This month we celebrate a day which took the world by storm, or so Luke reports when he tells us of the Holy Spirit’s coming upon those first disciples of the risen Jesus on Pentecost, as tongues of fire.
Since then, the storms that seem to have taken over the world, crusades, earthquakes, floods, genocide, hurricanes, plagues, tornadoes, tsunamis, terrorism and wars, are too numerous to mention. And their combined toll on the human spirit is unimaginable.
We live in an age when “spirituality” is all the rage. Everybody, it seems, has one, even if they also have no church home, no religious affiliation, nor belief in the God of the Bible. More than that, followers of these assorted spiritual paths are eager to have us salute their practices because, as they say, “We’re all on the same journey, we just walk along different paths and call our ‘higher power’ by different names.”
Those are “nice” sentiments; seemingly “harmless” beliefs; and, even make the politically correct among us feel all warm and fuzzy because we’re all so darned tolerant.
Inside the story of the Bible’s God, where the coming of Emmanuel is announced, where the Messiah’s breaking open and pouring out is declared; where the raising from the dead of Jesus the Christ is affirmed, warm fuzzies are not sufficient for the spiritual life prompted by the outpouring and indwelling of this Holy Spirit.
As Luke writes, Peter’s announcement about the Holy Spirit’s arrival onto and into the borning community of Christian believers offered simply stunning consequences. Quoting the prophet Joel, Peter testifies to the reality that now, life in the Spirit offers God’s dynamic embrace to the lowest of the low. No longer are the roles of speaking in God’s behalf, visioning God’s alternative reality, and imagining God’s otherwise restricted to a few chosen agents. Henceforth, all people are brought inside the margins of God’s boundless love. From now on, all people are gathered into God’s unearned “for-us.”
In God’s Jesus, the final judgment has been rendered. The judgment brought an unexpected mercy, an unanticipated righting of the wrong, an unmerited belonging, and, an unwarranted opportunity to share a common life as God’s holy and whole people.
Peter’s encouraging refrain, offered to all those who would hear, was, “Repent!” In other words, “Turn around! You’ve been looking and seeing this all wrong.” Simply admit the world’s nice, neat, orderliness is a cruel hoax that’s kept us bound to the ravages of nature, tied in knots by greed, and separated from God by our selfishness and pride.
In that Spirit, we repent and are reborn at worship each Sunday. On occasion, it feels nice!
Friday, June 01, 2007
An Experience of Spirit
Last week I mailed a card to a member of our congregation. The note I wrote said something to this effect: There's a new spirit alive among us, thank you for your generous contribution to our mission and ministry.
As the celebration of Pentecost lies just over our shoulders, I'm puzzled by how I communicated my word of thanks. What did I have in mind? Frankly, as I wrote the note I struggled with whether or not to capitalize the "s" in spirit. I made a conscious decision not to do that.
I sat at my desk for several minutes staring at the page. I knew that the next word I wanted to write was "spirit." What I was unsure about was whether or not I wanted to make either a personal or a corporate claim for knowledge about the Holy Spirit's presence and activity.
What was going on here -confusion or cowardice? Those of you who've heard me preach can attest that I know how to sound bold when I want to. Those of you who've heard my fulminating know that I can communicate with a bravado that masks for certainty!
What was my claim? What is my claim? Was I citing evidence for an esprit de corps, or was I trying to testify to what I take to be evidence of the presence of the abiding Spirit of the loving God who seeks to be with us always?
Esprit de corps is no trivial thing. It can make grown men, like the Indiana Pacers, shave their heads to win basketball games. It can also impel someone to leap onto a hand grenade to save comrades in arms.
St. Paul says that no one can say Jesus is Lord unless by the prompting of the Spirit. Luther says, The Holy Spirit reveals and preaches that Word (Christ), and by it illumines and kindles hearts so that they grasp and accept it, cling to it and persevere in it.
Our tradition gives us lots of language, even personal language, by which to speak about God and to speak to God. Jesus taught us to say, Abba, Our Father. Doubting Thomas taught us to say, My Lord and My God.
But we don't have much language by which we make personal claims about the Holy Spirit. In fact, part of our experience makes us leery of those who speak as though the Holy Spirit were handy in their pockets, or otherwise hooked-in by some sort of pipeline to direct knowledge of God.
Perhaps the insight lies here. It's not we who claim the Holy Spirit. Rather, the Spirit of the Living God claims us.
In John's Gospel, especially chapters 15 and 16, Jesus tells the disciples that he will send the Paraclete. That is, one who "stands beside" to be their comforter, advocate and teacher. In his letter to the church at Rome, St. Paul says, For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a sprit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ -if in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
This Spirit is neither a silent partner nor an idle sidekick. The Spirit is the presence of God with us and in us. The Spirit is the ongoing work of God to transform us into a continuing declaration of concrete Good News, in the face of particular bad news.
So in the choice of language I used in my note, I was right and I was wrong. It's difficult to claim the Spirit. But it's even more difficult to deny the signs of God's presence, nearness, and activity in a congregation of believers whose love for God and neighbor becomes increasingly evident day after day.
That I can claim. Your faith makes it so. Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.
As the celebration of Pentecost lies just over our shoulders, I'm puzzled by how I communicated my word of thanks. What did I have in mind? Frankly, as I wrote the note I struggled with whether or not to capitalize the "s" in spirit. I made a conscious decision not to do that.
I sat at my desk for several minutes staring at the page. I knew that the next word I wanted to write was "spirit." What I was unsure about was whether or not I wanted to make either a personal or a corporate claim for knowledge about the Holy Spirit's presence and activity.
What was going on here -confusion or cowardice? Those of you who've heard me preach can attest that I know how to sound bold when I want to. Those of you who've heard my fulminating know that I can communicate with a bravado that masks for certainty!
What was my claim? What is my claim? Was I citing evidence for an esprit de corps, or was I trying to testify to what I take to be evidence of the presence of the abiding Spirit of the loving God who seeks to be with us always?
Esprit de corps is no trivial thing. It can make grown men, like the Indiana Pacers, shave their heads to win basketball games. It can also impel someone to leap onto a hand grenade to save comrades in arms.
St. Paul says that no one can say Jesus is Lord unless by the prompting of the Spirit. Luther says, The Holy Spirit reveals and preaches that Word (Christ), and by it illumines and kindles hearts so that they grasp and accept it, cling to it and persevere in it.
Our tradition gives us lots of language, even personal language, by which to speak about God and to speak to God. Jesus taught us to say, Abba, Our Father. Doubting Thomas taught us to say, My Lord and My God.
But we don't have much language by which we make personal claims about the Holy Spirit. In fact, part of our experience makes us leery of those who speak as though the Holy Spirit were handy in their pockets, or otherwise hooked-in by some sort of pipeline to direct knowledge of God.
Perhaps the insight lies here. It's not we who claim the Holy Spirit. Rather, the Spirit of the Living God claims us.
In John's Gospel, especially chapters 15 and 16, Jesus tells the disciples that he will send the Paraclete. That is, one who "stands beside" to be their comforter, advocate and teacher. In his letter to the church at Rome, St. Paul says, For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a sprit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ -if in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
This Spirit is neither a silent partner nor an idle sidekick. The Spirit is the presence of God with us and in us. The Spirit is the ongoing work of God to transform us into a continuing declaration of concrete Good News, in the face of particular bad news.
So in the choice of language I used in my note, I was right and I was wrong. It's difficult to claim the Spirit. But it's even more difficult to deny the signs of God's presence, nearness, and activity in a congregation of believers whose love for God and neighbor becomes increasingly evident day after day.
That I can claim. Your faith makes it so. Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Blow Spirit, Blow!
They hung in the Lobby for more years than I’d care to admit. They were well past their prime. Their bright colors faded. Missing pieces left both contraptions lopsided and unattractive. Still, I couldn't remove them.
I’m referring to the mobiles that hung from the Lobby ceiling until just a few weeks ago. They were made by youngsters in our Wednesday youth bible study years ago, to celebrate Pentecost. Originally, each mobile ferried eight doves made of bright paper. Written on one side was the name of the child who’d traced and cut the dove from a pattern. On the backside of their paper dove, each child had written these words: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me … God has anointed me to proclaim Good News!
While the words paraphrase Jesus’ first sermon (see Luke 4:16-21), my reasons for keeping these increasingly unsightly objects in a space of honor was sentimental, not theological. I left these wobbly, colorless mobiles in the Lobby because both pairs of dowel rods, and the fishing lines that suspended the cut-out doves, had been fastened together by Pastor Chuck Schroeder. He completed this task at least two years before his death in 2004.
Removing them, unsightly as they were, was a “departure” I could not make. In the end, what persuaded me was my realizing that the mobiles were single-handedly responsible for nearly fifteen false burglar alarms. It seems our motion sensors were overreacting to the unusual flight pattern these mobiles took on windy days and nights!
No doubt the mobiles could have been moved to another room, or put some place where I reverence way too many treasures from days gone by. But in reality, it was long past time for them to go.
Jesus said, in John 3:8, “You know well enough how the wind blows this way and that. You hear it rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or where it's headed next. That's the way it is with everyone 'born from above' by the wind of God, the Spirit of God.”
As a new season of Pentecost unfolds, the Spirit keeps calling us not only to new places, not just to new opportunities for mission, but to new heights of intimacy and belonging with God and with each other. Experiencing this newness will require our making a departure from our comfortable “now,” to what might be an alarming future.
Please pray with me that our “letting go” and our “departing” moves more readily than my redecorating!
I’m referring to the mobiles that hung from the Lobby ceiling until just a few weeks ago. They were made by youngsters in our Wednesday youth bible study years ago, to celebrate Pentecost. Originally, each mobile ferried eight doves made of bright paper. Written on one side was the name of the child who’d traced and cut the dove from a pattern. On the backside of their paper dove, each child had written these words: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me … God has anointed me to proclaim Good News!
While the words paraphrase Jesus’ first sermon (see Luke 4:16-21), my reasons for keeping these increasingly unsightly objects in a space of honor was sentimental, not theological. I left these wobbly, colorless mobiles in the Lobby because both pairs of dowel rods, and the fishing lines that suspended the cut-out doves, had been fastened together by Pastor Chuck Schroeder. He completed this task at least two years before his death in 2004.
Removing them, unsightly as they were, was a “departure” I could not make. In the end, what persuaded me was my realizing that the mobiles were single-handedly responsible for nearly fifteen false burglar alarms. It seems our motion sensors were overreacting to the unusual flight pattern these mobiles took on windy days and nights!
No doubt the mobiles could have been moved to another room, or put some place where I reverence way too many treasures from days gone by. But in reality, it was long past time for them to go.
Jesus said, in John 3:8, “You know well enough how the wind blows this way and that. You hear it rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or where it's headed next. That's the way it is with everyone 'born from above' by the wind of God, the Spirit of God.”
As a new season of Pentecost unfolds, the Spirit keeps calling us not only to new places, not just to new opportunities for mission, but to new heights of intimacy and belonging with God and with each other. Experiencing this newness will require our making a departure from our comfortable “now,” to what might be an alarming future.
Please pray with me that our “letting go” and our “departing” moves more readily than my redecorating!
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Religion's Anti-Toxin: Jesus' Bread and Wine
Our kitchen’s being remodeled. By 7:15 Friday morning, there were three workers in that small place. At one time, seven men, six workers and me, crowded there. As the day wore on, three more came and went. The last carpenter left at 7:20 that evening.
Through the day, I took and made phone calls finalizing plans for Bethlehem, New Orleans benefit banquet. It was a fabulous evening. Larry and Patti, along with their friends Laurie and Bill, played terrific jazz. Yatz restaurant provided great Cajun food. Pastor Patrick Keen inspired us all. Generous Christians from across the Indianapolis conference donated upwards of $8,000 to support that mission.
Frazzled by the day and jazzed up by the evening, I couldn’t sleep. At midnight, still tossing and turning, I turned on Charlie Rose thinking some boring talk might lull me to sleep. It didn’t occur to me to play a tape of one of my sermons.
Charlie’s first guest was comedian, Bill Maher. Maher’s riffs against the president meant no sleep for me, yet! The second guest was a British author, Christopher Hitchins. Here, I thought, is a fast-acting sedative.
In his intro, Charlie spoke of Hitchens’ latest books. The first, he said, praised Thomas Jefferson for taking a razor to the New Testament and editing out the miracles. That left, Hitchins says, Jesus as philosopher and moral teacher. A second book was, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. I have no clue!
Charlie then said, “You’ve never been a fan of believers of any sort. Why am I not surprised by the title of your latest book, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything?” I rushed downstairs to finish watching the show. Finally, in bed again at 1:15, I still tossed and turned. This time arguing with Hitchins where I thought he has it wrong and fighting with myself over what I have to admit Hitchins has right.
At one level, Hitchins doesn’t say anything new. Way back in 1711, Jonathan Swift, who authored Gulliver’s Travels, wrote, “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”
Both Christopher Hitchins and Jonathan Swift are onto something. Each of them, though, misses the richness of the banquet table’s food, by focusing mostly on the corruption of those who:
• operate the hall
• select the ones to be invited as guests
• serve the diners
• as well as, how some of the welcomed diners behave both before and after the meal.
This, too, is nothing new.
Before we heard Jesus’ instruction to his disciples at their last supper together, in John 13:31-35 we heard Peter’s testimony about how God worked through Peter’s dream and Peter’s following through on that dream, for the benefit of Cornelius and his whole household, in Acts 11:1-18. I’m using the word, “testimony” not to describe Peter’s inspirational witness of faith. Testimony is the most accurate word because this event, happening not more than a few weeks or months after Jesus’ ascension, is the New Testament’s first recorded church fight and heresy trial. I find that to be way cool!
What’s cool isn’t the fight, obviously. What’s cool is that God inspired the believers who experienced it to record the whole messy event for our benefit. See, it never occurred to them that we might hear a story like this and find it to be poison.
Hitchins says religion poisons everything because so many believers hold that by obeying a few simple rules and holding some rather bizarre ideas, they will be rewarded with everlasting life in heaven. We’d have a hard time arguing his point. And if he’s completely correct, we’d also have to wonder why Bear and Lilly not only support this step we celebrate in Sarah’s and Paul's faith walk, they encourage it.
Here’s where Hitchins has it right. Religionists, then and now, work overtime to turn who the Bible says God is, and what this God does, on its head. Here’s where Hitchins has it wrong. Being Christian, becoming Christ-like, doesn’t have to make you a religionist.
What makes it hard to argue against Hitchins is that it often looks like there’s more evidence for his conclusion than there is for mine, for ours, for what Jesus commanded us to be and to do: By this will everyone know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
Today, in this banquet hall, where everyone is welcome as guest, we inept discipling, caterers are serving a rich food and drink to Sarah and Paul for the first time. Whatever it is we have not done before this meal, whatever it is we may fail to do after we’ve eaten, doesn’t change the One who is this Meal’s true Host. Nor does our doing or not doing change how Jesus, as our Host and this table’s food and drink, can transform Sarah and Paul, as well as us.
What God has in mind at this meal, what’s going on in Jesus’ heart in this meal, is that we become nourished and strengthened to join what God always does, what Jesus accomplished in his life, by his death, and now in his resurrection. Namely, that we might have life, and have it so abundantly that we, like Jesus, will give it away. We’re called to give our life away not as burden, or as a test, not as sacrifice, but as rich grace, as priceless, costly gift, from one beloved to another.
Martin Luther’s insight here, against religionists, with whom we still differ, is this. Eligibility for belonging in this body, criterion for welcoming by disciples of Jesus, entitlement for table service from the likes of us is not a reward for right rule keeping.
This banquet, as Jesus commanded it, is not open only to those who can afford a ticket. This dine-in experience is neither repayment for holding correct beliefs, nor is this an incentive for a promised place in heaven. Rather, the talk, the action, the visioning, the dreaming of rootednesses, relatedness, belonging and becoming in God start here, at this simple meal, the foretaste of the feast to come.
What God desires, what Jesus longs for, is that we become what we eat: breaking open persons, a pouring out people. What God desires, what Jesus promises, is that we who maintain this hall prepare and share this meal with all those whom God loves, keep on listening to God still speaking. That’s what obeying commands means – listening to God still speaking, following God still loving. That’s a far cry from the poison pill that makes folk run roughshod over people for the sake of rule keeping.
This morning, in their young faith, Sarah and Paul move beyond what they can see, and touch, and taste to listen to the command and to trust the promise that, somehow, Jesus is in this bread and in this wine, for each of them, for all of us. That’s, in part, a testimony to what they’ve seen as our faithful listening and trusting.
As their dining here continues, those of us more mature in faith, now get to model something else for Sarah and Paul. We can show them that it’s possible and desirable to move into and through what we see, and touch, and taste, to believe that despite the inept things we do before we eat, the God who is the true host of this table, remains truly for us. We can show them that by this eating and drinking, regardless of those corrupt things we do after we eat; this God still desires the kind of intimacy with us that nourishes us toward becoming Christ-like, out there.
Here’s a simple prayer to keep us all alert for God’s doing that and make us all acute to hearing that godly-call: God is great. God is good. Let us thank God for our food. Amen.
Through the day, I took and made phone calls finalizing plans for Bethlehem, New Orleans benefit banquet. It was a fabulous evening. Larry and Patti, along with their friends Laurie and Bill, played terrific jazz. Yatz restaurant provided great Cajun food. Pastor Patrick Keen inspired us all. Generous Christians from across the Indianapolis conference donated upwards of $8,000 to support that mission.
Frazzled by the day and jazzed up by the evening, I couldn’t sleep. At midnight, still tossing and turning, I turned on Charlie Rose thinking some boring talk might lull me to sleep. It didn’t occur to me to play a tape of one of my sermons.
Charlie’s first guest was comedian, Bill Maher. Maher’s riffs against the president meant no sleep for me, yet! The second guest was a British author, Christopher Hitchins. Here, I thought, is a fast-acting sedative.
In his intro, Charlie spoke of Hitchens’ latest books. The first, he said, praised Thomas Jefferson for taking a razor to the New Testament and editing out the miracles. That left, Hitchins says, Jesus as philosopher and moral teacher. A second book was, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. I have no clue!
Charlie then said, “You’ve never been a fan of believers of any sort. Why am I not surprised by the title of your latest book, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything?” I rushed downstairs to finish watching the show. Finally, in bed again at 1:15, I still tossed and turned. This time arguing with Hitchins where I thought he has it wrong and fighting with myself over what I have to admit Hitchins has right.
At one level, Hitchins doesn’t say anything new. Way back in 1711, Jonathan Swift, who authored Gulliver’s Travels, wrote, “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”
Both Christopher Hitchins and Jonathan Swift are onto something. Each of them, though, misses the richness of the banquet table’s food, by focusing mostly on the corruption of those who:
• operate the hall
• select the ones to be invited as guests
• serve the diners
• as well as, how some of the welcomed diners behave both before and after the meal.
This, too, is nothing new.
Before we heard Jesus’ instruction to his disciples at their last supper together, in John 13:31-35 we heard Peter’s testimony about how God worked through Peter’s dream and Peter’s following through on that dream, for the benefit of Cornelius and his whole household, in Acts 11:1-18. I’m using the word, “testimony” not to describe Peter’s inspirational witness of faith. Testimony is the most accurate word because this event, happening not more than a few weeks or months after Jesus’ ascension, is the New Testament’s first recorded church fight and heresy trial. I find that to be way cool!
What’s cool isn’t the fight, obviously. What’s cool is that God inspired the believers who experienced it to record the whole messy event for our benefit. See, it never occurred to them that we might hear a story like this and find it to be poison.
Hitchins says religion poisons everything because so many believers hold that by obeying a few simple rules and holding some rather bizarre ideas, they will be rewarded with everlasting life in heaven. We’d have a hard time arguing his point. And if he’s completely correct, we’d also have to wonder why Bear and Lilly not only support this step we celebrate in Sarah’s and Paul's faith walk, they encourage it.
Here’s where Hitchins has it right. Religionists, then and now, work overtime to turn who the Bible says God is, and what this God does, on its head. Here’s where Hitchins has it wrong. Being Christian, becoming Christ-like, doesn’t have to make you a religionist.
What makes it hard to argue against Hitchins is that it often looks like there’s more evidence for his conclusion than there is for mine, for ours, for what Jesus commanded us to be and to do: By this will everyone know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
Today, in this banquet hall, where everyone is welcome as guest, we inept discipling, caterers are serving a rich food and drink to Sarah and Paul for the first time. Whatever it is we have not done before this meal, whatever it is we may fail to do after we’ve eaten, doesn’t change the One who is this Meal’s true Host. Nor does our doing or not doing change how Jesus, as our Host and this table’s food and drink, can transform Sarah and Paul, as well as us.
What God has in mind at this meal, what’s going on in Jesus’ heart in this meal, is that we become nourished and strengthened to join what God always does, what Jesus accomplished in his life, by his death, and now in his resurrection. Namely, that we might have life, and have it so abundantly that we, like Jesus, will give it away. We’re called to give our life away not as burden, or as a test, not as sacrifice, but as rich grace, as priceless, costly gift, from one beloved to another.
Martin Luther’s insight here, against religionists, with whom we still differ, is this. Eligibility for belonging in this body, criterion for welcoming by disciples of Jesus, entitlement for table service from the likes of us is not a reward for right rule keeping.
This banquet, as Jesus commanded it, is not open only to those who can afford a ticket. This dine-in experience is neither repayment for holding correct beliefs, nor is this an incentive for a promised place in heaven. Rather, the talk, the action, the visioning, the dreaming of rootednesses, relatedness, belonging and becoming in God start here, at this simple meal, the foretaste of the feast to come.
What God desires, what Jesus longs for, is that we become what we eat: breaking open persons, a pouring out people. What God desires, what Jesus promises, is that we who maintain this hall prepare and share this meal with all those whom God loves, keep on listening to God still speaking. That’s what obeying commands means – listening to God still speaking, following God still loving. That’s a far cry from the poison pill that makes folk run roughshod over people for the sake of rule keeping.
This morning, in their young faith, Sarah and Paul move beyond what they can see, and touch, and taste to listen to the command and to trust the promise that, somehow, Jesus is in this bread and in this wine, for each of them, for all of us. That’s, in part, a testimony to what they’ve seen as our faithful listening and trusting.
As their dining here continues, those of us more mature in faith, now get to model something else for Sarah and Paul. We can show them that it’s possible and desirable to move into and through what we see, and touch, and taste, to believe that despite the inept things we do before we eat, the God who is the true host of this table, remains truly for us. We can show them that by this eating and drinking, regardless of those corrupt things we do after we eat; this God still desires the kind of intimacy with us that nourishes us toward becoming Christ-like, out there.
Here’s a simple prayer to keep us all alert for God’s doing that and make us all acute to hearing that godly-call: God is great. God is good. Let us thank God for our food. Amen.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Mother's Day with Jesus' Other Mother
Would we have a Jesus worth having if it were not for this Canaanite mother? Even though Mother’s Day thrives on sentimentality, let’s stop being sentimental about Jesus. Sentimental comes from the Latin word sentire. It means to form a judgment or hold an opinion based, primarily on feelings rather than thoughtfulness.
As Matthew tells the story, the meeting between this foreign mother and Jesus comes well after his Sermon on the Mount. That is, by the way, another of our opinions about who Jesus is, as well as what he said and did, that we hang onto, more sentimentally, than thoughtfully. We just love those sweet sounding “blesseds” don’t we? Look quickly at Matt 5:43ff. 43You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' 44But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? Nice happy thoughts, huh, but not many of us go there much.
We can’t, in all honesty, square the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount with the Jesus who meets the Canaanite woman. 21Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. 22Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon." 23But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, "Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us." 24He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." 25But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me." 26He answered, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." 27She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." 28Then Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed instantly (Matthew 15:21-28). This is Jesus’ Don Imus moment. Look how he is.
First, in verse 23, he flat out ignores her. Now you can’t make the case that he hasn’t heard her. In the same verse his disciples say, “Yo, you deaf? Can you hear that screeching? The Greek word they use is kradzo. It means to croak, or to screech like a raven.
Most likely to shut them up, he brings them up short with his, suddenly much narrower vision of who he’s to shepherd. Back in 9:35-36 Matthew tells us that after healing the woman with hemorrhages, after raising the synagogue official’s daughter from the dead, seeing crowds of needy people flocking to them in Jewish synagogues, Jesus was moved with compassion.
Here, it seems, seeing this outsider, this foreigner, this Gentile, Jesus is moved with contempt. “It’s not fair,” he says “to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Not a phrase our mothers or grandmothers stitch on our throw pillows, is it? I’m tellin’ you, this is Jesus’ Don Imus moment.
Let’s step back. Who is this woman? Start there. Back then, women don’t start conversations with men they don’t know. Women don’t roam the streets unescorted. Canaanite women, or men, don’t go seeking out any Jew, much less some sort of a rabbi. All that said, who we have here is a person with her back up against the wall. Most of us know that feeling, as well as the thoughts that go with it!
What she wants to know is, does this Jesus, and the God who he claims sent him, have anything to offer folk who have their backs against the wall? She seems to have found a flaw in Jesus’ his inclusive humanitarianism. The wisdom of his God (Proverbs 2) - that those who truly seek God will come to understand righteousness and justice and equity - seems to have escaped Jesus’ footpath.
To be fair – and, no, I’m not going to offer any excuses at all for Jesus’ arrogance, classism, racism, or sexism, this is a question that folks with their backs against the wall have been asking Christians for years. Does the Christ we Christians profess, offer a Good News that is concrete and relevant to particular experiences of real, bad news?
Most Christians have still the nasty habit of proclaiming an exclusive Gospel. We also make our proclamations of Good News more burden than grace. We preach a Jesus who asks folk to take up a cross, then we abruptly declare their current states of injustice, oppression, inequity not inhumane conditions which followers of Jesus ought to rail against, but burdens of faith they must bear, as they give out of their neediness to those who have less!
Like Jesus, whose narrow mission focused on the maladies of insiders, we are quicker to talk about the bounty of membership than we are to act in ways that make God’s blessings available to all God’s children. This mother, and all those still walking in her shoes, will have none of that from Jesus. Neither will they abide that kind of alienation from us; no matter we offer it in the name of God.
In her neediness, with her back up against the wall for the sake of her daughter’s wellbeing, she accepts Jesus’ vulgar description of her ethnicity. Kneeling before him in a submissive position, addressing him with a title of reverence, she adopts the oppressive identity he’s used to put her down and says, “Even B-words get to eat scraps from the master’s table. You got any scraps left for the B’s, Mister Rabbi? Cuz I’m thinkin’ Lord Master, that the One who made us both, and my daughter too, in God’s image and likeness, draws on a wisdom that prefers equity to fairness.” See that? She’s doin’ the dozens on him.
By the strength of her “right back at ya” faith in that kind of God, this woman, whose ethnicity, race and gender were held by Jews in Jesus’ day to embody all the wickedness and godlessness of every non-Jew, works a conversion is Jesus’ heart. He now calls her, “Woman,” the same word used in Genesis, for who it was that God made from Adam’s rib. It’s a word reflecting dignity, worth and belonging.
More than that, Jesus describes her faith as great. This is the only place in Matthew’s gospel where Jesus uses that word to describe someone’s faith.
Standing on and in the dignity and worth of her creation as woman, this Canaanite mother does nothing short of rebirthing Jesus. The one who brought the new teaching from the mount, be perfect, literally, be complete and whole as your Father in heaven is complete and whole, is moved to wholeness and completion by the heart of soul of this one who was called godless and wicked.
Here she represents all that God has in mind for the women who would share God’s own life-giving, freedom-bringing, home-making mission for all God’s children. Here she demonstrates for us the height and depth, the length and breadth God is willing to go to make life whole and complete for all those whose backs are up against a wall.
Were it not for her stamina, the charge Jesus gave his disciples, the command we call the great commission, to go out and make all nations disciples of this now inclusive Gospel, might never have been uttered. Were it not for her willingness to suffer the travail Jesus laid on her, we, so-called honorary Jews (Krister Stendahl), would not share in either the grace or the faith she experienced.
She is, for all of us Gentiles, the mother of our faith. By grace, most of us can claim an experience of a woman who has suffered travail for us. By grace most of us can name an encounter with a woman who has borne indignity to bring about our wellbeing. By grace most of us have a relationship with Jesus based on the great faith of a woman we call mother.
Today is a good day not to just find warm feelings for your mama. Today is a good day to make time to think about your mama. Remember her travail. Recall the indignities she bore on your behalf. Remind yourself of her stamina. Reminisce about the ways she sought to distinguish fairness from equity. Recollect her courageous faith.
When you’ve got all that thinking done, notice how you feel, then give God thanks for the gift of God’s own wisdom and presence you’ve seen, heard, touched, tasted, smelled and relished in, with the Mama God chose just for you. Like the Canaanite woman, against all kinds of odds we seldom call to mind, she mothered you best she could.
As Matthew tells the story, the meeting between this foreign mother and Jesus comes well after his Sermon on the Mount. That is, by the way, another of our opinions about who Jesus is, as well as what he said and did, that we hang onto, more sentimentally, than thoughtfully. We just love those sweet sounding “blesseds” don’t we? Look quickly at Matt 5:43ff. 43You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' 44But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? Nice happy thoughts, huh, but not many of us go there much.
We can’t, in all honesty, square the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount with the Jesus who meets the Canaanite woman. 21Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. 22Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon." 23But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, "Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us." 24He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." 25But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me." 26He answered, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." 27She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." 28Then Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed instantly (Matthew 15:21-28). This is Jesus’ Don Imus moment. Look how he is.
First, in verse 23, he flat out ignores her. Now you can’t make the case that he hasn’t heard her. In the same verse his disciples say, “Yo, you deaf? Can you hear that screeching? The Greek word they use is kradzo. It means to croak, or to screech like a raven.
Most likely to shut them up, he brings them up short with his, suddenly much narrower vision of who he’s to shepherd. Back in 9:35-36 Matthew tells us that after healing the woman with hemorrhages, after raising the synagogue official’s daughter from the dead, seeing crowds of needy people flocking to them in Jewish synagogues, Jesus was moved with compassion.
Here, it seems, seeing this outsider, this foreigner, this Gentile, Jesus is moved with contempt. “It’s not fair,” he says “to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Not a phrase our mothers or grandmothers stitch on our throw pillows, is it? I’m tellin’ you, this is Jesus’ Don Imus moment.
Let’s step back. Who is this woman? Start there. Back then, women don’t start conversations with men they don’t know. Women don’t roam the streets unescorted. Canaanite women, or men, don’t go seeking out any Jew, much less some sort of a rabbi. All that said, who we have here is a person with her back up against the wall. Most of us know that feeling, as well as the thoughts that go with it!
What she wants to know is, does this Jesus, and the God who he claims sent him, have anything to offer folk who have their backs against the wall? She seems to have found a flaw in Jesus’ his inclusive humanitarianism. The wisdom of his God (Proverbs 2) - that those who truly seek God will come to understand righteousness and justice and equity - seems to have escaped Jesus’ footpath.
To be fair – and, no, I’m not going to offer any excuses at all for Jesus’ arrogance, classism, racism, or sexism, this is a question that folks with their backs against the wall have been asking Christians for years. Does the Christ we Christians profess, offer a Good News that is concrete and relevant to particular experiences of real, bad news?
Most Christians have still the nasty habit of proclaiming an exclusive Gospel. We also make our proclamations of Good News more burden than grace. We preach a Jesus who asks folk to take up a cross, then we abruptly declare their current states of injustice, oppression, inequity not inhumane conditions which followers of Jesus ought to rail against, but burdens of faith they must bear, as they give out of their neediness to those who have less!
Like Jesus, whose narrow mission focused on the maladies of insiders, we are quicker to talk about the bounty of membership than we are to act in ways that make God’s blessings available to all God’s children. This mother, and all those still walking in her shoes, will have none of that from Jesus. Neither will they abide that kind of alienation from us; no matter we offer it in the name of God.
In her neediness, with her back up against the wall for the sake of her daughter’s wellbeing, she accepts Jesus’ vulgar description of her ethnicity. Kneeling before him in a submissive position, addressing him with a title of reverence, she adopts the oppressive identity he’s used to put her down and says, “Even B-words get to eat scraps from the master’s table. You got any scraps left for the B’s, Mister Rabbi? Cuz I’m thinkin’ Lord Master, that the One who made us both, and my daughter too, in God’s image and likeness, draws on a wisdom that prefers equity to fairness.” See that? She’s doin’ the dozens on him.
By the strength of her “right back at ya” faith in that kind of God, this woman, whose ethnicity, race and gender were held by Jews in Jesus’ day to embody all the wickedness and godlessness of every non-Jew, works a conversion is Jesus’ heart. He now calls her, “Woman,” the same word used in Genesis, for who it was that God made from Adam’s rib. It’s a word reflecting dignity, worth and belonging.
More than that, Jesus describes her faith as great. This is the only place in Matthew’s gospel where Jesus uses that word to describe someone’s faith.
Standing on and in the dignity and worth of her creation as woman, this Canaanite mother does nothing short of rebirthing Jesus. The one who brought the new teaching from the mount, be perfect, literally, be complete and whole as your Father in heaven is complete and whole, is moved to wholeness and completion by the heart of soul of this one who was called godless and wicked.
Here she represents all that God has in mind for the women who would share God’s own life-giving, freedom-bringing, home-making mission for all God’s children. Here she demonstrates for us the height and depth, the length and breadth God is willing to go to make life whole and complete for all those whose backs are up against a wall.
Were it not for her stamina, the charge Jesus gave his disciples, the command we call the great commission, to go out and make all nations disciples of this now inclusive Gospel, might never have been uttered. Were it not for her willingness to suffer the travail Jesus laid on her, we, so-called honorary Jews (Krister Stendahl), would not share in either the grace or the faith she experienced.
She is, for all of us Gentiles, the mother of our faith. By grace, most of us can claim an experience of a woman who has suffered travail for us. By grace most of us can name an encounter with a woman who has borne indignity to bring about our wellbeing. By grace most of us have a relationship with Jesus based on the great faith of a woman we call mother.
Today is a good day not to just find warm feelings for your mama. Today is a good day to make time to think about your mama. Remember her travail. Recall the indignities she bore on your behalf. Remind yourself of her stamina. Reminisce about the ways she sought to distinguish fairness from equity. Recollect her courageous faith.
When you’ve got all that thinking done, notice how you feel, then give God thanks for the gift of God’s own wisdom and presence you’ve seen, heard, touched, tasted, smelled and relished in, with the Mama God chose just for you. Like the Canaanite woman, against all kinds of odds we seldom call to mind, she mothered you best she could.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Snatches of Faith
By the end of this month I’ll have a new license plate on my car. It won’t be one of the new, free “In God We Trust,” vanity plates. I’m relatively sure I trust God, on most days. What I’m less sure of is: how much I trust God, on any given day, and what is it I trust God with / for, on any give day. There’s a clue.
Any day, every day, is a given day. Each day comes to us as a gift from God. Whether we are mindful of that, of course, is a whole ‘nother story!
Some folks I know contend that what we call faith really is trust. The intellectual, emotional state of believing may best be described, in English, with the word, confidence – a synonym for trust. Of course, in our everyday speech we don’t make much of a distinction between what we “believe” and what we “know.” It’s only when we say things like, “I’m taking X ‘on faith,’” that we seem to be admitting that our knowledge about X is less than certain, still we choose to hold on to, i.e., “believe in” the truthfulness of X.
One thing I do trust God, “in, with, and under,” as Luther was fond of saying, is what Jesus said in John 10:27-28: My sheep hear my voice. I know the, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.
Try preaching on that whole Good Shepherd shtick. It’s not a very urban metaphor. By the time the preacher explains all the nuances of agrarian shepherding and Hebrew prophets’ usages of shepherd imagery for various and sundry Israelite Kings - past, present and future - listeners have mentally retreated to that emotional space in the brain where decisions about the ACLU’s suing the state of Indiana over “religious” license plates are made!
I don’t know, for certain, that I’ve heard the Shepherd’s voice. I believe I’ve heard it before and I believe I will hear it again. I do know that I’m not the world’s best full-time follower.
I don’t know that I’ll have eternal life. I do trust I will and I believe it’s already begun. I have no clue what it means that I (they) will never perish. We translate the Greek word, apollumi, as perish. Its literal definition is: to destroy, as in to put out of the way entirely, abolish, put an end to, ruin, to render useless, or to kill.
I’ve also come to trust that no one snatches me out of the Shepherd’s hand. They don’t have a chance. I do it all for them! No sooner do I trust that I’m held in the palm of God’s hand than I jump off / out, of my own volition. Perhaps it’s because I think I know more or better. Maybe I believe I’m the better navigator. Looks like I’m much more suited to a vanity license plate than I’d like to admit.
I take all sorts of wrong turns, make outrageous maneuvers, go down blind alleys, cross untold byways, retrace my tracks to nowhere and wonder how I arrived onto a strangely random, dangerous road. On most occasions, I have the audacity to blame God for the lost-ness in which I find myself!
Part of what makes that doable, not right but doable, is that God always arrives at my lost-place before I do. I’m learning to trust that. In Romans 8:35ff Paul writes: The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:
They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
We're sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.
None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I'm absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us. (The Message)
Lord, I believe; help my unbelief. Trusting in you, I’ll not snatch vanity from the embrace of victory!
Any day, every day, is a given day. Each day comes to us as a gift from God. Whether we are mindful of that, of course, is a whole ‘nother story!
Some folks I know contend that what we call faith really is trust. The intellectual, emotional state of believing may best be described, in English, with the word, confidence – a synonym for trust. Of course, in our everyday speech we don’t make much of a distinction between what we “believe” and what we “know.” It’s only when we say things like, “I’m taking X ‘on faith,’” that we seem to be admitting that our knowledge about X is less than certain, still we choose to hold on to, i.e., “believe in” the truthfulness of X.
One thing I do trust God, “in, with, and under,” as Luther was fond of saying, is what Jesus said in John 10:27-28: My sheep hear my voice. I know the, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.
Try preaching on that whole Good Shepherd shtick. It’s not a very urban metaphor. By the time the preacher explains all the nuances of agrarian shepherding and Hebrew prophets’ usages of shepherd imagery for various and sundry Israelite Kings - past, present and future - listeners have mentally retreated to that emotional space in the brain where decisions about the ACLU’s suing the state of Indiana over “religious” license plates are made!
I don’t know, for certain, that I’ve heard the Shepherd’s voice. I believe I’ve heard it before and I believe I will hear it again. I do know that I’m not the world’s best full-time follower.
I don’t know that I’ll have eternal life. I do trust I will and I believe it’s already begun. I have no clue what it means that I (they) will never perish. We translate the Greek word, apollumi, as perish. Its literal definition is: to destroy, as in to put out of the way entirely, abolish, put an end to, ruin, to render useless, or to kill.
I’ve also come to trust that no one snatches me out of the Shepherd’s hand. They don’t have a chance. I do it all for them! No sooner do I trust that I’m held in the palm of God’s hand than I jump off / out, of my own volition. Perhaps it’s because I think I know more or better. Maybe I believe I’m the better navigator. Looks like I’m much more suited to a vanity license plate than I’d like to admit.
I take all sorts of wrong turns, make outrageous maneuvers, go down blind alleys, cross untold byways, retrace my tracks to nowhere and wonder how I arrived onto a strangely random, dangerous road. On most occasions, I have the audacity to blame God for the lost-ness in which I find myself!
Part of what makes that doable, not right but doable, is that God always arrives at my lost-place before I do. I’m learning to trust that. In Romans 8:35ff Paul writes: The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:
They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
We're sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.
None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I'm absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us. (The Message)
Lord, I believe; help my unbelief. Trusting in you, I’ll not snatch vanity from the embrace of victory!
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Gut-Check; Soul-Check
Hot town; summer in the city…go lyrics from a golden oldie I still enjoy. Sad to say urban ministry hasn’t kept pace with music’s evolution. What’s a city church to be and to do at a time and place when the chief of police sends five-page memos to the city’s pastors, pleading with them to attend a meeting?
I’m still a fan of a, now, ten-year old article recommending that church folk establish new theologies of creation, redemption, teaching, worship – the hole nine yards - for post-modern metropolitan centers. These should take social realities into account, without using mono-vision. Rather, church folk must use both the lenses of social science and theological science in tandem to ensure faith claims are relevant (not trendy) and concrete (not more blue ribbon commissions), as they articulate the Good News of Jesus Christ. His proclamation was nothing if it wasn’t both concrete and relevant.
Reworking faith and church at this level would include taking into account the very evident urban / suburban apartheid where fear, as well as a variety of –isms, meet. But where to begin.
Let’s start with an old book. Recommended to me, by a brilliant scholar and man with a deep, contemporary, Christian faith, Dr. Stephen G. Ray, Associate Professor and Director of the Urban Theological Institute at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, is Howard Thurman’s, Jesus and the Disinherited.
In his forward, Dr. Vincent Harding highlights the maladies of soul and spirit for which Thurman’s spirituality is the remedy. These inner demons are: fear, hypocrisy and hatred. While Thurman’s insights predate both the civil rights movement, and our own postindustrial experience, those of us whom these demons still hound - and we are legion – still require the divine grace, as well as the determination of will, to acquire the “profound succor and strength to enable them to live in the present with dignity and creativity.”
Dr. Harding also suggests that contemporary experiences of what Thurman addressed are detailed in a work entitled, Testimony. Published in 1994, the book is a collection of essays and poetry written by some forty young African American writers. Natasha Tarpley edits the piece.
If you’re at all feeling like your back is against the wall, (Thurman’s phrase) find someone with whom you might read and discuss Jesus and the Disinherited. It looks to be a way cool gut- and soul-check for would-be brave believers at the edge of a looming hot summer.
I’m still a fan of a, now, ten-year old article recommending that church folk establish new theologies of creation, redemption, teaching, worship – the hole nine yards - for post-modern metropolitan centers. These should take social realities into account, without using mono-vision. Rather, church folk must use both the lenses of social science and theological science in tandem to ensure faith claims are relevant (not trendy) and concrete (not more blue ribbon commissions), as they articulate the Good News of Jesus Christ. His proclamation was nothing if it wasn’t both concrete and relevant.
Reworking faith and church at this level would include taking into account the very evident urban / suburban apartheid where fear, as well as a variety of –isms, meet. But where to begin.
Let’s start with an old book. Recommended to me, by a brilliant scholar and man with a deep, contemporary, Christian faith, Dr. Stephen G. Ray, Associate Professor and Director of the Urban Theological Institute at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, is Howard Thurman’s, Jesus and the Disinherited.
In his forward, Dr. Vincent Harding highlights the maladies of soul and spirit for which Thurman’s spirituality is the remedy. These inner demons are: fear, hypocrisy and hatred. While Thurman’s insights predate both the civil rights movement, and our own postindustrial experience, those of us whom these demons still hound - and we are legion – still require the divine grace, as well as the determination of will, to acquire the “profound succor and strength to enable them to live in the present with dignity and creativity.”
Dr. Harding also suggests that contemporary experiences of what Thurman addressed are detailed in a work entitled, Testimony. Published in 1994, the book is a collection of essays and poetry written by some forty young African American writers. Natasha Tarpley edits the piece.
If you’re at all feeling like your back is against the wall, (Thurman’s phrase) find someone with whom you might read and discuss Jesus and the Disinherited. It looks to be a way cool gut- and soul-check for would-be brave believers at the edge of a looming hot summer.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Make Way for Cho Seung-Hui
Editorialists Leonard Pitts and Eugene Robinson warn us to beware of the narratives we bring to our interpretation of events. Good advice for those of us with children on college campuses this week. Sage advice for college students. Astute observations for people of faith.
It simply cannot be too soon to carry the meta-narrative of scripture as the lens through which we force ourselves to reckon with the events occurring at Virginia Tech. The record of that narrative will, as always, convict and console us amidst our weeping.
Once, again, we’ve witnessed another of civil (not civilized) religion’s “memorial” services which fails to include the perpetrating sinner. Once, again, we’ve demonized a wrong-doers personhood. Once, again, we’ve ethnically cleansed an American cultural phenomenon with loaded descriptors of an immigrant’s long-ago origins, over and against his long-standing American upbringing.
From the same biblical codex that sprouts privately purchased monuments to the biblical Decalogue in public places comes this word: You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. (Exodus 22:21.) A later rewrite commands more than avoidance: The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God. (Leviticus 19:34.)
On Monday we asked of the unfolding, deadly narrative, “Why.” By Wednesday we regretted the storied shooter’s answer; finding him to be neither alien, nor loving, and, by his own account, unloved.
Through our tear blurred vision we get to read this tragic episode inside a grander meta-narrative, the one so many claim to live in, with, and under. Our burning eyes, tear stained cheeks and salt-tasting tongues must find a way for our heavy hearts to makes room in God’s “always for-us, never at-us story” for Cho Seung-Hui.
The God of our, “There’s no way,” is the One who keeps sending us Him who is the way, the truth, and the life. That’s the same Jesus who wept over a city whose inhabitants kept deceiving themselves. It’s he who longed to gather each and all as a hen gathers her chicks, absorbing their pain, protecting their vulnerabilities, even as he lived and died to ensure that Death, no death, is ever the last word for anyone.
For Him, there is no “unlovable.” In Him, even salt-dried lips can heave through the sobbing, “Receive a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Alleluia!”
In short, “Make, we pray, a way out of our, ‘No Way!’”
It simply cannot be too soon to carry the meta-narrative of scripture as the lens through which we force ourselves to reckon with the events occurring at Virginia Tech. The record of that narrative will, as always, convict and console us amidst our weeping.
Once, again, we’ve witnessed another of civil (not civilized) religion’s “memorial” services which fails to include the perpetrating sinner. Once, again, we’ve demonized a wrong-doers personhood. Once, again, we’ve ethnically cleansed an American cultural phenomenon with loaded descriptors of an immigrant’s long-ago origins, over and against his long-standing American upbringing.
From the same biblical codex that sprouts privately purchased monuments to the biblical Decalogue in public places comes this word: You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. (Exodus 22:21.) A later rewrite commands more than avoidance: The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God. (Leviticus 19:34.)
On Monday we asked of the unfolding, deadly narrative, “Why.” By Wednesday we regretted the storied shooter’s answer; finding him to be neither alien, nor loving, and, by his own account, unloved.
Through our tear blurred vision we get to read this tragic episode inside a grander meta-narrative, the one so many claim to live in, with, and under. Our burning eyes, tear stained cheeks and salt-tasting tongues must find a way for our heavy hearts to makes room in God’s “always for-us, never at-us story” for Cho Seung-Hui.
The God of our, “There’s no way,” is the One who keeps sending us Him who is the way, the truth, and the life. That’s the same Jesus who wept over a city whose inhabitants kept deceiving themselves. It’s he who longed to gather each and all as a hen gathers her chicks, absorbing their pain, protecting their vulnerabilities, even as he lived and died to ensure that Death, no death, is ever the last word for anyone.
For Him, there is no “unlovable.” In Him, even salt-dried lips can heave through the sobbing, “Receive a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Alleluia!”
In short, “Make, we pray, a way out of our, ‘No Way!’”
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Jesus is Risen! - Now What? Tell Imus
If you’re tired of hearing about Don Imus, you came to the wrong place. Mind you, I hadn’t intended to talk about him. In last week’s Easter message I said the evangelists don’t intend to address either “how” or “why” questions about Jesus’ resurrection. Their focus, ours too, is on the “so what” question. The title of that sermon was, “Jesus is Risen! – So What?”
I said, answering that “so what” question, “Easter is God’s new way of saying, ‘I meant what I said and did in my Son, Jesus. I’ve come down to deliver you from bondage to sin and death. I’ve come down to save the world, not to condemn the world.’”
Every year, on the week after Easter, we hear about Thomas. My first thoughts about this week’s message focused on what it means to believe, or how we might distinguish our beliefs from our believing. That seemed like a reasonable follow-up to the “so-what” message. But in the wake of the Don Imus debacle, “Show-Me” Thomas and his poking fingers will have to wait until next year.
Throughout the week that doomed Don, what played out was another example of our culture’s doing a poor imitation of church. Many of the right words were in play: confession, contrition, penance, forgiveness, and forgetfulness, but too few Christian attitudes, principles and behaviors were on display.
Despite the abundance of “reverends” on so many talk shows, Jesus was under-represented. Most talking-head clergy sounded like graduates of the schools of Annas and Caiaphas, rather than alumnae of the Sermon on the Mount.
It’s verse 19 – 23 from the 20th chapter of John’s Gospel that’s on point here. See, the focus here is, “Jesus is Risen! – Now What?” That was missing from our “Christian nation’s” response to the peculiar pain Imus inflicted on the women from Rutgers as well as the sadness and outrage we felt.
Look at what happens in this upper room on Easter evening, before Thomas’ goings and comings redirect our focus. First, Jesus shows up. Amidst the disciples’ worst fears, Jesus hasn’t abandoned them.
Next, before they can react or respond, he offers Peace, Shalom. This isn’t wishful thinking on Jesus’ part. Neither is it some high-fivin’ homeboy’s way of saying, “Whazzup!” Nor is Jesus suggesting that they get caught up in some inner tranquility.
What Jesus is bringing and giving is the belonging and wholeness that comes from the dawn of God’s Kingdom Rule. It’s God’s new gift, through this risen Christ, from the future, here and now! Look at the third verse of Herbert F. Brokering’s hymn, Alleluia! Jesus is Risen!: Jesus the vine, we are the branches; life in the Spirit the fruit of the tree; heaven to earth, Christ to the people, gift of the future now flowing to me.
Then Jesus shows them his hands and feet. Though fresh from the future, in some sort of different body that’s able to move through locked doors, this risen Jesus has continuity with the Jesus they knew, loved, and watched get buried. They’re ecstatic.
Lest they miss the true source of their joy, he tells them again, “Peace be with you.” Rejoice in this life-giving, freedom-bringing, home-making Shalom. Under this holy rule, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
Don’t miss this. This verb, “has sent,” is the past perfect form of the verb, “to send.” That means it’s an action begun in the past, which continues in the present and goes into the future! Isn’t that cool? And you thought those Language Arts teachers were wasting our time!
Breathing on them, Jesus says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” This breathing-thing is crucial. We should hear, here, the same activity that occurred in Genesis where the Spirit-wind blew over the chaos and tamed it. We should hear, here, the same Genesis-action by which God breathed God’s own self into a mound of clay.
With this new-creation action, Jesus declares, Have on you, in you and with you that Advocate I promised you. Be empowered and become emboldened to do as I have done. “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
This is huge. This is not merely Jesus inventing some ritual action we call confession and forgiveness. Jesus is doing more than establishing what we call the Office of the Keys so pastors can comfort the anguish of morally afflicted members.
You see where this is goin’? What the disciples hear Jesus say – by the way, he’s speaking to us as well – are words from the same guy who washed their feet. This same Jesus said, “If, I, your Master and Lord, have washed your feet, you should do likewise. I have given you an example.”
The One who’s sending them is the One who told them to love others as he loved them. That same One said, “By this everyone will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
The last paragraph of Easter Sunday’s message was, “So what will you remember? Will you remember, tomorrow, and the day after, that because we are an Easter people, we not only remember differently, we live differently, and God’s world is alive, anew – for the love of God – Alleluia!”
Where were all the Easter people on Easter Monday when Don Imus needed them most? The only one who came close was, C. Vivian Springer, the women’s basketball coach at Rutgers, and even she, in her own woundedness couldn’t get all the way there.
Don Imus is a public sinner. We’re not talking politically incorrect, intellectually challenged, morally bankrupt, ethical lapse, or slip-of-the-tongue. We’re talking, the guy doesn’t get it. But the only difference between Don Imus, public sinner, and you and me, is the word, public.
We’re also talking about someone who, like us, is never going to make it on his own. Look at Acts 5:31, from a testimony Peter made, after he, like us, had been breathed on and sent, “God exalted him (Jesus) at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.”
Who, in the name of God, is going to give repentance, i.e., change of mind and change of heart, to Don Imus? It seems to me, if the man has a snowball’s chance in hell of getting out of the pit, it will only be because someone like you or me, an Easter person, washes his sinful, undeserving feet – even before he confesses adequately or apologizes appropriately.
That’s how it was, and is, for us isn’t it? While we still were in our sin, God so loved the world that he sent the Son to save the world not to condemn the world. Jesus is risen – now what?
Look, Don Imus is both responsible and, in this case, blameworthy for his actions. We have a right to expect there to be consequences. He may even suffer through these. What we don’t have a right to expect are consequences intended to inflict pain, cause shame, or spring from revenge. That’s not what forgiving or retaining sin means under God’s Shalom.
I’m not imagining y’all rushin' outa here to go phone Imus. But I can imagine, in fact I pray for, and will do whatever I can to help your leaving here and finding someone you know, close to home, maybe in school, perhaps in the next pew, at work, or where you volunteer who is responsible, blameworthy and stuck in a Pit they can’t get out of on there own.
The public of their sin may even have been directed at you. If you, an Easter person, don’t tell them the Good News, that Jesus is risen – now what, means Jesus has opened his crossed up arms wide enough to include them in his new Shalom loving and belonging, how will they ever trust that message enough to believe the risen Jesus just might give them repentance, too? If you don’t embrace them with God’s otherwise, how can they ever know risen Jesus now has a place for them at this table?
The new creation power Jesus gives us by the presence of the Spirit is the mighty dose of grace we need to carry on, to put into real people and real places the Shalom Jesus went ahead to bring back for us. It’s a huge task. It can often be very nearly unbearably unpleasant. Look at verses 30-31: But these (signs) are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and through that believing you may have life in his name.
Jesus is risen – now what? It's time to wash feet, even of the nastiest, not nice at all, down-right ugly and undeserving. That’s what believing and living in Jesus looks like.
I said, answering that “so what” question, “Easter is God’s new way of saying, ‘I meant what I said and did in my Son, Jesus. I’ve come down to deliver you from bondage to sin and death. I’ve come down to save the world, not to condemn the world.’”
Every year, on the week after Easter, we hear about Thomas. My first thoughts about this week’s message focused on what it means to believe, or how we might distinguish our beliefs from our believing. That seemed like a reasonable follow-up to the “so-what” message. But in the wake of the Don Imus debacle, “Show-Me” Thomas and his poking fingers will have to wait until next year.
Throughout the week that doomed Don, what played out was another example of our culture’s doing a poor imitation of church. Many of the right words were in play: confession, contrition, penance, forgiveness, and forgetfulness, but too few Christian attitudes, principles and behaviors were on display.
Despite the abundance of “reverends” on so many talk shows, Jesus was under-represented. Most talking-head clergy sounded like graduates of the schools of Annas and Caiaphas, rather than alumnae of the Sermon on the Mount.
It’s verse 19 – 23 from the 20th chapter of John’s Gospel that’s on point here. See, the focus here is, “Jesus is Risen! – Now What?” That was missing from our “Christian nation’s” response to the peculiar pain Imus inflicted on the women from Rutgers as well as the sadness and outrage we felt.
Look at what happens in this upper room on Easter evening, before Thomas’ goings and comings redirect our focus. First, Jesus shows up. Amidst the disciples’ worst fears, Jesus hasn’t abandoned them.
Next, before they can react or respond, he offers Peace, Shalom. This isn’t wishful thinking on Jesus’ part. Neither is it some high-fivin’ homeboy’s way of saying, “Whazzup!” Nor is Jesus suggesting that they get caught up in some inner tranquility.
What Jesus is bringing and giving is the belonging and wholeness that comes from the dawn of God’s Kingdom Rule. It’s God’s new gift, through this risen Christ, from the future, here and now! Look at the third verse of Herbert F. Brokering’s hymn, Alleluia! Jesus is Risen!: Jesus the vine, we are the branches; life in the Spirit the fruit of the tree; heaven to earth, Christ to the people, gift of the future now flowing to me.
Then Jesus shows them his hands and feet. Though fresh from the future, in some sort of different body that’s able to move through locked doors, this risen Jesus has continuity with the Jesus they knew, loved, and watched get buried. They’re ecstatic.
Lest they miss the true source of their joy, he tells them again, “Peace be with you.” Rejoice in this life-giving, freedom-bringing, home-making Shalom. Under this holy rule, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
Don’t miss this. This verb, “has sent,” is the past perfect form of the verb, “to send.” That means it’s an action begun in the past, which continues in the present and goes into the future! Isn’t that cool? And you thought those Language Arts teachers were wasting our time!
Breathing on them, Jesus says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” This breathing-thing is crucial. We should hear, here, the same activity that occurred in Genesis where the Spirit-wind blew over the chaos and tamed it. We should hear, here, the same Genesis-action by which God breathed God’s own self into a mound of clay.
With this new-creation action, Jesus declares, Have on you, in you and with you that Advocate I promised you. Be empowered and become emboldened to do as I have done. “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
This is huge. This is not merely Jesus inventing some ritual action we call confession and forgiveness. Jesus is doing more than establishing what we call the Office of the Keys so pastors can comfort the anguish of morally afflicted members.
You see where this is goin’? What the disciples hear Jesus say – by the way, he’s speaking to us as well – are words from the same guy who washed their feet. This same Jesus said, “If, I, your Master and Lord, have washed your feet, you should do likewise. I have given you an example.”
The One who’s sending them is the One who told them to love others as he loved them. That same One said, “By this everyone will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
The last paragraph of Easter Sunday’s message was, “So what will you remember? Will you remember, tomorrow, and the day after, that because we are an Easter people, we not only remember differently, we live differently, and God’s world is alive, anew – for the love of God – Alleluia!”
Where were all the Easter people on Easter Monday when Don Imus needed them most? The only one who came close was, C. Vivian Springer, the women’s basketball coach at Rutgers, and even she, in her own woundedness couldn’t get all the way there.
Don Imus is a public sinner. We’re not talking politically incorrect, intellectually challenged, morally bankrupt, ethical lapse, or slip-of-the-tongue. We’re talking, the guy doesn’t get it. But the only difference between Don Imus, public sinner, and you and me, is the word, public.
We’re also talking about someone who, like us, is never going to make it on his own. Look at Acts 5:31, from a testimony Peter made, after he, like us, had been breathed on and sent, “God exalted him (Jesus) at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.”
Who, in the name of God, is going to give repentance, i.e., change of mind and change of heart, to Don Imus? It seems to me, if the man has a snowball’s chance in hell of getting out of the pit, it will only be because someone like you or me, an Easter person, washes his sinful, undeserving feet – even before he confesses adequately or apologizes appropriately.
That’s how it was, and is, for us isn’t it? While we still were in our sin, God so loved the world that he sent the Son to save the world not to condemn the world. Jesus is risen – now what?
Look, Don Imus is both responsible and, in this case, blameworthy for his actions. We have a right to expect there to be consequences. He may even suffer through these. What we don’t have a right to expect are consequences intended to inflict pain, cause shame, or spring from revenge. That’s not what forgiving or retaining sin means under God’s Shalom.
I’m not imagining y’all rushin' outa here to go phone Imus. But I can imagine, in fact I pray for, and will do whatever I can to help your leaving here and finding someone you know, close to home, maybe in school, perhaps in the next pew, at work, or where you volunteer who is responsible, blameworthy and stuck in a Pit they can’t get out of on there own.
The public of their sin may even have been directed at you. If you, an Easter person, don’t tell them the Good News, that Jesus is risen – now what, means Jesus has opened his crossed up arms wide enough to include them in his new Shalom loving and belonging, how will they ever trust that message enough to believe the risen Jesus just might give them repentance, too? If you don’t embrace them with God’s otherwise, how can they ever know risen Jesus now has a place for them at this table?
The new creation power Jesus gives us by the presence of the Spirit is the mighty dose of grace we need to carry on, to put into real people and real places the Shalom Jesus went ahead to bring back for us. It’s a huge task. It can often be very nearly unbearably unpleasant. Look at verses 30-31: But these (signs) are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and through that believing you may have life in his name.
Jesus is risen – now what? It's time to wash feet, even of the nastiest, not nice at all, down-right ugly and undeserving. That’s what believing and living in Jesus looks like.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Trusting Easter's Enough - Whenever!
I love Easter. After more than two thousand years of fearing science; imitating emperors; impersonating philosophers; mirroring cruel dictators; adopting the tactics of snake-oil salesmen; and diluting the sheer gall of the Gospel, Easter brings us back to the clear message that through this Christ our lives belong to God.
It’s a message that’s simple to say, but not quite so easy to understand. Finding room to enter the message today, against the backdrop of Don Imus’ “comedy,” the death of a Kokomo guardsman in Iraq, or worse, the silent, private sufferings of your own heart may leave you in one of two places. Either you tolerate Easter even though you think this is all a bunch of hooey, but it’s harmless hooey, or, you’ve given yourself over to the truth of this incredible drama that’s beyond your wildest dreams.
What’s the message? That God sent Jesus to say and do everything he did, and to validate that God raised Jesus from the dead - and by that act God has triumphed over sin, death, and the devil.
If you take this at all seriously, you’ve had to, or will have to, try and wrap your brain around it. You’ll go after as many facts as you can. You’ll look for evidence and proof and test it all out against alternative theories. That’s part of what it means to have a mind in the first place. Then, you’ll move on to a way of trusting this so that metaphors and songs and poems do a better job of saying who you are inside the story of this God. That’s part of what it means to have a heart touched and grasped by this kind of God.
You can certainly enter the message today - either for the first time, or as a reaffirmation that this message defines who you are in ways that no other story can do. Meaning that, before your anything else - parent, spouse, employee, offspring, widow, divorcee, entrepreneur - and deeper than your anything else - you belong to this God, through this Christ, in the Holy Spirit.
The consequences, or effect, of this basic message - that:
• our sin, that is our over and over again tendency to miss the mark about who we are, is over come
• death is not the final word about who we are and who we are to become
• the devil, or any other power that competes for our loyalty, has been defeated.
The results of living in this message are radical and comprehensive:
• looking forward to the future replaces anxiety
• shame gives way to serenity
• distrust is displaced by joy
• self-discipline replaces addiction
• meaning overcomes maddening efforts to make an identity for ourselves
• relationship outstrips a desire for revenge
• persistence overpowers boredom.
• death gives way to life; darkness to light; fear to conviction; despair to confidence.
These effects are something like the fulfillment of your wildest dreams, your deepest hopes, your secret wishes. Only living this message, inside this story your hopes, dreams, longings, and desires spring from the heart of God - for you - not from your own, not completely trustworthy heart.
And there’s the rub, isn’t it? The Easter message goes against our grain, stands everything we know on its head. Despite appearances to the contrary, death is not the final word. Death is a door-way to a life that still, keeps on, continuing in God.
But instead of trusting in that, receiving an incredible freedom in the here and now, freedom from making our own meaning; we focus on the what of it, and the how of it, not the why of it.
Not one of the Gospels tells us what happened on that Sunday morning. They do - each one - all tell us that the Jesus who was crossed up, then shut up - somehow kept up coming after them - for them. That’s the heart of the message that Easter brings. Yes, in Jesus’ resurrection sin, sickness and the devil have been undone. AND, this God does that for you, for me. Despite everything we know, because of everything we know.
One of the grandest prayers in the Jewish Seder meal is the Dayenu prayer. After the eldest in attendance answers the question from the youngest, “Why is this night different from any other;” those gathered pray this way:
Dayenu - enough:
• O God had you made us in your image and likeness
• had you clothed us when we offended you in the garden
• spared Noah in the great flood
• given Abraham a son
• spared Isaac
• freed us from bondage in Egypt
• given us the 10 commandments and Torah
• forgiven King David his wrong-doing, etc.
But the facts of that prayer deny the truth of our being - a truth God knows and longs to undo. For us, it’s never enough.
And so, in the fullness of time God took flesh, became Emmanuel, God-with-Us. The heart of the Easter message is God for us. God, hard at work, trying to be enough for us. The crucified Jesus, still calling Mary’s name, still explaining scripture to the two on the road to Emmaus, still showing up in a locked room, still putting Thomas’ fingers into his wounds, still cooking breakfast for friends on the beach, still coming for us gathered in his name, still presenting himself to us in the Holy Spirit, in this word, at this meal.
Try as we do, it’s still never enough. Paul says, this side of the grave it will never be enough. We see through a glass, dimly. We have but a foretaste of the feast to come. He also says this: When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. That means “when,” as in whenever.
Despite what appears to us to be the continuing power of sin, death and the devil, glimpses of that Easter resurrection’s WHEN are breaking out all over. Whenever:
• the sun peaks over the horizon one more day
• a way out of now-way suddenly appears
• strangers put their strangeness aside in favor of relationship
• we let go of vengeance
• someone chooses to forget why they’re angry
• we employ our talents to make beauty, art, music, kindness
• we make room in our hearts for friendship and forgiveness
• our mouth’s declarations about injustice guide our hands and feet toward building justice.
Is this message believable? Not the way we usually use that word. Even Paul said as much. This is a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks. Then he went on to stake his own life on both the reality and the truth of the message.
So have countless others. The women who were last at the cross and first at the tomb believed. So did the centurion at the cross and the wealthy Joseph of Arimethea. So have famous folks like: Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Barbara Jordan, James Weldon Johnson, and Senator Paul Simon.
So have the not so famous. Like Ollie Filer, Bill Ecker, Dorothy Siersbeck, Chuck Schroeder, Irene Strom – David Neil Simmons of Kokomo, and our own lists could go on and on.
With that great cloud of witnesses, I stand on the shoulders of those first apostolic believers who trusted the why of it, without giving a hoot for either the what or the how of it - and am privileged to shout, once again, “Alleluia! Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
It’s a message that’s simple to say, but not quite so easy to understand. Finding room to enter the message today, against the backdrop of Don Imus’ “comedy,” the death of a Kokomo guardsman in Iraq, or worse, the silent, private sufferings of your own heart may leave you in one of two places. Either you tolerate Easter even though you think this is all a bunch of hooey, but it’s harmless hooey, or, you’ve given yourself over to the truth of this incredible drama that’s beyond your wildest dreams.
What’s the message? That God sent Jesus to say and do everything he did, and to validate that God raised Jesus from the dead - and by that act God has triumphed over sin, death, and the devil.
If you take this at all seriously, you’ve had to, or will have to, try and wrap your brain around it. You’ll go after as many facts as you can. You’ll look for evidence and proof and test it all out against alternative theories. That’s part of what it means to have a mind in the first place. Then, you’ll move on to a way of trusting this so that metaphors and songs and poems do a better job of saying who you are inside the story of this God. That’s part of what it means to have a heart touched and grasped by this kind of God.
You can certainly enter the message today - either for the first time, or as a reaffirmation that this message defines who you are in ways that no other story can do. Meaning that, before your anything else - parent, spouse, employee, offspring, widow, divorcee, entrepreneur - and deeper than your anything else - you belong to this God, through this Christ, in the Holy Spirit.
The consequences, or effect, of this basic message - that:
• our sin, that is our over and over again tendency to miss the mark about who we are, is over come
• death is not the final word about who we are and who we are to become
• the devil, or any other power that competes for our loyalty, has been defeated.
The results of living in this message are radical and comprehensive:
• looking forward to the future replaces anxiety
• shame gives way to serenity
• distrust is displaced by joy
• self-discipline replaces addiction
• meaning overcomes maddening efforts to make an identity for ourselves
• relationship outstrips a desire for revenge
• persistence overpowers boredom.
• death gives way to life; darkness to light; fear to conviction; despair to confidence.
These effects are something like the fulfillment of your wildest dreams, your deepest hopes, your secret wishes. Only living this message, inside this story your hopes, dreams, longings, and desires spring from the heart of God - for you - not from your own, not completely trustworthy heart.
And there’s the rub, isn’t it? The Easter message goes against our grain, stands everything we know on its head. Despite appearances to the contrary, death is not the final word. Death is a door-way to a life that still, keeps on, continuing in God.
But instead of trusting in that, receiving an incredible freedom in the here and now, freedom from making our own meaning; we focus on the what of it, and the how of it, not the why of it.
Not one of the Gospels tells us what happened on that Sunday morning. They do - each one - all tell us that the Jesus who was crossed up, then shut up - somehow kept up coming after them - for them. That’s the heart of the message that Easter brings. Yes, in Jesus’ resurrection sin, sickness and the devil have been undone. AND, this God does that for you, for me. Despite everything we know, because of everything we know.
One of the grandest prayers in the Jewish Seder meal is the Dayenu prayer. After the eldest in attendance answers the question from the youngest, “Why is this night different from any other;” those gathered pray this way:
Dayenu - enough:
• O God had you made us in your image and likeness
• had you clothed us when we offended you in the garden
• spared Noah in the great flood
• given Abraham a son
• spared Isaac
• freed us from bondage in Egypt
• given us the 10 commandments and Torah
• forgiven King David his wrong-doing, etc.
But the facts of that prayer deny the truth of our being - a truth God knows and longs to undo. For us, it’s never enough.
And so, in the fullness of time God took flesh, became Emmanuel, God-with-Us. The heart of the Easter message is God for us. God, hard at work, trying to be enough for us. The crucified Jesus, still calling Mary’s name, still explaining scripture to the two on the road to Emmaus, still showing up in a locked room, still putting Thomas’ fingers into his wounds, still cooking breakfast for friends on the beach, still coming for us gathered in his name, still presenting himself to us in the Holy Spirit, in this word, at this meal.
Try as we do, it’s still never enough. Paul says, this side of the grave it will never be enough. We see through a glass, dimly. We have but a foretaste of the feast to come. He also says this: When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. That means “when,” as in whenever.
Despite what appears to us to be the continuing power of sin, death and the devil, glimpses of that Easter resurrection’s WHEN are breaking out all over. Whenever:
• the sun peaks over the horizon one more day
• a way out of now-way suddenly appears
• strangers put their strangeness aside in favor of relationship
• we let go of vengeance
• someone chooses to forget why they’re angry
• we employ our talents to make beauty, art, music, kindness
• we make room in our hearts for friendship and forgiveness
• our mouth’s declarations about injustice guide our hands and feet toward building justice.
Is this message believable? Not the way we usually use that word. Even Paul said as much. This is a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks. Then he went on to stake his own life on both the reality and the truth of the message.
So have countless others. The women who were last at the cross and first at the tomb believed. So did the centurion at the cross and the wealthy Joseph of Arimethea. So have famous folks like: Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Barbara Jordan, James Weldon Johnson, and Senator Paul Simon.
So have the not so famous. Like Ollie Filer, Bill Ecker, Dorothy Siersbeck, Chuck Schroeder, Irene Strom – David Neil Simmons of Kokomo, and our own lists could go on and on.
With that great cloud of witnesses, I stand on the shoulders of those first apostolic believers who trusted the why of it, without giving a hoot for either the what or the how of it - and am privileged to shout, once again, “Alleluia! Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Monday, April 09, 2007
Jesus is Risen! - So What?
If you ask, most people will tell you the four evangelists give us all the wrong information about Easter morning. One source is Luke 24:1-12. Inquiring minds want to know:
• how did this happen
• when was it - just before dawn, at dawn, or after dawn
• did Jesus raise up, or was he raised up
• was the tomb’s stone pulled out or pushed out
• who folded the linens
• does the son of God make his own bed
• was there 1 angel like Mark says, or 2 like Luke says
• were soldiers on guard, as Matthew says, or not.
Of course, if those archeologists are right and they’ve found the bones of Jesus, none of that matters.
This is at least the second team of scientists in the last 30 years to make such a claim. So before we get too bothered about what they found, maybe we should let them finishing arguing over which group has the right set of Jesus’ bones. It reminds me of the time I spent a month touring Europe. Having gone through nearly 30 churches and cathedrals I saw at least 12 kneecaps belonging to John the Baptist. Remember, the Bible says John ate locusts. It doesn’t say he ate so many he turned into one!
If we believe the evangelists don’t answer the right questions, it could be that we’re asking the wrong questions. Most of us have lots of experience with that. Students ask teachers, “Will this piece of information be on the test?” The teacher answers, “The test is on the whole unit.” You say, “Hey Mom, what’s for supper?” She says, “I’m the adult here; whatever I fix, you eat; understand!” You ask a dealer how much a car costs and you get about as many prices as there are ducks floating in a shooting gallery. Ask your spouse, “Honey, what do you want for your birthday?” He or she says, “Surprise me.” You just have to make sure that really doesn’t happen.
The evangelists are not answering “how” questions. They’re answering the “so what” question. Now most of us don’t ask that question. Because we’ve been through this story so many times; because we’ve heard so many sermons, that question isn’t much on our minds.
We imagine God rewarded Jesus for being such a good guy. Or, God finally admitted that since Jesus was willing to jump through such a huge hoop on Good Friday, God owed resurrection to Jesus. In our own way half-hearted amazement, we say Jesus’ resurrection is God’s way of fixing God’s “Oops!”
Amazement is not a bad thing. Luke says Peter, once he’d proved to himself that his women friends weren’t hysterical with grief, was amazed by the empty tomb. Luke also says, in verse 12, Peter left the tomb as unbelieving as he was before he ran there. Amazement doesn’t address the “so what” question.
The word “amaze,” or some form of it, is used roughly 60 times in the bible. No one who has that feeling is moved to faith merely by having that feeling. The same bible uses the word “remember” just over 200 times. Even when the word is used in reference to God, as in, God set a bow in the sky so God would remember the promise God made to Noah (Geneses 9:8-17), remembering brings those who do that into relationship.
Amazement is often the feeling we have when we’re hanging so tightly onto the last thing we believe God did, we have difficulty believing the next, new thing God is doing.
Luke says, in 24:6-10, when the women followed the instruction of the two men in dazzling clothes to remember Jesus’ words, faith seized them and they ran to tell the apostles that Jesus was risen.
Amazement looks backwards, fixes its gaze there. Remembering reaches backwards and brings something forward into our present reality.
Remember Christmas? We say God is doing a new thing for the world; such a new thing, in fact, that God requires a new name, Emmanuel, God-With-Us.
Remember the Sermon on the Mount? We say God is teaching a new thing to the world.
Remember Maundy Thursday? We say God is feeding a new thing to the world, and establishing a new way to remain present in the world.
Remember Good Friday? We say God is finding a new way to conquer evil, as well as a new way to demonstrate the depth of God’s love for us.
So what is Easter? It’s God’s new way of saying, “I meant what I said and did in my Son, Jesus. I’ve come down to deliver you from bondage to sin and death. I’ve come down to save the world, not to condemn the world.”
Will you be only amazed by that, or will you remember that, from the beginning, my heart’s desire is to keep creating you, to keep saving and freeing you and to keep on blessing?
Will you be only amazed by my promises, or will you remember them well enough so you can see and join me in living in, with and under them, as they keep unfolding in your life and in your world?
Will you be only amazed by my Son, Jesus’ wise teachings, wonderful works, and profound prayers, or will you remember to expect him, alive, to go ahead of you each day, everywhere you go, offering you new opportunities to complete the good work God has begun in you?
Will you be only amazed by these new things or will you remember them, bringing them forward to help you to comprehend and to celebrate whatever way cool way I dream up next to hold you, to forgive you, to love you and to lead you?
Will you be only amazed by one long ago Easter, or will you remember that Easter is more than an event; it’s more than a nice story designed to tidy up a messy Friday. Can you remember; Easter is a new relationship, a new identity, your new autobiography, alone and together, you are my Easter people.
So what will you remember? Will you remember, tomorrow, and the day after, that because we are an Easter people we not only remember differently, we live differently, and God’s world is alive, anew – for the love of God – Alleluia!
• how did this happen
• when was it - just before dawn, at dawn, or after dawn
• did Jesus raise up, or was he raised up
• was the tomb’s stone pulled out or pushed out
• who folded the linens
• does the son of God make his own bed
• was there 1 angel like Mark says, or 2 like Luke says
• were soldiers on guard, as Matthew says, or not.
Of course, if those archeologists are right and they’ve found the bones of Jesus, none of that matters.
This is at least the second team of scientists in the last 30 years to make such a claim. So before we get too bothered about what they found, maybe we should let them finishing arguing over which group has the right set of Jesus’ bones. It reminds me of the time I spent a month touring Europe. Having gone through nearly 30 churches and cathedrals I saw at least 12 kneecaps belonging to John the Baptist. Remember, the Bible says John ate locusts. It doesn’t say he ate so many he turned into one!
If we believe the evangelists don’t answer the right questions, it could be that we’re asking the wrong questions. Most of us have lots of experience with that. Students ask teachers, “Will this piece of information be on the test?” The teacher answers, “The test is on the whole unit.” You say, “Hey Mom, what’s for supper?” She says, “I’m the adult here; whatever I fix, you eat; understand!” You ask a dealer how much a car costs and you get about as many prices as there are ducks floating in a shooting gallery. Ask your spouse, “Honey, what do you want for your birthday?” He or she says, “Surprise me.” You just have to make sure that really doesn’t happen.
The evangelists are not answering “how” questions. They’re answering the “so what” question. Now most of us don’t ask that question. Because we’ve been through this story so many times; because we’ve heard so many sermons, that question isn’t much on our minds.
We imagine God rewarded Jesus for being such a good guy. Or, God finally admitted that since Jesus was willing to jump through such a huge hoop on Good Friday, God owed resurrection to Jesus. In our own way half-hearted amazement, we say Jesus’ resurrection is God’s way of fixing God’s “Oops!”
Amazement is not a bad thing. Luke says Peter, once he’d proved to himself that his women friends weren’t hysterical with grief, was amazed by the empty tomb. Luke also says, in verse 12, Peter left the tomb as unbelieving as he was before he ran there. Amazement doesn’t address the “so what” question.
The word “amaze,” or some form of it, is used roughly 60 times in the bible. No one who has that feeling is moved to faith merely by having that feeling. The same bible uses the word “remember” just over 200 times. Even when the word is used in reference to God, as in, God set a bow in the sky so God would remember the promise God made to Noah (Geneses 9:8-17), remembering brings those who do that into relationship.
Amazement is often the feeling we have when we’re hanging so tightly onto the last thing we believe God did, we have difficulty believing the next, new thing God is doing.
Luke says, in 24:6-10, when the women followed the instruction of the two men in dazzling clothes to remember Jesus’ words, faith seized them and they ran to tell the apostles that Jesus was risen.
Amazement looks backwards, fixes its gaze there. Remembering reaches backwards and brings something forward into our present reality.
Remember Christmas? We say God is doing a new thing for the world; such a new thing, in fact, that God requires a new name, Emmanuel, God-With-Us.
Remember the Sermon on the Mount? We say God is teaching a new thing to the world.
Remember Maundy Thursday? We say God is feeding a new thing to the world, and establishing a new way to remain present in the world.
Remember Good Friday? We say God is finding a new way to conquer evil, as well as a new way to demonstrate the depth of God’s love for us.
So what is Easter? It’s God’s new way of saying, “I meant what I said and did in my Son, Jesus. I’ve come down to deliver you from bondage to sin and death. I’ve come down to save the world, not to condemn the world.”
Will you be only amazed by that, or will you remember that, from the beginning, my heart’s desire is to keep creating you, to keep saving and freeing you and to keep on blessing?
Will you be only amazed by my promises, or will you remember them well enough so you can see and join me in living in, with and under them, as they keep unfolding in your life and in your world?
Will you be only amazed by my Son, Jesus’ wise teachings, wonderful works, and profound prayers, or will you remember to expect him, alive, to go ahead of you each day, everywhere you go, offering you new opportunities to complete the good work God has begun in you?
Will you be only amazed by these new things or will you remember them, bringing them forward to help you to comprehend and to celebrate whatever way cool way I dream up next to hold you, to forgive you, to love you and to lead you?
Will you be only amazed by one long ago Easter, or will you remember that Easter is more than an event; it’s more than a nice story designed to tidy up a messy Friday. Can you remember; Easter is a new relationship, a new identity, your new autobiography, alone and together, you are my Easter people.
So what will you remember? Will you remember, tomorrow, and the day after, that because we are an Easter people we not only remember differently, we live differently, and God’s world is alive, anew – for the love of God – Alleluia!
Friday, April 06, 2007
Why Do We Call it Good Friday?
One of the biggest struggles I have in carrying out this pastoral role is dealing with beggars at the door. Someone who we’ve helped in the past came to the door yesterday. Just hearing the bell I knew it was a beggar. I even said that to the copier repair technician who was here at the time.
When I got to the door, the man said, “Can you give me $5, Reverend, I’m hungry?” “No,” I said, “can’t do it.” “But it’s your job to help.” “You want help,” I asked? “Okay, what’s your story?” “Whaddya mean,” he glared. I shot back, “Well, I’m guessin’ your mama didn’t birth no loser, so how’d you turn from that beautiful, proud boy into a loser?” Without pausing he said, “Well, I didn’t get into the NBA cuz I dropped outa school. Then I got shot here in my chest, see (he opened his shirt revealing a long scar). Then here in my head and I ain’t been right since, see,” (he took off his ball cap and pointed to a crescent suture line arching across his temple).
I wonder what it will take for me to see the truth. We’re all hungry; no, starving. We’ve all dropped out; each of us has lost a dream; and none of us, by ourselves, is right in the heart or in the head.
The One who we remember this day, the one whose blood and water flowed from his head and his heart, all down the cross is the same One who said things like:
• God sent the Son to save the world, not condemn it
• When you eat this bread, you’ll never be hungry again
• I came that you might have life and have it more abundantly
• If you drink from the waters I bring, you’ll never thirst
• No greater love exists than for someone to lay down life for another.
By grace, we stake our life, and bank our future on the One who took those words not only to heart, but to a heart pierced for us - while we were still losers. Before we even knew we were beggars at the door we are fed, watered, nourished, strengthened, by grace, and because of Jesus and his cross we belong to this loving God.
When we can trust grace, every day ending in “y,” especially toda“y” is a GOOD day!
When I got to the door, the man said, “Can you give me $5, Reverend, I’m hungry?” “No,” I said, “can’t do it.” “But it’s your job to help.” “You want help,” I asked? “Okay, what’s your story?” “Whaddya mean,” he glared. I shot back, “Well, I’m guessin’ your mama didn’t birth no loser, so how’d you turn from that beautiful, proud boy into a loser?” Without pausing he said, “Well, I didn’t get into the NBA cuz I dropped outa school. Then I got shot here in my chest, see (he opened his shirt revealing a long scar). Then here in my head and I ain’t been right since, see,” (he took off his ball cap and pointed to a crescent suture line arching across his temple).
I wonder what it will take for me to see the truth. We’re all hungry; no, starving. We’ve all dropped out; each of us has lost a dream; and none of us, by ourselves, is right in the heart or in the head.
The One who we remember this day, the one whose blood and water flowed from his head and his heart, all down the cross is the same One who said things like:
• God sent the Son to save the world, not condemn it
• When you eat this bread, you’ll never be hungry again
• I came that you might have life and have it more abundantly
• If you drink from the waters I bring, you’ll never thirst
• No greater love exists than for someone to lay down life for another.
By grace, we stake our life, and bank our future on the One who took those words not only to heart, but to a heart pierced for us - while we were still losers. Before we even knew we were beggars at the door we are fed, watered, nourished, strengthened, by grace, and because of Jesus and his cross we belong to this loving God.
When we can trust grace, every day ending in “y,” especially toda“y” is a GOOD day!
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Costly Recipe for Passionate Intimacies
Starbuck’s is my least favorite boutique. I’ve always been a Dunkin’ Donuts kind o’ guy. When forced by circumstances, usually a meeting, into Starbuck’s, I can’t seem to resist buying a biscotti, a long, hard, crunchy Italian cookie – best dunked in coffee. My grandmother made those often.
Among my most prized possessions is my grandmother’s biscotti recipe. She gave it to me 17 years ago, a year before she died. Fact is, it’s right here in my wallet. For reasons I can’t fathom, the last time I made biscotti, I stuck the recipe in my wallet instead of putting it back inside a cookbook where we keep other recipes from grandma. That was 5 years ago. The recipe has been in my wallet ever since then, and in the mean time, we’ve had only store bought biscotti.
Most of these are really bad. To keep pace with trends folks tinker with the recipe. They substitute margarine, not 5 sticks of pure butter. They add sesame seeds. Some add almond paste and almond pieces. A few bakeries put in, ahh, chocolate chips!
For all practical purposes, I don’t have grandma’s biscotti recipe. Having the recipe means gathering the ingredients. It requires measuring them out in the exact proportions. Owning the recipe means mixing the quantities together in the right order, using the appropriate utensils. Enjoying the recipe involves following the instructions for preparing and baking the dough. For as long as the recipe has been in my wallet, none of that has happened.
To many of us hold our Christian identity with the same ill regard I hold grandma’s recipe. It’s tucked safely away. We know exactly where it is. It’s tattered and worn not from over-use, but from abuse.
On his last night with his disciples, Jesus gave them an example and a commandment. Better words might be recipe or pattern, and an instruction or a direction.
Jesus always practiced what he preached. He walked his talk. He makes clear in this foot-washing both the high regard and the deep love he has for his disciples. He establishes in this meal the expansive, inclusive reach of his breaking-open and pouring-out love. He instructs us to do likewise.
Choose to love one another with a vulnerable love; love which is prone to be ignored, rejected, denied and even betrayed. It’s what happened with Jesus’ love. It can happen when we love that way, too. Despite that, as Jesus lives out that love, we see and experience a love persisting through to the end.
Both Jesus’ acted out language, and his spoken word, are in the plural. He performs what he does and speaks what he says to the community he’s called together. He knows how difficult it is for individuals, including himself, to love that way – vulnerably and persistently.
That’s why we do what we do here this evening. As those whom the Spirit of God has called together to receive this pattern, to practice this example, to hold this recipe in high regard, we keep these intimate rituals. We wash feet. We share a common meal. Both ground us in God’s own passionate, vulnerable, persistent and present love that gives us life, brings us freedom, blesses us, and makes us a blessing to and for the world.
You’d be hard pressed to call us a boutique church. That hasn’t, and shouldn’t, stop us from being bold enough to tinker with the recipe. Our tinkering, though, must always be relevant, never trendy. Our loving Jesus’ own in the world demands that we continue finding appropriate and truthful ways to keep shairn’ plenty good news!
When we faithfully execute that pattern, follow that example, serve up that recipe, everyone will know Whose disciples we are, because our love for one another, like Jesus’ love for us, stretches beyond our closest reach and extends passed our least costly embrace.
Among my most prized possessions is my grandmother’s biscotti recipe. She gave it to me 17 years ago, a year before she died. Fact is, it’s right here in my wallet. For reasons I can’t fathom, the last time I made biscotti, I stuck the recipe in my wallet instead of putting it back inside a cookbook where we keep other recipes from grandma. That was 5 years ago. The recipe has been in my wallet ever since then, and in the mean time, we’ve had only store bought biscotti.
Most of these are really bad. To keep pace with trends folks tinker with the recipe. They substitute margarine, not 5 sticks of pure butter. They add sesame seeds. Some add almond paste and almond pieces. A few bakeries put in, ahh, chocolate chips!
For all practical purposes, I don’t have grandma’s biscotti recipe. Having the recipe means gathering the ingredients. It requires measuring them out in the exact proportions. Owning the recipe means mixing the quantities together in the right order, using the appropriate utensils. Enjoying the recipe involves following the instructions for preparing and baking the dough. For as long as the recipe has been in my wallet, none of that has happened.
To many of us hold our Christian identity with the same ill regard I hold grandma’s recipe. It’s tucked safely away. We know exactly where it is. It’s tattered and worn not from over-use, but from abuse.
On his last night with his disciples, Jesus gave them an example and a commandment. Better words might be recipe or pattern, and an instruction or a direction.
Jesus always practiced what he preached. He walked his talk. He makes clear in this foot-washing both the high regard and the deep love he has for his disciples. He establishes in this meal the expansive, inclusive reach of his breaking-open and pouring-out love. He instructs us to do likewise.
Choose to love one another with a vulnerable love; love which is prone to be ignored, rejected, denied and even betrayed. It’s what happened with Jesus’ love. It can happen when we love that way, too. Despite that, as Jesus lives out that love, we see and experience a love persisting through to the end.
Both Jesus’ acted out language, and his spoken word, are in the plural. He performs what he does and speaks what he says to the community he’s called together. He knows how difficult it is for individuals, including himself, to love that way – vulnerably and persistently.
That’s why we do what we do here this evening. As those whom the Spirit of God has called together to receive this pattern, to practice this example, to hold this recipe in high regard, we keep these intimate rituals. We wash feet. We share a common meal. Both ground us in God’s own passionate, vulnerable, persistent and present love that gives us life, brings us freedom, blesses us, and makes us a blessing to and for the world.
You’d be hard pressed to call us a boutique church. That hasn’t, and shouldn’t, stop us from being bold enough to tinker with the recipe. Our tinkering, though, must always be relevant, never trendy. Our loving Jesus’ own in the world demands that we continue finding appropriate and truthful ways to keep shairn’ plenty good news!
When we faithfully execute that pattern, follow that example, serve up that recipe, everyone will know Whose disciples we are, because our love for one another, like Jesus’ love for us, stretches beyond our closest reach and extends passed our least costly embrace.
Jesus’ Colorful Passion – On a Stage Near YOU!
Every time someone gets up to proclaim the scriptures at worship lately, I’m reminded that a burglar ripped off our microphone, two cymbals, and a cymbal stand. I think they’re bad people.
Today I heard that our neighbor was robbed at gunpoint while working, during the middle of the day, in his tax office six blocks from here. I think that must have been a bad actor.
Now for sure, you can help me shift my attitude. In fact, I probably can’t do that without you.
But what I’m talking about now is something different. See, there are no bad people in this story of Jesus’ betrayal, arrest, trial, sentencing, and execution (John 18-19). Everybody inside the story, the naïve, lazy disciples, the betraying Judas, the Temple police, the priests who sent them, even Pilate, all of them were acting with integrity – much like Jesus. The difference is, Jesus acted out of both integrity and humility. He not only moved truthfully, as he understood truth to be; he is grounded – that’s what humble means – he was grounded in God’s truth
These other folks acted true to character, but they were grounded in something other than the unfolding story of God’s way of freeing them from oppression and injustice. They were convinced that they were the authors and directors, rather than actors in the story authored and directed by God.
Everyday, we, like they, have many opportunities to portray our true colors. By what we say and do, how we decide and judge, who we show ourselves to be – we display our true colors. We’re either truthfully acting in the ground of God’s story, or we’re bit players in some other powers’ fantasy.
Today I heard that our neighbor was robbed at gunpoint while working, during the middle of the day, in his tax office six blocks from here. I think that must have been a bad actor.
Now for sure, you can help me shift my attitude. In fact, I probably can’t do that without you.
But what I’m talking about now is something different. See, there are no bad people in this story of Jesus’ betrayal, arrest, trial, sentencing, and execution (John 18-19). Everybody inside the story, the naïve, lazy disciples, the betraying Judas, the Temple police, the priests who sent them, even Pilate, all of them were acting with integrity – much like Jesus. The difference is, Jesus acted out of both integrity and humility. He not only moved truthfully, as he understood truth to be; he is grounded – that’s what humble means – he was grounded in God’s truth
These other folks acted true to character, but they were grounded in something other than the unfolding story of God’s way of freeing them from oppression and injustice. They were convinced that they were the authors and directors, rather than actors in the story authored and directed by God.
Everyday, we, like they, have many opportunities to portray our true colors. By what we say and do, how we decide and judge, who we show ourselves to be – we display our true colors. We’re either truthfully acting in the ground of God’s story, or we’re bit players in some other powers’ fantasy.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Jesus, MBA
There’s money all over the place in Holy Week. It begins with Jesus overturning the money changers’ tables and scattering money all over the floor in the Temple. In the middle is the extravagance of the woman who anoints Jesus, and the cash on the barrel Judas negotiates to hand Jesus over. At the end, those same silver pieces come crashing back onto the Temple floor.
It’s a good thing that God doesn’t manage the wealth of grace the way we manage money. That’s what caught Jesus’ eye about this woman, and sent the onlookers into frenzy. The woman managed her expensive oil in virtually the same way God manages the wealth of God’s grace. She was extravagant with it. She lavished it for no apparent reason.
We don’t run our banks, our savings and checking accounts, our IRA’s, our 401 K’s, our money market funds, our mutual funds, or our stock portfolios that way at all. But that’s not the worst of it.
We’ve turned our time, our attention, our energy, our talents and everything we can manage to count, measure, calculate, tabulate, buy, or sell into a commodity. With the best of intentions, we even talk about children as our most precious resource. We always want to know the return on investment. We’re always looking to weigh the risk against the gain.
God, in Jesus, invites us into another way of reconciling accounts. Simply receive the precious gift of God’s outpouring love with open hands. Don’t hang onto it. Let it splash over those closest to you. They are as deserving and desirous of God’s generosity as you are.
It’s a good thing that God doesn’t manage the wealth of grace the way we manage money. That’s what caught Jesus’ eye about this woman, and sent the onlookers into frenzy. The woman managed her expensive oil in virtually the same way God manages the wealth of God’s grace. She was extravagant with it. She lavished it for no apparent reason.
We don’t run our banks, our savings and checking accounts, our IRA’s, our 401 K’s, our money market funds, our mutual funds, or our stock portfolios that way at all. But that’s not the worst of it.
We’ve turned our time, our attention, our energy, our talents and everything we can manage to count, measure, calculate, tabulate, buy, or sell into a commodity. With the best of intentions, we even talk about children as our most precious resource. We always want to know the return on investment. We’re always looking to weigh the risk against the gain.
God, in Jesus, invites us into another way of reconciling accounts. Simply receive the precious gift of God’s outpouring love with open hands. Don’t hang onto it. Let it splash over those closest to you. They are as deserving and desirous of God’s generosity as you are.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Christ’s Passion: Cliché or Cachet?
There’s a feature on my writing software that I can’t live without. Depending upon your computer’s age and the software it runs you may have this as well. Inside the spell-check tool is both a grammar checker and a reading analysis. My software does these tasks in two ways. One is clicking on the icon marked, ABC. The other is to set a feature that underlines misspelled words in red, as well as underlining grammatical problems in green, while I’m typing.
The program says the grammatical mistake I make most often is writing passive sentences. Sales and marketing folks, sports writers, fund-raising experts and some English teachers, say that passive sentences are boring. They lack zip. They’re usually lengthier than sentences using active verbs. This more dynamic style engages a different part of the readers’ and hearers’ brains. Sentences with active verbs chemically stimulate more dramatic reactions and responses from readers and hearers.
Writing often this week, for the worship folder, the newsletter and the blog, all this was on my mind while studying Philippians 2:5-11 (held to be an ancient baptismal hymn) and Luke 23:1-49 (a portion of Jesus’ passion). I was struck by different thoughts and feelings when hearing Luke’s story-telling approach to the last days of Jesus, in contrast to the more poetic approach Paul uses when he includes this hymn in his letter. Now that’s no great insight. A storyteller’s style differs, almost by definition, from a poet’s or a song-writer’s method of writing and composing.
The feelings I’m talking about lie deeper than the obvious. Both Luke and Paul’s hymn writer want to provide detail about the same event, the death of Jesus. Luke, though, puts the thoughts and feelings of Jesus in the mouth of Jesus. Once we move past the entry into Jerusalem, where Jesus is clearly in command, we don’t hear much from Jesus himself on Thursday and Friday.
The momentum in Luke’s account, the way he moves the death plot forward, is done by himself as narrator, or by means of his “reporting” the words and feelings of secondary players. Looking at the details, time-lines, and reactions in Luke’s telling makes Jesus seem like a passive character in the grandest adventure of his own story.
The hymn, on the other hand, offers insights that are inferred or surmised from the composer’s thoughts about Jesus in the midst of these events. The composer, then, infuses these reflections onto and into Jesus.
Even though this style has a definite “outside / in” quality, the result is anything but that. Look at how powerful, in control, and decisive the hymn’s Jesus sounds; He:
• did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited
• emptied himself
• took the form of a slave
• humbled himself
• obeyed to the point of death, even death on a cross.
See the difference? The hymn’s Jesus doesn’t look as much like a victim. The hymn’s Jesus is an active agent.
The hymn’s Jesus looks much more like the Good Shepherd Jesus we hear in John 10:14-18: "I am the Good Shepherd. I know my own sheep and my own sheep know me. In the same way, the Father knows me and I know the Father. I put the sheep before myself, sacrificing myself if necessary. You need to know that I have other sheep in addition to those in this pen. I need to gather and bring them, too. They'll also recognize my voice. Then it will be one flock, one Shepherd. This is why the Father loves me: because I freely lay down my life. And so I am free to take it up again. No one takes it from me. I lay it down of my own free will. I have the right to lay it down; I also have the right to take it up again. I received this authority personally from my Father." (The Message).
The hymn helps us see Jesus amidst this death-plot, not as the victim of the wolf, but as the caretaker, guarantor of the sheep’s well-being. The hymn has something to say to the sheep, as well. At the name of Jesus:
• we should bend our knees
• our tongues should confess Jesus as Lord, to the glory of the Father. (Not should, as in command, should as in what logical alternative is there?)
Why am I telling you all this? Because what Paul wrote, what the Bible says is: Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 2:5)
Sometimes, when somebody like me tries to break open a text for folks like you, we both wind up confused. Of course, I think I’m doing a good job when I show you the difference between a bible story and a bible hymn. But it can’t end there. If I leave you thinking that once we’ve sliced and diced these pages what we’re about is only literary criticism, I’ve done you a disservice. Like as not, I’ve committed a sin (missed the mark).
See, these aren’t just words and stories, parables and songs, proverbs and folktales about God. These aren’t even simply the trustworthy accounts of long ago folks’ experiences with God. These are a living God’s word spoken to us here and now.
God means for God’s presence in these words to inflame us and to stir up in us a living, active response to what this God is saying to us in this time and place - in, with, and under these words. As your pastor I want this understanding to be on your minds, in your hearts, at your finger tips, always. I want that for you and for us, especially this week, as together we consider how we will respond to what God does for us, and for the world, by means of Jesus and his cross.
It’s time to get that sorry picture Mel Gibson painted off your radar screen. Of course Jesus suffered, suffered greatly. Of course Jesus’ suffering is for us, that is, has a personal and eternal impact, or effect on us.
Don’t you think that if God thought it important for us to have a picture of the depth and level of Jesus’ physical torture, God’s evangelists would have done that painting? The evangelists don’t avoid the pain and suffering. Neither do they dwell on it. As they tell it, as this early composer sang about it, it’s neither necessary nor sufficient to get stuck in that portrait.
From the beginning, God has rejected revenge. Just prior to expelling Adam and Eve from the garden, for disobedience – that is, not listening to God, look at what God did. God made leather clothing for Adam and his wife and dressed them. (Genesis 3:21, The Message).
It’s not completely right to say we caused that to happen. It’s not accurate to say God needed that to happen to satisfy grievances God had, or has, against us.
What’s truthful to say, and to see, is this. God allowed this to happen. Jesus chose, as in willingly agreed to go along with what God was allowing. God moved this way for us, so we might turn around and begin to live, and move, and have our being inside this same God’s faithfulness and trustworthiness, which sets us free in Jesus.
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. That’s the overriding focus of this Holy Week. That’s what we’ll ponder together on Maundy Thursday, as we wash feet then share bread and wine. That’s what we’ll speak to God for, and listen to God say, on Good Friday.
Here’s what that means, not just for two days out of the year, but for everyday that we say we want to walk as disciples in the footsteps of Jesus and the God who loves him.
• What happens when God’s will is the last thing on your mind and seldom penetrates your heart? When your talk is a cliché and your walk has no cachet.
• What goes on in your life when your relationship with God lacks integrity?
• What overwhelms a country when its citizens believe God blesses them to the exclusion of everyone else?
• What occurs in your world when some crowd catches you up and you’re dragged off course?
• What are the everyday consequences when you’re bought off, for some modern equivalent of 30 pieces of silver?
• What goes down when your religion oppresses and condemns other children of God, in the name of God?
The God who loves Jesus, the Jesus who loves God, tell us over and over, how deeply God loves. They show us, over and over, what lengths God goes, willingly, to embrace passionately even the most raggedy characters our biblical pages describe.
Surely, someone in here looks enough like you to move you to respond to this living God with the loving word God desires to hear from each of us this day: Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven! (Luke 19:37-38)
The program says the grammatical mistake I make most often is writing passive sentences. Sales and marketing folks, sports writers, fund-raising experts and some English teachers, say that passive sentences are boring. They lack zip. They’re usually lengthier than sentences using active verbs. This more dynamic style engages a different part of the readers’ and hearers’ brains. Sentences with active verbs chemically stimulate more dramatic reactions and responses from readers and hearers.
Writing often this week, for the worship folder, the newsletter and the blog, all this was on my mind while studying Philippians 2:5-11 (held to be an ancient baptismal hymn) and Luke 23:1-49 (a portion of Jesus’ passion). I was struck by different thoughts and feelings when hearing Luke’s story-telling approach to the last days of Jesus, in contrast to the more poetic approach Paul uses when he includes this hymn in his letter. Now that’s no great insight. A storyteller’s style differs, almost by definition, from a poet’s or a song-writer’s method of writing and composing.
The feelings I’m talking about lie deeper than the obvious. Both Luke and Paul’s hymn writer want to provide detail about the same event, the death of Jesus. Luke, though, puts the thoughts and feelings of Jesus in the mouth of Jesus. Once we move past the entry into Jerusalem, where Jesus is clearly in command, we don’t hear much from Jesus himself on Thursday and Friday.
The momentum in Luke’s account, the way he moves the death plot forward, is done by himself as narrator, or by means of his “reporting” the words and feelings of secondary players. Looking at the details, time-lines, and reactions in Luke’s telling makes Jesus seem like a passive character in the grandest adventure of his own story.
The hymn, on the other hand, offers insights that are inferred or surmised from the composer’s thoughts about Jesus in the midst of these events. The composer, then, infuses these reflections onto and into Jesus.
Even though this style has a definite “outside / in” quality, the result is anything but that. Look at how powerful, in control, and decisive the hymn’s Jesus sounds; He:
• did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited
• emptied himself
• took the form of a slave
• humbled himself
• obeyed to the point of death, even death on a cross.
See the difference? The hymn’s Jesus doesn’t look as much like a victim. The hymn’s Jesus is an active agent.
The hymn’s Jesus looks much more like the Good Shepherd Jesus we hear in John 10:14-18: "I am the Good Shepherd. I know my own sheep and my own sheep know me. In the same way, the Father knows me and I know the Father. I put the sheep before myself, sacrificing myself if necessary. You need to know that I have other sheep in addition to those in this pen. I need to gather and bring them, too. They'll also recognize my voice. Then it will be one flock, one Shepherd. This is why the Father loves me: because I freely lay down my life. And so I am free to take it up again. No one takes it from me. I lay it down of my own free will. I have the right to lay it down; I also have the right to take it up again. I received this authority personally from my Father." (The Message).
The hymn helps us see Jesus amidst this death-plot, not as the victim of the wolf, but as the caretaker, guarantor of the sheep’s well-being. The hymn has something to say to the sheep, as well. At the name of Jesus:
• we should bend our knees
• our tongues should confess Jesus as Lord, to the glory of the Father. (Not should, as in command, should as in what logical alternative is there?)
Why am I telling you all this? Because what Paul wrote, what the Bible says is: Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 2:5)
Sometimes, when somebody like me tries to break open a text for folks like you, we both wind up confused. Of course, I think I’m doing a good job when I show you the difference between a bible story and a bible hymn. But it can’t end there. If I leave you thinking that once we’ve sliced and diced these pages what we’re about is only literary criticism, I’ve done you a disservice. Like as not, I’ve committed a sin (missed the mark).
See, these aren’t just words and stories, parables and songs, proverbs and folktales about God. These aren’t even simply the trustworthy accounts of long ago folks’ experiences with God. These are a living God’s word spoken to us here and now.
God means for God’s presence in these words to inflame us and to stir up in us a living, active response to what this God is saying to us in this time and place - in, with, and under these words. As your pastor I want this understanding to be on your minds, in your hearts, at your finger tips, always. I want that for you and for us, especially this week, as together we consider how we will respond to what God does for us, and for the world, by means of Jesus and his cross.
It’s time to get that sorry picture Mel Gibson painted off your radar screen. Of course Jesus suffered, suffered greatly. Of course Jesus’ suffering is for us, that is, has a personal and eternal impact, or effect on us.
Don’t you think that if God thought it important for us to have a picture of the depth and level of Jesus’ physical torture, God’s evangelists would have done that painting? The evangelists don’t avoid the pain and suffering. Neither do they dwell on it. As they tell it, as this early composer sang about it, it’s neither necessary nor sufficient to get stuck in that portrait.
From the beginning, God has rejected revenge. Just prior to expelling Adam and Eve from the garden, for disobedience – that is, not listening to God, look at what God did. God made leather clothing for Adam and his wife and dressed them. (Genesis 3:21, The Message).
It’s not completely right to say we caused that to happen. It’s not accurate to say God needed that to happen to satisfy grievances God had, or has, against us.
What’s truthful to say, and to see, is this. God allowed this to happen. Jesus chose, as in willingly agreed to go along with what God was allowing. God moved this way for us, so we might turn around and begin to live, and move, and have our being inside this same God’s faithfulness and trustworthiness, which sets us free in Jesus.
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. That’s the overriding focus of this Holy Week. That’s what we’ll ponder together on Maundy Thursday, as we wash feet then share bread and wine. That’s what we’ll speak to God for, and listen to God say, on Good Friday.
Here’s what that means, not just for two days out of the year, but for everyday that we say we want to walk as disciples in the footsteps of Jesus and the God who loves him.
• What happens when God’s will is the last thing on your mind and seldom penetrates your heart? When your talk is a cliché and your walk has no cachet.
• What goes on in your life when your relationship with God lacks integrity?
• What overwhelms a country when its citizens believe God blesses them to the exclusion of everyone else?
• What occurs in your world when some crowd catches you up and you’re dragged off course?
• What are the everyday consequences when you’re bought off, for some modern equivalent of 30 pieces of silver?
• What goes down when your religion oppresses and condemns other children of God, in the name of God?
The God who loves Jesus, the Jesus who loves God, tell us over and over, how deeply God loves. They show us, over and over, what lengths God goes, willingly, to embrace passionately even the most raggedy characters our biblical pages describe.
Surely, someone in here looks enough like you to move you to respond to this living God with the loving word God desires to hear from each of us this day: Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven! (Luke 19:37-38)
Friday, March 30, 2007
Relish is Good All Over!
“How can he say that every week, Pastor,” asked a very young woman. She says that each Sunday, after he returns home from church, her boy friend phones. Time after time his elated greeting is, “Theresa, I’m a changed man!”
I resisted the urge to point out that, at their ages, neither she nor he has reached full womanhood, or manhood. That wasn’t a hard task since my sons still ask me what I want to be when I grow up.
“What does he mean going to church makes him a changed man,” she pressed, delight and enchantment radiating from her face. “What do you think he means,” I asked. “Something about hearing God makes him feel good all over.” “Yes,” I said, “All over, and all over again.” The teachable moment evaporated as quickly and unexpectedly as it had arrived. “He’s got a new cell phone too and …”
Both youthful inexperience and over familiarity can do that; lead us to deprive a moment of its rich, hidden, mysterious bounty. Listen to those words: rich; hidden; mysterious; and, bountiful. Those are apt words to describe hearts leaning toward love.
Good words, too, to express hearts drawn on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday to lean toward an Easter Christ – rich, hidden, mysterious, bountiful. Especially apt words for hearts made ready by souls who have observed Lent; eagerly longing become a changed person.
It may have happened. We might even discover that it has happened – if we don’t advance beyond the teachable moment too quickly.
Even if our Lenten “sacrifice” was small: giving up chocolate; withdrawing from caffeine; abandoning alcohol; foregoing snack foods; small can be lovely. Lovely, not merely decorative but lovely, as in enticing, exquisite, indescribably new!
Before we advance through Easter, making that day a mere dietary liberation, spend time relishing in the new person God longs to lead you to become.
What is it about hearing, all over again, God’s moving Jesus from that tomb into our beating heart’s room, that makes you, us, feel good all over, all over again, in ways no dietary reprieve can match?
I resisted the urge to point out that, at their ages, neither she nor he has reached full womanhood, or manhood. That wasn’t a hard task since my sons still ask me what I want to be when I grow up.
“What does he mean going to church makes him a changed man,” she pressed, delight and enchantment radiating from her face. “What do you think he means,” I asked. “Something about hearing God makes him feel good all over.” “Yes,” I said, “All over, and all over again.” The teachable moment evaporated as quickly and unexpectedly as it had arrived. “He’s got a new cell phone too and …”
Both youthful inexperience and over familiarity can do that; lead us to deprive a moment of its rich, hidden, mysterious bounty. Listen to those words: rich; hidden; mysterious; and, bountiful. Those are apt words to describe hearts leaning toward love.
Good words, too, to express hearts drawn on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday to lean toward an Easter Christ – rich, hidden, mysterious, bountiful. Especially apt words for hearts made ready by souls who have observed Lent; eagerly longing become a changed person.
It may have happened. We might even discover that it has happened – if we don’t advance beyond the teachable moment too quickly.
Even if our Lenten “sacrifice” was small: giving up chocolate; withdrawing from caffeine; abandoning alcohol; foregoing snack foods; small can be lovely. Lovely, not merely decorative but lovely, as in enticing, exquisite, indescribably new!
Before we advance through Easter, making that day a mere dietary liberation, spend time relishing in the new person God longs to lead you to become.
What is it about hearing, all over again, God’s moving Jesus from that tomb into our beating heart’s room, that makes you, us, feel good all over, all over again, in ways no dietary reprieve can match?
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Oil Spills Still Change Boundaries
Do you remember hearing that 4 out of 5 dentists recommend Crest toothpaste? I went to the dentist last Tuesday. Here’s my tube of Colgate. There are at least two sides to every story.
When it comes to the story of a woman anointing Jesus, there are at least four stories. Each of the four Gospels has some version of a woman anointing Jesus, either his feet, or his head.
Scholars see different men purported to own the house where the anointing occurs. They notice that the four gospels identify at least two, perhaps three, different women as the anointer. The moral character of these women is also variously described. Variations as to when the anointing happens within the time-frame of Jesus’ ministry are spotted. They observe that in each account, different persons object to what the woman does, as well as to how she does it. Jesus’ retorts / rebukes to the objectors vary.
It would be interesting to compare and contrast these descriptions, but that’s not a good way to preach. Looking back, some of my preaching sounds more like a bible study than a sermon. When that happens, it’s often because I was unwilling to really wrestle with the text at hand.
The story of Jesus’ anointing in John 12:1-8, by Lazarus’ sister, Mary, offers us an opportunity to do some wrestling. Maybe if we do that together, my reluctance won’t get in the way of our meaning making here. Let’s just go with what John tells us, as though this was the only anointing story we have.
Now we’ve met this family twice before. The first time, Luke (10) tells us Jesus ate supper with these folks. That’s when Mary got on Martha’s last nerve by not helping to serve. The second time we encountered them was in John 11.
There we hear Jesus failed to come when the sisters sent word that Lazarus was ill. It’s also there where Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. That happens only after both sisters complain that Lazarus would be alive if Jesus had come when they called. Lazarus exits the tomb after Martha professes that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, but not until she’s reminded Jesus how much Lazarus’ corpse stinks after four days.
That’s a lot of information, but we’re not ready to wrestle yet. I’m almost finished setting up the arena.
So far, we’ve got a high stakes event. You know how weddings and funerals can stress family and friends. Four years later, my brother still reminds me the police came to his daughter’s wedding reception because of a ruckus my son and his date, along with my daughter and another guest, got caught up in. In all honesty, my wife remembers my involvement in that event much differently than I do. Just last Saturday we calmed a family argument before the guests arrived for a funeral repast in the fellowship hall. There’s more tension to notice in Bethany.
This boundary-breaking anointing is sandwiched between the breath-taking statements in John 11:45-54, and in John 12:9-11. The former asserts that the High Priest determined to find a way to have Jesus eliminated, and makes it clear Jesus’ goes into hiding because he perceives the threat. The latter states that Lazarus is also slated for elimination by the authorities. See, added to the strain of this extended family’s gathering, is the anxiety over the fate of the guest(s) of honor? The air is thick with worry. Everyone in the room is vulnerable to its pressure, we along with them. We’re each part of this extended family.
For us, it’s 7 days until Passover, 10 before Good Friday. It matters a whole lot which face, what heart, whose genuine persona we bring, whose authentic character we show to God, at Jesus’ Calvary. Look see who within the frame of this family’s portrait you “take after.” Ready? Wrestle!
Maybe you’re like Mary. So overwhelmed with gratitude to Jesus for restoring her world, it’s as though she and Jesus are alone in the universe. In that newly enlivened space she acts with complete abandon. She lavishes on Jesus oil priced at a year’s wages. Discarding proper social customs she lets down her hair in public and takes up a servant’s role. Despite the cost to her station and her reputation, she is extravagant with her reverence for Jesus. Will these be the days when, wordlessly, you act out your praise? What would that look like?
Maybe days like these, when God shows up so clearly, brings out the Judas in you. You can never really decide which of, at least, three faces to reveal:
• There’s that part of you who says a whole lot about what everything costs, but can’t talk at all about what anything is really worth
• You’ve also got a face that’s been involved, outwardly, in all sorts of religious enterprises, but you’re only participating for what you can take
• Then, too, there’s the part of you who goes through all the motions with no real feeling, no connection, no attachment.
Will these finally be the days when you receive and relish in the identity, relatedness, and belonging God gives you, for free?
Could be you’re like Martha. Like always, she’s serving. No pot banging at this meal. She’s shown up. She just can’t show out. God’s coming near gets her attention, but not her focus. God’s favor gets her concentration, but not her consideration. Nothing changes Martha. Martha remains Martha. The burdensome work remains hers to do, no matter how much Jesus relieves her of her heavy lifting. Might these, for once, be the days when you meet Jesus hands-free? Maybe now, seeing Jesus doing a new thing, in you and for you, instead of saying, “Much obliged, and let me get right to that,” you’ll sit at his feet, where you’re neither busy nor idle, but simply basking in the love that flows from him, to you.
There are at least two sides to every story. I met a man the other day that, on hearing that I pastor a church, said, “Well, Jesus is my savior.” I said, “That’s cool. I don’t look good on wood.” Four out of five pastors will be glad to tell you what you have to do to be saved. I simply want to remind you, as we wrestle with this text, who we promised to be, and what we pledged to do, whenever it was that God’s Holy Spirit called us together.
We promised to be honest to God. We pledged to join God in creating, saving, and blessing the whole world. We agreed we’d lean on one another. We covenanted to be open to the new things God has in mind for us to be and to do. We said we’d forgive each other. We vowed to welcome the changes, personally and communally, God’s coming in just these ways brings to us and for us.
Let these be the days when our commitments to God and to one another fill the air with the rich fragrance of our servant-pouring.
When it comes to the story of a woman anointing Jesus, there are at least four stories. Each of the four Gospels has some version of a woman anointing Jesus, either his feet, or his head.
Scholars see different men purported to own the house where the anointing occurs. They notice that the four gospels identify at least two, perhaps three, different women as the anointer. The moral character of these women is also variously described. Variations as to when the anointing happens within the time-frame of Jesus’ ministry are spotted. They observe that in each account, different persons object to what the woman does, as well as to how she does it. Jesus’ retorts / rebukes to the objectors vary.
It would be interesting to compare and contrast these descriptions, but that’s not a good way to preach. Looking back, some of my preaching sounds more like a bible study than a sermon. When that happens, it’s often because I was unwilling to really wrestle with the text at hand.
The story of Jesus’ anointing in John 12:1-8, by Lazarus’ sister, Mary, offers us an opportunity to do some wrestling. Maybe if we do that together, my reluctance won’t get in the way of our meaning making here. Let’s just go with what John tells us, as though this was the only anointing story we have.
Now we’ve met this family twice before. The first time, Luke (10) tells us Jesus ate supper with these folks. That’s when Mary got on Martha’s last nerve by not helping to serve. The second time we encountered them was in John 11.
There we hear Jesus failed to come when the sisters sent word that Lazarus was ill. It’s also there where Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. That happens only after both sisters complain that Lazarus would be alive if Jesus had come when they called. Lazarus exits the tomb after Martha professes that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, but not until she’s reminded Jesus how much Lazarus’ corpse stinks after four days.
That’s a lot of information, but we’re not ready to wrestle yet. I’m almost finished setting up the arena.
So far, we’ve got a high stakes event. You know how weddings and funerals can stress family and friends. Four years later, my brother still reminds me the police came to his daughter’s wedding reception because of a ruckus my son and his date, along with my daughter and another guest, got caught up in. In all honesty, my wife remembers my involvement in that event much differently than I do. Just last Saturday we calmed a family argument before the guests arrived for a funeral repast in the fellowship hall. There’s more tension to notice in Bethany.
This boundary-breaking anointing is sandwiched between the breath-taking statements in John 11:45-54, and in John 12:9-11. The former asserts that the High Priest determined to find a way to have Jesus eliminated, and makes it clear Jesus’ goes into hiding because he perceives the threat. The latter states that Lazarus is also slated for elimination by the authorities. See, added to the strain of this extended family’s gathering, is the anxiety over the fate of the guest(s) of honor? The air is thick with worry. Everyone in the room is vulnerable to its pressure, we along with them. We’re each part of this extended family.
For us, it’s 7 days until Passover, 10 before Good Friday. It matters a whole lot which face, what heart, whose genuine persona we bring, whose authentic character we show to God, at Jesus’ Calvary. Look see who within the frame of this family’s portrait you “take after.” Ready? Wrestle!
Maybe you’re like Mary. So overwhelmed with gratitude to Jesus for restoring her world, it’s as though she and Jesus are alone in the universe. In that newly enlivened space she acts with complete abandon. She lavishes on Jesus oil priced at a year’s wages. Discarding proper social customs she lets down her hair in public and takes up a servant’s role. Despite the cost to her station and her reputation, she is extravagant with her reverence for Jesus. Will these be the days when, wordlessly, you act out your praise? What would that look like?
Maybe days like these, when God shows up so clearly, brings out the Judas in you. You can never really decide which of, at least, three faces to reveal:
• There’s that part of you who says a whole lot about what everything costs, but can’t talk at all about what anything is really worth
• You’ve also got a face that’s been involved, outwardly, in all sorts of religious enterprises, but you’re only participating for what you can take
• Then, too, there’s the part of you who goes through all the motions with no real feeling, no connection, no attachment.
Will these finally be the days when you receive and relish in the identity, relatedness, and belonging God gives you, for free?
Could be you’re like Martha. Like always, she’s serving. No pot banging at this meal. She’s shown up. She just can’t show out. God’s coming near gets her attention, but not her focus. God’s favor gets her concentration, but not her consideration. Nothing changes Martha. Martha remains Martha. The burdensome work remains hers to do, no matter how much Jesus relieves her of her heavy lifting. Might these, for once, be the days when you meet Jesus hands-free? Maybe now, seeing Jesus doing a new thing, in you and for you, instead of saying, “Much obliged, and let me get right to that,” you’ll sit at his feet, where you’re neither busy nor idle, but simply basking in the love that flows from him, to you.
There are at least two sides to every story. I met a man the other day that, on hearing that I pastor a church, said, “Well, Jesus is my savior.” I said, “That’s cool. I don’t look good on wood.” Four out of five pastors will be glad to tell you what you have to do to be saved. I simply want to remind you, as we wrestle with this text, who we promised to be, and what we pledged to do, whenever it was that God’s Holy Spirit called us together.
We promised to be honest to God. We pledged to join God in creating, saving, and blessing the whole world. We agreed we’d lean on one another. We covenanted to be open to the new things God has in mind for us to be and to do. We said we’d forgive each other. We vowed to welcome the changes, personally and communally, God’s coming in just these ways brings to us and for us.
Let these be the days when our commitments to God and to one another fill the air with the rich fragrance of our servant-pouring.
Friday, March 23, 2007
General Pace's Moral Compass - Missing in Action!
General Peter Pace, like his commander-in-chief, is leading us toward a slippery slope. Among other misnomers, the General’s assertion that the U.S. military ought not to “say,” by its policies that it “condones” immoral behavior flies in the face of the military’s new recruitment standards. The General’s moral compass seems to lack a “true” North.
MSNBC reports that upwards of 13,000 first-time Army recruits were accepted under waivers for various medical, moral or criminal problems. Thirty-eight percent of the waivers granted were for medical problems.
It’s interesting that General Pace is concerned about unit cohesion and combat readiness issues when it comes to including professed homosexuals in the ranks, but is not concerned to field units which include those arrested for misdemeanors. As a combat veteran, I do not recall feeling threatened by those colleagues who identified themselves as homosexual, even when their identity became clear, seductively. I do remember, though, feeling threatened on more than one occasion by some fellow-combatants whose criminal histories were less than stellar.
Of special concern, here, is the General’s assertion that the beliefs he expressed to the editorial board of The Chicago Tribune were personal, not reflective of U.S. military policy. Rather, his beliefs are informed by his faith in God, as a Roman Catholic.
Brought up in the Roman church, I recall that much of what our civil society calls illegal, that for which one might face arrest and conviction on a misdemeanor charge, is also immoral and, also likely, sinful. Moreover, in some Roman quarters, knowingly placing another in harm’s way, by an unrepentant sinner, is also immoral and, quite likely, sinful.
General Pace’s selective moral enforcement is more than baffling and beyond troubling. It’s scary.
Does the General consult with the Roman U.S. Military Vicariate before recommending promotions of military personnel who are divorced and remarried? Does it matter, for the sake of promotion and command, that divorced and remarried personnel are themselves Roman Catholic or not?
Can a divorced and remarried commander-in-chief, or one convicted of a misdemeanor, according to the General’s moral compass, issue the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs lawful orders. Could a Mormon, someone who clearly affiliates with a non-Christian sect, command General Pace’s decision-making? How are the General’s personal beliefs impacting orders to military commanders and chaplains? These seem, rather, to be all over the map!
I must have missed the General's interpretaiton of the Roman Church's take on the just war theory. Martin Luther had much to say about the possibility of a “soldier’s being saved.” He also taught much about the Two Kingdoms (left and right hand of God). All that’s much too complex for this piece.
The General, like all of us who profess faith in the God of Jesus Christ, are called to bring life and faith together. We live in the world, allegedly, not of the world. We occupy roles. Sometimes the roles shape us. Sometimes we shape the roles.
Living into our baptismal roles, and living out of the promises to us God offers to the baptized, is a tall order. Sometimes our religious affiliations and denominations help us make that happen. Other times they’re not much help at all.
As we approach the time of year when Christians recall God’s most incredible “for us” at Calvary, it’s helpful for all of us, in general, to remember Jesus’ words at that Sermon on the Plain, found in Luke 6: 35-36 "I tell you, love your enemies. Help and give without expecting a return. You'll never—I promise—regret it. Live out this God-created identity the way our Father lives toward us, generously and graciously, even when we're at our worst. Our Father is kind; you be kind. 37-38 "Don't pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults— unless, of course, you want the same treatment. Don't condemn those who are down; that hardness can boomerang. Be easy on people; you'll find life a lot easier. Give away your life; you'll find life given back, but not merely given back—given back with bonus and blessing. Giving, not getting, is the way. Generosity begets generosity." (The Message)
As a wise Roman priest once asked my fretting Lutheran pastor’s heart, “Do you know anyone for whom the blood of Jesus was not shed?” That moral compass has always guided me true.
MSNBC reports that upwards of 13,000 first-time Army recruits were accepted under waivers for various medical, moral or criminal problems. Thirty-eight percent of the waivers granted were for medical problems.
It’s interesting that General Pace is concerned about unit cohesion and combat readiness issues when it comes to including professed homosexuals in the ranks, but is not concerned to field units which include those arrested for misdemeanors. As a combat veteran, I do not recall feeling threatened by those colleagues who identified themselves as homosexual, even when their identity became clear, seductively. I do remember, though, feeling threatened on more than one occasion by some fellow-combatants whose criminal histories were less than stellar.
Of special concern, here, is the General’s assertion that the beliefs he expressed to the editorial board of The Chicago Tribune were personal, not reflective of U.S. military policy. Rather, his beliefs are informed by his faith in God, as a Roman Catholic.
Brought up in the Roman church, I recall that much of what our civil society calls illegal, that for which one might face arrest and conviction on a misdemeanor charge, is also immoral and, also likely, sinful. Moreover, in some Roman quarters, knowingly placing another in harm’s way, by an unrepentant sinner, is also immoral and, quite likely, sinful.
General Pace’s selective moral enforcement is more than baffling and beyond troubling. It’s scary.
Does the General consult with the Roman U.S. Military Vicariate before recommending promotions of military personnel who are divorced and remarried? Does it matter, for the sake of promotion and command, that divorced and remarried personnel are themselves Roman Catholic or not?
Can a divorced and remarried commander-in-chief, or one convicted of a misdemeanor, according to the General’s moral compass, issue the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs lawful orders. Could a Mormon, someone who clearly affiliates with a non-Christian sect, command General Pace’s decision-making? How are the General’s personal beliefs impacting orders to military commanders and chaplains? These seem, rather, to be all over the map!
I must have missed the General's interpretaiton of the Roman Church's take on the just war theory. Martin Luther had much to say about the possibility of a “soldier’s being saved.” He also taught much about the Two Kingdoms (left and right hand of God). All that’s much too complex for this piece.
The General, like all of us who profess faith in the God of Jesus Christ, are called to bring life and faith together. We live in the world, allegedly, not of the world. We occupy roles. Sometimes the roles shape us. Sometimes we shape the roles.
Living into our baptismal roles, and living out of the promises to us God offers to the baptized, is a tall order. Sometimes our religious affiliations and denominations help us make that happen. Other times they’re not much help at all.
As we approach the time of year when Christians recall God’s most incredible “for us” at Calvary, it’s helpful for all of us, in general, to remember Jesus’ words at that Sermon on the Plain, found in Luke 6: 35-36 "I tell you, love your enemies. Help and give without expecting a return. You'll never—I promise—regret it. Live out this God-created identity the way our Father lives toward us, generously and graciously, even when we're at our worst. Our Father is kind; you be kind. 37-38 "Don't pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults— unless, of course, you want the same treatment. Don't condemn those who are down; that hardness can boomerang. Be easy on people; you'll find life a lot easier. Give away your life; you'll find life given back, but not merely given back—given back with bonus and blessing. Giving, not getting, is the way. Generosity begets generosity." (The Message)
As a wise Roman priest once asked my fretting Lutheran pastor’s heart, “Do you know anyone for whom the blood of Jesus was not shed?” That moral compass has always guided me true.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Check Out This Chick-Flick
After a funeral this past Tuesday, I ate lunch with one of the many ministers in attendance. This man has served a large, urban congregation for decades. We were talking shop. I asked him if he’s heard more pastors preaching a so-called Gospel of prosperity, over Jesus’ Gospel of the kingdom of God.
As our conversation continued, we became more passionate. We were sure that we preach Jesus, crucified and raised. We congratulated ourselves for keeping a cross in our worship spaces. We applauded each other for keeping national and denominational flags out of them. We consoled each other for feeling inept at reaching out to 20 and 30 something generations.
Just as I began wondering if we were sounding a little too righteous, my companion shared this. He said a local casino sent letters to all the pastors, offering each a free overnight stay, as well as $1,000 in chips. Then he said, “I will never be seen in casino.”
It wasn’t until much later in the day when I asked myself, “Did he mean he’ll never go and gamble, or did he mean he won’t go gamble at a site where someone who knows him might see him?” Was his statement sincere; “I won’t be seen because I’ll never be in one”? Or is he a hypocrite? I’ll never know; neither will you.
Sometimes, when a story’s ending doesn’t satisfy, we become irritated. Other times, a story’s disappointing ending causes us to discard the story all together. Then, there are those story’s whose inadequate end captures our imaginations as we mull over a variety of preferred, or more desirable, endings.
Jesus’ open, seemingly unfinished ending to the parable we call the prodigal son still catches most hearers up short (See Luke 15:1-3; 11b-32). That often results in some over analysis of both the story’s beginning, and / or a solitary focus on the story’s three main movements, the:
• younger son’s awakening
• watching father’s grace-filled, unconditional embrace
• charged language used by the older brother to his father.
Following an insight I’ve borrowed from Sharon H. Ringe, a Professor of New Testament at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D. C., let’s take a different tack. First, though, it should be noted that scholars who are women frequently offer biblical interpretations which are out of the main – if main is taken as the male-dominated historical-critical methodology that grew out of the German Enlightenment. This is a true blessing to the church.
As an aside, here’s a quick primer on the distinction between male and female scholarship. In her pioneering research, Carol Gilligan contrasted the moral development of females with that of males in her work, In a Different Voice. She observed that boys’ games, e.g., sand-lot baseball, purposed around competition and rule-keeping. Girls’ games, on the other hand, e.g., jacks, seemed to purpose around a way to “pass time” as these females focused on broadening and deepening their emotional relationship. (Sure hope I don’t sound like a candidate for the presidency of Harvard, here!)
Dr. Ringe’s insight – that is the only piece with which I’m familiar – is in re-naming this parable The Parable of the Beloved Brothers. My interpretation of Luke’s parable is based, principally, on that title. Errors in interpretation / understanding, then, are solely my own, and ought not to reflect on Dr. Ringe.
Male dominated scholarship frames the parable of the prodigal son within a win / lose dynamic. The plot line’s thrust is competitive. The story’s conclusion lends itself either to victory / surrender, or to a mano a mano standoff.
Hearing the story as the parable of the beloved brothers gives us a chance to redirect our own meaning-making efforts. At one level, nothing changes. The characters are the same. Their actions are constant and consistent. The conclusion is still abrupt, and, to some, less than satisfying.
At another level, Dr. Ringe’s re-naming changes everything. The sudden, nasty request by the younger son that his father “drops dead” and hand over the inheritance alludes to a prior and perhaps long-standing family strain. The boy’s dissolute living may be his effort to “buy” the affiliation and belonging he had at home, rather than a groin-oriented plot to sow his wild oats. His planned confession may be less belly-focused narcissism and more a parley with himself to restore relationship with his family.
The father’s reaction, “filled with compassion” draws us to realize that the Hebrew equivalent of this word is womb. The father re-wombs the younger son and so has no need to hear the confession, which, then, remains unspoken.
In the parable of the beloved brothers, the feast has all the trappings of a wedding feast, an experience wherein the prior stories of distinct families are entwined in the present and fashion momentum toward a new future. It’s only in the parable of the prodigal son that the feast resembles a “victory lap.”
Onto the scene arrives the elder brother. He’s carrying not only the fatigue of today’s burden, but the long-held resentment of days gone by. His distancing language, “this son of yours,” reveals all the angry baggage of someone who’s played by the rules, but lost the game to a cheater.
For his part, the wombing father speaks the same words, using the same endearing tone which brought new life to his “dead” younger son.
The story’s conclusion poses two theological challenges. That is, two opportunities for us to change our minds about who God is and how God works.
First, the parable of the beloved brothers forces us to admit that our understanding of sin, grace, repentance and forgiveness are really quite shallow.
We like to construct a world that says: God likes to forgive. I like to sin. Therefore, borrowing from Louis Armstrong, we sin, what a wonderful world!
We tend to see sin as rule-breaking, law-breaking. In Greek, the word is “missing the mark.” Not hitting the bull’s eye means something else gets hit. The result of sin is deep and broad breaches. The affects of sin are anguish, brokenness, grief and pain – within our self, among our relationships, and amidst the Godhead.
In our equation, grace becomes what an offender is owed, by a gracious God. Repentance, then, is a quick, “I’m sorry.”
Forgiveness is a reward for an apology, usually doled out with no small measure of wariness. Our forgiveness is often cunningly disguised revenge. It’s frequently dispensed with a shrug that sweeps an offense under the rug of political correctness, or tolerance.
The second challenge / opportunity the parable of the beloved brothers poses, besides exposing the cyclical nature of our life under the first challenge, is to say that with this God, in this God’s Christ, the past does not need to prescribe the future.
Sin is no longer about laws, shoulds / shouldn’ts, it’s about our being who God wants us to be, or who we choose to be when we determine to take God’s place.
Grace is about God’s own yearning and yawning when God experiences our absence. Grace is the movement of God to reconnect with us, before we apologize.
Repentance is our coming-around-to, our turning-toward, our changing from “me is god,” to God is God, as a result of God graceful wombing.
Forgiveness, then, is not about no longer remembering. Forgiveness – since it’s offered before apology or repentance - becomes, we’ll (God and us) move into a new future where we re-member, as in reconnect, reattach.
The “unsatisfying” ending we experience is the only plausible ending for the parable of the beloved brothers. It’s the only conclusion that reveals the open-endedness of the Kingdom of God.
This ending is the only accurate representation of the life-giving, freedom-bringing, home-making God (Walter Bureggemann) that accounts for the compassionate / wombing God that Jesus knew. This ending is the only comprehensive portrayal of the costly grace that’s faithful to the breaking-open, pouring-out Jesus’ sacrifice for us.
This ending is the end of my story, your story, and everyone’s story – beyond our wildest dreams. But you already knew that’s how it ends.
As our conversation continued, we became more passionate. We were sure that we preach Jesus, crucified and raised. We congratulated ourselves for keeping a cross in our worship spaces. We applauded each other for keeping national and denominational flags out of them. We consoled each other for feeling inept at reaching out to 20 and 30 something generations.
Just as I began wondering if we were sounding a little too righteous, my companion shared this. He said a local casino sent letters to all the pastors, offering each a free overnight stay, as well as $1,000 in chips. Then he said, “I will never be seen in casino.”
It wasn’t until much later in the day when I asked myself, “Did he mean he’ll never go and gamble, or did he mean he won’t go gamble at a site where someone who knows him might see him?” Was his statement sincere; “I won’t be seen because I’ll never be in one”? Or is he a hypocrite? I’ll never know; neither will you.
Sometimes, when a story’s ending doesn’t satisfy, we become irritated. Other times, a story’s disappointing ending causes us to discard the story all together. Then, there are those story’s whose inadequate end captures our imaginations as we mull over a variety of preferred, or more desirable, endings.
Jesus’ open, seemingly unfinished ending to the parable we call the prodigal son still catches most hearers up short (See Luke 15:1-3; 11b-32). That often results in some over analysis of both the story’s beginning, and / or a solitary focus on the story’s three main movements, the:
• younger son’s awakening
• watching father’s grace-filled, unconditional embrace
• charged language used by the older brother to his father.
Following an insight I’ve borrowed from Sharon H. Ringe, a Professor of New Testament at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D. C., let’s take a different tack. First, though, it should be noted that scholars who are women frequently offer biblical interpretations which are out of the main – if main is taken as the male-dominated historical-critical methodology that grew out of the German Enlightenment. This is a true blessing to the church.
As an aside, here’s a quick primer on the distinction between male and female scholarship. In her pioneering research, Carol Gilligan contrasted the moral development of females with that of males in her work, In a Different Voice. She observed that boys’ games, e.g., sand-lot baseball, purposed around competition and rule-keeping. Girls’ games, on the other hand, e.g., jacks, seemed to purpose around a way to “pass time” as these females focused on broadening and deepening their emotional relationship. (Sure hope I don’t sound like a candidate for the presidency of Harvard, here!)
Dr. Ringe’s insight – that is the only piece with which I’m familiar – is in re-naming this parable The Parable of the Beloved Brothers. My interpretation of Luke’s parable is based, principally, on that title. Errors in interpretation / understanding, then, are solely my own, and ought not to reflect on Dr. Ringe.
Male dominated scholarship frames the parable of the prodigal son within a win / lose dynamic. The plot line’s thrust is competitive. The story’s conclusion lends itself either to victory / surrender, or to a mano a mano standoff.
Hearing the story as the parable of the beloved brothers gives us a chance to redirect our own meaning-making efforts. At one level, nothing changes. The characters are the same. Their actions are constant and consistent. The conclusion is still abrupt, and, to some, less than satisfying.
At another level, Dr. Ringe’s re-naming changes everything. The sudden, nasty request by the younger son that his father “drops dead” and hand over the inheritance alludes to a prior and perhaps long-standing family strain. The boy’s dissolute living may be his effort to “buy” the affiliation and belonging he had at home, rather than a groin-oriented plot to sow his wild oats. His planned confession may be less belly-focused narcissism and more a parley with himself to restore relationship with his family.
The father’s reaction, “filled with compassion” draws us to realize that the Hebrew equivalent of this word is womb. The father re-wombs the younger son and so has no need to hear the confession, which, then, remains unspoken.
In the parable of the beloved brothers, the feast has all the trappings of a wedding feast, an experience wherein the prior stories of distinct families are entwined in the present and fashion momentum toward a new future. It’s only in the parable of the prodigal son that the feast resembles a “victory lap.”
Onto the scene arrives the elder brother. He’s carrying not only the fatigue of today’s burden, but the long-held resentment of days gone by. His distancing language, “this son of yours,” reveals all the angry baggage of someone who’s played by the rules, but lost the game to a cheater.
For his part, the wombing father speaks the same words, using the same endearing tone which brought new life to his “dead” younger son.
The story’s conclusion poses two theological challenges. That is, two opportunities for us to change our minds about who God is and how God works.
First, the parable of the beloved brothers forces us to admit that our understanding of sin, grace, repentance and forgiveness are really quite shallow.
We like to construct a world that says: God likes to forgive. I like to sin. Therefore, borrowing from Louis Armstrong, we sin, what a wonderful world!
We tend to see sin as rule-breaking, law-breaking. In Greek, the word is “missing the mark.” Not hitting the bull’s eye means something else gets hit. The result of sin is deep and broad breaches. The affects of sin are anguish, brokenness, grief and pain – within our self, among our relationships, and amidst the Godhead.
In our equation, grace becomes what an offender is owed, by a gracious God. Repentance, then, is a quick, “I’m sorry.”
Forgiveness is a reward for an apology, usually doled out with no small measure of wariness. Our forgiveness is often cunningly disguised revenge. It’s frequently dispensed with a shrug that sweeps an offense under the rug of political correctness, or tolerance.
The second challenge / opportunity the parable of the beloved brothers poses, besides exposing the cyclical nature of our life under the first challenge, is to say that with this God, in this God’s Christ, the past does not need to prescribe the future.
Sin is no longer about laws, shoulds / shouldn’ts, it’s about our being who God wants us to be, or who we choose to be when we determine to take God’s place.
Grace is about God’s own yearning and yawning when God experiences our absence. Grace is the movement of God to reconnect with us, before we apologize.
Repentance is our coming-around-to, our turning-toward, our changing from “me is god,” to God is God, as a result of God graceful wombing.
Forgiveness, then, is not about no longer remembering. Forgiveness – since it’s offered before apology or repentance - becomes, we’ll (God and us) move into a new future where we re-member, as in reconnect, reattach.
The “unsatisfying” ending we experience is the only plausible ending for the parable of the beloved brothers. It’s the only conclusion that reveals the open-endedness of the Kingdom of God.
This ending is the only accurate representation of the life-giving, freedom-bringing, home-making God (Walter Bureggemann) that accounts for the compassionate / wombing God that Jesus knew. This ending is the only comprehensive portrayal of the costly grace that’s faithful to the breaking-open, pouring-out Jesus’ sacrifice for us.
This ending is the end of my story, your story, and everyone’s story – beyond our wildest dreams. But you already knew that’s how it ends.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Trademark Infringement and March Madness
So what event do you know that can weave together so many great myths, like: Cinderella; David and Goliath; and, Shootout at the OK Corral? By the way, Dan Rather had it wrong. Myth doesn't mean "baloney," or worse. It's a technical word that defines a story as one which tells a peoples' shared truth in such a compelling way, those people make their meaning by living inside that story.
For many people, the NCAA's March Madness is such a story. Though half-time episode or time-out interlude might be more accurate words, the NCAA believes enough of us choose to live inside their March Madness they've trademarked that name! Many of us recall a time when people shared common language, experiences, customs and traditions. Often these were ethnic, and sometimes religious. Whatever their roots, we were introduced into them by our elders. We wove them together with our own interpretations. Then we passed these "latest and greatest" versions, as the shared stories we lived by, to our children.
Those stories seemed huge: large enough to hold onto the most long ago past; enormous enough to embrace each energizing and enervating present; and, expansive enough to encompass the most enormous dreams for every far distant future. It's truly a smaller, greedier, more selfish world that breeds a three-week myth, involving only sixty-five teams made up of 15 players, each - one winner 64 losers.
There is another March Madness story (which this year we celebrate in early April) that still speaks to our fiercest memories, our deepest fears in the present, our worst nightmares for the future, and our shared anxieties about death. Some folks still claim to live inside this story. Others, exclusive marketers, have trademarked the Gospel's liberating declarations and compelling claims about the meaning of Christ. They pirate the story of Jesus’ breaking-open passion and rename it “possibility.” They curtail the story of Jesus’ pouring-out cross and call it “prosperity.”
Why else would the world drink in stories that don't end our thirst for meaning, and dine on stories that can't nourish the next generation's present or sustain any future?
We'll spend some time of a Sunday, as well as a Thursday and Friday evening, then another Sunday re-membering, re-telling, re-entering and re-living a maddeningly, captivating story, and asking God to reposition us right into the middle of its still unfolding, life-giving plot.
It's the mythic story of one apparent loser who, by God’s grace-filled “for us,” makes winners of us all. That's no baloney. And it won't infringe on any trademark if we share the march toward its inclusive madness with you, too!
For many people, the NCAA's March Madness is such a story. Though half-time episode or time-out interlude might be more accurate words, the NCAA believes enough of us choose to live inside their March Madness they've trademarked that name! Many of us recall a time when people shared common language, experiences, customs and traditions. Often these were ethnic, and sometimes religious. Whatever their roots, we were introduced into them by our elders. We wove them together with our own interpretations. Then we passed these "latest and greatest" versions, as the shared stories we lived by, to our children.
Those stories seemed huge: large enough to hold onto the most long ago past; enormous enough to embrace each energizing and enervating present; and, expansive enough to encompass the most enormous dreams for every far distant future. It's truly a smaller, greedier, more selfish world that breeds a three-week myth, involving only sixty-five teams made up of 15 players, each - one winner 64 losers.
There is another March Madness story (which this year we celebrate in early April) that still speaks to our fiercest memories, our deepest fears in the present, our worst nightmares for the future, and our shared anxieties about death. Some folks still claim to live inside this story. Others, exclusive marketers, have trademarked the Gospel's liberating declarations and compelling claims about the meaning of Christ. They pirate the story of Jesus’ breaking-open passion and rename it “possibility.” They curtail the story of Jesus’ pouring-out cross and call it “prosperity.”
Why else would the world drink in stories that don't end our thirst for meaning, and dine on stories that can't nourish the next generation's present or sustain any future?
We'll spend some time of a Sunday, as well as a Thursday and Friday evening, then another Sunday re-membering, re-telling, re-entering and re-living a maddeningly, captivating story, and asking God to reposition us right into the middle of its still unfolding, life-giving plot.
It's the mythic story of one apparent loser who, by God’s grace-filled “for us,” makes winners of us all. That's no baloney. And it won't infringe on any trademark if we share the march toward its inclusive madness with you, too!
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