Resurrection Unresolved

Mark 16:1-8

Happy Easter!

Once a year we like to make a super big deal out of resurrection, even though none of our gospel accounts show us anything about it. What they do show is an empty tomb, mostly, and a bunch of disciples who do a pretty terrible job of getting even close to as excited as we are on Easter Sunday. 

The words Matthew, Mark, Luke and John use for the initial reactions of those first told of the resurrection are: “alarmed,” “trembling and bewildered,” “afraid,” “disbelieving”, “terrified,” “doubting,” “startled and frightened,” “wondering,” and “it sounded to them like nonsense.”  Not a single “Hallelujah!” among them!

 

So, I submit that maybe we’re a little removed from the whole story and invite us back to the whole resurrection thing today with fresh eyes.

 

First off, I’d like to point out that, knowing he’s going to rise from the dead, we don’t even pause to wonder why it took so long.  We just fill the Saturday of a Dead Savior with last minute Target runs for Easter tights, vacuuming the house, and preparing the ham for tomorrow, and don’t really give a single thought to the unsettlingly long delay between the death of Jesus and his resurrection. At the precipice of despair, when the worst thing ever has happened, it all just stops and stays for a while. 

 

In any world-altering project we competent humans undertake, this is the moment we would be all hands-on deck, nobody stopping, nobody sleeping, a beating heart of adrenaline-hyped project managers and bleary-eyed, caffeinated engineers making sure it all comes off as it’s meant to.  

But instead, God – and every single human in this story, made in the image of God - leaves the building and turns out the lights. They go home and crawl into bed and spend an entire day on purpose not doing it. Luther says Jesus sabbathed in the grave. Dead guy not in any hurry to get this show on the road.

 

We race to resurrection. We’d actually prefer to skip the death part completely, if possible. And if it must happen, let’s just dip our toe in and move on quickly. 

 

How strange it is, that in the wake of Jesus’s violent death, when all is utterly lost and darkness has triumphed unequivocally, the greatest drama of the cosmos grinds to a quiet halt. And another story takes center stage and demands precedence. Candles are lit, stories are told, prayers and naps and holding one another and reading alone and recalling the faithfulness of God and practicing the gratitude of belovedness are what happens.

 

Centuries later we know where this story is going, so we skip the pause and just boogie ourselves on to the celebrating. But while it’s easy for us non-stop, state of the art, capable modern creatures to miss that that the whole salvation story stopped at the most disastrous moment to remember God is God and we are not, uncooperative Mark makes jumping to victorious, joyful resurrection celebration super awkward.  

 

Because, after Jesus’ most faithful followers are told to spread the news of his resurrection, and then go meet the risen Jesus back where they began--in the ordinary places of life--Mark actually ends his whole gospel account with them backing slowly away from the weird stranger in the corpseless tomb, stumbling into the daylight, hiking up their skirts, and high tailing it out of there as fast as their legs can carry them, keeping mum about the whole crazy situation. 

 

This is such an uncomfortable ending that by the 3^rd century a short new ending was tacked on, and by the 5^thcentury an even longer one, where everyone did what they were supposed to and believed in the risen Lord, because people couldn’t bear the story stopping with the dissonant note left hanging in the air, just begging for someone to walk across the room and play the chord that resolves it.

So not only does the salvation story stop and stay a while at the worst part, like it’s not at all concerned about getting things sorted for us, but then Mark leaves the whole narrative of Jesus unresolved and unsettling. 

 

Let’s just say a fair-minded teacher would hesitate to give a passing grade to this project. The comments might say, “lacks clarity of purpose and audience, central idea not well presented, participants could show more effort, completely missing a conclusion, C-”. 

 

The truth is, in no universe, does what God is doing here make sense to our cause and effect, good guys/bad guys, earning and proving, comparing and competing, winning and losing sensibilities. In fact, we might say that God’s project upends all of that entirely.  

 

Here’s how we do Easter: a few typical options

Option 1: Easter is for later. It means we’re given an individual get-out-of-hell-free card, an eternal win on the uncompromising board game of life. So, if we play our cards correctly, we reap some well-earned rewards! (And we can help others get their cards too).  

Option 2: Easter makes us feel better. Jesus died and rose to calm the existential dread that meets us in the night, the voice that whispers we are not enough, that somehow, we’re failing at life. We’re honest enough to know we actually can’t do it on our own. And we hear Easter saying, You are enough.

Option 3: We’ve had it with all the gobbly-gook of religion and have washed our hands of it, except when we’re dragged to church by our smiling in-laws who are crossing their fingers that this time, we’ll change our mind and come back to faith.

 

Here’s how God does Easter: 

Instead of rescuing some people out of it, God plunges right into it all, right alongside us all. Instead of backing our self-improvement projects, Jesus goes right for our sin – which is just a shorthand way of saying, whatever blocks us off from God and each other, whatever tells us we are not worthy of God’s love, or that we are but someone else is not, whatever breeds fear, isolation, self-centeredness and destruction – this is what Jesus takes on for us and brings to the cross.  There is nothing - no suffering, sorrow, or loss, no horror done to us, or by us, that Jesus does not carry us directly into the heart of God, even the final terrible divider, death itself. Jesus was defeated and broken by all that defeats and breaks us. He was dead and buried. It was all over. For a while. Except it wasn’t. Jesus rose from the dead, and the end of the story has been written: there is no death so great that life is not greater, no evil so powerful that love will not prevail. 

 

And perhaps this is a message not yet felt on Easter morning, but maybe tasted earlier, in the moment the sabbath began and they all turned back to the truth that God is God and we are not, and practiced trusting God even if they weren’t feeling it, because it’s what we do. And they waited. With God, and with one another, they waited to see what God would do next. Maybe in their waiting, they remembered whose story this all is. And then the next morning, a few of them reached empty tomb to put spices on Jesus’ body. And they forgot again. Because

here’s how the first followers of Jesus did Easter: 

alarm, terror, confusion, skepticism, trembling and bewilderment. The idea of Resurrection did nothing for them whatsoever. Being told about it just freaked them out.

 

Because resurrection is not an idea or belief. It’s what comes after death. It’s the new life that comes after what was, has died. It’s the hope that is born from a place of loss and despair. It’s when tragedy is shot through with overwhelming love and inexplicable peace, when patient grieving abates and washes away and something new and unexpected wakes up and yearns to be born in us. It’s when you find that fear’s hold on you has been broken and you are free.  It’s when you find yourself able to love, able to reach out and be with and for another despite all the risks of heartbreak or failure.  It’s life, life, life. 

He was dead. The tomb was empty.  Resurrection didn’t mean anything until Jesus met them later, alive. Then they too were resurrected. Back in the ordinary places of life he told them to follow him into, they found God bringing resurrection all over the place, and began their new life of trusting in what they could not make happen, waiting and watching for what God would do next, in them and through them.

 

Except Mark doesn’t show us that part. 

 

What God is doing is beyond our capacity to grasp. So maybe it’s helpful to us that Mark stops while it’s unresolved and people are freaking out and confused and keeping it real, because the story keeps going, and pretending to resolve what isn’t resolved doesn’t make the truth any less true: that God is relentlessly bringing life, life that death itself cannot stop. 

 

The story of the Living Christ is still going. God’s still writing it with the ink of our lives. Our job is not to jump to resolution and hide from the discomfort and dissonance, but to wait and watch. God is always here, always at work, always turning death, impossibility and nothingness toward life and love, always bringing resurrection, always inviting us to join in.

But there can be no resurrection without death. So we go to the places of death, and we wait.  Jesus came in to this life to be with and for us. When we are with and for each other, that is where we find the risen Lord.

 

If this Easter finds you in the darkness of despair, I invite you into the great surrendering pause of practicing trust even if you don’t feel it, that is, to wait and watch for what God will do next. Please allow some of us wait there with you.

 

If you come to this Easter ready to heed the call of the messenger in the tomb and join in resurrection, I invite you to back into your ordinary life. Jesus said to follow him there. That’s where he will be. Go into your week and wait and watch for what God will do next and be ready to respond.  

 

If you’re here today to make someone else happy and you think none of this applies to you, I’m sorry, it actually does. You are already loved and claimed by God, and your life is just as much a conduit of God’s love and justice, hope and healing, as the person sitting next to you. I invite you too, to wait and watch for what God will do next.

 

Resurrection happens!  

We’re invited to surrender into the story. To trust that Jesus is out there ahead of us in the completely ordinary places of our lives, and the utterly ordinary lives of everyone on this planet. And when we’re over our shock at the whole thing not going at all how we think it should, and ready to find him, that’s where we should look. That’s where we’ll find God bringing resurrection all over the place. So we will practice trusting in what we cannot make happen, remembering together whose story this really is, and waiting and watching for what God will do next, in us and through us. 

Christ has risen, Hallelujah!  

Amen.

On Holy Week Worship with Kids

(Adapted from a message sent to my congregation's parents and grandparents)

Dear Parents and Grandparents,

Just a word about Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services as it relates to children:

I have no childhood memories of Good Friday or Maundy Thursday. Of course my understanding of the story of Jesus involved the Last Supper, his death, and the cross, but my tangible, communal experience of Holy Week moved from the playful joy of the Palm Sunday processional to the redemptive celebration of the resurrection the next Sunday on Easter.  Other than my mom’s private prayerful practice of fasting half the day on Good Friday, that day didn’t register much for me.  

In retrospect, the experiential, communal, church story of Holy Week for me was mostly positivity and cheer.  It wasn’t until much later that I came to experience the darkness the cross: the experience of God with us coming into our suffering and bearing it with us. The powerful recognition that the shadows are as much a part of our journey as the light, and that in Christ, the place God most promises to be is in those places of sorrow and suffering.  Truly, we are not only not alone, but God brings life out of the death of us.

The world is filled with fearful things. Kids do not miss this. They feel life’s pain and see it in the world around them.  That Jesus takes all suffering into himself, and into the heart of God, is a promise for all of us, no matter what age.  

My family has been coming to Good Friday service since my children were very young.  At LNPC the service is multi-sensory and moody. We read through the end of Christ's earthly life contrasting the seven last words of Jesus with the seven days of creation.  Many people in the congregation stand to read scripture, and our readers are all dressed in black. It feels different in the sanctuary than it does on Sundays, or on our cozy, warm, candlelit contemplative Saturdays. There is a somberness and solemnity to the evening, as we extinguish candles one by one and end in darkness. The service ends with a loud bang, and we all leave the sanctuary in silence. 

For my kids’ whole childhood they have attended Good Friday service, and since they were in car seats, we have driven all the way home from church in silence (beginning by hilariously reminding a toddler each time she'd forget - every 90 seconds or so...). We don’t speak until we set foot in the house.  A few years ago, I forgot this.  My kids met me silently at the church door and we walked to the car without speaking, and then I remembered, and felt grateful that they'd held the silence when I’d forgotten.  

 

We’ve talked this Lent about the “liturgies” that shape us (here, here, here, and here). The counter-forming practices of our faith tell us the real story, when so much around us tells us a different story.  God comes into all of it alongside it, to bear it with us and for us. God is not just there when things are going smoothly, or when we feel happy and upbeat.  God comes into the scary and sad parts of life – we are not alone.  This is the real story.

 

I want to encourage you not to avoid bringing kids to Maundy Thursday or Good Friday services, no matter their age. We absorb stories by experiencing them alongside others.  And Easter Sunday feels far more significant when witnessed and felt within the context of our whole salvation story.  

We are all church together, and we worship just as we are, however we are.  These worship services may open up interesting conversations in your family. At the very least, they offer a shared experience that speaks to us in music, darkness, scripture, ritual, and communal practice.

 

Blessings this Holy Week.

 

Kara

Saving / Being Saved

Mark 11:1-11 

I was raised with a high anthropology – which is to say, a view of human beings that puts a lot of power in our hands. I could choose whether or not to “accept” Jesus into my life, and evidently, my word was powerful enough to keep Jesus out of my life.  If people were not “following” God, their lives would be worse, and their afterlife doom, but it’s our choice. Human beings, in this view, hold an enormous amount of power. When it comes down to it, more than God, actually. Because we can tie God’s hands. We can keep God from acting, just by our inaction! Oh well. God would’ve saved us, but we said no thanks, and there was nothing God could do about it. God seems unable to override human beings’ refusal to accept God’s saving, or humans’ basic ignorance that that decision was ever in their hands to begin with. If we don’t say Save us! Which is what Hosanna! means, then God just won’t do it. 

But maybe you didn’t grow up like that. Maybe your underlying messages of human idolatry were not about eternity but about now. Maybe your hosannas were pointed inward, toward your own outstanding self. And the work of saving -whether that’s your own self, the world, or maybe even others, was your work to do. If we don’t do it, it won’t get done. Maybe Jesus didn’t factor in, except as a motivator or an example, and God’s role was simply to serve as an ethical ideal on which to base all the world-saving work we humans need to get busy with.  This is also a dangerously high anthropology, that is, this also seems to think human beings are far more capable and in control than we really are. 

But the bible has a pretty low anthropology. In the bible people are portrayed as mostly having no idea what we’re doing.  In the gospels, the disciples, who walked side by side with God incarnate, still had no clue what was happening most of the time. Even when Jesus told them, over and over again, how it was all going to go down, they still didn’t get it.  

And when the crowds naively celebrate Jesus’ coming into Jerusalem on a donkey, they laid down cloaks and branches heavy with misunderstandings and expectations. Their version of Hosanna! Save us! assumed they were welcoming into town the one who was coming to overthrow the oppressive Roman empire occupying their land. Here comes power to speak truth to power and overthrow power and give power back to the powerless!  Hosanna!

A high Christology believes Jesus is capable of saving.  So the palm Sunday crowds were ahead of us there. Because saving is what Jesus does; Jesus saves. Not our belief in Jesus, not our patterning our lives after Jesus, but Jesus, himself, saves the world, whether we believe in him or not, whether we follow him or not. The crowds were wrong about him and what he was there to do. But so what?  God does what God will do anyway. 

When Jesus rode into Jerusalem, he didn’t fit the people’s ideas of him; and all throughout the next week he resolutely refused to live into their expectations. He kept on undermining their hopes of glory and power with vulnerability and weakness, and then he let himself be killed, which was a killer to their dreams and plans.  

When we cry “save us” what we usually mean is, we want to not feel so much pain, or we want to be freed from the consequences of our choices, we want bad people not to be in charge of things, or we want to be spared from some impending tragedy or have security – even eternally. What we usually mean by “save us!” is “give us more control!” or at least make things turn out how we would like them to.  We use God as a means to our own end, a tool in our own self-development project or societal change platform. Our telos, or ultimate goal toward which our life is pointed, is usually our own comfort and well-being, the safety or security of those we love. 

When we cry Hosanna! Save us, Lord! we do NOT usually mean save us from our delusions, save us from our self-centeredness, save us from our mistrust of others and fear of vulnerability, save us from pride and thinking we have more control than we do, or save us from forgetting that you are God, and we aren’t, and denying that those we most dislike are also your beloved children. We’re not usually asking to be saved from our idolatry or ego. We’re certainly not asking to be humbled and brought low like Christ himself; we’re usually asking to be propped up and protected.

But that’s ok.  When we point our longings and fears toward God, God knows what we need hears our hearts, even if we can’t name what salvation is or imagine what it could look like, God brings it anyway, because this is who God is and what God does, regardless of who we are and what we do. 

And even when the people who cheered his arrival on Sunday turned around and cheered his demise on Friday, it didn’t alter God’s course.  We think death ends everything and is the strongest power of all, but in Christ God moves in and through death to bring new life. Because God brings life and salvation to the world.  This is what God does. And nothing, no matter what, can stop God from saving the world. 

So, first, here this good news, which comes as a blow to our high anthropology: You are not powerful enough to stop what God is doing.  And what you do will not save the world. You’re not really in control of much of anything. None of us are. It’s part of being human. And you are too important to God to let go of.  And so is this world. God’s YES is always bigger than our human Nos, or I don’t knows.  All this means your most excellent actions, most generous sacrifices, highest deeds of goodness cannot bring God nearer or give you any security at all.  And, your most horrible mistakes, most self-centered spitefulness, and worst deeds of cruelty, cannot make God retreat further or disqualify you from God’s love.  

We are making some terrible mistakes in the world. We are hurting each other badly. Our selfishness and division have very real and heartbreaking impact. Choices we make have appalling consequences and contribute to horrific suffering. And trapped inside of time, we can’t undo what we’ve done.  Nevertheless, nothing, nothing can stop God’s love and redemption. Nevertheless, Jesus saves.

We can participate in that salvation with awareness and gratitude, choosing to align our lives with the inbreaking Kingdom of God and seeking live as we were created to live, connected to God and others. Or we can participate in that salvation with naivete and ignorance, or even live our one life with deliberate malice. But make no mistake, we participate. One way or another, we are part of God’s redemption story. God will do what God is doing – in us and through us, or despite us and without our approval. God uses anything and everything to move the world toward healing and hope. God’s presence inhabits every moment. God’s voice cannot be banished or silenced, God’s work cannot be hindered or obstructed. Love prevails. Most often in unexpected and ordinary ways; most often through weakness. We can watch for it or not. We can recognize it or not. We can receive it willingly, or resist it pointlessly. But the love of God has claimed this whole story, Christ has come into this world, and turned it all inside out, and nothing can stop God.

Every year we read this text in one gospel voice or another, and every single year, we just breeze past and generally ignore a certain character that, in Mark, takes up over half the passage. This is, of course, the donkey. When Jesus tells a couple disciples to go untie a random colt from a random doorstep and bring it to him, and he gives them words for if someone asks them what they’re doing, it happens just like he says it will.  What this shows us is this: They may not have any idea of the big picture, or even what’s about to unfold, even though Jesus keeps trying to tell them that he’s here in Jerusalem to die. But in this small moment with a random donkey, they DO glimpse the Divinity of Christ, and they get this small taste of their own participation in something bigger. With this act of trust and courage, their actions join what God doing in the world. They go into this strange parade having been guided and having obeyed. 

God is always up to something way bigger than we can see or understand. Even though our participation is often misguided, driven by our own agenda for what being saved would feel like, nevertheless, God uses our actual experiences to bring love and healing into the world. Nevertheless, we are part of a story that reaches beyond us and yet encompasses our lives entirely. God’s healing comes into our most vulnerable and broken places, not because we are impressive and powerful but because we are not.  Jesus, in vulnerability joins us, and invites us into our own brokenness alongside one another to share in God’s redemption where it comes, where it is needed. 

This next week is going to suck for the disciples. And not just this next week, which ends in Jesus’ death, not to mention the death of all their beliefs and dreams and plans. Life is going to be overwhelming and disorienting for them for some time to come.  

So, the week begins here, in this moment of participating, with this donkey, and this goofy parade, where a whole crowd of people says the most true thing in the universe, even though none of them have any idea what they are actually saying or what it really means:

Hosanna, blessed is the one who comes to save. 

Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!

Hosanna in the highest heaven!’

 Amen.

How to Repent (It's not how you think)

Psalm 46, Jeremiah 31:31-34

When I was in college, I spent the large part of one summer sleeping on a 3-foot round papason chair cushion on the floor of an apartment five friends were renting in Dinkytown, in Minneapolis. At one point, we ran out of toilet paper and went through all the napkins, coffee filters and finally, Far Side comics, before someone finally bought more. But whatevs. We were young.

When Andy and I graduated from seminary, we were in our mid-twenties, and were willing to go anywhere in the US to start our next life chapter. Coast? Desert? Mountains? Big City? Tiny town? Sure! Why not! Andy applied to programs all over, and when we moved to Princeton, New Jersey, we packed up all our things in a u-haul and drove from LA for five days across the country. Each day was spent listening to Harry Potter cds and eating sunflower seeds and drive-through fast food. Each night we parked the truck with everything we owned in the world, towing our only car, strategically where we could watch it from our motel window so it wouldn’t get stolen.

There are times in our lives we anticipate upheaval. We expect it; invite it, even. We are totally open to change, happy to cooperate with a little chaos. But I think we think that is supposed to stop. That you will go through your change and chaos phase, and then after that, things are supposed to be predictable and secure. 

But life never stops with the turmoil. And upheaval is not an isolated incident. Children, or not, homes gained and lost, illnesses, adjustments—the changes just keep coming. That first friend to get divorced becomes one of many, maybe even yourself. That dream job you pursued falls through, that church you loved falls apart, that person you trusted falls away. And then your book club moves to zoom and eventually stops meeting, and your go-to restaurant goes out of business, and the person who has cut your hair for 20 years retires.  The neighbor you love moves away and the new people don’t seem interested in connecting, and that special, lonely spot you found solace as a child has become a sea of strip malls.

And these are just the little changes, the everyday, ordinary, constant disturbances. That is to say nothing of global horrors, war and atrocities, famine and hunger, natural disasters or community violence, nor of the unexpected personal catastrophes and devastating deaths that leave you breathless and disoriented, trying to figure out how life will look in a landscape you did not choose.

Disruption doesn’t restrict itself to phases, and chaos doesn’t play by any rules. Trouble, tumult, terror, and seismic shifts happen in our lives and in the world all the time. From our birth until we die, living with the unexpected and navigating constant change is basically what it means to be human.  anything can change at any moment, and everything does, all the time. 

 And in the midst of all this upheaval, we’re busy. We’re doing so much, and there is so much more we could be doing, and we only have time and energy for a fraction of it, and things are moving so fast who can keep up? But people seem to, so we strive, and reach, and do more, and wonder at our capacity, but keep scrambling to get our footing, racing to catch up, and feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and anxious so much of the time.  

In our Jeremiah text the people of God are exhausted by turmoil, unsettled by circumstances, unsure of their capacity.  They’d been ripped from home and forced into a life unfamiliar and uncomfortable, with no ease in sight, disoriented, trying to figure out how life will look in a landscape they did not choose.

They don’t know if they have what it takes to live up to their end of their relationship with God. In fact, all evidence from history and experience tells them that if it is up to them to remember and live from the truth of their belonging to God and each other they will fail.  

But God says it’s not their job to uphold this relationship. God will make a new covenant, a new bond, not dependent on their ability to remember correctly and teach each other rightly, but written into their very hearts, every one of them. God will be God. They will be God’s people. This covenant can’t be broken because it will be inside them and God will do the heavy lifting. Their belonging, identity, security is from God; God does this. “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” 

They are invited to trade their way of being for the one God is offering. They’re called to trust God and participate with God in a life of freedom and care for others, not when things get easier but right now - despite the upheaval, and right in the midst of their unsettledness. This home God is offering them is not dependent on what happens around them, because it happens within them, and between them.  

    Lent is a season of repentance.  Repent doesn’t mean wallow in your disgustingness and come groveling back to God. The Greek word for repent, means literally “change how you think after being with,” ‘turn around, shift your being in another direction, change your purpose after this encounter.”  Essentially, exchange your perspective for God’s, trade your way of being for the one God is offering.  Repentance is the wake-up moment, when we say, Oh! I don’t want to live afraid, resentful, stingy, anxious and striving! I want to live connected to God and others in freedom and care.

The opening line of Psalm 46, sum up the theology of the whole book of Psalms in these words: God is our refuge and strength. God is our safety. A very present help in trouble. Not a helper in the midst of trouble but Help itself. Very present help. Right here. Right now. Right in the midst of it. Therefore we will not fear. 

        But I fear a lot. I am a very skilled fearer.  I’ll let you in on the secret to my success: I practice fear by worrying. What if, what if, what if… My favorite time to do this is when I would really like to be sleeping.  When I am finally still, at the end of the day, I’ve stopped rushing and outrunning my anxiety, then it all catches up to me and I let buckle down and get to my worry workout, what if… what if.. what if…

I would love to trade my worry for trust. I would love some ease and trust, To not feel tossed about by chaos and upheaval but grounded in God’s care.  But if it’s up to me to remember my belonging to God and each other I will fail.  So what does repenting even look like, and how do we do it? 

It turns out, repenting is less something we do than what we stop doing. 

Be still. Psalm 46 goes on to say. Be still and know that I am God.  Be Still. In Hebrew, it means “put down your hands”-  cease striving. Quit doing stuff. Stop overestimating your own power to fix, change, control or escape things. Quit your fleeing and flailing and wait for God to act.  

In scripture, Be still is not a soft invitation to a spiritual spa moment. Be Still! is a command for the chaos. For the impossibility. For the crisis, and the injustice and the division and the shame. Be still appears as a command two places in scripture. One is here, in our Psalm, where it comes after telling us this doozy: Nations are in an uproar! kingdoms totter! God raises his voice and the earth melts....Be still and know that I am God.

The other place is 1000 years earlier than where we met the exiled Israelites today, when their ancestors have been delivered out of Egypt, but Pharoah has changed his mind, and has sent his entire army after them to destroy them. There they are, at the edge of the Red Sea, the chaos of waters blocking their way forward, and Pharoah's whole army bearing down on them from behind. They are trapped, hemmed in by danger, facing sure and certain death, and the command comes, Be still! The Lord will fight for you.

At the very moment when it seems like you should be scrambling and grabbing, and mustering all your resources, put your hands down.  Right in the middle of chaos and the tumult, when you’re uprooted from home and stuck in a place you do not choose to be, when you’re trapped, with nowhere to go, and certain death bearing down on you, Put down your hands. 

Stop moving. Stop doing. 

You are not God. Let God be God.

When things feel overwhelming. Be still.

When fear threatens to rule you. Be still.

When you’re unsettled and lost. Be still.

When the whole world seems to be convinced that we are about to be destroyed, Be still.  

Be still and know I am God.

When we’ve stopped rushing and outrunning our anxiety, when it all catches up to us, when we surrender our grabbing for control, God meets us here and takes us in another direction. 

God-- who breaks the bow and shatters the spear and burns the chariot and raises his voice and the earth melts and finds us when we’re lost and makes a way where there is no way and brings us home in love wherever we are—this God answers worry’s incessant what if, what if, what if, with the steady and unwavering heartbeat of Love, holding us close,  “Even though… Even if… Even when…” Even then.

Even though the earth changes. And mountains fall into the sea, and tsunamis and storms and whirlwinds roar through our world, and the very ground seems to shake beneath our feet and turmoil and tumult overwhelm us.  Even when the divisions between us seem insurmountable, and the constant voices around us urge urgency, and the judgment within us is loud and unceasing. Even if we’re between jobs with no prospects yet, or we’re staring down a diagnosis we can’t yet get our heads around. Even when the state of the world feels precarious and dangerous, or our precious kids that we’ve been so focused on raising are suddenly off adulting half-way across the country. Even then. Not because these things don’t or won’t happen, but because they will, and do. Even now. 

We will not fear. 

God is our refuge and strength.

God’s salvation meet us just exactly how we need to be met, to heal us where we are sick, and mend us where we are broken, and release us where we are caged, and find us where we are lost, and be our refuge in tumult, and give us a stability and security not dependent on what happens around us, because it happens within us, and between us, not by what we do but by mighty hand of God. 

Our belonging, identity, security is from God. God does this. “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, God says, “and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

We are God’s people.  Always. No matter what. 

May we rest in trust.

Amen.

Portions of this message were adapted from a chapter of Receiving This Life.

Becoming Who We Are

 John 2:13-22

We are what we love, St. Augustine asserted, and this Lent we are exploring how what we love and desire is shaped by our unthought habits and repeated rituals.  It’s our chance to do a “liturgical audit” – to ask what habits are shaping me away from life? And what habits are shaping me toward life?

We learn habits through repetition; they become so ingrained in us that we don’t even think about them. So changing habits can be daunting. Once we recognize an unhelpful habit, we want instant results and immediate gratification.  We modern folks are not wired for the long, slow slog of repeating uncomfortable things until they become second nature. We’d rather keep repeating comfortable things, even if they’re not great for us. 

A couple years ago I realized my problem with exercise was not that I didn’t have the right health club membership, exercise partner, tennis shoes or motivation, but that I didn’t have the right habits. I was formed and forming myself as a person who thought exercise was a good idea and did it when I could, but mostly just practiced feeling bad I wasn’t moving as much as I believed I should be. But, it turns out that changing my habits has changed my desires, and lo and behold: I have become a person who exercises. 

When I decided I would not be all or nothing about it, my mantra became Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. (This carries over quite well to things like thank you notes and birthday greetings, but not to things like home repair projects or driving). Consistency, rather than quality, was what mattered in my habit-learning quest, so I decided I would exercise every single day even if it was just for a few minutes, whether I felt like it or not. The promise was, if I did it every day, I would reach a point where it would become just like brushing my teeth—I would no longer have choose to do it, it would just happen. 

And I had evidence this could be so. I do, after all, brush my teeth—twice every day, in fact. And I tie my shoes like a pro without even thinking about it. Because a long time ago, I learned how by doing it imperfectly, over and over again, and probably I cried about it a few times. And now, I exercise. And as a totally non-athletic, lifelong avoider of sports, after a couple of years of moving on purpose every day, I sometimes really look forward to exercising – though mostly I love the feeling of having exercised.

Why can I apply these habit-forming ideas to things like eating vegetables or exercising, but I can’t seem to do so with prayer? I put up all sorts of hurdles and barriers between God and myself.  Even though I long to be connected to God, and I want to be a brave, kind person in the world, it appears I would much rather stay busy and distracted, even by tedious and unpleasant tasks, and practice feeing bad about “not praying enough,” than assume the inner stance of least resistance and terrifying openness to being encountered by God as just my vulnerable old self. 

Turns out, we humans have a long precedence of creating barriers to God for ourselves and others.

The marketplace situation in temple that Jesus blew a gasket over was not something out of the ordinary - it was business as usual. People had to change their normal money for temple currency, to buy sacrifices to offer to God here in this place where human beings and the Divine meet each other.

 

But that’s not how things started. Way, way back, when God was giving the Israelites instructions for how to live as God’s people, God said, 

Dedicate 10% of all your harvest from your cattle, crops, and vineyards, and bring it to God, and feast on it with God. This is a way to remember, every year through practice, that you belong to God.  And, so you don’t forget that you also belong to each other, every three years, use your saved up 10% to stay home and throw a feast in your own town for all who are in need. 

 

To help this happen, God’s law accommodated those who couldn’t reasonably travel long distances with 10% of all their harvest and animals. They could sell it, travel with the money, and then buy lovely things for feasting with God when they arrived at the temple. (Deuteronomy 14:22-29)

 

But over time, this directive that was supposed to make celebrating belonging to God and to each other more feasible for all, became a gatekeeping instrument, an obstacle to navigate, a hurdle to jump through. Now, whether you lived near or far, you needed to trade your money for temple money, and likely also exchange whatever imperfect gift you brought for a more perfect, worthy sacrifice. 

 

And so, a whole business arose in the temple to mediate the connection between human beings and God, and this is what Jesus came bashing and crashing and yelling about. 1500 years later, Martin Luther will call out the church for similar practices of selling and buying access to God, though in a far less dramatic tacking up of a piece of paper with some provocative statements written on it, onto a Cathedral door.

 

It turns out that even those of us who believe in a God of mercy and grace, belonging and wholeness, often tell a different story with our practices and habits, You belong if… you don’t belong unless… you only belong when…

After Jesus’ outburst, when the air clears of feathers, the coins stop rolling, and the shocked silence holds them all, someone clears their throat and asks, "What sign can you give us for doing this?," What an astonishing and wonderful question to our modern, secular ears! This question means they were willing to consider that God might be redirecting them through this – they were open to a Divine course correction.  

 

Lent is a great opportunity to be open to a course correction. But it can’t come from more of our own well-practiced, malforming habits. 

 

When Jesus answers them, he does that frustrating thing where he stays all metaphorical and vague, saying, Tear down this temple and I will rebuild it in three days. Only he uses the other word for “temple” not as in "sanctuary space," but as in “the place where God dwells.”  And the gospel author helpfully tells us he’s not talking about the building they are standing in, but about his very body. 

I am, Jesus will go on to say a million times in John, I am the way and the truth, I am the good shepherd, I am the light of the world, I am the resurrection and the life. I am the place where God dwells, the ground on which God and humans meet.

 

God became flesh and dwelled among us, breaking through barriers of time and space to be with us, and nothing can separate us from God's love.  According to the Apostle Paul, because we are in Christ, we are now the temple, the very place where God dwells. Our ordinary lives are the sacred ground on which Divine and human meet.  We are the Body of Christ, the dwelling place of God. 

 

And so, Lent’s Divine course correction opportunity asks us, 

How are we making our lives into a marketplace?  

How do we sell our attention and earn our worth? 

What hurdles do we put up to connection, and what barriers do we build against belonging? 

Do we despise our own imperfect gifts and try to exchange them for a more perfect, worthy sacrifice? 

As parents, or partners, or neighbors, or friends, do we construct all or nothing approaches that wall us off from the terrifying vulnerability of being human alongside one another and beloved of God, just as we are?  

How do we habitually resist being encountered by God?  

And what are the well-worn ways we withhold the possibility of access to God from those we despise? 

Do we avoid being brave and kind because we can’t do it perfectly? 

And with what patterns do we refuse to rest because we suspect being unproductive means being worthless? 

 

We are so practiced and proficient at our habits of disconnection and alienation from God and the world - which is another way of saying, we’re so good at our sin – that we do it without even having to think about it. It’s ingrained in us. No amount of our own effort can free us. We cannot save ourselves. 

 

The good news is Jesus is ready and willing to storm into our business as usual, and tear down every barrier we erect that divides us from God and each other. He is always opening cages and letting our guilty pride and pampered self-loathing fly off. Jesus will drive out every label and prerequisite we place on ourselves and others for how to be included or excluded as God’s beloved people. He’ll chase away our carefully calculated good deeds, toss out our smug judgments of one another, and gladly scatter in the dust all our well-honed measurements of worth.

 

Once that happens, the compasses of our hearts are recalibrated by the promise that in Christ’s body, Christ’s own relationship to God, we are pulled into love and set on a new path. 

 

And just as we may not realize we have habits that are misdirecting us, we also probably don’t appreciate those habits we have that reinforce us in our belonging to God and all others. Just take today, for example. By getting out of bed and coming here, even when you don’t necessarily feel like it, because here something happens that we can’t make happen, without even realizing it, we’re being, with and for each other, the place where God dwells. 

Today when we confessed our sin and sought forgiveness, sharing words spoken by followers of Jesus for hundreds of years, and when we called one another to worship by receiving the welcome of God and remembering out loud why we’re here, and in a few moments, when we lift up our fears and joys to God with one another in prayer, we are practicing assuming the stance of least resistance to being encountered by the Divine. 

When we share what we have in offering for the work of God between and among us that is only sustained by our free giving, we are living in a different economy than the marketplace of the world. When we depart in blessing and are sent out to see strangers as siblings, and our neighborhoods and communities as the sacred ground where Jesus shows up, we are learning new habits of relating through repetition. When we remind each other to watch in the world for God’s hope and healing, and we use our time and gifts to share in that work, the compass of our heart is pulling us toward God’s trajectory for the world.  Each time we acknowledge beauty, and let ourselves listen deeply, we are attuning ourselves to the Creator. And every time we answer our knee-jerk dismissal of another person with an internal reminder of their belovedness, and an external acknowledgement of our shared humanity, we are joining in our own transformation. 

Talking to God is worth doing poorly. So is reaching out to someone we’re worried about. So is accepting help from others. Saying things wrong to someone we love, and imperfectly apologizing does far more to shape both of us in our already-belonging than fearfully guarding our words does. Practicing forgiving forms us toward freedom. 

By repeatedly doing these uncomfortable things until they become second nature, we’re participating in God’s relentless redemption of the world and of ourselves, so that, little by little,  by the grace of God and power of the Holy Spirit, living our belonging to God and all others become more and more habitually ingrained in us, directing our love so we become who we are. 

Amen. 

 (The sermon is the second in a Lenten series drawing from the themes in James K. Smith's, You Are What You Love. Here is the first).