SCRIPTURE: Lamentations 2
TEXT: THEME: God expects us to take time and space to process trauma. INTRODUCTION The Bible is a collection of people’s stories with God. It records our human lives and our discoveries about God's character. One of the brilliant qualities of the Bible, is that it does not just record our successes and triumphs, but it also records our failures, sorrows, struggles, betrayals and pain. It is God’s dwelling with us through all the parts of our lives. In it, we can see God's healing, compassion, patience, forgiveness, love and life giving ways. Lamentation is such a book, where as the result of our failure, the Holy City of Jerusalem was invaded and destroyed, resulting in many of its residents being exiled to live in Babylon. 750 miles away as the crow flies, it is a 1,700 miles walk along the rivers. SCRIPTURE The second chapter in Lamentations is like the 1,700 mile walk. It is a space between the grieving in Jerusalem and finding ourselves displaced in Babylon. It is a space in sorrow before we begin crying out to God again. This is a space for us to wallow in self pity, to mourn our loss, to complain about what has happened to us, to get angry, to blame others and God, and to deny any responsibility so we don’t have to feel any worse than we already do and to be the victim of our own story. This is what it means to be human. The verses represented in the scripture reading illustrate very strong feelings. This is about what we feel. Its okay, we are human, we do this, sometimes when we are at our worst. But this is not all that we are. This is God letting us have our moment, until we decide God isn’t actually to blame and we shouldn’t have acted that way. This represents our knee jerk reactions to calamity, our monkey brain or amygdala fight or flight reaction. This is before our prefrontal cortex or Spock brain kicks in. Child psychiatrist John Rosemond talked about the “strong willed child.” He said that there is no such thing. I sort of suspect he actually meant that there are parents who are not very good at parenting. So when a child is angry and says that they hate us, then stomps away to their room locking the door…he says to take the vacation. Let them be, let them stew, be angry and after awhile, when they calm down and they need us again, they will come back. This is what is recorded in this passage. The people of God are angry at God and have stomped away to their room, blaming God for ruining their lives. 1God is angry at us and we are humiliated that all of these things have happened to us, with no thought our how we might have contributed to the situation. 4God has become like an enemy to us, by not preventing this attack, it is as if God was attacking us. If you are not for us, you must be against us. The tent of the daughter of Zion, is the temple of the children of God. 7There is no worship in the temple. It has been destroyed, What they do not see is that there was no worship of God happening there anyway because they had taken up to worshiping other gods. It wasn’t defiled by enemies, it was defiled by their betraying hearts. No worship of God, No leadership from God, No governance according to God’s ways, they turned away from God, but are not sorry about what they have done and blame God for the result of their folly. 11The grief and hunger they experience is emotional and physical but they are also spiritually starved. 14The counsel that they received was false. These prophets told them only what they wanted to hear, or what would continue to keep the prophets employed. They did not challenge their faith, or encourage them to grow. They were useless, misleading them in thinking that they were fine, when they were not. 16Their enemies have risen to make fun of them. Mock them and gloat over their demise. What was it in the way that Israel was living that made them to have so many enemies? Was it arrogance, greed, pride, selfishness, prejudice, self-righteousness? 20Then in the turning to God, it is almost as if saying: Look what you made me do. Don’t you know who you are doing this too? Not taking any responsibility for their actions or the consequence of their behavior. They have forgotten where their entitlement and privilege came from. 22They feel that God is to blame for not defeating their enemies. It is as if God had given their enemies an invitation to come and kill their children. APPLICATION God is big enough to be blamed by us for the bad stuff that happened in our lives. How do we move from blame to taking responsibility for our contribution to the situation we are in? What are we feelings in the space between disaster and hope? We need time and space to process events in our lives. After the fires in Lahaina and Kula, we spent time listening to the stories that people held. This gave them time and space to put their story together, to begin to articulate what happened to them and how they felt. This helped them get in touch with what they were feeling. Right or wrong, this is how they perceive what had happened and how it made them feel. The space after the disaster, to the time when we feel hope, is where our story get processed. As tell our story, we begin to know what we are feeling. This is where our listening can help identify the feelings being expressed. Sometime we don't know what we are feeling but others observe it. If we know how we are feeling, then we can decide if we want to continue to feel this way. Having time and space for sorrow, crying, blaming, knee jerk scenarios are our first response. Our presence, listening, moving towards normalcy, identifying feelings, are helpful for someone who is in the between space of disaster and hope. CONCLUSION In our story God is dwelling with us. There is a flip side to the story from Disaster to Babylon. The story that shows our actions that lead to the disaster. The story of how we felt one way because we didn’t have all of the facts correct. The story of how our feelings changed with a new perspective, a change in behavior or greater understanding. If anything, this says that we are people who are in process. Humans who we could get stuck in blame, anger, self-pity, grief, sadness, shame and helplessness. Keep processing, God has more for us beyond the space of lament.
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SCRIPTURE: Lamentations 1
TEXT: THEME: Giving ourselves grace to grieve our loss. INTRODUCTION Barbara Brown Taylor, a former pastor, educator at Piedmont College, and public theologian spoke about how our world is carrying a lot of unmourned grief. Our world has experienced so many kinds of losses. Just last week the shooting at the end of the Kansas City Chief’s parade triggered old sorrows brought about by gun violence. Our American culture doesn’t give us adequate opportunities to grieve. We don’t stop to reflect, to feel pain, placing an event like this into a larger context, we jump quickly towards revenge which is not mourning. Sometimes we need a retreat where we can scream with drums, or attend a really good funeral, or participate in a march advocating for the stop of losses due to abuse, but our culture does not offer a stylized way to deal with the corporate grief we feel as a community. She suggests that the church offer Ash Wednesday and the 40 days of Lent as a way for our community to deal with our unmourned grief with an opportunity to lament, confess sins, and sit in the sins of our community. This led me to the book of Lamentations. I have never preached from it before and I found a resource from Fuller Seminary called Lamentations in Lent. It seemed a bit much for the next 5 Sundays in Lent, so I thought maybe I’d join Iao UCC bible study in Mark. So I took Iao’s invitation to join them at 7pm. The Gospel of Mark will have us journey with Jesus up to the events of Easter but that wasn’t what I wanted to do so I went back to Lamentations. As I read the its passages I found that its poetry were touch points for the thoughts and emotions we are carrying about the Lahaina and Kula fires. I’ll be preaching from the first few verses of Lamentations 1 but have worked the other verses of the first chapter into the liturgy of our worship service. SCRIPTURE Lamentations speaks to our human condition. Our hearts are articulated in the words of this poem. From its verses I took the feelings that were communicated and attached some of our current feelings and events. As you listen to the retelling of this lament, do the same and attach your own feelings, thoughts, stories, to reflect, meditate and mourn. This is the beauty of poetry. 1Lahaina: sits in ashes, Once filled with people, now uninhabitable and empty. She has become like a widower. Once a princess among resort towns, she is now dependent upon handouts, subsidies, FEMA, grants, agencies and others to support her. 2Sorrowful, her tourist friends are gone, their playground is gone. Some try to take advantage of her despair. 3Her Livelihood is gone. Those who could–have left, locals are sheltered without jobs, security is gone, some are surviving to stay close to home, to ward off opportunist. 4The first Missionary outposts mourn. The Kalawina ministers behind the scenes. Our hope in God lies within. 5She is subject to insurance companies, building permits, the core of engineers, EPA standards, infrastructure and utility concerns. It is easy to think God is the cause of all of this. That is not true, God has not caused this, Rather God is with us in all of this and even with our children. 6Ambivalence towards Lahaina’s children drives the forces of power, money and politics towards quick fixes. This will be a long journey. 7All we have left are the memories. Even our mementos are gone. The touchstones to the past, the reminders of our history, the ancestors are gone and the artifacts of our stories. Don’t listen to those who try to take our heritage from us. 8what has happen to her bring sadness. It is so embarrassing. 9We are Mortified. We have been so short sighted, only doing what was needed in the moment without thought to its long lasting effect. We have no pride to preserve. “Lord look upon our despair and our shame.” 10what has been most dear to us has been taken away. Our boundaries have been violated. 11The treasures we have escaped with, we use for sustenance. Lord look upon our desperation. 12Tourist come and gawk at our misfortune. How sad, how poor, how houseless. 13The fires were relentless and complete. Everyone was affected by its wrath. 14Sometimes when things are difficult, it is easy to blame God for what we have done, or for things that have happened to us. Forgive us. APPLICATION The lament gives us time to consider what has happened. Identify how we feel, and even consider how we might have contributed to part of what had happened. We can admit our part, make plans to change our behavior so we don’t find ourselves in this situation again and see what we can do to make things better. The feelings we have are important. We may not understand them right away and need to give them the attention they need so we can identify them, explore why we feel that way, discover their roots and decide if we want to continue to feel like that or not. Too often we move towards quick solutions that are rash and don’t deal with the feelings we have, just burry them. When we are able to name these feelings it helps us to know what we are dealing with. Prayer, silence, engaging in a lamenting prayer gives us space to consider these things. Sometime we may need the help of a therapist who can help us to identify what we are dealing with and give us tools we can use to deal with our feelings. Praise music, the Psalms, and coffee with a trusted friend are other tools at our disposal. CONCLUSION On Friday Eddie and I spoke with an insurance adjuster about the repairs to the sanctuary roof and water damage inside. They surveyed the outside of our building with a drone and the inside with a 360 degree camera. Their AI software will identify all of the places in need of repair. They said there is a good chance that we will be able to get the funds that we need to do all of the repairs that need to be done. We need to be in pray that the insurance company will partner with us to make these repairs and keep our building going for the next 150 years. The interior work may be extensive. We may have to invite ourselves to worship at Iao UCC while they set up scaffolding to work on the ceiling. I can feel my anxiousness building. Remember the 4-8-7 breathing? We need to feed oxygen to our brain to think clearly. (And breath in the Holy Spirit). Sitting uncrossed with our feet flat to the ground and hands in our lap, helps us to feel grounded and maybe even sense the presence of the Lord being our foundation. There is lots of work to do, besides everything else we are already doing. But God hears our cries and journeys with us through all of this. Then down the road, I anticipate, we will celebrate, as people being able to return home to Jerusalem. To Lament is natural. We all feel loss in our lives from time to time. God is not foreign to our sorrow and is a companion who will not abandon us even when the road is difficult. God is a good listener, is patient with us especially when it is taking a while for us to get our bearings and knows that our feelings are important and will always be there to help us. SCRIPTURE: 2 Corinthians 4:3-6
TEXT: 6For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. THEME: Letting the light of the divine shine through us. INTRODUCTION Although it is Transfiguration Sunday I am not going to preach from the Gospel text. Theologian, Melinda Quivik gives an interesting perspective of the transfiguration. Jesus is on a hike up the mountain with James, Peter and John, when the veil of Jesus’ humanness is removed and Jesus’ divinity; wondrous, frightening, powerful, unexpected and rich is revealed. Dazzling white, the unnatural and incomprehensible draws us towards, the abnormal and apocalyptic sight (apocalyptic means: revealing; like the apocalypse of the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz). If that wasn’t enough, the companions that appear with Jesus are Moses and Elijah, showing us how Jesus it the fulfillment of the Law that Moses brings from God and the prophetic nature of Jesus, speaking God’s words to us. Then God speaks, don’t rest on these laurels but take these wonders in your heart and live it off of the mountain, among the people. The transfiguration is a change in Jesus’ outward appearance that does not change who Jesus is, but his transfiguration is a transformative moment for Peter, James and John. SCRIPTURE The gospel of Jesus Christ is carried by human vessels. Sometimes the glory of the Gospel is veiled by our humanness and sometimes, as the Apostle Paul recognizes, the Gospel is unable to be received through our veils of pride, selfishness, greed and lust. 6For it is God who said “Let light shine out of darkness” … Rachel Naomi Remen, story book writer, gives insight to this verse as she tells her grandfather’s story of the first day of the world. From out of the heart of the Holy darkness-the source of life, emerges a great ray of light, giving birth to the world of a thousand thousand things. And the vessels containing the light of the world, the wholeness of the world, broke and was shattered into a thousand thousand fragments of light. And they fell into all events and all people, where they remain deeply hidden. All people are created with the capability to discover these fragments of light in every person and event and as we do, acknowledging the light with awe or thanksgiving, it makes the world a little bit more whole, or as Paul might say, less veiled. APPLICATION Why talk about the transfiguration? Because it plants the brilliance of eternity in us as we are reminded on Ash Wednesday that we are dust. That as soil, we are dependent upon God breath in us for life. Our responsibility is to listen to Jesus and engage what we know about Jesus in our living. What is veiled in us that needs to be transfigured? As I was working on this passage, I realized I got my made up headings for the scripture reading wrong. The first part is a Lament: “the gospel is veiled, to those who are Pershing, the god of this world has blinded them, and keeps them from seeing the glory of Christ who is the image of God.” Then the second part is Transfiguration: “We do not proclaim ourselves but Jesus Christ in us; Let light shine out of darkness, to give light of the knowledge of the glory of God.” I realized this when I made a list of all the veils that blind us from seeing the divine; greed, power, prestige, money, possessions, materialism, fame, privilege, image, approval, popularity, ego, pain, prejudice, fear, selfishness, racism and self-preservation. The light of the divine that shines out of darkness are seen in acts of; compassion, stewardship, community life, a woman’s rights over their own body, seeing hurt, empathy, affordable drugs, healing, affordable health care, water rights, zero carbon foot print, justice, eliminating microplastics, generosity, financial planning, the family of God, equity, image of God, the body of Christ, the children of God and being the people of God. This is what transfigures through us when we drop our human veils and let Christ in us shine through. The USA is good, but not perfect and needs the church to help it move in betters ways away from the veils of self-centeredness and self interest. In today’s Mission Moment on the back of the bulletin, it talks about racism and earth justice. African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans and others are exposed to hazardous waste in their communities in the dumping of toxic material, testing of nuclear devices, medical experiments, diverting water, ignoring EPA standards and just pay the fines of their offensives. Racism is the intentional or unintentional use of power to isolate, separate and exploit others. This is another way to shine the light in darkness. CONCLUSION Transfiguration Sunday is also the last Sunday in Epiphany, this Wednesday we move into the season of Lent. As I worked in my yard, I listened to a pod cast interview with Barbara Brown Taylor. Episcopal priest, public theologian and former religion department professor at Piedmont College. In one of her side comments, she said that American Culture does not deal well with Lament. Other cultures have stylized ways of dealing with their loss. This is what the O Bon season is during the summer, the Lantern ceremony at Ala Moana beach park, the Mexican dia de muertes (the day of the dead), Ching ming. Besides funerals, our culture does not provide ways for us to deal with unmourned grief. Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent, 40 days before Easter are one thing that the church can offer. So I am planning to preach from the book of Lamentations for the next 5 Sundays before Palm Passion Sunday and Easter. This will provide us time to meditate, reflect and listen to what God has to say, not only to our own sins, but to the sins of all, and our corporate sins. It will give us a safe space to mourn so there can be some healing from what we have lost. SCRIPTURE: 1 Corinthians 9:16-23
TEXT: 23b so that I may share in its blessings. THEME: Faithfully living Christ’s Aloha can change lives. INTRODUCTION Every so often, while driving I will run across one of those “Live Aloha” bumper sticker. The one designed by Sig Zane with the resilient Ohia Lehua blossom in the corner. It started as a campaign, in 1993, to reform government when its organizers recognized that Hawaii was losing its Aloha Spirit. So, they decided to promote living according to the depth, beauty, and wisdom of the Hawaiian people. Live Aloha means to live with a caring spirit, respect for others, respect for land and the responsibility for all that surrounds us. When we couple this with the love of Christ, living aloha, is Christ’s Aloha, and should be characterize in our lives, in the church, permeate into our community, challenge our country and bring peace to the world. This is not domination but a grace filled craftsmanship of dominion or “skilled mastery.” SCRIPTURE Sometimes when we do a Bible study we get down to the minutia of a passage, with verb parsing and etymology, but at other times we need to pull back and view the passage from afar, to get a feeling of how this truth applies to us today. As we pull our view back from this passage, we can see how it is divided into two parts. The first being that of the Apostle Paul justifying to the church in Corinth his legitimacy as a teacher about Jesus and the second part, talking about how the Good News of Jesus Christ is for all people, backgrounds, races, culture and even religions. The Gospel of Jesus is primarily about our relationship with God. It’s free, easy, not lorded over, or complicated. Simple enough, but provocative. It raises our curiosity to learn more. It has us offering the best version of ourselves to others. We can journey in relationship with God through Jesus for the rest of our lives. Not only that but this is for everybody as we journey together. So, we don’t have to make living in relationship with God harder than it has to be. God does not regulate it, we don’t have to administrate it, all have must to do is share it, and dispense it by living it. Past lives do not disqualify us from relationship with God through Jesus. We all come from someplace before we have an experience of Jesus that moves us from; unbelief to faith, to the belief that Jesus is God in flesh and blood, to a new reality of resurrection, to relationships healed through forgiveness, and the dwelling presence of God’s Holy Spirit that gives us the ability to make changes in our world for God. It is after all a new beginning. Paul is not a theological snake oil salesman, but has an experience with the risen Jesus that changed his perspective and discredited his previous presuppositions. He now believes what he thought was blasphemous and reset his course of faith. The motivation of love is not domination. It’s not a forcible take over of culture, but is; persuasive, compelling, convincing, crafting, stewardship, skilled mastery in its living and resonates through our experiences. APPLICATION We all have come to believe in Jesus as the Christ in some way. The next part is for us to live what we believe by faith. How do we live/share/dispense this Gospel knowing that it is not just for us but for everyone? In thinking about the application part of this sermon, I began to think about examples of faith I was able to copy from observing how others carried on and lived their faith. There was a couple who didn’t use their old car as a trade in but gave their old car away to someone who needed one. There was a couple, that even though well into their married years always spoke with respect, appreciation and polite manners with each other. There is a pastor who took complicated theological ideas and made them simple to understand and even explained them with humor. There are those who don’t live as if they are dying, but as those who are going to live forever, with courage, trying new things, wonder and zest. A classmate of mine and her husband chose to keep their baby even though they knew she would have birth defects. They did what they could to let their daughter have as full a life as she could and know that she was loved. Then there where those who care for love ones, that I see the example of Jesus in them. It is humbling to watch and inspires me to be a better care giver. It is through the example of these, ordinary faithful people that I have been won over to be better. Watching their examples I have been able to copy some of what they do. This is what Paul is talking about when he speaks about becoming all things to all people. It is more about a humble empathy that understand where people are coming from, so we can speak human being to human being, and see the image of God in each other. Heart to heart, fear to fear, hope to hope and love to love. I have changed my mind and behavior because of kindness I’ve witnessed by others. I have changed my mind and behavior because of the generous acts of help displayed by others. I have changed my mind and behavior because I saw those who chose to be loving instead of judgmental. I have changed my mind and my behavior because of Hospitality I have received when I was hungry, lonely, and stranger. The stories of the Bible inform me about how important good, compassionate, and just our immigration laws need to be, as the people of God continue to be aliens in a foreign land, relying on the resources of others to be generous and kind. CONCLUSION More times than not, those who have the “live Aloha” bumper stickers are the worst drivers on the road and want you to ‘aloha’ them because they are not ‘aloha-ing’ anybody. That is not how it works. Aloha is not a commodity, or a demand on anyone, it is an inspiring way that we choose to live. Love more important than power. Loving you in spite of you. At the beginning of my career, I spent most of my preaching explaining the text so we could have an insightful understanding, but what good is a minuscule insight that doesn’t make a difference in the way we live our lives. So in the latter half of my career I have spent more time trying to figure out how the truth of a passage, can change the way we live, approach life, reconcile relationships, reprioritized our lives and calm our fears about death. When we get down to it, my preaching has been about being loved by God, about relationships with God and others, about our doing our best to be loving of others, and for us to love ourselves so we can bring the best of us into any situation and to others. One last observation. We live in an anxious world. There is a tension between Paul and the Corinthians in this passage. I went to a resilience training this week that the Hawaii Conference resourced using the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance Team. They demonstrated different breathing techniques as way for us to feed our brains with oxygen so we can be calm and bring our best selves into a situation or relationship. When I attended the General Synod last June, they began a lot of their workshops and session with breathing. As natural as we think it is sometimes, we need to stop hyperventilating and take a few deep breaths (even before we get our blood pressure read). One tool the resilience training taught us to do was to breathe in for 4 counts, hold that breath for 8 counts and release it in 7 counts. 4-8-7 In the word Aloha, Ha means breath. This could be a way, we can allow God’s breath to help us to live ours. |
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April 2024
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