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.

A Prayer for the 4th of July

A Prayer for the 

4th of July  

We belong
first and foremost
to you, Lord.
God of heaven and earth,
eternity and the moment,
ever and always.

Then we belong to the whole of creation.
the living, the dead,
the yet to become, and the reborn,
the whole ongoing cycle of earth and life
with all its glorious array of ever-expanding participants:
mountains and trees and oceans and valleys,
gazelles and robins and rivers and earthworms,
all.

Next we belong to the human family,
all humanity in every corner of the vast globe
all languages, creeds, cultures, skin tones, religions, beliefs, experiences, hopes, celebrations, losses, goals, vocations, technologies and connections,

in grief and wonder and anger and happiness and confusion and sadness and joy
whatever happens and no matter what, 
we belong to them all, all, all.
And they all
belong to us.

After this, we are grouped - 
some arbitrarily and some by choice - 
into land masses and geographic regions. 
We develop identifying accents, clothing preferences, and regional tastebuds, 
which is to say,
we gather our experiences into ourselves
alongside others
who are gathering into themselves experiences
alongside us.

We call our places of belonging towns, counties, villages and cities, tribes, nations, countries, continents and coalitions; 
these countless designations simply mean that
we live nearby and agree to certain codes
of living with one another
that in one way or another uphold our greater belonging -
to the whole human family, the living and the dead of all creation,
and the Lord of all.

Next we have the smaller groups in which we learn
and the people there who teach us,
the neighbors, musicians, coaches and collaborators,
the members of our faith, our teams, our clans.
We have hobbies we cultivate with the people who practice them alongside us,
passions we pursue and those whom they impact,
jobs we end up in and those who end up there too,
whose lives intertwine with our own.

And then there are those specific people from whom we come,
the ones whose being and belonging
shape our own being and belonging most directly,
I mean, of course,
our ancestors and grandparents,
aunts and uncles, cousins and kin,
parents and siblings.

We may have the partner with whom we share our life, 
and the children whom we shape and watch become,
and the pets we assemble into our homes,
and the gardens we tend,
and the friendships we cultivate,
and the places we grow our roots,
deep, strong, and sure,
with and for those to whom we give our hearts, 
who will one day be buried in the ground alongside everyone and everything else
to which we already and always belong.

So, on this day that celebrates our nation,
we give thanks for all the belongings that hold and shape us,
both created and innate.
We give thanks for the communities into which we pour our lives,
and for all those in our communities that pour their lives into us.
We give thanks for the earth that nurtures all life,
and for all those who nurture the earth.

On this day that celebrates our nation,
 in our collective belonging called The United States of America
we give thanks for all that is good and wise and kind,
all that upholds our humanity,
both individual and shared.

And in our collective belonging called The United States of America
we confess all that is evil, foolish, and divisive, 
all that damages our soul,
both individual and shared.

And when this day that celebrates our nation,
has come to an end,
in fireworks and fanfare,
it remains
that beyond country, beyond kin,
beyond borders and beliefs,
beyond any and all boundaries,
whether natural or unnatural,
is the Great Belonging,
that is,
to one another, all,
and to you, Lord of all.

For this, today,
we give thanks.

Amen.

- prayer by Kara K Root, from Receiving This Life

As simple and alarming as that

 2 Corinthians 5:14-21

When we moved into our house 19 years ago, we found a stash of letters from the 1940s tucked into the eaves of the garage. They were short, unsigned and cryptic, mostly asking for money and promising not to write again, and in our minds we made up a sordid story a secret affair followed by years long blackmail. The truth turned out to be far more tragic. The man who had lived in our house his entire life had a photographic memory – according to our neighbor who knew him later in life who would ask the man directions to obscure places and he could tell her off the top of his head from having seen a map. During World War II he served as a CIA agent, and when he left the service, they did experimental electroshock therapy on him so he wouldn’t remember the secrets he knew. It worked so well he forgot his family, and his wife and twin daughters left him. He lived alone and reclusive for the rest of his life, every few years a letter arriving, asking for money, and promising it would be the last time. This isolated man hid these letters away in an unfulfilled yearning for reconciliation that never materialized.

I tell this story for two reasons. The first is that reconciliation is the longing within us all. To be in right relationship with God, one another, and with our own selves and the world we live in is what we’re made for. And when we are alienated from this connection, we cry out to be reconciled, whether or not we know that’s what we’re doing.

The second reason I tell this is that having one-sided letters, with gaps between them at that, invites imagining stories. But when the person writing is very long-winded and detailed, like the Apostle Paul, it’s much easier figure out what the story is. Today we read from 2 Corinthians, which is Paul’s fourth letter to the church in Corinth. The first and third are lost; the second we call 1 Corinthians. 

I find it a tiny bit delightful to imagine the other two letters  one day discovered hidden in the cranny of some ancient cave.  Because Paul, who is human, got pretty peeved with the Corinthian church. They’re this savvy, diverse and cosmopolitan group of folks who tended toward arrogance, petty squabbles and blatant misbehavior, after many of them met Paul in person at his first visit after planting the church some years before, their high opinion of Paul evidently plummeted. They insulted him and questioned his authority. Paul was the kids say, “butthurt,” (translation: dramatic, over-the-top, offended), and vowed in anger not to visit Corinth again. 

His missing third letter Paul called his ‘painful letter.’  So, maybe it’s good it got lost. Nobody wants screenshots going around of their text fight with their spouse, or to be caught on film throwing a tantrum at their kid in public.  Let’s just say, only two Corinthian letters ended up in the bible as the trustworthy and authoritative word of God. And we know that at some point – some think in the middle of writing this letter - the Corinthians apologized to Paul, ejected the troublemakers, and they were reconciled. 

 God’s love is what’s real, it’s where our hunger points, our longing originates, and our purpose finds its fulfillment.  But we’re so easily knocked off course from being connected, or reconciled, to God, our deep selves and each other. The desert mothers and fathers from the 3^rd and 4^th centuries were the first to unpack how everything we’d call sin can be grouped into two piles: either aggression or greed, that is, either “a reactive and excluding fear” or “the urge to consume and absorb.”   

If we view the world through resentment and rage, shaped around narratives of victimhood and blame, we will live guarded and hostile, alienated.  If we view the world through competition and self-advancement, striving for bigger and better, or more unique and singular, always trying to be somewhere—or someone—that we’re not, we will live hollow and famished, alienated.  There is no end to ways we can turn the ditches of aggression into yawning chasms, and the potholes of greed into slippery caverns of alienation. 

But, as Rowan Williams says, 

Love is what happens when you stop being aggressive and greedy, and stop to look with your whole self, from the centre of who you are. It’s as simple and alarming as that.

Love has room to flower when you stop either pushing reality away or making reality serve your purpose. In that space, love grows. God…whose life is the ultimate definition of love, has neither aggression nor craving in the divine nature. God is not afraid and God is not greedy. It sounds blindingly obvious, perhaps, put like that; but if we say that the love of God is, in the divine life, the same thing as the absence of aggression and greed, this ought to make us think that perhaps it tells us something of how love works and fails to work in us too. (Passions of the Soul, xxxiii).

God, in love, already claims us and is reconciling the whole world to Godself and each other.  But we humans are wobbly, weak, and easily distracted. And to complicate things, we live in what Williams calls, ‘an entire human environment where, bizarrely, mysteriously, saying no to God feels easier than saying yes.’

So we are to both take sin very seriously, and also have compassion for ourselves and each other around it. Walking this human path, we can’t not tumble into the ditch of aggression and faceplant in the pothole of greed, and striving to avoid them becomes just another way of stumbling into one or the other. What saves us is only God’s grace.  

This is what I kind of love about 2 Corinthians.  Whatever aggression or greed filled Paul's painful third letter, there’s plenty of both left over for this one. But even though he uses parts of this letter to prop himself up, he also admits to it. He keeps throwing himself back on the grace of God and letting himself be reoriented to the real, and then reorienting us there too.  We see him living in real time what he is also teaching: that we have died in Christ and been raised to Jesus’ complete connection to God and all others, and so even though we keep succumbing to these temptations, they are not ultimately what define us or direct our lives. 

It reminds me of the story told by desert fathers and mothers of frustrated demons shuffling dejectedly through the desert, complaining that they can’t draw the monks into sin, but neither can they force them to anguish over their sin. When they try, the “‘great, old men and women’” just say, “‘Of course I’m a sinner! So what! I rely on the mercy of God!’” (Williams, 16) and go back to seeking a reconciled kind of life, that is, praying, serving others, practicing living from and for love in ordinary, unimpressive ways.

So what are we to do? Paul demonstrates in his fourth letter the simple but profound prescription of the desert monks that left the demons shuffling dismally in the wilderness, once we recognize we’ve stumbled into sin we’re to be honest about it, hand it over to God, and get on with our lives. Literally, that’s it. 

We don’t wallow in it. We don’t dwell deeply on our division, examine extensively our fears of one another, ponder relentlessly our selfishness, or probe exhaustively how appalling we’re convinced we are. We have died to sin and been raised to new life. To act as though, by the might of our own understanding, the strength of our own efforts, or the force of our own egos, we could pull ourselves out of sin and alienation, is just to fall back into it.

Whatever exciting or bland ways ‘our reactive and excluding fear’ or ‘the urge to consume and absorb’ is being expressed in us in the moment, we’re to look honestly at it, give it over to God, then we simply get on with it, whatever it is that God would have us get on with. We pick up where we left off, practicing living from and for love in ordinary, unimpressive ways.

God reconciled the world to Godself in Christ, and does not hold our trespasses against us, Paul says. Which is to say, God does not look at us with disgust or condemnation and neither is God convinced to love us because we are so impressive or interesting. God’s view is that we are inherently loveable. Like a new grandma stunned by her tiny grandson who does nothing yet but eat, sleep and poop, utterly loved for simply being and nothing more.  God holds us in love, and transforms us by grace to do the same for one another. 

So from now on we regard no one from a human point of view. When we’re resting in God's affection for us, it’s impossible to view others with hostility or fear. Instead, we find ourselves participating in the reconciliation of Christ, becoming instruments of God’s love, ambassadors of reconciliation. When we know ourselves to be held in love, we will love others. 

 So, we live our lives, in the moments we’re in and the people we’re with. We sin, we confess, we give it to God, and we go back to seeking a reconciled kind of life. Because to be in right relationship with God and one another is what we’re made for. It’s the longing within everyone, and the boundless gift of God in Christ, for us all.

Amen.

(I'm grateful for Rowan Williams' Passions of the Soul for the  direction of this message and insights about the desert fathers and mothers!).

Moments of Redemption

  1 Samuel 3:1-20

I wish someone would make a mini-series about Samuel’s life. It would open with this scene of the voice calling to the boy Samuel, and flow forward to all world-shifting drama Samuel will be in the dead center of: war, oppression, sweeping tragedy and great triumph, battles and brutality, victories and defeat, the Philistines’ capture of the Ark of the Covenant – the most sacred object of God, containing the ten commandments, Aaron’s staff and a bowl of manna—and after enduring horrific curses, their hasty return of it.  The little boy Samuel will grow up to become to the people of Israel judge, prophet and priest -converging these distinct roles in a single person as Israel becomes a monarchy. He’ll appoint Israel’s first king, the mighty, handsome warrior Saul, who ends up egotistical, self-serving and eventually going mad, and then sneakily anointing the youngest, backwoods, nobody, poet, shepherd kid to take his place who turns out to be King David. For the rest of his days, no matter who is in charge, Samuel will remain God’s spokesperson in Israel.

This child here in the temple, on the cusp of his first, unfortunate prophesy, will become the key figure that holds Israel to its identity. It would be something to watch, really gripping TV.

 

But the story would be punctuated with flashbacks too. Why is this child sleeping by himself in the temple near the Ark of the Covenant? Why is he being cared for by an elderly priest and not at home with his family? In one scene, we’ll see his mother arrive in the temple from afar, an annual pilgrimage, She’ll hug him close, give him a beautiful new robe she’s made him—she seems to love him fiercely. But then she’ll leave again. The next year she’ll return with another handmade robe and a passel of younger siblings he hardly knows. But here he sleeps, alone. 

 

And then we’ll understand, a few episodes in, when we see this same spot where he is lying now, curled up on a mat with a blanket, years earlier. There his own mother lay in a distraught heap, sobbing, begging God for a miracle, promising that if God finally gave her a child, she would dedicate him to serve God his whole life. Eli the priest found her there, and told her God had heard her cries.  

 

Three or four years later, she returned to the temple, to this priest that had seen her in her distress. This time she brought her young son and handed him over to Eli for care and instruction.  And then Hannah sang one of scripture’s handful of epic, prophetic songs of praise for God’s faithfulness, a song that harkens back to Miriam on the banks of the Red Sea when the Egyptians were defeated and God delivered the Israelites from slavery, and forward to Mary when Elizabeth recognizes she is carrying the Messiah who will deliver us all from death. 

 

We’d need to do justice to Hannah’s song, so our mini-series would probably need to be a musical - or an opera! – and here would build a swelling orchestral, triumphant and poignant emphasis on the surprising coexistence of her great sacrifice and her overwhelming gratitude, as she released what she most wanted in all the world and recognized God’s unshakeable hand at work in the world, the way her son will too one day. 

 

At the end of the song, of course we’d have to zoom in on little Sam, who would probably be sitting on the floor in this same spot he sleeps now, perhaps balancing a carved, wooden sheep on his knee and softly baaing, oblivious to all that’s about to happen to him or through him. He’d look so cute, and ordinary, that we’d scarcely believe this kid will become one greatest prophets in all Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

 

But the really, juicy interesting parts of the show, I suspect, would be around the priest Eli. Eli, who didn’t plan to raise this boy but ended up doing so. Eli, who had already raised two, extremely disappointing sons.  He’s a good priest but a lax father, and his sons have become thugs, mafioso types, blustering bullies. The bible actually calls them “scoundrels who had no regard for the Lord or the duties of the priests to the people.” Instead of serving God and caring for the people, they take what they want from whomever they want and make a mockery of God, stealing, abusing women, and demanding people’s meat sacrifices in the temple be served to them instead of offered to God. Eli begs them to repent, but they don’t listen to him. 

These sons are the great sorrow of his pained and troubled heart, and he has been warned by an unnamed prophet that God is not happy, and his sons will die on the same day as each other, and instead of Eli’s household, a different great priest will arise to lead the people.

 

And so, we return to the evening in question. 

Little Samuel is sound asleep near the sacred vessel of God’s power and presence, and then God calls him by name. Samuel? Samuel? 

“The word of the Lord was rare in those days, and visions were not widespread,” we’re told. And yet, YHWH speaks. And not to a great leader, but to a child, an adoring mother’s grateful sacrifice, a regretful priest’s young “padawan.”   

 

Three times the voice awakens him, three times Samuel runs into Eli’s room and shakes the priest awake, “Here I am, did you call me, Eli?” And twice Eli sends him back to bed. 

But the third time – (“though his eyesight had gone dim”, “the lamp of God had not yet gone out”) - Eli perceives what is happening.  “Samuel,” it says, “did not yet know the Lord,” but Eli did, and he sensed that the God of Adam, Abraham, Miriam and Moses, and the boy’s faithful mother, Hannah, was summoning the child. So, he tells little Sammy, “If it happens again, say, ‘Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.’

 

God calls again and Samuel answers, ‘Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.’ And God launches Samuel’s prophesy career then and there, with a real corker, one that, we’re told, will make BOTH ears of whoever hears of it tingle!  Samuel is to tell his dear teacher and guide that God plans to punish his household and wipe out his line because his sons are evil and he’s done nothing to stop them.

The poor child doesn’t sleep a wink. 

 

When Eli greets him in the morning and asks what God said last night, Sam’s afraid to tell him. But here is Eli’s great, redemptive moment. Here he steps into his own obedience as priest, surrogate father, and shaper of a prophet.  From humility and his awareness both of who God is and who this young child might turn out to be, Eli says two things. First, he says, “No matter what, however bad it is, you must tell me, Samuel, or may whatever it is happen to you.”  And, then, after Samuel shares the terrible vision, Eli answers, “God is God. Let God do as he sees fit.” 

 

 The very next words are, “As Samuel grew up, the LORD was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel…knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the LORD.”

 

For the remainder of his life and beyond, Samuel will continue to listen for the voice of God and obey – even if he feels annoyed about it, or if doing so puts him at risk, he will guide the people of God through turbulent times. And he will raise two untrustworthy sons of his own and suffer a similar disappointment to Eli. He’ll have a great retirement party and then get reluctantly yanked back on duty. And even after he’s dead, he’ll be conjured back to predict the outcome of a battle and make the on-his-way-out King Saul dearly regret having summoned his cranky ghost.

 

But on this evening, when God calls to Samuel and he awakens to the call of God on his life, the boy can know none of these things, and neither can those whose lives and futures he will have a hand in shaping. 

 

But one person does sense what is coming, and chooses to accept and join in, even if it’s not the way he would have wanted it to be. One person does recognize the hand of God at work, even if God’s voice doesn’t come to him. 

 

So here’s where our mini-series would have a little twist.  

While our show will be ostensibly, and truly, about Samuel, it’s really about God working through it all, the lives of every one of them, and we would probably be surprised to see it most in Eli. 

 

We’ve been talking about receiving our lives, what is, what’s difficult, what God is doing, what will be, and today we’re talking about receiving what God has already done.  That is to say, God is redeeming this world because God has already determined that this life and everyone in it exists for the love and belonging God embodied in Christ Jesus. God has already reconciled the world to Godself in Christ. God has called good God’s wildly diverse and harmonious creation, and God has condemned what defiles and dehumanizes, what divides and destroys.

 

 Redemption begins in judgment; resurrection starts in death. God’s word speaks this judgement into the world. The judgment of God is just and can be trusted. Because God's judgment is rooted in the love that breathed this world into being and summons all in love back to the Creator. So, God will always judge good and evil, and condemn that which violates the belonging of people to God or one another. And God took it all into the heart of God when Jesus breathed his last and death seemed to have won. And then, in resurrection, the power of death to destroy and divide was broken, and love will be the final word over it all. God’s judgment is God’s grace. God’s judgment puts death to death and raises all to life.

 

Eli receives God’s judgment spoken through the child Samuel. Even while Samuel is afraid to speak it, Eli recognizes God’s judgment is coming, and knows it is true and right. Heartbreaking, no doubt, but just and good, necessary even. He recognizes in this moment, watching what is happening with this boy, that his own leadership is ending, and God is doing a new thing, through this child. And he sees that God is giving him the chance to participate, still. Always. God is inviting Eli to share in redemption, his own redemption, the ongoing redemption of Israel, by raising this boy to listen for the word of God, and by encouraging him to speak it, as frightening as it may be, to stand up and speak out God’s word of judgment and God’s word of hope.

 

Later on, little Samuel’s first prophesy will come true. In the terrible battle when Israel is brutally defeated, and the Philistines capture the ark of the covenant, both Eli’s sons will be among the dead that day.  And Eli, then 98 years old, waiting at the gate of the city for news of the battle, will accept word of his sons with resignation, but when he hears about the Ark, he will cry out and fall backwards, break his neck, and die.  

 

And on the surface his story will have ended tragically. But the story is more than the surface glance, and Eli participated in God’s redemption all along. After the death of what his life was to be, he was resurrected into his purpose. He taught the great prophet Samuel to say, Speak Lord, your Servant is Listening. He recognized the voice of God calling to the boy, and accepted the judgment of God speaking through him.  Eli encouraged Samuel to speak what is true, to love God above all else and to care for God’s people.  

And it began this evening, this moment.

 

What God is doing is far beyond what we can see or know in any one moment. It includes the faith and the failings of all those gone before, and weaves us into a narrative that reaches beyond time.  While kings and nations rise and fall, mothers sacrifice and fathers sorrow, courage and trust weave through ordinary lives, God’s judgment and grace hold us all. And God does not waver in redeeming this beloved world, and drawing us all into the project.

 

God meets us in death and brings life. There is nothing that qualifies us to join in this redemption except our humility and our willingness to learn to say, Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.

Amen.

 

 Read previous sermons about Hannah and Samuel