Tag Archives: christianity

From Pastor Caryne: Take Up Your Cross

Posted on September 23, 2024 by | Leave a comment

Psalm 116:1-9
Mark 8:27-38

It is said that the Buddha once cautioned his students. He compared the task of trying to
understand his teaching to trying to pick up a poisonous snake in the wild: if you don’t go about it thoughtfully and intentionally, it’s easy to end up injured.

In today’s reading from Mark, Jesus warns his followers in a similar way. “It’s my cross to bear” is a fairly common saying, but too often it comes with a dangerous background, a poisonous misunderstanding of the teaching.

Listen as I reread verses 34-35: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

There is a sad, unjust history of the church, clergy, counselors, and others using this teaching to glorify suffering that should have been stopped. This phrase has been misused to encourage wives to stay in marriages even after they have disclosed domestic violence. It was misused to keep children from reporting abuse. It is misused to make God into a paternalistic, uncaring tool of the powerful at the expense of the marginalized. This kind of theology has been used to justify crusades, genocide against indigenous people, forced conversion, and other horrors that the God I know screams out against.

To be absolutely clear, God does not cause or desire suffering that causes harm for us. Our God is a God of justice and love. Anyone who teaches or counsels that God desires their people to stay in relationships and situations that are dangerous or that diminish spirits is wrong. If you have heard this before or if someone close to you has heard this, I am sorry. It is wrong.

The poisonous side of today’s teaching glorifies suffering, but just as the bite of a poisonous
snake can be lethal, when handled with respect its venom can have healing properties. The
healing word for today is that Jesus invites us to journey on his Way that brings life. And this isn’t just life in the sense of heart beating, lungs filling, brain signaling, but the paradoxical, holy life that transforms death and suffering.

In the first century Roman Empire, death on the cross was reserved for those with whom
officials wanted to make a statement. It was shameful, excruciatingly painful, and public, and it sent the clear message “When you challenge us, death follows.” That was the meaning of the cross to those in power.

But to those who follow the Jesus Way, the cross means something different entirely. Jesus
willingly took on the cross, not because he had to but out of love for his people. In his death and resurrection the cross is transformed from a tool of terror to a beacon of hope.

So when Jesus tells the crowd that to follow him they must deny themselves, take up their
cross, and follow him, he invites them to journey on his way, not to suffering for suffering’s sake. To deny oneself does not mean to accept abuse, but to surrender our own human hubris and tendency to look after ourselves at the expense of others. To take up our cross and follow Jesus means to take on the work of love and justice that we are called to in the world.

When we embark on this journey we will inevitably meet suffering on the path: it’s part of the human condition, and we can look to many of our teachers and saints to know that the power of the world often fights back against “the last shall be first and the first, last.”

And when we encounter suffering, the promise for us is that we do not face it alone. Jesus
travels with us. We also travel with one another. When Jesus teaches in our reading, he
addresses the entire crowd. As a community, just like that crowd, we shoulder our burdens and celebrate our joys together.

God does not cause or glorify suffering; God knows suffering and is with us in our own. The
psalmist knows this and has been there. The Psalm is a thanksgiving for God’s company during dire times: “the snares of death encompassed me…I suffered distress and anguish” they say. Even in these depths, God was with them and renewed them to “the land of the living.”

When we deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow the way of Jesus, we surrender to a
path that we don’t entirely know. There are difficulties and suffering, and there is also love,
justice, and peace. And we never travel alone. Thanks be to God, amen.

Leave a comment

Posted in Sermon

Tagged , , , , , ,

From Pastor Caryne, September 8th Sermon

Posted on September 18, 2024 by | Leave a comment

Isaiah 35:1-7a
Mark 7:24-37


One of my all-time favorite TV shows is “Call the Midwife” from the BBC. It’s a great show for many reasons. The characters are diverse in their life experiences and have their own arcs of change and development that intersect with one another. The costumes and sets that show the evolution of time, fashion, and technology in London’s East End in the mid-20th century are fun to watch. In any given episode there are multiple plots going on as we follow the midwives in their work and the happenings in the broader community.

What keeps me excited for each new season, though, is that the soul of the show is healing.
The show just released its thirteenth season, and from the beginning, through all of them themidwives know and act as if healing is wholeness. They look after the health of their patients’entire person. They help mothers and babies be as physically healthy as they can be, of course,but the midwives are also always listening for other ways people may be struggling: there aremothers who are on their own and who need companionship, there are families who are houseless or living in deplorable conditions who need advocacy, there are elders who need compassion and a reminder that they are needed in their community. We also get to see the midwives themselves find healing, when painful stories from their past catch up with them, and when heart-wrenching cases cannot find perfect solutions.

Healing and wholeness come from the same root word, and it is almost as if the writer of Mark knew that when putting together today’s reading.

In our first story, Jesus has gone north, into present-day Lebanon, to a place that was mostly Gentile. Even though the text says Jesus was trying to lay low, a woman found him, bows
before him and begs him to heal her suffering daughter. Jesus’ reply to the woman is rude and dismissive – there’s no way around that. He insults the woman as a Gentile, and suggests that she is not deserving of his help.

Even after that, the woman persists, and her retort both exposes the lack of compassion and insult from Jesus and shows that she will not stop seeking the healing she needs for her daughter. In the story, Jesus simply says, “For saying that” she will find her daughter well at home.

What is the healing that was needed here? The woman’s daughter is tormented by an “unclean spirit,” some kind of mental and perhaps physical illness that made her suffer. This needed healing and the girl’s mother was so single-minded that she was willing to approach a teacher from a different religious tradition about whom she had only heard stories.

I wonder how many people the mother had spoken to, how many healers she had already
approached, how many things she had already tried to no avail. I wonder how many people
thought she should just resign herself to the suffering, and if any of them actually said it out loud to her.

I wonder about the times of doubt the mother had: about whether she would ever find anything that would help, about whether or not she could be going about things differently, about whether anyone would ever actually listen to her rather than dismissing her calls for help.

The mother needed healing, too. She needed to be seen and heard and when Jesus refused to do that at first, she stood up to him. She would not let him leave without finding healing, and that time she was successful. Her daughter was healed, yes, but she also received the affirmation she had been missing.

In our second story, some people bring a deaf man with a speech impediment to Jesus for
healing. Instead of responding by voice and healing at a distance, here Jesus does almost the opposite. He takes the man away from the crowd, and touches his ears and his tongue, and asks that they be opened, and they are.

What was the healing needed here? The deaf man was brought to Jesus by others. I’m sure
these people were well-meaning but it makes me wonder how often he was able to
communicate for himself. Did anyone ever slow down enough from their verbal and auditory world to give him a chance to express himself, and be heard? I wonder how often the people he met saw him as a whole person and not just as his disability. I wonder if he felt isolated even though he was surrounded by people. He needed healing, and the healing he got that was most profound probably had nothing to do with his ability to hear or speak. Jesus took him away to a private place, where there were no crowds to watch or look at the man. Jesus touched the man’s face – a very intimate gesture. I wonder if any others took the time to be this tender with the man.

There is certainly healing needed in each of these stories, and the healing that we don’t see first is still needed. What we learn in these two stories is that God is a Healer, and she is a Healer of the wounds that are not the most obvious but are no less serious.

This healing is for us, too. And not only that but we can be healers to others, too. This is truly good news because there is a lot in our world that needs healing. In the two stories we heard today, I would also say that the people as a whole needed healing, too. We could spend a lot more time talking about the healing needed for societies that don’t take women seriously and who are too busy to stop the suffering of children. We could spend even more time, and we will, talking about the ways that our society dismisses the needs of disabled people, keeping them ostracized from the places and activities that would bring them further into community.

What needs healing, and what would make us whole? Those questions can guide us to seek
the healing we need and to become the kinds of healers our world needs. Thanks be to God, amen.

Leave a comment

Posted in Sermon

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

From Pastor Caryne: Do-ers of the Word

Posted on September 11, 2024 by | Leave a comment

Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9
James 1:17-27

In a story told by a rabbi, a well-renowned expert and teacher of the law was going to be
teaching in a nearby synagogue. When a devout Jewish scholar of the law heard this, he told
his community of scholars and practitioners, and they encouraged him to go. “Go and hear what he teaches, then come back and tell us.” So the man went. When he returned, the others asked him “Well, what did he say about the law?” And the man replied, “I don’t know, I wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying. I went to see how he ties his shoes.”

The man who went to see the famous rabbi was more interested in the rabbi’s actions than his words. In his experience of the law, he had learned that the real sign of God’s law of love taking root in a person was what they did. It was, and still is, easier to intellectually dissect the reasoning of religions and philosophies than it is to practice, to be vulnerable, to make mistakes, and to truly live it out.

A significant part of my own spiritual journey is learning about the Benedictine way of life. The Sisters of Erie, the nuns with whom I just spent a week of retreat, are Benedictine, which means that they follow the Rule of Benedict. Benedict of Nursia, a Roman Catholic Italian monk who lived in the sixth century, wrote the Rule to be a guide for monastic communities.

The Rule outlines a lifestyle based on God’s loving presence within all of creation and all people. The only stance a person can take knowing that all of creation is divine is one of complete hospitality, dignity, and wonder. The Benedictine lifestyle is centered around prayer and reflection that extends seamlessly into actions. The harshest words of the Rule are reserved for those who undermine the communal fabric of the group: like those who remain complacent about their life’s work and those who complain to others rather than bringing concerns directly to the leader.

It would be easy to dismiss a 6th century guide for running a monastery as irrelevant to us here in 2024. A separation of 1500 years is a long time, and many things have changed since then. What fascinated me about the Rule, though, is just how relevant and contemporary it is. Similar to other works of wisdom literature, much of the Rule feels eerily applicable to right now.

The Rule was written in a time of great cultural change: the Western Roman Empire collapsed near the end of the 5th century. Those who lived in 6th century Europe, like Benedict, lived in a time of fractured states and rulers constantly competing for territory. For average folks, living at or near subsistence and with little faith in their landlord rulers to protect them, it must have been a very anxious time. We also know, though, that times of confusion and upheaval can open the way to innovation and newness.

Enter Benedict’s Rule. He had witnessed the corrupting influences of greed, power, and
militarism. He had seen the way that these left the poor, the majority of society, starving and hopeless AND he had seen the way these twist and wound the souls of the powerful. So in the Rule there is no hierarchy by wealth or social position. Instead, seniority is only determined by the date at which one enters the community. The ritual for receiving people into the community was and is the same for the daughter of a day laborer as it was for the daughter of a Duke. The Rule takes beliefs and turns them into actions. If God loves everyone entirely and intrinsically and greed and power can easily corrupt, let’s provide for everyone’s needs and work for the good of the entire community.

For such an all-encompassing Rule, some parts seem very specific. For example, the first half of Chapter 66, “The Porter of the Monastery,” reads like this: “At the door of the monastery, place a sensible person who knows how to take a message and deliver a reply, and whose wisdom keeps them from roaming about. This porter will need a room near the entrance so that visitors will always find someone there to answer them. As soon as anyone knocks or a poor person calls out, the porter will reply, ‘Thanks be to God’ or ‘Your blessing, please,’ then, with all the gentleness that comes from reverence of God, provide a prompt answer with the warmth of love. Let the porter be given one of the younger members if help is needed.”
A whole half-chapter devoted to how to answer the door sounds a lot to me like the man who went to watch the rabbi tie his shoes, and it sounds a lot like our reading from James. The writer of James wrote around thirty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, to gatherings of Jesus-followers in Palestine. Like Benedict, this writer was also writing in a tumultuous time of displacement and persecution for Jesus-followers.

In that chaotic time and when our own time feels chaotic the message is the same: “Be doers of the word, not merely hearers who deceive themselves.” Keep living the Jesus life even when it seems like it makes no difference, even when it gets hard, even when it brings you criticism or worse. The writer takes the hearers of his letter back to when they first felt the tug of “this perfect gift…coming down from the Father of lights.” Keep doing the things that reflect the life-changing, heart-opening love of God in the world, even when they seem small or insignificant. At the Community Supper, keep putting cookies in bags and washing dishes with the love of God. With the Wellspring singers, keep singing to cheer and soothe with the love of God. With the Parent Child Center, keep hauling chairs to the fundraiser. Keep answering the door with patience, diligence, and the love of God. Thanks be to God, amen.

Leave a comment

Posted in Sermon

Tagged , , , , , ,