So, Sing!

This weekend was supposed to be our All-Church Spring Sabbath Retreat. We were packed and ready to go when the phone calls started rolling in - covid exposure yesterday, head cold, awaiting PCR test results, just came down with something... we had to cancel. The disappointment at another event being canceled, another gathering upended, another adjusting of our plans and letting go of our expectations, is profound. 

But there is something lovely and hopeful happening too.

In Minnesota, we've had the third coldest April in recorded history. (The Twin Cities average temp was 46 degrees. It's usually in the upper 50s and 60s). It was darker, and wetter, and windier than most springs too.  We Minnesotans are attuned to our seasons. Our souls feel the shifting. We watch for signs. We relish the rhythms. We can appreciate winter because we know spring is coming.  Spring didn't come.  

Until yesterday.  Suddenly, it is warm, and sunny, and birds are singing, and green things are bursting out of the ground and we are bursting out of our houses in shirt sleeves, and garden stores are bursting at the seams with happy horticulturalists.  It feels like hope.

It brought to mind this message we shared several years ago, so I adapted and updated it and am sharing it again today.  As we embrace this unexpectedly at-home sabbath weekend for rest, renewal, attentiveness to life, presence in our present, may we Sing.

Psalm 98

 
Sing  a new song. 
Try it. 
Something completely new.  
Something you’ve never sung before.
You don’t know the words, you can barely hum the tune, but sing it anyway. 
Try it on for size…no, just jump in and belt it out.  
 
Maybe you don’t sing with the confidence you would if it were the old song, the familiar song, the song that makes sense and feels easy.  Maybe you don’t feel so comfortable with the instruments, or you worry that you’ll be singing alone. 
 
Tell you what – how about if we sing with you?  
And not just us, the whole earth – the chaotic seas will sing too, and they can’t sound more in tune than you do – the floods will clap their messy hands; just make a joyful noise, really, any noise will do.  
 
But make it loud, ok?  
Because the hills are going to join in on this, and really, the world itself, and all those who live in it.  It will be a song like no other, so get ready to sing. Are you ready?
 
This song, it means something.  
This is one reason it is a new song and not the old songs. 
 
It is not a song of proper religion.  It is not a song of patriotism, or a song of war.  It is not a lament for how terrible things are, or a song of social consciousness or commentary.  This song simply can’t be sung by ‘us and them’, or played on bandwagons or soap boxes, and it’s not a rally song, a commercial jingle, or background music in an elevator.   It’s not like the old songs in any way at all, so you need to let all those go if you’re really going to sing this song.
 
This is not a lullaby we’ll be singing, here, this song is more of a wake up and take notice type song.  It is a remember and never, ever, ever forget kind of song.  It is a song for all the times when you were treated unfairly, and not only you, but all of those who were treated unfairly, ever – even by you. 
It is a song for the times you were overlooked and undervalued, the times you were nothing but a number, or a diagnosis, or an accessory, or a liability.  
 
This is a song for the ravaged and destroyed creation; over the parched, burning and starving earth, it sings crashing seas and clapping floods and quenching rain. And where she’s drowning in sorrow it lifts the ground from waterlogged sludge, and drapes it gently over the line to dry in the tender breeze and warm sun. It’s that versatile and powerful a song.
 
This is a song for all the times when evil won, and those times were many and great - countless, or so we thought - it sings right in the face of those times, it thrusts it’s wide eyes and unquenchable joy right up under the nose of those times and opens its mouth and belts out with all gusto right into the shocked and startled face of evil, knocking it down on its bottom to stare up in stunned standstill at the wild and mighty sound of the song.  
 
This is a song of justice that tears through the paper thin fragility of justice and liberty for all, that lifts up all the incidences – every single one – where injustice and oppression were really the rule, where lives didn’t matter as much as money, where people were forsaken for power – the song, you will hear it, has every one of their voices, loud and strong, vindicated and joyful, each forsaken child, every cheated worker, and every single starving, sick, disregarded or devalued human being that has ever been, all the silenced and ignored and unheeded voices will rise together in a sound so great that it shatters glass ceilings into a million pieces, reduces palaces to rubble and grinds diamonds to dust, a sound so powerful it drowns out every bomb and bullet and lie and label, and quakes opens the prisons and graves and sets the captives free.  
 
So get ready, because this is some song. 
 This is not just any song, it is the song of the earth for her king, her Creator; this is a song of all things made right.
 
But you know, this song, actually, is kind of a dangerous song.  
It is not a song for the faint of heart.  
We already discovered you don’t need to really know the words, or even the tune, you don’t have to have practiced or learned this song, in fact, there is really no way to do so, you just sing it.  
But you have to be willing to sing it. 
Are you willing to sing it?  
 
Because if you hear this song you can’t ever go back. 
You can’t pretend you didn’t hear it.  You can’t be the way you were before you sang it.  It changes you, but not just you; it changes everything. So, if you’re comfortable with how things are, I mean, if you don’t really want to see things too terribly different, than you’d better not sing the song. 
Just to be safe.  
 
Because there are no secrets once this song has been sung.  
There is nothing hidden that doesn’t get revealed.  
And all the things that look strong, or sure, or important, they might seem kind of silly and stupid once you hear this song.  
So, if you care a whole lot about those things, better not to sing it, at least not just yet.  Let them get tarnished first, broken in, disappointing. Let the expectations get a little bit dashed and the frustration build a bit, because this song is for everyone and everything, except it is NOT a song for the satisfied.  
 
It is not a song for the secure and the worthy, for the strong and the powerful, and it certainly doesn’t make you right or tell you who’s wrong. 
 It kind of makes a joke of all that, and if that is where you’re at, better to cover your ears and turn away for as long as you can stand it before it overpowers you, because you’re going to be really cut down to size and I can’t imagine that will be a very pleasant experience.  
 
But once you are, there is a place for you in this song too.  
Actually, it’s kind of the only way you can join in the song, is when you know that in singing it, you pass judgment on yourself, but you sing it anyway. 
 
Because – and this is the most important part, maybe I forgot to say this – the song is not about you.  
It’s actually not really about any of us, or anything we know or have done or ever will do.  
It’s about God.  
It’s all about God.  
It’s about what God has done and what God will do.  
It’s about God who does things, and doesn’t just watch it all and keep to Godself.  
But God watches too, and doesn’t miss a thing either, so there is nothing, nothing that doesn’t get made right in this song. 
 
It sounds like kind of a lot, and it is, actually. 
It’s everything.  
Way more than you or I could ever bear. 
Way more joy, and justice, than we would know what to do with in a thousand lifetimes.  
But we don’t really need to worry about it.  
We just need to pay attention. 
 
 The chorus is coming.  And when you’re paying attention, you get to see that it has already started. Here and there it startles you, or makes you cry for no reason, or gives you a weird thrill of recognition and irrational hope. 
 
 We’ve found ways to explain it away, the crazies, the anomalies, the exceptions, the sentimental or insane, but they’re not, really, they’re the song, peaking through the frayed seams, busting through a rip in the knee or a tear in a button-hole of the fabric of our so-called reality.  
 
The stranger stands and shouts a few notes before helping someone off the bus. The man on the overpass with the sign grips the change in his fist and hollers a bit of the melody into the passing traffic below. Neighbors lying side by side through the night echo defiant snippets through train tunnels –the tune bounces off the walls and wraps around the sleeping grandmothers and shopkeepers, while bombs drop overhead. Our own winter-weary bodies vibrate with the symphony of the overjoyed soil as we plunge our parched hands into the teeming universe below and turn our spent souls upward toward the sun. 
 
In fact, all over the world, if we just know how to listen, above us, beneath us, before us and afterwards too, we’ll hear that the song has begun; and the very earth itself is humming in anticipation.  Just lift your gaze to drifting clouds and breathe, or tune your ears to the skittering, chirping creature commotion.  Close down the computer, shut off the phone, turn off the tv and the lights and curl up at an open window as the day slips into night and crickets and katydids hold steady chorus beneath the city sounds. 
The noise is building.
 
And we, you and I, together, we sing the song. It’s what we do.  
It’s why in the world we come together and do this thing called worship that accomplishes nothing at all, as any reasonable person familiar with the old songs could tell you.
We come together to share the song, to remember the truth, to recount the steadfast love of our Lord, the coming and sharing and dying and rising, backwards and upside down, breaking in and spilling out, never ending and always persisting salvation of our God-with-us. 
We warm up our voices and pipe out a few notes in defiance of the deafening silence, in far-fetched musical mutiny to the grating discord of the world around us, and really, on its behalf, because like it or not, ready or not, the song is coming.  
 
So you might as well sing along.

 

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.

Recruited for Love in These Times

Matthew 1:18-2:15

This morning I sat in my living room watching chunks of my Christmas tree lights stutter and blink insistently, like Will sending a message from the Upside Down, and then, section by section, over the course of an hour or so, groups of lights held hands and silently screamed and died.  Now there are several gloomy, unlit spots on the tree, and I sat contemplating how the tree in my living room feels like a symbol for everything.  

This was a lovely tree in the field when I cut it down.  But the trunk wasn’t long enough for my tree stand, so when I secured it in, it swung around wildly, crashing to the floor at least twice.  So I cut off some bottom branches, and ended up taking out all the beautiful tree-shaped bulk and leaving it looking like an upright, green chicken drumstick with a huge bite out of it.  So I stuck a piece back into the stand on its own to fill the hole, a patch, if you will. 

The tree boasts a sparse smattering of ornaments because, after three days of looking at it empty and commenting plaintively to each other that we needed to decorate it, Maisy finally mustered the energy to hang a few on. But the Bing Crosby listening, egg nog drinking, ornament nostalgia memorabilia fest was not happening in our house this year.  

I keep coming back to something Mark Yaconelli recently said is helpful to remind young people, which my pastor friends keep telling each other and everyone else: It’s normal to feel tired in tiring times. It’s normal to feel anxious in anxious times. It’s normal to feel sad in sad times. 

These are tiring, anxious, sad times.  And our skins are thin, our patience for navigating all of this was spent months ago. Lots of us are edgy, and most of us are tired. I copied down a line from an Economist headline the other day, “Era of Unpredictability is Not Going Away Soon.” I keep looking back at it to help myself let it in.

 

So, into this comes the Christmas Story. And I don’t know what kind of unpredictable times they were living in, or anxious times, or sad or tiring times, but it’s safe to say human beings have been times like these all throughout history.  And God keeps recruiting us for love anyway, or maybe even recruiting us for love for these kinds of times.  In truth, there is no time God is not calling us into this life alongside each other to join Jesus there, and to be part of what God is already doing, despite the times, in the times, and through the particulars of the times. And this week I have been struck by how God reached out to each of the people in the Christmas story differently, specifically.

 

We have spent Advent peeking in on the Christmas story, preparing our hearts to receive it again.  We began where Luke begins the story of Jesus – with Old Zechariah, a priest from the hill country, and his long dead prayers for a child being suddenly answered even as his prayers on behalf of the people for salvation for Israel were being answered. God met Zechariah in the silence. He was a witness, a mystery bearer, one who does the holy act of observing what God is up to.  

God recruited Zechariah through an ego tussle with a smug angel, nine months of imposed silence, and the invitation to watch and marvel.

 

And Elizabeth, with her astonishing new role as a mother in her old age, keeping it all to herself until the summons to be a friend, sharing pregnancy with her very young niece Mary.   In her age and wisdom, she was bearing in her womb the great prophet who would announce the Messiah.  She recognized the mother of God who came to her.  And together they prepared for the world to change, with joy, and wonder, and trepidation, and learning, and hormones, and Zechariah at their beck and call, they bore in their bodies the God who comes in the flesh to bear this human life with us, and the one who will prepare the way, and ready the people’s hearts for his arrival. 

God recruited Elizabeth through resurrected hope, stirred vision and understanding and the gift of precious companionship.

 

And Mary, the one who said yes to being the bearer of God.  A life interrupted and rerouted, for a world reoriented and redeemed.   She was given Elizabeth and Zechariah, given courage and insight, given the Spirit to overshadow her and fill her very body with the life of the world.  Mary is shored up for the road ahead, and promised the guidance of God. 

God recruited Mary with an angelic visit of gentle reassurance and by being drawn into a small community of support to share with her this miracle, to surround her, uphold her and prepare her for what is to come.

 

Then we meet the shepherds, going about their business, not expecting or looking for anything outside the routine.  There was nothing to make them seem worthy of sharing in anything majestic or important, nothing to make them even wonder about such things.  They tend sheep, look after them, the way Jesus later says God does for all of us.  They become in Jesus’ teachings, a template of God’s consistent, relentless watching over us, God’s protection of us and God’s ceaseless, night and day care of us.  And they are invited to bear witness to what is unfolding. 

It was with an angelic choir breaking open the night sky, the most spectacular chorus of music and light and life, a heavenly celebration spilling over into earth, inviting these particular ordinary people to join in the joy, to peek at the promise that God recruited the shepherds.

 

Now this week we turn to Matthew’s story of the Christ.  And we meet Joseph, who wasn’t invited, wasn’t informed ahead of time, was simply told what was happening and left to adapt.  Joseph, who was called to walk a road he didn’t get to choose, chose to walk it with grace and generosity. Joseph chose to let go his own plans for life and accept the life he was handed, the role he was called to.  

God recruited Joseph through grief and loss and unacceptable circumstances, a dream and a relinquishment of power. And he accepted of a path of love and cooperation with God.

 

And we meet the Magi.  Scholars from far away, outside this story, not hoping, longing, looking for a Jewish Messiah, minding the signs of the cosmos, anticipating the movements of the universe. They are brought into the story and eager to follow where it leads, ready to discover what it holds. Persistent and dogged, traveling for years, arriving at the home of a toddler, shocking the neighbors and confounding his parents with their sureness and their foreignness. The magi embody the promise extending to the ends of the earth, celebrating a redemption that belongs also to them, and so to all of us too.  

God recruited the Magi through science and study, through their own intellect and diligent connecting of dots, through their determination and due diligence, and through their trust.

 

This story breaks all boundaries. Heaven and earth come together, kings are brought down and the marginalized and overlooked are drawn into the center. Strangers already belong.  Plans are thwarted and courage is kindled, the unknown is embraced and a community is formed of the most unusual collection of folk, recruited by God to be those to whom God comes, those in whose care God entrusts his baby human self, those who God trusts to share in this great mystery and promise for the whole world.  Not because they earn it or deserve it, just because God does it.  

 

And nobody gets the same invitation, nobody plays the same part; God takes pleasure in meeting each person specifically, uniquely, in a variety of unexpected approaches, particular to each life, which is to say, there is no end to the ways God comes into this world. There is no one outside God’s sights.   Each of us is called into the promise.  Each of us is invited to participate.  Each of us is recruited for love.  Every life is part of God’s great schemes.  

 

This week on Christmas Eve we will gather together to share the story of Jesus.  And we will tell this one little part of it. But the story of Jesus transcends all times.  It started way before this part – before time existed, when the word was with God and through whom all life into being.  And the story of Jesus outlasts you and me, and every nation and culture, and conflict and war, and advancement and civilization, and species and the very earth itself.  And you and I, right now, today, in these very times, are living the story of Jesus, the story of God coming in, the story of love greater than death interrupting ordinary life with promise.

 

May we be ready to receive this story. May we be open to being recruited too.

 

Amen.

The holy work of Advent

Luke 1:26-56

 This past week has been a hard week for hope, for me, and I anticipate this coming week, peace will feel like a challenge.  Which is why Advent is such a gift.  If I had to look at the circumstances in the world, in the lives around me, and feel hopeful, or say they speak of peace, I feel hard-pressed to do this.  

My kids’ school has been torn apart by incidents of racist and homophobic hate speech, with two students suspended and whole grades rising up in student-led protests decrying hate and demanding further action.  But through the week, the rhetoric and tone of the students began to change and escalate into a mob mentality of punishing, vigilante justice. It’s become a tangled mess of sin, which is to say, of people forgetting that we belong to each other – at every level –hate being met with hate, fear amping up fear. Revved up teens and exhausted, tense adults are facing off with no clear way forward, certainly not one provided by our culture, which offers nothing resembling mercy, practices vengeance in the name of justice, and persists until lives are destroyed, or until our attention gets grabbed by the next commotion.  

Our kids are doing what we’ve taught them to do, and they’re doing it to a couple of their own.  And that has been breaking my heart this week. Then the drama culminated with the announcement early Friday morning that restroom graffiti was discovered warning of a school shooting on Monday, which means hardly anybody showed up to school on Friday and school will be closed tomorrow, and now we are all suspended, in this state of tension and division. 

 

This, in the shadow of the school shooting in Michigan – the 28^th school shooting in America this year. We are averaging more than two a month, you guys, so all the administrators closing schools in an abundance of caution are not wrong to do so.  And yet another community is suffering unimaginable loss and grief. 

 

 Meanwhile, this morning’s headline read “Omnicron plunges the world into collective uncertainty.” As if we haven’t already been living in collective uncertainty for coming up on two years.  And so far we have no idea what this variant means or doesn’t mean, but that doesn't stop us from dooms-guessing.  So we let our already weary and tense selves get worked up and worried about what might be coming. And I don’t know about you, but once I get started, the apprehensions start to flow, and they’re hard to stop. Andy pointed out yesterday that I have a tell, a catch phrase that once he hears it, he knows I’ve handed over the reigns and anxiety is running the show.  It is when I start to say, with urgency and strain in my voice, how badly the dog needs her nails trimmed. 

 

So thank God for Advent. Thank God.

I welcome Advent’s demand that I wait in darkness for the light of God. Because there is darkness - around us, within us.  I believe this, I feel this, I struggle against this and often I succumb to it.  And I need to be told it’s ok to notice it and let myself feel how heavy and terrible it can be.  And yet, I also need to hear there is no darkness into which the Light does not shine; there is no darkness that can overcome the Light, and one day there will be no more darkness at all.  And that does give me hope. I am told to wait for peace, to expect it, to seek it and join it, and work for it, because I can trust that it is coming, that it comes. Into the darkest places, the most hopeless situations, God comes in.  This is what God does.

 

This story before us today pulls us back to the big picture: God comes into this life. 

It’s the continuation of my favorite story in scripture – last week we left silent Zechariah and pregnant Elizabeth, keeping mum about her pregnancy for the first five months too, because who could begin to explain? And who could she tell that would believe or understand?  Last week we jumped ahead to finish their part of the story. But that’s not how it happened – this part is what came in the middle, what shaped the next part, ultimately bringing them to tiny baby John the Baptist’s birth, and the end of Zechariah’s silence with his great proclamation to his startled neighbors, that culminates with exactly the words my soul needs to hear today:

By the tender mercy of our God,
   the dawn from on high will break upon us, 
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
   to guide our feet into the way of peace.’

 

So while Elizabeth and Zechariah are suspended in a state of uncertainty, Gabriel appears to Mary and invites her to share in the redemption of God, to let go of all that she though her life would be and step into this new role, God-bearer.  And when she is just as confused and questioning as Zechariah was about how the impossible could happen, Gabriel has a little more patience for her, and says, Even now your relative Elizabeth, who was barren, is in her sixth month, for nothing is impossible with God.  

 

And it doesn’t say that the angel tells her to go to Elizabeth but what else would Mary do? She immediately sets out on the 100-mile journey to visit the person she can share this with completely. And when she arrives, tired and hesitant, at her word of greeting, fetus John flip flops inside Elizabeth and kicks her out of her own silence to welcome Mary with joy and wonder, like a personal gift from God, Who am I that the mother of my Lord would come to me? She blesses Mary and her experience and trust, and Mary declares back to Elizabeth God’s greatness and what God is about to do. And right there the community of mystery-keepers and hope-bearers is formed: these two women, proclaiming the fulfillment of God’s promises with words and by their very bodies, and silent Zechariah taking it all in in wonder and witness.  Being together in this is what makes them able to trust that it is real. Bearing it together is what vanquishes fear and stirs possibility, what breeds hope and helps them anticipate the fullness of God for us all.  

 

We’ve said before that these three were church before there was a church. Even as Christ’s body was being formed, they are the nascent Body of Christ, helping each other remember the real reality breaking into this world, to see it unfolding right here in their very own lives, even. Together they are able to imagine the future God is bringing, can literally see in each other what God is doing for the future of the world, and proclaim it with confidence and trust. Together they move from suspended tension to hope-filled waiting.

 

No matter what unfolds in the world around us, in our own lives and bodies, in our communities and country, in the midst of whatever impossibility we are facing, or anticipating, or fearing, God is always breaking in. There is no life, no moment, no violence or horror, no despair or stuckness, no division, tension or uncertainty that God is not breaking into, not right alongside, not underneath and within. 

 

And we are given to one another- community to bear this reality together for the whole world, to remind each other of hope, to practice belonging and trust, to help each other watch God breaking in, and help each other live into the future that is coming. 

So we wait together in darkness for the light of God, and remind each that it’s ok to notice it and feel how heavy and terrible it can be.  At the same time we watch for the light and we seek peace, because the light shines in the darkness, and we trust that God comes in to bring redemption and life. That’s what God does. That’s who Jesus is: Emmanuel, God-with-us.  

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

 

Amen.

 

What I can and cannot do

 

Ephesians 4:1-16

I have close family members who are refusing to be vaccinated. I have weathered lots of disagreements before and still find a way to stay connected, but for whatever reason, this vaccination thing is a biggie for me.  I went the direct approach and talked about it with them and it created a huge rift between us and they asked me to stop bringing it up.  So now I sit with this rift and have a really hard time ignoring it, which is my preferred method of moving on.  I am angry. I feel trapped in anger. I am captive to anger. 
 
But here’s my modern advanced human being mistake: We think unity means ideological agreement. We think being united, connected, belonging to each other, means thinking, or knowing, or believing the same things.  Especially when our beliefs have real consequences in action – and we’re literally pulling in opposite directions. 
 
We also think unity is up to us. It’s our job to get each other to agree with us, then we will have unity. Then we will be connected.  And these days the way we build union is through anger or through fear.  Anger feels stronger than fear. So we let that fear turn into anger, anger that galvanizes union through violence. “Those people are doing this to us” we say, and we build whole communities around anger and fear, bonds that define ourselves over and against others, “We are not like them.” 
 
But at the core of it all, the unity we yearn for and are angry that we can’t have is to protect us from our fears.  Fear of loss, fear of perceived danger, fear of what will be taken away from us or done to us.
 
But in our scripture today Paul is talking about a different kind of unity.  Paul’s message is that we don’t have to be afraid. We were dead and made alive in Christ. Like the mantra that guarded my children from nightmares and reminded them of their baptism when they were little, we can remind ourselves, “Death can’t get me because Jesus has got me.”  We can give ourselves over to a union of life and for life without fear.  
 
The way of fear objectifies others and takes away personhood, both theirs and our own. But in the way of God, unity, belonging and connection is as persons with and for each other. God came as a person, for persons, to be a person with us and uphold our personhood.  
 
I can’t just snap the fingers of my heart and quit being angry, or fix my feelings by deciding to suddenly be ok with choices I see having damaging consequences in the world. And all my strategies for this are failing me.  I am imprisoned by anger.  I need to be freed by someone else. Paul says Jesus made captivity itself a captive.  “He who ascended, also descended” - God came into our death alongside, with and for us, so that by going toward the death we find life, and we find the one who sets us free from fear, and free from anger. Not by fighting them but by feeling them and opening them to God.  Christ makes a space for us to go toward our fear and anger, confessing them, again and again, and find in our places of death a God with us who give us life we cannot give ourselves.  
 
Fear and anger killed Jesus, and yet that fear, anger and death itself could not break the cosmic union that now holds us our deepest belonging to God and each other.  Our union is so secure in the love of God that nothing can separate us from that.  
 
What gives us unity is not ideological agreement but the very cross of Christ.  
This is Christ’s Body, not ours. We are set free to be with and for each other in love, to speak truth without fear, to call out lies that damage and divide, and in grace and gentleness, to grow up together into Christ, to more and more live as the one body we already are.
 
Yes, the pandemic could get worse. Yes school could be affected. Church could be affected. Vaccinated people can spread this.  “The war has changed,” the headlines read this week about the delta variant. And, friends, I am not down for more change or more war. I am not on board for this. I was looking forward to things getting better and better with no more surprises. I looking forward to mostly vaccinated, completely unmasked, shoulder-to-shoulder, boisterously singing, indoor worship on Labor Day weekend.  I was counting on it.  I was telling myself we were on our way out of this thing. I was feeling like I had about hit my limit of adjusting and surely we were finished with all that.  As Andy just said to me on a walk Friday night, “For people who watch the news, yesterday was a hard day.” 
 
But hearing that the war has changed and we are still deep in it doesn’t have to stoke me toward anger, or push me toward fear again, and we don’t have to let any of it drive a wedge deeper between us all.
 
Up against our impossibility and loss, we can confess our anger and fear and our exhaustion with it all, and let Christ meet us there, in and through one another. 
 
And we can “bear with one another,” as Paul says, we can “build up the body in love” and remind each other of what is true. So here are some things that are true that I want to remind us of: 
 
This, all of this, is part of the story. This is not the whole story. The world belongs to God. Church is who we are, not where we go.  Worship looks all different ways. So does gathering. We are good at adapting – even when we don’t like it. We’re scrappy and creative.  We’re also tired and probably sad. And it’s ok to grieve. Again. It’s ok to grieve again. Grieving is a need we can meet.
 
Also: Worry is practicing fear. Rest is practicing trust. We can choose what we want to practice.  
 
At last weekend’s Women’s Retreat we talked about different types of rest. (Sacred Rest by Sandra Dalton-Smith goes into detail about this, summarized in this article). Physical rest, like sleep, or stretching sore muscles, or walking circulation back into jarred nerves.  But the rest many of us need right now might not be physical; it might be emotional rest, or social rest, spiritual rest or sensory rest (or all the rest!).  We may need to take an extended break from the constant barrage of intensity in the news and social media.  We may want to set a regular coffee date, or morning walk, or evening phone call with a friend. Maybe we need to commit to reading a really good novel every week of August.  We might want a visit to a body of water, or the Landscape Arboretum, or to pull out a lawn chair each night and not miss a single sunset for a week. 
 
This month we will continue to meet over zoom for worship – Pastor Lisa will lead services that focus on awe, beauty and wonder in God’s creation.  And we are still planning to be together in-person (and via zoom, both) beginning September 5.  Because all we can do is just keep moving forward, knowing that things might - and likely will - keep changing, and as they do, we will keep adapting.  We don’t yet know what worship will look like on September 5. Will we be indoors or out? Will we all be masked? How will singing and music work?  When it’s time to have those answers, we will have those answers.  God always shows us the next step in front of us, and sometimes not very much further than that.  But we don’t actually know anything very far ahead of time these days.  And that’s ok. We are going to practice trusting. We are going to rest. 
 
Starting on Monday, I will be away for three weeks. For the past year and a half, it has been hard for me to step away – even when I was away.  I have carried worry with me, practicing fear.  I have not completely rested.  But I am going to be very intentional seeing about this time as sabbath time, to let this time reorient me back to God, back to trust.  This is God’s world.  We are held in God’s love, no matter what and always.  
 
Yesterday, while I was both breathing in the smoky Canadian Wildfire air into my aching, scratchy throat, and also watching an extended family pile out of cars with coolers and picnic blankets and set up next to a basketball court with tiny and big people getting ready to play together, I found myself praying the Serenity Prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.  So, I can’t make the air better, or make people get vaccinated – not even people I love.  I can’t make covid not be so relentless and contagious.  And I can’t even make myself not feel angry or sad or worried or scared.  

But I can remember that I belong to God and everyone else.  And I can take in the moments of joy and connection. And I can practice noticing and being present. And I can grieve.  And I can confess my fear and anger instead of letting them consume and trap me.  And I can rest.  I can be deliberate about practicing trust.  So I pray for the courage to rest.  And I invite you to rest this month too.  
 
Just before Paul says to live in unity, belonging and trust, he says why and how we can.  
I invite you to receive these words as a benediction:
 
I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.
 

Lament. Return. Remember. Rest.

Psalm 4

There’s a desperate vigilance and awful heaviness about the world at the moment. I think even if we aren’t paying super close attention many of us are still feeling it. A shared, psychic weight to the world. Even as we are hurriedly vaccinating people, the case numbers are rising toward a global highest point, and what, another mass shooting? Wasn’t there just one yesterday? The pressure feels audible, the tension palpable. So many people I know have commented on how utterly exhausted they feel. But at the same time our sleep is fraught and spotty. We are alert, restless and exhausted.

It feels like we’re given two options, and neither one is tenable. One is to watch every minute of the Derek Chauvin trial, read everything we can about little Adam Toledo, break apart the video of Daunte White’s killing, stay up late watching national guardsmen teargassing journalists a few miles away, track the vaccinations, stay on top of the politicians, check in on the suffering children at the border and the conflicts simmering all over the globe, worry about the threat of climate change, and compulsively wonder what more we should be doing. And if we are not out marching or speaking out then we are following those who are because we need to feel like we are doing something, like something is being done that can stop all this, or fix all this, and Lord, it’s all so awful how can we ignore even a moment of it? 

 

The other option we’re given is to go numb and limp, to shut it all off and block it all out and take in nothing but our own lives and desires, and maybe we occasionally feel a teeny bit guilty, but that’s better than helplessness and rage with no outlet. And sometimes we just bounce wildly back and forth between the two.

 

But there is a third way. And I think this Psalm gives it to us. 

 

It starts with lament. When the tears feel close and sorrow claws up the throat, and anger and rage are right here next to us we aim all of that right at God.  We moderns are pretty scared of lament in church, preferring the more palatable confession, but lament is in integral part of our faith. And this particular lament of David, we know, was sung all the voices crying out together, Answer me when I call to you God! How long will this go on?

 

There is a mystery word here that shows up 71 times in the psalms and twice in Habakkuk, Selah. Because it’s very close to the word for pause and also the word for praise, throughout the millennia it has come to be seen as a kind of mix of both - pause and praise God. Take a beat, and turn your attention back to God.

So built right into the song is a pause, everyone stopping, silent, shifting focus back to God. And then continuing on in unison.

 

So hear the Psalm again, in this paraphrase:

 

O God who knows me, answer me when I call!

When I have been confined in anxious misery before, 

you opened up expansive space for me to breathe, 

please hear me now, give me your grace again.

 

How long will our humanity be torn down? 

How long will lies be elevated, 

and people spread vitriol, delusion and exploitation?

 

Stop.

Take a beat. 

Turn your attention to God.

 

God has drawn us to God’s own being, 

those who seek God are claimed for God’s purposes.  

When you are worked up and distraught, 

don’t turn to division and blame; don’t tear down others.  

Instead, sit in it with God, 

be silent in a restful space. 

 

Stop.

Take a beat.

Turn your attention to God.

 

Lay everything before the Almighty in vulnerable honesty, 

and trust God with it. 

So many people say, “There is no goodness that we can see!” 

Oh Lord, let your love and truth shine on all of us!

You have filled me with deep joy, 

more happiness than when they have all the wealth 

and satisfaction they desire.

 

I won't stay up babysitting the world,

I will sleep soundly and deeply

because this your world, God, 

and my life is held in you.

 

 

Lament. Return to God. Then remember.  

This earth is heavy with sorrow and need. 

And at the same time this planet turns slowly in the utter silence of the vast cosmos, nestled amongst the great lights of burning stars, held in orbit to the sun. And within this planet, while one hemisphere is nestling down in winter hibernation, here the green shoots push up through the soil, and trees are awakening. And all over the planet new babies are born, and broken relationships are mended, and people are tending to each other, and there is laughter and joy, and tears of deep connection, and healing, and hope, and love remains the most powerful force in the universe, always at work, always, always, always.

 

But oh! We forget. So quickly, without realizing it, even when we’re trying to remember. 

This happened to me yesterday. I was remembering, and then I was completely derailed when I read in a commentary from 2012 (Shauna Hannan, Working Preacher) that in the first verse, where it says, you made space for me it originally alluded to “release from a tight noose at the neck,” the opposite of the word for when I was in distress, which is used for “a constricted larynx.”  And I stopped hearing the promise of God’s deliverance and the invitation to trust, and all I could see was that God did not make space for George Floyd when he was in distress, and how could I preach this text in the shadow of that? 

All day long I spun out, all day long I fixated on my words, the overwhelming sorrow and brokenness of this world, the pain of our city.  I did not lament, I obsessed. I did not take my anguish and sit silently before God, I logged onto the news and social media and started babysitting the world again. I did not come in honesty before the Almighty. I got caught up in blame and frustration in the country, and became controlling and edgy in my own house. 

And then I looked at the clock and realized it was time for evening prayers. So I sat down on zoom with those who meet together every evening.  

Stop. Take a beat. Turn your attention to God.

 

And suddenly there was joy, in sharing about a day spent with happy little cousins, and our delight and horror at a ridiculous amount of accidentally purchased bananas. Suddenly God was meeting us right there in our humanity, in our need, in our coming together. Then one of them repeated back to me that love is the most powerful force in the universe, and I was invited back into trust.

 

We are meant to stand with one another and for each other, to hold each other and fight for life for each other and us all, for this whole beautiful and broken world. We are made for love. God calls us into God’s purposes; we are drawn into God’s own being. We get to share in the love God is already, always bringing.

 

And then, at the end of the day, we sleep.  

To sleep is to yield to our most essential humanity – our creaturliness, our need, our soft, vulnerable, universal humanity, the warm breath, closed eyes, heavy limbs of us. 

Sleep is trust. It is pure being. Sleep is admitting we are not God. Sleep returns us to the humility of our own humanity. Only from here can we be fully in this life, with and for each other. 

 

We belong to God. This is God’s world. God made it. God came into it to bear our suffering and share our pain and take on our death so that death cannot, will not define us, will not have the last word, will not prevail. 

So stop. Take a beat. Turn your attention to God.

 

There is a poem by Pablo Neruda that I love, called Keeping Quiet. It goes like this:

 

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still.

 

For once on the face of the earth

let’s not speak in any language,

let’s stop for one second,

and not move our arms so much.

 

It would be an exotic moment

without rush, without engines,

we would all be together

in a sudden strangeness.

 

Fishermen in the cold sea

would not harm whales

and the man gathering salt

would look at his hurt hands.

 

Those who prepare green wars,

wars with gas, wars with fire,

victory with no survivors,

would put on clean clothes

and walk about with their brothers

in the shade, doing nothing.

 

What I want should not be confused

with total inactivity.

Life is what it is about;

I want no truck with death.

 

If we were not so single-minded

about keeping our lives moving,

and for once could do nothing,

perhaps a huge silence

might interrupt this sadness

of never understanding ourselves

and of threatening ourselves with 

death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us

as when everything seems dead

and later proves to be alive.

 

Now I’ll count up to twelve

and you keep quiet and I will go.” 

 

Christ has risen. He is risen indeed. 

Death does not get the last word, 

and love is the most powerful force in the universe. 

May we join in fully. 

And may we sleep soundly.

Amen.