What a Piece of Work is Man?

 Psalm 8

May 29, 2016

Memorial Day Observance

Mark S. Bollwinkel

 

In the back drop of the Nine Year War with Ireland and all of the intrigue surrounding the end of Elizabeth I’s reign at the end of the 16^th century, William Shakespeare writes a tragedy of epic proportions based on a fictional fallen hero named Hamlet, prince of Denmark.   Driven to insane revenge by the murder of his father the King by his uncle, who soon after weds Hamlet’s mother the Queen, Shakespeare’s play profoundly illustrates the madness of power and greed at all human levels; international, personal and deeply spiritual.   By the end of the play all the main characters are dead and the audience is left to ponder the meaning of life itself.

In Act II, Scene ii, two friends named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are charged with accompanying Hamlet to England with secret instructions to arrange for his death.  Pretending concern, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ask Hamlet how he is holding up with the death of his father and the taking of his throne and queen by his murderous uncle.   Shakespeare has Hamlet reply with bitter sarcasm and irony:

I have of late,—but wherefore I know not,—lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire,—why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?  (Hamlet Act II, scene ii, pp. 287-298)

Can you hear the echo of our Hebrew scripture lesson today from Psalm 8 in Hamlet’s soliloquy?

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
   the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
   mortals that you care for them?

Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
   and crowned them with glory and honor.
You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
   you have put all things under their feet…  

 

            Both pieces of literature suggest that God is active and alive in human destiny; that the earth and creation itself is inspired and transcendent.   Yet the two voices could not be more different.   One rejoices at the prospect.  One grieves the consequences of people who refuse to live up to such holy calling.   One is written in the comfort of abstraction by theologians.  The other is written by one who had more than his share of suffering and disappointment in the human condition.

            In the first chapter of the book of Genesis it is suggested we human beings are created in the image and likeness of God, that we are the children of God (1:27).  In the very next chapters with Adam, Eve, Able and Cain we children of God lie, betray and murder.

            “What a piece of work is man!”?   We may be crowned with glory and honor or all that we strive and hope for can be left as nothing more than dust.  And the choice is always ours.

            No where is the dilemma more profound than when it comes to war.

Christians have long debated the morality of war.   Some of the faithful have argued for a pacifist stance, refuting any justification for violence, citing Jesus’ many teachings on the subject.   Some of the faithful, citing the Old Testament in particular, will insist that God sends the good out to war against the evil using any violent means necessary to guarantee victory for the righteous.

Over the centuries still others have crafted a “just war theory”.  It suggests that to stand by and do nothing while evil ones plot and carry out violence on the innocent means that the good are in complicity with that evil.   Violence in measured response, strictly in self-defense, is justified then by the good as a last resort to stop greater violence.

Those “faithful warriors” who put on a police or military uniform and are daily willing to lay down their lives for others are living by that ethic (John 15:12-13, Romans 5:7).  They deserve our greatest respect.   We citizens should only ask that heir valor be spent when there is no other alternative.

While accepting the Nobel Prize for peace, President Jimmy Carter said, “War may be a necessary evil, but it is always an evil” (December 10, 2002).   Throughout history war rarely solves anything and in most cases makes things much worse.   Yet there come times when good people have no other option but to fight.   It is the legacy of those men and women who were willing to sacrifice everything to defeat totalitarian fascism in Europe and Asia during World War II that insured the peace and prosperity we now enjoy.     

On one of the walls of the World War II Memorial in Washington DC are quotes from this poem by Archibald MacLeish:

The young dead solders do not speak.
Nevertheless they are heard in the still houses.
(Who has not heard them?)   They say,
We were young. We have died. Remember us.
They say,
We have done what we could
But until it is finished it is not done.
They say,
We have given our lives
But until it is finished no one can know what our lives gave.
They say,
Our deaths are not ours,
They are yours,
They will mean what you make them.
They say,
Whether our lives, and our deaths were for peace and a new hope
Or for nothing
We cannot say.
It is you who must say this.
They say,
We leave you our deaths,
Give them their meaning.

                        (The Human Season, selected poems 1926-1972, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1972.)

            What meaning have we given our fallen heroes?  If we best honor the legacy of their sacrifices by what we do with this world they have left for us, how have we memorialized them?   

It is fitting and good that we erect stone memorials, wave flags and march in parades, of course.   But our lasting tribute to the fallen is how we live and the future we build for their, and our, children.

In January 1945 at the end of what is called the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes forest bordering Germany:

 “Maj. Roy Creek of the 507^th Army Rangers, one of the heroes of D-Day, met two aid men carrying a severely wounded paratrooper back to an aid station.  Creek took his hand to give him encouragement.  The trooper asked, “Major, did I do OK?”   To which he replied, “You did fine, son.”  But as they carried him away, Creek noticed for the first time that one of his legs was missing.  “I dropped the first tear for him as they disappeared in the trees.   Through the fifty years since, I still continue to fight the tears when I’ve thought of him and so many others like him.  Those are the true heroes of the war.  I hope and pray that we never fight another one.””  (Steven Ambrose, Citizen Soldiers, Touchstone, 1997, p. 390)

   Since World War II have we built a monument of the justice, economic development, cultural tolerance and investment in education in the world that would ensure the peace for which Maj. Creek prayed?

Memorial Day Weekend always reminds me of my dad.  Growing up in Ft. Wayne, Indiana we would attend a BBQ hosted by one of his friends who lived on the parade route.  We’d listen to the Indianapolis 500 auto race on the radio, eat hot dogs and hamburgers.  We’d wave at the parade participants.  My father and his buddies would salute the flag whenever it passed, all being veterans of the Second World War.  

Just last week my mother shared with us a letter of commendation to my father’s Army unit for valor in the battle of Iwo Jima.  She had saved it in a long lost file.  We never knew of his two bronze stars until his military record was read during the internment ceremony for his remains at the Sacramento Valley National Cemetery in Dixon. 

I am proud to be the son of Cal Bollwinkel who lived his life with honor and humility.

 

...what are human beings that you are mindful of them,

   mortals that you care for them?

Yet you have made them a little lower than God,

   and crowned them with glory and honor.

Today we remember and thank God for the brave men and women who sacrificed so much in the cause of war.   Whether their wars were just or the contrivance of politicians, those in uniform honored the best intentions in the human condition.  They fought, and some are still fighting, for a world of peace and a better future for their children.

Isn’t up to us who live on to work for that peace and future promise?

Amen.

Connecting the Head and the Heart

Matthew 28:16-20

May 22, 2016

Mark S. Bollwinkel

Traditionally the Sunday following Pentecost is known as “Trinity” Sunday, an annual attempt to teach the doctrine of the Trinity to the Church.  We all remember the Trinity, right, the notion of “God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit”?

We sing about it in one of our favorite hymns, No. 64, “Holy, Holy, Holy”; (verse 4) “Holy, holy, holy!  Merciful and mighty, God in three persons, blessed Trinity”.  We sing it in our Doxology following the Offertory.  That’s the song we sing in praise of God after we collect our financial gifts to the church, hymn number 95,  “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow; praise God all creatures here below; praise God above the heavenly hosts; praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost”.  If you grew up in a Roman Catholic family you learned to end each and every prayer with the same phrase while genuflecting.

If you grew up in a traditional Protestant church as a kid you probably recited the Apostle’s Creed each Sunday, (No. 881):

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord: Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, Born of the Virgin Mary, Suffered under Pontius Pilate, Was crucified, dead and buried, On the third day he rose from the dead; He ascended into heaven, And sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, The holy catholic church, The communion of saints, The forgiveness of sins, The resurrection of the body, And the life everlasting.  Amen.

The Trinity is one of the central doctrines of the Church but we don’t find the word “trinity” anywhere in the Bible.  We find the combination of the words “God”, “Jesus” and “Holy Spirit” only 7 times in the entire New Testament (Acts 2:33, I Cor 12:4-6, II Cor 13:13, Eph 4:4-6, I Pet 1:2, Rev 1:4-5a) and only once as the phrase, “Father, Son and Holy Spirit”.  Which is in our text from Matthew this Sunday.

The Trinity as a notion of God having “one substance and three persons”…Father, Son and Holy Spirit…came from an early church leader by the name of Tertullian (160-220AD).  He was a lawyer from Carthage and a convert to Christianity.  He was the first theologian to write in Latin.  He was the first to come up with the idea of three separate and distinct natures of the one God.

The idea goes like this:

God is the Creator, Source, and the Eternal Transcendent One.  God is above and beyond human comprehension.  This God is universal to all human cultures and time, especially known to Israel as the God who acts to save, love and forgive.  In the awe of nature, the silence of prayer and the presence of another we encounter the God that is “over” us.

God is Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the ultimate revelation of this loving God of Creation.   Jesus was fully human and fully divine, the culmination of God’s saving acts.  Jesus’ resurrection from the dead not only offered his disciples the same promise of eternal life, but ushered in the Reign of God on earth.  Jesus is the incarnation of God in human form, one born like us, who would laugh and eat and cry like us, and who would die like us.  Jesus is God “with us”.

God is the Holy Spirit, unleashed because of Jesus.  The Holy Spirit is the divine spark in us all that makes us alive, makes us human.  The Holy Spirit binds each individual into the fellowship of the church empowering the individual and the church to service and loving kindness in this world.  The Holy Spirit is that “friend” and “comforter” (John 14:15-31) that shapes us, moves us and carries us through the hard times.  The Holy Spirit is God “in us”.

God over us.  God with us.  God in us.  That is the Trinity.

Just like an egg.  One egg, three substances.  Shell.  White.  Yoke.  One egg in three persons, blessed trinity!

Even after learning it by repetition, as a child its meaning could be quite confusing:

After a hardy rainstorm filled all the potholes in the streets and alleys, a young mother watched her two little boys playing in the puddle through her kitchen window. The older of the two, a five year old lad, grabbed his sibling by the back of his head and shoved his face into the water hole.

As the boy recovered and stood laughing and dripping, the mother runs to the yard in a panic.

"Why on earth did you do that to your little brother?!" she says as she shook the older boy in anger. "We were just playing 'church' mommy," he said "And I was just baptizing him…in the name of the Father, the Son and in...the hole-he-goes." (attributed to many sources)

This understanding of God was new to the Western world which up until that time had worshipped many and different gods.

Personal monotheism was a radical notion.  It suggested that an individual could actually have a relationship with the One God, Creator of the universe; a relationship based on love.  It was an idea that turned the world upside down. 

It is too bad that the notion has become so common in our lives that it is something that we recite without much thought.  We may have lost just how important an idea it was.

For the writer of the gospel of Matthew it was much more than an idea.  It was the power and commission for the disciples of Jesus to change the world.  For the apostle Paul it was much more than a doctrine.  It was a lifestyle.  To the difficult and struggling church in Corinth he reminds them, in effect, “You’re not just anybody, you are the people of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit!  Now live like it!” (II Cor 13:13).

How ironic these past two weeks that the theme of the United Methodist General Conference was based on our scripture reading from Matthew this morning; “Therefore, Go!”   You may have noticed in the press that the Conference was torn by dissension and controversy with both conservative and progressive camps in the church threatening schism.   They were inviting each other to “Therefore, Go!” in an entirely different meaning than the original intention!  [Not to worry, for all of our heat and bother the UMC is not going to split anytime soon!]

What do we do with the reality of the love of God, the grace of Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit?  How does Church of the Wayfarer live out its commission to “go out into all the world …in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”?

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement in England, was born and raised in a devout Christian family, was an ordained Anglican priest, an instructor of Church History at Oxford University and served as a missionary to the colony of Georgia.   It was not until he was 35 years old that he would describe “his heart strangely warmed” during a vesper service in London in a Chapel on Aldersgate Street (Albert C. Outler, ed., John Wesley, Oxford University Press, NY, 1964, pp. 14-15).

This happened just weeks after he returned to England discouraged and depressed from failure as a missionary.   He was seeking encouragement for his faith.   He sought out fellowship and counsel from a group of Moravian Brethren to whom he was introduced on the passage home.   That evening at the Aldersgate Chapel, May 24th 1738, 278 years ago on Tuesday, while Martin Luther’s commentary of the fifth chapter of Romans was being read, Wesley understood in his heart and not just his head, that God loved him for just who he was; “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly…but God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us…” (5:6-8). These verses from the apostle Paul are the heart and soul of the Protestant Reformation.   We do not have right relationship with God because of anything we do, believe, say or practice.   God loves us before all that.  God’s nature is so completely love that God offers us that grace before we deserve it, in spite of our failures, simply because God is love.

After a life of academic learning and organized piety, that night Wesley got the good news in his heart and it transformed his life and set him on the course to change the world.

He didn’t call the moment a “conversion” experience; although an important spiritual experience in his life, it was one of many  (Heitzenrater, Wesley and the People Called Methodists, Abingdon, 1995, pp. 80-82).   Months later he would begin the open air preaching and small group organization that would become the Methodist revival which changed England and contributed to the Protestant Reformation.  

Wesley once defined a true Methodist as “one who has the love of God shed abroad in his heart”; we are to simply and profoundly love God with all one’s heart, soul and mind and love one’s neighbor as oneself (Heitzenrater, p. 107).  

When the heart and the head are connected it is a powerful force in a human life indeed.

In the gospel writer John, we hear Jesus teach, “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing”  (John 15:4-5).

He is describing that holistic connection between God, Jesus and those who follow his teachings and example.  Spirituality can be empty narcissism if it isn’t connected to the way one lives their life.  Pious behavior however noble and righteous can be dead if it does not come from the source that transcends ego.  

Our mission statement at Church of the Wayfarer is ‘Reaching up, reaching in and reaching out”.  It echoes Wesley’s call for the unity of personal spirituality and social responsibility.   If we follow the teaching and example of Jesus one can’t divorce the one from the other.  We can’t just love God or just love neighbor.   “Jesus spirituality” completely combines both as essential (I John 4).  In the words of the gospel writer John, we bear little fruit from our behavior if we are not connected…if we do not abide…with God’s spirit.

For Wesley, for all of his academic and pious credentials, it was in the Aldersgate experience that finally made that very connection.

When the heart and head are connected, it is a powerful force in a human life indeed.

Anne Lamott, the well-known humorist and committed Christian, has struggled with addiction and domestic abuse throughout her life.  She has no hesitancy to share that her faith in the living God has made all the difference in her life:

“I didn't need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity; I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees.”  (Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, Riverhead Books, 2006)

Matthew reports Jesus’ instructions to his followers shortly before he returns to heaven.  Our mission is still the same today to go and invite all into a relationship with the triune God…Parent, Child and Spirit.

We come here each week.  Something must compel us to be here, the music or the message or the fellowship of like-minded people.  Yet how many of us will invite a friend to come and experience what we find valuable enough to spend our Sunday mornings doing?

We have not come here to merely cope with the world and the difficulties of life, as important as that is.

We have not come here to maintain an institution.

We are here to change the world and ourselves.

Each week we sing and pray about “the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”.  We don’t recite these words merely because they are tradition.  We do so because our job upon leaving this beautiful room is to spread the word about the love of God, the grace of Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

We don’t do that by knocking on doors or preaching on the street corner.  We make disciples by being ones.  It’s our commitment to live out our lives as disciples that attracts people to the faith.

That means that if we want our church to grow…more members and volunteers and ministries…if we want our church to grow it is up to us to live out the love that Jesus taught us in word and deed.  And we can only do that when we connect our heads and hearts in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Amen.

The Student’s Life 

Church of the Wayfarer,

Scholarship Sunday 

Luke 2:41-52 

May 1, 2016 

Mark S. Bollwinkel

The church in all its forms and expressions for the last 2,000 years has established and supported institutions of learning.   Church based schools can be found all over the world. For churches to offer educational scholarships to young people not their own is not only a long tradition but one of the most “Christian” things we can do. In a way you all become one of our own here at Church of the Wayfarer as we pray for your success and long to hear of your progress. 

There is a long and significant emphasis in the Bible on the importance of education.  

Remember the story of the prophet Daniel?  Most of us learned about “Daniel in the lion’s den” from our Sunday school lesson.  If we study the Book of Revelation, there are multiple references to Daniel’s apocalyptic visions.   Few of us recall how Daniel got into the story in the first place. 

After the defeat of Judah by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE, Israel’s royalty, priesthood and intelligentsia were carried off into slavery (that date will be on the test!).  The King picked four of the best young scholars in Israel to be trained in the language and traditions of Babylon so that they might serve as official liaisons with the Hebrew captives.   Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are given the appropriate education to become top officials in the Babylonian government which begins all sorts of adventures, including the four of them being thrown into a fierily oven by their adversaries.  Protected by the Hand of the One True God they survive and throw their adversaries into the fire where they perish (Daniel 3:23).  (Remember, sometimes a good education can end up getting you in “hot water” for all of the right reasons! Although for Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego it wasn’t “hot water” but a “fiery furnace”!) 

As one of the most trusted advisors to the Babylonian palace, Daniel interprets dreams and has dreams of his own, seeing on the horizon of history the restoration of his people and the future of God’s reign.  In the most desperate times, people in our faith tradition looked to Daniel’s faith and vision for hope.  He got it in part from his commitment to learn. 

Our gospel report from Luke describes a young Jesus who runs off from his mom and dad in order to discuss theology with the elders.  When Joseph and Mary realize that Jesus is missing, they hurry back to find him three days later in the Temple of Jerusalem.   

Even Jesus illustrates the divine right of children to scare their parents to death! 

The boy is anything but repentant for the anxiety and grief he has caused his parents.  He responds to their concerns in amazement that they didn’t know where he was all along, “Didn’t you know that I had to be in my father’s house?”  Yet Mary and Joseph accept this mystery and end up treasuring such experiences in their hearts. 

Jesus will be called “rabbi” which means “teacher” or “master”.  Those given this title are acknowledged by the community for their learning and the application of knowledge.  In our tradition, wisdom and learning is held to be nothing less than a divine gift.    

The apostle Paul says in his letter to the church in Rome:  “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2). 

These young people we honor this morning with our scholarship support are seeking nothing less than the “renewal of their minds…what is good and acceptable and perfect” that they might transform their worlds and ours.    

It makes perfect sense for a church committed to “Reaching up, reaching in and reaching out” to partner with students.  Education is and always has been a real sign of hope.
             

            Amen.