Even when we forget

Genesis 12-21 

Episode 3: Hagar, Abraham & Sarah

I spent several days this week gathered in Maine with pastors who have been in a grant together for three years called “From Relevance to Resonance,” seeking to orient our lives and ministry work around the action of God. We gathered to talk about how fast our world moves, and how what keeps us human is not striving to keep up but receiving the resonant moments of uncontrollable aliveness that awaken us to the world and reconnect us to God and each other. And we discussed how we want to lead in the church to help each other pay attention to God. But even these people, who were literally there talking about trusting that God is real and really does stuff, found ourselves forgetting that God is real and really does stuff.  

It’s so easy to slip into thinking that it’s up to us – whatever it is. That we are supposed to make God’s work happen or bring about God’s future.  This is a foolish and dangerous mistake, but nevertheless, there you go. We all keep making it.

And with that, we turn to our ancestor, Abram.  God promises Abram that his descendants will number the stars, and through Abram’s line the whole world will be blessed.  But there is no way for Abram and his wife Sarai to fulfill this promise – they can’t create a multitude, let alone a single child. This blessing has to come from God. 

The covenant God made with all creation back with Noah, to never give up on the world, gets legs in the covenant God makes with Abraham. God chooses one family to know God and be in direct relationship with God, so that through them God might gather the whole beloved world into God’s Shalom, fullness of life.

So, leaving everything they know, all the ties and security they had, uprooted and wandering, Abram obeys. They go where God leads them, with only God’s promise holding them. 

But if you’ve read the whole scripture texts we’re covering today, you’ve seen that they keep on forgetting God is the one leading. And God has to keep reminding them that they are not in it to save their own skin; they are in this life to know and love God, and to let God make them a blessing to the world.  

God didn’t choose Abram and Sarai because of their great character or their unique skills. They were not especially worthy or extraordinary.  They became the people in whom God’s story is concentrated because God’s goodness and mercy can be revealed in any life, every life. God chose these people to be the ones through whom God would bless the world and so that is what happens. 

But it’s a really long wait. Really long, and even though God keeps reminding them their offspring will number the stars and will bless the world, instead of trusting God to fulfill the promise through them, Abram and Sarai get tired of waiting and take things into their own hands. They attempt to produce what God has promised to provide. 

A sure sign we’re NOT living in the covenant love of God is when we instrumentalize others.  When other people are not siblings in the human family who belong to God and to us, but obstacles to resist or despise, or objects to use or discard, we have turned our back on God and each other and made this about saving ourselves. 

So they make their slave-girl into a means to an end. They try to transcend their own limitations and their own embodiment by using her body to do God’s work for God.

Only once this thing they’ve schemed - that denies their belonging to God and violates their belonging to each other - achieves what they’d hoped it would, things get ugly. 

When the pregnancy begins to show suddenly it’s no longer like placing an order from an online shopping site. They are human beings, all, in this together. The way sin plays out, if we remember Adam and Eve, is that when we forget that God is God and we are in God’s loving care, when we violate our belonging in mutuality to one another, what comes next is shame, blaming, hiding and competing. We’ve moved ourselves to the center of our story, so the people around us become a threat. God cannot be trusted, we are lost in the consequences of our sin, unable to free ourselves from the cycles of fear, anger and selfishness that got us there in the first place. We are unavailable to God or one another, and the life-giving moments of resonance that reconnect us cannot be received. We are cut off from the life we are made for, life in relationship. Inaccessible and isolated, we only relate to the world through aggression. 

Remember, in the days of Noah, humankind became so violent, and ‘pursued only evil continually’ that they lost their humanity, and wreaked destruction on God’s beloved creation. This grieved God so badly that God almost wiped everything out, returning the world to nothingness to start over. But God’s deep love for creation and God’s mercy prevailed, and God committed to never give up on us. 

When Sarai abuses the girl she flees to the wilderness, which was like plunging into nothingness, into non-being. It’s the untamed wild where, centuries later, the Holy Spirit will drive Jesus, right after he is baptized. Barren, desolate and dangerous, the wilderness is the physical location of utter isolation. At that time deities were always attached to people and places, so to head to nowhere was to go literally into godforsakenness, to go where the gods don’t even go, to lose the groundedness in time and space that define us as creatures. She is fleeing to most certainly die.

But instead of becoming nothing, nowhere, we’re told exactly where Hagar is. “God found her by a spring of water in the wilderness- the one on the way to Shur.” 

God found her because God was looking for her. God looks for us. God goes where no decent god goes, into the wilderness and nothingness, to find us. God calls Hagar by name-  the first time she’s addressed that way in the story.  God says, Hagar, slave girl of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going? 

Why does God ask questions? It’s not like God doesn’t know the answers. When Adam and Eve hide naked from God in the garden and God asks, Where are you?  Of course God knows right where they are. So why ask? God asks questions to invite us back into the conversation. God brings us back into relationship and response. God addresses us as persons, and summons us back to the belonging that holds us.  

 “I am running away,” Hagar answers God. 

God meets Hagar in her despair. Tell your story to me Hagar, so it will no longer be what has power over you.Let me bear with you your experience of nothingness so that I may heal you and restore you to your true identity as one whom I care for who is called to care for others.  

After God hears Hagar and ministers to her, God tells her to go back. Not to a place, but to a person, Go back to Sarai. Humbly submit to her.  Instead of Sarai forcing her slave girl to submit, Hagar, seen by God, is going to Sarai in freedom and offering to care for Sarai. It’s Jesus’ Turn the other cheek–  a self-emptying action that requires that you see me as a person with agency, choosing to address you, another person. 

No longer as an object to use, or an enemy to despise, they must encounter one another as persons. From the nothingness of despair, Hagar is restored to personhood and agency, and sent to minister to Sarai, who is trapped in her own wilderness of regret and rage.  

 Then God makes a covenant with Hagar, giving her a future and a promise greater than any wrongs done to her. Her story will live on through generations too numerous to count – a promise mirroring the one given to Abram and Sarai. 

God pulls us out of nothingness and gathers us into the future God is bringing into the world. This is God’s future, not ours. So we don’t get to decide when or how it comes. We get to watch and join in as it comes.

Finally God gives Hagar the name for her son, swaddling him in promise before he’s even born. Ishmael means “God listens.” Then something quite marvelous happens: Hagar names God.  She is the first person in scripture with the boldness to name God. She calls God The God who sees.

Hagar returns to Sarai, and ministers to her in her despair. She shares the story of being found by God; she comes trusting in the promises of a God who sees us.   

Fourteen years later Sarai conceives, and at 90 years old her waiting finally end. God’s promised blessing is fulfilled through utter impossibility, because it’s God who acts, and not we who make God’s work happen or bring about God’s future. And Sarai, whose name meant ‘Princess’ will become Sarah, ‘Mother of Nations.’ alongside Abraham, “Father of a multitude of nations.”

And wouldn’t it be great if human beings just got it and stayed in right connection to God and each other all the time? But we don’t. Abraham and Sarah’s story continues, and they do a lot of dumb stuff with bad consequences. They keep forgetting God is the one leading. And God keeps reminding them that they are not in it to save their own skin; they are in this life to know and love God, and to let God make them a blessing to the world. And our bible includes all of that because this is not about extraordinary people doing great things, it’s about the God who chooses ordinary people to participate in God’s healing and trust in God’s promises together. 

So often in life things feel impossible and hard. But this God moves in impossibility. This God goes to the desolate places where the gods of this world will not go, and asks questions that set us free. This God listens, and sees, and calls us to minister to real people, and live into God’s future with hope. This God is so committed to loving and saving the world that God comes into this world as one of us, vulnerable and weak, and then plunges into the godforsakeness of death, so that not even that death separate us from God. 

God’s covenant with us means God’s grace comes first, before we mess up, claiming us for love. And God’s grace comes last, after all is said and done, claiming the world for love. And in the middle as we muddle, God’s grace continues claiming us for love. 

Humans can be horrible. And humans can be amazing. We can be courageous and loving, kind and brave. And we can be selfish and awful, calloused and uncaring. If the trajectory of the world were up to us, clearly, we’d be doomed. It’s easy to go down that path and assume that’s where it’s all headed. But God is real rightnow, and does stuff right here, in our very own lives, and way over there in the lives we can only watch from afar with sorrow and helplessness. God is real and doing stuff in the world.  We’re invited to trust this and join this.

Today we will baptize Imogen into the covenant family of God, this family that includes Isaac and Ishmael, Hagar and Sarah, Abraham and Noah and Eve and Adam, and you and me too. Her middle name already means “grace” in Japanese, and when we make the sign of Christ’s death and resurrection upon her, her new first name will forevermore be “Beloved, Child of God.”  

And the God who is real will really do stuff in Imogen’s life.  And we are here for it. We’re here to help her watch and join in. We’re here to listen to her stories, and encourage her in ministry, and be open together to those resonant moments we can’t control when we taste the fullness of it all. We’re here to live into the promises of God together, and practice trusting God to fulfill those promises through us. We get to practice living bravely into God’s reality even when it’s impossible, or especially then, seeing the world in all its beauty, and not shying away from its pain, because God comes into nothingness to minister to us and sends us there to minister to others.  

And because we all forget and remember together, one day, Imogen will undoubtedly remind you in some way or another of God’s grace, the love that claims us, and in this way, like those before us, we will continue to live in God’s covenant of shalom that gathers us and holds the world forever. 

Amen. 

 

What do I love?

 Each morning, the first thing I do is reach for my phone. I look at how good of a sleep I got according to my watch data, I read my emails, and check the breaking news.  This habit is not neutral. This is a practice that is forming me.  

Like a sponge, I wake up parched and immediately soak up the world’s tension and division announced to me in breathless headlines. I let the urgency, self-judgment, and need for productivity course through my veins and get my blood pumping. Little do I realize this going to my heart. I am shaping my desire by adrenaline and upheaval, I am being trained to chase competence, proficiency and efficiency, and sooth anxiety with data points and accomplishments.  And, I’m told I’m not fun to be around in the morning.

What is this daily practice telling me about what a good life is and how to live it?  What does it reveal about what I actually love, over against what I think I love?

James Finley shares a story of interning in a VA hospital on the treatment unit for alcoholism in the 1970s. The men on the floor, mostly Vietnam vets, had developed an initiation rite that was passed down. In order to be admitted to the unit, you had to pass through this rite.

Finley describes being in a large room, with chairs all pushed against the four walls and the center empty, except for two chairs facing each other. Nearly 100 men are sitting silently along the walls, heads down, eyes to the floor. 

In comes the person at the end of his rope, with alcohol destroying his life.  He’s nervous, glancing around the room, knowing he will need to pass this initiation to get in.  Those around the walls keep their eyes lowered, and remain completely still and silent. Finley says, “It’s serious as death, which it is.”

The interviewer invites the man to a center chair and sits down across from him. 

The questioner then asks, “What do you love the most?”

“The alcoholic, not know what to say, stammers something out like, “My wife.” at which point everyone in the room yells as loud as they can, “Bull----!” and then goes silent, staring at the floor. 

The rattled man looks back at his questioner, who asks again,

 “What do you love the most?”

“My children,” he tentatively answers.

“Bull---!”, hollers loudly back from all sides.

“What do you love the most?”

Finally, finally, the person says, “Alcohol.”

Immediately all the men rise to their feet and give the man a standing ovation. Then in complete silence they line up and hug him, one at a time, as tears stream down his face.

He is ready to begin his journey.

We can know a lot, believe a lot, have the best intentions and the loftiest goals, but our hearts are shaped by our habits.  Like a compass: our love is directed toward what we put our attention on, what we practice every day.  

Were someone to observe us from afar and describe who we are, they could not see inside us, read our thoughts or intentions, or deduce our motivations, they could only witness and describe what they see us doing with our lives, what direction we are moving. And the conclusions they draw about us would, in some ways, be more accurate than the conclusions we often draw about ourselves.

Generations before Christ, when the Israelites were delivered from bondage in Egypt, they were sent into the wilderness, for 40 years.  All the lifegiving liturgies and practices of their faith that sustained them behind closed doors as the people of God during their 400 years of slavery came with them. But other patterns and habits, the “liturgies” of the empire had been shaping them day after day, telling them their lives were worthless except for what they could produce. The way of fear dominated their waking hours, forming them in daily doses toward self-preservation, guarded competition and on-edge dread. 

But in the barrenness of the wilderness this liturgy was extinguished, and new patterns and practices took their place, shaping them toward a different way of being. Every single day, God, who claimed them as beloved children, miraculously provided them food and water, protection and care.  Little by little, day by day, through habits of trust and dependence on their Creator, they were remade from fear to trust, from degradation to dignity Instead of relentless, competitive striving, they were rooted and grounded in the belonging, generosity and rest of a loving God in whose image they were made for a life of giving and receiving ministry, to bear God’s love to the world. 

Today we read that Jesus’ own ministry begins when he is plunged under the waters of baptism, and hears God’s claim on him, You are my Son, my beloved, in whom I am well-pleased.  And then, immediately, Jesus is driven by the Spirit into the habit-disrupting, trust-teaching wilderness of his ancestors for 40 days of vulnerability to be cared for by God. 

Lent is the 40 days before the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead on Easter. It has always been seen as a kind of spiritual wilderness, a time of stripping away of our idols, isolation and captivity, and reorienting us back to God, who loves us and claims us for ministry. 

Lent turns the compass of our hearts back toward God, by first asking us, what is your compass pointing toward, that you may not realize? and then, like an initiation into recovery, disrupting our patterns of self-sufficiency and sin and recalibrating our loves.

Because when we see ourselves and our lives as they really are, and not just as we wish them to be: this is where God meets us, where transformation happens, where discipleship begins again, and again. In the wilderness of Lent, we too are tested by satan and waited on by angels, which is to say, we recognize how deeply seductive are the messages the world gives us about what a good life is, and how strongly they pull on us, but, there, in our most vulnerable and true selves, we are welcomed with ovation and open arms into the care of the one who calls us Beloved child in whom I delight.

My Lenten “liturgical inventory” began this week when I recognized how my waking up, (and for that matter, going to bed) rituals are mis-directing my heart. So I made the choice that I will not look at my phone for the first two hours of being awake. 

Each morning, I greeted the day in front of my eyes instead of on a screen. I was present to those around me instead of barking orders at them, and I felt myself inside my body, instead of racing through emails and giving my attention to whatever felt loudest or most urgent.  I managed to do this 5 of the 7 days. It is uncomfortable and hard.  But how hard it is shows me how necessary it is– like resting on sabbath Sundays reveals my dependance on doing. 

A week in, I’ve already discovered that when I come later in my day to the pressing news and to-do lists, first having awakened to God’s presence and been present myself with a different heart-orientation, it shapes my perspective, and I am noticeably less anxious the whole rest of my day.  

God is God, always here, always holding my life and this world in love, always moving both through and despite humans to bring redemption. I want to trust this, not just with my head, but with my heart, and so, then, also with my habits.  

May it be so. Amen. 

Remembering What's True

saiah 43:1-2,10-13 and Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

I have had many conversations with folks this week.  And while some of us may be feeling fine and dandy, many of us are discouraged and disheartened, and frankly, exhausted.  Here we are again, with mask mandates and distance learning, fighting the urge to horde things, and our pandemic vocabulary keeps growing: now we know phrases like “supply chain issues” and “rapid lateral flow tests” and the fine point differences between “isolation” and “quarantine.” 

So let me first say again, that “it’s normal to feel sad in sad times.”  And if you’re feeling more tired than usual, that’s no surprise. We have been buffering for nearly two years and our operating systems are slow.  It’s ok to be slow. It’s ok to do less.  This all is a lot to process, and the constant recalibrating is exhausting.
 
For us in the northern hemisphere, Epiphany comes in the darkest time of the year. In the cold and barren landscape of winter, we spend a couple of months turning our faces toward the light of the world that the darkness cannot overcome.  And right we could use some reminders of things we know and trust but sometimes forget.  So this is a good time for some perspective.  A good time to orient ourselves again toward the light.
 
There are two reminders our scriptures give us today that I want us to hear, that I think will help us in this time that feels a bit dark.  I want us to remember who we are. And I want us to remember who God is.
 
Who we are is not up for grabs, it’s already decided. You are mine. God says. I have chosen you and redeemed you and called you by name.  And this fact is sealed on us by our baptism.
We are baptized into Jesus’ death and resurrection – we die his death and are raised into his newness of life.  So that belonging that Jesus has with God, that belonging he has with the world, that is our belonging. And that life that was there at creation and prevails through eternity is our life. 
 
Some of us were baptized as kids, teenagers or adults and some of us were baptized as infants. When we see a little squirming baby baptized, who didn’t choose to be there and sometimes isn’t very happy about it, we are reminded of some things about God’s promises and our own identity.  First, that it is not about what we choose or decide.  Who we are begins with who God says we are.  And God chooses us, and claims us and calls us God’s beloved child who God is delighted in.  God says YES to us –and we will spend a lifetime learning to receive God’s YES. 
 
And when we see an adult come to the font to be baptized, what we are remined of is in this relationship with God who chooses us, we get to say YES back to God’s YES. We get to embrace our own “one wild precious life” and submit to the journey whatever may come. And Jesus’ life of total belonging to God and other people will be what defines our life. 
 
Like Mary before him, and Joseph, and the Shepherds heeding the angels' call, and the Magi setting out on their journey, and every scared and wondering king and nomad and giant-slayer and sea-parter and child-bearer and prophet and journeyer before them, Jesus says Yes to God, and by the divebombing Holy Spirit like a dove and the voice from heaven, God says Yes to Jesus. 
God says YES to us and we say YES to God.

What does it mean to say YES to God? 
It means we say yes to not being in it alone. We say yes to life and light and hope. We say yes to suffering and struggling and living fully. We say Yes to forgiveness and grace and mercy.  We say Yes to being defined by our belonging to God and each other, and not by what we accomplish or contribute or earn or prove. We say yes to what God is doing to love and save the world, and Yes the astonishing truth that God wants to involve us in it.  

No matter what life brings, or where it brings us, the first and final word over you and me is this: You are my beloved child and I am utterly delighted in you!
That is who we are. And I want us to remember that today.
 
The second thing I want us to remember today is who God is.
Listen to who is saying YES to us:
Before me there was no God and there will be no God after me.
I spoke and saved and promised,
There is no one who can undo what I do.
I act and who can reverse it? 

This is the God who made us, and claims us, and redeems us, and calls us. This is who says YES to us. Our NO can never be bigger than God’s YES. No matter how much we flee or forget or fight God, God’s love will never depart from us. 
We will never stop belonging to God.  
 
And this world will never stop belonging to God. 
God’s love is not hindered by supply chains and shortages, God’s redemption is not slowed down by global pandemics or festering conflicts. Natural disasters, human brokenness and societal failures do not stop God’s salvation in any way. No matter how much pain or loss or suffering, no matter how much fighting or forgetting we do as individuals, or whole people’s and nations, the world’s NO can never be bigger than God’s YES. 
All that God does remains. Every act of healing and love, every moment of connection and hope, every transformation and redemption, every righting of wrongs and building up of humanity, each act of justice, each time peace reigns, every moment of joy and triumph of life can’t be broken or lost, destroyed or ended. 
It is into death that Jesus comes to bring life. It is in the darkness that the light shines.
So, we often find that in the midst of suffering and weakness we may even become more aware of our belonging to each other, more attentive of our identity as beloved, more attuned to God’s relentless YES.  
 
“You are my witnesses” God says, “I chose you to know me, and trust me, and watch for me and join me. I chose you to share my YES with the world. 
 
So whatever these next weeks bring us, bring the world, we will keep remembering together who we are and who God is, and reminding each other.  In our tiredness or sadness, we will still keep being witnesses of our own and each other’s belovedness.  And in the unrelenting unknown and the persistent upheaval, we will still keep practicing saying YES to our belonging to God and each other. Like a song always being playing, we will let the Holy Spirit attune us to God’s unwavering YES in the world, in whatever ways it is beckoning us to join in. 
 
REMEMBRANCE OF BAPTISM
(With water trace the invisible sign of the cross permanently on your forehead)

Hear and speak these words of truth over yourself:
I am a Beloved child of God, in whom God delights. 
I am loved and claimed just as I am, for who I am, not for what I do. 
This cannot be earned and it cannot be lost. 
God has spoken this over me and it cannot be undone.
May I begin here, and let whatever work and rest, whatever sadness and joy, whatever flows out from me and back into me, be a response to this love. And may it give me hope. Amen.

The True Wisdom

Jan Richardson's The Best Supper. You can see her work at janrichardson.com, 
and register for her Advent retreat at adventdoor.org

 1 Corinthians 2:1-16

One of my favorite Thanksgiving stories pops up again every year in the news and social media because it is ongoing.  Six years ago a 64-year-old woman named Wanda Dench sent a text to her grandson inviting him to Thanksgiving dinner. But it was a wrong number, and a 17-year-old boy named Jamal Hinton received the text, and asked, “Who’s this?” She shot back boisterously, “Grandma!” After some sorting out and selfies confirmed they were, in fact, strangers, he asked, “Am I still invited?” And she answered, “Of course! It’s what Grandmas do! Feed people!” So he accepted and went to her house for Thanksgiving dinner. 

Jamal has been at Wanda and Lonnie Dench’s Thanksgiving table every year since. When Lonnie died of Covid, last year’s with Wanda was a table of shared grief.  This week Jamal and Mikeala will be back at Wanda’s table where they belong.  

We all belong to God and we all belong to each other. 

All of us. All the humans. Without exception. 

There is no more fundamental truth than this, nothing more real in all the world, actually. 

But oh, how we forget it, and doubt it and disguise it and deny it.  How we cover it up with layers of interpretation and competition and hedging our bets and building our coalitions and hiding our true selves. 

 

And soon this hunger for belonging - this absolutely core, unshakable reality that we yearn to feel because we know it in our depths as the truest thing, the most real thing - soon it becomes something we commodify. We dole it out in tiny amounts, and sell to the highest bidder, we seek it relentlessly, addictively, in harmful and dehumanizing ways. And we make it probationary or provisional, limited and guarded, shutting out some in order to welcome in others. 

 

We long so badly for this connection to God, this belonging to the very source of life, our identity, our purpose, our human-made-in-the-image-of-the-Creator-core-being –that we set up rules to mediate it, to say who has it, and who doesn’t, and how to earn it, and who can dispense it, and what can make you lose it or gain it. And oh, the contortions we twist and the energy we expend trying to gain or earn what already defines us!

 

We forget- in that deep existential kind of forgetting - that belonging to God and belonging to each other is something hidden before the foundations of the world, decreed before the ages for our glory, utterly true and eternally unchanging. And then once in a while, like unexpectedly sharing Thanksgiving with a stranger, we remember.

 

There are two wisdoms, friends. Paul says. 

There is the wisdom of this age.  At LNPC we’ve been calling it “the way of fear.” This wisdom is built on power and centered on scarcity. It tells us always life is urgent and you must never let up or let down your guard. Each of us is in this alone, other people are competition or threat, and judgment and condemnation are constant companions.  

The way of fear seeks salvation from smart leaders, wise investments and the careful construction or dismantling of isms. It says we can be saved by weapons, or by legislating against weapons, by this candidate or that party, by this act of piety or that specific prayer, by this way of seeing the world or that list of beliefs.  It says you can force others to respect you through violence or through moral rightness, and these also prove your worth or earn you a place at the table. 

And we put stock in that kind of wisdom, we pay money to it, and educate our children in it, and take it in through our televisions and computer screens and phones and car radios, scrolling, listening, reading, soaking in so many words: his words, her words, their words. 

 

And like the dingy beam of a dying flashlight, we hold up this worldly wisdom before us, and we squint into the darkness, letting it guide us. And we’re killing each other. And we’re blaming each other. And we are finding more ways to divide into ever smaller and more homogenous camps, until there will be no belonging left and it will be just me against you – all the mes and all the yous against all the other mes and all the other yous. Despairing. Alone. Afraid.

 

But there is another wisdom.

Ancient and true. Secret and Hidden. Decreed by God before the ages, running like an underground river through time.  The wisdom that spoke the world into being with a single word, the wisdom that bound it all in harmony and order, a delight to its creator, functioning in love and cooperation. The wisdom of the Word made flesh when the Creator of all came to dwell among us. Stupidly. Weakly. Foolishly, to live without power and to die alongside us, on our behalf. 

 

There is no worldly wisdom in this. It is what the Narinians call, “the deeper magic from before the dawn of time.” Unbreakable and resilient, absurd and steadfast, it comes concealed in weakness to stand always with the weakest among us.  

 

Paul was a Roman citizen from a prominent Jewish family, well-established with an impressive pedigree. He studied under the most prominent rabbis of the day, and was fluent in classical literature, philosophy and ethics. Paul was educated in the wisdom of the world. He was a successful, powerful, influential figure, and a zealot.  He knew how to speak the wisdom of the age, in the language of the rulers of the age.

 

But when he comes to the Corinthians, he chooses to leave all that behind. He sees it as a distraction, a shiny diversion that might keep people from seeing the real reality. I did not come with all the methods and the political skills of lofty words or persuasion. He says.  I came in weakness and fear, with much trembling. I wanted you to see God’s actions instead of focusing on my words -  So that your faith might not rest on human wisdom but on the power of God.

In other words, he says, I vowed to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

 

Paul uses this language -  “Jesus Christ and him crucified,” “the cross,” “the foolishness of the cross,” again and again, as a kind of shorthand to refer to the whole of the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus- that is, that the Almighty came into this world as a helpless a baby, into the arms of those he came to save, to share this life with us. And then died, taking all that separates us from God, all destruction and brokenness, even death itself, into God’s very being. 

Then Jesus rose from the dead, and everything we thought was real about the power of death and division is exposed as utter fraud by the unquenchable light of the world, the wisdom hidden before the ages shining forth, and there is nothing, nothing, nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. It’s settled and final: We belong to God, we belong to each other. This is what Jesus trusted, and embodied, what he died for and rose into and referred to again and again as ‘The Kingdom of God.’

 

And yet… and yet we choose sin. Which is to say, we choose self-protection and division and destruction and existential forgetting. We choose to tear others down and to fear, fear, fear that anything, everything, could tear us down. 

 

But here is the free gift of salvation, friends. Right here: You belong to God. You belong to all the rest of the people in this whole big world.  And they belong to God, and they belong to you. Fact. Done. All that is needed is to say yes. Yes, I accept that. Yes, I receive that.

 

And because we’re steeped in the wisdom of the age, bobbing around every day in the way of fear, this is not a once and done acceptance. It’s an, over and over, Oh yeah! That’s right! kind of remembering, a chance to return, at any moment, every day, back to the truth that holds us.

 

Biblical scholar Mary Hinkle Shore describes spiritual wisdom like a pair of lenses at an eye exam, where click, click, click, suddenly the fuzzy blur is sharp and clear, the chart in focus. You can see what was there all along, only obscured by the various lenses that misinterpreted it for you. 

 

Paul calls this having the mind of Christ. Jesus was both always connected completely to the Father and always belonging completely to the world. Always at home in God, always living in a settled state of trust. And we can enter that, too, at any moment. Christ’s faith is our faith, Christ’s mind is our shared mind now, Christ’s lens is our lens. The Holy Spirit makes us into Christ’s body here on earth so that we embody belonging to God and belonging to each other.

 

There is nothing that happens to us that God doesn’t share.  And sharing it with each other is how we see God, because that is where Jesus is. Bearing with us, already. 

That is the wisdom of the Spirit  - that God doesn’t swoop in and triumphantly sweep away all of life’s pain and heartache. God sets a place at the table of life for each person and sits down alongside us. God offers God’s very self to us, broken and given, so that we might be made whole.

 

Having the mind of Christ helps us see this.  And it makes us brave. Brave to face the truth. Brave to tell the truth. Brave to live the truth with each other. Even when the truth is, This sucks! This hurts so bad! it’s terrible and I hate everything about it! Because we know all sorrow and suffering is embraced and joined by God.  

And also, we know it’s not the end. It’s not the real, final, and true word about all of this or all of us. And right here, in the midst of whatever it is, we keep belonging to God and we keep belonging to each other. And this world is absolutely and forever loved by God, who is, at every single moment, bringing wholeness and love, healing and hope, through all the cracks and crevices in infinite and often unnoticed ways, and who is leading it all toward undiluted and unending love.  That’s the real reality.

 

A few minutes ago, when we baptized little Ohlin, we poured over him this promise and spoke into him this ancient and deep word of life, Ohlin you are held in the reality of God’s love, part of the harmony of all things, from before the foundation of the world and long after you are gone from it.  

And you, First Presbyterian Church of South St Paul, in this mystical and sacred act, promised to teach Ohlin this eternal wisdom, and when he forgets his belonging or the world’s belovedness, you are the ones who remind him. 

And you committed to Ohlin to live out your own remembering alongside him until he begins remembering for himself, and then helps you all in your remembering, and you’ll remember together. And you’ll send him into the world to remember with and for others, and to find Jesus right there where Jesus already is, to see God and join in God’s work of redemption. 

 

That this power was just bestowed upon a baby, that this act that undermines all the might and corruption and brokenness of this world just happened right here is a mystery that can hardly be grasped. 

None of the rulers of this age understand this wisdom, Paul says.

And why should they? It makes no sense. Its logic is love; its awareness is transcendent.

 

There are two short-cuts that I know of back to the true wisdom.  

The first one is sabbath. 

This wisdom tells us to stop and rest every single week. To put down everything, and not do anything impressive or productive at all– it deprives us of all our devices of accumulation, our instruments of efficiency, our tools of measurement and our weapons of comparison, and forces us to just be human beings with each other. Our glorious and pitiful, nervous and intriguing selves are utterly loved by God in all our sagging, annoying, endearing and honest humanity. This regular, intentional stopping doesn’t make us fall behind or miss out; but actually restores our souls, returns us to being human and grounds us in our belonging once again. Be still and know I am God.  

 

The second short-cut back to the true wisdom is gratitude.

 

Br. David Stendyl Rast asks, 

“Is not gratitude a passage from suspicion to trust, from proud isolation to a humble give and take, from enslavement to false independence to self-acceptance in that dependence that liberates? 

Yes. he answers. Gratitude is the great gesture of passage.

And this gesture of passage unites us. It unites us as human beings, for we realie that in this whole passing universe we humans are the ones who pass and know that we pass. There lies our human dignity.

There lies our human task.

The task of entering into the meaning of this passage (the passage which is our whole life), of celebrating its meaning through the gesture of thanksgiving.”

 

Sabbath and gratitude can point us back to the wisdom deeper than words.  

But we do not make moments of awareness and transcendence happen. 

They come upon us. 

From time to time, when we are unprepared and unsuspecting, we are seized by a kind of wakefulness that resonates in our depths. 

Cradling a new baby, swaddled and sleeping, warm against your chest…  

Standing still under a vast, dark and starry sky….  

Pausing, breathless and still, holding eye contact with a deer you’ve just startled while meandering in the woods…. 

Being held in someone’s strong embrace while you weep…. 

Rocking back and forth in violent hilarity with a friend gasping in unruly laughter beside you….

Through the whisper of memory, the glimpses of fullness, the flashes of beauty, and the tastes of wonder, God keeps calling us back to the deep.

The true wisdom will mostly show up in weak, gentle and surprising ways, but it is steady, persistent, unfailing.  Underneath and behind and inside everything is the heartbeat that keeps the whole world alive: 

We belong to God; we belong to each other. 
We belong to God; we belong to each other.
We belong to God; we belong to each other.

 

Here’s the really good news about all of this:

It remains true whether we remember it or not. 

Whether we are actively looking for it, practicing it and embodying it, or whether we’re stranded in fear or lost in exhaustion and all we can see is the next anxious moment in front of us, God’s persistent reality of love, hope, belonging and connection is already holding us all.  

The table of welcome is always set, and every one of us is endlessly invited.

This week, may we accept the invitation.

 

Amen.

 

To Be Free

Acts 16:16-34 (-40)

On Friday my son and I visited with a pastor who works for a ministry in Turkey that helps educate Kurdish girls.  These girls are raised with two primary tracks for their life, either  marriage, at an average age of 14, and often as a mistreated second or third wife, or being handed a weapon and sent to the mountains to join the fighters. This is your freedom, they are told.  This is your salvation.  

But instead, with this ministry, they go to school, they learn a trade, they start a business, and when the marriage proposal or the gun comes, they say No.  The average marriage age for girls involved in this program is now 22.  And they tend to marry men who see them more as partners. They teach their own children to read, they hire friends for their businesses, they strengthen and build their communities. And the church is growing in that place – just like it was in Paul’s day, and in much the same way.  People are having dreams, “I saw a man on a white horse and he said his name was Jesus,” can you tell me more about this Jesus?  What must I do to be saved?  And the reality of God that breaks in and sets people free is embraced and shared and spreads.

What does salvation look like?  What does it mean?   Well-being, deliverance, wholeness… freedom in Christ looks different depending on what you are in bondage to.  And lucky for us we have several examples right here in today’s text.  Everyone in this story is enslaved to something. Everyone is aiming for their own salvation. They are working for their own well-being and security, striving for some semblance of safety and freedom. And yet they are all enslaved. 

The slave girl is the first and most obvious. Doubly enslaved, to a demon and to human masters, she has managed to stay alive by staying useful to others and losing her entire self in the process, mind, body and soul.  This wretched state of false safety gives an illusion life – she belongs to them, she has a role, she is useful in society.  But her humanity is stripped away and tamped down.

And yet, on these days, as she follows around the Jesus-preachers, the demon in her announcing the truth to the world – “These are servants of the most high God who preach a way of salvation!”  Did she know it was possible? Did she long to be free?  And, when, (apparently because Paul got so annoyed), the girl is released from the grasp of the demon, the illusion crumbles.  She is no longer a profitable commodity. She is useless to her owners. Her place in the world is gone. 

This happens to us often, when we are set free from a deep and abiding slavery that has defined us – perhaps it’s addiction to our work and the accolades that come with it. Maybe it’s a story we’ve believed about ourselves for decades that falls apart. Maybe it’s when we stop drinking, or taking the pain pills that we’ve relied on for years, and the feelings we’ve avoided come flooding in and we don’t know what to do with them.  It doesn’t feel like freedom. It feels terrible.  It feels like disorder and disarray, and we wonder if we will survive it.

I wonder if the slave girl survived it. She’d been so enslaved for so long, what was there for her when she was set free?  We might even be tempted to think it was more merciful to let sleeping dogs lie, or in this case, dogs that go barking at your heals all day to keep doing that. At least she had an identity and a purpose in the world. At least she had someone looking after her, even if that person was using and abusing her and disregarding her humanity.  Isn’t that better than having nothing?

This is one of the lies that keep us from being saved.  That freedom is too risky. Too unsafe.  Too unpredictable.  We could die, after all. Better to stay sick, or trapped, if it keeps our head above water. When you are set free the illusions die. The false salvation is exposed for what it was, and things can feel very, very precarious indeed.

The second example of those enslaved is the owners of the slave girl, who have their own path to salvation plotted out. They’ve found their way to make money and stay upwardly mobile in the world. They’ve worked hard to build a business and things are going well for them until their property regains her humanity and then their empire crumbles.  

Turns out it can all be taken away in a second; it was never going to keep them safe or give them long-lasting wholeness or meaning.  They are furious, and they get their revenge.  False accusations against Paul and Silas, seeing them publicly and severely beaten, thrown into the darkest, most secure, most horrific cell in the prison with their legs in chains, that should help them feel better. Did they feel secure now?  Did they reclaim their salvation? How far will you go on this quest? And just out of curiosity, in the pursuit of money and security, how much is enough before you are finally permanently ok?

The jailer is my favorite trapped person.  He’s just doing his job.  It’s a good job, a clear job. Put the prisoners in. Keep them there.  But circumstances beyond his control – that is, an earthquake that, instead of breaking buildings and crushing people, shakes open doors and releases chains – threaten all of that.  By the dim light of the midnight stars he sees the prison door hanging open and it’s all over for him. He has failed at his one task. He will be held responsible for all of them.  The illusion of his own security is gone in an instant.  He’s ready to put a sword through his own chest when a voice calls out from the deep darkness, Don’t do it! We are all still here!

Calling for a light he goes in and is stunned to see the prisoners all there.  

Nothing makes sense anymore. Who is free? Who is enslaved? 

The jailer falls down at Paul and Silas’ feet and begs them, What must I do to be saved?

What must I do to be free like you are? 

The gospel of Jesus Christ turns everything on its head, every time and always. The weak are strong, the poor are rich, the secure are actually as vulnerable as the rest of us. Slandered, beaten and locked up, these are the ones who are free.  No matter what and always, Paul goes on to say in all his letters, in Christ you are free, so live like that is true. 

Every moment, any moment, you can live in God’s reality.

I want that, the jailer said. What must I do to be saved? 

Salvation doesn't mean you instantly have security, the respect of others, money, a job, or a home, or a clear path in front of you. Those are the illusion of salvation. Real salvation often feels like scary unknown.  We’d all like to see a better ending for the slave girl.  But this isn’t her ending.  It’s just the beginning.  And Paul and Silas’ infuriating joy to sing in the darkness while their bodies lay bleeding is the most unfathomable thing, and yet it sweeps up all the other prisoners and the jailer too into this glimpse underneath the game, behind the illusion.  It invites them to be saved as well.

The jailer takes them to his home and bathes their wounds. They baptize him and his entire household.  They share a meal together, and stories about Jesus. And some time before morning Paul and Silas step over the broken rubble to sit back down in their cell, where the magistrates find them and attempt to ‘set them free,’ offering what they think is theirs to bestow.

But Paul and Silas answer, No thanks. You publicly humiliated and beat us; you arrested us in front of the whole town. You are not going to release us in secret!  We are Roman citizens– a fact that having been mentioned the day before may have spared them all of this discomfort – a fact which now reveals the bondage of the magistrates themselves!  

It’s their job to uphold the law, to protect Roman citizens. They have failed at this spectacularly!  Now their own safety is up for grabs, jeopardized by their wielding of their so-called power.  Now their illusion of security and well-being is exposed as well, and they too are on shaky ground.

Groveling, they let Paul and Silas go with a public apology.  And on they go – both preaching and living the way of salvation, just like they had the day before, and the day before that, recognizing that no matter what happens, every moment is an opportunity to live in the freedom of Christ. Every moment is a chance to invite others into that freedom.

I had an odd taste of this freedom last week.  My lease on my car was almost at its end, so I stopped into a car dealership to find out about getting another car.  There is nothing that feels so much like a board game in real life to me as buying a car. The bartering, the posturing, the pretending you’re going to walk out and check the dealership next door, the willingness to wait it out and wear them down… I kind of secretly love it.  

So it was that I found myself sitting across from a man for an unexpected almost four hours. In between numbers and bartering we talked about faith, and dogs, and kids, and death and goals. He was Jewish and married to a Catholic, and at one point he showed me a photo of his Christmas tree.  At lunchtime he invited me to come fill a plate at the employee catered Memorial day lunch and we ate together at his desk as we waited for a finance person to open up.  

And for whatever reason on that day, something happened to me.  I sat there across from him, seeing him, and seeing all the men and women rushing around me playing the game, typing on their computers, or pointing out features on cars, or herding their kids through the showroom.  It was like time slowed down and I was struck by the two layers of reality I was witnessing. The first layer was the game. And I thought to myself, Why, this is all pretend! We’ve made all this up! Clever humans! The rules, the credit scores, the financing, the sales, it’s all pretend. But so is the money, and the jobs, and the transportation and the holiday weekend.  This man in front of me goes home at night to his Catholic wife, and they talk to their grown son in New York on the phone, and before he hangs up he says the words he heard for the first and last time in his whole life sitting at his own dad’s deathbed, I love you, son.  That’s the real. 

This conversation we are having as two human beings eating together, That’s the real.  

The rest is a game. The rest is pretend. And I am playing it, willingly, and, I hope, well. 

But in this moment I can see that it’s all a game just the same.  

This feeling of supernatural clarity between the pretend and the real made me ridiculously content in what normally would have driven me mad with impatience and restlessness.

Oh God! What must I do to be saved? What must I do to be free? What must I do to be awake to the real?

From that desk I was ushered to the finance office, where a pale, balding man in a buttoned suit on an 80 degree day sat surrounded by no fewer than 30 pictures of children under five that, I soon discovered, were all of his one son.  This fact filled me with utter delight.  The doting dad shared that preschool graduation had just happened the day before, and delicious summer now stretched out in front of them.  And I loved him. I felt love for this man. Like the pleasure of chocolate melting sweet in your mouth, I found myself savoring the exquisite purity of his love for his child.  

When my car salesman finally took me to my new car, after orienting me to the details, topping off the gas tank, and taking a photo of me in front of my old car so my daughter could say goodbye to it, he reached out and shook my hand and said, “It was really, really nice to meet you. I don’t say that to everyone. If you ever need anything, even if it isn’t car-related, call me.”

And I think what he was trying to say was that he had glimpsed the real too.  I think he was trying to say that for him the illusion was punctured too, just for a bit, and like me, he had tasted salvation.  The freedom of belonging to God and each other that exists and sustains us at every moment had touched him as well. 

When I drove away, I said aloud to my new dashboard, Well. That was something.  

And I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

What must I do to be saved?

It’s the question we ask when the illusion crumbles, when the delusion of control, or the façade of security falls apart.  It’s the question we ask when the lies of the world get holes poked in them, when the choices open up and we see there are others.  What must I do to be saved? When we get a peek at what freedom could look like for us, or we see what it looks like when someone else is living it.  When we are ready for something more, something deeper, something real, the question rises up: What must I do to be saved? 

And the answer can seem trite or unsatisfying if it is seen through the lens of the world. If control and working for your own salvation are your thing, the answer is really going to disappoint.

Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.  That’s it. When the text says “believe” it is not a mind word, a head concept. It’s a heart, gut, being thing - trust, fall back into, lean on. Surrender to this realty. Surrender and trust in this God-person who interrupts the pretend with the real.

The real broke into that town that day, for the slave girl and her owners, the prisoners and the magistrates, the jailer and his household, and the church grew.  And Paul and Silas left there and headed out to the next adventure, to see what might unfold.

Life is this. It’s an adventure. What might unfold?  As people claimed and defined by Jesus Christ, even in the midst of the game, every moment is an opportunity to trust in Jesus. Every encounter may give us a glimpse of the belonging we share in God. Every conversation, every difficult circumstance or life shift, or mundane chore is a moment the real can break in and we can live like we are free because we are.

Church, this is what we will pray over Ava today as she is baptized. That she would grow up trusting more and more that she belongs to Jesus, that her life is safe in God, that she is free – free to be present with others, free to be real in the world, free to struggle, and feel, and cry, and rejoice, free to live and risk and learn and love.  We pray that she will trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for her life and her freedom, and that she will help us trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for our life and freedom, so that in life or in death, in sickness or health, in triumph or despair, we are held in the freedom and wholeness and well-being of the life that transcends death.  

And just as they are available to all of us whenever and every time we need them, the words are right there for her to say, What must I do to be saved? And when she does, we will answer, Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.  You have been set free.

Amen.