Sermon, 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 4, 2021, "The freedom of open hands"

B Proper 9 14 Ord Pilg 2021

Mark 6:1-13

July 4, 2021

Court jesters, cartoonists, or comic strip writers have a way of saying things that undercut our culture in a way other truth-tellers cannot.   Comics or satirists are very often people who can say, before anyone else, that the Emperor or the Empire has no clothes.  George Carlin has always been one of those people who cuts through our culture like a hot knife through butter.  Upon Carlin’s death, Chaplain Mike Spencer wrote that George Carlin was Shakespeare’s prototypical fool.  In King Lear, once the king assented to the fool through his laughter, the king could not help but assent to the truth the fool wove into the laughter.  The king then calls upon the fool as the only one who can tell him painful truths.[1] 

In one of his routines, Carlin had me laughing hilariously, nodding my head as the uncomfortable truths skewered my hypocrisy.  I doubt that anyone else could have helped me to hear how I am enslaved by my own materialism.  George Carlin’s routine, “Stuff.”

 

Actually [a house] is just a place for my stuff, ya know? That's all, a little place for my stuff. That's all I want, that's all you need in life, is a little place for your stuff, ya know? I can see it on your table, everybody's got a little place for their stuff. This is my stuff, that's your stuff, that'll be his stuff over there. That's all you need in life, a little place for your stuff. That's all your house is: a place to keep your stuff. If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time.

A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you're taking off in an airplane. You look down, you see everybody's got a little pile of stuff. All the little piles of stuff. And when you leave your house, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn't want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. They always take the good stuff. They never bother with that crap you're saving. All they want is the shiny stuff. That's what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get...more stuff!

Sometimes you gotta move, gotta get a bigger house. Why? No room for your stuff anymore. Did you ever notice when you go to somebody else's house, you never quite feel a hundred percent at home? You know why? No room for your stuff. Somebody else's stuff is all over the darn place! And if you stay overnight, unexpectedly, they give you a little bedroom to sleep in. Bedroom they haven't used in about eleven years. Someone died in it, eleven years ago. And they haven't moved any of his stuff! Right next to the bed there's usually a dresser or a bureau of some kind, and there's NO ROOM for your stuff on it.[2]

 

I would continue Carlin’s lampooning to suggest that we buy a house where we keep our stuff and then, once we get really good stuff, we have to buy security stuff to protect the stuff in the house.   

Several years ago, one of my prized possessions was a car stereo/CD player Tracy had bought me for my birthday.  Oooooh, I had waited for that thing.   And there it was, in my car, pounding a backbeat of the songs I loved, fancy enough that it played my podcasts.  Not only was it stolen once while our car was parked alongside our street, next to our house, but after I replaced the one with the insurance money we used to protect and secure it, the second one was stolen with our car parked in our driveway, right outside our house.  Drat!  I didn’t have to worry about the car once I put the original radio back in it.  My garden variety AM/FM radio was apparently not something that could be easily fenced out in the community.   Grrrrrr. 

           Now one would have thought I had learned, but when that car stereo was stolen a second time, I actually thought about getting a security system for my car.  That’s right.  I would get a car security system for my then 1992 Saturn SL 1 with 250,000 miles.  This prized car--a car I started with a screwdriver because the key had gotten stuck in the ignition.  But it was my stuff, my shiny stuff.  And all I wanted was some nice stuff.  Thoughts about getting a security system to protect my screwdriver-started Saturn revealed a little too much of who I am in the world.

I hate moving.  I absolutely hate it.  Tracy will tell you that I shouldn’t hate it all that much because she has done most of the work whenever we have moved.  Moving cannot only be hard work but an incredibly painful experience.

           Because accumulating and hanging onto our “stuff” doesn’t always begin with being caught up in materialism.  “Stuff” can be connected to the historical repository of memories, keepsakes, the values we all share as families.  We sometimes worry that if we do not take it all with us, we will lose a part of ourselves.  And we may be right.  To set down our set of “stuff” may be a declaration for a point of departure, who we will be in the future and what values dictate our action. 

           We start out deciding, based on our values, what accumulated stuff we will purchase, borrow, or keep and too often end up with our accumulated stuff deciding our values for us.  All of us are caught up in it.  Moving, or as George Carlin indicates later in his routine, even going on vacation push us to make decisions about what of our “stuff” we will really need.  “You start to feel ok,” Carlin needles us, “because, after all, you do have some of your stuff with you.”[3]  Our stuff provides the comfort, defines what is home, so that we are oriented in the universe, defended from the chaos that might ensue if we did not have our “stuff.”

           Dr. King cited “materialism” as one of the three great evils of the American empire that is woven into our national story.  To buy, accumulate, hoard and fill our hands with “stuff,” even if it disfigures us, even if it creates incredible harm, is supposedly what we celebrate on this Independence Day.  We are being regularly told that we should have the freedom to fill our hands, fill our homes not recognizing that this materialism is destroying our true selves and our true home.

           In many ways, choices or values we have about our “stuff” indicate whether we think the universe is friendly or unfriendly.  Very often our accumulation of stuff indicates that our quality of life depends on it, that our children will suffer without it, and that we must defend ourselves from the harsh and wicked world that threatens to rob or violate us.  Or perhaps we need just enough “stuff” not to be thought of us as a hermit, spinster, or wacko.  Though we talk about the dangers of peer pressure for our children, we feel more “civilized” caving into peer pressure as adults.

           For if we saw the universe as friendly, our grip on our “stuff” might not be as tight.  How we value ourselves might not have so much to do with the next needful thing we purchase.  But we are being told over and over again that we are on our own, all alone, needing protection against an ever-increasingly cold and cruel world.  Batten down the hatches, circle the wagons to protect all of our “stuff.”   And the materialism taught to us day and night by the wider culture comes to define us, courses through our bloodstream.

Milada Veragrova

The story is told of an old woman brought to a psychiatric center.  She was wild, swinging at everything in sight, and scaring everyone so much that the doctors had to take everything from her.  But there was one, small coin she gripped in her fist and would not give up.  In fact, it took two men to pry open that squeezed hand.  It was as though she would lose her very self along with the coin.  If they deprived her of that last possession, she would have nothing more and be nothing more.  That was her fear.

That is very often our fear.  We are forever invited by God to open our tightly clenched fist and to give up the thing that possesses us.  But who really wants to do that?  We hold fast to what is familiar, even if we aren’t proud of it.  We clutch onto prosperity, competition, violence, warfare, and death so tightly that it becomes all we know, the only spiritual practice we have learned.

           I know I am caught in this narrative, how I am tied up in legitimizing myself, protecting myself, shamed into having just enough “stuff.”  In our culture, what we have normalized has become downright crazy.  Just think about lawn care.  Instead of growing food, each of us has to have a set of tools, a set of supplies, a lawn mower, a trimmer, a hedger, a broadcaster, a weed whacker, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, to keep the pristine green.  And it is a good bet every person on our block thinks they have to have one of those too.  So, of course, if I am going to have all that stuff, spend money on it, even though I know California is going through a terrible drought, and water is becoming a more and more scarce resource, I now have to spend all this time watering my lawn to justify buying my other stuff.

           In relating what it means to live life within a Benedictine order, Sister Joan Chittister writes, “It is so easy to make cosmetic changes in the name of religion.  It is so easy to make up rules and keep them so that we can feel good about doing something measurable in the spiritual life.”[4]  But we have to want to grow.  And sometimes that means, in a culture of plenty, disciplining ourselves so that we can open up our hands and are free to receive from others and with the “stuff” we do have in right proportion.  “What [Benedict] cared about,” Chittister wrote, is that we control them rather than allowing them to control us.”[5]

           Greek Cynics, contemporaries of Jesus, needled the Roman Empire by understanding the universe and Father Zeus as friendly and loving.  Beggars, Cynics depended on the giving of others.  Travelers or migrants, they carried little with them.  Some of the more extreme Cynics walked naked or dressed in a barrel through city streets—relying on the providence and goodness of Father Zeus, helping others to see that the Emperor and the Empire wore no clothes.  Jesus grew up and lived in an area that may have been strongly influenced by such Greek Cynics.[6] 

           In keeping with the values of the Greek Cynics, Jesus sends the twelve apostles out to exorcise the demon of the Roman Empire.  They are not to take anything on the road that might weigh them down:  no bread, no knapsack, no spending money.  Carry only one shirt.  Go out by twos.  Depend on the hospitality of others.  In fact, if people do not grant you hospitality, symbolized primarily by washing your feet as you enter their home, shake the accumulated road dust, that did not get washed off, as a witness against their inhospitality.  Pack light.  Have a buddy to protect you from the danger that is out there in the world and to provide accountability and mutuality.  Depend on the hospitality of others.

           Rarely do we hear the Christian mission related with such interdependence, such mutuality, such humility.  Even in the midst of the violence and warfare of the Roman Empire, Jesus invites the disciples to know the universe as friendly, loving, and hospitable.  If Jesus had sent them out burdened down with all kinds of stuff, imagine all the histrionics the apostles would go through to protect their possessions, to remain self-sufficient.  Instead, the apostles are sent out not with an extra days’ supply of bread but with no bread at all. 

           Many a devotional book will relate that if our hands are full, spiritually, we will not be able to receive the gifts God has intended for us.  Jesus sends the apostles out empty handed, materially, so that they may be free to receive the gifts, the goodness, the kindness, the hospitality God intends to give them through other people.  In renouncing their material possessions, they are free to receive from the hands of others.

The good news is, if we can imagine it, if we can walk out into the world with someone to walk with, pack lightly, and depend on the hospitality of others we would find the universe as a much more friendly place and God’s goodness waiting to find us. 

Too often we even judge our church with the values set by other churches—the biggest budget and the most members and the most up-to-date stuff.  It is the logic of the gospel--that Christians striving to be faithful are very often trying to find ways to be downwardly mobile.  As that happens, the goodness of life begins to flow toward us. 

Beyond even people of faith, what we are finding is, that even as the world gets scarier, a community movement is breaking out all over the world.    While I was in Billings, I was amazed by the number of young people who sought intentional community and service as Americorps VISTA volunteers or Jesuit Volunteers.   Now many of those same young people continue to live in intentional community in Minneapolis, are leaders of Planned Parenthood in New England, are leading out LGBTQ+ spirituality groups in Catholic Churches in Philadelphia, do justice work in Ann Arbor or Chicago, or are even beginning their call to ordained ministry in the United Church of Christ after graduating from seminary.  For these young adults, it is as if, once they chose to be downwardly mobile, they were opened to the incredible possibilities God had for them.  Many of us are learning that God created the pillars of the universe in such a way that sharing and hospitality help to build the foundation of the house we live in so that our neighborhoods, communities, and schools might thrive. 

The Empire of God, the Beloved Community, is built by solidarity with others, packing light, and depending on the hospitality of others.  For Jesus and the community around him, that was not some naïve religious notion . . . that was about survival.  In a world that depends on knowing ourselves as interdependent to survive, we must continue to see the pillars God has given us, the frame people around us are building, and put in the necessary community spaces that will allow us to receive the goodness and hospitality of God found not only in ourselves but in God’s good earth and in the hearts of neighbors who may not even look like us. 

May we be wise and courageous enough to walk out into the world with open hands.   Amen.

---

[1] “Thank you George Carlin,” Internet Monk, http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/a-christian-says-thank-you-george-carlin 

[2] George Carlin, http://www.songlyrics.com/george-carlin/a-place-for-my-stuff-lyrics/.

[3] George Carlin

[4] Joan Chittister, The Rule of Benedict:  Insights for the Ages  (New York:  Crossroad, 1997), p. 120.

[5] Ibid, p. 121.

[6] See F. Gerald Downing, Jesus and the Threat of Freedom (London:  SCM Press, 1987).

Sacred Place Worship Series 10, October 23, 2016, "The Sacred Place of Hospitality"

Sacred Space 10 BFC 2016

Hebrews 13:1-2

October 23, 2016

          As I hope this congregation knows by now, I struggle with Christian messages that take radical Biblical teaching and cheapen that teaching by acting like it was intended for the local church.   I get it.  I understand it.  What we do in the local church as spiritual practice should have some integrity to it.  It should mirror what we are called to do in the world.  But too often all those messages do is privatize radical Biblical teaching so that we never confront the public square with a countercultural ethic we are called to by a God of justice and compassion.  

          Never is that so true in our own denomination, the United Church of Christ, when we talk about making our local churches places of radical hospitality and extravagant welcome without recognizing the compelling, public issues that are before us.  Just at the end of September, United Church of Christ writer, Lillian Daniel wrote one of her typically pithy daily devotions intended for local congregations titled, “Hell Is a Place Where the Visitors Where Name Tags.”[1]  Catchy title and an interesting read. 

          But in a world, where the United Nations now estimates that 65.3 million people have been forced from their homes, a number greater than at any other time in human history and that there are 34,000 people forcibly displaced from their homes every day[2], people of faith should be raising their eyes to recognize far more than just the new young family that made their way to the door of their church.   For more than any other identifier of Judeo-Christian faith is the person, the faith community, which provides hospitality for the stranger.  We trace our faith history back to Sarah and Abraham, those immigrants who made a journey from the homeland of Ur, depending on the hospitality of others.  We proclaim that wandering Arameans were our ancestors, a reference to Jacob and Rachel and Leah and their immigration into Egypt.[3]  And over and over again, the phrase is repeated, “Remember, you were once strangers, aliens, foreigners, immigrants, refugees in Egypt,” as not only an ethical construct for the Jewish people which tells them how they are to treat the alien, the foreigner, the immigrant, but as a statement that goes to the core of their identity.[4]  

Indeed. Rev. Joan M. Maruskin, as a former Washington, D.C. representative for Church World Service’s Immigration and Refugee program, refers to the Bible as the “Ultimate Immigration Handbook.”  She states, “The Bible begins with the migration of God’s Spirit and ends with John in exile on the Isle of Patmos. Between those two events, the uprooted people of God seek safety, sanctuary, and refuge, and the living God gives directions for welcoming the stranger.”[5] 

          As I related in a sermon this summer, the infamous story of Sodom and Gomorrah is often ripped from its context to provide a vindictive against the LGBTQ community.  Following the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham sends his servant back to “his” people to find a fitting partner for his son, Isaac.  All the way to Abraham’s homeland, the servant wonders how he shall know who is truly one of Abraham’s people, part of the family.  He comes up with the answer when he arrives at the community well.  The servant decides that the one who provides not only food and drink and cares for the well-being for not only himself but also for his camels . . . that person is the fitting partner for Isaac. 

Bracketing the infamous story of Sodom and Gomorrah as an antecedent, we read the story of three Divine visitors who appear at the tent of Abraham and Sarah.  Before the Living God once again makes the promise of descendants to Abraham and Sarah, Abraham washes their feet, gives them a little shade, a little bread, tells Sarah to make cakes for them, kills the fatted calf with a little milk and cheese.  The promise of progeny becomes real because Abraham provides hospitality to the stranger. 

          Jewish rabbis have written, “Hospitality is a form of worship.”[6]

In fourth century Rome, the Emperor Julian sought to undercut the enthusiasm that had grown throughout the Roman Empire for Christianity.  Pagan spirituality only extended hospitality to its own kind—Sicilians to Sicilians, people of Gaul to others of Gaul.  Julian sought to cut Christianity off at its knees by having his pagan priests adopt their model of hospitality to the stranger.  Since Julian died in battle not long after he sent out this imperial decree, we do not know whether his plan and program would have robbed Christianity of its claim for a counter-cultural practice.[7]  As Benedictine sister Joan Chittister has said, hospitality for the stranger, and not just a bed and meal, but care for the whole person, was the primary way monastic Christianity defined itself over and against the Roman Empire. 

          With the continuing stories of Abraham and Sarah and their descendants, we know that these are not only values of early Christian monasticism over and against Empire, but also the values within Abraham’s family and Sarah’s circle as nomads, sojourners, migrants, refugees, and pilgrims themselves.  The story teaches that as we offer hospitality we may find that we are communing with the divine, sharing with the very people who come bearing divine gifts, maybe bearing our own salvation.

          One of the most powerful UCC stories happened in Chicago, Illinois.   Virgilio Vicente was a catechist in the Roman Catholic Church who fled his native Guatemala with his family. Virgilio had been marked for death for organizing workers.  So in the 1980s he sought sanctuary for his family by fleeing to the United States.   The threat was real.  Virgilio’s parents were killed by troops trained at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, and those same troops burned their village to the ground. 

Virgilio and his wife, Isabel, found sanctuary at University Church in Chicago, Illinois, a joint UCC/Disciples of Christ congregation then pastored by my good friends, Revs. Don and Ann Marie Coleman.  Here Isabel, Virgilio and their family were granted hospitality and raised their four children underneath the broad and beautiful wings of University Church.

In November 2005, Rev. Don Coleman watched as Virgilio posted pictures of his parents on the fence at the School of the Americas Vigil.  He began to feel the pull to intentionally cross the line at the School of the Americas knowing that action would probably result in a fine and a prison term.  With the support of his wife, his church community, and the Vicente family, Don did intentionally cross the line and was incarcerated for two months in a Chicago municipal jail.

More recently, one of those Vicente daughters, Gloria, now in her twenties, left to return to Guatemala.  There she learned the Mayan language, the first language of her mother and father, Cakchiquel.  She went to Guatemala as a missionary for Global Ministries of the United Church of Christ/Disciples of Christ and as a relationship partner with Guatemala Cultural Action, the religious wing of refugees who returned to Guatemala after the violence in the 1980s.   From the very people who were offered hospitality comes the missionary who then fed our church. 

From my heart of hearts, I really do believe this is how God acts in the world.  Our stories teach us this.  To those we extend hospitality in the world, we welcome the divine promise, we break bread with the Christ, we greet angels unawares.  Such stories and practices call into question the policies and programs that advocate for hate and discrimination within our world.  As Joan Chittister has written, hospitality too often has become making connections at cocktail parties when we don’t know our neighbors, don’t dare communicate with others in elevators, or even know the service employee’s name.  Chittister goes on to write,

Hospitality for us may as much involve a change of attitudes and perspectives as it does a handout.  To practice hospitality in our world, it may be necessary to evaluate all the laws and all the promotions and all the invitation lists of corporate and political society from the point of view of people who never make the lists.  Then hospitality may demand that we change things.[8]

Then hospitality may demand that we change things.   

In the current political climate, it is almost impossible to speak truth into the thick atmosphere of hate and fear.  During all of my work for a more humane immigration policy, I have not heard one person seriously ask for open borders.  And the United States vetting process for Syrian refugees[9] is so extensive and takes so long, refugees being immediately denied even based on gut instinct, such that we cannot keep talking about the threat of Isis terrorism and Syrian refugees in the same breath.[10]    

          I cannot tell you what an honor it is to pastor a congregation, that I believe, lives out what it means to be a sacred place of hospitality almost every day of the week.  With stories of how this congregation provided hospitality for people like Vilma Reich and other refugee and immigrant people to just our everyday courage that, I believe, is leading to a palpable, all-out joy here.  God and the Living Christ are present in such real ways.

Sometimes it takes my breath away—how you all will often engage the stranger in our midst, people we often know will never be able to return the favor.  How often when I feel uncomfortable with it all, you buck up my courage with your kindness and care, your unwillingness to promote fear and division. 

Some of you who were present for our Called to Care training may recall that I shared what an honor it was to minister in the midst of you all as a sacred place of hospitality when another clergy person almost reeled back in horror that we would not seek to find the nearest social service agency for people who have elemental needs in downtown Billings.  We pressed her.  “But many of these agencies are closed on Sundays.  And we invite many people into our meals because that is what people of faith do.” She was almost furious with contempt for us. 

At one point I went upstairs and there was Susan Betz, engaging as so many of you do, with someone who had walked into our church and clearly was struggling with mental illness.  Susan listened, expressed interest in his life, and introduced him as a person to the rest of us.  And I cry thinking of it because in that moment I knew I was in the presence of the Living Christ, not that we be irrational about this, but that Susan knew he posed no threat and so she offered her listening ear, her care and concern.  I see this repeated over and over in the midst of you—an invitation to our potluck, names learned of homeless people who just want a place of cup of coffee in our building, a young couple who takes someone into their home and buys them groceries, an absolute lack of fear about people who are clearly not here to harm us.  I am just swept away with this church as an incredibly sacred place of hospitality.  I am swept away.

Now, more than ever, in our world, we need the hospitality of Billings First Congregational Church extended into our wider world.  The season approaches when we remember a story that should identify who we are in the world but is too often forgotten in a world that peddles in division, fear, and hatred.  The poet Ann Weems writes of this story: 

Into the wild and painful cold of the starless winter night came the refugees, slowly making their way to the border. . . .

. . .One man he could handle . . ..two, even  . . ., but a border patrol . . . they wouldn’t have a chance.

She’d hardly had time to recover from childbirth

When word had come that they were hunted,

And they fled with only a little bread,

The remaining wine,

And a very small portion of cheese.

Suddenly, the child began to make small noises.

The man drew his breath in sharply;

The woman quietly put the child to breast.

Fear . . . long dread-filled moments . . . .

Huddled, the family stood still in the long silence.

At last the man breathed deeply again,

Reassured they had not been heard.

And into the night continued.

Mary and Joseph and the Babe.[11]

This is our story, that we remember. we identify our faith ancestors were once immigrants and strangers in Egypt, once refugees making our way to escape warfare and violence in the Middle East, depending on the hospitality of others, hoping there is room at the inn that no border patrol will refuse us as we flee for our lives.  At the very least, hospitality should put us in relationship with people who can then tell us their stories.  And as we spread our broad wings to cover them, we may find that their stories bring about our own salvation—we welcome the divine outside our tent, we break bread with the Christ on the road to Emmaus, and we greet angels unawares. 

        May this beautifully rich community of faith once again spread its broad wings to do what is definitively Christian and, in so doing, become aware of the angels that are found all around us.  Amen.

---

[1]Lillian Daniel, “Hell Is a Place Where Visitors Wear Nametags,” Still Speaking Devotional, September 30, 2016, http://www.ucc.org/daily_devotional_hell_is_a_place_where_the_visitors_wear_name_tags.

[2] “Figures at a glance,” UNCHR, http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/figures-at-a-glance.html.

[3] Deuteronomy 26:5

[4] Exodus 22:21, Exodus 23:9, Leviticus 19:33, Leviticus 23:22, Leviticus 24:22, Numbers 15:16, Deuteronomy 1:16, Deuteronomy 24:20-21, Deuteronomy 27:19, Jeremiah 7:4-12, Zechariah 7:10, Malachi 3:5, Psalm 39:12.

[5] “Sermon Notes:  Welcoming the Stranger,” Rev. Cecil Charles Prescod, Ainsworth United Church of Christ, April 22, 2007, quoting Rev. Joan Maruskin, “The Bible as the Ultimate Immigration Handbook.”

[6] Joan Chittister, The Rule of Benedict:  Insights for the Ages (New York:  The Crossroads Publishing Company, 1997), p. 140.

[7] Michael Bernstein, “The Oldest New Deal,” The Yale Free Press, April 2000.  http://www.yale.edu/yfp/archives/00_4_julian.html

[8] Chittister, “The Rule,” p. 142.

[9] Here is the vetting process described:  http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/resource/refugee-resettlement-security-screening-information. 

[10] A good article sharing how Syrian refugees may even make us safer:  Dave Bier, “Six Reasons to Welcome Syrian Refugees After Paris,” Niskanean Center, November 16, 2015.  https://niskanencenter.org/blog/six-reasons-to-welcome-syrian-refugees-after-paris/.

[11] Ann Weems, “The Refugees,” Kneeling in Bethlehem (Louisville, KY:  Westminister/John Knox Press, 1993), p. 59

Sacred Place Worship Series 6, September 18, 2016, "The Sacred Place of Emergence"

Sacred Place 6 BFC 2016

I Kings 19:5-18

September 18, 2016

          One of the things I try to do as a parent is to allow my kids to watch whatever media and entertainment they find interesting as a form of trust.  At the same time, I try to balance that with listening to and watching the media and entertainment with them.  I do that as a form of interest in their lives, a way to engage in conversation with them, and also a way to share my values with them.  I am really lucky to have children who may make fun of me at first, but care enough to then want to get my opinion.  So it was that my youngest son, Abraham, kept telling me that I needed to watch the HBO series, “Game of Thrones” because he thinks it’s the bees’ knees.  I wasn’t so sure when I saw a single episode saturated with such violence. 

          But then President Obama, at the Media Correspondence Dinner, a dinner where he is expected to show off his sense of humor, made a “Game of Thrones” reference, “Kahleesi is coming to Westoros”, and it drew the biggest laugh of the night..  So I knew “Game of Thrones” had become a cultural reference I had to learn to become part of the conversation. 

          “Game of Thrones” is really about who shall sit on the iron throne in Westeros.  I think the show works because everybody can pick a different person or family to root for.  Will the iron throne be controlled by the wealthy Lannister family, who, with Machiavellian precision, destroy their enemies and, in so doing, find themselves also destroying their family?  Does Stannis have the bloodlines which suggest he should be the rightful ruler on the iron throne, ordained by the god of light, and achieved through blood magic?  Should it be the Stark family and the person of integrity and courage, the bastard John Snow, resurrected from the dead by the Red Woman?  Or perhaps it shall be the strong young woman who begins with no army, no ships, not much that would recommend her to sit on the iron throne, Daenerys Targaryen? 

I can imagine that for many strong women, Daenerys Targaryen, her full name Daenerys Stormborn, First of Her Name, The Unburnt, Queen of Mereen, Queen of the Andals and of the First Men, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, for many strong women, she is they person they root for.  All of those titles reference what Daenerys has been through as naïve teenager to emerge as a confident young woman.  So the reference made during President Obama’s speech was Khaleesi is coming to Westeros, a reference to Hillary Clinton’s claim to the White House.  I know.  I went a long way for that one. 

           In this last season of “Game of Thrones”, Daenerys has been demoted in the city of the Dothraki.  She comes to the ceremonial center of the Dothraki, a strongly patriarchal culture, where she listens to the insults of all the men who think of her as weak and worthy of their threats of sexual violence.  In return, we can see that her transformation is complete.  She knows who she is.  She confidently tells them that they should worship her as their ruler.  Then she begins to calmly turn over the fire pits in the ceremonial center.  The men try to flee but the doors have all been jammed.  You see, Daenerys, is the Unburned.  Fire does not

Daenerys emerging from the fire unharmed.

harm her.  And she emerges from that fire, where people were threatening the end of her life, having transformed herself from a young, naïve woman to someone supremely confident in who she is as a rightful leader.  That Dothraki ceremonial center becomes a sacred place of emergence.

          With no less violence, in the Biblical story, Elijah has the prophets of Baal slaughtered after he shows how jealous he is on behalf of God.  No word yet on whether this slaughter was something God required of him.  And the word is sent that what he did to the Baal prophets, Ahab and Jezebel will certainly do to him.  Having proved that God is real to the people but not so confident about whether God will protect him, Elijah goes off and asks God to end his life.  He is sullen.  He is depressed. He is ready to end it all.  He is given food for his journey and he ends up on the mountain of God inside of a cave.  There he has something new to learn. 

          A strong wind, an earthquake, and a fire appear in all their violence.  But God is not in any of these three.  He comes to the mouth of the cave.

 Then comes what some translations refer to as “a still small voice”, another “the sheer silence”, and the Scripture Emma read for us to day, just “Thin.  Quiet.”  There is still violence in the world, God seems to be saying, but nevertheless,  the nonviolent God’s purposes are being worked out.  “So, Elijah, figure out your purposes for why you are doing things in the world and then go do these things that I tell you.” 

          Caves are those broken circles that connote sacred places of emergence.  For the ancient Maya people, they were considered their worship centers.  You enter in.  You are beckoned into the womb of a cave.  You emerge transformed by the experience.  Perhaps what Elijah is asked to remember is the very values that defined his God over and against the god of commodification, profit margin, and commerce.  For later on in the story, Elijah confronts Ahab with the death of the farmer, Naboth, and the values of the Living God in regards to land and sacred place. 

o   God owns the land.

o   The land is not for sale.  (You and the Land are one.)

o   The land is given for the shalom of the whole community (Shalom meaning peace, wholeness, connectedness).

o   Keeping the land in the “family” keeps the community free.

o   The land can be redeemed to avoid debt slavery and provide sabbath

o   The land requires rhythms of Sabbath and rest.

The god of commodification, profit margin, and commercialism tends to suck the sacred right out of sacred place.  Rather than asking questions about the holy, the mysterious, and how we are to emerge from a sacred place transformed, with this god, we ask the cost, the return, and the yield.  The place does not act on us, has no value in its own right.  Rather, it is an object from which we suck all of its marrow, extract all of its resources.  Then, we too, show ourselves to be objects ourselves, vampires who are just looking for where we can find blood next. 

For many people in our community the beginning of another school year has begun.  I think what we would hope for all of our young people is that they might experience school as one of those places of emergence.  It was Simone Weil, French political activist, philosopher, and Christian thinker, who believed a particular attention to study, would train us for patient, attentive prayer, help make school as a place of emergence.  Weil believed that this attention to study was not about scanning a subject or mental concentration that effectively tuned out distractions.  Rather, it was a receptivity or an openness to manifestations of truth.  Attention to study, as a spiritual practice,  is a waiting, a fruitful inactivity, an anticipation that truth would come—“a hungering for truth and hopeful expectation of its arrival.  The attentive person’s waiting is laden with the desire that her intelligence bear fruit.”[1]  We may grind, and wade through the monotony of study for a long period of time, Weil believes, but eventually, through our attention, a light bulb comes on and we emerge from the material with connection and understanding and a sense of the broader whole.  And in that moment, school becomes a place of emergence.

If not voluntarily, a person’s attentiveness is sometimes sharpened out of necessity or tragedy or devastation.  Dr. Cornel West believed that white folk in the United States had a chance to emerge from the tragedy of 9/11 with a greater understanding of the world because that calamity, in one fell swoop, might have brought attention to a bigger vision of the world and its suffering and death.  Much as the calamity of slavery made the African-American people attentive to all who sing the blues, white America might go through the grief process in a way that opened them to the suffering of the world.  Instead, West argues, our grief process was short-circuited by an authoritarian anger that immediately demanded revenge.  And we refused our own transformation, resisted emerging from our pain with greater understanding. 

In talking to a parishioner some years back about sacred places of emergence, he related one of the most amazing stories I have ever heard.  He related that he was on board a submerged nuclear submarine just off the coast of the Scandinavian countries when the power went out on the

sub.  Everyone on that submarine knew what that meant—they now had one hour of oxygen left.  He told me that it not only sharpened his attention in that moment but far out into the future.  He promised himself that if he emerged alive from that submarine he would learn every nook and cranny of a nuclear submarine so that he would never, ever be in that position again.  And his promise change the course of his life forever. 

We certainly do not want to create unbidden moments of sacred place like that for ourselves or our children, but how do we provide the cues for sacred places of emergence in ways that welcome them in?  How does our congregation become a sacred place of emergence? 

As I shared, caves have, mythologically, been seen as sacred places of emergence.  And the story of Elijah emerging from the cave contains all the elements.   Among the Native American Navajo people, the Hogan, sometimes a home, sometimes used as a ceremonial center for spiritual

practice, is a cue for a sacred place of emergence.  The Hogan is that broken circle, facing east to greet the sun, so that the entire earth might be seen as a sacred place of emergence.  Every day the Hogan cues the Navajo people to come out to the golden sun—the place of renewal, wisdom, sacred power, and the road to life.  The Hogan invites people to not only greet that new day but to be that new day.

In Christian tradition, the labyrinth, of course, is that broken circle that calls us into the center and then spins us back out into the world transformed by the pilgrimage.  It was the pilgrimage Malcolm X took to Mecca that radically transformed his life.  Malcolm X began his pilgrimage believing that white people and black people could not live in community.  He walked in to see people of all colors journeying in that pilgrimage to Mecca.  He emerged from that pilgrimage with a broader understanding of our kinship as a human community.

Ok, so I want to share the elements of a sacred place of emergence but then I’m going to turn to you to break into groups of three or four to talk about what your historical places of emergence have been and how our church might organize or construct itself so that we might become a better sacred place of emergence.  So be thinking about that as we go through these elements.

So here are the elements of what it means to be a sacred place of emergence:

o   Calls us in to call us out.  Womb-like.  And the womb can often be messy and feel like a very safe and dangerous place all at the same time.  We are held. But something new and transformative is about to take place.

o   May be a safe place that leads us out to a place of new wisdom or learning about God, yourself, and/or the world.

o   A place that gives you energy for new tasks or new adventures.

o   Can be a scary place in that once you are there, you are being prepared for something new or transformative.

o   It can be a journey or a pilgrimage to a particular place, a path we walk that we know will help us discern where and how God is moving and calling us out.  We listen for this call because, as Joan Chittister writes, we are all called.^[2]

o   Sometimes we only know that place of emergence when we have been devastated or the rules we thought governed life don’t fit.  Much like Elijah experienced, his world turned upside down by the realization that his life was not as charmed as he originally thought, or that God did not act in the world in the way he thought.

o   It is a particular place that allows us to see the holy everywhere.  As Biblical scholar, Ellen F. Davis has said, “If one place is sacramental, then perhaps every place, provided we learn to revere it, may yield access to grace.”^[3]

So what are our sacred places of emergence?  Or what is your story about

a sacred place of emergence?  And how could we provide cues to make Billings First Congregational Church a place at the ready to be a sacred place of emergence? Let’s take a minute to meditate on that and then I would like you to gather in groups of three or four to answer these questions. 

          For you, it might never mean that Khaleesi is coming to Westeros, but I hope our church might always be a place that helps you develop the attentiveness to know your power and believe that God is doing great things through you in the world.   Even today, transformation has begun in you.  May the God of the still, small voice, the sheer silence, the thin quiet, call you in and call you out to your life’s journey.  Amen.

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[1] Bradford S. Hadaway, “The Education of Attention,” in Attentive Patience:  Christian Reflection:  A Series in Faith and Ethics (Waco, TX:  Baylor University, 2016), pp. 29-30.

[2] http://rosemarieberger.com/2013/04/22/joan-chittister-a-call-is-a-sacred-reason-to-be-alive/

[3] http://www.faithandleadership.com/content/the-holiness-place?page=0,0