Monday, April 1, 2013

Idle Tales that are the Truth!




Three Women (Easter Sunday) by Romare Bearden
  • Three Women, Romare Bearden, 1979.
  • 
    Happy Easter! What is coming into your imagination that may seem like an idle tale (Luke 24:11), but that if you live it out will bring joy and healing to people or to animals and plants on God's green Earth? Live it! Live your precious life! Below is my Easter sermon. The heart of the universe, love, is abundant, for the taking!
    Blessings, Pr. Nancy

    Easter
    Luke 24:1-12
    “But these words seemed like an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”
    All the gospels tell of the women coming to the tomb; they find it empty; they return to tell the disciples, who do not believe them.
    Women through the ages have not been believed. An old wives’ tale… Have you had the experience of saying what you know is hard-earned truth, urgently important, you feel, but you are not taken seriously?
    Often it seems that God, or goodness, or truth needs to come in slantwise, through people who are not to be believed at first; as Emily Dickson wrote:
    Tell All The Truth
    Tell all the truth but tell it slant,
    Success in circuit lies,
    Too bright for our infirm delight
    The truth's superb surprise;

    As lightning to the children eased
    With explanation kind,
    The truth must dazzle gradually
    Or every man be blind.
    Emily Dickinson
    The truth must dazzle gradually or every person be blind.
    The Bible is a collection of stories (told by human beings and written down in human words) of people who were far from perfect who kept meeting God in unlikely places and people, who kept adjusting their lives, and stumbling over old patterns and breaking through to new life: followers became leaders, women make public dramatic statements of love, people heartbroken by sorrow and the absurdity of death are met with experiences of new life—of Jesus not bound by death but always calling forward to new life. And, they tell their friends of this strange, slant-wise truth. Idle tales…
    Therefore, Jesus told parables, and gave us strange sayings.
    Are these idle tales?
    Reading a contemporary, The Message Bible translation:
    Matthew 6:27-33: “Has anyone by fussing in front of the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? All this time and money wasted on fashion—do you think it makes that much difference? Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them. If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving.
    Or these idle tales?
    “The first shall be last, and the last first….”
    “Become like a child so that you can enter into the kingdom of heaven.
    “In as much as you give food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty, you give it to me…”
    “Turn the other cheek, when someone strikes you…”
    “If you have two coats, give 1 away…”
    “Ask me for living water…”
    A cluster of idle tales…
    Tell it slant, because otherwise, truth has a hard time coming up against the status quo, the half-lies that we tell ourselves: that to get ahead, we must push other people aside; that our economy must grow at all costs, even at the cost of the earth and its living creatures and other people left behind; that more stuff equals more happiness; that we don’t need to care about the past or the future; that violence brings peace..
    These half-lies, which pass for truth because we don’t hear much to counterbalance them; these half-lies pull us toward being less than we can be. God can’t get a word in edgewise, hardly; and God doesn’t compel; God invites us.
    What are seemingly idle tales can come to us when we listen to marginal voices: the poor, women, children, and people from other parts of the world, or the other side of town? What idle tales come to your imagination, stories that counterbalance the half-truths…and the status quo? Ways that you can see solutions to the problems you see and feel in the world?
    For the women didn’t let the disciples persuade them to stop talking….their news spread throughout the world and is the reason you are here today. They had courage to continue talking.
    Through the women’s story, the idle tale, even after Jesus’ horrible death, leading his disciples and friends to despair, God changed the stakes, rebooted, cleaned the disk; created a mysterious new birth, turned death into life; Jesus’ power of love and truth burst through the world, forever; through all barriers, prejudices, political power, cruelty, greed, our own failures to love and to forgive others, and even, perhaps especially ourselves. God always continues to create a world of love and peace for humans and Earth’s creatures. And, the loving power in the universe, needs the story to continue, through you, and me.
    When people tell  idle tales about God’s love and justice, you can feel it.
    Our Confirmation class—three young people—prayed together last week; one in 6th grade is studying sustainability and writing on nuclear power; she prayed for North Korea; another student prayed for the Syrian rebels; another prayed that we might continue as a group to study the Bible together…
    Idle tales are also actions that seem small: Ripple: “We never know how one small action inspired by love to bring about peace might ripple out and change the world.”
    Clean up of Bartlett Brook, behind our church; with UVM students; over four years, we took out a washing machine, a truck, and countless bags of sand, and won an award from Burlington for the most trash collected on Clean-Up Day
    His name was Nathan Johnson.
    He was a canner - he collected cans in Burlington.  He would collect, and talk to people all over the town and college.  He lived alone and very simply.  After he died he left money to his church, 1st Methodist of Burlington, to help homeless and needy men.  I think it was $25,000..

    Five ministers in Burlington got together and wanted to help, in an organized way, the people who came to their churches asking for help.  So, they decided to collect money from those five churches, added Nathan's money, and started JUMP. (Joint Urban Ministry Project)   It was in 1st Methodist for a year or two and then went to 1st Congregational for the next 24 years. And the rest is history.

    The great, most important idle tale is that God raises Jesus from the dead each day,  in you, strengthening you to be a Protest-ant, against all that creates disharmony and demeans people or that degrades them and Earth’s creatures. Strengthening you to embrace life, here on earth, and eternally.
    God seeks to restore harmony and wholeness (the meaning of “salvation”) through you and me, and Ascension, and the world-wide church, and all people. Because “God is the unconditional lover of all creation,” (­The Underground Church, p. 99)
    For the earliest representations of Jesus in the first 1,000 years (on walls and tombs and in churches) were not of Jesus suffering on the cross, but rather of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, the new ruler on the throne instead of Caesar, and of Paradise Restored.
    You and I are alive to celebrate and enjoy God’s love and life given in so many ways.
    Do you think you can take the idle tale of the women, that Jesus’ love is alive, now and always, and try it out, trust in your ability to love, and courageously give your imagination, your faith (trust), your love to it?  If you answer yes, your answer will bring you sorrow and joy, freedom and risk, adventure and meaning; and your answer will continue to tell the greatest story ever told, through your very own, precious, life.
    Amen

    No comments:

    Post a Comment