The redemptive work of God

2 Samuel 5:1-5; 8:15-9:13 

 Handsome and talented, winsome and strong, also deeply flawed, proud and punishing, and then wise and benevolent in his old age, David is the ideal on-screen hero. I am, frankly, stunned there isn’t already a six season Netflix series about him. The bible gives him a hefty portion of Old Testament airtime with 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, and 1 Chronicles, casting for him the perfect villain in King Saul. Predecessor to the throne, this former army general with real main character energy, is both immensely kingly then increasingly mad. He’s super jealous of David and hungry to hang onto power. Dangerous and prone to fly into terrible rages, King Saul is calmed only by the gentle harp playing of his nemesis, young David, which must drive him all the more mad.

Then we’ve got the wise Yoda figure in the prophet Samuel (whose own life is also a compelling show waiting to be made). He anoints Saul to be Israel’s very first king, and then later secretly anoints David when David is only a shepherd boy - the youngest and least likely of his many brothers to be anything but a country bumpkin, but he’s got skills, battling lions and bears to protect the sheep, and he’s a songwriting savant, making music all alone out in those green pastures near quiet streams, so maybe the series could be a musical. 

 

Then there’s the bond of a soulmate, a deep, abiding friendship with a close and intimate confidant, Jonathan, who, as a boy, watches the little kid David slay the giant Goliath in front of two mighty, cowering armies, (thatscene would be the title sequence for sure!) and then introduces himself, and the two become fast friends, and Jonathan loves our hero as he loves his own heart.

 

Jonathan also happens to be the mad king’s son, and he stands between the two to protect David’s life on several occasions. They meet up in fields and caves when David is in hiding from Saul’s fury, amassing a pirate crew of renegades and living off the land. Jonathan tries relentlessly to make peace and bring David back into the king’s good graces, and finally, in grief and sorrow, lets him go when he sees Saul will never relent.  Jonathan and David promise forever to stand by one another no matter what, and then Jonathan and Saul die in a different battle with the Philistines. (Goliath’s side gets them after all).

 

There is the love of a princess, who becomes his wife, and later is horrified by David’s unrestrained public display of emotion. Then another woman, Abigail, who saves her own husband from David’s wrath, deeply impressing him and then marrying him when her husband dies, and more women who become wives as well.

 

And there’s his sleezy, cascading into evil, obsessing over the married Bathsheba and impregnating her, then sending her husband to the front lines of battle commanding the rest of the army to retreat so he would be killed, and David could marry Bathsheba and cover up his shame. David’s greed, arrogance and cruelty are exposed in a humiliating confrontation with the new prophet, Nathan, whom God sends to David to set him straight. Crushed with grief and regret, David repents. And even though that baby does not live, he and Bathsheba remain married and other children follow, including Solomon. And Bathsheba herself rises to power, advising her own son once he assumes the throne.  

 

David’s vivid life is dogged by the threat of death, frequent betrayal, sheer terror and staggering loss, and along the way he builds the city Jerusalem, and unites the tribes and establishes the nation of Israel. He steals, cheats, rapes, lies, kills, and sacrifices those he loves for his own power and well-being. And he is also rules with wisdom and love, and is generous, kind, loyal, trustworthy, tender, and heartwrenchingly vulnerable. He ends his life passing on drawings and plans for the construction of the temple like a mantle and blessing to his son Solomon. 

 

But what’s especially compelling about David is how his heart is laid bare in the Psalms. Trust and gratitude, anguish and wonder, contrition and pettiness, anger, longing and love – half of the book of Psalms is written by him. It’s like having a glimpse of his inner world, his relationship and ongoing conversation with God. David’s prayers became the prayerbook of the Church, and of Judaism before us. Jesus himself was raised praying these same Psalms that we pray. For three thousand years - from sanctuaries to hospital bedsides, at caskets and christenings, chanted by monks and whispered in concentration camps, David’s words have been recited in every language on the planet, and the conversation with God continues. 

 

Now, having reacquainted ourselves with David, let’s imagine this week’s episode of our King David TV series begins with a flashback. A messenger, racing and breathless, arrives at Jonathan’s house, and stammers out to the servant who opens the door that Jonathan and King Saul have just been killed in battle. The household flies into a panic, people race around grabbing what they can and prepare to flee. A nursemaid bursts into an upstairs room where a young boy of five is napping. She snatches him up out of bed and carries him out, half asleep, still limp in her arms. Running to the stairs she whips around a corner and the boy slips from her grasp, dropping over the railing to the stone floor below. She screams and races to his side, and the flashback ends. 

 

We jump 20 or so years ahead to today’s reading. David has been king for some time, and most of the rest of Saul’s family has long been wiped out by David’s side in the ongoing battles for power.  The battle dust and construction dust died down, I imagine David finds himself in a period of relative peace. Perhaps he’s standing at a window on a beautiful sunny day, a soft breeze rustling the olive trees in the garden below. Calm is nice, but it can also bring up sorrow and ghosts, and David longs for his dear friend Jonathan. There is nothing David can do to change the past. But in the quiet of this pause, the question arises, What will I do with what’s left of my life?

 

And here comes up again that word we learned with Ruth – whose whole story is an illustration of this. The word is hesed, which means something like belongingnesss; here it is translated simply kindness. From the willingness to listen deeply, the song of God’s way rises up, and David summons a servant and asks, Is there anyone left of the family of my enemy who tried to destroy me, that I may embrace in God’s belongness, for the sake of Jonathan who did that for me?

 

And there is one person left, Mephibosheth, the boy whose tragic fall on the day of his father’s death began this episode. He survived all the killings between these enemy households over the years, overlooked, perhaps, because his disability made him seem unworthy of notice. Certainly, he was not seen as a threat or a player on the political gameboard. So David finds Mephibosheth. And the man must think he’s finally been discovered as the last of Saul’s household, and will surely die at the hand of the king. But instead, David raises him to honor, to eat at the King’s table for all his remaining days, giving him servants and Saul’s former lands. David goes on to care for him as his own son, and act as surrogate grandpa to Jonathan’s grandson Mica. 

He who was forgotten and forsaken, living in obscurity in someone else’s household, is welcomed in, given home, security, and belonging in the loving care of his father’s best friend and grandfather’s mortal enemy.  

 

God’s redemption is relentless and never-ending. In our own places of brokenness and unfinished business, we are met with grace. And from our vulnerability, not our strength, we are drawn into God’s unfolding salvation of the world.  When we seek to live honest and open to God, pouring out our pain and our praise, we’re formed for God’s purposes, and made ready to recognize the nudgings of the Holy Spirit when they come. 

 

Sometimes the task before us is clear and we know what is ours to do. And sometimes the chaos of life’s moment sets the terms and we put our head down and faithfully hang on.  But periodically a chapter ends, or a space opens up, and in the quiet the question may arise, What will I do with what’s left of my life?

 

When the search for an answer involves surrendering to God’s purposes, we will be drawn into the redemptive work of God, and the belongingness of God that embraces the world will be made manifest in our lives. 

 

God joins this human life with us, in all its fullness and its emptiness too. That Jesus rose from the dead means there is no darkness so deep that he is not there, no peace so restorative that he does not share it with us, no journey so difficult that he does not walk with us, no sorrow so great it will define us, no brokenness so complete that it cannot be made into a source of wholeness and life by the God who brings life out of death. This is the belongingness of God. This what God does and is always doing. 

 

Big-screen lives like David’s capture our attention, but mostly God works redemption in ordinary places like around dinner tables, and through ordinary acts like grandparenting a child who needs it.

 

And the work God has for us to do most often begins in our own impossibility, loss or brokenness. It may heal something unfinished in us, reawaken something dormant, or break us open for something entirely new. But always, it will bring deep joy, because we are made in the image of ministering God to minister to others, and when we participate in God’s world-healing hesed, we’re tasting already the meal that awaits us all at the table of the King forever. 

 

Amen.

Life goes on

 

In Meditations from the Heart, Howard Thurman writes:  

During these turbulent times we must remind ourselves repeatedly that
life goes on.
This we are apt to forget.
 
The wisdom of life transcends our wisdoms;
the purpose of life outlasts our purposes;
the process of life cushions our processes.
 
The mass attack of disillusion and despair,
distilled out of the collapse of hope,
has so invaded our thoughts 
that what we know to be true and valid seems unreal and ephemeral.
There seems to be little energy left for aught but futility.
 
This is the great deception.
 
By it whole peoples have gone down to oblivion 
without the will to affirm the great and permanent strength of the clean and the commonplace.

Let us not be deceived.
 
It is just as important as ever to attend to the little graces
by which the dignity of our lives is maintained and sustained.
 
Birds still sing; 

the stars continue to cast their gentle gleam over the desolation of the battlefields,
and the heart is still inspired by the kind word and the gracious deed.
 
There is no need to fear evil.

There is every need to understand what it does,
how it operates in the world,
what it draws upon to sustain itself.
 
We must not shrink from the knowledge of the evilness of evil.
Over and over we must know that the real target of evil is not destruction of the body,
the reduction to rubble of cities;
the real target of evil is to corrupt the spirit of man 
and to give his soul the contagion of inner disintegration.
 
When this happens,
there is nothing left,
the very citadel of man is captured and laid waste.
 
Therefore, the evil in the world around us must not be allowed to move from without to within.
This would be to be overcome by evil.
 
To drink in the beauty that is within reach,
to clothe one’s life with simple deeds of kindness,
to keep alive a sensitiveness to the movement of the spirit of God
in the quietness of the human heart and in the workings of the human mind—
this is, as always, the ultimate answer to the great deception.

AMEN.

A Prayer After the 2024 Election

 

 A Prayer After the 2024 Election

by Kara K. Root

God, election day has happened.

I have fears and worries. 

Dark thoughts keep me up in the night. 

The world seems fraught and fragile.

 I feel defensive, guarded, on edge.

I am protecting

the vulnerable parts of myself,

and thinking of the future I want for those I love:

safety and inclusion,

purpose and connection, 

mutuality and joy,

a life with hope.

 

But I’m convinced this future is under threat.

So I keep listening to the voices, and watching the screens,

 that repeat back to me

 my fears and worries.

At first, this helps. 

My fears are justified! My worries are validated!

But mostly it brings despair.

And I stay defensive, guarded and on edge.

And the world seems fraught and fragile.

And dark thoughts keep me up in the night. 

 

God, election day has happened.

The people I don’t trust, don’t agree with, and don’t know:

They have fears and worries. 

Dark thoughts keep them up in the night. 

The world seems fraught and fragile.

 They feel defensive, guarded, on edge.

They are protecting

the vulnerable parts of themselves,

and thinking of the future they want for those they love:

safety and inclusion,

purpose and connection, 

mutuality and joy,

a life with hope.

 

But they're convinced this future is under threat.

So they keep listening to the voices, and watching the screens,

 that repeat back to them

 their fears and worries.

At first, this helps. 

Their fears are justified! Their worries are validated!

But mostly it brings despair.

And they stay defensive, guarded and on edge.

And the world seems fraught and fragile.

And dark thoughts keep them up in the night. 

 

Lord, have mercy.

Christ, have mercy.

Lord, have mercy on us all.

 

No matter what we did or did not do, 

no matter what happens in our lives, country, or world,

or what unfolds in all human history,

this remains true:

all people belong to you

 and all people belong to each other.

We repeatedly forget this, 

we skillfully deny this, 

we frequently violate this, 

and we blatantly ignore this,

But our belonging to you and each other 

never stops being true.

 

Lord, may I bravely embrace it.

Make me open. Generous. Kind. Free.

 

After this election day,

Help me to love 

all my siblings in this vast, diverse nation.

Love my neighbors, whose lives touch close up,

and love the strangers to whom I also belong,

as I love my own scared and anxious soul.

Not because any of us deserves it,

more or less than anyone else,

but because you love us all, 

first, last, and always.

 

After this election day,

and no matter what comes next,

held in your love and trusting your belonging, 

may my life contribute to 

safety and inclusion,

purpose and connection, 

mutuality and joy,

a life with hope

for all.

 

Amen.

 

 

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. 

 

Bread, goodness, and who holds the future

John 6:24-35

I have a few liberal Christian friends who’ve started to talk about this being the end of the world.  I resist the urge to tell them they sound like some of our more conservative siblings assertions that we are “in the end times.” Same argument, different evidence, I guess.  When I told them my PhD welcome letter says my program begins September 1, 2024 and ends August 31, 2030, one said, “if any of us are still around by then.”  

I have been pondering for weeks why this is so unsettling to me. 

Then yesterday I read an article asking, why aren't people having kids? The surface answers people give are things like worries about the climate crisis or over population, or less stable finances, or fewer supportive structures than previous generations.  But the deeper reason, researchers found, is actually about meaning and purpose. 

These researchers concluded that when people are unsure about the purpose of their own life, they can’t see a reason to bring new humans into the mix. The researchers named “deep existential worries with no guidance to what is a good life,” and said “old frameworks have fallen away and the new ones provide hardly any answers at all.” In other words, a lot of modern people are really struggling to answer, What is a good life, and how do we live it?  

“If people are going to have children,” they said, “they need more than a hunch that human life is valuable. ‘It is not just the possibility of goodness but its actuality that fuels our deepest longing to ensure a human future.’”

The article goes on further to state that to claim joy or pleasure in the prospect of parenting can seem distasteful. The researchers say, "'To assert the goodness of one’s own life is to risk coming across as privileged, or just hopelessly naive.'" 

Both of these perspectives are working with a certain view of the future, of God, and mostly of human beings and our role here.

If having joy, or peace, or seeing life as good is to be greedy or out of touch with reality, we seem to believe that joy is a limited commodity, that peace is something people might hoard, that life is entirely ours to produce or uphold. Do we believe that rational, aware people must maintain a constant state of anxious worry, and face the future with foreboding? 

Are we afraid to taste hope? Afraid to consume joy lest we use it all up like fossil fuels or the ozone? We are hungry for meaning. Hungry for purpose. Hungry to know what a good life is and how to live it. We are ravenous for some hope and starving for joy. 

This dear crowd of people in our scripture today, who have managed to track down Jesus, they’re hungry too. Even though they’ve just come from experiencing the feeding of 5000 people with just a few loaves and fishes. Jesus calls them out, saying they came looking for him because they wanted more – what? Spectacle and excitement? Proximity to power? Free food and good feelings? More sense that, at least for the moment, things are going to be ok?  In any case, it was not because they recognized in the experience any deeper meaning from God, or sensed a higher purpose drawing them in. 

So when they ask, “How can we do the work of God?” they don’t like the answer they get. Because Jesus says, “The work of God is to believe in the one whom God sent.”

Pause the conversation, because this will be important for our discussion: 

This word, believe, or have faith, means literally, entrust yourself to an entity with complete confidence. It’s not belief as intellectual agreement or faith as the capacity to hold firm. It’s utter yielding trust, surrendering to the one who holds firmly to us. Like a baby going limp in in the safety of your arms, the work of God we are called to is to let go and be, because Jesus has got you. 

But who wants to be told to surrender? To just trust and stop striving? That what’s ours to do is live the one life we have been given joyfully and to die in assurance of grace? Frankly, that seems hopelessly out of touch and dangerously naive. 

Resuming the conversation, as though the crowd didn’t just eat till they were full at the miracle picnic with leftovers galore, they ask Jesus what sign he’s going to give them to persuade them to believe, “like manna in the wilderness,” they suggest.

So, Jesus reminds them it wasn’t Moses who provided that manna to their ancestors, but God. They knew this story. But when we’re feeling worried, insecure or grasping for some control, it’s easy to forget what we know. 

More than just food where there was none, manna taught the Israelites to entrust themselves into God’s care. Under Pharoah’s rule their identity was as property, their purpose was to toil for their survival, and their lives were only as valuable as what they could produce for the empire.  Freed, in the wilderness, they were fed and cared for. They were learning how to rest from a God who rests--and who, by the way, thinks life is so great that, in the act of creating it, God kept pausing just to enjoy it, and to declare to Godself how very good each new thing is. By eating manna, their ancestors practiced being loved, being valued, being treasured by God who claims them as beloved children.  

By eating the manna every day, they were learning trust, year after year, and gradually, they began to believe that maybe they didn’t have to scramble for their safety, or labor for their life, or ensure their own longevity, or direct their own future.  Because by giving them manna, God was saying I will provide for your needs. Surrender into my care. As civil rights leader and Baptist pastor Ralph Abernathy famously said, “I may not know what the future holds but I know who holds the future.”  This is what manna taught the Israelites.

Then Jesus pulls out of the past into the present tense and says, “God gives bread from heaven for the life of the world.” 

“Sir, give us this bread always!” They cry.

Jesus answers, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

And they have no idea what to do with that statement. This uncomfortable exchange goes on for a ton more verses, at one point the disciples themselves saying, This is such a hard teaching, who can accept it? Finally, the eager crowd, who’d been so intent on finding Jesus, eventually gives up and wanders off. They were not ready for what Jesus was saying, but who among us is?  

When Jesus says I am, he is invoking the very identity of God- the name, YHWH, means I AM, but in a simultaneously transcending time and entering time kind of way -  compressing past, present and future into the present, right now, I am. Always now, I am who I will be, and who I was, I’m being, even Beingness itself. 

So when Jesus says, I am the bread of life, I am the light of the world, I am the good shepherd, I am the resurrection and the life, I am the true vine, he is saying that beneath our deepest hungers, and up against our greatest fears, and inside the worst suffering or the haziest future, right now the very ground of being is being with and for us and calling us right now into being.

When we are lost, I am the way. When we without guidance or drowning in darkness, I am the light. When we’re tangled up in lies, I am the truth. When we’re terrified of death, I am the resurrection. When we dodge own vulnerability and weakness, I am the good shepherd who looks after his sheep. When we can’t seem to find meaning and purpose, and we question the fundamental value of human existence, I am the life. And when we are hungry, deeply longing to be filled, I am the bread of life, manna itself.

When Martin Luther was asked what he would do if the world was ending tomorrow, his answer was, “Plant an apple tree.” In other words, the future isn’t ours to control. Our job is to trust and obey. Right now.

And the models Jesus gives us for this way of living?  Birds of the air and lilies of the field who neither toil nor spin, infants who can’t do anything but be adored and cared for, branches attached to a strong vine, wandering sheep who recognize the shepherd’s voice, and need the shepherd to keep them safe. 

Jesus is not just the possibility of goodness but the actuality. I AM came into human life and human death right here with us, making the act of living itself a holy task. The precious, poignant reality that we get to be – in these specific bodies, on this remarkable planet, for this one blip of time in all the universe, alongside all these other beings made in the image of beingness itself?  Astonishing.

 Believe in me – this is the work of God that we can do. Entrust the world to me. Entrust yourself to me. Surrender into my life and my love. Let the manna feed you. Let the perpetually-present bread of life nourish you.  Do the two things Jesus says are the sum of all God’s commands: Love God and love your neighbor. In other words, be human, be, right now. That’s your role. 

Live the one life we’ve each been given - as unselfconsciously as flowers, as bombastically as birds, as unhesitatingly as infants, as vulnerably as sheep, as inseparably as branches drawing life from and expressing the life of the vine itself. And in this living, we can expect to be fed manna. We can assume our purpose is to give and receive love. We can practice the belonging that can’t be broken. We can follow our creator in walking around every day declaring life good.  We can welcome ourselves and others into the deeper meaning that already holds us all. We can practice living in freedom and rest.  And we can anticipate with confidence that the culmination of it all is complete wholeness for all of creation, that we get to joyfully join its coming, right now.  

We know this story. But when we’re feeling worried, insecure, or grasping for some control, it’s easy to forget what we know.

But when we entrust it all - ourselves, our beloved, and this fragile world - into the care of I AM, we are doing the great act of faith, and in believing we participate in the AM-ness at work- the right now life of God healing the world, practicing peace and joy, and claiming the future for hope. 

Amen.

The way we decide

 Acts 1:1-17, 21-26

Things have been a little weird and intense for the disciples since Jesus was murdered by the state and came back from the dead. Judas has died by suicide.  The community has been pretty much in hiding.  Then the risen Lord started popping up places.  He’s kind of the same but different, both unrecognizable and completely familiar, both available and not. For a little over a month, he’s been showing up here and there, walking along with some of them down a road, coming through locked doors and eating fish, hanging out with them day after day and teaching again like before. And now, he has just literally vanished into the sky before their eyes.  
 
This weekend we celebrate the Ascension – the day Jesus disappears into the clouds and leaves the disciples staring up into the sky with their mouths hanging open. They can feel his absence where his presence once was. And yet he promises he will be there with them in a different way, guiding them nonetheless.
  
So now a new adjustment, a new assignment: Jesus said to Stay Put and Wait for the Holy Spirit, whatever that means.  That’s their job.  So that’s what they are doing. Constantly devoting themselves to prayer, it says, coming together, helping each other learn to trust that God is here now, and God will lead them into what is next. 
 
And then we are given a bizarre and delightful illustration of this trust in action. They are trying to decide who should replace Judas in their leadership.  And they have two good options before them, Justus, and Matthias, both followers of Jesus, who knew Jesus in the flesh, both men of integrity, both willing to serve. Whom should they choose?  
 
Do they make pros and cons list? Debate with Robert’s Rules of Order?  Launch campaigns and take a vote, the 120 or so of them?
 
No! They draw straws! They flip a coin, roll the dice, “cast lots.” They use a game of chance to take things out of human hands.  
 
There is nothing intrinsically spiritual or holy about this.  We don’t think flipping a coin at the beginning of a football game is asking God to choose which team should start. We don’t think God is involved when we play paper, rock scissors over who has to put the kids to bed.  Casting lots was just used by the soldiers two months before to divide up Jesus’ clothes among themselves while he hung dying on the cross, so it’s not like lot casting is some inherently God-seeking process.  But when it comes time for the followers of Jesus to pick a leader in witnessing to Christ’s resurrection, they roll the dice.
 
They don’t ask themselves WWJD – What would Jesus do if he were here?  Because Jesus is here!  He’s as real among them, among us, as when he walked the earth in the flesh. They’re learning to trust that this is so.  So why not ask Christ to pick and then flip a coin? 
 
The Ascension means that Jesus can’t be captured and boxed up, marketed, claimed, or relegated to the past as a venerated historical figure we make reference to but never address directly.  Jesus is risen and ascended.  Now the community has to learn how to live in the paradox of our faith: that Christ is not here but is HERE. They have to look for Christ, learn to be present to the presence of Christ, listen for the voice of Christ, in and through, and alongside one another. We can’t see him, we can’t touch him, and yet, when we are present with each other, acting with and for one another, Jesus Christ is right here in that space, energy, connection between us.  We are the body of Christ.
 
How do we hear God?  Sometimes it feels like a quiet little nudge that leads us just the little next step, or the wisdom that sinks into our soul when something in us says, “Yes. That is right.” But mostly, we hear God by listening together. By surrendering together.  Waiting for the Spirit to direct us. And then acting.  
And then surrendering and waiting again.
 
This way of discernment is brazenly different than the world’s way – which is fast and decisive.  Wayne Muller reminds us (in his book Sabbath), 
 
"The theology of progress forces us to act before we are ready. We speak before we know what to say. We respond before we feel the truth of what we know. In the process, we inadvertently create suffering, heaping imprecision upon inaccuracy, until we are all buried under a mountain of misperception. But Sabbath says, Be still. Stop. There is no rush to get to the end, because we are never finished. Take time to rest, and eat, and drink, and be refreshed. And in the gentle rhythm of that refreshment, listen to the sound the heart makes as it speaks the quiet truth of what is needed." 
 
We talked this week in catechesis class about trust – how trust is the core of it all. Our security in life or status with the divine not about cracking a code, earning a prize, or figuring out the rules. To be in relationship with a living God must begin with trust—that God is real, and that God wants to lead us all toward love, toward healing, toward forgiveness, toward righting wrongs, and bringing justice, and birthing hope right in the places of utter despair.  
 
So maybe God makes the coin flip one way and not the other.  God is certainly capable of that.  May we too have such trust in God.  
 
Or maybe God thinks it is cute that they are so intent on replacing Judas, as though having 12 disciples like Jesus had originally chosen when his ministry began, a reflection of the 12 tribes of Israel, is essential for what is to come. As though their structures and containers are vital. Of course they have no idea that just days from now that wild Holy Spirit is about to bust the gospel out of its confines and jumpstart it’s spread to the ends of the earth through witnesses who have never seen the human Jesus with their own two eyes, nor heard his voice speaking in a language they wouldn't understand anyway, but who will definitely hear the message their hearts recognize beyond all else, and see the risen Lord transform their very souls.  And they don't know it yet, but the 12 are actually the 120 of them, and about to become 3,000 in one day, and Matthias is never mentioned again in the bible.  
 
So perhaps when they cast lots God chooses for them.  Or maybe it doesn’t matter one way or another to God, but God appreciates their intention just the same.  God is with them even now, as they faithfully seek to do God’s will, and that in itself is beautiful and holy. Whether their decision has any effect on things or not, that they would surrender and seek is shaping them all the same.  
 
Their imaginations can’t begin to grasp what is to come, and so they faithfully make their decision, and then suddenly the whole landscape shifts, and then they will seek God’s direction for the next thing. What more faithful way to live is there than that?
 
We are not building a movement, standing up for values, or shoring up an institution. We are joining in the Kingdom of God. We are witnesses to resurrection, learning to recognize and share in the healing work of the living Christ that is happening right now.
 
Yesterday the youth cleaned out the sanctuary, or got started, at least. After 14 months of emptiness and clutter, regular dust and construction dust, and spiders gleefully given free reign, it was a big, big job, and the youth made a big dent in it. When they peeled down the images of the bible characters we began journeying with in Advent 2019, and unpinned the Psalm river hanging on the back wall from not last summer but the summer before that, I was struck by the ways we’ve grown in our own faithfulness and discernment.  There are things we thought mattered a great deal that turned out not to be important at all. And there are things we had no idea would be significant that have turned out to shape us considerably. 
 
We are not the same congregation we were when we last sang and prayed together in that space. Case in point, when we left the building we had only just discerned, after a year of prayer and listening, that our building was indeed part of our mission, and we would say Yes to the preschool.  Now we will return to their presence already among us.  And we ourselves are different. We have lost beloved members and gained beloved members.  Our ways of feeling connected have changed and, in many ways, even deepened.  
 
When the whole landscape shifted we never, ever could have imagined what was to come, so we had to seek God’s direction, surrender and wait for the Holy Spirit, and then act. And here we are again, on the cusp of another huge shift, a new adjustment.  And our imaginations can’t begin to foresee what is coming.  But as witnesses to resurrection, who know the power of the risen Lord to bring new life into our lives and our world, we will keep helping each other learn to trust that God is here now, and God will lead us into what is next.  And we will keep learning to recognize and share in the work of the living Christ that is happening right now. 

And what more faithful way is there to live than that?
 
Amen.
 

Choosing Life, Being Found

                    

Jeremiah 31:31-34
 
This week I found myself needing to repent. I got caught up in a pattern of behavior that was life-draining for me and caused pain and confusion for others.  And when I woke up to it, I felt awful and flooded with regret.  Because I was thinking about repentance as our theme this week, it was especially uncomfortable because most of me was caught in the pain and agony of the experience, and a small part of me was watching myself and taking notes. 
 
The Greek word for repent, Μετανοεῖτε means literally “change how you think after being with,” in other words, turn around, shift your being in another direction, change your purpose after this encounter.”  Repent is not a moral word of judgment and condemnation, like we like to make it. It actually isn’t about being good or bad.  Repentance in the biblical sense is a complete reorientation.  It is turning from death to life.  We could think of it as laying down your mind and exchanging it for the mind, perspective, and purpose of Christ. Sometimes repentance is used as something that happens to you, rather than something you do.  One biblical scholar says, “It can be more about being found than about finding oneself." (Matt Skinner, Working Preacher).
 
When we recognize we have sinned, that is to say, when the lightbulb goes on and we can see that we have made a choice toward death and division instead of life, we are flooded with regret and sorrow. We can’t go back and undo what we did or take back what we said. So what happens next?  
 
Sometimes we double down; it’s too painful to honestly face what we’ve done or own what we’ve said, so we blame other people, or the circumstances.  We may make excuses, or drink to forget. We may deflect and point at someone else whose actions are “worse” than ours, to try to make ourselves feel better.  All of these things usually make us feel worse and more stuck.
 
We have no good human mechanism for getting ourselves out of sin, the power of sin, the mindset of sin, which is separation, isolation, judgment. Paul says we are a slave to sin.  Trapped in sin we move to the punishment of sin, condemnation.  Because Sin is living as though God is not God and we are not beloved children of God created to live with and for each other.  So when we get caught in sin, and we are suddenly aware that we are caught in sin, we often sin more to try to make ourselves not feel so alone, so trapped, so disappointed in ourselves.  Or we judge and condemn ourselves, or each other for the sin, which is just another way of staying locked in sin, being ruled by the way of fear.
 
But God has a mechanism to get us out of sin.  All the way back to Adam and Eve, through the prophets and judges and kings, to John the Baptist shouting on the banks of the Jordan this message is then embodied in Jesus himself who proclaimed the words that set us free: Repent! Repent for the kingdom of God is right at hand!
 
Translation: Trade out your way of sin and alienation and disconnection for my way of belonging and love.  Let yourself be found, for God’s way of life is right here for you.
 
Like sunflowers turning their face toward the sun, like exhausted, angry toddlers running back into their parent’s arms, repenting returns to our true selves, and our true place in God. We turn our wilting little hearts back toward their source of life.
We don’t even have to believe we will find mercy, though we will. We may be craving the judgment and condemnation we think we deserve, but this is the power and beauty of God’s way: once we repent, once we turn our sorry selves back toward love, we are released from judgment and condemnation. Once we repent, we receive grace and find ourselves held by God with others. We only need to trust just enough in that belonging to open up and admit we feel ashamed, and acknowledge our regret over what we’ve done.
 
So many of our texts this Lent have been connected to the Babylonian exile – the Israelites ripped from home and stuck somewhere unfamiliar and uncomfortable that is not home.  This feels fitting because this pandemic has been like the whole world living in a kind of exile.  The promise of this prophet to the people in exile is a relationship with God that is not dictated by rules, shaped by fear of punishment, or demanding careful tiptoeing, but a connection defined by love, covered in grace and secured by the Divine and not by us, steered by the One who anticipates our need for salvation and offers it before we ask.
 
These people don’t know if they have what it takes to live up to their end of the deal. In fact, all evidence from history and experience from history tells them and if it is up to them to remember their place and live from that truth they will fail at staying true to God.  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. This covenant can’t be broken because it will be inside them and God will do the heavy lifting.  They will be God’s people and God will be their God, period.
 
We long to be connected and alive, to sense God and see others, and we long to contribute to connection and love and joy for others.  So for us, repentance is the gift of this connection, the tool right here in our own hearts, to come home when we fall away, to remember when we forget, to let ourselves be put back together again by God, whose love and mercy meet us not only when we step up and reach out, but especially when we’re stuck in our sin.
 
God’s goal isn’t punishment but reconciliation, reconnection. God wants for us wholeness and love.
 
So we get to step up and claim it. We get to accept being accepted, like we said last week that Sabbath rest offers us.  Repentance does this too.  It’s the wake up moment when we say, Oh! I want to trade my pitiful way of greed, resentment and constant condemnation, for God’s way of love that belongs me to God and other people!  And in that moment, we let 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.  Our anger or disappointment, our mistakes or our stupidity, do not get to set the terms, define our lives, keep us divided or trapped. God’s love sets the terms. Grace holds us. When we receive God’s forgiveness, we can forgive ourselves, and we can forgive each other.  
 
But we have to do that part. We have to repent. We have to take that step of complete vulnerability and say it – to God, to ourselves, to the person we’ve wounded. We have to admit we’ve gone off track and let ourselves get turned back around by God, to the way of love and trust, to our true selves.
 
After repenting, I felt relief and hope and clarity.  It’s painful to look honestly at yourself, but it means a new way opens up. Nobody in my house is under any delusion that I wont behave badly ever again, but I got to experience being seen, being forgiven, remembering my place alongside those I love, and more ready to forgive and see and love them as well.  We belong to each other. I belong to all others.
 
A few of us meet online for morning and evening prayers each day. Every Friday night we pray Psalm 40:8. It says, “I delight to do your will, O my God, your law is within my heart.” We delight to do God’s will. We delight to feel ourselves part of the fabric of life, connected to others, aware of God, awake to gratitude and fullness of joy. God’s way is inside us, part of us, leading us, and leading us back when we lose our way, bringing us home again.
Thanks be to God.

Amen.