Lectionary Meditation (8/5/2007)

Lectionary for this week.

Hosea 11:1-11
11:1 When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.

2 The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols.

3 Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them.

4 I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.

5 They shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me.

6 The sword rages in their cities, it consumes their oracle-priests, and devours because of their schemes.

7 My people are bent on turning away from me. To the Most High they call, but he does not raise them up at all.

8 How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.

9 I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.

10 They shall go after the LORD, who roars like a lion; when he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west.

11 They shall come trembling like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria; and I will return them to their homes, says the LORD.

Last week I had to work at my meditation, poking and prodding rather unenthusiastically. This week the text from Hosea leaped off the screen at me. I barely made it passed the end of the first verse before my eyes had filled with tears that welled up from a heart overflowing with love, joy, acceptance, and a complicated tangle of emotions I gently let be.

Last week I commented to my priest that I did not understand her love for Hosea. She preached exactly that and I found myself warming to the book, and understanding her fondness for it. Eternal love, endless forgiveness, a God who will always take us back. But my hackles still rose in annoyance at the treatment of women, so biblically stereotypical. Woman the wanton, woman the whore, and the long suffering husband. (When in my experience it is so often the other way around.) Here it was again, God male-male good; woman not God-woman not good. I was left with very mixed feelings about Hosea.

Then I read the above. Oh yes, the word "he" is used to describe God but it sounds out of place and awkward, it is out of tune among the symphony of words. The imagery here is overwhelmingly female. God is Mother in no uncertain terms. God who lifts her child in her arms. God who stands silhouetted in the bright light of the open door calling her children home. God who holds tight to the tiny fists of her children as they take their first bobbling steps, who dries their tears and kisses away the "owwies."

God whose love is so strong, so tender, so heartbreakingly real that she presses her cheek against ours, closes her eyes, and wraps us in her arms, smiling at the wonder of what she has created. God who will always forgive, always call us home, always stand in the open doorway. This is the shape of the God in whose image we were made. The tiny fragment of infinity that is Mother/Sister.

I have often chafed at the maleness of God in the bible. My intellect tells me that the bible was written by men, it was of course their stories and their understandings that made it onto paper. Knowing that doesn't mean my soul doesn't occasionally long for its own image and shape in the words. But every now and then a glimpse, a flash, of another side of the story peeks through. Perhaps veiled, covered in the dust of millennium and nearly lost, but there. A female face of God, a tiny clandestine gift from our ancient sisters. Perhaps whispered into the ear of a child by his mother, told over and over until he had made it his own and no longer remembered it as a woman's tale.

I read this piece and in my mind the image rose of a friend, cheek pressed gently against the forehead of the toddler in her arms. He sat in her lap, wrapped in love. Both their faces were wreathed in smiles. A young untarnished soul, and one heavy with many burdens, at peace together for a moment in that timeless embrace of a woman and a child. What better balm for my soul then to watch the eyes of both fill with peace? And now to read and know that God holds us just so, if we will only let her.

What greater comfort, what more perfect happiness? Hosea 11:1-11. This one I will treasure in my heart, and ponder it in the silence of my soul.

Breath of fire

Blessed One, breath within us
inhale and draw out our anger
and our hurt, exhale and breath
within us love and peace
to purify us
with the essence of You

Let our hearts from emptiness, fly
into the light of You,
through the shining radiance
of You, who whispered "live"
and a spark grew in darkness

Let your breath, that ignites
a river of stars to holy burning,
lift the flagging embers
of our lives and make them eternal
living fire, for You
and in You,
and through You

To make sacred

Reading back articles of another blog I've discovered (there are so many talented writers out there) I came upon an excerpt from the following book: The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus' Final Week in Jerusalem. It goes now on my long, long list of books to buy and read. (For every book I finish on this list another five get added, it is a lifetime project.) This excerpt in particular caught my attention. I read it once, twice and then sat thinking.

How, then, did people create, maintain, or restore good relations with a divine being? What visible acts could they do to reach an Invisible Being? Again, they could give a gift or share a meal. In sacrifice as gift, an offerer took a valuable animal or other foodstuff and gave it to God by having it burned on the altar... No doubt the smoke and smell rising upward symbolized the transition of the gift from earth to heaven, from human being to God. In sacrifice as meal, the animal was transferred to God by having its blood poured over the altar and was then returned to the offerer as divine food for a feast with God. In other words, the offerer did not so much invite God to a meal as God invited the offerer to a meal.

That understanding of sacrifice clarifies the etymology of the term. It derives from the Latin sacrum facer, "to make" (facer) "sacred" (sacrum). In a sacrifice the animal is made sacred and is given to God as a sacred gift or returned to the offerer as a sacred meal. That sense of sacrifice should never be confused with either suffering or substitution.

Its not the definition of sacrifice we are used to, not the one we expect. My priest talked about a "what if" game they played in seminary. What if Jesus was gay? What if Jesus was married? What if, what if, what if? How would that change your faith? Trivial things in the end, that make no difference to me. But what if sacrifice is not what we thought? What if it has nothing to do with suffering? What if it is not Christ substituting himself for our punishment? What if, instead he did something so radically different that the Church has shied away from it in fear for two thousand years?

What if Christ made humanity sacred? What does that mean, what does that change? Not just, saved, not just redeemed from our place in the dirt, but sacred. Holy, vessels worthy of God. What does that mean for us, what about our faith would that change? What about the way we treat one another and act in this world would change? What about the way we care for ourselves would change?

Prayer for reconciliation

God of unity you formed all of creation. You made stars and planets, plants and men all alike. We are more alike than we are different and yet we divide ourselves. We wound one another with word and action and we withhold repentance and forgiveness. Creator and Lover of mankind break down our pride and our stubborn wills. Remind us of all we have in common and put our differences into perspective for us. Bend our hearts to love. We pray to you for all relationships cracked or shattered, all trust abused and all who are estranged. In the name of the One who creates and loves. Amen.

Schism

One Spirit holding fast
watching human nature split
and divide like waves
against the sword sharp
prow of a proud ship.
Pride and anger knife through
the dream of a Kingdom
without war or pain.
I turn about, with tears
unshed behind my eyes
and a heart that hammers
for your word, and hold
my breath.
Bread and wine, meat and drink
restorers of my soul
in You who cannot be divided.
I stretch out my arms against
the hard gentle surface
of your table and close
my eyes against the war beat
of the world.
I breath You in and out,
life that will not leave me
and lay weary head down
against your breast.
Forehead and thoughts
hot with will pressed against
the cool of You.
At my back, before my face
the waves pound fury
the sea roars destruction.
I lean harder, deeper
into You and know,
know beyond surety.
I am not afraid.

Sheep among.... tigers?

Be sheep among wolves. Our priest reminded some of us of Christ's command before our last vestry meeting. I have always assumed the command meant to be meek or perhaps quiet and careful. To stick together as a flock and of course to trust our Shepard. After all, sheep are quiet animals, and not terribly bright. They rely on numbers and the protection of their human caretaker to keep them safe from predators.

We here in 21st century America have very little experience with sheep or wolves, and if we did it wouldn't be very helpful. American wolves are shy and vanishing. There has never been a recorded fatal wolf attack in the US, not in its entire history. But the wolves of Europe and the Middle East were something else entirely. They were large and aggressive, living close to man and hunting him as casually as they hunted his livestock. They and man were it could be said, at war. Man won in the end but there were casualties and the fear of wolves that war instilled is still part of our consciousness, stamped into even the brains of those who have no cause to fear.

It is these aggressive, dangerous wolves the gospel writers would have been familiar with. Wolves who lurked quietly in the dark and pulled down cattle, and sheep, and children. Wolves with blood on their teeth and murder in their eyes. And yet, amid the danger and destruction the Christ enjoins his followers to not be like the hunters who used club and bow and sword but like the helpless sheep.

Why? It doesn't make much sense. Why send those you love into the maw of something that will consume them?

Today I came across something that at first seemed utterly unrelated. An amazing story and video of a tiger attack. I watched the furious attack, the raw power. Here was death incarnate, not evil, but so incredibly powerful and dangerous that even a man sitting on the neck of a full grown elephant was not safe. But it was the story of the moments after this video was taken that are important. Those next moments meant life or death for two men knocked from the relative safety of their mount. Injured and vulnerable they would have made easy prey for a tiger. But for the elephant who went as a lamb among wolves.

The elephant, Joymala, held down the tiger with one enormous foot. She could have crushed it, elephants stomp attackers into the ground. Their great feet are deadly weapons. Instead she held the infuriated animal to the ground, restraining it with her trunk. It must have roared with fury, it must have lashed out with teeth and claws. But she did not kill it and at last it escaped and fled.

I will perhaps tell people in the future to be as an elephant among tigers. For we are certainly powerful, we can hurt one another or destroy one another as easily as that elephant could have destroyed the tiger. We posses destructive weapons: anger, indignation, pride, vicious words, scheming plots, lies, and sharp intellect. We can crush the life and joy from another soul with frightening ease. We can sap the energy our of those around us. We can bring down a career or a life as easily as the angry tiger leaped through empty air to her victim.

We can snap the neck of a sheep with our teeth, growling from the darkness, hunting from the shadows. We can create fear.

But that is not what we are called to. We are not to meet anger and violence with blind passivity. We are not to keep our mouths shut and allow anger and evil and love of power to corrupt and harm. Neither are we to fight fire with fire. Neither are we to attempt to destroy evil with evil. We are called not to use our power for destruction. Not to hurt or destroy. Instead let us use our strength with all of the restraint of an elephant, and the faith of a lamb.

Lectionary meditation (7/29/2007)

Lectionary 7/29/2007
What a strange and seemingly disjointed set of readings. In the OT we are now firmly rooted in the fiery damnation of the prophets, and in a rather jarring shift we hear instructions for prayer from the NT. I sat and stared at the readings a bit, looking for the thread that made sense. I picked at the gospel, it really is a good meaty story. I poked nervously at the prophet (I figured the advice about wizards and dragons goes double for prophets.) Finally I caught at a little shining thread, gave a pull and felt the lessons fall into place around me. It is the psalm that ties the readings together for me this week.

Psalm 85
5 Will you be angry with us forever? Will you prolong your anger to all generations?

6 Will you not revive us again, so that your people may rejoice in you?

7 Show us your steadfast love, O LORD, and grant us your salvation.

8 Let me hear what God the LORD will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.

9 Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land.

10 Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other.

The psalmist could be directly responding to the damnation by the prophet. The psalm calls out to God: please don't leave us. For it is there that the true desert lies, in separation and absence from God. And the gospel reading, the prayer Jesus teaches his disciples is both our plea, and God's graceful answer to the psalmist's lament.

And there is the important thing. It is an answer. Not an intrusion, God does not force himself or his grace upon us. But when we ask, as the psalmist does, for grace it comes. To do that we must first acknowledge the prophet. We must own our isolation from God, we must accept that we brought about the desert. And we must go searching for God again, we must go asking as the Psalmist did, as the disciples did. (Notice that we say the confession before the Lord's Prayer in Episcopal services.)

Perhaps the lessons aren't so disjoint this week, but they are hard. To reach the joy and gifts of the gospel we must walk with humble listening hearts through the desert of our own creation.

This would be an interesting sermon to write, and no, not an easy one. It does however speak to me and I believe it speaks to this parish. We need to first hear the prophet, then we must become the psalmist and the disciples. Impossible? Perhaps, but what a promise at the end:

Luke 11:13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"

I can speak for no one else Lord, but I speak for myself: Come, Holy Spirit. Cleanse me and guide me, inspire and fire me. Enfold me in your presence and water the desert of my life with the grace and love of my Holy One.

Clearing

The hill stands bare
and naked, wrapped
in the sharp dying scent
of vanished pine.
Scoured ground,
cleaned with diesel churning
power. Pale
white stumps, ghosts.
The grass remembers,
shade and cool.
Wind among the needles,
sighing. Cracked,
by engine roar and shouts
of men. Wrapped
in the sharp scent
of vanished pine.

Prayer for rebirth

Breath of heaven,
surround and infuse me,
fill me and overwhelm me.
Fire of creation,
anoint and send me,
strengthen and guide me.
That I might rise,
like a phoenix
from the fires of this world.

Prayer

Judge of mankind,
we sorrow at our sins,
we despair at our brokenness.

Raise us up,
and remake us,
a new creation.

Perfected in your love,
washed in forgiveness,
held in your presence.

Now, and forever, Lord. Amen.

Silent embrace

There are places in this world that are 'thin.' Where what we can see and hear and feel with our limited human senses weaves itself though something deeper. Such places tend to be held sacred. Perhaps they began that way, a place where the universe was simply thinner and more fluid and that brought seekers who named them 'sacred.' Or perhaps they were worn thin by use, by thousands of questing feet, a million seeking hearts, hundreds of hungry souls. I stood in such a place, before ancient stones that rang like bells at the touch of the last rays of daylight. There at their feet the ground hummed with energy outside any the world contains. A place of otherness that has drawn us to it across the millennia.

Places not so obvious can be just as powerful. I wonder about my own church, perhaps it is the nearness of other there that makes it so easily warped and corrupted. Perhaps it is a lack of understanding of the power we dwell in there that creates anger, strife, jealous possessiveness.

I have stood at the heart of our own holy place more than once and felt the heartbeat of God, felt suddenly the thinness of "reality" around me. As holy, divine, infinite intruded on the mundane.

Today I stood at the altar, fingers sliding ribbons into place in a familiar book, mind wandering along frustrated pathways. I lay my hands against the smooth linen, and closed my eyes. The world fell away in a slow shower, stretched and diminished until the street sounds became dream and unreality. Silence, deeper than an ocean, vast and endless wrapped me up, folding around me. I heard a beat low and deep, pressure in my ears, vibration in my bone. The heartbeat of the world, the breath of divinity, the endless rhythm of creation.

I could have stood for all time, rooted within eternity, singing in silent unison with the heartbeat of stars and mountains. I had stepped outside of time, grown thin. Breath called me home, the steady rise and fall of my chest separating itself from the deep rhythmic beat. I opened my eyes to the unchanged/new moment, my ears still full of eternity. I moved slowly, touching forehead, chest, shoulder, shoulder, heart; sealing the beat within. I finished dressing the altar in silence and bowed at last, low and silent, still hearing the low thrumming beat of creation deep within my bones.

They say peace...

...They dress the wounds of my poor people
As though they're nothing
Saying "peace, peace"
When there's no peace

Now can a bride forget her jewels?
Or a maid her ornaments?
Yet my people forgotten me
Days without number
Days without number
And in their want
Oh in there want
And in their want
Who'll dress their wounds?
Who'll dress their wounds? - "Something Beautiful"

God sings those words in Sinead O'Connor's new song "Something Beautiful." This song is so utterly packed with theology. It begins with tender praise, a plea for an offering to be accepted. It slips gently into confession and unworthiness. And then it turns about and offers these last plaintive words. The words of a loving God, a spurned lover, lamenting for the beloved.

It seems every day a different part of this song speaks to my soul. Today I think of peace. How often do we indeed extend a hand and say the word without meaning? A friend once asked me how someone could serve with us at the altar and a few minutes later be whispering and plotting. They say peace, but there's no peace. We do indeed forget God. We turn away, full of our own pride and confident that we are right. Only our own will becomes important, only the knowledge that we know best. And then we invariably wound.

I am no saint, I too am far too prone to turn my face away from my God and forge my own path. But I wonder, for those who have become a hard unmoving wall, who strike out from the shadows, who whisper and conspire all the while saying "peace," who will dress their wounds? They drive away, they divide and splinter. They conspire against a priest, or they drop bombs on civilians and 'insurgents' alike. In the name of right. They 'hate the sin, but love the sinner.' They claim Truth and power for themselves to the exclusion of all else.

We have the capacity to make something beautiful. It seems to me that we are only truly and fully happy, only at peace, when we are doing just that. When we create something of beauty, when we nurse the seed of love and glory within our hearts into full flower. When we fulfill the promise God placed in us at our creation. A promise of beauty and love.

So why then do we wound? Why do we call out false peace? Why do we forget the One in whom we must live and move and have our being? Here in a little church in a small city, or in a stately white house, or the fields of Iraq, or the gold encrusted palaces of Rome, or in the fist of a thousand Bible wielding pulpits. They say peace, when there's no peace.

Darkness and light

Father of mankind,
you have been my strength,
my fortress and my rock.

Hold me through the darkness
of this endless night
and give me comfort
until my eyes can see
your light once again.

Entreaty

God, be with me
for my enemies are near.
Gracious one enfold me
in the comfort of your presence.

I am weary and weeping,
I am angry and shaking,
I am all but spent
with worry and strife.

Be with me
and those I love
throughout this long night
and even longer days.

You are Peace, comfort,
and strength.
Be with us always,
oh Blessed One, we pray.

Bread of heaven

This meditation started with a little book I read years ago that focuses on bread as part of our spiritual lives. But as I wrote my sermon for last week I found myself pondering invisible need. And a conversation reminded me that our response to one another can often, without our intending it, be wounding. I read through this meditation one last time before posting it and realized it was achingly intimate. Though I had just stood in front of the congregation and told them intimacy with one another is where our calling lay I found, suddenly, the intimacy here amidst a discussion of spiritual hunger overwhelming. So I am posting it without editing, without removing the intimate messy words that make me shy. I realized that as honest as I have tried to make this place the words have been a protective film. This time they are stripped away. Perhaps it is remembered hunger, or the inclusion of my interaction with another. Perhaps it is the fact that I speak of communion, that rite I cannot seem to live without. Whatever the reason, I offer the messy intimacy of my life.

Bread, there is perhaps no more staple food in our diet, or more symbolic. Bread triggers, in some instinctual part of our brain, thoughts of safety and home. Want to sell a house? Have bread baking in the oven when the buyers come to look. Want to welcome new neighbors? Bring a loaf of bread to their door. We eat it, almost without thinking, as part of all three daily meals. It is the foundation around which our kitchens revolve. From toast with our coffee, to stuffing for our fanciest meals. And if you are Christian bread is, quite often, small, flat, and tasteless; and the body of Christ.

Just as it falls, almost unnoticed at the center of our physical lives so too do tiny bits of bread fall at the center of our spiritual lives. Such tiny things, seemingly utterly insignificant. And yet without them one can starve. I have felt the spiritual hunger, I have seen it in the faces of others. It is real, and sharp, and as painful as a stomach knotted and empty.

Yet for a friend bread has ceased to be home and comfort. It has become an enemy, bringer of pain and torment. Even the host, once food for the soul has become enemy to her body. Hunger, the world shifts as those around are fed and nurtured from a thing one must fear. As the act that unites us divides, almost invisibly. The alternative is dark, textured and soft, and fragile as gossamer. Fragile as the normalcy of our lives. Fragile as the wholeness of our souls.

How easily do the words, the actions of others deprive us of spiritual meat and drink. How readily do we wound one another; and how easily can we heal one another. Harm and help, we hold one in each hand. We hand them out with the same ease. The help may become hurt, or the hurt help if we do not watch and listen to the other. If we focus only on ourselves and our own needs. After weeks of forced fast I set safe bread gently in her hands murmuring holy words. "The body of Christ, the bread of heaven." But how invisible was the abstention, how transparent the change. Who noticed? Anyone? What do I not see, what need passes before my eyes like a ghost. How often do I miss the subtle cry of a wounded soul.

Bread has, since the time of Abraham been hospitality and welcome. Abraham fed it to God himself in the form of a dusty stranger. The Hebrews ate heavenly bread in the wilderness. Christ shared bread with hungry crowds on wild plains, and with close friends in small dark rooms. We are part of those great stories, when we offer bread and life to one another. Around the altar, around our dinner tables.

We must feed one another, love one another. We must be the bread of life for one another's souls. But to do that, we must be aware of one another. We must truly see. We feed the hungry with physical bread, we take great warm loaves of bread from our ovens and set it before our families, our friends, and strangers in need. But bread feeds only our bodies. And we are not only bodies. We need spiritual bread, rich and nutty. We must be fed or we grow weak and trembling, our souls sink into darkness.

When our bodies starve they make their pain and need clear in sunken cheeks and dull hungry eyes. Spiritual hunger is harder to see, and the bread that will feed it less easy to grasp. We must be wide awake, our eyes open, our ears listening for the cries of a hungry soul. And we must choose carefully between what will wound and what will feed. What will poison and what will nourish. A word, a gesture can lift up our starving neighbors or drive them deeper into the dust, clogging their throats with arid sand.

When our neighbor has grown soul-starved we must bring spiritual bread to her. We must feed his soul as we would feed his body. We must remind her of the taste of God. And in the doing our own hunger will be assuaged, our own emptiness will be filled, our spirit fed with the Bread of Life.

Praise and thanksgiving

Lord of Heaven we thank you for answered prayers. Our hearts are lightened and joyful for the darkest fears of our long night have been banished and hope has returned. We see your loving presence in our lives, we feel your comforting embrace and we thank you. Our lives are fragile and fleeting but you remind us that we are never alone. You are with us, even when we do not look for you. We thank you, we praise you, and we bless you. Amen.

Phoenix Fire

The clouds hung in low, mother-of-pearl rolls over the wet dark trees. For a breath the sun hung between the hills and the low weeping clouds, painting their undersides with the colors of dawn. Red and orange, bright as phoenix fire.

We rode out yesterday through a landscape dry and brittle as bone. The sun bright, its light hard edged and hot on our backs. The grass dry and parched, brown and sun-bleached. If I listened to the grass I would say it was the end of August.

The rain this morning brings with it birdsong, it softens the light and gives the word new breath. Everything old is new again, hope springs back from the dust of despair.

We prayed for a parishioner in the hospital and healing showered down like the rain outside, bright and cleansing, bringing with it hope and joy. The light of a new day, life remade for each of us. We start over each morning, new life, new hope, new chance. The word rises from the ashes of its old self in the fires of the phoenix.

Vulnerable

I preached this morning. I preached. That just doesn't cover it. It just doesn't express the wonderful things that happened. Like stepping through a curtain and discovering that the world on the other side is entirely different, and yet wholly the same as the one you expected.

I stood in the darkened sanctuary yesterday. I had come to set up the altar for communion. The rain came down gently on the roof, whispering with silence. The light was diffuse and weak. I stood looking out over the empty pews, filled in my memory with faces come and gone. I could hear in my ears the voices of those who had stood in the place before me. And I turned around, looking up the steps to the altar, lit from behind by the spilled light of the sacristy. I stood beneath the altar, letting the rain and memory speak. And finally I prayed.

I robed this morning, laughing with our priest and her husband, shepherding our acolyte, the usual chaos before service. And everything was right. Nerves had dissolved into bubbling excitement. By the time our priest read the gospel a grin had spread across my face that refused to be displaced. She prayed for me, her smile mirroring mine and I turned out to face my family. Not phantoms this time but flesh and blood. I finished with a smile and floated through the rest of the service. This people, this family wrapped me up at the Peace and afterwards in hugs and smiles. Shaking my hand and filling my eyes with their smiles. I am official now. I am on the way and if it was affirmation I needed they gave it to me, washing me with it like yet another baptism.

I have done in the last few months one impossible thing after another. I have made myself vulnerable to fear and failure over and over. And again and again fear has become joy, and failure has yet to rear its head.

After the service a gentlemen I did not recognize came into the nave and sat quietly at the back reading the prayer book. The church was nearly empty, the last few stragglers from the adult education class leaving as I cleaned up the church, clearing the altar. For some reason I came to the altar rail and asked him, "is there anything else we can do for you?" He sat quietly for a moment and then said simply "I missed communion." Remembered hunger washed over me. I asked him to stay. Our priest followed me back to the sanctuary and the three of us gathered around the altar and shared communion, praying and eating together in the quiet church surrounded by the beloved phantoms of the Body of Christ. Amen. Alleluia.

Calling silence

Rain on the roof
is calling,
calling the silence
up from the pews.
Shadows of ages
and shades of a people
calling in silence
up from the pews.
Remember the masses
gone and departed
silence and memory,
thick dusk come at noon.
Air that is water
and light that is
darkness. Silence,
of history whispering
there, there in the pews.

Triptych

God our Father, forgive us.
Christ our Brother, lead us.
Spirit our Comforter, guide us.

We have sinned, Father.
We have stumbled, Brother.
We have strayed, Comforter.

Lord, have mercy upon us.
Christ, give us your love.
Spirit, renew our souls.

Prayer of star stuff

Lord of light, we come once again to a new day, and we praise you for it. We stand beneath the blue bowl of heaven and upon the green bowl of earth. The deep surrounds and upholds us, filled with the infinite mystery of you. Let us remember that we are all connected to one another, to the world around us, even to the furthest star. For we are all the stuff of stars, and our very atoms remember when all things were one, pure potential in You. The essence of us remembers its true nature. Let us allow it to sing your praise in harmony with all creation. In the name of God, who created and creates. Amen.

Breaking bread apart

An hour North of me, right now, a small piece of my church family is breaking bread together. They started a few minutes ago, by now they've read the lessons for the day and our priest has said a little something about the Gospel. They have traded the Peace, perhaps they are right now. Together under the cozy white arch of the choir loft, with the little altar set with the simple "every day" crockery chalice. They are whispering peace in each other's ears and hugging one another.

I suppose somewhere in the world at any moment of the day some of our brothers and sisters are meeting and eating and celebrating. It is my little community at the moment, keeping up a chain of prayer and worship that stretches forward and back into eternity and left and right through space. In three, four, more dimensions of our reality.

I feel the distance. A tugging at my heart that wishes it were sharing the bread and the cup just now. I look out the window, away from the glowing eye of work and into the breathtaking beauty of sky so blue it hurts and clouds so white they bleed purity. And I can feel the eternal worship, I can almost sip the wine of prayer, I can almost taste the bread of praise. And I can feel the distance, for some reason, achingly close in this moment.

When I was a child I used to try to feel the reality of the world beyond my eyes and ears. I used to try to fathom that when someone walked out the door they continued to exist. I used to watch the faces in other cars as they sped past me and try, with effort like lifting a thousand pounds, to truly feel that they were real.

For just this moment, the length of a breath, the moment when the wafer snaps in that silent space; I know they are. I can feel them, there in my chest, too far away.

Too blue

The bowl of sky
puts all my words
to shame
painted with clouds
thin as breath
enhancing color
with their lack
jewel, inverted marble
reflecting us
above, behind, through
leaves too green to
exist
but in dreams
stirred by breath
of memory, framing
skeletons of trees
who have forgotten
to dance.

Praise through creation

Creator God we thank you for relief from heat. We thank you for the cool of morning and the gentle watering of rain. Refresh and renew us as you revive the world around us. Give us joyful hearts to delight in your creation and remind us that you placed us among it to care for and tend it. Let our noisy babble still and humble in the face of your creation's praise. Let us hear creation speak in the song of a sparrow and the whisper of the wind. Let us hear the wonder of your presence in the breath across the water and the sound of dew on grass. Your glory is all around us Holy One. Let our lives still, and our hearts hush that we might sit still with you and worship you with all creation. Amen.

The bowl and towel of a servant

In the Midwest intimacy is not seemly. Touch is suspect. Perhaps we are dour prudes, sexually repressed to the point where any touch borders on the sensual. Or perhaps we are so emotionally disconnected that touch threatens to break loose emotion and open us up to a world that considers displays of true feeling tasteless and crass. We are most certainly Protestant, shining examples of the areas staunchly Germanic roots.

It is perhaps why some of our congregation sit in angry silence during a Peace that has become more and more boisterous. It is perhaps why some parishioners still offer only a tentative handshake though there are smiles now, and laughter. Growing up I shook hands at the peace, one to my right and one to my left, formal and seemly. I avoided having to make eye contact with anyone. But my own repressed roots gave way under the onslaught of loneliness and an outpouring of genuine love and care that took physical form as effortlessly as breath in another place and time.

A hug becomes an expression of love and acceptance, support and solidarity, comfort and communion. Those who move past their hesitance and let another in close for the first time hug suddenly with abandon. Faces transformed into smiles, arms clasping fiercely. I know a massage therapist who often laments that her therapeutic touch is often the only one the elderly receive. Even her young clients, surrounded by family and loved ones seem starved for it. Simple touch. The truth is we hug our children. We kiss them and tickle them and hold them. But then they pass the age of puberty and find themselves in a new and foreign world where we simply do not touch. The sole exceptions in our lives, those brief moments of intimacy with our lovers. We starve for touch. We, and our communities suffer.

It is a fight of inches, an internal battle to turn back the dour German farmer inside who glowers suspiciously, whispering in the backs of our minds. I had one as well. She was angry and distant and perfectly seemly. It took the bowl and towel of a servant to give her rebirth.

It took a dimly lit church and a hushed crowd. It look a new leader who seemed blind to our discomfort. It took a bowl of cool water. I slid off my shoes, still hidden safely behind the armor of a cassock. The water lapped against my skin, poured over my feet. Hands, warm and nervous. As the one who knelt before me patted my feet dry our eyes met hesitantly, the armor fell away.

I washed three pairs of feet that night. Some whole and neat, others pained and hurting. I looked up into the faces above me and smiled, blinking back tears. Touch and tears. A heart full to bursting in the flickering darkness. Christ knelt beside me, within me. Christ washed with me. Christ washed me.

What could be more seemly? What could be more right? I hugged the souls I washed, clinging tightly. And the old Germanic farmer in the dark and lonely places of my soul cried, and died. And rose again, a new creation, out of the waters of a baptism understood in the bowl and towel of a servant.

Give me your hands friend. Take mine and hold them and smile into my face. Let me see God in your eyes. Touch one another, love one another, hold one another as Christ holds us. And let me never forget the towel and bowl of a servant.

Prayer of beauty

God, you bring light into this world and reveal beauty beyond our power to comprehend. You are light. You are love. You are beauty and wholeness. We worship you and we adore you. We praise you for the beauty you have created in this world. And we thank you, for you have given us the power to be co-creators, bringing beauty and light into the world in your name. Let the works of our hands, be praise. May the songs that our hearts sing be worship. May the beauty we create always reflect you, oh Holy One. For you are the source of all things. Amen.

Desperate Harm

"I am afraid that she will do a desperate outrage to herself!" What old fashioned words. And yet perhaps so much more appropriate than medical sounding terms like 'suicide.'

How long has it been since such a subject was too distant for me to have to think about? Perhaps back to Junior High, those awkward years between child and adult. By High School suicide was part of my vocabulary, two older students had indeed done desperate outrage to themselves and were gone.

We are surrounded it seems by desperation. It creeps in close even in our joy. While a life begins, or a new chapter in another's life unfolds there are always those so lost in darkness that outrage and harm seem the only path they can see.

Is there any fear deeper than knowing someone you love is dwelling in such deep darkness? Is there anything that can still the heart so instantly as the thought that one we love might do desperate harm to themselves? While many celebrated last week a family member did just that. He failed at our new word. The cold and clinical suicide. But he succeeded in inflicting desperate harm.

Even as I mourn his pain, it reminds me of what could have been, what might have happened. My heart shivers at the thought that another dear to me nearly did desperate outrage. I would not have known until it was too late. But for the little ones who called her name, called her back, I might have lost her to darkness.

And yet there are more, my prayers gained a new member. Another soul trapped in darkness. But thank God, not silent. It is silence that seizes me with dread. Silence is where desperation builds brick on brick, creating a wall so solid and high light can find no way through or over. And the soul trapped within withers and finally, lost within the desperation, does outrage.

Lord of Light let all those lost in darkness be not silent but cry out with a loud voice. Give us ears inclined to hear them and equip us to rush in with your light; that no one would feel the need to do harm or outrage in desperation.

Prayer for the lost

Holy One, as light wakes the world around us we pray for seekers. For those seeking peace, or healing. For those seeking for answers, and trust. For those seeking a new place or vocation. For all those who stand in darkness longing for your light. Help us Merciful Father to bring peace to the hurting, healing to the injured, and love to the lonely. Give us strength to act as guide and counselor in you name for others. And be our guide for the seeking in our own lives. For we know that only in you may we find answers, only in you may we be whole. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Prayer for teaching and study

Gracious God you inspire us with the mystery of your Word. We thank you for instruction and inspiration. We thank you for wise teachers and challenging friends. We pray that our study together would bring us always closer to your and the Truth you reveal in the world through your Word, Jesus Christ. Help those who teach to speak only by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and help those who listen to listen with Her ears. We pray for the sake of your Word in this world. Amen.

First Sermon: The messy Samaritan

Luke 10:25-37

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he said, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" He said to him, "What is written in the law? What do you read there?" He answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." And he said to him, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live."

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, `Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.' Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" He said, "The one who showed him mercy." Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."

Luke 10:25-37

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."

We hear that summation of the Law more than once in the Gospel. This time it appears in Luke in an equally familiar story. I would guess many of us heard this one growing up in Sunday School. We’ve heard it read here in church many times. It is so familiar in fact that the phrase 'good Samaritan' isn’t just understood inside our churches. It has become a part of our secular language as well. It seems everyone knows the story of the Good Samaritan, even Americans who have never set foot inside a church use the phrase. So what does common knowledge say a Good Samaritan is? Someone who helps another in need, usually a stranger, with no thought of reward.

Here at (NAME REMOVED) we do pretty well with that definition of the good Samaritan. We've got Food for Families, the food pantry, the thrift shop, and the refuge. Individually the list of charities we support is probably very long. We have taken to heart the story of the good Samaritan, and the definition of neighbor and care with which the world around us is so familiar. We are people, helping strangers, and not expecting reward. But there is more to this story, and I’m afraid the definition we all know is missing something.

Let’s go back to the story again: A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. There are three other men in this story about the Samaritan. A man beaten and left for dead, a priest, and a Levite. We don’t hear about any of them very often. So, what about them? Lets start with that priest and that Levite. Jesus certainly didn’t pick them by chance. Who were they? They were both respectable Jews. The priest is perhaps young, eager, and devout. The Levite perhaps older, he has been there and seen that. They are both neatly dressed in clean linen garments. Their very appearance as they hurry down that hot dusty road says they are devout and careful in their adherence to the law. They both gave money to the temple, they gave beggars who came to the doors of their comfortable homes the required scraps from the kitchen. They obeyed the law, they were good righteous men. Right? They might have been called pillars of their community. Maybe a lot like members of our congregation. Folks we admire and are grateful to have among us.

So what goes wrong, why are they the bad guys in Jesus’ story? They are hurrying down the road, absorbed in their own thoughts. It is hot, they are thirsty and tired. And these roads aren’t safe, they are studying the hills around them carefully, looking for any sign of trouble. Off there, beside the road among the rocks and the remains of old camps and discarded human trash they see what might be a dead body lying in the dirt. He’s been beaten, he is bloody and covered in dust. They can’t be certain if he is breathing or not, but he certainly looks dead. Both of these good men avert their eyes and maybe urge their animals on a little faster. Both of them hurry away.

They saw him, Jesus is pretty clear on that. Jesus knew that according to the Jewish purity laws they had done the right thing. It seems callous to us, but in that time and place no one would have faulted them for protecting their own ritual purity. No one but Jesus, who tells us that the rules have changed. Jesus knew something about how easy it is to feel like you are doing all the right things when you are really missing the mark. He knew how easy it is to not see the need right in front of our faces. Obeying the letter of that Law and not its spirit, isn’t enough. Jesus showed the lawyer, and us, that getting messy was required for his followers.

But lets not forget the first person mentioned in this story. A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. There are times in all our lives when it is here, in this man, where we see ourselves. Because this injured man isn’t just one of the “others” out there somewhere. He’s not only in a homeless shelter, or in a refuge camp far away. He is also sitting right here in the pew. We are the Priest and the Levite, but we are also, all too often, the beaten man laying beside the road.

The injured man in Jesus’ story has an advantage over us. He is wounded in a way no one can miss. Everyone passing by on that road can see how hurt he is. Everyone knows he needs their help. We aren’t always so lucky. Our wounds aren’t always so obvious. I might be afraid of loosing my job. Or maybe your family is struggling with a sick child, or elderly parent. Some of us are afraid we won't be able to pay our bills this month, or that the car won't start tomorrow, or an illness will get worse, or the University will turn us down, or a plea for forgiveness will be rejected, or our husband will hit us again.

If it was your neighbor in the pew struggling with one of those things, or a thousand other invisible injuries would you know? When we are struggling, injured, tired, or afraid, do we turn to our neighbor and ask for help? As hard as being the good Samaritan can be it is often harder to be the injured person who needs help. Especially when our injuries are invisible. If we are lonely, depressed, afraid, hungry. My Grandmother used to say ‘keep a stiff upper lip’. In other words, we put a good face on things, we pretend. We pretend we are OK and we pretend those around us are OK.

That definition of the Good Samaritan we all know is missing something. We aren’t called just to help the strangers out there. Our neighbors are right here as well, members of the body of Christ. We are each others neighbors, and too often we forget about one another. We forget that there is need right here. And there is help, right here in our midst if we are willing to get messy with each other. We are to be caring for one another. That can be frightening. It is frightening to ask: What do you need? It is frightening to ask: Will you help me? It is easier to give money to a distant cause. Or cook a meal for someone we don’t know, or smile and try to struggle through on our own. It is much easier to care for our distant neighbors. It is easier to be the one who gives care.

It is much harder, it seems, to take care of each other, right here. Because then it’s personal. Jesus is calling us to become personally involved in the lives of our neighbors. And those lives can be messy. Jesus does not tell the story of a good Samaritan giving a widow a handful of money to buy bread. He doesn’t get off with something that clean or quick or easy. The injured man was beaten and bloody. Covered in the dirt of the road, his own blood and tears. He lay among the debris and trash. The Samaritan stops along a dangerous stretch of road. He has made the peril of this injured young man his own. He kneels down in the dirt and the muck and lifts up the injured man’s head to give him sips of water. He keeps up a reassuring flow of words. “You are safe,” he says “Rest, you are safe.” He stands up and we can see that now he’s got blood, here, on the front of his tunic. His knees are stained with dirt. He turns and goes back to his donkey and draws out the oil and wine he bought for his own use and then he unfolds his spare cloak. It is good strong linen but he takes it in his hands and tears it into strips.

He washes the injured man’s wounds and binds them up gently with the strips of cloak. When he is finished his hands are covered with blood, and here, up his arms his sleeves are stained with it. His clothing is covered in splashes of wine and oil. He pauses for a moment, listening to the dry wind, does he hear horses? The tromp of boots? He looks the injured young man in the eyes and he smiles at him, it is time to go. Finally he leans down and he wraps his arms around the man and he lifts him. He sets him gently on the back of his donkey and they set off together. This Samaritan doesn’t look much different than the man he has helped now. He is covered in the same blood, the same dirt, the same filth. He is hot and sweaty and tired. Rescuing this young man was not easy or neat, it was messy and dangerous and intimate.

As I thought about the dual call today to both give and accept help I thought about something that happened to me a few weeks ago. I ride a little paint mare. She lives in a barn filled with the barn owner’s very fancy, very expensive, imported dressage horses. Image is just a little cow horse, and I’m just not in the same ‘class’ as the barn owner. For the year Image and I have been there the barn owner has spoken to me only to give orders, or tell me when I’ve done something wrong.

A few weeks ago I went to ride and found Image limping. I brought her into the barn, my heart hammering. I didn’t know what to do. Her hock was swollen and hot. I began hosing the leg down with cold water. I had never doctored an injured horse. Then the barn owner came through the big double doors. “Is she hurt?” She asked me. I nodded. “You should wrap it.” She started to turn away and I had a choice. I didn’t know how to wrap a horse’s leg, I didn’t even own any bandages or poultice. So I swallowed my fear of this acidic woman and said: “I don’t know how, would you show me?” To my surprise she went off to the tack room and returned with her arms full of her own horse’s bandages, soft cotton pads, and a big jug of poultice. She knelt down (in her designer cloths) in the water beside Image’s swollen leg and she taught me how to cover the injury in medicated mud. She taught me to wrap the injury. She made sure I got my hands in there, doing the steps with her and answering all my questions. By the time we were done we looked a lot alike. Our hair coming down, our cloths were covered in the same mud and horse hair and water. We got messy together. Image was cared for.

She didn’t have to inconvenience herself and come down to the barn when she saw Image limping. She didn’t have to give me her own bandages or take the time to teach me. And I didn’t have to make myself vulnerable by asking for help. But we did.

There is our call from Jesus. To get messy together. Jesus is calling us to inconvenience ourselves, to make ourselves uncomfortable, vulnerable. He is calling us to share in the pain and fear of our lives with each other. Let’s get messy.

Praise for derailed plans

God of the unexpected we thank you for rain! For showers that may derail our careful plan. Remind us that we do not always know what is best. Remind us that rain must come to water the earth and our lives. Help us to embrace the unexpected and give thanks for the blessings for which we do not ask. That I minds might be opened to your will for us and our hearts prepared to accept it. Care for us, and send us holy surprises that we might never take your bounty for granted. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Life lesson & Carrots (Part 3)

There is something very important to remember while riding. A horse that is moving forward has much less power to buck. A horse that is moving forward can't rear. Forward is not always what our instinct tells us is safe, and yet there is nothing (mounted) that is safer.

Image planted four hooves, dropped her head and spun. We shot backward. She tossed her head and I could feel her front end coming light, her front hooves threatening to come up off the hard packed dirt of the road. "Forward!" Trees behind us, a ditch, danger. I slammed heels into her sides with all the might and enthusiasm of a pony clubber. Image snorted, head coming up and we took two steps forward. But whatever she feared was still ahead. We spun again, scrambling backward.

I sat deep, reins in one hand and fly whisk, held like a crop, in the other. I smacked and kicked, my concentration focused on a single instant in time. In dressage you work for effortless joining. For aids and cues so subtle an audience would never see how horse and rider communicate. Stillness, unity, effortlessness. But here on the trail those things can fail and subtlety must yield to necessity and survival. I kick her bay flanks and bring my open hand down hard against her sweating neck. Crack. She stops backing, surprised. I squeeze, sending her forward. Two steps, pause, breath. Two steps, pause, breath. Always forward. The panic evaporates, the imagined danger forgotten. I feel her uncoil and send her forward with gentle pressure, the tension running out of both our bodies, the battle over for the moment.

There is very little as dangerous as a backing horse. Or one who stands still in panic and may explode in hysterical bucks at any moment. And yet instinct still screams at us to stop when we should instead be urging, forward! Always forward!

My instructor says it this way: I don't care if its ugly, get her forward! It doesn't matter if she jigs or jogs. It doesn't matter if we walk or trot or canter around with our head pointed at the sky. In those moments when Image's brain shakes loose it is only forward that matters.

In life our instinct is to stop as well. Stop and regroup. Take time to catch our breath and pause. But it is in standing still that we are most vulnerable. It is in standing still that we can loose sight of which direction is forward, that we can begin to slide backward into danger. It does not have to be pretty, but keep moving. It does not have to be fast, but keep moving. Always forward through the fear and the panic, the darkness and the confusion. Only forward will carry us through and out, past the danger and back into the sunlight.

For unity

Universal Father you created infinity and filled it with the impossible. You created humanity and gave us freedom and reason. We praise you for our creation and we thank you for the freedom we abuse. Help us Lord to see that we are all your children. Help us to join hands with each other and use the freedom and the power you gave us as free gifts to bring about your dream for Creation. Give us wisdom and moderation in all our dealings with one another. Allow us to see that in you we are all One. Send your Spirit to us Lord to open our eyes, our minds, and our hearts. That we might be one holy family in You. Amen.

Comfort for the sick

We pray for the sick and the weak. For those waiting in hospitals and nursing homes. For those far from their own homes and families, who long for the familiar and the comfortable. Comforting God give them hearts filled with Grace and Peace. Never allow us to forget them, Loving God, nor to be too busy to bring light and laughter to the sterile places of their lives. Let us be comfort. Let us bring your Love into places of fear and pain. Let us uphold the weary and the failing. Give us courage to never shrink from those in need; but strengthen our hands and our hearts to bring your healing presence into their lives. We pray to You, who makes all things well. Amen.