Saturday, June 23, 2012

What is Faith?





What is faith?
Is it a feeling? Can you measure it?
Can you make it or lose it?  How do you get it?  
How do you know if you’ve got it?  How do you know if it is enough?

I once knew a family, with a 12 year old boy who was horribly injured two years before I met them in a freak sledding accident.  When I met them, he was in a wheelchair, paralyzed from neck down. 
The family called themselves people of faith.  They prayed every day for this boy to be healed.  Faith meant that if they believed in it strong enough, if they prayed hard enough, and if enough other people prayed too, God would heal him. And the whole family and all their energy revolved around the impending healing of the boy.  Every day that he woke up still paralyzed was just an illustration of the weakness of their faith, and they applied themselves doubly hard the next day to believing God would heal him.
In the meantime the girl had become a teenager, disillusioned and confused, the father had left, his faith too weak, unable to hold on any longer to this way of life, but still the family prayed and believed.  Any adjustment to life as it was was conceding that he would not be healed, so every day they lived in holy resistance.  This was great faith.
And I wondered at this Jesus, who allowed their kid to be paralyzed and was dangling healing like a taunting reward just out of reach until they could produce the proper measure of faith, and I wanted to ask, but never did, about this Jesus, Who then is this?

A very old man is dying, surrounded by his family – daughters, grandchildren, great grandchildren.  He has been living in and out of dementia’s fog for some time, sometimes recognizing their faces or their voices, sometimes mistaking his eldest daughter for his wife of 60 years who preceded him in death a few years before. 

He had been an ordinary man, a little too dependent on the booze, a little too stingy, sometimes funny, often quiet, a little racist, a little sexist, but by in large a good and kind person, shaped in huge part by his difficult childhood during the Depression in inner city Baltimore.
The day comes when he is to breathe his last, and his youngest daughter sits at his bedside and asks him if he has given his life to Christ, if he wants to spend eternity in heaven.  She takes his hand and prays with him, and she has a sense that he really understands her in that moment, and is filled with great peace that her father is now saved.
At his funeral she shares this story – to the people he went to the Baptist church on the corner with whole adult life, the friends who had weathered thick and thin with him through decades, and his grandchildren in the front row.  And she assures them that he has indeed given his life to Jesus – on his very deathbed – and the faith he found in those last few moments was enough to save him now from hell.

And I look at the faces of those he loved around me, and at my grandpa in the casket, and I think of this Jesus, who allowed him to squeak into heaven at that last minute and overlooked his whole life before then, and whatever weaker manifestations of faith he had exhibited until that moment, and I feel the question burning inside me, about this Jesus, Who then is this?

I walked into the room on the oncology floor, a brand new baby chaplain, and there were his parents, standing next to the body of their teenaged son, taken by cancer.  They could not have been more different. The father’s face twisted in grief, his body was hunched over in a chair by the bed, he looked like he had just been sobbing. 
The mother erect, brisk, composed, she was saying to the father,  “God wanted him; this is God’s will.  This is how it was meant to be. It does no good to cry about it, we should be rejoicing! He is with God now! Where’s your faith?” 

He stared at her like she was a stranger, this mother of his son. Something like horror, disgust and despair filled his eyes, and I almost heard his question aloud as he thought of this Jesus who would take their son from them and require that they celebrate it, Who then is this Jesus?

Why are you afraid? Jesus asks the drenched and trembling disciples. Have you still no faith?

If we had faith we could move mountains. If we had faith we could calm storms. If we had faith we wouldn’t feel afraid when we are faced with the very real possibility of perishing, or grieve when someone we love dies. We wouldn’t worry so much, we wouldn’t doubt so much, we’d feel sure, happy, confident. If we had faith we wouldn’t have questions, or feelings that were not positive.  We’d never feel overwhelmed or angry. If we had faith.

And I wonder, when I hear this story, What is it about us, what is it about me, that when we hear this story, when we see the storm and witness the disciples’ terror, and then watch Jesus speak to nature, addressing the elements themselves, and observe that in an instant and the wind and the waves obey him – why, when we hear this miraculous tale of terror, dramatic salvation and amazement, do we fixate on one thing, the question, Why are you still afraid, Don’t you have any faith?
Like Jesus looks out from the pages past the disciples, right at us and asks, What’s wrong with you? Where’s your faith?  And we can barely stand disappointing Jesus, and so we nestle into the comfortable Christian shame that we’re just not good enough and maybe hope to try harder.

It occurs to me that perhaps we’ve missed the point a little.

Because if faith is loyalty to a monster who wants us to celebrate when our kids die, then I don’t want it. If faith is suspending life waiting for some miracle, or praying certain words so you don’t end up in hell, then, no thank you. 
And if Jesus is expecting me to ignore the storms around me or within me, or say that a raging gale is just a light summer rain – that losing a job or a friend, or gaining a diagnosis shouldn’t rattle me, or that tension between friends or regretful words to my kids are nothing to fret about, then I can honestly say I can’t do it.

It’s impossible. I am a rattleable person. Sometimes I am strong, but a lot of the time I worry and I fear.  I feel weak and confused and I have a lot of questions.  And if I have my whole life to perfect this thing and strive every moment of every day, I will never reach the level of faith that keeps me calm in a storm.  My stomach still drops in the turbulence on the plane, and my heart pounds at the word that someone might be mad at me.  So where is my faith?

But I think there’s another line in this story that shows faith.  (And it’s not when they accuse Jesus of not caring while they’re dying, by the way).  It’s actually the disciple’s awe and fear-filled response to the whole thing. Even the wind and the seas obey him!  Who then is this?
Who then is this? Who is this God?  The story asks. 
And by asking, it invites us to notice:
Jesus is the one who gets in the boat with them to lead them to the other side.
Jesus is the one who calms the storm.
Jesus hears their cries.
Jesus looks on them with compassion.
Jesus wishes they were not afraid.
Jesus wishes they had more faith.
Jesus can see what’s bigger than the storm and invites them to see that too.

This story isn’t to tell us to buck up and have faith so we don’t fear.
It’s a reminder that even when we fear, God is there.
That whether what we fear comes to pass or not, we are not alone.
That we can have an emotional outburst at God and it doesn’t chase God away.

And faith is
 that point- whether before it all happens or after it’s all over, or ,God-willing, right in the very thick of it, where the question is allowed to surface within us, Who then is this Jesus?

There’s a little conversation that gets repeated now and then at my house.  It’s when some squabble happens between the kids and they’re fighting over something,
then Maisy begins screaming and crying runs to tattle to Andy, “Daddy! He’s not sharing! Don’t you even care that I’m not going to get my half?”
and then Andy says, “Maisy! Honey! Don’t you trust me? I wont let you go without!  It’s my job to take care of you and make sure you have what you need, I’m your Daddy.” Basically, “Why are you afraid? Don’t you trust me, my dear?”

And the question of faith gets stirred in her, Who then is this, my daddy? Will he let me go without? No. My daddy takes care of me, and my brother too. He makes sure we both have what we need.
And this exchange invites her to deeper faith, to perhaps next time, to say instead the cry of great faith, Daddy, please help me!

Why are you afraid?
Because this storm is going to kill me.
Because my arms and back are tired, and the wind is cold, and it’s loud and terrifying.
Because you are asleep. You don’t seem to notice the utter peril I am in and it makes me feel alone.  And then comes the reminder, I am here. I will take care of you. Don’t you trust me? And with the question, Who is this Jesus? comes the faith.

Our storms are not always something that happens to us. Sometimes they happen within us – as the Psalmist prays, longing to trust God to act, frustrated about the pain in the world and people who do not fear God seeming to get away with evil on God’s watch. 
Sometimes our storms are wrestling to come to terms with what we’re experiencing, or an addiction we can’t shake that threatens to overwhelm us, or feelings of helplessness at what we see around us.
When Faith asks, Who then is this God? It gives us perspective. We see, in the observation of the Psalmist,
God cares for the poor
God made some promises
God sees all people as valuable
God hasn’t given up
God is a stronghold for oppressed and a helper in need,
And then the prayer becomes, Look God! I know you care. I know you can make things right. And I hate what’s happening to me. And to people who seem not to be seen at all. You see us.  God, please help now!”

And sometimes storms happen between us. They breed mistrust and jealousy; they allow us to stop seeing one another as human beings and instead as adversaries or threats.  And the accusations flash like lightening and the arguments roll like thunder and we are overwhelmed in the storm.
But sometimes we have faith in the middle of a situation, and we can ask about God, Who then is this? Who are you, God, in the midst of this?
When we remember that God does real things in our life, even right now,
and that God made all of us in God’s image,
God wants us to be connected, in relationship,
God loves me and loves them too
God brings wholeness and healing,
And then, like in the letter we heard tonight, perhaps we don’t need to run or give up in fear, but can hang in there and seek to be reconciled, can be vulnerable even in pain, and can reach out and seek to make things right, even if there is no guarantee that it will succeed.

Life is scary.  Relationships are messy. Being a person in the world is a scary, messy business.  And instead of leaving us to sort it all out on our own, Jesus joins the mess,
and stands right next to our fear,
so that in the storms around, between and within us,
and in the times of calm and peace,
when we feel strong and sure and full of confidence,
or weak and scared and utterly confused,
when life is ordinary and boring or extraordinarily meaningful,
in all our moments, whether we know it just then or not, Jesus is present, and we are invited to trust him,
and to both delve into the answer
and be drawn into the question, again and again,
Who then is this God?
And THIS, my friends, is Faith.  This is the faith that holds us. The faith to which we’ve been called.
Amen.

For another exploration of faith that riffs on this theme, check out David Lose's thought-provoking article, What if faith is a question?

Thursday, June 21, 2012

REST, expected and elusive

This was shared at a worship service held at Westminster Presbyterian Church, as part of their "Everyday Holy" series.  This week's topic: Sabbath.
Rest After Work, Vincent Van Gogh

When I was in 5th Grade, we did a unit on “pop art”.  Andy Warhol, the Marilyn Monroe print, you remember what I mean.  We were to create a pop art item – something in life writ enormous, advertizing out of context or with odd color, or repetition. 
I made a watch.
A huge watch that I could sit inside of. 
The face of it was bigger than an extra large pizza, and the straps were twice as long as I was tall, and painted royal blue.  When it was nearly complete, I needed only to add hands, but couldn’t figure out what to make them from. 

I brought my dilemma to my dad, who both fancied himself a deep thinker, and also liked to expend as little unnecessary energy as possible, so instead of helping me come up with a material to design hands from, he flippantly suggested, ‘Why not leave the hands off? Then you could call it, “How will we know when to rest?”

So while other kids had a giant awesome stick of Wrigley’s gum, or a comic strip of neon Snoopy heads, I had an enormous watch with no hands and an esoteric statement about our culture’s obsession with work and refusal to stop. 
I was the weird kid in the 5th grade at Sunny Hollow Elementary.

How will we know when to rest? 
We wont. We don’t even know how to rest anymore.  
In our culture, we see rest as weak.  You must earn rest, rack up your vacation hours, and then don’t do too much of it at once.  Resting is kind of lazy or unmotivated.  Slackers and freeloaders rest a lot.  Also sick people, old people, and infants.

We don’t feel very good not doing. It feels kind of rotten. We’re really good at doing. We do all the time, non stop.  We do more than one thing at a time to “save time”; we pay bills and watch TV and eat dinner simultaneously. I never saw my mom put mascara on anywhere other than in the rearview mirror as she was driving me to swimming lessons or girl scouts.  Doing is what we know.

And the more we get done in the day the better we feel about ourselves. Like the Israelite slaves of Pharaoh, we matter only if we produce, produce, produce.  In our modern day slavery, it’s a little more sophisticated – we also matter if we consume, consume, consume.  And we measure our worth  - and others do too - by how much we produce or consume in a day.

And woe to you if you get mono, or cancer, or have a nervous breakdown, and you find yourself unable to produce or consume - for who are you now?
(And also, secretly, kudos to you too, because as terrible as illness is, you finally get permission to rest).

But resting is not just a good idea saved for those who earn it, can afford it, or can’t help it.  It is actually a commandment of God – oddly enough, right alongside the biggies of not killing or stealing. In the top ten most essential things to live by in God’s view is this command to regularly and purposely stop doingTo rest. 
Why? What’s the point of Sabbath?

First, Sabbath reminds us who we are.
Sabbath refuses to let us be defined by a lifestyle of slavery and relentless production.  When you are just being and not doing, your worth cannot come from what you contribute.

You are more than what you make, earn, buy, sell, own, produce or do, Sabbath says. You are free.

Also, Sabbath as God commands it is when everybody rests, even the land!  So my neighbor and my daughter and the kid who mows my lawn and my boss, and the person on TV who seems so important and essential, and the one in the war-torn, starving, forgotten place are all people, just like me. Loved by God, and caught in the cogwork of an overextended, under nourished life, just like me.
We are all God’s beloved children, and we are all made in God’s image– each one different. Each one with specific things that fill us with joy and satisfaction and express our true self and God’s unique delight in us.

Observing the Sabbath reconnects with one another and celebrates who God made us to be.
Sabbath makes us human again.
Resting on purpose reminds us who we are.

Secondly, Sabbath reminds us whose we are. 
You belong to the God who brought you out of the land of Egypt! begins the Sabbath command. And this God who delivered you is the God who looked on creation and called it good. 
God rested and enjoyed what God had made. And that rest in itself was part of creation’s cycle.  And actually, rest is part of how God created everything on earth to function, you and me included.

We are made in God’s image and called to participate with God in the world. How can we do that if we never stop to rest? 
We are actually supposed to enjoy what we are part of in this short life, and to call life good, like the God in whose image we are made.

We belong to God, the creator, sustainer, enjoyer of life. 
When we stop doing and allow ourselves the space to be, things slow down and we notice.  And we can see, sometimes in tiny, ordinary and surprising ways, God’s pervasive presence in the world and our own place within it. 
And our capacity to praise our creator, and to delight in life, grows deeper.

God is God and you are not, Sabbath says.
And neither is any one of the thousand other things that would seek to dominate your life, clog up your mind, soak up your attention and eat up your time.

Outside forces can’t dictate the terms of your existence.  Only God can.
 And this is God’s world!  So relax and enjoy what God has made. 

Remembering the Sabbath reconnects us with God and celebrate God’s world.
Sabbath returns God to God’s place in our lives and returns us to God’s care. 
Resting on purpose reminds us Whose we are.

The other nine commandments God gives the freshly freed take the people out of slavery. The Sabbath commandment takes slavery out of the people.

Three years ago this summer at Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church, we decided to begin intentionally practicing Sabbath rest as part of our life together, so we created a Saturday night service twice a month so we could take those Sundays as a Day of Rest for the whole community.
The guidelines we gave ourselves were: To try to do nothing from obligation.  What do you enjoy that you never have time for? Do that.  Are you alone a lot? Be with others.  Are you overly busy and surrounded by noise? Spend some time alone and quiet. What will make the day different than your ordinary days?  What will give you joy? We decided that for one day, we would pay attention to what our souls needed.  For this day, we would try just being.

The first “practice” Sabbath Sunday in my house was strange and wonderful.  I felt incognito, a little guilty, a little elated. We did what came to us. Read. Napped. Played legos, took a walk together.  My 2 year old daughter and I ended up together in a big bubble bath filled with toys, that became for months after our Sabbath Sunday ritual.  The day was a delicious conundrum.  It stretched on forever.  I cooked lunch instead of throwing pb&j on paper plates.

That evening we all returned to church to share how we had experienced the day.  Walking into the room, I was stopped in my tracks by the feeling, a calm energy, a happy buzz.

We gathered together and people began to share. 

Diane said “I knew I couldn’t do laundry, so I opened the paper and there was an article about the butterfly exhibit at the zoo. So I got in the car and drove there. And I spent the morning walking through the butterflies.” 

Lois said, “I called my sister in law, whom I haven’t seen in a year, and she came over for brunch.” 

Barb said, “I sat on the front porch with a cup of coffee and read the whole newspaper, from cover to cover.”
 
Norm said, “I walked around the lake, listening to birds and didn’t rush at all.” 

I listened, amazed. 
We had been talking for months about the gifts of Sabbath, the way God would meet us if we stopped long enough to be met.  But here they all were, telling me that it was true after all.  
Had I really believed it? 

We are three years in now, and getting better at it.  
Sabbath Sundays are both beautiful and frustrating.  They’re beautiful because here and there, all over the city, individuals and families are purposely stopping.  In some sacred “TIME OUT” we set down our doing to allow time for being

But our Sabbath Sundays are also frustrating, because we are part of a people who has forgotten that we’re free, and we don’t remember how to rest.  So the day is a little like a drug withdrawal.  We might feel stir crazy, restless, a little guilty. We might judge ourselves as not holy enough because we can’t figure out the “right” way to Sabbath. 

But frustrating as they are, these feelings themselves are a gift. They show us the slavery we normally live in and the freedom we’ve forgotten, and so we are invited to even offer the discomfort as a confession to God, receive it as a gift of awakening, feel it as a deeper invitation to rest.

So hear the message of Sabbath:
You are free and loved just for being you, and for no other reason. 
Wholly apart from all you produce or consume, you are God’s precious child.
This is who you are. 

And despite what everything around us would lead you to think, there is no God but God, the Creator, sustainer, enjoyer of life. 
This is whose you are.

So I want to invite you to accept the gift of Sabbath. 
Let God reconnect you with others and celebrate who God made you to be.  Let God reconnect you with your creator and celebrate God’s world. 

This week, set aside a day.  Or if you need to start slower, a half day, or an evening, an hour early in the morning, and STOP. 
Rest. 
Notice. 
Turn off your phone and the TV.  Put your work in another room.  Ignore the dishes in the sink and let the laundry wait for tomorrow.
Pause to hear the voices that compete to tell you who you are supposed to be 
and let them go. 
Listen to the lies that try to tell you what owns you 
and let them go.

Close your eyes and look deep in your soul and ask yourself, 
What would give me joy right now?  
What does my soul need? 
Look into the face of your kid or your partner, or call up a friend, and ask them, 
What do you need to say no to today, to remember that you’re free? 
Want to rest with me?

And then let God meet you at that place.  Because God will.
Amen.



Sunday, June 3, 2012

The Story we belong to

Romans 8:14-17, 22-27
Acts 2:1-21
To celebrate Pentecost we walked through the journey we've taken this year- from September through May through the Old Testament on a path that began outside and took us past symbols of all the stories and into the chancel, where we took a "family photo," gathered around the table for communion, and then settled in for a recap of our journey.

The world - created for a
peace prayer service
Normally, Pentecost is a great celebration of the Holy Spirit.  Which it is.  Or it is a birthday party for the church  - where it all began.  Or it is a recognition that the gospel is for all people and without bounds.  It is all of these things. But for us today, it is a chance to lift up the story – the whole story of God – because of Pentecost we, this little group of people – are part of it. Today is a day to stand in Pentecost and look back at the parts of the story we’ve told this year.

So let us begin at the beginning.
In the beginning…we met God.  The delighted artist, who created, of all things, LIFE, and then made in God’s own image those to share it with, to nurture life along with God. And all things were in harmony, interconnected and free.  And it was so very good. And we declared that God brings life out of nothing, that we belong to this God, and that God celebrates life and rests, and invites us to do the same.                                                                                                           
   
The tree, where we nailed things
that separate us from God and each other
And then we watched as in the middle of that creation God put a tree – God’s own vulnerability, the chance to be rejected, chosen against by God’s own image-bearers. And the people did so; and the relationship was broken.  But God meets us where we are and we can never drive God away, and so the story continued.

After some generations of people it seemed the world was full of evil and relationship between God and humanity, and between human beings, was seemingly broken beyond repair. So God planned to wipe out creation and start over- but first plucked out Noah and his family and some animals – a sample, if you will.

But by the time the roaring waters receded, the remorseful God repented, and hung the bow in the sky to symbolize that God would never again destroy the world that God loved. 
The people may be unable to choose God, but God would never again choose against them. God promises never to gives up on us, no matter what. 
And the Story continued.

 Some generations later God adapted strategy yet again, to bless the world through one family, and so Abraham was called to be a blessing. But true to form for the God who likes to bring life out of nothing, Abraham and his wife Sarai could have no children.  
And we sat here and listened to Sarah tell her story, and watched her grief as she struggled with this deal God had made with Abraham that both excluded her and depended entirely on her. And we shared her joy in the end when God kept the promise and she bore a son, and we bore witness to the God who keeps promises.
As that son grew to be a boy the relationship between Abraham and God changed; the promise had been given and the dynamic closeness had waned. Then God asked for the unthinkable: that Abraham sacrifice the promise, sacrifice his own son. And instead of contending with God as he had in the past, Abraham proceeded to obey mindlessly, defeatedly, leading Isaac to the mountaintop, knife in his bag.

But God had no intention of letting him go through with it, and at the last minute God stopped him.  And we wondered together if God had wished that Abraham had fought him on it earlier, and either way Abraham was reminded once again that God is relentlessly for us, and unlike the gods of the day to whom the people gave blind obedience, the true God desires a real relationship with real people.  So we learned that God wants us to talk back, we are expected to engage, participate, wrestle.
And the Story continued.
  
When Abraham and Sarah’s son Isaac was grown, he had two sons.  Esau and Jacob. And Jacob tricked his father and stole Esau’s, who sold his status and inheritance for a bowl of stew.  And it oddly appeared that God preferred the less worthy brother, and the mother helped him get away with it because she clearly did as well. 
And Jacob fled.  Then years later, when he’d grown and learned and suffered karma and also prospered, the night before he was about to face once again this brother he had deceived, he found himself wrestling, quite literally, with God, and with all the struggles of his life, all night long, and he is injured, and he wins
Broken down and made whole, he exchanged his swagger for a limp, and as he met his brother again we learned that sometimes newness looks like limping. 
And the story continued.   
                                                                                                        
Then we heard the story of Joseph, Jacob’s youngest son, and watched it come to life in black and white and color on canvas as we listened to his dreams, to him being dropped into a pit and sold into slavery by his brothers, and sent off to Egypt, and rising in the ranks, and being thrown in prison, and interpreting dreams, and redeeming himself, and becoming the savior of all of Egypt and many peoples beyond, and finally, being reunited with his brothers and father and making peace. 
Story of Joseph, created during worship by artist Susan Hensel

And instead of seeing God speaking or acting in drama, voice, flood, or overt instructions, God moved behind the scenes, between the people and within the situations, and we know this because all throughout the story we heard the constant refrain, “And God was with Joseph.”
And we saw that God works both within and despite us, and we can actually see God’s work in our lives in both ordinary and extraordinary ways.
  
And the story paused there so we could enter into Advent, but we saw the story continue in the waiting for a savior, in the stories of the prophets’ cry of honesty and John the Baptist’s wild pronouncements and Joseph’s living in a reality he did not have any choice in, and Mary’s dance and words of hope when she stood before us.  

And we watched God move in their lives in very different and eerily similar ways to ourselves, and saw again that this God who made it all and craves connection, and calls us to be part of all this with God is at it again, this time irreversibly, by coming, entering into it, and God is changed as much as the world is.

Then we picked up where we left Joseph and the generations that came from his brothers, Jacob’s sons and their offspring, the twelve tribes of Israel, who had prospered in Egypt for generations until the new Pharaoh was threatened and didn’t remember the story of Joseph, and enslaved the Hebrew people. 
They suffered there in slavery for more than a generation until God called Moses from a burning bush and revealed God’s name, Yahweh, I am, and then led the people to freedom. Only they didn’t go right to freedom, remember?

They stopped for 40 years in the wilderness, the liminal space, the space in between slavery and freedom, where what you were is taken out of you, and you learn what it is to be free, to be God’s people instead of Pharaoh’s people. 
And we learned that God redefines relationship, life and direction in these in-between places, and that sometimes we have to let go of the old before we can step into the new. 

And while they were there, God gave them guidance and direction for how to be free, how to live in a way different than the way of Pharaoh, and we imagined this way together with the kids at St. Joe’s, asking, if we could create a world that was as good as we can imagine, what would it be like?
And they said brilliant things like, all people would feel safe, and nobody would go hungry, and all sorts of other profound and simple things that we discovered were right in the way God had given them to live when God gave them the ten commandments, and that God still delivers us, every single day, if we let God, from slavery to freedom. And the story continued.

Then we met Ruth, and once again, God receded into the background and let the simple, ordinary and extraordinary people’s lives tell the story.

And it was a story of Hesed – that word for which there is no English equivalent but which permeates and indeed drives the whole story of God, Hesed, which brought the world into being and pulses underneath every interaction God has, Hesed, which we saw meant something like “Belongingness” – And in the Hesed of God this foreigner with nothing to offer became a great grandmother of David.

And we saw that an I-will-go-there-with-you God, calls us to be an I-will-go-there-with-you people.
And the story continued...
  
...with David, the boy who became king after Saul, after the people demanded God give them a king and God complied. And we spent an evening reading David’s journals, his laid-open, bare-naked heart when he’s sick or scared, or proud and excited, when he’s hopeful and despairing, he holds it all open to God and these words from his heart and harp became prayers that people have used for thousands of years, giving us words when we have none or when we all want to share in a prayer together.  
And we imagined together the delight of God who longs to connect with us when God hears us share our innermost struggles and joys with God in the words of one long ago who did the same.   
And the story continued.

Then we met Solomon, not nearly as nice a guy as his dad David, but who was clearly a politician and statesman, a man who got things done.  And under Solomon the people of Israel became a real nation like the others, and wealth and prosperity and security was theirs, (along with things like taxation and forced labor). 
And Solomon builds a temple with the plans his father had left behind and it becomes a glorious thing, and even though God can meet them anywhere and always has, God sees that the people need a place to come, where they know they can meet God and God can promise to meet them, and so the temple becomes that place. 
And we recognized that our temple is this shared feast, these people, this gathered community of people, wherever and however it happens. Wherever we are on our journey of faith, when we come together God promises to meet us. 
  
Lord's Prayer in many languages
And then the story paused once again, but really continued, just differently, so we could spend Lent with the Lord’s Prayer, immersing ourselves in it through many paraphrases and the beautiful unpacking of five different voices and perspectives, and discovered, among other things, that we have some pretty great preachers among us, but also that prayer is all sorts of things and that God listens when we pray. 
Then on Palm Sunday we witnessed the people’s, (and confronted our own), expectations that God come the way we think God should, and do the things we think God should, and God comes the way God wants to come and sometimes that looks like suffering and dying for us, and there’s nothing we can do about that but sit back in awe and wonder and gratitude at such a thing.

Then on Good Friday, when we heard the words of God at creation alongside the words of godforsakenness at the cross, and we left in darkness and sorrow. 
But on the third day we returned here to resurrection.  
And we celebrated.  That God who brought life out of nothing brings life even out of death, and desires so desperately to share life with us that sharing death with us became the way life prevails. And so God is redeeming, creating, and entering in every second of every day. 

We heard stories of resurrection from living prophets, three among us who shared how they had experienced God bringing life out of death in their own lives and the world around them, and then we returned to the unfolding story and hunkered down with the prophets.

And now for the past six weeks we’ve hurtled through hundreds of years of heartbreaking loss. The people kept forgetting their story and turning away from God and returning to slavery in all sorts of forms, the nation was split up and eventually decimated, and the temple was destroyed and their identity was forgotten or traded away. 
And God was angry and hurt and frustrated, and gracious and tender and patient, and impatient and sorrowing and overflowing in love, and it went on and on.  And the prophets did their criticizing and energizing thing: criticizing the dominant culture and pointing out and grieving that things are not as they should be, and energizing the people to a future found in God, in the world as God intends it to be.

 We watched Hosea embody God’s grief and commitment, and Isaiah tell the truth of God’s future like it is an absolute fact, and Huldah help Josiah help the people remember who they are and who God is. 
And we had a potter sit in our midst as we heard the words of Jeremiah who talked about God sometimes tearing us down and creating us anew,
King Nebechenezzer
& his golden statue
and then Nebechenezzer set up a golden Bieber statue right in our midst and the children acted out Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego’s refusal to bow,
and we saw how comedy exposes the empire for what it is, and how God’s freedom to be who God will be was upheld in their words, “Even if God does not save us, we still will not bow.” 
And then, finally, we arrived at Malachi, and heard within it words from a Christmas hymn and realized that when love breaks in, when God arrives on the scene in the flesh, everything after and before that moment is changed, and every part of this unfolding story, while it stood alone, also led to the moment when God would come in and redeem the past and the future, and never again be separated from the people God loves in the world God adores.                                                           

Which brings us to this moment.  Pentecost. The celebration of the church.  The Body of Christ. The Holy Spirit within and between us. The whole world involved.
photo taken at the beginning of the service
 And here’s the picture of the prophetic community. You and me and all of us, part of this rich and amazing story. 

This is your story.
And we’ve only told a tiny part of it! There is so much more! – within this book and in the world around us, there is so much more, that, as John says, “all the books in all the world could not contain it.”
So go into the world.  Be people of the story. Do what the prophetic community does:  remember. grieve. hope. talk about it with each other.
This is God’s world. God isn’t letting go.  God is doing something all around you.  Go and be part of it.  Because this story continues!
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...