Rumblings and ramblings: a series of reflections on my ordination anniversary...

Thank you for the kind and encouraging words you have recently shared with me as we get ready to mark the 30th anniversary of my ordination into Christian ministry.  I am going to use the outline of that reflection for the essence of this Sunday's message - amplified by a few stories - and, of course, the music that informed and even shaped those distinct times in ministry.

This week, mostly as a way for me to sort through my feelings about having a celebration - I mostly am uncomfortable with them - I thought I might reflect on some of my inner rumblings and see what pops up.  For years I hated public birthday parties - anticipation of them sent me into a week long funk - and I tried to always take a "personal day" on my actual birthday because I hated being the center of attention.  Or more honestly, I hated being the center of THAT kind of attention.  It was ok to be the leader of a class - or worship - or a political campaign; in those leadership roles I was acting as a servant.  Sure, I was often the focus (even if it should have been on God) but at least I was doing something for the greater good.  At a birthday party, however, it was just me - as me - and my role was to receive - and I hated it.

But by about the time I turned 50, that started to change.  To be sure, a lot of other things had shaken out inside me, too so by the time my birthday came around it was just a little bit of fun to receive gifts and be embraced by those I love.  I was still a little uneasy, but I've learned to enter those kinds of celebrations with open hands - receptive - rather than clenched fists. Now I don't think this resistance and hatred of these kind of celebrations was false modesty.  No, my suspicion is that it was related to both shame and an inability to receive blessings.  Thankfully, some of that has been healed - some of it has simply been acknowledged - and some of it I will probably carry to my grave.  But I now have a measure of peace born of the "unforced rhythms of grace"."

Practicing letting go - surrendering to God's grace - learning how to be graceful in those times and events that are beyond my control is at the heart of my Christian spirituality.  It is at the core of what I preach and how I try to live.  Imagine my surprise, then, when those old "birthday demons" started to make their presence known last night as I pondered what I was feeling about this up-coming anniversary celebration.  "I don't want ANY of it" I kept hearing a small child-like voice intent upon a temper tantrum saying.  "I haven't earned it with these people yet," was just below the surface, too.  "After all, it has only been five years and we still have a lot of work to do."  Truth told, I was feeling surly and antagonistic and very resistant to anything gentle.

But the voices of two old friends were also part of this inner conversation.  One is pastor M. Craig Barns of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.  I don't know Craig but I have become a fan of his writing.  And in an older book, When God Interrupts, I read the following:

I have become convinced that Christianity is fundamentally an experience of losing the lives of our dreams (or wounds) in order to receive the lives Jesus died to give us... we have a name for this process in the Christian church: we call it conversion.

WTF?  But it is true - letting go and surrender - is about giving up one part of life to experience the deeper life of God more fully.  That has been true before - and there's no reason to think it isn't so now.  Especially when the second old friend, from the gospel of John, reminded me of this post-resurrection story:

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ A second time he said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.’

Those last words have been essential to my spirituality over the past 15 years, too.  So, like Siddhartha, I now find myself back at the same damn river again.  I've changed, the river has changed and time has passed; and yet the old demon returns albeit in a new form.  And I am asked to practice what I preach and rest into the unforced rhythms of grace.  I feel like an idiot - maybe child-like too - but now I have a clue about what's going on.  So, here I go again: 

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

It is just the church...

One of the things I have come to realize over the years is that even though I have given my adult life to the church - and love it dearly - it is only church.  Too often, I think, some fail to realize that the church isn't Jesus.  Oh, we have love to share and we're called to minister as the Body of Christ.  But we aren't Jesus...

... mostly we are broken women and men doing the best we can.  And sometimes we are able to share love in healing and redemptive ways.  That is always a beautiful thing for the Lord.  But more often than not we're also bogged down with fear and sin and our wounds get the best of us, right?  Pastor M. Craig Barnes has written this note to pastors:

A pastor's ability to enjoy church is directly related to knowing its limits. The church is not Jesus. It may be the body of Christ, but only sort of.  The Reformers always maintained an important distinction between the visible body - which is weak - and the invisible Body of Christ - which transcends the limitations of the church we see.  This frees the pastor not to take the church more seriously than God does... Clearly God doesn't expect the church to build the New Kingdom on earth. That will always be accomplished by the ongoing work of the now ascended Christ working with the Holy Spirit.... So when pastors are trying to evaluate the success of their life's work, they dare not allow the limited and weak body known as church to be their measure. (p. 12, The Pastor as Minor Poet)

I suspect those who are not pastors could benefit from such a humble and liberating notion of the church, too.  Sometimes the criticism of a church - or THE church - that I hear is more a projection of an individual's own failings writ large.  Other times their critique is born of real naivete. To be sure, churches hurt real people in very real ways - but that must be said for all of us (myself included) if we're at all honest.  So I'm often perplexed - and frustrated - when people choose to forget this reality.   

In The Great Speckled Bird, Rob McCall writes that the current arguments against religion offered by the likes of Dawkins, Hitchens et al are simply true for all people.  When the NY Times summarizes Dawkins' book, The God Delusion, like this:  "An Oxford scientist asserts that belief in God is irrational and that religion has done great harm to the world," McCall writes:  "Who could argue with this?  But of course, the same assertions could be made about science and technology which gave us weapons of mass destruction, the collapse of world fisheries and global climate change among other things.  The same assertions could, in fact, be made about the entire human race:  that they are irrational and that they have done a great deal of harm to the world." (p. 130)

He continues: 

Yes, horrible things have been done by those who marched over the broken, bleeding bodies of others under the flag of religion: the Crusades, the Conquistadores, the Inquisition, mass persecutions of the Jews, the Salem witch trials. But horrible things have also been done by those who marched over the bleeding bodies of others under the flag of anti-religion: the Reign of Terror in France, the Nazi holocaust, Stalin's starvations, Mao's revolution, Pol Pot's killing field. It is neither flag of Faith nor the flag of Reason that is horrible; it is marching over the broken, bleeding bodies of others under any flag or no flag at all that is horrible. (p. 131)

So the Apostle Paul got it right when he told us that we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God - everyone of us.  None are a whole lot more holy or noble or sanctified than anybody else - and that includes the faithful, the reasonable, the churched and the unchurched, those who have been blessed by congregations and those who have been wounded and those who have done the wounding inside the church. 

Because, you see, it is just the church - and the church is not Jesus.  This distinction has become helpful to me over the years and could be helpful to those who aren't clergy, too.  What do you think?

The kitchen is a holy place...

Last night I baked my first successful loaf of bread in a LONG time.  I used to bake a lot 40 years ago.  Hell, I used to bake a lot when the children were small, too.  But over the years I lost interest and time.  Not that I lost interest in bread - even working at the Atkins diet from time to time - it just wasn't a priority in my life.  The same thing once happened to music, too if you can believe that!  After seminary, as I got busier and busier, it seemed that I only played periodically. By the time we got to Cleveland music-making was sporadic for about five years.  Hmmm....

And in some distinctive ways, baking bread last night was like picking up my guitar after a long absence.  It felt a little odd but also familiar at the same time.  I had to follow the recipe very carefully, too because I'd forgotten some things about baking that used to be second nature.  And I was humbled by how much time it took... and that was a good thing.  Joy Mead writes:

Because bread won't be hurried
we have to learn to let it be,
to do nothing, to be patient,
to wait for the proving.
Because bread won't be hurried
and is a life and death process,
we find out in its making
that time is not a line
but a cycle of ends and beginnings,
rhythms and seasons,
growth and death,
celebration and mourning,
work and rest,
eating and fasting,
because bread won't be hurried.

So there was sauteing the onions in real butter, sifting the flour (what a lovely process) and kneading the blob of ingredients into a loaf.  And waiting - lots and lots of waiting.  By the time I took the bread out of the oven there was a heavenly aroma throughout the house and a healthy does of anticipation in our hearts and bellies.  Lord, there is nothing better in all creation that fresh, warm bread made at home.  Nothing!

Gunilla Norris puts it like this:

Familiar and strange,
the kitchen is a holy place -
alive with possibility.

A place for the elements.
Water in the tap,
fire in the stove,
earth in the food,
air - between, around, above and below.

Behind the cupboard doors
are the pots and the pans,
the bowls and the dishes,
the measuring cups
and the the measuring spoons -

holy things
that lie ready for use,
much like our dreams
that lie waiting
behind our eyelids.

The kitchen is alchemical,
a place where we cook - actually
and spiritually. We come to it
for nourishment and ease.
We come to it as to a center -

the heart of the house,
the heart of dwelling.
In the kitchen we are one,
linked by hunger -
actual hunger and spiritual hunger.

We go to the kitchen to be
nourished and revealed.
It is a holy place.

That's how I felt - connected, grounded, rooted in tradition and open to possibilities - in a very earthy and holy way.  There is nothing abstract about kneading 100 times, or waiting 2 hours or adding butter to a steaming slice and savoring it in your mouth: nothing - it is all real and satisfying.  Embodied.  Dare I say incarnational?  I am going to try a Welsh recipe later this week that includes fresh herbs and baking the loaves in a clay flower pot.  But now it is time to tend to some weeds outside before the day evaporates...

Oh yes, here's a picture of MY loaf (partially consumed.)

Thoughts on thirty years of ministry...

When I entered Union Theological Seminary 33 years ago, I had two small children, had worked as an organizer with the United Farm Workers movement of Cesar Chavez, had tried to clean up the care provided to profoundly disabled children in a custodial care home, worked in a variety of gas stations and restaurants and believed myself to be fed up with both traditional politics and church.  While finishing my undergraduate degree in Political Science from San Francisco State University, I entered the realm of "sanitized Marxism" (a phrase borrowed from Cornel West.) By the time I arrived in NYC, I had studied the major texts of the New Left, read and re-read the essential Liberation Theologians of Latin America and was ready for the church to serve as the vanguard of social and spiritual change.

Like many before me, Luke 4: 18-19 rang true for me: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.

And the songs that I was playing and calling my own from that time?  "Darkness on the Edge of Town" by the Boss, "Psycho Killer" by Talking Heads, almost anything by the Clash and a ton of Pete and Arlo.
Instead, the United States elected Ronald Reagan.  Still, I went to my first congregation in Saginaw, MI - home of three steel foundries and a major division of General Motors - with the expectation that Christ's upside down kingdom would be as compelling and energizing to others as it was to me.  What I found, however, was ordinary people struggling to keep food on the table in the midst of a recession, young people obsessed and seduced by either fashion or money and most people with little time left for challenging the status quo at the end of every hard earned day. I was amazed - and often overwhelmed - at the weight of pain and emptiness people carried with them every day.  And began to get in touch with my own demons. 

Springsteen's "Reason to Believe" is the song I sing about Saginaw and think of Paul's words from Romans 12: I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual^* worship. Do not be conformed to this world,^* but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Other songs from that era for me were:  Born in the USA, Dancin' in the Dark and Don't You Forget About Me.)

Three years later, I was called to a small, inner city congregation on the West Side of Cleveland:  once an Irish and German neighborhood that had moved hillbillies from Appalachia through before becoming home to a new generation of Puerto Ricanoes, I was in heaven.  "This is where things are going to happen," I kept telling myself - and I stayed for 13 years trying to make it so.  In that time, I travelled to the former Soviet Union twice, was elected to the Board of Education as part of an inter-racial reform team, experienced the slow disintegration of my first marriage and rediscovered the importance of intimacy with Christ.  We integrated that small, tough church - and developed some important ministries to the children of the hood - and then the county hospital bought all the surrounding land and levelled everything in a mile radius of the church and ten years of mission work died.

I loved everything about Cleveland - it is a peasant town in the best sense of the word - filled with salty saints, dill pickles and pumpernickel bread.  There are great pierogies, too along with collard greens, pico de gallo, the Cleveland Indians and some of the best microbreweries on the planet.  Facing my failures - learning to laugh at myself in humility not shame - and trusting that God's grace was bigger than my imagination became the heart and soul of that ministry.  An inner revolution, to be sure, with a lot of time spent learning how to be present with others in compassion. 

Not much changed externally in those years, but I was born again... and found myself singing along with Paul Simon:  a man walks down the street, he says "why am I soft in the middle now, why am I so soft in the middle now when the rest of my life is so hard?" And the text that still rings true from this time comes from Psalm 131:  O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvellous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.^*(Other important songs from that era include:  the solo work of Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul, U2's Joshua Tree album, Joan Jett and more Talking Heads.) 

So it was off to Tucson, AZ - a wild and laid back community close to the Mexican border  and I was finally going to prove myself as a pastor.  No more fussing with the body politic here because this congregation had been through an internecine battle of epic proportions. And I began working 12-14 hours a day trying to bring healing and hope back into the place.  And after five years, there were signs of life and numerical growth.  We had a ball doing ministry in this strange and unique place:  strong youth groups, intense adult formation gatherings, brilliant and creative music and the chance to mature and ripen as a spontaneous preacher.  It was a blessing...

... and also a curse.  The intensity of my striving - my need to be successful - almost killed me and nearly destroyed my second marriage.  Seems I am a very slow learner but it was here that I learned that the institutional church will reward my addiction to work by consuming me in every way possible.  Until, of course, I had nothing left to give.  So as my spiritual advisor cautioned, "The time has come for you to discover the right reason for staying in ministry.  You've already unearthed all the wrong reasons for going into this work, let's find the ones that bring life." 

And so we began... and I rediscovered the spirituality of music.  I wrote my doctoral  dissertation on how living into a musical spirituality could be soul food as well as prayerful.  We built a rockin' fun band, Stranger, and found ways to welcome in people from the fringe.  The songs of U2 became essential at this time in my ministry - especially "I Still Haven't Found What I've Been Looking For," "Beautiful Day," "Love Part II" and "When Love Comes to Town."  The Boss reunited with the E Street Band and put out "The Rising" which is still dear to my heart - along with "You're Still Missing."  I even got a chance to regularly play a few tunes with our local favorite bar band, The Rowdies, notably:  "Keep Your Hands to Yourself," "After Midnight" and "You Shook Me All Night Long."

After 10 years, our connection to the GLBTQ community was solid and we were becoming the spiritual home to some transgendered folk, too. We were straight and gay, young and old, rich and poor, women and men and children and  I developed deep and loving friendships in Tucson that I will treasure forever.  

And then it was time to move on... this time to the small New England city of Pittsfield that had once been a thriving industrial center.  Now, 20 years after GE had left, it was finding a way into new life through the arts, small scale farming, tourism and modest size manufacturing.  No sooner had we arrived than the stock market crashed and the hopes of renewal were put on hold. But little by little, sometimes with just faith and no evidence, people have made their way through the troubles and things are starting to grow strong in the town and the church. None of us are out of the woods yet, but there is life here and it is deep and beautiful and real.  We are attracting younger families, we have built a deeply creative musical ministry that incorporates tradition and jazz alongside Taize chants and rock and blues.

And once again, I have learned - and relearned - that resting in God's grace and doing just my part of the work is what ministry is all about:  it isn't fixing what isn't mine, it isn't healing an other's wounds and it isn't trying to do everything all at once.  The unforced rhythms of grace are about changing what I can, being present in honest ways and entrusting the rest to the Lord. As the Serenity Prayer teaches:  we have to acquire the wisdom to distinguish between what we can do and what we must surrender to God.  This text, from Matthew 11 in the Peterson reworking, guides my work today:

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.

Next week, this faith community will help me celebrate the 30th anniversary of my ordination vows.  A colleague in New Haven, who just celebrated her 30th, too encouraged me review those vows.  It was good counsel:

+ Do you hear the word of God in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments and accept the word of God as the rule of Christian faith and practice?

+ Do you promise to be diligent in your private prayers, the reading of scriptures as well as the public duties of your office?

+ Will you be zealous in maintaining both the truth of the gospel and the peace of the church by speaking the truth in love?

+ Will you be faithful in preaching and teaching the gospel, administering the sacraments and exercising pastoral care and leadership?

+ Will you keep silent all confidences?

+ Will you seek to share love equally with all people and minister impartially to all?

It is a humbling time - my family will gather with me for the evening marking the anniversary - and a few friends from around the country will be here, too.  As I look back over the 30 years, two things stand out for me.  First, without resting firmly in God's grace, everything else falls apart - and I mean everything.  Second, God's grace is greater than even my failures so there is is always hope.  Don't give up...  

Everything is personal...

"Nothing is easy... in a postmodern age when we question all our assumptions and struggle with global warming and belligerent politicians, the commonwealth of peace seems very far away.  But making bread gives us meaning," writes Donna Sinclair. And, "that, above all, is why it is a spiritual task. It helps us trust that the world will survive, that we are loved and that the kitchen where we work is holy ground."

For longer than I can remember I've believed in my core that each meeting at church - planning meetings, study meetings, council meetings - should begin with a bit of shared bread.  Maybe some wine, too - or maybe not - but probably so.  My daughter tells me that when she was in India wherever she went - for business, pleasure or study - every encounter began with tea.  And refreshments, too.  Somewhere along the way our realm became too efficient, too interested in the bottom line and hospitality and humanity was discarded as too costly and mostly irrelevant.

But as one spiritual director said to me years ago when I insisted that like the Godfather certain things were not personal, just business:  EVERYTHING is personal - especially in the church.  That changed my life.  Everything is personal - everything takes time - every bod is unique - everything needs space to grow and ferment, percolate and bake, ripen and mature.  So what could be more prayerful, counter-cultural and nourishing than to start everything we do with some bread?  Ms. Sinclair continues:

What could be more compelling (to hungry people) than to wrap the new religion in bread? What could draw more surely on the strength of Demeter, the reigning goddess of bread? Nothing could give Jesus' friends more hope - with his terrifying death soon to come - than bread, which depends on grain that dies in the fields but comes back again as goodness.  At every meal, they would think of him. Every time they gathered as friends, he would be present in the breaking of bread.

Like Gandhi said: there are people in the world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread. So this Monday, when we gather to study, I'm going to bring bread and tea and start things off right.  And my time for prayer and study at each Council meeting this year is going to include a bit of bread and wine, too.  Sure, it will take us a little more time.  Of course, it will seem excessive and extravagant when there is business to be resolved.  But we serve a Crucified and Upside Down Lord - who comes to us as bread and wine - and after 30 years of waiting the time has come to do this in my ministry. 

Everything is personal - and being nourished and connected matters - so I'll keep you posted.  Joy Mead puts it like this:

Out of fire it comes
with bodily contours
satisfying to all senses:
a warm loaf; seedy and grainy,
soft and being-shaped,
its yeast smell, homely
and heavenly,
of fungus and damp autumn
woodlands... and the sun's warmth.

All life is here:
ordinary, good and beautiful:
growing things and cow-dung,
woody roots and seeds,
bodies of creatures
long dead in the soil;
all in this given
bread of our beginnings;
all in our breaking
and sharing
our one loaf.

(A total guilty pleasure - love it ALL - bread!)

Let my prayer (and bread) rise...

I love bread - all types of bread - crackers, yeasted, flat, sour dough, white, wheat and everything in-between.  Donna Sinclair wrote:

Baking bread makes me calm, whether it is my English grandmother's scones or my Scottish grandmother's raised white loaves.  Because bread is the opposite of fast food. You cannot make bread n ten minutes, and the slow work of kneading and shaping quiets our noisy and over-scheduled lives. Indeed, bread demands peace: you cannot grow grain in a battlefield. Bread also demands justice: cheap bread that results from the loss of the family farm is just too bitter to eat.  In fact, bread is the very picture of a just society.

For the next few weeks I'm going to be thinking a lot about bread - and maybe I'll even bake some.  We had great bread at today's Eucharist.  And it will play a key role in the up-coming 30th anniversary of my ordination vows on September 29-30th (the actual day was June 6, 1982 but what's three months among friends).  Then on October 7th our celebration of World Communion Day will include four different communion stations with different breads from around the world. 

If it is true that I often summarize the heart and soul of my spirituality in music - we'll be using a tune from each of the four congregations I've served to consider God's still speaking insights for me (and those songs are:  Springsteen's "Reason to Believe" for Saginaw, MI - Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me, Al" for Cleveland, OH - "One of Us" by Joan Osborne for Tucson, AZ - and the Herbie Hancock arrangement of Peter Gabriel's "Don't Give Up" for Pittsfield, MA) - it is equally true that I mostly think of the day-to-day realities of a faith community as a feast.  And feasting requires good bread, wine, resources to share, a place of welcome at the table of grace for everybody, beauty, time, music and safe space.

Donna Sinclair's beautiful book, A Spirituality of Bread, and Joy Mead's, One Loaf, have become sweet companions on the journey that always take me deeper. "The peaceable kingdom, which cannot come unless it is first imagined, is a commonwealth (the faithful) must hold in their hearts until they can make it whole - until grandchildren on new unsteady legs come to a laden table and thanks are said that all the world has bread."  So... que la fête commence!

I am a blessed man...

Every week I get to make music with some of the finest musicians - and sweetest people - I've ever met.  After studying, praying and writing for most of the day on Tuesday, I head off for band practice and choir rehearsal.  Our rock/folk/jazz ensemble, Between the Banks, meets for an hour + and tonight we cooked up a chill version of U2's, "Grace" for Sunday.  We also worked on Herbie Hancock's smokin' take on Peter Gabriel's, "Don't Give Up" which I think we'll use next week for my 30th anniversary of ordination.  And we started up on Taylor Swift's "Safe and Sound" from The Hunger Games in which we'll have one of our middle school girls sing the lead.
After a quick break, it was on to choir practice - a few of the band now sing in the choir, too - plus a handful of other good souls.  It is great fun to switch from jazz and blues into John Stainer four part harmonies or Celtic tunes with a classical bent.  A few beloved members of each group were unable to be present tonight and you could feel the loss; not only were their voices missing, but their spirit, too.

As I was driving home in the first serious autumn rain of the season I thought to myself:  Man, are we going to have an eclectic Sunday!  We'll start with a classical organ prelude, move into a contemporary hymn driven by piano, bass and guitars - sing two responses from the African and/or African/American tradition - turn U2's "Grace" into a chill blues - add Stainer's "How Lovely are the Feet" and close with an extended improvisation on a Lakota hymn.  I am in heaven - blessed and loving it!

Dwelling on God's holy mountain...

NOTE: Here are my worship notes for this coming Sunday, September 23, 2012.  They are a work in progress about grace, God's holy mountain and living by trust.

 

Introduction

Have you ever said something stupid out loud? I mean really stupid – like you know it was totally wrong and inappropriate even as the words were falling out of your face – but they keep coming?  I’m talking about something really, totally and completely stupid?

I have – you’ve heard some of them, too – I’ve said some stupid things in worship when I’m trying to be funny or spontaneous.  I’ve butchered some historical facts about the Bible when I conflated one reality with another.  And I’ve said stupid things in a manner too harsh when I’ve felt worn-out and hung-up wet to dry.  And if you’re anything like me, you have said some stupid things, too in your day:  words you wish you could take back immediately – not so much because they are embarrassing – but rather because they either confuse or wound another, right?

Sometimes I’ve heard or read stupid things in the Bible – maybe you have, too – things that enflame our hatreds or degrade our neighbors or cause us unnecessary suffering and pain.  I think of the women I’ve counseled through the years who’ve continued to stay in abusive and destructive relationships because they’ve been taught that it is God’s plan for creation for women to submit to their husbands.  After all, it says in Ephesians 5:  Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior. Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands.

·       I think of our historic anti-Semitism that runs rampant through Christianity born of the notion that the Jews are Christ killers – the gospel of John is filled with barbs against the leaders of Judaism – so it must be God’s will to hate them, right?

·       And then there are those throughout the ages who have wounded and abused themselves physically because they believed that when Jesus said, “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.  And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell" he was speaking literally not figuratively.

Saying stupid and hurtful things seem to be a part of the human condition – we all do it – we’ve all done it – and we’ll all probably keep doing it this side of glory forever.  To which St. Paul tells us something that is not stupid.  He writes to the early church in Rome:

We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family.^* And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified. I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

That is, if we truly love God and ache to learn from our stupidity – if we are willing to be humbled by our failures and turn them over to the Lord by grace – then God will take even all that is stupid and hurtful in our lives and history and work it for good.  He’s not saying that everything IS good – nor that everything always is easy – but that even our sins and stupidity can be used for the work of grace for those who are committed to God’s purpose revealed in the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ.

Insights

And THAT is a huge blessing – a massive gift filled with hope and healing and forgiveness – that is offered to us by God in return for love.  Paul promises that if we love the Lord then there is nothing that can happen that can subvert God’s plan for the world.  What’s more, there is nothing that can ever separate us from God’s love and grace either:

I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And why does Paul make such an outrageous statement and promise?  What evidence does he have in his experience to warrant such a huge claim?

·      Well, he himself has been healed and forgiven – by the crucified and risen Jesus – who came to him in a vision, lifted away the blinders of fear and hatred and set him on the road of life filled with a mission of mercy.  Paul has lived into and through the life, death and resurrection of the Lord so he knows in his flesh what God can do through love.

·       Are you still with me?  Do you hear what I’m trying to say?  Stupidity and sin, fear and hatred, death and destruction can all be used by God for good if we give it to the Lord in love.

Do you know the name Elaine Pagels?  She is a distinguished scholar of religion at Princeton University who has written about the Gnostic Gospels and other spiritual texts that the Church has kept hidden or banished.   Over the years, the more she studied and wrote about the stupidity and sin of the Church as an institution, you could see that she was becoming more and more alienated and disillusioned. 

“But then something happened.  A death.  The death of her son, her oldest child – the worst kind of sorry any parent could imagine.  And as she absorbed the news of his fatal illness, and certain death, she rediscovered something” (Rediscovering Reverence, p. 68) that she describes like this in her book, Beyond Belief:

On a bright Sunday morning in February, shivering in a T-shirt and running shorts, I stepped into the vaulted stone vestibule of the Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York to catch my breath and warm up. Since I had not been in church for a long time, I was startled by my response to the worship in progress – the soaring harmonies of the choir singing with the congregation; and the priest, a woman in bright gold and white vestments, proclaiming the prayers in a clear and resonant voice.  As I stood watching, a thought came to me:  here is a family that knows how to face death…

Standing in the back of that church, I recognized, uncomfortably, that I needed to be there. Here was a place to weep without imposing tears upon a child; and here was a heterogeneous community that had gathered to sing, to celebrate, to acknowledge common needs and to deal with what we cannot control or imagine. And at the same time, the celebration spoke of hope; perhaps that is what made the presence of death bearable…

I returned often to that church, not looking for faith but because in the presence of the worship and the people gathered there – and in a smaller group that met on weekdays in the church basement for mutual encouragement – my defenses fell away, exposing storms of grief and hope.  In that church I gathered new energy to face whatever awaited us as constructively as possible.

Like the Apostle Paul told us:  when we bring whatever we have to the Lord in love… nothing not death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Now that’s an enormous idea – bigger and more awesome than most of our imaginations can grasp - so our spiritual founders took the time to find different symbols from our everyday lives that pointed to the enormity of God’s grace.

·       Sometimes they spoke of God’s presence as the dew of the morning in the desert – and what does that image evoke for you? 

·       At other times God was like a shepherd whose rod and staff brings us protection even in the valley of the shadow of death.   Sometimes God’s love is like a feast – thou preparest a table before me even in the presence of mine enemies and my cup overflows.

·       Today’s reading from the prophet Isaiah suggests that God’s power and presence in our lives is like a mountain – a place that is elevated and huge – a new heaven and new earth even where creation and joy abound.

And before I go a little deeper into Isaiah’s vision, let me ask you:  have you ever been to a mountain top?  What did it feel like?  Think about that deeply – try to reclaim the feelings of being on that mountain – because it is those feelings, not the facts, that give our faith power and depth.

·       What mountain tops have you experienced – where and how – and what did it feel like to be on that mountain?  (Let people share their encounters…)

·       For me, different mountains evoke different feelings:  when I stood on the rim of the Grand Canyon it was humbling – I was saturated with awe and silence – at the enormity and power all around me.  But when I drive Route 7 up to Williamstown and reach the crest that looks out over the valley, on that mountain I start to breathe deeper and feel very much at rest and peace with the world.

Israel’s poetic prophet, Isaiah, mixes three truths together in this morning’s reading about what life is to be like under the love and grace of God.  First, he acknowledges that there is always suffering – the former devastations he calls them – the wounds and pain we bring upon ourselves through stupidity, sin,  greed, fear and hatred.

·         What does that kind of sin and stupidity look like in our time?

·         What are the signs of greed, fear, ignorance and hatred in our generation?

The promise of the prophet is that on God’s holy mountain these wounds will be used to bring about healing and hope through grace.  That may seem incomprehensible – absurd even – but that is the promise.  And trusting in grace means that we don’t have to understand how this works.  We don’t have to be God.  We are simply asked to acknowledge and confess our sins and turn them in humility to the Lord.  First, Isaiah speaks of the suffering.

Second, Isaiah clearly celebrates a sacred reality that both transcends and transforms the former things:  not only is God delighted with the new creation, but humanity is set free.

·       I will rejoice in Jerusalem and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.

·       What do those words say to you?  What is God saying to us about the quality of our lives lived in God’s grace?

·         What about here?  What do you hear in these promises? They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity;^* for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord and their descendants as well.

God is creating here – over and over the words of Genesis are used to remind us that the healing and rejoicing of the Lord is a creative gift – a gift of grace after the wounds of sin.  A gift of shalom that is offered to everyone who seeks to dwell on God’s holy mountain

·       And that’s another huge word – shalom –  that has to do not only with right relations between people – healing and justice and compassion and creativity all rolled together – but also right relations between human beings and animals and plants and water and air. 

·       Wherever there is enmity between human beings and the land, wherever there is war and fear, wherever there is hunger or homelessness or intolerance, there is no shalom. 

The Apostle Paul calls the absence of shalom God’s wrath – not an active punishment like we’re bad or stupid children – but rather the absence of the Lord’s presence in our lives for a time so that we’ll experience the consequences of our own stubborn opposition to the way of the Lord.  In Romans 1 Paul puts it like this:

The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.  Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools; and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.

I have come to see God’s wrath as less active and more passive than we’ve been told.  It is rather like a loving parent who in exasperation with a child says, “Look I’ve given you love and wisdom and  trust and protection but you insist on doing hurtful things to yourself and others.  Well ok, then, have it your way… and see what you think then.” 

·       So the parent steps back and lets the beloved child stumble and fall and fail.  It is agonizing – it is the powerlessness of love in action – and there are lots of tears and prayers and silence offered up in hope that at some point the pain – the emptiness – will be too great to bear and the child will want a change.

·       And sometimes that happens – the Bible tells a lot of stories about home-comings and feasts after stubborn children grow weary of their sins – and the Scriptures are full of passages about the rejoicing in love that takes place in God’s heart:  my child was once lost, but now she is found.  Hallelujah!

That’s the hope of shalom – and wrath – that together they might bring us home into God’s love. 

Conclusion

But sometimes that doesn’t happen, right?  We know this in our own families and we certainly see it in world events.  And this is where the enormity of God’s love – the awesome and humbling power that is more massive than a mountain – comes back into play:  we are invited to live and act as those who trust.

Now we see as through a glass darkly – only later shall we see face to face – for now we feel only  the emptiness:  now we see the darkness and have no idea how the light of grace will come to pass.  Now we have tears not rejoicing, famine rather than feasting.

To which Paul says very tenderly:  Beloved, please, remember the Lord Jesus Christ – and what came into his life by the grace of God - he, too, was lost but now is found.  He, too, was dead but now lives.  And what God has given to Christ Jesus in love, he offers to us, too.  Not because Jesus earned – not because we deserve it – but because God loves us  as God. 

All things can work together for good for those who love God when we are called according to his purpose. Having experienced this in my own flesh and soul, I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This is the good news for those who dwell – and seek – the Lord’s shalom on God’s holy mountain.  So let those who have ears to hear, hear.

 

credits:

1) pamelahilliardartimages.com

2) kennybeal.wordpress.com

3) redbubble.com

4) fineartamerica.com

5) singledadinla.com