Sermon: The Arriving One

Mark 13:24-37

‘But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened,and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in clouds” with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. . .

It's hard for us to identify with this scripture passage. It's difficult for us to connect with it.

This is not the typical, everyday faith language that we use, right? I mean, let's be honest here: How many of you can imagine yourselves sitting down in a nice, serene coffee shop with a good friend, and when that friend asks you, "What role does faith play in your life?" or even "How has Jesus changed your life?" how many of us could imagine taking a sip of that coffee. . . and then launching into the question with cataclysmic language about the destruction that is soon-to-be-awaiting the sun and moon? How many of us would do that? Or how many of us would lovingly reach our hand across the table and say, "Well, you know, for me, it's really been like a fig tree. . ."

It isn't as though this passage has nothing to teach us. It has much to teach us! But let's be honest from the beginning. It's hard to identify and connect with this scripture passage, at the very least, on a surface level. This isn't our typical, everyday faith language.

Then, of course, there's this too: When we hear or read scripture passages like this one, we often associate them with people and religious movements that teach about the immanent destruction of this world. Sometimes, these people and religious movements even put a date on that destruction. Just out of curiosity, I find myself wondering, how many of us thought of Harold Camping when we heard this scripture read aloud a few minutes ago?

Harold Camping and Family Radio recently ran a huge campaign to let people know that the rapture was going to happen on May 21st of this year, followed by the cataclysmic destruction of the earth and nearly all of us (after all, this rapture was going to be extremely exclusive, limited to those who believed that May 21st was the very date at hand). But to the embarrassment and dismay of Camping and his followers, May 21st came and went this year, and when Harold Camping recalculated his numbers and then pushed for an October 21st date, that day came and went too.

In response to these teachings and to this very visible campaign, many of us wanted to quote a sentence from today's scripture lesson and say, "No one knows the day or hour." And yet the very scripture we find ourselves wanting to quote is part of a larger framework that makes us a bit uncomfortable because we associate it with movements like these.

This scripture lesson has much to teach us, but it's hard to identify and connect with it. It's not our typical, everyday faith language. And perhaps we don't want to be associated with such language because we don't support how some people tend to use it.

And then, more honesty. There's this too: We just came out of one of our favorite holidays. Only a few days ago, many of us sat around tables filled with turkey and some of our favorite side dishes. And while some of our relatives may have annoyed us, many of us were grateful to experience several of our favorite traditions.

And then Thanksgiving suddenly rolled over into the Christmas season, at least as far shopping is concerned. I would say that this happened overnight, but if you've been following the news, you probably know it rolled over this year in a matter of hours, because stores began opening at 11pm on Thanksgiving night. We naturally want to bring this Christmas transition into our faith life too. So we come to church after this great transition, excited to begin Advent, and this is the scripture lesson? Seriously, Renee? Seriously, organizers of the Revised Common Lectionary? Really?

There are many reasons that it's difficult to identify and connect with this scripture passage this morning. But let's hang with it because this scripture passage does have much to teach us. And it is part of the language of Advent.

The Bible is a canon of scriptural writings - writings that use different voices, faith perspectives, and genres of stylistic language to give expression to who God is and how God claims us, loves us, and works for the ultimate good of creation. This passage is part of a genre in the Bible, and that genre is called Apocalyptic Literature. It might not be our typical, everyday faith language. It's not even the dominant language of the Bible, but it is a particular type of language that has been used at different moments within faith-history - within faith crises - to express deep convictions about who God is and how God cares for those who are enduring intense suffering.

The Book of Daniel in the Hebrew Scriptures contains large sections of Apocalyptic Literature. Revelation, the last book of our Bible, is classified as Apocalyptic Literature. And I guess that makes sense. The original Greek name of that book is simply "Apocalypse," taken from the very first word of the text. And then there's today's lesson - this chapter from the Gospel of Mark. This is Apocalyptic Literature as well. In fact, since it's just one chapter long, Biblical scholars like to call this chapter "The Little Apocalypse."

It may be cryptic language. It might be a bit foreign to us. But "The Little Apocalypse" makes big claims about God. And as we begin the Advent season, we can add our voices to these claims. We can add our convictions to this proclamation: God arrives. God shows up.

Apocalyptic passages of the Bible were often written centuries apart from one another, but in every case, the authors and the communities of faith behind these writings were experiencing political oppression or religious persecution. And most often, both were happening at the same time. The ability to practice one's faith was at stake. Human lives and human wellbeing were at stake.

So authors and communities of faith used cosmic language to speak to one another in symbolic terms. God is powerful and mighty, and though human powers of oppression and persecution are threatening to destroy us, God has not forgotten us. God will arrive. God will show up. God will save us. God will make all things right, transforming our lives - transforming the entire cosmos.

God is arriving. Watch. Wait. Endure. God is about to show up.

This is what the genre of Apocalyptic Literature conveys to us. Just when we think we can't endure any longer, God arrives, ready to make all things new.

Some of us have experienced political oppression and religious persecution on a large scale. Most of us have not. But we have all suffered. We have all wondered in dark times if we've been forgotten or if we're even going to make it one more day. The particulars may be different for each one of us, but as a community of faith, we are connected in that kind of experience.

We've probably all had a moment - maybe some of us are having a moment right now - where we've been in so much pain and confusion that it feels like our very cosmos is being torn apart and the world is ending.

It hurts. It doesn't make sense. But thanks be to God, the conviction of the Christian faith, is that God is arriving. God is showing up - God is willing to show up! - precisely in the messy, insecure places where we think we can't endure on more day.

God is arriving. Watch. Wait. Endure. God is about to show up.

That is the language of faith. That is the language of Advent.

With the Christmas shopping season encroaching other seasons of our lives and other holidays, perhaps it's helpful to say that the liturgical season of Advent is not Christmas. It's not. We're going to wait a bit longer for that, and we actually have a church-wide liturgical season for that. It's actually called Christmas. :)

Advent is connected, but Advent is its own autonomous season with its own language and its own questions to be asked of us. That's how we get scripture texts like this one in the lectionary. Advent says that the God who was, is, and is to come is the very God who loves us enough to make our lives new, the very God who is arriving into our pain and into the pain of the world, the very God who judges the oppression of this world so that it ceases and is no more. That's what Advent is about.

In 2007, when Advent was about to begin, I was in one of the most formative periods of my life. On one hand, it was such a rich time, but on the other, it was also one of the darkest, most difficult periods of my life. Months before in February, I had learned that someone deeply close to me was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer, and the dreaded word 'terminal' was part of the diagnosis. The news of this impending loss was more than enough for me to carry, more then enough to make my last year and a half of seminary a challenging time. But on top of that, as many of you know, grief is often cumulative. A new wound sometimes brings up intense emotions of unresolved grief. And that's what happened to me. During that period, I remember telling one of my seminary professors, "I feel like this news has brought up everything that's ever upset me from any point during my life."

I brought those emotions with me one night into an Evening Worship service that was held weekly in our church for college and seminary students.

The sermon addressed much of what I needed to hear. There was a refrain of a few of a questions that was voiced several times. "Where will we see the Kingdom of God among us now? Who will be there when we see it, and where will it take us?"

It was our custom to share communion every Sunday in this Evening Worship service. On this night, as we transitioned from sermon to communion, my emotions felt heavy.

But then I overheard something. It was simple. It was such a simple moment that transformed where and how I was. I've never forgotten it.

"Will the communion servers please come forward?"

Laura and Amanda received the bread and the cup from the table and stood in front of us. We were all invited to come and receive. The person leading music approached them first, and Laura and Amanda voiced the typical liturgical words. "The Body of Christ." "The Cup of Salvation."

And since I was sitting in the front row, I overheard something. Amanda turned to Laura and asked, "Why do we always whisper it?" "I don't know," Laura said back to her, still whispering.

Then they started doing something very simple, but for me in that moment, it was transformative. They started speaking their words more substantially, as of they were something to actually proclaim, as if this moment of bread and cup was a gift of love that was actually meeting us in the present moment. "The Body of Christ." "The Cup of Salvation."

So when I went through the line and stood in front of Amanda, before she could speak, I said, "I want you to really say it."

"THE CUP OF SALVATION!!!!" she said. She practically shouted it.

Naturally, as I dipped my bread into the cup, my first response was to start snickering. Amanda wasn't trying to be disrespectful or silly, though the gesture was a bit playful. Like so many moments of play, the gesture carried meaning to me.

I sat down in my chair after that, filled with transformative joy. God had arrived. God had shown up. God had been there all along - not apart from my pain, but right in the midst of it. God wasn't far off, waiting to swoop in in some distant future. God was in front of me right now in THE CUP OF SALVATION of all places! God had encountered me with love and presence right in the midst of some playful but profound words.

How will God arrive for us in the season of Advent even now?

Watch. Wait. Endure. God is about to show up.

Let's walk the road together and see it for ourselves. Amen.

-Renee Roederer, Director of Young Adult Ministries, and the Community at Pasadena Presbyterian Church

Sermon: The Stewardship of Our Lives

THE STEWARDSHIP OF OUR LIVES

Matthew 25:14-30

Sermon preached by Dr. Mark Smutny

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Pasadena Presbyterian Church

Matthew 25:14-30 “For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; ¹⁵to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. ¹⁶The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. ¹⁷In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. ¹⁸But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. ¹⁹After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. ²⁰Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.’ ²¹His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ ²²And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.’ ²³His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ ²⁴Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; ²⁵so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ ²⁶But his master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? ²⁷Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. ²⁸So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. ²⁹For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. ³⁰As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

Every year in mid-October, I visit my parents in southern Idaho for a week. It’s a time I set aside each year to catch up with them, to share stories, to talk about family, church and politics and to simply relax in each others presence for a whole week. It’s a very special time and I wouldn’t miss it. Mom and Dad are now 79 and 80. They finally retired this past spring after sixty years of hard work dairy farming seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, year after year. While my brothers and I never thought they would give up farming, they finally did. In October during my annual visit, they were more relaxed than I had ever seen them before.

During my visits, one of the serendipitous things that usually happens, and it inevitably happens in the wee hours of the morning, when we are drinking coffee waiting for the sun to come up, is that I hear stories from them from way back, often from their own childhoods, some of which I have never heard before. My mom and dad have this gorgeous, panoramic picture window that faces to the east and southeast. The window looks out over a pond lined with trees and cattails that attracts great blue herons, geese, ducks and other water birds. Further in the distance are mountains which in early fall are snow-capped. The sunrises can be simply gorgeous—absolutely out of this world.

There’s something about the quiet and beauty of that setting early in the morning while sipping coffee that creates a place of extraordinary safety. This safety allows whatever comes into the mind to surface. Sometimes what emerges is playful. Sometimes what surfaces is a detail of family history that I find absolutely fascinating. Sometimes what is brought forth is so gently painful that I realize that right there in the bosom of my own family the safety that is created is nothing other than holy.

I don’t know how it is for you, but in my experience we don’t have that many settings in our lives where we experience that kind of safety—where we are safe to say whatever comes into our minds, safe to express the deepest part of ourselves, safe without worrying whether we are going to look right.

One of the threads that weaves through the story of my father is how he has managed through the course of his life not only to with what in today’s parlance we would call an abusive childhood, but to be transformed by it, to rise above it by embracing its most painful aspects. In the safety and holiness of my visit I learned something more of that transformation and how my maternal grandfather provided a positive role model for my dad in a critical moment in his life.

My maternal grandfather was always called “Granddaddy Don.” I never knew him. I only knew of him as he died when I was three. One of the stories that emerged of Granddaddy Don this past October was that my father’s relationship with his father-in-law was very close. We were talking about grandfathers because I had just become one. I had said one early morning that I hadn’t known Granddaddy Don and so inquired of my mom and dad, “What was he like?” And the stories poured out about what a good man he was. My Dad talked about what it was like to get close to a man his father’s age who didn’t yell at him, who would joke with him, and pass on wisdom about farming, and call him a “Bohunk.” Bohunk is slang for a Czech person, a native of Bohemia. My dad said, “Granddaddy Don did not mean anything derogatory at all; he was just poking at me.” My Dad said that Grandpa was the first man he knew that loved him. To understand how important these disclosures were you need to understand that my Dad’s dad, my paternal grandfather, was an abusive alcoholic—a very bright man, extremely intelligent, except that when he was drunk, he lost control and went into an alcoholic rage. More than a few times I heard my father talk about how his father blamed his own parents for not giving him the proper inheritance back in Nebraska that he deserved. That was the reason he had not done well in his life. He always had excuses. Dad’s dad beat his wife, my grandmother. My Dad witnessed some horrible things. My Dad finally put a stop to it when he was sixteen and took a loaded shotgun from his father’s arms and called the sheriff who arrested him. Dad vowed when he was a teenager never to be like his father. He joined the Presbyterian Church in his hometown and has been a part of the church ever since. He’s spent his life managing his anger, mostly successfully. He’s a gentle, compassionate soul. When he met my Granddaddy Don at age 20 after he fell in love with my mother, he found a man who was gentle and wise and who took him in and showed him another way to be. He found a father who really cared.

This past October, in the wee hours of the morning, two grandfathers, one grandmother, drinking coffee in the safety of family as the sun rose over the horizon, opened up about pain from the past and it was good.

My father has had a good deal of pain in his life—as all of us have had. But you know, he’s been a good steward of it. Yes, he’s been a good steward of the pain in his life. The way he’s taken the pain of his childhood, the broken places and dealt with them. He’s been a good steward of his life. He’s decided to take his painful past and say, “I’m not going to be like my father. I’m not going to make excuses for the circumstances of my life. I’m not going to drown my pain with booze. I’m not going to blame. I’m going to manage my anger as best as I am able. I’m not going to inflict others with my garbage. I’m going to look into my past and squarely face it. With God’s help, I’m going to be compassionate and gentle. In so many words, I’m going to be a good steward of my life.” He is not perfect, but I believe my father has done a good job with his life and I am proud of him.

There are other approaches we humans can take. One approach is to deny that suffering and pain exist. There are individuals and families and organizations and structures that choose denial. From Penn State to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, from bishops to politicians, churches and families, boardrooms and bedrooms, whole systems and individuals, even whole countries choose to deny pain. They say, “Don’t talk about things that are painful. Don’t bring them to the surface. Don’t make me squirm. It’s not polite. Where are your manners? Don’t talk about injustice. It’s class warfare. Don’t talk about abuse. Are you crazy, hysterical, bankrupt? At all costs, keep secrets hidden. Paper them over. Protect appearances. Protect and deny. Keep them hidden even from yourself so you don’t even know what you feel.” This is the path of denial and it is sick.

My God, why is denial so powerful? Is it that we have such a weak doctrine of evil? Is it that we prefer denial over the pain of the little ones? Or is it that we are afraid to look squarely at the pain of our own suffering and therefore can bear the pain of others? Denial is pervasive—denial of our own pain.

Another thing we do with our pain is we use it as an excuse for our failures. If only I had not failed. If only life had broken this way for me and not that, I would have, could have been better. If only, then I would have been somebody.

Still another thing we do is to be embittered by our pain and thereby enshrine it. We hold on to it like it was a sacred treasure. I was wronged long ago and so I dress it up in a little chapel and now I worship it so I don’t have to move on.

The alternative to all these ways is to be a good steward of our lives: to take the hard times, the sad and painful times and not be afraid of them but to be in touch with them, even embrace them because in doing so we can become most alive. We can become most vital in what it means to be a fully alive human being. We can become most open and compassionate to other people. Like my father we can become gentle and compassionate even as we manage the most painful and damaging aspects of our life journeys. To be a good steward of our lives is to be fully aware of the depths of who we are, who we have been, especially in the most painful places, so that we can become fully alive and liberated, fully free and healed.

This stewardship of our lives is what Jesus may have been talking about in the parable of the talents, a parable that on the surface seems harsh and judgmental but with a second reading is an affirmation to live life courageously and to face it squarely. The parable tells the story of the Master who doles out talents to three servants: to one he gives five talents, to another two, to another one. Off they go with their investments. He comes back on a day of reckoning and he asks the five-talent man what he’s done with his money and he says, ‘Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.’ ²¹His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ The two-talent man goes through the same procedure and has also doubled his earnings.

The one-talent man, you’ll remember, is a different case. He says, ‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; ²⁵so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’The Master says, ‘You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? ²⁷Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. ²⁸So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. ²⁹For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. ³⁰As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

The one-talent servant seems to represent the kind of person who, as I said before, buries that part of himself or herself that most needs to be alive. The treasure that is buried is that which most needs to be brought into the fullness of God’s light so that it can be transformed from darkness into something of power and beauty. The one-talent servant who buries his treasure maybe represents the kind of person who buries his pain, who buries her suffering so deeply that it hides down deep, buried low in the ground, covered over with dirt about six feet deep.

I think each of us knows that when we cover over our pain so deeply, our life becomes diminished. We become isolated and cut-off. When Matthew speaks of the outer darkness, maybe the place is not so much a place of punishment and judgment as it is a place where God has not been allowed to work, a place where there is so much darkness that it feels like you are all alone and there is no one to help.

But there is much good news in this parable. The two-talent and the five-talent servants trade their talents away. They trade with their lives—a wonderful concept. We trade with our lives. You need what I have to give. And I need what you have to give. And in this wonderful reciprocal relationship our community is transformed. We are life traders, you and me. This is the joy to which the Master invites us: a community of talent trading. In the community of shared suffering we are transformed into a community of shared joy.

In our shared sufferings, in the sharing of our lives, a sacred trust is forged. In the community of the church, in the safety of this community, in the bosom of this church family we share our stories of heartache, injustice, abuse, sadness and grief. We share our need for forgiveness, our need for redemption, our need for belonging. In the miracle of shared suffering our stories become sacred treasure. Our pain and suffering are transformed. God takes what was buried and raises it up. Pain becomes treasure. Treasures are multiplied. Treasures of compassion, healing and hope are poured out, and then doubled, tripled, quadrupled, not only for ourselves but for others as well. It’s the Parable of the Talents, you see.

It’s like my father taking his painful childhood and choosing to face his pain, not bury it, even embrace it, and with God’s help become the good man he became and is, my father, a compassionate, decent man who has done well with his life.

This is the stewardship of our lives: that we can look at our lives and treasure them. That we examine even the most painful aspects of our life journey and embrace them and by so doing discover that God can bring healing and new life. The alternative is to bury our pain. Like the one-talent servant who buried his treasure deep underground, we stuff our pain or deny it, thereby cutting off what can most bring growth and new life, energy and compassion.

Ultimately, it is the cross that speaks the most powerful word about the relationship between facing our pain and the stewardship of our lives. It was Jesus, the pioneer of our faith, who in love and faithfulness faced great pain and suffering and brought to our lives and world new life, great compassion and hope. May we, with the prodigious talents we have been blessed: with the life experiences, the heartaches, the curveballs, all the choices we have made, all of them, the shabby ones we would not choose to repeat, and the ones we would repeat, the pain, the suffering, the injustices, all the treasures with which we have been blessed, may we trade them away. May we trade them for God to use, not to hide them, nor to bury them, but let us trade them away! And in so doing, in the company of shared suffering, in the miracle of shared community, may we find healing! May we find energy! May we find power! May we find new life! May we find compassion for ourselves and for one another! May we be found to be worthy stewards of our lives, the lives we have been given, sacred treasures of a loving God who yearns for us to be free, whole, empowered and compassionate human beings! With God’s help let it be so. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Restrepo: TONIGHT at Pasadena City College!

At Pasadena Presbyterian Church, we are looking for ways to partner with student veterans from Pasadena City College. We hope to learn from their experiences and gifts, and we are looking for ways to provide care.

Members and friends are invited to an event on the campus of Pasadena City College tonight. There will be a showing of the film Restrepo, a documentary about the war in Afghanistan. And afterward, there will be a panel of student veterans who will give their perspective and be available for questions.

Please join us at 6pm in the Creveling Lounge (in the Student Center Building) at Pasadena City College tonight!

Celebration for the Madrigals!

On Sunday, with love and great celebration, Pasadena Presbyterian Church said goodbye to Luis and Margie Madrigal as they retire and prepare to move to Phoenix. Luis and Margie have served the Spanish-Language Ministry and the wider church for eleven years. Their vision, service, hard work, and deep love for the people of this congregation has transformed our church life and broadened our sense of community together.

Luis helped to lead both the English-language service and Korean-language service on Sunday. And we held a congregational wide celebration and luncheon together.

We give thanks for Luis and Margie Madrigal!