A Sermon by Michael Relland, Intern Minister at UNMC, Candidate for Master of Divinity, Wesley Theological Seminary, preached on January 25, 2009
My two year-old daughter moves regularly between my home in DC and her mom’s home in Maryland. People ask me how she copes. They wonder if she gets confused in this fractured family life. She, however, has no problem with it. She is always recreating herself. She plays a new role—she finds a new role for herself to play—as she moves among two worlds. These worlds represent how her mom and I are different. One is urban, the other suburban. One large and well-appointed, the other not so much. These homes carry the left-over furniture, photos, and the baggage of a relationship gone south. But to this very young person, there is no sense of a lost family, just the opportunity each week to visit a new place—a new sense of family.
The relationship is a new relationship—not a bad one, or a dysfunctional one, or labeled in any way, except that she is guided by people who love her and in whom she trusts. Every week, she checks in with me about where she is going with her life. She asks, “Am I going to go to your house on Saturday?” You see, Saturday for her is the changing time, the time when a new place comes into being, when her other life happens. Now she doesn’t have any control over the larger structures of this life, but within it she makes a life for herself. The place in which she finds herself is wonderful. She is not scarred by disappointed love.
Two-year-olds just don’t drink from the same well as adults. Adults, who are full of meaning. I think of how I have acted in the past and I lay on some meaning to it, and it becomes me. I carry it around. I hold onto my meanings because they mean so much to me—I made them! Some memories I brand as negative, like “I have ruined that relationship. I’m unlovable.” or “I didn’t win that grant application. I know I am an unclear writer.” Some are just as well positive. Well, these are all realities, and you can live into them, if you choose. But please know that you are choosing them. You choose to take this opportunity, not that. You choose the words to say to yourself when you win or fail at something. You are writing your own script and you are choosing, like my two year-old daughter, how to be with your family and friends. Your role with them is created, negotiated between people who hopefully love each other, but are lots of times just trying to cope with each other.
Sometimes, I long to be a two year-old, so I can renew my role with my dad, but there’s no need to wait to renew. I can do it now. The fact is, even if I could go back and be like my daughter, that would not change who my father was and still is—he’s a difficult man, for me. And he did the best he could, given what his dad did for him, given what sort of father role his dad showed him.
As President Obama said in his speech, “we carry forward a precious gift, passed from generation to generation… we can choose our better history.” So I chose to call my dad after 10 years of silence and thank him for passing me his sense of humor. There. Freedom. I was a two year-old bright shining in the other home I could visit, the one where my dad and I talked, the one where I am guided by people I trust.
As an adult, it is more on my own shoulders to trust myself, and I have resources: I gain inspiration and direction from Jesus on the shore inviting me to my other life, my other home. It’s hard to really trust myself when I replay old roles. It’s really hard to throw your net down, like those disciples did in the book of Matthew. They were giving up their livelihood. But it may be even more difficult to give up the way you have been, the script you’re playing in. How do we call for a rewrite? How do we create a new role? First, tell those around you who you are. They enable you. Here’s a good example: when people started calling me Reverend. That’ll change you real fast. You come into a self that is, well, more reverend! We could try it today: I’ll start calling Perry King Reverend, and we’ll see what happens.
Of course, he already acts like it sometimes, what I know of his work. So it may not be a big change we’re up against, but simply affirming something in someone they didn’t know in themselves, saying “thanks.” I told my son the other day how I liked how he was so nice. He freaked out, then proceeded to be mean the next hour just to balance the script out. That’s not how it was supposed to work. We can tell those people who know us who we are. It can be difficult. It’s like walking into the room with your relatives over the holidays and feeling like a child again, and not in a good way, but in acting out your old roles, new year after new year. I have a friend who is just not able to be with his relatives after a few days; the family script places some burden on him.
I have done Bible study workshops where people identify as Job or Jesus or Cain because of the pain they carry. You can tell it to stop, or change, but it takes courage and leadership of self to break into a new role. Unfortunately, many of us wait for a crisis in our lives to show us what’s not working in our life. Something just got so bad that now we’re seeing it. Someone we’ve wronged long ago was not able to tell us at the time, because they lacked the courage to tell us who they were, and so now they don’t talk to you, or they said something hurtful. But it’s never too late to change.
“Our souls wait quietly for you. From you comes our deliverance. How long will our troubles press on us, push on us like we were a leaning wall? You are our strength.” This is the psalm we read today to each other in the responsive reading. The writer cries to God, but we hear it, too. We are leaders for each other. We do enable each other, in both healthy and unhealthy ways, and we need to wake up to what is stopping us from living wide-eyed like a two year-old. God, Jesus, our Spirit—these are our deliverers, because as spiritual people I think we can grasp what is missing in our life, and make it anew. Like a New Year’s resolution, but with greater swiftness, it can hit us: “Oh, yea! I could be doing that with my partner, my job, myself.”
God invites deliverance; invites renewal through our deep reflection. God is also OK with us hearing a voice, immediately throwing our fishing nets down and just walking toward our own liberation.
Somewhere in our lives we will find strength.
Somewhere in the script, even to the last page, we will discover our best self
and I will applaud your role, your resolution, your gifts, your pain, and you will be free. May it be so and can I hear an Amen.
OPENING WORDS
Isaiah 58:6-7
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
CALL TO PRAYER
Psalm 62 Adapted from Opening to You Zen-Inspired Translations of the Psalms
Liturgist: Our souls wait quietly for you,
Congregation: From you comes our deliverance.
L: You are our rock of redemption.
C: How long will they press on us?
L: Push on us as though we were a leaning wall?
C: Yes, God, wait quietly on our souls, for you are our deliverance.
L: You complete us. You are our light. You are our strength.
C: We trust in you always. We pour out our hearts to you.
All: O God, hear our prayers.
READING I
An excerpt from President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Speech
"...in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness."
READING II
Matthew 4:18-22 (Worldwide English (New Testament))
18Jesus was walking by the sea of Galilee. There he saw two brothers, Simon who later was named Peter, and his brother Andrew. They were throwing a fishing net into the water. Their work was to catch fish.
19Jesus said to them, `Come with me. The work I will give you will be to catch people.'
20Right away they left their nets and went with him.
21Jesus went on from there and saw two other brothers, James and John. Their father's name was Zebedee. They were in the boat with their father mending their nets.
22Jesus called them. Right away they left the boat and their father and went with him.