priceless--a sermon for ordinary 33B

Rev. Teri Peterson
RCLPC
priceless
1 Samuel 1.4-20
15 November 2009, Ordinary 33B

On the day when Elkanah sacrificed, he would give portions to his wife Peninnah and to all her sons and daughters; but to Hannah he gave a double portion, because he loved her, though the Lord had closed her womb. Her rival used to provoke her severely, to irritate her, because the Lord had closed her womb. So it went on year after year; as often as she went up to the house of the Lord, she used to provoke her. Therefore Hannah wept and would not eat. Her husband Elkanah said to her, ‘Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? Why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?’
After they had eaten and drunk at Shiloh, Hannah rose and presented herself before the Lord. Now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat beside the doorpost of the temple of the Lord. She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord, and wept bitterly. She made this vow: ‘O Lord of hosts, if only you will look on the misery of your servant, and remember me, and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a male child, then I will set him before you as a nazirite until the day of his death. He shall drink neither wine nor intoxicants, and no razor shall touch his head.’
As she continued praying before the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was praying silently; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard; therefore Eli thought she was drunk. So Eli said to her, ‘How long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself? Put away your wine.’ But Hannah answered, ‘No, my lord, I am a woman deeply troubled; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time.’ Then Eli answered, ‘Go in peace; the God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him.’ And she said, ‘Let your servant find favour in your sight.’ Then the woman went to her quarters, ate and drank with her husband, and her countenance was sad no longer.
They rose early in the morning and worshipped before the Lord; then they went back to their house at Ramah. Elkanah knew his wife Hannah, and the Lord remembered her. In due time Hannah conceived and bore a son. She named him Samuel, for she said, ‘I have asked him of the Lord.’



This is going to be an odd thing for a pastor to say, and some of you may be shocked to hear it, but stick with me. Sometimes, I hate people. Not individuals, but people—the whole lot of us. I know, I know, hate is a strong word and is not to be used lightly, and I should say that I “intensely dislike” instead, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes, I do hate people. I know that hate is not a part of what God intends for us or for this world, but while we strive for the more excellent way we are still broken people, so I’m willing to go ahead and confess this to all of you: I hate when we exclude others because they are different from us. I hate when we act in ways that are hurtful to our planet. I hate when we withhold love to prove a point. I hate when our expectations of ourselves and one another obscure who we are as children of God. These times make me want to ask why we can’t all just get along, everyone love everyone, sing in perfect harmony…come on people, now!

The beginning of this story brings all of that up for me. Hannah wants to have children, but can’t. And Peninnah has dozens, it sounds like, and taunts Hannah because of this difference. And Elkanah isn’t helping, since he clearly loves one of his wives more than the other, but also one wife is more valuable than the other, and those two things don’t line up. It almost seems as if the whole society is conspiring to bring Hannah into a deep depression. And they are, really, because she is worthless. Hannah is a woman without children—in her culture, she has no value, no meaning, no purpose. She’s just taking up space.

Thankfully, we no longer believe that about childless women. Those of us who either choose not to be parents or who can’t be parents though we might want to are still valued members of society, worthwhile members of families, and lead meaningful lives. But I suspect we do believe it about others in different situations. Our culture values work, for instance, and often those without work feel as though they contribute nothing—like they are worthless. Those who have no home to live in sometimes feel as though they have no value as people because they have no possessions of value. I would be willing to bet that we can each think of either a person or a category of people that we consider to be in some way lacking worth, lacking value, lacking purpose, taking up space.

That’s the place in which Hannah lives. Everyone around her knows what she is. She knows what she is, too—she’s a smart girl, she knows what people are saying and she has internalized the message of her society. So she does the only thing left for her to do—she takes her despair into the temple, at the height of a festival in which sadness is prohibited. Even here, she can’t bring herself to speak out loud—she moves her lips but her voice is silent. But in that silence, in that pleading, in that conversation, Hannah finds something. She renews her relationship with the God who is love, and she discovers that all she had thought, all she had believed, all she had wept over, was a lie.

That’s right, a lie. Hannah had been told a lie, she had bought into it, she had lived it for all of her adult life. And I would be willing to bet that many of us buy into this same lie—I know I certainly do sometimes. It’s hard not to—it’s sold to us every day, in most of our conversations, in all of our advertising, in many of our TV shows and movies, and sometimes even in our families and churches. And when I say it, you are all going to roll your eyes and say how obvious it was, but it’s still out there and we are still living it, even if subconsciously.

The lie is this: that our value, our worth, our purpose is determined by the things we have, the things we do, the job we perform, the family members we relate to, or anything else at all.

Pure and simple, it’s a lie. Your value, your worth, is determined by one thing and one thing only. You are a child of God. Period. You are loved beyond belief, valuable beyond measure, priceless, because God loves you. That’s it.

Does that mean that we don’t do wrong things sometimes? Does that mean we are perfect and wonderful and lovely at every moment? Does that mean we aren’t still broken, living in a world where love is often the last rather than first thought? No. But it does mean that we are not defined by those things. That is not who we are, not where we find our worth.

To discover our worth, we don’t need to bear children or do the right job or say the right things or live in the right neighborhood or wear the right brand of shoes or be little miss perfect all the time. All we need to find our worth is to renew our relationship with God, who made us and calls us, and who chooses us before we can even respond. That is the heart of our story.

The first question in one of our Presbyterian teaching tools is this: “who are you?” Normally we would answer “I’m Teri, I’m a pastor, I’m a cat owner, I’m a motherless daughter, I’m a friend, I’m a colleague, I’m a sister, I’m a musician…” and so on. But none of those are the answer. The answer is “I am a child of God.” That’s it. And that, friends, is the truth, and the good news of the gospel. Once we know this truth, we can join our newfound voices with Hannah’s and sing about the world being changed at last into the kingdom of God...

‘My heart exults in the Lord;

my strength is exalted in my God.

‘There is no Holy One like the Lord,

no one besides you;

there is no Rock like our God. 

Those who were well-fed are begging for bread,
while the hungry are served second helpings.
The barren has a houseful of children,

but she who has many children is forlorn. 

God brings death and brings life,
brings down and raises up. 

God puts poor people on their feet again;
God rekindles burned-out lives with fresh hope,
Restoring dignity and respect to their lives.
For the very structures of earth are God's;
God has laid out a firm foundation, and not by might does one prevail. 


Thanks be to God.
Amen.

strange

it was the first time I didn't spend the entire day at home, eating comfort food and blogging and reading silly books.

I would have, but for a meeting I couldn't avoid, but somehow going and doing something (farmer's market, starbucks, meeting, a little work, playing video games with friends) that made life resemble a normal life--like the life I have on other days, like the life millions of people have every day, regardless of major milestones in my own life...it was kind of good. maybe.

I still miss my mom. every day. and I still don't celebrate Halloween because it's not really fun any more. but yesterday was almost a normal day. almost.

I could see glimpses of what Isaiah talks about in the text we will hear in worship this morning:

And God will destroy on this mountain

the shroud that is cast over all peoples

the sheet that is spread over all nations;

God will swallow up death forever.

I might be about to believe that again.

birthdays

The birthdays since I became a real grown up (aka since graduating from a zillion years of consecutive schooling):

4 years ago today, I lived in Egypt and I spoke to my mother for the last time before she died.

3 years ago today, I was at the White Mountain Cooking School, learning many vegetarian yummies, with my fabulous friend Jennifer!

2 years ago today, David LaMotte was playing a concert right here at my own church, and it was completely amazing.

1 year ago today, my small group (which was supposed to be meeting and learning about Body Prayer and embodied spirituality) surprised me by giving me a beautiful gift and also taking me out for Mexican food instead of having a regular small group class.

Today, I received all the gifts that were on my wish list (new stainless steel saucepans, TWO snuggies (one for home and one for office), and a Wii!! And tonight I will have Mexican food (catered by an amazing local restaurant) and chocolate and cake with lots of great church people.

I am 29 today. Since I was born in 1980, I can do this: next year, I will turn 2010, and in 2011 I will turn 2011, and so on. I love it. :-)

Locks of Love

before...

and after....

today

is the day that I will make a huge leap and get 10" of my hair cut off to send to Locks of Love.

5pm central time. pray for me and for Arthur (my hair guy). :-)

Jeez-O-Matic

be my best--a sermon for Ordinary 29B

Rev. Teri Peterson
RCLPC
be my best
Mark 10.35-45
18 October 2009, Ordinary 29B

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to Jesus and said to him, ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’ And he said to them, ‘What is it you want me to do for you?’ And they said to him, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.’ But Jesus said to them, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?’ They replied, ‘We are able.’ Then Jesus said to them, ‘The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.’
When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. So Jesus called them and said to them, ‘You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’



You can’t always get what you want…hard words for a child of the 80’s, part of the first generation of girls to be told “you can be anything you want to be” with any real sense of truth to that statement. “You can be anything you want to be,” said my mother, who had been told that “girls aren’t marine biologists.” I’m not sure “preacher” was ever a line my non-churched family imagined for their little girl, but there you have it—you can be anything you want to be. Of course, that line was usually followed up with “you just have to work the hardest, do your best, try hard, be the best you can be.” In other words, you just have to be the Best…which of course means being better than everyone else.

There’s danger in being the best. Sure, it can open doors and you can be anything you want. It can also close the mind, making it hard to see when the things we’re seeking are not the things we ought to be doing.

James and John only wanted to be the best—the best disciples, with the best place of honor. And, since they knew that they could be anything they wanted to be, they just asked. “We want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.”

Jesus lets them tell him what it is they want him to do before going all Rolling Stones on them—“you can’t always get what you want.”

Part of me wants to go easy on James and John—after all, didn’t Jesus say, “ask and you shall receive”?? Aren’t we supposed to go to God with the deepest desires of our hearts? Aren’t we supposed to want to be the best, strive for the greater things, work toward that place of honor? What’s wrong with asking for what you want? Isn’t that sort of what prayer is about—asking God for things?

I’m pretty sure this is the sort of halfway understanding of prayer-as-magic that floats around in our nominally Christian western culture. When we pray, we ask God for what we want, and we hope God will do it or give it to us. The stereotypical version is the prayer for a parking space, but this is a pretty common approach in a lot of situations, I think. We ask God for peace, for comfort, for healing, for hope, for sunny days, for courage, for partners and friends and colleagues, for justice. And we hope that God will grant those things, at least at some point—though preferably sooner rather than later.

In some ways, it’s a little like we pray to a Jeez-O-Matic, a vending machine God. We press D-8 and we hope for Twix…and if Twix are not what come out, we try C-12 and E-4 and any other combination the vending machine offers, and some it doesn’t offer, hoping for the response we want. Taken to an extreme, this soon becomes a “what’s in it for me?” approach. Sure, I’ll come and follow you—what will you do for me? Yeah, I’ll think about helping my elderly neighbor, but…what’s in it for me? Yes, something needs to be done…but what good will it do me?

“We want for you to do for us whatever we ask of you….in Jesus’ name, Amen.”

But, as Bishop Will Willimon says, Jesus is not a technique for getting what we want out of God; Jesus is God's way of getting what God wants out of us.

While we are praying, asking God for things we want, talking to God about things that matter to us—often life-or-death things—God is also talking to us, in some ways praying to US to do these same things—to bring peace, to do justice, to have the courage to comfort hurting people, to offer hope to those in despair. We pray “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” and that is also what God wants…and what God wants us to do. To live as transformed people who help build the kingdom of God right here on earth. Jesus came to show us God’s will, to be God’s voice and hands and feet…and then to call us, US! the Body of Christ—God’s very own hands and feet and voice and heart right here on earth, where the kingdom is nearby, at hand, coming even now.

We all know that we have to try our hardest and do our best and be all that we can be…but what does it mean to Be My Best in the kingdom of God? Jesus tells us—unlike the rest of the world, in the community of God’s people, in the body of Christ, in the kingdom of God, the greatest is the servant, the VIPs are the slaves of all. When we serve others, when we work for peace and justice, when we comfort the downtrodden and cry with the grieving and laugh with the joyful, when we help those in need, then we are the greatest. The lowest of the low are the ones who end up with the greatest place of glory. Being the best, in the sense of being better than others, won’t get us the place of honor. Instead, Jesus tells us to find our identity in him, to Come, Follow, to wash feet and feed the hungry, to have compassion, to heal. Then we will be our best—our best selves, fully the people God calls us to be. This is exactly what we need.

You can’t always get what you want…but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.

it's almost my birthday!

Only a few more days.

So the question is...

when do I open all these????

:-)

Thanks Dad and grandma!!!