Words on Christmas

Do you remember chemistry labs?  The labs where you would mix things together and watch what would happen?  One of my favorite authors, Madeline L’Engle, goes from chemistry class to Bethlehem in the following poem entitled: “The Bethlehem Explosion.” (A Cry Like a Bell: Crosswicks, 1987.)

The chemistry lab at school
was in an old greenhouse
surrounded by ancient live oaks
garnished with Spanish moss.

The experiment I remember best
was pouring a quart of clear fluid
into a glass jar, and dropping into it,
grain by grain, salt-sized crystals,
until they layered 
like white sand on the floor of the jar.

One more grain—and suddenly—
water and crystal burst
into a living, moving pattern,
a silent, quietly violent explosion.
The teacher told us that only when
we supersaturated the solution, 
would come the precipitation.

The little town
was like the glass jar in our lab.
One by one they came, grain by grain,
all those of the house of David,
like grains of sand to be counted.

The inn was full.  When Joseph knocked,
his wife was already in labour; there was no room
even for compassion.  Until the barn was offered.
That was the precipitating force.  A child was born,
and the pattern changed forever, the cosmos 
shaken with that silent explosion.

Yes, the world once did not have a room for the God-in-the-flesh child.  But the world often has no room for lots of things:

No room for the patience it takes to do the long, messy grieving over the death of one who is precious to us.

No room for the respect needed to lay down its war of words or weapons against those who don’t think the same, or believe the same.

No room for the sharing needed for those in grinding poverty, who can’t manage to dig themselves out or feed themselves on nothing.

No room, except for the pointing of fingers, for those who have been unemployed for a long time.

No permanent room for thousands of war refugees living in tents on the borders of nowhere.

No room for immigrants who bring different ways.

No room for priorities to insure that all girls across the globe have access to education.

No room to set aside judgment in order to accommodate forgiveness.

No room for the powerless to have a clear enough voice to be heard.

What would you add to this list? There is no room for so much and for so many in this world.  Yet, in spite of the world’s scarcity of room, God made room for the world with the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem.  As the poet said, a silent explosion that one night has changed the pattern forever.  This is good news, the great joy we keep singing about today.  God squeezed into a manger and there is now room!

For forgiveness as deep as the ocean to rest upon the guilty and shamed-burdened.

For life as wide as eternity to hold the dying.

For welcome as spacious as the air we breathe to embrace the rejected and overlooked.

For freedom more powerful than cell walls to give hope to those imprisoned.

For healing stretching as high as the mountains to strengthen those who are broken.

For love reaching into the darkness left by absence to lift the lonely.

There is room  in God’s heart for all of us.  If God can squeeze into a manger, then God’s heart holds more than enough compassion for you and for me.  We may doubt whether we have any room in our lives for God, but there is no doubt that God has room for us:

No matter how far away we are.

No matter how far gone the situation troubling us is.

No matter how scornful the world has been.

No matter how many doors have been closed in our faces.

No matter how costly it will be to make a space for us, (the cost has been taken care of).

The silent explosion of Bethlehem has reversed things forever for us when Jesus, God-made-flesh, was born, lived, loved, died, was raised again and is yet present with us.  Yes, there is indeed room in God’s heart for us.  So much room that, in fact, the silent explosion once started in Bethlehem continues whenever God’s people in the name of the Christ Child make room for others in their hearts.

In the last month I've watched my brothers and sisters with whom I worship provide winter shelter (several months rent) for a single mother and her two small children until there is an opening in a program that will get the mother the permanent skills she needs to be independent. In the last weeks I have seen these same people make room for young children to get a head start in their education, put Christmas dinners on tables of families whose pantries are bare, knit mittens for cold hands, and take soup to the sick.  The Bethlehem explosion continues through God's people, signs that the cosmos is still shaking from that silent explosion.

Where can you see it happening?

It's a mystery!

I have been mentored by a lot of contemplatives over the past ten years.

And just who is a contemplative? you may ask.

My granddaughter is, for one.  For the past five months, my one year-old granddaughter has lived only a half mile from my house.  This is a gift I do not take lightly.  After a hard day at work I sometimes call her parents up and say I have an hour in the afternoon or evening to play.   She has become my youngest contemplative mentor.

The two of us, grandmother and granddaughter, sometimes find ourselves sitting quietly on the porch swing.  A car goes by and she proudly says the word "car" acknowledging its presence.   She hears a bird, looks at me with her eyes wide and makes the sign for bird with her hand.  We walk to the railroad tracks and listen perhaps ten minutes for the sound of the train whistle in the distance, and then there is a long wait of ten minutes more before the gates start flashing and the locomotive goes rumbling by with a thrill.  On the other hand, she often notices and stops at sounds that I overlook.  We do a lot of careful listening together.

Most often contemplatives are known for practicing prayer, not so much by talking to God, but as listening to God. Often their times of prayer consist of sitting silently together, perhaps after hearing a word of scripture, waiting and alert to the presence of God.  The contemplative at prayer has learned to value spacious silence which, as Thomas Moore has said, is "not the absence of sound, but rather a shifting of attention toward the sounds that speak to the soul."

Contemplative prayer pays attention to the present moment, the here and now---which, of course, is the only place where we can encounter God.  We can't jump ahead in the future to hear what God will say or do a year from now.   Nor can we go back to the past either to fix it or bring it back.  God's Spirit acts in us today.  God's word reaches and speaks to us now.  Contemplative prayer brings us into God's present presence.

My granddaughter is the best mentor for that.  She doesn't care about what happened in the morning or worry about what will happen tomorrow afternoon.  She is totally and enthusiastically absorbed in the now with her grandmother.  She draws me in so that I too, when with her, cannot worry about the difficult meeting in the evening or dwell on that painful conversation of the morning.  I am totally in the present in her presence, simply enjoying her...like contemplative prayer is with God.

Another important aspect of contemplative prayer for me is that it can be playful.  There is a freedom to be creative, imaginative, move around, be spontaneous, draw, write a song, walk in God's creation with the openness and wonder of a child.  No, contemplatives don't just sit quietly all the time.  There is a freedom to be oneself as beloved child of God.

And my granddaughter and I do that playing thing together.  She and I have our own holy hilarity.  We build towers and crash them on the floor and roll in laughter.  We "wow" over the lights on the Christmas tree.  We are fascinated with colored leaves, tiny flowers, bees on the sidewalk and fish swimming in the lake.   We stick our feet in the cold river.  We chase bubbles before they burst on the grass. We slurp spaghetti noodles into our mouths and laugh. (Don't tell her parents.)  With few words or with no words, our times together are full of play and delight in being together and we are content to be children of God.

There is indeed a variety of ways to pray, just as there is variety in communicating with anyone we love. I suppose many people often hear me pray as a pastor at their hospital bedside or see me pray formally in a written or sung prayer in worship or offer a table blessing at a fellowship meal.  But it is the contemplative side of prayer that nurtures and grounds me for the more public prayerful leadership that takes place.  The listening, the attention to the present, the playfulness and creativity springing from delight in God's presence feeds my soul for the work I am called to do.

After all, Jesus did say, "Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it."  (Luke 18:17)

For an old pastor to be nurtured in her prayer life by the youngest of God's beloved children has got be one of the great mysteries of faith.

Unexpected chuckles on an Advent Sunday

Our second service this morning was "alternative worship"----whatever that means.  Perhaps it means  that we used a screen (heads-up) instead of bulletins (heads-down).  Today, however, in the first Sunday of Advent, it mostly meant that two of our college students, who were home for the Thanksgiving holiday, led some of our music: guitar, piano and random percussion worked together.  One piece that a young woman sang was particularly beautiful: "Let Your Light Shine Down on Me."  

That theme about which she sang came from Isaiah and Romans: Walking in the light of the Lord.  One of our quieter, young adults helped to lead worship, prayers, a teaching about the advent wreath and, yes, even parts of the "message".  Another read the scriptures...and what does 'debauchery' and 'licentiousness' mean anyway?  Someone else had cut out footprints for each of us, and on them we wrote down simple, ordinary things that are characteristics of walking in the light of the Lord, maybe things that God is inviting us to do this advent.  People spent time talking to each other about ways they had seen God's light in their lives recently.   Now you must understand, talking with one another about faith stuff is an unfamiliar step for reserved Lutherans who usually sit spread out in the pews apart from one another.  Yet today people moved closer together and before long the congregation was buzzing with conversation.  Singing the African song, "We are [walking] in the light of the Lord," we walked and rolled (one of us is in a wheelchair) around the sanctuary, placing our footprints on the floor leading up to the communion table.  We looked at what other people had written on their footprints.   We walked up to place our offerings in a basket that had been brought back from Nigeria by two Peace Corp workers, relatives of one of our congregation.  

There were tea lights (battery operated) lining the path up to the communion table and which my alb managed to brush out of place here and there. It didn't matter.  We hadn't figured out how to get the wheel chair up the steps to the communion table, but by the end of the worship one of our people had already addressed that challenge for the future in order to make our rolling brother better included in the circle.   As we were singing "This Little Light of Mine" throughout communion, a second-time visitor and African American, lifted up her voice above the others and sang it the way we up-tight European-descended Lutherans can't manage yet. For a brief  moment I had to pause in handing out the bread of Christ just so I could listen to her unexpectedly leading our song.  

In Advent we are reminded to wait, to wake up, to notice, to be ready for the unexpected coming of Christ. "Come, Lord Jesus."  I can't wait until Jesus comes again.  But meanwhile I am determined to write this down tonight because the quiet, intermediate arrivals of Christ in our midst are so easy for us to miss.  I know in my gut that Jesus was hanging around this morning, a foretaste of what is to come, and if I don't write it down it will be one more of God's gifts that may go unnoticed.  In this morning's second service, we weren't particularly organized and our worship wasn't polished.  Some of us were definitely out of our comfort zones, and our ushers were graciously asking with puzzled looks: and what is it you are asking us to do?  

But here was Christ's unexpected presence today: several  voices (not one pastor's) led worship; many voices shared the message with one another---different ages, different backgrounds, different abilities were welcomed in tangible ways. In fact, the whole body of Christ was more actively working and participating in worship today. It was a community-body-of -Christ experience.  If no one of us was quite comfortable or totally sure about what was happening next, well, judging from the gospel today, that isn't one of Jesus' priorities. Jesus just tells us to be ready and then surprises us.  And, yes, my hunch is that he has a sense of humor about it all.

This morning was not quite what any of us expected.  All I'm saying is that Jesus, chuckling a bit, showed up in worship today.  (Thanks be to God.)  

Rebuilding Humility on the Jersey Shore

In the last few blog posts I have been thinking about humility, the lack of it in our culture and in ourselves, the importance of it when we find it.  Granted, humility is not the most popular topic to write about, but here's one more thing to say about it.

Last week, I went on a working mission trip to help with the long rebuilding of the New Jersey shore from hurricane Sandy which devastated the area over a year ago.  We stayed in a Presbyterian Church in Point Pleasant and were absolutely amazed by their hospitality and the great lengths this congregation has gone to feed and house volunteer groups week after week. Thank you, people of Point Pleasant Presbyterian Church.

This was my first experience with a mission trip of this nature.  I am a musician, a thinker, a reader, a preacher, a writer, a listener---but rebuilding a house is not one of my strong suits. Yet, here I was, ready to serve, convinced by fellow members in my congregation that there would be something I could do.

And there was!  Primarily as a learner.  This is where the humility part comes in.  For four of the five days I was down there I was on the painting crew.  Now, I have painted in my own home and done a passable job.  But here in Point Pleasant I was working with a volunteer who is a professional painter!  He is also retired from being a high school principal, so he knows how to teach and administrate.  Out on the work site he was teaching me the craft of painting.

You may wonder how much one needs to know in order to paint. You would be surprised. Thoughout the week he would walk by, observe what I was doing (or not doing) and ask in his quiet way, "May I offer a suggestion?"  Of course, I would answer with a yes.  And then he would tell me more about how to hold a brush, the best way to roll the paint on the wall, in what order to paint a paneled door, how to edge the trim and much more.  Sometimes when I heard "May I offer a suggestion?" I would be momentarily disappointed; it meant that I was still not doing something right!  That's where some humility needed to come in; it takes humility to be a learner.  As the week progressed, I  began to value each new painting tip I learned.  I was doing better work for the people we were serving and someday I would be doing better work in my own home.

But I also learned to value the question itself.  My painting coach didn't come to me and tell me how to do something.  Instead, he very simply asked if he could suggest something, which I think implies a respectful way to teach, more of an invitation.  For the learning to continue, I would need to agree to my own learning.  By answering "yes" I accept the invitation and become a participant in the process, not just an object to be corrected.  It appears to be a more humble way to teach.  What would he have done if I said, no?  I didn't test that.  My guess is he would simply have shrugged his shoulders and said calmly, "Okay, let me know when I can help."

It seems to me that Jesus' preferred way of teaching was also by invitation: he invited people into ways of being participants in the kingdom of God. He did this by telling stories like the one about the Samaritan who crossed the road to help an injured stranger or by suggesting metaphors like being "salt" and "light" in the world to describe how our living can make a difference to others.  Hopefully we answer "yes" on most days. Teaching, learning, rebuilding on the Jersey shore and being a  follower of Jesus happen best when accompanied by a sprinkling of humility.

Humility in the face of all saints

Tomorrow we celebrate All Saints Day, although technically the festival of All Saints was November 1.  We Lutherans are not very good at going to mid-week services, so we postpone the celebration until Sunday. This year the list of our congregation's saints who have died and entered the "church triumphant" is especially long.  In fact, it is heart-rending.  We will read their names in our prayers of the church and a bell will toll after each name is read.  The bell tolls deep.  We miss their faithful presence.

In my last two posts here and  here, I have written, reflected and wrestled with humility...or the lack thereof. I told you I would let you know if I found it.  I have.

On October 30, a congregation member died suddenly.  Over the past few days I have been preparing for the All Saints Day message in which I have reflected on the gifts of the ten brothers and sisters who have died in the Lord this past year.  But I have also begun preparing for the funeral of this faithful and beloved sister in Christ who has most recently departed and whose name will be read last tomorrow.  It is fair to say that I have been humbled.

There is a tendency for many to say only good things about the one who has died as if we have to prove that they are worthy of God's notice.   As if we will jinx their future or dishonor their memory if we admit some of the ways that they may have failed us.  What short shrift we give God's graciousness and forgiveness!

Nevertheless, I am humbled when I hear of the gracious things my departed brothers and sisters have done that I have known nothing about.  When I discover that they, quietly and behind the scenes, have been serving their neighbor (and therefore the Lord) in ways that few people know about, I can only describe my response as humility. How much they had to teach me and I didn't know.  Perhaps I didn't  know about it because I wasn't listening carefully with enough of my own humility. I also suspect, though, that they didn't care about the "left hand knowing what the right hand was doing."  There is something about many in the passing generation that doesn't need to be praised, that knows we do what is right and loving because we can (by God's grace), not because anyone is looking.

And so I now name humility as a frequent part of the generation that preceded me. If that is true, then I only have a few more years to learn from them.  Or perhaps humility is  the final stage of development for any generation that is entering their last years.  Maybe I too will do things with humility by the time I am 85. Nevertheless, I know this: I still have a lot to learn about walking humbly with one's God.  And every time I preside at a funeral, the more I realize time is running out for what I have yet to learn.

On meeting a black snake

Yes, I have been out day hiking on the AT again.  Three times, actually, because I've had the luxury of a full week of vacation.  

I have stood on a rock precipice and peered over the valley to ridges beyond.  I have walked under yellowing trees tossing their flames one by one into the chill wind.  I have sat beside a stream of the clearest water that becomes the glass coffin for leaves of red maple and brown oak.  I have walked softly on scented needles of pine through the gloomy maze of their dark trunks.  In the warmth of a noon sun, I have traced the path through a thicket playground full of noisy sparrows.  Hunched by a campfire, I have watched the moon, part shadowed, part light, rise while my legs, facing the fire, burned with heat and my back, facing the damp grass, shivered.  It has been a full week.

Oh, yes, and I met a black snake on the trail not too far, as I recall, from the thicket with all the small birds---a virtual grocery store for a snake.  I will not, however, let that fact cloud my respect for this creature.  Soon it will be hibernating in a rocky den in mountains that I love, perhaps one of the rock jumbles I had just finished climbing over.  At the moment I saw it, however, the snake was absolutely still.  Whether it was soaking in the sun, or waiting for a chipmunk to run by, or watching for me to leave it alone, I do not know. I circled it, took a few cell phone photos, and estimated its length to be five and a half feet.  It remained motionless all the while.  Without analyzing, without words, its snake thing to do was simply to hold one's head up, be still, watch and wait.

The Psalms are well known for moving from the subject of creation and its Creator to the dilemmas of humanity.  I am going to make the same shift.  In my last post here I began reflecting on what it means to practice humility in our lives.  I'm not good at the humility thing, and in fact that was one of the things I was thinking about on this day of walking.  Then I saw the snake and eventually realized that an important quality of walking humbly is to be able to be still, hold one's head up, watch and wait.

What might that look like practically speaking?  Instead of jumping to my own conclusions, listen to what another is trying to say.  Instead of charging ahead with my own plans to fix problems, waiting in prayerful stillness to see what God might be suggesting.  Instead of first following my own interests, also looking to the interests of others (a paraphrase of the apostle Paul).  Instead of becoming defensive in the rightness of my own view, listen for the truth in what others are saying.

Why, in the face of a towering two legged creature, did the snake know to choose stillness over slithering away under the dry, fallen leaves?  Perhaps a herpetologist could answer that question.  But let me guess that true humility can remain still, wait and watch because it is curious to know and respect the other; it values the other as much as itself.   In some cases humility is the strength that gives itself for the sake of the other.  Isn't that at the heart of the good news of what Jesus did?  And if so, then why as followers of Jesus, aren't we better at listening and waiting? 

A little humility?

I am appalled by the self-righteousness that has permeated our lives. Two examples---no, three.

First, in the nation where I live, two factions of elected officials cannot work together.  They each are standing on supposed principles, refusing to compromise.  Meanwhile dedicated government workers are not getting paid, children are not able to to participate in clinical trials at a nationally run health institute, the economy is beginning to slump, research is being shut down, food is not being inspected, national parks are closed, and programs for those in need are in jeopardy---and that only names a few consequences.

Second, I am appalled that when my faith denomination installed a new presiding bishop last week, the clergy group on facebook, my colleagues, nitpicked and sniped about the worship service---about this procedure or that hymn chosen, what color should have been used, who was represented or under represented---all in self-righteous, deprecating tones.

Alas, finally, I realized this week that I am also rather appalled by me.  I once served on a staff that was creative and accomplished much in the congregation.  We were "successful" and loved our work;  we were supported and admired in return.  With pews full, I (self-righteously, I now realize) assumed that we were doing well because we were competent and had a good combination of gifts.  Well, we were a good ministry team, but herein lies the problem.  Although I would never have said it out loud, there was a barely conscious, but underlying judgment on my part that the colleagues who were struggling in other congregations must be lacking in some way while we were doing something right.  This is my confession.

Now I am the struggling, trying-to-be-faithful pastor in a struggling, trying-to-be-faithful congregation.   I love this group of God's people like I loved the group of years ago.  But I am forced to look at the world and at the Church from the shadow of a more (seemingly) insignificant, questioning, and self-doubting underside. That perspective has caused me painfully to confront my past self-righteousness for what it was.  At the time I could never have seen the inherent follies of  my thinking, but I now consider how very foolish I was to assume that our/my success was a sign of competence and God's favor.

Working hard, doing one's best and constantly learning are always important while at the same time they can lead into a trap.  Trust in what the world considers measurable success leaves no room for me to trust in how God is working. Trust in the rightness of my own capability and knowledge leaves no room for the humility one needs to listen carefully to others.  Trust in efficiency leaves no room for the patient, faithful, slow work of God. Trust in what is admired and applauded leaves no room for serving and taking up the cross.

How have we become so confused?  On this continent, at least, humility is hard to come by while self-righteousness is overly abundant.  Yet if I now name the latter in others, it is only because it has been and certainly is still a part of me and my own struggle.  Those of us who say we follow Christ are following one who walked a different, very foreign path to the assumptions we automatically live by.  The apostle Paul writes:

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.  Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.  Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death---even death on a cross....(Philippians 2:3-8)

The truth these verses convey is so jarring to what is considered normal in our culture that it sounds like chalk scraping on a chalkboard.  (Even as I date myself with the chalk simile,  my shoulders tense with the memory.)  To protect ourselves from its implications, I think we Christians have wrapped this humility sounding truth up tightly in a theological box for discussion only so we don't have to deal with what it looks like in practice.

So how do I let humility out of the box?  Where will I find it?  How do I help others find it?  Who do I know in my life that models it well?  I am going out searching---which is a little tricky, because humility doesn't want to be found.

If I make any discoveries that can be publicly posted, I'll let you know.

In between the first step up and the home-made soup

Yesterday was a hiking day on the section of the A.T. that climbs "southbound" out of Duncannon over Cove Mountain, descending to Miller's Gap Rd.  It was a very slow 8.5 miles.

One of the reasons I both enjoy and need to hike is that it is an activity that is wholly absorbing.  I must be attentive to where I am putting my feet, where I am placing my hiking poles, and the location of the next white blaze marking the trail.  This concentration was especially true for yesterday's hike because a good portion of the trail was covered with rocks.  All the rocks make it harder to discern trail from mountain, hence the need for the white blazes.

If I was not vigilant, I found myself veering off the path on the rockiest stretches, or catching a pole in a crevice, or placing my foot on a wobbly stone threatening my balance. With all my focus on the simple task of walking, for a while the worries of the week behind and the week ahead fade away.

But there are other things to notice too: the last of the goldenrod, yellowing fern, a dead caterpillar attacked by ants, white-rimmed fungus, red Virginia creeper, a glossy brown centipede climbing through dead leaves.  I hear the occasional sound of farm equipment in the valley, a hawk cry, cedar waxwings in a thicket where trees have blown down, a woodpecker drilling over the ridge, squirrel chatter.  Mostly I notice the absence of noise and the fullness of trees.

In between the silences I sometimes hum a song, often a hymn, in rhythm with whatever pace I am trying to keep. I was struck yesterday by how the words of "Come, my Way" sounded so different out in these remote woods rather than in  its usual setting within a worship setting under a roof and behind walls.

Come, my Way

As I am picking my way among the rocks and white blazes, occasionally wandering from the path.

my Truth, my Life:
such a way as gives us breath;

     As I breathe in the air smelling of damp earth and pine needles.

such a truth as ends all strife;

     As the strife and pressures of the week's responsibilities are laid down and left behind.

such a life as conquers death.

Out on the mountain I am more aware of creatures preparing for the winter and the fragility of life, the need for food, water and shelter to stave off death.

Come my light, my feast, my strength:
Such a light as shows a feast

I literally cannot walk out here without the daylight and am mindful I must be off the mountain before dusk.  And the feast?  Well, how about this view off of Hawk Rock, the silver Susquehanna winding through the mountains; the farm in browning fields, the scattered calls of black-capped chickadees.

Such a feast as mends in length;

This feast of walking out here does its mending and restoring, making me ready to go back to work---tomorrow, that is.

Such a strength as makes its guest.

I do need strength to hike like this and know that each year I am able to do it is a gift.  Already my body is aching.  But I am also aware, particularly on the trail, that I am a guest in God's creation.  It is not mine, but it is here to be delightfully enjoyed.

Come my joy, my love, my heart:
Such a joy as none can move;

As my feet slip here and there and I must keep moving, I think about the constant presence of joy that runs deeper than the roots of this mountain, the Joy that doesn't move.

Such a love as none can part;

Under these trees, I find myself praying for the people given me to love and am grateful for love received---the Love which is life itself.

Such a heart as joys in love.

And that is what inevitably happens to me on a hike---it gives me back a heart that joys in love. Gratitude.  Time to go back to a loving home, to work, but most immediately to my husband's home-made chicken soup.

Hymn text:  George Herbert, 1593-1632; music;  Ralph Vaughn Williams, 1872-1958

Craziness!

This story that Jesus tells here is craziness, just craziness!

There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought against him that this man was squandering his property.  So he summoned him and said to him, "What is this I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer."

Then the manager said to himself, "What will I do now that the master is taking the position away from me?  I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.  I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes."

So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he asked the first, "How much do you owe my master?"  

He answered, "A hundred jugs of olive oil."

He said to him, "Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty."

Then he asked another, "And how much do you owe?"

He replied, "A hundred containers of wheat."

He said to him, "Take your bill and make it eighty."

And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.  And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest (worldly) wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.  (Luke 16: 1-9)

Craziness!  Shenanigans!  Dishonest manager caught and served notice.  Before he's axed, he gets in good with customers by means of his boss's money.  The owner, while terminating the manager's position, commends him for being shrewd.  Is this story supposed to be a life lesson for Jesus' disciples?  Or tongue in cheek maybe---as in "It wouldn't hurt you disciples to be a little more street-wise"?  Or is it a case of a playful Jesus chuckling over the puzzled faces of disciples as in, "Come on, guys, lighten up. We're on our last trip to Jerusalem, after all."

One of my colleagues noted that parables are designed to provoke conversation.  And in his follow-up remarks, Luke, the one who wrote down Jesus telling this story, seemed to think Jesus was trying to provoke conversation about how disciples were to use money.  As opposed to being dishonest with money (verse 10).  As opposed to how the Pharisees loved money (verse 14).  As opposed to how we can't serve God and wealth at the same time (verse 13).

But I didn't get anywhere in puzzling this story through by assuming that the disciples were being contrasted to act differently than the dishonest manager.  So I asked a different question of the story: How are the disciples and the dishonest manager suppose to be similar?  Let's rephrase it and get personal: How am I similar to the dishonest manager?

Bingo! The story suddenly opens up.  Let me count the ways.  Seriously.

1. Both the manager and myself each serve a master who, for all intents and purposes here, owns everything. The manager served, used, lent and collected his rich master's property, not his own.  I am not the owner of what I "own" either.  It's all God's.  Everything.  My calling is to be a steward of everything--even "dishonest,"worldly money.

2. Both the manager and myself squander what's given us to manage. Polluting the environment.  Wasting time.  Purchasing what I don't need. ("I "give" some to God, but the rest is mine to do with as I want.)

3. Just like the manager, my earthly job of being a manager/disciple for Christ will end---when I die, of course.  If asked to give an account of what God entrusted to me, will I have invested in the kingdom of heaven/eternal home priorities (as in "treasure in heaven," Luke 12:32-24)?

4. For all the wrong reasons, the dishonest manager at the last hour participated in the gospel of Luke's great reversal of being generous to the poor, lightening the burden of debt, and sharing.  I may not to be generous out of expediency because of impending job loss, but how am I generous and creatively resourceful with the money/wealth I manage because I am a follower of Christ?

5.  Similarly the dishonest manager, when in a bind, made establishing new relationships a priority.  As a follower of Jesus, does the generosity and resourceful sharing of gifts (including sharing the good news of Christ) establish  new relationships, inviting them into the community of Christ?  Do people come to faith and become brothers and sisters because of  my willingness to be involved in their lives?

Hmmmm.  Jesus' story is not craziness.  It's ingenious!  It has quite cleverly hooked me and is slowly reeling me in.

This may be a spoiler

I have just finished reading a well-crafted collection of six short stories that I wish I had read 25 years ago.  The Wild Birds by Wendell Berry honors our human connection with the land, with our neighbors, and with the passage of time.  One of my favorite stories is entitled "It Wasn't Me."  Here's a summary before we get to the quote that I've read and reread.

Elton and Mary Penn became tenant farmers on Old Jack Beechum's farm in Kentucky when he moved into town because he was lonely and not able to do the farmwork anymore.  The Penns not only cared well for the farm but were frequent visitors for Old Jack whose only daughter lived far away.  When Old Jack died, his good friend Wheeler, a lawyer as well as a farmer, handled the estate.  Old Jack left the Penns a sum of money and his daughter the farm, but Wheeler knew that Old Jack's hope was that his wealthy daughter would sell the farm to the Penns for a modest amount.  Old Jack's wish was never stipulated in the will, only written on a scrap of paper and forgotten in a coat pocket before he died.  In spite of  her father's wish, the daughter and her husband sold the farm at auction to get as much as possible.

With Wheeler's encouragement, Elton participated in the auction although he thought he could never outbid those who had their eye on this good piece of well-maintained property.  As the bidding went higher and Elton was ready to call it quits, Wheeler kept urging him on, convinced of what the land was worth, of Elton's skills and love of the property, and of his friend Old Jack's desire that the farm should belong to the Penns.  And so Elton ended up purchasing the farm at a price more than he thought he could afford.

Now Elton is sitting in Wheeler's office, anxious, worried that the mortgage is more than he can handle if circumstances get the least bit hard. Wheeler, who has studied the figures and believes the Penns are safe enough,  has informed him that he personally has already contributed a small  amount to the price of the farm as a gift in honor of his friend Jack and that he, like Jack, has seen how the land has thrived under Elton and Mary's care.

But Elton's pride is getting in the way, and although he is appreciative of  the money inherited from the estate and for Wheeler's counsel and help, he says he doesn't deserve the farm if he is not able to make it on his own without having a soul to thank.  Wheeler responds:

Well, putting aside what Mary Penn might have to say about that, and putting aside what it means in the first place just to be human, I don't think your old friend has left you in shape to live thankless....You're indebted to a dead man.  So am I.  So was he.  Back of you is Jack Beechum.  Back of him was Ben Feltner.  Back of him was, I think, his own daddy.  And back of him somebody else, and on back that way, who knows how far?  And I'm back of you because Jack Beechum is, and because he's back of me, along with some others. It's no use for you to want to make it on your own, because you can't. ...[When] you quit living in the price and start living in the place, you're in a different line of succession.....The way you got in it, I guess, is by being chosen.

That's the quote I have pondered.  Of course, as a pastor, I am use to saying that all we have is a gift of God.  That is a "theological" statement,  easily said on the surface, easily agreed with on the surface and hard to flesh out in the depths of living. Wendell Berry's story does just that in a different way.

What if everything that I had been given, that I did not earn in my life were taken away?  My piano and lessons.  My dulcimer.  The help with the mortgage one month.  Or let's go deeper.  My marriage.  My children. My education.  My friends.  My call to pastor a congregation.  I've earned none of these things.  They were all given by choice.  (Well, I guess my children didn't choose me; but they are gifts nevertheless, and there were many who helped in the birth, adoption and raising of them.)  And those who gave to me were given to by others.  None of us makes it on our own.  None of us. We earn very little of who we are and are indebted to a long stream of folks and dear ones who have shared of themselves.  We are chosen by person after person throughout our lives.

And this, my friend, is for me one of the best pictures of God, God's family and grace that I know:  The way we've gotten into this baptismal gift is by being chosen.  We don't earn it, but we can be deeply grateful for all of it and start living into it, passing it on.  

I don't think I've spoiled the story too much.  Read it and the rest of the book!







  

Keep it simple

Wednesday night I watched my granddaughter praying.

I had dropped off some cookies at my son and daughter-in-law's new apartment, something I could never do when, until two weeks ago, they lived 500 miles away. When I arrived that evening, they were  putting my 17-month-old granddaughter to bed.  Good timing on my part, I would say.  Soon the little one was hugging me tight as we rocked in the chair in her room, keeping the beat as I sang through a long list of songs, lullabies and a hymn or two.   She was very still for a very long time.

Sure that she was asleep, I laid her down in her crib.  Immediately her eyes popped open wide with a betrayed look, and for a minute she did not move, just looked around with her concentrating frown at what was still a strange new room.

Suddenly the arms reached out.  When that had no effect on me, since I was trying to be the responsible adult saying it was time to sleep, she then demonstratively sat up.  And when that did not accomplish what she needed from her grammom, she started to whimper with displeasure.  Now this toddler has no concept of God yet, but she has already learned the first lesson of prayer: trust the one to whom we pray.  She, more than I, trusted that the one who loved her would not leave her alone in a strange dark place.

What’s a grammom to do?

What's God to do for that matter?

Lord, teach us to pray, said Jesus' disciples one day.  They had heard that John the Baptist's followers had received a workshop on prayer from their teacher and now Jesus' disciples wanted to hear Jesus' version. They certainly knew Jesus went off to pray a lot.  How did he pray?

So Jesus told his followers something quite unique: to pray to Abba.  Papa.  Not Creator-of-the-Universe.  Not Ruler of-all-nations.  But to Abba---our good and dear parent.  Father.  The heart of Jesus' prayer is an intimate, trusting, close relationship---like a child in the arms of a loving parent.  In prayer we are children, and in prayer our Abba is not going to leave us alone in a strange dark place.  Prayer is trusting talk (sometimes wordless) with our Abba.

The second thing I notice about Jesus' teaching on prayer is that he kept it simple. (Luke 11:1-4) Hear the simplicity of Jesus' petitions: Give us bread today.  Forgive us as we forgive.  Save us in hard times.  He said it simply.  There is nothing hard or involved about his prayer.  It is as simple, really, as one of us wordlessly reaching up one's arms to the trusted One.

Why do we pastors seem to make prayer much more complicated and fancy?  Ecclesiastically verbose, if you will.  And why do those of us sitting in the pews or chairs think our prayers are not good enough to pray out loud?

Lord, teach us to pray, queried the disciples.

Are my prayers more complex than necessary?  Probably.  While at times I have been told my praying is comforting and people are grateful, maybe it is more about the fact I am praying than what I say in those prayers.  Have in the end my prayers also been intimidating?  Do people in the congregation prefer me to pray rather than risk their own words in comparison?  If for my part I have unwittingly led the congregation to think that prayer, particularly community prayer, takes special training, I have not been a good teacher.

Last Wednesday, standing beside a crib, I was not asking:  Lord,teach me to pray.  But suddenly he was inviting:  Elaine, how would you like me to teach you something about prayer since you are intending to preach on Sunday.  This has been his crib-side teaching: That simply raising my arms to Abba is quite enough.  That the Lord receives my simple wordless plea with his arms open wide as well.

A missed connection

Somehow I missed an important connection.  I've known that "For Whom the Bell Tolls" was a 1940 novel written by Hemingway and that "No Man Is an Island" was a song of the 60's and 70's (with rather sappy lyrics, by the way).  But how did I miss that these two titles, now common phrases, were originally written by a 16th-17th century English poet and priest?  Not only that, but these familiar phrases are part of a collection of meditations or brief sermons?  Here are those two phrases originating in John Donne's Meditation XVII.

No man is an island, entire of itself.  Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.  If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were.  Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.  And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for thee.    —John Donne (1572-1631)

You can read the one page meditation here.  And you can read the article that made the connection for me here.

In a time of human history when there was plenty of war, terrible disease and religious divisions, John Donne speaks of the deep way humankind is connected to one another.  He also speaks in the paragraphs before and after the one quoted above of how we are all connected in the universal Church.  We are all a part of the Church (the body of Christ) and if one dies, a piece of me dies too.  Hence the bell tolls.

How timely is this?  Or is it simply timeless?  Stalled debates in our governments.  Wars around the world.  World economies reacting to each others' news.  Some people starving while others are overfed.  The tense balance between human consumption and the planet's health.  Instant connection to people around the world via the web.

On a smaller scale, in my little playing field, Lutheran congregations are learning that they need each other to do mission together.  And some Christians are realizing that no one can be an effective messenger of the good news of Christ all on their own.  Didn't Jesus send the followers out by twos (Luke 10)?  We truly need one another, whether that happens in a formal or informal way, to grow in faith...a concept that runs counter to the "I'm-spiritual-so-I'll-just-do-my-own-thing" idea.

Donne addressed all this centuries ago.  Except Donne puts it so much more poetically:  that if a clod of dirt were washed into the sea, Europe would be the lesser.  That when I hear a church bell tolling a death, a piece of me dies too.  That no man is an island; we just think and act like we are sometimes.  When are times when you have sensed that profound connection with the whole that Donne is writing about?

Changing Time Zones

Well, it has been a long time since I have written on this blog.  There were confirmations, baptism, graduations.  I attended a synod assembly to elect a bishop and before that there were preparations to get ready for the assembly.  I went on a two week vacation, but only after first tying up all the loose ends in order to get away for vacation.  Frankly, I had just plum run out of the creative energy it takes to write.  I could barely come up with the creativity for preparing sermons in the weeks preceding my departure. (I know, that begs the question of preaching being open to God's inspiration, not our doing.)  But at any rate, blogging had to take a rest.  Like me.

So one of the things I relish about camping vacations is the chance to be more attentive to the outdoors, to allow my activities to be molded, not by my agendas or others' agendas, but by the rhythms of daylight and night, sun and showers, heat and chill, wild wind and dead calm.  Here's an example.  At the faintest hint of dawn, usually about 4:40 a.m., the eastern pewee slowly began his song and by 5:00 a.m. would be belting out a persistent "pee-ah-wee" joined by a variety of calls and songs from other birds stirred up by its noise.  It wasn't just birds either. The dogs would jump on our bed to see if we too were awake like all the other creatures in the woods.  And so over the 12 camping days our bodies began to respond and awaken on "woods" time.  

The outdoor rhythm of rain happens regardless of my vacation plans.  Although it helps to have comfortable rain gear, hiking in a soft rain can be just as stunning as on a clear day.  While in bright sunlight tree leaves reflect back the glare with a white sheen, in the dampness of rain those same leaves suck in and hold onto the most vivid shades of green they possibly can.  Mist curls around the mountains, and the river is swollen with energy. 

Back in the trailer as a thunder shower beats on the aluminum roof, the forcefulness or the lightness of the rain has a number of differing types of sounds that I rarely notice while sitting in a house.  Meanwhile, gusts of wind send twigs flying and branches snapping, and I am alert to what's going, especially with the tornado warnings.  After all, my camping roof is less than substantial and there are a number of substantial trees within falling distance.  The rhythm of the outdoors is not always safe.

There is a rhythm of mystery and surprise in the outdoors.  On several occasions we hiked or biked to locations where we thought we might find a night heron to photograph.  So we went here and there, including the spot where we had seen one last year.  But the mysterious night heron remained elusive.  Meanwhile we were surprised by noticing other things:  tracking a strange (to us) bird call and finding a prothonotary warbler eating a dragonfly, an indigo bunting flying from tree to tree over the bike trail, two snakes sunning on some roots, a mockingbird doing a strange wing display that, when we checked things out on the web, even ornithologists can give no definitive reason for.  The rhythm of the outdoors is to receive with gratitude what one does see and accept what one doesn't...at least for that day.

The rhythm of night is honored differently in the woods where we camped.  At dusk the creatures  become quiet and often the air becomes still as well.  We might have a campfire going, but it doesn't last long before my body heads for bed too.  After all, haven't I been awake since 4:40 a.m.?  And so darkness means sleep time instead of another meeting or another job to do or a blog post to write :-)

Now I am back home and, a bit wistfully, am no longer moving on outdoor time. (Thus I am still writing this several hours after night has fallen.)  To remind myself of the outdoor time I just left, one of the first things I did when we arrived home was restock the empty birdfeeders---only to find out that the birds had returned to their own rhythm of finding food in the wild outdoors and have been slow to return.  Each day a few more are back.  I finally saw a woodpecker today. 

But what an irony!  I feed the birds out of the pleasure of watching them.  They are reminders to me in my daily working world to pay attention to creation and its rhythms.  But in drawing these feathered creatures to the feeders, I have actually been pulling them from their natural outdoor rhythms.  Ironic, yes.  But am I going to change?  Heck, no.  They are well fed and raising healthy families.  And I, watching them, am a calmer and more grateful person in my Eastern Daylight Time.

And in addition, I am writing on the blog again.

How's my trust factor?

There are a lot of things going on in my family as well as in the congregation where I am a pastor that require trust---trust in God, that is.  Job situations.  Health situations.  Congregational mission.  Overwhelming change.  Trying new things.  Limited resources.  Listening for God's direction.  Trust.  Trust.  Trust.  What is God up to?

Given all that, I am re-reading (for probably the fourth time in the last three years)  Brennan Manning's book, Ruthless Trust.  I feel like I keep flunking the "trust course,"  and so I keep retaking it, re-reading the book,  hoping it will finally sink in, drawn to something deeper that I can't quite grasp.

In one of my past lives as an early childhood educator, I learned that trust is basic to human development.  In Erik Erikson's stages of psycho-social development, trust vs. mistrust is the  first stage of development that an infant is learning up to about 18 months.  It is not surprising, then, that trust seems to be basic to one's relationship with God as well.  I am in my 7th decade of this spiritual journey, and here I am still learning the trust factor.  Do I trust God to take care of my children's lives?  My congregation's life?  My life?  Yes, I say.  Of course I do, I say...a bit glibly.  And then things start getting sticky and messy, and the trust level  starts sliding down while the anxiety level starts rising.

Here's a quote from the book.  (I've been stuck in the second chapter for three weeks!):

Let's say I interviewed ten people, asking each the same question---"Do you trust God?"---and each answered, "Yes, I trust God," but nine of the ten actually did not trust him.  How would I find out which of the ragamuffins was telling the truth? I would videotape each of the ten lives for a month and then, after watching the videos, pass judgment using this criterion: the person with an abiding spirit of gratitude is the one who trusts God. (Ruthless Trust: The Ragamuffin's Path to God, p.24.)

Many of you read from Acts chapter 16 this Sunday if you use the Revised Common Lectionary.  Paul and Silas were flogged and  thrown into a Philippian  jail for healing a slave girl that was obsessed with a fortune-telling spirit.  Once the spirit was gone, she could no longer work to make money for her owners who then demanded the arrest of the healers.  A flogging ensued.  Bleeding and bruised, sitting in the dark with their feet in stocks, what did Paul and Silas do?  They sang hymns.  Not hymns of lament, but hymns of praise that captured the attention of the other prisoners, certainly captured the heart of God, and eventually brought the jailer to faith. (The exciting story, earthquake and all, is in chapter 16 of Acts.  To see how far their trust in God went, you will just have to read it here. )

Would I be singing joyful hymns to God in a prison cell, or would I be crying my lament? Honestly, it's very likely to be the latter.  Sure, laments are appropriate at times.  But thanking God implies that one TRUSTS that God is going to be bringing good into the dark mess where one finds oneself.  It implies further that God's love and grace are actually with the person in the moment.  Hence Manning's point:  the one with an abiding spirit of gratitude is the one who trusts God.

My life flows on in endless song above earth's lamentation,
I catch the sweet though far off hymn that hails a new creation....
What though my joys and comforts die?  The Lord my Savior liveth.
What though the darkness gather round?  Songs in the night he giveth...
No storm can shake my inmost calm when to that rock I'm clinging.
Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?

                                             (Robert Lowry 1826-1899) 

And so I was once again mulling over trust and what it looks like in our lives as I hiked over yet another mountain, Blue Mountain this time, on the Appalachian Trail.  The trail is good and there is plenty to be grateful for on a spring day with wildflowers blooming.

And  as for gratitude, I am deeply grateful for a day off to walk.  But there is a big difference from being grateful to God while climbing the rocks up the mountain and being grateful to God when things are bleak.  Apparently the difference is trust.

Back to Basics

Last week on a gorgeous spring day the hike on the American Discovery Trail was decidedly unsuccessful.  It started off beautiful as I walked the bridge crossing the river to Annapolis.  But less than two hours into the walk I was stuck on a road with no shoulder, nowhere to step off the road, and was facing into a blind curve with cars speeding around at 50 m.p.h.  This was a walking trail?  I did not want to die for this, so I retraced my steps, took a detour (thanks to a Google Map) but only ended up at a multi-highway intersection with no pedestrian crossing.  Traffic was intense.  Perhaps bicyclists could have managed more safely, but the Annapolis area simply does not expect pedestrians to be walking on roads.  Given the fact that Rick and I had driven two hours just to get to the starting point for the day, I have come to the conclusion that this adventure might not be worth it in time or cost of gas---at least not in the Annapolis-Washington area.

So this morning, with another stunning spring day on a Friday off, I suddenly decided to go back to basics.   The Appalachian Trail is practically in my backyard...well, maybe eight miles away.  All of a sudden it seemed rather silly not to take it on again.  Around twenty years ago I hiked much of the local AT with my children on Sunday afternoons.  It's not  a "new" adventure, but I haven't done much of the trail for awhile.  There certainly is no traffic.  It will save me adding much carbon to the planet's atmosphere in order to get to the trail---at least until I cover all the AT miles nearest my home.

So today I started at Boiling Springs (mile 1112) and walked north across the Cumberland Valley for 10.3 miles.  I was surprised by how well maintained the trail is through this area, and it really is quite beautiful.  What a great walk and a good workout!  Here are a few cell phone photos:

Leaving Boiling Springs and discovering a Jack-in-the-pulpit on a break.

A farm in the Cumberland Valley and a healthy patch of swamp cabbage

A robin's egg and dandelions look better at the edge of a farm field.

A sprouting crop of some kind of grain and a cluster of Virginia bluebells.

A contented cow and the Conodoguinet Creek.

Not bad for a back-to-basics 10.3 mile day in the Cumberland Valley.

Sunday morning with a little holy imagination

It’s been a hard week at St. Paul.  We’ve lost 2 friends---at least in this old creation:  brother with a wry sense of humor born in Scotland and a gentle, always encouraging sister.

It helps when we’re missing them to see the bigger picture.  Walter Brueggeman, a Lutheran theologian and biblical scholar, writes the following:

The Bible is an act of faithful imagination. It is not a package of certitudes. It is an act of imagination that invites our faithful imagination that makes it possible to live faithfully. The Bible is an act of imagination that is rooted in memory but that presses always toward new possibility that is in front of us.  

Maybe that’s what we need: a dose of faithful imagination.

The vision of prophets set their holy imaginations going so they could be faithful to what God was calling them to do.  Take Isaiah, for example: he thought he was way too unworthy to be God’s messenger and not so politely tried to decline.  Enter a vision: an angel bringing a hot coal from God’s throne to purify Isaiah’s lips (ouch) and words!  With that holy imagining, Isaiah was faithful, and his words still and and encourage us.

Dishonest Jacob was on the run from his brother who wanted to kill him, some would say justifiably.  Jacob spent that first of many nights away from home sleeping on the hard ground where he had a vision of a stairway to heaven and God saying: I will be with you and will bring you home again. Jacob never lost hope.

Ezekiel knew that imminent slaughter and exile of God’s people by a ruthless foreign nation was near; but in a vision God showed him a desert with scattered bones, bones that started coming together and taking on flesh and become living people again.  Ezekiel could be confident that God would bring his people back together again one day, and Ezekiel could imagine his work wasn’t in vain.

Peter, resting after lunch, saw a blanket being lowered from the sky holding animals unclean for a Jew to eat. Peter heard a voice telling him to eat anyway.  Was it the tempter’s voice?  Or God’s? Or indigestion?  But then "unclean gentiles" came knocking on the door and invited Peter to an unclean home, to eat unclean food and to tell non-Jewish people the good news of Jesus.  Thanks to that earlier vision Peter’s holy imagination kicked in and he was faithful to go preach the gospel to strangers.

But I need to pay attention for a few minutes to the vision of John of Patmos, the writer of Revelation.  He wrote during a time of terrible persecution of the early Church: Christians were imprisoned, thrown to the lions, set on fire as torches to light the city of the emperor.  His vision, the writing of Revelation, is full of violence and threat of evil.  (We wouldn't read some of it to our children.)  His holy imagination and vision is shrouded in coded words (so that if it fell into the wrong hands people wouldn’t be identified).  In the end, his visions---like the imagination of good poetry, powerful art, creative music---help us see God’s  bigger picture, in this case a time when God will make all things right,  bringing an end to death, evil and pain.

Listen.  This is Rev 21:1-6 from The Message.  See if this holy imagination can help us be faithful even when we grieve:

I saw heaven and earth new-created.  Gone the first heaven, gone the first earth, gone the sea.  I saw the Holy Jerusalem, new-created, descending resplendent out of Heaven, as ready for God as a bride for her husband.  I heard a voice thunder from the throne:  “Look!  Look!  God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women!  They’re his people! he’s their God.  He’ll wipe away every tear from their eyes.  Death is gone for good—tears gone, crying gone, pain gone—all the first order of things gone!” 
The enthroned continued: “Look!  I am making everything new!  Write it all down—each word dependable and accurate.”  Then he said: “It’s happened.  I am A to Z.  I’m the beginning and the conclusion.  From the Well of the Water of Life I give freely to the thirsty....I’ll be God to them, and they’ll be sons and daughters to me.”

While hearts are aching for a brother and sister in the Lord,  we can’t help but notice that in John’s beautiful vision there is no more death, pain, evil, sickness, grief.  It’s all gone!   While John of Patmos’ persecuted Christians saw a bloodthirsty Rome and a Jerusalem burned to the ground, John’s holy imagination inspired them to also see God’s presence filling a new holy city.

We use this passage of scripture often at funerals to encourage one another what heaven is like, what it is like to live in God’s presence—for Marge, for Andy, for ourselves. But wait!  Did you notice something?  We don’t go to this city.  It is not a place we travel to.  It comes to us.

It seems John of Patmos is saying we do not go to heaven; God’s heavenly presence and rule comes to us.
Someone has written that it is one thing to think that God is preparing a place for us, out there where things are great.  It is an entirely other thing to look around at the very place in which we live, the injustices, improprieties, and problems, the evils and get ready for God to come here, transforming all of it into something new.

If death and pain and evil will be gone; what takes its place?  First John sees  a new creation.  Second he envisions God actually coming to make his home among men and women.  Third a well of the water of life is given freely to the thirsty...those thirsty for life, I presume.

But are we really waiting for this vision to happen?  Haven’t those things already started happening?  Hasn’t the heaven, God’s kingdom already started breaking into the cracks of this broken world?  Paul writes to the Corinthians: So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see everything has become new.  (2 Cor.5:17)   Jesus himself pointed the Samaritan woman to the well and said: Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.  The water that I will give will become in the a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.  And at our baptism hasn’t God already proclaimed that God is our God and announced us sons and daughters of God?  And in the Gospel of John, the writer says that the Word became flesh and lived among us!  God in Christ has already been dwelling with us and we  have seen his glory.

So today, holy and hallowed imagination proclaims that we don’t have to go anywhere to live with God; God is living within each one of us who believes in Jesus.  We know the truth of John of Patmos’s vision.  The gathering of Christians is already God’s home.  How’s that for holy imagination?  The life and love of the heavenly presence of God has already been set loose in us. Yes, it’s been a hard week, but God’s new, resurrected creeation is just that much closer to being completed.   We are called to be faithful, and keep on sharing the life and love of Christ, scattering it like seeds into the debris of the old creation around us.  We are the new creation so far, and God will do the rest and finish it completely into something new, something even our holy imaginations can’t fathom.

But the hope of that new creation, the almost unimaginable possibility of God making all things new, feeds our faithfulness to follow the Lord even through the grieving.  Thanks be to God.

Sunday morning musings

This past week began on a lovely spring day with evil exploding in Boston.  In our shock we scrambled to ask questions:  Who set off the bombs at the finish line?  Why, why did they do it? When will they be caught?  Who are the victims?  We wanted answers; we had to know.  On our behalf reporters surrounded the spokespersons who were sources of information.

It was a winter day at a different event, Hanukkah to be exact, and Jesus was surrounded by religious leaders in Jerusalem.  In this case it was not an anxious crowd asking questions.  This group encircling Jesus was not far from taking justice into their own hands.  In fact, Jesus was their suspect, although they could not sufficiently prove anything yet to the Roman authorities who could do something about it.  Some of the group had been saying Jesus had a demon.  Others had been offended when Jesus had suggested the religious leaders were blind.  A few had picked up stones to throw at him when he said their father was a devil (not Abraham) and a liar and murderer from the beginning because that's what they were doing.  They had been grossed out when he said he was the bread of life.  They had been outraged when he broke their version of religious law by healing a sick, lame man on the Sabbath.

So now on that winter day they surrounded him on the temple portico and asked:  “How long will you keep us in suspense: if you are the Messiah, tell us plainly?”

This was NOT a friendly question. The question implied a threat; it could have been a trap...like a bomb.  For most of those religious leaders, they sensed an evil in their midst, and they were targeting Jesus.  The problem was that they themselves were the problem.  They were not really listening to Jesus' teachings, but listening to their own agendas, protecting their own turf, setting themselves up as the all-knowing sources of information, filled inside and out with judgment, engrossed in plotting,  and therein lay the evil.

In so doing,  they missed hearing Jesus’ invitation to them---even though it was plain as day that winter morning as they walked the temple porch.  Here was the royal Shepherd of God’s people standing on the remnant stones of what wise King Solomon had built, looking at them and saying:  "My sheep hear my voice.  I know them and they follow me.  I give them eternal life and they will never perish.  No one will snatch them out of my hand."  (John 10:27-28)  Any one of them could have started listening, really listening to him at that moment and started following.  It was his open invitation.  Instead they picked up rocks to stone him; somehow he managed to escape.

I have been reading a book, a 500 page book!  My brother had given it to my father for his November birthday, so when I was down there a few weeks ago, I picked it up and started reading it.  Written by Eric Metaxas, it is called Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.  You may know a bit about Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  He was a German Lutheran theologian and pastor during the rise of the Nazis and their National Socialist Party in the 1930's.  At that crucial time, one of the problems with much of the German Church and its religious leaders was that the whole focus of a pastor’s education was on critical knowledge and analysis of scripture texts as historical documents.  They knew about Jesus. They knew about what Jesus said, or what was said that he said, but from a distance. They studied scriptures with their own agendas.  Bonhoeffer noticed that there was little of reading scripture devotionally, no real listening to Jesus teachings with hearts and minds, no understanding that God speaks to God’s people through scriptures (Hebrew and Christian), no sense of following Jesus in a living relationship.  In that vacuum, it was easy for much of the German Church to be swept up in the rise of Nazi Nationalism, into the rhetoric of blaming Jews for their problems, into excising the scriptures they didn't like (especially the Hebrew parts), into giving oaths of allegiance to a demented dictator promising to restore impressive national power.  They listened and followed something else besides a savior Jesus who spoke about humility, forgiveness, caring for the poor, protecting the weak and loving the neighbor.

Bonhoeffer and others recognized what was happening in the Church, and raised objections.  Only God in Christ could be absolute Lord, no human fuhrer, they said.  The Confessing church movement was formed.  Bonhoeffer worked hard at teaching underground seminarians in his care and any others who would listen how to hear scripture, pray, meditate and to trust it as the very message of the Lord,  the words of a Shepherd to his flock.

"My sheep recognize my voice," said Jesus.  "I know them, and they follow me."  (John 10:27)

It was hard for the Confessing church to follow Jesus.  As the decade progressed, as evil, murder and genocide grew, as the main German church sided with Nazis out of fear or brainwashing, the Confessing church experienced a  time of persecution.  But ironically, it was also a time of renewal. Faith became stronger for those pastors and Confessing Church members who often found themselves imprisoned by Nazis on trumped up charges.  Some were even martyred.  And Bonhoeffer?  He was hanged shortly before the war ended....but that is another story for another time.

Here is the point for now.  Whatever the century, wherever the location in the world, at the core of the Church is not knowledge about God or Jesus based on one’s own agenda or preconceived notions or academic ideas (although study and intellectual discourse is important).  At the core of the Church is the kind of listening that friends or lovers have for one another.  It is open and deep, accepting and honoring.  At the heart of the Church is the kind of listening that needy sheep have for the voice of the shepherd.  If a sheep can’t trust the shepherd’s direction and follow the shepherd closely, it will get lost going its own way.

"My sheep recognize my voice," Jesus says.   "I know them," he says.  And then Jesus gave two promises to those who are listening.  He gives the sheep eternal life (10:28) which, by the way, is less about what happens when you physically die, but is totally about a  life lived out right now in abundance---full of love and service and forgiveness.  (Not exactly the culture's idea of abundance, however.)  And yes, we are promised this life continues on into and after our deaths.  We will always be living and following Jesus.

The second promise Jesus makes is that no one can snatch a sheep out of the Lord’s hand. (10:28)  No hangman in a concentration camp, no hell creating dictator, no misguided religious leader, no marathon bomber—no one can snatch us out of the Lord’s hand.  They may kill us, but no one can make our lives or our work in following the Lord null, void and worthless.

That is a word that our world needs to hear this week.  And you and I need to hear it when we find ourselves afraid.  In this time of testing, hardship and challenge for the Church, we listen together to what the Shepherd has to say and trustingly hope to recognize his voice---not because we are particularly good at hearing, but simply because our Shepherd, who knows us well , is particularly good and gracious about communicating invitations for us to follow in his way.