Steadfast

It is a very human thing to expect things. We expect the sun to rise. We expect to be paid for our work. We expect the meals we order at restaurants to have the order right, the food safe to eat, and the restrooms clean. We have expectations. We want them met. It’s a very human thing to have expectations. And it’s a very human thing to have the wrong expectations.

I thought I was done with this church thing until I heard the preaching of Rev. Bill . He was a pastor, a Jungian psychologist, and a scholar. He was also a heck of a preacher. He told stories with conviction, I was captivated. I saw what he did. Heard his thoughts both in sermons, in Bible studies, and over coffee or a meal. I was amazed by his intellect and how he would take concepts I knew and mess with my expectations.

Growing up, I was taught that “You should FEAR the Lord, your God.” After all, “The beginning of wisdom is THE FEAR of the Lord.” This meant that we should cower in front of God. It’s why we needed others to pray for us. Like the church structure and hierarchy. And the saints. You’re too impure and unclean to approach God directly, so you need an intercessor. I hated this concept. I didn’t like the picture it painted of God. I couldn’t believe it. So I was out.

Yet Bill preached how we think of fear would be both in awe of God and in love with God. There’s no direct English translation for the Hebrew word “yirah.” Rabbi Alan Lew describes yirah as “the fear that overcomes us when we suddenly find ourselves in possession of considerably more energy than we are used to, inhabiting a larger space than we are used to inhabiting.”[1] Bill spoke about his feeling of yirah when he was a young boy.

He was sick at home in his room. Yet what a day to be sick! This was the day of his cousin’s wedding! The cousin whom he adored. The cousin who babysat him for his parents’ dates. They were close, and here he was sick in bed. He spoke about how his cousin came to visit him. Her gigantic wedding dress seemed to fill up his room. His cousin radiant and glowing. She was so beautiful that he hid under the covers and it took a lot of coaxing for him to peek out and speak to his cousin.

Bill taught me about yirah. It’s like a radiant bride. It’s a feeling of having considerably more energy than we are used to. I know that feeling. Bill is a saint to me. He helped me overcome my wrong expectations that God demands our fear. No. It’s more like the feeling of when God shows up, your heart isn’t big enough to hold all that love. Your brain isn’t smart enough to grasp what’s going on. Like on your wedding day when you first see your spouse. Yirah. When you hold the hand of a dying friend or family member, and they say a simple word that carries so much meaning and weight it makes you cry. Yirah. Like that movie or commercial you cry at. Yirah. I love Bill for getting me back in the church and challenging my assumptions. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Because of Bill, I went to seminary. There I met Dr. Lee, professor of systematic theology. Systematic theology I expected to be a dry and boring class. Here’s how to think about the Trinity, and sin, and here’s how it all worked. Jesus died for your sins, got what we deserved, and you have to believe and be Christian or you’re headed to hell. I expected Lee to be a humorless and exhausting person. Expectations can be wrong.

Lee is the most exciting professor I have ever taken a class from. I tried to take every class he offered. He actively thwarts expectations. Instead of one system of theology, he taught multiple and made it fun. He taught the Theological Worlds, which we covered in the Tuesdays at Two Bible Study. He taught using films, and books, and theologians, and the Bible, and documentaries, and music, and hymns, and whatever! You never knew what was coming next.

He took me who liked to think I was a rational, reasonable, evidenced-based guy who believed in The Facts and showed me how the facts won’t save us. Facts are things that will still be true when all of us are dead. Things like gravity. Things like Newtonian Laws of Physics. How things change over time, which we call evolution. These are true. Why these things ARE… well that requires interpretation. That requires putting meaning on it. And meaning, try as we might, isn’t fact. When we say a person has a gravity about them, that’s meaning. It’s true, but it’s an interpretation of the personality that seems to be serious, likable and pleasing to folks. It’s not the same as saying that person is literally a large body that spins and thus pulls objects into orbit and is able to keep objects on their skin.

Lee gave me permission to enter into mystery. To say “I don’t know.” To be still and know that God is God and I am not, and I don’t have to have everything figured out or have all the answers. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.

Then there’s the Rev. Nancy, the pastor of the church where I interned. She was a hard, no-nonsense, preacher. And she could PREACH. Having not ever had a pastor who was a woman before, I had expectations from my youth. Nancy countered all of them and uncovered ones I didn’t know I had. She held me accountable. Had high standards for me and for her church. She could make the hard decisions.

The church doesn’t handle the leadership of such women well. We often expect our women leaders to be nice and likable. To be polite. To be differential. To work on lowering the pitch of their voices. Not to question or call us out on our nonsense and bad-behavior, and cut to the point. Nancy did that and more.

Once she had to make a hard call. The organist played every song as a dirge. She was depressed as she was carrying so much in her life. Nancy saw that the situation had become unmanageable and the organist was impossible to work with and her attitude was affecting the life of the church. Nancy, with the council, came to the decision to give the organist a leave of absence and bring in a substitute. The organist would have at least a month off and could come back immediately afterward or take as long as she needed. Plus, Nancy would meet with her regularly as her pastor to help walk with her through this difficult time.

By the second week, the word around church was that Nancy had forced out the organist and this was a step to fire her. And who was saying this? The moderator of the church council! The very same moderator who helped come to the decision for the leave of absence in the first place. And who did the moderator hear this rumor from? The ORGANIST! Nancy reminded the moderator the he helped make the decision. She confronted the organist about being the source of these rumors. She showed me how to lead in a strong style that was also pastoral. That church thrived under her leadership and lives were changed. People who were hurting were healed.

Blessed is she who comes in the name of the Lord.

Jesus coming into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey. The people are singing Psalm 118:26 at Jesus. The word has gotten out about this Jesus. The ancient psalm is sung to him. There are also ancient practices at hand. The laying of palms on the road, the throwing of coats, that’s what you do for a conquering hero. The ancient beliefs about a Messiah, a military leader who would rise up with an army and crush the occupying Romans and restore the glory of Israel back to David’s time, to make the country great again; that was the expectation.

Israel would be top dog in the world. But that’s not the God of the Old Testament. That’s not the God that states that Israel would be a nation of priests that blesses the world and doesn’t harm it. That’s not the God we find in Christ, who comes as the Messiah, but not like we expected. Christ who rides in not on a military charger horse, but on a humble donkey. Jesus whose only weapon is love. The man from Nazareth whose only army is made up of a bunch of losers and outcasts; tax collectors and fishermen from the rural backwaters of Galilee… not the genteel urban educated Elite of Jerusalem or soldiers. The son of an unwed mother brought to you by no sponsor, as opposed to the hierarchy of the Temple and the traditions found within.

Palm Sunday is a sad day for me. It exposes our expectations for what they are: empty. Wrong. Selfish. We cry “HOSANNA” on this day, a word that means “SAVE US” because we never expected to save ourselves. Jesus would do it for us. We just need to believe. We don’t need to transform our lives or live any differently Sure, we’d like to think if we were in 1930s Germany we wouldn’t be Nazis. We would have stood up to Hitler, but we often go with the crowd. We’d like to think we’d march right alongside the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr in the 1960s, but are we marching with protesters in our day and age? Odds are, we aren’t. We wouldn’t. Yet this is what this day is: a counter protest to Rome led by Jesus and his disciples. We’d like to think we’d not abandon Jesus, that we’d still have the fervor of this day of his triumphal entry into Jerusalem… Yeah… That’s what his disciples thought to… And we know that story and how they acted. How we would and do act. It’s a very human thing.

Yet blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed are those who are steadfast in their love for God and Neighbor and put it all on the line. Blessed is the one who thwarts our expectations. Blessed is the one who teaches us the counter-intuitive ways of God. Blessed is the one who helps us think about old concepts in new ways. Blessed is the one who can love us and still call us on our hypocrisy. Blessed is the one who is steadfast. Who won’t deny their convictions and won’t go the easy path of public opinion. Blessed are the ones who call us on our comfortable ways of violence and oppression and would rather die than retaliate and keep the violence in circulation.

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. I don’t know who that is for you. I don’t know who is your Bill, Lee, or Nancy. I don’t know who in your life has been a steadfast witness to love, joy, and peace. Who danced a different dance and taught you to as well… Maybe you have a name… can you say it right now? Go ahead… everyone’s listening. Whisper that name now… Can you picture their face? Go ahead… Do you see them? Is it one or a crowd of witnesses? Take a mental picture of that face or those faces and say with me… Blessed are those who come in the name of the Lord. Amen.

Works Cited

 http://www.jonathanfields.com/is-it-fear-or-awe/

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