Going with the Givens
Genesis 45:1-15
Sermon preached August 14, 2005 (20th Sunday in Ordinary Time)
by The Rev. Lynn P. Lampman
One of the greatest things in my mind that has come from Patricia being on sabbatical is how we are really getting to know each other. It is one of the blessings that comes from having a different preacher each Sunday. In the previous Sundays we have heard our brothers and sisters talk about what they believe, how they feel, what they long for, what they feel called to and a whole lot more about who they are. Since I have gained so much from their honesty and revelations I thought for at least one more Sunday we would continue in this tradition.
This morning I find myself spurred on by not only by what is going on in my own spiritual journey, but also by what I've heard recently from the television set. Yes, this from a woman who wears a T-shirt with the picture of a television that says, "Think outside the box". There are more preachers on TV these days who are preaching the gospel of prosperity. Over and over again, we hear God wants to bless you, give it all to you, and make your life into everything you always dreamed of and more. I still find myself doing what I did in seminary, though instead of literally yelling at the screen, I find I merely yell in my mind these days. I hear myself saying, "Don't just hold the big floppy Bible, preach from it and while you're at it preach the whole truth. Couple that with my ongoing experience with Buddhism, which at this point involves regular meditation practice and yearly retreats with Buddhist teachers who share their wisdom regarding suffering, compassion, loving-kindness and anger to name just a few. As is my practice these days, I try to hold things side my side for comparison and contemplation. All of this has caused me to ask the questions "what is life really about and what is true".
Because I grew up an evangelical (which in this church may be more difficult to admit than saying you're gay) I am still compelled to take Scripture seriously. In my early years, I followed the discipline taught, if you only have a short time in the morning and you have to choose between feeding your soul or feeding your stomach, you need to chose feeling your soul. Which is all to say; on more mornings than I can count it was a quiet time consisting of reading scripture and prayer, rather than a bowl of cereal or a few waffles. Does the Bible support a gospel of prosperity? Who has it right about suffering: Christianity or Buddhism or could they both have it right and there is once again another universal truth?
When I think about scripture and life as I know it is, I see so much more than just prosperity. A see a broader and deeper terrain and a much richer landscape. Like on our recent backpacking trip, we saw beautiful expansive skies, captivating rays of warming sun, the gorgeous hues of blues and grays as we took in the mountains, but lest I forget, my knee reminds me that on that trip we also had 50 mph. winds, unrelenting rain, limited visibility, boulder sized rocks, a big fall and an uphill climb filled with suffering and pain. This is life; this is how it is sometimes.
Let me propose this morning that there are five things we cannot change and that happiness will be ours if can find a way to embrace them. Here goes my list of the five things we cannot change:
Everything changes and ends,
Things do not always go according to plan,
Life is not always fair,
Pain is a part of life,
People are not loving and loyal all the time.
If we are honest, we would have to confer we know these things to be true. All you have to do is look at your life for a few moments and look around at other people's lives for just as short a time. And in no time, you will conclude we all experience these five things and that we are powerless to prevent them. Yet, despite the fact we know this to be true, we fight these givens. We find ourselves denying they exist, trying to prevent them from happening, running from pain and suffering and desperately clutching pleasure.
The first given is everything changes and ends. Let's start with our reading from Genesis to verify this truth. Here we have Joseph, a young man with a promising career, a real visionary, (much too some people's chagrin), and a guy with a great wardrobe, (check out that coat of many colors). Yet, change is right around the corner and before we know it he has no vision at all, all around him is darkness, he's in filthy dirty rags, and all that is before him is a mere two feet as he suddenly finds himself in a real deep pit courtesy of his brothers. He goes from having a large extended family to no family, from being free to being a slave, from a sure future to one totally unknown, in short, from riches to rags. Notice we do not have the gospel of prosperity here: from rags to riches. The Bible does not seek to cover up what life is really about. The scriptures declare over and over again when you get life, you get change and you get endings. The list of changes and endings sited in holy writ is many, yet let me name just a few and you'll see what I mean about scripture not trying to cover up life's realities:
The Israelites exiled to Babylon: strangers in a strange land,
The oppressive occupation of the Roman Empire,
The destruction of the temple,
Paul becomes sick during his missionary journeys and remains so, almost blind.
Naomi dies and leaves Ruth stranded and alone.
So what do we do with changes and endings? If we are spiritually evolved we seek not an answer but significance. Mature meaning derives not necessarily from a clear understanding but from the opportunities for wisdom and compassion offered by the event. Grasping meaning is more a matter of appreciation then of intellectual certainty. Carl Jung said, "Meaning makes things endurable, perhaps everything".
Teresa of Avila said, "When we accept what happens to us and make the best of it, we are praising God".
The second immutable fact is: things do not always go according to plan. Scripture does not hide the fact that life has its twists and turns.
Joseph's brothers think they are rid of the pain after they throw the brother they detest into the pit, yet all is not well for long, for soon they find themselves with empty stomachs amidst a nationwide famine.
One moment Jonah is aboard a cruise liner, the next moment he was in the belly of a big fish, what was scheduled to be a dream vacation turned out to be really lousy accommodations and the horrible company of the Ninevites he despised. Do you think Jonah asked the cruise line for a refund?
The disciples expect a quiet day just listening to the teachings of Jesus and find themselves closed in by the crowd and then having to serve lunch to 5,000 people.
Adam and Eve thought it would all be paradise and before long they find themselves knee deep in weeds and a body filled with the pains of childbirth.
Moses worked his whole life to get to the Promised Land and yet dies before he reaches it.
The adult challenge is to believe there is a design that wants to come through in our lives despite the random and untidy display. For then, we have the vision to behold a constellation instead of a stray array of straggling stars. If on a cloudy night we cannot see the pattern of the stars, it does not change the fact that behind the mist and the fog there is a constellation.
The third reality of existence is: life is not always fair. Joseph's brothers come to the land of Egypt and to Joseph himself (though they do not recognize him) to request food and relief from the famine. Joseph responds with openness. The challenge is to meet our losses with loving-kindness, the commitment to act and think lovingly toward others, especially when they test our patience or act hurtfully toward us. Cultivating loving-kindness when people treat us unfairly or hurtfully helps us by keeping our hearts open in and through the moment of being hurt. Openness does not mean we let ourselves be victims of abuse. We simply allow ourselves to be what we are at our most loving, that is vulnerable. A mature adult notices closing off is dangerous to sensitivity and that remaining open is dangerous to her boundaries. The middle path means a willingness to be open while also maintaining healthy boundaries. Dialogue is the alternative to withdrawal or retribution. A spiritually evolved adult is not satisfied with the glee of retaliation but wants the joy of loving-kindness.
As some of you may know, right after college I spent two years working for the Presbyterian Church's program: Volunteers in Mission. I worked at a residential facility for children in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky. One evening I had a conversation with one of the house parents. He was a young man in his 30's who was raised in the mountains, went off to college and then returned to the mountains. He began to tell me about an incident that occurred several years before, between his father and his brother. They both were drunk and had an argument about who was going to drive the car. The argument turned ugly and both shot each other to death on the front lawn of their home. The house parent calmly and casually turned to me and said, "It's a good thing they killed each other, because we would have had to kill the one who was left". Crazy mountain talk said out of ignorance? Sometimes we think another's culture is foreign, only to discover we are much more alike than we ever thought. Retaliation can be our knee jerk reaction, it can be our habit, or it can be our tradition, it can be what we've always done. But, should it be? Ask Jesus who defied tradition and established norms and dared to embrace and respond with openness, compassion and loving-kindness to the Canaanite woman and her daughter.
The fourth unavoidable given is: pain is a part of life. Not unlike some of you, a part of my childhood was traumatic; mine was abuse from an uncle. Since I have been twenty seven years old (twenty years now) I have recurrent flashbacks to that abuse. On all accounts, I feel as if I am reliving the horror. And one of the most difficult parts of that has been that some of those flashbacks have occurred here at church. I found it so hard because, I couldn't reconcile that spirituality and pain could reside together. It is only after being instructed not to fight the flashback and just let it happen, that the flashbacks have been shorter and fewer. Our natural reaction to pain is to resist, yet when we sit with it, accepting it is present, that pain seems to change form. What are we doing with our pain and the pain of others? Are we running from both? Or are we able to bring ourselves to the place of empathetic presence - listening to pain with the five A's: attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection and allowing. Octavia Butler in her science fiction novel entitled Parable of the Talents, describes for us a group of people who are known as "sharers", because they feel in every way: emotionally and physically the pain of others. Should we not all be sharers?
Job a man who had his skin covered with sores from crown of his head to the soles of his feet. He knew pain is a part of life. Yet, his friends were not of much help in his pain. Jesus knew pain. Even from the cross, he used his pain to further open his heart, to his mother, the criminal, the Roman soldiers, as well as you and me. Was Jesus pain on the cross part of being fully human or fully divine?
The fifth and final immutable fact is that people are not loving and loyal all the time. Sometimes people love us loyally and faithfully, even unconditionally. Sometimes they hate, reject, abandon and betray us. An evolved adult has learned to take all this in stride. We feel the pain, but it does not devastate or destabilize us. We receive love with openness and appreciation. We receive loyalty with gratitude. We handle betrayal with the strength we gained from psychological work. We let go of retaliation and act with compassion thanks to our spiritual practices.
Some Sundays when I am not at Tab, I can be found preaching in Episcopal churches since I work for Episcopal Community Services. Over several months, it seemed every where I went they were having healing as part of the service and I was asked to anoint with oil and pray with and for folks desiring healing. On one of those occasions, several people approached the altar rail, each kneeling and waiting for anointing and prayer. The first three requested healing for severe physical illnesses they were facing, the fourth and final person shared the following, "my family has been at odds for more years than I can remember. I want it to stop and I have decided it will stop with me. Mental health is not about what happened but about how we manage what happened.
Inconsistent loving, rejection, abandonment and betrayal fill the pages of scripture. If you doubt me, ask Jesus about Judas and Peter, ask Moses about Aaron, ask Cain about Abel and ask Jacob about Esau and of course don't forget to ask Joseph about his family. It was a reality of the Biblical world and it is a reality of our world.
In closing, let me share a story about Elijah. Whenever I hear the name Elijah, I think not of the biblical prophet, but the prophet I meet in the mountains of Kentucky named Elijah Walker. One evening, several brothers had gathered on the bridge, right next to the one and only store in town. Two state troopers pulled up to the bridge, got out of their squad car, exchanged heated words with the brothers who were recently released from prison and known bootleggers in this dry county. Before long, pushing and shoving started. A man went to the phone at the corner store and was heard to tell the brothers' father, "You better come down here, they're pushin your boys around". Soon after, the father pulled up to the bridge, yanked his gun off the rack in his pick up truck and began blowing the state troopers off the bridge. Both dropped to the ground. Elijah Walker was one of the staff at the children's center where I worked; he was at the corner store. He ran over to the state troopers, felt the pulse of the first one, he was dead. He went over to the second and he was still alive. He took off his t-shirt and shoved it into the gapping hole in the state trooper's chest in an attempt to slow the bleeding. He quickly got a pick up truck, loaded the state trooper in the back and got in along side him. They rushed to the hospital, which was one hour and fifteen minutes away. The state trooper lived because of the compassion and courage of Elijah Walker. Yet, this act cost Elijah his home and his livelihood for it was seen as against the norm. In solidarity with the community, he should have let the trooper bleed to death. Elijah had no choice if he wanted to stay alive he would never be able return to Buckhorn, Kentucky. The next day he signed up for the military and was shipped off to Germany.
No person or event can force a negative reaction from you when you are committed to standards of loving-kindness - both Joseph and Elijah will tell you this is true. For they know this to be true, that no human action can take way another human beings capacity to love.
In our time together, we have been looking at some of life's givens as graces and it my hope that in so doing, we find the truth has set us free. Amen and Amen.
© 2005 by Lynn Lampman. All rights reserved. Please consult the author at tabernacle@tabunited.org if you wish to use the text of this sermon, in whole or in part.
