from The Barrel

Sunday February 14, 1993

Key Scripture—Genesis 29: 10-27

“What think you of falling in love?” Shakespeare asked.

“Fall from the treetops
Fall from above
Fall from anywhere
But don’t fall in love”

the little rhyme I learned somewhere along the line advised. Love. Butterflies in the stomach, and stars in your eyes.

“They say that falling in love is wonderful.”

“It’s cherry pink and apple blossom white
When you’re in love.”

“Love is a many splendored thing.
It’s the April rose that slowly grows
In the early spring.
Love is nature’s way of giving
A reason to be living.”

“Do you ask what the birds say? The sparrow, the dove,
The linnet, the thrush say, “I love, and I love.”
In the winter they’re silent, the wind is strong;
What it says I don’t know, but it sings a loud song.
But green leaves, and blossoms, and sunny warm weather,
And singing and loving—all come back together.
But the lark is so brimful of gladness and love,
The green fields below him, the blue sky above,
Then he sings, and he sings, and forever sings he,
“I love my Love, and my Love loves me.”

Love. Our literature and lore are full of it. There are love stories and songs, there are sonnets and rhymes, there are movies and plays, there are legends and clichés that enshrine and immortalize love. There were Samson and Delilah, Isaac and Rebecca, David and Jonathan, Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra, Daphne and Chloe, Tristan and Isolde, Hamlet and Ophelia, Burton and Taylor, and many famous as well as many lesser known couples who have inspired song and sonnet from time immemorial.

Before I go any further I should admit that this is the first time I am preaching a Valentine’s Day sermon. It may be that I am getting sentimental in my old age. So I changed the lectionary for today, since February 14 falls on a Sunday. I shall try to avoid the temptation to use the traditional device of preachers when they talk of love to talk about the three different Greek words eros, philos and agape that are all translated love in English. I shall use expressions of love that have come from many sources Biblical and non-Biblical to define and describe this human experience that borders on the define.

I woke up two days ago with the thought in my mind, “Sigmund Freud was wrong! Love is much more than sex.” I don’t know what I must have been dreaming, or whether I had been dreaming at all. But all of a sudden it seemed to me that to confine the human experience of love to a biological function was to limit our understanding severely. Certainly our human sexuality is closely intertwined with much we call love. There are some who would argue that it is at the base of our experience of love. There are others who argue that it enhances and enriches love, but love has deeper roots in our souls.

Friendship and companionship are even more basic to love than sexual attraction.

“All love that has not friendship for its base,
Is like a mansion built upon sand.
Though brave its walls as any in the land,
And its tall turrets lift their heads in grace;
Though skillful and accomplished artists trace
Most beautiful designs on every hand,
And gleaming statues in dim niches stand,
And fountains play in some flow’r-hidden place:

Yet, when from the frowning east a sudden gust
Of adverse fate is blown, or sad rains fall
Day in, day out, against its yielding wall,
Lo! the fair structure crumbles to the dust.
Love, to endure life’s sorrow and earth’s woe,
Needs friendship’s solid masonwork below.

For many years I have given presents of music boxes to my wife for birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, and so on, until a couple years ago she told me she had enough. We have a curio cabinet full of them. Every now and then I would wind them up in turn. “Close to you,” “Love Me Tender,” “Memories,” and a host of other melodies that could occupy her for a long while.

And while our tradition has immortalized the love of man and woman, and our tradition and culture has frowned upon and denied that deep and genuine relationships are possible between persons of the same gender, the door has been opened slightly, and many of us are beginning to learn that the depth and intensity, the beauty and the purity of love is not confined to heterosexual relationships. For if the basis for love is not sexual but human, if friendship and companionship are the ”solid mason-work below,” then surely those deeply human qualities are possible for all our human relationships, and homosexuality as truly as heterosexuality can enhance and enrich those relationships that give so much joy, and fulfillment, so much meaning and purpose to human life.

The magic and the mystery of love is that it helps us to discover parts of who we are that we never would have known we were to stay safely within ourselves. The poem I share with you now is titled simply, “Love,” by Roy Croft.

I love you,
Not for what you are
But for what I am
When I am with you.

I love you,
Not only for what
You have made of yourself,
But for what
You are making of me.

I love you
For the part of me
That you bring out;
I love you
for putting your hand
Into my heaped-up heart
And passing over
All foolish, weak things
That you can’t help
Dimly seeing there,
And for drawing out
Into the light
All the beautiful belongings
That no one else had looked
Quite far enough to find.

I love you because you
Are helping me to make
Of the lumber of my life
Not a tavern
But a temple;
Out of the works
Of my every day
Not a reproach
But a song.

I love you
Because you have done
More than any creed
Could have done
To make me good,
And more than any fate
Could have done
To make me happy.

You have done it
Without a touch,
Without a word,
Without a sign.
You have done it
By being yourself.
Perhaps that is what
Being a friend means,
After all.

It is at this very deepest level of our being that we find within ourselves the capability to know and experience God in a fullness and a depth we would not otherwise have known. In the rock musical Jesus Christ Superstar, of a generation ago, Mary Magdalene encounters a depth of her being that confuses and confounds her as she enters into a relationship with Jesus.

“I don’t know how to love him,
What to do, why he moves me.
He’s a man, he’s just a man;
And I’ve known so many men before
In very many ways, he’s just one more.”

Yet it is very obvious that he’s not “just one more.”

“I’ve been changed, yes, really changed.
In the past few days, when I’ve seen myself,
I seem like someone else.”

It was in the human relationship of love that Mary finds a part of herself that could only be expressed in relationship to God.

In the Gospel according to John in the New Testament, the writer continually makes reference to John as the disciple whom Jesus loved. I don’t want to make too much of this, but it seems to me that Jesus must have loved all his disciples. The disciple whom Jesus loved, refers, to a special relationship John experienced with Jesus.

In a slightly different vein, those of you who have seen the movie, Sister Act saw how the leading lady played by Whoopie Goldberg takes two popular songs written and sung to express romantic love and uses it to express a relationship with God. So when she takes the song, Nothing in the world could make me untrue to my guy, and transposes it to say, “my God” it seems to be even more appropriate than in the secular version. In the same way the song,

“I will follow him;
Follow him wherever he may go,
There isn’t a mountain too high...
to keep me away,
Away from my love.
I love him, I love him, I love him;
and where he goes I’ll follow...”

That whole song becomes more expressive of the human relationship of God in Jesus Christ than it is of our normal human loves.

Saints and mystics often describe the inner relationship as a mystical romance with God. Sometimes the language they use to describe that deeply spiritual experience is much like the sexual experience. That is not sacrilegious. It shows us how close to God we are when we deeply and truly love.

Jacob loved Rachel. He loved her to work seven years for her; and when after seven years he was tricked, he worked another seven years. It is at the level when our souls reach beyond ourselves to find a fulfillment and satisfaction that is so deep that our lives will always be impoverished without it that we experience love; and it is there that we experience God.

We could go on talking and quoting for a long time. One more bit of verse that expresses love for the woman who kissed this frog and even though I may have not turned into a handsome prince, at least I am a frog who has been kissed by a princess. The poem is also to God who not only created me with potential but has helped to discover some of that potential and shows how I can become all I’m meant to be.

How do I love the? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

It is when we learn to love like that that we are closest to the heart of God. It is when we experience that depth of love that we share in the divine nature which is love. For “love is from God, and whoever loves is born of God and knows God... God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Sunday December 25, 2005
Park Presidio United Methodist Church
San Francisco, CA

Behold, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people. Luke 2: 9

Merry Christmas! Or do you say, Happy Holidays? Or does it matter? But we will come back to that in a moment.

First let me say how good it is to be with you again and to have the privilege of the pulpit, as I share in your worship today. Natasha is seeing to it that I don’t rust out in retirement.

Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays, does it make any difference? Have you been following the debate? I have not paid much attention to it, but it has been hard ignore it completely. Apparently some people in the “Christian Right” of whom, one of my friends says that they are neither Christian nor right, in any case some of these ultra conservatives are objecting to the use of the use of Happy Holidays. They insist that it has to be Merry Christmas.

And make no mistake about it, they are serious about their objections. They have gone so far as to organize and push a boycott against Target Stores until they stop advertising “Holiday Sales”. Does that sound a bit silly to you? Well, not to these zealots. They think that Christmas is uniquely theirs and any attempt to accommodate others somehow violates their theological integrity and their spiritual birthright. If Jewish people want to celebrate Chanukah they can do it without horning in on a Christian thing. Christmas is for Christians, Chanukah, Kwanza, Eid are for the others. In their mind any attempt to be inclusive of other people’s holidays by grouping them with Christmas must be resisted with all their might.

I must say, I have a pretty good idea of how they feel. When I was growing up, in Trinidad, I remember, all too well, resenting the fact that my Hindu friends and relatives celebrated Christmas. They did not go to church, or sing Christian songs, but they had their gatherings and festivities. I felt that they had no right to celebrate Christmas, because, as I said, they were not Christians.

Now listen to this:

Behold, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people.

“…great joy for all people.”
That does not seem to indicate that this is only for a select group of people. You may recall that at the time of the angel’s message there were no Christians. There were only Jews and Gentiles. The message of the angel was that the news of great joy was not only for Jews, and certainly not exclusively for Christians, who did not exist at the time. The message of the angel was for all people, namely, for Jews and Gentiles. The joy that was to come was not only for those who considered themselves to be God’s Chosen People. The joy was also for those whom the Jews considered to be beyond the pale. Indeed, the Jews at that time believed that God created Gentiles to feed the fires of Hell. That angelic message of inclusiveness certainly was not intended to soothe the sensitivities of those who considered themselves entitled to exclusive domain.

We create our barriers, we build fences to exclude those we believe less worthy. We devise theologies, formulas, passwords, ceremonies to prevent others from sharing the good news unless they follow rules which we have made. You have "to be saved". You have to be "washed in the blood of the lamb". You have to do a lot of things that we, ourselves have no idea of what they mean, that we ourselves do not do.

We divide and exclude so that we can get all the goodies. But the good news of great joy is for all the people: Christian, Jews, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto and whatever other divisions we have devised including agnostics and atheists. I kid you not, “all people” includes even those who are not sure of, deny the very existence of God. All of their celebrations are included. Christmas, Kwanza, Eid, Chanukah, Divali , Winter Solstice or whatever, all are celebrations of joy. All their holidays, all their holy days are joyful. The good news of great joy is that all the barriers have been removed.

Now I want to focus for a moment on what the good news of great joy actually is. The story in Luke focuses on the birth of Jesus. But what is the significance of that event? My concept of Christmas is that it is a celebration of love breaking into the world in the form of a human baby. In the midst of a world that is torn by injustice, greed, and oppression, besieged by racism, homophobia, and anti-semitism; in the midst of a world that is being blighted by the destructive use of money and power; into the midst of such a world love breaks in quietly, in the unlikeliest of places, in the most vulnerable form.

Someone asked me the other day what I thought God was like. Now you would think that for one who has spent the major part of his life as a theologian, teacher and preacher, that should be a pretty easy question to answer. I should have the answer on the very tip of my tongue. The truth is, I really don’t know much about God. Does that sound strange? O, I know the theologies, I know what the Bible says, I know what I have read, and I have been taught by my professors. But I know precious little about what God is like. I suspect that if we are deeply honest with ourselves we would all have to made the same admission.

So my answer went something like this: Of everything that I have learned about God the only thing that my experience can affirm and verify is that God is love. My concept of God is that God is Love. God is Perfect Love or to put it another way, Perfect Love is God.

Almost everyone has experienced love. We all know something about love, about loving and being loved. I love my wife, I love my daughters and my sons=in-law, I love my grandsons and my granddaughters, I love my brothers and sisters, my nieces and nephews and other relatives, I love my friends and neighbors, although I still struggle with loving my enemies. I suspect that the same is true for most other people, including most of you here.

As imperfect as my love is, I have loved, and I have been loved. To me there is nothing more beautiful, nothing more wonderful, nothing more full-filling, and nothing of greater value in the world than love. I believe that there is nothing more powerful in the world than love. That is exactly what my concept of God is. Yet, even though I am love and love, my love is imperfect. My self-love often gets in the way of my love of my wife. The desire to exercise power was too often mixed into my love of my children. I have no idea of what Perfect Love would be like. But I do believe that if Perfect Love exists anywhere such Perfect Love would have to be God.

And to me, that what Christmas is about?

Love came down at Christmas
Love all lovely, love divine…

My sisters and brothers, if the message of peace on earth were ever to be fulfilled, it would not come through the governments of the earth. Nor would it come through the United Nations or any treaties between nations. Peace on Earth could only be fulfilled as we humans became more loving. The joy, the celebration of this season is this: not that somehow we come up with a formula so that some selected few can go to a special life after death, while the others are relegated to some horrible Hell. The joy, the celebration of this season is this: That love has come into the world, love that breaks into our lives. The good news of joy is that the transforming power of love can not only make us more loving persons, but make our society and the world more loving, too.

God redeems and transforms the world not by making Christians of us all, but making us all more perfect in our love, until the reign of peace and justice begins.

My sisters and brothers, whatever holidays we celebrate, whatever joy we receive and share, when love enters into our personal world, when love begins transformation within our personal lives, when love becomes more real in the world around us, God becomes real for God is love. And when we celebrate the coming of love into our world, we celebrate the deepest and best of our humanity.

That, to me, is the good news worth celebrating, the good news of great joy, for all the people.

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanza, Happy Chanukah, Happy Divali, Eid Mubarak, Happy Winter Solstice. May love flood your heart, may love fill all our lives, and fill all the earth. Amen.

Easter Sunday 2004
Park Presidio United Methodist Church,
San Francisco, CA


“If a man dies, will he live again?” The age-old universal human concern which has fascinated and puzzled the human mind from time immemorial was posed thus in the Book of Job. This was the classic argument, which separated the Pharisees from the Sadducees in the time of Jesus, which they debated endlessly.

I am here to testify to you today that, at least in one sense, the answer to the question is “yes”. Some of you will have learned from, our daughter, Natasha that in the closing days of January (2004) I had an episode of cardiac arrest; I experienced, what the doctors call, “sudden death”. My heart stopped beating, my breathing stopped, my eyes rolled back in their sockets and my body started to become rigid. Were it not for the fact that I was exercising at the hospital and very timely work of the code team I would not be here to tell the tale. As it was, I woke up almost two hours later in the Intensive Care unit gagging on a respirator tube and a team of doctors and nurses watching my progress. By the grace of a merciful providence I am here to tell the tale today.

I am not claiming to have had the experience of resurrection, which Easter celebrates. I want, rather, to illustrate the power of life, which will not easily be snuffed out. And, yet, life is fragile. None of us know, from one moment to another, what can happen to us in an instant. In my own case I was exercising on a treadmill. I was in better health and condition than I had been in twenty years, or even more. I could exercise harder and longer than at any time in my adult life. I was secure in the knowledge that not only was I doing well, but that I was doing very well.

And, yet, one minute before my treadmill session was done I collapsed on the treadmill with no pulse and no breath. One of the persons who witnessed the episode told me, later, that my eyes rolled back, my body started to become rigid, and I started to turn blue. Life is fragile, indeed!

Most of us live and behave as if we will live forever. We make plans, we abuse our bodies, our minds, our spirits, and we neglect our relationships. One of these days, we tell ourselves, we will get around to doing those things we know we should. We live as if we have an iron grip on life, as if we can hang on to it forever, if we so chose.

But life is fragile.

“Life is but a passing day, no tongue my tell how brief it’s span.”

Or, as it is written in the Epistle of James:

“Come now, you who say, ‘today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town, and spend a year there, doing business and making money’. Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes…”

Life is fragile! But, then, you know that.

By now you have probably figured out that this is not a traditional Easter sermon. I could easily have preached one if I had chosen to do so. I have preached them as an ordained pastor for 39 years. Indeed, I could have gone through and revised one of those and preached it here today. But you have heard traditional Easter sermons before, and you will no doubt hear them again. You were probably inspired by them, moved to tears by them, felt you faith and commitment strengthened by them. But that is not the word that came to me to speak to you today. So, I ask you to, please indulge me in this.

Many, many years ago, in my boyhood, I heard a missionary preacher say, in a sermon, “They say that there are thousands living who will never die, but I tell you that there are millions dying who have never lived.” Those words of Dr. J. C. MacDonald have come to me over and over through the years, and have challenged me not only in my thought, but also in my living.

When I was a student in Seminary in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on of my buddies was deeply scholarly. He read voraciously, and was always discussing erudite subjects. One day one of our friends said to him, “Live, Sam, live! Get yourself a car, get a girl, go out there an live!” Now that may be a somewhat immature concept of what living is, but his point was well taken, and I am happy to report that Sam took it. He continued to be a scholar, but he realized that he was more than a brain.

“There are millions dying who have never lived.” Indeed, there are millions living who have never lived! For many years of my professional life I was a busy pastor. I attended meetings all over the country, indeed, all over the world. I wrote and preached hundreds of sermons. I counseled and helped lots of people. I advocated for peace with justice. I was a busy pastor. I visited with the sick in the hospital, and the hurting in their homes. I taught Confirmation Classes, raised funds, and managed budgets. I was a busy pastor. I brought to healing and wholeness to many people.

I was a busy pastor. Too busy to spend much time at home. I had important things to do. So I didn’t always make it to my children’s band concerts. One of our daughters, to this day, has not forgotten that I missed her birthday. “But I was in India, “I protested. “But you were not there for my birthday,” she insisted. “But I’ve been there for all your other birthdays.” “But you were not there for my birthday.” So how important is a child’s birthday compared to being on a Travel/Study Tour of India under the auspices of the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church? In her mind there was no doubt of how important it was.

But I was a busy pastor. It didn’t do much good for my health. I developed high blood pressure. And I am sure it did not do much to help my genetic tendency to heart disease. Several years before I retired I decided I needed to live. I decided that the most important thing in my life was my marriage, and the most important person in the world to me, was my wife.

Do you know what the most important event in my day became, and still remains so? Every morning I sit with my wife and we eat breakfast together. Not a very elaborate or exciting breakfast: it used to be a half of a bagel, toasted, with cream cheese and a cup of black coffee. Now, a boiled egg, or a bowl of oatmeal porridge and a cup of coffee. Not an earth shattering even, I know, but I would not give it up for all the meetings, all the travel, or all the important and exciting things I have done in my life.

The question for you and me, my friends, is not, “If a man dies, will he live again?” That is a question for preachers, for theologians, for intellectual discourse, and for Easter sermons. For us, the challenge is that thrown out by Dr. MacDonald: “There are millions dying who have never lived.” The question for us is this: Is there life before death? Have you lived? Are you living? Or are you putting it off to some more convenient time. Maybe when the kids are older, or when you get that raise, that promotion, when you retire, or to whatever that convenient excuse is which we use to persuade ourselves. The question for you and me, my sisters and brothers, is not, “Is there life after death?” For us the question is, “Is there life before death?”

What would living be for you? Have you thought about that at all? What would living be for you? If all the justifications for putting it off were suddenly resolved, what would you do with your life? I spent years helping all kinds of people, but I was not there for my family. I was not a bad husband and father, but my daughter’s rebuke still haunts me: “but you weren’t there for my birthday.” It’s not that I did not want to be there for her, but she understood very well that I had other priorities.

“There are millions living who have never lived.” Are you one of them? We all are, aren’t we, to one degree or another. The poet, John Donne put it this way:

“’Tis ye, ‘tis your estranged faces
that miss the many splendored thing.”

Ah, yes, “the many splendored thing” to which we will devote ourselves one of these days. What is “the many splendored thing” for you? And what is the estranged face that causes you to miss it?

After my sudden death experience one of my friends wrote to me in an email, “there must be something that you were sent back to finish.” That may well be, but I have not spent much time trying to figure out what that may be. All that I want to do is to live each moment, savor each experience, treasure each relationship, and value each person I encounter. The poet H. W. Longfellow put it this way:

“Trust no future however pleasant,
Let the dead past bury its dead.
Act, act, in the living present…”

One of my exercise buddies said to me on the first day I went back to exercise, “Brother, you are living on borrowed time.” To which I responded, “Don’t I know it! But then, so are you!”
Life is fragile, indeed. But, after my experience of the fragility of life I am here to testify that life is good. Too good to be wasted making excuses; too good to be wasted doing things that are not truly important to us; too good to let it slip through our fingers without our having truly lived it. “There are millions dying who have never lived.”

As my seminary friend said to my buddy, so I say to you, “Live, Sam (or Sue, or John or Jane, or whoever you are), live, Sam, live!”

Amen! It shall be so.

Sunday January 25, 2003
St. Andrew's Kirk
St. George's, Grenada W.I.




How good it is! How good it is to be in Grenada again! Twenty years is much too long a time to be away. How many times over those years, "in vacant or in pensive mood", scenes from this part of my experience have flashed upon my "inward eye"! Scenes of sitting among the old gravestones in the churchyard and looking down on the Esplanade, of sitting at the old fort and looking down on the harbor. Scenes of driving along the western side on a Sunday morning and crossing the bridge at the Concord River and looking down at the women doing their wash in the river.

How good it is to be with you, again! Life has a way of getting in the way of things that are important to us. For a long time I tried to maintain contact with many of you by mail, but both you and I let it languish. To be here today and to be looking at your faces again is a great and beautiful gift.

How good it is to stand in this pulpit again! I am grateful to your pastor the Rev. Mr. James for his gracious invitation to share this moment with you, today. I must warn you, though, as I warned him, that I have not preached a sermon for a while and my skills may be a little rusty.

In my retirement sermon two-and-a-half years ago I attempted to distill all that I had learned in my thirty-nine years in ordained ministry in three and a half words: "It's about people." After two and a half years of retirement I think that sentiment is as valid today as it was then. I still believe that it's about people, although in a slightly different way.

Funny thing about retirement is that I don't think as a preacher anymore. I am not forever preparing sermons in my head. I used to have three our four sermons running around in my head at any given moment. All I had to do was grab a-hold of one of them and start pulling. I saw sermon illustrations all around me in my daily experiences. Now I have been learning to be a regular human being, and it has been a very humbling experience. I don't want to go into detail about that, but I do want to try to share with you the essence of what I have learned in my retirement.

One of the most significant things that has been happening in my retirement is that I spend a lot more time at home. Prior to my retirement I was gone all the time. My wife almost had to make an appointment to talk with me. Now I am at home almost all the time. And the thing about being at home that much is that it puts me in contact with my wife not only for longer periods of time but with much greater intensity. And that, my friends, can either make or break a relationship.

Here is a story that illustrates what I mean.

One day the king called in his most trusted counselor.
"I don't know what to do," said the king, "the princess, my daughter, wants to marry a most disagreeable rogue. I know that if I forbid it, her resolve will only be strengthened. What shall I do?"
The counselor thought for a minute and said to the king, "Your Majesty, I have an idea that will almost certainly work."
"Please tell me what it is?" begged the king.
"If it pleases your Majesty, tell your daughter that she may marry whomever she wishes, but with one condition."
"What would that condition be?" asked the king.
"That the princess and the man she thinks she loves must be put in a room together and be locked in."
"What?" exclaimed the king, "are you crazy!"
"Tell the princess that she and this man must remain in the room for two weeks. All their needs will be met, but they will neither see nor talk with anyone else until two weeks have passed. If after two weeks they still want to marry, give them your blessing. If their love is not true, they will hate each other long before the two weeks are over, and wish to get out of there. If, however, their love is true, it will draw them closer together."

The truth is that living together in close proximity either destroys a relationship or binds it even more tightly. For the past two and a half years I have been learning how to live in relationship in a way that I had not in 35 years previously. I am pleased to report that after two and a half years that my wife has not tried to jump out a window, although I am sure she must have thought about it at times. In my retirement what I have learned is, that it's about relationships.

Several years ago, when one of our daughters was in a confirmation class I taught one of the other girls in the class said to her, "you're so lucky to have a dad like that; I think that he is such a wonderful man." To which my daughter replied, "That's because you don't have to live with him." How true! There are so many people who attract our attention, or elicit our admiration, but what are they like up close? How well do they fare in relationships? Would you want to live with them?

Living in relationship is not the easiest thing in the world. Yet, I have learned that it is one of the most important and fulfilling things in human experience. I believe that living in relationship is not only at the very center of what it is to be human, but, indeed, it is at the very heart of our spirituality. Spiritual life is essentially about living in relationship.
The epistle of 1 John puts it this way:

Anyone who says, “I love God,” and hates his brother or sister, is a liar; for he who does not love a brother or sister, whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. 1Jn 4: 20

Yes, relationships are that important.

Notice that the writer is talking about loving a brother or sister whom one has seen. It is all too easy to love people in general. "Love your neighbor as yourself" sounds good until you begin to apply it to a particular neighbor. It is all too easy to love people in the abstract. I love everybody in the world. I love the poor. I love those who are hurting and neglected. So long as they live at a great distance from me I have no problem loving them. It is the people with whom I have to live that I find it difficult to maintain a healthy relationship. Or to put it in more earthy terms, it is the people with whom I have to share a bathroom who put my love to the test.

Wouldn't our spiritual lives be so much easier if we could live as hermits on a mountaintop without daily human contact? Wouldn't our relationship with God be enhanced living in a cave where we could commune with God in the stillness of our solitude! If we could dedicate our lives entirely to God and live in a monastery or a convent and have time to pray and meditate all day, without the distractions of having to deal with other people or all the demands upon our time, we could be saints, too!

No, my brothers and sisters. The way to deeper spirituality lies not on the mountaintop. The way to a closer relationship with God lies not in a cave. The way to a richer life in the spirit lies not in a cloister! The way to deeper spirituality lies in the give and take of every day life with other people. We learn to live in communion with God in learning to live in relationship with one another. Yes, it is that ordinary and mundane.

When I was in active ministry I thought that one could not sustain a life of the spirit without regular church attendance. I couldn't understand how one could be Christian if he or she did not come to worship sing the hymns, and listen to my wonderful sermons. I thought that people who regularly absented themselves from Sunday morning worship missed out on the main essential of spiritual life. For some reason what Jesus said completely eluded me:

If you bring your gift to the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift and go and first be reconciled to your brother or sister… Matt 5: 23, 24.

A relationship with God can only be maintained as we live in harmonious relationship with one another. Indeed, according to Jesus, all our works of piety are worthless apart from a harmonious relationship with our brother or sister.

As we said earlier this is not an easy thing to do. Indeed, it is more difficult than anything else I have attempted. The strange thing is that I did not pay much attention to it until after I retired. I was always too busy, or too tired. I had important things to do all over the country and all over the world. But the most important thing I had to do I did not even recognize. I neglected the most important people in my life and was busy helping other people.

Unfortunately, I am not the only person who has that difficulty. I think that clergy are particularly prone to that problem. In the care of souls we find ourselves caught up in something very intoxicating. The respect and love that others have for us by virtue of our office too easily goes to our head. We soon find ourselves working overtime to get more of it. It is an occupational hazard. We neglect our families, we neglect our own physical health, and we neglect our own spiritual lives. When I talk with younger brothers and sisters in the ministry I tell them that it is most important that they take time for their families. You can always get another church, but you only have one chance with this family.

The old saying, "Charity begins at home" is true. It is true that Love begins at home. At home is where we learn to love. Home is where we practice love until we become better and better at it. We learn living in relationship not in a cloister, but in the heat of our every day lives lived with others. It is probably the most difficult thing that anyone can ever do. Yet, there is no doubt in my mind that it is the most important thing that anyone can ever do.

Here is another thing I have learned: it helps when you have a good teacher. My wife has been a wonderful teacher. Over the years as I neglected our relationship because I was too busy or too tired, she worked unceasingly at maintaining that relationship. She kept reminding me of how important it is. But not only has she been helping me to strengthen our relationship, she has been helping me to live in relationship with that grandson whom I love but who drives me crazy. She has been helping me with that son-in-law who aggravates me almost past endurance. She gently reminds me, and sometimes not so gently, when I do or say something that may cause hurt to another. I thank God for her gentle and wise teaching.
.
But, not even a gentle and wise teacher can make it happen all at once. I am far from being there. But, by the grace of God I say, in the words of John Wesley, "I am going on to perfection." In short, difficult steps, day by day, sometimes moment by moment, I am learning to live in relationship.

I realize that all this may not sound very profound, or theological. It is something anybody can think about. Indeed, it is likely something that you knew all the time. Yet, although it may not seem like much, I am beginning to learn that it is the most important thing in the world.

There are three things that last forever: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 Cor 13: 13

And how is love best and most completely expressed, but in our everyday human relationships.

Well, that is what 65 years of life has taught me: that the greatest thing in the world, the most important thing in life, is our relationships with one another. That, my sisters and brothers, is what it's all about. It's about relationships.

Sunday June 11, 2000

Key Scripture—1 Corinthians 3: 1-3



Where do I begin? Should I start with a young insecure boy who found approval and acceptance in a loving grandmother, aunt and parents? Or maybe a young teenager in a deeply spiritual mode, yet burdened with guilt? Or a young boy who heard a call to ministry in the voice of his father speaking to someone else? Where do I start?

Let’s begin in the year 1957. I had already completed two years of theological education. Three others and I would be leaving for Canada in September for studies leading to ordination. That year I had organized and led a mission of young people to the island of Grenada. We had conducted services, met with young people there and organized Christian Endeavor Societies. And somewhere along the way I had picked up a bug that developed into what the doctor diagnosed as serious case of infectious hepatitis on my return to Trinidad. I had excruciating headaches, very high temperatures, and serious diarrhea.

It was during that illness that my fevered brain had a delirious dream. I dreamt that I had already been ordained and I was serving a church in Trinidad. People came from all over to hear me preach, and they were falling over converted all over the place. I was soon called to a larger church and before long I was sent to North America with the same spectacular results. My preaching resulted in mass conversions wherever I went. I was sent on a mission to Russia and in Moscow the Russian communists were coming to Christ in droves in response to my preaching.

In 1961 I had completed my studies and at the age of 23 returned to Trinidad to be ordained. I was appointed to a Pastoral Charge with eight churches. In the main congregation they were planning to build a new church building but the congregation had been split into so many factions that most people did not talk with each other, and more stayed away than came to church. I was too young to know any better, so I went about the business of healing the broken body. I preached as I hard as I could but I witnessed no conversions as a result of my preaching. In a couple of years I was called to another Charge. They, too, had had severe conflicts and splits, and I began again the work of healing.

In 1965 I accepted an appointment to the island of Grenada, where Ruth came and joined me, and we were married. We had planned on a quiet wedding, but the congregation would have none of it. They arranged the reception and even secured a beautiful completely private hideaway by the sea for our honeymoon, where we had total privacy. We roamed around like Adam and Eve, although my blushing bride insisted on us wearing more than fig leaf aprons.

It was during this period, in this idyllic setting, that my disillusionment with ministry began and grew to critical portions. Even though people were responding positively to my ministry, my preaching was not having the desired effect. As far as I knew no one was being saved. Admitting failure as a preacher I began to search for alternate forms of ministry. Since I had always been told I had a gift for writing I thought that developing that gift by training in religious journalism would enable me to reach and touch people in the way my preaching did seem to be doing.

So on October 2, 1968 my young wife and I, with our two little girls, Nadia and Natasha left, Trinidad for Wisconsin. We were too young and foolish to realize the enormity of the journey we had undertaken. With a few dollars we had raised from selling everything we had we bought tickets, and with $1,000 (US) on loan from one of my brothers, we came to Wisconsin. Bishop Alton appointed us to Avoca and Gotham. A grand salary of $4,000 managed to keep us going, and pay my out-of-state tuition at the University. But more than that the wonderful people of Avoca and Gotham, and later Wyoming Valley, received us with such warmth and generosity of spirit. I have recounted this at another time and won’t go into it now.

Slowly my call to pastoral ministry returned during this period, and I began to realize that I had been disillusioned because I had set unrealistic expectations for myself. I had misunderstood the nature and function of preaching. But I continued to be on a crusade. In 1973 we accepted our first full time appointment in Bristol and Wesley Chapel. Things were hopping in this charge. They responded to our ministry with enthusiasm and we were very busy and active people. Shortly after we went to Bristol one of our girls fell seriously ill. We almost lost her. The people of the churches surrounded us with their love, they held us up with their prayers. They did everything that needed to be done so that we could give ourselves to our daughter. When our daughter recovered as if by a miracle we had no doubt in our minds that it was the power of love and of prayer that brought healing.

In 1978 we accepted an appointment to Markesan. I remember coming home from a meeting where I had met with District Superintendent Lloyd Foster. I told Ruth that he had asked us to go to Markesan. My wife broke down and started to cry. “What’s the matter?” I asked her, completely befuddled. “At least they could send us to some placed I’ve heard of!” she said. “Where in the world is Markesan?” became home for six wonderful years. And in 1984 we accepted an appointment to La Crosse: St. Luke’s. After only two years we were appointed to Mayville and Horicon where we were told that our gifts and graces were needed. After six years in Mayville and Horicon they were ready to have separate appointments and we accepted an appointment to University Church in Madison. After three years there we came kicking and screaming to Waterloo.

So here we are today after 39 years of ordained ministry. What have I learned? I have learned that ministry is not about converting people. This may come as a disappointment to some, but I sincerely believe that that is not the job of preaching. I had been disillusioned in ministry because I had mistaken expectations. My fevered dream had set up expectations that were completely unrealistic and untrue and had left me frustrated and feeling a failure. It had robbed me of the peace and fulfillment of the heart of ministry. It had caused me to miss all the wonderful things that were happening in my ministry.

I have learned that ministry is not about changing the world. Certainly there are problems everywhere. Certainly there is poverty and oppression, there is hunger and disease and death. There are problems that frighten even the bravest. I have tried, but I have not changed the world. It is not because I have failed at it, but I have come to understand better. It is not that I don’t continue to challenge injustice, but I see it in a larger context. If I cannot change the world, I have sought to change myself, to become a more understanding and caring person. Love changes more people than any other power that I know.

I have learned that ministry is not about theology. As much as I love theological thought, discussion and debate, it is not what ministry is about. It is not about persuading people to accept my particular theology. Indeed, my theology has changed so much over time that I myself no longer accept theologies that I held not so long ago. Ministry is not about pushing any particular theology. Indeed, I have learned that theology is highly overrated. I would not say that it is not important at all, but it is much less important the I had thought. I believe I can say that in every congregation I have served that my theology was more liberal that the majority of the members of the congregation. But that did not keep me from developing deep relationships and spiritual bonding with people of all theological shades.

I have learned that ministry is not about raising the budget. It is not about financial solvency. It is not about paying apportionments in full. It is not about statistical reports, or Charge Conferences. It is not about bishops and district superintendents. It is not about any of the things I have been told it is over the years. What is ministry about? It’s about people. It’s not about converting people. It’s not about manipulating them to believe what I think they should believe. It is about loving people. That’s simple enough, isn’t it? Perhaps you knew it all along. For me it has taken a journey of thirty-nine years to come to this understanding.

It’s about the people in Dummer and Parry, two small hamlets in Southern Saskatchewan, who loved a little brown man who came to serve them as a student minister. It’s about people in Couva, Balmain, Calcutta Settlement, Indian Trail, Carolina, McBean, Esperanza, California, people in Fyzabad, Rousillac, Siparia Road, people in Grenada, in St. George’s, Samaritan, Gouyave, and Conference, people in St. James, and in Guaico. It’s about people in Avoca, Gotham, and Wyoming Valley, people in Bristol and Wesley Chapel, people in Markesan, people in La Crosse, people in Mayville and Horicon, people in Madison, people in Waterloo. It’s about my own wonderful wife, and my four loving daughters, who together have been a ministry team with me over the years.

Ministry is about people. Jesus knew that, of course. To him it was about a Samaritan woman looking frantically for love. It was about a demented maniac who lived among the tombs. It was about an old rabbi who was searching for meaning beyond the theologies he had learned. It was about little children who recognized in him a friend. “You are the light of the world,” he said. “You are the salt of the earth.” I could name names, but that is dangerous business, because I could never name them all. Yet today I do want to say that I wish our friend Vera were with us. Vera was Auntie Vera to our girls. She welcomed us into her family. She was my mentor, my sister, and my friend. I miss her terribly today. But who knows, maybe she is celebrating this day with us.

I love you all. And I thank you for the wonderful love that you have shared with us over the years. You are the church. You are the seed. You have helped me to understand and to experience what ministry is about. You are what my ministry has been about, and you have been worth every minute of the more than thirty-nine years of my life devoted to this vocation.

With all my heart I thank you, and the hundred of others who have been a part of this wonderful journey with us. May God bless you all, always!

(I preached this sermon at my retirement service)

Sunday August 28, 1994

Key Scripture—Song of Solomon 2: 8-13

They say that falling in love is wonderful, wonderful...

Some of you are still young enough to feel the blush and fire of young love. Some of us, who may not be quite that young, recall the violent fires and still glow with the warmth of maturing relationships. “Falling in love is wonderful,” indeed! Being in love makes the whole world beautiful. Living in a continuing loving relationship gives a fullness and completeness to our experience we could have in no other way.

“The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills.
My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice.
My beloved speaks and says to me: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away;
for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”

Anyone who has ever been in love recognizes the internal condition that bit of poetry describes. We know the excitement and anticipation we feel every time we think of the one we love. We know how thoughts of our loved one our fill hearts with day and night.

(We) know how it feels to have wings on our heels
And to fly down the street in a trance.
You fly down the street on the chance you might meet
And you meet, not really by chance.

And to quote from another musical.

Ah, yes, (we) remember it well!

For we, too, have been there.

But what if the poetry describes something else? What if the beloved in Song of Solomon is not a human creature, but God? What if I told you that the relationship of human individuals to God can be as intoxicating, as exciting, and as intense as falling in love? It can, you know! Mystics and saints in widely different traditions over ages have described the relationship with God as a love affair. Indeed, the only parallel in human experience that approaches the closeness and intimacy of the human spirit with God is the closeness and intimacy between lovers. Think of any love song you know, and substitute God for the human loved one and see how well that describes your relationship with God.

In the movie Sister Act actress Whoopie Goldberg plays the part of a night club singer whose life is threatened, and takes refuge in a convent, disguised as a nun. She eventually becomes director of the convent choir. Because her career as a night club singer leaves her more familiar with popular music than with church songs, she treats some of the popular love songs she knows as anthems of praise to God. So in the song, “I will follow him,” she sings about following her Lord wherever he goes. She sings of the devotion and faithfulness of the human lover to the divine lover, and the song “My Guy” soon expresses a relationship with God:

“Nothing in the world can take me away from my God...”

Soon the excitement and enthusiasm of that faith catches on in the convent and the nuns sing with a fervor and excitement the covenant has never known before. Although this excitement is disquieting to the Mother Superior the joy and exuberance of such a faith overflows into the street, and people come flooding into the church.

Nor is that kind of devotion fanciful or a modern phenomenon. Look into the Psalms and you see that intimacy expressed.

“As the hart pants after the water brooks
So pants my soul for thee, O God.”

Does that panting, that yearning of the human spirit for God in any way express our relationship with God? Do you find yourself longing and yearning for the time you can be alone with your lover God? Do you find yourself looking for every excuse to withdraw into the closeness of God’s embrace? When you sing words like,

“Jesus, lover of my soul
Let me to thy bosom fly...”

does it in any way express the intimacy of your relationship with God?

Kabir, the Hindu poet-saint postulates love as the basis of the human relationship with God. Paran atman or the Divine Spirit seeks a loving relationship with Jivan atman or the human spirit. Paran atman or God initiates leela, a game or play or dance which is an invitation to Jivan atman (the human spirit) to enter into relationship. It is when the human spirit (Jivan atman) responds that one enters into an intimate loving relationship with God. When in our Scriptures John the evangelist tells us,

“God so loved the world that God gave the only Son...”
that becomes for us an invitation to relationship with God.

When the basis of our relationship with God is love no more do we quake in fear of punishment from an angry God. No more do we seek to offer sacrifices to appease a vengeful and wrathful God. No longer is our relationship with the Great Spirit one of cringing in fear at the feet of a terrible and implacable God. God has initiated the dance, the leela, and invites us to join. The response of the human spirit is of a grateful and joyful engagement in relationship. And now whatever we do is not in appeasement to an angry God. Instead they are our gifts of love that we bring to our lover. We continually seek and find ways to nurture and nourish the relationship with God. The intimacy becomes closer and closer and it is sometimes difficult to tell where the lover ends and the loved one begins. Ultimately we seek complete identification with the lover, so that we are no longer two, but one.

The function of spiritual disciplines is to provide us with means and opportunity to be in loving relationship with God. We turn to God often in prayer not because we want to ask for something for ourselves, but because we want to be in contact with our lover. We spend time in meditation not to gain some kind of spiritual power, but to enter into deep communion with God. Our fasting is not some kind of penance, some kind of punishment to which we subject ourselves, but a way to deepen and enrich our communion with our beloved. Silence and solitude, worship and service are ways in which we nurture and deepen our intimacy, ways in which we strengthen our relationship with God who loves us.

Yet the relationship we have with God is not exclusive. It is not “just the two of us.” Indeed, the more intimate our relationship with God the more closely related we find ourselves to those others who are beloved of God. More than that it is our loving one another which expresses most clearly the depth and intimacy of our relationship with God. That is to say that our love for others is the surest demonstration of our love for God.

“...everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love...if we love one another, God lives in us, and God’s love is perfected in us...The commandment we have from God is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”

In our lesson in the epistle James makes it clear where our affections should be. According to James, God clearly has a preference for the poor.

Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the realm that God has promised to those who love God?

Our intimate relationship with God is expressed in loving those whom God loves. So that God’s preference for the powerless, for the persecuted and dispossessed becomes our preference, too. Then James goes one step further: loving one’s neighbor is not expressed in feeling or in words, but in loving deeds.

If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

The spiritual discipline that is most expressive of our relationship with God, is not the amount of time we spend in prayer each day. It is not lying on beds of nails to show our devotion. It is not preaching great sermons, or listening to more of them than anyone else. The spiritual discipline which demonstrates most effectively our relationship with God is the discipline of loving service of the “least of these.” It is the way that we love and serve the lowliest of Jesus’ brothers and sisters that expresses the depth of our devotion and intimacy of our relationship with God.

That is how Jesus chose to live out his relationship with God. It was not to stand on his prerogative or to grasp for equality with God. It was, rather, in the plight of the deprived and dispossessed that the intimacy of his relationship with God was seen. When the Syrophoenician Gentile woman came to him asking for healing for her daughter, he found in her ostracized condition a richness of faith and love he could not resist. He found a mother’s love that would not take “no” for an answer. He found a humble faith that would not be put off by human distinctions. In much the same way it was the helplessness of the deaf mute who was brought to him for healing that aroused in Jesus a compassion so deep that he could not resist. That is how he chose to express his loving relationship with God.

It is when we respond to the pain of the hurting ones, it is when we touch the leper and untouchables of our time, it is when we care for those who have nothing with which to repay, it is when we serve the needs of the powerless, when we reach out to the publicans and sinners around us today, when we embrace our brothers and sisters regardless of human distinctions, when the difference between straight and gay, between rich and poor, between black and white become opportunities to love and serve, it is then that we most clearly and unmistakably display the Christ-like spirit. It is then that we witness to having the “mind of Christ” within us. It is then that we demonstrate our intimacy with God.

“These are the ones we should serve,
These are the ones we should love...
Loving puts us on our knees,
Serving as though we are slaves,
This is the way we should live with you.”

Sunday April 17, 1994

Key Scripture—Ruth 1: 1-18



The idea for this sermon comes from a friend who defines herself as a Wasco woman. (The Wasco is a small cup-like rock formation in the Columbia river, that is now at the bottom of a dam on the river.) Her people were hunters and fishers, and the guardians and caretakers of the Wasco which gave them their name. We’ll talk more about her in a moment. The other woman in that tale is Navajo. She was raised on the reservation in native ways and customs. She went to mission schools and has now completed seminary, and tries to continue to define herself as a Navajo woman.

The two women with whose story we begin, are from another tribe in another time and place. Orpah and Ruth belonged to the tribe of Moab. When the tribe of the Hebrews crossed the Jordan they found other cultures and other people on the other side in the land of Canaan. The Amorites, the Jebusites, the Hivites, the Perizzites, the Amalekites and the Moabites called this land home. When a famine overtook the Hebrews an Ephratithe of Bethlehem-Judah named Elimelech and his wife Naomi and their sons Mahlon and Chilion went to live in Moab.

Their sons grew up among the Moabites and in due course married Moabite women: Orpah and Ruth. In the course of time Elimelech died followed, in time, by his two sons. Naomi and her daughters-in-law were widowed. Naomi had heard that things were now better back home, and she decided to return to her people. She urged her daughters-in-law to return to their families while she returned to her family.

We are familiar with Ruth’s story. We have admired her love and loyalty for her Hebrew mother-in-law and her determination to stay with her, to return with her to a people who were not her own. Her words have been immortalized in story and song:
Whither thou goest, I will go; and wherever thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.
Ruth becomes an ancestor of David and the genealogy of Jesus includes this Moabitess as a great-grandmother many times removed.

Have you ever wondered what became of Orpah? I have to admit that I have never thought much about Orpah, largely, I suppose, because the focus I learned was clearly on Ruth. I never gave a thought to Orpah until my friend, the Wasco woman, told me that she identified with Orpah. Orpah had been married to a Hebrew, yet she seemed to have remained a Moabite. She apparently retained her relationship with her family, and it would not be unreasonable to assume that she retained the customs and culture of her Moabite family and ancestors.

That we have so easily identified with Ruth, that we have so highly valued her loyalty, that we have honored her value as an ancestor of Jesus is an indication that we believe she did the right thing. She is obviously the heroine of the story. We feel a tinge of regret, even of recrimination that Orpah did not have the same loyalty, the same depth of devotion to Naomi as did Ruth. That she chose to remain and live in her culture, and to worship her gods is unfortunate in our minds. That she would not trade her myths for the myths of the Hebrews was not only disloyal it was pagan. That she would not give up the customs and traditions that shaped her life was to choose to disappear into forgetfulness so far as we are concerned.

What ever became of Orpah, do you wonder? Whatever becomes of those who choose to retain their own cultures, their own language, their own myths, their own religion? Is it automatically better to become converted? Is the value of becoming “Christian” of embracing European culture and values, unquestionably the better course of wisdom? Are the urban Indians who have left the reservations, who have adopted the values and lifestyle of the dominant white culture, wiser and better off than reservation Indians? And those who have renounced their traditional religion and have embraced western Christianity, who have traded their native myths for the Hebrew and European myths, are they better, wiser, are they better off, have they secured a better relationship with God?

My friend, the Wasco woman, graduated from seminary last year. I told her that I was not sure that I was truly happy for her. I am not sure that being schooled in our house theology would better equip her to serve. She assured me that she knows who she is and that she will always be Wasco. She has embraced Jesus, but she has not renounced her traditional myths. The Navajo woman of whom I spoke is in much the same situation. Except that she has already completed seminary, but her District Committee on Ministry, District Superintendent and whatever powers that be actively blocked her ordination and attempted to take her out of the process.

Shirley Montoya, the Navajo woman, will not trade in the myths of her culture. She has embraced Jesus but she continues to hold on to her traditional religion and beliefs. Ordination in this man’s church, and I say that intentionally, demands that she reject and repudiate the culture and customs of her ancestors. To this Navajo woman this is tantamount to denying who she is at the very heart and soul of her being.

Orpah’s and Ruth’s stories are Carol and Shirley’s stories, not as two separate individual stories, but as one story. Each one of these women is both Orpah and Ruth. They are both attempting to embrace Jesus while retaining their own cultures and traditions. The stories and beliefs that has shaped their lives has made them the persons they are. Is it possible for a person to embrace Jesus, his life and his teachings, and retain the traditions of their ancestors? Or is every other belief system to be regarded as nothing more than inferior pagan myths that must give way to superior Christian enlightenment?

Don’t you see that to affirm these two women is to repudiate what we have been doing in the church for centuries? Older Native people, like my Muskogee Creek friend Harry, were raised in mission schools where they were beaten for speaking in their native languages. That pagan nonsense had to be eliminated if they would become christian. In God’s name the christian church has committed cultural and religious genocide on every continent on earth. The Tale of two women is also my story, as well as it is Carol’s and Shirley’s story, so I understand it well.

That is why I keep calling us to move toward a “post-Christian” theology. Our ancestors in the church did what they did, at least partly, out of what they believed to be, a zeal for God. They acted out of the best understanding they had. Theology, as the church has defined it, is not the only theology that is possible. The Hebrew and European myths are not the only, nor are they the most effective myths. Why can’t we learn from each other? Why can’t my spirituality, why can’t my understanding and experience of God be informed by Biblical tradition as well as the tradition of my ancestors? Is it not possible that other people in other places and times had genuine and valid experiences of God? Is it not possible that people in other cultures, people in other theological traditions may have had experiences of God that can enrich and enlarge my own experience?

Why is it so important to us in the church that we need to be the only people who are right? Why do we feel that we have to be always right? Why do we have this fixation that for anyone else to have any valid experience means that our own experience is invalidated? Why are we so insecure about who we are, so uncertain about what we believe? Is the Christian God so weak and uncertain that He needs to be defended by mere mortals? Do we know for sure that the God of the Hebrews is different and superior to the Wakan Tanka of the Sioux, or the Allah of the Muslim?

A Tale of two women, of two Moabite women, of a Wasco and a Navajo woman, becomes the tale of many people in our world today. The truth is that there is a great wealth of mythology, there is a great wealth of spiritual experience, there is a great wealth of knowledge of God, that to close ourselves off from anything is to choose to limit our own faith experience, to impoverish our own spirits, and to seek to limit the very nature of God.

May the God of Abraham and Sarah, the God of Orpah and Ruth, the God of Tulsi Das and Kabir, the God of Black Elk and Black Hawk, the God who has become known in every tradition, enrich and enlarge our vision and our faith.