What God Makes of Us

(A homily before an annual congregational meeting)

Psalm 62:5-12

For my birthday in November I was given sourdough starter from Patisserie Margo, in Edina. It is a 35-year-old sourdough starter that originated in France, (which feels really, really old, until I think about the jar in the fridge of one of our members, with a sourdough starter that is over 100 years old).  

 

It’s been interesting to learn how to use this starter, when and how to feed it, how to bake with it. It is completely unlike cooking with yeast. I have to listen to it, watch it, pay attention to it, because it will tell me when it’s ready to be used by how bubbly and stretchy it gets – like the inside of a roasted marshmallow.  And then I can’t plan how long the dough will take to rise; it rises at its own pace, affected by the temperature and humidity around it. So sometimes bowls of dough sleep overnight in my daughter's closet - the coldest spot in the house.  

 

And when I need to get rid of some starter so I can feed and use it again, I feel some pressure to dispose of it ethically. I am not going to just toss it – it’s a living thing with a long history!  So I put it into things- corn bread, muffins, pancakes, crepes.  Now my skeptical kids ask two pre-screening questions of my baked goods, “Is it gluten free? Did you put sourdough in it?”

 

This thing isn’t just flour and water; it’s history, and time, and chemical reaction, and story; it’s living potential in a jar.

 

But also, it’s just flour and water.  

Which makes the whole think kind of mysterious and magical.  

 

I am not sure what percentage of what’s in my jar is actually part of the flour and water that came over from France 35 years ago, and yet this starter is that starter.  

 

I love imagining that along with the tiny amount in the cardboard container that was given to me is 35 years worth of breads, croissants and rolls spilling out of that bakery, and countless other tiny cardboard containers sent into other kitchens like mine, filling the world with delicious baked goods for decades before and after me. 

 

And if, because it’s so old and precious, I had tried to just hang onto and save that little bit of sourdough in the cardboard container, it would have eventually died, because it stays alive by being used.  In fact, I didn’t get it home fast enough--by the time it reached my kitchen it was already bubbling and spilling out of the container ready to be used. 

 

In April this congregation will turn 99 years old.  It began seven years before that even, in 1915, as a bible study under a tree on the same spot where our building sits now. 

 

And who knows what percentage or flavor of an original congregation remains 99 years later, and yet this congregation is that congregation.

 

A congregation is a living, breathing entity. It expands and contracts, people come and go, babies are born, people die, the building changes, the ways of sharing in God’s mission changes, and all along it is fed, tended and cared for by God.

 

We exist to be used by God to spill life and hope, love and healing into the world.  That is what keeps a congregation alive.  In countless ways, over decades, this congregation has been mixed and made into all sorts of lovely things that feed the world with life. 

 

Ordinary flour and water kind of lives began this thing way back when, and ordinary flour and water lives continue to be what God adds in and stirs up into this miraculous, mysterious mix that makes up Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church.  

 

We are history, and time, and chemical reaction and story; we are living potential that God uses to remind each other and the world of our belonging to God and all others in Christ Jesus. 

 

This was maybe as unusual a year as LNPC has ever had.  Maybe.  A lot happened we had no control over, and yet, God sustained us and used us.  And we discovered that even though a warm kitchen is where we believe dough belongs, sometimes what it needs the chilly closet. And that no matter where we are, or how we come together, God’s ministry is alive in us and moves through us.  

 

This is God’s congregation, not ours. God’s ministry started long before this little congregation, and God’s ministry will continue through us and long after us.  We don’t sustain ourselves, we simply love and seek God, and allow God to feed us and use us, again and again, and when we do, God will do marvelous things.  

 

"God alone is our rock and our salvation, our fortress; we shall not be shaken."  And so, today as we seek to listen to each other and to God, as we look back at this year and continue, as always, to discern our way forward, above all else, may we heed the words of the Psalmist who tells us, “Trust in God at all times O people, pour out your hearts before him…” and “The power belongs to God, and steadfast love is yours, O Lord.” 

I wonder what God will make of us next.

 

Amen.

The New Normal

Daily Devotion - April 23

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

(Keep Calm and Carry On was a motivational poster the British government produced in1939.  As WWII loomed, the poster was designed to boost the morale of, and give guidance to, the British public, through the "new normal," which included widely predicted mass air strikes on major cities. It debuted in 2009 on the wall of the dining room of the Root household to help me parent through a particularly rough season of dinner/vegetable battles with my strong-willed toddler. In April 2020, I began regularly consuming coffee from my mug with the "Keep Calm..." logo to help me through Quarantine).

How are you doing today?

For me, it is dawning (again!?!) that this will change us for a long time.  There is no snap of the finger back to normal. Our governor just canceled in-person school for the rest of the school year, and I'm watching colleges talk about fall semesters online. Andy and I were on a zoom call yesterday for an event we were going to lead together in October (OCTOBER).  The whole, everyone at a retreat center in one place idea is out.  Now, if it is safe to gather, it will likely be in small groups, so maybe smaller concurrent gatherings with Andy and myself rotating between them and the rest seeing it through a live feed? Or something nobody has even thought of yet...? 

October.

When "normal" does "resume" it will be in fits and starts, a little here, and little there, slowly, gradually, 10 people at a time, maybe 50 now, oops, back to 10, etc.  

What does Church look like then?

(What does then look like then??)

I've met with some other pastors (via zoom, of course!) this week, and here's what I heard about what Church is looking like for others: Groups of people praying together by phone, online weekly bible studies, an online VBS in the works, pre-recorded bible study video snippets, coffee hours - like ours, where people are checking in with each other, weekly confirmation class zoom gatherings, online organ concerts.  We are preparing for our first online memorial service.  One church I know of found a lovely way to invite people to come by and leave cards at the home of someone who has lost a family member. Some tiny congregations of under fifty are seeing thousands "joining in" their livestream, some large congregations accustomed to high attendance have much lower "viewership" of their services. Some congregations have never really had "small group" ministries, so are figuring out how to pivot their whole model and help folks get connected in completely different ways.  I think what we are all realizing is:

This is not temporary and then we'll go back to normal. 

This is the new normal until there is another new normal.  

That is a mindset shift for me, and I imagine, for you as well. So the question of how to live in the now continues to be a biggie - for ourselves and our households, but also for our congregations.  

How are we being Church well right now?  
How might we need to keep adapting - we did from "normal" to "temporary," now we're going from "temporary" to "new normal" - to meet some new needs that have arisen, or address some needs that have been put on hold?  
How are each of us coping?  
How can we help each other remember our primary belonging to God and each other in the midst of this?  

The new normal for our church session (board - used to meet monthly) is to meet for an hour every week.  And we'll be circling back with our hospitality teams in the next few days as well, to check in on how each person is doing.  In following the sound guidance from our state health officials and our governor, and looking at the trajectory for COVID-19 in MN in the coming weeks, session voted this week to continue meeting online and by phone through May.  

So, the six weeks we've had so far will be joined by a minimum of five more.  
What can we do to help each other find joy, connection and grounding during this? 
How can we keep seeking the presence of God in our lives and in the world during this phase of new normal?

I came across this quote today, and found it quite lovely.

"We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanence, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern. The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping even.  Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now." 

                - Ann Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

So, (while I think there are gift in looking back and also looking forward), I feel compelled by the invitation this quote raises to trust in life's ebb and flow. This is to say, for me, to trust also in the Holy Spirit's constant interference, comfort and guidance, and to see God's presence, which is always in the here and now, by living in the present and accepting it as it is now.  

This feels like a huge challenge, and I find myself reacting to it with lots of internal resistance, but also with some curiosity and longing. A small part of me even wants to scream out "Yes!"  And I know this to be true also because I've been genuinely blessed, and not a little intrigued, in hearing some people' stories of these days include words like "contentment", "joy", "peace", "surprising ease", "gift" and "treasure."  I believe those things are given to us in any and all circumstances, and right now we have the opportunity to discover them in new places, and ways we've not yet learned to look. 

So, here's to the new normal. Here's to living in the present and accepting it as it is now.  

I'll see you here.

CONNECTING RITUAL:

Perhaps, sometime today, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we might extend a blessing in this way, and so join our hearts:

When you pray this prayer - keep the "us" and the "we" - pray it for yourself, but also for your congregation, or family, or community. (And then, you could pray it again for your nation, and again for our world).

May the strength of God pilot us.

May the power of God preserve us.

May the wisdom of God instruct us.

May the hand of God protect us.

May the way of God direct us.

May the shield of God defend us.

May the host of God guard us against the snares of evil

and the temptations of the world.

May Christ be with us,

Christ before us,

Christ in us,

Christ over us.

May your salvation, O Lord,

Be always ours this day and forevermore. Amen.

- Patrick of Ireland (389-461)

Where God resides

King Solomon's Temple

Haggai 1:15b-2:9

Psalm 145: 1-5, 17-21

Our memories and imaginations mix up some powerful cocktails.  Reality pales next to an experience percolated in the flavorful bath of nostalgia, amnesia and hindsight.  Kodak photo paper costs more than the generic brand, because it produces brighter, clearer pictures, “brilliant true color” they say.  But in development Kodak tapped into research that indicated that people don’t remember things as they really were.  The idea of rose-colored glasses is real - our memories store things brighter, more colorful than things really are. So a photograph on Kodak paper does not show the scene as your eyes see it, as they saw it when you snapped the photo, instead it saturates the paper with deeper color, makes the lines crisper and the colors brighter.  Ahh, we think to ourselves, now that is what it was really like!

And once the memories simmer into the lore and sink into storyline of a people, once some prophesy is thrown into the pot and the people’s hunger is sprinkled with suffering and loss and stoked by injustice, we are in dangerous territory. 

We’re at the place where disillusionment and apathy breed. We’re at the place where hope dies.

What is church? is our question of the season. What does it mean that we see ourselves connected somehow to God and each other?  That we are part of this thing we are part of?  What is this thing anyway?  This is not a new question, it’s been asked many times before.

 Our question comes up in the words today of a prophet named Haggai, who speaks up at a time when a small remnant of of exiles return to Jerusalem after being driven out nearly 70 years before by the Babylonians, who destroyed their temple, decimated their kingdom, and ended their way of life, scattering them to the winds. Twenty years earlier small groups had begun coming home to the place where their promises died, where their history collapsed, and began reconstructing life there. They trickle back not as a mighty nation, but as a crushed people still ruled by outside forces.

 

In this place Haggai speaks up, and his ministry lasts exactly four months, but his message was so important that it is included in the scriptures that ended up in our hands, as part of our story, so today with our own stories and questions we listen to his.

The exiles had settled, grown families, worked jobs and built lives in their new homes, and what compelled them to leave all of this to go back to Jerusalem was the words of other prophets and beliefs long held, that God would once again make of them a great nation, and that the Davidic line would continue, and that all the nations would again honor them.

And so, hope rekindled, they left their new lives and returned. Most of them had been young or not even born yet when they left, so they returned with expectation and filled to the brim with stories, images of the glory days, of God and grandeur, of Solomon’s temple in all its splendor and Israel as a strong nation, in hope that all that would be restored.  They returned with brighter than real pictures in their minds, their hope shaped by images colorful and stirring.

But when the precious few who returned got back they found nothing left of the temple or the days gone before, and encountered hostility from surrounding people and those who’d never left. The money promised by the Persians to rebuild the temple didn’t materialize, and life back in Jerusalem was nothing at all like they’d been told it would be, let alone what they had hoped or expected.  

So after a feeble start to rebuilding the temple with the first wave of returnees, they’d given up on it: it would never be – could never be – what it was, so why bother?  They settled down, built homes for themselves, and began to eek out a “good enough” life in this new place, promises of the prophets be damned.

Then, twenty years later, with another wave of stragglers returning, Haggai comes along, and his primary message is: rebuild the temple.  

Now, as exaggerated as their memories and lore of the first temple might have been, they were also right. The temple would NEVER again be what it had been.  Built with “borrowed” labor, from wealth accumulated by exhaustively taxing others, Solomon’s temple was an unrivaled masterpiece. 180,000 artisans were said to have worked on it; the magnificence of it was legendary.

And as the house of God, Solomon’s temple in all its splendor, was filled with symbols of God’s might and power, God’s faithfulness:  irreplaceable identity markers of God and the people who belonged to God:

-        -The Ark of the Covenant with its mercy seat and the golden angels with outspread wings that had been carried through the wilderness and reminded them of God’s covenant with them

-       - The Ten Commandments stone tablets

-       - A pot of manna, probably petrified, reminding them of God’s provision for them in the wilderness

-       - Aaron’s rod, used in so many of God’s miracles of deliverance

-      -  urim and thummin, symbols used to hear God’s voice

-      -  the eternal fire of God burning on the alter[1]

But these are gone; it’s all gone.  The symbols of God’s supremacy, rule and power, God’s enduring care for them -  had long ago been taken away, destroyed or pillaged by an invading army… The symbols of who they were as God’s people – gone. How could the temple ever be the same? How could God, or their faith or world, ever be the same? Who are they, without these symbols, without this history, this fulfillment of promises?

And Haggai, dear little Haggai, pipes up. Rebuild the temple, he says.  Keep going - Is this work you are doing on it nothing?

We human beings are people of symbols. We are meaning-makers; we need concrete and tangible things with which to capture and keep meaning. If it isn’t scrapbooks, photographs and keepsakes, it’s rituals and traditions, it’s thanksgiving dinner and Christmas stockings and baptismal vows and advent candles and wedding rings. 

We use symbols to make sense of our experiences, and even to allow us to truly experience life, God and meaning. 

So it is no small thing that their symbols are gone. It is not insignificant that the temple itself  - where God’s spirit had filled the space in a dramatic cloud when the doors opened for the first time – it’s not irrelevant that this is no more. They were the people of this God, brought to this place, made into a nation, a people ruled by God who was worshiped in this place.

They had the answer to the question, and any one of them back then could have told you without skipping a beat.  They could stand in the temple and point to the symbols and say right then and there who they were and how they were connected to God, what their place was in the world and why they lived like they did. They knew what it meant to worship and what their faith was all about. 

Now it is all gone, long gone. So who are they?

When Haggai speaks up, he uses language of old, promises of old, words about the God who delivered them out of Egypt, the God who claimed them as God’s very own beloved people.  He uses the old language of covenant and promises.  His words place even the confusing unfolding events of the present into a new light – suggesting that despite all evidence to the contrary, God is doing a new thing in the world, renewing the covenant relationship with Israel, helping them remember and reclaim God’s promises.  That even this pathetic little temple you’re building out of leftover rubble is part of God’s bigger picture.

Rebuild. Haggai says. Put the symbol of God’s presence with you back in your midst. Because God has chosen to be with you, you are God’s people. Whatever the external circumstances may say to the contrary, the truth is, you are God’s people. You have a responsibility to act like it.

And so, to a people teetering on the brink of extinction, held together by the tenacious zeal of a handful of priests and the fading faith in the promises of the past, nearly devoid of hope, a task is given: Put before you once again a visible symbol of what God has done, is doing, among you.  God’s grace has allowed you to survive, and God is still making God’s presence known, even here and now. Something new and living.

The temple was not important in and of itself; the symbols were nothing more than symbols. What was real all along was the presence of God; God who has never left them and will always be with them.  The rebuilt temple is not the point.  It is the building, the moving and living in faith and trust in the God who exists beyond nations and kings, outside time and space – who has claimed this people and promised to be with them no matter what. That is the point.

I will give prosperity, better translated, I will give shalom, peace, abundance. I am God beyond this moment and cannot be contained within the walls of your temple, or expelled when the walls fall down.  I am God of all the nations, of the whole world. I am the God of the past and of the future.

Hope is not about the present circumstances, it’s about the future and past telling a story to the present, mingling their flavors so that the present tastes like what is coming with a reminder of what has been. 

Their hope is not in what they can see before them, their hope can only be in the One who has claimed them through everything and continues to.  Who are we anyway? We are God’s people.  Same as we’ve always been and always will be.  So let’s act like it.

In a world that is always changing – the old is always passing away and the new is always coming, and life is never ever stagnant, even when we pause for a brief moment in a phase it doesn’t last, In a world where things are being built up and torn down constantly, where we feel uprooted half the time and dig our heels in the other half – nothing seems constant, nothing is sure.  But God remains. God remains God.  Even in the dust of broken dreams God’s promise sustains.

We are not people who merely recount, in larger than life images, the stories of the past.  Comparing what is to the rosy picture of what was.  We don’t just eek out a good enough life or hope for the best in the future.  As the Church, we are the temple of the Holy Spirit, the Body of Christ, we are the living, breathing place God resides – the people in which God’s Spirit dwells.  Our actions and words, our worship and praise, our fears and doubts, our love for one another and our care for creation, our connection to strangers and community, and to the world beyond our daily life – we are the place God resides.

And we have our symbols and signs too.  In this broken bread and poured wine before us today we share the symbols of God’s love – of God’s unrelenting and tenacious love, clinging to us, claiming us, even sharing our humanity itself, even unto death and beyond.  In the symbols, and and words, and songs of this place and time, in the rhythm and ritual of this gathering we are describing the past and what God has done, meeting God in the here and now, and remembering the future to which God is calling us, and to which all this is headed. 

We are noticing and recounting God’s faithfulness and reclaiming our identity as God’s own, as people who join God’s hope in the world.  

Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; his greatness is unsearchable. says the Psalmist.

One generation shall laud your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.

On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.

so here I go…

The LORD is just in all his ways, and kind in all his doings.  The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.  He fulfills the desire of all who fear him; he also hears their cry, and saves them. 

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

---

[1] I an indebted to Andrew Woff for this list.