Take as Your Guide 2-24-13

Take as Your Guide 2-24-13 God, sometimes we flounder about looking for what or whom to follow. Conflicting voices claim our attention and scatter our focus. We long for spiritual transformation in ourselves and in our world. Lead us, dear God, like a mother hen gathering her young. Call us with your voice and Holy Spirit. Amen Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem! Both Jesus and Paul are lamenting over the people who cannot be saved, so to speak. In Paul’s letter, he is talking primarily about those who refuse to hear the Gospel, letting the things of the world stay uppermost in their hearts and minds, filling their thoughts with everything but the Gospel of Christ. Jesus brings the same kind of lament over all of Jerusalem, God’s chosen people. Those same chosen people have a history of killing the prophets God sends to them and closing down their hearts to hearing God’s word and will for them. Is it beyond us to know what Paul and Jesus experience? Barbara Brown Taylor describes it like this: "If you have ever loved someone you could not protect, then you understand the depth of Jesus’ lament. All you can do is open your arms. You cannot make anyone walk into them. Meanwhile, this is the most vulnerable posture in the world --wings spread, breast exposed -- but if you mean what you say, then this is how you stand." If you have children, grandchildren, nieces or nephews, you can understand this first-hand. A parent will do anything to protect their child; sometimes, however, it is just not enough. Children will go their own way, often bringing great heartache to themselves and to their parents. Jesus and Paul--both willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to bring all the children to knowledge of God and God’s reign of justice—Jesus and Paul both suffer the heartache of knowing that certain children just won’t come. No matter how wide their arms may stretch, there are some who will not hear of the love of God. What do these scriptures say to us—mostly comfortable, mostly with some sense of God’s will for our lives, mostly willing to take on others’ needs as our own—what do they really have to say? They seem harsh, almost out of place when we happen upon them with little to no warning. We get uncomfortable in new ways. You see, I think there is more to this story than calling us to scurry under the protective wings of God. Some, here today, are discovering that they need God’s spiritual and emotional protection and I trust that you will find a place where you feel safe and loved. As for the rest of us, I believe that God is calling us to be the arms of the mother bird. After every oil spill, or hurricane, or tsunami, there are stories of mother birds risking and losing their lives to save the babies they have pulled underneath their wings. I never thought much about a bird being my hero, but when those stories make it to youtube or one of you sends me a link, I find myself honoring those mother birds just as I would honor any parent who would give their all to protect their young. And whether or not you have thought about it, we all have children knocking at our doors looking for God’s protection and safety. Some of these children are gay, many are not. Some of these children are transgender, many are confused. Some of these children are poor and some just different from other children. But some of these children will not live long enough for us to offer our wings of protection, though some will. It is easy, surprisingly easy, to resist the temptation to feel responsible when one of our LGBT teens commits suicide. It used to be easy for me. Then I experienced it up close and personal. In my casework days, long years ago—just about at the height of the AIDS crisis, I was assigned a child, William, 14 or 15, and obviously gay. Since there were no special programs in those days, (and, sadly, few exist today), he was sent to a group home because no foster parent was willing to deal with his acting out. He was miserable and he told me so. My hands were tied, I could not send him somewhere else and I, certainly could not tell him that I was gay—this being 1987. Not too many months after he asked me to move him, he committed suicide in the group home. And while I did not kick the chair out from under him—he did that himself—I certainly felt that I had helped tie the knots in the sheets that he used as a rope. That was 1987—I was new to casework and had only been “out” myself since 1982. Today, it is not 1987 and I’m blessed to be in a position where I can be just about as “out” as it is possible to be. Many of you do not share that similar blessing, but if you do, please do not hesitate to use your own identity as a building block for kids and young people to see that life is not over when you discover that you are gay or transgender or bi-sexual. We must begin to use our wings to shelter these children and adults who need us the most. There is another group of people who need our wings—while maybe not as dramatic as children committing suicide—many of these folks are just as desperate. These are adults—usually depressed, perhaps hopeless—who feel that God cannot possibly love them. These are the adults, both young and old, who have lived with the message of God’s hatred of their lifestyle or God’s condemnation of their addiction, mental illness, or poverty. If we are to be God’s wings, we must make room for these children of God. Let’s face it, if we just stand here, most of these folks will miss us entirely and pass on by. Even if we just open our wings and stand like giant statues, few will even notice that we are there beyond an initial stare. But, if we speak, if we call to them, they will most certainly stop in their confusion and pain to hear and see what we are about. Alan Brehm, in The Walking Dreamer, says this: “Faith enables us to move out of the essential hopelessness of our world and to step into the 'glorious liberty' that God is bringing to the whole creation through Jesus. It is a different path, a whole new way of life that sees the possibility of new life in every death, sees the light shining in the deepest darkness, and sees hope in the midst of despair." Listen to the words of Jesus when told that Herod is out to get him. “Tell that old fox that I am going to keep on doing what I am doing—healing the sick, ministering to the mentally ill”. Most scholars agree that some of the so-called demons which Jesus called out of people might well be modern day epilepsy, schizophrenia, and other neurological and psychological illnesses. So, what Jesus is saying, is “Fox or no fox, I’m doing what I’m doing—loving and healing. “ Jesus lets nothing interfere with his ministry. He excludes no one from the reach of God’s love. His message remains the same—go, do, heal, love. Lee Koontz says, “"It is an extraordinary statement on the grace of God, and also a compelling proclamation that no place stands exempt from God’s tender compassion and persistent love. Those who seek to follow Jesus must learn to view the world with no less compassion, no less forgiveness, and no less love." This calls us to a new way of being, a new way of reaching out, a new way of doing church. We are called by God, in both solitude and communal prayer and seeking, to new ways of doing things, to creatively reach those who need to be reached. As we sit and listen, pray and respond, we will sense that we are always covered by the wings of God’s perfect love. And we are present to the knowledge that God always grieves for those who will not hear or cannot hear, those who will not learn or have not heard of divine acceptance. This is the Lenten Journey in a nutshell—that we, already knowing the peace and grace from this God of radical acceptance and love, will become present for those who need us to reach our arms wide inviting them to gather under the wings of God. We know that Easter will come again—we are a resurrected people. During Lent, we take time to pray and to listen, to ask and to follow. This very act of separating ourselves for some special prayer and meditation is an act of faith—faith that when we honestly seek in humility and in the knowledge that we are called to be servants one to another—faith that we will hear the Spirit of God move among us—inviting, reviving, refreshing, and renewing our spirits for service. And, so, Lent calls us to action—the creation awaits our response to God’s gracious work among us. On this, the second Sunday of Lent we must choose either to leave this place unmoved by God’s Holy Spirit or surrender our own complacency and become open to what God is calling us to do. It’s a journey, my friends, and together we will continue to discover what God wants this church to be. God is alive and well and moving in our lives in mighty and wonderful ways. I trust us as a people and I can hardly wait to be a part of all that God is calling to become. Amen and amen.