memory – Salvaged Faith

Grounded with our Ancestors

Posted on November 3, 2019Leave a comment

Text: Matthew 1:1-17

The very name of our church, Immanuel, means “God-with-us.”
God is with us.
Right here in this very time and place.
Living, moving, breathing.

In times past, we relegated God to the heavens while we mundane humans continued our life here below.
And then we cried out in times of tragedy… “God, where are you?!”

In other times, the suffering in our midst was so stark that we thought surely God was dead… or even worse, didn’t care.

But that is not who God claims to be.
God takes on flesh and makes a home among us.
And his name is Immanuel.
God is here.

Diana Butler Bass is a respected Christian academic whose books offer hope and meaning to many. In particular, she is helping us all to navigate what it means to live as people of faith in a world that increasingly doesn’t care about what Christianity has to offer the world.
In her book, Grounded, she wrestles with what it means to really understand that God is with us. She describes it as “a social and political question with sweeping consequences for the future.” If we really focus on rediscovering and relocating and reacquainting ourselves with God, Immanuel, with us right here… it will reground our lives.
It will center us.
Give us purpose.
Remind us of who we are.
And…
It will call us to a new way of being in this world.
As Butler Bass writes,
“God is.. that which grounds us. We experience this when we understand that soil is holy, water gives life, the sky opens the imagination, our roots matter, home is a divine place, and our lives are linked with our neighbors’ and those around the globe. This world, not heaven, is the sacred stage of our times.” (p 26)

We are turning the corner on the Christian year and preparing for Christ to be born among us once again.
So I wanted to invite us to look at some of those relationships throughout the month of November that Butler Bass claims ground us in the life of God. Our roots – or our history and ancestors…. Our home lives… our neighborhoods… and this common, kingdom life to which we all belong.
How should we look upon those relationships if God is truly present in the midst of them?
How might our relationship with one another change?

Today, we celebrate the saints who have completed the race and now rest in the presence of God.
We remember their lives.
We cherish their memories.
Each one planted seeds of faith and hope and love in us and have shaped us.
I asked you to share with me some of your own stories of these saints in your individual lives.

One of you told me about Gramma Gert – or GG – the nucleus of your family. She never drove, but either walked or got a ride to church every Sunday. If you had anything to pray for… you took it to GG… because you knew it would get plenty of Godly time and attention.

Someone else fondly remembered their third grade Sunday School teacher, Mr. Going who taught them the Lord’s Prayer. Rather than simply memorizing it, they took it line by line and rewrote it in words that were easier for a child to understand. Mr. Going made faith real.

Another of you shared with me the story of your great grandmother who came to Iowa from Norway in 1862 at the age of six. She dictated her own life story and left these words at the end… Love one another, Jesus has said, “If you don’t love one another you don’t love me”… and she addressed her children and their future families saying, “I have prayed for you all, I put you all in the Lord’s hands… God bless you all, may we me up yonder where there is no parting anymore.”

Whether it was a parent, or teacher, a neighbor or great-grandparent, these people of faith left a mark on your life.

One of the things I have been challenged by in Butler Bass’s book, however, is to remember that our roots are far deeper than our memory.
We are shaped and influenced by generations that have come and gone… and yet we seem to have forgotten their stories.

I actually thought I was doing pretty good by this account.
My mom and I have done a bit of genealogy work on our families. We have spent hours researching names through the Mormon genealogy center. We’ve created family trees that go back not just hundreds, but thousands of years. In fact, one line that we traced goes back all the way to the year 6!
Together with great-aunts and cousins, we have trampled through cemeteries in south central Iowa to find tombstones of relatives long dead and gone.
We’ve even gathered iris bulbs from one of those long forgotten places and brought them home to bring a piece of the family back with us.

But Butler Bass notes that we save things and we gather information, but we don’t often collect what those details mean to our lives. “We have more information about the past,” she writes, “but less actual connection to it than those in previous ages.”
The truth is, I don’t know the stories of most of those names I have collected together in my family history. I can tell you where they lived and died and where they are buried… but what did they experience in this life? What brought them joy? What struggles did they over come? Their stories are largely forgotten because we stopped handing them down.
And even on days like today, when we celebrate communion with the saints of God, with those who have gone before us, when we invoke their presence and their memory… do we have any sense of whom we are eating with today?

Our text for this morning is in essence a family tree. It is a genealogy of Jesus Christ shared with us by the apostle Matthew in his gospel.
And truth be told, often we glance at those names and the same sense of dryness and lack of life and history overcomes us.
We gloss over their names as a boring list of people we don’t know.
But they are our spiritual ancestors.
And who they were matters.
And who was included in those histories matters.
One of the things that you might notice if you compare the genealogy of Matthew and Luke is that Matthew actually includes the names of some women!
We find the story of Tamar… who was left widowed and childless in an age in which that was a death sentence. This family tree continues only because she tricked her father-in-law, Judah, into getting her pregnant by dressing up as a prostitute.
Rahab was an actual prostitute who was part of the battle of Jericho… Joshua sent spies into the city to scout it out and Rahab is the one who sheltered them. As a result, her family was rescued and she married into one of the important families of Israel.
Her son, Boaz, married an foreign immigrant, Ruth, who tricked him into the relationship by getting him drunk one night.
We are reminded in this genealogy that Solomon’s mother was Bathsheba. His family story is one of adultery and murder as Bathsheba was taken advantage of by David.

These are stories of scandal, but also intense strength, compassion, resolve, and determination. These women and the lives they led are our spiritual ancestry!
I wonder if Matthew perhaps included these women in his ancestry of Jesus as one way of grounding the story of Mary and Joseph and rumors and scandal circulating around his birth. But also, it was a testimony to the faithful ancestors that gave someone like Mary the courage to keep trusting God would be with her in the midst of the journey.

How does knowing these stories ground our sense of purpose, identity, and ability to navigate the trials and tribulations of our lives? Might we call upon these ancestors and their faith in God to help us persevere in our own journey?

Another thing you’ll notice if you look at the family tree included in Matthew as opposed to the one in Luke, you’ll actually find two very different stories of where Jesus comes from and what his life means, claiming political and spiritual authority from different sources!
Matthew grounds the life of Jesus in the history of the Jewish people. As verse 1 proudly states: A record of the ancestors of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham. He is the heir of the Kingdom of David and of the covenant of Abraham. He is the King of the Jews.
Luke’s version ignores most of kings and focuses on ordinary, everyday folks who don’t appear in grand stories of scripture. And his version goes all the way back, not just to Abraham, but to Adam… emphasizing the whole family of earth.
There was actually a joke I heard frequently growing up that all the Czechs on the south side of the Cedar River were related to one another. Not originally, of course, but because “bohemies” couldn’t swim, we all ended up marrying one another.
I saw this in my own lifetime… My Babi (grandma) was a Benesh and my Deda (grandpa) was a Ziskovsky.
Just two generations later, a second cousin from the Ziskovsky side married a fourth cousin from the Benesh side…
That’s in essence Luke’s point… Instead of emphasizing one thread of one famous family, he brings home the point that we’re all eventually related to everyone else. His is a family tree that is a lot like the image on the front of your bulletin… with a single origin for us all.
What does it mean for our relationships with one another, if we recognized our common ancestory and inheritance as children of God? If we remembered that our stories all start in the same place, grounded in the same history, created by the same God?

Today, we feast with our ancestors.
We remember the lives they lived.
We remember the faith they handed down.
And their lives help us to become even more grounded in our relationship with the one who not only created us, but who is right here with us.
A God who was, and is, and is to come.
Immanuel…
God with us.

Despair to Hope

Posted on June 15, 2008Leave a comment

There are only two things that I really want to comment on this morning – and then I want us to turn our hearts and minds to a time of prayer – because Heaven help us, this is going to be a long summer in Eastern Iowa.

First of all, I was so surprised last night when I again read the scripture from the book of Romans in this week’s lectionary. Not realizing what the situation would be, I had actually planned on not sharing this passage of scripture – I wanted to instead focus on hospitality and use the text from Genesis… the story of Abraham welcoming the three strangers.

But again, knowing that what was happening around us was more important than any preconceived notion of mine, I went back to our texts this week and was ready to use something completely different. Until I read Romans. (5:1-5)

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

When I wasn’t helping out my husband’s family in the past few days… helping to calm worried spirits, getting meals for 11 people on the table, trying to get to places around Cedar Rapids to help sandbag… I was glued to the television. I’m sure many of you were also. And what continued to amaze me were the statements of hope and strength that kept being shared with the community.

Rev. Linda Bibb is the pastor at Salem United Methodist Church. It is on the corner of First Avenue and 3rd Street West and on Thursday evening, their stained glass windows were almost completely under water. And when she was interviewed on KCRG she said: “that the church is not the building, so they Salem church is doing well and proclaiming that they do not fear the future because God is already there.”

Gail Gnaughton – President and CEO of the National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library had this to say:

“The Czech and Slovak peoples have endured many devastating events in their history and have survived to become stronger. Iowa is filled with the strength of those who settled here and built the Cedar Rapids community. The museum will rise again from above the flood waters to continue as the touchstone for Czech and Slovak cultural heritage in the United States.”

In Walter Bruggemann’s reflections upon this passage, he shares that the amazing thing about both the Jewish and Christian communities is that memory produces hope in us, in the same way that amnesia produces despair. “We hope in and trust the God who has done these past miracles, and we dare to affirm that the God who has done past acts of transformation and generosity will do future acts of transformation and generosity.”

He shares the hope of Israel even though their communities and cities were destroyed and they were sent into exile. In the prophetic words of Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Isaiah, the people heard “a vision that defied and overrode circumstance…” They heard about a restored temple in Jerusalem, a new covenant with Israel where God would completely forgive them and would start again, and they heard of a wondrous, triumphant homecoming to Jerusalem. “So these exiled Jews – the most passionate, the most faithful – took these dreams and hopes as the truth of their life. They acted toward that future.”

In the same way, Christians refuse to see “the present loss as the last truth (for it is) a community that knows that God is not finished.” We can call the dreaded Friday on which Christ died “Good” because we know that it is not the end. This passage from Paul is a refusal to give in.

Bruggemann goes on to say that our ability to turn memory into hope, even in the midst of loss “is not about optimism or even about signs of newness.” In fact, if watching the images on television and even seeing the waters recede in Cedar Rapids, there is little hope there, little sign of newness anywhere – the streets, the buildings, and everything inside is covered with a disgusting brown film.

No, claiming that hope does not disappoint is according to Bruggemann, “a statement about the fidelity of God who is the key player in our past and in our future… “ and so we have the ability to say: The Kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe the Good News.
(Walter Bruggemann- http://www.icjs.org/clergy/walter.html – “Suffering Produces Hope”)

Secondly, I want to share with you the call that is before all of us from the Gospel of Matthew. Here again these words at the end of chapter 9:

35Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. 36When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

The phrase that strikes me the most in this text is that Jesus had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless. The Message translation says they were “confused and aimless” and the American Standard Version says they were “distressed and scattered.” In any case… these were people who needed some guidance. They were having a tough time and they needed some love and compassion and some real help. And Jesus said – we can do this. There are so many of them and there are so few of us… but we just need to pray to God that more people will be sent our way and that we can do this!

At about 10pm on Thursday night, I was watching the news and heard a cry for help. The last remaining water pump in Cedar Rapids was in danger and there was great need to secure the well with sandbags. Evidently only about 10 people were helping there and it simply wasn’t enough. I desperately wanted to help, but I couldn’t get there – it was on the other side of the river, and with the interstate being shut down, it would have taken at least an hour to travel the half mile it would normally take. I couldn’t do anything but pray.

The next morning, they showed footage about what happened that night. More than one thousand people had showed up and created a HUGE fireman’s brigade to get the sandbags to where they were needed. And within a very short time, they had saved and protected that well and in doing so – saved the whole city’s limited water supply. It was extraordinary. A simply cry for help on the television resulted in that amazing response.

Two weeks ago, we heard about the communities north of us that were suffering from tornadoes and flooding, and we quickly sent out a plea for people to head up to that area and help in any way we could. With very short notice, we were able to get a team of 13 people together and go up and make a significant difference in one woman’s life.

The truth of the matter is, in these next weeks and months – the harvest that Jesus talks about is plentiful. There are so many hurting and helpless people in these communities that have been affected and they are going to need more help than what FEMA can provide. They are going to need more than money and flood buckets (although those things are necessary and we should give all we can). They are going to need people to stand beside them and to believe with them that there is hope for their lives. They need people to work along side them and to share the good news that this present circumstance is not the final word of God. And we can be the people who do so.

In your bulletin there is an insert… and it shares the ways that we can respond as a church to the disaster that has struck our part of the world. Two weeks ago I shared with you that Teresa of Avila once wrote: Christ has no body on earth but ours… with which to look with compassion on the world. And that statement is as true today as it was two weeks ago, as it was two hundred years ago. There are so many people out there, right now, who need our help, and we can respond with our hands and our feet and our hearts.

In the Message translation of the bible, the commission of those disciples who go out to serve in the name of Christ goes a little something like this:

“Don’t begin by traveling to some far-off place to convert unbelievers. And don’t try to be dramatic by tackling some public enemy. Go to the lost, confused people right here in the neighborhood. Tell them that the kingdom is here. Bring health to the sick. Raise the dead. Touch the untouchables. Kick out the demons. You have been treated generously, so live generously.
“Don’t think you have to put on a fund-raising campaign before you start. You don’t need a lot of equipment. You are the equipment…”

You are the equipment. You are all that Christ needs to help those that are hurting… and we can share that love freely, because we have been given that love freely by Christ. We can help others and freely give of our time, because we know that others have freely given of their time to help us in the crises of our own lives. We can freely give of our hearts to others, because we know that others would freely give to us if we were the ones in need today.
So take the time to look over the call to help. Take some time to pray about it. And then I hope and I pray that you will say yes. Let us together walk with those who are suffering, and let us together find hope. Amen. And Amen.