Sunday, May 24, 2015

Remaining there always




“I am the vine and you are the branches. Abide in my love.” This passage from John 15 has always been meaningful to me because it was read to me at my baptism.  I stood in a white robe, in a fiberglass pool built into the front of the sanctuary, waist deep in warm water - a short, nervous 13 year old - and said into the mic that I loved Jesus and wanted to be baptized.   And my mother stood in the congregation, holding open the bible and read to me these verses as a charge: “Your life comes from Jesus, hang onto Jesus, abide in him and his joy will be in you.”  I can still hear her voice saying those words.  Hang onto Jesus.

I recently heard a table full of Lutheran pastors debating whether faith was more monkey or cat, which is to say, do we cling to God, like a baby monkey, while God moves and leads, trying hard not to fall off, or do we get carried like a limp kitten in his mother’s mouth, trusting we wont get dropped? Who does the hanging on? was the debate. What is our role in our faith with God? 
And if you think this kind of discussion can’t get heated, think again.

But the word abide is not a desperate clinging, being carried along, afraid to fall off, and it’s not a passive ride either, trusting God not to drop you but not really participating in where you are going.

In fact, abiding isn’t really about hanging on at all, or being hung onto, for that matter.  Abiding is an active trust; it’s relaxing your grip, opening up, dwelling, hanging out, staying there, not fleeing and not flexing, but moving along nonetheless.  It’s a with-and-alongside, and within-and- around kind of thing, like being buoyed in a river while you swim, or surrounded by sunlight as you walk.  It’s less baby monkey or kitten and more child playing in the yard with Mommy in a time-suspended kind of where can I go from your Spirit, where can I flee from your presence? way of being.  She’s right there, she’s not going away, she is delighting in you and you are safe with her.  Abide there. Remain. Receive, participate. Be. In my love; surrounding you like a force field.  
You are pulled into the inner dynamic of God, which is love.  Abiding in Jesus’ love is letting the life of God that is in you, that claims you, live through you. It is trusting that your life comes from the Source of Life.

Tonight we celebrate Pentecost – the birth of the church, the moment the Spirit came down.  The Acts Pentecost passage with the tongues of fire and the other languages, is one telling of how it all got going, and it’s the one that gets all the press. But the Great Commission in Matthew is another, and our text tonight from John is yet another way of telling how the church began and the Spirit came and drew the disciples and all who followed Jesus into deep friendship and shared mission with the Creator, in the love between the Father and the Son.

In our passage tonight, like shivers down the spine, the breath of the breath of life, breathes on them.  Receive the Spirit, take in the life of the lifegiver. Let it stir you alive as it did the earth creature, Adamah, as it did the waters it hovered over when there was nothing but emptiness, moving the nascent world into vibrant, joyful being.  And then, he says, Receive my peace.  Peace is what I give you. Take in my peace, dwell in my peace.  Be filled with peace.

And then that amazing charge  - not “preach the gospel” or “go to all the world” or “make disciples” or any of the rest of how it is said in the other places. No, here he says it this way – if you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven and if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.
You are now in this with me - this peace, this abiding in love and inviting others to abide there too, this trusting God for life kind of living. You are drawn into the very relationship of God – the force that binds God and Jesus through the Holy Spirit, the inner substance of the Holy.  And in this love you have power - if you want to hang onto the things that divide and destroy, hold them and they will be held.  But if you let them go, release them, they are gone. 
This is your calling in the world.  To live from this love. To be grudge-releasers and mercy-sharers and trusters of love and dwellers in peace and spreaders of forgiveness and hope.  To live in the same connection to God and each other as I do. To let God’s life flow through you: Love each other.  Abide in my love.

Several years ago, I heard Dr. Fred Luskin speak, a world expert on forgiveness.  He said he was frustrated some time ago because most faith traditions speak extensively about the need to forgive and how good it is to do, but they don’t tell us how to forgive. They don’t often help us to do it. They just tell us to do it. And people get so stuck in unforgiveness. So very stuck.  So he has dedicated 25 years of research and work to teaching people how to forgive, and to measuring scientifically the effect it has on people’s bodies and minds and relationships.  And do you know what his team has found is at the very root of all forgiveness?

Abiding in God’s love. 
Of course, they wouldn’t say it quite that way in the laboratory. Instead they would talk about finding that place of peace within, about living from that place; but the way you get there?  Love.  He walked us through an example.  Think of someone you adore, he said. Get a good picture of them in your head.  Remember what it feels like to be so loved by them, so known and valued. How they delight in you!  Let your heart even get warm right now as you think of this person. Hold that feeling within you.  Now open your eyes, he said. Five minutes of this every day is more effective than psychotherapy in helping people to forgive. 

Love unclenches our heart, it drives out fear, and frees us – ever so much more - to forgive and to live even more out of the love that holds us, because all forgiveness, all love and mercy and with-each-other-ness come from God’s own love, God’s own being.
Abiding in God’s love not an abstract, spiritual and distant thing.  It is a concrete, real, tangible thing; it is loving each other and letting ourselves be loved; it looks like forgiveness, and it tastes like peace.  

Tonight we are baptizing little Eleanor.  And she is not going to remember this night, but I am her godmother and I will tell her about it.  And I love that the message she will get to hear is this:
You are already claimed by love – Eleanor, you belong to love. That is your home. It’s what gets to tell you who you are; it’s what gets to show you what others really look like and teach you what this world around you is really for. Love does. 

And it’s your job, as you grow, to remain there. To let yourself be loved. To let love guide you as you live with other people and meet them and fight with them and forgive them and fall for them and feel your way through all the complicated and messy things it is to be human alongside them. You get to stay in love’s forcefield through all of it.  A walking abider in love; that is what you are.

And what you forgive will be forgiven – you have power, my dear!
And you will forget sometimes.
 It’s going to be tempting sometimes to cling to hurt and anger, to shut out others and punish other’s wrongs, and to take into yourself all the judgment and failure and No of the world and others and yourself when you’re afraid or angry or jealous or afraid, and to believe that No, as though it is true, as though it gets to tell you who you are or what is real.  And you might even believe this No so much that you go out looking for what you already have, trying to be what you already are.

But God has said Yes to you, Eleanor, I will tell her.  We all saw it, I felt it drip off my fingers and soak your soft little head, and that Yes will never, ever end. Your life is now hidden with God in Christ.  And you get to remain in that Yes, abide in it, swim in it, let it fill you up and spill out onto others.
 You get to be a messenger of God’s Yes in the world. You are part of love – already and always a part of love. Love is what gets to tell you what is true and trustworthy and right. Only love! Not being right or being strong or being good or being fearless. Love.

And on this Pentecost weekend, it’s such a blessing to remember alongside Eleanor that this is what it is to be the Church – the people who belong to love – who live that alongside others, who bear this great and astonishing power to be about forgiveness in the world, about release and freedom, to let people be defined not by rules or anger or fear or judgment, but by love. 

Hey church, what if that is what is required of all of us, with these kids we baptize? 
To live around them and alongside them as though we really believe we are loved by God? To live our lives, every day, as though we really trust that our life comes from the Source of Life, as God really is with us everything, and the peace Jesus speaks of really is ours? 

To not be afraid to be honest about the times we forget it, to seek forgiveness from each other, and from God together, from the things that hold us captive –to actively confess and say, please, help me be free again? 
To walk around this life with a hidden awareness of God’s utter delight in us, and the inability to walk by another person without seeing them the exact same way? 

It is our calling to live in that much peace, that much freedom, and trust, and abiding in the love of God that claims us, that we just keep forgiving, keep pushing past the barriers we’ve erected and the fears that capture us, and keep on saying no to no, for ourselves, and others, and the world, believing instead, that we are part of God’s Yes.

Trusting that love is what claims us, so we are free not to retain our sins or the sins of others, free not to live guarded by calcified pain, but instead to face and feel pain and even let that pain carve room within us for joy, let it open up new spaces in us to be filled up with love.

We are the Body of Christ, the ones who abide, as Jesus abides, that is, in Jesus Christ we actively live in God’s Yes for the world, actively remain in the love of God. That is who we are.  And the world needs us to be to be this.

You did not choose me, but I chose you, Jesus says, to us, to the Church, to Eleanor. I chose you to remain open and ready to meet God, who is with and for us all, and to love as you are loved. 

So, let’s bring up Eleanor and pour this truth over her and welcome her into it, and say to her on behalf of all those who will get to live out this promise in her life day by day: Eleanor, your life comes from Jesus. That means you belong to love. Abide in this reality, little one. May you be filled with joy and peace in trusting.  And throughout your life, as you continue to find your voice and discover your place in this world, may you let the life of God that is in you, that claims you, live through you.
Amen.





"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. 
I do not give to you as the world gives. 
Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid."  
(John 14:27)

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Joining the cosmic shift




This week a Pew research study came out saying that Christianity is declining in America – there was a big drop in the percentage of Americans who call themselves Christians.
That was followed by a flurry of interpretive pieces-  it’s not declining, there are less closet atheists now, or it is just a shedding of the dead weight of all the churches and denominations that used to be Christian that have left true Christianity.  Or it’s because churches are not doing enough to reach millennials; or because churches are too engaged politically, or not engaged enough politically, or because people are more independent, and less comfortable with labels and membership.  And there are dire predictions of what it means in the future, as Christianity loses ground to other religion and to the “nones”, with some even saying things like “the decline of Christianity in America could lead to a collapse like the Roman Empire.” 

Against this backdrop comes the story of Paul and Barnabus’ almost comedic encounter with the people of Lystra.  Our passage today reminds me a bit of any number of movies I’ve seen where someone arrives washed up on a supposed deserted island only to be lauded as a god by the locals – like the Ewoks welcoming Princess Leia and worshiping C3PO as a golden deity, or Tom Hanks in Joe vs the Volcano, or Garfield in that movie where he goes to Hawaii – (and I know there are many more but for some reason those are the three that come to mind).   After healing a man who had never been able to walk, Paul and Barnabas are assumed to be gods come down to earth. But because of a language barrier, it takes these two a little while to figure out what is happening, and when they finally do it is almost impossible to correct the misconception.  And it gets even more dramatic and funnier when you glimpse the events leading up to and following this encounter.

We are now something like 18 years after Jesus sent the disciples into all the world.  I want to let that sink in for a minute, because in reading these things in the bible, highlights without the spaces in between, they seem closer together than that, and in following something like the narrative lectionary, where we take huge leaps through books, it can feel even faster.
But this is like an entire childhood later; let’s just say that if their “go and make disciples” was born around Pentecost, it could vote by now.  18 years ago right now cds were cutting edge, everyone used paper maps in their cars to get places, and 97% of phones were still plugged into walls. 18 years is a long time, and a lot happened in that time, not all of it worth reporting.

When we look at the whole thing from where we are – a couple thousand years and a few thousand miles away, it looks like the gospel spread to all the world so thoroughly and effectively that there is no actual global center to Christianity –it truly is in every place.  It might be easy to assume that it went along like a fabulously executed strategic plan, the disciples got their marching orders and obeyed, Paul had his Damascus road conversion, and then went on to convert the world.  From this far away, it’s pretty clean, systematic, even. 
But on the ground, up close and in the moment, it looks a lot messier than that. Like, for example, the fact that Paul and the others are getting beat up repeatedly, even occasionally stoned and left for dead, and it often appears that almost nothing goes as planned.  
Our story of the incident in Lystra is sandwiched right between episodes of beatings, misunderstandings and scuffles, and throughout this portion of Acts we keep seeing a dogged group of religious Jews racing between paragraphs and ducking under page turns to catch up to Paul and Barnabus in each of the places they go, deliberately undoing what they’re doing.  Convinced that Paul and Barnabus are corrupting the true faith, these ardent believers keep arriving in towns right after them calling them dangerous and getting the townspeople to violently drive them off.  So if you imagine that is par for the course for them, then the reception they receive in Lystra must be positively exhilarating.
At first they must be thrilled! Elated! This guy is healed and everyone is responding! This is how it feels when things go well! Look how excited they are! They get how great the gospel is! They’re getting it!  Look how many are getting it!
Through the cheering and the garlands they rejoice, laughing along with the euphoric people right up until it starts to dawn on them that something is not right… that, wait a minute, what’s happening… are they getting ready to slaughter that animal to us?? Oh no, wait, do they, do they think we are gods… ??
And it turns on a dime. Now they’re devastated – how could it have gone so wrong
This is pretty much the opposite of what they are trying to communicate!  This is not what God wants at all! In fact, God wants the people to turn away from these practices, and recognize the God who has been revealing Godself to them all along, caring for them and feeding and nurturing them and filling their hearts with joy! Paul and Barnabus are merely fellow recipients of this grace, bearers of good news of the true God who did indeed become human. But despite all their screaming and clothes-ripping and desperate explaining, they still scarcely restrain the crowds from sacrificing an animal to them in worship.

And the verses immediately following this incident show that once the crowds calm down, that group of naysayers hot on their heels catches up to them and convinces the people of Lystra that Paul and Barnabus are shysters, and they once again get driven from the city, (this time Paul is stoned and left for dead).  So they’re back on familiar turf, anyway.

But there is an even stronger thread that runs through it all, and that is this: They continue rejoicing. They keep coming back among other disciples of the way and giving thanks to God, rejoicing together, praying together, seeking God’s direction, celebrating and then jauntily setting out on another journey, joyful and filled with a sense of purpose.

Why?  Well, they weren’t in it for the fame – obviously.  They were horrified by the response of the people in Lystra.  
And they weren’t in it for a scorecard.  They seemed to lose people as fast as they gained them; let’s just say their methods begged for a corporate strategy assessment, anyway.  
But they kept going, forward, and looping back, revisiting communities, supporting those who had joined the Way, building them up with encouragement, receiving their encouragement and care, and moving on to new territory, undaunted by the many troubles and complications.

There is a resilient and enduring dependence on God, a reliance on the guidance of the Holy Spirit, a TRUST that God really is leading and doing something out there in the world calling them to come see, come and share, and it keeps them going.  
In the face of disappointment, fear, hunger, rejection, danger, this is what gives them strength.  This is what defines reality for them, not those things.

Every time they return to a community for prayer, fasting and discernment, every time they share their experiences, their joys and struggles, they get grounded again in the real reality, the big picture, the kingdom of God, this force of love that looks really different than the way of fear. They meet at the table and break bread and encounter again the risen Jesus through their shared stories of Jesus, recounting his words and deeds, remembering resurrection appearances, through weeping together, laughing together, praying together, and then, regrounded in the life of God, they head out to each new adventure.  And each new adventure and all the judgments and obstacles they encounter, rather than tearing them down, only served to increase their trust that they are indeed joining in the cosmic shift already underway.

They trust that God who led them there, would meet them there, and would take it from there.  God is doing it. Not them, not their own strength or skill or great cultural savvy or stunning presentation.  And then that kind of trust is exactly what they are inviting others into.

They really, to their very core, believe and trust that this is God’s ministry – and they are just participating.  And they want to give their whole lives to participating in this force of love because God is wooing the whole world, and how could they miss out on this? 

And so trusting the Holy Spirit means that they go out in anticipation, that in each place, at any moment, God is bringing them to see what God has been up to, that God is leading them to meet people whose lives God has been stirring, who are ready to hear just what it is Paul and Barnabas are coming to say. 

Here in Lystra, it’s this one man, this man who stops Paul in his tracks, and in whose eyes Paul, when peering intently, sees something he recognizes:  faith, a trust already in God’s power to heal, so Paul goes where God is and meets him in that place of faith.  And God heals the man.  As one biblical scholar explains, “This is the nature of faith in Acts: trust in a God who will keep God’s promises. So also this is the nature of God in Acts: a God who meets us and heals us.” (Eric Barretto)

Is Christianity in America is dying?  I don’t know. But I do know that any time we make it about ourselves, the institutions we build, the work we do, the labels we accept or give to others, the us and them battle where we recruit people for our side and tally our cosmic scorecard, the number of people in our pews or money in our bank accounts or trends on a graph or great skills or cultural savvy, any time we use the world’s rejection and stoning or praise and glory to dictate to us what is true about what God is doing in the world, we are being guided by the way of fear, not trusting in the big picture, the real reality.

God doesn’t care about our thriving institutions, our crumbling traditions, our labels, or our successes and failures.  All of the things we use to make us feel secure, to reassure ourselves that we are on the right track, are simply distractions from the Kingdom of God, which always comes in weak and backwards and upside down and often very messy ways, and will never stop wooing hearts and changing lives and pulling us into trust and hope.  
It simply will not.

The real reality is that Jesus is already out there in the world, doing what Jesus does, and inviting us to come and see, come and share.  That is how the love of God works- it is an unstoppable force that is holding the universe together and bringing new life relentlessly. And every one of us needs to be converted again and again – it never ends, like we saw last week with Peter. God keeps drawing us into deeper relationship and greater openness to meet Jesus in the unexpected places and unlikely people, trusting that God leads us there, will meet us there, and will take it from there.  

This week, another reality was unfolding alongside all the grandiose and distressed predictions of Christian doom.  It was this little thing called a “Love flash mob” – a once a year, online tradition where a small group of volunteers hold up a family or two in need and ask people to pitch in for their need. The rule is that nobody can donate more than $25, because it’s an act of trust in God’s love, and faith that if we all join in a little bit, big things can happen.
This year they dreamed bigger, and instead of one or two families, they lifted up 176 people beginning with three: a large foster family that needs a van, a wounded vet’s family that needs a washing machine and a car, and a little girl that needs legs, yes, legs, because she was born without.  And they kicked off the love flash mob, and the donations and words of encouragement from started pouring in.  After two hours, ordinary people all over the country, giving less than $25, raised $82,000 and those three needs were met.
Then they held up a 9 year old girl who, after a conversation with a homeless person two years ago, began growing vegetables to share with the homeless people in her community, and as she got to know them, began expanding ways she helped until now is part of a movement to build small houses- so more strangers rose up and supported her. Then, for a mama with a spinal injury who uses leg braces and crutches and struggles getting her little kids in and out of the car to go places, who love going to the park together, more strangers bought a yard playset for them. 
And then for an incredibly inspiring bus driver who has encouraged countless kids and families, and who is dying of cancer, people who did not know her provided those families the means to celebrate her and care for her in her final days, and the list goes on and on. 
And it seemed impossible and ridiculous but in a little over 24 hours, over $268,000 was raised to do something meaningful and personal for 176 different people, to show them that they are seen and loved.  The average donation amount from over 15,000 different people was $17. And one volunteer’s young daughter, watching all this unfold, commented, ““Mom, it’s so cool that we already know that in the end Love wins, so we can always make sure we’re on the right team.” 

Sisters and brothers, we already know the end. 
So which reality will lead us? What way we will we live? 
Because whatever the state of the “church” is in America, the Body of Christ is alive and well, the Church – those who live forgiven and free in the love of Jesus and share that love with others - is steadily, messily doing its thing, and every day we get to join in the cosmic shift already and always underway. 
But it’s easy to get distracted from that truth.  So we keep coming back among other disciples of the Way to get grounded again in the real reality, to meet Jesus together by giving thanks to God, rejoicing together, praying together, sharing our joys and struggles, seeking God’s direction, celebrating and then jauntily setting out again on our journey in anticipation, to see what God is up to out there and listen for how the Spirit is calling us to respond. 
And it is my fervent prayer that in all of this we too, really, to our very core, trust that this is God’s ministry – and we are just participating.  And that we will want to give our whole lives to participating in this force of love, because God is wooing the whole world, and how could we miss out on this?

Amen.


Sunday, May 3, 2015

Disciples of Love not Fear





I wonder what it was like- to see Jesus this way, appearing here in Galilee where you came to meet him after his resurrection.  I wonder what it was like to be given this charge, to be sent in this way. Make disciples of all nations. To all nations literally meant to all foreigners – the most unknown and least understood peoples, the ones not like you, not from where you’re from, not looking like you or talking like you or thinking like you, to be sent from your home to the unfathomable reaches of the earth at time when that was almost inconceivable. 

How befuddling this must have been, how overwhelming.  
To think that this is now their job, this monumental and incomprehensible task. One scholar said that today, it might feel like being told to go and cure cancer throughout the world, go and save the bees and stop the polar ice caps melting, go and bring world peace between warring countries.

It doesn’t surprise me that it sounds like that to us. 
We continue to hear this through the voice of the way of fear that has always taunted and misled us  – that lie that it is about you and me. That it is up to you and me. That it belongs to you and me.  That we are the authority. That we are separate from each other, and competing for the same things. 

If this is true then we’re sent to all the earth to recruit for our side. We’re sent to enlighten to our superior perspective. We’re sent not to join or be changed, but to rescue or correct. We’re sent to distribute the Jesus commodity that we possess to those who are without.  The great commission.  
The great omission, perhaps - because we really just have a dead Jesus then. 
A Jesus idea, a Jesus religion, a Jesus cure or talisman, but not a living Jesus. Not a present Jesus. Not God with us and always with us.

But maybe the disciple weren’t overwhelmed with this great commission at all. Maybe they trusted that Jesus was alive, and they wouldn’t be going out to bring Jesus but to meet him who would be with them always. 

Because somehow, this is true.  Amazingly, this is a fact about us today.  You and I are sitting here today, reading this message that was given to the disciples on that day as though it has something to do with us, as though it makes a claim on us.

Two thousands years later and six thousand miles from that mountaintop in Galilee, we sit here as baptized disciples of love incarnate. It happened. This thing they were told to go do, to go share; they were sent and they went, and it happened- through them and alongside them, without them and in spite of them, within and around them.  Because the reality of love is God’s strong inner chord singing throughout all of life, and enduring despite death’s fiercest blows, drawing people to it, filling people with it, sending people in it to love and love and love.

No one has ever seen God, if we love one another God lives in us, and God’s love is perfected in us.  What is it to abide in this reality, to remain in this truth?  What is it to truly trust in this love? this love that casts out fear and makes us brave and honest and real.  Not exempt, not perfect, and not safe, but with and for each other as he is with and for us. Participants, collaborators, beloved, beside one another.

To have been made a disciple means to belong to this whole other way from the way of fear, it means we can say, “we have known and trust in the love God has for us.”
It is never only for you or about you. 
It is never over or against anyone else. Love draws us in deeper and opens us up wider, binding us to those around us and all over the world, sisters and brothers, beloved of God.

It’s a big thing, yes, this great commission, but it’s the smallest of things- the most focused and present and now and real of all things.  
Love this person in front of you. See them. Let yourself be loved.  
Right now. 
Receive forgiveness that is offered.  Offer forgiveness undeserved.  Uphold one another.  See each other’s humanity even when, especially when, the other person can’t see it in themselves, when they are living from shame, or hate, or despair or anger, love means you can see them still as beloved and treat them that way.  
You can witness the real reality in the face of the lie. 

Recognize that we all belong to each other, that we all belong to God.  
Share that truth in every way you can in any moment you have. 
Live and breathe and move from your belovedness – baptize others in love, claim them beloved and name them beloved, teach them to obey this command of love, this life-giving, filling up, breaking open truth that they were made for, that we are all made for.

We are not peddlers of a message, we don’t get to own it or spread it or deliver it or recruit for it; it is not ours to distribute or withhold or convince people of.  
Fear does that, and there is no fear in love; perfect love casts out fear.

This has been a week with lots of fear. 
As the death toll in Nepal continued to rise and the intensity in Baltimore continued to climb, this week I watched a lot of footage online.

I saw the story of a teenage boy, who had been away in college but had come back to visit the orphanage he was raised in when the earthquake struck, leaving no adults around, he pulled child after child out of the building and helped them erect temporary shelter and find food and care for each other as they await rescue.

I saw a group of shouting men whose words I could not understand dig frantically at grey crushed rubble with their bare hands, clawing at it for a half hour and gradually, so slowly, a limb at a time, free a baby who had been completely buried, and weep and holler with joy as they held him up, alive and breathing.

I saw a young boy whose dad took him to the streets of Baltimore with a broom and a camera, to share in and record history in the making, and many, many stories of neighbors cleaning up together, or marching side by side, people who had never spoken before, saying how this is changing their city- neighbors connecting in the streets, joining in purpose and frustration, yes, but also in truth and hope as evil and brokenness is revealed in the light of day and confronted out loud.

And when you pay attention to these stories it feels like death is being beaten – as big and horrible and ongoing as it is, it feels exposed this week, ugly and wretched in the face of so much vigorous with-you-ness, so much love casting out fear.

Whenever something big and tragic happens far away, this little lie begins to creep in again, the way of fear, dead Jesus kind of lie, that it is up to us, that somehow only we have what is needed, and that if we don’t act nothing will change, so we send money, and forward or write, compelling articles, and we pray, but in the face of something so huge we feel largely unable to make a significant difference – like we’re facing down the assignment to cure world wide cancer or “make disciples of all nations” – it is befuddling and overwhelming, so we gorge ourselves on 24 hour news, ingesting the fear, perhaps figuring that feeding on the heartbreak is almost like helping in some way.  

And we forget the living Jesus. 
We forget the love that has no opposite that pulses through it all claiming each one of us.  We forget that we act freely, instinctively, of course we act, and we pray, and we send money, and we write articles, and we stand alongside, because we all belong to each other, but it’s not up to you and me. It doesn’t depend on you and me; we are not the only people on the planet God has called.

In fact, God has called every single one of us
There is no one who is not sent, no one who is not called beloved and called to love. And in any given moment, any single human can be, and is, responding to that love, from that love, standing alongside another, lifting up another, offering or receiving forgiveness, or hope, or tears of grief, or shrieks of joy.  In every single moment, this is happening, through us and alongside us, without us and in spite of us, within and around us, and even far away from us, because love is moving, brothers and sisters, because Jesus is alive, God is with us all.

You can witness the real reality in the face of the lie. 
Live the truth doggedly alongside those around you, and don’t consume the lies of fear, instead, like Mr. Rogers says, look for the helpers… Perhaps the most faithful and needful of all things to do in the midst of any kind of far away crisis or national struggle, is to bear witness to the love- watch for and share about the places the real reality is breaking through.  Because it is; it always is.

As Frederick Buechner said, “Resurrection means the worst thing is never the last thing.”  All authority in heaven and on earth is now in the hands of love incarnate, so go therefore into all the world, wherever you are, however you find yourself, and make disciples of love –people who know themselves first and foremost as beloved, and who are compelled irreversibly to see others that way as well. 
That is what it is to be a disciple. That is what it is to be a human being who knows God.

Trust, then, that God with us is with us all, in every time and place, because, as human beings love one another they meet Jesus, who is, right now, and always, with and for us all, to the end of the age.

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...