To Remain Human

 

(This is why LNPC is doing a digital fast.)

To Remain Human

by Brian Lewis

The nervous system

was never designed

to carry the grief

of an entire planet

Yet here we are

A child starving

crosses our screen

between weather reports

and advertisements

Forests burn beside stock prices

Wars arrive

in the same hand

that holds photographs

of our grandchildren

And somewhere inside us

something ancient

keeps trying

to respond

This is the exhaustion

few know how to name

Not simply stress

Not simply fear

But the unbearable collision

between the human heart

and the scale

of modern awareness

We were meant

to know the sorrow

of the village

Now we are asked

to metabolize

the suffering

of civilizations

And many are drowning

Some in rage

Some in distraction

Some in endless performance

Some in irony so thick

it becomes a shield

against feeling anything real

Others quietly disappear

inside themselves

their spirits dimming

beneath the constant demand

to remain informed

productive

available

certain

The world keeps shouting

Choose a side

Move faster

Consume more

Outrage harder

Win

But the soul

does not speak

in that language

The soul speaks

through silence

through grief

through awe

through the sudden trembling

that arrives

when one human being

finally feels

the reality

of another

This is why

so many people

stand at the edge

of breakdown

Not because they are weak

But because they are porous

Because somewhere beneath

the armor

their humanity

is still functioning

And perhaps

that is what must now

be protected

Not merely ecosystems

Not merely institutions

But the fragile interior capacities

that allow human beings

to remain human

inside an age

that profits from fragmentation

To remain tender

without collapsing

To remain informed

without becoming consumed

To remain compassionate

without surrendering discernment

To stand before suffering

without turning away 

and yet also

without allowing suffering

to transform the heart

into stone

This is harder

than revolution

Harder than ideology

Harder than certainty

Because it asks something

few civilizations

have ever learned to cultivate

strength

without cruelty

Perhaps this is why

small acts matter so much now

A hand on a shoulder

A teacher

who notices the silent child

A man planting trees

whose shade

he will never live to sit beneath

A woman refusing

to let cynicism

be mistaken for wisdom

These are not small things

They are the architecture

of psychological survival

The architecture

of repair

And maybe the future

will not ultimately be decided

by those

who accumulated the most power 

but by those

who learned

how to carry immense complexity

without surrendering

their capacity

for love

Because civilizations do not die

only from invasion

or collapse

They also die

when people can no longer feel

one another

When exhaustion

becomes identity

When distraction

becomes culture

When tenderness

becomes embarrassment

When the human nervous system

finally says

enough

But I do not believe

that ending

is inevitable

I think there are still people

quietly rebuilding

the interior world

Still people

teaching children wonder

Still people

protecting beauty

Still people

who understand

that compassion

is not sentiment

It is infrastructure

And perhaps

the task before us now

is not merely

to save the world 

but to become

the kind of people

capable

of inhabiting it together.

 

Belonging In Turbulent Times

Ephesians 2:11-22

Americans are living in an intense time, or at least, anticipating one. After half a century of political peace in this nation, there is brewing a kind of turbulence we’ve had in our past and other nations have experienced more recently or frequently.  And we kind of don’t know what to do with that. Let’s just say, it’s nicer to feel invincible as a country, to assume that what happens other places won’t or can’t happen here. It’s preferable to at least pretend that things will always remain stable no matter what. 

When things get intense, we humans amp up a favorite sin, which is to other each other. To hunker down into our silos of shared ideology and use shorthand labels to sort who’s in and out, who’s an ally we can count on and who’s an enemy we can despise or ignore. We can sum up a whole person in a single word, words like MAGA, woke, immigrant, anti-vaxxer, lawyer, widow, trans, white, sick, retired, Evangelical. We can boil down an entire human being into a simplistic stereotype. And once the label defines who we are, we’d better stick with our own group, because how else will we belong?

Which brings us to this letter, written several decades after Jesus died, to people who are doing what people do – they are othering each other. The recipient community is made up of both Gentile and Jewish Christians.  And according to this letter, shorthand labels have been slapped on the groups: “the circumcision” and “the uncircumcision.” 

Why those words? The offspring of Abraham were chosen by God to particularly, knowingly, intentionally, participate with God in caring for the world. This covenant identity and role was marked by circumcision. Called to be the people of God for the sake of all the other nations, they were agents of belonging in and for the world.

And so, this ancient symbol of belonging to God to care for the world is now being used inside a community of Christ-followers to separate and alienate, the very opposite of its original meaning.

Fourteen generations after Abraham, a young, Jewish woman was invited by a messenger of the Divine to be what some ancient Greek icons call, “the container of the uncontainable.” Through her body, God came into this fragile human life of living and dying to reconcile all things to Godself. Born a helpless infant needing to be cared for by those he came to save, Jesus came to break down all divisions and bring all people into the family of God.  

The Magi from afar, kneeling before this impossible child, were the first to worship a Messiah they did not grow up anticipating, (I suppose making them the original “the uncircumcised.”) Then thirty years later, after Jesus died and was resurrected, the party burst the seams and spread everywhere, and people of all languages and cultures were drawn by the Holy Spirit into the covenant family of God and transformed into agents of belonging for the whole world.

We’re now 81 generations after God came in Christ reconciling all people to Godself. But the malicious custom of othering others is alive and well in us. Every culture and people is adept at dividing, blaming and condemning, with their own short-hand labels and dismissive ways to signal who’s in and who’s out, and we are certainly no exception. Nor do we hesitate to use the language and symbols of our faith to do so. Why do we do this?

All human beings share the longing to feel safe and seen, to matter, to contribute. All people feel pain and joy, welcome new life, and experience aging and death. All people suffer. All people long to belong. But with our limited imaginations and seemingly unlimited susceptibility to fear and insecurity, we mostly can’t fathom that the belonging of God includes us all, or that there is no limit on love, no quota on forgiveness, no ranking of human value, no lifetime maximum belonging a person experiences or offers to others before it's all used up. 

Remembering our shared humanity feels easier when life is going along smoothly and we have spare reserves of equanimity and Zen. And perhaps some of us here now do, thanks be to God if that is you today. 

But many of us are a bit worried and raw, a tad edgy and tired, and collectively there’s a looming sense that things are just beginning, whatever that means, whatever those things turn out to be. So, it’s safe to say, even without a lot going on on the health front, or job front, or kid front, or parent front, most of us are already not operating at full capacity. 

For my part, 11 days ago, our jet-lagged family welcomed a new, wildly disruptive puppy who we are already in love with, but the sleep deprivation and vigilant attentiveness is no joke.  My kids keep telling me I’m mean. I don’t feel mean, just tired. But I’m told I walk around all the time sounding mean. 

So, if the message of this text today was: Go be kind and love all people, it would be impossible for me. Because right now, I can barely be kind to the people I already love. 

Add to the fatigue and caffeine a steady flow of news and commentary about political conventions and the horrors in Ukraine and Gaza, and fretting about the future of the planet, and there is no way I’m an agent of love and belonging in the world.  

The way of fear is loud, and I listen to it. And Paul seemed to know his readers did too. So the answer to our petty division and deep anxiety isn’t just to tell us Quit it and be nice!

We are simply, clearly, not capable of that. 

Thank God Paul wrote this letter and not I. Because here’s what he has to say, (aka, hear the good news of the gospel): 

First, the peace, goodness and wholeness we long for so deeply? It is not of our making. Christ does this, is doing this, has done this, will do this. Jesus Christ “proclaimed peace to those far off and peace to those near,” giving us all access to the very heart of God. Well-being within, well-being between, well-being everlasting.  We don’t do this, Christ does.

Second, Paul writes earlier in this letter that it is God’s “plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”  Meaning, this world, and everything in it, belongs to God. We are held in a greater love and a deeper story that outlasts time itself.  So, we can with confidence answer the “what if?” of fear with the “even if!” of hope. This is a lesson we learned during the pandemic when we left the building in Lent and returned two years later having learned the Lenten lesson still hanging on the wall, “Fear asks, What if? Hope answers, Even if!” Even if the worst thing we can imagine happens (like the whole world shuts down in a pandemic!), God is still God. Love is still love. This is all heading somewhere unstoppable. Even if. Always.

So we can look at the world truthfully, without hiding or covering over evil, upheaval, suffering or general disappointment. We will name the reality, “This is part of the story.” But then we’ll keep going, naming also the deeper reality, “This is not the whole story. The world belongs to God.” 

Third, Paul says the divisions we think exist - Christ has shattered them. Christ abolishes hostility and alienation between us and makes out of the fractured bits one human race. We don’t choose this, or create this, and we can’t make it not true (even when we try). In Christ, God reconciled us all to God and each other, and complete wholeness and connection is where this whole story is heading. We can deny it or defy it. Or we can join it, by taking up our calling to participate with God in caring for this world. 

This is not done through our stellar intentions or superhuman efforts, but by our honesty, our humility, our presence alongside, with and for one another. We live the belonging by our vulnerability. By seeking to see others and be truly seen. By asking for, and offering forgiveness. Pursuing invincibility and chasing safety won’t bring us well-being. We live into fullness of life, this peace Christ offers, by opening up and welcoming our shared humanity with those who – no matter how different than us- are also just like us. 

Finally, Paul tells us we are “no longer strangers and aliens, but citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.” 

We, the Church - that is, you and me and all those everywhere formed by the death and resurrection of Christ and drawn by the Holy Spirit into the covenant family of God - we are transformed into agents of belonging for the whole world. And we are marked for this covenant identity and role by our baptism. 

When we live in the actual, particular, singular life we’ve each been given, committed to be in this place with these people, today, no matter what tomorrow brings or the day after that, something happens to us and through us that we can’t control. The Holy Spirit makes the hodge-podge, imperfect collection of ordinary people a holy dwelling place of the Divine. We become “the container of the uncontainable.” Jesus Christ is actually here, among and between us, drawing us into the beloved world where he continues to break down all divisions, and bring all people into the family of God.  

So take a breath and let it out. Settle into the love that holds us all. 

May we trust God, care for others, and live the gift and calling of our shared belonging. Come what may, even if, and always.

Amen.

Ordinary Miracles and Ongoing Epiphany

 

Adoration of the Magi, Andrea Mantegna, c. 1495-1505.

When Epiphany dawns, the swaddling clothes have long been packed away in the attic of the peaceful little home, with room for a workshop that Joseph had rented them in Bethlehem, not too far from THE stable, actually, but near enough to town that he got a little business, enough to keep food on the table. 

And to be honest, since the night when the shepherds and angels and everyone showed up in a wild blur of glory and honor, life has been kind of quiet. Mary and Joseph are far from the people and place they’d call home, no grandparents pitching in or aunties around offering advice through Jesus’ first fever, first tooth, first words, first steps. Leaning on their new community for connection and support.  This was not how they imagined their family life would start- not even once they rearranged their imaginings to include God-incarnate crawling across the living room floor.  Other than that one time Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Zechariah came to visit, commiserating over sleepless nights and nursing woes while the babies gurgled together on a blanket on the floor, it has mostly been just the three of them, mama, dada and Jesus, getting to know each other, gently becoming a family.  Week to week, season to season, it’s an ordinary life. 

 

Until the pagans show up and call their kid the king of the Jews.  

 

Just when the story begins to lose its hard edges, when the nostalgia starts to descend and the lens begins to soften, when this baby has begun to feel like he is theirs, a reminder that he is not arrives in the form of sages from a far-off land, astrologers, scientist mystic-scholars who had been watching the skies for signs of God.  

Surprising, perhaps, that those with no personal stake in the story generational anticipation of a Messiah, or claim to Yahweh’s promises to the people claimed by Yahweh, are the ones Yahweh involves next. Their arrival bursts the domestic bubble and exposes the light to all the world.  

 

Epiphany, we call this day. Enlightenment. Aha!  When the scene is illuminated what was familiar and known one second look completely other and utterly amazing the next, often because you suddenly see things with a broader perspective, or through the eyes of another. 

The Christmas moment speaks God WITH US, Epiphany says GOD with us.  

Attention! Sweet and cuddly though he is, folks, this isn’t your own private Messiah.  He belongs to the whole earth! And all who live upon it belong to this little one who has settled himself contentedly here in your lap.  You are recipients of this miracle as much as the next person, of course, but with just as little sense of what it all means as the rest of us, maybe even less, actually, than these astonishing strangers who have arrived on your doorstep seem to grasp.

 

After this great entourage of exotic travelers that have flooded this quiet, provincial town exchange greetings with his parents and bestow their gifts on the child (and there were certainly many of them, of course; what a silly modern assumption that there were just three, because one gift a piece), after the camels have been tended to and bedded down, the tents erected and the strangers washed up and unpacked, I love the crazy, cozy image of lamps lit, table set, Mary and Joseph and their surprise visitors all crowded around an unexpected potluck of fragrant dishes. Wall to wall humans, who look different and smell different and wear different clothing and speak different languages, and whose paths never, ever should have crossed on this planet in any conceivable way, breaking bread together, drinking wine together, sharing together what used to be mostly their own private secret that nobody else could relate to. Perhaps tomorrow they’ll invite the shepherds back over for breakfast.

 

These travelers, who have journeyed over desert and mountains, through seasons and struggles, countless freezing nights and endless scortching day, driven by a quest through unknown to arrive at the very source. And then, from the moment they lay eyes on the child, and Mary and Joseph lay eyes on them, the cosmic cat is out of the bag, so to speak.

 

The ego-maniacal King Herod is now chomping at the bit to stamp out this newly discovered threat to his power, and the news is out, things are not business as usual; God has really come, the world is topsy-turvy and strangers from a strange land are visiting that nice couple down the street, normal as you please.  And it’s as though that one lone star now shatters into a trillion pieces, filling the sky with bright mess, scattering shards of radiance from one end of the globe to the other.

 

Of course they stayed a while, these unexpected guests.  After all, it took many months, maybe years, to get there, they’re not just spending one night and leaving.  So what was it like, adjusting to being next to the miracle for a while?  Was it all the more miraculous for its ordinariness? 

How did it feel to go from a distant star and a lifelong, theoretical quest for truth to a flesh and blood child who threw bawling toddler tantrums when he needed a nap, smeared hummus on the dog, and belly-laughed when daddy tickled him with his beard?  

Because here’s a truth, miracles are almost never as sexy in person as they’re built up to be.  

 

What was it like for Mary and the strangers from the East to fall into some daily patterns together, to have almost nothing humanly in common and yet get one another at a cellular level, sharing in a reality nobody else on earth yet sees, representing to each other by their presence that this really is real. God has really come; the world is being redeemed.  This wonky little collection of folk are now church, if church means, and I think it does, the people gathered around Jesus wondering together who God is, and watching together what ,God is up to. But also, maybe, getting annoyed because they load the dishwasher wrong and forget to take their shoes off in the house?

 

And then after the long visit, and the dreamt warning not to go back to Herod, and the Magi bypassing Jerusalem to return home by another road - (Oh, wasn’t Herod steaming mad when then never swung back by the palace! Didn’t he pace on his balcony with his eyes on the horizon day after day, the realization slowing dawning after one week, two, three, that they were NOT coming back, and there wasn’t a darn thing he could do about it!) - Just after the hugs and blessings and goodbyes, the little family turns back inside, sighing, and expecting, perhaps, that life might return to normal: normal is redefined again. 

Epiphany keeps going, you see.  It doesn’t actually let you turn back. 

By its very nature Epiphany’s path is almost always that of another road.

 

The new road is revealed when, three years after the one who told him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, an angel messenger invades Joseph’s dreams, saying, Take the child and his mother and flea, right now, go to Egypt. Get up! NOW.  And it’s your turn, Joseph, to be the strangers from a foreign land.

God-with-us, who was born in a stable is now transient and homeless, and you along with him, foreigners in a foreign land.  

 

Some traditions hold that the little family settled in Egypt with the Ishmaelites, that they were received warmly by the way other side of the family tree, way back before Egypt became the land of captivity, the place from which Yahweh delivered the Israelites from slavery, back from the time when it was all the same trunk, the roots, the beginning. Father Abraham - father of us all, descendants as numerous as the stars.

 

It’s like baby God is on a sightseeing tour of the greatest hits. 

I have been at this project for quite some time, you see…

 

So to the land of Egypt they went, (part of the Roman Empire at the time), seeking safety and welcome in the hospitality, hearts and homes of strangers, who are all part of the whole great story anyway, while back home among the children of Israel, the so-called “King of the Jews” Herod’s terrible wrath and fear ordered the deaths of all male children under two in an effort to stamp out the light of the world before the flame caught and spread.

 

Then it was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: ‘A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.’

 

And I hate that part of the story and will never understand it, and don’t have a whole lot to say about it, except to notice both that God’s love doesn’t keep madness from happening but suffers it with us, coming as a homeless, transient peasant child, whose identity is revealed to nameless sheep-herders and pagan foreigners and NOT to the powers that be, no matter how loudly they rattle their sabers and fiercely they demand to be in on the secret, and also that as sweeping and awful as Herod’s act of terrible evil was, it seemed not to make a dent whatsoever in the God-with-us project. And while Herod himself is long dead and gone, love endures forever, profoundly and mightily, and every single day God-with-us is with us, transforming our shared life, bringing belonging and hope, redemptive kindness and healing care, and continuing to break through the darkness with light, every moment of every day.

After Herod’s death the little family finally journeys to Galilee, where they settle down at home amid grandparents and lifelong neighbors, to raise their first-grader in Nazareth, where he will run through the same streets, swim in the same streams, sit in the same school and participate in the same synagogue they did, in the tiny familiar world that had cradled and shaped them before their lives were ripped open by the light of the world.  

 

How was little Jesus shaped by those early wanderings, I wonder? 

What did he absorb from the Magi and the Egyptians, from the journeys and the dreams, and then from those who shaped his sense of home?  How did Epiphany bend his path?

 

And what about those Magi? The journeyers, soul friends and miracle sharers who brought epiphany onto the scene as much as they received it themselves?  What became of their lives after their encounter with the light of the world? How were they drawn into a lifetime of attunement to epiphany?

 

Epiphany keeps going, friends. The light of the world shimmers in our very own lives. And nobody gets to own this story – this story holds us all. It can’t be domesticated. What God is doing is always bigger, always more, always beyond us, and also right here next to us, in the minutia of our very ordinary lives. It pierces the darkness, the horrors, the loneliness, the wandering. It shares the awkward and unknown, the familiar and the comforting, the strange and the new, the death and the life, drawing us out into worlds we can’t imagine, bringing us home by roads we can’t foresee. 

 

Today we get star words. They are not magic. But they are a chance to lift our heads and look beyond ourselves with hearts open to however Christ might encounter us, attentive to wherever God might lead us this year. God is with us, transforming the world. 

So, arise, shine, beloved, your light has come. 

Happy Epiphany.

 

 

Our humanity is showing

Daily Devotion - April 2

I will send a brief message each day (except Mondays) while we are pausing gathering in person.
- Kara

Every night after dinner Andy and I watch the PBS NewsHour. My daughter thinks it's funny to see the reporters all talking from their own homes, with their books and photos in the background like the rest of us, all reaching the world through our screens.

There is a tenderness to the program these days.
I feel like Judy Woodruff is mothering us through this, alone in the studio. After each segment the people say things to each other like, "It's so good to see you."  And, "Stay healthy." And, "We appreciate your work so much." And "Thank you for what you do."  The nightly news is shimmering with care and humanity.

But I also cry through the news every night.  I cry at the horror - overflowing ERs with under-equipped doctors and nurses, freezer trucks as morgues, caravans of migrant workers in India. And then I cry at the beauty - people hanging out of windows and off balconies raucously applauding doctors and nurses at shift change time, a little girl being given a "birthday parade" of cars driving by her house honking, a violinist in an evening gown giving a concert off of her front porch, a woman on her back deck leading a zumba class with a bullhorn while people in backyards in every direction flail along.

Our humanity is showing.
Both the horror and the beauty are on full display right now. The weakness and the strength, side by side.
Tears feel like an appropriate response.

Also, God is here. In all of it.  Right here in it.  Always meeting us in the places we don't expect or forget to look.

Death and life, lament and resurrection -  it's all right at the surface.  I want to live awake to it AND being awake hurts a little bit right now.  But I am working hard to let myself stay permeable, to allow the sorrow and joy move through me, to rinse me out and get me ready for more.  I want to keep watching for God in the midst of it all. I want to keep seeing people.  This feels like the most important thing I can do.

I'm remembering now that this means resting more too, and turning it off on purpose sometimes as well.  Sabbath has never been more important.  For me, this means no news on Sundays.  And I am taking Mondays completely off. No screens. No work. Just rest. Being outdoors. Reading good novels. Making good food.  Naps. Tending the house. Tending the yard.  Tending my family relationships.  And I am ending each work day at 4 pm (except Tuesdays, when session meets at 4).  The boundaries are not easy for me, but they feel vitally important.

Where have your tears been coming?
How have you been experiencing humanity - your own and others'?
What has been your sabbath?
What boundaries are helping you navigate things?

Living awake takes courage. Staying open takes a willingness to be broken open. Our humanity is on full display.  But out there, in here, there is grace for it all. There is grace for what happens, and grace for our response to it, and grace for the next thing after that.  

Spirit, open my heart, to the joy and pain of living...
Amen.

CONNECTING RITUAL:

Perhaps, right now as you read this, or tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we might recite or sing this together, and so join our hearts:

Chorus:
Spirit open my heart
To the joy and pain of living
As you love may I love
In receiving and in giving
Spirit, open my heart

1 God, replace my stony heart
with a heart that's kind and tender.
All my coldness and fear
to your grace I now surrender.

2 Write your love upon my heart
as my law, my goal, my story.
In each thought, word, and deed,
may my living bring you glory.

3 May I weep with those who weep,
share the joy of sister, brother.
In the welcome of Christ,
may we welcome one another.
Listen to it here.


This week, we are reading through the Gospel of John.  In my house, it is at the dinner table. Maybe for you, it will be when you wake up, or before bed, or over lunch.  It can be read in about 20 minutes a day, or by reading three chapters each day.  If this is your approach, today, we are reading Chapters 13-15.

An Ongoing Conversation

Luke 11:1-13

When I was young, I believed prayer could cure cancer and guarantee we’d find a parking spot at the mall. I knew ways to pray that would bring Jesus into your heart or cast demons out of it.  I even believed that I had a magic super power prayer. I thought, if anyone tried to kidnap me, I would only need to shout with confidence, “I rebuke you in the name of the Lord!” and they would flee in fear.  I almost hoped someone would try it.  Thank God nobody did.

I prayed all the time, for everything, I didn’t hesitate, I asked brazenly for what I wanted, expecting it to be given unto me.  

I am not sure what I thought about God, who God was or what God was about, except that I had the bead on God. I knew how to get God to do what wanted. I would say the right words, the right way with the right attitude, and whatever I asked for would happen. “Your will be done, Lord!” I had the code cracked.  I knew God loved me and had a wonderful plan for my life. Seek and you will find! Ask and you will receive! I got this.

Here’s what’s tricky about this. It would be easy now to say I got it all wrong. That’s not how prayer works at all. And it’s true; it’s not. But there was one thing in this that I got right.  

In the parable Jesus tells his disciples, about the neighbor who knocks on the door at night asking for bread for an unexpected guest, the word for persistence, is actually, in the Greek, “shameless, audacious, bold.”  He tells his disciples to boldly, brazenly ask for what they want. I had some boldness about me in those days.  That part of prayer I got right.

Yesterday I googled “How to pray” and got 795,000,000 results. We want to do it right. We are trying to live a good life, and we don’t want to mess it up.  We would love to have a magic ace up our sleeve, but at the very least, we don’t want to piss off the almighty.  Or maybe we don’t even know if there is an almighty, but we think it wouldn’t hurt to hedge our bets.  We have things we want done, things we wish we’d never done, people we want to save and we wouldn’t mind making sure we ourselves are saved too.  The world is scary. Bad things happen. We do bad things. Prayer must be there to fix all of this, right?

Teach us to pray! Jesus’ disciples ask him. John’s taught his disciples! They got the bonus lesson, we want that too!  Jesus seems to got it going on in the prayer department. Give us a little of your mojo, Lord.  

So Jesus does gives them some words. And I love him for this. They wanted something concrete to hold onto, and he gave them that. We want something concrete to hold onto, and God gives us that.  

We’ve made his words into The Lord’s Prayer, a procedure almost, something we can rattle off.  And indeed, we do rattle them off - I have been asked to slow down in leading them so they can be felt and savored, and I keep forgetting about this until I’m in the car on the way home, and then I swear I’ll do the Lord’s Prayer slower next week.

This sample prayer Jesus gives to his disciples begins with addressing God as Abba, Daddy, Mommy – extremely intimate, parental language. Already, he’s way outside the box as far as rabbis teaching their students to address the divine. This is the tradition, remember, that replaced the name for God all throughout the bible with THE LORD, so as not to speak the holy name aloud.  And Jesus is brazenly, audaciously, assuming a very familiar, familial connection to God, like a trusting toddler.  Maisy used crawl up my lap and face me, and pat her chubby hands on my cheeks and look into my eyes and say, “Hi Mamamama!” 

Pray like that, Jesus says.

And then the prayer has two movements. Immediately it invites God to draw us into God’s concerns. You are holy other, Your kingdom come, your will be done, here on earth as it is in heaven. Reframe our perspective, God, give us your way of seeing and relating.

Then the prayer shifts to inviting God into our concerns – give us our daily bread, forgive us, as we forgive others, lead us not into temptation.  Help us with what we need for our survival, what we need for our being to be held in others, and in you.

Pray like this above everything, all-powerful and mighty God is actually your mommy, who cares about the intimate details of your life, and wants to be involved in them. Pray like you are invited also into the intimate details of God’s own life, like God wants you to be involved in them.

Two weeks ago I shared I was going on a silent retreat.  Well, I did, and it was wonderful, the walks and the naps and the writing and reading and the chanting with the monks. 

I recalled something I had read last year when I was there, about sabbath. God rests, so we rest because we’re made in God’s image. We all know that. But this person wrote something like, “God rests because keeping this world going is not the only thing to God. God has other interests and hobbies; it’s not all about us.”  And it struck me as so funny, so delightful, unexpected and surprising. Of course. We rest because keeping the world going is not the only thing that makes us us. There is more to us than the work we do to keep everything afloat. Why not God? 

So I tried something then.  I let myself wonder who God was apart from what God does to keep the world going. I let myself contemplate what it might be like to hang out with God in the rest of God, and not just the work, (the being of God, and not just the doing!) not just what I wanted God to do for me or for the world, but to be curious about who God is and what God was into, apart from keeping everything going. And on a trail deep in the woods, I cleared my throat and said, aloud, “Hi.”  

And as I walked along, feeling like I was walking along with God, in God, it became like a kind of centering prayer.  Every so often, I’d bring my attention back with my sacred word, which, in this case, was, “Hi.” And each time I got a little thrill. God was here. I was here. We were hanging out. “Hi God.” “Hi God, it’s me.” “Hi God, what are you into when you’re not keeping everything afloat? Hi God, Will you show me who you are?”

Last week, I got to go back and forth, between praying the Psalms, and being rooted in the liturgies of addressing God as the Great I AM, the mystery we must bow to approach, to trudging along the same path in the woods, stick in my hand, leaves crunching beneath my feet, praying, “Hi, God.” 

What Jesus is trying to show the disciples about prayer has far more to do with who God is, than how to pray. He gives them the how, because that’s what they’re asking for, he gives them some words and perspectives and even attitudes – pray audaciously! 

But he is showing them who God is by how we’re told to pray - Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened. God is a God who gives, who hears, who answers, who opens the door to us. 

Which of you, if your child asks for an egg will give a scorpion, or as Matthew 7 more helpfully suggests, when they ask for bread will give them a stone? If we, who are evil, can give good gifts to our children, how much more this God of ours?  

            

Our chapter this week in our book that we are reading together, Being Disciples, talks a lot about forgiveness.  “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Forgiveness – both giving it and receiving it- returns us to the core of our humanity as a gift that is bestowed upon us, by God, and upheld by each other, rather than something we each possess and defend. Forgiveness breaks down the armor and shell of us, so the tender and defenseless human part inside is exposed – I need to admit my need, I need to let go my power, I need to see and be seen, I need to be ministered to.

We belong to each other and we belong to God – so the vulnerability of this connection means I am bound to uphold others’ humanity and I need others to uphold mine. We nurture each other’s dignity. 

Living is risky. Being human is an unsafe activity. We can get hurt. We can hurt others. But also, we can bestow dignity and uphold humanity. We can forgive; we can receive forgiveness. We can restore and be restored.

 “I cannot live without the word of mercy; I cannot complete this task of being myself,” Rowan Williams says, “without the healing of what I have wounded.” 

We need each other for this – the ones we wound and those who’ve wounded us. We are set free to live fully in our humanity when we release the hold we have on others with our unforgiveness.  And we are set free to liv fully in our humanity when we receive forgiveness from someone we have wounded.

Forgiveness pulls us into God’s life. And it pulls us back into our humanity.  

This is how to pray--as one connected already to God and to others, as one longing for that connection to be restored, shameless in asking for it to be.

We pray as a who, addressing a who, a personal being who is free to act or not, who has interests we know nothing about, who loves and adores us, and invites us to refer to the Great and all powerful Mystery as our closest, most trusted source and caregiver, We pray in an ongoing conversation that will never end.

Jesus prayed this way. Secure in his connection to God and all others, certain in where this is all going to end up –living from the complete here in the partial.  There is a kind of submission that happens, then. When I am in my most honest and vulnerable and human self, I return to the strength of the bond that will never let us go. 

During my life, my view of prayer radically shifted. 

I prayed, really hard in all the right ways, for a friend to be healed, and she died. 

I got a little more aware of the world’s suffering and a little humbled and scared to pray for my own puny old needs with so much worse tragedy unfolding on the planet. 

I got tangled up with people who used “prayer” as permission to do and say whatever you feel like in the name of “God,” with religious impunity.  

I got educated on histories, heresies, theologies and doctrines, and mixed up about which way was right and why it matters. 

I got suspicious of my motives, and curious about God’s priorities. 

So I got afraid about asking, and hesitant about seeking, and sheepish about knocking. I didn’t want to do it wrong. Perhaps it was better not to pray than to pray the wrong way.

We once said here that the only way to do it wrong, the only way not to pray, is not to show up as your real and authentic self, or not to acknowledge that God has shown up.  That if you do those two things- if you show up, and if you trust God is showing up, you’re praying.  

You’re praying with words, or silence, or walking, or breathing, or begging and pleading, or using formal written liturgy, or singing in your car, or dancing in a field, or crying with someone else in your arms. If you are present, and you attune to the presence of God, you are praying.

This sounds easy. This is not easy. 

We hardly ever show up in our real lives as we are. And we rarely expect God will. 

But the moment you say, “Hi God,” why, here you both are! 

God is already here, waiting, waiting for us to ask, to seek, to knock, ready to open the door. Not to open it with judgment or criticism, "Where have you been?” or ready to tell you how you’ve been doing it wrong, keeping track of how incorrectly you’ve been asking, or sporadically you’ve been seeking or how long it’s been since you knocked.

No, God is always, already here, with love. Ready to receive whatever we bring. God is inviting us to address the Divine with the audacious boldness of a toddler patting her mama’s cheeks, ready to soak in the gaze of love that is always turned to her. 

God is inviting us to be like an annoying neighbor pounding on a door demanding what we need to care for the unexpected guest.  If we can give good gifts to our children, How much more will the Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask?

In other words, how much more than all the generosity and excitement I might have to show my own daughter that I love her, and she belongs to me no matter what, is God ready to draw me toward God’s own self through the power of the bond that connects the Father to the Son and breathes life into the world?

We don’t know why God does some things and not others. Sometimes prayers get “answered” how we hope they will, meaning, what we ask for happens. Sometimes they don’t.  Sometimes God cures cancer, and even gives us parking spots when we ask.   Sometimes God doesn’t.  God is free to act and free not to.  And we are free to ask. God wants us to ask because God wants to be with us, to share our place, to invite us to share in God’s. God does love us and have a wonderful plan for our lives.  God came into this human life, taking on all suffering and death, with us and for us.  God will minister to us. God will forgive us.  God love us.  That’s who God is. 

God is always ready to return us to the core of our humanity as a gift that is bestowed upon us, by God and through each other.  And we can receive this gift when we’re ready to let go of our humanity as something we each possess and defend. 

Teach us how to pray, Jesus, like you do. Teach us how to be human again. Teach us to trust, to forgive, to receive, to boldly live in our belonging to God and each other. 

So find some methods you like. Try out different strategies. Find a good structure to help you. But however you pray, show up with your real self.  

Trust that God has shown up in God’s real self. 

Ask. Seek. Knock.

And don’t hold back. Be shameless about it. Be all in.

The good news is you can’t fail at prayer.  The other good news is you can’t succeed at it either.  It’s not a game to win.  There’s no code to crack. There are no rules to memorize. There’s no magic formula to master. 

Be you. With God. That’s it.

Amen.



We are in a series with Rowan William's book, Being Disciples. The first chapter's sermon, "Being Disciples," is found here. The sermon corresponding to the second chapter, "Faith, hope and love" is here. This is connected to chapter 3, "Forgiveness."