Come on up to the house....

NOTE: Here are my sermon notes for the second Sunday of Lent - February 28th. As the next installment in my series re: Eucharistic spirituality, I am considering what it means to live as a blessing - both those who are blessed by God and those who advance blessings in God's world. I am particularly curious about the words of Jesus re: God coming to us like a mother hen to gather and protect her brood; as well as being unable to see Christ again until we can say, "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord." And, despite another snow cancellation, the band is going to try Tom Wait's tune, "Come On Up to the House" as part of the celebration. Join us if you are around, ok?

There is a life-time of wisdom for the church in the words Jesus shared with that small group of Pharisees on his way to the Temple:

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killer of prophets, abuser of the messengers of God! How often have I longed to gather your children, gather them up like a hen with her brood safe under her wings— but you refused and turned away! And now it's too late: You won't see me again until the day you can say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”

He’s talking about being a blessing to others – not a curse.

• He’s reminding them that God seeks to share comfort, healing and joy with us – not judgment and shame.

• And he’s making it clear that all too often religion becomes part of the problem rather than the solution to the brokenness of the world – and it breaks his heart.

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, would that you had ears to hear and hearts to respond to the Lord – but you did not.” This is a lament – a grief filled expression of sorrow – a judgment from Jesus shared in the minor key of the blues that is intended to get under our skin and rattle us. There is nothing nice or safe about these words. They are supposed to wake us up, grab us where we live and shake us into an awareness that our lives often wound God’s beloved.

• But I don’t think they do that anymore: no, I suspect that rather than wake us up, they mostly put us to sleep – or sound irrelevant or worse.

• Because, you see, most of us don’t believe that Jesus is speaking to us in this passage. He’s talking about the Romans in first century Palestine – or else to those religious leaders with corrupt hearts who were plotting to kill him two thousand years ago – or maybe even to those in our day who talk about loving God but then murder abortion providers during worship or fly planes into buildings in the name of the Lord or want to put the 10 Commandments up in our courtrooms but have no commitment to living them out in their everyday lives.

It is like what Mark Twain used to say about the definition of a good sermon being one that goes right over my head to hit the person sitting behind me square in the heart. That’s a hard word, I know, but the documentation is that the fastest growing spiritual group in New England and all of the United States is to be found among those who consider themselves “spiritual but not religious.”

• They don’t want to have anything to do with organized religion anymore because they think we’re hypocrites – stone cold phonies – who want the church to be our personal burial societies rather than the living body of Christ.

• They say that for the most part churches in our land might sing the old revival hymn, “Standin’ in the Need of Prayer” from time to time, but we don’t really believe that it’s ME, it’s ME, it’s ME, O Lord – not the preacher, not the deacon but it’s ME, O Lord – that’s standin’ in the need of prayer.

And I think they are on to something – but it is NOT that we have a monopoly upon hypocrisy – that’s just human nature and is true across the religious spectrum. My rabbi friends like to tell the story of the day when the local rabbi, “in a frenzy of religious passion, rushed before the ark of the covenant, fell to his knees and starting beating his breast, crying, ‘I am nobody. I am nobody!’”

The cantor of the synagogue, impressed by this example of spiritual humility, joined the rabbi on his knees, crying: “I am nobody! I am nobody!” Then the custodian, who was watching all of this from the corner, found himself filled with zeal and couldn’t restrain himself any longer. So he rushed to join the other two holy men on their knees calling out: “I am nobody, Lord. I am nobody!” AT which point the rabbi, nudging the cantor with his elbow, pointed at the custodian and said, “Hmmmm… look who thinks he’s a nobody!”

So, let’s be clear: nobody’s got a monopoly upon hypocrisy. Rather what I think our spiritual but not religious critics are helping us see is that unless we can show real evidence of being grounded in Christ’s radical love – a community of faith that acts like that momma hen gathering God’s children together for healing and hope – then we should be abandoned just as Jesus told us. Put more positively, we have been called by God to be a blessing – so let’s be clear about what that means for our generation.

It is my conviction, you see, that living as part of God’s blessing for the world asks us to integrate God’s grace on two levels: the strategic and the spiritual – the institutional and the personal – the public and the private. And let me explain both so that we’re on the same page.

Publicly I don’t think the people of Jesus Christ can preach to the world any more - at least not for the time being. We’ve shot ourselves – and often everyone else – in the foot too many times to be taken seriously. So what I sense this moment in time requires is a bold sense of humor mixed with an earthy spirituality that assures broken people that we’re all in this together.

• Humor, you see, is ultimately about sharing the truth with humility. It comes from the word humus – of the earth – and has to do with being grounded in God’s grace.

• How does the Bible put it: in the beginning – on the day the Lord made the earth and the heavens – the Lord God formed a human from the dust of the ground – adam ha adama – and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life so that the earth being became a living being – nephesh chayah – filled with the breath of the Lord?

This is not an age for didactic or doctrinal preaching – there’s simply no trust nor common ground – except in our brokenness. Henri Nouwen puts it like this in his little book, Life of the Beloved.

I suspect that many people suffer from a deep sense of being cursed not blessed. When I simply listen to what they are talking about during dinner, in restaurants, during work breaks, I hear much – much blaming and complaining in a spirit of passive resignation. Many people, and we too at times, feel like we’re victims of a world we cannot change and the daily news doesn’t help with that feeling. (NOTE: Nouwen wrote this in 1992 – way before the 24/7 assault of cable news – which has only intensified these feelings.) Look at what is happening throughout the world – look at the starvation – the refugees – the prisoners – the sick and the dying… Look at the poverty, the injustice and war. Look at the torture, the destruction of nature and culture… look at your daily struggle with our relationships, our work, our health… where is the blessing?

That’s where humor – and humility – and storytelling and music come into our ministry: they help us find common ground. They help us discover God’s blessings in the most unlikely places. And they help us claim where the blessings of the one who comes in the name of the Lord are taking place every day. Humor and humility, you see, are about honesty.

In his autobiography, the former Secretary General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold, wrote: Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is of self-exultation. To be humble is not to make comparisons. Secure in its reality, the self is neither better nor worse, bigger nor smaller, than anything else in the universe. It simply is… (simultaneously) nothing and yet at the same time one with everything.

Strategically – publicly – institutionally, humor is one of the ways we can communicate something of God’s blessing with a world that doesn’t trust us. Do you hear what I’m saying? I am convinced that one of the best ways to share the good news of Jesus Christ is through clear and thoughtful self-deprecating humor. Because, when we can laugh at ourselves, we don’t have to laugh at another’s expense: it is a spiritual commitment for rebuilding trust in a broken world.
The same goes for how we use music in worship: if we only celebrate the sounds of the elite and perfect here we are communicating that there is no place for our brokenness in our church. And that is not only untrue – adding insult to injury – it advances the judgments of the world rather than the earthy forgiveness and grace of God.

• That is why I insist that there be something besides German chorales every Sunday – not that I have anything against high culture.

• But given the brokenness of the world and Christ’s calling to reach out in healing to all who are tired, wounded and beaten down by shame… we have to go the extra mile – and as jarring as it is to some ears, the music of the people in popular culture says: there is a place for you at our table.

Take this song by one of the most low-down jazz artists of this era: Mr. Tom Waits. He sounds like a junkyard dog, he is about as lovely as sin itself. Yet he speaks of God’s grace in ways would make even Mozart and Bach envious. (This is a little sweeter version than Waits' original, but still right on!)

With humor and earthiness this “gospel song” is about invitation and hope - it speaks of living with gratitude not obligation – and it bubbles up from below rather pours down from above. To be sure, I am not saying this in the ONLY sound we should include in worship. Just look at what’s on the menu for today and you’ll see that it includes: a great old American folk hymn, chants and responses from Africa, the classical sounds of Europe as well as a modern Roman Catholic song of praise. And when we add the music of Tom Waits to the mix, well let’s just say that it makes certain that we set a place for EVERYONE at the blessing table of Jesus Christ.

Those are a few of the strategic and public commitments I believe are critical for us in communicating Christ’s good news at this moment in time. And there are two personal and spiritual commitments that are important to nourish privately if we’re going to be authentic, ok?They include:

• Time in prayer: Henri Nouwen puts it so well when he tell us that in order to live as a blessing in the world, we need to spend time everyday being nourished from the inside out by God’s love. This takes quiet practice where we simply accept God’s grace. He writes: “I am so afraid of being cursed and hearing that I am no good or not good enough that I can quickly give into the temptation to start telling God what I need rather than remain still… but when I let myself rest in the voice of God’s love” I discover that God’s presence is soft and healing. Like a mother hen…

• He suggests sitting quietly and using a simple phrase to ground your heart in God’s grace. Maybe something like the words of St. Francis – make me an instrument of thy peace– or just a word – Abba – Healer of my soul – gentle spirit. By resting in God’s presence, we let ourselves be filled and healed from the inside out.

That is the first inner commitment – and the second is equally gentle: looking for and naming the blessings that happen every day in ordinary ways. You don’t have to invent them – and you don’t have to fake them either – they are all around if you aren’t too busy to claim them. They are everywhere: The laughter of children – the beauty of the snow fall – the embrace of a friend – the cooperation of colleagues at work – the safety and serenity of this Sanctuary – the grace of sobriety – the humor of gentle poetry and storytelling – the beating of our hearts.

When we practice these two inner spiritual commitments – quiet prayer and recognizing the blessings of our ordinary existence – Nouwen writes this: “I must tell you that when you claim your own blessedness by God, it always leads to a deep desire to bless others. For the characteristic of the blessed one is that wherever they go, they always speak words of blessings to the world.”

That is they build trust – they break down barriers – and they make connections beyond fear and hypocrisy. I think the American poet, Billy Collins, got this perfectly right in his poem, “The Lanyard.” It not only feels to me like what church could be in the spirit of Jesus, but resonates with the Lord when he told us: you won’t be able to see me again until you can say blessed in the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Collins writes:

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Gentle humor and humility – earthy spirituality mixed with quiet prayer and gratitude – such is the path that nourishes God’s blessings within and among us. So let those who have ears to hear, hear.

Credits: 1) Irv Davis, "Painting of Jerusalem Palms" @ About.com: Judaism; 2) David Avisar. "Praying for Jerusalem" @ Jewish-Art-and-Gifts.com; 3) Spiritual Formation @ Missionaloutreachnetwork.com; 4) Norman Rockwell, "Do Unto Others" 5) St. John's Genesis @ Per-Crucem-ad-Lucem; 6) Chidi Okoye, "Humility" @ modernartimages.com; 7) Michelle Levian, "A Song for You" @ amapedia.amazon.com; 8) Arthur Danto, "Posture of Contemplation" @ intersectcommunity.com; 9) C. Robin Janning, "Pour Out the Heart" @ Image and Spirit.blogspot.com