Sermon for Sunday, August 10, 2014 Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28 Matthew 14:22-33 “Walk This Way”

In our Old Testament reading today, we move from the story of Jacob to the story of his family, a large group of boys.

If you remember the story of Jacob, we recall that his father, Isaac, preferred his elder son Esau, and it was only by trickery that Jacob got his father’s blessing. What ensued was years of pain and anger and fear.

You’d think that Jacob would have learned from his own experience that favoring one child over the others causes problems. But family behavior tends to repeat itself, doesn’t it? And so Jacob loves his youngest child, Joseph, the best.

But Joseph seems like an annoying brat, braying over and over again that he can interpret dreams. And his father seems to ignore the obnoxious behavior, perhaps because he was once equally obnoxious, and even gives him a special coat to wear, an expensive coat, a beautiful coat of a hundred different colors.

And his brothers understandably resent all this. Sibling rivalry, as bad or worse than that between Jacob and his brother Esau.

But, unlike Esau, they act. When his father sends Joseph out to check on his brothers where they are herding sheep, they decide to get rid of him. Not kill him, at least not directly. At first some of them want to kill him, but Reuben says no. He doesn’t want Joseph’s blood on his hands. So he says, “Let’s throw him into that deep pit over there.” Reuben intends to rescue him later, after they’ve put a good scare into him. So they take his coat and toss him into the pit. They smear blood on the coat – they will tell their father that a wild animal got Joseph – and ready themselves to return to Jacob, but then something happens –

A caravan of Ishmaelites appears, passing through, on the way to Egypt. The brothers sell the boy as a slave to them for twenty pieces of silver, thinking it is not good for a brother to kill a brother. Perhaps this generation has learned something from the past. Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, somehow they’ve learned that even in the greatest anger, killing is not a good solution.

We’ll hear more about Joseph in the weeks to come, but at least we hear something that has the possibility of redemption. Killing is forever, but this has the chance for making things right again.

It is not a coincidence that this story of Joseph and his brothers is linked to the story of Jesus walking on troubled waters.

Imagine the scene we hear of in the Gospel: Jesus wants some time alone to pray and to rest, after the feeding of the five thousand. He sends the disciples on ahead of him, in a boat, across the sea.

While they’re out in the boat, in the middle of the sea, a great storm comes up, and it looks like the boat will be swamped and they will drown. To say that they are afraid is an understatement. Jesus sees them, and knows their fear, so he goes to them.

He walks to them, across the water. He doesn’t swim. He walks. On top of the water.

They see him, but in the midst of the spray and the waves and their own seasickness, they don’t recognize him. He calls out to them, but they think their eyes are playing tricks on them. No man walks on water.

Perhaps it is a ghost. Perhaps not.

So Peter calls out, “Lord, if it is you, call me to come to you on the water.” Peter, like many fisherman, cannot swim, so he is asking for a lot. It’s not merely a test of Jesus’ voice, it’s a test of Jesus’ power.

And Jesus calls. And Peter gets out of the boat, and promptly goes under the heaving waves, crying to Jesus to save him. Jesus reaches down, hauls him into the boat and gets into the boat himself, and the storm immediately stops. Jesus chides Peter, saying that his lack of faith was what caused him to sink. All the disciples say “we believe, Lord!”

On the face of it, these stories from the Gospel and the Hebrew Bible don’t have much to do with each other.

But look below the surface, and you’ll note some interesting things.

In both stories, people are far away from home, in a state of disorientation. The brothers of Joseph? Distressed at their father’s favor toward their brother Joseph, away from their father and their home guarding the sheep. The disciples? Exhausted after the feeding of the five thousand, away from their rabbi and dry land and headed for the other side of the sea.

In both stories, emotions run high. Jealousy, fear, anger, doubt.

In both stories, surprising things happen that derail what we thought was the pattern: a caravan of Ishmaelites passing through, a sudden storm, a person walking on top of water.

In both stories, the recognition that what God wants is at variance with what human beings expect to do.

Joseph does not die. His story continues.

The disciples do not drown. Jesus reveals his power in a surprising way to save them. Their story continues.

It’s good to remember these two oddly linked stories when we are in the midst of our own storms, when our emotions overwhelm us, when we are angry, afraid, despairing, jealous.

Our stories continue, because God is a part of them. Our stories continue because God sends some Ishmaelites to interrupt a planned fratricide. Our stories continue because God walks out onto the water, in contravention of all we know about the science of water. Our stories continue because God wants us to continue God’s story. We are the bearers of the word. We carry God’s story forward in how we live our lives.

We walk, as the shepherding brothers of Joseph walked. We walk, as the Ishmaelites walked toward Egypt. We walk, as Jesus walked, to say that it is possible that water can be walked upon, that people who want to kill each other can learn a better way, that a slave in Egypt can become Pharaoh’s right hand man and reconcile with his family.

We walk by faith, because Jesus walked, to be the way, that the world might learn God’s will.

We walk, and we pray that others might walk with us, against the old way and toward the new.

Amen.

Sermon for Sunday, August 3, 2014 Gen. 32:22-31 “Night Visions”

How many of you didn’t sleep well last night? Was it simply a matter of biology – you shouldn’t have had that last glass of water at 10 pm – or were you tossing and turning over some problem in your mind? Did you have a bad dream from which you awoke in a cold sweat?

Yup. We’ve all been there.

I used to call them the two a.m. willies – unable to sleep, tossing and turning, dozing and having frightening dreams – and they usually were at their worst when I was worried about something. How was our business doing? Would I pass an exam in seminary? Was one of the kids going to get through a difficult challenge?

Two a.m. willies. They’re not fun. Why is it that we are in the grip of them in the middle of the night? Why not in the daytime, when they don’t seem quite so scary?

Science has some of the answers if you’re having nightmares: eat the wrong foods before bedtime, take certain medications, be in a stressful situation, and you may end up with bad dreams.

Some think those nightmares are your psyche’s way of sorting out and problem-solving, when you are sleeping and less likely to resist solutions. But what if you’re awake when the willies come on?

Night-time panic attacks are not uncommon, particular if you’re experiencing an extended period of stress. Some people with PTSD experience them.

If you have experienced nightmares, night terrors, or night-time panic attacks, you’re probably shivering in your seats right now. They are no fun, and no one wants to be reminded of the experience. But they do happen…

…which leads me to wonder if Jacob, alone in his tent by the River Jabbok, is experiencing a nightmare, or a panic attack, or if God or an angel is wrestling with him, giving Jacob the two a.m. willies.

He would have good reason to have them. Remember, this is the guy who cheated his brother out of his inheritance. This is the guy who was going back to face that brother. Who knows if Esau was still ticked off after all these years? And Jacob was now a pretty successful guy. He was at risk for loss of his wealth as well as the possibility that Esau would physically attack him.

So we have this story. Jacob, away from his family, rests by the river. He has sent them on ahead. Is this because he is using them as human shields, or simply because he doesn’t want them to be at risk by accompanying him? We don’t know. But in the dark, he wrestles with a man. Is it an angel? Is it God? Jacob certainly thinks the latter, since he names the place “Face of God” – Peniel – when he departs the next day.

But is this frightening encounter, this midnight wrestling match, a dream or real? Is Jacob, as Jungian psychotherapists might guess, working out his problems and fears in his dreams? Is this a fevered imagination gone wild or a misinterpreted panic attack or is it God opening up a can of…well, you know what kind of can I’m thinking of…because of Jacob’s less than stellar actions.

Jacob, the trickster tricked by Laban into fourteen years of labor to get the woman he loved. Jacob, the cheater, aided and abetted by his mother as he pulls the wool over his blind father’s eyes. Jacob, the one who was second chronologically but is first in terms of bad behavior.

If you were God, and you had made a promise to Abraham about generation after generation of the Chosen people, and then this grandson of Abraham sins in stupid, sophomoric, venal ways…well, wouldn’t you want to whack the guy one upside the head? 

Doesn’t he deserve it?

But as in all the stories of the relationship between God and God’s people, it’s complicated.

God shows up to wrestle all night with this annoying guy, and the annoying guy cannot be wrestled into submission. So God whacks him HARD on the hip, dislocating Jacob’s hip. 

That’ll slow him down…

But even though he is slowed down, Jacob still continues the wrestling, now a verbal sparring. He says “Bless me.” Now when we hear “bless me,” we think warm and fuzzy. But this is still the same sort of wrestling that Jacob did with Esau, that same sort of striving to get what he wants, but doesn’t seem to deserve. Jacob is saying “Gimme that blessing. We wrestled all night and you didn’t beat me until you hit me on the hip joint.” And God, who is probably a little tired of this guy, says “Okay. But riddle me this: what’s your name?”

Jacob look at him a little suspiciously. Is this a trick? The trickster, exhausted, doesn’t have it in him to come back with a snappy reply. He simply says, “Jacob.”

And God says, “Yeah, well, you may say that, but I’m changing that. Your name is now Israel, because you have wrestled with God and with human beings and have prevailed.” Jacob thinks, “umm, yes, that’s what the word Israel means, but is this guy saying he’s God, that wrestling with him was like wrestling with God?” So he asks the obvious question.

“You’ve got to tell me who you are.”

The first rays of the dawn lighten the skies, and God says “yeah, right. I bless you.” And then God is no longer there, at least not visibly.

The blessing that Jacob got, that first one, the inheritance and blessing from his father Isaac that caused his problems with his brother Esau, was a blessing that Jacob didn’t deserve or earn. But the second blessing, the one from God, is one Jacob earned. He wrestled for it, all night long. He deserved it, not because he was perfect, but because he struggled and he suffered for his misdeeds.

Jacob, renamed Israel, the name of the Chosen nation. Jacob, an unlikely leader, an undeserving inheritor, nevertheless blessed.

There’s a lesson for us here. I expect that none of us think of ourselves as God’s chosen one. We are experts in explaining how we don’t quite meet God’s expectations. We regularly do bad things, stupid things, mindless mistakes that separate us from God’s desires for us. We get the two a.m. willies when we think about that. We wrestle with God, saying “you’re not giving me what I want right now!” And God keeps wrestling with us…not because God particularly enjoys wrestling, but because he wants us to recognize that we’re not really wrestling with him, we’re wrestling with ourselves, our own unhealthy wants and expectations. God wants to bless us, but sometimes we need to do the wrestling before we can even recognize who it is we are seeking a blessing from.

We are built to struggle, to wrestle, to sometimes go the harder route rather than the easier one. We are intended to engage God as two seemingly evenly matched wrestlers, trying to connect, trying to understand what it is we are trying to understand, what that blessing will mean.

Sometimes the only way we get to a place of blessing is by the wrestling at midnight. By the sweat and fear of the two a.m. willies. By the negotiation, by the question  “who are you?” Sometimes we only know what the blessing is, and who bestows it, by the hard work of the middle of the night. The dark night of the soul. The questions. The wrestle. The sweat.

The blessing is there, if you’re willing to wrestle for it, if you’re willing to ask for it, and if you’re willing to believe that you deserve it.                       

 Amen.

Sermon for Sunday, July 27, 2014 Genesis 29:15-28 and Romans 8:26-39 “Not According to Plan”

A bunch of people got onto an airplane the other day. They were on vacation, going to visit relatives, moving to a new place, taking a business trip. They were men and women, old and young, babies in arms and folks in wheelchairs. The logistics of their trips had been planned – where they were going and when, who was going to pick them up, whether they needed to go to the currency conversion kiosk …they each had a checklist of sorts, a plan of action.

And then something happened. A missile, and then the plane was exploding and bodies were flying and nothing that happened was part of the plan of action. And even the remnants of their bodies and the plan that had carried them were no longer treated according to the normal plan for such abnormal events.

So much for the checklist. So much for the plan.

A few thousand miles away, parents were dressing their children for school. Food was being prepared, very early in the morning, before dawn since it was Ramadan, the month of daytime fasting. Men were planning their workday at their tasks. Women were figuring out if they needed to go to the market for more rice or bread for the iftar dinner after sundown. 

Nonpolitical people, Palestinians who simply wanted to live their lives, regardless of the 

political strife that has been a subtext of their existence for decades. It was the normal plan of the day for these folks during the holy month.

And then something happened. Bombing from Israel, intent on destroying Hamas, viewed by Israel as a terrorist political group, but who was killed? Children. Old people. Women. Maybe a few Hamas leaders somewhere amongst the dead, but mostly not. Children who should have been walking down the road with their backpacks filled with their books and homework were in morgues. Mothers were in the emergency medical facilities, being treated for shrapnel and for traumatic amputations. Men screaming, looking for their families in the remnants of their demolished homes.

So much for the plan of the day.

What happens to us when our plan of the day is shattered? When our child or our spouse is injured in an accident? When we get a frightful diagnosis? When our friend is arrested? When our son checks himself into rehab?

Plans of the day. The old joke is this: “Do you want to make God laugh? Make a plan.”

The joke is predicated on the notion that God knows that life is unpredictable and that we human beings, who think we can control our universe, can forestall that unpredictability by making a plan.

But our plans are waylaid by the things we cannot predict, by human folly, by wars, by plagues, by the unexpected.

And in those moments, like the painful moments we have heard about these past few weeks, if we know nothing at all, we can still know one thing: God suffers beside us.

God feels our pain, and weeps with us, and holds us in the divine embrace to comfort us and say that bombs and death and demonization of other people are not the only story to be told.

There is another one, one that is based in our sure knowledge that God is with us. God sent our savior, Jesus Christ, fully anticipating that bad things would happen, then as now. God’ s son Jesus taught us to know our Creator in ways that humans could understand. And then Jesus entered into our world of struggles and pain and brokenness in the deepest possible way: he allowed himself to become a victim of betrayal and to be crucified. To suffer pain. 

To feel the sting of Judas’ kiss. To undergo the lash and the cross.

When we cry out “does God know how much pain I am in?” remember this: Jesus, the Son of God, willingly accepted his death.

To know how it feels to be fully human. To understand our cries. To have intimate and personal knowledge of what we suffer.

And that is why Paul says “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Jesus saved us. Jesus suffered for us. He feels the cries of mothers in Gaza whose children have died. He feels the shock of families whose loved ones died on the Malaysian flight over the Ukraine. He feels the fear of little children, sent by their families across the Sonoran desert to find an escape from gang violence in Central America.

Jesus knows the drop in the pit of the stomach of a plan gone awry in an awful way. And he doesn’t turn away. He stays with us in the confusion and the anger and the grief. Because there is nothing, NOTHING, that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And that love should then motivate us to make changes in the world, or our little corner of it, in a way that is more in keeping with the Creator’s intent than bombs and detention camps.

If we are not separated from the love of God, how can we possible act in ways that deny that all are given that love? How can we not feel their pain, as God feels ours? How can we not speak out and say “Enough!”

Amen.