Sunday, September 15, 2019

Attuned and Ready



John 1:29-39

I am really awkward at parties. Maybe it's because I didn't go to a lot of them when I was younger so I'm still learning or something, but I just can't seem to find my way in to relaxing and being normal at a party.  

Last night I was at a party in a neighbor’s backyard. And as we were standing there with our drinks in our hands making small talk, a mom in the neighborhood, who I’ve known since our kids were in kindergarten, began complaining about the religious teaching at the private middle school where her daughter attends. And she kept apologizing to me.  Knowing that I am a pastor, so not just a Christian, but like, a super invested, professional Christian, every time she brought up any criticism about, as she called it, “churchy stuff,” she would lay her hand on my arm and say, “I’m sorry,” and then go on to finish her comment.

I am not sure how to take it when this happens. As though I represent all of Christianity in any given situation, a whole belief system, never mind that there are some 43,000 different Christian denominations in the world, each believing nuanced things different enough from others to designate them a distinct group. And then between and within all those different groups, there are different ways to answer, Who is God?  

They Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion survey of American religious life found that American Christians have roughly four different gods, a third of us believe in an authoritarian God, a quarter believe in a benevolent God, a quarter have a distant God, and the rest, a critical God.  Whichever of these gods we have is a higher predictor of our political and moral attitudes than is our religious tradition. 

So what does it mean to be a Christian? 
When my neighbor sees me, what does she think my life consists of? 
How does she imagine I shape my world, or operate within it? 
Differently enough from her that she finds it necessary to apologize to me if she says anything critical about religion, clearly.  But would she be surprised to know my own Christianity looks really different from my parents’ or my siblings, or the other Christians on our street, or other Christians in my own denomination, or even that our faith looks different within a single congregation?  

How do we know what to believe, how to live, what to follow? 
How do we know what God is really like?  
Do we just pick the version of God that sounds the best and go with that? 
What about the one that connects most to whatever childhood trauma or psychological issues I’m working through at the moment?  So I have a “distant God” until my guilt or shame conjures up a “critical God,” and then I soothe myself with with a “benevolent God” who suits me just fine till I mess up and then the “authoritarian God” kicks in?  

It’s all very confusing, what we humans have done with the whole idea of following Christ.  It seems it can mean anything people make it mean, as long as they can make a good case for it.  Does it mean adding things to my life?  Like prayer and good works and reading my bible? Does it mean subtracting things from my life? Like gossip and sex and drinking and lying?  
How do we know when we’ve arrived?  How can we measure if we are doing it correctly? The whole thing has become very complicated.

“In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.  He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did knot know him.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it."  
The book of John begins this way just a few verses before our text.  It goes on to say, The word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory… full of grace and truth.”

How do we recognize God? How do we follow?  The first disciples in John are told, “Look! There’s the lamb of God, there is the one.”  
And they followed Jesus. They let their curiosity lead. 
They didn’t know what they were doing yet; they were just awakened to the possibility of something. They were looking, so they kept looking, kept watching.
And Jesus turns and sees them.  He sees them.
And then he asks them, “What are you looking for?”
And all these conversations are going on at many levels at once. 
They scramble for a response. How to keep the conversation going…“Teacher," they say, “where are you staying?”
And Jesus answers the question beneath the question, the one they are really asking but maybe don't have words for, the reason they’re looking, their deep longing and hope and curiosity, and he says, “Come and see.” Come find out.

So they do.  They spend the day with him; it says, they abide, they remain, they loiter with no agenda in particular. They sabbath with the Son of God, hanging out listening, talking, sharing food, and space alongside each other. Watching and listening, being heard and seen. 
They find Jesus and they are found.  
They go from looking to seeing. 
And the next day they tell a couple of others, We have seen; you should come and see too!

“He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; and yet the world did not know him.” 
God is in the world, right here among us.  
The Church is the community who sees.  Disciples, Christians, followers of Christ, we seek to see God right in the midst of it all, right here.  To see Jesus. 
And we need each other for this.  Because not all of us see all the time; in fact, most of us don’t see much of the time. 
We forget to look. We forget to listen.  Or we’re just learning again how to.  But because we keep inviting each other, Come and see, we keep taking turns getting glimpses. By being in this together we go from looking for Jesus out there to seeing Jesus right here.  

Rowan Williams says being a disciple is a state of being.  It’s not a belief system or a list of behaviors or doctrines to subscribe to. It’s a willingness to live attentive, expectant, awaiting the action of God in the world, trusting it is always about to occur.

And then it’s submitting to that.  Letting it lead you.  Hanging out where Jesus hangs out. Which is both with the outcast, and with the Father – that is, really seeing those around us and sharing their place, being pulled out of our comfort and self protection towards each other – the other that might be most challenging for us.  
And resting in the love of the Father to the Son, the unconditional and without end love that flows inside the Trinity.  That’s the basis of prayer – to simply be as present as possible, and accept that God is already present right here with you, and then being in that love and listening with your being, open to what might come next.

A disciple is a learner. Williams says, and what we are learning is “how to be a place in the world where the act of God can come alive.” 

This is what we are learning. This is what God is doing to us.  Making our lives into a place in the world where the act of God can come alive.  Making us alive, and making us into participants in the resurrection power of Christ as it brings life to others, to the world.  
Being a disciple is living with attentiveness, ready and willing to act in love, expectant that God will act, and show will us what to say or do to join in God’s act.

This is not a religion. It’s allowing Jesus to come into our own death experiences and bring us alongside others in theirs, trusting new life will emerge, and then watching for it to happen. It’s being seen by God, being asked by God, what are you looking for?And responding.
And when God speaks, when God acts, it transforms our images of who God is. It’s not a type of god or a type of belief; it’s a living conversation with our Maker that remakes us.  The Holy Spirit reconnects us, to God and each other. 

I upped the awkward last night by excusing myself early from the conversation because I needed to go home and finish my sermon.  This neighbor asked, “What are you going to preach about?” 
And after she pressed me I told her about our question for the year – Who is God and what is God up to?  And she said, “I think God must be disappointed in us for how we’ve been treating each other lately.”
And I answered, “I believe God is always here, in every moment doing something, even right here.” I even gestured around the party, where groups of people chatted and ate, a band played music while a few people danced, and children ran around laughing and yelling.  
I continued, “And we can try to learn to pay attention under the surface, to notice how we already belong to God and one another and join in.”  

Her response was, “I’m with you.  It’s all about community, right?  It’s all about community.” 

And almost back to my house, in the middle of the sidewalk, I blurted outloud to myself, “No! That’s not it! It’s not just all about community!” And I felt frustrated that I hadn’t gotten to the heart of it. Because the heart of it is deeper, and unknowable, and something I couldn’t really explain.

GOD IS HERE, already doing something.  There is something bigger and wilder, not in our control, not ours to manipulate, or grasp even, or get right or screw up.  It’s beyond what our minds can comprehend or our bodies could contain.  Our hearts’ deepest longing cannot begin to sink to the depths of this, our most euphoric joy and most soul-rending sorrow are a finger dipped in the punch bowl of God.   

And when I had looked around the party, and suggested that God was right there, for just a moment my discipleship flared up, a little “what if?” sparked inside me. What if God does something right here? Right now? In one of these conversations? What if there is a moment that changes the trajectory of a life? That sets someone free? A word that brings unexpected healing?  A door that opens to new hope or possibility?An inexplicable flash of love and belonging that sets off a journey? It could happen at any moment.  It doeshappen at any moment; somewhere it is happening, even in this very moment right now. 

What makes us followers of Christ is that we expect that Jesus might do something at any moment, and that he might involve us.

So do we let things go?  Of course! 
Whatever clogs our view of what Christ might be doing, whatever blocks our path of participating in love when we are summoned to do so, we let those things go.  They are keeping us from the full and joyful life we are called to.  The harder we hang onto them, the more likely they are blocking our view of God, and the more clearly we will see and freer we will be to participate if we let them go.

Do we add things? Of course! Whatever helps us to both look and see, to both listen and hear where God is and what God is doing.  We are given witnesses of who God is and what God does in scripture and in each other’s lives, so let’s spend some time in those places.  Purposely adding things that take away barriers, deceptions and distractions– practices that clear us out and focus us and keep us present, like prayer and silence and stillness, these help us to be disciples, they help us to see Jesus.

What version of God do we go with?  It doesn’t matter.  They’re all two dimensional projections of god made in our image.  They will all be crucified when the real God encounters us. Start somewhere. God promises, when you seek me you will find me.  So seek. Look.

Which denomination is right? None of them! They’re all just structures, built around ideas which are built around a shared desire to know and serve God. They get some stuff right and lots of stuff wrong.  So pick one and begin.
Join a church. Find the disciples. Be a disciple. Let go the things that keep you from Christ, add in the things that lead you to Christ. And watch and listen for the living God, who might intervene presently, and who may summon you to act in love at any moment.  

How do we know when we have arrived?  
There is no arriving, there is only abiding.  
And if we are worried about measuring if we’re doing it correctly, we are focusing our watching and listening in the wrong direction.

Being a disciple is “being where you are in order to be changed.”  This is thrilling and terrifying. Over and over it puts us to death and raises us to new life.  This being changed is never finished, but it’s also not ours to finish. God does this in us. 

What is ours to do is to be where we are. To expect God to act. To assume the Holy Spirit will change us.  To practice paying attention.  Something is about to break at any moment.  (Maybe even be in the middle of a party!)  And when it does, maybe we will see it, and perhaps we will let Jesus involve us in whatever that might be.  
Amen.


(This season, our congregation is reading Rowan Williams' Being Disciples: Essentials of the Christian Life, and drawing from it for our worship and Sunday school.  This chapter was: Being Disciples. Next up: Faith, Hope, and Love).

Monday, September 2, 2019

Telling the stories that change us




Growing up, I used to think I needed a better testimony. It’s no good to just say you grew up a pastor’s kid and kind of always knew God.  I would simmer with righteous jealousy whenever I heard someone really lay it out there, drug addict and homeless, and God saved them from all that and gave them a new start. Or filthy rich, self-serving lawyer who met Jesus and gave it all up to go into youth ministry.  God, of course, is capable of saving people from all sorts of things. Their things just seemed way more interesting, and way more important to be saved from, than mine.

This is our last unit with the Psalms – what Brueggemann calls, "Psalms of New Orientation." In many ways, these are the testimony Psalms. We started the summer with Psalms of Orientation – which praise the reliability of God’s goodness and the order of creation. Then we moved into Psalms of Disorientation – those prayers that invite us into our experience when all trust in God’s goodness and the world’s dependability and order crumbles. 

Now we come to Psalms of New Orientation.  In some ways they are a return to where we began, except that after disorientation there is no going back.  These prayers of the specific goodness of God who saved them from specific trouble, prayed by those who’ve been through death and come out the other side through no fault, or power, of their own. And they give God complete credit for it all.  These are testimony songs.

There is this inexplicable moment in the Psalms of Disorientation, when the Psalm goes from anguish and despair suddenly to gratitude and effusive praise for God’s salvation.  Sometimes that’s because the person or community is healed from sickness, released from bondage, defeated an enemy army, or some other clear, “give me the microphone I’ve got a testimony” type of redemption has occurred.  
Other times the circumstances don’t actually change at all –their reputation isn’t suddenly repaired or their power returned to them, but something has shifted.  They are brought from oppression to freedom, even in the midst of a difficult situation.  
In either case, the credit goes to God.  And what is called for in the moment is gratitude.

These are songs of grace.  Psalms of new orientation can’t come on their own.  They are only the new life after the death, the new story after the old.  They are what is born after what has been lost.  A different kind of trust, a new kind of faith-  one that has been tested and formed, let go and given back as a gift.  Many are directly related to struggles in the own Psalmists’ lives. But many look back to specific acts of God’s deliverance generations earlier, such as God bringing their ancestors out of slavery in Egypt five hundred years before. Retelling God’s faithfulness then becomes a way to celebrate and recognize God’s faithfulness now.  

 “I waited patiently,” our Psalm begins, and God saved me
God is the one who acts.  And what we call “waiting patiently” may not have looked so patient at the time. We’ve seen the first half of some of these and it looks a lot more like arguing and blaming and cajoling and begging than patient waiting.  This is like a little kid throwing a tantrum at the store, wanting only to be home, and when it’s all done and he is safely at home, he might say, Mommy brought me home.  I knew all along that she would.

Of course, looking back, we are much more sure that God will act than we might have felt in the moment, but that is our prerogative.  We get to say, “I knew God would do it, and God did.”  That doesn’t make us liars.  It makes us changed.  
The action of God is so powerful and transformative that not only does it change the present and gives us a new future, it changes the past too.  God’s grace is a time traveler; God’s intrusion reframes the narrative.  The action of God was coming all along, even if I couldn’t see it. I waited patiently and God delivered me.  After we have come out the other side, the story that has changed us changes.  

Let me give you an example of this. While I’ve had a lot of wonderful jobs, and plenty of tolerable jobs, I have also had two jobs in my life that sucked the life out of me.  One of them was while Andy was a Ph.D. student and I was the sole breadwinner.  They were both difficult and draining.  I felt trapped - my soul slowly being sapped.  I might say it in a Psalm as,I struggled through frustration and confusion, not knowing my purpose or contribution, but God saved me.  I was a patient and willing recipient of God’s grace.  
Now I wasn’t, actually, at the time, either patient or particularly receptive.  I was impatient and miserable, and I felt stuck.   But looking back at these things, we can say, “I trusted God and God delivered me,” even when it happens the other way around: God delivers us and we learn we can trust God to do so.
Because not only did God deliver me from those places, by my either quitting or getting fired, and not only did God give me ways to make money to support us where I felt happier and freer, but also, it turns out, I received valuable wisdom and meaningful growth from having suffered through those two jobs.  
Truly, not a week goes by that I don’t directly apply skills or insights from one or the other of those experiences. God used them to make me a more genuine human, a more attentive noticer, a more intentional leader, and a pastor who knows that whatever good happens here among us is because of God and not me.  Knowing this makes me far less likely to hang my own worth on how “well” the church is doing, which is much better for you all too.  
So my Psalm of new orientation about this would probably end with something like, I praise you, God! You are relentless about redemption! Praise the Lord, who uses everything in our lives, and doesn’t let even a single drop of it go to waste.

If, as our last round of Psalms taught us, questioning God’s goodness is a valid and vital part of faith, then so is accepting it, celebrating it, and telling about it when you see it and feel it.  It doesn’t stop with the asking, or the saving, or even with the praising, it must come full circle – others must know the truth of your life- the story of your being saved.  We don’t just belong to God, we also belong to each other. Which brings us back to testimony.

Your story is part of the story of God.  It is the story not of one who did it all on their own, nor is it the story of one who lost it all.  It is the story of one who has been saved. Saved by God. Given a new life, new beginnings.  
When you speak of your salvation to others, your humanity that has been lost, overlooked, starved, dead, trapped in the desolate pit, stuck in the miry bog – it is reestablished. Your place is restored, your voice is remade. These Psalms remind us we are no longer defined by our striving or our struggle, but by our participation with Christ in God’s life. 

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, I once was lost but now I’m found!
You put a new song in my mouth, O God, a song of praise and thanks!

But I’m not talking about just a one time conversion experience, rehearsed and rehashed to compare who got the better before and after photo.  There is not just one Psalm of New Orientation.  God doesn’t just save us once.  This happens over and over, throughout our lives.  “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, God’s mercies never come to an end.  They are new every morning.” (Lamentations 3:22-23) 

We all have testimonies. We all have Psalms of new orientation inside us.  Many, many of them.  We just don’t know how to sing them, or haven’t thought to.  
We have all been saved by the intervention of a God who leans in close and hears our cries.  But we don’t always recognize it.  And even if we do, we rarely either give God praise or tell others what God has done for us. 

Maybe we’re afraid it’s bragging, or could jinx our good fortune, or isn’t as impressive as a story as it ought to be.  Maybe we’ve been more on the lookout for things like dumb luck, or our own prowess and skill, and haven’t learned how to give God credit- or feel silly or naive doing it.  I suspect mostly it's that we are just moving so fast in this life we don’t stop to notice the hand of God; we're out of practice recognizing it, and expressing the gratitude we feel.

Let’s do it anyway. Let’s assume, like the Israelites did, like David did, that God is involved in it all.  Let’s imagine God is always more present, more available, more engaged, more invested, than we can conceive of.  
Let’s practice with each other waiting patiently when we’re in the pit, and when we’re delivered out of it, rejoicing unabashedly and telling about it to all who will listen.  
And let’s practice listening and receiving each other’s stories of deliverance, being the people who believe you when you say you experienced God. We will be the people who celebrate when you experience life out of death, because we know this is real, and because it points all of us back to the truth of our belonging to God and each other that can only come from God.

Sometimes we might do this with our day or with our week, look for God’s action to express gratitude.  But like the long gaze back of the Israelites, what it might do for us to look back at our lives – ten years ago, let’s say, or twenty, or forty even, and recognize some of the times that God saved us? 
Can you seek out a time in your own story when you felt lost, or stuck, or dead, and newness came, God intervened, hope was born where there was none, and quite apart from anything you could have cooked up?
Can you see where you might have been heading one way and you were led another way instead?
Were you saved from a toxic relationship? 
Given a new start after an illness or injury took away what you thought made you you?  
Did you find yourself in a new place where you didn’t know anyone, and kind and wonderful people came into your life?  
Did a rejection from the school you had your heart set on, or the job that was perfect for you, mean you ended up in exactly the right place that you may never have chosen otherwise?  
Did the pain over losing a spouse, or a child, threaten to swallow you whole and shut you down for life, but somehow, now, you are living, even with joy?  
Were you lost in addiction and released from its grip and every day keep choosing that freedom?  
Did you make a choice that caused great pain to others, and later find forgiveness and a new start?
Were you reunited with a long-lost childhood friend, or reawakened to a discarded passion or interest you got to pursue later in life?  
There is no end to the form these stories of God’s faithfulness and saving can take.  As the Psalmist says, You have multiplied, O Lord my God,
   your wondrous deeds and your thoughts towards us;
   none can compare with you.
Were I to proclaim and tell of them,
   they would be more than can be counted.

Let me be clear that celebrating God’s deliverance doesn’t mean we are saying everything in our life is great right now. This Psalm itself veers back into pleas for help.  Speaking out about what God has done for you in the past in no way undermines a fresh experience of God’s absence, or the need for God’s intervention again in your life. 
This is the paradoxical faith of the Israelites, that they can sing praises for God’s faithfulness in the past, even while begging God to please be faithful now.  It is, in fact, a basis for their pleas.  
So if that is where you are now, in a place of struggle or anger with God, I invite you to do two things.  One, read the rest of this Psalm.  Pray with it this week.  The Psalms are filled with words to bring you into your experience where God can meet you.  This prayerbook has been used by people like us for two thousands years to help us plant our feet and face God with whatever we’ve got. 
But the second thing I invite you to do is to take this moment to look back on your life and seek out times of God’s salvation.  Look for stories – your own stories – that show you who God is and what God does.  

And then we’re going to tell them.  We are going to practice it now: the noticing, the thanks, the telling and the receiving of these testimonies.  Let us sing a new song.
  
We did this together in worship on September 1.  
You can do this at home with these prompts:

I was…
Then God…
I praise the Lord, who…

Try thinking of a half dozen or so.  
Share them with someone. 
Share them here in the comments, if you’re willing.


This is the fourth of a four part series on the spirituality of the Psalms.  
You can read the rest here: 
Part 1 - A life well-lived
Part 2 - Starting and ending this way
Part 3 - Praying the dangerous ones 

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