Sunday, February 18, 2018

To be made of dust and water

Daniel Bonnell, The Baptism of Christ


One Wednesday night in cold February, 2008, I stood in line holding my nearly six month old son on my hip as he sucked his little fist and clung to me with his other arm.   In front of me was a dear 99 year old woman. I watched the pastor smear ashes on her soft, wrinkled forehead and say, “From dust you came and to dust you shall return.” 
I felt my heart rise to my throat and the tears come to my eyes as I witnessed this and thought, not long now.
The pastor’s words felt very true as I watched this woman slowly turn to walk away, leaning heavily on her cane. The truth of our mortality, I thought, right before my eyes.
But I snapped back to attention when the next thing I knew, the pastor was pressing her ash-covered finger to my baby’s own soft, tiny forehead and saying the very same words to him, from dust you came and to dust you shall return. Then the tears did come. I didn’t want what was true for the old woman with a long, full life behind her and one foot in the grave to be true also for my tiny one, not long out of the womb with his whole life in front of him.  But it ‘s true of us all.
And Lent is about telling the truth.

We’ve begun our 40 days of Lent, to mirror Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness. It’s the 40 days that lead up to Easter (minus the Sundays, which for Christians are always days of resurrection).  And we begin Lent with these verses from Mark, that pack into a very small space Jesus’ baptism, his temptation in the wilderness, and beginning of his ministry – all in whirlwind kind of storytelling that leaves no room for details.  Baptism. Wilderness. Ministry. Ready, set, go!

Jesus comes up out of the waters of his baptism, and the Spirit like a gentle dove alights on him, and the voice of God says, “You are my child, Beloved One. I am delighted in you.” And then, suddenly, violently, the same Spirit drives him, still dripping, into the wilderness. 

The wilderness is a big motif in scripture and a big metaphor in our lives. Perhaps we think of wilderness as barren and lonely, and it often it is. Isolated, cut off from what gives you security, community, purpose and direction, wilderness feels somehow both wandering and stranded at the same time, with the very real possibility that you will not make it out alive. 
But in Mark’s breathless and brief telling, the wilderness feels almost crowded and noisy, Jesus was surrounded by wild beasts and inundated by temptations delivered by Satan, and ministered to by angels.

And Mark says almost nothing about the temptations.   The other gospels describe this in some detail, but Mark finds it sufficient to say he was tempted by evil incarnate, and leave the rest to the imagination.
Perhaps for Mark it doesn’t matter specifically what the temptation was; just that it was a real temptation.  He wasn’t teased by the devil, or given a safe opportunity to flex his refusal muscles or assert his boundaries, like practicing a language, or doing a training exercise.  This wasn’t a game; Jesus was genuinely tempted. 

Tempted, like we are.  Tempted to hunker in our corners and shout insults at the other side, rallying against our enemies. Tempted to give in to despair, or let anger swallow us up.  Tempted to make our world really small and really safe and really pleasant and ignore anything that feels too big or overwhelming, especially the plights of others.  Tempted to numb the pain – with alcohol, or medications, or pornography, or non-stop work or being sucked into the social media vortex, whatever dangerous addiction or mindless pastime we can find to help us not to feel bad, even if it means we wont feel much at all. 
Temptation is real and all of us face it. Jesus did too.

And in the wilderness, stripped down to desperation, everything offered to him - each deal or suggestion or idea that evil incarnate held before him - seemed really, really good, and he was tempted to give in, to take the sweet relief offered and be done with the struggle.  It was a fight within himself, a battle to resist, complete with doubt and second guessing and anxiety.  Oh, and also there were wild beasts.  Mark doesn’t elaborate on them either.
And then angels come and minister to Jesus in the wilderness.
And that’s all Mark has to say about them too.

But the story doesn’t begin in the wilderness; it all begins with baptism.
And so even as the sign of the ashes on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday made visible, traced over the blessing spoken on us at our own baptisms, we begin Lent here, too, the place of our identity, belonging and naming, Beloved. 
We begin at baptism. Today we will remember our own baptisms as we baptize little Rowen.

When God with us came into this life he took on death alongside us. Before his ministry begins, Jesus is plunged under the water symbolizing chaos and death, and pulled back into the light of breath and life. He metaphorically dies and is risen –and when we are baptized into his death and resurrection, we do the same.

We don’t do it very dramatically here- you should go home and watch the youtube video of the Orthodox priests in Georgia thrusting babies head first into water and then flipping them over and and dunking their feet, three times back and forth, head feet head feet head feet, in less than 5 seconds total, and then dropping them into an outstretched towel before these waterlogged little ones know what hit them and set up wailing.  
Here we just pour an almost tidy amount of water on the head.

But the intention is that it symbolizes our death and our resurrection, both our actual death and our death to all that keeps us from life –and a rising to life in Jesus’ own life and death, now to be defined by love, the Kingdom of God, the reality we choose to live in.

Rowen can’t choose this yet. He gets to be told later that God’s love was spoken and poured over him before he could do anything to earn or reject it. And that it will be the very last thing true about him as well. It never ends. Nothing he can do can make God stop loving him. This is what gets to define him now. Not any success or failure in his life, not anything anyone else thinks about him, or even what he thinks about himself. Only this: God naming him beloved. 
Brittany and Jonathan, when you hand your son over to the waters, you are handing him over to the real reality. You are saying, Yes, death will come for him. But death is not the final word. The final word is life – love, resurrection, hope.  And the first and last word of his identity is beloved, child of God, delight of God’s heart.

The most terrible temptations he will face, pure evil that is in this world, the wild beasts that will threaten to tear him apart, the lonely and barren places he will walk through in his lifetime, cannot separate him from God’s love, cannot change his identity, or his calling. Beloved, child of God in whom God delights.

This means Rowen can live without fearing death. He can live without dodging his vulnerability or hiding his weakness. He can live without avoiding or numbing pain, or striving to try to earn his belonging.
Rowen will be invited to live into his baptismal identity. From this day forward, he is called to discover what it means to belong to God and belong to all others – to let love be what defines him, to receive and give forgiveness, to join in the ministry of God always underway, and to know in the wilderness that he is not alone and that it doesn’t end there.

I wonder if the reason Jesus’ wilderness experience comes immediately after his baptism, is because to truly be human Jesus must come face to face with evil incarnate. Must experience despair, and fear, and temptation, and being ministered to.  
To take in that God has claimed and chosen you to join in God’s reality and bring others into it too, brings you right up against your own complete inability to fulfill that calling, makes you face the despair at the futility of it all, if it is in your own hands. 
Because if it is all in our own hands we are doomed. 

It’s been a hard week. A school shooting brings to light the existence of absolute evil, and the terrible suffering we can often ignore, along with the culpability and failure of us all to be who we are meant to be and to love as we are meant to love, and the utter impossibility of protecting those who need protection and preventing horrible things from happening.  Life is precarious and sometimes terrifying.  And we rage and wail at it and wring our hands and try to overcome our limitations but we are just as helpless to create good and stop evil as we’ve ever been.  The truth of our mortality is right before our eyes. 

And yet, and yet, Jesus comes out of the wilderness proclaiming to the world that there is another way.  That the time is right now.  That God’s transformation of the world is already happening. And that you, and I, and everyone else, is invited us to trust in it, and join in it too. Because it’s not in our hands at all, this is God’s show.

In this time before Easter when we enter Lent, we endeavor to repent, and to trust in this good news, because normally in life, we are not very good at either one of these things.

And then we go with honesty into a kind of wilderness, where we face our fears and the beasts that threaten to tear us apart, where we name evil incarnate,  and feel the temptations to numb or hide, or hurt, or hate, so enticing with their false promises of relief. We go to that place of wilderness honesty and vulnerability. We join Jesus there.

From dust we came and to dust we shall return, every single one of us, ready or not. Lent helps us tell that truth, but also the truth about death being real but not the end. Lent invites us to live into the absurd truth that in weakness and fragility, love overpowers and outlasts hate and evil. 
Because we have looked at death without looking away, we will be ready to welcome life. We will be ready for the good news of the resurrection that opens wide our hearts when we let them be broken first by the truth of our mortality.

Only then can the angels minister to us, and only then can we come out the other side not only proclaiming but believing it for ourselves – that the kingdom of God has come near.  That God’s love and salvation has come into the world, is coming even now, and will one day be all that endures.  Only then are we ready to truly live out our calling – brave and vulnerable and real. On Easter we come out of the wilderness proclaiming to the world that there is another way.  That the time is right now.  That God’s transformation of the world is already happening. And that you, and I, and everyone else, is invited us to trust in it and join in it too. Because it’s not in our hands at all, this is God’s show.

Beloved, children of God, delight of God’s heart, this is the story that defines you, this is the identity into which you are called, this is the truth spoken over you, and this is the life into which you are sent.  Baptism. Wilderness. Ministry. 
Let us join Jesus there and begin again.
Amen.

Monday, February 5, 2018

A Way to Pray: 40 Days Towards Love

A year ago, I was preaching at Collins Street Baptist Church in Melbourne, Australia, just after the US Presidential Inauguration.  Before I got up to speak, I looked out into a congregation of faces filled with empathy, and was asked this earnest question: 


"America is facing a time of great uncertainty with a change of leadership. There are many rejoicing and may grieving at the change. How can we best pray for you and people like you seeking to live the gospel in these times?"
And then these people on the other side of the globe committed to praying for my congregation throughout the year.  I was so moved by their care and their prayer that I was inspired to begin a weekly service of Prayer for the Nation.

These services took shape around a practice with 80+ Prayer Hearts, all bearing names of different people, groups or realities in our country. Every Friday morning, I sit with one or two others, and we hold a few of these hearts in our hands and feel our own hearts open toward God, our neighbors, and those we feel divided from.
This practice has become a significant spiritual discipline for me.  At the end of the week, sometimes the news, arguing, rallying, blaming, finger-pointing and fear-mongering feels like it has built up on my skin in dirty layers. My spirit is knotted tight in my gut and I feel weary and drained.  

But when I sit in this place for a half hour, my heart open up. 
I see all these names of people and places before me, and I feel my spirit soften. 
I choose 4 or 5. Sometimes they are ones that make me ache with sadness and longing, sometimes they are names that make me bristle with defensive anger. Often, it's a mix of both.  When I hold them in my hand and pray, I can feel the layers begin to melt away.  I release anxiety, fear, worry and frustration. I most often leave feeling peace.  It makes me ready to begin again in vulnerability and openness, to practice the belonging to God and to all others that changes the world.

Lent is just around the corner. And suddenly last week my friend Lilly, (who is an amazing Worship Curator), had an Epiphany - we should create a Lenten Prayer experience with these Prayer Hearts.

So we did!
And my congregation is going to use it through Lent.
It is not time-consuming to do, but it is challenging, because it gets underneath our defenses and labels to our own hearts, and seeks to let God move us towards love.

Our 40 Days Towards Love Lenten Prayer Tool is a downloadable resource that comes with a Leader's Guide and the 80+ prayer hearts, and is available in versions for individuals/families or communities/congregations, and in US or International formats.  It includes lots of bonus materials, like optional weekly action steps, prayer stations, Good Friday and Easter ideas, and ideas for using them beyond Lent. 

This kit is designed to use the Prayer Hearts for Lent, but these Prayer Hearts can be used ANY time, in LOTS of ways, (they could even be used in non-religious settings).

I loved creating this with Lilly, and I am thrilled to be sharing it with you. I hope it can be as meaningful for you, your family or congregation, as it has been for me.



See the 40 Days Towards Love Congregation Version
See the 40 Days Towards Love Individual/Family Version

Sunday, February 4, 2018

Time to Celebrate: Vulnerability & Ministry




(aka, LNPC State of the Union)


Nine years ago on Pentecost Sunday, we pulled out a big piece of chart paper in worship, and we asked ourselves a question together, that it was a new one for us.  The question led to a kind of a counting exercise.  
In a world of measuring and comparing, churches have felt compelled to calculate how successful they are by what some call, “butts and bucks,” that is, they count butts in the pews and bucks in the bank.  If their attendance is climbing and their financials look good, then they must be doing well. 
But Church isn’t a business we are building and it isn’t somewhere we go. It’s who we are. So on that day nine years ago we asked ourselves a different question, How are we being church?  and we started counting people.
We began by counting the obvious – butts in the pews.  Then we thought of some of the groups that used our space and counted them. We branched out and counted the Meals on Wheels volunteers and the people they delivered food to.  We counted the place we volunteered to serve meals and the people we serve them to.  Then we hit a kind of lull, and there was a pause.

And then someone said, “Dee has keys to all her neighbor’s houses, she lets their dogs out and maintenance people in.” Aaah. So we counted Dee, and her neighbors, and the kids she watched over on the bus stop corner every morning, and then the floodgates opened. Meals for a neighbor who was sick with cancer. Rides to treatment.  Tea with a lonely neighbor. A congregation on the other side of the country using a prayer practice we’d developed, we were on a roll.  It was a lucky month to do this in, because General Assembly was in town with a couple thousand Presbyterians in attendance, and our PW had sewn waterfall banners to be hung around a labyrinth there, and our worship team had set up a prayer chapel for the delegates to find respite in the midst of their work.  So when all was said and done, we had, in one month, well over three thousand people that we counted as “being church.”

It was an eye-opening, life-changing moment for our congregation, because it helped us to see that God was doing something here, right now, and we were already participating.
Comparing ourselves to bigger, more “successful” churches with extensive children’s programs and way more butts and bucks, or looking back longingly at the days we more closely resembled those churches, was missing where Jesus was: Here. Now. Instead, we suddenly discovered the gratitude, energy and calling of paying attention to who we already are, where God is already ministering in and through us, and joining in on that ministry on purpose.

It’s nine years later, and I want to bring you back to that focus today.
You all are followers of Jesus, trusters of God, participants in Love. You know that about yourselves, we remind each other of that, we look for ways to join in. That is Church. You are Church. It’s who you are.  Today is for celebrating that.

In our scripture today, Jesus had recently called the disciples to follow him.  The time is right now, he says, the kingdom of God is here, wrap your mind around this and trust in it. Join me and be part of it with me.

But if you were one the disciples that had walked away from your father and fishing business and thought you were going to go adventuring far away, you would be mistaken. Because almost the very next stop on this journey was back home to Peter’s house. 
His mother-in-law was very sick. As soon as Jesus got there they told him about her and he went and took her by the hand and she stood up and was healed.
Where Jesus goes, healing happens. And he begins in our ordinary lives and our own vulnerability. It starts with sharing our own needs and worries and joys, with seeing people and being willing to be seen.
And then the whole town arrives on the doorstep. With Jesus, the sick and demon-possessed are not hidden away somewhere else.  When Jesus shows up, the most vulnerable are brought out of hiding to the center of the community.
And the vulnerable become ministers.  When Peter’s mother in law was healed she got up from bed and reached out to serve them. They didn’t ask her to, she just did it; because in the Kingdom of God we all have a part to play in both receiving and in giving.

You, Lake Nokomis, disciples of Jesus, welcome the vulnerable to the center of the community, and you invite everyone to both receive and give. 

The disciples are about to discover, when Jesus hustles them right out of town and onto the next place, that they are not about to build a career right here at home dispensing Christ’s ministry to others, just like pastors are not actually the main ministers, and church buildings are not the main place ministry happens.  The disciples are called to invite and empower others to do it, because everyone is a minister, and our whole lives are for ministry. We are all meant to receive and to give ministry.

This kind of receiving and giving, this life of ministry, requires courage and vulnerability, which always go hand in hand.  Brene Brown found in her research with over 2,000 people, that no experience of courage ever comes without vulnerability.  

One of the most powerful moments of courage and vulnerability I have ever witnessed happened this year through you.  Marty had been ordained the year before to a Ministry of Dying – and in his vulnerability became a minister to the rest of us.
The moment I am thinking of happened at his Goodbye Service in March.  Just before the service began, Marty told me to please announce that he had been having stomach troubles during the day, and he may need to get up and go to the bathroom during the service, so that if that happened people could just sit tight and pause the service until he returned.

The courageous and deeply vulnerable act of admitting this and not hiding his weakness, and then asking me to tell everyone, and then when I did, feeling the whole room immediately move into that space on the other side of courage where things that scare us become no big deal, was astounding to me.

And then, we all got vulnerable and brave together.  We said outloud that Marty was dying, and it felt so awful and helpless, all of us crying through “what a wonderful world,” that I thought I might not make it, to be honest. 
We tell ourselves that being vulnerable can kill us.  But we stuck it out.  And when the song ended, we were all still sitting there, perfectly alive, with our wadded-up tissues in our hands. We had made it to that space on the other side of courage, and there fearlessness, humor, joy, and even peace, filled us and held us as we shared stories of Marty’s life.
Through courage and vulnerability, we entered into the Kingdom of God, where love is the biggest and truest thing, and all of the demons and ailments that keep us from real life are rendered powerless.  And his friends came there with us! Like the whole village gathered in the doorway that night at Peter’s house to watch what Jesus can do. 

In this community the vulnerable are ministers. 
Children are ministers.  Shy people are ministers.  Artists are ministers, and people with dementia are ministers. In this community the grieving are ministers and the rejoicing are ministers, those who feel settled and sure, and those in upheaval and transition are ministers.  Those of us with extra time on our hands, and those without a second to spare are all ministers.  Those in the prime of their lives and those who know their deaths are near are ministers.  Because we are all vulnerable, and we can be brave together, to bear each other’s burdens and share each other’s joys, and go out from here into our lives to do the same in the world. That is ministry. And we are all ministers. 

On the disciples’ first big gig, things went late into the night, with everyone gathered around watching Jesus do his thing.  But when the disciples woke up the next morning, Jesus was gone.  They hunted for him everywhere – is he in the bathroom? Did he go for a coffee?
No - went away to rest and pray alone.
This is the inhale to ministry’s exhale.  And we are learning it too – we call it Sabbath.  When we practice stepping away to rest and refill, to reconnect with God so we can reconnect with each other, we’re learning how to inhale so we can exhale.  
This makes no sense in a world, or a church, that wants to keep exhaling all the time, do more, help more, save more, say more.
But Jesus never hesitated to step away. 
This is God’s show, God’s world, God’s ministry we are sharing in.  Keeping it all going is not our job. The main thing here is love, and God is moving everything in that direction. Our job is to stay human, to come back to whose we are and who we are.  And then our job is to seek Jesus and join him in that love.

On Saturday Evenings you come in here with your babies and your worries and you set them down and let the music and the candlelight hold you.  You let yourself pray in whatever ways you feel led.  You inhale.  Meals to new parents, Prayer for the Nation, two Sundays a month to stop and be, we have woven it into our life together – watching for ways to inhale, and helping each other inhale too.

But the disciples don’t quite get it yet, so they hunt him down and throw a fit at him for disappearing right when things were going gangbusters.  Everyone is looking for you!  Because, of course, Jesus should stay put and set up shop, right? Build some pews and put butts to count in them? Establish a successful healing and demon-casting out business that grows bigger every year? People will come from miles around! 

But this isn’t about something you can build, compare and measure; this is about participating in the Kingdom of God. The whole village is now filled with ministers. So it’s time to go invite others into this reality too.

Here’s the thing, it simply will not work to try to make Jesus stay in the last place he brought healing and hope to continue doing the same thing in the same way. 
So often the church looks back and says, That was amazing! That is who we will be from now on! And then we try to recapture the magic, and bottle the formula, and sell enough of that idea or program to at least break even.  Everyone is looking for you, Jesus, where did you go? Come back to where we are!
But Jesus doesn’t play that game – he’s on the move!  And so we have to keep asking – Where are you now, Lord? What are you doing in our lives right now, God? What are you doing in and through this community right now? Where are we being called to join you in the world right now?

Already in this new year, your session has spent upwards of 15 hours in discernment together, asking those questions, seeking God’s will, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. And on the other side of this process came the gratitude, energy and confidence that God is calling us this year to deeper caring, sharing and community, in three ways:

The first is in our area of WORSHIP:
Worship returns us to trust in God, and reconnects us in belonging to others. It turns out that this practice we’ve been doing of giving 10% of our income to other expressions of God’s ministry in the world is significant and transformative, and can be an act of true worship. We believe God is calling us to deepen our tithing practice - there is much more potential there than we have realized, acknowledged, or tapped into.  How can we connect more with the communities we are giving to?  How can the tithe money be merely the “practice run” that opens us to deeper ministry with and alongside others in the world?  How can we share more widely as a congregation the joy of choosing recipients and giving?  How might God use this act of tithing to continue to change us and call us to generosity in our own lives, opening our hearts more widely to trusting God and belonging to others?

The second calling is in our HOSPITALITY:
Providing a place of hospitality and a community of welcome is central to our calling right now. Session believes God is calling us to invest in this building as an important resource for ministry. Our building has more groups meeting in it than ever, but the roof will need to be replaced soon, and for decades we’ve lamented inaccessible bathrooms, and gathering room doorways too narrow to fit a wheelchair through.  More than a decade ago, the lack of an elevator is all that kept us from housing after school tutoring program, and without one now our space is a barrier to people and groups fully participating in activities here.  Session determined that it is time to begin dreaming and planning for the future ministry in this place, by beginning a capital campaign to upgrade and improve the building.  How can we prepare for who God wants to bring to this place and be ready for the ministry God will do here?

The third calling is, of course, our SABBATH calling:
God is calling us to deeper connection through Sabbath, and particularly this year, through Sabbatical – it’s the inhale that fuels the exhale of ministry.  It’s meant to reground us and reconnect us to God and to each other. As we ponder the three months we have set aside for this, the question to you all is, What would make your hearts sing?
While my family and I are off inhaling and heartsinging, you will be here with each other doing the same.  Today in our annual meeting, you will get to do some initial brainstorming about that. What would feed this community with play, fun rest?  What might deepen your relationships with each other and grow your trust in God’s care? How can you use those three months for renewal and joy?  Really taking this time to inhale as a congregation makes us ready for all that God wants to do in and through us as ministers!

We are not going to do a counting exercise today, because it turns out ministry is not an addition problem that originates with us, it’s multiplication that begins in God, and spreads infinitely through our lives, always inviting us to join Jesus where he is right here and now.  It can only be measured in, of all things, fruit – like joy and peace and patience, generosity and kindness.  And it is encountered in the intangible but most real things, like vulnerability and courage, inhaling and exhaling, trust, and love. The disciples in our story today are just are beginning to learn that, and we are learning it to.

So let’s celebrate today, Church! Let’s share the stories of where God is already ministering in and through us, and let’s join in the Kingdom of God on purpose once again! 



(PS - Perhaps many of you might not think of annual reports as particularly interesting, let alone utterly delightful documents. But I will tell you, this year, our annual report is utterly delightful. Because in addition to sharing some of the ways we are joining Jesus in ministry, it has messages from some of the people who have gathered in the doorway. 
There is a message from a pastor in New Zealand who came to learn from us, an author who wrote about Sabbath and included our story, and a few of the folks who use this building for ministry we might never see.  There are stories about our “Pentecost Practice-run” inspiring the same in Central, and maybe even another one in England!  Prayers we’ve written spread far and wide, and thank you notes came back to us from people in the places we’ve tithed.  When you live in the way of love and trust, it draws others to be part of the Kingdom of God too. Read the report. You'll love it.).




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...