Remembering how we do this

Our faith in the present is shaped by remembering God's faithfulness in the past. We are sustained by the same God who has sustained us before, and all those before us.  We modern folk are always looking forward. We forget that at any moment we could receive again the gifts and lessons we've been already been given. Here is a glimpse back at our own journey where God met us in difficult times. This God meets us again, here and now.

 Repent: lament, return, remember, rest
A sermon from June 2021 (mid-pandemic lockdown, post George Floyd murder)

 

Psalm 4

Answer me when I call, O God of my right!
   You gave me room when I was in distress.
   Be gracious to me, and hear my prayer. 

How long, you people, shall my honour suffer shame?
   How long will you love vain words, and seek after lies?
          Selah
But know that the Lord has set apart the faithful for himself;
   the Lord hears when I call to him. 

When you are disturbed, do not sin;
   ponder it on your beds, and be silent.
          Selah
Offer right sacrifices,
   and put your trust in the Lord. 

There are many who say, ‘O that we might see some good!
   Let the light of your face shine on us, O Lord!’
You have put gladness in my heart
   more than when their grain and wine abound. 

I will both lie down and sleep in peace;
   for you alone, O Lord, make me lie down in safety.

 

There’s a desperate vigilance and awful heaviness about the world at the moment. I think even if we aren’t paying super close attention, many of us are still feeling it. A shared, psychic weight to the world. Even as we are hurriedly vaccinating people, the case numbers are rising toward a global highest point, and what, another mass shooting? Wasn’t there just one yesterday? The pressure feels audible, the tension palpable. So many people I know have commented on how utterly exhausted they feel. But at the same time our sleep is fraught and spotty. We are alert, restless and exhausted.

 

It feels like we’re given two options, and neither one is tenable. One is to watch every minute of the Derek Chauvin trial, read everything we can about little Adam Toledo, break apart the video of Daunte White’s killing, stay up late watching national guardsmen teargassing journalists a few miles away from us, track the vaccinations, stay on top of the politicians, check in on the suffering children at the border and the conflicts simmering all over the globe, worry about the threat of climate change, and compulsively wonder what more we should be doing. And if we are not out marching or speaking out then we are following those who are, because we need to feel like we are doing something, like something is being done that can stop all this, or fix all this, and Lord, it’s all so awful how can we ignore even a moment of it? 

 

The other option we’re given is to go numb and limp. To shut it all off, and block it all out, and take in nothing but our own lives and desires. And maybe we occasionally feel a teeny bit guilty, but that’s better than helplessness and rage with no outlet. And sometimes we just bounce wildly back and forth between the two.

 

But there is a third way. And I think this Psalm gives it to us. 

 

It starts with lament. When the tears feel close, and sorrow claws up the throat, and anger and rage are right here next to us, we aim all of that right at God.  We moderns are pretty scared of lament in church, preferring the more palatable confession, but lament is an integral part of our faith. And this particular lament of David, we know, was sung in community, all the voices crying out together, Answer me when I call to you God! How long will this go on?

 

There is a mystery word here that shows up 71 times in the psalms and twice in Habakkuk, Selah. Because it’s very close to the word for pause, and also the word for praise, throughout the millennia it has come to be seen as a kind of mix of both - pause and praise God. Take a beat and turn your attention back to God.

So built right into the song is a pause, everyone stopping, silent, shifting focus back to God. And then continuing on in unison.

 

So hear the Psalm again, in this paraphrase:

 

O God who knows me, answer me when I call!

When I have been confined in anxious misery before, 

you’ve opened up expansive space for me to breathe, 

please hear me now; give me your grace again.

 

How long will our humanity be torn down? 

How long will lies be elevated, 

and people spread vitriol, delusion and exploitation?

 

Stop.

Take a beat. 

Turn your attention to God.

 

God has drawn us to God’s own being, 

those who seek God are claimed for God’s purposes.  

When you are worked up and distraught, 

don’t turn to division and blame; don’t tear down others.  

Instead, sit in it with God, 

be silent in a restful space. 

 

Stop.

Take a beat.

Turn your attention to God.

 

Lay everything before the Almighty in vulnerable honesty, 

and trust God with it. 

So many people say, “There is no goodness that we can see!” 

Oh Lord, let your love and truth shine on all of us!

You have filled me with deep joy, 

more happiness than when they have all the wealth 

and satisfaction they desire.

 

I won't stay up babysitting the world,

I will sleep soundly and deeply

because this your world, God, 

and my life is held in you.

 

Lament. Return to God. Then remember.  

This earth is heavy with sorrow and need. 

And at the same time this planet turns slowly in the utter silence of the vast cosmos, nestled amongst the great lights of burning stars, held in orbit to the sun. And within this planet, while one hemisphere is nestling down in winter hibernation, here the green shoots push up through the soil, and trees are awakening. And all over the planet new babies are born, and broken relationships are mended, and people are tending to each other, and there is laughter and joy, and tears of deep connection, and healing, and hope, and love remains the most powerful force in the universe, always at work, always, always, always.

 

But oh! We forget. So quickly, without realizing it, even when we’re trying to remember. 

This happened to me yesterday. I was remembering, and then I was completely derailed when I read in a commentary from 2012 (Shauna Hannan, Working Preacher) that in the first verse, where it says, you made space for me it originally alluded to “release from a tight noose at the neck,” the opposite of the word for when I was in distress, which is used for “a constricted larynx.”  And I stopped hearing the promise of God’s deliverance and the invitation to trust, and all I could see was that God did not make space for George Floyd when he was in distress, and how could I preach this text in the shadow of that? 

 

All day long I spun out, all day long I fixated on my words, the overwhelming sorrow and brokenness of this world, the pain of our city.  I did not lament. I obsessed. I did not take my anguish and sit silently before God. I logged onto the news and social media and started babysitting the world again. I did not come in honesty before the Almighty. I got caught up in blame and frustration in the country, and became controlling and edgy in my own house. 

And then I looked at the clock and realized it was time for evening prayers.[1] So I sat down on zoom with those who meet together every evening.  

Stop. Take a beat. Turn your attention to God.

 

And suddenly there was joy, in sharing about a day spent with happy little cousins, and our delight and horror at a ridiculous amount of accidentally purchased bananas.[2] Suddenly God was meeting us right there in our humanity, in our need, in our coming together. Then one of them repeated back to me that love is the most powerful force in the universe, and I was invited back into trust.

 

We are meant to stand with one another and for each other, to hold each other and fight for life for each other and us all, for this whole beautiful and broken world. We are made for love. God calls us into God’s purposes; we are drawn into God’s own being. We get to share in the love God is already, always bringing.

 

And then, at the end of the day, we sleep.  

To sleep is to yield to our most essential humanity – our creaturliness, our need, our soft, vulnerable, universal humanity, the warm breath, closed eyes, heavy limbs of us. 

 

Sleep is trust. It is pure being. Sleep is admitting we are not God. Sleep returns us to the humility of our own humanity. Only from here can we be fully in this life, with and for each other. 

 

We belong to God. This is God’s world. God made it. God came into it to bear our suffering and share our pain and take on our death so that death cannot, will not define us, will not have the last word, will not prevail. 

 

So stop. Take a beat. Turn your attention to God.

 

There is a poem by Pablo Neruda that I love, called Keeping Quiet. It goes like this:

 

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still.

 

For once on the face of the earth

let’s not speak in any language,

let’s stop for one second,

and not move our arms so much.

 

It would be an exotic moment

without rush, without engines,

we would all be together

in a sudden strangeness.

 

Fishermen in the cold sea

would not harm whales

and the man gathering salt

would look at his hurt hands.

 

Those who prepare green wars,

wars with gas, wars with fire,

victory with no survivors,

would put on clean clothes

and walk about with their brothers

in the shade, doing nothing.

 

What I want should not be confused

with total inactivity.

Life is what it is about;

I want no truck with death.

 

If we were not so single-minded

about keeping our lives moving,

and for once could do nothing,

perhaps a huge silence

might interrupt this sadness

of never understanding ourselves

and of threatening ourselves with 

death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us

as when everything seems dead

and later proves to be alive.

 

Now I’ll count up to twelve

and you keep quiet and I will go.” 

 

Christ has risen. He is risen indeed. 

Death does not get the last word, and love is the most powerful force in the universe. 

May we join in fully. And may we sleep soundly.

Amen.

---

[1] At this time, Pastor Lisa and I were praying every morning and evening, and the congregation every Sunday night, over zoom, with a family navigating mom's cancer.

[2] In my first foray into online grocery shopping, rather than 14 single bananas, I’d inadvertently bought 14 2lb bunches of bananas.

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.

Holding you through it

Psalm 139

Are you feeling foggy or disjointed? Having trouble concentrating or a terrible time sleeping? Are you irritable and edgy, or weepy and jittery? Perhaps you feel poised for disaster, ready for the other shoe to drop, but it already has, and now it feels like maybe pieces of the house are falling off too, so you’re guarded and alert and afraid a lot of the time?
If so, you may be living in January 2021.
 
Ten months ago we thought we all were making a temporary sacrifice, a momentary tweak, then we were told to hunker through the summer like it was a long winter, and then summer ended and fall ended and winter came. And here we are, still in a global pandemic.  
 
And now, nearly a quarter of a million people in our country testing positive every day and one person is dying approximately every 21 seconds, and a new, far more contagious variant ripping across the world, is actually THE BACKDROP to the seismic upheaval, political turmoil, bubbling violence, overt racism, rampant, damaging conspiracy theories dividing us in unfathomable ways, our democracy battered and bruised as national guard surrounding capital buildings with fencing and razor wire and occupy the Capitol in preparation for a transition in government that may be less that peaceful, so much drama that a president’s impeachment—for the second time—registers as relatively minor news.  
 
Oh Lord, we’d love a prescription to end our fatigue and anxiety!  But there is actually nothing wrong with us.  How we feel right now is just how human beings should feel in circumstances like these. 
 
Perspective helps. 

Last week we glimpsed who God is and what God is up to with the Magi visiting the baby Jesus and thwarting King Herod’s plans stamp out his supposed rival. By pulling way back to the cosmos, to see the God whose plan of salvation and hope for the whole world unfolds all over the place all the time, in the stars themselves and the small stories on the margins of things, even while the supposedly big stories are boiling right in front of us – we put ourselves, and this whole world, back in context. This is God’s story, we said. Oh yeah, remember? The world belongs to God. Be still and know this.
 
This week, we get reoriented again, but this time by zooming way in close, between a human heart and the Divine.  Psalm 139 comes to us not as a remedy, treatment or lesson, not as answers or advice, but as a very intimate conversation between a person and God. 
 
Oh, God – you know me completely! The parts of me I want known – which feels like a gift, but also the parts of me I wish I could hide, none of me is hidden from you. And there is nowhere I can go that you are not there, holding me, pursuing me, never giving up on me. Before the words are even on my lips, you know what I will say completely.  And even so, you love me. You made me and delight in me – I can hardly take that in, it’s so overwhelming and inconceivable.
 
And there is a part of this Psalm that I bet really jumped out at you when Lisa read it; it wasn’t actually meant to be included in the lectionary reading for today, because 99% of the time we skip this part.  It wrecks the vibe, so we censor it out.  But I loved hearing this part today, because I feel it resonate in my body. 
 
God, I wish you’d kill the wicked! 
Those bad and terrible people who are against you, who undermine your ways, 
with violence and evil—I wish they were destroyed! 
Oh God, I hate them! I hate them so much! They are my enemies!
 
Anger makes us uncomfortable. When we feel angry, as many of us do right now, we try to channel it, or stuff it down, or explain it away. But anger is our inner being saying, “This is not right.” This is not right! It’s energy in our bodies announcing that things are not as they it should be!  So we need to listen to our anger, to let it say what it needs to say. 
 
But instead, whenever the church reads the Psalm about God knowing us completely and how we can’t hide anything from God, we skip over the part where the Psalmist tells God how angry he is!  
Adorable! 
 
God will never, ever let you go, will never turn away from you, will never give up on you or stop loving you, and already knows and sees the whole of you anyway. What if you came with the courage of the Psalmist, and let God know what you are really thinking and feeling right now?  All of it, with no holding back? No checking to see if it's the right way to think or feel, just telling God?  
 
When the Psalmist unleashes his anger to God, he’s not theologically solid.  He talks to God like God needs defending, like God’s way is somehow at risk by the actions of humans, like God’s agenda of hope and redemption could be derailed were it not for his righteous rage, I hate those who hate you, God!  
 
Nevertheless, our predecessors in the faith left this part in here, even though hatred gets us nowhere, and God doesn’t need defending, and God’s way is happening no matter what.  This part is important because we get to say anything to God. We need to be able to say anything to God.  Our bible has this in it because in this relationship with God, we are supposed to not hold back.  This is the place where you get to say the unsuitable things and acknowledge all the difficult feelings and vent in ridiculous superlatives. This is where you even get to be wrong. God wants us to be angry with God instead of apart from God.
 
I imagine our Psalmist like a storming, tantruming child, ranting about bad people and the injustices they do while Mother God looks right into his face with tenderness and compassion, taking it all in.  When the Psalmist is spent, and all the fury has leaked out, mama opens her arms. And having been seen and heard and unconditionally received, the Psalmist crawls into her lap and curl’s up against God’s shoulder.  And he rests there.  

And then, there, in the safety of God’s love that will never waver, the shift happens, and inside his heart the space opens up to ask, most vulnerably of all, with absolute trust – Will you search me God? Look at my heart, please, see if there is any wickedness in me. Help me live in your way of love that cannot, will not end.
 
It’s ok to not be doing ok right now. It’s normal to be overwhelmed or exhausted. To be afraid or worried, edgy or weepy.  To feel scattered and not up to the task – any task. And it’s ok to feel angry.

This is a moment to remember our humanity, our limitedness, and the fragility of the structures we build up to sustain and hold us.  Underneath, and around, and through, and despite, and in the midst of all of it, God is holding us. That’s true about the whole big picture, but it’s also true about each and every one of us. God knows you completely. You cannot be lost; you will not be abandoned, there is space in God’s heart for all the things you are feeling.  
 
I am going to drop some sabbath wisdom on us today: It’s ok to stop. Breathe. It’s ok to turn your attention to the basics.  Breath. Food. Water. Sleep. Movement. One friend this week said he realized he doesn’t have energy right now for anything, so he figured out his top three things, family and two areas of work, and he’s paring back. He is taking a three month break from every other commitment and expectation.  And when he’s told people this – on the committees he is on and the leadership roles he is in, while some people may be frustrated, many people are saying, I feel like I am barely hanging on too. Or, I was wondering if I should quit this committee, maybe I could take a 3-month break too.
 
Maybe we remember again that insight about living in a different culture, covid culture, and how exhausting it is to be navigating this all the time, and how it’s wise to only plan to do three things in a day.
 
We know that in scripture when God tells us to Be still, it’s not in the gentle moments of bubbling brooks and floating clouds and introspection and groundedness, but in the tumult and the fury, when the Israelites are trapped at the edge of the Red Sea and the entire Egyptian army is bearing down on them weapons drawn, and they’re facing sure and certain death, Be still! God says, I will fight for you! 

 
And in Psalm 46, where the earth shakes and mountains crumble into the heart of the sea, Be still and know that I am God.  When the nations are in an uproar and kingdoms totter, God’s voice raises and the earth melts.  
This God is with us. The God who leads in the pillar of fire and parts the crashing Red Sea and guides the star-gazing Magi to the toddler savior on his mother’s lap in the house that nobody else is paying attention to at the moment – everywhere, always, right here, right now, this God is our refuge and strength.

 
The tumult is here. Now is a good time to Be Still.  

Be gentle with your heart and let it speak freely to the One who knows you completely and loves you unendingly. And since God knows all of it anyway, don’t hold anything back.  Tell it all to God.  Let God hear and receive whatever you have inside.  And find rest in the arms of the one who is already holding you close.
 
Amen
 

The deeper truth

 

Devotion for Being Apart -
October 4

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

Psalm 19

This weekend I’ve been cranky and frustrated and weary.  I can feel it when "the insolent have dominion over me."  It churns inside me and I have to let it out by adding to the noise with my own rants of incredulity and horror.  Andy calls it, “The Kara Talks Over the News About the News Podcast.” But I can’t help myself.  The Psalmist, most likely King David, prays, “Keep me back from the insolent, Lord;” I say, “Let me at them!” 
 
Right now there are so many voices, so many words. Shouting over each other to be heard. And we are listening to them all, taking them into ourselves, letting them shape us, make us afraid, anxious and angry, tying us in knots, paralyzing us.
 
As the decibels get turned up and the rhetoric roars in these next couple of months, Richard Rohr last week advised we safeguard our souls by standing “as a sentry to the door of our senses” and limiting our news intake to an hour a day. He said, “It will only tear you apart and pull you into the dualistic world of opinion and counter-opinion, not Divine Truth, which is always found in a bigger place.” 
 
Divine truth is always found in a bigger place. Bigger than opinion and counter-opinion. Bigger than fear and division. Bigger than viruses, and sickness, politics and fires, racism and power-mongering, bigger than all the words and voices that separate us into for and against, or seek to steal our hope.  But these days, I frequently feel pulled into the dualistic world. I often feel torn apart. 
 
This might be a good time to refresh ourselves on the Way of Fear and the Way of God that have guided us for a while.  Because this whole prayer, this poem, is celebrating the Way of God. It is resting in the confident peace of the bigger place, and by praying it, David is helping himself return to that place, being put back together. 
 
The Way of Fear begins in self-sufficiency and judgment; it curls us in on ourselves to seek security, self-preservation and personal glory, even at the expense of others.  Our worth is earned, having more makes us better, and other people are competition for resources or obstacles in our way –they exist to be used or discarded.  Every moment the world is urgent and dangerous so we can never let our guard down; and there is no stopping or resting or we will lose our place. In the Way of Fear, we walk through the world ruled by death, threatened always by the fear of loss - loss of dreams, plans, reputation, belonging, so we are dominated and held captive to isolation and suspicion.
 
The way of God begins in gift and abundance. This is the bigger place where the Divine truth is found.  We are created for connection and belonging, so the way of God opens us up toward the world and one another. We are loved just as we are, and meant to live fully this one wild and precious life we have been given. The people journeying alongside us are neighbors, friends, siblings, not threats, rivals or competitors.  We need each other to be whole, we have everything we need, and what we have is for sharing. We are meant to stop frequently and purposefully, to rest and receive this gift of a life, and because most of the things that really matter are slow and take time. The world is filled with beauty, infused with the life of the God who holds us all.  
Life in the way of God is shaped around the justice that means everyone has what they need, the kindness that means “I will stand with you,” and walking humbly—vulnerably, honestly—with our God, (Micah 6:8) who never leaves us nor forsakes us. We’re made for life—to seek life, and nurture life, and contribute to life for others—to feel joy in our deep abiding connection to God and each other. The love of God that breathes all life into being holds us and connects us, and nothing in all of creation can ever separate us from this love, so we are free to be with and for one another fully and wholly.
 
David’s Psalm reminds us that this message being proclaimed all around us, in ongoing expression, it’s being told every moment, just not with speech or voice.  Just not in the way we’re bombarded with.  The deeper truth is being told, from a bigger place than opinion and counter-opinion.
 
But the deeper truth is set at a different frequency. We have to attune ourselves to hear it. It sounds like music, and poetry, and windsong. It’s heard in children’s laughter, and snoring dogs and growling stomachs and sizzling food. It's expressed in quiet sighs, and unrestrained tears, and gentle pats, and falling rain. 
 
The whole cosmos declares the wonder of God, David writes, this vast, living container of a world witnesses to what God does.  Even though it’s not amplified voices and teleprompter speeches, God’s way is talking to us all the time; the deeper truth goes out to all the earth. When we forget there is a God, we quiet ourselves and listen for the voiceless voice, the speechless words of creation’s message. No matter how loud the noise of fear gets, we can hear the humming world to remember there is a God over all of this.
 
The second movement of David’s poem celebrating the way of God is for when we forget who God is and who we are meant to be with and for each other.  David gushes about the law of God – God’s way is not chaos and cutthroat; it’s not everyone in it for themselves. It’s ordered by love and designed for belonging. It revives the souls, and makes wise the simple, and rejoices the heart, and enlightens the eyes. It is pure and good trustworthy and true.  And at any moment we can turn to the wisdom of our faith, and immerse ourselves in scriptures - the words of Jesus, the prayers of Psalms, and the stories of the struggles and conflicts of the faithful who have gone before us, in their own forgetting and remembering that there is God who loves, and orders and intervenes in this world, we are reminded too. 
No matter how bitter the division and turmoil, and how disordered things appear, we can feed ourselves on the precious gift of scripture and words and writings of women and men of faith who’ve gone before, to remember who God is and who we are meant to be with and for each other. 
 
And David’s final moment is within, turning right toward God it shifts the mic from creation and scripture to our own mouths.  When we forget that we belong to God, and find ourselves overwhelmed by hopelessness or swept up into the discord, we speak to God directly from the heart.  God see me as I am. Clear out everything in me that gets captive and caught in the way of fear. I am being dominated by the disdainful and contemptuous; I might even be disdainful and contemptuous myself.  May the words that come from my mouth, and the thoughts that swirl in my heart, be part of your reality, be reflections of your love and care for all people and this whole wide earth.  Keep me in your way, O God. Keep me here.
No matter how badly we feel torn apart, polluted with and sucked into the fray by the undertow of despair and disgust, we can open our vulnerable hearts right to God and ask to be cleared out, put back together and set right to remember that we belong to God, and we can trust and rest in God’s reality.
 
In the midst of the fires and the virus and the crazy politicians, God is still good. In all things, no matter what they are, God is still moving the world toward goodness. 

We can choose to listen to the voices fighting for power, splitting us into my team against your team, and echoing sonorous speeches of doom.  But day to day pours forth speech and night to night reveals knowledge of a good God whose purpose for the world, for each one of us, is not hindered or stopped by the violence of our rhetoric or the damage of our actions.  And we can choose to listen to that instead.  
 
God’s way of love and justice and standing-with-you kindness moves through it all – in the middle of the suffering, right up against loss, not backing down from fear or the noise, and paying no mind to the mindgames or the power plays.  Because in Christ our God is right here with us, in the death, leading to life, the light shines that no darkness can put out.  Behind, underneath, through and always, gently and unceasingly, God’s way persists and prevails.
 
 CONNECTING RITUAL:

Before we go to bed, whenever that is in our home, may we pause pray, and so our hearts with each other and the world:'

God of all,
help me listen to Divine truth in the bigger place.
Attune my heart to your frequency, Lord.
I want to see hope, and feel joy, and recognize love
and share all these things with others.
I want to be grounded in the wisdom that transcends the noise.
I want to be brave to face suffering and pain,
knowing your love meets us there too,
there especially.
I want to see you, Jesus, here with us.

Free me from the way of fear.
Help me to live in the way of God.
Teach my heart to hear
the voice of truth.
Amen.

Prescription for the week:  Limit news to one hour a day.  Take some or all of these supplements: Read poetry, listen to music, spend time in nature, read the bible, read some of the mystics, or writers Henri Nouwen, Eugene Peterson, Thomas Merton, Kathleen Norris, sit in silence for five minutes, tell God whatever is going on in your heart.

Persons Alongside (and how it happens)

1 Corinthians 12:12-13:13 (or this excellent paraphrase: 12:12-31 and 13:1-13)

This week my mom asked me to stop talking to her about politics.  

To be honest, she’s been asking me to stop for a while, and I’ve just kept doing it, sending her articles, forwarding her things. I wanted to connect with her, to bring her to a place where we’d see things the same way (my way) and agree, and we’d commiserate, and laugh, and it would feel easy and peaceful. 

We didn’t come to that place.

Instead she wrote me a three page letter describing why she believes what she does, and respectfully asking me to back off and please respect her.  

It was humbling to receive.  

Because we are not going to agree. Maybe ever. And there will always be points in her beliefs or her reasoning that I will want to say,’ But wait…” But that’s not quite true…!” But have you considered…?” but in the midst of this argument, I got arrogant, and proud, and irritable and maybe a little bit rude.  

And I stopped seeing her as a person, quite apart from me and her role in my life, a separate person with fears and hopes and experiences that have shaped her beliefs and made her see the world and live her life in her own particular way, just like my fears and hopes and experiences have shaped my beliefs and the way I see and live in the world.  

She gets to be herself – with all her gifts and perspectives and impact in the world, and I get to be myself with all of mine - and nevertheless we are connected – both as mother and daughter, and in the Body of Christ.  

And while in many ways I don’t understand her, and she doesn’t understand me, I am grateful she had the courage to both confront me, and to share her story with me. 

And I love her. Not always well, but I do.

What is love? How do we do it? Especially when things feel complicated and confusing?

Paul tells us all sorts of things love is. And most of the time that we hear his list we either make it a mushy and weddingy ideal, or if we take it seriously, it makes us feel terribly guilty and inadequate and notice how poorly we love.

But take comfort, friends, remember, Paul isn’t writing this to perfect people. They are in trouble. In fact, they are currently all the things he says love isn’t – arrogant, proud, comparing themselves to each other, keeping a list of wrongdoing, envious, jealous, insisting on their own way, celebrating each other’s failures, name-calling, bragging, you name it, (and actually, Paul does).  And he says, love – which is everything, is none of these things.

And then, quite apart from our understanding of it as schmaltz or martyrdom, Paul describes love as something that exists outside of us. Love is something we receive, something that lives through us. Actually, love is a gift – like all these other gifts he just got finished talking about-  a gift from the God of Love who Loved so much as to join us fully in life and death.  Love belongs to God, and comes from God, and returns to God, and God shares it with us. 

This means that it isn’t about our ability to continue feeling all loving towards each other. Or even our ability to have pure motives all of the time, to keep arrogance out of the picture, or stay clear of irritability and resentment.   It isn’t about being people without a single self-righteous thought in our head or petty frustrations in our interactions.  And it isn’t about quietly striving to bear all things and forgive all things and endure all things until we are all used up and dried out and nothing at all.  We can’t conjure love, or achieve love or work hard enough to produce it.

But how do we do it, then?  Love is something we receive, but it’s also a verb. 

What does it mean to love?

We usually take 1 Corinthians 13 on its own, it’s even referred to as “the love chapter”, but it is Paul’s direct explanation for how people so diverse and varied, with so many different backgrounds and perspectives and experiences and gifts and abilities – live together as One.  Love is how the Body of Christ works.

So first, he says two important things that about what it means to be the Body of Christ. The first one is: we are connected. 

We are One Body.  This is God’s body, and you and I are a part of it because God had put this body together as God sees fit.

God has chosen to connect us to each other and we are connected, period. Even when we don’t act like it, even if we pretend we aren’t, even if we disown one another, we cannot truly detach parts of the body and decide they don’t belong or contribute, or that they don’t impact us and that we are not in some way dependent upon each other.  We are.

Whether we like it or not we are inseparably attached. Even when we feel desperately isolated, or treat others that way, we are not alone.  We are part of the same body, connected as tissue and blood, suffering when others suffer, carrying the shame of dehumanizing words or actions done to or by another, bearing each other’s sadness and grief, celebrating when there is joy in each other’s lives.  Because we are part of the One Body we belong to each other. We are connected.

The second thing Paul wants them to understand about the Body of Christ is: we are all different. 

And we are meant to be! We bring different gifts and perspectives, different interests and passions, different pain and loss, growth and new life. We need each other; we need people radically different than we are.  

We can’t and shouldn’t all be alike, like a pile of identical disembodied parts –that is no-body instead of a one-body. We only make sense if we are not the same.

That means that we each need to be who we are. 

We need to be completely ourselves, to own our own stories and shortcomings, longings and quirks. The way we play our role in this big picture is by bravely living who each one of us is distinctly called to be. Parker Palmer has said, “The deepest vocational question is not ‘What ought I to do with my life?’ It is the more elemental and demanding, ‘Who am I? What is my nature?’ True vocation joins self and service in the deep joy of knowing that we are here on earth to be the gifts that God created.”

Jesus meets us as we are, and takes all these different people and makes us One.  

We are broken, like the rest of the world, we are selfish and self-righteous and broken. 

But Christ enters our brokenness: the places where we are torn apart, paralyzed by fear or failure, divided from each other and our own selves. Christ enters our brokenness, and becomes the body broken for us, so that we may be whole, joined together in love.  

All connected, completely ourselves.

And Paul is saying that the potential exists – and one day will be fully realized – for our differences to strengthen the body, for the image of God to be lived in fullness, fully embodied, and for the body to function at its peak: alive, healthy, vital, each part singing its own contribution, in the harmony of the Spirit of God. 

We are to bravely live out this all connected and completely ourselves reality.  And the only way we do that is through love.  Without that, nothing works. Nothing else we try to do or say matters or lasts.

So often we see each other as stereotypes or functions, role models or rivals, two dimensional figures to like or dislike, fear or forget.  

But these people around us, beside, us, in front of us every day, are broken and beautiful, both just like me and mystifyingly different than me. 

They each have unique gifts and voices and whole worlds of pain and hope and lived experiences behind their beliefs and actions, just like we do.

Love invites us to be people, alongside other people; that’s where Jesus is.

There is this guy, Benjamin Mathis, who goes around setting up a “free listening” table, and he sits and listens to people. Just listens.  When he finds himself across from someone he disagrees with, he tries to see the person behind the belief – to hear “the biography rather than the ideology,” by asking,

 “Will you tell me your story?  I’d love to know how you came to this point of view.”

He tells this story:

She was just staring at me. 

She had something to say, and I could tell she was curious about the Free Listening sign, but she didn’t seem to have to courage to speak to me.

Yet.

So, I waited. Nowhere to be, and all day to get there.

…

Finally, she walked up, and like a young warrior preparing for battle, she said:

 “I don’t usually do this, and I know this isn’t a hot button topic anymore… But, I think abortion is wrong. It’s not a form of birth control, and people who have them should be arrested for murder." 

He continues: “… I wanted to stop her, and tell her my story. 

I’ve sat with two loved ones as they suffered through the difficult decision and consequences of ending a pregnancy. It was a brutal human experience, and gave me an insight to something I never expected to witness. 

In moments like that, “choice” doesn’t seem to be the right word.

So, when she told me they should be arrested for terminating a pregnancy, the familiar burn of disagreement started to fire in me.

There were so many things I wanted to say. I wanted to change her mind, to argue, to disagree. It’s a natural response.   

But, if my story brought me to my beliefs, then I needed to know how her story brought her to her beliefs.

  

So, I asked:

“Thank you for sharing that. Tell me your story? I’d love to know how you came to this point of view.”

She seemed surprised by my interest.

“Why? It doesn’t matter. Your sign said Free Listening, so I gave you something to listen to.”

“Give me more to listen to.”

“They should be locked up! It’s wrong. It’s not right to go out and sleep with whoever, then just vacuum away the result like it never happened.”

She paused…then inhaled the entire world.

“And it’s not fair. All I’ve ever wanted to be is a mom. My whole life, I knew I was meant to have children. Then, when I was 18—18!—the doctor told me I’d never have children. My ovaries were damaged, or missing...it doesn’t matter which. I kept it a secret, and when my husband found out, he left me. I’m alone, my body doesn’t work, I’m old…who will ever love me…”

I wondered if she could hear my heart breaking.

“…so, I guess I get upset when I see people who can get pregnant, who can have kids, who’s bodies work…who can be moms…and they just choose not to…”

Sometimes, there’s nothing to “disagree” with.

I didn’t need to be right.  

I just needed to be there.

She wiped away a few tears, gave me a hug, and thanked me for listening.

She exhaled, and walked [away].

Maybe one day, she’ll hear my story.  But today, it was my turn to hear hers.

I hope she felt loved.

When we love, we break through the divisive, defensive veneer and we touch the real; we taste the Kingdom of God, where we belong to God and we belong to each other.  We bear witness that God is constantly moving things from death to life, from despair to hope, from isolation to connection.

But it isn’t about trying to love, making yourself love, or feeling badly for how badly you love – that just makes you into a two-dimensional role, a success or a failure. 

Loving is about being fully a person: loved, and made to share love. It is joining in what God is already doing.

So because love is forgiving I can forgive.

Bcause love is kind I can risk kindness. 

Because love is patient I can stop, and see you, and take a breath, and be patient with myself. 

 And when I keep a record of wrongs, when I am arrogant or filled with envy – that very fact drives me back towards love, which tells me, promises me, that these things fade away and love remains.  

Our imperfect love doesn’t mean love isn’t real – instead it shows how real love is. 

So dimly we see, so faintly we taste! – but it is enough to tell us there is so much more!

The faith is that love endures, the hope is that love remains.

So we can can say I love, forgive me my selfishness, I love, free me from my envy and my arrogance, I love, heal me of my hatred and my jealousy. I love, I love, I love! 

These things have no place in love, and yet love has a place in me, claims me, clings to me, and I love, even with these things staring me in the face, I love.  I can love because I am loved- I can love, can dip my toe in and dive in with all my unlove because there is love, because it doesn’t depend on me or come from me; it holds me and fills me and draws me in deeper and braver.

This is how God made it to work, made us to work.  Underneath all the fear and distrust, below the noise and the competition, behind all the various gifts and contributions and identities, within all the different experiences and beliefs and stories, are unique persons, all connected, each completely ourselves.

The Body of Christ is the alternative community that embodies this reality.  

And what makes it possible, what fills it, and heals it, and fuels it, and spreads it, is love - our origin and destiny; everlasting and unbreakable, fearless, selfless, believes all, hopes all, endures all, LOVE.

So let’s live it.

Amen.