Keep Calm and Carry On

Isaiah 65:17-25; Isaiah 12; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19

Friends, do you ever worry?  Do you ever let your worries get the best of you?

Have you ever stayed up all night before a conversation you were dreading?  Were you up all night preparing your brilliant defense, so to speak, your witty, sure-fire presentation?  Did you find that when you finally got to that moment, after being up all night, that you were so tired and overwhelmed when you opened your mouth you could only say, “uhhhhhhhhhhh?”  Yep, I’ve been there too.  It would’ve been better to have gotten my sleep and not stressed so much over it.

Let’s take this up a notch:  Have you ever heard of “preppers?”  They were in the Cap Times a few weeks ago, I think, folks that are prepared for nuclear apocalypse, or zombies, or whatever, complete with their own bunkers full of weapons and non-perishable foods, and they draw great security from this, that they feel prepared for any eventuality.

Ah, bless them.  I do keep a little canned food and a flashlight on hand, but I’m not ready to build a bunker just yet.  I don’t even do extreme couponing, even though it’s quite popular with my friends!

Perhaps while I’m a little prepared, like maybe for a big snowstorm or a power outage, I’m not as prepared as I could be, and maybe that’s because I haven’t been that worried about it so far.

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Each of the Scriptures today addresses people who are worried.  Whether in the time of Isaiah, or the time of Jesus, or the time of Paul, these folks were worried their whole world was about to cave in on them.  And they had good reason to be worried--whether it was war, or famine, or persecution, losing the people they loved, their homes, everything they knew.  And sure, we know situations like that can happen today--how often have they happened, just even this week in the Philippines, or last year in Superstorm Sandy?  We know life is precious, and fragile.

But you know what I love?  I love that these passages today are some of the best passages of comfort and strength out of the whole Bible.  The Bible knows how to talk to worried people!

We can find so much comfort in these verses.  My favorite is in Isaiah 65, “They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord”--that gives me great comfort.  And Chris in the choir has talked about how much she loves the verse in Isaiah 12: Surely God is my salvation, I will trust and not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my might; and will be my savior.  --And indeed, what a beautiful mantra we could hold onto throughout any difficulty in our lives!  And it’ll definitely stick with you today, with the choir anthem and the hymn we’re going to learn later.  It’s been in my head for weeks.

Jesus tells his audience, and us, when you hear of these things,  to not be terrified!  Granted, Jesus doesn’t want us to be naive either, because bad things may indeed happen, then and now, but we shouldn’t become petrified, unable to function or enjoy our lives in the meantime.  When these times come, we can also trust in the Lord and find we are given words and wisdom sufficient to the task, no matter what might happen.

All of the Scriptures tell us today, don’t sit around and do nothing, but also, don’t get obsessed over what may happen.  That’s a great paraphrase of the popular saying, “Keep calm and carry on.”  We can make reasonable preparations, but you can only be and do and respond as best you can in any given moment with what you’ve got.  Since we simply cannot predict the future, neither can we fully prepare for it.  Sometimes we just have to pray, and trust, that we will have what we need when we can’t possibly predict the outcomes.  And in the meantime, don’t get too riled up by all the doomsday prophets and the like, otherwise, we will miss out on the real joy in our lives!  God gave us a good world and we are to care for it and enjoy it with one another!

So I got wondering the other day, do you ever picture Jesus stressing out over something like the feeding of the five thousand the night before?  Do you think he was up all night thinking, “oh, gee, we’ll be so far from town, and which disciple should I put in charge of dinner, and do you think people will know to bring potluck…?”  I don’t know if he did that.  But I will tell you we do have a Bible story of Jesus staying up all night, in the Garden of Gethsemane, when his life was truly at stake, and he was worried.  He was fully human, after all!  At the end, he released control to God and went forth from the garden to the crucifixion.  And God responded by raising Jesus from the dead three days later.  Now really, who else saw that one coming?

Truly, there will be difficult times in our lives, enormously difficult times, when we wish we didn’t have to go through things the way they might play out, when we wish we didn’t even have to get up and face the day.  Sometimes no matter what we do, those trials are inescapable.  But even in such times, remember, that God wants good for us.  God wants healing for us, and wants us to know and be comforted by God’s own presence surrounding us and in us.  Our world isn’t perfect, isn’t always easy, and isn’t always loving, but our God loves us.  Let’s give thanks always for this, that God loves us even when we aren’t always perfect, easy to live with, or all that loving.  We are God’s beloved children; let’s rejoice and be glad!  Thanks be to God!

Prayers This Week:

For all affected by the typhoon, especially in the Philippines

For all who are seeking affordable healthcare

For all who are coping with the aftermath of disasters or violence

There But For the Grace of God...

Isaiah 55:1-9; Psalm 63:1-8; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9

This is an excellent resource on prayers celebrating the gifts of women in the church:  http://www.pcusa.org/media/uploads/pw/pdfs/2013_celebrate_the_gift.pdf

Today’s Scriptures offer some difficult stories, and show us that the questions people had for Jesus back in his time, are not so very different from the questions of faith which we hold deeply today.

Today we have stories of people suffering and being struck down, stories warning us to be mindful of our own morality, and how not to end up like those other folks.  And maybe these days, we might have a question in our minds of just how troubling these stories can be.

When Bad Things Happen To Good People*

In the Gospel story, people are asking Jesus the fundamental question, Why did these bad things happen to these people? After all, they suffered unspeakable acts when the local dictator killed people trying to practice their religion.  And we hear from the people an even deeper suspicion then than now that might those who suffered might have deserved it; morality, etc.  Yet Jesus reminds them that the people who suffered are no better or worse than anyone else.  Simply put, tragedy is not God’s punishment for sin.  That’s pretty radical talk, and often overlooked.  And Jesus goes on to say that trying to insulate ourselves from the bad which has happened to others, is more likely to lead us on our own short-sighted paths to destruction.

And in Paul we hear phrases that are so often misinterpreted by people trying to comfort others going through suffering.   But what does it really mean to be tested?  And that phrase that God never gives us more than we can handle--not actually what Paul says--says that everyone faces tests; rather; God gives a way out somehow, and that is what allows us to endure a situation, because there is some glimmer of hope.  And that way out may entail some extremely difficult choices.

It’s important to realize when reading this passage that Paul is trying to coerce the “know it alls” at Corinth, who think that they’re better than others and can get away with doing things that cause others to stumble, because they’re invincible.  Paul is warning them that they’re just as human and just as vulnerable as anyone else.  

When we see someone else who is suffering, we have this saying, “There but for the grace of God go I.”  It’s supposed to be a sympathetic phrase, that we could just as likely be the one suffering as the person we’re observing.  But it’s not really God’s grace that allowed us to live a more privileged or less harrowing life than someone else.  And it doesn’t mean that God didn’t extend grace to a person who is suffering.  Instead, I think the more appropriate questions are:  How much grace does God extend to us?  And, How much grace do we need to extend to each other?

Women, Self-Righteousness, and Grace

As you’ve already seen in the bulletin, this weekend of focus on the gifts of women in PCUSA, and it’s the ‘kickoff’ of sorts to our One Great Hour of Sharing.

And I’m wondering if you’ve heard the phrase, “hating on each other?”  It means to have a certain amount of self-righteousness about someone else, especially the kind that we get together in groups to express.  Well, I’m going to be honest with you, just as the Scripture stories all have people who are kind of doing this to others today, we’re pretty good at doing this as women.  If you want evidence of this today, you need look no further than the websites called “mommy blogs;” where you can hate on those who use disposable diapers, or daycare, or formula, or just parent their children somehow differently than you do.  A generation ago, before the Internet, the more familiar term was the “mommy wars”--with deeply drawn lines between women who stayed home to raise their children and those who worked outside the home.  It really is the same war, now just fought on different media.

However, as a world, we’re making a little more progress when it comes to ‘hating on,’ or blaming, women who experience domestic violence or sexual assault.  The rhetoric in this country is dying down about whether the woman in question did something to “deserve it,”  whether by wearing the wrong outfit or burning her partner’s supper--and more emphasis is being put on women’s rights not to be abused in the first place.  Yet, there is still work to be done in our society, and work to be done around the world on this very topic.  And we ourselves can probably be more helpful when talking about these things in other places by not saying it happens because the men in those countries are somehow morally or culturally inferior to the men in our own, as a result of their race or ethnicity or religion.  Perhaps when we say this, we do so in the vain hope that it will not happen to us.

And there are so many other circumstances in which women can find themselves, that we are more willing to judge or regard with disgust, rather than compassion--for example, teenage pregnancy, or prostitution.  We heap shame on women who do either of these things, while probably hoping that either situation doesn’t happen to anyone we know.  And yet, even in the Bible, God brings blessings through pregnant teens and prostitutes.  It’s not an easy life, to be sure, but we don’t need to make it harder.

Remember that phrase again, “God never gives you more than you can endure?”  Well, maybe God doesn’t, but others do?  What is harder to face, the suffering of our situation, or the stigma we receive from others?

And then, there’s the tension that exists closer to home, that might be in any of our homes, which is the tension between Mothers vs. Daughters; or especially mothers and daughters in law.  We consider ourselves lucky when a relationship is good; and almost inevitable when the relationship is not--perhaps because years of heartache are so deeply felt and remembered.  Whatever role we play, it’s easier to commiserate with our friends than to really work on the brokenness in the relationship itself.

[And let’s be honest, the world has changed and it exacerbates that tension: Everything that we thought we knew about raising children 20 or 40 years ago is considered wrong now:  should the baby always sleep on its back, or on its stomach?]

Of all the things I’ve described above, then and now, I think we do well to hear those words in Isaiah, when God says:  My thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways.  The heavens are higher than the earth--well, we all know that taking the high road, and truly doing so, is hard!

And yet, we too, whether we have faced misfortune, or are tempted to judge others who have, we might know deeply the words of the Psalmist, that God’s “Steadfast love is better than life; my soul clings to you, you have been my help.”

The Outreach Factor: God Abundantly Pardons

This will be even more important for us as we seek to grow.  As Isaiah says, People we wouldn’t even consider associating with might turn to us, and when we reach out as a church to our community, we might be surprised whom we find waiting for us, if we are really practicing God’s welcome!

Why waste our efforts on anything less than what God seeks from us?  Whether cliquishness or fashion or denigrating others?

After all, God abundantly pardons.  What if the housekeeping isn’t perfect?  God pardons.  Did you make a costly mistake at work?  Have a family fight?  Did you sleep in and miss church?  God abundantly pardons.  Forgot to exercise last year?  Your Doctor might not be so understanding, but God abundantly pardons.  The point is not to give up and stop caring as if nothing matters--but at least to reduce our anxiety about failure, so that we can begin to practice love.  Begin seeing world as God sees it --and not wandering around in self-righteousness, because that is a problem.  I think we all have to be reminded of this from time to time, because it’s so easy to do, to think we’re doing it all right, we’re going to church every week, we’re watching our mouths, we’re doing a little volunteer work here and there--but it’s too easy to judge others.  We get too fixated on what others doing wrong, probably missing something looming large in our own lives.  Paul says, “If you think you’re standing, watch out that you don’t fall.  Everyone faces the same kinds of tests in this life.”

Finally, let’s go back to that fig tree in the garden.  When we’re ready to cut others down, God pleads for another chance.  When we’re the ones who feel like we’re a waste of space, God may simply have put our feet in manure a while until we are ready to thrive again!

When we have been shown such abundant grace, why wouldn’t we want to respond in kind?  Why wouldn’t we want to bear good fruit?

Tragedy is not a punishment for sin.  In judging others, we risk destroying our own lives as well as others.  God has shown us the ways of love, through extending grace to us, that we might lend our own acts of healing to a hurting world.  Go and do likewise. Amen.

*There is an excellent book by this title, authored by Rabbi Harold Kushner.  I highly recommend it.

Children’s sermon:  Why do bad things happen?

Sometimes we do things that aren’t wise, and bad things happen. If we tease someone, they might cry.  If we don’t study, we might get a bad grade.   If we let our cat out, it might get lost.  Other times, we have accidents, where we didn’t do anything wrong, but something bad happens anyway.  In Biblical days, people thought that if something bad happened to you, you must have done something wrong to deserve it. This is done to scare other people into being good, but didn’t work very well, and people were afraid.   Jesus says that this is not true, and that we should not judge people by the bad things that have happened to them, because they could happen to anyone.  Rather, we should focus on God’s love for us, trust in God, and show God’s love to other people.

Prayers:

For those recovering from stroke

For those struggling with mental health

For those struggling with addictions

For all who face abuse in their homes and families

For all who face hunger

For all women who struggle to gain access to education, work, and safety in their daily lives around the world

For the Catholic church, as they seek a new leader, that they may discern with wisdom