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's most true really IS true

Yesterday our car was stolen. From our driveway. With my purse inside.

We didn’t discover this until around 10 am when it was time to drive somewhere and the car was just… gone. Looking back at the ring cam, we saw Andy strolling without pause across the naked concrete at 7:30 on his way to class. I walked the dog at 6:30 am through the empty driveway without a thought. Further back, 4:23 am, car. 5:23 am, no car. It pops like a bubble out of the picture.

   

It took another fifteen minutes after discovery of the stolen car to realize my purse (and key fob) had been inside. The afternoon before, I had picked up Maisy after a class canoe trip, and carried in her camping gear instead of carrying in my purse. 

My stomach dropped, my heart started pounding and my mind spinning. No. No! 

I was supposed to leave in 36 hours to fly to New Jersey for a conference, to stay in a hotel and rent a car to visit Owen. How would I do these things without my driver’s license? Credit cards? How would Andy travel that afternoon if our accounts are compromised? How far had the damage already reached? How could I stem the risk?  Now I would spend the whole, frantic day doing damage control.  

Our 18-year-old neighbor, Gigi, came over.  While I made agitated phone calls to the police, insurance, and credit cards, pacing the house and swearing liberally while on hold, Gigi and Maisy calmly phoned the ring company and car company and held ground under my swirling.  Pulse racing, hands cold and fingers tingling, I could feel the adrenaline rushing through me. People asked me numbers I had memorized and I couldn’t remember them. Maisy deftly swept through her photos to zoom in on our license plate and calmly recite it to me so I could tell the police.

But for all the drama of yesterday, a clear and unexpected theme rose up: kindness. Human connection. I believe with my head, and even with my heart, that we all belong to God and we all belong to each other. I believe this, and preach this, and try to live my life in this direction. But yesterday I lived it in my body. In my neighbors. In my friend who said his afternoon was free and he’d be happy to pick me up to run errands with me, and another friend who texted me this poem (from Leaf Litter by Jarod K. Anderson) that was somehow exactly what I needed in that first half hour.

I like to tell people we are all ministers, made in the image of a ministering God, here on this planet to care for one another and be cared for. And then yesterday I was cared for by the police officer who told me it was not my fault – purse and keys inside or not – I did not steal a car.  I was ministered to by the neighbor who immediately pulled her own car around front and said, “I’m not using it today, take it.” I was cared for and carried forward by the cheerful new bank manager, in her achingly earnest office, with artful stacks of leadership books and diagrams of positive affirmations pinned up above her desk behind silly photos of her two dogs. She opened one of the many, tidy binders and swiped through pages of screenshots to figure out how to make me a new debit card on the spot. “I don’t know much about the system yet, but this, I think I can do!” When my body hit the chair in the DMV, holding only a borrowed car key, and my passport, insurance statement, and checkbook, I felt myself go still inside. Absolutely motionless. The roiling urgency drained from me and pooled up on the floor, leaving me empty and quiet. I had made all the calls I could make. The cards were locked down. The insurance was handled. The police report was filed. There was nothing for me to do but wait. I didn’t have the attention span to scroll my phone, or focus on the gripping novel on my kindle app. I just sat. I sat amongst other humans for an hour and a half. And what I witnessed was kindness. Belonging in action. Slouching in seats and leaning along the wall with sixty other people from all walks of life, in all manner of need, we helped each other figure out which lines to stand in. Nodded greetings. Gave up chairs for one another. The women behind the counter were infinitely patient and pleasant, putting their full, competent attention onto each individual person when their number came up.  Yesterday evening my doorbell rang. It was the newish neighbor from across the street, the one I don’t know well. Earlier in the day, on my way to the bank, she’d stopped me. She’d seen in the online neighborhood group that my car had been stolen, and had wanted to express her condolences, “We’re all in this together,” she’d said. And she too had offered her car. “I barely use it. I’m retired. Next week we are leaving for six months to travel. Seriously, I’d be honored if you used it.” I thanked her and was deeply moved by her kindness. We exchanged phone numbers. But truthfully, there was no way I’d be borrowing her car. I believe we all belong to each other. But in practice, I prefer to handle things myself.  When I answered the door last night, she was standing there with her keys and insurance card. She opened my hand and pressed them in my palm. “Please,” she said, “take it. I believe God puts us across each other’s paths for a reason.” I started to cry a little. That made her cry a little. “May I?” she asked, and she leaned in and gently hugged me. Before dark I pulled her car into our driveway and texted her my gratitude. She answered, “Wishing you a better day tomorrow.” I replied, “Today was pretty amazing actually. Kindness everywhere.” Yesterday our car was stolen from our driveway with my purse inside. I spent the whole day doing damage control. The most I could muster foodwise was a 4 pm bowl of the same oatmeal I’d eaten at 6 am.   But last night I went to bed full.  I fell asleep utterly awake to the reality of the love that holds us, humbled by the avalanche of care that had been showered on me, and feeling tangibly the belonging that binds us all together. Thanks be to God. Amen.

How our story begins

Genesis 1-3 (we're using a paraphrase from The Peace Table story bible)

Episode 1: The Beginning

On a walk to the park this week with the 12^th graders from my daughter's school, the German foreign exchange started excitedly pointing and laughing at a row of yellow school busses parked together. She whipped out her phone and snapped photos to show her friends. How American! 

What is “American” culture? High school proms and hot dogs? Hollywood? Infighting? As Americans, are we connected to a shared history or cultural identity that we feel comfortable naming or claiming or can even agree on? (To be fair, our nation isn’t even 250 years old). 

 

Even if you are someone with a strong connection to your particular heritage and cultural identity—like Joyce and Norm and their the Czech Hall, where in two weeks we could all go eat kolaches that Joyce will help make, and hear Czech songs and watch Czech and Slovak dancing—as modern people, more tuned in to our newsfeeds than our neighbors, it's easy to feel these days like we are rootless. How many of us know stories about our grandparents’ parents (or even their names)? In this day and age, each one of us, it seems, is now carving out a life for our own selves from the endless buffet of options. To navigate this super confusing and overwhelming life, we turn to WebMD, YouTube how-to videos, Amazon reviews, and political commentators. 

How do we really know who we are? Where do we turn to remember whose we are?

 

Today I want to remind you that no matter what else is true about who each of us is, we are all people of a deeper story that extends beyond time. We belong to a tradition, ancient and broad, spanning the whole globe and stretching thousands of years into human history. Like all family trees there have been rotten branches, tragedies and trials, happiness, healing and hope.  Among our shared ancestors are villains and heroes, poets and prophets, but mostly ordinary women, men and children whose lives and choices became part of our legacy. 

 

And this is the book of our story. The Story. The biggie. The story of our faith, our ancestors, the tradition that holds us and the God who came in to share this life with us. 

 

This book is messy and it’s confusing, because it is super ancient, and we have so little in common with people who lived so long ago. We don’t even understand how they tell stories, or why, so sometimes we read this book like it’s trying to make us do something, or think something, or coach us on earning God’s approval or avoiding God’s condemnation. 

 

But really, this is a family scrapbook. In this book a whole bunch of different people, in different places and different times, experience in different ways, who this God is and what God is up to in their lives. So, in this way, we also have lots in common with the people in this book. Because we get scared too, and we don’t like feeling weak or vulnerable either, and we tend to think we are not worthy of love, and we compare ourselves to others, and we turn our backs on people who need us, and we wonder what a good life is and how to live it, and we forget whose we are and who we are all the time, just like they did.

Our ancestors told the stories, and shared the poems, and recounted the battles, and prayed the prayers, and sang the songs that made it into this book, because doing these things reconnects us to whose we are and who we are.  

 

But this is also more than a book. It’s a glimpse into a story that’s still going on right now. Christ has risen and lives in and through us, so this book helps us ask who God is and what God is up to here. And we trust that when we read it, the Holy Spirit speaks to us, and helps us hear and see the God of our ancestors right now.

 

And, like any story, the beginning tells us right away whose story this actually is. It all begins with God.  

From nothing, emptiness and impossibility, in the dark, God creates.

God doesn’t paint a still-life and hang it on the Almighty wall. God sets in motion an interconnected eco-system of energy and synergy, plants and animals, days and nights, tides and seasons, creeping things and flying things, microscopic and cosmic geometry and color, joyful peace and noisy harmony. 

And every time God makes more, God looks at it all and calls it good. Ooh! That’s good, and that’s good, and that’s good too! This life is good! Goodness is the beginning and the reason for it all. Our tradition gives us the word Shalom – wholeness, peace, in the complete belonging of all things to God and each other. 

 

When God finishes making everything and calling it good, God rests, and calls the rest good too.  In Shalom, God hangs out with creation and just enjoys watching life be itself.

 

So the first thing we know is that the story of us begins with God. And this world is good and life is for enjoying goodness with God. 

 

Our Peace Table story bible does a great job giving us the gist. But if you decide to read along in the Bible you will see in that in these three chapters we’re looking at today, Genesis actually has two different stories of creation. 

 

The first one we just saw: God creates, God calls it good, night and morning then another day, makes more stuff and calls that good too. In this one, human beings are the pinnacle of creation, made last, and made in God’s image to share in God’s care for all the rest of it. Humans are invited into the work of God and also the rest of God, as agents of shalom.

 

In the second version of the beginning, human beings don’t come last. The human creature comes before the rest, held in God’s very arms with life breathed into its nostrils from God’s own breath.  And this earth creature is there to watch God finish creating, gets to see the plants and trees grow right up out of the ground. God places the creature in a beautiful garden - here is the home I made for you, for you to live in and care for.

 

Then God chooses to be vulnerable. The uncreated Creator loves the earth creature and invites the human to love God in return. But in order for a yes to really be yes, there has to be a no as well. Is it love if there is no other option?  So, among all the fruit trees of the garden, God puts one tree the human must not eat from.This is the boundary I set up; here you do not cross. 

 

And then God notices it doesn’t work for there to be just one human. There needs to be another, a partner, “a helper” it says, the way God is a helper (same verb in the Hebrew).  For there to be the image of God there needs to relationship, like there is relationship in the Trinity itself, so God begins creating animals from the dust, forming them and bringing them one by one to the earth creature– what about this one?

And whatever the human names the animal, that is what it becomes. Side by side, God and human, creating and naming. And as much joy as there is watching the rest of life come alive, there is not another creature that can be a fit for the human. 

 

So God causes the lone earth creature, literally this adam, from the earth, adamah, to sleep. Then, instead of from the dust, God takes from the material of the creature itself and forms another – like it, but different. And now there is male and female, sameness and difference, together reflecting the image of God that couldn’t be reflected in one solitary earth creature. The old creature has ended, and the new creature awakens to belonging, and they are named Adam and Eve. They are both naked and not ashamed. They are fully themselves with God and each other, with no desire to be anything other than who they are, no fear or mistrust, and no reason to hide. They’re together in shalom, in the goodness and belonging of God.

 

Now we return to the part of this story where fear comes in and mistrust begins, when the snake convinces the humans that God can’t be trusted, and suggests, why not be in charge like God instead of living as creatures who belong to God and each other? So they cross the boundary of God’s care and do the one thing God told them not to do.

 

Now they really do know it all: all the potential for things to go wrong as well as right, all the places for pain and lies, all the ways we are different and could hurt each other. And they get scared, and sad, and worried, and jealous, and suspicious. Trust is broken. Filled with shame and fear, and they hide from God. 

 

But God never lets go. God never gives up.  God even has compassion for our shame. God meets us where we are and gives us what we need. So, God calls them from their hiding and clothes them. Like a parent dressing a child in jammies before bed, God wraps them up in love and takes care of them.

From the very beginning, and no matter what, we are God’s beloved. And in all of our beginnings and no matter how we might turn away from God or try to be God, God keeps taking care of us and God’s story of Shalom keeps going. 

 

When we go to school and to work, when we stop working or finish school, when we are young and when we are old, when we feel secure and when we feel lost, when we feel connected and when we’re ashamed of what we’ve done, when we care for others and when we break trust, when we remember and practice our belonging, and when we let fear tell us who we are and whose we are and we hide from God and each other, no matter what and always, God holds us in love. 

 

Our story starts and ends with the real, living, present God. 

You and I are people of Shalom, meant to share in God’s care for the world. We belong to a God who takes emptiness and impossibility and brings life out of nothingness and light into darkness, and invites us to rest in the goodness of God. This reality is our root system, our culture, our shared language, and the lens that shapes how we see the world. Let’s keep telling each other our story.

Amen.

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

Psalm 46, Jeremiah 31:31-34

When I was in college, I spent the large part of one summer sleeping on a 3-foot round papason chair cushion on the floor of an apartment five friends were renting in Dinkytown, in Minneapolis. At one point, we ran out of toilet paper and went through all the napkins, coffee filters and finally, Far Side comics, before someone finally bought more. But whatevs. We were young.

When Andy and I graduated from seminary, we were in our mid-twenties, and were willing to go anywhere in the US to start our next life chapter. Coast? Desert? Mountains? Big City? Tiny town? Sure! Why not! Andy applied to programs all over, and when we moved to Princeton, New Jersey, we packed up all our things in a u-haul and drove from LA for five days across the country. Each day was spent listening to Harry Potter cds and eating sunflower seeds and drive-through fast food. Each night we parked the truck with everything we owned in the world, towing our only car, strategically where we could watch it from our motel window so it wouldn’t get stolen.

There are times in our lives we anticipate upheaval. We expect it; invite it, even. We are totally open to change, happy to cooperate with a little chaos. But I think we think that is supposed to stop. That you will go through your change and chaos phase, and then after that, things are supposed to be predictable and secure. 

But life never stops with the turmoil. And upheaval is not an isolated incident. Children, or not, homes gained and lost, illnesses, adjustments—the changes just keep coming. That first friend to get divorced becomes one of many, maybe even yourself. That dream job you pursued falls through, that church you loved falls apart, that person you trusted falls away. And then your book club moves to zoom and eventually stops meeting, and your go-to restaurant goes out of business, and the person who has cut your hair for 20 years retires.  The neighbor you love moves away and the new people don’t seem interested in connecting, and that special, lonely spot you found solace as a child has become a sea of strip malls.

And these are just the little changes, the everyday, ordinary, constant disturbances. That is to say nothing of global horrors, war and atrocities, famine and hunger, natural disasters or community violence, nor of the unexpected personal catastrophes and devastating deaths that leave you breathless and disoriented, trying to figure out how life will look in a landscape you did not choose.

Disruption doesn’t restrict itself to phases, and chaos doesn’t play by any rules. Trouble, tumult, terror, and seismic shifts happen in our lives and in the world all the time. From our birth until we die, living with the unexpected and navigating constant change is basically what it means to be human.  anything can change at any moment, and everything does, all the time. 

 And in the midst of all this upheaval, we’re busy. We’re doing so much, and there is so much more we could be doing, and we only have time and energy for a fraction of it, and things are moving so fast who can keep up? But people seem to, so we strive, and reach, and do more, and wonder at our capacity, but keep scrambling to get our footing, racing to catch up, and feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and anxious so much of the time.  

In our Jeremiah text the people of God are exhausted by turmoil, unsettled by circumstances, unsure of their capacity.  They’d been ripped from home and forced into a life unfamiliar and uncomfortable, with no ease in sight, disoriented, trying to figure out how life will look in a landscape they did not choose.

They don’t know if they have what it takes to live up to their end of their relationship with God. In fact, all evidence from history and experience tells them that if it is up to them to remember and live from the truth of their belonging to God and each other they will fail.  

But God says it’s not their job to uphold this relationship. God will make a new covenant, a new bond, not dependent on their ability to remember correctly and teach each other rightly, but written into their very hearts, every one of them. God will be God. They will be God’s people. This covenant can’t be broken because it will be inside them and God will do the heavy lifting. Their belonging, identity, security is from God; God does this. “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” 

They are invited to trade their way of being for the one God is offering. They’re called to trust God and participate with God in a life of freedom and care for others, not when things get easier but right now - despite the upheaval, and right in the midst of their unsettledness. This home God is offering them is not dependent on what happens around them, because it happens within them, and between them.  

    Lent is a season of repentance.  Repent doesn’t mean wallow in your disgustingness and come groveling back to God. The Greek word for repent, means literally “change how you think after being with,” ‘turn around, shift your being in another direction, change your purpose after this encounter.”  Essentially, exchange your perspective for God’s, trade your way of being for the one God is offering.  Repentance is the wake-up moment, when we say, Oh! I don’t want to live afraid, resentful, stingy, anxious and striving! I want to live connected to God and others in freedom and care.

The opening line of Psalm 46, sum up the theology of the whole book of Psalms in these words: God is our refuge and strength. God is our safety. A very present help in trouble. Not a helper in the midst of trouble but Help itself. Very present help. Right here. Right now. Right in the midst of it. Therefore we will not fear. 

        But I fear a lot. I am a very skilled fearer.  I’ll let you in on the secret to my success: I practice fear by worrying. What if, what if, what if… My favorite time to do this is when I would really like to be sleeping.  When I am finally still, at the end of the day, I’ve stopped rushing and outrunning my anxiety, then it all catches up to me and I let buckle down and get to my worry workout, what if… what if.. what if…

I would love to trade my worry for trust. I would love some ease and trust, To not feel tossed about by chaos and upheaval but grounded in God’s care.  But if it’s up to me to remember my belonging to God and each other I will fail.  So what does repenting even look like, and how do we do it? 

It turns out, repenting is less something we do than what we stop doing. 

Be still. Psalm 46 goes on to say. Be still and know that I am God.  Be Still. In Hebrew, it means “put down your hands”-  cease striving. Quit doing stuff. Stop overestimating your own power to fix, change, control or escape things. Quit your fleeing and flailing and wait for God to act.  

In scripture, Be still is not a soft invitation to a spiritual spa moment. Be Still! is a command for the chaos. For the impossibility. For the crisis, and the injustice and the division and the shame. Be still appears as a command two places in scripture. One is here, in our Psalm, where it comes after telling us this doozy: Nations are in an uproar! kingdoms totter! God raises his voice and the earth melts....Be still and know that I am God.

The other place is 1000 years earlier than where we met the exiled Israelites today, when their ancestors have been delivered out of Egypt, but Pharoah has changed his mind, and has sent his entire army after them to destroy them. There they are, at the edge of the Red Sea, the chaos of waters blocking their way forward, and Pharoah's whole army bearing down on them from behind. They are trapped, hemmed in by danger, facing sure and certain death, and the command comes, Be still! The Lord will fight for you.

At the very moment when it seems like you should be scrambling and grabbing, and mustering all your resources, put your hands down.  Right in the middle of chaos and the tumult, when you’re uprooted from home and stuck in a place you do not choose to be, when you’re trapped, with nowhere to go, and certain death bearing down on you, Put down your hands. 

Stop moving. Stop doing. 

You are not God. Let God be God.

When things feel overwhelming. Be still.

When fear threatens to rule you. Be still.

When you’re unsettled and lost. Be still.

When the whole world seems to be convinced that we are about to be destroyed, Be still.  

Be still and know I am God.

When we’ve stopped rushing and outrunning our anxiety, when it all catches up to us, when we surrender our grabbing for control, God meets us here and takes us in another direction. 

God-- who breaks the bow and shatters the spear and burns the chariot and raises his voice and the earth melts and finds us when we’re lost and makes a way where there is no way and brings us home in love wherever we are—this God answers worry’s incessant what if, what if, what if, with the steady and unwavering heartbeat of Love, holding us close,  “Even though… Even if… Even when…” Even then.

Even though the earth changes. And mountains fall into the sea, and tsunamis and storms and whirlwinds roar through our world, and the very ground seems to shake beneath our feet and turmoil and tumult overwhelm us.  Even when the divisions between us seem insurmountable, and the constant voices around us urge urgency, and the judgment within us is loud and unceasing. Even if we’re between jobs with no prospects yet, or we’re staring down a diagnosis we can’t yet get our heads around. Even when the state of the world feels precarious and dangerous, or our precious kids that we’ve been so focused on raising are suddenly off adulting half-way across the country. Even then. Not because these things don’t or won’t happen, but because they will, and do. Even now. 

We will not fear. 

God is our refuge and strength.

God’s salvation meet us just exactly how we need to be met, to heal us where we are sick, and mend us where we are broken, and release us where we are caged, and find us where we are lost, and be our refuge in tumult, and give us a stability and security not dependent on what happens around us, because it happens within us, and between us, not by what we do but by mighty hand of God. 

Our belonging, identity, security is from God. God does this. “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, God says, “and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

We are God’s people.  Always. No matter what. 

May we rest in trust.

Amen.

Portions of this message were adapted from a chapter of Receiving This Life.

Bringing Us Back

 Mark 10:35-45

Our congregation has spent time over the years learning about NVC, non-violent communication. NVC teaches that at our core, every human being has the same needs.  One layer up, our feelings are merely indications of needs that are currently met or unmet in the moment. Then there are the strategies we use to meet those needs.  If I’m feeling overwhelmed I may have an unmet need for rest. Or if I have too much on my plate, or a project I can’t find my way into, I might have a need for order or clarity, for example.  So, if I take my overwhelmed feeling and  spend an hour scrolling through Airbnb locations, checking facebook and watching tik tok videos this strategy may meet a need for ease, but it doesn’t address an unmet need for rest, order or clarity. It may actually make those needs more acutely unmet.

A child throwing a tantrum is feeling overwhelmed, perhaps because she is hungry, or tired, or bored.  Her parent will work to figure out which of these it is, and respond by helping her meet her need for food, for sleep, or for stimulation.  We are usually pretty good at listening for the need underneath the strategies and feelings with children, less good with adults, including our own selves.  We get tripped up by our differing strategies.  
 
We all share a need for security.  When this need seems unmet we may feel afraid,  or helpless or anxious; when our need for security is met we may feel calm and confident.  There are many strategies people take to meet this need for security.  One of my neighbor’s knows every neighbor’s name, and the names of the mail carrier, garbage truck drivers, pets and local shop owners. She checks in on folks when they’re not well, shares excess produce, and welcomes new people to the neighborhood.  She is meeting a need for security, and also meeting needs for connection and community for herself and for others.
  
Another neighbor two blocks down has a “Beware of Dog” sign hanging on their gate, and stenciled large on their garage door the words, “This property is protected by Smith and Wesson.”  With the threat of dog and gun violence, they are trying to meet their need for security, but it’s possible their strategy may be undermining their needs for connection and ease.
 
I am saying all this because we are about to take a master class in listening to the need and not to the strategy.  And I want us to go into this story with a teensy bit of empathy for James, John, and the rest of the disciples in this one.  Because they are about to look pretty bad.
 
“Teacher, the brothers say, we want you do to whatever we ask of you.”  This sounds pretty cheeky and presumptuous.  But it also reveals a shocking lack of listening skills or willful denial on their part.  Because this conversation comes as they are walking toward Jerusalem – toward Jesus’ death, and Jesus expresses this in detail, “You guys, we are heading to Jerusalem now, the place where I will be turned over to the religious authorities, put on trial, condemned to death, handed over to the oppressive Roman Empire, mocked and humiliated, spit on, flogged and then killed.  And after three days I will rise again.” 
 
And their response is, “Hey Jesus, when the revolution happens and you take over the throne, we think it makes the most sense for the two of us to be your top advisors, will you make sure that happens?”

Which means they did not hear a single, excruciating word Jesus just said.  
 
A lot is made of the foolish disciples, never really getting it, especially in the book of Mark.  These guys ask this greedy and off-base question and the others get mad at them for it. Maybe because they recognize it for how completely tone deaf it is, but most likely because they hadn’t thought of it first.  
 
Human beings since the beginning of time have equated power and security; when you’re persuaded by the way of fear that others are a threat and you need to ensure your own place in this life, this makes sense.  Who wants to be on the bottom?  Why not mitigate as much risk as possible?  These guys were looking out for themselves.  Here was a strategy to meet their need for security.  
And they were going after power and security even if it meant not hearing Jesus about the things that will soon make him utterly powerless and vulnerable, and even if it meant pissing off the other disciples.
 
So a typical take-away is to make sure you are better than the disciples at this whole discipleship thing, So serve one another and don’t asking for special favors from God. Amen.
 
But I hate this takeaway, because we so often get distracted in scripture by the humans just being human, and thinking that being a Christian means we are supposed to somehow not be quite so human.  Do better. Be different.
 
But that’s not what the bible is there for.  It’s purpose is to tell us who God is in the midst of our humanity. And when they ask Jesus to do for them whatever they ask, Jesus responds, with tenderness and attentiveness, “What is it you want me to do for you?” 
 
And when they tell him their bad strategy for security – proximity to power – he hears right past it, and right past the fact that they didn’t listen to him, and he listens to the heart of them.  He lifts them up with respect and hears them with care. 
 
“Are you able to handle all that I go through?” he asks. 
 
“Yes! Of course we are!” they reply, caught in their own stories of control and leadership.  
 
Then Jesus drops the truth on them, ‘You will go through what I go through, just as I am here to go through all that you go through.  But the power thing that you are thinking of, that’s not how this Kingdom works. There is no invincibility in this gig.  Suffering and death will still come for you.  If you feel the urge to be great, serve others. And if you want to be first, you must turn around and be a slave instead. Because I came to serve, not to be served. I’m here to give up my life for all.’
 
When we turn to one another in care, we are brought back to our true calling and security. Not in avoiding pain or weakness, but in joining each other there. We are made in the image of God who ministers, who comes into this life to share it, and gives his human life in care for others. Where we find Jesus, right now, is in receiving and giving love and care to and from other people.
 
I don’t want to pile on the disciples for their bad strategy and tactless approach. I do the same thing all the time.  I want to recognize the shared need I have with them, the need to feel like things are going to be ok, and I will be safe and secure, cared for and not forgotten, and that my life matters. I too hate feeling afraid, or anxious, or insecure.  Jesus sees us at our core, and sees through all our silly strategies for security.  And Jesus meets that need by bringing us back to our belonging to God and each other. Our security, in life and death, is being held in God’s love no matter what and always.  
 
For 16 years, every time I have ever driven or walked by the house two blocks down, I have thought about the needs of those neighbors.  They run a daycare – near their ‘Smith and Wesson’ sign, is a sign about driving slowly because of the children.  And behind the fence with their ‘beware of dog’ sign is a yard filled with play equipment, often covered in wiggly, laughing children.  But they’ve had two other signs displayed over the years.  On the peak of their house has hung a light-up broken heart, with the words, “We’ll always miss you, Richie.” And across the rear window of their mini-van are the words, “Parents of a murdered child.” 
 
I can’t begin to imagine the loss and suffering these neighbors have been through, and how frightening and insecure the world must feel to them. I can’t fault them for wanting life to feel safer and less terrifying.  I want the same thing.  Their Smith and Wesson warning may feel like a winning strategy, but I suspect that any security they feel may actually come from their daycare.  Because caring for others returns us to our humanity, reconnects the severed parts of us, allows the neurological pathways in the world for healing and hope to flow from and to us. 

We meet Jesus, who is with and for us, when we are with and for each other.  And Jesus sees past our stupid strategies and our protective pain to the soft heart of us.  Like a parent to the child tantruming on the floor, Jesus knows exactly what we need, even when we do not, and he asks us with infinite gentleness and unwavering love, “What is it you want me to do for you?”  And when we answer our dumb idea, God gives us the connection, wholeness and security our hearts are longing for anyway.
 
Amen
 

What God Makes of Us

(A homily before an annual congregational meeting)

Psalm 62:5-12

For my birthday in November I was given sourdough starter from Patisserie Margo, in Edina. It is a 35-year-old sourdough starter that originated in France, (which feels really, really old, until I think about the jar in the fridge of one of our members, with a sourdough starter that is over 100 years old).  

 

It’s been interesting to learn how to use this starter, when and how to feed it, how to bake with it. It is completely unlike cooking with yeast. I have to listen to it, watch it, pay attention to it, because it will tell me when it’s ready to be used by how bubbly and stretchy it gets – like the inside of a roasted marshmallow.  And then I can’t plan how long the dough will take to rise; it rises at its own pace, affected by the temperature and humidity around it. So sometimes bowls of dough sleep overnight in my daughter's closet - the coldest spot in the house.  

 

And when I need to get rid of some starter so I can feed and use it again, I feel some pressure to dispose of it ethically. I am not going to just toss it – it’s a living thing with a long history!  So I put it into things- corn bread, muffins, pancakes, crepes.  Now my skeptical kids ask two pre-screening questions of my baked goods, “Is it gluten free? Did you put sourdough in it?”

 

This thing isn’t just flour and water; it’s history, and time, and chemical reaction, and story; it’s living potential in a jar.

 

But also, it’s just flour and water.  

Which makes the whole think kind of mysterious and magical.  

 

I am not sure what percentage of what’s in my jar is actually part of the flour and water that came over from France 35 years ago, and yet this starter is that starter.  

 

I love imagining that along with the tiny amount in the cardboard container that was given to me is 35 years worth of breads, croissants and rolls spilling out of that bakery, and countless other tiny cardboard containers sent into other kitchens like mine, filling the world with delicious baked goods for decades before and after me. 

 

And if, because it’s so old and precious, I had tried to just hang onto and save that little bit of sourdough in the cardboard container, it would have eventually died, because it stays alive by being used.  In fact, I didn’t get it home fast enough--by the time it reached my kitchen it was already bubbling and spilling out of the container ready to be used. 

 

In April this congregation will turn 99 years old.  It began seven years before that even, in 1915, as a bible study under a tree on the same spot where our building sits now. 

 

And who knows what percentage or flavor of an original congregation remains 99 years later, and yet this congregation is that congregation.

 

A congregation is a living, breathing entity. It expands and contracts, people come and go, babies are born, people die, the building changes, the ways of sharing in God’s mission changes, and all along it is fed, tended and cared for by God.

 

We exist to be used by God to spill life and hope, love and healing into the world.  That is what keeps a congregation alive.  In countless ways, over decades, this congregation has been mixed and made into all sorts of lovely things that feed the world with life. 

 

Ordinary flour and water kind of lives began this thing way back when, and ordinary flour and water lives continue to be what God adds in and stirs up into this miraculous, mysterious mix that makes up Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church.  

 

We are history, and time, and chemical reaction and story; we are living potential that God uses to remind each other and the world of our belonging to God and all others in Christ Jesus. 

 

This was maybe as unusual a year as LNPC has ever had.  Maybe.  A lot happened we had no control over, and yet, God sustained us and used us.  And we discovered that even though a warm kitchen is where we believe dough belongs, sometimes what it needs the chilly closet. And that no matter where we are, or how we come together, God’s ministry is alive in us and moves through us.  

 

This is God’s congregation, not ours. God’s ministry started long before this little congregation, and God’s ministry will continue through us and long after us.  We don’t sustain ourselves, we simply love and seek God, and allow God to feed us and use us, again and again, and when we do, God will do marvelous things.  

 

"God alone is our rock and our salvation, our fortress; we shall not be shaken."  And so, today as we seek to listen to each other and to God, as we look back at this year and continue, as always, to discern our way forward, above all else, may we heed the words of the Psalmist who tells us, “Trust in God at all times O people, pour out your hearts before him…” and “The power belongs to God, and steadfast love is yours, O Lord.” 

I wonder what God will make of us next.

 

Amen.