- \n
- If the word is to take flesh today, the word must be made welcome.\u00a0 The word must be received and made visible in us.<\/li>\n
- I am in the word, and the word is in me, let us give thanks and praise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
PRAYER<\/h2>\n
In the name of the Triune God, the Creator, The Christ, and the Holy Spirit, let us pray.\u00a0 Come Oh, Creator, oh immensity of love, oh eternity of mercy.\u00a0 Come and be with us, and in us, and beside us and over us.\u00a0 Be as hands upon us, and fashion us for shining.\u00a0 Be as warmth within us.\u00a0 Inspire us for caring.\u00a0 Be as strength beside us.\u00a0 And shape our lives for healing.\u00a0 Abide in our prayers, the spoken and the unspoken, and make your word come true in our flesh.\u00a0 Through Jesus Christ our Redeemer.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n
Let us ask God for the forgiveness that we need. (silence)<\/p>\n
Let us now pray together.\u00a0 Merciful healer, we do not claim our gifts.\u00a0 We do not face up to our call.\u00a0 We do not appreciate your partnership in creating a new community and a new world.\u00a0 Today we repent and return from our old ways, and commit ourselves to new partnerships for holding on and for new visions for a different heave and earth.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n
Anyone in Christ becomes a new person all together.\u00a0 The past is finished and gone.\u00a0 Everything has become fresh and new.\u00a0 Friends, believe the good news of the Gospel. (Crowd Response.)\u00a0 And now in the power of God\u2019s grace, let us share with one another some sign of that peace that is within us.<\/p>\n
SCRIPTURE READING:<\/h2>\n
Ruth 1:6-18<\/h3>\n
Our first lesson is written in the book of Ruth Chapter 1, verses 6 to 18.\u00a0 Then Naomi set out with her daughters-in-law to return to the country of Moab.\u00a0 For she had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and given them food.\u00a0 She set out from the place where she was with her two daughters-in-law, and they set out to the place, and they went on their way to return to the land of Judah.\u00a0 But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, \u201cGo, return, each of you, to her mother\u2019s house.\u00a0 May the Lord deal kindly with you, as he has dealt with the dead and with me.\u00a0 The Lord grant that you may find a home, each of you in the house of her husband.\u201d\u00a0 Than she kissed them, and lifted up their voices, and wept.\u00a0 And they said to her, \u201cNo, we will return with you to your people.\u201d\u00a0 But Naomi said, \u201cTurn back my daughters.\u00a0 Why would you go with me? Have I have sons in my womb that they may become your husbands?\u00a0 Turn back my daughters.\u00a0 Go your ways, for I am too old to have a husband.\u00a0 If I should say, I have hope, even if I should have a husband this night and should bear sons, would you therefore wait until they were grown?\u00a0 Would you therefore refrain from marrying?\u00a0 No, my daughters.\u00a0 For it is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the Lord has gone against me.\u201d\u00a0 Then, they lifted up their voices and wept again. \u00a0And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.\u00a0 And she said, \u201cSee, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods.\u00a0 Return after your sister-in-law.\u201d\u00a0 But Ruth said, \u201cEntreat me, not to leave you or to return from following you.\u00a0 For where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge.\u00a0 Your people shall be my people.\u00a0 And your God, my God.\u00a0 Where you die, I will die.\u00a0 And then will I be buried.\u00a0 Will the Lord do so to me, and more also, even death part me from you.\u201d\u00a0 And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her no more.\u00a0 Here ends the first lesson.<\/p>\n
Mark 14:1-9<\/h3>\n
And the second lesson is written in the Book of\u00a0 Saint Mark, Chapter 14, Verses 1 to 9.\u00a0 It was now two days before the Passover, and the feast of the unleavened bread.\u00a0 And the chief priest and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by guilt and kill him, for they said, \u201cNot returning, not during the feast, lest there be a tumult of the people.\u201d\u00a0 And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the Leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of ointment of pure myrrh.\u00a0 Very costly.\u00a0 And she broke the jar, and she poured it over his head.\u00a0 But there were some who said to themselves indignantly, \u201cWhy was the ointment thus wasted?\u00a0 For this ointment could have been sold for more than 300 denari and given to the poor.\u201d\u00a0 So they reproached her.\u00a0 And Jesus said, \u201cLeave her alone.\u00a0 Why do you trouble her?\u00a0 She has done a beautiful thing to me.\u00a0 For you will always have the poor with you, and whenever you will, you can do good to them.\u00a0 But you will not always have me.\u00a0 She has done what she could.\u00a0 She has anointed my body before my burial.\u00a0 And truly I say to you, whenever the Gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.\u00a0 Here ends the second lesson.<\/p>\n
SERMON<\/h2>\n
First I\u2019d like to give an offer to God for this opportunity to stand and boldly proclaim the liberating word.\u00a0 I would ask that you help me this morning as we come together just a verse or two of a very familiar hymn: Kumbaya.\u00a0 (Singing of Kumbaya.)<\/p>\n
Let us pray.\u00a0 Thou my everlasting portion, more than friend or life to me, all along my pilgrim\u2019s journey, Savior let me walk with thee.\u00a0 Not for ease or worldly pleasure, nor for fame my prayer shall be.\u00a0 Gladly will I toil and suffer.\u00a0 Only let me walk with thee.\u00a0 Lead me through the vale of shadows, spare me all life\u2019s pitfalls, see.\u00a0 Then the gate of life eternal, may I enter Lord, with thee.\u00a0 Close to thee.\u00a0 Close to thee. Close to thee. Close to thee.\u00a0 All along my pilgrim\u2019s journey, Savior, let me walk with thee.\u00a0 And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, oh Lord my God, my strength and my redeemer.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n
The Great Love Story of Ruth and Naomi
![\"Ruth](\"\/shaw\/files\/2013\/12\/Ruth-and-Naomi-324x300.jpg\")
<\/a><\/h3>\nI invite you now to review with me some thoughts as we think of this great love story.\u00a0 Of Ruth, Naomi, and Orpah.\u00a0 The story opens wherein we find Naomi, her husband and two sons have left their home, their familiar surroundings, their friends, their place of worship, their workplaces, in search of what I would call a higher ground.\u00a0 A place where they could be fed, filled, and find new possibilities as they struggled with human survival.\u00a0 They were like many other families of their time, migrating from place to place, looking for hope, looking for life, looking for a new home.\u00a0 Perhaps they are like many folks that we hear about today, living in a world of plenty, and yet some statistics say that 2\/3 of all the people in the world live in poverty.\u00a0 We have what we would call a world famine.\u00a0 And everyday, thousands and hundreds of thousands of folks, wanting to keep their families in tact, picking up everything that they can carry, they try to find the Moab of this day, a higher ground, a place where they can call home, a place where they can come and find dignity.\u00a0 A place where they can find justice and peace, a land that\u2019s claimed often by national boundaries, but a land that belongs ultimately to God.\u00a0 Well, the earth is the Lord\u2019s and the fullness thereof.\u00a0<\/strong> And yet, hungry, homeless, naked people, not wanting to take what is ours, but what is rightfully given to all of us, justice, peace, love, food, shelter. And often times, they cross many deserts.<\/p>\n
The deserts in the cities, the deserts in the suburbs, the deserts in the countryside,<\/h4>\n
looking for a sanctuary, a place to worship, a place to belong.<\/h4>\n
And we call them refugees, immigrants, runaways, street people, foreigners, communists, anarchists, Sandinistas- everything but a child of God.<\/em>\u00a0 And they\u2019re children of the King, marching to Zion, beautiful, beautiful Zion, Marching to Zion, that beautiful city of God.\u00a0 And so, what we have here are some refuges.\u00a0 Some people of God who realize that there is a higher ground, a higher place, and they want to find it.\u00a0 And together, they pack up their things and move to Moab.\u00a0 If I could use my imagination some, and somehow or another gather the consciousness of these people, they could have easily sang this song \u2018I\u2019m pressing on the upward way.\u00a0 New heights I\u2019m gaining everyday.\u00a0 Still praying as I\u2019m onward bound, Lord plant my feet on higher ground. Lord lift me up and let me stand on heaven\u2019s table land.\u00a0 A higher place than I have found, Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.\u201d\u00a0 And sometimes, that journey to higher ground gets rough.\u00a0 When we move to higher ground, it always requires of us risk.\u00a0 Risk of discovering that the grass is not always greener on the other side.\u00a0 Sometimes, the grass is browner on the other side.\u00a0 Sometimes, there\u2019s no grass on the other side.\u00a0 Sometimes, when we plant our feet on higher ground, we stand in a position of being rejected, as being seen as foreigners, invaders, communists, Sandinistas.<\/em>\u00a0 Another problem of moving to higher ground, is that some of us are not willing to suffer the consequences of freedom, and justice, and love.\u00a0 M. Scott Peck in his very familiar book The Road Less Travelled <\/i>talked a lot about how people avoid suffering.\u00a0 Trying to avoid that which makes sense, that we must do. \u00a0And he points out as Karl Jung would say that most neurosis is a substitute for evasion of long-time suffering.\u00a0 Moving to higher ground always causes us to suffer, and to create a system of problem solving.\u00a0 Moving to higher ground always requires of us faith.\u00a0 And this morning, I want you to know that everything we need, God\u2019s got it.\u00a0 What do you need today?\u00a0 In this community, I want you to know God\u2019s got it.<\/p>\n
Do you want to Move to Higher Ground?- a story<\/h3>\n
<\/p>\n
Do you want to move to a higher ground?\u00a0 Do you want to leave this wilderness of spiritual and moral famine?\u00a0 Are you willing to move as a family of faith, leaving no one behind.\u00a0 Reminds me of a story that I heard recently, of a gold-medal track star, who had an opportunity over the years to coach many track teams, until one day he had an opportunity to coach the Special Olympics.\u00a0 The Olympics that had as its candidates, as its members, people with a special kind of need, people who are often ostracized by this intelligent community.\u00a0 And yet, they taught him something that day.\u00a0 As the seven contestants stood on the line, and the gun was shot, they all took off running for the finish line.\u00a0 One little boy stumbled and fell.\u00a0 Everybody turned around and went back.\u00a0 Somebody picked him up. Somebody wiped him off.\u00a0 Somebody kissed where he hurt, and they all joined hands together and ran across that finish line together. \u00a0Do you want to move to a higher ground?<\/p>\n
We must all move together.<\/strong><\/p>\n
And so it was with Naomi and her family as they moved to Moab together.\u00a0 And as the story goes on, an unexpected, and yet expected event happens.\u00a0 Her husband dies.\u00a0 Oh, the pain, the sorrow, the grief.\u00a0 But yet, Naomi had still two persons of whom she could call family, her two sons.\u00a0 And so she stayed and then they enlarged this family by marrying two women from this new land.\u00a0 What kind of relationships did they have that would allow them as foreigners to marry other foreigners?\u00a0 Would you marry one?\u00a0 Weren\u2019t there any other Jewish girls around?\u00a0 What would Naomi say when they came back and told her that they had fallen in love with these foreigners?\u00a0 What would the people in the synagogue say?\u00a0 What would their church say?\u00a0 What would God say?\u00a0 Well, apparently all things work for the good of those who love the Lord.\u00a0 And we find that the two boys marry, but the story didn\u2019t end happily ever after for we find that after ten years of marriage, then something else tragic happens.\u00a0 Now the two sons die. And all Naomi had left were these two women.\u00a0 Two strangers, or was it two friends, whom she had yet to meet.\u00a0 Lord have mercy, what shall I do?\u00a0 I\u2019ve come this far by faith, leaning and trusting in God, and now this!<\/p>\n
And all I have, are these two strangers.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
Sometimes all that we have left in life are really strangers.\u00a0 Folks whom, like us, have differences from us, racially, socially, economically, religiously, culturally, philosophically, different.\u00a0 And if it were not for our need to move to higher ground, a place for our own survival and success, a place of transition, we probably would never have to meet them, and vice versa.\u00a0 But because of the choices that we make, and they make, our paths sometimes meet.\u00a0 And what happens in that situation could be the difference between tragedy and triumph.\u00a0 The different between life and death.\u00a0 The difference between heaven and hell.\u00a0 The difference between knowing about God, or coming to know God.\u00a0 The difference between playing church, and being church.\u00a0 The difference between being prophetic or just merely being religiously nationalistic.\u00a0 The difference between being co-creators of God\u2019s Kingdom, or mere insulators of our own Kingdom, creating God in our image, and never being created in God\u2019s image.\u00a0 And the beat goes on.<\/p>\n
A Call to be Family<\/h3>\n
And so, what we have here today, as far as I understand it, is a true test of faith.\u00a0 Faith in a God that calls us to be family.\u00a0 And we are called everyday to be family.\u00a0 Sisters and brothers who may have so many things uncommon, and yet if we dare look a little closer at our human passages, how we\u2019ve come and how we\u2019re gonna leave.\u00a0 You realize real soon sisters and brothers, we\u2019re family.\u00a0 Nearly five years ago, my oldest son, then 12, was diagnosed with having cancer.\u00a0 Tenovia sarcoma. I was pastoring a small church, and I was pregnant, trying to understand what it is God had called me to do.\u00a0 I also had two other children, a son 11, and one 2.\u00a0 And of course, I had a husband.\u00a0 In tying to discover what this cancer was all about, time and time again, I was confronted with the issue of death.\u00a0 Death has no color.\u00a0 It\u2019s not black.\u00a0 It\u2019s not white.\u00a0 It\u2019s not Hispanic.\u00a0 It\u2019s not Asian.\u00a0 It\u2019s not Native American.\u00a0 It\u2019s all, and yet more.\u00a0 Death has no color, and yet it colors into our lives, alienation, despair, anger, guilt, denial, bargaining.\u00a0 It tries to destroy and sometimes succeeds at destroying our family ties, which comfort, which gives us our identity, our purpose.\u00a0 For Naomi, Orpah, and Ruth, their loss had no color.\u00a0 It just hurt! It gnawed at their inner souls.\u00a0 It made them examine and reflect what it meant to be in true relationship with one another.\u00a0 It reminds us that life is fragile.\u00a0 Life is a gift.\u00a0 This old building keeps on leaning, I got to move to a better home.\u00a0 And every now and then, and I want you to know it\u2019s more now than then, people we love die.\u00a0 And they leave us to wrestle with what it really means to be family.\u00a0 And so, as tragic as this all seems, there always seems room for triumph as we worship the living God.\u00a0 This juncture, this crisis called all three to reevaluate their relationship.\u00a0 Who am I?\u00a0 And who are you?\u00a0 And what does it mean to be family, when the bloodlines of family have now been severed?\u00a0 Well, Naomi being the oldest, and with the most experience of having journeyed with family, she\u2019d risked more, she had to make some connections now with her roots.\u00a0 She decided now to go home.\u00a0 In the words of Carol Rayburn, in her understanding of this text, three women from Moab she says that perhaps Ruth, Naomi I mean, had the most to risk.\u00a0 But now, she was considered to be worthless.\u00a0 Motherless.\u00a0 Financially unable.\u00a0 Who wants to take care of folks anyhow?\u00a0 There was no pension left for her.\u00a0 There was no social security.\u00a0 There was no welfare check.<\/p>\n
And yet, in our world today, what do we do with persons who find themselves in similar situations, we devise ways of eliminating them, institutionally.<\/h4>\n
We allow things to nurture hopelessness and fear so that the community itself, so that the community eliminates itself.\u00a0 What\u2019s black on black crime about?\u00a0 What\u2019s the resurgence of gangs about?\u00a0 What\u2019s this drug scene about?\u00a0 We can\u2019t stop it with guns.\u00a0 We can\u2019t stop it with more policemen or policewomen on the street.\u00a0 We can only stop it with love.\u00a0 Who am I?\u00a0 For Orpah, a young woman who loved her mother-in-law. And yet, not to be the point of being willing to move beyond duty, and many of us, take this position as Christians.\u00a0 We do what\u2019s expected and required.\u00a0 No more.\u00a0 And no less.\u00a0 Of course, she didn\u2019t want to see Naomi abandoned, and yet she did what was expected of her, she offered herself.\u00a0 Many of us offer to help, but our hearts aren\u2019t in it.\u00a0 Our relationship is defined and confined by our willingness to follow the law at its minimum.\u00a0 Our New Testament Gospel reading for today describes how when one moves beyond the law, this woman offered all that she had for Christ- not her minimum, her maximum.\u00a0 Her most precious gift, her most extravagant gift- her love.\u00a0 God calls us to move beyond the law\u00a0 and bring ourselves and all that we have to where it really hurts.\u00a0 Look around, you don\u2019t have to look far.\u00a0 Why do we have to go across the water?\u00a0 There\u2019s hurt in this community.\u00a0 There\u2019s brokenness in this community.\u00a0 Look around.\u00a0 You don\u2019t have to look far.<\/em><\/p>\n
Last year I had an opportunity to travel to Honduras and to Nicaragua, and an opportunity to break away one day and look around into the city.\u00a0 To go into the market place.\u00a0 Looking around so much that I got lost.\u00a0 I had an appointment with a nun who had been there for several years.\u00a0 And when I was given the directions, it seemed very simple to me.\u00a0 But when I was on my own getting ready to leave the marketplace because I had planned to return later on to shop, unable to speak the language of the people, the arrogance that I had to go over there and attempt to share in this culture, and could not speak very well in this language.\u00a0 And yet I was there.\u00a0 Trying to find my way to where I needed to be was not a command of the language, and yet with a lot of money in my pocket, but because of the embargo and the sanctions that the United States had placed on this government, I couldn\u2019t buy a taxi cab because there weren\u2019t too many taxi cabs running.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t get on the buses because they were overcrowded, and so the only thing I could do was walk.\u00a0 As I walked, I asked the Lord to lead me and to guide me, for I had come this far by faith.\u00a0 Walking along, asking in my broken Spanish dialect, where was this place, give me directions.\u00a0 Some people of course didn\u2019t have time to help.\u00a0 And others saw me as a foreigner, as a stranger, as an enemy.\u00a0 And others really, one, decided that it wasn\u2019t enough to point the direction, that maybe this woman, this black woman, this American, this North American, needed some help, and he no longer was satisfied with seeing me go in so many directions, he decided to enter into my confusion and my pain.\u00a0 He decided to become my mouthpiece.\u00a0 He decided to ask for himself directions, for he too was new to Monagua.\u00a0 And finally, because of his intervention, his giving of himself- he didn\u2019t have to do it- I found my destiny.\u00a0 I offered him money, and he would not take it.\u00a0 He asked that I would pray for him, and for his country.<\/p>\n
Who am I?\u00a0 And who are you?\u00a0 What does it mean to be in relationship with one another?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
<\/strong> Martin Buber in his book The I and Thou, <\/i>will share some things with us this morning.\u00a0 And I quote \u201cMan\u2019s world is manifold and his attitudes are manifold.\u00a0 What is manifold is often frightening because it is not neat and simple.\u00a0 Men prefer to forget how many possibilities are open to them.\u00a0 Not all simplicity is wise.\u00a0 But a wealth of possibilities breeds dread.\u00a0 Hence, those who speak of a wealth of possibilities speak to the few, and are of help are even fewer.\u00a0 The wise offer only two ways of which one is good, and thus helps many.\u00a0 The world wants to be deceived.\u00a0 The truth is too complex and frightening.\u00a0 The taste for truth is acquired, an acquired taste that few acquire.\u201d These words speak to our condition, our human struggle as people who constantly come in contact with one another, and yet, we remain separated.\u00a0 We fail to become family.\u00a0 Buber goes on to talk of five kinds of relationships that have no use.<\/p>\n
The \u2018I-I\u2019 relationship: \u00a0These people speak, but the only time they speak of you, is when they speak of themselves.\u00a0 The \u2018I-I\u2019 relationship.<\/p>\n
The \u2018I-It\u2019 relationship is a lack of devotion.\u00a0 They think of you as objected.\u00a0 They examine you, they experience you.\u00a0 They always experience you in the past, never present.\u00a0 No place for reciprocity.<\/p>\n
The \u2018It-It\u2019 has no I, and the whole focus of this kind of relationship is those who are professional students, professional scholars.\u00a0 They have no time for themselves, and what they study is their life.<\/p>\n
Then, there\u2019s the \u2018We-We.\u2019\u00a0 They have no I, there\u2019s no individuation.\u00a0 And when they talk about you, they talk about us.\u00a0 You know folks who say, \u2018well, we did it.\u00a0 We did it!\u2019\u00a0 But they can never talk about what they did specifically.<\/p>\n
And then Buber talks about the \u2018us-them.\u2019\u00a0 The world is divided in two- the sheep the goat, the male the female, the them and the us.\u00a0 If you\u2019re not one of us, you\u2019re one of what?\u00a0 Them.\u00a0 Children of the night and children of the darkness.\u00a0 Faculty and students.<\/p>\n
The I and You<\/h3>\n
But Buber calls to us, however, the kind of relationship that allows for mutuality and reciprocity, for encounter, not just experience.\u00a0 And this is the I and the You relationship, where the I and the You are both connected by God\u2019s love.\u00a0 The I and the You are found and lost in this relationship.\u00a0 And for us, God\u2019s grace that meets us in our wonders together.\u00a0 Folks talking about how they want to be found.\u00a0 You have to be lost first!\u00a0 Reminds me of a story of a man who was examining the beauty of the grand canyon one day, and as he admired it, he fell over a cliff.\u00a0 And as he fell, he prayed, he said \u201cLord, help me!\u201d\u00a0 And suddenly to his surprise, and to his pleasure of course, there was a limb to which he was able to hold on to.\u00a0 And he looked up the many many feet and he hollered up and he said, \u201cIs there somebody up there who can help me?\u00a0 God, are you up there?\u201d\u00a0 And a voice said, \u201cYes, son.\u00a0 I\u2019m up here.\u201d\u00a0 He said, \u201cLord, can you help me?\u00a0 Can\u2019t you see I\u2019m falling?\u00a0 My goodness!\u00a0 Help me Lord!\u201d\u00a0 And the voice said, \u201cLet go, and let God.\u201d\u00a0 He said, \u201cWhat?\u201d\u00a0 This man must be crazy.\u00a0 \u201cLet go? Is there anybody else up there who can help me?\u201d<\/p>\n
Orpah wasn\u2019t willing to let go and let God.\u00a0 And you and I are not willing sometimes to let go and let God, but we must.\u00a0 You see, we always want to be in control.\u00a0 We think that if we can reason things out.\u00a0 All we need is another study program.\u00a0 All we need is another commission on religion and race.\u00a0 All we need is a commission on the status and role of women.\u00a0 All we need to do is to look and study again what bothers us.\u00a0 That\u2019s the \u2018I-It\u2019 complex.\u00a0 And the \u2018I-It\u2019 never wants to be studied itself.\u00a0 It always wants to study something other than itself.\u00a0 You have problems here at BU?\u00a0 You don\u2019t need nobody to come in here and study something that you need to just sit down and deal with yourself. \u00a0On heaven and in earth that can solve your problems for you.\u00a0 For God would call you first of all to just take a moment and look at yourself.\u00a0 It\u2019s me.\u00a0 It\u2019s me oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer.\u00a0 Not my mother, not my father, not my preacher, not my teacher, but it\u2019s me!\u00a0 We don\u2019t go anywhere looking to resolve problems unless we first start with ourselves.<\/p>\n
And in the \u2018I-Thou\u2019 relationship we realize that I can\u2019t be free if you\u2019re not free.\u00a0 I can\u2019t be whole if you\u2019re not whole.\u00a0 I can\u2019t be the best of what God has called me to be if you\u2019re not the best of what God has called<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0You to be.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
It\u2019s me. We began with the confession that we\u2019re the ones who cause the pain and the separation.\u00a0 Reminds me of this story I heard of, this woman by the name of Mrs. Jones. She always used to look out her window at her neighbor\u2019s laundry.\u00a0 So much so that she would even go and call up her friends and tell them about this woman\u2019s dirty laundry.\u00a0 Until one day her friends came to the house and as her friend walked around inside trying to see this neighbor\u2019s dirty laundry, she brushed up against the window pane and said, \u201cOh my goodness Ms. Jones.\u00a0 What is this?\u00a0 This is dirt.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think that your neighbor\u2019s clothes are dirty.\u00a0 I think that you got dirty windows.\u201d\u00a0 We\u2019re always trying to take the log out of somebody else\u2019s eye, but Christ calls us today to look at the dirt that\u2019s in our own eye.\u00a0 It\u2019s me.\u00a0 It\u2019s me oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer.<\/p>\n
And secondly, I think another important point for us is that our language should demonstrate that we realize that God calls us to be in relationship to one another.\u00a0 It amazes me how Buber records in his book the languages of the Zulu tribe and the Fujian tribe\u2019s people, their words for far away.\u00a0 In Zulu, the multiple phrase for far away is \u2018where one cries mother, I am lost.\u2019\u00a0 The Fujian people would say, they look at each other, each waiting for the other to offer to do that which both desire but neither wishes to do.\u00a0 And we talk about far away.\u00a0 Our language then, must express our willingness to lose ourselves to find ourselves.\u00a0 Our words must be words of reconciliation and love.\u00a0 If we want to be family, we must be willing to examine those words that help us to be family.\u00a0 Not a monologue, but a dialogue.\u00a0 Both sides encountering each other in a relationship of mutuality.\u00a0 In God\u2019s Fierce Whimsy, <\/i>I\u2019m sure some of you have read, one of the black writers who\u2019s writing to the white sister, and they shared with each other some myths and some concerns as women.\u00a0 One of the concerns that the black woman raised is this, she said that one of her friends was familiar enough to call her family and sister, and asked of her to dismiss a myth about black folks.\u00a0 She said, \u201cI heard that black people have a natural body odor.\u201d\u00a0 She said, \u201cI feel close enough to you today to help me to dismiss this myth.\u201d\u00a0 And the sister said, \u201cokay, what should I do?\u201d\u00a0 And she said, \u201cWell, can I smell you?\u201d\u00a0 And she said, \u201cOh, yes. Go ahead.\u201d\u00a0 And the white woman smelled the black woman. But then, the black woman said, \u201cWell, we heard some myths about white folks too.\u00a0 We heard that sometimes your hair when it gets wet, it starts to smell like a mangy dog. I wonder if you\u2019ll let me smell your hair.\u201d\u00a0 The white woman became in fits.\u00a0 \u201cHow dare you!\u00a0 How dare you examine me!\u00a0 For I am the one who is to examine you.\u00a0 You\u2019re coming into my family, I\u2019m not coming into your family.\u00a0 How dare you examine me!\u201d\u00a0 And she marched off, missing an opportunity to be family.<\/p>\n
Like Ruth, we must be willing to then, therefore, pay the price of this encounter.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n
While in Nicaragua after a meeting with the nun, I went back to the market place with a pocket full of money and very few words to buy what I wanted, but I knew one phrase, and that was \u201cQuanto quiesta?\u201d\u00a0 And I may not be saying it right, right now.\u00a0 And the proprietor whose face and skin was black he said, \u201cWhere are you from?\u201d (laughter.)\u00a0 I said, \u201cYou speak English?\u00a0 Thanks be to God!\u201d\u00a0 I said, \u201cWhere are you from?\u201d\u00a0 He said, \u201cI\u2019m from the Blue Fields.\u201d\u00a0 He said, \u201cBut where are you from?\u201d\u00a0 I said, \u201cI\u2019m so glad I could find someone to talk to.\u201d\u00a0 He helped me to feel at home, to feel all was not lost, that there was some connection there, some sense of family.<\/p>\n
What good is the Church when folks aren\u2019t willing to pay for that which the Church is called to do- give sight to the blind, shelter to those who are homeless, food to the hungry, and bring to those who are broken a sense of wholeness.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
Sometimes this price is death.\u00a0 And yet, and yet, Jesus paid it all.<\/strong><\/p>\n
And many others have come to lay down their lives so that we might live.\u00a0 The encounter often times calls us to places that we wouldn\u2019t normally go.\u00a0 That\u2019s death.\u00a0 Just last week, trying to be the mother of the year, with my 4-year-old daughter, who sometimes I spend not enough time with, I said, \u201cOkay Alexis, let\u2019s do something that you would like to do.\u201d\u00a0 So she said, \u201cokay, Mommy, let us take a bath, because my oldest brother and my youngest brother took a bath last week, and we never get to do those things.\u201d\u00a0 And I said, \u201cOkay Alexis.\u00a0 Let\u2019s take a bath.\u201d\u00a0 And we sat together in that tub.\u00a0 She washed my back, I washed her back.\u00a0 And I said, \u201cOh Alexis isn\u2019t this fun?\u201d\u00a0 And she said, \u201cYes Mommy, but I have something to tell you.\u201d\u00a0 I said, \u201cWhat is it you have to tell me Sweetheart?\u201d\u00a0 She said, \u201cWell Mommy, before I got in the tub, I had to go to the bathroom.\u00a0 And I just couldn\u2019t hold it.\u201d\u00a0 I said, \u201cAlexis, a number one or a number two?\u201d\u00a0 She says, \u201cMommy, it\u2019s just a number one.\u201d\u00a0 And I said, \u201cThanks be to God.\u201d\u00a0 I said, \u201cAlexis, it\u2019s alright.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s alright.<\/p>\n
And isn\u2019t it alright Christian Friends, that sometimes we have to sit down in other folks\u2019 mess to be family.\u00a0 Sometimes places where we would not normally go, we have to go and sit down in their mess, so that together we may be changed and be made like into God\u2019s own glorious body.<\/p>\n
And so for Ruth, she was willing to sit down and go encounter Naomi in her mess, wherever and however.\u00a0 And so she did.\u00a0 I close with this story.\u00a0 I imagine this could have been a Boston Seminarian who had an opportunity to go teach a Sunday school class.\u00a0 And trying to teach it creatively, for we learn in Christian Education, so many fine ways of teaching.\u00a0 Amen?\u00a0 And so while sitting with her class she said, \u201cI want you to help me now to define which commandments this story describes.\u201d\u00a0 She says, \u201cNow, a little boy and a little girl were told to clean their rooms when their mother left.\u00a0 And they didn\u2019t do it.\u00a0 What commandment is at stake here?\u201d\u00a0 All the hands went up, and they said, \u201cHonor thy mother and thy father that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord has given thee.\u201d\u00a0 She said, \u201cGood!\u00a0 Good good good.\u201d\u00a0 She says, \u201cNow, this other little boy went into the drug store and he went down the candy aisle and he put five jawbreakers in his pocket.\u00a0 And he did not pay for them.\u201d\u00a0 All the hands went up.\u00a0 \u201cThou shall not steal.\u201d\u00a0 She said, \u201cExcellent!\u00a0 Excellent!\u201d\u00a0 Then she said, \u201cOkay. A little boy and a little girl were playing, and the little girl snatched the little boy\u2019s car and wouldn\u2019t give it back. And the little boy trying to retaliate, turned and pulled her cat\u2019s tail.\u201d\u00a0 Well, the whole class was confused.\u00a0 There was silence.\u00a0 And one little boy, half committed, raised his hand, and said, \u201cWhat God has joined together (laughter.)\u201d\u00a0 I want you to know today that I believe God has joined us together.\u00a0 God has called us to be family, sisters and brothers alike.\u00a0 God has called us to be willing to lose ourselves and to find our new families.\u00a0 And what God has joined together, let no one put us up.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n
Let us join now in prayer for strength, for wisdom, for courage.\u00a0 We pray for strength, oh God.\u00a0 (crowd response.) We pray Oh God, for wisdom. (crowd response.) And Lord, we pray for courage. (crowd response.)<\/p>\n
PRAYER:<\/h3>\n
Oh God, of Ruth and Naomi.\u00a0 Oh God, of our mothers and our fathers.\u00a0 Oh God of us all.\u00a0 Move us with your spirit now, to be willing to go to the places you would send us so that no one may feel alienated, that we all may experience the joy that family brings.\u00a0 Move us, oh spirit of your love, to have the courage and the faith to press on to higher ground.\u00a0 Keep us forever in the way.\u00a0 For we pray in the name of Jesus Christ who calls us to be family with him.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n
BENEDICTION:<\/h3>\n
And now, unto a God who is able to keep us from falling and to present us blamelessly before God\u2019s throne of grace.\u00a0 A God who looks beyond our faults and supplies our needs, who helps us to press on to higher ground, new family, new community.\u00a0 A new world, and unto God who is able to do all things, we ask that we be dismissed from this place, but never from God\u2019s presence.\u00a0 We pray this in the sweet name of Jesus Christ with the communion of the Holy Spirit, now and forever more.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Books Referenced in Sermon:<\/h2>\n
The Road Less Travelled-\u00a0<\/em>M. Scott Peck<\/p>\n
The I and the Thou- \u00a0<\/em>Martin Buber<\/p>\n
God’s Fierce Whimsey –\u00a0<\/em>Mud Flower Collective<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kay Albury-Smith March 17, 1988 LITURGICAL INTRODUCTION If the word is to take flesh today, the word must be made welcome.\u00a0 The word must be received and made visible in us. I am in the word, and the word is in me, let us give thanks and praise. PRAYER In the name of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7986,"featured_media":0,"parent":318,"menu_order":8,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/shaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2202"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/shaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/shaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/shaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7986"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/shaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2202"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/shaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2355,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/shaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2202\/revisions\/2355"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/shaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/shaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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