The Ashes

Well, England got the Ashes back today. What are the Ashes, you may ask? Clearly, you are not a follower of the game of cricket.

The Ashes is a Test cricket series played between England and Australia.

The series is named after an obituary published in a British newspaper, The Sporting Times, in 1882 after a match at The Oval in which Australia beat England on an English ground for the first time. The obituary stated that English cricket had died, and the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia. The English media dubbed the next English tour to Australia (1882–83) as the quest to regain The Ashes.
During that tour a small terracotta urn was presented to England captain Ivo Bligh by a group of Melbourne women. There are many stories that circulate as to the actual origins of the Ashes.

Today, after many days of play, England emerged triumphant and has regained the Ashes. It was a big day at our house.

Church and China

Went to Morrilton to preach this morning and got to meet our friends' new exchange student from China. Kendi is from Guangzhuo (guan jo), China and will be a senior at Morrilton High School this year. In our ongoing it's-a-small-world kind of life, we already know someone who has lived in in Guangzhuo--Skip's buddy Greggo from college. He did one of his many post-doc stints there. I believe today was probably Kendi's first church service, and I know it was his first experience with Mexican food! He has only recently arrived, so I know he must be super shell shocked, but was just delightful. When we got back to our friends' farm house, he shared with all of us a traditional Chinese moon cake and told the story behind the moon cake.

Our friends will be a great host family and I know both Kendi and they will be blessed by this time. What a great experience for their boys, who are in kindergarten and second grade.

When we were at lunch, another friend who came to church this a.m. commented how "international" lunch was. He commented that he was eating in a Mexican restaurant (run by Mexican immigrants), and eating with an exchange student from China and friends who had just returned from three years in Germany and England. I told him that this kind of gathering was likely to become more the norm than the exception.

There was a woman at church this morning who had lost a grown son only two weeks ago. She told me that she really needed to hear what I had to say this morning. Interestingly enough, I almost always preach the lectionary, but I couldn't really find a groove with the passages for this week, so I kind of just chose one at random. One of those God Things, as a friend of mine would say. So I thought I'd post it here.

The Canaanite Connection

Matthew 15:21-28

Our scripture this morning bothered me for many years. This woman with a demon-possesed child comes to Jesus for his help and he can’t be bothered. He even ends up insulting her.

This is not my kind of story. The Jesus in this story is not my Jesus. My Jesus is the one who touches lepers, who treats women like people, who feeds the hungry, who heals the sick. My Jesus would never treat a woman with a sick child in this manner. So my entire relationship with this particular passage of scripture has been based around the question of why Jesus would behave in this manner.

Perhaps this is supposed to be the story that explains how Jesus realizes that his ministry is meant to go beyond the Jews and reach Gentiles as well. Maybe the whole thing was a set up to provide a teachable moment to the disciples. Maybe Jesus had low blood sugar and it was making him cranky. It doesn’t really matter to me anymore. I’m not so concerned with why Jesus acted as he did. For now, for me, this story is about the faith of a woman.

The faith of a Canaanite woman. A woman who is the other. A woman who doesn’t belong. She is an outcast. She isn’t a part of the people Jesus came to save. She isn’t deserving. But she is pushy and clever and persistent. I like that. She and I. Me and her. We could be friends.

Hers is an active faith. So often when we talk of faith, it’s in a passive, almost resigned way. Have you ever noticed that people tend to say, “Well, you just gotta have faith.” When they don’t know what else to say or do? But this Canaanite woman’s faith isn’t one of resignation, it’s one of action. She wasn’t giving up. Even though she had absolutely no business being there. She was a Canaanite. Jesus wasn’t supposed to touch her or even talk to her. He wasn’t even supposed to be there for her.

But that didn’t stop her, and in the end it earns her something that no other person in the book of Matthew receives. Jesus tells her she has great faith. A pushy broad who loves her child is declared to be a woman of great faith. Maybe this is my kind of story after all.

This story is a good reminder to us all of what theologian Krister Stendahl has suggested—that we are merely honorary Jews. We, too, are the outsiders. We are Gentiles. Paul reminds us in Romans that it is by grace alone that we have been admitted to the ranks of God’s people. We have no right to demand help from Jesus. It is not a right, but a gift of grace.

Like the Canaanite woman in the story, we humbly beg for his mercy. We are the other.
There are times in our walk of faith that we know exactly what it is to be the Canaanite woman.

We come, like the Canaanite woman, when we get a medical diagnosis that changes our life forever.

We come, like the Canaanite woman, when we have desperately tried to follow the path God wants for us but seem to keep taking the wrong turns.

We come, like the Canaanite woman, when we have heard one too many stories of our brothers and sisters meeting violent ends.

We come, like the Canaanite woman, when a relationship falls apart and we don’t seem to have the tools to repair it.

We come, like the Canaanite woman, when we have done everything humanly possible for our children but cannot cast out the demons that possess them.

We know what it is to be the Canaanite woman. When we’ve given up any pretense of being good enough to deserve God’s favor. When we’ve let go of the notion that God owes us anything. When our experiences seem to tell us that God doesn’t care, but our faith demands that we believe that God must indeed care. We know what it is to be the Canannite woman.

Some years ago in Detroit, Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel spoke on the subject: "After Auschwitz, Can We Still Believe!" Jews and Gentiles alike filled the great synagogue to listen to the recollections of a man who survived Dachau. Wiesel is a small and fragile man. And he stood at the podium for nearly an hour telling one story after another of the horror and despair of those bleak days in the '30s.

Painfully, silently, the audience relived the events of Wiesel's young life when he was the only surviving member of his family. Finally the stories ceased. His eyes dropped to the floor. There was no sound at all in that mammoth room for what seemed an agonizing eternity. Then he repeated the question, "After Auschwitz, can we still believe?" He shook his head slowly, sadly, "No, no,..." before concluding powerfully, "but we must!" *

We must! Concerning whether or not to have faith, there is no choice. There was none for the Canaanite woman, none for Elie Wiesel, there is none for you and me. There will be times when you believe that being faithful makes no difference. Be faithful anyway. There will be times when it seems like God doesn’t hear you. Call out anyway. There will be times when you feel like God doesn’t love you. Know that you are loved anyway.

Let us be like the Canaanite woman, humbly bold in our faith. Humble enough to know that we don’t deserve God’s grace and mercy, and bold enough to ask for it anyway.

*Retold from Hang In There!, David E. Leininger, Christianglobe Networks, Inc.

Gas Guzzlers

I have been amazed at how often I have to fill my car up with gas here. I was beginning to think that maybe something was wrong with my little Toyota Matrix. Perhaps the toy car needed a wind-up. But then I realized that without any form of public transport (including the ability to walk), you use up a LOT more gas.

We are so short sighted here in US. No investment in public transport or even in sidewalks or bike lanes. If there was bike lane all the way down Bowman Road, I could ride my bike to do a number of errands. But as the road is now, I can't even walk safely. There's not even a shoulder in some places. More bike lanes and sidewalks could be a double whammy in our effort to be less dependent on oil AND in the growing obesity epidemic.

Our family continues to get settled in. Riddles, the bunny, seems to be the one who is having the hardest time making the adjustment. Not only has he bitten me three times (never did that before), but he fights against being taken out of either of the houses (indoor and outdoor) to be taken out to our little bunny run. Both Skip and I have almost dropped him. I imagine we'll have a "Riddles on the loose" story sometime in the near future. Rosie has made the transition much more smoothly.

We were in the pet store buying food yesterday and looking for something the bunnies could play with in their house. Bunnies are curious creatures and, apparently, get bored if there's not enough stimulation and then they start doing things like chewing up their home. So I was trying to decide between one thing or another and my eight-year-old puts her hand on my arm and says, "Mommy, you worry too much about the bunnies. I mean, it's good that you worry about the bunnies because they are our bunnies. But I think you may worry a little too much." She's getting way too smart.

Maddie is so ready to get back to school. She was telling me that some of her friends think she's crazy for wanting to go back to school and I told her that one of the reasons school is fun for her is that she enjoys learning new things and that, so far, all the new things have been pretty easy for her to understand. I told that for some kids, school is really kind of hard and, therefore, not as much fun. I also pointed out that she makes friends easily and enjoys school because it's time with those friends. She told her Dad that I told her that she enjoys school because her brain is so big. And her father's response to that was, "Oh good. Then there's plenty of room for your German homework!"

Getting There

The house is beginning to shape up, but there's still a lot to be done. Only one more week until Maddie goes back to school. We're both a little under the weather, so that's not really helping anything.

This past week, in the wake of the death of John Hughes, I've been thinking a lot about Lloyd Dobbler and Ferris Bueller and the athlete, the princess, the basket case, the criminal and the brain. I've been remembering that when I saw Pretty in Pink when I was 16, I was so happy when Molly Ringwald's character ended up with Andrew McCarthy's Blaine, the guy of her dreams. And how when I saw it again at 26, I thought she really blew it, because the Duckman was the real catch.

When Maddie gets a little older, it will be interesting to see if those movies still have something to say. She will be the target audience--the white, suburban teenager--only a couple of generations removed. Surely Lloyd and Ferris are timeless characters. And Samantha's crush in Sixteen Candles is one that will be repeated until the end of time. (I'm guessing that the writers of Hannah Montana came of age on John Hughes movies as well since Hannah/Miley's love interest share's the name of Samantha's--Jake Ryan).

I've read a lot of pieces on Hughes over the last few days, but the most personal one was this op-ed piece from the NT Times.

Gonna try to go close my eyes now. Maddie woke up from a bad dream and I haven't been able to drift back to sleep.

Post Camp Depression

So camp was really great--good kids, good counselors, good fun. Even with the rain, everyone just trouped along and didn't let it spoil the fun.

One of my favorite moments at camp was after vespers one night. Each night as we dismiss, everyone passes the peace. The first night, the kids are challenged to pass the peace to at least five people and each night the number increases. About mid-way through the week, everyone was in the swing of things and for some reason everyone kind of moved off to the sides and were moving in kind of a circle around the JMo tabernacle. Somehow, one kid found himself in the middle of the circle all alone and he just threw his hands up and shouted, "Would somebody peace of Christ me?!" I mean, come on. Haven't we all had days like that?

So after a week of doing what I'm good at, I come home to a disaster area of a house in dire need of organization and cleaning (two things I am really lousy at). To let you know where we are at this point in the game, Skip was opening up one of the boxes and pulling out books. "Where do you want me to put these?" he asked. I told him that I would love for him to put them in a bookshelf, if he could find space in one. He couldn't. I was hanging up to shirts in his closet and I had pry some other clothes apart just to squeeze them in his closet. And Maddie's stuff. Uggg. She has a closet full of clothes that she will only be able to wear on the weekends once school begins. And I can't even begin to imagine what we're going to do with all her toys and games. Yeah, I'm pretty much ready to head back to camp.