Grief with God

If you had stayed
 tightfisted in the sky
and watched us thrash
with all the patience of a pipe smoker,
I would pray
 like a golden bullet aimed at your heart.
But the story says
 you cried
and so heavy was the tear
 you fell with it to earth
here like a baritone in a bar
 it is never time to go home.
So you move among us
twisting every straight line into Picasso,
stealing kisses from pinched lips,
holding our hand in the dark.
So now when I pray
I sit and turn my mind
 like a television knob
till you are there
 with your large, open hands
spreading my life before me
like a Sunday tablecloth
and pulling up a chair for yourself
for by now
 the secret is out.
You are home.

(John Shea, "The God Who Fell from the Sky")

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Brea Congregational United Church of Christ

April 7, 2019

Cultivating Our Values

Luke 6:39-49  He also told them a parable: “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit?  40  A disciple is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully qualified will be like the teacher.  41  Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? 42  Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye. 

            43  “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit;  44  for each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush.  45  The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. 

            46  “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you?  47  I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, hears my words, and acts on them. 48  That one is like a man building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock; when a flood arose, the river burst against that house but could not shake it, because it had been well built.  49  But the one who hears and does not act is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the river burst against it, immediately it fell, and great was the ruin of that house.”

For a lot of years I wasn’t much of a gardener. My garden looked rather sad.  I love gardens, but I mostly ignored mine, because it wasn’t much fun.  I took my failures to heart.  I felt guilty.  I wouldn’t have said so at the time, but I felt I’d failed at gardening.  And it was a vicious cycle. I would buy plants and ignore them, and they would die.  You have to show up to garden.  But when I took on the challenge of planting a native garden, something shifted.  I’m not sure how or why.  I stopped beating myself up over my failures.  And I started to enjoy paying attention to my garden. I even got up early so I could have an extra hour in the morning to work in the garden!  Gardens like attention.  

I can’t force any plant to grow.  But I can check up on it, and notice if it’s having trouble, and get advice on how to help it, and then if it still dies, maybe learn something from the experience.  And keep showing up.  Plants do still die in my garden. But I noticed them.  I did what I knew how.  I’ve let go of guilt.  I show up for my garden now, and I get a lot of joy from it.  It’s a God thing.

I’d like to say I do the same for my relationships with people.  It’s a work in progress.  Somebody remarked that my work in politics must really be a God thing.  Hosting a downballot party for my friends and neighbors was a God thing– very empowering and very fun.  But much of my political work gets me frustrated and feeling powerless and trying not to despair and trying to hang onto my values… when politics can bring out the worst in me.  It invites me to be sure I’m right, and blame other people, and panic, or get bitter and hopeless.  Ugh!  Then I have to use my spiritual tools to let that stuff go and put my Christian values in the driver’s seat.  Over and over again.  I have to use all my spiritual tools just to to face politics. So I guess it is a God thing; I have to invite God into my politics or it’s a train wreck.  When I succeed I often find myself grieving over the brokenness of it all, before I can find hope again.  Grieving can be a God thing too.     

Our reading today is about faithfulness: how we show up for God, and for ourselves.  It is part of the teachings of the Kingdom of God that Matthew and Luke share from a common source.  Someone apparently memorized a “best of” collection of Jesus’ sayings[1]and shared them, we don’t know who.  These shared teachings are known by biblical scholars as “Q” (from Quelle, the German word for source.) We usually read today’s sayings in Matthew’s ordering. Luke’s ordering them gives them a little different flavor. 

First, Jesus warns us of being led astray (the blind leading the blind into a ditch), and being hypocrites (take the log out of your own eye!)  We Christians have lofty principles.  We have such lofty principles, they’re impossible to live out without frequent failure. It’s easy to see others’ failures, and usually it’s hard to admit our own.  And the tighter we hold to our lofty principles, the more likely we are to break them trying to enforce them on everybody else!  Christians are bound to be led astray or be hypocrites a good part of the time. 

Next, Jesus shows us how to tell if we are being led astray or being hypocrites.  Not by our intentions, but by what we do.  Good trees bear good fruit, evil trees bear bad fruit.  I hope you know better than to think that some people are good and some people are evil.  I love this quote by Solzhenitsyn: 

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Darn.  We want to be seen for our good intentions.  And we want to get it right every time.  And we will fail.  

Then if we despair of the whole project of following Jesus, he reminds us to go back to basics: build your life on a rock, on something bigger and stronger and more enduring than us.  We don’t have to explain it.  Just hang onto it.  Let’s trust God, and keep trying to be faithful to Jesus’ teachings, so we have something to hang onto when the storm comes.  And occasionally even produce good fruit.  Notice that Jesus didn’t say we’d be exempt from storms if we built on the rock.  He said that we would survive the storm.

Now we have enough metaphors for six sermons. Jesus started it.  Also a recipe for faithful living in the real world, with all our good intentions and plenty of bad fruit in the mix. 

Let us remind ourselves of Jesus’ core teaching. Love God, and love our neighbor as ourselves.  So simple, but it isn’t easy.  Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you?”  This is not a scold.  This is a plea for us to choose the way that leads to life, and love and healing, and transformation.  It is a simple choice, but it isn’t easy.  It’s hard to love.  Open your heart and you are vulnerable.  You get hurt. Pay attention and you see all the brokenness, the parts of our families and our society that are in need, and those parts that are less than loving, and it hurts. 

If it’s up to us to fix our broken bodies, our broken relationships, this broken planet, we’re doomed.  But we are held up by a love so vast that it binds us despite our brokenness. It is only possible to love in the middle of brokenness when we open ourselves to a power greater than ourselves.  We don’t have all the answers.  We don’t have to.  We are asked to show up.  Be humble. Learn.  Try.  Fail.  We will fail.  Forgive, and be forgiven.  Reach out. Fail.  Forgive some more.  Forgive ourselves, forgive others.  And can I just point out that forgiving is not the same as condoning? Forgiving addresses the past.  Condoning, or not, addresses the present and the future.

There are seasons when we can just let our garden grow, and enjoy it.  Good fruit happens, we don’t really know how but we’re happy to take the credit.  Savor its sweetness.  But don’t take it for granted. 

But then comes bad fruit. The things that go wrong, the things that are ugly and mean.  When things go wrong, when things get ugly and mean, we can brush over it, turn a blind eye.  This is handy.  We can witness the tragedies of seven billion people on our nightly news; we have to ignore some of it.  But if we are showing up for ourselves and God, some of that brokenness is ours to face. I thank those of you who are facing the brokenness of our environment.  Of hunger and homelessness.  And then there is the personal stuff.  Broken bodies, broken relationships, broken souls.  It isn’t easy to face our brokenness.

When things go wrong, when things get ugly and mean, we can become fearful. What do you do when you get scared?  Some people go into lockdown mode.  Find enemies.  Gather weapons.  We would never do that, right?  Only, in my own way I do.  I shut down, exclude the people and situations I can’t face.  We live in a society filled with fear.  It comes out as addiction, as hatred and intolerance, and as smaller and smaller lives.  We have good reasons to fear.  And fear prevents us from being faithful, from showing up for our neighbor, for ourselves and for God.  

When things go wrong, when things get ugly and mean, we often judge.  Assign blame.  Diagnose and label.  Justify ourselves, or beat ourselves up.  Nurture resentments and judgments.  Demand my solution, because I know what’s right for you.  Here, let me get that speck out of your eye!  This kind of judging is human nature; it’s unavoidable. And it can destroy our relationships. But we don’t have to stay in judgment. Beyond judgment and blame and resentment is… well, often grief, at witnessing our brokenness, our disappointed expectations.  

Oh it’s hard to show up for the grief, the healing grief, the work of love in a broken world.  But when we do, we are not alone, as John Shea reminds us in this poem, "The God Who Fell from the Sky."

If you had stayed
 tightfisted in the sky
and watched us thrash
with all the patience of a pipe smoker,
I would pray
 like a golden bullet aimed at your heart.
But the story says
 you cried
and so heavy was the tear
 you fell with it to earth
here like a baritone in a bar
 it is never time to go home.
So you move among us
twisting every straight line into Picasso,
stealing kisses from pinched lips,
holding our hand in the dark.
So now when I pray
I sit and turn my mind
 like a television knob
till you are there
 with your large, open hands
spreading my life before me
like a Sunday tablecloth
and pulling up a chair for yourself
for by now
 the secret is out.
You are home.

In the midst of our brokenness, God moves among us, giving us the power to open our hearts.  So we can show up for ourselves and one another, and God, who was waiting for us all along.  Amen.

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[1]  “Q” might have been an oral or written collection of Jesus’ teachings.  While it is usually believed to be written, I have been convinced by a classical scholar that it was more likely oral.