transformation

16 Pentecost: From A to B (or dying again, and again, and again…)

September 12, 2021 by Cam Miller

There is something about September,
even when it has been years since you were
in school or had kids in school, that is so fresh.

To me September feels more like the New Year
than January 1…or Advent 1 for that matter.

I don’t know how to launch into this gracefully,
so here goes: I know we all think we are special.
I don’t know if that is a Western thing,
or an American thing,
or a human thing,
but we all think we are special —
even if we think we are a terrible person
we think we are an especially terrible person.

Whether you are unemployed at the moment
or a corporate executive;
whether you are a teacher of children
or a child of teachers;
whether you are of Italian ancestry
or your genes are rooted in Tanzania;
whether you eat sushi from expensive restaurants
or Mac ‘N Cheese from a box;
we are all on our way
from A to B
and there is only one way to get there.

Now we all have different ideas
and names
for “A” and “B.”
And that is what this sermon is about –
indeed, that is what today’s Gospel is about
and what religion is all about
not to put too fine a point on it.

When we hear stuff like Jesus predicting
he will be rejected and killed and suffer,
and that he supposedly wants us to do the same,
that is,
deny ourselves,
find a cross, and
follow him into oblivion,
that is the A to B path
being recommended by the gospels.

Now let me add a caveat
included in Marcus Borg’s “Reading the Bible Again, for the First Time.”
He tells of being at a Christian seminary somewhere
when a guest speaker, a Hindu,
offered an interesting response
to such gospel language.
In particular, it was to Jesus purportedly declaring
that HE is
“the only way
and the only truth
and the only life.”

“It is absolutely true” the Hindu said,
“that Jesus is the only way.
And that way – of dying to an old way of being
and being born into a new way of being –
is known in all of the religions of the world.”

You see, it is a universal A to B.

It is an example of Jesus’ abundant reversal sayings
that are rough paradoxical wisdom
that every one of us knows from experience,
but which we would rather not know
and look away from.

Dying to an old way of being
and being born into a new way of being
is a universal human wisdom
that is echoed in particular
at the heart of the Christian Gospel.

But please, let’s not be literal-minded.
Just because the text says, “take up your cross
and follow me”
does not mean
we have to go looking for ways
to be persecuted.
And most especially
it does not mean the myriad
assortment of pain and suffering
we all experience – as if the cross
is a symbol of random tragedy.

This saying gets bastardized
and trivialized
when we talk about our arthritis
as a cross we have to bear.
Or our domestic partner’s slovenly habits
as our cross to bear.
Or our children’s discipline problem’s
as our cross to bear.
Or any one of the standard and normal
difficulties that we humans encounter
in the course of our every day lives.

Dying to an old way of being
and being born into a new way of being
is about choice.
It is about choices we have the opportunity to make
that subvert the way the world is organized
and which helps the transformation of the old order
to a new place.

Whether it is our own resistance to being transformed,
or the resistance of those with power
who use that power to repress justice,
dying to an old way of being
and being born into a new way of being,
is about becoming agents
of transformation.

The cross we have to bear
is not about our personal pain and suffering,
it is about our willingness
to become agents of personal
and social transformation.

Please allow me to repeat that,
because it is so counter-cultural:
The cross we have to bear
is not about our personal pain and suffering,
it is about our willingness
to become agents of personal
and social transformation.

It is about our willingness
to become midwives of death
and the mothers of new birth.

Peter’s horrified reaction to Jesus’ A to B, is typical.
We want to be comforted.
We want some assurance
that all this effort will give us some safety
and some personal protection.
We want our religion
and our god
and our church to calm our fears,
cradle our pain,
caress our grief,
erase our scars,
forgive our crimes,
heal our remorse,
and generally make us feel better.

Peter’s response is our response:
“Hey, man, what are you talking about?”

But the stunning wisdom we behold
underneath this ugly text,
tells us that the God
who invites us to die to the old —
an old way that is keeping us from being transformed into the new —
is not the least bit deterred by our fear,
or our pain,
or our anxiety
or even our death.

If I am even close to understanding this text,
then the God who we come to worship —
while not desiring our suffering
or encouraging our pain —
does not consider they are a barrier to our efforts
to bring justice into life.

I don’t mean to over-emphasize this point here,
but it does seem kind of important.

Most of the prayers I offer to God,
are petitions for God to intervene somehow
on behalf of other people
or myself,
and for the relief of our pain and suffering.
But I get the distinct feeling
from this very core gospel text,
that such things
are not really at the heart of God’s concern.
Rather, that in giving birth
labor is expected
and pain
has a function in delivery.

If I listen to this wisdom,
and don’t get angry because I don’t like it —
which I don’t — then what I hear
is that much of our pain
and much of our suffering
is unfortunate
but a natural course of events.

This excludes, of course, the pain
and suffering we inflict upon one another.

If I am hearing this wisdom right,
then I can imagine God saying to me:
“Cam, I feel your pain, I really do,
but your pain is beside the point.”

”Listen, I hear your fear,
and I know, I really know,
that fear is difficult to move beyond,
but that is your task.”

”I know you hurt, Cam,
and I know, because I hurt too,
that it gets hard to see beyond your own needs,
but that is what you need to do.”

“Cam, I know you are very sad
at the loss of so much which was familiar to you,
and I really do know
what grief and sorrow feel like,
but don’t use that to hold back the tide
of transformation
which is something I have set in motion.”

“Remember Cam, I have searched you out
and known you…
I really have
and I really do.

So you need to know
that your life is found in death,
and that all those things you cling to
need to be let go of.
And you need to risk the death
of what you care about
in order to gain the life you imagine.”

That is just my imagination:
what I imagine God would say to me
in a way I could understand.
Inside this ugly text of the gospel,
is a stunningly beautiful wisdom:

To be transformed
and be born into a new way of being
we have to die to our current way of being.

If you don’t like this painful wisdom
seek not the Buddha,
for he will tell you that
before enlightenment
much death comes first.

Seek not an escape from this wisdom
through Hinduism,
because the cycle of life is an endless dying
to the old in search of the new.

Seek not an escape from this wisdom
through Islam, for death is the doorway to relief.

Seek not even the science of Physics
for it will tell you
that energy is transformed through death –
over and over and over again.

In fact, I suspect this wisdom
is what we are looking for in coming here.
Not because we cherish suffering.

Not because we necessarily believe Jesus
died for our sins.
But because intuitively,
experientially,
every one of us knows
that there is only one way
to get from who we are at this moment
to the person we have always wanted to become.

That way,
in one way or another,
includes a death.
Not a physical death
but a letting-go-death of the things
we hold onto that keep us from transformation.

I don’t know what that is for you —
it could be an obsession with power
dependence on alcohol
drivenness for beauty
an endless lust for pleasure
a bottomless hunger for success
a penchant for absolute security
even the toxic nectar of resentment —
but to the extent that they keep us from being midwives of justice,
and hold us back
from a personal transformation
that has called to us through the years,
is the extent
of the death that awaits us.

This ancient and homely story
we tell over and over and over again
through the centuries,
is a metaphor for the wisdom
that aches inside us all.
It is universal.
It is the way from A to B.

3 Lent B, 2021: Hillel and Jesus, Practice and Transformation…

March 7, 2021 by Cam Miller

“We live on only one side of the world,”
Kenneth Patchen concluded his poem.

”Through the flames I can see the lowered faces
of creatures that watch us in amused love.
We live on only one side of the world.”

Whether metaphysical worlds,
as he may have been writing about,
or the historic worlds —
ours and those many worlds
that unfolded before us
in their own times and places —
we live on our side
and see those other worlds
through glasses fitted
with 21^st century lenses.

Today I want to try to poke into another world
using a more antique lens, or
at least changing our usual view.
In order to do so,
this sermon or reflection
is longer than most.
Fortunately, you have a control switch
on your computer or smart phone
and you can do it in smaller bites if you wish.

One thing is for sure about Jesus
pushing people around
and turning tables upside down
in the Temple courtyard.
He could not have done it alone.

First of all,
the Temple mount was more than thirty-five acres
and big enough to accommodate
nearly thirty-five football fields.
We’re talking BIG courtyards!

Secondly, what small business owner
with even one once of chutzpah
is going to stand by
and passively watch some scrawny rabbi
ruin his business and demolish his inventory?
The minute Jesus started pushing people around
and throwing birdcages into the air
you know all those guys with vested interests
would come after him –
and if they came after Jesus
we can figure that Jesus’ boys
got into the fight too.

I like to imagine
that Jesus woke up the next morning bruised, stiff,
sore, and hung-over with regret
for letting go of his temper
and causing a riot.

But, while that is a fine cinematic story,
I want to turn toward that Exodus passage
(20:1-17)
and engage in a little rabbinical Christianity.
I promise that if we dive into the law of Moses
we will come up with a clearer view of Jesus.

It would be inconceivable
for a Jew to talk about Moses
without understanding him in the context of Torah.

Likewise, it would be ridiculous
for a Buddhist to talk about Buddha
without understanding him in the context
of the sutras and tantras.

Or imagine a Taoist trying to explain Chuang-tzu
without understanding him
in the context of the Tao-te ching?

Yet popular Christianity,
for centuries if not forever,
has assumed we could understand Jesus
outside the context of Torah and Talmud.

For example, there are 621 Laws of Torah
but Christians normally only talk about ten.
Of the Talmud we know even less.

We scratch for spiritual wisdom in Christianity
from the resurrection forward,
but that is like trying to understand
Abraham Lincoln
without knowing about the Civil War, slavery,
or his days in Illinois.
So I want to give us a lens
through which to see Jesus
by way of a Talmudic context.

The Talmud is the collection of stories
and commentary
that interpret the bible as well as add bylaws,
customs, and proverbial advice
to all that is in the Hebrew Scripture.

The Talmud began orally
and was shared by word of mouth.
Eventually it was collected and written down.
It covers a thousand year —
from 580 before the common era (BCE)
to 550 after the common era (CE).

The Talmud grew out of the principle
that ever since the time of Moses
and the written Torah,
there had always been an interpretive process
in the community of faith
that brought the Torah to life
for each generation.

The idea was that Moses
had been given Torah at Sinai,
and each generation onward
delivered that wisdom into the hearts
of the next generation
through an interpretive process.

In Jesus’ day
there was a hot debate within Judaism
over the appropriateness
of this developing Talmudic tradition.

The Sadducees, among others,
claimed that Torah was not to be interpreted
but left alone.
To them the Law as it was received in Scripture
was to be received and applied as literally as possible without modification.

The Pharisees were the primary purveyors
of the Talmudic tradition in Jesus’ day,
and insisted
that the laws and teaching of the prophets
by themselves
required interpretation
and even expansion
from one generation to the next.

If that sounds like a familiar argument, it should.
Think about our own arguments over mediating
the U.S. Constitution.

So Jesus did not stand alone
and there is almost nothing of what he taught
that was not lodged
in the dialogue and debates of his day.
The best way to see this
is with some examples.

Rabbi Hillel
is to Judaism
what Paul is to Christianity.
More than any other single person in the hundred or so years
that surround Jesus,
Hillel shaped the direction of Jewish thinking
and provided the basic principles
upon which the Talmud
eventually came to be formed.

Hillel died a dozen years before Jesus died
and it is likely that Jesus
would have had an opportunity
to hear the great teacher speak.
There is no doubt
that Jesus would have known and argued
with Hillel’s disciples.

You see, Jesus grew up at a time
that can be described as the culmination
of one of Judaism’s most vibrant and creative centuries –
in spite of civil wars and Roman occupation.

The two-hundred years between
the Book of Daniel
and the Jewish Roman Wars of 70 AD,
was rich with great Jewish thinkers,
historians, and heroes.
At the time of Jesus’ birth
Judaism whirled around
two mythic Talmudic sages
who often taught from opposite ends of the Torah:
Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Shammai.
Both these sages
established schools in what we call Palestine,
and attracted large followings.

Shammai was what we would consider “conservative”
because of his more cautious
and limited interpretations of Torah,
while Hillel was liberal and expansive.

The subject of divorce offers us a good example.

The argument between Hillel and Shammai
hovered around Deuteronomy 24 that says, “When a man takes a wife and marries her,
if then she finds no favor in his eyes
because he has found some indecency in her,
he writes her a bill of divorce and puts it in her hand and she departs out of his house…”

Now please understand that in its context,
way back in 6^th Century BCE,
that biblical law was an improvement for women.
Instead of just kicking her out of the house,
writing a bill of divorce was intended to provide warning
and legal recourse for a woman.
While that does not sound like much safety to us
it was an improvement for women in that culture –
and even today in many parts of the world
it would still be an improvement.

But 600 years later,
Shammai and Hillel argued
about how to interpret that law.
Shammai said that only “adultery”
was legitimate grounds for divorce
while Hillel said that,
“She finds no favor in his eyes”
means anything
from adultery to poor housekeeping.

Then Jesus entered the argument.

Someone asked Jesus where he stood
on the question of divorce,
and the implication we don’t hear in that Gospel is:
with whom do you side, Hillel or Shammai?

Instead of quoting Deuteronomy, Jesus says,
“From the beginning God made us male and female…
and because we were created that way,
when a man and a woman are joined in marriage they become one flesh.
What God has joined together
let no one put asunder.”

Jesus’ audience would have been astounded
at that response, shocked even.
What he is saying is that divorce
is not a problem of how to unload property,
it is a case of amputation.
A man and a woman are one,
created together in the image of God
and therefore a man cannot kick his wife out
any more than he can cut off his arm.

Jesus does not prohibit divorce
as erroneously interpreted
by Roman Catholic tradition,
he rather re-states the category of thinking.
It is not an issue of property
it is a problem and need for healing.

In other words, it is an issue of mutuality
involving both partners
and requires a healing process
more than a legal one.
We can see this in Jesus’ introductory words
when he said, “Moses enacted this law on divorce
because men have a hardness of heart.”

What he meant by that
is that not only do men and women
require mutuality,
but marriage itself needs bolstering
in the face of the male propensity
toward self-centeredness.
In short, the union by which two become one
cannot be motivated by law;
it cannot be achieved
with behavior modification;
such a union only takes place
with the transformation of both man and woman
into more than either one
is on their own.
So the challenge here, he implies,
has to do with transformation.

All of that is to say,
that Jesus stood in contrast
to Hillel and Shammai
by putting his focus,
not on property but transformation — the spiritual
side of marriage.

“We live on only one side of the world.”

Now, that is probably enough
for one sermon itself,
but I am hoping to drag you further
into this history.
It will clarify this teaching
that comes from the example of divorce.

Another example of Jesus
standing in the Talmudic tradition,
is his contrast with Hillel
on the summary of Torah.
A student once asked Rabbi Hillel
if he could teach the whole of the Law
while the student stood on one foot.
Hillel replied:
“Do not do to others what you would
not have them do to you.
All else is commentary.”

As we know, Jesus echoes Hillel
in the Sermon on the Mount when he said:
“Do to others
as you would have them do to you.”

Side by side, Hillel and Jesus,
offer their own versions of a golden rule
that was widely known and taught
throughout the ancient Near East and Roman world –
and we still have it today.
Pretty cool.

Do NOT do to others
what you would NOT have them do to you……
verses, DO to others
what you would have them DO to you.

Hillel’s is far more practical.
Do NOT do to Vladimir Putin
what you do NOT want Putin to do to you.

Insert whoever your own personal enemy is.

We can live that way
with discipline and will power.
Do NOT to do somebody else
what you do NOT want him or her to do to you,
is possible –
we need only follow the laws and guidelines
that place boundaries on our behavior.
”Wear a mask.”

But Jesus’ version is not so practical.
DO for Putin
what you would have Putin do for you!

Faced with an enemy we hate,
Hillel’s injunction
is to refrain from mistreating him or her.
But Jesus would have us actually
go and DO something
for the scoundrel.
DO something nice for an enemy
or person we hate.
No set of laws can be written
to motivate us
to cross hatred or anger
in order to serve someone
we do not like or whom we mistrust.
Laws can provide sanctions
that prohibit negative behavior
but they cannot be written
to propel us into moving beyond hatred and anger.

We can write laws against racist, homophobic,
misogynist, and xenophobic behavior
but we cannot make laws
that do away with hate.

Jesus’ golden rule
presumes a personal transformation –
it requires an internal revolution
that creates a new kind of person.
Herein lies the power and drama of Jesus: Transformation.

Laws are okay, Jesus said,
but internal revolution and born again evolution
was his teaching.
And in fact, Jesus said
he would not change one dot
or stroke of the Law.
The Law serves its purpose he said.
The purpose of Torah
is to protect people
who are un-transformed
from hurting one another and themselves.
Torah is good.

But to follow Jesus
is to open oneself to transformation – to new creation.

“Your will be done on earth
as it is in heaven”
requires a transformation of the life we live
and the world we have created.

We have to be able to see
more than our world —
we have to be able to see into heaven
in order to create the transformation on earth.

Jesus means for us to be internally transformed
and become agents of a new creation
by carrying our own internal revolution
beyond our own skins.

And the content of what Jesus had to say
was not the only thing that matters.
It is the way he said it.
With clever parables,
dramatic sayings,
and radical assertions.
Jesus threw a spear that pierced
our assumptions about God and life.

When the spear hit,
in the form of a startling new way to view
an old familiar issue,
we have one of two experiences.
Either the surprise opens us up
to a flash of insight
or it closes us down,
fogging us over
with confusion and defensiveness.
By reversing conventional wisdom
Jesus gave people
and opportunity to be broken open
and receive sudden insight.

Seek God in weakness not power.
Find God in risking your safety
instead of the comfort of security.
Discover God in failure
rather than success.
Don’t look for God in the face of a friend
but find God starring back at you
in the eyes of an enemy.
Hear God in the stutter of ignorance or innocence
instead of the famous and intelligent.
Feel the touch of God
in the human crush and grime of the city
rather than the majesty
of the sun’s evening glow.
Court God in the darkness of suffering
rather than in the arms of the all-powerful.

Those are just a few examples of his reversal wisdom.

In the deliberate and courageous
exploration of the unexpected,
and by the reversal of the conventional,
we will not only see and hear and touch
the presence of God,
we will begin to be transformed by it.
Now this teaching of Jesus
will never come to us gracefully or easily,
and it is not to be attempted alone.
Those of us who would follow Jesus
need to hold hands
and enter the presence of God together –
pushing and tugging,
and holding onto one another all along the way.

All of us benefit by following
the practical and sagely wisdom of Rabbi Hillel.
But in order to follow Jesus
we simply must be transformed.
That transformation begins to happen
when we reverse the world as we have ordered it
— when we begin to look into more worlds
that the one have made.

Last Epiphany 2020: Under our noses

February 23, 2020 by Cam Miller

Text for Preaching: Matthew 17:1-9, “The Transfiguration”

I know people forever changed by battle,
both on the ground splattered by blood,
and in the air singed by fire
while beholding a face through the glass
of another cockpit.

I know people forever changed by childbirth,
those for whom it was inside out
and the ones for whom the experience
was outside in.

Accidents and catastrophe
have transfigured and disfigured and re-rendered
more humans than can be counted,
lives ripped open and
torn asunder without warning.

The angel of death tip-toeing near,
touching the spine or whispering in the ear,
has changed many lives
for both good and bad.

Millions are enraptured almost weekly –
a Pentecostal fever
shivering the brain and racking the body
until encased in a dead faint.
Whether such drama has ever changed a life
I cannot say.

Few of us can point to a single moment,
a pencil spot in time
upon which everything changed for us –
upon which nothing going forward
would ever be the same.
And yet…all of us – all of us – have turned on the dime
of such moments.

We probably did not recognize
the gravity of the moment
the geography of the spot
the singularity of the minute or second
the separation of before and after,
but it was there
when we were.

In fact, all of us
have more than one moment
that changed everything going forward
and rendered everything we left behind
as just so much history.

It is surely a measure of grace
that we do not recognize those moments in real time
because we might never have chosen
what we did choose
and our lives would be lesser for it.
But that is how it is with us:
nearly every moment
transforming
and transfiguring,
and thanks be to God,
we do not even know it.
Moses,
Elijah,
Buddha,

Jesus, and Mohammad
were each taken up
and rendered differently –
changed in an instant
of enormous transformation.

Not only them,
but mystics in every religion
write poetry and songs
about being changed in a razor-thin trice –
a twinkling flash of power
beyond forethought
or control.

This is how we live,
you and me even,
but we just hate to see it
as it actually is.

Ironically, we would rather pretend
that our lives are routinely ordered
because in that kind of world,
we call the shots.
We try to see randomness, change,
and transformations as unusual,
unique,
the exception
to all those plans
and the likeliest of scenario
we imagine for our futures.
That child we gave birth to,
the only one
that could have only been created
at the very moment that his or her conception took place,
a moment we likely never noticed,
became the child we have grown accustomed to
and may even imagine we planned.

That spouse we chose
and probably do not associate with randomness,
took place as a result of endless choices
by so many other people,
known and unknown,
that to call it “our” choice
seriously underestimates the role
of other people
making other choices,
many of which were random and ridiculously
improbable.

The concept of the self-made man or woman
singularly carving out
his or her own destiny
is laughable.

The thin vision
of our lives as chosen and ordered
and the result of a good plan,
is dim vision at best,
and more truthfully, blind.

I have nothing to say about the so-called
“Transfiguration” story we hear twice a year
in the lectionary readings.
As far as I can tell,
it was told to one-up Moses and Elijah,
and later, among Gentiles,
as some kind of evidence
that Jesus was the biggest
and bestest of them all.
As a story it has very little,
if anything, to say to us
about the lives we lead.

But it does serve to remind us,
or at least it can,
that every next moment
is ripe with possibilities
we do not expect
and likely do not see
because of the assumptions we make.

The events
and people
and experiences we live
are braided with singular moments
and delivered to us
via people and events
we did not have control over
and receive often without input.

This is obvious to us
when something big comes along that we were not expecting
but it is equally true in every moment,
even though we are asleep to it.

We probably could not tolerate
hyper-sensitivity to this truth
but it would bolster our humility
and open our minds
if we were a tad more awake.

While we do get to make plans
and work toward goals
and anticipate rewards and accomplishments
for our efforts,
we should also be keenly aware
that nothing we have done, accomplished, or will do
is without the participation of countless other people
contributing to the trajectory of our lives
and the triumphs and defeats we have known.
In everything we do
and plan to do,
both randomness and serendipity
play a role.
And so we are changed,
transformed even,
by singular moments in time
we did not recognize
and often cannot trace back
or put our finger on.

I really do believe
that were we to ascend a mountaintop
from which we could see all the moments of our lives
spread out in detail before us,
we would be blown away by what we saw.
The crazy whacko-mystical story
about Jesus, Elijah, and Moses on a cloud
is nothing compared to the transformations in our lives.

If only we could see our lives
as they actually unfolded
and suddenly recognize the patterns
and interconnected events and people
we have always considered unrelated,
we would be speechless.

There is no real “so what?” to this sermon,
it is more like a sunset
or a dramatic spray of the milky way
on a perfectly clear night.

Just something to look at and say,
“Wow, we’re really small, aren’t we?”
And then bow our heads,
hold our hearts,
and say, “Thank you.”

16 Pentecost: From A to B (or dying again, and again, and again…)

3 Lent B, 2021: Hillel and Jesus, Practice and Transformation…

Last Epiphany 2020: Under our noses

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