There’s a New World Comin’
May 13, 2007
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: John 5:1-9; Revelation 21:1-5, 10:22-22:5
Anne Lamott is an author who has written a several fictions, a manual on writing, and 3 books of reflections on faith. The first, Traveling Mercies, was published in 1999, the second, Plan B, was published in 2004 and the third, Grace (Eventually) was published this year. Lamott is an irreverent, candid, Californian who wears her hair in dreadlocks, uses language that would be at home in a steel mill, and is – of all things – a Presbyterian. She notices the difference between the way the world ought to be and the way it is, she notices the difference between the way she ought to be and the way she is, she wrestles with those differences and a number of other incongruencies in life, and she marvels at God’s care for her, and she continues to grow in her understanding, or at least in her acceptance, of the way the world really is and the way she really is. And along the way, her observations are at times very funny and at other times very wise.
All of us have to face these incongruities -- the gulfs between the way we ought to be and the way we are, the way the world ought to be and the way the world is loom large. And it is easy to be discouraged, or frightened, or angry. And most of us are at least one of these much of the time. It’s hard to accept that the world is as it really is. And yet, acceptance is, I think, the first step toward change.
It’s fitting, I suppose, on Mother’s Day to quote my own mother – who says from time to time as the situation warrants: “It is as it is, if it isn’t as it ought to be.”
I used to think that expression was merely funny. But over the last ten years I have grown to appreciate how truly wise it is. Most of us spend a fair amount of energy fighting reality – either in denial or outrage. And while it’s important to keep attuned to a vision of a better way, it’s also really important to really get an understanding of how things really are – because we can only start from where we, and the world, really are.
Let me give you an example: several years ago I was serving in a church where there was a staff member who had real problems with the idea of an associate pastor, which was my position then. She refused to work with me, she interfered with my job description, when committees at the church wanted me to work with them, she talked them out of it. It was not a good place to be, and I often thought “If it weren’t for So-and-so, everything could be different.” And I wasted a whole lot of energy fuming about her, and trying to figure out how to get her to change so that I could do my job. While I was right – she shouldn’t have been allowed to have such an impact on my call – at a certain point I had to just accept the situation as it was. Fair or not fair, appropriate or not appropriate, she was not going to change just because I said the situation was not fair.
So I came to a point of realizing that the situation was what it was. I was not going to be able to change it. Once I accepted that – that it was as it was if it wasn’t as it ought to be – then it was very clear that was I needed to discern was my appropriate response. If the situation is as it is…what next? How do I respond? I began to realize that what I needed to worry about was the one area that I had control over, namely my own actions. Previously I had wasted a lot of energy over how she was – she shouldn’t be like that! She should let me do my job! She shouldn’t take over this class! I was resenting her actions instead of discerning my own response. And so for two years the situation was stuck. I think that it was when someone from the Presbytery said to me one day, “It seems very clear that she is never going to accept you in this position,” that I realized that the situation was what it was. And at that moment it also became clear that the task before me was not, “How can I get her to be as she should be?” but was instead, “How should I respond to this situation?” Once I realized this, it was only a short time before I left to take a different call.
It is as it is, if it isn’t as it ought to be.
I began to call this a theology of acceptance, although it’s a slightly misleading name, because as I said before, acceptance is the first step toward change. Going back to the example of my co-worker: as long as I was focused on how she should be, nothing was going to change, and nothing was required of me. I could fuss and fume, but I didn’t have to actually do anything. Once I accepted that she was as she was, I was faced with the challenge of determining my response.
Fussing and fuming is a very safe place to be; it relieves us of the responsibility of actually doing anything. Many of us have that response to events in the world, and I can very easily get stuck there myself. My mother used to say something else, usually when I was looking for something. This was: “Look with your eyes and not with your mouth.” Instead of asking her where my lost thing was, I needed to be looking for it myself. Instead of talking about the problems, we need to be looking for solutions, opportunities in our own lives to create change.
Many of us have been very frustrated and concerned about the environmental crisis – we have seen a number of documentaries, we’ve read some of the newspaper coverage, and we’ve become aware of the complexity and gravity of the situation. And it’s very easy to feel that this awareness is making a difference. And at a certain level it is – it’s making us different in that we understand more about the world. But I think that it’s very easy get stuck at our anger and horror about global climate change, for example, without that anger leading us to an appropriate response. We stay stuck in our anger, and the outrage has a certain satisfaction to it, but we aren’t actually doing much.
Jesus asked the man at the pool at Bethsaida, “Do you really want to be made well?” That’s an important question for many of us – not only as regards the environment, but regarding so many things. Do we really want to get fit? Do we really want to change a relationship? Do we really want to be debt-free? Or less stressed? If we want our lives to be different, maybe we need to stop waiting for life to get different. May we can choose to begin living differently in whatever the circumstances are. Maybe change begins with us.
The head of staff at my first call, Rev. Roger Kunkel, used to say, “Jesus didn’t come to make life easy, he came to make us equal to life.” So many people expect that Jesus should make life easy, or at least, easier. Jesus never said anything of the sort, by the way. He tended to talk about life being harder for his followers, not easier.
Do we really want to be made well? I read once that there are two times we can change: (1) when we believe we can, and (2) when it hurts too much not to. We’re finally getting to the second condition – as we consider the needs of the earth, it hurts too much not to change. Once we understand how the world really is, we have to respond to it. But this isn’t just true about the environment, it’s also about the Lone Ranger ethic that we have built a culture around – it hurts too much to be that separate from other people. It’s true about the pace of American life – it hurts too much to be constantly working.
God has a vision for change – changed hearts, changed lives, and a new world. But God doesn’t just snap divine fingers to make it all happen – God’s favorite building material is the human heart, and so God is able to create change, but only when we want that change.
This week, I heard someone say something very important. She said, “I get angry over so many things. But I’ve finally realized that it’s time for my anger to lead to hope.” I think a lot of people are in that space – especially around environmental issues. Many of us are beginning to realize that the world is as it is, if it isn’t as we’d want it to be. Oil is going to run out: it is as it is. So how are we going to respond?
On Thursday, here at Frame, there was a gathering of 18 people from 11 different churches, representing 9 different religious traditions. We were gathered to organize an interfaith coalition for the environment. And it was truly interfaith – in addition to the Presbyterians, Lutherans, Catholics, Methodists, and UCC, there were also folks who were Unitarian, Muslim, Buddhist and Eckankar. We were gathered because it is time to let anger be transformed to hope. If we want a new world, we have to be prepared to live differently. We need to listen to one another. We need to work together. We need to allow God to energize our thinking, to create the vision of what’s possible. We’re used to feeling somewhat powerless in the face of such overwhelming problems, and yet the 18 of us who gathered here on Thursday are ready to begin to think differently. Albert Einstein said, “We can’t solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
The thinking we’ve been using as we’ve created these problems is ideas like: more is better, growth is good, he who dies with the most toys wins, taking care of number one, I can do it myself, where’s mine, winning is everything. But the God who is ready to reshape our minds and hearts says things like, “He who would be a leader must be a servant; love your enemies, turn the other cheek, let the children come unto me, the peace I give is not like the peace of this world.” Much of the recent work on the environment has sounded a note of hope, and is looking at solving big problems by thinking smaller – by building vibrant local economies, we can both strengthen the relationships and nurture of our communities AND provide adequately for the needs of the earth and those who live on her. New life through new thinking.
In the church, Easter is not just one day. Resurrection is part of a theology that celebrates God’s capacity for creating new life. We are still celebrating the Season of Easter, when we celebrate resurrection – the God of Israel is one who has over time, created a way where there is no way. The theology of resurrection says that new life was not simply a special deal for Jesus, but that transformation and new life is what God does. The people who met Jesus and the people who came to the early church did so because they could see that Jesus and the disciples were experiencing the power of the living God. Are we able to engage the possibility of being transformed by God? Are we ready for new life? We worship on Sunday because the early church wanted to celebrate Easter every week – to remind us that God creates new life still.
Change is hard, but sometimes it brings new possibilities – this week, we’re asking folks to try change for one week – we’re asking people to try sustainable travel to worship next Sunday – we are asking people to share rides, walk, ride your bike – make a small change, but make a change. Please sign up on the list by the office or at coffee hour to offer rides – and if by Thursday, no one has called you for a ride, call the office and see if someone on the list lives near you so that you could get a ride with them. This week, I’m trying to ride my bike to the church every day. Some of you are way beyond me in terms of your biking or walking instead of car use – but I’m just going to start where I am. For some of you, biking isn’t an option – but you start where you are, too. Maybe that means combining errands into a single trip, or shopping closer to home. Fortunately, the gas prices are rising so much that it’s easier to think about this now!
We’re used to the independence of driving, but clearly, our future as a world will require more interdependence. It’s not just about oil – it’s about a way of life that needs to look to relationships with other people and the earth as being essential to life, and especially to the good life. Do we want to be made well? If so, we need to be ready to look in our own hearts, at our own lives – and in circumstances that we can’t change, perhaps we can change our own response. That can be true in relationships, in health issues, in many places of life other than the state of the earth. I had an email just this morning from a couple who has been dealing with very stressful pace of life for a long time, and are experiencing a great sense of newness and freedom as they have realized that they have choices, and that by scaling back their business considerably, they can create more space in their lives for their lives. My brother and his wife have realized that they don’t have to wait until things calm down – they can deal with life as it really is, and make choices to reject the “more is better” ethos in favor of a better life right now.
Anne Lamott says at one point that the most basic prayers are “Thank you” and “Whatever”. “Whatever” is a way of accepting reality as it is; “thank you” acknowledges that God is at the heart of all that is, and we are not on our own as we try to engage change – God is always ready to make us new, and through our changed hearts and lives, to make a new world. Amen.
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: John 5:1-9; Revelation 21:1-5, 10:22-22:5
Anne Lamott is an author who has written a several fictions, a manual on writing, and 3 books of reflections on faith. The first, Traveling Mercies, was published in 1999, the second, Plan B, was published in 2004 and the third, Grace (Eventually) was published this year. Lamott is an irreverent, candid, Californian who wears her hair in dreadlocks, uses language that would be at home in a steel mill, and is – of all things – a Presbyterian. She notices the difference between the way the world ought to be and the way it is, she notices the difference between the way she ought to be and the way she is, she wrestles with those differences and a number of other incongruencies in life, and she marvels at God’s care for her, and she continues to grow in her understanding, or at least in her acceptance, of the way the world really is and the way she really is. And along the way, her observations are at times very funny and at other times very wise.
All of us have to face these incongruities -- the gulfs between the way we ought to be and the way we are, the way the world ought to be and the way the world is loom large. And it is easy to be discouraged, or frightened, or angry. And most of us are at least one of these much of the time. It’s hard to accept that the world is as it really is. And yet, acceptance is, I think, the first step toward change.
It’s fitting, I suppose, on Mother’s Day to quote my own mother – who says from time to time as the situation warrants: “It is as it is, if it isn’t as it ought to be.”
I used to think that expression was merely funny. But over the last ten years I have grown to appreciate how truly wise it is. Most of us spend a fair amount of energy fighting reality – either in denial or outrage. And while it’s important to keep attuned to a vision of a better way, it’s also really important to really get an understanding of how things really are – because we can only start from where we, and the world, really are.
Let me give you an example: several years ago I was serving in a church where there was a staff member who had real problems with the idea of an associate pastor, which was my position then. She refused to work with me, she interfered with my job description, when committees at the church wanted me to work with them, she talked them out of it. It was not a good place to be, and I often thought “If it weren’t for So-and-so, everything could be different.” And I wasted a whole lot of energy fuming about her, and trying to figure out how to get her to change so that I could do my job. While I was right – she shouldn’t have been allowed to have such an impact on my call – at a certain point I had to just accept the situation as it was. Fair or not fair, appropriate or not appropriate, she was not going to change just because I said the situation was not fair.
So I came to a point of realizing that the situation was what it was. I was not going to be able to change it. Once I accepted that – that it was as it was if it wasn’t as it ought to be – then it was very clear that was I needed to discern was my appropriate response. If the situation is as it is…what next? How do I respond? I began to realize that what I needed to worry about was the one area that I had control over, namely my own actions. Previously I had wasted a lot of energy over how she was – she shouldn’t be like that! She should let me do my job! She shouldn’t take over this class! I was resenting her actions instead of discerning my own response. And so for two years the situation was stuck. I think that it was when someone from the Presbytery said to me one day, “It seems very clear that she is never going to accept you in this position,” that I realized that the situation was what it was. And at that moment it also became clear that the task before me was not, “How can I get her to be as she should be?” but was instead, “How should I respond to this situation?” Once I realized this, it was only a short time before I left to take a different call.
It is as it is, if it isn’t as it ought to be.
I began to call this a theology of acceptance, although it’s a slightly misleading name, because as I said before, acceptance is the first step toward change. Going back to the example of my co-worker: as long as I was focused on how she should be, nothing was going to change, and nothing was required of me. I could fuss and fume, but I didn’t have to actually do anything. Once I accepted that she was as she was, I was faced with the challenge of determining my response.
Fussing and fuming is a very safe place to be; it relieves us of the responsibility of actually doing anything. Many of us have that response to events in the world, and I can very easily get stuck there myself. My mother used to say something else, usually when I was looking for something. This was: “Look with your eyes and not with your mouth.” Instead of asking her where my lost thing was, I needed to be looking for it myself. Instead of talking about the problems, we need to be looking for solutions, opportunities in our own lives to create change.
Many of us have been very frustrated and concerned about the environmental crisis – we have seen a number of documentaries, we’ve read some of the newspaper coverage, and we’ve become aware of the complexity and gravity of the situation. And it’s very easy to feel that this awareness is making a difference. And at a certain level it is – it’s making us different in that we understand more about the world. But I think that it’s very easy get stuck at our anger and horror about global climate change, for example, without that anger leading us to an appropriate response. We stay stuck in our anger, and the outrage has a certain satisfaction to it, but we aren’t actually doing much.
Jesus asked the man at the pool at Bethsaida, “Do you really want to be made well?” That’s an important question for many of us – not only as regards the environment, but regarding so many things. Do we really want to get fit? Do we really want to change a relationship? Do we really want to be debt-free? Or less stressed? If we want our lives to be different, maybe we need to stop waiting for life to get different. May we can choose to begin living differently in whatever the circumstances are. Maybe change begins with us.
The head of staff at my first call, Rev. Roger Kunkel, used to say, “Jesus didn’t come to make life easy, he came to make us equal to life.” So many people expect that Jesus should make life easy, or at least, easier. Jesus never said anything of the sort, by the way. He tended to talk about life being harder for his followers, not easier.
Do we really want to be made well? I read once that there are two times we can change: (1) when we believe we can, and (2) when it hurts too much not to. We’re finally getting to the second condition – as we consider the needs of the earth, it hurts too much not to change. Once we understand how the world really is, we have to respond to it. But this isn’t just true about the environment, it’s also about the Lone Ranger ethic that we have built a culture around – it hurts too much to be that separate from other people. It’s true about the pace of American life – it hurts too much to be constantly working.
God has a vision for change – changed hearts, changed lives, and a new world. But God doesn’t just snap divine fingers to make it all happen – God’s favorite building material is the human heart, and so God is able to create change, but only when we want that change.
This week, I heard someone say something very important. She said, “I get angry over so many things. But I’ve finally realized that it’s time for my anger to lead to hope.” I think a lot of people are in that space – especially around environmental issues. Many of us are beginning to realize that the world is as it is, if it isn’t as we’d want it to be. Oil is going to run out: it is as it is. So how are we going to respond?
On Thursday, here at Frame, there was a gathering of 18 people from 11 different churches, representing 9 different religious traditions. We were gathered to organize an interfaith coalition for the environment. And it was truly interfaith – in addition to the Presbyterians, Lutherans, Catholics, Methodists, and UCC, there were also folks who were Unitarian, Muslim, Buddhist and Eckankar. We were gathered because it is time to let anger be transformed to hope. If we want a new world, we have to be prepared to live differently. We need to listen to one another. We need to work together. We need to allow God to energize our thinking, to create the vision of what’s possible. We’re used to feeling somewhat powerless in the face of such overwhelming problems, and yet the 18 of us who gathered here on Thursday are ready to begin to think differently. Albert Einstein said, “We can’t solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
The thinking we’ve been using as we’ve created these problems is ideas like: more is better, growth is good, he who dies with the most toys wins, taking care of number one, I can do it myself, where’s mine, winning is everything. But the God who is ready to reshape our minds and hearts says things like, “He who would be a leader must be a servant; love your enemies, turn the other cheek, let the children come unto me, the peace I give is not like the peace of this world.” Much of the recent work on the environment has sounded a note of hope, and is looking at solving big problems by thinking smaller – by building vibrant local economies, we can both strengthen the relationships and nurture of our communities AND provide adequately for the needs of the earth and those who live on her. New life through new thinking.
In the church, Easter is not just one day. Resurrection is part of a theology that celebrates God’s capacity for creating new life. We are still celebrating the Season of Easter, when we celebrate resurrection – the God of Israel is one who has over time, created a way where there is no way. The theology of resurrection says that new life was not simply a special deal for Jesus, but that transformation and new life is what God does. The people who met Jesus and the people who came to the early church did so because they could see that Jesus and the disciples were experiencing the power of the living God. Are we able to engage the possibility of being transformed by God? Are we ready for new life? We worship on Sunday because the early church wanted to celebrate Easter every week – to remind us that God creates new life still.
Change is hard, but sometimes it brings new possibilities – this week, we’re asking folks to try change for one week – we’re asking people to try sustainable travel to worship next Sunday – we are asking people to share rides, walk, ride your bike – make a small change, but make a change. Please sign up on the list by the office or at coffee hour to offer rides – and if by Thursday, no one has called you for a ride, call the office and see if someone on the list lives near you so that you could get a ride with them. This week, I’m trying to ride my bike to the church every day. Some of you are way beyond me in terms of your biking or walking instead of car use – but I’m just going to start where I am. For some of you, biking isn’t an option – but you start where you are, too. Maybe that means combining errands into a single trip, or shopping closer to home. Fortunately, the gas prices are rising so much that it’s easier to think about this now!
We’re used to the independence of driving, but clearly, our future as a world will require more interdependence. It’s not just about oil – it’s about a way of life that needs to look to relationships with other people and the earth as being essential to life, and especially to the good life. Do we want to be made well? If so, we need to be ready to look in our own hearts, at our own lives – and in circumstances that we can’t change, perhaps we can change our own response. That can be true in relationships, in health issues, in many places of life other than the state of the earth. I had an email just this morning from a couple who has been dealing with very stressful pace of life for a long time, and are experiencing a great sense of newness and freedom as they have realized that they have choices, and that by scaling back their business considerably, they can create more space in their lives for their lives. My brother and his wife have realized that they don’t have to wait until things calm down – they can deal with life as it really is, and make choices to reject the “more is better” ethos in favor of a better life right now.
Anne Lamott says at one point that the most basic prayers are “Thank you” and “Whatever”. “Whatever” is a way of accepting reality as it is; “thank you” acknowledges that God is at the heart of all that is, and we are not on our own as we try to engage change – God is always ready to make us new, and through our changed hearts and lives, to make a new world. Amen.