Standing in for Jesus

The beach at Ocean Park, Maine, a CHAUTAUQUA-BY-THE-SEA.

I’m still basking in the afterglow of our vacation in my favorite place to unwind. We go to a Ocean Park, a coastal Chautauqua community in Maine, the place where my family has been going for four generations. A high point this year came when my kids decided we should celebrate my birthday. Yes it is true: I am now officially old enough to know better. But I’m also old enough to start claiming I don’t remember what that is.

We made our celebration on the front porch, a block from the sea, as we feasted on lobster, mussels and clams. When it came time for the obligatory singing of Happy Birthday, some folks walking by stopped and joined in the song. I thought of them standing there, signing in harmony for a stranger, as I started wrestling with this week’s scriptures.

Their random act of kindness reminded me of my Aunt Dot, a woman who spent most of her summers in that seaside resort. Aunt Dot’s house was full of little frames contain words from a hymn or psalm or payer. Often the words would be illustrated by a drawing of a pastoral scene, a cute little kitten or an adorable child. On her walls you could find the Lord’s Prayer, many versions of Psalm 23, and several copies of a hymn that I remembered when reading this week’s texts.

I remember singing this hymn in Vacation Bible School there on the Maine coast. And I recall seeing the refrain, illustrated with a smiling, red cheeked blond girl, in Aunt Dot’s house. The refrain is simple:

Brighten the corner where you are!
Brighten the corner where you are!
Someone far from harbor you may guide across the bar;
Brighten the corner where you are!

It is not found in our Hymnal. It was written in 1913 by Ina D. Ogdon, a woman whose dreams of being a preacher were dashed by the responsibility of caring for her ill father. Rather than dwell on this setback, Miss Ogdon decided to write hymns. Unable to preach the word from the pulpit, she ended up speaking through the words others sang. Stuck in her corner, she brightened it with hymns that fulfilled her call to ministry. That act, the act of people finding a way to fulfill their personal ministry, is woven into each of today’s scriptures. And each text makes clear we don’t have to go to seminary or be ordained to serve as a minister.  There: it’s before noon and you’ve already saved the cost of a Seminary degree.

Knock and the door shall be opened; Ask, and you shall be answered

Today’s scriptures offer us a series of compelling perspectives of how we can live in right relationship with God. A recurring theme woven into these texts centers on walking close enough that we ask God for help as we need it. Our Gospel says “ask and you shall be answered.” Yet this thread begins much earlier with Abraham after he has “entertained angles unawares.” Now, as God is about to depart, God says:

“I’m going to Sodom and if they are as bad as I hear I’m going to wipe them off the face of the earth.” How does Abraham respond? Does he cheer the omniscient, all-knowing deity on? Does he ask for ringside seats to watch as the city is destroyed? Does he congratulate God for “getting it right?”

Abraham does none of this. Instead he thinks of the people of Sodom and asks God, “would you destroy that city if you find 50 good men?” God answers: “No for 50 good men I will not destroy the city.”

Abraham does some quick math and realizes he has a problem, he can’t think of 50 good men in all of Sodom. So Abraham asks: “What if there were 40 good men?” God answers: “No for 40 good men I will not destroy the city.” Abraham is still thinking of people he knows in the city and asks:”what if there are 30 good men? God answers: “No for 30 good men I will not destroy the city.” Still wracking his mental address book, Abraham asks: “What about 20 good men?” God answers: “No for 20 good men I will not destroy the city.” Now reduced to counting on his fingers, Abraham starts with the little finger on his left hand and ends at the same finger of his right hand. “What about 10 good men?” he asks. God answers: “No for 10 good men I will not destroy the city.”

What does this story tell us about Abraham’s way of relating to God? This encounter is unlike the myths many of us know about the Greek and Roman gods. Can you see Zeus patiently enduring this series of questions? Zeus most likely would have lost patience and hurled a thunder bolt at Abraham half way through the process.

For Abraham, God is approachable, a divine being Abraham can ask for help.

Wrestling with Angels

 

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel by Eugène Delacroix, 1798-1863.

We are called to think and ponder God’s words until we recognize God’s continuing presence in our lives.

 

After all this rain, I feel a little like Garrison Keeler and his hometown, Lake Woebegone. For I feel we’ve just lived through an unsettling couple of weeks,
I knew something was off Thursday night when the rain stopped. I checked the weather radar and saw I had just enough time to walk to the park and move one of our cars so it wouldn’t be towed as part of Alameda’s street sweeping income program. I was right: the rain held off until I made it home. But as I was walking across the park toward the parked car I heard the telltale sound of sprinkler heads popping up out of the ground.

Then came the “psspft…psspft…psspft” heralding the progression of the sprinkler’s pulsating spray straight towards me. As I ran across the waterlogged lawn I thought: “Something’s just not right about this.” If only my being chased across a sodden lawn by a sprinkler was the worst of it.

We are called to be ‘children of light’

Lower Manhattan skyline showing the World Trade Center in August 2001.

I remember exactly when the world changed. We were sitting at a stop light at the end of the Trumbull Street ramp in New Haven on our way to work. I absently mindedly reached over and turned on the radio. An excited voice says a plane has crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers. I think, “It must have been a small plane,” because it is a bright cloudless day. I remember reading about a B-25 bomber that slammed into the Empire State Building in 1945. That accident killed 14 people but the Empire State Building stood firm. I remember walking back from the July 4^th fireworks at the start of the summer, walking by the twin tours at night, looking up and thinking they were, well, too big to fail. Then came word the second plane had slammed into the other tower, and we slowly realized this was not an accident, this was a terrorist attack. The towers stood but then collapsed. A few weeks later we went to Ground Zero, walking around the gaping hole where the twin towers once stood. My heart broke as I read flyer after flyer pleading for information on the whereabouts of a father, mother, sister, brother, daughter, son. As a people, we were stunned that so much evil could be done by so few people. Slowly, our world changed.

To his credit, President George W/ Bush quickly insisted America was at war with terrorists, insisting we were not at war with Islam. Speaking on September 17, 2001, the President said: “The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace.” For awhile, President Bush’s view held. Looking back at the nine years since 9/11, America seems to have slipped away from this fundamental idea. Increasingly, Islam – not terrorists – is portrayed as America’s enemy.