Psalm 148, Revelations 21:1-6, May 19, 2019, Annalea Kauth Sermon

“Ripples” 

by Annalea Kauth

Have you heard of Paul Wesselmann? Paul Wesselmann is known as the Ripples Guy. He started an inspirational and thought-provoking weekly email called the Ripples Project.  These emails have a way of popping up when, without realizing, I start to feel a little stuck.  I will have forgotten about these weekly emails and then they will pop up alongside your emails, the radio station emailing about Gretchen’s radio ad, and even those numerous emails with Session and Keith.  The emails consist of three sayings, comments, or short writings; a Pebble, a Boulder and a Ponder.

For the last two months these emails have answered questions I’ve had weighing on my heart.  Questions I feel, didn’t think important enough to pray about, but are still there just the same.  Clearly, I may not have thought them important, but God did and he would send ripples along to me.

Case in point:

March 25^th’s Pebble:
“If you never heal from what hurt you, then you’ll bleed on people who did not cut you.”

And Boulder:

“Even when the wound is not your fault, healing from it is your responsibility.”

I didn’t really think much of this at first, but as the weeks progressed I started to understand.  To fight for a justice when an admittance is the best to come, can lead to “bleeding” on those who are there to stand with you and protect you.  It can keep you from hearing their acknowledgments and feeling their love for you.

April 1^st’s Pebble:

“One reason you're on this planet is to discover all the reasons you're on this planet.  Go find your reasons!”

Am I the right person for this, am I doing what I am supposed to be doing? These thoughts would come up and I would question my experience, and if I would be weak link because I didn’t or don’t have experience.  With this Pebble, God reminded me that experience is not the only reason people step up. God reminded me that he had surrounded me with a community of family who would help me discover and take great joy in whatever I found.

April 15th’s Pebble:
“Fear has two meanings: "Forget Everything And Run" or "Face Everything And Rise." The choice is yours.”

And Boulder:
“Being free of fear is not a matter of never feeling it, but of not being flattened when we do. We can feel it and know it is a natural phenomenon, also an impermanent one, which will have its say and be gone.”

I was going through a lot of “I don’t know”. We were going through un-charted territory and didn’t know what we would find. This causes a lot of anxiety and fear and I sure felt mine. God stepped in with this email and quieted the voices in my head so I could truly listen. By turning to him I was able to lay the weight of my fears with Him to allow me to keep going.

By April 29th’s Boulder, I knew I was doing this today:
“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places -- and there are so many -- where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.”

There were things and situations not where I thought they would be. With every meeting I would experience a great sadness when an experience or conversation was shared. I felt like those in Psalm 148, I couldn’t understand God’s relationship to those on the other side. I didn’t understand the magnitude of God’s steadfast love and mercy. God pointed out that I didn’t need to understand, I didn’t need to ‘fight’ the other side, my focus didn’t need to be over there but right here with you. I needed to open my eyes and see those hurt but compassionate, frustrated but kind, and find my way with you.

By May 6th’s Boulder, I was working through the scriptures for today, still nothing written yet:
“Everything grand is made from a series of ugly little moments. Everything worthwhile by hours of self-doubt and days of drudgery. All the works by people you and I admire sit atop a foundation of failures. So whatever your project, whatever your struggle, whatever your dream, keep toiling.”

This new heaven and new earth in Revelations 21 didn’t happen without heartache and suffering. Our toils these past few months are our foundation for the dream of that perfect vista view, where mourning and crying and pain will be no more.

This bring us to this past Monday’s email. We find things winding down and finishing, and we need to start looking to the future, near and far.

May 13th's Pebble:
“I don’t know what my path is yet. I’m just walking on it.”

And Boulder:
Sometimes you don’t need to have a Master Plan.
You can trust in your Not Knowing instead.
Sometimes you just need to take the next step.
A small step.
Into safety.
Or into the wilderness.
Trust.
Breathe.
The great Master Plan unfolds with each tiny step you take.

We all know our great plans of the future are never on the path we thought it would take.  I have been asked by a couple people when I told them I was doing this Sunday’s service if I was looking at this for a career, a calling. I was quick to say no, but my answer was not entirely true. I do feel called to be here today, but not to become a pastor. I do feel called to be a leader, but not the president as well.  I felt called here today because of my relationships with you. You have fueled my fire.  I don’t’ know what today will bring or how it will leave any of us. I will still have questions and God will still answer them; I just don’t know how they will come.  I do know that those pebbles you have dropped in my water are the beautiful ripples of your love and care I feel every day. Reminding me that all is in God’s divine plan. Your pebbles make me hopeful in this newness and are a beacon for me to find my way.

Psalm 40:1-6, Jonah 2:1-9, John 9:1-12, May 5, 2019, Ginger Rembold Sermon

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MUD 

       

        Wow. What a topic for a sermon.  Mud. Muck. Mire. The pit. The belly of a whale. I’ve kinda had fun thinking about this for several weeks.  What in the world do all these scriptures have in common...other than they involve yucky slimy stuff.  Is Ginger out of her mind?  (Probably!) Is this the lectionary for today?  Absolutely not.  But during Lent I came across an article in Presbyterian Today,  written by its editor, Donna Jackson.  She was lamenting the mud season of New England – we can relate.  That period of time in spring when the snow is melting, everything is brown and still bare and dead, and what is left is muck.  Muck that sticks to everything.  Jackson wrote, ‘When stuck in the mud, where is God?” 

        The topic of mud reminded me of when Rick and I visited Alaska ages ago  and we stopped along Cook Inlet on the Kenai Penninsula.  The tidal waters here are immense – 30 foot differences between high and low.   During low tide, to walk on the tidal flats is to risk the muck.  The water laden sand pulls one down and the more you struggle, suction begins to hold your feet fast. People have died on these flats. Your only recourse is to wait patiently for help...and hope it comes before the tide returns.  Is this the pit of David?  Where is God in the tidal mud?

        The events in the life of our congregation over the past year made me pause when reading Jackson’s article.  For we have been in a mess, stuck in the mud, caught in the slime of the whale’s belly.  We have felt at times like we wanted to just run away from it all.  The church seemed like Ninevah, and Tarshish looked really appealing!  And once we got our feet caught in the muck, like David, we  wondered if we could ever get out.  The mire seemed to just keep pulling us down. We had pride – we could solve this!  Yet with that attitude,  we just sank deeper.  Where was God?  Where was the holy in the mud?

        I picked up a book by Mike Howerton, a pastor in Redmond, WA, titled Glorious Messes.    The essence of his message is simple: we encounter God most profoundly in the middle of the mud.    I am not even going to try to summarize the highlights of this 200 page gem, but I do want to focus on several questions that spoke to me and perhaps might speak to you and our church as well.  Questions we might all try to answer for ourselves.

        First did we run?  I probably have.  No, I haven’t run to the extent of avoiding church, but I am a non-confrontational person.  I don’t like conflict, I try to avoid it.  I found Tarshish looked a lot easier than diving into the mud of Ninevah.  We run sometimes because we have a different agenda from God.  We run because of pride. We run because of our fears.  We run when we fail to act in a positive way.  But running doesn’t solve the problem.  Closing ones eyes and hoping we don’t step into the muddy part of the roadside doesn’t help. Running simply doesn’t make the mud go away!  Just ask Jonah.

        Secondly, have we waited patiently for the Lord?  Waiting is sometimes risky.  Waiting means trust that God is in the mud with us, beside us, that God loves all of us in spite of the mud, and wants what is best for all of us.  Waiting is HARD WORK!  It means letting go of our fears and agendas and giving God time to work through us and in us.  It means Letting go….like the phrase ‘Let Go and Let God’.  But so often we listen to ‘God helps those who help themselves’, so we squirm and wiggle with our pride and fears and manage to dig ourselves just a little deeper into the belly.  But God doesn’t wait to act until the mess is figured out.  God is a work all THROUGH the mess.  Have we noticed?

        Have we listened for God’s voice?  Jonah spent three days in the belly of a whale.  That’s a long time to wait patiently for God’s rescue.   Especially with all that slime and belly guts hanging around you!  And the smell couldn’t have been great.  But what else do you do when in the belly?  It’s dark!  You can’t read or play games!  Your cell phone doesn’t get reception,  So you might as well have a good long conversation with God and make sure that God does most of the talking and you do most of the listening.  I have trouble with that sometime.  It is so easy to tell God, ‘this is how I want you to fix this mess’, so make sure such and such happens.  Sometimes we are so focused on OUR solution, what we perceive as right and just, that we fail to see how God is at work making mud pies.  But like a loving father, God really does know best.  Like my Mama God, God works through the mud with forgiveness and grace.

        Listen to the end of Jonah’s prayer. :I will sing praises to you”  Listen to the end of David’s plea. “He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God!”  , Have we really celebrated our blessings with praise and gratitude?    Have we given God credit for the ways in which God’s love has been manifest in our congregation and through our missions.  Have we taken a really good look at the positive over the past years?  Have we truly celebrated together as a faith family?   Rejoicing in God’s glory! Singing our praises!  Or has the mud stuck in our throat and rendered us silent while we dwell on on the mess. God’s help comes through the Hallelujahs.

        Back to the blind man.  Yes, mud in this story as well.  But notice what Jesus does with that mud – he heals the blind man.  Jesus uses his spit and dirt to heal.  How much muckier can you get than that?  And in the same way, God uses the mud to heal us, not in spite of the mess, but using the mess as an agent of change and transformation.  How can we be re-created through our mess?   Where is the Hallelujah as this church moves forward?

         Editor Jackson again closed with.  “Our mud season – those times of sorrow, challenges and dashed dreams – is a redemptive time to slow down, grab tighter to Christ’s hand and remember that God will always get us through.  We need to slosh through the mess knowing that something beautiful, something sweet awaits.  For there is always something waiting beneath the messes of life.  God is always there, preparing new life, preparing an Easter Alleluia, beneath the mud. It’s rather like finding that first crocus blossom.  Sing praise to God!  Alleluia! Amen!

        On one side of your insert you’ll find a place to reflect for just a couple minutes.  What is your personal mud at the moment? Perhaps it involves family, perhaps your faith, perhaps our community or world. Jot down a few words of where you find yourself in the belly of the whale right now.  Then pause, listen, and write a couple words of how you might praise God in that situation, and in so doing allow God to bring you out of the pit. 

 John 9:1-11

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man who had been born blind.  His disciples asked him, “Teacher, whose sin caused him to be born blind? Was it his own or his parents' sin?”

Jesus answered, “His blindness has nothing to do with his sins or his parents' sins. He is blind so that God's power might be seen at work in him.  As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me; night is coming when no one can work.   While I am in the world, I am the light for the world.”

After he said this, Jesus spat on the ground and made some mud with the spittle; he rubbed the mud on the man's eyes  and told him, “Go and wash your face in the Pool of Siloam.” (This name means “Sent.”) So the man went, washed his face, and came back seeing.

His neighbors, then, and the people who had seen him begging before this, asked, “Isn't this the man who used to sit and beg?”

Some said, “He is the one,” but others said, “No he isn't; he just looks like him.”

So the man himself said, “I am the man.”

“How is it that you can now see?” they asked him. He answered, “The man called Jesus made some mud, rubbed it on my eyes, and told me to go to Siloam and wash my face. So I went, and as soon as I washed, I could see.”

CHILDREN’S MESSAGE

        How many of you like to play in the mud?  Make mud pies or get that green slimey stuff you can buy in the store?

        I want to tell you a muddy story – it’s a true story when I was about Silas’ age,  I had just received a brand new pair of bright white tennis shoes.  They glowed!  It was springtime in California and it had rained a few days earlier.  The first time I wore my new  shoes to school, I was walking home by myself along the road – there was no sidewalk.  There were two puddles ahead of me with a strip of bare muddy ground in between them.  I didn’t want to walk around the puddles, so I went across the mud.  Guess what happened?  Yep, my shoes were a MESS!  I got stuck in the mud and it squished all over my shoes.

        When I got home I was so ashamed I made my life even worse – I lied to my mom.  I told her I had been looking at a book and didn’t see the mud.  When you are 10 years old, Moms are kinda like God.    I think she knew I was lying, but she took my very dirty muddy shoes  and later in the week – I think she deliberately made me wait - she washed them several times with bleach.  I hardly slept that week I felt so guilty for lying to my Mom-God. But my shoes came clean.  Later as an adult when I asked my mom, didn’t remember this story – that’s how God is – he cleans us up,  forgives and forgets.  But I didn’t  forget.   learned that God works through the mud to teach us some important lessons about love and forgiveness.