The Irreverent Reverend

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Thanksgiving is just around the corner (how did that happen?). It is the season of gratitude and being thankful. It is the time of year we tend to think about the poor and drop a few bucks in the plate for the food pantry or toss a bag of stuffing in the carriage for “their” thanksgiving meal. The recipients of our occasional generosity are the faceless nameless poor who are hungry not just on Thanksgiving but most of the year.

Call me cynical (most people do) but it seems to me that at least some of our gratitude is a thinly veiled version of “thank God I’m not that poor slob.” It mirrors a story in the Gospel of Luke (18:9-14). The parable attributed to Jesus begins with “two men went up to the temple to pray.” One was a Pharisee and one was a tax collector. The Pharisee was all pumped up with his own importance and used flowery words in his prayer that were really self-aggrandizing. The tax collector (who was universally hated by everyone) stood off in the corner and prayed in humility and honesty. The Pharisee, who was lost in his own importance, thanked God that he was not like the tax collector. See the connection?

The parable suggests many teachings, but one that comes to the fore as we enter the season of Thanksgiving is our tendency to be grateful that we are not like…fill in the blank. As we give thanks for our own bounty and give to others out of our excess, we toss a weird kind of prayer that sounds a little like the Pharisee.

Genuine gratitude is born of sterner stuff. It has a direct line to faith. The premise of gratitude is that we are stewards of God’s bounty. It does not belong to us and it is not just a fruit of our own labors. Rather, it is a gift to us entrusted to us by the Creator. As such, we are faith-bound to use what is entrusted to us in the service of others and the creation.

It is an invitation to give, not out of our excess, but out of our very substance. It is an invitation to radical generosity that reflects a radical faith in God as the Eternal Steward. Walter Brueggemann, Old Testament theologian, writes often of the “theology of scarcity.” Basically it means that we hold onto stuff out of fear there will not be enough. It means we are stingy with our stuff and not deeply mindful of the poor who depend on a more balanced stewardship of the earth’s goods.  As the old saying goes, “There is enough for everyone’s need, but not everyone’s greed.”

Many have had to cinch up spending during the time of Covid, and I don’t mean to minimize the budget crunches some people are feeling. For a great many, however, the increased prices and short supply has had little direct effect. And there is gratitude for that. But this is not genuine gratitude, it is a Pharisaic babble that celebrates our ability to rise above others and create an illusion of self-sufficiency.

As we grow in faith, we come to the truth that we are stewards of the earth’s bounty, and our perspective will begin to shift. First, it will create generosity toward others. Second, we will begin to dismantle our theology of scarcity and embrace a theology of generosity that believes there is enough for everyone. Third, it will align our consumption with our resources. Fourth, it will create a base for true gratitude which is intimately related to faith.

Believing in a God who is first and finally generous, always merciful and unfailingly loving allows us to take risks for our faith. It aligns us in a whole new way with the needs of the world and our responsibility as stewards of God’s bounty.

This year may our thanksgiving be built in true gratitude. May our generosity be based in risk-taking faith and may our giving come from a place of deeper stewardship.

Protestants aren’t much for All Saints Day.  The tradition of saints is associated mostly with our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers.  We might think of Saint Francis of Assisi because of his prayer, which incidentally he didn’t write, but that’s beside the point.

In addition, saints seem foreign to our everyday experience. They lived long ago and were somehow different from us mere mortals.  Those who manage to be canonized in the complicated process of the Catholic Church are folks we don’t fancy ourselves to resemble, but I think we are missing the boat.  There is a rich tradition of saints that belongs to all people of faith, a biblical tradition found in numerous places in the New Testament.

The saints, most simply, are those who love God.  That’s it, those who love God.  That makes the whole idea of saints a lot more real.

I first learned about the saints in the little UCC church in Somersville, CT, where I grew up.  It is the mill village on the west side of the town proper.

This little church was peopled with farmers and builders, truck drivers like my father and stay-at-home moms like my mother.  The mill that once employed most of the people in the village stood vacant, just down the road near the waterfall that had once powered the machines that made the wool.  It was a simple place filled with people of uncomplicated faith and a kind of down-home way of being in the world.

I learned about God by watching God’s people in that place.  The church had its share of squabbles and petty nonsense like every church, but at the end of the day we found our center in that simple sanctuary with the wheezing Wurlitzer and a well-intentioned, if slightly off key choir. Ministers came and went.  Some were pretty good and others not so much, but each of them offered something to the mix of  community that found its stability in the God who called us together.  The place is pretty much the same, even to this day. The youth group kids of fifty years ago remain my friends.   

During my youth, there were people who had been members for fifty or sixty years who carried the history of the place in their bones. Now my dad is the fifty-year member who carries that memory for the generations that are coming behind him.

We learn about faith from watching those who live it.  And we are the canvas on which others learn to draw their pictures of God and live the life of discipleship. 

The early Christians we read about in scripture had no special training. They were not without flaws and failures and fears.  They were human beings living out the faith while in search of the faith, as Frederick Beuchner observed, leaning on one another to be the lens through which the goodness and grace of God came into focus. Their love for God was manifest in the way they lived, how they treated one another and the quality of community they created.  It was at once deeply human and profoundly holy.

Celebrating the saints is about remembering those who walked with us and helped form the path we follow.  Celebrating the saints is about God’s persistence in raising up the teachers and models and proclaimers of the word we need for the sake of the Word we become to others.

Take a moment and call those people to mind and let them wash over your heart in gratitude.  Outside of your family, who taught you the faith and modeled the faith?  What community formed you?  Let the names rise from your heart to your lips.  Speak the names aloud.

The names are a whispered prayer of gratitude.

All Saints Day is also an invitation to look at how we are walking through this life. It is also a time to wonder how our days will mark the paths of those who follow us in the life of faithfulness.

Our time, this day, is in desperate need of people of faith to embody the Word in the world.  The religious nuts out there who get the most attention do not speak for us, but if we do not speak our faith, that voice wins.

In short, this is a day to celebrate our togetherness across the generations.  Richard Rohr reminds us, “living in the communion of saints means we can take ourselves very seriously because we are part of the Great Whole.  It also means we cannot take ourselves too seriously because we are part of the Great Whole.”  The place that is ours is uniquely ours and the place that belongs to others is uniquely their own. 

In the economy of God’s grace the whole does not come to pass without all the witnesses of all the generations.  The richness of the saints is unfolded in particular moments that are gone as soon as they come, but they leave permanent marks on our soul. 

All Saints Day is our invitation to remember our uniqueness and the authenticity of our own witness as much as it is about remembering the witness of others through the years.  It is a funky time warp where we keep company with those who have gone before us and those who walk beside us.

Time has a way of erasing the irrelevant. What remains is the essence of our witness. In the end, what we leave behind is the love that is entrusted to us, the love that makes us human, the love that breaks our heart and heals it only to break it again.  In the end, the saints are those who love God.  And that is one wild ride.  To sing a song of the saints of God is to sing the song of humanness gathered up in holiness, love transforming what is less than lovely and light shining in the darkness.

By guest blogger the Rev. Linda Faltin

Missing indigenous women and girls in the Americas…honor killings in India…abductions of schoolgirls in Nigeria…countless women abused by their husbands in virtually every community in almost every country of this world. Yet we act so surprised, become so outraged, as if this were something new and startling. When, in fact, this is the way things have always been for those of us who are female and the recipients of misogyny in all its many forms. Men have always been the ones in control, the ones to write the laws, the ones to handle the wealth and even the health care systems. And while it’s true that we have made strides throughout the world, with more women in positions of power in government and business and academia, we have a long, long way to go until there is true equity in the systems in place on this planet we call home. For patriarchy still reigns supreme and women are still seen as “less than” in so many quarters.

And while I have absolutely no data to back it up, have seen no studies done, read no papers or articles to this effect, I have my own theory about this preeminent position of misogyny in our nation and in our world. In spite of what Sigmund Freud saw as a “problem” for women which he dubbed “penis envy”, I suspect that what is really happening among so many of our male siblings is “creation envy”. After all, we females are the ones who are the vessel, the vehicle, for the birthing of new life. We are the ones who give birth to the next generation. We are the life-bearers. And in so being, we also have the potential to “give birth” to new ideas, new ways of doing things, new and different ways of seeing our world and solving its problems, unlike the “tried and true”- and often failing ones- advocated by the male of the species.

The book of Genesis tells those of us in the Judeo-Christian tradition that God created humanity in the Divine image, creating them- us- male and female. Both in the Divine image. Both commissioned by the Creator to care for the earth and all of its inhabitants. Both equally important in the Divine scheme of things. But only the female was endowed with the life-giving ability to give birth, to bring into being the next generation of human life. And while both sexes are necessary for this miracle to happen, only the female is charged with being the life-bearer. This is a position of such beauty and creativity, that across the ages the male subconsciously developed the sense of being second-best. After all, why did God give this important task to Woman and not to Man?

Thus…envy. And what do we do with envy? We turn it into anger and into the justification for mistreatment, for abuse, for every sort of debasing behavior which the human mind can invent, turning the power for generative creativity into the dreadful power of control, firmly placing the male foot on the female neck.

Now, lest you think I am a man-hater, I hasten to assure you that I have many wonderful male friends and family members from whom I have never felt such misogyny. Indeed, some of my greatest encouragers over the years have been the men in my life. But looking around me, I see that this has not been the case for many women: girls and women are still being exploited and trafficked for sex; women still make far less than men for the same kind of work; far fewer women are in positions of authority and decision-making; and the systems firmly in place in our culture justify and excuse bad male behavior in a manner not accorded to females.

If we truly believe, and I do, that all humans have been created in the Divine image and that we all have inestimable worth because we each contain that spark of divinity, then how can nearly half of the human race justify treating the rest of us with such disdain, such lack of care? And since we are the life-bearers, shouldn’t we be accorded the level of respect which this role deserves? Brothers, don’t envy our creative abilities, but learn from us- about relationships, about problem-solving in a way that includes everyone, about valuing and respecting all people and creatures on this planet, about working for peace and justice with compassion and determination.

Join hands and hearts with us, that together we might create a society, a world, in which ALL-female and male- will be accorded the respect and value each deserves. This, to me, is the Reign of God for which Jesus worked. This, to me, is the Reign of God for which we should be working. Let it be so.

Last week I wrote about the book of Job. This is part two. Forty-two chapters and one thousand fifty-nine verses weave a complex tale about the dealings of God with humanity and humanity with God.  Job’s tortured life gives us lots of clues about how we can meet our own trials.

Far from answering the question about why the innocent suffer, why tragedy befalls human kind and just what kind of God is in charge of this old universe anyway, the book of Job compels us to the murkier waters of what it means to have an honest relationship with God and with each other.  The context of the exploration is both set and sharpened by unspeakable suffering and wrenching pain.

Whatever it is that we think we know about God and each other is honed by human pain.  That’s not to say that we get to make up our own notions about God out of the stuff of our days. It means that life challenges our shallow notions about everything, including God, in ways nothing else can. 

The biggest gripe Job had with his friends is that their academic theology and perfect doctrinal constructs were spiritually bankrupt.  If they were seminary trained, their transcripts would reflect good marks in systematic theology and failing grades in pastoral care. 

The major theme of the book of Job is the invitation to authenticity: spiritual and relational.  It begs the question of how we move from the faith of our childhood to an adult faith; how we move from what we think we know to what we believe; how we integrate head, heart and soul.

The witness of Job suggests that one way, perhaps the most powerful way, is through the things that cause us the most pain, the deepest distress and the greatest anxiety.  Without asking or answering the question “why,” Job invites us to meet God on the other side of silence, protest, despair, emptiness and loss.  Job invites us to meet God on the other side of our pain, bearing witness to a promise that we will not be left on our own, even as Job was not finally left on his own. 

Faith is tempered by the stuff of life.

On the other side of Job’s railing and wailing, God shows up. In a Cecil B. DeMille kind of moment God shows up in a whirlwind and call’s Job name. And after all Job’s questioning, God has a few questions for Job. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” And it goes on from there. You can read it in Job 38. It’s some of the best poetry in the Bible.

And when God is done, Job repents in dust and ashes. And the text says he despised himself. This is not about self-hatred or self-loathing. It is about true humility. And humility is not to be confused with humiliation. It means an accurate accounting of who one is, neither self-aggrandizing nor self-deprecating. Job understood something new about himself and it opened the door to an authentic relationship with God.

You may remember Job’s three friends.  Rather than enter Job’s struggle they stayed at the edges and tried to pull Job back to familiar, safer ground.  Their comments reiterated tired notions of three themes: 1) it really is your fault, 2) you must have done something wrong, and 3) you know how God works, Job; it’s an eye for an eye kind of world.  

And when the day of reckoning comes, it’s the friends who are in the hot seat. God says to the friends; “you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. It’s an ironic twist.  Job gripes, groans, wails, moans, protests, screams and demands. His friends are horrified at his cheekiness. They are sure God will come along any moment and finish Job off as punishment for his bold speech.

After God shows up and shows Job a thing or two, God pretty much says, “Well done Job.”  You get it, now pray for these bone heads who don’t.

I’d love to know what Job said in his prayer, but we aren’t privy to that in the text. Suffice it to say Job probably prayed from the new place of his humility and authentic relationship with God.

It seems to me that suffering does one of two things. It either makes us bitter or it makes us better. We can work it through and come to a new place, an authentic faith and a deeper understanding of what it means to be human. Or, we can become angry, bitter, cut off from ourselves and closed down to others.   

If Job had swallowed his rage, sadness and anger, bitter probably would have won out over better. Instead, Job was honest. He didn’t hesitate to take God on. He was authentic with his friends and called them on their theological mumbo jumbo. And when all was said and done, he didn’t hesitate to come to a deeper more honest understanding and faith on the other side of his encounter with God.

The book of Job is, for all its quirkiness, a wonderful invitation to sort through our own trials and traumas with a willingness to be honest with ourselves and with God. Don’t worry; God can take it. Just look at Job.