June 29, 2008
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Jeremiah 28:5-9 and Matthew 10:40-42
Be the Gospel
The phrase “Because I said so” is rarely enough to motivate anyone into action.
“Do as I say, not as I do” also lacks essential credibility. So “Put your money where your
mouth is” and “Practice what you preach.” “Don’t talk the talk, if you can’t walk the
walk” because “Actions speak louder than words.” Or, as St. Francis put it, “Preach the
gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words.” This well known quote points out the
importance of living the words we say that we believe. Language has its limits. It is often
useful to find other ways to communicate.
Bilingual Communication
A couple of years ago I traveled to Central America with a group of students and
staff from Andover Newton for a two-week service learning program. We spent one
week in Nicaragua and the second week in El Salvador working on school building
projects through the non-profit organization, Seeds of Learning. As a result of that
experience I now have a much deeper appreciation and greater empathy for anyone who
comes to our country with no understanding of English because I don’t speak Spanish.
Language can present a formidable barrier. Which is why it’s so important in today’s
world for our school kids to learn a second language. I studied a language when I was a
kid in school. But the language I studied was French, not Spanish. Since most of my
fellow Andover Newton travel companions are from the northeast, many of us had
learned at least a little French. It was amazing and amusing as we struggled to speak in
Spanish, how many times a French word would pop out of one of our mouths. We went
beyond ‘Spanglish’ to ‘Franglish.’ We could actually understand each other’s
communication efforts in this improvisational hybrid language, but I’m sure we left our
hosts confused. Except for one. I discovered on an overnight stay at a fair trade coffee
cooperative in Nicaragua, that one of my hosts had participated in an agricultural
exchange program, and had spent four months living on a farm in Quebec. When I
showed interest in his experience, he produced a photo of himself dressed in a winter
parka and a fur-lined hat with earflaps, a map of Canada and his thick Larousse Spanish-
French, French-Spanish dictionary. We didn’t have a first language in common, but we
almost had a second language in common. And we laughed a lot that afternoon.
Laughter is a language everyone understands.
People who truly have something to say to each other will find a way to bridge
the language gap. Another bridge my group used extensively was photography. One of
the first phrases I learned to say in Spanish was, “Puedo tomar una photographia?”
Which means, “May I take a picture?” No one I asked ever responded “no.” In fact, any
one of our group who produced a camera from pocket or backpack quickly found his or
herself surrounded by children. The grownups weren’t far behind. Digital cameras were
a particular treat because they could view the snapshots of themselves, their friends and
family members instantly. We could also cycle through the photos we’d accumulated on
our memory cards to show them what we’d seen of their country so far. One-word
questions and explanations were exchanged. Huddled around a 2-inch view screen, more
laughter and nods of understanding.
We taught each other new skills, non-verbally, by demonstration. We showed the
Nicaraguans how to paint a building. They taught us how to make tortillas, step by step.
Play was another common language. We played baseball and soccer with the kids. And
on our last day in the village we brought a piñata.
Are You Picking Up What I’m Laying Down?
Doesn’t food always taste better when it’s shared? Our group always packed
extra food to take out to the worksite so we could share lunch with the village residents.
Not because they were hungry, they had plenty to eat; plenty of nourishing food, like rice
and beans and tortillas. But these communities were pretty far flung. Sharing a meal is a
great way to connect with people, and the kids in particular were curious to try something
different. In Nicaragua, we spent our nights in the small town of Dario so in the
mornings we could get melons and sliced bread and other sandwich fixings from the
market. One day we were handing out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and slices of
watermelon from our coolers. We’d brought the peanut butter with us from home. We
didn’t have enough PB & J’s for each kid to have a whole sandwich. Unfortunately
Andover Newton doesn’t offer a course in multiplying loaves, fishes or sandwiches so it
was a good thing that these kids were naturally inclined to share with each other.
I watched one girl divide a sandwich so she could give part to her sister. She did
this by pealing the slices of bread apart. As a lifelong peanut butter and jelly connoisseur,
I was concerned that they were splitting it in a way that was just wrong. You know some
jelly will always stick to the peanut butter part, but no peanut butter ever sticks to the
jelly half. They got the same volume of sandwich, but they didn’t get the same flavor.
And I wondered what they would say to each other about their experience of what the
Americans were handing out. One might find it stiff, thick and a little hard to swallow.
But the other could think it was light and sweet, but more fluff than substance. Which
only shows that however good our intentions, in reality we have no control over how our
offerings are received. The speaker’s intended message may not be the same message
received by her listeners. And multiple listeners may hear different meanings in the same
words. The best we can do is to try to communicate honestly and graciously, both when
we speak and when we listen. And to pay attention to the clues that might suggest that
our intended message may have gone astray, while at the same time being respectful of
the listener’s need to interpret the message through his/her own experience.
Dueling Prophets
Communication is complicated. And although Jeremiah is known for his
prophetic words, words that often prompted his listeners and his family to want to ignore,
disown and even kill him, Jeremiah took his communication efforts one step further. In
Jeremiah 28:10-11, the verses immediately following today’s passage we read:
Then the prophet Hananiah took the yoke from the neck of the prophet Jeremiah,
and broke it. And Hananiah spoke in the presence of all the people, saying, “Thus
says the LORD: This is how I will break the yoke of King Nebuchadnezzar of
Babylon from the neck of all the nations within two years.” At this, the prophet
Jeremiah went his way.
Following God’s instruction, Jeremiah had made himself “a yoke of straps and bars and
placed them on his neck” (Jeremiah 27:2) to demonstrate that it was God’s intention that
the kingdom of Judah become a vassal of the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar. Perhaps
Jeremiah was trying to demonstrate that, yes, the yoke was awkward and clumsy. It
wasn’t ideal, but it was bearable. Reading further we learn that sometime after Hananiah
broke the yoke and offered the opposite interpretation of the situation and prophecy,
Jeremiah was instructed by the LORD to tell Hananiah, “Thus says the LORD: You have
broken wooden bars only to forge iron bars in place of them” (Jeremiah 28:13).
Jeremiah’s concern was that if the people didn’t concede to the overlordship of
Babylon, their fate would be worse, as indeed it did become after a failed revolt. At the
time of his sign act of wearing the yoke, only the Judean leadership had been exiled to
Babylon. Most of the people remained on the land, and remember that the covenant
between God and the Hebrew people involved this promised land. Separation from the
land would be disastrous. The practice of exile involved relocating people and mixing
them up with people relocated from different conquered nations so that it was more
challenging to plan or organize a rebellion. Also, God was believed to dwell in the temple
at Jerusalem. In those days the Hebrew religion wasn’t really portable. Separation form
the land meant separation from God.
Jeremiah believed that the people had brought this fate of servitude to Babylon
upon themselves by not keeping up their end of the covenant agreement. The Babylonian
army, in this sense was God’s agent on earth to execute the consequences of breaking the
covenant. Therefore, accepting the status of vassal – the wooden yoke - was the correct
response, and the best option for the preservation of the community. Resisting, rejecting
the deserved corrective action by God only resulted in a sterner corrective action – the
iron bars. Time proved Jeremiah right, as the Temple in Jerusalem was eventually
destroyed, and all of the remaining leadership along with much of the general population,
were exiled from the land for several decades.
No Words
One of my favorite movies is called “Contact.” It’s based on the novel of the
same title by Carl Sagan. It is about an astronomer with no use for religion who receives
a message from space. Using a machine built from alien design plans, she eventually is
able to travel and meet this advanced intelligence. During the process of selecting who
would make the trip, she argued that the traveler should be a scientist because the
message was in the language of math, which is the universal language. But en route she
witnesses cosmic phenomena that she can’t describe scientifically or mathematically. Her
rational language fails her and all she can say is, “No words. Poetry. We should have sent
a poet.”
There were several times during my ten weeks as a Chaplain Intern last summer at
Fletcher Allen Hospital when there were no words. I visited a patient who was dying
from cervical cancer. She was twenty-five years old with three small children at home.
She tried to speak but I couldn’t understand her slurred words. I’m not sure if she even
knew I was there, she may have just been mumbling through the morphine. I touched her
hand and said a prayer.
One night when I was on call I was paged to visit a patient in ICU who was
intubated. She communicated by writing on a clipboard with a marker, but also with her
eyes and with her body language. She had a lot to say, and the staff didn’t have the
luxury of spending as much time with her as she demanded, because they were also
tending to the medical needs of several other patients. My patient was anxious when
awake, and I was relieved on return visits when I found her sleeping, because she was at
rest. At those times, I held her hand and prayed for her silently.
I don’t believe it matters what we say in these moments. Words give sound to our
presence, but I suspect it is that presence that is significant. Words give structure to our
feelings and intentions. But those flow from the heart in silence, and collect in the spaces
between our words. Maybe it’s that our use of words brackets the silences, effectively
highlighting the spaces where the real ministry occurs. We hold open the threshold for
the Spirit to work its poetry.
Snapshots of Home
One of the things I carried with me on this trip was a wallet sized photo album
containing a handful of snapshots of my family, and a postcard with an aerial view of
Caspian Lake and Greensboro Village. No matter where you go, family and home are
two things you’ll find close to everyone’s heart. These photos were a wonderful point of
connection especially with the women. We met mother-to-mother. As I continued to
share with them I learned more Spanish phrases – ‘this is my house’, ‘my husband’, ‘my
daughter is 17 years old.’ On the postcard I could point out my house and the church.
One woman I showed these pictures to, wanted to show me her house. She had built it
almost entirely by herself. She had some help with the foundation, but took four months
to complete the masonry walls on her own. It is a beautifully simple home. Her husband,
it turns out, wasn’t there to help because he works in Costa Rica eleven months out of the
year.
In Nicaragua, we traveled to the work sites in the backs of small Toyota pick up
trucks. The first site, Santa Lucia, took forty-five minutes to reach on a dirt road. After
two days of clearing rocks and digging a foundation in Santa Lucia, we move on to a
second site. It was a two-hour drive on a dirt road that wasn’t nearly as good as the one
to Santa Lucia. The truck bumper dragged on the rocks as we crossed through
streambeds. We learned to stand up in the truck as the locals do, and hang on to the
metal bars that frame the truck bed. With all of us standing, there was more room in the
back of the truck. On the back roads of Nicaragua, any vehicle with room automatically
stops to take on walkers headed the same way. We came upon a woman carrying a crate
of tomatoes on her head. We put the crate on the floor of the truck bed and helped her
climb in. When we reached the next cluster of houses, we banged on the top of the cab –
the signal to stop. She climbed out, we handed her the crate. She put it back atop her
head as we drove on. Later that day, on the way back to Dario, we picked up a woman
with a chicken. The bird’s feet were tied. I wondered why she was taking the chicken
into town. Perhaps we’d see her the next day and give her a ride back out to the
mountains. It seemed doubtful that the chicken would be making the return trip. Taking
on passengers like this is not about pity or charity or relieving our own guilt for having a
truck. It’s just what you do. It is simply hospitality.
Hospitality
The passage we heard this morning from Matthew’s gospel continues from the
readings of previous weeks. The disciples have been commissioned and sent out with
instructions on what to do. They have heard how difficult their work may become, and
that not everyone will receive them kindly. But that warning is somewhat tempered by
today’s passage, which speaks of the communities that will recognize the importance of
their mission and receive them. These are communities that know what it means to be
welcoming and hospitable. They will offer cold water to the thirsty disciples, a simple
gesture of kindness, as if these visitors were Jesus himself. There is a spirit of generosity
and compassion in these communities. There is a spirit of a living Gospel, even without
the speaking of words.
Live The Gospel
We can’t choose our family, we’re stuck with whatever family we’re born into.
We’re also blessed by whomever we call family members. The universe has a way of
teaching us the lessons we most need to learn. Or as my CPE supervisor used to say
when we stressed over our own self doubts, “You’ll get the calls you need.” I believe
that the same is true for church communities. When the going gets rough it might seem
simpler to leave and find a community of like-minded people. But where would be the
growth opportunity in that? Where would be the adventure of exploring another person’s
point of view, and the hospitality of inviting that person to consider yours? This burden
is bearable, even if it is awkward and clumsy to carry. Struggling with it together, just
like sharing work and sharing food and playing and laughing together are the things that
make for community. Communities share the burdens as well as the joys.
Like family members, members of religious communities won’t always agree.
And that’s OK, as long as the relationship remains intact. So go ahead and speak your
mind, but do so with kindness in order to create the hospitality that invites others to do
the same. But also listen to each other with kindness. Go ahead and disagree on some
issues. But be respectful of each other even if your thoughts don’t track the same way. It
is very likely that everyone shares a common goal, specifically, the best interest of the
community. The real disagreement may simply be over how to best achieve it.
Most importantly, when the conversation ends, respect and welcome the silence.
Recognize that it is not emptiness, or simply the absence of speaking. Even then keep the
channels of communication open, and only if absolutely necessary, use words.
So let the people of God say, (silent Amen).
Sermon 06/29/2008