Falling in love

Luke 2:1-20

I’ve seen a lot of birth announcements on Facebook recently.

In the old days – you know, a decade or two ago – when the baby was born you called people, using the telephone.  Grandparents, siblings, dear friends: the new baby’s family circle, got the call, and printed announcements or word of mouth took over from there. 

Today, within hours of the baby’s birth, family, dear friends, and perhaps hundreds of near strangers are informed of the baby’s arrival, stats, name, and first photos online.  An extraordinary number of unrelated people now share that intimate access to the birth day, including folks you didn’t even eat lunch with in high school. 

But it’s oddly similar to that moment two thousand years ago when the sky around Bethlehem suddenly rang with the angelic birth announcement.

To an unrelated group of shepherds minding their own business, the sudden and prodigal news of a baby’s birth, stats, name and general appearance were even less expected than a former colleague’s hospital photos. 

But the joy was real, and in this case the news was meant precisely for the hundreds, then millions of near-strangers who would eventually learn the baby’s story.

That’s the thing about Christmas.  The thing that’s oddly contemporary in a wireless, internet-connected world.  The news is for EVERYONE.  

This miracle of God, born human, living among us, is remarkably public and undiscriminating.

It’s because that baby, born in a stable, announced by angels, is our all-access pass to God.  Near-strangers, the ones who don’t even appear on the Christmas card list, that’s who gets intimate access to God, tonight.

In Luke’s story and in Matthew’s, the people who come to see this baby, to witness and celebrate the birth, are precisely the people we would never imagine in our own family nativity stories.

There are shepherds – the first century Palestinian equivalent of day laborers, widely regarded as unreliable and socially marginal. 

And there are magi. Foreigners.  They hang out with governors and kings (also not the folks who usually come to visit the baby in the hospital) but they probably had accents and funny clothes.

That scene around the manger is full of people who don’t belong there: the infant asleep in a feed trough, a mother and father far from home.  Animals.  Laborers.  Foreigners.  

That picture is God’s announcement to us that in Jesus, everything changes.  This infant is God’s gift to us of unrestricted welcome and access.

God, born human, is wide open to the unlikely, to those who seem undeserving, to strangers, to you and me, reaching out our hands to hold a baby.

For the last couple of months, Brian and Ruth Ann Pfohl brought their foster baby Easton to church, and I watched as he passed from arm to arm, cradled by people he’d barely met.  Like the infant Jesus, Easton was on loan to us, and like Jesus his love and nurture came from strangers, adoptive parents, and unexpected friends. 

Like the infant Jesus, Easton simply let us fall in love.

Other parents of this congregation have told me about watching their child pass from arm to arm, in worship and at coffee hour, held and loved by friends and near-strangers in a mutual and unplanned act of trust.

Holding a baby is an act of radical intimacy. 

And here, especially tonight, you don’t have to be a parent to hold the baby, to nurture growth and love with the ordinary physical support of your arms and body. 

You don’t have to be a family member, or even a close friend, to fall in love, to have grace and compassion kindled in your heart by the weight of an infant in your arms.

God is born – in an unlocked, temporary stable, open to all and sundry – so that you and I can never lose that intimate, nurturing, radical access to God. God is born an ordinary, extraordinary, human infant so that you and I, strangers to the family but beloved of God, can fall in love tonight. 

And over and over again.

The Christmas miracle of birth and angel news is a miracle of invitation.  You and I are invited to family intimacy with God, tonight and forever.

Of course, intimacy isn’t easy.

Once they get inside our hearts, babies grow and change and take us to unexpected places, demanding that our hearts grow with them.   It’s the same with anyone we relate to in love.  Intimacy erodes our defenses against grace and joy as well as grief and pain. 

So vulnerability is part of Christmas.  

At this season our dependence on one another for hope and happiness is more obvious than usual – around the table, under the tree, in a mall or in a candlelit church – when the world insists on brightness and cheer.

And that, too, is why God is an infant, tonight, surrounded by strangers.   A baby’s fragile body depends on the constant support of others for nourishment, cleanness, and even warmth, and God invites us to offer that care. 

Tonight, God the baby is vulnerable to us, open to the pain and the delights of human relationship.  From this time forward, every human hope and pain, every fear and every joy, is felt by God.

Once we fall in love with a baby, we belong to that baby for life.  

Through sleepless nights, new discoveries, bruised knees and hearts, abundant growth, the care and joy never end.

And that, too, is why God is born in a stable, announced with exuberant joy to strangers in the field, and visited by foreigners.  God the infant invites us to open our arms because tonight no one, no one at all, is left out of that invitation, that love, that belonging, because it doesn’t end in that stable. 

This miracle is meant to go on and on.

Day in and day out, the Christmas miracle of birth and love keeps hold of us.

Tonight, there is this infant, God made flesh, so that the unlikely, those who seem undeserving, strangers -- you and I -- can fall in love with God.

Because once we fall in love, the miracle claims our days and nights, our hearts and hopes,

and filled and surrounded by love, we belong to God for always.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve 2010 

Listen to the Sauerkraut

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Every Thanksgiving meal is a story.

Or lots of stories.

On the Thanksgiving table of my childhood there was always a dish of sauerkraut.
It was Silver Fleece canned sauerkraut, and it wasn’t the most delicious thing on the table – at least to my taste! – but it was there every year.
That particular sauerkraut was there because my grandmother’s mother’s family had come from Germany. And that family had brought to their new American Thanksgiving table a piece of who they were, and where they had come from, every year until, in our generation, it simply wouldn’t have been Thanksgiving without that particular fragrant dish of pickled cabbage.

There are other stories at other tables.
Stories about cranberry sauce almost left on the kitchen counter in another state, and rescued at great peril of rush hour traffic. Stories about recipes, passed from mother, to daughter, to son; stories disastrous dishes of Thanksgivings past, and about why it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without that particular dish.

Funny stories, loving stories, a few sad stories. Stories that shape our lives, and reflect our relationships.

Close your eyes for a minute, and see the dinner table in your imagination.
Where do those foods come from? Why are they right for this meal? Who is in the stories that sit on your table today?

Of course, there are probably some things on your table because of “Tradition” and not because of someone specific, and those dishes tell a community story.
A story that starts with the one we learned in elementary school: about hungry, hard-working Pilgrims and generous Indians making friends and making peace over a harvest feast.
That story goes on, integrating stories of new immigrants. Hungry Poles, or Irish, or Italians, and a new generation of “natives” to teach the harvest feast. Hard working Chinese, and Mexicans, and a new kind of “Indians,” and another new generation of natives to pass the tradition on. And each new generation makes the story its own.

Like all the stories on our tables, the national story of Thanksgiving is a story about who we are, and where we come from.
And it’s a story about coming home.

So is the story that Moses teaches the people of Israel to tell on a similar occasion. When you bring your harvest to the altar, you tell a story:
A wandering Aramean was my ancestor….we went to Egypt as a stranger, and became many; we were oppressed, and cried for relief; God brought us out of Egypt into an abundant land.
And that’s where this food came from.

These stories are our salvation history:
the story of who we are as the story of whose we are, and why.
On days like today, we’re more aware than usual that we belong to our ancestors, for better or worse. We belong to what happened to our families. And we belong to God, who brings us home.
And that’s where this food has come from.

The stories aren’t usually perfect. To claim a shiftless Aramean as your father wasn’t something to be especially proud of, and it is hard to remember slavery, even – or especially – after you’ve been set free.

But the messy bits – from turkey disasters to broken relationships to slavery – all the sins and the griefs belong in our stories, along with the healing and joy.
The messy bits, just like the joyful bits, are our salvation story, because they are who and where we were when God called us to be God’s own. Even the messy bits that happen every year, and get cleaned up at every Thanksgiving meal.

When we hear the stories – at the altar or on the table – and remember who and whose we are, and why: That’s what makes it a holy meal.

That’s what we do here this morning. We gather around a table, and tell the story of our salvation to make holy the meal we share, and to make holy the community that shares it.

Just like it’s what we do later today: gather, tell, and eat. And eat some more.

So listen to the prayers,
and listen to the sauerkraut.
Listen to the turkey, and the yams (or the sweet potatoes) the dressing (or the stuffing), and all the other dishes on the table.

Listen for the stories, sad or funny, loudly repeated or quietly heard,
the stories that remind us of how we belong to our family, and our community, and our God.
About who we are, and whose we are,
and about coming home.

Listen especially today, but not only today
and when you hear each story, say Thank You.

Thank you.
Amen.

Living in The End

Isaiah 65:17-25,  2 Thessalonians 3:6-13, Luke 21:5-19

There’s just something about the end of the world that makes it come up over and over again. Every summer, it seems, there’s at least one “blockbuster” end-of-the world disaster movie.  And every November, in the church’s cycle of scripture, there’s at least one end-of-the-world gospel story. Like, for example, today.  It’s one the special-effects crews would have a field day with.

The scene starts with the beauty and marvel of the Temple in Jerusalem – wonderful workmanship, and gorgeous decoration.  But swiftly the emphasis shifts to destruction and calamity: not a stone of the building will be left on another; earthquakes and wars and insurrections and lawlessness and….  well, you’ve probably seen one of those movies.

Last week, Frank Samela called me to announce that certain parts of our very own buildings were auditioning for disaster: crumbling concrete, and a part of the rectory foundation ready for stone to slip from on top of stone.

Of course, the first question I asked him was, “When will this be?  Should I be packing up the office?”

And Frank explained: Teams of workmen spent this last week tuckpointing at the rectory and repairing concrete in our driveway and stairs.  (Yes, it is safe for you to move normally around the building)

When I asked, Frank didn’t tell me when; he told me what we were going to do about it.

And, in that, he’s more like Jesus than he probably realizes.

Everyone’s natural reaction to hearing Jesus announce that the Temple will be torn stone from stone is to ask When??

And Jesus never answers when.  Instead, he describes what to do: how we are to respond to God, no matter when:

Do not follow false teachers.

Do not be terrified.

Make up your minds to testify to God, in the midst of disaster. 

But don’t prepare your testimony in advance, because it is Jesus who will show you what to say.

Waiting for the end is not just for pessimists with a basement full of canned goods.  It's the everyday task of Christian living.  And there are better and worse ways to do it - we heard today Paul's worries about the Thessalonians' method of waiting: apparently another teacher has told them that in a world near the end, they should party like it's 1999.  So he reminds them of the way Jesus teaches us to live:

Be faithful.

Be confident.

Above all be witnesses for God and the gospel, not by eloquence, but by listening for Christ.

Now, if you’re like most of the people I’ve been talking to lately, you don’t really have time for the world to end this November.

We’re busy.

But over the last couple thousand years of Christian life, it’s become clear that the end of the world comes in more than one way.

There are little apocalypses that surround us now.

Cancer.  Job loss. Broken relationships in our families. Wars and earthquakes. Little apocalypses that end not the earth, but certainly life as we know it.  Challenges that become disasters if they lead us to forget either who we are, or whose we are.

And neither Jesus, nor the economic pundits, nor the doctors, nor anyone else can tell us when they’ll come. But Jesus does, always, tell us what to do, and how to respond.

Be faithful.

Be confident in God.

and be ready to be witnesses for Christ.

Jesus doesn’t promise us the resources to survive unscathed,

but instead the resources to proclaim the gospel, to shine with God’s good news in the midst of the world’s biggest mess.

And whether the end of the world comes all at once, or in local apocalypses, over and over, you and I are who God chooses to testify to God’s good news.

I have been listening lately to the words of the gospel that Jesus has given to this particular community – to Calvary, in the middle of all the little apocalypses of illness and loss – and this is what I have heard:

In the heart of our identity is the good news of God’s compassion. 

We are never more Calvary than when we are feeding and visiting one another in times of struggle. 

Never more ourselves than when we pour out compassion in the form of mosquito nets to combat malaria, or school uniforms to help lift girls and boys out of chronic poverty.

Those actions are what Jesus gives us to say to a world that loses hope.

And God has given us two very powerful words that come up over and over again at Calvary: Thank you.

I hear Thanks-Giving in Vestry meetings, ordinary conversations, and Sunday School classes.  Thanks to one another, and thanks to God for the abundance of God’s gifts, and for hearing our prayer. In fact, we’re building our budget for next year not on “here’s what we need,” but on “thank you very much!”

Those two words are what Jesus gives us to say to a world driven by fear and need.

And, at Calvary, we also know something about joy.

In prayer and in scripture, we are reminded that the time of God’s coming in final judgment is not just about earthquakes and disaster.  It is also about healing and peace.

We are reminded of that today in the vision of the prophet Isaiah: God’s promise to create earth and heaven new, to vanish the burdens of error and violence and grief and greed that have scarred our relationships with God, with one another, and with all creation, and to renew God’s people in health and blessing, and especially joy.

When I hear that vision – even more than when I hear about earthquakes and crumbling stones – I can’t help but ask “when?”

How soon, God, will that new creation come?

But the answer is the same: not a timetable, but a guide.

Be faithful.

Be confident in God.

And above all, be ready to be a witness for God’s good news.

In the new creation, the token of that good news is our joy. 

The radiant joy that God has in us shines through us, as God’s invitation to all the world.

In world ending disaster, in little, life-changing apocalypses, and in paradise, God calls on us as witnesses:  Faithful, confident, and above all, hearing and sharing the good news that Jesus gives us, radiating joy.

We practice that here at Calvary, so that whenever the end of the world comes, in disaster or in new creation, we are already doing what God calls us to do.

God’s witnesses, 

by compassion, and gratitude, and joy;

now, and whenever.  

Amen.

Expecting healing

Isaiah 35:1-10,  Luke 5:17-26

Do you ever think that we expect a lot of God?

I’ve been praying for healing for a lot of folks lately.

(Have you?)

Praying for patience and strength, for people who are sick, and for their families and friends.  Praying for wisdom and guidance for doctors and nurses and pharmacists and techs.  Praying for the healing of hearts and spirits, damaged by long trials of pain and limitation.

And I’ve been very explicit with God about how much I want the cancer and the degenerative diseases and the heartbreak to just go away and leave us alone.

I expect God to listen, and to hear.

I expect people I’m praying for to recover.

I expect healing in ways I can’t even describe.  And that’s when I sometimes start to think it’s a lot that I’m expecting from God.

But the evidence of scripture is that God expects us to expect all that and even more.

God gives us visions of healing that go beyond re-knit bones and flesh, beyond stronger muscles, beyond cancer remission, surgical repairs, and getting life “back to normal.”

God gives us visions of healing that sweep souls and hearts into vibrant joy; visions of broken communities restored, of chronic and life-long limits entirely transformed into wholeness.

We heard from the prophet Isaiah that this healing vision God gives includes homecoming, safety, and the end of sorrow; not just for God’s people, but for wild beasts and for the land itself.  The lonely, barren desert land bursts into blossom in sheer joy.

That’s not “getting better.” That’s healing above and beyond health.

And Luke’s story of Jesus and a paralyzed man reminds us that healing is found first in the community of friends, whose faith and literal support bring us to the place of healing, then in the reconciliation of our lives and souls to God, and then finally, in the transformation of our physical ills and limits.

Do we sometimes expect less of God than we should?

That’s what this morning is all about.  The promise that God’s healing, like God’s love, is broader and deeper than we imagine when we are hurting, or lonely, or despairing. 

The promise that God’s healing touches not just our bodies, but our hearts, souls and communities – and even the earth itself, with all creation. 

And the promise that God’s healing is about even more than the relief of pain or the return to normal – that God’s healing is about joy and wholeness that cannot be contained.

Sometimes the physical cure we ask for is secondary to God’s true healing – as in the story of the paralyzed man this morning.  Sometimes, the physical cure is immediate and unmistakeable. Sometimes it never comes.

But the witness of scripture and the promise of God invite us to ask for more. 

To bring our pain, small and great to God.

To bring the aches of our heart and spirit and hips and hands, expecting to share in the healing of the world.  To bring our physical and spiritual crisis to God, expecting to be transformed by God’s touch. 

To bring our dis-ease and brokenness of every kind, expecting to be swept up in God’s compassion for all creation.

We don’t pray to control what happens. 

We pray because whatever happens, we need God’s healing gifts, for heart, body, spirit and the community and creation around us. 

We pray because God expects us to long for healing.

And when we do that in community, as we share one another’s pain, we share our hope and our love as well.

And that is why we are here today.

To share, one-by-one and all together, in God’s healing of the world.

Will there be faith on earth?

Jeremiah 31:27-34; Luke 18:1-8

Today’s gospel parable would fit right in to the 21^st century news cycle:  corruption, justice denied and justice received.   In fact, the parable alone, without the context of teaching on prayer that Luke gives us, has made-for-TV-movie written all over it.

In a certain city there was a widow.

To understand the nuances of that description by gospel standards, the movie gives us background on the woman’s character – dedicated to good works, a moral and faithful example in her own community.

And still, one of the most vulnerable people – imagine her losing her home as a result of the crummy economy and corrupt banking practices, with no one to support her.  She stays in homeless shelters, and can’t get a lawyer to take her case.

That case is being heard by a certain judge, known by all to be corrupt – not interested either in enforcing the law, nor guided by any recognizable moral standards.

So she shows up daily in his courtroom, demanding justice even after her case has been dismissed. 

She confronts him on the street, screaming in his face.  She shows up at political fundraisers he attends, creating noise and disruption. 
She sleeps on the street at the front door of his house.

The English translation of the judge’s description of this persistence is entirely too gentle.  In the original Greek, he more literally fears that she is giving him a black eye – with the implication of both physical threat and visible embarrassment.

Somehow, our hero the widow manages not to get thrown in jail for either stalking or contempt of court, and the judge reopens her case, resolves it with justice – not just fair application of the law, but God’s justice which uplifts the oppressed.

The music cues us to reach for the Kleenex as she returns to her home, her good works, and her community. 

Then just before the credits roll, we hear Jesus’ narration:  “If such a corrupt, flawed system provides justice in the end, don’t you understand that God’s justice comes sooner and stronger.  So be persistent in prayer and expectation.

But, when the Messiah comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Huh?

It’s a great story, and it makes clear metaphorical sense – right up until Jesus throws in that last question:  When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?

Option one:

Well, of course he will.  That’s what the point of this story was, right?  That we should be persistent in faith.  It’s our obligation, it comes with a promise, and we’ll maintain that faith for God to find.

Option two:

Jesus is answering the questions that take up the previous scene of the gospel story: “When will God’s kingdom and God’s justice come?”

And as usual, he provides not a date, but a description of how to wait.

Or there’s another possibility. 

One that most commentators don’t mention; one I learned from Joey Vitti and Austin Nolan when the Journey to Adulthood youth were helping me plan our worship today.

Maybe this story is about how God is going to keep bugging us until we get it.

And that one makes a lot of sense to me.

The corrupt judge can look like a caricature of our own flaws and imperfections.  As a society, it’s easy to find examples of disregard for God, or disrespect for others.  We don’t, as a community, get God’s justice done consistently.

And the widow, aggressively expecting attention and justice despite overwhelming odds against – well, a lot of God’s story is like that. 

We’ve been reading from the prophet Jeremiah for weeks now.

We heard first God’s insistent, dramatic, even pushy insistence on justice among the people of Israel, and a promise of disaster when justice and faith are left undone. 

We hear about invasion and defeat at the hands of Babylon, a very impressive black eye.

And today we’ve reached the point in the story when the people of Israel hear God calling them to restoration, to life in a merciful and just relationship, and a chance to start again. 

It’s a cycle recorded over and over again in scripture. From long before Jesus taught, God has yearned and promised to create in us the kind of faith in which prayer day and night are a natural part of our bodies and being. Preemptive, radical forgiveness, written on our hearts.  Hearts that make us more like God, and more like the widow in Jesus’ story.

There is another story in the news this fall that might help us imagine what that unrelenting faith looks like – another one we may yet see as a made-for-TV-movie.

This one takes place at a mine in Chile.  It too, starts out as a hopeless case.  17 days of failed attempts to dig out; rumors of corruption and unsafe practices in the news; 17 days of slow starvation underground. 

It ends in wholeness and reconciliation – a world-watched hopeful, tearful restoration as 33 miners return, mostly healthy and joyful, to the world. 

But it’s the middle that teaches us what Jesus teaches:

It’s the 17 days of drilling, even when rational expectation was failing. 

The 52 days of insistent presence – a full court press of doctors and experts, family and friends on the surface and colleagues underground, unrelenting and proactive in their expectation that restoration would come soon.  News and nutrition, tasks and plans flowed both ways, so that the miners and the rest of us were ready for any day to be the day of restoration.

That’s what Jesus and the widow are telling us about faith (and about when the kingdom of God will come) and it applies to our response to the endless, joyless economic recovery, and to more personal pain, like illness or loss.

That in prayer, in relationship with others, in everyday living, we are to act as if today is the day that the mine will be opened. 

As if today is the day that the kingdom of God comes, today is the day when justice and mercy restore us to wholeness.

It’s not especially easy.  We’ll get tired, we’ll get renewed, and sometimes it will seem ridiculous.

But – like the hope climbing out of a Chilean mine – this persistent faith can be both attractive and contagious.

God calls us to be as active as that widow, or a mine rescue crew, pursuing healing and justice and wholeness every day, in small ways and big ones. Not only because it’s good for us, but because our living like that is good for the world.

For most of us, there will probably be no TV movie.  But our stories will still be the answer to Jesus’ question:

When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?

 

Never Lost

from A Service of Thanksgiving for the Lives of our Pets, Calvary Episcopal Church, Lombard,
hosted by the Lombard Veterinary Hospital, 
October 2, 2010

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

I don’t know what animals believe about God, or about death.

I can’t get my cat to tell me.

But I am quite sure that pets know some things about life and about God that you and I might learn from scripture.

There is a time for everything. 
A time to be born, and a time to die.
A time to eat, and a time to run. A time to hide your toys, and a time to insist on play,
A time to sleep, and a time to make sure that no one in the house is sleeping.

We learn these, and other things from our pets.
We learn patience.  And joy.  We learn that we are not as in charge as we think we are.
We learn about trust, because our pets trust us. And we learn about how God means for us to live with all God’s creatures when we live up to that trust.

We learn much about love, when we love our pets, and we are here today because of that love.
Because we love a pet, or love someone who loves a pet,
we grieve when a pet dies.
We grieve the very real loss of a companion in life, a living, breathing gift of God our creator.

We remember, with laughter or tears, the favorite games and places.  We remember the people our pet connected us to, and the gift of touch. 
We give thanks for the memories.
We cry for our helplessness when the injury or illness or simple age of our pet was too much to heal,
and we cry when we have to choose to let them go.  Because, sometimes, that is the gift we can give them. 

I don’t know for sure what pets believe about God, or what happens when we die. But I know what I believe.

From the beginning of Creation, God made spiders and fish, birds and lizards, cats and elephants and dogs and horses and rabbits, and rejoiced that they were good.
From the very beginning, God told us to live together in harmony with animals and taught us to care for all creation with God’s own care.

And most of all I know,
that from forever to forever, not one single one of God’s creatures, ants or lions or gerbils or snakes,
not one can ever be lost to God.

Every one of God’s creatures is welcome in God’s home.  We heard that in the psalm that began our service today.
The story of the Rainbow Bridge, that we heard today, is one way of imagining that truth: that not one of the pets we have loved, nor you or I, not one is ever lost to God.
And scripture tells us that in the kingdom of God, every one of God’s creatures will find shelter, and safety, and peace.

There is a time for everything under heaven:
A time to cry,
a time to remember,
and a time to turn to God for comfort, knowing that God’s love is big enough for us in our joy and grief, big enough for our pets, and for all God’s creatures,
all welcome and at peace in God’s home,
and never, ever lost.

Church is like Carrots?

Last week the New York Times ran a story about how attempts to get Americans to eat more vegetables tend to stumble on our cultural habits and fail.

This is my favorite part:

The nation has long had a complicated relationship with vegetables. People know that vegetables can improve health. But they’re a lot of work. In refrigerators all over the country, produce often dies a slow, limp death because life becomes too busy.
“The moment you have something fresh you have to schedule your life around using it,” Mr. Balzer said.
In the wrong hands, vegetables can taste terrible. And compared with a lot of food at the supermarket, they’re a relatively expensive way to fill a belly.

Vegetables are too much work, it turns out.
Fresh food requires planning and commitment
If we don’t already eat them regularly, vegetables can seem to require a set of knowledge and skills that shut us out. 

Carrots are like church.
Or, at least my experience of vegetables is a lot like the way many people experience religion.
You know it’s good for you, but….
The practices of faith: prayer, community, study – all these require planning and commitment – just like a box of CSA veggies.
There are an intimidating array of things you don’t know that other people seem to: Facts, like how long it takes to cook an artichoke, or how many different gospels there are.  Matters of opinion, like the difference between an Episcopalian and a Congregationalist, or the best way to prepare yams (or are they sweet potatoes?)  And mysteries, like what happens after we die, and why some people like okra.

In the wrong hands scripture can be revolting, and compared with a lot of the alternatives, faith can be expensive: in courage and commitment - and yes, occasionally in cash.

It wasn’t a cheerful comparison when the article pointed out that historically, none of the marketing strategies, good advice, or public projects, have made much of a dent in Americans’ aversion to vegetables.

But it made me think, again, about how and why people might come to church.  Marketing, information and advice,  can shape expectations and create “shoulds” or good intentions:
I would love to be healthier; I should eat more vegetables.
I would like to know how to pray: I should go to church.

But that’s not what makes the difference in the practices of faith or dining.

The vegetables I do eat, I eat because I know them.  My parents provided me with enough broccoli and asparagus as a child that I still believe they are easy and delicious.  Every tomato I eat is a yearning to return to the mountaintop of a sun-warmed tomato fresh from the vine.  Salad is a discipline I’m still learning, a study I took up because so many of my friends practice it. 

Vegetables make their way into my life through family, and friends, and the occasional sweet miracle.
And that’s how we get to the practices of faith, too.   Maybe we pray because we can’t remember not praying.  Or get up in the morning and go to church because it brings back a little, each time, of one sweet revelation.  Or read scripture because we have friends to read it with.

Not because we "should," but because we have a guide, a companion, to make the start easier and keep us company in the practices.  Or because, more rarely, one taste was enough to send us yearning for it every day.

Church and carrots do have a lot in common, including this:  they don’t come easy unless you’ve done it all your life (and then there are still challenges and surprises!)  But in the end, it’s worth it. 

I’m going to go see about some sweet potatoes, now. (Or are they yams?)

Rejoice

Luke 15:1-10


I’ve seen a lot of books that offer Jesus’ management principles, but I’ve never been especially tempted to buy them, since I tend to think that anyone who can imagine Jesus as a corporate executive has not met the same Messiah I have.

Today, for instance, we hear Jesus’ reflections on asset management.
Which of you,     having 100 sheep and losing one,
does not leave the other ninety-nine unguarded and at risk in the wilderness to chase down the one that was lost?
And what woman, having lost 10 percent of her household cash does not drop absolutely everything to find it – and once found, invites the neighbors over for a party that more than likely costs at least what she’s just lost and found.

Which of you manage your work or your home like that?  (show of hands?)

It’s a deliberately out of proportion response to a relatively minor problem – not just in the recovery effort, but in the extravagant attention of the neighbors.  The whole community is called to take notice of the loss, the risk, and the recovery.

This week, I couldn’t help but notice the extravagant attention that national and international media, political, and religious organizations paid to the plans of one pastor of a very small church in Florida.
You might have heard about it. 
Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center – a church of apparently about 30 people – announced a Qur’an burning event.  Demonstrations – in Afghanistan and in the US, effigy-burnings, counter-demonstrations and news stories followed; the President, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, and most major political and religious figures in the US weighed in.
(with the possible exception of Richard M Daley)

One missing sheep, one missing coin,
claims the complete attention of the shepherd, the woman, and eventually the entire community.
One small church, one offensive action,
has held hostage the attention of our nation, much of our world, and the leadership of several faiths.

It matters.
And it’s ridiculous.

It’s always dangerous to believe you know who the lost sheep is in one of Jesus’ parables.  But my own response to the 24-hour news coverage of a small stunt in Florida is probably not unlike the reaction of the Pharisees or the 99 sheep.

"That idiot. 
It’s his own poor choices that have gotten him in trouble. 
What a waste of attention and effort, when there is so much good going on in the world – churches and mosques and synagogues that are sheltering the poor and lonely, feeding the hungry, and proclaiming truly good news of God’s call to us are being ignored for the sake of this one guy."
99 righteous sheep, ignored for one lost fool.

It’s the reaction I think Jesus is expecting when he presents this parable.         
But it’s not the response that God is looking for.

Rejoice is what the prodigal shepherd says to his neighbors – with no reference to the fate of the 99 sheep.
Rejoice is what the woman says to her neighbors as she blows her newly-re-found savings on a party.
Rejoice with me is what Jesus says to the Pharisees and what God says to us.
The Pharisees, and you and I, are invited by Jesus to see as God sees: Rejoice with me, because what was lost was found.

If you find it hard to imagine your way into the mind of God, it may be easier to imagine the joy of the lost sheep on being found and restored to the community.
Many of us have had an experience of being found by God, or by one of God’s people, when we were lost, or alone, or in danger of our health, our life, our sanity, or our relationships. 
Many of us know, and I believe all of us can imagine, the extraordinary gift of being found, and even more, of being restored to wholeness, to our relationship with God and our community, in spite of how we had lost ourselves.

That experience leaves us full of the mercy of God – the mercy that Paul proclaims, that Jesus demonstrates, that the prophet Jeremiah begs Israel to accept.  Mercy that is extravagant in and of itself.

But Jesus invites us to an even more extravagant joy: to see that mercy as God sees it – as no risk or effort ever wasted,
even on the most hopeless and lost.
And Jesus invites us to share in God’s joy – a joy that cannot be contained, that will never stop inviting others to rejoice.

Because if we share God’s perspective, then neither Pastor Terry Jones nor anyone else looks like a threat to our self and salvation, no matter how misguided, mistaken, or just strange that other sheep may be.

I’m still horrified that anyone who knows that Jesus taught us to love our neighbor as ourself, and even to love our enemies, could plan to burn the Qur’an with the intent to destroy a faith. 
And at 9 years and counting, I remember other smoke, and I’m still sick that anyone could so distort faith in God to lead to terrorism and the death of thousands. 

I can’t love those neighbors and those enemies by my own will power.

So Jesus offers us a chance to see from God’s perspective; to see without fear and without contempt.
To see the idiots and the strangers and the sinners in our life with God’s overwhelming, extravagant commitment that not one of them will be lost. 
To see, with God’s love, the unrestrained joy and celebration when one of us is found.

Jesus offers us a lens to see Pastor Terry Jones,
or the idiot whose mistake means everyone else works overtime,
or even sheep from God’s other flocks like Muslims praying near “ground zero” as a cause of joy to God.

Not because of what they do – or don’t do – but because God will break the bank for anyone, seek them out, and celebrate that they are found.

Jesus invites us to see such extravagant attention to one sheep, one man, one small community, as a sign of God’s commitment that not one of us will be lost to God.

It’s messy, it’s not fair.  It flies in the face of common sense.
And those management principles are a lousy way to get ahead in business or to manage your retirement savings.

But it is an invitation to extravagant joy.
And to love as God loves; to rejoice because God rejoices, are the founding principles of the kingdom of God,
and that is where all God’s sheep, where you and I, belong.

Budgeting for the Kingdom

Luke 14:25-33

I’m not a real home improver – but I watch them on TV.

And what I’ve learned so far is that there are two kinds of renovation:
In the first kind, a professional designer and contractor come to your house with a crew of handypersons.  They perform a wide variety of tasks that look so easy you could certainly do them on a Saturday afternoon, and a beautiful new kitchen appears in 47 minutes plus commercial breaks.
Then there’s the other kind of renovation, in which homeowners begin by removing a major chunk of the house’s fixtures or walls, and five weeks later the kitchen is still missing a wall and an oven, and several thousand dollars over budget.

That’s  the kind of project Jesus is talking about today.
… which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it?   Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him…

Maybe the neighbors don’t really make fun of the half-finished kitchen (especially if they’ve done some work on their own house), but Jesus expects that we can all imagine the despair, embarrassment, exhaustion and chaos of that half-finished, out-of-resources experience.

And Jesus is pretty confident that we don’t want to go there. 
That’s why he’s very careful to outline exactly what following him is going to cost.

Open up your mental ledger or spreadsheet, and count along:
ONE Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.
Hate is not something I recommend to make everyday life easier.  And it’s not entirely consistent with what Jesus teaches about loving others as yourself.  But Jesus uses that very strong language of hate to be sure that we hear that the call of discipleship is so strong it challenges even the strongest of our ties,
it’s stronger than the blood which is thicker than water.

TWO  Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
That’s all about accepting that your death and your life are someone else’s to control – not our own.

THREE  none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.
Easier to say than do, by a long shot, but clear.

Jesus does not say you have to do these things to be a good person, or to be a holy person, or to be a member of the church.
But being a disciple, a person who has truly absorbed the life of Jesus into one’s own life, is that expensive.

And Jesus doesn’t list these things to encourage either atheism or despair.  He lists them for the crowd because his teaching and his healing are so attractive and appealing that people have begun to give up family ties and material goods to follow him around.

Jesus knows that – if we don’t first count the cost and know we can pay it – there will come that time when we’ve run out of resources and the joy of following Christ will turn into despair, embarrassment, exhaustion and chaos, just like the half-finished walls of a tower or a new kitchen.

And the kingdom of God can’t be abandoned half finished.

The work of the Church and the life of discipleship aren’t actually the same thing.  Related, yes – and that relationship has been making me think:  I’ve been recruiting a lot of volunteers lately, and I’m very aware of the temptation to tell prospective Sunday School teachers and Vestry Members that the work I’m asking them to consider will be easy.

Doable, yes.  Fun, often. Sometimes it's simple, and sometimes it doesn’t take all that much time – make this decision on Monday night, share this Bible story with the kids on Sunday morning – but it’s not always easy.
And, just as with towers and kitchen remodels, it can be hard to tell just what will be difficult, even if you’re already started on the job.

So I try, as best I can, to be honest about the cost.
And to offer not a cheap experience, but the resources we will need to do the job right.

Because what we do here – in our classrooms and our parish hall, our sanctuary and our homes – might not require that we hate our families or sell everything we own.
But the work of building the kingdom of God and of nurturing Jesus’ disciples always demands our heart.  Sometimes more heart than we thought we had when we started.

It's worth it.

We don’t want a cheap church – one in which all the volunteer jobs are easy and take less than an hour a month. 
Because with those resources, we’d never get the material bought or the foundations laid.

We don’t really want a cheap relationship with Jesus.  Because, as experience has taught many of us, the cheap stuff breaks the quickest. 
We want the quality stuff – the church and the relationship with God that will endure, even beyond our family, or our possessions, or our lives,
and especially when we stand to lose those things.

That’s what Jesus is talking about,
reminding the crowds who’ve delighted in his healing and teaching that the easy part of our relationship with the Messiah will barely scratch the surface of the relationship God invites us to.
It’s expensive.
And Jesus wants us to count the cost, because we need to carry it through, and we need to know it’s worth it.

And there’s something else to hear, if we are listening.
Jesus says these things to the crowds who have been following him on the road to Jerusalem.  The road that literally ends at a cross on a hill and a tomb in a garden.
And when Jesus says that we cannot join him on that road without counting the cost, we know that he has counted the cost.
That on that road to Jerusalem, Jesus has counted the extraordinary cost of death and resurrection, and knows that he will finish the task.

And even more, God has counted the cost of our salvation, beginning to end,
and God will complete it.

Its expensive.
And it definitely takes longer than 47 minutes plus commercials.

But knowing the cost, in time and effort, in pain and loss, in love and the depth of our hearts,
God has counted us worth it.
Worth the gift of Godself, and worth giving ourselves to God.

God is not cheap.
Neither are we.
But the budget of the kingdom of God is abundant, and it will be completed.
Amen.

Stand up

Luke 13:10-17

Twice this week I found myself in conversation about Sunday mornings: "Why don’t people go to church?"
One of those conversations happened in our Wednesday morning Bible Study, the other at one of our summer dessert events.
In both conversations, we talked about all these other things on Sundays – football practice, and golf and school events and more. Or a busy seven day week that means that for many people “Sunday morning is the only time I get to spend time with my family.”

And someone asked me,
Isn’t that a violation of the Ten Commandments?

How does that one go?
Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God…

The word “sabbath” derives from the Hebrew root for rest. Rest in the sense of stopping, cease and desist from action or work, to sit still.
It’s something God did in creation. It’s something many of us need. And it’s a commandment: to stop what we’re doing, and be still.

And on a Sabbath day, Jesus is sitting in the synagogue, teaching, and in that congregation we notice a crippled woman, bent and twisted, visibly tied in knots.
Jesus reaches out his hands, heals her, and she stands up - every knot in her body undone and straight – and praises God.

A miracle.
But does it break the Ten Commandments?

It’s the first question that leaps to mind for the leader of that congregation.
It might seem odd to some of us that channeling the healing power of God is the sort of work prohibited by Sabbath, but the people of Israel had had more than a thousand years by that time to debate and consider what’s allowed, what’s rest, and what isn’t. And that community had come to the conclusion that God’s healing was the ordinary work of the community, and should be done on the six work days of the week (short of life or death cases).

So what Jesus does is work – as recognizable in that community as heavy lifting, operating machinery, or responding to the boss’s email on your BlackBerry is to our community.

It’s not the first time, either.
It’s the third time he’s healed someone in the synagogue on the Sabbath, according to Luke.
And, as usual, it gets him in trouble.

Jesus responds that we’ve missed the point.
Don’t all of you untie your livestock to care for them, even on Sabbath? and should not a daughter of Abraham, embraced in God’s covenant, be set free from bondage on Sabbath?

If – two thousand years later – we hear Jesus saying that the law does not apply to God, or to followers of Christ – then we’ve also missed the point.
Because what Jesus is saying makes sense only if you are listening to the whole covenant, the whole commandment.

Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy….
Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.

Sabbath is not leisure time, in which others work for us. Labor by livestock, servants, or anyone else is explicitly forbidden.
Because Sabbath is when God sets every one of God’s creation – donkey, slave, daughter, head of household – each one free from bondage.

Sabbath – stopping – is about being set free from the things that bind us to all of our busyness.

You and I owe the Saturday-Sunday weekend to the Labor movement and Henry Ford – and it wasn’t standard in the US until after 1938.
We owe Sunday morning sports, the working weekend, Sunday shopping and all the things that compete with church, to the cultural diversity and economic boom (yes, and the effort to dig out from recessions) of the late 20th century
(and also to Henry Ford, who thought that giving his workers a day off to spend would help the economy, and car sales).

So, if folks are shopping, working, and getting the kids to practice on Sunday instead of going to church, is that a violation of the Sabbath commandment?

No.
Because technically, it’s Saturday – the seventh day, on which God rested – not Sunday – the first day, day of light and resurrection – that we’re supposed to stop working.

And yes,
because as Jesus points out, when we ask about breaking the rules, it usually means we’ve already missed the point.

Stopping work – even God’s work, short of life or death – is a holy practice, shaped by the community to bring us closer to God.
And yet more important is to remember, by being close to God, that Sabbath is about being un-bound. And Sunday is about resurrection.

So if –in church or out – we spend a week wrapped in the busy-ness of life, forgetting resurrection, forgetting how God sets free the pain, and expectations, and fear that bind us, then we have missed the point.

We can miss that point as easily at church as at the football field.

And if we come to church because we are supposed to, even because we know it’s holy, but we don’t remember why we come, we have no business expecting the folks at brunch, or the mall, or at work today to join us at church.

Our prayers, our hymns, our Eucharist are all supposed to remind us – just like the woman healed in the synagogue – that the practice of Sabbath is to know ourselves set free – and that our natural response is to stand up straight, praising God.

So: If God has set you free
from fear or anxiety or the despair of sin, stand up.
(I mean it, stand up - but if God has set you free and you still don’t stand well, raise your head)
Free from prejudgments, unjust laws, or slavery to the expectations of culture, stand up.
From illness, or pain, stand up.
From believing that it all depends on your own success or failure, stand up.
Free to do what you love, or to love with your whole heart, stand up.
If God has set you free, and I haven’t mentioned from what, stand up.

And when we do that,
when every person in this building knows in her body and mind, in his work and rest,
that God’s covenant with us is to set us free from pain and fear and oppression – when we live the Sabbath like that,
then neither football, nor the boss, nor the busy-ness of our culture, nor anything else will separate us from the love of God.

God’s freedom and Sabbath joy will shine through us to the world.

And yes, in fact, we will be the place to be on Sunday morning. Amen.
Hallelujah!

August 22, 2010

Hospitality

Luke 10:38-42

I wonder if Jesus wrote a thank-you note the next day.
And if he did, I wonder what it said…

Dear Martha,
I had a nice time at your house last night. Dinner was excellent; the food was delicious and your attention to all the details was remarkable.
But next time, don’t cook.
Thank you very much.
Sincerely,
Jesus

Or maybe the note went like this:
Dear Mary,
I had a very nice time at your house last night. The food and fellowship were excellent. I have rarely felt so welcome as when you sat down with me and just listened to what I had to say.
Your focused attention made it clear that for once, I have been truly heard.
The house was a mess, but tell your sister not to worry.
Thank you very much.
Sincerely,
Jesus

Actually, I suspect Jesus didn’t write a thank you note at all.

When you come right down to it, he’s not a very polite guest. Any first-century Miss Manners would be upset. Throughout Luke’s gospel story, Jesus sits down to eat and promptly breaks the rules or criticizes his host.
He invites his own guests, without telling the host. He disapproves of the seating arrangements. He condemns the hard work of his hostess, rather than thanking her for her care.
He seems to go out of his way, in fact, to be the person you wouldn’t invite a second time.
And yet Luke’s story is all about hospitality. Surprising hospitality, in which the guest becomes the host, the lepers, the strangers, and the socially unacceptable are made the guests of honor at the banquet.
And most importantly, God made flesh is welcomed as an honored guest, by those who have no homes, those who are far from home, and those who have no honor to share:
Notorious sinners offer extravagant welcomes to Jesus, Gentile strangers bring royal gifts to an infant camping in a cave, and women break the rules.

Hospitality is a sacrament.
When you have been truly welcomed and cared for, in a strange place, you know this.
When you have focused on the care of your guest, and seen him or her begin to truly feel at home, you know this.

But Jesus wants a different kind of hospitality than we are usually taught to offer:
Not a good dinner, prepared with care,
but the audacity to step into a room where you really don’t belong, and listen as though you were the only one there.
Like Mary, sitting at the teacher’s feet, when by all common standards, she should be stirring the pot and setting the table to make him feel honored and welcome.

It’s not hard to read this story about Mary and Martha and the dinner at their home, to see and hear the truth that Jesus calls us to focus on the gospel and the kingdom of God, and understand that we need to turn off the oven and the Blackberry and spend more time at church or bible study.
But if we read only this story, it can be easy to miss how much more Jesus wants from us.

Last week we heard a story about neighbors, a story that comes right before Martha’s dinner in Luke’s gospel.
We heard Jesus talking to a lawyer – a man whose job is to study scripture, to read and listen and understand the word of God, without distractions.
To him, Jesus says, repeatedly, go and do. That story is full of action verbs.

It’s about focus on the word and the kingdom of God, yes.
But even more, Mary’s story and the lawyer’s story are about breaking our habits of holiness and finding a radical new relationship with God.

From birth to resurrection, and at every meal in between, the story of Jesus is a story about how God calls us to walk away from our norms and expectations into a new and unpredictable encounter with God.

The motto of this story – of much of Luke’s gospel – might be:
“Do something different for Jesus.”

If you know how to find God in stillness and quiet, volunteer for a week or two in the Sunday School, and listen for God’s voice in the children’s questions.
If you find God most surely in serving others behind the scenes, talk to me about how you might, just once, share your knowledge of God in public – preaching or teaching or writing.

The ways we have learned to know God, to find God, to worship God, to welcome God are all holy and important,
but the kingdom of God is near in the places where we are least at home.

Many of you know that for several years I taught kayaking on Lake Michigan. But you may not know that in spite of that, I think of the great outdoors as foreign territory. Places outdoors – woods and lakes and campsites – are full of bugs or bears, have unpredictable weather, and generally no plumbing. Also, no microwaves.
And there I was, in my first year of guiding, in the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior, responsible (with a partner) for the comfort, feeding, and safety of a dozen strangers.
I was definitely not at home. But God was. Not just where I expected, in the beauty of the lake and the sandstone cliffs – but in the way that a dozen strangers began to trust their kayaks and their tents and one another, a dozen new people feeling welcome and at home in a place that’s no one’s home.

I’m pretty sure Mary wasn’t entirely comfortable, sitting and studying scripture with the men.
I bet the lawyer was completely awkward and anxious when he started to seek and serve his neighbors.
But they were acts of hospitality, in strange and foreign places.

Maybe you’ve felt it – the first time you volunteered at PADS, or taught Sunday School, or sang in the choir, or hosted an event.
That's kingdom-of-God hospitality: Spreading the table, opening our hearts to the unknown, offering the loving attention that welcomes God and the stranger into places we ourselves are not at home.

The thank you note for that hospitality won’t come in the mail.
But it’s been written already in the story of God made flesh
of Jesus, far from home,
making sinners and lawyers and women and you and me
at home in the kingdom of God, already
and forever.

July 18, 2010

Do you want to be made well?

John 5:1-9, Revelation 21:10,22-22:5

I imagine that the area around the pool of Beth-zatha was a lot like the Emergency Room on a busy night:
Crowded.
Young and old, poor and well-off. Some people noisy, others so silent in their pain they seem to suck the sound out of the air around them.
Anxious.
Full of the distinct scents of illness.
And full of waiting. Patient, urgent, desperate, expectant waiting.

Because the pool at Beth-zatha, by the Sheep Gate (full of lanolin from the wool of all those sheep; soothing for those suffering from the various skin diseases known as leprosy) would be stirred up by the power of God – and when the water rolled, people went into the pool and came out healed.

Unlike (I hope) the ER, healing in that pool was only available for the first one in.
So you might imagine what it was like to come to a place where you know there’s healing to be had – and not receive it.
To put yourself in a holy place, certain to see a miracle,and to go home with the same problems, same pain, same old same old, knowing you’d be back the next day, because, after all, that's what you have to do if you want God to heal you.

This is a story for people who come to church every week.
Or for any of us who’ve gotten in a habit about our relationship with God.

It’s not that I think we’re disappointed all the time when we come to church. I certainly hope not!
But we do come here, many of us, because we know that it’s a place of healing – and we know we need healing.
We might have seen miracles here and want to renew those miracles in our own lives.
We might come because we know God is active here, because we know that there is love and acceptance, coffee and company, laughter, Kleenex, and folks who know us
– those things that soothe the roughness of our lives the way lotion soothes the skin.
And some days we go home, still sharp-edged and flaky.

If that’s ever happened to you,
you’ll have a pretty good chance of imagining how it felt for a man who’d been sick for 38 years to come to the pool of Beth-zatha:
the place where you’re supposed to come for healing,
and go home again,
for 38 years.

You can get used to it,
forget that you’ve come for healing, and go through the motions,
just in case.
(that's still an act of faith.)

You can focus on seeing God at work in other people’s healing;
that can feed your soul, too.

You can quit coming.
You can keep on reaching for healing, rushing toward the miracle as if for the first time,
without any serious expectation that this time will be different.

I suspect the sick man in the gospel had been through all of those options and more.

And then one day Jesus walks through the Temple gates,
looks directly at him and asks, “Do you want to be made well?”

What would you say??

I admit to just a wee bit of disappointment that the man doesn’t exclaim,
“Duh! Of course I want to be well!
(What do you think I’m doing here?)”

But he actually says something I suspect I’d be more likely to say under the circumstances.
He explains why he’s not well yet.
“I come for healing, but you know, other people have more help, and I can’t get in the pool by myself!”

If you get used to coming to a place of healing and going home without a miracle, you might stop thinking about how much you long for that miracle, and focus instead on what stands in your way.

It’s possible to get used to the reasons we’re not yet healed – not yet sure we’re whole and holy, until the reasons become excuses, and we let God and ourselves off the hook.

Did you expect a miracle when you came to church today?
Did you expect a revelation from God, a life-changing sense of the call and the power of God?
Did you come, expecting to be healed and made well?

If you didn’t come with those expectations,
why not???

That’s what Jesus asks the man, saying,
Do you want to be made well?
Jesus calls him back to his longing for a miracle, calls him out of the habit of going home unchanged,
and face-to-face with God, he stands up and walks away well.

The world is a wonderful place – full of the signs of God’s presence, not just healing, but all kinds of miracles: light, weather, food, and the people of God.
So’s the church.
And we can get used to coming to a place of miracles, and going home without one.
But I don’t think that’s how God wants us to live.

In the vision of God’s new creation in the Revelation to John we find that there’s no Temple in the city.
You can’t go to the Temple, the church, looking for God or waiting to be healed – because God is already face to face with us, calling us and supporting us to stand up and be well.

It’s a vision of a relationship in which it’s impossible to be distant, lost or disconnected.
A vision of relationship in which we can’t go home unchanged,
because we live every moment in the vivid, brilliant assurance of God’s care.
And from that miracle of living always face-to-face with God flows the water of life, and the tree whose growth is for the healing of the nations.

I believe that that’s how God wants us to live.
That’s how God promises we can live.

The promise and the expectation of this Revelation is that you and I should expect to be whole and holy,
to be healed not sometime or somewhere,
but here and now.

Because from that open longing and eager acceptance of the miracle of God’s love comes the river of life, not just for you and me,
but the healing of the world.

In the new creation,
you can’t get used to going home without a miracle.
So I hope you’re looking for one,
longing for one,
here, today.

May 9, 2010

Alleluia! We've lost Jesus!

Luke 24:1-12

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

I love doing that.
Love the joy and the noise and the affirmation that God has acted.
I’d shout that all day if I could get you to shout back every time.

But what if, this morning, I’d greeted you instead by saying:
Alleluia! We’ve lost Jesus!!
(Because we have, you know.)
And we don’t know where to find him, Alleluia!

That’s the Easter gospel in a nutshell:
the story of that Easter morning some two millennia ago in Jerusalem, when a group of women went to anoint the body of their friend and teacher.

Those women took spices and ointments, and went to the tomb prepared for grief, and work, and what we’d now call closure –
the chance to come to terms with the end of the story.

And the tomb was empty.
The place where they had seen Jesus laid – seen with their own eyes – was empty. Abandoned. Jesus was not where they had left him.

And the dead, as you very well know, don’t get up and walk out for a cup of coffee.

(That moment, standing and staring into the empty tomb on Easter morning, new life probably felt a lot less like rejoicing at a long expected birth, and more like the shock of realizing you’re pregnant when you definitely planned not to be.)

How did this happen? they must have wondered. Where is he?
What are we going to tell his mother?!

And at that point, angels enter the story. Two men in dazzling garments who ask,
Why do you look for the living among the dead?

It’s a moment when you might wonder if you’re losing your mind: He was right here. I know he was. (Don’t I?) We left him here just a day ago. I know we did. (Didn’t we?)

**
What do you do when you lose something important?

I know what I do.
First I panic, just a little bit.
My keys were right here. Who has them?? what will I do without them??

Then I remember what my mother taught me:
The guiding principle of finding what we’ve lost is to remember:
Where did you last see it?
to retrace our steps, in the hope of finding something where we left it.

Last week we lost the cross. The wooden cross that we bring out on Good Friday, to focus our prayers.
It wasn’t where it usually waits, year to year, so Frank Samela and Jack Holley and I – together and separately – opened all the closets and climbed up and down stairs and looked behind every door.

Eventually, I remembered where I’d last seen it:
covered in God Sight Lights at our vacation bible school last June. And sure enough, it was in the place I hadn’t looked among the VBS supplies.

The cross is like that. We can find it again, if we look where we last left it.
But Jesus isn’t like that.
He’s not likely, living, dead or resurrected, to stay where we put him.

Mary, Joanna and Mary had come back to the place where they last saw Jesus, but he’s not there. And the angels ask, Why do you look for the living among the dead?
Why do you look for Jesus to be where you left him?

And then they remind us,
remember what he said to you, that the Son of Man must be handed over, and crucified, and on the third day, rise again.

Remember: not where you left him, but what he told you.

The women remember.
And they leave the empty tomb and go to tell the other disciples the news.

I can – almost – imagine them saying, Alleluia, we’ve lost Jesus!
And we don’t know where to find him, Alleluia!
"But the words seemed to them an idle tale…."

It doesn’t make sense, and the Easter morning story ends with amazement. Not assurance, not understanding, just amazement.
And yet the story is full of joy.

We don’t know where to find Jesus. We only know that he is not where we last saw him.
But that itself is cause for joy, because we can’t go back to where we used to be.

All the gospels agree: Resurrected, Jesus doesn’t look the way we expect; and finds us where we aren’t looking.
Easter joy is the gut-deep knowledge that we don’t know where to find God, but that God has not lost us, and finds us when we don’t know where to look.
It’s good news, because we cannot go back to where we left him.

News, good and bad, can’t be un-heard. Words can’t be un-said, neither joy nor pain can be un-felt.
Hearts don’t un-break. Birth can’t be un-born and death can’t be un-died.

We can try to go back to the tomb, but Jesus won’t be there.
And because we don’t know where to find him, he might meet us anywhere – most certainly when we’re not looking.

Luke tells a story of that first Easter Evening, when two disciples are chewing over the mystery (of the missing body) with a stranger who teaches them the scripture they’d long since heard.
Then at dinner, they recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread
and then he’s gone.

It’s good news that Jesus won’t stay put.
If he were always where we left him, Jesus wouldn’t be where we need him next.

And from this moment on, no pain or boredom or joy or wonder
is empty of the possibility of finding God
or, more truly, of God finding us.

On Easter morning, in Easter life,
the empty tomb stays empty, God cannot be grasped, Jesus will never again look like we expect, and we still say “Alleluia!”

We praise God because not knowing where to find Jesus means that we do not have to solve the mystery to find the joy.
That we do not have to fix the broken pieces to be made perfect;
that we don’t have to hurt less (or more) to be filled with love.

And that is good news, indeed.

So, Alleluia, my friends:
Alleluia, we’ve lost Jesus
and we don’t know where to find him, Alleluia!

That’s the Easter news:
amazement, and joy, and the gift of God finding us when we don’t know where to look.

(And that’s what we said to begin with, isn’t it…?)
Alleluia, Christ is risen!!!
The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!!

Easter: Sunday April 4, 2010