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.

Surprising discovery

I spent last week attending a conference presented by PRIM (Presbyterian Reformed International Ministries) held at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.   One of the best parts of the week was that I got to lodge and eat meals with my granddaughter.  How good is that?

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But why did I go?  What did I hope to learn?

I went because our congregation is beginning a time of renewal, prayer and discernment for mission.  I am more convinced than ever that it must be the power of the Holy Spirit that will guide the Church through the many changes in the next century.   A week from Monday our congregation starts "listening" in a focused way to where God is calling us to do ministry in our community.  So what better thing to do, I reasoned,  than to attend a conference on the gifts of the Holy Spirit?

This is what I learned.  Both Lutheran and Reformed traditions spend a lot of time in their "heads".  Our thoughts and therefore our doctrines and confessions are organized and logical.  What seems harder for us in our traditions is to be open to the free blowing wind of the Spirit that Jesus referred to in John, chapter 3.

And so in this past week I found myself identifying with the similar struggle of Reformed Christians to talk about the real and present power of the Holy Spirit.  Yes, Lutherans struggle with this as well.  I could respect the Reformed pains to articulate carefully their experience with the more charismatic gifts of the Spirit.  Since I too come from a very intellectually oriented denomination, I have had little experience with the more charismatic gifts alluded to in the Christian scriptures.  But in attending the conference, this is the discovery that really surprised me:  there is indeed  a common thread between, for example, speaking in tongues and prophecy in the more charismatic tradition  presented by these Reformed Christians and the more quiet, contemplative prayer of the mystical Christians which has been a part of my prayer practice for the last decade.  The common thread is listening.  Listening.

At last week's conference, I listened with other Reformed Christians for the prayers God might want me to pray for others.  These listenings were not merely random thoughts.  I learned these listening, prophetic prayers must be grounded in scripture and that they have to bring glory to God.  I realized that in my own contemplative practice, I too listen for the prayer God is welling up in me to pray for others.  I just do it with more silence and often without words.  Still, the end result is the same:  listening to how the Holy Spirit is directing and obeying where the Spirit leads.

I return to Pennsylvania and my congregation having witnessed the power of the Holy Spirit set loose in Reformed charismatic brothers and sisters.  How exciting and energizing!  But I am not envious to be like them.  Instead, I have come back witnessing to and honoring the power of contemplative prayer in my own experience.  I have discovered that the two traditions and practices are parallel.  While I have not been given charismatic gifts,  I have grown to cherish the gift of silence in contemplative prayer.  As I wait in silence before God, I am renewed and made whole both to pray and to act in tune with God's Spirit.  Silent, contemplative prayer has been and is a deep well of strength for me.   In silence before God, I am emboldened to pray clearly, directly and through the Spirit's power in specific situations.  This is the gift that I am called to practice as the congregation enters a time of discernment.  And so I return to Pennsylvania so glad to be a Lutheran contemplative Christian (which for some is an oxymoron).  More than that, I am grateful to be a follower of Jesus, a follower of the One who has invited us to pray in the Spirit's power (in whatever tradition and way we manage to do it) for the sake of the world.  Thanks be to God!

Not a normal Easter

I have been involved in worship leadership either as a pastor or as a church musician since 1978 and have never missed an Easter.  In fact, I don’t think I have ever missed being in church on Easter anytime in my six decades of life...until this past Easter Sunday.

No flowers.  No singing of "Jesus Christ is risen today."  No soaring organ or alleluias.  No crowds of people. I didn’t have any props at all to get me psyched for “Christ is risen.”  Instead, I experienced Good Friday and the tomb of holy Saturday and the breaking news of Easter morning in a very different way.

Early Saturday morning I drove 300 miles to help my parents in a medical emergency with colleagues filling in for the worship leadership I was leaving behind.  My one brother had traveled the same distance the previous afternoon.  My other brother held a vigil of concern half a continent away.  It was  the strangest, the most frightening and exhausting Easter of my life.  (And holy week is never easy for a Lutheran pastor or musician.) It was also the most significant, and I didn't step foot in a church.

The point being Christ is risen in spite of us and where we are.  We not only can share the story of Christ's rising though glorious and inspiring worship, but just as profoundly, we can share that story when we see Christ living in our daily, nitty-gritty, close-to-the-tomb, difficult lives.  We sometimes meet the risen Christ in the darkness.

Mary Magdalene saw the risen Christ when she was weeping.  The two disciples on the road to Emmaus saw the risen Christ when they had given up hope.  Thomas saw the risen Christ only after doubting that it could be possible.  Where in our grief, or in our giving up, or in our doubting do we need to see the risen Christ?  Or where in our not knowing what to do next can we see the risen Christ face to face?  Where in a home filled with anxiety did I see the risen Christ?

Love.  I saw the risen Christ in love.

Before I say more, let me be clear: if my mom had been diagnosed with a brain tumor (which at one point we feared), or if we would have had to move her to a memory support unit (which we also feared), the risen Christ would have still been there for us and would have been just as real to us.  The good news of Christ’s risen power always runs deeper than our immediate circumstances.  The power of the risen Christ in our lives cannot be thwarted by anything that is happening to us.  God's grace is too big.  God sends the risen Christ  to meet us at the tombs of our lives.  That's where I stood, while Christians around the globe were celebrating.

I think my previous Easter celebrations have blinded me to the fact that resurrection is not easy.  In fact, it is much harder than a soaring trumpet refrain or an exhilarating resurrection sermon or an awesome candlelight vigil.  First, only God can accomplish resurrection, not any of us.  Not any of our prepared liturgies.  Only God does resurrection.

Second, there may be things that we need to let go of to encounter the risen Christ.  Mary had to leave off looking into the empty tomb, Thomas had to risk leaving his doubts, and the disciples had to leave their hiding behind locked doors.  But look at what a difference it made!.  You and I know Christ lives and loves us because these first followers listened to the risen Christ and let his power do new things in their lives.


And so while others celebrated the Vigil and sang Easter hymns, I had to let go and sit quietly with family. There I watched the power of Christ’s rising in the tenderness of my weary dad rising to care for and love my confused mom, of our praying openly with one another, in the soft singing of “Great is Thy Faithfulness” in the emergency room while holding my mom's hand, and in the lively, renewed dialogue between my brother and myself.

My parents are home now, back on their own with a support system in place and home health care checking in.  We've come out on the other side and all is well. We can call that resurrection, and I am grateful for healing.  Just as I am grateful for the many who prayed us through those difficult days. Things are back to normal---actually, better than the old normal since new lines of communication and support have been taken on.  But resurrection itself isn't normal; it is  inexplicably life-giving and life-changing.  It is God creating a new thing.

Thus I am different; there is something new and I still cannot quite articulate how yet.  Maybe I will in a future post.  But I know I have heard the risen Christ call my name in the dark, and I have seen what Easter is like in the silence.  And this quiet resurrection is full of love, not lilies.

May the risen Christ open our weeping eyes, our doubting minds and our fearful hearts to the love and grace that gives us life.