God completely With Us

  

Luke 2:1-20

Would it be utterly tactless to admit on Christmas Eve that I am a teensy bit sick of Christmas? For the past month the soundtrack in our house, and car, and on vacation, and during dinner, has been Christmas classics. And while Bing and Ella and Frank and Mariah and are great, there’s a point when it all turns stale. 

 

And because Christmas classics are playing all the time, we’ve naturally had many conversations picking apart the origins and meaning of everything from the culturally shifting read of “Baby, it’s cold outside,” to the weirdly morbid lyrics of “Frosty the Snowman,” to the sketchy relationship dynamics in “last Christmas I gave you my heart but the very next day you gave it away” to the debatably patronizing misunderstanding in “I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus.”  Interspersed among these empty, sugary treats are the delicious and filling songs we’re singing here tonight, telling a story of mystery and wonder, of love and joy. But it’s all mixed up together, the deep and the stupid, and it’s relentless. 

 

But I am not here to rail against the commercialization of Christmas, which I happily join in every year. Instead, I want to invite us into that story of mystery and wonder by being here in the presence of God and each other.

 

The truth is, I am not really sick of Christmas, so much as I am craving to know the truth of it, to feel the real of it, to be drawn back to the hope of it. I want to peel back the shiny paper and see Christmas for what it is, not a dreamy, cheery, fix-everything event that makes us feel all warm and cozy and ends all strife and strain. 

 

The birth of Christ is untidy and uncomfortable, and at least here, tonight, we need not pretend it’s anything else. The actual Christmas moment is just like the rest of life: it’s awkward and messy, tiring and scary, a little exciting, a little confusing.  

 

And that’s how God wanted it. God wanted to be human, so God came human -  vulnerable, needy, loveable and infuriating – to humans, into the arms of ordinary, conflicted people struggling to do the right thing and wondering even what that is.  

 

God trusted ordinary people to welcome him in and care for him like one of our own. Love came in to be loved. This is the beginning of the story of Jesus Christ, and it’s the new beginning for the whole earth and everyone in it.   

 

God chooses to be with us, as we are, in this life, as it is.  And so this Christmas, like every day, our sadness is as welcome as our happiness, our anger is a gift that points us to truth, and no matter what we do, even when we lose sight of what’s real and bury it in layers of false cheer, even when we hurt others or ourselves, even when we’re drowning in regret, desperate for forgiveness, or numb with fatigue, nothing can separate us from the love of God, who heals what’s sick and mends what’s broken and welcomes home what’s lost.  

 

This little baby Jesus will die, that guaranteed when he draws his first human breath and cries his first tiny tear. God takes all suffering and death into God’s own self. Addiction, estrangement, illness, pain, injustice, cruelty and loneliness, there is nothing God does not bear with us, nothing can be greater than divine love coming in. The cross is there, in the manger. So is the empty tomb, so that, even now as we celebrate his birth, we can say with confidence, No death, no matter how big or small, gets to define who we are, or decide where all this is going. In Christ Jesus, we are forgiven, connected and made whole. You and I, the earth and everything in it, this whole story from beginning to end, belongs to God. 

 

No wonder the angels busted the sky open with joy, and the shepherds’ fervent words caused awe and amazement in all who heard them, and Mary eternally ponders these things in her heart.  

 

God took on flesh and God crept in beside us. Suddenly the ordinary is miraculous. This human living, astonishing. Every breath we take, a gift.  Bodies that grow, and learn, and smell, and taste, and sweat, and break down and need tending, minds that solve complex problems, imaginations that conceive breathtaking art, hearts that discover little ways to make each other laugh, and uncover just what will comfort another, all of it, miraculous. All things God is utterly delighted by. All things God wanted to know from the inside. 

 

Christmas invites us to be present, then.  Not to have answers, or have it all together, or to be cheerful or even introspective. Simply to receive the presence of God, right here, in these ordinary, miraculous lives we’re given, and to receive these lives too, with all our limitations and misdirections and all our mystery and wonder, love and joy, our beloved, holy, ordinary lives as conflicted people struggling to do the right thing and wondering even what that is, called to be here in this gorgeous world God is always making new.

 

And honestly, God loves us so much, I think God probably finds it cute when we make such a big, fancy, obnoxious to-do out of stuff, inevitably mixing up together the deep and the stupid,even so much that we sometimes lose sight of the treasure underneath. No matter, because when this turbo-charged season ends we remain forever inside the story of Christmas, of God-with-us nevertheless, fully, always leading everything eternally toward life and love.  

 

Amen.

Be Here Now

Daily Devotion - March 22

I will try to send a brief message  to my congregation each day while we are pausing gathering in person. Today's is the sermon from our online church gathering.
- Kara

 Luke 10:38-42
Martha

I was having an anxiety moment this week on the phone with my sister. This is a surreal reality we are living in, where there is no end in sight, where the threat looms, the numbers climb, the scenarios unfold, and none of them rosy. The losses pile up, big ones and little ones, the pressures build up, big ones and little ones.
And life as we’ve known it has ground to a screeching halt.  An unfathomable stop.

And the questions loom: What happens with school? With the economy? When we start getting sick or losing those we love? What happens to the vacations we had been saving for? To the job we had just gotten? To the comfortable, familiar rhythms of life?  Haircuts, and dentist appointments, and movie theaters, and coffee shops?  What are we going to do?  How are we going to get through all of this? What will this do to us?

If I want to go there, I can go there, quickly. I can elevate my heart rate and feel the adrenaline course through me.  I can get sleepless, and restless, and worried, and anxious, distracted by many things.

So as we were ramping up, pulling each other into anxiety, my sister paused, and as I have shared a couple times this week – she said something that I have been repeating to myself over and over.

From outside the urgency, she spoke truth that brought me back to the present.

She said, “There is grace for what actually happening. Never for what might happen.”
Last week Lisa introduced us to Lazarus- the resurrected man, when she preached about his sister, Mary.  He lived in his sister Martha’s house in Bethany, along with their sister Mary. These three were very close friends of Jesus, and, not having a home of his own, their house was where he went when he wanted to come home.  Since most of us are stuck in our houses, we are going to spend the next few weeks in theirs.

In this scene, we see Martha doing what women were supposed to do when they welcomed people into their home. They were supposed to be preparing – the home, the meal, the table.  Men were supposed to sit with their guests and carry on the conversation; they were allowed to live in the present. But women were supposed to be organizing and planning, and doing the work to be ready for what was next.

 Mary should be preparing too, but she decides she is going to go sit with Jesus instead, and Martha gets stuck with the work alone.
But Martha doesn’t stick with what she should be doing either, because she brings her concerns right to Jesus.  She shows us what to do with our own anxiety.

Lord, don’t you even care? She asks. Don’t you even care that she’s left me to do all the work alone?  Tell her to help me!

There is another time in scripture where Jesus’ friends said, “Lord, don’t you even care…? It was when the disciples were caught in the middle of a terrible storm, and the boat was going under, and Jesus was asleep ASLEEP in the stern.  And they shook him awake in terrified panic and said these very same words, Lord, don’t you even care… that we are dying?  Don’t you even care that we are going to drown?

And for as much as that is NOT actually where Martha is, it is where she feels like she is. I am drowning here! Tell her to help me!  I am alone! Do something!  Jesus, don’t you even care?

Don’t you care that there are not enough hospital beds or ventilators?
Don’t you even care that my retirement is dwindling away?
Don’t you even care that I lost my job?
Don't you even care that my kid is stocking groceries during a lockdown?
Don't you even care about the people stuck in refugee camps?
Don’t you even care that I can’t handle work and kids in the same space a single second longer?
It’s bad, so bad, can’t you see how bad it is? Don’t you care?

It’s the “What if?” of fear that projects the future. We are used to preparing for the worst, or the best, or any possibility that might arise.
This future-oriented, preparation kind of life is how we’ve shaped our whole society, it’s how we operate. We work for what is coming. We look toward what is coming. We live for what is coming. We make calendars, and lists, and reservations, and investments. We know how to be organizing and planning, and doing the work to be ready for what is next.

But this? This being stuck in the perpetual present?  We have no idea how to do this.
We’re stuck at home and not even living, as we’ve come to define living.
Or we’re out there where somehow the hospital and grocery store have become the front lines of something even our high tech models can’t completely predict, and we are not prepared.  We have no choice but to simply face it when it comes.

And what we want, desperately, is grace for what might be.
We want grace for the possibilities, and the dangers, and the contingencies.
We want some way to be organizing and planning, and doing the work to be ready for what is next. We want God to join us in the urgency!  To rally others to take it seriously! To get us all pointed on the solution!

But what we need is God from outside our urgency to speak truth to us.
We need the voice of “Even if…” to bring us back into the present.
Martha, Martha, Jesus says, you are worried and distracted by many things.  There is need of only one thing.  Mary has chosen the good, and it will not be taken away from her.

Just like the disciples, tossed about in the little boat in the big storm, Martha has lost sight of who is sitting in her midst.  Jesus invites her to be in the moment.  Be where Jesus is.

Jesus is inviting us to live in the truth that in life or in death we are held in the love of God. To take a deep breath, and set it all down and come back to that truth.
That nothing can separate us from the love of God.
There is never grace for what might be, only for what is.

The good life is only ever the life we are in, not the life that may be.
God’s grace is for the now.
God is making something TRULY new, right in the middle of what actually is.  Always.
We can’t stop this from happening. It’s what God does.
It is not dependent on the work that we do.
We can’t bring it about, but we can join it when it happens, right now.

Beloved one, you are you are worried and distracted by many things.  There is need of only one thing.  To be in our lives where God already is. To be here now.

God is in our living rooms.  And also in the hospital rooms, and the strategy rooms, and grocery store stock rooms, and the great wide empty streets, and resting rivers and quiet skies of the whole world; God is right here in this with us.
God is seeing us through, right now.
There is grace for what is actually happening.
Each day, right now. Right here.
God is with us.
Amen.

(This year, we are asking, "Who is this God and what is God up to?" And "What is a good life and how do we live it?" along with some of our biblical ancestors.  The sermons related to this series are here: Hannah, Mary, Anna & Simeon, John the Baptist, Samuel, David (we had a theater performance, here's an older sermon about David), The Samaritan Woman, Mary of Bethany (preached by Pastor Lisa), Martha, Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, Thomas (preached by Pastor Lisa, follow up devotion here)

Living from the complete

1 Corinthians 13:8-13

On Monday I will fly to Kentucky.  I will land in the airport in Louisville and I will call for an Uber. I will ask the Uber to drive me an hour away outside of all cities and towns, past miles and miles of white-fenced horse ranches, to Trappist, Kentucky, where a huge, stone, white-washed building filled with silent monks sits on a hill overlooking rolling farmland and woods with winding trails. 

I will get out of the car. Then I’ll ask the Uber driver to come back on Friday and get me, because there is no taxi or Uber service out there, and no cell phone service either.  So I will trust that the driver will return to get me at the end of my time.

Then I will spend five days expecting God to do something.  I don’t know what it is I expect God to do.  Just something. As to my part, I will make myself available.  

I will do this by not bringing any fiction along.  I just finished reading an excellent novel, and I’d love to start another one on the plane. But I won’t, because there is no greater escape for me than into a world created by strong turn of phrase and compelling characters.  And I want to be as present as possible.

I will also make myself available to God by turning off my phone for the entire time without peeking at it. Not even once. This one is harder. It means trusting God with my family. It means letting go of the illusion that if I were with my kids nothing bad could happen to them, or if I were reachable then I could prevent or solve a tragedy.  

I will simply have to be in my life and let them be in theirs.  

I will pack sturdy walking shoes.  And a journal.  And a big book I bought recently called, An Anthology of Christian Mysticism that I’ve looked at for weeks but can’t stay focused enough to read- especially with a novel nearby. And I will bring some markers and paper.  And comfy clothes.

These things will help me be available for whatever ends up happening between God and me.

This is to be five whole days of silence.  

So I will leave behind the politeness and niceties that make me want to apologize when I reach the doorknob at the same time as someone else, or use my Thank yous, pleases, and excuse mes.  I will be a silent person among silent people, who express gratitude or deference with a head nod, a smile, eye contact.   

I will make myself available to God by going to the church to read scripture and chant along with the monks, (the only time they use their voices). I won’t go all eight times a day, I’m not thatwild.  But a few times.  I am already looking forward 7:30 pm compline each evening, when the monks put themselves to bed with the startling words, “May the all-powerful Lord grant us a restful night and a peaceful death.” And then we all line up for a goodnight blessing splashed over us in holy water, one at a time, as a reminder of our baptism and eternal life in Christ.

And maybe once I will go to the 3:15 am candlelit Vigil, when the vast ceiling is cloaked in darkness, and the scant candle flames dance along the walls and the silence of the star-studded sky and rolling hills is swathed around the chapel like a blanket so thick you can almost feel it.  And when the last tone of the bell in the tower rings out, I’ll pad back down the hallway and crawl back into bed. 

I know there will be restlessness.  I will crash around the woods until I can settle into my own body, until I can carry the silence within enough to start hearing the symphony all around me in the forest and fields.  

I know there will be lots of noise inside my head and heart that needs to clean itself out, and I will try to be patient with myself as that expulsion happens. I also know there will be tears as things loosen up.  

And I know, from experience, that I will be mostly, but not perfectly, silent.  That sometimes – when I stub a toe, or lock myself out of my room, or drop an earring down a drain – I will unwittingly swear outloud.  Then I will immediately judge myself for it, and scold myself that the only words coming up from my dark heart into the God-soaked silence are bad words.  Then I will find some self-compassion and laugh at myself, and maybe even imagine God laughing too, so there will be another sound coming from me than the swears, and the cleansing of the laughter will set me free and I will go back to my silence.  

I know I will nap a lot because the tiredness catches up to you when you stop.  I know I’ll struggle to try to achieve something and then remind myself I am simply trying to be aware and expectant and that in itself is a big enough challenge. 

I don’t know how God will meet me, or what God will do. But I know God will meet me there.

Now we see dimly, like in a shadowy mirror, squinting to tell exactly what we are looking at, but at least catching glimpses. But then we will see face to face, God and us, no confusion, clear as day. Now we know in part, and then we will know fully, even as we are already fully known.

All we have now is the partial. Partial attention and partial presence and partial ability to know, or to love, or to trust.  But the partial serves its purpose because it points us to the complete, and the complete is coming.   And when it does, the partial will fade away.

We want the complete. We live in the longing that cannot and will not be fulfilled until the complete comes, and so we are always pining, always a little lost, a little hungry, a little unsatisfied. We long for God. But we mostly don’t know it is God that we are longing for. 

But some things come into the partial from the complete. They give us somewhere to abide, something to remain in that will persist past the incomplete into the whole.  “Faith, hope, and love,” Paul says, “these three remain.” 

Faith is a loaded word. 

We think it means religion. Or certainty. Or doctrine. And all of those things can go into it, but they are not faith.  We are filled with questions. Filled with doubts. Filled with contradictions and failures. And so we judge ourselves for the “faith” we have or don't have.  We think we need to arrive at some truth, or at least be on a quest for it.  But that’s not faith either.

Faith is, quite simply and purely, the presence that does not let us go.  It is this dependable relationship, and the trust inside us that grows toward this presence, this One who knows all and sees all and holds all, who knows and sees and holds US.  

So together the people of faith embody this kind of trust. We become with and for each other and the world, the kind of people who don’t let go.  We stand alongside in suffering.  We stay near in sorrow. We see and stand with the marginalized, the lost, the undependable, those with nothing to give back.  We stay. We abide with each other, because God abides with us. The way we say it around here is that we meet Jesus, who is with and for us, when we are with and for each other. That’s faith.

What about Hope?

Is hope naïve or entitled?  I heard that said this week.  That hope is something for those who are privileged enough to be sheltered from the extremities of injustice, or from the mortal suffering of war or famine.   That hope anesthetizes people, keeps them from action, because it’s pie in the sky projection that everything will turn out ok, and things, for some, clearly are not ok, and may never be.

 I don’t know what that is, but it’s not hope. 

Hope from God comes from outside our reality. It is not limited by our limitations, not skewed by our perspectives, not clouded by our suffering or perceived lack thereof.  

Hope unflinchingly recognizes all the anguish of the partial and says, Nevertheless, the complete is coming.  The complete is coming when all will be whole, when the fullness of all we ever have been and ever will be, will be, without end. 

Hope means nothing is lost, nothing is overlooked, nothing is forgotten. Instead, death is overcome with life, fullness of life, for each one and for all.  Hope not a human sentiment about a disconnected future that we manufacture in our dimly mirror-gazing, in-part knowing existence.  It’s the unwavering gaze of the loving witness who sees and bears all, and who holds in the Divine self the continuity of the whole story – the human story and each human story inside of it.  All that has been and all that is, and even all that has yet to unfold, is held already in the love and completeness of God.  

And so Hope and patience belong together.  It takes time for us to deepen and grow in Christ into people who are shaped by the complete and not the partial.  So if we long for hope, and want to embody and live in hope, we practice patience. With and for each other, with our learning and our letting go, our struggles and our questions, our disagreements and our searching, our naiveté and our judgments.  We are patient as the Holy Spirit sets us freer and freer.  And out of that patience, hope will begin to bloom and grow.

And Love, what a commodified word, Love.  

We love pizza, The West Wing, autumn in Minnesota, and our grandchildren.  But if we’re honest we don't really know what it means to love God.  

We’re so flooded with choices, Rowan Williams suggests (in the book we are reading together, Being Disciples), that we confuse wanting with loving. We think it’s about our freedom to choose whatever we want, whoever we want, however we want.  Our lives become “an endless stream of disconnected acts of choosing.”  It doesn’t really matter whatwe choose, just that we feel free to choose for ourselves.

But love is not wants and choices.  Love is the deepest life instinct, the Greek word eros.  It’s the energy that drives us to what really matters.  Love is what helps us step back from distraction and anxiety and turn toward something beyond us that gives our lives purpose and meaning.  It grabs us as a deep regard for the world, for humanity in general and the specific humans our lives are bound up with, and for God. Love is living in a state of openness to joy. Williams says, “Love is what permits us to be breathed into, to be given to, to be made alive.”  We love because God first loved us.

And love never ends. Not ever.

True freedom is not to be self-determined choosers who feed our wants. 

True freedom is to be our deepest and truest selves, who come from, and exist for, and return to, love.  We are free to discover slowly and patiently “the deepest rhythms of our life,” Williams says, “to find the context in which we will grow in God.” 

This kind of freedom requires resistance to the consumer culture of wants and choosing.  It means renouncing what looks like freedom but is actually slavery, and choosing instead, the freedom that leads us to fullness. 

And it insists that we face honestly and confess our own refusals of faith hope and love.  The ways we act like they are ours to produce, or they’re aspirational, or they’re for some and not all.  We must face the many ways we reject the complete in favor of the partial, over and over, each day.  

We are here to receive from the relationship that wants to make us whole.  The unconditional witness and presence that breathed life into the universe breathes life into you and me, and is wholly committed to who we are and will be, each of us, and the whole of us together.  

We are not in the complete yet, but God is.  And so at any moment we can abide in the one who was and is and will be.  

“Faith, hope and love,” Paul tells us, “these three things remain.” They are from the complete and come to meet us in the partial. Faith, hope and love come from God to us.  We receive them.  

The Spirit gives faith as a reliable relationship, a transcendent and grounded truth that holds us. And hope, as an abiding and tender witness to all that we, and the world, have been and will be and are right now.  And love, as unrestricted and absolute bond with God, ourselves and each other that will not end. When everything else fades away, this is what will be, familiar because we’ve tasted it partially, but the fullness of it will satisfy us completely.  And the greatest of these is love.

So we show up. We can’t manufacture faith from our stuttered and stunted attempts toward truth, or produce hope from the despair and despondency around and within us, or duplicate love from the shallow self-selection of wants. 

But we can be patient together. And still.  And gentle with ourselves and each other.  We can make space for the Divine to meet us here, and work in us and change us.  We can expect to be changed. We can expect to be encountered. We can let faith take root, and hope open us up, and love grow in us like a strong and mighty tree.

There will be restlessness. And lots of inner noise.  

And there will be tiredness and naps.  

There will also likely be swearing, and most certainly self-judgment. 

But we can show up with our sturdy walking shoes and our comfy clothes to be available for how God might want to meet us.  

And while my tools may be a journal and pen, yours may be knitting needles, or a fishing pole, or a prayer cushion, or a labyrinth, or your camera – whatever help you listen and look and pray, by which I mean, be open to the great openness where God will meet you.  

We can’t make faith, hope and love real in our lives, but we can practice self-compassion and forgiveness.  And we can risk trying out the things that feel strange and new that may lead us deeper into reality, to abide in the eternal.  In Jesus, God came to be with us in the discomfort and newness of human existence; we can come into discomfort and newness too, to find Jesus. So maybe it’s not chanting with monks. Maybe it’s chanting Psalms here with us. Or seeing a spiritual director. Maybe it’s reading the bible with a friend, or volunteering in the community soup kitchen, or trying centering prayer with a group.  Maybe it’s risking being vulnerable about what’s really going on inside of you and letting someone else near.

You can be sure there will be tears as things loosen up, and cleansing laughter too.  And we might struggle to try to achieve something and then have to remind each other that we are simply trying to be aware and expectant, and that in itself is a big enough challenge.  

But we will trust together that if we seek simply to live in awareness with expectancy, our deeper life-instinct will awaken, which is love. And the yearning at the core of us will permit the Holy Spirit to shape us into people who abide in faith, hope and love, who live freely as a person among people. And we won’t know how God will meet us, or what God will do.  But we know God will meet us here.

Amen.

(This is a sermon series based on a book the congregation is reading together, Being Disciples, by Rowan Williams. This is week 2, chapter 2, "Faith, Hope and Love."  First Installment, "Being Disciples." Next up: "Forgiveness").

Ready

I go on sabbatical at the end of this week.
This is my second sabbatical, and this time mine overlaps with Andy's, so our family will be spending two months in Europe.
We'll start in Berlin, (where Andy will teach a class on Bonhoeffer, in the Bonhoeffer Haus, which is pretty awesome). Then we'll settle down in Paris for the duration, with short trips to London, Switzerland, Taize, Venice and Florence, and whatever day trips in France occur to us.
(When we come home, I'll have one more month left, which includes a week-long silent retreat at a monastery in Kentucky).

My goal this sabbatical is "uni-tasking," which is to say, I want to do one thing at a time.  I want to live in the moment, to be in the here and now. I want to exist in the world with five changes of clothes and no social media.  I want to struggle through learning a language, let my kids teach me things, and read novels set in the place I am visiting. I want to journal in a cafe and walk till my body hurts.  I want to see art, and taste food, and be surprised by what a day might bring, and what I can get by without.
I want to learn from the French joie de vivre, which, I suspect, involves slowing down a lot and practicing patience and presence. And I am fascinated anyway by the idea of living with "exuberant enjoyment of life."  I wrote about accepting the gift of this sabbatical, and the strange phenomenon of avoiding joy instead of embracing it.  I have let go of guilt and self-judgment (which is an ongoing practice.  Even in the writing of this I have had to do it again).  That seems essential to receiving grace and joy.  I've also let go of Facebook.  Both of these experiences are preparing me for what's ahead.

I am scaling waaay back, leaving my computer at home (gulp), and going back to pen and paper.  My work email is set to automatically delete everything that comes in. Next I have to figure out how not to get news updates on my phone every time our president says something shocking.  But we're planning on turning off our phones for much of the time too.
I want to remember how to breathe. Deeply and fully.
And then I want to do it a lot.

I have purchased three different travel purses and road-tested them. This is unusual for me, considering I have used the same purse every day for at least seven years, and the same wallet since I was 18.  I dug out some old purses to see if any of them might work. This is evidently not unusual for me. In one I found a ticket stub to the Table Mountain Cable Car in Capetown, and in another a subway card from NYC. After much indecision and extensive advice from Maisy, I think I finally arrived on the one I'll be taking.  Now I am on the hunt for the perfect walking-all-over-creation shoes.  These obsessions are helping me break down this big trip into manageable, bite-sized anxieties.

We are almost ready to go.
We've changed the burnt-out lightbulbs and washed the windows, and Saturday I'll scrub the fridge.  All the things that need doing that I don't do for myself, I will do for someone else.
The dogsitter will have a lovely clean fridge and bright rooms.

I looked up my family tree, and it turns out that I have lots of roots in some of the places we'll be, so that's exciting.  Maisy has some city scavenger hunt books, Owen is already planning family excursions to nearby towns, and Andy is reading French philosophers. The Roots are exploring.

Both kids are bringing ukuleles so we have some musical evenings ahead.  Art supplies made the cut too, but the stuffed animal limit has been set at a strict four.
The kids are heartbroken about leaving the dog for two whole months, and we're working through those tears. There will be many more, I am sure.  And I am not naive about how our strong-willed collection of introverts will handle jet lag, homesickness, competing agendas and limited alone time.  But I am hoping to glean some joie even from that vivreing.
Or at least grow in patience and presence.
And breathing.

We are leaving in the thick of summer and returning to Fall. Owen leaves 13 and returns 14.  My church will change while I am gone.  But, as I have repeatedly assured the kids, the dog will not forget us.
Two months is a very short time in the scheme of things.
But each one of the next 60 days is a gift, ready to be received.
I am ready to receive them.

On Prayer (and the two only ways to Not-Pray)

Psalm 130 & 131

This summer we are trying out different ways to pray.  But it occurs to me, that we might want to take a step back and ask, What is prayer?

Perhaps we think it is something only especially religious people can do – or at least, only especially religious people are good at. (Watch how many potlucks and picnics are put on hold until the pastor can get there to pray).  Most of us don’t want to do it in public, that’s for sure.  Maybe prayer is something we feel like we should do before we eat or go to bed, or we find ourselves doing it urgently when things go wrong, often feeling guilty that we don’t do it more when things are going right.

But prayer is nothing more, and nothing less, than communication between God and us.  In that way it is both utterly simple and natural, and also pretty astonishing.  We were made to be connected to our Creator, each other, the world around us.  But that God wants to communicate with us? Wants to hear from us? Wants to tell us things? Amazing!

Prayer can happen anywhere, anytime. In the dead of night when fear grips you, flat on your back on the grass gazing up at a soft, sunset sky, naked in the shower when your mind is roaming, anxiously driving in a snowstorm, sitting in a heart-soaring concert.  Martin Luther famously prayed on the toilet.  Prayer is something we’re made for. 

And it’s not just talking to God with words. It is talking. It is also listening. It is receiving, and resting, and noticing and being quiet, and yelling and crying, laughing and singing, dancing, walking, and sitting very, very still. It’s thoughts in your head or words outloud, or a feeling in your gut, or a warmth in your chest. Think of all the ways a person can communicate without even using words!  Sighing, and body language, laughing, pointing, shaking in anger, weeping in joy. Prayer uses our senses, our bodies and minds and hearts.  It is the substance of our communication with God.

Anyone can pray. Everyone does pray - even if they don’t realize that’s what they’re doing. 

The point is – there is no wrong way to pray – it’s a relationship –hanging out with God in whatever way the two of you happen to be hanging out at the moment.

There are really only two ways to not-pray.

The first is to act like God isn’t here. 

And the second is not to show up yourself. 

If you acknowledge God is here, and if you show up too, you will be praying.

This may be harder than it sounds.  

We have all sorts of handy and habitual ways to ignore God, and all sorts of practiced and thoughtless ways to be less than fully present ourselves.  

In fact, much of what we might think of as prayer is actually Not-praying - it acts as though that God is an idea, concept, or belief, rather than an actual being who encounters us. Or else it's playing a role, going through motions, checking a box, rather than being fully and honestly present.

But in the two prayers we have before us today, we see a beautiful example of both recognizing that God is here, and showing up yourself.

David didn’t hide from God or sugarcoat things.   There is a particular kind of honesty, a kind of trust, to be able to say what you are really feeling and needing, without feeling the need to make the other person think the best of you, or protect their feelings.

David didn’t say, I’ve got this God. no worries. I’m on top of it.  I don’t mean to trouble you. He didn’t keep himself out of the relationship. Make himself seem ok, even when he wasn’t. He didn’t dismiss his discomfort or need; he let it all out.

Out of the depths I cry to you Lord!  Hear my voice! Listen to me! Please!

In both of these Psalms David starts by talking honestly to God, moves into to talking honestly to himself, and ends with talking to the community about God.

God hear me!

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits…

O Israel, hope in the Lord. For with him there is steadfast love...

And then,

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up too high….

But I have calmed and quieted my soul. Like a weaned child.

O Israel hope in the Lord form this time on forevermore!

Yesterday, inside a single day, I shared joy with someone I love who was excited. 

I was unable to take pain away from someone I love who was suffering.

I felt stuck in misunderstanding and sorrow with someone I love.

I felt ashamed and vulnerable about a weakness of mine on full display, and was embraced and unconditionally seen and loved in the midst of it by someone I love.

And I also caused pain and deeply hurt, to someone I love.  All different people.  In one day.  

Lord, if you marked our transgressions, who could stand? 

There is no way to do this perfectly, this living and loving and being in the world.  We will hurt others. We will be hurt. We will wander off, and come home, and do things we regret and do things we celebrate, and the whole big mess of it is something we can bring to God, plop down before him and say, From my depths I cry to you!

Our hope is not in our own ability to love well or live right, it is in God. God’s forgiveness, God’s steadfast love, God’s Spirit working in and through us.

God is here. And God expects us to show up too. 

We are here. And we expect God to show up too.

I wait for the Lord. More than those who watch for the morning.  

More than the father by the sick child’s bedside, counting down the hours. The worker on the night shift, the clock inching slowly by.  The sailor in the terrible storm, the traveler on a long flight, the child away from home overnight for the first time.

I’ve watched for the morning.  When Owen was brand new, I had the midnight to 5 am shift.  And sometimes I was awake for the bulk of it, bouncing, feeding, burping, comforting. And Oh, did I watch for the first sign of the sun peeking over the horizon, the light in the room to begin to shift.  For the hope that would meet me like I was crawling onto shore, I made it, I made it through the night, and it was going to be ok.

To wait for the Lord more than that... With all fervent desperation and staunch commitment to see it through.  There is trust there.  That like the morning sunrise, God will come. God will answer me. I will hang on.

This is what prayer does: It waits for God.

Wait.  Don’t rush to the next distraction. Don’t cave to the easy solution. Wait for the Lord. Sit in the discomfort. Feel how frustrated you really are. Cry out from your depths.

God will show up.  Prayer trusts God to show up.

And then – the other side of it – show up yourself. 

A weaned child, David calls his soul. A weaned child is no longer nursing, completely dependent on mom.  A weaned child is one who crawled down off mom’s lap and walked off on their own, felt the world, been knocked about, done things they regret, learned things they love, and then, in his metaphor, comes back to climb into mom’s lap and rest in her arms, to find comfort and peace. My soul is like the weaned child that is with me. 

 My soul had been bruised and battered, has explored, and made mistakes, and learned some things, and tried out life, and I bring it back to myself and hold it close and calm it. Shh. It’s ok. You’re ok.

My friend Jamie taught me to put my hand on my cheek, and say, Oh honey.  It is a way of summoning my soul back to myself when I am upset or overwhelmed. I feel my eyes well up often when I do it. I feel the empathy of seeing my own soul with compassion, as God sees it, welcoming it back, battered and bruised, to the love and care that God is extending to me. I may have been hiding because I didn’t feel worthy, or fleeing because I thought I’d be found out in my shame, or too busy and distracted to pay any attention, or racing too fast to catch up.  This move, Oh honey, brings me back to myself. It brings me back to God.

Tend to your heart. Discover your need for forgiveness. Accept it with gratitude.  Lower your eyes, set down your ego, coax your wild and weary soul back into your own embrace. Let yourself feel your scattered pieces come together and hold them, right here before God. Right here, and nowhere else.

Here I am Lord.  All of me. Right here. Seeing myself clearly, reigned in and ready. Waiting for the source of hope to meet me.

Around here we call that space where we wait for God and where we tend our souls, “Sabbath,” and we keep saying, forgetting, and remembering this: When we stop, God will meet us.  When we stop, God will meet us.

After a time, waiting for God and tending your soul, it happens.  There is a kind of thing that gently overtakes you.  A wonder, or gratitude, or confidence, or peace: a recognition of transcendence – that the Holy, wholly other than you, is actually here, can be trusted, sees you and loves you. And perhaps the feeling bubbles up as it did for David, the urge to announce it, O Israel! Hope in the Lord!  God cares about us! God will not let us go! Steadfast love! The power to redeem! God can be trusted until the end of time!

So far this summer, we’ve recognized God and shown up ourselves - with journaling, with movement, and on Saturday with clay.

Sometimes our heads get in the way. We overthink things, we try to make everything into words, we analyze and justify, and find it hard to quiet our souls and wait before the Lord.  On Saturday a lump of clay helped us out with that.

We worked it with our hands and saw what happened. For some, an image came to mind and they tried to shape the clay that way, for others, the shape changed as they went and it was more about the process. The clay became things we wanted to tell God, or things God might be telling us, or just a chance to play together.

You each got some playdoh when you came in. For the next couple of minutes, I invite you to work with it.  Don’t worry about how it looks, about artistic skill or anything like that, and don’t worry about what anyone else is dong with theirs.

Maybe for you it’s just a quiet stress relief to squeeze it, a moment that helps your mind quiet and be still.  Whatever it is, for the next couple of minutes, we are going to hold the playdoh in our palm and hold our heart open to God, and see what happens.  God is here, and we will be here too.

Let us pray.

*          *          *          *          *

O Lord, our hearts are not lifted up, our eyes are not raised too high;
We do not occupy ourselves with things too great and too marvelous for us.
But we have calmed and quieted our souls, like weaned children with their mothers;
   our souls are like the weaned children that are with us. 

O children of God, hope in the Lord, from this time on and for evermore.