On The Way--A Sermon

On the Way

John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church

Elizabethton, Tennessee

September 9, 2012

“If I do not go to the hell to help the suffering beings there, who else will go? ... if the hells are not empty I will not become a Buddha. Only when all living beings have been saved, will I attain Bodhi.”

--Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva

Today we wrap up the summer preaching series on happiness. It has been hard even to say that last sentence. Life has been lived in a fog since the death of Zach. I feel like I am living but not living. I am not exactly sure what the word “surreal” means, but it seems to apply. I am thankful for the mind and body’s natural defenses that only allow this shock of realization at intervals.

It has been jarring to continue this sermon series on happiness at a time when my family and I are going through the most devastating period in our lives. And yet amidst this injustice, the birds are oblivious and inappropriately, keep singing.

In that same inappropriate way, I preach on happiness. Yet oddly enough, it is appropriate.

The word happiness sounds so trite. It is like finally getting to meet the President and all you get are a few sentences and you waste them commenting on the weather. It is like sitting down for dinner and all that is served is candy.

Is it the word, “happiness” that is the problem? Would the word “joy” be better? Could be. Is there something too self-focused about the word happiness? Too much navel gazing? It is like skimming the covers of the tabloids in the supermarket aisle. The celebrities only have first names. Kate and Tom breaking up. Justin and Aniston getting engaged. Miley and Pink jealous of each other’s mohawk. If these celebrities with their looks, wealth, and connections cannot quite seem to corner happiness is there any hope for the rest of us? What is this happiness that we are chasing?

This summer we looked at the work of psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. He seemed to me to make as much sense as any. Happiness is pretty much something we are wired for or not. We can cheat and boost up our biological set point by meditation, possibly medication, and reframing our behaviors and outlook. Increasing the quality and quantity of our relationships can increase happiness. Plus discovering and using our strengths to do meaningful things can add to happiness.

There are other things he writes about that can add to happiness, like surviving adversity and working on those old fashioned ideas called virtues that our great-grandparents knew. Ben Franklin made his own list of 13 virtues. He made a chart and he would evaluate himself at the end of the day as to how well he did exercising his virtues. These virtues included humility, tranquility, silence, chastity, cleanliness, moderation, justice, sincerity, industry, frugality, resolution, order, and temperance. He said he wasn’t perfect by any means. But the discipline, he said, made him a better person. Ben Franklin was a pretty happy guy.

My first congregation was in upstate New York. I remember some of the Mennonite families would use the names of virtues to name their children. I found myself taken aback when I would run into someone named Temperance or Patience. I wonder if it helped. With a name like Patience you don’t want to be caught cutting in front of others in the line at the Wal-Mart.

Earlier this year Columbia University’s Earth Institute published the World Happiness Report. They made their conclusions based on a number of factors including health, job security, political freedom and so forth. They discovered that the happiest nations were Scandinavian countries. Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Netherlands topped the list. Following in order of happiness were Canada, Switzerland, Sweden, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, and then coming in at eleven was the United States. The authors of the report wrote:

"While basic living standards are essential for happiness, after the baseline has been met happiness varies more with the quality of human relationship than with income...Policy goals should include high employment and high-quality work; a strong community with high levels of trust and respect, which government can influence through inclusive participatory policies; improved physical and mental health; support of family life; and a decent education for all."

I appreciate that Columbia University is making an attempt at uncovering what social, political, and economic factors contribute to well-being or happiness and what we can do as communities of people to increase levels of happiness. They show that happiness or contentment or well-being is important to evaluate and to pursue. Happiness it appears is not so much a state or a goal, but a way or a path.

According to this report great inequality within a nation or community is one thing that serves to decrease the level of happiness of everyone, even those who appear to benefit.

It is an old lesson. If we wish to be happy, we would do well to increase the potential for the happiness of others. If meaningful work, education, good relationships, a comfortable income, good health, personal freedom, and so forth are available to me and make me happy that is good. But if my neighbors are not able to attain those things, my happiness actually decreases. That is only reasonable because that means I am a human being. Human beings cannot truly be happy in the midst of the suffering of others unless they are actively engaged in relieving that suffering. Happiness cannot ever be an individualistic pursuit. We can only be happy to the extent that we bring happiness to others.

That wisdom is at least as ancient as the bodhisattva. The bodhisattva is motivated by compassion to bring Buddhahood or enlightenment to all beings. The image is that the bodhisattva refuses to enter Nirvana, or heaven to use a Christian word, until all beings enter Nirvana. The idea that there would be heaven where the righteous experience bliss while others suffer in hell would be an anathema. Only a sociopath could be happy--if that is what you could call it--in such an existence.

It is impossible truly to be happy and at bliss knowing that others suffer. The bodhisattva devotes his or her existence to bringing others to enlightenment. The point is that this is a never-ending task. The deeper point is that it is in the doing of it, it is in the compassionate work of bringing others to enlightenment that the bodhisattva actually lives happiness. Happiness, or enlightenment, or contentment is not a state or a goal but a way.

Jesus Christ can be understood as a bodhisattva. This is the great hymn from Paul’s letter to the Philippians about the Christ:

I appeal to all of you to think in the same way that the Anointed Jesus did, who
Although he was born in the image of God,
Did not regard “being like God”
As something to use for his own advantage,
But rid himself of such vain pretension
And accepted a servant’s lot.

Since he was born like all human beings
And proved to belong to humankind,
He recognized his true status
And became trustfully obedient all the way to death,
Even to death by crucifixion.

That is why God raised him higher than anyone
And awarded him the title that is above all others,

So that on hearing the name “Jesus,”
Ever knee should bend,
Above the earth, on the earth, and under the earth,
And every tongue declare: “Jesus the Anointed is lord!”
To the majestic honor of God , our great Benefactor.  (Scholars' Version)

Paul, in reciting this hymn, is admonishing his friends to do the same thing, to share the same attitude. Even as Judaism and Christianity on one hand and Hinduism and Buddhism on the other come from geographically different places and from different cultures and developed differing languages and different symbolic expressions, at the deepest levels, their fundamental affirmations are similar.

Who is the happy person? Who is the contented, enlightened, and whole person? Who is the saved person? It is the one who realizes that happiness is not something to attain. Happiness is not a noun. It is a verb. It is a way of being for all beings.

The literature about the bodhisattvas is wonderful. There are billions of these beings and they appear to us all the time even as we don’t know it. Sometimes it is the cashier at the store. Sometimes it is an animal. They appear to us and do things to awaken us. You can’t just make people enlightened. People have to realize it on their own. The Bodhisattvas have to sort of, well, trick you into it. In those experiences in which you have had an increase in awareness or an aha! moment, a bodhisattva opened that path for you. You can have fun with this. You don’t have to take it literally, but the imagery of the universe filled with bodhisattvas in disguise seeking to make all beings happy and enlightened is a wonderful image. When feeling discouraged knowing that all these beings are on our side is comforting.

Now the thing is…that you are a Bodhisattva as well. You are that for others. Don’t be afraid to take that role. That is the deep wisdom. Now this same thing is in the Christian tradition. The Cosmic Christ is within and among us. As the risen Christ was with the walkers on the Emmaus road and they didn’t realize it until they all broke bread together, so the Christ is with us and is seen in the aha! moments, the breaking of the bread, the unexpected laughter, the act of compassion, the suffering shared. The point again, as Paul writes in Philippians, is that we are to be of the same mind. We are to be Christ for another.

You want to be happy? You are not alone. Billions and billions of bodhisattvas and little christs are conspiring at this very moment to help you.

The clincher is that you are one of them.

Amen.

Cronies of Jesus--A Sermon

Cronies of Jesus

John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church

Elizabethton, Tennessee

September 2, 2012

Luke 7:31-35

What do the people of this generation remind me of? What are they like? They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, but you wouldn’t dance; we sang a dirge, but you wouldn’t weep.’ Just remember, John the Baptizer appeared on the scene, eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, ‘He’s possessed.’ The Human One appeared on the scene both eating and drinking, and you say, ‘There’s a glutton and a drunk, a crony of toll collectors and sinners!’ Indeed, Wisdom is vindicated by all her children.’”

The Fellows of the Jesus Seminar wrestled with this saying attributed to Jesus. It is also found in Matthew’s gospel, but not in Mark. If Mark is written first and Matthew and Luke each copy Mark and add to it, where did the sayings and deeds of Jesus originate that Matthew and Luke share in common but not in Mark? The hypothesis is that these sayings and deeds are from a separate source. Scholars call this hypothetical source “Q” which is the first letter of the German word “quelle” that means source.

Did this saying originate with Jesus? The Fellows voted and it received a gray vote. This can mean that it sounds like Jesus but there are some problems. The problem is this label “Son of Man” or “Son of Adam” or as the Jesus Seminar translated it “the Human One.” The Gospel authors use the phrase “son of man” to refer to an apocalyptic figure who will come to establish the kingdom of God. They applied that designation to Jesus. Did Jesus think of himself as such or did he think there was another “son of man” yet to come or is Jesus here using that phrase as a parallel to “yours truly” and speaking about himself in the third person? The Fellows of the Jesus Seminar couldn’t agree.

This is from The Five Gospels published by the Jesus Seminar:

Most Fellows were convinced that Matthew, Luke, and Q understood this phrase in a messianic sense, in which case the saying cannot be attributed to Jesus. Other Fellows argued that son of Adam was Jesus’ way of referring to himself in the third person. The difference between a pink and a gray designation hangs on the thread of that single expression. P. 303

But they did agree that this sounds like Jesus. This sounds like the difference between Jesus and John the Baptist.

John the Baptist is like the children who play the dirge and Jesus is like the children who play the flute. John the Baptist tells people that the kingdom of God is coming and that the wrath of God is as near as the axe at the root of the tree so repent! The basic message of John is to stop behaving unjustly toward your neighbor.

Jesus sees things differently. He tells people that they are the light of the world and the salt of the earth, that the kingdom of God is not coming, but is already within them. Dance.

As the comparison continues, John is an ascetic. He takes no pleasure from wine or food. Jesus, on the other hand, is a party animal. He is accused of being a glutton and a drunkard. John the Baptist tells the sinners to repent. Jesus parties with the sinners.

If this saying does go back to Jesus, Jesus is scolding the religious leaders. They call John possessed because he is an ascetic. They call Jesus a drunk because he celebrates with his cronies. The religious leaders aren’t happy with either one or with either message. They won’t mourn when John plays a dirge. They won’t dance when Jesus plays his flute. All they do is complain.

Jesus is saying there is no way to communicate to you. John couldn’t and neither can I. Both John and Jesus were trying to communicate the kingdom of God or the presence of God, in their own distinct way. The religious leaders would have none of it.

Both Jesus and John were in their own ways holy fools. John wore his camel skin and leather belt, eating locusts and wild honey in the desert. John challenged the powerful, including the king to repent of their injustice to their neighbors. This is the content of John’s sermon according to Luke:

The crowds would ask [John], “So what should we do?”

And he would answer them, “Whoever has two shirts should share with someone who has none; whoever has food should do the same.”

Toll collectors also came to be baptized, and they would ask him, “Teacher, what should we do?”

He told them, “Charge nothing above the official rates.”

Soldiers also asked him, “And what about us?”

And he said to them, “No more shakedowns! No more frame-ups either! And be satisfied with your pay.”

That is John the Baptist. He is playing the dirge. He is the prophet crying out in the wilderness calling on people to do justice.

Jesus’ approach was a bit different. This is how Luke reports Jesus’ first sermon. Jesus goes to the synagogue in Nazareth and reads from the scroll:

The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to announce pardon for prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind;

to set free the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s amnesty.

He puts the scroll down and he says that he is going to be doing these things not in his hometown but elsewhere. Jesus plays the flute.

Jesus wanders the countryside healing, telling stories, casting out demons, befriending the friendless.

Different approaches. Different messages. Different ways of understanding God and the way God acts in the world. They are not mutually exclusive. It isn’t that one was right and the other wrong. They are both calls

to awaken,
to open mind and heart,
to crack the hard shell of cynicism and prejudice,
to feel the pain of the neighbor as one’s own pain.

That is the role of the holy fool. Both John and Jesus played this part. The holy fool calls attention to himself or to herself for the purpose of challenging conventions or to communicate wisdom.

Saint Juniper is an example of a holy fool. Listen to this description:

Saint Juniper, an early follower of the Franciscan order, was known for taking the doctrine of the Franciscans to the extreme. Whenever anyone asked for any of his possessions, he freely gave them away, including his clothes. He once even cut off the bells from his altar-cloth and gave them to a poor woman. His fellow Franciscans had to watch him closely, and strictly forbade him from giving away his clothes. While such behaviors were embarrassing to his brothers, he was also recognized as a pure example of the Franciscan order and thus esteemed.

John and Jesus as well as other holy fools each in their unique way invite us to uncover the vulnerable, sacred quality of life. They encourage us to remove that protective layer of propriety or status and discover the human within us and embrace that human being, that beloved you. When we are able to discover that holiness within we can connect with others at the deeper level of feeling. We can connect with people quite different from us, or who we thought were different from us.

The political contests are so shallow whether they are the contests of secular or church politics. They are little more than people covered in heavy armor hitting other people who are covered in heavy armor. Even as we might participate in it or observe it, we feel cheap, sickened and used at the end of the day. There is no content, no humanity, no vulnerability, no holiness.

When that becomes normal, when beating each other while wearing our armor is all that life has become, the holy fool has to play a dirge or play a flute, something, anything, to create feeling once again. The holy fool breaks convention, regards the outcast as royalty, pokes fun at pretentions, calls the righteous “sinners,” and the sinners “saints.”

“Mourn, dance, do something!” pleads the fool.

To be a holy fool can be a dangerous calling. John the Baptist was beheaded and Jesus was crucified. People don’t like it when you try to remove their protection. If you take a risk to remove your armor someone might attack you when your defenses are down. That does happen. I would be lying if I said it didn’t. Nevertheless, what is life if we never take off our armor? What is life if we never see another person without her or his armor? What is that life? It is lonely. And it is never-ending war.

What gift can we offer another or ourselves? What if we could be a person, or if we could create a space, or could form a community that was safe for people even if just for a little while, to remove armor and to be human with one another?

I think we can and I think we have. I have seen this community be that. It is something that cannot be taken for granted and that needs nurture and attention. It takes a courageous person to be the first to remove the helmet, put down the sword and shield and step out of the armor.

It takes a courageous, holy fool to say:

“This is who I am.
This is where I hurt and this brings me joy.
This is what I fear and this is what I hope.
Tell me about you.”

It is risky. There are no guarantees.

The religious leaders, “this generation” as Jesus called them could neither mourn nor dance. I understand it, but I find it sad nonetheless. There must be more to life than polishing our armor. I think we all deserve better than that.

May you heed the call of the holy fool,
     to take a risk and find your heart.
May you find other cronies of Jesus
     who will give you the gift to be yourself.
May you find the courage to remove the armor,
     even if just one piece at a time.
May you find yourself mourning and dancing
     in the company of sacred and holy fools.

Amen.

And David Danced--A Sermon

And David Danced

John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church

Elizabethton, Tennessee

August 19, 2012

David and all the house of Israel were dancing before the Lord with all their might, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals.

2 Samuel 6:5

My wife’s grandmother is one of those people I have always enjoyed.
She is very down to earth.
About ten years ago the family was gathered and we were talking politics.
The conversation turned toward President Clinton
who at the time had just left office.
Grandma Helen had the best evaluation I have heard then or since.
She shook her head and said,

“He was a good president but a naughty boy.”

I think that might be a good evaluation for King David in the Bible.
He was a good king, but a naughty boy.

Some of the best literature in the Bible is found
in the narratives of 1 and 2 Samuel.
They are the stories, for the most part of David.
He is the shepherd boy chosen by God over his older,
stronger brothers because the text tells us

For the Lord does not see as mortals see;
they look on the outward appearance,
but the Lord looks on the heart. 1 Sam. 16:7

David is the one chosen by God to replace Saul and be king over Israel.
Many of the stories reflect this tension between Saul and David.

When Saul goes mad, David is the one who soothes him with music.
David is the brave young man who slays the giant Goliath
with a slingshot and a smooth stone.
David is a mighty warrior.
While Saul kills his thousands, David kills his ten thousands.
The plot is complicated as Saul’s daughter Michal loved David.
But David really loved Saul’s son, Jonathan.
When Jonathan is killed in battle, David weeps for him and says,

“..my brother, Jonathan,
greatly beloved were you to me;
Your love to me was wonderful,
Passing the love of women.” 2 Sam. 1:26

David is a victor and knows how to celebrate his victory.
After he brings back the ark of the covenant,
           he strips down to his underwear and dances.

David and all the house of Israel were dancing before the Lord with all their might, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals. 2 Samuel 6:5

His wife, Michal, is not impressed and tells him that
 he is dishonoring his role as king.
But apparently, God was on David’s side on this one.
The text says that

“Michal, the daughter of Saul had no child to the day of her death.” 2 Sam. 6:23

Biblical literature has an odd way of punishing its characters
in its attempt to determine what God might think.
I think it is important to remember that this is literature
and these are all literary characters created by their authors.
These literary characters include the character, God.
This literature has left a legacy in which tragedy is viewed as divine punishment.
But just because these ancient authors wrote in that way,
it doesn’t mean it is true.

Yet the passion is poignant.
David is acquainted with grief.
In addition to the death of his beloved, Jonathan,
David’s son,Absalom, also dies in battle.
David voices one of the greatest cries of grief
known in western literature:

‘O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would that I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!’ 2 Sam. 18:33

In David, we see great joy and great grief.
And it is all out there.

In a narrative that begins with another great line from literature,
         “In the Spring of the year the time when kings go out to battle,”
David does his naughty thing.
He spies on the beautiful Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, bathing.
He has an affair with her while her husband is fighting for him.
Because he thinks she might be pregnant,
David tries to cover it up by calling Uriah
back to spend the night with his wife.
Uriah is such an honorable soldier that he
refuses to enjoy pleasure with his wife
while his comrades are fighting.
Then David has Uriah sent to the front lines where he will be killed.
After that happens, David makes Bathsheba his wife.

David’s scheme does not go unnoticed.
The Lord who sees on the heart also sees the sins of the heart.
The prophet Nathan confronts David with a story:

Once there was a man who had a small lamb.
He loved his lamb as if it were a child.
Another man had many lambs.
But the day the wealthy man wanted a feast
he took the poor man’s lamb and slaughtered it.

“What should happen to that man?” Nathan asks David.
David filled with righteous indignation said that the wealthy man deserves to die!

And Nathan says, and I need to use the King James to get the full effect,

“Thou art the man!”

Nathan tells David of his sin and David repents.
In the biblical way of regarding tragedy as judgment,
the child of David and Bathsheba dies in infancy.
And in the biblical way of expressing redemption,
another son of Bathsheba and David,
Solomon, eventually becomes David’s heir.

David is credited with writing the psalms,
all the great poetry of praise and lament.
It was fitting to credit David with that as his own life was filled with passion.
Plus he was a musician who could dance.
Current scholarship does not regard the psalms as authored by David.
In fact, the literature surrounding David is now considered by many scholars to be fiction more than history.
He is like King Arthur, more of a legend than an historical figure.

While that might be considered a loss,
that is the loss of the historicity of David, I tend to think of it as a gain.
Seen as literature, the authors come alive.
What is it they want to tell us about life, passion, and God through these stories?

In the character of David,
we are shown the depth and the height of human experience.
The greatest joys and the deepest sorrows are found in him.
In David, kingdoms are formed.
Battles are won.
Battles are lost.
He achieved greatness and he paid for that with great personal pain.
In the portrait of David,
the authors paint a life fully lived, filled with joy and sorrow.

This summer’s sermon series is on happiness.
One of the resources is a book by psychologist Jonathan Haidt,
The Happiness Hypothesis:  Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom.

One of the topics he addresses is life’s purpose and meaning.
Rather than speak objectively about the meaning of life,
which is pretty hard to do, actually,
he writes subjectively about something that is a bit more approachable.
What is the meaning within life?

How can we make our lives meaningful and purposeful? He writes:

Why do some people live lives full of zest, commitment, and meaning, but others feel their lives are empty and pointless? P. 219

The goal isn’t to judge ourselves or others
but really to give ourselves permission to invent or to reinvent ourselves.
We might look at some of the things human beings need.
In the end he says we are social creatures and industrial creatures.
We need love and attachments.
We need real relationships.
Also, we need vital engagement and meaningful work.
We need a calling, if you will.

He writes:

Happiness is not something you can find, acquire, or achieve directly. You have to get the conditions right and then wait. Some of those conditions are within you, such as coherence among the parts and levels of your personality. Other conditions require relationships to things beyond you. Just as plants need sun, water, and good soil to thrive, people need love, work, and connection to something larger. It is worth striving to get the right relationships between yourself and others, between yourself and your work, and between yourself and something larger than yourself. If you get these relationships right, a sense of purpose and meaning will emerge. P. 237-8

As I look at the story of David
who has relationships with many, both men and women,
who had meaningful work, battling giants and enemies
who established a kingdom for something higher than himself,
          that is God,
who sins, and yet knows enough not to blame someone else for it,
          or wallow in guilt,
          but repents and pays the consequences,
who grieves deeply in his heart,
who makes music, writes poetry, and dances…

…so what of David?

Was he happy?
He probably had a good a chance as anyone.
So do we all….

Amen.

It's All God--A Sermon

It’s All God

John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church

Elizabethton, Tennessee

August 12, 2012

Jesus said, “I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained. Split a piece of wood; I’m there. Lift up the stone, and you’ll find me there.

--Jesus, Gospel of Thomas 77

When I created the themes for summer worship I chose the larger theme of happiness. As I look back over the summer worship guide, it seems like it came from a long time ago. Now as I am seeking to get back into a rhythm of life which includes worship and ministry with you and I look over these themes, I wonder what the old me was thinking. My mood was playful when I put this together. Playful and oblivious. In some ways, I was like a child, really, without a care in the world. That isn’t true, of course. I had many cares. They just seem so distant now.

I am no longer oblivious. I have seen something. I have seen the excruciating fragility of this precious life. You don’t come away from that unchanged. I hope and I trust and actually I know that that old playfulness will peek around the corner at me now and again. Thankfully, as we have been surrounded by the light that as Jesus says “is over all things” that  playfulness hasn’t abandoned me. It isn’t the playfulness of a puppy but of an older dog who for a moment forgets her aches and pains and remembers the old, familiar games.

Scripture is not written for the young. The guardians of scripture try to force it on the young. “Read this, it is good for you.” But you have to have experienced some fragility before its light reveals the places within you that were formerly hidden in darkness.

This text for example. Jesus says,

“Split a piece of wood; I’m there. Lift up a stone, and you’ll find me there.”

As you know I spent my childhood on a farm in Whitehall, Montana. I split a fair share of wood in the Summer and Fall to use for the wood furnace during the Montana winters. In Spring, after the field was plowed, disked, and harrowed we would hitch an old hay trailer to the tractor and pull it through the field. We would pick the stones that had been turned up and pile them on the trailer. Then we unloaded those stones in a pile on the edge of the field. As I split wood and lifted up stones, I really can’t say that I saw Jesus.

Split a piece of wood; I’m there. Lift up the stone, and you’ll find me there.

What is he talking about?

I know there are people who have seen the face of Jesus in the clouds, or on a tree or in their oatmeal. I found this article that was written just this week in the Christian Post:

An elderly man at an adult daycare in Texas says when he was having his bacon and egg breakfast taco, he noticed the face of Jesus on the flour tortilla staring back at him. He showed it to others to confirm, and the news of the "miracle" spread.

Ernesto Garza, 80, has now tucked away a half-eaten breakfast taco with an image of Jesus Christ, carefully wrapped in foil, in the refrigerator at La Amistad Adult Daycare in Beeville, Texas, and intends to preserve it for as long as he can.

Like any other morning, Garza sat down with his taco at the daycare's cafeteria and unwrapped it. But that morning, he decided to eat only the inside of the taco. As he was poking around, he noticed a face on the charred flour tortilla staring back at him.

"I looked at it for five minutes," Garza was quoted as saying. Then he showed it to a friend sitting next to him and asked what she thought the face on the tortilla looked like. Garza's friend looked at it and jumped from her seat. "Jesus," she said.

Soon, everyone at the daycare was in the cafeteria to have a look at the face of Jesus, followed by a pouring of phone calls by media outlets.

"Here's the eyes, nose, mouth, mustache," he told KRIS-TV.

"I consider it a blessing because it's unique," Angie Rodriguez, the daycare's director, stated. She also said she had prayed the previous night for a sign from God to reassure her in the midst of a crisis in her life. The "miracle," she said, touched her life. "We believe God works in mysterious ways."

For Garza, it was "a blessing from God."

Jesus said,

“Split a piece of wood; I’m there.

Lift up the stone, and you’ll find me there.

Unwrap your breakfast taco and you’ll see me there.”

I am not an expert on the Gospel of Thomas or on the philosophies that shaped its texts. Nor am I an expert in the authenticity of Jesus sightings. I don’t know what Jesus or the author of Thomas was thinking, but Taco Jesus probably wasn't it.

But you know, people do experience the holy and the sacred in ways that are open for them. There is a sense of longing for the sacred amidst our ordinary lives.  Consider life day in and day out in La Amistad Adult Daycare Center in Beeville, Texas.  For most of the residents, this is the last stop before exit.  I'll bet they could use a little divine intervention. Good for the director of the center to call in the media, make a miracle out of this, and brighten up these lives. Why not? It is holy playfulness.

Good for those of you who each day, make and celebrate miracles and make a big fuss over others in a playful and joyful way.

Last night I was at the Johnson City Cardinals ball game. In between innings they have games for the kids. One of the games is to be the first to put on jersey and a helmet and run to slap the hand of the guy with the microphone. In this contest, there were two boys. One of the kids was able-bodied and the other was in a wheelchair. The able bodied kid took his time, purposely fumbled with the jersey and helmet so the boy in the wheelchair would win.

Those little miracles of kindness happen all the time. Peter Mayer in his song, “Holy Now” writes:

…the challenging thing becomes
Not to look for miracles
But finding where there isn't one

We long for the sacred and the holy. We long for the story of Moses confronted by God in the bush that burns but is not consumed to be true. We long for the miracle of Jesus turning the boy's lunch of bread and fish into a feast for 5,000 to happen today. We want to see Jesus in his glory on the mountaintop as did Peter, James, and John. In a similar story from the Hindu tradition, Krishna gives Arjuna eyes to see as God sees and he is transported to view the cosmos in a way he has never seen before. He is confronted by the holy and his life is transformed.  We want that.

Those are the stories of scripture. They are not repeated literally in our lives, but they speak to the experience of the holy that we glimpse when we are open and vulnerable to it.  Now we might see it in acts of kindness when this ordinary world with its excruciating fragility is embraced by the light of love and human compassion. In that light, wood, stones, and even breakfast tacos become experiences of the holy.

Amen.

Finding Yourself and Loving What You Find--A Sermon

Finding Yourself and Loving What You Find

John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church

Elizabethton, Tennessee

August 5, 2012

You are the light of the world.

You are the salt of the earth.

--Jesus

The Lord lives in the heart of every creature.

He turns them around and round upon the wheel of his Maya.

Take refuge utterly in him.

By his grace you will find supreme peace,

and the state which is beyond all change.

--Krishna

Bhagavad Gita 18:61-62

I have often said that if Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, and other true

Emissaries of God came together, they would not quarrel,

but would drink from the same one cup of God-communion.

--Paramahansa Yogananda

It has been six weeks since I preached my last sermon. This is the longest I have been out of the pulpit since before we moved here seven years ago. My last sermon here on June 24th seems like and really is from a different world, a different life.

We have felt the embrace of love and compassion from this congregation. From the first day that we received our tragic news, you all have been there for us and continue to be here for us. Do know that Bev, Katy, and I are very, very grateful to all of you for your love and support. We have been held by the larger community and by the friends we know from places we have lived previously. Bev and Katy have been embraced from friends at their workplaces. Complete strangers pray for us.

Katy has been back to her work for several weeks now. Bev went back to school this past week and greets students this coming week. Thanks to Don Steele for leading Sunday services these previous two weeks, I have been able to ease into a rhythm of sorts at church and in worship.

Today I am honored and privileged to be in the pulpit and to administer the sacrament of communion with you, my friends. This is a sacred space and a sacred time.

I have no idea what I am doing. I guess that is not unusual.

I don’t know what I am supposed to do or how to do it. I wrote in the White Spire that I hope to follow a path between two extremes. On one hand to avoid pretending that I can fulfill my calling as a minister as if my personal loss has no bearing on it, and on the other hand to avoid misusing the pulpit as my own group therapy. That seems to make sense, but I don’t know. I really don’t have a lot of rules about this. We’ll see what happens.

I do write some posts on my blog. That is a personal medium that kind of works for me. Feel free to read it, but I ask you not to read too much into it. It is one way I process a lot of things. Since Zach’s death, I use it to address aspects of grief that I feel comfortable writing about publicly.

That isn’t the only way. I won’t speak for Bev and Katy, but do know that we are doing what we need to do and getting the support we need socially and professionally. I know that you wonder what you can do for us and I am sure that you would like to ease our pain and that you probably feel helpless to do so. That’s real. I don’t know what to do to ease my pain and I feel helpless too. So we are in that same boat. But we are floating.

I also know that our grief can trigger the grief of others. Our experience has and will bring up emotions of loss that many have experienced. Perhaps this is true for you. I hope that you can be real with that. One of the things you might do as an individual is to pay attention to your own feelings of loss. I hope you can find a way to share that. Feel free to talk to me about that. I would like that.

One of the many things that was done in these past few weeks that I appreciated was the adult forum on grief that I heard Carol Ann McElwee led. It might be a good idea to have more of those kinds of forums.

Harriet Baker put a book in my mailbox courtesy of the Morris-Baker Funeral Home that has been really helpful. I would recommend this book to anyone, How To Go On Living When Someone You Love Dies. It is good solid truth about grief and loss. The author is psychologist Dr. Therese Rando. It validated so much of what I was feeling.

Maybe one of the things we can do as a congregation is to respond to our personal loss by becoming even more aware of the losses we all suffer and how we grieve them in unique ways. I know I would feel good to know that something helpful and healing could come out of this.

The sermon theme for this summer is happiness. I decided to stick with it. If happiness is real it is going to have to be tough and persistent. It has to be as the hymn says,  

“O joy that seekest me through pain.”

One aspect of joy is the awareness that we have something of divinity about us. We have a sacred dimension, perhaps a vertical dimension that transcends, permeates, and embraces all of our being.

I think this is what Jesus discovered when he said,

“You are the light of the world.”
“You are the salt of the earth.”

Or as Krishna said,

“The Lord lives in the heart of every creature.”

We are more than the sum of our body parts.
This is true whether we feel it or not.
Every life is a gift.
This is true whether that person knows it or not.
No matter what, Love will not let us go.

For the past month I have felt a physical burning in my chest, as if my heart has been emptied. It is hollow.  It is a hollow pain.

What does that mean to be hollow in the heart? 

This week I chose for one of our readings the poem from Hafiz about stealing the flute from Krishna. As I was writing this sermon I was curious about the significance of Krishna’s flute. I am sure that there are many, many meanings, but one I found that I particularly liked is this. It speaks to me of the meaning and possibility of this emptiness in my heart:

If you get rid of your ego and become like a hollow reed flute, then the Lord will come to you, pick you up, put his lips and breathe through you and out of the hollowness of your heart, the captivating melody will emerge for all creations to enjoy.

Amen.

If It Feels Good Do It (in moderation of course)--A Sermon

If It Feels Good Do It (in moderation of course)

John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church

June 24, 2012

It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and honorably and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely and honorably and justly without living pleasantly. Whenever any one of these is lacking, when, for instance, the man is not able to live wisely, though he lives honorably and justly, it is impossible for him to live a pleasant life.

Epicurus, Principle Doctrines 5

During the season of summer we honor the spiritual path of awe and wonder, the via positiva.   My sermons for this summer are about happiness.  What is happiness and how can we be happier?  It isn’t quite correct to tie particular emotions or feelings to a particular path, but if we had to do so, we might call this the happy path. Feel good. Celebrate. Enjoy life. Appreciate what is. Drink it up.

I want to suggest that happiness is found and is a result of traveling all four paths. If the via negativa, via creativa, and via transformativa don’t promise happiness why take them? But the via positiva seems like a natural place to start a discussion, maybe even a quest, about what happiness is and what we might do to be happier.

One of the sages we will encounter on this path is University of Virginia psychology professor, Jonathan Haidt (“Height”). In preparing for this sermon, I read his book, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. I will be coming back to him quite a bit in these series of sermons. Dr. Haidt takes ten ideas from ancient philosophy and religion in regards to happiness and evaluates these ideas in regards to what we are learning from modern psychology.

It is a great read. I learned a lot and after reading it, I actually feel happier. For the most part, I am a happy person. I can get down. I have gone through periods of depression. I battle addictions, struggle with anxiety, and tend to give in to habits that make me less happy than more happy, but overall, I am a happy person. I am happier now than at any other time in my life.

After reading The Happiness Hypothesis, I realized that happiness is combination of many things and there are some things that we can do to increase our happiness. I learned that happiness is given to us by our genes, not so much a set point but a set range. There are, however, some things that we can do that can expand that range and that can help us stay in the top end of that happiness range. I will be talking more about that. I liked learning that in the book. There are some things I can do and that I can help others do to increase happiness, including preaching a series of sermons on happiness. That made me happy.

I also realized that happiness is a worthwhile goal. I have a couple of messages in my head. They want to downplay happiness. One probably comes from my religious background although I am not sure. I think I had a happy church life as a child, but somewhere along the line I got the message that if you are happy you are being selfish. What about suffering, climate change, human rights abuses and all of that? Amidst all the suffering in the world what gives you the right to be happy? Jesus wasn’t happy. The Lord wants you to suffer so take up the cross and be miserable like he was.

The other message is that happiness is for simple people. Serious intellectuals dress in black, are filled with existential angst, read the French deconstructionists, and write dark poetry. Happiness is for yokels and stand up comics. I should say, that many stand up comics, the really funny ones, are well-acquainted with adversity. That is why they are funny. They have reframed adversity through humor and come out on the other side.

I am not exactly sure what to make of those messages that haunt my psyche. I think that they might need some unraveling in therapy. : )  My initial thought to that is that happiness is connected in a major way to purposefulness. We are going to talk about that in this series of sermons as well. We may not think of it as happiness or call it happiness, but if your strength is to consciously engage the dark side of life as vocation or avocation, that might amount to the same thing.  My hunch is that Mother Theresa and maybe even Kurt Vonnegut were for the most part, happy. 

I want to talk today about pleasure, particularly, the happiness that comes from pleasure. Before I go there, I want to talk about the happiness equation. Math makes me happy. I am happy that Jonathan Haidt put happiness in equation form. This is the equation:

H = S + C + V

H = Happiness we experience

S = Biological set point

C = Conditions of life

V = Voluntary activities

Happiness comes from our genes. We know this by people who we think should be happy. They can even win the lottery, yet after the initial euphoria, they generally go back to the happiness point before the windfall. Similarly, a person may suffer a financial set back or accident and after adjustment, even though the set back or accident changed that part of her life completely, she will go back to her initial happiness set point before the set back or accident.

Psychologists now think it is more of a set range than a point. We are destined by our genes for a certain level of happiness. It is possible to change the internal setting. Haidt mentions three things that can do that, meditation, Prozac, and cognitive therapy. I will talk more about that as well later in this series. 

We can also bump up that set point or put ourselves in the high end of the range by C and V, the conditions of life and by certain voluntary activities. Haidt writes:

The level of happiness (H) that you actually experience is determined by your biological set point (S) plus the conditions of your life (C) plus the voluntary activities (V) you do. p. 91

The Buddha was all about voluntary activities, for example the eightfold path that included meditation and mindfulness. He didn’t seem to think conditions of life mattered at all. He could get in the zone. Not everyone is the Buddha and there are some things that we can change about our external circumstances that can help regarding happiness.

These include

1. decreasing the level of noise, especially noise that is variable and intermittent. 
2. Also, reducing your commuting time. 
3. Increasing the amount of control over your life and your choices will increase your happiness. 
4. Increasing your approval of your body image.  This doesn’t have to do with attractiveness but it has to do with shame. Decreasing the level of shame about your body will lead to more happiness. Haidt says that “improvements in a person’s appearance do lead to lasting increases in happiness.” P. 93 
5. The big one is the strength and the number of good relationships.  

In other words, externals do matter. That is the C in the equation.

H = S + C + V.

What is the V?

Voluntary activities. Not all activities make a person happy. Haidt writes that

“Chasing after wealth and prestige usually backfire. People who report the greatest interest in attaining money, fame, or beauty are consistently found to be less happy, and even less healthy, than those who pursue less materialistic goals.” P. 95

Many of us will just have to take that on faith. Or we can read the sordid tales of the unhappy lives of celebrities in the grocery aisle. We think they have everything. Why can’t they get their lives together? But ancient wisdom and modern science seem to tell us that fame, wealth, achievement, and beauty lasts for a little while, then it’s back to set point.

This is the ancient wisdom from Ecclesiastes. In that marvelous chapter two, the speaker who has everything, achieves everything, enjoys all the pleasures of life, and says,

“Then I considered all that my hands and done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind…”

He is back to set point.

But, there are activities, voluntary activities, the V in the equation, that can increase our level of happiness on an ongoing basis. One is physical or bodily pleasure. This is why when humans gather together they eat. Heidt writes:

“At meal times, people report the highest levels of happiness on average. People really enjoy eating, especially in the company of others…” p. 95

In addition to pleasure that consists of food, sex, backrubs, and cool breezes, there are also gratifications. Haidt writes:

“Gratifications are activities that engage you fully, draw on your strengths, and allow you to lose self-consciousness.” P. 96

The idea is to arrange your day and your environment to increase both pleasures and gratifications. Appreciate the sunset and lose yourself in a meaningful activity that uses your strengths. That is the V.

Now there is a tendency to overdue on the pleasure. If eating a Whopper makes me happy supersizing it will make me super happy.   Right?  That is actually not true. Pleasures must be spaced and as your grandmother told you, in moderation, to retain their potency to increase happiness.

Pleasures are not in themselves lasting. That is why they can tend to be disparaged.  Pleasures can be addictive and insistent, calling us back and away from activities that might help us in the long run.

Addiction in part comes from “if it feels good do it” again and again and again. Haidt writes:

Because the elephant has a tendency to over indulge, the rider needs to encourage it to get up and move on to another activity. P. 96

What is the elephant? A metaphor he uses for the mind is a rider on an elephant. The rider is our consciousness and reason. The elephant is the unconscious, the feelings, desires, instincts that are our evolutionary heritage. They are the forces that move and motivate us. The trick is to find ways to train the elephant. More on that to come as well.

The simple point I want to make today in addition to whetting your appetite for this series of sermons on happiness is to suggest that

1. happiness comes from both within and without. 
2. Happiness is a result primarily from biology. 
3. But we can tinker with that if necessary through meditation, Prozac, and cognitive therapy,
4. and we can add to happiness by adjusting some of our external conditions and 
5. by consciously engaging in voluntary activities that both increase gratifications through using our strengths and 
6. by enjoying the pleasures of life in a way that honors them, by neither indulging or detaching.

Those voluntary activities also include experiencing the pleasures of life. You won’t get lasting happiness as Solomon told us, but when we are mindful about them, they make life tasty.

It is not bad to feel good.

Or if it feels good, do it, in moderation of course.

Amen.