Sunday, September 26, 2010

Misery, Money & Me


On Thursday I went to drop Maisy off at daycare, which is located in the student housing area of Luther Seminary.  Thirty children line up under the awning near the front door to catch the bus every morning.  This particular morning it was raining, and there were two police cars pulled up to the sidewalk, the officers talking to someone in the middle of the swirling, noisy crowd of children. 

I took Maisy inside and when I came out I heard from a parent that the police were trying to “move someone along.”  This man had been storing his bike near the dumpsters, and had been spotted earlier that morning in the seminary library – conspicuously not reading, which raised suspicion, and someone called the police.  So while the children waited for their bus, they witnessed the police intervening on this vagrant who had been seeking somewhere dry to pass the time.
Now, this sort of thing really messes with us Christians.  On the one hand, we don’t want homeless people hanging around our kids waiting for the bus.  We want security and order where we live, so if we were being honest, at least some part of us would say we were glad for the police intervention here (someone from the seminary did call them, after all). 

But we can’t just stop at that, our faith has something to say about it too.  We feel conflicted, torn, we stand around and wonder aloud if there is somewhere he could go, if there was some policy the seminary should have when this happens.  “We are a Christian institution, after all.” one dad said.
It’s one thing to send money to people over there, but it gets a lot messier when they’re dumped right on your doorstep.

In our story, Lazarus, the pitiful poor guy, is right there, blocking the way even, every time the obscenely rich man comes in and out of his house.  
So I guess he was supposed to take care of him.  I guess what we’re supposed to get from this parable is that we should take care of the poor or else we may find ourselves in trouble.  The rich man clearly did not do the right thing.
But what is the right thing?  Giving money you know will be used on alcohol or drugs? Not giving money because you can’t trust how it will be used?  Putting yourself or your family at risk for a stranger? 

And the one poor person dumped on our very own doorstep is nothing when we let ourselves consider the vast numbers of people living in poverty in our own city, our own state, nation – to say nothing of the world, of the war torn places of starvation and suffering beyond our wildest imaginations, poverty we couldn’t even begin to fathom. 
It is absolutely paralyzing, really, and we can feel incredibly overwhelmed if we let ourselves.  We want to do the right thing, we want to be good people, we want to make a difference, we care, but what is the balance? How do you live a life that includes vacations and Starbucks, bus stops and birthdays when so many people are suffering?

So, if you can’t do enough, which nobody really can, after all, then at least feel really guilty when you do anything extravagant.
We had a song we use to sing in my deeply ironic family that went: “Happy Birthday, ugh. Happy Birthday, ugh. Misery and despair, people starving everywhere. Happy Birthday, ugh. Happy Birthday ugh.”  Maybe that is the right Christian attitude.  If we can’t bring ourselves to let the rainsoaked stranger inside our own homes or libraries, at least we can feel really torn up and conflicted about calling the police on him…

Life isn’t fair. It is horribly unfair, and everything we do, practically, participates in this unfair system. My cell phone has some kind of metal in it mined by children working and dying in some African country for pennies a day, My coffee was grown on land cleared out from destroyed rainforests by people unable to use their own fields for food crops because they make more growing coffee for rich Americans to drink than they would growing things that could actually feed their families.  My clothing was probably sewn by a child in China. 
I am practically personally filling landfills with pull-ups and disposable cups, and I drive every single day past someone with a cardboard sign and struggle to make eye contact and wonder if today I should give change or not.
I waste so much, and I take so much for granted, I ignore so much of what is going on in places outside my own daily grind, and the thought of learning to be conscious of my impact and eliminating my carbon footprint and buying sweat-free, fair-trade, local, organic, give-back and green makes me bone weary and so defeated. 
And it makes me feel really really guilty.

And this parable just seems to heap the coals on.
There is a chasm between the rich man and Lazarus.  As small as a doorstep or an automatic fence, but a chasm nevertheless.  And for whatever reason in the universe where these perverse and unfair things happen, one was rich and the other was poor, and no amount of crumb sharing or brow beating was going to ultimately change that.... Just as there is a chasm between me and Haitians living in tent cities, an impossible and vicious divide.

This parable then follows the rich man and Lazarus past this realm and into the next.  Now, in death, after their alienated but adjacent lives, there is a chasm that they can see with their eyes, an impossible, impassible separation. The rich man is on one side of the divide and Lazarus is on the other and the gap between them is expansive indeed.

When the rich man looks up from his torment and sees Lazarus resting in comfort, he begs that Abraham send Lazarus to help him. 
As one person has said, “he asks for mercy, not forgiveness, he asks for water, not for life.”  He still, even in the torments of Hades, does not get it.  Dude, it’s OVER for you.  You HAD your chance and you blew it. Don’t you even get it YET?  You were no more deserving of your wealth than he was of his poverty. And that chasm you reinforced between you and this beggar on your doorstep, it’s real now, how does it feel to be on the other side of it?

And if you don’t feel the impossibility within this story by now, you’re not listening.  Because unless you are poor, unless you’re Lazarus with the sores and the starvation and the food just outside of reach, unless you’re in dire straits, or Darfur, chances are, the character that’s YOU in this story is the rich man.

And Lazarus? Divine justice looks after Lazarus – the only person, ever, in one of Jesus’ parables to be named, and his name means “God helps”.  GOD helps him.  God has got his back.  God makes sure that in the end Lazarus is ok. 
But what of this great chasm? What of this impossible divide, and the nameless rich man, now forever thirsty, and his five brothers back in life doomed to inherit his fate? 
What of us?

“Your brothers wont believe, wont change their ways, even if someone comes back from the dead.”   Abraham tells the rich man. Jesus tells his disciples.
Even if someone comes back from the dead, it wont convince them that this life is fleeting, that what we’ve been given by the luck of the draw is meant to be shared, that we are, in some way, responsible for, or at least connected to, one another, that God’s grace is what holds us all in the end. They wouldn’t believe when the prophets warned them and the law told them, and they wont believe even if someone who died came back.

But the truth is this: we do know someone who has come back from the dead. And we do believe him. 
We believe him when he says he is making all things new. We believe him when he says the poor will not always be poor and riches will pass away.  We believe him when he dumps over the tables of the moneychangers in the temple and says “You come to God because God makes a way, not because you earn it or buy it or deserve it.  Because you need it.  And you all need it.”  We all need it.  We need a way across the chasm that separates us from God and each other. The impossibility that paralyzes and blinds us every day.

We do know and believe someone who came back from the dead, and what he said was “Repent, the kingdom of heaven is near.  It’s peeking through even now.  Feed the hungry, clothe the poor, love the outcast… When you do these things for one another, you do them to me.” 
The kingdom of God makes you see people differently.
The rich man is not in trouble for being wealthy. He’s not answerable for all the other poor people in his village, or country. He is where he is in this story because he did not see the one right in his path.  
He is in trouble for thinking he is the center of the story.  He is in trouble for not seeing.
Two individuals living side-by-side, day in and day out. Lazarus was placed on his very doorstep and he did not see him. And even after death, he still does not see Lazarus as anything but a subordinate in his own story, someone who can do something for him, who SHOULD do something for him.
 Lazarus is not an underling meant to prop up this man’s life. He is not a backdrop to be ignored, or a burden to be avoided.  He is a person.  He is known to God; he belongs to God.  And he’s a fellow human being, no different than the rich man himself.
This is the rich man’s great sin.  He does not see Lazarus’ humanity, or his own.

The kingdom of God is at hand. Where the hungry are fed. and the brokenhearted are comforted. and the meek inherit the earth. and mercy and peace are the order of the day.  Where people are seen and known and we are part of the greater whole.  We’re talking about God’s kingdom, not our’s.  And it is right here, reach out and touch it, dip your toe in and test it out. 

The world is filled with unfairness and evil, and when we see it we bear the injustice of it, the grief of it, we weep for it and we do what you can. And we also live our lives, which are a gift, as all life is a gift. We live our lives in gratitude and in openness to the ways God might be calling us to join in this kingdom unfolding, this newness weaving its way through reality.

It doesn’t solve the moral dilemmas or make things easy for us.  And what we do with our money does matter. It matters. It says something about what matters to us, and it really can affect other people in small and in really big ways. But, as Paul says, “If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. I am nothing.” 
If I do all that I can with everything I have to make the world a better place, because it is the right thing, or because I feel obligated or sad about the world’s problems, if I do it so that I learn and grow, or so that my children will have a better world to live in, or so that the principles of justice and equality will stand... All these things are good things and good reasons, but if any of them are my reasons for doing good things I will inevitably, one day, either give up, or burn out in defeat, or break down in despair or shut out the world’s problems and focus only on myself. 
I will miss the whole point because I am still the center of the story, I am the primary actor and the world is my stage, the others are in it are not fellow human beings but my duty to care for, a project to fix or a crisis to solve.
But Lazarus had a name and the rich man did not.

This is God’s world, not ours.  And it is filled with people with hurts and hopes and needs and joys, here sharing life with each other, people whose humanity calls out my own and together we reflect the image of God.

To hear the message of Jesus’ parable, the words of the dead and risen one, we must See Lazarus. The named ones, the ones God knows and sees. We must live from our shared humanity.  We are mutual recipients of grace, sharers of grace and participants in God’s unfolding promise. 
So may we see.  May we we live joyfully and participate freely in the ways God’s love is making all things new, both far away and right on our own doorstep.


Loving God, we repent for our apathy. for our fear. for being paralyzed by guilt and overwhelmed by the sadness of it all.  We repent for thinking it is hopeless. And we repent for thinking it is all up to us. For thinking we are the somehow the center of the story and what we do can make or break the whole narrative.  Help us to trust you. Help us to see the people you put in our path, to recognize our common humanity, and to share what we have with one another and the world that you are redeeming.  Thank you for your grace that holds us all, now and forever. Amen.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Keeping the Faith

Today we gathered for a special service, a very different kind of get-together.  There were packs of Kleenex in all the pews, a basket to drop notes into at the door, and candles around the space.  The communion table was left conspicuously open, the cup and platter in one back corner, a couple of candles in the other.  In the center of the space was a big, soft chair, with a homemade quilt over it and a puffy footrest. It was flanked by rocking chairs and pews extending from there – forming an intimate circle, bracketed on either end by the baptismal font and the communion table.
People came in with more tissues in their pockets or purses; some couldn’t bring themselves to come at all.  They mostly entered timidly, quietly, apprehensively.  Then she came in, walker slowly pushed in front of her. She was guided to the special seat, her feet propped up on the plush cushion.
“Welcome to our ‘Keeping the Faith Ceremony’” I said.  And we proceeded to acknowledge that our dear sister is dying, that her life is coming to an end, and we have been blessed beyond measure to share it with her. 
We read scripture and sang a hymn, we prayed and then the time came for us to fill the table. And we did. People brought items up that had stories attached to them, sharing memories of her.  Trinkets, symbols, laughter and tears.  One person brought a film clip, from old 8 mm footage of a family celebration at the lake, ending with our guest of honor 40 years earlier cheekily dancing at the camera.  Some brought flowers; a few brought “just myself and my words” and shared with her what she had meant to them in their life, what she had been in this community.  Some merely stood and said how deeply they loved her, and that she could read the rest of what they had to say in the note they had left in the basket.
When the sharing was finished we gathered around her and laid our hands on her.  We prayed for peace and God’s presence, we poured out our gratitude for her life and our sadness to be losing her.  We anointed her with oil and blessed her, just as she was anointed at her baptism, claimed by God and marked as Christ’s own forever.  We hugged her and returned to our seats to listen to sweet sopranos sing a song of blessing, “May the Lord bless you and keep you…”
And then it was over. Except nobody wanted to go.  We lingered nearly an hour.  Someone rustled up some cookies and someone else made coffee. We placed them with a jug of cider and some paper cups on the communion table, and lingered in the sacramental fellowship of love, the sacred space held by the Spirit of God.  In the shadow of death, we will fear no evil.  For Thou art with us.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Responsible Remembering: 9/11 & Now














A friend of mine who is Muslim (and 9 months pregnant!) lives near the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, and every year, like everyone else with enough yard space close to the gates, she and her husband use their grass for State Fair Parking.  She recently shared on Facebook how, as she was cheerfully sweating and directing cars into spots, she was suddenly verbally accosted by a couple of guys yelling racially charged jokes at her on their way into the "great Minnesota get-together."  This opened up a discussion where others began sharing their grief at similar, painful experiences.


I have shared a few thoughts here about the jarring experience of returning from South Africa- where I was given an anecdotal and broad crash course in their history, work for reconciliation, and striving to build a "rainbow nation" unified in their diversity, where all are respected.  (The poignant and powerful South African Constitution is worth a read!)  

The horrors of apartheid and the ease with which a nation slides into something so inhumane were fresh on my mind when I landed back in the US to the reverberations over a Muslim Cultural Center near the former World Trade Center Site, and a fringe pastor in Florida's plans to burn the Quran on the anniversary of 9/11. 

Still mulling the powerful ways that violent and abhorrent circumstances were used to unite instead of divide, where forgiveness was held side by side with remembering - so that a whole nation might be transformed, I am hopeful that we might be similarly inspired and taught by our own experiences.  
And I do find it ironic that thanks to Pastor Terry Jones and his tiny congregation in Gainesville, FL, American Christians now find ourselves in the uncomfortable and tragic position of having to explain to the Muslim world that beliefs and actions of a few extremists do not represent the rest of us or our faith.  (May God use this to deepen empathy for our Muslim brothers and sisters...!)

It is important that we talk about what is happening in our nation, and consider the role each of us plays - if not by overt participation in hateful or ignorant words or actions, than perhaps by our apathy and avoidance.  I am particularly aware of the discomfort and challenge this presents to me as a follower of Christ Jesus in a troubled and fearful world, where, if I am honest, I am always obligated to ask, What is God doing here and now, and how am I called to participate?

So, in recognition of the anniversary of 9/11, I invite you to consider some excellent and thoughtful resources to stir discussion and deepen reflection on, and engagement in, some of the issues stirring up pain and division in this world that God deeply loves and is working to heal and restore.

(I will add articles and resources as I come across them, and I invite you to share some as well!)

Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero: A Frontline Special, with wonderful resources, discussion questions, and interviews available at the PBS website.
Eleven Days in September: A collection of poetry and reflections seeking to "respond" rather than "react".
Loving Your EnemiesA Sermon from Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
After the Attacks: A Spiritual Challenge: An extensive collection of articles on Beliefnet.com
What would Jesus Do? Burn the Koran or Eat with his Muslim Neighbors?: A thoughtful piece by Eugene Cho, blogger and co-founder of One Day's Wage.
America's Crucial Choice: Religious Division or Unity: An article by Eboo Patel looking at the history of religious strife in America and offering some helpful suggestions for building connections
The Implications of Calling Cordoba House a "Mosque" A helpful article from Sojourners by Melvin Bray clarifying terms and challenging assumptions

Muslims, Ground Zero, Fear and Fairness: An article from Patheos by Greg Garrett, Baylor University professor.


American Muslims are Not Responsible for 9/11 An article from Sojourners by Jim Wallis.


Heartsong Church Welcomes Memphis Islamic Center Another of the many contrasting stories that don't as often get told...


A Call for Respect for Muslim Neighbors: An official release from the PCUSA




When you don't have a year off to eat, pray and love...





Over at Patheos, they've asked a few folks to share, in 100 words or less, how they seek spiritual renewal in times of personal crisis.  
I was one of the responders, and I invite you to read the lovely and poignant responses they received here: 


Spirtual Renewal in times of crisis


From Patheos:
With the recent release of the movie Eat, Pray, Love, about one woman's spiritual quest after a bitter divorce, we've been thinking about the ways each of us seeks renewal, specifically in times of crisis. And while author Elizabeth Gilbert's journey led her on an extended pilgrimage far from her home in NYC, we couldn't help but wonder:  How do you seek spiritual renewal when you can't leave your family, your job, your mortgage payment?

We reached out to some of our favorite bloggers to share their thoughts on the question:  When you can't drop everything for a year-long spiritual pilgrimage, how/where do you seek spiritual renewal in times of personal crisis?  Their very personal responses follow. Join the conversation by posting a comment. 





Sunday, September 5, 2010

old letters and new life


A few months after we bought our house, Andy was re-insulating, standing on a ladder underneath the floor of our family room – pulling out the very sparse filling which was mostly made of ancient shredded newspapers, when he discovered a stash of old letters tucked in up inside a gap.  These letters were dated in the 1930s.  There were twenty or thirty of them, from the same person, hidden all together over a time span of a several years, in the eves of what was once the garage. 
What led the man who lived here to hide the letters? we wondered.  What was the tale behind these short, terse, often sad notes?  There is story here, one that has taken us years to piece together, a little at a time, and we still only know parts of it.  Reading between the lines, guessing at the sender and the recipient, the motivation of the letter, what it was like to get it, what happened as a result of it... this is a fascinating game.
There is nothing like an ordinary and mysterious letter to open peephole and draw us into a bigger story. 

Today we have before us an absorbing story, and the only window is a single letter, a letter filled with emotion and affection, posturing and persuading, referencing a relationship that stretches before and beyond the moment of writing and receiving this letter.  We can only guess at the circumstances that would bring about such a letter, and even more intriguing, at the circumstances that resulted from such a letter.

This little letter is in our bible because it is undoubtedly and indisputably from the Apostle Paul.  And as such, it is unusual because it is written to an individual and not a community, someone Paul knows well and cares about very much. 
But it is also in our scriptures because to the early church and church fathers, this letter helps us to know something of what it means to follow Christ.  So even though it is written to a particular person about a very particular situation, this letter is also meant for you and me.  
Unlike the letters in my garage ceiling, written long gone and having nothing to do with us, letters that after enjoying the game of guessing, we can put away to forget and ignore, this letter before us today puts a demand upon us. 

It is not only about these individuals long ago, but has something to say to all of us, as followers of Christ, as many parts of the one Body of Christ, the community that lives in the world as a living, breathing window into the kingdom of God.

How was this letter received?  In what spirit was it sent? Probably there was both joy and fear on both ends –hope and concern from both parties.  This is not a harmless catching-up type letter that drifts softly and alights without breaking the surface.  This letter likely landed with a KERPLUNK!, a cheerful but disturbing splash that irreversibly rippled out in endless concentric circles, and we can only speculate at its outcome. 
And in reading it ourselves, we risk it penetrating our surface as well, causing unsettling ripples in our own lives.  So are you up for it?

Shall we crack the weathered seal and take a peek?


 Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother,






To Philemon our dear friend and co-worker,
to Apphia our sister,
to Archippus our fellow-soldier,
and to the church in your house:

 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
 When I remember you in my prayers, I always thank my God because I hear of your love for all the saints and your faith towards the Lord Jesus. I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective when you perceive all the good that we may do for Christ.
I have indeed received much joy and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, my brother.

 For this reason, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love—and I, Paul, do this as an old man, and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus.
I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment. Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful both to you and to me.
 I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you. I wanted to keep him with me, so that he might be of service to me in your place during my imprisonment for the gospel; but I preferred to do nothing without your consent, in order that your good deed might be voluntary and not something forced.
Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back for ever, no longer as a slave but as more than a slave, a beloved brother—especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.
 So if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. If he has wronged you in any way, or owes you anything, charge that to my account. I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand: I will repay it. I say nothing about your owing me even your own self.
Yes, brother, let me have this benefit from you in the Lord! Refresh my heart in Christ. Confident of your obedience, I am writing to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say.
 One thing more—prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping through your prayers to be restored to you.

Epaphras, my fellow-prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends greetings to you,
and so do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my fellow-workers.
 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

What we do know is that Paul is writing from prison, to Philemon, a dear friend, someone he loves and respects.  He is writing on behalf another dear friend, one he calls a son, Onesimus, whom he also loves and respects.  This is all well and good, except that the second used to be the first one’s slave.  And there is clearly some tension, possibly Onesimus stole from Philemon or ran away or both, but at some point found he his way to Paul and also to Jesus. 

And now, an unsuspecting Philemon opens up a letter from his dear friend and imprisoned mentor, Paul, for whom he has been worrying and praying.  And his breath must have caught in his throat when he read the words, because in this letter Paul is reuniting slave and master.
Paul stomps on the law and shoves right past social standing and natural order; he bypasses personal anger and wrongdoing, and goes right for the jugular.  “You two are are brothers in Christ,” he says, “you are mutual image-bearers of God.”  And having stripped away the lenses of cultural roles and societal norms he thrusts their humanity suddenly before them. 
Philemon, meet Onesimus; Onesiums, meet Philemon.

What does this gospel of Jesus Christ do to us?  Really?
It puts us in terrible dilemmas, awkward circumstances, troubling situations. 

Who are you, now, if not slave? If not master?  After you have been this way for so long, after you have learned and lived as one or the other, how can you be any other way?

I’ve recently returned from spending 8 days in South Africa, and while I was there I read both Mandela’s and Tutu’s books about apartheid and it’s ending, and I am flabbergasted.  I still can’t wrap my mind around how – as individuals let alone a whole nation of people – how you shift from being slave and master, ruler and ruled, powerful and weak – to being equals, brothers and sisters, partners.  I am amazed by a whole people pushing the restart button.

When we toured Robben Island, where Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison, the first part of our tour was led by a young, colored man.  Coloreds, (or light-skinned people of mixed race), and Indians were considered above black and below white, in the order of value, respect and rights.  It was that intentional, simplistic and insidious.
Our guide around the island was 23 years old, so he was seven years old when Mandela became president.  He has no real conscious memory of apartheid – it has been over for most of his life. And yet, he says, it will take many generations for South Africans to truly be finished with apartheid. 
“If I wanted to keep two people apart from each other” he said, “I could hold them back with my arms, but that would work only so long before my arms would get tired and I would let go.  I could build a wall of bricks between them, and they could find their way around the wall.
But, if I whisper lies to each one about the other, if I tell them things that make them distrust the other, make them see the other as unequal, dangerous, different, threatening, then I have no need to stand between them or build walls. They will stay apart. 
For us in South Africa, the walls and barriers, the systems and rules and even conscious beliefs that kept us apart are gone, they have been dismantled.  But the unconscious beliefs are so deeply ingrained that they shape us still, and it will be not my generation or my children’s generation who will be truly free, it will be the generations that come after that.
We must dedicate ourselves to relentlessly breaking down the prejudices, we must cultivate awareness of our own subconscious stereotypes as often as possible and be intentional about the choices we make in even the smallest of interactions.  And one day, perhaps, my great grandchildren or their children will see a truly free South Africa.”

Unlike South Africa, where the system has been changed and now the individuals in it must change, in our story today, Paul is claiming that though the system may be no different than it ever was, both Philemon and Onesimus are now different – being in Christ changes them.

Onesimus is sent back to his old life as a new man. He returns to Philemon, and possibly to slavery, for all he knows – but he returns as a free man.
Onesimus has tasted freedom, he has known community and mutual respect, so why would he ever return?  Because as long as he is gone, he is bound within the system, a runaway slave, hiding and fearing, defined by his actions.  But now he is free to return and face his master.  And though legally he is facing punishment and enslavement, these things do not own him. He functions now within an evil and dehumanizing system, but does so as a human being, a free person, someone with identity and dignity, who is defined not by the system but by the claim of Christ on his life.

And so it is for Philemon, though has been wronged, humiliated, stolen from, he is now told this runaway slave is his brother, his partner in Christ. Never again may he see Onesimus as an object to be owned, as property, but instead as a fellow human being.  
“Onesimus will walk in that door,” Paul tells Philemon, “and when he does, look on him not only as one Christ loves, but as one that I love.  He is my heart, and I am sending him back to you. Treat him as you would me.”
Even though by conventions or law Philemon should punish Oneismus, sell him or even kill him, Paul is telling him he is not bound by conventions or laws.  He is not bound by anger or retribution.  He is not bound by what Oneismus deserves or even his own honor or rights.
Paul is giving Philemon another way – urging him to live from his freedom in Christ. He is free to act differently, free to be human, to live from his own humanity as a child of God and meet Onesimus the same way. 
And this restores not only Onesimus’ humanity but Philemon’s own humanity as well; it reinstates his own empathy and dignity, calling him to be compassionate, humane.

Neither man now holds power over the other –  they are both set free in Christ to meet one another in their humanity.

If Jesus Christ, God incarnate, has come into the world, has shared this life and died at the hands of those whom he created and rose to conquer death, then that changes everything.  Because we are in Christ, we are a new creation, the old has gone the new has come. 
Being free in Christ means that in whatever circumstances we find ourselves – we are called to live as though that system or those circumstances can't dictate who we are.  Who we are is determined by God.  We are free from the fears that make us hold so tightly to what we have even at the expense of others, that make us need to be right or strong.
We are free to live differently.

But this freedom is not easy. And it is quite paradoxical as well, Paul is writing from jail, after all.  Being in Christ doesn’t make life easier.   In fact, being in Christ often makes things messier, more complicated and challenging.  The gospel doesn’t exempt us from real life or spare us from the systems or consequences.  It doesn’t float tranquilly on the surface, just a compliment to our lives, or a gentle addition to the world’s systems and structures as they are.

Instead, the gospel plunges through the surface and sinks down into every single encounter, permeating each interaction, calling us by the Spirit to act from our humanity and uphold that of others.  The freedom of gospel requires us to ask the difficult questions even if it means we must change.

 So what happens in this story?  
What does the reunion look like between Philemon and Onesimus?  
How does the future of the household unfold? Or the little church community that meets there who witnesses this reunion? 
What becomes of the relationship between the two men?  
What happens to their own lives as a result of this interaction? 
We don’t know.   And Paul doesn’t ever get the chance to use the guest room that he has asked Philemon sets aside for him - his own life ends before their story does. 
And so the mystery of this letter remains.

But the questions it raises for you and me remain as well. 
How does the claim of Christ on our live change everything for us? 
What does it mean that we are defined by a different reality?
What does it mean that we are free?
How are our live shaped by the truth that each human being is made in God’s image and is part of God’s plan? 

When we gather today at the Table, before the paradox of a broken body and shed blood, shared among friends when their God was about to die before them, and shared today among friends who confess that our very life is found in this dead and risen Lord...  
When we gather today at the table we gather in a story that is unfolding within and beyond this world and even though we don’t live from our freedom much of the time, in fact, we are part of this reality.   We gather inside a promise lives among us and through us and one day will be fully realized, and that is this:  The whole world belongs to God, and we are each children of God, free to build up one another in love, to celebrate justice and live out mercy, to embrace peace and share hope. 

May we live into that reality now, ever more bravely, that our own lives are a story both ordinary and mysterious, a glimpse of God’s unquenchable kingdom.

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

Psalm 46 ,  Jeremiah 31:31-34 When I was in college, I spent the large part of one summer sleeping on a 3-foot round papason chair cushion o...