Saturday, July 23, 2011

God, groanings and good news


Our prayers this night in worship -
each one spoken simply and then held by the community in prayer.




The very last thing I would want to hear, if I were the parent of any one of those kids on that island in Norway – whether living or dead, or really, if I were any Norweigian at all today, is “All things work together for good for those who love God…” 

I might be a little more open to hearing, “The Spirit prays for us with groanings too deep for words.” Because it isn’t that we know what to pray for and just need a little help getting it out, it’s that we have no idea what we need, we don’t even know what we want half the time-
Sometimes all we have is just pain, just raw awful pain and nowhere to put it and nothing to say about it.  Or we have regrets; half the time we want to pray that something didn’t happen, we want to pray to change the past, and our prayers are just a bunch of “if onlys” and “whys?”  Can we just pray that that madman didn’t get on that island?  Can we just pray that we never sent our kid there? 

Very rarely do we know how to pray or even know what we’re praying for, as though we would know how to solve the nation’s budget crisis? The devastating famine in Somolia, projected to kill 800,000 kids? The war in Iraq?  As though you and I could figure out the best way to bring peace to the Middle East?  As if I know how to stop my son’s deep fears, or help my mother cope with unemployment or chronic pain?

 Lord knows, we don’t know how to pray. We just know things are not right. And we don’t even know how it would look if they were right, or we feel selfish asking for perfection, or overwhelmed by the suffering of others, so we are paralyzed in prayer so much of the time.

So, if I were a Norweigian parent of one of those kids tonight, I might be ok with being told that the Spirit prays for me with groanings too deep for words, because that is all I would have right about now.

But this passage is filled with things that are gospel, which means, "good news," I mean really, really good news, that have often been wielded so thoughtlessly, applied so dreadfully, that it becomes not really good news at all, kind of news we’d rather avoid instead.  Like being told, in the midst of some crushing grief, that all things work together for good, as though God wanted this tragedy to happen, or at least planned it, which in my book would be plenty malicious enough.

After centuries of filtering the gospel through Catholic guilt and Protestant work ethic and Western Capitalism and American Consumerism and Individualism, we can barely hear the good in this news at all. And what is good news here, what most everyone can agree is most certainly and undeniably good news, we reserve mainly for the dead.

Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus! So for you who lay before us in your casket, gone from this life, this is great news! You are held safely in God’s care and love.  As for the rest of us… I guess someday we’ll all be in your shoes anyway and the promises will mean something for us as well.

This passage is so filled with pitfalls and baggage hooks, especially for formerly religious or raised religious folks, this “comfort” ends up the opposite – it represents a lot of the reasons we left the church or are wary of coming back. "No condemnation" for some must surely mean condemnation for others – and all this talk of “elect” means we’re just politely not mentioning the “damned”, right? 

But despite all the theological jargon and the baggage-laden words (like “predestined” “conquerors” “justified” “saved” “elect”) that may make us want to steer clear of this passage, and also often those who feel comfortable with it, there really is good news here, good news for all of us, and for the whole world.

And it begins with who God is.  
Because if God is a distant God, demanding perfection and hard to please, dictating in advance all that is to happen without regard to its impact on individual human beings or communities, if God is just wielding God’s power, arbitrarily choosing when to step in and stop things and letting other terrible things go on, for the sake of some greater purpose that some of us might be called to and others excluded from, then this is not good news. 

And it really isn’t for any of us either. Because who among us could really please this God? Who among us could endure such suffering as "conquerors" and just go along with whatever "good" must be coming from our pain?  Perhaps there are some. 
But I already know I’m not one of them. 
And it would take some kind of super feat of faith, some great personal piety (and a hearty dose of denial?) to live as though things around us are unfolding as they were always meant to, as though God intends each and every thing that occurs, and its meaning simply temporarily escapes us.

Poet and essayist Scott Cairns says,
 “Whether or not you think the world was initially created as the shaky sphere it is - a notoriously unstable crust skidding over a roiling swirl of molten rock - there's no arguing that it isn't something of a crapshoot now. Earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, famine, flood - take your pick. And lest we forget the human hand in our crapshoot's wealth of crap, we must remember to add to that wild mix our own pathological history of aggression, murder, war, and genocide.
And where, exactly, is our God in all of this?
Well, the story goes that He has descended into the very thick of it. 
The story goes that He remains in the very thick of it."  (Scott Cairns, The end of suffering: Finding Purpose in Pain, 108).

And if THAT is who God is, then suddenly the good news really is good. Because God doesn’t stand back like a puppet master, God enters into all of human life and existence, with and for us. Jesus lives life with us and suffers death for us and is raised back to life and now death never again gets to have the very last word.  In Christ, all of life is bent back towards God; in Christ all of life is redeemed.
 
So to say that "God works all things together for good for those who love God and are called according to God’s purposes" does not mean that God plans out a course of suffering for us to make us stronger people, or lets bad things happen in order accomplish some supernatural purpose or glory.  Instead, because God joins us in our suffering, shares it from the inside, bears it with us, for us, all things work together for good because there is nothing that can separate us from God’s love.  All things work together towards love.  Because God’s love embraces us even when we feel utterly abandoned and godforsaken, God shares our place of abandonment and godforsakenness in Jesus’ death on the cross. 

The promise is that this suffering, this tragedy, this pained relationship or financial ruin or horrifying disaster or crippling depression – God’s love meets us even in this. God’s love isn’t stopped or hindered by this, in fact, the power that brings life out of death brings all things, anything, no matter how awful or trivial, into God’s purposes of love.

Earlier today I shared a message from Bard and Kjersti, our congregation’s friends in Norway, Bard said, "We are all well - all considering. Today we are in tears, mourning and losses of those killed in the bombing and particularly all the young people (at least 84!) shot to death at the social democratic youth camp. But how radically evil this is - we will not let hate eat our hearts out. Today the atmosphere in Norway is one of care and love."

For those who love God and are called and moved and motivated by God’s purposes, by the things that call and move and motivate God – love, forgiveness, healing, wholeness - for these the good news is that there is nothing that ever happens that cannot be used by God for love, evil can never get the last word, hopelessness or despair cannot win. Because God can work love and healing and wholeness in and through everything.
And we are more than conquerors, stoic endurers of suffering who one day get the satisfaction that we’ve made it through, survived, as though this life is something to be merely tolerated, or is to be separated from our spiritual existence. No, we are more than that, much more. Through Christ we are participants in this love that transforms, redeems, makes whole, not just us, but the world we live in, the people we love, the communities we share, the families we’ve been given for this short time we have on this planet.  
 “The extreme greatness of Christianity,” said Simone Weil, French philosopher and Christian mystic, “lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering, but a supernatural use for it.”  But, as Paul reminds us, it isn’t we who work to do this, it is the Spirit of Christ who lives in us, prays for us, works through us.  And for a God who brings life from death itself, all things are ingredients for life.  And, as we pour into one another and declare over one another at our baptisms: since we have been claimed by this love and now belong to it, chosen by love to spread it and talk about it and share it and hang onto it and give it away, what, then, could ever separate us from the love of God?
Could "hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" If all of evil swelled up and swallowed us whole, even that would be no match for the love of God in Christ Jesus, this love that claims us and lives in us and works everything towards love. 

So groan away great Spirit within us and between us, because we don’t know what to do with our sadness sometimes, and we don’t know how to fix the brokenness we see and share.  And draw us ever more into your love, to be people moved and motivated by your very heart of love for the world.

 Amen.


Sunday, July 17, 2011

The Inescapable God




Psalm 139 (all of it, not just 1-12,23-24)

I know people who like to talk about God for fun. Ok, I might be one of them.  And there is no end to what could be said, from whatever perspective you say it.  Is God the cosmic power over all? The personal savior? The beginning of all things?  We can pick apart how God is represented, what beliefs reflect our picture of who God is, speculate about what God thinks of things or how God does or doesn’t intervene in life. 
And whether its fun or frustrating, at some point, you reach the end of it; you’ve said about what you can say for now, you rise from your seat, clean up the empty wine bottles and dirty dishes, turn off the lights, and everyone heads home. And it usually doesn’t ultimately change you that much, all this ad nasueam talking about God.

Not like talking to God.  Now that’s something else entirely.  
Once you’re home, and the silence wraps around you and the whole world is asleep but you’re still lying there.
Vunerable. Tentative. unguarded.

Oh God.  Hi. It’s me. 

It’s me again.  Little old me.

Do you know who I am? 

I’m not sure I know who you are. 

I think I saw you today, God. Was that you? 

Where are you? I’m so afraid and so alone, where are you?

There is no telling where this might lead. You can talk about God without really even believing God exists.  But when you talk to God you’ve just opened up your own being to another being.  And that is quite something. 

I love our Psalm today, because it feels like we are eavesdropping on an intimate conversation, peeking in at someone’s diary, listening in on their secret heart.  This isn’t a poem about God, this is a love letter to God.  And the voyeuristic thrill and sentimentality hook me right off the bat.

“Oh God, You have searched me and known me...” 
How we long to be known!  It is so rare and fleeting in life that we ever feel fully known. Being known in this life happens in glimpses, in spurts, in moments frozen in time. A look of shared meaning, the comment that show you this other person can tell what you’re thinking, the gesture that says he knows exactly what you need in that moment without you saying it. 

It’s nice to be known, it makes us feel complete to be known. Full. At peace.
But we also like to control how we’re known, how much we’re known, what is known of us in different contexts, and how the knowledge can be used.
It is unsettling to think that there is one who knows absolutely everything, the good and the bad, the deep and ugly, the ridiculous and embarrassing parts of us, and not just what we’re willing to post on our status updates.

There is a song by the Civil Wars where the frustrated lovers sing back and forth to each other. He sings, “You only know what I want you to.” and she answers, “I know everything you don’t want me to.”

That God knows us that way?  Everything, not just the things we want known about us.  And closely, intimately...

I was with a dear friend this week, sharing something that painful, and she was right there, listening, and I felt really known.  But then there was a moment when the being known went from feeling good to feeling too intense.  When I became afraid of my own emotion and weary of sharing, and I didn’t want to take things any deeper or stretch the conversation any further. In a split second I moved from feeling open and trusting, grateful for her presence with me, to wishing I could teleport her out of my car so I could just cry in peace without her looking at me with such invasive tenderness.

Sometimes it’s hard to be known.  Sometimes it’s excruciating to be loved.
Sometimes we’d rather be alone. 
But God’s knowledge of us, God’s love of us, is apparently unyielding.

Margaret Wise Brown wrote a wonderful book called, The Runaway Bunny:

Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away.
So he said to his mother, “I am running away.”
“If you run away,” said his mother, “I will run after you.
For you are my little bunny.”

“If you run after me,” said the little bunny,
“I will become a fish in a trout stream
and I will swim away from you.”

“If you become a fish in a trout stream,” said his mother,
“I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you.”

And they go on: he becomes a rock on a mountain high above her, she becomes a mountain climber, he becomes a flower in a hidden garden, she becomes the gardener,  he becomes a bird, a sailboat, a trapeze artist, she becomes the tree, the wind, a tightrope walker. And when he becomes a little boy who runs into a house she answers,

 “If you become a little boy and run into a house,”
said the mother bunny, “I will become your mother
and catch you in my arms and hug you.”

“Shucks,” said the bunny, “I might just as well
stay where I am and be your little bunny.”

And so he did.
“Have a carrot,” said the mother bunny.

THIS is how relentless God’s love is. 

But there’s more, even.  
What about that chunk of this Psalm that was omitted for this week’s lectionary, and is almost always left out when we hear this psalm? 
The part where our cosy waltz veers off into mixed martial arts and starts ranting about hating people and asking God to kill them. 
Pretty horrifying, actually.  Almost discredits the whole thing.   I suspect this section gets cut because it makes us so uncomfortable to think someone could be this intimate with God and then go off into a hatred spiral. It feels so inconsistent.

But instead of being scared off by this part of the Psalm, I suddenly remember that I am seeing this as a raw, open diary, as a brutally honest person talking right to God who knows what he’s thinking anyway. 
And then it strikes me as so beautiful in its uncensored wrongness, it’s candid depths, and the trust it must take to say it all to God, it all its passion.  
And it’s a little bit of a relief, too, to see this here, because how often do we get it wrong!  In how we unthinkingly judge other people and the world, how we try in unhealthy ways to fix what we see broken, in what we selfishly ask God for or mistakenly offer to God as some kind of praise.

But as heartfelt and misguided as we so often are, even that doesn’t stop God for a second.  I imagine God taking this passionate psalmist up into God’s great lap and pressing his head onto God’s ample chest and rocking, crooning, chuckling about all the offers to smite the enemy on God’s behalf, just like I do with my tiny ninja when she tires of protecting the house from invisible impending doom and peels off her mask, dejected,
or how I held my fierce little big brother when I heard that he stood guard over his little sister for four straight days when she started at his daycare, ready to take on a anyone who tried to mess with her until the teachers finally told him they’d look after her and he could stand down.
    
Hush now.  Mama God says.  I’m here.  I don’t need your protection.  You can set down your weapon. Just let me love you.

God loves us with an unfathomable depth of love.  God knows us. So it’s ok that we get it wrong sometimes.  And when the sadness or the disappointment or pain pierces you, it’s ok to say irrational and crazy things. It’s ok not to qualify yourself, or censor to what you think God wants to hear.  And even if you try to run away and hide your face in shame after you realize what you’ve actually said, what you’ve really done, there is nowhere, NOWHERE you can go to get away from God. 
Oh the mixed joy and terror of this!
Oh the freedom and bondage that is being loved so completely! 
God simply will not let you go.  
Knew you before you knew yourself, knew you in the context of the very earth and cosmos, before time and space!  Knows when you work and when you play, when you rest and when you run yourself ragged. Knows when you’re generous and loving and forgiving, and when you’re at the end of your rope and lash out in inappropriate anger at your children or roommates.
Knows all that you do and think. ALL of it.  
And you can’t hide. You can’t escape. Wherever you go, God is there – and not just peeking through the crack in the door, like a mother I know watching her son at Summer Robot Camp this week – no, standing there in plain site, WAITING for you, like YOU are the reason for God to show up at all. 

And in the utter depths of despair, when it feels the night will swallow you whole, and the darkness cover all that is light, darkness is no thing to God.  Dark, light, night, day, in, out, old, new, malignant, benign, free, incarcerated, whole, broken – this one’s not intimidated, not backed down, not going anywhere. Steadfast. And unafraid.  And this unafraid one is standing here for you. With you.

When all is said and done, and the flailing or fleeing or shame or doesn’t do a thing – God is still right there.  And when the words run out and the theories about God and all the eternal trying and failing to be the person you think you should be, there God is.  All along.

 “Fine then.  God, Search me, Know my heart, you may as well if you love me that much.  Look in on my thoughts and help me, change me, heal me.  I relent. I surrender. Shucks, I might just as well stay where I am and be your little bunny.

I invite you today to begin the conversation again, as we are invited to everyday. 

Hi God, it’s me, you know, me.

Surrender to the one who knows you so completely and will never let you go. 
Rest. 
Breathe. 
Abide in the love of the one who holds you. 
And have a carrot.  Cause God’s not going anywhere.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Away and home again (sort-of)

It has been a few weeks since I have posted.  The kids and I just returned from 16 days in New Zealand and Australia.  (We were all there, but just the kids and I returned - Andy will be back in a week).  And the return journey was a drawn-out doozie; I wish I would've taken before and after pictures - we looked like a trio of surly, hungover criminals slinking through US Customs.

But I have things to say, I think, things to process and share about our time there - about traveling with kids, about Christchurch and Christ's Church, about time alone with family out of normal context (but never alone by yourself), and what surprising sacred space sightseeing opens up within and between us.  I have lots burbling, I think.

But at the moment I am a foggy mess.  My edges are all blurry I can't latch onto thoughts.  (Not to mention trying to feed myself and the kids when we want breakfast in the middle of the day and dinner in the middle of the night).  So the post-travel post(s) will have to wait a few days.  (At least until all the bubble-wrapped souvenirs are off the dining room table and we all three can sleep through the night without waking each other up for an extended song, craft, story and granola bars break before returning to bed).
As Owen just said when I asked him to get the remote control, "I just can't. I have too much jet-lag right now."

How we're NOT feeling right now. Ok, maybe just one of us.

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