From: Dr. Randy L. Rowland [rlrowland@comcast.net] Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2007 8:30 PM To: Dr. Randy L. Rowland Subject: weekly words from Randoon ... 2/25/2007 Weekly Words From Randoon February 25, 2007 NEWS FROM SANCTUARY This coming Sunday 3/4: The Lord’s Supper & Brunch at Romio’s after church @ 11:15am. This weeks Attendance: 100 Offering: $3,026 Kids: 1 PRAYER – God, we lift up the hungry and homeless to you. Christ, we pray for peace. Jesus, grant us all the courage to live into our gifts and serve the common good. Father, console those who have suffered losses of loved ones and those who are working their way through broken relationships. REFLECTIONS – on “The Fear of Rejection/Abandonment” Matthew 3:13-17 - Living Beyond Our Fears #8: Fear of Rejection/Abandonment Laid to waste on Day 1 … It’s early September 1958. I am 5. It’s the 1st day of Kindergarten. It is also the day after my mom and sister left for my mother’s home country of England for 5 months. And, it is the very day on which my dad is leaving to do 2 weeks of active duty at an Air Force base called Wright Field in Ohio. I am a fat little boy – so precocious in my fatness that I have man-boobs even as a child. I am dressed a lot like an English school boy because mom didn’t know how “yanks” did this sort of stuff. So….Dad drives me to University Place Elementary School, walks me into Mrs. Wilson’s Kindergarten Room and drops my off with the words “see you in a couple of weeks” and walks out. I FREAKED just seconds after he left the room and began running for the door. Mrs. Wilson tried to cut me off, but I busted a cutback move on her and made the door. In the hallway, I ran wide then cut back toward the middle to evade the school nurse, Mrs. Utgaard. NOW………I was on Dad’s tail…and shouting, “GET BACK HERE, D*** IT!” Dad increased his pace to a jog, hit the outside door and I get apprehended by Mr. Johnson the school principal and re-incarcerated in my kindergarten room. You see, I was showing something really major that day that has always been a huge issue for me. I was the adopted boy…given up…orphanaged, foster-housed, the taken in by Chuck and Audrey Rowland. I was horribly insecure about relationships. ANY sign of REJECTION and/or ABANDONMENT caused me to GO OFF. AND……….I have spent the 49 years since then doing a combination of DEALING WITH AND DISGUISING the FEAR OF REJECTION AND ABANDONMENT. HOW ABOUT YOU? Anyone sensitive to similar issues? We human beings attach ourselves to objects of identity … those objects are often people. WHEN OUR OBJECTS OF IDENTITY THREATEN TO SHIFT, SHIFT or CATCH US THINKING THEY ARE GOING TO SHIFT, we move into modes of behavior that are often unhelpful to us and others. You see….the fear of rejection and abandonment causes a number of potential disastrous outcomes when carried out into our actual behavior patterns. Being aggressive and punishing. Being clingy and needy in relationships. Being overly performance oriented in order to win love, respect, security…an whatever. The fear of rejection can cause us to stay in bad relationships….or at least cause us to put up with bad relationships without any attempt to improve the situation. Fear of abandonment can arouse jealousy and perceive others who might be intruding on our network as a threat that must be disposed of. Do you get the feel for the monster the fear of rejection and abandonment can become? It has a horrible polluting effect on our soul, but also on our entire sphere of influence. HOW DO WE LIVE BEYOND THE FEAR OF REJECTION AND ABANDONMENT? Perhaps there is a bit of a clue in a Biblical Narrative about the life of Jesus. Let’s take a look at Matthew 3:13-17 and explore what the occasion of Jesus’ Baptism by his cousin, John the Baptist, in the Jordan River might have for us …MATTHEW 3:13-17 13Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. 14But John tried to deter him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" 15Jesus replied, "Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness." Then John consented. 16As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. 17And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." THIS IS MY SON, WHOM I LOVE; WITH HIM I AM WELL PLEASED. Jesus comes to human life to make all the connections humans make in relationships, rituals, work and all the rest. On this day, he is asking to be baptized as a symbol of purification and entry into the very community that he will purify and renew. There is a certain RIGHTEOUSNESS about our institutions and rituals that Jesus’ recognizes. A real “hot dog” would have come in and said, “yeah, let me baptize you, John. I’m the man. And, when I done with you, throw a little agua on me.” That’s not what Jesus’ does. He understands symbols, roles in society and rites of passage. IN THE ACT of BAPTISM, Jesus subjects himself to the full rigors of membership in God’s Family…which, at that time was the Jewish faith. In this submission to the PEOPLE OF GOD at that time, Jesus takes on privilege of membership along with responsibility and accountability to the Jewish authority structures. So……in a very real sense, while it seems – as we read the Bible – that all the other sectors of society, even the non-religious really like Jesus, THE INSTITUTION IS THE ONE THAT WILL TURN ON HIM AND KILL HIM. He makes himself vulnerable to the dysfunctions and evil evident in every human system. He is attached to an object that can and will reject him. He is attached to an object that can and will Abandon him. The best the human spirit can confer upon him with the earthly element of water is a promise to be a part of something that doesn’t work and will hurt him. IS THAT NOT TRUE OF MOST HUMAN SYSYTEMS?? Anyone ever been hurt by a parent or sibling in a family setting? Anyone ever damaged be a disastrous betrayal by a friend? How about a marriage or serious romantic relationship failure? Or…even wounds inflicted by the CHURCH…THE PEOPLE OF GOD? IS THIS FAIR? Probably not. But. We live on a broken plane of existence and what is, is. . BUT, is WHAT IS all there is? Certainly not…See the radical in-breaking of God by the power of the Holy Spirit in answer to the human spirit. Verse 17: 17And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." . While a SECONDARY part of Jesus’ identity is his worldly roles and relationships, his PRIMARY. IDENTITY is “beloved son of God” who so pleases the father that he must do NO MORE. He must SIMPLY BE. This identity is what grounds Jesus. It equips him to do what must be done and say what must be said even in the face of human scorn. One must think that faith heroes like Martin Luther King, Jr., Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others must have heard the same voice to do what they did in the face of hatred and rejection…even death. BRUCE LARSON, clearly the most influential person I have known in my life, said about this story in the life of Jesus that it teaches you and me an important lesson: WE ARE TO TRUST GOD AND LOVE PEOPLE. IF WE REVERSE THAT WE ARE SCREWED!! TRUST GOD, LOVE PEOPLE. God is trustworthy. People are Love-Worthy. "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." WE MUST BE REMINDED CONTINUALLY that this is what God is saying to us. Just last week, I was in the Dominican Republic. We took a really cool guided, all-day, van trip from Punta Cana to the capitol city of Santo Domingo. We saw San Pedro, home to baseball legends Sammy Sosa and Alfonso Soriano. We saw the landing site and original grave site of Christopher Columbus. All along our routes, I kept seeing large buses whose owners displayed FAITH STATEMENTS on the back window to attest to their relationship with God in Jesus Christ. The two most common huge window stencils were - JESUS ME AMA .. and .. JESUS TE AMO. If I have my primitive Spanish right these are authoritative voice statements saying JESUS LOVES ME and the second sign saying JESUS LOVES YOU. I asked our driver, Raul, if they ever wrote I LOVE JESUS. He said, NO. He indicated that such a statement might be arrogant. Instead, the people of deep faith in the D. R. appear to be fascinated with the fact that JESUS LOVES THEM. Theologian Karl Barth was delivering a lecture before a huge crowd and the media. At a question and answer time, he was asked, “Dr. Barth, what is the greatest theological truth you have ever discovered?” Without flinching, he responded, “JESUS LOVES ME THIS I KNOW, FOR THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO.” The Faithful ones I saw in the Dominican Republic and a great theologian both saw the same thing. Truth is, I can hardly speak of God. I open my mouth to tell God I love him…and just as the “I…” forms and begins to stutter out of my mouth… GOD SPEAKS, “YOU ARE MY CHILD, WHOM I LOVE AND WITH WHOM I AM WELL PLEASED.” Every attempt to express my love is silenced by the THUNDERING YES OF GOD TO ME. At last, I am constrained to simply say, YES. Yes. Y-e-s. For God speaks his disposition toward me too loudly and too often for me to get a word in. In the end – we are invited to TRUST GOD and HIS LOVE FOR US and LOVE PEOPLE even if they don’t love back – and all this out of a DEEP AND FULLY APPREHENDED UNDERSTANDING THAT WE ARE BELOVED OF GOD AND PLEASING TO HIM – that we are part of a FOREVER RELATIONSHIP that cannot and will not go away. In the light of such LOVE and ACCEPTANCE and PERMANENT EMBRACE there IS NO rejection or abandonment. Even if you find this hard to believe because of stuff in your life, know for certain that GOD BELIEVES IN YOU. Go and make it a GREAT WEEK! Much Love, Dr. Randy L. Rowland 2854 NW 59th Street Seattle, WA 98107 USA 206.953.0909 www.sanctuarycrc.org