The SF Giants held a student summit at Oracle park on Saturday called Bring Change to Mind.  It was a workshop designed to remind students that their mental health was a normal part of health and they should not feel stigmatized by talking about it, or seeking help, or helping someone else.

In late February the Texas governor Greg Abbott directed the state's child welfare agency to open child abuse investigations into parents that provide gender-affirming care to their children.  Anyone can make an anonymous report to Child Protective Services.  While some families have already been targeted by Child Protective Services and are in the system already, many families are trying to pre-emptively engage legal counsel.  Lawyers are saying they have never before been consulted about whether it is legal to follow a doctor's orders.1

In Russia, Vladimir Putin has made it a criminal violation punishable by 15 years in prison for anyone in Russia to speak of Russian involvement with Ukraine in any way that goes against the state talking points, including the use of the word “war.”  Facebook and Twitter have been suspended to discourage outside information from being seen by Russian citizens.

We are deeply divided by the politics of Trump vs. anyone else.

We are deeply divided by talk of COVID protocols.

We are deeply divided by climate conversations.

Stressful things of this nature have a deep influence on our mental well being, and our physical health as individuals and as communities.  Between the loss of civil discourse, the pandemic, and now the war between Russia and Ukraine, our stress levels have been steadily climbing upward.  I'm sure most of us met our stress limit long ago.

With all that in mind, I ask you to consider your reaction to this quote?

“Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies; we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn't through love, because love is hard.  It makes demands. Hate is simple. So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that's easier than trying to hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time.”2

You have a post-it inside of your bulletin.  I'd like you to write down the word “hate.”  

The quote is from a novel called Beartown, an imaginary town in Sweden.  Written by Swedish author Fredrik Backman, the novel is about the things that can unite and the things that can divide a community.  There has been a startling crime committed by a teen that sets the stage for the divisions that are then created, and the sides people start to take, and the lengths people are or are not willing to go in order to remain in community.

How did you feel when you wrote the word “hate?”  Was it uncomfortable just to write it?  It's the kind of word that's hard to say, hard to hear, and hard to see being written by our own hand.  I invite us to explore this word and the impact it has on us, because I think that the temptation to hate is one of the riskiest temptations we face right now.  

Hate allows us to do just what the author described and categorize the world into us and them; good and evil; friends and enemies.  Even on facebook, it's tempting to be friends with people who hate the same things as we do!  Hate is a done deal – no decisions to be made, no compromises to be made, no work to be done, nothing needs to change.  It's tempting because all conflict can potentially go away – isn't that what we all want, a conflict free life?

Think of your own life in the past few years.  We've lived through some rocky political times, the extreme range of climate experiences is mind boggling, the pandemic has exhausted us, and most recently the danger of another major war looms on the horizon.  Add to that, the normal ups and downs of life and love and loss, work and play, and we have very little extra space within us to offer anything of ourselves to any more difficulties.  Why work through a difficult relationships, I'm too tired.   Why go to the trouble to enter into the maze-like world of trying to understand something, when it's so complicated?  I'm tired, I have to take care of my own health, I have to step back from things that stress me out.  Yes, we do, and yet we risk getting in the habit of not engaging, not trying to be with the other, no longer remembering how to be in even a healthy conflict.

Jesus avoids the temptations of the devil, according to the Lukan version of these events, because he was filled with the holy spirit.  Listen to the different phrases each gospel writer uses.  In Matthew we read, “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”  He was led by the Spirit, to be tempted by the devil.  In Mark we the entire story is told in just two verses:  “And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.”  Luke however begins with “Jesus, full of the Spirit”  This telling of the events let us know right away that Jesus was full of the Spirit, inside of him, the whole time.  Yes, led by the Spirit, and yes, tempted, but all of this while he was “full of the Spirit.”  One commentator said, the Spirit didn't just drop him off.  While Jesus was tempted by the devil to satisfy his desire for food, safety, and power, Jesus didn't think his way out of the struggle.  The spirit was within him.  While we might not think of food and safety and power being related, Diana Butler Bass tells us that in Jesus' time, they were very much related to survival.  In the time of Caesar, distribution of food and protection were directly controlled by Caesar, so your well being was directly affected by your loyalties.  Maybe that's what Putin wants.  Jesus knew, says Diana Butler Bass, that “His will be the power of love, service, gratitude, and humility. A “kingdom” with a table instead of a throne.”3

Love requires us to take risks, the opposite of shutting down and isolating and giving up.  Love requires us to ask questions.  Love requires us to live with the unknown and trust.  In a guest opinion article in the NY Times, Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Wakler wrote about the kind of love that his congregation still feels, even after being attacked.  Love, even love your enemy, or love as you would like to be loved, is hard because we are all strangers and that is a great unknown, and that leads to fear.  Entitled, “My Synagogue Was Attacked, but I Will Never Stop Welcoming the Stranger,” he writes “We're strangers because it takes too much work to be curious, to give others the benefit of the doubt.” Love is harder.  It's tempting not to love. (The full article is out on the square table in the narthex.)

Right now in the world, our wilderness seems to be all around us, maybe just around the next corner.  Our wilderness is the fast-paced news cycle that keeps TMI right in front of us 24/7.  Too much information.  Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber says “Maybe the opposite of fear isn't bravery. Maybe the opposite of fear is...love.”  She recognizes our exhaustion saying, “"I'm not saying we should put our heads in the sand, I'm saying that if your circuits are overwhelmed there's a reason and the reason isn't because you are heartless, it's because there is not a human heart on this planet that can bear all of what is happening right now."5

Maybe hate is not your particular temptation these days.  I invite you to take a minute right now, to write down, just for yourself, what are you tempted by in the midst of life these days?  

Early on in the pandemic, the Poetry Society of America launched a series called Reading in the Dark, in which they asked poets which poetry they turn to in difficult times.  One respondent, a medical doctor named C. Dale Young, wrote about why he chose the poem called A Brief for the Defense, by Jack Gilbert.  He writes, “This poem, "A Brief for the Defense," is complicated and not always loved by people, but in it I hear a call for resistance in the face of overwhelming sadness and despair. I come back, again and again, to these lines: "We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, / but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have / the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless / furnace of this world."  The entire poem is available in the narthex also.  One other line that caught my attention was the line in the poem that reads, “To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.”  When there is so much angst out there, be sure not to focus only on the injustice.  Focusing only on the wrong and the hurt means that the anxiety has won, means the evil has won by taking the whole of us.  We must risk delight in the midst of the hurt so that we don't break under the weight of the world.

This poem doesn't answer all questions, but makes a good point.  Dr. Young turned to those words in the midst of the dark days of the pandemic.

What do you turn to?  Is there a poem, a scripture text, a prayer, an activity that reminds you not to give up, not to hate, not to give in to the easier road?  Just a few days ago we were reminded that the mark of ashes is among other things, a reminder to us that we are claimed by God.  This year, in this place, in these troubling days, what is the thing that you will do to be closer to God?  Write that down on your post-it note too.  Pray.  Draw.  Walk.  Read scripture.  Don't be tempted to shut down, isolate, or hate lest we forget how to relate to one another.  

Here are some words by Cheryl Lawrie, as posted on the front of your bulletin:

i just realized

that in my imagination

the wilderness is always somewhere else;

a foreign landscape i actively have to enter

in the act of being faithful.

truthfully,

the wilderness is always where i am

right now

and faith is the courage to stay with it

when i'd rather pretend i am

anywhere else.

Let us pray,

____________________________

1 As Texas targets trans kids, their families scramble to find lawyers

2 From a facebook memory post of a colleague.  She participated in a workshop a year ago in which she was reminded of this quote.  Swedish author Frederik Backman writes in his novel Beartown, about a small town in Sweden that becomes known for their youth hockey.  He writes about the stories that unite them and the stories that divide them.

3 Diana Butler Bass, March 6th Sunday Musings from the Cottage

4 My Synagogue Was Attacked, But I Will Never Stop Welcoming the Stranger

5 If you can't take in anymore, there's a reason  And  "Be Not Afraid" <--(um, yeah...ok)

"Test?"

Reverend Debra McGuire

March 6, 2022

Scripture/links