A Lifetime of First

Thirty years ago, I broke a barrier many thought could not be broken: I became the first woman to caddy on the hallowed fairways of the most famous sporting event on earth: The Masters.   It was not an easy road to get there.   Many doubted the possibility of change.  Most wondered whether women were strong enough.  The leaders preferred to do things the way they had always done them.  My own stubbornness, my Mom’s passion, my Dad’s willingness, and a change in the perpetually conservative Augusta National allowing PGA golfers to bring their own caddies, enabled me to break the gender and color barrier and become the first woman to caddy the Masters.  My Dad, George Archer, was the Champion in 1969.  He was such a good putter that a newscaster this week said that when Tiger Wood's putter was hot, "He was putting like George Archer."   Caddying many PGA events as the first woman was only one landmark in a long list of firsts that I have been privileged to pioneer.

 It was a fabulous and head spinning experience.  I had hoards of people asking for my autograph, taking pictures, reporters asking for interviews, and people coming up to me all day and night, on and off the course, to pose for pictures and asking to shake my hand.  One middle aged CEO even grabbed me near the famous 16th party triangle and kissed me on the lips before he walked away.  I’m sure I stood there in astonishment for at least a minute before I got back to work.

That week,  I learned that celebrity is quintessential boredom.  The repetitive questions made me weary.  I don’t know how those who make their living in public are able to graciously and creatively answer the same mundane query one hundred or more times.  Few people ask questions that are insightful or new.   With our attentions spans even further diminished,  I am certain it is far worse today than it was then. The limelight is not something I enjoy. 

I kept my focus by repeating that if one teenager can demonstrate that women can do things the world said we couldn’t, then the world would be different.  While many may not feel like caddying is anything world changing,  I did.  It was a matter of strength and freedom.  If we allow others to decide what we can or can’t do based on their opinions of who we are, we are all impoverished.   For years,  I heard teachers, doctors, politicians say that men are stronger than women.  I didn’t agree.  I could out lift, out run and out climb most of the boys in my high school.  While many men might be stronger than women in some ways,  what man could stand the pain of childbirth, I wondered?  There are different kinds of strength and we all benefit by allowing all to share the burden and to cheer each other on, rather than put each other down.

My image and story appeared in newspapers and magazines all over the world.  As Sojourner Truth said, “Ain’t I a woman?”  I repeated her question with determination as I carried the 70lb bag up and down hills in Georgia humidity.  I carried it into the many fishbowls of doing something first.  I carried into sporting events where I competed against and defeated male athletes.  I carried it into the debate team at Stanford, where I faced down such giants as Edward Teller (the Father of the Hydrogen Bomb) as we argued nuclear power, (yeah, that was ridiculous.)  And I’ve carried into countless churches as I have tried to demonstrate that power should not be assumed or hoarded.  We all benefit when strength is not assumed, but shared. 

30 years is a long time.  But in many ways, our ideas of who can and who can’t need to continue to grow and mature.  Any time we limit someone else,  we limit ourselves.  There is more to greatness than a green jacket.  But it is a gorgeous event to carry on.

Rev. Dr. E.A. Klein
Tacoma, WA

Good Friday Message

Good Friday @ St. Leo’s   2013
Fierce Landscapes
The Character of God: Desire

Isaiah 52:13-53:12
52:13 See, my servant shall prosper; he shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high.
Just as there were many who were astonished at him--so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of mortals-so he shall startle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him; for that which had not been told them they shall see, and that which they had not heard they shall contemplate.
Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
 He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account.
Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.
By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people.
They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him with pain. When you make his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days; through him the will of the LORD shall prosper.
Out of his anguish he shall see light; he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

John 18:1-19:42
18:1 After Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley to a place where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place, because Jesus often met there with his disciples.
So Judas brought a detachment of soldiers together with police from the chief priests and the Pharisees, and they came there with lanterns and torches and weapons.
Then Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to him, came forward and asked them, "Whom are you looking for?"
They answered, "Jesus of Nazareth." Jesus replied, "I am he." Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them.
When Jesus said to them, "I am he," they stepped back and fell to the ground.
Again he asked them, "Whom are you looking for?" And they said, "Jesus of Nazareth."
Jesus answered, "I told you that I am he. So if you are looking for me, let these men go."
This was to fulfill the word that he had spoken, "I did not lose a single one of those whom you gave me."
Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it, struck the high priest's slave, and cut off his right ear. The slave's name was Malchus.
Jesus said to Peter, "Put your sword back into its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?"
So the soldiers, their officer, and the Jewish police arrested Jesus and bound him.
First they took him to Annas, who was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest that year.
Caiaphas was the one who had advised the Jews that it was better to have one person die for the people.
Simon Peter and another disciple followed Jesus. Since that disciple was known to the high priest, he went with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest,
but Peter was standing outside at the gate. So the other disciple, who was known to the high priest, went out, spoke to the woman who guarded the gate, and brought Peter in.
The woman said to Peter, "You are not also one of this man's disciples, are you?" He said, "I am not."
Now the slaves and the police had made a charcoal fire because it was cold, and they were standing around it and warming themselves. Peter also was standing with them and warming himself.
Then the high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and about his teaching.
Jesus answered, "I have spoken openly to the world; I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all the Jews come together. I have said nothing in secret.
Why do you ask me? Ask those who heard what I said to them; they know what I said."
 When he had said this, one of the police standing nearby struck Jesus on the face, saying, "Is that how you answer the high priest?"
Jesus answered, "If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong. But if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?"
Then Annas sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest.
Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. They asked him, "You are not also one of his disciples, are you?" He denied it and said, "I am not."

One of the slaves of the high priest, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, asked, "Did I not see you in the garden with him?"
Again Peter denied it, and at that moment the cock crowed.
Then they took Jesus from Caiaphas to Pilate's headquarters. It was early in the morning. They themselves did not enter the headquarters, so as to avoid ritual defilement and to be able to eat the Passover.
So Pilate went out to them and said, "What accusation do you bring against this man?"
They answered, "If this man were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you."
Pilate said to them, "Take him yourselves and judge him according to your law." The Jews replied, "We are not permitted to put anyone to death." (This was to fulfill what Jesus had said when he indicated the kind of death he was to die.)
Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?"
Jesus answered, "Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?"
 Pilate replied, "I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?"
Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here."
 Pilate asked him, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."
Pilate asked him, "What is truth?" After he had said this, he went out to the Jews again and told them, "I find no case against him.
 But you have a custom that I release someone for you at the Passover. Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?"
They shouted in reply, "Not this man, but Barabbas!" Now Barabbas was a bandit.
Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged.
 And the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they dressed him in a purple robe.
They kept coming up to him, saying, "Hail, King of the Jews!" and striking him on the face.
 Pilate went out again and said to them, "Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no case against him."
So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, "Here is the man!"
 When the chief priests and the police saw him, they shouted, "Crucify him! Crucify him!" Pilate said to them, "Take him yourselves and crucify him; I find no case against him."
The Jews answered him, "We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has claimed to be the Son of God."
Now when Pilate heard this, he was more afraid than ever.

He entered his headquarters again and asked Jesus, "Where are you from?" But Jesus gave him no answer.
 Pilate therefore said to him, "Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?"
Jesus answered him, "You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above; therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin."
From then on Pilate tried to release him, but the Jews cried out, "If you release this man, you are no friend of the emperor. Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the emperor." When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus outside and sat on the judge's bench at a place called The Stone Pavement, or in Hebrew Gabbatha.
Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about noon. He said to the Jews, "Here is your King!"
They cried out, "Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!" Pilate asked them, "Shall I crucify your King?" The chief priests answered, "We have no king but the emperor."
Then he handed him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus;
and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha.
There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them.
Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews."
Many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek.
Then the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, "Do not write, 'The King of the Jews,' but, 'This man said, I am King of the Jews.'"
Pilate answered, "What I have written I have written."
When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and divided them into four parts, one for each soldier. They also took his tunic; now the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from the top. 19:24

So they said to one another, "Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see who will get it." This was to fulfill what the scripture says, "They divided my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots."
And that is what the soldiers did. Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.
When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, "Woman, here is your son."
Then he said to the disciple, "Here is your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.
After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), "I am thirsty."

A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth.
 When Jesus had received the wine, he said, "It is finished." Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
Since it was the day of Preparation, the Jews did not want the bodies left on the cross during the sabbath, especially because that sabbath was a day of great solemnity. So they asked Pilate to have the legs of the crucified men broken and the bodies removed.
Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him.
But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs.
 Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out.
(He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth.)
These things occurred so that the scripture might be fulfilled, "None of his bones shall be broken."
And again another passage of scripture says, "They will look on the one whom they have pierced."
After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body.
Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds.
They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews.
 Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid.
 And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.


Fierce Landscapes:  How God’s Character Sustains Us Through Difficult Places

Wanted

In the new film, “It’s a Girl: the 3 deadliest words in language”  Evan Grae Davis chronicles the 16 years he has spent traveling the world and documenting issues affecting the poor including the Gendercide, that the United Nations estimates can be as many as 200 million women.  That’s 33 Jewish Holocausts, 10 Russian fronts, 400 Million Killing Fields, 200 Rwandas, and 6 times as many devastations as all the Genocides of human history combined.   Yet, there are no museums, no monuments, no memorials, and very, very few mentions of it in any history book, newspaper, or government program.

“The film tells the stories of abandoned and trafficked girls, of women who suffer extreme dowry-related violence, of brave mothers fighting to save their daughters’ lives, and of other mothers who would kill for a son. ” (www.itsagirlmovie.com)

It is a difficult story to watch.

In one scene,  an Indian woman leads the camera crew to the place outside her residence where there are 8 small graves.  WIth smiles and animation, she describes how she strangled each of them shortly after birth.
She shows no remorse.  She cannot afford to raise a girl child.
Perhaps she is unwilling for them to suffer as she does.

This story is repeated nearly 15,000 times a day.   I cannot image what it would be like to carry a child to full term, to experience the cusp that is the life and death of labor, to see, yet again, that your child is a girl, to silence it’s short-lived breaths, then to dig another grave in your own cemetery of fragile ghosts, the lost girls who will never be lovingly held, whispered to, or cherished.  They are unaffordable.  They are unwanted.

Many of us have experienced a sliver of what it means to be unwanted.  Whether while running the gauntlet of adolescence, enduring the choice of teams in PE, being laid off or fired from our jobs, losing our homes to foreclosure, missing the friend who never calls, or having a partner betray us, we understand what it means to feel unwanted.

The thing about the experience of loss is that it often translates into a questioning of our own worth.  Certain myths influence our self- assessment.  If we were better, bad things would not happen.  If we were more beautiful, he would love us.  If we were thinner, more men would notice.  If we were more successful, women would be interested.  If we were better, we would not feel so ashamed.

For all of us who feel unwanted, who are unwanted, God comes in person to show us the height and depth and breath of his desire.  This is not a God who stands distant and condemns.  It is a God who comes so close that he is willing to be held and nurtured by human hands, women’s hands, to walk the roads we all must walk, roads filled with loss and heart ache, and to spread his arms so wide that it is a cross itself that reflects the enormous capacity of desire for us.  How can we ever look upon the Cross again and say we are unwanted?

He knows what it is like to be unwanted.   We said we wanted him.  For thousands and thousands of years we begged for him to come.   We burned incense, we built pyres, we stacked huge stones into temples, we sacrificed virgins hoping he would come.

The very person who were were all waiting for, for centuries comes into the world and do we embrace him?  Do we bow down before him?  Do we thank him for coming?  Do we show how much we have wanted him?  No.  We killed him.  We destroy the Son of God.

Oh, how I long to think that we learned something from this horror.  But I harbor in my heart the fear that we would do it again.  Because we are still jealous, we are still greedy, we are still self-righteous, we are overpowered by fear.  We are still wanting God to be our servant rather than to serve God.    We are still wanting.

And yet he says to us, in every page of the Gospel, in every utterance he makes, “You are wanted.  I love you.  You will never be alone.”  Even when we reject him, he does not reject us.  Even when we condemn him, he pleads, with gasping breaths, for God to forgive us.

How can someone so loving, so filled with truth, so kind, who constantly reaches out to us,  be claimed by his followers to be harsh, judgmental, and convicting?  How can we claim in his name that others are “unwanted”?  I don’t understand it.   I don’t how those of us who know him can let others who claim him make such terrible pronouncements and not demand they back down?
For every member of any church who has protested some service in hatred, are there not 10, 100, a 1000 that know him who can say, “It’s not true.  You ARE wanted!”

The Church as the Bride of Christ

In a world where killing girls is commonplace, Jesus does the unthinkable.  He choses a young woman to be his Mother.  He chooses women to be his followers.  He stays in their homes,  he looks at them, he speaks to them with respect rather than condemnation, even humor.  He heals them in a world that would rather bury them in unmarked graves.   He calls his Church: “Beloved” and names her his Bride.
He pays her dowry with his blood.
He lifts her up to be his partner and lover.

In an age where the Church is disregarded by the culture, when people claim that “faith’ has little impact on society, when they say that spirituality can be sustained without religion, I say, how dare we insult the Bride of Christ?  Would not any husband take offense?  Yes, she/we are not perfect.  Yes, we have our faults.  They are many.
But we have been chosen as his bride, and we must live out of this marriage,
not out of criticism or complaint, or embarrassment or fear.

A marriage, to be sustained, must have substantially more positive interactions than negative ones.  Can we,  as the Bride, continue to proclaim our relationship with the One who wants us?   Jesus has not left us.  Jesus has not turned his back upon us.  His desire for us is not diminished.  He feasts his eyes upon our beauty.  He longs to be at our side.   He does not leave us alone, ever!

He is there with us in the moment when you get on the plane; when the doctor says, “You have cancer” when you are the widow or the widower, when you are fired.  When you are homeless.   Even on the worst moment of your entire life.
When it doesn’t feel like it,  you are still wanted.

Instead of a ring, we have been given another symbol of his promise.

The cross is every crossroads of your hurt.  It is every intersection of your loss.  It is every time that you have not spoken out of fear or have spoken out of hate.  It is every rejection, ever betrayal, every shard of ruin.  It is our mortality.
You don’t have to approach it.
No one is forcing you.
You can spend the rest of your life running away.
Or you can turn and kiss, embrace what holds you, what fear stands like a devil at the crossroads.  You can embrace it,  and leave fear at the junction of Christ’s pain, and your forgiveness.  You can venerate the cross, the supreme instrument of a shameful death, and by it,  embrace the One who died upon it, for you, because he wants you to leave behind fear and enter into Life.

We are the Bride of Christ.
Let us approach our beloved and renew our vows.
We are wanted.
Let us show him the love he desires of his bride.
Amen.