Don't Leave the Room, Leave Room

3-8-20

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

During my reading week, I read Barbara Brown Taylor’s newest book called Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others. Taylor is an Episcopalian Priest turned Religion Professor at a small liberal arts college in rural Georgia. While teaching her Religion 101 course, she and her students would have may adventures learning about Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and in the process, Taylor – the professor – ended up learning a much deeper and wider appreciation the central tenants of her own faith.

And really, what can be more central to our Christian faith than the words of “John 3:16”? Plastered on bracelets and billboards, quoted over an over again until we have heard it so much we have no idea what it means… sort of like when, as a kid, I would say the same word over and over again until my brain could no longer process it, and instead my ears only heard meaningless syllables.

John 3:16 John 3:16 John 3:16 John 3:16 John 3:16 John 3:16 John 3:16 John 3:16

You see what I mean?

But of course, John 3:16 DOES mean something… it is the verse-identifier of one of, if not THE MOST memorable and memorized verse in the Bible. When you hear “John 3:16,” you all know that this is shorthand for (say it with me) “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

But sometimes the shorthand gets in the way of the words themselves. Before today, did you know remember this is a quote of Jesus? And that he’s taking to someone else? did you remember that this is part of a conversation? John, of course, is the book of the Bible this quote comes from (one of the four Gospels, at the beginning of our New Testament, to be specific)…. Coming from the third chapter of this book, and in particular the 16^th verse in this chapter. We forget that there are other verses in this chapter, others chapters in this book, and other books in the Bible.

We remember this verse but forget the situation this happened in – for this, we might actually feel sorry for poor Nicodemus. In Holy Envy, Barbara Brown Taylor also feels bad for poor Nick – I’m going to call him Nick - And devotes a whole chapter in her book to talk about him, because of how his silence has been used against him throughout the ages.  He was left in the dark, both literally and figuratively. In other words, he’s “Nick at Night.”

But why is it that he come by night – was it to be hidden and not seen by others? We often interpret his behavior as embarrassment or secrecy. But maybe he came by night because it’s a better time to talk about important things. How often is it easier to talk about deep matters by candlelight, or the flickering of a campfire, than it is to talk under florescence lights, or by the bright light of full daylight?

Nick does not begin his conversation with Jesus by being on the offensive. His first volley is not attack, but praise – “we know you are close to God” he says. But “Poor Nick” is a literalist. He does not know that he is in John’s Gospel, where nothing is ever (only) as it seems.” (164) In the Gospel of John, Jesus loves to speak in loaded language. Water is never just water, bread is not just bread, and night and day mean so much more than where the sun is located in the sky. And birth is not just your everyday, contraction-filled, counting the dilated centimeters – type birth.

No one enters this life without being born from a mother, and similarly no one enters the kingdom without this birth from the Holy Spirit. But what was so mind-blowing to hear for Nick at the time has become rote for us hearing these astonishing words from Jesus two thousand years later. Christians in the twenty-first century throw around the term “born again” much like we throw around “John 3:16.”

Barbara Brown Taylor, in her holy quest to dig deeper, further wonders: but “What if [Jesus’] purpose is not to enlighten Nick but to endarken him…” and to remind him of the limits of what we humans presume to know about God. 

Nick’s problem then becomes not that he DOES NOT know… (sorry that was a lot of nots!) … but the fact that he thinks he SHOULD know.  His fault wasn’t his unbelief or his lack of faith. His fault was placing too much faith in the wrong thing – the confidence of his own knowledge of the divine, rather than being open to the workings of the Holy Spirit and the unknowing that she brings. He expects an answer from Jesus, and instead gets a whole big mystery.

“As far as I can tell, the only things Nick did wrong on the night he met with Jesus was to leave the room.” Taylor asserts. I would add, he also didn’t “leave room.” Nick’s un-knowing made him uncomfortable. If only he had leaned into and made room for his discomfort a little bit longer.

All this birth talk in reference to God and conversations about the Holy Spirit makes us uncomfortable too. Barbara Brown Taylor goes as far as to claim, “If I am born of HER (the holy spirit), she is my mother…. She comes, she goes. She gives life to all creation.” The Holy Spirit is beyond our control. She causes us to bump unto people we wouldn’t normally be in contact with. She drops us off in unexpected places to experience new and different ways of being in the world.

We don’t get to choose how and when we were born, and if you have ever experienced pregnancy, you probably are aware of a profound loss of control over your own body. Perhaps had Nick been a woman or a mother, he may have heard these words from Jesus – and felt the movements of the Holy Spirit – a little bit more clearly or receptively. Birthing is hard, and being born is hard. The light blinds our brand-new eyes, and we are expected to breath in a whole new way we aren’t used to. There is a reason that they say the first few months of life are like a “4^th Trimester”… it takes a while for us to get used to the unexpectedness of being born… and perhaps if we had been giving a choice, we might opt to stay in that womb forever.

But the Spirit is persistent… much like the voice that Elsa is haunted by in Frozen 2 while her life seems to have finally settled down into some sort of version of normal after her adventures in the previous movie. Though the signature song of Frozen 2 is certainly no “Let it Go,” we can all relate to Elsa’s reluctance to give up all the good, stable life around her – to stay in her safe, comfortable, predictable sphere. She doesn’t want to hear it; she doesn’t want to know more… because it will change things.

 Similarly, Nick might say to Jesus if Nick were a Disney princess in a Disney movie, he might sing along with Elsa: “You're not a voice, you're just a ringing in my ear. And if I heard you, which I don't, I'm spoken for, I fear… I've had my adventure, I don't need something new, I'm afraid of what I'm risking if I follow you, into the unknown ...”

Except that… Nick DOES HEAR that call again… and he does come back into the story after he fades away. At the end of the Gospel of John, after Jesus has died and is about to be buried, there he is, ready and waiting, burial spices in hand. Together, with Joseph of Arimathea, these two men carefully wrapped Jesus’ body and prepared it for burial, a task that was normally relegated to women. In a way then, these two men also prepared Jesus for his rebirth… his birth from above, his resurrection. These men labored, not knowing for sure what would be next, as they laid his body in the darkness of a tomb…. That in the end, became more like a womb for the new life about to arrive.

I might summarize Barbara Brown Taylor’s whole book using a quote from this chapter on Nick: “Once you have given up knowing who is right, it is easy to see neighbors everywhere you look.”  Something new is at work being born in us… with the Holy Spirit as our midwife. Sometimes its going to feel uncomfortable, and it might even be painful. But it is in the service of making room - making room for the work of the Holy Spirit, making room for the new thing that is to come, making room for all people to be welcome. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Red Light, Green Light, Lent Light

3-1-20

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and savior Jesus the Christ, by the power of the holy spirit, amen.

On my way to Trinity Wednesday night for our joint Ash Wednesday worship, I got stuck at the light on the corner of Old Dublin Pike and Main Street. As the stop lights cycled through for everyone else multiple times, the light for the straight lane – the one I was in - stayed red…I started to worry as the time grew later and later. I still had to stop here to grab my alb and stole. I worried that Pastor Nancy would wonder where I was. I had to ask myself – am still supposed to be a rule-abiding citizen, even when it seems like the rules are not working properly? Just as I was about to give up on that stationary lane and try to sneak into the left-hand turn lane to find another way, perhaps risking cutting off another car, or at least being rude … the light finally turned green again, and life proceeded as normal. I needn’t have worried because I showed up at Trinity right on time.

Lent is kind of like that. Ready or not, it’s time to pause, take stock, and make note of the brake lights and the stop lights. Ready or not, it’s time to travel through the wilderness, take the slow lane or even a different route…. Knowing that in 40 days (minus Sundays), we will still arrive right on time, exactly where we need to be.

Now we may not find ourselves led out into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit this Lent, as Jesus did. We may not face a serpent or the devil face to face. We may not have the ability to turn stones to bread or ever be offered all the kingdoms of the world. But we DO have one thing in common with Jesus in the wilderness - an identity given to us by God. Jesus had just come from his baptism, when his freshly recognized and newly blessed identity as the Son of God was called into question. And we too are called Children of God in our baptisms, and we too find ourselves under the world’s scrutiny before the water on our heads has a chance to dry.

On the verge of starting his earthly ministry, Jesus had to define what it meant to be “the son of God.” Was Jesus going to reflect a kind of power and glory that the world could easily recognize? Or would Jesus set his agenda according to God’s definition of power and glory?

The first temptation does seem pretty harmless - After all, it wouldn’t hurt anyone if Jesus did a little magic on those rocks so he wouldn’t be hungry AND angry – or HANGRY as the cool kids say. I would have turned those stones into bread in a heartbeat, and probably added some hummus too, faster than you can say “Grab a Snickers.” But, Jesus saves his divine breadmaking skills for another time, to feed 5,000 hungry people rather than feed himself only, which happens later in the Matthew’s Gospel.

The same happens with the other two temptations. Instead of throwing himself off a roof to test God plan for him, Jesus instead shows his resolve do follow God’s will, to trade being lifted high on a building to being lifted high on a cross. And instead of seizing the opportunity to rule all the kingdoms of the earth for himself, Jesus instead will open the kingdom of heaven to all who follow him. In the rest of his ministry, we can see how Jesus’ time in the wilderness prepared him to fulfill his baptismal identity.

In the wildernesses we find ourselves in, be they physical, emotional, or spiritual, we too find our identity tested. We are constantly tempted into thinking that, as we are right now, we are not good enough to be children of God.

Most of us are aware of our limitations and our hang-ups, and the tempter takes every opportunity to remind us where we fall short with a never-ending commentary in our brains – Surely, we are mistaken if we think that God has chosen us. Surely, God wants us to work a little harder at being God’s children. Surely, we need to prove that we are worthy of being chosen.

I imagine something similar going through Eve’s mind while she listened to the clever arguments of the serpent in the garden. When the serpent told her that eating the fruit would make her more like God, to have knowledge of good and evil, she jumped at the chance. She did not trust that God had created her good, just as she was.

The story of creation in the book of Genesis is so epic that there is not just ONE version of the story but TWO (You can look it up for yourself on Page 1 of your pew bible)… and at the end of the second one, God gave free reign of the garden Eden, but said, “You can eat from any tree in the garden, except for one. Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or you will die.”

But if you didn’t already know the answer, you would probably easily guess what happens next - the snake convinces Eve to try the fruit from the forbidden tree. Eve eats, then Adam eats. Their eyes were opened, and they knew there was trouble in paradise. In the Sara Bareilles, called “Eden ,” Eve tells us her side of the story -  “Walking in the garden was a serpent-shaped heart and he told me – ‘What is broken cannot show, and “less than beautiful” is worse than unholy.’”

The snake of course was wrong… but Even and Adam found that out the hard way, and in the song, Eve reflects, “…. Now I'm wide awakened and still paying for the poison they sold me.”

The Adam and Eve in all of us all too often trust the words of the crafty serpents around us, rather than the incredible promise that we are loved and claimed as God’s children. It’s hard for us to see ourselves as God sees us. We look into ourselves and only see what is lacking, and so comes our tendency to reach for too much power, too much security, too much comfort in order to fill the gaps. This is the poison that the serpent – and the world – is selling. But God sees us a different way. When the rest of the world tells us the opposite, God tells us that we are worthy, we are loved, and we are enough.

In Jesus, God’s love is shown to the world. In Jesus, we see that the love of God would go to any length for us, and would travel any distance, and would even go to death and back for God’s beloved children. We certainly long to hear these words on a daily basis.

One meaning of Lent is “to lengthen,” like the daylight hours in the coming spring, that hopefully will arrive someday soon.  The purpose of Lent is to makes US “long” for this new life – We long to stop causing and receiving pain.  We long to be out of the night and we long for the return of the dawn.

Lent is not for us to improve ourselves with sacrifices to become more worthy or more holy come Easter Sunday. Lent instead takes us through the wilderness to reflect our own shortcomings, to remind us to let God be God. Not so that we can feel guilty at where we have fallen short. But so that we can get out of our own way and be nothing less than members of God’s family. It’s been said that when Martin Luther felt tempted to despair by the devil, he would shout in response, “I am baptized!” Not “I was”, but “I AM.” Present tenses. True in this very moment.

The trip through Lent every year takes us from a garden to a wilderness and back again, from human sin and transgression and death to resurrection, from the ash crosses of Ash Wednesday to the shadow of the cross on Good Friday, through the Garden of Eden, to the garden of Gethsemane, to the garden that contained Jesus’ empty tomb. Every year, we tell the story, to remind ourselves who we are and WHOSE we are. “I am baptized.” Present tense. Now and forever. Thanks be to God, amen.

Marked with Ash, Burn with Grace

Ash Wednesday 2-26-20

Every year Trinity Episcopal and Family of God Lutheran trade off hosting and preaching Ash Wednesday. This year they hosted, I preached. 

Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

It started a few weeks ago – my friends giving advance notice by posts in my Facebook news feed, letting us all know that they would “signing off” Facebook during Lent, or disabling the Facebook app on their phones in an attempt to use it less often. That’s when I really know that Lent is on its way – that, and when I start seeing advertisements for fish sandwiches at all the fast food places, and an email message, from our bishop at least, that we should be ADDING a spiritual practice to our Lenten Discipline instead of giving something up for Lent.

Are you still not sure what you are going to be giving up for Lent, if anything? Not to fear - I also saw a friend share a way for your phone to decide what you should give up! Don’t do it right now, but later, simply type in “For Lent I’m giving up” and then keep pressing the predictive text option, and voila! Instant Lenten Discipline. For example, my phone’s predictive text says this “For Lent I’m giving up on me and I will be there at the same time.”

I would like to think that my social-media generated Lenten discipline would be one that Martin Luther would approve of – simultaneously giving up on “me” – my “self”/ my ego/ my need to be in control – and at the same time, taking on the intention of being present wherever I am at, with my FULL SELF, my being, my attention. After all, this is what Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent are about at their core – not to make ourselves suffer to reenact Christ’s suffering, but to deny ourselves, take up our cross, so that we may more fully be ourselves – beloved children of God – for the benefit of other people.

We are lucky that this is the year of Matthew, where we spend an entire year reading through Matthew’s gospel. Most years, this expert from the Sermon on the Mount we just heard from Matthew seems to come out of nowhere (sort of like Ash Wednesday some years when Easter is at its earliest). This year, we have already spent weeks with Jesus up on the mountain top, listening to him preach the beatitudes – blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the peacemakers, for theirs is the kingdom of God – and also about how we are salt and light. Just a few weeks ago, Jesus told us to “Let our lights shine…. So that others may see our good works and glorify God.” As Martin Luther supposedly said, “God doesn’t need our good works, but our neighbor does.” So, our light shines through our service to others… and not in picking the most challenging Lenten Discipline. In other words, Jesus says: let your light, not your piety, shine before others to the glory of God.

And yet, we still come to worship on Ash Wednesday, to receive and ash cross on our foreheads, which will be pretty obvious if you go out in public after this. It signifies who has been to Ash Wednesday service and who hasn’t. An ash cross on your forehead isn’t exactly secret. But maybe some things shouldn’t be “hidden under a bush basket” or a bowl, as Jesus said earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, just a few weeks ago. Some things should be done in secret, without attention being drawn to them… like if you do choose to give up sweets. But some things ought to be shared.

This ash cross marks you as someone who came here today, to receive both this remembrance of your death, and also the remembrance of your life, through receiving the body and blood of Jesus. This ash cross will wash off or smudge off if you forget it’s there and the ashes tickle you and make you itch … but the cross on your forehead that you received the day of your baptism can never be erased or taken away. Today you have been marked as a reminder of your death… but under that is the promise of life that is being created out of death – our death, and the death of Jesus.

Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the season of Lent, an inconvenient day in the middle of our week, to start an uncomfortable season in the middle of our year, to remind us of the inconvenient and uncomfortable truth that we will all eventually die. “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” No thank you! Hard pass.

The truth is though, we are surrounded by death…. But we refuse to see it, and we also have forgotten how to see it. Plants and animals had to die for me to eat dinner before I came here. A tree died in order to give you this sermon. And I think that each of us knows what it’s like to say goodbye to a loved one who has died.

But we no longer see death as part of our daily reality. A veil has been drawn over how we spend our last days and moments, and what happens to us after our death, by the medical and the funeral industry. Most of our loved ones – or even us, when our times comes, spend their last moments in a hospital room, surrounded by medical equipment, and our bodies are whisked away and not seen again until the family visitation, wake, memorial service, or funeral. It is a strange time in history - in the last century, we have been separated from the ritual and sacred task than has been a tradition for centuries: mourning for our dead by caring for them ourselves, in our homes, with our families… and thus facing the reality of our own death on a regular basis.

But we have chosen, in this place and this time we live, to remove all things uncomfortable and inconvenient from our immediate sight. As death historian and eco-mortician Caitlyn Doughty writes in her memoir about her time working in a crematorium, she reminds us that: “At this very moment, [people who have died are driven] down highways and interstates in unmarked white vans … [they] crisscross the globe in cargo holds of airplanes while vacationing passengers travel above. We have put the dead beneath. Not underground, but under the tops of fake hospital stretchers, within the bellies of our aircraft, and in the recesses of our consciousness.”

We don’t want to talk about it, and we don’t want to think about it. Not today, not ever. Because death is something we cannot control or fight forever. Mortality is a battle we will always lose. “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” We would much rather forget, on purpose, until we even forget our forgetting. But the downside is, the time we spend running and hiding from death is time lost that could be spend on living… loving… serving… and shining.

Ash Wednesday inconveniently and uncomfortably reminds us of our death and begins a season in the church year that reminds us of our own sin and brokenness, leading us on the way to the cross, and the suffering and death of Jesus. But this season will have an end, just like death has an end. New life rises from ashes. Death is an end and it is a beginning. Jesus is both the crucified one and the risen one. I can both give up my “self,” and I can also bring myself fully present, in all my “beloved child of God” glory. I can be both made of ash and also made of light.

One pastor poet reflects on today, Ash Wednesday: “I live in a body made of ashes. It is at once fragile and resilient – easily torn apart but never destroyed.” Another pastor wrote a of poems reflecting on the death of her father, and called it “Ash and Starlight,” and wrote “On waves where trembling feet sink and dance, there rises between my toes, a peace… Where heaven and earth embrace, where the ash in my mouth, the starlight in my bones weave together in wholeness…. unfurling my hands in aching yes and clasp the holy gift, which is this day…  Another chance to live, to burn with grace.”

Today we are marked with ash but burn with grace. We remember that we are mortal beings, and that our time on earth has a beginning and an end. “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” But no matter what, we are held by God, who created us from the ash that comes from stars…. black as the night sky where they can be seen and shine at their most brilliant. 

Black IS the color of ashes, often associated with sin and death. It is the what we wear to show others we are mourning the loss of a loved one who has died. But black is also the color of an empty tomb, where death has lost the battle. And though we have been marked by ashes to remind us of our death, we have also been marked by the cross of Christ at our baptism, to remind us of the new life we have in Christ. We have each been claimed by God. God loves us, and is walking with us through this time. And the end of the Lent road leads us out to and Easter dawn. Thanks be to God. Amen.

From Transfiguration to Eternity

2-23-20

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

It is good to be able to experience something just a little bit out of the ordinary, isn’t it? For example, a few weeks ago I took some time out of my regular schedule to spend an entire week reading all the books that has I had wanted to catch up on for the last few months but haven’t had a chance to. But one thing I did not expect to receive alongside knowledge and insight – a sore back from all that sitting. I have no idea how I did this college and seminary!

That week I got to “spend time” in a Religion 101 classroom with Barbara Brown Taylor. I dove into the life and wisdom of Rozella Haydee White, a speaker I had heard for the first time during the 2015 national youth gathering in Detroit. I read a memoir of a Latina Lutheran woven with the stories of immigrants and refugees in the Bible. I dug into how to cultivate a culture of generosity in congregations. I even traveled the world with mortician and death researcher Caitlyn Doughty as she explored death rituals in other countries. 

In one chapter of this particular book, called “From Here to Eternity” Doughty she wrote about her visit to a Buddhist columbarium in Japan called Ruriden, which is very surprising by our standards. The columbarium (a place where cremains are laid to rest) is a room full of thousands of niches containing tiny buddha statues all the way around. When a family comes to visit, using a swipe card coded to the location of their loved one’s remains, the tiny Buddha figurines begin to glow violet, and the Buddha figure that contains your loved one’s ashes shimmers with a bright white light. It may seem strange to us, but to the people of Japan, this is a deeply meaningful part of how they honor the people they love who have died.

The transfiguration story and Transfiguration Sunday is a strange little holiday in the church year…it sneaks up on us out of nowhere and puzzles preachers and church goers alike. But this story – and this Sunday - serves a very specific purpose. It is the space that separates the season after Epiphany and the season of Lent. It is the hinge that connects Jesus’ baptism and Jesus’ death. It is the liminal space – the “thin place” - the changes the course of Jesus’s journey and prepares him for what is to come. It is the mountaintop experience that catches the disciples, and us, off guard, and makes us wonder what we signed up for. It stops us in our tracks and interrupts our “regularly scheduled daily lives.”

As a friend of mine recently reflected, “How many of us go through our lives just going through our lives?” And yet, every so often, we all experience something like the joy and fear of a mountain top/ life changing moment. Sometimes they are sudden and come upon us unexpectedly – a surprise diagnosis, a shocking job opportunity, nearly missing a fender bender, or an accidental meeting that changed your life. For example, the morning I opened the email on Ash Wednesday 2017 to find out that I was in the top 10 in an international preaching contest that I had forgotten that I entered was one such moment.

Other transformational moments mark the hinge moments between important life stages, between two different states of life that we have been preparing for in one way or another, for months or even years:

Engagement - Wedding day – marriage

 School – graduation – “real life”/job

Pregnancy – birth – life

Pre-baptism – baptism – following Jesus as a disciple. (You get the picture)

The transfiguration of Jesus is the hinge moment in his ministry – setting him on the path toward Jerusalem, and his death on the cross. Similarly, Transfiguration Sunday is the hinge between the season after Epiphany, and the season of Lent.

Peter’s problem is that he wanted to live in this “hinge moment” up there with Jesus, Elijah and Moses on the mountain. The longer they stay up there, the longer they put off facing the whole “death of the son of man” thing. But we can’t live on the mountain top or in those transitional moments for ever. As wonderful as your wedding day might have been, can you imagine how stressful that would be to live every day in that kind of intensity? You would never go around your daily business wearing your graduation cap and gown. After your diploma is in your hand, you get to work putting what you’ve learned into practice.

After God had affirmed Jesus, using the same words as God did during Jesus’s baptism (though adding “listen to him” as an addendum), and the disciples had seen Jesus in his glory, consulting with two of the most revered prophets of all time, Jesus and his disciples had to come down the mountain.  They had to return to real life. Though the life they then returned to would never be the same again. This surprising experience is something they carried with them, and eventually made its way to us, to keep surprising us as well. They had seen Jesus through the eyes of God, and they would never be the same.

But that tends to be the case, when we look at others through the eyes of God – if the light of Christ has been given to each of us as we have been baptized, what would happen if we acted like we could see this shining flame ALL the time? What if we intentionally looked at one another, using God Vision? And what if you also saw YOURSELF that way?

One of my favorite books is Lila by Marilynn Robinson. Lila grew up poor and orphaned in the 1930s, and only saw herself through the eyes of those who looked down on her because of things she did to survive. Seemingly and surprisingly by chance, she ends up in a small town in Iowa, and marries the local minister.

On the day that preacher proposed to AND baptized Lila, he remembered the day they met: “I expected to continue with [loneliness] the rest of my life. Then I saw you that morning. I saw your face.” Lila replied, “Don’t’ talk like that. I know about my face.”

But he persisted. “I suspect you don’t. You don’t know how I see it.”

One night during a snowstorm after they were married, the two of them were talking, and Lila’s husband said, “Family is a prayer. Wife is a prayer. Marriage is a prayer.”

Lila, remembering her own baptism, adds, “Baptism is a prayer.”

To that, her husband replied, “No, baptism is what I call a fact.”

Your baptism is a fact. God’s love for you is a fact. God chose you – that’s a fact. As strange as it may sound, the light of Christ shines out in you too – as that light shown in the face of Jesus.

The season of Epiphany may be over, but the light will never be extinguished.  And as we face our own mortality and mark Jesus’ journey to the cross this coming Ash Wednesday, I would dare to say that it is not darkness that we are really afraid of. It’s shining that we fear. We would rather wait in the wings and hide in the cloud – or in three little huts – on the mountain top rather than go down the mountain to shine. But as Marianne Williamson wrote in her poem “Our Deepest Fear:”

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us....

We ask ourselves - Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.....

We are all meant to shine… We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; It's in everyone....

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

And that means, we gotta shine.

This world is a pretty scary place, And it can be even scarier when we go out on a limb and “let our light shine,” especially when what we do or say will be perceived as something that is surprising or shakes up “normal life.”  In those times, we can remember that the light that is within us is not our own - it comes from a source of light that is greater than us. Our light comes from God. God illuminates our way and defeats the powers of evil in this world. In Jesus, God revealed to all people God’s love in the flesh. And that love is given to each of us to shine in the world.

Together, we are able to shine, to rival even the sun in the sky…. Just as Jesus did, both up on that mountain, and in his words and actions, in his life and in his death… and beyond. So, as God says, Listen up! Listen to Jesus - Get up, and do not be afraid. Thanks be to God. Amen.

"God... Bless you!'

Grace and peace to you from God our creator and from our Lord and savior Jesus the Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

While I served as a pastor in New Jersey, I had the privilege of being the chaplain at a high school youth retreat at a local camp. It’s a Saturday night tradition to have an open mike night after evening worship, and normally kids sign up to sing their favorite song or play the guitar. But one act surprised us all. A high should senior got up and did a comedy routine, and she was funny.

She began her routine by describing what it was like to ride down to this youth event with her pastor at the wheel. When being cut off, this youth informed us, the pastor might yell, “son of a… child of God!” … Or when someone would suddenly slow down for no apparent reason, causing her to slam on her brakes, the pastor would say, “God… bless you!”

We “adult-type-people” sitting in the back were practically rolling on the floor laughing. It was nice to know that someone else also felt the same frustration that I did about some of the crazy driving I had encountered in New Jersey! But while I laughed, I also cringed. Because I’ve been there. I’ve been the person being cut off, and I’ve said some pretty unkind things alone in the safety of my vehicle. We all knew what this pastor had wanted to say, and we all knew that at one time or another we all had said those things, or we at least thought them.

But if a tree falls in the woods with no one to witness, does it makes a sound? And If no one hears my tirade against that driver, no harm no fowl, right? Jesus says …wrong. In that moment, according to Jesus, when we let our anger get the better of us, and say things we will regret later, we are breaking the fifth commandment – “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”

And so, after building us up for two weeks after hearing about being blessed if we are poor in spirit or mourning or peacemaking, and after hearing about how we are light and salt for the world… The gloves are off, the rubber has hit the road, the other shoe has dropped, and Jesus is done with the appetizers and is ready to get to the main course. And this meal is certainly hard to swallow.

You might say that this is where being light intersects life – after talking about letting our light shine in the world, Jesus here it telling us how that’s done, example by example.  Jesus here is asking us, not just to keep the commandments of old, but to exceed them in a way that sounds beyond human ability.

I don’t know about you, but I think that the 10 commandments are just fine, as is. For the most part where we live it’s pretty easy to refrain from murdering someone. In fact, it’s pretty easy to go down the list of commandments and think we are doing ok – yup, respecting my parents, nope, didn’t steal anything today, nope, didn’t testify in court… so I’m good.. right?

But Jesus stops us in our self-congratulatory tracks. It’s one thing to do the minimum, to refrain from causing someone physical bodily harm. But if you are angry with your sibling, if you insult them and call them names, they are as good as dead to you, and Jesus says that you as good as murdered them in your mind.

We would rather think about the Jesus that is all about love and tolerance and all that good stuff. Love then, becomes a blanket over all the bad stuff I do, and makes it ok that I keep doing it. But thinking about love this way is about as effective as roses and chocolate one day a year, and misery the other three hundred and sixty-four.

Another time Jesus says, love your neighbor as you love yourself. As in, you see your neighbor not as an object to be coveted or as a means to an end to get what you want, but as a human being with thoughts and feelings, with hopes and dreams, with flaws and needs. Love means that we should treat everyone as if they are a beloved child of God. Because that’s what they are.

Truly keeping the 5^th commandment in the Jesus Regime also means not labeling people or not insulting them and their families. AND, as Luther adds, it also means living together in unity and helping our neighbors out when they are in need. 

The same goes for Jesus’ take on the 6^th commandment – “you shall not commit adultery.” Luther’s explanation reads: “you are to fear and love God, so that we lead pure and decent lives in word and deed, and each of us loves and honors his or her spouse.” Jesus takes it a step farther by saying: “everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” 

When a man looks at a woman in this way, he sees her only as function of what she can give to him, he denies her autonomy as a person, and he reduces her to commodity be acquired. Women’s bodies have always been feared, shamed, and controlled. Jesus isn’t telling women to cover up because “boys will be boys.” Jesus is instead calling boys to be men, to put an end to centuries of blaming and shaming.

Jesus lived at a time where marriage provided financial stability and the assurance of a future through children. The idea of romantic love, or our obsession with a holiday that celebrates romance and couples would be completely foreign to them.

Divorce is a traumatic, life-shaking event no matter what the context. Jesus is affirming that, in the words of a colleague of mine, “Each person is sacred and deserves to be treated that way.” Divorce is naming what is, and it is never a sin to tell the truth. Divorce does not break vows – it simply states that vows have already been broken, whether by egregious behavior or “irreconcilable differences.” In fact, staying in a relationship that is unsustainable can only add to everyone’s pain and suffering. Staying can sometimes mean breaking faith with yourself, in not loving and honoring yourself enough to leave. Divorce is the most loving option when it is the only way that the sacredness of human life – YOUR LIFE – can be affirmed and defended, and remarriage between two consenting adults who respect the sacred humanity of one another is never a sin.

So, perhaps then instead a list of things to avoid, these commands become the means of living a life that is full of real love and real relationships, with Jesus leading the way.

And we who are following in his footsteps are going to aren’t going to get it right all the time. We will continue to be the angry ones and the ones who cause others to be angry.  Sometimes we will be ones doing the cursing in our cars and at other times we’ll be the ones doing the cutting-off on the turnpike. But if we choose to look at those around us through the eyes of Jesus, as beloved children of God, we infuse a healthy and much-needed dose of humanity back into the world. We are blessed by God, so that we become a blessing to one another.

Back at that youth retreat with the funny standup routine… That same pastor, the youth was talking about, came up to me after I had prayed individually over a long line of youth during a healing service…. not to receive a blessing, but to give me one.  In that moment I remembered that I too was a “daughter of a child of God.” As much as I was teaching and preaching and ministering to others that weekend, I was also continually learning from, and being surprised by, and being MINISTERED TO by others.

Even when we don’t choose life – when instead we choose isolation over connection, fear over acceptance, hate over love, death over life, death does not have the final say. Life has the final say – the life that Jesus not only tells us about but also shows us in every moment of his life on earth. Jesus came to show us that love has the final say.  AMEN

Mini Sabbatical/ "Reading Week"

During the week of Feb. 3 - 9th I did a "Reading Week" tiny sabbatical to catch up on the pile of reading that has been building up over the last few months. I went to a variety of different place to read, including Cross Roads Camp, the local library, and Princeton Seminary Library. What a fun week it was to absorb all this wisdom. I didn't pick any particular theme, but it seems that the theme picked me: all of these books really emphasized the power of relationship - with people we love (and have lost), with people who are different from us, between us, God, and our money, and with ourselves. 

The God who Sees: Immigrants, the Bible, and the Journey to Belong by Karen Gonzales5 stars. This book is also part memoir, part theological grounding and reminder that both the tenants of our belief and our holy scriptures calls us to see the image of God in immigrants. Though the author herself is from Guatemala, this book feels so relevant in the midst of the ELCA sanctuary conversations, the travel bans, and the recent report of the murders of people deported to El Salvador. This book gives a human face and human stories to a complex issues, and challenges us to fulfill our call as followers of Jesus to see what God sees - our beloved humanity in all people.

 Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others by Barbara Brown Taylor5 stars. This book really does live up to the hype. Loved it. As a pastor I too often get stuck in a Lutheran silo, so it's really nice to get any perspective outside of that.... It also resonated in a lot of my cross-cultural experiences. I especially appreciated the chapters about Jewish faith and Islamic faith.

 Love Big: The Power of Revolutionary Relationships to Change the World, by Rozella Haydee White5 stars. Part memoir, part call to action, this book was both a quick read but a deep one, to the point and complex, deeply Lutheran without some of that insider language that creeps in, inspirational and challenging. So much of this book feels alive and relevant it's hard to pick one thing. I appreciated her thoughts on how we search for love in the wrong places, and also her experiences working for and walking away from the ELCA machinations. 

From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death, 

by Caitlyn DoughtyFive stars. Though Doughty never says much about faith or pastors, I appreciate her honest take on death and the importance of ritual and making meaning around it. Pastors are "death professionals" too, and anything we can do to help make meaning and normalize grief helps us be better at pastoral care. This trip around the world shows that it's not about WHAT we do as we honor our loved ones, it's that we should remember with intention and love, and not avoid the conversation. PS, do you have a death plan yet? 

Contagious Generosity: Creating a Culture of Giving in your Church, by Chris Willard and Jim Sheppard  I would give this one 3.5 stars. It has some GREAT insight about shifting congregational cultures, developing tools and capacities, and some necessary come-to-Jesus advice. I will probably use it in my congregation. However.... ALL the quotes and ALL the examples were from male pastors in multi-pastor congregations (I have never heard of a stewardship pastor!) The theology is evangelism- adjacent. There's also a lot of references to the crash of '08. If the author would make a new addition just without all the dudes, I'd give it 4 or 4.5. A fast but good read (just skip all the dudes).

Walking into a Blessed Future

2-2-20

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

We walk quickly and we walk slowly. We hurry when we need to be somewhere fast…. or we amble our way through a store or the mall when we don’t have a pressing need. We hike in the woods with purpose, and we drag ourselves up the stairs after a long day. But what does it mean to walk humbly? And what does it mean to walk with God?

We may try to take the lead and choose pace direction, but that often gets us into trouble. We can drag our feet and lag behind, but then we might miss where God is leading us. Every moment God is walking with us, next to us, and we could not have a better traveling companion. God knows the way. And God calls us to follow… and then calls us blessed.

Blessed? What? ME? No way! I don’t look at all like the perfect, happy people on all the commercials or in the magazines. I’m not as successful as the scientists curing cancer and famous authors I hear about in the news. I don’t make as much money as CEOs and movie stars. Surely THOSE people are the ones who deserve to be seen as special, not me.

The disciples might have been thinking the exact same thing as they listened to Jesus. Last week we heard about how they were at the beginning of their own walk with God. They had just been called by Jesus to follow him, to even drop what they were doing and just go. No more fishing for fish – Peter, Andrew, James, and John would be fishing for people from now on. So, I’m sure wondered, “What in the world did I just sign up for? And What happens now?”

Jesus’s answer comes in the next chapter in Matthew, as he begins what we call “The sermon on the mount” - it IS a sermon and it IS on the side of a mountain. This is Jesus’ very first sermon the Matthew – his inaugural sermon if you will, and this section is what is commonly called “The beatitudes.” This sermon will set the tone for the Jesus administration and sets the terms for what it means to be a disciple.

To be a disciple is “churchy” way to be a learner, a student. A student learns from and listens to a teacher. And the very first thing that Jesus the teacher teaches in his very first sermon is that his students are blessed. Jesus’s disciples are blessed, even though they would not be considered first round draft pics for Jesus’s Kingdom.

Take a look over who Jesus says is blessed one more time. This is a list that seems totally backwards, and shouldn’t make any sense to us. This is not how the world works, as we see on a daily basis. The world says– those who are wealthy and successful are blessed, those who are in power are blessed, the famous, the popular, those who seem to “have it all together” are blessed, those who are beautiful or attractive or thin or strong are blessed….Just look at the news, social media, or the cover of any magazines in the checkout aisle at ACME. They do not feature people like us.

But Jesus turns the world order on its head. Instead, THESE are the blessed ones –those who don’t have it all together, those who are bullied, dispirited, or fleeing their homes as refugees, those who are grieving, those who hunger and thirst for the common good, those who are merciful and compassionate, those who work for peace and reconciliation, those who have a single-minded devotion to God’s kingdom, those who don’t back down from working for justice, even when they are misunderstood and challenged. Jesus calls THESE people blessed. And I am sure that we can all find ourselves somewhere on this list

The NEW Kingdom, the Jesus regime, starts NOW, with his first sermon, which states that you are blessed, right where you are, however you find yourself. Jesus calls YOU blessed, because you ARE a child of God and a fellow disciple of Jesus. Jesus teaches us that we are blessed because we need to know where we are FROM before we can know where we are going.

Lutheran writer and speaker Nadia Bolz-Weber shared this reflection recently (in her most recent email newsletter): “Maybe the Sermon on the Mount is all about Jesus’ lavish blessing of the people around him on that hillside who his world—like ours—didn’t seem to have much time for: people in pain, people who work for peace instead of profit, people who exercise mercy instead of vengeance. Maybe Jesus was simply blessing the ones around him that day who didn’t otherwise receive blessing, who had come to believe that, for them, blessings would never be in the cards…” So, Nadia Bolz-Weber imagines Jesus standing among us offering some of these new beatitudes: “Blessed are they who doubt. Those who aren’t sure, who can still be surprised... Blessed are those who have nothing to offer. Blessed are the preschoolers who cut in line at communion. Blessed are the poor in spirit. You are of heaven and Jesus blesses you. Blessed are they for whom death is not an abstraction. Blessed are they who have buried their loved ones, for whom tears could fill an ocean. Blessed are they who have loved enough to know what loss feels like. Blessed are the mothers of the miscarried. Blessed are they who don’t have the luxury of taking things for granted anymore. Blessed are they who can’t fall apart because they have to keep it together for everyone else. Blessed are those who “still aren’t over it yet.” Blessed are those who no one else notices. Blessed are the forgotten. Blessed are the closeted. Blessed are the unemployed, the unimpressive, the underrepresented. Blessed are the wrongly accused, the ones who never catch a break, the ones for whom life is hard, for Jesus chose to surround himself with people like them. Blessed are those without documentation. Blessed are the ones without lobbyists. Blessed are foster kids and special-ed kids and every other kid who just wants to feel safe and loved. Blessed are those who make terrible business decisions for the sake of people. Blessed are the burned-out social workers and the overworked teachers and the pro bono case takers. Blessed are the kids who step between the bullies and the weak. Blessed are the merciful, for they totally get it.

Jesus lived the true meaning of being blessed, he fulfilled his inaugural promises, and while doing so he turned an instrument of death into a symbol of new life and the new family we are all a part of.

Jesus spent most of his time with the downtrodden and displaced, with those grieving, with those hungering and thirsting for God’s kingdom, with those actively making peace, with those with a heart for God’s justice, with those who are merciful when the world thinks it’s a sign weakness, and with those who are hated and feared by others.

We are called to be hungry and thirsty for God’s justice when there is a clear “Justice shortage.” We are called to show compassion when we are taught to only look out for ourselves. We are called to follow the voice and vision of Jesus above all the other desires of our hearts. We are called to be an active force for peace in the world.

To the rest of the world, this looks like a completely foolish endeavor. But, as Paul wrote, “Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world?” “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.”

In the Jesus regime, what seems foolish is wise and what seems weak is strong. The merciful, the meek, the peacemakers, you, and me are all blessed and are brought together into a blessed community and family. And a crucified man is our ruler and guide in doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with him along the way on this journey. And whether than journey is fast or slow, straight as the crow flies or full of detours and, the destination is the same – The kingdom is coming, and the kingdom is already here… as we put one foot in front of the other, taking the next stop… then the next… then the next. Thanks be to God, amen.