"Holding on, Loosely" -- a sermon on Generosity, for All Saints Day

John 11/Psalm 24

            Today is All Saints Day – and I can’t help thinking that every one of us has at least one person we are remembering today 

            -- at least one person for whom we will light a candle, at least one person for whom we give thanks because they were ‘saints'  for us

            – they let the light of God’s love shine through them in some way or another. 

            Today is All Saints Day – a day when it has become our custom to name those who have died in the past year – and also to light candles for others who we remember, who we call saints. 

            Saints.  No matter how many times I say it, it still seems odd, at least I some ways. 

            Because we associate the word ‘saint’ with those extraordinary heroes of the faith.  “I’m not a saint!”  Are you a saint?

             It can be a problem, this word.  What is a saint, anyway?  

            Whatever you think, today is a day to remember people in our lives that have been gifts to us, in one way or another. 

            We call them ‘saints.’ 

            But what is it about them that makes them a saint…. I have been thinking about that this week, and I have been thinking about my dad.             

He is one of my saints, even though he would also be someone who would claim, “I’m not a saint!” 

            He is one of my saints, because his life is a gift for which I give thanks, because he taught me so much:  about faith, about love, about holding on, loosely.   

            He loved to laugh, to tell jokes, and to sing, even though he didn’t know all of the words. 

            His favorite Bible passage, he liked to tell me, was from John 11:  “Jesus wept.”

             He said it with a twinkle in his eye. 

            Not only did this verse say a lot about Jesus – but it also was short and easy to remember.  My dad.

             He used to stand next to me in church, singing with strong baritone, helping me find my place so that I could sing along.  My dad.      He and my mom told us Bible stories, and taught how to pray.        Except that my dad had a special way of teaching us. 

            He would sit down at the edge of our beds, and he would talk to us in this creaky old voice, and say, “I am Methusalah, the world’s oldest man.” 

            He would claim to know Abraham and Moses and David.

             But he was sooo old that he would forget or fall asleep during the Lord’s prayer, so that we had to supply the missing words.  My dad. 

            “I’m not a saint,” he would probably say.  He belonged to God, and the light of God shined through him.

            You might wonder, on this day, why we are reading Psalm 24.        John 11 makes sense.

             It is about the hope we have as Christians, what makes us saints.  But why are we reading from Psalm 24 as well? 

            Probably it is assigned for All Saints Day because of the verse about having clean hands and pure hearts, but I can’t help noticing the verse first verses today. 

            They are good verses for All Saints Day too.

             “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world and those who live in it.” 

            Everything belongs to God – and we belong to God too. 

            We come from God, and we go back from God.

             In the middle – is the gift.  We are gifts to one another. 

            We are gifts to God, too.  Hold your life, loosely.

             My dad did that.  He took Jesus very seriously.  Himself – not so much. 

            When I first learned that we would be in the middle of our stewardship campaign on All Saints Day, I worried. 

            I didn’t’ want something like “Stewardship” to get in the way of remembering the saints and giving thanks for their lives.

             I didn’t want something like money getting in the way of talking about saints as those who trust Jesus and hold their lives loosely. 

            But the more I thought about it, the more I had to wonder why.     What is it about money that makes me want to avoid the subject?            Is it because I have to admit that there are times when I have been good at giving – but there have also been times when I have been bad at giving?

             Is it because I know that money is a touchy subject for all of us, including me?

             I almost have an easier time confessing when I haven’t been so good at prayer – than I do my failures in financial stewardship.

            But you see -- giving – whether money or time or talent – but we are talking about money right now – is a spiritual discipline, like prayer.  We don’t do it so that God will love us more – God couldn’t possibly love us more than God already does. 

            We don’t do it because we have to – but we do it – we give – because God already holds our lives so tightly, because God weeps with us, and rejoices over us, and when we give – we are able to hold our lives a little more loosely. 

             And the two things – that are important in the spiritual discipline called giving are that we give regularly,  and that we give proportionately. 

            We give regularly so that it becomes a habit.  We just get used to it. 

            We get used to it in the same way as we get used to opening our hands and receiving the bread and wine for communion:  Jesus’ life and forgiveness, for us. 

            We get used to it in the same way we get used to folding our hands and bowing  our heads in prayer.   And when we get used to it… it gets down into us, so that, when a young man who grew up in this church got a bonus from his company recently, the first thing he thought of was to share a portion of it with his faith community.

            The second discipline involved in giving is that it be proportional – that is we give according to what we have, not what we don’t have.

             I know a woman who was very intentional about giving more – because she knew her congregation – her church family – well enough – and loved them well enough  -- to know that she could do it while others  – could not. 

            She gave proportionately, according to what she had.

            And the third discipline – did I say there were only two? 

            The third is joy.  Give joyfully. 

            Because your names are written in the book of life. 

            Because God holds your life so tightly.

             Because the whole world, and everything in it, belongs to God.  Because life, in all its terror and all its beauty, is a gift. 

            Because you get to hold babies, to wade in oceans, to break bread, to sing, to hear the stories of your parents, your children, your grandchildren.

            Because this is your church family – because we belong to one another --

             Because the sign of the cross is marked on your forehead.    Because Jesus wept, and rose from the dead. 

            And because God promises – that God will take your life – your whole life – every single part of you, including your finances – and used it to proclaim the glory of God. 

            And the light of Christ will shine through you – through us – as a congregation. 

            Give regularly.  Give proportionately.  Give joyfully.  Joyfully.

            I can’t help thinking today as I am remembering – there was this time I was a young adult, and I was just out of the nest.  And this terrible (I thought it was terrible) thing happened one night.

             It was dark, and I was trying to lock my car out on the street, and the key got stuck in the lock. 

            And I pulled and I pulled and I pulled and the key broke in there.  I went up to my apartment and I called my dad.

             What else could I do?  I explained my dilemma and said I didn’t know if I could afford a locksmith. 

            And he said, ‘Oh, don’t worry.  I’ll give you money.”  And I said, ‘Dad, you don’t have any money.” 

            And he laughed and said, “Oh yeah, that’s right.” 

            I was so depressed.  And I thought it was the end of the world.

            And my dad made me laugh.   

            He was willing to give me what he had – and what he didn’t have.  And he would do it joyfully – -- and sacrificially --because he loved me.     He held his life loosely. 

            But he held mine tightly. 

            Who do you love – that much?

            Hold your life, loosely.

            It’s the only way you can ever hold it, anyway.

            That’s what so many of the saints have taught me -- by the way the lived, by the way they died – by how they gave.

            Their lives belong to God.

            And the light of Christ still shines in them.

            AMEN

           

                            

Feeding My Dad

I went to visit my dad yesterday, at the nursing home.

I was trying to get there about mid-morning.  My mom has said that he is better in the mornings, or later in the afternoon.  But then I needed to proof-read the Sunday bulletins, and make a couple of phone calls, and try to make a couple of appointments with homebound members, and help find a microphone for the people who will be using the fellowship hall today.  So I got there just before lunchtime.

These days, I don't always recognize him for a minute when I first walk in.  He was sitting in his latest wheelchair, which is huge and can be used for reclining.  He used to have these lah-di-dah motorized wheelchairs, but he doesn't need them any more.  Now, it's the comfort that matters.

I looked at this old man in his wheelchair, sitting at the head of one of the tables, and for a minute I stared at him and thought, "Is that my dad?  He looks so old."  But as I got closer I knew that it was him.  They had cut his hair recently, and it looked nice.  But he didn't have that nice wave in his hair any more, like when he was young.

I moved toward his table, and one of the aides volunteered to move him to another table, so that I could sit next to him.  "He's a feeder," they said.  "Do you want to feed him?"  I said that I would.

I sat down next to him, and spoke into his ear.  He tried to talk, and mostly stuttered, but he grabbed my hand.  His hand was warm.  In a little while, the food came:  egg bake and red jello, carrots and peas, mandarin orange salad.  I put a little jello up to his mouth, and waited for him to eat it.

Meanwhile, a social worker from hospice stopped by.  They are just starting to come and visit my dad, and I was glad to meet her.  She stayed and asked me some questions.  Since I was feeding my dad jello, I remembered how we all used to go out on Sunday after church to the Forum cafeteria downtown.  It was just an ordinary cafeteria in some ways, but it had this awesome art deco architecture.  It was a great building.  And they had every color of jello at the Forum cafeteria.

I got my dad to eat a little of the egg bake too.  I could tell he was getting sleepy, but he ate most of the egg bake, and some of the jello.  I thought about how he used to make us toast in the morning (he was not really a cook); sometimes he would put the peanut butter on the toast and forget and start to eat it himself.  And we would shout, "Dad!  That's our toast!"

The social worker asked me this question, "Did he used to be a sweet man?"  I know what she meant, but it startled me.  Suddenly I got this urge to find pictures for her, pictures of the dad I knew.  I took out my iPad and found two very very old pictures, taken when I was a baby.  I particularly wanted her to see the wave he used to have in his hair.

The picture I really wanted her to see was not so old, and was taken at my sister's wedding, many years ago.  I like my dad's crinkly smile in that picture. He looks so happy.

Yes.  He was a sweet man.  Maybe he was a little too tender-hearted sometimes.  I think he let my mom be the "bad cop" more than she really wanted to be.  But he had a sentimental streak a mile wide.  He really thought that love conquered all.  His favorite movie was Pollyanna.  He liked dogs.  Our cat:  not so much.

He enjoyed tinkering with radios and fixing televisions.  He enjoyed talking to people.  He wasn't that ambitious.  The most important thing to him was that he took care of us.

So now, I'm taking care of him.  Not as much as I should.  Just once in awhile.  I'm taking care of him, and singing in his ear and remembering.

The Simplest Things

Sometimes I still don't know what to say, even after all these years offering pastoral care in all kinds of situations.  I learned that the daughter of a member of my parish died suddenly this morning; no one knows yet why.  On the phone with him, I felt like a stumbling idiot, saying inane things.

Later on, I went to visit my dad in the nursing home where he lives.  All the roads were under construction, it seemed, and when I got to his area, I didn't find him right away.

He was sitting at a table in the corner, his head down, with a piece of cake and some lemonade in front of him.

I went over and sat across from him and held his hands.  "Hi Dad," I said in a loud voice.  No response.  "I'm here.  It's Diane.  How are you?"

No response.  I bent down and looked him in the eye.  I took both his hands, sang a chorus of 'You are my sunshine,' asked him, "What's black and white and red all over?"  I sang a few words of "Where the blue of the night meets the gold of the day," and told everyone within earshot about how he used to sing his own version of 'The Sheik of Araby' to us when we were little.

The activity director came over and whispered in his ear.  She said he was really good yesterday; she wished someone had been there.  She gave him a little sip of lemonade.  "Sometimes that wakes him up," she said.  She said she thought maybe he was just tired.  "Are you tired, dad?" I asked.

He closed his eyes.

I sang a little more, though, of course, I don't know all of the words.  I asked him if he remembered helping me with my multiplication tables, or teaching me to drive.  I told him he was a good dad.

Then I thought about how the activity director had spoken right into his ear.  I leaned right into his ear and I said, "I love you."

He nodded.

I don't know why I hadn't thought of it before.  The simplest thing.

"I love you, dad," I said, and he nodded and I thought that somehow, when he looked at me, he saw me, and suddenly, he remembered everything.

"What's black and white and read all over?  Is it the newspaper?"

"Oh, yes," he said.

"Why did the chicken cross the road?  To get to the other side?"

Oh yes.

I sang a few words of "Where the blue of the night meets the gold of the day" and he hummed along.  I told him that he was a good dad.  I was glad to be his daughter.  And it seemed like when he looked at me, for a little while, anyway, he remembered everything:  the prayers, the jokes, buttering our toast and riding in the car and going to get Christmas trees in December.

I said I had to leave but I would try to be back soon.

Then I said it again, the only thing I knew to say, right in his ear.

"I love you, dad."

"I love you too."

The simplest thing.

Why didn't I think of it before?

Visiting My Dad

I got a call yesterday to visit someone in the hospital.  I didn't know her well, but I recognized her name, and when I got to the hospital, I remembered her husband.  Two of her four daughters were there.   They were not sure about their mother's prognosis, so we prayed for strength for whatever the future would bring.

Then I went to visit my dad at the nursing home.

I don't visit my dad enough.  Every time I go, I consider this truth.

When I got there, he was napping, but was ready for a visit.  So we got him up and I asked him about his day.  It was quiet there on a Saturday afternoon, though I thought I heard a movie in the background of the social room.  We talked about his favorite foods (pizza, meatballs, cherry pie, corned beef), and sang a few songs, including Bing Crosby songs and some hymns.  My dad had a pretty good voice back in the day, and he loved to sing Bing Crosby songs most of all.  I tried to get a little crooning in my voice when I sang "When the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day."   I didn't know all of the words, but then, neither did he.

Then we said the Lord's Prayer together.

My dad used to read Bible stories to us when we were getting ready for bed.  My parents both said our prayers with us, but when my dad said them, he would often pretend he was Methuselah, the world's oldest man.  He would tell us that he remembered Moses and Abraham and all of the heroes of the Bible, and he would talk in an old man's voice.  When we started to say the prayers, he would pretend that he was falling asleep during the prayer, and when his voice trailed off, my sister or I would kick him.

So, that's my memory of my dad teaching me the Lord's Prayer.

My dad wasn't a terribly educated man.  The youngest son of Swedish immigrants, he at first longed to be a high school teacher:  he wanted to teach Shop.  But he found that college was more of a challenge than he imagined, so he changed his plans and opened his own business:  Radio and TV Sales and Service.  I still remember the smells of that old shop, oil and picture tubes and carpeting.

My dad was traditional, which means that he didn't really cook or do much cleaning, unless my mom specifically told him what to do.  He was endlessly fascinated by television and he could fry an egg, grill hamburgers and make a mean bean sandwich.  He wasn't a cat person, but he loved our dog.  He was sentimental, believing that love should always win out.  But I don't remember ever seeing him cry. He liked to cover up tough times with a laugh or a joke.

He liked to sing, but he rarely knew all of the words to the songs.  So sometimes, he made up his own words.

When I was trying to figure out whether to change course and go to seminary to be a pastor, I was desperate to know what my parents thought about it.  They're Scandinavian, though, which means they aren't always free with their opinions.  But finally, I practically begged.  I asked my dad, "Do you think I would be a good pastor?"

"Oh," he said, "I think you'd be good at whatever you did."

"You never say that," I told him.

As if thinking it for the first time, he said, "Nobody ever said it to me, either."

I don't visit my dad enough.

But when I do, we sing.  Even though neither of us remembers the words.

I Remember Riding in the Car with My Dad when I was Little

"You shall put these words of mine in your heart and soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and fix them as an emblem on your forehead.  Teach them to your children, talking about them when you area t home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.  Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, so taht your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the Lord swore to your ancestors to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth."

Deuteronomy 11:18-21

I remember riding in the car with my dad when I was little.  I remember partly because when I was small, my dad had a big orange van that he used for his business, which was TV Sales and Service.  It had the words G&B TV on the side in great big letters.  This was an era waaaaay before SUVs, and riding in my dad's van was an adventure.  Sometimes when we set out, he would pretend that we were taking off in a huge jet liner:  "Pilot to co-pilot/pilot to co-pilot, come in please," he'd say to me.

I remember riding in the car with my dad.

Sometimes we'd be going to get the Christmas tree, and he'd be singing Christmas carols all the way there and back.  Sometimes he told jokes, kind of cheesy jokes, actually, and other times we'd have serious conversations, especially as I got older.

We discussed questions, even theological questions, on occasion, talked about (for example) what was the most important day in the church year (Easter? Christmas? Pentecost?), or why bad things happened to good people (neither of us had the answer to that).  I remember on a couple of occasions, he talked about tragedies we had heard about on the news, and people's statements that they were saved from death or injury or some bad thing, becasue "God was with them."  But, my dad would always say, "What about all those other people?  The ones who died?  The ones who suffered?"  Wasn't God with them, too?  Didn't God love them too?

I remember riding in the car with my dad, and the converesations we had.

"Teach (these things) to your children, talking  about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise."

One of the things I think about often is what it means to live a generous life.  What does it mean for us, as individuals, as families, as a congregation, to be known as generous?  There are a lot of components to this, lots of ways to practice generosity -- or not.  There are people who are quick to give, a little or a lot, whenever there is a need.  There are people who are quick to extend their own hearts to others, be vulnerable, share their own struggles, be real.

My dad wasn't perfect by any means.  But it seems to me that he had a kind of generosity, the generosity to count among God's blessed ones the suffering and the sorrowing, the down-and-out as well as the up-and-coming. 

As we contemplate in our congregation what it means to live a generous life, I hope that our definition will include both generous financial giving to the mission of our congregation, and a generous heart, one that extends God's presence and God's love to the ones who need it most.

I remember riding in the car with my dad, when I was little.

You Are My Sunshine

Yesterday, after church (baptism at the second service, and visit with the woman who fractured her skull), my husband and I went to visit my dad at the nursing home where he lives. 

When we got there, he was sitting in his wheelchair in the main room, napping.  We woke him up and I grabbed a chair from another table, which upset one of the women who was sitting there.  She started talking very loudly.  I decided to avoid further upset by taking the piano bench instead of borrowing a second chair.

My dad is not the sparkling conversationalist he once was, for a lot of reasons.  Besides his Parkinsons, he hasn't had his hearing aids for a long time, and yesterday it appears he (or someone) had mislaid his glasses.  After a few minutes I got out the riddle book and the scrapbook with all of the pictures of his days with the Swedish Male Chorus.

I started by asking him some riddles.  "Why did the fireman wear red suspenders?"  (He didn't know that one.)  "Oh, to keep his pants up!"  I answered.  However, he still knew the answer to "What's black, and white, and red (read) all over?"  'The newspaper', he answered.  One of the first jokes he ever told me.  He also remembered a few knock knock jokes.

We took out the big scrapbook and started looking at the pictures.  He picked out the pictures of my mom, as she went along on a couple of their tours.  I noticed that in one of the pictures, all the members of the Chorus were wearing red suspenders.  "Hey!"  I said.  "Why did the Members of the Swedish Male Chorus wear red suspenders?"

"To keep their pants up," said a man at the next table.

I noticed that in the Male Chorus Scrapbook, there was a singalong book.  So I took it out, and tried to find a few songs we could sing together.  One thing my dad could always do --  he could always sing.

Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me
Home, Home on the Range
Don't Fence me In
You are my Sunshine

A woman came up to me and asked me if I could help her with her zipper.

"Why do you want help?"
"So I can take this shirt off."
"Oh, I don't think you want to do that here," I said.  As she turned around, I noticed that her shirt did not have a zipper.

So my dad and I went back to our singing:

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You'll never know, dear, how much I love you
Please don't take my sunshine away.

What's black and white and red all over?
--The newspaper.

On the Second Day of Christmas

....I got a sore throat.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

On the second Day of Christmas I got the day off.  I am sort of, unofficially, on vacation.  The interim Senior Pastor decided that I would preside and preach on Christmas Day, and he would preside and preach today, and we would each get the other day off. 

On Tuesday I will be officially on vacation.  But, since I was off today, I went to church with my mom, who doesn't get to go to church with anyone usually, since my dad is in a nursing home.  Before that, I got up early to make blueberry pancakes for my husband, who was going to play for three churches at his church.  I watched the movie Pollyanna, which is coincidentally one of my dad's favorite movies.  There was a great line that I hadn't noticed before, when the townspeople go to the pastor for help when no one else will speak up, because, as Pollyanna says, 'no one owns the church.'  It seems to me that this is still one of the big responsibilities of the church, to speak up when no one else will, because 'no one owns the church.' 

On the second Day of Christmas I heard the Pollyanna sermon, and I heard a great sermon at my mom's church too, all about the Incarnation as God's deep presence in the suffering of the world.

My mom and I visited my dad in the nursing home.  We put up a little Christmas tree with a few small bulbs, listened to Bing Crosby and looked through a memory scrapbook my mom is making.  I saw a picture of my dad with his army buddies for the first time.  He remembers a funny picture of me when I was little, would like a picture of that in his scrapbook. 

Later on, I came home, started the fourth pair of cable footies (I still have all this yarn and presents I didn't get made).  I do think I need a new project, though.

And tonight, as I'm getting ready for bed, and getting ready for "official" vacation, which starts on Tuesday, I realize that my throat hurts and I'm a little achy.

Ministering to My Dad

I went to visit my dad the other day.  My mom is out of town for a few days, visiting my niece, on the occasion of her 18th birthday.  So I wanted to make a point to visit him while she was gone.

The first thing I noticed when I got there was that his hair looked kind of funny.  He has naturally curly hair, and it looked kind of fly-away, like he was a mad scientist.  He was sitting with two aides, and when I said something about it, they both got to work re-combing his hair so that it would look better.  It occurred to me that there is more than one reason for a nursing home resident to need regular visitors.  It's good for the workers to know that people will be coming by.

So, they wheeled my dad over to a table with me, and we got re-acquainted.  He asked about people, how they were doing.  He was a little bummed that he couldn't go and visit my neice.  (She's 18; he's 81.  "You have something in common," I said.) I tried to call my sister but she wasn't home.  (He probably couldn't have heard her, but I thought it would still seem like a good connection.)  I had brought my old copy of "Youth's Favorite Songs", which was really his songbook from when he was in Youth Group.  We sang some of those together, including, "Living for Jesus."  I also sang "Children Of the Heavenly Father." 

There was a lady sitting by the window near us, talking to herself.  At one point she started saying, "Sing a little louder!"  I said I was singing with my dad, and she said, "Still, I wish you would sing a little louder."

As often happens, we got into a little theological conversation.  My dad opined that he might die soon.  "You look okay to me," I told him.  "So you think I should keep going?" he said.  I said I thought that was okay.  "Everybody will die someday, but I think you still have some good years."

He expressed some doubts about his worthiness.  He seemed concerned that he was not good enough to be a Christian.  I read some familiar passages from Romans.  "All have sinned and fall short, but they are now justified by his grace as a gift."

"Do you trust Jesus?" I asked him.  "Yes," he said. 

"Well, then, that's all there is to it," I answered.

"You mean it's that simple?"

Sometimes I do try to make things complicated.  I mean, living for Jesus and all that.  I know it's not all about going to heaven when you die.  Living for Jesus means a lot of things for our life right now.

But actually, when I think about it, it really is that simple -- whether you're 18 or 81, whether you're living or dying, doing justice, loving kindness, walking humbly...

"Do you trust Jesus?"