Friday, July 31, 2020

Widening our hope scope

Devotion for Being Apart -
July 30


This summer, I will share new devotions from time to time,
and invite you to browse through devotions that have been posted on this blog.


Last week I stopped by the church building for the third time since mid-March. It's like a time machine.  Frozen in place from the day we walked out of it.  Dee's cookbooks are in the narthex for sharing - where we put them at her Memorial service. The Lenten "hope" bracelets are at the back of the sanctuary for people to take one on their way out of worship. And our bible people are smiling down on the empty pews from the windows.  The building feels stuffy and still, and a little sad.

But one thing stopped me in my tracks.  It was our Lenten theme of hope, still speaking from the hallway wall:







Our questions, with the Psalm 23 collage we did in All-ages Sunday school.

So here it is.
When we hung these questions on the wall, we were living in the "what if?"  We had no idea what was coming, and would not have believed someone if they'd tried to tell us.
I mean, imagine, in retrospect, what "what ifs" we could have said!
What if there's a global pandemic?
What if suddenly kids can't go to school for the rest of the school year?
What if all public places shut down and everyone stays home for weeks on end?
What if hundreds of thousands of people get sick and thousands in our country and around the world die?
What if our economy teeters on the brink of collapse, and people lose their jobs or have to work from home, and those who work at grocery stores and on delivery trucks become "frontline workers?"
What if a black man is brutally murdered in our city by a police officer and the whole country ignites in protests and our nations wakes up in a new way to the problem of racism? 

AND SO ON.


All those what ifs came to pass! False security has crumbled, brokenness is on full display, our future feels uncertain, and life is in a strange suspension and upheaval unlike anything anyone now living has ever experienced before, (As my 90 year old grandma asserted to me last week).

Now we are living in the "Even if"s of our previous "What if"s!
And God is still God.
Love is still love.
Life and hope are coming up where we don't expect them.

Looking forward 
as we wait for word on schools, and as we watch the virus numbers and death rate climb, as we watch our city try to figure out a way forward.... it would so easy to fall back into "What if."  

But I suggest we look around ourselves at the things that would have been unthinkable, terribly dreaded "what ifs" that have happened, and we notice that here we are, in them, right now, and then we, paradoxically, let that feed our hope.  

We might think of this as practicing "Even though" reflections.
Even though we can't meet in person as a congregation for months on end, still we are church, still worshiping together, still holding each other in prayer.
Even though we can't physically be with those we love, still we are connected, still finding ways to laugh and cry and talk and listen.
Even though... Even though... Even though...


This is what Israel did all the time. They looked back at what God had done, they looked around for what God was doing, and they let them point them ahead to trust what God would do.  At least, this is what they sometimes did, and what the prophets and poets kept inviting them to do.  And through it, they learned that when we are stuck in "What if," then recognizing the "Even though " can lead us back to "Even if."

Even though my job has changed significantly, I'm working, and so many people right now are in this same boat. So...
When I feel myself asking, What if I lose my job? I can trust that
Even if that happens, I will be cared for by God and a way forward will become clear.

Even though the kids struggled in the Spring, we made it through, and everyone learned from that experience. So...
When I feel myself asking, What if the kids don't go back to school in-person?  I can trust that
Even if that happens, we will be cared for by God and a way forward will become clear.

And so on.
And we begin to widen our hope scope, and build our hope muscle.

By the way, I love how hope is a time traveler. The words we hung on the wall back in February have come here to speak to us now.  
Fear asks, "What if?" and Hope answers, "Even if!"  
Thanks be to God.

And now the words drawn and illustrated on the mural taped below our lenten questions by "then" us for "now" us, Psalm 23:


The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
   He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters
; 
   he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
   for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
   I fear no evil;
for you are with me;
   your rod and your staff—
   they comfort me. 
You prepare a table before me
   in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
   my cup overflows. 
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
   all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
   my whole life long.

CONNECTING RITUAL:
 
Perhaps tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we can pray in this way, and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

Let your prayer be a kind of litany to God, a call and response in which God answers you.

1-  Begin with the Even though... this is the gratitude time, that purposely acknowledges the presence and activity of God.

Think back to all that you've lost, all that has changed in this time, name it and let the Holy Spirit fill in the rest of the sentence.  This formula makes space to recognize the steadfast love of God.

Even though...   still...
This formula makes space to recognize the resurrection life of God in places that feel fraught.  Watch for signs of hope you can see in the midst of circumstances that have taken place or are taking place right now.
When... God...

2-  When you feel ready to move on, let yourself tap into the places of anxiety and worry in you.  You say the What if... and let God bring you to the Even if...

What if...

Even if...

Sunday, July 26, 2020

How to Pray in a Pandemic

Devotion for Being Apart -
July 26


This summer, I will share new devotions from time to time,
and invite you to browse through devotions that have been posted on this blog.

Illustration of the prayers, done today during worship by Susan Hensel

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.


Amusement parks have reopened in Japan, and along with them, some new rules.  (I mentioned this in my devotion on 7-17).  This rule for roller coasters is posted where you can see as you are boarding. “Please scream inside your heart.”  I first discovered it when someone shared in a tweet that said, “After six months, 2020 finally has its motto.”

Paul says that in our weakness, when we don’t know how to pray, the Spirit intercedes for us with groans too deep for words. In other words, when we are screaming inside our heart, we have a translator.
Maybe we’ve thought this verse means that when we’re praying and we aren’t using the right words, the Holy Spirit tells God what we really mean.  But (according to scholar James Dunn, the syntax tells us) it actually means, when we don’t even know what it is that we want, let alone how to ask for it, the Spirit groans with us and for us with a meaning known to God. When are trapped in confusion, and can’t even identify what to ask for.  When we have no idea what would help and we are just screaming inside our hearts, the Spirit intercedes, turning our silent screams into prayers for exactly what God knows we need.

This is such good news to me.
It’s hard to pray right now.
I don’t know what to pray for these days.
We like to tell God specifically what we want God to do for us.  Usually when we pray, we give God a little direction.  This isn’t bad; it’s just kind of cute.  When my daughter was three years old, she would stand on a stool next to the counter, watching me intently.  Pointing her little finger, she’d give me detailed, step by step instructions for how to make her toast.  As she told me how to do it, she’d also patiently remind me how she’d prefer it to turn out (lightly toasted, lots of butter, all the way to the edge).

We pray like this, as though God is a mom who ‘needs’ us to give her step-by-step instructions for how to do her job, and maybe has also forgotten our preferences and could use some helpful reminding of how we’d like it all to turn out.
We tell God things like, “please guide the surgeon’s hands”, “help her feel better”, “end the violence.” And we pray for God to do the things God already does, and be the things God already is. “God, bring your peace and comfort” “God, be with us here.”
This is all just fine. There’s nothing wrong with praying this way. (The Spirit translates these prayers too!) But sometimes, often, we ask way too small.  We pray in a “help us get through this” kind of way, when what God may want to do is more of a “use this to completely transform everything” kind of thing.

The bottom line is, prayer is something we’ve made overly complicated, and God hears us however we ask and whatever we say.  But what I absolutely love about this text is that Paul is telling us we don’t have to know what to ask for, and it’s ok if we can’t really find the words to say anything. We don’t even have to know what we really want from God. We just have to scream inside our hearts. And with sighs too deep for words—at a frequency maybe our ears can’t even hear—the Holy Spirit turns our silent screaming into prayer that God, who searches our hearts and knows the mind of the Spirit, hears and responds to.

I could stop there, and it would be enough for today. But it just keeps getting better.

We come next to a verse that has been widely misunderstood and misused.  “All things work together for good for those who love God.”  In utter contrast to the verses we just read, this feels so much like a shoulder-patting dismissal of deep suffering.  It sounds like a trite answer to hush the the deep groaning and sighing that we have just been told the Spirit takes up on our behalf.

And it feels exclusionary, like it’s saying, Hey – if you’re someone who loves God, and is lucky enough to be called according to God’s purposes, God will make sure everything that happens to you turns out good, so cheer up! 

But apparently our own human nervousness crept into the translations. (As the work of biblical scholars, especially Haley Goranson Jacobs and Brian Walsh, explains,) the original Greek actually says something like, “God works in all things for the good, together with those who love God.”

 First of all, it tells us God is actively working in all things.  Things themselves don’t work together for good - It’s not advocating an “everything will work out” approach to life.  There is a distinct actor here, and it’s God. In every situation, every moment, every conflict and especially in suffering, God works persistently and unrelentingly toward healing and wholeness and connection.

And second of all, our part, then, is not to just cross our fingers, paste on our smiles and and pat each other’s shoulders saying, One day this will feel better; God will make a bad thing turn out good, you’ll see.
Our place is to join God where God is working, to work together with God for the good, because “with those who love God, God works in all things for the good.”

This points back to what we were just talking about. When we are screaming inside our hearts at our own pain and the terrible suffering and injustice in the world, we are working together with God.  Miraslov Volf says, “we are being God-lovers, inspired by the Spirit to groan in such a way that God the heart-searcher knows what is going on. We are caught up in the love of God for the world, and it’s a painful love, because the world is in a mess.”
God will work for the good. And we will join in at the very place of the pain because that is where God’s Spirit is working.

Not only is suffering not worth comparing with the glory that is to come, like we heard last week, but suffering is something through which God is bringing new life. The cross reveals to us that in Christ God comes specifically intosuffering.  If you want to know where to find God, it’s in suffering.  Not just to share suffering, but to work in it and through it to bring new life.  God brings life out of death. That’s what God does. So we go to the death and we wail there at the agony of it, with insistent, expectant waiting for God’s new life to appear.

And we’re told that when we do, the Spirit—the same Spirit who hovers over the water at creation, whose breath becomes life in human lungs, who guides the people of God across the red sea and through the wilderness as a mighty pillar of fire at night and cloud by day, to the promised land, that same Spirit—is in us, groaning deeper than any of our words, for the salvation of the world, for an end to suffering, for the hope and promise of God to be fulfilled in our midst.  Our crying out in places of suffering joins in God’s work of redemption.

So here is what we will do: We will scream inside our hearts about the deep, pervasive cancer of racism that has been eating out the heart of this country since its inception, and we’ll work together with God to join the redemption God is bringing.

And we will scream inside our hearts about this sneaky disease that has shut down the world, and taken away from us the very things that help us stay human.  We’ll lament the absence of touching and spontaneous fun.  We’ll grieve the vacuum of human energy of gathered crowds, and the closeness of intimate conversations in restaurants, the joy of shared music and shared lockers, and the feel of hand holding and handshakes, not to mention the loss of each other’s faces, now modulated to each other by screens and blocked from one another by masks, paradoxically for each other.
And all the other places of despair within us, and conflict between us, that rise in us like a silent scream, the pain we have no words for, we will turn toward those places of suffering instead of fleeing them.  Addiction, illness, broken ties and broken futures, we will cry out about them.  And we wont worry about trying to tell God what we think God should do to solve the world’s problems, or even our own.  Because our solutions will undoubtedly be too small and short-sighted anyway.  We’d suggest repair and renovation to a God who specializes in resurrecting the dead.

So we’ll let that pressure go—to solve it all for God, or to be strong prayer warriors, or to even the pressure to have words.  We’ll go into our weakness, where we have no idea how to pray, and we’ll just bravely wait there, with our screams and groans, sharing the heart of God and letting the Spirit translate it all into prayers for God bring new life into our death. And we will trust, that in everything, God works together with us for an outcome shaped not by our limited imaginations, but by God’s limitless love.

Amen.


CONNECTING RITUAL:
Perhaps tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we can pray in this way, and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

Let's try praying with fewer words. Instead of telling God what we want God to do, let's just lift up the things we are carrying by saying only the single word or phrase that expresses the need (a person's name, a situation). Pause... Then move to the next word or phrase.

God,
...
Amen.

Friday, July 24, 2020

What are you waiting for?

Devotion for Being Apart -
July 24


This summer, I will share new devotions from time to time,
and invite you to browse through devotions that have been posted on this blog.




As a pastor, I have the distinct and unique benefit of also being the proofreader and theological sounding board to a prolific theologian. The section of Andy's latest manuscript that we worked through today talked about waiting. I wrote about waiting in a devotion back in May.  It’s July, and we are still waiting.

Waiting, Andy discussed, is always waiting for something. There is no waiting that isn't directed at some end.  We wait for a bus, or for our food at a restaurant, or wait for an answer to our college application, job interview, or offer on a house.

Because waiting is for something, imagining being stuck waiting, with no end or goal, feels awful.  He uses the example of prison - where the only thing someone is waiting for is for the waiting to be over. 

Right now, as a whole country, we don’t have a for to be waiting for. Are we waiting the pandemic to “end”? (What would that even look like?) A vaccine to be found? (distributed widely?) School to start? (meaning what??) The economy to recover? (??)  Life to get back to “normal”-? We don’t know what the end of our waiting will look like, or when it might come.  We are pandemic prisoners, waiting for our waiting to be over.

And yet, as I said in May, the church's job is to wait. We're called to this.  And we do know what we’re waiting for.   Christian waiting is shaped by the recognition that at any moment God might break in and meet us right here.  We wait for encounter with God. We wait for the justice God is bringing, and the peace God is bringing, and we wait actively, by living those realities now, even as they are not yet fully here.  We sit in the places of suffering and despair, of injustice or emptiness, and we wait for God together, alongside each other. With the world. For the world. Our waiting is active, hopeful. We know God is coming, is always coming into our death experiences with resurrection and new life. We don’t know when or how God might come, might bring redemption in small or big ways to the situations in which we wait. But that is part of the wait too. We watch, we trust, we hope, we wait.

Sabbath prepares us for this. By regularly putting down our doing and purposely spending time in being we are cultivating our waiting. Sabbath is meant to help us step out of the way of fear long enough to recognize its emptiness and inability to fulfill us.  It’s meant to shift us back into a way of life that waits expectantly every day, every moment, for God to show up and do something.

Normally, we are always filling up our life with busyness, so we don't have to be still, and uncomfortable. Busyness buffers us from waiting and wonder what we’re waiting for, or whether what we’re waiting for is worth the wait.  Modern people have mistaken fullness for busyness, so we get busier and busier, and make our lives fuller and fuller, which only makes them feel more and more empty. Normally, we’re too busy to really be in our lives. We're so busy doing, we forget our being and our belonging.

Now we are not in our lives, as they were. But we are in a season of waiting. 
It may be helpful in this season, to reflect on what we are actually waiting for, and what we hope will come.  Perhaps we may need to face that what we're waiting for either won't arrive or won't satisfy us when it does.
Are we waiting to return to a way of life that kept us from living a full life because we packed it too full?

We are made for fullness of life, to live in our belonging, connected to God and each other. We pause and rest regularly in order to remember that and return to it, and hopefully take that awareness into the rest of our week, so that it might shape our lives.
Now we are paused indefinitely, and we are waiting.

But can we let this pause help us remember and return to our true belonging and life meaning? Can we live in the Christian waiting we are called too?  Can we wait trusting that God comes in, that God is already here, and that our lives, our world, our nation, our communities, can be and are the place God is bringing salvation, in small and big ways, even every day?  Can we watch in the despair and pain, in the suffering and the anxiety, for the activity of God?

 This pandemic wait is longer than anyone thought it would be, and it's going to go on a whole lot longer.  Waiting only for the waiting to end is torture.

But this Christian waiting lasts a lifetime.  And waiting for the inbreaking of God is active, and hopeful, and joins in the transformation the Spirit is always bringing into the world.

These words of T.S. Elliott, from Four Quartets, speak to me today:
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

For more:





CONNECTING RITUAL:
Perhaps tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we can pray in this way, and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:


God, the waiting is so hard.
What am I waiting for, really?
I think I am waiting for...
because I am telling myself...


God help me wait for you.
Help me watch for you.
Help me sense your presence.
Help me follow your guidance.
Help me join in your Kingdom,
breaking in now,
all around me,
moving the whole story,
toward life and fullness.
Teach me to wait.
Make me someone who waits,
hopeful and brave.
Amen.

Thursday, July 23, 2020

Looking more closely

Devotion for Being Apart -
July 23


This summer, I will share new devotions from time to time,
and invite you to browse through devotions that have been posted on this blog.


Last night Maisy called me into her room. She'd had a rough day,  feeling down and despondent for most of it.  But I could see when I entered her room that something had shifted.  Her eyes sparkled when she said, "Hey mom, I was just talking to my friend Greta, and I asked her how she is such a content and happy person so much of the time. She told me its gratitude. She tries every day to notice all the things she's thankful for. I just did it, and Mom, it really works!"

"That's great, honey!" I replied. Then, in typical Maisy-style, never letting me be a bystander but pulling me into life, she said, "You try it now. Just look around and name what you're thankful for in your head."
Then she watched me expectantly.

So I did it.

I looked around the room and felt thankful for the roof over our head and a strong sturdy house, and noted that I really am thankful for that. When I turned back my eyes fell on the dog, and then slid onto Maisy.  I was surprised to feel a heart-squeeze of deep gratitude. She nodded, smiling. I could see in her eyes that she knew I was thanking God for her and for Khaleesi.
I smiled at her and left her room, letting my mind go already to more things I felt grateful for.

Wouldn't you know it, Maisy was right. Suddenly being told to name what I was thankful for, and obeying for just 60 seconds, pulled me into a different headspace and heartspace for a moment. It changed how I prayed for her when I returned to kiss her goodnight and and put her to bed. It changed how I laid my tired self down put myself to bed. Just a little bit more aware, a tad bit more in touch with the mystery it is to be alive at all.

It's nice to be given a liturgy by a couple of 13 year olds. (That's Church!)  Also, we have this practice deeply embedded in our Christian faith. I think of Eva's favorite hymn, "Count your Blessings..." and of countless theologians and mystics before Eva who've turned to gratitude as a way to stay grounded in God's bigger picture.

Specifically, I love the work of Brother David Steindl-Rast on gratefulness, and I will send anyone who is interested a copy of his book, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer.  It's excellent. I'm serious that I will mail you one if tell me you want one.
(So tell me. Do it).

True gratitude doesn't deny what's in front of us, it looks more closely into what's in front of us and into ourselves, for the Kingdom of God. It assumes we can already taste the Kingdom of God, catch glimpses of it.  It assumes God made the world good and goodness is all around us.  To rejoice in the good doesn't deny the evil or the brokenness is there, it acknowledges all that is here, but that means we acknowledge the goodness too.  And we direct that acknowledgment at its source.  Gratitude is one of the shortcuts out of the Way of Fear and back to the Way of God. (False cheerfulness and platitudes are not).

In the meantime, here are some things I am grateful for this week, that I want to share with you.

This conversation with David Steindl-Rast, about gratefulness.

This Krysta Tippett interview with Pauline Boss about "Ambiguous Loss", which is loss without any promise of a resolution -  how that impacts us and how we can navigate it.  (I shared an introduction to it in the "prayer and poem" section of this week's announcements).

Finally Theresa Latini wrote this lovely reflection on masks, along with a blessing for masks that she uses with Eleanor whenever they leave the house with their masks.

CONNECTING RITUAL:
Perhaps tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we can pray in this way, and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

Tonight, I will let Maisy direct us in prayer.
Simply stop wherever you are and look around.
Start naming the things you feel thankful for - they can be big or little, silly or deep, just start listing them.
Being still in place and noticing is simply the starting point - let your mind wander out of the room to other things you are thankful for too.

Don't just say, "I'm thankful for..." - thought that's a terrific start.  Try saying, "God, thank you for..." and speak right to the God who is present here with you.

. . .
When you are finished, listen in the silence for a response.
. . .

Amen.

Friday, July 17, 2020

Calloused Hope

Devotion for Being Apart -
July 17

This summer, I will share new devotions from time to time,
and invite you to browse through devotions that have been posted on this blog.



I heard a couple weeks ago that while Japan has reopened some theme parks, to help prevent the spread of Covid-19, screaming on roller coasters is outlawed. Signs at the parks now say, "Please scream inside your heart."  Someone shared this news on Twitter with the comment, "After 6 months, 2020 finally has a slogan."

Please scream inside your heart.

From time to time this comes back to me and I like it, because I feel like that's what I am doing, and it makes me smile to be given permission - nay, encouragement - for this activity.

We are not off this roller coaster any time soon, so please scream inside your heart.

Also feels true: Screaming in each other's faces could spread infection, so please scream alone and quietly. That message I am actively resisting.  We need people to scream with. Even virtually.

But of course the whole thing breaks down as an analogy pretty quickly. Nobody chose to get on this roller coaster, and certainly none of us is here because we think this is fun.

When I was first starting out in ordained ministry, I was part of a group of new pastors assembled by the wise and gentle Rev. Cal Cooper, a retired minister who would convene us monthly to share lunch and support.  One thing he was insistent on: you must have something on the calendar to look forward to.  Each month he would go around the table and ask us what ours was. It didn't have to be huge, or even soon, but some trip, some adventure, some plan that tickled our fancy, something outside the regular pattern should be shimmering out there in our near future.

I am remembering the wisdom of that advice this week. It goes deeper than I realized at the time. Having something to look forward to helps us remain present right here and now. It somehow anchors us.  In my house, in the past five months, we have had only the opposite, as plan after plan has dropped off the calendar and fallen into the abyss.

 But suddenly we have a few things on the calendar: god-willing and if all stays stable, the kids are quarantining in preparation for (highly-adapted, bubbled-up, masked and socially-distanced) camp next week, and while they are there I will lead a silent retreat for tired pastors, each tucked into our own cottage for a few days of prayer and rest.  Then in mid-August, my family will spend five greatly-anticipated days in a cabin on the Gunflint Trail.  This is the one we've buckled our anticipation to most.  My daughter keeps asking, every few days, "So if everything else gets canceled, the cabin up north is still happening no matter what, right Mom?"

After mid-August, we'll have to put something else on the broad, empty, white expanse of our hall calendar, because having those things to look forward to these past few weeks has fed our souls and stabilized us a bit.

We're strapped into this wild ride for a while, you guys.  Things are not improving, indeed, with school just around the corner, and winter coming soon enough, this ride is only getting more twisty and nausea-inducing.

We could look ahead to the sharp turns and sudden drops with so much anxiety and fear.  We're debating between the terrible possible repercussions of exposing our children and teachers to great risk, or the challenge of keeping kids isolated trying to learn through screens.  We're dreading the frigid elimination of the outdoor spaces we've become so dependent on to meet our needs for connection and engagement in the world.
For me, considering both of these upcoming thresholds leads directly to projecting the complete failure of America as a nation.  The virus hijacks the next few years, destroys our economy and quarantines us from the rest of the world, the whole structure of our society crumbles, and my children inherit a dire, dystopian future. (Please scream inside your heart).

But then I remember we have a death and resurrection faith, and God is always moving, and this is part of the story, but not the whole story, and the world belongs to God.

Nicholas Kristof has an excellent opinion article this week in the New York Times called, "We interrupt this Gloom to Offer: Hope."  He talks about how our needless suffering right now may be a precursor to real change. "Perhaps today’s national pain, fear and loss can also be a source of hope: We may be so desperate, our failures so manifest, our grief so raw, that the United States can once more, as during the Great Depression, embrace long-needed changes that would have been impossible in cheerier times."

The pandemic has glaringly exposed the brokenness of our system.  "The grim awareness of national failures — on the coronavirus, racism, health care and jobs — may be a necessary prelude to fixing our country."  Fifty years of economic and healthcare policies crafted for systemic inequity have taken a terrible toll on our nation, and we've been largely indifferent, until now.
“There was something about seeing a man’s knee on another man’s neck that woke people up,” Kristof quotes Helene Gayle, the chief executive of the Chicago Community Trust.

Drawing from examples in history, he then goes on to lay out what is possible, when we've seen how bad it really is and have the motivation to build something better.  He spoke with President Jimmy Carter: “I know we will see a better future... Sometimes there must be a reckoning and course correction.” And Senator Cory Booker: “Hope right now in America is bloodied and battered, but this is the kind of hope that is successful. It’s hope that has lost its naïveté.”  Booker calls it "calloused hope" - hope that is tough and resilient.

(I highly recommend reading the whole article). 


The article shifted me back into the space of remembering that America is a long story, still being written.

But even beyond that, whole nations rise and fall, kingdoms come and go, but the story of God's world continues: death and resurrection, always redemption, always toward life.

There's no disembarking this roller coaster. But we can keep making sure there is something on the calendar to look forward to. Even if it falls off shortly.  Our naiveté is gone.  We know it's all up for grabs.  We have to hold all our plans lightly and hang on for the ride.  Our looking forward can be with dread, or with calloused hope. I choose calloused hope.

So today I lean into calloused hope, and remain ready to scream inside my heart (and over zoom with others) as the need arises.  



CONNECTING RITUAL:
Perhaps tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we can pray in this way, and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

I scream my fears and dread into the abyss,
You hear my cry, O Lord.

And I feed the tender shoots of hope,
with memories of your faithfulness,
with reminders of life coming from death,
with recollections of despair giving way to newness,
with gratitude
that what is dead,
and broken,
and destructive
within us,
can be rooted out,
and a new way can be planted.

Deliver us from evil.
Free us from temptation.
Feed us with the bread we need today.
Bring your Kingdom way into reality now,
that we might truly live our belonging to each other,
and find our life to you.
Give me the courage to plan for joy,
and the strength to hold plans lightly.
Give me the trust to rest in your love,
and to join in your trajectory of justice and peace.
for yours is the Kingdom, now and forever,
and in you is our hope and our future.

Amen.

Sunday, July 12, 2020

No Condemnation

Devotion for Being Apart -
July 12

This summer, I will share new devotions from time to time,
and invite you to browse through devotions that have been posted at this blog.




There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  For the living reality of connection and life through Christ has set you free from the way of fear, disconnection and deadness.  For God has done what an ethical framework for a good life, weakened by our division and selfishness, could not do.  By sending Jesus, God-with-us, to share humanity with us to deal with our brokenness and division, God condemned this disconnection from God and each other, so that we might actually live in right relationship with God and each other.  We live not led by disconnection, fear and self-centeredness, but guided by our deep and secure belonging to God and each other.

For those who live in the way of fear are consumed with pursuits that bring disconnection from God and each other, but those who live guided God’s Spirit focus on the things that reflect our belonging to God and each other. To live in the way of Fear is to live as though dead and toward death, but to live in the way of God is to be truly alive and to participate in life and peace.  For this reason, the mind that is set on selfish pursuit and discord is hostile to God – it does not submit to God’s reality – indeed, it cannot, and those who are living toward disconnection and selfishness cannot please God.

But you are not in the way of fear, disconnection and deadness, you are in the living reality of connection and life through Christ, since the Spirit of God dwells in you.  Anyone who does not live in this way of life guided by Christ’s Spirit does not experience this reality. But if Christ is in you, though death and discord still affect you, your deepest reality is your aliveness and unshakeable connection with God and each other.  If the Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead inhabits your life, God—who brings life from death—will bring life to all the places of deadness in you, by the Holy Spirit who is in you.
(paraphrased by Kara Root)


I wonder what Paul would think of our culture today.  When he says, “There is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” I think, Sure, Paul, but have you seen us?  We are condemnation experts, condemnation ninjas—fast and skillful, stealthy and lethal with our condemnation talents.  We’re experienced professionals at condemning each other; and sheer geniuses at condemning ourselves. We dole out condemnation for what we do wrong, what we forget to do, and for what we do right if it’s for the wrong reasons. 

We can even time-travel our condemnation – we condemn people for things they said or did years ago, or for not coming clean in the present about things they said or did years ago, and we condemn ourselves for not knowing then what we know now, or even not knowing yetwhat we may know eventually
We actually wake up and go into the world ready to condemn. From the mildly irritating in our own homes to truly evil in our country, there are disagreeable people everywhere doing appalling things, and we are primed to notice and ready to condemn them.  
And we even help each other practice!  Social media is filled with videos of people behaving badly that some helpful agent of condemnation recorded and shared online so the rest of us can condemn this person too.  

We’d probably have to sit Paul down and explain it to him. Paul, dear, modern people believe it’s our right, in fact, our duty, to “call out” others.  And those who have done something especially offensive to us or awful to others should be rigorously condemned, which we today call, “canceled.” It’s like saying life really would be better if this person didn’t even exist.  

This puts a lot of pressure on us.  Judgment is a problem for us, we’d tell Paul.  Our culture says “Don’t judge,” because to judge is to condemn, isn’t it? We can’t imagine that it would be otherwise. So we all live a bit terrified of being judged by others because their judgment has some kind of power to erase us or dehumanize us somehow.  We’d explain that if he were going to live here with us, he’d have to strive to be “non-judgmental,” while also being quick to condemn religion or ideology that seems judgmental, and simultaneously not hesitate to immediately judge and roundly condemn those who judge and condemn others, while insisting he’s not judgmental. 

But here’s our problem: we are wired for judgment. We need good judgment to make good decisions. We have to be able to size up situations and immediately make judgments about danger or safety, about whether something is trustworthy or untrue, about the best way to respond to someone in need or react to someone’s request. Human beings need judgment. In fact, those with poor judgment or no judgment don’t often live very long.   

So we can’t really escape judgment, nor, apparently, should we. But clearly, where there is judgment, there is condemnation. And here we are, participating in the whole cycle. Just trying not to live in self-condemnation won’t keep that from happening, and it’s impossible to try not to judge each other.  Especially when so many people around us are complete morons.

We are stuck. Paul told us last week, there’s nothing we can do to get unstuck. Just knowing what’s right doesn’t mean we’ll do it, and besides, getting all caught up on doing it right is another way of being stuck.  We keep living in ways we don’t want to live, and not living how we do want to live.
And then he tells us, There is now, therefore, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 

In Christ Jesus, God becomes a person, just like us, with us.  God affirms personhood by taking on personhood.  The One who made human beings in God’s own image enters in and shares our place as a person, and so in this way God makes personhood the place of holy encounter with the Divine.  Every time we condemn others or ourselves, we violate the fundamental belonging to God and each other that defines us as people.

The law, a strong ethical framework, cannot save us – it is so weakened by our division and selfishness. The law makes us better at condemnation.  But by sending Jesus to share our humanity, to enter into our brokenness and division, God exercised the power to condemn, and what God condemns is not you or me, not vast groups of people, or people who do certain things or don't believe certain things. God does not condemn people at all; God affirms people.  What God condemns is our division, our broken relationship with God and each other. God condemns the things that take away our personhood.

And so, Paul can say with confidence, and so can we, that there is now, therefore, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  No condemnation. Not of myself, not of others. Dehumanizing others and dismissing them as worthless, overlooking those in need, calling out and labeling people as monsters, idiots or enemies - that will not stand. That has been put to death in Christ.  That is sin, which God condemns. That is ignoring their personhood, their humanity, when those people belong to God and to us.  And that way of being doesn’t control us any more; we’ve been set free.  When we are in Christ Jesus, Jesus’ connection to God and each other is now ours.  God makes it possible for us to live in our complete belonging that cannot be shaken.

So there is no condemnation for us, or in us, or through us, because condemnation has been condemned, and we have been made alive to belonging.

This achieves a remarkable thing—it separates condemnation from judgment.  It redeems the purpose of judgment. It restores something to the law and makes it a means of grace.  The judgment of God comes in grace – it comes to us as persons and calls us back to our personhood.  God’s judgment reveals the places of death in us or between us so that God’s Spirit can make us alive.  We can receive judgment instead of fear it – it uncovers our failures, our jealousy, pride or self-hatred.  We can even judge ourselves with God’s judgment, without condemnation.  This judgment comes with grace that meets us in our stuckness with the possibility of healing and transformation.  

You and I can walk into a situation and use judgment to see what is hurtful and what is good, what sows division and what affirms connection, because we see people as people.  We must judge, so we can celebrate the things that affirm life, so we can join the things that bring peace, so we can live in our true connection to God and each other.  But we must remember that in Christ Jesus there is no condemnation, except the condemnation of our disconnection from God and one another.  So we live free from condemnation, and reserve condemnation for the things that strip people of their personhood.  We are free to notice and judge when our own behavior is dehumanizing to others, so we can change it. We are free not to participate in a tragic culture of condemnation. We live in a different reality; we practice our belonging. 

What an invitation, then!  Whenever we feel the urge to condemn—whenever we feel judgment lead us toward the temptation to see anyone as less than a beloved child of God, less than our sibling in this life—we are reminded that not only is condemnation not a right, it’s a violation of personhood, ours and theirs. We are in Christ Jesus, and there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 

Instead, the Holy Spirit makes us able to look at each person with compassion and curiosity, to look again until we can see their personhood, to look until we can recognize the humanity underneath, and say here is a person who shares my humanity. Here is one of God’s beloved, with the same feelings and needs that I have—someone who gets lonely, sad, or desperate, someone with loved ones and dreams and hopes, someone who has suffered, perhaps someone whose behavior at the moment is what NVC calls a “the tragic expression of unmet needs,” or makes southerners say, “bless their heart.” We are not permitted to dehumanize anyone, to dismiss or strip humanity away from anyone, not even ourselves.  We are those who are set free to live into our belonging, bound in Christ to live into the belonging of God.  For us there is now therefore no condemnation.

Amen.

Thursday, July 9, 2020

Four Months

Devotion for Being Apart -
July 9

This summer, I will share new devotions from time to time,
and invite you to browse through devotions that have been posted on this blog.



A few days ago I had a conversation with a friend who was worried about what to do with school in the Fall. She was caught imagining different scenarios, playing out the stresses and choices to figure out if school returned full time, part time, distance, etc.  Finally, she said, "It's really hard to make a decision when we don't have all the information yet."  When she said that something clicked in me.
"It's not really hard." I said. "It's impossible. It's impossible to make a decision when we don't have all the information yet.  Use your energy on what's possible."  

Again I am reminded of Matthew 6:34, "“So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today."

This week marks four months of our pandemic existence.  We have been living here for four months.  Today someone mentioned to me the parallel of travel to another culture. You go to another place for a short time and you're a tourist, a bit longer and you're a temporary resident. If you stay long-term in a place that's not native to you, you're an expat, or permanently, you're an immigrant.  In all of these scenarios, every day you are waking up, walking around, living, relating, figuring out money, food, time, and rules for interacting in a culture other than your native culture.  It's exhausting. Everything takes work. Everything involves translation, reading the situation, trying to figure out of you're doing it correctly. Everything is a negotiation. This is mentally draining in the most delightful of circumstances.  Living in another culture is exhausting.

All of us are living in another culture right now - Covid Culture, Pandemic World.  And it turns out we are not just tourists - we've outlasted that term.  Now we're adjusting to the reality that there is to be no going "home" anytime soon. And friends, I don't know about you but I didn't really pack right, or say goodbye like I wish I had, or in any way mentally prepare to be away from my regular life for so long.

We didn't choose to go on this trip. And where we go after this will likely not look anything like what we left back in March. This culture we're all visiting together is not even a stable, steady culture that will get easier to adjust to as we become more familiar with it.  It's constantly shifting and changing, and just when we figure out how to live here, the rules change, the expectations change, and here comes more negotiating.  This is utterly exhausting.  

We have been here for four months, with an open-ended ticket. "I promise you, this will end." our pediatrician said this week to my daughter. "But I can't promise when."

So we do the best we can. Each day has enough trouble for today, and it does no good to spend our energy worrying about tomorrow.  By the time tomorrow comes, we may be in another culture altogether. But wherever we are tomorrow, we know that we can expect more discomfort, more adjustment, more negotiating.

But, let me remind us again: we've been at this four months. We've strengthened some skills, we've gained some flexibility, we're remembering we need to rest and pace ourselves, we're paying better attention to our choices. I'd even say there have been gifts in the midst of this. There have been surprises, and insights, and unexpected opportunities.  Would we choose those gifts over going "home"? Maybe not. But no matter where we are, God is with us, God can meet us, God can guide us.  I promise this will end. But I can't promise when.  But we have made it this far.  We can live here today; we've done it for 120 todays already.  And tomorrow's troubles are for tomorrow.


CONNECTING RITUAL:

Perhaps tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we can pray in this way, and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

Grace for today.
Grace for this moment.
Grace for the breath, this thought, this emotion.
Grace for this night.
Grace to sleep, and grace to wake.
Grace for tomorrow.
And for the day after that.
Grace, grace, grace.

Amen.

Sunday, July 5, 2020

Can't seem to get it right

Devotion for Being Apart -
July 5

This summer, I will share new devotions from time to time,
and invite you to browse through devotions that have been posted on this blog.




Paul's letter just got awkward.  The renowned teacher has been talking about God, and the church, and big ideas about faith, and now he’s suddenly talking about himself. But he’s not saying things he's proud of, he’s talking about what he’s not proud of – where he feels helpless or lost.
It’s a little too personal, like he’s had one too many, and the deep down feelings are coming up and, we want to say, Paul, dude, it’s ok, and try to get him back on track to with the big ideas. Or tell him to save it for his therapist’s office.  Besides, instead of good news, this kind of feels like bad news.  Or like he’s telling us this bad news to set us up for some good news, but we’re clearly not there yet.  It’s uncomfortable to stop here. Let’s get to the gospel!

But one thing we Presbyterians believe about scripture is that it’s all gospel - It’s all good news, even the “bad news.” Each time we open the bible, God can speak truth to us.
So we’re sticking here today with Paul’s personal lament about knowing the difference between good and evil, and even wanting to choose good, but watching himself choose evil anyway.  An inner battle between sin and the law.

Just before this part, Paul explains that the law of God is good – it shows us how God designed human life to work best, connected to God and each other, so it’s a gift to us. But once we know, we are also suddenly aware of how often we choose not to live that way.

It was easier not to know right from wrong, just to be selfish or ignorant of the ways we contribute to disconnection and brokenness.  Doing harm to ourselves and others because we didn’t know better, feels better than realizing all the harm we’ve done.  And worst of all is knowing, and continuing to do it anyway.

And once we start to have this awareness, we often look back at our previous self, or at those who are where we were, and feel disgust or contempt.  How could we have believed what we did, done what we did, said what we did?

I think about this when it comes to language.  Imagine we’ve just learned that a word or phrase we’ve used a lot is racist, which is to say, it contributes to brokenness and disconnection.  First of all, with that new awareness comes shame and regret, for having used the word.  Now we have the law, in other words, we know this phrase is bad and we add it to the list of words we should not use.  This is a helpful list, it guides us toward respect for others, so we are on board with the law.  We can see how life would be better if everyone followed the law and avoided the words on the list.

Now having been given the law, we are awake, and aware in a way we were not before. So when we hear other people use the word or phrase we know should not be used we get upset, angry.  We tell them they should not use that word or phrase.  They, perhaps, are not under the law yet, have not been converted to see how that word or phrase causes harm, so they tell us to back off and mind our own business, they can talk however they want.  Well, that makes us even madder. So mad, in fact, that we call them some words and phrases off that list.  But that’s ok, because they don’t deserve respect because they are refusing to show it.
Now we are trapped right back in sin  - only this time, we are contributing to brokenness and division knowing better.

Or to bring it closer to home, I know how I want to treat my children, I have read all the books and articles that give me clear guidance for the parenting I believe in and choose to practice. But in the moment of flared tempers, or exhaustion, or frustration, all that goes out the window.  And I can see myself behaving in ways I absolutely do not believe in.  O wretched mom that I am!

Knowing what is wrong isn’t enough to keep us from doing wrong. The law itself can’t set us free. In fact, it first makes us more miserable.  Now, having this second, awakened self within me, I can turn and look at the yelling self and say, What are you doing? This is not how you should be acting! And that feels awful.

We are not slaves to sin anymore – we are not helpless to those urges that are self-serving or divisive, we are not ignorant of our behavior and its impact.  We agree the law is good! We delight in the ideals we stand for – that everyone would be upheld and respected, and we could work together and listen to each other. Of course this is how we want to live, we say.  But that doesn’t mean we do it.

The law can’t save us, Paul says. In other words, awareness, being woke, knowing what’s right, recognizing the difference between good and evil, this doesn’t keep us from doing evil. It can’t ultimately fix what’s broken.
The law is good and necessary, but it also creates one more thing we can become a slave to.  We go around policing each other, and living in harsh judgment of ourselves, thinking change can come from just more knowledge and insight.  Of course knowledge and insight are important – they move us forward. But the place we’re moved to first is a greater awareness of our sin, of the ways we are trapped. The law illuminates our need for something beyond us to save us, because, wow, it’s all so much worse than we realized.

The big good news is coming in the next part of this letter, but the little good news of this part is that if you feel hopeless because you’ve done so much work and learning, and tried to change, and keep feeling stuck, that’s normal. It’s actually good. You are actually on the way of transformation.  We, as a nation, in a new reckoning with our history and systemic racism, are on the way of transformation.  People starting AA, facing their addiction, are on the way of transformation.
Awareness of how bad it is, and how trapped we are in repeating the cycles of destruction or dehumanization again and again, even generation after generation, is part of how we are set free.

And here Paul models for us what we can do with that: We can confess it. We can repent of it.  We no longer say, “I didn’t know!” Instead, we say, “I knew, and I did it anyway.”  We can speak boldly of our sorrow and shame; we can claim our guilt as part of our story.  We don’t pretend we are perfect, or even enslave ourselves to the quest to be perfect. We confess our brokenness. We draw closer to the pain instead of trying to flee or fix it. We let ourselves say the deep down feelings that are coming up; we tell the uncomfortable truth.

This Christian life is a life of deep honesty.  And the hardest things to be honest about are not the things we did by accident. They’re the times we hurt others on purpose, or went against what we believe, or lied to protect our reputation, or turned away from someone instead of acting for them.

So instead of pretending we don’t need saving, and covering up or making excuses for the brokenness and division we contribute to, we can face it and tell the truth about it.
And instead of thinking the law can save us, we can admit how hard it is to realize how very far away we are from the goal, and how trapped we feel by the ever-increasing list of rules for doing it right, and how it can even can make more judgmental of others and ourselves.

In other words, instead of avoiding doing what’s right, or obsessing about doing it right, we confess. We repent.  We tell the truth about it and grieve it. We join Paul in the discomfort, and let ourselves feel how hard all this is.  And we boldly acknowledge that we need someone from outside this mess to save us.  Wretched person that I am, who will rescue me from this body of death?  Paul says. Then his outrageous and hopeful whiplash declaration, Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Hear the good news: We can't get it right.
Amen.


CONNECTING RITUAL:

Perhaps tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we can pray in this way, and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

A good way to end the day might be with an adaptation of the prayer of confession from worship:

God, I pause at the end of this day
to let my awareness catch up with me.
I can see the sin and brokenness within me.
I don't turn away, but welcome that awareness now,
and name now those places in us me, where I long for your healing and wholeness...

Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy. 

And God, as I think about my relationships, with those close to me, and those I don’t know so well, I welcome awareness of the sin and brokenness between us.
Into all the ways I act as though we do not belong to each other, bring your healing and wholeness, especially....

Lord have mercy.
Christ have mercy.

God, I welcome awareness of the sin and brokenness around me. I lift up those places in my community, my country and your world, where I long for your healing and wholeness, especially....

Lord have mercy.
Christ have mercy.

Hold me in your forgiveness.
Speak to me your peace.
Rest me in your grace. 
Amen.

On Holy Week Worship with Kids

(Adapted from a message sent to my congregation's parents and grandparents) Dear Parents and Grandparents, Just a word about Maundy Thur...