Home
By Bishop Sharon Rader
Psalm 42
The summer our daughter graduated from college, she and 2 or 3 friends decided they needed to spend just a bit more time together before they all went on to jobs and graduate school. They rented a house in Kalamazoo MI, got short term, low paying jobs and proceeded to have one last fling.
That summer was the time of another move for Blaine and me, too—good United Methodist pastors that we were. We moved from Lansing to Grand Rapids, MI which meant we would then be living only about 45 minutes from Kalamazoo where our daughter was living.
The move was hectic, time consuming, and the weather was HOT. We got caught up in all the details of packing, unpacking, making daily runs to the hardware store, the TV cable offices, the local grocery stores, etc. Slowing down one evening, I realized we’d been in Grand Rapids for a full week and we hadn’t heard a word from our daughter in Kalamazoo. So laying exhausted in bed, I dialed up her number. She answered!
“I was just thinking about you,” I said, “and I so I called.”
“Good to talk with you,” she replied. “Funny you called. We were just in Grand Rapids going to a movie.
In Grand Rapids attending a movie! Heaping a bit of guilt onto her, I mentioned that I was surprised she had not been in touch with us when we were going through our chaotic week, and wondered why she hadn’t come home when she was in town.
“Well,” she said, “I didn’t have your new phone number and I didn’t know where the new house was. I didn’t know where home was!”
Home.
Among the magazines stacked up in our living room is a recent edition of FTM, the magazine of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. The CEO of the organization opened the July/August edition writing about what he labeled the “seismic shifts and challenges that organization had undergone since its formation in 1942”: name changes, moves of the central office from California to Washington DC, changes in the board from a management board to a policy board, and of course the significant changes taking place in laws and licensing, and the development of a nimble organization that devotes more time to networks—both geographical and topical. “These transitions should not be viewed casually”, he wrote, for “these events were filled with anguish and elation, support and opposition, protagonists and antagonists.” Some, he allowed, would approach the change with a sense of opportunity and excitement, some with trepidation, and others possibly with a sense of indifference. For some there will be a strong sense of loss, for others an eagerness to shape the organization to meet emerging needs. The AAMFT, he said, has experienced members who “have been there, did that, got the black eye and trophy, and who are yet willing to offer guidance and expertise…and then members all along the continuum just willing to assist.”
As I’ve listened to the conversation around our house, it seems this organization—whether we’re talking about the national AAPC or this Heartland region, can easily identify with Tracy Todd’s analysis of AAMFT. It is not unfamiliar territory. There is much change going on in the AAPC and it is represented well in this very room, I hunch. A community of people, an organization, wondering where “home” is.
Psalm 42 is the beginning of 11 Korahite psalms, offering an introduction about hope and continued service born of loss. Korah was an influential figure from the Hebrew wilderness period. He was a descendant of Levi, and a leader of the rebellion against Moses and Aaron. He died in his attempt to seek priestly equality with the descendants of Aaron. The Aaronites grew in power and authority while the Korahites were reduced to peripheral cultic roles. The “sons of Korah” continued variously as singers, as guardians “in charge of the work of the service” in the Temple, as gatekeepers, and as temple bakers! They were taunted, opposed, cast off, forgotten, and worst hurt of all, some sarcastically questioned of them: “Where is your God?” (New Interpreter’s Study Bible, 788-89) The Korahites were longing for home.
Anne Lamott says she does not know much about God, but she has “come to believe, over the past 25 years, that there’s something to be said about keeping prayer simple.”
Help. Thanks. Wow. These are the simplest words she can find for her prayers.
And she cautions us not to get too bogged down on to whom or what we pray to. She says “prayer is communication from our hearts to the great mystery, or Goodness, or ‘Howard’ (as in the Lord’s Prayer for Christians when we say the Our Father who art in heaven, Howard is your name). Some pray to the animating energy of love we are sometimes bold enough to believe in; to something unimaginably big, and not us. We could call this force Not me, and Not Preachers Onstage with a Choir of 800. Or, she says, for convenience we could just say ‘God’.”
Lamott wonders if the first time we really pray, “we cry out in the deepest desperation, “God help me”. And she thinks that is a great prayer, as we are “then at our absolutely most degraded and isolated, which means we are nice and juicy with the consequences of our best thinking and are thus possibly teachable.”
“Or”, she goes on, sometimes we might be in one of our “dangerously good moods, and say casually: “Hey, hi, Person. Me again. The princess. Thank you for my sobriety, my grandson, my flowering pear tree.” HELP,THANKS, WOW,The Three Essential Prayers, Anne Lamott, Riverhead Books, 2012.
Experiencing danger, threat, anxiety, death, a grief for the seeming absence of God, the Psalmist cries out: “my soul longs for you, O God…my soul is cast down within me…the enemy oppresses me…my soul longs for you, O God.” Ps. 42 There are tears, despair, and a complaining to God. Set this right, he pleads. Help. Help. Where is home now? Help.
And yet…and yet, in the midst of their greatly reduced places of authority and power, the Korahite psalmist begins to help the community remember—remember a former time of health and healing in the Temple. While it is true they cannot go back to visit and be present in the Temple as it once was, they can remember—remember the joy of past attendance there and how healing waters flowed from the Holy One into all of life. Remember life-giving presence. One commentator on this section of the Psalms says what we learn here is that remembering and memory seem to contribute to an emerging sense of hope. Hope and despair can exist together. In remembering past times of intimacy with God, the Psalmist begins to once again cling to hope. In the midst of not knowing, memory is a key to hope in waiting confidently for God to act and lead into the next new thing.
Perhaps the AAPC, perhaps the Heartland Region of the AAPC, feels some days rather like the ancient Psalmist. You long for flowing streams of vitality and making a difference in the lives of individuals and communities. You long for clarity of purpose, sufficient resources and personnel. You long for gatherings of like-minded students and practitioners who want to share experience and expertise. Maybe in this moment there is yet time to remember….What do you remember about days gone past when AAPC felt like home. What was that like? What was happening? Just 3 or 4 of you share….help us all remember.
We remember and we simply say “thanks”. Again Lamott: “it is easy to thank God for life when things are going well. But life is much bigger than we give it credit for, and much of the time it’s harder than we would like. It’s a package deal, though. Sometimes our mouths sag open with exhaustion, and our souls and minds do, too, with defeat, and that saggy opening is what we needed all along. Any opening leads to the chance of flow, which sometimes is the best we can hope for, and a minor miracle at that, open and fascinated, instead of tense and scared and shut down. God, thank you….
“Most of us,” she says, “figure out by a certain age—some of us later than others—that life unspools in cycles, some lovely, some painful, but in no predictable order. So you could have lovely, painful, and painful again, which I think we all agree is not at all fair. You don’t have to like it, and you are always welcome to file a brief with the Complaints Department. But, if you are patient and are paying attention, you will see that God will restore what the locusts have taken away.” (Lamott, Ibid.)
Home. “Oh Mom,” our daughter Mary admonished one day after I’d used her story one time too many in a sermon. “I did say that, but I knew where home was/is. Home is where you and dad and the dog are…wherever that is.”
The Psalmist got it way before Anne Lamott did. He cried out help! He remembered. And then came Thanks. “These things I remember as I pour out my soul…Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted with me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my help and my God…the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. Home.
Blessing:
Life is short, and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us.
So be quick to love.
Be quick to love.
Make haste to be kind
Make haste to be kind.
And the blessing of God who loves you be with you this day and this night and always. (From a worship bulletin at University UMC, Austin TX)
Amen.
By Bishop Sharon Rader
Psalm 42
The summer our daughter graduated from college, she and 2 or 3 friends decided they needed to spend just a bit more time together before they all went on to jobs and graduate school. They rented a house in Kalamazoo MI, got short term, low paying jobs and proceeded to have one last fling.
That summer was the time of another move for Blaine and me, too—good United Methodist pastors that we were. We moved from Lansing to Grand Rapids, MI which meant we would then be living only about 45 minutes from Kalamazoo where our daughter was living.
The move was hectic, time consuming, and the weather was HOT. We got caught up in all the details of packing, unpacking, making daily runs to the hardware store, the TV cable offices, the local grocery stores, etc. Slowing down one evening, I realized we’d been in Grand Rapids for a full week and we hadn’t heard a word from our daughter in Kalamazoo. So laying exhausted in bed, I dialed up her number. She answered!
“I was just thinking about you,” I said, “and I so I called.”
“Good to talk with you,” she replied. “Funny you called. We were just in Grand Rapids going to a movie.
In Grand Rapids attending a movie! Heaping a bit of guilt onto her, I mentioned that I was surprised she had not been in touch with us when we were going through our chaotic week, and wondered why she hadn’t come home when she was in town.
“Well,” she said, “I didn’t have your new phone number and I didn’t know where the new house was. I didn’t know where home was!”
Home.
Among the magazines stacked up in our living room is a recent edition of FTM, the magazine of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. The CEO of the organization opened the July/August edition writing about what he labeled the “seismic shifts and challenges that organization had undergone since its formation in 1942”: name changes, moves of the central office from California to Washington DC, changes in the board from a management board to a policy board, and of course the significant changes taking place in laws and licensing, and the development of a nimble organization that devotes more time to networks—both geographical and topical. “These transitions should not be viewed casually”, he wrote, for “these events were filled with anguish and elation, support and opposition, protagonists and antagonists.” Some, he allowed, would approach the change with a sense of opportunity and excitement, some with trepidation, and others possibly with a sense of indifference. For some there will be a strong sense of loss, for others an eagerness to shape the organization to meet emerging needs. The AAMFT, he said, has experienced members who “have been there, did that, got the black eye and trophy, and who are yet willing to offer guidance and expertise…and then members all along the continuum just willing to assist.”
As I’ve listened to the conversation around our house, it seems this organization—whether we’re talking about the national AAPC or this Heartland region, can easily identify with Tracy Todd’s analysis of AAMFT. It is not unfamiliar territory. There is much change going on in the AAPC and it is represented well in this very room, I hunch. A community of people, an organization, wondering where “home” is.
Psalm 42 is the beginning of 11 Korahite psalms, offering an introduction about hope and continued service born of loss. Korah was an influential figure from the Hebrew wilderness period. He was a descendant of Levi, and a leader of the rebellion against Moses and Aaron. He died in his attempt to seek priestly equality with the descendants of Aaron. The Aaronites grew in power and authority while the Korahites were reduced to peripheral cultic roles. The “sons of Korah” continued variously as singers, as guardians “in charge of the work of the service” in the Temple, as gatekeepers, and as temple bakers! They were taunted, opposed, cast off, forgotten, and worst hurt of all, some sarcastically questioned of them: “Where is your God?” (New Interpreter’s Study Bible, 788-89) The Korahites were longing for home.
Anne Lamott says she does not know much about God, but she has “come to believe, over the past 25 years, that there’s something to be said about keeping prayer simple.”
Help. Thanks. Wow. These are the simplest words she can find for her prayers.
And she cautions us not to get too bogged down on to whom or what we pray to. She says “prayer is communication from our hearts to the great mystery, or Goodness, or ‘Howard’ (as in the Lord’s Prayer for Christians when we say the Our Father who art in heaven, Howard is your name). Some pray to the animating energy of love we are sometimes bold enough to believe in; to something unimaginably big, and not us. We could call this force Not me, and Not Preachers Onstage with a Choir of 800. Or, she says, for convenience we could just say ‘God’.”
Lamott wonders if the first time we really pray, “we cry out in the deepest desperation, “God help me”. And she thinks that is a great prayer, as we are “then at our absolutely most degraded and isolated, which means we are nice and juicy with the consequences of our best thinking and are thus possibly teachable.”
“Or”, she goes on, sometimes we might be in one of our “dangerously good moods, and say casually: “Hey, hi, Person. Me again. The princess. Thank you for my sobriety, my grandson, my flowering pear tree.” HELP,THANKS, WOW,The Three Essential Prayers, Anne Lamott, Riverhead Books, 2012.
Experiencing danger, threat, anxiety, death, a grief for the seeming absence of God, the Psalmist cries out: “my soul longs for you, O God…my soul is cast down within me…the enemy oppresses me…my soul longs for you, O God.” Ps. 42 There are tears, despair, and a complaining to God. Set this right, he pleads. Help. Help. Where is home now? Help.
And yet…and yet, in the midst of their greatly reduced places of authority and power, the Korahite psalmist begins to help the community remember—remember a former time of health and healing in the Temple. While it is true they cannot go back to visit and be present in the Temple as it once was, they can remember—remember the joy of past attendance there and how healing waters flowed from the Holy One into all of life. Remember life-giving presence. One commentator on this section of the Psalms says what we learn here is that remembering and memory seem to contribute to an emerging sense of hope. Hope and despair can exist together. In remembering past times of intimacy with God, the Psalmist begins to once again cling to hope. In the midst of not knowing, memory is a key to hope in waiting confidently for God to act and lead into the next new thing.
Perhaps the AAPC, perhaps the Heartland Region of the AAPC, feels some days rather like the ancient Psalmist. You long for flowing streams of vitality and making a difference in the lives of individuals and communities. You long for clarity of purpose, sufficient resources and personnel. You long for gatherings of like-minded students and practitioners who want to share experience and expertise. Maybe in this moment there is yet time to remember….What do you remember about days gone past when AAPC felt like home. What was that like? What was happening? Just 3 or 4 of you share….help us all remember.
We remember and we simply say “thanks”. Again Lamott: “it is easy to thank God for life when things are going well. But life is much bigger than we give it credit for, and much of the time it’s harder than we would like. It’s a package deal, though. Sometimes our mouths sag open with exhaustion, and our souls and minds do, too, with defeat, and that saggy opening is what we needed all along. Any opening leads to the chance of flow, which sometimes is the best we can hope for, and a minor miracle at that, open and fascinated, instead of tense and scared and shut down. God, thank you….
“Most of us,” she says, “figure out by a certain age—some of us later than others—that life unspools in cycles, some lovely, some painful, but in no predictable order. So you could have lovely, painful, and painful again, which I think we all agree is not at all fair. You don’t have to like it, and you are always welcome to file a brief with the Complaints Department. But, if you are patient and are paying attention, you will see that God will restore what the locusts have taken away.” (Lamott, Ibid.)
Home. “Oh Mom,” our daughter Mary admonished one day after I’d used her story one time too many in a sermon. “I did say that, but I knew where home was/is. Home is where you and dad and the dog are…wherever that is.”
The Psalmist got it way before Anne Lamott did. He cried out help! He remembered. And then came Thanks. “These things I remember as I pour out my soul…Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted with me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my help and my God…the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. Home.
Blessing:
Life is short, and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us.
So be quick to love.
Be quick to love.
Make haste to be kind
Make haste to be kind.
And the blessing of God who loves you be with you this day and this night and always. (From a worship bulletin at University UMC, Austin TX)
Amen.