the blessings of paradox...

One of the multiple paradoxes I experience working with a few trusted and
beloved musical colleagues has to do with the marvelous realization that the "whole is greater than the sum of its parts." I understand it comes from the genius of Aristotle (Aristotle, Metaphysics, translated by W. D. Ross, Book VIII, 1045a.8–10.)

In the case of all things which have several parts and in which the totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something besides the parts, there is a cause; for even in bodies contact is the cause of unity in some cases, and in others viscosity or some other such quality.

Last night, for example, individually we were all weary: life has been challenging for each band member in a variety of ways and as we gathered to work through the first set of an upcoming performance, it showed. I know that I was fatigued physically from a few demanding days of ministry and music-making as well as emotionally exhausted from carrying around in confidence both the pain and love I share with my mates. Interestingly, despite a collective flagging mojo, everyone was on time for rehearsal. When I started acting a bit cranky, someone else cracked a joke about me that reclaimed a measure of humor and humility. This happened a few times for other members of the band. What also caught my attention was how each song was filled with rich harmonies, subtle musical nuances, and emotional commitment. No one was dialing-it-in despite being bushed. Their laughter and loving presence helped me get over my self (mostly) and I sensed the presence of the sacred within and among us.

This band, in one form or another, has been playing together for over 15 years. As the new/old hymn puts it: "I will weep when you are weeping; when you laugh, I'll laugh with you; I will hold your joys and sorrows till we've seen this journey through."  Like I replied to a local church search committee when asked how I practice self care: I play music with a small collective of trusted and talented friends. Rehearsing, arranging, refining, critiquing, and performing our music is soul food for me and spiritual succor, too. This ensemble is my faith community. And I wasn't kidding. Each of us, of course, have our own discrete formal spiritual practices. But I find myself more often than not on holy ground with these women and men - and I rejoice in it!

Something similar takes place with my partner in the duo: Two of Us. We work hard at making joyful and satisfying music. And even though we've been playing out with a few other friends who bring percussion and bass into the mix, what we do each Tuesday night establishes the foundation. And when we get to share that sweet soul music... well, it is a little bit of heaven right here on earth for me. It calls to mind what Kris Kristofferson once wrote about Dennis Hopper in "The Pilgrim."

He's a poet, he's a picker

He's a prophet, he's a pusher

He's a pilgrim and a preacher, and a problem when he's stoned

He's a walkin' contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction,

Takin' ev'ry wrong direction on his lonely way back home.

He has tasted good and evil in your bedrooms and your bars,

And he's traded in tomorrow for today

Runnin' from his devils, lord, and reachin' for the stars,

And losin' all he's loved along the way

But if this world keeps right on turnin' for the better or the worse,

And all he ever gets is older and around

from the rockin' of the cradle to the rollin' of the hearse,

The goin' up was worth the comin' down

Add into this mix my new gig as an interim pastor to a lively congregation open to the playfulness of a ragamuffin gospel and I am one happy camper whose so very, very grateful. As this springs ripens - and our respective challenges are dealt with - I give thanks to God that I am a part of such a blessing.

lent two: our failures hold the possibility of blessing

 Text: Mark 8: 27-32

Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi, and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah. And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone. Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes and be killed and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter saying, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Today’s appointed New Testament text from the gospel of St. Mark is both one of my favorites and one of the most challenging to interpret. It not only invites us to get clear about who Jesus was to his disciples, to the emerging Christian community of the first century CE, as well as you and me some 2,100 years later. It’s a nuanced story with bold images that has simultaneously been con-fusing, clarifying, and challenging. On the upside, it asks us to come to terms with who Jesus is in our lives; on the downside, St. Mark’s choice of words are so loaded and historically contextual that it’s no wonder we’re sometimes bewildered and befuddled. Do you recall the old story about a young pastor’s first Easter Sunday children’s message?

“Who can tell me something about Easter?” she asked the cluster of little ones? One little girl raised her hand and said, "Easter is when they hide all the eggs.” The pastor said, “Well, sure, but there’s more going on: so, can you tell me something more?” A 10-year-old boy replied, “Well, pastor, Eas-ter is when we’re blessed to get a chocolate Easter bunny in our basket.””

“Hmmm,” said the young clergy woman, “that IS always fun, but it’s not really what we celebrate in church, right? Any other ideas?” At which point a shy little girls said, “Pastor, I think I know: on Good Friday, Jesus was crucified” at which the minister smiled with excitement and said, “Yes, yes, right, go on, please!” So, she added: "The next day, Jesus was placed in a cave behind a big boulder." The minister grew more excited thinking we’re really, finally, getting somewhere. “Anything else?” she asked enthusiastically. To which the child replied: “Um yes… on Easter Sunday, the boulder is rolled back, and Jesus comes out alive!” Which totally flipped the minister out for now at least one child got it. “You’re right on the money, child; can you tell me what happened next?” The little one paus-ed, then smiled, and said: “Well, when Jesus comes out of the cave alive, he looks around and… (say it with me if you know) if he sees his shadow, we’re going to have six more weeks of winter!” 

With the innocence of a child, would you pray with me now that we might go a little deeper?

Lord, in your wisdom and mercy, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be made acceptable to you through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ who, with you and the Holy Spirit, reign in heaven forever. Amen.

There are at least four levels of spiritual truth taking place in this short passage – and if we fail to take them into account, we’ll celebrate a Christ who may be familiar to us but will NOT lead us into the kingdom among us as it is already happening in heaven. First, there’s the symbolism linking Jesus to John the Baptist, Elijah, and the other prophets of ancient Israel. Second, there’s what the text meant to the faith community guided by St. Mark’s gospel in the middle of the first century of the CE. Third, there’s the paradoxical spirituality of Jesus concerning the Cross that continues to be worthy of our consideration. And fourth, there’s what WE do with this wisdom.

I’m a believer in wrestling with each of these insights. Not only do they tell us something about the mysterious nature of God – who will NEVER be fully understood lest God no longer be Almighty – but they also offer us a warning about taking the words of Scripture only at the literal level because THAT obscures the historical nuances St. Mark wants us to confront concerning Jesus as a Messiah who must suffer, die at the hands of the chief priests, elders, and scribes before being raised to NEW life by God’s love. A simplistic reading of this text, you know, gave birth to nearly 2,000 years of antisemitism in the Church – and St. Mark the evangelist was NOT advocating that THEN any more than he is today. One commentator put it like this:

Here we come face to face with arguably the most difficult, challenging, and dangerous of Jesus’ teachings: the idea that Jesus must suffer, die, and rise again, and that anyone who seeks to be his disciple must “deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” The disciples are perplexed, Peter is offended, and Jesus takes them to task for misunderstanding him — so we should be caut-ious about whether or not we understand him ourselves… If the disciples are any indication, mis-taken conclusions abound when it comes to the full meaning of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Which is why St. Mark gives us three cycles in which (a) Jesus predicts his passion and suffer-ing; (b) the disciples misunderstand; and (c) Jesus responds with a discourse on the true nature of discipleship.

One useful way I’ve found in sorting this out is to look closely at the arch of Peter’s life. His ups and downs, questions, doubts, fears, and tenacity are a synthesis of how many of us experience grace. In St. Mark’s gospel, Peter symbolizes the journey of faith for many giving shape and form to what I think of as a gradual transformation. He doesn’t get it all right all at once – he’s a slow learner – and THAT, beloved, is good news – and I’ll say more about it in a moment.

But first, there’s the context in which this gospel was conceived: St. Mark crafted it during the Roman Empire’s brutal war of suppression against Israel’s insurrection of 67 CE where war – in all its horror – not only shaped the faith community but defined how St. Mark describes Jesus within it. Former Roman Catholic priest, James Carroll, retired columnist for the Boston Globe and novelist of great insight, unpacks this in chapter two of his monumental: Christ Actually: The Son of God for a Secular Age.

The First Holocaust (he writes) was the Roman War against the Jews, ignited not long after the life-time of Jesus. It began in 67 CE, intensified between 115 and 117 and concluded about 136. The scale of destruction during this war was devastating: millions of Jews were killed, tens of thousands of women were raped, Judea and Galilee were laid to waste, the second Temple was demolished, and Jewish communities throughout the Mediterranean were attacked and terrorized.

Carroll reminds us that both St. Matthew and St. Mark were eyewitnesses to the sacrilege – and this horror shaped how they interpreted both Jesus and his ministry. “Mark is the main source of, and template for, the later gospels of Matthew and Luke. Mark’s rendering of Jesus, and its proclamation of him as the Christ, are the central pillars of the Christian imagination – yet Mark is rarely read in the context of war.” The insurrection began in Galilee where sixty thousand Roman legionnaires were killed and more than 100,000 Jews enslaved before sacking Jerusalem… where 10,000 crosses bearing Jewish bodies circled the Temple Mount in the Holy City.

In my analysis, after the Christian community of Jerusalem experienced devastation, slaughter, ter-ror and abandonment, they began to rethink who Jesus was and what he meant. In his day, Jesus was a wisdom-keeping, itinerant spiritual nonconformist emphasizing community building rather than chaos; he practiced a radical inclusivity that broke down the barriers of gender, class, and race; celebrated a radical trust in God’s enduring grace that maintained forgiveness to be the path to personal and social healing - and never called himself Messiah. He insisted that his integrity and authority came from living simply as a human being fully alive. He never spoke of himself as a deity nor did any of the Biblical writers in his lifetime.

· After his followers lived through the moral madness of war, however, Jesus the earthy mystic became Christ the divine God-man who was holier in death than he was in real life. Mark and his allies who endured the unimaginable violence of Rome’s war, started this shift towards Jesus as Christ.

· The gospel writers of 70 and 80 CE, women and men traumatized by the brutality of the Ro-man Empire, borrowed a chapter from the apocalyptic book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible to rethink a reality that included the crucifixion of over 500 Jews every day.

And their conclusion, a re-interpretation of Jesus and his ministry, had two components: First, that Judaism and the Temple HAD to be destroyed by God and replaced by the Church because the old way had become corrupt; that’s the beginning of what we know as supercessionism or replacement theology that remained orthodox until the reforms of Vatican II. And second, that the betrayal of Peter and the male disciples was symbolically linked to the betrayals that occurred throughout the Christian community during Rome’s war against Israel. In this retelling, Peter’s consistent confusion, and eventual abandonment of Jesus, is ugly, but doesn’t end in judgment: just grace.

Carroll asserts that Mark and the other evangelists highlight this as a pastoral assurance to their broken faith communities that even moral and ethical failure need not end in hellfire and brimstone because the loving embrace of Christ begins and ends with forgiveness. He writes:

If the gospel of Mark was addressed to a frightened, demoralized collective of Jesus people holed-up in Galilee, to a people threatened on all sides by marauding Romans as well as revenge-see-ing Jew-ish Zealots (remember the Christians chose NOT to join Israel’s military rebellion against Rome) or Jews associated with rabbis who believed Jesus to be a false Messiah who threatened the survival of what remained of Judaism; if those Jesus people, who bore the burden of guilt at their own failure to join the resistance, or were tempted to believe that they were cowards who may have lost their faith in the Lord, Mark’s message was straightforward good news: Do NOT feel guilty because you faltered in your faith; do not feel disqualified because you lost hope; do not count yourselves for-saken, because LOOK: the most intimate friends of Jesus behaved exactly the same way including the exalted Peter (whom Jesus called the ROCK upon whom a new community shall be built.) What you need to hear in this time of grotesque tribulation is that Jesus extends his call NOT to heroes alone, but to cowards, to those who fail him, and reckoning with our failures can be the starting point of a deeper discipleship.

That’s a lot to take in, right, so let me ask: are you still with me? Carroll contends – and I concur – that the good news during and just after the catastrophic collapse of Jerusalem: Where many “refused to stand up to Rome, but hid… who likely informed on one another, became collaborators, ran off to the caves in the desert, committed suicide or helped others do so… were just real people looking out for their own skin. They were beleaguered, terrified human beings who behaved like broken human beings always do.” And Jesus NEVER condemns our humanity – he joins it – by grace. Carroll concludes that this shift in interpreting Jesus, “born of mass violence inflicted by the Romans in 70 CE demanded St. Mark’s revisions. The catastrophe… forced the Jesus people to look back on their memories, prayers, collected sayings, and stories in a new light… a light cast by the fires of war."

This macro context is usually avoided or at the very least forgotten in most of our Bible commentaries, but it shapes even the shortest verses of St. Mark’s gospel – including today’s text – where our old friend Peter begins by celebrating Jesus as the Anointed One only to say in his next breath that Jesus should skip out on his appointment with destiny. Jesus asks: Who do people say I am? Peter answers: The Christ … but please don’t act like it. Stay here with us here in safety. You may remember that Peter said much the same thing in the story of the Transfiguration we considered on my first Sunday with you: Let’s stay where it is safe! To which Jesus says: GET THEE BEHIND ME, SATAN! 

This is Peter distilled to his essence: his is a wandering faith where he’s called, doubts, resists, affirms, learns, wonders, hopes, betrays, and finally let’s go of his ego long enough to become a courageous, albeit flawed disciple – much like you and me. Have you ever looked at the totality of his story as a continuous whole? Early in all the gospels, Peter is called – and follows. Life as a fisherperson under the bootheel of the Roman occupation was a dirty, thankless job. Most of the catch went to feed the garrisoned troops in Israel – and what wasn’t taken by Rome left only a meager existence: so who wouldn’t leave all that behind to follow Jesus, right?

· But no sooner does Peter leave then he starts to question and doubt: he freaks out in the boat on the Sea of Galilee, begging Jesus to save them from a storm that Jesus sleeps through. He confesses his mentor to be the long anticipated Messiah but urges him to not act like it. He celebrates Jesus and then doubts him. And after Jesus tells Peter he’s not a political messiah in the expected way, Peter turns on his friend: he deserts Jesus in the garden when the Roman soldiers take him captive, he denies knowing Jesus while awaiting the outcome of the trial shouting: Woman, I do not even know him. The gospels go on to tell us that Jesus predicted this betrayal before the cock crowed three times. And when the cock does crow, Jesus looks at his friend in sorrow – and Peter flees again weeping in shame.

· But the story doesn’t end there: St. John’s gospel, written 40 years after Mark, includes a post resurrection story in which Peter first dismisses Mary Magdalene as an hysterical woman after SHE meets the resurrected Lord in the garden; and then fails to recognize his old buddy after returning to his old life as a fisherman by the sea. Talk about symbolism, yes? Betrayal and denial has pushed Peter back into his old way of being.

As the story ripens, after breakfast on the beach, Peter’s eyes are opened to the presence of resurrected one much like the experience of other disciples on the Road to Emmaus where they, too, fail to recognize Jesus as the Risen Lord at first until they break bread together. When Peter awakens, Jesus asks: Peter, do you love me? Three times he asks this in parallel to Peter’s three betrayals. Peter, do you LOVE me: You know I love you, Lord – then feed my sheep.

John closes the story with Jesus telling his friend: when you were young, you went where you wanted and did what you felt; but now that you have matured, you will be led into those places you do NOT want to go by another. By those in need. By those haunted by a shame like your own. Go out and love, them. And tradition as well as Peter’s own letters tell us that is exactly what Peter did: he went back out into the world to tell people that God’s grace was available to everyone: sin and shame are NOT the end of the story. In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter says: Silver and gold I have not, so I give to you all that I do have: in the loving presence of Jesus as Christ – pick up your life and walk!

If you look at Peter’s letters to the young church, you find not an overblown enthusiast nor an un-grounded soul shaped by shame, but a man of sober humility. So much so that at the end, when Peter was arrested by Rome and condemned to crucifixion, he pleaded with his captors to nail him to the cross upside-down because he would never presume himself to be equal to his Lord and Sav-ior Jesus. Peter’s witness shows us a person transformed by grace. And Mark was trying to assure his beaten down friends that the power of Jesus that healed and renewed Peter, could renew them as well. Grace is greater than demons or death, war or betrayal, confusion and chaos. Jesus is NOT just a humble wisdom keeper… No, he's the one who shares with us the unpredictable, undeserved, and even promiscuous grace of God that can heal wounds personally AND advance mercy in our society.

What St. Mark did in his day, you see, is what ALL good preachers do in theirs: tell and retell the story of Jesus and his love as the story of how grace can set us free from fear, shame, and the stench of sin. Peter learned this incrementally – step by step – mistakes and forgiveness intertwined over a lifetime. And I submit to you that this is good news for us. I know it’s been so for me because like Peter I’m a slow learner, late to the party, and in need of a ton of grace. Most of us are NOT like St. Paul on the Damascus Road: we’re rarely smitten with one life-changing event that causes a 180 change of direction. Rather, we experience the blessings of the gospel slowly, taking two steps forward and one step back most of our lives.

Mark’s gospel was crafted to assure us that THIS can be a blessing. Yes, the train MAY have left the station, but it will make frequent stops so you can climb aboard. For if this was true for a guy like Peter, it can be true for us as well. Slowly and unevenly, Peter opened his heart to the love of Jesus and came to experience a grace that subversively transformed him – and the promise is that it can transform us, too even when we’re lost, hurt, and confused. Elizabeth Bolton and the scholars at the SALT Project write:

Some of the worst things in the world (the Roman cross and betrayal by your friends) can be trans-formed into some of the best things in the world (the Tree of Life and forgiveness even among enemies) — by a God willing redeem everything… like poet, Mary Oliver, wrote: Christ’s story will break our hearts open, never to close again to the rest of the world.

The path of Jesus is the paradoxical way of healing, and liberation – it is grounded in humility and the Cross not grasping, dominance, and destruction – and it’s every bit as bewildering and challenging to us as it was to St. Mark’s community. With all due respect: MOST of us are like Peter, slow to change and able to grasp grace only incrementally.

That’s why Lent shows up again and again, asking us to listen to a story where patience is the path to faith, giving is more important than grabbing, generosity trumps vengeance, and trust instead of control carries the day. It’s the counter-cultural message of the Cross – good news then and now.

lent one: just light a freakin' candle, man!

NOTE: Given my break in sharing the Small is Holy reflections (a work still in progress) I'll be posting the written versions of my Sunday morning message from Palmer during Lent. Here is the first instalment.

Lent One 2024: Lent – at its best – is a gift. We haven’t always treated it as a gift, mind you, given our tendency to think and see life in an either/or binary manner, but that’s not Lent’s fault. It’s just how things are. Notice that I don’t ascribe blame here because, you see, I’ve been persuaded that an emphasis on original blessing, not original sin, resonates more with the grace of God that Jesus reveals. So, my days with spiritualities of shame, blame, or judgment are mostly over! Not that I ignore sin, ok I just try to keep it in perspective.

Yes, I know this departs from traditional Western theology that starts with human depravity; clearly Calvin and Augustine have their place. But so, too the well-respected minority report whose lineage harkens back to the generous orthodoxy practiced by the desert fathers and mothers of the 3rd CE, the joyous panentheism of the Celtic Church in the 4th century, and the heart and soul of St. Francis of Assisi who chose to incarnate the beauty of following Jesus and his love in the 1200s. What’s more, original blessing is a path proclaimed by mystics of every stripe, context, and tradition. The poetry of Kabir puts it like this:

Friend: hope for the Guest while you are alive. 

Jump into experience while you are alive!

Think... and think... while you are alive. 

What you call "salvation" belongs to the time before death. 

If you don't break your ropes while you're alive, 

do you think ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic just because the body is rotten is fantasy. What is found now is found then. 

If you find nothing now, you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death. But if you make love and embrace the divine now, in the next life you will have the face of satisfied desire.

This is at least PART of what I hear in today’s text when Jesus announced: The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near; so repent and believe in the good news. I want to unpack those words – especially fulfilled, kingdom, repent, and believe – because they too have been sullied and diminished by centuries of clerics more jazzed with penitence than celebration – which is why we don’t hear them as part of God’s gift in 2024. In the beginning, if you will, repentance and belief were ALL about changing direction so that we might become fully our best selves as God intended. Pope Francis likes to say that If you want to grow closer to God during Lent, then:

Fast from hurting words and say kind words, fast from sadness and be filled with gratitude. Fast from anger and be filled with patience. Fast from pessimism and be filled with hope. Fast from worry and have trust in God. Fast from complaints; contemplate simplicity. Fast from pressures and be prayerful. Fast from bitterness; fill your hearts with joy. Fast from doing and simply be. Fast from grudges and be reconciled Fast from words and be silent and listen.

In this spirit the practice of a Holy Lent has to do with choices: letting go of or holding on to whatever binds and exhausts us; clearing away inner distractions so that there’s more room within to be filled with grace. Dr. Alicia Britt Cole, popular Christian author, writes: Lent can be a much-needed mentor in an age obsessed with visible, measurable, manageable, and tweetable outcomes, for it invites us to walk with Jesus and his disciples as they encounter the parts of life we’d rather avoid: grief, conflict, misunderstanding, betrayal, restriction, rejection, and pain. Easter CAN be a celebration of salvation as the stunningly satisfying fruit of letting go and letting God. Lent shows us how to become empty so that we might be filled.

St. Paul encouraged this when he taught that in everything God can work for good for those who love the Lord. Not that all things ARE good, but God’s love can transform even the Cross into a source of new life. Eugene Peterson restates this truth when Jesus talks about blessings in the Sermon on the Mount saying: You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope for with less of you there is more of God and his rule. You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you because only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you. You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less for that’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.

Are you still with me? Have I at least suggested why a spirituality of original blessing might have merit? I hope so because I want to explore what gets in our way: what inhibits, distracts, or prevents us from resting more consistently into God’s grace. What slows us down from trusting that the Lord is truly within and among us, ok? Look, we ALL have wounds and fears, right? There are social constructs that encourage conformity as well as bullies, insecurities, institutions of oppresssion and so much more. But that was true in the days of Jesus, too. So, what does he MEAN by insisting that: The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near; so repent and believe the good news? The Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, professor of Old Testament studies and wisdom-keeper of our United Church tradition, believes that Lent is the great departure where we practice giving up:

The greedy, anxious anti-neighborliness of our economy, the exclusionary nature of our politics that fears the other, and our self-indulgent consumerism that devours creation be-cause these things keep us from trusting that grace is a gift: a gift to be simple, a gift to be free; a gift to come down where we ought to be.

The Eastern Orthodox speak of the Great Lent as a concentrated season dedicated to moving beyond self-pity and regret with specific practices set aside for each week including intensified prayer, vigorous fasting, and acts of generosity for the poor. This year I want to talk about Lent with you as a way to get UN-stuck: NOT a season focused upon our profound or pervasive sinfulness – but rather a way to face and address the inertia that keeps us from recognizing God’s love in our lives. It’s been said that ALL of us sometimes fail to recognize something: Jews do not recognize Jesus as Messiah, Protestants don’t recognize the spiritual authority of the Pope, and Baptists don’t recognize one another in the liquor store.

The problem is that when habit, culture, confusion, and exhaustion block us from recognizing the sacred in every one and every thing: we’re stuck – creatively clogged, spiritually constipated, and ethically malnourished. You might even say that our imagination has atrophied, and our soul is star-ving This condition inclines us to forget or ignore that in the beginning God created us ALL from the same dust and dirt and called it ALL good. Very, very good. This was brought home to me earlier this week when I read that: 

Spiders dream. That monkeys playfully tease their predators. That dolphins have accents That lions can be scared silly by one lone mongoose. That otters hold hands. And that ants bury their dead. Both science and spirituality affirm that ALL of creation is not only good, but linked together in an inescapable network of mutuality where whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. There is NOT their life and ours nor your life and mine. There is just ONE life as MLK told us: Either we learn to live together as sisters and brothers; or, we else we perish together as fools.

Clearly, something is stuck when good people all over creation choose NOT to recognize the sacred presence in ALL life. Look at Israel and Palestine – Russia and Ukraine – the Muslim and Hindu vio-lence in India – or the so-called troubles of my kin in Northern Ireland. Once upon a time it truly made sense to stay stuck in our basal ganglia – our fight or flight reptilian brain. But in the 21st century we know that what harms one directly hurts us all indirectly. To paraphrase St. Paul, we practice Lent year after year because when I was a child, I spoke as a child, thought as a child, and acted as a child; but when I matured, I put childish and reptilian things away so that I might live unstuck. That’s why Lent always frames our unclogging with one of the gospel stories about the baptism of Jesus, his time in the desert, and his first call to repentance.

This is another place I tend to take a minority report: traditionalists interpret both the baptism of Jesus and his time in the desert as something extraordinary. These events are seen as bold, charismatic happenings. But I believe both the baptism of Jesus and his time in the wilderness were more spiritual rites of passage designed to give him space to think, feel, and pray about his emerging ministry. It was his way of getting unstuck from culture and religion.

As one called into the prophetic tradition of ancient Israel, Jesus would have needed training. You may recall that last week in the story of Elijah and Elisha, the younger prophet was an ap-prentice who literally was passed the mantle of Elijah. Now, we don’t often make this connection between Jesus and John the Baptist but the story tells us that Jesus went to John for baptism. My hunch is that there’s more going on here than meets the eye – like Jesus being trained in the wisdom of God’s first revealed word in nature. I see John training Jesus as a wisdom-keeping mentor who KNEW how to read the signs in the sky, the birds of the air, the unforced rhythms of grace in nature. So, when Jesus is finally baptized it’s more the culmination of his training not a spontaneous act of the spirit: it’s a ritual initiating him as a prophet. Same for his 40 days and nights in the wilderness: that, too, sounds like a traditional rite of passage where a spiritual novice sets out on a vision quest to integrate holy and human wisdom.

And as is often the case for an extended retreat – and that’s what the 40 days is all about – a LONG time not an exact number like 40 years in the desert or 40 days on Noah’s ark. During these lengthy retreats people regularly experience doubts and questions as well as bits of clarity. A clue to this interpretation is that while in the desert Jesus was tested by his shadows AND ministered to and cared for by animals and angels. He heard in his heart that he was God’s beloved at his baptism – now he takes some time out to discern what that means. His prophetic journey began with Jesus being the carpenter’s kid, but after training in the way of the prophet and getting unstuck on his vision quest, he becomes an avatar of sha-lom and an advocate for spiritual transformation. That’s why I believe Jesus articulates the meaning of HIS new life metaphorically saying:

Time has been pregnant with possibilities – a necessary season of waiting and gestation – but now time is filled full with so much grace that it’s giving birth to a new way of being called the kingdom of God. 

That’s my paraphrase, of course, with tradition stating: The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near; so repent and believe in the good news. But that’s what fulfilled means: the Greek word St. Mark uses is pleroo – meaning to be complete, to ripen and mature, to bring to birth a final realization. It’s the gospel’s translation of the Aramaic, d’mala, spoken by Jesus – and shows up all over the place in the Bible. In the Sermon on the Mount, St. Matthew has Jesus saying: do not think that I have come to loosen or abolish Torah and the Prophets; no, I have come to fill them full and complete them. St. Luke opens saying: I am writing so that you may know the d’mala – the complete truth about the one we know as Jesus – who makes us whole. And St. John starts by noting that: The Word became flesh and dwelt among us; we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten from the Father who is filled full with grace and truth (that is, made complete and whole – d’mala/pleroo.

The Bible scholars that I trust note that in Aramaic, Greek, and Hebrew to fulfill is: To carry out or bring to realization, to perform or do as is a person's duty; to obey, satisfy, complete, and incarnate the Commandments. Two hundred and forty times the Hebrew Bible uses a cognate of d’mala – maley – and it’s also used 52 times in the New Testament. That’s also why I hear Jesus saying something like this: we can each become complete or mature as God intended – filled full with grace like I was during my baptism – if we choose to welcome rather than oppose God’s love and practice getting unstuck.

We have always been God’s beloved – since the start of time when God created us and called it good . To trust this deeply, to live into original blessing not original sin, is to take up residence in the kingdom of God. So, let me say a word about kingdom, ok? The Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault offers this clue about the meaning of God’s kingdom when she writes:

Throughout the Gospel accounts, Jesus uses one particular phrase repeatedly: “the Kingdom of Heaven” (or sometimes the Kingdom of God.)” These words stand out everywhere: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like this,” “The Kingdom of God is like that,” “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you,” “The Kingdom of God is at hand.” Whatever this Kingdom is, it’s clearly of foundational importance to what Jesus was trying to teach. Many Christians today, particularly those of an evangelical persuasion, assume that the Kingdom of Heaven means the place you go when you die — if you’ve been “saved.” But that’s NOT what Jesus teaches: time and again he tells us that the kingdom is within us, that it is at hand, that it is NOW not later. Bourgeault adds: you don’t DIE into it; you awaken unto it.

· Others equate the Kingdom with an earthly utopia. For them the Kingdom of Heaven would be a realm of peace and justice, where human beings live together in harmony with a fair distribution of economic assets. For thousands of years, prophets and visionaries have labored to bring into being their respective versions of this kind of Kingdom. (NOTE: this is clearly how John the Baptist talked about the kingdom of God – same for the prophets of ancient Israel – and even the first disciples of Jesus.) But it’s NOT how Jesus understood it because the main problem with earthly utopias is that they never seem to last. So, Jesus rejected this understanding as well: when his followers wanted to proclaim him the Messiah, the divinely anointed king of Israel who would in-augurate the reign of God’s justice upon the earth, Jesus shrank from that saying, strongly and unequivocally, “My kingdom is not of this world.”

The BEST scholars of our era insist that the: Kingdom is really a metaphor for a state of conscious-ness; it’s not a place you go to, but a place you come from. It is a whole new way of looking at the world, a transformed awareness that literally turns this world into a different place.” This take on the kingdom: sees no separation between God and humans, between humans and other humans, or beyond humanity and the rest of creation. We’re ALL in this together and whatever blesses one ripples through life like a pebble spreading blessings to the whole pond. And THAT, beloved, is the deeper and more important understanding of repentance. Metanoia is NOT a feeling of remorse or shame over some indiscretion, failing, or sin. No, to repent is to radically trust God’s grace – trust it so profoundly that it changes – meta – our mind and way of knowing – nous – from the inside out so that we become the person God has desired us to be from the beginning.

When you know you are the beloved child of God, one who trusts God’s grace beyond every other truth, then you, too can live into the inner peace that Jesus shared with a wounded world. You, too, can share compassion, creativity, and courage tenderly because you know God is God, so you don’t have to try to do it all – just your part. And THAT is why we keep practicing Lent as a gift – not a burden – but a gift that encourages us to get unstuck – a gift that promises grace in ways that nourish, ripen, fortify, and empower us with new minds: metanoia.

Lent has historically been defined as relinquishing – letting go – self-emptying or renunciation – and the Via Negativa has its place. How does the Serenity Prayer put it: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. It’s a time-tested way to practice fasting, prayer, and sharing with the poor. But a new spirit is emerging about Lent that’s guided by the Via Positiva – adding a practice that fills us full – instead of just emptying. Tricia Gates Brown – lay theologian, poet, dreamer, and author – recently put it like this:

A few years ago, I created a practice that brought Lent to life for me—a new way to commemorate the season. You see, for me, Lenten imagery is strikingly about the darkness and dormancy preceding Easter, like the darkness and dormancy of winter that precedes Spring. A plant goes dormant in wintertime, but does not die. In fact, the nourishment of winter is essential to its growth. Winter is when roots are strengthened, made ready for the coming vitality. The imagery and symbolism of Lent also points to the tomb, to the time between Jesus’ crucifixion and resur-rection, when something mysterious happens. We don’t know quite what that mystery was, but the lacuna of the tomb prepared the way—the way for Easter, for the Jesus Movement.

Much like Pope Francis, Dr. Brown suggests that maybe some of us will want to add a spirituality of addition to our spiritual toolbox as well as the practice of letting go in subtraction.

In Lent, we go deep into the roots, into a time of mystery and tomb, into nourishment and dormancy. Thinking of Lent only as a time to focus on ‘sinfulness’ and giving things up as a kind of penance, doesn’t resonate with Lent as a time to delve deep into the roots of a thing. Anticipating Lent, I started to ask: How do I want to go deeper this year? What calls me into a practice of deeper reflection?

She said that one year exploring quantum physics took her deeper. Another year it was taking in new music. And most recently it was simply sitting in nature and rejoicing in its bounty as a human be-ing not a do-ing. And I’d like to suggest WE give this alternative Lent a go. What would it mean to enter a Holy Lent as a six-week retreat dedicated to going deep into the roots of something that would nourish YOU – fill you full – so that your joy expressed God’s grace just by the way you walk-ed around? Would you be willing to try it? Explore it? Walk around with it for a season?

I’m not talking about burdening yourself with something too big or too grand, ok? About 30 years ago when I started to get serious about the contemplative life, I told Fr. Jim O’Donnell, my spiritual director, that this Lent: I’m going to fast two days a week, pray and chant the Psalms every morning, and spend some time in our local soup kitchen. To which he said, “Slow down, big guy, slow down. Just light a blasted candle every morning as you pause to breathe in a sacred breath. Too often we come up with grandiose plans that only disappoint. So, just light a freakin candle, man, ok?”

And that’s my invitation for you: start small – don’t set yourself up for failure. And to help remind you to go slow and start small – like the proverbial mustard seed – here’s a Lenten tool. Take this wee glass rock and… what? Carry it with you? Place it somewhere you’ll see it regularly as a reminder to start small? Whatever… but take this home with you as you try this out.

We’ll check in each week as Lent ripens, ok? The GIFT of Lent is renewal – a time to rest, to go deeper into trust and grace – and do so with joy. Remember that Jesus told his disciples: I have come so that your JOY may be full. In that spirit, let those with ears to hear: hear.

two of us at methuselah: monday friday 19th 8 pm

 

reality is the will of God so let's start there...

Decades ago - while visiting a boldly evangelical, white Lutheran pastor in a burned-out neighborhood in Detroit whose congregation bucked all the trends and continued to grow by leaps and bounds - I was told: "The ONLY thing the church has to offer people that culture can't is... Jesus."  That continues to shape my sense of doing and being the church. In our current context, however, the rise of independent, big box, mega churches has caused some confusion re: what are small congregations to do? The big box churches have been wildly successful in creating spiritual shopping malls that provide soy chai lattes before worship and merch and music afterwards. With rare exceptions, most of these congregations are in the South/Southwest. Most are non-denominational communities or part of the Calvary Chapel franchise. All attract a minimum of 10,000+ every week, claim 2000+ in membership, are multi-racial, multi-cultural, and vigorously informal and tech savvy. And, as an NPR report puts it:

At a time when empty pews are forcing churches across the country to shutter, these mostly nondenominational houses of worship are largely bucking that trend — attracting younger, more vibrant and more diverse congregations. The average Christian congregation in the U.S. is in precipitous decline, with just 65 members, about a third of whom are age 65 or older, according to a 2020 pre-pandemic survey. By contrast, a separate 2020 study found that three-quarters of megachurches were growing, many at a rapid clip.

(read more @ https://www.npr.org/2023/07/14/ 1187460517/

megachurches-growing-liquid-church)

Countless once mainstream but now sideline congregations have tried to borrow the external style of these obviously popular churches. They assume that style matters most in 21st century America - and to some degree they aren't wrong. What participants in these mega-churches say is that they left the churches of their youth in search of a spiritual home that evoked: "a feeling of belonging... where the congregation mostly looked like themselves with a lot of millennials and Gen Z participating in an enthusiastic manner." They valued the informality of the gatherings, resonated with the sophisticated use of technology in worship, appreciated the "hip" vibe of the worship, and the easy anonymity of participation. "It's like Wal-Mart," a dear friend used to say to me, "easy in, easy out in a context that looks and feels like me."

The Wal-Mart analogy has legs in an era where convenience trumps community: just ask the owners of countless mom and pop neighborhood shops that have been unable to compete whenever big box stores move into town. And while I am NOT one to demonize competition - or economies of scale - like Joni Mitchell sang presciently so long ago: "something's lost and something's gained in living every day" right?

The conservative commentator for the NYTimes, Russ Douthat speaks to this in his most recent newsletter where he observes that in addition to institutional decline and the inability to compete with big box operations, another transformation is taking place in culture - including religion. (see" "How the Internet is Making Everything Nondenominational" in his subscription series.) We might call it the deconstruction of tradition, or, the emergence of radically decentralized living. The more we relinquish loyalty to traditional institutions, that harder it is to analyze what's taking place.

The emerging nondenominational landscape, to say nothing of post-Christian forms of spirituality — the complex of paganism and pantheism and spiritual-but-not-religious explorations that I also try to write about — is making any coherent sense of what’s happening in American religion ever more elusive. And the same is true of a journalistic landscape where a historian on Substack has a bigger audience than many voices in traditional media. The media as a feature of American culture doesn’t have to face an extinction-level event to become much harder to analyze, generalize about and reasonably critique.

What I’m describing with religious phrases is similar to the distinction drawn in a recent essay by the critic Ted Gioia (another Substacker), who describes how the old America of “macroculture” doesn’t understand the new America of “microculture” — meaning, mostly, that big lumbering enterprises like movie studios and media companies and Ivy League universities are working uphill to adapt to a world where a YouTube star they didn’t know about till yesterday can matter more than Oscar votes, a well-reviewed book or a Harvard imprimatur. At one point, Gioia paraphrases another critic, Ryan Broderick, arguing that there’s increasingly a “real internet” and the “media’s idea of the internet,” implying that traditional media isn’t working hard enough to understand or learn from the microcultures that are quickly taking over.

That closing sentence cuts to the chase: there’s increasingly a “real internet” and the “media’s idea of the internet,” implying that traditional media isn’t working hard enough to understand or learn from the microcultures that are quickly taking over." Or as Bob Dylan sang with a snarl: "Something's going on all around you and you DON'T know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?"           

All of which suggests to me (as a clergy person just returning to serve a traditional congregation) at least the following:

+ As Meister Eckhart (13th century mystical Dominican priest) told us: "Reality is the will of God; it can always be better, but we must start with what is real." There's NO way to put the Jinn back in the bottle, ok? So let's embrace our new decentralization playfully, creatively, and faithfully. Let's make small sacred again in communities dedicated to the radical love of Jesus. We cannot - and will not - be able to compete with the big box churches. We can neither do entertainment as well as Disney, coffee better than Starbucks, or convenience like Wal-Mart. So, in this era of high tech decentralization, let's build communities of compassion where every individual matters. How did the "Cheers" theme song put it? 

Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got

Taking a break from all your worries sure would help a lot

Wouldn't you like to get away? Sometimes you wanna go

Where everybody knows your name and they're always glad you came

You wanna be where you can see  our troubles are all the same 

You wanna be where everybody knows your name

+ Let's go deep, not wide: deep with connections, deep with radical hospitality, deep with going the extra mile, deep with wisdom and spiritual guidance. The big box experience celebrates passivity - like a shopping mall with music market-tested for your demographic - it is easy in, easy out. Our charism as small faith communities on the margins is different: our gift is being there in the un-easy times because we're small enough to listen and flexible enough to respond. We also trust that homogeneity is NOT always what we're looking for - especially if we don't fit in with the status quo. So, let's boldly proclaim the love of Jesus for those who DON'T look, act, think, or believe like us.

+ And let's go beyond pop-psychology on Sunday mornings and cheap politics, too: let's help people nourish a contemplative inner life. Let's treat formation as a sacred gift that can bring healing to someone in pain. Let's put our partisan politics aside - not abandon our convictions, mind you, but use discretion - so that we might discover our common ground. Back in the day, REM sang: "Everybody hurts." And that's as true in Trump country as in the land of Biden - and beyond. 

Douthat closes his reflection like this: The internet makes everything much more visible but considerably less legible. We see our own culture through our screens, darkly, and the things that matter most may be somewhere back in the shadows, just beyond our sight. This is part of our reality so let's find it's blessing trusting St. Paul when he proclaimed: God works good in everything for those who love and trust God. 

religion and spirituality in north america are NOT dead...

For the past year a quirky, contrarian notion about the state of "the church" has been gaining momentum within me. To say that it is at odds with conventional wisdom would be an understatement. Of late, there has been a host of critical commentaries forecasting the inevitable demise of the once mainstream - and now totally side-line - congregations that has become normative. Look at the bottom line they tell us - and then stick a fork in them because they're done. 

At times, I've shared this dour perspective, too and a recent posting from the Gallup Polling Organization states the new normal: U.S. church membership was 73% when Gallup first measured it in 1937 and remained near 70% for the next six decades, before beginning a steady decline around the turn of the 21st century. (read their full analysis @ https://news. gallup. com/ poll/ 341963/ church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx)

These metrics are clear: North Americans are voting with their feet when it comes to formal religion. This is NOT in dispute. What my heart and experience tell me, however, is that the obvious is not the whole story. 

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one who questions the prognosis that faith is on life support in North America. My hunch is that the numbers will get worse before they get better if we're only counting buns in the pews. We know that alienation and social isolation are rampant. So, too, the ugly polarization of the body politic that has given a new lease on life to our periodic pathological rejection of institutions. (see "The 100 Year Extinction Panic is Back Right on Schedule" @ https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/26/opinion/polycrisis-doom-extinction-humanity.html?bgrp=c&smid=fb-share&fbclid=IwAR22osyDUxqj2ARDCyuFvkTNMvym5G85IWHR00eL8i83iFxeXCWDb75Ds and "How We Were Wrong About What Happened to America in 2020" @ https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/31/opinion/covid-2020-recovery-society.html?bgrp=c&smid=fb-share&fbclid=IwAR1Zq5-22oeoYLxLof2gwRn_cTybh9rw7jOPk9VFWQBJRj85NoIsotJx2Vc) The trust we give to our institutions ebbs and flow but even these realities are not the whole story.

As a person of mystical faith, I tend to look for "the eagle within the egg." I mistrust one-dimensional metrics as arrogant pieces of the pie that too often get passed off as the whole. A deeper analysis intuits that we're on the cusp of a radical reckoning that is currently sorting out what adds value to life and what bleeds us dry - and the jury is clearly still out about when the dust will settle. This reckoning is taking place in our race relations, our sexuality and understanding of gender. It is happening in a growing commitment to environmental solidarity and the paradox of participatory democracy. And if you look closely it is shaking out in art, culture, music, fashion, design, literature and the quest for peace as well - and will likely continue to do so unevenly over the next 50+ years - because THIS is NOT the end of the story.

What's more, those practicing a sacramental spirituality that honors the obvious while discerning its deeper insights trust that the presence of the sacred saturates our existence. Of course, there ARE countless congregations that have chosen to become burial societies. For whatever reason, they're too tired, apprehensive, or stagnant to embrace this moment. They refuse to confess with St. Paul that "in everything God works for good with those who love God." Not that all things ARE good, That's romantic BS. But as a funeral liturgy in my tradition puts it: "We are certain that neither death nor life, angels or principalities, things present or things to come, powers, height depth nor anything else in creation will be able to separate us from the love of God made flesh in Jesus our Lord."

What I see repeatedly - in struggling congregations, brew pubs, art galleries

, coffee houses, concert halls, and small dinner parties - is this: we are discarding the toxic elements of our various faith traditions and, like the neo-Jungian author, Thomas Moore observes, we are creating liberating spiritualities that work for us in this wildly secular society. Moore's "A Religion of One's Own" - along with Richard Rohr, Cynthia Bourgeault, Barbara Brown Taylor, Walter Wink, Phyllis Tickle, and others documents what's happening below the bottom line. Beyond the imagination and analysis of good souls addicted to binary vision. Over the next few months I'll be unpacking this reality more thoroughly taking on both the cynicism of conventional wisdom and the exhausting elitism of the so-called cognoscenti.

My take on contemporary spirituality is shaped, you see, by the people who speak to me while playing in both dive bars and upscale trendy wine bars. They yearn for community. And a sense of meaning in pursuit of compassion. Perhaps that's why I've adopted the late Frank Zappa's quip re: jazz. "Jazz isn't dead," he used to say earnestly, "it just smells funny!" So, too the grass roots spirituality that is emerging in 21st century North America.