Sunday, June 8, 2014

Hopers and Dreamers



This week a line of kindergartners 68 children long snaked its way up the sidewalk and through our front doors, and down into the basement of this building.  I stood with the door open welcoming them, and they looked up at me with bright curious faces and said Hi!- nearly every single one.  They were here to visit their new school, being renovated across the street, and I was invited to join a small group of them for a tour.  I took my place at the end of the line, and looked ahead at a dozen bobbing dark heads as we crossed the street, a dozen tiny bodies in bright orange and dark navy t-shirts that read on a dozen small backs, “Ask me about my hopes and dreams.”


Our session dreamed some dreams last March. We sat in a room and laid out in front of us everything we could think of that was happening in the life of our congregation. We read and absorbed all the congregations’ shared observations. We had pages and pages of lists on sticky newsprint on the walls and the floor.  We held it all up before God and asked what was next.  We talked and prayed, and then we waited. And waited. And we left the retreat without answers, but a clear sense that we were to keep holding these things and keep waiting.

And I couldn’t help but think of that as I oohed and ahhed the new windows and sanded classroom floors along with my tour-mates, standing in a space of hopes and dreams, and thinking about how all that is happening around in the life of this congregation, including being there with these little ones, was opening up of hope and stepping towards realizing some dreams of our own. 

Hospitality. Jan and I sat on the basement floor eating bagged lunches with them that day and imagined a bit into the future.
What will happen to us in the Fall?  Who will we be then? Because we will be different than we are today.  To them we will be: the church across from my school!  (We are already, I was told by one of the little girls, “The church I went to once for a party.”) Will we be: the church where I wait for my dad to pick me up? The church where I go for help with math? The people that come and read to my class?

Who are we to the kids at St. Joe’s? The people who make space for my prayer? The people that listen to me? The people that share books with us, or helped us build our labyrinth where I go when I need to quiet my insides?

Who are we to our neighbors? The folks whose garden I water? The people who helped me with rent? The people who give lemonade and bathroom breaks to the playground building volunteers?

Who are we in the Church? The people who honor and value the gifts of all? The people who seek to follow Jesus alongside others? The people not afraid to risk, and gentle with each other in the bumpy places? The congregation that offers rest, and permission to stop, and a place to explore the gifts of peace and sabbath?  The people who are not afraid of differences and stand with others in honesty and love?

Pentecost is the beginning of the church, yes, but it really is the moment when the Spirit gets out ahead of the disciples, pulling them forward into the future that God desires for them, for the world.  When all the dreams of those who’d gone before and the lessons learned and the prayers prayed and the experiences experienced seem to be pointing to something that isn’t a conclusion or a summary or a regret or even a gratitude. 
It’s a calling.  It’s movement.  It’s motion. 
The Holy Spirit is out ahead of us, pulling us forward into the future that God desires for us. 
We once said of ourselves “God is doing something here that incorporates the past and leads us into the future.”  Pentecost invites us to that future, it compels us to have visions and dream dreams and in the process opens possibilities we never envisioned and dreams we didn’t even know to dream.

What is the Spirit doing ahead of us?  What is the Spirit doing ahead of you?  How are you being called forward into the newness breaking forth in the world? Which is to say, where are the surprising moments that make you feel like you are part of something bigger – even little moments, like walking unexpectedly one lunch time in a line of tiny hopers and dreamers toward their future, wondering how it will change the trajectory of our future?

You know it's the Spirit when you’re blown as if by wind from the places you’re hiding in safety into the place where you risk being known by others. 
You know God is going out in front of you and calling you forward when others are welcomed in whom you wouldn’t seek out.
It’s the Spirit when it’s messy and a little out of your control.
It’s the Spirit when you find yourself living into gifts and using language you didn’t know you had, or maybe that you that you’ve never been brave enough to test out. 
It’s the Spirit when it makes you want to love the world more, and helps you see Jesus there.
When it’s the hope and dreams that move front and center, instead of the fears and worries, that is the Spirit of God.

The disciples didn’t manufacture Pentecost. They didn’t produce it or strategically plan it.  They gathered together in prayer and waited for the power of the Spirit. And when it came it wasn’t what they expected. But they were ready nonetheless.
And the Spirit gave them the languages – all different – to speak the hope and love of God in many different ways to many different people, one message with many voices – Jesus, still meeting people exactly how they need to be met and telling them just what they need to hear to bring them to life. 

And then all together they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

And Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. Living into this blessing that has grabbed hold of them and propelled them forward.

Here’s one thing

you must understand

about this blessing:

it is not

for you alone.
It is stubborn

about this;

do not even try

to lay hold of it

if you are by yourself,

thinking you can carry it

on your own.
To bear this blessing,

you must first take yourself

to a place where everyone

does not look like you

or think like you,

a place where they do not

believe precisely as you believe,

where their thoughts

and ideas and gestures

are not exact echoes

of your own.
Bring your sorrow.
Bring your grief.

Bring your fear.
Bring your weariness,

your pain,
your disgust at how broken

the world is, how fractured,

how fragmented

by its fighting, its wars,

its hungers,
its penchant for power,

its ceaseless repetition

of the history it refuses

to rise above.
I will not tell you

this blessing will fix all that.
But in the place

where you have gathered,

wait.

Watch.

Listen.

Lay aside your inability

to be surprised,

your resistance to what you

do not understand.
See then whether this blessing

turns to flame on your tongue,

sets you to speaking

what you cannot fathom
or opens your ear

to a language

beyond your imagining

that comes as a knowing

in your bones

a clarity

in your heart

that tells you
this is the reason

we were made,

for this ache

that finally opens us,
for this struggle, this grace

that scorches us

toward one another

and into

the blazing day.

We are a Pentecost people, and this blessing is not for us alone.  We are hopers and dreamers, pulled by scorching grace toward a world filled with people longing to be asked about their hopes and dreams.  We are watchers and listeners, noticers in waiting.  May we be ready for the Spirit to pull us into the future.

 Amen.

Sunday, June 1, 2014

From the time when all will live


Ascension pictures are so terrible they are awesome.
(Don't believe me? Google "Ascension of Jesus.")
This is one of my favorites.

Jesus entering the Heavenly CT Scan Machine.
Or an egg yolk.
Or diving into a bowl of Lemon Tapioca custard.
Yum.

Can you see the wires?  Also, he always leaves his shoes behind. Always.
And he never pencil dives either - arms out or not at all.


It’s interesting how a season can wear out. Snow in November makes us giddy and nostalgic, but by April it makes us surly and weepy.  Christmas at first is thrilling, and then several weeks later with a brittle tree dropping needles on your floor and more sweet cookies everywhere you go, you are pretty ready for it to be over. 

I am feeling that just a little bit about Eastertide.  I’m not a very patient people, and we’ve waited seven weeks to see what happens next. 
Since Easter we’ve joined the disciples in the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus- the times he appeared to people, upsetting knowledge of death with the terrifying prospect of eternity and new life again and again. 
We’ve seen them react in all sorts of ways, doubt, devotion, astonishment, ecstatically throwing themselves in a lake.  We’ve seen reconciliation, teaching and learning, scripture being opened, and lots of sharing the news with each other.  Sitting tight and waiting like he said to do, fleeing back home to do what you know how to do instead. 
And we’ve seen lots of meals and hospitality extended in all directions- and the reoccurring pattern that when they really do recognize Jesus, it is in the breaking of the bread, the sharing of a meal, the caring for one another that comes in serving and being served.
And all that raw, alert, attentive wrestling to make sense of what is happening has a huge place in our life of faith, but we can’t stay there forever – it wears on the nerves and keeps us in a holding pattern. 
That holding pattern breaks today for the disciples, in a pretty dramatic fashion, that leaves them staring at an empty sky, and told by angels to move on, (that ship has sailed, so to speak).
The ascension ends the cliffhanger of Easter.  It doesn’t get much airtime usually, but frankly, it’s pretty important to the whole story.  Where is Jesus’ body? He rose from the dead! What happened next?

Now, I don’t know if we think the resurrection itself trumps everything, or that it doesn’t matter what happens to Jesus’ body, or that the knowledge that he just kind of whisks up to heaven in front of his gobsmacked followers is common knowledge and not worth mentioning much?  Maybe it’s just too weird to linger on. 
But I suspect Ascension doesn’t  get much airplay because we like our story to have a happy-ending, triumphant climax, and Easter fits that bill so well that we act like Easter is the end of the story of Jesus, and Pentecost is the beginning of the story of the church, and everything that happens in between is kind of irrelevant. 

But what happens in between is vital.  What happens in the times in between are always vital.  And this one big continuous story without end even yet, has a very important transition occurring in the time between Jesus’ resurrection and the beginning of the church at Pentecost.  Something is happening within and between the disciples that is preparing them to become the Body of Christ, making them into witnesses of God’s love and salvation.  But it turns out that it can’t happen without watching Jesus disappear, alive, from their sight. 
For one thing, without the ascension, they would not be ready to let go of wishing things could be the way they were when Jesus was here, like in the old days.  And they need to quit going back to old boats and staring up at empty skies so they can do the fruitful work of waiting for the power of God that is coming, when the Holy Spirit will turn them into witnesses in all the earth.

Shortly after Easter, while it was still very much on our minds, Owen asked a bedtime question. Now, here’s the thing about bedtime in our house- for whatever reason it’s the time the questions come.  I don’t know if it’s a stalling tactic or that when the body tired out the mind wakes up or what, but bedtime turns my children into theologians, philosophers and scholars. I often end up standing bedside in long conversation, but Andy, who happened to be doing bedtime on the night this question came, had a different tact.  He said, “Write down your question, Owen, and tomorrow at dinner, we will talk about it as a family, so we can all learn from your question.” (GENIUS)

Now, our theological discussions at dinner are something I wish we could record for posterity.  They usually involve scrunched up faces and furrowed brows and me translating technical terms into easier words from time to time, but every once in a while, it all clicks together and the whole bunch of us is momentarily alight with insight.  This was going to be one of those.  It was also to be the first time a full-on diagram would appear at the dinner table. (Theologian Daddies are the coolest.)

So the next night at dinner, Owen brought down his piece of paper with his question on it. The question was this, “If God can raise people from the dead in the bible, why doesn’t God still do it today?” 

What a great question.  First of all, Andy said, people don’t only rise from the dead in the bible.  There are several in the bible-  the little girl Jesus healed, Lazarus, Jesus himself, and a few others, but people claim that it happens today too.  (Here I interjected and mentioned the movie some of you saw a couple weeks ago together, based on the book “Heaven is for real” about a little boy who died and came back, as an example).  Sometimes, from time to time, back in bible times and today as well, people do come back from the dead.
But they all have one thing in common. Do you know what that is?
They die again.
They don’t keep on living.  It’s a brief reversal of death – an interruption, but they still end up dying like the rest of us.  Nobody doesn’t die. 

So Andy drew a diagram on the paper below Owen’s question.  On one side of a timeline he put the words, “the time when all die.” 
“We live here,” he said.
He drew a huge gap and barrier in the middle, and on the other side he wrote, “the time when all live”.
“We all will die,” Andy said, “because we live in the time when all die.”
“But there is one exception to this – and that is Jesus.” 
Then he made a little stick figure, hopping over from the one side to the other.  “Jesus is the one who comes from God’s future – from the time when all live, and comes into this time when all die to be there with us.  Jesus died, but when Jesus rose from the dead, he does not die again.  He comes to take us with him into a future that waits for all of us.  The time is coming when life will win out,  “the time when all live,” and Jesus breaks into “the time when all die” carrying the future within himself and bringing us into that future.”

We sat there a minute while this soaked in, forks still, and mouths open.  Finally, nodding heads, soft, “oh”s, and one, “Cool, Daddy!”  And then somebody asked, “What about zombies?” and the spell was broken.

But I have been stuck on that conversation ever since, because I’ve been stuck with the disciples each week who are stuck in the “what is happening and what comes next” of Jesus’ resurrection.

If we’ve learned anything in this lingering resurrection season, it’s 1- that we recognize Jesus among us in the moments of hospitality and shared humanity, and 2- that we are meant to tell what has happened to us, we are meant to share the stories of Jesus meeting us.  We don’t get experiences of God just for ourselves – these moments are for us, yes, but they are for the whole community.  They are for the whole world.  Faith is a shared thing – I will tell you what God has done for me; listen to what just happened to me! From Carolyn’s “Godipity” moments, to the ways Jesus is saying to us, Follow me, we are meant to tell one another about what God is doing in our lives, and in so doing, to remind each other where this is all going.  This is being witnesses.

Now, about those people Andy brought up who do, from time to time for whatever reason – medical, mystical or otherwise, come back from the dead.  Their resurrection is this momentary miraculous sign, really, a gift to them and their loved ones, to be sure, but miracles are never meant for one – they are always always meant to be shared.  Their story belongs to all of us, it becomes a promise to us, a reminder that the time is coming when death doesn’t win.

So – resurrections in our lives, whether physical or emotional, relational or spiritual – however it happens that hope is born from hopelessness and joy comes out of despair – they are signs meant for all of us, that announce that even though we live in the time when all die, in Jesus we are being brought into the time when all will live.  Just look at the life springing up inside me, around me, between us, near us!  That is a sign of the life that is to come, the life that has already come and cannot be quenched!

So here is the answer to the cliffhanger of Easter, and the reason why the Ascension matters. Jesus is still out there, alive -  showing up in whatever way we most need to be met.

A friend recently shared a story of a preacher who, like me, often writes her sermons in a coffee shop. And there are opinionated, unaffiliated people in her regular coffee shop, so she is bold to ask them questions she may not necessarily ask her parishioners.  On this occasion, just before Easter, she was chatting with a particularly verbose guy, who often liked to engage her in theological conversation, sometimes outrageous, always animated.  She knew he’d respond, so she asked him, “Jack, where is Jesus’ body?” And he answered in brevity and truth, “Wherever we need it to be.”

We are Jesus’ body.  He lives in us- between us, through us, in spite of us.  He comes to us from “the time when all will live,” into “the time when all will die,” and reminds us of what’s coming.  In all life and resurrection, we recognize our Risen Lord and receive the promise that life will prevail.

So we get to sit at dinner and say to our children, yes, our dog died, our great grandma died and our friend’s baby died, and the people in that earthquake or that car accident or that terrible war died, and you and I will die too, because we live in the time when all will die.  And we have a God who came to earth and died too – so we are not in this time when all will die alone, God is here in it with us and carries all our grief and sorrow and suffering and death into the heart of God. 
But also, my darlings, hear this: we have a Messiah, a savior, who comes from the time when all will live, and rises from the dead, and ascends into heaven and even now, is busy getting involved, bringing life, bringing us toward life, and showing up where we most need to be met, and you and I get to join in and be witnesses of that life.

So the faithful response, the one the disciples are given to do, is to wait for the Spirit. Wait for the power of God to move in the reality that you now carry within you the life of the one whom death cannot defeat, and even while you and I will die, and our institutions will crumble and our dreams disappear and our goals change and hopes waver, we are held in the love of the God of life, living in new life and resurrection that happens again and again as a sign of what is in store for the world.  You and I are witnesses of life, we are harbingers of newness and hope.  So let’s get busy waiting for the Spirit to lead us once again and not spend another second gazing at an empty sky.
Amen.


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