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10/21/2018 0 Comments I Love So Much as it Grows DarkA sermon preached on 10/21/2018
by Rev. Robin Bartlett at the First Church in Sterling, MA Please pray with me in the words of this poem entitled Dios by Cesar Vallejo I feel God travel with me, when the sun sets and on the sea, together we walk as it grows dark. We are all together but walk like orphans. But I feel God and he gives color to my life. He is kind and sad, like those who attend the sick and dying; He whispers like a lover in distress. His heart must hurt for his creation. Oh, my God, though I have just come to you, I love so much as it grows dark, and in the balance within the heart, I weigh and weep for frail Creation. And you, what do you weep for … you who love with your immense and whirling heart? I consecrate you, God, because you love so much; because you never smile; because your heart must ache as Time continues. Amen. Glennon Doyle says that the world is both beautiful and brutal all that the same time. She calls it “brutiful.” I love so much as it grows dark, the poet says. On this day when the October trees are showing us what the beauty of letting go looks like, we sit also with great suffering. There are people here still recovering from cancer treatments and heart problems, and broken hearts. There are people sitting among us who are worried where their next meal will come from, or if they will ever stave off this loneliness. We are joined today by the family of Josh Byrne who tragically lost his life on his honeymoon last week in Costa Rica in a flash flood. We grieve at the loss of life and livelihood by hurricane victims in the Florida panhandle. On this day that we affirm beautiful Knox Leclair’s status as beloved by God and marvel at the miracle of his life, our heart is also at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore with our 19 month old Charlie, paralyzed from the neck down since July 5th from a terrifying disease. We celebrate the beautiful wedding of “our kids”, Lilly Harper to Kevin Pelland yesterday, and we mourn on the one year anniversary of Shelly Kennedy Leonard’s death. I watched the absolute joy on your faces last week as you introduced me to your dogs and cats and guinea pigs; as Pumpkin the bird cat-called me during my sermon. And I saw the tears that rolled down your cheeks as you lit candles for your beloved pets now gone. Creation gives so much to us, and takes so much from us. What do you weep for…you who love with your immense and whirling heart? Our scripture this morning is from one of the most theologically troubling and stunningly written books of the Bible, the book of Job. It’s a story about trying to love God amid the growing darkness of one man's greatest suffering. Job is a wealthy man living in UZ with a large family. In the text, he is called “blameless” and “upright.” In other words, he does all the “right and good” things. He goes to work, he pays his tithe at church, he always tips the waiters generously at restaurants even if the service was slow, he never flips people off on route 2 when he’s stuck in traffic, he comes home to his adoring family and gives them his full presence, never scrolling through his iPhone when he should be paying attention to the loud and joyful conversation at the dinner table. He is good to his mama, and mows her lawn once a week. He says his prayers at night, giving thanks to God for all of it. Satan shows up to talk to God about Job. Satan says “this guy Job can’t really be all that good.” Satan and God get into a debate because God strongly disagrees. Job really IS this good and pure, God says. Satan tells God that the only reason Job is so sinless and such a great, upstanding person is because God has blessed him so abundantly with all of the good things—-a great family, a prosperous job, a nice house, stock options, and a good community around him. Satan says that if he’s allowed to relentlessly punish Job, Job will eventually turn and curse God. God disagrees, and for some reason, takes Satan up on this bet. He says to Satan, “OK, you can punish Job relentlessly…just don’t kill him.” In the course of one day, Job receives four messages, each bearing separate news that his livestock, servants, and ten children have all died due to marauding invaders or natural catastrophes. Job tears his clothes and shaves his head in mourning, but he still blesses God in his prayers. I love so much as it grows dark. Satan appears in heaven again, and God grants him another chance to test Job. This time, Job is afflicted with horrible skin sores. His wife encourages him to curse God and to give up and die, but Job refuses, struggling to accept his circumstances. I feel God travel with me, when the sun sets and on the sea, together we walk as it grows dark. We are all together but walk like orphans. Job has friends that come and visit, which is a good thing for friends to do, but the visit soon turns sour. After sitting with Job in silence for seven days while he mourns, they start bombarding him with long explanations for why these terrible things have happened to him. Eliphaz tells Job that God must be punishing him for something terrible he has done. Bildad and Zophar agree saying that Job must have committed evil, that his dead children brought this upon themselves, and worse, that he probably deserves greater punishment than what he even received. They say things like, “everything happens for a reason.” “God doesn’t give us anything we can’t handle.” “Maybe God just needed one more angel.” Thankfully, Job calls them out. He’s like nope nope nope. First of all, we have done nothing wrong. And second of all, I don’t worship some kind of sadistic God like that. He calls his friends “worthless physicians” who “whitewash their advice with lies.” He refuses to curse God. Though he believes his friends to be full of it, he continues to lament that bad things can happen to good people. He laments the injustice that allows wicked people to prosper while someone like him who has spent his life loving and serving the Lord could be cursed so terribly. Out of the whirlwind, God finally speaks, asking a list of rhetorical questions, which is where we enter the story from our scripture today in chapter 38. God asks Job: Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? Who has the wisdom to number the clouds? Or who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens, when the dust runs into a mass and the clods cling together? In each instance, God announces that the elements of creation have been positioned exactly as intended. Maybe that’s cold comfort to some, but it is relieving to me. For those of us who attended Andy’s Eat Pray Learn on Wednesday night, where we talked about Darwin, Creation and God (a small subject for an hour long presentation on a Wednesday night), we left with more Job-like questions than answers. If the elements of creation have been positioned exactly as intended by a loving and all powerful God, why is natural selection all so brutal? Why, over the course of evolution, have 99.3% of species been eradicated from the earth? Why do natural disasters steal so many lives? Why do we suffer? Why would God create beings capable of killing the planet and each other? Does your heart hurt for your creation, God? The most relieving and beautiful concept that Andy said to us that night was the thing evolution teaches us: human beings are not the center of the universe. While some of our scriptures certainly suggest otherwise, this is the beautiful and relieving thing God is saying to Job, too. The universe has order, and its not ordered around you. God assures us that the world contains a certain sense of wisdom that we will never understand. Job’s fear was that the disorder in his own life implied that creation had run amuck or worse yet, that God had abandoned his just rule over the world. But Job 38 is a simple assurance that there is a method to the madness. God doesn’t promise that chaos and disorder won’t break out, only that creation is not greater than its creator. (W. Dennis Tucker) There’s something terrifying and relieving about being a teeny tiny speck on God’s vast and ordered universe. There’s something profoundly relieving to know that its not all about me because I’m not at the center of it. But I feel God and he gives color to my life. He is kind and sad, like those who attend the sick and dying; He whispers like a lover in distress. His heart must hurt for his creation. I asked blessed, broken-hearted mama Becky Conway if I could share some of her writing about baby Charlotte with you again today and she said yes. She has been asking me questions about God. Why God would steal from her girl. She has been crying out like Job, and I told her that raging to God is a form of faithful prayer we should all participate in far more often. So please hear this as a prayer. She writes: “I hate to go back to this being “unfair”, my dad always said “life isn’t fair”. i’ve never understood that saying more than I do now. why is it bad things happen to good people? I could ask a million “why” questions but i’ll spare you that novel…. …I think about our “old life” often. if i’m being honest with you it makes me angry. how come we have the greatest surprise of our life, we nurture and care for her and love her more than anything in this world. we do everything “right”, and things like this happen. ….For now I will focus on my purpose. being the best mom i can be and being an advocate for her and others. i want to teach everyone that people with “disabilities” are not different. to allow others to see through appearances that make people look at you or question what is wrong. one day I hope for this world to look past the things that make us who we are in a judgmental way and to just accept each other.” I said this to Becky, but I want to also say this to all of you, as well: If I believed that God would steal from Charlie to punish or to teach a lesson, or for some other purpose, I’d be an atheist. God is Love, period. God doesn’t offer protection to those who call God’s name as our psalmist suggests, but is present to us, especially in our deepest suffering. God walks with us in the dark. God’s immense and whirling heart aches when our hearts ache. God shows up in every prayer others pray for you, in the hands of the nurses and doctors who care for you, in your mama heart that leads you to work for acceptance of difference. God is in your family, who is strong at the broken places; God is there in all of the people willing you to survive with everything they have. You can see God every time you look into the beautiful eyes and still shining smile of your child. I love you. I am with you. I will not leave. That’s what God says to us out of the whirlwind of this brutiful, ordered universe we are not the center of: “I love you. I am with you. I will not leave.” God tilts the waterskins of heaven, giving us what we thirst for when we cry out God’s name. And God promises us this: Love wins in the end. If love hasn’t won yet, it’s not the end. Sung: I see trees of green, red roses too I see them bloom for me and you And I think to myself what a wonderful world I see skies of blue and clouds of white The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night And I think to myself what a wonderful world The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky Are also on the faces of people going by I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do They're really saying I love you I hear babies crying, I watch them grow They'll learn much more than I'll never know And I think to myself what a wonderful world Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world Amen
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10/7/2018 0 Comments TodayA sermon for the UU Church of Concord, NH preached October 7, 2019 at the UU Church of Concord, NH by the Rev. Robin Bartlett, one of your alumni UU church of Concord! It is so good to be back. I grew up in this church, the daughter of Peter and Christy Bartlett and Beth (Bartlett) Armstrong and Stew Armstrong. I was born into this church family in 1976 and was christened here the same year. I was the only baby in the nursery that year. The only other Sunday School kid at the time was a teenager, Rachel Anderson and she babysat me in the nursery, and her father is sitting right in front of me. She is also a UU minister now. Coincidence? I think not. I was raised to believe in the Holy Trinity here: Emerson, Humanism and the Democratic party. I lit my first Christmas candle on your altar as the littlest angel. I sang my first solo here. I cooked my first turkey dinner here. I learned all about sex and anatomy here in AYS, now called OWL. I came of age here in 8th grade. I had my first wedding here. A lot of my childhood memories contain the smell of this building, which I can still conjure up in my nose. I left almost 25 years ago in 1994 when I graduated from Concord High, but I have never forgotten you. You helped me find my voice. You brought me to my first anti-war protest on Washington. You supported me in high school when I protested the school musical. You cheered me on when I received the NH young feminist of the year award that same year. You gave me the gift of Unitarian Universalism, the free faith which has nurtured me throughout my spiritual journey. This journey has led me down many different paths, including into the ministry. The Unitarian Universalism you gave to me held me from the Richard Dawkins-esque atheism of my youth to the progressive Christian church in Central Massachusetts I now lead. Imagine a tradition so wide in its welcome that it has room for both Dawkins and Jesus! Though I have been ordained for 5 years as of this month, this is the first time I have preached from your pulpit. Thank you, Michael, for this daunting opportunity. I think I see my sixth grade teacher, and my piano teacher from that same era. So this is not nerve-wracking at all. This is why, at the risk of comparing myself to Jesus, I chose a reading from the Gospel of Luke to read today. In this reading Jesus is beginning his ministry. He has returned to his hometown of Nazareth in Galilee, and everyone has heard about him at this point. He had begun to teach in the synagogues, and word was spreading. He was praised everywhere he went. He was on his way to becoming, in other words, a bit of a celebrity preacher. And now Jesus is offered his “hometown boy makes good” moment. He gets to preach in his childhood congregation. He gets up in the pulpit, looks over the crowd of people that contain his 6th grade teacher and several of his high school teachers and his parents’ friends and the elder who scolded him for loading up on too much cake at social hour, and unrolls the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah. Expectation fills the room. People catch their breath. He stands in front of them, probably thinking a flood of thoughts. Maybe his palms were sweaty, and maybe he swallowed hard. Jesus cleared his throat, and read this text from the Prophet Isaiah: The spirit of the Lord is upon me, Because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To let the oppressed go free, To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. And then, with all eyes on him, and all of the people waiting with baited breath to hear what he might say next, Jesus sits down. I call this the “Jesus mic drop.” Jesus takes the scroll, reads the text, decides it’s all the words he needs to say, drops the mic. And then he sits down. I can only imagine what the people in that Temple were thinking when Jesus sat down. They were expecting to hear a sermon—some commentary on the text. They were expecting so much more than what he gave them, which was from the scrolls that they had heard probably hundreds of times already. “The eyes of all the synagogue were fixed upon him,” the text says. They stare. “DUDE. Did he forget to write his sermon or something?” “Is he for real? THAT’S IT?!” And all eyes still on him, still sitting in his chair, maybe because he senses they need more from him, Jesus adds: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” That’s it. That’s his commentary. “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” I have come here to proclaim the same thing. But I want to say it a little differently because I grew up in this church, and I know a little bit about your theology. So this is the Robin Bartlett Revised standard version: The spirit of Love is upon me because I have been anointed to bring you good news to you who are brokenhearted. All of you who are held captive will soon be released, the blind will see, and the oppressed will receive justice. And I am proclaiming this—2018--the year of Love’s blessing—the year of the Love Revolution. Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. I didn’t have the lay reader read the rest of the scripture, because I’m hoping that what happens next to Jesus doesn’t happen to me. Jesus gets driven out of town. The congregation takes him to the top of the hill to throw him off of the cliff. “Truly I tell you,” he says, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown.” And he walks right through the crowd and leaves. Dianna Butler Bass, in her sermon “the power of today” says: “(The people in the synagogue) were likely shocked. What do you mean that the Spirit of the Lord is HERE? Now? Today? That the poor hear good news, that prisoners are being released, the blind see, and the oppressed receive justice? This is the year of Lord's favor?” You are probably thinking the same thing. Have you been reading the news? There is no way that this scripture is being fulfilled today. This can’t be the year of Love’s blessing. Today, I heard that a powerful judge lied under oath after being accused of sexual assault and is still getting confirmed to the highest court in our land. Today, the president of the United States is mocking a sexual assault victim. Today, our country is more divided than it has been since the aftermath of the Civil War, and the modus operandi is pure cruelty. Today, immigrant and refugee children are still separated from their parents in detention camps. Today, there’s a Muslim ban, trans folks are regularly being murdered, and black men are getting shot and killed in their own homes. You can’t be serious that this scripture has been fulfilled TODAY. We don’t often talk about the power of today. Instead, we spend a lot of time reminiscing about the past, and freaking out about the future. “Harness the power of TODAY,” Jesus says, in his one-line commentary. Jesus sounds like some kind of self-help guru. But that's what he says. Despite all evidence to the contrary, THIS is the year of the love revolution. Because TODAY the spirit of Love is upon us. I just went to see my dear friend from Concord High School Geno Carr in his Broadway musical debut this summer, in “Come From Away.” Have you seen it? Do any of you know Geno? Talk about Hometown boy makes good. (Geno and I sang our first duet together in Junior High chorus at Rundlett, so I’m just saying….my big break may be coming next.) “Come From Away” is the remarkable true story of a small town that welcomed the whole world. Gander, New Foundland is a town about the size of my small town in Sterling, Massachusetts—9,000 people— where 38 planes were diverted on September 11, 2001 when the United States closed its airspace for the first time in history. The people of Gander saved the whole world that day. The size of the population of the town nearly doubled when the planes landed. 7,000 confused, angry, terrified “plane people” from all over the world— were put up in people’s homes and schools and community centers. Stores in the town stripped their shelves to bring the “plane people” toiletries, diapers, sanitary products for women, and snacks. The citizens of Gander made three meals a day for the “plane people” for four days, gave them air mattresses and hand-me-down clothing and showers. They tried to communicate in languages not their own and kept the animals stowed in the bottom of the planes alive including a pregnant Bonobo. They got the passengers phones so that they could desperately call home. They comforted the bereaved and terrified once the plane people realized what was happening back in the United States. The people of Gander distracted them with jokes, sang karaoke and danced with them in the town bar. They found places in the town church for Jews and Muslims and Hindus and Christians to pray together. They found places underneath the cross on the altar for the Muslims to put their prayer rugs, and for the Jews to say the shabbat blessing and for Hindus to chant mantras. Imagine a church in small town Newfoundland so wide in its welcome it can hold all the world’s religious traditions under one roof! The people of Gander generally just opened their homes and hearts to strangers from all over the world that day. One of the cast members said, the show “is not about the sadness of September 11th, it’s about the goodness that came out of it.” Like the first responders who ran to the crumbling twin towers instead of away, the people of Gander, Newfoundland taught us something about revolutionary love that terrible day. In the midst of unprecedented terror, the people of Gander proclaimed that TODAY the spirit of Love was upon them. Despite desperate family members searching for thousands of lost loved among the rubble, the people of Gander declared TODAY we have been anointed to bring good news to those who suffer. Despite hate winning the news cycle, the people of Gander declared that today Love has sent us to proclaim release to those held captive by hate. Despite stories of Muslim folks being targeted and killed in retribution for the terrorist attacks, the people of Gander declared that those who were blind to their own prejudices now may see one another. TODAY. Despite language and culture barriers, the people of Gander declared with their actions that TODAY is the year of Love’s favor. TODAY the oppressed will go free. Today, Sunday, October 7th, 2018, love’s blessing is upon us. Today you have been anointed by the spirit of Love, to bring good news to the poor. The poor is all of us—we who live in a culture that starves the spirit, thrives on separation and greed, plies us with a steady diet of fake news and the thin gruel of empty consumerism. Our good news is that there is depth and joy and love beyond the lies we are fed by those who wish to exploit us. Today the scripture is fulfilled. We are bringing good news to the poor. Today we are releasing captives: those of us who have been held captive by the toxic religious and ideological orthodoxies of our youth. In shared faith, we are given uncompromising, unrelenting, indomitable freedom. Today the scripture is fulfilled. We are setting the captives free. Today, our eyes are being opened to what we were once oblivious to—to what was once hidden or silenced. We are uncovering the truth of sexual assault, the truth of white supremacy, the truth of patriarchy, the truth that we aren’t what we thought we were as a nation or as a people. Our eyes are open, and we are responding not just with exhaustion, cynicism and despair, but in the streets, in the board rooms, and in the voting booths. Today the scripture is fulfilled. We are recovering sight to the blind. Today the oppressed are being set free. I know that you have a deep commitment to welcoming and supporting New Americans who have come to this country as refugees. Your circles of support have been helping these families establish new lives since 2008. The families, from Burundi, Iraq, Bhutan, and Congo have enriched the lives of your church in ways you never imagined. You are needed now more than ever. TODAY the scripture is fulfilled because of all of you. The oppressed are receiving justice. And still, you and I know there is more work to do. The people we serve TODAY need us now more than ever. And TODAY we can transform from people who succumb to the worst of who we are, to people who live in to the best of who we can be. The moral revolution this country needs is here in this room. The Church was made for such a time as this: demanding that we welcome the stranger and pray for our enemies. The church was made for such a time as this: demanding that we LOVE our neighbor as ourselves. WE were made for such a time as this, because together we can do very hard things. Today is the day. There is no time but now, no people but us, and no way forward without turning toward one another. The spirit of Love is upon us. Bring good news out into a hurting world that desperately needs love’s healing. Today. Amen. |
AuthorRev. Robin Bartlett is the Senior Pastor at the First Church in Sterling, Massachusetts. www.fcsterling.org Archives
February 2021
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