"Rest Awhile"

7/19

Remembering Dan

I returned to Pittsburgh for the memorial service of a friend who died of Covid, the virus that led to this service being delayed by some 8 months. The little Oakdale Church was filled to capacity for my friend Dan’s service, maybe 2-250 people or more. And an equal number streamed through after the service to pay their respects.

The service reflected the impact this good man had in the  community in which he grew up and in which he remained. A father, husband, grandfather, teacher, musician and more. There was music from the Ukrainian Orthodox tradition, and traditional Christian music form the Americana tradition and from John Prine, another Covid casualty. And many heartfelt  testimonies.

Later in the afternoon, the family hosted a celebration at their old barn complete with barbecue, beer and a steady flow of music by people of all ages. Goo people. Solid people. With roots in the farms and mines and mills that filled this area. They believe in work lek they believe in Jesus but work his so much harder now.  This is the ethos I grew up with. This is where I feel “home.”

Reflecting on the  turnout to remember my friend Dan, I recall what Oz said to the Tin Man, “A heart is not judged by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others”

On Sunday, I preached at the Oakdale Church.  Here’s what I had to say…

Sermon

7/18

Text: MARK 6: 30-34, 53-56

Good morning.  First …historic note..since March 1st 2020 until today, the only place I have preached a live in person sermon is right here at Oakdale Presbyterian Church, last August. The very special hand made mask I received is on the collage inside my cd from last year. So it’s good to be back. 

A lot has happened since last we’ve been together. We’re opening up again.  And seem to have covid on the run. At least in places that have gone in for vaccinations. And I’m here this weekend because our brother, our companion, our friend, Dan Hanczar died from Covid. Listen …for what it’s worth, last fall I lost three friends in two weeks,  two of them guys more or  less my own age. Believe me, I have NO time for anyone  who says this is a hoax or who wants to  politicize personal responsibility  and public health. 

Oh…And we’ve got a new President!….and the Pirates may be in last place, but somehow they manage to come back from 6 down in the last two innings and win!  (That’s why we watch!)

We have lived through a year of Coronavirus world and we are still here. Oakdale Church is still here. You are still here.  Let yourselves feel that.

Now what’s up with Jesus today? 

I have to say this is one of my favorite passages…it’s perfect for summer time, vacation time, it’s the inspiration for a song I wrote for a friend’s memorial.  It’s a passage I’ve preached  on at least a dozen times in my years as a pastor.

What’s going on?

Jesus is greeting his disciples. They have come back from the journey he sent them on preaching repentance.  He knows they need a break. They need to come away and go  to a “lonely place,” a place where they can be away for awhile and catch their breath.  

And, I might add, they need to mourn the loss of their friend John the Baptist.

This is important because it recognizes that Jesus wants us to care for  ourselves. Just like he wants us to shake the dust off our feet  and leave when we are not received, not beating your head again the wall, he wants us to know when we need to take a break and catch our breath if we’re going to be any good to ourselves let alone anyone else. 

But here’s what happens..somehow word gets out and a big crowd gathers before they even get there.  And here’s what I love …Jesus could look at this crowd and say, “Oh man, all I wanted is just one day, just one day…is that too much to ask? Oh man…” But he doesn’t.  He looks on them with compassion because they seem like sheep without a shepherd. SO he begins to respond to their needs. 

This has been a rough time…NPR, in a story entitled “The Great Resignation” recently reported on the number of people who after a year of Covid are leaving their jobs. Questioning  when, how and for whom thy work.  Worn out deacons and elders and even pastors leaving their churches and people, in what we might call the great reassessment, leaving their marriages.  It’s been a hard year, and everyone of us knows that. 

Maybe we need to take minute and ask ourselves what we have left.  Or what we need to leave. 

And Jesus gets it.  We have permission to care for ourselves..BUT..human need is so great…only getting greater..as one commentator said, now even the wildness is congested with human need. Every time I go into Penn Station, I immediately encounter 2 to 3 people, as the kids say, buggin’…cursing God, the government, the cosmos  in mainly incoherent fits of rage… 

Listen…Jesus is not here to make us feel better. Jesus is here to welcome us into the kingdom, the kindom and get us living in it now…

Let’s think about compassion a minute. That great Kentucky poet Wendell Berry has said our system is an economy of the one night stand….consumption without responsibility let alone relationship…

In Jesus ‘ day,  extension of compassion under Roman Imperial Rule…was revolutionary action…compassion has concrete content in the real world…

For years, a voluntary medical tent in the US side of the border provided emergency help to people found in the most dangerous,  life threatening part of the Sonora desert.. The US Border Patrol had a working agreement not to arrest anyone receiving medical treatment. Until a new regime raided the medical facility and arrested those receiving aid and those offering it.  New border personnel made a point to empty plastic water bottles despite a prestatehood Arizona tradition that forbade denying people water in the desert.  Volunteer medical worker Scott Warren was arrested for  water. Thankfully an Arizona court found him not guilty. And with a change, border guards are now working with medical volunteers again. 

All I’m saying is compassion, simple compassion, can be seen to have content  beyond  its simple  humane reality.

So what do I want you to take away today?

One, Jesus wants you to care for yourself. Figure out what that means. Rest awhile.  One time I preached this sermon wanting to make a point about God. I asked the kids, who never takes a vacation, intending to answer it with God. And one kid answers, “My Dad.” No good. I learned  that lesson much too late. This  been a hard stretch.

Two…acknowledge that this has been a hard year for everyone., And so treat each other with compassion. 

I flat out love the the billboard banner that Dan's kids had made for their mother's birthday…”TAKE LOVING CARE OF EACH OTHER…” Do that friends and we'll keep  Dan near…

And oh yeah, Thank God for Music. Amen.

My friends, let those  with ears to hear, hear…REST AWHILE……

AMEN

                                              " Rest Awhile" 

...And a Cup of Cold Water..

7/2

At Oakdale

Oakdale, Pennsylvania is still its own little town in what is now the ever expanding greater airport sector of Pittsburgh. Once a farm town, it’s most historic moment was probably the great munitions factory explosion of 1918.  And probably more than one recent devastating flooding experience. There’s a long tradition of girl’s softball. A corner store/deli named Sil’s where I was  greeted with a slivovitz toast to welcome 1995. And a Presbyterian Church I was blessed to serve in 1994-1995.

Some in Presbytery were surprised when I went there because by reputation they were conservative evangelical and I was thought to be beyond liberal.  But in the sermons I preached before I came I took the Bible seriously. Very seriously. And I could see their highest value was community. As was mine. They had just been through a young pastor who had demanded a much beloved community member  who would do anything for the church had to give up what the young pastor deemed to be an immoral relationship. That was not going to work in Oakdale. 

I will always remember the elder who said to me, Pastor, sometimes you just have to set principle aside and do what’s right. And of course we shared Steelers. And Pirates. And Penguins. Black and gold. 

There was also a marvelous mythic story about one of the community’s only Jewish members facing down the Ku Klux Klan, cooking a potato on the burning cross and staring the leader into beating a hasty retreat from this clearly dangerously crazy person. 

It was a beautiful year. After having my own interest in music reawakened, I shared that gift with them. A pastor/lounge singer friend of  mine and I put together a band and did a special Christmas concert. And my aunt helped put together a Christmas choir. And my friend Dan joined us and we did music together. He gave me a set of new strings when I left.  

After 20 years, last year I was coming back to Pittsburgh for  a wedding. And wanted to play a gig so I called Dan to join me. And he invited me to join his band for a church street fair and Sunday morning.  I met the new pastor, a dynamic young woman named Robin who had come to them following a painful congregation split. She basically wrapped them in love and opened the doors wide. At the street fair …and on Sunday morning…the new emerging inclusive community was clearly visible. (A visible as tattoos!) Her supportive camp director husband and new child were welcome additions to the community. I could feel the quiet vibrancy and grown sense of self-confidence. 

So I was saddened to learn that this year Robin and family and returned to New Zealand. And so I made plans to come back to Oakdale and share a Sunday with those who had remained faithful. And of course sing with Dan….

Dan and Bob

These were my reflections in the Sunday before the 4th of July…

                                                                     

                                                                 ****

                                           And a cup of cold water….

There is so much that we could  talk about. It’s the  4th of July weekend. The first thing I  think about is not fireworks but cook outs…hot dogs hamburgers, baked beans, especially baked beans the way my mother made them. …In New York City where I live, the day this is the public swimming pools open....

I have two very distinct memories…It was 1976, the bicentennial year…I had been invited to Pawnee, Oklahoma for the annual Pawnee nation reunion and pow wow. An elder in my congregation was the former chief. In Tulsa, he worked for the postal service. But with his people he was a chief. For the week of the pow wow, all economic differences from the outside world were set aside and the people lived communally from a common store house. The pow wow opens with “flag song”…not the Star Spangled  banner, as I light have expected, but a song about the young men who went away to fight for the US in foreign wars… a welcome home  for those who came back and a song of morning for  those who did not…One of the sons was a trader in Indian jewelry. And he gave me a ring from the southwest of turquoise and coral..It’s gone through a lot, been lost and regained twice. But I have essentially worn it every day for 40 years…and am wearing it today.

It was 1983 in Nicaragua…during the peak of the  contra war…Our country, my country, supporting those contras.  So I was understandably shocked to see our flag flying high at their foreign ministry…we always honor countries that are celebrating  their revolutions they said .

Set all that aside a moment…I want to get deeper  into the 4th…but through the scriptures…

First, the story of Isaac… in all honesty, this is a troubling and disturbing story…what is its point? What is it about? Remember how Isaac and Sarah could not bear children? And then finally Sarah gets pregnant and laughs…and that child is Isaac, the sound of laughter…Isaac…the one he loves…(Uh, but what about Ishmael? Ismail? In Islam, it’s him…well, actually, it’s a complicated history, but most Muslims believe it was Ismail/Ishmael who was bound. And Abraham  tells him what is going on and and he agrees and encourages his father..and rolls over so his father won’t see his face. So it will be easier. We could certainly explore that. 

But imagine how Abraham would feel…asked to sacrifice his beloved son…isn’t there a question to ask here?…

Is this really a test? Some say the real test was that Abraham was supposed to refuse…BUT…that doesn’t seem accurate to story..

Historians say this story is a mythic explanation of the end of child sacrifice. among the Hebrews.  BUT…stay inside the story..some say this experience affects Isaac for the rest of his life…that he never felt quite completely  safe..always somewhat wary of this strange God.

Was this really about Isaac’s faith? (“God will provide…” he says. Does he truly believe this? Is this an affirmation, when God provides the lamb?)

Dan and I sang Leonard Cohen’s telling of this story…he wrote it at the peak of the Vietnam era…he saw sacrifice of children as not inspired by awe for wonder or wrestling with a demon or the lord…or mystery…….(I need to say, I believe we could use a draft….where all of us must share the define of our country equally…we would  all wrestle with the sense of any particular war …instead, for most of us, wars are fought by other people’ children…wearing camo sports uniforms isn’t quite enough….) 

Okay…Question one ….how would you feel?

 God honors Abraham because: 

…since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me….

One could argue, that in Jesus, this is exactly what God does….

But I need to be honest…I can’t roll with the idea that we are so bad, God requires a blood sacrifice to excuse us and set us free and thereby kills his own son…this is not someone, this is not a God  I would want to be with…this is a frightening  character…

BUT..what if God is saying…I love these people so much, i want to know them them. What it feel like to be them….I will join them in their midst…I will send my very son to live with them…show them how to live…even if knowing them, it will me cost his life…I‘ll go that far…for love…And that is a God I can go with..

Leonard Cohan doesn’t judge Abraham..he allows the mystery..and awe..to remain …when my father’s hand was trembling with the beauty of the word…

He does criticize those who sacrifice  children with no vision, no wrestling with demons or God…

And here’s where I’m easing back into the 4th of July…are there ways in which innocent children are being  sacrificed today? Or perhaps what kind of world are we  leaving our children?  I’m asking you to answer that question, talk about it with your friends…and ask what then are we to do?….

I can’t leave this without a word from Jesus..(that’s, after all, why we’re here…) Jesus says:

whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple — truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”

The wife of my predecessor pastor at West Park, Evelyn Davidson believed that the LGBTQ community felt abandoned by the church …and that in Jesus name we were called to show a different face, the face of Jesus.  So she set up a water table to pass out cos of cold water to hot marchers ash the PRIDE march. Literally a cup of cold water in Jesus name…To this day, volunteers pass out water on PRIDE Sunday at the Evelyn Davidson Memorial Water Table…And so I ask you…who is hot and tired?  Who is thirsty? For water? Thirsty for love? Oh if only every child were as loved as the children I know of this  congregation…

That’s what we do…we can offer cool water in Jesus name…to ALL  and I do mean ALL God’s children…..

Let those with ears to hear, hear….

Amen

                                         ****

Our music was truly fun.

Bob, Dan and Jamie

Terry who as a teenager played for Oakdale is still there at the keyboard 22 years later. We sang Dan’s Johnny Cash inspired “C-Minus Christian” and closed with my Teddy Mape’s memorial “Rest Awhile..”

                                                                     "Rest Awhile"

                                                                             ****

I shared these words with my final prayers…

You were truly blessed by Pastor Robin…she brought love and light and laughter back here….you have courageously stayed faithful both before and after her and as you prepare for a  new pastor you bring that faithfulness as a gift…

In the future, we will need communities that can sustain themselves with or without a pastor…it all depends on mutual accountability…this is what is needed..

1.Be there for one another…always

2. Study together …with discipline and commitment

3. Worship…celebrate…share at a deep level…without reference as to how, when or where…

4. Act together…

You can do this…you have done this

Thanks for all you gave to me and my family…

                                            ****

There was time for goodbyes to so many special people. Like the Kehms, part of the glue that holds it all together.

Bob and Eleanor

(Along with so many more..) And recovering my shoes as I left to go to a Pirate game a year ago…and found them here in the same place a year later…and yes, on may way to another game today….