“Living from the Core”

Sixteen years ago, I ruptured a disc in my lower back, so my doctor sent me to a physical therapist to help heal the disc and relieve the pain I was having. The physical therapist looked at the MRI of my back and said, “Yep, you have ruptured your disc. So, here is what we are going to do. We are going to strengthen your core because if the core muscles of your abdominals, hips and back are strong then you will be better balanced when you are walking and moving, and you will have better support for your back.”

          Sounded great to me until we began doing core exercises: laying on my back and raising and lowering an exercise ball with my legs, standing on one leg for balance while moving my other leg in front, side, back, side, front called a star, and an exercise called the plank. It took awhile to figure out how any of these were going to strengthen my core and heal my back, but over time as I did them slowly, intentionally and with discipline over the next several weeks and months the pain ended, and I noticed I was better balanced when I walked, and I was sitting straighter. I, also, came to realize that all the movement and power of my body originates in the core whether swinging a golf club, a tennis racket, running, jumping, or even just walking. The core is the place of balance, a stable center of gravity, good posture, and protection for the spine because it is the center of our bodies and if we want to live physically healthy and active lives then we live from our core outward.       

          The same can be said about the rest of our lives as well. When Jesus warns his disciples and the crowd gathered around him to beware of some of the Pharisees and scribes saying, “Listen to what the scribes and the Pharisees teach because they sit on the seat of Moses, but do not act as they act’ he is teaching them to live from their core, live from the God center of their lives unlike what the Pharisees and scribes were doing. 

 Now, I will tell you the Pharisees and scribes Jesus was criticizing were not every Pharisee or every scribe. Jesus was criticizing those who they thought they were exceptional, who thought they were religious role models, spiritual superstars, paragons of piety, clergy celebrities, God’s own Dream Team. Those Pharisees and scribes were more than happy to have the place of honor at banquets, the best seats in the synagogues and the respectful greetings of people in the marketplace that showed they were respected and honored as people who were superior to everyone else. These were the ones who sat on the seat of the great prophet Moses as if they had been hand picked by God like Joshua was to be teachers and prophets in the mold of Moses. They dressed as wise teachers of Torah with broad Tehillim which, were small leather boxes containing portions of Torah, broadly across their foreheads or arms and long fringes on their prayer shawls, so everyone could see just how pious they were. They were the height of arrogance and they had sold their integrity for wealth, status, power, and celebrity.

Now, Jesus is not taking cheap shots at these Pharisees and scribes only because they say one thing and do something else. Rather, because they are so caught up in their self-justifying, self-righteous, oppressive rule making and barrier building behaviors they blind themselves to the way God is actively working in their midst through Jesus and they lead God’s people away from God. Those Pharisees and scribes have forgotten that honesty is telling the truth to ourselves and others and integrity is living that truth from the center of your life outward.

Unfortunately, God is no longer at the center of their lives. Jesus is not the first to criticize those teachers, priests and rulers of Israel who have divided hearts and who lead God’s people away from living with God at the center of their lives. Every true prophet of ancient Israel including Micah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah were called by God to criticize priests, teachers, and rulers for being hypocrites, who sell their integrity for money, for power, and for status. They were also called to criticize judges who take bribes instead of judging fairly and equitably without regard for status or power. The clergy fail to teach the Torah and instead turn worshipping God into a business, motivated by money and celebrity while community leaders consider justice to be totally repulsive preferring instead to neglect the most vulnerable and powerless in favor of ingratiating themselves to the wealthy and powerful while mouthing pious platitudes and clichés assuming they will be secure forever their status and power in society. Sounds kinda contemporary does not it.

Of course, as the prophets point out if the people do not change the direction they are going, then God will change all of it for them by allowing Israel to be like a field plowed under and Jerusalem a city that is leveled until the noise of buying and selling in the marketplace, the sounds of children laughing and playing in the streets, the songs of lament and praise in the temple are all stilled, so that the silence of the living God is matched by the silence of a city that has died.

           Jesus is calling and teaching his followers and everyone in the crowd to also change the direction of their lives by centering their lives on God and God’s Torah and not by looking at those Pharisees and the scribes, who are hypocrites, as role models.

As theologian Stanley Hauerwas says, “Show me how a person behaves, in the smallest, most everyday practices of life, and that tells you all you need to know about what is most valuable in that person’s life.”

So, instead of being arrogant, seeking status, power and wealth, Jesus recommends humility. “The greatest among you will be your servant,” he teaches. “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.” Jesus does this to remind his followers and the crowd and us that God does not call us to follow Christ for privilege, rather we are chosen to serve. We are not called to be successful; we are called to be faithful. We are called to center our lives in God and live from our center the authentic life of the faithful people of God.

An authentic life lived according to God’s Word made flesh and God’s word in scripture. When Jesus affirms what the Pharisees and scribes are teaching, he is affirming that they are indeed teaching Torah. But what Jesus is really affirming is the authority of scripture as the rule for our faith and life and the witness without parallel of God’s self-revelation to human beings down through centuries and revealed in Jesus Christ. When Jesus tells us we have a teacher he is pointing us to himself. Jesus is our teacher because Jesus lives what he teaches, he perfectly embodied everything he taught. Especially, what it means to let go of pride and arrogance, so one might serve God and God’s agenda. Jesus said, “I am the way” and he pointed us to that way when he rejected sitting at the head table, when he rejected the tempter’s offer of power and status, when he tied a towel around his waist to wash his disciples’ feet like a servant, and when he gave up the power to avoid suffering on the cross, and instead willingly offered his life on the cross of death, so we might have life and have it in abundance.

          One of the ways we answer Jesus’ call to serve God is by serving others like Paul Farmer. Paul Farmer grew up in a trailer park in Florida, went to school at Duke University and Harvard Medical School, and ended up with an M.D. and a Ph.D. He could’ve decided to practice medicine in an elite and lucrative practice anywhere in the country, but in his mid-30s he was working in Boston for a third of the year and living in a church rectory in a slum, while the rest of the year he worked without pay in Haiti, providing medical care to poor farmers who had lost their land to a hydroelectric dam. In 1987, he co-founded the nonprofit Partners in Health with Ophelia Dahl, Jim Jong Kim, Todd McCormack, and Tom White that by 2003 was treating 1,000 patients per day in the Haitian countryside, free of charge, and was also working to cure drug-resistant tuberculosis among prisoners in Siberia and in the slums of Peru. Partners in Health are a community health care model that has reached 3.1 million patients in clinics throughout the world, has provided 2.1 million women with check-ups, and have home health care workers visit 2.2 million homes in some of the poorest communities in Rwanda, Peru, Sierra Leone, Kazakhstan, and the Navajo Nation.

Of course, not all of us feel called to medical missions or missions in foreign countries, but we can live our God centered lives outward in faithfulness, which sometimes leads to unexpected moments of clarity, compassion, and grace.

Susi Lockard wrote in the May–June 2008 issue of The Upper Room about how when her children were infants and, “I rocked them to sleep, I sang to them and prayed for them. I remember holding my 14-month-old son and praying for his future relationships with his roommates, his friends, his wife. For years, I came back to the same prayer. When my son went off to college, I could not wait to hear about his roommate. “Well, Mom, he is a recovering drug addict. He was sent here for a year of rehabilitation and is studying art, taking part in sports, and trying to re-enter normal life.” I felt as if God had let me down, and my disappointment came through. “I do not understand. I have prayed for 18 years for you to have a good roommate who would have a good influence in your life.”

My son, wiser than I, answered, “Maybe his mother was praying the same prayer.” Susi’s son knew that he had been nurtured all his life and now had a chance to nurture a young man with serious problems. Susi thought her son needed a strong Christian friend; God knew that her son needed to be a strong Christian friend.

 “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted,” may we all strive to live from the core, from the God- center of our lives.

 

Sixteen years ago, I ruptured a disc in my lower back, so my doctor sent me to a physical therapist to help heal the disc and relieve the pain I was having. The physical therapist looked at the MRI of my back and said, “Yep, you have ruptured your disc. So, here is what we are going to do. We are going to strengthen your core because if the core muscles of your abdominals, hips and back are strong then you will be better balanced when you are walking and moving, and you will have better support for your back.”

          Sounded great to me until we began doing core exercises: laying on my back and raising and lowering an exercise ball with my legs, standing on one leg for balance while moving my other leg in front, side, back, side, front called a star, and an exercise called the plank. It took awhile to figure out how any of these were going to strengthen my core and heal my back, but over time as I did them slowly, intentionally and with discipline over the next several weeks and months the pain ended, and I noticed I was better balanced when I walked, and I was sitting straighter. I, also, came to realize that all the movement and power of my body originates in the core whether swinging a golf club, a tennis racket, running, jumping, or even just walking. The core is the place of balance, a stable center of gravity, good posture, and protection for the spine because it is the center of our bodies and if we want to live physically healthy and active lives then we live from our core outward.       

          The same can be said about the rest of our lives as well. When Jesus warns his disciples and the crowd gathered around him to beware of some of the Pharisees and scribes saying, “Listen to what the scribes and the Pharisees teach because they sit on the seat of Moses, but do not act as they act’ he is teaching them to live from their core, live from the God center of their lives unlike what the Pharisees and scribes were doing. 

 Now, I will tell you the Pharisees and scribes Jesus was criticizing were not every Pharisee or every scribe. Jesus was criticizing those who they thought they were exceptional, who thought they were religious role models, spiritual superstars, paragons of piety, clergy celebrities, God’s own Dream Team. Those Pharisees and scribes were more than happy to have the place of honor at banquets, the best seats in the synagogues and the respectful greetings of people in the marketplace that showed they were respected and honored as people who were superior to everyone else. These were the ones who sat on the seat of the great prophet Moses as if they had been hand picked by God like Joshua was to be teachers and prophets in the mold of Moses. They dressed as wise teachers of Torah with broad Tehillim which, were small leather boxes containing portions of Torah, broadly across their foreheads or arms and long fringes on their prayer shawls, so everyone could see just how pious they were. They were the height of arrogance and they had sold their integrity for wealth, status, power, and celebrity.

Now, Jesus is not taking cheap shots at these Pharisees and scribes only because they say one thing and do something else. Rather, because they are so caught up in their self-justifying, self-righteous, oppressive rule making and barrier building behaviors they blind themselves to the way God is actively working in their midst through Jesus and they lead God’s people away from God. Those Pharisees and scribes have forgotten that honesty is telling the truth to ourselves and others and integrity is living that truth from the center of your life outward.

Unfortunately, God is no longer at the center of their lives. Jesus is not the first to criticize those teachers, priests and rulers of Israel who have divided hearts and who lead God’s people away from living with God at the center of their lives. Every true prophet of ancient Israel including Micah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah were called by God to criticize priests, teachers, and rulers for being hypocrites, who sell their integrity for money, for power, and for status. They were also called to criticize judges who take bribes instead of judging fairly and equitably without regard for status or power. The clergy fail to teach the Torah and instead turn worshipping God into a business, motivated by money and celebrity while community leaders consider justice to be totally repulsive preferring instead to neglect the most vulnerable and powerless in favor of ingratiating themselves to the wealthy and powerful while mouthing pious platitudes and clichés assuming they will be secure forever their status and power in society. Sounds kinda contemporary does not it.

Of course, as the prophets point out if the people do not change the direction they are going, then God will change all of it for them by allowing Israel to be like a field plowed under and Jerusalem a city that is leveled until the noise of buying and selling in the marketplace, the sounds of children laughing and playing in the streets, the songs of lament and praise in the temple are all stilled, so that the silence of the living God is matched by the silence of a city that has died.

           Jesus is calling and teaching his followers and everyone in the crowd to also change the direction of their lives by centering their lives on God and God’s Torah and not by looking at those Pharisees and the scribes, who are hypocrites, as role models.

As theologian Stanley Hauerwas says, “Show me how a person behaves, in the smallest, most everyday practices of life, and that tells you all you need to know about what is most valuable in that person’s life.”

So, instead of being arrogant, seeking status, power and wealth, Jesus recommends humility. “The greatest among you will be your servant,” he teaches. “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.” Jesus does this to remind his followers and the crowd and us that God does not call us to follow Christ for privilege, rather we are chosen to serve. We are not called to be successful; we are called to be faithful. We are called to center our lives in God and live from our center the authentic life of the faithful people of God.

An authentic life lived according to God’s Word made flesh and God’s word in scripture. When Jesus affirms what the Pharisees and scribes are teaching, he is affirming that they are indeed teaching Torah. But what Jesus is really affirming is the authority of scripture as the rule for our faith and life and the witness without parallel of God’s self-revelation to human beings down through centuries and revealed in Jesus Christ. When Jesus tells us we have a teacher he is pointing us to himself. Jesus is our teacher because Jesus lives what he teaches, he perfectly embodied everything he taught. Especially, what it means to let go of pride and arrogance, so one might serve God and God’s agenda. Jesus said, “I am the way” and he pointed us to that way when he rejected sitting at the head table, when he rejected the tempter’s offer of power and status, when he tied a towel around his waist to wash his disciples’ feet like a servant, and when he gave up the power to avoid suffering on the cross, and instead willingly offered his life on the cross of death, so we might have life and have it in abundance.

          One of the ways we answer Jesus’ call to serve God is by serving others like Paul Farmer. Paul Farmer grew up in a trailer park in Florida, went to school at Duke University and Harvard Medical School, and ended up with an M.D. and a Ph.D. He could’ve decided to practice medicine in an elite and lucrative practice anywhere in the country, but in his mid-30s he was working in Boston for a third of the year and living in a church rectory in a slum, while the rest of the year he worked without pay in Haiti, providing medical care to poor farmers who had lost their land to a hydroelectric dam. In 1987, he co-founded the nonprofit Partners in Health with Ophelia Dahl, Jim Jong Kim, Todd McCormack, and Tom White that by 2003 was treating 1,000 patients per day in the Haitian countryside, free of charge, and was also working to cure drug-resistant tuberculosis among prisoners in Siberia and in the slums of Peru. Partners in Health are a community health care model that has reached 3.1 million patients in clinics throughout the world, has provided 2.1 million women with check-ups, and have home health care workers visit 2.2 million homes in some of the poorest communities in Rwanda, Peru, Sierra Leone, Kazakhstan, and the Navajo Nation.

Of course, not all of us feel called to medical missions or missions in foreign countries, but we can live our God centered lives outward in faithfulness, which sometimes leads to unexpected moments of clarity, compassion, and grace.

Susi Lockard wrote in the May–June 2008 issue of The Upper Room about how when her children were infants and, “I rocked them to sleep, I sang to them and prayed for them. I remember holding my 14-month-old son and praying for his future relationships with his roommates, his friends, his wife. For years, I came back to the same prayer. When my son went off to college, I could not wait to hear about his roommate. “Well, Mom, he is a recovering drug addict. He was sent here for a year of rehabilitation and is studying art, taking part in sports, and trying to re-enter normal life.” I felt as if God had let me down, and my disappointment came through. “I do not understand. I have prayed for 18 years for you to have a good roommate who would have a good influence in your life.”

My son, wiser than I, answered, “Maybe his mother was praying the same prayer.” Susi’s son knew that he had been nurtured all his life and now had a chance to nurture a young man with serious problems. Susi thought her son needed a strong Christian friend; God knew that her son needed to be a strong Christian friend.

 “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted,” may we all strive to live from the core, from the God- center of our lives.

 

“Serving Others by Opening Doors”

Moses stands staring across the Promised Land, seeing the homes, villages, cities and territories the tribes of Israel will inhabit and live within, seeing, perhaps, the vision of the future God intends for the people Israel and the whole world. This vision from the top of Mt. Nebo is a gift of God’s grace to Moses because he will not step across the Jordan River with the Israelites. This is as close as he comes before he dies and is buried in, as scripture tells us, an unknown place.

          Oh, the people will mourn his death for thirty days before they are led through the waters of the Jordan River by their new leader Joshua to begin the next part of their life’s journey, even as they begin receiving the land promised to them by God through their ancestors Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel and Leah, and their children who are the twelve tribes of Israel.

Yet will they comprehend everything Moses has taught them? Will they for example, remember the lessons taught them as they wandered with their parents and grandparents for forty years in the wilderness? Will they remember their wandering was because of the choice their grandparents made to reject the land of promise and reject God by refusing to enter the promised land the first time? Will they comprehend how God’s Torah, God’s teachings that Moses taught them in Sinai and repeated as they stood outside the promised land, opens up the promises of God, explains God’s intentions, lays out the way for God’s people to live together, saying what is necessary to realize the promise of blessed abundance and a sustainable life lived on the land on which they will dwell? Will they comprehend that Torah does not guarantee land and security and blessing, it just invites and offers it by describing the path toward it? Also, will they comprehend the kind of leadership Moses embodied as he led a rag tag people-some of whom were Hebrews and some of whom were not Hebrews, but all of whom were also slaves In Egypt and who decided to get out of Dodge when the getting’ was good, walking through the waters of the Red Sea which becomes the dividing line separating their past from their future? Did they grasp the significance of this leadership that had to deal with complaints, whining, threats, and rejection while at the same time Moses was leading these people as God called and taught him to do?

From my perspective I doubt they did and I say this because none of the commentators and scholars I have studied and some of the textbooks on organizational behavior I have read and used as well all the other books on leadership I have studied ever discuss Moses’ leadership, except those who wrongly credit Moses for creating the pyramid organizational scheme for modern corporate and church leadership that has been largely found ineffective and useless in this our time of shifting from modernity to post-modernity, which has been opening our eyes to the reality that the world is pluralistic and not monolithic, and that the church’s crisis of a lost identity and a loss of purposefulness is the result of our not knowing who we are or why God created the church.

Yet, Moses’ leadership was quite extraordinary because at a time of absolute power and control invested in one person, who could wield that power and control in service to their own selfish agenda, Moses did not do that. Rather, Moses was faithful to God’s agenda. He listened to the needs of the people and he encouraged and developed new leaders to help in that mission, mentoring the leader who would take over after he was gone. He listened as the people  vented their disagreement with the direction they were going and he listened to their alternatives, while still seeking ways to bring the people to the place of well being and health and wholeness by teaching them God’s way to live, so everyone in the community would have enough. He also did not allow the community’s failures to keep the community paralyzed and stuck because he reminded them of their history and God’s vision for their future and their children’s future and their children’s children’s future, inviting them into the epic quest of teaching the rest of humanity scattered throughout the world how abundant, tranquil and complete life is when communities live according to God’s teaching. Also, he showed the people with his life the persistent faithfulness of never giving up on trusting and following God, who never gives up on them.

While Moses is celebrated and revered as the prophet par excellence, that is until Jesus shows up, and is remembered as Israel’s first great leader, I believe he is really an example of the servant-leader, one who isn’t concerned about having power over people, but one seeking to do good for people and opening doors for people to walk through into the future God intends for them.

This is clear when we look at the 11 characteristics servant leaders possess, compiled by Dan Wheeler and John Barbato based on the work of Robert Greenleaf and Larry Spears. The first characteristic servant leaders have is a calling, the place where one’s passion and the needs of the community or world meet, compelling that person to act for the benefit of other people. For Presbyterians, call is what happens when a person with abilities gifted to her or him hears God calling them to use those abilities to serve God’s agenda in the world by engaging God’s mission of peace, of health, well being and wholeness for every person through the vocation God has equipped them to do. Certainly, Moses was called by God to use his strength for doing right and challenging the authority of the oppressor and to keep following God’s agenda, while letting go of his own self-interest for the sake of others.

Second, servant leaders actively listen, seeking first to understand and letting the other person know they are valued and heard, then encouraging the people to share their ideas.

Third, servant leaders express empathy by walking with other people amid life situations which may be mundane or challenging, but always understanding what is happening in the lives of others and how it affects them. Fourth, servant leaders seek ways for healing to occur, have an awareness of self, other folks and the world around them, by creating an environment encouraging emotional mending that is part of the community they serve’s healing to wholeness.

Fifth, servant leaders have a keen awareness of what is happening around them and this awareness informs their opinions and decisions. Sixth, servant leaders are persuasive. They persuade people to act, rather than using the power of authority to force people to do what the leader wants them to do. Just as God is persuades people to go in the direction God wants them to go, so do servant leaders. God does coerce and neither do servant leaders. Rather, the servant leader offers compelling reasons for people to follow their direction. Seventh, servant leaders conceptualize the world, events, and  imagines the possibilities for the future then encourages people to dream great dreams, opening up the creative process to everyone in the community and teaching the people to avoid getting bogged down in the weeds of day-to-day- realities and operations.

Eighth, the servant leader has the foresight to recognize the consequences of choices and to envision the future by seeing the patterns in the environment and anticipating what the future will bring.

Ninth, the servant leader is a good steward of the community’s resources by preparing the community to reach out into the larger community to serve the health, the well-being and sustainability of the whole community, knowing that the health and well-being of community of faith is directly affected by the health and well-being of the entire community. Tenth, the servant leader is committed to guiding people to develop their abilities as fully as possible and see them grow because the servant leader values each person and believes each person is essential to the growth of the community. This is especially important as they seek to mentor the future leaders of the community, particularly those who will take leadership positions like Joshua did or like Jesus’ disciples will do following his ascension.

Finally, servant leaders build community by fostering the unity of the community into a cohesive oneness that lives with integrity, so that who they say they are is reflected in what they do and how they live. In other words, they walk the talk.

However, as much as Moses is a great example of servant leadership, it is Jesus who is the ultimate example and, indeed teaches the twelve disciples that if they want to be great, they need to be the servant of all because he did not believe equality with God and all the power such equality might be his to use was something to be grasped, but was, instead, something to let go, so he could come to serve God by serving humanity, which is the reality of the two great commandments. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, strength, and being and love your neighbor as you love yourself.

Jesus is the ultimate servant leader, who, as William Blake wrote, opens the doors of perception, so everything will appear to women and men as it really is, that is the infinite, the full reality of God’s presence and grace permeating all life.

If the church, the universal Christian church, is to emerge from its current crisis of lost identity and purposefulness and if the Presbyterian Church specifically desires to really live into the Reformed tradition’s watch words of ‘being reformed and always willing to be re-formed, re-shaped, by the Holy Spirit” then we might want to pay close attention to Moses and Jesus’ servant leadership practices because in doing so, our lights will shine, revealing more clearly that we are the image and likeness of God dwelling within a creation God called good and complete. And then, we too shall dwell in the peace we are seeking.

“A Visible Faithfulness”

They forgot. They just simply forgot. That is the reason the Hebrews melted all the gold they had been given by their Egyptian oppressors as they were exiting Egypt and cast it in the image of a golden bull they could worship instead of God.

          They forgot! That is the reason they said, “Moses has been gone too long up that mountain, so let’s make our own god and let’s decide how this god will act and what this god will do for us after we make it.”

          They forgot! That is the reason they whined aloud to Moses, “where is the food, where is the water? Oh, we had it so much better in Egypt. You have just taken us out here into the desert to die. We should have stayed in Egypt where life was so much better.”

          They forgot! That is the reason they adopted their neighbors’ gods and ways of living. That is the reason they sacrificed their children to idols in the fire pit of the Valley of Hinnom, the valley of slaughter and shame. That is the reason they turned away from God generation after generation after generation even though God sent prophet after prophet after prophet to call them back to God’s way. That is the reason they built their cities on the backs of the poor, the powerless, and those unable to speak for themselves.

          They forgot is the reasoning the psalmist uses to explain why this people who were created out of love in the image and likeness of the Creator decided they would create a god out of metal, wood, or stone, rejecting the Lord of the Universe who created and gave them life as a gift. They rejected the Creator of life, who after hearing their cries for deliverance, comes down and rescues them out of genocidal death, makes a dry path for them to walk through a sea, vanquishes their enemy because they were incapable of defending themselves, and who feeds them food and water in such abundance that all they need to do is pick up the manna from the ground and eat it and scoop the water from the flowing stream that just simply appears. They forgot it was God who kept them safe. They forgot it was God who led them to a fertile land and guided them as they entered it and took it over. They forgot the promises they made to God at the mountain and after they had entered the promised land. They forgot the community building and nurturing and sustaining way of life God gave to them. They forgot how Moses stepped in God’s path when God’s anger was boiling over and prayed that God would be merciful, would forgive them, would have patience with them. Not because these were smart and innovative people. Not because they were powerful! Not because they deserved it. Not because of anything about them at all. Rather, because God is faithful, kind, merciful, and steadfast in loving.

          To tell you the truth, I have a tough time believing that the Israelites forgot all that God had done for them. That they had forgotten the story of their lives, how they came into existence, how they came to be in the land, how they had the identity they had and the meaning and purpose for their lives. How could they forget the reason God created them as a community of faith? How could they forget the “Why” of their lives?

They celebrated Passover, didn’t they? They celebrated Pentecost, didn’t they? They did tell the story of God and their ancestors repeatedly in Temple worship, didn’t they? So, I wonder, how is it possible for them to forget all God has done for them?

          Then, I remember listening to the questions Americans ask at the Gettysburg National Park and battlefield. “Did the soldiers hide behind the monuments when they fought? Where did the redcoats come from? What was Lincoln’s Gettysburg address? Do you mean he really had a house here? Why were so many Civil War battles fought on National Park Service land?”

Then, I read about a teenager who participated in his churches’ “40 days of Purpose” campaign, hoping that an exploration of Rick Warren’s” The Purpose Driven Life” would explain why faith makes a difference in people’s lives, only to reach this. conclusion, “I don’t understand why you need God for a sense of purpose, self-esteem, or whatever…lots of young people have that without God,” which has become the reason so many young adults are describing themselves as “nones,” meaning no religious faith tradition. Then, I read about the estimated 70% Biblical Illiteracy rate. It is then I understand why the psalmist thought the Israelites forgot.

          But that is not really what happened. They did not forget. They chose not to remember. They chose to say that is a nice story about God and the Exodus and all, but that is not really our life story. We looked around and we found others that sound better, so we have created a different one. Or, some might have said, “We like the Babylonian life story. The Greek life stories. Roman life stories. So, we are going to make that our life story. One of these will give us identity and purpose,” 

It does not surprise me the Israelites did that, after all the prophets are clear that it did happen. It does not surprise me because it is still happening today among people, including Christians. Some are saying, “We like the consumer life story, the nationalistic-isolationist life story. The ideological purity life story. The God of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism life story. Greed is good life story. Violence is the answer to every problem life story. The people are poor because they are lazy or are drug addicts and I am rich because I got it the old- fashioned way-I inherited it and have friends in Congress who will protect my wealth life story. The science and historical fact alone life story.

There are all kinds of life stories competing to be our life story. They all will give a person something that appears to be identity and meaning for life, but sadly they all will turn out to be an illusion. The truth is there is only one story that has truth, nurtures life, and sustains life in a relationship with God and with humanity that is filled with the well being and wholeness of shalom.

          It is a story that is woven out of the threads of three stories. First, God’s story-the story about all God has done and is doing in the lives of people and creation whether written with words or written with the lives of all created life. Second, the Bible story that is God’s self-revealing presence and intention for life in relationship with people throughout time and place. Third the life stories of people like us who have experienced God’s presence, God’s power for life, God’s unconditional love, and God’s unwarranted and undeserved grace.

When all these threads are woven together, they tell the holy life story. A story we need to know intimately with all the details because this is our own life story, individually and communally. It is the life story pointing us to the reason for our existence the “Why” of our life that gives us identity and meaning and purpose for our lives, leading us to live fully as God’s people, responding to God’s call to be witnesses of grace within creation.

          Paul was making this very point when he invited the Philippians to keep on doing the things they had learned, received, and heard and seen in him. Paul knows that the story that orients his life is the story of God in Jesus Christ. It is this story that gives him identity and it is this story which gives his life meaning and purpose as it continually challenges the continuity of Paul’s own life story by presenting him with the challenge of power through weakness, power through the cross and the reality that his witness to God in Jesus Christ comes not only in the telling and in the scriptures, but significantly comes to reality as he embodies it in his life. Yet, this is not solely Paul’s story because Paul recognizes and has been teaching the Philippians, the Corinthians, the Galatians, and the Romans that the significant meaning of being Christian is how the gospel-God’s good news-is embodied in the lives of Jesus’ followers and representatives.

Theologian Douglas John Hall writes, “We are part of the response of God to the massive suffering of God’s world.” We are the visible representative God provides in the world. We are the people learning to become the fully human being God created us to be and we are learning to be this fully human being through the freedom from self-concern, so we might take up in concrete ways the concerns of our neighbors, their society, and their world.

          The importance of our embodying the gospel is enormous. Just take for example what it means for children and young adults. If children and young adults are to trust God and firmly root their lives in God, they need to discover the difference God makes in their lives and they will only discover this in the details of this one life story. As Chanon Ross wrote a few years ago in the Christian Century, “In the Christian story, we discover a fiercely loyal God who creates, loves, lives, dies, lives again, and calls young adults into the passionate grace of the baptized life. That is something young adults can sink their teeth into, but these details are available only in the Christian story as told in the Bible, the Creeds, and seeing these details come alive in the lives of other baptized people. “This is what ignites youthful passion in young adults more than any youth event or personal sense of purpose ever could.”

          As one young woman who was entering youth ministry said through her tears, “My faith was no match for college. Youth group was fun, but no one taught me anything. Those years were marked by drugs, broken relationships, and an eating disorder. Don’t you see? If I had grown up in a youth group that lived as a different community where everything began and ended with prayer and where the distinct message of the gospel permeated everything and one that embodied the gospel, I would have had a fighting chance.”

          We cannot simply explain that life in the community centered upon God and following Jesus Christ is different, we must show how to live this difference, showing it in every prayer, every hymn, every worship service, every Sunday school class, every mission project, every workday, every vacation day, every town meeting, every moment. The world must be able to look at us and see a people who are visibly faithful. For, we are to make visible the tapestry of God’s kingdom woven together through the threads of God’s story, our families’ story, and our life story, so all may see that God is at work in us and through us, making us shine as lights for the world, so no one will ever forget all God has done to create life, to nurture life and sustain life with the living waters of grace.  

A Rule of Love

          A scribe walks up to Jesus and asks, “What is the first commandment?”

          “The Lord is our God, The Lord alone. You shall love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might. The second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (“Matthew 22:39, John 15:17 NKJV)

          And, as one rabbi taught, “Everything else is conversation.”

          Jesus places the Ten Commandments into one inseparable relationship with his answer. Every image we have of the Ten commandments depicts two tables. On one table is how we are to live our life before God and the other is how we live together as a community. Yet, the two tables are inseparable. One cannot love God without loving one’s neighbor and one cannot love one’s neighbor without loving God. Choosing to emphasize one at the expense of the other is contrary to what God intends the people of God to do.

Yet too often we do just that. Indeed, many Christians create displays of the ten commandments like the one Roy Moore did when he was running for public office in Alabama. He created a display that weighs 5,280 pounds or about five hundred pounds per commandment, so when he brings this monument to public appearances it needs to be loaded on the back of a flatbed truck. Joshua Green, writing in the Atlantic Monthly a few years ago, notes that whenever the truck returns to Alabama, “a 57-foot yellow I-beam crane that spans the ceiling of the Clark Memorials warehouse drops down to retrieve the Rock from its chariot, and even this one — a five-ton crane/ — buckles visibly under the weight.”

“I know,” as Professor Tom Long writes, “that Jesus once scolded the Pharisees for neglecting the weightier matters of the law, but somehow this I-beam-bending version of the Decalogue seems way out of proportion.”

          But it makes the perfect point about the way the Ten Commandments have become a heavy burden in our contemporary culture. Every conversation I hear about them has some commentator wagging a finger at another person saying, “thou shalt not!” as if the commandments were created by God to be a moral imperative, a checklist for deciding whether someone is getting into heaven or not, rather than being the structure forming and shaping a community of health and well-being. Of course, for other folks, the commandments are a legalistic framework used to place heavy yokes publicly on the necks of rebellious children or a society out of control. I mean listen to the words of Luther’s Small Catechism, “God threatens to punish everyone who breaks these commandments. We should be afraid of His anger because of this and not violate such commandments.” (“The Ten Commandments – Bible Hub”)

I suppose all these understandings of the Decalogue makes a two-and-a-half-ton rock sitting on the bed of a truck seem to be about a perfect symbol for what the Ten Commandments might be. Especially, since we seem to have forgotten that the Babylonians’ gods were heavy idols that had to be trucked around, “These things you carry,” Isaiah chided the Israelites, “are loaded as burdens on weary animals” (Isa. 46:1).

          The problem is that all the ways we use the Ten Commandments or the ten words as they are referred to in Hebrew scripture fails to recognize they are about liberation and are God’s rule of love. They are given as an expression of God’s liberating the people from slavery out of the love God has for people. Indeed, the reading begins with, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the house of slavery.” God liberates the Hebrews from slavery, then freely provides them all they need for life, including how to be free and loving as a community of health, well-being, mutuality, loving-kindness, and wholeness. Indeed, as Walter Brueggemann, Old Testament scholar, points out, “these ten commands are to be the bedrock of God’s intention for Israel, from which all other commands in Israel is understood to be derivative. “

          Also, these commands are created to establish a social rule contrasted with that of pharaoh, so that the people do not attempt to replicate the governance of pharaoh with its coercion, brutality, dehumanization of other peoples, and exploitation of other peoples within the community. Thus, this community of God’s people are to practice God’s justice instead of pharaoh’s injustice and to establish neighborly well-being instead of coercion, fear, and exploitation.

 You see, God does not intend to re-enslave people with these commands, but to set them free as if to say, “you are free not to need any other gods or even to make 5,280-pound images of God to truck around. You are free to rest on the seventh day because you, your animals, your servants, your land all need rest from productivity, so you can all be healthy and enjoy a long life. You are no longer at the mercy of an oppressor working you to death and you are not something to be used up or consumed until there is nothing left of you. You, the powerless, are free from the rapacious capacity of the strong because I, the Lord, have set limits to the acquisitive capacity of members of the community. You are free from some members who want to take what another member of the community needs for life.

 You are free from the tyranny of lifeless idols made of stones or wood; free from solving every problem with violence and you can instead look for ways to solve problems with other people and tribes, so everyone wins and gets what they need for life because there is abundance for all. You are free to find ways to sustain life for yourselves, for neighbors and for all creation. You are free from having to covet what your neighbor has because you both have everything you need for life and, by the way, you are free from having to compare yourself with your neighbor or find your self-worth based upon what you or your neighbor owns or can do because you are loved just as you are and you are free to celebrate other people’s gifts because you have valuable gifts, too.

          Or as another theologian has written “You want to make an idol of this God, an image of bird, snake, tree, pole, money, fame, or pleasure? This God will have none of that because this is the God who brought you out of slavery. You want to trivialize the name of this God by slapping God’s name onto any fool thing you already want to do, thereby baptizing your idiocy with a divine seal of approval, thereby enslaving oneself in the bondage of self-satisfied power. God will have none of that either, for that is also a kind of slavery from which you need to be free.”

“God says, I want you free, because I am in the freedom business. All the ways you can imagine falling back into slavery and death, God is there to call you out to freedom and life, because that is who God is. God is life and freedom. It is God who has brought us out of the house of slavery and God can surely do so again, bringing us the lasting freedom of grace.

          Not only that, but God’s good news of life should be like music with the Ten Commandments the dance steps that set us moving together, as Tom Long has suggested. They are supposed to be our wings, so we might soar on the wind of the Holy Spirit. This is one of the reasons Luther, also, suggested to change the language of the commandments from “thou shalt not” to more positive language that evokes the freedom God’s love intends for us to enjoy, so instead of “thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor” perhaps ‘find joy in telling the truth, being honest and upholding the goodness and good name of your neighbor as if pronouncing a blessing upon your neighbor.”

          Also, if we want to pass this good news of freedom and life to our children, then we are going to have to be creative; more creative than hanging the Ten Commandments on a wall, memorizing them in order or hauling them around on a flatbed truck. I suggest we create stories because as Robert Wuthnow writes, “”Stories do more than keep memories alive. Sometimes these stories become so implanted in our minds that they act back upon us, directly and powerfully.”

          Wuthnow tells the story of Jack Casey, a volunteer firefighter and ambulance attendant who, as a child, had to have some of his teeth extracted under general anesthesia. Jack was terrified, but a nurse standing nearby said to him, “Don’t worry, I’ll be here right beside you no matter what happens.” When he woke up from the surgery, she had kept her word, and she was still standing beside him.

This experience of being cared for by the nurse stayed with him, and 20 years later his ambulance crew was called to the scene of an accident. The driver was pinned upside down in his pickup truck, and Jack crawled inside to try to get him out of the wreckage. Gasoline was dripping onto both Jack and the driver, and there was a danger of fire because power tools were being used to free the driver, the whole time, the driver was crying out about how scared of dying he was, and Jack kept saying to him, recalling what the nurse had said so many years before, “Look, don’t worry, I’m right here with you, I’m not going anywhere.” Later, after the truck driver had been safely rescued, he was incredulous. “You were an idiot “he said to Jack. “You know that thing could have exploded, and we’d have both been burned up.” In reply, Jack simply said he felt he just could not leave him.

This is how the commandments are supposed to work, as Tom Long says it, “We have the experience of being cared for, the experience of being set free and loved, preserved in a story. Then, comes the life shaped ethically around that story. A nurse saying, “I’ll be right here beside you” becomes the action of a man risking his life for a stranger because he knows in his bones that he just cannot leave him.”

 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you . . . out of the house of slavery” prompts us to live lives shaped by the love and freedom created by God,” asserts Tom Long.

And I got to believe living God’s joyous freedom and love held within the Ten Commandments is much better than carrying around tons of dreary duty, just hoping the wheels do not come off the flatbed truck of our lives.

Everybody is a Critic

Everybody is a critic. Think about it for a minute. How many armchair quarterbacks could have thrown a pass better than the professional, college, high school player they are watching? How many umpires are called blind or told to call it both ways? How often have you critiqued the driving skills of other drivers on freeways, especially on cross country trips? Or criticized a town official, any elected official local, state, national, or hymns picked for worship, or the police officer who gave a ticket-any ticket to someone you knew?

          Everyone really is a critic. So, why are we surprised when we read Exodus and hear all the mumbling, grumbling, moaning, whining, complaining that the Hebrews and others are doing in the middle of the wilderness? Where is the food? Where is the water? Did you just bring us out here to die? We had been better off in Egypt-at least we would have had food before they worked us to death. Yeah, and where is God? Is God with us or not, Moses? Yeah, Moses, where is the Creator of the Universe? Yeah dude!

          Now, we all know that God was with the Hebrews and the other slaves who left Egypt with the Hebrews largely because Exodus includes this fact as does Psalm 19. God was before them and behind them in great pillars of fire and smoke, leading them to the land promised to them through their ancestors and protecting them and feeding them manna everyday and providing them water everyday. Indeed, God was transforming the wilderness from being a place where lifelessness appears to be the only order a person or a people might depend upon. God is transforming the wilderness from being the place where escaping from one kind of death only leads you to different kind of death. Indeed, the wilderness is often described as a place of disorientation, disorder and chaos and where promises of life seem to rise like mirages and where hope keeps disappearing in sandstorms between towering rock-strewn mountains, however God is transforming the wilderness into a place where God is met, is found to be responsive to the needs of the people, so the people will learn to trust God. This is reason God provides what the wilderness cannot provide not by airlifting the people out of the wilderness, but by leading them to find the resources for life within the place of seeming desolation and hopelessness.

“The place where a table is spread in the presence of seeming disaster,” writes theologian Terence Fretheim, “and where the gift of water bubbles out of a rock struck by a wooden staff calling a people to see life abounding around them. Where the gift of food comes from the place where the resources for life appear imaginary. Where there is a gift of healing in a place where pain seems never to end.”

So, if God is doing all these wonderful things why are the people grumbling? Why will they very shortly melt their gold and create a golden calf to worship as their God, which is most certainly a loud and clear rejection of God?

I think it is because of what Fretheim writes at the end of that last sentence I quoted, which is the wilderness is being transformed into a place “where the movement from death to new life comes from within the very experience of godforsakeness because death is transformed into a new life yielding a new identity and a new way for living as a sustainable community beyond the deathly journey through the wilderness.”

Having a new identity and a new way of living means they have to give up their old identity as the people oppressed by Pharaoh and held in slavery and made to work without rest, without complaint because that meant the work would get harder, the beatings would increase and their lot in life wouldn’t change for the better. It also means they must give up their old way of living. They would have to give up a familiar existence and routine they had learned and used to navigate the world around them for a new way of living their lives, which was not yet in this part of their Exodus journey noticeably clear to them.  

You see, they do not know where they are going. They do not have maps to tell where it is or Google earth to give them a view of it and they do not know how to get there or what it will be like when they do arrive. They are living in the middle of uncertainty with little that is familiar or comforting and they are not learning the lessons God is trying to teach them. And their anxiety is about as high as an elephant’s eye to borrow a lyric. Indeed, their anxiousness is so high, they are failing the one overriding lesson God is trying to teach them, which is very simply “Trust God with your life.”

Trust God has created a reliable world where what is needed for life-food, water, air to breathe, earth that is fertile and is able to bring forth abundant harvests. Trust God has created a new structure for the community that will allow each person to have all they need without  resorting to greed, without desiring what your neighbor has, without resorting to killing to solve problems, without lies and gossip that destroys relationships within the community and beyond the community, without creating a hierarchy of those at the top and those at the bottom of the community and valuing those at the top more than those at the bottom, without those in power using that power for their own agendas or to oppress the people in the community, and without disregarding those ties that bind family’s together in healthy relationships. In short, trust God has created a community where healthy relationships abound and wholeness is for available for everyone just as the psalmists sings about in those psalms of orientation and praise.

All the Hebrews and those other people journeying with them will have to do is fully embrace, intentionally and mindfully live, and commit themselves to a relationship of mutuality and fidelity with God and with neighbor, becoming the people God is teaching them, molding them, and shaping them to be.

Then, when they do embrace and commit themselves to this new identity and are becoming this people the moaning, complaining, criticizing, groaning and conflicts will cease because they will know God is with them and they will become pilgrims on their way to a destination, rather than being wanderers walking hither and yon lost in the wilderness, yearning for the good old days of Egypt.

Truthfully, this is one of the overarching lessons all of scripture is teaching because once the Hebrews cross into the land, they will be challenged continually to embrace and commit themselves fully, intentionally, and mindfully to becoming the people God continues to teach them to be. It is a lesson the Israelites will have to learn repeatedly, and it is the lesson every Christian congregation we meet in all the epistles whether written by Paul or by others will have to learn. Indeed, that is what all the epistles are about because all of those folks from Corinth to Thessalonica and everywhere else are being challenged to leave behind their past and former identity and to fully embrace and commit their lives to living their new identity in God and in Christ, trusting God is with them to lead them, protect them and care for them along the way of their life-long pilgrimage down the long road of faithfulness to God and neighbor.

It has not changed. This, too, is our challenge in this time and this place. Are we willing to risk trusting God by living fully, intentionally and mindfully our identity as followers of Jesus who strive to share the gospel of God’s love and forgiveness that is a gift for all people, reaching out to God through worship, reaching out to one another by sharing fellowship and sharing times of challenge and joy, reaching out to the community locally and globally in ministries aimed at feeding the hungry and providing comfort to the distressed and despairing people, so we will be a blessing to other people?

 Are we willing to commit our lives to becoming this people God is teaching us, molding, and shaping us to become, so we too might be pilgrims journeying to God’s destination, rather than being wanderers traveling hither and yon lost in the wilderness? Are we willing to risk trusting God with our lives?

“In Whom Do You Trust?”

The 1920’s were a roaring time of new ideas, new wealth being amassed as the stock market climbed higher and higher, new music of jazz set the tone and beat, as did the flapper and the new dances of the young. This was a time of rapid change and growing optimism as many people in America sought to move from World War to a time of unending abundance and peace.

            Chicago was caught up in the rapid changes and seeming growth without end as it expanded its limits by swallowing up the little towns and villages near it. What had been prairie before were now the fertile fields where houses called bungalows sprang up like daffodils in spring. In one small town, a high school was established even before there was a building constructed to house it.

            Caught up in the frenzy of the moment and sure that this prosperity was a firm fixture of their new reality, the men and women of a church that had been around for about 50 years saw this as a time of opportunity and challenge, so they began building. They built a chapel, a gymnasium, theater, kitchen, Sunday school rooms and more. Every single square foot was used by the high school as well as by the members of the congregation because it was growing and growing.”

             They were like the Hebrews who quickly packed the belongings they could carry and accepted all the gold, jewelry, and ornaments of their Egyptian neighbors then left Egypt and the Pharaoh’s mud pits, practices of genocide, taxes and oppression to follow the pillar of clouds marking God’s presence and following Moses to this new land of promised milk and honey.

            Life was very good! The excitement of leaving and the thrill of freedom made them giggle and find new ways of expressing this uncontainable joy! They would have their own land and their own vineyards, and they would rule themselves. The nightmare of Egypt was over! Everything was going to be different and wonderful! Life was going to be filled with abundance and peace. God is good!

            Then came the crash of 1929. All the money being made from the buying and selling of stocks came to a screeching halt. The unending boom of the stock market crashed and splintered like a mirror dropped on the floor. The bubble finally burst. A good many people lost everything. All their money, their homes, and their way of living. A lot of companies went out of business. People lost their jobs in massive layoffs and plant closings. A long drought and poor crop rotation and soil conservation in Oklahoma and Texas finally hit its peak. Drying the land out so much that prime farmland became just dust and blew away.  Farmers couldn’t grow crops, and many lost their farms and had to move. It was a very hard time. It was a time of dislocation and disorientation as people struggled to make sense of all that was happening to them.

Even the church that had grown with such optimism and accepted the challenges and opportunity offered it during the fleeting and illusory prosperity of the years before suffered. Many of the women and men were unemployed. Some were barely hanging onto their own homes while others were scrambling to stay afloat. The trustees, who take care of the church buildings, openly despaired because they didn’t think they could make the mortgage payments used to finance the new building.  They saw no way out of this terrible situation. Many men and women of the church felt real despair and were afraid and didn’t know what to do because they thought the church might have to close.

            The Hebrews reached the Red Sea and saw how wide it was and how deep it was then turned around to see the Pharaoh’s army of chariots gaining on them. For generations they had been taught, like you are, that they were God’s chosen people, people of God’s promise, people who were going to participate in God’s future for the world, and people who were to be blessing to the world. Just days before they witnessed God acting on their behalf by causing plagues upon their oppressors and giving them Moses to lead them out of Pharaoh’s land toward the land God promised to them. But, as they camped by a place called Migdol next to the Red Sea, they saw the sea and they saw the army bearing down on them. They saw no way of escaping the army. Chariots move faster than people on foot. This was not what they expected to have happen. Yes, the pillar of smoke was behind them, shielding them from Pharaoh’s army at least, maybe for a night, but clouds cannot stop spears. Water vapor is no hindrance to a horse and chariot. How could a future that seemed so bright and promising just the days before turn into the nightmare they plainly envisioned? This was not supposed to be happening to them! They were God’s chosen people! How will they bless anyone if they are destroyed?

            In the despair and fear of this dislocation and disorientation of the way they thought the world was going to be, they cried out to the Lord to help them and to save them. They spoke loud cries of anger, of why, and of pleading their helplessness and their vulnerability. They implored the Lord to act to save them. “How can I praise you if I am in the Sheol?” they cried. The also cried out to Moses, “What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt. Didn’t we tell you to leave us alone and let us serve the Egyptians? That we’d be better off not changing or taking this way through the wilderness to the land promised us? “

But, Moses said, “Don’t be afraid, stand firm and see the deliverance that the Lord will do for you today.” All they had to was to pray to God and trust that God who heard their cries of anguish in the mud pits of Pharaoh’s oppression and who brought them this far would save them if they continued following Moses along the way Moses was taking them.

            They women of the Chicago church gathered and wondered aloud what would happen if everyone in the church prayed together at 10 o’clock each morning? What if everyone just stopped what they were doing at 10 in the morning and prayed for God’s help, with this overwhelming debt and the chaos of the times.

            The Session thought it was a good idea and so did most of the congregation. So that’s what they all did. But that’s not all they did. They had ice cream socials, Wednesday night suppers, buy a book for the library drives, and such, but mostly what they did was pray and ask God to help them get through and overcome this trouble.

            You know, the Hebrews, also, just didn’t stand around watching the army coming at them. They were not paralyzed in their fear and despair. They saw Moses stand up on a big Rock and spread out his hand and lift the big rod God gave him and right before their eyes the sea parted and there was a dry path to walk over to the other side. All the Hebrews did just that. They all walked, maybe a few ran, to the other side even knowing the Pharaoh’s chariot army was beating down on them. In the end, the Hebrews were all on the opposite shore of the sea and were safe when Moses raised his arms and rod, and the waters came back together again. They were safe. The situation that seemed so hopeless was transformed into a new situation with hope for a future of well-being in this new land Moses was showing them. They could see at that moment the real possibility of a new way of life because the danger, the trouble was gone, and they weren’t afraid anymore.

            The same thing happened in that Chicago church. All those ice cream socials and library book drives and suppers were more successful than anyone imagined was possible. Money even seemed to come from the most unexpected places. They were able to pay off the mortgage ahead of schedule. To celebrate this new orientation of their lives the people of the church gathered in a great worship service of celebration and praise.

“I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation. This is my God, and I will praise him,” sang Moses and the Hebrews at their worship service and celebration.

For the congregation this was a defining moment of their life together. Older members would retell this story of when “we all prayed together at 10 am every morning” whenever new troubles threatened the church. They repeated the story to the next generation because it confirmed their identity as part of this congregation who cried aloud to God and who God had answered by bringing them out of trouble to give them a new future.  You see, the people of this congregation knew deep within them that they didn’t do the impossible, God did. All they did was raise their hands and voices in prayer, then do what they could do and trusted God to help them.

Just the way the Hebrews had done. The Hebrews knew it was not Moses’ arms outstretched or the rod he held that parted the sea and made a way out of no way for them. It was God who did it. The rod and Moses spreading his hands was just a way for God to do what God intended to do just as the suppers, ice cream socials, and library drives were just a way for God to work through the people of the congregation. God didn’t need to have Moses hands to part of the sea and God didn’t need the people to have dinners and things, God could have saved the Hebrews without Moses’ help and could have saved that congregation without their help, but God doesn’t choose to do that.

            If you think about all of the Lord’s saving acts in Scripture-sparing the first born of the children of Israel, parting the sea, giving manna in the wilderness, Jesus being born and growing up in a family, going out among the people and teaching and leading people-were all done to build a deep and intimate relationship with people, so they would learn to trust God and by trusting God they will know that God is always with them, hearing cries for help, working on their behalf, so they might have everything they need to live in God’s kingdom of peace.

God wants persons to know they can live their lives depending upon God’s presence as a refuge in a hostile world, relying on God’s promises to act, God’s compassion and unfailing love without worry. anxiety and fear. God wants all people to know the Lord is God of life and wills life for all people. God wants all people to realize that the power to deliver people comes from God working through people, by transforming their efforts aimed at making life possible during the good times and in those times of despair, trouble, dislocation, and disorientation and accomplishing the impossible by creating a new possibility for life. God wants persons to know they can be communities of faith; communities of trust-trusting God with their very lives and their futures.

May we be those people.

All Land Is Sacred

Where, O God, can I flee from you?

          Where, O God, can I go and hide from you?

          These are the psalmist’s questions reflecting a radical monotheism that is relational. This is a song of a relationship between psalmist and God that covers the entire breadth of human existence in terms of God’s presence, knowledge and power, the giving and nurturing of an awareness of the Lord as the total environment of life as well as the teaching and confessing that “my times, O God, are in your hands,” according to James Mays’ commentary. This intensely personal devotional song portrays the human self in the light of the work of God as well as God’s work and person as the foundation for the human person’s life. This is not an abstract or systematic writing about who God is and what God does, rather it is the intimate relationship where the psalmist is completely known by God. The Hebrew word translated as “know” indicates this knowledge of God is intimate and deep from the moment of being formed in the womb through birth and into the long daily routines of awakening and sleeping, going out from home, and coming back home, working, and resting and eating. Nothing is hidden from God and there is nowhere to go to get away from God. The psalmist is never free of God; however, neither is he a prisoner of God. Rather he is free to live for and with God, as Mays describes this relationship.

          Reading this personal psalm of God being the totality of a person’s life and the encompassing environment for all life contrasts and highlights the foolishness of Jonah, who goes to great lengths to hide from God because he refuses to be the prophet to Nineveh that God has called him to be. Instead, he runs in the opposite direction, tries to hide from God aboard a boat, then in the middle of storm convinces the crew that they can calm the storm by throwing him overboard into the sea, which they do. Then, in the sea he is swallowed by a great fish, as described in Hebrew. It is while he is in the great fish that Jonah prayers a prayer of thanksgiving to God for saving his life, which is humorous because he has been trying to hide from God, trying to hide from the Creator of the Universe. Of course, Jonah’s prayer is answered, and the great fish vomits him up onto shore where he begins walking to Nineveh to be the prophet God has called him to be, although he complains to God throughout his time of ministry in Nineveh.

          So, when Jesus couples Jonah’s story with Jesus’ death and resurrection it is a sign that God’s transformative love is a call to remember how near we are to God’s love and remember the power of God to transform life as well as remembering the unconditional nature of God’s love to forgive and embrace those who change the direction of their life even if it means God seeking us in the depth of our sorrows and our desire to hide ourselves away from everything and everyone, including God, to lift us up out of our miry bog and to place us on a dry, level plain, so we might continue to live for and with God in a greater awareness of God’s encompassing presence and trusting God to sustain life now and for eternity.

          What the psalmist is also calling us to realize with the focus on geography, the focus on God being the total environment of life and the focus on God’s participation in our own personal creation is that all life is sacred and connected to each other in relationships of interdependence where what happens to one member of creation impacts and influences other members of creation.

This is profoundly true in our relationship with the land that we are tasked by God to till, tend, and protect and to care for, so it remains able to nurture life and sustain life and which various passages of scripture point out is often a mirror of our relationships within families and within whole communities.

          Cain’s slaying of his brother Abel is but one example of this mirroring effect. Cain and Abel are the sons of Adam and Eve. Cain is the oldest and is a farmer while his younger brother Abel is a keeper of sheep. They both bring to God offerings from their respective vocations. Abel’s is accepted by God while Cain’s is rejected by God. Cain is angry, dejected and is warned by God that “sin is prowling like a wild animal waiting to overcome you, but you must master it.” Thus, Cain has a choice either to master sin or be mastered by sin. Still feeling the rage of his anger, Cain invites his brother into a field and kills him, then walks away. However, the voice of the dirt that absorbed Abel’s blood cries out to God with its own sorrow and grief for the blood spilled in violence because anger, resentment, and rejection had all grown to such overwhelming proportions that Cain could not master sin, but instead sin mastered him. It mastered even his response to God’s question, “where is your brother?” and his retort, “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” Keeper, the word has more meanings than one who keeps. It means “to exercise loving care for, to watch over, to guard, to preserve, to protect, to tend to the needs of another, to save a life, to sustain life.”

          This was the same word “shamar,” in the Hebrew, used in Genesis earlier to describe God’s expectations for the man and woman and their descendants to keep the garden, keeping it able to be fruitful by their serving the land and all creation as they tend to the land’s needs and protecting the land from those elements that might destroy it, making the land unable to be productive and unable to sustain life.

Now, as the land that absorbed Abel’s blood cries out in sorrow and grief, the fractured and broken relationship of the brothers was, also, given voice as the land’s pollution from violence mirrored the pollution of sin Cain experienced. In the same way that the mark on Cain signified his identity as one who ended life, the infertility of the sacred land, scarred by the blood seeping into it, identifies it as land unable to nurture life or sustain life.

          Similarly, Walter Bruggemann, Old Testament scholar and theologian, makes this same point about land mirroring the broken and fractured relationships within families and within the community in his work “The Land: Place as Gift, Promise and Challenge in Biblical Faith” using the themes of contamination of the land, of excluding people from the land and possessing land to fulfill selfish economic actions without regard for the community, and of the defilement of the land. He begins, of course, with Moses’ farewell speech about faithfully living God’s teachings and God’s way of life as the foundation for staying long in the land promised and given to the Hebrews while being unfaithful to God’s way is the basis for the Israelites being exiled from the land and losing the land. Thus, the way the community lives its daily life in all their various relationships impacts what happens with the land.

          I doubt that we are strangers to this conversation if we consider how brown field industrial sites have physically divided communities and economically divided communities into those who have more than they need for life and those who do not even have the necessities needed to sustain life. Not to mention making the contaminated land unable to be used for the nurturing of life and the sustaining of life. We might also hear in this conversation the call to reflect about how brown field industrial sites also violates the command to love your neighbor as yourself and violates God’s call to keep the land. Or, perhaps we might consider the way “mountaintop removal strip mining and the accompanying filling up of valleys with the debris from mountain top  is the most destructive way to mine coal, creating unhealthy living conditions for people in nearby communities, eliminating not only  forests and streams but altering a whole ecosystem that can never be restored as well as forever changing the communities where people live,” according to Kentuckians for Commonwealth. How does this action comport with loving our neighbors or keeping, tending, or lovingly caring for creation as God has called humankind to do?

          How does any of the environmental disasters we have witnessed whether from the BP oil spill, the Exxon Valdez, Love Canal, the Chernobyl or the Three Mile Island disasters, or the pollution of rivers by coal mining companies, to name just a few, square with an understanding of our responsibility for the keeping and caring and protecting of the land given to us by God, not to mention the psalmist’s declaration that God is the total environment for life?

          As the Seasons of the Spirit commentary reminds us, our choices have consequences for the land. Sacred ground can become scarred ground, whether by shedding blood or by poisoning the soil. So the question for Christians today in light of climate change, Arctic permafrost melting and rising ocean levels is, will we hear the voice of the land crying out to us for restorative justice and peace or will we keep pouring the blood of human violence, contamination, defilement and greed into its mouth, so that we do not have to hear the land’s voice crying out to us or to listen to God teaching us the way for life to be nurtured and sustained?

          How we answer that question will have consequences for how much longer the land will nurture and sustain life for us, our children, and all future generations.

“On the Way”

A number of years ago at a conference Eugene Peterson told the story of the day he was in his backyard with his lawnmower tipped on its side. As he tells it, “I was trying to get the blade off, so I could sharpen it. I had my biggest wrench attached to the nut but could not budge it. I got a four-foot pipe and slipped it over the wrench handle to give me leverage, and I leaned on that still unsuccessfully. Next, I took a large rock and banged on the pipe. By this time, I was beginning to get emotionally involved with my lawnmower.”

          Until his neighbor walked over and said that he had a lawnmower like Peterson’s once and that, if he remembered correctly, the threads on the bolt went the other way. So as Peterson says, “I reversed my exertions and sure enough, the nut turned easily. I was glad to find out I was wrong.” Peterson was saved from frustration and failure and may never have gotten the job done no matter how hard he tried doing it his way.

          Psalm 121 is like the neighbor who notices we are going the wrong way on our lifelong journey of faith and says gently and in a quiet voice, “hmm, er, I think you might want to try going the other way. Here let me show you.”

          The very first few lines set us on the right path with the observation that the pilgrim looks to the hills, the mountains, the horizon, the path in the distance and wonders, “from where will my help come? Where will my guidance, my protection, my guardian of life come from? In ancient Israel, pilgrims would have looked to the hills wondering where the thieves, the desperadoes, the robbers, or the lions were going to come from. Traveling on foot to Jerusalem was a perilous journey, which was why pilgrims traveled in large family groups and village groups as a measure of protection against the perils of roaming, hungry wild animals, or roving bands of greedy, hungry wild humans. We hear this concern and anxiety clearly in the opening sentence, but later in the psalm we will hear about other possibilities for injury for people making a pilgrimage like spraining an ankle from a loose stone, sunstroke from walking out in the open grassland and desert areas in the hot sun as well as the fatigue and anxiety of trying to reach one’s destination may grow to pressures that effect our emotional well-being-described by ancient writers as Moon stroke-which is by the way where we get our notion of lunacy; Luna being Latin for moon.

          Of course, we could update these possibilities for injury with a person with handgun or piece of explosive turning the travel plans of three hundred air passengers into disaster. Diseases like Ebola and cancer can break through our pharmaceutical defenses and invade our bodies with crippling effect, even diseases we thought were no longer a threat can make a comeback such as the plague or smallpox. An accident in a car or a fall from a step ladder can change our plans for a Saturday afternoon quickly.

          Yet, the possibility for injury is not the only thought on the minds of pilgrims when they look to hills and mountains, since Palestine like other ancient places were overrun with popular pagan worship and much of this pagan worship was practiced on hilltop shrines, grottoes, even groves of trees were planted as places for worship of various gods and goddesses. Within these hilltop shrines were places where sacred prostitutes both male and female were provided, so people would be lured to engage is acts of worship that enhanced fertility of the land by mimicking the acts of Baal and other pagan gods and goddesses. Some acts of worship would make you feel good, protect you from evil with spells, rituals, enchantments against the perils of the road. As Peterson writes in his “Long Obedience Toward the Same Direction,” “Do you fear the sun’s heat? Go to the sun priest and pay for protection against the sun god. Are you fearful of the malign influences of moonlight? Go to the moon priestess and buy an amulet. Go to the shrine and learn the magic formula to ward off the mischief of demons.”

          While we might scoff at the ancient travelers for their superstition, what about the advertisers promising to delay aging creams, pharmaceuticals that will alleviate a wide range of disease symptoms and shouldn’t we ask our doctors to give them to us or cool body sculpting processes to give you the body you want without any effort? The hucksters promoting life-changing products on television, internet sites or magazines at Wegman’s check out counters. The politicians whose mantra is “trust me I’ll protect you and your family,” while passing laws that will destroy whole communities, who will traumatize children and parents and are busy raising money to stay in office by repeating those same lies repeatedly.

          Our anxieties, fears, diseases, trials, tribulations and traumas are real and we should be crying out, “Help,” but if we focus on the hills or what’s on the hills to be our help, our sources of guidance, the protector and guardian of our lives and all life we will be let down, we will be betrayed because the hills and mountains for all their quiet strength and beauty are just hills and mountains and for all the promises of safety and protection against the perils of our life long road trip the priests, priestesses, con artists and hucksters are very just lies or as the prophet Jeremiah reminds us, “Truly hills are a delusion, the orgies on the mountains.”

          Our friendly, quiet neighbor Psalm 121 speaks clearly and simply where our help will come from-the maker of heaven and earth. The Lord. The Creator of all life in the beginning and each day. It is not in worship of flowers, stars, mountains, or organs, in religions that make the best of what it finds on the hills. It is in the Lord who creates life, not in creation because the Lord is always present. The Lord does not doze off or leave us to our own devices or allow evil to overcome us. God does not get tired and disgusted by our meandering obedience and leave us to fulfill some false prophecy in the Middle East. God’s interest in us does not wax and wane in response to our spiritual temperature. This was in part the point of Jesus asking his disciples while standing among the hilltop shrines above Caesarea Philippi, “who do people say I am?’ Do the people get that I am God with them? That I have come to heal them with God’s grace? This is, also, the point the psalm is making: that the Lord is with us, guarding us in our beginnings and our endings, when we leave home, and we arrive at our destination. Sun, moon, trees, rocks, and human created idols have no power. They are not able to inflict evil upon us because God guards us from every evil. The promise of Psalm 121 is not that we will never have trials or troubles, fears or not ever stub our toes, but that none of this-no accidents, no distress, no disease, no person will have the power to separate us from God and God’s purposes in us. This is the basis for the petition in the Lord’s Prayer. “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil” and it is a prayer that is answered every day, sometimes several times a day in the lives of those who walk in the way of faith.

          What Psalm 121 invites us to do is not only to take our fears, our trials, troubles, trauma, the accidents, the anxieties of life seriously, but to take God more seriously as the source of life, the guardian, the protector of our life and all life by daily living God’s path of life where we affirm the each step we walk, each breath we take we know we are preserved by God, we know we are accompanied by God, we know and celebrate God is our bridge over life’s troubled waters and telling the Christian story by describing the God who preserves, accompanies and keeps life, so that whatever we experience we know God is with us as Luther wrote in his hymn, “And though this world, with devils filled should threaten to undo us, we will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us.”

          Life is created and shaped by God and the life of faith is a daily exploration of the constant and countless ways in which God’s love and grace is experienced. This is the blessing of Psalm 121. May it be so for you as it has been for me.

Voices of Silence from the Edge

“Hello darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk to you again because a vision softly creeping left its seeds while I was sleeping and the vision that was planted in my brain still remains within the sound of silence.”

 Silence, as Paul Simon wrote, can be a cancer preventing people from hearing each other, may be the oppression that keeps criticism and truth telling stomped down, or can be the way prophetic words are seen and heard and acted upon in places of poverty, or can be the realization of the truth contained within the mystic Rumi’s question, “Why, when God’s world is so big, did you fall asleep in a prison of all places.”

              Yet, silence may be the very thing we crave when the legion of voices taunting us, screaming at us, confusing us, never leaving us alone, until we are driven to such distraction and mind fragmenting chaos that people want nothing more than to drive us out to the edges of the community and chain us to a tree in the wilderness where death permeates every breath we take.

          Silence may also be the very thing we crave when fear, the exhaustion of running away from both success and failure drops us to our knees in the far edge of a desert wilderness where only a small tree or a cave may shelter us from the harshness we experience. The wilderness is a place where we need food and water to nourish us and where we need the strong encouragement to stand up and go and live our purpose.

          Silence may also be the very thing we crave when the disorientation of grief over an ending sends us out into the wilderness of discernment, the wilderness of thoughtful reflection, so we might find the anchor we need to stop feeling as though we are free floating like an unmoored boat bobbing in the sea. Or we feel lost as if we are meandering in a maze.

          This silence we crave is found in the wilderness, whether an actual place or simply time spent in solitude away from the daily hassles, but wherever it is, it is on the far edge of life because that is where God finds us, nourishes us, encourages us, heals us then leads us back to the place where we will live our life’s purpose, our reason for existence, our new why.

          Both Elijah and the man from Gerasene experience God’s actions and voice on their far edge and both are transformed by God’s actions, and both are sent back to their communities. While their stories end up being remarkably similar and give us some ideas about our relationship with God and how God may be or will be acting in silence on the far edges of our lives, their stories have very different beginnings.

Elijah had just proven to 450 Baal prophets that Yahweh, the Lord of the universe is the only real God in existence. Baal is nothing more than an idol, incapable of creating or sustaining life. As Jeremiah would later taunt the Judeans, Baal is just like a tree or a rock, nothing more. Elijah does this by challenging the 450 Baal prophets to a sacrificial worship contest to see whether Yahweh or Baal could light a huge bonfire altar with sacrificial animal on top. Of course, Baal does not light the fire even with the Baal prophets dancing around it. Then, Elijah repairs the altar to the Lord using twelve large stones to represent the tribes of Israel, digs a trench around the altar, filling it with a years’ supply of seeds. Finally, Elijah places the sacrificial animal on the wood invites all the Israelites gathered on Mt Carmel to pour water on the wood three times before praying for the Lord to set the wood on fire and consume the sacrifice, so the people would know that the Lord is God. Of course, the Lord does light the wood on fire by a lightning strike. Elijah has won the debate! The people fall on their faces to worship God. Then, we are told Elijah solidifies the win by killing all 450 Baal prophets in accordance with Deuteronomic law that says the community must execute any prophet that leads God’s people to worship idols. Afterwards Elijah tells King Ahab the three-year drought will be over, so get ready to celebrate God and God’s goodness. However, Ahab goes to tell Queen Jezebel, who introduced Baal worship, how Elijah proved Baal was no god and how he killed the Baal prophets. Jezebel sends out the message to Elijah,’ you killed my prophets, so I’m going to kill you.”

Now, I don’t know what Elijah thought was going to happen, but clearly being killed wasn’t it. Maybe, he expected Jezebel to turn toward God and give up worshipping Baal. That might explain him being so overwhelmed by fear that he runs and runs and runs until he ends up in the Exodus wilderness of Mt. Sinai on a journey that mirrors the Israelites journey from slavery and genocide in Egypt through the wilderness to the land of milk and honey, the land of abundance of life for all. Like the Hebrews, the wilderness will be the place where God teaches Elijah to trust God. First by trusting that God will feed Elijah, that God will give him sustenance for the 40 day and night journey just like God gave the Hebrews food and water during their 40-year journey. More importantly, Elijah will learn that God comes not in the grand displays of earthquake, wind, and fire as Moses experienced, but God may also come in a fine, sheer silence. Coming to the prophet with a word of vocation, with a call to go back to God’s people to anoint one person for prophetic ministry and anoint another for a ministry task.

 Elijah learns to trust that God is the God of life, but that sometimes it is valuable to seek a critical distance-to take a step back- from our fears and the distractions of our lives, so we might slow down, be still, be calm out in a place of a fine, sheer silence and listen for God’s voice speaking to us the wisdom of God’s unconditional love calling us to go and live our life’s unique purpose among God’s people, all of whom also have a unique purpose given them by God, because doing so roots us in God’s garden of life where our lives will blossom fully just like the peonies and the lilacs do.

Elijah ran away from his community, but the Gerasene man was driven away by his community. He was chained and shackled naked in the tombs because the Gerasene community was afraid of him and thought him to be a wild, dangerous beast unfit to live within the Gerasene community because he was possessed by a legion of demons that tormented him so fiercely that demons drove him to break his chains and shackles and run out into the wilds, into the far edges of life. Indeed, his life was on the far edge, and it really doesn’t matter whether we say it was because of demons possessing him or a mental illness possessing him the effect on the man and his community was the same.

Now before arriving on the Gerasene shore, Jesus had traveled across a storm-tossed lake in a boat the disciples feared would be capsized by the violent waves crashing in over them. So, of course, in their fear they woke Jesus up and said, “Master, we’re all going to die” or words to that effect. Naturally, Jesus stands up, stretches, calms the storm, silences the waves of the lake, and rebukes his disciples for their lack of faith, their lack of trust in him.

When Jesus steps ashore he is confronted by the demoniacs holding the man prisoner within his own body and mind. Like he did with the storm Jesus calms the storm-tossed man by commanding the demons to leave and go into some pigs. The demons do this and, as we know, they jump off a cliff and die. When Jesus calms the storm inside this man, he brings him into the fine, sheer silence of God.

 But Jesus actually does more than that. You see, Jesus heals the man so completely that the people of the village do not recognize him anymore. They heard the witness of the swineherds, who told them about what Jesus had done with the demons and the pigs, so they came to see for themselves. When they arrived, they saw Jesus and this stranger sitting together. The man was healed, healthy, made whole and was now wearing clothes and listening to Jesus. The people of the community have no idea who the man is until they are told. Indeed, the man is so transformed the villagers are afraid of him and of Jesus, who sent the demons into the pigs.” I mean if Jesus can do that, what else might he do? What might he do to us,” they say. So out of their fear, they drive Jesus away.

Standing on the shore in silence, the man wants to come with Jesus, but Jesus gives him a calling to go, leave the far edge of life for village of Gerasene, so he can tell the villagers and everyone else he meets about what God has done for him. He, a Gentile, is to be a witness for Christ. He is to tell the story of how God healed him, made him whole without first asking if he was worthy enough to be healed or if he was among the “right” people. He was healed to wholeness by God because he was a person in need of healing. God reached out to him in unconditional love to heal and make him whole. This was the story he was to tell the villagers and everyone else. This was his purpose for life, his reason for existing, his why.

The Gerasene man and Elijah point us to the value of silence, stillness, of taking a step back to create a critical distance for thoughtful reflection and response as the way to stop running through the mazes of a harried and fearful life and instead focus on our faith in God, our trust in God. Trusting God will calm our storm-tossed lives, will nourish us, will heal us and make us whole, so we will be ready to go back to our community with a purpose for life, with the reason for our existence. When we fully live our God given purpose our lives will fully blossom and show people that God is the God of life for every person and all creation.

As a poet writes, “God’s wisdom is the voice of unconditional love from the edges of life, not heard by many, responded to by less, and followed by few. Therefore, be aware, listen and hear in your center Wisdom’s voice calling for unconditional love from the edge. Then in thought, word or deed be this gift to the other person; unconditional love from your center to the other’s person’s center in the fine, sheer, healing silence of God.      

This is our purpose, our reason for existence as a compassionate Christian community. May we blossom fully into being it.        

“Hungering for Great Treasure”

There is no lack of odd treasures or prizes that people will pursue with passion and single-minded purpose. For example, the most sought-after treasure in all of tennis is a dish that is a little more than 18 inches in diameter. Of course, it is made of sterling silver and around the rim appears the goddess Minerva, with symbols for the liberal arts: arithmetic, astrology, dialectic, geometry, grammar, music and rhetoric.

Curiously, there’s nothing on the dish about tennis. Which is strange, given the fact that this trophy is awarded to the ladies’ singles champion at Wimbledon, the tennis tournament that ended just a few weeks ago.  The Venus Rosewater Dish. That’s what the trophy is called, and the “Venus” part was there long before Venus Williams won it three times.

The dish was made in 1864 and has been awarded to the singles champ since 1886.  Yet, if you were to run across this dish in an art gallery, you might say, “Huh?” It looks like something that should be propped up in your grandmother’s china cabinet. But if you’re a tennis player, the Dish is a precious treasure, a holy grail, a pearl of great value. Players from around the world push themselves to their physical and mental limits — training, practicing, focusing, competing — hoping to be able to play at Wimbledon, the most prestigious tennis tournament in the world. And all the way, they are dreaming of the Venus Rosewater Dish. Of course, this trophy is not unique. There are many treasures or prizes that people pursue with passion and single-minded purpose.

Consider: The Borg-Warner Trophy that has been awarded to the winner of the Indianapolis 500 since 1936. On it are the sculpted faces of each winner, and the cup’s hollow body is reportedly able to hold 48 cans of beer.

The Green Jacket, has been given to the winner of the Masters Golf Tournament since 1949. Winners are thrilled to wear the coveted Green Jacket, even though it’s not the kind of jacket you’d wear unless you were in an Irish pub — or had just won the Masters.

 An Olive Wreath, placed on the heads of Boston Marathon winners since 1897. These olive branches are cut from groves in Marathon, Greece, the scene of the battle from which the original marathoner, a man named Pheidippides, ran to announce the Athenian victory in 490 B.C. Then he dropped dead.

Or, in the story from Genesis this morning, Jacob seeks Rachel, who for him is a treasure worth fourteen years of his life. What all these treasures have in common is the passion, the hungering after the treasure with a single-minded determination, the attitude of how valuable the treasure is and the certainty that this treasure will change the lives of those who win it or receive it.

  Equally compelling is the hunger for deep spiritual connectivity, a deepening experience of being connected to God and through God to others. According to George Gallup, “eight out of ten Americans express a desire for spiritual growth.” This is clearly evident in the growth of books, cds, and tapes about spirituality, about how to be more spiritual, the way being spiritual can help you at work, get more out of life, about the way the neuro-connectivity of spiritual experiences create within us a deeper awareness of who we are and our purpose for living.

This hunger is expressed sometimes the way Sam Keen writes, “We have to stop pretending that we can make a living at something that is trivial or destructive and still have a sense of legitimate self-worth. A society in which vocation and job are separated for most people gradually creates an economy that is often devoid of spirit, one that frequently fills our pocketbooks at the cost of emptying our souls.”  

Or it is expressed by people seeking to comprehend an experience like the woman who came to a spirituality fair in England and happened upon the booth where a Christian congregation had set up to offer intercessory prayers to the fair’s participants. The woman came up and talked about a vision she had of angel, who came and spoke to her about how God loves her. What she wanted was help in understanding what this meant because she wasn’t a Christian and had no idea what to make of this experience.

All these folks are right in line with those folks seeking another set of rather peculiar treasures that people pursue with passion and purpose, using every ounce of their heart, soul, mind and strength. The single unifying theme is that these treasures are all illustrations of or metaphors for the kingdom of God. “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field,” says Jesus, “which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matthew 13:44). Jesus goes on to say, “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it” (v. 46). 

The kingdom of heaven is like the Venus Rosewater Dish, a treasure hidden in a field, the America’s Cup, a pearl of great value, a World Series Ring, like finding the technology stock you bought in the 1980s for $50 and suddenly realizing you are a millionaire. It is like the owner of DeBeers finally finding the perfect diamond and selling a billion dollar empire to have it.  It is like the harassed physician tired of the HMOs, selling home and BMW and finding bliss in a mission in Sudan refugee camps. It is like the crack addict waking up with a clear head and is free to choose a new life. It is like a woman conversing with an angel assuring her of God’s love for her.

But the question for all of us is this, are we pursuing the kingdom of God with the passion of Wimbledon tennis players, America’s Cup sailors and World Series sluggers? Are we hungering for God’s great treasure?

Where are our attitudes, determination and desire? Where’s the sense that we are on a mission? It takes focus and passion to pursue a heavenly treasure. The person who finds treasure in a field “goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (v. 44). The merchant who found a pearl of great value “went and sold all that he had and bought it” (v. 45). That’s focus. That’s sacrifice. That’s passion and purpose.

You have to admire the determination of A.J. Jacobs, an editor for Esquire magazine, who decided to spend a year living the Bible — literally He packed away any of his clothes that were made of mixed fibers, since this is prohibited in Leviticus 19:19. He made a commitment to stop lying, speaking evil, gossiping, complaining and despising his neighbor — hard to do in New York City I guess. He did this because he was impressed by the power of religion as “an enduring force,” and he was determined to explore his own religious background. What amazed him was how this focus and passion changed him.

As he was learning to pray one day, he stood up before tasting his lunch of hummus and pita bread, closed his eyes and said, “I’d like to thank God for the land that he provided so that this food might be grown.” Now you might think that this prayer would be enough, especially for a beginner. But he found that his gratitude went further. “I’d like to thank the farmer who grew the chickpeas for this hummus,” he said. “And the worker who picked the chickpeas. And the truckers who drove them to the store. And the old Italian lady who sold the hummus to me at Zingone’s deli and told me, ‘Lots of love.’”

A.J. Jacobs discovered that giving thanks to God feels good. It makes him feel more connected, more grateful, more grounded, and more aware of his place in the world. Prayer reminds him that food doesn’t spontaneously appear in his refrigerator, and that he’s lucky to have food at all. These are good insights, and they are making A.J. Jacobs the person God created him to be. But none of this would have happened if he had not focused on living the Bible for a year.

So … where’s our focus? Our sacrifice? Our passion and purpose? What’s your Venus Rosewater Dish? Earthly treasures are easy to identify, whether they might be winning championships or achieving sales goals, losing weight or gaining an advanced degree. But heavenly treasures? These are a bit more difficult to visualize. Still, give it a try. Imagine yourself living by the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount for a year. Picture yourself digging into the parables of Jesus or the letters of Paul. Commit yourself to starting each day with prayer, treating your neighbor, as you would like to be treated, or serving Jesus Christ by serving the hungry or the homeless. Or better yet commit to seven practices that will keep you spiritually fit, 1. Honest to God prayer that expresses, exhilaration and exhaustion; 2. Balancing your schedule with Sabbath and action, silence, and speech; 3. Self- nurturing spiritual practices in community and in solitude; 4, Spiritual mentoring and healthy friendships with appropriate boundaries; 5. transforming failure by mining gifts in weaknesses and strengths; 6. Integrating the mystical, the political, intellectual and the physical into your whole person; and 7. a life mission that links personal passion with some need in the world.

Each of these is a worthwhile goal, and each requires determination, desire, and a sense of mission. Each will challenge you, reward you and turn you ever so slowly into the person Christ is calling us to be. Remember God is pursuing us no matter how feeble or intense we are in our pursuit of God. “That is the mystery of grace,” writes Tammy Wiens.

God is pursing us because the stakes are high. Every choice we make has consequences. “Again,” says Jesus, “the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad” (vv. 47-48). So, it will be at the end of time, says Jesus, when the angels of God separate the evil from the righteous. You must pick your treasure well, warns Jesus.

So, make it a heavenly treasure. The good news is that we don’t have to win any world championships to live a life that is pleasing to God. Jesus describes the kingdom of God as a mustard seed, the smallest of seeds that grows into “the greatest of shrubs” (vv. 31-32). And he says that the kingdom “is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened” (v. 33). The point is that small acts of love and faithfulness can transform the world around us, changing ourselves and our communities, so all that we are is responding to all that God is.

“Weeds Among the Wheat”

A few years ago my wife and I were walking through the woods and I saw several small, but very lovely flowers.

            “Look at these purple flowers. Aren’t they great?” I said.

            “Yeah. For weeds they are kinda pretty.” She said.

            “C’mon, those can’t be weeds. They look just like flowers.”

            “Nope, they’re weeds. But very lovely looking weeds.”

            I remembered a few years ago that I was mowing the grass and saw several very large green, spiny leafed plants with a bunch of tiny white balls on the end of each leaf. I thought, “Well, what are those weeds doing among her wild flowers? They’re ugly and out of place, so I’ll just yank them up and put them on top of the grass clippings and she’ll thank me for being helpful.”

            That evening at dinner, my wife asked in the general sort of way wives and mothers do, “Who pulled out my flowers? Well, who indeed had pulled out her flowers!

            “What flowers?” I asked.

            “The ones laying on the grass clippings by the curb?” she said.

            “Those were flowers?” I asked.

            “Of course, it’s a flower. What’d you think it was?”

            “A weed. That’s why I pulled it out.”

            That’s the problem, you see. Sometimes you can’t tell the weeds from the flowers. So, when you pull out what you think are weeds you might be just pulling out flowers instead. This is the same problem the servants of the farmer in Jesus’ parable had. They came out to the fields where the farmer had sown good seed, only to discover weeds growing amongst the wheat. Perplexed they went to the farmer, “Master didn’t you plant good seed in your field?”

            “Of course,” he answered. “Then, where did those weeds come from?” the servants asked.

            “An enemy has sowed weeds in my field.” Now, these were not ordinary weeds. These were darnel, an annual grass that with its’ long slender bristles looks very much like wheat. Of course, it isn’t wheat. It just looks like wheat. The other thing to know is that darnel has roots that entangle themselves around the roots of other plants. So, when the servants volunteered to pull the weeds out of the field, the farmer says, “No! For in gathering the weeds, you will uproot the wheat along with them. Just let them both grow together until the harvest.”

            “Really? You let the weeds grow with the wheat? Doesn’t sound quite right, does it? Every gardener knows you pull the weeds out of the garden because if you don’t, the weeds will take over the garden and choke out the good plants. Leaving the weeds in the field, you run the risk of everything being destroyed. Not only that, but there will be weed seeds to plague the farmer with more weeds next year. Nope. The servants are right. Let’s get rid of them. Let’s pull those inconvenient and potentially destructive weeds out of the field right now!”

            “No! The farmer is adamant. Let the weeds grow along with the wheat and when the harvest rolls around, I’ll deal with the weeds by having the reapers come in and separate the weeds from the wheat. Then, we’ll bundle them up and burn them in a big fire.” Okay, end story. Except this story is a Jesus’ parable and it is one, which is about the kingdom of heaven. Yet, as the parable stands it’s a bit hard to grasp what Jesus is trying to teach his disciples, including us disciples.

            Good news! Jesus explains this parable a few moments later when he and the disciples go into a house alone. Jesus tells us that the man who sows the seed is the Son of Man-Jesus; the field is the world. The enemy is the devil or Satan. The good seed-the wheat-are the children of the kingdom and the weeds are the children of the evil one. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. So, at the end of the age Jesus-the Christ, God with us will send down angels to collect all the causes of sin and the evildoers out of the world. They will be taken and put into a fiery furnace where they will weep and gnash their teeth forever.

            Well, all righty then! This is a parable about what happens to evildoers. God finally answers Job’s question, “Why do the wicked prosper and the good suffer?” Well, Jesus says, the wicked will get theirs at the end of the age and the good will get their reward.  So, this parable is about God’s judgment.

            Or is it? Jesus doesn’t really explain the entire parable. He only explains the smallest portion of the parable. There is a whole lot more going on in this parable. First, the kingdom of heaven is like a man sowing good seed. If that man is Jesus-God with us- and the good seed are the children of the kingdom whose lives are the flowering and fructifying grains of wheat growing and maturing and the field is the entire world, all of creation, then Jesus is saying the kingdom of heaven is already planted within creation and is growing and coming to life in the lives of people and communities. We aren’t waiting for the kingdom of God to come into being. It is here already. This goes along with the parable of the yeast and the bread. The yeast is the Word of God (Jesus), who creates life; the flour is the world and the when the yeast is dissolved in water and added to the flour it becomes dough. The kingdom of God, you see, is hidden with creation; it pervades creation, and is at this very moment creating life within it. Just as yeast cannot be separated from the dough; neither can the kingdom of God be separated from creation because God-The Father-the Son-and the Holy Spirit- is intimately connected to creation and active within creation’s life. That’s part of what is happening with Jacob in the wilderness. God is letting Jacob know that even though he is separated form his family-he is not separated from God, who will protect him and bless him. He need not be afraid of how his future unfolds because God has already blessed his future with life.

            Which brings us to the second big unexplained part, “the enemy sows the seed when everyone is asleep then goes away.” As Robert Capron, an Episcopal priest writes, “Since the weeds in no way seem to interfere with the growing of the wheat, it is the word ‘enemy’ that should be the crux of the interpretation.” The enemy comes. Sows weeds. Leaves. That’s it. We never hear about him anymore. The wheat is in the field, the kingdom of God is in the world, and the only thing God’s enemy can do is sow darnel; a weed that masquerades as wheat and gets tangled up with wheat. The weed isn’t wheat, it’s not ever going to be wheat, yet it causes a great deal of confusion, anxiety, and frustration for the servants because they are so focused on the weeds and getting rid of the weeds.

            Which is exactly what the enemy wants. The enemy-you can call him the devil, Satan, those who oppose God’s will, whatever-can only sow something that masquerades as the reality. It isn’t reality. It is a counterfeit reality and has nothing to do with God. But that’s what happens with evil. It gets mixed up and tangled up with God’s reality and sometimes we can’t tell the difference. Like some of the Pharisees and the chief priests and the scribes. They see Jesus heal, hear Jesus teach, and watch as he east with all kinds of people-no one in their right mind would be caught dead with-and all they see is a weed and all they want to do is to pull it out of the field. Get rid of it before it takes over. Does anyone really think they all knew for certain that Jesus was God with us? Of course not. It’s just that they were so focused on evil and being pure to keep sin at bay that they have bought into the counterfeit reality and, now they can’t see the wheat for the weeds.

            Sadly, the truth is we do the same thing. We can’t tell the difference between good people and those with evil intent. The foolishness and failure of racial profiling to determine who’s a criminal or a terrorist and who isn’t ought to teach us that. No one who saw the hijackers knew they were terrorists. No one in Israel can tell ahead of time who is a suicide bomber and who isn’t, and they’ve had a lot of practice trying to figure it out. Look at how the church has treated people over the last several thousand years who they thought were witches. We’ll dunk you in water to see if you drown, if you don’t, you’re a witch and if you do-oh well our bad. How stupid and ignorant is that? Not to mention theologically disgraceful. If to prove you’re faithful to God, you must die, denies the fact that God is about creating life and the one who opposes God is all about destroying life. Therefore, killing people to find out whether they are godly or not means those who do the killing are on the side of evil.

            Evil does exist and we will confront evil in our lives, Jesus has said that. Even within the same person good and evil can exist together. But our response as servants of God isn’t to try and pull it out, wipe it out of the world, or destroy it because we will only succeed in destroying the good with the bad. That’s one of the reasons evil wrecks havoc in the world because the servants of God see what they think are weeds and decide they just gotta pull it out of the world. Destroy it before it destroys the world. But every time we do that, we destroy the good. Which is exactly what the evil one wants to happen. It wants confusion, fear, anxiety, over reaction, and chaos that destroys life. Evil wants us to take him more seriously than we do God.

The truth is evil is not more powerful than God. It has no real positive power of its own. That’s why Jesus said the enemy sowed weeds and left. That’s as much as he can do. God has already won the battle with evil. It’s over!  That’s the promise and the reality of the resurrection. 

We need to stop taking evil more seriously than we do God and focus on what God is doing in the world to bring life into desolate places. We need to affirm the reality that God’s kingdom is here and we’re living according to God’s kingdom values now! We need to talk about God’s powerful love that conquers all the hurts, the hang-ups, and the destructive habits we have, or we’ve seen others struggle against. We need to talk about God’s unconditional and steadfast love that is with us and all people every moment of every day and to reinforce the true reality that each person we meet is God’s child, who is valuable, who is wanted, who has a purpose and place in this community. We need to talk about how God is so faithful and is present with us that we never need fear that God will abandon us like others may have done.

We need to focus our living and our being on God, so the light ignited within us by God in Jesus Christ will shine brightly, illuminating the truth and the reality that God’s glory and power oversees the world.

“Proclamation of the Gospel for the Salvation of Humankind”

“Jesus Christ is Lord!”

              This is the gospel. It is the gospel because this short, concrete declaration opens to us the essential aspect of the gospel, the good news, which is the story about God in Christ’s unrivaled power over the universe, a power we come to know most intimately in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, who is God with us. It leads right to Paul’s claim in his letter to the church in Rome that there is no difference between Jew and Gentile since the same Lord is Lord of all. There is only one God, not a multiplicity of gods and goddesses, and that one God is the Creator of the universe, is the Savior of the universe, and is the God who sustains all life in the universe by freeing creation from captivity to sin and death, so creation might live now as God intended all creation to live in the very beginning of life. It is the same God who comes to us to show us who God is by coming to be one of us in the birth, life, teaching, healing, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ as John reminds us, “No one has seen God. It is the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made God known.” Made God known to us so clearly and intimately that we know with a heart’s assurance that God is not some remote unfathomable mystery, rather we know God loves us and is present in our lives from the moment of our birth until we go home to God precisely because in Christ God is concretely revealed in words and actions, so we do not have to settle for generalized or abstract ideas of the divine. And in Christ God’s new way in the world is revealed fully and it is this way Jesus beckons us to follow.

              “Jesus Christ is Lord!” is the gospel, the good news, because Jesus is the content and substance of the good news the church is called to proclaim for the salvation of humankind.

              Proclaiming it as boldly as those German pastors who stood up to Hitler with these words, “In view of the errors of the “German Christians” of the present Reich Church government which are devastating the Church and are also thereby breaking up the unity of the German Evangelical Church we confess the following evangelical truths,’ Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death. We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation apart from besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures, and truths, as God’s revelation.”

              Jesus Christ is Lord is the one proclamation the church was called into existence by God’s creative one Word to proclaim.

              Now, some of you may be wondering how I can make such a bold statement, as “this is why the church was called into existence,” but it’s true and it is scripturally based. Remember the commission Christ gives to his disciples before ascending? It is to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”    

              Well, you can’t make disciples, baptize, or teach people to obey God if you don’t first proclaim the gospel. Otherwise, they’ll just think you’re weird and strange because they won’t understand what we’re doing immersing people in water and asking them to join us.

              But it is what God has always called the people of God to do as the prophet Isaiah tells us, “Do not fear, or be afraid: have I not told you from of old and declared it? You are my witnesses. Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; I am the Lord your God, who teaches you for your own good, who leads you in the way you should go. O that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your prosperity would have been like river and your success like waves of the sea; your offspring would have been like sand and your descendants like its grains; their name would never be cut off or destroyed from before me. Go out from Babylon, flee from Chaldea, declare this with a shout of joy, proclaim it, send it forth to the end of the earth; say, “The Lord has redeemed his servant, Jacob!” God out and proclaim it with joy saying, “God in Christ has saved humanity from sin and death and delivered all creation to God’s new life.”

You see, the church is called into existence to proclaim the gospel. This is why one of the Six Great Ends of the Church is “proclamation of the Gospel for the Salvation of Humankind.” The other great ends of course are the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God; the maintenance of divine worship; preservation of the truth; promotion of social righteousness, and exhibiting the kingdom of heaven to the world.

              By the way, these six great ends are noted in the “Book of Order” one half of the Presbyterian church’s constitution, and they have been part of our Reformed heritage, since they were first developed between 1904-1910, as the Presbyterian church sought to clearly delineate what are the foundational purposes of the church, which is of course, one of the meanings of the word “end.” The reason for seeking to be clear about the church’s basic works is to speak about who the church is and what the church is called to do. There are many things we could be doing as a people gathered together such as raise money for hospital, entertain people, play baseball or golf, have lectures or slide presentations about important topics of current interest, or a hundred other activities and some of these might even be beneficial for the community, but what distinguishes the body of Christ from other groups of nice, friendly, good deed doing folks are these six purposes for our being that shape our lives, so we do not fall prey to fads, expediency, thinking we are the savior of society, or mere catering to cultural norms, any one of which may lead us far away from being the body of Christ.

              Now, I must say that I have not listed these purposes in any order of importance, since they all are what it means to be the church and are interconnected with one another and support one another. I mean evangelism would be hard to carry out if a congregation is not faithfully nurtured in worship of God. Worship cannot be faithful if there is not a concern for preserving and speaking the truth. This interconnection is so thorough that if a church fails to do any of these purposes, it fails to be fully the church of Jesus Christ.

              So, I begin with proclamation, not because it is the most important or because I think it leads us into all the rest, but because we increasingly live in a world where people are seeking good news, seeking the truth about the meaningfulness of life, seeking answers to life and death, seeking that one story of life that includes their life story, seeking to know they are valued and loved just because they are alive, and seeking hope in a world where hope seems in perpetually short supply.

              By proclamation I do not mean telling the story only in the sanctuary to those who show up. If we take the word apart what we discover is that proclamation means to “cry out before” like the town crier ringing a bell or blasting a trumpet, saying, “hear ye”

 or more contemporarily, “Yo, Yo, listen up! I have something important for y’all to hear and get down with.”  Or something like that. Proclamation is a public statement to the world; its very purpose is to make something public.

              Now, I do get it that we all grew up in a culture that said faith was private. It wasn’t polite to speak publicly about our faith, since we live in a society that allows for a diversity of religious beliefs and practices from Presbyterians to Roman Catholics to Hindus to Muslims to atheists, to Jews to Unitarians to Jains. I also get it that when we speak aloud the good news that we risk being labeled as people who are infringing on the freedom of others because for many inside the church and outside the church religious truth really means truth for me. It is subjective and not universal.

              I also get it that many people inside and outside of the church think the church is a human institution of human creation, rather than God’s creation in Christ, rather than being the body of Christ.

              Yet, I keep hearing Paul’s words “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent?”

              How can anyone want to come inside a church unless we bear to them the good news of a salvation rooted in God’s solidarity with humankind not only in the past, but now in this present moment? How will they know God abides in them, among them and with them as a human community blessed by God’s grace if we fail to tell them? How will they comprehend the Spirit’s revelation of the truth about God’s way in the world, creating new human community in Christ, empowering the people of God, nurturing us in faithfulness, and leading all people to lives of love, joy and peace if we do not tell them?

              Of course, many of you might be imagining my next word will be to go out in twos to knock on doors, equipped with bibles or pamphlets and are gripping yourself for the horror of people hiding behind closed doors or diving behind sofas and chairs to avoid answering their doors, but relax. Rest easy. Proclamation can be done that way just as it can be done by standing on a street corner preaching to all who pass by, however what I want to you to do is what a Navy chaplain colleague of mine has done with Marines in Iraq. When someone asks him about the meaning of the cross on his shirt or asks what it means to be a Christian, he tells them about the incomparable love of God in Christ brought into reality and still present in the world, simply saying “God so loved the world that the Lord gave his only son, so that everyone who trusts in Jesus Christ may not perish, but may have eternal life. Because God did not send his Son Jesus to condemn the world, but to save it for a new, abundant life with God.” Then, he invites the Marine to follow Christ by trusting his life to Christ. Then, they pray together. It doesn’t matter if they are in the mess hall or sitting around an office. When the time is right, he proclaims the gospel, “Jesus is Lord.”

              It’s just that simple. And if you do it, you just might hear Paul saying, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

              How beautiful indeed!

“Freed to Be”

“Thirty-five years earlier, before the relapse of my dystrophy, I couldn’t have done what I’ve done. I was a businesswoman, I had a shop, I was in a marriage, and I was a conformist. I probably had to go through all this to come out at the other end, to be sort of hit on the head and to realize that my former life wasn’t all that good and that it was time to try something else, said Hanni Sager, Toronto’s Toy Lady. Sager was renowned for her toys and all the displays and play time events she put together in Toronto, especially Toronto’s Harborfront cultural center, but today she is working with disabled and street children in Mexico’s Oaxaca state near the Pina Palmera Center for disabled children by helping them to become toy makers of the simple folk toys they enjoy despite the muscular dystrophy that wastes away her muscles.

Sanger has discovered the truth of Proverbs 14:12, “Before every person there lies a wide and pleasant road that seems right but ends in death.”  For Sanger, like many people, started down a road that seemed pleasant at first, a wide road that promised freedom, that promised joy, but which turns out to be the wrong road headed in the wrong direction and by the time she discovered this she couldn’t turn around on her own.

  Then, she heard the words inviting her to a life of true freedom and a rest that brings real lasting joy, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

Now, freedom has been spoken about and celebrated much these last few days. Politicians have talked about freedom. We’ve had fireworks celebrating freedom that are designed to make us feel joyful. We’ve heard the songs declaring freedom in the symbols of freedom like a flag, which should spark some feeling of being joyfully free. We’ve even heard famous quotes about freedom such as these:

“Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man,” by John Locke (1632–1704), British philosopher. Second Treatise on Civil Government (written 1681, pub. 1690).

“Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation, which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation,” from Thomas Jefferson ‘s March 4, 1801, First Inaugural Address.

“Freedom is not an ideal, it is not even a protection, if it means nothing more than freedom to stagnate, to live without dreams, to have no greater aim than a second car and another television set,” by Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965), U.S. Democratic politician. “Putting First Things First,” Foreign Affairs (New York, Jan. 1960).

            Yet, do any of these quotes or any of the words spoken or the songs sung lead us to authentic freedom? Have we been freed to be? How many people are still caught up in carrying the burdens they’ve been seemingly chained to like the Greek mythological king Sysiphus, who was condemned to roll a rock up a hill only to have it roll back down when he comes near the top for all eternity? Maybe, some are carrying the burden of fear about the next terrorist attack, the next casualty report from Ukraine, the next financial meltdown, the next round of inflation statistics that tell us we need to have 4% or more of our neighbors chronically unemployed to get inflation down to 2%, the next gas hike, the next food hike or shortage, the next report about how many foreclosures there have been and will be in the coming months and the next essay about what the future might or might not hold?

  Maybe, the burdens we carry have to do with feeling like we do not belong because those who said they loved us abandoned us or turned away from us. Or, perhaps we are carrying the burden of busy ness that is depicted in the Chinese pictograph by two words “heart” and “killing” and so being busy means killing our hearts physically and poetically Or, perhaps it is the burden of our anxieties, the burden of our temptations and our responsibilities, the burden of our loneliness, maybe after bereavement, and the burden people have when they sense that life has no meaning, and above all, there is the burden of our failures and of our guilt. What a burden they can be!

            In the weariness of carrying any of these burdens is it possible for others and for us to hear the words of Jesus’ invitation, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” as an invitation to the only true and real freedom we will ever have?

            These are words that have been immortalized in Handel’s “Messiah” and by that famous religious artist, Harold Copping, who in one of his pictures, depicted Jesus standing on a hillside with the crowds milling beneath him and his arms are outstretched as if to welcome the crowds with the caption underneath, “Come unto Him.”

Come unto him because Jesus is the supreme burden bearer. He is the one the Gospel of John speaks about early on, “Behold, the Lamb of God who bears away the sin of the world.”  This is the essence of the Good News, that God, through His Son Jesus, because of His great love for us, came to be one with us, took our humanity to himself when He was born, and took our sin and guilt to himself when He died, setting us free.

Perhaps one of the best expressions of this comes from John Bunyan in his allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress: “Up this way then did a burdened Christian run, and not without some difficulty because of the load on his back. He ran thus until he came to a place somewhat ascending, and upon that place, stood a cross and below a sepulcher. So, I saw in my dream, the justice Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders and fell from his back and began to tumble and continued to do until it reached the sepulcher where it fell in, and I saw it no more. Then was Christian glad and lightsome and said with a merry heart, `He has given me rest by His sorrow and life by His death.'”           

Yet, how are we to understand this invitation to lay down our burdens and put on Christ’s yoke as freedom, not to mention offering us rest? Well, a yoke was used to put oxen into teams, usually teaming an older ox and a younger ox together. Now, yokes could either be ill fitting or right fitting. Those that were ill fitting did not rest easy on the oxen, rather they chafed the oxen and the oxen struggled against them making the work harder and their burdens heavier. The same could be said for the way the Pharisees had become by the First Century. Indeed, several rabbis of the time said Torah hung like a sword held up by a single hair over the head of the people and they often spoke about the “yoke of the commandments” meaning the faithful obedience of Torah. For some folks in the first century, their faith had become less about trust and more about religious minutia that burdened them down with the realization they just could never measure up and if they couldn’t measure up to being faithful to God then they were truly lost. In many ways, they felt the way Bono describes the way many of our contemporaries feel, “‘I often wonder if religion is the enemy of God.  It is almost like religion is what happens when the Spirit has left the building. The Spirit is described in the Holy Scriptures as much more anarchic than any established religion credits.’

  Jesus’ metaphor of the yoke calls people to rethink about what was truly important in being faithful to God. As a bridge between the inability of some people to see God’s saving work revealed in Jesus’ healing and so miss seeing the coming fruition of God’s kingdom and the Sabbath controversies of the next chapter when the Pharisee’s concern is about working on the Sabbath and the proper observance of hand washing rituals, Jesus calls attention to what the kingdom of God is truly about and what it means to be faithful and obedient followers of God’s way. His metaphor comes after the Sermon on the Mount’s long teaching about the costly life of discipleship, so clearly Jesus is not offering us a vacation from being faithful to God, nor is the rest he offers a period of inactivity, rather he invites us to put on a yoke that is right fitting. That fits us so well; it will not chaff us, but is as the underlying Greek word means, “kind” and easy for us to wear. This is the carefully designed yoke which is made for us because God has not only given each of us a task to do that is made to measure, but God gives us the ability to do it. Also, Jesus’ yoke is easy, and his burden is light because fulfilling the Torah, according to his way is simplified by his emphasis on the weightier matters of God’s commands; justice, mercy, and faithfulness wrapped in the embrace of God loving us and our loving God with every fiber of our being and loving our neighbor as Christ has loved us. While the old Shaker hymn is correct that it is a gift to be simple, Jesus does not diminish the weight of our accountability to God, but he will also help us to bear this responsibility.

Jesus does not invite us to be a solitary ox pulling the load alone but invites us to be Jesus’ yokemate and so learn from him how to live faithful obedient lives. The reason for yoking a younger ox to an older ox, was so that the older oxen could teach the younger one how to move under the yoke and how to work together to make the work easier and lighter and not so tiring that the oxen became worn, weary and exhausted. In the same way Jesus invites us to wear the same yoke he is wearing and to learn from him. Learning not only to think, but also to do and to live. Almost saying to us, “Become my yoke mate and learn how to pull the load by working beside me and watching how I do it. The heavy labor will seem lighter when you allow me to help you with it.” Like in the over quoted poem “Footprints” we often discover that when we see only one set of footprints in the path behind us, those are moments in our lives when Jesus carried us and all our burdens. Carried us in the gentleness of God’s grace and humility of God coming to serve us, so we might learn to serve God and each other in sharp contrast to some of the current crop of Christians set on the rule keeping of religious minutia, but at a deeper level we learn that serving God and all our fellow human beings demands a spirit of gentleness and humility. Demands watching Jesus closely to see how he crafts his obedience to God, so we may do likewise and find ourselves in the place just right, find ourselves in the valley of love and delight.”

  The place that is right for us and where we discover we are free to be, who God created us to be. The true freedom God intends for all people, the freedom, to not be oppressed, to not be dominated and controlled or held in slavery to all the internal and external, the emotional and the social powers that enslave us, that dehumanize us, that wear us down and exhaust us by their taunts, but to be the authentic human beings we are created to be and discovering the profound joy that permeates everything we do and wells up within us the gushing release of rejoicing for the blessing of being in the liberating, healing and invigorating reality that is God’s kingdom as the wisdom of Jeremiah tells us, “Stand at the crossroads and look, and ask where the good way lies, and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.”

Radical Hospitality

There was once a monastery that had been a vibrant center of spiritual awakening and life as an old story tells us.  It was a place where the town’s people would come for worship in the chapel, to have picnics on the lawns, to walk in the gardens or the forest behind the monastery.

     But that had been many years before. Now, the gardens were overgrown with weeds, the walkways were taken over by grass, the building was crumbling, none of the town’s people came for worship in the chapel, and only five brothers and the Abbott, all over the age of 80 remained. Clearly, this was a dying order.

     Deep in the forests stood the hermitage of the rabbi from a nearby village. Whenever the rabbi came to his hermitage, the old monks could sense his presence and would whisper among themselves, “The rabbi is in the woods. The rabbi is in the woods.”

     On one such occasion the old Abbott decided to visit the rabbi and ask him for his advice about what the monks could do. After all the rabbi was a learned and wise man, able to discern the right path to take in many situations. “Perhaps, he’d know what we might do to save the order,” the old Abbott told the monks. So, after dinner he went into the forest and walked to the rabbi’s hermitage.

     The rabbi greeted him warmly. “My old friend,” the rabbi said,” how are you?”

     “Not so well,” said the Abbott and he explained to the rabbi the reason for his visit. The rabbi listened and shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. It is the same for me in town. They just don’t seem to come anymore. I don’t have an answer for you. But, stay awhile and let’s visit.”

     So, the Abbott stayed, and they talked, they read scripture, had tea, prayed, and cried together. The Abbott realized how late it had gotten and stood to leave. He was just starting to go out the door when the rabbi spoke.

     “I am sorry I don’t have advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that one of you is the Messiah.”

     The Abbott thought it was an odd thing to say, but as he walked through the forest, he pondered what the rabbi meant. “One of you is the Messiah.” He entered the monastery and all the monks gathered around him. “What did the rabbi say? Did he have some advice for us? What are we supposed to do, did he say?”

     “No, he did not know what we are to do,” the Abbott said softly, “But, right at the end, as I was leaving, he said a most curious and cryptic thing. One of us is the Messiah. But I don’t know what he meant.” 

     Each of the monks walked away to their room muttering,” One of us is the Messiah?” Over the next few days and weeks each monk thought deeply about what the rabbi had said. ”One of us is the Messiah?” they thought. Does he mean one of us monks? If so, which one? Did he mean the abbot? yes, of course, he meant Father Abbot. He is a great leader. On the other hand, could he mean Brother Thomas. Certainly, brother Thomas is a holy man. A man of light. He could not have meant Brother Eldred! Eldred is so grumpy, but you know when you think about it, he is right most of the time. Maybe he meant Brother Eldred. But surely not Brother Phillip. Phillip is so passive a real nobody, yet he is always near you when you need him. He just appears. I know he couldn’t have possibly meant me. I’m just an ordinary person. Yet. O God, not me. I couldn’t be that much for you. Could I? Then, the monks began treating each other with extraordinary respect and love on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah. And on off the chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect.

     A spirit of extraordinary respect and love permeated the monastery as though it were floating in the very air the old monks breathed. Soon, the monastery seemed more alive. The monks repaired the walkways, mowed the grass, and planted flowers that blossomed in a grand array of colors. Their worship reflected this wonderful spirit in a deepening of prayer.  This wonderful spirit drifted down into the town. The townspeople felt drawn by the spirit of respect and love to the old monastery and began coming back to sit on the grass, have picnics with their families, even to worship with the monks, and some of the young men began talking with the monks and a few joined the order, then a few more joined the order until at last the monastery was once again a vibrant center of light, spirituality, and life.

         What a beautiful story of transformation. A worshipping community that was struggling to survive in the middle of their barrenness becomes transformed into being once again a thriving, life nurturing, and life sustaining community of hope. Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? And, the transformation seems so simple, doesn’t it?

     Yet, what we do not hear in the story is the struggle to live toward the fulfillment of the promise that “one of you is the Messiah” with a faith, with trust that is willing to relinquish control of the present for the sake of a new Genesis to come to fruition in the future.

We know there is a struggle to move from barrenness to abundance because in this story we hear the echoes of Abraham and Sarah’s struggles with barrenness and God’s promise to them of land that includes within it the promise of a child because land is never for just the present generation it is for the generations coming after us.

But Sarah and Abraham have been waiting and waiting and waiting for the promise to be fulfilled ever since they began this journey from barrenness to abundance leaving Ur for the land God will show them, which has really been a journey of hope. The challenge however has been to be faithful to God in the middle of this waiting. I think that is why Sarah laughs at the Oaks of Mamre because she has been waiting and waiting and she has come to doubt the promise will ever be fulfilled.

You see, in the beginning of the journey of hope it sounds as simple as Jesus telling his disciples when he sends them out “Whoever welcomes you, welcomes me.” That is easy to understand. 

When people in the villages see the disciples and offer them hospitality, they are offering hospitality to Christ because the disciples were representing Christ. They were acting as his ambassadors. Just as our ambassador to the United Nations is the symbol of the presence and the voice of the government and nation of the United States, so too the disciples were the symbol of Christ’s presence with the people they meet along their journey. They are no longer acting solely for themselves.

The disciples are acting for Christ, so they are supposed to act toward the people they meet in the same way Jesus acted toward people. That was why Jesus told his disciples to go to the house of Israel and proclaim the good news,” the kingdom of heaven is near.”  That is what Jesus was doing. That was, also, why Jesus gave them the ability and empowered them to heal the sick, to cleanse the unclean, to cast out demons, and to bring people who were dead back to life. Because that was what Jesus was doing in his life and it was what he would be doing in his death on the cross and in his resurrection to new life.

     The disciples are to walk into villages and be thinking; “I am representing Jesus, so how would Jesus act? What would he say to this person or that person? And, they had to remember this even when people didn’t treat them very well. And they needed to remember that Jesus never wanted anything from people. He wasn’t looking for acclaim, a pat on the back, a movie, a book deal, or wealth. Rather, Jesus came to serve other people, not to be served by them. He looked to their needs first without regard for his own needs.

From the 5,000 people Jesus fed with a loaf of bread and two fish to the woman who was about to be stoned. Jesus saw the great crowd who followed him, listened all day to his teaching, and who were far from their homes without resources to feed themselves, so he asked the question, “How are we going to feed these people?”  He listened as the crowd of men, who wanted to stone the woman accused of adultery, ask him the question about whether it was okay for them to do this. His answer was simple, ”The one who is without sin may cast the first stone.” Then, when the men dropped their rocks and walked away Jesus, who was without sin and who might have condemned her did not, instead he gave her the gift of mercy, compassion, justice, and forgiveness, freeing her to see herself and her life differently. He saw desperation in the eyes of a father, whose child was sick and maybe dying and acted to heal her. He mourned with Mary and Martha. He rejoiced with the families of the bride and groom at a wedding celebration. He even took the time to talk to children all the while reminding the adults how important children are and how vulnerable they are. Jesus, also, included everyone in his teaching and at the dinner table. Women, children, and men. He didn’t ask them a lot of qualifying questions to see if they met some purity standard. He didn’t even seem to be concerned about whether they agreed with him or not. He ate meals with tax collectors and with Pharisees and scribes. Around his table everyone was invited, had a place, was welcome to be with him and to share the meal provided.

  Each person Jesus encountered he treated with loving kindness, treating them as important, worthwhile, gifted persons, who deserved love, respect, and compassion just because they are alive and are God’s creation, whom God loves steadfastly, without limit or condition.

     The disciples had to remember all of this because Jesus was teaching them to see people not through their eyes with their vision from their understanding of the world, but to see the world through Christ’s eyes and with Christ’s understanding of the world, so they might see each person as Christ sees them. For Christ was not simply sending them out to do what he was doing, he was sending them out bearing the gift Christ was bringing.

     The gift of God’s grace. The gift we cannot earn nor the gift we can claim to deserve. It is a gift we can only receive with gratitude and trust. This is what the disciples were bringing into all the homes of the villagers, who welcomed them and showed them hospitality. Who invited them into their homes as strangers and treated them with loving kindness, warmth, and an invitation to be at home as valued and trusted members of the community. Persons who are of equal worth and dignity as is every person in the community.

     You see the villagers did not know they were going to be receiving Christ much less that they would be receiving this wonderful gift. They were acting out of an understanding of hospitality that aimed to turn strangers into friends. An understanding that hospitality is a form of healing and care giving extended in food, shelter, and good conversation. They knew they were providing a safe place where people may be healed from the bruises and buffeting of a culture which devalues and diminishes a person’s very being.  They also knew that hospitality does not begin in food, but in conversation, in encounter, in eye contact and attentive listening. Indeed, attentiveness means to wait, to give time to another person. Time to hear what the hesitant person might want to say, time for the other person to be at home, and time for thoughtfully receiving the gift of presence the guest brings with them. To receive a person with this hospitality is to be aware that just as Abraham had entertained angels and God under the shade of the oaks at Mamre, so too they might be receiving God and the good gifts God brings into their homes. Just as they did each day when they breathed in air, when they saw the sun rise, when they ate food, and when they gazed around at their families, friends, and, yes, even the strangers traveling through their village.

     This was the kind of hospitality Paul urged his fellow disciples to extend to one another because it was a way of proclaiming the gospel-the good news of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God-but also as visibly living the way Christ welcomes them to his table and to himself.

     And that is the real point of that beautiful story of transformation. The transformation of the monastery did not come just because the monks treated each other better or nicer. Nor did transformation happen because they followed the latest fad, the next new thing, the newest book by the newest church growth guru, or the newest technological gadget. Transformation does not happen because of technique.

Transformation happens when everything said and all that is done, when all our attention is away from the struggle and is, instead centered in Christ. When we lift eyes upward and keep our vision on Christ, so that we, too, see every person as Christ sees them. When we extend hospitality to other persons as if the other person was Christ and when we live visibly the good news that the kingdom of God is near, welcoming all people into new life as Christ welcomes us around his table of blessing. May it be so here in this place at this time.       

“Handing Cups of Cold Water to Neighbors”

What would happen if we began serving cups of cold lemonade on the lawn out front of the church before worship, instead of after worship? What would happen if those who stopped to get a cup of cold lemonade were all invited to join us for worship?

Well, some might come inside out of curiosity. Some might not join us at all but get be glad to drink the lemonade and watch us go inside. Some might be angry because they might have thought we were trying to trick them or create an obligation for them to join us. Some might get us so engaged in deep conversation that we might not notice the time for worship had come and gone.

Then again, what would happen if we stopped expecting people to come on their own initiative through our church doors and instead took seriously our calling to bring the gospel to them? What would happen if we truly believed that we bear the presence of Christ to every person we encounter, in every home, workplace, or neighborhood we enter? What would happen if we saw every conversation as an opportunity to speak words of grace, every interaction as an opportunity to embody Christ’s love for the neighbor?

What if church wasn’t limited to a particular place, at a particular time, among those gathered in all the churches throughout the world, but was in the everyday ordinary daily activities of our lives wherever those activities occurred? What if those everyday ordinary moments were the place where we met Christ and others met the Christ within us? What if our mission was simply to hand out cups of cold water to people who are thirsty as Jesus taught in Matthew 10:40-42?

What if being a follower of Christ is as simple as listening to person without judgment, without needing to fix them or their problem, so they would know they have been heard whether that listening happens at Wegman’s or down at the beach listening to music on Wednesday summer nights. What if being a follower of Christ is as simple as putting together a picture puzzle with a child or a friend? What if being a follower of Christ was as simple as encouraging a co-worker to take their vacation even if it prevents us from being able to take our vacation at the same time? What if being a follower of Christ is as simple as not paying attention to gossip or responding at all to insults and slights whether spoken, emailed or tweeted. What if being a follower of Christ is as simple as letting go of our agendas, so others may be served? What if being a follower of Christ is as simple as letting someone else be first to go at a four way stop?

What if all these simple acts and many other acts of kindness, compassion, generosity, mutuality, and loving care were all that it took to heal our community to wholeness?

Is that enough for us to do these simple acts and others as we follow Christ this summer, letting others see the Christ in us as we seek the Christ within them? Is that enough to risk changing the world?

Hope is not Vain

            Why? O Lord Why do you care about us mortals? We are not as grand as the stars in the sky. We are not as marvelous as the sea. We are not as wondrous as the sun and the moon. We are not as vast as the oceans. Why?  O Lord, why do you take notice of us?

          We seem to always to be asking God why questions. Why do good things happen to bad people? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why is there drought? Why is there a flood? Why is there hatred? Why is there deception and betrayal by the very people we are taught to trust and believe will act to keep us safe, to keep us healthy, and who are supposed to act for our well-being?  Why am I afraid of being vulnerable? Why do I wake up feeling like a I did not get enough sleep? Why do I go to bed at night feeling I did not get enough done? Why do I live in scarcity? Why can’t I just be me? Why can’t I laugh and find joy and dance? Why do I always compare myself to others, instead of rejoicing in my own abilities? Why is violence too often the default response when we have experienced violence? Why do we seriously believe that more violence will end violence? Why? O Lord why? Where is the wisdom to solve problems differently, live more creatively?

We ask our “why” questions because we seek the one answer; the one explanation sufficient to explain everything. The answer that will grant us the certainty we so desperately crave. The one answer that will give us control over the messiness and uncertainty of life. The one answer that will grant us the ability to predict everything that will happen. Yet, most of the time we discover the answer appears elusive, just beyond our grasp.

Then, we gather in a sanctuary on the first day of every week. We gather in a sanctuary in all the diversity of our ages- those in their sixties, seventies and eighties, others in their middle years, the young adults, and children squirming in their places. The book of God’s word is opened. An ancient proverb is read. One written centuries ago to a gathering quite like ours. Proverb 8  is telling us that God’s wisdom is all around us. It is everywhere we are whether at work, at school, on the golf course, on the stage, at the mall, or at home. After some singing, one of us reads what has come to be called “the Good News” contained in an ancient letter. A letter, like the proverb, that was written centuries ago to a congregation like ours. Then, following a word of reflection, we come to a table with the simplicity of bread and wine laid upon it. We pray the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving to God reminding us about all God has done out of love for humanity and the world from creation to Christ. Then, the bread is broken, the cups are filled, and we share together the living presence of Christ. Indeed, we say, by God’s grace, we all have become the body of Christ in the world, so intimately has God joined us to one another. We pray in English. Yet, somewhere in a different part of the world, on this same Sunday, another community of believing people gathers in their humble church building, listening to the same ancient letter, and the same Good News. They speak their Thanksgiving in Farsi, Kurdish, Chinese, Spanish, Swahili, Creole, German, Russian, Urdu, or Tamil. And they too share in — and become — the Body of Christ.

  To the passing observer, it appears these assemblies are divided by so many barriers: language and culture, the disparity between the rich and poor, and even more glaringly, the differences between their governments. But those who have been gifted with new sight, through the regular celebration of the Eucharist, are able to see something surprising beyond every difference, something surprising in the face of suffering, in face of violence, and amid all that denies life. We all, in every assembly such as this throughout the world, have become one body because we share one bread. We are one body, no matter where we are and wherever we are.

This is the truth Paul speaks about when he says, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.”  Ever since Martin Luther first read these verses when he was seeking the answer to his “why” questions about how he could possibly be granted salvation when he knew he was so imperfect and so caught up in sin, the Reformed tradition has stated very clearly and correctly that “we are justified by grace through faith” and in stating that so clearly from Martin Luther to John Calvin to John Knox to every person who has uttered that phrase, Christians were set free from any idea that we somehow need to buy our salvation, either by good works or by money. We are set from any notion that we have to prove we are worthy of love and belonging because in Christ God told us emphatically, we are worthy of love and belonging.

You see, while being set free is a good thing, Paul’s letter to the house churches in Rome is less about us and what we do than it is about God and what God is doing for us. The justification Paul is speaking about is righteousness, since the Greek word dikaiosune means both justification and righteousness, but as theologian Krister Stendahl reminds us, if we want to know what Paul means we need to know the background of justification and righteousness. Since Paul is Jewish, the background is contained in the Hebrew word for righteousness that is used in perhaps one of the most ancient portions of the Bible, Judges 5:11 – the victory song of Deborah- which can be translated literally, “There by the watering troughs shall they rehearse the righteousness of the Lord.” Various translations do often read it as, “righteous acts,”  “triumphs,” blessings,” or  “just deeds of the Lord.” But what is important is this call to “rehearse the righteousness of God” comes at a time and in a situation, in which the Hebrews were absolutely convinced of their identity as God’s people, so that when God acted on their behalf it did mean salvation, triumph, and blessing because God was putting things right.

Putting things in the order that God wills, so all humanity and all creation may be blessed with life. Just as God did it for the Hebrews so they would witness about it to the world, so does God do it for all humanity through Christ. Yet, God does not act out of some obligation of the covenant or because the Hebrews deserve it or because we deserve it, or because our prayers had all the right words and sentiment behind them. Rather God acts out of God’s own faithfulness to the promises for life God makes to humanity and to creation from the very beginning of life to Noah and Abraham to Moses and the Apostles. A faithfulness to all whom God claims as God’s people through God’s self-offering love poured out over the world on the cross and poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us.  Faithfulness and righteousness we can depend upon as we live our lives because God is the source of our hope.

Paul bases his assertion that hope does not disappoint on this reality of God’s righteousness and God’s faithfulness. It is an assertion Paul can make because he has experienced God’s righteousness and faithfulness. It is an assertion made by the witness of the judges, the prophets and the psalmists who said God does not let those who trust God suffer disappointment because they too experienced God’s righteousness and faithfulness in their lives. They experienced God standing with them amid their loneliness and alienation from God. The experienced God standing beside them when they were ashamed of themselves, when they felt the burden of guilt at their imperfection, when they knew that if people really knew them; they would not love them, and those people would disconnect from them. God coming to be with them when they were at their weakest, at their most vulnerable when they felt unworthy and were just trying to hide or be disengaged. Yet, God came to be with them, giving them and us the gift of the great and gracious love.

          A love that states unabashedly, “You are my child and I love you unconditionally and there is nothing that separate you from me and from my love.” This is grace we accept as a gift, doing so with gratitude.

          I say gratitude because gratitude opens our eyes, so we might clearly see the giver of the gift and see our relationship with the giver. Our expression of thanksgiving expresses our unity with God and deepens our relationship with God because we acknowledge our vulnerability and our dependence upon God. We acknowledge our need for God’s support, God’s encouragement, and God’s loving concern. This gratitude breaks through all our barriers of false independence and we acknowledge that we are not self-sufficient, autonomous people, but that we need God, and we trust and are confident in God’s love for us. As theologian Shirley Guthrie writes, “Once we are able to acknowledge and trust God’s goodness instead of our own, just then we will discover salvation is not a prize to be won by our good works, but a gift to be accepted by faith.”

          Faith that is not simply trust but is a response in a relationship where one dares to risk trusting the other by being vulnerable with the other and by choosing to risk that trust every day. Faith is not a destination but is a way of living life as God calls us to live it just as God called the Hebrews to live it in the covenant of ten words given to them in Sinai. This life God intends for us is one of peace that heals our brokenness and frees us to be fully human. The peace of standing in grace freed to be who God created us to be by using the gifts God has given us for the benefit of the whole community without wondering if we should be gaining something out of it. Standing in this grace filled peace, we can be who we really are without asking whether we are handsome enough, tall enough, thin enough, smart enough, dressed fashionably enough, perfect enough, powerful enough, certain enough, extraordinary enough, have the right house, or read the right magazines because we know, finally we are worthy of love and belonging. We know that we are enough, just as we are. Standing in this grace filled peace, we can dare greatly to reach out to those ignored, left out, forgotten, or just lonely and say, “You are my brother. You are my sister. You are God’s child, and you are worthy of love and belonging.”  

Standing in this grace filled peace, we affirm we are the Body of Christ united as brothers and sisters with all persons who profess Christ as Lord and Savior wherever they are and whom ever they are.  Standing in this grace filled peace, we know suffering may come to us, but we know God does not will suffering for us and does not leave us to suffer alone but gives us the energy to endure and to see ways to use such trials creatively. Standing in this grace filled peace, fills us with hope for the coming fruition of God’s kingdom knowing God will not disappoint us.          

Standing in this grace filled peace, frees us from asking God, “Why, O Lord, do you care about us? Because we know one certain answer is, “You are my child and I love you.” Amen.

“The People God Chooses”

            Imagine for a moment that the Bibles in the pews are your family photo albums. Now, imagine you are opening the front cover and the first few photos you see are Abraham and Sarah a nice couple married a long time; Hagar an Egyptian single mom; Joseph a carpenter from Nazareth, Peter, a fisherman; Matthew a tax collector for the Romans; Paul whose name used to be Saul, then they are some other people like Jim and Bob.

            Now, you might be wondering, “What is connection between all these different people?” They don’t live in the same town or village. They don’t even live on the same continent. They don’t all speak or read the same language. Not only that, but they don’t seem to have much of a family resemblance. Yet they are all connected by one important link that makes them part of the same family. Does anybody want to venture a guess?

            These are the people God chooses to be God’s people. People God has chosen, along with a whole lot of other people God has chosen, to serve God by being active participant’s in God’s agenda for the world. The nice church word we use for God’s choosing is “call.”

            A call comes to both individuals and to whole groups of people God gathers into a community. Gathering them, so they might live according to the way that God shows them is healthy, vibrant, and that will attract other people who have heard God calling them to become apart of such a community. You see God’s intention is that all humanity live in this same healthy, vibrant community where each person is concerned about the other person and all seek to serve both God and each other following the example of Jesus Christ, who as Paul writes, “being in the very nature of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant.”

            To make this happen, God, for a reason only God knows, has decided to work with and through fallible, some might say hardheaded, human beings. Now, there are a number of things to keep in mind about all the people I mentioned a few moments ago.

Primarily, they are all ordinary people like you and me. They were living their lives quite nicely before God called them and until God did call them, they were living their lives according to their plans and designs. Abraham and Sarah were in their seventies and were childless but doing very well with Abraham’s father and extended family in Ur. Hagar had been a dutiful servant to Sarah and did everything she was told to do, even becoming Abraham’s second wife. Joseph was planning to marry a young woman from his hometown of Nazareth named Mary. Peter was just mending the fishing nets and preparing for the next day’s fishing. Matthew was sitting at his table collecting taxes. Saul was on his way to Damascus to arrest those blaspheming followers of Jesus from Nazareth, certain he was doing God’s will. Jim was caught up in his acting career that he had been working at since graduating from Yale Drama School. Bob Diehl was climbing the executive career ladder for a Fortune 500 company with all the rewards of a big house, fancy cars, country club membership, and a small trailer in Lake Placid used for skiing weekends and vacations.

            Second, none of them saw God’s call coming or were even thinking about it. But honestly that’s the way it is with God’s call.

            One minute you’re living in Ur, the next you’re packing up and heading out for a place only God knows. One minute you’re mending nets, the next minute a guy you’ve never seen says, “come and follow me. I’ll teach to fish for people” and off you go. One minute, you’re galloping down the road then a bright light scares the horse you are riding, and you end up dumped on the ground, blind with Jesus is telling you how you will be serving him. One minute you’re plotting the next acting job then you’re being dragged to seminary. One minute, you’re climbing the corporate ladder then you begin wondering if it is worth it if you must sell your soul to the company and betray everything you believe is right and true. Or you’ve got this gnawing at your heart that just won’t go away.

            However, it happens, the “call” always begins by encountering God at an unexpected time and place. God just shows up right smack in the middle of a person’s life. It might be a still small voice telling you go, or it might be like it was for Bob Diehl whose wife talked him into going on a retreat, or it might be Jesus, God with us, who comes like the song asking, “Will you come and follow me, if I but call your name? Will you go where you don’t know?”

Yet, there is one thing to remember about this encounter, it might be unexpected for us, but it isn’t for God. For God the moment God comes to us is the “kairos” moment, the fullness of time moment, it is the right time because it is God’s due time when circumstances are just becoming ripe like apples in an orchard.

            So thirdly, God chooses the right time to act to bring into being new life through very ordinary people by demanding and inviting them to join God’s work of creation. For Abraham and Sarah, it was to be patriarch and matriarch of generations of people as numerous as the stars in the sky or grains of sand in the desert. For Hagar it was her son Ishmael who would be the leader of the people. For Joseph it was to be faithful to his relationship with Mary, to go to Bethlehem as part of the fulfillment of God’s prophecies, to go to Egypt to protect Mary and this remarkable child, and it was to live a life of faith with Mary, teaching all of his children what it meant to be part of God’s people. For Peter and Matthew, it was to be part of the twelve who would be the builders of Christ’s community of followers who would take their place among the people of God. For Paul it was to preach the good news of God’s healing grace being showered upon all people through Jesus Christ, particularly among people who had no idea God’s blessing of life was for them, too. For Jim it was to be guiding force in the transformation of a congregation that had lost its story and its identity, so they might reclaim their identity as God’s people. For Bob it was to expand a soup kitchen in Plattsburgh, so more people might be fed with good nourishing food, have social contact with others, and who just might realize they too are God’s people.

            Fourth, God’s call thoroughly transforms the lives of everyone God calls and everyone they meet along the way. Every one of the people we’ve talked about this morning had their lives completely transformed by God’s call. Abraham and Sarah never went back to Ur. Hagar didn’t go back to Egypt or to Abraham. Peter never fished again. Matthew stopped collecting taxes. Paul helped increase the number of Christ’s followers. Jim doesn’t act and Bob and his wife live in a tiny trailer in Lake Placid. It is also important to realize God’s call and responding to that call does come with a cost. Every one of these people gave up something substantial. Whether it was seeing their father again or giving up the fancy cars, the nice house, the country club membership and hearing your son say in jest as Bob’s son did, “I’m glad I had moved out before you became poor.” But every one of them would agree with Paul who told the Philippians, “I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.”

            This transformation however is not a one-time event because God’s call is not static; it is dynamic. It recurs repeatedly. God continuously encountered Abraham and Sarah during their journey. Jesus continuously was teaching the Peter and Matthew what it meant to “fish for people” even after his resurrection. God’s call is dynamic also because it involves movement to a new place and a new life. Paul’s preaching and teaching completely changed the lives of people in Corinth, Ephesus, Galatia, and his letters remind them about how their lives are to reflect that change. Not to mention Abraham and Sarah’s lives were changed not only geographically, but they became parents sometime in their eighties! Now, that’s changed! The congregation Jim is serving in Seattle is moving from a movie theater into an historic downtown church, so they might find a deeper and more meaningful identity as God’s people.

            God doesn’t call congregations and individuals to stay in the same place and do everything the way they’ve always done it before. God’s call demands transformation. It demands a new attitude and a change in the direction of the ministry and a change in the way they do things. They don’t look to others, even other churches, to see how they’re doing it, so it can be copied. Rather, God is calling congregations and individuals to re-examine and re-think everything they are doing, so they might hear God calling them to go and might see what new thing God wants them to be doing that will be part of the new life God is creating.

            Part of this transformation includes renaming. God gives a new identity to the person or community that speaks about who they are now. Abram becomes Abraham. Saul became Paul. Those who respond to God’s call will not ever be the same people they were. Read Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians or Corinthians. He is telling them exactly that. Their past is dead and gone. They have a new life, and this new life has new demands and new commitments and a new way of living that unfolds as they embark on this journey of faith with God.

            And that is what God’s call is all about. A journey of faith. A journey of trust. Abraham and Sarah, Hagar, Joseph, Peter, Matthew, Paul, Jim, and Bob had absolutely no idea where God’s call would lead them. All they really knew is that when the Creator of all life calls, you must respond with complete trust that God is with you and will show you the path of the journey.             So, why is this important to us? Well, you are to look for your picture in the scriptures because you’re included in the family photo album. God is calling each one of you to ministry. That’s why you’re here. 

“Takin’ It to The Streets”

They were all gathered in one place! They were all praying together in one place!

              Until a wind with the force of a category 5 hurricane blew through the building, blew through them with such power and energy it roared out of that one place leaving behind tongues of fire dancing above the heads of all who were gathered together igniting within them a fire for God so passionate they had to get up, get out of the house, take to the streets, open their mouths speaking in such a great diversity of languages it sounded at first like an symphony orchestra warming up or a gaggle of wild geese honking and making such a raucous noise it roused from complacency all those gathered in Jerusalem for the Pentecost festival celebrating Moses bringing God’s ten commandments and Torah from Mt Sinai.

At first, the crowd thought they were just partying a bit too heartily, but Peter squashed that rumor quickly by telling those assembled, “They aren’t drunk! This is exactly what the prophet Joel spoke about so many years ago-God’s breathe of life has blown into these people, the Spirit of the Lord is upon these people, and they are boldly proclaiming God’s vision for life; the same the vision Jesus-who was crucified, dead and buried, but who was raised to new life- himself brought to reality in your sight and your hearing.”

              Finally, the crowd stopped talking long enough to hear the apostles speaking and yes, these men and women were speaking in all the native languages of the crowd. This was a vivid and amazing unplanned, unexpected, unorganized, God driven flash mob event! This was God’s forceful wind of change and growth becoming real in the streets where the people were.

 Now, I know normally when we hear this story of Pentecost, we dwell on the tongues of fire dancing over everybody’s head or the fire the Holy Spirit kindles within us energizing us to boldly speak the gospel. Or, we pay attention to the wind blowing through the house and through the disciples and we speak about how in Hebrew the word “ruah” means wind or breathe and we are reminded that God’s “ruah” stirs up the watery unformed mass of stuff in the beginning of God creating life,  then God gently blows “ruah” into the man and woman making them living beings, or we are attentive to Ezekiel watching  God breathing over the dry bones bringing them to life as a way to show Ezekiel what God intends to do to the exiled Israelites living in Babylon, then. we make the connection that this is the very same “ruah” God promises the prophet Joel to pour out on all flesh so old men dream dreams, young men see visions, and daughters speak prophetic words as exemplars of how God births new life. Or we simply say, “Happy Birthday Church” and celebrate the birth of the church as happening right now, since the Holy Spirit is breathing new life into the church all the time in all the great diversity of places throughout the world.

However, as I read this story aloud what I think is important is where God’s wind of change and new life being birthed was happening.

Check it out! They were in one place until the wind blew through them and the fire danced over them igniting their passion and their energy and driving them out of that place into the streets! Which is where the people heard them speaking! In the streets! They were, to quote the Doobie Brothers, “takin’ it to the streets!” Because that’s where the people living in the hell of poverty, oppression, despair, and desperation are who need to hear and experience the gospel. They weren’t in the one place with the disciples because if they had been, they too would have been set on fire and filled with God’s breathe of life then sent out to breathe out the gospel in words every person standing in the streets could understand.

Those who God wanted to hear and experience the gospel were in the streets and the Holy Spirit energized the disciples to take the gospel out to the streets to them. Meeting the people where they were and using the language the people could understand to make the good news of Jesus Christ vibrantly alive, so they would also experience God’s presence, God entering their lives with vision for life, so, their lives would be changed, so they would grow into being part of God’s people.

And it makes perfect sense that God would do that. After all, God called to Abraham where Abraham was. God came to Jacob where Jacob was getting ready to sleep. God sent Moses to where the Hebrews were. Jesus came to people where they were amid their lives whether in a stable in Bethlehem or on a hill, or on the lakeshore or in the Temple in Jerusalem. Jesus stood on the bank of the Sea and called the disciples from what they were doing and where they were sitting to come and follow him. Jesus met and healed people with leprosy on the road. Jesus met and spoke to the woman at the community well. Jesus preached sermons from mountains and plains and fed people where they had gathered. Jesus met the disciples on the road to Emmaus, outside his tomb, in the house, and on the shore of the sea. Jesus even confronts Paul on the road to Damascus and comes to the house of Ananias to send him to the house where Paul is staying.

Jesus’ commission to the disciples is “Go and make disciples of all nations” and his last words to them before his ascension is, ”You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  Following Jesus and walking the path Jesus sets before the disciples to be his witnesses, his representatives, his apostles mean taking the gospel to the streets, on the road where the people are. They will continually go to meet people where they are. Peter will meet the paralyzed man outside the temple. Peter will go to Cornelius, Philip will go to meet the Ethiopian eunuch on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza, Paul will travel throughout Greece, Rome and Syria with plans to go to Spain always meeting people where they are in the market place, in artisan shops, or on Mars Hill On every street where they meet people God’s “ruah” changes lives and grows whole and healthy people..

And Christians have continuously gone to where people are. Cyril the apostle to the Slavic peoples living in what we call Eastern Europe went to where they were to proclaim the gospel even to the point of writing the gospel down in their language, which has now become known as Cyrillic. Pope Leo of Rome in 453 stopped the Huns from sacking Rome by going out to meet them where they were. When all the public institutions of the Roman Empire failed it was the church that brought food, clothing, and medical care to those who needed it. The Irish monks took the Gospel with them to Scotland and the world as well as all the teachings they had preserved in books when they set off in their tiny round boats.

The Boulder Mennonite Church of Boulder, CO reached out to a family with a child born with heart trouble. The congregation adopted the child and cared for him as if he were their own child. When, the child was near death in the hospital the congregation made a tape of them singing several hymns. Two of the women drove it to him and played it for him at 11 pm at night. He died later that night. At his funeral, his father stood up and read the Scriptures: nothing can separate us from the love of God. One member asked him how he could have such faith? The father said, it was the congregation that had showed him that Christ was alive and real during that time.

Members of that church and other churches around the world participate in Christian Peacemaker Teams that go to trouble spots in the world to try to defuse violence and to act as escorts-walking with people who are at risk of being physically attacked. One such person was Tom Fox, who was murdered several years ago in Iraq. He routinely walked with Iraqis to their jobs hoping by his presence to keep them safe. Mother Teresa and the Sisters of Charity took to the streets to find people dying in gutters and to bring them back to their hospital and hospice center and care for them and pray with them giving them dignity and loving kindness until they died. People’s Ministry in Christ in Rochester is on the streets meeting people where they are in the Emerson Neighborhood that is plagued with drugs and violence and they looking to do more.

We, too, are taking it to the streets through Habitat for Humanity and all the food ministries we are doing. By doing these ministries, you are meeting people where they are and speaking a language they understand, so they will hear God’s vision for life and experience God’s loving grace that is for them. It may be the language of hammers hitting nails, saws buzzing through boards, laughter, music, swapping plants, stories, and ice cream, but it is all about telling the good news of Jesus Christ. Good news that speaks about loving and serving God by loving and serving our neighbors where they are. Good news that speaks God’s vision of life that is joyous, filled with energy and delight, and that gathers people together in one place each speaking Christ’s language of love for the world and experiencing God’s wind of change and growth blowing through them, changing lives, and growing a whole and healthy people of God.

But so, you know, this is just one of the lessons we will learn from Acts of the Apostles this summer as we spend some time seeing how 120 women and men gathered in one room in a middle eastern city became a worldwide church. Those of you who want to grow this congregation, remember it begins happening, by Takin’ the Gospel to the Street. Amen.

Language of the Soul

Jesus sowed his seeds in their hearts, then he went. He knew things would not be ideal. There were the birds and the droughts, the weeds and the insects, the parasites, and the blights.

          But there was also the power of the seed itself writes Kenyan teacher Joseph Donders.

          The power of the seed Jesus planted within their hearts was carried with them back to Jerusalem as they trod along the stony road aware as Paul will later write, “the form of this world is passing away,” since all the perspectives about the world as it had been, all the methods, all the values for determining worth and significance has ended. A new reality has taken its place.

          This new reality is marked by Jesus dying, his rising from the tomb, and his ascension to rule with the Creator of the universe. Death, the ultimate ending that seems to set the boundaries of our horizons, our values, our fears, and our projects, has itself ended in the resurrection of Jesus the Christ. This new reality has become the story of how the world has been turned upside down and enabled those who follow Christ to live as people “between the times,” between the end of an old age held by the powers of death and evil and the beginning of the new age waiting for its fulfillment still to come in a future that is open-ended to the movement of the Holy Spirit.

          As the disciples-waiting to be apostles- gather in the upper room in Jerusalem, their minds may have wandered to the questions beckoning within them. Questions such as, “why did he have to go, now? Couldn’t he have stayed a bit longer? How long will we have to wait for his return? Why couldn’t everything be just the way it had been? Why do we have to wait here in Jerusalem? Why doesn’t he just restore the kingdom to Israel and be done with it? Why can’t we know the date and time when it will happen?”

          They had lived through so many transitions the last three months and now once again they were caught in the transition moment. The ending that started this transition was Christ’s ascension and now they were living in that liminal- that threshold moment between the ending and the new beginning Jesus promised was coming to them in Jerusalem if they just patiently wait for the Holy Spirit. So firmly caught in this time of discernment and waiting, the time Karl Barth called the “significant pause” these disciples can do only one act. They pray.

But, not just stopping for a moment so words may be artfully constructed and spoken, this is a prayer of waiting grounded in the certainty that the Crucified One is now the Glorified One, the one whose glory is the cross and who has been affirmed by God as having done all things well by receiving him back to his right hand from whence “all things have been put under his feet,” as the psalmist sings. There he rules “as head over all things within creation including the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”

The ascension affirms that all of humanity has access to God’s ultimate reality and purpose because in his ascension Christ has carried with him our humanity into the fullness of God’s presence. Christ has taken all of Mary’s tears, Peter’s fears, Judas’ betrayal, the boldness of the woman with a hemorrhage, the repentance of Zacchaeus, the tenderness of John the beloved disciple, the sadness of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and the courage of Mary Magdalene into God’s loving heart. Jesus also took with him his own experience of temptation, of being misunderstood by his family and close friends, of suffering, of dying, of shame, and of joy. Jesus took with him into God’s heart the entire scrapbook full of the pictures of being human where it is held within God’s redemptive purposes for our lives.

All of this moves the disciples to pray the language of the soul. The language of the way of living in the world with the awareness of how close they are connected to existence by their thoughts, their actions, and their relationships in that upper room along with every relationship they had beyond that space and every relationship they would ever have. The language of knowing they were woven into the fabric of life by the Creator of all life. The language of being centered wholly on God in Christ without distraction, so they might see new possibilities, envision the new life of witnessing to God’s good news in Jerusalem, Samaria and to the ends of the earth. The language not only of words spoken, but words sung to God, whose music was deepening their awareness that God-the Breath of Life present throughout the universe-comes to visible expression in them. The language of sound, of rhythm sung in chant as they had heard prayers of the psalmists chanted and sung in the hometown synagogue and the Jerusalem Temple lifting their praise to God, lifting their gratitude to God for the blessings they experience, expressing the intensity of their feeling through the variety of pitch, speed, volume, melody, harmony, and rhythm in a wider range of expressiveness that music encourages and empowers us to do. Prayers of the soul sung to God because God is present with them and is already wiping away all tears. Prayers of the soul sung with music surrounding the scriptures they read and music expanding the meaningfulness of the scriptures. Prayers of the soul sung to bring to God the lament and the gratitude experienced in the body and made increasingly conscious in their minds as words are sung and everyone in the community participates in bringing their whole body, their whole being into prayer because music invites such wholeness.

Indeed, it is the language of the person’s whole self coming into a journey embracing the fullness of their personhood allowing them to be seeking, questing, being on an adventure of finding their place of resurrection so they might find their resurrected self, the self they hope to be, to become, their true self in Christ.

I realize that in an activist age when busyness and full schedules and exhaustion are the hallmark of what passes for success, we might expect the disciples to be doing something more useful than praying without interruption, zealously, unwaveringly, dedicating to God all their moments in this waiting time. However, what the disciples are doing is witnessing that the church is more than busyness and work and strenuous efforts, at the heart of the church is prayer spoken and sung. Indeed, gathering to wait and pray are depicted in Isaiah 40:31 as the two primary activities of a faithful church. Waiting is, writes William Willimon, a former Bishop of the United Methodist Church, of course an onerous burden for us speed of light, computerized, 5G soon to be 6G, holographic telephone calling, living in a world of instant everything people. Waiting and praying implies that the things which need doing in the world are beyond our ability to accomplish solely by our own efforts, our programs, and our missions. Waiting and praying reminds us we need some other empowerment. Waiting and praying, also, reminds us that the Holy Spirit is a gift of God’s grace, which is never our assured possession. It is a gift, which must be constantly sought anew in prayer.

          It is the gift calling us to celebrate that we have been taken by God’s beloved into the very heart of God, where we are more deeply valued, loved, and held by God than we might have known before. Held in the attentive care of God in Christ through Christ’s presence with us as if we were the only person in all of creation and yet, Christ is present to all persons and all of creation, since there is no place without him.

This is our hope. Hope blossoming in our trust that the grace of God is present in all the abundance we have seen and known in this crucified, risen, and ascended One. Hope blossoming in our trust in the promise of God’s mercy for all who seek it, want it with all their heart, who “hunger and thirst after righteousness” and who place all their confidence in Christ. Hope blossoming in our trust that God’s redeeming grace fills every nook and cranny of the entire universe!

 Hope blossoming within us, born of the language of the soul whether spoken or sung, but always centered in God. Amen.

Preparing a Room for Whom?

The room was still. Only moments before he said, “I am leaving you and where I am going you cannot follow me now, but afterwards you will.” Then Peter asked why and said, “I will follow you anywhere. I will even lay down my life for you.” Then, he said, “No you won’t. You will deny me three times before the rooster crows.” Leaving us alone. Deny him not once, but three times. Yes, the room was very still.

            Still with the confusion of not understanding what he meant by leaving us, the embarrassment of hearing the truth of our shallow commitment, and our feelings of being abandoned.

             Still with our questions. Why would he say such things to us, now? Does it have to do with what he has been telling us about being lifted, about suffering at the hands of the chief priests and the scribes, and about this foot washing and being a servant. Why is he telling us to love one another as he has loved us? Why is he saying good-bye to us? Where is he going? When will we go after him? Yes, the room is very still.

             “Do not be troubled in your hearts,” he whispers. The quiet assuring voice meant calm and comfort like a mother’s soft cooing to her frightened child. “Do not be troubled in your hearts. Believe in God. Keep trusting God who hears your cries of anguish, your prayers of confusion, your tears of grief, who takes the burdens off your shoulders, frees the basket from your worn hands and rescues you from despair and distress then takes you to a place of milk and honey. A place of peace and abundance where the Lord is always present. Keep trusting God who has sent his only Son to be with you, to be one of you, to be one within you. Also, trust in me, the Son the Father has sent, for it is through me that you have seen the Father. It is through me that just as I am one with the Father and I am one with you that you will be one in us. It is through me that just as I am one with you that you will be one with each other and one with all people and with all creation.

            Yes, I am leaving you, but I am not abandoning you or leaving you alone to live by your own limited understandings and devices. Rather, I  am going to prepare a dwelling place for you in my Father’s home where there are many rooms, then I will come back to bring you to this dwelling place, so you all may be with me.”

            Christ speaks these wonderful words of assurance and promise as the disciples struggle with their confusion and incomprehension and as the chaos of the violence, suffering, and injustice Christ will soon experience and the disciples will later experience is coming closer.

            Yet, as assuring, calming, and comforting these words are the disciples still do not get what Christ is doing and saying. In seminary, we often jokingly referred to the disciples as the “twelve guys who just don’t get it” not because we do get it, but because we and they are in the same boat. The stormy sea of questions threatening to swamp them are the same questions threatening to swamp us. Their confusion and incomprehension are ours.

            We hear Christ’s words of comfort and promise, but we still ask Jesus, “Yes, but what do you mean you’re going to prepare a dwelling place for us?

            The answer for the disciples and for us is in the simple statement Christ has consistently said, “I must go to Jerusalem to suffer, to die and to be lifted up on the third day.”

            Christ prepares our dwelling place through his self-offering on the cross and in his resurrection. The cross is where Christ lifts off of our shoulders the burden of our guilt for the hurts we have caused other people, the burden of our sin of  thinking we are self-created beings and acting in our own self-interest, the burden of our seemingly inherent imperfection Paul describes to the Romans as “I do not do the good I want, but I do the very thing I hate,” and the burden of our inability to trust God enough to live according to God’s way, and our rejection of God and God’s covenant of self-giving love.

            He lifts this burden off our shoulders, carrying it for us and willingly accepting the consequences of our burden which is death, so we may be rescued from the oppression of our burden and delivered through the reality of Christ’s resurrection to a new life of peace and abundance in God’s presence.

            Christ, also, prepares our dwelling place through his self-offering on the cross and in his resurrection by revealing God ‘s triumph over evil and all those who oppose God and God’s intention for human beings and creation. On the cross and in the resurrection God’s glory is revealed. A glory that is the triumph of life over death; the triumph of the mutuality- self-giving love-of the all-inclusive community over self-interest, isolation, alienation, and exclusion. A glory giving rise to hope. A glory that is the very substance of hope.

            Hope freeing us to live right now in the peace and abundance of the Kingdom of God because we know through Christ God is for us. with us, within us and cannot be defeated. Hope freeing us to respond to God’s grace by giving ourselves, wholly and completely to God in Christ without fear of ridicule or persecution because we know through Christ God keeps all promises of presence, of healing, of justice, and peace.

            Hope freeing us to love and serve all people by delivering meals on wheels, visiting those who are imprisoned, tending the wounds of children wounded by violence and neglect, standing shoulder to shoulder with those who suffer injustice by not tolerating jokes that demean and gossip that destroys other persons; knowing as we do this for our neighbors, we are doing this for Christ.

            This hope frees us from the fear of death because we know that we may see through a glass darkly now, but soon we will see face to face because we are witnesses to Christ’s resurrection and the fulfilled promise of life without end.

            This hope frees us from the fear of final judgment because we know God in Christ is our judge and we know what our judge has already done for us. We know through Christ that God does not hate and will the destruction of sinful people, but God loves them and wills their reconciliation and salvation because we have experienced the depth of God’s steadfast love and mercy in Christ’s self-offering on the cross and in his resurrection.

            This hope frees us to trust Christ has prepared a dwelling place in the gracious radiance of God’s presence because Christ is the Word who was in the beginning. The Word who is with God. The Word who is God. The Word who brings life because in him is life and life is the light of all people. The light calling all of us home. The light coming again to bring us home.        

Whose Voice Do We Listen to?

When I was teenager, I listened to Theolonius Monk, Herbie Hancock, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Herbie Mann, Judy Collins, and Joni Mitchell, but it was Miles Davis whom I listened to endlessly. In the mid 70’s, Miles Davis cut an album (for those younger than 50 think CD, for those younger than 30 think mp3) called “On the Corner.” I couldn’t wait to play it, but when I did all, I heard was noise sounding very much like a city street at midday.

            I thought, “I paid for this! What a rip off!” Then I remembered this was Miles the architect of cool jazz. Miles, the inventor of the jazz edge, who was continually pushing the edge further and further out. So, I listened some more. At first all I could hear was city street noise- cars, horns, radios, chatter, and all those other sounds, but now I was listening to hear Miles’ voice, his horn. The distinctive timber, the smooth, the slow dance, the boisterous, bounding, flying of his horn cutting through the noise creating space between the sounds leading me down a path only those who recognize and know his voice might journey to get to the place where jazz lifts one up beyond the noise and beyond oneself.

            The key to the journey of following Miles down that path is recognizing and knowing his distinctive voice. Strangely enough, this is the same key to following Jesus.

            “The shepherd calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.”

Jesus knows the only way for his followers to do what he taught and empowered them to do after he was no longer physically, in the five senses meaning of the word, with them was for them to hear his voice, recognize his voice, then to faithfully walk the path Christ bushwhacked and blazed before them, so they might be followers of Christ’s way.

  The way of daily witnessing to God’s restorative justice, God’s liberation from oppression, God’s promise of an abundant life for everyone, and God’s love which is so inclusive that it reaches out even to those people who hate and seek to exclude everyone not like them. The daily witnessing to God’s love aimed at healing and reconciling all human brokenness.

Jesus experienced throughout his life all the noise of competing voices trying to get him to take a different path than the one he was leading his followers to walk, whether it was the noise of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, the Zealots, or the Romans, so he knew his followers experienced all of those same competing voices and would experience even more competing voices, even those voices among the apostles and followers of Christ saying, “No. Not that way! This is the way we need to go” along with the noise of Greek philosophers proclaiming the Epicurean way, the Stoic way, the Platonic or Neo-Platonic way, the Socratic way, or the mystery religion way.

We ourselves are still surrounded and inundated by the voices seeking to lure us down another path, encouraging us to leave Christ’s path for a path that will lead us only into the fragmentation of a way of being that promises, as Joni Mitchell has written in her song “Woodstock”, to only make us “be a cog in something turning, caught in the devil’s bargain.” Whether it is the voices of advertising on radio, television, newspapers, magazines, or the internet; the voices of people telling us we need to regain the Enlightenment understanding of the duality of the world that is divided between materiality and spirituality; the voices of those who say science and faith have nothing in common and if we choose one we must then exclude the other as has been suggested in way too many high school curriculums; or voices calling us to equate success with greed as the greed is good promoters like John Stossel who encourage a monoculture that believes Monsanto can own your DNA and own all the seeds producing the food you eat; or the voices who clamor for despoiling all of creation in search of fuel and profits without recognizing that what we do to the earth, the air, and the water we are doing to ourselves in a communal act of global extinction; or the noise of people telling us to grow the church by taking on all the characteristics of an over rationalized industrialized process, so the church might resemble McDonald’s with its efficiency, quantification, predictability, and control; or those who proclaim faith as entertainment while driving out neighbor love and the Sermon on the Mount; or the noise of people telling us violence is entertainment and so is watching people humiliate themselves for money on shows like Survivor and the Price is Right all these voices seek to lure us away from Christ’s way by masking, hiding and distorting the one voice we need to hear and follow in living our daily lives. That’s why the key for us and for the apostles is to hear and recognize Jesus’ voice the way sheep recognize the voice of their shepherd.

Now, we might not like it when Jesus refers to us as sheep because sheep are well, notoriously dumb, passive creatures who won’t and can’t defend themselves against predators, and are, also, prone to get lost. But I kinda think they are smart because sheep know they can’t go it alone and they know they need someone to lead and guide them. I was told by a parishioner in another congregation I served, who had been shepherd when he was a boy in Italy, that sheep are herded by being led. If you were to stand behind sheep and make a lot of noise all that happens is that the sheep run around to get behind you, so you can lead them. They prefer being led. However, they will only follow their shepherd because his voice is the one voice they know and trust. You see, shepherds and sheep have an intimate relationship with each other. Sheep, it seems, consider the shepherds part of their family and they develop and share a language of their own. The shepherd can tell the difference between a bleat of pain and a bleat of pleasure, while the sheep learn the click of a tongue that means food, the two-note song signaling it’s time to go home, and the tone of comfort in the shepherd’s voice that assures the sheep the shepherd is looking out for their well being. They trust the shepherd will never lead them into danger or abandon them, but will always protect and save them, will always lead them to places of nourishment and peace.

            The same is true for the apostles. Their relationship with Jesus grows and deepens over those three years and, most importantly, during the forty days following his resurrection. The apostles learn what his voice sounds like and what his words mean. They develop a language that is not only their own but has its roots in the language they already share as Judeans, though Jesus deepens their understanding of the nuances of this language by all that he teaches and commands them and how he, himself, lives it. So, when they are sent out into the world to teach all that Jesus taught them on the day of Pentecost, they are still able to hear his voice, trust his voice and keep to the path he calls them to journey along throughout their lives even as they invite others to join them on the journey and become the sheep in Christ’s flock, and these new sheep will in turn learn to hear Jesus’ voice, to trust his voice, and trust that God in Christ is the good shepherd.

            Yet, how is it that those of us who hear the apostles’ invitation to join the journey and become part of the flock can hear Jesus’ voice, trust, and know it is his distinctive voice? The same way the apostles learned. By being in an intimate relationship with God in Christ who already knows our name, has already committed himself to us, has been involved in our lives before our birth and every moment following our birth, and who is waiting for us to enter this relationship of trust and mutuality by learning to hear God’s voice speaking to us through scripture, in the silence of prayer, and in the life experiences of the people around us. This is a  way to think about how you will continue to be a community of faith for years to come, how you will leave a legacy ensuring future generations are able to be part of this community of faith.

            For it is in community reading scripture together that we hear God’s voice speaking life into being; teaching the man and woman to trust God; promising a covenant of life with all creation whose symbol is the rainbow; calling Abraham and Sarah into a relationship with God that promises abundant life and blessing not only for Abraham and Sarah and their children, but for all humanity and creation through them; and demanding the liberation of the God’s people out of death dealing slavery then leading them through a wilderness where God speaks into being a new way of living as a distinctive community. In scripture we hear God calling prophets to speak God’s words of repentance, new life, and hope. In scripture, we hear God’s promise of healing, of abundant new life, of justice, of salvation, of hope in the voice of Jesus, whom God sends not to condemn us, but to lead us to the fullness of life by a cross and resurrection. In scripture we learn that Christ is the voice speaking self-giving love that is patient, kind, seeking our well being, and always keeping the promise of abundant life.

            A promise we hear in the silence of prayer when we still our voices and all those other competing voices, so we might concentrate on actively listening for Christ’s voice. For we know we cannot listen very well to the voice of Christ until we are silent as the 14^th Century mystic Johannes Tauler puts it, “Therefore you should observe silence! In that manner the Word can be uttered and heard within. For surely, if you choose to speak, God in Christ must fall silent. There is no better way of serving the word than by silence and by listening,”

We also know God in Christ speaks in silence because it was in the silence of night when all was quiet that God spoke to Samuel, it was in the stillness of the mountain top that God spoke to Elijah, it was in the quiet of the daily household chores that God spoke through the angel Gabriel to Mary. Scripture is where we hear Christ’s voice speaking out to us, but scripture is also where we hear the voices of those witnessing to God in Christ’s voice speaking to them in the middle of their daily lives. From Noah hearing God calling him to build an ark to Abraham and Sarah answering God’s call to leave their homeland for the place God will show them. However most notably it is in the psalms where the witnesses of God’s grace speak joyous, glad abandoning praise and humble thanksgiving for the steadfast love, healing justice, reconciling mercy, and the goodness of an abundant life lived in intimacy with God even as they testify to hope grounded in God’s continuing promises of life heard at times of deepest turmoil and pain. A testimony reminding us that the psalms are prayers lived by people in all times and places.

            People like Pearl Kashishian, who while standing at her husband’s beside where he lay cold and lifeless one September evening, spoke softly to him, “Shall I read to you darling?’ His eyelids fluttered and she began reading, “the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” For Pearl, an Armenian woman of faith looking back upon more than sixty-five years of married life she knows how God’s goodness and mercy have pursued her and her husband. For Pearl, this psalm is a reminder of how Christ’s voice and God’s presence have led her down safe paths, especially the experience of walking through the valley of the shadow of death as a child living through the Turkish genocide of Armenians from 1894-1916 when more than a million Armenians were killed. As a young woman, Pearl left her town of Kayseri traveling through the desert where more than once the traveling party was without food and water until somehow food was discovered. Where more than once they were led on the right paths avoiding danger, particularly the night Turkish soldiers surrounded the group bringing them well within the shadow of darkness, but a rod and staff-Pearl said-quite literally protected them. That night at her husband’s hospice bed, her husband Fred looked at her and in a hoarse whisper asked, “What will you do alone?” “Fred, “she said, “God is good. Remember how he protected me through the massacre and led me safely to America? Surely, we can trust God to take care of me now. We will simply listen to hear Christ’s voice calling us to follow where he leads.”

For the truth is, we do live in the presence of the Lord’s goodness and mercy, and we do dwell in the house of the Lord, and we shall all our life, without end.  

Welcome to Emmaus Road

Welcome to Emmaus Road!

            It is a short road as roads go only sixty stadia or as you all would say seven miles long. It is not a particularly significant road as roads go. As a matter of fact it might best be described as a seasonal use road because it seems to be most heavily traveled only in the Spring when many sojourners, pilgrims, people like yourselves, come down this road. It is, you see, the only road linking Jerusalem to Emmaus and Emmaus to Jerusalem.

            Yet, that is not why this road has become so important. It’s importance comes, as so often is the case with roads, by what happened on this road to Emmaus.

            As the story goes, two men were walking along this road on the first day of the week. They had come from Jerusalem though it is unclear whether they came from the city together or met each other on the way out of the city. Still, they were walking very close together completely engrossed in conversation about the events that happened in Jerusalem during the recent feast of Passover.  

            One of them, Cleopas, said, “Peter called him the Messiah, the Son of God long before we arrived in Jerusalem for the Passover.”

            “Yes, yes” says the other one,” but, Peter denied him. Why would Peter do that?”

            “Why would Jesus tell us that one would betray him, that he would be arrested..”

            “But, he said all of that before any of it happened.”

            “I know…I know, but he has died and now the women tell us the tomb is empty. Peter and John also saw it was empty, but where is the body? What has happened?”

            “I..I don’t know. It is happening as he said it would, but how can he be the messiah if he is dead?”

            Uncertainty. Doubt. Questions. These two men are followers of Jesus of Nazareth and they are trying to figure out what all of their experiences with Jesus means. To comprehend what the events of the past week and all that happened to them in Jerusalem means and what it all means for their lives. Unfortunately, they are not doing it very well. They seem to be missing a critical piece. We could very easily think, these two are ..well..perhaps a bit doltish. You know not very observant or not educated very much in the traditions and teachings of the rabbis. However, they grew up in families and communities where faith is central to their lives.

            They went to synagogue, listened as the scrolls were read and proclaimed. In their homes they participated in feasts and holy days like Passover. They traveled with their families and villages to the Temple in Jerusalem for Passover, the Day of Atonement, the festival of Booths and the festival of Pentecost. They studied scripture with the rabbis to prepare themselves to proclaim their faith and take their place as adult members of the community. All of their lives were focused upon God, what God has done for them as part of the people Israel and how they are to respond to God.

            Added to this is the three years they spent with Jesus. Hearing all that Jesus taught in the stories -the parables-he told them whenever they were inside homes, traveling along the road, walking through fields, and worshipping in synagogues. Think of the time they spent watching Jesus with other people. How gentle his touch was to the lepers and the woman with the flow of blood. How he welcomed and valued the little children sent out to beg on the streets. How he welcomed many different kinds of people to eat with him. How he preached along the lakeshore and in the mountains. How he told them exactly what was going to happen in Jerusalem not only in words, but in the actions tied to his words at the last meal where he explained the significance of  the bread and wine as he broke the bread and he poured the wine.

            Still, these two disciples are trying to figure out what they experienced and its meaning. They do not even notice the stranger walking behind them and listening to them until the stranger asks them, “What things are you talking about?”

            They are astonished that he was in Jerusalem and does not what has happened! The irony of their own uncertainty about their own experiences apparently was lost on them. So, they told the stranger all about what had happened to Jesus of Nazareth his arrest and his crucifixion and how  “some women in our group early this morning went to the tomb….” They told him they had hoped Jesus was the Messiah, but his death ended their hopes.

            They taught him all they knew. Their voices must have given away their sadness and uncertainty because the stranger said to them,

“Oh, how foolish you are and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets declared. Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter his glory?”

            Then, the stranger began teaching them. He was opening the scriptures to them. Interpreting the scriptures for them. Not just some scriptures or fragments of scripture. Rather, he begins with Moses then the prophets showing them how the scriptures all relate to what God is doing in Jesus the Christ.

            The innocent lamb sacrificed in Egypt whose blood is poured out over the lintels of the Israelites’ houses so death will pass over them as the way God will save them from death, so the Lord might bring them into new life. In the same way,  John the Baptist called Jesus the lamb who takes away the sins of the world, because his blood is poured out causing death to pass over all humanity, so all humanity is saved for new life.  The bread given by God to the Israelites to eat in the desert, so they would not be hungry is like Jesus feeding five thousand people, so they would not be hungry.

            The bronze serpent raised by Moses, so all who look upon it might be saved from death by the poisonous snakes is a parallel to Christ raised on a cross so that all who see him will be saved from the poison of sin. The suffering servant  the prophet Isaiah spoke about who is chosen by God, whose has the Spirit of God upon him to bring justice, who will open the eyes of the blind, deliver prisoners out from the dungeon, who has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases, who is wounded for our transgressions and who made intercession for the transgressors is Jesus Christ who said as he was dying on the cross, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

            The stranger draws out from scripture God’s acts of justice, liberation, wholeness of life, and steadfast love throughout time and place then links them together with Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection to show the consistent way God has been with people, God has acted for people, and God’s intention for people from the beginning to the present.

            The two disciples listen intently to him until they arrive at the inn of Emmaus. They ask him to join them for a meal at the inn and he joins them. During the meal the stranger moves from being guest to being the host as he takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it and gives it to them.

            Suddenly, they see Christ. They recognize him in the breaking of the bread. This is the dramatic moment, the climax of their journey. Their lives are transformed. They are completely reoriented. This experience moves them from their confusion and doubt to an illumination and a certainty about Christ, about God and about themselves. Their eyes are opened. Their hearts burn with the fire of God’s truth within them. Everything is finally connected and makes sense. They run back to tell their friends what they experienced.

            What did they experience? They experienced being church. Being disciples of Christ. Being Christians. For in this one small journey is the model for the lifelong journey with Christ they have been on and will continue to be on with the risen Christ. Jesus Christ has once again modeled for them being disciples and apostles just as he had during his life, his death and resurrection, so that what Christ did his disciples would also do. The disciples who would be the nucleus of the church.

            There on the Emmaus Road, they had Bible study. The scriptures were not only read but were reflected upon and are related to other scriptures, so that a complete picture of all God has done, will be doing, and has promised to do out of God’s faithfulness, justice, compassion and steadfast love to bring life to people throughout time and place becomes clear. This drawing the scriptures together into a whole, then leads to discerning what this means for their lives in the present and in the future.

            They had fellowship in their journey together, those who were known to each other and the stranger who was welcomed into their conversation then invited to sit at table and share a meal and become, in that sharing, part of their community.

            Yet, central to both the Bible study and the fellowship is that Christ was modeling the four-fold action of worship. They gathered and welcomed a stranger to join them as they reflected about the meaning of what was happening in their lives, so they might fully understand what God was doing in Jesus Christ and what this meant for their lives.  Scriptures were spoken aloud from Torah, the prophets, the Psalms as complements to what was happening in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. His words and his actions. Then, they were interpreted to underscore God’s actions and the meaning of those actions for their lives. They were at table where word and action were tied together, so that the deeper meaning of bread and wine came together in that moment and the disciples’ eyes were opened to Christ’s truth and they felt the burning of the Holy Spirit within them empowering them to go out from that place back into the world to share what God had done for them and what God was doing for the world through the risen Lord Jesus Christ.

            This is why Emmaus Road is so important. For it is on this road we see our own journey of discipleship. For we are the two disciples and central to our journey is worship where we gather together in God’s presence, we hear God speaking to us God’s Word as scripture is read and proclaimed, we respond to God’s Word by celebrating the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper where word and action are brought together into the unity of God’s grace filled acts of bringing life out of death and by offering ourselves out of gratitude to be God’s obedient servants, then we go out carrying God’s Word into the world always knowing that our risen Lord Jesus Christ is with us and the Holy Spirit burns within us empowering us to represent Christ to the world in the unity of our words and actions, so all may concretely experience the good news of Jesus Christ and join us on the journey of discipleship.

            So, yes, welcome to Emmaus Road!

Blessing Doubt

     Fear and doubt were everywhere. In each look. In each locked door. In each word barely spoken. Fear was in their memories of denying they even knew Jesus and in their desertion of him when he carried the cross of death through Jerusalem streets. Fear and doubt drenched and flooded their lives. And we know this same fear and doubt because we are told and taught to fear and doubt everything as one writer has stated, ”from crime rates, to unemployment, terrorism to isolation to news media to climate change.”  We are a people living in fear and doubt.  

We’re told to fear Isis. We’re reminded that we’re on the brink of nuclear war with North Korea and Iran. We’re told to be afraid of immigrants. 

We’re afraid of sickness and vaccines.

We’re afraid of loss.

We’re told to be afraid of the wealthy. 
We’re afraid of what we lack.

We’re afraid of our failures. 

We’re afraid of our past.
We’re afraid of each other and we doubt we will ever know joy and peace.

We’re a people afraid, and that fear has trapped us. Like the disciples in those early moments after Jesus’ death, we’ve locked ourselves in an upper room, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “ 

Aung San Suu Kyi, political activist, prisoner, and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize said it plainly and truly when she said, “The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.”

Like the early disciples, we are fully aware of the prisons built from fear, doubt, and uncertainty.

           Yet, into these fear and doubt constructed prisons steps Jesus with the simplicity of the blessing, “Peace be with you” recalling the words of comfort he spoke at the Last Supper, “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.”

The peace Jesus gives comes from the knowledge that, in spite of all the hurt, the violence, the destruction and harm the world can and does inflict, God’s compassion and care, embodied in Jesus standing in our midst, applies at every point where we experience fear, doubt and uncertainty to reassure us that we are not left to be imprisoned by our fears or doubts because as the psalmist reminds us God is our refuge, our sanctuary, or chosen portion and with God is the path of life where fullness of joy and pleasures forever are ours.

          A life, Jesus reminds them, that comes from God when he breathes on the disciples and tells them to receive the Holy Spirit. Empowering life comes from God now just as it did in the beginning of life when God breathed over the watery, dark chaos where life did not exist, just as it did when God breathed life into the man and the woman and just as it did when God breathed life into the dry bones while Ezekiel watched. This empowering life will not only send God’s people out into the world to teach everything Jesus has been teaching about forgiveness, reconciliation, mutuality, compassion and servant leadership, which are all part of living God’s way, but it is also the continuing presence of Christ with his disciples, sustaining their lives and their ministry and, as one commentator says, it is also the creative power of God always at work to enliven creation itself.

          Intertwined within the peace and power of the Holy Spirit is Jesus’ response to doubt. Now, Thomas seems to be singled out for his doubt, however all the disciples had their doubts until the risen Christ comes to them. Thomas is simply seeking, a bit more graphically said, the same assurance the other disciples experienced. But what is important about this doubt is that Jesus does not condemn nor disparage Thomas for expressing his doubts and questions. Faith that cannot tolerate doubt or questions fails to reach deep down into the hidden places of our minds and our hearts where doubt and questions too often dwell unspoken or acknowledged, especially in those moments when faith is tested by experiences of suffering or pain. Jesus is essentially saying to Thomas, “okay you need something more than a secondhand encounter. You need to touch, to see, to fully experience resurrection, so go ahead touch, see, and believe.”

          Thomas was blessed even amid his doubts and questions and so are those who gather for worship on Easter morning and who did not go to the empty tomb or see the risen Christ for themselves. Jesus meets people where they are. He is like a good doctor who sees each person as an individual with different experiences and different approaches to life and whose needs are all different. He does not give the same prescription to everyone, as though the life of faithfulness is a one size fits all baseball caps. 

          Jesus comes to us, giving us what we need day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year using the common elements of water, wine and bread within a creation filled with reminders of God’s empowering life surrounding us because he does not want anyone to miss out on the empowering life of grace and peace promised to us in the resurrection.

Celebrate the Journey

Come, sing, O Pilgrims of faith, in joy! The sun chases away the darkness. The earth shakes violently witnessing to Jesus’ resurrection shaking the foundations of heaven and earth, fulfilling God’s word spoken to the prophets like Ezekiel,  “I will open  your graves and lead you out of your graves. I will be your shepherd and I will seek you out and bring you back home. I will bring you to the land and I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live.”

The guards quake at the sight of the stone rolling away and an angel plopping upon it as the power of Jesus’ resurrection moves the ground beneath all political pretenders to power and arbiters of truth! God acts at the boundary of life we call death and does something altogether new, by acting to overcome all the hurt and harm done to Jesus and to us through God’s power of healing to bring wholeness into being. This is the divine promise that in the full realization of God’s reality healing and wholeness will hold sway for all humanity.

Then, an angel speaks the truth of joy to the women venturing to the tomb in the early morning hours, “Ladies, do not be afraid” the angel says, “if you’re looking for Jesus, you’re looking in the wrong place.  Jesus isn’t here! He’s gone ahead of you to Galilee, that’s where you and all the other disciples will see him. So, go and tell the others.”

When Mary Magdalene and the other Mary run back to the others, they don’t get very far before Jesus appears to them. They grab his feet! This isn’t a ghost, an apparition, or a hallucination. This is a person they can hold onto!  Jesus still carries in his resurrected body the scars of the nails, the spear hole in his side- the wounds of crucifixion. The women fall to the ground and worship him. Then, Jesus tells them, “Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

So, come, O Pilgrims of faith, sing for joy because the journey is not over. Yes, the cross and resurrection do mark the end of one age and the beginning of the new one. Yes, the cross and resurrection are the decisive moments when the history of the world is changed forever! Yes, we will only be able to comprehend our lives in the present because of the cross and resurrection! However, “the rest of the story awaits us in Galilee where Jesus is waiting because, simply put, Jesus has more for us to do. We still have a path to walk leading us into the new life God creates for us through Christ and in Christ, which is why Jesus tells the women to tell the men he’ll meet them in Galilee.

Except that is not quite what Jesus is really saying. What he is actually saying is, “tell them I am leading them to Galilee” since the Greek the word for “going ahead” has within its nuanced meanings “leading.” This is the same word Matthew uses to describe the star that would “lead” the magi to the infant Jesus. You see, Matthew connects the magi being led by God to the infant Jesus as the proclamation to the world that God has arrived on the scene in the flesh to the men and women disciples being led by Christ to Galilee where they will be given their marching orders to go out into the world proclaiming the power of God’s good news of new life breaking into the historical lives of all humanity.

What the Mary Magdalene and the other Mary discovered that first Easter morning and what we are discovering this Easter morning is, God goes ahead of us. God is not locked in the historic past, not locked into an ancient time when people believed in miracles, spirits, and demons. Nor is God shut up in our personal past, along with our sins, our youth, our wasted opportunities, our childhood certainties, our idealism, our first love.

Instead, God in Jesus Christ goes ahead of us leading us into the world—into a transformative way of life that testifies to the power of resurrection wherever we live. “Jesus is going ahead—not going away,” writes Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza. The “empty tomb does not signify Jesus’ absence but his presence.  It announces the Resurrected One’s presence on the road ahead of us, in a particular space of struggle and recognition.”

Why does Jesus “go ahead” of us into Galilee, into the world this Easter season? Marianne Sawicki argues the disciples are commanded specifically to go to Galilee because Galilee is the location of “the mountain to which Jesus had directed them because it is the place of his singular teaching about what it means to follow him, to walk with him.  In other words, the Christian who wants to see the risen Lord is being directed to the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount, since walking with Christ necessitates being obedient to these teachings.”

The commissioning of the Eleven on the mountain in Galilee in Matthew 28:16-20 confirms this is what Jesus calls his followers to live as well as to teach, but all of that is for the next day.

Today, what is most important for us to grasp is that Jesus is “going ahead” of us and leading us into a transformative life, so we might experience Jesus’ resurrection presence not only in Galilee but also in Galveston, Orlando, Orange County and Wayne County, Monroe County, and all the places where humanity dwells, experiencing resurrection on all the roads of our lives. 

Today, we are challenged, like the women, to run and meet the wondrous and liberating future Jesus offers to us, grasping it and living it today and all the days of our lives, celebrating the journey with our song of deep hope and good news that Christ is risen, Christ is risen, indeed!

Holding the Cup of Sorrow

After Jesus entered Jerusalem to the cheering crowds waving their palm branches and spent the last week teaching, praying, and eating meals with his friends Jesus instructs two disciples to find the upper room to share one last meal together, sharing the Passover meal.

  Their last meal together is finished. Jesus walked out of the upper room to go down to a neighboring garden with Peter and the brothers Zebedee.

          “I am deeply grieved,” Jesus says to them, “even to death. Remain here and stay awake with me.” Then, Jesus walks just a short distance before the anguish, the pain, and the certainty of suffering he will experience overcomes him and he drops to the ground, his sweat and tears dropping from him like blood.

          “Abba,” He prays,”if it is possible, let this cup pass from me…” His agony over what he knows awaits him in just a few short hours is so intense it is more than he can face. Yet, at this same moment, his friends who came to the garden with him and who said,”Oh yes, we will drink the cup you are going to drink,” are sleeping. They could not stay awake, be watchful, or even be aware of all Jesus is experiencing. In the darkness of the garden, when Jesus needed their comforting embrace or simply their presence, they deserted him for sleep.

          Jesus picks up the cup he is to drink in this moment of abandonment, holds the cup tightly then looks deeply into all the sorrow, all the bitterness of life he will swallow and Jesus cries out, “Abba, if it is possible let this cup pass me by.”

          But we know it will not pass him by. We know he will experience suffering because we will see him on the cross. We will hear him crying out, “My God, my God, what have you forsaken me” and we will hear in his crying out the psalmist’s lament, echoing  all human suffering.

          I know I heard the same lament one hot, clammy day in 1969 on a street in Biloxi, Mississippi where I was stationed in the Air Force. Hurricane Camille had roared through Biloxi destroying buildings, houses and roads and shattering the lives of people living in the city. I was sweeping up the debris on one residential street as part of the clean-up effort, when I heard sobbing just a few yards from where I stood. I came closer to the sobbing with every stroke of the broom. A rail thin man tightly clutching himself sat rocking back and forth on a pile of rubbish that was once his home, sobbing uncontrollably, “Why? Why, O Lord? Why did they all have to die?”

           We hear this same lament in the stories filling the pages of Jonathon Kozol’s book, “Amazing Grace” that chronicles the lives of children living in the South Bronx, one of the poorest, most dangerous neighborhoods in our nation. A place 15-year-old Isabel describes as, “Not like being in jail. It’s more like being hidden. It’s as if you have been put in a garage where, if they don’t have room for something, but aren’t sure they should throw it out, they put it there where they don’t have to think about it again.” Imagine how it feels to be nothing more than unwanted stuff put out of sight, put out of mind.

          We also hear this lament echoing in the grieving wails of Palestinian mothers and fathers, Israeli mothers and fathers, Iraqi mothers and fathers, Darfur mothers and children, Sri Lanka children left orphaned by war, American mothers and fathers mourning the death of their sons, daughters, parents, families. We hear it in the stories of children chained to floors in India and made to weave rugs to be sold in New York City, Des Moines or Rochester. We hear it in stories of young girls, boys and women kidnapped by human traffickers. We heard it in the cries of parents in Ohio and the neighbors of the three children who died from gun violence in Nashville alongside a teacher, a janitor, and a principal.

          Finally, Jesus’ crying out the psalmist’s lament, “Why have you forsaken me” pushes us to be deeply aware of our own sorrows, our own loneliness, our own broken lives, alienation, career confusion, wounds, pain filled diseases, losses, unfinished grieving, or unfulfilled needs for affirmation and belonging. Every one of us has experienced sorrow, some of us are experiencing sorrow and some of us will be experiencing sorrow in the tomorrows of our lives. Sorrow is at once intensely personal and at the same time universal.

          For as we look upon the man of sorrow hanging on a cross with outstretched arms, we realize Jesus is not alone on the cross because as Henri Nouwen reminds us, “It is also, us, the whole human race, people of all times and all places, uprooted from the earth as a spectacle of agony, who are hanging on the cross with Jesus.” This is in part one of the meanings of Jesus’ words, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all people to myself.” So, it is not only Jesus the man of sorrows hanging on the cross, but it we the humanity of sorrow hanging there with him, hanging between heaven and earth with all that which is Christ-like within us being crucified and suffering and crying out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken us?”

          When we lift the cups of our lives and hold it as Jesus held the cup of his life, it appears to be filled to the brim with physical, mental and spiritual anguish and we hear Jesus’ question, “Can you drink this cup?” Now, our first response surely might be, “Why would I want to drink it? Just let it pass by me, thank you very much. Can’t we just put all this sorrow out in the garage and forget about it, can’t we? Can’t we just turn on the television or the internet and be entertained into a mind-numbing vegetative state with sitcoms and the unreal realty shows? Can’t we just turn away from this sorrow, deny it exists, and think happy, anesthetized thoughts?

          The truth is we cannot. This is the cup of life, our life, a life we must live. A life we must think about and reflect upon. One we must have opinions about, discuss and contemplate. As one philosopher has said, “The unexamined life is a life not worth living.” Intuitively, we know this is true. We know living life mindlessly, aimlessly is not enough. We must know what kind of life we are living. We must look at our life critically, because if we fail to do so we lose our vision of what makes our life significant, we lose the meaning our life has, we lose the value our life has for us and for everyone we are connected to in our families, our neighbors and our community.

          But, holding this cup of life and peering deeply into it is hard and demands great courage. Even Jesus found it hard and needed help beyond that of his sleeping disciples. Jesus does not rely on his own will power and determination, rather he like the psalmist relied upon the one with whom he shared a bond that could not be broken. He possessed an intimate trust beyond betrayal, surrender beyond despair, and a love beyond all fears with the one called Abba. It is this intimacy beyond all human intimacies, as Henri Nouwen writes, made it possible for Jesus to turn the request to let the cup pass him by” into a prayer directed to the one who called him, “My Beloved Son.”

          Despite all the anguish he felt at that moment, this bond of love was there. It was there beyond all feelings and all thoughts, and it maintained a communion-a unity of being one- beyond all disruptions. It is this intimate communion that made him grasp the cup and pray, “Let it be as you, not I, would have it. Let it be thy will that is done” as an act of trust in God.

          Jesus did not throw away the cup out of hopelessness; instead, he gripped it and drank it to the bottom out of a deep “yes, I will drink it” to God, the one who loves all wounded hearts and the one whom Jesus knew would hear him and act to be with him. As Luke tells us, God sent an angel to give Jesus strength and comfort.

          Which is what God does for us as well and that is the affirmation of the psalmist in Psalm 22. It is quite easy to stop at the first few lines of Psalm 22 and think, all that is there is a lamenting cry of suffering, particularly since Jesus utters those words on the cross, but that is not what the psalm is all about.

When we look at the psalm in its entirety, I invite you to open your Bibles to Psalm 22 and look at the space in verse 21 between, “Save me from the mouth of the lion” and “From the horn of the wild oxen you have rescued me.” That small space is the place where God acted to transform the psalmist’s life of pain and sorrow into a new life of joy and peace, which he sings about in the remaining verses of that psalm. Psalm 22 like nearly every one of the psalms of lament ends in resurrection, ends in praising God for transforming their life for the better.

          You see,  sorrow, is not all our life is about. Pain and suffering are not the definitive answer because the Lord of life will act to turn our sorrow into joy, our mourning into dancing just as God does for all humanity. One of the great blessings of trusting God to act to transform our lives is that we are free to embrace our sorrows as part of our life and we are empowered to see them differently and see within them the possibility of transformation, see within them the seed of a new and different life. After all, doesn’t the husk of a seed need to be broken before the green shoot comes forth? Doesn‘t the cocoon need to be torn open before the butterfly can emerge? Doesn’t the darkness need to be pierced, so the light of a new and completely different day might dawn?

          Isn’t this what faith means?

“Seeing Through the Eyes of Faith”

How do you see?

          When you look at the forest do you see only the tall standing trees, the fallen and decaying trees, the leaves, the pine needles, the shrubs and flowers, the stream, and the earth? Or do you look deeper and see the mushrooms as part of the intricate life support system stretching out beneath the soil like a woven mat transferring nutrients from one species that has more than enough to nourish itself to another species that needs more nutrients to live. Do you see this wide-ranging life support system, also, healing the forest, and connecting all the life of the forest in symbiotic relationships?

          How do you see?

          When you look at a disheveled man, whose children are running amok at a hospital, do you see a person who cares little for his appearance and even less about disciplining his children? Or do you look deeper and see a man held in the stupor and freshness of grief at the death of his wife?

          How do you see?

          When you look at the rows and rows of empty grocery shelves do you see senseless pandemic shopping, or do you see deeply beyond the empty shelves to the fear and panic of neighbors who believe life is unraveling and society is breaking down because of the coronavirus we cannot control by border walls and the magical thinking of “everything will be fine?”

          How do you see? How deeply do you look at the world around you to discover where God is at work and where God may be calling you to minister? These are the questions God sets before us to ponder on this fourth Sunday of Lent as we begin to recognize that this journey of walking with Christ to Jerusalem is not solely to weep our laments at the foot of the cross nor to shout hallelujah at the empty tomb, but is a journey about how we see ourselves, how we see the world around us, and how we respond to what we see and what we experience.

          Our first clue that God is up to something more than a walk along a hard and stony road comes as we join Samuel as he obediently sojourns to Bethlehem. Samuel knows that when people see him coming, they will be frightened because they will assume he represents King Saul and they have learned that when a central government comes to a little, unimportant village it is to seize something, whether that something is people, money, produce or votes. Agents of the government rarely come to give, but they always seem to come to take. The villagers’ sight is limited by the darkness of their experience, which has taught them to be suspicious and wary. Their wariness is reflected in their anxious question, “Do you come peaceably?”

          Samuel, himself, must guard against seeing only on the surface by assuming God is calling him to anoint one of Jesse’s sons to be the new king based solely upon their appearance or height. As God reminds Samuel, “the Lord does not see as humans see, they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”  God looks deep into the very being of the person because it is only by seeing deeper that God will see the character and the integrity of the person.

          God’s point is, also, made perfectly clear in John’s gospel when Jesus heals a man born blind and who has been reduced to begging on the village streets. After he is healed, some of his neighbors cannot tell who he is, even when he is standing right in front of them. He looks like the guy born blind, but this man can see. His neighbors then reason that he can’t be the man born blind because no one who has been born blind has ever been made to see. He must only look like the guy born blind. Their vision is so limited and their perspective so narrow by their knowledge of reality that they can’t see beyond the way they have known this man all his life. The darkness of what they have always known limits their ability to see that this man is no longer the man born blind but is now the tangible evidence of how God creates life anew.

          Now, we can’t blame the local folks because we all live in an assumptive world, a realm that is bounded by certain steadfast convictions of what can and cannot be, and by a world increasingly based upon a very limited perspective and vision creating a box within which they dwell. This is somewhat the way it was for those of us who remember John F. Kennedy’s declaration that we were going to put a man on the moon and remember how many people thought “Yeah right! Nice bit of inspirational challenge, Mr. President, but in the words of present-day politicos “let’s get real!” This same limited perspective is true for the pundits come election night November 2016, particularly those Democrats, who just couldn’t comprehend how wrong they were in believing that Hillary Clinton was going to win the election. After all, they had the data to tell them what was going to happen.

         But give the villagers some credit for wanting to at least be open to the possibility they got it wrong because they bring the man to the Pharisees, who happen to appear on the scene. Of course, all the Pharisees want to do is investigate what has happened in case one of more than 480 purity commandments had been broken. Now, they begin by asking how he regained his sight. When he tells them, “This man Jesus put mud on my eyes and I washed and now I see” some responded, “Wait! He did this on the Sabbath! He can’t be from God because he sinned by healing on the Sabbath.”  

So, the Pharisees reveal how blinded and boxed in they were by the purity laws and rules they have constructed to determine who was faithful to God and who wasn’t. They are in many ways like the man Eugene Peterson talked about. This man installed a large picture window in his living room, so he could see the beautiful green mountain vista outside. At first it was breathtaking to contemplate what he saw until he noticed a speck of dirt on the window then he got out the Windex and paper towels and cleaned the window. Pretty soon, neighbors would stop over to look out the window, but their children pressed noses and dirty little fingers on the window, and he couldn’t wait for them to leave, so he could clean the window. Then, he realized he’d save time if he kept the cleaning supplies right next to the window. Yet, it seemed to quickly become dirty, so he constructed scaffolding to keep people away and make it easier for him to clean the window. That’s when he discovered he could no longer see the wonderful green mountain vista. The very thing he wanted to see, and experience was lost.

The Pharisees had constructed so many rules over the centuries they could no longer see or experience God’s presence and actions in the world, even when it happened right before their eyes.

          That’s why the Pharisees go to the man’s parents and ask them if this man is their son and was, he in fact born blind. His parents say yes, he is our son, but we don’t know anything about him getting his sight back. He is of legal age to speak for himself, go talk to him.” The man’s poor parents’ vision was limited by the darkness of their own fear of being kicked out of the synagogue, which in the first century meant being kicked out of the entire community and forced to become refugees. In their fear, they fail to see the joy and immense possibilities for a new life their child now has open to him.

          All because Jesus heals his blindness. But, is there more going on here if we look deeper? You see this man is no longer confined and imprisoned by an old identity. He is no longer a man born blind and sentenced to a short life of begging for handouts. Now, he is the man who can see. Now, he can create a new life with a new identity and new life story for himself. The past is dead and gone and it has no power to determine or shape his future, a future wide open and filled with abundant possibilities unimagined.

This is the new, unscripted, wide open future of possibilities God intends for all humanity. That is the point of Lent and our journey with Christ to Jerusalem, to the cross, to the tomb then to the empty cross and the empty tomb. Christ comes to heal us of a past we cannot change, a past filled with pain, regret, shame, tragedy, illness, heartache, everything that has broken or fragmented our lives and the lives of family and friends and enemies, so we might see God’s vision of reality and see before us all the God gifted possibilities for living life differently, more abundantly, more authentically, more courageously, and with more integrity as our inner life of prayer becomes one with our outer life of action and we bask in the light of God’s peace, healthy and whole in our resurrection life.

Choices, Choices, Choices

“My mother,” Bill Moyers said, “used to leave her freshly baked sugar cookies right in the middle of the table, warm and inviting but forbidden until supper was over. If she meant the temptation to be test of discipline, to build character, my brother and I often flunked. I think of this when I hear the story of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. Why didn’t God place the forbidden fruit on the very top branch, beyond the reach of innocence? Genesis confronts us with many tempting questions.”

            Why didn’t God place the forbidden fruit on the very top branch? Why did God put the tree of knowledge of good and evil right in the garden? And, why did God draw attention to it by telling the man not to eat the fruit because on the day that he did, he would die? Who was the serpent anyway? Why did the woman eat the fruit then give it to the man. Why did the man accept it so passively? Finally, is this a lesson about the choices we make and their consequences?

            So many questions to ask. Seemingly, so few answers to receive. However, I think there is a fundamental lesson resting, simply and plainly in this scripture, which becomes clear only when we compare the man and woman’s story with the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness.

            You recall, the man and the woman are in the garden God has created as part of the whole of creation. God created the man and the woman for a purpose- a vocation. They are to keep and till the garden. They are to be God’s stewards of creation and exercise care and concern in preserving creation as God created and ordered it. God, also, created them to be companions for each other. They were to live together in a relationship of mutuality; helping each other, caring for the other and working with the other person. They will be a community together. There is no hierarchy or relationship of superior to inferior. Neither is more important than the other. They stand together as one. This is the vision of community no matter how many people reside in the community. All are to be one. Now, God gave them gifts for this vocation- food for their physical nourishment. They could eat the fruit of any tree of the garden. And, pleasure in their work. God, also empowered them for this task with the freedom to carry it out, and with authority over the rest of creation. 

            But there was a limit to their freedom and authority. For God told the man, “of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat because on the day you eat the fruit of that tree you will die.”

            Well, one day as the woman and the man are busy working in the garden, the serpent comes to the woman. Now the serpent is characterized as the craftiest of wild animals God created. However, being crafty does not necessarily only mean being sneaky, conniving, or diabolical. It does mean those things, yet it also means skillful, ingenious, or dexterous. So, the serpent can be deceitful or the serpent can be ingenious depending upon how the serpent chooses to use its crafty character.

            On this particular day, the serpent asks, “Did God really say, ’you shall not from any tree in the garden?” A simple question. No hint of untoward motive on the part of the serpent. Just asking what God’s word was regarding the fruit of the trees. Actually, the serpent is really wondering how much freedom God has given to humans. What choices do they get to make if indeed they get to make any choices at all. A clever question because a yes or no response is impossible. By the way, just for the record, the serpent is asking both the man and the woman the question. The “You” in Hebrew is a plural, so both of them are asked the question. The man remains silent while the woman answers the question.

            “We, “said the woman, “can eat the fruit of any of the trees in the garden, except God said ‘you shall not eat the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you will die.”

            Fairly straightforward answer. She does add a prohibition God did not give the man earlier, but the man may have added that to God’s word when he re-told the command. “Nope, can’t eat it or you’ll die. As a matter of fact you can’t even touch it. Touch it and you’ll die too.” We really don’t know where the extra bit of the command comes from, but the woman is pretty sure about the command and what it means and the man is too, since he remains silent.

            “Did God really say that to you?” the serpent asks. “C’mon, you want the truth. You won’t die. God just said that because God knows when you eat the fruit your eyes will be opened and you’ll be like God. You’ll know what God knows. You’ll know about good and evil.”

            Well, the serpent’s response jolts the man and woman’s reality. The seeds of doubt are sown just by the serpent’s words. The serpent doesn’t “do” anything, but ask a question and offer a different version of why God doesn’t want them to eat the fruit of that tree. I can almost hear the questions going back and forth between them. “We won’t die if we eat it? Can the serpent be telling us the truth? Why would God say such a thing if it wasn’t true? And, what’s this stuff about being like God. It’d be good to be like God. Look, at all that God can do! Does it just come from knowing good and evil? Will we see the world and ourselves as God does?  Does God not want us to be like God? Is God holding us back from realizing our true potential?”

            The serpent seems to be telling the truth. Yet, is he? Is death only about physical death or is there a broader definition of death that they don’t know about? Has the serpent held out the possibility of something more for them? Something that will enable them to transcend who they are, where they are, and their limitations. “The serpent calls God a liar,” says Leon Kass, a professor of ethics, “and the serpent undermines God’s authority and offers what seems to be an exciting new possibility.”

            While the woman and the man do not voice their questions or their ponderings out loud, we get an inkling of their thinking as the woman judges the fruits beauty, its goodness as food, and its desirability to make one wise. All of which combine to tell us they have decided to trust the serpent and their own decision making abilities rather than God’s word and the boundaries and limitations God placed upon them.

             Compare the woman and the man’s actions with Jesus’ actions in the wilderness. Just as with the man and woman, God had a purpose for Jesus. Jesus came to save people from their sins and to be Emmanuel, “god with us.” And, God empowered Jesus for this vocation with the words God spoke at Jesus’ baptism, “This is my Son, the beloved with whom I am well pleased.”  Then, Jesus is led out into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit before he begins his ministry. For forty days and nights Jesus fasts- a real Lent- and he is famished. Can you imagine fasting for forty days and nights? It’s tough just to go a few hours without eating! But, Jesus does it for forty days and nights. He is famished and, perhaps, weak.

            Enter the devil, in Greek the word is diabolos and comes from the verb to separate or to cause conflict. This is what diabolos, or Satan in Hebrew, is about doing. The goal is to separate human beings from God. So, here comes diabolos aka the Tempter with what Henri Nouwen calls the three compulsions of this world.

            The first, to be relevant. “Hey, if you’re the Son of God turn these stones into loaves a bread. That’s what the people are expecting from the Messiah. C’mon, if you’re really the Son of God it’ll be easy. C’mon, I dare ya. I double dog dare ya. C’mon turn the stones into loaves of bread. It’ll remind people about how God provided manna in the wilderness for the people. C’mon.”

            Jesus simply says, “bread is not that important to life. One does not live only by eating bread and food, but has life by every word that comes from God’s mouth. God creates life by God’s word and I’m not here to do miracles for the sake of proving who I am. That’s not God’s purpose or plan for me.”

            The Tempter comes back with the second compulsion, to be spectacular. “Okay! Well, lets see if you really trust God. Jump off the pinnacle here of the Temple and see if God sends down angels to catch you.  Remember scripture says, “He will command his angels concerning you, on their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.”

            “Yes,” Jesus said, “But it is also written, ‘do not put the Lord your God to the test.” Don’t see if God really will do what God promises to do. Realize that God’s promises are real promises and that God always does what God promises to do. That is what trusting God is about. And, God has given me a path to walk and I will be walking that path. I am to be obedient only to God’s will. Not mine. Not yours. Not anyone else’s. Only God’s.

            Then, the Tempter retorts with the third compulsion, to be powerful. “Yeah, yeah. Look, I will give you all the power, wealth, and kingdoms on the entire earth. Everything you see here. All you have to do is bow down and worship me. That’s all. Do it and you get everything. Power. Wealth. Kingdoms. Servants. The whole enchilada. Huh. Huh. Huh What d’ya say?”

            “Away with you Satan!” Jesus says, “It is written, worship the Lord your God and serve only God.”

            Jesus is tempted with the same temptation as the woman and the man, to be like God. “if you are the Son of God, “ says the devil, “then act like it. Use your power to create food, orchestrate a spectacular miracle, and rule over all the kingdoms of the world.” But, Jesus doesn’t give in to the temptations. Rather, he chooses to live as God has created him to live, doing what God has planned for him to do, and trusting God completely.  The man and the woman do not.

            “You ask what did Adam and Eve do wrong in the garden, “said Marianne Thompson a professor of New Testament, “they fail to trust God-that what God says will happen, will happen, or that what God prohibits is for their own good.”

            The man and woman try to reach beyond the limits of their creatureliness, to transcend creation, but they cannot. They have knowledge of good and evil, but it is knowledge limited by the contingency of human life. All we can know is the past and the present. We cannot accurately see into the future, nor do we completely comprehend the impact down the road for the choices we make today. The woman and the man didn’t know that their choice would lead to a death that is defined in Scripture as separation of persons from God. The breaking of their relationship with and their separation from God becomes a physical reality when they are expelled from the garden. Yet, they broke not only their relationship with God, but with each other as well. When God asks the man how he knows he is naked then tells him what he has done and God asks why he did it. The man blames the woman. “It’s not my fault, She gave it to me!” Then, the woman blames the serpent in turn. Both fail to take responsibility for their own choices and actions. As they blame each other, conflict ensues and their relationship is damaged. I doubt they saw all of these consequences coming from that one choice. But, how many of us do? Test this out by any choice you have made at any point in your life. Look at the impact of choices you’ve made has had on your life. Look at the impact of choices made fifty years ago by chemical companies to dump waste into rivers and land. We can’t know what God knows because we do not have God’s perspective on the entire created order. We can’t be like God, exercising God’s authority or claiming God’s wisdom because we are not God.

            In resisting the temptation to be like God, Jesus countered every word of the tempter with a word of God. By doing this, he proved himself to be the Son of God and accepted the limitations of power and authority imposed upon him. As Paul wrote to the Philippians, “though Jesus was in form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.”

            The good news is Jesus’ victory over temptation provides us with hope that we, too can resist if we trust God and God’s word. Jesus’ example shows us the power of God’s word. The woman and the man’s downfall was trusting the tempter’s word as the basis for their choice and, thus, not trusting God’s word. But we must rely on the truth, the faithfulness of the word of God no matter what other voices declare it absurd or invalid. No matter what experiences urges us to doubt or presume on it.

            Jesus’ victory over temptation gives us life beyond our bondage to sin and death. Because Jesus, Son of God, resisted the temptation to be like God, because he accepted being a servant, taking on himself our full humanity including all the burden of our sin and guilt, we are saved.

            We still experience temptations and we still may sin. But through Christ we have the strength and the courage to be the people God created us to be, the people who are truly ourselves when we live in an intimate relationship with God and as a community of mutuality with each other.

             As John Calvin writes, “We are God’s people; let us therefore live for God. We are God’s people; let God’s wisdom and will therefore rule all our actions. We are God’s people; let all parts of our life strive toward God as our only goal.” We are God’s people let us find our life and rest in God alone.

“Fragile Love, Faithful Response”

When I was a child Christmas at our house was more like National Lampoon’s Griswold family Christmas with all the mishaps of trees, dinners, and chaos than it was the Norman Rockwell-Hallmark picture-perfect Christmas. Over the years, I have taken comfort in knowing that the first Christmas was not produced by a flawless lead-up and elaborate preparations dictated by convention. Certainly, most people in the first century did not expect the incarnation to happen through the life of a young, unmarried girl, named Mary and her groom to be Joseph where mystery and scandal met in the fragility of love and a faithful response on the journey toward wonder and new life.

You see, I think we need to remember that Joseph was simply a village carpenter in Nazareth engaged to a young woman of his village named Mary. Joseph is easily forgotten amidst the drama of God’s mysterious and surprising gift of a child to the young woman Mary and her faithful response to Gabriel’s announcement that she will be Theotokes-God bearer, ”God, let it be with me, your servant, according to your will” not to mention her song of such prophetic wonder that musicians are still seeking ways to put it to ever more thunderous and stirring music today.

          So, it is very easy to ignore Joseph with his rough, calloused working man hands, but ignoring Joseph will leave us caught in darkness instead of being illuminated by the light of God’s love shined through the multi-dimensional kaleidoscope of Joseph’s faith.

Yes, Joseph is a village carpenter, but he is one at a time when being a carpenter meant being an artist as well as a skilled craftsman. The artist in Joseph dreamed into being pieces of furniture, houses, cribs, utensils, and other household items long before they took shape in wood. Artists frequently have in their imaginations the thing they wish to create. They see it whole and complete in its design and how the creation will be used. I can attest to this as a writer. I have written a couple of novels, several plays and numerous short stories and each time I have had the story visualized like a movie in my imagination long before I had it written on paper or word processor. Artists, also, see beyond their raw materials to see the possibilities of what those materials might be.  As Larry Chottiner said about his father, “He could take wood and fashion a chair or a cabinet or a crib for my daughter’s baby dolls. He knew how to make steel and how to shape a red-hot ingot into a piece of pipe or a structural beam.”

          So, too did Joseph know how to take raw materials into his hand and envision what this raw material was going to become before taking tools in hand and bringing his vision of what this material was going to become into reality.

However, Joseph is not only a carpenter.  He is not only an artist. He is also a righteous man who is, Matthew tells us, the latest link in a long line of generations who have all struggled to be righteous. All the way from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph of the multi-colored coat, to Ruth, Samuel, King David, Solomon on down to Joseph of Nazareth. To be called righteous is a weighty descriptor because the man or woman who is righteous is obedient to God’s word, not in a legalistic manner that speaks about dreary dutifulness or judging others to see if they measure up, but by the choice to be bound to God in love. A love that is wholehearted and prompts the person to be as faithful to God from their side of the relationship as God is faithful to the person from God’s side of the relationship. This bond of love comes from the dynamic movement of God’s love extending its power among men and women, who experience God’s love as the abiding presence of God making their lives complete. 

Out of their experience of being whole, the righteous person makes the bond of love with God visible in their way of living, so that every decision reflects God’s will and their love for God. Anyone who works with this person, who sees this person, who has any sort of relationship with this person, knows that this is a righteous person, and celebrates them as a blessing to his or her community.

          However, being obedient to God isn’t easy and doesn’t lend itself to quick fixes or knee jerk reactions. Being obedient to God is a struggle to discern by opening one’s awareness of God’s presence and the path God is inviting you to walk. Joseph’s dilemma about what to do when he discovers that the woman, he is engaged to marry is pregnant causes him to struggle with what path is God’s way.  One the one hand he loves God and wants to be obedient to God’s Torah and the community’s standards of behavior for young unmarried women, but that means he would have to drag Mary out into the public square, denounce her, humiliate her, and make her subject to being stoned to death for what many in her community would consider adultery which was the prescribed penalty according to Deuteronomy 22:23-27. On the other hand, Joseph loves Mary deeply. He was planning to make a home, raise a family, and spend the rest of his life with her. He wants to do the right thing, but he doesn’t want to embarrass or hurt Mary. Certainly, he doesn’t want Mary to be stoned to death. So, how does he balance his love for God and being obedient to God’s Torah and the community’s expectations of living as God’s people with his love for Mary?

          While he is struggling to discern what to do, he recognizes that wholehearted obedience is also about being compassionate, it is about seeking the well-being of other people in the community and providing for the needs of others in the community by imitating God’s nature. This is what Joseph is doing by being merciful and kind to Mary through his decision to continue with the marriage, even though he is planning at some point to divorce her without scandal, so she might be able to remarry. He doesn’t want to shame her or humiliate her. He is concerned about her future and her life and in a way the life of her child.

          Aren’t we all like Joseph at times? We go about our business and do not want to make trouble; we just handle things quietly and without a fuss, knowing that the things we might want to do loudly are best done quietly.

          Of course, before Joseph could act, God acts by sending an angelic messenger to Joseph as he slept. This message is delivered in a dream about how God had chosen not only Mary to play a special part in the fulfillment of the word God had spoken through the prophet Isaiah, but God has also chosen Joseph, like his technicolor dream coated namesake, to participate in God’s plan of bringing salvation to the world.

          Do not be afraid, the angel told him, meaning do not hesitate, do not worry about taking Mary as your wife, for the child is the one who will save his people. This is a child conceived by the Holy Spirit and God wants you to name this baby Jesus-meaning he saves. For this child is the one who is called Emmanuel and like the sign given to King Ahaz and the Israelites in the time of Isaiah, this child will be the visible, concrete presence of God with God’s people. He will incarnate God’s being, so God’s people will directly experience the power of God’s love to restore and create life. He will incarnate the power of God’s love to overcome all evil in the world, so that God’s joy, hope and peace will flourish on earth as it does in heaven.

Joseph acts with great courage because it takes great courage to be obedient to God despite what the interpreters of the Torah tradition might have said was the right thing to do, the biblically sound thing to do or what social expectations say is the right thing to do. Yet, it also took the vision of an artist whose feet were firmly planted, firmly centered in God with one arm stretched back holding in his hands the tradition and heritage of the past while at the same time his other arm stretched forward to hold in his hands the hope of God’s future promise for all humanity and all creation to be living God’s shalom, which in the present moment dwells unseen within the young woman Joseph loves. Joseph the artist hears the angelic message and can envision the creation of a new heaven and new earth God was bringing and is bringing to reality.

Courage and artistic imagination coalesced in the mind of this simple carpenter from Nazareth empowering him to do what God was calling him to do. As one pastor has written, “He accepted the responsibility God placed upon him. He risked his reputation, his life on a dream. He allowed God to touch the deepest parts of his being.” Then, he did what God called him to do, he named the baby Jesus, and he helped birth salvation into the world, by participating in the birthing of a child.

I often wonder how I would respond if I were in Joseph’s shoes, don’t you? I mean what would happen if God whispered to one of you in the comfort of your sleep about things that had to happen to fulfill what had been spoken by a prophet? Would you have the courage and the imagination to be as obedient to God as Joseph and Mary were?

It is useful  to ponder about the ways that the faithful thing to do and the faithful way to live are sometimes at odds with tradition, teaching and social conventions and expectations. Also, that the unexpected things outside of social expectation and conventions can often be wondrous signs that God is at work even as the less than picture-perfect Christmases that are not as perfect as we might want them to be, and the lives that are not as perfect as we want them to be, just might be the very place where God shows up to do something new, beckoning us to trust and follow without being afraid or worried about where the journey will take us, but simply being willing to take the path God sets before us with one hand holding firmly to the traditions of the past while reaching out with the other hand to grasp the brightly lit future of hope, joy and peace God promises us and all creation. May we, too, say let it be with me according to Your Word of life, O God.

Joy Begins Now

Darkness falls fast in these autumn days, and we know the darkness will continue to grow in the days ahead of us as we venture into the freezing days and nights of winter. Yet, many people feel darkness has been falling upon them for longer than a season. Whether it is the news of the high infant mortality rate in Rochester, the continuing struggle to solve the education issues plaguing city schools, the rise in the suicide rate of middle age white males and veterans or the year-long election cycle that has been filled with hatred, lies, and misinformation spewing forth on a daily basis with threats of jailing political opponents, journalists, and deporting millions of people, scandal after scandal in a drip-drip-drip leaking of documents by a group caught in their own brand of self-righteousness or encouraging violence against people who are different as the answer to the frustration and despair of an economic prosperity that has become nearly unreachable for many people in this country regardless of skin color or ethnicity as has the myth of an American Dream created out of a model of unending consumerism fueled as Wendell Berry writes by a commerce of violence, or voter suppression by the government or public institutions being assailed as useless and cracked cisterns incapable of holding water let alone our society; all have contributed to the weariness and darkness many have experienced and may experience as fear of the future imprisons people.

This darkness seems to deepen with the images Jesus describes for his followers in this morning’s reading from Luke. The image of armies surrounding us, the need to become refugees to escape the violence of war, being hated because we are followers of Christ, the woe to women who are pregnant or who are new mothers, the enslavement of one people by another people, even creation will shake, rattle, and roll as the Jerusalem Temple is destroyed.

Yet, all of us gathered here this morning like the gatherings of other communities of faith in Baldwinsville, Syracuse, New York State, America, The Northern Hemisphere and around the world know the darkness will be driven away by the light. Darkness, despair, fear, and hopelessness cannot overwhelm and imprison us because God’s light will not allow it to do so. This is the starting place of joy and hope that dispels fear because God promises to be doing an entirely and completely “new thing” that will not resemble the old or grow out from the old.

This is the promise uttered by the prophets and the psalmists, particularly during Israel’s exile when the promise from God was that even exile will be transformed into a viable place for life. “This promise,” as Walter Brueggemann wrote in his book “Theology of the Old Testament,” “which defies every logic, but which could not be devised by those who reiterated the oath, assures Israel that its life and eventually all the historical process, is not a cold, hard enactment of power and brutality.” Rather, it is God’s powerful intention for well-being, abundance, justice, and compassion to bring into reality a newness of life that cannot be extrapolated from the present but is an utterly new life. The words of God the prophet Isaiah speaks tell of God’s promise to overcome all that is amiss whether caused by Israel’s disobedience or the untamed forces of fear and death. The newness of God’s new creation will touch every aspect and phase of life as every portion of life is re-created by the positive, life-giving power of God’s love enacting wholeness, abundance, and restorative justice for all human communities as hostilities at every level and in every dimension of creation will be overcome. In this extraordinary new creation, the light of God’s love will drive out fear and darkness.

Perhaps this is the reason doctors without borders and nurses without borders risk their lives to tend to the wounds and disease of patients in places where medical services and medicines themselves are in short supply, but too often where the violence of war is abundant. Perhaps this is the reason for the Red Cross to bring food, clothing, toiletries, and blankets to places like Haiti, Syria, and Louisiana. Perhaps this is the reason Hope Fellowship travels to re-build homes and communities in the aftermath of hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods. Perhaps this is the reason mission teams travel to communities to repair, re-build homes and lives each year. Perhaps this is the reason community gardens have nearly doubled in size and may grow larger next year. Could it be they want to live in a world where babies are not born for sudden death, but live long full lives; where no more shall the sound of weeping or cry of distress be heard in the world because of hunger, disease or violence; where an adult lives a long full life filled with meaning and where people shall build houses to live within and will plant vineyards and vegetable gardens, whose produce the gardeners will eat and enjoy because no one will take it from them or force them to work for those who oppress them; where the shalom-the peace of predator prey living together in harmony and where violence no longer exists?

Could it be that the hope of God’s new heaven and new earth where peoples, habitations and nature are all woven into a complex relationship of wholeness has been heard as an invitation to take part in God’s creative transforming mission-Missio Dei- to the world? Could it be that when they have heard the prophet Isaiah proclaiming God’s intention to create an entirely new world where heaven and earth are to be one unified creation, they were reminded of God’s creative capacity to create life anew because God’s creative word speaks a vision that comes to realization. This Missio Dei vision of a new heaven and new earth does not come out of nothing nor does it come out of the ashes of a destroyed creation, instead it is the creation out of the chaos of human endeavors, of a spoiled and polluted nature and of everything in between. In this Missio Dei, God is transforming creation so thoroughly that the former things will not be remembered and will no longer influence or effect the present or the future.

Imagine a totally new beginning for Baldwinsville and Syracuse where everyone has a place to live in safe and decent homes, where everyone can freely move about without fear of violence or the fear of driving through dangerous neighborhoods, where a person isn’t stopped by police simply because of the color of their skin or because they fit a certain profile, where no one is a stranger and where everyone has meaningful work and a living wage. Imagine buying your home and knowing you can keep it forever – no one threatening to take it from you because they want it, or because you’ve been laid off, or made redundant, or had your job shipped overseas. People can breathe again – really breathe – without fear that life will be snatched away from them.

Last year, I asked you to imagine this congregation being a totally new congregation, designing and planning its organization in new ways, finding new ways of getting things done,  discerning new ways for us to worship God, designing a new way of welcoming visitors by first getting to know them as friends, and discerning the way we reach out into the wider community around us based solely on Missio Dei-God’s creative transforming vision of a new heaven and new earth. Letting the past be the past without any power to control, determine or define the future. Letting go of all the ways we compare ourselves to other congregations because we are focusing on being authentically who we are. Letting go of the old paradigms and schemes for growing the church by focusing our life together on God’s mission for this community and for the world.

 I challenged you to join the Israelites who came back to Judah from Babylonian exile and to respond to your situation the way they did as recorded in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Their response was to rebuild the city and the Temple and to rebuild their community by once again committing themselves to centering their lives in God and God’s way of being a community where well-being, health, and growing and sustaining life was for every person. This is the hope contained within the promise of God’s new heaven and new earth, a hope inviting people to live today in God’s new heaven and new earth.

Interestingly enough,  this is the invitation to living the golden rule “do unto others as you would have them do to you” and being mindful that the yardstick by which we measure others will be yardstick by which we ourselves will be judged. Both of these are simply calls to “love your neighbor as yourself.” It is the hope of the sacredness of life at every moment of life, of welcoming the stranger either the migrant or the refugee as sisters and brothers whose desire for a life of stability, of health and well-being and peace is the same as our own, of ending poverty and the immorality of homelessness, of encouraging all people to dream the vision of God’s new heaven and new earth then act on that vision.

We have made good beginnings in meeting this challenge of participating in God’s mission to the world through the continued support of our missions, the community garden that grows community by growing relationships, and the new opportunities of joining with other Presbyterian churches.

While God will bring this new heaven and new earth to fullness as Jesus taught us that God will do, the call to be Christ’s body here in this place at this time challenges us to fully participate in Missio Dei- God’s creative transformation of the world, it challenges us to consider how to best use our increased financial and human resources in reaching out beyond ourselves into the community of Baldwinsville, Syracuse, and the world, so whatever we do reflects God’s expansive and inclusive will for the world and not our limited vision of what is possible, challenges us to be an entirely new First Presbyterian Church focused on creatively thriving knowing that as Paul reminds us that if God is for us, which God is, who can be against us, who can hold us back from living in God’s new heaven and new earth today?

The answer is simple: No one.

Persistence is Faithfulness

“We are planting trees whose harvest will be enjoyed by others” is an adage I have long used to describe my ministry as an interim pastor because everything I did was to guide a congregation toward health and wellness, preparing them to enter a long and fruitful relationship with their next installed pastor. I also used this saying when I did youth ministry because I knew the fruits of what we do today with children and youth will not come to complete fruition until five years later.

          In many ways, this adage is about persistence because unless one is willing to work patiently today, diligently for the harvest that will not come until some point in the future, one is not persistent. Unless one is willing to put off the momentary fleeting reward of today, the immediate gratification of this day for the true, long-lasting life of well-being and peace that will come in the future, one is not persistent.

          Persistence is what both Jeremiah and Luke are teaching us today, though in diverse ways. Jeremiah speaks God’s words about the heart transplant God will be making in the exiled Israelites, so they might live as God has been trying to persuade them to live, trying to teach them to live, trying to command them to live, inviting them to live, since Abraham and Sarah.

God says through the prophet, “The days are surely coming when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, I will put my teaching in their hearts, I will write it on their hearts; and they shall be my people and I shall be their God.” This is the promise of an intimate relationship that is not dependent upon following words etched in stone but operates from within like blood flowing in veins and arteries bringing nourishing life to the entire body. God is promising to be “one flesh” with the people, so that finally sin and judgment will be a thing of the past and God’s people will live in the closeness of a life giving and life sustaining relationship that cannot be broken and cannot be destroyed because we do not have to learn God’s teachings, they are intrinsically part of who we are, our actions and our words will express the truth that God lives within us.

          Now, while we tend to focus on the heart transplant of the Israelites, we often fail to appreciate God’s persistence in the relationship with humankind. If we were, as one commentator suggests, to summarize the biblical story of the Old and New Testaments it would be about God’s persistent, unshakeable, everlasting, faithful love for humans and for all creation. Repeatedly, we discover the depths of humanity’s penchant to ignore God, thinking we must be God and trying to live according to our own agendas, rules, and philosophies. Yet, God is so in love with us that God refuses to let us go our own way. Rather, God persistently stays bound in this relationship through God’s own sovereign actions to save us-often from ourselves-whether in flood or Exodus or Exile or Cross and Resurrection, offering us a way to comprehend justice that restores people to community instead of banishing them out of community, listening to our prayers of gratitude or lament, our crying day and night in pain, without ever forgetting us, then forgiving us time and time again, even to the point of taking on all the deadly consequences of our sins upon God’s own being in Christ, just to bridge the chasm separating us from God and from each other, bringing us to a renewed life of health, well-being and peace.

          In the face of God’s persistent love, God’s people are challenged in every generation from the man and woman in the Garden of Eden to those of us sitting in this sanctuary and around the world by Jesus’ question, “will the Son of Man, find faith on earth?” This question challenges us to respond to God’s persistence in this relationship with our own persistence.

 Indeed, reformed theologians including John Calvin have emphasized that we cannot separate who God is and what God does from who we are and what we are called to do. God’s sovereignty over all areas of our life does not allow us to compartmentalize our faith into private and public boxes. Rather, our whole life is connected to God. This is the reason the parable of the widow, who unrelentingly seeks justice from a man who is a judge and who disrespects everyone and who ignores everyone and cares little for their concerns or opinions is about persistence not only in praying for justice and praying for peace, health, and well-being, but faithfully living lives attuned to the way God calls us to live.

However, as we know, being persistent and living faithfully is not easy. Just read the epistles and the stories of the church’s struggles throughout the centuries in all the many separate places where followers of Christ have tried to live faithful lives, persistently trying to live God’s way in the world. Whether it has been persecutions, the social culture, false teachers or false pastors or the institutional church leading people to worship and follow them instead of worshipping God and following Christ, Christians have had to struggle and persistently seek to faithfully live God’s way. It has never been easy, and it is not easy today in this country when we have discovered in this current election season the way so many Christians have forgotten the point of being a follower of Christ.

Yet, praying consistently and persistently is not easy either. Teacher and Pastor Fred Craddock said this about prayer, “All we know in the life of prayer is asking, seeking, knocking, and waiting, trust sometimes fainting, sometimes growing angry.” He could say the same thing about faithful living because we will come up against people who have more power than we do and who are willing to do whatever they want to keep their power and privilege. The widow certainly had that experience with the judge.

Widows after all were powerless in ancient Israelite society. They needed a strong advocate just to be treated with some small measure of respect and to be treated fairly. Of course, this is the reason God time after time declared that one measure of Israel’s faithfulness to God was how that community cared for its most vulnerable and powerless members-widows, orphans, poor, and the resident migrants and immigrants living in the community’s midst. A measure of its faithfulness as God’s people was how just, fair, and equitable a society it was. Did the lives of one group of people in the community matter more than the lives of other people in the community? Did the wealthy get special treatment, did the priests in the Temple get special treatment? Were the rules of the community stacked in favor of one group of people at the expense of other people in the community?

  Yet, Jesus tells us that as powerless and poor as this widow is she does not give up. She constantly seeks out the judge in the day and in the night crying, weeping, and wailing until finally the judge can no longer bear to be confronted by her persistent pleas and gives her the justice she seeks.

Jesus is pointing to this woman as emblematic of persistence, as the example of what it means to never give up, or as Vince Lombardi, the great football coach once said, “It’s not important if you get knocked down, but whether you get back up every time you get knocked down.”

Also note this about the widow, she isn’t sitting at home waiting for something to happen, she is actively seeking the justice she needs for her health and well-being. I imagine her life of persistent prayer and trust in God has empowered to her to be so active, knowing she is not seeking after justice alone because God is with her and with God nothing is impossible, as the Torah, the psalms, the prophets and Jesus’ life, death and resurrection and the epistles persistently teach us.

As professor Tom Long notes, if we really trust God and really believe in the power of prayer, in the power of praying that God’s kingdom come, so “thy will be done on earth as it is heaven,” if we really believe that prayer can effect world peace, if we were truly convinced that prayer changes things, changes us, heals broken lives and restores severed relationships, then we would be praying constantly and we’d experience the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit driving us out into the streets where the people are, so we might persistently and actively work for peace, for well-being and for the health of the community as an act of resistance against all forms of injustice.

For as Luise Schottroff emphatically writes in her interpretation of this parable, “praying and crying to God against injustice describes the whole life of the believers, their efforts, their protests of injustice. It also describes their trust in God, for they know that God acts very differently than the unjust God.”

As Jesus teaches us through the story, God grants justice because God not only persistently loves us through self-giving actions, but God’s loving justice reveals God’s resistance to individual and community sin, resistance to the powers that greedily seek their own agendas, their own way at the expense of the rest of humanity and creation. God’s loving justice reminds us that the point of following Christ is persistently glorifying God by helping humanity, especially the exploited, the destitute, and those trying to survive as well as humbly serving others; being joyfully hospitable; working to create economic and social structures, so every person has all they need for life; radically loving all people because there is no us and them, it is only all of us and being grateful to God for the life given to us as a gift, mindfully aware of how precious and wondrous it is because God created it out of a persistent love.

“Opportunities in Unexpected Places”

The elites of Israelite society, the chief priests, the scribes, the military commanders, the advisors to the king, the learned, and the skilled artisans stumble along the stony road to exile. The road is hot, rocky, and dusty. At the resting places on the side of the road, Babylonian soldiers laugh and mock them. Their feet trod the stony path to a land they do not know; to live among a people they cannot understand; for a length of time beyond their reckoning even as they mourn the death of families, friends, and neighbors amidst the rubble of the burned-out Temple, which had been the central visible symbol of their faith but is now gone along with homes and families. All of it is gone and they will all struggle to find a way to define the purpose for their lives as an Israelite exile community. Yet, how will it be possible for them to be the people Israel without land, without Temple, without priest, without cities, without homes, without family, and without friends? Everything that defined them as a people was gone. Nearly, every element of their identity has been taken away from them, as if they were stripped naked of their personhood. 

Into this complex matrix of grief, disorientation, culture change, shock and despair come the prophet Jeremiah’s letter God told him to write. In the letter, Jeremiah delivers this word from the Lord: “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:5-7).  The meaning is clear.

“Your old life is dead,” says the Lord; “your new life is to be found where you are and in the new circumstances of your life. And it’s going to be this way for an exceptionally long time, but at the ripe time, Kairos time, I will gather you and bring you back home. So, do not be seduced by despair and disorientation and false prophets who do not speak my word, because they will only lead you to death. Instead, center your life in me for I am your God, and you are my people, and it is in my way and by my word that you will find new life springing up in unexpected places and in unexpected ways.”

Here in this letter hand carried from Jerusalem’s rubble is God’s promise of life. A promise resonant with the promises God made to Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel and kept through Moses and the wilderness experience where Israel was taught to trust God enough to choose life by centering their lives in God and God’s way of being. A promise betrayed during the monarchal period of Israel’s life story when exceptionalism, pride, prosperity, and power seduced Israel, as Walter Brueggemann points out, to believe that God’s primary purpose and function was to guarantee Israel’s special privileges and entitlements in the world. They were self-deluded into thinking God served them and their agenda for the world, until the prophets spoke clearly that God was reasserting the reality that the Lord of the universe will order creation and humanity according to God’s restorative justice, righteousness, and equity. When the Israelites did what their ancestors did in the wilderness, that is when they failed to listen and trust God, they were sent out into this new wilderness called exile, so that once again God might teach them to trust and center their life in God and God’s way of being with this new promise of hope-this new promise of life.

  What I find remarkable and significant for North American Christian congregations in this promise is what comes in the last sentence, “seek the welfare of city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare is where you will find your welfare” because the word translated as welfare is “shalom” which in this context can mean soundness, wholeness, completeness, health, or well-being. These are all words defining the totality of God’s peace. Switching out welfare for one of these other words makes the sentence’s meaning different, “pray for the health of the city for in its health is your health,” or “pray for the well-being of city for in its well-being is your own well-being,” or maybe a combination “pray for the wholeness of the city for in its health and well-being is your own health and completeness.”

In whatever way we seek to translate shalom, the reality comes back so hard to us that it is impossible for us to miss the point that God is teaching, which is very simply that we are inseparably connected to everyone within the community in which we live or as Martin Luther King Jr. would say “we are all caught in an intricate web of mutuality where I can never be all I am to be unless and until you are everything you ought to be.” We are not created to be isolated little random moving beings within creation happy to be thinking solely of ourselves. Creation wasn’t created that way in the beginning and it doesn’t work that way now. Every part of creation is connected to every other part of creation, just like the cells and organs of our bodies are connected in interdependent relationships where what effects and influences one cell or organ effects and influences every other cell and organ. We all know that right? If I eat spoiled food and get food poisoning, it’s not just my stomach that expereinces it, is it? Or, if I have cancer or diabetes not just one small portion of the body is affected by it. The same is true of the hand surgery I had a few years ago. The same is true for communities.

Indeed, God’s lesson for these former elites of Israel is that there can be no viable future of well-being for the wealthy and powerful Jerusalem establishment, unless the entire community has well-being.  A lesson the wealthy and powerful failed to learn throughout the history of Israel and a lesson the wealthy and powerful have always failed to learn throughout the history of the world both ancient and contemporary, particularly as we see them time and time again routinely neglect the health and well-being of the most vulnerable and powerless among them, the widow, the orphan, and the resident alien and allow the community to be disparately divided between the rich and the poor. This is the same lesson the 1% in this nation, their politicians and even the libertarian tea party folks, the MAGA folks, and other self-centered folks have, also, failed to learn. 

Yet, God is teaching this lesson to the Israelites in a strange land among people who do not share their faith, nor their worldview, but who are in control of governmental power, land, and wealth because they are the majority, and the Israelite exiles are the minority. So as the powerless and vulnerable minority, the Israelites are challenged to act in ways that will create health and well-being for the entire community.

This is what makes this verse significant for North American Christian congregations, who have been told Christendom, the imperial and power aligned church, is dead! Who come to the reality that the church no longer has the influence on culture and society it once did, even the big church evangelicals are losing influence according to Christian Century magazine. We are becoming a minority within many of our communities because our membership has been declining for decades and the church is being disestablished from its institutional moorings.

But I must say that is great! Here is an opportunity for Christians to re-orient our lives, our thinking, our discussions away from the obsession of church growth, the whining about decline of membership, the snake oil of finding the silver bullet for congregational transformation, dispensing with the focus on congregational life cycles and all the other nonsense that keeps us trapped in the self-absorbed delusion of despair and disorientation, so we might focus instead on the health and well-being, the wholeness and peace of the communities we live within and in doing so find our own health, wholeness and peace. After all, God‘s lesson for the exiled Israelite elites is a powerful challenge to Christian congregations who feel they are living in exile to look beyond ourselves and to comprehend that the health of the communities where our congregations are located has a direct impact on the health of the congregation. If a community is declining in population, chances are the congregations within it will also be declining. Nor can you expect stewardship to rise when everyone in town is laid off as some churches I suspect discovered during the last economic downturn.

What is, also, exciting is that the Israelites rose to the challenge in Babylon by creating community centers within the exile community whose focus was education, language instruction in Hebrew and Aramaic, social events, active engagement in the larger community, and prayer. These community centers eventually evolved into the synagogues that were brought back to Israel when God restored them to the Promised Land, and which flourish everywhere in the world where Jewish communities exist. The exiles found a way to sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land through creativity, through the courage to do something brand new, something no one had thought to do before and did this in the face of despair.

This is what Christian congregations, also, need to do. We all need to be courageous and creative enough to enter this time of transition thoughtfully and intentionally because when we do, we will discover a new way of being church that is so new, it will redefine what it means to be the ‘people of the Way.” 

This is the challenge for congregations in a time of transition as they consider how they will re-define their identity then live that identity, how they will care for each other, so everyone thrives, how they will create a deeper spirituality through a creative and imaginative worship, and how they will engage their neighborhood, so the congregation becomes stronger, more visible, and more highly valued as a catalyst for health and a thriving well-being that will ripple throughout this neighborhood and into the entire city, so the presence of this faith community will make a difference and will matter to the entire community.

This challenge is not beyond any congregation to engage. Right now, there are congregations doing creative ministries through collaborative relationships with community agencies on mission projects that seek to make systemic changes in the health and well-being of their communities. I am one of the passionate proponents of this approach because in my own research and ministry with congregations attempting change I discovered that when a congregation goes outside of its walls to do mission that is focused on improving the health of the community, the community response to the congregation is positive and the congregation is awakened to the hope and possibilities for life that seemed impossible to imagine as new people come to worship and participate in the life of the congregation. Now, lest you think I am as one colleague described me “dangerously naïve” about the long-term possibilities of this, it has been working in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood since the late 1980’s when Rev. Eugene Rivers and other pastors involved their congregations to end gang violence and influence in their neighborhoods. By 1991 gang violence in those neighborhoods was reduced by about 25% and those same faith communities are acting today to make systemic changes in that neighborhood through the Ten Point Coalition, it happened in Worcester, Mass when the Pleasant Street Baptist Church sought the health of the community, and it is continuing through the neo-monastic community “the Simple Way” in Philadelphia.

Every time Christians walk out into the mission field right outside their doors with an assured hope and an unshakeable faith in God, seeking the health of the community by creating meaningful community and by encouraging seekers to seek the transcendence and mystery leading to the exciting discovery of the meaning and purposefulness for each person’s life that is when the entire community experiences the completeness of God’s peace embracing them, which is exactly what God desires for all humanity and for all creation.

Living Letters of Hope and Peace

There is smoke. People are running. Weeping rises in the air matching the upward flow of dust. An uneasy tension permeates the very core of a person’s body seeping deep within it.  Questions spew forth like a summer rainstorm from every person.

          What will happen next? Where is a brother, father, sister, wife, mother, aunt, uncle, cousin, grandmother, grandfather?  How could this have happened to us?  How will we live? How will we know what to do?  Will I ever feel safe again? Where is God?

          Underlying the questions are the emotions washing over each person like a spring flood in a dry riverbed.  Anger, fear, sadness, despair, abandonment, vulnerability, uncertainty, uneasiness, loneliness, denial, bewilderment, disorientation.

           The weeping, the questions, the dust, and the emotions congeal together into the loud cry of lament, “How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations! She that was a princess among the provinces. She weeps bitterly in the night. She has no one to comfort her. Judah has gone into exile with suffering and hard servitude. My soul is bereft of peace. I have forgotten what happiness is, so I say gone is my glory.”

          In 587 BCE Jerusalem was reduced to rubble and ashes. The Temple was destroyed, and all the royal family, the high government officials, priests, and craftspeople were led off as prisoners by the Babylonian army, walking naked for the arduous journey to Babylon. It will become the Hebrew trail of tears. Their prayers in psalms of lament tell later generations of their suffering. Laments that cry out, “Why have you forgotten us completely? My groans are many and my heart is faint.”

 Psalms that tell us the story, “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there, our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?”

          Their homes are gone. Their land is gone. The Temple is gone. The priests are gone. No longer will they bring sacrifices to the Temple. No longer will Passover be celebrated as it was. Gone are most of the external symbols that gave them identity and defined them as a people. And worst of all the Babylonians think it is self-evident that their god is stronger and more powerful than the Lord. After all, it is the victors who write history, not the vanquished. Israelites knew how the world was supposed to work, how their life was oriented in a direction they understood, lived, found comfortable and meaningful. But not now.

          We know how they feel, don’t we? Their plight, their tears, questions, and emotions are all familiar to us because we too have felt them in some way. We have felt dazed, angry, abandoned, vulnerable, scared, uncertain, uneasiness, loneliness, and bewilderment. Whether it was the aftermath of 9/11, a train wreck, an explosion, a mass murder in a school or synagogue, a car wreck, or the Jan.6 riot at the Capitol. We have all experienced loss whether a friendship breaking apart, moving to a different place, disease robbing us of the ability to do that one thing we have a passion to do, or even the death of a father, mother, brother, sister, husband, or wife. Some of you remember when Kodak, Xerox, Bausch and Lomb, Carrier Corp, or other major manufacturers were all doing great. I am sure many of you remember when your church sanctuary was filled with worshippers on Sunday mornings. When there was an Adult Choir, a Junior Choir, and a children’s choir.

Indeed, I suspect some of you might be right this minute experiencing some disorientation in your life. You, too, may be asking how did this happen? Why did this happen to me? What do I do now?

I don’t know about you, but when I have those questions, then I recall the Israelites’ situation and the one question that comes to my mind is, “What did the Israelites do at this moment of exile?” What made it possible for them to cope in a strange, foreign place?

Well, strangely enough the answer dwells in the psalm Jesus quotes while he is dying on the cross and being mocked and derided by the crowds of people.  Rather than simply quote the psalm to you I want you to please open your bibles to Psalm 22. Look at how Psalm 22 begins as a lament, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me.” As you read the rest of the psalm, you notice the intensity and the anguish of the lament. Then, we get to verses twenty-one. “Save me from the mouth of the lion,” it begins. Then, notice verse twenty-two we hear the psalmist, “I will tell of thy name to my brethren, in the midst of the congregation I will praise thee.” 

Something has happened between verse twenty-one and verse twenty-two. Notice the space between the two verses because what changes the psalmist’s lament to praise, and thanksgiving happens right there. There in that space God acts. There in that space is where God does whatever God might do to cause a transformation, a healing in the psalmist. A healing that restores life to the psalmist as God promised to do for the people Israel. God has heard the palmist’s lament and God acts. We don’t see what God did. Nor, does the psalmist ever say exactly what God did or when God did it. The mystery of all of that is left as a mystery because the what’s and the when’s are not important. What is important is that this space is where faith resides.  Where faith leads to hope and hope leads to peace.

This isn’t the faith that says put a smile on your face and act as if everything is simply fine because, “I have my Jesus.”

Nor can faith be treated as a commodity that can be increased or decreased. That was Jesus’ lesson to his disciples when they cried out to him, “Increase our faith!” They thought Jesus’ demand for radical forgiveness was beyond their ability because their faith was quantifiably too small. So, they cry out to him, “Increase our faith!”  As if they were near empty vessels that Jesus could just pour faith into. Like one would pour water into a pot or a pan. But Jesus says your faith could be the size of a tiny mustard seed and it would be enough to transplant an oak tree into the sea. You see, faith is not about quantity.

Faith is a gift from God in the same way grace is gift from God. Faith does not spring up out of the person as intellectual acceptance or by some act that a person does, but it is a response to what God has done, is doing and promises to be doing throughout people’s lives.

  As Rev. Robert McAfee Brown, pastor and theologian explains, “the gospel does not say ‘Trust God and God will love you,’ the gospel says, ‘God already loves you, so trust God.” Indeed, our word faith comes from the Hebrew word “amn” and the Greek word “pistis” both meaning trust, reliability, loyalty, and obedience. Faith says we can trust God because we know God always keeps the promises God makes. Faith says we can rely on God because we know God does not abandon us in times of sorrow or trial but is present with us always. Faith says we can do our best to be loyal and obedient to God and God’s way of being persons in community because we know God’s love is steadfast; it cannot ever be lost, diminished, or destroyed.

It is faith, in God’s steadfast love and faithfulness that empowers the Israelites during exile to truthfully name all their losses aloud, to say aloud all their questions, and all the emotions they experience, so these questions and emotions could be publicly faced in all the depth of their pain as an act of faith. Only a people who expect God to be listening can do this. Only a people who expect God to act for their well-being as God promises to do can do such a thing. Because it is only by facing the reality of their pain, their wounds, and their sorrow in lament, that the Israelites will find solace, comfort, healing, and hope.

Hope that rises out of the depths of lament heated by faith that asserts “tears may come in the night, but joy comes in the morning,” boiling over in praise to God as the Israelites creatively reconstruct their reality by defiantly asserting that reality, is not as it appears to be. Defiantly asserting that those who are in positions of power are not powerful at all. Defiantly asserting that today they will live their new future grounded in God’s promises of restoration spoken through the prophet Isaiah, “but be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating. For I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy and its people as a delight. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it or the cry of distress.”

Hope captured by the writer of Lamentations, “O Lord, my suffering and my homelessness is bitter and filled with sorrow. Still, when I remember your love for me and remember your love never ceases and we can never be cut off from you, O Lord, hope calms me. For I know each morning is a new day to experience the mercy of the Lord. You, O Lord are faithful beyond measure. I will hope in the Lord, waiting patiently for salvation, for the saving grace of the Lord to be given to me, to be showered upon me.”

This is a faith that trusts and relies exclusively on God in the total and complete surrendering of the Israelites lives to God. Trusting God’s way of living together in community will equip the Israelites to creatively live in this foreign land in a new way. They may no longer be able to worship in the Temple, but they can still worship God. They may no longer celebrate Passover in the exact same way as before, but they can still celebrate Passover. God is still with them showing them a way, even if it is distinctively different than the way they lived in Judah.

This was good news for the exiled Israelites.  It is the good news Paul spoke about in his letter to Timothy when he wrote about being thankful for Timothy. For Timothy’s distinctive personal being and friendship, for being a co-worker in ministry, for his unfeigned faith, and for the personal gifts of ministry given this young man. These gifts are lifted by Paul in a prayer of gratitude. Gratitude for Timothy’s mother and grandmother who nurtured him and his faith in the same way Paul’s family nurtured him in his faith, which opened him to Christ and the new life of hope leading to peace that Christ brings into the world. Paul is also grateful to God for his own apostolic calling and the people who bring him food, necessities, and companionship amid his suffering in a Roman prison. Theologian and professor Cornel West echoed this same gratitude when he said at the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly, “We do create ourselves, we did not give ourselves language. We did not fall from the sky. We came out of a faith tradition. I am here because somebody loved me, somebody cared for me, somebody was attentive to me and taught me how to live.”

Acknowledging and being grateful for our faith and the tradition of being committed to love-love for God and love for neighbor- no matter what the circumstances of our lives are, means saying yes, we did not fall out of the sky. We are here because somebody loved us, somebody cared for us, somebody was attentive to us and taught us how to live faith-filled lives empowering us to be the love letters from those earlier generations on whose shoulders we stand to the younger generations of our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren because we want them to know that somebody loves them, somebody cares about them and somebody is being attentive to them and wants them to know how to live faith-filled lives of integrity, courage and peace. This is what creating an environment where God’s gift of faith and grace through Christ can be received is all about. You see faith cannot be taught, but what can be taught is the way faith empowers us to tell the truth-to have integrity, naming truthfully our losses and speaking aloud our questions and emotions right here in our worship through our prayers and our songs.

What can be taught is how faith empowers us to turn our prayers and songs of lamentation into hope. Hope freeing us to creatively see our world in a new way. Hope freeing us to live our lives in a new and distinctively unique way as we respond with the complete surrendering and commitment of our lives to God in Jesus Christ. Hope freeing us to live God’s peace.

What Kind of Table Do You Have?

A couple of years ago, I read a story about a woman who does nothing but travel about the country teaching a course called, “Table Manners for Executives.” She teaches aspiring business executives which fork to use first and where to put the napkin.

          “Companies,” she said, “find that one of the most important attributes for an executive is the ability to eat like an executive. One of the primary ways that companies decide who can cut it up at the head office and who can’t cut it at the head office is based on how that person behaves at a dinner table.”

          While we may chuckle at the mental image of the high-powered executive hopeful sitting down at a table to be taught which fork is for salad and which spoon is for soup, we know meals are more than simply the means we use to put food into our bodies for nourishment. Rather, meals and table-fellowship are extraordinarily complex social events that carry far deeper meanings about who we are, our values, and our society.

          Think about it for a moment. The White House has someone called the Chief of Protocol who does little more than worry about where people are to sit at state dinners. Getting the seating wrong could create a whole international incident. Think about the important dinners you’ve attended, who gets seated at the head table?

Why do you think that during the days of racial segregation in the American South as late as the 1950s and 60s there were cafes with signs reading “White Only?”  Rev. William Willimon remembers his favorite place to buy juice in Greenville, South Carolina had stools on one side and a shelf for standing on the other side. The African American patrons were made to stand at the counter while the white patrons sat on the stools. White segregationists knew that to allow a person to sit at a table and share a meal with you is to admit that person is a full, equal human being just like you.

          Something happens when people sit next to each other at a table sharing food and conversation. Anthropologists speak of meals as a kind of code communicating a multi-layered message. They say” if food is treated as a code, the message it encodes will be found in the pattern of social relationships being expressed. The message is about different degrees of hierarchy, inclusion and exclusion, boundaries, and transactions across the boundaries.”  In less academic terms, meals and table fellowship reflect our relationships with other people, values our society has determined are important in those relationships, and how we define ourselves.  That is perhaps why divisions at the meal table are so rigorously enforced. There is food for the poor and food for the rich. There are “high class” restaurants where the waiter is meticulous about every detail of your meal; calls you sir or madam and where the prices are not included on the menu because if you must ask the price then you don’t belong eating there in the first place. Then, there are the “greasy spoon diners” where they shove the food in your face and grab your money. There is an adult table and a children’s table. There is the table where the poor and the homeless eat and the table where we eat.

Jesus perfectly understood the coded message meals and table-fellowship sends to those gathered around the dinner table. Social divisions were just as rigorously enforced around First Century Palestine dining tables as they are today. A dinner with guests was an occasion of social importance, to which people of one’s class and status are invited and where there is an implied sharing of values and ideas. The status and rank of individuals are legitimated by their inclusion in the guest list and their location on the seating chart.

For example, a Pharisee would only eat with those people sharing the same purity standards as he or she held. These purity standards stated that even in one’s own home, the law of ritual purity was to be followed. Therefore, one must eat ordinary food in a state of ritual purity as if one were a temple priest eating food offered to God. In short, the Pharisees ate only with people just like them. The people who really belong to their community. The real Israelites.  In addition, guests were seated according to status and rank with those having the highest honor being seated closest to the guest of honor or the host, even at the host’s right hand which is the symbol of sharing in the host’s power and prestige. Of course, there is also the rule of reciprocity that stated very simply means: invite those persons to dinner who can invite you to dinner in return, especially if they are wealthier and more powerful than you are, so when you dine at their home your status goes up.

          However, Jesus breaks these rules.  Today’s gospel is one of those “you have heard it said, but I say to you” sorts of sayings by Jesus. You have the world going in one direction, Jesus going in the opposite direction. 

         Jesus suggests that the way to have honor is not to seek honor. To rise to the highest place is to go to the lowest place. You want to have a wonderful dinner party? Invite those no one else will invite because they are not “the right kind of people.” Also, be sure to invite those people who cannot repay you. Give without expecting anything in return. You want to be great? Do not come expecting to be served but come to serve others. Those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

Jesus does not say this and teach this because it’s the way to make friends and influence other people, or because this is the key to being successful, or because it is the way to have a nice, altruistic, liberal dinner party. Rather, he says this because this is the way meals are eaten in the kingdom of God. These are the table manners and the way of living in the kingdom of God. Everything Jesus says at this dinner party from the sayings to the parables is pointing the people away from the way they think the world works and pointing them to the way God intends people to live in God’s kingdom. Jesus is not just suggesting a minor change in the rules of etiquette, he is talking about a radical change in the world. A polar reversal when the north pole becomes the south pole, and the south pole becomes the north pole. When God humbles the pretentious and exalts the humble.

  Jesus teaches us not only with his words, but also with his actions. He eats with Pharisees, wealthy patrons, and scribes who oppose him, who badmouth him, and who invite him to dinner only because he is popular and might be the next great rabbi.  Jesus, also, eats with tax collectors, fishermen, prostitutes, lepers, migrants, immigrants, and sinners. Jesus invites his closest friends to one last dinner with him, washes their feet like a servant and serves them food, then says, do you get what I just did for you? Do you comprehend that I just served you? Because that’s what I am calling you to do for each other and for all other people in the world.

          If we are to be Jesus’ followers, then we are called to pay attention to the way our fellowship witnesses to God’s fellowship established in Christ both between God and the whole world and among human beings. The way we share meals and table fellowship speaks volumes about our faith, our priorities, and about whether we are living our lives united with God in God’s kingdom. Today’s gospel compels us to ask ourselves questions like, “Who is present when our congregational family gathers at the table? Who is absent? Have we really invited everyone to the table?

          Theologian Karl Barth suggested four dimensions of fellowship:

1. As the community reaches out to all nations, it offers unity among peoples that overcomes national, ethnic, and linguistic barriers

2. In its attitude toward racial differences God’s people refuse to accept either legitimacy or necessity of dividing up the community into special communities based on skin color, gender, or sexuality.

3. Responding to the plurality of human cultures, the ministry of God’s people brings together different people to overcome cultural differences rather than to bless cultural differences and,

4. In its pastoral work, the Christian community sets aside all distinctions between rich and poor. Barth has said the community of God’s people would be mortally sick if it were to identify itself with a particular class, race, or culture or to align its concerns with the interests of a particular class, race or culture or its faith with a particular political or philosophical ideology.

          Jesus invites all of us sinners to sit at his table and eat the meal of mercy, of forgiveness, of reconciliation, of love, and life he has prepared and serves to us.  We are the guests at a banquet we had no right to expect to be invited to attend because we are not perfect people. We are empty, hungry, and needy, probably more so than we might want to admit. Yet here we are. We are invited to come to this banquet with the words of the prophet Isaiah ringing in the air, “Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. And you that have no money come, buy, and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” We are invited to come to this banquet where we are reminded that through Christ’s self-offering on the cross God reconciles us to God self and in Christ’s resurrection God brings us to a place of new life not because we earned it or deserved it. Rather, only because God loves us. This banquet is a gift freely given to us by our host without any expectation that we can or will repay him because God knows we have no way to repay God for the gift of grace, the gift of life. Jesus simply says come to me with empty hands held out and I will fill them with the bread of life. Come to me with broken, empty hearts and I will mend them, and I will fill them with my love for you.

Once we have shared in this banquet, Jesus calls us, urges us to go out of this sanctuary and invite all people to come to his great banquet, his great feast called resurrection life with their empty hands held out, so Christ can fill them with the bread of life and with their empty, broken hearts, so Christ can mend them and fill them with his love.

Rules to Keep, Rules to Break

What do we see?

This is the persistent question Jesus is dealing with in Luke’s Gospel. He has just chided the people gathering around him for being able to tell when it will rain, when the sun is about rise in the morning, or a strong wind from the south means a heat spell, but not being able see what was happening right in front of them in the present moment.

Indeed, Jesus has been talking about this blindness and about the weakness of those who cannot discern the present evidence of God’s rule since he preached his sermon on the plain. But Jesus is not alone in this chiding of God’s people. God calls Jeremiah to be a prophet because God wants people to hear about how they have been conned and duped by the Kings, the priests, and the false prophets who shout Peace! Peace, when there is no peace and the priests who have failed to teach the people God’s way of living and leading the people to be united to God.

Instead, the priests have taught the people to practice meaningless rituals, while they maintained the status quo of the elites on top and people serving the elites as though they were still slaves in Pharaoh’s kingdom.

  Jeremiah is calling the people to change the direction of their lives and to make the decision to live united to God in God’s covenant of ten commands each day of their lives, rather than to keep trusting those who are leading them away from God.

The psalmist in psalm seventy-one sings the praise that celebrates God’s presence while proclaiming trust in God as only a person can do who always knows now and in every circumstance that her life belongs to God and her future depends upon God.

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews tells those listening to this letter read in worship to change the direction of their lives-live a transformed existence. The letter writer is calling them to decide to be united with God through Christ. Yet, this transformed existence can only happen in the presence of a transforming power available to those called to such a transformed existence. This power, as the writer of Hebrew asserts, is in Jesus the Christ, the mediator of the new covenant. The mediator of God’s love.

          Jesus is teaching in a local synagogue on the Sabbath for the last time as this story opens. A woman who has been crippled to weakness for 18 years enters the place of worship, the place where the story of liberation, healing to wholeness, and God’s love is told and re-told to every generation, so that each generation participating in the story may praise and express gratitude to God. This woman is nameless, which makes her invisible to her first century village. She has no name, no status, and no connection to this community. We have no idea what has crippled her. What has pressed down upon her with such persistence that it has sapped her strength, made her fragile, liable to yield to collapse or break under pressure or strain? What has kept her crippled, nameless, and invisible? What cripples anyone to weakness? Abuse or mistreatment done daily with such ferocity that one bends and bends just hoping it will stop or by bending one hopes to escape some of the crippling blows. It doesn’t have to be physical abuse because emotional abuse is just as crippling, just as strength sapping. I know because I am a survivor of both and of a poverty that can be just as crippling.

Maybe, it is an addiction. Addictions whether of drugs, alcohol, gambling, overeating, compulsive shopping, or nail biting, judging others or gossiping can all make us fragile and likely to break under the weight of our demons leading us to what addicts us, what makes us fragile as well as our shame and guilt.

          Then, there is the wilderness of oppression, poverty, violence, bigotry, a narrow perspective about what is happening in our community, state or world that also cripples us with a weakness that may leave us unable to cope, unable to live in hope or able find the way out of the wilderness.

In addition, every time we alter our behavior to accommodate our addiction or whatever cripples us with weakness, it can seem like there is no way out, there is no way of getting away from it because it envelops you, surrounds you and overwhelms you like Louisiana flood waters or a California wildfire raging out of control. So, after trying to stand up to it, to fight back against it only to fail repeatedly, it is easy to bend under its weight, to accept it and, worse, to embrace it as who you are and let others define you by what cripples you to weakness.

          You see, this unnamed woman, who is bent over by the weight of all that has crippled her isn’t just some woman, she is like way too many women, way too many children, way too many men whose vision of the world never reaches beyond the fragility and the breaking point of what cripples them and what keeps them crippled by a community’s status quo and those who seek to keep the rules rigidly in place.

          People like the leader of the synagogue who challenges Jesus’ healing on the Sabbath as breaking the Sabbath rules because such healing is considered work and work is not to be done on the day of rest, re-creation, and refreshment. Maintaining the Sabbath rules that are piled on the people year after year have become in the first century and, even like the 21^st century interpretation by some Christians, a means of social control and oppression. The questions we might want to ask are what does the rigid keeping of rules accomplish and who benefits by the rule keeping? These are, of course, variations of the questions we might want to ask about solving the problems of poverty, income inequality, violence, and immigration.

What are the rules maintaining the status quo of poverty, income inequality, violence, and immigration and who is benefiting by not solving these problems?

          The answers just might reside in Jesus’ acts to heal the woman and instruct the people in the synagogue. First, remember Jesus takes the initiative to heal the woman. She doesn’t come seeking something from him, she simply comes to worship God. By this healing act, Jesus not only lifts off the weight of the crippling weakness, but he brings her fully back into the community. She can now be seen as the person she is, and she can now fully participate in the life of the community. Jesus’ teaches that the woman is a daughter of Abraham, so shouldn’t she be treated better than they would treat an animal? If an animal were bound, wouldn’t they unbind it and bring it to water, don’t they feed and care for their animals on the Sabbath, if an ox were found in a ditch on the Sabbath wouldn’t they rescue it, wouldn’t they free the ox? So, why wouldn’t they set free a human being from whatever is keeping her or him bound, enslaved, or diminished?  Didn’t God do that for them when they were enslaved in Egypt? Isn’t that what is celebrated on the Sabbath?

Aren’t we celebrating God’s kingdom where no one is weighed down with burdens so heavy they bend one over, no one is left fragile, no one is left vulnerable to crippling weaknesses, but are strengthened, are set free from all the ways humans are oppressed, addicted, traumatized, and betrayed by one another? After all, humanity was not created for the keeping of Sabbath rules, instead Sabbath was a gift to humanity from God. The gift of liberation from the pre-occupation of 24/7/365 tasks completion. The gift of liberation from all that enslaves us. The gift of liberation to be restored, to live a transformed existence of active holiness where we celebrate everything God has done for us and will do for us by seeing God’s presence and the evidence of God’s rule in the present moments of our lives even as we live united to God and God’s rule that lifts people out of their present situation into a new transformed life where they fully participate in the life of the community and are seen as a talented human person who has a name, who makes a contribution to the community and who is the very image of God in our midst. Just like all of us.

Isn’t this what Jesus calls us to see when he breaks the rules and heals a woman on the Sabbath? Isn’t Jesus calling us to embrace God’s rule of love as the only rule we need to keep?         

Whose Voice Do We Listen to?

Whose voice do we listen to is the key question being asked in this week’s scripture readings. Typically, we call this Sunday Good Shepherd Sunday because Psalm 23 speaks of the shepherd who leads the sheep to places of tranquility with the abundance necessary to sustain life and have life thrive and because of the John 10 reading about Jesus declaring the disciples are like sheep who knows their shepherd’s voice and can distinguish his voice over and against all other voices competing for their attention. The other scripture readings for this week have similar thematic elements revolving around voices and who recognizes them and the good news they bring.

When I was teenager I listened to Thelonious Monk, Herbie Hancock, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Herbie Mann, Judy Collins, and Joni Mitchell, but it was Miles Davis whom I listened to endlessly. In the mid 70’s, Miles Davis cut an album (for those younger than 50 think CD) called “On the Corner.” I couldn’t wait to play it, but when I did all I heard was noise sounding very much like a city street at midday.

          I thought, “I paid for this! What a rip off!” Then I remembered this was Miles the architect of cool jazz. Miles, the inventor of the jazz edge, was continually pushing the edge further and further out. So, I listened to some more. At first all I could hear was city street noise- cars, horns, radios, chatter, and all those other sounds, but now I was listening for Miles’ voice, his horn. The distinctive timber, the smooth, the slow dance, the boisterous, bounding, flying of his horn cutting through the noise creating space between the sounds leading me down a path only those who recognize and know his voice might journey to get to the place where jazz lifts one up beyond the noise and beyond oneself.

          The key to the journey of following Miles down that path is recognizing and knowing his distinctive voice. Strangely enough, this is the same key to following Jesus.

          “The shepherd calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.”

Jesus knows the only way for his followers to do what he taught and empowered them to do after he was no longer physically, in the five senses meaning of the word, with them was for them to hear his voice, recognize his voice, then to faithfully walk the path Christ bushwhacked and blazed before them, so they might be followers of Christ’s way.

The way of daily witnessing to God’s restorative justice, God’s liberation from oppression, God’s promise of an abundant life for everyone, everywhere, and God’s love that is so inclusive it reaches out even to those who hate and seek to exclude everyone not like them, healing and reconciling all human brokenness by words and actions.

Jesus experienced throughout his life all the noise of competing voices trying to get him to take a different path than the one he was leading his followers to walk, whether it was the noise of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, the Zealots, or the Romans, so he knew his followers experienced all of those same competing voices and would experience even more competing voices, even those voices among the apostles and followers of Christ saying, “No. Not that way! This is the way we need to go” along with the noise of Greek philosophers proclaiming the Epicurean way, the Stoic way, the Platonic or Neo-Platonic way, the Socratic way, or the mystery religion way. 

We ourselves are still surrounded and inundated by the voices seeking to lure us down another path, encouraging us to leave Christ’s path for a path that will lead us only into the fragmentation of a way of being promising, as Joni Mitchell has written in her song “Woodstock”, to only make us “be a cog in something turning, caught in the devil’s bargain.” Whether it the voices of advertising on radio, television, newspapers, magazines, the internet; the voices of people telling us we need to regain the Enlightenment understanding of the duality of the world that is divided between materiality and spirituality, the voices of those who say science and faith have nothing in common and if we choose one we must then exclude the other as has been suggested in way too many high school curriculums, voices calling us to equate success with greed as the greed is good promoters like John Stossel who encourage a monoculture that believes Monsanto can own your DNA and own all the seeds producing the food you eat, voices who clamor for despoiling all of creation in search of fuel and profits without recognizing what we do to the earth, the air, and the water we do to ourselves in a communal act of global extinction, the noise of people telling us to grow the church by taking on all the characteristics of an over rationalized industrialized process, so the church might resemble McDonald’s with its efficiency, quantification, predictability, and control or those who proclaim faith as entertainment while driving out neighbor love and the Sermon on the Mount; and the noise of people telling us violence is entertainment and so is watching people humiliate themselves for money on shows like Survivor and the Price is Right. All this noise and more noise like it seek to mask, hide, and distort the one voice we need to hear and follow in living our daily lives. That’s why the key for us and for the apostles is to hear and recognize Jesus’ voice the way sheep recognize the voice of their shepherd.

Now, we might not like it when Jesus refers to us as sheep because sheep are well, notoriously dumb, passive creatures who won’t and can’t defend themselves against predators, and are, also, prone to get lost. But I kinda think they are smart because sheep know they can’t go it alone and they know they need someone to lead and guide them. I was told by a parishioner in another congregation I served, who had been shepherd when he was a boy, that sheep are herded by being led. If you were to stand behind sheep and make a lot of noise all that happens is that the sheep run around to get behind, you. They prefer being led. However, they will only follow their shepherd because his voice is the one voice they know and trust. You see, shepherds and sheep have an intimate relationship with each other. Sheep, it seems, consider the shepherds part of their family and they develop and share a language of their own. The shepherd can tell the difference between a bleat of pain and a bleat of pleasure, while the sheep learn the click of a tongue that means food, the two-note song signaling it’s time to go home, and the tone of comfort in the shepherd’s voice that assures the sheep the shepherd is looking out for their well-being. They trust the shepherd will never lead them into danger or abandon them, but will always protect and save them, will always lead them to places of nourishment and peace.

          The same is true for the apostles. Their relationship with Jesus grows and deepens over those three years and, most importantly, during the forty days following his resurrection. The apostles learn what his voice sounds like and what his words mean. They develop a language that is not only their own, but has its roots in the language they already share as Jews, though Jesus deepens their understanding of the nuances of this language by all that he teaches and commands them and how he, himself, lives it. So, when they are sent out into the world to teach all that Jesus taught them on the day of Pentecost, they are still able to hear his voice, trust his voice and keep to the path he calls them to journey along throughout their lives even as they invite others to join them on the journey and become the sheep in Christ’s flock, and these new sheep will in turn learn to hear Jesus’ voice, to trust his voice, and trust that God in Christ is the good shepherd.

          Yet, how is it that those of us who hear the apostles’ invitation to join the journey and become part of the flock can hear Jesus’ voice, trust and know it is his distinctive voice? The same way the apostles learned. By being in an intimate relationship with God in Christ who already knows our name, has already committed himself to us, has been involved in our lives before our birth and every moment following our birth, and who is waiting for us to enter this relationship of trust and mutuality by learning to hear God’s voice speaking to us through scripture, in the silence of prayer and in the life experiences of the people around us. This is a way to think about how you will continue to be a community of faith for years to come, how you will leave a legacy ensuring future generations are able to be part of this community of faith.

          For it is in community reading scripture together that we hear God’s voice speaking life into being, teaching the man and woman to trust God, promising a covenant of life with all creation whose symbol is the rainbow, calling Abraham and Sarah into a relationship with God that promises abundant life and blessing not only for Abraham and Sarah and their children, but for all humanity and creation through them, demanding the liberation of the God’s people out of death dealing slavery then leading them through a wilderness where God speaks into being a new way of living as a distinctive community. In scripture we hear God calling prophets to speak God’s words of repentance, new life, and hope. In scripture, we hear God’s promise of healing, of abundant new life, of justice, salvation, of hope in the voice of Jesus, whom God sends not to condemn us, but to lead us to the fullness of life by a cross and resurrection. In scripture we learn that Christ is the voice speaking self-giving love that is patient, kind, seeking our well-being, and always keeping the promise of abundant life.

          A promise we hear in the silence of prayer when we still our voices and all those other competing voices, so we might concentrate on actively listening for Christ’s voice. For we know we cannot listen very well to the voice of Christ until we are silent as the 14^th Century mystic Johannes Tauler puts it, “Therefore you should observe silence! In that manner the Word can be uttered and heard within. For surely, if you choose to speak, God in Christ must fall silent. There is no better way of serving the word than by silence and by listening,” We also know God in Christ speaks in silence because it was in the silence of night when all was quiet that God spoke to Samuel, it was in the stillness of the mountain top that God spoke to Elijah, it was in the quiet of the daily household chores that God spoke through the angel Gabriel to Mary. Scripture is where we hear Christ’s voice speaking out to us, but scripture is also where we hear the voices of those witnessing to God in Christ’s voice speaking to them in the middle of their daily lives. From Noah hearing God calling him to build an ark to Abraham and Sarah answering God’s call to leave their homeland for the place God will show them. However most notably it is in the psalms where the witnesses of God’s grace speak joyous, glad abandoning praise and humble thanksgiving for the steadfast love, healing justice, reconciling mercy, and the goodness of an abundant life lived in intimacy with God even as they testify to hope grounded in God’s continuing promises of life heard at times of deepest turmoil and pain. A testimony reminding us the psalms are prayers lived by people in all times and places.

          People like Pearl Kashishian, who while standing at her husband’s beside where he lay cold and lifeless one September evening, spoke softly to him, “Shall I read to you darling?’ His eyelids fluttered and she began reading, “the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” For Pearl, an Armenian woman of faith looking back upon more than sixty-five years of married life she knows how God’s goodness and mercy have pursued her and her husband. For Pearl, this psalm is a reminder of how Christ’s voice and God’s presence have led her down safe paths, especially the experience of walking through the valley of the shadow of death as a child living through the Turkish genocide of Armenians from 1894-1916 when more than a million Armenians were killed. As a young woman, Pearl left her town of Kayseri traveling through the desert where more than once the traveling party was without food and water until somehow food was discovered. Where more than once they were led on the right paths avoiding danger, particularly the night Turkish soldiers surrounded the group bringing them well within the shadow of darkness, but a rod and staff-Pearl said-quite literally protected them. That night at her husband’s hospice bed, her husband Fred looked at her and in a hoarse whisper asked, “What will you do alone?” “Fred, “she said, “God is good. Remember how he protected me through the massacre and led me safely to America? Surely, we can trust God to take care of me now. We will simply listen to hear Christ’s voice calling us to follow where he leads.” For the truth is, we do live in the presence of the Lord’s goodness and mercy, and we do dwell in the house of the Lord, and we shall all our life, without end.             

God’s Inexplicable Call

“What do they see in me?” Louis asked himself. “Doesn’t she know who I am?

Louis knew exactly who he was. A man addicted to heroin for most of his life, whose drive to feed his addiction took over his life entirely. “My life became a continual search for the drug. When my mother was dying, “he said, “I never visited her. I was too busy looking for my next fix.” He was a man who spent most of his life in and out prison and when he wasn’t in prison he disappeared for a year at a time, just to hide out from anyone who dared to reach out to him. He knew he was worthless.

          But he wasn’t worthless to Lori Gonzalez a suburban housewife and mother of three children, who volunteered at her church’s homeless shelter. Lori had been volunteering for a while at the shelter when she was pushed into serving gravy in the food line and came face to face for the first time with the people who came to the shelter. No longer were they anonymous people, she looked into their eyes, she began praying for them and then as she said, “I felt touched by the spirit of God telling me I had to know their names. I realized that these were people who others kept at a distance. Getting to know their names meant a lot. That was the day I found my calling.”

          Serving gravy at a homeless shelter seems like a strange place to hear God’s call, let alone be a suburban housewife in Southern California who makes friends with drug addicts and homeless men and women and whose dream ministry is to start a shelter for the homeless with her family and name it, “Louie’s Place” in honor of her friend Louie, who heard his own call from God during rehab and who now, “struggles a lot and each day is a challenge, but I am getting stronger every day and life is much better now.” Now he has his own apartment and a full-time job. On the weekends, he spends his time doing maintenance at Glenkirk Church where the homeless shelter Lori serves is located.

          A drug addict and a suburban housewife. Two vastly different people, living vastly different lives, yet God calls both to changed lives. But, why? Why would God choose those two people? It is inexplicable! We can’t explain it because we don’t have ready-made answers to why God chooses to do a lot of things.

          Maybe the answer is simply, God does inexplicable things. Think about it for a minute. God chooses to call Paul to be Christ’s ambassador to the gentiles. I mean here is a guy who is the Pharisees’ Pharisee. He was a zealot for his faith and in his zeal was prompted to work for the purity of the faith by getting rid of these blasphemers speaking about Jesus as Lord. Jesus as Messiah. Jesus as God. Saul, his name before God changed it for him, was absolute in his certainty that he understood whom these people were and what to do about them. He based his life on the assumption that the survival of God’s people depended upon making sure that God’s welcome was extended only to the limited number of people for which it was meant. He wasn’t being a closed-minded jerk preserving his own status; in his eyes, he was acting to ensure the survival of his people, his family in the broadest and noblest sense.

So, he went about breathing threats and murder against the disciples. There was not any room for disagreement or even the tolerance of “let’s agree to disagree.” This was the serious business of getting these people who were destroying the faith either to renounce their discipleship or get them out of the synagogues before they brought everything to an end.

          He was on his way to Damascus with a letter of authority from the Temple high priest to arrest anyone suspected of being a follower of the Way-a follower of Christ. His plan as he rode the Damascus Road that day was to hurry to Damascus to find these people, arrest them then bring them back in chains to Jerusalem for a quick, short trial before punishing them. Saul was certain about what he was doing and why he was doing it. Saul was dead, certain he was right.

          Now, if you’ve ever tried to persuade someone of Saul’s temperament to change his or her mind, you know it’s a challenging thing to do. Maybe, that’s why the only way God could get Saul’s attention was with a blinding flash of light in the middle of the day in the middle of the road to Damascus. It was a light so blinding; Saul was unable to see during and after the encounter with Christ, who asks Saul the million-dollar question, “Why are you persecuting me?” Now suddenly, the central question for his life was not about who is worthy enough to join the people of God, but how quickly all people can be gathered at the table to break bread with Jesus in a foretaste of the feast that will never end. Suddenly he’s no longer the Saul the Pharisee, but Paul the blind man lying in a bed waiting for the blindness somehow to be lifted off his eyes, so he can really see what is truly real.

           But Paul isn’t the only one whom God inexplicably chose to call. Peter was probably the last person anyone in his village would have thought would be put in charge of anything. He was a fisherman, not a high-status job in the first century, and he was known to be somewhat of a speak first-think later sort of guy, who was just as likely to be wrong as he was to be right and even if he was right, he might not know it or even know why he was right. The central question in Peter’s life was, “Will there be enough fish today for us to eat?”  Each day he set out to answer that question and the answer was always, ”Uh sure we have enough fish to eat today.” Sometimes it was, “no, we don’t.” Then, Jesus comes along after his resurrection and Peter and the boys have so many fish, the boat is about to sink! Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me?” and suddenly the central question for Peter’s life is, “can I gather the fullness of the flock I am called to feed with the unlimited blessings God has for every person in the world?”

          Paul and Peter, Louie and Lori are not the only ones God has inexplicably called.

John Wesley was a proper little Oxford don, a priest, a devout Christian who had devoted his life to study and proclamation of the gospel. But he had no fire. After a disastrous stint as missionary in Georgia, he went, in his words, “unwillingly” to a meeting in Alders Gate Street in London. There, while someone was reading Luther’s dull commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Wesley’s heart was “strangely warmed.” His soul struck fire and the Wesleyan revival began. It was, for Wesley, just like Saul on the Damascus Road.

          Then, there is writer Anne Braden, who grew up in the old South, in a privileged family, in the 1930’s. As a college student, she had dinner one night with an African American woman. There, at the table, sharing a meal together, she was born again. In words worthy of Paul she later wrote, “It was a tremendous revelation…the turning point of my life. All the cramping walls of a lifetime seemed to have come tumbling down in that moment. Some heavy shackles seemed to have fallen from my feet. For the first time in my nineteen years on this earth, I had room to stretch my arms and legs and lift my head high toward the sky…. Here for a moment, I glimpsed a vision of the world as it should be; where people are people, and spirits have room to grow. I never got over it.” (The Wall Between, pp. 27-28)

One of my professors at Columbia was Barbara Brown Taylor, who told us of the time she was on a seminary admissions committee. They turned this student down, a student who obviously had few academic qualifications for theological study. But he wrote to them from his jail cell to tell them that the parole board would let him out if they let him in. They invited him to plead his case before them. Barbara described how this big guy came in and told them that, as a young teenager, he had held up a convenience store. All he remembered was brandishing this unloaded gun at the clerk, an off-duty policeman spotted him, shots rang out. Then, before the oak table of the seminary admissions committee, he pulls up his shirt to show them where the policeman’s bullet got him in the gut, went out the other side. “That was my Damascus Road, my burning bush!” he exclaimed.

“Of course,” said Barbara, “we didn’t want to admit him into seminary. But what could we do? We knew Acts 9! If God could make an apostle out of Saul the murderer, what might God do with a guy with an unloaded gun? It was just the sort of inexplicable thing that a God who would raise Jesus from the dead just might do.

But the truly inexplicable call God is making is happening to someone here this morning. Someone sitting next to you has been hearing the small, still voice speaking quietly to her or him. Someone has heard God’s inexplicable call through the voice of husband or wife or, even, you. Someone at this moment is feeling that strange warming sensation Wesley described, or just the feeling of the spirit of God moving through them, pushing, and prodding and grabbing hold of them and showing them the world as it should be and will be through the grace of God.

Right here and right now, the God who raised Jesus from the dead is doing what God does, making the inexplicable call that will change the central question of somebody’s life, who might just be asking the same question everybody, including me, asks God when we hear that call, “God, don’t you know who I am?”

Those Who Have Eyes to See

One of my favorite cartoons is one from the New Yorker magazine of the 1930s picturing a preacher standing up at a baseball game shouting at the umpire, “Thou hast eyes to see, but thou seest not.” 

             Of course, what we see sometimes depends upon where we are standing, our values, our faith tradition, our life experiences, which all meld together to create our perspective that leads us to the way we interpret events, people, and the world around us. One of the points Justo Gonzalez, preeminent church historian, made, when three of my colleagues and I met with him a few years ago to discuss issues facing the church, was about perspective because quite honestly the issue the North American Christian churches are stressing about are not the same issues facing Christians in other parts of the world at all. While our denominational leaders constantly express concern-some might say whine-about the decline of church membership; Christians in other parts of the world are celebrating the growth of the Christian church. Indeed, the fastest growing Christian churches in the United States are among immigrant communities, especially in the Boston area. Also, there are more Christians in the world today than at any other time. Indeed, even in Muslim countries many people are becoming Christians.

            So, perspective is important not only for how we see, but what we see. This is, I think, the important lesson we learn from the dinner party Martha, Mary and Lazarus throw for Jesus and the disciples the night before Jesus triumphantly enters Jerusalem six days before his death. Remember, Jesus and the disciples return to Bethany and stop at the home of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. Now, Lazarus, the man whom Jesus had earlier raised from the dead, hosts a dinner for Jesus at the home he shares with his sisters. As usual, Martha prepared and served dinner. Then, Mary comes into the dining area carrying a jar of costly perfume. She kneels at Jesus’ feet and bathes his feet with this perfume, wiping his feet with her hair in an act of loving devotion and an act of gratitude. This perfume’s bouquet fills the home with a sweet fragrance. It lingered in the air for days, so each person who breathes it in over the next few weeks will recall what happened that night and if not knowing it for themselves will ask, “Why does this house smell so sweet?” giving Mary the chance to tell the story.

            Judas watches this act of humble, loving devotion and immediately sets out to rebuke her by defining the act as wasting a valuable resource.

 “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” He demands.  Certainly, he has a point, doesn’t he? I mean, three hundred denarii could feed a family for a year, since a denarii was the daily wage for a laborer in First Century Jerusalem. As a poor person, if the laborer did not make that daily wage, he and his family did not eat that day and stringing together several days or weeks of not eating put their lives at risk.  Having grown up living in poverty, I can tell you that for people living on the tattered edge of survival anywhere in the world, waste of any sort can mean death.

I am sure many of you learned the same adage “waste not, want not,” that I learned from my mother who lived during the Great Depression of the 1930s.  My mother made sure if something could still be useful it was saved and not thrown away. We used everything until it could no longer be used and I’m guessing many of us are just as concerned today about not wasting our resources whether time, money, or other resources.

            However, wastefulness is a multifaceted problem. Wastefulness is a problem here in America because it tends to blind us to how much we have compared to other people in the world. Also, our wastefulness may suggest we do not know the value of those resources we are wasting. Of course, being overly concerned about wastefulness may also produce stinginess. As Ronald Sider has noted in his book, “Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger”, “the richer we become the less we want to share with others.” We may even declare there aren’t enough resources to go around. We hear that all the time right now, don’t we? Not enough money for teachers or schools. Not enough money for hiring nurses. Not enough money for healthcare for everyone. We just can’t afford it! Isn’t that part of the argument surrounding healthcare reform or eradicating poverty?  

Yet, do you realize that we spent about $5 trillion on the defunct Star Wars missile defense system that never worked and might never have worked according to several noted scientists. Now, if we, as Sister Joan Chittister suggested to the Presbyterian Women a few years ago, took just $1 trillion out of that $5 trillion we could buy a $100,000 home for every family in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Iowa, we could put a $10,000 car in every one those garages and still have enough left over to build 250 $10 million libraries and 250 $10 million hospitals for every city in those states. After that, we could still have money to bank and from the interest alone we could pay 10,000 nurses and 10,000 teachers and still give $5,000 to every family in those states? So, it is not about having enough resources, it might be having the eyes to see our resources and our lives in a new way.

Certainly, Mary, by her act, challenges us to see ourselves and our life in a new way through her extravagant gift, which is very much like the actions of the widow, who gave all she had to the Temple. When Jesus says the widow who placed two mites in the collection box gave more than all the others, he is not stating an accounting fact. Rather, Jesus is describing something about her gratitude and her trust in God.  Though she gave only two mites, the widow gave extravagantly, recklessly, foolishly. She gave in the same way she had experienced receiving God’s blessings of life, receiving God’s love. She gave in the same measure as God gives. She has eyes to see her life differently than those around her, so her actions can only be defined by how she sees and experiences life. 

             It is the same for Mary.  After her brother’s resurrection, Mary sees her life in a new way. She also saw Jesus in a new way and perceives what he is doing as extravagantly generous and different. Remember, it was just a brief time ago that Jesus had raised her brother Lazarus to new life after he had been dead for four days.  You will recall that on that day, Martha came out to meet Jesus after Lazarus’ died and said, “You know if you’d been here my brother wouldn’t have died.” Prompting Jesus to say, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha retorts, “Yeah, I know on the last day.”  Then Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life and those who believe in me, even though they die will live and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Whereupon Martha affirms Jesus is the Messiah. Then, Mary comes out to meet him, kneels at his feet weeping and says, “Lord, if you had been here my brother wouldn’t have died.” Remember, it was her weeping and the weeping of the other villagers in Bethany that moved Jesus to weep with them, to share the pain of their grief and this was the prelude to his raising Lazarus to new life.

            The other thing to remember is Bethany is just a stopover on the way to Jerusalem during the Passover where Jesus is going to suffer, die, be buried, and be raised again on the third day. A small piece of information he has been telling the disciples repeatedly. Yet, Judas and the other disciples do not seem too concerned about Jesus’ suffering and death. They may simply not believe it is going to happen. Then again, it’s about how they see and how they perceive.

  Which brings to my mind something Kathleen Norris wrote, “Maybe monks and poets know, as Jesus did, when a friend, in an extravagant, loving gesture bathed his feet in nard, an expensive, fragrant oil and wiped them with her hair, that those who know the exact price of things, as Judas did, often don’t know the true cost or value of anything.”

            Occurring between two deaths and two resurrections, Mary’s action becomes a prophetic proclamation of Christ’s death and resurrection, and by her act she gives testimony to the truth which she personally has experienced: out of death Jesus brings life. Jesus did not raise Lazarus from death as some side show example of power, but as a way of revealing who God is and what God is doing through Christ, which points humanity to the glory of God, who creates and brings forth life even out of situations where life does not seem possible.

This is the new thing God is doing, but Judas and the other disciples fail to see the new thing because they are stuck in the mud of their old way of seeing and perceiving the world.

            However, Mary does see. She does perceive God doing a new thing in Christ, so she breaks all the taboos of her day, related to gender, social distance, and extravagance, and expresses her faith in the Christ who faced death because of his solidarity with the community’s marginalized. She is with Jesus in her prophetic action in the same way that Jesus is with the poor, the widows, the children, the alien, and those on the edges of society. She is with Jesus as a grateful response to the extravagant giving of himself. Mary recognizes the wildly extravagant gift of life Jesus has given to her brother and to her, so she gives in the same measure as God in Christ has given to her out of gratitude and love. For the only response to grace is gratitude for that is what closes the circle sending the love of the receiver back to the giver, who becomes a receiver, creating a joyful spiral of giving and receiving rising higher and higher and uniting the giver and the receiver in a relationship of solidarity, mutuality, and love. This is the very example of Christian discipleship which is defined by acts of love in relationships of solidarity and mutuality lifting people up to a vibrant and thriving life and is also defined by each person’s response to Jesus made visible in the integrity of their life.

This is the lesson and challenge Mary teaches us. For when she pours extravagant perfume on Jesus’ feet, she is making a gesture of gratitude that sees Jesus for whom he really is and she recognizes, who she really is and what her life is to be. The same is true for us. When we respond to God’s gift of grace with gratitude, we see God as the giver of life, and we see clearly that we did not create ourselves and that we continue to exist because of God’s creative love expressed forcefully in Christ’s self-offering death and his resurrection. Out of this clarity of vision, we are able to see that each gesture of gratitude we make whether of private or public prayer, worship, or celebrating the sacraments unites us with Christ in a spiraling love that joyfully claims us with blessings declaring, “You belong” eliciting our grateful response, “Thank you, God!,” in all we say and do until our whole life becomes a sacred gesture of gratitude to God, who gives life generously and extravagantly.

“Until”

          Words are so great! I love words. Words like Varoom or chrysanthemum or nettle. They just roll around in the mouth and bring such joy to say them like marshmallow and s’mores. Put a few together like in the song “We’ve all Gone to the Moon” whose lyric is “mouths full of chocolates” and there is a lush, richness that just makes you smile.

          Of course, there are words so full of power they make us come to attention when they are spoken. There are words that speak of softness and gentleness just by their sounds. But some words are easily forgotten or overlooked as we read or hear them because they don’t seem important. One such word is “Until.”

  Until is a small word. It is used to connect subordinate clauses in sentences, which seems like sort of a dull thing to do. After all, it isn’t powerful like nouns or verbs that are the center of attention in sentences. Nor is it as glamorous as the adjectives or adverbs one might pile upon one another in an ever-cascading array of words creating sounds and images that land on a single noun to flatter and fete it by all the extravagant attention being paid to its multifaceted existence.

          No, “Until” is just a simple word. A sort of blue-collar-pack-the-lunchbox-go-to-work kind of a word. Yet, in the right circumstances it has more power than any verb or noun might ever have. For example, did you sense its power in the parable of the Lost Sheep” when it created a more dynamic meaning for the parable?

          “Which of you is like the shepherd, who having one hundred sheep and losing one does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness to go after the one that is lost “Until” he finds it?”

          Until tells us that this shepherd does not assign a time limit to his searching, the shepherd searches continuously no matter how long it takes to find the lost sheep. It might be an hour, an afternoon, or a morning. It might take all day or even several days, a month or a year, a decade or beyond, but the only basis for the shepherd stopping the search is finding that one lost sheep.

          “Until” defines for us what is most important to the shepherd. The shepherd is not content to have most of his sheep safe in the sheepfold. This shepherd wants all the sheep to be safe and well and gathered, so the flock will be whole. Every sheep is important to this shepherd, so much so he cannot allow even one to be lost.

          As powerful as “Until” is in the parable of the lost sheep, its power expands in the parable of the lost coin. “Or, what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully “Until” she finds it?”

          “Until” not only defines the length of the search, but it gives the impression of the acute urgency and thoroughness of the search. This woman is leaving no dust bunny not swept. This search is the clean every speck of dust, turn over every piece of paper, move every piece of furniture even grandma’s heavy couch from the thirties when they used real hardwood, lift up every blanket, dust ruffle, cup, glass, saucer, look in the cat’s paw and dog’s bed, in the attic, the basement, empty out the kitchen garbage can onto newspapers, sift through the coffee grounds kind of searching without stopping UNTIL the lost coin is found. It doesn’t matter that she has nine other coins that individually are just as valuable as or collectively more valuable than the one lost coin. This woman isn’t stopping UNTIL the lost one is found. What is important about the lost coin is finding it.

          The same might be said of the father who waits for his younger son to come home from that son’s waste filled journey to a distant land, where the son lived as he pleased, both wasting all the inheritance he had demanded from his father and wasting himself before finally ending up living with pigs and eating their slop.

          Now I know scripture does not actually have the word “until” in this story, but I think it is suggested because the father was standing on the road leading to his home searching the horizon for the appearance of his younger son. When his son appeared, the father ran to his son. So, I think we could say that the father stood searching the length of the road leading to his home every day UNTIL he saw his son, then he ran toward him. Hugs him. Clothes him with the finest robes. Doesn’t care about the rehearsed apologetic, humbling, groveling, hoping to be forgiven speech of the son, instead the father says, “Let’s party! Let’s celebrate my sons’ homecoming because I thought my son was dead UNTIL he showed up here alive!”

          And again “until” describes the unlimited time the father was willing to wait and search the horizon for some sign of his child’s return. There is no end to the father’s waiting because he will only stop waiting and searching until the time the child who was lost is found. We may think extraordinarily little about the word “until” as we read or listen to these parables being read, but if we really listen closely or read them closely, we will experience the powerful and deep meaning the word “until’ imparts. For this word is not a simple connecting word. Rather, it is pointing us beyond our own limited perspective about how we think God is working in the world and our limited comprehension of the depth of God’s grace, so we might see that God is out to completely transform the world and every person in the world. God is not content with most or some of the people being transformed or gathered in God’s reality. God wants everyone transformed and gathered as one community and God will not stop seeking and searching “Until” all are gathered.

          Jesus tells these parables not simply to answer the critics who complain and grumble that he is spending too much time with tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, and other sinners. Jesus tells them to teach those who hear him something deeply profound about God.

  God is interested and loves deeply all those who are seeking to be as faithful as they can be, like the older brother in the story of the prodigal son, however God refuses to allow those who wander off and get lost to remain lost. God has already blessed the faithful and they have already received everything God can give them. They have God’s grace and love in abundance. But God wants everyone to experience grace, experience being loved even if they have been unloved or even unlovable. One of the important things the actress Monique said to reporters about playing the character she did in the film “Precious” was that she learned that everybody needs to be loved and wants to be loved, even at those moments when they are as lost as they can be and at those times when they may be as unlovable as they might be.

          John reminds us, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who trusts in him may not perish but have eternal life. Indeed, God didn’t send Jesus into the world to condemn the world, judge it, or blow it up in some military apocalypse movie that some Christians think is going to happen, and they are waiting to have happen because they believe in the anti-biblical false assumption that only the select truly righteous few will be whisked away to heaven. Nor did God send Jesus into the world because as Christian Nationalists wrongly believe God only loves some people and not others. Instead, what scripture tells us through the prophets, God’s teachings and Jesus’ story teaching is what God desires and is working to bring to completion is the salvation of the entire world; transforming every person and community for an abundant life, giving every person and all of creation a new life characterized by sustainable relationships and communities whose foundation is God’s compassion, God’s infinite providence, God’s justice, God’s deep and expansive love that is extravagant and outrageous even as it passes all our understanding, surpassing even all our imaginations.

          I have to say that every time I preach about God’s unlimited, unmerited free grace, people get annoyed and, sometimes get angry with me because as the hymn “there’s a wideness in God’s mercy” points out in a stanza typically left out of most hymnals including our own, “But we make his love too narrow by false limits of our own; and we magnify his strictness with a zeal he will not own.”

          Some folks just can’t stand free grace because they want everyone to earn their way into heaven as if that were possible. They want everyone to have to measure up to a standard of perfection they create. They are like the folks grumbling about Jesus eating with sinners and tax collectors. They are the older brother, who doesn’t realize he already has everything God has to give him. They are folks who can’t sing, “Was there ever kinder shepherd half so gentle, half so sweet, as the Savior who have us come and gather at his feet?”

           Yet, “Until” reminds us God’s expansive, free, unmerited, undeserved love that is outrageous, extravagant, beyond our imagination is exactly the love we are to express in our teaching through the stories we tell whether it is retelling these stories of lost coins, lost sheep, or lost children, the Good Samaritan story, or the stories of Jesus healing and feeding folks. We are to express this same extravagant love in our missions whether it is repairing somebody’s home or reaching deeper into the Baldwinsville community to lift people out of poverty.

It is this same outrageous, unmerited love we are to express in our worship and our music singing all the stanzas of all the great diversity of hymns as we try to reach every one of all ages, singing boldly about a love that grabs hold of us and does not let us go. It is the same radical searching, rock solid love we express and share in fellowship by encouraging and honoring every person’s contribution to an event.

 It is this expansive, outrageous love that is the good news people are to use as the foundation for building their lives upon. A foundation that will not shift or crumble under you because it is not sand that may be washed away by the tides of struggle and challenge. Nor is this foundation eroded earth on a hillside that may be turned into slip sliding mud falling down a ravine by the hard rains of tough times and broken relationships.

          God’s love is granite solid. It will not fade away or fall away. Even when we are lost God comes searching for us Until we are found and welcomed back with great celebration to the home of wholeness, completeness, gracious hospitality, and health that is the peace Christ brings to every one of us and every person in the world today and every day of our new, transformed life.

Risking All for Life

In 1933 the German Lutheran and Reformed Confessional Churches were faced with a tough decision. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party had taken over the running the government and was making everything in Germany subservient to the state and to Hitler. The German Confessional Churches did not escape this invasion. Many people in the church-members and pastors alike-chose, for whatever reason, to confess the church was subservient to Hitler and he was to be regarded as head of the church instead of God and Christ.

          However, in 1934 over 100 pastors gathered in the town of Barmen to decide what they were going to do and say about this challenge. Three men, Reinhold Niemoller, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Swiss theologian Karl Barth met together and wrote what is now called the “The Theological Declaration of Barmen” which said in part, “Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and death. We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths as God’s revelation.”

          The pastors unanimously approved this declaration and went home from Barmen to preach this from their pulpits the following Sunday. Within days of that Sunday nearly every one of them was arrested. Eventually, all 100 pastors were put into concentration camps and nearly all of them died in the camps.

          At a time when very few people in Germany or outside of Germany dared to stand against or oppose Hitler and the Nazis, these pastors courageously risked everything for life by standing up and publicly confessing what they knew was the truth. Their witness is the tangible act of Psalm 27, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”   The psalmist expression of trust and hope in God welcomes people who are scared or uncertain about the future to enter God’s home with the assurance there is a joyful and peace-filled life inside if they will only risk walking through the doorway. Those 100 German pastors knew what was likely to happen to them if they dared speak truth to power, but they also knew where their citizenship rested and where real life dwelled.

          “Yes, my brothers!” Paul would have said to those 100 pastors because they decided to risk living as “citizens of heaven” and not live as people “whose minds were set on earthly things.”

Everyday Christians throughout the world are doing the same. Today, Christians in Turkmenistan and other places in Asia Minor have Bibles and they read them with their neighbors in their homes knowing that being caught with a Bible will land them in prison, yet they willingly risk everything to own a Bible, to read and study scripture together, they worship in small house churches and they hold VBS camps for children and youth. I have read their letters sent to those of us who are their prayer partners. Letters filled with the joy of faith and letters where they admit their fears. Yet, they continue to affirm their trust and hope in God.

We too are invited to enter God’s home during this our Lenten journey by imitating those saints past and present who struggle to live their faith in community with the high expectation that they were doing what Jesus called all who follow him to do, “pick up the cross and follow me,” following Christ by imitating Christ’s declaration of citizenship in God’s kingdom when the Pharisees who came out to warn Jesus that Herod was coming to get him. Jesus made it clear that Herod posed no threat to him, since he was on a sacred journey ordained by God, which was not going to be stopped by that old fox Herod. Further, Jesus was focused on what God wanted and not what anyone else wanted.

          This is exactly the point Paul is making to the house churches of Philippi when he contrasts the difference between having one’s mind set on earthly things and affirming one’s citizenship in heaven.

Now, it may sound rather otherworldly to affirm our citizenship in heaven, but when Paul speaks of our “citizenship in heaven” he is saying something that is full of earthly significance for us and for the Philippians.

          Citizenship is about where you live, about the values, commitments, loyalties, and allegiances that make you who you are or create your “Why” for living. When you cross some international border and hand the customs officer your passport, you are revealing where you live, what your values are, how you will act and react to situations in a foreign land, where you have come from and to where you shall return. Citizenship tells other people something about you.

          This was just as true for ancient Israel. To be an Israelite meant something specific about who you were, how you would act and react to situations in a world that was foreign to you. For Israelites to understand what that meant, they had to hear the story in scripture of how they came to exist as this particular community. They had to hear about Abram and Sarai risking everything to go where God was sending them beyond Ur. They had to hear the promises God made to Abraham of descendants as numerous as the stars in the night sky.

  They had to hear about the covenant ritual of sacrifice God performed to seal that promise and in hearing these stories they learned what it meant for them to live every day in the land God had promised to give Abraham and Sarah’s descendants. They heard the Scriptures read, so they might comprehend what it meant to be this particular community in a relationship with God, who chose them to serve God’s agenda for humanity, so they could do actions each day leading them toward the fulfillment of their “Why.”

As Walter Brueggeman, Old Testament scholar, describes the community forming nature of Scripture, “Israel’s narrative is a partisan, polemical narrative. It is concerned to build a counter community-counter to the oppression of Egypt, counter to the seduction of Canaan, counter to every culture, an alternative to every imperial pretense. There is nothing in this narrative that will appeal to outsiders who belong to another consensus, or who share a different ethos and participate in another epistemology. To such persons, Israel’s narratives are silly, narrow, scandalous, and obscurantist. Torah intends to nurture insiders who are willing to risk a specific universe of discourse and cast their lot there.”

          Paul is inviting the house churches of Philippi to also “risk a specific universe of discourse and cast their lot there” or, said in less academic terms, Paul is inviting the Philippians to step into the Kingdom of God as full citizens and live their lives according to God’s standards. To define themselves as persons in the way God defines human persons by being in relationship with God and other people the way God defines being in relationships and for the purposes that God intends for all humanity.

          This is not a simple thing Paul is inviting them to do because he is inviting them to renounce their citizenship in Caesar’s kingdom and all kingdoms created by human persons while declaring out loud their citizenship in God’s kingdom. This was not an insignificant act for a person in first century any more than it is for us today. In the First Century, it meant giving up family connections and social connections and moving to the margins of their contemporary society, so they could become part of a new community and a new family.

Paul was fully aware of what he was asking them to do because he had given up much that defined him. Paul was born into a prestigious and observant Jewish family in Tarsus. He was circumcised as required by Torah on the eighth day of his birth. His circumcision was a symbol of his inclusion in the people of God-Israel. In addition, even though he grew up in the cosmopolitan city of Tarsus, now in present day Turkey, Paul traced his family roots to the tribe of Benjamin, Jacob’s youngest son, Isaac’s grandson, and the great-grandson of Abraham and Sarah. Paul was the Hebrew of Hebrews. He was also a Pharisee. One who had studied the written Torah and the rabbinic oral interpretations of Torah. One who knew the psalms and the prophets. One who prayed faithfully in the synagogue. One who kept all 485 rules of ritual purity.

          Yet, all of these wonderful defining values, commitments, loyalties and allegiances, he counted as meaningless because of the one singular experience on the Damascus road when a brilliant flash of overpowering light changed everything for Paul. When the light flashed Paul fell to the ground. Then a voice spoke to him, “Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?”

          “Who are you? Lord?” Paul asked.

          “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” Jesus replied. “Go into the city and you will be told what to do.” Paul got up and opened his eyes only to discover he was blind. His companions brought him to Damascus where he stayed in home of a member of the synagogue. Finally, someone came to him and explained what Jesus wanted Paul to do and his blindness was healed.

           Paul gave up everything that had defined who he was as a person, so he could become the person Christ in God wanted him to be. The Damascus Road experience taught him faith was not about what family you are born into, nor is it perfectly keeping all the purity rules any more than it is the superficiality of giving up meat one day a week or adding a new prayer practice solely for Lent. Faith runs deeper than that.

          Faith is trusting God. Trusting that God has created everything we need for life and that there is enough for everyone. Faith is trusting God’s way of being in relationship within a community and God’s way of sustaining that community. Faith is trusting that God’s intention for humanity will fulfill the promises of peace and joy for all humanity and that in living God’s way will encourage other people to join in living that way as well. Faith is trusting God regardless of what everyone around us is claiming. Faith is having a deepening relationship with God and with God’s people lived out as citizens of heaven. Faith is tangibly, visibly being a follower of Christ welcoming all people into God’s home through worship and fellowship, expressing God’s love by serving other people. Beyond all of that, faith is risking everything for life because God is our light, our salvation, the stronghold of our life and we are unafraid of anything or anyone.

A Transforming Light

            As a child I loved standing next to the windows in our home on sunny days because if I stood in just the right place as the sun shone through the glass, I could see the light break up into a variety of colors – blues and reds and yellows. And, the next thing I knew I was smiling. It was almost like the secret of light was being told to me and opened for me to see. As if someone was saying, “See the plain light, well if you look closely at it, through this glass, at just this angle, you will see there is more to light than what you usually see. You will see all that light really is.”

          I often remember this when I look at morning glories. Morning glories in the darkness just before dawn are all wrapped up tightly in upon themselves. We can see the colors of the morning glories on the outside of the blossom and have some hint at its size and shape, but we can never really see the fullness of the morning glory until the sun rises and shines its light. Then, the morning glories open, opening wide and full, letting us see the rounded patterns of the edges of its bloom the grandeur of its rich blue or purple that deepen from edge to center then gradually lightens into yellow or white in the deep recess of the stem. At it’s fullest the morning glory reveals everything about itself to us. Almost inviting us to know it more completely in the light.

           This is what happened in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth. In the beginning the earth was a Tohu Va Bohu Va Hoshek- a dark, formless void where darkness covered the face of the deep. There was no shape, no patterns, no order, no way of seeing the potential; everything was hidden in murky darkness. Then, God said, “Let there be light. And there was light.” Light penetrated the darkness and soon we clearly see God’s creating word at work. In the light, we watch the unfolding of creation and the unfolding of God’s ordering of creation and God’s intention for creation. In the light, we see the transformation of the earth from a dark, hidden mass of chaos without life to a complex, layered, ordered well lit place where life flourishes and is sustained in abundant diversity.

          This is also what happened when God called Moses to come back up a second time to receive once again the Ten Commandments. You recall the first time Moses went up to the mountaintop to meet with God and had come down with the Ten Commandments he found the Hebrews had abandoned their trust in God in favor of worshipping a Golden Calf. In anger, Moses smashed the two tablets of the Decalogue then scolded the assembled Hebrews for giving into such foolishness.

When Moses reaches the mountaintop the second time, a cloud descends upon him and we are told God stands by him and in front of him. Moses talks with God in the radiant light revealing God’s presence. In the light, Moses has a conversation with God that is so intimate that God reveals to Moses the name that can only be spoken as Adonai-the Lord. The name that means being, that means life.

           In the light, God reveals to Moses the fullness of God’s character and intentionality for the Israelites and for the world. Here as never before, God reveals to a human person what is most powerful and definitional of God’s self. God is the one who is faithful, merciful, slow to anger, gracious, forgiving, and abounding in a steadfast love that does not end.

          As powerful and important as God’s self-revelation to Moses is, the meaning of this self-revelation is only made clear when placed in the context of the covenant God gives to Moses. God reveals God’s own character and intentionality, so that the Hebrews may know who God is and live in solidarity with God according to God’s way of being as the faithful community called Israel, the people of God.  The people God has chosen and transformed to be a blessing to the nations through this covenant. A covenant that gives body, continuity and visible shape to Israel’s new possibility of life when Moses writes it down on two stone tablets.

This is the reason God calls Moses into the radiant light of God’s presence. This intimate conversation and experience is not something private and only for Moses. Rather, Moses is called into the light of this unique self-revelation, so he may fully be the prophet God has called him to be. So, he can lead the people through the wilderness to the land God promised to give to Abraham’s children. So, he can be the person who hears God speaking to him and who, in turn, speaks God’s words of covenant-words of blessing and words filled with the promise of life-to the Israelites.

Moses carries these words down the mountain on two stone tablets, but Moses also carries in his shining face the awesome power of God’s light and presence into the midst of Israel, so Israel will know God dwells with them. It is in the dazzling light of Moses’ shining face that Israel experiences the awesome reality of God’s presence and sovereignty.

           It is, also, in the dazzling light transforming Jesus’ face and his clothing that Peter, James and John experience the reality of who Jesus really is. In the light, the veil hiding Jesus’ identity is pulled back and Jesus’ true identity is made stunningly manifest and Peter, James, John, and all of us see who Jesus really is.

          Only eight days earlier Peter had exclaimed Jesus was the Christ. The anointed one of God. The messiah. However, neither Peter nor any of the other disciples really understood what that meant. They had some idea of what being the messiah was about based upon the synagogue tradition and rabbinical interpretation of Scripture, but they really did not grasp it fully. I doubt they really understood what was going to happen when Jesus invited them to come up to the mountain with him to pray. After all, they were weighed down with sleep by the time they reached the mountaintop. That is, until the dazzling light changed Jesus so intensely and the two men, Moses, the prophet par excellence and the great Torah giver to Israel, and Elijah, the great prophet who brought healing and food to a Gentile widow and her son while all of Israel was suffering from a famine and who spoke God’s words of repentance and judgment to King Ahab, show up.

          The two great figures of Israel’s faith are wondrously present with Jesus discussing Jesus’ departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. The very journey Jesus had just finished telling his disciples he was going to make was the topic of conversation between Jesus, Moses, and Elijah because as great as Moses was in bringing the Torah-God’s teachings- down the mountaintop to the people and as great a prophet as Elijah was speaking God’s prophetic words to the people-it is Jesus who is the fulfillment of the hope and promise of the Torah and fulfillment of the hope and the promise of the prophets. It is Jesus who comes in the flesh as the epiphany of all epiphanies. It is Jesus who is God’s singular self-communication and quintessential self-revelation which is made abundantly clear to the disciples and to us when the cloud of God’s presence descends and envelopes Jesus, Peter, James and John and the strong, commanding voice of God says, “This is my Son, the Chosen, listen to him!”

          Listen to him! God says, because Jesus will reveal to you the fullness of God’s character and intentionality. If we want to see God, we must look to and listen to Jesus. We are not free to make God over into anything we please. God is not some amorphous blob that we can shape at our will for our purposes. God has a definite character and disposition; God says certain things and not others.

          Despite the claims some people make that God is some vague, unknowable, ineffable, and indiscriminate experience that cannot be known or as one person said recently to William Willimon the former Dean of Duke University Chapel, “We all have our different concepts and ideas of God,” Christians are those who believe that one of the ways God has loved us is by revealing the Lord’s own being to us in Jesus. God has come to us from outside of our lives to be with us in the middle of our lives. We celebrated this not too many weeks past when we gathered around the manger at Bethlehem. There we discovered that God has a face, a name, and a family. God is not some aloof, abstract principle. God has a name-Jesus.

          And, if we listen to him. Really pay attention to him then we will know God is gracious, faithful, merciful, slow to anger, forgiving, and abounding in steadfast love without end. If we really listen to him, then we will see that the shape, the continuity and the possibility of our new life is fully revealed in his person. If we really listen to him, then we will hear Jesus invitation to “follow me’ is an invitation to live in solidarity with God in the deep richness of God’s own life. If we really listen to him, then we will hear Jesus’ invitation”to be my apostles” is the invitation not to stay up on the mountaintop basking in the warm and heady light of God’s presence, but is the invitation to carry the light of God’s presence into the challenging valley of our neighbors’ everyday life, so our neighbors will know God dwells with all of us.

So, they will know Jesus, who stands alone before us, Son of God, epiphany of epiphanies, the chosen, the singular self-revelation of God, is the one who fulfills God’s promise of new life for us and for all people by his life, his death on the cross, and his resurrection.

Impossible Possibility

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could go to a bookshelf and pull down a cookbook and find a recipe for “How to help your best friend through their problems?” It might tell you exactly what to say, when to say it, then what to do next. Maybe something like, “Bring Danish, add strong coffee, sit around the kitchen table for 30 minutes.” Something clear and exact.

Or maybe we could look up the recipe for “How to raise children who always do what you ask them to do.” In this magical cookbook, there are clearly defined ingredients and specific instructions. Of course, nowhere, but nowhere would you ever find the nebulous, “season to taste.”

Wouldn’t it be great, also, if we could just reach up and grab the cookbook for being a follower of Christ? We would find the specific ingredients in designated amounts telling us how to serve God. Pray four times a day, say a kind word three times a day, and add two hours of Bible study each week, mix, simmer, and serve. We would be sure we were praising and giving thanks to God correctly because the directions would be clear and exact.  We’d know that it’s possible to follow this recipe because we’d know ahead of time that the recipe works.

          Very often, Christians approach Jesus teaching his disciples through the sermon on the plain what the vision of God’s kingdom is as if it is a magical recipe for life. Remember, Jesus begins this sermon by saying the folks who are blessed are the poor, the hungry, the folks who are weeping, and the folks who are excluded, reviled, hated, and defamed on account of Jesus.

 Then, Jesus teaches that the folks who are woeful are the rich, the well-fed, the ones who are laughing, the people other people are holding up as examples of how to live according to the norms of the culture.

          After that, Jesus tells his disciples, “Love your enemies. Do well to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. If someone hits you on the left cheek offer that person the right cheek. If someone takes your coat then give them your shirt. Don’t practice revenge. Give to everyone who begs from you. Do to others what you would have them do to you. Lend to those who cannot repay you. As a matter of fact give without expecting to get anything in return.”

          And if we do hear these words as if they are magical cookbook recipe that we can follow and use saying, “Oh, do to others what you want them to do for you.  We can do that. I want people to speak nicely to me, so I’ll speak nicely to them. I want people to help me, so I’ll help other people. What could be easier?”

          By approaching Jesus’ teachings this way, we might become like the woman who lives in New York City. She hears a sermon on these words of Jesus and decides to put them into practice. She’s going to change her attitude and change the way she deals with people. No longer is life lived through resentment and revenge. From here on out it is “love the enemy, turn the other cheek, and forgiveness.”

          Monday morning comes and she heads to work. Barely has she left her apartment building when she is approached by a beggar. “Give to everyone who begs,” Jesus said. So, some money is fished out and placed in the beggar’s hand. On the subway there are other beggars and more money is handed out. At the entrance to the office building sits a homeless woman, shivering in the cold. “Do not withhold even your shirt,” Jesus said. So, this faithful person sheds coat and sweater and hands them to the woman. Inside the building, office politics are in full swing. Instead of jockeying for power, she shares words of affirmation and practices a spirit of forgiveness. But, an office rival, sensing an opportunity to move up the corporate ladder because of her new way of being, moves in skillfully for power and pushes her out the door. At the end of the day, this woman may well have lived the gospel command, but she may also be broke, cold, and unemployed.

          And, we are tempted to cry out, “what a minute! I thought she’d be blessed and get the rewards of those blessings Jesus taught. How come everyone doesn’t like her, help her and affirm her? That’s not the way the recipe said it’d turn out!”

          The problem is we either forget or fail to comprehend that Jesus is beginning to differentiate the kingdom of God from the prevailing culture the people who are listening to him are living within.  Remember, Jesus has just called all twelve of his disciples to “follow me and be my apostles” then he walks down from the mountain with them to the level plain. He begins by saying that in the kingdom of God the rules of the prevailing culture don’t work. Those cultural rules that define who a person is, what a person’s status is and where the boundary markers of who is valued, who is blessed by God, who is to be emulated and imitated, and who is acceptable don’t work in the kingdom of God.

          In the kingdom of God the persons the prevailing culture does not bless, but does scorn and regard as cursed, such as the poor, are the ones who are blessed. The persons the prevailing culture does not want to see, but wants to hide away somewhere because those people are reminders about what is unpleasant, what is negative, what is embarrassing to see, what makes people feel bad, because those folks are reminders that life in creation is fragile, conditional, and can be painful, such as those persons who weep and mourn, those who weep and mourn are the ones blessed. The persons the prevailing culture doesn’t care about, doesn’t see as they beg on the streets and at the city gates and whom the prevailing culture won’t give even the basic necessities for life, such as the hungry and homeless, these are the persons blessed in God’s kingdom. The persons the prevailing culture wishes would stop speaking, would stop reminding everybody about the covenant with God, would stop saying that the way the prevailing culture operates is more about death than about life, those persons who the prevailing culture will destroy to put an end to their speaking, such as the prophets, they are the ones blessed.  And, in the kingdom of God those people whom the prevailing culture regards as blessed, as valued will discover how woeful they really are.

They will be like Jacob the tailor who felt he had been mistreated in the church. So, he withdrew from the community and isolated himself from his friends and neighbors. Weeks went by until, finally, the pastor called on him. After a polite greeting, there was a heavy silence. Then the pastor said, “Let’s sit in front of the fire.” So the two men sat in complete silence. An hour or so later the pastor picked up the fireplace tongs, pulled out a coal and placed it on the hearth, away from the fire. Still no word was spoken. The two men just sat and watched the glowing, burning piece of coal become darker and darker, until finally it was cold and dusty with ashes. A few moments later, Jacob the tailor spoke, “I understand,” he said. Not one word had been uttered but the point had been made. When we withdraw from the community, we isolate ourselves from our neighbors and from God, and we are alone, cold, and ashen.

This is the woe for those the prevailing culture blesses because in the end they will discover how far they have separated themselves from God, the source of life. 

Now, Jesus doesn’t speak these woes because God doesn’t like rich people, or people who are comfortable, or people who have enough to eat, or people who are lighthearted and enjoying their life, or people other people celebrate. Or, because they are beyond God’s redeeming power.

The point is the way life is lived in God’s kingdom is radically different from the kingdoms they are living within whether it is Herod’s kingdom, the Roman Emperor’s kingdom, or any other kingdom. And, Jesus is teaching these people that they have a choice about which kingdom to live within. Either God’s kingdom or some other kingdom. This is made clear in Jesus words because the words Jesus uses are performative words. Words that describe reality the way it is right now. You see, the kingdom of God is not some faraway place. It is not some distant future reality that exists in some highly romanticized and sentimental ideal, Shangri-La, over the rainbow place, but exists here and now. These blessings are happening as we speak. God’s vision and agenda for life is happening today and is continuing to happen tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow whether we experience it or not. Whether we take part in it or not.

          And, if we want to live within God’s kingdom we have to understand that the model for how we live, our behaviors and responses to creation and the people around us is God. It is not any other person or any philosophy or moral construct of the prevailing culture. God is our model for living as Leviticus 19:2 points out, “You shall be holy for I the Lord your God am holy.”  Followers of Christ do not reciprocate because we are given gifts, invited to dinners or treated nicely nor do we even love those who love us, nor do followers of Christ retaliate when we are mistreated, abused, experience violence or hated because we do not draw our behavior patterns and responses from those who would victimize us. We are not shaped or molded by the hostilities and abuse unleashed on us or by the love and nice treatment we receive from others. Followers of Christ do not respond in kind, or by playing dead or whining, rather followers of Christ take the initiative to act the way God acts, with self-offering love, forgiveness, and generosity as God teaches us by God’s own actions. God does not reciprocate but is kind and generous even to the ungrateful and selfish. God created the sun to rise on the evil and the good alike, the rain to fall upon the just and the unjust. God offers a radical grace to everyone without respect to whether a person merits it or not. This is the point of the prodigal son and older son story later in Luke.

          This is not to say that living in God’s kingdom is an easily learned and practiced formula or a magical recipe for life. It is not. Even Martin Luther King Jr. understood this during the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama in the early 1950’s when he spoke about having to teach people that non-violence, non-retaliation was not cowardice, stagnant passivity, a deadening complacency, but was an act of resistance, it was a refusal to cooperate with the systemic racism and the violence used to maintain the status quo of Jim Crow. As he said in a speech before the YMCA and YWCA at the University of California, Berkeley, “We had to use our mass meetings to explain non-violence to a community of people who had never heard,” of it. Doctor King also asserted in a sermon in Montgomery that the most durable power in the world is love and it is central to life, quoting John, “God is love.’ The person who loves is a participant in the being of God. The person who hates does not know God.”

          Living in God’s kingdom is to daily remember that God’s kingdom is not bound to any nation-state, to any government, to any religious doctrine, denomination or institution, to any political or economic philosophy or to any other human constructed norms or understandings and is very often in radical opposition to all them because God’s kingdom is love seeking the well-being of every single person because every single person is created in God’s image and likeness and God loves everyone and desires every person to thrive and have well-being!

          This means the followers of Christ wake up each morning with feet on the ground, committing to living today in God’s kingdom and none other, saying aloud, “Today I will be holy as God is holy.”

Faith and Fruitfulness

A few years ago, I received a letter from Amanda Alexander, Director of Franklin Covey Coaching, offering me a personal state of the art training system designed to bring stress free, prosperous living to a select few people, who are serious about achieving greater personal success. There was a toll-free number for me to call within seven days, so that I might join Amanda and the rest of the select few in this life changing adventure.

          So, what to do? If I call the toll-free number and find out about this personal-state-of-the-art success program then ante up the cost of the program, I will be on my way to achieving a level of personal success most people only imagine. I will have life as defined, I am sure, by our culture’s measures of success-perhaps wealth, position, power, possessions, and I am sure you can fill in the rest. But, if I don’t call the toll-free number quickly enough and if I don’t quickly charge the program cost to my Visa, Mastercard, Discover card, or American Express well then I will lose out. I may never achieve the success all of us must be dreaming about. Thus, I may never get a real life.

          “Hmm. To call toll free or not to call free? But, is that really the question?”

          I am reminded of a story of a man who was a Quaker. Now, this man put up a sign on the vacant piece of land next to his house, reading-“This land will be given to anyone who is truly satisfied.” A wealthy farmer who was riding by stopped to read the sign and said to himself, “Since our friend the Quaker is so ready to part with this plot of land, I might as well claim it before someone else does. I am a rich man and I have all I need, so I certainly qualify.”

          With that he went up to the door and explained what he was there for. “And, art thou truly satisfied?” the Quaker asked.

          “I am indeed, for I have everything I need.”

          “Friend,” said the Quaker, “if thou art satisfied, what dost thou want the land for?”

          Indeed, that, is the question. Why would you need more, if you have all you need and are satisfied?

          This is the question dwelling between the lines of both Psalm 1 and Jeremiah chapter 17 when Jeremiah paraphrases Psalm 1, “Thus says the Lord, cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the Lord. They shall be like a shrub in the desert and shall not see when relief comes. Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought, it is not anxious and it does not cease to bear fruit.”

          Psalm 1 holds within its spare poetic lines the entire Book of Psalms and, maybe all of God’s Torah-Torah meaning in Hebrew teaching, because it defines the life of faith as a life of trust in God. It is as Walter Brueggmann has said, “announcing the primary agenda for Israel’s worship life is obedience, to order and conduct all of life in accordance with God’s purpose and ordering of all creation. The fundamental contrast of this psalm and all of Israel’s faith is a moral distinction between righteous and wicked, innocent and guilty, those who conform to God’s purpose and those who ignore those purposes and, in so doing, disrupt the order.” In short, how human life is lived is decisive.

          Which is precisely what we hear Jesus telling the disciples and all the people gathered on the plain when he describes those persons who are blessed and those persons who are cursed.

  Here are clear and simple images that easily define the choices set before us as well as the significance of those choices. Clearly, Jesus, the psalmist, and Jeremiah are teaching us that our choices will make a difference for us and they will also make a difference for our families, for the community we live within, and other people we may not even know because our lives are connected to their lives. And, this is true for all the choices every person in the world makes as well.

   So, do we want to be a shrub planted in the desert? The desert where heat is extreme and there is little or no shade, precious little water or rainfall, and where the sun bakes the earth and all the plants. Of course, this may mean the shrub’s roots are shallow because they don’t get enough nourishment to become thick and strong enough to penetrate deeply into the hard-baked soil. Shrubs with shallow roots are easily uprooted and blown about by the winds of the desert. Think tumbleweeds, for instance. Life for the shrub is about survival because life is fleeting, perilous and focused on fear.

          Or, do we want to be a tree planted by a stream? The stream is constantly flowing along its course and as it weaves its way it constantly gives nourishment to all the plants and trees along its banks. A tree planted near a stream is rooted deep into the earth because it has enough nourishment to grow strong roots that easily dig deep down into the rich, moist soil. Such a tree is not concerned about or worried about surviving. Instead it’s thriving. Thriving as it grows tall, and its many branches grow and spread out with blossoms budding and blooming in season becoming fruitful while being a source of nourishment to the insects and animals living near by. Such a tree as this lives a long and healthy life firmly rooted in its place even in times of drought.

          The choice for me is a simple one and one that makes a lot of sense. After all, when the prophet Jeremiah compares a shrub in the uninhabited salt land with a tree planted by a stream he is literally giving us a choice between life and death. It is the same choice Jesus is giving the crowd on the plain. Either they trust and surrender their lives to God by following Jesus, learning to be his obedient disciples, expressing their gratitude for the blessing of grace through their lives, thriving and full or they can trust their lives to the ways of the mere mortals of the world who are valuing things, valuing superficial praise, and valuing success and achievement, valuing coercive violence, valuing absolute, dictatorial power, valuing only what is material, and finding themselves in the end shriveling up to die.

          The choice seems so simple. Yet, if it is so simple, why is it so often that people choose to be the shrub?

          Why do they choose to trust and surrender themselves to the dazzling desert of the world’s way by trusting in mere mortals, only to quickly discover themselves living in the desert of fear? The desert of fear, Henri Nouwen describes in his “Life Signs,” is the place where we are homeless, finding that we do not belong anywhere, so that we propel ourselves to search for belonging, acceptance, freedom and relationships of intimacy in knowledge, competence, notoriety, success, friends, sensations, pleasures, dreams and artificially induced states of consciousness until we discover we are strangers even to ourselves. Living in this desert of fear we see the world as a place of scarcity and threat that forces us to close ourselves off from the world and continually withdraw into ourselves until we become disconnected from God, the source of life.” The desert of fear, also, forces us to define ourselves and our value as a person by what we produce, driving us into frantic productivity as we try to stave off our sense of uselessness. In this desert of fear, we become a shrub whose life is so devoid of joy, well being and peace that we grasp at the false promises of joy offered by over consumption, extreme sports, and dangerous thrill-seeking, even leading us to seek our well-being in hoarding possessions that will come to own us. In this desert of fear, even our hope for peace rests in alerts, warning labels, and pre-emptive strikes. None of which satisfies, comforts, or keeps us safe and thriving but only leaves us still living in reactive, destructive fear.

          However, if we choose to trust and surrender ourselves into the rich, moist soil of God, constantly fed by streams of God’s living water then we will find we have come to God’s home of love. The home where we do belong, find acceptance, safety. A home where we let go of our defenses to live free, free from the masks we hide behind, free from worries, free from tensions, free from pressures of unending consumption and unending productivity, free from coveting more and more because with God, we discover we have all we need for life.  This is the home where we can laugh and cry, embrace and dance, sleep and dream quietly, eat, rest, and play. Dwelling with God, we find the most intimate relationship of our lives is with the source of all life. A connection made in prayer when we open ourselves to God, being fully vulnerable and hiding nothing, assured that God takes seriously our pain, our questions, our anger as well as our praise, our thanksgiving, and our whole-hearted love.

Here in this intimate relationship with God we discover our intrinsic worth as a person created by God’s Word and nourished by God’s steadfast love, faithfulness and commitment to us which leads us to discover that we are created for a relationship with God and we are created to be in relationships with other persons both reflecting and defined by God’s love, faithfulness, and commitment, so that we realize our life is both vertically and horizontally relational.

          The clarity of this discovery comes alive when we read and study the Scriptures finding, as the psalmist says, our delight in the Torah, the instruction of God, and finding the story of our lives woven together with the stories of God’s people throughout time and place in the whole cloth of life. Especially, as the story of our salvation, our new life in God’s house of love, becomes one with God’s saving acts of all people in the Exodus and ultimately in Christ on his cross and in his resurrection. Here, we find our place around the table of Christ’s self-offering joining our voices with all the voices of God’s people in songs of gratitude. Gratitude that is the core of our life with God in Jesus Christ. Gratitude that propels us outward into the world to create communities where there are no haves and no have nots, no insiders or outsiders because every person has all they need for life and all are insiders. Gratitude awakening within us the awareness that not only do we have worthwhile gifts to share, but so do others have gifts to share with us. This gratitude creates in us a willingness to receive with joy and thanksgiving those gifts of others. Also, leading us to discover that every encounter with another person is an encounter with Christ. And, it is in these encounters where we share our lives with others that the Body of Christ grows strong with deep roots and bearing the fruit of the Spirit, joy, well being, and peace that nourishes and joins us with Christ’s work of transforming and gathering all people and all creation into the thriving life of dwelling in God’s home of love.  The choice is simple! May you and I be trees rooted by the stream of God’s living water bearing the fruit of faith.

God Calls Us Out of the Deep

“O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”

          These words sound like words Martin Luther might have tormented himself repeating as a litany early in his life. Indeed, Luther greatly despaired about how sinful and unworthy man he was to be a monk or a priest. How, absolutely, certain he was that he was unfit to serve God and God’s people and how this was reinforced by his father who repeatedly told him what a failure he was. I recently watched a movie about Luther’s life and there are many great scenes to this movie, but the one that grabbed me the most was the scene where before he served mass, Luther lay prostrate on the floor before the cross with his arms outstretched as though on a cross. His face was on the floor with his lips touching the stone floor with just enough room for him to pray. Perhaps, praying that God would deliver him from the body of this death, or at the very least make him worthy enough to serve communion.

          Luther didn’t hate himself, he just knew the truth about himself.

The same truth Isaiah was confronted with that morning in the Temple where he had gone to prepare for worship. The one place in all of Judah where the symbol of the unity, the majesty and the presence of God living in the midst of God’s people seemed so certain. There, Isaiah is doing the priestly work I am sure he felt God had called him to do. Until, in the quiet before worship God unexpectedly shows up scaring Isaiah because when God shows up this time it’s not in the nice, still voice or the whisper softly spoken. No, this time God fully shows up. He sits on the throne with royal robes flowing down like rushing Adirondack mountain waterfalls in spring completely filling the Temple with just the hem. In that moment Isaiah realizes God’s sovereignty is real. God’s power is real. God’s presence is real. God’s righteousness and holiness is all too real. In this moment, Isaiah knows there is not a place in the world where God’s presence and power does not reach.

Even the seraphs’ song confirms this. “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of the hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory.” The three-fold “Holy” describing the totality and distinctiveness of God’s power and presence in the world.

          Confronted with such power, righteousness, and holiness of God, Isaiah can only wail, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips!”

          The prophet is confronted with his own place in the world. He is confronted with his limitations of vision, of imagination, and knowledge and language of God. His limitations reminding him that however he imagines God or speaks of God or what he knows of God is simply too small, too incomplete. The reality is God is too big, too far beyond his ability of speech or creativity. It is as if the prophet says, “I am not holy as the Lord my God is holy.”  Isaiah know he cannot hide the truth about himself from God, because what the psalmists says is true, “O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You knit me together in my mother’s womb.” There is nothing about me that you do not know and there is nothing I can keep secret from you.”  In this moment of confrontation, Isaiah feels the shame and the guilt of being flawed, vulnerable, and ultimately unworthy.

          The same unworthiness Peter felt in the aftermath of the amazing catch of fish when he realizes in whose presence he is standing. It is as if he is standing on the very edge of a wide chasm much wider than even the Grand Canyon. On this side is Peter and on the far, far distant side is Jesus, God with us. Peter knows he cannot cross the chasm on his own, nor can he build a bridge to the other side. All he can do is stare at the great distance between himself and God lost in the truth of his shame, guilt and unworthiness.

          Some of us know what Peter knows about shame. The feeling of not being good enough, of having to prove ourselves worthy of any goodness and knowing we won’t quite measure up, of hating ourselves for being unworthy, and of having to be perfect because we know that if people really knew us they would not accept us, care for us, or even love us.

          In many ways, Isaiah says aloud what many of us think and feel, but keep within the silence of ourselves. “I am an unclean person. I am utterly unworthy.” Even the apostle Paul knows he is unworthy to be Christ’s representative. He was a persecutor of the church. He put people into jail. He held the coats of those who stoned Stephen. He is the last person anyone would have chosen to do evangelism for Christ’s church. Even the apostles and believers in Jerusalem and Antioch and Damascus were wary of him and didn’t trust him further than they could throw him, so bad was his reputation.

          Yet, how does God respond to Isaiah’s expression of being this flawed, shamed human person of unworthiness? Is Isaiah sent away from God’s presence? Is he told he doesn’t belong to God’s kingdom? Is he told he should work harder and longer to be perfect and worthy of love? No! Of course, not.

God meets Isaiah at the point of his confessed need of mercy by cleansing his lips and taking away his sin and guilt. God takes the initiative by sending the seraphs to cleanse Isaiah’s lips with a piece of burning coal from the altar in an act of free grace. In Luke’s Gospel, God takes the initiative in an act of grace to close the chasm between us and God by an act of grace through Christ.  That’s the point of the great catch of fish after the fishermen had fished all night and caught nothing. God takes the initiative! There is nothing Isaiah, Peter, you or I can do or need to do in order to receive God’s forgiveness and love. Isaiah, Peter, you and I do nothing. God does everything as a gift of abundant life.

As Paul in his letter to the church at Rome says, God has condemned sin and death through Jesus Christ, but does not condemn us. Rather, God frees us in Christ to live as God’s sons and daughters through our unity with Christ in the immersion of our lives in the living waters of Christ at our baptism and the immersion of our lives in the living body of Christ in our celebration of Eucharist, the thanksgiving for Christ’s self-offering of his body broken and his blood poured out for us. In this unity, we receive life without end in the presence of God. Our shame and our guilt are gone. We do not need to keep reliving our past mistakes, our past history, or to keep trying to prove ourselves perfect and worthy of love.  God knows all there is to know about us and says, “I love you and I welcome you, home.” Like the father in Rembrandt’s painting of the Return of the Prodigal Son, God welcomes us home and draws us back into the family as if saying, “We have saved your place at the table. Here is where you belong.”  Or, like the mother in Van Gough’s painting of a mother holding a child on her lap as she gently rocks back and forth, God comforts us, reassures, and holds us close, so we will know we are safe and loved.

In God’s loving presence, we are free to tell the truth about our lives. In fact, that’s exactly what we are doing each week when we pray our confession aloud together then pray our personal confession. We are telling the truth because it is safe to do so here. We are in the one community, outside of maybe a twelve-step community, where we can honestly say, “Woe is me. I am a man, a woman of unclean lips. I am unworthy” without it being a guilt trip or used to banish us from the community. We are assured in Christ of God’s mercy and unconditional, steadfast love. An assurance I speak every week after our confession because that too is speaking the truth.

          The truth that it is God’s grace which gives us new life by the generous, righteous, holy and loving God, whose beloved children we are.

But it doesn’t end there. God is near enough that Isaiah hears God ask, “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?” Caught up in the awareness of God’s mercy and steadfast love and the transforming power of the Spirit, Isaiah responds, “Here I am, send me. Let me go serve you. Let me be your messenger to your people speaking your words of hope to a people you will cleanse, reconcile to yourself and give the gift of life in your presence and peace.” Peter, Andrew, James, and John’s answer to Jesus’ invitation to “come, you’ll catch people” is to simply drop their nets and go.

          For us living within this transformed life, we too, if we are listening, will hear God calling to us; asking us, “Whom shall I send. Who will go out for us?”  Through grace we are empowered to answer faithfully, “Here I am, send me. Let me be your servant. Let me take your word of generosity, creativity, righteousness, and steadfast love into the world, so all will know the power of your presence and the tranquility and fullness of your peace.”

The Extravagant Sign

“We have always done it this way!”

          These are the seven last words of the church, words spoken to resist any change. Spoken to preserve time honored traditions of the church that have been meaningful and valid throughout all time and all place by everyone in the Christian church and which will continue to be so forever. What nonsense!

          I have to confess that every time I hear someone utter these words I cringe, not only because they are a sign of a congregation that has decided to wither away on the vine of life, but because they simply aren’t true. There is nothing in the church that has always been done one particular way in every time and place. For example, organs are a relatively new instrument used in the church and when they were introduced into worship some folks described it as the “devil’s plaything” and fought intense battles with each other whenever an organ was brought into a sanctuary.

Sort of like if I was to suggest bringing electric guitars, steel drums, banjos, mandolins, conga drums, vibes and rain sticks to lead us in singing Bluegrass Gospel and reggae hymns. Now, I know some of you might really like that, but I know congregations that panic at just the thought. Another example is communion, it wasn’t always Wonder bread and grape juice because early on it was whatever the local bread was and it was wine without or with water, and not, by the way, a nice cabernet or pinot noir. Even those hymns that are everybody’s old favorites were at some point new, and the first hymnal of early reformed churches were the psalms sung in chant or plain song. Indeed, the psalms are our oldest hymns. Neither is worship as we do it today the same as it was done in the early church, nor is it the way it is done in the worldwide church. If we were in Kenya, for example, we’d be worshipping for three hours and much of that time would be in glad dancing and singing with drums or if we were in England or Scotland the real alternative worship might be a self-directed, contemplative walk through several rooms with a poem to read, a movie to watch, art to appreciate, music to hear, sing or play ending with prayers in an upstairs room above a bar or health club.

          Not only are those seven last words mythical and perhaps tolling the death knell of a congregation they aren’t biblical and they certainly do not speak the truth about God. Throughout the scriptures we hear in deep and rich diverse ways how God’s people spoke about God being the God of newness. The God of transformation. Nothing is static with God. God is all about life being dynamic. Genesis chapter 1 is all about how God transforms a dark, desolate, void of life watery chaos mass of stuff into a well-ordered creation of great diversity designed to nourish life and sustain life for all of creation. The Noah flood stories are about God re-creating life and making a new promise we continue to see in rainbows. God was creating a new family when God called Abraham and Sarah, an aged and childless couple, to be the patriarch and matriarch of a new people founded on God’s promises of land, presence and new way of thriving together.

       This newness of God is at the center of the Hebrew faith tradition and for Christians Jesus’ life is the quintessential manifestation of God’s newness once again breaking into the world to change the world in unexpected ways. Jesus doesn’t come to keep the world as it was or as it is. Rather Jesus is intent on dramatically and radically changing the world. By the way, the Revelation of John speaks about the new heaven and earth as being one whole place on earth. Earth does not get destroyed; it gets transformed in its unity with heaven.

  We are called to be faithful followers of Jesus Christ, we are not called to be content with a static “this is the way we always do things” attitude. As the prophets and our ancestors tell us God’s newness is beyond our explanation and beyond our conjuring. It is up to God alone and it depends upon God alone. God will bring newness and change whether we want it or not and will do so in a way that will be unexpected and, perhaps, surprising.

The prophets and our ancestors tell the stories about the community that receives, trusts in, and embraces this miracle of newness. For they know it is a community summoned to what, Walter Brueggemann calls, “a radical obedience to God’s way that is so radical the world responds to it with hostility borne of fear. Yet, in facing such hostility this community turns to God, in trust and hope that God will transform that hostility into peace even as the community boldly acts in response to God’s self-giving newness.

          Cleary, the Epiphany season celebrates all the newness God is manifesting in the world. Whether, it is how the life creating Word came into the world full of grace and truth, or the promise of new hearts and a covenant written deep within the people of God, or it is the prophet Isaiah speaking God’s promise of transforming Jerusalem and Israel from a people exiled, discouraged, and living in misery whose name has become Desolate and Forsaken, an object of shame and contempt, to being a people whom God will rename, “my delight is in her.”

          Even the story of the wedding at Cana is less about weddings and the            embarrassment of a family’s hospitality coming up short when the wine runs out than it is a narrative calling us to see the extravagant sign pointing us to the “old” giving way to the “new” that Jesus will manifest every where he goes. Indeed, John’s gospel is about signs, not miracles. Signs that continually point us beyond the act itself to the abundant and overflowing newness of life God is bringing into being.

          While this wedding story set in the small Galilean town of Cana seems a great way to speak about hospitality and the traditions of a seven day celebration of marriage that melts together two lives into one life, that even melts together two families including the far reaching extendedness of those families into one family, or it is an opportune moment to speak about generosity, or welcoming the stranger, John has none of that in mind. Nor, is John concerned about speaking about Mary as the epitome of caring for others when she asks her son, Jesus, to do something about the lack of wine or that the change of water into wine is a sign that the old Torah is being dispensed with as legalistic purity laws.

          Rather John is only interested in the life within a life of newness. Nothing is changed, but everything is changed. Water is wine. Word has become flesh. A time that is yet to come is now.

          “This is existence at the edge of the ages, the point,” as Gerard Sloyan writes, “where the old eon and the new age begin a new dance” and the signal for this new dance pointing to God’s grace is the extravagance of wine surprisingly and unexpectedly of the finest vintage turned loose on an already well lit village celebration in an act of poetic, absolute newness. What will be is. What seems to be is no longer. In this Word and Light of God who is a man, all is new.  

In this revelation of newness, we are called to celebration, lifting our voices not only in praise, but in full throated joyfulness like the wine steward discovering how wonderful the vintage of wine he tasted really was.

I sometimes wonder if the church gets too caught up in repeating the seven last words and has forgotten God loves the laughter of people, has forgotten how God strolled in the Garden come evening seeking time to be with the man and the woman, has forgotten Jesus was at a wedding feast and I’ve not been at many dour, joyless weddings feasts.

I also believe the church has forgotten that faith is about living one’s life and is not separated from life as James McBride Dabbs, author and Presbyterian elder remembers from his boyhood in South Carolina, “Religion was day and a place: religion was Sunday and the church: almost everything else was life. Religion was a curious quiet, and inconsequential moment in the vital existence of a country boy. It came around every week, but it didn’t seem to have much to do with the rest of life, that is with life.”

The story of the wedding at Cana is a reminder that we serve a God who puts joy into life, who thinks it is worth an extravagant sign to keep the party going as we celebrate the newness of life. Our faith is not separate from life it is, rather, how we engage life with freedom, with joy and with an eye to behold the wondrous blessings of all God is doing to change life from old to new each and every day in celebrations of God and of people.

David Steele, a pastor and author, describes this spirit of celebration as “Cana-grace,” the knack for throwing parties combining food, decorations, music and laughter in a radical hospitality of welcome, wellbeing and love. Steele, like Jesus, learned this grace from his mother and thanked God for this gift of celebration many times in his ministry, even to the point of coining the beatitude, “Blessed is the pastor whose church has a real tenor or plumber, but doubly blessed is the pastor whose congregation knows Cana-grace,” who knows how to celebrate the newness of life.

“Christians,“ writes theologian Robert Hotchkins, “ought to be celebrating constantly. We ought to be preoccupied with parties, banquets, feasts, merriment. We ought give ourselves over to joy because we have been liberated from the fear of life and the fear of death. We ought to attract people to church quite literally by the fun there is in being a Christian.”

Jesus turns water into wine and keeps a wedding feast going with great surprise and celebration of the young man and woman and this is part of what God wants us to be about, the celebrating of brothers and sisters in Christ  by eating barbeque on the back porch  and laughing until the sun goes down; Christian women turning the parish hall into a festive tea party as they share the gospel and food together; a new member’s dinner at someone’s home that ends with folks hugging each other and giving thanks to God for the welcome they have received at church and the many celebrations yet to come in the newness of an abundant life beyond our definitions and our imaginations, which God is, even now, creating.

A new life dancing at the edge of the ages, in poetic and absolute newness.       

Rejoice! Christ is Coming!

           Do Not Fear! Rejoice! Fully embrace the raucous, cheering, dancing joy of God’s

presence among us!

Do not fear! God is gathering the people on the margins of the community together and bringing them into the community, so the community will be complete once again.  Do not be Afraid! Rejoice! The Word of life is near! The birth of Christ draws near! Everything we have waited for is about to happen!

          Rejoicing is what Zephaniah, the prophet, proclaims when he says God’s mercy is poured out in love over the people of Judah, renewing and transforming them into faithfulness, health and well-being as peace is held in God’s love.

Rejoicing is part of John’s call for repentance as his bombastic “Prepare the Way!” echoes Zephaniah’s call to fearless living centered in God, who rejoices for the one lost sheep that has been found and for the prodigal child who has come home.

The morning stars sing together lauding the new creations, who are the people standing on the banks of the Jordan River. The sea roars, the hills sing and the trees of the field clap their hands celebrating the people with water dripping down their bodies from their heads to their toes, their faces turned toward John.

  There were so many faces. So, many different faces. Rich people, tax collectors, soldiers, leatherworkers, potters, farmers, men, women, and children. Faces like those of the homeless, faces that can be looked at and not seen.  Faces seemingly without histories and faces seemingly without personalities, since we have nothing to remember them by. No letters. No books. No videotapes. No digital images stored on a smartphone or in drop box. They are strangers to us. 

Yet, they aren’t just faces and they aren’t strangers to John. They are real persons with families, with work to do; weddings to attend, children to nurture, protect, nourish and teach, with loved ones whose deaths they mourn. They are real persons God created in God’s likeness and image. They are persons who matter to God.  And, because they matter to God, they, also, matter to John.

I believe John really loves those who heard his hard words, which too often have been used in the repent or else school of fire and brimstone teachings of some Christian churches. Too often misinterpreted to condemn people as chaff, the part of the wheat plant shed to get to the whole grain. But, I think John loves these people as God loves them because he is telling them they are worthwhile and valuable and what God wants them to do is let go of the habits and hang-ups that keep them from being fully the image and likeness of God, that keeps them from being the people God created them to be. I think this is the reason John stood in the river, preaching enthusiastically, exhorting the people who lined the banks of the river to “shuv” to change the direction of their lives. Exhorting them to choose between life and death like Joshua when Joshua stood before Israel and told them they had a choice between living centered in God or living centered in something or someone else. Joshua and John desperately want the people to choose life because they want them to experience the joy, the freedom, and the overwhelming tranquility of peace that comes from living God’s way of peace held in love. A way of peace drawing people into life sustaining relationships because God’s love is all about relationships that will sustain life. Indeed, God has created us to be in relationships and there are at least three ways of being in relationship that keeps us healthy and fulfills God’s promises of joy and peace.

Outward: These are our daily experiences of living in the world with other people- our families, our friends, our neighbors, the bank teller, the drive-up window person at Dunkin’ Donuts, the Wegman’s clerk ringing up your groceries, the counter person at Sal’s pizzeria

Inward: This is how we relate to our inner self–the person we are and the person we want to be.

Upward: Our relationship with God–how we meet, experience, and live with God every day of our life from the mundane moments to significant seasons.

Each of these relationships is important to sustaining and nurturing our lives as Paul points out in his letter to the church at Philippi. Paul delighted in his relationship with God and in his coming closer to being the person he wanted to be, but he also rejoiced in the outward relationships he began and kept throughout his far-flung ministry. His letter to the Philippian church reveals that while he was imprisoned in Rome, he was comforted when he remembered these brothers and sisters and the time they spent together. They were his “joy and crown” and they were his beloved friends, whom he called shining stars in the universe holding securely the word of life.  The apostle rejoiced in all his of personal relationships and was strengthened and nurtured by them. Paul was teaching the Philippians what Jesus had come to teach, that a rich and deep life of joy and peace is based upon being connected to other lives.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu writes about it this way, “Africans believe in something we call “ubutu botho.” It means the essence of being human. It speaks about humanness, gentleness, hospitality, putting yourself out on behalf of others, being vulnerable. It embraces compassion and toughness. It recognizes that my humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. In our African language,; he writes, ‘we say, a person is a person only through other persons. I would not know how to be human at all except I learn this from other human beings. We are created to be in a delicate network of relationships of interdependence. We are meant to complement each other. When we break that fundamental law of our being all kinds of things go horribly wrong. No one and not even the most powerful nation can be completely self-sufficient.”

God created us in such a way that we are to find our humanness in our relationships with other people. One of the great Hebrew words from Genesis 2 is ”Ezer”  which is translated into English as helper. One reason this word is great is that it is associated with the woman God creates to the companion to the man and is only used again in reference to God or powerful kings. This means the woman is to be the man’s powerful helper like God is humanity’s powerful helper. As I think about the word beyond the story of the man and woman and reflecting about all of us being created in God’s image and likeness, I believe we are to be each other’s powerful helper, each other’s powerful ally similar to the way God is our helper and ally, which is self-giving, forgiving, seeking what is best for the other person without dominating the other person, and seeking ways to sustain each other’s life in relationships of mutuality.  We learn to do this, to be the helper God intends us to be for each other, through the course of living our daily lives in mundane moments like shopping. I mean think about the last time you were shopping at Kohl’s or Macy’s did you look the salesclerk directly in the eyes as you took your package and said, “Thank you?” Did you mean it? Were they helpful and present to you? Were you grateful for their time and attention?

We are also each other’s powerful helpers and allies by being fully present in each moment we live. Being fully present means seeing the people we meet each day as unique persons. For example, does the receptionist at the doctor’s office own a dog or a cat? If so, what’s its name? What is it like? Is there a funny story you remember about the cat or dog or some event in their lives? That young woman handing you your hamburger out the drive-up window had a nametag–what is her name?

Yet, we become the most powerful helpers in the midst of sorrows, troubles, disasters when we recognize how valuable our presence can be and how helpful we are when we realize that while we often do not have wise words, the right word, the circumstance transforming, magical, mystical words to say; we do have at least five ways we can be helpful to one another as Emily Heath wrote, “we can say, “I don’t believe God wanted this or willed” whatever happened since a grieving friend or family member is likely hearing that this is God’s will from a number of other people. It is life sustaining to affirm the idea that God did not will whatever occurred.

  We can say, “It’s okay to be angry, to feel all that you are feeling and I’m a safe person for you to express all of those emotions to if you need it.”  Expressing all the emotions one is experiencing is an essential part of the grieving process, but many people don’t know where to talk about it because they are often silenced by others when they express their feelings.

When you tell someone you are a safe person to share all feelings, including anger, you help the grieving person know where they can turn.

We can say, “It’s not okay.” Sometimes the pieces don’t fit. Sometimes nothing works out right. And sometimes there is no way to fix it. Naming it can be helpful for some because it lets them know you won’t sugarcoat their grief. 

We can say, “I don’t know why this happened.” We all want to ask why, but very often we do not know the answer and we cannot explain it, often it’s best just to acknowledge what you do not know.

  We can say, “I can’t imagine what you are going through, but I am here to support you in whatever way feels best.” Each loss is different, even if we have experienced a similar loss, so it is better to ask how the grieving person is feeling and what you can do to help. Then, do it and respect the boundaries around what they don’t want help with at this point, since you will be putting some control back into the hands of the grieving person, who often feels like they have lost so much of it.”

Whether it is sorrow, unfathomable tragedy or simply the mundane and everyday encounters, each one of them carries with it the possibility of being in a relationship with another person. By the way, a “relationship” is not defined solely on the length of its duration. A relationship is begun when a genuine connection is made between people

A connection we can make only if we slow down our hectic and harried daily lives. Creating a life full of deep and rich personal relationships demands we take every human encounter seriously. Former House Speaker Sam Rayburn believed the three most important words in the English language are: “Wait a minute” because they call us to pause in our encounters and conversations with each other and be mindfully and thoughtfully present to one another.

Being present and attentively caring about and loving our neighbors with the self-giving, patient, enduring, faithful love of God, who is always near and present with us. A nearness and a presence we experience in the concreteness of Jesus the Christ, who is coming to teach us how to embody in our daily relationships God’s love and way of peace, so we too might rejoice in all our relationships! Rejoicing that God loves us more than we expect to be loved. Rejoicing that God is near and present with us in Christ. Rejoicing that God is healing us, turning our mourning into dancing, our tears into joy as each night of despair and grief gives way to the dawn of God’s new day. Rejoicing for all the joy and peace we experience with each smile and each thank you we give and receive from each person we encounter each day.

So, yes rejoice you shining stars of the universe holding fast to the word of life. Rejoice you who are like the angels singing alleluias announcing to a darkened world that in Bethlehem a child is to be born, who is the Prince of Peace, the prince of wholeness and loving kindness.

Preparing for Our Future

There was a man, as the story goes, who had been a closet slob most of his life. He just couldn’t comprehend the logic of neatness. Why make up a bed if you’re going to sleep in it again tonight? Why put the lid on the toothpaste tube if you’re going to take it off again in the morning? The man admitted to being compulsive about being messy. Then he got married.

His wife was patient. She said she didn’t mind his habits, if he didn’t mind sleeping on the couch. Since he did mind, he began to change. He said he enrolled in a training program for slobs. A physical therapist helped him rediscover the muscles used for hanging up shirts and placing toilet paper on the holder. His nose was reintroduced to the smell of Pine Sol. By the time his in-laws arrived for a visit, he was a new man.

But the moment of truth came when his wife went out of town for a week. At first he reverted to the old man. He figured he could be a slob for six days and clean on the seventh. But something strange happened. He could no longer relax with dirty dishes in the sink or towels flung around the bathroom or clothes on the floor or sheets piled up like a mountain on the bed. What happened? Simple. He had been exposed to a higher standard of living. (Lucado, 116-117)

This is the prophet Malachi’s point when he declares his message that God is displeased with the unfaithfulness and the empty worship of the Israelites. God is angry with leaders who have caused people to leave the way of integrity, justice, and uprightness. They have led the people off the path of life and well-being God longs to give them, instead the leaders have led the people on the path to death and destruction. While we may live in an age of disappointments and cynicism, it is important to ask ourselves what happens if injustice prevails? Does nothing then matter? Is anything fair game? Are we alone? Is it everyone for herself? Or, are we not longing for God’s rule of goodness and justice to prevail? Will that not be good news for the faithful who have striven for good in the face of arrogant oppressors who always seem to come out on top? Don’t we with Malachi long for, hope for a world of goodness, where justice matters and integrity finally prevails?

God is faithful, says Malachi, and is about to send one who will reunite and purify all of Israel. One who will take the Israelites’ hearts and minds and place them in the refiner’s fire. Now, the refiner’s fire is the place where smelters would place the rocks containing gold and silver, so they could get rid of all the stuff around the gold and silver and only be left with the precious metal. Being a smelter was not easy work in Malachi’s day. It was hot, hard and heavy work. The smelter worked outside a furnace that spewed heat and probably on occasion sparks that burned him. It required great strength to lift and move massive quantities of rocks by the men tending the fire. They all felt the power and danger of the fire’s presence with a directness few of us ever experience, except perhaps for firefighters. This is what God is like Malachi said. A blazing fire. Because God is God, to be in God’s presence is always a bit dangerous. No impurity, no sin, no wrong can survive in the presence of God. God will burn away our faults until only what is precious remains.

In the same way God is also sending one who will be like fels naptha laundry soap used by our mothers. This person is bent on making certain our clothes are clean and we ourselves are clean. A mother who will not rest until everything is clean and fresh for her family is acting out of love and tenderness because she cares beyond words that her family is healthy and whole.

This is the work Christ is coming to do in each person’s heart and mind, because what is most valuable and precious to God is a heart and mind totally centered on God embodied by living in joy filled obedient service borne of gratitude for God’s free gift of healing grace. This is, as Benedict writes in the prologue to his monastic rule from the sixth century, the only true life with the only real fulfillment there is. A life that is, as Benedict writes, not simply a better life, but the best life we can imagine. A life lifting us up out of the miry bog sucking us down into deep mud; a life lifting us off the sand shifting beneath us, keeping us unsteady, unsure, and afraid of collapse, to place us on a solid rock upon which to build the houses of our lives.

 It is a life with higher standards not lower standards. A life demanding that we not preserve the status quo of power and injustice, but follow Christ in turning the status quo arrangements of power and injustice on their heads by valuing people before doctrines and policy; valuing loyalty to God before loyalty to government; valuing self-giving love, compassion and mercy before revenge, apathy, and self-centeredness; and by valuing the gifts of life found in creation to human designed technologies  like hydraulic fracking or strip mining that destroy creation. It is a life spent being intentionally faithful in our relationship with God by being intentionally faithful and just in all the relationships of our lives, since our faithfulness and love for God is measured by our faithfulness and self-giving love for family, friends, neighbors and strangers. A life demanding much from us because we have received so much from God in the gift of God’s grace that our response can only be holy obedience to the holy guidance given us in Christ to live the way of peace. A way requiring preparation as John the Baptist makes clear when he preaches Isaiah’s prophetic vision on the banks of the Jordan River, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord. Make his path straight.” Or as Benedict might say in the sixth century, “Let us open our eyes to the light that can change us into the likeness of God. Let our ears be alert to the stirring call of his voice crying to us every day, saying “Come my children, hear me, and I shall teach you the awe of the Lord.” Or, as noted Christian Educator John Westeroff puts John’s message in contemporary parlance, “ I invite you to ponder the possibility of receiving a telephone call from someone you have never met face to face, but because of the stories you have heard about him, you feel that you know him quite well. Over the years, you have confessed your love for him. You have offered prayers in his name. Today, he has called to say that he is on the way. Imagine what he is bringing with him. He is bringing every single thing you need to continue your journey into the dominion of God. His name is Jesus, but before he can come, preparations must be made.”

John, whose priest father exclaims at his birth, “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High. You will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins,” will name what needs to be done to prepare for Jesus’ coming into the life of the world and into our own lives. John speaks the word repentance “Metanoia”, which in Greek means change. Now, we usually think of repentance as a great, life-changing action, but metanoia can refer to a small change as well, and if one projects a small change over a long-enough time, then a small change can become a life-altering event. Metanoia can mean something like the mid-course corrections that were part of the Apollo space program. The space capsule would burn its rockets only a few seconds, but the course change was immensely significant. John’s call to change was a call to the people to re-orient their lives away from the rule of the Roman Empire’s status quo  toward God’s rule of love, justice and righteousness. It is a call to turn away from being self-absorbed and thinking one is the center of the universe and to begin centering one’s life in God. Thinking it is possible to love God and neighbor and worry less about yourself. It is a call to turn to the direction from which salvation comes and to be ready to receive it when it does come. It is a call to acknowledge that, indeed, we need to change our way of living and being, then following that up with concrete actions and willful acts of imagination, imagining that through the grace of God, the completion of a whole new you is possible and imagining that a future of well being and health is possible.

For the people gathered on the banks of the Jordan such imagining was going to be a disorienting shift of perspective, so John not only taught, but also baptized with water those who heard him. Pushing them under the water to signify their death to their old way of life, then raising them up out of the water signifying their birth to a new life. John did this to impress upon them the significance of the change they were taking. Yet, John’s baptism was not an isolated act, but is part of the fulfillment of the prophetic and poetic vision of Malachi seeking through these acts of preparation the removal of all encumbrances that might get in the way of God’s transformative grace poured out upon all humanity through Christ’s coming into the life of the world.

In this Advent season when we expect and long for Christ’s coming, what preparations will we make? How are we removing all the encumbrances getting in the way of centering our life in God as we await the coming of Christ as the “dawn from on high breaking upon us, giving light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the future way of peace?”    

Living into Hope

              The Covid-19 reactions of panic, pandemic shopping with its trademark hoarding of toilet paper and weapons and ammunition buying  is a reminder about the way fear too often drives human behavior toward self-destruction as well as social destruction because we lack control over the circumstances of our lives and we desperately want control.  If one doubts this, just listen to politicians’ rhetoric surrounding the pandemic and their actions to stop a virus that no ones know enough about, including the doctors and researchers who study epidemics and disease. This fear is also happening in faith communities who are struggling to find avenues to gather people virtually together for worship as well as the institutional response I read recently coming from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) about celebrating the Lord’s Supper in worship that is being done through electronic venues.

           My own response is to calm, slow down and remember I am a follower of Christ, who celebrates Easter-who celebrates resurrection- of life rising out of death? I follow the God who makes a way for life to flourish even when it seems impossible for life to even exist. I follow the God who makes for life out of no way. And, this is simple truth echoed in the psalms of lament such as Psalm 130 that begins “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!” and ends with “O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with God is great power to redeem. It is the Lord who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.”

Every psalm of lament ends with the brutally honest expression of pain, sorrow and grief  rising up from the rubble of despair and the debris of their despondency like children trapped in the rubble of a building after an earthquake or bombardment. Yet, in all but two psalms of lament there comes the witness that God has changed the situation of the psalmist from death to life. We never hear what God did because the how is not as important as the reality that God transformed life’s circumstances, so a vibrant and thriving life arose like a phoenix from the ashes of despair and tragedy. The psalms of lament bear a strong unequivocal witness to God’s compassion enacting a new creation of life, gifting the psalmist with a sustaining hope that life will arise once again, no matter what has happened.

This is the same simple truth we hear in chapter 37 of Ezekiel when God calls the prophet to speak a word of comfort, of hope to the people Israel in Babylonian exile. Before the prophet can do that God brings him out to an ancient battlefield strewn with bones and asks him, “ben-Adam- song of man-can these bones live?

Ezekiel answers truthfully that only God knows the answer to that question. This is, of course, the moment God gives the prophet the words to speak to the dry bones, which the prophet does speak, stirring the lifeless bones back to life. it isn’t surprising that God would go to all this trouble because God intends Ezekiel to experience for himself the prophetic word God will give him to speak to the exiles because when he does speak God’s words of comfort and possibility; telling them God will lift Israel off rubble of despair; God will sift through the debris of despondency to bring them to new life; God will breathe new life into the people; God will raise up new faithful leaders and they will live once again in their homeland, the people Israel will hear the truth and the certainty of hope and trust that no matter what God is transforming their life circumstances.

They did trust because, as Walter Brueggemann, Old Testament scholar describes, they are hopers , whose life story is a “partisan polemic narrative. It is concerned to build a counter community-counter to the oppression of Egypt, counter to the seduction of Canaan, counter to every cultural alternative and every imperial pretense. There is nothing in this narrative that will appeal to outsiders who belong to another consensus, or who share a different ethos and participate in another epistemology. To such persons, Israel’s narratives are silly, narrow, scandalous and obscuranist. The narrative form of the Torah intends to nurture insiders who are willing to risk a specific universe of discourse and cast their lot there,” according to Brueggemann. They are invited to make their lives coherent with that narrative or to say it another way toot their lives squarely in the stories of their ancestors’ experiences of God’s presence, compassion and steadfast love that creates life anew, so life flourishes as well as in their own lived experiences in a deep abiding relationship with God.

Followers of Christ are invited to do the same. No where is this made more clear than in Jesus raising Lazarus to life after Lazarus has been dead and buried for four days. Jesus meets Lazarus’ sister Martha outside the village and he reveals that he is the resurrection and the life, then joins the villagers and her sister Mary in weeping and grieving as an act of compassion before commanding Lazarus to “come out.”

In this tiny village, God’s life creating word comes, so these villagers might experience for themselves God restoring life an out of this experience trust God will restore their lives, will sustain their lives out of compassion and love for them no matter what their circumstances might be and we who read and hear this story, the psalms and Ezekiel’s story are invited to do the same and to root our lives in these stories.

We are not to root our lives in doctrinal statements, propositional truths, institutional dictates, economic theory, the trading of human lives for a booming economy as Trump and some conservatives have suggested, or joining the cult of ignorance and hate or systematic theologies based on neo-Platontic-Aristoelian modes of discourse, but we are called to root our lives in the God who is compassionate, who is merciful, who is steadfast in love and kindness.

Doing so, especially during this pandemic, because we trust God and trust God shows us how to live vibrantly through the gifts of healing given to doctors and nurses and researchers and others who are seeking to preserve life.  God is acting to transform this life circumstance, even if we cannot tell how or when.