Montclair Presbyterian Church

When our daughter came home from school on Friday she mentioned that some of the teenagers at her high school were talking about the Tsunami warning in California. As is often the case with teenagers, it eventually turns into joking and laughing. One of the differences between teenagers and adults is in how we deal with fear. Teenagers tend to laugh while adults tend to act out in anger or by trying to over-control a situation. Teenagers are seeing the same pictures of devastation coming from Japan that we are seeing. As far away as Japan is, teenagers who live near the coast in California can almost imagine a wall of water crashing through the coastline and they can certainly imagine the feel of an earthquake because most of them have experienced one by now. No wonder they were talking about and nervously laughing about tsunamis. They feel some fear, whether they recognize the fear or not.
Most of us continue to be dismayed by the reports coming from Japan. Most of us cannot imagine the chaos and confusion and devastation that they are experiencing, let alone the ongoing fears related to a nuclear meltdown. As I was driving to work this morning, I was thinking about how helpless we end up feeling when tragedy strikes across oceans. We want to help in some way and we think about how we hope those in Japan would come to our aid if the situation were reversed. As I was pondering our feelings of helplessness, I drove through a very poor section of Oakland and saw several men pushing shopping carts looking for bottles or cans. As I watched them labor in the rain, I realized how easy it is to forget the tsunami of poverty that continues to wash over the city in which we live and work.
If you are feeling helpless and want to do something in term of Tsunami relief, I have three suggestions for you. The first is to donate money to the Presbyterian Disaster Relief fund and designate it “for Japan.” The second is to donate money or food to either the food bank or a local homeless shelter that has a feeding program. The third is to buy food that can be distributed (I used to buy bulk trail mix or cheese and crackers) and when you see a homeless person or someone pushing a shopping cart, pull over and hand them some food. Obviously none of these are long-term solutions, but if you need something to rid you of your feelings of helplessness, any one of those ideas would work.
As you pray for all of those in Japan who are suffering, remember to do the work required in each of your significant relationships because at any moment a tsunami of one kind or another can change one’s life forever.

One of the authors I have enjoyed immensely over the years is Frederick Buechner. He is an ordained Presbyterian minister and he has a way of writing about life and faith that is poignant, at times funny, and takes one to different depths depending upon the subject. One of his books that I recently picked up from my shelf again is “The Longing for Home.” In it he talks about our childhood “home” and how for each of us it is different depending upon where we most felt at home. If our parents didn’t provide a stable and warm home, maybe it was our grandparents or our best friend’s home. Regardless, he describes how we spend a great deal of our lives feeling homesick for either the home we had or the home we never had and for which we still long.
At some point in our lives, however, we realize we have reached an age where there is no going back and at that point our longing takes on a different character. We long to be wholly loved and whole and our longing becomes a longing for an eternal home. In our culture in the US, we have made an enemy of death rather than a friend so we rarely talk about our eternal longing. Have you ever asked someone who is closer to the end of their life than to the beginning what they long for in death? For people who spend their lives taking faith seriously, we skirt the issue of death altogether perhaps because there is no one living who has experience!
When I was a child I heard about the mansions, the streets made out of gold, and the harps that played music constantly (I actually worried about that one a bit since I wasn’t sure how I could listen to harp music 24/7). Do I still believe in that picture? Do you? If not, what is your vision for what comes after death?
The people I have met over the years who are not afraid of death are also people who are living life to the fullest. We all have longings. Imagine how incredible it would be for the oldest generation to share with the younger generations their longings for what comes next. None of us can ever be “right” about what comes next since there is no way to verify so why not share our longing and our visions with one another? Maybe if we do we will all journey in that direction more gracefully.

When I was 7 years old and living in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, my family belonged to a neighborhood pool complex. Early on summer mornings, when the dew was still clinging to the grass and the temperature of the air was still reasonable, I rode my bike down to the pool for my swimming lesson. One morning in particular, the sky was overcast and the air was cooler than usual. Getting into the pool was as painful as having my hair brushed, but not getting into the pool was even worse because of the cool air outside. After completing the lesson, we were allowed to jump off of the diving boards. At that age I was still fearless so of course I wanted to jump off of the high dive. In my mind I was in the air for an eternity so the jump was much more like flying off of a cliff and into a river miles below.
To avoid becoming an icicle in between the pool and the high dive, I ran-walked as fast as I could without eliciting a whistle blow from the lifeguard. I waited my turn at the bottom of the ladder until the child who had just jumped made a loud splash in the water. My hands reached for the rungs on the ladder and I moved hands and feet together as fast as I could to get to the top. Slippery hands, slippery feet, chattering lips, and goosebumps everywhere are not ideal companions when one is trying to climb. When I got to the top rung I quickly grabbed for the bar and slipped. Before I knew what was happening, I was falling through the air with nothing near enough to grab. What seemed like slow motion was in reality probably 2 or 3 seconds. Bodies falling don’t take long to reach their destination. The cement was where I landed and for a few seconds it felt as if I were in a bubble and sounds were muted. Whistles were blowing, people were shouting and before I could make sense of what had happened, people were leaning over me telling me not to move. Looking into their faces as they knelt down beside me or stood over me and peered, I began to feel afraid. Fear was the mask they were each wearing.
Within a short time, the siren of an ambulance began to howl, getting closer and closer. Lying on the cold and rough ground covered with a blanket, I didn’t understand the ambulance was for me. When they loaded me into the ambulance and pulled out of the pool complex, they did not blare the siren. That might have been fun! Sometime later that day the doctor met with my parents and said they had done as many tests as they could and he could not find a single thing wrong with me. He was releasing me to them but warned them to keep an eye on me because he believed something could still arise. As the 4th of 6 children, I enjoyed the attention that day after I arrived home.
It wasn’t until many years later that I began to wonder how I could have fallen 20 feet (approx.) on to my back on the cement and not suffered even a scratch or a bruise anywhere on my body. Is that physically possible? Was I just very lucky or did God intervene in some way? If God intervened, that raises a whole other set of questions. Why would God protect me and not so many others? Does God intervene in the world like that? How could God intervene sometimes and not other times? My cousin fell on to the cement at a football game and is now paralyzed. Was he just unlucky? Could God have intervened? People talk about miracles. What is a miracle? Did I experience a miracle? At the very least I am decidedly lucky. Daily I keep my eyes and ears open for how God might be at work in our world. And I wonder…

Last Sunday evening I went to our junior and senior high youth group. The first 10 years I was a pastor, I had the privilege of leading various youth groups. I have missed hanging out with the youth in the past 10 years! Youth always have different ways of seeing and thinking about the world and God.

We tackled a big question on Sunday evening. Our youth leader, Taliltha Given Phillips, drew two continuums on the white board. One continuum had “God has total control” at one end and “God has no control” at the other end. Just above that she drew another continuum with “God is good” at one end and “God is not good” at the other end. She asked the youth where they were on the continuum. We talked about some situations where people ended up being harmed in some way and then looked at whether we believe God was involved or not involved. The youth almost instantly brought up the holocaust. Why waste time on more minor examples?? One of the suggestions raised in general was that God is in total control but we just don’t understand why things happen and we can’t always see what things might be necessary in the bigger picture. There were others who thought God’s control has to do with trying to get us to do certain things and sometimes we listen and sometimes we don’t so bad things happen. What became evident in the course of the discussion is that it’s tough to be in the middle of the continuum of God’s involvement. In some ways it would be easier if God controlled everything or nothing. If you take the position that God controls some things, it raises questions about which things and why. If God can intervene now and then, why doesn’t God intervene in the most horrific things? Is there rhyme or reason to why/when God intervenes or is it random? If God does not intervene in something like the holocaust or genocide in Darfur, does that mean God is not good? How do we ever really know when God is intervening if we cannot see God? I am not sure what the youth were thinking by the time they left on Sunday night. They probably left with more questions than they had before they arrived! The church’s job is not so much to fill them with dogma as it is to teach them how to think about God and the world and humans and the relationship between them. All in all, I think the evening was a success.

The bummer about being a preacher is that I have to pay attention to what I am preaching and sometimes it’s stuff I would rather not think about at all. Take economic justice for example. It’s one thing to preach about making invisible people visible and it’s another thing to think about what I personally would have to do to make that a reality. Isn’t it ironic that preachers preach about economic justice and most churches are structured in such a way that the senior or head pastor is paid the most, then the associate pastor, then the musician, then the Education person, then the office staff and then the grounds or custodial staff? Why on earth don’t we all get paid the same? Is one person’s work really worth that much more? Our custodian was on vacation during the month of December (you know that time of year where everything happens). Daily I felt her importance because of all of the tasks that were not being done as she usually did them. Should I really be paid more than she is paid? On some level it makes sense that we would structure salary according to education and experience. At the same time, is that enough to justify the pay differential? The problem is that in order for all of us to be paid the same, those of us who are getting paid more would have to be willing to be paid less. Am I willing to be paid less so that my staff is all paid the same? This is where the rubber meets the road and is probably why I have yet to hear of a church where the entire staff is paid the same salary. Change begins with me. Am I willing? As much as I’d like to stop thinking about it, I can’t. Sometimes that’s what preaching does to me. The words grab me and won’t let me go even long after they have been preached…

Last Sunday in church I lugged a suitcase in to Celebration filled with heavy theological books. While I was talking with the children, I had them feel how heavy it was and then I opened it and pulled out the books that I had titled with things like “anger,” “guilt,” “hurt feelings,” and “the unwillingness to forgive.” The kids decided it was very heavy and they would rather not carry something like that around if they had a choice. I explained that every year we get to decide which baggage we carry with us into the New Year and which baggage we leave behind. The way to decide is to ask ourselves, “Is there something I still need to learn or get from carrying this baggage?” An example of baggage we could let go of is being angry with our brother for teasing us 5 years ago (and we don’t even remember the specifics). An example of baggage we might choose to continue to carry is sadness over moving away from a friend. We might choose to continue to carry that sadness if we think it will help us remember our friend. Each of the kids and adults were invited to write down on a sheet of paper the baggage they want to leave behind this year. Those who had written something then brought the paper forward and deposited it into the empty suitcase. We zipped it up, gave all the baggage inside to God in prayer and then continued our celebration. After the service, a four year old boy approached one of our staff members and told her about the baggage he was going to continue to carry and the baggage he was leaving behind. What an inspiration he is to me and to all of us. If we had begun this process when we were four, our loads would be much lighter by now! May you experience freedom in your spirit as you choose the baggage you will carry into this New Year.