Friday, August 19, 2016

Is Love Enough?

Is Love Enough?

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, O.A., Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
August 21, 2016;  Proper 16, Year C, Track 2
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Luke 13:10-17)  Now Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment." When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day." But the Lord answered him and said, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?" When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

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[If you were here last week, you know I recycled a sermon from 15 years ago. Now, I promise I'll write a new sermon one of these days. But I had another hard week, and I had to go to Little Rock for a meeting Friday and Saturday. I just didn't have time. So, back to the barrel. This one's only 12 years old; from 2004.]

That bent-over woman. I wonder what it was -- the Aspirit that had crippled her for eighteen years.@ My intuition is that it didn't have it=s origin in something physical. But it was crippling, nonetheless.

Like the woman who grew up in the home of an angry father and a compliant mother. Everyone walked on eggshells trying to avoid setting him off. She learned that when she was a good girl, a very, very good girl, he wouldn't lash out at her with his bitter tongue and his biting sarcasm. But something in him was so angry that she never felt really safe. She tried to please him, to make him happy, to make him love her. But he was unhappy and angry. So she grew up feeling vulnerable and insecure. Now a mother and grandmother herself, she=s never really felt safe in a relationship. She kept the peace by taking care of others. But with the divorce and all the kids grown up, now there=s no one to take care of but herself. And she doesn't really know how. She wishes someone would rescue her; she=s willing to do anything to make someone happy, if they would only love her; accept her. But she needs people so desperately that she scares them off or wears them out. Though her father has been dead for years, she is still bent over, carrying the shadow of his ghost, a spirit that has crippled her for so many years.

Or the moody teenager who doesn't know what=s wrong with him, but there=s nobody to talk to. His father=s preoccupied with business and his mother just preaches at him. What they are trying to teach him at school is stupid and worthless. Who cares that the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, my God! He=s not about to let somebody see him walking out of the counselor=s office or some shrink=s place. So he hangs out with some other kids who are as moody as he is, and that feels better. Alcohol or drugs help him not feel like he feels. When he=s picked up trying to use a fake ID his mother tells the officer he=s been nothing but trouble since the day he was born, and something inside of him hardens. So, she thinks I=m trouble. I'll show her trouble. And he walks out slumping over with a sullen cold rage that he carries like a sack across his back. AYou=d better straighten up,@ his mother shakes her finger at him. AYeah. Right.@ He can feel the spirit that is crippling him just before his eighteenth year.

Henry David Thoreau hit a communal chord with his words Athe mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.@ The external circumstances of so many lives are threatening and transitory. How many people are just one pay check from quiet financial desperation? How many are going as hard as they can and never catching up? But it is the internal baggage that is so quietly and desperately crippling. No one is immune from hurts, misunderstanding, and love with bitter hooks and strings attached. No one=s spirit reaches eighteen years without feeling attacked and crippled.

We are not told anything about the woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years; she just appears. But she appears in the synagogue on the Sabbath. We know she lives in a patriarchal world where the women who attend the synagogue are set apart in their own room, apart from the men whose daily prayers in that synagogue include the prayer of blessing and thanks to God for not making them women. We know that she lives in a world where the men of authority and power will react to her healing with criticism because it is done on the Sabbath, caring more for the rules and traditions than for her liberation. 

In his wonderful and challenging novel The Last Temptation of Christ, Nikos Kazantzakais imagines a conversation between Jesus and John the Baptist. They are sitting in the hollow of a rock, high above the Jordan, arguing all night long about what to do with this world. It is sunrise. John=s face is hard and decisive; from time to time his arms go up and down as though he were chopping something apart. Jesus= face is tame and hesitant. His eyes are full of compassion.

AIsn't love enough?@ Jesus asks John.

ANo,@ John answers angrily. AThe tree is rotten. God called me and gave me the ax, which I then placed at the roots of the tree. I did my duty. Now you do yours: Take the ax and strike!@

AIf I were fire, I would burn,@ Jesus says. AIf I were a woodcutter, I would strike; but I am a heart, and I love.@ [1]

For so many people the tree of life is rotten. The weight of the world is heavy and tiring. It feels like things will go on like this and just keep going on like this. It=s easy to understand the desire to strike out. It=s easy to feel disillusioned. We want a Messiah who will do something to set things right. We want a God who will bring some relief and justice, who will rescue the innocent and punish the abusive. We want a Messiah who will fix us, and make us so that we won=t keep walking into the same blind alleys over and over again. And we spin in the vortex of our own vicious circles, weighed down and crippled. 

Eighteen years! Eighteen years she was bent over and unable to stand up straight. When you've been bent over that long, people get used to it. They don=t really notice. It's like you've always been that way. It's like it's always been that way. 

But Jesus noticed her. Three wonderful words in this story, AJesus saw her.@ I think there is a lot underneath those words. He really saw her. He saw her suffering. He cared. His look was not one of curiosity, or judgment, or aversion. His look was one of compassion. He called her over and let her know she could be free. She could be liberated from this spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. He touched her. AIf I were fire, I would burn; If I were a woodcutter, I would strike; but I am a heart, and I love.@ And love was enough. Whatever trauma had crippled her and bent her low was melted by a knowing, compassionate love that gave her the freedom to stand up straight again, free of her bondage on this Sabbath day.

Is love enough? Is God=s divine, unqualified love enough to fill the emptiness left by an angry and neglectful father? Can a heavenly Father's abundant acceptance and delight heal the hurt and restore our dignity? Is love enough? Can the love of a Messiah who was despised and rejected reach out to touch the alienation and loneliness that leads us to self-destruction? Can the compassion of a Messiah who really sees break through the walls of hostility to touch our sensitivity and hunger for true love and understanding?

Yes. A thousand times yes. Love will break any rules and suffer any cross to manifest itself. Not only is love enough, it is the only thing powerful enough to free us.

When all human love has failed us, especially our love for ourselves... When our spirits are crippled... God sees and cares. God touches us with gentle compassion. God frees us from the stuff that weighs us down and convicts us. Any time; any place. Right here; right now. 

Be free of whatever burdens you. Be free of whatever weighs you down. Stand up straight and proud. AYou are set free,@ says Jesus on this Sabbath. Stand up straight immediately and begin praising God saying, AWe believe in One God, the father the almighty...@


[1]Quoted by Barbara Brown Taylor, AGod In Pain,@ p. 19
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Saturday, August 13, 2016

Interpreting the Present Time

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, O.A., Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
August 14, 2016;  Proper 15, Year C, Track 2
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Luke 12:49-56)  Jesus said, "I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided:
                father against son
                                and son against father,
                mother against daughter
                                and daughter against mother,
                mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
                                and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."
He also said to the crowds, "When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, `It is going to rain'; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, `There will be scorching heat'; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?"
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[NOTE: I wrote and preached this sermon fifteen years ago, August 2001. This week has been a busy one, and I didn't come up with a good sermon idea, so I'm pulling this one out of the barrel. Lowell]


"You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?"  (Luke 12:56)

Whenever the natural forces of destruction, storm or wind, are active anywhere in Asia, the skies of Utah light up.  The visiting dust shimmers red in the air, painting vast vibrant colors against the magenta mountains.  That evening sky is a metaphor of a fundamentally new way of understanding the world as an interconnected Web of Life.  Scientists tell us that there are unseen connections between what were previously thought to be separate entities.  Those who will thrive now and in the age to come are those who can interpret the appearance of earth and sky, and adapt to reality, the world the way it is.  The problem is this: for those of us who are about age 45 and above, reality is dramatically different from the way we learned about it.

The new science of quantum and chaos has changed our fundamental understanding of life.  We are going through a period of new learning that is comparable to the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.  It is an apocalyptic time of change.  And change brings conflict.

Some people wring their hands and produce words of woe, trying to build walls of protection around their old certainties as they prophesy doom with a grim glee.  Their world is dying in the new fire.  Their words are words of straw.  The prophet Jeremiah says, "What has straw in common with wheat?"

But all around us are words of wheat, planting seeds of a new future, recognizing what God is doing in our time. 

Apocalyptic times are times of fire and hammer, when old ways are destroyed, and the energy of fire and hammer are constructing new ways out of the old.  It is an extraordinarily exciting time to be alive.  I once thought, how lucky those who were alive in Renaissance Italy.  No more.  Generations will look back at this age and say, "How thrilling it must have been to be alive when such secrets of the universe were being revealed!"

The fire and hammer is on our front pages and our cell phones.  Globalization.  Genetic modification.  Human sexuality.  Climate change.  Immigration and refugees.  Twitter.  Bike trails.  Hybrid self-driving cars.

The voices of control and protectionism are anxiously trying to build walls around themselves, while the ground under their feet is moving and shaking.

For nearly four hundred years we've lived in the shadow of Newton=s understanding of reality: Newton said that our universe is like a machine.  To understand it, just analyze the parts and put them back together.  We can control machines.


No more.  We now recognize that reality is a dance of chaos and order.  There is no simple, objective truth out there somewhere – a book of rules that you can follow and know that you are right and those others are wrong.  No, everything is in relationship to everything else, changing and learning and evolving.

Life is not like a machine.  It's more like jazz.  There is some structure.  The musicians agree about melody, tempo and key.  Then they play, listening carefully, communicating constantly.  What happens is a surprise.  Music beyond what we imagined.  It seems to come from somewhere else, from a spirit or energy that the musicians have accessed among themselves, a relationship that transcends our false sense of separateness.  When it happens; it appears.  And the musicians are amazed, joyful, grateful.

In natural systems, there is some structure, some boundaries that keep a weather system or chemical interaction related.  But then begins the dance between chaos and order.  What the scientists have discovered is that if a chaotic system stays open and has the capacity to change, it will reorganize itself at a higher level of organization. That's important. Let me say it again. If a chaotic system stays open and has the capacity to change, it will reorganize itself at a higher level of organization.

You've experienced that in your life.  Everything begins to unravel.  You can=t stay ahead of the curve.  Events happen and you can=t control things.  You feel anxious and pulled apart.  But if you let go of your anxiety, listen and look and learn, waiting patiently for what you do not know:  without your realizing it, something emerges that brings a new order and consciousness.

People my age and older have watched that happen to our world.  When I was a child, there were separate bathrooms and waiting rooms, for colored and white.  Women could be secretaries or nurses or teachers.  No one was homosexual; no one had heard of transsexual.  Schools were "separate but equal." 

People were so afraid when that world began to fall into chaos.  I remember the fears.  What will happen when black children swim with white children?  What if a man has to take orders from a woman?  Gay people will love each other if we don=t stop them.  There=s no telling what will come if we let negroes have an education with white folks.  For many people, those changes felt like their world was crumbling apart. 

But, if a system stays open and has the capacity to respond to change by reorganizing itself at a higher level of consciousness, there can be new and healthier relationships between black and white, woman and man, gay and straight.  We can evolve and become co-creators with God of a new and more whole universe.

Those who have vision and trust will help midwife the new world that God is creating.  But it will take a new way of being.  Listen to what science is telling us:  The new reality rewards curiosity, not certainty.  The new reality comes with truth in paradox, not absolutes.  Relationship is everything, and everything is in relationship.  It's all one.  You can=t just ignore the different.  The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.  No single person or school of thought has the answer.  We're in this together. 

Einstein said, "No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that created it."   And, as Niels Bohr discovered the fundamentals of quantum theory he concluded, "If an idea does not appear bizarre, there is no hope for it."  In the new reality we will have less intellectual confidence, but life will be infinitely more interesting.  We'll have to be comfortable with uncertainty, and appreciative of the role of chaos.  We'll need to stay together to share each other's curiosity, wisdom and courage.

What an exciting time it is to be alive!  What a great time to be religious!  For religion is what holds us together when the conflicting desires within us threaten to pull us apart.  I want to be part of a church and a community that enters fearlessly into this new reality, trusting that God is bringing about the fulfilling of the divine vision.

Listen to what the organizational development specialist Margaret Wheatley says about her own yearnings in a quantum universe.  These are words I can embrace as well: "I want to trust in this universe so much that I give up playing God.  I want to stop struggling to hold things together.  I want to experience such security that the concept of 'allowing' – trusting that the appropriate forms will emerge – ceases to be scary.  I want to surrender my fear of the universe and join with everyone I know in an organization that opens willingly to its environment, participating gracefully in the unfolding dance of order."[i]

She's described a healthy church and a healthy person of faith.  I pray that we will be people who are able to interpret the appearance of earth and sky; people who will know how to interpret the present time: people who live with hope, openness, and trust; curiosity, wisdom and courage; connected to the whole.  If we can embrace that spirit, we can cooperate with the new creation that God is bringing about in our generation.



[i] Margaret J. Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science, 3rd Edition, Barrett-Koehler, 2006, p. 25