Pastor Rebecca Schlatter Liberty & Pastor Elaine Hewes Sermon preached at Redeemer Lutheran Church, Bangor, ME March 1, 2015 Sunday Second in Lent Texts: Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Mark 8:31-38 Relinquishing [Pastor Rebecca] One of my favorite Redeemer traditions is the tradition of congregation members preaching at our midweek Advent and Lent services. For some years the Lenten topic of an ordinary thing has invited some amazing and powerful reflections. But this year, Pastor Elaine and I invited speakers (and listeners) to reflect on a new theme: the theme of letting go. It seemed appropriate not only for the season of Lent, but also for reflecting on the first year of our team ministry at Redeemer, because growth and change always involve some letting go. Here s what we wrote about this theme: Lent is a season for "spring cleaning." In traditional terms, we repent, are forgiven, and "let go" of sin and our dependence on anything except God. But we also might think of it as: relinquishing all that keeps us stuck in old patterns, letting go of habits that interfere with our loving and being loved, letting go of familiar things as we live into life s changes (aging bodies, loss, or even change at church!), forgiving ourselves and others, or
"fasting" from things we rely on instead of God (for example, a substance or an activity). As we reflect on letting go, we notice the way it creates space for new Easter life. It seemed right that if we re going to invite you into that reflection, the two of us should join in as well. So you ll hear from both of us this morning. You couldn t ask for a more appropriate set of Bible readings today for our Lenten theme. If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. Denial of self. Self- denial. It s what a lot of people associate with Lent. Giving up something for Lent is the modern version of the older discipline of fasting. But the tradition was never just about deprivation. We dig down deep in ourselves to notice, as Luther might say, that it hasn t worked to save ourselves. We are each a dust- to- dust, ashes- to- ashes part of a hurting and hurtful world. When we dig down deep we notice all the ways we ve tried to save ourselves, all the things we ve depended on instead of God. Jesus call to deny ourselves invites us to give up or fast from trying so hard to save ourselves through better ideas or a better diet or a better home/marriage/work/habits. As it was with Abram and Sarai, denying self is a chance to go by a new name, a renewed future, a new identity given by God. As it was with Peter, it s a chance to notice how fixated
we are on human things our own ideas for how things must happen and let God turn our attention to divine things instead. To deny the self we think we are, so that we can become the self God thinks we are. What will be let go of, relinquished, in that process? I ve seen this quote posted on social media a couple times recently: Once a man was asked, What did you gain by regularly praying to God? The man replied, Nothing but let me tell you what I lost: Anger, ego, greed, depression, insecurity, and fear of death. Sometimes, the answer to our prayers is not gaining but losing; which ultimately is the gain. The quote isn t attributed to anyone, but it echoes Jesus in today s gospel. And our Lenten theme. Pastor Elaine gets the first word on that theme today, which seems appropriate because this whole team ministry first came into being through her discernment to relinquish some aspects of her call [Pastor Elaine] What a perfectly beautiful idea Pastor Rebecca had when she suggested that both she and I preach this morning as we approach the one- year mark of our team ministry and as we enter a Lenten season whose theme is relinquishment or letting go. What a perfectly beautiful idea she had that we pastors allow ourselves the opportunity to be as vulnerable in our sharing as we are asking Redeemer members to be in their sharing during Wednesday evening vespers on the challenging theme of letting go
As many of you know, my change from being Redeemer s full- time pastor to being Redeemer s ¼ time pastor was, in part, an attempt on my part to let go of some of the responsibilities of the pastoral office. And truth is, some of those things have been easy to relinquish the administrative responsibilities for example the fine- tooth- comb look at our constitution the questions about how many times a day the plow guy should come and just where he should put all that snow These things have been easy to let go of Some things have been a bit harder to relinquish of course among them my role as first responder when someone in the congregation is in need of pastoral care, the blessed and beautiful agony of sermon preparation week in and week out, the reflexive response to run to the telephone whenever it rings and to say in my perky voice, Redeemer Lutheran Church, Pastor Elaine Hewes speaking. These have been some of the harder things to relinquish to let go of. And I am ever grateful here for the image Judy Madson used last Wednesday evening in her Lenten sermon when she spoke of relinquishment as the on- going movement from a fist closed up small and tight to the opening of the hand the repeated letting go of what had been previously held onto so tightly, and the opening to a greater receptivity and sensitivity Because that has been what some of my letting go has been like a continuing effort a work in progress some of it not done so well some of it done with a begrudging heart some of it requiring me to pry open my closed fist The most important letting go still feeling a bit like that at times
And in order for me to speak of what that most important letting go entails, I need to tell you about how I taught first grade So over the many years I was a first grade teacher, I always got to school before the janitor every morning I individualized every child s learning program so he or she only had to work on the skills he or she had not yet mastered I shaped my classroom so it felt like magic when you walked in (all of my bulletin boards were hand- made, using illustrations from books, which I would project on a wall using an opaque projector, tracing the illustrations on construction paper, and cutting them out, even to the finest detail of a flowered tea cup sitting on a table They were gorgeous, attracting ooos and aaahs from the many visitors who would come in to see them) Every year my first graders would give poetry parties in the evenings, to which their parents and grandparents would be invited I made sure my first graders were the best behaved children at school assemblies And every morning, after I had made sure the classroom was just the right mix of color and comfort and order and beauty, I would repeat my teaching mantra to myself, I must make sure that every child leaves school today feeling successful. It was my job, I thought, to make sure every stitch in the fabric of first grade was perfectly in line with the next that there were no loose ends or ragged edges And I spent most of my time (and much of my paycheck) making sure this was so all of it fit into the moments when I was not making supper,
cleaning the house, or carting our three kids to activities all over the Blue Hill Peninsula Perhaps you are not surprised Perhaps you have seen me on a Sunday morning lead worship, preach a sermon, and then rush off to teach Sunday School to the Redeemer children (after having made sugar cookies to reflect the lesson for the morning) All the while wondering when I could get to the store to buy ham and peas for the soup I needed to make for our Wednesday night supper So let me just say that I am not disparaging these efforts I am not saying they weren t born, at least in part, by a deep love of art and color and books and stories and children and the moon and the ocean and Wisconsin hills and Ford pick- up trucks and Wilbur and Charlotte and fried eggs and country music late at night, oh and Jesus Let s not forget Jesus and more importantly, the Mystery to which Jesus points I m not saying any of these efforts had a badness to them. Or that they were devoid of joy. But I m beginning to see now that in the extreme there was a sadness to them And I say so for three reasons among them these My incessant doing my constant need to make sure every stitch was in order and every loose end picked up sometimes made it very hard for others to participate in the project at hand (kind of like the times I would ask my mother to help me with a sewing project, and she would take the item in question over to her sewing machine, and zip, zip, zip have it done in a minute s time, ever so glad to have been so helpful). And then there is the tendency one has (when successfully keeping so many balls in the air at once) to begin thinking that
your value and meaning as a human being depends upon your talent for such expert juggling And that your family depends upon your talent for such expert juggling and that your community depends on your talent for such expert juggling and that your relationship with God depends upon your talent for such expert juggling. At which point your greatest fear becomes the fear of dropping one or two or all of those balls That fear being the saddest thing of all because it keeps you from recognizing the gift that lives at the heart of our faith The gift that actually comes when you drop the balls, and you stand there bereft and ashamed, and someone comes and says something like, It doesn t matter that you forgot your lasagna for the meal at the homeless shelter that s supposed to be served in less than an hour Pastor Elaine. We brought plenty with us, and we forgot it was our turn to cook for the shelter once, and someone else helped us, so we know these things can happen really easily. The gift that comes when a medical emergency in the family takes you from the Christmas pageant production at the last minute, which you had stitched together so perfectly, and all the children and their families and the new pastor are left to put on the pageant, and some of your carefully stitched threads come undone, and a sheep or two get mixed up with the Wise Men and a little pig shows up at the manger when there are no pigs in the story, but that s OK because Jesus gets born anyway and the light shines through in the very places where the stitches aren t so tightly sewn together
The gift that comes when someone is actually brave enough to say, I think you have a control issue Pastor Elaine, but I love you anyway So this is what I am still working on relinquishing letting go of the illusion that I need to keep all those balls in the air And what I m hoping to receive into my open hand and heart is the thing I ve preached about for the past 17 ½ years, but which I rarely allow myself the joy of receiving fully The gift of grace The gift we can only know when love is extended and shared and offered despite our failures in the midst of the complexities and ambiguities and uncertainties and loose stitches and rough edges and dropped balls The gift I am still learning how to receive, even as I know that my fullness of life depends upon it For as a wise poet once said, When we are empty, then we will be full. I am still learning. Thank heaven God is not done with me yet. [Pastor Rebecca] When I was in middle school, it was tradition for the 6 th grade to put on an abridged version of Romeo and Juliet each year, with a variety of students taking on each role (for example, there was a different Romeo for each scene in which he appeared). I secretly longed to be one of the Juliets. Not just because she was the lead, but because the role was so romantic and sweet. And I so wanted to be, or at least be seen as, romantic and sweet. Alas, by 6 th grade
it was already obvious that romantic and sweet were not my specialty. Instead I was cast as the Prince in the 1 st scene, in which I strode onto stage and broke up a swordfight between the Capulets and Montagues. I was one of the smallest kids in my class, but I rocked that role. I put so much of myself into it that for the remainder of middle school, the teacher would invite me back each year to give the prince s speech and inspire the new 6 th graders. I still know the first part by heart: Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace, Profaners of this neighbor- stainèd steel! Will they not hear? What, ho! You men, you beasts, That quench the fire of your pernicious rage With purple fountains issuing from your veins, On pain of torture, from those bloody hands Throw your mistempered weapons to the ground, And hear the sentence of your movèd prince. You would never mistake it for Juliet Not every tiny 10- year- old girl could pull off the prince s role, but for some reason I could. I was just made that way. For the last 30 years, I have been trying to figure out what God wants to do with the way that I m made. I ve slowly been learning to appreciate it along the way. When you want to be romantic and sweet, and you ve come to believe that that s what girls and women in particular should be, what do you do with an ability to come on stage and break up
swordfights? For the last 20 years I have been involved in theological education and ministry, which have just added to the confusion. Aren t pastors supposed to be the church version of romantic and sweet? Unconfrontational. Comforting. Care- taking. Grandfatherly (or more recently, grandmotherly). It s a persistent stereotype, and like many people in American Protestantism, I ve had trouble shedding it. It s a caricature, a distortion that doesn t fit many pastors in reality. But it can persist in the church and even, as I can personally attest, in some pastors themselves. As we were discerning the team ministry last year, in a meet and greet conversation, one of you asked me what I expected to be the most difficult aspect of this call for me personally. I responded that it would probably be hard to stay rooted in my own sense of ministry, without trying to turn myself into the kind of pastor you have had for the last 17 ½ years, and still have. I already knew well my struggle to be myself in a role that has always seemed to require something different than myself. And I also already knew that Pastor Elaine in many ways fits my image of a pastor much better than I do myself. (Though she too is far more beautifully complicated than a stereotype!) Here s where I am a year later: I was right that this has been really hard. It s a lot harder than it sounds like it should be. What could be easier than being oneself, right?! But I don t think I m alone in this. It seems like all adults carry some baggage about the kind of person we think we should be, or the kind of person we get positive reinforcement for being.
What a man is supposed to be, or a woman. How a mother or father is supposed to act or feel. A husband, a wife, a son or daughter. What someone in your occupation is supposed to accomplish. The supposed to s we carry can get heavy, and they can bring a lot of shame and fear along with them. The shame of feeling our mis- fit selves to be wrong. The fear of disappointing people, or the fear of losing the positive reinforcement we associate with fitting in. How amazing would it be to let go of those things, to live our lives without those burdens? What a relief it would be to let go of all those ways we try to save our own lives. What amazing things could God do with us and through us, if we weren t spending so much energy maintaining the supposed- to selves? What if all that energy were unleashed for our best creativity, compassion, problem- solving, leadership, and generosity? What a gift that would be for the church and the world and our families. It sounds wonderful, but I can t tell you how to get there from here. I have not achieved this relinquishing. Even though you told me when you called me to be your pastor that you didn t expect me to become Pastor Elaine, I confess that I have not always believed you. A year later, I still carry plenty of fear that I will disappoint you. Decades into ministry, there s still a part of me wishing I could be Pastor Juliet! It s crazy, I know, because I do believe that s not what Redeemer or the larger church or God needs most from me.
But you know how deeply rooted in ourselves these things are. So deep that it s impossible to save ourselves. Here s what I know: It is an incredible blessing to be in relationships and roles that reveal our selves to us in all their messiness, and call us to the hard work of denying, as in turning away from, the baggage, shame, and fear we carry. It is a great privilege when we belong to a family, a church, or an occupation that invites us to become ourselves in the process of losing ourselves. Those vocations and their challenges are some of God s best gifts. And here s what I suspect, if I read today s gospel in light of the whole gospel promise: Jesus does not command us to deny ourselves, as in, In order to get new life, here s what you must do. Maybe it s more a description of what new life looks and feels like. As Judy Madson said in her Lenten reflection last Wednesday, it looks like living in the world like this [with open hands] rather than like this [with closed fists]. It feels like becoming your true and deeply loved self, in the process of losing your ashamed and fearful self. Self- denial is tricky. Ironically, Lent can become a season of self- improvement giving up this or that bad habit, or taking on this or that good- for- you discipline. But Lent first came into being as a way to get ready for the mind- blowing and heart- rending and life- saving experience of resurrection at Easter. Our spiritual forbears devoted 40 days to that preparation. But maybe it s not preparation like the spring cleaning you give your house when guests are coming.
Maybe it s preparation like, Brace yourself ready or not, resurrection is coming! And when it comes, who knows what we might be able to let go of? Who knows in what ways our lives might be saved? Hymn of the Day: Take, O Take Me As I Am (ELW 814)