tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88364042024-03-23T12:50:12.281-05:00the thin paper vaultMelissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.comBlogger968125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-37959434496441955042014-07-30T13:58:00.000-05:002014-07-30T13:58:20.308-05:00Semi-retirementWell hello.<br />
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Not sure who all still lurks around here anymore these days...<br />
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This blog has always happened in fits and starts, which was just fine while I was winding my way through seminary and while blogging and social media were all new, exciting, trendy ventures.<br />
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But this particular space has become a bit of a challenge for me! It started as a purely personal blog, where I talked about my own life, shared stories and pictures from family gatherings and holidays, wrote a bunch of posts about mundane things like knitting and baseball-watching. The mundane stuff meandered over into Facebook statuses and tweets, and honestly, much of that has just fallen away altogether.<br />
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I used this space as a place to dump sermons and musings on ministry, and I still like putting those things out there for people to read, but I've started to think that this is no longer the best space for them.<br />
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So, I think it is time to make official what has been happening unofficially around here: to place this blog into semi-retirement. <br />
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Instead, I've started focusing my writing a bit, and portioning it out. So never fear! I'm still writing, just in different places:<br />
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<a href="http://keepingtheseason.blogspot.com">Keeping the Season</a> - a blog that I've kept for a few years now, mainly a collection of art, poetry, music, and musings on the liturgical seasons, which started as a way to collect my Advent post-a-day projects. This is also where I've been posting my sermons.<br />
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<a href="http://theholyimagination.blogspot.com">The Holy Imagination</a> - a new blog that I've started, focused more intently on matters of spirituality, faith, ministry, and seeing God in the wider world.<br />
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<a href="http://genesiseighteen.blogspot.com">Laughing With Sarah</a> - this is my hidden-turned-semi-public blog on all things infertility, pregnancy, and baby-related.<br />
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Those three are more than enough venues for keeping up with me. Art, spirituality, and family. The three big emphases in my life. Feel free to follow me around in those ventures! <br />
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And who knows whether this space will come alive again - it certainly might! But until then, it is time to go quiet around here, intentionally, that other pieces of writing and creativity might have room to grow.Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-57412871743514680862014-05-15T23:06:00.001-05:002014-05-28T16:15:55.207-05:00This is hard: PastoringIt is Thursday night, the end of my week. Friday and Saturday are wide open for me this week, two days to relax and clean the disastrous kitchen and do laundry before Sunday starts things all over again.<div><br></div><div>You'd think that arriving at the "weekend" would be enough to relax me.</div><div><br></div><div>But it took a seriously delicious dinner, a FaceTime with my parents, cuddling Sam, taking a long bubble bath while listening to a favorite podcast (using baby bubble bath), changing into PJ's, and half a beer to finally get me wound down.</div><div><br></div><div>There are plenty of things to love about being a pastor. That you, in the words of a colleague, "get paid to love people." That I have a super-flexible schedule. That I get to do a wide mix of things, from counseling to writing to music. That I get paid to meet folks for coffee.</div><div><br></div><div>But let me tell you. Being a pastor is hard.</div><div><br></div><div>I could make you a list of ten people, just off the top of my head, who are going through really rough stuff right now. And I can do a lot of things and say a lot of things, but I cannot - CANNOT - fix what they are going through. It makes your heart tired.</div><div><br></div><div>I spend more time than you'd imagine answering emails and managing details, which is fine except for those weeks when you've barely been able to keep up and are anxious that you might have forgotten to do something or let someone down.</div><div><br></div><div>There are weeks when I pay my $1.25 for coffee at Java John's, and then a couple dollars' worth of $.50 refills, and still can't come up with a decent amount of inspiration for a Sunday sermon. There are days when I receive more negative emails than positive ones, and days when people seem to understand my professional (and personal spiritual) committment to grace and forgiveness as an open door to say things and act in ways that are less than kind.</div><div><br></div><div>Looking for God in everything means that you get pretty sensitive to the needs and burdens of the world. You worry a lot about the state of the world. You feel things deeply. You slip into pastor-speak as your default mode of small talk. You find yourself saying things like "How <i>are</i> you?"</div><div><br></div><div>There's a reason that this line of work is called a CALLING. Because you don't do it for yourself. You don't do it for fun, or because you want to. You do it because you can't <i>not</i> do it. You do it because something in your heart has absolutely no choice in the matter.</div><div><br></div><div>And so sometimes, you find yourself watching mindless TV at midnight in flannel PJ pants, nursing a beer, and as relaxed as you are and as relaxed as you will be for the next day or so, your head and heart are already turned toward Sunday, toward the start of the new week, toward that irresistible pull to care for hearts and change the world.</div>Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-44905031634592249602014-04-09T16:44:00.000-05:002014-04-09T16:44:17.914-05:00What does grace look like?A few weeks ago, a strange convergence of faith-related things happened in the public eye.<br />
<br />
Fred Phelps, founder of Westboro Baptist Church, died in hospice care.<br />
Mark Driscoll, outspoken writer and pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington, posted a public apology letter for some of his actions in leading his church.<br />
World Vision, a Christian child sponsorship and world relief organization, changed their hiring policies to open employment to those in same-sex marriages...and then promptly reversed their decision.<br />
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I could spend many words on any one of those three events. We have the death of a man who led his congregation in truly hateful acts, picketing and protesting funerals of soldiers and celebrities, standing outside public events with damning anti-gay signs. We have an apology letter and a "signing-off" of social media from a man who has said terrible things about women, and especially women in leadership, though his apology seems most aimed at his own actions within his own church. And we have a relief organization who, whether you agree with their methods or not, does much good in the world, who opened the doors to more just hiring practices, and then, under pressure from donors, closed that door, and in the process still managed to lose much funding...funding that is crucial to saving the lives of children and families around the world.<br />
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What has been most interesting in watching these stories unfold is the gracious response to all three stories by those who, if we're being honest, were most theologically inclined to engage in a bit of Schadenfreude.<br />
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I watched Christians of all stripes pray for Mr. Phelps's peaceful passing, and for comfort for his family and his congregation. I watched progressive Christians offer up support and kindness for Marc Driscoll. I watched Christians in support of same-sex marriage say things like "if we think it is wrong for Evangelical organizations to pull support for World Vision when they opened up their hiring practices, then it is equally as wrong for us to pull support when they closed them."<br />
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And I was amazed at all this grace.<br />
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For as much as I believe I am a compassionate, caring person, I also know that I am stubborn. And when I get into the thick of things with those with whom I disagree, I can become oppositional for opposition's sake. And it is in times like that when I need the Holy Spirit, or my conscience, or someone who knows me well, to gently tap me on my shoulder and whisper into my ear, "Grace, Melissa. Grace."<br />
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And when I slow down enough to take a breath from my own stubbornness, then I find myself doing things like rooting for the underdog (or at least feeling empathy for them), taking seriously the real hurts of others (even if they are caused by inaccuracies or misunderstandings), looking for the best in others, and taking seriously the notion that even those with whom I disagree are often also working out of deep-seated convictions and good intentions.<br />
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I preached a couple weeks ago about God's call for us to seek loveliness in one another and in our world, rather than setting our sights on one another's sins, limitations, or brokenness. I am thankful for all those in my life who model grace; who look for the holiness in one another, who remember that God has called us all "beloved."<br />
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So what does grace look like? I think it looks like taking each other seriously. Taking each other at our word. Looking for points of agreement rather than disagreement. Listening often and listening well. Being bound to one another by our shared humanity, by our shared neediness, by our shared salvation. It's like compassion plus empathy plus being self-aware enough to realize that you aren't right all the time and you certainly don't always need to "win."<br />
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May you see grace in one another today, and feel grace extended to you, and be graceful and grace-filled in the people and places you touch.Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-35463997936673880022014-02-27T15:14:00.000-06:002014-02-27T15:16:48.521-06:00Alive, I promiseSo...<br />
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Yeah. It's been quiet around here.<br />
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It's not that I don't have a lot to say.<br />
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Really, for starters, let me be embarrassed that I didn't even stop in here to post something big and important (that you probably figured out, if you can do math, and that you probably figured out if you are on Facebook or have spent any time near me or my extended family in the last three months):<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Welcome to the world, Samuel Tyler! </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">(Err...welcome to having spent three months in this world already before your mom got around to posting anything about you here...)</span></div>
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Here is a quick photo timeline - brand new through three months:<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EryG6J2iqdw/Uw-m2x6nb_I/AAAAAAAAFKQ/tt7G0AAvFMQ/s1600/IMG_3219.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EryG6J2iqdw/Uw-m2x6nb_I/AAAAAAAAFKQ/tt7G0AAvFMQ/s1600/IMG_3219.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ5ih7LnOmxz6NX9r_xO5Jod_ltPy6bXUJTmUV_fOYDpnqyefaMe9qwAaKJhopiTQFEo4XdZtyuwq2ta16mHj5hap9tqVC5mDR-y4SrWvuD2UpZY1HOp2CnJwpnLi6_GSUus9A/s1600/IMG_3845.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ5ih7LnOmxz6NX9r_xO5Jod_ltPy6bXUJTmUV_fOYDpnqyefaMe9qwAaKJhopiTQFEo4XdZtyuwq2ta16mHj5hap9tqVC5mDR-y4SrWvuD2UpZY1HOp2CnJwpnLi6_GSUus9A/s1600/IMG_3845.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDvR_ROG_phgfQStPhAjQlhYw5qx4paMhq0zcuMExhADLU-OhoQFnr_4RZU3d9VNyogG8RO7R9vBxODAXhMmroSNtVAREX-PYgwzXbcdn-dGN7LarsX_rrYhr2g2Bo3c6Sab_f/s1600/IMG_3932.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDvR_ROG_phgfQStPhAjQlhYw5qx4paMhq0zcuMExhADLU-OhoQFnr_4RZU3d9VNyogG8RO7R9vBxODAXhMmroSNtVAREX-PYgwzXbcdn-dGN7LarsX_rrYhr2g2Bo3c6Sab_f/s1600/IMG_3932.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVnPs0IcIBSYX8nKXMqnFXQGEE061dNar2aOqr2F_IVywyvRCWQEKe4okdvcqM-UaJMMGCelMBIpxqmIijb6s1mpaY2eb7T7aNuik158lfpcyFjIwOUCP_-z1DdjrQBy8D7SHM/s1600/IMG_4139.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVnPs0IcIBSYX8nKXMqnFXQGEE061dNar2aOqr2F_IVywyvRCWQEKe4okdvcqM-UaJMMGCelMBIpxqmIijb6s1mpaY2eb7T7aNuik158lfpcyFjIwOUCP_-z1DdjrQBy8D7SHM/s1600/IMG_4139.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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Yeah. We think he's pretty adorable. I don't need to litter this blog with incessant baby talk; if you're curious about Sam, his birth story, and random tidbits month to month, feel free to get your baby fix over at <a href="http://genesiseighteen.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Laughing with Sarah</a>.</div>
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I'm a month into being back at work, and Sam hangs out here in the office with me every day. It makes for a very full existence. For good and for bad. :) For instance, I have a crying, angry baby on my lap right now, and he's full, and I just changed his diaper, so I really have no idea what is wrong. Which makes me frustrated. And crying baby does not equal amazing productivity. I spend most days alternating between entertaining him (and getting very little done), and then rejoicing when he falls asleep for a nap (and rushing to get as much done as possible in a one or two hour window).</div>
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Matt is teaching a course at Luther College this semester, in addition to his regular human resources consulting job out of Chicago, so he is just about as busy as I've ever seen him. Maybe as busy as he was in law school, even? But I hope that he's finding the opportunity fulfilling, and not just stressful. And maybe it will open new doors for the future!</div>
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Let's see. What else...</div>
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It's cold here. By "here," I don't think I mean Iowa. I think I mean the midwest. But either way, brr. Lots of days below zero. And lots of snow. Exactly what winter should be, in my estimation. But the icy roads and the inability to spend any time outside (lest my face fall off) are starting to get a little old. And so I've been drinking a lot of coffee and hot chocolate to keep warm. And cheating a little and wearing jeans to the office some weekdays, because it is just too cold for skirts or for flimsy dress pants.</div>
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I have all sorts of things I want to write about soon: thoughts on family, thoughts on community, thoughts about the spirituality of repetition and routine...so look for more writing on the horizon. Hopefully I can also find the time and energy and organization to start posting my sermons again, because it's nice to have them out and about beyond just the walls of the sanctuary.</div>
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Anyway, consider this post a re-entry. Life is busy, and finding uninterrupted time to write is tricky (Sam loves to be held, and I'm terrible at typing one-handed!), but writing is good for me. It is normalizing. It centers me. It keeps me connected.</div>
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So watch for more to come. I've missed it here.</div>
<br />Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-21326504110470421172013-11-08T16:08:00.000-06:002013-11-08T16:08:05.652-06:00Daylight Savings Time<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoqwLCQNDmSVG46vittlZQIv8fKO1yFNrtz2AQDlxiVLpp65xAH_xqBX3IcFqWIBe_7qSmZGqNGJkBedN6285AL2l-2TAs96at_oBsz-XEmKYKvSJDwF2EmyDYmmfjepZboAZK/s1600/photo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoqwLCQNDmSVG46vittlZQIv8fKO1yFNrtz2AQDlxiVLpp65xAH_xqBX3IcFqWIBe_7qSmZGqNGJkBedN6285AL2l-2TAs96at_oBsz-XEmKYKvSJDwF2EmyDYmmfjepZboAZK/s400/photo.JPG" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I'm keeping warm with a scarf, a baby belly, and slippers.<br />My knitting sits on the coffee table, waiting patiently.<br />Emme claims the blanket on the end of the couch as her own.<br />This is what happens when the afternoon turns gray.</td></tr>
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It is 3:34 p.m. here in Iowa.<br />
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I just turned on lights in the living room because it was getting dark. Hard to tell whether the darkness is due to last weekend's time change or whether it is due to a thick, gray mass of clouds that have settled in over the town.<br />
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It always takes me a few days to adjust to the time change in the fall. Mornings, instead of looking like dark nighttime, look instead like faintly-lit gray hazes that make you wonder whether it is morning or evening; early daytime or late-afternoon cloud cover. Afternoons turn dark sooner than expected, and night falls earlier, fooling you into thinking that the day has come and gone more quickly than you expected. It takes me a few days of this to settle into it, to get to a place where I don't feel so disoriented and unsure of the time and rhythm of the day.<br />
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And then, as I settle in, something switches in me, and I <i>get it</i>. I remember what winter is like, and I understand the new feel of the day, and I remember the parts of my own self that get tucked away when we spring our clocks forward in March.<br />
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In other lifetimes, I gave myself an October threshold for listening to Advent and Christmas music. These days, I hold out until at least the start of November. This year, for whatever reason, I didn't even start thinking about it until last week, when I started loading up playlists onto my iPod in preparation for labor and delivery later this month, and I programmed myself a copious amount of Christmas music for those forthcoming hours.<br />
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I forget that we've passed Halloween already, and that Thanksgiving is only a few weeks away. My usual rush to embrace autumn feelings and flavors has been a little slow this year.<br />
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Perhaps because while the seasons change around me, and the time changes, and the sun sets earlier in the afternoon, my mind is not on the seasons themselves, or on holidays or traditions or even the bits and pieces of nostalgia that late fall and early winter dig up in me.<br />
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For the whole span of time we've lived in Iowa, time has been pressing ahead toward only one thing: the birth of this much-loved, much-awaited hedgehog of a baby, whose due date is just two weeks away. Thanksgiving this year will either be a celebration of a very new newborn, or the last few days of a very very uncomfortable pregnant lady. Christmas feels like forever away, because something as big as HAVING A BABY needs to happen between now and then. The whole fall has been a time of talking about this eventual baby and making initial plans and preparations, except that we are now in the last days, and the things that needed to get done "sometime this fall" now need to get done today and this week and as soon as we can manage them.<br />
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Today, though, Daylight Savings Time finally caught up to me in a useful way. As I sat here on the couch, watching the grayness of the afternoon creep in through the windows, I felt this urge for something to happen. Tired of waiting, I felt ready for a holiday, or ready for some nostalgia. Ready to knit and make soup and do autumnal things. Ready to scoff a little less at the Thanksgiving and even Christmas commercials on TV. I am ready for something to happen. Ready to meet this baby, or to eat some stuffing, or to start sorting through the Christmas decorations that we might put up right after Thanksgiving with family members who will be coming to see us. I'm okay with the wind blowing outside, and with the fact that it might be time to pull out my winter coat, even if I can't zip it up right now. I am ready for something to happen. Babies, holidays, families, cozy nights, anything to reclaim a space for myself that is no longer a space of mere waiting, but a space of anticipation and joy and movement.<br />
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Maybe being nine months pregnant makes me a bit of a crazy-lady. Because I'm not sure how a gray afternoon can somehow make me excited rather than depressed. But maybe the weather just reminds me that the seasons are again changing, and that nothing actually stands still in life, and when the quiet of waiting starts to drive you a little nuts, even the world outside can remind you that change is always on the horizon, and those things that you've been waiting for will indeed come, and all the days that you've been counting will indeed lead to something new and interesting and beautiful.Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-85186020407597185122013-10-07T17:29:00.000-05:002013-10-07T17:29:16.515-05:0020 Pentecost: Faith enough<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/bgdlynch/8464786923/" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Mustard Seeds by BGDL, on Flickr"><img alt="Mustard Seeds" height="265" src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8386/8464786923_162b059c57_z.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/bgdlynch/8464786923/">Mustard Seeds</a>" by BGDL, on Flickr</td></tr>
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<b>Luke 17:1-10</b><br />
<i>Jesus said to his disciples, "Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come! It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble. Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, 'I repent,' you must forgive."<br />
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The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!" The Lord replied, "If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you.<br />
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Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, 'Come here at once and take your place at the table'? Would you not rather say to him, 'Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink'? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, 'We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!'"</i><br />
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Every time I read this gospel, a hymn-verse leaps into my head. The disciples say "increase our faith," and my mind goes to the communion hymn, "Thee We Adore." Maybe you know it. The third verse goes like this:<br />
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Fountain of goodness, Jesus, Lord and God,<br />
cleanse us, O Christ, with thy most cleansing blood:<br />
increase our faith and love, that we may know<br />
the hope and peace which from thy presence flow.<br />
(Thee We Adore, O Hidden Savior, ELW 476)<br />
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<i>Increase our faith and love, that we may know the hope and peace which from thy presence flow.</i> <br />
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It's a prayer that many of us have likely prayed, in so many words, just like the disciples who cried out to Jesus, "increase our faith!"<br />
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It was October of last year. I was lying in bed at night, processing the news that our third attempt at IVF had failed. And for the first time in our many years of trying to have a baby, I finally got fed up. I laid awake in bed, praying...if you could call it praying. Mostly, I just said angry things to God. I said words inside my head that I’d never say out loud, in polite company or otherwise. I was hurt, I was angry, I was tired. And I wondered whether I had faith enough to keep going, to keep trying and hoping.<br />
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"Increase my faith and love," I prayed, in far angrier language, "that I might know hope and peace in this struggle."<br />
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Have you ever had nights like those? When you lie awake wondering if you really have faith and strength enough to press forward? When your doubts and fears seem to outweigh your faith? When the calling set before you by God seems to be just too difficult to carry out?<br />
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Throughout this season of Pentecost, the green season of growing in faith and discipleship, Jesus has been telling his disciples, over and over again, about the struggles of faith and discipleship: To be a disciple, you give up the comforts of home, and you put the concerns of the kingdom of God ahead of your other priorities. Being a disciple means carrying the cross, giving up possessions, and recognizing that the cost of discipleship is your very life itself. <br />
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Today, Jesus again instructs the disciples to do some hard things. “Follow me,” Jesus said, “and don’t give in to temptations to stray from working for the kingdom. Follow me in protecting the vulnerable. Follow me in confronting sin and injustice. Follow me in forgiving one another, and forgiving one another over and over again.”<br />
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Like the disciples, we are no stranger to the reality that faith and discipleship sometimes ask us to do very difficult things. Public things, like feeding the hungry, forgiving as we’ve been forgiving, putting the needs of others ahead of our own needs. And personal things, like moving forward through grief or confusion or tough personal circumstances.<br />
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Any one of these things has the power to keep us up at night, whether we are heartsick over the needs of our world or paralyzed by the needs of our own souls. And in those awake-at-night moments when we feel overwhelmed by the paths life has set before us, we, with the disciples, cry out, “Increase our faith!”<br />
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Because maybe, we believe, maybe if we had more faith, all the hard stuff would be easier. Maybe, if we had more faith, we could be better people. Maybe, if we had more faith, we could actually do good in the world. Maybe, if we had more faith, we’d have more answers and more certainty. Maybe, we think to ourselves, there is this certain level of faith, a certain volume of faith that needs to fill us up before we have the courage and strength to go forward in whatever God calls us to do or endure.<br />
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Everything else in life seems to function this way. You need a full gas tank before you can head out on a road trip, and you need a certain level money in your savings account before you can buy a house, and you need a certain number of years in your current position before you can earn a promotion, and you need a certain level of education or training before you can do certain tasks. We're used to this idea that you need a particular amount of something before you can benefit from it.<br />
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And so we look at faith the same way. Either as a practical concern or a matter of desperation. "Increase our faith!" we cry out to God, because it's hard for us to ever believe that we have enough of it.<br />
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The problem with this line of thinking is that it turns faith into a commodity rather than a gift. It turns faith into a bargaining tool, where we think we can trade a certain amount of faith for some outcome that we desire from God. It turns faith into a weird mystical protein shake that we drink to bulk ourselves up before we do the heavy lifting of sharing the gospel with the world.<br />
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This "increase in faith" mentality makes faith all about us instead of all about God; all about our needs instead of all about God's faithfulness.<br />
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This is where Jesus steps in with the reminder that even a speck of faith the size of a tiny mustard seed is plenty. More than enough.<br />
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Because the thing about faith is that it really isn't about us. It's about God. In our dark nights of the soul, it’s not actually the quantity of our faith that gets us through, it is the whole and complete faithfulness of God to us that sustains us. And when we are called to do hard things like forgiving and reconciling and feeding and healing, it’s not the strength of our faith that helps us carry out those tasks, it is the whole and complete faithfulness of God to us that empowers us.<br />
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Jesus tells the disciples that the tiniest speck of faith is enough to answer God's calling. That even the teensiest scrap of faith is plenty to act faithfully in the world. Hence his little discourse on slaves doing only what they ought. He’s telling the disciples that they don’t need superhuman faith to answer God’s call to act faithfully in the world.<br />
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Because there is no rule that says you have to have all of your own baggage figured out before you can offer a listening ear to a friend in need. And there's no prerequisite that you have to have forgiven yourself before you can forgive others around you. And you can feed the hungry even if you are still feeling spiritually hungry. And you can tell somebody that God loves them even if you aren't quite sure that you yourself are so loveable.<br />
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Jesus calls the disciples and us to follow in his way of mercy and love, but he doesn't tell us that we need to be spiritual giants before we can do that.<br />
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Instead, he assures us that a speck of faith the size of a mustard seed is plenty of faith to live as disciples. He reminds us, deep in our hearts, that a taste of bread and a sip of wine and a droplet of water are more than enough to carry us through each week.<br />
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Because even a tiny, feeble faith can cling to the promise that God is faithful, and loves his whole creation; that there is nothing, not height or depth or anything in all creation that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus; that by God's grace alone we live and move and have our being.<br />
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Friends, God is bigger than all of your fears, all of your doubts, all of your hesitations. God is faithful, even when we aren't. Even your smallest seed of faith in our faithful God means that you have the strength to face tomorrow, and the power to live faithfully for the sake of the world. For it is indeed by grace that you have been saved and will be sustained, through faith, whether big or small, and this is not your own doing, it is the doing of God, who promises always to see you through each new morning, for each day is a new reminder of resurrection, and a new sign of hope for you, for me, and for all creation.Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-71149646957460894562013-09-17T13:44:00.000-05:002013-09-17T13:44:15.114-05:00Chasing utopia...and losing yourselfI am a perfectionist.<br />
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I have been for a very long time. Perfectionism manifests itself in me in various ways: being a type-A, detail oriented person; having manic swings where I have to ORGANIZE EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW; feeling guilty if I have not accomplished what I believe to be my best work; feeling hurt and ashamed by critique, no matter how kind or valid.<br />
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This is not to say that I am in perfectionist mode all the time. I make messes, I can be a total flake, I often have the urge to ignore areas of life and work that I'm not good at.<br />
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In general, my perfectionism means that my outlook on life is based on seeking ways to make things as good as possible. Some days, this comes across as optimism and energy. Other days, this comes across as frustration and feelings of inadequacy.<br />
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Put another way, I am a person who is always seeking utopia in some fashion, big or small. If I can just arrange my office in the perfect, most beautiful, most organized way, then I have created a peaceful utopia amidst the bustle of everyday church life. If I can just bring a few really good ideas to a committee and see them through to success, then I have created an affirming utopia where we are all empowered, and where I am in good graces. If I can wake up early on a sunny Saturday morning and walk first to the farmer's market and then to my favorite, idyllic coffee shop, then I have created a slice of small-town utopia that might trump whatever I loved or miss about suburban life.<br />
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I mean, I have this tendency to believe that if I put things together <i>just-so</i>, then I can create and appreciate a perfect little world around me, and be very, very happy.<br />
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The problem is that this doesn't actually work in real life.<br />
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It's not just that my office gets messy and disorganized sometimes, or that even my best efforts sometimes receive due critique. It's not just that sometimes I oversleep my alarm on Saturdays. And it's not even that the world is an unpredictable place, and I can't always control everything (as much as I'd like to). <br />
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The problem with endlessly seeking utopia is that you lose yourself in the process. When all of my time is spent organizing perfect parameters for my life, I don't actually get around to <i>living</i> that life.<br />
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Take yesterday, for example. It'd been a sleepy, frustrating sort of day. I spent the afternoon looking forward to going home, crashing on the couch, and knitting to the sound of silly television shows.<br />
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I got home, and pulled out my basket of knitting, but first decided that I was hungry and needed a good snack (a honeycrisp apple and peanut butter...yum). Once I had the perfect snack, I went back to the couch, and then had to find the perfect channel on TV before I could settle in to start knitting (that took two full cycles through all the channels, just to make sure I wasn't missing anything that happened to be at commercial during the first pass). And just in case somebody at church really needed me (and I wouldn't want to let anybody down), I probably needed to grab my phone and check my email one last time. Basically, it took me forever to get around to knitting, and I only finished a couple rows before it was time to start thinking about dinner.<br />
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Because everything needed to be just-so. Because I had to be perfectly set-up for my picturesque late afternoon of knitting. And in the process of setting myself up, I wasted all of the time I could have simply been knitting.<br />
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That's the thing about utopia. Work too hard to create your perfect world, and you never actually get around to enjoying it. Because you've put too much pressure on yourself to be perfect instead of being happy.<br />
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It's a lesson about life, surely, and about ministry. And about starting families and taking care of houses and doing all of that grown-up sort of stuff. We think that perfect will pave the way to happy. But perfect really just delays happy until sometime in the unknown future.<br />
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Which is not exactly how I want to live. Nor is it how my faith encourages me to live.<br />
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In Matthew 6 Jesus says, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?...But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today."<br />
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And in Revelation 21 I read, "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 the one who was seated on the throne said, 'See, I am making all things new.'"<br />
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We're not talking self-made utopia here. We're talking about trusting God in the stuff of today, and trusting God in the work of new, perfect creation. So how might I - how might each of us! - live in this space where we trust God more than we trust ourselves, where we stop trying to make things perfect, and instead focus on appreciating and loving <i>this</i> day and <i>this</i> blessed moment? Might we find that we are happier? More fulfilled? Less anxious?<br />
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I suspect so.<br />
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I must myself remember: I am not called to perfection. I am called to be faithful and gracious, generous and kind. And there is a big difference between those things.Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-58488361824648729452013-09-11T13:16:00.005-05:002013-09-11T13:16:59.811-05:0016 Pentecost: Counting the cost<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/megantotherozar/3620495168/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title=""Count the Cost" by Laura Megan Photography, on Flickr"><img alt=""Count the Cost"" height="400" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3618/3620495168_3c2bb25417_z.jpg" width="267" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/megantotherozar/3620495168/">Count the Cost</a>"<br />
by Laura Megan Photography, on Flickr</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b><b>Luke 14:25-33</b></b><br />
<i>Now large crowds were traveling with [Jesus]; and he turned and said to them, "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.' Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.</i><br />
---<br />
It wasn’t too long ago that I found myself in the midst of a conversation about sales tax, of all things. (Riveting, I know. I hang around with terribly interesting people.) The conversation went something like this:<br />
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“Wouldn’t it be nice if sales tax was already factored into the cost of the things we buy? Doesn’t matter if it made prices look all funny, like $22.56. It would just be so much easier to know up front what things were really going to cost when you got to the register.”<br />
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And then we went on to think fondly of the handful of states in our country that don’t charge sales tax on necessities like food and clothing, not because those goods are necessarily cheaper to buy, but because there is no mystery. The cost is laid out, and there’s nothing more to it.<br />
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Counting the cost is something that we do all the time. Often, counting the cost means taking a look at what we think we can afford, and then choosing accordingly. Like how sometimes my beverage choice at Java John’s is determined not by what I want to drink, but by how much cash I have in my wallet. We count the cost when we think about spending money, or time, or energy, or commitment, and the question at stake is always, “Is it worth it?”<br />
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Which leads us to today’s gospel. Jesus, like a sales-tax-included pricetag, lays out the full cost of discipleship to the crowds who seek to follow him. He tells them exactly what it might cost them if they choose to walk in his footsteps.<br />
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We have to be careful when we approach today’s gospel. On first glance, it is easy to read it as a list of conditions that Jesus requires us to meet before we can become disciples. As if Jesus is saying, “first go renounce your family, then go give up all of your stuff, and then renounce life itself, and when you’ve done all of those things, come back to me and we can talk about your place among my disciples.” It is easy to misread this passage and come to believe that the cost of discipleship is an up-front cost that we somehow need to pay before we can join Jesus’ team.<br />
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But that way of thinking is pretty much opposite of the way that God works. God didn’t make us promise to cherish one another and the whole creation before he decided to craft the universe, and when we failed miserably at both of those things, God didn’t make us promise to be good or even to be sorry before he decided to show up in our world in the flesh and walk with us in the person of Jesus. Jesus didn’t make us promise to love him or believe in him before he choose to die for us. And God certainly didn't wait until the world was ready and receptive to raise Jesus from the dead and usher in the promise of new creation.<br />
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In the story of our faith, God is always the one who acts first, and God is always the one who loves freely, without making us first check the little box that says we accept his terms and conditions.<br />
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And so there's something else going on in today's gospel reading, something different than a message of "sacrifice everything for Jesus or else." <br />
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Because what we really have in the gospels is this guy Jesus who shows up on the scene, and starts telling people, “follow me.” He is this rebel prophet and teacher, who gets the religious leaders all riled up with some regularity, and he heals people and does these crazy miracles, and he teaches some pretty incredible stuff about forgiveness and mercy, and he keeps talking about this “kingdom of God,” and as he goes along, he keeps saying “follow me” to people, regardless of their place in life. And he’s interesting enough that people actually drop everything to follow him around.<br />
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Which sounds great until you realize that people have left behind families and obligations and livelihoods and possessions to follow Jesus. And that's a really big deal. Leaving behind your family, in Jesus’ time, especially if you were a man, meant leaving them without security, without status, and without protection. Leaving behind your job left you without income. Leaving behind your obligations to your town or clan or synagogue left you with a bunch of angry and confused people on your hands.<br />
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Now notice that Jesus doesn’t discourage people from doing all of this. He doesn’t send them home, saying “your family needs you” or “you should probably at least give your boss two-weeks’ notice before you quit your job.” He instead simply makes the point that you’d better be prepared, because following him is likely to come with a cost, because ushering in God’s kingdom of justice and peace and forgiveness and mercy is a big deal, and doing the work of this kingdom is pretty amazing, but it’s going to rock the boat.<br />
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And so when Jesus talks about calculating the cost of discipleship, I believe that he's actually just preparing us for the reality that sometimes God calls each of us to such an irresistible calling that everything - <i>everything</i> - we thought was important becomes less important. That sometimes when God moves our hearts to live as disciples, we become oddly willing to leave everything else behind. And that looks really really weird to the world. Because we aren't terribly used to this idea of sacrifice.<br />
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Matt and Kristi fell in love over organic chemistry homework. They graduated college together, went to medical school, started a family, and all the while knew, deep in their hearts, that God had a calling for them. So just two days ago, after months of preparation, Matt and Kristi and their two young girls left their Rochester home, boarded a plane, and two long flights later landed in Ethiopia, to begin their first two-year term as medical missionaries in a remote village about four hours from the closest city. Four hours from their mail, four hours from their mission headquarters, four hours from internet. In order to follow God's call, they had to bid farewell to sisters and cousins and parents. They had to sell many of their belongings, and pack and store whatever was left. For them, their call to discipleship happened just like Jesus predicted: giving up family and possessions and livelihood for the sake of the gospel. But note the order of operations. First came the call, then came the sacrifice, and not the other way around. Counting the cost happened only after saying yes to God’s call to discipleship.<br />
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So the question at hand in today’s gospel is NOT, “What are you willing to give up for the sake of the gospel?” but rather, “What is it about the gospel that makes you willing to give up everything for its sake?”<br />
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Is it the assurance of God’s unconditional love and forgiveness? Is it the hope of a new creation? Is it the promise of everflowing grace and mercy? Is it the expectation of perfect peace and wholeness for our world? Is it the wonder of abundant, eternal life?<br />
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What about the gospel is so irresistible to your heart that you’re willing to make sacrifices for it?<br />
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For author Sara Miles, a forty-plus year atheist, the irresistible gospel showed up as a piece of communion bread, offered freely and exactly at God’s right time, and the call of the gospel was so strong that she not only found faith, but used that faith to begin a food pantry out of her new church, against all odds.<br />
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For Martin Luther, the irresistible gospel showed up as a new understanding of the words, “for it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and not by works,” and the call of the gospel was so strong that he took the risk of reforming the church, and starting a legacy that has followed him five hundred years down the road.<br />
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For Matt and Kristi, the irresistible gospel showed up as a summer mission project in Mexico that connected their faith and their medical training in new and enlivening ways, and the call of the gospel was so strong that they’ve shipped their family halfway across the world to offer health and wholeness in God’s name.<br />
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Maybe the call of the gospel is clear to you. Maybe you’re still searching. But wherever we are on our faith journey, we yet gather here to hear about the fullness of God’s love and grace, and we keep splashing around the waters of forgiveness, and we keep breaking the bread of life, and we keep sharing the light of Christ, that the gospel message might somehow, someday become irresistible to each and every one of us.<br />
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And if there’s anything at all that I can say to you with certainty this morning, it is that the God who has begun the good work of faith in each of us promises to see it through to the day of completion. And whatever it is about the gospel that has drawn us to this place, however feebly, God will sustain us in whatever he calls us to do in his name.<br />
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So count the cost if you must. Add up the columns, and compare gains and losses if need be. But know that there is only life to be gained from answering God's call to embody his love and compassion in the world. Know that this life of faith is worth whatever it may cost you. Because Jesus says to each of us, “I’ve already paid the cost in full. So follow me, because there is hope and forgiveness and wonder and boundless love to be found along this road I call you to travel. Trust me. Follow me. It will always be worth it.”Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-32626003916706887372013-08-27T14:26:00.000-05:002013-08-27T14:26:48.165-05:00Late August and heavyMy phone says that it is 86 degrees outside right now, creeping up to a high of 90. It is sunny and humid. The air feels hotter and heavier than 86, or even 90. Drive north or south two hours from here, and the temperature climbs to the mid-nineties. It does no matter that school has been in session for a week now. The weather does not care that our hearts and minds are in autumn. The weather, after being so mild for so many months, has decided to be SUMMER. The very week after the pool has closed for the season.<br />
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Thank goodness for a powerful - if noisy - window air conditioner that chills my office in five minutes flat. And thermal water bottles filled with ice water. I'm wearing one of the lightest, coolest dresses that still fits over my belly, and my skin is cool to the touch. But the heat is still making itself known. The sun and humidity, even on the outside of my cool windows, manage to seep into my body and destroy my energy levels. My body feels heavy and tired in that way specific to summer languor.<br />
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Meanwhile, the exhausting effects of summer heat are lost on dear little hedgehog, who seems to have spent all day yesterday and the day before resting up for a day full of action. Thumps and tumbles and twitches galore today. This is endlessly amusing. With every strong movement, I stop what I'm doing, put my hand on my belly, and try to feel what's going on from the outside. Once I've done that, I move my hands and smooth my dress tight over my belly, and watch with curiosity to see whether any of the movements are big enough to see from the outside. (In case you were wondering, yes. Mostly tremors right now. No particular movements or body parts. But plenty of ripples and shakes.)<br />
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Today, I am feeling late August in my head and heart and bones. I would love nothing more than to give into the summer heat, turn off my computer, head home to the couch for an air-conditioned nap, interrupted only by long, lazy gazes at my belly, intervals of knitting, and having no housework or dinner plans other than eating strawberries and drinking ice water.<br />
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I do not like the heat, please don't get me wrong. I have no nostalgia for humid, sunny, sweaty summer, nor do I have patience for the stifling thickness in the air. But I do know that the hot days of summer are the days that force you to slow down, and make peace, however much you can, with being completely unproductive. The hot days of summer invite you to combat heat with laziness, the heavy ooziness of sinking into a chair in a cool room, your limbs and memory alike feeling heavy and immoveable.<br />
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And maybe, right now, the desire to sit and be slow, to focus all my energy on self-care, is a heat-induced desire to save up the quiet moments before hedgehog arrives and all changes. As impatient as I am for his/her arrival, part of my brain knows that the quiet parts of life are about to disappear, and that the luxury of laziness will come to an end. I think that part of me fears losing control over my own destiny - the ability to put off doing the dishes because I don't feel like it, and the ability to sit on the couch and do nothing if I so choose, and the ability to procrastinate.<br />
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I suspect my languishing mood will snap once the heat wave snaps, and I know that excitement about this baby already trumps all fears of change. But for today, I really wish that someone would look at me and my drowsy eyes, and tell me to go home, to put my feet up, to take it easy...and that I wouldn't feel guilty for doing so.<br />
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Because even though they showed up late, the dog days of summer have yet arrived. It is late August and heavy. And maybe the world would do well to slow itself down, even just for a few days.Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-2023379425261636482013-08-26T15:38:00.000-05:002013-08-26T15:38:08.387-05:0014 Pentecost: In proportion<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/reway2007/6662322225/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Bonus Photo - Reality by reway2007, on Flickr"><img alt="Bonus Photo - Reality" height="265" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7019/6662322225_075438518a_z.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/reway2007/6662322225/">Bonus Photo - Reality</a>" by reway2007, on Flickr</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>Luke 13:10-17</b><br />
<i>Now [Jesus] was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment." When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day." But the Lord answered him and said, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?" When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.</i><br />
---<br />
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If you read any handful of Madelenie L'Engle's novels and memoirs, you might pick up on a common personality trait among her heroines, herself included. Many of these women, at one point or another, talk about their mental and emotional states as a matter of being "in proportion" or "out of proportion." L'Engle uses this talk of "proportion" to convey something common to each of us: knowing when things in our lives feel balanced, settled, and ordered, and knowing when things in our lives feel unbalanced and askew.<br />
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It is this idea of proportion that intrigues me about the woman in today's gospel reading.<br />
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For eighteen years, she has been living out of proportion. She has been stooped over and thus bent out of normal physical proportion. But more than that, eighteen years of being bent-over must also have put her emotions, her livelihood, her hopes for a future out of proportion as well.<br />
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With such an ailment, and being a woman at that, her life would have been difficult. She would have been at the fringes of society, and totally reliant on others to carry out necessary tasks, such as drawing water. Who knows if she would have been deemed "marry-able," and if not, she would have been left without a husband, without status or protection. The difficulties of such a life would have been absolutely out of proportion with any hopes, dreams or expectations that she might one day have had about her life.<br />
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The text says that this woman has been crippled by a spirit. It is hard to discern whether the author intends us to understand this woman as being actually possessed, as with other characters in the gospels, or whether this talk of being crippled by a spirit is meant to imply no one could figure out the cause or her ailment, and thus everyone ascribed it a supernatural cause. Or maybe the author simply means to tell us that both her body and spirit were weighed down, bent over, downcast; we all know that a broken and downcast spirit can, quite literally, weigh us down and bend us over.<br />
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We also don’t know exactly why this woman is in the synagogue. She is Jewish, and so perhaps this is a mark of her identity and faithfulness. It is also possible that she went to the synagogue when she knew there would be lots of people around, with a flash-in-the-pan hope of receiving money or food from a generous soul. All that we know from the text is that the woman happens to pass by the place where Jesus is teaching.<br />
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Unlike other characters in the gospel who seek out Jesus for healing, this woman does not approach him, and she has no friends who push her into his personal space. It is Jesus who notices her, who calls her over, who interrupts his lecture that he might show love and compassion to this nameless woman.<br />
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This is the first important thing we need to take away from today's gospel: that Jesus seeks out those who are bent down, who pass below the gaze of society. While there is wisdom to the idea in our society that recognizing your own need for help is the first step in your recovery, Jesus doesn't function inside these parameters. Remember that early in Luke's gospel Jesus unrolled the scroll, and read from Isaiah, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free."<br />
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Jesus is always actively seeking out need and fixing it. Jesus brings wholeness to those who seek it, but he also brings wholeness to those whom he seeks out. Remember that he also describes his mission in terms of a woman seeking a lost coin or a shepherd seeking a lost sheep. Jesus understands his mission to be seeking out those in any sort of need, and lifting their burdens. His healing is free and openly offered. And so he calls over the bent-over, out-of-proportion woman, and heals her of his own volition.<br />
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Of course, this gets him in a little bit of trouble. It's the Sabbath, and the letter of the law says that you are to do no work on the Sabbath, and so those who are itching to get Jesus in trouble are quick to point out that it doesn't matter how miraculous the healing of this woman is, Jesus should have waited to do it until some other day.<br />
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This is the second important thing that we need to take away from today's gospel: Jesus isn't concerned with the letter of the law; he is concerned with the spirit of grace and freedom. Jesus understands God's law as something that is intended to bring life. Indeed, the Sabbath commandments were never really about restricting work for the sake of restricting work, that somebody might be able to be smug and boast. The Sabbath commandments were about freeing slaves and livestock and workers of any variety from the burden of their work. It was an opportunity for rest, given justly to all, and not only to those who could afford it. Jesus understands that the law is not about bondage but about freedom. And so it is more important to him to liberate this woman from her ailment than it is for him to worry about the letter of the law.<br />
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Jesus, in today's gospel, is acting out of proportion, acting outside the normal balance of society. He offers for free what society says should come at cost, and he offers with grace that which society says should come with boundaries. Jesus acts out of proportion precisely to bring this woman back into proportion, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.<br />
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Today’s gospel reading is one that we often overlook, but one that speaks very deeply to our hearts. We all know what it feels like to be out of proportion, bent over by the weight of the world.<br />
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These are the times when heartache paralyzes us from even simple functions like eating and sleeping. These are the times when worries overtake us, or physical limitations come to define us, or depression descends upon us like a dense fog. These are the times when we feel lonely and tired, stumbling, stooped. In these out-of-proportion moments, we can feel mildly off-kilter or overwhelmingly despairing. In our out-of-proportion moments, we can easily forget who we are and lose sight of our inherent, God-given belovedness.<br />
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This is when we need to remember the bent-over woman in today’s gospel. She is a living reminder to us that no matter how bent-over we feel, no matter how out of proportion our lives get in their worst moments, Jesus always seeks us out, promising to lift us up and bring shalom to our troubled hearts.<br />
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The bent-over woman in today’s gospel reminds us that, from the beginning, God has been working to bring our world into proportion, putting things again and again into their beautiful, ordered, intended places.<br />
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In the beginning, God created the earth, drawing order and meaning out of chaos. Through the prophet Isaiah, God promises that every valley shall be lifted up, and every hill made low, the crooked straight, the rough places smooth. Jesus proclaims that the last shall be first and the first shall be last; that the lost shall be found; that those who humble themselves will be exalted and those who exalt themselves will be humbled. And Jesus, on the cross, did the most disproportionate thing imaginable: he died so as to restore the promise of life and forgiveness to a broken world.<br />
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God in Christ is always in the work of restoring things to balance and wholeness, of returning this world to proportion over and over again, no matter how many times sin and death throw things out of whack. This is good news and healing balm for our souls.<br />
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So whether you are in good proportion right now or feeling totally out of sorts, trust that Jesus is keeping his eye out for you. He will always notice you as you pass by, and call you to his side. No matter how ungracefully you shuffle over to him, his compassion remains the same. He will touch you and speak to you, and restore your soul.<br />
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Because just as Jesus spoke to the woman in the synagogue, so also does he speak to each of us, saying “My dear one, you are set free from whatever ails you. Rejoice, and go forth in peace.” Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-89940642357599193142013-08-04T12:00:00.000-05:002013-08-06T15:30:05.500-05:0011 Pentecost: Hearing voices<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/morran/317368468/" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Listen, I am Shabby by Camilla Engman, on Flickr"><img alt="Listen, I am Shabby" height="288" src="http://farm1.staticflickr.com/124/317368468_00d1fc63b2_z.jpg?zz=1" width="350" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/morran/317368468/">Listen, I am Shabby</a>" by Camilla Engman, on Flickr</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Hosea 11:1-4</b><br />
<i>"When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them."</i><br />
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<b>Colossians 3:1-3</b><br />
<i>So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.</i><br />
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<b>Luke 12:13-21</b><br />
<i>Someone in the crowd said to [Jesus], "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me." But he said to him, "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" And he said to them, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." Then he told them a parable: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, 'What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' Then he said, 'I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."</i><br />
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A friend of mine in high school, feeling all wise after taking a semester of psychology, told his mom that she wasn't crazy if she talked out loud to the dog...she was only crazy if she expected a response! (There’s high school hubris for you...)<br />
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I wonder, then, what this friend would have said about talking, out loud, to yourself. Do the same rules apply? Is it better to talk in your own head or to talk out loud to yourself? And does it make a difference if you expect a response? I mean...just how much of a conversation can you have with yourself before you ought to go find somebody else to talk to instead?<br />
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In today’s gospel, Jesus tells a parable of a rich guy who amongst other problems, has a bad habit of talking to himself.<br />
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Did you notice that when this rich man was faced with a conundrum of abundance, his first recourse was to start talking to himself? First, he talks to himself about barns. And then - then! - he starts talking to himself about a future conversation that he plans to have with himself once these barns are completed. He says, “I will (later) say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’”<br />
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While there are plenty of lessons to be learned from today’s parable about wealth and greed and generosity, maybe one of the more important ones for us is a lesson about the danger of staying stuck in your own head.<br />
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It turns out that we humans can convince ourselves all sorts of crazy and misguided things when we only talk to ourselves. From the very start of creation, God intended us to be in relationship with other human beings and with God himself. Because it wasn’t good for us to be alone. We need companionship and we really really need God and others to help us see reality. And so things get a little messed up when we ignore those relationships and listen only to the voices in our heads instead.<br />
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Because without a reality check from the outside, the voices in our heads can turn dark. At our worst, they can convince us that we are something other than we actually are: beautiful, beloved children of God. It’s the voices in our heads that tell us that we’re weak or undeserving, or too fat or too thin, or unforgivable or unloveable. The voices in our heads are really good at convincing us that it’s okay to take that one more drink, or that it’s okay to treat someone who has hurt us with resentment instead of forgiveness.<br />
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And the more we listen to the voices in our heads more than we listen to God and others, we start to believe two big, crazy lies that the rich man in today’s parable came to believe.<br />
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First, we start to believe that we don’t actually need anybody else. We start to think that we are totally self-sufficient, and that we can control our own destinies, and that our happiness depends on nothing else but our own efforts. This rich guy had plenty of wealth, plenty of crops, plenty of security for his future. And so his grand plan is to settle down, eat, drink, be merry, and believe that he, of his own accord, had secured a blissful future for himself.<br />
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And when we believe that we can do it on our own, we do the same thing. We keep buying stuff that we don’t need, because it makes us happy for a while, and then we buy more stuff when that first round of happiness wears off. We constantly chase wealth and success, and we store up extra toothpaste and canned vegetables and clothes that don’t fit, not because we are so worried about scarcity, but because the more stuff we collect around us, the more we can keep up the illusion that we don’t need anybody or anything outside of our own selves.<br />
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If we keep listening to those voices in our heads, unchecked, we start to believe a second big, crazy lie. We start to believe that nobody else needs us. The rich guy had way way way more than he needed to keep himself alive and well. But he never got around to thinking or caring that somebody else out there might need him to share his abundance.<br />
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We’re really good at convincing ourselves that nobody needs us. In our worst moments, we convince ourselves of this in despair. When we aren’t feeling so confident or appreciated or valued, we can talk ourselves into a really dark “nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I’ll go eat worms” sort of place.<br />
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But those voices in our head can also try to convince us that nobody needs us as a defense mechanism against the brokenness around us that is simply too much for us to handle. If we let ourselves believe that nobody needs us, then we don’t need to turn on the news at night and hear about war and scandal. If we believe that nobody needs us, then we can postpone that visit to the neighbor who might just unload all of her loneliness and pain on us. If we are convinced that nobody needs us, then we don’t need to bring food or money to the pantry and risk running into the face of poverty in our midst.<br />
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To sum up: Believing the voices that tell us we don’t need anybody puts us in the position of having lots of stuff, with nothing left to need. Believing the voices that tell us nobody needs us puts us in the position of having lots of stuff, with nothing to give.<br />
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And these two lies are at the heart of the rich man’s problem. Because thinking of ourselves as an island is a really quick path to greed.<br />
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This is where God steps in with a couple of harsh reminders. He nudges us into recognizing our foolishness, and reminds us that we are mortal, and that wealth is fleeing, and that there are plenty of people who have need for our extra stuff and our love and our forgiveness.<br />
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God steps in with the voice of Hosea to remind us that we are bound to him and to one another with cords of human kindness and bands of love, and that even if we listen to voices that try to separate us from God and others, God has this compassionate and relentless heart that won’t ever let us go.<br />
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God steps in with the voice of Jesus to tell us that our lives do not consist in the abundance of possessions. He shatters the illusion that abundant life is something that we can make for ourselves, or something that we can find within us. He gives us Jesus, the living bread from heaven, who says “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” who says, “I came that they might have life and have it abundantly.” Jesus reminds us that abundant life comes from God, the source, the giver, the merciful, and not from inside our own heads.<br />
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God steps in with the voice of Paul to remind us that we have been liberated from ourselves through Christ, and that our old worries and lies and misgivings were trampled by the cross, and that we aren’t captive to the voices in our heads anymore. Paul tells us that we have been raised up, and that our true lives and futures have been revealed in Christ, and that we are children of light and glory and generosity. And so we are no longer bound by voices of greed or anger or abuse or dishonesty.<br />
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The good news, friends, is that God has a really big voice. And so no matter how often we fall prey to the conversations we have inside our own heads, God’s voice is always bigger. And he is bent on getting our attention, whether by priests or prophets or judges or disciples or apostles or the words of Jesus, or the loud sound of hammer to cross, or the sound of a rock sliding away from an empty tomb, or the rush of the Spirit across our ears.<br />
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And the voice of God is always a voice of freedom. It tells you that you are free to love others and let them love you. It tells you that you are free to give yourself away because God will always come back to you with an abundance of love, mercy, and compassion. The voice of God tells you that you are loved and beloved, that you are not alone, that you are very much needed and valued, and that you have good to offer this broken world.<br />
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So come to this table today, and hear the voice of Christ that says, “This is my body and my blood, given for you.” Hear these words and feast on the bread of life. There is plenty for all. At this table, we eat, and we drink, and we can be joyful, because we know that our lives belong to God, and not to ourselves. There is no need to worry. There is no need to fear. Life is here, waiting for you. It is abundant. It is free. It is enduring. It is the sweet taste of grace. It is the sweet voice of love.Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-35633936191446278852013-07-24T16:07:00.000-05:002013-08-06T15:36:26.388-05:00Giving myself grace to "just go home"A dear friend (and really wise pastor) just put up <a href="http://reluctantxtian.wordpress.com/2013/07/24/success-will-kill-you-or-i-want-you-to-go-home-seriously/">a blog post about our society's fixation on work and success</a> that you should read right now. I mean it. Open it in a new tab, read it, and then come back here. I'll be waiting.<br />
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Ok, pretty great stuff, right?<br />
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The prophet Isaiah asking, "Why do you spend your money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?" Pretty convicting.<br />
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And then these lines, which made me nod along vehemently:<br />
<blockquote>I don’t want to cultivate a society that expects full time work for part time pay, and I don’t want to cultivate an individual who accepts that they aren’t valuable enough to not be defined by their job.<br />
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It’s a spiritual issue. In my work I can “work for God” so much that I lose sight of God altogether because I’m so busy. In our work we can lose sight of ourselves, of our God-given identities, because we take on the identity of “success.”</blockquote><br />
But it was these words that really made me stop in my tracks:<br />
<blockquote>How can we have spiritually healthy people if we have spiritual leaders and spiritual homes who are in the same rhythm as the mega-firm and the mega-business?<br />
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By and large, I just want you to go home. And I want me to go home more. As a Christian, as a pastor, as someone who cares about the health and souls of my people, just go home.</blockquote><br />
I think, that more than anything else, these lines describe part of my own journey to leave the Chicago suburbs - my home! - and to head off to small-town Iowa, leaving behind one thriving congregation to go serve a different thriving congregation.<br />
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It's a pretty quiet day here in Decorah. I woke up, stopped by the co-op to grab some sweet treats for the office and a cup of coffee to de-fuzz my morning brain, and then landed in my office. I spent the morning being productive. All manner of small tasks, from answering email to planning worship ideas for tonight's healing service at the high school leadership camp I'm co-chaplaining at Luther College. I worked through the noon hour, and then about one o'clock, went home to eat some lunch.<br />
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After lunch, I drove out to the hospital to see whether there were any members in need of a visit. I stopped by the store to pick up a few supplies for tonight's healing service. And then made my way back to the office to finish off a few tasks before going home.<br />
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As I was driving back to church, I had a strange, questioning moment. I wondered to myself whether such a relaxed, free work day should feel as normal as today felt.<br />
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See, previously, I lived and served in big, bustling suburban Chicago. My home turf, mind you, and an area of the country that I dearly love. But for as much as I love about Chicagoland, as I served there, I grew increasingly unsettled by the pace. I commuted twenty minutes to church, which meant I never went home for lunch...and often didn't go home at a regular dinner hour, either. The bustle of the area, people's busy work schedules, and parents' desires to give their kids a wide range of extra-curricular experiences spilled over into the character of the church. We ran program after program. We as a staff took on the bulk of planning and execution of these programs, because our volunteers were already too busy. So I worked long and full days, working through the afternoons to my evening meetings. I was busy. It felt normal, because I really knew no other. And it worked. I was tired a lot, I ate a lot of dinners at 9:30pm, but somehow it worked.<br />
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But now I'm living the opposite life. I'm a mere two-minute commute from church. I eat lunches and dinners at home. I do more visits and reading than I do project planning. I spend time in the office when there are office things to do, and spend time elsewhere when there are elsewhere things to do. My time is more flexible...and there's a lot more elbow room. <br />
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On slow or quiet days, I get anxious, I admit. I'm still in a bit of that mindset where if I'm not busy, I feel like I'm not doing my job. Except that my congregation doesn't expect me to be busy for the sake of being busy. They expect me to write sermons and plan worship, to do visits and to check in at the hospital, to attend meetings as I am able, to empower volunteers instead of taking everything on myself. And yes, I have some project that I'm working on, and there are always those busy weeks where there are more things to do than there are hands and hours to do them. But for the most part, the expectation is that I ebb and flow with my weeks. And it takes work for me to appreciate the quiet weeks instead of feeling guilty. It takes work for me to realize that a four or six hour day here and there make up for the ten hour days that show up here and there. And it takes work for me to remember that ministry is about the care of souls and not about the hours I log.<br />
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Which is why Tim's blog post hit me particularly hard. Because I'm still finding my rhythm here. And when I don't know what else to do, I <i>do</i> "just go home." And sometimes I need reminding that my time and my energy and my own personal spiritual health are more valuable than I think they are. And that the slower rhythm to my days doesn't mean I'm doing anything wrong. And that it will take some time for me to outgrow my learned behavior of measuring myself by "success" and "busy-ness."<br />
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Yes, I need to keep learning how to give myself the grace to "just go home." And figure out how to help other people find that same grace.Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-39345659596802937772013-07-18T12:04:00.001-05:002013-07-18T12:05:35.652-05:00Let's talk about heads and heartsI'm not quite sure why I was thinking about my own faith development as I was washing my hair in the shower this morning, but for whatever reason, I started retracing my path through churches and congregations and formative faith experiences and my own shifts and trends in my "faith-personality," should such a thing exist.<br />
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For me, faith has been something that has always bounced around between head and heart. Depending on my stage in life, I've leaned into headier and heartier seasons of faith, and it is interesting to me to look back and see what was fulfilling for a season, and what came up short.<br />
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As a kid, and probably well into my teenage years, faith was a pretty neutral thing. It was heart insomuch as I believed in God with an earnestness that only children can muster, and it was head insomuch as I was learning stories and collecting information about God. It wasn't an emotive faith, nor was it intellectual. It was simply a childhood faith, where learning about God and getting excited about going to Sunday School was no different than learning about books or science and getting excited by going to the library.<br />
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Into middle school and high school, I think that I retained some of this "childish" quality to my faith. Not in a bad way at all, mind you. I appreciate that my life afforded me the ability to hold onto a simple faith for so long. I grew more convicted during this time, about faith and about many other things, the way that all people do in adolescence. You start to define yourself all on your own, and hold tightly to the things that you care about. Faith was one of my BIG THINGS in life, as much as was writing poetry, being a good student, and thinking that my sense of humor was incredibly grown-up and witty.<br />
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It took me until college to start treating my faith in God as less of a "given" and more of a conscious choice or awareness. And when I started considering faith as something conscious, I also started navigating the divide between head and heart. As I joined Christian organizations on campus and grew to make friends who came from different styles and church backgrounds, I came to the realization that my faith, if I had to give it a location, was squarely in my head. It was a big and odd identity crisis for me. Because knowing in my head that I trusted God and the Bible to be true things was very different than having the moving, emotive, almost mystical sensations of God that many of my friends had experienced. And knowing or trusting God suddenly didn't seem to be enough. <br />
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I tried and tried to shove my faith down from brain to heart. I tried doing morning devotions where I'd leave myself time in silence to try to compel God to say something to me, either in voice or through divine gut instinct. I went to alternative worship services and tried different postures for praise and prayer. I tried to read my Bible more, journal more, and think way less about what I was reading and writing. I'm not sure if I just expected the Spirit to grab and guide my hand or what. I tried drawing my faith into more and more life decisions, even some ridiculously small ones, thinking that I would experience God more if I just channeled him more often.<br />
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Let me tell you. My attempts to emotionalize my faith failed miserably. I know that I felt good about them at the time. But if you go back to my journals from college, it's pretty embarrassing. I mistakenly believed that experiencing God had to be something emotion-driven, and that the only way to let God lead was by getting my brain out of the way. And in the process, I just ended up sounding even more naive than my previously simple faith...and far more desperate. Not good desperate. My college understanding was that having a heart-bound faith was all about connecting with God on an emotional level.<br />
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Then I decided to go to seminary. Well, if we're going to be exact here, I'm probably better off saying that I followed a strange and undefined sense of call to seminary. And a seminary that encouraged and lifted up the intellectual side of faith. I was in heaven. (Well, except for being lonely because my boyfriend-turned-fiance-turned-husband lived far away from me, and working harder than I've ever worked to keep up in my challenging classes, and muddling through the process of figuring out that, hey, maybe God is calling me to be a pastor and what does that mean for me and my future...)<br />
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But the intellectual stuff was great. I adored systematic theology, because it meant reading and thinking and processing faith according to logic and philosophy. I was heartened to learn that there were plenty of folks over the centuries who had delved deeply into their brains to make sense of faith. I'm pretty sure I dropped my college "faith is emotive" act within my first week of classes. It was refreshing to feel like I was among friends, among others who, like me, let faith sit up in their brains, and didn't feel any shame or regret about it. <br />
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I loved learning about the intricacies of scripture and the history of its interpretation. I exercised a thinking faith with wild abandon, perhaps to the point of pushing my faith to an arm's length in order to indulge my headiness. I was probably more excited about faith and church during seminary than I'd ever been at any other point in life, but kept pretty detached from the personal side of my faith during that time.<br />
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Since seminary, and through my pastoral experiences on internship and now in these first two congregations that I have served as a pastor, I'm starting to come around to another new stage in my faith life. And this is where we get to my hair-washing epiphany.<br />
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I'm a logical, reasoned person. That's just my personality. I like to be organized, I like when things make sense and are consistent. I enjoy patterns and routines. And that affects how I approach my faith. I look for themes, I try to piece together large and consistent generalizations about who God is and how God works, I appreciate the logical flow of the liturgy and the church year, and I keep constructing for myself a nicely-bounded understanding of my own theology.<br />
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In practice, however, I'm coming to realize that my faith is far more heart than it is head. But in a very different way than in college.<br />
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I'd always assumed that to have a heart-based faith, it meant that your heart is how you knew and understood God. But maybe that's not how it works.<br />
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I look at the world, and my heart pours itself out. My faith drives me to look differently at my neighbors, and to desire deep peace and harmony and hope. My faith drives me to see the cracks in our shared life on this planet, and makes me more aware of greed, self-interest, and waste. I feel deep compassion for all who hurt, and not just the good guys. And so it dawned on me this morning that my faith is truly a heart-based entity.<br />
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Just instead of my heart being where I expect to know God for my own sake, my heart is actually where God calls my faith into action and being. I used to think that a heartfelt faith was all about me and God, all for my sake. Now I see that a heartfelt faith is actually all about the world and God, and how those things happen to intersect in my own being. Heart-faith isn't about my disposition toward God. It's about my disposition toward the world.<br />
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And this, perhaps, is how (at least in this season), my head and my heart are making peace with one another. What I know about God in my head filters its way through my heart and out into the world. And it's not an either-or. It's a both-and. Both head and heart. A new brand of simplicity that is no longer childish or untested, but is instead a straight line drawn from knowing to being, from thinking to caring, from head through heart and then out into the world.<br />
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Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-36658097331523976612013-07-10T12:14:00.002-05:002013-07-24T16:11:20.397-05:00Let's talk about babiesFor the last five years of my life, something has been happening in the background.<br />
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You've heard a lot in this space about my journey through seminary and internship, and my first years of being a pastor. You've heard about my family and some of my vacations, my love for baseball and knitting, my thoughts on dialogue and division, and my crazy idealism for the world we live in. Recently, because I've been busy, you've mostly gotten lots and lots of sermon transcripts.<br />
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But behind all of this, for the last five years, Matt and I have been on a long journey to try to start a family.<br />
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It has been quite a journey. A journey that has included frustration and tears, losses and medical interventions, countless needle-stabs and blood draws, surgeries (major and minor), and through it all, enough peace in our hearts to keep stepping forward, one day at a time, without counting up our fears or losses or heartbreaks. Which is not to say that there weren't bad days (there were plenty), or that we had the strength or gumption to keep pressing ahead indefinitely (there comes a point when you have to start thinking about stopping, for the sake of your sanity).<br />
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I wouldn't wish this journey on anyone. And yet, as I have come to learn, this journey is so very common, and nobody really knows it.<br />
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There have been lots of blessings to come out of this journey that wouldn't have happened otherwise. I have made new friends and built new relationships with others who have struggled, just like we have. Friends of mine have come out of the woodwork to share with me their own stories of infertility and pregnancy loss. I have been forced to think - deeply! - about what I hope my life will look like, and what pieces of my body and soul I am willing to make vulnerable in order to pursue those hopes and dreams. I would venture a guess that Matt and I are closer and better because of all of this, and that our relationship is in a deeper place than we could ever have expected it to be after 8.5 years of marriage. I've been forced to be emotionally vulnerable (in a good way), and to learn to ask for/accept help (which I'm terrible at). Spiritually, I've run the gamut from praying fervently with hope to shouting at God in absolute anger. I've connected to Bible stories in far different ways, especially stories of barren women, but also stories of finding peace in trial, and finding kindred spirits in all those in the Bible who felt they had no other option but to cry out to God and put themselves out there, because they had no other choice.<br />
<br />
But don't be mistaken. These beautiful and unforeseen blessings do not, in any way, make this path easier. They don't make this journey "better." They don't redeem the pain and frustration of spending so much time, money, and energy trying to accomplish something that should be simple; something that biology has been making happen since the start of the human race. Infertility and pregnancy loss are HARD.<br />
<br />
As we crossed over into 2013, there were lots of transitions on the horizon. I had just accepted a new call, which meant leaving a church I loved in order to follow God's call to a new church that I was excited to love. Goodbyes and hellos are hard. Even (especially!) the good ones. Also, this new church was in a new town in a new state...putting me five hours from most of my family and from the Chicagoland that is a HUGE part of who I am. Moving is my least favorite thing ever, because it involves packing, and so there was plenty of stress on the horizon as I packed both our apartment and my office, and as we went house-hunting in Decorah, and as we tried to make the most of our last weeks in Chicago before moving.<br />
<br />
During this time of crazy transitions, we also decided to take one more (last?) shot at a round of IVF. We'd done a few cycles before, and still had a couple embryos frozen, and we decided (with the encouragement and blessing of my doctor), to try one last round before we moved away (and out of his care).<br />
<br />
My official start date here at First Lutheran was March 1. I preached my first sermon here on Sunday, March 3. I spent Monday and Tuesday of that week trying to get my office unpacked and set up. And then on Wednesday, we drove back to Chicago, because that Thursday was my embryo transfer (the culmination of a month-plus cycle of medications and monitoring). The timing of the cycle and the transfer was certainly not ideal. It was just another thing to add to all the madness of moving and starting a new job and closing on a house.<br />
<br />
But for some crazy reason, the absolute wrong time turned out to be the absolute right time. And so two weeks after starting my new job, we found out that one of those little embryos had stuck around, and we were pregnant. Thrilling news, and terrifying. Because once you've experienced a loss, it takes a long time for you to actually believe that the pregnancy is going to last. Between then and now, there have been plenty of anxious days. Plenty of worry and wonder. Plenty of huge sighs of relief every time blood draws showed my hormone levels going up, and every time my doctor has been able to easily find a heartbeat at our monthly appointments.<br />
<br />
It took us until week 13 to start telling close family and friends. It took us until week 16 to share the news with the congregation. And it took us until week 17 to go public. For as much as your head knows that, statistically, chances of loss after 13, 16, 17 weeks are incredibly low, your heart still worries that you will (continue to) be the exception to the rule, the person who keeps defying the odds in the wrong way.<br />
<br />
But it's getting harder and harder to worry, and easier and easier to believe that THIS IS HAPPENING. FOR REAL. We crossed the 20-week mark over the weekend (halfway there!), and had our big mid-pregnancy ultrasound yesterday. And yes. There's a baby in there. A baby with arms and legs that move and kick, a baby with a little heart beating away in its chest, a baby with teensy toes and little lips, who is just starting to get big enough for me to feel it when it tumbles and flips and kicks.<br />
<br />
I can't completely shake my fears that things still might go wrong, but I am also learning, day by day, how to really enjoy this good news. I'm learning how to let other people be happy for me. I'm learning how to settle in and act and feel like your everyday, average pregnant lady. And honestly, I keep feeling a huge sense of relief to know that the news is now out there for all to know. I feel like I've been keeping huge secret after huge secret for these last five years. For so many good reasons, we've kept this whole journey pretty quiet. But now that we've crossed over in time to be closer to birth than to conception, I am really happy, not only to be talking about a BABY!, but also to be a little more candid about the road we've traveled to get to this point.<br />
<br />
Wow. Lots of words in this post. Makes sense. There's a lot that's been bottled up for a long time. Feels good to put it all out there. As a reward for wading through all of this, how about a picture? Enjoy!<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vvTaYRkZVlg/Ud2UgbkLWqI/AAAAAAAAE2E/YQ9UcPjJohM/s1600/photo+3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vvTaYRkZVlg/Ud2UgbkLWqI/AAAAAAAAE2E/YQ9UcPjJohM/s400/photo+3.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">20-week ultrasound! We chose not to learn hedgehog's gender - we are into surprises. Still plenty amazing to look at this picture and see an obvious baby! This is starting to feel real. Also, see the arm up by the face? Hedgehog did NOT want their picture taken. Haha!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-349756881215425752013-07-07T12:00:00.000-05:002013-07-08T13:34:53.590-05:007 Pentecost: Leaving ourselves behind<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/13615771@N05/5342291198/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="what i usually pack by pinay traveller, on Flickr"><img alt="what i usually pack" height="241" src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5085/5342291198_2bb63a226f_z.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/13615771@N05/5342291198/">what i usually pack</a>" by pinay traveller, on Flickr</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>2 Kings 5:1-5a, 9-14</b><br />
<i>Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the LORD had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy. Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman's wife. She said to her mistress, "If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy." So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. And the king of Aram said, "Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel."<br />
<br />
So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha's house. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, "Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean." But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, "I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?" He turned and went away in a rage. But his servants approached and said to him, "Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, 'Wash, and be clean'?" So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Luke 10:1-11, 16-20</b><br />
<i>After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, 'Peace to this house!' And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, 'The kingdom of God has come near to you.' But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 'Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.' Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.<br />
<br />
The seventy returned with joy, saying, "Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!" He said to them, "I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."</i><br />
---<br />
<br />
We waited until the last pre-trip meeting to give out the packing list for the high school group summer trip. The group was heading up to the Wilderness Canoe Base in northern Minnesota, to spend a week helping the staff at base camp clean up after a stretch of devastating forest fires. <br />
<br />
The problem with the packing list wasn't what it said to bring.<br />
<br />
The problem with the packing list is what was what it said not to bring. No cell phones or iPods or electronics to distract us from the tasks ahead of us. No flip flops or open-toed shoes, in order to keep us safe on the uneven terrain. No food or candy in the cabins so that we didn't attract critters to our cabins. But the worst thing? No shampoo or soap, because there were no showers, because showers waste water, and soap and shampoo pollute the delicate wilderness ecosystem.<br />
<br />
As expected, the high schoolers reacted to this packing list with wide eyes. No cell phones or flip flops? No soap or shampoo? It was as if we had asked them to leave their very selves behind. <br />
<br />
Something very similar happens in today’s gospel reading.<br />
<br />
Jesus is preparing disciples for a great wave of ministry. Not just the twelve famous disciples, but nearly sixty others as well. They are all about to be commissioned to go into towns and villages to cure diseases, cast out demons, and call people to repentance in Jesus name. As they prepare to set out, Jesus gives them a few last-minute instructions. First, go in pairs. Second, don’t take anything with you, no purse or bag or sandals. Third, freely receive and reward the hospitality of strangers.<br />
<br />
Yes, Jesus sends the disciples out with his own what-not-to-pack list. It’s not just luxuries and comfort items that he asks them to leave behind. He asks them to leave behind things essential to their survival. No money means no resources to buy food or lodging. No bag means no means of carrying extra supplies. No sandals means a slow, dusty journey, and means extra-dirty feet for the hosts of households to wash when taking them in.<br />
<br />
There is nothing glamorous about the disciples’ mission. Jesus sends them out as plain, vulnerable souls who will be forced to let go of their pride and to trust both God and strangers to provide for them along their journey. When Jesus tells the disciples to leave everything behind, I imagine that they stared back at him with wide eyes. I imagine that it felt as if Jesus had asked them to leave their very selves behind.<br />
<br />
Because being empty-handed is a hard calling. We humans don’t like to be left unprepared. It’s why we collect so much of stuff around us, stuff that we hold onto “just in case,” like junk drawers filled with old receipts and cords, or boxes of clothes packed away in the basement, or the secret stash of chocolate we hide in the freezer. We overeat or overwork or overcompensate to create a buffer between ourselves and our fears of failure. We don’t want to find ourselves lacking anything.<br />
<br />
Whether we know it or not, we collect all of this stuff as a way of minimizing our vulnerability and resisting reliance on God and one another. We use abundance and self-reliance as both buffer and crutch. Because it’s the message we ear all the time: More is better. You can have it all if you just want it enough. You can do it yourself. Thick skin is a sign of strength. Abundance is a sign of success.<br />
<br />
And all the stuff we collect up around us becomes the stuff that defines us. We become our clothes and our homes and our cars and our jobs and our ambitions and our hobbies. And to leave any of this behind means leaving behind our very selves. And that makes us vulnerable. And vulnerable is uncomfortable.<br />
<br />
And...I think this is exactly the point of today's gospel. Letting go, leaving behind, is vulnerable work. It is vulnerable to think about leaving ourselves behind to become the unequipped disciples that Jesus sends out. It is vulnerable work to let go of belongings, certainty, and self-reliance for the sake of Christ's mission. It is vulnerable to clear away the clutter to regain a clear view of God in the world. It is vulnerable business to leave ourselves behind so that God can take center stage.<br />
<br />
But it is precisely in our vulnerability that we see God's strength. It is precisely in the vulnerable gap between what we have and what we need that God steps in to do his deepest work.<br />
<br />
In the uncomfortable gap between what the disciples carried and what they actually needed, God filled the space with acts of power and radical hospitality from strangers. In the uncomfortable gap between Naaman's prideful expectation of being healed by an amazing act of power and Elisha's simple instructions to bathe in the river, God filled the space with healing, wholeness, and refreshment. In the uncomfortable gap between the luxuries the high schoolers wanted and the stripped down bags they actually packed, God filled the space with changed hearts and new eyes to see the splendor of God in his creation.<br />
<br />
Did you notice what happened when the disciples returned to Jesus after their mission? They fell all over themselves to share with Jesus the exciting things that they had seen and done. They told about their adventures, and rejoiced over the work that they had done, and shared stories of hospitality...and never once talked about what they lacked or left behind.<br />
<br />
The same thing happened with that group of high schoolers. They returned home from their trip telling stories about pulling up brush and debris around camp to protect the land from future forest fires, and they talked about picking wild blueberries and playing in the lake, and they rejoiced in new friendships and told of being moved by God during campfire devotions...and never once talked about what they lacked or left behind.<br />
<br />
Isn't this all very good news for us? We have the assurance that God steps in to fill the gaps. We have hope that God works deeply through our vulnerability. We have security in a God who comes to define us when we leave all else behind.<br />
<br />
Because we have a God who, through the vulnerability of the cross and the emptiness of the tomb, brings us strength from weakness, life form death, power from insecurity, and hope from chaos. And we have a community of faith right here, where we can splash in the water of our baptisms, and to eat the bread and wine that draw us into the communion of Christ's body, so that we can find the strength to get over the idea that we can or should do it all ourselves, and instead go out to pursue lives of getting the heck out of the way, so that God's spirit can have the freedom and space to blow through our lives.<br />
<br />
So what is it in your own life that you need to get rid of so that God can move freely in your life? What items in your schedule need paring down or what ambitions do you need to rethink? What patterns of spending your time or money do you need to change? What emotions, biases or hardness of heart do you need to acknowledge and clear away? <br />
<br />
What is God just itching to do in and through you once you become willing to leave yourself behind for his sake?<br />
<br />
My friends, it is time to leave yourself behind. To commend your spirit into God's hands. To put away every "just in case" bag that you've packed in your life and to take nothing else with you on your life's journey besides God's mercy. It is time to feel the wind of the spirit blowing through your empty fingers, leading you to new people and new places. For once we leave ourselves behind, we have the joy of feeling the stirrings of our unhindered God moving in us and through us, animating our souls. Don't you want to be free to see where he leads?Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-14031611057008909612013-07-02T22:49:00.001-05:002013-07-03T10:24:26.661-05:00Four monthsSo here we are.<br />
<br />
We've been living here in Iowa for four months.<br />
We've been living in a small town for four months.<br />
I've been at First Lutheran for four months.<br />
We've owned a house for three and a half months.<br />
<br />
Also...it's time to out myself as four-plus months pregnant (19 weeks)! Which is a huge surprise and joy and blessing. It has been an incredibly long, difficult journey to get here. Time and grief and doctors and loss and needles and so many expectations. There are probably plenty of words to be written about all of this at some other time.<br />
<br />
Put all of this together, and you'll rightly conclude that these last four months have been a huge time of transition. Lots of life changes all at once. Lots of uncharted territory; lots of new. Lots of stuff up in the air all at once.<br />
<br />
When I announced my departure from St. Timothy, I remember thinking to myself "The next few months are going to be chaos, and all I have to do is get to the other side of it." And between organizing a graceful and responsible departure, packing up an apartment, house-hunting, saying goodbyes, and fussing with paperwork for this new call, there was definitely a huge whirlwind of chaos that took place. I held on for the ride. I looked with hope to the far side, where I would be settled.<br />
<br />
And so, in many ways, here we are. Settled, whatever that means. We have a house and all of our stuff is here. I have daily routines. I have favorite restaurants. I have responsibilities and projects at church. I have a doctor. I have entertained house guests.<br />
<br />
But I sort of forget that being settled and feeling settled are different things. Patterns are surfacing. But I'm still learning how to be a part of this congregation and this town and this community. I am playing the part, but it doesn't feel like me yet.<br />
<br />
And this is when I remember that four months isn't very much time. It's time enough to learn a lot. And to know a lot. Now I just need to settle into my own skin.<br />
Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-28561416808129452132013-06-30T12:00:00.000-05:002013-07-03T10:35:01.542-05:006 Pentecost: Following through<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mightyboybrian/6441479431/" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Following Three Friends Into a Storm by MightyBoyBrian, on Flickr"><img alt="Following Three Friends Into a Storm" height="400" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7151/6441479431_f30df3dd67_z.jpg" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mightyboybrian/6441479431/">Following Three Friends Into a Storm</a>"<br />
by MightyBoyBrian, on Flickr</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>2 Kings 2:9-14</b><br />
<i>When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, "Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you." Elisha said, "Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit." He responded, "You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted you; if not, it will not." As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven. Elisha kept watching and crying out, "Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!" But when he could no longer see him, he grasped his own clothes and tore them in two pieces. He picked up the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. He took the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and struck the water, saying, "Where is the LORD, the God of Elijah?" When he had struck the water, the water was parted to the one side and to the other, and Elisha went over.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Galatians 5:13-14; 22-25</b><br />
<i>For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." [The] fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Luke 9:57-62</b><br />
<i>As they were going along the road, someone said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." To another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." But Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." Another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home." Jesus said to him, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."</i><br />
---<br />
<br />
It was third grade when Sarah and I tried to build a house.<br />
<br />
We'd just finished an architecture unit in school, learning about different styles and designs and features, and we'd even taken a walking tour of the neighborhood to look at windows and doors and roof structurs. Our final project was grab a partner, pick one of the styles of houses we had discussed, and to build our own model house out of cardboard.<br />
<br />
Sarah and I had grand ideas. Our house was going to have a tall, peaked roof, and a wrap-around porch, not unlike the very gingerbread-house-esque dollhouses that we ourselves coveted. Shutters on the windows, pillars framing the front door, it was going to be beautiful.<br />
<br />
The problem, however, is that two nine-year-old girls might have grand intentions, but they don't have great follow-through. We fussed over our plans, but lost energy to actually build the house. We didn't think through the supplies we'd need, so we tried to construct our house using rubber cement and a sewing kit. And did I mention that we didn't start building until the afternoon before the project was due?<br />
<br />
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, they say. And we all have our good intentions. We all have our good ideas and our noble impulses. But as it turns out, whims without follow-through don't amount to much.<br />
<br />
And this is especially true with matters of faith.<br />
<br />
In our gospel reading today, we meet three well-meaning folks who have the very best intentions of following Jesus. They have the eagerness. They have the excitement. But they don’t quite have the follow-through.<br />
<br />
Jesus and his disciples are on their way to Jerusalem. For Jesus, this is a death-march. It is his pilgrimage to the cross, and his face is fixed forward. As they travel, a crowd gathers around them, and some members of this crowd, inspired by his words and deeds of power, decide that they, too, want to be a part of the action. <br />
<br />
For them, the decision to follow Christ is something like an impulse-buy. You know, like the ice cream you bought at the Whippy Dip on your evening walk (even though you didn't plan to stop), or the magazine you couldn’t help buying in the checkout lane (even though you just planned on buying some milk and eggs)? To these would-be followers, joining up with Jesus seems like a great and even irresistible idea.<br />
<br />
And there’s a certain measure of beauty in that. Because it is indeed true that the gospel of God’s grace and salvation is pretty irresistible stuff. It’s the promise of new life and the comfort of an eternal homecoming for our longing souls.<br />
<br />
The problem is that faith is bigger than just the idea of salvation.<br />
<br />
This is where these three members of the crowd get stuck. They are eager to be a part of all of the good stuff of following Jesus, but they don’t grasp the weight of what this good stuff will demand of them. They have great intentions, but don’t have the heart to follow through on the demands of discipleship. They have dreamed up a beautiful house in their heads, but aren’t able to commit to building it.<br />
<br />
Because the peculiar thing about hanging out with Jesus is that, whether we like it or not, faith changes us. Following Jesus makes us different. God’s grace may indeed be free, but this freedom inspires new demands of our souls. Faith in Christ breeds discipleship, and as Luther Seminary professor Michael Rogness says, "Discipleship means living in ways that we might not otherwise live."<br />
<br />
Jesus, when commissioning the disciples, didn’t say to them “Go into all the world, convincing people to believe in me.” He didn’t say “Go into all the world and get people to subscribe to a creed about who I am.” He said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”<br />
<br />
Discipleship means getting out of our heads and hearts, and letting the faith that is in us show through in our words and our deeds. Discipleship means following Jesus, not simply believing in him. Discipleship means following through on the grace and compassion that first drew us to faith.<br />
<br />
Martin Luther was clear that our good works do not determine our salvation, but he was equally clear that faith always bears fruit; that if our hearts have been moved by Christ, we will bear the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control; loving our neighbors as ourselves.<br />
<br />
And all of this sounds so nice and wonderful...in theory. But if we are anything like those crowds, and I think we are, we also get a little stuck when we really consider the idea that faith might change us. That faith might make us live differently. For some of us, we aren’t sure that we are actually capable of living as disciples, and aren’t living fully into Christ’s calling because we’re afraid of failure, or afraid that we’re not worthy. For others of us, we aren’t sure that we actually want to live as disciples, because we are comfortable with who we are and don’t know what would happen if we changed, even if that were a change for the better.<br />
<br />
And so we find excuses to merely nibble at faith instead of sitting down for the whole meal. Like those members of the crowd, we put qualifications around our desire to follow Jesus.<br />
<br />
I’ll follow you, Jesus...if I can approve the itinerary first.<br />
I’ll follow you, Jesus...if you let me first take care of some important business that’s weighing on my heart. <br />
I’ll follow you, Jesus...if you just wait for a couple days so that I can get my affairs in order and say my goodbyes.<br />
<br />
I think that if it were up to us, not many of us would ever become disciples. Because loving your neighbor and being gentle instead of angry and being generous instead of sensible is all hard stuff to do. And there are days that I don’t want to be so kind, and there are times that I really don’t feel so patient, and what about those days when joy is the farthest thing from my mind and heart? If it were up to us, not many of us would ever become disciples.<br />
<br />
But the good news is that it really isn’t up to us.<br />
<br />
Today, we are going to baptize baby Elliot. He will pass through those baptismal waters as a sign that he has been chosen and claimed by God. He will be anointed with oil as a seal of his belovedness. Elliot has not chosen God - God has chosen him, just as God has chosen each one of us. Elliot’s parents and sponsors, as well as all of us gathered here, will make promises on his behalf as we welcome him into God’s family and dedicate him to Christ’s service. We will all promise to support and pray for him as he grows into the calling that God has prepared for him: 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 world.<br />
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These are some mighty tasks entrusted to this small child. These are some mighty tasks entrusted to each and every one of us! And while we might not ever do any of these things perfectly, baptism reminds us that we have both been called to Christ’s service and, more importantly, empowered by God’s spirit to carry out those tasks.<br />
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Because baptism is the beginning of our lifelong process of conversion; of feeling God molding our hearts anew every day, about trusting God’s double-share of grace to reorient our very beings around loving God and loving neighbor.<br />
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This is not flash-in-the-pan faith that we’re talking about here. This is long-term business. Because when God claims us, it’s not just for a moment. It’s forever. And trust me, God is really good at his follow-through.<br />
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He has given us these waters of baptism and this table of mercy, to remind us often that we are forgiven and blessed, loved and saved and called.<br />
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And more than that, God has given us Christ, the one who has set us free. And we have thus been called in this freedom to serve one another in love, bearing fruit, and giving over our hearts to the deepest workings of God’s divine compassion. We live by the Spirit, and we belong to Christ, who says to each of us, “Follow me.”<br />
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May God give us all the strength to answer this call, not just to follow, but to follow through, and to be true disciples of his love and mercy. May we wake up every day, ready for God to shape and mold us into Christ's hands and feet for the world. May we give up control of our hearts, minds, souls, and spirits to the movings of God's grace. And may we see ever more clearly the places in our lives where God is calling us to live differently, that his kingdom might continue to come to life among us.Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-67808822500133731722013-06-16T12:00:00.000-05:002013-07-03T10:33:30.881-05:004 Pentecost: Getting what we don't deserve<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/estenh/4163978077/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Justice's Scales by estenh, on Flickr"><img alt="Justice's Scales" height="296" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2706/4163978077_3347a97cef_z.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/estenh/4163978077/">Justice's Scales</a>" by estenh, on Flickr</td></tr>
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<b>1 Kings 21:1-10; 17-21</b><br />
<i>Later the following events took place: Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard in Jezreel, beside the palace of King Ahab of Samaria. And Ahab said to Naboth, "Give me your vineyard, so that I may have it for a vegetable garden, because it is near my house; I will give you a better vineyard for it; or, if it seems good to you, I will give you its value in money." But Naboth said to Ahab, "The LORD forbid that I should give you my ancestral inheritance." Ahab went home resentful and sullen because of what Naboth the Jezreelite had said to him; for he had said, "I will not give you my ancestral inheritance." He lay down on his bed, turned away his face, and would not eat. His wife Jezebel came to him and said, "Why are you so depressed that you will not eat?" He said to her, "Because I spoke to Naboth the Jezreelite and said to him, 'Give me your vineyard for money; or else, if you prefer, I will give you another vineyard for it'; but he answered, 'I will not give you my vineyard.'" His wife Jezebel said to him, "Do you now govern Israel? Get up, eat some food, and be cheerful; I will give you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite." So she wrote letters in Ahab's name and sealed them with his seal; she sent the letters to the elders and the nobles who lived with Naboth in his city. She wrote in the letters, "Proclaim a fast, and seat Naboth at the head of the assembly; seat two scoundrels opposite him, and have them bring a charge against him, saying, 'You have cursed God and the king.' Then take him out, and stone him to death." Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying: Go down to meet King Ahab of Israel, who rules in Samaria; he is now in the vineyard of Naboth, where he has gone to take possession. You shall say to him, "Thus says the LORD: Have you killed, and also taken possession?" You shall say to him, "Thus says the LORD: In the place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth, dogs will also lick up your blood." Ahab said to Elijah, "Have you found me, O my enemy?" He answered, "I have found you. Because you have sold yourself to do what is evil in the sight of the LORD, I will bring disaster on you."</i><br />
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<b>Luke 7:36-50</b><br />
<i>One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and took his place at the table. And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him — that she is a sinner." Jesus spoke up and said to him, "Simon, I have something to say to you." "Teacher," he replied, "speak." "A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?" Simon answered, "I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt." And Jesus said to him, "You have judged rightly." Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little." Then he said to her, "Your sins are forgiven." But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, "Who is this who even forgives sins?" And he said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace."</i><br />
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Chris was the biggest kid in his kindergarten class. He was tall and thick, square-shouldered and heavy compared to his classmates. He was a sweet kid but a handful, And he always started to get a little tired and moody by the time the after-school program began. <br />
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Chris, as many young children do, had a strict sense of justice and fairness. Things were supposed to be black-and-white, and even, and everybody was supposed to get the same stuff. If other boys in the after-school program were playing the board game Trouble and they hadn’t yet given him a turn to play, he’d get angry, because he deserved a turn, too. At snack time, if everybody else got a whole, unblemished pretzel rod, then it wasn’t fair to give him two broken pieces, even if those pieces amounted to more food when you put them together. <br />
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And then there was the day that he was standing in line at the vending machine, to buy a can of juice. The boy in front of him put in his dollar, hit the button, and in a moment of lucky malfunctioning, they machine dropped two cans into the drawer instead of one. Excited, Chris put his dollar in next, and hit the button...and only one can came out. No matter that the machine was only supposed to give you one can. The machine had given his friend two cans, and it just wasn’t fair. That might have been Chris’s biggest meltdown all year.<br />
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But it’s nothing compared to the meltdown that Ahab has in our first reading. He, too, is bent on getting what he wants, and getting what he thinks is fair, and he throws one heck of a tempter tantrum when things don’t go his way.<br />
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He wants this piece of land owned by a man named Naboth. This isn’t just any piece of land. It is fertile, and rich, and right in Ahab’s backyard. Ahab really really wants this land. He’s really excited to plant a vegetable garden there. So he offers Naboth fair compensation for it. He'll give him a better vineyard somewhere else, or cash if Naboth would prefer. And Ahab completely expects Naboth to sell. Because hey, he's offering him a really good deal!<br />
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But Naboth doesn’t want to sell, and it has nothing to do with money. His land isn’t just beautiful and fertile, it is also a place of blessing and ancestry. The name of the land, Jezreel, literally means, “God planted,” and Naboth isn’t about to give it up. So Ahab stomps off, angry and sullen. He throws himself on his bed like a petulant child, turning his face to the wall, refusing to eat.<br />
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Then Jezebel walks in, and says "What kind of a king are you, anyway?" and, God save her, takes matters into her own hand. She uses Ahab's power to forcibly take the land, because hey, he's the all-powerful king, and he can get whatever he wants, and it's Naboth's fault for not accepting the good deal in the first place.<br />
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Can you find yourself in this story? I know that I can. Pouting when we don't get what we want? Check. Getting angry when we don't get what we think we fairly deserve? Check. Believing that we should always be able to find a way to make things go our way? Check. Exploiting our own corners of power, big or small, to stack the deck in our favor? Check.<br />
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The human inclination is to act as Ahabs and Jezebels, demanding that things live up to our own desires. The human inclination is to put God on the side of what we think we deserve.<br />
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This is why God sends prophets like Elijah to give us the pesky news that God isn't in the business of getting you what you want and God is definitely not in the business of coddling the rich and the powerful. God is in the business of divine justice, of righting the world, of lifting up the poor and lowly and raising the stooped shoulders of the broken and sinful.<br />
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This is the heart of the conflict in today's Gospel reading. When Simon gets angry about the woman who burst into his house, it's not because she interrupted his VIP dinner or because she bucked social convention about how women were to act around men in polite society. No, the thing that <i>really</i> gets Simon's goat is that this woman is a <i>sinner</i>, and how dare Jesus show her love and forgiveness! God's favor was reserved for the faithful and the respectable, those who were deserving of it! How could this Jesus claim to forgive her sins and then treat her with the same honor as the truly respectable company around the table? It simply isn't fair.<br />
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So Jesus asks Simon, "If there were a money lender who was owed debts by two different people, and one of those debts was a matter of lunch money, while the other of those debts was a matter of a year's salary, and he forgave them both their debts, cancelling what they owed, which would be more grateful?"<br />
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And Simon, channeling the petulence of Ahab, rolls his eyes and says with a sigh, "I suppose the one with the larger debt."<br />
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"Then," Jesus says, "since her sins, which were many, are forgiven, she has shown much love."<br />
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The very core of the prophetic message spoken by Elijah and Jesus today is that God doesn't care a lick about what is "fair." God cares about being lavish with mercy and forgiveness, and being overwhelmingly concerned for the plight of those who are weak or tired or powerless; especially all of us sinners. We, who at one time were weighed down by sin and death, have been forgiven much through Christ, not because we deserve it, but because God is gracious. And so, just like the woman washing Jesus' feet, out of our forgiveness we are called to love and love much in our world; to be prophetic voices that proclaim God's upside-down, generous brand of justice.<br />
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The author N.T. Wright, in a recent interview, said, "The point of justice and mercy...is not ‘they deserve it’ but ‘this is the way God’s world should be’, and we are called to do those things that truly anticipate the way God’s world WILL be."<br />
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And so we are called to be prophets in our own world, speaking and acting out the way that God's world should and will be. We are called challenge our human inclination toward retribution. We are called to challenge our world's systems of power and reward. We are called to pursue relentless compassion. We are called to live with less so that those in need can live with more. We are called to be generous, both in material and in mercy. We are called not merely to be "fair," but to be symbols of hope for God's deep, divine justice, which raises up the weak and liberates the oppressed.<br />
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As theologian Jurgen Moltmann says, "Faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience. It does not calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in man. Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present" (<i>Theology of Hope</i>).<br />
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May the rich unfairness of God's love and forgiveness cause you to live with hope, each and every day. May you grow ever more deeply dissatisfied with reality as it is. May your heart be made restless by the peace of Christ. And may you find your own prophetic voice, to speak mercy and compassion into this unfulfilled present, drawing our world ever-closer to God's perfect, promised future.Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-33098830535609032722013-06-09T12:00:00.000-05:002013-07-03T10:31:14.513-05:003 Pentecost: Hitting bottom<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wesleypeyton/8592221113/" title="Look up, look down by wesley peyton, on Flickr"><img alt="Look up, look down" height="266" src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8230/8592221113_c68bf618ba.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wesleypeyton/8592221113/">Look up, look down</a>" by wesley peyton, on Flickr</td></tr>
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<i>Then the word of the LORD came to [Elijah], saying, Go now to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and live there; for I have commanded a widow there to feed you. So he set out and went to Zarephath. When he came to the gate of the town, a widow was there gathering sticks; he called to her and said, "Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink." As she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, "Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand." But she said, "As the LORD your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die." Elijah said to her, "Do not be afraid; go and do as you have said; but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterwards make something for yourself and your son. For thus says the LORD the God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the LORD sends rain on the earth." She went and did as Elijah said, so that she as well as he and her household ate for many days. The jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the LORD that he spoke by Elijah. After this the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill; his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. She then said to Elijah, "What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!" But he said to her, "Give me your son." He took him from her bosom, carried him up into the upper chamber where he was lodging, and laid him on his own bed. He cried out to the LORD, "O LORD my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?" Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried out to the LORD, "O LORD my God, let this child's life come into him again." The LORD listened to the voice of Elijah; the life of the child came into him again, and he revived. Elijah took the child, brought him down from the upper chamber into the house, and gave him to his mother; then Elijah said, "See, your son is alive." So the woman said to Elijah, "Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in your mouth is truth." (1 Kings 17:8-24)<br />
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Soon afterwards [Jesus] went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother's only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, "Do not weep." Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, "Young man, I say to you, rise!" The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, "A great prophet has risen among us!" and "God has looked favorably on his people!" This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.(Luke 7:11-17)</i><br />
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The story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath is an old favorite of mine. I remember listening to Bible story tapes before bed as a child, and even to this day distinctly remember hearing about the jar of meal that wouldn’t run out and the jug of oil that was never emptied. I think that I imagined the neverending jug of oil as something similar to a fake glass of orange juice that came as part of a toy kitchen set; the glass was double-walled and between those two walls was the fake orange juice. When you tipped the cup, the liquid disappeared as if you were drinking it or pouring it out. But when you righted the glass, the liquid ran back, “refilling” the cup. I was pretty sure as a kid that the jug of oil functioned exactly like that glass.<br />
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But here’s the thing. This story of Elijah and the widow? The Sunday School version of the story only talks about the flour and the oil. Because it’s the fun part of the story: the awesome amazing miracle that leaves everybody happy. But as you know from today’s first reading, there’s more to the story. And it’s not particularly happy. The whole thing is actually a little gritty; when you look at the details, it’s really a story about hitting bottom.<br />
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To set the stage, we have to back up one chapter to 1 Kings 16, where we hear about the unfaithfulness of King Ahab. He has hit a new low in unfaithfulness, being deemed the king who has “done more to provoke the anger of the Lord…than had all the kings of Israel who were before him.” <br />
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In response, God has sent a drought upon the land as judgment for Ahab’s unfaithfulness. This means that a whole nation is in peril, as creeks dry up and crops wither away. Times are dire.<br />
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It is at this point that we meet the widow of Zarephath. She, through no fault of her own, is hovering close to the bottom. For starters, she is a widow. This means that she has no voice, no portion, and no protection outside of her only son. More than that, because of the lingering drought, her knuckles have been scraping the bottom of her jar of meal for days now, and on this particular day when Elijah shows up, she is gathering sticks to build a fire and prepare a last meal for herself and her son. <br />
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The audacity, then, of Elijah to prevail upon her, even after hearing her dire story, and insist that she first feed him. Perhaps she is moved to compassion by a fellow human being who knows hunger and thirst. Perhaps she is naively wooed by Elijah’s impossible promise of neverending flour and meal as a reward. Perhaps she has been so beaten down in life that she knows nothing other than being taken advantage of.<br />
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But there, at the very bottom, she makes that small cake for Elijah, prepares the rest of her stores for herself and her son, and come the next day, she finds that the jar which she thought she’d emptied still had flour in it, and the jug that she thought she’d poured out still had oil in it. Once at the very bottom, at the brink of death, she was now able to feed herself and her household indefinitely, rewarded by God for her hospitality and faithfulness.<br />
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It would be wonderful if this were the end of the story. Then I’d get to preach a sermon about how God comes through for us when it looks like we have nothing. Or about how God gives us the strength to be generous even in our times of scarcity.<br />
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But the story marches on. Barely have we had time to rejoice in the miracle of the flour and oil when the widow’s son falls ill. Ill to the point of death. There is no breath left in him. <br />
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If starving to death seemed like hitting bottom, then this tragedy has plummeted the widow through the floor into the basement below. Dying of starvation in the midst of a drought is one thing. A widow losing her only son, her only protection, her only hope, is quite another. Mixed-up together is the pain of grief, the fear for her future, and the shock and whiplash of being saved from death only to be cast at its feet.<br />
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“What have you against me?” she asks Elijah. “Why have you saved us with the miracle of food only to rip my only son from me?”<br />
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She has, once again, hit the bottom.<br />
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This is a cycle that we are all familiar with, in some fashion or another. Cycles of good news and bad news that repeat, cycles of depression that follow moments of joy, times when tragedies and deaths pile up one after another, times when we pull ourselves up and out of bad habits or addictions and then fall back into them again.<br />
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The widow of Zarephath, like the widow of Nain or Job or any other Bible character who has had their hope pulled out from under them, raises the question with us, “Where is God when we have hit bottom? Where is God when we have absolutely nothing left?”<br />
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Where is God when long winters and cold, rainy springs threaten our farms and livelihoods? Where is God when we have a good, new job in a new town, but not the money to pay the security deposit on an apartment to move there? Where is God when we grieve children who have died so many years too soon?<br />
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Where is God when we have absolutely nothing left? When we have hit bottom? One answer would be that when we hit bottom, God pulls us up.<br />
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This is certainly what happens in our readings today. Elijah cries out to God and the widow of Zarephath’s son is raised from the dead. Jesus has compassion on the widow of Nain and her son is raised from the dead.<br />
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So the simple answer here might something like God always brings life out of our death, and when we hit the very bottom and have nothing left, God shows up to give us back our lives. And I believe this is true. This is the hope that I cling to when the world around me seems too far gone.<br />
But I think that there is a deeper, more satisfying, and perhaps even more faithful answer to the question of “Where is God when we have hit bottom and have nothing left?”<br />
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The answer is that God is with us. Always. No matter what. This is the heart of the good news in our readings today.<br />
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Elijah, at the death of the widow’s son, didn’t give her any trite assurances. He didn’t get defensive when she challenged him. He didn’t get up and walk away. Elijah, the man of God, the man serving as the mouthpiece of the Lord, went to the child and grieved, right alongside the widow. He cried out to God even as he was a walking, talking, weeping symbol of God’s presence, even there at the very bottom.<br />
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And Jesus, seeing the funeral procession heading out of town, took one look at the grieving widow and was moved to compassion. Nobody asked him to perform a miracle. Nobody called him over to the weeping crowds. Jesus took it upon himself to walk into the middle of the grief, and to care for this widow, this stranger, in her time of need. Jesus didn’t ignore the crowds, nor did he shoot off a miracle from afar. He put himself right in the center of grief, walking along the road with those who had hit the very bottom of their grief.<br />
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And so even as we cling to this everlasting hope that Christ is our resurrection, and that through him we have the power to know life even in our moments of grief and death, we also take yet greater comfort in knowing that God is never far off from us. That no matter how hard we hit the bottom, God doesn’t forget us. As it says in Romans, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”<br />
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For I am convinced that nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God. That is sublimely good news. And it is the heart of our Christian witness.<br />
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Because the heart our faith isn’t to naively promise everybody that everything will be just peachy; that life with God will always be good and happy and satisfying. The heart of our faith is to preach a Christ who walked with us to the point of death, who fed us a last meal in his dying days that might sustain us in our dying days, who promised never to leave us nor forsake us.<br />
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New creation is coming, yes. But while we wait, we have companionship with a God who is as unfailing as that jar of meal and that jug of oil. A God who pours himself out for us and is never spent. A God who never runs dry. A God who stands with us on the mountain peaks and weeps with us at rock bottom.<br />
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So eat this meal today, the flour and the oil of everlasting hope. Trust in a God who will not fail you. Take comfort in a savior who sees you with compassion, and who promises to walk with you every step of this life. Be sustained by God’s love, which will not fail.Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-61188162716672451022013-05-19T12:00:00.000-05:002013-05-30T14:33:35.504-05:00Day of Pentecost: In our own language<i>When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. <b>Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?</b> Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs — in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power." All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine." But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 'In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women,in those days I will pour out my Spirit;and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below,blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood,before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'" (Acts 2:1-21)<br />
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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. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. (John 14:12-17, 25-27)</i><br />
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Our Land Rovers drove out from the green, bustling town of Mto wa Mbu, Tanzania to the dusty land just a few kilometers to the outskirts. Prickly acacia bushes and tall termite mounds littered the landscape as we drove through the dirt under a clear and expansive sky. Way off in the distance, a small building came into view – a square, one-room church with cinder-block walls and a tin roof. We were about to sit in on choir rehearsal.<br />
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We were greeted by young Maasai women, mostly teenagers, wearing traditional swaths of red and blue fabric, with heavy beaded necklaces and bracelets jingling with each step. They giggled as they looked at our own strange clothing and weird white skin.<br />
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We entered the church and sat on rough wooden benches, the choir on one side, all of us visitors on the other. And they began to sing. Songs of praise and joy, in a completely different tongue, with complex and unfamiliar rhythms, with a strength and presence of voice that not one of us travelers had ever heard before. They sang and they danced, and small children wandered in an out of the space. We listened to the music and examined the murals on the walls, which included snippets of Bible verses, such as “seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness.”<br />
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They took a break from singing so that we could have some conversation. Up at the front of the church, three people gathered to facilitate. There was Simon, the evangelist or leader of the church, who spoke Maa, the language of the Maasai, and Swahili. Next there was Dr. Steve Friberg, medical missionary and host for our trip, who spoke Swahili and English. And next to him was me, the pastor and leader of our group of travelers, who according to custom was to bring greetings from our group to theirs.<br />
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And so we started talking. I thanked God for the hospitality of these church members who had welcomed us into their church and their music, and I greeted them in the name of Christ, and I expressed the blessing of unity that we shared in Christ. Dr. Friberg translated my words to Swahili. Simon translated his words into Maa. And back-and-forth we went. The church choir asked us questions about our own land and our climate and our faith in Christ; we asked them about what difference Christianity made in their lives. And it was all mediated through a chain of translators, shifting words from one language to another, helping all of us speak to one another across a great language divide.<br />
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<i>The day of Pentetecost had come. And there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. At [the sound of the wind and the rush of fire] the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?</i><br />
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The gospel message showed up anew on the day of Pentecost– the good news of God's love and grace, the good news of Jesus, who came to earth, lived, taught, healed, suffered and died, and the astonishing good news of Jesus rising from the dead. But the truly incredible thing was that this message of hope and joy and salvation came to each person in his or her own language, in familiar, understandable words. No longer was there only one language to speak of God; no longer was God’s grace only for those who knew the vocabulary, no longer was the power of the Spirit only given to those on the inside. Redeeming the confused tongues at Babel, now the Spirit fell upon all nations and tongues. Young and old, slave and free, man and woman, Jew and Gentile, near and far: all had access to one God through this one Spirit, who breathed out God’s good news in as many languages as there were ears to hear it and tongues to proclaim it.<br />
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Think, for a moment, about your earliest memories of church and faith. How did you come to hear about Jesus? Who taught you about God? When did you first start feeling the rumblings of faith in your heart? How have you experienced the Holy Spirit, or when have you felt the unmistakable presence of God surrounding you?<br />
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If you were to share your experiences with your neighbors in your pews [or around the table during fellowship hour], you’d probably find as many differences in your stories as you found similarities. Each of us has a different story of faith to tell, because each of us has been touched in different, personal ways by the presence and grace of God. We live in a Pentecost world, where God’s good news keeps spilling into our world in new and different languages, that all might hear and believe.<br />
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In Bible study last Monday, we focused our conversation on the Holy Spirit. We brainstormed images and ideas that we thought captured the nature and function of the Holy Spirit. By the end of the hour, we had identified the Holy Spirit as a voice, a spirit of life, a feeling of companionship, a rush, a presence, a mover & shaker, an inspirer, a transformer, an intercessor, a conscience, a community-builder, a gatherer, a sharpener of senses, a wind, a comforter, a teacher, a truth-teller, a protector, a liberator, a peace-bringer, a counselor, a sign or symbol, and a flame. <br />
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Initially, I looked at this list and decided that the Holy Spirit could be summed up as a meddler – as always having her fingers in everything. But the more I thought about it during the week, the more I started to realize that I was wrong. If I <i>really</i> wanted to sum up the nature of the Holy Spirit, I had to think of her as a translator.<br />
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Because our experiences of the Spirit - as comforter, counselor, inspiration, or or otherwise - are experiences of God himself translated into words and feelings that we can understand.<br />
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The Holy Spirit is God’s way of always reaching us where we are. Through the Holy Spirit, God speaks to us in our native languages, revealing his presence in ways that we can trust to be true. The Holy Spirit brings us moments of hope in the midst of sorrow, moments of comfort in the midst of grief, moments of joy in the midst of darkness, moments of inspiration in the midst of boredom. The Holy Spirit reveals God’s heart in the beauty of nature, in the care and compassion of our neighbors, in our amazing capacity for growth and change, in solemn moments of prayer and in holy moments of laughter. In many and various ways, the Holy Spirit translates God’s grace into languages that we can understand.<br />
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And this act of translation is always transformative. For us in that church in the middle of northern Tanzania, translation transformed strangers into neighbors. For those in Jerusalem on that first Pentecost, translation transformed ordinary crowds into faithful believers and disciples. For all of us in the body of Christ, translation transforms us from hearers of the word to doers of the word, just as the Holy Spirit transforms ordinary bread, wine, and water into extraordinary, tangible means of grace and forgiveness.<br />
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And just as the Spirit translates God’s truth into our own languages and tongues, so also are we called to be a many-tongued people of Pentecost whom God has called to translate his good news into languages that our world will understand.<br />
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So what languages do you speak? <br />
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Do you speak the language of art, able to translate God’s hope into paintings and sculptures and fiber arts? Do you speak the language of technology, able to translate God’s hope into 140 characters at a time? Do you speak the language of compassion, able to translate God’s love into hugs and boxes of tissues? Do you speak the language of protest, able to translate God’s liberation into editorials and thoughtful dialogues? Do you speak the language of children, able to translate God’s joy into moments of creativity and play?<br />
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There are many gifts but one Spirit, many tongues but one Lord, many glimpses of grace, but one Creator of us all. And so we are called to make peace with God’s divine open-endedness, knowing that there are always new languages to be spoken, and great and greater works to be accomplished in Jesus’ name.<br />
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For we are yet living in the age of the Holy Spirit, who blows wherever she chooses. And in the rush of that wind, we push forward into a divine future of a limitless God who lives and breathes and moves and speaks life into our souls.<br />
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May we always have ears to hear, and may we always have voices to proclaim God’s praise.Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-10143798948682054182013-05-08T14:02:00.001-05:002013-05-08T14:02:27.175-05:00Easter 6: Heaven is here<i>And in the spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life. Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. (Revelation 21:10, 22; 22:1-5)<br />
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Jesus answered him, "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me. I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, 'I am going away, and I am coming to you.' If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe. (John 14:23-29)</i><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjldZ8IPjTFKT_mW089OZAPJ9PFkvRT61oyl8fgToK49HaYJ5fJ4eF92imOaCEcwg9CNPQY0eDNkiz4Af4Zh9u_lkirSsNxYgODINrHxPw6gFDz9WsFyowqx1aU6C34M2UrsxjWyA/s1600/Basic+Skills.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjldZ8IPjTFKT_mW089OZAPJ9PFkvRT61oyl8fgToK49HaYJ5fJ4eF92imOaCEcwg9CNPQY0eDNkiz4Af4Zh9u_lkirSsNxYgODINrHxPw6gFDz9WsFyowqx1aU6C34M2UrsxjWyA/s200/Basic+Skills.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtQ5ZGkwb6xGSMSUwG_WOL87U0-4ddT8WPQJ6lcliShefgU_G2biUgrvNY5Cd3aPWfOoq7QQUxxiT_NvaZSINSlQw71nXmGE7zzaEoJ00wSVn9ENzIXvXNBTes4qG7C-i9C3M-4w/s1600/Heaven.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtQ5ZGkwb6xGSMSUwG_WOL87U0-4ddT8WPQJ6lcliShefgU_G2biUgrvNY5Cd3aPWfOoq7QQUxxiT_NvaZSINSlQw71nXmGE7zzaEoJ00wSVn9ENzIXvXNBTes4qG7C-i9C3M-4w/s200/Heaven.jpg" width="200" /></a>As a “welcome-to-Iowa” gift from my sister, she sent both Matt and me Iowa-themed t-shirts from <a href="http://raygunsite.com/" target="_blank">a fantastically hip little t-shirt studio in Des Moines</a>. My shirt is purple, is covered in standardized test bubbles, and those bubbles are strategically filled out to spell out the word “Iowa.” Underneath, the tag line says, “we test your basic skills.”<br />
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Matt’s t-shirt is far less complicated. It is black with white writing, and it quotes the movie Field of Dreams: “Is this heaven?” “No, it’s Iowa.”<br />
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“Is this heaven?” It’s an apt question for us in these days of Easter, while we bask in the glow of Christ’s resurrection and look for new life as it springs up around us, however slowly. Indeed, Christianity itself is oriented around a belief in life beyond life and the restoration and reconciliation of creation. And whenever we start talking about all of this stuff, we are really talking about the nature of this thing we call “heaven.”<br />
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We hear a lot of talk about heaven these days. In the last year, the media has clamored to tell the stories of two different people who claim to have seen beyond the veil of death into heaven. <br />
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Newsweek featured the testimony of Dr. Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon whose brain was attacked by a rare illness, sending him into a sever coma. In this essentially dead state, Dr. Alexander reports catching a dazzling glimpse of a life beyond life, an existence beyond body and brain, something that he could only describe in terms of heaven and afterlife.<br />
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And all the morning shows plugged the book, <i>Heaven is for Real</i>, the account of a young boy’s near-death experience, where he came to and described an experience of being with family members who had passed away, sitting on the lap of Jesus, hearing angels singing to him, and seeing the Virgin Mary standing next to Jesus in heaven.<br />
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Both of these fantastic stories paint a picture of heaven that fits with a lot of popular Christian thought, that heaven is a far-off place which is waiting for us beyond death. Add to this understanding any cartoon depiction of heaven, and you get an other-worldly place filled clouds and harps and blue skies, and naked cherubs with fluffy wings.<br />
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A theology of a far-off heaven implies that heaven is an escape; it is something other than this existence, something detached and distant from this world. If you’ve spent any time with the books in the <i>Left Behind</i> series, you know that there is a strong strain of popular theology that understands heaven as a reward for suffering through this life, and a special, set-apart place for the truly faithful.<br />
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There is a skewed, sideways version of “good news” that comes out of this way of thinking about heaven. It goes something like this: “God has something good in store for you, you just have to make it through this life before you get to see it, so hold on, be strong, muddle through this life, and once you die, it will all be worth it.”<br />
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But is this really what heaven is all about? Is heaven truly someplace far off from here, and is it only a place that we can access after death? Is life in this world really just about biding our time until we get to go someplace better?<br />
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Our readings today seem to say otherwise. In fact, our readings from both Revelation and John throughout this Easter season have been pointing us in a different direction, where heaven isn’t a place we go to when we die, but rather heaven has begun here and now, and if anybody is doing the traveling, it’s God and not us.<br />
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Last week, we saw in Revelation a vision of God’s new heavens and new earth, and the new Jerusalem coming down from the heavens, and we heard the voice from the throne proclaiming, “see, the home of God is among mortals, and he will dwell with them.”<br />
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Today, our Revelation reading continues the story. The holy city, our apocalyptic vision of God’s restoration of the world, makes its way to earth. And there is no more temple mediating access to God, for God is here and in all and through all. And in holiness of the new creation come to earth, the gates are always open, there is no fear, no longer is there evil or falsehood or brokenness. And this new creation is full of life. A tree of nourishment and healing, a river flowing with the water of life, and God as the very light and life of all.<br />
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This vision is everything we hope heaven to be – a place of peace and wholeness, a place of life and abundance, a place of closeness to God. But notice that this place is not far-off. This place is here. And this place is not just sometime in the future. This place is unfolding among us, right before our eyes. From the moment of Christ’s resurrection, God has begun his new heavens and new earth, and we catch glimpses of resurrection all around us.<br />
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Jesus, in today’s gospel, gives us a hint about what heaven-on-earth looks like. It looks like love - love for our resurrected Lord and love for our world through acts of service and compassion. It looks like peace beyond the peace of this world, peace in our hearts that brings us wholeness. It looks like companionship with God, who lives in us and breathes through us. It looks like divine inspiration and comfort from the Holy Spirit.<br />
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And so the good news for us goes something like this: “Heaven is already here, coming to birth among us. God is shaping and reshaping the world, and at the end of all things, God’s new creation will come to completion. There will be resurrection later, but there is also life and new life here and now.”<br />
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So how would your life look different if you were always keeping your eyes open for glimpses of heaven? What would it look like to wake up every morning seeing your own life and breath and the sunrise as miracles of God’s new creation? What would happen if you saw resurrection and redemption in the eyes of every person you meet in your day? How might your soul leap for joy if, every day, you recognized God breathing newness into your spirit, even as you continue to long for the day when you, too, will see the new Jerusalem coming to earth?<br />
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Because I don’t think that the right answer to “Is this heaven?” is “No, it’s Iowa.”<br />
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I’m pretty sure that the only right answer to “Is this heaven?” is “Yes. Yes, heaven is here, in Iowa. And it’s all around the world. For God is dwelling among us, and new life is spring up all around. Thanks be to God!”Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-37982127448902934032013-04-28T12:00:00.000-05:002013-04-29T16:01:15.338-05:00Easter 5: New creation<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/funcrush/6943323508/" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="before & after by funcrush28, on Flickr"><img alt="before & after" height="240" src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5321/6943323508_34c6071d5d_z.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/funcrush/6943323508/">before & after</a>" by funcrush28, on Flickr</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, "Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?" Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, 'Get up, Peter; kill and eat.' But I replied, 'By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.' But a second time the voice answered from heaven, 'What God has made clean, you must not call profane.' This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man's house. He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, 'Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.' And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, 'John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.' If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?" When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, "Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life." (Acts 11:1-18)<br />
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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." Also he said, "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true." 6Then he said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. (Revelation 21:1-6)<br />
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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. 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." (John 13:31-35)</i><br />
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This week, I attended a gathering that involved a number of area clergy, of many and various denominations. And as we introduced ourselves, there were at least a few folks who blinked a few extra times and forced polite smiles when I, a woman, introduced myself as a pastor. I generally have two reactions to moments like this. First, I feel a little defensive and defiant, and square my shoulders up as if to say “Yup, I’m a girl. What are you gonna’ do about it?” And then I get over myself, and my second reaction is to remember that I am hitting against a longstanding boundary, one borne out of faithful people trying to live faithfully according to their understanding of who God is and how God works, and that people of faith come to different conclusions about all sorts of things, and that crossing or giving up certain boundaries is really difficult.<br />
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This recent encounter of mine is not <i>entirely</i> unlike the disciples’ reaction to hearing that Peter, a Jew, entered the house of Cornelius, a Gentile. They, too, blinked a few extra times, and raised their eyebrows, and then went one step further, openly criticizing him for crossing a longstanding – and yes, even God-given! – boundary, a boundary that was, for them, a mark of faithfulness.<br />
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To combat the criticism, Peter tells them the story of what happened to him; the story of the sheet and the clean and unclean animals, the voice of God speaking directly to him, changing his own rules about who was “in” and who was “out” of salvation, the story of Peter’s own new revelations about the gift of the Holy Spirit. And Peter closes his testimony with one hard-hitting, humbling, knock-out punch of a question: “If then God gave [the outsiders] the same gift [of the Holy Spirit] that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?"<br />
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Having grown up in a church that emphasized the <i>consistency</i> of God, and that took comfort in a God who never changed, today’s passage from Acts blew my mind the first time I read it all the way through. Because this story, perhaps more than nearly any other story in the Bible, reminds us that our greatest comfort is not a God who remains static and unflinching, but a God who reacts and responds to the world around us, who is willing to be a little bit unruly and do unexpected things and even change course if it means bringing more people into his kingdom. It tells us that God is far more interested in making us new than he is in sitting back, hands-off, just observing creation from afar. <br />
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This is the whole point of Christ coming to earth - that the world might change course, that God might offer us the new news of resurrection and life instead of the old news of sin and death.<br />
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Paul writes to the church at Corinth, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”<br />
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The good news? You are a new creation. In Christ, God has birthed his new heaven and new earth in you and for you.<br />
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The bad news? You are a new creation. And so you can no longer simply rely on your old ways of being. The former things have passed away and you are now an agent of newness and transformation in the world, whether you like it or not.<br />
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The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard writes, “The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world?...Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God.”<br />
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And I would add, “Dreadful it is to fall in with a God who is constantly making things new!” Because once we’ve been made new, then we are a part of making the world new, and real, deep, lasting newness is hard.<br />
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It is so much easier to buy into the world’s small, false, or shallow images of newness than to live into God’s overwhelming, sweeping promise of a new heaven and new earth.<br />
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It’s easy enough to walk down the cleaning supply aisle of the grocery store and grab the spray bottle of tub and tile cleaner that has a “new formula!” sticker on it. But it’s hard to advocate for opening up the arms of the church to new people that the church has historically left out of its mission or ministry or leadership.<br />
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It’s easy for most of us to go out to eat and try something new off of the menu that we haven’t tried before. Bt’s hard to let God lead us to new depths of sacrifice for our neighbors, like the hard sacrifices of our time or our money, or the <i>especially</i> hard sacrifice of giving up our egos and our desire always to be right (not that I know <i>anything</i> about this one...).<br />
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It’s easy to buy a workout DVD or subscribe to a nutrition plan that promises us a new body in sixty days or our money back. But it’s hard to cling whole-heartedly to God’s promises not just of health but of wholeness, for our bodies and for our creation.<br />
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It’s easy to buy a new novel and read an enthralling, romantic love story. But it’s hard to live out God’s new and alternative definition of love that isn’t bound to romance, emotions, or likability…but rather to commitment and action.<br />
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This, my friends, is why Jesus gave us the directive to love, not just as a nice suggestion, but as a commandment. “A new commandment I give you,” Jesus says, “that you love one another as I have loved you.” <br />
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How did Jesus love? By smashing through boundaries and limits to touch the unclean and to eat with tax collectors and sinners. By widening the circle to include women and slaves and outcasts and children and fishermen as leaders and disciples. And to what end? That the ends of the earth might be a part of God’s kingdom of newness and life, a kingdom that transcends all the human divides that plague our existence. <br />
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And so in this post-Easter world, on the far side of the resurrection, God has set a challenge before us. That we take a risk with Peter in believing that God is really, truly, honestly making all things new. That we take a chance on love that transforms the world, even as we ourselves have been transformed.<br />
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Let me tell you. It’s hard work.<br />
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You know it as well as I do. I mean, think for a moment about your own life. Where are the places in your life where you would rather draw boundaries than tear them down? Who is that one person or group of people that you struggle to reach out to in love? What is one piece of tradition or history that you are reluctant to give up in order to let God widen the circle?<br />
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Stepping fully into God’s new heaven and new earth means taking a risk. It means taking a leap of faith.<br />
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And this is precisely why we keeping coming back to this place to worship and study, and why we read and re-read our Bible, and why us preachers keep preaching, and why we keep repeating confessions and creeds and keep coming back to this holy meal: because we need help entering again and again into the flow of God’s new and living water. We need help trusting that God is making our world new. We need assurance that we too can be bearers of this newness.<br />
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My friends, each one of you is a beautiful child of God. And each one of you is a new creation. May God continue to refresh and renew you, may Christ guide you to love as he loved, and may the Holy Spirit carry you on the rush of the wind to new places, smashing through old boundaries, that you might come face to face with the new heavens and new earth that God is creating in and among you.Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-83130670207391844002013-04-27T11:49:00.002-05:002013-04-27T11:49:37.441-05:00Arriving: "New" as opposed to "better"<i>"Arriving" is a continuation of the blog series "Leaving," which reflects upon my process of transitioning out of my first call and into a new call; leaving St. Timothy Lutheran (Naperville, IL) and moving to First Lutheran (Decorah, IA).</i><br />
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I am preaching this weekend on texts that all have to do with newness. Peter figures out that God is heading in a new direction, opening up the movement of the Holy Spirit not just to the "insiders," but to all. Revelation talks about God's plans for a "new heaven and new earth," where death and mourning and crying will be no more. And Jesus talks about the new commandment that he gives us, his disciples: to love one another as he has loved us.<br />
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And right now, my head and heart are bearing the weight of what newness means...and what it doesn't!<br />
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What they don't tell you about leaving a congregation and beginning with a new congregation is that you will spend more time than you'd like second-guessing yourself, feeling uncertain, and feeling guilty.<br />
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Back in December, I weighed lots and lots of things in deciding whether it was time to transition from a first call into a next call. I did more soul-searching that I've ever done before (or so it seems), and I opened my ears and heart to my closest and most trusted confidantes as I sought counsel. And when all the hopes and dreams and opinions and prayers had been weighed, I trusted the feeling deep in my gut that God was drawing me to this new thing, and that God was drawing me to a new thing that was for good and not for harm.<br />
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And I feel, consistently, that this new call is good. This new home is good. This new way of life in a small town and not in a suburb is good.<br />
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But what I have a hard time fending off are the more worldly voices in my head that try to ask me, "Is all of this newness BETTER?" It's a trick question. A false pretense.<br />
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In many other careers, you make decisions based on upgrades, on moving up a ladder, on moving forward. But in this peculiar calling to ministry, you make decisions based on moving sideways and throughways and all sorts of other crazy directions, based on where you truly believe God is calling you to be, for any number of purposes and plans.<br />
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And so how do I explain to those "upward mobility" voices in my head that this new call isn't about being someplace "better" than before, or that following the movement of the Spirit isn't about making comparisons of worth or notoriety. I came from good and entered into good. I came from fulfilling expressions of ministry and have entered into new fulfilling expressions of ministry. I gave of myself and my gifts to one beautiful and appreciative congregation, and I am giving of myself and my gifts to a new beautiful and appreciative congregation.<br />
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And when those misunderstanding voices creep into my head, the ones that would want me to frame my transition in terms of "better or worse," and want me to feel uncertain or guilty, I fend them off by remembering one particular, profound, important detail:<br />
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God doesn't talk in terms of making us "better." God talks in terms of making us NEW. And God loves the pieces of us that are old, and the pieces of us that are new. God isn't interested in talking about "self-improvement," but rather calls us to love and service for the sake of our own newness and the newness of the world.<br />
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And so I am here, in a new place, to love and to serve, and to bring the light of God to this place, in this time, just as I was called to love and serve and to bring the light of God to a different place in a different time, and just as I imagine God will call me to bring light and love and service to some other, future places at some other, future times.<br />
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Because newness is mostly a matter of giving in to God's call for the sake of faithfulness. And in that mindset, there is no more guilt, or fear, or second-guessing. Just trust that I am here, exactly where I am supposed to be, exactly as God wants me to be for many and various purposes.Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-64489264056215651492013-04-14T12:00:00.000-05:002013-04-29T15:28:07.808-05:00Easter 3: Feed my sheep<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/86953562@N00/2377663514/" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title=""Feed My Lambs" by withrow, on Flickr"><img alt=""Feed My Lambs"" height="228" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2263/2377663514_538cf3f77d_z.jpg?zz=1" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/86953562@N00/2377663514/">Feed My Lambs</a>" by withrow, on Flickr</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>Acts 9:10-16</b><br />
<i>Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, "Ananias." He answered, "Here I am, Lord." The Lord said to him, "Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight." But Ananias answered, "Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name." But the Lord said to him, "Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name."</i><br />
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<b>John 21:1-19</b><br />
<i>After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way. Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, "I am going fishing." They said to him, "We will go with you." They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.<br />
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Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, "Children, you have no fish, have you?" They answered him, "No." He said to them, "Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some." So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, "It is the Lord!" When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea. But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards off.<br />
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When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, "Bring some of the fish that you have just caught." So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred fifty-three of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, "Come and have breakfast." Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, "Who are you?" because they knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.<br />
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When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my lambs." A second time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Tend my sheep." He said to him the third time, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, "Do you love me?" And he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go." (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, "Follow me."</i><br />
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Some of my favorite summertime memories as a child are traveling up to Door County, Wisconsin each summer. We stayed in a small cabin on Whitefish Bay, right on the water. A highlight of these trips were the nights when we cooked dinner on the beach over a campfire. We’d set up a picnic table with hot dogs to roast, or we would assemble tinfoil dinners to bundle up and cook in the coals. And after dinner, always, s’mores for dessert. There was nothing better than eating there by the fire, with sand under our bare feet, with no extra lights besides the fire and the moon, and no extra sounds but the waves and our family conversation. There was always an intimacy around that fire, and a simplicity.<br />
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And this is where the heart of our gospel story begins today.<br />
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The resurrected Jesus comes to the edge of the water to join his disciples for breakfast. He stands on the shore and gives them a little fishing advice, and then he cooks their catch over the campfire. They eat and talk together in the pale light of morning, warmed by the fire and by their friendship. After the stress of Jesus’ arrest and the tragedy of his death, and the baffling mystery of his resurrection, on this morning, there is finally time and space to relax and decompress. There’s nothing left to prove. Jesus simply feeds his disciples with loaves and fishes, hangs out with them, shows his love for them by taking care of them and feeding them and eating with them.<br />
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This meal of bread and fish on the beach is a post-resurrection Eucharist, another meal where Jesus gives himself to and for others. It is a sign for the disciples, and for us, that Jesus nourishes us in body and in spirit. Every Eucharistic meal that we share reminds us that we are never far from Jesus’ presence. We eat and we drink to remember that we are never outside the scope of Jesus’ love and forgiveness.<br />
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But this meal is also something bigger than fellowship and forgiveness. It is also a commissioning. The breakfast on the beach and our shared Eucharistic meal are intended nourish us to go forward into the world to share in Jesus’ mission and ministry.<br />
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When Jesus and the disciples finish eating their campfire breakfast, Jesus turns to Peter and asks,<br />
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“Do you love me?”<br />
“Yes,” Peter says. <br />
“Then feed my lambs.”<br />
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Jesus asks a second time, “Do you love me?” <br />
“Yes,” Peter says. <br />
“Then tend my sheep.”<br />
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And then a third time. “Peter, do you love me?”<br />
And Peter feels frustrated and hurt. “Lord, you know that I love you.” <br />
“Then feed my sheep.”<br />
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Peter, the disciple who has always been so eager to please, can’t understand why Jesus won’t believe him when he says he loves him. He doesn’t understand that Jesus is asking of him something deeper and bigger than merely devotion. Jesus is trying to tell Peter that loving him is a matter of action. That the true way to love Jesus is to serve others, following his example.<br />
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Remember Jesus’ last supper with his disciples before his arrest? At that meal, he got up from the table, wrapped a towel around his waist, and washed his disciples’ feet. He then went on to tell them that they should wash one another’s feet, and that this is how all people would know that they were his disciples, if they loved one another in this way.<br />
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To love Jesus is to serve. To love Jesus is to act.<br />
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Do you love me? Wash each others’ feet.<br />
Do you love me? Feed my sheep.<br />
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This is how we most deeply love the savior who first loved us. Not by shutting ourselves away in personal prayer and devotion, though those things are certainly important. But loving Jesus is primarily a <i>public</i> act. To love Jesus is to go out into the world, doing acts of mercy and service in his name.<br />
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Sometimes those acts of mercy and service are, quite literally, acts of feeding. Like our food pantry. Or our community meal, which has been so successful that we’ve now started doing it twice a month. Or serving Meals on Wheels. Or dropping off dinners for a new mom or a grieving family.<br />
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And sometimes these acts of mercy and service take on a whole other range of forms, from showing kindness to a stranger to offering a helping hand to a neighbor, from watching a friends’ children so they can have a night off to standing up for somebody who is being bullied or insulted.<br />
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And sometimes, our love for Jesus calls us to do really hard things, like loving our enemies, and blessing those who curse us.<br />
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Ananias knows something about this.<br />
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In our first reading today, Saul has been blinded along the road. He stumbles into the city, refusing to eat or drink. The Lord speaks to a man in the city named Ananias, saying “Ananias, disciple, you are the one whom I have chosen to find Saul, and to lay hands on him, and to heal him.”<br />
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Ananias, however, knows who Saul is – a dangerous man with who persecutes the faithful – and he tries to talk God out of the task. Ananias has a really legitimate reason for resisting God’s call. But God will have none of it.<br />
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“Do it anyway,” God says, in so many words.<br />
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This is the hardest part about loving Jesus. Because if loving Jesus means feeding his sheep, then loving Jesus means feeding even the sheep that we don’t like or can’t understand. It means serving those who we think are undeserving. It means showing love to those who have made mistakes, even huge, unforgivable mistakes. It means demonstrating the wideness of God’s mercy even to the criminal, the unethical, and the delinquent.<br />
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Because Jesus loved us even when we weren’t very likable. He served us though we were undeserving. He showed love to all of us despite our mistakes, even our huge, unforgivable mistakes. He stretched out his arms on the cross to demonstrate the wideness of God’s mercy for all.<br />
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Jesus even showed up on the beach to feed breakfast to a flock of disciples who had deserted him, denied him, fled in panic, locked themselves away in fear, forgot everything Jesus had taught them and empowered them to do. He fed them and cared for them and called them friends.<br />
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Likewise Jesus feeds us here at this table, at our own “breakfast on the beach.” He serves us bread and wine, and words of grace and forgiveness. He tells us that he loves us and the whole world that God has created. He calls us friends and commissions us as disciples.<br />
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And from this meal, he sends us out with very simple instructions:<br />
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“Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Show love and do mercy. Follow me.”<br />
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May this meal and God’s grace give us the strength to go into all the world, showing love, even as we have been loved.Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836404.post-47870764306004716772013-03-26T15:02:00.000-05:002013-03-26T15:02:25.654-05:00Gardeners or guardians?When I was officially installed here in my new call two Sundays ago, Bishop Ullestad led me in reaffirming the promises that I made at my ordination:<br />
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<ul><li>Will you preach and teach in accordance with the holy scriptures and with the confessions of the Lutheran church? Will you carry out this ministry in harmony with the constitutions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America?</li>
<li>Will you be diligent in your study of the holy scriptures and in your use of the means of grace? Will you love, serve, and pray for God's people, nourish them with the word and sacraments, and lead them by your own example in faithful service and holy living?</li>
<li>Will you give faithful witness in the world, that God's love may be known in all that you do?</li>
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<b>I will, and I ask God to help me.</b><br />
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Maybe it's just me, but that third promise - to give faithful witness in the world, that God's love may be known in all I do - governs my execution of those first two promises.<br />
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Because what is the point of preaching and teaching, of being faithful to the holy scriptures, of aligning myself with the Lutheran confessions and the ELCA? <br />
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<i>That God's love may be known.</i><br />
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And what is the point of studying the scriptures and administering the sacraments? <br />
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<i>That God's love may be known.</i><br />
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And to what end do I love, serve, pray for, and lead fellow brothers and sisters in Christ and all of God's children? <br />
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<i>That God's love may be known.</i><br />
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And so I see myself as a gardner. I feed and water and tend to a congregation and a community that God's love might blossom and grow. The purpose of ministry, for a gardener, is to leave room for grace to bloom, and to nourish souls, and to encourage growth in grace, compassion, and love.<br />
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But there are also plenty of other pastors who see their role as guardian, rather than gardener. They want to defend the faith, and defend a particular flavor of Christian theology, and protect brothers and sisters in Christ from bad or incomplete or shallow or harmful theology. They seek to uphold meaningful boundaries and distinctions, many of which are deeply faithful and loaded with important historical baggage. <br />
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In a lot of ways, I empathize with the guardian model of ministry. I like traditions and structures, and I value integrity. I'm a theology nerd and a liturgy nerd, and I have plenty of opinions about the "right" way to do things, and "right" understandings of how God works.<br />
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But when hand-wringing about scriptural interpretation and confessional adherence get in the way of giving faithful witness to God's love, then guardianship becomes a problem. When sacramental theology becomes more focused on who's in or out, or who is deserving, rather than expanding our understanding of the sacraments as means of grace, then guardianship becomes a problem. When we start believing that God can only show up if we worship "correctly" or if we start believing that salvation only comes to those who pick the "right" atonement theory, then guardianship becomes a problem. And more than a problem. A liability.<br />
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Because my ordination vows never ask me to protect my congregation from non-Lutheran theology. And they don't tell me that I'm ordained to be a protector of tradition or orthodoxy.<br />
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They tell me to be faithful. Be faithful to the scriptural witness. Be faithful to the vision of those who have come before you. Be faithful in your grace-giving, and in your love and care for God's people. Be faithful, that God's love might be known in ALL you do.<br />
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And so I approach the privilege and responsibility of ordained ministry as a gardener, not a guardian. Because I am called to bear witness to the grace and love of God, and to help others see the wide reach of God's embrace. It's not about defending or protecting. It's about tending, and nourishing, and growing in grace.Melissahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09236978765342471022noreply@blogger.com0