1 Sermon 10.26.08 Rocking chair prayers Rev. Lynn James, LMHC Matthew 22:34-40 Do you have a favorite chair? Maybe it is a lazy boy recliner, in front of the television, or perhaps it is a porch swing, the perfect place for watching birds and fireflies, falling leaves or opening wildflowers. Maybe it is your computer chair, where you surf the worldwide web or get caught up with your friends on e-mail or facebook. My favorite chair is the platform rocking chair. You know the ones I am talking about? I think they are also called glider rocking chairs. Regular rocking chairs start out on one side of the room and as you rock they walk, ending up on the other side of the room against the wall! If you are rocking a baby, it s impossible to get up, scoot the chair back over, and not wake the child! They are unsteady too; if you rock too hard they can sometimes tip. I like platform rocking chairs because they both move and stay put; they rock, but they are extremely stable. We bought one at a garage sale when I was pregnant with our daughter, Kali. Many of my fondest memories are of wearing that chair out. I found a picture of, it the other day, as I was trying to get my photos organized. Actually, I found a bunch of pictures taken of that chair over the years. I think every person who came over and held Kali those first months of her life sat in that chair. My husband s eldest brother and his wife came on day 3, bringing vegetables from their garden, homemade noodles, pies, and a quilted baby blanket. They belong to the German Baptist Brethren which is similar to the Amish: the women wear white stiff net bonnets and dresses that have a sewn in cape. The men have long beards and wear black suits with buttons
2 instead of zippers. There are no instruments in worship and the men and women sit on separate sides of the sanctuary. Women do not speak in church. After rocking our baby, they walked with my husband across the street so he could show them around the church he and I were serving together. As they left, they hugged me good-bye, smiled, and said to us, You have a beautiful church. Because I am a woman, they do not acknowledge my call to ministry directly but they are kind to me. They would not be comfortable worshiping with us there just as we would not be comfortable worshipping with them. I love music that moves with rhythm and emotion and I encourage people to show up for worship in jeans and shorts if that would make them more comfortable. They chant their hymns and have no organ, no piano, no guitar, and certainly not a brass section at Easter. They have heated debates about what colors of fabric are too bright for the woman to wear and how the younger women have started wearing too much pink. Last summer we spent an afternoon at their national tent revival held back Jack s hometown of Rossville Indiana. There we heard one minister declare, If it was good enough in the 18 th century, it should be good enough today. Not all the members agree with that statement and that is creating tension for their community just as we too live in that tension between conserving the past and adapting to new awareness and knowledge as we move into the future. Like a rocking chair, we all rock back and forth between: holding on and letting go, holding still and moving forward, justice and mercy, agreeing and disagreeing, rocking, moving, being flexible while also staying put, immovable, firm on those things that cannot be compromised, and the hardest task of all: serving Christ together, united, and building bridges of understanding between both sides of current issues.
3 Jack s brother has 2 boys who are now married. Eric married a German Baptist Brethren woman, Megan, and Brian married a Buddhist woman from Thailand, Sama who he met at Purdue. Both nephews have stayed in our home at different times and their wives rocked their beautiful babies in that rocking chair. I must confess that each time, I made an excuse to linger in the kitchen nearby, listening as one sang lullabies and old hymns with a voice as so pure it brought tears to my eyes, the other sang songs in a language I did not know but with love so pure that I understood every word. Over the years, I watched as these grandparents fully embraced both families, equally. I marveled at how these staunch German Baptists, leaders within their faith community, were able to travel to Thailand to attend the Buddhist ceremony and to honor and connect with Sama s family there and how they have loved her as their own daughter for these past 10 years. I am humbled and moved by their faith in action. The differences between the German Baptist faith and my own are very real and at times are very uncomfortable; but the bridge God extends between us is even more real. Jack s sister married a man who is Mormon; what I knew about Mormon beliefs, before I met Jerry, was that I was uncomfortable and in disagreement with them. What I have learned is that Jerry s soul and life and faith cannot be summed up by the specific creeds and details of Mormonism. The man exudes love and joy and deep goodness. He has been fighting cancer for the past 2 years and recently was given less than 6 months to live. When we visited him in the hospital, we all laughed and cried and talked about faith. We agreed that when we all meet up again on the other side, there is going to be one heck of a game of euchre. Do you know what
4 Mormons, UCCs, and German Baptist all have in common? Euchre. Oh yes, and homemade ice cream, even though we each swear by different recipes Also pictured in the rocking chair is my friend who is an evangelistic vegetarian; she is militant about not eating meat. She sat in that chair and rocked Kali, seated next to my husband who grew up hunting and trapping, plucking feathers off of the chickens his grandmother had just decapitated, plucking the bullets out of the cows brains during butchering every January of his childhood, a job he says he liked because it kept his hands warm. When Jack eats lamb, goat, beef, (even) rabbits, he is united with fond memories of checking his trap lines on the way to school with his buddies, and being raised hunting with the men of the Rossville community that nurtured him as he was growing up. We ate pasta and vegetables for dinner that night as we celebrated her upcoming marriage to Mike, who directs the Chicago Homeless Foundation, and together we tried to figure out how our church might support homeless children. In addition, that chair has rocked Jews, Catholics, agnostics, Muslims, a Chinese Buddhist, Unitarians, and fundamentalists. A few years ago it was blessed to hold a refugee from Ethiopia whose skin is the color of the dark wood of the chairs arms. 6 months pregnant, she talked to us of torture and despair as well as love and hope and returned later with her baby in her arms to continue her stories. My sister s life partner, Bee, sat there 15 years ago, the first time she came to dinner at our home and our daughter crawled up on her lap for a story, officially welcoming her to the family. That chair has rocked people who were grieving and people who were laughing, people who I like and people I still find annoying. It has rocked parishioners who affirmed our
5 ministerial leadership and it has rocked those who respectfully disagreed with us, and sometimes, back and forth throughout the years, these were the same people. It has rocked men and women, babies and children, members of our youth group, and many of our old folks. More than a few times my daughter turned it into a rocket ship and occasionally I was invited to go along. Many times it was the place where heated family discussions happened as we tried to work through problems and competing needs. I thought we were just buying an old rocking chair; but really, we were buying a bridge. Whenever I read the bible, I read it from the perspective of that rocking chair as well as the scripture we read this morning. The passage is rooted in the Jewish Shema, the prayer from Deuteronomy 6:4 repeated every morning and every evening. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength." And then Jesus adds the verse from Leviticus 19:18. "And love your neighbor as yourself." Out of all the creeds, belief statements, laws and rules, this is the bottom line. According to Jesus, this is the standard by which we are to understand and apply all other biblical verses and church teachings. Charles Wesley, one of the main leaders of the Protestant reformation and founder of the Methodist Church created what is called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. He explained that while scripture is primary for our faith, it is always interpreted by setting it alongside of tradition, experience, and reason. Four corners working together to provide balance-sort of like the foundation of a platform rocking chair.
6 Loving your neighbor and self, means in whatever ways possible, to refuse to allow yourself to be mistreated. Your body is God s temple, not someone else s garbage dump and not some random mistake. You are sacred. God is within your soul. You carry God s light, God s Presence, and God s blessings within every cell, every thought, every breath, and every moment. When anyone desecrates you, berates or criticizes you, condemns or harms you, they are violating not just you, but your Creator. Our faith and our sacred texts proclaim that this is true of everyone, even those we disagree with or do not like. Loving our neighbor means taking seriously Christ s repeated challenges to those who would limit the gates of heaven to only those who pass certain tests of faith. It is reminding ourselves that Christ once announced that those considered most unclean, impure, and unpopular in society, will surprise us all by entering the kingdom ahead of us. I imagine that perhaps, seated next to the throne of God, might be a rocking chair, and seated there, persons I might be surprised to see, just as they might be surprised to see me! Jesus is not saying that loving our neighbor means we should feel warm and fuzzy toward them, especially when a neighbor acts as enemy. It is not simply a smiley face Have a nice day that disregards the ugly realities of life, of the brutally that happens when these two commandments are minimized or forgotten. Jesus took a strong stand on justice and compassion and a flexible stand on religious practices and rules. Jesus also believed that the world is best changed through healing not violence. Jesus loved the Torah and quoted it often, in ways that drew circles of inclusion instead of lines of exclusion. Jesus gave his life destroying the hierarchies, human made pecking orders,
7 like when farmers have to isolate a hen who is injured because the other hens would sense its weakness and instead of protecting it, would peck it to death. Jesus and Paul, whose writings are the earliest we have from a follower of Jesus, shockingly both lift up women as leaders in the church and called slaves equals to themselves. It was radical and controversial; when seriously applied, it still is. Those that society deemed sub-human, Christ quotes his Jewish faith, and Paul echoes it, insisting that they are all to be treated with hospitality, as neighbor, and announces that this is the essence, the heart of the gospel. One thing that farmers and rural communities like yours know is how to be neighbor to one another. No matter what church someone attends, what methods you use for farming, making maple syrup or homemade ice cream, whatever debates you ve had about any number of topics, if your roof needs repaired, your farm needs plowed because you are sick during planting season, your yard needs moved or your driveway needs shoveled, your spouse needs driven to a doctor s appointment, or your children need babysat, you can count on each other. It doesn t mean the issues are not important; it means that God is bigger than they are, and that the Holy Spirit can unite people no matter how insurmountable the differences and divisions may seem. And that, my friends, rocks. Amen. (copyright 2008, Lynn James, all rights reserved)