Even when we forget

Genesis 12-21 

I spent several days this week gathered in Maine with pastors who have been in a grant together for three years called “From Relevance to Resonance,” seeking to orient our lives and ministry work around the action of God. We gathered to talk about how fast our world moves, and how what keeps us human is not striving to keep up but receiving the resonant moments of uncontrollable aliveness that awaken us to the world and reconnect us to God and each other. And we discussed how we want to lead in the church to help each other pay attention to God. But even these people, who were literally there talking about trusting that God is real and really does stuff, found ourselves forgetting that God is real and really does stuff.  

It’s so easy to slip into thinking that it’s up to us – whatever it is. That we are supposed to make God’s work happen or bring about God’s future.  This is a foolish and dangerous mistake, but nevertheless, there you go. We all keep making it.

And with that, we turn to our ancestor, Abram.  God promises Abram that his descendants will number the stars, and through Abram’s line the whole world will be blessed.  But there is no way for Abram and his wife Sarai to fulfill this promise – they can’t create a multitude, let alone a single child. This blessing has to come from God. 

The covenant God made with all creation back with Noah, to never give up on the world, gets legs in the covenant God makes with Abraham. God chooses one family to know God and be in direct relationship with God, so that through them God might gather the whole beloved world into God’s Shalom, fullness of life.

So, leaving everything they know, all the ties and security they had, uprooted and wandering, Abram obeys. They go where God leads them, with only God’s promise holding them. 

But if you’ve read the whole scripture texts we’re covering today, you’ve seen that they keep on forgetting God is the one leading. And God has to keep reminding them that they are not in it to save their own skin; they are in this life to know and love God, and to let God make them a blessing to the world.  

God didn’t choose Abram and Sarai because of their great character or their unique skills. They were not especially worthy or extraordinary.  They became the people in whom God’s story is concentrated because God’s goodness and mercy can be revealed in any life, every life. God chose these people to be the ones through whom God would bless the world and so that is what happens. 

But it’s a really long wait. Really long, and even though God keeps reminding them their offspring will number the stars and will bless the world, instead of trusting God to fulfill the promise through them, Abram and Sarai get tired of waiting and take things into their own hands. They attempt to produce what God has promised to provide. 

A sure sign we’re NOT living in the covenant love of God is when we instrumentalize others.  When other people are not siblings in the human family who belong to God and to us, but obstacles to resist or despise, or objects to use or discard, we have turned our back on God and each other and made this about saving ourselves. 

So they make their slave-girl into a means to an end. They try to transcend their own limitations and their own embodiment by using her body to do God’s work for God.

Only once this thing they’ve schemed - that denies their belonging to God and violates their belonging to each other - achieves what they’d hoped it would, things get ugly. 

When the pregnancy begins to show suddenly it’s no longer like placing an order from an online shopping site. They are human beings, all, in this together. The way sin plays out, if we remember Adam and Eve, is that when we forget that God is God and we are in God’s loving care, when we violate our belonging in mutuality to one another, what comes next is shame, blaming, hiding and competing. We’ve moved ourselves to the center of our story, so the people around us become a threat. God cannot be trusted, we are lost in the consequences of our sin, unable to free ourselves from the cycles of fear, anger and selfishness that got us there in the first place. We are unavailable to God or one another, and the life-giving moments of resonance that reconnect us cannot be received. We are cut off from the life we are made for, life in relationship. Inaccessible and isolated, we only relate to the world through aggression. 

Remember, in the days of Noah, humankind became so violent, and ‘pursued only evil continually’ that they lost their humanity, and wreaked destruction on God’s beloved creation. This grieved God so badly that God almost wiped everything out, returning the world to nothingness to start over. But God’s deep love for creation and God’s mercy prevailed, and God committed to never give up on us. 

When Sarai abuses the girl she flees to the wilderness, which was like plunging into nothingness, into non-being. It’s the untamed wild where, centuries later, the Holy Spirit will drive Jesus, right after he is baptized. Barren, desolate and dangerous, the wilderness is the physical location of utter isolation. At that time deities were always attached to people and places, so to head to nowhere was to go literally into godforsakenness, to go where the gods don’t even go, to lose the groundedness in time and space that define us as creatures. She is fleeing to most certainly die.

But instead of becoming nothing, nowhere, we’re told exactly where Hagar is. “God found her by a spring of water in the wilderness- the one on the way to Shur.” 

God found her because God was looking for her. God looks for us. God goes where no decent god goes, into the wilderness and nothingness, to find us. God calls Hagar by name-  the first time she’s addressed that way in the story.  God says, Hagar, slave girl of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going? 

Why does God ask questions? It’s not like God doesn’t know the answers. When Adam and Eve hide naked from God in the garden and God asks, Where are you?  Of course God knows right where they are. So why ask? God asks questions to invite us back into the conversation. God brings us back into relationship and response. God addresses us as persons, and summons us back to the belonging that holds us.  

 “I am running away,” Hagar answers God. 

God meets Hagar in her despair. Tell your story to me Hagar, so it will no longer be what has power over you.Let me bear with you your experience of nothingness so that I may heal you and restore you to your true identity as one whom I care for who is called to care for others.  

After God hears Hagar and ministers to her, God tells her to go back. Not to a place, but to a person, Go back to Sarai. Humbly submit to her.  Instead of Sarai forcing her slave girl to submit, Hagar, seen by God, is going to Sarai in freedom and offering to care for Sarai. It’s Jesus’ Turn the other cheek–  a self-emptying action that requires that you see me as a person with agency, choosing to address you, another person. 

No longer as an object to use, or an enemy to despise, they must encounter one another as persons. From the nothingness of despair, Hagar is restored to personhood and agency, and sent to minister to Sarai, who is trapped in her own wilderness of regret and rage.  

 Then God makes a covenant with Hagar, giving her a future and a promise greater than any wrongs done to her. Her story will live on through generations too numerous to count – a promise mirroring the one given to Abram and Sarai. 

God pulls us out of nothingness and gathers us into the future God is bringing into the world. This is God’s future, not ours. So we don’t get to decide when or how it comes. We get to watch and join in as it comes.

Finally God gives Hagar the name for her son, swaddling him in promise before he’s even born. Ishmael means “God listens.” Then something quite marvelous happens: Hagar names God.  She is the first person in scripture with the boldness to name God. She calls God The God who sees.

Hagar returns to Sarai, and ministers to her in her despair. She shares the story of being found by God; she comes trusting in the promises of a God who sees us.   

Fourteen years later Sarai conceives, and at 90 years old her waiting finally end. God’s promised blessing is fulfilled through utter impossibility, because it’s God who acts, and not we who make God’s work happen or bring about God’s future. And Sarai, whose name meant ‘Princess’ will become Sarah, ‘Mother of Nations.’ alongside Abraham, “Father of a multitude of nations.”

And wouldn’t it be great if human beings just got it and stayed in right connection to God and each other all the time? But we don’t. Abraham and Sarah’s story continues, and they do a lot of dumb stuff with bad consequences. They keep forgetting God is the one leading. And God keeps reminding them that they are not in it to save their own skin; they are in this life to know and love God, and to let God make them a blessing to the world. And our bible includes all of that because this is not about extraordinary people doing great things, it’s about the God who chooses ordinary people to participate in God’s healing and trust in God’s promises together. 

So often in life things feel impossible and hard. But this God moves in impossibility. This God goes to the desolate places where the gods of this world will not go, and asks questions that set us free. This God listens, and sees, and calls us to minister to real people, and live into God’s future with hope. This God is so committed to loving and saving the world that God comes into this world as one of us, vulnerable and weak, and then plunges into the godforsakeness of death, so that not even that death separate us from God. 

God’s covenant with us means God’s grace comes first, before we mess up, claiming us for love. And God’s grace comes last, after all is said and done, claiming the world for love. And in the middle as we muddle, God’s grace continues claiming us for love. 

Humans can be horrible. And humans can be amazing. We can be courageous and loving, kind and brave. And we can be selfish and awful, calloused and uncaring. If the trajectory of the world were up to us, clearly, we’d be doomed. It’s easy to go down that path and assume that’s where it’s all headed. But God is real rightnow, and does stuff right here, in our very own lives, and way over there in the lives we can only watch from afar with sorrow and helplessness. God is real and doing stuff in the world.  We’re invited to trust this and join this.

Today we will baptize Imogen into the covenant family of God, this family that includes Isaac and Ishmael, Hagar and Sarah, Abraham and Noah and Eve and Adam, and you and me too. Her middle name already means “grace” in Japanese, and when we make the sign of Christ’s death and resurrection upon her, her new first name will forevermore be “Beloved, Child of God.”  

And the God who is real will really do stuff in Imogen’s life.  And we are here for it. We’re here to help her watch and join in. We’re here to listen to her stories, and encourage her in ministry, and be open together to those resonant moments we can’t control when we taste the fullness of it all. We’re here to live into the promises of God together, and practice trusting God to fulfill those promises through us. We get to practice living bravely into God’s reality even when it’s impossible, or especially then, seeing the world in all its beauty, and not shying away from its pain, because God comes into nothingness to minister to us and sends us there to minister to others.  

And because we all forget and remember together, one day, Imogen will undoubtedly remind you in some way or another of God’s grace, the love that claims us, and in this way, like those before us, we will continue to live in God’s covenant of shalom that gathers us and holds the world forever. 

Amen. 

 

What's most true really IS true

Yesterday our car was stolen. From our driveway. With my purse inside.

We didn’t discover this until around 10 am when it was time to drive somewhere and the car was just… gone. Looking back at the ring cam, we saw Andy strolling without pause across the naked concrete at 7:30 on his way to class. I walked the dog at 6:30 am through the empty driveway without a thought. Further back, 4:23 am, car. 5:23 am, no car. It pops like a bubble out of the picture.

   

It took another fifteen minutes after discovery of the stolen car to realize my purse (and key fob) had been inside. The afternoon before, I had picked up Maisy after a class canoe trip, and carried in her camping gear instead of carrying in my purse. 

My stomach dropped, my heart started pounding and my mind spinning. No. No! 

I was supposed to leave in 36 hours to fly to New Jersey for a conference, to stay in a hotel and rent a car to visit Owen. How would I do these things without my driver’s license? Credit cards? How would Andy travel that afternoon if our accounts are compromised? How far had the damage already reached? How could I stem the risk?  Now I would spend the whole, frantic day doing damage control.  

Our 18-year-old neighbor, Gigi, came over.  While I made agitated phone calls to the police, insurance, and credit cards, pacing the house and swearing liberally while on hold, Gigi and Maisy calmly phoned the ring company and car company and held ground under my swirling.  Pulse racing, hands cold and fingers tingling, I could feel the adrenaline rushing through me. People asked me numbers I had memorized and I couldn’t remember them. Maisy deftly swept through her photos to zoom in on our license plate and calmly recite it to me so I could tell the police.

But for all the drama of yesterday, a clear and unexpected theme rose up: kindness. Human connection. I believe with my head, and even with my heart, that we all belong to God and we all belong to each other. I believe this, and preach this, and try to live my life in this direction. But yesterday I lived it in my body. In my neighbors. In my friend who said his afternoon was free and he’d be happy to pick me up to run errands with me, and another friend who texted me this poem (from Leaf Litter by Jarod K. Anderson) that was somehow exactly what I needed in that first half hour.

I like to tell people we are all ministers, made in the image of a ministering God, here on this planet to care for one another and be cared for. And then yesterday I was cared for by the police officer who told me it was not my fault – purse and keys inside or not – I did not steal a car.  I was ministered to by the neighbor who immediately pulled her own car around front and said, “I’m not using it today, take it.” I was cared for and carried forward by the cheerful new bank manager, in her achingly earnest office, with artful stacks of leadership books and diagrams of positive affirmations pinned up above her desk behind silly photos of her two dogs. She opened one of the many, tidy binders and swiped through pages of screenshots to figure out how to make me a new debit card on the spot. “I don’t know much about the system yet, but this, I think I can do!” When my body hit the chair in the DMV, holding only a borrowed car key, and my passport, insurance statement, and checkbook, I felt myself go still inside. Absolutely motionless. The roiling urgency drained from me and pooled up on the floor, leaving me empty and quiet. I had made all the calls I could make. The cards were locked down. The insurance was handled. The police report was filed. There was nothing for me to do but wait. I didn’t have the attention span to scroll my phone, or focus on the gripping novel on my kindle app. I just sat. I sat amongst other humans for an hour and a half. And what I witnessed was kindness. Belonging in action. Slouching in seats and leaning along the wall with sixty other people from all walks of life, in all manner of need, we helped each other figure out which lines to stand in. Nodded greetings. Gave up chairs for one another. The women behind the counter were infinitely patient and pleasant, putting their full, competent attention onto each individual person when their number came up.  Yesterday evening my doorbell rang. It was the newish neighbor from across the street, the one I don’t know well. Earlier in the day, on my way to the bank, she’d stopped me. She’d seen in the online neighborhood group that my car had been stolen, and had wanted to express her condolences, “We’re all in this together,” she’d said. And she too had offered her car. “I barely use it. I’m retired. Next week we are leaving for six months to travel. Seriously, I’d be honored if you used it.” I thanked her and was deeply moved by her kindness. We exchanged phone numbers. But truthfully, there was no way I’d be borrowing her car. I believe we all belong to each other. But in practice, I prefer to handle things myself.  When I answered the door last night, she was standing there with her keys and insurance card. She opened my hand and pressed them in my palm. “Please,” she said, “take it. I believe God puts us across each other’s paths for a reason.” I started to cry a little. That made her cry a little. “May I?” she asked, and she leaned in and gently hugged me. Before dark I pulled her car into our driveway and texted her my gratitude. She answered, “Wishing you a better day tomorrow.” I replied, “Today was pretty amazing actually. Kindness everywhere.” Yesterday our car was stolen from our driveway with my purse inside. I spent the whole day doing damage control. The most I could muster foodwise was a 4 pm bowl of the same oatmeal I’d eaten at 6 am.   But last night I went to bed full.  I fell asleep utterly awake to the reality of the love that holds us, humbled by the avalanche of care that had been showered on me, and feeling tangibly the belonging that binds us all together. Thanks be to God. Amen.

How our story begins

Genesis 1-3 (we're using a paraphrase from The Peace Table story bible)

On a walk to the park this week with the 12^th graders from my daughter's school, the German foreign exchange started excitedly pointing and laughing at a row of yellow school busses parked together. She whipped out her phone and snapped photos to show her friends. How American! 

What is “American” culture? High school proms and hot dogs? Hollywood? Infighting? As Americans, are we connected to a shared history or cultural identity that we feel comfortable naming or claiming or can even agree on? (To be fair, our nation isn’t even 250 years old). 

 

Even if you are someone with a strong connection to your particular heritage and cultural identity—like Joyce and Norm and their the Czech Hall, where in two weeks we could all go eat kolaches that Joyce will help make, and hear Czech songs and watch Czech and Slovak dancing—as modern people, more tuned in to our newsfeeds than our neighbors, it's easy to feel these days like we are rootless. How many of us know stories about our grandparents’ parents (or even their names)? In this day and age, each one of us, it seems, is now carving out a life for our own selves from the endless buffet of options. To navigate this super confusing and overwhelming life, we turn to WebMD, YouTube how-to videos, Amazon reviews, and political commentators. 

How do we really know who we are? Where do we turn to remember whose we are?

 

Today I want to remind you that no matter what else is true about who each of us is, we are all people of a deeper story that extends beyond time. We belong to a tradition, ancient and broad, spanning the whole globe and stretching thousands of years into human history. Like all family trees there have been rotten branches, tragedies and trials, happiness, healing and hope.  Among our shared ancestors are villains and heroes, poets and prophets, but mostly ordinary women, men and children whose lives and choices became part of our legacy. 

 

And this is the book of our story. The Story. The biggie. The story of our faith, our ancestors, the tradition that holds us and the God who came in to share this life with us. 

 

This book is messy and it’s confusing, because it is super ancient, and we have so little in common with people who lived so long ago. We don’t even understand how they tell stories, or why, so sometimes we read this book like it’s trying to make us do something, or think something, or coach us on earning God’s approval or avoiding God’s condemnation. 

 

But really, this is a family scrapbook. In this book a whole bunch of different people, in different places and different times, experience in different ways, who this God is and what God is up to in their lives. So, in this way, we also have lots in common with the people in this book. Because we get scared too, and we don’t like feeling weak or vulnerable either, and we tend to think we are not worthy of love, and we compare ourselves to others, and we turn our backs on people who need us, and we wonder what a good life is and how to live it, and we forget whose we are and who we are all the time, just like they did.

Our ancestors told the stories, and shared the poems, and recounted the battles, and prayed the prayers, and sang the songs that made it into this book, because doing these things reconnects us to whose we are and who we are.  

 

But this is also more than a book. It’s a glimpse into a story that’s still going on right now. Christ has risen and lives in and through us, so this book helps us ask who God is and what God is up to here. And we trust that when we read it, the Holy Spirit speaks to us, and helps us hear and see the God of our ancestors right now.

 

And, like any story, the beginning tells us right away whose story this actually is. It all begins with God.  

From nothing, emptiness and impossibility, in the dark, God creates.

God doesn’t paint a still-life and hang it on the Almighty wall. God sets in motion an interconnected eco-system of energy and synergy, plants and animals, days and nights, tides and seasons, creeping things and flying things, microscopic and cosmic geometry and color, joyful peace and noisy harmony. 

And every time God makes more, God looks at it all and calls it good. Ooh! That’s good, and that’s good, and that’s good too! This life is good! Goodness is the beginning and the reason for it all. Our tradition gives us the word Shalom – wholeness, peace, in the complete belonging of all things to God and each other. 

 

When God finishes making everything and calling it good, God rests, and calls the rest good too.  In Shalom, God hangs out with creation and just enjoys watching life be itself.

 

So the first thing we know is that the story of us begins with God. And this world is good and life is for enjoying goodness with God. 

 

Our Peace Table story bible does a great job giving us the gist. But if you decide to read along in the Bible you will see in that in these three chapters we’re looking at today, Genesis actually has two different stories of creation. 

 

The first one we just saw: God creates, God calls it good, night and morning then another day, makes more stuff and calls that good too. In this one, human beings are the pinnacle of creation, made last, and made in God’s image to share in God’s care for all the rest of it. Humans are invited into the work of God and also the rest of God, as agents of shalom.

 

In the second version of the beginning, human beings don’t come last. The human creature comes before the rest, held in God’s very arms with life breathed into its nostrils from God’s own breath.  And this earth creature is there to watch God finish creating, gets to see the plants and trees grow right up out of the ground. God places the creature in a beautiful garden - here is the home I made for you, for you to live in and care for.

 

Then God chooses to be vulnerable. The uncreated Creator loves the earth creature and invites the human to love God in return. But in order for a yes to really be yes, there has to be a no as well. Is it love if there is no other option?  So, among all the fruit trees of the garden, God puts one tree the human must not eat from.This is the boundary I set up; here you do not cross. 

 

And then God notices it doesn’t work for there to be just one human. There needs to be another, a partner, “a helper” it says, the way God is a helper (same verb in the Hebrew).  For there to be the image of God there needs to relationship, like there is relationship in the Trinity itself, so God begins creating animals from the dust, forming them and bringing them one by one to the earth creature– what about this one?

And whatever the human names the animal, that is what it becomes. Side by side, God and human, creating and naming. And as much joy as there is watching the rest of life come alive, there is not another creature that can be a fit for the human. 

 

So God causes the lone earth creature, literally this adam, from the earth, adamah, to sleep. Then, instead of from the dust, God takes from the material of the creature itself and forms another – like it, but different. And now there is male and female, sameness and difference, together reflecting the image of God that couldn’t be reflected in one solitary earth creature. The old creature has ended, and the new creature awakens to belonging, and they are named Adam and Eve. They are both naked and not ashamed. They are fully themselves with God and each other, with no desire to be anything other than who they are, no fear or mistrust, and no reason to hide. They’re together in shalom, in the goodness and belonging of God.

 

Now we return to the part of this story where fear comes in and mistrust begins, when the snake convinces the humans that God can’t be trusted, and suggests, why not be in charge like God instead of living as creatures who belong to God and each other? So they cross the boundary of God’s care and do the one thing God told them not to do.

 

Now they really do know it all: all the potential for things to go wrong as well as right, all the places for pain and lies, all the ways we are different and could hurt each other. And they get scared, and sad, and worried, and jealous, and suspicious. Trust is broken. Filled with shame and fear, and they hide from God. 

 

But God never lets go. God never gives up.  God even has compassion for our shame. God meets us where we are and gives us what we need. So, God calls them from their hiding and clothes them. Like a parent dressing a child in jammies before bed, God wraps them up in love and takes care of them.

From the very beginning, and no matter what, we are God’s beloved. And in all of our beginnings and no matter how we might turn away from God or try to be God, God keeps taking care of us and God’s story of Shalom keeps going. 

 

When we go to school and to work, when we stop working or finish school, when we are young and when we are old, when we feel secure and when we feel lost, when we feel connected and when we’re ashamed of what we’ve done, when we care for others and when we break trust, when we remember and practice our belonging, and when we let fear tell us who we are and whose we are and we hide from God and each other, no matter what and always, God holds us in love. 

 

Our story starts and ends with the real, living, present God. 

You and I are people of Shalom, meant to share in God’s care for the world. We belong to a God who takes emptiness and impossibility and brings life out of nothingness and light into darkness, and invites us to rest in the goodness of God. This reality is our root system, our culture, our shared language, and the lens that shapes how we see the world. Let’s keep telling each other our story.

Amen.

It needs to said

 Ephesians 4:25-5:2

Paul can be really esoteric and theological, with paragraph long sentences that strain the brain. But then suddenly he’ll get really practical, punchy and concrete. All that to say, I wonder what was happening in the community that Paul felt the need to specifically address the thieves in the church. 

A few decades ago, we had some thieves in this church. I called Gary for the story and he directed me to Dick. Dick was on the counting team and began hearing from folks that their offering checks weren’t being cashed out of their bank accounts. This went on for a couple of weeks, and he asked Warren to look into it. Warren had heard that a few kids had been spotted going into the bathroom during worship. So he went to investigate, and found a stash of checks stuffed behind the radiator. 
 
For these details, I called Warren. The boys had been pocketing the cash from the offering plate and ditching the checks where they thought they would never be found. 
They were called into a meeting with the pastor. She told them if they’d amend their ways, she would not turn them into the police. They agreed to give up their stealing. But things were tense for a while. They’d taken some $1500 of the congregation’s money. And their parents were prominent members, embarrassed by their kids’ behavior. 
Warren had the kids do things around the church building, like yard work, cleaning the toilets, and miscellaneous painting jobs inside and outside the building. He set the number of hours that they had to work off and tells me he thinks they learned a lesson. Those kids presumably grew up to lead productive lives. 

The congregation showed those boys kindness, and the kids themselves learned they were not defined by their violation but claimed by the community as beloved children of God. 

This letter to the Ephesians says Christ has broken down all dividing walls and made us one new humanity. Our personhood is upheld in the upholding of each other. We’re not apart and alone, we’re in this life together. And our worth and place is not determined by what we do, but by what Christ has done. 
 
“Thieves must give up stealing,” Paul says. Fair enough.  Seems like good advice. But Paul doesn’t say “Don’t steal because it’s wrong.” Or “Have a little self-respect.” Or, “Do some good, honest work to make something of yourselves in the eyes of others.”  Paul says, “Give up stealing, do honest work with your hands, so that you have something to share with those in need.” 
We are not restored to our humanity and belonging by reclaiming some individual, personal dignity. We are restored to our humanity and dignity when we can act for one another in belonging.
 
The way of life Paul is describing is counter-cultural. It’s counter-intuitive. He’s just gotten finished saying we’ve been given new life in Christ, so live like what’s true is true. And here’s what a good life looks like. Then lots of concrete, even ordinary advice, plus a word to the thieves.
 
So, if Christ has made us free for a life of connection and fullness, how do we live this life?
First, Paul says, it’s putting aside falsehoods and telling the truth in a falsehood peddling world.  It’s normal for us these days to tolerate and spread rumors we know are not true to cut people down (as J.D. Vance has discovered).  We regularly claim complicated things are simple, and treat complicated humans like they’re simple. With photo filters and curated posts, we make our lives look sparklingly authentic and perfectly genuine, while hiding our weaknesses and hiding behind our politics or our labels.  
Paul says tell the truth. Why? Because we belong to each other. When the world says we’re apart and against, and we need to be thick-skinned and self-sufficient, we tell the truth of our belonging and our vulnerability, we live the truth of our shared humanity. 

Second, and not unrelated, Be angry, Paul says, but don’t sin.  My friend Jason is a pastor. After the death of his grandparents his family was feuding over the inheritance. On the way into church one Sunday morning, he got a call that his uncle had burned his grandparents’ farmhouse to the ground.  When he arrived at church Jason was full of anger and sorrow. 

But instead of hiding his anger behind religious platitudes and pretending everything was fine, he told the truth. He stood in front of his congregation and shared about the phone call. Then he said, “Right now I am really, really angry. If you need pastoral care this week, here is another pastor you can call.” 

To smother anger is to take it to bed with you, to bring it into your next day, and the day after that, to feed it until it grows so large that it turns around and smothers you. Don’t make room for the devil, Paul says, which is to say, don’t entertain temptation. Don’t indulge the craving for revenge or control. 

When Pastor Jason confessed his pain and anger to the people of God, he leaned into the belonging that holds us. And in doing so, he both invited care, and also showed those who might have been afraid of their own anger or sorrow, that if they shared their pain they would be cared for too. He trusted that God would move him through the anger and out the other side, though at the moment he didn’t see the way, so he let himself be where he was, where Jesus is, where Christ can us.

Third, in this life of new humanity in Christ, Paul goes on to remind us that what we say has power. How we speak to each other matters. Our words can tear people down, our words can build people up. 
 It’s like the Rumi quote Kristen always has at the ready:
Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates. At the first gate, ask yourself, “Is it true?” At the second gate ask, “Is it necessary?” At the third gate ask, “Is it kind?” ~ Rumi

Cruelty is lazy. And can even be momentarily thrilling. It’s rewarded these days too. To let fear rule us, to turn off our hearts and brains and let the reactive part of us be in charge for a minute is just easier. It feels good to be the windshield and not the bug.
But then, if we’re paying attention, it feels terrible. Because to act with malice toward each other is to act against our own humanity. When we try to unbelong others we deny the very belonging that defines us. 

The currency of the Kingdom of God is kindness. Like the kindness the congregation and pastor showed those little Lake Nokomis thieves 30 years ago, and the kindness Paul calls the thieves in Ephesus to show to those in need by giving up stealing and working hard to make a decent living in order to care for others. 
 
Our words, Paul suggests, can give grace. Astoundingly, this means that the God of the universe can speak to people’s hearts through our mouths. People may hear the truth of their own worth and place because of what you and I say. And if our words, and our actions, can participate in the activity of the Divine claiming and healing the world, what is a good life if not that? 
 
The underlying, irrevocable fact Paul is trying to get across is we are all in this together. Kindness is living our belovedness with each other.
But lordy, it takes a beat. A pause to shift there. Thank God Paul says all this, because it all needs to be said. The way of belonging to God and each other needs to be remembered and practiced together. I need to remember and practice it. I need to be pulled out of myself to truly see others, even sometimes those others I love most in the world. We need a confession-repentance kind of deep breath moment of realizing we’ve slipped back into living the bondage we’ve been freed from, and turning our hearts back to God. Because in our own power we can’t muster the kindness, or brave the truthfulness, or extend the forgiveness, or do the not slandering, especially if we’re angry, or scared, or just plain tired. And we’ve had plenty of practice at the spite, apathy and lies.
 
But Paul just got finished saying we are being rooted and grounded in love. Like plants, with roots nourished deep below the earth, and sun shining from above, you and I are being actively tended and cared for, so that what comes from us and lives through us is love. So that we live in love, and for love. This is what Christ did, and the power of the Holy Spirit does, in us. 
 
And the deeper we are rooted and more we are grounded, the more love invades our cells and whose we are comes out in who we are. We find ourselves trusting belonging, welcoming others in and leaning in ourselves to the love that holds and upholds us all.

Christ has already made us one; that part’s not our job. Our job is to practice living what’s true. And we do it in really concrete and ordinary ways. So in this practicing, trusting, honest kind of life, may we be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven us, and be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. 
Amen. 

Bread, goodness, and who holds the future

John 6:24-35

I have a few liberal Christian friends who’ve started to talk about this being the end of the world.  I resist the urge to tell them they sound like some of our more conservative siblings assertions that we are “in the end times.” Same argument, different evidence, I guess.  When I told them my PhD welcome letter says my program begins September 1, 2024 and ends August 31, 2030, one said, “if any of us are still around by then.”  

I have been pondering for weeks why this is so unsettling to me. 

Then yesterday I read an article asking, why aren't people having kids? The surface answers people give are things like worries about the climate crisis or over population, or less stable finances, or fewer supportive structures than previous generations.  But the deeper reason, researchers found, is actually about meaning and purpose. 

These researchers concluded that when people are unsure about the purpose of their own life, they can’t see a reason to bring new humans into the mix. The researchers named “deep existential worries with no guidance to what is a good life,” and said “old frameworks have fallen away and the new ones provide hardly any answers at all.” In other words, a lot of modern people are really struggling to answer, What is a good life, and how do we live it?  

“If people are going to have children,” they said, “they need more than a hunch that human life is valuable. ‘It is not just the possibility of goodness but its actuality that fuels our deepest longing to ensure a human future.’”

The article goes on further to state that to claim joy or pleasure in the prospect of parenting can seem distasteful. The researchers say, "'To assert the goodness of one’s own life is to risk coming across as privileged, or just hopelessly naive.'" 

Both of these perspectives are working with a certain view of the future, of God, and mostly of human beings and our role here.

If having joy, or peace, or seeing life as good is to be greedy or out of touch with reality, we seem to believe that joy is a limited commodity, that peace is something people might hoard, that life is entirely ours to produce or uphold. Do we believe that rational, aware people must maintain a constant state of anxious worry, and face the future with foreboding? 

Are we afraid to taste hope? Afraid to consume joy lest we use it all up like fossil fuels or the ozone? We are hungry for meaning. Hungry for purpose. Hungry to know what a good life is and how to live it. We are ravenous for some hope and starving for joy. 

This dear crowd of people in our scripture today, who have managed to track down Jesus, they’re hungry too. Even though they’ve just come from experiencing the feeding of 5000 people with just a few loaves and fishes. Jesus calls them out, saying they came looking for him because they wanted more – what? Spectacle and excitement? Proximity to power? Free food and good feelings? More sense that, at least for the moment, things are going to be ok?  In any case, it was not because they recognized in the experience any deeper meaning from God, or sensed a higher purpose drawing them in. 

So when they ask, “How can we do the work of God?” they don’t like the answer they get. Because Jesus says, “The work of God is to believe in the one whom God sent.”

Pause the conversation, because this will be important for our discussion: 

This word, believe, or have faith, means literally, entrust yourself to an entity with complete confidence. It’s not belief as intellectual agreement or faith as the capacity to hold firm. It’s utter yielding trust, surrendering to the one who holds firmly to us. Like a baby going limp in in the safety of your arms, the work of God we are called to is to let go and be, because Jesus has got you. 

But who wants to be told to surrender? To just trust and stop striving? That what’s ours to do is live the one life we have been given joyfully and to die in assurance of grace? Frankly, that seems hopelessly out of touch and dangerously naive. 

Resuming the conversation, as though the crowd didn’t just eat till they were full at the miracle picnic with leftovers galore, they ask Jesus what sign he’s going to give them to persuade them to believe, “like manna in the wilderness,” they suggest.

So, Jesus reminds them it wasn’t Moses who provided that manna to their ancestors, but God. They knew this story. But when we’re feeling worried, insecure or grasping for some control, it’s easy to forget what we know. 

More than just food where there was none, manna taught the Israelites to entrust themselves into God’s care. Under Pharoah’s rule their identity was as property, their purpose was to toil for their survival, and their lives were only as valuable as what they could produce for the empire.  Freed, in the wilderness, they were fed and cared for. They were learning how to rest from a God who rests--and who, by the way, thinks life is so great that, in the act of creating it, God kept pausing just to enjoy it, and to declare to Godself how very good each new thing is. By eating manna, their ancestors practiced being loved, being valued, being treasured by God who claims them as beloved children.  

By eating the manna every day, they were learning trust, year after year, and gradually, they began to believe that maybe they didn’t have to scramble for their safety, or labor for their life, or ensure their own longevity, or direct their own future.  Because by giving them manna, God was saying I will provide for your needs. Surrender into my care. As civil rights leader and Baptist pastor Ralph Abernathy famously said, “I may not know what the future holds but I know who holds the future.”  This is what manna taught the Israelites.

Then Jesus pulls out of the past into the present tense and says, “God gives bread from heaven for the life of the world.” 

“Sir, give us this bread always!” They cry.

Jesus answers, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

And they have no idea what to do with that statement. This uncomfortable exchange goes on for a ton more verses, at one point the disciples themselves saying, This is such a hard teaching, who can accept it? Finally, the eager crowd, who’d been so intent on finding Jesus, eventually gives up and wanders off. They were not ready for what Jesus was saying, but who among us is?  

When Jesus says I am, he is invoking the very identity of God- the name, YHWH, means I AM, but in a simultaneously transcending time and entering time kind of way -  compressing past, present and future into the present, right now, I am. Always now, I am who I will be, and who I was, I’m being, even Beingness itself. 

So when Jesus says, I am the bread of life, I am the light of the world, I am the good shepherd, I am the resurrection and the life, I am the true vine, he is saying that beneath our deepest hungers, and up against our greatest fears, and inside the worst suffering or the haziest future, right now the very ground of being is being with and for us and calling us right now into being.

When we are lost, I am the way. When we without guidance or drowning in darkness, I am the light. When we’re tangled up in lies, I am the truth. When we’re terrified of death, I am the resurrection. When we dodge own vulnerability and weakness, I am the good shepherd who looks after his sheep. When we can’t seem to find meaning and purpose, and we question the fundamental value of human existence, I am the life. And when we are hungry, deeply longing to be filled, I am the bread of life, manna itself.

When Martin Luther was asked what he would do if the world was ending tomorrow, his answer was, “Plant an apple tree.” In other words, the future isn’t ours to control. Our job is to trust and obey. Right now.

And the models Jesus gives us for this way of living?  Birds of the air and lilies of the field who neither toil nor spin, infants who can’t do anything but be adored and cared for, branches attached to a strong vine, wandering sheep who recognize the shepherd’s voice, and need the shepherd to keep them safe. 

Jesus is not just the possibility of goodness but the actuality. I AM came into human life and human death right here with us, making the act of living itself a holy task. The precious, poignant reality that we get to be – in these specific bodies, on this remarkable planet, for this one blip of time in all the universe, alongside all these other beings made in the image of beingness itself?  Astonishing.

 Believe in me – this is the work of God that we can do. Entrust the world to me. Entrust yourself to me. Surrender into my life and my love. Let the manna feed you. Let the perpetually-present bread of life nourish you.  Do the two things Jesus says are the sum of all God’s commands: Love God and love your neighbor. In other words, be human, be, right now. That’s your role. 

Live the one life we’ve each been given - as unselfconsciously as flowers, as bombastically as birds, as unhesitatingly as infants, as vulnerably as sheep, as inseparably as branches drawing life from and expressing the life of the vine itself. And in this living, we can expect to be fed manna. We can assume our purpose is to give and receive love. We can practice the belonging that can’t be broken. We can follow our creator in walking around every day declaring life good.  We can welcome ourselves and others into the deeper meaning that already holds us all. We can practice living in freedom and rest.  And we can anticipate with confidence that the culmination of it all is complete wholeness for all of creation, that we get to joyfully join its coming, right now.  

We know this story. But when we’re feeling worried, insecure, or grasping for some control, it’s easy to forget what we know.

But when we entrust it all - ourselves, our beloved, and this fragile world - into the care of I AM, we are doing the great act of faith, and in believing we participate in the AM-ness at work- the right now life of God healing the world, practicing peace and joy, and claiming the future for hope. 

Amen.

Belonging In Turbulent Times

Ephesians 2:11-22

Americans are living in an intense time, or at least, anticipating one. After half a century of political peace in this nation, there is brewing a kind of turbulence we’ve had in our past and other nations have experienced more recently or frequently.  And we kind of don’t know what to do with that. Let’s just say, it’s nicer to feel invincible as a country, to assume that what happens other places won’t or can’t happen here. It’s preferable to at least pretend that things will always remain stable no matter what. 

When things get intense, we humans amp up a favorite sin, which is to other each other. To hunker down into our silos of shared ideology and use shorthand labels to sort who’s in and out, who’s an ally we can count on and who’s an enemy we can despise or ignore. We can sum up a whole person in a single word, words like MAGA, woke, immigrant, anti-vaxxer, lawyer, widow, trans, white, sick, retired, Evangelical. We can boil down an entire human being into a simplistic stereotype. And once the label defines who we are, we’d better stick with our own group, because how else will we belong?

Which brings us to this letter, written several decades after Jesus died, to people who are doing what people do – they are othering each other. The recipient community is made up of both Gentile and Jewish Christians.  And according to this letter, shorthand labels have been slapped on the groups: “the circumcision” and “the uncircumcision.” 

Why those words? The offspring of Abraham were chosen by God to particularly, knowingly, intentionally, participate with God in caring for the world. This covenant identity and role was marked by circumcision. Called to be the people of God for the sake of all the other nations, they were agents of belonging in and for the world.

And so, this ancient symbol of belonging to God to care for the world is now being used inside a community of Christ-followers to separate and alienate, the very opposite of its original meaning.

Fourteen generations after Abraham, a young, Jewish woman was invited by a messenger of the Divine to be what some ancient Greek icons call, “the container of the uncontainable.” Through her body, God came into this fragile human life of living and dying to reconcile all things to Godself. Born a helpless infant needing to be cared for by those he came to save, Jesus came to break down all divisions and bring all people into the family of God.  

The Magi from afar, kneeling before this impossible child, were the first to worship a Messiah they did not grow up anticipating, (I suppose making them the original “the uncircumcised.”) Then thirty years later, after Jesus died and was resurrected, the party burst the seams and spread everywhere, and people of all languages and cultures were drawn by the Holy Spirit into the covenant family of God and transformed into agents of belonging for the whole world.

We’re now 81 generations after God came in Christ reconciling all people to Godself. But the malicious custom of othering others is alive and well in us. Every culture and people is adept at dividing, blaming and condemning, with their own short-hand labels and dismissive ways to signal who’s in and who’s out, and we are certainly no exception. Nor do we hesitate to use the language and symbols of our faith to do so. Why do we do this?

All human beings share the longing to feel safe and seen, to matter, to contribute. All people feel pain and joy, welcome new life, and experience aging and death. All people suffer. All people long to belong. But with our limited imaginations and seemingly unlimited susceptibility to fear and insecurity, we mostly can’t fathom that the belonging of God includes us all, or that there is no limit on love, no quota on forgiveness, no ranking of human value, no lifetime maximum belonging a person experiences or offers to others before it's all used up. 

Remembering our shared humanity feels easier when life is going along smoothly and we have spare reserves of equanimity and Zen. And perhaps some of us here now do, thanks be to God if that is you today. 

But many of us are a bit worried and raw, a tad edgy and tired, and collectively there’s a looming sense that things are just beginning, whatever that means, whatever those things turn out to be. So, it’s safe to say, even without a lot going on on the health front, or job front, or kid front, or parent front, most of us are already not operating at full capacity. 

For my part, 11 days ago, our jet-lagged family welcomed a new, wildly disruptive puppy who we are already in love with, but the sleep deprivation and vigilant attentiveness is no joke.  My kids keep telling me I’m mean. I don’t feel mean, just tired. But I’m told I walk around all the time sounding mean. 

So, if the message of this text today was: Go be kind and love all people, it would be impossible for me. Because right now, I can barely be kind to the people I already love. 

Add to the fatigue and caffeine a steady flow of news and commentary about political conventions and the horrors in Ukraine and Gaza, and fretting about the future of the planet, and there is no way I’m an agent of love and belonging in the world.  

The way of fear is loud, and I listen to it. And Paul seemed to know his readers did too. So the answer to our petty division and deep anxiety isn’t just to tell us Quit it and be nice!

We are simply, clearly, not capable of that. 

Thank God Paul wrote this letter and not I. Because here’s what he has to say, (aka, hear the good news of the gospel): 

First, the peace, goodness and wholeness we long for so deeply? It is not of our making. Christ does this, is doing this, has done this, will do this. Jesus Christ “proclaimed peace to those far off and peace to those near,” giving us all access to the very heart of God. Well-being within, well-being between, well-being everlasting.  We don’t do this, Christ does.

Second, Paul writes earlier in this letter that it is God’s “plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”  Meaning, this world, and everything in it, belongs to God. We are held in a greater love and a deeper story that outlasts time itself.  So, we can with confidence answer the “what if?” of fear with the “even if!” of hope. This is a lesson we learned during the pandemic when we left the building in Lent and returned two years later having learned the Lenten lesson still hanging on the wall, “Fear asks, What if? Hope answers, Even if!” Even if the worst thing we can imagine happens (like the whole world shuts down in a pandemic!), God is still God. Love is still love. This is all heading somewhere unstoppable. Even if. Always.

So we can look at the world truthfully, without hiding or covering over evil, upheaval, suffering or general disappointment. We will name the reality, “This is part of the story.” But then we’ll keep going, naming also the deeper reality, “This is not the whole story. The world belongs to God.” 

Third, Paul says the divisions we think exist - Christ has shattered them. Christ abolishes hostility and alienation between us and makes out of the fractured bits one human race. We don’t choose this, or create this, and we can’t make it not true (even when we try). In Christ, God reconciled us all to God and each other, and complete wholeness and connection is where this whole story is heading. We can deny it or defy it. Or we can join it, by taking up our calling to participate with God in caring for this world. 

This is not done through our stellar intentions or superhuman efforts, but by our honesty, our humility, our presence alongside, with and for one another. We live the belonging by our vulnerability. By seeking to see others and be truly seen. By asking for, and offering forgiveness. Pursuing invincibility and chasing safety won’t bring us well-being. We live into fullness of life, this peace Christ offers, by opening up and welcoming our shared humanity with those who – no matter how different than us- are also just like us. 

Finally, Paul tells us we are “no longer strangers and aliens, but citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.” 

We, the Church - that is, you and me and all those everywhere formed by the death and resurrection of Christ and drawn by the Holy Spirit into the covenant family of God - we are transformed into agents of belonging for the whole world. And we are marked for this covenant identity and role by our baptism. 

When we live in the actual, particular, singular life we’ve each been given, committed to be in this place with these people, today, no matter what tomorrow brings or the day after that, something happens to us and through us that we can’t control. The Holy Spirit makes the hodge-podge, imperfect collection of ordinary people a holy dwelling place of the Divine. We become “the container of the uncontainable.” Jesus Christ is actually here, among and between us, drawing us into the beloved world where he continues to break down all divisions, and bring all people into the family of God.  

So take a breath and let it out. Settle into the love that holds us all. 

May we trust God, care for others, and live the gift and calling of our shared belonging. Come what may, even if, and always.

Amen.