Matthew 16:13-20
Do you ever hear voices in your head?
Voices that sound like your parents, maybe? Voices that sound like our friends, or even like a commercial we’ve heard on TV. Voices that might sound like our own voices when we are scared or angry.
You might hear them telling you what to do and what not to do and what you ought to do better. Those are the voices, for better or worse, that tell us who we are.
Sometimes they give you confidence.
And often, they take it away.
I hear those voices. Maybe you have heard them too. And I’ll bet we’re not the only ones.
Today we heard Jesus ask the disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”
That answer’s easy. That’s about the voices we hear with our ears.
But then he asks, “Who do you say that I am?”
That question is harder. It is about the voices inside.
Voices that ask what this all means to us, and what we’re doing hanging out with Jesus in the first place. Voices that might ask: Who are we to say? What if we get the answer wrong?
Then Peter – the disciple who’s most likely to just say whatever’s in his head - answers out loud: “You’re the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”
It’s a powerful statement. When Peter says it out loud, it’s a commitment that all the disciples believe that Jesus is the one who has come to change the world, to show God’s will and God’s presence right here and right now, a commitment for all of us that nobody else is more important than Jesus.
It’s big, but the way Matthew tells the story, it’s not the most important thing. The turning point in this story is not the proclamation of faith, it’s the way Jesus responds:
“You are Rock. And on this rock I will build my team.”
In this moment, as Jesus and the disciples talk about who he is known to be, they begin to talk, for the first time, about who we are meant to be.
In this moment, the church is born - not as a place, an organization, a family – but a new community, called out of ordinary life and given authority for a purpose.
“I’m giving you the keys,” Jesus said.
That’s a metaphor that works now just the way it did two thousand years ago: I’m giving you power and freedom and authority and responsibility. What you teach, what you decide, really and truly shapes the kingdom of heaven, the way that God’s will and presence is lived and known on earth.
God is giving us the keys. Everything that happened to Peter and the disciples that day has happened to you and me, too. And it’s going to happen again today, in a couple hours/ few minutes, as we baptize Daven and Gavin.
It starts with proclaiming that truth about Jesus, that he is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.
And then God responds. All over again, a new community is formed. A team, called together out of our perfectly ordinary lives, and given the keys.
Gavin and Daven, their parents and godparents, and you and I, are given authority and purpose, so that everything we decide, and do and say, is to make God’s presence real.
At our own baptisms, and again when we baptize someone new, we get the keys. We become the church, responsible and privileged to shape the kingdom of God, on earth as it is in heaven.
Sounds like a big job, doesn’t it?
It’s good news, though. (Good news often comes with immense responsibility – ask any new parent.) And here’s the other good news that comes with it:
Peter didn’t get those keys a couple thousand years ago because he was the best, the smartest, or the winner of any election. He didn’t get them because he worked for them He got those keys because of gifts God had given that he never even went looking for.
“Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah,” said Jesus, “because no human agency has shown you the truth, only the gift and revelation of God.”
We don’t have to earn the keys, or inherit them from our parents;
we don’t have to be perfect.
We just have to trust and believe the gifts that God has already given us.
Whether we’re eager to get the keys and change the world, or more like Peter, prone to make mistakes, willing to try but not especially sure what we’re doing,
or even if the voices in our head tell us we can’t do it,
God still gives the keys and the freedom and responsibility with complete confidence.
We don’t have to be sure of ourselves for God to be sure of us.
Which brings us back to the voices in our heads. The ones that tell us who we are, what we can and cannot do.
Can you hear the voice in your head, whispering over and over:
You are Rock, and on this rock I will build my church.
Blessed are you – yes, you – because God has given you truth and gifts.
You are blessed because of God’s blessing, and you are Rock, strong and beautiful and ready to build.
What will your life be like if that is the voice you hear in your head? If you hear, every day, God’s confidence in you, God’s trust in you, God’s gift inside you.
You are blessed. You are Rock.
And I will give you the keys to shape the world, on earth as it is in heaven.
That’s the truth that Gavin and Daven will be baptized into today.
The truth you and I already live.
As their new community of faith, you and I can and should whisper that truth into their ears this morning, and this year, and all the days of their life.
And that voice in their tiny heads is whispering in your head, too.
So listen.
You are blessed. You are Rock.
God is confident and sure in you, and you are called to build the kingdom, on earth as it is in heaven.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Monday, August 15, 2011
Belonging
Matthew 15:10-28
There’s a common ritual of childhood, one that’s familiar to many of us, even if we didn’t precisely do it ourselves.
It’s the ritual of “No Boys Allowed.”
Or “No Girls.”
It’s a secret club, or a sign on the bedroom door, a way that we declare to ourselves and to the world that we belong in this place, or this group,
and those icky people don’t.
“No Boys Allowed,” usually passes in a few months or years or even weeks. But we do the same thing all our lives, in different ways.
That’s what Jesus is talking about in the gospel we hear today: All that back and forth about what defiles a person is in response to a complaint that Jesus and his disciples don’t belong because they don’t wash their hands before they eat.
That’s not about germs, it’s about respecting a commandment that the holy community purifies itself before eating together. And Jesus’ disciples don’t seem to care about the holiness of the Jewish table fellowship.
That might not bother you and me very much.
But changes to our own religious ritual can be disturbing. There are things we just don’t want to sing, or hear, or do in church because they poke holes in our sense of holiness.
And being able to trust the holiness of our community matters.
It supports our confidence in our faith. It helps us feel safe so that we can be more open to God and the others within our community. Trusting the holiness of our community makes it easier to trust God as we know we should.
But Jesus says that those reassuring signs of holiness aren’t really what we want them to be. It’s not what we let in that hurts our holiness. It’s what we let out. The things that really damage holy community come from the heart, not from outside, not even from our own hands.
And then a woman comes. A Canaanite woman, who worships different gods, who presumably can’t even imagine that Jesus is the Messiah, God’s Anointed One, the living breathing assurance of God’s holiness.
And this woman is a pain in the neck.
She’s too loud. She keeps insisting on attention.
Her mere presence pokes holes in the fabric of the holy community.
The disciples don’t hesitate to complain about that. And when even Jesus is blunt and rude in defending the boundaries of the holy community with his talk of dogs and throwing the food away,
she claims her own belonging anyway.
Even the dogs under the table eat the crumbs.
Whatever it looks like, however true it is that I don’t belong like you, it’s also true that I do belong.
Even those who don’t sit at the table are fed. The holy gift of healing belongs to me and to my daughter, because we belong to God, even though we don’t belong to you.
At last Jesus proclaims the greatness of her faith and her daughter is healed. She belongs.
What comes out of the mouth can destroy holiness, Jesus says. And then the Canaanite woman shows us that what comes out of the mouth can also make us pure, make us holy.
Not by repeating the ritual laws, but by claiming our belonging, in public, from the bottom of our hearts.
Have you ever felt that you don’t belong?
Have you ever thought to yourself, I don’t belong here, at Calvary?
Maybe you were new and no one else was.
Maybe things changed around you, and it made you feel excluded.
Maybe a relationship broke apart, and what used to feel like home started to feel like foreign and dangerous territory.
Maybe you’ve got the whole Nicene Creed memorized, but standing up and reciting a 1600 year old statement has never seemed to have much to do with your faith or your life.
Maybe it seemed like your pain was different from everyone else’s pain and healing, or that if people knew the ‘real you’ they wouldn’t like you, and wouldn’t understand.
Maybe you even feel some of that now.
It happens in lots of communities. It happens here. It’s happened to me.
And if it hasn’t happened to you, it has happened to someone sitting near you now.
That feeling that we don’t belong is painful, and it’s very very likely to cut us off from the healing grace of God that’s pouring out all around us.
If we believe we don’t belong we can make it true.
Or our faith can make us whole.
The hero of these miracle stories is usually the healed person, not the healer. The one who claims and accepts God’s grace, in spite of habits of pain and exclusion.
That’s what this never-named woman does.
She faces down being not good enough, not knowing enough, not being liked (and probably not liking very much those disciples who wanted to get rid of her). And she just belongs for all she’s worth.
Sometimes Jesus seeks us out when we need healing. And sometimes – even some of the times Jesus comes to us – we just have to step up and claim our own healing and wholeness.
What would it mean to you to claim your belonging?
For some of us, it might be praying out loud – in a restaurant or in a church meeting. Knowing that we don’t pray like the book, or the professionals, and pouring our faith out of our hearts, through our mouths, anyway.
For some, it might be stepping up to claim a responsibility or a gift without waiting to be asked. Believing and proclaiming that the passion in your heart for cycling, or AIDS research, or your own healing is just as important to God and the holy community as food and kids and whatever else we talk about the most.
It might be telling the story of your pain to someone else and discovering that what’s kept you lonely is actually something you share.
It’s painful to feel that we don’t belong. But sometimes all we need is to claim our belonging, from the bottom of our hearts.
And when we do belong, when we are wrapped in the comforting assurance that we are secure in this holy community, we thank God, and we remember that what comes in cannot hurt our community, however strange it feels.
It’s what comes from the bottom of our hearts that makes us holy.
The Canaanite woman reminds us that even the dogs under the table are fed. Even the people we don’t pay attention to, even the parts of our selves we think are misfit and unimportant, belong.
Belong in the holy community,
belong to the kingdom of God,
and have a claim to wholeness and healing and being fed.
And Jesus responds.
The holy community is big enough and resilient enough for the faith in all sorts of unexpected hearts.
God’s wholeness and healing are abundant enough,
but you and I must be faithful enough to claim it,
to belong to God, no matter what.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
There’s a common ritual of childhood, one that’s familiar to many of us, even if we didn’t precisely do it ourselves.
It’s the ritual of “No Boys Allowed.”
Or “No Girls.”
It’s a secret club, or a sign on the bedroom door, a way that we declare to ourselves and to the world that we belong in this place, or this group,
and those icky people don’t.
“No Boys Allowed,” usually passes in a few months or years or even weeks. But we do the same thing all our lives, in different ways.
That’s what Jesus is talking about in the gospel we hear today: All that back and forth about what defiles a person is in response to a complaint that Jesus and his disciples don’t belong because they don’t wash their hands before they eat.
That’s not about germs, it’s about respecting a commandment that the holy community purifies itself before eating together. And Jesus’ disciples don’t seem to care about the holiness of the Jewish table fellowship.
That might not bother you and me very much.
But changes to our own religious ritual can be disturbing. There are things we just don’t want to sing, or hear, or do in church because they poke holes in our sense of holiness.
And being able to trust the holiness of our community matters.
It supports our confidence in our faith. It helps us feel safe so that we can be more open to God and the others within our community. Trusting the holiness of our community makes it easier to trust God as we know we should.
But Jesus says that those reassuring signs of holiness aren’t really what we want them to be. It’s not what we let in that hurts our holiness. It’s what we let out. The things that really damage holy community come from the heart, not from outside, not even from our own hands.
And then a woman comes. A Canaanite woman, who worships different gods, who presumably can’t even imagine that Jesus is the Messiah, God’s Anointed One, the living breathing assurance of God’s holiness.
And this woman is a pain in the neck.
She’s too loud. She keeps insisting on attention.
Her mere presence pokes holes in the fabric of the holy community.
The disciples don’t hesitate to complain about that. And when even Jesus is blunt and rude in defending the boundaries of the holy community with his talk of dogs and throwing the food away,
she claims her own belonging anyway.
Even the dogs under the table eat the crumbs.
Whatever it looks like, however true it is that I don’t belong like you, it’s also true that I do belong.
Even those who don’t sit at the table are fed. The holy gift of healing belongs to me and to my daughter, because we belong to God, even though we don’t belong to you.
At last Jesus proclaims the greatness of her faith and her daughter is healed. She belongs.
What comes out of the mouth can destroy holiness, Jesus says. And then the Canaanite woman shows us that what comes out of the mouth can also make us pure, make us holy.
Not by repeating the ritual laws, but by claiming our belonging, in public, from the bottom of our hearts.
Have you ever felt that you don’t belong?
Have you ever thought to yourself, I don’t belong here, at Calvary?
Maybe you were new and no one else was.
Maybe things changed around you, and it made you feel excluded.
Maybe a relationship broke apart, and what used to feel like home started to feel like foreign and dangerous territory.
Maybe you’ve got the whole Nicene Creed memorized, but standing up and reciting a 1600 year old statement has never seemed to have much to do with your faith or your life.
Maybe it seemed like your pain was different from everyone else’s pain and healing, or that if people knew the ‘real you’ they wouldn’t like you, and wouldn’t understand.
Maybe you even feel some of that now.
It happens in lots of communities. It happens here. It’s happened to me.
And if it hasn’t happened to you, it has happened to someone sitting near you now.
That feeling that we don’t belong is painful, and it’s very very likely to cut us off from the healing grace of God that’s pouring out all around us.
If we believe we don’t belong we can make it true.
Or our faith can make us whole.
The hero of these miracle stories is usually the healed person, not the healer. The one who claims and accepts God’s grace, in spite of habits of pain and exclusion.
That’s what this never-named woman does.
She faces down being not good enough, not knowing enough, not being liked (and probably not liking very much those disciples who wanted to get rid of her). And she just belongs for all she’s worth.
Sometimes Jesus seeks us out when we need healing. And sometimes – even some of the times Jesus comes to us – we just have to step up and claim our own healing and wholeness.
What would it mean to you to claim your belonging?
For some of us, it might be praying out loud – in a restaurant or in a church meeting. Knowing that we don’t pray like the book, or the professionals, and pouring our faith out of our hearts, through our mouths, anyway.
For some, it might be stepping up to claim a responsibility or a gift without waiting to be asked. Believing and proclaiming that the passion in your heart for cycling, or AIDS research, or your own healing is just as important to God and the holy community as food and kids and whatever else we talk about the most.
It might be telling the story of your pain to someone else and discovering that what’s kept you lonely is actually something you share.
It’s painful to feel that we don’t belong. But sometimes all we need is to claim our belonging, from the bottom of our hearts.
And when we do belong, when we are wrapped in the comforting assurance that we are secure in this holy community, we thank God, and we remember that what comes in cannot hurt our community, however strange it feels.
It’s what comes from the bottom of our hearts that makes us holy.
The Canaanite woman reminds us that even the dogs under the table are fed. Even the people we don’t pay attention to, even the parts of our selves we think are misfit and unimportant, belong.
Belong in the holy community,
belong to the kingdom of God,
and have a claim to wholeness and healing and being fed.
And Jesus responds.
The holy community is big enough and resilient enough for the faith in all sorts of unexpected hearts.
God’s wholeness and healing are abundant enough,
but you and I must be faithful enough to claim it,
to belong to God, no matter what.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Friday, July 22, 2011
A-ha! Altars
Genesis 28:10-19
Have you had one of those A-ha moments?
One where suddenly you know what you didn’t know before. Or you recognize someone or something in a whole new way.
If you went to Vacation Bible School or on pilgrimage this week, you might have had one of those Ahas of God’s presence and God’s blessing.
But even if you weren’t out looking for God, you might have had one too.
Think about Jacob.
Jacob is the black sheep of the family, who has swiped his older brother’s birthright for a bowl of stew, and stolen the blessing meant for Esau with a dirty trick. So his brother is ready to kill him, and now Jacob is on the run.
And when he falls asleep in the middle of nowhere, he has a remarkable dream.
A stairway to heaven – with messengers trotting up and down to communicate with God – but as he watches, God is right beside him. And God promises him everything he has plotted and cheated for, and lots more besides: land, children (lots and lots of children) who will be a blessing to the whole earth. A secure and wonderful future.
God promises to protect him, provide for him, and bring him back home safe and sound. God promises never to abandon Jacob.
And Jacob wakes up with his big “Aha!” on the tip of his tongue.
God is here, where I never expected it.
Not in some distant heaven, but standing right next to me.
Here, with me, even though I never really believed it before.
God has come looking for me and I don’t need plans or schemes or channels or official messengers or anything else to find and be found by God, to bless and be blessed by God.
Has that ever happened to you?
I hope it has.
It’s happened to me.
But the thing is, I don’t always remember that.
I know I’ve been discovered by God’s love; I know I’ve discovered God right here, in Sunday School classrooms and quiet conversations, in Lake Michigan and in grocery store parking lots and other unexpected places.
But I can’t always get that moment back.
I don’t truly remember many of those experiences, and I don’t always remember what I’ve learned from them.
Which is too bad.
Because even though it’s easier, in some ways, to live without that spotlight certainty of God right here, focused on you, when we don’t remember that immediate, present presence of God, we can start to feel forgotten, alone, bored and, well, easily tempted to get ourselves in trouble. Prone to overwork, or to quit without trying.
And when we do remember, we become our best selves: generous, forgiving, hopeful,
because we know we don’t have to do this on our own.
God might have come looking for Jacob over and over and over before the dream in the story we heard today, but this is the Aha that shaped Jacob’s life.
It’s not that Jacob is transformed into a different person.
For the rest of his life, he’s still the guy who doesn’t hesitate for a moment to seize his own advantage.
But it changes the world. At least, his world.
Now he’s a man who remembers that he is known and loved and claimed by God.
There’s something that happens in this story that doesn’t happen in every encounter with God: in the Bible, or in our lives.
When he wakes up, full of his Aha, his discovery that God is right here and that he is abundantly blessed,
Jacob makes an altar.
It’s not a very fancy altar. An average size rock, upended like a pillar, with a little oil drizzled on it. But Jacob marks the spot so that he will never forget that this unlikely place is the “House of God.”
There’s one Aha moment in my life that I haven’t forgotten (well, there are more – but this is the one I’m telling you about.)
Last spring I went on a clergy retreat in the North Carolina mountains. I knew it would be a pretty good experience, but in the middle of that week I discovered that truth all over again:
God is here. Not just everywhere, not somewhere, but here, with a love and a blessing that we can’t run away from.
I knew I knew that already. But I still had Jacob’s vivid “Aha.” God is in this place, in my life, where I wasn’t really looking.
So I made an altar.
I didn’t set up any rocks at the retreat center (as it happened, there were already plenty of signs that said “God is here.”)
I bought a little watercolor of the North Carolina mountains. A little altar, in a frame, that came home with me to stand up and say “God is here.”
And on the days when I don’t remember that in the ordinary way, I can look at the picture, and discover that Aha all over again.
I’d like to tell you that it’s completely changed my life.
It hasn’t. I still forget lots of those everyday discoveries of God’s presence and blessing.
But there’s one more thing in my life to renew that discovery. A second chance, and a third, and another and another to live into the awareness, deep down, that I am known and loved and blessed by God.
You may have altars, too.
Photos or mementos or stories from one or two really special experiences that bring the discovery of God’s love to you fresh, again and again.
What would it be like if we marked all those places in our lives, so that the world was covered in altars?
So that we’re surrounded by God’s unmistakable nearness, discovered by God’s delighted, loving presence, all over again, in our homes and in the grocery,
every time we enter the classroom, or the living room, or the pew?
At the back of the church there is a basket of rocks. Take one, and make an altar.
If you’ve had one of those Ahas this week, mark it on the stone, and take it home with you, or to the office, or wherever you need it most.
Or just put a stone in your pocket, and when an Aha happens, mark the spot. Not a fancy altar – just enough to remember that here and now you know that God is here, with you.
This week,this month, this year, when the Aha of God’s presence finds you,
when God’s blessing discovers you where you weren’t even looking,
take a moment to make an altar.
Move a rock.
Take home a picture.
Write a note, and stick it under your pillow, or in the visor of your car, or in your wallet.
Make an altar that marks you, over and over and over, as known and loved and blessed by God.
It might change the world.
But if it marks you, that’s enough.
Sunday July 17, 2011
Have you had one of those A-ha moments?
One where suddenly you know what you didn’t know before. Or you recognize someone or something in a whole new way.
If you went to Vacation Bible School or on pilgrimage this week, you might have had one of those Ahas of God’s presence and God’s blessing.
But even if you weren’t out looking for God, you might have had one too.
Think about Jacob.
Jacob is the black sheep of the family, who has swiped his older brother’s birthright for a bowl of stew, and stolen the blessing meant for Esau with a dirty trick. So his brother is ready to kill him, and now Jacob is on the run.
And when he falls asleep in the middle of nowhere, he has a remarkable dream.
A stairway to heaven – with messengers trotting up and down to communicate with God – but as he watches, God is right beside him. And God promises him everything he has plotted and cheated for, and lots more besides: land, children (lots and lots of children) who will be a blessing to the whole earth. A secure and wonderful future.
God promises to protect him, provide for him, and bring him back home safe and sound. God promises never to abandon Jacob.
And Jacob wakes up with his big “Aha!” on the tip of his tongue.
God is here, where I never expected it.
Not in some distant heaven, but standing right next to me.
Here, with me, even though I never really believed it before.
God has come looking for me and I don’t need plans or schemes or channels or official messengers or anything else to find and be found by God, to bless and be blessed by God.
Has that ever happened to you?
I hope it has.
It’s happened to me.
But the thing is, I don’t always remember that.
I know I’ve been discovered by God’s love; I know I’ve discovered God right here, in Sunday School classrooms and quiet conversations, in Lake Michigan and in grocery store parking lots and other unexpected places.
But I can’t always get that moment back.
I don’t truly remember many of those experiences, and I don’t always remember what I’ve learned from them.
Which is too bad.
Because even though it’s easier, in some ways, to live without that spotlight certainty of God right here, focused on you, when we don’t remember that immediate, present presence of God, we can start to feel forgotten, alone, bored and, well, easily tempted to get ourselves in trouble. Prone to overwork, or to quit without trying.
And when we do remember, we become our best selves: generous, forgiving, hopeful,
because we know we don’t have to do this on our own.
God might have come looking for Jacob over and over and over before the dream in the story we heard today, but this is the Aha that shaped Jacob’s life.
It’s not that Jacob is transformed into a different person.
For the rest of his life, he’s still the guy who doesn’t hesitate for a moment to seize his own advantage.
But it changes the world. At least, his world.
Now he’s a man who remembers that he is known and loved and claimed by God.
There’s something that happens in this story that doesn’t happen in every encounter with God: in the Bible, or in our lives.
When he wakes up, full of his Aha, his discovery that God is right here and that he is abundantly blessed,
Jacob makes an altar.
It’s not a very fancy altar. An average size rock, upended like a pillar, with a little oil drizzled on it. But Jacob marks the spot so that he will never forget that this unlikely place is the “House of God.”
There’s one Aha moment in my life that I haven’t forgotten (well, there are more – but this is the one I’m telling you about.)
Last spring I went on a clergy retreat in the North Carolina mountains. I knew it would be a pretty good experience, but in the middle of that week I discovered that truth all over again:
God is here. Not just everywhere, not somewhere, but here, with a love and a blessing that we can’t run away from.
I knew I knew that already. But I still had Jacob’s vivid “Aha.” God is in this place, in my life, where I wasn’t really looking.
So I made an altar.
I didn’t set up any rocks at the retreat center (as it happened, there were already plenty of signs that said “God is here.”)
I bought a little watercolor of the North Carolina mountains. A little altar, in a frame, that came home with me to stand up and say “God is here.”
And on the days when I don’t remember that in the ordinary way, I can look at the picture, and discover that Aha all over again.
I’d like to tell you that it’s completely changed my life.
It hasn’t. I still forget lots of those everyday discoveries of God’s presence and blessing.
But there’s one more thing in my life to renew that discovery. A second chance, and a third, and another and another to live into the awareness, deep down, that I am known and loved and blessed by God.
You may have altars, too.
Photos or mementos or stories from one or two really special experiences that bring the discovery of God’s love to you fresh, again and again.
What would it be like if we marked all those places in our lives, so that the world was covered in altars?
So that we’re surrounded by God’s unmistakable nearness, discovered by God’s delighted, loving presence, all over again, in our homes and in the grocery,
every time we enter the classroom, or the living room, or the pew?
At the back of the church there is a basket of rocks. Take one, and make an altar.
If you’ve had one of those Ahas this week, mark it on the stone, and take it home with you, or to the office, or wherever you need it most.
Or just put a stone in your pocket, and when an Aha happens, mark the spot. Not a fancy altar – just enough to remember that here and now you know that God is here, with you.
This week,this month, this year, when the Aha of God’s presence finds you,
when God’s blessing discovers you where you weren’t even looking,
take a moment to make an altar.
Move a rock.
Take home a picture.
Write a note, and stick it under your pillow, or in the visor of your car, or in your wallet.
Make an altar that marks you, over and over and over, as known and loved and blessed by God.
It might change the world.
But if it marks you, that’s enough.
Sunday July 17, 2011
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