Sermons

This little piece is what I presented to my congregation March 30, 2008 for Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. Please check out the American Cancer Society and the Colon Cancer Alliance’s websites for additional information on this “Preventable. Treatable. Beatable.” disease.

Good morning.

The purpose of my coming before you today is threefold:
1. To help engage your imaginations about the ministry I am a part of on your behalf working with those who suspect they have or who do have Colorectal Cancer. I began in January after leaving my work as a hospice chaplain.
2. To talk to you about the importance of routine screenings for colorectal cancer, given March has been Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month.
3. And thirdly, to keep my promise to Pastor Laurie to not talk about the poop too much! Of course numbers one and two are all about the poop!

You know, talking about the poop is what makes being in this church—and in our denomination—unique and special. We try to face our fears when it comes to the tough stuff. I grew up in churches where women were told to deny the call of God on their hears just because of their gender. Yet Congregationalist woman Antoinette Brown was ordained by her congregation in 1853. I stand before you today talking to you as a woman minister because of the witness of this congregation in my life these last 13 years of my membership. I am here because of our willingness to come and reason together about what the faithful life entails for our whole person, and because of our covenant together to support one another when the poop hits the fan!

And at some point, it always does.

My work puts me in contact with people from all over the country dealing with the messiness of life.  Some may call me with simple questions about screening, while others face terribly hard dilemmas about the efficacy of continuing treatment when the colorectal cancer is devouring their liver, their lungs, their body. I counsel people about where God is in their suffering. I hold their story as sacred, even as they struggle to understand how Cancer came to their door. I guide. I educate. I listen. And every single day I stand at the threshold of our failed medical system, and often out of compassion school people without insurance or means on ways to work the system to get screening or treatment. Even as I stand here today, I fear my message will strike a chord in someone who needs to be screened but cannot afford it. “Here, at Coral Gables Congregational Church?” you might ask. For at least six years of my membership here I was one of the millions of Americans living without health insurance. Did you know me then? “So, yes. Even here.”

When we are willing to talk about the poop, we are willing to acknowledge that it is not a problem someone else has “over there” that we might sweep in on our white horses and save them from, but instead we acknowledge that it is right here in our midst. Or as the bestselling children’s book by Taro Gomi points out, “Everyone poops.” And because of that, each one of us here is at risk of developing this terrible disease. That is the bad news, but the good news is that with routine screening—starting at the age of 45 if you are African American or age 50 for everyone else of normal risk—colon cancer can be found before it is—well, cancer. Getting your routine colonoscopy every ten years does not just tell you if you have cancer, but can actually be both preventative and curative if you have polyps or one of the early stages of this disease. Even though colorectal cancer grows slowly, getting it out early helps to ensure that it does not have any time to pierce the wall of the colon and spread, which is most often fatal.

Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer related deaths among men and women combined—only lung cancer beats it. Yet the only way we see a decrease in deaths is due to screenings. Why don’t people want to get screened? Fear. Dave Barry summarized this fear in a recent essay as, “You don’t want a doctor to stick a tube 17,000 feet up your butt.” And for him, it was only when his younger brother—who did not put off getting screened at 50 like he did—announced that he had colon cancer that Dave finally went to be screened. As Dave pointed out: What if his brother had put it off like he did?  Sadly, he most likely would have had a terminal version of the disease.

The beauty of our faith and our faith community is that we come together to grow to be whole people of God. Whole people. God is still speaking to us, my brothers and sisters, in our day and age with our advances in being able to help prevent this disease. The number one commandment in the Bible—said over 60 times in both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures—is, “Do not fear.” So I tell you today the same thing, “Do not fear the poop! God will be with you!”

And I will be in Fellowship Hall after the service with brochures and to answer any questions you might have.

Thank you.

Working as a hospital and hospice chaplain over the last eight years, I can trace certain themes I repeatedly hear from my patients and their families. These themes include: questioning of why bad things happen to “good” people; the meaning in suffering; the timeliness or “out-of-time” sense when someone dies; trust issues with the medical community; causality; God’s intervention (or lack there of) in our lives; and the meaning of hope/feelings of despair. You know…the light stuff! The most common spiritual intervention I provide directed at a single place of spiritual suffering centers on the popular myth: “God never gives us more than we can handle.”

I write the word “myth” intentionally because indeed this is just that–a myth. We human beings created this idea out of our own hope that it might be true, but not based on any ancient sacred text we might hold to within either the Jewish or Christian traditions. There is a text in the Christian Scriptures that does have somewhat similar language, so the popular consensus is that it has been misquoted just enough to get the other idea into our popular lexicon. The text comes from I Corinthians 10:13 where the Apostle Paul writes, “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” The part that is interesting four our discussion is where he writes, “[God] will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.” I guess we could call this “Biblical Telephone!” One person after another tweaks it just enough that over time we ended up “God never gives us more than we can handle.”

The problem comes from when we go around spouting off this myth as Biblical truth and live our lives by it!  Worse yet, we often tell this to people truly hurting as a way to try and assuage their pain.  Would you feel better to know that when the most horrible pain of your life is upon you–and you feel like you are going insane from not being able to bear it, yet having to anyways–to know that God had allocated this pain for you knowing you could handle it?

Just recently I spoke to a woman on the Helpline I answer who struggled with this notion. She had just been diagnosed as Stage IV, and she was shattered. She endured more grief and loss in the last twelve years than most, and now with hardly any emotional, physical, spiritual, or financial resources must wage war on this horrific disease–after being Stage Zero a couple of years ago and given the “all clear.” In our conversation, the issue of why would God be “giving” her the cancer came up. Why? Because she had been taught (most likely at church!), “God never gives us more than we can handle.” The implication is that God is giving the cancer for some higher purpose. She told me she believes in a loving God, which led me to ask, “Is a loving God then the creator of your heartache?” I reminded my caller–who is a Christian–of Jesus’ own words on the cross, in which he quoted the Psalmist saying, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” I believe those words are the cries of someone who intimately knows what it means to endure much much more than they can handle.

If the ancient Hebrew and/or Christian Scriptures are important to you, let me direct you a gem from Proverbs 18:14: “A man’s spirit sustains him in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?” I do believe that feeling supported, loved and cared for while we battle the diseases within (and the dis-ease without) help us to heal in body, mind and spirit. This is why it is so important to surround ourselves during our healing journeys with those who can listen and hold the most fragile of moments–those times of despair, anger, hurt and loss–and celebrate with us the moments of life, hope, love and laughter we will experience even with disease. No one can bear our pain or illness for us–in that we are totally alone–but they can carry us while we bear it by carrying our spirit close to their own. Without that, our spirits will be literally crushed, and that is too much to bear.

My encouragement to you today my dear friends is this: God is not the author of our heartache or our broken bodies. We are fragile and live in a fragile world where brokenness is par for the course. God (or Love, if that fits your spirit better) is, however, always wanting to be part of the circle of support cheering us on, believing in our power to create goodness and beauty in a place where there is pain, and encircling us with comfort in the living we are doing right now…even when it is truly more painful than we can bear.

I wrote the following prayer for “Seminarian Sunday” at my home congregation,

Coral Gables Congregational Church.

Today we come together to not only draw closer to the Source of Love—God—but also to one another. Inspired by this love, some of us have made the journey from the pew to the pulpit. For me, it was one of the hardest and loneliest journeys I ever made; it was also one of the most significant, beautiful and amazing journeys. I can remember being on this very chancel surrounded by more love than I had ever experienced in my whole life–many of you were there. Isn’t it amazing how life is like that? The bitter makes the sweet all that much more meaningful and rich.

Maybe you too have been on a journey like this—from student to teacher, from child to parent, from employee to employer, from caretaker to the one cared for, from married to single or single to married, from healthy to ill, or experienced the renewal of your body following an illness. All of us move from moth to butterfly. The ebb and flow of life continually has us in its grip, smoothing out our rough edges, sloughing away our dirt and grime, shaping us. So, as we pray today, let us pray for all of those on the lonely road of transition and transformation.

Loving God, you know us by heart. You know when we rise and when we fall. From far away you see our hearts and tenderly cradle us in your arms of comfort and rest. Even when we long for touch, connection, and love—we are not alone. You are with us. Hear our prayer.

We pray for all those who hear you asking, “Whom shall I send?” Help us to bravely venture forward and say, “Here I am Lord, send me.” May we hear you whispering in our ears to love your children more fully today.

We pray for all those who sacrifice the prestige, wealth and comfort they see their peers obtain in order to humble themselves before the hurting world. Be with them and all who sacrifice their comfort for your good.

We pray for those who fear paying their bills, feeding their family, getting the car fixed, or losing their home. You have given us enough resources and the creativity to take care of one another—help us to let go of our greed so everyone has what they need.

We pray for those who feel isolated and alone as they struggle to transform their body, their mind, their heart, their spirit. Change is never easy, but it is always constant in our lives. Change hurts, and pain is so isolating—even from you dear God. May your hand place a healing balm in our lives and may we feel carried by those who love us.

We pray for those facing a spiritual crisis today, trying to sort out the facts from the mythology, the truth from the minutia, the hope from the despair. May your cloud by day and fire by night illuminate our path and help us come to a place of imagination in what is possible and acceptance in the beauty of the questions.

We pray for those who are looking today for the face of God—waiting expectantly for just one person to listen, care, be tender, forgive, understand or hold. May we be your face of unconditional love in the world.

We pray for transformation, sweet Jesus. We pray to be made new. Come and see the deepest part of our hearts, and revive us so we might be strengthened to love again today. Hear our prayer.

Amen.

My Dear Faithful Reader,

We have come to the first anniversary of my blog. First of all, thank you so very much for the affirmation of reading my blog (some of you more than my own Mama!) and sharing with me the places my writing touched you and your story. I must say I am rather surprised by all of this! What started as a way to post photos of my then six week-old puppy Emma–who was still living with her Birth Mother at the time–transformed into something I never expected. I grieved the loss of a meaningful relationship. I worked through much of what it meant for me to work as a hospice chaplain. I highlighted the hilarities of my dating life. And, most importantly, I educated you on men in tank tops!

Given Top Ten Lists are so passe I say, “Nine is Fine!” Here are my favourite nine posts from this last year:

9. I Heart Atheists! This post is dedicated to my patient “Hank,” of whom I wrote. I am glad he is no longer struggling to breathe or to find love.

8. Posting My Big Secret This post received the most private email because people were worried about me. In many ways it was the hardest to write. I reveled an important secret, and in so doing found a way to tell my closest and dearest just how much despair (my definition of anti-hope) I felt following the break-up. This post continues to have meaning for me due to my continuing love of Post Secret, and because I hope by exposing my pain–even as a minister–others fearing the only way through is out might feel comforted.

7. I’m Coming Out: Jesus Know About My Vibrator The year’s most embarrassing and second funniest post. I still cringe when people ask me for my website address thinking about them reading this particular post. Of course this is exactly why it is on this list–I am a glutton for embarrassing myself on this blog with the bitter truth. For the record–and thankfully–I have had sex since I wrote this post! (Once.)

6. The Whispering God Where is God when bad things happen to good people? In part, this post contains my answer to this question and my own thinking about God’s intervention–and lack there of–in our lives.

5. 40 Reasons I Make A Great Girlfriend (and her evil twin 40 Reason I Will Drive You Crazy & Am Not Perfect) This was so much fun, and I met my friend in Austria through putting up the “Great Girlfriend” list on craigslist.

4. A Rose Garden Relationship I continue to think about what I wrote in this post. If there is such a thing as your own writing being a gift to you, it would be this post. I feel it helped me clarify what relationship values continue to remain important to me and also what I ultimately have to offer all of my relationships, including the one I have with myself.

3. You Play, You Pay This post about my prayer for my Aunt Charlyne to come to terms with her cancer and still remains at the forefront of my thinking about her. She finished her second round of chemo, and she will find out next week the results of her latest PET scan. She told us at Christmas she feels the cancer is spreading.  All my work with patients has taught me our bodies tell us the truth–even long before the tests and doctors do–so I cannot help but wonder if hers is telling her a truth now. I do not know what will happen with her body, but I know she will be surrounded by love regardless of the outcome. This is what matters most.

2. Tank Top Wearing Man Candy? The single funniest thing I have ever written! I cannot see a man in a tank top without thinking: “Baby, if you only knew how I felt about THAT!” If you love it too, please go out to Urban Dictionary and suggest “The Tribble Factor” for a word/definition.

1. The Mango Tree My homage to my father and the continuing bonds of love death cannot separate us from and how these bonds continue to inform our present and propel us into our future.

Here is to a wonderful Year Two!

For those of you who read my blog consistently, you will find elements of this sermon familiar. I used the story I wrote earlier in the summer to commemorate my father’s death as the jumping off place for a recent sermon. The text from the Hebrew Scriptures is Genesis 17:1-8, 17-22, the story of Abram and Sari being renamed and told of the coming birth of a child late into their barren years.

In the summer of 1977–the summer my Father died–a mango tree was planted in our back-yard. Dear friends of my family gave the tree to us shortly before they moved back home to India. The father finished his PhD at the University of Miami, so it was not too long after Daddy died that the tree was planted. Their six-year old daughter and I played and attended kindergarten together. I can remember jumping on the mattresses at her house; they sat on the floor, so her mother felt our safety was not endangered! Her home always smelled of warm spices. I can remember being jealous of the pretty red dot her mother painted so carefully on her forehead. I can remember the cool embrace of her mother and father, always so glad to see me come to play. Her parents’ car had rotten floorboards, so you had to hold up your feet. I loved watching the road go by, especially in the rain.

The tree commemorated my friendship with their daughter, my Mother’s addiction to mangoes ( I still have nightmares.), and Daddy’s life. I can remember the father digging the hole and planting the tree. A small tree, with stakes and ropes to keep it upright. The hole was too big, but my Mother felt it would help the tree to mulch around it, so it was never fully filled in to the top of the hole. And mulch we did! Year after year, the best of the table scraps, grass clippings, and refuse went under that tree. Even the dead bunnies from a prolific surprise by my rabbit Baron (who then became “Baroness”) went under this tree. The offerings to the gods never were as thoughtful or as sacred as what we offered our dear mango tree.

When we sold the house ten years later, we still had never tasted one mango off our blessed tree. She never bloomed. Not once.

We sold the house on 100th Street to a Greek Orthodox priest. He invited to his open house to see all the renovations he made to our old home. We walked through the house noting each change, including the central air conditioning we never had. My room was now an office. The interior garden taken out, paved and a big hot tub put in its place. The Buddhas and totems were gone. The little concrete pond where Kelly Grey and I poured a whole bottle of bubble bath before turning on the pump and filling the patio with bubbles, gone. A huge satellite dish could be seen looming in the back yard. So much change, yet so much the same. We noticed and took in all the ways “our home” had become “his house.” As we finished our tour, we walked through the master bedroom and bath, then the laundry room, which put us at the very back of the expansive indoor patio and overlooking the back-yard. Mother and I saw it at the same time. The mango tree laden with fruit.

Mother turned to me and said, “It is time to go.”

Our faithfulness to our little mango tree not too unlike Abram’s to God. Dutiful to a fault, yet the promises of fertility beyond the grasp of reality. Don’t you just love it that Abram hears this covenantal blessing from the Holy One and laughs? Can you see him? I can. I can in large part because I have been him. All of us come to that place where we feel “settled” and accept—in a sense—our lot in life. Things may not be the way we originally hoped, but things are what they are and we try to hold onto that little corner of the world we call our own.

We do not look to the sky to see promises like stars painting the eternal ceiling above us with abundance. We do not want to be renamed anything other than what we are right now in this very moment. We only want to stay the course, keep things the same. Maybe we might complain about how they used to be when they were better, because the past somehow seems better in the rear view mirror than the uncertain future ahead. We did not feel that way about it when it was our present reality—of course—but now the luxury of time has given us the gift of forgetting the bad parts and putting on a pedestal the good.

Abram understands this too. He cries out to God to just let Ismael—his illegitimate child with his wife’s slave—be “enough” of God’s blessing for him. Let us look at our text again:

Abraham fell face down; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” And Abraham said to God, “If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!”

Abram wanted to keep the status quo, and changing it—even in ways that brought forth more fruit, more complication, more change, more work, more legacy, more life—inspired great fear, trepidation and well, laughter.

One of my responsibilities in my job with hospice is to lead a bereavement group. Week-after-week I often hear the same stories repeated about the way a loved one died, the ways in which modern medicine failed, the ways in which other family and friends just do not help with all the hurt, the ways in which life will never be the same without the one who died, the ways death changed life and the anger at those changes. I hear these stories from the same people week-after-week, and my heart hurts for them because I see how stuck they are, and I long to offer some kind of healing balm that might validate their pain, but also inspire them to embrace this change and the fruit it might bring to their lives. That old mango tree in the yard of my childhood home keeps coming to mind.

See once upon a time, I dated Plant Geek. Plant Geek is getting a PhD in Horticulture from the University of Florida and works down in South Dade studying Mamey for his dissertation (of all things!). His adviser went to Costa Rica for six months in 2005. Plant Geek house sat and dog sat in his absence, and this was the time of our dating.

We walked around the yard, moving between all the various fruit trees and plants. What else would you expect from a horticulture professor specializing in tropical fruit?! When we came to one particular mango tree, Plant Geek started to pick some of them off for me and Mother. He always considered himself to be her “Dealer,” given she really is a Mango Junkie. And what a good Dealer! More varieties. More mangoes. Needless to say, Ms. Audrey loved how it worked out that I dated Plant Geek during mango season!

As we stood under the tree, so laden with fruit, I thought of our tree on 100th Street. I told Plant Geek the whole story of our mango tree–even the dead bunnies–and how it never blossomed or gave us fruit. I told him about finding her drooping with fruit just a year later. I wanted to know one thing: Why?

He told me the answer was simple. We had been too good to the tree. Trees need stress in-order to bloom and give off fruit. Reproduction, which is what the fruit is all about to the tree, comes about when the tree gets scared it might die and so it sends forth the fruit to ensure its survival in the next generation. In commercial growing, he told me, they actually use drought and flood to force stress their trees into better production. Our tree never experienced a single stressful moment until we sold the house to a man not quite as dedicated to her nurturing. She did the only thing possible. She freaked out! She brought forth fruit for her survival.

How often all of us get stuck thinking life should be about rocking along and keeping everything nice and even and happy. Oh to have an easy stress free life! What wouldn’t we give for that! And, how much we need safety, security, good food, water, and tender loving care to grow to be strong, healthy and happy. But the truth is that part of what inspires our imagination and makes it sparkle with possibility much like the stars in the darkest night sky, is stress. And like Abraham, we too shake our fits at God and want things to just stay the same and for our lot to be secure.

Unfortunately, life is not like that. I recently remarked to my bereavement group that given how I am younger than all of them, and I know “life is not fair,” I was sure they knew this too. “So,” I asked, “What did you do in the past to help deal with the ways in which life was unfair?” The room fell into an awkward silence, and when someone finally spoke it was to tell the same story from the week before about trying to keep some piece of their loved one “alive” in their home.

Now do not get me wrong, all of us need places where we can bemoan, mourn, and cry out in anger and anguish the terrible changes this unfair life brings to each of our doors. We all go through terrible emotional droughts, and for many in my group that is where they are and where they should be. I understand. When my father died thirty years ago his death ushered in a terrible drought in my life. From his death June 28th, 1977 until the one year anniversary, I saw more than some see in a lifetime. Daddy, Grammy, and my best friend from church all died. My sisters came to Mother and told her they never wanted to see us or have anything to do with us again. With them went their husbands, Aunt Clem and Grammy, before she died later in the Fall. Our dinner table went from nine to two in less than one month. Losing my family like that has proven to be the most powerful loss of my life.

But my life has not just been about those losses, just as Abraham and Sarah’s was not just about barrenness.

For now I seek to embrace the good covenant I have with God, one you have too. The covenant that no matter what happens God with be with us. The covenant that grace is enough and mercy plentiful. The covenant about loving God, my neighbour and myself. The covenant that focuses on forgiveness and inclusion at the dinner table of all God’s children, even when they are barren or stressed out!

I want to embrace with gratitude all the love wrapping itself around my life. I possess more love than I know what to do with from both friends and family. When I was ordained last fall, the most beautiful moment for me came during “The Laying On of Hands.” Being surrounded by all of these loved ones blessing me and my calling to walk beside all of God’s children surpassed any other moment of my life. That moment did not come easy. Years of study, poverty, questioning, giving up, trying again, waiting, wondering and working had to transpire before I found myself on my knees at the altar surrounded. I felt more love in that one moment than I had ever experienced in my life. I could feel the mango tree of my own life overflowing in fragrant fruit.

So, tell me friend, what about your own tree? Do you feel the stress of your life bringing forth new fruit and the abundances of creativity, friendship, compassion and love? Or do you just laugh when God wants to bring you out of your barrenness–even if it is painful and stressful–and pray for the status quo?

As those of you who follow my blog already know, I have not posted in a bit. No block, just lack of time to edit and post. Here is my sermon from Mother’s Day 2007 that I preached at Church By The Sea, Miami Beach, Florida. The texts for the sermon are Isaiah 54:1-8 and I Thessalonians 2:5-8. I will say that this sermon came from my own current season of barrenness that I continue to work through.

I can still remember the first time our passage in Isaiah grabbed my attention. The year was 1998, and I was finishing up my last semester before getting my Bachelor’s at St. Thomas University. I already knew I would be going to Duke Divinity in the fall, and the only word to describe how I felt about my “calling” and imminent graduate schooling would be “terrified.” I bought a new “Sweet Honey in the Rock” CD and sat at my desk in Dr. Holland’s office—I worked for him—and unwrapped it. I put the disc in my computer and began playing it while reading the liner notes. I became transfixed when I came upon their song “Sing O Barren One.” The song had been written for a friend of Bernice Johnson Reagon for her Ordination service…a service I could not even begin to imagine for myself. I forwarded the disc to the song and heard these words…

Empty and lonely I was
Worthless and useless I felt
Bounded and closed, I wandered
Empty and useless I was

Then I heard the voice
Sing O Barren One
Sing out and cry aloud
Sing O Barren One
Sing out and cry aloud

Have you ever had a moment where you just got it? A moment where you understood? A moment where the Whispering God boomed in your heart and mind and you knew…just knew the most amazing thing?

What did you know? Did you know that you mattered? Did you know love’s sweet kiss for the first time? Did you know you were not alone? Did you know you were doing exactly what you were supposed to do? Did you know that you were going to make it?

In that moment of hearing the song, I heard a promise from God to me. A promise that I would forget the shame of my youth. A promise that my own barrenness(the terrible losses of my father and sisters when I was six; the ugly and awkward years of my youth; the feeling of being a misfit; the failures—for some reason they fail you if you only show up to Oceanography once)—those places where life just seemed to never want to grow—would find new life because “God is my husband.” I knew I would be ordained. I knew I would sing…sing…sing. I remember calling my mother and told her, “God knows me and has called me by name.”

So here we are these many years later, and the moment of discovery of this passage continues to be a moment of promise for me. I began a love affair with it. In my Hebrew Scripture class in seminary, I wrote my final exegesis—just a big fancy word for “studying the heck out of it”—all about these precious eight verses. When leading an adult Advent class, I used them. Again and again, these verses weave themselves into the fabric of my life. They are a part of my own personal “Sacred Text.” They mean so much to me because barrenness is a theme in my life, and honestly, I keep revisiting these places of emptiness…even now.

I offer them up to us today because I think we are in desperate need for their testimony to what our response to barrenness ought to be…

All of my studying these eight verses taught me that the identity of the “Barren One” is Jerusalem. The Israelites freed again from bondage journey back to their holy land, but instead of flowing with milk and honey, she was just a shambled and desolate place. Her children had scattered to the winds of occupation, slavery and brutality. Jerusalem could not be more bare. So our prophet writes to Jerusalem’s scattered refugees calling them home with the promise God will be present to them, no longer abandoning them, and will satisfy their barren longings.

Our sacred texts are full of stories of barren women: Sarah, Hannah, Naomi, Elisabeth and Mary. The imagery central to our understanding of what it means to have hope in the midst of desperate times: Life is possible even where it is not. God will not be discouraged by the death of promises or dreams. Life will find a way. You cannot get more barren than a virgin, so the story of Mary and Jesus became the ultimate retelling of this narrative.

Now we must be careful to not get caught up on technicalities. As I said, I taught from this passage in an adult education class during Advent. The whole first class I listened to quite the debate about the real age of so-called “barrenness” at the time of Jesus! Fortunately for us, the metaphor does not rely on whether or not Elisabeth was 23 or 53, but what does matter is the imagery itself. I offer this to you because I do not want you to sit there and think, “I am a man; what do I know of being barren?” or “I have three kids; I cannot even imagine what that looks like, but I do dream it involves more sleep than I get.” In other words, this barrenness has nothing to do with sperm or eggs or zygotes.

No, this barrenness is about the pain that desolates our lives. It is about abandonment, fear, anger, jealousy, disappointment, loneliness, loss and grief. This is about just plain being a human being hurling through space and feeling it. When were you the most barren?

Did a dream die? Did you find yourself with a regret or two along the way? Did you stop believing in God? Did you feel worthless, empty and alone? Did your friends abandon you? Did your family reject you? Did you lose a job? Did you get your heart broken? Did you have a creative impasse? Did you lose your status, wealth or significance? Did you feel you were just existing?

I know barrenness because I have been fired, broken-up with, a poor seminary student, living with my parents as an adult, and been lost, even after finding my way. Barrenness is not rare, but it is unique in each of our lives. As a hospice chaplain, again and again I hear of the barrenness of being old and slowly dying. I held the hand of a woman 100 years old not too long ago, who expected to die shortly after her 100th birthday. Three months later and she wanted to know of God, “What am I doing here? Why do you let me linger? I should be dead already? What good am I? What purpose is there?” She echoed a sentiment I hear too often, and I said to her what I always say (out of compassion), “I do not know why you have not died yet. I do not know, but I do hear your pain.”

Now some of you might be saying to yourselves, “It just was not her time yet.” Or maybe even, “God must still have had a purpose for her, which is why she was still alive.” The truly brave might even think, “She lived that long so you could talk about her in this sermon!” Don’t get me wrong, I do value the interaction with her, and when she died a few short days later I went to the house afterwards and whispered in her ear, “I am so happy for you.” But being with so many as they die has not given me the secret to why we die when we do or what the full purpose in those “lingering” moments truly is. I only know mystery in that place, but I can clearly see the barrenness hurts us all regardless of gender, age, status or education. Everybody hurts.

Now this is an extreme example, but I highlight it for us because I think part of the natural and normal reaction to barrenness is to ask “WHY?” We feel shame when we are barren, and we feel the need to stand before God and ask why we have been abandoned yet again.

So here we are, full of barrenness and Isaiah calls upon us to do what? Sing and enlarge the place of our tents. Huh? Now in reality Isaiah is making a call to those rebuilding Jerusalem to not be narrow-minded or prejudice. The only way to rebuild is to accept the “mixed multitude” into her gates. The strict boundaries of who was an “innie” versus an “outie” had to be abandoned in order for the city—for life—to flourish. We must abandon the lie of “blood being thicker than water.” As Isaiah tells Israel’s scattered children: We must be open to all in order to flourish, even those we might have rejected before.

For us, the response to barrenness is to be the same: We must open up and prepare for abundance to come to us in people, places and ways we may not be familiar with.

I do not know about you, but when I feel at my utmost worst, preparing for loving in a new way is not exactly what I am planning on (I shut down.)…no, I am planning on a good old fashioned pity party. I will be serving macaroni and cheese and Bryer’s Mint Chip Ice Cream at my pity party. Depending on how bad it is, I will also break out the movies Black Widow, Steel Magnolias, and Die Hard…or if it is really really bad: Titanic. I will buy a moisturizer that promises me that I will look closer to 26 than 36 and new underwear (don’t ask). I will smoke a cigarette—one single cigarette—just to prove that I can do whatever I want! (Pouting included at no extra charge) And I will cry to anyone willing to listen that my life as I know it is over, that God has completely forgotten my name and for that matter is probably dead or never existed. And to think, these are some of the more positive responses to my own barrenness. Worst case scenario? I start wondering why I even exist.

Now, I do not wish to dazzle you with some kind of positive thinking, reverse psychology, actualization voodoo here, although they do have their place. Nor is this about spiritual gymnastics to get God’s favour or intervention. You know? I will enlarge my tents—meaning “I will keep trying God, so you can do your part too.” No. The cost of this kind of discipleship is much much more difficult, and bargaining is not allowed.

Let me read to you again our text from I Thessalonians:

But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.

The link I see between these two texts is this: Enlarging our tents in the face of unspeakable barrenness is about being willing to share our very selves…like a mother nursing her baby…even when we are starving for love and wholeness. The cure to worthlessness and uselessness is letting another nurse at your very breast, and this is ultimately our Gospel…our “good news.” For what good is it that Jesus suffers with us, if we cannot mix it with the milk of our own lives and offer it to the one who is starving. Much like the old allegory on the difference between heaven and hell: In both, we sit at the banquet table laid out with every possible culinary delight. In both, we sit with our arms in splints unable to feed ourselves. In hell, we sit and starve. In heaven, we feed the one across from us. It is for this reason I selected the line from the Black Eyed Peas’ song “Where Is The Love?;” we live in an age of barrenness.

When we enlarge our tents we open ourselves up to being used by God to tend to others in the very ways we are so desperate to be tended to. Enlarging our tents is about being the very thing we find so lacking in the world. If you look back to the opening passages for your meditation, you will see that I chose the two complimentary passages from Rabbi Hillel and Jesus. One states “do not do” to others what you would not want done to you, and the other “do to others” as you would want for yourself. I must say, I love Jesus’ spin on the commandment because it requires us to be proactive. There is a physicality to “enlarging our tents” not just a mental exercise. This spiritual practice requires preparation and action.

Do you wish you did not have to always eat alone? Set another place at the table and keep inviting until someone accepts. Start a Supper Club. Feed the homeless.

Do you wish traffic was better in Miami? Stop cussing out the guy who cuts you off, listen to your favourite music or ride your bike more.

Do you wish there was more peace in the world? Make-up with your family member you just cannot stand, refuse to gossip, or join Amnesty International.

Do you need love? Mix the milk of your own life with the Good News of God’s unending love for us.

In other words, be the very change you feel is lacking in the world. Enlarge your tent first. For me, these words from Isaiah have served as a panacea to my pain in a way that all the mint chip ice cream in the world just can’t, maybe that is why I am so in-love with them.

Enlarge the site of your tent,
and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out;
do not hold back; lengthen your cords
and strengthen your stakes.
Do not fear, for you will not be ashamed;
do not be discouraged, for you will not suffer disgrace;

You know I have another patient, also a woman, who is nearing her own 100th birthday. This last Christmas Eve she and her husband celebrated their 70th Wedding Anniversary. They survived the War, when so many of their family died in the concentration camps. They too were refugees trying to rebuild their lives in countries so unlike their own. I never hear her ask why she is still alive or say that she is just lingering. In part, I know this is due to the love affair she has with her husband. Their only fear is what will happen when the first one dies—worry for the one left behind. There are pictures on her wall of the dinner with their son and his wife and one other couple from the night of the special anniversary. I asked her recently how they came to be friends with this other couple, thinking they had known each other for a very long time. She told me that a couple of years ago the two couples met in the building where they live, and that in spite of a good 20 year age difference, they quickly became their very best friends. Imagine that…she made a new best friend in her nineties.

She refuses to see herself as “all dried up” and continues to offer the sweet milk of her life to those around her. She is not afraid to enlarge her tent, regardless of her age or disease. What a beautiful example to us all. Amen.

The following is a sermon I preached at my home church in October of 2006. Let me begin by giving you the two scripture lessons from the Lectionary for that Sunday:

THE HEBREW SCRIPTURE WITNESS:

Job 23:1-9, 16-17

Then Job answered: “Today also my complaint is bitter; his hand is heavy despite my groaning. Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his dwelling! I would lay my case before him, and fill my mouth with arguments. I would learn what he would answer me, and understand what he would say to me. Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power? No; but he would give heed to me. There an upright person could reason with him, and I should be acquitted forever by my judge. “If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him; on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him; I turn to the right, but I cannot see him. God has made my heart faint; the Almighty has terrified me; If only I could vanish in darkness, and thick darkness would cover my face!

THE CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURE WITNESS

Hebrews 4:12-16

Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account. Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Sermon:

Seeds of Life

Cold was the night, hard was the ground
They found her in a small grove of trees
Lonesome was the place where Georgia was found
She’s too young to be out
On the street.
Why wasn’t God watching?
Why wasn’t God listening?
Why wasn’t God there for Georgia Lee?

These words come from Tom Waits’ song “Georgia Lee” where he both tells the true story of a murdered girl and pleads for understanding about where Love is in the face of terrible tragedy and loss. Georgia Lee suffered and suffering is incomprehensible to us.

Let me tell you a more typical story: During my internship in North Carolina, one evening I found myself on my renal failure unit sitting and listening to a man of seventy tell me about how he felt that he was a failure. He sacrificed spending his time playing with his kids to work two jobs so they could all get a good education. And now here he was, spending his retirement caring for his wife, who had Alzheimer’s, having his own grueling dialysis treatments and spending his children’s inheritance on medicine. He recounted despair after despair. What would he leave his children? He told me his secret—he had considered suicide to make things better but realized that he could not leave his children with the burden of his wife’s care. He looked at me deeply, grasping my hand so tightly that our hands shook: “Chaplain, tell me, where is God? Will he help me? What did I ever do to him to deserve this pain? What ever can I do?” And with that he broke down and wept openly. A country man, a strong man, a man’s man, sat there asking me to explain to him the deepest mystery for those who know Love’s tender kiss and then also face feeling the deepest rejection by that very same Love. Why do we suffer as we do?

I find in my practice as a Chaplain that we have done a terrible job within our faith communities of narrating suffering in such a way that gives us tools to deal with the terrible things we all somehow face. So, again and again I walk beside people, especially those facing the death of loved one, and find that faith has only offered them impossible standards or empty platitudes, or convinced them that God is intentionally doing this to them to teach them a spiritual lesson.

My job as a Chaplain is to find you where you are and support what you already believe or question. So, when it comes to the nature of suffering, I cannot dismantle centuries of harmful teaching. I cannot begin to speak to why the world works the way it does or tell anyone with certainty exactly who God is and how God does or does not act, for my experience of God cannot capture that truth in a way that is true beyond question or reproach for anyone other than myself.

What I can do is reflect God’s presence in their suffering by showing up and holding their fears and pain. I feel intimately called by God to go and stand beside people as they raise their hands towards heaven and cry out, “See me! Listen to me! Be here! Answer me!” I understand these questions, for I too have asked them. So today provides me with a rare opportunity to talk to you about some of the things I see we can say about suffering so that we are set up for Life and not for failure.

Then Job answered: “Today also my complaint is bitter; his hand is heavy despite my groaning. Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his dwelling! I would lay my case before him, and fill my mouth with arguments. I would learn what he would answer me, and understand what he would say to me. Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power? No; but he would give heed to me. There an upright person could reason with him, and I should be acquitted forever by my judge.

All we like Job have shaken our heavy hearts in dismay and said, “But I am good. My wife is good. He never hurt anyone. We do not deserve this.” We love cause and effect. Be good and good things will happen. Do bad and bad things will happen. I do not mean to imply a loose understanding of karma here, but instead that simple base part of ourselves where we believe one plus one should always equal two.

So, why do we suffer? The most pure answer I can give holds not one shred of meaning: We suffer because we do. Suffering, having problems, facing loss, having grief and despair all characterize the human life. Period. We suffer because we do.

I am a big believer that meaning is not some big floating cloud of intentionality by God towards us and what we go through. I believe that the meaning we give to the tragedies we face comes strictly from our own willingness and creativity to do just that…an opportunity God wants to be a part of, but not that God creates suffering for us to teach us a certain lesson about the meaning of life.

We suffer because we do; we create meaning with that suffering because we can.

I realize that I am saying something that we do not often articulate, and quite frankly the historic theology of the Christian Church has embraced a radically different theology about suffering. Here are some common themes:
1. Suffering is good and we must suffer for the good of God.
2. Suffering is a holy enterprise.
3. You really know you love when you suffer.
4. The better the Christian the more quiet they are when they suffer.

I reject these understandings of suffering, and quite frankly in my practice as a Chaplain I have never seen these offer any hope to those who have been taught them. If anything, they set us up to fail because when we are faced with pain we get scared. And when we are terrified we have a God-given instinct: Fight or flight! If suffering was something God intended for us as part of holiness then why build our core with a default OUT? And if suffering is so good that we should embrace it with quiet acceptance, why did Jesus curse God from the cross and cry out saying, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?

I want to offer us another—more life giving—way to think about the suffering we face. We suffer because do, but the opportunity to create life, love and healing with our reality is limitless. When we embrace our lives—the fullness of our lives that contains beauty and real stinky messiness—we embrace that we are human. Being human means that we are frail, limited creatures. We break, and we heal.

So, let us be honest about why we are suffering. What is causing the real pain?

I have a patient right now who is actively dying. Her dear sweet husband is stuck on the fact that she is a good person and that he just cannot seem to understand why she is dying. What did she ever do to deserve this? The flaw that I see in his logic (but not in his heart or questions) is that what is causing her death is cancer, not her or anything she has done or not done. The causality is cancer. She has cancer. Period. And even if her lifestyle aided in her getting this particular disease, the reality is that if we live long enough we will get anything and everything. We are human beings. We die. Babies, teenagers, young mothers and old men all die everyday. You are born. You live. You die. She will die from cancer; she knows how she will go and that her time is very limited. I do not know how or when I will die, but I do know it will happen to me too. What is causing the real pain in this family is the terrible reality that she will die and they will miss her deeply. What value is there in wondering what she did or what they did to cause her death?

I am not arguing against us asking these deep “root of our lives” questions. But I am inviting us to consider the ways in which causality is tied to our faith understanding and how destructive that can be.

As we engage the fullness of our pain, we need not rationalize it away or think that our pain is insignificant in the light of another’s pain. God is not extending any merit badges for rationalizing away our pain or our need. This is not a time for “mind over matter.” Life hurts us all sometimes. How many times has someone asked you how you were doing and your soul cried out to say, “I am hurting. I am so lonely that sometimes I feel desperate for some human interaction and touch? Or I am going through x, y or z.” But instead of the truth, you say to them, “I am fine, you?” thinking to yourself that you do not want to be a burden or that the other person probably has it worse than you and who are you to “complain” anyways? As any of my friends will tell you, when they say they are “fine” I reply, So, you are feeling Freaked-out, Insecure, Needy and Emotional—what is really going on?”

I believe that acknowledging our own pain creates the opportunity for healing bridges between others and ourselves. When we are honest about the fact we are hurting we open ourselves to extend and receive compassion. I don’t know about you, but I would rather not tell someone who has the “perfect” life about my problems. They are just not going to get it when I am miserable. And the person who denies their own pain usually says things like, “It is all in God’s hands. or Everything is going to be okay.” I do not think that the husband of my patient would be very comforted with the thought that his wife’s life hangs waiting for the whim of God or the lie that she will be okay. Being in-touch with our own suffering helps us let go of platitudes and get down to the truth, “I see you are hurting and this sucks!”

When we embrace the suffering of our lives, we find Immanuel. God with us. I love this one part of our lesson from Hebrews: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.” By allowing ourselves to be human beings who hurt, we allow God to come and sit with us on the ash heaps of our lives. The greatest balm I know for suffering of body, mind and spirit is to not be alone. No one else can feel your pain for you, but to know that you are held in love and care as you suffer—that has miraculous healing power.

I want to preach to you the Good News of resurrection…most importantly spiritual resurrection.
Michael McGee says this of spiritual resurrection: Spiritual resurrection happens when our “hope has grown into healing, when we have gone from seeing ourselves as broken and fragmented to being whole and complete even though we still hurt.” We have established that pain and suffering just are, and in the same way the opportunity for healing and wholeness are ever present. Spiritual resurrection happens when we take that opportunity, grab onto it and our lives become more, not less, with what has happened to us.

Spiritual resurrection is all around us! As Helen Keller said, “Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” Having an imagination about this kind of wholeness is not a denial. Healing does not mean that the bad things never happened, but it does mean that the end of the story is NOT the suffering. How many times did Jesus say to those afflicted, “Rise up! And let me see you whole!?” The pain wins when we are presented the opportunity to heal but resist it thinking that we have to hold onto our suffering for it to stay real. In the end, however, the suffering stays real and we lose a little bit more of our lives each day as a result. There is no magical expiration date…but what I can tell you is that if you hear Jesus whispering in your ear “Rise up!” do not be afraid to be whole again.

Finally, when we do find our mourning turning into dancing, let us not only celebrate being free from this pain, but also ask God “What I am free to do for Love and life now?” This is where we reflect our divine right as children of God, made in the image of God, made of the stuff of stars, to be creative with God and design the next chapter. Reach out. Grab your neighbour’s hand. Let us be transformed together as spiritually resurrected persons, who have abandoned the hamster wheel of despair where we spin around and around wondering what we ever did to deserve this. Dance! For anyone can survive…finding ways to love and invest with the suffering of our lives takes uncommon courage, but we have within us all the tools needed. God is not hiding from us, for God is right here in the fabric of all that we are giving us the creativity and grace to imagine our lives WITH what has happened to us.

I know this is true out of my own life and the painful losses I have suffered through. I have asked deep questions and shook my own fists at God so hard that I swear I have given God a bloody nose on more than one occasion! When I hear “Georgia Lee” I often have put my own name into that song asking “Why wasn’t God there for Jacqueline?” I only can speak to you about the life that is possible with what happens because I of the spiritual resurrections I have had in my own life.

Once I had a vision of my life being a terrible wasteland—similar to one we might imagine following a nuclear holocaust—where God and I tended a small and thriving garden together. I saw Jesus and I laughing on the tiny patches of grass, teasing and tickling, rolling around as children might with glee. The warm sun on my face. The cool breeze whistling though my two weeping willows that embraced us with their drooping shade.

Close your eyes and count to ten
I will go and hide but then
Be sure to find me. I want you to find me
And we’ll play all over
We will play it all over again
There’s a toad in the witch grass
There’s a crow in the corn
Wild flowers on a cross by the road
And somewhere a baby is crying
For her mom
As the hills turn from green back
To gold
Why wasn’t God watching?
Why wasn’t God listening?
Why wasn’t God there for Jacqueline?

And as I looked out across the barrenness and scarred landscape left by the pain of my life outside of that garden, I knew that things might change and life take a turn and bomb this garden one day too. And then it hit me: I know how to grow another one, for the seeds of life are always within in me. The seeds of life are within us all. We were made from them as were the stars. Amen.