Preach!

Daily Devotion - April 22

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

Our deck door is open. OUR DECK DOOR IS OPEN. Minnesota friends, the near 70 degree temps are leaking into the house and we are leaking out into the yard, and it is glorious. Ok, I just asked Alexa, and she says it's only 61, but wow, does it feel great!  

This morning a far-away friend thanked me for my daily messages, and said so many folks had become "preachy" lately and she was glad I was "keeping it real."  

"Preachy" is a word that has come to mean, I think, a kind of sanctimonious safely removed, telling other people what to feel and think sort of thing. Which is too bad. Because, as an actual preacher, I crave good preaching and I appreciate it to my bones.  

Good preaching watches for what God is doing in scripture and the world and shares about it. And a big part of that is looking right where we are, in our own lives, for the activity of God.

This means, by default, keeping it real. Because it's hard to see the real God doing real things in our real lives if we are striving beyond whatever we are in for some perceived perfection.  Here's how we should be coping....  Here's what you should be believing...

Here's what you should be doing... 

How about instead, What in the world is God up to now??

Good preaching is really just asking these questions of the text - and when I say "text" I mean whatever is in front of us - Who is God and what is God up to?

And the question we are all, already asking much of the time, What is a good life, and how do I live it?

Who is God here? In this moment of exhaustion when I want to open my mouth wide and scream swears into the face of this one I know I love more than my own life, but cannot stand at the moment?

Who is God, with us and for us, right now?

What is God up to now? When I am feeling so isolated and alone, and even jealous of the people talking about how they want to scream swears into the faces of their loved ones because I am not near anyone I love?

What is God doing in my life right here?

Who is this God and what is God up to when I wake up inexplicably cheerful, when the day feels bright and I feel grateful for life and my chance to be living it and the little things are bringing me big joy?

And what is a good life in the midst of all this chaos and standstill? What's the purpose of my life, my day, my existence now?  And how do I let myself find the good right now, right here, and not just postpone it for when this is "over" - whatever that means?

What is God up to when the sickness comes, and things feel scary and precarious, and my mortality is front and freaking center?

Who is God right now for this one I love whose dementia means they can't remember what's going on or why nobody is allowed to visit, and every day feels strange and awful? 

What is God up to when the babies are coming and the grandpas are dying and they might miss each other on the way in and out?

In my life, in my world, with the people I love, in my community, in this whole situation, in the global human drama, who is God? What is God up to?

God meets us in the questions. We keep thinking it's our job to get ourselves to some zen place of arrival, to find some spiritual lessons in this, or to come out the other side a better person. Fine, that would all be wonderful. And KUDOS, seriously!, to those people who are doing that all on their own. For a lot of us, though, that's just not possible, or even, I'll admit it, desirable.

What I mean is, I suspect that the gift of this time isn't that we can do a terrific self-improvement project.  Instead, I suspect the gift of this time is the awareness that all our self-improvement projects have gotten us nowhere.  

We need someone from outside of this, to meet us within.

We need resurrection.  That's not something we do. It's something done to us, in us, through us.

The best sermons being preached to me these days are by kids, because they are the best at keeping it real.  Like Robbie in worship a few weeks ago, echoing the Psalmist, reminding us with breathless wonder, that God made SO MUCH, the whole world, and even YOU and ME!   Or like my friend's 14 year old who, echoing the author of Ecclesiastes, pontificated for several days that all is pointless and our toiling is for nothing. He LIVED in that place for days, like an Old Testament prophet, refusing to shower or eat, (forget about schoolwork or chores). Grieving on behalf of us all, perhaps. He showed me, at least, a little something about the importance of all-out, no holes barred, not to be deterred, mourning, aka. keeping it real.

So, preach to me, Church.  

Don't tell me about having a good attitude or a cheerful heart, or being better, doing better, making it all better. Tell me about your loneliness and your sorrow, and the waiting for God to bring resurrection into the death of you. 

Tell me how you're struggling, and let's watch together for where God is coming into that. I want to hear the sermons about suffering and redemption, about brokenness and healing, about sorrow and joy, (or just sorrow, if that's what they are), about not knowing the answers and learning how to live with the questions.  Tell me how you are seeing God in ways you didn't know to even be watching for. Or tell me how you're learning to watch.  I want the little nuggets that get overlooked. The gentle surprises and the time-stopping moments, both.  

Give me the real stuff.

Thankfully, that's what basically everyone in scripture does.  Just lives along their way having their messy lives invaded by God, and then telling people about it.  

I need your sermons. Keep preaching to me. And I will keep preaching to you.  Let's keep keeping it real.

CONNECTING RITUAL:

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

Why not write an actual paper note of thanks to someone who has preached to you this week.  If that's just too much in your current state, an email then, or a text.  Or pick up the phone.

Think of one person you can say, Thank you for...

Here's how it preached to me:

(aka, Here's how it revealed to me something of who God is and what God is up to).

(It can be a small thing they'd consider "no big deal" - those are the most fun thanks to receive, when you didn't even realize the Spirit was preaching through you). 

Sabbath gifts you can receive right now

Working Preacher and Faith+Lead have published an article I wrote about Sabbath lessons in Quarantine time.

You can find that article here at Working Preacher, and here at Faith+Leader. 

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)