Therefore...

  

Romans 12:1-8

When I was ten years old at summer camp, we could earn points for various activities. My favorites were archery, target shooting and memorizing bible verses. I had no idea then that I would become a preacher, but these verses sounded so much like a booming sermon that I threw open the window of our bunkroom, and shouted them down to passers-by until I had the whole thing perfected in the cadence of an old-timey preacher. I still have them memorized.

“I urge you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world!  I roared out the window, jabbing my finger at the sky. But be transformed! By the renewing of your mind! That you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good, and acceptable and perfect!

 

Listen to all the active verbs there! So commanding and directive! All the things we are supposed to be and know and do! Present yourselves a sacrifice to God, do not be conformed to this world, be transformed, Even when the verbs are not technically active, we can make them active by how we hear them: renew your mind, prove the will of God, which by the way, is good and perfect.

 

Even the more gentle version we read today still puts a lot in our hands. Listen to all the active verbs, Use your gifts! (don’t waste them!) Helpers, help! Teachers, teach! Givers, give! Leaders, do a good job leading, and if you’re taking care of others, keep a smile on your face!

 

This striving, active, individual faith that takes it into your own hands and works hard at it may have been what my summer camp was going for, but it’s not what Paul is going for. 

 

All throughout the letter to the Romans, Paul is talking about real life, the Kingdom of God reality, life as God created life to be, life as God is moving everything towards once and for all. He is talking about living no longer in the illusion created by sin that we are apart and against, that belonging is earned and we’re defined by the world’s labels and our own striving, trapped under sin’s ranking, comparing and condemnation. 

He is talking about life in freedom –life where all people are upheld in the belongness of grace, and our identity is secure in God, and God is the primary actor and we are recipients and participants in a life made for joy. This is the life we are given by Christ, in Christ, in fact, in him we have died to anything else and been risen to this new life of belonging, connection and wholeness, so we should be living what is true about us and about God. 

Right before our verses, Paul writes “from God and through God and to God are all things, to God be the glory forever and ever, Amen!” Then our text begins with, “Therefore…”

Because all things are from God and through God and back to God, Therefore, present yourself to God, your whole, living, embodied self.

 

Paul loves run-on sentences where things are all connected back to God. We tend to break those up and lose the thread. Out of curiosity, I spent some time checking the original Greek on all of this, and it turns out that contrary to how we like to hear this, there is only ONE active verb in the whole thing. The one thing we can do and should do, according to Paul, is to offer ourselves to God. 

 

That’s it.  That is the one action we are to do. And it’s no small thing, it’s everything. It’s a sacrifice, Paul says, a holy sacrifice that God finds well-pleasing, or, delightful. (God speaks the same declaration over Jesus at his baptism, “this is my Son, the beloved, in whom I am well-pleased, in whom I delight). In other words, when we give ourselves to God, our “everyday, ordinary life—our sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life” God is delighted, and we are doing what Paul calls our ‘reasonable’ or logical worship. What conveys our gratitude and praise, and honors God as God, is ourselves, given to God.

 

When we do that, then all sorts of things happen that we don’t do. The rest of the passage is filled with things that happen to us, or through us, or for us, except for the next two verbs, which I was thrilled to discover are middle passive. This is a verb form we don’t have in English, so we usually just make it active, which is pretty messed up, because the middle passive means we participate in something we don’t initiate.  So, when we actively present ourselves to God – here I am God, just me, just like I am, that’s all I have to give so I give it all- then the ‘being not conformed’ to this world and the ‘being transformed’ are things God does to us and in us, that we join in. We are not the ones making it happen; we are surrendering our will into the will of God who initiates the work in us, and we participate in that work that God will bring to completion.

 

This might sound small, but it’s kind of a big deal.  We are both passive and active at the same time in our not conforming to the realities of this age, and in the being transformed by God, who renews our minds to become more and more able to discern what God is doing in the world, which is, Paul tells us, the good and the delightful, bringing wholeness and completion to world. We begin to see that happening around us. We start to notice what we didn’t notice before. We are being changed, pulled out of the lies and deception that would pit us against each other, center ourselves in the narrative, or let fear or force dictate reality, and we’re pulled instead into God’s relentless and subversive work of healing the world that moves through us to all the others we already belong to in a life made for joy and fullness.

 

Years ago, I got all excited learning about Meister Eckhart and ended up introducing you to a phrase from a quote by James Finley teaching about Eckhart. (For the thousandth time, I apologize,) he says, “Lovers cannot make their moments of oceanic oneness happen, they can only assume the inner stance that offers the least resistance to being overtaken by love. The poet cannot make the poem come, the poet can only assume the inner stance that offers the least resistance to the poem arriving. The healer cannot bring the healing, the healer can only assume the inner stance of least resistance to healing coming through them.”  

 

Actively surrendering our will to the will of God is assuming the inner stance of least resistance to the Holy Spirit; it's this middle voice verb of attentive readiness for what God wants to do in and through us.  Like poets, and healers, and lovers, and artists, and musicians, and friends, we get to participate in the things we can’t make happen, and marvel at the beauty we end up sharing in. 

 

This is all by God’s grace, not because we’ve somehow earned it, or deserve any more or less involvement or attention than anyone else. God gives to each person grace for the life they’re to live—even Paul’s own telling us this, he says, is by the grace of God. 

 

Then he goes on to say we don’t need to reach our minds above and beyond what is a fit for us. There is an echo here of the Psalmist in 131, “O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not concern myself with matters too great or too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child.” And in Psalm 46, “Cease striving and know that I am God.”

Paul says our minds, rather, have been made for sound judgment, and God gives each person the measure of faith we need for the calling we have, (i.e., It’s all very reasonable. Quit overcomplicating it).  We’re one body in Christ, he says, like a human body with many parts that don’t all have the same function but instead work together. And we have gifts, given by grace, differently to each of us.

 

And here is where it gets even cooler with the Greek grammar: everything from here on out is passive, even though we driven, active, moderns who go, go, go, do, do, do, and can’t stop won’t stop don’t translate it that way. 

So, Paul starts listing gifts – prophesy, is in proportion to faith. Service? He does not say, then serve! Teachers? Teach! Do the things! No, he says, in effect, if the gift is service, then you are an instrument of service, if the gift is teaching, the teaching comes through you, if the gift is encouraging, then you are a conduit of encouragement, if the gift is giving, then generosity fills you and spills over, if leading, then you have diligence, if you’re showing mercy, then cheerfulness lives in you.

 

Each action happens not by determined striving, setting your mind to it, trying to be a decent person or good Christian, but because who you are is made already to participate with God’s action moving through you in this particular way, and it will come out in ministering to others.

Can you hear the freedom? The life? The holy sacrifice of ourselves that becomes worship and gratitude to God? Can you see why God finds this everyone-living-who've-they've-been-made-to-be-and-so-working-cooperatively-together utterly delightful?

 

Each person is both entirely unique and entirely connected to everyone else. We are all essential. We are urged to participate with what God has already done for us all, by who God has already made us to be.

 

Last weekend, on our day retreat, we played Poetry for Neanderthals, a fun, ridiculous game that makes you speak only in single syllable words, which turns out to be really, really hard, and sound very, very funny. But in order to play the game you need to get what a single syllable word is. And all of a sudden, there is Wendy, so naturally teaching the group how to hear the syllables, clapping words with her hands and giving us examples that we clapped with her, and the teaching just flowed from her. She didn’t have to put her mind to striving to be teacherly and take up the teaching task, it just happened because she was connected to the rest of us, and the gifts she’s been given by the grace of God poured out of her into the group, bringing everyone in and uniting us in understanding.  

Likewise, Edie, when her friend left the room, went to check on him and make sure he was ok. Compassion and care just happened--her body stood up and out she went. 

And if you have been away for a while, or have something difficult going on in your life, chances are you’ve heard from Kay. Because she is attuned to people and interested in others, and she won’t let you fall through the cracks. 

Jen’s creativity starts flowing for the next hands-on worship project right after this service ends, and she often sparks ideas for me just by sharing her own ideas. 

When Pat fires up the grill, or Kristen drops a line of poetry on us, we’re glimpsing their unique souls, participating with God in the good, delighting God and the rest of us too. And I would venture to guess that no other church has an empty ‘pet chaplain’ job waiting to be filled--we simply named what was already happening through Joyce.

 

All these gifts are not about improving a religious club or even just strengthening our relationships with each other here.  We are each part of the Body of Christ--God’s embodied interaction in the world. God’s life is happening through every person in this room out there in the world in our ordinary, everyday, walking around lives. That’s what it is to be Christ’s Church. But being church together, we get to see it up close in one another, practice and encourage each other in it. And sometimes we recognize in someone else the gifts they may not yet see in themselves. We get to grow together as one body deeper and deeper in the life of Christ for the world. 

 

From God, through God and back to God it all flows. Therefore, the most logical way we can worship God is to present our peculiar, particular selves to God, and God happens to find that delightful. Freeing us and transforming us to recognize and join God in bringing life and wholeness in the world, God makes it so we participate by being who are, with and for each other. 

 

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. 

 

The good news about who God is

Hebrews 4:12-16

There’s a trope in some versions of Christianity, of a harsh, judging God and Jesus as a best friend / boyfriend / approachable pal type.  When we blow it, God is ready to come down on us with ferocity, and then in the nick of time, like a codependent mom to an intimidating dad with explosive anger issues, Jesus soothes God’s temper and helps get us off the hook.  This text doesn’t not contribute to that idea.

All are naked and laid bare- literally "neck splayed open to the sword" – to the one to whom we must render an account.
 
Nothing is hidden from God. The word of God that speaks into being all that exists, can judge thoughts and intentions of the heart, is able to slice that fine line between soul and spirit, joint and marrow, selfishness and boundaries, pity and compassion, confidence and pride.   God can see what we can’t. God can see it all clearly – before God no creature is hidden. Not any of us, not ever. 
 
But Jesus is the high priest who has been through all we have and meets us with grace.
 
The Lutherans like to call this law and gospel: the terrifying news that we can’t possibly measure up to God’s ideal, followed by the terrific news that Jesus has done this for us. The bad news before the good.  But as Presbyterians, we actually believe that it’s all good news. That grace meets us even in the judgment, grace first, grace in the middle and grace at the end; it’s all grace. 
 
So this message – that every dark, shadowy corner of our souls is exposed to God, that nothing is hidden, that we are known utterly, vulnerable completely, that nothing we can do can hide us from the ultimate judge of the universe - is already, in itself, good news.
 
I felt that this week. My knives are dull, I hack away at chicken, bend and tear the skins of tomatoes, and I can’t cleanly divide stubbornness from integrity, or clearly separate seeking support from engaging in gossip.  I’m a muddy mess inside.  When relationships get challenging or situations feel complicated, guilt and sorrow get mixed up and cloud my thoughts and emotions, and I am not sure if I can trust my own judgment.  

What a relief it is to come to this passage and hear that to God, it is all clear. That when I can’t even see what it is I need to be freed from, God already knows completely.
 
It’s also good news to me that the whole world, every creature and society is likewise laid bare before God. No amount of covering up evil, no clever spin or mass manipulation can obscure God’s view. God sees it all as it is, knows us all as we are. God’s word exposes the truth. Period.
 
There is a place to anchor our lives in something beyond us and our uncertain and bungling assessments of the world or our ourselves. A fiercely trustworthy, entirely qualified, unwaveringly just authority already sees and knows it all, and one day we will all have to own up to all of it. This is good news. 
 
We are completely exposed and vulnerable, at the mercy of this God.  
AND, we are at this God’s MERCY. God came to share this life with us - Jesus felt tension, fear, worry and sadness, Jesus had convoluted relationships, knew pain and loss, struggled to make sense of things, dealt with frustration and confusion.  Jesus lived our human struggles, but without the division from God and others that we call sin. 
 
So we are invited to approach this God with boldness.  Because what we find when we come to this God is mercy and grace.  Mercy and grace based on an accurate and true assessment of things. Mercy and grace that comes from knowing from the inside the weakness and anxiety of being human. Both are true. 
 
THIS is good news.  
God doesn’t let us off the hook because we’ve pulled the wool over God’s eyes like we do to ourselves and each other: tell half the story, paint ourselves in good light, set up others as the real problem, or pin ourselves under crushing blame.  God knows and sees all of it, missing nothing, and ALSO meets us with mercy – mercy we can’t seem to extend to each other, or to ourselves.   The all-knowing, righteous judge of the universe chooses to extend this mercy to us.  In fact, God does more – God meets us in our weakness with grace to make it through, grace that helps us forgive ourselves and each other, grace to start over when we fail, grace to begin again when we think we’re out of chances, grace to face a broken world with love and mercy too, grace to start seeing our own selves as we really are instead of as we wish we were or as we fear we might be.
 
The past two weeks we’ve dug into our question, What is a good life and how do we live it? Now we are seeing our other question play out, Who is this God and what is God up to? 
 
And we’re seeing James answer it this way: God is the One, all-knowing being in the universe who rightfully renders judgment on us all, because from God nothing is hidden. But instead of condemning us to separation from God and each other, God claims us anyway and joins us right here in Jesus Christ, suffering in all the ways we do, but without the muddy mess of division and contradictions, without all the stories we tell ourselves that keep us from our true belonging to each other and God. In our time of need, we find mercy and grace from this God to help us through. That is who God is and what God is up to.  All the time, and right now. 
 
So come boldly.  Tell it right to God; God knows it anyway.  When you shout it, or write it, or weep it, you will find relief, mercy, grace, help.  Both because Jesus has been there, and because God sees you exactly as you are and loves you completely. This is good news.
 
Amen.

How to live a good life

James 3:13 - 4:3, 7-8a

What is a good life?  We have ideas of what a good life is or should be. Right now especially it seems to have something to do with being on the correct side of the issue, whatever the issue may be. And just as important as being correct is being seen as being correct.  It can be about vaccines, or policing in our cities, or climate change, or racism, or it can be about how your lawn looks, and what you’re putting into your body, and how well-behaved your kids are, and what kind of effort you put into maintaining friendships.  What it looks like to others is at least as important as what it actually is.  
Modern life is primarily a performative exercise.
 
But, James asks, what’s going on in your heart?  Is this so-called good life being lived with envy, resentment, self-centeredness, bragging, or bending the truth?  If so, then there will be disorder and wickedness of every kind.  If so, it’s not a very good life.
 
What is a good life, then, and how do we know how to live it?
 
For example: Is it ok to shop at the super convenient and cheap store that pays minimum wage and doesn’t provide their employees with health insurance?
 
 What about that place that pays great, delivers health insurance, treats employees well and donates to great causes, but the owner of the company invests his personal money in a fund that, among a number of other good things, also supports a cause that dehumanizes some people?  
 
Is it actually better for the environment to buy the toilet paper that is made from sugar cane and bamboo, if it comes encased in several layers of cardboard stuffed with (recycled) paper and is delivered to your door by a large gas guzzling vehicle? 
 
Is it ok to want to have nice things or go on nice vacations when there is so much poverty and inequity?  Do you volunteer enough? Speak out enough?  Keep your house tidy enough?  Spend enough time with your kids, or grandkids, or parents? Do you stay informed enough?  Exercise enough?  Pray enough?
 
Living toward a standard of a good life that isn’t even fixed or clear is exhausting.  Measuring that against how well other people seem to be doing it in order to figure out whether I am doing it right is downrightt mind-scrambling.  
 
In fact, disorder and wickedness of every kind result from this kind of selfish ambition and envy motivation.
 
I feel disordered frequently. I feel the desire to be seen as good that, if I am honest, is sometimes greater than the desire to actually be good.  
 
I feel jealousy or resentment rise in me on a regular basis.  I feel misunderstood and I lob misunderstanding right back at the opposing party.   I am often quick to judge and quick to anger.
 
If a good life has to include with what’s in my heart along with mastering some performative actions then I can’t even delude myself that it’s possible to live a good life.  There is no way I can live a good life.  I can try all I want, but it is never enough, and I do it for all the wrong reasons, and from all the wrong motivations.  And the striving and comparing and accusing voice of judgment against myself and others will never stop howling inside my head and often out my mouth.
 
What is a good life and how do we live it?  
If this scripture is prescriptive it hasn’t yet told us what to do.  Because trying not to be selfish or jealous, or striving to have perfect motives when we perform all of our lofty and moving-target good life actions, is not only stupid and impractical, it actually is impossible.
 
This is good news actually. We can’t actually live a good life. We can’t even figure out what a good life is half the time.  
But that’s not our job. 
 
Here’s where it this passage tells us what is our job, three things:
Submit yourself to God.
Resist the devil. 
And draw near to God.
Submit. Resist. Draw near.
 
Submit yourself to God, James says because all the conflicts and disputes come from the cravings at war within ourselves.  They come from the way we try to save ourselves, advance ourselves, preserve ourselves, present ourselves. 
 
But life is not actually not about belonging to ourselves, it’s about belonging to God, and through God to each other.  And in fact, God does a much better job of unconditional love and boundless acceptance than we could ever do for ourselves. So much so that when our lives are rooted in our belonging to God, we can be brave and open and connected to others.  So we are called to submit ourselves to God, to confess our selfish desires and admit our messy motives, and lay down our flimsy defenses and repent. We ask for the connection and hope that we desire, that we are made for.  
 
Then, instead of us trying to live a good life by whatever current standards and definitions we have embraced at the moment, the wisdom from above that is God’s wisdom, not ours, will live through us.  And our lives, the words we say and the actions we take, how we treat others, how we treat ourselves, what we do with our money and our time -  these things will become a good life. They will be done with gentleness, born of God’s wisdom.  
When God moves through us God draws us into lives that are peaceable and pure James says, and “willing to yield, full of mercy, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.”  But we don’t make that happen. We can’t.  We submit ourselves to God and the Holy Spirit does that work in us.  And the Holy Spirit draws us into God’s goodness already at work in the whole world, and we join in out of joy and calling, not out of urgency, pressure or guilt.
 
Second, we resist the devil – the Greek word is the accuser, the voice of condemnation and blame directed at our selves or others, the voice that that tears down our own humanity, or someone else’s.  That voice that says if we try harder and learn all the things, and avoid all the things, and do all the things, we can live a good life like those people obviously do. Or, look how awful they are, if we aren’t like them then we must be good.  That voice that tells us we are in it on our own, and we are supposed to be stronger than we are and not ask for help or admit weakness.  The voice that says we have nothing to offer someone else, nothing to give.  The voice that says that other people’s suffering or the problems in the world are not my business. The voice that says we have to carry it all and if we don’t it proves we don’t care.  We speak back to the voice of the accuser and stand up to it. We refuse to relinquish our minds and hearts to the delicious but poisonous, divisive anger of it.  When we confront the accusing voice, it will flee from us. 
 
And finally, third, we draw near to God.  We steep ourselves in what helps us seek God – meditation, walks in nature, stillness, stopping and stepping out of it all through gratitude, practicing noticing, and wonder, and cultivating silence.  We choose to spend time with those in need, and to care for each other, and we let ourselves be cared for and seen in our own need by others because right there is where we see God most.  We are human and present in our lives, because the God who became human in Christ is present to us here.  
Stop performing your life and live it, right here where God is.  Draw near to God and God will draw near to you.
 
This is a good life. 
Submit, resist, draw near.
 
I am more and more convinced that the way through this pandemic is to go deeper and simpler. Do less.  Listen more.  Turn things off and turn things down.  The noise and the conflict is a liar that tricks us into feeling alive but drains us of life. 
No matter what is happening around us or to us, we can live a good life.  God’s goodness is here for us, at any and every moment.
So submit to God and let God bring you into peace.  
Resist the accuser and it will flee. 
And draw near to God and God will draw near to you.
Amen.

In on the Miracle

 

Matthew 5:1-12

Right now feels like we are poised on the edge of a significant, history-making moment. 

Friday a friend on the phone with someone in Washington DC said this person was watching out her window as the city was being boarded up. The National guard is standing by, ready to be deployed. Nobody knows what is going to happen next, or how we all will respond to what happens next. 
 
Of course, it’s already history-making, we’re in a global pandemic and all.  But it suddenly really feels significant and history-making.  Our country feels fragile, things are charged and divided, we are raw about racism and doing hard introspective work about the changes needed in our nation. Our mental health is affected by our limited our ability to be together, the loss of our normal routine with jobs and school, with no way to imagine the future or timeline for when this might be over.  We’re struggling to hang on when the ground feels so unstable. So we are coming into this significant historical moment exhausted from nine months of virus vigilance and let’s just say, we aren’t at the top of our game.  
We are going into this future-shaping, unknown outcome, amped up stakes, moment feeling especially vulnerable, particularly powerless, and parched in our hearts and souls.  Some of us feel a kind of alert, attentive stillness, preparing for whatever comes next, others of us are flailing and wringing our hands in worry, and sighing or swearing a lot.
 
Perhaps I am not speaking for you, and you’re feeling mostly terrific and unfazed at the moment.  If that’s you, I’m genuinely glad for you.  If you’re like me, though, what Jesus says today might sound like good news: 
 
Blessed are the poor in spirit.  
Ok, God, I’m listening.
 
Blessed are those at the end of their rope. Blessed are the bone dry, those who can’t fake it, those who are facing their own nothingness and know it: God’s way of life is for them. 
 
I want God’s way of life! I want to live beyond the striving and comparing, the judgment and the fear. I want to remember that we belong to God and each other and that can never be taken away. I want to remember that love is real and it never ends. The way back into that that reality is not by determined will or strong faith, but through our own emptiness and longing. 
 
Jesus comes into our death with new life. It is in our impossibility that Christ meets us.
 
Blessed are… all these beatitudes begin, this whole sermon on the mount starts with a litany of blessing like statements of fact. Happy, contended, grounded are those…. Then it flips everything upside down and says a bunch of things we don’t prefer and wouldn’t chose, and pull us into grace. “Grace means nobody gets what they deserve but infinitely more.” Fredrich Buechner says, “Blessed is the one who gets the joke, who sees that miracle.”
 
Blessed are the parched souls, God’s way of belonging and grace is especially for them. 
 
Also in on the miracle?  Those who mourn. They will be comforted.
 
This word for mourn is the strongest possible word for mourning.  And comforted here is the strongest possible word for comforted. So, blessed are those who are in absolute abject despair.  All defenses crumbled, unable to fake it, actively surrendering to all-out no-holds-barred grieving.
They will be comforted, not made comfortable, as in, hanging out in a familiar place with a hot cup of tea and your feet propped up.  But comforted, as in completely propped up on someone else’s strength.  When we let out our agony, others will bear us up and walk with us, and carry our burdens with us, and not let us be lost or alone. 
 
We are all mourning something. There is loss that we keep in or downplay, that we are invited to let it out. 
 
By the way - Jesus did not say blessed are those who mourn for they will find inner strength to triumph over their circumstances, or blessed are those who mourn for they will be delivered from the things that are causing them sorrow. No, he said, blessed are those who mourn for they will be joined and held up in their grief and their circumstances.  When we mourn we find right here the Christ who suffers with and for us. In the presence of those who come around us to lift us up is the actual the presence of God. 
 
The next one feels a little icky. Blessed are the meek. God knows, and this is on full display right now, we will choose security above all else. We will choose it over goodness or cooperation or justice, we’ll choose the way of fear’s promise of safety over love’s vulnerability in a heartbeat.  We want to be strong, and right, and self-sufficient, and respectable and buffered from loss. We don’t want to be “meek.”
Lisa once said, “It is hard and humbling to realize that faith leads not to security but to vulnerability.” We belong to God and we belong to each other- we are dependent and interdependent. No amount of striving can make us ever not need God and each other.  So saying Blessed are the meek is like saying, Contented are the honest. In on the joke are those who get that they are recipients of grace alongside everyone else. The antidote to our obsessive striving for security is humility.
Lisa said it this way, “To be meek not to be ashamed or small or groveling. It is only to be at peace with our place in the universe, not to be secure, but to be at home.”
In on the miracle are those who are at home in God’s grace, they are at home in the whole world.

And blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness!  We who long to live in God’s way, to see justice and kindness and mercy and love as way of life in this life, we will be filled. Because it is not we who bring about God’s reality, it is God who is already and always bringing it. So we watch and wait and pray and yearn that we all could live our belonging to God and each other, and the promise is, that in longing for it, we will experience it.

And being at home in God’s grace, and longing for God’s belonging to be shared means getting comfortable with mercy. But that is not a popular stance these days. Mercy feels risky and embarrassing, and so outdated. Right now our world feels like a very punishing place, without a lot of room for mercy. We’d rather punish others. We ourselves would rather be punished harshly. We are not good at accepting mercy or extending it to others.  We’d prefer to restore order, or pay penance, or earn acceptance. Even better, we’d rather just cut people off completely and move on with our lives. 
 
But in the kingdom of God mercy is what keeps us all afloat.  Because mercy is how grace works. God’s way is forgiveness and compassion that are not deserved and cannot be earned. 
And the promise is, you brave souls who reach your hand toward another with no guarantee they will accept or appreciate it, when you may not get the recognition or justice you deserve, You will receive mercy.
 
Giving mercy washes away the hardness and the stuckness in our hearts, and receiving it sets us free from the self-judgment and self-punishment we often choose instead. 
 
Blessed, then, also are the pure in heart, those who welcome mercy and live in it, those who for whatever reason, have chosen NOT hard and cynical, NOT self-protective and cunning.  Those whom we might dismiss as naive or weak, easily taken advantage of, are the ones who are tuned in to the song of kindness and love and mercy and hope that the rest of us mostly ignore. These are the ones who get to see God.
In on the miracle are those whose hearts are vulnerable and open.
 
Then there are the peace-makers.  The Hebrew word for Peace, Shalom, means “fullness” or “completion”.  So the greeting, Shalom, means “May you be completed.” When we contribute to others’ fullness, fullness in the world around us, and fullness between us, we literally share in the substance of God’s life, here and now.   Whenever we say, by our words or our actions, “May you be completed,” we make peace. 
We smile it, and knit it, and bake it, and write it, and march it, and speak it, and hug it, and listen it into being, we break down strife and strain by wishing wholeness and fullness upon others. And those who are doing this, Jesus says, know with confidence whose and who and whose they are. 
 
But just to be clear, being peace-makers doesn’t mean we’re suddenly no longer tension-makers and crazy-makers too.(Back to the poor in spirit!) It means, as Glen Stassan says, we “abandon the effort to get our needs met through the destruction of our enemies.” Being a peacemaker starts with surrendering our own troubled hearts to God’s mercy, and letting God bring peace through us.
 
And Jesus ends the whole thing with, Blessed are you when you are deeply misunderstood, labeled, dismissed and hated for living like the game is pretend, and choosing to live in God’s belonging instead.  And, then here comes the only command in the whole beatitudes – you should rejoice and be glad, because what you are doing is noticed.  You’re undermining the way of fear; you’re making good trouble. And there is a whole cloud of witnesses—those who’ve been in on the miracle longer than you have—cheering you on.  And one day, when all this is over, you will be thanked by the Creator for your participation in the miracle. 
 
This moment is significant, and historical, and it is fraught. But beloved children of God, we live in a deeper reality, deeper than any moment, and with a further horizon beyond all the significant historical moments gone before and all those to come, and we know this world belongs to God, and every one of us in it belongs to each other.  No matter what, and always. And God is always working.  No matter what and always.  God’s grace holds us and sustains us.
 
No matter what and always, this remains true: when we feel parched in our hearts and souls, God’s way of belonging and grace is for us. And when we express our heartbreaking grief we are lifted up on others’ arms. And when we’re at home in God’s grace we find the whole world to be our home. And when we long for God’s belonging between us we find fullness, and when we’re brave and generous with mercy we ourselves are awash in mercy.  And when our hearts are vulnerable and open, we see God.  And when we surrender our troubled hearts to God’s grace and let God’s fullness come to and through us, we remember whose and who we are, part of the eternal community of good trouble makers, persistent love-seekers and brave hope-bearers. 
 
This week, and always, may we know ourselves to be in on the miracle.
Amen.

PRAYER PRACTICE:

Using a journal, or verbally with a quiet few minutes to reflect and pray, let yourself express to God what is on your heart in this way:

God, I am mourning...

God, I long for...

God, thank you...

Repeat as many times as necessary.

The Game is False

Devotion for Being Apart -
September 27

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

Today's scripture comes just after a rich landowner, who has followed all the religious rules, asks Jesus, What must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus tells him to sell everything he has and give the money to the poor and come follow him. Then Peter, seeing this, asks, Hey Jesus, we’ve given up everything to follow you, what will be our reward?  Jesus answers, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like a vineyard owner..."  Matthew 20:1-16.




Jesus’ parables are always designed to expose something about the way of fear and reveal something about the way of God. In the way of fear envy is at play – we envy others and desire to be envied.  Envy is an essential component, actually, a necessary part of the game.  We only know how good we have it or how far we’ve gotten, or how much we matter, if we compare ourselves with others and see where we rank.  

We want to know what we have to do to succeed, to be safe, to be good, to be secure. We figure that out by looking at others and seeing how we measure up. We’re better than some, but worse than others. It’s how the way of fear operates.
 
But in this parable the landowner pays everyone the same thing, no matter how long they work. Forget that they all start out equally in need – some worked all day, and some just a few minutes, and they all received the same thing.  And he made sure that they all knew it too, it wasn't a secret what he paid them. He set them up for envy and then broke the measuring stick. He refused to play the game.
 
The parable could just as easily have been about tragedy. When tragedy cherry picks– through accidents, or sickness, this one dies from covid, that one has no symptoms, these parents have a child with addiction or mental illness, that one’s kids are honor roll athletes – envy comes into play in a huge way. We feel relieved it isn’t us, or we wonder why it’s us and what we did wrong. 
 
But when tragedy is a hurricane that destroys the entire town, or a fire that wipes out the whole region, it doesn’t matter how nice our house was or how hard we worked, or how well we followed all the rules, all that we’ve invested is gone- whether that was a whole lot or nothing at all.  Now we are all equal – we all have nothing. The measuring stick is broken; everyone is out of the game.  (Of course, in real life we’d find other things to envy – like who has better home owner’s insurance, because inside the way of fear we can’t help comparing ourselves, searching for ways to save ourselves.) 
 
But in the way of God there are no comparisons, there is no way to gain an advantage over anyone else.  The reasons for envy disappear. We are all human beings, claimed and cared for by God.  We are all living by God’s grace.  We participate alongside each other and no one is better, or more deserving, worse, or less deserving than any other.  We are not paid by what we have earned; we are paid by the generosity of our God. 
 
This is bad news for when we think we think we’re doing pretty well comparatively speaking, when we’re convinced we’re secure or that we’ve succeeded. When the game is working for us, it sucks to be told it's pretend.  But this is good news when we have nothing to give, nothing to lose, nothing to compete with. The game is false. We are free.
 
We all belong equally to God and to each other, and every one of us is dependent on the generosity of our God.  All of us live in God’s grace. And God invites all of us to join in, no matter how much or little we think we have to give. And this God also makes sure we have what we need, no matter how much or little we think we’ve contributed to earning our keep.
            
I hope that this makes us brave.  We’ve got nothing to prove and nothing to earn.  In God’s Kingdom all people really are equal, each one valued, made in the image of God.  Every single one of us is loved by God completely, whether we think we deserve it or not. No matter our circumstances, each of us meant to share in God’s life and joy. And regardless of how much or little we may think we have to give, each of us is called join in God’s redemption and hope in the world. 

Amen.

(Go here for more on The Way of Fear and The Way of God).
 

CONNECTING RITUAL:

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

Envy and Gratitude - a mental, written, or praying exercise

Envy is the currency of the way of fear. Gratitude is the currency of the way of God. 

Envy tells us we are in it alone and against one another, and uses comparison as a way of measuring how well we are doing.  Gratitude recognizes we are all in it together and everything is a gift, and there is no measurement - it's all grace.  

It doesn't work just to try not to feel envy and to try to feel gratitude.  
But when envy arises we might be curious about it and acknowledge it, Oh, hello envy! There you are! Telling me I need to earn my place! I am envious because I am telling myself things would be better for me if...

We might turn toward gratitude by letting envy lead us there.  
The way of fear is telling me I need _____ to be (secure, happy, ok, good enough, successful, safe, etc).  
But here is my life, just as it is.
I know love through ______.
I feel joy when ______.
I am grateful for ______.
God cares (God, you care) for me through _____.
(Thank you).

This whole exercise can be done written, in our head, or as a prayer.