Sermons: July 2010

Independence Day (transferred to Pentecost 6)
July 4, 2010

Deuteronomy 10:17-21                                                                 Hebrews 11:8-16
Matthew 5:43-48                                                             Psalm 145 or 145:1-9

I have deeply conflicted feelings about July 4th.

I grew up when the cold war blazed with white-heat, mushroom-cloud intensity. Some of you of a certain age will remember the air raid drills where we would hide under our desks in case of nuclear attack. (To the left is a parody poster; only #7, though, has been added to the original poster that graced classroom walls in the ‘50s and ‘60s.)

My dad was an Air Force officer. It was only later that I realized that every base we lived on in the ‘50s and ‘60s had been ground zero. If the Soviets had rained down missiles upon us, we would have been among the first to be vaporized. If you’ve seen Dr. Strangelove, you know the madness I’m talking about.
My teenage years coincided with the Beatles being together as a group. But that means I also lived my teen years during the war in Vietnam.

When you ever hear people getting all warm and fuzzy about the groovy 60s, don’t believe them. They must’ve spent all their time
inhaling. For me, in the 60s patriotism came at the point of a gun,
arrest, and surveillance at home, and napalm and slaughter abroad. “Love it or Leave it.”

Many of us who opposed the war in Vietnam, including religious leaders such as Rabbi Abraham Heschel, the Cistercian monk Thomas Merton, and Martin Luther King, Jr., did so because we saw our country becoming increasingly militarized: My Lai and Kent State were poisonous foreign and domestic fruits of that militarization (1). As Merton reminds us, war is the logical outcome of a superstitious reverence for violence.

At the end of World War II, some political scientists, using an alias to protect themselves, predicted that the United States from that time forward would have a “permanent wartime economy” (2). They argued that after World War II the U.S. would retain the character of a war economy; even in peacetime, U.S. military expenditure would remain large.

President Obama for 2010 proposed a military budget of $685 billion dollars (3). To give us some perspective, military spending accounts for almost a quarter of our national budget, more than Social Security or Medicare (4). The United States alone accounts for 42% of all military expenditure worldwide (5).
Although the term “permanent wartime economy” was coined by leftist scholars, big business soon embraced both the phrase and the reality: the CEO of General Electric, who was also vice-chairman of the War Production Board, championed the idea of an institutionalized war economy, directed by corporate executives, based on military industry, and funded by the government. This CEO warned at the close of World War II that the U.S. must not return to a civilian economy, but must keep to a "permanent war economy” (6).
Two things concern me here on this Fourth of July: (1) the spiritual, theological, and social consequences of militarism, especially the patriotic and militaristic Christianity so widespread in this country; (2) what our wildly disproportionate spending on the military means for us as we try to live out Christ’s call to care for those in need.
A community church close to where I live has a huge cross on the exterior of the sanctuary. Each summer at this time in the run-up to the 4th of July the members of that church unfurl over the cross an even more huge American flag. During the day the cross is invisible, obliterated by the flag. But at night the cross lights up: it eerily glows from behind the flag, a ghostly and sepulchral presence.

In 2003, shortly after the invasion of Iraq, the priest at St. Paul’s Church, formerly Episcopal, supported the war from the pulpit and said that the United States was doing God’s will. The opening hymn that day was “Onward, Christian Soldiers.”

Onward, Christian Soldiers.

These two events symbolize how love of country can disfigure, and even displace, love of God. As hard as it may be for us to accept, especially on the Fourth of July, Jesus did not teach love of country.
The word “patriotism” has at its root the Latin word pater, “father.” Patriotism is love of the Fatherland. By contrast, Jesus taught, preached, enacted, and embodied the love of God the Father. As he says in today’s reading, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven” [emphasis added].The fatherland for Jesus was the Kingdom of God: God’s love for, and abiding Presence in, the people of God.
Perhaps the chief aspect of the Kingdom as Jesus taught and lived it is compassion. Jesus embodied the compassion of God and taught this central precept: Be compassionate as God is compassionate (7). During one of the few times Jesus speaks about “last things,” he insists in a parable that God will not bless those who attend church, are “saved,” or have “a personal relationship with Jesus.”

No, God will bless those who not only have compassion but who act out of the depths of that compassion: “for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me” (8).
Jesus emphasizes that it is those who do these ministries who are blessed by his Father; it is they, he makes clear, who will “inherit the kingdom” (9).
As we know, even the Devil can quote scripture. A permanent wartime economy and militarized Christianity have as their K Street lobbyist and spokesperson the Devil; this Devil, an antichrist, mouths a mocking and malignant inversion of what Jesus says:
People are hungry; because of spending on armaments, we will not give them food. People are thirsty; because of an endless “war on terror,” we will not give them something to drink. People are naked; because of preemptive war, we will not give them clothing. People are sick; because of “national security,” we will not take care of them.
On this Fourth of July I humbly suggest two things we can do to honor our country and defeat the devil of militarism. As the bumper sticker says: PEACE IS PATRIOTIC.
  • First, we do what God asks, and Jesus models: compassion and care for strangers, for the naked and sick, for those locked in any kind of prison, physical or spiritual. Unlike the Christian militarism so widely practiced in this country, this is Gospel Christianity.
  • Second, living out Gospel Christianity requires us to be political; it calls us to question, challenge, and confront our country’s misplaced priorities: the military gobble up 25% of our national budget while the poor go hungry, the sick untreated, and the homeless unhoused.
Some Senators in Congress just recently refused to extend unemployment benefits for the jobless; at the same time, some Senators argued at General Petraeus’ confirmation hearing that we should stay in Afghanistan indefinitely. Since World War II, we have lived in a permanent wartime society with a permanent wartime economy. These martial twins steal food from the mouths of the poor and throw it to the ravening and insatiable dogs of war.
Unlike military campaigns, our Gospel mission to change America’s priorities will never be accomplished. But the Kingdom of God is not something to be accomplished; we are to live it. And in living it we are truly blessed.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God (10). Amen.
†     †     †    
Notes
  1. By Michael Eric Dyson, “The prophetic anger of MLK,” The Los Angeles Times, April 4, 2008: http://spiritualsocialjustice.tribe.net/thread/96b4c23e-44fa-4204-a3ba-f61517c09175.
  2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_war_economy.


Sermon for Pentecost  
July 11, 2010
Grace Episcopal Church, Bakersfield
Rev. Vern Hill

[I am indebted to two major inspirations beyond Amos and Luke for this sermon.  Both provided bits of phraseology and insight.  Since I tend toward an editing style I’m not about to walk away from good stuff.  Still, in both cases I found myself led in a rather different direction than either of their pieces took them which I will credit to a bit of inspiration in the mix.  The first source was Nathan Nettleton from a sermon in July of 1998 published on line by LaughingBird.net.  The second writer is a real favorite of mine, Rex A.E. Hunt.  I like his laid back Aussie style.  He is a good storyteller and he is an unrepentant Progressive.  His piece was titled “The Neighbour We Will Allow, is the Challenge.”  This provided that interesting twist of perspective which led me to talk about the radical welcome and inclusion. – Vern]
Once again, we have two amazing stories to work with this morning, the vision by the prophet Amos of God making play with a Plumb Line and Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan.  Together their story currents sweep us toward what Al Gore calls in another context “an inconvenient truth”; in this case a series of inconvenient truths that converge to give shape to the Kingdom of God.
First some background on the prophet Amos.  Amos lived about 2800 years ago, 8 centuries before Jesus.  As he makes clear he does not see himself as a prophet, but a simple herder of sheep, a farmer and tender of fig trees, born in the small town of Tekoa about 12 miles southeast of Jerusalem.  In other words he was an 8th century BCE redneck son of Judah, the southern kingdom or what we might call the South Holy Land.  Driven north by his vision of God at the crooked wall he and his message were understandably unwelcome in Israel (Holy Land of the North).  This foreigner from Judah and his message of doom were completely at odds with the prevailing politics of good feeling optimism and hope and economic prosperity.  Life had been good for a select portion of Israel’s population.   A growing wealthy elite encouraged by King Jeroboam’s leadership ignored the plight of the poor becoming poorer and the basic requirements of justice and righteousness.  If any of this sounds remotely familiar and contemporary, I’m sorry I didn’t invent it; I’m just reporting.  This though is what stirred Amos’ wrath.  The closing words to today’s first reading would be tough to swallow if this were your family Amos was speaking of and you were king -  
`Your wife shall become a prostitute in the city,
and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be parceled out by line;
you yourself shall die in an unclean land,
and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land.'"
In his vision Amos saw God as a builder standing at the top of a wall with a plumb line in his hand .  Today many builders now use a laser beam instead,  but a plumb line is about as simple a tool as you can find – a weight on the end of a string.  And let gravity do its thing.  Holding it up to a wall we can tell quickly whether the wall is truly vertical or crooked and perhaps weak. 
So when Amos sees God holding a plumb line to a wall he hears God say, “I am using it to show that my people are like a wall that is out of line.” My people are found to be off at an angle from where they are supposed to be. They don’t measure up.
Many of the stories we have about Jesus show us Jesus doing a similar thing - holding up the plumb line to the people around him. And in today’s gospel we have an example of one of those stories.
The story starts with a question put to Jesus; an intellectual question about the qualifications for eternal life. “What must I do to inherit eternal life (not life after death, but life within the Kingdom of God)?” And Jesus’ answer is so thoroughly orthodox as to almost be boring. He hangs out the plumb line – the Torah:  “Do what Torah [the law] says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Certainly it was so orthodox an answer that the asker felt he was being made to look stupid (which Jesus certainly would have never done) and he had to follow up with a question for clarification: “So who is my neighbor?”

And Jesus gets the plumb line out and tells this story about the Good Samaritan .  A man is on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem, foolish to be alone we could add subscribing to the contemporary notion many have that victims often get what they deserve for their own carelessness or stupidity.  He is beaten and robbed, left in a ditch to suffer alone.  Travelers pass by without giving aide perhaps even with credible justification and then one person pauses.
Now the first problem for us hearing this story is that we have heard it so often it has become domesticated and we can easily miss the edginess to it – it is a parable which means it is designed to turn our ideas, our values and our worldview upside down.  It is to puzzle us.  It contains inconvenient truths.  Any simple understanding is to miss the mark.
What do I mean?  There are numerous sermons and explanations of this parable as an “example story”, a story about two self-possessed hypocritical types and a virtuous marginalized hero.  Here’s the problem with this notion.  If this was a story of “go and do likewise”, of bad guys vs the good guy or is simply an illustration of the love of neighbor or an indictment on heartless, self-possessed religious folks – any of these scenarios -  then aid offered by any good Jewish lay person would have made the point in terms of compassion required by Torah, the plumb line, of neighborliness.   But the final rescuer is hardly a good Jewish lay person and this is no accident of casting.
Or maybe the point is about loving one’s enemies, a fetching possibility – remember Jews loathed Samaritans.  John Crossan points out in his book  Parables:  The Challenge of the Historical Jesus,  it would have been radical enough for a Jewish person to stop and assist a wounded Samaritan.  But here in this telling by Jesus the “Gospel of Jesus” requires something to be said that could never have been said in that day – a true oxymoron extraordinaire – “the Good Samaritan.”
You see this story reaches way beyond moral theater or even ethnic hatreds.  This story is a window into the activity of Godly grace and redemption.  This is about God’s unwillingness to abandon any of those made in his image.  This is a story of God’s choices and his theater, his stage – it is about God’s grace, God’s redemption, God’s mercy, God’s explanation of what it truly means to say that all are welcome at his table.
The Samaritan who is a lay person, a foreigner, an outsider who is to be shunned – this is the one at this moment on this road from Jericho to Jerusalem who embodies the true interpretation of Jewish compassion, the very soul of Torah – not pity or feeling sorry for someone, but a recognized kinship,  a togetherness that urges the work of mercy out of us, that brings it to life and us to more than what we were just minutes before. To fully embrace the radical offense of the inconvenient truth here for those who heard Jesus say this we may need to modify the main character to a more contemporary casting – Having been hurt badly you now are the one laying in the ditch, beaten and bleeding.  You look up into the eyes of a young Muslim extremist, a skinhead with his Nazi tattoo, an illegal from across the border trying to reassure you in his broken English, a drug dealer, an embezzler or thief, a prostitute, a child abuser – any of them could be looking into your eyes.  Could you allow them to be your neighbor, to give you aid, to be merciful in a moment of kinship?  Would you take your part in this Godly moment of redemption, a small light in the darkness?
The inconvenient truth about the Kingdom of God is that all really are welcome at God’s table, all our called and we never know for sure when that call of grace is at work in a person’s life. God is not simply interested in “the salvation correct people” (the religious version of politically correct) , the ones we might think seem worth saving, who appear contrite by our terms.  The truth of the Samaritan story is that we may never know when we are taking part in someone else’s redemption moment OR and this is really tricky, is this another redemption moment for us too? 
You see here is another even greater inconvenient truth of this parable – a necessary Truth leading into the Kingdom of God.  We are all part of the greater WE.  We are members of that Amazing Grace Tribe of Neighbors – grace that saves and keeps saving and rescuing and directing a wretch like me and you and the uncountable rest.  We are all part of the Table Gathering. This is what being inclusive means.  All are in need of Godly nurture and mercy moments and encouragement.  I truly believe that the grace of God is at work in every life –often ignored and rejected by us in our distractions and busy-ness, our fearfulness and times of violence even great violence and hatred and ignorance UNTIL a moment at the side of the road, from the ditch there is the call – until there comes another birthing moment and we begin to more clearly understand what we have been, what we have been created to be and our place among all the rest within the Kingdom of God.
I believe in what the cover to our bulletin says –  Whoever you are,  Wherever you find yourself on the journey of faith, even if you have yet to realize it is a journey of faith that you are on, you are welcome at the Table prepared for you.  There is a place set.  You are welcome even with your great skepticism or without any belief in God.  For God believes in you and what mercy and goodness you are called to become.   Amen.

Changing the focus: from homosexuality to heterosexism
Dr. Liora Gubkin, Grace Episcopal, July 18, 2010

The seed for this sermon was planted when I heard Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong’s “A Manifesto! The Time Has Come!” He declared:
I have made a decision. I will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone. I will no longer engage the biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view still has any credibility. I will no longer discuss with them or listen to them tell me how homosexuality is “an abomination to God,” about how homosexuality is a “chosen lifestyle,” or about how through prayer and “spiritual counseling” homosexual persons can be “cured.” Those arguments are no longer worthy of my time or energy.

As a teacher who expends a fair amount of time and energy educating people who hold precisely these views, Spong’s words resonated for me. How I would love a person’s sexual orientation to be as morally neutral a fact as her height! (Just for the record: I am heterosexual and almost five foot two) For me, some of Spong’s most inspiring moments in the manifesto occur when he takes those to task who use religion, specifically, the bible, to justify discrimination against homosexuals. Here are a few brief examples from later in the manifesto:

I see no way that ignorance and truth can be placed side by side, nor do I believe that evil is somehow less evil if the Bible is quoted to justify it. …I make these statements because it is time to move on. The battle is over. The victory has been won. There is no reasonable doubt as to what the final outcome of this struggle will be. … Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. Therefore, I will from this moment on refuse to dignify the continued public expression of ignorant prejudice by engaging it. I do not tolerate racism or sexism any longer. From this moment on, I will no longer tolerate our culture’s various forms of homophobia. I do not care who it is who articulates these attitudes or who tries to make them sound holy with religious jargon. …

I agree with Spong’s view of history – ultimately, civil marriage will be legal for homosexual and heterosexual couples, and, perhaps very soon, even “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” will be repealed. However, the need to educate both hearts and minds will continue, at least here in Bakersfield, for the foreseeable future. And the holders of those hearts and minds quite often hold the bible as an important source for their values. Thus, while I am not interested in using the bible to debate the moral status of homosexuality, I am very interested in helping students understand how the bible functions in their decision-making process. This morning, I will share with you some of the strategies I use to help students become more critical thinkers about the ways religion works in society.

Perhaps the most important piece of information I share with them is that personal experience shapes how one reads biblical text. More than thirty years ago, the liberation theologian Robert McAfee Brown made the astute observation “what we bring to scripture often determines what we draw from scripture.”  During the last five years, I’ve assigned several classes of students to read Dawn Moon’s brilliant book God, Sex, and Politics which presents and analyzes discussions about homosexuality in two Methodist churches: one urban and liberal, the other rural and conservative. Hearing the multiplicity of Christian voices, we learn that the most prominent factor in their understanding of homosexuality is whether or not they have friends or family members who are gay or lesbian. And in every case, their reading of the bible supports their point of view.
The last time I taught this book in Sociology of Religion, I prepared students with a few preliminary readings. We looked at the small collection of texts from the Hebrew Bible and New Testament that are drawn upon to justify anti-gay behavior. Then, we read a tongue and cheek letter that is widely circulated on the internet as a humorous way to introduce the liberation theologian’s insight that “what we bring to scripture often determines what we draw from scripture.” Is anyone familiar with Dr. Laura? She is a talk show radio host and self-help book author who says she “offers no-nonsense advice infused with a strong sense of ethics, accountability, and personal responsibility.” The letter challenges her seemingly biblical-based rejection of homosexuality. I’ll read you just a few paragraphs from it, but it’s easy to find online if you’re interested in the whole letter.

Dear Dr. Laura:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When people try to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to follow them: …
d) Lev.25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians? …
h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their
temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?  i) I know from Lev.11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves? …

Perhaps the answer to the last one is that all Americans should play soccer! But the more serious and theologically interesting point is that even people who claim to read the bible literally, are picking and choosing verses that are relevant to their experience. Sometimes, this practice is called “prooftexting” choosing texts as proof to support one’s position.

Liberal and progressive religious folk can also engage in prooftexting. The final reading I share with my class to prepare them for God, Sex and Politics comes from Rabbi Lisa Edwards, the spiritual leader of Beth Chayim Chadashim, the oldest GLBT synagogue. In Jewish tradition, a different section from the first five books of the bible is read throughout the liturgical year. The following “commentary” is read when Leviticus 19, also known as the holiness code, is the portion for the week:

We are your gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered children:
“You must not seek vengeance, nor bear a grudge against the children of your people.” [Leviticus 19:18]
We are your bi, trans, lesbian and gay parents:
“Revere your mother and your father, each one of you.” [19:3]
We are elderly lesbians, bisexuals, gay men, and transgendered people:
“You shall rise before the aged and show deference to the old.” [19:32]
We are the stranger:
“You must not oppress the stranger.”
“You shall love the stranger as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” [19:34]
We are lesbian, gay, trans, and bi Jews:
“You must not go about slandering your kin.” [19:16]
We are your trans, gay, bi, and lesbian siblings:
“You shall not hate your brother or sister in your heart.” [19:17]
We are lesbian, gay, trans, and bi victims of gay-bashing and murder:
“You may not stand by idly when your neighbor’s blood is being shed.” [19:16]
We are your bi, gay, trans, and lesbian neighbors:
“You must not oppress your neighbor.” [19:13]
“You must judge your neighbor justly.” [19:15]
“You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself.” [19:18]

In his manifesto, Bishop Spong declares, “I do not tolerate racism or sexism any longer.” Education about the history, legacy and ongoing impact of racism and sexism – as well as tools for transforming our society into a place that can more closely approximate the ideal of “liberty and justice for all” is an ongoing task. An important insight generated first by womanist (that is – women of color) scholars and activists is that forms of oppression interlock and overlap to maintain the hierarchies of power and privilege that shape society. In addition to our work to recognize the workings of racism and sexism in ourselves and others, we also need to examine heterosexism as an oppressive force that prevents us from embodying our best selves.
Feminist theologian Mary Hunt describes heterosexism as “the attitude and ability to enforce the notion that heterosexuality is normative to the exclusion of the full flowering of same-sex possibilities” and also as “a system of privilege accorded to those who love persons of a sex/gender not their own to the detriment of those who love persons of their same sex/gender.” And this system “is deeply woven into the social fabric of laws, customs, ethics, and commerce.” My hunch is that heterosexism is a new term for many of you – although we are all familiar with its pernicious effects. Since most of us are more skilled in working with the categories of sexism and racism than with heterosexism, I think it may helpful to make some careful comparisons. For this I will draw on the work of Peggy McIntosh and her essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”

McIntosh was working within the university to incorporate women’s studies material into the curriculum. She observed how hard it was for even well-meaning men to acknowledge the entitlements they had simply by virtue of being male. For example, even when they could see that women were under represented throughout the university, they could not admit the corollary that men were over represented. In her essay, she uses this experience as a launching point to think about her own unearned advantages vis-à-vis her African American women colleagues. It was hard work! She writes, “My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture, I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will.” She then proceeded to analyze her experience and list 46 ways she lives her life as a white woman with unearned privileges. Her work is now a classic in anti-racist education; it was one of the first articles written by a white person about how whites unfairly benefit from unearned privileges. In a revised version of the essay, McIntosh includes a short list of unearned privileges derived from her heterosexuality. ”The personal is political” remains true. Her list applies to me as well:

1. My [child will] not have to answer questions about why I live with my partner (my husband).
2. [Based on our sexual orientation, we] have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people approve of our household.
3. Our [child will be] given texts and classes that implicitly support our kind of family unit and [do not turn him] against my choice of domestic partnership.
4. I can travel . . .  with my husband without expecting embarrassment or hostility in those who deal with us.
5. Most people I meet will see my marital arrangements as an asset to my life or as a favorable comment on my likeability, my competence, or my mental health.
6. I can talk about the social events of a weekend without fearing most listeners’ reactions.
7. I will feel welcomed and “normal” in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.
8. In many contexts, I am seen as “all right” in daily work on women because I do not live chiefly with women.

McIntosh is careful in her use of analogies – heterosexism is not the same as racism, even though they are interlocking forms of oppression - but she makes the following important observation:
In my class and place, I did not see myself as racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring racial dominance on my group from birth. Likewise, we are taught to think that sexism or heterosexism is carried on only through intentional, individual acts of discrimination, meanness, or cruelty, rather than in invisible systems conferring unsought dominance on certain groups.
These “privileges” bring “dominance” but not “moral strength”; they diminish all of us.
The seed for this sermon was planted by Rev. Spong’s manifesto. What would it take for these ruminations to take root and blossom? What would it take to live in a world where all could flourish regardless of their love-identification?

  • Perhaps when confronted with heterosexism – even when dressed in holy jargon – you will name it as such.
  • Perhaps you will engage in political activism to dismantle the structures of heterosexism that currently confer unearned privilege on many of us and thus defer our hoped-for dream of liberty and justice for all.
  • Perhaps you will make an accounting of the workings of privilege in your own life.
“You must not oppress your neighbor.” [19:13]
“You must judge your neighbor justly.” [19:15]
“You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself.” [19:18]
And, each of us, in our own way, can contribute to the work of dismantling heterosexism.

Bea Huerta
July 25, 2010      
           
            When I was young I always wanted a horse.  We had plenty of land to graze a horse and space in the old barn that was on the property that we lived on.   Being nine years old and not realizing how very poor we actually were and that the care and feeding of horses was just as complicated and expensive if not more so than the care of children. 


I had finally quit asking to get a pony until the day one fell into my lap!  My friend Katherine and her sister Deborah had run down the hill they lived upon to beg and plead with us to take their pony.  He had bitten their Father and he was going to shoot “Pepper” if they couldn’t find a home for him.  I turned to my father and asked him “Please?”  My father was not an easy man to be a daughter to, especially since we didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of subjects; The Viet Nam War, Women’s Lib, Angela Davis running from the Feds, even at the age of nine if you can believe that, to name a few.   He knew though how badly I wanted a horse. 
He had me call the teacher who not only boarded and bred horses but who I also “worked for” mucking out stables, feeding and brushing horses, taking care of tack, and cleaning horse hooves of horse poop; all this for the privelege of riding one of her Arabian show horses when my work was finished. He had me ask her if I could do work around her stables to “pay” for Pepper’s room and board.  She said “Yes,” my father rolled his eyes and acquiecised.  I ran up the hill with the Hilton sisters to claim the prize I was bold enough to ask for. 


What I brought home was probably the ugliest horse ever born.  He looked like a giant Shetland pony, with a Draught horse’s head on the arched and beautiful neck of the Arabians I was so used to riding.  He had a Roman nose and a roached mane.  He was fat, barn sour (ask the question) and mean.  He was beautiful!   Pepper the Pinto came fully equipped with a chapped, and ancient saddle, two bridles, and blanket and pad. 
This was a truly awful creature, he bit, he kicked, ran away, was spooked easily, but he was a great jumper.  He jumped barb wire fences to run away from me his savior!  He would often head back for the Hilton’s house up on the hill and sometimes it would be my father angry after getting a call from the sheriff that his “horse is up in so and so’s lawn munching up the clover” or “eating up the alfalfa hay in so and so’s pick up truck”.  Pepper was mine so I had to listen to my father and go bring him back, even when he was halfway across the town or trying to court some pureblood quarterhorse mare (he was a gelding so I have to hand it to him for trying).  He was the Gomer to my Hosea, and my father was the god calling the shots, he was not happy with me or the horse, but he was as patient as he could be considering our transgressions.  Mr. Hilton was a vengeful and terrible god just like my father could be, and we being the children of these men had to hop to.
Pepper was not grateful at all that I had saved him from imminent death.  The first time I mounted up the saddle slipped because he was holding his breath (it’s pretty funny when this happens when you aren’t on the receiving end).  When I finally had him cinched up tight the saddle held as I mounted up.  Back came that ugly head and he bit me in the middle of my back.  Fuming I jumped down and bit him back, hard.  Right on the neck, my father had watched this while he worked on his car.  I know he was there just in case that horse was really as dangerous as he was led to believe; instead he laughed his head off.  So Pepper and I had this on again off again romance.  He’d run away and I would find him, even though I wanted him to stay gone at times, my father would tell me to go get him since he was my responsibility. 
I resented Pepper for his running away, when it finally occurred to me that he just wanted to jump.  Here this ugly beautiful Pinto horse was just a jumper at heart.  So I worked him.  I worked him hard, put him on a lunge line with an old whip and got him used to running in circles.  Recruiting my friends and siblings to spook him with the promise of a ride, they would jump out from cardboard boxes when he was on the lunge line until he got used to the unexpected, he knew that he could trust me.  (After this training he could be ridden without some idiot in a car honking and spooking him so that he bucked you out of the saddle and headed home pronto!  He was a born jumper, he loved it, took to it like a duckling for water.  The next step was having him do the jumping with me on his back.  He only faltered once and that was the first jump, he adjusted for my weight all 60 pounds of me back then and jumped every stack without a fault. 


Gathering scrap lumber and “liberating” some from construction sites with my friends we built some fence set ups for Pepper to try next.  I knew he could do it.  Two feet jumped it, three feet jumped it and with me feeling my stomach turning just knowing that we were going to crash, 4 feet jumped it.  My free horse had turned into a great jumper, a gentle (and tired) horse.  He had even quit biting after I had bitten him back.  Life was wonderful.   Then at 5 am one morning the phone rang, it was Mrs. Sinyard screaming on the phone at my Dad on a Sunday (his only day off) to come pick up that “damned pinto” because he had broken into the grain bin and devoured his weight in barley and oats meant for show horses not “goosenecked, piebald, cow-hocked piece of dog meat!”  I was immediately sent on my bike to reclaim my horse.   
This story came back to me when I was reading the passages for today, and I drew a parallel to it with my own experience with my husband.  He had grown surly and just mean and demanding of me.  I felt resentment towards him and returned the surliness to this man that I had married and loved with “snakes instead of fishes”.  I was even thinking of divorce because the rift between us seemed so great.  I resented his hovering, I resented his noseiness, I was tired of the constant asking where I had been, where I was going.  Then it finally occurred to me almost too late like Pepper’s need to jump, he had a need to take care of me.  I decided to think alternately, not negatively.  I realized his hearing had been going bad for quite some time, and that I was taking his asking to repeat myself as him not paying attention to me.  Instead of taking a step back breathing and thinking about his hearing loss I was giving him back evil.  He had been knocking on my door just asking to be able to help me even in little ways and I was not answering.  I was making excuses because of my anger towards him.  I am glad though that he was persistent in his reaching out to me.  He didn’t ask for bread he just asked for some of my time, and I was being selfish.  God is not selfish and love cannot be selfish, and we have every right to demand and be persistent for what it is that we need and want out of our relationships, be it one with our Lord or even one with Mr. or Mrs. Grumpy pants.  God granted me insight to understand how I was undermining my marriage, and he helped me shed the resentment that was tearing it apart.