the thin paper vault

A little embarrassed

2012-01-30T11:47:00.000-06:00

Yesterday in worship, my children's sermon was all about listening for Jesus, and I wanted to give them a concrete way that we can see and hear what Jesus says. So I thought about the way that some Bibles have Jesus' words in red, and thought that it might be a nice way to show them how we "hear" Jesus' voice in the Bible. So I dug through my bookshelf to find my confirmation Bible back from eighth grade, which I knew had Jesus' words printed in red.

(Sidenote: Way to feel old...yeesh. I opened up the Bible and saw the inscription, and thought about how long ago 1994 was. My oldness was further confirmed when some of the high schoolers at church reminded me that they weren't born yet in 1994. Yikes.)

Anyway, today, I am working on writing a short devotion for a Lenten devotional booklet, and I grabbed my pocket Bible off my desk, the Bible that has been my primary Bible for, like, 5 years now. And I'm reading from the book of John, and after a few minutes, it dawns on me that there is something funny about the page...

See that? Yup. This Bible, that I've been using for many years now, has Jesus' words in red. And I never noticed it. Went digging for an old Bible yesterday for no reason. Not sure why that makes me feel so dumb, but it does.

Epiphany 4: Possession

2012-01-29T12:00:00.000-06:00

Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth — as in fact there are many gods and many lords — yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.(1 Corinthians 8:5-6)

They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, [Jesus] entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God." But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be silent, and come out of him!" And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, "What is this? A new teaching — with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him." At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.(Mark 1:21-28)
---
I am not a big fan of horror movies. Back in high school, I remember clawing at a friend’s arm during the movie Scream, and feeling dismayed when my we decided to follow it up by watching watching I Know What You Did Last Summer…and I’m pretty sure that both of those movies qualify as “lightweights” in the scary movie genre. It turns out that I scare easily. In recent years, Hollywood has become a little obsessed with making movies about spirits and paranormal activity and people being possessed by evil…and I haven’t gone to see any of these movies, because, as we have established they freak me out. But it’s hard not to think about these sorts of movies when we read Mark’s gospel today.

We have before us this strange but illuminating encounter between Jesus and a man with an unclean spirit. Jesus has been teaching in the synagogue, and raising eyebrows with his wise and authoritative teaching. And in the middle of all of this, a man possessed by an unclean spirit stands up, and this spirit inside of him takes one look at Jesus and cries out, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God." And Jesus casts out this unclean spirit, which causes the poor man to convulse and shake on its way out. Without much else in the way of a frame of reference, maybe you are sitting here, pulling all of your mental images from the Exorcist, complete with head spinning and foaming at the mouth.

It would be easy, in our modern context, to brush over this story because we don’t talk much in the way of being demon-possessed, except in the realm of Hollywood and of superstition. But if we are too hasty to dismiss this story as fantastic or irrelevant, then we miss the point of the story. Because even if we aren’t sure about the idea of demons, isn’t it a truth of life that we are all, in our own ways, possessed?

I mean, aren’t we all possessed by something? How many of us have ever referred to our fears and temptations as our “demons?” And aren’t we all always in danger of being owned and controlled and gripped by things that aren’t of God, that aren’t life-giving? Possession is about ownership, and there are so many things out there that that grip us, that hold us, that replace our whole and holy innermost spirits with the spirit of darkness.

If I were to send a notepad up and down the pews, and have each of you write down one thing that possesses you, that owns you, we’d end up with a long and diverse list. Here are just a few of the things that might end up on that list:

I am possessed by the knowledge that my cancer could come back.
I am possessed by an overwhelming work schedule that keeps me from spending as much time with my family as I would like.
I am possessed by an unsettling feeling that, despite what the doctors say, things are getting worse and not better.
I am possessed by worry that my children are being bullied, hurt, or excluded.
I am possessed by my addiction.
I am possessed by a cloud of depression that keeps me from seeing any good in the world.
I am possessed by my possessions.
I am possessed by the uncertainty of my job situation and my financial future.
I am possessed by the voices that tell me I am unlovable, unforgivable, and unworthy.

Maybe you found yourslef in that list. Or maybe there is something else that holds onto your spirit. But we are all possessed by something. And when we feel most troubled by these things that hold us in their grasp, we, like that demon-possessed man, seek out voices that can rescue our spirits.

I watched the State of the Union address last Tuesday evening, and watched the Republican response, and listened to the television interviews afterwards. And all of these voices tried to speak with authority about the things that possess us as individuals and as a nation. All of these voices offered ideas for driving out our uncertainty about the economy, and releasing us from the grasp of fear over war and terrorism, and rescuing us from worries about the environment. These voices all tried to speak with authority about whether our collective future is hopeful or doomed. And the problem is that there were all of these voices, and they were all speaking with authority, and they were all pretty credible voices, and certainly compelling ones…and none of them came to the same conclusion on anything. These voices, it turns out, did nothing to relieve us from our demons and give us healing and hope.

Today’s gospel makes it clear that there is only one voice that can really free us from the things that possess us, and only one voice that can calm our demons. As the apostle Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians, “Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth — as in fact there are many gods and many lords [and many demons!] — yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.” Our authoritative voice of liberty and life is this voice of God in Jesus.

Jesus has the power to speak to our demons because he was himself “possessed,” as it were, by the Holy Spirit that descended upon him like a dove at his baptism. A voice from heaven declared Jesus God’s beloved son, and so the voice of Jesus can pierce through our dark spirits and bring them light.

Jesus is always on the side of the light; on the side of goodness and peace and healing and hope and wholeness. There are so many places in the gospels where Jesus says “Fear not,” and where he calms storms and where he says “you are forgiven,” and where he heals broken bodies and where he raises people from the dead. Jesus isn’t just a teacher, and his words aren’t just nice preaching. Jesus’ words always take action; they have the power to DO something. And Jesus didn’t stop acting in our world way back in Bible times. Jesus’ words still have the real power to release us from the grip of all that seeks to possess us, and the authority to replace fear with life.

My friends, this is such good news that it makes me get all excited and talk in run-on sentences. Because how can each one of us not be overwhelmed by the thought that nothing else in this world can have a permanent hold on us, and that nothing else in this world can hold us forever in its clutches, and that no darkness can overcome us, because we have in us the light of Christ which is a balm for even the most troubled parts of our souls?

Every time we read the scriptures together, we hear words that are more than words. They are words that point us to the living Word, Jesus Christ, Son of God. And the Word of God is an active Word of life, and can’t you feel your heart stirred within you?

Every time we gather for communion, we hear Jesus voice saying “Take and eat. This is my body broken for you. Take and drink from this, all of you. This cup is the new covenant in my blood, shed for you and for all people for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in remembrance of me.” And in these words, we know, in the depth of our hearts, that when we eat and when we drink, we are taking into our spirits the real body of Christ that gives us real forgiveness.

And every time that we gather at the font to celebrate the gift of baptism, we hear Christ’s promise that in those waters is a real death to sin and darkness, and a real rising to new life. And if that weren’t enough, in baptism, each of us, like Jesus, is possessed by a new spirit: the Spirit of God. In baptism, we hear the words, “Child of God, you are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever,” and those words are as real and powerful as they get. Because they tell us that everything else that seeks to posses us is shoved out, and we are gripped and held by God’s own Spirit. This is possession in all senses of the word: God claims us, owns us, and his spirit takes us over.

Right here and right now, we can touch the swirling water in the font, and we can grasp the bread and taste the wine, and in all of this we can touch and be touched by the healing hand of Jesus. We cling to the hope of God’s spirit dwelling in us, and we listen for the voice of Jesus, who speaks to us with divine authority, casting out sin and fear and brokenness and even death itself. For Jesus himself is nothing other than the living, loving, life-changing Word of the Lord. And to this, we reply, “Thanks be to God.”

Holy eavesdropping

2012-01-28T11:06:00.005-06:00

You would be surprised (or maybe you wouldn't be) by how often the pastoral life looks sort of like this. Somedays it's a computer, other days a book, and many other times, it is a person. But I find it interesting that Starbucks, Caribou Coffee, and any number of local, independent coffee shops* have become holy ground - local annexes of the church.

A couple weeks ago, I was in a different Starbucks, working on a sermon and a bunch of other writing that I needed to get done, and I was in a crowded corner where I could touch at least three other tables without having to get up from my own chair. And so, even with my headphones on and my music turned up, I still couldn't escape hearing the conversations happening around me.

One of these conversations was a chance encounter between a college student and the campus ministry director from her school. She was doing homework, he was meeting a different student, but they took a moment to catch up, and he was inquiring about her success (or lack thereof) in finding a church to attend during her four years at school. She talked to him about the difficulties of settling into a church for a short, four-year stint, and how churches don't seem to know quite how to engage college students, or any young adults who are still transient. He invited her to some campus ministry events, left a business card for her, and walked off, to meet with his regularly scheduled appointment.

I sat there, biting my fingernails for about five minutes. I wanted to believe that this was "holy eavesdropping," and felt stirred to continue the conversation that this young woman had begun. And after deciding that I'd regret this opportunity if I didn't do anything, I got up, slid over four feet into the empty chair at her table, introduced myself, and asked if she'd be willing to tell me more about what it was like to be a college student looking for a church in this day and age.

I don't know that she said anything that surprised me - talk about wanting to connect with peers, and wanting to be at an authentic church where it didn't feel like people were simply trained to say the "right answers," and wanting to engage deeply with a congregation, but how challenging that is when you are temporary.

But I realized, in that encounter, that there is something in me that is intrigued by coffee shops and ice cream shops and public places where there might be more opportunities for "holy eavesdropping" and open doors to conversation. I sort of like the idea of being "that pastor" who hangs out in coffee shops and "outs herself" as a pastor at appropriate moments to give a word of hope and grace to people around her.

Because I wonder if coffee shops and restaurants are their own brand of confessionals, where people go to process life and confide in friends and converse about the ups and downs of life. And maybe the church isn't the right place for those conversations, for whatever reason. And might we think about ways that the church could move out to the places where these conversations are happening, rather than waiting for these conversations to come into the sanctuary and find us?

*Sidenote: Pssst...Naperville! How 'bout you find a place for a good indie coffee shop, perhaps downtown near the Riverwalk? I love Starbucks and Caribou is pretty good, especially the new one on Ogden, but really, I would adore something more local.

Just a little jazz

2012-01-27T22:03:00.001-06:00

Fruitlessly flipping channels tonight, late into a Friday evening, when non-cable television has very little to offer...and caught the end of some people singing together on PBS. Intrigued, I kept watching, and discovered that I was watching the "Tony Bennett: Duets II" episode of the PBS Great Performances series. I was hooked. I'm still watching as I write. I was particularly taken by his singing "Speak Low" with Norah Jones:

I have a secret soft spot in my heart for this type of vocal jazz; slow, dreamy, a little sexy, something that you so very much want to slow-dance to. There was a stretch of time when I dreamed of being the one singing these songs. But these days, I think that all I want is to be there, listening, dancing, feeling full of romance and nostalgia and intrigue.

I don't listen to jazz very often, but enjoy it when I do. I listen to far more vocal jazz than any other type. And I love the idea of jazz like you wouldn't believe. It is so very personal. A thin space between creator and creation. And it takes so much skill...to truly embrace and illuminate all the freedom that you have in the music.

So just a little jazz chat for a Friday night... :)

Hope still

2012-01-19T16:28:00.004-06:00

It is 4:28 p.m., and I am conscious of the fact that in exactly three hours and thirty-two minutes, confirmation class will be over and it will, officially, be my day off. I am conscious of this fact because I am ready for the day away. It has been a week too full of sadness and pain for too many members of our congregation. It has been an emotional week for me, as we move ahead with more medical tests on our way toward making a baby the hard way, and a tiring week for Matt, because he's been sick. And so I am ready for tomorrow. Ready for a Friday-afternoon walk around the Arboretum, especially if it is snowing (like they say it will be). Ready for another chance to get the kitchen cleaned up and the laundry put away. Ready for a morning of sitting on the couch, in my pjs, knitting and watching PBS travel shows.

As a pastor, I have the peculiar blessing of being invited into sacred and vulnerable places in people's lives. I don't for a moment take this blessing for granted. And I certainly do not resent it. It's beautiful, it's God-given, it's holy.

But even amidst the holy, I find that I need equally holy moments of quiet, of refreshingly empty space, of deep breaths and being still.

This morning, faced with all of the ongoing weight of this week, I turned on a CD of a choir concert from my senior year of college. I picked this CD for its first track, William Billings' setting of Psalm 42. During choir tour, I gave the devotion before one of our concerts, and shared with my fellow choir members the peace that I took from this particular poetic rendering of the psalm, especially the second stanza: "Why restless, why cast down, my soul? Hope still and thou shalt sing the praise of him who is thy God, thy health's eternal spring." I still remember the way that my choir director caught my gaze that evening as we sang those two simple words:

Hope still.

Words I needed to hear this morning, as I started counting hours toward tomorrow's day off and as I yearned for some moment of peace and quiet for my restless soul, and peace for those around me. There was no question about which CD I was going to pull off the shelf, and which track I was going to listen to - even twice in a row. I needed to hear those two words:

Hope still.

Sometimes you have to go back for seconds.

2012-01-16T15:59:00.001-06:00

When you have a small French press, it's not at all inappropriate to drink two rounds of coffee in one day instead of just one, right? That doesn't make me an addict, right?

It's been a quiet Monday in the office, and so I have taken advantage of the quiet to work through various backward and forward looking tasks that come with the transition into the new year:

Reading through the annual report of the congregation as our ministry leaders reflect on 2011 and set goals for 2012.
Gearing up for tomorrow night's budget meeting where we will finish a final draft of the 2012 budget to be voted on this upcoming Sunday.
Writing newsletter articles about new and upcoming 2012 events.
Sending off paperwork to the synod to report and reflect upon 2011.
Revisiting tasks and projects from late December that took a back seat to Christmas and New Year's.
Finally clearing my brain out of holiday mode and settling back into ordinary time.

And even though I am, by nature, a person of reflection, who is generally comfortable with sitting and thinking and reviewing...today, it has taken that second pot of coffee to keep me going!

Epiphany: The three kings

2012-01-09T07:00:00.002-06:00

The Three Kings
words by Laurence Housman
music by Healy Willan

"Who knocks tonight so late?"
the weary porter said.
Three kings stood at the gate,
each with a crown on head.

The serving man bowed down,
the Inn was full, he knew.
Said he, "In all this town
is no fit place for you."

A light in the manger lit;
there lay the Mother meek.
"This place is fit.
Here is the rest we seek."

"Come, come."
They loosed their latchet strings,
so stood they all unshod
"Come in, come in, ye kings,
and kiss the feet of God."

Epiphany

2012-01-06T07:00:00.001-06:00

Epiphany
by Judith Bingham

Deep midwinter, the dark centre of the year,
Wake, O earth, awake,
Out on the hills a star appears,
Here lies the way for pilgrim kings,
Three magi on an ancient path,
Black hours begin their journeyings.

Their star has risen in our hearts,
Empty thrones, abandoned fears,
Out on the hills their journey starts,
In dazzling darkness God appears.

Christmas: Thursday (Epiphany Eve)

2012-01-05T07:00:00.002-06:00

John Gunstone says,

The star was a particularly evocative symbol. Variously interpreted as a figure of an angel or as a sign of the Holy Spirit, it pointed the magi (and so also the members of the church who meditate on the gospel) to Christ. 'Is it to be wondered at,' asked John Chrysostom, 'that a divine star ministers to the rising Sun of Righteousness? It halts above the head ot he child as if saying, 'This is he'

Below is a picture of artist Pandora LaCasse's work; she creates light sculptures in public places, combating the dark of winter with bright light, like the star piercing the dark sky that pointed the Magi - and that points us! - to the Christ. Read more about her artwork on the On Being Blog, and hear her talk about her artwork on YouTube.

Christmas: Wednesday

2012-01-04T07:00:00.003-06:00

Christmas: Tuesday

2012-01-03T07:00:00.002-06:00

A Christmas Creed from Latin America
I believe in Jesus Christ and in the power of the Gospel which began in Bethlehem.

I believe in the One whose spirit glorified a small village, of whose coming the shepherds saw the sign, and for whom there was no room in the inn.

I believe in the One whose life changed the course of history, for whom the kings of the earth had no power, and who was not understood by the proud.

I believe in the One to whom the poor, the oppressed, the discouraged, the afflicted, the sick, the blind and the leprous gave welcome and accepted as Savior.

I believe in the One who, with love, changed the hearts of the proud, and with his life, showed that it is more important to serve than to be served, and that the greatest joy is in giving your life for others.

I believe in peace, which means justice among all peoples and nations and love among all.

I believe in reconciliation, forgiveness and the transforming power of the gospel.

I believe that Christmas is strength and power, and that this world can change if, with humility and faith, we kneel before the manger.

I believe that I must be the first one to do so. Amen.

(ht: Quinn Caldwell via the January 2 Stillspeaking Daily Devotional)

Christmas: Monday

2012-01-02T07:00:00.001-06:00

Even as we're facing down the start of second semester, even as we "grown-ups" have already headed back to work, even as the stores around us are selling all Christmas items at 75% off while making room for their Valentine's Day displays, we as Christians (and litugically-minded Christians, at that!) have the opportunity and privilege to remember that Christmas isn't just a day, but rather a season...and a season that isn't over until Friday (which is Epiphany, our next church season of light, revelation, and the good news of Christ for all the world).

Professor and author Richard Beck has written an especially thoughtful blog post about Christmas-as-season, entitled, simply, "It's Still Christmas." It is certainly worth a few minutes to follow the link and read the entire post!

He encourages us to

resist the cultural push to be productive and "get Christmas up" as soon as possible. Leave the tree and the Nativity set out. Let's slow down and prayerfully linger. Yes, well into the New Year. Let the kids learn that Christmas cannot be reduced to the one hour when they opened their presents. Christmas isn't over. We're still in the middle of it.

So even if you're back at work, or back at school, or have otherwise stepped back into the usual routine of life, be sure to come home in the evening and eat those last few Christmas cookies, or even bake a few more if you're running low! Keep those lights up for a few more days, and sing a few more carols around the piano. Make a couple more fires in the fireplace and dedicate them to family evenings of retelling the Christmas story, watching the Christmas movies you haven't gotten around to watching, and playing with your new Christmas toys. For, as Beck reminds us, "it's still Christmas!"

Christmas: Sunday (New Year's Day)

2012-01-01T07:00:00.002-06:00

January 1, 2012. It is another new beginning.

What beginnings are you looking forward to? What things are you glad to put behind you? What are the blessings that you hold from 2011? What are the anxieties and anticipations of the new 2012 year? Where are you continuing on, and where are you starting over?

The good news is that God is all about new beginnings:

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. (Genesis 1:1-4a)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. (John 1:1-5)

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! (2 Corinthians 5:17)

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
"See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away."
And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new." (Revelation 21:1-5a)

Blessings to you in this new year. May you experience God's newness every day, and may you remember that in God's grace, you are a new creation!

Midnight for the restless soul

2011-12-31T19:15:00.000-06:00

It took me a long time to fall asleep last night. I was exhausted, from Christmas, from traveling, from taking advantage of being on vacation to eat more and sleep less than I should. But despite my exhaustion, I didn't fall quickly into an easy sleep. I felt my mind moving and my heart beating, and recognized these feelings as a general sense of anxiety that sometimes moves over us, as is the human condition, I suppose.

By today, those feelings of anxiety - over what I might be working on, over what the new year will bring, over what I might have forgotten to do or say - have shifted into feelings of flat-out restlessness. Which is, perhaps, exactly what I should be feeling on New Year's Eve, if you think about it. The stroke of midnight is a pronounced metaphor for change, and carries with it both hope and fear as we anticipate the future, and the direction that our lives move.

On this New Year's Eve, I find myself quite ready to put 2011 to bed. There were more than my share of wonderful moments in 2011, don't get me wrong. Ten years of waiting finally gave way to my dream of traveling to Tanzania, and it was one of the best things I've done in my life, ever. I've spent lots of time with family and friends, survived the 30th birthday, witnessed plenty of miracles and blessings.

But 2011 has brought it's own set of challenges as well. Most notably my emergency surgery in September for an ectopic pregnancy, and the implications of that surgery for us going forward as we try to start a family. And plenty of challenges for friends and church members and colleagues.

And so I find myself feeling restless tonight.

I am deeply desiring something new. Matt is shopping for a new cell phone, and I find myself oddly envious of the "newness" of that venture. But it's not that I want a new phone, per se. And I'm typing this on a new (to me) computer, so it's not that I want new things. But I am craving the feeling that comes with newness. The rush that comes with new things, or new ideas, or new opportunities, or new discoveries about myself and others. I think this means that I am the sort of person that finds change rather invigorating, even though I am also the sort of person that relishes routine and tradition and being comfortable with the way things are.

And, perhaps, I have high hopes that 2012 could be a year of big changes. An IVF journey toward starting a family is first on the list, and so 2012 could be the year of the baby. Buying a house is on the radar, and if finances work out well enough, 2012 could also be the year of the house. I am excited for a new year of ministry, and new projects in ministry, and new opportunities for learning and service and exploration. I am looking forward to the first real snowfall of winter, which hasn't happened yet, so 2012 will hopefully be the year of the February blizzard.

But whatever form "newness" takes in 2012, I am craving it. And my restless heart beats steadily on toward midnight, when I will count down the seconds like everyone else, giving undue power to that silly little clock as we cross from one year to the next in one tick. Here is to 2012, to blessings and joys and curiosities and the hope for all good things, for me, for you, and for our world.

Christmas: Saturday (New Year's Eve)

2011-12-31T07:00:00.000-06:00

Eternal God, you have placed us in a world of space and time, and through the events of our lives you bless us with your love. Grant that in the new year we may know your presence, see your love at work, and live in the light of the event that gives us joy forever—the coming of your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. (Evangelical Lutheran Worship)

Ecclesiastes 3:1–13
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God's gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.

Christmas: Friday

2011-12-30T10:06:00.002-06:00

And the word became flesh and lived among us...

“The Word became flesh” is God acting, God reaching. It reveals the lengths God is willing to go in pursuit of humanity, and it reveals an intimate, passionate, and vulnerable pursuit. The Word enters the darkness in order to bring light. Barth says that in this act “the antithesis, the distance, the abstraction that is created by the fact of darkness…is overcome.” It was not God who created the distance: it was humanity; it was sin. And in Jesus Christ, the distance is overcome.

Jesus Christ isn’t God standing back, beckoning fools to get out of their big and loud and stinky vehicles; Jesus is God climbing in the seat beside the fools and remaining there for the duration of the ride. The Word become flesh isn’t God giving up and turning away in disgust when God sees the people eat their third meal of the week from McDonald’s; it is God joining them for the meal. Instead of God protecting God’s good reputation, remaining above all the futility of the human race, instead of God maintaining good taste and impeccable manners, in Jesus we see God entering the paltry ruckus of life as we know it. It looks foolish. But it reveals, perhaps, something about how God feels about us. It was always in God’s heart to give up glory and power in order to achieve union. In the story John tells, wisdom plays the fool in order to be with us. The story of the Word become flesh is the story of God with us in an incredibly vulnerable way.

Debbie Blue, From Stone to Living Word: Letting the Bible Live Again (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2008), pp. 112-113.

Christmas: Thursday

2011-12-29T09:10:00.002-06:00

Hey Guys! It's Christmas Time!
by Sufjan Stevens

We can walk out after dark
Because it's Christmas time
Colored lights glow from the park
Because it's Christmas time
And the bells on the reindeer sled say
It's Christmas time
And the quilts on the back of the bed say
It's Christmas time

I think about how we could run away
Now that it's Christmas time
We travel in a one-horse open sleigh
Now that it's Christmas time

There's your father with his pipe
He says it's Christmas time
He might let us stay up all night
Because it's Christmas time
I might wish you all the best
Because it's Christmas time
I might kiss you on the back of your neck
Because it's Christmas time

I think about how we could run away
Now that it's Christmas time
We travel in a one-horse open sleigh
Now that it's Christmas time

It's Christmas time

Christmas: Wednesday

2011-12-28T08:52:00.001-06:00

"Godburst" by Ann Weems

When the Holy Child is born into our hearts
there is a rain of stars
a rushing of angels
a blaze of candles
this God burst into our lives.

Love is running through the streets.

Christmas: Tuesday

2011-12-27T07:00:00.000-06:00

In him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

Christmas: Monday

2011-12-26T07:00:00.000-06:00

Good is the Flesh
by Brian Wren

Good is the flesh that the Word has become,
good is the birthing, the milk in the breast,
good is the feeding, caressing and rest,
good is the body for knowing the world,
Good is the flesh that the Word has become.

Good is the body for knowing the world,
sensing the sunlight, the tug of the ground,
feeling, perceiving, within and around,
good is the body, from cradle to grave,
Good is the flesh that the Word has become.

Good is the body, from cradle to grave,
growing and aging, arousing, impaired,
happy in clothing, or lovingly bared,
good is the pleasure of God in our flesh,
Good is the flesh that the Word has become.

Good is the pleasure of God in our flesh,
longing in all, as in Jesus, to dwell,
glad of embracing, and tasting, and smell,
good is the body, for good and for God,
Good is the flesh that the Word has become.

Christmas Day

2011-12-25T07:00:00.000-06:00

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.

-John 1:1-14

Christmas Eve

2011-12-24T07:00:00.000-06:00

When the church sings "O Come, O Come Emmanuel," we are singing a very old text and tradition. That Advent hymn illuminates each of the seven O Antiphons, which are ancient pieces of the evening vespers liturgy during the end of Advent. For each of the last seven days before Christmas, a different attribute or characteristic of Jesus for whom we wait is highlighted:

December 17: O Sapientia (O Wisdom)
December 18: O Adonai (O Lord)
December 19: O Radix Jesse (O Root of Jesse)
December 20: O Clavis David (O Key of David)
December 21: O Oriens (O Dayspring)
December 22: O Rex Gentium (O King of the nations)
December 23: O Emmanuel (O God-with-us)

The O Antiphons help us put voice to all of our Advent hopes and dreams, as we watch and wait and pray for Christ to come to us.

Maggie Dawn writes about the hidden message in the O Antiphons - that as we wait for Christ who is all these things, Christ promises us, "Tomorrow, I come!" And this is very good news for us. She goes on to tell us that,

Before you look forward for the answer to prayer, look backwards to the waiting. Somewhere, hidden in your conversation with God, even though it feels like a monologue, there is the whisper of an answer.

Tonight, as we celebrate the light of Christ being born into darkness, we remember that God's whisper of an answer to us is that in Christ is the light and life of all the world. Our whisper of an answer to our prayers is that Christ is come!

Advent 4: Friday

2011-12-23T09:37:00.000-06:00

Making the House Ready for the Lord
by Mary Oliver

Dear Lord, I have swept and I have washed but
Still nothing is as shining as it should be
for you. Under the sink, for example, is an
uproar of mice—it is the season of their
many children. What shall I do? And under the eaves
and through the walls the squirrels
have gnawed their ragged entrances—but it is the season
when they need shelter, so what shall I do? And
the raccoon limps into the kitchen and opens the cupboard
while the dog snores, the cat hugs the pillow;
what shall I do? Beautiful is the new snow falling
in the yard and the fox who is staring boldly
up the path, to the door. And still I believe you will
come, Lord: you will, when I speak to the fox
the sparrow, the lost dog, the shivering sea-goose, know
that really I am speaking to you whenever I say,
as I do all morning and afternoon: Come in, Come in.

Lord Jesus, Master of both the light and the darkness,
send your Holy Spirit upon our preparations for Christmas.
We who have so much to do seek quiet spaces to hear your voice each day.
We who are anxious over many things look forward to your coming among us.
We who are blessed in so many ways long for the complete joy of your kingdom.
We whose hearts are heavy seek the joy of your presence.
We are your people, walking in darkness, yet seeking the light. To you we say, “Come Lord Jesus!”
--Advent Prayer, Henri Nouwen

Advent 4: Thursday

2011-12-22T07:00:00.027-06:00

Anybody else feeling a little frazzled at this point in the season? A little out of proportion? A little overworked and overwhelmed? A little too behind on tasks...or a little too behind, emotionally? Maybe, if you're anything like me, the busyness of these last days before Christmas feels a little heavy and dark, like the short days and long nights of December itself.

The good news is that we have now passed through the darkest night of the year. Here, in the last week of Advent, we have crossed the longest night and we are slowly moving back into days that will be lighter and lighter, even as we look to the brightness of the star over Christ's manger and the brightness of Christ as our light.

As the dark awaits the dawn,
so we await your light.
O Star of promise, scatter night,
loving bright, loving bright
till shades of fear are gone.

As the blue expectant hour
before the silv’ring skies,
we long to see your day arise,
whole and wise, whole and wise,
O lucent Morning Star.

As the moon reflects the sun
until the night’s decrease,
may we your healing light release,
living peace, living peace,
unto your holy dawn.

Shine your future on this place,
enlighten ev’ry guest,
that through us stream your holiness,
bright and blest, bright and blest;
come dawn, O Sun of grace.
We await your light.

--Susan Palo Cherwien

Take heart, all who are feeling dark and cold. Night will indeed blossom into dawn. Wishing you all peace and hope as you await God's dawn in your own life.

Advent 4: Wednesday

2011-12-21T07:00:00.000-06:00

Gabriel's Message
Basque carol, paraphrased by Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924)
Originally based on Angelus Ad Virginem, Anonymous 13th or 14th Century Latin
performed by Sting

The angel Gabriel from heaven came
His wings as drifted snow his eyes as flame
"All hail" said he "thou lowly maiden Mary,
Most highly favored lady," Gloria!

"For know a blessed mother thou shalt be,
All generations laud and honor thee,
Thy Son shall be Emanuel, by seers foretold
Most highly favored lady," Gloria!

Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head
"To me be as it pleaseth God," she said,
"My soul shall laud and magnify his holy name."
Most highly favored lady. Gloria!

Advent 4: Tuesday

2011-12-20T07:00:00.000-06:00

Rick Morely writes a reflection on the "gutsy faith" of Mary. In it, he says,

Mary, in the annunciation, becomes the patroness, of all who are called by God to do impossible things. Of those who become embarrassments to their family and communities on behalf of God. She reminds us that the godly thing isn’t always the prim-and-proper thing. Sometimes when we answer God’s call, we become a laughingstock. Or, even worse, persecuted.

Mary took a risk on God. She risked her status, her dignity, her "normal life" in order to live out God's call. And in Luke's gospel, she articulates the depth of her faith in one simple statement: "Nothing is impossible with God."

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about "impossible things," and how they are such a part of our daily thoughts and feelings. "Impossible things" are

the questions about our ordinary lives for which we have no answers: why we fall ill or why loved ones suffer; why we can manage big accounts and complicated tasks at work but can't manage to get the dishes done and the house picked up; why we love whom we love or dislike whom we dislike.
the big things in our futures that seem insurmountable: big purchases that we want or need to make, such as houses or cars or healthcare; facing our own (or our loved ones') chronic or terminal illness; discerning where we will work or where we will live or how and when to start a family.
the dreams and hopes that seem too frivolous to consider, or too difficult to attain: being recognized for artistic talents or athletic skill; earning a promotion or landing your dream job; going back to school to finish your degree - or to earn another one; miracle cures; defying the odds.

Gabriel says to Mary, "Nothing is impossible with God."

Mary conceived Jesus by the Holy Spirit, Elizabeth bore a son in her old age (just like Sarah), Moses parted the Red Sea, Daniel escaped the jaws of the lions, Noah survived the flood, Jesus rose from the dead.

Part of having the "gutsy faith" that Morely talks about is taking the chance that this statement - "Nothing is impossible with God" - might actually be true. And not true in a trite sort of way - you know, trivializing our own hopes or the hopes of others with a quick "Nothing's impossible for God" and a shoulder shrug.

I'm talking about really really believing it. Believing that the God who did crazy and miraculous things back in Bible days still does crazy and miraculous things in our world. Faith really is about having the audacity to believe that things can change, that our world can be different, that God really acts in our lives, even when things seem improbable, crazy, or downright hopeless.

My own personal challenge right now is to walk my faith journey with greater confidence that these simple words - "Nothing is impossible with God" - are true, to invest my hope ever more deeply into the hands of a God who makes promise after promise to his people, to take a bigger risk on God, to be faithful, to be gutsy.

Who's with me?

Advent 4: Monday

2011-12-19T12:45:00.000-06:00

Annunciation
by Madeleine L'Engle

To the impossible: Yes!
Enter and penetrate
O Spirit. Come and bless
This hour: the star is late.
Only the absurdity of love
Can break the bonds of hate.

After Annunciation
by Madeleine L'Engle

This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason
There'd have been no room for the child.

Advent 4: Being at home with God

2011-12-18T12:00:00.003-06:00

Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the LORD: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, "Why have you not built me a house of cedar?" (2 Samuel 7:5-7)

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you." But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" The angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God." Then Mary said, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word." Then the angel departed from her.(Luke 1:26-38)
---
I think that Dorothy was onto something in the Wizard of Oz, when she said “There’s no place like home.”

Last night, as I turned out lights and moved toward bed, I paused in the middle of the living room for a moment, where all was dark except for the glow of the Christmas lights in the window. The room was clean and comfortable, with all the clutter stashed safely away in baskets and closets, save the box of crayons on the coffee table, and the drawing of a Christmas fireplace scene made by one of my nieces during the evening’s family get-together, which included carols by the piano and plenty of hot chocolate and cookies. I looked around the room and felt a warm “this is home” feeling in my heart.

Back in 2008, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, put out a video message for Advent. In it, he described the Advent themes of watching and waiting as “the longing to be at home with God again.” It’s quite a lovely phrase, “the longing to be at home with God again,” and it evokes warm and comforting feelings of our own beds, our childhood homes, and the safety and security of a slice of cinnamon toast. How many of us long to settle in with God in such a safe and warm way!

But Williams goes on to say more about God’s homecoming in Christ: “When Jesus comes into the life of the world,” he says, “it’s something unplanned, overwhelming, something that makes a colossal difference. We long for it, yet we don’t quite know what it’s going to involve.”

In other words, “being at home with God” is not the same thing as building God a permanent home of our own design.

In our first reading this morning, God scoffs at the idea of a residence being built for him. “Did I need a house for all of those years that you were wandering in the desert?” he asks. “Wasn’t I with you, even in the wilderness? And did I once ask for a permanent home with a solid roof and a warm bed?”

David doesn’t get to build God a house. Likewise, we don’t get to choose where or how God makes his home among us. We don’t choose walls for him, or boxes. We don’t get to wrap him up and tie a neat bow around him. God makes his own home among us, taking up residence of his own accord, moving and stirring in the world as his Spirit chooses, even in the unlikeliest of places.

Take Mary, for example. God, through the Holy Spirit, chooses to take up temporary residence in the belly of a teenage girl. Pretty inconvenient. Pretty controversial. Pretty unthinkable.

There is nothing predictable or tidy about God choosing to become incarnate - choosing to become God-in-the-flesh - through human birth via teenage girl. For Mary, the Spirit’s stirring is a messy business. How will she explain her pregnancy to Joseph? And how will the unmarried couple explain the pregnancy to their families and villages? Mary’s life is now taken over by planning for a baby, and enduring all of the physical ups and downs of pregnancy, and sorting out the crazy news that this baby is the Son of God. Not to mention the fact that she will end up having her baby while traveling far from home, and out in a stable, at that! Everything about the situation is irrational, messy, confusing, and disconcertingly open-ended. And yet Mary still says, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

I think of Madeleine L’Engle’s short poem, “After Annunciation,” which says,

This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason
There’d have been no room for the child.

There is nothing reasonable about the way that God chose to come to earth. And there is nothing resonable about the way that God continues to work in the world. When the Holy Spirt stirs in our own bellies, there is no telling where that Spirit will lead. Things might get messy. Things might feel uncertain or incomplete. We might not feel that we have a clear picture of the way forward, or of the end results of God’s leading.

Maybe you’re like me, and this news makes you more than a little nervous. I am, by nature, a pretty rational and ordered person. My first two activities every Monday morning are 1) to tidy up my office, since Sunday mornings always leave behind a serious mess, and 2) to make my to-do list for the week, organizing my tasks so that I don’t forget anything. I like things to happen in reasonable ways, logical ways, nice, neat, ordered ways. I would much prefer to build God a house of my own making so that I could always know his comings and goings.

But God’s Spirit will have none of that. God moves and acts and lives in the world in wild and amazing ways. The Holy Spirit stirs in us when God dwells in our hearts, and this stirring rarely comes with a nice, neat, logically-ordered plan. Had Mary been filled with reason, there’d have been no room for the child.

I sometimes wonder if our hearts don’t look very much like our garages, our attics, or that one closet in the back of the house that no one’s allowed to open. Don’t we all fill our hearts and minds with an entire flea market’s worth of worries, hopes, burdens, and dreams? When we talk about “carrying the weight of the world” on our shoulders, can’t we actually feel the weight of all of our thoughts and feelings as they lean upon our physical bodies? Some of the clutter in our hearts and minds are things foisted upon us - illness, rejection, fear, loss. Some of the clutter are things that we choose for ourselves in hopes of determining our destiny or keeping our vulnerability at bay. Our hearts are filled with worries and woes, reasons and reasoning away.

What are those things that are cluttering up your own heart and soul? What are the worries or distractions that are filling you up, leaving no room for God to take up residence? What are the doubts or fears that keep you from opening the door of your heart to the movement of God’s Spirit?

The challenge of Advent - and the challenge of faith - is to settle into God’s open-ended future for us.

Mary said “yes” to God’s call before she knew the end of the story. And as it turns out, the end of the story is that her firstborn son, Jesus, is the one who healed the sick, tended the poor, taught the people about God’s love, gave up his own life for the sake of the world, and rose from the dead to break the power of death forever.

Christ in the manger assures us that our longing to be at home with God has been fulfilled, that the home of God is truly among mortals, that he is our God and we are his people. Because of this good news, we can open up our cluttered hearts to the stirring of God’s spirit - wherever and however that spirit leads us, to the unlikelest corners of the world, to all those places where God leads us to be his hands and feet in the world. Because we, with Mary, can trust that the unruly wind of the Spirit will ultimately lead us to God’s hope and joy. And so we, too, can say “yes” to God, even when we do not know the end of his story for us on this earth.

We cannot make a neat and tidy home of cedar for God to live in, but we can make our own hearts hospitable to God when he blows through the door. This is what being at home with God is all about.

As Mary Oliver’s poem “Making the House Ready for the Lord” says,

Dear Lord, I have swept and I have washed but
Still nothing is as shining as it should be
for you. Under the sink, for example, is an
uproar of mice—it is the season of their
many children. What shall I do? And under the eaves
and through the walls the squirrels
have gnawed their ragged entrances—but it is the season
when they need shelter, so what shall I do? And
the raccoon limps into the kitchen and opens the cupboard
while the dog snores, the cat hugs the pillow;
what shall I do? Beautiful is the new snow falling
in the yard and the fox who is staring boldly
up the path, to the door. And still I believe you will
come, Lord: you will, when I speak to the fox
the sparrow, the lost dog, the shivering sea-goose, know
that really I am speaking to you whenever I say,
as I do all morning and afternoon: Come in, Come in.

Being at home with God might be unpredictable, and the stirring of God’s Spirit might be irrational and uncomfortable, but we, with Mary, are told, “Do not be afraid, for you have found favor with God.”

All that is left for us to do is to say back to God, “Here am I. Welcome. Come in, come in.”

Advent 4: Sunday

2011-12-18T07:04:00.002-06:00

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for you, Lord, have looked with favor on your lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed;
you, the Almighty, have done great things for me,
and holy is your name.
You have mercy on those who fear you,
from generation to generation.
You have shown strength with your arm;
and scattered the proud in their conceit,
casting down the mighty from their thrones
and lifting up the lowly.
You have filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
You have come to the aid of your servant Israel,
to remember the promise of mercy,
the promise made to our forebears,
to Abraham and his children forever.
-Luke 1:46b-52

Advent 3: Saturday

2011-12-17T07:00:00.000-06:00

Patrick Oden, in his reflection "A Way in a Manger", reminds us that incarnation (God-in-the-flesh) is a messy business, and that the scandal of the incarnation is that God would choose to come as a human - a fully human human.

[When things are messy or frustrating], that’s precisely the place where God enters in, joining with us, bringing life and hope. When it is messy, when it is loud, when everything seems out of hand, God is with us, incarnated among us, joining together in our struggles right when they seem the most overwhelming. We don’t ignore the struggles. We look for the God who became a baby in the midst of a messy, awkward, frustrating manger. Because we know this incarnation means all things are made new.

Advent 3: Friday

2011-12-16T07:00:00.001-06:00

This is from a few years ago - a video message from Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, giving his reflections on Advent. It's about ten minutes long, and well worth watching. With one week left in Advent, what are you still waiting for? What are you still longing for? Can you still find space and quiet to reflect on what your life will look like when Jesus makes his home in the manger and in our hearts once again?

Advent 3: Thursday

2011-12-15T07:00:00.000-06:00

Emmanuel
by Angela Alaimo O'Donnell

From the cave of darkness
a baby comes to light.

In the nick of time,
eternity tonight.

In a world of error
a perfect child is birthed.

In the midst of terror,
peace arrives on earth.

In the chill of winter
dawns this blazing son.

To a world of sinners
comes this sinless one.

In a land of chaos
speaks this single Word

whose voice can raise the dead,
whose promise can be heard.

Even as he cries
sleepers stir beneath the sod

for nothing is impossible
with God.

Advent 3: Wednesday

2011-12-14T07:00:00.001-06:00

Prophets
by Anne Porter

Once in the Advent season	They scraped up all the ashes
When I was walking down	And with them decorated
A narrow street	Each other’s faces
.	.
I met a flock of children	Then they ran back to me
Who all came running up to me	And stood
Saying that they were prophets	In a circle ‘round me
And for a penny they	.
Would prophesy	We stood that way
.	In a solemn silence
I gave them each a penny	Until
.	One of the children spoke
They started out	.
By rummaging in trash-cans	It was the prophecy!
Until they found	.
A ragged piece of silk	He said that long before
.	The pear tree blossoms
It’s blue, they said	Or sparrows in the hedges
Blue is a holy color	Begin to sing
Blue is the color that	.
The mountains are	A Child will be our King.
When they are far away
.
They laid the rag
On a small fire
Of newspaper and shavings
And burned it in the street

Advent 3: Tuesday

2011-12-13T09:15:00.002-06:00

The strange good news of our faith is that incarnation (God-in-the-flesh) is about weakness rather than strength:

God comes into the world as a baby. Naked and needy. That’s the way the Christian story goes. That’s a significant revelation. And it’s maybe not all that comfortable for us. God doesn’t come to the world looking big and self-sufficient and simple and coherent, like an answer or a moral absolute, but looking weak and hungry, totally dependent on his mother. That’s what babies are like. They can’t propel themselves. They can’t even focus their eyes. Helpless is not a bad word for what a baby is. God comes into the world as a baby. That is a subversion of how we might expect the almighty God to come.

This hasn’t always immediately struck everyone as good news. Ever since people heard this story, there’s been a tendency to think it might be better to have a God that never really shared the weakness of the flesh. A God that never really shared our weakness, our blood, our bones, our need. But whenever that tendency surfaced, the community looked back over everything and said, you can’t get away from it. The Christian story is a story about God become human: fully human, fully God. You may choose another story, but then it’s not this one.

-Debbie Blue, From Stone to Living Word: Letting the Bible Live Again (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2008), pp. 121-122.

Advent 3: Monday

2011-12-12T08:10:00.000-06:00

"With eyes of faith which look backward through the years we, too, see the angels and hear their heavenly song. We kneel at the manger-cradle to behold and adore the child. Dare we ask what this vision means? ...In spite of all our fears, and all the dismal signs, and all the disheartening facts that confront us in a world at war – a world where force is the God of nations, and cruelty is a virtue – still the message rings down the ages telling us that these things need not be...."

- Bates G. Burt, from his sermon on Christmas morning, 1940

Prayer for Peace
(text: Abbie Burt Betinis/Bates G. Burt)

Peace, the breath of peace is near, it calms and cheers,
As we, with eyes of faith, look backward through the years...
Peace, it was the Angels' song when He was born,
Peace and Good-will to all, they sang, on Christmas morn.

Gloria! Et in terra pax!

Lovely, oh so lovely, the reflected star,
The star of Hope in every eye that sought so far...
Far, they sought to love him: Bethl'hem, Calvary...
That from their want and fear all people shall be free.

Gloria! Et in terra pax!

Softly, o'er the snow so softly comes the sign,
A better peace descends to us at Christmastime.
Softly, o'er the snow so softly, then is gone –
So we wait in hope, and fear, to see our century dawn.

Gloria! Et in terra pax!

Angels, o'er the broken, spread your silver wings,
And help us to keep sacred all the love He brings.

- text © Abbie B. Betinis, 2004

Advent 3: Sunday

2011-12-11T07:16:00.000-06:00

The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn.
For as the earth brings forth its shoots,
and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up,
so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise
to spring up before all the nations.
-Isaiah 61:1-2, 11

Advent 2: Saturday

2011-12-10T07:13:00.002-06:00

"In the darkness, something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it . . .

Then two wonders happened at the same moment.

One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale; cold, tingling, silvery voices.

The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars. They didn’t come out gently one by one as on a summer evening. One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out . . .

If you had seen and heard it, as Digory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing.”

-C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew, Collier Books, New York, pp. 98-99

Advent 2: Friday

2011-12-09T12:17:00.000-06:00

One more "waiting for light and comfort" sort of post: Coldplay's song, "Christmas Lights."

Christmas night, another fight
Tears we cried a flood
Got all kinds of poison in
Poison in my blood

I took my feet
To Oxford Street
Trying to right a wrong
Just walk away
Those windows say
But I can't believe she's gone

When you're still waiting for the snow to fall
Doesn't really feel like Christmas at all

Up above candles on air flicker
Oh they flicker and they float
But I'm up here holding on
To all those chandeliers of hope

Like some drunken Elvis singing
I go singing out of tune
Saying how I always loved you darling
And I always will

Oh when you're still waiting for the snow to fall
Doesn't really feel like Christmas at all

Still waiting for the snow to fall
It doesn't really feel like Christmas at all

Those Christmas lights
Light up the street
Down where the sea and city meet
May all your troubles soon be gone
Oh Christmas lights keep shining on

Those Christmas lights
Light up the street
Maybe they'll bring her back to me
Then all my troubles will be gone
Oh Christmas lights keep shining on

Oh Christmas lights
Light up the street
Light up the fireworks in me
May all your troubles soon be gone
Those Christmas lights keep shining on

Advent 2: Thursday

2011-12-08T09:00:00.002-06:00

In a post to the On Being Blog a little more than a week ago, Debra Dean Murphy invites us to see Advent as a time for doubt and struggle, recognizing Advent as

the ancient, autumnal interval of darkness and foreboding with its achy uncertainty blanketing landscapes both inner and outer. This [type of] Advent offers room for doubt and struggle. It grants permission to rest in — rather than to resolve — the tensions and paradoxes, the sometimes maddening contradictions that shape the life of discipleship.

As the days continue to get shorter and the nights longer, it is easy to slip into the lonely places in our minds and hearts, where we find ourselves listening to the voices that tell us stories about the worst parts of ourselves and our world. This is far from a joyous place. At best, we might find ourselves in a contemplative state of melancholy, and at worst, a state of fear, anxiety, and despair.

I'm not urging anyone to depress themselves or poke at emotional bruises, of course. But I am willing to agree with Debra that the dark days of Advent give us permission to recognize the darkness in our own lives, without feeling any shame or guilt. Especially in the midst of a world that, at this point in December, has already worked itself into a frenzy of holiday cheer, Advent gives us permission to linger with the darkness, especially when we are dealing with struggles that keep us from embracing the pervasive encouragement to be merry, jolly, and filled with the Christmas spirit.

Because if you look at our Isaiah text from last Sunday, you'll realize that God's good news comes most readily to people who have suffered. God's light shines most brightly in the land of deep darkness, to paraphrase another famous passage from Isaiah. If you look through the Old Testament, and especially through the words of the prophets, you will find that

The God spoken of in these ancient texts is saving a people and redeeming all of creation. In this work we sense, with Flannery O’Connor, that “grace must wound before it heals.”

In John the Baptist's call for repentance and in Isaiah's charge to comfort God's people, we find this same sentiment: that God's word of grace in Christ Jesus does not come to remind us that we are joyful, secure, and comfortable, but to bring joy, security, and comfort to those exact places in our lives where those things are absent.

Martin Luther believed that true faith could only come from a despairing soul, one that had seen the dark and then received the light. Perhaps this is what Advent is all about.

Advent 2: Wednesday

2011-12-07T07:00:00.001-06:00

While I was growing up, it was about this time every year that my sisters and I would camp out at church on a Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon, while my father rehearsed a giant choir (that my mother sang in) to perform the first section of Handel's Messiah.

If you are at all familiar with Handel's Messiah, then it must have been impossible for you to hear last Sunday's Old Testament reading - the opening verses of Isaiah 40 - without hearing a tenor's voice ringing in your head.

I was thinking today about the amazing choice that Handel made when he decided to open his oratorio with the words "Comfort ye." Here we have a major choral and orchestral work that chronicles the birth, life, death, and resurrection of our Messiah, Jesus Christ...and the first thing that Handel decides you need to hear are the words "Comfort ye."

What a beautiful theological statement. For whatever else Jesus is, he is our comforter. For whatever else we look for Jesus to do and be, he is the one who will change the direction of the world, making the high low and the low high, making the crooked straight, making the rough places smooth. Handel lets the tenor be that "voice crying in the wilderness," to proclaim to all who might listen that God is about to do a new thing, changing the world, bringing comfort to aching souls and changing the fortunes of all humanity.

The purpose of the coming of the Messiah, as prophesied by Isaiah, as composed by Handel, and in the words of a number of social activists and religious leaders, might indeed be "to comfort the afflicted, and to afflict the comfortable."

In this Advent, may you find comfort in all of your rough places, and may God shake things up for you in your comfortable places, that you may know the true good news of Jesus, bringer of both comfort and justice.

(And just so I can get a little Handel stuck in you head, here are two videos, one of the opening tenor recitative and one of the aria. You have to get over the fact that the tenor soloist looks a little like Woody Harrelson... But he has a beautiful voice. Worth the listen. Also, pay attention to the astute and beautiful commentary that accompanies the musical selections. Some great things are said in the way of introduction!)

Advent 2: Tuesday

2011-12-06T12:28:00.000-06:00

Here is an amazing sermon by Nadia Bolz-Weber (aka "Sarcastic Lutheran") that you absolutely must read.

Mark 1:1-8
The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, "See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:'Prepare the way of the Lord,make his paths straight.'" John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

So, in the spirit of full disclosure I feel you should know that I am not now, nor have I ever been, a crazy street corner preacher who waves her Bible wildly while shouting red faced at passer-bys, "Repent!" This may come as a shock. And I’m not ruling it out as a possible career move in the future. But (for now) as an outsider to the crazy street corner preacher world, I must say I feel for those guys. Because what could their success rate possibly be? I mean, does shouting, "Repent!" at people actually work? Just speaking for myself, never once has my life changed because a crazy guy with a sign yelled at me from a street corner.

I mention this because it feels like maybe John the Baptist was the first and last successful crazy street corner preacher. And given the success he had, you know, with all of Judea and Jerusalem coming to partake in his baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, I wonder what the guy said exactly? Why did so many people come to him for his baptism? Because bless their hearts, but our modern street corner preachers who hold signs that say “repent” don’t have near the same results at all.

Maybe you feel like I do, namely that when I hear a preacher shouting “repent” what I really hear is he or she saying, "Stop being bad. Start being good or else God’s gonna be real mad at you." Which feels like more of a threat than anything else. That just never works on me. Who wants their spiritual arm twisted until they cry Uncle?...it’s like...religious bullying.

And I just can’t imagine that it was religious bullying which brought all of Judea and Jerusalem to be baptized by John. I mean, fear and threat can create change in behavior. No question about it. But it doesn’t really change your thinking. Threats don’t change your heart.

For that kind of change - change in thinking and change of heart - it takes truth and promise. Namely, truth and promise that are external to us and that come only from God reaching into the graves we dig ourselves and bringing out new life. Because if repentance comes from something other than an external word of truth about who you are and who God is, it’s not repentance. It’s self-improvement.

And I’m pretty sure that what happened that day by the banks of the Jordon was more than just a massive wave of self-improvement.

So if John came preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins then maybe it wasn’t so much so that sinners would confess and stop being bad. Maybe it was so that all would hear the truth about this God who comes near to us in the person of Jesus Christ - not so that we might be good but that we might be new. John says to them, "Prepare the way of the Lord. Get ready for something new. Because there is one who is coming who will change everything."

And the way in which John the Baptist prepares the people for the Gospel is by making room for it through washing away their old ideas and expectations. The untruth and sin and shame and all competing identities float away in the Jordon because the real thing is finally here. Because in Jesus, God is doing a new thing, not to make us good but to make us new. See, I believe it was the truth and promise of this Gospel and not religious bullying that compelled repentance and new life from the people of Judea

For this reason I love that Mark’s gospel opens with: The beginning of the Gospel (that is, the Good news) of Jesus Christ Son of God. If it had been titled the beginning of the Good Short Story of Jesus Christ Son of God then it would not be news. What makes it news is that it is something new that is external to us that we have to be told. It is news because it is not anything we could or would ever come up with ourselves. Because any truth that I generate from within me simply doesn’t have the power to save me.

A couple years ago I had a conversation with a family member who is non-religious. “I just don’t really need anything outside of myself to give me meaning or comfort” she said. “Really?” I answered. “I desperately need something outside of myself because if this is all there is...well, I can’t think of anything more depressing.” I need an external interruption. and I need it a heck of a lot more than I need self-improvement. Because I can actually change my behavior on my own. It’s my thinking and my heart that only God can redeem.

So this week I began to wonder if maybe repentance is giving up on the idea that we can redeem ourselves. Maybe true repentance involves surrender more than it involves self-improvement. Kind of like how the practice of kneeling in church has military origins - namely, that it was a posture of surrender...as in, you can’t fight if you’re kneeling. And this kind of surrender, the kind we see in forgiven sinners in the waters of the Jordon, only comes from hearing the truth of who we are and the truth of who God is.

Repentance – in Greek it means something closer to “thinking differently afterwards” than it means change your cheating ways. Of course, repentance CAN look like a prostitute becoming a librarian but repentance can also look like a whore saying, "Ok I’m a sex worker and I have no idea how to get out but I can come here and receive bread and wine and maybe if only for a moment I can hold onto the love of God without being deemed worthy of it by anyone but God." Repentance is a con artist being a real person for the first time ever, without knowing who that person is anymore but knowing he sees it in the eyes of those serving him communion, naming him a Child of God. Repentance is realizing there is more life to be had in being proved wrong than in continuing to think you’re right. Repentance is the adult child of an fundamentalist saying "I give up on waiting for my mom to love me for who I am so I’m gonna rely on God to help me love her for who she is because I know she’s not going to be around forever." Repentance is unexpected beauty after a failed suicide attempt. Repentance is a couple weeks ago when the clerk at the Adult bookstore on Colfax teared up and said “Your church brought me thanksgiving lunch?”. Repentance is what happened to me when at the age of 28 my first community college teacher told me I was smart and despite all my past experience of myself I believed her. See, repentance is what happens to us when the Good News, the truth of who we are and who God is, enters our lives and scatters the darkness of competing ideas.

For it is the external truth of God that liberates you from the bondage of self. This is what the daily return to baptism looks like. It is like the arm of God reaches in to rip out your own heart and replace it with God’s own. The Gospel is like your own emancipation proclamation. Every time you hear the absolution – that you are forgiven, every time you hear that Christ has come into the world to change everything, every time you hear that you are a child of God and that this is God’s very own body broken and poured out for you. Every time these external words of good news enter your ears they scatter the darkness of competing claims. And to be sure, all of it is the Beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ Son of God. Amen.

Advent 2: Monday

2011-12-05T11:47:00.002-06:00

The God We Hardly Knew
by Oscar Romero

No one can celebrate
a genuine Christmas
without being truly poor.
The self-sufficient, the proud,
those who, because they have
everything, look down on others,
those who have no need
even of God- for them there
will be no Christmas.
Only the poor, the hungry,
those who need someone
to come on their behalf,
will have that someone.
That someone is God.
Emmanuel. God-with-us.
Without poverty of spirit
there can be no abundance of God.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Advent 2: Six words

2011-12-04T12:00:00.002-06:00

Comfort, O comfort my people,says your God.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the LORD's hand double for all her sins.

A voice cries out: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken."

A voice says, "Cry out!" And I said, "What shall I cry?"

All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.
(Isaiah 40:1-8)

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,"See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,'" John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
(Mark 1:1-4)
---
Legend has it that novelist Ernest Hemmingway was once asked to write a full story that was only six words long. His response was, “For sale, baby shoes, never worn.”

In those six words, a beginning, a middle, and an end. He tells you exactly what you need to know, and nothing that you don’t need to know. Many others have tried this same exercise, with a variety of results:

“I still make coffee for two.”

“The psychic said I’d be richer.”

“Finally, he had no more words.”

Mark begins his gospel in similar fashion: The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Yes, I know. It’s thirteen words long. But still. Give the man some credit. The first line of his gospel tells the whole story of Jesus, the whole plot of his gospel, in one compact sentence fragment that doesn’t even contain a verb. Unlike Matthew, who begins his gospel with a full geneology of Jesus’ ancestry; unlike Luke, who begins his gospel by explaining to Theophilus that he is setting out to write an orderly account of Jesus’ life and ministry; unlike John who writes an entire prologue to his gospel, musing about light and life; Mark just jumps right in. “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God,” he proclaims, and then immediately drops us into the middle of the desert, next to a crazy baptizer munching on bugs and honey, who tells us, “Repent, believe, and be baptized.”

And that’s it. All you need to know. Jesus Christ is Son of God. Believe it.

I’ll admit, the opening of Mark’s gospel feels decidedly un-Christmasy. He doesn’t tell us any details of Jesus’ birth. No stables, no stars, no shepherds, no angels. He doesn’t wax poetic about Christ as the light who will enlighten the world. He doesn’t talk about Mary or Gabriel or Elizabeth.

Far removed from the warm fuzzy Christmas stories that we prefer to tell this season, Mark and John the Baptist and the prophet Isaiah cut right to the true - and uncomfortable! - story of human existence: we live in a fleeting world where life is fragile; vulnerable. “All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades; surely the people are grass.” The real story is that we yet “wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.” The real story is that we are still wandering in the wilderness, in need of repentance and forgiveness of our sins.

But over and against the real story of our existence, Mark offers us the real good news that Jesus is Son of God, our savior, who broke through the heavens and came to earth with full power and full grace. This Son of God came to tell us that we have served our term, that our penalty is paid, that the time of uncertainty and suffering is over.

As Christians, Advent and Christmas are really about this true story of our brokenness and of Jesus Christ, Son of God, our savior. We are called to give voice to this good news, and share it as a life-giving alternative to the other holiday stories that we hear all around us - which at best are full of shepherds and angels, holiday generosity, or family traditions, and which at worst are full of stuff, consumption, bustle, and stress.

But here’s the thing: To all who suffer illness, fear, and unemployment this season, the world’s stories offer no true word of comfort. For those who grieve, who struggle, and who doubt themselves or their faith, the world’s stories have little power to heal and restore.

But our story of faith, our thirteen-word story of “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God” is a life-giving story. We proclaim a Christ who is more than a cute baby in a manger, who is powerful and compassionate, who saves his people. We tell the story of Jesus, who comes to us, again and again, in our darkest nights, our longest waits, and our messiest moments - to bind us up in his grace in love.

If you hadn’t noticed, this morning’s readings are all about voices. Isaiah talks of a voice crying in the wilderness, a voice called to “cry out” Mark starts off his gospel with his own voice, proclaiming Christ as God’s Son. John the Baptist appears on the scene as the voice saying, “prepare the way of the Lord.” And Advent is about finding and preparing our own voices to share God’s good news with the world, bringing light to dark places and bringing a smooth way to rough paths.

In the novel, The Magician’s Nephew, C.S. Lewis also talks about a voice, rising in the darkness to bring light:

In the darkness, something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it . . . Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale; cold, tingling, silvery voices. The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars. They didn’t come out gently one by one as on a summer evening. One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out . . . If you had seen and heard it, as Digory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing.” (C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew, Collier Books, New York, pp. 98-99).

In this Advent darkness, have you heard the First Voice? Have you heard the deepest call of your faith? Then it is time to let your light shine, and to let your voice sing out. It is time to add your voice to Mark’s, to Isaiah’s, and to John the Baptist’s. It is time to shout to out that Jesus came as saving love for our unravled world. This is a message that cannot wait for a perfect time or opportune moment. This is a message that needs to rush into the world. We can’t wait until the perfect time to raise our songs, and we can’t put off shouting God’s good news from the rafters until it is a more convenient time. The time is now.

Take heart! It doesn’t take many words to tell this story! Mark proves to us that good news can be shared in thirteen words or less. Hemmingway tells us that a whole story can be told in six words or less.

So what is your story? What story of hope is God asking you to tell? What is your own six-word story of good news?

Perhaps, with Isaiah, your six-word story of good news is “Comfort my people, says your God.”

Perhaps, with John, your six-word story of good news is, “Repent, for Christ is at hand.”

Perhaps, with Mark, your six-word story is, “Good news: Jesus is God’s Son!”

I tried my hand at it and came up with, “We wait. Christ comes. Hope prevails.”

You should try your hand at it, too. Find a moment today to scribble down God’s good news for you and for the world in six words. Channel Mark, and figure out how to tell God’s story in one compact sentence.

And then find ways to share your six-word gospel. Share them with your family around the dinner table, or write them in your Christmas cards. Stick them up as your Facebook status, or record them as your voicemail greeting. If you are the creative type, make them into bumper stickers or put them on t-shirts or write them on Christmas tree ornaments.

But whatever you do, go out there and share them! Because God’s good news for weary souls is not just for us. God’s good news is for everyone, the whole world over. In the midst of all of the stories that you tell this season, may you, in faith, be empowered to share the heart of the gospel message - the real story of redemption: that Advent is just the beginning of the good news that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, our savior.

A a voice says to each of us “Cry out!” And the only question left for us to answer is, “What will we cry?”

Advent 2: Sunday

2011-12-04T07:00:00.001-06:00

Advent 1: Saturday

2011-12-03T08:53:00.002-06:00

Keeping with this week's themes of silence and waiting, a quote from Frederick Buechner:

In the silence of a midwinter dusk, there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen. . . You are aware of the beating of your heart…

The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment.

Advent is like that moment at the top of the roller coaster, when you come over the crest and stop - however briefly - before rushing onward into the thrill. Advent is like the nearly imperceptible moment between inhaling and exhaling, when all breathing stops, just for a fraction of a second. Advent the feeling of being suspended, weightless, breathless, still.

Amidst the bustling world - our everyday tasks, our preparations, our decorating, our shopping - our peculiar joy as people of faith is to stop and to be still, in the quiet of our hearts, claiming sanctuary from the whirling motion of life to indulge the "extraordinary moment just before [something] happens."

Wishing you stillness and peace today, and throughout your Advent journey.

Advent 1: Friday

2011-12-02T07:00:00.001-06:00

In silent night, when all is calm and all is bright,
In silent night, O holy night,
The Baby from heaven is born on this night.
The Child, innocent Child is born.

In silent night, as darkness flies and all is light
In silent night, O holy night,
The Baby in radiance lay sleep on this night.
The Child, the holy Child is born.

In silent night, this Son of God and son of man
Shall one day cry and later die
Upon a cross for you and me.
The Child, the Prince of Peace, is born.

--"In Silent Night" by Mitchell B. Southall

Advent 1: Thursday

2011-12-01T07:00:00.001-06:00

There are plenty of catchy songs out there that stick in your brain for hours and even days after you listen to them. Some of these songs are great and you are happy for them to run on repeat in your head. Others are horrible and you do everything in your power to will their words and melodies away.

One of the good songs that gets stuck in my head whenever I listen to it is a song called "Dark Blue" by Jack's Mannequin. In it, he sings:

Slow down...this night's a perfect shade of
Dark blue, dark blue
Have you ever been alone in a crowded room when I'm here with you
I said the world could be burning down
Dark blue dark blue
Have you ever been alone in a crowded room well I'm here with you
I said the world could be burning 'til there's nothing but dark blue...
Just dark blue

This song, I suppose, could be a theme song for the season of Advent. After all, the church dresses up in blue for Advent and we talk a lot about darkness and blueness and waiting.

Why blue, you might ask? Here is one answer to that question:

At seven o’clock on a Monday morning in early December, two young children take their place at the breakfast table. Heat rises from their bowls of oatmeal and cups of hot chocolate, teasing their still-sleepy eyes awake. The younger child looks upward and notices the view out a high window. The sky is an inky blue, a deep indigo, and the silhouette of a great tree in the cuts across the almost emerging dawn as a rough black stripe. “Mom,” he says, suddenly alert, “look at the sky. It’s the same color as the Advent candles!”

In Advent, we turn our eyes upward. The smoky blue threshold of night that blankets North America during these weeks can feel oppressive, so that emotionally we may feel “blue.” But this vast celestial canopy can also inspire awe. Advent blue marks this tension between our own smallness, our sleepiness, our vulnerable place in the cosmos and the way the heavenly promise of redemption stirs and quickens us. As the scriptures urge us to “keep awake,” we respond with vigilance.

excerpted from “Environment and Art for the Season [of Advent],” Sundays and Seasons 2002, Year A, (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 2001), p. 25. (ht: Clayfire Curator blog)

Here is another answer:

But still, why not red? Everyone else is using red, including most churches. Red is our culture’s go-to color. Red symbolizes heat, fire, blood, passion, love, warmth, power, excitement and aggression. Researchers say it can elevate blood pressure and respiratory rates. It has the effect of stimulating people to make quick decisions and increase expectations. Red is an attention grabber. Words and objects in red capture people ‘s attention immediately. Red is an emotionally intense and very extreme color.

Blue, by contrast, is more complicated, the experts say. Blue represents solitude, sadness, and depression–Blue Monday–but it also signifies wisdom, trust and loyalty. Wearing blue to job interviews, they say, indicates dedication and loyalty. Blue relaxes our nervous system, while red excites it. Blue has a sobering effect on the mind and can cause people to be more contemplative, which is the opposite of our reaction to red. Peaceful, tranquil blue, is a good color for bedrooms, causing the body to produce calming chemicals. Darker shades of blue, however, can feel cold and depressing.

So, what is the Church trying to tell us by using the color blue–lighter shades of blue, to be sure–during the Season of Advent? In a word, hope! In two words: divine hope!

At the outset of the Advent season, the church “hopes for more than we have yet seen.” Think about this. There is a profound difference in the message we have to deliver in this season of the year, versus the predominant message of our culture. To be sure, both church and culture look to the coming of Christmas and say, Jesus has come! But only the Church looks to this annual celebration and says, Christ will come again! To deliver this startling message, we need all the resources we can command–both sight and sound.

Sid Burgess, excerpted from “Blue vs. Red,” a sermon for the 1st Sunday of Advent, December 1, 2002, Edgewood Presbyterian Church, Birmingham, AL. (ht: Clayfire Curator blog)

Here is wishing you a dark blue Advent, full of days where you slow down, where you feel alone in crowded rooms, where the world is the perfect shade of dark blue for you to hope for far more than you have yet seen.

Advent 1: Wednesday

2011-11-30T05:22:00.002-06:00

Ian Morgan Cron has written an intriguing blog post titled, "Is Jesus Just Background Music in Your Life?" He wonders out loud about whether there is so much Jesus "background noise" in our lives that we lose hold of the intrigue and mystery of who Jesus really is.

Cron quotes Max Picard’s The World of Silence, in which he writes,

Today, when there is only noise in and around man, it is difficult to approach the mystery. When the layer of silence is missing, the extraordinary easily becomes connected with the ordinary, with the routine flow of things, and man reduces the extraordinary to a mere part of the mechanical routine.

Advent is a time for shutting out the background noise, even background noise about Jesus. Advent is a time for honing in and really listening to the genius in the music, so to speak, of the crazy, improbable, life-giving story of God's divine power breaking through the sky and coming to rest in a manger.

This Advent, what are you going to do to preserve your layer of silence? How are you going to keep enough space between yourself and the noise of Christmas preparations that you can focus on the mystery of God-made flesh?

Advent 1: Tuesday

2011-11-29T09:05:00.003-06:00

There Was a Time: An Advent Poem

by Fr. Joseph Breighner

There was a time when there was no time,

When darkness reigned as king,

When a formless void was all that there was

in the nothingness of eternity,

When it was night.

But over the void and over the night Love watched.

There was a time when time began.

It began when Love spoke.

Time began for light and life, for splendor and grandeur.

Time began for seas and mountains, for flowers and birds.

Time began for the valleys to ring with the songs of life,

and for the wilderness to echo with the wailing of wind

and howling of animals.

And over the earth, Love watched.

There was a time when time began to be recorded.

A time when Love breathed and a new creature came to life.

A new creature so special that it was in the image and likeness of Love

Of Love who is God.

And so man was born and the dawn of a new day shone on the world.

And over man, Love watched.

But there came a time when the new day faded.

A time when man who was like God tried to be God.

A time when the creature challenged the creator.

A time when man preferred death to life and darkness to light.

And so the new day settled into twilight.

And over the darkness, Love watched.

There was a time of waiting in the darkness.

A time when man waited in the shadows,

And all creation groaned in sadness.

There was waiting for Love to speak again--for Love to breathe again.

And kings and nations and empires rose and faded in the shadows.

And Love waited and watched.

Finally, there came a time when Love spoke again.

A Word from eternity--a Word

Spoken to a girl who belonged to a people not known by the world

Spoken to a girl who belonged to a family not known by her people

To a girl named Mary.

And all creation waited in hushed silence for the girl's answer.

And Mary spoke her yes.

And Love watched over Mary.

And so there came a time when Love breathed again

When Love breathed new life into Mary's yes.

And a new day dawned for the World

A day when light returned to darkness, when life returned to dispel death

And so a day came when Love became man--a mother bore a child.

And Love watched over Love--a Father watched His Son.

And, lastly, there came a time when you and I became a part of time.

Now is the time that you and I wait.

Now we wait to celebrate what the world waited for.

And as we wait to celebrate what was at one time, we become a part of that time

A time when a new dawn and a new dream and a new creation began for man.

And as a part of time, Love waits and Love watches over us.

Advent 1: Monday

2011-11-28T07:00:00.000-06:00

As I sat in church yesterday, peering through the windows behind the organ at the gray sky and bare tree branches, I thought to myself "I am not ready for Advent to be here already."

I love Advent. It is my favorite church season. Advent elements of watching, waiting, and hoping in the dark resonate with my own faith and my own personality. I adore Advent hymns and their imagery of dark and light, night and dawn, God's now and God's not yet. I think there is nothing prettier than a sanctuary dressed up in twilight blue, full of candles, dark but warm, with cold air blowing outside.

More than that, I enjoy preparing for Christmas. I can't wait to put up our Christmas tree, to string lights around our windows, to replace our usual trinkets and knick-knacks with glass Christmas trees and a nativity scene. And don't even get me started on Christmas music...

I have so many deep memories and traditions associated with this season. And when Advent 1 hits, I always want to be perfectly ready for it.

Most years, I find myself longing for Advent long before the season arrives. I try to pick an acceptable date in early November to start listening to Christmas music, and I have to resist starting our decorations early. All I want to do is jump headlong into an Advent space of darkness, warmth, candles, and the music of both Advent and Christmas. And in these eager years, I always feel like I've been waiting with anticipation....for the very season of waiting and anticipation! A pre-Advent Advent, if you will.

But yesterday, gray and cold, found me sitting at church, seeing the blue and the candles, feeling the dark morning echo the darkness of waiting...and yet I still felt unprepared, as if Advent had snuck up on me, and it really should only be the middle of October right now, because that's where my brain is sort of stuck.

And then, I heard these words in the gospel reading: "Keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake — for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake"(Mark 13:33-37).

And I remembered that the point of Advent is not to have arrived early on God's doorstep, sitting outside the stable impatiently and unimpressed, as if God should show up in this world right on my own schedule and according to my own poetic and picturesque rules. God broke into our world and it was a beautiful surprise. God breaks into our own lives in spontaneous and merciful ways.

Advent is an elbow to the gut while we are nodding off amidst the ordinary, busy trappings of our daily lives. It startles us awake and shoves us into preparing for Christ with hope and expectation. The point of Advent is not that we are sitting idly by, our bags already packed for Christ to come. The point of Advent is to nudge us into remembering that Christ will come, and we might do well to start wrapping our brains and hearts around this idea. The point of this season is not that we already have everything figured out and put in place. The point of this season is to remind us to keep moving, and to startle us awake so that we might get to work, preparing and fixing and cleaning and cooking and setting lights in our windows so that the whole world might know with Christ that we are, indeed, awake!

So it is okay that I was not ready for Advent to begin. And it's okay that I am still getting my head in the game. Because Advent gives us permission to scramble a little bit, because in that scrambling, we rouse our expectation and excitement, running around and getting everything ready for the beginning (again) of God's new world come to earth in that unexpected, unassuming, tiny little baby of a savior.

Advent 1: Sunday

2011-11-27T07:00:00.001-06:00

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
so that the mountains would quake at your presence.
When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect,
you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.
From ages past no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who works for those who wait for him.
- Isaiah 64:1, 3-4

Good Gifts (something to think about on Black Friday)

2011-11-24T23:21:00.000-06:00

[December was my month to write the "Musings" column for the church newsletter; this is a copy of what I wrote, but this time with a picture and links!]

Nadia Bolz-Weber is the pastor at House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Colorado. HFASS (as they refer to themselves) is an alternative Lutheran congregation in the heart of the city, with a pronounced focus on social justice. A few years ago, HFASS created an art project during Advent which they titled, "Our Lady of the New Advent."

They created an icon, a picture of Mary holding the baby Jesus, out of scraps of Christmas advertising they received in the mail. They did this as a way of faithfully subverting the world’s message that Advent and Christmas are about stuff rather than Spirit.

Nadia says, "Every piece of this [icon] is from Christmas ads: circulars, catalogs and all that junk that comes in the mail and the newspaper. An artist in the community traced the image [of the mother and child] onto poster board indicating what color should go in each shape. People ages six to sixty-five cut out the right color from the ads and glued it in the space. Easy and subversive."

In this Advent season, our challenge as people of faith is to make meaningful choices about where we spend our time, energy, and money against a world that becomes more and more commercial with each passing holiday season. Our faith asks us to appreciate the season’s emphasis on giving, but to make different choices about how we give, and how much we give.

We have a number of alternative giving opportunities here at St. Timothy this year. These are ways that we can choose to give in more meaningful ways and honor the gift of Christ that is given for the sake of the world.

As in past years, we have set up our Christmas Giving Tree table, where you can purchase gifts for foster children through Lutheran Social Services of Illinois, and where you can donate rent money for homeless families supported by Bridge Communities.

New this year is our upcoming fair trade fair, in partnership with Lutheran World Relief and SERRV, to take place December 10/11 and 17/18. Fair trade goods are items produced in developing countries that are distributed for purchase with the goal of emphasizing fair wages, sustainable practices, and direct support for artisans. Stop by the fair trade tables in the narthex during these two weeks in December to purchase ornaments, candles, jewelry, accessories, coffee and chocolate. Purchase gifts for your family and friends, knowing that you are using your money to do good in the world.

Another way to embrace the spirit of giving and to use your money in a meaningful way is to purchase items from the ELCA Good Gifts catalogue. Visit the social ministry table to pick up a copy of the catalogue. Purchase a pig, goat or alpaca on behalf of a family member, and help a family or village across the world secure a reliable source of food and income. Purchase a well, an irrigation canal, or water jugs in honor of a coworker, and help people in remote areas of the world gain access to clean water. Flip through the catalogue and decide whether you want to cover school fees for a young girl in a developing country, or help start a community garden, or give meals at a soup kitchen. This catalogue is full of ways that we can join together to support the creative and life-giving work of our church across the nation and the world.

By making different choices about the gifts we give at Christmastime, we honor the spirit of watching and waiting for Christ, not only during the blue season of Advent, but during the whole of our Christian lives. For Christmas is not merely about gifts, but about one particular gift: the gift of hope born in our hearts and lived out for the sake of the world.

So, part of our call as people of faith during Advent is the call to resist the things in our world that try to make shallow the profound longings and promises of faith for which we wait. Part of living intentionally during Advent means that we see Christmas as the arrival of wholeness and salvation. Then, this season can become for us a time to recognize the needs of our world and to live out the true hope of our faith, the promise of light and life brought to earth by the Christ child in the manger.

Christ the King Sunday: Restoration not separation

2011-11-20T12:00:00.002-06:00

For thus says the Lord GOD: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the land. I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord GOD. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.(Ezekiel 34:11-16)

Jesus said, "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 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.' Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?' And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.' Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?' Then he will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."(Matthew 25: 31-46)
---
May 21, 2011 was a Saturday. I remember because I was preaching, so I was here at church mid-afternoon, getting things prepared for worship. I was sitting at my desk, reading over my sermon one last time, when I remembered that this day was supposed to be the day that the world would end, at least according to Harold Camping and his faithful followers. As I sat there, I couldn’t remember if he had said the world would end at 5pm or 6pm, and which time zone he was basing that on. And the truth of the matter is that I had dinner plans after church, and joked with myself that it would be a shame to miss those plans should the world really end.

Well, May 21 came and went. And Camping revised his prediction, moving the end of the world to October 21, and October 21 came and went, and here we all still are, people who have not yet reached the end of the world, and who have not yet seen Christ coming again in all his glory.

Camping’s picture of the end of the world was one of separation. God’s faithful and chosen would be lifted from this earth, separated from the very world that God created and promised to redeem. The rest of the world would undergo months or years of horror and tribulation, God further scattering and separating humanity as we scamper away from wrath and judgement. This picture of the end shows Christ the king coming as champion of the strong in faith, and judge of the broken, vulnerable, or weak in faith.

Here’s the thing: even if Camping was extreme in his desire to predict the day and time of Christ’s coming, his picture of the rapture and tribulation and end of the world is a picture that is all-too common among some Christians. There are many people of faith who believe that the end times - the reign of Christ the king - will come full of fire, wrath, and rapture. And there are many people who see the end of the world as a time of separation rather than restoration.

But our readings for today tell us otherwise. They tell us that God’s will is not for us to be scattered, but for us to be brought together. Christ our king comes not to side with strength, but with weakness. God’s hopes and promises are given first and foremost to the least of these and to the lesser, failing parts of our own souls. Christ will come in his glory to restore, not to destroy.

I think that our gospel today - the sheep and the goats - is perhaps less about judgement and more about a picture of what Christ’s kingship all about. The most striking and convicting part of today’s gospel is the news that Christ, our king, identifies himself with the lost and the least, and the news that Christ’s compassionate heart always sides with the saddest, most broken, most vulnerable corners of life. Christ is not a king of our virtues, strengths, or accolades. Christ is king of our shortcomings, our loneliness, our vulnerability.

See, sometimes we serve the least of these and sometimes we see Christ in the least of these. But sometimes...we are the least of these. And the kingship of Christ, the victory and power of Christ, comes precisely because he too was the least of these.

Our gospel this morning begins with Christ talking about the son of man “coming in glory.” But what does this glory look like? Where does this glory come from? The very next verse that follows today’s gospel reading, Matthew 26:1, says, “When Jesus had finished saying all these things, he said to his disciples, ‘You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.’”

This is where Christ’s glory lies - not in his power to separate sheep and goats, not in his ability to flaunt the power of the divine, and certainly not in his power to judge the living and the dead. Christ’s glory lies precisely in the heart of the the cross, where he himself was separated, cut off, and scattered; where he was alone, lonely, and suffering; where he was weak, broken, and dying, all so that each and every one of us might be restored and brought back into God’s fold.

In Christ’s last days before his crucifixion, he shared with the disciples the sad truth that in the days leading up to his death, even they, his faithful friends and disciples, would scatter and flee. They would desert him and become separated. Christ told them this not as a threat or a judgment, but as a description of human nature when things get difficult. When we are afraid, we cut ourselves off. When we are in danger, we flee for our lives. When we have no more resources, material or emotional, we hunker down and serve ourselves first.

Being scattered and isolated is not something that will be inflicted upon us at the end of the world. Being scattered and isolated is a description of the world as we currently know it. We live every day yearning for connection, yearning to be bound together with one another and with our creation.

Technology keeps trying to come out with new and better ways to connect us to one another. We’ve moved from letters to telephones to the ubiquity of cell phones and now to cell phones with video chat so that we can see one another as we talk. Or we look to email, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, or GChat as ways that we can connect via the internet. Or what about neighborhood newsletters and activity coordinators, village recreation departments offering everything from kiddie soccer to art classes to yoga groups, school-sponsored parent groups, Young Life, Scouts, team sports and school music groups? Or the feeling of rooting for your team in a stadium full of thousands of other screaming fans, or finding a group of people who share your taste in music, or movies, or books, or wine? Or how about Bible studies or youth groups or group service projects or corporate worship?

This is certainly not an exhaustive list of ways that we try to connect with one another, though it is an exhausting one. And it is clear from this list that entire industries have been built around addressing our need for connection - for being brought back from our scattered and separated places into communities and collectives.

Both of our readings this morning start from this same premise: that we are people who have been scattered and divided. We are sheep and goats, and we are flocks scattered across the hillside, lost and lonely. We are people who are used to fending for ourselves, either by choice or necessity.

The good news in our readings today is that God’s picture of the end of the world is a picture not of further separation, but of restoration.

At the end of the world - when Christ will come again, this Christ for whom we wait, this Christ whom we hold vigil for throughout the season of Advent - at the end of the world, Christ comes not to scatter us further, but to seek us out and bind us up, to bring us together again into God’s fold, to judge us not based on success or failure or strength or weakness, but based solely on God’s grace and love.

Right now, in this world, we are God’s scattered and separated people. But God promises us that he will find us and restore us, under the care of Christ who is our king and shepherd. God promises, “I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.”

This promise is what sustains us through the waiting of Advent, when we sit together in the twilight of faith, awaiting again a king who will come not in a blaze of glory, but in a manger, heralded not by power and riches, but by a star and a few lonely shepherds. God’s good news for us is that the loneliest and neediest parts of ourselves and our world can watch and wait in the blue of Advent, the blue of the sky as God’s new dawn approaches. This promise is what keeps us awake, through our darkest nights, and empowers us to keep praying the fervent prayer Christ has taught us, saying “thy kingdom come, Christ, and thy will be done, both on earth as it is in heaven.”

It is time, my brothers and sisters, to take heart, and to keep the faith even as we wait for that day in God’s future when earth and heaven will meet, when Christ will come again to bind up the brokenhearted, to bring us back into the fold, to restore our souls and to restore creation, and to bring us once again face to face with all of the saints. For each moment of watching and waiting for Christ the king is a moment lived in both God’s promise and fulfillment.

For God says to each of us: “I, the Lord, will search for you, and will seek you out. I will rescue you from all the places to which you have been scattered. I will feed you with good pasture. I myself will be your shepherd, and I will make you lie down. I will seek you when you are lost, and I will bring you back when you have strayed, and I will bind up your injuries, and I will strengthen your weaknesses. I will feed you with justice. And I, the LORD, will be your God. Forever and ever.” Amen.

Pentecost 22: One life to give

2011-11-13T12:00:00.005-06:00

Jesus said, "For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money. After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, 'Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.' 2His master said to him, 'Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.' And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, 'Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.' His master said to him, 'Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.' Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, 'Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.' But his master replied, 'You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'"(Matthew 25:14-30)
---
We’ve hit that point in the year again - the last Sundays before the beginning of Advent, the last Sundays before the new church year, the stretch of weeks in November each year when all of our readings start talking about the end of the world, and when Jesus gets a little bit “hellfire and brimstone” on us. We start talking as if the end of the church year were the end of the world, just like we did last year and the year before and the year before that.

The church year repeats itself, and as it turns out, as a preacher, you find that you also sometimes repeat yourself. So I want to begin today’s sermon with the last three lines of a poem that I know I have quoted to you before; the last three lines of Mary Oliver’s poem, “The Summer Day:”

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Fitting words for the last dying days of this church year and fitting words for today’s gospel.

Today, we hear of a master who who entrusts his wealth to his servants while he goes on a long journey. To one, he gives five talents, to another, two, and to another, one. The first two servants take the abundance they have been given and multiply it. The last servant, however, takes his master’s abundance, chooses the way of fear rather than of trust, and buries the money in the ground.

There’s a lot going on in today’s parable, but I think there’s only one detail that you really need to know to understand the story. You need to know that a talent is a HUGE amount of money. A talent is a sum of money worth about 6000 denari, which in Jesus’ time meant 15 or 20 years’ worth of wages; just about a whole lifetime’s worth. So Jesus tells this parable to make a point about something far bigger than what we do with our money. Jesus uses this parable to tell us something about our life’s work, about the things we devote our lives to. You might say that to talk about “one talent,” Jesus is really talking about “one lifetime.”

Implicit in the parable is the question asked by Mary Oliver: “What will you do with your one wild and precious life?” Jesus challenges his listeners to make a choice about whether they will live out their one wild and precious talent to grow God’s kingdom, or whether they will let fear and despair bury them deep in the ground.

See, today’s gospel isn’t about what you would do if you, like the first two servants, had all the money in the world and the freedom of five or ten lifetimes to live out God’s call. Today’s gospel is about what you will do, like that last servant, with this one precious lifetime that you have been given.

As we tiptoe into the holiday season, it will be impossible for us to avoid the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” and the various retellings of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” You might not think these rich and sentimental stories have anything to do with the parable of the talents, but it turns out that they do. All of these stories ask the question, “What is a lifetime is worth?”

Through the help of Clarence, Angel Second Class and the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future, George Bailey and Ebenezer Scrooge are whisked to the outskirts of their own lives so that they can see their lives from the outside in. They see the big picture, and the ways that their own actions, for good or for ill, have a far-reaching impact on the lives of those around them. And in the end, both men come to understand how much their lives matter and how they have immense power to do good in the world.

We might not have quite the same luxury as George Bailey and Ebenezer Scrooge; not many of us are likely to gain a supernatural companion who will turn the binoculars around in order to give us a far-off, far-reaching picture of our lives. But we do have today’s parable, which asks us to confront our life from the vantage point of the end, standing before the master, giving an account of what we’ve done with our one talent - our one precious lifetime.

We are Christians who believe that, at the end, it is nothing but God’s grace that saves us, and nothing that we do. We are Christians who believe that God’s judgment of us rests not upon what we do or do not do, but only on the righteousness won for us by Christ. But this parable, and the whole of Matthew 25 from which this parable comes, makes it very clear that God still cares about what we do, and that at the end of the world, it still matters if we kept awake, if we grew the abundance of God’s kingdom by sharing it, and if we shared God’s grace by serving the last and the least.

See, the whole problem with that third slave wasn’t that he didn’t know how to grow his one talent, and it wasn’t that he was afraid of his master, or lazy and willing to accuse his master of unsavory business practices. The problem with the third servant was that he never realized that the whole business of the one talent wasn’t about him. The money was never his own to begin with, and his management of the talent was never a matter of his own personal gain or failure. His one talent should have been all about the master’s desire and abundance.

This is the leap that God challenges us to make: moving away from the “it’s all about me” attitude to an “it’s all about God” disposition. The basic premise of our faith is the idea that God created the world out of nothing and made us out of dust, giving us life as a gift, not as a privilege. And when the time was right, God showed up among us in the flesh in th person of Jesus, to give us back our lives after they had been broken and scarred and damaged. And this new life, again, was given as a gift, not as a privilege or a right. Our one talent - our one precious lifetime - is all about God, and all about multiplying God’s grace in the world.

So it is good that we give money to the church and to charities that serve God’s children...but it is not good enough. Being faithful with our one talent means that we also make choices about wealth and abundance, different than the choices the world would make, seeking “enough” rather than “as much as we can get.”

It is good that we provide food and volunteer hours for our homeless brothers and sisters at Hesed House, and it is good that we pack meals at Feed My Starving Children...but it is not good enough. Being faithful with our one talent means that we care enough about poverty and oppression to go out and seek justice, and not just charity.

And it is good that we offer our gifts, time, and abilites to St. Timothy, creating a beautiful community within our congregation...but it isn’t good enough. Being faithful with our one talent means that we spill out into the streets and neighborhoods to create God’s community of faith beyond our doors. This means actually talking about our faith and sharing with the world the good news of Jesus Christ that has gripped and convicted our own souls.

It is the hardest thing in the world to live an “it’s not about me” sort of life...but it is also exceedingly liberating. God’s grace and generosity to us means that we are free from having to worry about our lives, what we will eat or drink or what we will wear. Elsewhere in Matthew, Jesus tells us “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.”

So on this commitment Sunday, I certainly ask that you be gracious in your giving to this church in this time and in this place. But more than that, I ask you to let commitment Sunday be about something bigger: recommitting your one lifetime to doing God’s work of grace in all corners of the world.

This is what conversion is - choosing God’s interests instead of ours. This is what faith is all about - standing at the end of time looking backwards to see God’s big picture, and acting accordingly. This is what baptism is about - dying to ourselves and rising with Christ. This is what Christ’s table is about - tasting God’s grace and abundance that has been broken and poured out for the sake of the whole world. And this, my friends, is what stewardship is all about - living every moment believing that our one talent, our one precious life, is our one chance to grow God’s grace in the world.

So let’s let today’s parable be our Clarence, or our ghosts of Christmas past, present and future. Let’s stand at the end, looking back at our wild and precious lives, taking stock of our life’s work and asking ourselves, “How does my life build up God’s kingdom and multiply God’s grace? How can I grow God’s grace in the world?”

This is our life’s calling extended to us from a God who is gracious, who promises that Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead, who promises that he will make all things new. This is the grace in which we live, and the urgency. For God desires nothing more than to look us in the eye, at the end of it all, and say to each of us, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

We Gather Together

2011-11-02T10:31:00.000-05:00

I heard this arrangement of the hymn, "We Gather Together," on the radio last night and thought it was GORGEOUS. Score one for Stephen Paulus.

Making space?

2011-11-01T10:36:00.001-05:00

I need to admit something: I am frustrated today.

I was driving to church, winding my way through the affluence of Chicago suburbs, caught up in the flow of mini-vans and SUVs speeding along around me, catching glimpses of professional landscapers planting thousands of dollars worth of mums and other fall flowers around the base of a grocery store sign at the edge of a strip mall...

And I felt my shoulders stiffen as I thought "This is all too much."

Too much money going to too many unimportant things. Too much speed. Too much being-late-because-we-are-so-overscheduled. Too much ambition...and too much fear.

And when I settled into my office for the day, and read through my emails, and started addressing the questions and needs of families, I thought the same sorts of things: "This is all too much."

How should a church speak to and address the problem of "too much" in a congregation?

How do you address the fear of failure that drives parents to schedule a million college-application-boosting activities for their elementary-aged children?

How do you address the keeping-up-with-the-Jonses panic that keeps people tied to high-income but highly-demanding jobs?

How do you help people get to a place where they feel actually challenged by Jesus' words to the rich young ruler ("sell everything and give it to the poor") or by his words to his disciples when he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom ("Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money — not even an extra tunic")?

Really, how is the church called (or IS it called?) to help empower people to make space in their life so that there is room for God to show up in the still-small voice?

In the spiritual life, the word ‘discipline’ means ‘the effort to create some space in which God can act.’ Discipline means to prevent everything in your life from being filled up. Discipline means that somewhere you’re not occupied, and certainly not preoccupied. In the spiritual life, discipline means to create that space in which something can happen that you hadn’t planned or counted on. (Henri Nouwen)

How is God calling me to make space in my own life? And how is God using me to help encourage others to do so?

Reformation Day: Closer to Free

2011-10-30T12:06:00.000-05:00

But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:21-26)

Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." They answered him, "We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, 'You will be made free'?" Jesus answered them, "Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. (John 8:31-36)
---
If you listened to any pop radio in the early 1990’s, or if you ever watched the television show, “Party of Five,” then you might recognize the following song from the Wisconsin-based band, the BoDeans:

Everybody wants to live
How they wanna live
And everybody wants to love
Like they wanna love
And everybody wants to be
Closer to Free

Now, these lyrics might not be the greatest poetry that you’ve ever heard or anything, but they do sum up not only the yearnings of a whole young adult generation, but also, a particular condition of every human soul: part of being human is to long for freedom. This is why teenagers test their parents’ boundaries, and why some graduates choose colleges far far away from home. This longing for freedom drives us to seek better jobs so that we can be financially free, and better gym memberships and diets so that we can be free from health problems, and good retirement plans so that we will one day be free to travel and to fill our unoccupied time with hobbies and home improvement projects.

Everybody wants to be closer to free.

Jesus said to those who had believed in him, "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." They answered him, "We have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, 'You will be made free'?" Jesus answered them, "Very truly, I tell you, everyone is a slave to the sin and brokenness of this world. But if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

The heart of today’s gospel can be summed up in two statements: The truth is that everyone is bound by something. And the truth is that Jesus offers us the chance not only to be closer to free, but to be perfectly free.

When Martin Luther took his monastic vows, he threw himself headlong into the requirements of the monastic life: prayer, fasting, spiritual reflection, and confession. But Luther was a man plagued by constant fear and doubt over his own salvation. He was so gravely insecure about the future of his own soul that he carried every monastic spiritual practice to the extreme. He felt utterly compelled to confess everything he had ever done, spending hours with his confessor, up to six hours at a time! He would desperately detail every sin that he saw in himself, and was tormented by fear that God would yet find his efforts inadequate and throw him into the depths of hell.

Luther later wrote, “I was myself more than once driven to the very depths of despair so that I wished I had never been created. Love God? I hated him!...I lost touch with Christ the Savior and Comforter, and made of him the jailor and hangman of my poor soul.”

Luther was a man who was bound by his own fear of God’s wrath and his own inadequacy, and he was a man who desperately needed to be rescued by the freedom offered by Christ.

It wasn’t until nearly a decade later that he was finally convinced that Christ could make him free. in 1515, Luther had received his doctorate and was preparing a series of university lectures on Paul’s letter to the Romans. He came across the passage from Romans 3 that we read this morning, a passage he had likely read many times before. But on this occasion, it was if a light bulb went on over his head when he read “The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ [is] for all who believe.”

These words were freedom for Luther. His soul, which had been held captive by fear and despair, was now comforted by the truth of the gospel: By Christ’s death and resurrection, he was made free from sin and death, not by his own efforts, but by God’s grace. Luther came face-to-face with the freeing truth that salvation wasn’t a matter of his own spiritual aptitude, nor was it a zero-sum game of sin and confession. It was simply his faith that saved him. By faith, he was made free.

In Luther’s story, we find both pieces of today’s gospel: the hard truth that in our humanness, we are living bound lives, and the saving truth that in Christ, we have been made free.

Luther’s story is also our story. We are all bound and we are all made free.

So I have a question for you: In your own life, what binds you? From what do you need to be made free?

Are you bound fear that you are unworthy of God’s forgiveness?

Are you bound by the feeling that your world keeps on spinning at an accelerating rate and the fear that if you stop to breathe for only a moment, your world will spin out of control?

Are you bound by anxiety over your adequacy as a parent or partner, or by a fear that you will fail the ones you love?

Are you bound by uncertainty about your future? By a constant and nagging sense of worry? By anger or envy? By a fear of death?

The world tries to promise you that it has solutions for all of these things. It tries to assure you that you can take destiny into your hands and work to make yourself closer to free.

Every car commercial that shows a driver soaring over hills and around curves on a fresh and empty road through a lush landscape tries to promise you that freedom can be bought - or at least financed - through your local Honda dealer.

Every wireless carrier and cell phone manufacturer that advertises faster 4G speeds, brighter screens, and endless apps tries to promise you that freedom is the pocket-sized feeling of a touch screen under your fingers.

Every low-budget television commercial made by a bankruptcy attorney who guarantees you a quick and easy path toward debt reduction tries to promise you that freedom is just a phone call away.

Every HGTV series that invokes a professional organizer to help families pare down their wardrobes and get their home offices under control tries to promise you that freedom can be constructed through the principals of good interior design.

Any one of these things might very well offer you the illusion of freedom.

But our true freedom, our lasting freedom, our perfect freedom is not to be found in anything that this world offers. Our true freedom comes from those same words in Romans that quieted Luther’s heart and rescued his soul from despair:

“The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ is for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.”

Or put even more simply, in Jesus’ own words, “if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

Brothers and sisters, there is perfect freedom to be found for all of our bound or despairing souls. There is perfect freedom that has already been won for you. Trust that Christ has already saved you. Remember that you have been baptized and set free. Let your worried and resisting heart become vulnerable to the truth that nothing in this world can determine or diminish your worth, because you are already righteous, you are already saved, you already have infinite and immense value, because God’s grace has freely chosen you.

My invitation to you today is that you take a moment - at communion, or during the peace, or following worship - to plunge your fingers into the font, into the same cleansing and life-giving waters that washed you in baptism. With your fingers in the water, I want you to feel God washing away all of the things that bind and paralyze you. As you lift your hand from the water, let your soul be revived by Christ’s assurance of freedom. And with your fingers still wet, make the sign of the cross over your body, or trace a cross on your forehead, remembering the freedom that comes with being a baptized child of God.

Children of God, called and beloved, hold fast today to your watery faith and step out of your bondage. Feel God’s new life in your bones. Breathe the free air of your salvation. Hear Christ’s words of promise: “The Son has made you free, and you are free indeed!”

A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you. (Ezekiel 36:26a)

2011-10-27T14:15:00.000-05:00

The very first words I typed today, just a few minutes past sunrise, were these: "If there were any doubt that God still works miracles, the last 12 hours are proof that he does..."

Adelaide Zoe was born on Thursday, September 8, 2011, to my good friends Dawn and Brian. An adorable and sweet little girl for two wonderfully deserving people.

That following Monday, however, I got a phone call from Dawn, who was crying so hard she could barely speak. Through a ridiculously fortunate series of events, the doctors had just discovered that Adelaide had a serious heart defect - hypoplastic left heart syndrome, to be exact. This meant that she was born with a severely underdeveloped left ventricle, and would need a series of three surgeries to "fix" it. And by "fix," I mean rewire the heart so that the right ventricle would take over all heart function. (You can read about the series of procedures here, here, and here.) The first of the surgeries took place a little over a week after the diagnosis.

Over the last month, Adelaide has remained at the hospital, getting stronger and recovering from her surgery. But in the last couple weeks, she experienced some setbacks, and at various points was put back on her breathing tube.

This past Saturday, after a week of Adelaide not improving, Dawn texted me to tell me that her doctors were recommending that they put her on the transplant list. I can't begin to imagine how it feels to put your six-week old daughter on a heart transplant list...

On Tuesday, there was a prayer service for Adelaide held at Dawn's church. In a very Greek Orthodox fashion, we gathered together and lifted up prayers. The service involved much chanting by a variety of priests, and incense, and staying on our feet for nearly thirty pages of liturgy and prayers. I think we all poured our hearts into that liturgy, praying as hard as ever that Adelaide would improve.

Last night, Wednesday, I was in the middle of cooking late dinner when I received this text from Dawn:

8:00pm - Just got a call that they have a donor for Adelaide...they still have to check the heart in person but as long as it looks good she will go into surgery around midnight. Will keep you posted...please keep her in your thoughts/prayers!

And then, as I was headed to bed:

12:03am - So here we are...got confirmation of a donor heart for Adelaide and she just went into surgery. Please keep her in your thoughts/prayers!! Will provide updates as we get them.

I was full of adrenaline and worry, so I didn't sleep very well. I woke up about 3:30am, sleepily checked my phone for any updates (there were none), and rolled around in bed for a long while before falling back asleep for a few hours.

And THEN:

5:59am - New heart is in and she is off bypass which means it is beating on its own. Surgery isn't over yet but they are finishing up now.

And THEN:

6:27am - Just talked to the surgeon - surgery is complete and she's all closed up! He said it is a great heart and things look good. Next few days are still critical, but we are optimistic! Thanks for your love and support. :)

Those must have been the fastest 12 hours that have ever taken place ever, anywhere on earth, at any time. In fact, if you had gone to bed at a reasonable hour and not checked Facebook all night, you might have missed knowing about the whole transplant until it was over!

I think about this little family and how many miracles they have seen during Adelaide's first short few weeks of life. It was a post c-section pain in Dawn's leg (which turned out to be nothing) that brought Adelaide to the hospital nursery, where they realized that she had a problem. Otherwise they might not have learned of the heart defect until it was too late. Adelaide went through the Norwood Procedure like a champ, with no real complications. And now, just days after being put on the donor list, just ONE DAY after a prayer service held in her honor, at midnight during the first few minutes of Dawn and Brian's fourth anniversary, Adelaide was given a new chance at life.

There are still many prayers to be said, and many long days ahead. There are still risks and concerns, and perhaps unknown challenges yet to be faced.

But this little girl is certainly blessed.

As I said at the beginning: If there were any doubt that God still works miracles, the last 12 hours are proof that he does...

The unoriginal but amazing life

2011-10-26T12:50:00.000-05:00

I bought a notebook this morning.

More specifically, a black, softcover Moleskine 2012 Weekly Notebook Diary/Planner. Because in church work, you need to have a January calendar at the ready by the time November hits.

It is my first Moleskine, and kudos to them for having created a brand that carries with it such a particular mystique that it actually seems like an important detail in my life to say "it is my first Moleskine," as if that really means something.

A little baffled and enticed by the sheets of icon stickers in the back pocket, I ventured to the web to see how others had used these stickers...and found no useful pictures or suggestions (not that there is a right or wrong way to use them, but I was curious). But I did end up pouring over blog posts about the creative ways that people use or modify their Moleskines, extensive discussion of the best Moleskine pen (turns out it is the very pen that I am already using!), and glimpses of fascinating people who read many books or drink many wines or travel many places, and then have the patience and inspiration to write about those experiences.

I don't read enough books these days to warrant a book journal, and I would probably have no patience to keep up with it anyway. I don't drink nearly enough wine, nor do I care deeply enough about it, to have any interest in keeping a wine journal (and for as much as I love food and cooking, I'm not sure that a restaurant or food journal would be exactly the right thing for me either).

But travel? I don't do much of it, but I would love to do more. I feel the pull of city-based Moleskines, that include public transportation maps and give you space to write about all the things in a city that you've seen, done, tasted, and experienced.

Or how about a plain old ruled notebook...that could accompany me on travels all across the world? I kept a serious journal during our Tanzania travels. I wrote down all the details I could remember about our days, as well as keeping lists of the food we ate, the animals we saw, and the Swahili we learned. I used that notebook to keep score as we played cards on our flights, I pressed flowers in between its pages, and I saved beer bottle labels in its back pocket.

And so, at this moment, as I stare outside at the gray Chicago sky, I find myself desiring the unoriginal but amazing lives of so many of my fellow young adults: lives filled with travels and journals, laptops and good coffee, a spirit of both exploration and appreciation.

And all because I needed to buy a day planner.

Pentecost 18: What belongs to God

2011-10-16T12:06:00.003-05:00

Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?" But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, "Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax." And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, "Whose head is this, and whose title?" They answered, "The emperor's." Then he said to them, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's." When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.(Matthew 22:15-22)
---

There is a picture that has been circulating the internet this week; a picture created in response to the Occupy Wall Street protests. The heading on the picture says “Down with evil corporations!” The picture itself is of the protesters, a whole group of them crowded together in the street. But then there are arrows and labels Photoshopped over the protesters’ heads. One arrow points to a man wearing a hat, and is labeled “Hat by J. Crew.” Another arrow points to a hand-written sign, and says “Black Marker by Sharpie.” Another arrow points to cameras that protesters are holding, and says “Camera by Sony” and “Video camera by Panasonic.” Arrows and labels like these obscure much of the picture.

Then, at the bottom, there is a sardonic caption: “Join us as we organize against corporations, using social networking (by corporations), smartphones (by corporations), serviced by wireless carries (that are corporations), wearing clothes (made by corporations), capturing it all with cameras (made by corporations), and getting there via cars, buses, bicycles, and shoes (made by corporations). We deserve more from these greedy corporations. Join us afterwards at Starbucks!”

It is biting satire. And it poses a trick question: can you protest the very corporations that you rely on for your food, clothing, and everyday needs?

It’s a trick question because if you try to answer it, because there isn’t a good answer. And in many ways, this picture is actually asking us a modern version of question that the Pharisees and Herodians ask Jesus in today’s gospel: Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?

Like the person who put together that Photoshopped picture of the protesters, the Pharisees in today’s gospel have spent a lot of time thinking and plotting, working hard to come up with THE PERFECT trick question. They’ve invested time and intellectual energy into creating an inescapable conundrum, crafting both the perfect rock and the perfect hard place.

At the time, the Jews were being forced to live under Roman rule. If Jesus is to say that it is lawful to pay taxes, he would be committing heresy by legitimizing Roman rule over God’s rule. If, however, Jesus answers that it is NOT lawful to pay taxes, then he is committing treason. It’s a trick question because there is no good answer.

What is so funny about today’s gospel is that after all the time the Pharisees have invested in trying to trap Jesus with the perfect question, Jesus blows it away in approximately eighteen seconds. Pull out a coin, he says in response to them. Whose image is on it? The image of the emperor? Good then. Give to the emperor what belongs to him. And give to God what belongs to God. And that is that. Jesus has successfully answered the question, and successfully shown that he is the clever one, easily winning the battle of wits that has been set before him. The religious leaders are amazed.

And, perhaps, so are we. Or maybe, we are not as much amazed as we are confused, left scratching our heads about what exactly Jesus means. Does his response mean that he sides with the Wall Street protesters or stands against them? Is he for taxes or against them? Does this mean he supports big government or small government? Jesus’ words in today’s gospel get at the heart of what it means for people of faith to live in a world that ceaselessly battles for our allegiances, economic and otherwise.

Coke vs. Pepsi, Cubs vs. White Sox, Republican vs. Democrat, fast food vs. slow food, quantity of life vs. quality of life, time vs. money: we live in a constant battle for allegiance. And as people of faith, we are constantly living a struggle between empire and God, between the world as it is and the world as we want it to be, between the demands of “real life” and the true desires of our hearts. In this context, how on earth do we give to the emperor what is the emperor’s, and give to God what is God’s?

Not to be trite, but the answer is simple: we must choose to remember whose image we bear.

When Jesus holds up a coin for all to see, he points to the image of the emperor that the coin bears. Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor, he says. That is, let the empire take care of the things that bear the image of the empire. Return to the world the things of this world - money, status, ambition, busy-ness, commerce, politics, shopping malls, degrees, resumes.

The things that bear the image of the emperor are not necessarily bad things; many of these things are good and necessary for the order and function of daily life. But the things of the emperor are all temporary, and you are not created in their image.

The number of hours that you work in a week, or the number of hours you feel pressure to work: these are not the whole of you. These are things of the emperor.

The awards that your children win - or don’t win; your children’s grades and extra-curricular activities: these do not define them, nor do they define you. These are things of the emperor.

Your height and weight, your fashion sense, your manicured nails or your broken ones: these are not the whole of you. These are things of the emperor.

Even your political views, your opinions of the economy, your employment or your lack thereof: these do not define you and your life. These, too, are things of the emperor.

No matter how often or how deeply we interact with the empire, with the temporary structures of this world, we still do not bear the emperor’s image. These things of the emperor are not the things that were created to be the deepest desires and reflections of our hearts.

When Jesus holds us up and points to us, just like he did with that coin, he points to a very different image, an indelible image stamped onto each of us, deeply embedded into our very hearts and souls: he points to the image of God.

We read in Genesis 1 that “God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

God did not create us to bear the image of the emperor. God did not create us to bear the image of empire, democracy, capitalism, consumerism, patriotism, or any other “ism.” God created us to bear his own image. God created us to reflect the image of the divine; the image of the eternal.

The divine image is one of hope and peace, love and compassion, grace and patience, forgiveness and contemplation, creativity and joy. Into this image were you crafted, and your worth comes not from what you build, earn, or achieve, but from God’s divine grace and mercy that have claimed you and redeemed you. And because we bear this image of God, God asks us to give over our whole lives to his care.

Give to God the things that are God’s. It is not a demand. It is an invitation.

God invites us to give up our burdens by handing them back to him. God invites us to give him our fears and anxieties. God invites us to give to him our hopes and dreams. And God invites us, through the rushing waters of baptism, to give him permanent residence in our hearts, minds, and souls. In return, God promises to live in us and act through us, making us vessels of divine love, grace, forgiveness, and hope.

Now, it is the tricky, complicated, broken, redeemed nature of creation that we will daily get tangled up in both God and empire. We can’t escape empire and we can’t escape God. We will always be those people who protest corporations using our iPhones. We will always be stuck making imperfect decisions about how to prioritize the temporary and the eternal.

But we always have a choice.

We can always choose to remember and live according to the image in which we are created. We can choose to remember that we bear the thumbprint of the very God who seeks us out and lifts us up. We can look at ourselves in the mirror every morning and see the cross that has been marked across our foreheads, whether in oil, water, or ashes. People of God, we have been eternally sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever. This is the image that you bear to the world. This is the image that defines you.

I want each of you now to turn to your neighbors sitting next to you in the pew. I want you to reach over and trace the sign of the cross on their forehead, and look them in the eye as you tell them “You are made in the image of God.” Take a moment, right now, to remind your neighbors of the divine image they bear.

And then tomorrow, when you wake up, before you brush your teeth, before you pay any attention to your hair, before you tend to any of your other regular morning business, I want you to catch a glimpse of yourself in a mirror. Look at yourself, bedhead, unwashed face, and all, and see through your bleary morning eyes that same cross on your forehead. Look yourself in the eye, and say, “I am made in the image of God.” Repeat this every morning this week.

If you are feeling ambitious, I challenge you to seek out a mirror every time this week that you feel disappointed, pressured, or out of balance. I challenge you to seek out a mirror every time the things of the emperor start to weigh you down. Go back to that mirror and look yourself in the eye, and remind yourself, “I am made in the image of God.” See how your week feels different when you really commit to remembering whose image you bear. Come back next week and tell me about it.

My friends, you are all created in the image of our loving and gracious God, a God who spared nothing for your creation and redemption. You have been marked and sealed with the divine image. You are people free from the demands of the empire, freed in Christ to love and serve one another, freed in body and soul to give up to God your life, and to give in to the hopes and dreams God has for you. May you always remember in whose image you are made, and may you be blessed by it.

Something in the weather?

2011-10-05T11:48:00.000-05:00

I don't know what it was - the weather, my tumultuous past week, too much time reading books involving neuroscience - but I had a couple oddly detailed, crazy dreams last night.

In the first one, apparently we were living in an apartment building with a bar in the lobby. I stormed into the bar, having gotten word, somehow, about Matt and his group of friends getting horribly drunk and destroying things. I stormed over to Matt, who was sitting in a booth, really drunk. He said to me "YOU'RE drunk!" And I said "Not as drunk as you!" (If you know Matt at all, you'll know both why this dream is sort of hilarious...and why, in the dream, I was so surprised and angry!) His friends bragged to me about some of the stuff they happened to break during their mischief, and I was fuming. I took Matt, stormed up to our apartment, and refused to let any of his friends in. I woke up angry, which was the funny part of all of this, and it took me a minute to realize that I shouldn't feel betrayed or angry at Matt, who was sleeping beside me, not drunk, not mischievous, not anything.

Later on, I had a dream that it was a regular Sunday night high school youth group night, and there was a small handful of items on the agenda: reminding them to get their summer trip forms turned in, singing some songs together, and then watching a movie with themes of resurrection. Things had barely gotten underway when another youth group showed up to join us. They, apparently, were from a satellite church (spun off from a local megachurch) who wanted to see how we did youth group. So all of the sudden we had TONS of youth, and I was trying to talk about the summer trip, and halfheartedly inviting this new bunch of kids to join us, while their leaders - who were far more talented at guitar and worship-leading than I was - tuned their guitars and sort of took over the worship part of the evening. Then we turned on the movie, and for some reason, I wandered around church for most of the movie, checking in with people who had just come from a Sunday evening worship service, chatting with an old friend from college who had played trumpet during the service, and eventually making my way back to the youth room for the end of the movie. The main character of the movie, apparently, was played by Kelsey Grammer, and the whole point of the movie was him coming to terms and making peace with death, hoping for resurrection. The last scene was him finally "giving in" to the inevitability of death, symbolized by him falling. And then he lands on a bed and wakes up in a bedroom that, while not as fancy as his own bedroom, is still comfortable, homey, and filled with people who love him. So apparently the lesson in all of this is that on the other side of death, there is still comfort, peace, and love...and that life after death is pretty similar to, though better than, life on this earth. After that, everybody packed up because the movie was over, and the weird invading youth group invited us to join them sometime, and said that they'd join us again...and that was it.

So as I said. Not sure why all the crazy last night. It's been a while since I've had dreams like this, so intricate and filled with details and, really, cohesive plot-lines. But if anyone has any control over my mind, I would actually appreciate a better and more dreamless night tonight...I need a good nights' sleep one of these days!

Pentecost 14: Are you envious because God is generous?

2011-09-19T11:28:00.001-05:00

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it. But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the LORD and said, "O LORD! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live." And the LORD said, "Is it right for you to be angry?" (Jonah 3:10-4:4)

[Jesus said,] "For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o'clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, 'You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o'clock, he did the same. And about five o'clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, 'Why are you standing here idle all day?' They said to him, 'Because no one has hired us.' He said to them, 'You also go into the vineyard.' When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, 'Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.' When those hired about five o'clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, 'These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.' But he replied to one of them, 'Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?' So the last will be first, and the first will be last."(Matthew 20:1-16)
---
I don’t know much about Diane, but I do know that she was a generous woman. She was homeless, living on the street in Washington D.C., but always found ways to give to others, even in her own need. My friend Keith tells the story of the day that Diane called him and told him to look out the window of his apartment to the street below. There, along the street, was Diane, a limousine, and an invitation for Keith to join her for a fancy dinner out to celebrate her new job and first paycheck. Diane was the sort of person to browse charities and give gifts to them on the behalf of others. You might receive a notice in the mail, thanking you for donating ten bicycles to an orphanage in Brazil, and you’d know that Diane was behind it. When Diane died, a young boy asked to speak at her funeral, and shared the story of how Diane had written a check every month to help this boy’s mother pay the mortgage. I don’t know much about Diane, but I do know that she was a giant of generosity.

And for those of us who have so much, do we not wonder about how this woman, who appeared to have so little, could give so very much?

Generosity always causes us to raise our eyebrows and ask questions. Because it is in our human nature to cling to that favorite phrase of economists and politicians alike: “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” Generosity makes us suspect. It throws us off because generosity is fundamentally lopsided. Generosity is pathologically unfair. Generosity depends upon tipping the scales out of balance.

Two weeks ago, we heard Jesus talk about the subversive practice of seeking out those who have wronged us, not for the sake of accusation, but for the sake of forgiveness. Last week, we heard even more about the relationship-restoring practice of generous forgiveness, of repairing the breach. Those gospels were both about the idea that the kingdom of God is precisely about not getting what you deserve...it’s about getting something far better. Today’s gospel is no different. It is an entire parable devoted to the idea that in God’s kingdom, we don’t receive blessing because we deserve it; we receive blessing because God is generous.

Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is like a vineyard owner who goes into the marketplace to find day laborers to pick grapes that had suddenly burst into ripeness. He goes early in the morning, hires the go-getting folks who are already up and ready to work, and promises them the usual daily wage. Later in the morning, realizing that there is more work to be done, he goes back to the marketplace, finding more workers who aren’t quite such early risers, but who are still worthy workers, and he promises to pay them “whatever is right.” Finding that the work still exceeds the workers, the vineyard owner goes back again at noon, and then again at three, picking up the workers who have slept in or been occupied with other morning business, still promising them a fair wage. Finally, at five o’clock, when there is still work left to be done, he goes to the marketplace one last time, hiring all of the unmotivated or unskilled or lazy or incompetent or weak or small workers who are still standing around, looking for work. He hires them for the last hour of the day and brings them to the vineyard.

At the end of the workday, the owner calls the workers in from the fields to be paid. He starts with the workers hired last, paying them the usual daily wage - the same usual daily wage he had promised the first workers he hired. At this, those hired first start smiling to themselves. If the vineyard owner is paying these guys the usual daily wage for one hour of work, how much more will he pay those who have been working for nearly twelve hours? Those hired at three step forward, and also receive the regular, usual daily wage. As do those hired at noon. And those hired at nine. And when those who were hired first receive, also, nothing more and nothing less than the usual daily wage, they begin to grumble and complain: “It’s not fair!” they say. “How is it that you have made the rest of these slackers equal to those of us who have been working our fingers to the bone for the entire day?”

The vineyard owner asks, “Friends, did I not promise you when I hired you that I would pay you the usual daily wage? Didn’t you agree to these terms before you came out to the vineyard? I have done you no wrong. Am I not allowed to spend my own money in any way that I choose? Are you envious because I have been generous?”

These grumbly workers would have been best friends with Jonah, our fish-bellied prophet from the first reading. God, in God’s infinite mercy, has chosen not to destroy the evil city of Ninevah. And this makes Jonah mad. Red-faced angry. Upset enough that his blood pressure rises and his eyes widen and he can’t manage to say anything that doesn’t come out loud and full of exclamation points: “This is why I didn’t want this assignment! Because here you set me up to risk my life preaching to a city such as Ninevah, and then decide not to destroy them! How dare you be a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love?? How dare you! Lord, in a world like this, it is better for me to die than live. It’s just too unfair!”

And the LORD said, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

The vineyard owner asked, “Are you envious because I have generous?”

Have you ever stopped to think about how unfair this business of being a Christian really is? If someone asked you what the kingdom of heaven is like, isn’t the honest answer, “the kingdom of heaven is unfair?”

Because this is a kingdom based on lopsided things like forgiveness and generosity, which God gives us with little regard to our station in life, despite our best successes and worst failures. The Bible is full of sinners who God still loves. The Bible is full of screw-ups who Jesus yet died to save. The Bible tells the stories of God’s word coming to undeserving people, through the testimonies of imperfect disciples and letter-writers.

And Jesus was killed precisely because he preached the unfair message that God’s kingdom was not only for the pharisees and religious leaders, but also for the prostitutes and tax collectors. Jesus was killed precisely because he preached a message of God’s preferential option for the poor and lowly, rather than the powerful and high-achieving.

In our own lives, we know that God forgives lifelong sinners on their deathbeds. The church welcomes back members that have hurt or been hurt by the body. We know that God’s grace falls equally upon those who volunteer for everything and upon those who only attend worship and those who barely make it to worship on Christmas Eve and Easter. We know that God allows bad people to be successful. We know that lazy co-workers are considered for the same promotions as we are. We know that crazy drivers on I-88 won't always get pulled over by the police. We know that no matter how hard we work, there will always be time when we watch someone else receive extra praise.

And in the face of God’s generosity - to us, yes, but especially toward others, those who are precisely not us - we are cast us into a space where we are faced with a choice. Do we respond like Jonah and the early-bird workers, seeing in God’s generosity to others only what we perceive to lack? Or do we respond like Diane, seeing God’s blessings in her own life and inspiring her own generous heart? When we witness moments of unfair generosity, how do we choose to respond? With gratitude or with resentment?

Pastor David Lose says, “The killer thing about this choice is that it really is a choice as unavoidable as it is simple -- you just can't be grateful and envious at the same time. So which is it going to be?”

I want you to take your hands and place them out in front of you, palms up. Look at them. Into one of these hands, I want you to place your resentments, the grudges you hold, or the things you envy. Into the other one of your hands, I want you to place the blessings in your life, things for which you are grateful, the abundance that you have. Now slowly close your fists. In one hand, you hold your blessings, in the other, you hold your misfortunes. Both of your hands, physically, weigh pretty much the same. But spiritually, one of these hands probably feels heavier.

Be honest with yourself. In your life as it is right now, which hand is heavier? Which hand is fuller? Is it the hand in which you placed all of your jealousies and perceived injustices? Or is it the hand in which you placed your blessings and thanksgivings? Let the heavier, fuller, weightier hand sink a little bit. Only you know which hand that is. Think about which hand is heavier. Think about which hand you want to be heavier. Which of your hands is the way that you want to respond to God’s generosity in the world? How can you live your life to reflect this?

Now take your hands and open them up again. Bring them together, one hand on top of the other, into a gesture of begging, of openness, of receiving. There, in your cupped hands, are all of your joys, all of your blessings, all of your resentments, all of your frustrations and misfortunes. Into these very hands God will place the fullness and assurance of his forgiveness and grace as you receive bread at communion. Jesus’ body is given for you, for your resentments, for your joys, for your moments of generosity and your moments of selfishness. And into these very hands he commends his own spirit, giving you grace upon grace from a lavish and generous God who gives you not what you deserve, but what he freely offers out of love. Feel the weight of the bread in your hands and let the heaviness of God’s lavish blessings linger on your palm even after you eat. For this bread is more than bread. It is the generous promise of forgiveness and blessing offered to you by none other than our God who is both gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

Kitty litter and dirty coffee cups

2011-08-24T14:43:00.000-05:00

My morning happened in themes.

I woke up this morning, already feeling gross and sweaty from the impending 92-degree forecast for today. I pulled myself out of bed, turned on our ceiling fans, and pressed the "on" button to our living room window air conditioning unit. (Which sent the cat scurrying away. She's not much one for noises.) Our apartment is small, but even with two window air conditioning units, it's anybody's guess if we'll come home to a cool apartment or not later tonight.

So the dreaded thought came to me: I'd better clean out Emme's litter box and finish the dishes before I left for church, because a small apartment plus a 92-degree day equals lots of stinkiness if we don't stay on top of the smellier parts of things. (Ahhh...aren't you glad for these rousing insights on my life?)

So I reloaded the dishwasher and finished washing the pots and pans. I scrubbed the countertops (hey, I was on a roll!), emptied the trash, and even remembered to move our fruit bowl off of the kitchen table (and out of the blazing line of sunlight). Then into the study, giving our crazy cat a new fresh litter box and hauling a smelly trash bag to the front door.

Cleaning the apartment, even in these minor ways made me feel good. It will be nice to come home to it tonight. But let me be very clear about something: NOTHING about either of those cleaning tasks made me think of church, of God, or of anything remotely spiritual.

I arrived at church, grumbling as I walked in about how it was 10:00 a.m. and already so warm and humid that my car had trouble picking up its usual radio stations.

When I got to my office, I grabbed my water bottle and headed to the kitchen to fill it up. I decided, on a wise whim, to bring along the old coffee cups that were still lingering on the table behind my desk, with coffee-stained rings around the insides. I scooped them all up and headed to the church kitchen where, for the second time this morning, I found myself scrubbing dishes. After they were all clean, and I had filled up both my water bottle and one mug of coffee, I headed into the sanctuary.

Last night, we offered a Taizé healing service here at St. Timothy, and pulled out lots of candles and icons to illumine the worship space. Part of our worship involved people lighting candles as prayers and placing them in pots of sand as a light and life-giving symbol of prayers rising up to God.

I decided it would be a good idea to start putting away all of the items we had used for worship last night. I got to the pots of sand, which was really not sand at all but gravel, and not unlike the kitty litter I encountered earlier in the morning.

As I finished cleaning up, and grabbed my water bottle and coffee cup to head back to my office, I thought about how my morning had been strangely thematic, centered around kitty litter and dirty dishes.

Remember how I said that my morning tasks at home in no way reminded me of spiritual things? That was a true statement. But the church tasks I did as I started another day of living out my calling to the ministry? The completely reminded me of home things.

And so I wonder if we sometimes get it backwards. Often, we focus on how the life of faith means finding the spiritual embodied in the mundane. And this isn't a bad thing. Certainly the life of faith is a life of reverence, where we are asked, again and again, to see God in our neighbor, in creation, in both the glamorous and smelly parts of our lives.

But what if there is yet something to the notion that the life of faith really means finding the mundane in the spiritual? What if we stopped trying to expect our daily lives to mirror what happens in worship, and what if we instead remembered that everything we do as a people of faith has its roots in the ordinary-ness of human life?

Today, church reminded me of my daily life, and it caused me to stop and think about the way that God chose to mingle both holy and mundane in the embodied Word, that is, the person of Jesus. And how would my life be different if I saw in Jesus the mundane reflected in the spiritual - the human reflected in the divine - rather than the other way around?

A manifesto for questioning Christians

2011-08-22T23:14:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Wendell Berry and his brilliant character Jayber Crow (from the novel by that same name) for putting into words the way that questions shake and shape our faith, or perhaps, become our faith.

Questions all of a sudden were clanging in my mind like Edgar Allan Poe's brazen alarum bells. I still believed in the divinity and the teachings of Jesus...but it got so I couldn't open a bible without setting off a great jangling and wrangling of questions that almost deafened me.

If we are to understand the Bible as literally true, why are we permitted to hate our enemies? If Jesus meant what He said when we should love our enemies, how can Christians go to war? Why, since He told us to pray in secret, do we continue to pray in public? Is an insincere or vain public prayer not a violation of the third commandment? And what about our bodies that always seemed to come off so badly in every contest with our soul? Did Jesus put on our flesh so that we might despise it?

But worst of all was when it hit me that Jesus' own most fervent prayer was refused: "Father, if thou be wiling, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done." I must have read that verse or heard it a hundred times before without seeing or hearing. Maybe I didn't want to see it. But then one day I saw it. It just knocked me in the head. This, I thought, is what is meant by "thy will be done" in the Lord's Prayer, which I had prayed time and again without thinking about it. It means that your will and God's will may not be the same. It means there's a good possibility that you won't get what you pray for. It means that inspite of your prayers you are going to suffer. It means you may be crucified.

After Jesus' terrible prayer at Gethsemane, an angel came to Him and gave him strength, but he did not remove the cup.

Before that time I may have had my doubts about public prayers, but I had listened to them complacently enough, even when they were for the football team. I had prayed my own private prayers complacently enough, asking for things I wanted, even though I knew well already that a lot of things I wanted I was not going to get, no matter how much I prayed for them. (Though I hadn't got around to thinking about it, I already know that I had been glad to have some things I had got that I had never thought to want, let alone pray for.)

But now I was unsure what it would be proper to pray for, or how to pray for it. After you have said "thy will be done," what more can be said? And where do you find the strength to pray "thy will be done" after you see what it means?

And what did these questions do to my understanding of all the prayers I had ever heard and prayed? And what did they do to the possibility that I could stand before a congregation - my congregation, who would believe that I knew what I was doing - and pray for favorable weather, a good harvest, the recovery of the sick and the strayed, victory in war? Does prayer change God's mind? If God's mind can be changed by the wants and wishes of us mere humans, as if deferring to our better judgment, what is the point of praying to Him at all? And what are we to think when to good people pray for opposite things - as when two devout mothers of soldiers on opposite sides pray for the sfety of their sons, or for victory?

Does God want us to cross the abyss between Him and us? If we can't - and it looked to me like we can't - will he help us? Or does He want us to fall into the abyss? Are there some things He wants us to learn that we can't learn except by falling into the abyss? Is that why the jonah of old, who could not say "thy will be done," had to lie three days and three nights in the dark in the belly of the great fish?

"Father, remove this cup from me," I prayed. And there I stopped. For how would I know what God's will was, even provided I could have the strength to submit to it? I knew a lot of hearsay about God speaking to people in plain English, but He never had (He never has) spoken so to me.

By then I wasn't just asking questions; I was being changed by them. I was being changed by my prayers, which dwindled down nearer and nearer to silence, which weren't confrontations with God but with the difficulty - in my own mind, or in the human lot - of knowing what or how to pray. Lying awake at night, I could feel myself being changed - into what, I had no idea. It was worse than wondering if I had received the call. I wasn't just a student or a going-to-be preacher anymore. I was a lost traveler wandering in the woods, needing to be on my way somewhere but not knowing where. (Jayber Crow, pp. 50-52)

Pentecost 10: Who do you say that I am?

2011-08-21T12:00:00.000-05:00

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" And they said, "Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter answered, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. (Matthew 16:13-20)
---
It happened to us twice. Two different times, sitting in two different mud-walled churches with tin roofs, two different Maasai choirs singing worship from deep in their souls, clothed in red and blue plaid and their fanciest beadwork. It happened to us twice, in two different Maasai churches, as part of a time set aside for the formal exchange of lengthy greetings, filtered through two layers of translation. It happened to us twice, while we were sharing and learning about life in the Tanzanian bush and in suburban America.

It happened to us twice: a raised hand on the far side of the church, and a Maasai man or woman standing to ask us questions about our faith and culture. Twice, we were posed the question “Are you Christ followers?” And then follow-up question, “How does that make your life different?”

More than wanting to know what Christianity is like in a different land, more than wanting to know what the church is like across an ocean that none of them would ever see, these men and women wanted to know who Christ was to us, on a deeply personal level. They wanted to know that believing in Christ had changed our lives. They wanted to know that our faith and discipleship mattered - really mattered - in our lives.

For these communities of faith, gathered out in the dust under the shade of thorny acacia trees, following Jesus was nothing other than a life-changing commitment. Christ following meant abandoning some long-standing tribal and cultural practices and adopting a new worldview where all humans, male and female, are equal in God’s eyes. They expected nothing less from us. They wanted to know that our experience with Christ was just as personal, just as powerful, and just as life-changing as the Christ that they had come to know.

“Are you a Christ follower?” the asked. And, “How does that transform your life?” Or, in other words, “Who do you say that Christ is?”

* * *

Jesus arrived at Caesarea Philippi. This Jesus was the one who even before birth was called “Immanuel,” God-with-us, the one who will “save his people from their sins.” This Jesus has already taught, healed, and performed wonder after wonder, and yet been asked, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

Jesus arrived at Caesarea Philippi, a political threat and a curious figure to the villages. And so he asked his disciples about all the rumors that were flying about him, and about the Son of Man, the Messiah that the whole world was hoping for. He asked them, “Who do people think the Son of Man is?” The disciples told him, ‘Some think John the Baptist, some think it’s Elijah, there are a few who think it might be Jeremiah, or maybe one of the other prophets.”

Jesus pressed the disciples, asking more pointedly, “What about you? Who do you say I am?” And Simon Peter, always first to run off his mouth, confidently declared, “You are the Christ. The Messiah. The Son of the living God!” And Jesus said, “Blessed are you.”

* * *

A quick trip to Google is all it takes for us, in our current day and age, to answer Jesus’ first question, “Who do people say I am?”

Author Geza Vermes says that Jesus is, “an unsurpassed master of the art of laying bare the inmost core of spiritual truth.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. says, “Jesus Christ was an extremist for love, truth and goodness.”
Mikhail Gorbachev says, “Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind.”
Camille Paglia says, “Jesus was a brilliant Jewish stand-up comedian, a phenomenal improviser. His parables are great one-liners.”
And John Lennon, in his infamous quote about the Beatles, says, “We're more popular than Jesus Christ now. I don't know which will go first; rock and roll or Christianity.”

Google, television, radio, and any quantity of books, interviews and articles can tell you a lot about Jesus. But they can only get you so far. They can only answer that first question Jesus asks, “Who do people say that I am?”

But the question that Jesus really wants to know the answer to is the second question, the personal question: “Who do you say that I am?” It’s not good enough for us to know what other people believe about Jesus. The life of faith begun at baptism is a life of discerning the answer to the question, “What do I believe?” It’s the point of our Christian education and confirmation ministries. It’s the purpose of sharing the Word together in worship and in personal devotion. It’s the goal of meeting Christ at the table in bread and wine.

When Peter speaks up and proclaims, “Jesus, you are the Christ,” Jesus turns around and says “Blessed are you.” I don’t think he says this because Peter said the “right” answer. Jesus tells Peter that he is blessed for having proclaimed his own faith, rather than regurgitating any secondary sources. “Blessed are you,” Jesus says, “for believing in me, and not just in stories and second-hand reports about me. Blessed are you because you felt God’s grace stirring in your soul and have come to believe in me, the one whom he has sent. Blessed are you because you have seen me - really seen me! - and believed.”

* * *

Sitting on those narrow benches, kicking the dust under our feet and smelling the breeze at it blew in through the cracks where the tin roof met the mud walls of the churches, our group looked at each other quietly, trying to come up with a simple answer to a question that seemed so complicated: What does following Christ really mean to you?

Whether they knew it or not, the eager Maasai women and men who posed the questions were asking us to disregard what everybody else thinks about Jesus. They were asking us to disregard what we’ve read or studied. They were challenging us to disregard all of the good answers that we could quote other believers and other theologians. They were pushing us to resist talking about Christianity in the third-person.

I wish I could tell you that we stood up and shared with them glowing testimonies of the ways that each of us have experienced Jesus in our lives and come to be transformed by him. And I wish that I could tell you that we shared story after story about how Christ was using us to bring real change to our communities here at home. But we were quiet. Maybe it was too big of a question. Maybe it was too complicated to explain through two layers of language barriers. Maybe we were shy, or just out of practice when it comes to talking about the personal side of our faith.

All I know is that those moments of quiet and stammered half-answers about Christianity in America sparked in me a new desire to draw closer to Jesus, so that I, too, can talk in easy, concrete, faithful terms about my relationship with Jesus, just like the members of the congregations who hosted us did. I want to be able to say, confidently, things such as “God is the one who brings the rain. Jesus is the one who brings equality. My faith liberates and empowers me from the cultural hardships of being a woman. Jesus is the shepherd of my soul.” Or, in the words of Peter, “Jesus, you are the Christ, the Messiah, the one sent by God to redeem the world.”

The good news for me, for you, for our group of Tanzania travelers is that we can keep looking for the thin places in our lives where we encounter Christ in transforming ways, and we can keep practicing our lines so that we speak in a vocabulary of faith. The good news is that God opens up safe spaces where we can search our hearts to discern where God is really working in our lives. And maybe, in this moment right here and now, the best news of all is that we come together week after week and practice our faith in this community or other worshiping communities like this. We pray prayers that help us find our words. We sing songs that help us expand our imaginations and our vocabularies. And, week by week, we stand up together, our voices supporting and being supported by the whole people of God, and we practice again the words of our faith every time we begin the Creed with the words “I believe.”

I would invite you right now to reach forward and grab a red hymnal. Turn to page 229 in the front, which is part of the rite of Holy Baptism.

As I ask each question and we respond, I invite you do think about the words you are saying, perhaps more deeply that you’ve ever considered them before. Think about the words that communicate the faith of the deepest parts of your heart. Think about the words that challenge you, or the words that are hard for you to agree with. Think about what it really means to you to say the words “I believe.” And consider this your way, today, to answer the question posed to us by Jesus: “Who do you say that I am?”

Do you believe in God the Father?

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.

Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God?

I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.

Do you believe in God the Holy Spirit?

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.

Amen.

Pentecost 8: Wrestling with God

2011-07-31T12:00:00.001-05:00


"Jacob Wrestling God 2" by Chris Cook

The same night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, "Let me go, for the day is breaking." But Jacob said, "I will not let you go, unless you bless me." So he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob." Then the man said, "You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed." Then Jacob asked him, "Please tell me your name." But he said, "Why is it that you ask my name?" And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved." The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. (Genesis 32:22-31)
---
Throughout the summer, we have been reading through some of the most important Old Testament stories that have shaped our faith. Over these past few weeks, we have gotten to know the character of Jacob pretty well. Today’s story is of Jacob wrestling with a divine stranger, but if you’ve paid any attention at all over the last few weeks, you know that Jacob iis a man who has been wrestling his whole life. He’s used to wrestling…and to winning. He is a man accustomed to having the upper hand.

Jacob wrestled right from the start, contending with his brother even in the womb, and grabbing his brother’s heel as they were born, not content to be left behind or second best. He was opportunistic and wrestled the birthright away from his brother Esau, simply by offering up a bowl of soup in a moment of hungry weakness. He wrestled his father Isaac’s blessing away from Esau simply by wearing goat skins and taking advantage of his old father’s failing eyesight. He was quick and wrestled himself away from home to escape Easu’s anger. He went off, fell in love, and wrestled with Laban’s own wheeling and dealing in order to win Rachel as his wife...and came away from many long years of wrestling with not just Rachel as his wife, but also her sister Leah!

Today’s story picks up after Jacob finally leaves Laban’s house, with wives and wealth, and gets hit with a terrifying piece of news: Esau is coming to meet him, and he’s bring along an army of 400 men. Once again, Jacob is in a position of wrestling. He imagines a match-up with his brother, and wrestles his way out of immediate danger first by sending money ahead of him as a bribe, and then sending along his wives and children across the river first, hoping that Esau will feel pity and call off the attack. True to form, Jacob is, again, wrestling that he might prevail and save his own skin.

And just when Jacob is finally alone, left on the near side of the riverbank with his life, for the moment, intact, he is forced to wrestle once again, but this time, for real. A mysterious man appears, takes Jacob down, and the two men wrestle until daybreak. Limbs flailing in the reeds along the riverbank. Muscles aching, bruises appearing, sweat and dirt covering their faces.

And as Jacob wrestles this divine stranger, he also wrestles with himself. He wrestles with all of his fear, his frustration, and his guilt. He wrestles with his own devious and cunning deeds. He wrestles with his identity. And for the first time in his life, Jacob is met with a wrestling match that he cannot win. After a lifetime of taking cheap shots in order to win the desires of his heart, Jacob is now entangled with an opponent over whom he will not prevail, no matter how strong he is or how hard he fights. It is simply not his time to win.

Just as day begins to dawn, the mysterious divine stranger sets Jacob’s hip out of place and calls the match. It is over. And Jacob has lost.

I attended a preaching conference last spring, and our keynote speaker talked at length about how previous generations of churchgoers had a more intimate knowledge of the Bible and all of its stories of faith. He remarked that for this group, he could ask any of them to tell him a Bible story that supported them, helped them, or related to their life, and they would be able to do it. But with our current generation, for many reasons, this same intimate Biblical knowledge doesn’t exist. We don’t know the stories well enough to hang our hats on them. So if you are someone today who needs a story that you can relate to - a story that you can identify with, take comfort in, and rely on, this story about Jacob might just be the perfect story for you.

Because it isn’t difficult to insert ourselves into Jacob’s story. We know what it feels like to wrestle and bargain for our own self-interests. We know what it feels like to want to get ahead at any cost. We know what it feels like to tell half-truths in order to save our skins.

And, I imagine, many of us also know what it feels like to wrestle with God.

We struggle with God when we cannot see or understand his plan for our lives. We contend with God in the face of death and destruction. We fight with God when we feel that our prayers have gone unanswered. We struggle with God when we fear our doubts and when we need answers for our skeptical souls.

I have a friend - another pastor - who loves to read books written by atheists and skeptics. He especially loves to read the angriest of these books! He does because he wants to learn and grow, and to wrestle with his faith in new and deeper ways.

We wrestle when we hear news of the terrorism in Norway or the devastating drought and famine in the Horn of Africa, and wonder how we can find God even in these difficult circumstances.

Last Sunday was my first Sunday back after a long summer of travel. I remarked during that service that it felt like coming home to be with all of you again. But as I looked around, I realized that part of the reason that worship felt like a homecoming is that I know you all so very well. I can look around and know what various things you are wrestling with in your lives - illnesses, fears, griefs, questions, hopes. So many of you are wrestling with deep and difficult things. Know that you are in good company.

Yes, my friends, if there is but one thing that connects us deeply to the character of Jacob, it is most certainly this: that we, too, have stood on that riverbank in the dead of night, struggling and shoving and kicking and screaming, wrestling with our creator, hoping to prevail.

The Atlanta-born artist Chris Cook has painted four depictions of Jacob’s divine wrestling match. The second one, pictured above, is painted in mostly subdued green and blue tones. Cook has painted the match using intentionally simple forms: the easy shape of blue and green hills, the upper half of the painting filled with white dotted stars across a dark blue sky, a swirling blue moon, and then two figures, set right in the middle of the canvas, large and strong to the eye.

God is painted as a large, marshmallowy figure, with huge soft limbs and giant hands and feet. Around his head, a divine yellow glow. And in the arms of this big, soft figure is Jacob. Jacob, by comparison, is painted as a disproportionately thin, wiry man, his whole body being the width of one of God’s legs. He is a caricature of weakness: spindly limbs, tiny fists aimed at God’s face, a comically small head resting on this long stick of a body, his unpainted face staring up at the hulking figure of God who holds him.

But when you look at the painting, before you notice the bold brush strokes, or before you notice the bold contrast between the huge figure of God and the skinny figure of Jacob, you notice something yet more striking.

The two figures, though wrestling, appear as if they are dancing. God’s arms hold Jacob in a partner’s stance. The legs of both figures are right in step with one another. The characters do not look tangled at all. They are in rhythm together, in sync. The feeling evoked by the entwined characters is not one of struggle but of grace. If you were to look at the painting without its title, you might at first assume that it is a painting of a divine dance or of a divine embrace. The painting evokes the idea of Jacob’s wrestling match as a tender, emotional, grace-filled event.

This painting answers for us the important question, “Why do we wrestle with God?” We wrestle with God because wrestling is intimate. In order to wrestle, you have to be up close and personal. You can’t wrestle from afar; you have to be touching. You need to grab one another in awkward poses, you need to coordinate your movements, you need to embrace. Wrestling brings you together. And when we wrestle with God, we, like Jacob, can get close enough to see God face to face.

Have you ever picked on your brother or sister because you didn’t know how else to give them attention? Remember the boys that chased the girls on the playground and pulled their braids to show them that they liked them?

Even if we are angry with God, disillusioned with faith, and full of doubts, if we are yet willing to get close enough to God to pull on his pigtails and wrestle him to the ground, then we are still following the deepest desire of our heart: to see God face-to-face. And the story of Jacob teaches us that in seeing God face-to-face, we will be blessed.

Jacob loses the wrestling match there on the riverbank, and loses badly. But the story goes on to tell us that even on the losing end of this wrestling match, Jacob receives not merely a limp, but a new name, a new identity, a new purpose, and the full blessing of God.

Jacob teaches us that wrestling with God, seeing God, and being blessed by God all go hand in hand. For us, out there in the world, our calling is to wrestle with God in our own faith-lives, and to wrestle with the brokenness in our world on behalf of that faith. The purpose behind all of our wrestling is to see God ever more clearly, and to discern God’s plans and dreams for our lives. And we live, every day, in hope that out of our wrestling, our struggles, our doubts and even our fears, we will find blessing.

I leave you, this day, with a blessing that I came upon in some recent reading. It picks up on what we heard in Jacob’s story, about the connection between wrestling, blessing, and seeing God. It lifts up your own struggles, and asks God to give you new chances to wrestle with your faith, that you might truly see God face-to-face:

May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart.

May God bless you with holy anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may tirelessly work for justice, freedom, and peace among all people.

May God bless you with the gift of tears to shed with those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all that they cherish, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and transform their pain into joy. (Fourfold Franciscan Blessing)

May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you really can make a difference in this world, so that you are able, with God's grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.

I pray that you continue to wrestle, all the way until daybreak, and that in your wrestling, you will come to know God more deeply than you have ever known him before, and that you will indeed be blessed by your encounter.

Grateful for the now

2011-06-21T18:18:00.000-05:00

I had an odd experience today. Facebook made me grateful to be 30, grateful to be where I am, grateful for my current friendships - both old and new! - and immensely grateful to be the person I am now, in 2011, apart from all of the people I have tried to be over the years.

One of the funny things about Facebook is the fact that I am FB friends with plenty of people whom I wasn't terribly close to in real life. Also funny is that I am close to some people now, in my young adult life, who I was barely friends or acquaintances with when we were in school together (high school, college, or seminary). I am grateful for these "late-blooming" friendships, and grateful for the people I have stayed close to over any number of years...and also grateful for moving on beyond other relationships.

Let me explain. Today on Facebook, I looked at pictures that a FB friend of mine posted - a person who I was in lots of activities with at school, but a person who I wasn't very close to. The pictures were of him hanging out with other folks who I went to school with. They all looked great - happy, healthy, enjoying their opportunity to reunite for some summer fun. The pictures are all of people who I desperately wanted to like me back in the day. An "in-crowd" of sorts. Since we all did the same activities, I saw these people a lot, and shared lots of experiences with them. But I never was accepted by them as a friend. I was never on the inside of them. And years ago, it bothered me. A lot. I couldn't figure out why a group of people that I had so much in common with would cast me to the outside before they had even gotten the chance to know me.

But as I looked at them in those pictures today, I felt some of that old insecurity fall away. I felt happy for them that they were happy. And I felt sort of strange about the fact that I could be FB friends with some of them even though they didn't ever give me the time of day. And it stopped mattering to me that I wasn't a part of them.

I looked around at my life and felt grateful for all of my relationships. I felt like, at 30, I was finally allowed to admit that life is better now and I like myself better now than I ever did during high school or college or even seminary. It as if I wanted to believe that each of those parts of my life was the best part of my life. And truly, I've had some amazing and blessed experiences throughout each of those stages of my adolescence and young adulthood. But today, Facebook made me feel keenly aware of how much I've grown beyond those days. It's refreshing to be at a point in life where there isn't an in-crowd anymore. It's refreshing to be at a point in life beyond adolescent drama. It's refreshing to be my own person, charting my own way, and feeling, in some small way, that I have finally "arrived." And, honestly, it's nice to feel secure enough in who I am to be able to look back at all the people I used to try to impress and think, "I don't need to waste my time seeking approval anymore. I like the person I've become and I like the life I am living."

I don't know if it's the fact that I'm now 30, or if it's the fact that I'm about to leave the country for a few weeks (for the first time), or if it's something else completely, but I'm just feeling grateful right now for all the blessings in my life - people and otherwise - and grateful for the ability to outgrow the past. Maybe that's just a part of growing up.

Holy Trinity: Grace, love, & communion

2011-06-19T12:00:00.003-05:00

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the LORD sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory." The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said: "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: "Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out." Then I heard the voice of the LORD saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I; send me!" (Isaiah 6:1-8)

Finally, brothers and sisters, farewell. Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you. 2 Corinthians 13:11-13)

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:16-20)
---
I’d like to begin this morning by telling you a little bit about a new church that has formed. It’s a few years old at this point, but is still full of the excitement and eagerness of new believers and new members. It is a church that is raising big questions about how the church of Christ is supposed to relate to its culture. Few members of this church were raised in the church, and so they are still working out the details about how to balance their Christian identity with their spirit of mission within the neighborhood. Noble work, yes, but work that has caused lots of infighting and arguing. They can’t decide whether they should be a part of distinctly non-Christian community meals and events. They can’t come to agreement on what they believe about marriage and moral issues. They argue over how they should worship and they sometimes disagree over matters of doctrine. In all of this, they don’t yet know how best to mediate personal disputes among church members, and yet they are desperately seeking unity as a community of faith.

Now I need to admit that I’ve been a little facetious with you here. Because this description of a very modern-sounding church with very current-sounding struggles is actually a description of the church at Corinth, one of the earliest Christian communities that Paul established and corresponded with. It is the church responsible for Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, the second of which we read this morning.

The church in Corinth was trying to get its act together. They wrestled with how to relate to their culture, and they wrestled over issues of doctrine and morality. They loved one another, but they argued and fought and dealt with internal divisions. The church at Corinth is an example of a community learning and struggling with how really to be community in Christ.

At the end of a letter full of admonitions and advice, Paul turns his focus to the value of unity in Christ. He closes his letter with the words we read earlier this morning: “Finally, brothers and sisters…put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”

This last sentence is the way that we greet each other liturgically, every Sunday when we come to worship. We invoke the entire trinity as we come together as a worshiping community, relying on Christ’s grace, God’s love, and the Spirit’s fellowship to bring us unity in our common tasks of praise and discipleship.

Speaking more broadly, when Paul bids us the grace of Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Spirit, he is connecting the blessings of God with the values by which true community can flourish, not just within the church, but beyond.

Let me explain. Grace, love, and communion: these are ways that God acts toward us. God shows us grace, God loves us, God binds us into communion with him and with all creation. God’s face has shined on us and salvation has been given to us. But that is not the end of the story. In the same way that God meets us through grace, love, and communion, God also calls us to meet one another and our world with the values of grace, love, and communion.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book Life Together, explains it this way:

When God was merciful, when He revealed Jesus Christ to us as our Brother, when He won our hearts by His love, this was the beginning of our instruction in divine love. When God was merciful to us, we learned to be merciful with our brethren. When we received forgiveness instead of judgment, we, too, were made ready to forgive our brethren. What God did to us, we were able to give; and the more meager our brotherly love, the less we were living by God’s mercy and love. Thus God Himself taught us to meet one another as God has met us in Christ. (Life Together, 25)

Grace, love, and communion are the ways that God teaches us to meet one another as he has already met us in Christ and enlivened our hearts by the Spirit.

So here is the million dollar question: What would our community and world look like if people of Christ really met one another with the grace of Jesus, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit?

Isaiah’s experience in our first reading gives us come clues.

Isaiah finds himself in the presence of God and in the midst of a divine community of worship that cries, “Holy, holy holy is the Lord of hosts! Heaven and earth are full of his glory!” Isaiah immediately identifies himself as an outsider to this community. “Woe is me,” he says, “for I am lost and unworthy, a sinner standing before the face of God, an exile to God’s chosen ones.

As we look around our neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, social circles, and even around this worshiping community gathered here, it takes but little effort for us to identify the “Isaiahs” in our midst – the woeful, lost, “unclean” outsiders who feel unworthy, who keep to the fringes of our communities or are shoved to the outside. People who don’t quite fit into social norms. People of different classes and backgrounds. People of different physical or mental abilities. People who rub us the wrong way. People whose values and commitments are significantly different than ours. People who we see as too needy or too anxious or too stand-offish.

Isaiah is quick to see all the things that would cut him off from the community assembled before him. But God is quick to pull him in.

It takes one simple, holy touch for Isaiah to be brought to the inside. The seraph touches the coal to his tongue, instantly forgiving him, restoring him, and making him a whole and complete individual in God’s holy community. And when God asks “Who will go for me?” it is Isaiah, the newest member, who jumps up and volunteers, “Here am I – send me!”

This is what meeting people with grace, love, and communion is all about: reaching out with a holy touch to those who are kept to the outside of our communities, offering forgiveness and restoration to the longing souls in our midst, and showing grace and love to the woeful, lost, unclean ones who, like Isaiah, are in need of invitation and restoration.

Meeting one another with grace, love and communion means slowing our judgmental reflexes. When a car zooms in behind us and tails us when we’re already driving ten miles over the speed limit in the right lane on I-88, our gut reaction is to write him off as a jerk. When we read news headlines about politicians caught in scandals, lies, and morally questionable behavior, our gut reaction is to demand their resignations.

For most of us, judgment comes far more easily than grace. But the extraordinary news of our salvation is that in Christ, God chooses not to show us judgment, but rather to show us his love by being gracious and drawing us into the communion of saints.

Meeting one another as God meets us means that our great commission is to create new habits, training our hearts and minds to have a new brand of gut reactions: when met with angry or aggressive drivers on the interstate, recognizing that we don’t know their stories and that they might be stressed, struggling, tired, or late – and recognizing that we’ve all been there; when met with political scandal, remembering that we have all been embarrassed and shamed, and that even the most upstanding people can have flawed and complicated lives.

Meeting one another with grace, love, and communion is a big undertaking, but one that God has empowered us to do in Christ, through the Holy Spirit. When you look at your own life, which of these three values is the hardest for you to live out in your daily life? Is it hardest for you to meet people with grace? Is it hardest for you to meet the world with unconditional love? Is it hardest for you to create community and seek unity?

Take a moment to write down the value that you most need God’s help to live out in your life – grace, love, or communion.
…
Now write down a few ways that you can practice living out this value in the next days or weeks. Write down the old habits you want to rid yourself of that keep you from living this value. Write down new habits you’d like to create. Write down reminders for yourself so that you keep this value a priority in your daily life.
…
Keep this list with you this week. Share it with a friend or family member who might be able to help keep you accountable. You might want to bring this list over to the prayer corner during communion and take a minute to pray for God’s help. You might want to put the list in your Bible so that you trip over it during your daily devotions, or you might want to tape it to your mirror so that you catch a glance at it every morning.

That early church in Corinth definitely didn’t get things right on the first try. Or the second try. Or, probably, many times after that. Modern communities of faith don’t get it right all the time, either. But that church in Corinth kept trying. They kept writing back to Paul, sharing joys and struggles, asking for advice, and grappling with issues of faith because they took Jesus commission very seriously: Go, make disciples of all people. They wanted to learn how to meet each other and their world with God’s gifts of grace, love, and fellowship. They were a work-in-progress and so are we.

So we keep splashing around in that baptismal water, and we keep gathering to hear God’s Word, and we keep showing up hungry to the feast that God continues to spread before us. We pray and we praise and sit at Jesus’ feet, training our minds and hearts to approach our world with the same care that God approaches us.

And this is why, week to week, we coming back here and gather around those same words from Paul, those words that describe both God’s action and our call, that describe both our gathering and our sending, that bind us together and send us out:

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all: And also with you.

Amen.

Easter 7/Ascension: Sit here for the present

2011-06-05T12:00:00.001-05:00

I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.(Ephesians 1:15-23)

In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. "This," he said, "is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." So when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" He replied, "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." (Acts 1:1-11)
---
When I was growing up one of my favorite books was the Beverly Clearly classic, Ramona the Pest. In this book, Ramona Quimby, a precocious, curious, and unintentionally mischievous young girl, begins kindergarten.

On her first day of school, she walks into the classroom and meets her teacher, Miss Binney, who leads her to one of the classroom tables, telling her, “Sit here for the present.” Ramona mistakenly believes that she has been singled out to receive a special gift, and refuses to leave her seat, all morning. She brags to her new classmates that she has been chosen for a special present. She keeps her bottom firmly planted to her seat, even when the rest of the class moves about, because she waiting for the present that she believes has been promised to her. Poor Miss Binney finally has to break the news to Ramona that the expression “for the present” means “for now,” and has nothing to do with getting a gift.

“Sit here for the present” is an apt phrase to describe our readings today that tell the story of Jesus’ ascension into heaven. It is forty days after the resurrection, and Jesus has spent many of these days with the disciples, teaching them, opening their hearts to the scriptures, and charging them with the task of proclaiming to all the world repentance and forgiveness of sins in his name.

When the time comes for Jesus to depart from the earth, he leads the disciples out and gives them some last instructions. In so many words, he tells them to “sit here for the present.” Except that when Jesus says, “Sit here for the present,” he means both sit here for now and sit here to receive a gift. Both Miss Binney and Ramona Quimby would have been satisfied.

Jesus tells them, “Stay here in Jerusalem for now, because you are about to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Don’t leave the city until you have been clothed in this power. John may have baptized you with water, but hold on tight, because when the Holy Spirit shows up, you will be baptized in the spirit. Remember earlier when I told you that you would do great things, and that you’d do even greater things than I did? This is what I was talking about. When you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, you will have the power to spread my good news not only to the city, not only to the region, but to all the corners of the earth.”

Sit here for the present.

Jesus’ message to the disciples and to us is that God and God’s gifts are accessible to us, here and now. God and God’s gifts are accessible to us, here and now. But I think that the hard part about this good news, both for the disciples and for us, is believing that God would choose to move and act in this present world, because this world is still broken, still longing, still unfulfilled.

The disciples struggled with this. Sit here for the present, Jesus says, and they respond, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel? Is God’s kingdom about to reign on earth? When you leave, will all now be restored?” The disciples weren’t quite ready to accept Jesus’ message of “sit here for the present.” Their feet might have been planted firmly on Jerusalem soil, but their minds and hearts had already left the scene, skipping ahead to the end of the story that Jesus had told them about, when God would come to reign and the kingdom of this world would pass away. And for good reason! They looked around their world, saw pain and injustice and oppression and fear, and wondered if it was yet time for God to restore the world.

One temptation that comes with following Christ is the desire to skip ahead to the end of God’s story. An entire Christian pop culture industry has been built around such a focus on the end times. At its best, a focus on God’s new heaven and new earth can be profoundly hope-giving. But at its worst, such a focus on the end times can lead people of faith to skip ahead to the end of the story and to see it as an escape from this world and this life. This sort of escapism leads to things like rapture theology and the heartfelt, earnest, albeit mistaken urgency with which people like Harold Camping proclaim the apocalypse.

I understand this temptation. I flip on NPR only to hear in-depth reports about war-torn villages, homeowners facing foreclosure, and environmentalists worried about the sustainability of food or energy sources. I watch the local news and see stories of missing children, domestic violence, and murder. I read the newspaper and find anxious tidings of slow economic recovery. It doesn’t take much effort to find out that, despite technology and progress, hungry people are still hungry, sick people are still sick, and poor people are still poor.

And I suspect I’m not alone when I feel overwhelmed by all of this bad news. On overwhelmed days, any one of us might feel tempted to give up on in this world, disengage, and decide that it’s best just to bear with this life, hide out where we can’t see the pain of the world, and bide time until we get through to heaven.

On a smaller scale, there’s a certain amount of this “grit our teeth and get through to heaven” mentality that defines our daily lives. How many mornings do each of us wake up, take stock of the business – and busyness! – of our days, and soothe our anxious minds by telling ourselves, “only ten hours until I will be on my way back home…all I have to do is survive ten hours…” Maybe it’s ten hours, or eight, or fifteen for you. Or maybe your waking thought on Wednesday is, “I am halfway there, I only have a few days left until the weekend.”

But when the anxieties and tasks of the day seem too much, and when your to-do list keeps you awake at night; when the stuff of life feels overwhelming; when your days seem mostly all about survival: these are the moments when we most need to hear again the good news of Jesus via Miss Binney: “Sit here for the present.” Stay here for now. Keep engaged in this world, in the present moment, in the stuff of this world.

Because God isn’t hanging back, waiting until the end to act in beautiful and miraculous ways in this world. God isn’t biding his time, saving all his best stuff for when we get to heaven. God is active, here and now! God doesn’t wait to be present until after all of your meetings are done. God’s doesn’t store up his work and only unleash it on the weekends. God doesn’t hold back blessings until life slows down and anxiety dissipates.

God simply shows up. In the present. And God acts. Here and now.

God sends people into our lives at those perfect moments when they can be blessings to us. God sends sparks into our hearts that lead us to organize a second Feed My Starving Children MobilePack here at St. Timothy, or to ship ourselves halfway around the world to support life-giving medical care and see a few giraffes along the way, or to bring a bike and a dog along to worship alongside the trees and the birds and even the freight trains. God leads us to the edge of the pool where the kids splash around and where a deck chair and a good book are sacred symbols of Sabbath.

God whispers into our ears words of permission to slow down, to stand still despite the madly spinning world outside, to breathe, to give up anxiety about what we cannot control. For God is here, God is now, God is in the present. And when we start really trusting that God is in the present, then we will start to see, more and more, the gifts that God pours out into our lives every day.

Jesus promises us that God’s kingdom will one day come to reign. He promises us that there will come a day when we no longer need to pray, “thy kingdom come.” We wait in faith for the day when we will no longer have to pray, “give us this day our daily bread,” because the needs of the world will be met; when we will no longer have to pray, “forgive us our sins as we forgive others,” because all will be reconciled; when we will no longer have to pray, “save us from the time of trial” or “deliver us from evil,” for brokenness and sin and death will be no more.

But in the meantime, we live as people of the promise. People to whom much has been given, and people to whom much more has yet been promised. We sit here in the present, knowing with confidence that God breaks in and acts, even in our imperfect world. We sit here in the present so that we have a front-row seat from which to see God’s daily blessings. We sit here clothed with the gift of God’s spirit that moves us to be blessings in our world.

For the Spirit that has been poured out upon us is the spirit of wisdom and revelation that Paul talks about. And this gift of the spirit enlightens the eyes of our hears to that we daily “may know the hope to which [God] has called [us]” and the “riches of [our] glorious inheritance” as God’s chosen saints, and feel in our bones “the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.”

Sit here for the present.

Miss Binney’s words are God’s blessing to us and our charge. They are our hope and our call to action. No more skipping ahead to the future. No more giving up on the world. No more keeping God’s blessings at arms’ length. Because our present is God’s present. This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice, and be glad in it!

Easter 5: Taste and see

2011-05-22T12:00:00.001-05:00

Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation — if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:2-3,9-10)

Jesus said, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going." Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him." Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied." Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it." (John 14:1-14)
---
One of those quirky-facts-you-might-not-know-about-Pastor-Melissa is that, in my spare time, I enjoy reading food blogs on the internet. There are a handful of sites that I visit regularly. One blog is written by a mom in New York city who has a teensy kitchen, an adorable one-year-old, and great love for the joy of simple food. One blog is written by a whole staff of writers who seek out interesting recipes from around the world, as well as reviewing the lastest and greatest kitchen tools and tipping readers off to seasonal ingredients showing up at farmers’ markets across the country. One blog is written by a photographer in Colorado who shares her best landscape photography as well as her best food photography.

Reading these blogs is fun for me because they offer me inspiration and new ideas. They help me figure out what to do with interesting, crazy, uncommon but beautiful items at the farmer’s market. They help me figure out what to cook for dinner when I don’t have any good ideas of my own. But mostly, reading food blogs is fun because I like hearing the stories of people who have tried and tasted amazing things, who get excited about the beautiful foods that they eat. All of these people keep up their blogs for one simple reason: they have tasted something delicious and they want to share with the world the flavors that move and inspire them.

Our reading from 1 Peter begins with these words: “long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation — if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.” Honest question time: When is the last time you tasted the goodness of the Lord in such a compelling way that you felt compelled to share that flavor with the world?

The disciples were desperate to taste and see the goodness of God. They followed Jesus around like expectant puppy dogs, with wide eyes and searching souls. “Show us the way to the Father,” they say, and “How will we know the way?” Thomas asks. Jesus looks at them and shakes his head. “I am the way. In me you can find all life and all truth and all revelation of God’s hopes and dreams and promises.”

God bless the disciples for being confused and dense and, well, human, I suppose. Because Philip still doesn’t get it, and asks again, “Just show us the Father and we will be satisfied.” Jesus must be losing patience here. “Have I been with you all this time and still you do not know me? I’ve told you that the Father and I are one. I’ve done signs and wonders to show that the Father and I are one. If you can’t believe what I’ve told you, at least believe the miracles.”

Maybe the problem here is that the disciples are too close to Jesus, and have spent too much time getting used to his presence. They’ve seen signs and wonders, yes, but they’ve also seen him eat and sleep. They’ve seen him with bedhead, and they’ve smelled him after long stints on the road without a bath. They’ve heard him preach to crowds, yes, but they’ve also chatted with him about lesser things along the road, killing time between destinations. Maybe the problem is that some of the wonder has worn off. You spend enough time with ordinary-Jesus, and you begin to forget about some of the extraordinary.

I read an interesting fact this week: “The native mountaineering guides in the Himalayas, known as sherpas, are intimately acquainted with the face of Mount Everest. However, they only know it from one side – the view from their home valley. They have been known to respond in disbelief to images of Everest taken from the other sides. Their disbelief changes to one of amazement when they realize that something with which they are so familiar can have other sides to it.”

When we gather to worship, and when we approach scripture – when we come to the table or font, or when we show up with other faithful folks for one reason or another, do we come, expecting only to see Jesus from the one side that we know best? Do we seek only the parts of Jesus that have become ordinary to us? For all of us, there are days that we don’t have the energy to do much other than this. I understand. We all have days where all that we can handle is an encounter with a familiar Jesus who says familiar things, who looks exactly like we expect him to look, who doesn’t shake up our souls or lives too much.

But when this becomes our pattern – when we get so settled and comfortable in our home valley, with only one view of Everest rising up in front of us – we cultivate lives that remain unmoved by faith and uncompelled by wonder. And when we are unmoved and uncompelled, then the good news of Jesus doesn’t get out there into the world like Jesus commissioned us to do.

So let’s recover a little wonder today. It’s still the Easter season, after all. We are still basking in the glow of an empty tomb. Think about it! The empty tomb! And just when we thought we had Jesus all figured out....

He definitely taught us some amazing things about how to love one another and how to be humble and holy, and he promised us a new kingdom and an alternative vision to the despair of this world. He baffled us with some of his miracles. I mean, really, it’s a hard thing to ask of our rational brains to process this whole impossible business of water-into-wine, paralyzed-men-walking, blind-men-seeing, five-loaves-two-fish-feeding-thousands. And if all that weren’t enough wonder for us, we followed him into Jerusalem and watched, with that horrified sort of wonder, as he was arrested right in front of our eyes, and was beaten and betrayed and sentenced to death like the worst of your common criminals.

It was as if all of our wonder died right there on the cross along with Jesus.

But then there’s this empty tomb. Jesus’ body was supposed to be there, we placed it there so lovingly, caring for what was left of our hope, tending to the graceful shrouding of our broken faith. But today, there’s nothing left inside this stone cave. Nothing but this pesky light that won’t stop shining. Nothing but this intense and heart-pounding curiosity. Nothing but this sneaking suspicion that we are being watched by angel-eyes...or by the eyes of a gardener...and when we turn around to leave that tomb, we come face to face with the impossible. Not your garden-variety impossible, but the ultimate impossibility. There is Jesus, and he’s alive! I mean, really, truly, honestly ALIVE. It was amazing enough that he empowered the poor and stood up to the authorities and gave us a sneak peek at God’s kingdom. But now, he’s here, the one who was dead, who is now alive. Death is done for. Resurrection is real. Life wins.

Don’t hold this truth at arm’s length. Don’t fend off the wonder. Don’t dismiss this side of Everest that shows you that the empty tomb is FOR YOU. On this other side of the mountain, you can catch the awe-provoking vision of your own life, claimed and loved by God.

1 Peter says, “you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

Do you believe this?

Do you believe that you are chosen?
Do you believe that you are anointed and called?
Do you believe that you are holy? Your whole life and whole being?
Do you believe that you are God’s own?

All those times that you’ve felt that you were nothing – all of those times when you were not – those times are behind you. Where once you were not, you now are. You are chosen. You are called. You are holy. You belong.

All those times that you’ve felt like life is merciless or harsh – all of those times when life has seemed nothing but a survival of the fittest, gritty, competitive, cutthroat – all those times are behind you. Where once life was merciless, you now have been shown mercy. You have been picked up and placed back on your feet by a God of compassion. You are helped up when you slip. Your heart and soul are being carefully tended by the one who has called you out of darkness into marvelous light, who has pulled you from the comfort of your valley over to the other side of the mountain to give you a new and breathtaking view.

When we gather on the far side of Everest, we hope and pray and trust that God will show up. And when God shows up, then we are pushed beyond ourselves, out into life beyond the safety of church doors.

When God shows up, he calls us to the risky business of letting wonder permeates every moment, every action, every fiber of our being. It’s risky because we are compelled in faith to share this wonder with everybody we meet. It’s risky because faith compels us to share the good news that is in us.

When we share God’s good news, it’s not because we’re trying to convert anybody. It’s not because we want more members to join our church. It’s not because we can promise anybody an easier life or a quick fix for their problems. And it’s certainly not about saving people from the flames of hell.

It IS about sharing with the world this hope that we carry as a flame inside of us – this joy that permeates even the deepest grief, this confidence that we HAVE been promised a future, and a future with hope. It’s about sharing the wonder that has been enlivened inside of us by our experiences with a God who saves. It’s about our divine motivation to see the world with love and to see one another as blessed and beautiful children of God.

Those opening words from 1 Peter today are a challenge set before us: “long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation — if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”

If, indeed we have tasted that the Lord is good...

If we have tasted that the Lord is good, then we will be compelled by the taste that lingers on our tongues. If we have tasted that the Lord is good, then we will long to taste that goodness again and again. If we have tasted that the Lord is good, then we will be hard-pressed to keep this good news to ourselves. If we have tasted that the Lord is good, then the praise of God will always be on our lips and the joy and purpose of our life will be growing into the salvation that God has prepared for us.

If, indeed, we have tasted that the Lord is good...

Well, my friends, I’ll just put it out there. This table is risky today. Because when you come up here, you’re going to get a piece of bread that is more than just bread. It’s probably the most unsafe piece of bread you’ll ever receive. And it’s going to look like ordinary bread, and taste like ordinary bread, and it’ll have a crust and crumbs just like you’d expect it too. But the taste that lingers on your tongue will be so much more than just the aftertaste of bread. And the wine that you sip, or that you drench your bread in, will taste just like you’d expect it too. It’ll be all grape-y and it will warm your throat as you swallow, and it’ll remind you of other wines that you’ve sipped at other times. But the taste of that wine which remains under your tongue will be so much more than just the aftertaste of wine.

This bread and this wine are the spiritual milk for which we long. This meal is not a meal of bread and wine, but a meal of Christ, in, with, and among us. By this meal, we grow into salvation. but more than that, by this meal, our faith takes the nourishment it needs to jump and leap inside our hearts so that it can rise up within us, and shove us back out into the world to share the wonder that is inside of us.

So, my friends, if you dare...

...come to the table today. Venture to the other side of Everest. Eat this bread, drink this cup, and taste. Taste and see that the Lord is indeed good.

Easter 3: A baptismal call to peace

2011-05-08T12:00:00.001-05:00

You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God. Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.(1 Peter 1:18-23)

Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, "What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?" They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, "Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?" He asked them, "What things?" They replied, "The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel."...Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, [Jesus] interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, "Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over." So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?" That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, "The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!" Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.(Luke 24:13-35)
---
In our passage from 1 Peter today, we read, “Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.”

1 Peter is a letter that was written to encourage the newly baptized in their new life in Christ. This weekend, it is also a letter that encouraged our Confirmation class as they affirmed their baptisms on Saturday evening. They stood up in front here, and one-by one, they each affirmed their own new lives in Christ, professing their faith and recommitting themselves to their baptismal promises.

They promised, according to the rite, that they would continue in the covenant God made with them in holy baptism: to live among God’s faithful people, to hear the word of God and share in the Lord’s supper, to proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed, to serve all people, following the example of Jesus, and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.

These promises that we hear at every baptism and affirmation of baptism are, when you really think about it, broader statements about what it means to be a Christian. They are an outline of what it means to have faith and to be a Christ-follower.

Certainly many, if not most, of these promises appear in today’s gospel reading, and I would encourage you to re-read the Emmaus story sometime this week, through the lens of these baptismal promises.

But for today, I would like to focus on that last promise in the list, the promise to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.

What a week it has been. I came home after high school group last Sunday night, and turned on the television to check on baseball scores. But when I turned it on, I found there much more than I had bargained for. And so what a week it is to talk about Emmaus, about the presence of the risen Christ, and about the baptismal call to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.

It is not difficult to find ourselves into the center of today’s Gospel, on that road, walking away from the city, from its chatter and buzz about the death of a person of significant political threat.

If Jesus were to come up to us on the road this week, and innocently ask us, “What are you discussing as you walk along - what is the news of the week, my friends?” we might respond to him with the same incredulous tone of voice that Cleopas used when speaking to Jesus on the road: "Are you the only stranger in the United States who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days? The things about Osama bin Laden, and his death at the hands of our soldiers?” And if Jesus asked, “What about these things?” we might answer, “Some of us rejoiced, some of us prayed, some of us felt scared. We had hoped that this moment would be the one to redeem all the lingering grief of 9/11, and now we all are waiting, waiting to see if this news brings comfort or uncertainty, peace or retaliation.”

And just as those two disciples pulled off the road and stopped for the evening, so also did a group of people from this congregation stop in their tracks and gather earlier this week for an evening of prayer. We gathered to pray for peace. We folded peace doves, we blessed our enemies, and we prayed for the nations of the world. But mostly, we gathered, like those disciples, inviting Jesus to come among us and to stay with us.

And we recalled last week’s gospel story, where the disciples were locked away in an upper room for fear of the tumultuous world outside, and the way that Jesus appeared among them, greeting them with the words, “Peace be with you.”

More than any of the disciples, and more than any of us, Jesus knows what it’s like to stand at the center of political turmoil, national fear, and a world that too-often resorts to violence. And yet he comes to the disciples and to us not in fear but in peace. He walks with the two men along the road and joins them for supper in Emmaus, not because he is afraid of the dangers of the road, but because his very presence at that table gives them peace.

Amongst other things we are celebrating this weekend we also celebrate Mother’s Day. In 1870, Julia Ward Howe wrote her “Mother’s Day Proclamation,” as a reaction to the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian war, as a call for women to stand up for the cause of peace. The proclamation reads:

Arise, then, women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,

Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice." Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

Not your usual Mother’s Day brunch fodder, is it? These are powerful words of peace that give us permission to grieve, and even permission to fear the uncertainty of our world, but they also remind us that the strongest response to grief and fear is not violence, but rather peace.

Christ at Emmaus urges us to this same end. The risen Christ appears to the disciples in word and at table, not bearing the imprint of the violence enacted against him, but rather bearing to them the imprint of the God of peace. In this Easter season, we do well to remember that Christ’s resurrection is a symbol of God’s dream for the world, where the wolf and lamb dwell with one another, where violence against neighbor and creation are no more, where there is no more death or captivity, but only freedom and life.

All of the promises made in baptism, all of the promises that our young people made last night, all of these elements of being a Christian - we make these promises as people of this resurrection. As our young people have publicly affirmed their baptisms, so also do we have the opportunity - each and every today - to inwardly affirm our own baptisms, remembering that each one of us is a new creation in Christ, claimed and called, blessed and named. We are Easter people, who know that our burial with Christ in baptisms is also our life with Christ forever.

Our own baptisms, whether of water or of tears, “have purified [our] souls by [our] obedience to the truth so that [we] have genuine mutual love.” We are thus called by those baptismal waters to “love one another deeply from the heart,” because “[We] have been born anew, through the living and enduring word of God.”

Today, we have heard God’s word. We will gather at the table to break bread with our risen Christ. And with each new day that rises, we can dive deep into the waters of baptism once again, affirming as the whole people of God our baptismal call to love the world as Christ as loved. God bless us as we go forth as people of the resurrection, called to love and to serve, and called to be bearers of God’s divine peace. For the Christ whom we follow is the same Christ who says to us, “Peace. Peace be with you.”

Strange beauty

2011-04-28T10:28:00.010-05:00

Have you ever had one of those moments where you just get the feeling that something has been set in motion? Where you can't quite put your finger on it, but it feels like the wind is blowing, and not just the wind of spring weather, but the unexpected rush of the Spirit (the ruach, if you will)? From the time I awoke to the time I stepped into the office today, my morning was filled with strange things, beautiful things, and even strangely beautiful things.

My day began in the flat-out strange category. I woke up remembering strange dreams and strange half-awake thoughts that had happened to me overnight. But even stranger than that was the fact that I awoke with "Yatta" stuck in my head. Seriously, if you take the risk of following this link and watching the video,you will understand just how STRANGE it was to have this rattling around in my head. It's a relic from college, when some great and hilarious guys would send out a "Wednesday Nonesense" email each week, with a link to something strange, silly, or bizarrely humorous. Yatta was one of these. Waking up with it stuck in my head was weird and silly, but also a nice reminder of old friends, and a nice catalyst for nostalgia about people, places and memories from many years ago. Yatta is strange...but it definitely put me in a good mood.

As I was driving along Chicago Avenue today, entering the residential corridor of historic houses leading up to North Central College and downtown Naperville, the weather was having an internal conflict. It could not decide whether to be sunny or cloudy. Ahead of me, to the west, storm clouds filled the sky, corner to corner. All was deep gray facing forward.

But behind me, the sun was shining, and shining brightly. The sides of the street were lined with yellow flowering trees that have sprung into bloom with all of the rain we've had recently. These yellow flowers caught the sunlight and glowed up against the background of dark gray clouds, pulling out the blue and green undertones in the sky. The stormy/glowing contrast was spectacular. It was a strange combination of sun and storm, light and shadow, brightness and dark. And in all of its strangeness, it was the most beautiful thing I've seen in a long while.

By the time I wound my way through downtown Naperville, the wind had set the sky in motion, and the odd combination of sun and clouds had dissolved into a cold, flat, overcast sky. But even without the glow of the sun, I noticed that the rainy weeks had set all of downtown into bloom. The trees that all winter had been budding with white Christmas lights were now budding with white and pink and yellow flowers. Even if it doesn't feel like spring, even if the sun has been shy, even if the rain has been a cold rain rather than a warm one, the trees betray the fact that spring is indeed here.

Not only the trees, but the tulips that were planted along the river and throughout the Riverwalk. I hadn't noticed until today that they had been planted. A foil for the dreary day, they were bright and colorful, full of life and hope and joy.

As I looked around a world in bloom, a world thriving and being nurtured by the rain-filled sky, and as I drove, feeling the wind pull my car back and forth, hearing that stupid Yatta song running on repeat in my brain...

...I think I heard a still-small voice.

It said, "things are on the move."

It wasn't an ominous voice. It wasn't a happy-go-lucky voice. It was a serious voice, full of hope. It was a voice that felt neither optimistic nor pessimistic...it just felt true.

I have no idea what these "things" are that are on the move. I feel a little silly for even talking like this, as if I'm claiming any powers of premonition or providence. But there was no doubt in my heart that there was something stirring.

On this morning of strange beauty, I look forward to whatever strange beauty lies ahead, being carried along on the wind of the spirit.

Holy Saturday: Romans 6:3-11 & John 20:1-18

2011-04-23T23:00:00.001-05:00

Let anyone who is thirsty come to me.
John 7:37
(Kristen Malcolm Berry)

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him." Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes. But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?" Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!" (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord"; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb. Early on the first day of the week, Mary came to the tomb. In the middle of the night, with the darkness surrounding her, Mary came to the tomb. Knowing the old, familiar feel of darkness, feeling the old, familiar darkness of grief, Mary came to the tomb.

Mary’s encounter with the risen Jesus began in the darkness, and tonight, so has ours.

“This is the night,” we sang. This is the night. This is the long night of faith between the cross and the empty tomb. This is the night that begins where Good Friday left off, with the candles all snuffed out, with the cross plainly in view, with silence and uncertainty.

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb.

She walked as a person of old hopes, defeated dreams, lost expectations. And yet...and yet. Under cover of dark, she came to the tomb. Something in her wasn’t content with the old world. Something in her knew that there was still newness to be found, and whatever flicker of promise or curiosity that was left in her soul led her back to the garden.

This is the night.

This is the night that we ourselves gathered in the holy darkness to seek God’s promise that our old condemnation to death could be vanquished by new life; hoping that the the old brokenness in our bones could be transformed into the new wholeness that we ache for. This is the night that we rebelled against old news of the cross and death, hoping against all hope that here, we’d see the strange, unexpected glory of resurrection.

In the darkness, we comforted ourselves with old stories of faith. We took comfort in stories that assured us of God’s faithfulness throughout the ages. We were reminded, over and over again, that God pulls new life out of old places.

Out of the old chaos, the old swirling of the tohu vavohu, the face of the deep, God pulled out the newness of creation, the fresh beauty of order and life.

Out of the old life of weary slavery, God pulled forth the Israelites, passing them safely through the waters toward the new land promised to them, the land flowing with milk and honey.

Out of old Abraham’s faithful heart, a heart so faithful to God that he would bring Isaac to the edge of sacrifice, out of the old promise God brought forth the new promise of ancestors as numerous as the stars in the heavens.

From old bones, lying in dust and grief, wasting away in the dry heat, God pulled together sinews and muscles and breathed into them the breath of new life. The new answer to the old question, “Can these bones live?” is a resounding “Yes!”

Over and against this world’s “old news” of hunger, thirst, pain, and weariness, God promises a new world overflowing with mercy, a place of promise at the edge of saving waters.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stood up up to the old regime, to the old rule, to an old life of blind allegiance to human lordship, and, passing unharmed through the fire, God used them to bring new faith to the King and all the land.

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb.

And it was empty!

“Whom are you looking for?” the man asked, this man who might as well have been the gardener, this man who could not possibly have been Jesus, because death is as old as the beginning of time, and as final as the end of time.

“They have taken away my Lord,” Mary says, crushed with defeat, grieving a friend and teacher, grieving the hope she had that the world could ever be new.

Jesus said to her, “Mary,” calling her by name, and her eyes were opened. Off she runs to the other disciples, to the villages, to the corners of the earth, shouting “I have seen the Lord!”

Tonight, through fire and water, bread and wine, old stories and new stories, we join Mary and the disciples as they run through the garden, peeking into the empty tomb, finding their friends, overwhelmed with the sheer power of coming face-to-face with the impossible-come-true.

Their empty tomb is our empty tomb, the corner of the garden where the old story of death and defeat passed away into the rising brightness of God’s new morning.

N.T. Wright, in an Easter sermon entitled “God’s Future in Person,” says this:

Jesus has gone through death and out into God’s new world, God’s new creation, and to our astonishment he’s come forwards into our world, which is still in Old Time, to tell us that the day has in fact dawned and that even though we feel sleepy and it still seems dark out there the new world has begun and we’d better wake up and get busy.

That, of course, is part of what the gospel writers were trying to tell us with their stories about very early morning, and people running to and fro, and discovering that something had happened which they weren’t expecting, for which they weren’t ready, and which both fulfilled their wildest dreams and turned those same dreams inside out and upside down in the process. And unless you’re prepared to have something like that happen to you, you’d be better off staying in bed instead of coming here...to have the water of Jesus’ victory over death splashed over you, to watch God’s new fire and to pray for that fire to be lit by the Spirit inside you. (N.T. Wright, “God’s Future in Person,” Easter Vigil 2007)

Christ’s resurrection is not for his own sake. It is one hundred percent for our sake, and for the sake of the whole creation. Christ died, was buried, and rose again that we, too, might have the power to die to the old and rise with the new.

Paul asks, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” Our baptism is our burial. In the waters of baptism, we die to sin, die to brokenness, die to fear and condemnation, die to the old creation that lingers in our souls. But we rise from those waters as people cleansed and claimed, people very much alive and full of new life, and full of the promise of resurrection. “For,” as Paul says, “if we have been united with [Christ] in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”

Christ has vanquished death so that we, too, may defy death. Christ is the firstborn of God’s new creation so that we, too, can be made new.

This is the night.

This is the night in which the darkness has been transformed into holy brightness. This is the night in which death has died and life has risen.

This is the night when all the old has been made new.

Rejoice, therefore, choirs of angels! Rejoice, therefore, you dry bones and you waters of the flood! Rejoice, therefore, children of Abraham and Isaac, all those who have passed through the fire and water and remain yet unscathed! Rejoice, all creation! For Jesus Christ is risen.

Alleluia! Amen.

Good Friday: John 19:13-22, 28-30

2011-04-22T15:00:00.000-05:00

We have this hope, a sure and steadfast
anchor of the soul. Hebrews 6:19
(Kirsten Malcolm Berry)

Today is a day when the gloom of the weather - gray, chilly, rainy - matches the gloom of the day. It is Good Friday, the follow-up story to what we experienced last night on Maundy Thursday. It is a bleak day, when we recall Jesus' suffering and death. I told Matt that the poignancy of Good Friday worship, for me, is looking around at the dark sanctuary, which has been stripped of all banners, candles, and decorations. Tonight is the night when we sit and experience what it feels like when "God has left the building."

On this Good Friday, a picture is worth a thousand words. All images are artwork from today's noon Stations of the Cross worship. Each piece was created by a member of our congregation.

FIRST STATION: JESUS IS CONDEMNED TO DEATH
As soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. They bound Jesus, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate. Pilate spoke to the crowd: "What do you wish me to do with the man you call the king of the Jews?" They shouted back, "Crucify him!" Pilate said to them, "Why, what evil has he done?" But they shouted all the more, "Crucify him!" So, after flogging Jesus, Pilate handed him over to be crucified.

SECOND STATION: JESUS TAKES UP HIS CROSS
Carrying the cross by himself, Jesus went out to the place called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. 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. Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches, and wisdom and strength, and honor and glory and blessing.

THIRD STATION: THE CROSS IS LAID ON SIMON OF CYRENE
As they led Jesus away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus. "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

FOURTH STATION: JESUS MEETS THE WOMEN OF JERUSALEM
A great number of the people followed Jesus, and among them were women who were wailing for him. But Jesus turned to them and said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children."

FIFTH STATION: JESUS IS STRIPPED OF HIS GARMENTS
When they came to a place called Golgotha, they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall; but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. The soldiers divided his garments among them by casting lots. This was to fulfill what the scripture says, "They divided my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots."

SIXTH STATION: JESUS IS NAILED TO THE CROSS
When they came to the place that is called The Skull, there they crucified Jesus; and with him they crucified two criminals, one on the right, and one on the left. He poured out himself to death, and yet he bore the sin of many.

SEVENTH STATION: JESUS DIES ON THE CROSS
When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, "Woman, behold your son." Then he said to the disciple, "Behold your mother." And when Jesus had received the vinegar he said, "It is finished!" Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

EIGHTH STATION: JESUS IS LAID IN THE TOMB
When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb.

Maundy Thursday: John 13:1-7, 31b-35

2011-04-21T12:17:00.000-05:00

Then he poured water into a basin
and began to wash the disciples' feet.
John 13:5
(Kirsten Malcolm Berry)

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?" Jesus answered, "You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand." Peter said to him, "You will never wash my feet." Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no share with me." Simon Peter said to him, "Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!" Jesus said to him, "One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you." For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, "Not all of you are clean." After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, "Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord — and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them. "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, 'Where I am going, you cannot come.' I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

As I read this story through this Maundy Thursday, I was particularly struck by the somber finality of the scene. Jesus has gathered his disciples for his last meal, something emotional and jarring if we think about its parallel - the last meal ordered and eaten by a prisoner prior to execution. To be quite honest, thinking about the simultaneous finality and yet insignificance of a prisoner's last meal makes me feel rather disturbed and even queasy. How strange it must feel to have to decide what the last thing you eat will be, knowing that on the other side of that meal is your own death. It makes me shudder.

Here, Jesus is eating his own last meal, in the company of his disciples, and ever movement of the evening feels sad, sore, and final. There is grief behind this story. Jesus gives his last exhortations to the disciples, with grief in his voice that he will soon be taken from them. There is grief in his actions as he chooses to serve his disciples, letting that be the last image they have of their time together.

He serves them in the meal - blessing the bread, offering the wine, giving them himself in the guise of grapes and grain. He serves them as a common slave, emptying himself, kneeling, washing their feet. He serves them in his words, showing for them great love and urging them to be blessings to the world, as he has blessed them to be. Each movement in this last scene is deliberate, done with great care, crafted by Jesus in the same way that you craft your goodbyes to dying loved ones as you gather at their deathbeds. Each moment needs to be meaningful, memorable, weighty, and not trite.

The reason that these movements carry such weight is because of the immense love that is behind them. I firmly believe that on Maundy Thursday, Jesus is not thinking about resurrection or reunion with his disciples (and the whole world!). Rather, he is only focused on the imminent inevitable. He is about to be separated from those whom he loves. He is about to face troubles and trials and sufferings. He is on his way to dying. For real dying. Dying and all of the emotional and physical pain that go with it.

So this last meal is his last chance to make sure the disciples know how he feels about them, and about all the world that he has come to love and serve and save. As he gathers the disciples for the Passover meal, we read that Jesus, "having loved his own who were in the world, loved them to the end." Everything that happens at the table and on the floor happens in the context of this great love, a love that prevailed in Jesus' heart all the way through his final moments to his last breath.

After he washes the disciples' feet, he returns the table, asking gently, "Do you know what I have just done to you?" He goes on to tell them the heart of his mission in the world: that they, who have been loved and served by Christ, are the ones who are blessed to love and serve the world. He says, "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

The final moments of Jesus' life, his final moments with his disciples, the finality of his time on earth as he looks ahead toward the threat of defeat and death, are spent talking about love. I don't think this is just an emotional man getting sentimental. I think that, for Jesus, this is his last chance to boil down his whole life's mission into a few words. All the miracles, all the teachings, all the meals, all of them have at their heart this one message: I, Jesus, came to love and to serve. You, my disciples, must carry on this legacy. Love one another. Love one another enough to get your hands dirty. Love one another enough to cross boundaries. Love one another enough to get in trouble with those who don't understand. Love one another, even to the point of death.

This, friends, is the message of Maundy Thursday. It is not time to rush ahead to the cross, or worse yet, to rush ahead to the resurrection. Tonight is the part of our three-day worship when we remember, deeply remember, the heart of Christ and the heart of his life among us. The bread and wine of Christ's body are given for us, out of his deep love. Christ stoops to live among us and serve us, out of his deep love. And Christ sends us out to be blessings, wrapping our own arms around the world in nothing other than Christ's loving embrace.

Wednesday in Holy Week: John 13:21-32

2011-04-20T15:43:00.001-05:00

Then he took a loaf of bread, and when
he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it
to them, saying, "This is my body..." Luke 22:19
(Kirsten Malcolm Berry)

After saying this Jesus was troubled in spirit, and declared, "Very truly, I tell you, one of you will betray me." The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he was speaking. One of his disciples — the one whom Jesus loved — was reclining next to him; Simon Peter therefore motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. So while reclining next to Jesus, he asked him, "Lord, who is it?" Jesus answered, "It is the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish." So when he had dipped the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas son of Simon Iscariot. After he received the piece of bread, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, "Do quickly what you are going to do." Now no one at the table knew why he said this to him. Some thought that, because Judas had the common purse, Jesus was telling him, "Buy what we need for the festival"; or, that he should give something to the poor. So, after receiving the piece of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night. When he had gone out, Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once."

Last year, I remember writing about this passage and coming to a newfound appreciation for it when I did my research and learned that Jesus offering Judas the dipped bread was, in fact, a sign of great love and honor, and the amazing sign it is to us that God shows us such deep love in Christ, even despite our own betrayals and shortcomings. I still find this very moving.

But this year, I have to say, I feel dissatisfied with the above passage. I have little patience today for what seems to be a big charade. Jesus becoming troubled in spirit, talking dramatically (even melodramatically?) about how he would be betrayed by one sitting at the table, the way that he has to be prodded by John (who was first prodded by Peter) to share the identity of the betrayer, and then the way that he doesn't come right out and gives a name, but instead makes a big display of the bread, the dipping, and the handing over of it to reveal the betrayer.

It reminds me of the way that reality shows end each week. Maybe Survivor, when the votes are tallied at tribal council. Maybe the Bachelor, giving away his roses. Maybe the Biggest Loser and the way that everyone reveals their vote using a covered plate (how clever). Maybe America's Next Top Model, when Tyra keeps revealing the pictures of those who are safe for another week. Maybe even American Idol or Dancing With the Stars, and the paring down of contestants into a small group of the lowest vote-getters. (I don't watch that much reality TV, I promise...)

Each show has its closing ritual - the awkward, contrived, melodramatic space where the group has to look one another in the eye, rehash each others' virtues and faults, second-guess their actions and efforts, and come face-to-face with the reality of the situation (despite whatever meddling the producers have done along the way). And then...

A commercial break.

And THEN, the reveal. In some of these reality shows, nearly half of the show is dedicated to the "voting off" process. Would it be easier just to reveal the episode's loser without all the pomp and ceremony? Of course. Would it be better TV? Well, probably not. Would it be as effective? No! This is because there is something important about the suspense, no matter how contrived.

The suspense gives each contestant time to worry that they might be the one voted off. The slow pace forces each contestant into a place where they consider all the reasons that they might honestly be the one going home. The drawn-out ceremony allows the TV audience to weigh again the merits and problems with their favorite (or least-favorite!) competitors. It gives all of us a chance to consider that we might be wrong.

So maybe this business with Jesus and Judas serves the same purpose. The slow pace, the contrived ceremony, the artificially-imposed suspense: these things give each disciple plenty of time to realize that they might actually be the one. It gives them space to consider the lesser parts of their souls, and to admit that they are as likely to be betrayers as anyone else. The slow pace of things gives that same opportunity to each of us as we read the account.

Because the truth of the matter is that we all have our own reasons to believe that we are the ones capable of denying and betraying Jesus. We all have times when our motives are less-than-honorable, or times when we take the easy way out, or times when we would rather save our own skin rather than stand up for what is right.

So I guess this brings me right back to last year, and right back to the bread. Jesus handed off the bread to Judas, honoring him, loving him, promising to die for him. When we remember the Last Supper in worship tomorrow night, Jesus hands each of us the bread as well. We've had time to think about the sinful parts of ourselves - to consider how are prone to betrayal and denial. But in that bread, given to us and for us, we know that we, like Judas, are yet redeemed.

It turns out that Jesus was never much a fan of voting people off the island...

Tuesday in Holy Week: John 12:20-26, 31-36

2011-04-19T15:39:00.000-05:00

*God is light and in him
there is no darkness at all. I John 1:5
(Kirsten Malcolm Berry)

Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus." Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. The crowd answered him, "We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?" Jesus said to them, "The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light."

This passage is an image-fest.

We have the image of a grain of wheat being buried in the ground - metaphorically dying - so that it can rise up and bear fruit. Is Jesus talking about his own death, that it is only by his death that his mission and message will come to bear fruit in the world? Is he saying that only by his death will we be able to receive the fruits of his resurrection, namely the fulfilled promise of new creation and new life? Or is he talking about us - that only when we die to our old lives, the old regime, the old systems and selfish desires, only then will we be able to rise up as God's children, bearing the fruits of love, compassion, and justice in the world?

We have the topsy-turvy images of losing a life in order to gain a life, and hating a life in order to keep a life. Again, we have this same sense that there is something eternal to be gained from loss, whether we are talking about Jesus' death or our own lives.

And then this image of light warding off the darkness. Jesus is the light, the one who is "with [the disciples] for a little longer." But more than that, Jesus plays darkness and light off of one another, talking about how hard it is to walk when it is dark and how much better it is to walk when it is light, as if he is reminding all who are listening that it hurts to stub your toe on a chair in the middle of the night when all the lights are off and you get up from sleep to go to the bathroom. Jesus is the light, and while he tells the disciples that it is far easier to believe in him - the light - while he is still with them, of course we are stuck in a place where we have to believe in a light that we have not yet seen, at least not in the flesh.

All of these images and paradoxes trip over one another in today's reading. I've been sitting and struggling all day with how to make some general statement about this passage, or how to boil it down into a succinct and pithy statement about faith. But I've found my own thoughts to be as scattered as the images.

So instead, I leave you with picking out the images that speak most clearly to you in this passage as you move through Holy Week. As we look toward death and resurrection at the end of this week, perhaps you need the image of the seed dying and rising to help you focus on Christ's sacrifice. Maybe this Holy Week is a week that is driving you toward renewed commitment to discipleship, and you need to hear about the buried seed bearing fruit in order to remind you that it's okay to let the old self die, because God has even better life in store for you on the other side. Maybe you need a reminder of who is first and who is last, and a nudge to hold more tightly to God and more loosely to the things of this world and your own self-created life. Maybe you just need the assurance that you are a child of light.

But whatever you need from this passage, whatever image you cling to, whatever clever turn of the phrase that captures your imagination, know that Jesus is painting a picture of "before" and "after." Before: darkness, death, sin, misplaced power. After: fruitfulness, life, new life, light, Jesus' reign. And the good news is that through the cross, we have already been given the "after."

Monday in Holy Week: John 12:1-8

2011-04-18T12:00:00.000-05:00

Mary took a pound of costly perfume
made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet,
and wiped them with her hair... John 12:3
(Kirsten Malcolm Berry)

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor? (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."

This is the third time in the gospels that we encounter Mary of Bethany. The first time, in Luke, we watch Martha bustle around the house as Mary sits at Jesus' feet, listening to him, having "chosen the better part," as Jesus puts it. The second time, in John, Mary runs out of the house to meet Jesus as he nears the village, falls at his feet, and cries out, "If you had been here, my brother (Lazarus) would not have died!" And then there is today's reading, the third encounter of Jesus and Mary. This time, while Martha serves dinner (staying true to character, indeed!), Mary again settles herself at Jesus' feet, anointing them with perfume and wiping them with her hair.

In a sermon a few weeks back, I referenced my summer as a hospital chaplain, and all the personal challenges and struggles I went through during those eleven weeks. What got me through the hardest days, what pushed me into the rooms of patients and into the center of loved ones, gathered together around the bedside, was a very Martha-like understanding of service. I served and cared for people by finding them coffee or water, by getting them kleenex, by volunteering to find nurses, by offering up my seat, by offering information or by offering to track it down. I served God and served people by keeping busy on their behalf.

I think that many of us function, faith-wise, in Martha-mode. We love God by volunteering at homeless shelters and food pantries. We serve Jesus by helping out at church, signing up for church activities, supporting ministries, and even taking on church and worship leadership roles. We focus on the moving-and-shaking part of our faith development. And all of this is very good. Martha is certainly serving Jesus in a meaningful way by preparing him dinner and making sure that his visit is comfortable and filled with hospitality.

But Mary, on the other hand, seeks to serve and love Jesus by devoting her whole attention to him when he is around. Not devoting her attention to her own actions, but rather to his actions and his words. Sometimes I wonder if the busy parts of my faith are really all about God or all about me. Probably a mix, I suppose. But I think that there are times when being busy in faith is more about being busy than it is about faith.

I don't offer myself many opportunities to be un-busy in faith, to sit still, to be honest about myself and to honestly seek Jesus. Mary is always real in front of Jesus - no flurry of actions to hide behind - and she understands the reality of the Jesus whom she admires. This is why she anoints his feet so extravagantly: Jesus knows her, and she knows Jesus. She knows who he is and what he is about to do. And she knows - deeply knows! - that what Jesus is about to do is for her sake.

In this Holy Week, my challenge to myself is to grab spaces to slow down, to let Jesus really know me and see me, and to move toward Easter knowing ever more deeply that Jesus' death and resurrection are not just vague, general actions, but that they took place FOR ME.

Palm Sunday: Who is this?

2011-04-17T12:00:00.006-05:00

If these were silent, the stones would
shout out. Luke 19:40 (Kirsten Malcom Berry)

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death —
even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11)

When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of
Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, "Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, 'The Lord needs them.' And he will send them immediately." This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, "Tell the daughter of Zion, 'Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.'" The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!" When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, "Who is this?" The crowds were saying, "This is the prophet Jesus of Nazareth in Galilee." (Matthew 21:1-11)
---
When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking “Who is this?’

I wonder if this was like the time on choir tour when we sang and stayed in Philadelphia the same night that the NBA All-Star game was happening there. I walked with friends around the city post-concert, finding food and exploring, and we suddenly came upon a swirling mass of people. We pushed our way to the edge of the crowd, discovering that everyone was gathered around the entrance to a restaurant that was having a swanky post-game party, with a red carpet and velvet ropes leading to the door. With each limo that pulled up, the crowd buzzed and shifted to see which sports or entertainment celebrity would be revealed when the car door opened. Those of us in the back who couldn’t see would rely on the murmur of the crowd to hear what was going on. There were crowds like this all over the city - anxious and excited people gathering together, hoping to catch a glimpse of somebody famous.

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking “Who is this?”

Our culture simply buzzes over celebrities and interesting people. We know a host of intimate details about celebrities we follow - their favorite foods, the outfits they wear when they go shopping, where they go shopping, their children’s names, their workout routines, their hometowns... We follow celebrities on TV, in magazines, and online to feel like we really know who they are.

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking “Who is this?”

Take ten seconds, right now, to think about your answer to this question, “Who is Jesus?” If you’re brave, write a thought or sentence on your bulletin. If you’re super-brave, show your neighbor what you’ve written.

Throughout Lent, we have been trying to answer this question. The characters in the gospel readings gave us a lot of good answers. Everything from Nicodemus calling him a teacher from God to the woman at the well calling him a prophet to the people in the Samaritan village calling him the savior of the world. The devil in the wilderness hit the nail on the head, calling him Son of God, and the man born blind believes when Jesus calls himself the Son of Man. And then there’s Martha - Martha, in last week’s reading, professing: “Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” All of these Lenten questions and encounters have been pushing us, step by step, toward a deeper understanding of who Jesus is.

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking “Who is this?”

We, with the crowds, want to know who Jesus is. We, as those drawn through the waters of baptism, as those gathered here in this space to hear good news, as those shouting “Hosanna!” at the arrival of the king, as those who are faithful or seeking or curious, are the ones who want to know, for certain, who Jesus is. We are people who desperately want to know Jesus. It’s not good enough for us just to know what he ate for breakfast or what his favorite restaurant is. We, brothers and sisters, are the ones who crave a real, honest, deep, true answer to the question, “Who is this?”

In our Philippians reading today, Paul tells us exactly who Jesus is: he is the one whom God has highly exalted, giving him the name that is above all names, Jesus Christ the Lord, the savior of the world. But Paul reminds us that Jesus and his identity are not to be found by looking at the glory of God. Rather, Jesus is revealed to us, his truest, “realest” self, by the fact that he “humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross.”

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil asking, “Who is this?”

If Palm Sunday raises the question “Who is this?” then Good Friday gives us the answer: This is Jesus, the one sent to save the world, not in a blaze of glory, but in a profound sigh on the cross, upon which Jesus revealed to us the fullness of God’s love and the fullness of his mission to bring all creation into God’s merciful embrace.

This is the heart of our faith - that in the cross we see the true face of God in Christ. Martin Luther believed strongly that the cross is the only place that we know for sure who God is and how God saves. The cross is the place where we know for sure who Jesus is.

The theologian Robert Kolb, reflecting upon Luther’s theology of the cross, says

God at his most glorious, in his display of the extent of his mercy and love for his human creatures, appears, Luther believed, in the depth of the shame of the cross. There [God] is to be seen as he really is, in his true righteousness, which is mercy and love. There human beings are to be seen as those who deserve to die eternally but who now through baptismal death have the life Christ gives through his resurrection, forever. (Luther on the Theology of the Cross)

At the center of our faith is this absolute paradox - that we see the glory of God in Christ only through the tragedy of the cross. It is both mind-bending and game-changing.

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil asking, “Who is this?”

We see Christ most truly not in his moments of glory, but in his moments of shame. Likewise, as we look around our world, we see Christ most clearly and intimately in the poor, broken, tired, shameful, and needy parts of our world and our lives.

For the triumph of the cross is the fact that God’s grace and salvation come to all of the broken corners of our world. The promise of the cross is the fact that death and all our little deaths have been defeated. The glory of the cross is the fact that resurrection will come to the dying, and light will vanquish the darkness. The victory of the cross is the fact that God promises us a tree of life, bearing fruit for all the hungry, with leaves that extend into a healing embrace for all the nations.

This is why Paul says in 1 Corinthians that

the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God....God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are....[this] is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking “Who is this?”

One answer comes to us in the words of the poet Sylvia Dunston:

You, Lord, are both Lamb and Shepherd.
You, Lord, are both prince and slave.
You, peacemaker and swordbringer
Of the way you took and gave.
You the everlasting instant;
You, whom we both scorn and crave.

Clothed in light upon the mountain,
Stripped of might upon the cross,
Shining in eternal glory,
Beggar’d by a soldier’s toss,
You, the everlasting instant;
You, who are both gift and cost.

You, who walk each day beside us,
Sit in power at God’s side.
You, who preach a way that’s narrow,
Have a love that reaches wide.
You, the everlasting instant;
You, who are our pilgrim guide.

Worthy is our earthly Jesus!
Worthy is our cosmic Christ!
Worthy your defeat and vict’ry.
Worthy still your peace and strife.
You, the everlasting instant;
You, who are our death and life.
("Christus Paradox")

As we move through this Holy Week, I pray that Jesus might be revealed to you ever more clearly as we enter again into Jesus’ last days and into the intimate details of his last meal, his betrayal, and his death. I pray that Jesus will be known to you ever more deeply as we hold vigil at the tomb, waiting for the stone to again be rolled away so that we can once again see resurrection.

For this Jesus is the one whom God has highly exalted, giving him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Lent 4: John 9:1-41

2011-04-03T10:41:00.000-05:00

As Jesus walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes, saying to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, "Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?" Some were saying, "It is he." Others were saying, "No, but it is someone like him." He kept saying, "I am the man." But they kept asking him, "Then how were your eyes opened?" He answered, "The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, 'Go to Siloam and wash.' Then I went and washed and received my sight." They said to him, "Where is he?" He said, "I do not know."

They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, "He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see." Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath." But others said, "How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?" And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, "What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened." He said, "He is a prophet."

The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, "Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?" His parents answered, "We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself." His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. Therefore his parents said, "He is of age; ask him."

So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, "Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner." He answered, "I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see." They said to him, "What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?" He answered them, "I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?" Then they reviled him, saying, "You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from." The man answered, "Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing." They answered him, "You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?" And they drove him out.

Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?" He answered, "And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him." Jesus said to him, "You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he." He said, "Lord, I believe." And he worshiped him. Jesus said, "I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind." Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, "Surely we are not blind, are we?" Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, 'We see,' your sin remains.