If I may, one of the things that gets under my skin from time to time -- this is Father’s Day so I can say this -- is when people hear that I’ve got the kids for a day or a weekend or even an evening, and they refer to it as “babysitting”. That ever happened to you, dads? Or maybe you’ve said this to a dad: “Oh, that’s great, you’re babysitting the kids tonight?” Why is that? When a father is taking care of his own children, he’s “babysitting”? I try to gently respond, “I’ll be parenting tonight, yes.” Now, I know that it’s not ill-intended, and it probably just points to the fact that one parent is with the kids more than the other. I guess I should should just keep my mouth shut and enjoy the ‘props’ I get -- maybe I should ask Heather for an hourly wage ;) -- NO -- but I’m just thinking about that concept of babysitting this week as I look at this text from Paul. (So central - Luther...)
In his letter to Galatians -- now in Chapter 3 -- Paul talks about the law as a sort of babysitter. It’ll take care of things until Christ gets home. All those years in the desert/exile, the law was the babysitter. A good babysitter enforces the rules that were prescribed. A good babysitter is a good disciplinarian. That’s why as kids we loved the babysitters, who had no idea what the rules were. But even a good babysitter -- any child will tell you -- and we all know -- is far from the real thing.
The law of God is far from the real thing. The law -- the Ten Commandments -- all the do’s and don’ts about being God’s people. It’s like babysitter. It keeps us in line until Christ gets home.
And how we often can mix that up with the real thing -- with the Gospel of God: the good news of love and forgiveness and grace.
I imagine there are some places, some churches even, where ministry just seems like babysitting, maybe that’s been true here at SVLC too, at times, if we’re honest...where ministry is not ministry at all but everything is just reduced to nothing more than a bunch of do’s and don’ts:
“Worship like this, organize yourselves like that. Come to church like this, sing like that. Dress like this, don’t dress like that. Think like this, don’t think about that. Live like this, don’t live like that…”
This is what Paul was addressing then too. The Galatian Christians had carried over so many of their old rituals, and so they were having trouble accepting new people into the Christian fold, people who didn’t share their old traditions: Gentiles. Paul is taking their rejection of difference head on: “Your old traditions -- as great as they might be -- are a babysitter...for the real thing...that is Christ’s love!” And then he goes on: “When you were baptized…you were clothed in Christ’s love. (No one gets a bath from their babysitter! You get a bathed by your mom or your dad!) When you were bathed, people of God, you were bathed in Christ’s love. We’re not throwing out the law. We’re not throwing out the good babysitter (abolishing the law). The babysitter will always be important to us. (Our kids, btw, have an amazing babysitter, who lives across the street -- but she’s now gone off to college over-seas. Man, we miss her!) The babysitter will always be important to us, but it’s nothing like the real thing! It’s nothing like Christ himself, and that Gospel of peace.
--
That’s what makes this tragedy -- yet another, this time in Orlando -- so difficult. If Christ has come, if the babysitter can go home, then why is there all this violence?
Our Presiding Bishop, Elizabeth Eaton wrote in her statement to the ELCA this week:
“We are killing ourselves. We believe that all people are created in God’s image. All of humanity bears a family resemblance. Those murdered in Orlando were not abstract ‘others,’ they are us. But somehow, in the mind of a deeply disturbed gunman, the LGBTQ community was severed from our common humanity. This separation led to the death of 49 and the wounding of 54 of us.”
Where is Christ in the midst of that?!
You know, some have even silently (and some not so silently) applauded this shooting, pointing to this as, “Well, that’s what they get for being gay”? Where is Christ in the midst of that?!
This week, being at a loss, I called the pastor at Reformation Lutheran Church, down the street from the Pulse night club. Pastor Rob, and we talked just for a few minutes. But in that time, he shared with me, how much “noise” there is...from all sides. Reformation is on the main thoroughfare to the nightclub. All the traffic they’re getting right now, from the national media, to protestors, to mourners, to onlookers...everybody’s got something to say. But Pastor Rob, said that he’s trying to help his own congregation -- which was deeply affected -- and that whole community, in the midst of all the noise, to keep silent. He practices intentional silence at the moment of death in his hospice work, and he’s trying to do that now, but trying to keep that now, he said, is like trying to hold back a title wave. I asked if we could send them a quilt…
--
Sisters and brothers in Christ, when tragedies like this happen, and continue to happen -- we’ll keep seeing this level of violence -- when tragedies like this happen, and continue to happen, it is so hard to believe that Christ hasn’t gone on a little trip or something and just left us with the babysitter.
Is the law all we have here, in the wake of such tragedy? Has Christ gone missing? Where is God in the face of unspeakable hatred, bigotry, violence, terror and death?! Is the babysitter, the law, the rules, all we’ve got?
NO.
God is here. And God is present in Orlando. God is grieving too. God is holding all those in the Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Trans-Queer-Intersex-Asexual community who are terrified right now. All those who are overcome with anger, all those who are making so much noise (on all sides of the issue), and all those who are speechless. This is especially where our God comes out, and other gods can fall away: because our God not only goes to and gets close to death and terror, our God journeyed through it, experiencing death itself and the terrorism of the cross. Orlando is not void of the Divine; Orlando -- and all places of pain and death -- is exactly where God is right now.
In baptism we have been clothed with Christ. We have been covered with God’s love, grace, acceptance, pardon and peace. And so we too move to the pain, sisters and brothers in Christ. Not because we have to -- it’s not the law that moves us to the pain -- but because we can’t help ourselves: we’re baptized. God’s grace propels us. We’re washed in that same cross! (pause)
I’d like you to turn to the HoD #705 now, and let’s read these words together before we sing it…vs. 3 &4.
(Harry E. Fosdick, Baptist ministry in New York at the end of his life wrote these words as our nation was headed to war again.)
Sisters and brothers in Christ, God has come home. We are, in fact, no longer in the care of a babysitter. God, our heavenly parent, is here -- not as a babysitter, but as a parent. To walk with us in our trials, comfort us in our fears, forgive us in our shortcomings, and to give us courage “for the living of these days”. God has come home. AMEN.
---
Blessing of Fathers
Gracious God,
pour out your Spirit on all fathers.
Grant to them keen insight
into their children’s needs.
Help them to be faithful examples of truth and love.
Soften their hearts
so that they might hear their children’s cries.
Strengthen their resolve
to be men of commitment and faith.
In times of sorrow and disappointment
let them know that you are by their side.
In times of doubt and confusion
show them the way.
In times of happiness and joy
let them see your face in all
that is good and right and true.
In all times sustain them with the knowledge
that they are your beloved children.
We ask this in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment