Thursday, February 26, 2015

Schlemiel, Schlimazel and Mensch.



A Reflection for II Lent                                                         All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C.
March 1, 2015                                                                         Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16      Psalm 22:22-30      Romans 4:13-25          Mark 8:31-38

Schlemiel, Schlimazel and Mensch.

I had some trouble getting into these lessons and after struggling with them, I went to read one of my favorite authors, Frederick Buechner, a Presbyterian Minister who is almost 90 years old, has authored 36 books, and still puts out a weekly blog. After looking at his stuff for this reflection, three Yiddish words came to mind: schlemiel, schlimazel, and mensch.

Our first lesson is about the man we call Abraham, but this lesson calls him Abram. Frederick Buechner, in his book Peculiar Treasures, had this to say about this character: “If a schlemiel is a person who goes through life spilling soup on people and a schlemozzle is the one it keeps getting spilled on, then Abraham was a schlemozzle. It all began when God told him to go to the land of Canaan, where he promised to make him the father of a great nation, and he went.”

It all began in the mythic city of Ur which, depending on your sources, was either in Southern Iraq or Northern Syria, or Armenia, or on the Anatolian Plain in Turkey. In this city lives a man called Abram. Now I want a show of hands of men: “If you are 75 years old, like Abram when he was called, or if you are close to it, or if you can imagine reaching 75, do you think you will jump up and down at the prospect of leaving your house on which the mortgage is paid, leaving your medical plan and savings behind, giving up everything you hold dear, packing up some donkeys and walking hundreds of miles across the desert and wastelands for the thrill of being a father for the first time in your life?”

Now for women, a show of  hands: “If you are 65, ten years younger than your husband (who also may be your half-brother), you have already gone through menopause, and your husband (or half-brother or cousin) says he heard a voice calling him out of the Ether waves to leave the house, do without the paid servants, the friends you made all your life and all the rest, and walk for hundreds of mile across deserts and wastelands so you could be a mother for the first time in your life, would you be happy about doing it?”

I am not a woman, but before Pat and I got married and she was around 50, she did agree to move a whole 50 miles from Roanoke to Lynchburg, but for a few years she kept returning to see her dentist, her doctor, her auto mechanic, her hair dresser, even her dry cleaner. When I suggested that it would be nice if we had a red-headed little boy, she looked at me like I was crazy.

Now Abram starts to wonder about putting up with being a schlemozzle after about ten years of wandering around, getting into a fight with his nephew Lot (in which Lot gets the better land), going through some good years and then bad years of warfare and famine, having his wife confiscated by one of the local rulers of the land in which they were refugees, and then being sent packing when his wife is finally returned to him - and there is still no child is sight.  Finally Sarai, now 75, gets the bright idea of fixing up the old goat Abram, who is now 85, which a buxom Egyptian beauty called Hagar, and she gets pregnant. Well that took care of the child part of the trip, except Hagar gets “uppity” and puts Sarai down. Sarai, in retaliation, gets Abram to kick the Egyptian baggage out into the desert, but she comes back and has the child.

Another 13 years pass and Abraham, now 99, comes home from a journey and says that the voice he has been listening to has told him that all males in his household need to be circumcised, that a child would be born to him and Sarai, and their names would be changed from Abram which means “My Father (my God) is honored” to Abraham which means “Father of Many Nations”, and from Sarai which means “Princess” to Sarah meaning “My Princess”.

Don't you think that someone in these 24 years might have said, “No! God might have a plan but it is not my time table, it is not rational; thank you, NO. It is not feasible and it doesn't make sense. Thank you very much, NO. If it were really God calling us, don't you think that the road would have been a tad easier?  I say NO thank you.” I would not have waited 24 years, I would have started off casting my negative vote at the beginning.

There is a schlemiel in the Gospel story with Peter. Again I go back to Buechner's Peculiar Treasures where he talks about Peter: “The first time Jesus laid eyes on him, he took one good look and said, "So you're Simon, the son of John", and then said that from then on he'd call him Cephas, which is Aramaic for Peter, which is Greek for "rock." A rock isn't the prettiest thing in creation or the fanciest or the smartest, and if it gets rolling in the wrong direction, watch out. . .” Peter lives down to his name and becomes the rock in the Jesus path when he says that Jesus just doesn't get this Messiah business. “After all if you are the Messiah and God is behind you, then everything is supposed to work out for my satisfaction as well as God's.”

In Paul's letter to the Romans, Paul reexamines Abram, and in other places Peter, and moves them from schlimazel and schlemiel to mensch. A mensch is a person of respect and integrity, a person you can count on. We might be tempted to see Abram and Peter as people who kept messing up, and they both do, but when God looks at them, they are seen by God as mensch, people who God holds in respect. God respects us by giving us freedom, over and over again, and is with us as we mess up and never turns the divine back on us.

We started this service with a Penitential order where we acknowledge that we have fallen short of God's dream for us, and still we ask the energy that created us and who gives us energy for another chance. That next chance is given before we ask. It is a gift of Grace which alone has the power to change a schlimazlel and schlemiel to mensch. Grace is another word that I go back to Buechner, but in his book Wishful Thinking:
“Grace is something you can never get but only be given. There's no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth.
A good sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace. Loving somebody is grace. Have you ever tried to love somebody?
A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the assertion that people are saved by grace. There's nothing you have to do. There's nothing you have to do. There's nothing you have to do.
The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you.
There's only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you'll reach out and take it.
Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.”

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