Monday, January 30, 2017

Are you tired yet?





At that time Jesus said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
 ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’ 
Matthew 11:25-30

Every day here in Australia I wake up to a Facebook feed flooded with anger and fear and frustration and desperation. Sign this petition, call your congressperson, here’s fifteen vital things you should be paying attention to for the next four years!  And underneath of all of all these cries of Urgency! Vigilance! I hear deep sorrow, fear, and an unyielding fatigue. We thought when the contentious election season ended we could finally stop being on constant alert. But it turns out that was just the beginning, and there is no end in sight.  Americans are divided in many ways, but one thing we all have in common, is that we are weary.

Into this weariness come Jesus’ words, Come to me, Jesus says, and I will give you rest.

OK, Jesus, that sounds nice, but get real. It will have to wait. You must not be paying attention. This is clearly not the time to rest. If there were ever a time in our lives for vigilance, attention and non-stop effort, surely this is it.  How could we really contribute if we stopped and rested? What would it say about us if we turned away, if we weren't watching every moment, absorbing and feeling every blow? How would we measure our commitment if we didn’t pay 24/7 attention to it all?

In regular life, we're already a mess around the idea of rest. Those we esteem most in western cultures are the tireless, the unstoppable, the fighters that just keep pushing themselves, those that get it done. How are you? We ask each other. “Busy!” we always answer, cheerfully, proudly, exhausted. We might as well answer, “Distracted! Pulled in many directions. Unable to focus on or enjoy any one thing. Weary.”

But amp up the ante, put the whole work-weary, pressure-weary, election-weary nation under this new regime that is systematically dismantling much of what had seemed definitive and unshakeable about our country, and we’re in uncharted waters.  “Weary” doesn’t begin to describe people’s emotional state, but we tell ourselves we’re not allowed to be weary. That would be like giving up.

Rest is a nice idea, a someday luxury for a less urgent time. We’ll save rest for the sick and utterly depleted, for those fighting illness or recovering from surgery. Maybe when you absolutely can’t keep going, and you’re forced to stop and catch your breath, you can briefly rest until you can amp back up again.  Rest takes us out of the fight, and that can make us feel like we're abandoning others.

This passage of scripture comes in the middle of a long rant of Jesus’ about how the people are missing the gift right in front of them.  And it begins with the part where Jesus pauses in talking to the people, and raises his face to the heavens in a mid- argument prayer.  Like an exasperated mom, he blocks out their whining for a minute, heaves a dramatic sigh and intones, Oh, Thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because, clearly, you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants…

Infants get it, and we don’t.
Here’s the thing: Infants don’t exist on their own. They come attached to a parent. Completely dependent. Known, loved and cared for, learning who they are and experiencing the world through that secure attachment. 
And beyond that, infants don’t do a darn thing, really. They don’t contribute anything to the household economy or pitch in a single helpful thing to the community around them.  They don’t seem to feel at all driven to accomplish anything at all. And they hardly ever compare themselves to each other, or to their developmental milestones, to gauge where they are lacking or take pride in how quickly they are advancing. 
Babies are completely unconcerned about persuading others to think like them, or judging those who don’t, and infants rarely obsess about the future.
And they are only children of their parents; their identity is from the ones who gave them life. It would never occur to a baby to imagine you feel anything for them other than unconditional delight and devotion.  

To be an infant is to be vulnerably and simply you.  You, belonging.  You, beloved.
At the very most core –babies are still completely connected to God, and they take for granted that we all belong to each other.
They rest in their reality; they trust:
My needs will be met.  
I can sleep when I am tired. 
I can eat when I am hungry.  
I can cry when I am sad.
I can close my eyes without fear.  
I am held by someone stronger than me.
I belong to these people. They belong to me.
The world is filled with beauty, wonder and love.

Jesus doesn’t say, Come to me you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you extra energy and the strength to power through.  I will give you an edge, a do-over or a bump up.   I will promote your agenda or satisfy your desires.  Jesus isn’t offering a strategy to win, or to overcome our humanity and need, to fix the world how we think it should be fixed. 

Jesus is inviting us to tell the truth with our lives, to live how we were made to live – attached to our source of life. To come back to the reality that babies still exist in, to return to the natural order of things.
Rest is part of the cycle of creation itself, hibernation, germination, night, day, winter, spring.  It is initiated, and in fact, commanded, by the creator of all, who rests. 

The Old Testament often refers to the promise of salvation as “coming into the rest of God.”  In other words, rest is what it feels like to be saved from whatever keeps us captive, released from whatever consumes us, freed from whatever enslaves us, restored from whatever disconnects us from God, and relieved of whatever keeps us divided from each other.  Salvation is coming into the rest of God.

But, especially in the midst of what feels like such a national crisis, how do we do it?  
How do we actually put down what is weighing on our minds and pressing on our souls?  How could we ever allow ourselves to?

He answers the how question too.
“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,” Jesus says. A yoke is a wooden crosspiece that is fastened over the necks of two animals and attached to the plow or cart that they are to pull.
“Take my yoke upon you.” This is a straight up trade. Jesus says, I will release you from your work and give you a different job altogether.  I will unhook you from all that you are dragging around, and connect you back up to me, and you will carry what I carry into the world instead.

What are you weary of?
What heavy burdens are you carrying around? 
To what are you captive?  
What feels most pressing, most urgent, most demanding?
These are what Jesus will ask you to lay down. 
That feels terrifying.  Because the very things we are often most weary of, are the things we also believe define us, or the things we think can’t happen without us.  We tell ourselves they are our identity, our purpose, our reason for being.  And who would we be, without these things?  How can we be expected to lay those down?

The yoke we are given by the world, the one we instinctively pick up starts in the very earliest lie, which says we are in this alone and God can’t be trusted.  It goes on to convince us that the goal of life is security and self-sufficiency at all costs. Those around us are competition, threat and obstacle; there is not enough to go around, so guard yours well. It says that the powerful matter and the weak don’t, that having more makes you better, and that all human worth is earned. It’s all up to you, so never slow down, never give up, never let go, never lose your place.
That’s the yoke we are accustomed to being strapped into, the cart we are most often pulling behind us.  Regardless of how we each specifically fill it – this message is the gyst of it for us all.  And this way of life demands constant vigilance and self-protection.

We can easily see this mentality shaping the current regime, but when it comes to doing justice, fighting for rights, standing up for one another, this mentality also often shapes our actions.  Life is a battle. It’s all up to us. The “other side” is the enemy. Those who dehumanize others are less than human.  No rest for the weary – you must stay constantly engaged. You are not doing enough. You are doing it wrong.

Anger sets people on fire. Rage motivates, and fuels, and makes people show up and do good things.  But it only works if you continually stoke the fuel of despair and outrage, and even then it burns out quickly and leaves ashes and exhaustion in its wake. And then the people who care, and want to make a difference, feel guilty for not maintaining that level of urgency and involvement, for letting everyone (themselves, God, and especially the vulnerable) down. 
This is one way to carry the heavy yoke.

But there is another yoke. There is another way.
Jesus’ way, the Kingdom of God, says we are already connected to God, like infants to a mother. And life begins in abundance and gift.  Our God comes into this life with us in weakness and impossibility, and stands with the poor, the stranger, the abandoned and the overlooked. That’s where God already is; that is where you will always find Jesus.  
And you are loved already, just as you are, and you are not meant to be “perfect,” you are meant to be the only you God ever made, in all your glorious difference, alongside all these others who are different from you, but also who are in it together with you as, sister, brother, friend.  There is enough to go around, and life is for sharing.  And no matter what it looks like at any given moment, it’s all heading toward connection and wholeness, because God is the one who decides the end, and in Christ, it’s already been decided.  Living in freedom, connected to God and each other – this is Jesus’ “yoke.” Bearing this is what Jesus is inviting us to join him in. 

Our life could be dictated by the things we avoid or fear, by the expectations put on us by others, by our bosses or bank accounts, or by the desperation and urgency of the current national crisis.  This is an option, and it’s a compelling one at the moment.

Or we could turn to God, who is Lord of heaven and earth, and find ourselves along for the ride in Christ’s work of loving and healing a weary world in all sorts of unexpected, impossible and subversive ways.  
God’s way is not our way. All true transformation, healing and newness comes through weakness, futility and impossibility.  
Lest we forget: we don’t have a triumph and might faith, we have a death and resurrection faith.  
It’s our job to remind each other of that.

I love that in the Jewish understanding of Sabbath, the day begins at sundown. That means that rather than rest being a reward for a job well done, or a last ditch attempt to recover from hard labor or relentless fighting, rest is where it all starts.
Rest is where your being and your belonging begin. 
In rest, we trust:
my needs will be met.  
I can sleep when I am tired. 
I can eat when I am hungry.  
I can cry when I am sad.
I can close my eyes without fear.  
I am held by someone stronger than me.
I belong to these people. They belong to me.
The world is filled with beauty and wonder and love.

And when you wake, all your work and efforts and living flows from this rest, this place of groundedness, peace, salvation. 

When things feel most urgent, most pressing, most despairing, this is not the time to panic, talk faster, run harder, strive further. On the contrary, this is the time to stop. 
To return to the natural order of things, to come back to the reality that babies still exist in, completely connected to our source; belonging to God and belonging to each other. 
To let what we do and say next flow from salvation’s rest. 
From abundance. 
From trust that God is doing something, always, and that we have a place in that.
Our calling comes from who God made us to be, and God will give us a sustained and consistent way to join in, a way that wont deplete us and burn us out, but will fill us with purpose and joy, even in the midst of sorrow.  A way that will connect us more deeply with one another and make lasting change. 

Anger and disappointment come from a longing for what we are made for to be experienced – to live and feel the deeply held values that we know in our bones to be true - such as respect, mutuality, kindness, safety, well-being, contribution, belonging, to be heard and seen, etc.  When we stop and sit with this longing, even naming it in specifics, and let God meet us in our grief and our desire for wholeness, then, instead of lashing out in frantic activity, our actions will be guided, focused, joyful, even.  They will be grounded in connection and cooperation, instead of hovering in isolation and haste.  We will participate with hope instead of desperation, because we are not looking for might and triumph, we are not trying to win, or beat our enemies. Instead, we are watching for resurrection out of death, we are finding our humanity alongside each other, and we are joining in God’s ongoing salvation that began before us and will continue after us. 
This yoke is easy and this burden is light.

Jesus says Come to me.  And we are invited to answer,
Yes. OK. I will comeI will lay down my burdens and my pride; I will admit my weariness, and I will welcome your rest. I wont let rest become a last resort, a contingency plan, a life-saving measure. I will come now. I will begin here.
Yours is the way and work I choose.

What will be your ways to say Yes this week?  
A whole day with the phone off, reading and napping by the fire, or wandering unhurried through the woods? 
A three-minute pause each day in your car before heading into work?  
Something creative or crafty, something you enjoy that fills you?
When things are noisy, where is your silence?
Where is your music? Where is your joy?  
Who are the people you look at that remind you that you love, and are loved?  
Where do you go for support?  For reminding?  For relaxation? For respite? 
What will be your Yes this week?

Listen again. These words are for you:

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

 (Mt. 11:28-30 adapted from The Message)


Sunday, January 15, 2017

Epiphany's question

Ethiopian Magi, from a photo online by Patrick Comerford



Epiphany has come to be known as the celebration of the three kings’ encounter with Jesus, only in this text there are only two kings, and neither of them are the Magi. 

Our passage begins “in the time of King Herod”, and I translate, “In the time of a notorious authoritarian demagogue, enormously wealthy and notably insecure, a ruler obsessed with his reputation, who both taxed the people extensively and offered extensive job creation on vast construction projects throughout the kingdom designed to build up his name. Herod was a sovereign answerable to a foreign government, who spent lavish sums of money building up his own private empire and secure fortresses, whose rule was characterized by security measures aimed at suppressing the people’s contempt for him and keeping them from speaking out, and whom history remembers for both for his successes and his tyrannical despotism, in that  time…”
In the time of that “king”’s rule, comes another king.

A baby, born amidst a bit of scandal and a shotgun wedding to a carpenter and his young bride in Bethlehem of Judea, which, to translate again, means either born in a tiny, nowhere town on the outskirts and in the shadow of powerful Jerusalem, or means to be born in a place of deep significance – the city of David, where David was born, and later anointed by Samuel, and then later crowned King of Israel. The place where the matriarch Rachel, Jacob’s wife, was buried many generations before, (her tomb is at the entrance to town). The place where Ruth and Naomi returned and lived. To the seat of power Bethlehem of Judea was an unassuming little town.  To the people of Israel, it was a city of identity and symbolism, a city of prophets, and kings, and divine direction “from of old.” 

We’re not even one whole line into this story and it’s already dangerous and provocative!

So what we’ve read so far could be stated, in other words, “In the time of a flashy, demagogue king of commercial success and paranoid dominance known throughout the region as “the king of the Jews”, after the King of the Cosmos was born, when the Messiah was a toddler hiding in plain sight in the modest, secret place of divine promise and deep and ancient authority…”
In THIS time
some magi came from the East to the center of Herod’s power asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.’ When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him…

Now, while there actually are some wise men in this story. Scholars, sages, scribes – they are not the magi, they are Herod’s advisors. The ones who are gathered to tell the one in power what he wants to hear. These chief priests and the rulers of the people confirm what the prophets foretold – that the messiah would come from Bethlehem. 
But the ones who followed a star from a distant land, the strangers, foreigners who didn’t belong in the picture, they were magicians, astrologers, mystics with a vastly different worldview and understanding of the universe than anyone else here.

And they were the ones who really knew what was going on. They came in obedience, following a celestial sign, and when they arrived they were overwhelmed with joy, and they humbled themselves before a child and a woman. And then, not one bit deferential to the whims and commands of the so-called rulers of this age, they defied orders and went home by another way. Their direction came from the Creator of the universe, who guided them with stars and dreams, and revealed himself to them in the vulnerability of a child whose life was under threat from those whom the world saw as powerful.

I love this story so much for so many reasons. I love imagining the Magi showing up, and what it does to the neighborhood. Their otherness: Other clothes, other language, other skin, and hair, and smells, and mannerisms, and customs. The little town is invaded by otherness, in the form of these people who recognized, and came to celebrate, that this whole world has been invaded by otherness: “The word became flesh and made his home among us.” God has come in! Their arrival declares, and now resides, incognito, next door.

And I love imagining Mary and Joseph’s tiny circle of co-conspirators and witnesses, those on the inside who get what is going on – which so far, if we’re counting, has only been the two of them, Zechariah and Elizabeth, a bunch of random shepherds – whom I like to imagine them staying in touch with – and old Simeon and Anna from the temple.  Can you imagine that crazy hodgepodge getting together for a support group?  You have all been part of this amazing thing, this story that is changing the world has changed you, and nobody else will get it, but as different as you all may be, you have each other, you all are in it together.

But then suddenly this tiny circle is blown wide open by these people from the other side of the world, who have nothing in common with any of you – they haven’t shared the same messiah hopes, or the same ways of being captive or oppressed. They haven’t learned the stories or believed the prophets; they haven’t longed for the salvation of Israel, and they know nothing of David, or Moses, or Abraham and Sarah, any of those whose lives had gone before, through whom God has shaped the way.
 
Here come the astrologers. The ones who aren’t even looking like you do to your God and faith of your people- instead they are looking beyond this planet altogether for direction. They are watching the stars and measuring the universe for order and revelation, and their story of longing for hope and deliverance couldn’t be more different than yours.  But also, at its essence, it is absolutely the same.  We all long for our source, the source of all life.  And when love comes in, they will load up their camels and cross deserts and mountains to welcome it, to kneel down before the one who brings in the real, who brings salvation. And in wonder you discover that you are in it together far beyond how you ever fathomed together could mean.

Two stories are playing out at the same time.
One is the story of a so-called king, locked away in his fortress, raging in fear, perceiving threats to his power and authority, using manipulation and flattery to coerce strangers- as though they are under his jurisdiction – to do his bidding, so that he can stamp out a potential usurper by any means necessary.
The other one unfolds in a simple home on a simple street, with an ordinary family opening the door to astonishing strangers from afar, who unexpectedly kneel before a mother with a child on her lap, and then give strange gifts and tell strange stories in a strange language, with charades and hand gestures, of a long journey led by a mysterious star, the very heavens pointing them to this precise place.

Oh, Herod. This story is so much bigger than you. It’s so much longer, deeper, stronger and more significant.  God is doing this thing.  God has come, God is here – and this thing is moving toward its eternal and everlasting conclusion.
No matter how it looks on the surface at any given moment, the heartbeat underneath is love, and the project of a whole world indivisibly connected to God and each other, of all nature in harmony, and all people in family, with God as the true sovereign, who rules in disconcerting vulnerability and incontestable strength – like it or not, that is happening. 
And it can never be thwarted. Not by ego-maniacal leaders, not by the wisdom of the sages, not by coercion or might, or brutal violence or tragic suffering, not by anything human beings can forget or demand, or screw up or succeed at.  Nothing we can do, or not do, can stop what God is already doing. It is unstoppable.
And yes, we do a whole lot to muck it up –accidentally or on purpose.  We can act like we are divided, we can kill, and blame, and shut down, and overlook each other. We can contaminate the earth and wipe out whole species; we can ravage our own hearts and minds and go numb or afraid – and fear can make us do terrible, heartless things. But no matter what, God is doing this.
It can happen through us or it can happen in spite of us, but God’s project of redemption and wholeness is under way, and it will not stop until all that remains is love.

Today’s scripture is a story about some, one especially, who missed it. Who lived in the way of fear, obsessed with his own security and power – and ultimately lost it anyway because death is real, triumph is short-lived, and permanent success is an illusion. 
And it’s a story about some who got it. They set down everything and went on a long journey to lay themselves down at the feet of it, to welcome in the divine with ecstatic joy.  They let it shape them, each moment, taking it in, noticing, listening, sharing, and then getting up and going home by another way because ultimately security comes not from what we build up for ourselves or tear down in others, but from trusting our lives to the Great I Am, who directs the whole universe in true wisdom. 

And even when this King, who starts out his time here submitting completely into the arms and care of those made in his image, grows up to be killed by these he has come in to love and save, even that does not stop the project, it only cements it deeper and opens it wider.
The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. Not ever.

We have a choice. We can look at what is right in front of us at any given moment, and we can live in fear. We can believe that the powers that rattle their sabers are the real powers, and that the terrible damage they can do – and they can do terrible damage – can break us, or make the world go off course.
But we are the others, brought into this story not through the genealogy and messianic longings of our people, but through the strangers who followed the stars. We are people called to lift our eyes to a further horizon.

The whole world is in on this conspiracy.  Every blade of grass, and creeping insect; every daily sunrise and blazing planet, light years away.  We are people of this infinite vista, this vast, cosmic perspective, not bound to look only to the situations in front of us like Herods, captive in fear to events and circumstances by which we stand or fall, driven to go after our enemies or hide in fortresses of false security.
We belong to another narrative; we are subjects of another king: the Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, eternal and omnipotent. 
And this King has come; and now there is nothing, not anything, that can separate us from the love of God.  God’s redemption is under way already and forever. 

Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. 
For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you. 
Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

Lift up your eyes and look around; they all gather together, they come to you;
your sons shall come from far away, and your daughters shall be carried on their nurses’ arms. 
Then you shall see and be radiant;
your heart shall thrill and rejoice.

In the tides of history, there is, as Ecclesiastes says, nothing new under the sun.  Nations rise and fall. Great leaders come and go, fools rise up and disappear, fear dominates and wars rage, babies are born and gardens are tended and beloveds die and are buried, their graves are covered with new fallen snow, and the sun melts the snow and spring comes again, and love, love, love, happens, in between, in all the nooks and crannies, weaving us together and weaving us into the story that cannot be derailed.  God’s story.  There is never anything so bad that it can alter the origin or the outcome – it all comes from God and to God it all returns.
And in the in between time, God comes to share it. 
And I, for one, want to share it too. I want to be in it together with all the otherness and beauty that is in it with me.
And I want to know that I am in it while it’s happening, not just when it’s all over, looking back to see that I mostly missed it.
I for one want to be guided by the deeper, eternal force of love, instead of the shallow whims of panic, the rise and fall of drama and dread, addicted to the non-stop fluctuations of worry, frenzy and regret.

This is God’s world. We are just living in it.
And whenever I feel rage, despair, or frustration at how things seem to be going, I want to remember that I have a choice.
I could stop. At any moment.
And I could quiet myself.
And notice, and let myself plug back into the real – where nothing can stop love and forgiveness, nothing can hinder hope and healing – not the most terrible thing I can imagine can stop God from acting. 
And I could remember that God wants to act through me.
And that I want God to act through me.

THAT’S the story I want to be in.
The one where I kneel before the hidden, humble king, a baby savior, who saves us from all the darkness within and without. The One who brings together strangers to surrender in joy to the love and hope embodied in their midst.

I want to be in the story where I hang onto ancient and cosmic promise
and don’t cower at bullies or venerate false power,
where I pay attention to dreams,
and find solidarity with people I think of as other,
and bear gifts for the unsuspecting,
and gladly lay down my life, a gift of gratitude to the God who comes in,
and am made willing to be redirected and sent home another way.

Fear and love. 
Power and weakness.
Rulers and strangers.
In those days, in these days.
Two stories unfold; two stories are always unfolding.
One, as dominant as it sometimes seems, and as compelling as it often appears, will end. It is mostly illusion, anyway.

The other story is the story of God.
Eternal and unstoppable.

Which story will you live?


Amen.

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