Month: July 2018

Of Walls and Wilderness

/ erikamorck / Leave a comment

A sermon based on Jeremiah 23:1-6, Psalm 23, Ephesians 2:11-22, and Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Grace and peace to you, brothers and sister in Christ, from God our Father.

I had a slightly different sermon prepared for you today. For those of you who read my midweek prologue you probably came to church expecting to hear politics from the pulpit or at least the inference of such. Alas, I woke up yesterday morning knowing that the divisions of which I was going to speak wasn’t what I needed to hear right now. Trusting in Pastor Mark Gravrock’s wisdom from 2 weeks ago – I am going to guess that what I need to hear today may just be what you need to hear too.

And so there I lay at 6:30 a.m. Saturday after a night of writing the sermon on walls I had planned for you, restless and a tad weary, I was in need of good news. Frankly the level of angst and division that is polarizing our nation and world has been taking a toll on me. Maybe it is because my job in a financial advisor’s office exposes me to our client’s rollercoasters of emotion as the political and economic frenzy of empire impacts the very thing we manage – their money – on a daily basis. Let’s just say the last couple of weeks of have been especially trying.

Needless to say, the last thing I wanted to hear about at 10:15am on a beautiful Sunday morning is more about the things that divide us -the dividing walls of hostility between “us” and “them,” whether based on ethnicity, religious, political, or economic views, class, citizenship status, gender, culture, job position, or whatever else of this world that we choose to hang our identities on or take offense at. No, this what I really want to hear is someone saying ‘Erika, on October 1st, your sabbatical starts!” But I digress…

“Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” Jesus tells his disciples upon their return from their first missions without Him -they had preached, they had cast out demons, they had anointed with oil those who were sick, they had called people to wake up to God’s call and purpose for their lives. In other words, they had been really busy doing some pretty heavy stuff.

Other translations of the bible use the word “wilderness” – come away to the wilderness and rest awhile. Doesn’t that sound wonderful? We are lucky to live in a playground of wilderness. Lately, our slice of wilderness is looking very much like the one Jesus and his disciples experienced in today’s Gospel – “And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them.  As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd;” Sound familiar? What wilderness?  No matter where they went the masses found them. Bringing with them the immensity of human need and despair.

Mark refers to a wilderness often throughout his Gospel. In fact, he opens his Gospel with John the Baptist appearing as a voice in the wilderness telling of the one who is to come. Jesus spends 40 days in a wilderness. While the wilderness can be a place of rest and solace and recreation like that to which Jesus invited his disciples today, it can also be a very hostile place – a place to escape from.

When I woke up yesterday morning, it dawned on me that the sermon I was going to preach sounded an awful lot like that kind of wilderness – the hostile one. The wilderness that is played out on the opinion pages of our newspapers and broadcast across the airwaves and social media. The wilderness of empire where politics and power separate us from humanity and hope. The wilderness of “Us vs. Them” and Right vs. Left power plays. The wilderness of broken relationships and broken trust. The wilderness of lives and families torn apart by addiction and violence, of communities divided by hate. The wilderness of loneliness. The wilderness where we are consumed with working, collecting, amassing, and generally “getting ahead” to the detriment of our spirits, our relationships, and rest.

Oh, my goodness, are we ever living in a wilderness of walls and human despair!  We are just like the masses of lost sheep rushing to Jesus in need of a Shepherd. Living behind walls that separate us from God and one another, longing for the healing of our hurts, wanting to belong, searching for peace.

The scriptures I had read over and over again in preparation for today took on a whole new meaning for me. So perfect for our time and our place in this wilderness – they are full of Good News!  In Jeremiah, we hear of a promised shepherd for the world (the Shepherd in those days -as we learned from pastor Mark last week – was symbolic of a King.) While corrupt leadership had “scattered” the sheep, lead them astray and dashed their hopes, God gathered the remnants of his flock back to him and promised the coming of a righteous shepherd. When we place our hopes and trust in leaders of this world we will no doubt be lead astray and have our hopes disappointed at some point. But God is the good shepherd, and when we place our hope and trust in Him we will always know justice and good care.

We see in today’s Gospel, the stark contrast of Jesus to that of the corrupt King Herod we witnessed last week, as Jesus takes on the role of the good shepherd. Despite having been rejected in his hometown, despite having received news that his comrade John the Baptist has been killed, despite crossing over the sea and the barriers it represents many, many times, despite being tired and hungry and in need of rest, Jesus sees the crowds of people who are “like sheep without a shepherd,” and has compassion for them and he begins to teach them. They are brought out of their wilderness and healed.

We are reminded by the 23rd Psalm that our Lord will give us all that we need. That in Him we will find a place to rest and restore our broken hearts and burdened minds. We are assured that He will lead us in the right ways – not for fulfillment of our worldly desires but for those of a higher calling. He will comfort us when fear and evil try to separate us from Him. He will stand with us in the face of our enemies and feed us together at His table – no need for a wall here. We are promised goodness and mercy in all our days.  This Lord who is our shepherd is with us always. He goes from being a God above us to one with us, accompanying us in our place of wilderness

And then, we hear of God’s ultimate promise to us from Paul in his letter to the divided people of Ephesus – Christ is our peace. In the ultimate act of shepherding, Jesus went out into the hostile wilderness and gave his life for us – declaring peace and freedom from the shackles of sin on new terms, a peace and freedom forged not by the powers of Empire in its various forms, but in the blood of the Shepherd on the cross. Through the cross, the wall dividing Jew and Gentile, citizen and stranger, those who are us and those who are them, was broken. And that is only the beginning. God in Christ made one humanity of the two.  Not making us uniform but rather uniting us with all our complexities in Christ as Jew and Gentile; citizen and stranger, us and them. This unity is not of our doing. It is out of the grace of God. This is the church and Christ is the cornerstone.

It doesn’t stop there. Paul tells the people of Ephesus – and the words should ring just as true to us today – remember who you were, see who you are now.  Remember when you were dead through your trespasses, God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us – made us alive together with Christ—by grace we have been saved! Through his great love for us, Christ calls us, his lost sheep, out the wilderness – the wilderness of exclusion and hostility and divisiveness. He alone tears down the walls that we build up around ourselves, walls that separate us from Him and “them.”  Christ calls us to a place where we are united together in Him. This togetherness in Christ – our good and compassionate Shepherd – empowers us to welcome the stranger, to teach and share the Good News, to have compassion and suffer with those who are wandering in a wilderness of their own – not just on Sunday but every day as well as on the opinion pages and our social media posts. Doesn’t that sound like a nice respite from this wilderness of walls we have been wandering in?

We will never know perfect peace or unity in this world. Our defenses and offenses will always be aroused by the sins inherent to humanity. But through Christ we have a place to go where walls are invisible. This place is a daring place where a different kind of power – the self-outpoured, boundary-crossing power of Christ’s cross – is at work.  We can trust this power to undermine every wall that divides us, to heal our hurts, to unmask our defenses, and bring us peace until we are as Paul wrote, “built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”

There is hope. Saturday morning, I heard a voice in the wilderness- it was good news – as I relished the extra minutes of pillow-time with the cool breeze wafting in through my window contemplating where in the world my sermon on walls was going to take me. Ye, I heard good news on the news! The Mayor of Branson, MO was being interviewed in the aftermath of the duck boat sinking tragedy where 17 sightseers lost their lives and many more were injured. Her comments are just what I needed to hear this morning and echoed what I hope you will take away from my sermon today: “We are all about taking care of our citizens,” she said, “but what makes us unique is we are all about taking care of strangers too. When you come here we love on you no matter whether you are here as a citizen or as someone we have never met before.”

Yeah, I think she was at a bible study this week. I think she got the message.

There are no walls of division or exclusion with Christ. We will never be alone in the wilderness. We can come to Him and rest awhile. And Erika needs a sabbatical.

Amen.

“And Now for Something Completely Different!”

/ erikamorck / Leave a comment

“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.”

July 1 marked my one-year anniversary as a first-time home owner. Looking back at the frenzied week of financial stress I experienced preceding that monumental day in the life of Erika Morck I just laugh. How I managed to pull off getting my recently deceased father’s accounts transferred into my name and getting the cash ready to make the down payment is still a head scratcher. Fortunately, I was blessed with professional assistance from an outstanding mortgage company and responsive financial advisors and investment firms. I know I depleted a forest’s worth of trees in financial statements and other paperwork. And, even though I ground about an inch off my tooth enamel, the thrill of accomplishing this all on my own was liberating and I know my father would have been proud of his daughter’s conscientious business acumen.

I have learned much in this year of firsts – mainly that a plumber must have installed a high-flow spigot on my bank account. Handing the largest check I have ever written in my life over to the title company was just the beginning of the expenses. I have also learned that the freedoms that come with being a homeowner don’t mean that I will live a free life.  On the contrary, my relatively free and easy hiking every weekend apartment living lifestyle has been transformed to one of house and endless yard maintenance activities – all in the name of pride of ownership. My obsessive nature lends to hours of weekly weed eradication and taming the rebellion out of my lawn… In essence, I have become a slave to my once dreamed of source of liberation!

Yes, I bought the house with open eyes – but the driveway turned out to be much longer than I thought this winter and the yard much bigger than my future-puppy mommy eyes led me to believe. Alas, I do love the new me – somewhat domesticated, still lively, but much less restless in my quest for roots. I have been firmly planted on my nearly ¾ acre of paradise.

Add to all this domestic bliss a final year of theological study – and now filling in for a pastor on sabbatical on the side of a 40 hour a week job – and my life has pretty much become devoid of spontaneity and spunk. And lately that has been getting to me. Consumed by deadlines and responsibility, I have forgotten how vital play (aside from entertaining the pup) is to our well-being.

And so, it was with a bit of tongue -in-cheek anxiety that I said to myself: “And Now for Something Completely Different,” threw caution to the wind, and said yes to a Social Distortion of epic proportion (at least in my quiet little neck of the Symphony society!) Abandoning my usual “control of the situation” modus operandi I allowed 2 days of my life to be planned by someone else – someone I trust with all my heart mind you – but still – this is something completely different!

Embarking on a 2-day midweek (mind you!) auditory adventure the likes I have never heard nor willingly seen before or even remotely fathomed, this church-lady was about to get her groove back.  Bound for Spokane’s Knitting Factory and the Historic Davenport Grand Hotel, the journey began with a stop at Kootenai Falls and a walk on the swinging bridge.  On to Idaho we spotted and snorted at the microcosm of wealth tucked into the beautiful little burg of Sandpoint, ID with it’s very “now” drive-thru convenience store and stately “cabins.”

Then the reality of the big city hit us as 6 lanes of traffic ushered us into Spokane at a snail’s pace with construction detours all over the place! Needless to say, my hands gripped the steering wheel as I tried to remember learning to drive in downtown Denver. It should have been a piece of cake but that was 30 some years ago and a lot of small town living in between. My perseverance paid off big time when we finally found our way to the “grandest hotel” in Spokane. Built in 1914, this world class wonder did not disappoint!

I reluctantly handed the keys of my bronze baby to the valet – never in my life have I had my car valeted before! We did decline the tuxedo wearing bellhop’s offer to carry our 2 duffle bags to our rooms. I honestly would not have known what to do with my hands!! I stood agape in complete awe of the soaring architecture complete with gilded columns, tiled ceilings, and gold faucets shimmering in the candelabra lit bathrooms.  I felt like a princess and even better, was treated like one!

 

We had a few hours to kill before getting our eardrums blown, so we strolled along the beautiful river-walk downtown, window shopped and store snooped, and then decided to find food. Google maps was NOT our friend in this instance. In search of “locally-sourced, award-winning cuisine in a relaxed yet intimate atmosphere” we found ourselves walking in what my mother would have called the “red-light district!” That was decidedly not what we wanted on our menu so we opted for the Spaghetti Depot complete with railcar booths and 2 kid’s birthday parties.

It was now time for the main event – one of my companion on this adventure’s top five bucket list items – to see the iconic 3-decade plus strong punk rock and roll band Social Distortion. Now I know, this is not normal Erika fare, but I must admit that they have something here!  And, as I said before, it is high time for something “completely different” in my life. Really.

We started the night in the balcony but quickly decided that the main floor front of stage vantage point – also known as the mosh pit – was where this epic moment in our lives would take place. Yes, really. Their searing guitars and heavy locomotive rhythms shook me from toe to temple – as did the crowd. But I rather liked this all-but-perfected mix of punk, bluesy rock n’ roll and outlaw country.

The rest of this two-day spin through spontaneity consisted of wondering what happened the night before, restoring my hearing, hiking along Lake Coeur D’Alene, and making the long drive home. Arriving at my doorstep I felt like I had just lived more life than I have in the last 2 years in just two days. It felt wonderful! Invigorating! My mind not only felt refreshed but stretched.  Indeed, as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. stated, “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.”

If variety is the spice of life, bring on the flavoring! I am hungry for more and feel as if a wall has come down opening up a whole new dimension in my life.  My sermons will even be written from a slightly different perspective now!

The moral of this story – anything done over and over again – even activities that bring you joy – lose their pleasure impact. There is also great truth in the saying “All work and no play make Erika a dull girl.” It is good to let go and dare I say – go a little crazy at times! Life is meant to be lived fully. When I take a final stock of my life someday in the far off distant future (I hope!!) I won’t remember how perfect my lawn looked on July 14th, 2018 but, I will remember the absolute glee of getting my groove back to the roar of electric guitars and the wonderful self-discoveries made along the way.

Let your rebel light so shine!

Do Not Fear, Only Believe (Jesus Changes Everything)

/ erikamorck / 2 Comments

A sermon inspired by Lamentations 3:1-33; Mark 5: 21-43

The call had come. The call I had prepared myself for but was not anticipating – I thought things had stabilized for my Dad, but my brother’s voice on the other end of the line some 475 miles away –  said everything without needing words. My Dad, who had had a couple of bumpy days after falling and hitting his head had just moved into his new residence at St. John’s Nursing Home – into the skilled nursing wing – a transition in life we didn’t plan for but knew was for the best. He lasted there 4 hours when the chaplain that stopped in to visit alerted the staff that something didn’t seem right. When my brother called, Dad had already been transported to ICU. Fred didn’t know what was going on with him, but I had better come. Don’t try to drive tonight – he said – just get here.

I knew this highway well – the one fraught with panic, emotion, tears, and farm machinery that pulls out in front of you and robs you of any polite composure behind the wheel. That I was making this dreaded drive across Montana again so soon after my mother’s death left me desperate for answers that were not forthcoming from God. WHY? Why was he doing this to my Dad, a man that had given so much of himself and deserved so much better. WHY was he doing this to our family?

From Lamentations – “He has made my teeth grind on gravel, and made me cower in ashes; my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, “Gone is my glory, and all that I had hoped for from the Lord.”

I was angry. I was desperate. I felt guilty for living so far away and attending to the ends of my parent’s lives from afar – detached from the wasting away of life that comes before death. I was afraid. Afraid of what saying goodbye would be like – I hadn’t had that chance with my mother – I was afraid of what death would feel like as it overtook him. I was afraid of living without him. I was afraid of life without my dad. My heart was pounding, and my ears were rushing and the pit that grew within my stomach began to overwhelm me as I drove on. And then Jesus heard me.

From Lamentations – “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope…”

It was up to God now – like it always had been. Even though my faith was my foundation, it had been very hard for me to wholly trust and not try to control God – to make my ways His way. This ending, this sending – this story of the greatest man I had ever known was not supposed to end like this.

You see, the amazing thing about Jesus is when I finally gave Him my will and fully trusted my Dad to Him, a certain peace came over me. My heart quit pounding, my ears quit rushing, and while my tears didn’t stop flowing, my eyes could see clearly again. His grace is amazing.  Jesus changes everything.

The Lord’s mercies are new every morning, but sometimes we have to experience the darkness of night to appreciate them – and sometimes those nights can be pretty dark if not downright scary.

We are in good company when we find ourselves searching for God, feeling abandoned by his presence, feeling forsaken and heart broke. The Bible is full of stories of suffering and sorrow, ire and isolation, fear and frustration; full of human struggle and seeking – Adam, Eve,  Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Joseph, Naomi, Job, David, Jeremiah, Jonah – all the great ones with great but in no way always happy stories.

The words of hope we heard this morning in the reading from Lamentations came from an author who wrote, in the 2 preceding chapters, verses of incredible mourning for the once great and promised city of Jerusalem now in ruins, her people slaughtered, and the Lord’s temple destroyed. Words of hope preceded by words of mourning not only for what had  become of Jerusalem but, like many of us who have had our lives turned upside down and our greatest hopes dashed – for the special beauty of that life. He grieved not only for the past that was lost but for the future he had expected and hoped for. And, he like we, searched for a God who, in the midst of such immense, even violent suffering, seemed to be a stranger.

Those people knew God to be steadfast in his mercy and in his wrath. Their circumstances of suffering were a direct result of their sin. They navigated in a wilderness of their own making. And they lived in fear of God, rather than in relationship with him.

There are times when we too, find ourselves in a wilderness. Alone. Afraid. Angry. Questioning the goodness and presence of God amidst the messiness of life. Who hasn’t wondered if there even is a god?

Afraid that if we get angry with God –  if we let Him have it –  voicing the injustices in our lives and the world –  he will utterly reject us; or perhaps it is more a sense of fear of losing control of the situation –  afraid of relinquishing to God the outcome we desire.  In so doing, when we hold back on God with our anger – AND OUR TRUST, we construct our own barriers to an authentic relationship with him as well as saying that God’s power and mercy is finite.

Walter Brueggeman, a renowned and quite popular on YouTube, Protestant, Old Testament scholar and theologian, says that you can’t have an authentic relationship with God If all you can do is praise Him.

Luckily for us, our God whose wrath is measured, is also a God whose mercy is unmeasurable. And so, to know the weight of the sin that is of this world and to better know us, he sent his Son to bear with us and to ultimately bear our sin.

And Jesus changed everything.

Let’s take a look at what an authentic relationship with God, our Lord and Savior Jesus looks like – one in which we put voice to our lament,  where we let God in on the matters at hand, and trust that  every morning is new and full of mercy:

There was a woman, suffering for 12 long years with an affliction that made her unclean – that cast her out of her community – that she could do nothing to resolve or control. She longed to be well and had tried everything physically possible to be well. Seeing doctor after doctor, spending all she had but nothing worked.

Imagine her frustration with a body that wouldn’t function as it was supposed to – that caused her pain –  that had betrayed her and bankrupted her.

Imagine her loneliness – isolated; cast out by societal rules for something she could not control.

Imagine her loss of hope as doctor after doctor failed her.

From Lamentations – “I am one who has seen affliction under the rod of God’s wrath; he has driven and brought me into darkness without any light; against me alone he turns his hand, again and again, all day long.”

She cried out to Jesus – she made her plight known and Jesus changed everything.

She had hoped for healing. She got so much more.

“Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your disease.”

For so long fear and illness had defined her – they still had their grip on her. But Jesus’ gives her more than she could ever have imagined. She is no longer just “a woman,” but a “daughter.” Jesus claimed her as his own and restored her to community as one whose “faith” has “made her well”.  Promise and peace have been added to the new reality in her life. The healing of her disease comes as almost an afterthought.

There was a father, a religious leader in the community, who was bereft and urgently seeking help for his dying daughter – who finds help but is put aside by other pressing matters and then that help comes too late. His hopes are dashed. His faith shaken.  Gone is a life that had yet to begin, that held so much promise and had brought so much joy. He was a leader in the community and yet he still was met with suffering.  Pain knows no boundaries, but it appears that sometimes faith does.

Imagine his despair as he ponders the unfairness of this broken world – that his little girl should die while he is left behind to mourn.

Imagine his anger that he of all people could not protect his daughter from the ravages of her illness.

Imagine his broken heart –  that he would never hear her jubilant laughter or watch her dance again.

From Lamentations – “He has made my flesh and my skin waste away and broken my bones; he has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation; he has made me sit in darkness like the dead of long ago.”

Jesus sees beyond the doubt. Jesus changes everything.

“Do not fear, only believe.”

 Jesus says and with those words, resurrects a life out of fear and doubt into one lived in trust and faith.

There was a man who walked among us, who brought the dead to life and helped the blind to see. Who for a time was celebrated and followed for the things he did and the words he spoke. But like so many of us – just when we are at the top of our game – he got knocked down, he found himself alone – he felt utterly rejected by his friends and his Father – as he bore within his body and spirit the physical manifestation of the sins of the world.

Imagine his terror as he contemplated his fate.

Imagine his sense of abandonment as he waited through the darkest hours of his life alone among sleeping “friends.”

Imagine his sheer sadness and heaviness of heart over the sins of this world.

Imagine the agony He endured on the cross – the mocking and scorning, the pain and the death just so that he could be one with us, to know our struggles and deepest hurts, and so that we of all people, could have everlasting life – freed from the sin that keeps us in darkness, and a life filled with the light of new mercies every morning.

From Lamentations – “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases his mercies never come to an end.”

Jesus changed everything. He came to be with us to bear with us in our darkest hours and give us all that we need. His mercies are there for us each morning – if we seek him and trust that he will see us through. Saved by grace, we are given Jesus’ strength, wisdom, guidance, power and discernment to get through every moment of every day.

Jesus changed everything for me. I made it home in time to hear my Dad say my name one last time. He passed from my arms into the arms of Jesus the next morning. Death was not as I had pictured it would be – at once rather matter of fact – at once incredibly holy.  The fear I expected was instead a quiet peace. The cries of my heart were not out of anger or abandonment but out of relief and acceptance of an end and a beginning. Jesus changes everything.

Since that day that he brought peace to a heart filled with anguish, I have known times of darkness again. But I have not faced it alone. His mercies are there every morning –  giving me just what I need – not always what I want or expected – but always what I need.

From Lamentations – “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”

Look to Jesus. Do not be afraid. Believe and go on living as He leads you – with faith.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness, oh God.

He is there for you too.

Amen.