Sunday, March 17, 2024

How to Repent (It's not how you think)



Psalm 46Jeremiah 31:31-34

When I was in college, I spent the large part of one summer sleeping on a 3-foot round papason chair cushion on the floor of an apartment five friends were renting in Dinkytown, in Minneapolis. At one point, we ran out of toilet paper and went through all the napkins, coffee filters and finally, Far Side comics, before someone finally bought more. But whatevs. We were young.


When Andy and I graduated from seminary, we were in our mid-twenties, and were willing to go anywhere in the US to start our next life chapter. Coast? Desert? Mountains? Big City? Tiny town? Sure! Why not! Andy applied to programs all over, and when we moved to Princeton, New Jersey, we packed up all our things in a u-haul and drove from LA for five days across the country. Each day was spent listening to Harry Potter cds and eating sunflower seeds and drive-through fast food. Each night we parked the truck with everything we owned in the world, towing our only car, strategically where we could watch it from our motel window so it wouldn’t get stolen.


There are times in our lives we anticipate upheaval. We expect it; invite it, even. We are totally open to change, happy to cooperate with a little chaos. But I think we think that is supposed to stop. That you will go through your change and chaos phase, and then after that, things are supposed to be predictable and secure. 


But life never stops with the turmoil. And upheaval is not an isolated incident. Children, or not, homes gained and lost, illnesses, adjustments—the changes just keep coming. That first friend to get divorced becomes one of many, maybe even yourself. That dream job you pursued falls through, that church you loved falls apart, that person you trusted falls away. And then your book club moves to zoom and eventually stops meeting, and your go-to restaurant goes out of business, and the person who has cut your hair for 20 years retires.  The neighbor you love moves away and the new people don’t seem interested in connecting, and that special, lonely spot you found solace as a child has become a sea of strip malls.


And these are just the little changes, the everyday, ordinary, constant disturbances. That is to say nothing of global horrors, war and atrocities, famine and hunger, natural disasters or community violence, nor of the unexpected personal catastrophes and devastating deaths that leave you breathless and disoriented, trying to figure out how life will look in a landscape you did not choose.


Disruption doesn’t restrict itself to phases, and chaos doesn’t play by any rules. Trouble, tumult, terror, and seismic shifts happen in our lives and in the world all the time. From our birth until we die, living with the unexpected and navigating constant change is basically what it means to be human.  anything can change at any moment, and everything does, all the time. 


 And in the midst of all this upheaval, we’re busy. We’re doing so much, and there is so much more we could be doing, and we only have time and energy for a fraction of it, and things are moving so fast who can keep up? But people seem to, so we strive, and reach, and do more, and wonder at our capacity, but keep scrambling to get our footing, racing to catch up, and feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and anxious so much of the time.  


In our Jeremiah text the people of God are exhausted by turmoil, unsettled by circumstances, unsure of their capacity.  They’d been ripped from home and forced into a life unfamiliar and uncomfortable, with no ease in sight, disoriented, trying to figure out how life will look in a landscape they did not choose.


They don’t know if they have what it takes to live up to their end of their relationship with God. In fact, all evidence from history and experience tells them that if it is up to them to remember and live from the truth of their belonging to God and each other they will fail.  


But God says it’s not their job to uphold this relationship. God will make a new covenant, a new bond, not dependent on their ability to remember correctly and teach each other rightly, but written into their very hearts, every one of them. God will be God. They will be God’s people. This covenant can’t be broken because it will be inside them and God will do the heavy lifting. Their belonging, identity, security is from God; God does this. “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” 


They are invited to trade their way of being for the one God is offering. They’re called to trust God and participate with God in a life of freedom and care for others, not when things get easier but right now - despite the upheaval, and right in the midst of their unsettledness. This home God is offering them is not dependent on what happens around them, because it happens within them, and between them.  


    Lent is a season of repentance.  Repent doesn’t mean wallow in your disgustingness and come groveling back to God. The Greek word for repent, means literally “change how you think after being with,” ‘turn around, shift your being in another direction, change your purpose after this encounter.”  Essentially, exchange your perspective for God’s, trade your way of being for the one God is offering.  Repentance is the wake-up moment, when we say, Oh! I don’t want to live afraid, resentful, stingy, anxious and striving! I want to live connected to God and others in freedom and care.


The opening line of Psalm 46, sum up the theology of the whole book of Psalms in these words: God is our refuge and strength. God is our safety. A very present help in trouble. Not a helper in the midst of trouble but Help itself. Very present help. Right here. Right now. Right in the midst of it. Therefore we will not fear. 


        But I fear a lot. I am a very skilled fearer.  I’ll let you in on the secret to my success: I practice fear by worrying. What if, what if, what if… My favorite time to do this is when I would really like to be sleeping.  When I am finally still, at the end of the day, I’ve stopped rushing and outrunning my anxiety, then it all catches up to me and I let buckle down and get to my worry workout, what if… what if.. what if…

I would love to trade my worry for trust. I would love some ease and trust, To not feel tossed about by chaos and upheaval but grounded in God’s care.  But if it’s up to me to remember my belonging to God and each other I will fail.  So what does repenting even look like, and how do we do it? 


It turns out, repenting is less something we do than what we stop doing. 

Be still. Psalm 46 goes on to say. Be still and know that I am God.  Be Still. In Hebrew, it means “put down your hands”-  cease striving. Quit doing stuff. Stop overestimating your own power to fix, change, control or escape things. Quit your fleeing and flailing and wait for God to act.  


In scripture, Be still is not a soft invitation to a spiritual spa moment. Be Still! is a command for the chaos. For the impossibility. For the crisis, and the injustice and the division and the shame. Be still appears as a command two places in scripture. One is here, in our Psalm, where it comes after telling us this doozy: Nations are in an uproar! kingdoms totter! God raises his voice and the earth melts....Be still and know that I am God.


The other place is 1000 years earlier than where we met the exiled Israelites today, when their ancestors have been delivered out of Egypt, but Pharoah has changed his mind, and has sent his entire army after them to destroy them. There they are, at the edge of the Red Sea, the chaos of waters blocking their way forward, and Pharoah's whole army bearing down on them from behind. They are trapped, hemmed in by danger, facing sure and certain death, and the command comes, Be still! The Lord will fight for you.


At the very moment when it seems like you should be scrambling and grabbing, and mustering all your resources, put your hands down.  Right in the middle of chaos and the tumult, when you’re uprooted from home and stuck in a place you do not choose to be, when you’re trapped, with nowhere to go, and certain death bearing down on you, Put down your hands. 

Stop moving. Stop doing. 

You are not God. Let God be God.

When things feel overwhelming. Be still.

When fear threatens to rule you. Be still.

When you’re unsettled and lost. Be still.

When the whole world seems to be convinced that we are about to be destroyed, Be still.  

Be still and know I am God.


When we’ve stopped rushing and outrunning our anxiety, when it all catches up to us, when we surrender our grabbing for control, God meets us here and takes us in another direction. 

God-- who breaks the bow and shatters the spear and burns the chariot and raises his voice and the earth melts and finds us when we’re lost and makes a way where there is no way and brings us home in love wherever we are—this God answers worry’s incessant what if, what if, what if, with the steady and unwavering heartbeat of Love, holding us close,  “Even though… Even if… Even when…” Even then.

Even though the earth changes. And mountains fall into the sea, and tsunamis and storms and whirlwinds roar through our world, and the very ground seems to shake beneath our feet and turmoil and tumult overwhelm us.  Even when the divisions between us seem insurmountable, and the constant voices around us urge urgency, and the judgment within us is loud and unceasing. Even if we’re between jobs with no prospects yet, or we’re staring down a diagnosis we can’t yet get our heads around. Even when the state of the world feels precarious and dangerous, or our precious kids that we’ve been so focused on raising are suddenly off adulting half-way across the country. Even then. Not because these things don’t or won’t happen, but because they will, and do. Even now. 

We will not fear. 


God is our refuge and strength.

God’s salvation meet us just exactly how we need to be met, to heal us where we are sick, and mend us where we are broken, and release us where we are caged, and find us where we are lost, and be our refuge in tumult, and give us a stability and security not dependent on what happens around us, because it happens within us, and between us, not by what we do but by mighty hand of God. 


Our belonging, identity, security is from God. God does this. “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, God says, “and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

We are God’s people.  Always. No matter what. 

May we rest in trust.

Amen.


Portions of this message were adapted from a chapter of Receiving This Life.

Sunday, March 3, 2024

Becoming Who We Are

 John 2:13-22

We are what we love, St. Augustine asserted, and this Lent we are exploring how what we love and desire is shaped by our unthought habits and repeated rituals.  It’s our chance to do a “liturgical audit” – to ask what habits are shaping me away from life? And what habits are shaping me toward life?

We learn habits through repetition; they become so ingrained in us that we don’t even think about them. So changing habits can be daunting. Once we recognize an unhelpful habit, we want instant results and immediate gratification.  We modern folks are not wired for the long, slow slog of repeating uncomfortable things until they become second nature. We’d rather keep repeating comfortable things, even if they’re not great for us. 

A couple years ago I realized my problem with exercise was not that I didn’t have the right health club membership, exercise partner, tennis shoes or motivation, but that I didn’t have the right habits. I was formed and forming myself as a person who thought exercise was a good idea and did it when I could, but mostly just practiced feeling bad I wasn’t moving as much as I believed I should be. But, it turns out that changing my habits has changed my desires, and lo and behold: I have become a person who exercises. 

When I decided I would not be all or nothing about it, my mantra became Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. (This carries over quite well to things like thank you notes and birthday greetings, but not to things like home repair projects or driving). Consistency, rather than quality, was what mattered in my habit-learning quest, so I decided I would exercise every single day even if it was just for a few minutes, whether I felt like it or not. The promise was, if I did it every day, I would reach a point where it would become just like brushing my teeth—I would no longer have choose to do it, it would just happen. 

And I had evidence this could be so. I do, after all, brush my teeth—twice every day, in fact. And I tie my shoes like a pro without even thinking about it. Because a long time ago, I learned how by doing it imperfectly, over and over again, and probably I cried about it a few times. And now, I exercise. And as a totally non-athletic, lifelong avoider of sports, after a couple of years of moving on purpose every day, I sometimes really look forward to exercising – though mostly I love the feeling of having exercised.

Why can I apply these habit-forming ideas to things like eating vegetables or exercising, but I can’t seem to do so with prayer? I put up all sorts of hurdles and barriers between God and myself.  Even though I long to be connected to God, and I want to be a brave, kind person in the world, it appears I would much rather stay busy and distracted, even by tedious and unpleasant tasks, and practice feeing bad about “not praying enough,” than assume the inner stance of least resistance and terrifying openness to being encountered by God as just my vulnerable old self. 

Turns out, we humans have a long precedence of creating barriers to God for ourselves and others.

The marketplace situation in temple that Jesus blew a gasket over was not something out of the ordinary - it was business as usual. People had to change their normal money for temple currency, to buy sacrifices to offer to God here in this place where human beings and the Divine meet each other.

 

But that’s not how things started. Way, way back, when God was giving the Israelites instructions for how to live as God’s people, God said, 


Dedicate 10% of all your harvest from your cattle, crops, and vineyards, and bring it to God, and feast on it with God. This is a way to remember, every year through practice, that you belong to God.  And, so you don’t forget that you also belong to each other, every three years, use your saved up 10% to stay home and throw a feast in your own town for all who are in need. 

 

To help this happen, God’s law accommodated those who couldn’t reasonably travel long distances with 10% of all their harvest and animals. They could sell it, travel with the money, and then buy lovely things for feasting with God when they arrived at the temple. (Deuteronomy 14:22-29)

 

But over time, this directive that was supposed to make celebrating belonging to God and to each other more feasible for all, became a gatekeeping instrument, an obstacle to navigate, a hurdle to jump through. Now, whether you lived near or far, you needed to trade your money for temple money, and likely also exchange whatever imperfect gift you brought for a more perfect, worthy sacrifice. 

 

And so, a whole business arose in the temple to mediate the connection between human beings and God, and this is what Jesus came bashing and crashing and yelling about. 1500 years later, Martin Luther will call out the church for similar practices of selling and buying access to God, though in a far less dramatic tacking up of a piece of paper with some provocative statements written on it, onto a Cathedral door.

 

It turns out that even those of us who believe in a God of mercy and grace, belonging and wholeness, often tell a different story with our practices and habits, You belong if… you don’t belong unless… you only belong when

After Jesus’ outburst, when the air clears of feathers, the coins stop rolling, and the shocked silence holds them all, someone clears their throat and asks, "What sign can you give us for doing this?," What an astonishing and wonderful question to our modern, secular ears! This question means they were willing to consider that God might be redirecting them through this – they were open to a Divine course correction.  

 

Lent is a great opportunity to be open to a course correction. But it can’t come from more of our own well-practiced, malforming habits. 

 

When Jesus answers them, he does that frustrating thing where he stays all metaphorical and vague, saying, Tear down this temple and I will rebuild it in three days. Only he uses the other word for “temple” not as in "sanctuary space," but as in “the place where God dwells.”  And the gospel author helpfully tells us he’s not talking about the building they are standing in, but about his very body. 

I am, Jesus will go on to say a million times in John, I am the way and the truth, I am the good shepherd, I am the light of the world, I am the resurrection and the life. I am the place where God dwells, the ground on which God and humans meet.

 

God became flesh and dwelled among us, breaking through barriers of time and space to be with us, and nothing can separate us from God's love.  According to the Apostle Paul, because we are in Christ, we are now the temple, the very place where God dwells. Our ordinary lives are the sacred ground on which Divine and human meet.  We are the Body of Christ, the dwelling place of God. 

 

And so, Lent’s Divine course correction opportunity asks us, 

How are we making our lives into a marketplace?  

How do we sell our attention and earn our worth? 

What hurdles do we put up to connection, and what barriers do we build against belonging? 

Do we despise our own imperfect gifts and try to exchange them for a more perfect, worthy sacrifice? 

As parents, or partners, or neighbors, or friends, do we construct all or nothing approaches that wall us off from the terrifying vulnerability of being human alongside one another and beloved of God, just as we are?  

How do we habitually resist being encountered by God?  

And what are the well-worn ways we withhold the possibility of access to God from those we despise? 

Do we avoid being brave and kind because we can’t do it perfectly? 

And with what patterns do we refuse to rest because we suspect being unproductive means being worthless? 

 

We are so practiced and proficient at our habits of disconnection and alienation from God and the world - which is another way of saying, we’re so good at our sin – that we do it without even having to think about it. It’s ingrained in us. No amount of our own effort can free us. We cannot save ourselves. 

 

The good news is Jesus is ready and willing to storm into our business as usual, and tear down every barrier we erect that divides us from God and each other. He is always opening cages and letting our guilty pride and pampered self-loathing fly off. Jesus will drive out every label and prerequisite we place on ourselves and others for how to be included or excluded as God’s beloved people. He’ll chase away our carefully calculated good deeds, toss out our smug judgments of one another, and gladly scatter in the dust all our well-honed measurements of worth.

 

Once that happens, the compasses of our hearts are recalibrated by the promise that in Christ’s body, Christ’s own relationship to God, we are pulled into love and set on a new path. 

 

And just as we may not realize we have habits that are misdirecting us, we also probably don’t appreciate those habits we have that reinforce us in our belonging to God and all others. Just take today, for example. By getting out of bed and coming here, even when you don’t necessarily feel like it, because here something happens that we can’t make happen, without even realizing it, we’re being, with and for each other, the place where God dwells. 

Today when we confessed our sin and sought forgiveness, sharing words spoken by followers of Jesus for hundreds of years, and when we called one another to worship by receiving the welcome of God and remembering out loud why we’re here, and in a few moments, when we lift up our fears and joys to God with one another in prayer, we are practicing assuming the stance of least resistance to being encountered by the Divine. 

When we share what we have in offering for the work of God between and among us that is only sustained by our free giving, we are living in a different economy than the marketplace of the world. When we depart in blessing and are sent out to see strangers as siblings, and our neighborhoods and communities as the sacred ground where Jesus shows up, we are learning new habits of relating through repetition. When we remind each other to watch in the world for God’s hope and healing, and we use our time and gifts to share in that work, the compass of our heart is pulling us toward God’s trajectory for the world.  Each time we acknowledge beauty, and let ourselves listen deeply, we are attuning ourselves to the Creator. And every time we answer our knee-jerk dismissal of another person with an internal reminder of their belovedness, and an external acknowledgement of our shared humanity, we are joining in our own transformation. 

Talking to God is worth doing poorly. So is reaching out to someone we’re worried about. So is accepting help from others. Saying things wrong to someone we love, and imperfectly apologizing does far more to shape both of us in our already-belonging than fearfully guarding our words does. Practicing forgiving forms us toward freedom. 

By repeatedly doing these uncomfortable things until they become second nature, we’re participating in God’s relentless redemption of the world and of ourselves, so that, little by little,  by the grace of God and power of the Holy Spirit, living our belonging to God and all others become more and more habitually ingrained in us, directing our love so we become who we are. 

Amen. 


 (The sermon is the second in a Lenten series drawing from the themes in James K. Smith's, You Are What You Love. Here is the first). 

Sunday, February 18, 2024

What do I love?



 Each morning, the first thing I do is reach for my phone. I look at how good of a sleep I got according to my watch data, I read my emails, and check the breaking news.  This habit is not neutral. This is a practice that is forming me.  

Like a sponge, I wake up parched and immediately soak up the world’s tension and division announced to me in breathless headlines. I let the urgency, self-judgment, and need for productivity course through my veins and get my blood pumping. Little do I realize this going to my heart. I am shaping my desire by adrenaline and upheaval, I am being trained to chase competence, proficiency and efficiency, and sooth anxiety with data points and accomplishments.  And, I’m told I’m not fun to be around in the morning.

What is this daily practice telling me about what a good life is and how to live it?  What does it reveal about what I actually love, over against what I think I love?

James Finley shares a story of interning in a VA hospital on the treatment unit for alcoholism in the 1970s. The men on the floor, mostly Vietnam vets, had developed an initiation rite that was passed down. In order to be admitted to the unit, you had to pass through this rite.

Finley describes being in a large room, with chairs all pushed against the four walls and the center empty, except for two chairs facing each other. Nearly 100 men are sitting silently along the walls, heads down, eyes to the floor. 

In comes the person at the end of his rope, with alcohol destroying his life.  He’s nervous, glancing around the room, knowing he will need to pass this initiation to get in.  Those around the walls keep their eyes lowered, and remain completely still and silent. Finley says, “It’s serious as death, which it is.”

The interviewer invites the man to a center chair and sits down across from him. 

The questioner then asks, “What do you love the most?”

“The alcoholic, not know what to say, stammers something out like, “My wife.” at which point everyone in the room yells as loud as they can, “Bull----!” and then goes silent, staring at the floor. 

The rattled man looks back at his questioner, who asks again,

 “What do you love the most?”

“My children,” he tentatively answers.

“Bull---!”, hollers loudly back from all sides.

“What do you love the most?”

Finally, finally, the person says, “Alcohol.”

Immediately all the men rise to their feet and give the man a standing ovation. Then in complete silence they line up and hug him, one at a time, as tears stream down his face.

He is ready to begin his journey.

We can know a lot, believe a lot, have the best intentions and the loftiest goals, but our hearts are shaped by our habits.  Like a compass: our love is directed toward what we put our attention on, what we practice every day.  

Were someone to observe us from afar and describe who we are, they could not see inside us, read our thoughts or intentions, or deduce our motivations, they could only witness and describe what they see us doing with our lives, what direction we are moving. And the conclusions they draw about us would, in some ways, be more accurate than the conclusions we often draw about ourselves.

Generations before Christ, when the Israelites were delivered from bondage in Egypt, they were sent into the wilderness, for 40 years.  All the lifegiving liturgies and practices of their faith that sustained them behind closed doors as the people of God during their 400 years of slavery came with them. But other patterns and habits, the “liturgies” of the empire had been shaping them day after day, telling them their lives were worthless except for what they could produce. The way of fear dominated their waking hours, forming them in daily doses toward self-preservation, guarded competition and on-edge dread. 

But in the barrenness of the wilderness this liturgy was extinguished, and new patterns and practices took their place, shaping them toward a different way of being. Every single day, God, who claimed them as beloved children, miraculously provided them food and water, protection and care.  Little by little, day by day, through habits of trust and dependence on their Creator, they were remade from fear to trust, from degradation to dignity Instead of relentless, competitive striving, they were rooted and grounded in the belonging, generosity and rest of a loving God in whose image they were made for a life of giving and receiving ministry, to bear God’s love to the world. 

Today we read that Jesus’ own ministry begins when he is plunged under the waters of baptism, and hears God’s claim on him, You are my Son, my beloved, in whom I am well-pleased.  And then, immediately, Jesus is driven by the Spirit into the habit-disrupting, trust-teaching wilderness of his ancestors for 40 days of vulnerability to be cared for by God. 

Lent is the 40 days before the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead on Easter. It has always been seen as a kind of spiritual wilderness, a time of stripping away of our idols, isolation and captivity, and reorienting us back to God, who loves us and claims us for ministry. 

Lent turns the compass of our hearts back toward God, by first asking us, what is your compass pointing toward, that you may not realize? and then, like an initiation into recovery, disrupting our patterns of self-sufficiency and sin and recalibrating our loves.

Because when we see ourselves and our lives as they really are, and not just as we wish them to be: this is where God meets us, where transformation happens, where discipleship begins again, and again. In the wilderness of Lent, we too are tested by satan and waited on by angels, which is to say, we recognize how deeply seductive are the messages the world gives us about what a good life is, and how strongly they pull on us, but, there, in our most vulnerable and true selves, we are welcomed with ovation and open arms into the care of the one who calls us Beloved child in whom I delight.

My Lenten “liturgical inventory” began this week when I recognized how my waking up, (and for that matter, going to bed) rituals are mis-directing my heart. So I made the choice that I will not look at my phone for the first two hours of being awake. 

Each morning, I greeted the day in front of my eyes instead of on a screen. I was present to those around me instead of barking orders at them, and I felt myself inside my body, instead of racing through emails and giving my attention to whatever felt loudest or most urgent.  I managed to do this 5 of the 7 days. It is uncomfortable and hard.  But how hard it is shows me how necessary it is– like resting on sabbath Sundays reveals my dependance on doing. 

A week in, I’ve already discovered that when I come later in my day to the pressing news and to-do lists, first having awakened to God’s presence and been present myself with a different heart-orientation, it shapes my perspective, and I am noticeably less anxious the whole rest of my day.  

God is God, always here, always holding my life and this world in love, always moving both through and despite humans to bring redemption. I want to trust this, not just with my head, but with my heart, and so, then, also with my habits.  

May it be so. Amen. 

Sunday, January 21, 2024

Agents of another reality


Mark 1:14-20 

When a company is under investigation, nobody suggests it’s a great time to invest your money. Who decides to buy an apartment in a building that’s on fire? I’m just saying, cheerfully recruiting new talent when your public spokesperson has just been arrested seems an odd strategy.  

Even though John’s been thrown in jail, Jesus still blows into town saying, I’ve got great news! God’s way is unfolding right now! Change your whole way of seeing things and sign on with me!  At the least, John’s arrest is terrible PR for the movement; at most, shouldn’t it give you pause? And yet, Jesus seems worried not at all. And yet, a bunch of them actually join up.  

The NRSV version makes it sounds like they sign up for a job change – instead of fishing for fish they’re going to fish for people. OK, maybe not entirely the same skill set, but kind of an exciting, lateral move? Risky obviously, given John’s arrest, but a possible upgrade in adventure, at least. Think it over, talk it over with the family, find out the benefits package and maybe give Jesus an answer in a day or two?  But they don’t pause to mull it over, “Immediately” they leave their nets and follow Jesus. 


Being human in the world means with all of our choices and actions we are always asking, What is a good life and how do we live it? And these guys had it answered, at least for the time being. They were fishermen; fisherpeople. They had the skills, the training, the connections and the tools. It’s who they were, it’s how life worked, it’s what they knew, and how they were known in the world, they were fishermen. There was no questioning it, it was the order of things. But with one word from Jesus, and despite the bad news about John, they walk away from everything they know to follow him.

 

When our translation says, “I will make you fish for people,” it captures the true meaning, which is that it is for everyone, humankind, not just men.  But we lose something from the original poetic contrast. Listen: As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea--for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, "Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”  

But by changing “fishers” to “fish for” a noun was made into a verb.  

 

In that moment, Jesus isn’t just giving these people a different job, telling them to do something different. He’s not calling them to work for a new cause. He’s not changing their verb; he’s giving them a new identity.  Jesus isn’t calling us to do stuff for him. Jesus is calling us to follow him and then he points us toward other people.

 

Follow me, and I will make you a fisher of persons. He’s starting where they are, in terms they understand, but inviting them into something they can barely grasp, something that doesn’t even exist in their imagination, something only discoverable by following. 

 

Today we so often think our verb is our identity. We mix up who we are with the things we do.  We think the answer to what a good life is comes from our own efforts, or we let the voices around us tell us makes a person successful or right, and we cling vigilantly to those ideas.  We make it ok to despise those with opposing strategies for the same security and fulfillment as we’re chasing.  And we center ourselves and our well-being, because if we don’t who will?

 

These first disciples did not leave their nets to follow Jesus because he offered a better salary and benefits package, or a more exciting opportunity for advancement, or because he inspired them to fight for a cause, or guilted them to work for a change, or gave them a chance to prove how good they are, or promised a sure path to safety.  


I think they followed Jesus because Jesus came embodying a completely different reality altogether. One where the circumstances around you don’t dictate your identity and your security.  Where—even in the midst of frightening developments and unexpected losses—you still somehow trust, and even proclaim, that God’s up to something unstoppable.  Where the authority over your life is bigger than the powers of the age, and fear doesn’t determine what you’re willing to do or say, your connection to God and others does.

 

The time is fulfilled! Jesus declares. There are two words for time in the Greek, Chronos time means hours, minutes and days, and Kairos time, means the right, opportune time.  Jesus says there is no better time.  Eternity is breaking in nowRight now God’s reality is fully here.  God’s way is unfolding around and in and through and despite us, in no time like the present. 


Love that is eternal - unbreakable, unstoppable and neverending - has punctured our limited, ordinary, right now existence. Eternity is invading this chronos time where our bodies wear out, and our jobs disappear, where our capacities ebb and flow, and our friends move away or die, where we’re always facing unknown, and nothing ever stays constant, where we struggle to find our footing, and when we think we’ve figured life out, it’s not long before we have to start figuring it out all over again.  

 

But, as real as all that seems, as real is it all is, as all-encompassing as our verbing along in chronos time feels, none of that is what truly, deeply defines us. That is to say, being fisherpeople-or teachers or pastors or nurses or Democrats or Republicans or colleagues or volunteers--for however long, or however well, we do that, while those things we do are part of us, they are not who we are. 

 

When God-with-us calls us to be fishers of people, we are called to point our lives in love toward the world and its inhabitants because right now, this moment, God is here with us. Right now, we are here, alongside each other in this fleeting time-bound life. 


No matter how much or little we contribute at any given time, how ready or equipped we feel or don’t, right now we are loved, and we can love. We are seen and we can see one another.  

Amidst an ever-changing landscape of upheaval, we are part of something transcendent and called to something permanent. Within our chronos reality we are drawn into Kairos kind of living, the right-now-ness of God’s presence. So we are fishers of people while we teach, or nurse, or parent young children, and when those verbs disappear, we are still fishers of people; our lives still participate in the deeper reality of love. From the moment our hearts are awakened to this calling, to our last living breath and then beyond, with whatever we have to offer, in whatever ways that looks, we are here with and for each other, because we’re following the one who is with and for us.

 

Even though John had just been arrested, the Kingdom of God is near. Even though bad things continue to happen, even though injustice and unfairness persist in our world, suffering is real and people are frequently cruel and more often thoughtless– no amount of darkness can put out the light, nothing can stop where this is heading. 


That morning Jesus came strolling onto their beach joyfully declaring, God’s reality is available right now, right in the midst of what is. Turn in a new direction, and trust in this good news.’  

Follow me, Jesus said to them that day, And I will make you agents of this reality in the world. 

To each of us, he says the same.

 

Amen.

Thursday, January 18, 2024

Welcome Receiving This Life

My new book has been out for almost a month now.  

Enough time for a few folks to have read it. Enough time for us to get out from under the holidays and me to say again to the rest of us: Here it is, world!  

For individuals and congregations, people doubting faith or people leading faith, with devotions, prayers, liturgies, and practices, able to be read cover to cover or hopped around in, read for inspiration or used as planning resource, I am so excited to watch this book do whatever it's meant to do in the world. 

If you've read it and enjoyed it, would you be willing to leave a review on Amazon? And would you share with me how you're using it, or what in it spoke to you? 

If you are wondering about it and want to know more (not coming directly from me!), below is a lovely review from The Presbyterian Outlook. (Consider subscribing to the Outlook.) 

Kara

FROM THE PRESBYTERIAN OUTLOOK

BOOK REVIEWS

Receiving This Life: Practicing the Deepest Belonging

Kara Root’s message is this: Receive what is. Receive what is difficult. Receive what God is doing. Receive what God has already done. Receive what will be. Receive it all. — Philip J. Reed

BY PHILIP J. REED
PUBLISHED: DECEMBER 28, 2023


Kara Root
Fortress Press, 306 pages | Published December 19, 2023

Kara Root gives us a great gift: she empowers us to trust in the God who shows up! The heart of Receiving This Life lies in connecting the doctrine of revelation to our ability to receive the life this God offers. Doing so is not easy. We will be injured, and we will wound others. We will know weariness, loss, sickness, suffering, loneliness, fear and death. And yet there will be joy — the energy of being fully alive, connected and awake. Root’s message is this: Receive what is. Receive what is difficult. Receive what God is doing. Receive what God has already done. Receive what will be. Receive it all! Because we know God will show up, Root calls us to “open ourselves to the possibility of experiencing God right here and right now.”

Receiving This Life is a collection of professional and personal reflections; prayers; litanies and spiritual practices that include many wonderful vignettes. In a particularly poignant story, Root describes her daughter’s first day of kindergarten. Maisy took a first step into her new classroom and promptly burst into tears. “I can’t do it. No, Mama!” In a moment of desperation, Root said, “Maisy, guess what? God has a surprise for you today. When I pick you up, I want you to tell me what it was.”

Root, of course, had no idea what the surprise would be. She prayed all day. “(P)lease, please, please God, show up for Maisy today!” And God showed up with a surprise for Maisy every day that first week: a new friend, a shared dessert, a silly song that made the entire class laugh. Root asks her readers, “How will God surprise you today?”

Root’s pastoral imagination often expresses the reflections’ theological themes. Some selections address life circumstances, cultural events and the church year. She includes a back-to-school blessing, liturgy for collecting and turning off cell phones, and new words for Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” to be sung on Easter. Receiving This Life is full of fresh ideas for personal and corporate worship.

It is equally rich with new ways to articulate Christian faith and doctrine, including clear and profound theological understandings of creation, sin and judgement, Christology, and baptism, to name a few. Root is at her best when she shares rich and energizing theology about the God who shows up: “We want to store away the manna, have our spiritual pantries loaded with Costco-sized stockpiles of trust, even certainty ... But instead, God gives us for this day what we need today, what we could never manifest ourselves.”

Most books about church leadership today fall into two categories: hero stories of growing a church into Goliath-sized proportion or desperation stories of deconstructing faith and leaving church. Receiving This Life is neither. It is the story of a pastor who fulfills her calling by showing up, paying close attention to people God brings to her, and anticipating that God, too, will show up. Together, they experience the deepest belonging. As you read Receiving This Life, God just might show up in your life and leadership, too.

PHILIP J. REED

Philip J. Reed is a recently honorably retired pastor who is learning to read and sail with the wind, sometimes in a boat. He lives in Grosse Ile, Michigan.

Sunday, January 7, 2024

Walking Humbly

Matthew 2:1-12

On Christmas Eve, an eight year old church member and I discussed the scandalous fact that even though all our nativity scenes place those wise men right up there in the hay near the manger, they likely did not arrive until Jesus was around two years old. His mind was blown. I didn’t even get to the part about there most likely women being in their group of undoubtedly more than three, because unlike a kids’ birthday party, three gifts doesn’t mean three people showed up.  

And when the Magi did find Jesus, it was in a house, on a street in the small, unremarkable town of Bethlehem, where Mary and Joseph had temporarily settled.  Maybe little Jesus was playing with blocks on the floor of his dad’s shop, or sitting in the kitchen in his diaper, gnawing on a hunk of bread while his mom made lunch.  Maybe Jesus was toddling around the yard with the kids of the shepherd’s families, who had become good friends, being the only other people besides Uncle Zechariah and Aunt Elizabeth to know who Jesus really was. In any case, however ordinarily the day in Bethlehem had begun –sometime after morning chores and greeting neighbors, tending to animals, and work in the carpenter shop—suddenly the quiet neighborhood streets were flooded with the spectacular sounds, smells and sights, of a camel-filled caravan winding toward and piling up in front of Joseph’s house, an entourage of exotically-dressed travelers, excitedly conversing in a foreign language as they approach the front door.  
And even though our nativity scenes don’t give us this glimpse, the Christmas story is not complete until we celebrate Epiphany, the visit of the Magi.
 
A friend recently gave me a book about walking. The book begins in frustration, that while so many other religions have maintained physical disciplines, like Hinduism’s yoga, Taoism’s tai chi, Buddhism’s kung fu, and so on, Christianity seems to be largely cerebral, without a physical component.  And yet, we have an incarnational faith, that is, we believe that God came embodied, into this life in a physical human form to share life with us, so to disconnect prayer from a bodily expression of it seems strange.  

Turns out that it seems perhaps we do, but it’s overlooked because it is the most basic, simple, ordinary human thing: walking.  Our faith story begins with God walking with Adam and Eve in the garden, and after they hide themselves from God in mistrust and shame, “walking with God” becomes synonymous throughout scripture with "holiness." Jesus' ministry began when he walked into the wilderness, and continued through walking, criss-crossing territory, meeting people on foot and face to face, and, when he wasn’t in a boat, Paul’s journeys walked him across the Mediterranean region. Historically, walking pilgrimages - first to Jerusalem and then to other holy sites - have been an integral part of the Christian faith. To walk in this way is to acknowledge that even more than the destination, it’s the walking towards that changes you. Finally, the early Church simply called Christianity “The Way.” Jesus says he is the way – he is the route and the journey.
 
So, meeting up with the Magi again this year, I had walking on my mind.  When the star appeared, these scholars of the sky, these practitioners of religion very unlike that of the Hebrew people, consulted their charts and spread the word, assembled their group, packed up their supplies and set out walking, for who knew how long, to go who knew where, and find who knew what. They walk for months on end, day after day, night after night, week after week, through all manner of weather and dangers, navigating through storms and hunger, wild animals and rugged terrain, the court of a despot and the skepticism of scholars, to seek the One promised for centuries to a people not their own. On they walk, trusting that what they are walking toward has somehow changed the trajectory of all humankind. And day after day, they are being changed by the walking itself, their lives being shaped for, and by, this impending encounter with the light of the world, the word made flesh, one slow step at a time.
 
When the visitors first and finally arrive at their perceived destination, it’s not like they think it will be. In the capital city at the seat of power, they are ready to publicly honor the majesty of this holy one. But they can’t find him. Of course, they assume, this great child who has come to change the world is already being honored by all the important people.  Of course, the leader of this land would even, perhaps, have him in the palace.  Instead, they found that nobody in Jerusalem had heard of him. And not only that, but the scholars and priests had to be summoned to look back at the prophesies and figure out what in the world these strangers were even talking about. 
And Herod, the insecure and unpredictable demagogue, is caught unaware, suddenly alerted that his authority may be usurped by some grand scheme that somehow caught the attention of people a world away but slipped by right under his nose. 
 
So, on they walk.  And when the Magi arrive in little Bethlehem, at the home of Joseph the carpenter, these impressive people from an extraordinary place kneel before the seemingly ordinary toddler on the lap of a peasant woman. And their shocking arrival and sincere worship must shake Mary and Joseph to the core, jostling them out of the daily routine and reminding them that this whole thing is so beyond them, and that they are controlling exactly none of it. 
 
And then, because of a dream, the Magi walk home by another road to bypass the raging Herod. And, because of a dream, Joseph will take Mary and Jesus and walk to Egypt, to live as refugees in a foreign land to protect this child from being killed, like so many others subsequently are, by Herod’s violent insecurity.
 
Life is hard. But we complicate it even more. We think we should know things and don’t, we think things that should be easy and aren’t. For better and worse, nobody really gets what they deserve, and so much of it is arbitrary and out of our control. Living is filled with guesswork, and we make terrible mistakes. Evil people often get power, and good people often suffer, and figuring out which way to go is frequently fraught, and our actions have unintended consequences, and we lose people, and we hurt people, and we try to do the right thing but struggle often to know what that is, and why, why can’t God be more obvious? So we think we have to crack the code, figure out how to do it right, learn the moves, like those who went before us did, right?
 
Turns out the central characters throughout our whole faith story were also just feeling their way along, responding to the circumstances, doing the best they could, adapting as they went, just like we are, every day.  They didn’t have anything figured out.  They were trying to live attuned to the deeper story, learning to pay attention, filled with longing and sorrow, and wonder, just like we are. And God directed them, sometimes in extraordinary ways, but mostly in the most basic, ordinary, everyday way, one regular, basic step at a time. None of them ever knew much further ahead than the next step because few of us ever do. Human beings live in time. We move one step at a time, trapped inside of time. But eternity has entered into time, so nevertheless, here on this journey, we are never alone.  And “the road is made by walking,” as they say.  
 
God came into this life, to walk with us, like we walk. In the confusion and the frustration, in the danger and the worry, in the unknown and the figuring it out as you go. This whole thing is beyond us; we are controlling exactly none of it. But every part of all of it is claimed for love, and filled with the presence of God-with-us. Jesus is the way, the route and the journey.   So to practice this faith and follow this Christ, we are to slow our pace to the speed of our soul, our basic humanity, to walk along, like the Magi did, one foot in front of the other, day after day, sometimes excited and feeling it – other times so not, but still, led onward and practicing trust. We learn from them to keep our feet on the ground, and our eyes on the sky. And little by little, we are changed by the walking. Made brave to face adversity, made humble to bow before majesty, made quick to reach across human barriers to see us all in the story of God, made open to dreams and wise to know when to switch routes.  

Whatever we navigate, however it comes, the work of God happens in and through us, one step at a time. This is holy work, walking humbly with God. And in inhabiting our lives, and bodies, and neighborhoods, and communities, we join our forbears in seeking the light of the world that the darkness cannot put out. And we become people ready to pay homage every time we find Christ where he is unexpectedly residing.

Amen.

How to Repent (It's not how you think)

Psalm 46 ,  Jeremiah 31:31-34 When I was in college, I spent the large part of one summer sleeping on a 3-foot round papason chair cushion o...