Stressed. Anxious. Worried. Overwhelmed. As a pastor, these were some of the feelings I heard expressed by New Britain residents in the days following the October Nor’easter. Most of us confronted cold, dark nights lit only by candles and flashlights. Some were trapped in their homes for days because of downed trees and branches. Many were unable to cook meals or wash clothes. Others couldn’t bathe or flush their toilets and had to stay with relatives or in shelters. This rare storm tested our ability to respond to adversity in our lives.

One comment in particular made me pause and ponder the spiritual lessons we might take from this experience. These words came from a big, burly guy, a former Marine and firefighter, who had set out early Sunday morning to plow driveways for his customers. Like all of us he was appalled by the devastation and destruction he encountered. In his younger days, he thought, he would have taken it all on. He imagined his younger-self brandishing a chainsaw and single-handedly clearing every blocked road and rescuing every trapped little old lady. But now, as he picked his way through the debris, he could only shake his head and say, “I just can’t do it all.”

I just can’t do it all. We should all pause and repeat these words; “I just can’t do it all.” On one hand, this is an honest acknowledgment of our limitations. But these words are also the first step in leading a life of faith. When we acknowledge our limitations, we make room in our lives for the divine to move.

We often associate faith with belief in a particular God, doctrine or set of values. But before we ever arrive at what we believe in, we must know how to act from faith. How will we respond when we are stressed, anxious, worried or overwhelmed, when we confront devastation and destruction in our lives? C. S. Lewis once said, “What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.” Our first step is to simply let go and say, “I just can’t do it all,” and trust that someone or something else can and will respond. Then, in faith, we take another step.

Shane Claiborne’s Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals and its accompanying website regularly integrate reflections on the lives of saints, ancient and contemporary, into daily prayers. Today’s prayer introduces Ambrose of Milan (339-397):

A provincial governor in fourth-century Italy, Ambrose was drafted to serve as bishop before he was even baptized. Reluctant to serve the church at first, he took the task seriously when he finally accepted the call. Ambrose gave away all of his possessions, took up a strict schedule of daily prayer, and committed himself to the study of Scripture. Called from the world of politics to serve the church, Ambrose was a leader who spoke truth to power and did not back down, insisting that “the emperor is in the church, not over it.”

Addressing Roman Emperor Theodosius about a massacre he had authorized at Thessalonica, Ambrose of Milan wrote, “You are human, and temptation has overtaken you. Overcome it. I counsel, I beseech, I implore you to repentance. You, who have so often been merciful and pardoned the guilty, have now caused many innocents to perish. The devil wished to wrest from you the crown of piety which was your chiefest glory. Drive him from you while you can.”

The life of Governor (and Bishop) Ambrose stands in the sharpest possible contrast to the disgraced and ousted Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, who was today sentenced to fourteen years in prison for corruption. Where is our Ambrose?

Those of you who follow the South Congregational-First Baptist Church Facebook page know that I have recently become enamored with Peter Rollins. I’m not quite sure how to classify him, philosopher, theologian, new-monastic, prophetic voice in the emergent church? I know he is a beer drinking Irishman and that is good enough for me! His book Insurrection: To Believe is Human, to Doubt is Divine will soon be released, and reviews, interviews and excerpts have recently appeared on Facebook and Twitter.

In Insurrection Rollins speaks of what he calls pyro-theology. He coined the term based on a quote from a dead Spanish Anarchist named Buenaventura Durruti who said that “The only church that illuminates is a burning one.” Of course Durruti was advocating for the destruction of the church as an institution. On the one hand Rollins accepts Durruti’s critique that the church today too often fails to illuminate anything or anyone. On the other hand he appropriates the image of the burning church to demand a faith that is on fire, that is all consuming. Rollins grounds this pyro-theology in radical confession of doubt and unknowing. Doubt and unknowing should be the starting point for our prayers, our hymns and our services of worship. Only then will we make room for an authentic experience of the divine. Here is Rollins’ fellow Irishman Pádraig Ó Tuama giving beautiful, poetic expression to such a confessional, pyro-theology in his song Maranatha. Note, the song includes “the eff-word” so you may not want to play the video in the presence of young children.

We worry that if we admit our failures and limitations we will be consumed by our doubt and unknowing. In fact the opposite is true. When we, like Pádraig Ó Tuama, confess that we are weak, that we are tired and give up, that we have screwed it up again, and that we have made our home in Babylon, Holy fire will kindle within us, and the church will again blaze a path for a hurting world. Alleluia!

I don’t know about you, but I find much of what is happening in the world today to be depressing, anxiety producing and infuriating. It is bad enough that we are involved in intractable wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, wars that continue to inflict death and destruction, not only on our own troops and families but also in the lives of millions of innocent people in these countries. It is bad enough that we are mired in an intractable recession that is inflicting gross hardship on millions of people. It is bad enough that we are confronted with a debt crisis that threatens entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, leading to financial insecurity and high anxiety all the way around. Wars, recession, debt crisis and to top it all off we have these idiots in Washington D.C. who are holding the country hostage to make political points. It all makes me completely insane and I am just fed up!

Remember those commercials for Calgon bath beads. We see a harried woman overwhelmed by the chaos at home who pleads, Calgon take me away. We then see her blissfully reclining in a luxurious bath. Our temptation in the face of the chaos and anxiety that surrounds us is to call out, not to Calgon, but to God, “Lord, Lord, take us away!” Take us away to some imagined, blissful paradise.

Perhaps this is what Jacob is feeling. Jacob has plenty of chaos to deal with himself. You will remember that Jacob tricked his brother Esau into giving away his birthright. In a rage, Esau vows to kill Jacob. To preserve his life, Jacob’s mother Rebekah sends Jacob to live with her brother Laban where he marries Laban’s daughters Leah and Rachel. Many years pass and as we come to this morning’s scripture lesson Jacob is hoping to reconcile with his brother Esau. Jacob has sent a peace offering of livestock but is still terrified that Esau will destroy him and his family. Jacob sends his family ahead of him and settles down for the night. The scripture doesn’t record his thoughts or his prayers but we can imagine him pleading, “Lord, Lord take me away.”

Instead of whisking Jacob and his family away to a place free of all conflict, fear and hardship, God comes to Jacob in the form of a stranger and wrestles with him. God leaves a mark, striking Jacob on the hip that he will forever walk with a limp, but Jacob refuses to let go of God. God renames Jacob, saying “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel (which means “the one who strives with God,” or “God strives”) for you have striven with God and humans.” And God blesses Jacob.

Jacob is confronted with chaos, fear and suffering. But instead of taking him away from it all, instead of taking Jacob up the ladder into heaven, God comes down Jacob’s ladder and wrestles with him. As we face the chaos, fear and suffering of wars, recession, debt crisis and political Armageddon, a wrestling match with God is hardly the answer we seek to our plea, “Lord, Lord take us away!”

Which brings us to this video that narrates and illustrates a contemporary parable written by an Irish writer and storyteller, Peter Rollins. What do you think?

The idea of God abandoning people in heaven as a judgment on their failure to commit themselves to and engage in the hardship and suffering in this world is creative if not strictly biblical. But Rollins’ parable certainly gets at biblical concepts that are at the very heart of our faith. God’s promise is not all about some future escape to a blissful paradise. God promises to be present with us in the chaos, fear and hardship of our lives in this world, today. And God asks us to be present with, not escape from, those who suffer the most from our present tribulations.

God descended to wrestle with Jacob, wrestle with Jacob’s history of selfishness and deception, and wrestle with the fear Jacob felt as he anticipated the possibility of redemption and reconciliation with his brother Esau. If we stop reading at verse 32 as we did this morning we miss the real outcome of God’s wrestling match with God. The very next verse reads, “Now Jacob looked up and saw Esau coming.” Jacob advances toward Esau bowing to the ground seven times as he goes, (and) Esau runs to meet him, and embraces him, and falls on his neck and kisses him, and they weep.

God descends among us, wrestles with our fear and dread, our hardship and suffering, and leads us to redemption and reconciliation. Of course we know this because in Jesus Christ God didn’t just come down a ladder to Jacob, God descended to wrestle with human sin and suffering and redeem all of us. But God does more than wrestle with us and redeem us, in Jesus Christ God calls us to wrestle with and redeem all those who suffer the consequences of war, illness, poverty, and injustice.

Nothing communicates this call more effectively than the story of feeding a crowd of 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish. Note, though, that it isn’t Jesus who feeds the crowd. The disciples come to Jesus at the end of the day and say, “it’s late Jesus, send all these people away so they can buy food for themselves.” But, knowing the plight of this battered and broken rabble, Jesus responds to the disciples saying, “No, don’t sent them away, you feed them.” He blesses the bread, breaks it and gives it to the disciples to distribute to the crowd. Some scholars explain this miracle by suggesting that once the crowd saw that the disciples were sharing everything that they had, everyone in the crowd responded by sharing what they had.

How might these two stories, Jacob wrestling with God and the disciples feeding the 5,000 with 5 loaves and two fish, respond to the hell, and I mean hell, that is breaking loose in Washington? Here are a few thoughts:

God is here in our midst wrestling with us to bring redemption and reconciliation out of sin and conflict. Bearing the name Israel, we are called to strive with God and humans. We can’t hide, as people of faith we are marked by our encounters with God. Wearing the mark of these encounters for all to see, we are called to confront fear and humble ourselves before our brothers and sisters in Christ. If Jacob and Esau can reconcile, so can Democrats and Republicans. But it requires all sides humbling themselves, maybe even bowing to the ground to each other seven times. Just imagine! And Jesus commands us, you feed my hungry, my hurting, my naked, my sick; give everything you have.

This is one of the ideas behind taxation, taxes are a way of sharing our loaves and fish with seniors who have worked their whole lives trusting that they would not be abandoned when they cannot work any longer, taxes provide for those impacted by the recession, the unemployed, the homeless and the hungry, taxes provide healthcare for the sick.

Now, some say that it is not the government’s role or responsibility to care for the most vulnerable. O.K., truth be told, this libertarian perspective is not inconsistent with the Bible. There is no clear biblical mandate for government to provide for human need. So one can believe that the government is not in the best position to meet these needs, that the government is inefficient, that the government doesn’t spend tax money wisely, and still be a faithful Christian. But if we are to be faithful to the Bible, we absolutely cannot write the most vulnerable out of our lives of faith and this means challenging ourselves to give everything that we have for the least of these.

Jesus commands us to meet these needs somehow. I paid over $16,000 in taxes last year. Unlike the loaves and fish it isn’t all that I have, but it is a lot. You bet I’d like to have that money back. But if I am going to make a case that I don’t want the government to have this money, that I don’t want the government to respond to the needs of the hungry and hurting, then I darn well better be prepared to give that money and more to the hungry and hurting crowd around me.

How many of the people who are raging about the government taking their money are upset because they would rather give all that money away to the most vulnerable people in their community. How many would give the $16,000 or $6,000, or $160,000 that they paid in taxes to the homeless shelter down the street, to Iraqi children who lost limbs in the war, to a neighbor who hasn’t worked in four years. I can tell you how many. Zero.

Some of the voices I hear in the budget debate cry out that the government is taking their hard earned money, money that belongs to them. Rubbish. All that we have is given to us by God, only so that we can share it. Wrestle with that!

Casey Anthony has been almost universally condemned. Can we pick up her story at the courtroom exit and use our sacred imagination to craft narratives that are redemptive, for Casey and for ourselves? What would such a story look like? Where would we begin?

Thanks to technology first developed to chronicle human suffering, we can now share our witness and testimony about God’s work in the world for all to see. Ushahidi (Swahili for witness and testimony) is an internet application that was first developed to document acts of political violence in Kenya in 2008. Since then, Ushahidi has been used to monitor elections in India, locate earthquake survivors in Haiti, identify oil washing up on beaches following the BP oil spill, and monitor crime in Atlanta. Ushahidi collects, sorts and maps reports from observers, then displays this information on a website. If the technology is useful for monitoring suffering, why not use it to report Good News!

This is what we have done at South Church in New Britain. Using the Ushahidi application we have set up a website to allow anyone to report their God Sighting, their Good News about the ways God is acting in the world today. Reports will appear on the Salt and Light website with a brief description and a color-coded dot on a map to indicate whether the God sighting was evidence of faith, compassion or justice. Try it! There are currently four ways to submit your witness and testimony to the Salt and Light website:

1. Go to the website, http://saltandlight.crowdmap.com then click on the green “Submit a Report” button in the upper right. First enter a short title, then a brief description of your God Sighting, next click whether this event was a reflection of faith, compassion or justice, and finally enter the location and click the green “Submit” button at the bottom of the page.

2. Send a text message including a brief description of your God Sighting to 860-681-9128. Include the word faith, compassion or justice and your location in your text.

3. Tweet your God Sighting on Twitter with the hashtag #besaltandlight.

4. Or send and email to saltandlight@southchurch.org. Here too, include the word faith, compassion or justice and your location.

Including your name and email address is optional (when reporting through the website). If you choose not to include your name, your submission is completely anonymous. Once Pastor George approves your report, your witness and testimony will appear on the Salt and Light website. Be salty! Let your light shine!

This great bit of satire from the always on target The Onion gives us an opportunity to look at ourselves when we say how “blessed” or “lucky” we are.  Beyonce, we are told, was very lucky when a stray bullet miraculously hits a passerby instead of her.  Of course the clip says nothing of the passerby’s lucky, focusing instead on a small bruise Beyonce got when the victim fell on her.  How often do we talk about how blessed or lucky we are without considering the implications for others.  Are we blessed by our comfortable standard of living if it comes at the expense of poverty inducing cheap labor in the developing world?  Does God bless some of us at the expense of others?  What does this say about God?  A great opportunity to share a good laugh and look at ourselves and our God.  What do you think?

But it occurs to me that Mary could be accused of this same alleged practice.  After all, she was a single mother (“engaged” but never married) from Nazareth who travels to Bethlehem to register herself and her baby as citizens of Rome.  Emperor Augustus’ purpose in conducting this census was to make sure that everyone paid their taxes.  But it is also true that by registering in this way, Mary claimed all the rights and benefits of citizenship for herself and her child.

Jesus was born a Roman citizen.  But instead of anchoring his family to Rome, Jesus anchors all humanity to a love and justice that transcends all borders.  Instead of inflicting a cruel and offensive dehumanization, Jesus allows all of us “strangers and foreigners on the earth” (Heb 11:13) to be fully human.