RCA Texts for this week: Genesis 12:1-9, Psalm 33:1-12 or Psalm 50:7-15, Romans 4:13-25, Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
The texts this week are rather unsettling. In fact, they're quite literally unsettling. We start with Abram who, at 75, God commands to leave everything he's ever known and set out for a new country. Matthew tells us today of the calling of one of the disciples. A man with a job and we have to assume family. Jesus walks into his life and turns everything upside down.
I borrowed a book (The Alchemist) from a friend this week. It's quite an enchanting fable about a simple shepherd boy who takes a big risk, leaves everything he's ever known behind, and goes off in search of his own personal treasure. Like Abram, and Matthew, and the rest of the disciples the young boy in this story had things pretty well in hand. He had a job, some stability, and plans for the future. And then someone walked into his life and turned it all upside down. Pretty soon he was off getting into a great deal of trouble and danger and wondering along the way why he'd ever left his comfortable hillsides and friendly sheep behind.
These aren't just Abram's or Matthew's stories; they're our story. Most of us are pretty comfortable, I know I was. I had a good job, a very cozy house, a garden coming along quite well, a circle of friends, and family close by. For the last eight years I've been living the American dream. Guess what, so had Abram, who had accumulated quite a bit of wealth, enough to see himself comfortable for the rest of his days. And the thing about being comfortable is, it generates a great deal of inertia. I wonder if Matthew, James, John, Peter, Mary Magdalene and the rest were comfortable? Did they think they had things pretty well worked out? Often while everything might look right in our lives, and while we might be pretty happy, there is something missing.
We know it's not there, we know there is "something else" but we can't quite put our finger on what it is. You could call that nameless "thing" by a lot of names. You could say it is your destiny, or your calling, or your heart's desire. All sound pretty good, but it isn't usually that easy. Do you think it was easy for Abram, in his old age, to uproot his family and cross dangerous terrain to settle in a new place? The story doesn't give us much detail but imagine what his wife thought of this crazy idea. Imagine his neighbors' whispers: surely he's gone mad!
And the disciples? Called away from their fishing nets some leave their elderly father behind, others leave families, stable jobs, and wealth. They give up everything to follow a penniless, homeless, wandering teacher.
But you could say, God talked to Abram! And it was Jesus calling those disciples to follow him, that's easy! Is it? Do you think God spoke in Abram's ear? Do you really think that God drew the old man a map and laid everything out neatly for him? Do you think Jesus walked around with a glowing halo that let everyone know that this preacher was worth following? The world was full of wandering teachers and healers in first century Palestine, they were everywhere. No, I think it is far more likely that Abram, Mary, Matthew, and Peter all did something far more amazing than accepting hand written instructions from the Most High. I believe they listened to that quiet inner prompting that we too hear. To the tiny inner urgings telling us that God has more for us to do than just get by. And I don't think it was easy for them to make that change either.
I am turning my household upside down, becoming a landlord, quitting a job I quite enjoy, leaving behind family and friends, not because God stood in my living room and told me to move to Austin Texas and pursue ordination, but because the quiet insistent inner voice kept urging me to something more than the American dream.
The same friend who loaned me that book has expressed a similar feeling of dissatisfaction. She's got a lot of reasons to stay safely in her own land, just like Abram. But like Abram she's beginning to listen to the quiet voice of God within. The voice that tells her there is more for her to do. Abram didn't listen to that voice and get up and go until he was 75! And thank goodness! Because if he hadn't we might despair. We might say: it's too late for me.
Through Abram, who at the end of his life became Abraham and the father of three faiths, God is whispering to us that it is never too late. To pursue our dreams, to work toward the Kingdom, indeed to follow Jesus. For some of us that might mean leaving a job, and family, and everything we have known. For others it might mean picking up an instrument we put away in childhood and making offering again of that part of ourselves. For others it might mean volunteering our time and skills to help others, instead of putting in that overtime at work. I can't tell you what God is calling you to do, only you can know that. Only you can listen to the quiet voice within calling "Follow me." But I can tell you that God is calling, no matter who you are, or where you are. God is urging you to a more faithful, more authentic, more complete life.
Only you can choose to take a chance, and follow.
It is "Trinity Sunday" today in the Episcopal church; otherwise known as the Sunday priests all across our nation try with all their might to explain to their congregations a concept that completely and totally baffles them (the priests, not the congregation)!
I'm never one to shrink from something I don't understand, or to be afraid to tackle the unexplainable. So here it comes: Trinity Sunday.
Genesis 1: "In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters."A wind from God, what an amazing image. In the formless chaos before creation God creates wind from God's own self. God breathes. And then God speaks the first words: "Let there be light." God breathes, God acts, God speaks. But wait, this is Trinity Sunday. Shouldn't I be explaining about how the wind is the Holy Spirit; and the Word, that's Jesus; and well then God is, well, God...
Except the Jewish people who told this story didn't have our concept of the Trinity. This isn't a story about "The Trinity," this is a story about God. A God who speaks, and acts, and breathes. You notice, God doesn't even have a name here. All the god's around the Hebrews had names, like Baal, and Ra, and later still Zues. God though, their God and our God, is only God.
Our psalm today ends: "O LORD our Governor, how exalted is your Name in all the world!" and our canticle:
"Glory to you, Lord God of our fathers; *All these mentions of God's Name, and yet do you notice, its missing. The Hebrews finally gave God a name that couldn't be pronounced. We don't even bother with that, we just say God. Not a name, but a title. There used to be thousands of little gods, every one of them with a name. We have God.
you are worthy of praise; glory to you.
Glory to you for the radiance of your holy Name; *
we will praise you and highly exalt you for ever. "
What does this have to do with Trinity Sunday? I think it has quite a lot. You see every year we try to explain the unexplainable. Every year we try to name the unnameable. I hope you'll forgive me if I quote the Tao te Ching. The opening words of that ancient sacred text begin:
The tao that can be toldThere is great truth here. I was in college when I first read those words and I remember vividly stopping in the middle of the University library and sitting down on the floor to read them again, very slowly. As I read I felt a flower of understanding opening in my heart and in my mind. My soul said yes!
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
I can't explain the Trinity to you today. Not if we had a hundred years to sit together and discuss nothing else. Not if all of humanity sat down together and pondered nothing else for a thousand years, because God cannot be named. The God who has no name, and a thousand names, and who is too great for any name, moves and acts and speaks and breathes.
God cannot be explained by any doctrine, or constrained by any name. I did a search while writing this for "names of God," and I found a website that listed all the "names" of God from Hebrew and Christian scripture. Now most of them would hardly sound like proper names to you or I, but the list numbered over a thousand and I'm sure we here could think of more. Our God is a God of a thousand names, and all togehter they are insufficient. Yahweh, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Creator, Redeemer, Holy One, Lord, Mighty One, Savior, Deliverer, Shield, Righteous One, El-Olam, El-Berith, Abba.
If you want to understand God, then my friend, you are in the wrong place. The closest we've ever come were the words spoken to Moses: "I am that I am." or more literally and I think excitingly "I-shall-be that I-shall-be." We cannot name God. Neither can we divide or define God. That is why there are a great many preachers this morning sweating over sermons for Trinity Sunday.
That does not mean the Trinity is not important, or valid. Oh no, just the opposite. The uniquely Christian doctrine of the Triune nature of God is so very important because it is so impossible. If I could explain it to you in ten minutes, or in a lifetime it would be horribly and irrevocably flawed. It would be too small and too simple for the awesome impossibility that is God. God who moves, and speaks, and breathes, and acts. God who is, and was, and is to come. God who bears a thousand names, yet cannot be named.
If you are confused by the Trinity, you're in good company. And you have it exactly right. Because God is bigger than our names and yet God has chosen to reveal God's self through those names. God has chosen to draw God's awesome and infinite self down to fit infinity into a name. Holy One, Yahweh, Jesus, Spirit, Love. God who is the source of all things, and the destination of all things. God who is both Son, and Father, and Spirit. God who created time itself in its mind twisting infinity. And God who fits within each of our hearts, dwelling fully within us to comfort, to guide, to challenge, and to inspire.
Indeed God is Great, and Good, and Holy. God who cannot be named and yet to allows His essence to dwell within a name that we can grasp: Abba/God. God who cannot be named and yet dwelt fully within a human who bore an ordinary name: Jesus/God. God who cannot be named and yet dwells within you and I as She inspires and fires us: Spirit/God. And for that great mystery; thanks be to God. Amen.
A short meditation this week. I've been a little busy with things like seminary applications and the GRE.
I thought I was going to talk to you today about commandments. When I first read the Gospel for this week that first line seemed a wonderful place to start. It allows us to talk about love, and Christ's command that we love one another. It seemed like a much needed message in a week when I read about bombings, shootings, thwarted bombings, and accidents. But as I sat with the text preparing to write I heard another voice; and all because I misread a line.John 14:15-21
15 "If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 17 This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
18 "I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. 19 In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21 They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them."
'In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.'You see I sat reading the Gospel and I saw the words "because you live, I also will live." It's an easy inversion for the eyes to make. But it struck me deeply. "because I live, you live. because you live, I live." And I thought, is this not truly Jesus' commandment for us?
Do our lives tell the Gospel story? Do our lives give Christ flesh and blood today? Does Christ live in us? Those are big questions, they could be a frightening burden. They could be something we can never hope to live up to.
I have a story for you. It's a story about me, and it's not one I'm proud of. A few weeks ago I got rear ended and my car spent a few days in the body shop. The body shop was a few miles from my office so when the car was ready I headed across town after work eager to pick it up. Instead of taking the highway I decided to cut across on surface streets. Between one light and the next the neighborhood changed from shiny new office buildings and streets filled with BMWs and Audis to old houses with winter shabby yards and cheaper, older cars. There were people walking with shopping bags, and sitting on porches. There were a couple boarded up houses, and bars on all the store windows. My urban instincts told me this was an "iffy" neighborhood!
My heart rate went up a little and I suddenly wished I'd taken the express way. I checked to make sure the doors were locked. I wanted out of there! I reacted with fear and distress to people because they looked different, dressed differently, had less. I made snap judgements about my safety based on the neighborhood around me. I'm not proud of it, and my heart was not Christ-like in those worried minutes.
But then I saw up ahead a familiar sign, a blue and white and red shield. You all know the one, there's one outside our church as well. I immediately felt safer, more at home, my worry settled down and I was able to look around more clearly. I was able to see my own reaction, and how unreasonable it was, and I was able to ask forgiveness and continue on my journey calmly.
Fear features often in the Gospel. Jesus tells his disciples not to be afraid, angels tell Mary and the shepherds not to fear. Fear features often because fear is something we all experience. We all know what it is to feel alone, lost, foreign, and afraid. Even church can cause fear. Some of us grew up in churches that preached a pretty fearful message of damnation for many. Every evening when we turn on the news the fact that our world is not as God intended becomes painfully obvious, doesn't it? And we sit perhaps, feeling small and helpless. How can we be Christ to billions of people who are starving, suffering, and dying? The fear of failure can stop us before we've even begun.
It would be one thing for Jesus to tell us yet again not to be afraid but it wouldn't help. We'd still feel that fear. So Jesus does more. Knowing our fear and loneliness, Jesus gives us what I think may be the most reassuring words of scripture.
Jesus promises that we are never alone. The Spirit is with us as our guide, our protector, and our Advocate. Jesus tells his disciples, and us, that we never need feel alone again because: 'he abides with you, and he will be in you.' Does that mean we'll never feel afraid or unequal to the task before us? Hardly! Just as I felt overcome by irrational fear we will all find ourselves in places where we are afraid.
But in those places when we are afraid we can remember Jesus' promise. God is with us, as our Advocate. I looked up advocate in my dictionary because I often like to see where our words come from and what is their root. Advocate is from the Latin word advocare which means "call (to one's aid)" God is with us, dwelling among and within us, always. And when fear overshadows us we need only to call. This is Jesus' promise to us. That God is always with us. Without that promise, without that knowledge we could never hope to live as Christ commands. We could never hope to live, so that he might live through us. We could never hope to make even the smallest dent in the overwhelming need around us.
But we have that promise. As Christ lives, so we live. And Christ does live in each of us, today, tomorrow, and for all time. Amen. Alleluia!
1 Peter 2:1-10The lectionary today is full of stones. In Acts the first Christian martyr is stoned, in the Psalm God is called our fortress and 'strong rock.' And here, in the first letter of Peter we hear about the cornerstone that is Christ.
Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
4 Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and 5 like living stones, let yourselves be built* into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For it stands in scripture:
‘See, I am laying in Zion a stone,
a cornerstone chosen and precious;
and whoever believes in him* will not be put to shame.’
7 To you then who believe, he is precious; but for those who do not believe,
‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the very head of the corner’,
8 and
‘A stone that makes them stumble,
and a rock that makes them fall.’
They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.
9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people,* in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.
10 Once you were not a people,
but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
but now you have received mercy.
We don't usually notice stones, but the world is full of them. They make up our foundations, our sidewalks, our roads. They are a nuisance to be raked out of our gardens, fun to be skipped across a still lake, pain in our shoes, or if you're like me they're door stops and paper weights. Stones are mightily useful things, how often we taken them for granted.
Stones don't usually get much notice. They're dull. Go out to any farm field and you will find piles of stones around the borders and in the hedgerows, why? Because they've been discarded.
‘The stone that the builders rejectedhas become the very head of the corner’
We often hear these words and think of the crucifixion. But that's missing the point. Just as the farmer picked up the stone in his field and throw it away as useless or harmful, the establishment wanted nothing to do with an itinerant preacher from Nazareth. Jesus was a nuisance. He didn't toe the line, and like the rock in our shoe he made those in authority very uncomfortable.
But Peter calls Christ a "living" stone. You see Jesus didn't just get in the way. A regular stone in a field might break a plow blade and needs to be tossed out. There are lots of stones in the bible: Barabas was one. A revolutionary, a freedom fighter, today we'd call him a terrorist. He made the authorities plenty uncomfortable but that was all he did. Jesus did more than just make some folks uncomfortable. He went beyond that to offer an alternative. As our "living stone" he offered teachings that could be a foundation for a whole new way of being.
Jesus came to those that authority and power had rejected. I hate to say it, but he didn't come to people like us. He came to the destitute, the outcast, the despised. Today what would those people he came to look like? They might have been AIDS patients, transgender teens, single mothers or grandmothers on welfare, the homeless, the insane. And what did he bring? He brought hope. He sat down and ate with them, and he gave them good news. He told them that they were not useless. He empowered them. He lifted them up, and taught them to care for and one love another. He told them that he loved them, and that GOD loved them.
That is the good news, no wonder it was rejected. If those "others" are truly good and useful, truly beloved of God, the authorities would have to admit there was something fundamentally broken about their world. The bad news is the world is still broken, and the good news is still being rejected. The temple authorities rejected Jesus and his Way; we do too. Every time we condemn or reject someone who makes us uncomfortable, every time we allow the world to tell us that we are useless, every time we give up, or give in.
Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and 5 like living stones, let yourselves be built* into a spiritual houseGod is calling us to become living stones ourselves. God is offering us the chance to be like Christ. That isn't an easy thing I'm afraid. It means rejection. It means that the world will not understand us. It means we will be called to speak out against repression and violence wherever it finds root. Doing so won't make us popular. Like Stephen and Jesus and thousands of others it will mean our rejection by many.
Most of us are probably pretty comfortable. But our world is still full of the same repression and violence and inequality that held sway when Jesus walked the hills of Palestine. It might make us unpopular but we are called to speak out when our government tramples on the poor, or oppressed (and it does). We are called to speak out when big business does harm to workers or citizens or creation itself. We are called to speak out when our churches cause pain or harm through their teaching or actions. We are called to be like Christ, to be living stones.
We can become the foundation of the Kingdom of God. No, we must become the foundation of the Kingdom of God.
"you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people,* in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light."God had a purpose for us when we were called. Not to just come and sit here on Sunday morning and then go back to living in the world. No, we were called out of darkness and it is our obligation to call others as well:
10 Once you were not a people,
but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
but now you have received mercy."
Let us be living stones! Because God is good, and God has given us life and light and joy. That we might bring all the discarded stones of the world to God who discards nothing! Amen. Alleluia.
Have you bathed in the light
of a life immersed in call?
Have you seen the radiance
that turns a person, into
a saint, before your eyes?
A Renaissance painting
of an angel, haloed in light?
If you have, you sat
before God; you saw beauty,
created and shared.
Take off your shoes, cover
your head, this place is holy.
I am doing retreat meditations partly through poetry. All meditations from the retreat April 5th and 6th will use the "retreat" tag.
I will be giving this short sermon during our Eucharist on Sunday to close out the retreat.
Luke 10:21-28
21At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.
22"All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."
23Then he turned to his disciples and said privately, "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. 24For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it."
25On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"26"What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?"
27He answered: " '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, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"
28"You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."
Do you remember the pictures you drew as a really little girl? Colorful stick figures with big crayon names over their heads? Well Mia had drawn one of those pictures of her family. There were five figures on the paper. Right in the middle was a little girl, just to be sure Mia had written "ME" over her head. And there was a little stick figure cat, bright orange and named "Freckles." Freckles had died a few months before, but Freckles was still part of Mia's family. On the left side of the paper were two big people she had labeled "Mom" and "Dad." And on her right was on last figure, drawn with its stick arms spread wide and a big smile on its face. And over this person Mia wrote: "God."
"you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children."
Mia understands. She's still young enough. She knows that God loves her, and she loves God and that is all that is needed for God to be a member of her family. She needs no theology or creed to have a personal, intimate relationship with her Creator.
We begin without fear. We draw, and we paint, and we build sand castles without judgment. It has been a long time, but when I was very little I drew huge murals. Whole villages and country-sides full of people and animals trees and houses. I told stories with those drawings taping sheets of paper together into a long scroll and drawing on and on adding as I went. And I took photographs of pine cones and icicles without thought for composition or form or technique, just because they were pretty and I wanted to share them.
But at some point a teacher tells us we've drawn a person wrong, or our painting is sloppy, or our pottery cup is lopsided and we begin to believe it. We start to look at what the other children are doing, at the art that hangs on the walls of our homes and we start to compare our own and find our work wanting.
When we're little we sit and listen with wide eyes to stories of the whale swallowing Jonah, to a star that traveled, to a stable birth, to God making people out of clay. And we believe in the power of those myths. I grew up the daughter of two naturalists. I knew that whales had baleen and ate krill. I knew they couldn't and wouldn't swallow people. I knew at some level that stars couldn't move around in the sky. But I believed anyway with the innocence of a child who has yet to learn words like "fact" and "corroboration." Truth was truth and I could hear the truth in those stories, just like Mia can. When we were little God loved us, and that was all that mattered. And then someone began to talk about theology, or debate creation and evolution, or ask us to memorize a creed, and for many God starts to fades out of their family portrait.
We grow up. We stop looking at the world with those wide soft eyes we used on our walk yesterday. We started looking at God's creation with hard adult eyes. We started judging and weighing, and we stopped playing and listening. And we lost sight of so much of it because of that. Jesus holds up little children as our example, and more than once Jesus promises the Kingdom of God to such people. When we were little the creative power God planted in each of us could flower and create and express without fear. We loved, and played, and created out of the instinct of our selves, created in the image of a creative and loving God.
As we leave here and drive home my prayer for each of us is that we will search within ourselves for our own Mia. For the little girl who knew God was part of her family and prayed that prayer with smiling faces and bright orange crayons. Amen.
"Still Doubting" - John Granville GregoryI have always loved this painting. I love the look on Jesus' face, and on Thomas's. I expect Thomas to jump with surprise at any moment and his Rabbi and friend to laugh, and hug him, and laugh a little more; with that impetuous twinkle in his eyes. Jesus delights in this friend who needed to see for himself, who needed to experience. And here is Thomas, honest Thomas who will not pretend to be something he is not. Here is Thomas, doing what those other two chaps just aren't brave enough to do. I love the intimacy of touch, the familiar closeness, the humanity here. For who has not been one of these figures time and again in our lives.
We are Thomas. And that isn't a bad thing! So far from it, dear friends. Thomas is the voice inside all of us that demands more. Thomas demands a personal experience of God and of Christ. A family member has commented that she just doesn't get the warm fuzzy personal God feelings many of those around her in church seem to. She sees them lifting their hands, swaying with the music, even crying and she wants it. Who wouldn't be frustrated to not have found it. But she refuses to pretend. She is Thomas. Demanding to touch, and refusing to fake something she hasn't experienced.
Would that more Christians were like Thomas, that more of us could be honest about our doubts and our fears. The title "doubting Thomas" has been used as an insult for so long we are afraid to let our natures show. But it isn't just Thomas who doubted. When things got bad all the disciples fled. When Mary proclaimed the resurrection to the 11 they did not believe her. But only Thomas had the courage to admit his doubt. Thomas is not our warning, but our model.
Thomas asked for a personal experience of Jesus. He wanted to know for himself, to have the Christ once more in his life. Thomas could have hidden his doubt, he could have celebrated with the rest, and buried his need for a personal experience of Jesus deep inside. Certainly it must have taken courage to stand as the obstinate odd-man-out while the rest spoke so excitedly. He could have followed along with his friends, afraid to admit that he wasn't sure. He could have failed to demand that Jesus come back into his life. But he didn't. He was honest with his sisters and brothers, and he was honest with God. And for that honesty, he was rewarded. As one of my favorite hymns says: Ask and it shall be given unto you. Thomas revealed his need, he asked, and Christ came.
And lest we fall into the old trap of believing that Jesus condemned Thomas for his honesty listen to Christ's words again:
"Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." John 20:29Jesus does not condemn Thomas, instead he speaks words that should be comfort for us. Jesus blessed all those who find themselves doubting in the face of a personal distance from Jesus and yet following anyway. This is perhaps the last beatitude. For here our doubt is affirmed as honesty, our demands for a personal experience of God and of Christ acknowledged, and our times of loneliness, and isolation from God, blessed.
Jesus comes for Thomas, for even one sheep. And Jesus will come for us as well, though it may well be when we least expect him. So, my doubting brothers and sisters, let us be honest. Let us be as Thomas.
Ask for resurrection!
Ask to touch Christ with your own hands, and see him with your own eyes!
Ask for the experience of God within your own life!
It is cold this morning. Good Friday had not rain, but a blizzard of snow. The tears have been shed, the darkness has come, now we wait. I teased a friend this morning that I wanted to get in a few little Alleluias in anticipation. We just don't like to wait.
But Saturday, this day of waiting, of holding our breath, of empty deserted sanctuaries, must be. I think of the darkest times in my own life, and in the lives of those I love. Never has the darkness been followed immediately by light. The problems that seem impossible to surmount are never solved overnight. There is always waiting; when the crushing sorrow, or fear, or anger has passed, and the darkness has turned to grey fog. Those days of waiting are, perhaps, the hardest and longest times of our lives.
Even as Christ hung on the cross yesterday those who loved him best, his mother, Mary Magdalene, and a few others stood nearby. But now, closed in the tomb he is alone, as they are alone. Wrapped in their grief, isolated by their confusion. How could this happen? How could this be? I imagine Mary, the Magdalene, slamming her fists against Peter's chest. She is angry, betrayed, and hurt. "How could you let them kill him?" She sobs, and Peter, lost in his own betrayal would have no reply.
Now in the waiting we are truly alone. In those long days and nights when we wait, helpless and powerless, we may feel utterly abandoned. But the truth is, we are not. Christ warned those who loved him that the road he walked was dangerous. That he had chosen to speak for the voiceless, to challenge the ways of the powerful, and that they would strike back. He warned those who loved him, but they did not understand. They continued to believe in the rosy utopia of their own creating and when their expectations were shattered, they fled.
We do the same, every day. We make little deals with God to get us the job we want, the house we lust after, to keep our family safe, and always to keep our lives on an even and balanced keel. But those things were never what God promised. Just like the disciples we don't see Good Friday coming, so when it does we scatter and from our dark hiding places we are sure that we have been left utterly alone, that we got it all wrong, that God isn't really with us.
Today, wherever you are in your own journey, remember and know you are not alone. Because unlike the Marys, or Peter, or the rest we have already seen the glory of Sunday morning. We know the rest of the story. God wins. And God waits here in the grey fog of the between times. The tomb today becomes a womb, waiting patiently, heavy with mystery to bring forth new life. Just so our own tombs of waiting, whether we wail without, or sleep within. God waits as well, God works while we stumble blindly, God is making creation new. Wait, here in the garden, and when He calls your name you will see.
"Hosanna to the Son of David!Don't those Hosannas feel good? Go ahead, give another one a try: hosanna! It's been a long Lent for me, I imagine it has for many of you as well. I'm more than ready for some celebration! So were the Jews. Sometimes we forget that Jesus didn't live among people like us. He lived with, taught, and served the poor and the outcast. He came not to the leaders and the powerful, not even to the comfortable, but to those the political and religious authorities of the day had ground beneath their heals.
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!"
Jesus came to the disenfranchised: to the poor, to slaves, to women, to children, to widows, the disabled, prostitutes, adulterers, and sinners. He came to the people on whom backs had always been turned and he told them that things could be different. He told them that God had bigger plans, better plans, than the ways of men.
But then the crowds listening to him did the same thing we often do, they misinterpreted. When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey many scholars now believe Pilot (the Roman governor) was riding into the city through another gate. Two processions. One for the wealthy and the powerful, meant to show the unstoppable power of Rome; and one opposite it, different in every way. Except many of those spreading their cloaks on the ground and shouting hosanna didn't realize that. They thought this prophet, this one called the son of David came to take David's place. They still believed that the kingdom of Jesus was one of political and religious power.
We make those same mistakes, though perhaps ours are a bit different. Sometimes we make the assumption that the Kingdom of God is entirely not of this world, and from there come out pictures of that perfect afterlife for those who just do the right thing in this life. Ironically it was that very misunderstanding of the kingdom that was used to maintain the grinding poverty of serfs in feudal Europe. And it is the same thinking that leaves us uncalled to act in the world today.
The truth that Jesus proclaimed when he road a humble donkey over a road lined with palm branches and coats was something quite different. He announced a new creation here and now. A new creation we are called to be integral in creating. That is our call when Christ calls "Follow me!" But right now, on Palm Sunday is where that command to follow gets hard.
A great majority of Christians will take home their palm branches today and won't be back in church until Easter morning. I understand why, we're busy people and it's been a long winter and a long lent. We are hungry for hosannas and alleluias. But if we truly mean to obey Christ when he calls us to follow him then we must follow him not only along the palm strewn path but into that dark upper room, the midnight garden, the interrogation, the lonely cross, and ultimately into that cold tomb. Because without that walk the good news isn't really good news, it's hollow and meaningless.
I am old enough to remember when the Sunday before Easter was just Palm Sunday. When the Passion waited until Holy Week. I understand why the church has compressed the two into one, or at least I understand the logistics that made is seem sensible to someone somewhere. But here at least it is only Palm Sunday. Why? Because Palm/Passion Sunday does a great disservice to those who come to the church seeking to understand the dark times of their lives.
That good news I talked about is here. Our lives aren't made up of Palm and Easter Sundays. We all have our Gethsemanes and Golgothas. And our hope, our promise, our good news from God is that God is with us in those times. When we enter the church with Hosannas and then plunge straight through the darkness of the Passion in one short hour we give ourselves permission to skip over the darkness. We can hold our breath for a brief hour and go back to our lives for a week, emerging unscathed Easter morning. We turn the journey to the cross into a short play, and trivializes our own dark times. We run the risk of thinking darkness is something we can avoid, that we can live on the mountain tops. Christ new that wasn't true.
So I am inviting you to celebrate with me today, I am inviting you to celebrate Palm Sunday and then to walk the painful path of Holy Week. It will be dark, there might be tears, you may grow weary, and this is all right because we will walk through the darkness with Christ. We will walk through the valley of the shadow of death with God, and God will remind us of the Good News: that God has walked through the same darkness and God is with us in our dark times.
Relish today, dear ones. Relish the expectant joy of our Savior. Spend time in His presence, shout with joy, wave your palms, sing. And know that the coming darkness will pass and when it does the light will be infinitely more dazzling than anything we have dreamed of before. Amen.
Ezekiel 37:1-14I love this reading, it's one of my favorites. First for its poetry; the sound of the words and the way they dance together, word building on word like the bones build upon one another. But I love it even more for what God promises within it.
The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, "Mortal, can these bones live?" I answered, "O Lord GOD, you know." Then he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord."
So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live." I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
Then he said to me, "Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, `Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.' Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act," says the Lord.
Because this is a story about resurrection, rebirth, and new beginnings. This is a story for the church, and it is a story for each of us as all the best myths are; it imparts a deep and abiding truth that we desperately need to hear.
Yet, lest we misunderstand what God offers there is also the Gospel today.
When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." - John 11My rector preached on the Gospel today and he hit on something that I missed, given my earlier meditation focusing on the beautiful promise of Ezekiel. And yet the two are really the same promise. Let me explain.
I have a dear friend who has been battling illness for a long time, and like Mary and Martha what I want is healing, for God to bring healing and wholeness like magic. Our rector this morning told us about a vibrant young woman who, suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease, slowly lost control of her body. She lost the ability to speak, to walk, even to smile. As each each of those things left her an empty place remained. After an hour, a day, or months of emptiness the hole was filled by something else. When she lost the ability to talk she taught herself to paint. And the rule at her home was, if you came to visit her you painted with her. Skill didn't matter, she handed you a brush and some paint and that was that. And she reveled in the creations of her guests, and they in hers until her home was filled with beautiful, love filled, artwork.
Those who sat with her as she died saw her fear of death fall away, and they said their own fear vanished as well. Her resurrection didn't begin at her death. It began long before. Lazarus was raised, but he would die again. Yet his miracle is what we still ask for: resuscitation, not resurrection. What Jesus offers, what the young painter found, what God offers in the valley of dry bones isn't the resuscitation of Lazarus, it is true resurrection.
I don't want to sit and watch a friend suffer. If we're honest, none of us want to see the resurrection experience in the midst of pain or illness, we want resuscitation! We want God to return us, or our loved ones to that mythical state of wholeness. If only God would heal us, how much could we do?
But God isn't offering the quick fix, the instant healing, God offers us something more. God takes the dry bones of our lives and gives them new life. Where we see only death and destruction God brings breath and strength and newness. It's not necessarily the message we wanted. We wanted the master to show up on time, to lay His hands on our broken bodies and make us feel better. We want God to perform on command. If only, if only.
Yet how much more powerful is resurrection? From the depths of our brokenness we find new gentleness, or new strength, or new wisdom, or new ways to love, or new ways to reach out. From the depths of our brokenness God offers the promise that He will take away our fear and use our resurrecting lives to bring resurrection to others.
It is Lent, and we are speaking of resurrection because here in Lent we can see what we must walk through to reach that resurrection. We must lay in the valley of dry bones, utterly spent, dry, scattered, broken. We must walk through the graveyard with the weeping Jesus. We must taste the bitterness of life before the sweet power of resurrection can break over us. Before we can be raised up from the dust and made to stand anew, before we can be loosed from death.
That is what I pray we may each find in our lives: true resurrection. The life that means we need not fear death.
1 Samuel 16:1-13, Psalm 23, Ephesians 5:8-14, John 9:1-41
"Sleeper, awake!If you grew up in the 70s or 80s you might have the same reaction as I to this passage. Sleeper, awake! My mind flashes first to the startling blue eyes of Paul Atrides and I hear the words: "The sleeper has awoken!" Yes, Frank Herbert's beloved epic: Dune. I grew up watching the movie version, both repulsed and fascinated by the characters; and I sat in trembling awe of Shihalude.
Rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you." - Ephesians 5:14b
In Herbert's world Paul's eyes were opened by the water of life, and he saw the world as it truly was for the first time. That sight gave him power, it made him a man who lived in the world but was not of the world. The change, those startling blue eyes, was outward and visible, but it was the inward invisible change that mattered. It was the inner transformation that changed his life, and the course of the world. He became one with the great worm, he became a god-bearer.
Does Dune seem a strange topic for a lectionary meditation or sermon? Perhaps, yet often our fiction is the place where we wrestle with the deepest of truths. Our fiction has become modern myth. What ancient peoples explored in religious story we spin into tales of star ships and alien worlds. But the issues we seek to master, the knowledge we seek to impart are much the same.
This week God speaks to us of sleepers, and of sight. In the old testament reading God chides Samuel for his human sight, for judging the sons of Jesse by human standards. Samuel sees their strength, or their handsome mien, or their proud carriage and he makes certain assumptions. Had Samuel made the choice he would have anointed the human choice, the eldest son in all his worldly strength. But God sees the inner power of men and he chooses David, the youngest. Fair of face perhaps, but certainly not the intimidating kingly man his older brothers might have seemed.
Samuel trusts the voice and vision of God. He closes his own human eyes and becomes alive, awake with the knowledge of God. Only then does he see David, and know him. Just so the gospel story this week where sight and blindness, sleepers and those who have awoken merge and shift. Jesus turns the world on its head. Herbert would say, perhaps, that he makes the desert bloom.
In the days of this story those born disabled, either blind or deaf or dumb, we assumed accursed by God. Everyone knew that such a one suffered for the sins of their parents, or sins they themselves committed before their birth. They were pitied, outcast, and ostracized. Their families even felt the brunt of such treatment for surely the blindness of their child pointed a finger of blame into the heart of their own lives. Yet Jesus tells us such a thing is anathema to God. He makes mud, bathes the blind man's eyes, and gives him sight.
Mud, it is resurrection is it not? We are dust, and to dust we shall return. But Jesus makes the dust of the earth moist and alive with water and breath, for such is spit. The Christ, is remaking creation to heal the hurt of humanity. Christ indeed offers a second birth into a world where our eyes have been opened; where the startling brightness of our souls can shine forth from those newly opened eyes; where, like the blind man, the world may not even recognize us, so transformed have we become.
In the movie re-imagining of Dune the world, represented by the Emperor and House Harkonen cannot accept this new thing that is happening. They cling blindly to their old weapons. They hide behind walls and canons and instruments of death. But of course life breaks in from that frightening desert, regardless. It overwhelms the old blind ways. And we, who are watching, sit on the edge of our seats though we know there can be only one outcome. The desert, the awakened, life must prevail.
The Pharisees, the priests, all the people of that town see with human eyes. They see with the eyes of Adam and Eve, opened to perceive sin. Christ offers another kind of sight, a grafting of our sight with God's. Christ offers grace and the awakening it brings. But those in this story that represent the established order of the world see only their own fear, only the laws given for human weakness. Offered the water of life they refuse it and turn instead to violence and intimidation. Driving out, at last, the miracle in their midst.
It is, in the end, the same story we can find at the heart of Dune. It is a story about choice, the choice to see different, the choice to awaken to a new way of being, the choice to accept the divine spark we all carry. What Jesus offers is not easy. He makes resurrection from dust, but the healing he offers does not insulate us from danger or fear. It does not turn the once blind man's life into paradise. In fact, awakened and sighted the healed man ends up back where he began. And yet Christ finds him again. Those who see with human eyes reject and cast out, but God searches out again and again.
There is the hope for us, that our eyes might be opened, that we might be awakened to God's presence in our midst. And that we might know that no matter what God will ever seek us out and find us.
"Sleeper, awake!"
This post was borrowed from my discernment journal and has been edited and expanded here, thanks for a good friend for her wise insights.
It doesn't feel like lent. Maybe it was missing Ash Wednesday. Maybe its the hectic schedule, or the fact that the snow outside reminds me more of Christmas or Epiphany than Lent. Whatever it is I feel like Lent has wandered off into the snow and gotten lost.
My Lenten study books (too many of them) are sitting unread in the reading pile. My yoga is not getting done. About all I've managed this first week is to keep my head above water, or perhaps that should be snow.
What is it about the liturgical seasons that makes us feel as if life should alter subtly as we enter into them? We expect the bated breath of expectation in Advent, for life to slow down a bit, darken a bit, hush a bit. We expect the buoyant exultation of Christmas to carry over into our whole lives. And we expect Lent to put the brakes on our world, to give us space to breath and reflect. And of course it doesn't work that way. Lent is just the name for these forty days that to most of the world are nothing more than a slice of winter. The world around us hardly notices and if we are not careful we hardly notice as well.
It is of course my own busyness that keeps Lent off there in the shadows waiting to work on my soul. It is of course about balance, time management, setting priorities. And the irony is that much of the busyness are things I added in an attempt to keep that "holy Lent" we all strive for. Good intentions. Perhaps we give up sugar, or online shopping. Perhaps we're "adders" who instead of giving up take on a new practice. Maybe we promise to do morning prayer every morning, or (like me) to do yoga when I first rise. We pick out study books for Lent, good meaty things that will surely teach us more about God. In short we set out on the path of good intentions toward a destination of self improvement. Is it any wonder Lent doesn't resonate and we're left feeling a little cheated. God isn't cheating us, we're cheating ourselves.
God's one desire is for us to turn our lives toward God's self. To refocus ourselves over and over again on God. Instead we devise complicated "plans" that create more and more inner clutter.
That does not get us off the Lenten hook. That doesn't mean we get to wander through life doing whatever pops into our heads at the moment. But it does mean we need to let go of the guilt when the study plans don't work out, or we eat that chocolate bar, or we just can't rise early enough to do yoga. We need to release that guilt and sit quietly with God. And when we are quiet we need to ask ourselves, and that still small voice within, how we can best draw closer to the One who is waiting for us?
When our lives our overflowing with "should," what to do? What to do when it all is important? I know what the answer should be...
John 2:13-22 (NRSV)I entered Lent with a great many plans, as so often happens they didn't work out the way I'd expected. Lent this year feels very un-Lenty (if you will indulge the word). I am not feeling penitent, nor contemplative. I find myself feeling every day, normal, entirely less spiritual than you might expect. My careful Lenten plans lie in ruins at my feet. Now I could feel guilty, or I could acknowledge that the best laid plans of all of us are often no match for life. I can acknowledge that I'm not the one in control and instead enter quietly into Lenten discernment, where is God calling me deeper into communion?
13 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. 15Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. 16He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’ 17His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’ 18The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ 19Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ 20The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ 21But he was speaking of the temple of his body. 22After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
What is happening this Lent was unexpected. I normally read about half of the daily lectionary since I switch every other night between Compline (with the daily office readings) or a long meditation session. But this first week of Lent I have found myself reading the daily office Gospel reading even when I can't find time for the daily office. And I have found myself entering into those readings more deeply than ever before. The reading above was from Tuesday. It is a familiar story, as so many of them are, but I am different now than I was the last time I heard it, or indeed than any time I have heard it before.
The words that sounded with profound truth for me were one simple sentence:
21But he was speaking of the temple of his body.Yes, this is a foreshadowing of the resurrection and surely that is what the original author intended. But I could not help but hear the words we use to send LEVs out with their charge: "We who are many are one Body..." I could not help but hear "The Body of Christ, the bread of heaven" as the wafer touched my hands and my eyes met those who spoke them. For when we speak those words, priest or LEM, we not only name the gift we share with our brothers and sisters we name our brothers and sisters. We acknowledge the one who kneels before us as the Body of Christ.
What I heard in the Gospel that night was hope, not hope for resurrection of the physical body of the historic Jesus two thousand years ago but for the resurrection of the Church. I heard the protest of human beings who have always done their flawed best to build a suitable home for God, and who have always failed.
20The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’And I heard Christ say that yes, despite all our failures God indeed has a temple here on Earth in which to dwell: within each of us, within the Church. I heard that God has built God's own temple, one that cannot be destroyed. One that God will raise up in resurrection again, and again, and again. I heard hope.
I am reading The Mystical Sense of the Gospels and working my way through it ever so slowly. It is a gentle teacher, prodding here, enlightening there, speaking to the deep quiet well within me that recognizes and longs for the indwelling of God; and always encouraging a deeper reading of scripture. Perhaps because of that mystical beginning the daily office readings for yesterday struck a deep resounding cord. The Psalm began like gentle balm (118) with the mantra like repetition of the words "God's mercy endures forever." And then the gospel story (Mark 6:30-46) opened up like a blooming lotus, the fragrance of a new and deeper meaning washing over me.
30 The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught. 31 Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, "Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest."It is a familiar story is it not? And yet the daily reading frames it in such a way that I saw it entirely anew last night. It is a story, a parable, about many things but one of them is this: Jesus has commissioned his disciples and preachers and healers. They have been sent out to do the work of the church, to declare the Good News and bring comfort and healing to those in need. Now they have returned and Jesus immediately recognizes that the work they have done is draining work. As full as they are of joy at their success, as excited as they might be, and as much need as there still is in the world he gives them permission, no he requires them, to take time apart to rest.32 So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place. 33 But many who saw them leaving recognized them and ran on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. 34 When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things.
35 By this time it was late in the day, so his disciples came to him. "This is a remote place," they said, "and it's already very late. 36 Send the people away so they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat."
37 But he answered, "You give them something to eat."
They said to him, "That would take eight months of a man's wages! Are we to go and spend that much on bread and give it to them to eat?"38 "How many loaves do you have?" he asked. "Go and see."
When they found out, they said, "Five\u2014and two fish."39 Then Jesus directed them to have all the people sit down in groups on the green grass. 40 So they sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties. 41 Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to his disciples to set before the people. He also divided the two fish among them all. 42 They all ate and were satisfied, 43and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces of bread and fish. 44 The number of the men who had eaten was five thousand.
45 Immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. 46After leaving them, he went up on a mountainside to pray. - Mark 6:30-46
And as so often happens to those who serve, the rest is interrupted. The good intentions are lost, there is yet more need, it will in fact never end. And yet these preachers, teachers, and healers are dry. The need is more than they can fill. They have but a little to give (those few loaves of bread and fish) and the needs of the people who have come are indeed vast. They despair. They likely feel tired, worn out, and utterly inadequate. But God takes their offering as meager as it is and makes it enough, more than enough. And then Christ sends them away to find rest (ensuring their rest by staying to dismiss the crowd himself). And if the message needs to be hammered home any harder, he sets off as an example to us all to renew himself in prayer.
The story had never opened to me in quite the way it did last night. It was a story I had dissected and researched and written about more than once. But last night the gospel turned and became a personal thing, a meaning hidden deep within that rose up and enveloped me when I needed it. It is a comforting reminder of our humanity, our need for quiet rest, and our inability to do it all alone. I sat in the flickering light and offered up my friends, my family, my whole heart to God in prayer because often that is all we can do. When we have exhausted all the actions, when our planning has failed, or when we are simply tired or overwhelmed by need there is only prayer.
The Gospel reminds me of my CAP SAR training where we learned we could not help others if we were not ourselves rested and healthy. The lesson here is the same, though it is prayer that refreshes us. We need more than sleep, food, and physical rest. We need emotional and spiritual space as well. To expect more of ourselves, or those who serve us than Christ is of course foolish. I hope that lent will be for those who labor a time apart for prayer, rest, and renewal.
Gospel for the First Sunday after the Epiphany:
Matthew 3:13-17Beloved. Today's Speaking to the Soul rather took my breath away. It seems like a simple little post over there, a short little guided visualization meditation. And yet there is holiness within that little word that catches me up every time I hear it: beloved. Love gets over used today, so does family. Everyone it seems is family, your church, the people you work with, your sports team. Everyone loves one another. Don't believe me, just listen to a few minutes of political candidates fawning over the voting masses.
13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" 15 But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness." Then he consented. 16 And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased."
But beloved remains unscathed, it still holds the sacred power bled out of so many of our words. It still has the ability to stop me in my tracks, turn me around, and send me (teary with joy) to my knees.
The meditation today asked good questions, profound questions. Most obviously what exactly does the word "beloved" mean? It sounds old fashioned, formal, romantic perhaps. It speaks of something deeper and more mysterious than when we say "I love ice cream." And yet something about that word keeps us from using it every day. How often have I called someone a beloved? I'm afraid to say, it isn't often.
Beloved. The dictionary defines it this way:
–adjectiveI'd like to explore a more active definition. Beloved - Be loved - being love. In other words: one, on behalf of whom, we act out of love. It is love being that in response to our beloved's words assuring us we don't have to go with her to the hospital for that test we reply "I know" and go anyway. Being love makes us sit quietly and listen when we really want to talk. Being love causes us to leap with joy when our beloved smiles, and drops a weight of lead into our heart at the sound of their tears. Being love means we welcome both the heart leap and the heart lead and carry them with gentle, open hands. Being love makes us the safe harbor for a battered soul, a listening ear, a lifting joke, even a shared rant. Being love makes prayer a constant lifting up with God, for love itself is prayer.–noun
1. greatly loved; dear to the heart.
2. a person who is greatly loved.
Being love does not have to mean romance, though it can. In a society that has lost sight of love in place of sex we might forget, but Beloved is for our sister, brother, mother, daughter, or friend every bit as much as it is for our lover. That's important because it is love, being love, that sustains us. Just as we would die of thirst without water, or waste away in starvation without food, without beloved we will just as surely die. And just as one food alone cannot give our bodies all they require for life and health we must widen and deepen and broaden our hearts as well. We need to be surrounded, upheld, enfolded by souls we call beloved and who in turn are love to us.
And at our center, at the deepest part of us it is God who teaches us the meaning of being love. It is from Love itself that we must take our pale mirror image and polish it our whole lives, learning with our Beloveds how to live into that mystery. It is through that human Christ baptized by his cousin in the Jordan that our human ears have been opened. For God loved us from before our birth, from before the time the first molecules of us knit together in the womb. We however were deafened by our guilt, it is through Christ we can learned to hear those blessed words spoken to us as well there in the deep well of our souls: "This is my Beloved."
Since its Tuesday and I haven't done a sermon in far too long here goes. If I were preaching this I would let it sit a few days and edit it. Since it will only be preached here I am posting it as is.
Matthew 2:1-12 (NRSV)What is there to say about Epiphany? We all know the story. We probably all have a little creche at home with three wise men; old bearded fellows in fine robes each holding a little box. I could remind you that Christmas has 12 days, from Christmas day through today, the feast of the epiphany. (I hope you all still have your Christmas trees up!) I could tell you that those wise men didn't actually come to the stable but (as Matthew notes) to a house where Mary and Joseph were living with the toddler Jesus, an infant no longer. I could tell you all about those costly gifts and the wonderful symbolism in each of them. We could discuss just exactly where the wise men came from, why they were so interested in a baby Jew, and was that star really just a super nova anyway?
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.’ When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:“And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
who is to shepherd my people Israel.” ’
Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.’ When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
As much as I enjoy arguing theological trivia, I don't want to talk about any of those things. Because they aren't really what's important to us today. It doesn't really matter if the wise men arrived three days or three years after Jesus was born. Stable or house isn't really important. We don't need the wise men's names, or their nationalities either.
What matters in this story is something else entirely: the wise men showed up. It might seem like a small thing. After all, if they hadn't showed up Matthew's account would be a little shorter, we'd have a few less Christmas carols. It might have even been better that way: perhaps a horrible massacre of innocents could have been avoided and Mary and Joseph could have stayed in Bethlehem, safe and anonymous.
But the wise men did show up. With all the mess their journey caused we might all think it better if they'd never come. Yet how much of our faith, and our journey together, is about just showing up?
Last week we heard the story of Jesus' birth. We watched as glory burst out on a lonely hillside and we watched a group of frightened shepherds show up at the stable. A bit too much wine out on those cold slopes they might have said to one another. They might have huddled down and tried to forget. Instead, they showed up. This week the wise men have traveled a much greater distance, following a rather tenuous guide and ancient stories of a king whose birth would be heralded by a star. They too showed up. The magi and the shepherds shared something important. They were listening, really listening. You see the priests and scribes were supposedly waiting as well. They were supposedly listening for signs that the Messiah was coming, but they missed it. When God did something unexpected they missed it. They didn't show up. Herod, the priests and the scribes all had a chance. They had a chance to listen to the angels, to see the star, to follow the wise men. They had a chance to show up. Instead they stayed home, paralyzed by fear and their own, human, expectations.
The story of God's people is a story about those who show up when God calls them, and those that don't. And that is our story as well. Because God is calling each and every one of us, just as he called Mary, and Joseph, a bunch of shepherds, some foreign wise men, and even the priests, and the scribes, and Herod himself. God calls all of us. Like those shepherds on the hill it can be terrifying to be called. Like the wise men it can mean a long, hard journey into the unknown. Like the priests and scribes it can come in a form we were never expecting. The question is, will we show up?
This last week, in the midst of bitter cold and a couple winter storms two people I love had to move. They needed to pack up everything they owned, store it away, and live for a little while in a sort of exile. Their friends and family had hoped and prayed it wouldn't be necessary, but we knew it was coming. There wasn't anything we could do to stop it. It would seem we were helpless. It is a scary, frustrating thing to be helpless. But God, in the midst of our fear calls out "don't be afraid, show up!" So this week I did the only thing I could do, I showed up. I didn't wait for the request for help, I showed up and offered, and other friends did as well. We spent five days packing and sorting, storing and cleaning. Sometimes my help probably wasn't really required but in those moments my presence was all I had to offer, and so I gave it. One friend's gifts kept us laughing and rolling our eyes when we might have wanted to cry. Another mover perhaps laid a gentle hand on an arm, silent presence. Some simply worked, their gift was their presence. As each crisis rose and broke over us like a wave someone showed up, and the crisis was solved. We all showed up and God was there, waiting for us.
It is often a lot easier not to show up. It is easier to ignore all the little subtle hints that our presence is needed. It is easier to tell ourselves that everything is OK, that its somebody-else's-problem. We can be so caught up in our own lives and worries and plans that when God breaks in with a call that doesn't fit that plan we, like the scribes and chief priests, miss it entirely. We do it when we tell ourselves that no one will notice if we skip a church member's cousin's funeral. We do it when we drive past a homeless person every day without seeing her. We do it when we squash those "not quite right" feelings in a situation of suspected abuse. We do it when we refuse to forgive. We do it when we harden our hearts. We do it when we are too busy to call the pew-mate we didn't see in church last week. God calls, and we don't show up.
When we don't show up, epiphany doesn't happen. The Christ child remains cold and alone. Gifts grow stale and unused. A star fades, forgotten. God asks so little of us, and so much. Watch, wait, listen; and show up.
When I was an undergraduate student at Western Michigan University I majored in Computer Science. I had felt an unnameable tug for years but ignored it in favor of a career with high earning potential. And then in my freshman year of study I was hit full force between the eyes by God calling me to ordained ministry. But I didn't show up. I stayed a Computer Science major, I ignored God's call. A few years later, in one of my final courses the professor spent the last class session talking to us about call. He didn't use the church's words but he spoke of the computer science profession as vocation. He spoke passionately about purpose, about living out our lives as an offering to God/Allah/Jehovah. I could see the fire in him, I could see God's call on his life to teach, and yes, to be a computer scientist. And as I looked around me I saw that same call reflected back in many of the faces of my classmates. And I knew in an instant that I hadn't showed up. That God was calling, and I was not listening. I knew I wasn't called to computer science. I knew what I was called to. Like the scribes and chief priests I wasn't rushing to Bethlehem to see God at work I was hiding behind my own plans and good intentions.
God kept calling, I kept not showing up for the next ten years. Until a wise woman came along, once again asking "where is the child," this time I leaped into the air with joy and said: Let me go with you that I might worship the baby as well! You see, there is even more good news in our every day epiphany stories. God gives second, and third, and fourth chances. God never stops calling us. Whatever call God is making on your life right now, or last week, or ten years ago, you still have the chance to show up. No matter how many times you have failed in the past, from fear, or stubbornness, or deafness, or anger, or no reason you can understand: you can still show up. Christ is still there, waiting.
God is calling us to show up. The Magi are at our door asking: where is the child? How will we answer?
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