The Context of the Meal

 Matthew 14:13-21

Besides the Resurrection, the Feeding of the Five Thousand is the only miracle that appears in all four gospels; it’s a super important story for the early church and clearly meant to give us a glimpse of who Jesus is and what God is up to. And as bible stories go, it’s fairly tame and unassuming, so we love to tell it to children. It’s not scandalous or disturbing, and it has a happy ending too! What's not to like?

 

But like most things in life there is more going on than we see on the surface. The context matters. When we tell this story on its own, we don’t realize that in Matthew’s telling in a single 24-hour day, a bunch of big things happen that maybe have something to do with each other. And maybe it’s not as meek and mild as we think. 

 

Our story begins early in the morning with the words, “Now when Jesus heard this...”  Heard what?  When Jesus heard that John the Baptist, who had been in prison, had just been beheaded, and his head delivered to Herod on a platter in the middle of an extravagant and vulgar dinner party. John’s disciples had picked up his body from the palace and buried it, and gone immediately to tell Jesus what had happened. 

 

When Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place. 

 

 And who wouldn’t?  What else in the world is there to do?  

John is gone, his cousin, his friend, the one who knew who Jesus was better than anyone -  from before he was born, even – leaping in recognition in his mother Elizabeth’s womb at the sound of pregnant Mary’s voice, the one who proclaimed in the wilderness that the Messiah is coming, and plunged God incarnate under the waters of baptism, the one whose whole life was telling that God’s kingdom is coming and announcing that Jesus had arrived, this John has just died a pointless, disgusting, inexplicable death, as a pawn in a gluttonous game of revenge and power. 

 

When Jesus hears this he withdraws in a boat to a deserted place.  

But the crowds seek him out. 

 

On foot they go around, ahead, and I have always imagined them like clingy toddlers flooding his alone place and his apart time with their need and their clamoring, their sheer mass, the overwhelming sound, smell, the hungry obligation of them.  And I’ve felt defensive of him, as perhaps, his disciples were too. He has every right to absolutely lose it. To tell them all to go away. To tell the disciples to make them leave him alone.  To practice self-care and turn the boat around and float alone in the waves for hours until he regains his composure, until he finds some peace and quiet.

 

But when Jesus sees the crowd, it says, he has compassion on them, and cures their sick.  He brings the boat ashore and goes to them and stays there with them. 

Vulnerable, grieving, reckoning with the horror and consequences of evil, mourning the death of his beloved friend, Jesus embraces the vulnerable, the grieving, the sick and despairing.  

 

And I don’t think it was a “nevertheless” kind of thing, being with them. I don’t think it was “even though” he was sad he embraced them “anyway” sort of deal. I think it was an “alongside,” “with and for” kind of thing. I think it was sorrow meeting sorrow, a pretense stripped away, no games being played, hearts connecting scenario. 

 

I guess until now I have always seen the crowds as almost predatory, like relentless zombies following him around, grabby and demanding and needy. Why can’t they just leave him alone?   

 

But this time I saw something different. I had to read it three times: “Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns.” When confronted with the news of his friend’s death Jesus went to hide in his sorrow. But when the crowds heard the news that they knew would devastate Jesus, they went to find him.  And not to give every person there a noble and altruistic motive, but perhaps, without overthinking it, the drive to be together in suffering is a way human beings return to our humanity, which is also to say, a way we seek and share in the presence of God. Perhaps that’s the way God designed us.  When someone we care about suffers a great loss, the reflex is to be with them, to share the pain.  

 

A few weeks ago a friend texted me from a meeting of exhausted teachers, education assistants and therapists in a program for children with extreme trauma, to tell me that a therapist had just said, (and I paraphrase to remove the swear word), “Self-care is hogwash. When something happens we don’t take care of ourselves, we take care of each other.” This is not to say we should not have good boundaries, or cultivate healthy habits, or that we should give and give when we are tapped out. This is to say: in crisis we do not take care of ourselves; we take care of each other. We belong to each other.

 

So perhaps, as much as all those people needed Jesus, Jesus needed them too.  Maybe he needed to feel his belonging to each other and God, and that was not something he could have done on his own in the moment. 

Being with them connected him to the bigger context, the deeper story, the wider belonging. In his own need and dependence on God, Jesus was moved with compassion for the people, and he welcomed them, listened, touched, and healed their sick. In his own vulnerability Jesus reached out to theirs.  And I wonder how God-with-us being with us with them on that day–the Great I Am coming in weakness alongside weakness with healing and hope—how this may have fed Jesus himself in that moment. 

 

As the day stretches toward evening the disciples, who, let’s face it, must have been freaking out all day at this impromptu gigantic event they were apparently hosting in the wilderness without a port-o-potty or vendor stand for miles around tell Jesus that maybe he should send the crowds away so they can find food for themselves in the villages.  But Jesus answers, They need not go away - you feed them. An impossible and ridiculous instruction.

 

But impossibility is God’s favorite canvas. And now a meal is about to take place that will upend the meal that preceded it. 

The first meal happened among sycophants in the seat of power. Full of insecurity and hungry for esteem, a cruel leader fed his own ego in a vicious power play of political manipulation and demonstrable control, killing a person in a mighty flex of fear and dominance. 

The second meal is happening here among ordinary people in the middle of nowhere. Full of sorrow and hungry for gentleness, a brokenhearted healer is feeding thousands with a single child’s handful of bread and fish, in a compassionate outpouring of inconceivable abundance and demonstrable unity, nourishing all these people in a colossal expression of love and solidarity.  

 

And the people, out there in the deserted place, far from the center of commerce and empire, are sitting down on the ground like one enormous picnicking family, dining on manna, until all, every single one of them, to the last man, woman, and child is full, and there are leftovers galore. And the power that brought the world into being, is here, among them, healing the sick, providing their daily bread and receiving their love and gratitude, and together, all of them are connected and held in a power greater than death, a force greater than evil, that is moving the world toward love. This power is not encountered by the strong but the vulnerable, and it comes not through coercion or control but through compassion and companionship.  

 

In a few minutes we will share a meal that seems almost silly, really. Without the context it could feel tame and unassuming, a nice tradition, a lesson to remember. But real violence rages in our world, rampant corruption and evil, power is wielded to selfish ends and lives are lost for pointless reasons, and own lives from time to time threaten to brim over with despair. 

In this context we will eat bread and drink grape juice and claim that God is with us right here and now and it means something important and powerful.  Because God is, and does; Jesus himself was broken for us, taking into God’s own heart the heartbrokenness of us all. 

 

We are gathered today in our shared need and vulnerability, with whatever we bring and however we’re struggling, and Jesus meets us here, joining us with all those gone before, including those that one evening in that deserted place who ended that sad day side by side with a sister who was just healed, and a neighbor who just found hope, and thousands of siblings in this world God is creating anew. 

In receiving the bread, taking it and pass it to one another as they did, we are connected held in a power greater than death, a force greater than evil, that is moving the world toward love.

 

And, just to wrap up the day, because, believe it or not, there are still a few hours remaining: after the feast Jesus releases the disciples and disperses the crowd and finally gets away to a quiet place. He rests. And stops. And makes space for his grief to breathe.  But he does so now not as one thrown into isolation by his pain, but as one who has been held in solidarity in the love and care of others, as having experienced the power of God moving through him to them and through them to him and the love of God holding them all as they all shared that day together, that meal together. Now, grounded in his belonging to God and each other, Jesus finds the solitude, solace, and silence he needs. 

 

But just in case we don’t yet get how big it all is, just before dawn breaks on this long, full day, we meet back up with the disciples, who left that epic experience to find themselves all night long battling raging winds and torrential rains in their precariously rocking boat. And just as he did for the crowds, Jesus meets them right where they are, which means that as the vulnerable and terrified disciples squint through the storm, they see Jesus calmly walking to them on the water.  

 

Amen.

Faithing Together

 

Mark 6:1-13

Sometimes I have faith. I feel settled and grateful and connected and even sure.  And sometimes I am amazed at my unbelief. That is to say, I have a shocked moment when I realize I have been swamped by fear and I am just treading water in it as thought this is all there is. Or I caught in anger and breathing it in and letting it fill me and feed me.  Or I am cut off from anything beyond myself, my worries, my projects, my interpretations of things, and I am just existing as though this is all there is, completely forgetting there is someone that holds me and this whole world. I can go on this way for days.  Detatched from my deepest self, from God, from others. And then suddenly I wake up and remember - or am re-membered -  to my belonging, invited back into trust, feeling my heart open back up to transcendence, widen back out toward God.  And I am “faithing” again.
 
What does it mean to have faith? To be a person of faith? Is it to attend religious services regularly? Or to do good things in the world? Is it to believe in something beyond what can be seen and touched?  Is it to have certain strong convictions? To work for justice and peace? Certainly it can include any and all of these things as expressions of faith.  
 
But at it’s core is trust. But it’s not a fully-developed and airtight trust that never wavers, it’s more like inching toward trust, learning to trust, being open to trusting and entrusting your life to God. It’s turning toward someone, letting your heart open toward God, letting God turn your heart toward the real. 
 
Faith is a hemorrhaging woman reaching out from a crowd and grasping the edge of Jesus’s cloak hoping it will heal her, and Jesus blessing her for it.  It is a dying girl’s father tracking down Jesus and begging, please come and heal my daughter, not knowing that by the time he reaches Jesus it will already be too late, but Jesus goes to his home anyway and brings his daughter back to life.  
 
Faith starts the moment we turn whatever it is within us back toward God – even if we don’t know who or what God is. It begins in our human longing, Help me, Jesus!  It’s My little daughter is dying!, or just reaching out with a tiny shred of hope and grasping the edge of a garment. Like the disciples in the boat asking in the storm, Don’t you even care? faithing can start in doubt and anger, with despair and fear. It’s turning toward Jesus, however that happens. And when Jesus commands nature and the storm responds, the disciples’ faith is stirred up, who then is this?  And they are drawn in deeper, turned more fully toward Jesus. 
Jesus has just been with these people, in this place of faith – where people are facing their deaths, reaching toward God, learning to trust, acting on what hope gives them.
 
But now Jesus has left that place, and has come off the road with the band. He’s back in his mom’s kitchen with his newfound fame and reputation and his gaggle of disciples. This is his hometown with his home people, the world of brothers and sisters and long memory: mischief and mudpies, first steps, forged friendships, lost teeth and puberty, for the love of God.  This is the town that still holds both the whispered scandal of his origins, and the tangible results of his professional labor, “Wait, Jesus, the carpenter? Mary’s son, Jesus?”
The people who heard your voice change are going to have a hard time taking your prophetic preaching seriously -  especially when the claim is that you’re from God and everyone knows you come from right down the street.
 
But more than amused, when he comes speaking with authority and they see the deeds of power that he does -  they take offense. 
Just who does he think he is? What is he trying to pull?
 
And Jesus is amazed at their unbelief, their untrust, their lack of faith.
And, scripture says, he could do no deeds of power among them – except lay his hands on a few people and cure them. (which sound like deeds of power to me- and felt like it to the sick people who got cured). But it wouldn’t have mattered what he did.  He could do no deeds of power among them.  There was no curiosity or openness. They weren’t holding up their longing, daring to hope for the impossible. They weren’t wondering who he could be, they knew who he was - he was one of them.  And they were offended that he had the arrogance and audacity to pretend to be someone different, and to insist that God would act among them in unexpected ways.
Those people he “healed” were probably getting better anyway.  Their illness must have just run its course. It was all in their heads.  
As far as they were concerned- it simply couldn’t be. Period. He was limited by their unbelief.
 
Does faith allow God to do more in our lives? Very possibly.  
Does faith allow us to see the things God is already doing in our lives? Absolutely.  
 
Because without faith- without that question bubbling within us, without the act of holding up our longing, reaching out in hope, (or even simply honestly inhabiting our own deadness), the encounter can’t really happen.  We won’t be open to it, or recognize it when it does.  
Faith is not a closed conclusion. It is an open awareness.  It’s turning toward God with whatever is in us and watching expectantly for what will happen next.
 
And now, from that place, the disciples are sent out, and ironically, doing deeds of great power.  Doing more, it seems, than Jesus himself could do in his hometown.  But the disciples don’t go out bearing great power to dispense to others. They go powerless–needing a place to rest, needing coats for the cold, a bathroom, food and shelter. They go to receive the hospitality of strangers. 
 
Jesus sends them out needing fellow human beings.  And not just for what they provide, or as a ready audience for their message. The disciples are sent out into the world forced to rely on other people’s compassion and openness. They must allow others to step up to meet their needs.  And the disciples will need to stay with folks- to form relationships, not just bounce around getting what they can from people.  So not only do they need fellow human beings, they also need to join fellow human beings. And the longing, the action, the“Help me Jesus!” gets pointed toward others, where Jesus meets us in one another.  We turn toward God by turning toward each other.
 
Through the love and generosity of strangers, God will provide.  And through sharing ourselves and our story of who Jesus has been for us, God will act again right now between us.  And maybe he is talking as much to himself as he is to them when he says, if they don’t welcome you and refuse to receive you, shake the dust off your feet and move on.  This is about connecting with God and each other.  Keep seeking that connection.
 
We cannot give healing to others as a self-assured dispenser of goodness; we must come to goodness and healing together with someone.  We must allow ourselves to be seen, not in our shiny strength and aptitude, but in our sweaty, dusty, hungry, cranky, awkward humanity. 
 
It’s a lot easier to give than receive, but receiving keeps us human. It keeps us connected. It keeps us encountering God in our lives, again and again.  This is what Jesus wants for the disciples. They must receive care to give it. They must come vulnerable to share their lives with those who can care for them.  It’s how Jesus himself came. Vulnerable and needy, learning to be human with humans, sharing life with those who cared for him.  We know who he is – he’s one of us.
We belong to God, and in Jesus, God belongs to us. 
This is how God arranged it, so we may know the interdependence of all life.  Faith presses us into this relationship, to live out our belonging to God and each other.  
 
May we have the courage to keep turning toward God together with whatever is in us and watching expectantly for what will happen next.
 
Amen.

Tend Life

Devotion for Being Apart -
June 12

I will share a devotion Sundays, and Wednesdays through Fridays.
- Kara

I repotted the church peace plant yesterday.
It had outgrown its pot - the one session planted it in nearly twelve years ago.
You can read more about that plant here.

It made me think about how we are changing and growing during this, in ways we don't yet understand and maybe can't yet see. It made me wonder about what kinds of containers will support our life together in the chapters after this one.

And it made me come back to the moment - it was also a tactile thing to do that used my body (it's heavy!) and needed my attention, and it wasn't crisis or worry or fatigue.  It was simple.  Instead of being consumed with the unknown, I was consciously tending life.

I saw my hairdresser today for the first time since January (!) She had taken six weeks off for surgery just before the pandemic hit.  I texted her when she left telling her to go easy on herself, that my experience with any surgery has been that your body takes longer to recover than you think it will.
Today she thanked me for that text, and said it helped her, because even though they told her six weeks, it's been four months and she only this week feels like she is recovered.  We talked about how hard it is to let your body do what it needs to, but also how amazing it is that your body does get there.  Healing is really hard work. It takes exactly the amount of time that it needs to take.

I am finding that a lot these days. I have an agenda for my body. It is night - I will sleep now and wake up rested.  I am taking the day off - I will get the rest and energy I need and come back ready.  Or for my mind -  I have this thing to accomplish and will focus and get it done in the amount of time I have set aside for it.  Or my children - you can cry and get over it and move on in a logical amount of time, right?  We have that with our society  - it would be nice to be done fighting about things. It would be lovely to recognize the problem of racism and then get it fixed and done with, whether out there or inside our own selves.  But it doesn't work that way.  Change is slow, deep work, that takes remembering again and again, noticing again and again, coming back to what's actually here and letting things heal and unfold because we are tending the life. 

And in the midst of all this - we are still sick and getting each other sick - with an actual virus, which we can't see and can't just fix.  This is exhausting. We wish it were over. Shouldn't it be over by now? Maybe if we act like it's over, that will make it over? Alas, it isn't so.  We must live the moment we are in right now.  It's the only way.

So, tend life. Within you, around you. Instead of being consumed with the unknown, be in this moment, and right here, tend life. Put your hands in the dirt. Take naps. Notice hunger and eat. Let tears come when they want to, for as long as they want to.  Laughter too. See the invitations in front of you and respond - there is life popping up all around us, calling to us to join in.  Be gentle with those around you. Be gentle with yourself. We are changing and growing during this, in ways we don't yet understand and maybe can't yet see.  That's really hard work. Let it happen in the way it needs to.  

---

CONNECTING RITUAL:

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

Lord God,
you have called your servants to ventures
of which we cannot see the ending,
by paths yet untrodden,
through perils unknown.
Give us faith to go out with good courage,
not knowing where we go,
but only that your hand is leading us
and your love supporting us;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
AMEN

(From the Lutherans - I am not sure what book but I hear them use this prayer a lot!)

The truth about Christmas

Luke 2:22-40
Anna & Simeon

A few days after Christmas I looked at my tree and was filled with disgust.  It no longer represented all the joy of the season; it just looked like clutter in my living room, a big depressing task waiting for me.  And while I had room for one more glass of egg nog, I couldn’t even muster another round of Bing Crosby tunes to accompany me in the chore.  

Add to that the fact that I had to take it down alone. Nobody wanted to help me, and I didn’t want to force or coerce them into it. For some reason, the absurdity of it all made me very emotional, and I ended up crying through the whole process. Resentfully wrapping the ornaments, wiping bitter tears off my face while I unwound the lights, I felt unhinged. 

I kept saying to Maisy, who was nearby and watching me with a worried look, “I am not trying to get you to help me with this! You get to have a real choice! This is not manipulation! I don’t know why I am crying! I’m just having some big feelings!”

Christmas is weird. 

Every year my mother-in-law’s husband gives us a big gift box from General Mills, where he used to work, filled with fruit roll-ups and pudding mix and cereal, and it’s a bunch of crap I don’t buy, and wont eat, in lots of packaging I will throw away. But I know it means a lot to him to give it, so in the moment, I actually genuinely enjoy receiving it. And then, after my kids rifle through and take what they want, I try to incorporate things like cheese-flavored soft taco bowls into our lives.

And my dad wouldn’t take his shoes off when he came over, because he has diabetes and his feet get cold, so the rest of us spent the evening walking through his melted shoe water in our socks on my freshly washed floors, and I stuffed down my frustration didn’t say more than one teeny little side comment right at the beginning, because I wanted things go well and for everyone to get along.

And I lost the gift I bought my mom, and at the last minute I ordered another one to be delivered, which got there after Christmas, and then I found her gift on Christmas eve, and now I am stuck with a beautifully wrapped gift card to a movie theater chain that doesn’t exist in the Midwest, and a CD of Christmas music I’d already bought myself for Advent. And I don’t know what to do with either of them.

And after mailing it out I discovered that our Christmas card had 5 typos.

And my grandma, who this year lost her house and her dog, spent Christmas helplessly watching her son die of cancer, and he spent it unwillingly dying.  My cousin’s baby is due in April, and my uncle most likely wont get to see his grandchild’s life begin.  And there is absolutely nothing I could do sitting across from him except cry along with him.

Some of us have kids that we can't talk to, not really, no matter how much we try. Or we spent Christmas day overwhelmed with the grief of missing someone who wasn't with us anymore. Plans changed, people got sick, and the dinner had fewer place-settings than it was supposed to have. Some of us said the wrong thing, or regret not speaking up. 

And some of us spent the season trying to ignore the gnawing loneliness, or the nagging worry, and just stay happy like we’re supposed to.

So I cried while I took down the tree. 

Because I love Christmas. But also, if I’m honest, what a great big let-down it always is. Along with all the shimmer and warmth, Christmas is awkward and exhausting, and it is never how we remember it was or hope it will be.  It’s just not big enough or deep enough to hold all the expectations and longings we pile onto it.  

So we put Christmas away. It’s all done. Forget the whole 12 days of Christmas thing – in an era of sound bites and viral tweets we have moved on.  You’ve had your little holiday break. Time to turn your attention back to the distractions of your busy lives, and the urgent struggles of the world. Life moves fast. The Valentine candy is on the shelves, people. 

But that’s not how Church time works.  Church time is slower, and deeper, and is not in a hurry, and doesn’t stop either. So it’s Epiphany now, the festival of Christmas spreading out and sinking in. It’s when we celebrate the light coming to all the world, for all the people. 

We don’t put away the story with the ornaments and stockings, or keep Christmas in its precious, nostalgia box that comes out once a year and otherwise doesn’t intersect with life. The story of Christmas continues.

And for Luke, it continues just after the Shepherds depart, with the scene we just read, that happens when Jesus is just a few days old. 

This is way before the Magi, who don’t actually arrive until Jesus is a toddler. On Epiphany, the Magi are usually the stars of the show. Because of them we remember that we Gentiles are in this story too. The Wise Men are a big deal; they get way more airtime in Matthew than the birth of Jesus does.  And that story has such exciting drama with its spices, and gold, and camels, and the star guiding them to Christ child, the crazy murder-hungry King and dream warnings and such, that we turn usually eagerly from Luke’s Shepherds to Matthew’s Magi and often overlook this little story.  But this is a pretty incredible Epiphany story too.

Joseph and Mary bring their firstborn baby boy to the temple, like every good Jewish couple, for the ritual of “the redemption of the firstborn son.” It’s a ritual of expectation and nostalgia, really.  It is a symbol of the deliverance of firstborn sons from the Angel of Death in Egypt when the Jews were freed from slavery; it is a symbol that this one, and everything that comes after this one, is a gift from God. And so the first fruits of labor, the first money made, the first grains and livestock are given to God, to whom they rightly belong, because God gives us all. The firstborn son, then, belongs to God; he is considered holy. 

But this ritual is, in effect, to buy the child back from God. Rather than the child being set aside to be holy, to live in the temple like Samuel did, or perhaps to become a priest when he grows up, the parents would pay God for the right to raise the child as their own, and let the child to grow up participating in ordinary life, rather than only holy things. This makes it sound heavy, but it wasn’t.  It was a celebration of God’s provision, a reminder of God’s care, and an act of joyful gratitude. You brought your baby to the temple, where a sacrifice was offered and a blessing was made, and you brought your child home, and he belonged to you.

Now, there is this man in Jerusalem, Simeon, a prophet, who spends his days searching the streets, wandering and watching the ordinary world, waiting to see a sign of the salvation of Israel. Simeon is a seeker of the light.  Every year, year after year, Simeon watches for a sign. He lives in expectation that God is going to do something to save the people. Year after year goes by, Simeon gets older and older, hanging onto the promise that he would not die before he saw the God’s salvation. And he waits, and he watches. Year after year, his expectations hang there, unfulfilled, and still Simeon waits.

But on this day, in the middle of the regular holy activity of the temple, Simeon suddenly sees this poor, plain family approach the priest, just getting ready to carry out the ritual.  He rushes past the rest of the world in its routine, and makes a beeline for the family.  Reaching out his hands he gently lifts the baby from his startled mother’s arms.  Holding up this unremarkable couple’s small, red-faced infant in the air, Simeon’s face breaks out in joy.  He raises his voice above the din of the temple, and astonishing Mom & Dad and everyone else, he shouts out his Epiphany, “You can let me die in peace now, God! I’ve seen your salvation with my own eyes! The light has come to the whole world and glory to your people Israel!” 

Then he lowers the child softly into his mother’s arms. And with tears running down his wrinkled face and into his beard, he embraces and blesses the little family.  And when he has finishes his blessing, he leans close to Mary; his hands grip her shoulders and he looks directly into her eyes.  His voice dropping and striking a chillingly serious note that causes her to shudder, he speaks, “This child will be the rise and fall of many in Israel. He’ll be misunderstood and opposed, and his being here will expose the hidden truth of people’s hearts. And it will wound you terribly.”

What did Mary think this was going to be like? Raising the God-child? Did she expect this? The recognition, the outburst, the prediction, the warning? The last people to tell Mary that this child was God-with-us were the shepherds. And Mary has been pondering their words in her heart ever since.  Now someone else has recognized who Jesus is. And he has seen her too, and what it will mean for her life to have Jesus in it.

Then comes Anna, another temple regular.  Once a young, sad widow, she has been in the temple over sixty years devoting her whole life to fasting, praying, and serving.  She gave up her common, ordinary life and took on the life set aside to service of God.  She too is a seeker of the light.

  

When the commotion begins, Anna feels a surge of awareness, a powerful déjà vu.  As though in a dream, she rises from her prayers and slowly walks over, staring at the baby, now awake and starting to fuss. When she reaches the small group, she looks up and locks eyes with Simeon. In deep recognition without words, her soul fills with joy that spills from her eyes.  She raises her head and begins to laugh, and cry, and shout to God, right then and there, Thank you! Thank you, Lord!

Then after placing one small leathery hand tenderly on the baby’s downy head, she whirls around and began telling people, spreading her Epiphany throughout the crowd, grabbing this one walking past, bending to that one kneeling there, her voice filled with wonder and delight, “See that child! Redemption has come!"

Then these two stand as witnesses and watch as the priest completes the ritual. And as light-seekers, Epiphany-bearers, they understand what nobody else sees: In this moment God-incarnate is being claimed by human beings to belong to the human family. The Holy One is called out of the holy to live as an ordinary and common human child. 

And then, his story becomes so ordinary, so commonplace, so representative, that the next dozen or so years of Jesus’ life are summarized in one line: “And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.”

Those years were full of absolutely ordinary things –cuts and bruises, and stomach flu, and temper tantrums, and baby sisters, and making friends, and being teased, and doing chores, and laughter, anger, gladness and tears. And like every human life those years were also full of tragedy and loss and fear and surprise. Politics and violence shaped the world Jesus lived in too. In his teen years many Galileans were killed in political uprisings; throughout his childhood Roman atrocities were still happening in the villages around his. 

And before Jesus turns 30 Mary buries Joseph. His dad doesn’t get to see his son’s ministry begin. And then she will have to helplessly watch her son die.  Because he lived an ordinary human life.

The light has come into the world. INTO the world – the very fabric of it. Inseparable from it. Tangled and tied and mixed up and stirred in, so that it cannot be extracted.  It’s not set apart for holy places or special people. The ordinary is infused with the holy, the holy has been claimed by the ordinary; God is irreversibly here. 

Christmas is not a brief episode, a happy but empty event; Christmas is a reorientation to the future. Christmas is the beginning of God’s joining us in this life. In every single ordinary, and unholy, and joy-filled, and disappointing part of it.

  

Simeon and Anna glimpsed the future right now. They recognized in a tiny baby given over to an ordinary life, the mighty movement of reconciliation and redemption coming into the world. It wasn’t a future either of them would get to see unfold in its fullness, all they would get is this one glimpse. But they proclaimed its coming nevertheless.  They recognized, and knew that the world would never be the same. 

Our traditions and rituals are not big enough or deep enough to hold all the expectations and longings we pile onto them. But Christ is in the world.  And we are asked to put our expectations and longings on him.  All the strained relationships and lost opportunities, all the people we hurt and those whose hurt we can’t release. All the love we have and don’t know how to show, and the places where we are just perpetually disappointed—confess them, in pain and sorrow, to this child, this God in here with us, who has lived it all alongside us.  

This One can bear the weight of all our expectations. This One can hold all our disappointment, and unfulfilled longing and grief, and work new life in us. Christ can set us free from resentment, free from being defined by anger, or loss, or worry, free from fear, and free from the power we give to the stories we tell ourselves. We are not trapped or stuck. That is the gift of Christmas.

Anna and Simeon recognized it, and so can we. We are the light-seekers and we are the Epiphany-bearers.  We are the ones who glimpse in the ordinary the future that is coming. We can live in the promise that these hard places within us and between us one day will be healed. We can trust that this brokenness in the world is being healed.  We can watch for it, and tell about it when we see it in front of us in subtle and wonderful ways. 

So maybe we sit by a candle, or by the window when the first light of dawn is breaking, and let the tears come. Or maybe it happens as we are taking down the tree, or by the light of the wildfires raging on the news, or in the car on the way home from the hard visit, or sitting across from the dying one’s own tears. 

To feel the brokenness, the incompleteness of it all, and pour it out to God is not some kind of failing; it’s brave faith.  Telling God the truth of our disappointment, anger, and unfulfilled longings and expectations is an act of trust. Trust in the one who knows the longing, who is bringing the healing, who can handle our sorrow, and who will make us whole.

The Kingdom of God is slower, and deeper, and is not in a hurry, and doesn’t stop either. God’s salvation comes. Darkness is all shot through with light. Christ is in the world.  Sometimes the wait is long, like Simeon’s. But the promise is real. Christmas is still spreading out and sinking in.  And one day, the love, freedom and joy of it will be all that remains. 

Amen.

This is part of a series, journeying with some of our Biblical ancestors: Hannah, Mary, Anna & Simeon, John, Samuel, David*, The Samaritan Woman, 


(*This is an older message about David, in this series, we had a wonderful performance of 'David" by Theater for the Thirsty)

Real Reality: Bumping up Against Grace

2 Kings 5:1-14 

(& Revelation 7:9-17)  

Naaman is a hot shot general. A high up muckity muck commander of the King of Aram’s army.  And he’s got a terrible secret. He has a dreadful skin disease. The kind that if it were widely known; people would shun and fear him. The kind that spreads wickedly and eventually destroys you, bit by bit, making you numb and breaking you down, until you’re worthless and ruined, and then you die.

Now, there is going to be some rearranging in this story, some view-shifting suprises. Some lessons about who God is, and some surprising places where power does and doesn’t reside, and what ultimately is real reality. So listen up.

To start, Naaman is powerful. The slave girl that his soldiers stole from her homeland who now serves Naaman’s wife, is not. And yet this girl knows who can help him (which means she also first must know he is in need of help) and she offers to him what she knows – there is a prophet who can cure you. 

The slave girl from Israel does not keep silent and guard her knowledge, instead she reaches out to help the very person responsible for her slavery. Why?, we might wonder if we were Naaman. Why would she help me? It makes no sense. But Naaman, so secure in his perch of power, doesn’t stop to wonder about this.  He misses the first sign.

 Instead he goes straight to his boss, a king, who sends him off to the king of Israel – because who is the most powerful person in a nation but its king?  Any shamans or seers or healers would certainly be under his employ; he wields the power of life and death, so surely he is the one to whom Naaman should be sent, right? And off Namaan goes.  Now these two kings have been at war before (such as when the slave girl was taken from Israel to begin with) and they will be at war again. But for now, the king is asking a fellow king for a favor.

Only, the king of Israel is not pleased by this request.  In fact, he tears his clothes, thinking the other king is provoking him, creating a situation that could lead to more war. Because, and here’s our second glimpse into the strange workings of the people of God- the descendants of those delivered out of slavery into the promised land, those who knew the wilderness and the covenants of God’s way of life that is radically different from the Pharaoh’s, those who lived under King David, who have known the direct intervention of the Almighty, and the guidance of prophets, and the wisdom of Solomon – they don’t function like other kingdoms.  You see, the king is not really the most powerful person in Israel. Kings have their place, sure, but God appoints prophets who anoint kings and hold kings accountable, who speak to God for the people and for God to the people, and who provide a kind of checks and balances, cosmically speaking.

So as Naaman’s journey unfolds, he’s getting himself into something. All the centers of power that should be, are proving to be merely illusion, or simply a matter of opinion, as Naaman travels farther and farther from what he has always known as reality. He just doesn’t realize it yet.

Until, after Elisha summons him from the king’s court, he arrives at the front door of the prophet.

Naaman’s life is in the balance. This disease will eventually take his health, his reputation, his career, his life.  And here’s his chance to be cured.  So he is going to throw all he can at it. And what he can throw is considerable. He is accustomed to getting what he can pay for, to knowing what his prestige and riches can buy. He is not used to being treated as though he is… ordinary.  He knows the score. He has settled it more than once.  He knows the rules to the game and how to stay on top, where he belongs.

Here’s the irony though, for the very powerful Naaman, for most of us, from time to time, perhaps.  Super-commander, leprosy-infected Naaman stands at that door believing he is both better than, and worse than, every other person around him.

He knows he is in a position to need to humble himself enough to ask for healing, but not so much that he is helpless or anything. He can certainly pay for it. He can wow the prophet in the process.  He can show up with his chariots and entourage, with his considerable wealth dripping off him ready to trade treasures for services rendered.

And yet, as he is soon to discover, this is not about what Naaman can earn or buy or bargain for. This is not about approaching kings and impressing prophets and purchasing a new shot at life.

This is grace. Pure and simple. Unearned. Undeserved. Healing because God chooses to heal him, and nothing else.  Naaman has bumped up against the grace of God.

So Naaman’s choice to receive this gift that can’t be bought is going to be humbling. He’s going to have to follow instructions, as mundane as they are, that give no attention whatsoever to his greatness or his terribleness. They simply say, go and bathe in the Jordan river.  The river that Jesus will one day be baptized in and claimed as God’s own.  Bring your impressive self with your impressive disease to the muddy, ordinary, unimpressive river.  Dip seven times- the number of completion, of perfection- and you will be made clean.

This infuriates Naaman. It makes him crazy with indignation.  Here he stands in real need, the spot on his arm spreading, he swears, even since yesterday! Here he stands near his state of the art chariots in his flashing armor and rich robes, more striking in his might and in his need, than anybody else, right? He is to be taken seriously.  And then he is sent off by a lowly messenger like an errand boy, to bathe in an underwhelming river.  Elisha the prophet doesn’t even come to the door.

Will he receive the gift of healing? Will he accept the grace that is offered?

How do we try to earn what is only a gift? 

How might we miss what God wants to do in and through us through ordinary people in ordinary ways, because we are so convinced God should do it in the way that would impress us or others? Take us as seriously as we take ourselves?  Respect our hard work, or our deep pain?  We want God to play by the rules of the world. To reward those who earn it, or buy it, or deserve it, or can prove they’re worthy, or who pray the loudest, or beg the hardest, or give the most selflessly.

And we want God to join us in our conspiracy to cheat death or avoid death, which means, actually, that we want God to fear death along with us.

But God doesn’t. God is not afraid of death.  God’s not afraid of anything that intimidates us or impressed by anything that sways us.  One day we will stand with God on the other side of the ordeal, on the other side of whatever told us we were dirty or different or dangerous, whatever told us we were worthy, or better, or good.  One day we will stand on the other side of it, not because we did anything to get there but because Jesus did. Jesus is more powerful than all that we think is powerful, more real than all we think is real.

You and I, we’d like a little lead time. We’d like a heads up, and maybe a bit more of a buffer, financially speaking. We’d like to be able to rest our whole security in something we can see and touch, even if what we can see and touch is the respect of others measured by the number of Facebook friends or Twitter followers or letters after our name, or people who know our name. We’d like to trust in our success or stability as witnessed by the numbers on our bank statement, or report card, or frequent flier miles, or on our latest fasting-cholesterol reading, or gauge our value by how well our kids and grandkids are doing in the world’s eyes. 

What we don’t realize is that healing never comes to our bodies alone, or an isolated problem or situation. It’s always more of a total overhaul: it changes our spirit and our outlook and our way of being in the world, maybe even more than it affects the physical ailment or specific immediate problem.  Because healing is a stepping momentarily into the eternal, where our metrics don’t mean a thing. It shifts what matters to what really matters.

The final voice of wisdom, that is, voice of with the power to shape the outcome of things for Naaman, is another servant.  Come on, the man says. If the prophet had told you to do something difficult, you would’ve done it in a heartbeat. This is easy! Why not give it a try?

So a discombobulated Naaman, stripped of his pride and his pristine robes, steps through the weeds and muck into the Jordan river and begins to dunk himself under. One could say, he steps into his own baptism, his own Red Sea crossing – “Be Still, and God will fight for you.” 

I wonder what got washed away with each dip?

How could that “prophet” humiliate me in this way? Who does he think he is?

Dunk. Does he even know who I am? I am important and powerful!

Dunk. I am powerless and filthy, riddled with disease and heading for the grave.

Dunk. I want to be made well. I really want to be healed.

Dunk. What if this works? Could this possibly work?

Dunk. Why should it?  Who do I even think I am?

Dunk. Oh God, help me!

Dunk.

And out he emerges from the watery darkness, glowing and clean, with the skin of a child, fresh and unblemished.

Listen to what happens next:

15 Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company; he came and stood before him and said, ‘Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel; please accept a present from your servant.’

But [Elisha] said, ‘As the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will accept nothing!’

He urged him to accept, but he refused.

Then Naaman said, ‘If not, please let two mule-loads of earth be given to your servant for your servant will no longer offer burnt-offering or sacrifice to any god except the Lord. ¹⁸But may the Lord pardon your servant on one count: when my master goes into the house of Rimmon to worship there, leaning on my arm, and I bow down in the house of Rimmon, when I do bow down in the house of Rimmon, may the Lord pardon your servant on this one count.’

[Elisha] said to him, ‘Go in peace.’

God is God and we are not. 

God’s way of being and doing is not a bit like our own, and God doesn’t care one whit for our success or power or credibility or how much we can bargain for what we think we should earn.  Instead God cares for each of us in our most naked and vulnerable selves– all the mess and all the glory mixed up together in a body that breaks down and an ego that puffs up. 

Naaman discovered that God heals and makes whole.  He felt what it is to be seen and loved by the Creator.  He glimpsed a reality stronger and deeper than what he’d always believed, so off he went, with a ridiculous grin plastered on his fresh-skin face, and a couple of wagon loads of Israeli soil so that from now on he could pray on holy ground to the God who saw and saved him.

Today is All Saints Sunday. It has been celebrated in the Christian Church for over a thousand years, as a day to look beyond the reality in front of us to the bigger picture, to remember that those who’ve gone before are, what the author of Hebrews calls, “a great cloud of witnesses” that surrounds us. That in God’s reality nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Not time or death, not heights or depths or angels or demons or principalities or powers or things present or things to come or success or power or weakness or failure or who we think we are or who we say we know or what we can measure.  All the things we see as so important, so permanent, so powerful -they cannot define us, they cannot save us, and they cannot keep us enslaved.  God is outside and beyond, and also enters right in, right alongside, so that we are not alone.

A tradition in many churches today is to remember your baptism. That which truly defines us. The reality spoken over us that our identity is first and foremost, and last and forever, in Christ Jesus. We approach the font and feel the water in our hand and imagine ourselves going under, imagine the lies and the sickness and the sin and the shame and the pride and the arrogance and the self-importance and the self-hatred and the judgment and the pity and all of the layers washing away as we dunk under into the watery chaos and come up, clean and new. 

We imagine ourselves alongside all who’ve ever gone under that same water – Naaman, and Jesus, and your own dear grandmother, and those sitting beside you right now- no better and no worse than any other, and saints, every single one.  Because we are not defined by the reality of the world that tells us who we are is earned, bought, lost, or bargained.  We are defined by the Creator of the Universe who reaches out in unearned, undeserved grace, and grabs hold of us and says, this one is mine.

Listen to the words spoken over the baptized – as I speak them over you again today:

For you, little one,

the Spirit of God moved over the waters at creation,


and the Lord God made covenants with God’s people.


It was for you that the Word of God became flesh


and lived among us,

full of grace and truth.


For you, [N], Jesus Christ suffered death


crying out at the end, "It is finished!"


For you Christ triumphed over death,


rose in newness of life,


and ascended to rule over all.


All of this was done for you, little one,


though you do not know any of this yet.


But we will continue to tell you this good news


until it becomes your own.


And so the promise of the gospel is fulfilled:


"We love because God first loved us." 

May we, like Naaman, be washed again today of whatever we fear and hide, whatever we believe is powerful and able to say who we are and aren’t. 

And may our hearts be opened and our perception awakened,

to see what is really real,

to walk vulnerably into the healing that is offered us,

and to face our lives confident in the promises that hold us, and brave to live them out,

alongside all those we share our days with, and all those who’ve gone before us, and all those who will come after you and me. 

Today, may we bump up against grace.

Amen.