Friday, December 26, 2014

Be Not Afraid (aka, What if-?)

"Let not your heart be troubled, Be Not Afraid.
Heaven and earth have been gathered, Be Not Afraid."
- Advent sending song and Christmas Eve welcome song, LNPC 2014

Christmas Eve at LNPC, photo by Maggie Cochrane

Imagine you are God, and you love this gorgeous world you’ve made, and especially you adore all these creatures made in your image, to care for each other and this world.
Imagine you’ve made it all to work together in this crazy, intricate, symbiotic relationship, where nobody is able to do it alone, and everyone needs each other, and all have a part to play, and the animals and plants and human beings are interconnected in this giant web of teeming, joy-filled life that fills you with delight.

Only, the humans get afraid.
Afraid that maybe you won’t accept them the way they are, and you’ll want them to do or be something different first.
Afraid that maybe the person on the left and right might actually be better, more important, than they are.
Afraid that in fact there isn’t enough to go around, so they’d better grab what they can even if it means someone else doesn’t get any. 
Afraid that someone will take what is theirs or hurt them, so they start taking what is others and hurting others instead. 
Maybe they get so afraid that they start putting up all sorts of walls between themselves, these walls even get inside themselves, so the parts of them that seem weak or ugly, the parts that make them cringe and cry, the hopeless, helpless parts, they tamp down and bottle up and cover over and make themselves appear stronger, better, more sure than they really are because it is dangerous to be weak, and terrifying to be vulnerable. 
Maybe they start devising ways to tell who is better than others, and who is not worth even considering, who can’t be trusted and who should be shunned, who is most a threat and who is most a target. 

And all this is so frightening that they set up some systems and beliefs and procedures to bring some clarity to what is expected, and how to get there, how to avoid what is harmful and chase after what can make them more secure and less scared, and pretty soon they are living completely dictated by it all and disconnected from you, each other, even themselves.  And while it’s exhausting, and overwhelming, and all-demanding, at least it’s familiar, and the rules of the game, while harsh, are at least clear, so they persist, and the lies dig deeper and the fear gets bigger and so it goes.

Imagine you try to get through to them.  To tell them it’s not like this. To tell them they’ve got it wrong. That you already love and choose them, that they already belong. And that you don’t want them to be strong and independent, you want them to be real and interdependent.  That there is enough for all, and that they all need each other, and nobody is better than any other, and it’s all meant to work in connection and not division. 
Imagine that you try to show them that their sadness is as welcome as their happiness, and their anger is a gift that points them to truth, and that no matter what they do, even when they lose sight of what’s real and hurt others or themselves, none of that can separate them from you because you heal what’s sick and mend what’s broken and welcome home what’s lost.  That the point of it all is to be connected to you and one another, and to join in life in the world you love.

You try to tell them in gift and abundance, sharing all that you have and inviting them to share it with you.  And they turn instead to fear and suspicion, blaming each other and you and hiding from your love. 
They start competing and killing and destroying, and it gets so ugly, and evil, and feels so lost that you decide to wipe it all out and start over. But you love them too much to end it completely, and you see that they will not really change, so you decide that no matter how much they keep turning away from you and hurting each other, you will never give up on them, so you make promises and invite trust again. 

And while they keep on turning to fear instead of love, you choose one family, through whom to bless the whole world, one family who will live in connection to you and invite everyone else into that connection and love, your proxy, your community of welcome. 
But the fear creeps on and the division grows stronger and they declare enemies and battle and enslave each other, and so you send plagues and promises and part waters and provide in wilderness, and bring freedom and order, and describe for them what life in relationship with you and each other looks like: that you are the one who holds their life, and in your way all have enough, and nobody has to live in fear.  You tell the people they no longer are bound in the way of fear, but are free instead to follow your way – the way they were wired to live after all.

And they find themselves living between your way and the way of fear, returning again to the relentless pursuit of more and the acceptance of less, and the way of fear grows within them and spreads like cancer, continuing to divide and devastate, so you send messengers who speak in poetry and prophesy, and you send leaders who bring guidance and wisdom and honest songs of praise and lament, and who also fall themselves into the pursuit of power, prestige and possessions as their source of security, and so both succeed and also fail spectacularly to embody your message of love.

And on it goes, until you decide the way to communicate your true intent, the only way to undermine all the false beliefs they have created, and expose the powers they’ve erected to enslave themselves, the way to show them the love it’s all grounded in and leading to, is to embody it yourself. 
To come right into it with them.  
The loneliness, the isolation, the divisions and the deceit, the lies that bind them tight, and fear that keeps them captive to violence and discord, you will go there and join them in all of that.

But you’re not going to go in the way they would expect or respect. If the world wants power and might, you’re going to come in vulnerability and weakness.  If they venerate those with stature and prestige, you’re going to come to the poor and the overlooked.  If they think it is about what they can earn or prove, you will choose the unsuspecting ordinary, and you will come in unexplainable mystery. 
And instead of appearing to the confident and the respectable, you will hang out with the doubters and the stumblers, the ones who can’t fake it.   Those up against their own humanity will be nearest to your transcendence.  This is how you’re going to come in.

Into their fear, that keeps them in striving and struggle, you’re bringing peace.
Into their fear, that plots and plans and guards and hedges, you’re bringing hope.
Into their fear, that layers things in apathy, and seeks shallow pleasure in greed and consumption, you’re bringing joy.
Into their fear, that makes them hide in self-protection and lash out in hate, you are bringing love. 
But you’re going to do it in upside down and backwards, foolish absurdity. 
You’re going to break the rules wide open.

And so the time arrives…

The congregation told the story of Christmas in readings, carols, drama and music, young and old together sharing in the telling, using Luke 1:26-38, Matthew 1:18-25, Luke 1:39-56Luke 2:1-20.






So, there we have it.  Our foolish, absurd and glorious story, that God enters in to claim the world in love.  And we ended things there on a pretty big claim, a cosmic from the very the beginning promise, that the light has come that the darkness cannot put out.  And now it’s time to wrap it up neatly, so I guess we have a choice, tonight, you and I.

We can take this as a quaint, if not bizarre, traditional story, a sentimental habit, sing our carols, light our candles, and go home to the rest of our Christmas Eve plans.  Nobody would think twice about it, if that’s what we did.  It’s all that’s expected, really. The only real logical move with this story we pull off the shelf once a year to page through the faded pictures wistfully until the moment passes, and real life with real reality resumes, and we move on without a second glance.

But I want to suggest another idea. 
What if we don’t wrap it up and put it away? What if we linger in the what if of this preposterous story? Poke with our finger this astounding claim, that in Jesus Christ, God is with us?  What if there is a God whose love is so relentlessly for us, that God came into all this alongside us?

What if this were true?

What if God already loves and choose you and you already belong?  And what if you’re not meant to be strong and independent, but real and interdependent? What if there really is enough? And we all really do need each other? And it’s designed to work in connection and not division?  What if our sadness is as welcome as our happiness, and our anger is a gift that points us to truth?
What if, no matter what we do, even when we lose sight of what’s real and hurt others or ourselves, none of that can separate us from God, who  heals what’s sick and mends what’s broken and welcomes home what’s lost?  What if, the point of it all is to be connected to God and one another, and to join in life in the world God loves?

What if, in Jesus Christ, the whole trajectory of things is forever bent back toward God; all things are moving toward their completion, redemption, and wholeness, and you and I are held within this, so that even in the darkest times, when death is breathing down our necks, there is still something greater holding us fast, never letting us go?  What if we can, from time to time, walk the weak and foolish way of God, even in the midst of the way of fear that seems so big and powerful?

Sisters and brothers, picture for a moment that this is so:  that into our fear, that keeps us in striving and struggle, Jesus brings peace. 

“Not as the world brings”, he says, “Let not your hearts be troubled, nor let them be afraid.” (John 14:27)

Into our fear, that plots and plans and guards and hedges, Jesus brings hope, “a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” calls the author of Hebrews. (Heb 6:18)

Into our fear, that layers things in apathy, and seeks shallow pleasure in greed and consumption, Jesus brings joy.
 You show me the path of life” sings the Psalmist. “In your presence there is fullness of joy...” (ps 16:11)

And into our fear, that makes us hide in self-protection and lash out in hate, Jesus brings love.
“Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” The Apostle Paul asks, “Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:35, 37-39)

What an outrageous claim!

What if it’s true?

If it’s true, then it is possible that God is always breaking in like we’d never expect or respect.  If it’s true, then the Holy One is actually encountered, not in power and might, but in vulnerability and weakness, and not through stature and prestige, but alongside the poor and the overlooked.  Everyday, it’s possible that God does meet us in the unsuspecting ordinary and unexplainable mystery, breaking the rules wide open.   

If it’s true, then the place to find Jesus, really and truly and actually, isn’t with the confident and strong, but hanging out with the doubters and the stumblers, the ones who can’t fake it.  The place to see Jesus, the light of the world that the darkness cannot overcome, is up against our own humanity, the doorway to transcendence is right there, in our own raw, and unpolished lives, where God is with us, bearing our pain and sharing our joy, and we can see God with us when we are with and for each other.

And if it’s true, then in upside down, backwards, foolish and absurd ways, quietly and steadfastly, God is turning the world around.

So why not stay open to this Christmas moment for a little bit longer, and see what might come of it? Why not hold still in the what if of all this for a while more, and see if God shows up?

Sunday, December 21, 2014

The way of love (not good-person-ness)










On this third week of Advent, on the very threshold of Christmas, we are about to be reminded that we’ve made something sweet, tame and mild out of what is really a very messy, scandalous, painful and strange story.  We’ve soaked it in sentiment and preserved it in tinsel and wrapped and smothered it in hefty layer of consumerism, and now it barely resembles what it was, or rather, we’re no longer able to hear or see it for what it still is.

But we’re going to try. For the next few minutes, we’re going to set all of it down, the shopping and baking and relatives and expectations and presents and nit-picky pressure, and everything else, and we are going to listen to the text and let the Holy Spirit show us a thing or two about the alternative narrative, the Kingdom of God reality that shines through our scriptures today.

Joseph. A good person, a righteous man, the text says.  He was minding his own business. He didn’t ask for any of this; he did not volunteer. He didn’t even have a chance to refuse, like Mary did.  He just found himself suddenly in this place, where everything he had planned for his life was over, and instead he was handed something, let’s face it, awful.

Because he was a good person, he had decided to divorce Mary quietly. Because, apart from living together, they were actually lawfully bound – that is what “betrothed” means, not so much engaged as legally wed and just waiting for the party to make it official.
So it turns out, Mary is pregnant.

Oh Joseph.  This is nothing if not a world-crashing down upon you moment.
Joseph is betrayed. How could she do this to him? Who even is she?  He will be pathetic and dubious in the eyes of his community.  Humiliation, anguish, shock, confusion, anger, you name it, he’s got it rolling over him in waves. And here is what he’s left with: Clearly it’s all over. If he brings charges of adultery against Mary, she could theoretically be stoned to death; that is what the law prescribes, anyway. But being a righteous man, the text says, being a good person, he decides to divorce her quietly instead.
It is big of him to take the quiet divorce route.  He is choosing to take on the shame and degradation of being cheated on, and move on quietly on without reprisal, to spare Mary from harm.
This marriage is dead on arrival.  One way or another, it’s not going forward from here.
Who in their right mind would proceed under these circumstances?

But God stops him.  There is another way he is to take. 
This marriage is over. It is dead. 
And then it is resurrected.
Remember our text last week? I am about to do a new thing. Before it springs forth, I will tell you of it!
In this moment, everything Joseph knows of himself and of God and of the world in which he is living, must crumble away and die, so that a new thing can be born.

Matthew is telling the story of Jesus in a very different way than Luke does. No stable or manger, no shepherds or angels.  In fact, you’ve heard his entire birth narrative, which boils down to the last part of the last line, the awkward: but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.
That’s it.  What matters to Matthew is something different than Luke, he’s wanting us to see the big picture in a particular way: that what continues here is the whole story of God, the covenant of God is finding fulfillment.

So, first Matthew gives us the genealogy – here is who went before, here is where Jesus came from – from the very beginning, here is the unfolding of what God is doing throughout the ages leading up to this point, but it’s not neat and clean.  Certainly, there are lots of impressive figures on it, but also some very surprising ones.

Four women appear in the genealogy – it’s not typical for genealogies of that day to include any women, and here are four. All four of them are outsiders, from other peoples than the Hebrews, not people of the covenant, not the first you’d put into an impressive pedigree. 
There is Tamar, who ensured she was impregnated by her father in law in order to carry on the line of Judah after her husbands died and left her childless.  Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute who saved the spies who climbed the wall of Jericho, and became the mother of Boaz.  Ruth, the Moabite and daughter in law of Naomi, who married Boaz.  And the wife of Uriah, namely, Bathsheba, whom King David took, and who became the mother of Solomon. 
All of these women, unlikely suspects indeed, made choices toward God in ways the men, the Hebrews-the covenant people, the assumed good guys in the stories, did not.  In other words, they were all righteous, following the way of God, so much so that they included in the covenant and the genealogy of the Messiah.  These are people who would clearly have been considered unworthy by the dominant script, but God chose them as part of God’s plan to bring salvation, and names them in the lineage of the Messiah.  Because, in case we forget this between the Old and the New Testament, let’s be reminded right off the bat: God’s always works through the unexpected, the unusual, and the, frankly, impossible. 

And then we come to Joseph. He too is righteous, the text says.  He seems a good candidate for all of this. Impressive pedigree, and a person who follows God’s ways. Someone we might even think worthy of such a calling.  But that is not allowed to stand. Instead of allowing Joseph, his worthiness or his lineage, be the source of the Messiah, God goes off script again.  And takes Joseph along.

Have you noticed on our journey through the Bible so far, that nobody is ever chosen because they are good?  Think back on the folks we’ve met – Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joseph, David, Solomon, – none of them were inherently good people, all of them were deeply flawed.  And even if they started out “good,” they didn’t stay like that.  In fact, nobody is ever allowed to remain good in the bible, and thanks be to God for that.  Because if they were, if they continued to appear worthy, upright, noble people, then it would seem that their own merit or strength is what’s important to the story, that it was their goodness that made them part of God’s plan.  We may tell the biblical narrative that way, but the scriptures themselves most certainly do not.

  Good is part of the way of fear, the dominant script that tells us who we are is measured by how we are perceived by others, and that God’s favor can be earned and lost, and that our worth, and that of others, is being continually ranked and judged, so we had better not slip up.

But God is doing something utterly subversive, backwards and upside down, not respecting even the tiniest bit the dominant script, or whatever false gods we set up – both outside and within our religion- that tell us who is important and who is worthy and who can be disregarded or overlooked or dismissed.  God could’ve easily waited a few months until Mary and Joseph were properly married, and all then all this would’ve been kosher, not a bit unsavory or disreputable, a complete non-issue. But it’s important that God shatter again our belief in what is right and true, and earned and lost, and bring us into the realm of trust and wonder and mercy, where God is God and we are not.

The way of God is the way of impossibility, of barren and virgin wombs, of youngest sons and foreign women and weak and messed up leaders, who find in their brokenness a new identity as representatives and servants of the living God.  The bible will not allow anyone to stay a “good person”.  To be part of God’s plan of salvation, you have to get stripped of your goodperson-ness and receive instead the grace of God who claims you nevertheless.
If you are going to participate in God’s way you have to see yourself anew, as sinner in need of salvation, broken in need of healing, lost, in need of finding.  Because this story is not for the strong and the competent (as though those even exist), this story is for the broken, the sinner, and the lost. So that is precisely who God uses to bring it about. 

Joseph must let go of who he thought he was, and in the process, who he thought God was too.  He thought God would want him to dismiss Mary quietly, cause as little embarrassment for her as possible, but preserve his own dignity, honor, and standing as a faithful follower of God.  So of course that is what he will do. 

But No. It’s not, an angel tells him.  He must do something completely unexpected.  God redefines faithful for Joseph. It doesn’t mean good.  It means getting your hands and your reputation dirty. It means living in impossibility.  This is not your child.  And yet he will be.  You are to name him and raise him and love him.  And you will walk in the shadow of the whispers your whole life.  For who could ever believe her cockamamie story? A virgin pregnant? Hogwash.  You’ve been betrayed.  There is, or was, another man. You’ve been made to look a fool. 
So up against your doubt, inside of this foolishness, you will live, right there against your own fear and questions and inability to even to control your own life or narrative, you will be asked to be faithful.  To accept what God is giving you and follow where God is leading you.  And you will take on guilt. You will appear to be something that you are not – this child’s father, and in so doing, you will become his father after all. 
Joseph goes from upstanding, ethical guy, good person, to one who must constantly have faith up against his doubt, must trust again and again that there is more going on than we can see, and must be willing to live into the unknown where the rules that made sense yesterday no longer hold sway.

And the upheaval doesn’t end here- this is just the beginning.
What goes through Joseph’s mind later on, in the dark moments when they are living in exile in Egypt? He was supposed to be a carpenter. In his home town. That and nothing more.  Instead he finds himself at the center of this universe-altering event that feels really just like ordinary life but harder, and less in control, and often lonelier than had he stayed in the village like everybody else and lived and died as a good person.

So, in order to be ready for what is to come, in order to be able to participate in what God is doing, Joseph first needs to let go of what was. That ship has sailed.  
When he gets up from that dream, and does what the angel tells him to do, he enters into a conspiracy with God that undermines the whole system by which the world operates, and so he will forever be outside it, judged and misunderstood, but also set free. 

Before he proceeds, he needs to decide who will be God- the god who he thought god was?  The one that called him to be a decent human being, a good person who minds his own business and is worthy of admiration and respect, in a world of competition and scarcity and judgment and fear and earning God and human favor, where women get stoned for adultery and the “right” thing to do is to dismiss her quietly and go about your business?

Or the God who comes to him in angel and dream telling him that there is something beyond what we can see and hear and touch that is impossible but real, and inviting him to step into a different reality from here on out, one defined by love and standing-with-you-ness, and grace unearned and forgiveness unmerited, where everybody has enough and nobody is dismissed, quietly or otherwise, into a future that God is unfolding right before him in foolish and backwards and extraordinary ways?

The old way is dead for Joseph. And he has no choice about that.  The new way opens up before him and he gets to say yes to that.  To join Mary in this place of bearing this secret, this absurd glory, that nothing is impossible with God, that the creator of the universe, the god of the covenant, of Abraham and David, is coming into this world, alongside us, to be Emmanuel, God is with us, and you, Joseph!, will be the first to hold him in your arms, and it will be your job to name him and raise him, not as a good person, who is respected in society and honored in the community, but as a vagabond and a subversive, who dines with outcasts and sinners and operates by a different script altogether- the one that’s about redemption and forgiveness and freedom and connection to God and each other and abundance and gift and wholeness for all.

So do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife.  Love her.
Name the child Jesus.  Love him.  That is your calling. 

And so Joseph wakes in the world a different person than he lies down to sleep.  His old life dead, he rises to live into a different script – to walk in the way of God instead of the way of fear.

Perfect love casts out fear.  God’s love has no opposite.  A love vast and bottomless, it is what we all come from and all return to and in the middle are invited to share in.  It is the reason God created, the reason God came in. That nothing might keep us from this love.  Not even our efforts to be good, and worthy of such love. 

To participate in the way of Christ is to take away good person-ness, and instead to live broken, honest and real, with faith up right up against our doubt. And sometimes it will feel really just like ordinary life but harder, and less in control, and little bit lonelier than just going along with the dominant script. 

But it’s also what sets us free to truly receive the love of God that has no opposite, the love that comes spilling out in forgiveness and mercy and peace, hope, and joy, and moves through us into the world.

Come, let us welcome the messy and scandalous way of God in Jesus Christ that is turning the world on its end.


Amen.

Saturday, December 13, 2014

The Way of Joy




Joy!
Joy is the sneaky preview of the Kingdom of God.  
It’s a moment of accepting the gift of being alive, reveling in it, trying it on and feeling its fabric enfold you. It is perspective and gratitude, but not the thoughtful, serious kind, the kind that makes you want to burst out in exuberance and throw yourself at God for a giant bear hug.

Joy is the experience of total alignment and delight that makes you want to erupt into unsophisticated laughter.  We once talked together aboutjoy as “premembering” – remembering the future.  It only comes upon you when you’re right here, fully present, and then suddenly it takes you by surprise, grabs hold and pulls you to the window and says, Look! Look how beautiful it all is! Isn’t it amazing?!  Joy is a brief anchoring in the Big Picture, a sudden, unexpected taste of the real reality.

This Advent, each week we are contrasting the Way of Fear with the Way of God.  The two competing scripts, narratives that vie to direct our lives, that we’ve been witnessing in struggle throughout the whole Old Testament.  So to remind ourselves – the way of fear, we’ve also called the dominant script that we live by in our time, says that:
The powerful matter, the weak do not. Having more makes you better, your worth is earned, others are nothing more than a competition for resources or an obstacle in your way, they should be used to further yourself, or eliminated.  Life begins in self-sufficiency, and you’d better not screw up. You will be judged and ranked, and dismissed if you make mistakes or are no longer productive. There is not enough to go around so take what you can get before someone else does.  God is keeping score; we should be too. 
There is no time to stop or rest or let up for even a moment, or you will get behind, you will lose your place, and just have to “catch up.”  The goal is security at all cost, and almost all of the time the world is dangerous and urgent.  This script shapes life around the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of personal gain. That’s the Way of Fear.

The other Way, the Kingdom of God Script, we said, says that it all begins in gift, and abundance. You are made by God for connection and communion.  You are loved just as you are. You are not meant to be perfect, (there’s no such thing); you are meant to be you. On this journey of life that begins in gift and ends in connection and communion, the people journeying alongside you are neighbor, friend, brother and sister, not threats, rivals or competitors.  You need each other to be whole, and what we have is for sharing. Life doesn’t make sense alone and isolated and against; you are created for relationship with God and with each other, and there is no such thing as one without the other.  The goal is wholeness, connection and joy, and the world and those of us in it, are wired for this. We have everything we need, and would remember that, and live in that if we regularly stopped everything long enough to let God remind us. This script shapes life around “everyonehaving what they need” justice, “standing with you” kindness, and “attentiveand open” walking humbly with God. (Micah 6:8)  This is the way of God – the big picture.

So as we sit here tonight on the brink of Christmas, preparing to welcome God with us, we feel the pull again between these two competing narratives, and it may be helpful to pause  to remember why God came to be with us.
God didn’t come in to punish.  Didn’t come in to rescue certain ones out. Didn’t come in to teach us how we should be in order to be accepted by God.  All of these would put God comfortably in the way of fear.  They’d make sense to us in the way the dominant script says life works.
But, of all the craziness, Jesus says that he came that we might have joy, God’s joy, and that the things that keep us from joy would be stopped.  God’s intention for us is to bring us back in alignment with the creative maker of the world, to sync us up with the one whose joy spilled out and gave life and breath to a universe.  God came in Jesus that we might live fully the real reality, the Kingdom of God, the truth of the Big Picture, life as God means for it to be lived, here and now.

But we resist that.  In our everyday lives, in our communities, in the Church itself. We resist the absurd Way of God in favor of the rational Way of fear. 
There’s a word for resisting the way of God and living in the way of fear: Sin.
Sin is the lie that tells us who we are and who God is and who others are instead of the truth, the barrier between God and us, between ourselves and others, between ourselves and our true selves. 
Sin is what separates us from God. 
Sometimes we join in sin by the overt choices we know we are making, that come from belief in the way of fear- that my desires justify harming another, that my own self-preservation demands dishonesty, that something you have will make me happy or secure so I need to take it for myself.  Sometimes our participation in sin is inadvertent, accidental, or apathetic acceptance that allows the way of fear to dictate our time, money, relationships, and actions.  Going along with what’s easy and wrong instead of seeking what is difficult and right. Trying desperately to earn what is a gift.  Sinning is choosing to live as slaves when God has made us free. 
We are all impacted by sin, and we all sin, all the time. 

But God’s way keeps inviting us back to the big picture. Into the Way of Joy.  God’s way invites us to live in the real reality- that we are already set free, that we belong to God and not to sin. That we are secure in the promises of God and not in whatever we can make or build or prove.  In Jesus, God came into this world of sin, into this world of separation, God entered right into the way of fear, to share it with us, so that we are not alone in struggling here.

And God breaks open the power of sin, to set us free. 
One day the whole system will be overthrown, and the poor and lowly will be lifted up and the strong will be made weak, because what we believe makes us strong is all a farce anyway.  One day the way of fear will utterly crumble away.  One day all time will be different- measured by delight, instead of deadlines, counted out in laughter and tears instead of accumulated accomplishments. 
One day the real reality that is breaking through all the crumbling parts will be the only way left standing, the word of God that remains when all the rest falls away. So we are invited right now to live the true script, defiantly and joyfully in the face of the dominant one, because it the truth, and the future is breaking in.

So against this backdrop, comes our scripture addressed to a people in exile.  Having lost it all.  They'd succumbed to the Way of Fear, and turned away from God until everything they’d known is gone.  And now, they're just moving on as though that is the final word about them. It’s over. So live in the now. Adjust to exile; let go of what was and what you thought might be.  Accept that you’ve been beaten, and what will define you forever is sin, your separation from God, your choices that led you to here, and the things that made it easy to stay in the way of fear -this is who you are now.

They are bruised reeds. Dimly burning wicks. Done. Not good for much anymore. 

And surely that is what a God who punishes, who only rescues certain ones out, who shows us the way we have to be in order to be accepted by God, would have things be. Surely that is “justice”, at least as the world would define it.  With God comfortably defined in the way of fear, that would make complete sense to them.

But through the prophet in whom God delights, the voice who wont grow weary God speaks to them, and then three times talks of justice – mishpat-justice, that word we discovered means, “everybody has enough and all are cared for.” It promises this justice to a weary and worn out world that has given up. 
And then it invites the weary people to premember.  To find their purpose and their identity as the people defined by God’s way of freedom and hope, telling them they are to be bearers of God’s light, the people who remember the future and embody God’s connection and covenant to a world that is hungry to hear this news. 

The bruised reed and dimly burning wicks bringing hope to the rest of the world? 
Instead of either giving up, or surreptitiously propping themselves up and frantically keeping themselves from flickering out, like they should be?  
The vulnerable bringing good news?
In God’s way the ones who most need to hear the good news become the very best ones to deliver it. We saw that last week as well.  
Not because they’ve got it all figured out, or are so worthy or strong, or have never succumbed to the way of fear, but because they need the light and the freedom of God as much as the next person.

And because it’s not their news they bear:
Thus says God, the Lord,
who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread out the earth and what comes from it,
who gives breath to the people upon it
and spirit to those who walk in it…
That’s whose news it is.  You can trust in this news. 
And the news is this:
You are mine. I have called you to be a light to the nations. I have given you as a covenant to the people.  You are my gift to the world.  YOU ARE the good news.  Through you I will open the eyes that are blind and set the prisoners free from their dungeons. 
You will be the people who tell the truth about the Big Picture.  You will be the ones who remind the world that we belong to each other, and that all are worthy of love and respect.  You will bring my balm and healing where there is pain and sorrow.  
You will be the ones who bravely share when the way of fear says horde, who say enough when the way of fear demands more, who forgive when the way of fear says punish.  You will be generous with your kindness instead of stingy with your courtesy.  
And I will give you the courage to look past the surface anger or ignorance because you know what fear is like, and you recognize it in all its forms. 
You will be the people who live plugged in, ready for joy’s jolts – delighting in the gift of being alive with and for each other and willing to celebrate the wonder of it.

You are the ones who I tell, even before it springs forth, that I am doing a new thing.  All around you, new thing is about to spring forth, is already happening, through you, alongside you, between you, and you are the noticers and the joiners, the celebraters and the brave proclaimers in this new thing springing forth.  That is who you are.

So sing out with joy! The very next verses say:
Sing to the Lord a new song,
   his praise from the end of the earth!
Let the sea roar and all that fills it,
   the coastlands and their inhabitants.
Let the desert and its towns lift up their voice,
   the villages that Kedar inhabits;
let the inhabitants of Sela sing for joy,
   let them shout from the tops of the mountains.
 Let them give glory to the Lord,
   and declare his praise in the coastlands.

Joy is powerful, friends. 
Boyount, ridiculous joy grounds us in truth.  
It shatters the false with real, tangible experiences transcendence.  It is light piercing darkness; it is shimmering congruence with the way of God. Joy trumpets out the Way of God, and backs fear into a corner with its overwhelming, unabashed celebration of life and living.  Joy summons us awake and gives us strength to stand in the darkness, within and around us, and courage to step out of sin’s definitions and demands, and embrace the deeper truth and reality of the Kingdom of God that holds us all.

O God.  Make us conduits of your joy! May we welcome your joy, when it erupts within us. Set us free from the things that rob joy.  Deliver us from the way of fear that we might live in the way of Joy.  In ordinary and extraordinary ways, may we bear for the world your light, and embody for each other your invitation to freedom and life. May we love so whole-heartedly that it breaks us open. May we really share in each other, in the lives of those we have been given to, so that we can feel the truth.   And may we watch for and share the good news that your promise is what endures, and your justice and peace will prevail.


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...