Ask Why - a sermon

“Ask Why”
Rev. Alison Longstaff, May 31, 2015
Bath Church of the New Jerusalem
Deuteronomy 4: 32-40; Matthew 10:22-30; TC 508

Judgment comes from fear.  Curiosity comes from love.

When you find yourself judging, see if you can be curious instead.

True Christianity #508

One day there appeared to me a magnificent temple. It was square in form, and its roof was in the shape of a crown, with soaring arches rising on high all round. Its walls were continuous windows of crystal and its gate of a pearly substance. Within on the south side, and facing the west was a pulpit on the right of which lay the open Word, surrounded with a blaze of light whose brightness enveloped and illuminated the whole pulpit. 

When I approached nearer I saw this inscription over the gate, "Now it is permitted" which means that it is now acceptable for people to explore with intelligence the deep questions of faith.  - Emanuel Swedenborg

Today is “Trinity Sunday” in mainstream North American Christianity.  Many Christian preachers across the continent are tackling the topic of how God can be both three and one at the same time.  I sat through a Lutheran classmate’s sermon one Trinity Sunday back in Canada and felt deeply grateful to be Swedenborgian.  What a challenging theology!

Swedenborgians simply don’t do the trinity the same way most Christians do.  We are solidly anchored in the belief in one God.  There is one God, and Jesus was that one God come down to earth.  That is orthodox Swedenborgianism, (and yes, it has gotten us into trouble with other Christians through the years).

Why do we believe what we do about the trinity?  That is a great question!

But I am not up here this morning to argue for or against the various interpretations of the trinity through the ages.  I am here to support the questioning.

“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers,” said Voltaire.

Who here has read, The Shack by William P. Young?  I experienced a squirming discomfort with the representation of the trinity (as three distinct people) when I read it.  That representation of the trinity was simply “wrong” in my mind.  But fortunately I also felt curiosity.  Having walked beside and come to love fellow seminarians who had to work within the trinitarian model, I had developed a curiosity about how they navigated that whole puzzle.  I had seen and heard quite a few creative and redemptive interpretations, and I had to admit that The Shack’s speculative representation had a certain appeal.  I still prefer the Swedenborgian resolution of the Trinity, but within its paradigm it is a strikingly creative solution to a sticky conundrum.

Prejudice closed me to anything good that The Shack offered.  Curiosity opened me up to the story it had to tell, and left me in respect for the storyteller and the courageous tackling of some very challenging material.  In the end it was of no consequence if I “agreed” or “disagreed” with the interpretation of the trinity. Compassion for the heartbreak and deep wrestling in the story is what mattered.  Doctrinal differences over the trinity became irrelevant before the deep questions springing from the main character’s broken heart.

Fear and judgment shut us down.  Love and curiosity open us up.

“Curiosity is a willing, a proud, and eager confession of ignorance,” said S. Leonard Rubinstein.

If you are willing, raise your hand if, at some point in your life, you felt shamed or reprimanded for asking a question.  If you were asking a spiritual teacher, spiritual guilt was probably added to the shame and the reprimand.  I personally think that shaming someone for asking a theological question is a form of spiritual abuse, especially if it is a child.

Children are born asking, “Why?”  I suspect that we would keep asking “why” all through life if we were not taught to stop asking.  Somewhere along the way, we get the message that it is not okay to ask so many questions.

Too many of us were made to feel guilty if we questioned what we were being taught in church or in Sunday School.  (Perhaps not in this church, but in all too many.)  A lot of that silencing probably came from tired and frustrated teachers who thought they were supposed to have all the answers.  To stand at the front of all those questioning eyes and NOT know the answer can be terrifying.  But it is terrifying only if you believe you are supposed to know.  No human can have all the answers, but somehow too many teachers and leaders feel shame if they don’t have all the answers. 

Let go of certainty. The opposite isn't uncertainty. It's openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow.” Tony Schwartz - writer and business productivity leader

Oh the relief when I was taught that I didn’t need to have the answers to all the questions children would ask when I taught them.  Children are not afraid of not knowing; it is adults who are.  Children are okay when a grown-up says, “Huh.  I don’t know!  Maybe we can find out together,” or even better, “I’m not sure. What do you think?” 

It is amazing what you can hear when you ask a child what they think.  It is remarkable how satisfied a child can be with their own answer, even if it sounds a bit eye-brow-raising to us. Children don’t necessarily want an authoritative factual response from adults.  They like to explore the answers for themselves.  And it is okay if they come up with a “wrong” answer because sometimes we grownups are looking at the answer through the “wrong” lens.   With the right lens, the child’s answer would make perfect sense. 

At age four, “Because it wanted to,” is a perfectly sensible answer to, “Why did the ball roll down the plank?”  It isn’t until much later that “the law of gravity” is developmentally more satisfying.  What answers make sense to us will fit with where we are on a spiritual, mental, and emotional continuum, and therefore there is no “right” or “wrong” about having different perspectives. It is okay to allow each other to be somewhere different than we are on the spiritual journey, (even if we are sure they are “wrong.” It isn’t about where they are anyway).  

Fear of asking questions shuts us down from learning; it shuts us down from a bigger world perspective; it shuts us down from practicing walking on our own spiritual feet and becoming spiritual grown-ups.

Carved over the entryway of the temple seen in Swedenborg’s vision was, “Nunc Licet,” or “Now it is permitted.”  (Actually, it would have been written in a spiritual language, but as Swedenborg wrote in Latin, “Nunc Licet” is what the Latin says.) What is permitted? “To enter into the mysteries of faith.” In other words, “It is okay now to ask theological questions;” “You are allowed to explore it all now;” or “You no longer have to be afraid of challenging the things you don’t understand.”

And so it is a foundational teaching in Swedenborgian theology that we don’t have to be afraid of probing into any aspect of faith.  Intelligent questioning and a genuine desire to understand is valued here.  My job as a spiritual leader is to support and advise, to walk beside and encourage, to offer tools and ideas and different perspectives.  My job is not to judge people or tell them how they ought to think or feel. 

Fear judges and controls, while love is curious.

My yoga teacher in Canada taught us to pay attention to our inner self talk during our practice.  Were we judging ourselves for not doing the poses better?  Were we beating ourselves up or feeling frustrated that we hadn’t made more progress from the week before?  Again and again she invited us to be curious about ourselves, not critical.  She invited us to explore and be playful with how we were approaching a pose, especially if it seemed too hard.

This invitation to be curious rather than judging continues to teach me.  When I find myself judging myself (or someone else or something) if I can just bring curiosity to the table too, the inner dialogue transforms.  Instead of thoughts that criticize and condemn I can begin to ask things like, “What is going on underneath this judging?”  “What am I afraid of?” and, “How else might I move through this with more compassion?”  From negative inner attacks it shifts to compassionate problem-solving; from a passive, blaming place it shifts to a creative optimism.

When we can become conscious that we are judging, and instead of judging, become curious, whole new possibilities and solutions open up.  Fear underlies judgment and fear shuts us down while love underlies curiosity and love opens us up.

“Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will,” said James Stephens.

“Seek, and you will find,” said Jesus.

“It is okay to ask the questions now,” is apparently carved on a temple in heaven.

May we become like little children and return to fearless curiosity and never stop asking, “Why?”  Amen 

The Readings

Deuteronomy 4:32-40

For ask now about former ages, long before your own, ever since the day that God created human beings on the earth; ask from one end of heaven to the other: has anything so great as this ever happened or has its like ever been heard of? Has any people ever heard the voice of a god speaking out of a fire, as you have heard, and lived? Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by terrifying displays of power, as the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? To you it was shown so that you would acknowledge that the Lord is God; there is no other besides him. From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you. On earth he showed you his great fire, while you heard his words coming out of the fire. And because he loved your ancestors, he chose their descendants after them. He brought you out of Egypt with his own presence, by his great power, driving out before you nations greater and mightier than yourselves, to bring you in, giving you their land for a possession, as it is still today. So acknowledge today and take to heart that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other. Keep his statutes and his commandments, which I am commanding you today for your own well-being and that of your descendants after you, so that you may long remain in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for all time.

Matthew 10:22-30

Then came the Festival of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was in the temple courts walking in Solomon’s Colonnade.  The Judeans who were there gathered around him, saying, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”Jesus answered, “I did tell you, but you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name testify about me, but you do not believe because you are not my sheep.  My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.  My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”

Heal Yourself

With permission, I share this posting from a treasured mentor:

"My thoughts on the tragedy in Newtown:

My heart hurts for the parents who have lost their children. Sunday night, Obama shared my favorite quote about parenting: 'when you decide to have a child, you make the decision to have your heart forever walk around outside your body.' Their loss is more profound than we will ever know. I pray for their courage.

This is a clarion call to all of us.

We are impacting our children, every last one of us and it's time we woke up to the epidemic that is sweeping our nation. Too many parents are distracted, too many single moms and dads don't have the support they need, too many adults have not healed their own wounds and so they pass their damage on to their children like karmic sludge. We subject our children to a culture dominated by fear (news, video games, movies) and then wonder what the dang problem is. The problem is not "out there", it's "in here".

          Here’s my wish for us all, that we:

Wake up, out of our comfortably numb state, and start to really get the horrifying legacy we are leaving with our children and on this planet.

Feel the pain we’ve been avoiding, the pain of our inner child that didn’t get what he or she needed and love that part with powerful conviction, with the ferocity of a mama or papa bear. Let go of any desire to be driven to the next distraction, drama or adrenaline rush and just be with yourself.

Take fierce, bold action, from a place of wholeness.

If you want to make an impact and not have these children (and their protectors) die in vain, then commit to healing you, to healing your own inner child. From there, you will know the exact perfect action to take. Anything before that will be saving and saving never works. It’s rooted in imbalance.

I pray you will let this tragedy be the wake up call you needed to make the difference you came here to make with your life.

Share with me your thoughts, feelings and ideas about this tragedy, the state of our disconnectedness in our country and anything else you feel you want to share….even if it’s simply an “amen sister”.

So much love,

Kristin Sweeting Morelli"

https://www.facebook.com/kristin.morelli.1?fref=ts

http://goddessrising.com

http://kristinsweetingmorelli.com/2012/12/thoughts-newtown-tragedy/

Can There Be Peace In Palestine?

This was written in response to a trip I was lucky to be part of in 2007.  I thought I would repost it as we witness renewed violence in in the Holy Land.  Regardless of what one thinks of the theology, the details remain true.

"Can There Be Peace in Palestine?

- reflections on my trip to Israel"

Alison Longstaff, August 26^th, 2007

Church of the Good Shepherd

Psalm 122: 1-9; Matthew 24:1-13

                                                                                                     

            As many of you know, I went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land this past Spring.   Because the Holy Land is not the most stable of regions, preparation for the trip included a day-long session on culture shock, cultural sensitivity and diversity, and post-traumatic-stress disorder, among other things.  In our information packets we found articles on how to recognize post-traumatic-stress disorder, both in ourselves and in our fellow travellers.  We learned that we could be affected by the general atmosphere of trauma-survival among the peoples we would be visiting.  We discussed how we should care for ourselves and each other should violence occur.  It was sobering.

            Above all, we were taught, "The situation in Palestine is complicated."  We must try to withhold judgment.  We must avoid taking sides, and instead, simply keep our eyes and ears open. Apparently, westerners characteristically assume that the problems over there could be easily fixed if someone just said the right thing or took charge the right way.   It is not so.

            I was immediately struck by the warmth with which the Israelis in the airport greeted us.  They welcome all visitors.  The arrival of tourists helps them not feel so isolated nor so judged and feared and cut-off from the rest of the world.  We also met our tour guide at the airport, a Palestinian Arab Christian Israeli.

(picture: The Lion's Gate in Jerusalem. Notice how bullet-riddled it is.)

            His name was Husam, not Hussein  but Husam.  He advised us to call him "Who? Sam?" to remember the correct pronunciation.  His name was as unfamiliar in my mouth as his identity was to grasp in my brain.  An Arab Christian Palestinian Israeli. He was an Arab, which is a blood-line or ethnicity, but he was not Muslim, like many Arabs are.  He was a Christian.  There are many Christians in the Holy land still, Christians descended from the Christians who have been there since the time of Jesus.  He is Palestinian, which means his family has lived in the Palestinian territories for centuries, but he is not a terrorist.  It is terribly unfortunate that the western media has somehow gotten many of us in the Western world to equate "Palestinian" with "terrorist." It is an emotional and fearful association and entirely uneducated.  There are so many good and peaceful Palestinians. To think every Palestinian is a terrorist is as accurate as thinking that, because I am a woman and a seminarian, all women are seminarians.  (Picture: Husam [white hat] talks to some of us on the school steps. See the clear, brilliant blue of the sky.)

            And, Husam was an Israeli.  Both a Palestinian and an Israeli?  At the same time?  Yes.  He was born to a Palestinian family in Palestinian territory, but he is one of the lucky few to have an Israeli passport.  He is recognized as a citizen of Israel.  Many Palestinians are not, for all sorts of reasons, which is a huge part of the problem over there.  But he is.  So He is an Arab Israeli Palestinian Christian.  Even he doesn't know where he fits.

            There are so many ways I could describe our travels over there.  I could speak of the land, the light, and the locations.  I could describe all the many churches vying to be sitting on the "original spot where" something religious maybe happened.  I could describe the crazy mix of old and new, and the march of time in a place nearly older than time.

            But I choose to describe my observations of the people of the land, the desperate religious sincerity, and the age-old battles for dominance and control.  I choose to describe both the beauty and courage, the resilience and hope in the face of the repeated failures of the peace efforts.  And the heart-breaking violence that seems to have a life of its own.  

(Next two pictures: school children, Christian and Muslim, playing soccer together in Ramallah. Will they also grow up to kill or be killed?) 

            At no time did we witness open violence.  We were never exposed to any real danger, ever.  But we witnessed evidence of the tension everywhere we looked.  From the thick razor-wire topped walls that Israel is unremittingly erecting around section after section of Palestinian territory, to the machine gun toting soldiers, to the bullet holes riddling the walls of Jerusalem, we could not help but be aware of the tension.

            These people have lived through things I can't even imagine.  We had to pass through heavily guarded check points.  We had our bus driver yelled at by an angry Israeli guard at one check point.  We had soldiers barely out of their teens march through our bus, examining our passports, machine guns slung on their hips.  One pulled off his sunglasses, and looked just like our neighbour's son, except he had darker hair. 

            Israel is a military state, and every young person must spend two years in the army.   Imagine if we lived there.  That would be every young person you know, taught to handle guns. To shoot to kill.  To obey orders.  To see violence as a common occurrence.  Jake and Sam, Stephanie, and Megan and Kate, Heather and Joshua. . . .  Both my girls, and eventually, Jordan.  And this, not in Canada, but in a country born in the holocaust, and shaped by a lifetime of hatred and oppression.  I simply can't comprehend it.

(picture: overlooking the school's playground in Ramallah) 

            We stayed in Bethlehem first, beyond the wall.  The Palestinians nearest Jerusalem live in some of the worst conditions.  Though our hostel was spacious, clean, and quiet, we saw the rubble and neglect in the streets.  The severe water restrictions were evident in the bathrooms though never shoved in our faces.  Some of us blithely and ignorantly took our long western showers, not realizing the desperate need for every drop behind the walls.  You see,  Bethlehem, a scarce five miles from Jerusalem, is Palestinian.  It is the distance of about eight kilometres from here to the St Jacobs farmers market or from here to Sports World.  For that matter, from here to the Carmel Church, our Swedenborgian cousins.  By now, development is as continuous between Jerusalem and Bethlehem as it is between Good Shepherd and St Jacobs.  It could be one big city except the Israelis have been and still are erecting a wall all around Bethlehem, and all around Ramallah, and around many other places.  Imagine having friends who lived near the St. Jacob's farmer's market who were walled in, and never allowed to leave.  Imagine them cut off from their jobs, their doctors, their families.  Imagine trying to invite them to a wedding or a funeral, and them being refused permission to come.  This is the reality of many Palestinians in Israel.  No wonder many have resorted to violence.  Some are cut off from their family vineyards which have been their livelihood for centuries.  It is arbitrary, cruel, and they are completely powerless.  There is 70% unemployment within these walled areas.

            Seeing the conditions behind the wall and hearing the stories, it was hard not to take sides against the Israelis.  On the first day, a group of us went to visit a Christian school in Ramallah.  Because our bus and tour company had all the right passes and papers, and because tourists bring welcome dollars to Israel, our bus was allowed to traverse the two heavily guarded check points in order to make this trip.  Ramallah, yes, the Ramallah in the news, is another stone's throw out the other side of Jerusalem.  We travelled from the dusty, broken, and run-down Palestinian streets of Bethlehem into the clean, new, well watered and beautifully landscaped Israeli neighbourhoods on the right side of the wall, and then back into the pock-marked, rubble-strewn, and neglected streets of Ramallah.

            We met some of the most courageous and called teachers and volunteers at this school, as in the many other Christian centres we visited.  The school in Ramallah has several hundred pupils from Kindergarten to about grade eight.  They are Muslim and Christian.  Yes, this school welcomes Muslim children, and educates them as Muslims.  The Muslims have separate religion classes from the Christians, but also, all the children have religion together once a week, where they learn about each other's religions as well as the many other religions of the world.  The Christian and Muslim families in these Palestinian territories are bound together by their shared hardship.  They want only peace, and for their suffering to end.

(Picture: Children cluster around Debbie Lou and others of us, including our tall photographer)

            Everything looked normal.  The children's happy voices rang out from the recess yard as we sat and spoke with the head teachers.  Debbie Lou, one of our group who is a music instructor at Wilfrid Laurier, went out to mingle with the children.  When the children learned that she loved music, they wanted to sing her their songs.  One little boy sang her "his song."  The interpreter described the story to Debbie Lou as the little boy happily performed his long composition.  It was a song about his grandfather, who was taken in the night from their home, by soldiers with guns.  It was about how he would never see his grandfather again, and it went on and on.

(Picture: in the crowd is the little boy singing to Debbie Lou.)

            The teachers told us that this type of song is a form of trauma therapy for the children.  That the primary task the teachers face, daily, is helping the children deal with the precariousness of their lives.  Almost nightly, Israeli soldiers come into some part of Ramallah and arrest someone or shoot up a home, occasionally just because they can.  It is a form of intimidation.  It is meant to keep the Palestinians off balance.

            The children come to school chattering about the soldiers being on their street in the night, much the way our kids might chatter about an extra violent thunderstorm or a tornado scare.  This is normal for them.  The safest place these children have is the school.  The teachers do everything they can to help the children, Christian and Muslim together, to feel safe and loved and cared for by God.  Even so, in 2002, the soldiers came to the school during the day. They blasted open the doors and shot up the walls.  When the teachers complained to Isreali officials afterwards they were told, "No one was hurt."

            "No one was hurt."  Imagine if a huge explosion rocketed those doors off their hinges and a mass of armed soldiers stormed in screaming and ordering everyone onto the floor, and then proceeded to shoot up our walls and windows.  Then after yelling at us all and calling us names like filthy terrorists, vile English, dirty Canadians, and threatening to kill us and our families, for several hours, they left. ? !  "No one was hurt," simply doesn't adequately describe the shock we all would have sustained

(picture: One of our Canadian peace-workers, one of the seminary professors, and the brave head teacher of the school.)

            Just looking at the blast-blackened and twisted front doors would be enough to bring all of the emotional trauma back.  And we would be left to pick up the shattered glass, and see our dear sanctuary all bullet-riddled, and try to decide how to go on.

            This is one tiny piece of one tiny reality in all of the stories and sights we heard.  I haven't even told you about the three empty dialysis chairs awaiting children who would never show up that day at the hospital.  The guards at the check-points refused three children permission to come get their dialysis treatments at the hospital.  It makes no sense.  Three children, who would be dead in two days if they are not allowed through the wall to the hospital for their treatments.  That was four months ago.  Are any of them still alive?

            If I think too much about it all, I get choked up.

(picture: The head teacher and some students.)

            The same day that we visited that hospital, we went to the holocaust museum.  We only had a half-hour for the museum, which needed at least three.  I could barely take it in.  I sat and wept and wept.  That night, tempers erupted in our group.  There was shouting and accusations resulting in withdrawal and tears.  We were all dealing with more than we could handle.  The scope of the human on human abuse and horror was more than we were capable of comprehending.  We were shattered.

(Picture:The school pastor looks on and our Canadian tour director talks to the head teacher.)

            We are very sheltered here in Canada.  And we kid ourselves if we think we are incapable of the behaviours we heard of and saw in Israel.  Everyone of us, under the same conditions, would exhibit much the same behaviours.  Just witness the small violence of barking, hurtful accusations that arose in our tiny, peaceful, Canadian group after the one day of witnessing the hospital and the holocaust museum.  We were overwhelmed.  The helplessness and grief had to pour out somehow.  We were able to apologize and heal within 24 hours.  These people are dealing with a legacy of trauma and violence that spans generations, crosses cultures, and touches every one of us.  It's not going to be a simple fix.

            Though it is understandable, the fact of the holocaust does not give Israel a right to bully and oppress the Palestinians.  A battered wife will take a long time, a LONG time before she will trust a man to treat her kindly.  How much more is Israel a battered wife?  The horror of the generations of abuse must work its way out somehow, and it will take time.

            "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem. . . .  How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not ready." (Matt 23:27)

            Before we become too depressed by the stories we've explored together today, before we decide that it is all hopeless and horrible, let's remember that God was born into this very place.  He did not and will not give up on us, though He himself, his beauty and love and truth was spoken into this darkness and treated much the same way.  Standing with and bearing the horror, and still staying open to love is the way out.  And I need not go to Israel to do this work.  I can find it readily in my own family and neighbourhood, and yes, even in our church.

            When you and I work to face and, without passing on the harm, express and release the hurts and little traumas and small betrayals we face within our lives here and now, we are helping to strengthen the great global consciousness of peace and forgiveness.  It has long been known that abuse will be passed on and on until someone is strong enough to stop the transmission.  The abuse will stop when the human race is ready and strong enough and conscious enough to stop it.  AND, what you and I do in our hearts, here and now, today, makes a difference.  Forgiving my brother, my sister, my father, for abuses and hurts in my family, is the way I help the world move toward forgiveness. (picture: watching the children at play)

            Yes, there are many active and hands-on ways we can try to help in Israel.  They need help.  They particularly need volunteers who speak Arabic.  I can put you in touch with any number of ways to provide support and caring if you feel called.

            But more than that, you and I can stand, hand in hand, and believe in peace and forgiveness.  You and I can look fearlessly into the horror and hopelessness and speak love into the darkness.  We are not alone in the desire for peace.  We have God on our side.  And God is infinitely patient and infinitely healing.  If our hearts break at the sights and stories, God's heart breaks a thousand times more.  But while we become weighed down by hopelessness, God has never given up and never will give up.  He knows what He's doing.  Nothing, absolutely nothing is hopeless in God's care.

            As we read in Jeremiah:

For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord,

plans for your welfare and not for harm,

to give you a future with hope. (Jeremiah 29:11)

            Thank you for listening.  Amen.

Special music  Calling All Angels    by Jane Siberry