Friday, May 24, 2019

Some thoughts on Sabbath


Over the last ten years, I've done a lot of thinking, practice and work around Sabbath, both with my church community and in my own life.  I was recently asked to write a commentary for Working Preacher for a 3-week series on Sabbath.  Here it is.




(For more on Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church's Sabbath practice, and our life together, check out some of these articles).

Sunday, May 19, 2019

The measure of a life





My favorite uncle learned this week that he has a 5-inch tumor in his lung.  He has just retired and is building a house, just like his father, my grandfather, who died rapidly of cancer 36 years ago this week.  My uncle has three recently launched kids, and a 3-year-old grandchild.  When he heard the news he wept, and said, “I have so much to do!”  

Life doesn’t give us a blueprint, or a timeline in advance. We make our choices, each day, each season. We live our circumstances, waking up each morning and doing that day, and then laying down at night, satisfied or not, to do it all again.  One day it ends.  Our life is summed up and the verdict is rendered.  What will we leave behind us; what will our story have been?

There are people who make an impact in the world.  People whose kindness and goodness shapes those around them.  Their presence seems to leave a wake, or carve a path for others to follow, for us to emulate.  They make their world a better place.  When their story is told, it is that they were a good person. They lived a good life. It is what we all aspire to, perhaps, and secretly wonder if we’re getting there.

Tabitha was one of these people. She was a respected leader, referred to with the title disciple- the only feminine use of that noun in the whole bible.  We are given her Aramaic name, Tabitha, which means ‘grace’ and her Greek name as well, Dorcas, which means ‘gazelle.’  Giving us both names means she may have been widely known, she spoke more than one language, perhaps traveled between communities. 
In any case, Tabitha was deeply treasured and greatly respected, so much so that when she dies, they send two men to Peter, to ask him to come. He should know she's gone.  Really, she’s too good a person to let go.

Peter gets up, he arises, and goes.  And when he arrives the room is filled with grieving people. They’re holding up tunics and clothing she made for them, displaying tangible proof of her impact and care.
It was a big deal to make a piece of clothing in those days. Rare and labor intensive, there was even a law that if you borrow a tunic you return it by sundown – it might be the only one someone owns.  And here the whole room is filled with them. Tabitha was a busy, productive, good and impactful person.  A benefit to her community; a blessing to the world.  She was a model follower of Jesus.  She’s become a saint, in fact, she is now St. Tabitha the Widow in the Greek Orthodox church, her feast day is October 25.  The Catholics commemorate her as Dorcas, and Dorcas societies, which provide clothing for the poor, are named after her.  Protestant churches commemorate her together along with Lydia in January.  Tabitha was without doubt an exemplar disciple.  

Rewind the story to the first person Peter prays and asks Jesus to heal.  
The text names this man too: Aeneas.  This man is paralyzed. He’s been confined to his bed for 8 years already, and will, presumably, remain there until he is transferred from his bed to his grave.  If he is known in his community, it is not for his contributions, but for the burden he is.  Everything that he needs, others must do for him.  Bathing, dressing, bathrooming, eating.   His story went quiet years ago.  His possibility quenched.  Any chance Aeneas had of living a good life, making an impact on the world, being productive and contributing things of value, are long over.  

Death is the absence of life.  She has died.  Her life is over. The ink is dry; the hourglass empty.  In effect, he has too.  He is living in death, waiting for death.  
And then the word, a command that interrupts their death with life, Anesthi!

I once spent six months in West Africa on the volunteer hospital ship, The Anastasis, which is Greek for resurrection.  Children, women and men with tumors, twisted limbs or cleft palates were brought aboard. They were laid down in the hospital wing, and put under for surgery, and when they awoke, when they arose, they had moved from death to life.  A new life opened before them, a life with hope and possibility that had been dead to them before. God interrupted their story with a different story, and their lives became a witness to the love of God, a window to God’s grace.

Get up! Peter tells Aeneas. Anesthi! Arise. Get up and make your bed.  You make your bed when you leave it, when you wont be in it but will be out and about in the world.  Instead of a bed for sickness, Aeneas, make yourself a bed for rest.  Move from death into new life, Aeneas. 
Immediately Aeneas gets up, and his arising becomes the story that turns the hearts of all those in the region to Jesus, witnessing to God’s love, giving a window to God’s grace. 
Aeneas, the man God healed, Aeneas, the risen one.

Back to Tabitha of the tunics. 
She mattered so much to so many. Her life mattered.  She was a good and faithful disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The evidence of her goodness, her faithfulness, her worth, is all around her in her death. On display in the very room. See how good she was? See what an impact she made? 
But before Peter prays for her, he banishes all of that from the room. All the people, and the tunics, and the grief, all the stories of her faithfulness, the symbols of her value, and the signs of her impact. 
Now, Peter kneels down and prays. 
Then he turns to the body and says, Get up. Anesthi! Arise!
Tabitha opens her eyes and sees Peter. She sits up. 
He reaches out his hand and helps her get up.  
Calling back in all the people, he presents her to them.  Alive.  And this story spreads just like the last, and just like the last, turns people to Jesus, a witness to God’s love, a window to God’s grace.

The Christian story celebrates a good life lived. 
We should all aspire to a life like Tabitha’s. We should help each other be disciples.  
But Tabitha is not resurrected because she has lived a good life.  
Tabitha is resurrected and given life because Jesus is the resurrection and the life.
Aeneas has no value that society could affirm; he makes no impact.  He is no model disciple or productive contributor.  He’s certainly not changing the world. His life already over. To some he might be considered worthless. 
And yet, God resurrects him too.  
Tabitha is trying to live a good life inside the story of Jesus Christ. But the story of Jesus Christ is so big that it even comes to those who don’t live a good life.

Remember when we talked about self-righteousness? How insidious the temptation is to try to earn or prove our own place? How Saul was the perfect follower of God, stomping out dangerous corruption and shutting down those who would pollute the true faith? And how Ananias, a faithful follower of Jesus, questioned God’s instruction to go to Saul?  And remember how God crucified both their stories and gave them a new story, one of finding the risen one and new life in the presence of their enemy?  It wasn’t their own goodness and faithfulness, but the act of God through one they despised that became their window of grace.

We might be tempted to believe Tabitha has earned the right to resurrection.  But that’s not how it works. God’s resurrection is so generous and promiscuous, that it comes also to the ones who can’t possibly earn a thing. And even though she is a model disciple whom we should strive to emulate, even so, Tabitha too needs God to act for her. 

When Aeneas dies, they wont hold up what he accomplished. They will hold up what God did for him. And the same is now true of Tabitha. She is no longer defined by what she has accomplished. That died with her first death.  Now she too is defined by what God has done for her.  Their stories were interrupted with resurrection. Rise up, get up, and live.  Anesthi! 

I’m willing to bet that in this room we all want live in a way that when we die, they will tell stories and hold up examples and symbols of what a good life we’ve lived.   But even when circumstances act to make it impossible to live the kind of life that would earn us that, God’s act reaches us, comes to us, and gives us new life. 
Because that is who God is. That is what God does.

Before anything even happens, this story is already subversive; the gospel always flips the cultural script.  The one who has lived a good life and is a respected leader and a true disciple is a woman.  This woman has done so much for everyone.  The one who can’t do anything for himself is a man.  He has no good acts to commend him, for 8 years he’s been nothing but his need.  And the story of Jesus’ incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection gets played out equally in both their lives.  They both become part of the story of the church, shared and treasured, alongside each other.  
Because it is is Peter who comes to them, Peter through whom they are healed, Upon this Rock…! The foundations of St. Peter in Rome are built on their stories.  
In the name of Jesus Christ, to the paralyzed man, Peter says, Arise! Get upAnesthi! 
To the dead woman, in Jesus' name, Peter says, Arise! Get up!Anesthi! 
And both of them do.
Their story speaks the Easter message: the resurrection of Jesus changes everything.  Death does not get to have the last word.  Not when it comes to us as suffering, or injury, or loss of mind or mobility, or the end of a dream or plan, and not when it comes to us as a life ended, and our accomplishments on display amidst our weeping loved ones.  

One of my very most favorite parts of being a pastor is doing funerals.  I don’t know if you’ve noticed on the bulletins at these things, but we don’t actually call it a funeral, a memorial service, or a celebration of life.  We call it “a service of witness to the resurrection.”  And all the loved ones who want to tell stories of their person, how good they were, what an impact they had, that is good and lovely.  It’s inspiring to see someone’s life defined by discipleship or charity, marked by goodness and kindness.  
It’s beautiful and important to celebrate a life well lived. 
But even those who’ve lived a good life, that’s not the totality of who they are.  There is the darkness too, inside all of our stories. The pain we’ve caused, the pain we hide.  The failures and struggles we’ve never overcome.  Sometimes it feels like there’s an invisible scale held up, and we feel the need to pile up our good on one side against the bad on the other and hope it tips us enough in the right direction in order to have been considered a worthy life.

But what about the life cut short? The life misdirected? What about the secret sins we hide, the failures we fear ever letting out into the light in case they cement our unworthiness around us? 
When we gather, the final word spoken over us is witness not to the goodness or worthiness of our lives. It is a witness to the resurrection of our Lord.  That each of our lives, in myriad ways, reveals the grace of God that comes to us in our places of death, and brings new life.  That each of us is a unique window into the story of the Divine who joins us and redeems us, and connects us in love to God and each other.  
No matter how worthy or worthless, well-lived or wasted, impressive or depressing, productive or paralyzed, no matter what proof there is of goodness or lack of opportunity to try, each life is a witness to the love and grace of God. 

My uncle doesn’t even know his diagnosis or prognosis yet.  He’s stuck in the horror of waiting and dread.  (Lord, have mercy, O God, draw near!)  But none of us knows our trajectory or our end, really.  We get the chance to live as good a life as we can.  And we should help each other do that.  But we should also know this: we will not be measured by how well or poorly we accomplished that.  
When this life is over, we will be mourned and missed, and we will be embraced and welcomed by the God who took on all sin and death so that nothing might ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.  The value and worth of our lives is already declared over us by the God who claims the world in love, and names each one, Beloved, child of God.  Everything else is the canvas on which that story is painted, the paper on which that portrait is written.  
When all is said and done, the infinite grace of God shines through the windows of our lives, witnessing to the limitless love and resurrection power of the God who repeatedly and continuously interrupts death with new life, Anesthi! Arise, Get up and live!

Amen.

Sunday, May 5, 2019

The story of your life



According to a study conducted by political scientists at Louisana State University and the University of Maryland,  
"Just over 42 percent of the people in each party view the opposition as "downright evil." “Nearly one out of five Republicans and Democrats agree with the statement that their political adversaries “lack the traits to be considered fully human — they behave like animals.””
But their line of questioning did not stop there.  They continued by asking, “Do you ever think: ‘we’d be better off as a country if large numbers of the opposing party in the public today just died’?”
 And some 16 percent of Republicans (or 7.9 million voters) and 20 percent of Democrats (that translates to 12.6 million voters) do think on occasion that the country would be better off if large numbers of the opposition died. 
(As reported in the NY Times)

Every human being is living out of a story. 

Saul had a story. Saul’s story was that the Israelites had been corrupted by bad ideas. They had been tarnished by interaction with the wrong kind of people. Saul has the pure ideal  - what you believe matters a great deal. How you live matters. 

For Saul, it was crystal clear. The right way of life is threatened by these bad people, who worship not the true God, but a man, a criminal killed by the death penalty. These people are are not just wrong, they are evil. They are warping the truth and leading good people astray.  They must be stopped.  Saul is a righteous man. He is full of righteousness. He is morally right, his cause is just, he is virtuous and true, upright and worthy. And he gets lots of props for it.

Nobody decides to be self-righteous.  But we live out of stories that perpetuate it.  I am this so I am clearly not that. I identify with this group, so by default, and sometimes gradually, I agree to abhor that group.  I hold to this ideal, am guided by these good and right principles, so how can I associate with those who do not hold to what is good?  I am confident of my rightness, bolstered in it, secure beyond doubt by all the things that keep reinforcing my story, and therefore I am dead certain of their wrongness. 

Left to our own devices we will all seek to justify ourselves at the expense of others. This is, by the way, sin. Disconnection from God and each other.  Left to our own devices we will seek righteousness at every turn; we are so very tempted to be right.  We will make enemies faster than friends, and they’ll last longer. 

Saul is going to Damascus with a story. 
He’s a zealot for the faith, drawing on the stories in Hebrew scripture of those whose holy zeal pleased the Lord, and who turned Israel away from their sin and corruption and back to God. He is fanatical and relentless, invested and dedicated,and has become a rather famous heretic-hunter. A few chapters back he held the coats and watched while the Jesus-follower Stephen was stoned to death. Because with evil spreading like this, perhaps it might be better if large numbers of these folks just died.

Saul had a story, and his life had one mission: to stamp out evil and stand up for what is good and right and true. Imagine if Saul had had a Twitter feed.  All that he could accomplish today!

We are almost through our year on grace, friends. And our theme right now is grace infinite – grace that comes to us, and through us, and keeps going, never running out. Grace is the way God interrupts our story and gives us a new one. God either meets us in our places of death and nothingness, or requires that something in us die and we face our nothingness, so that we might find real life. 

Saul is on his quest for God, guided by his story, firm in his ideals, righteous and true.  And it’s all going as planned when suddenly, in a blinding light and voice from heaven, he is confronted by voice, who calls him by name.  Saul, why are you persecuting me? 
Who are you? He answers. 
And God, the great I am, answers him with a name.
I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. 
Get up and enter the city and you’ll be told what to do.

And Saul is thrown into an identity crisis. 
An identity crisis is when the story you are living no longer works for you. 
All you thought made the world make sense no longer holds up.  
A person in an identity crisis is a person without a story.
Saul’s story is taken from him. He is a person without a story.
Directionless and helpless, he is led by the hand into the city like a frightened child. For three days he lives in darkness, confusion and fear, unable to eat or drink. 

Then the voice of God calls out again. 
But this time it’s Ananias, one of the community of Jesus-followers, whom God calls by name. 
Ananias. 
Here I am, Lord. He answers, all faith and eagerness, just like the prophet Isaiah, Here I am, Lord, send me!
Everyone has a story, and Ananias is no exception. 
He is a follower of Jesus the Christ.  He is ready to do as God commands. He also knows who Saul is.  And he and his community have every reason to despise and fear him. 
Saul is the enemy. His ideology is wrong, his beliefs are dangerous, and, if the rumors are to be believed about what he has done, he may even be lacking the traits to be considered fully human — he behaves like an animal, after all.

God tells Ananias to go to this certain street to a certain house and find this certain man, Saul of Tarsus. This man is praying and has seen a vision of Ananias coming to lay hands on him so that he regains his sight. 

But Ananias balks. Perhaps he hasn’t heard correctly. Perhaps God is not informed as to exactly who this person really is, what evil he’s done. Certainly God cannot mean for Ananias to help this man. He’s the enemy.  
Our stories are very, very powerful.

‘Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.’ 
But God says, Go, I have chosen him to be an instrument to bring my name before Gentiles and Kings and the people of Israel, I myself will show him how much he is to suffer in my name. 
So Ananias goes, even though it could be a trap. Even though this person is someone he has good reason to fear and distrust, in humility he goes to share in Saul’s death experience. 
He goes in the ministry of being with someone in an identity crisis.

Ananias arrives and finds Saul in his paused state of weakness and waiting, a man without a story.  Ananias places his hands on Saul, and touching him, he calls him, “Brother Saul” and says, “the Lord Jesus Christ, whom you met on the road, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” 
And when they encounter one another, it’s Jesus they meet.  

No idea will save you.  No rightness or righteousness will save you.  Only encounter with the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus did not give Saul an ideology, a superior insight or a moral high ground. He gave him a person: I am Jesus. 
I am Jesus whom you persecute. 
I am Jesus whom you now meet in the touch and ministry of another.  
I am Jesus who crucifies your story and gives you another in its place. 

And from there Saul finds himself welcomed into the community of Jesus- followers, that just a few days earlier he had intended to destroy.  And they find themselves welcoming in this one they knew as their oppressor who had been intent on their destruction.  
And the grace of God meets them all in the person of the other. 

When Saul comes to the Damascan community of Jesus-followers, he is no longer the invincible warrior for God, fighting for what is right. His self-righteousness is gone. His upbringing, education and training in reason or argument cannot bolster him.  His undisputed faith or stellar reputation are now meaningless. His legendary courage and rock solid conviction of purpose are worse than worthless here. 
All of Saul’s somethingness has been stripped away.  
He comes vulnerable. He comes in his nothingness.  
He comes only as a person, among persons.

And they receive him. 
They release their idea about him and receive him as a person.  
They give him a bed, and meals, and friendship. They tell him the resurrection stories and talk about their own trust and transformation.  Instead of revenge or retaliation for the death of Stephen, instead of fear and shunning and self-protection, they see him and receive him as a person and love him.

In the Body of Christ, Saul experiences the risen Messiah. The voice who called out to him from the blinding light is given hands, and faces, and names, flesh and foibles and families. They become his ministers, and they receive each other as Christ.

In the presence of their enemy they surrender their own story and receive a new one. It’s a story of healing, nurture and blessing. And forgiveness. They forgive Saul. And his story is reframed and retold, as God’s interruption of grace always does. 

Now he looks back at his life and sees the damage he has done, and the futility of his self-righteousness, and the truth of his belovedness and belonging to God and to these others.  

Who are you, Lord? 
I am Jesus, the person whom your ideas persecute. 
I am found among those you are persecuting. 
And so are you. 
Your identity is given to you, your story is restored, in the ministry of shared weakness and death, in the encounter between persons.

We don’t want to see each other as persons. Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of Non-violent communication, says, "It's hard to believe that those who are doing things far outside our value system are human beings like the rest of us. It's very challenging."   

We wont give the benefit of doubt to each other because we are afraid.  
Perhaps we’re scared of an identity crisis. 
What if we lose our story? What if this person makes me change my ideas?  
What if accepting this person is the same as accepting their ideas?  
What if their false and dangerous ideas spread to the people I care about?  
What if, by seeing them as human, equal and beloved, our story is corrupted, and we no longer know who we are?  

The human temptation is always toward self righteousness. It is always toward building our own somethingness. We are always tempted to write our own story. To build and maintain our own identity. To form our own I am from our ideas and accomplishments. 
But the Christian life is one of being knocked to the ground and given an identity crisis, and then a new story. 

Saul dies to his story of zealous righteousness, and awakens to his story of grace, experienced alongside these others whom he had seen as enemy. This experience is so transformative that it becomes his story, his life message, his purpose.  Everything he had been about up till now is seen anew through the lens of amazing grace. Throughout all the letters he ends up writing and all the places he ends up going, before the Gentiles and Kings and people of Israel he speaks to, Saul tells his story as a recovering self-righteous-aholic who has been saved by grace.

We find out a few verses later that Saul’s name is changed to Paul – which means, “Humility,” perhaps the last name that he, or anyone else, would think to give to this man. And yet, he lives into it – even up against his own reoccurring instinct toward self-righteousness, which he names, grace is the story he keeps living and telling. And it turns out Ananias' names means "The Lord gives grace."

We call this story, “the conversion of Paul.” But it’s also the conversion of Ananias, and the conversion of the Damascan community of Jesus-followers.  It’s the transformation of all of them.  To follow Jesus is to welcome Christ in the person of their enemy.  To serve God is to come vulnerably to be cared for by God at the hands of their enemy.

Everyone is living from a story.  In any other story we have about ourselves, our jobs or families, our educations or accomplishments, in what we’ve lost or survived, it becomes easy to start thinking, “I did that. I earned that. I survived that. I guess I was great.”  It’s easy to see ourselves as the good and others as the bad, easy to place ourselves above, over and against one another. 

But you can’t do that in a story of cross and resurrection. You can’t get comfortable in the rightness of your ideas in a story that keeps sending you back to your sin, back to your nothingness, to find there the person of Jesus Christ, who meets us with grace and forgiveness and belonging we can’t earn. 

You were in sin and Jesus found you.  That is the story of your life. That is the story of Saul’s life now. And we have the freedom to live now out of this story. Inside all the other stories in our lives- our jobs and our families, our communities and the things we care about and pursue, inside them now we live this story: that we are sinners saved by grace.  Like good and holy Saul, like faithful Ananias and the Jesus-followers of Damascus, we are always in need of conversion.

Where is Jesus saying to you today, I am Jesus whom you persecute?
Or, I am Jesus whom you meet in the touch and ministry of another?  
Or, I am Jesus who crucifies your story of righteousness and gives you a story of grace in its place? 

Grace comes to us, and through us, and keeps going, never running out. In grace, Jesus calls us by name and gives us an identity crisis. Then the Holy Spirit brings us to other persons, to find there between us the very person of Christ. Our story of disconnection from God and each other is crucified, and we are given a new story, of belonging to God and belonging to each other.  
May God resurrect us again.
Amen.

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

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