Lent 3, 2015 - Ich-Du

I have two magnets on my fridge that I particularly like. One says, "Because I'm the mother ... that's why." and the other is from Alcatraz Island, the site of the infamous maximum security prison, and it says, "Regulation #5. You are entitled to food, clothing, shelter and medical attention. Anything else you get is a privilege." I like these magnets because when I look at them, they make me feel tough and in-charge, and like I'm the boss of the house. They make me think that I'm right to want the kids to have chores, and that I'm right when I want to be stricter with them and impose consequences for every misdemeanour, and that I'm perfectly justified in demanding that they listen to me without question, and do what I say, and obey me at every turn. When I look at these magnets, I feel strong and powerful, and authoritative. These magnets are, in a sense, commandments. They are the rules of our house. You shall obey your mother. You shall be grateful for what you get. You shall work for the things that are extras.

But you know, I struggle sometimes with being this kind of rules person. You see, one of the things that’s come up in the last few months of visiting and talking with people in their 80s and 90s is that there is a distinct difference in quality in the interactions between families where the children grew up in a rules-based house and families where the children grew up in a relationship-based house. Now, I'll explain what I mean by relationship-based house in a minute, but in a rules-based house, children were taught that following the rules was the most important thing. Whether they were house rules or Bible commandments, the rules - well, they ruled. Don't question your parents, don't cause trouble, finish your food, sit up straight at the table, go to church every Sunday, sit up straight in church. We would call these families very strict, and there's no doubt that, in many cases, this way of living was a mode of survival. I know that when families are trying to get through a crisis, and just struggling to survive, that they often have to turn to the reliability and dependability of rules. When things are in chaos, we need stability and predictability. And rules offer that.

But when rules are the only things that a family, or a community, knows, that's when things can get tricky. Because when we rely only on rules, we end up treating those who are supposed to follow the rules, not as people, but as objects. As things. As things which are supposed to follow the rules, but probably aren't. A famous German Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber, called this way of relating to someone as being in an I-It interaction with them. In his original German, he called it Ich-Es. This kind of interaction with people is built solely on rule-following. We don't see the other person as an individual, or as a person like us. We see them as a rule-follower, as an "It." We don't recognize their God-given uniquenesses, we don't have compassion for their frailties, we don't think of the love that they have to share with us, we don’t overlook or forgive their infractions. We think of us, and we think of them. Buber called it an I-It interaction, but we might call it an Us-Them interaction. When we live with only rule-following as the foundation of our live, we divide the world into those who follow the rules - presumably "us" - and those who don't - "them." When my husband and I set down some rule in the house, and the kids break it, my husband and I become "us" and the kids become "them." A divide grows between us adults and them children. We're the parents, they're the kids. And we see this divide in families where the children have long been grown up and living on their own. The gap between the parents and the children that was created by a strict emphasis on rules is evident throughout the life of those families, even though they are now all adults. The parents and the children have strained relationships - everyone is still trying to live by the rules, and still treating each other as "Its" - still living with Us-Them interactions. 

So, like I said, I struggle with this rules thing. Because rules clearly have their place - they establish stability, they even - when interpreted correctly - protect society. They protect the weak and vulnerable. The Ten Commandments are great examples of that - “You shall not murder” protects those who are too weak to physically protect themselves. “You shall not commit adultery,” in Israelite times, protected women who would otherwise be cast out by their husbands and made homeless. Today we might say, You shall not abuse women. “You shall not steal” protects those who have to work to support their family. “You shall not bear false witness” protects those who would otherwise be vulnerable to lies about them. “You shall not covet” protects those who can't protect their belongings without help. We can't have no rules at all - anarchy is great for the powerful and hell for the vulnerable. We need rules. But, we can't relate to people through rules alone. We can't create community or family on I-It or Us-Them, rules-based interactions alone.

But I don't think we're supposed to. I just said that the Ten Commandments protect the weak and vulnerable, but more than that, they protect relationships. At the foundation of these commandments is the idea that the reason we don't hurt people is because they are people. They are God's creation, just like we are. We don't bear false witness and lie about others because doing so is destroying the reputation of another person, not a thing, not an It. We don't steal because it would be stealing from another person, like us. We're not stealing from Its, or from things, or from "them." We're stealing from others like us, we're disrupting the relationship. Buber had a name for this relationship, too. Standing against the I-It, Ich-Es, Us-Them interaction is the I-Thou, or I-You, or, in German, the Ich-Du relationship. The I-Thou relationship is built on seeing the other as ourselves. It comes from building on relationship, actually, instead of rules. It take the gap between us and them and turns it into a "we."

This I-Thou, or "we" is the foundation of the relationship-based families that I mentioned earlier. In these families, where the children grew up where relationships were the priority, rather than rules - not that rules were abandoned - but where the love between family members was the guiding principle, these families live as "we." There is no division between the adult children and their parents - there is only love and care. They are kind to one another, and respectful of one another, and compassionate, and merciful, and forgiving. All the things that God calls us to be, when you think about it. I've seen this with my own children, actually. Those moments when I come down with the rules, when I override their feelings and their thoughts by demanding that they submit, those are the moments when I feel that they are the farthest from me. They don't see me as a person, or even as their mother who loves them - they see only a law-giver who doesn't care about them. But those moments when I approach them on the basis of our relationship - out of love and compassion, and an understanding that we all have bad days that make it hard for us to do what we're supposed to do, and with forgiveness and grace - those are the moments when we reach one another and when we live as "we" and when they can see the relationships under the rules and, interestingly, find it easier to follow those very rules.

So how do we move from I-It, Us-Them rules-based interactions to I-Thou, We, relationship-based interactions? How do we change those intrenched behaviours that may have gone on for decades? Well, we don’t. But God does. God gives us rules and commandments in order to provide stability and protect our relationships with one another. But above all, God gives us love. "For I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments." I preached on this verse a couple of months ago, and it's important enough to repeat again. God's relationship with us, God's everlasting covenant with God's people, is based most importantly on steadfast love. God is determined to have an I-Thou relationship with us. Yes, God establishes rules, but God forgives. Through Christ, God forgives us all of our rule-demanding and our rule-breaking, God forgives us when we break the commandments and when we break relationships. And God loves us, and in loving us, transforms I-It, Us-Them interactions into I-Thou relationships, where each person is a dearly loved child of God. When we trust that God’s love outlasts God’s punishments, when we allow ourselves to fall into the I-Thou relationship with God that God already has with us, the power of the love in that relationship spills over into all of our other relationships. When we feel that God loves us as persons, as individuals and not as things or Its, we can love others in the same way. Because we are God’s “Thous” - we can see others as “Thous” and God can work to transform our I-It interactions into I-Thou relationships.

So I have these two magnets on my fridge. “Because I’m the mother ... that’s why.” And “You are entitled to food, clothing, shelter and medical attention. Anything else you get is a privilege.” And they’re kind of funny, and they make me feel powerful and in-charge, but they don’t make me love my children more or make my children love me. So on our fridge I also have pictures of the children, and my husband, and our friends. Pictures of people whom God has put into our lives as living reminders of the I-Thou, I-You relationships, signs of God’s gracious love. Rules and commandments are important, but they only take us so far. Underneath them lies God’s I-Thou relationship with creation, a relationship God is calling us to and that God already shares with us. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Lent 2, March 2, 2015

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”  But what is our cross? Some people have interpreted this literally, to mean that we should seek out the path of martyrdom and live lives of asceticism and deliberate suffering. In some cultures, on Good Friday, Christians whip themselves and have themselves nailed to a cross as a way of taking up their cross. But Christ does not say, “take up my cross and follow me.” He tells his follower to take up their cross. Christ’s cross was a literal one, that was preceded by suffering and ended in death. Our cross simply means our own suffering and death. We are called, as followers of Christ who confess our faith in God’s power of life over death, to take up our own suffering and death. We are called to live with our own death, which will probably not happen as Jesus did, but will happen all the same. You will die. *I* will die. (Which, I confess, is a strange thing to announce on one’s birthday.) I. Will. Die.

To take up our cross also means taking up the reality that the things and the people we love will die. Our cherished memories of the past and our hopes and dreams for the future will die. The relationships in our lives will die. And sometimes, this is harder to face than the thought that we ourselves will die. I’m actually okay with the thought of dying. But the thought of my children dying, or of my childhood home being destroyed with all of those dear memories, or the thought that my family might never be able to go back to visit our friends in California, the community that helped us raise our children - these things are much harder to accept.

And yet our lives are filled with death. Or course, it doesn’t always come at us that directly. More often, it comes at us sideways, in the form of loss. Is there anything in your life that you are facing losing this year? A job? Your house? Mobility? Your driver’s license? Independence? When we lose something, we are upset because it has, in effect, died to us. The thing, or the person, or the relationship that we lose is no longer present in our lives - we have lost it - it is dead. And, in many cases, we fear this. Look at Jesus’ disciple Peter - he was desperately afraid of losing his leader, and so when Jesus talked about dying, Peter rebuked him. Told him to stop talking. How often do we do that? Refuse to really talk about losing something or someone we love dearly? When I asked you if there was anything you are facing losing this year, did you really think about it? Or did you think about it briefly and then think about what you need to get at the grocery store this week? There are many reactions to thinking about loss. Sometimes we obsess about it, but other times, we fear talking about letting go of something because we are afraid that will make it a reality. Have you ever talked to your children about your funeral plans? Or about living wills or medical intervention at the end of your life? Did they jump right into the conversation or did they raise some objections at first? We want to escape talking about loss and death, but the truth is that letting go and losing something and watching it die is already part of our reality.

But we still struggle with it. Even knowing that, we can’t let go that easily. We want to save our life, to keep holding onto those things, and those memories, and those hopes, and those relationships. We don’t want to let them go, we don’t want to let them die. Even Jesus, the night before his trial and crucifixion, prayed in the garden of Gethsemane that his death would not come. He begged God that, if it were possible, the coming suffering and death might be passed over. Jesus did not welcome death - he was not eager to lose his relationship with his disciples, or to lose the life he had.

Nevertheless, “not my will but yours be done.” Jesus did not embrace death, but neither did he refuse it. Even though we might avoid talking about loss and death, and even though it hurts to think about dying and letting go of what we have known, God empowers us to follow Jesus. Christ is clear, “if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” And right after that, “for those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

So how do we let go of the things we hold so dear? How do we let go of memories, or hopes, or relationships? How do we lose our lives and let these things die to us? 

Have you ever tried to take something from a toddler that they don’t want to give? When my oldest son was four, he still had a pacifier that he carried around. (And just so you know, I asked him if I could tell this story and he said it was okay.) And we had tried everything to get him to give that pacifier up, but he just wouldn’t let it go. So one day, I told him that the local toy store - one of those old-fashioned toy stores that has the train tracks running inside that the kids can play with - not like ToysRUs - the store was collecting pacifiers to send to babies in need in poor countries. (Yes, we lied to our children. He doesn’t know we made this story up.) So, the store was collecting pacifiers for babies in need, and now that he was a big boy, could he help out and give them his pacifier? No. Well, the store was also promising that any child that brought in their pacifier would get a toy in return. Well... that store happened to have some Thomas the Train items that Akira *really* wanted. So, off to the store we went, and he marched right up to the counter, slapped down his pacifier and walked out happily clutching his Thomas the Train engine. He wasn’t quite ready to give up his pacifier for nothing. He really needed to get something in return.

And the same is true for us. We haven’t changed much from when we were children - we don’t like to let go of something and stand with empty hands. Fortunately, God does not ask us to do that. You see, God is not asking to let of our lives for nothing. God is not calling us to lose the things we love for nothing. God is offering us something in return, something that we can grasp only if our hands are empty, but something far better than what we are currently holding on to. Christ says, “those who lose their life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel will save it.” God is offering us, in the place of those things that die in the end anyway, new life. God is offering us an everlasting relationship, through Christ, that will continue forever. We hear this promise first given to Abraham. God promises Abraham that when his life here on earth is done, he will live on in the multitude of generations to come, and that God will maintain an everlasting covenant with them. And, in fact, for thousands of years, Abraham’s name has lived on in Judaism, which proclaims faith in “the God of Abraham, and Jacob, and Isaac.” If having your name recited by millions of people for thousands of years as part of daily prayer isn’t living forever, I don’t know what is. So in Abraham, we see the beginnings of God’s offer of something new and wonderful and far better than what we are currently holding on to.

We are given God’s promise at the beginning of our scriptures, and also at the end. In the book of Revelation, the prophet presents a vision of God bringing down a new heaven and a new earth, to replace the current earth. We hear, ‘“I heard a loud voice speaking from the throne: Now God’s home is among mortals. God will dwell with them and they will be God’s people, and God will be with them. God will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the old things have passed away.” And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.”’ God is offering a new earth, new things, new memories, new hopes, and new relationships, that are infinitely better than what we have now, so that we might let go of what we have now in order to embrace the fullness of what God offers.

These new things are better because what God is offering us most clearly, what God is holding before us to empower us to let go of our own lives, is the death of death itself. The poet John Donne wrote a poem about death that you may be familiar with - it starts, “Death be not proud,” and it ends, “One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more; death thou shalt die.” Imagine - lives with no suffering or death, relationships that do not end but only ever grow deeper in love, memories that are not consigned to the past but live in the present. No more death. In Christ, we see that promise renewed. On Easter, we see death die.

Christ calls us to take up our cross. To take up our own death. Christ calls us to lose our life for his sake - to let go of those things that keep us trapped in our fear of death, to let go of those things that silence us and prevent us from talking. Christ calls us to let go of our fear of losing what we love, to let go of our fear of dying, our fear of losing cherished memories, our fear of losing long-standing relationships, even to let go of our fear of losing our hopes and dreams. Not because these things are bad in themselves, but because God is holding out to us even more wonderful things - new life in Christ, which does not die or fade or hurt or disappoint.  When Christ calls us to take up our cross - to take up our death - Christ is calling us to live fully every day in anticipation of embracing the gift of new life that God promises us. We no longer fear death, for death is overcome in new life in Christ. To live in this world, to live this life carrying our cross and losing our life for the sake of Jesus and the gospel, means living every day first acknowledging that we and all things eventually die, and then carrying on secure in God’s promise of an everlasting covenant with us, and secure in the reality that Easter has come and that death has died and that we have new life in Christ. We are freed to talk about those things we will lose, to talk about our own death and the death of that which we love. Even though we die and all things we love come to an end, God does not allow that end to be forever. We receive these things again, in abundance and eternally, when we stand in the presence of God.

Think again of whatever it is that you face losing this year. The reality of our world is that you will lose it - if not this year, then the next, or the year after, or the year after that. The things of this world die and become lost to us. But, so that we may let go of it, God offers us Easter, and invites us to grasp the promise of resurrection and new life fully, with both hands. Let go of the things of this world, and receive, in fullness, the new life that Christ brings you. You will die. You will live. Thanks be to God. Amen.