Adversary

Adversary from Joseph Taber on Vimeo.

Matthew 16:21-28

21From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. 22And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

24Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?

27For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. 28Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.

This is the Word of the LORD

Thanks be to God

Jeremiah 15:15-21

15O LORD, you know; remember me and visit me,

and bring down retribution for me on my persecutors.

In your forbearance do not take me away;

know that on your account I suffer insult.

16your words were found, and I ate them,

and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart;

for I am called by your name,

O LORD, God of hosts.

17I did not sit in the company of merrymakers,

nor did I rejoice;

under the weight of your hand I sat alone,

for you had filled me with indignation.

18Why is my pain unceasing,

my wound incurable, refusing to be healed?

Truly, you are to me like a deceitful brook,

like waters that fail.

19Therefore, thus says the LORD:

If you turn back, I will take you back, and you shall stand before me.

If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless you shall serve as my mouth.

It is they who will turn to you, not you who will turn to them.

20And I will make you to this people a fortified wall of bronze;

they will fight against you but they shall not prevail over you

for I am with you to save you and deliver you,

says the LORD.

21I will deliver you out of the hand

of the wicked

and redeem you from the 

grasp of the ruthless.

This is the Word of the LORD

Thanks be to God.

It is my hope that nobody will need this sermon. It is my hope that we will all shake hands and smile at the end of this service, and never have to think about it again.

However, if that was my belief, I would be saying something very different.

The prophet Jeremiah lived through deep trauma and testifies to the horror he and his people experienced. “Oh LORD, you know; remember me and visit me.” It is my hope that no one here will live through that kind of pain.

There are profound moments of darkness in this world, where chaos seems to rule and the world doesn’t make sense. It is tempting to believe that nobody close to us ever has to go through that, but we know that we live in a world where suffering exists.

There’s a lot of tradition, much of which is supported by scripture, that one should give one’s worries over to God, trusting that God will take care of them. As Paul’s letter to the Romans says, God works all things together for the good of those who love God. Matthew also urges us not to worry about tomorrow, but to focus on the troubles of today. Those passages, and the trust in God they portray, provide a lot of comfort in an anxious world. They can help keep a person from feeling overwhelmed, and give them the faith and strength they need to continue.

While this kind of theology is a great help in the daily struggles that grind at us,  sometimes we cannot give our worries over to God. Some wounds are deeper than our faith, waves of psychological and spiritual pain that sweep us off the rocks to which we cling: the grief of a sudden death, the fear of one who suffers violent abuse, the silent howling of one who has been sexually assaulted. Traditional responses, the rocks of our faith, no longer hold meaning. We cannot hold on to what used to hold us up. When someone suffers that level of trauma, their whole world plunges into unspeakable, soul-wrenching darkness. “Why is my pain unceasing, my wound, incurable, refusing to be healed?”

Jeremiah lives in that darkness, his whole ministry is defined by it. Jeremiah's Judah lives with the trauma of death, abuse, and assault daily and on a national scale. There is no one left to say "give it to God." And to a person dealing with these trauma, there's not always a way to hear it.

There is not an analogue in American cultural memory for the catastrophe of the Babylonian captivity. the closest we get is New Orleans in the days following hurricane Katrina, where society simply ceased to function in the wake of a natural disaster. For ancient Judah, the armies of Babylon were the force of nature that stripped away everything on which they thought they could rely, including their relationship with God. The catastrophe of Babylon’s conquest of Judah has broken down every support system and comfort they had, including temple worship.

Jeremiah had been a Levite, a temple assistant. Before babylon invaded, he was educated, respected, and gratefully living out his calling. “Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart.” But in the chaos after the conquest, “[the word of God] is all that is left for Jeremiah; it is nothing and yet it is everything.” The theology of the temple, and of the Judean monarchy, has failed, so Jeremiah, who had internalized the word of God, writes his own lament, his own confessions, because there is no prayer strong enough for the deep wounds of his soul.

But on an individual level, many of us have, tragically, lived through that kind of trauma. All of us, at one time or another, have felt grief that turns our anger against God. Jeremiah stands in for us, expressing the frustrations that we are culturally conditioned to keep to ourselves. After all, we’re supposed to be happy all the time, right? “I did not sit in the company of merrymakers, nor did I rejoice;” Trauma and grief can reach a point where those experiencing kit withdraw from their social interaction as a defense mechanism, joy becomes so foreign it cannot be approached.

Jeremiah uses language that is disturbing and foreign to the theology which most of up hold dear. God is supposed to be present and accountable always, a very present help in times of trouble. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for thou art with me?

But Jeremiah is not walking through that valley, he lives there. Surrounded by the atrocities of war and plunder. So he speaks in ways that don't fit with what we've come to expect from scripture. Jeremiah, and the nations to whom he preaches, do not feel as though they can count on God. Their experience is that nothing is predictable, and they have no control over their own lives. “Truly, you are to me as a deceitful brook, like waters that fail," Jeremiah says to God.

We are not the first interpreters to be troubled by Jeremiah's theology. John Calvin, one of our foremost theological ancestors, wrote “If we take the words as they appear to mean, they seem to border on blasphemy; for God had not without reason testified before, that he is the fountain of living water.” That description, of God as living waters, is spoken by Jeremiah earlier in the book. The prophet here is throwing God's own words back in his face, and with them, the entire covenant. From Jeremiah's perspective, God has abandoned his people and broken the covenant. Jeremiah’s trauma-fed accusation is that God is not the protector of Judah, but an adversary. jeremiah feels trapped between God and God’s people. “Under the weight of your hand I sat alone, for you had filled me with indignation.

We don't find much assurance in the words of a prophet who doesn't trust the God on whose behalf he speaks. So Jeremiah, instead of giving assurances he doesn't have, gives us the language to hang on to God with both hands, a way to tell the truth of deep suffering and to still have God as a part of our lives, even when we lost sight of the assurances we have.

There is resurrection after disaster. The exile kicks off a renaissance in Jewish thought, giving rise to synagogues, rich literature, and even the concept of monotheism. Perhaps Jeremiah can see those things coming. Perhaps he knows that one day other prophets will offer clearer hope, and other generations will be able to hear it.

But for now, the people are withdrawn from their social support systems. Trauma robs us of our ability to connect with others. People who have endured that level of violence against their souls cannot reach out in love, or hope, the trauma has robbed them of that capacity. Jeremiah, as spiritual leader and prophet, is given the primary purpose of maintaining the integrity of these people's relationship with the God of their ancestors. He has to keep a relationship with God strong enough to survive the trauma.

In the abyss of anguish, that means hanging on to God as an adversary. Jeremiah gives the people a way to express themselves without endangering any fragile healing at work. Their faith isn't just shaken, it's shattered. But out of that mess, “[Jeremiah’s prayers] provide a way to pray that gathers in the afflicted, draws them back from social isolation, articulates doubt, and shows how it is possible to cling relentlessly to God in the wreckage of their world.”

I hope that this way of doing theology remains distant to us. I hope that we will be able to leave here and take only the joyful sounds of "Jesus loves me." I hope that we can see that there is more to the story, that the prophets that write after Jeremiah, like Isaiah and Zechariah, can fill us with hope. However, if that had been true for everybody, we would not need the prophet Jeremiah's words.

There are people in this room who have picked up the pieces from trauma, who have stared profound grief in the face, who have endured abuse, who survived sexual assault. There may be people here who will have their faith shattered by some future disaster. Jeremiah led an entire nation in pleading with God, "I thought I could depend on you!” There may be people who have wept that same prayer. Jeremiah sets the example that “challenging God’s apparent unreliability in this manner is fully spiritual. It is language of fidelity, because it assumes God values relationship and is open to being affected personally be a believer’s suffering.

There are places of profound darkness in the world, from which human eyes cannot see the light that shines. There are places where people cannot hold on to hope, because something has removed that capacity from them. And yet a light shines in the darkness nevertheless, and the darkness cannot extinguish the light. Dr. Kathleen O'Connor reads Jeremiah's words as a model for how to hold on to God when we have lost all hope:

“Here is what to do in the pit of hopelessness: cling to God, even when God has slipped away. Yell at the top of your collective lungs. Hold tightly, mercilessly, and with every ounce of strength, shout and scream at the deity…Lay it out so you can see it yourselves and can see each other in the deep, unending wound. God is hidden there in that space.”

In that space, we find Christ crucified. Divinity hidden on a cross, joining us in the depths of human suffering, sharing Jeremiah’s feelings of abandonment, taking part in the grief and trauma which are part of life in a broken creation.

Jeremiah’s laments accuse God of being absent in trauma, because how could a loving God possibly allow so much suffering to those whom he had covenanted to love and defend. When Christ announces he is heading to the cross, Peter tries to protect him. But Christ’s mission is to participate in the whole drama of human life. That has to include the disaster of the cross, or the title of Emmanuel, “God with us” means nothing. Jesus cannot let Peter’s short sighted love stop him from his obedience to eternal love.

There is promise of resurrection, sure. But before Christ can promise to be with us, even to the end of the age; he must cry out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When we are living through trauma, we may not be able to take comfort in the resurrection we hope is coming, because the nature of trauma is that it breaks down hope and leaves us wordlessly empty.

And God replies, even in the pit, we still have a future. “Therefore, thus says the LORD: If you turn back, I will take you back, and you shall stand before me.” There is a resurrection after the cross, there is a return from exile, there is a loving God at the end of lament. But until we get there, I think Jeremiah shows us that it's ok to be honest with God, to struggle with faith, to doubt, and even to feel like an adversary of The LORD.

Perhaps Jeremiah's theology is a preview of the crucifixion. It is suffering, and bleak, and horrifying. We have lost some of the scandal of the cross over the years, placed it on too many items of jewelry and made it normal. Jeremiah's adversarial relationship with God is offensive to most of us, troubling and uncomfortable. Perhaps we are too quick to gloss over it and get to the happier resurrection, or even to join Peter in saying "God forbid it, Lord! this must never happen to you!” But perhaps that is us setting our minds not on divine things, but on human things.

But it's ok to rail at God. It's ok to accuse him of not holding up his end. It's ok to sit at the foot of the cross, or in the ashes of exile. Jeremiah shows us how to hold on to faith when we cannot be faithful. But Christ goes to the cross so that we will not have to face our trauma alone. Christ shows us that God is faithful even when we cannot believe God when he says “I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked and redeem you from the ruthless.” We know, therefore, out of exile, and death, and crucifixion, comes resurrection, and we know the story doesn't end it tears of lament, but in tears of joy.

Go, Therefore

1 Kings 19:9-18

9At [Horeb, the mount of God, Elijah] came to a cave, and spent the night there. Then the word of the LORD came to him, saying, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" 10He answered, "I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it way."

11[God] said, "Go out and stand on the mountain before the LORD, for the LORD  is about to pass by." Now there was a great wind, so string that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; 12and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. 13When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and wont out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" 14He answered, "I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away." 15Then the LORD said to him, "Go return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as King of Aram. 16Also you shall anoint Jehu son of Nimshi as king over Israel; and you shall anoint Elisha, son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah as prophet in your place. 17Whoever escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall kind, and whoever escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha shall kill. 18Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him."

This is the Word of the LORD

Thanks be to God

Matthew 28:16-20

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Go therefore and make disciples of all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

This is the Word of the LORD

Thanks be to God

Both of our stories this morning are, I'm quite sure, familiar to all of us. They are stories where God shows us something of himself. In 1 Kings, God reveals something of himself through the sound of sheer silence, or a still, small voice in other translations. In Matthew, God's self-revelation comes in the form of the post-resurrection Christ, sending the disciples throughout the world and promising to be with them.

But besides their familiarity and God's self-sharing, these stories are connected through the doubt they portray in those who serve God. Some of the disciples, seeing Jesus ready to ascend to heaven, doubted. Elijah is just coming off of a major victory against the prophets of Baal and loses his nerve, fleeing into the wilderness until he comes to Horeb, the mount of God, which is sometimes also called Sinai.

One story takes place where the instruction of God came down, the other where the Word of God made flesh was taken up, and both are filled with the doubt of those who lived through them.

We are living through frightening times. An hour's worth of evening news is good for a full night of unsleeping anxiety. That doesn't even count the innumerable small things that make our daily lives uneasy: family unrest, problems at work, troubled friendships, health issues, money troubles, the list goes on. Like Elijah, we may be driven out into the wilderness just for a chance to get away from the problems we see.

"I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it way."

I feel like I've been doing everything right, and yet so much is still going wrong! I'm out of ideas, out of energy, out of resources, "I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away." We can almost taste the unspoken plea as it rests just behind our lips and Elijah's, "O God, please help me..."

We expect God to intervene out of wind, earthquake, and flame, elemental solutions to the problems of our souls. We see them as something we can grab hold of, a solution tailor-made to impress us and restart our struggling faith.

But God was not in the wind, neither was God in the earthquake, or even the fire. "After the fire a sound of sheer silence." No distractions, no excuses: it's time for a face-to-face chat with the almighty.

I don't think it goes the way Elijah envisioned it.

When we're in the kind of mindset that I see in Elijah here, we expect that God has somehow done us a disservice, and that when we present our case, God will apologize and take us up into his loving embrace and promise that it'll all be better soon. "Look God, we had a deal. I would be a good person and you would make my life easy. I've been a good person, very zealous for the Lord, and yet my life is still difficult. Come on! Do your job! Make me happy!"

"Elijah..." says the LORD, in the same tone of voice, no doubt, that God used when he called to  Adam and said "where are you?" The tone of voice that indicates that God already knows the answer, but is giving us the opportunity to confess it ourselves. "There came a voice to him that said, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"

So Elijah lays out his case, woe is him, for his task as a prophet is so difficult, and he's all alone. "He answered, 'I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.'"

I love God's response here, because it's so vastly different than what we expect from God when we're standing in Elijah's shoes. I think we expect a pat on the head and an invitation to rest until we're no longer tired of the big mean world in which we live.

God response, instead, bypasses our whining and sends us back out to work. For the prophet Elijah, on the run and feeling all alone, "The outcome of the [experience of God] is vigorous, risky intervention in the life of Israel and of its neighbors." Elijah's solution was to retreat from the world' God's commissions him to engage it, to continue preaching the Word of the Lord in the face of ridicule and persecution. God's command of faithfulness does not mean withdrawing from the world, but getting to work for the good of God's people.

And yet God does not just leave Elijah feeling ignored either. His concerns are valid, our world is harsh, and its people resist their Lord beyond belief. God reminds Elijah that he is not alone, as he feels. He is called to anoint the next generation's prophet: Elisha, son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah. God also tells him of seven thousand other faithful people still living in Israel. Elijah is not as alone as he thought.

Though it's tempting to get caught up in our own struggles, and to imagine that we are alone in all the world, God reminds us that we do not go into the world by ourselves. Wherever we go, we're going together.

I am terrible at telling ahead of time what events in my life are going to be a big deal to me. I didn't think my Seminary graduation back in May was going to be a big deal, and it surprised me. I thought the Presbytery meeting on Tuesday would be just another, final, hoop through which to jump, after all, I've already been a pastoral presence in this congregation for two months. I had been through the wind, the earthquake, the fire, in seminary, in the committee on preparation for ministry, and the call search process. No distractions, no excuses: it's time for a face-to-face chat with the presbytery.

It did not go the way I envisioned it.

Like Elijah’s prideful loneliness, I had overlooked my community of faith who surprised me with a profound expression of y'all's love for me. A group of folks, representing this whole congregation, met at the church at way-too-early in the morning to ride the church bus for two hours because we neither struggle nor triumph alone. Wherever we go, we're going together.

That's the lesson I took from Elijah's encounter at Horeb, the mount of God. The impressive fanfare of wind, earthquake, and fire do not contain God, although they point to him. Once God has our attention, through the sound of sheer silence, we encounter him face-to-face and are reminded that, excepting only Christ, the world does not begin or end with any lone individual. God elects a people.

We have stories of individual encounters with God, Jacob at the ford of the river Jabbok, Moses at the burning bush, Saul on the road to Damascus. "These encounters with individual persons are characteristically not ends in themselves but concern [the LORD's] larger purposes.”

God’s purposes are almost always larger than a single individual. God intends good for all of creation, and for all of those whom he loves. God gives us one another and calls us to journey though our lives as connected, particular people. We each have our own experiences and are called to share them with one another. Even though I was surrounded by my fellow Presbyterians on Tuesday, many of whom have known me since childhood, the fact that my church sent a group to represent them means more than I can express. Through your expression of love, God spoke to me saying that wherever our church is going, we’re going together.

“Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.”

There will be days when we have doubts, both as individuals and as a congregation. When we do, however, we join the company of Elijah and Christ’s earliest disciples. They make for good company, even in our doubts. Even though Elijah’s plea may taste just a bit like self-centered whining, even though the disciples doubt in the very face of the resurrected Christ, their doubts are not unfounded.

We are living through frightening times. An hour's worth of evening news is good for a full night of unsleeping anxiety. That doesn't even count the innumerable small things that make our daily lives uneasy: family unrest, problems at work, troubled friendships, health issues, money troubles, the list goes on…

But we do not have to face our fears alone.

Like the disciples, called by God to a place of worship, we have seen the risen Christ among us. God has promised to go with us, even when it means death on a cross and the depths of human suffering. Like Elijah on Horeb, the mount of God, we are reminded that there are faithful people in our communities who can be a comfort and fellow kingdom-workers with us.

God shares himself in the face of Elijah’s fear by giving him a job to do, and reminds Elijah that he is part of a beloved community on whom God would not give up. “The LORD said to him, "Go return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as King of Aram. Also you shall anoint Jehu son of Nimshi as king over Israel; and you shall anoint Elisha, son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah as prophet in your place… Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.” I do not know where this church is going, but we are going there together.

Christ sent us out into the world saying “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” I do not know where this church is going, but I know that God goes with us.

We will have doubts, we will have fears, but we will also have triumphs and will lift up our heads in hope, because God goes with us as we travel together. From Horeb, the mount of God, to Galilee, the mountain to which Jesus had directed them, to the foothills of Western North Carolina in a little town called Lowell, we will move forward together, knowing that God goes with us.

These stories are familiar to us because we have keep telling them to one another. They are not just bible stories, they are our stories, and we have lived them as much as the characters who are featured in the text. We know that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, and that support can overwhelm our loneliness and help us get back to showing the love of Christ as we work with each other and walk hand in hand.

I do not know where this church is going. My hope is that we are on the edge of profound spiritual growth and faithful service, but I do not know what that journey will look like.

I do not know where this church is going. My hope is that we are leaning forward into a future where we will see God’s wonders in our congregation, our presbytery, our denomination, our community, our region, our world, but I do not know what service God has in mind for us.

I do not know where this church is going, but I know we go with God, and with one another. So let us Go, therefore, into the world. We have work to do, obedient service to Christ our king. It is not our ability that makes this work doable, it is the fact that wherever we are going, we go together. It is the truth that whoever we are going, God goes with us.

Alleluia, Amen

How to talk to dying people - Rev. Dan McCurdy

My friend Rev. Dan McCurdy, a pastor in Wisconsin, posted this on a Facebook group of which we are both members. I think it's one of the most important things I've seen on the internet. It's reposted here with his permission. Often times, in my experience, clergy and chaplains are looked to for this kind of ministry so that family/friends don't have to. However we often have other responsibilities, one of which is to equip families/friends to deal with these kinds of life changes.

So many people, when confronted with a dying person, avoid them because "they don't know what to say."
This is largely a byproduct of feeling like you need to cheer the other person up, or "make them okay with it." Given how rarely we are OKAY with it (especially if we love the one who is dying) this is a tall order. Luckily, it's not ACTUALLY our job.
So here's how you talk to a dying person.
1. Show up. This is 90% of the battle. So long as you aren't especially, near intentionally horrible, the mere fact that you arrived will make your visit a highlight of their day. The Western fear of death means that many people wind up dying alone, avoided by those who care for them. So show up, and you're off to a good start/
2. Touch them. This goes under the sub-heading of showing up... in the end stages of death, as people become less and less aware of what is happening around them, physical contact makes your presence a little more real. Most of the time, what is killing the person isn't contagious through simple physical contact, so unless there are signs around warning you off, feel free to put a hand on their arm or shoulder. (Washing your hands before you walk into the room, of course.) A lot of dying people go days at a time without being touched in a friendly way. It helps them feel more human in a time where a lot of their humanity is being taken from them.
3. "How is Today?" At least once, by accident, you will give your dying friend or loved one the opportunity for the best joke dying has given them... "How are you?" "I'm dying. You?" After the fun of that, a better greeting is "How is Today?" Terminal diseases have good days and bad days. This is a way to find out how they are feeling on this specific day, and lets you know what is going on.
4. Don't be afraid to talk about yourself. A dying person often feels like the world around them is gone... people around them only talking about the disease, funeral arrangements, travel plans, etc. If they ask you questions about what you are up to, don't feel the need to turn the conversation back around onto them, saying; "Well, that's not important right now..." let them dictate what is important, If that includes asking if you've beaten your high score on Candy Crush Saga yet, answer them.
5. Watch for leading questions. If they ask you a question like; "What do YOU think happens when we die," give your answer with a nutshell, and then ask them what they think. These questions are often looking for an opportunity to explore some murky concepts. Tell the truth, and listen for the truth they tell when you return the question.
6. Let them steer the conversation. If the deep talk gets to deep, they'll yank the wheel and take it somewhere else entirely. Let them. In a world where more and more decisions are being taken from them, allow them to dictate this.
7. Do not compulsively fill every silence. If they go quiet, and you don't have anything to say, don't feel the need to babble for the sake of babbling. Silence can be golden.
8. When the time comes to leave, make definite plans to come back. Whenever possible, pick an exact date and time. "I'll see you around" is too nebulous and opens up a strong possibility of "Is this the last time I'll see you." It can ruin a happy day. So be definite. It doesn't assure anything, but it sure leaves the visit on a strong note.
And finally, remember that no matter how far gone they are, until the very end, unless they were clinically deaf before, assume that they can hear you. Talk TO them when you are in the room, instead of always talking over them. Tell them that you love them, that you'll miss them, anything you need to say.
And when the time comes, say goodbye.

Continue

Continue from Joseph Taber on Vimeo.

Haggai 2:1-9
In the second year of King Darius, in the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the prophet Haggai, saying: 2Speak now to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people, and say,
3Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory?
How does it look to you now? Is it not in your sight as nothing?
4Yet now take courage, O Zerubbabel, says the Lord;
take courage, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest;
take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord;
work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts,
 5according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt.
My spirit abides among you; do not fear.
6For thus says the Lord of hosts:
Once again, in a little while,
I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land;
7and I will shake all the nations,
so that the treasure of all nations shall come,
and I will fill this house with splendor,
says the Lord of hosts.
8The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the Lord of hosts.
9The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former,
says the Lord of hosts;
and in this place I will give prosperity,
says the Lord of hosts.

Luke:20:27-38
27Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him 28and asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. 29Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; 30then the second 31and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. 32Finally the woman also died. 33In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.” 34Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; 35but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. 36Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. 37And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. 38Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”

This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God

Over the last several years, I've noticed something peculiar about American culture. We are totally youth obsessed. We spend untold amounts of time and money to avoid the reality of our own aging. Maybe it’s because we remember the past more fondly than we read the present. Maybe we look towards the former glory of our houses because we have become discouraged with the work required to maintain them, to rebuild time after time.

I think that's because, at some level, we know that we have a shelf life. We are limited both in our ability and in our time. Our limits terrify us, the death and loss we experience during our lives are so far beyond even the illusion of our control that we reach into the illusion of eternal youth to avoid dealing with the most terrifying events in our lives. We are consistently taught, as American Christians, that grief and fear are “bad” emotions, and should be treated as though something is broken in our minds.

But the human condition is a frightening one, throughout our lives, we have to deal with loss, with grief, with pain, much of the time through no fault of our own. In my work at the hospital, even the most gifted doctors much eventually face that everything they do is just a stall tactic. Avoidance of these frightening realities may be easier than dealing with them, but pretending they don’t exist doesn’t solve them, and I’m not convinced it actually makes it more bearable.

I think that when we run as hard as we do from the things that frighten us, it makes us think that we have to bear them alone when they do finally catch up to us. When we can no longer avoid the grief over the loss of a dear friend or relative, we feel like we cannot reach out to anyone else because no one else is grieving in the ways we are. By avoiding them, we are allowing them to fester, merely so that we can keep up the cultural illusion that we are not susceptible to those dark emotions.

Death is a reality, and an eventuality, for us all. And that is a terrifying prospect, so much so that we go to great lengths to avoid even the appearance of approaching that end. Searching for a way to increase our reach into the future, straining for something beyond the scope of our life on this planet. We search for eternal youth, for a measure of immortality, the idea that our deaths are only in part.

The Christian claim is not one of immortality, it is of resurrection. Because we will all face the trauma of loss and death. If we trust a continuity based on our own abilities, we will find ourselves paralyzed in the face of the limits of our imagination.

The prophet Haggai finds himself in that position. He is among the Jews who return to the promised land after what's called the Babylonian captivity. It's one of the pivotal moments in scripture, for before this time the understanding of God centered around the protection of the law, the covenant, and above all the holy city of Jerusalem which housed the temple. God was one who preserved the life of his people.

But the temple has been destroyed, the people of the land have been carried off to a foreign country, away from their ancestral inheritance. Though some of the people have survived, and have been allowed to return home, they have lived through a trauma so severe that American culture has no common frame of reference. Everything they understood about reality, about their identity, about their God, is dead.

But the covenant is not one of immortality, but of resurrection. God speaks to their spiritual death:
"Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory?
How does it look to you now? Is it not in your sight as nothing?"

The temple-centered religious practices are dead. But God is not. Though lives have been lost, though faith has been lost, the God of their covenant is working on their resurrection, and encourages them to rebuild, not because they are invulnerable to another conquest, but because not even death can separate us from the love of God. It is not the glory of the temple that matters, it is the glory of God. Though the temple may be lost, the presence of the LORD is still among us. So God tells us to not be paralyzed by our fear that even the greatest of our works will fade in time.

"Take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord;
Work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts."
It is easy to become discouraged when they look around and see the limitation of their humanity, and the fruits it has borne for them. There is much to fear, Haggai's congregation do not have a King of the line of David on the throne, they have a governor appointed by their captors. They have a high priest, but no place for him to carry out his duties. The work of their hands has been laid waste with fire and sword at the hands of the Babylonian army. Their exile has been real, so have the deaths that they have witnessed on their journey.

Just so our own journeys take to places we would not choose to go. Sometimes they take us to a sports field, where we begin to realize that our bodies can no longer do what we ask of them. Sometimes they take us to a rite of passage and we are confronted with the vision that the one who we are so accustomed to seeing as a child has become an adult, and our relationship has irrevocably changed. Sometimes they take us to the edge of a hospital bed, where we hear the doctor say words that we cannot accept, news of finality, of saying goodbye instead of new greetings.

The theoretical Widow in our gospel passage has found that grief time and time again, having buried seven husbands. But it’s not her grief that concerns the Sadducees in our gospel passage this morning. These learned men, wealthy and powerful, pose the question as a trap, to get Jesus to admit that the resurrection isn’t logical.

Well they’re right, it’s not.

Where’s the logic in the grief of a seven-fold widow being transformed to songs of praise? Where’s the logic in a barren mother being called a child of the resurrection? Where’s the logic in a conquered people reinvesting in a temple to a God who hadn’t prevented disaster?

Where’s the logic in a God who refuses to give up on us when we so consistently abandon God? Where’s the logic in an all-powerful God who goes to death, even death on a cross?

The resurrection is not about logic, it’s about the greatness of God, who can triumph even over the fact of death.

God’s covenant is not one of immortality, it’s one of resurrection. Where there once was only death, now there is life, and life abundant. For God is not of the dead, but of the living. John Donne wrote that “All [humanity] is of one author and one volume, and when one [person] dies, a chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated.” And as we wait for our own translation, we will lose access to friends and family who are taken by death before us. That loss is real, and deserves to be mourned.

We confess that Christ was crucified, died, and was buried. But through the loving power of our God, death was not the end of his story, and it’s not the end of ours. Because we are witnesses to resurrection: the creation of life where there was only death. That resurrected life will be one of greater glory than we can now imagine.

The Sadducees assumed that in the resurrection, everything would be back to the life they understood, the life that had enriched them, that they understood and could work within, only with everybody alive again.

But the God who writes and rewrites the laws of nature does not just raised us from the dead, we are reformed in this resurrection. Not just humanity either, all of creation is redeemed through the death and resurrection of Christ, that is the new form of humanity. “For thus says the Lord of hosts: Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; ...The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts.”

The resurrected life is one where we dine with our Lord, no longer held back by our fears and grief, but loved through them. Our fears are redeemed to joy, our grief to gratitude, our despair to faith. Because the power of the God of resurrection makes it so.

Because the God who loves us enough to become a human, with all of our limits, like us in every respect except sin, will let neither sin nor death separate us from God. The God whose sovereignty speaks into being things which do not exist declares us to be children of the resurrection.

So the widow no longer needs to be defined by her ability to bear children and continue the family line. The sinner no longer needs to be cast out for his uncleanness. The wealthy businessman no longer needs to focus on acquiring enough stuff to pass on his legacy. The temple no longer needs to compare itself to a faded memory of its own glory. The church elder no longer needs to hold up the church on his own, fearing that if he steps away that no one will fill the void.

Now they are all called children of the resurrection, worshipping God in spirit and in truth, not in a temple or church.

“So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter.” Because ours is a tradition not of immortality, but of resurrection. Our tradition says that death may be more powerful than we are, but our God is more powerful than death by far. We will grieve those we have lost, and we will grieve for ourselves when we lose parts of ourselves. When our time comes, others will grieve for us as well.

But that grief is not the end of our story, because God’s story continues forever, and God’s love for us is such that he wants us to be a continual part of that story. A story of creation, resurrection, and everlasting praise.