The Zacchaeus in us all

 

Luke 19:1-10 There’s a little bit of Zacchaeus in all of us, and definitely Zacchaeuses we can point our fingers at in the world. At first this might not sound like a compliment.  (So, keeping in mind that while the version of the story we just read made it sound like after Jesus invited himself over to Zacchaeus’ house the whole conversation between Jesus and Zacchaeus happened right there on the street in front of everyone, by the grammar of the text, it’s more likely that the rest of the story happened inside Zacchaeus’ house, away from the listening ears of the crowd). Imagine ten years after the moment we just read and sang about. Imagine trying to explain to someone new to town what went down that day with Jesus and Zacchaeus and the rest of them. It might sound something like this: Jesus of Nazareth was coming to our town! It was the most exciting thing to happen in years. Famous for lifting up the poor, healing the sick, scandalizing the powers with his talk of God’s kingdom. Everyone turned out for a glimpse, to see him for themselves, to hear him speak hope and promise. Nobody wanted to miss it. But that little rat, Zacchaeus, that traitor to his people, arrogant and conniving, who hid behind his high walls and his piles of money, he wasn’t in the crowd. Then I saw him, down the road, racing ahead of the celebration. I watched him scurry over to a tree, and then, actually climb up it! Like a little kid! Ha! Looking over his shoulder, left and right, he thought nobody was looking, then hiking up his robes and grabbing a tree limb, he pulled himself into the branches, his feet scrambling to catch hold, and finally settled into the rustling canopy, then he held still half hidden in the branches.  How humiliating for him if anyone were to see him there! Lucky me, I did! I could barely contain my glee. He could never live this down. I would see to that.  Jesus and the crowd had just about arrived right under where he was balancing like a buffoon, but before I could nudge a friend and point up at Zacchaeus, Jesus stopped walking. Everyone grew silent. Then Jesus shouted up into the tree, “Hey Zacchaeus! Hurry up and come down from there! Today I am coming to stay in your home.” Well, if Zacchaeus didn’t drop right out of those branches, the little rat. The look on his face was astonished, ecstatic. He bowed to Jesus and stammered out that he would be most welcome, then ran off home to prepare.  We were dumbfounded; what in the world? The crowd started muttering in surprise and horror. Hadn’t Jesus been invited to stay in the homes of our most respectable people? Did he not know what Zacchaeus was? And yet, he called him by name! What did this mean?  Was Jesus even who he said he was?  Well, he went. He went to the home of Zaccheaus, the filthy tax collector. The whole household had rushed around, and rumor had it they had whipped up a feast lickety-split. No big feat though, while the rest of us might have struggled to pull off a last-minute dinner party for a visiting celebrity—would have spent weeks preparing and days making things ready—Zacchaeus always had more than enough food on hand, and more than enough servants to help prepare it. While they carried on into the night behind those high walls, the whole town was on fire with the gossip. Of all the places he could’ve stayed, why did Jesus choose the home of a despicable sinner? A bad person, who had turned his back on his own people, who lied and cheated every day? What was Jesus up to? Can you believe that? It wasn’t easy to tell you this story because to tell you the truth, I can barely remember what it was like then, what he was like before.  It must be hard for you to hear too, because you do not know Zacchaeus in this way.  You know him as Zach!  Yes! This is the same Zach! The Zach who invites all who are hungry, or down on their luck, to dine with him every night, who sees those in need helps us see them too. The Zach who uses his station to look after our village, to stand up to the Romans when they try to overstep.  Are you surprised that it wasn’t always this way? There was a before and an after; what happened that day changed everything.  After Jesus had stayed in his home, much to our amazement, the very next day, and day after day after that, Zacchaeus visited each person in the village. He brought the record of taxes and revealed in detail how he had cheated us. He apologized, and then, right there, he would open his money bag and pay back four times what he’d taken over the year. Person after person, household after household, he did this. If you think a grown man getting caught with his robes tangled around a tree branch with the whole town looking up at him is humbling, imagine him looking each one of us in the face, with the record of his own wrongdoing in his hands, confessing his sin and making amends.  The day Zacchaeus came to my house, a few weeks after Jesus had stayed with him, he looked so different it was hard to not to stare. His own eyes were clear instead of troubled, his forehead soft instead of pinched, his shoulders drawn back and his back straight and proud instead of hunched and furtive. Honestly, even as he brought himself low before me, he looked taller than he had ever looked. Can you even imagine what our community would be like without him? He's our Zach, humble, brave and compassionate, our trustworthy, village tax collector, Zacchaeus.   *               *               *               *               * Zacchaeus was lost. He had lost his humanity. Cut off from his neighbors, from himself, isolated and hated, feared and ridiculed. Zacchaeus exploited his individual power to get rich off of them, and they used their collective power to mock and alienate him. He thinks he’s such a big man but look at him, the shrimp! It’s us against him!  Then Jesus came to town. Jesus doesn’t play our games, or curate his reputation. Jesus ignores our judgments and rejects our labels. In Christ there is no ‘us and them’ only ‘us all.’ We turn one another into objects—objects of desire, objects of pity, or objects of scorn. Jesus sees only people, beloved children of God, all, every single one of us. No matter how we perceive the world or portray it, there is simply no one who doesn’t already belong to God and to all the rest of us, no person whose life is not for ministry – for caring and being cared for. When Jesus looked up into that tree that day, he didn’t see a corrupt and cowardly tool of an evil regime who had cheated his neighbors and profited on the misfortune of others. Jesus saw a beloved child of God. Filled with loneliness and longing, like everyone else. Born for belonging, like everyone else. Made to care for others, like everyone else. Unique in all the world, like everyone else. Guilty of bringing pain and suffering to others, like everyone else. Trapped in sin, aka, stuck in ‘a misdirection of the gaze' , like everyone else, helpless to free himself, like everyone else. Jesus saw a ready recipient of God’s mercy and untapped agent of God’s ministry. And whatever it looked like to anyone else, however else anyone chose to interpret what was happening in that moment, didn’t matter. Because what Zaccheaus heard was: The pain you’ve caused, the choices you’ve made, the labels you’ve earned or claimed or had slapped onto you by others, these are not who you are. You are Beloved Child of God, son of Abraham, member of the household of God, able to give and receive care.  I see you, Zacchaeus. And I’d like to spend this day with you.  Jesus came to seek and saves the lost. In every one of our lives, there are times when we are lost. Lost in pain or struggle, lost in direction or hope, consumed by the flames of anger or the fog of numbness, lost in who we thought we were or where we believed we were going. We might lose ourselves, become someone we don’t recognize for a time, or be lost to each other, behind walls we can’t break through and seem to keep building higher.  But we are never lost to God. God in God’s mercy—unearned, undeserved, unlimited grace—reaches us right where we are and brings us back home to the love of God that calls us by name and calls us back to each other. God releases us from our isolation and turns our gaze back to what’s real and true and unchanging. This is never not happening. How are you and I Zacchaeus? Where are we hiding in shame, trapped in our pain, stuck in destructive choices, or locked in labels, longing to catch a glimpse of hope as it passes by, but unable to join in?   And who are our Zacchaeuses? What terrible people would we rather mock and condemn than entrust to God’s mercy and receive in God’s love?  Whom would we be horrified to see Jesus choosing? We can’t change hearts—not other people’s and not even our own—but we can hold our hearts out toward God and each other, vulnerable, in humble hospitality to the Holy One who calls us by name, and to these holy ones we’re alongside here on this planet. Ready or not, Jesus keeps showing up among us with mercy, receiving our welcome and reorienting our lives. Thanks be to God, there’s a little bit of Zacchaeus in us all. Amen. (Sin as "a misdirection of the gaze" from Simone Weil, in Waiting for God)

Hosanna!

Scriptures: Isaiah 11:1-9, Matthew 21:1-11
 

 One week ago, I was at the Hands-off protest in the little town of Lihue, on Kauai. For a couple of blocks people lined the street on both sides, cheering and waving all manner of signs, while music blared over the loud speaker: I get knocked down, but I get up again… We didn’t start the fire, the music mingling with the rhythmic pounding of a group of hand drummers, voices shouting and horns honking. I teared up, of course, picturing us here, on this tiny island way out in the Pacific Ocean, hours after everyone else, sharing in this thing that was happening all over the country. The feeling of collective action and comradery was electric.  It felt like hope, like possibility, like anticipation, like we were part of something bigger, something coming.

 
And then I saw him. The man in the tan t-shirt and fishing hat, bouncing an actual tiny palm tree in the air.  And it stopped me short. Because of course, I thought of this moment.  
 
How different are we, really from those 2000 years ago who lined the streets on Palm Sunday shouting,Hosanna, which means Save us!, protesting an oppressive regime and anticipating deliverance by this one who would restore their rightful place, and take his place as king, and rule them like King David did 1000 years before? 
“Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
 
Those in Jerusalem that day wanted Jesus to save them from the Roman Empire, to make Israel great again, to bring back stability, and raise up the weak, and destroy the corrupt mighty.  And maybe they even had in their minds the idea that Jesus was the fulfillment of prophesy. Because while, for Holy Week, we’ve momentarily jumped forward 600 years to join this crowd and walk this week with Jesus, we get to hear these events with their ancestors in mind.  And certainly, it’s possible that, standing there on their spread-out cloaks with their own palms waving in the air, they were recollecting the same stories we are working our way through. If we think back to Lisa’s sermon last week,we will recall that the kingdom of David and Solomon had crumbled, their homeland was destroyed by the Babylonians, and the people are in exile, waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Today’s prophetic message from Isaiah comes to them fifty years in, give or take, when they’ve pretty much settled into their lives in Babylon. Some families in ongoing despair and suffering, others are getting comfortable in the empire. Into that accommodation and apathy, that acquiescing to the status quo of exile, here comes the prophetic promise of a savior who will deliver them from captivity. 
 
And with a scripture we normally read at Christmas time, we hear of the One from the root of Jesse who shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
and who is ushering in a kingdom of peace so counterintuitive to the natural order of things that fear is nonexistent – lambs and wolves hanging out, calves and cubs cuddling, children and snakes all safe together.  “No one will be hurt on God’s holy mountain” it promises. “Just as water fills the sea, the whole earth will be full of people who know and love the Lord.”
 
So maybe that day with their palms in hand they remembered the prophet’s promise to their ancestors 600 years before. And maybe, just like we do on Christmas, they’re declaring that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s salvation, and maybe, also like us, they’ve decided what that salvation looks like so they’re making Jesus into who they think Jesus should be for them. Whether we think Jesus should keep us safe and prevent bad things from happening, take away our pain, strong-arm our enemies, or make us into supernaturally good people, however our version of God’s plan goes or our view of salvation looks, they had their version too, and figured he would fulfill it.

And like his very first journey on a donkey in the womb of his young mother Mary, when the world had no idea know what was coming, once again, he will take the cosmos by surprise.  Because beyond everything we think salvation should be, God’s way of love flips things upside down and inside out, it is unrelenting and quiet, foolish and strange. Jesus wasn’t there to lead the revolution at all, he was there to die. The things the people projected onto him were not going to happen. And just a few days later this whole crowd will join in collective chanting again. This time, instead of ‘Hosanna!’ They’ll chant ‘Crucify Him!’ without even a bit of irony or self-awareness. 

But the prophetic beauty and power of this moment is that, even though they’ve got messed up motives and confused ideas and false assumptions, what they are saying is completely true, part of the fabric of all things most true. Jesus does save us. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the lord. 

So I return to that fellow in the bucket hat at the protest last week, bobbing his palm up and down in time to the music. He didn’t bring a sign that said one thing; he used his foliage to affirm everything, to say ‘here, here!’ to it all, a bouncing exclamation point to every the messages surrounding him on cardboard, to all the stop doing this, bring back that, cruel and mocking jokes, heartfelt pleas, clever slogans and desperate longings, held by people joining together and projecting our desires, despairs, and prognostications into the air alongside one another, all of us shouting all our various Hosannas and Save uses into the atmosphere. 
 
Who were we aiming them all at? I guess we were aiming them at each other, at the collective consciousness, the universe, the far away government on the other side of the ocean. Perhaps at all those people in all those other time zones who did this before us, like some kind of call and delayed response. 
But mainly, to be honest, we were aiming them at the passing cars. If they honked and gave us the hang-loose hand out their window, the cheering got louder. We got a response! They agree! They’re with us! It was like facebook “likes” and Instagram hearts in real life -the literal thumbs up right to our faces, a feel-good echo chamber of our shared discontentment and frustrations, elevated by peppy music and comforting companionship.  And that is not a bad thing – making our voices heard matters, and it felt good. And then it pittered out, and eventually we tossed our signs in the back seat of the car to be recycled later and wandered off to a noodle house for lunch.
 
But it made me realize that as heartening as that was, it only goes so far what I was really craving was thisrally. The one where the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee when God incarnate meanders on a donkey through the middle of people’s expectations and projections to bring us the salvation we need, and not the salvation we think we want.  
Because if our salvation is up to us, to shout it back and forth to each other, to cajole and persuade other selfish, broken human beings to do the right thing, we have no hope. Left to our own devices, we’ll just grasp onto stability enough, a sufficient status quo of empire apathy that lets us turn away from our human siblings, slowly destroy this beloved planet, and perpetuate cruel injustice and dismissive division with maybe a veneer of civility.
We’ll wave our Yes at whatever makes us feel heard and seen, and fear will keep being our driving force. We’ll keep hating our enemies, and flapping our competing signs and propping up our conflicting causes and getting a thrill from the responses we solicit and calling it progress. We’ll elect good people, and bad people, and good people again, and if we get our way, life will go on pretty much the same with a few tweaks, while the threat of death looms as large as it ever has.  We need something from outside ourselves to do the saving.
 
Palm Sunday can feel a bit weird and superfluous, like a mini-Easter. Hooray! Jesus is the coming King! But really, Palm Sunday the culmination of Lent. It's the false finale that draws out all our counterfeit redemptions.  We wave our palms and shout our hosannas and save uses, thinking This is it! It’s going to happen like we want it to! and take all our self-deception and salvation projections—all we think we want and need, who we think God should be for us and what we think God should do for us—and we aim it right at Christ. We load all our misguided intentions, our self-centered solutions, and our sureness of what will save us, onto his shoulders, while he rides by us, perched atop that little donkey.  And Jesus welcomes them into himself, absorbs all of them, and carries these sins to the cross. There our cries for salvation will be answered, just not how we think they should be. 

There God incarnate submits completely to the human experience of suffering and death, so that nothing can separate us from God’s love. God has come, God is here, God loves this world and everyone in it far more than any of us do, and despite us, God is redeeming it all. As Lisa and the prophets reminded us last week, “we live in hope, because we know that God will act. We don’t know the why, nor the how, nor the when. We cannot predict God’s miracles, but we live in the certainty of God’s redeeming power.”
 
However, our hosannas get shouted, or whatever our palm branches represent for us today: God is breaking in, that God has come to share this life with you and me, and something irreversible is about to take place.  
Salvation is what God does and will keep on doing until it is complete. We don’t compel it, and we can’t thwart it. God is saving the world. So, bring your needs and longings and ask away. The Holy Spirit will translate our prayers, and God will bring the saving that we need. 
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the Highest.
Amen.
 

The redemptive work of God

2 Samuel 5:1-5; 8:15-9:13 

 Handsome and talented, winsome and strong, also deeply flawed, proud and punishing, and then wise and benevolent in his old age, David is the ideal on-screen hero. I am, frankly, stunned there isn’t already a six season Netflix series about him. The bible gives him a hefty portion of Old Testament airtime with 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, and 1 Chronicles, casting for him the perfect villain in King Saul. Predecessor to the throne, this former army general with real main character energy, is both immensely kingly then increasingly mad. He’s super jealous of David and hungry to hang onto power. Dangerous and prone to fly into terrible rages, King Saul is calmed only by the gentle harp playing of his nemesis, young David, which must drive him all the more mad.

Then we’ve got the wise Yoda figure in the prophet Samuel (whose own life is also a compelling show waiting to be made). He anoints Saul to be Israel’s very first king, and then later secretly anoints David when David is only a shepherd boy - the youngest and least likely of his many brothers to be anything but a country bumpkin, but he’s got skills, battling lions and bears to protect the sheep, and he’s a songwriting savant, making music all alone out in those green pastures near quiet streams, so maybe the series could be a musical. 

 

Then there’s the bond of a soulmate, a deep, abiding friendship with a close and intimate confidant, Jonathan, who, as a boy, watches the little kid David slay the giant Goliath in front of two mighty, cowering armies, (thatscene would be the title sequence for sure!) and then introduces himself, and the two become fast friends, and Jonathan loves our hero as he loves his own heart.

 

Jonathan also happens to be the mad king’s son, and he stands between the two to protect David’s life on several occasions. They meet up in fields and caves when David is in hiding from Saul’s fury, amassing a pirate crew of renegades and living off the land. Jonathan tries relentlessly to make peace and bring David back into the king’s good graces, and finally, in grief and sorrow, lets him go when he sees Saul will never relent.  Jonathan and David promise forever to stand by one another no matter what, and then Jonathan and Saul die in a different battle with the Philistines. (Goliath’s side gets them after all).

 

There is the love of a princess, who becomes his wife, and later is horrified by David’s unrestrained public display of emotion. Then another woman, Abigail, who saves her own husband from David’s wrath, deeply impressing him and then marrying him when her husband dies, and more women who become wives as well.

 

And there’s his sleezy, cascading into evil, obsessing over the married Bathsheba and impregnating her, then sending her husband to the front lines of battle commanding the rest of the army to retreat so he would be killed, and David could marry Bathsheba and cover up his shame. David’s greed, arrogance and cruelty are exposed in a humiliating confrontation with the new prophet, Nathan, whom God sends to David to set him straight. Crushed with grief and regret, David repents. And even though that baby does not live, he and Bathsheba remain married and other children follow, including Solomon. And Bathsheba herself rises to power, advising her own son once he assumes the throne.  

 

David’s vivid life is dogged by the threat of death, frequent betrayal, sheer terror and staggering loss, and along the way he builds the city Jerusalem, and unites the tribes and establishes the nation of Israel. He steals, cheats, rapes, lies, kills, and sacrifices those he loves for his own power and well-being. And he is also rules with wisdom and love, and is generous, kind, loyal, trustworthy, tender, and heartwrenchingly vulnerable. He ends his life passing on drawings and plans for the construction of the temple like a mantle and blessing to his son Solomon. 

 

But what’s especially compelling about David is how his heart is laid bare in the Psalms. Trust and gratitude, anguish and wonder, contrition and pettiness, anger, longing and love – half of the book of Psalms is written by him. It’s like having a glimpse of his inner world, his relationship and ongoing conversation with God. David’s prayers became the prayerbook of the Church, and of Judaism before us. Jesus himself was raised praying these same Psalms that we pray. For three thousand years - from sanctuaries to hospital bedsides, at caskets and christenings, chanted by monks and whispered in concentration camps, David’s words have been recited in every language on the planet, and the conversation with God continues. 

 

Now, having reacquainted ourselves with David, let’s imagine this week’s episode of our King David TV series begins with a flashback. A messenger, racing and breathless, arrives at Jonathan’s house, and stammers out to the servant who opens the door that Jonathan and King Saul have just been killed in battle. The household flies into a panic, people race around grabbing what they can and prepare to flee. A nursemaid bursts into an upstairs room where a young boy of five is napping. She snatches him up out of bed and carries him out, half asleep, still limp in her arms. Running to the stairs she whips around a corner and the boy slips from her grasp, dropping over the railing to the stone floor below. She screams and races to his side, and the flashback ends. 

 

We jump 20 or so years ahead to today’s reading. David has been king for some time, and most of the rest of Saul’s family has long been wiped out by David’s side in the ongoing battles for power.  The battle dust and construction dust died down, I imagine David finds himself in a period of relative peace. Perhaps he’s standing at a window on a beautiful sunny day, a soft breeze rustling the olive trees in the garden below. Calm is nice, but it can also bring up sorrow and ghosts, and David longs for his dear friend Jonathan. There is nothing David can do to change the past. But in the quiet of this pause, the question arises, What will I do with what’s left of my life?

 

And here comes up again that word we learned with Ruth – whose whole story is an illustration of this. The word is hesed, which means something like belongingnesss; here it is translated simply kindness. From the willingness to listen deeply, the song of God’s way rises up, and David summons a servant and asks, Is there anyone left of the family of my enemy who tried to destroy me, that I may embrace in God’s belongness, for the sake of Jonathan who did that for me?

 

And there is one person left, Mephibosheth, the boy whose tragic fall on the day of his father’s death began this episode. He survived all the killings between these enemy households over the years, overlooked, perhaps, because his disability made him seem unworthy of notice. Certainly, he was not seen as a threat or a player on the political gameboard. So David finds Mephibosheth. And the man must think he’s finally been discovered as the last of Saul’s household, and will surely die at the hand of the king. But instead, David raises him to honor, to eat at the King’s table for all his remaining days, giving him servants and Saul’s former lands. David goes on to care for him as his own son, and act as surrogate grandpa to Jonathan’s grandson Mica. 

He who was forgotten and forsaken, living in obscurity in someone else’s household, is welcomed in, given home, security, and belonging in the loving care of his father’s best friend and grandfather’s mortal enemy.  

 

God’s redemption is relentless and never-ending. In our own places of brokenness and unfinished business, we are met with grace. And from our vulnerability, not our strength, we are drawn into God’s unfolding salvation of the world.  When we seek to live honest and open to God, pouring out our pain and our praise, we’re formed for God’s purposes, and made ready to recognize the nudgings of the Holy Spirit when they come. 

 

Sometimes the task before us is clear and we know what is ours to do. And sometimes the chaos of life’s moment sets the terms and we put our head down and faithfully hang on.  But periodically a chapter ends, or a space opens up, and in the quiet the question may arise, What will I do with what’s left of my life?

 

When the search for an answer involves surrendering to God’s purposes, we will be drawn into the redemptive work of God, and the belongingness of God that embraces the world will be made manifest in our lives. 

 

God joins this human life with us, in all its fullness and its emptiness too. That Jesus rose from the dead means there is no darkness so deep that he is not there, no peace so restorative that he does not share it with us, no journey so difficult that he does not walk with us, no sorrow so great it will define us, no brokenness so complete that it cannot be made into a source of wholeness and life by the God who brings life out of death. This is the belongingness of God. This what God does and is always doing. 

 

Big-screen lives like David’s capture our attention, but mostly God works redemption in ordinary places like around dinner tables, and through ordinary acts like grandparenting a child who needs it.

 

And the work God has for us to do most often begins in our own impossibility, loss or brokenness. It may heal something unfinished in us, reawaken something dormant, or break us open for something entirely new. But always, it will bring deep joy, because we are made in the image of ministering God to minister to others, and when we participate in God’s world-healing hesed, we’re tasting already the meal that awaits us all at the table of the King forever. 

 

Amen.

Saving / Being Saved

Mark 11:1-11 

I was raised with a high anthropology – which is to say, a view of human beings that puts a lot of power in our hands. I could choose whether or not to “accept” Jesus into my life, and evidently, my word was powerful enough to keep Jesus out of my life.  If people were not “following” God, their lives would be worse, and their afterlife doom, but it’s our choice. Human beings, in this view, hold an enormous amount of power. When it comes down to it, more than God, actually. Because we can tie God’s hands. We can keep God from acting, just by our inaction! Oh well. God would’ve saved us, but we said no thanks, and there was nothing God could do about it. God seems unable to override human beings’ refusal to accept God’s saving, or humans’ basic ignorance that that decision was ever in their hands to begin with. If we don’t say Save us! Which is what Hosanna! means, then God just won’t do it. 

But maybe you didn’t grow up like that. Maybe your underlying messages of human idolatry were not about eternity but about now. Maybe your hosannas were pointed inward, toward your own outstanding self. And the work of saving -whether that’s your own self, the world, or maybe even others, was your work to do. If we don’t do it, it won’t get done. Maybe Jesus didn’t factor in, except as a motivator or an example, and God’s role was simply to serve as an ethical ideal on which to base all the world-saving work we humans need to get busy with.  This is also a dangerously high anthropology, that is, this also seems to think human beings are far more capable and in control than we really are. 

But the bible has a pretty low anthropology. In the bible people are portrayed as mostly having no idea what we’re doing.  In the gospels, the disciples, who walked side by side with God incarnate, still had no clue what was happening most of the time. Even when Jesus told them, over and over again, how it was all going to go down, they still didn’t get it.  

And when the crowds naively celebrate Jesus’ coming into Jerusalem on a donkey, they laid down cloaks and branches heavy with misunderstandings and expectations. Their version of Hosanna! Save us! assumed they were welcoming into town the one who was coming to overthrow the oppressive Roman empire occupying their land. Here comes power to speak truth to power and overthrow power and give power back to the powerless!  Hosanna!

A high Christology believes Jesus is capable of saving.  So the palm Sunday crowds were ahead of us there. Because saving is what Jesus does; Jesus saves. Not our belief in Jesus, not our patterning our lives after Jesus, but Jesus, himself, saves the world, whether we believe in him or not, whether we follow him or not. The crowds were wrong about him and what he was there to do. But so what?  God does what God will do anyway. 

When Jesus rode into Jerusalem, he didn’t fit the people’s ideas of him; and all throughout the next week he resolutely refused to live into their expectations. He kept on undermining their hopes of glory and power with vulnerability and weakness, and then he let himself be killed, which was a killer to their dreams and plans.  

When we cry “save us” what we usually mean is, we want to not feel so much pain, or we want to be freed from the consequences of our choices, we want bad people not to be in charge of things, or we want to be spared from some impending tragedy or have security – even eternally. What we usually mean by “save us!” is “give us more control!” or at least make things turn out how we would like them to.  We use God as a means to our own end, a tool in our own self-development project or societal change platform. Our telos, or ultimate goal toward which our life is pointed, is usually our own comfort and well-being, the safety or security of those we love. 

When we cry Hosanna! Save us, Lord! we do NOT usually mean save us from our delusions, save us from our self-centeredness, save us from our mistrust of others and fear of vulnerability, save us from pride and thinking we have more control than we do, or save us from forgetting that you are God, and we aren’t, and denying that those we most dislike are also your beloved children. We’re not usually asking to be saved from our idolatry or ego. We’re certainly not asking to be humbled and brought low like Christ himself; we’re usually asking to be propped up and protected.

But that’s ok.  When we point our longings and fears toward God, God knows what we need hears our hearts, even if we can’t name what salvation is or imagine what it could look like, God brings it anyway, because this is who God is and what God does, regardless of who we are and what we do. 

And even when the people who cheered his arrival on Sunday turned around and cheered his demise on Friday, it didn’t alter God’s course.  We think death ends everything and is the strongest power of all, but in Christ God moves in and through death to bring new life. Because God brings life and salvation to the world.  This is what God does. And nothing, no matter what, can stop God from saving the world. 

So, first, here this good news, which comes as a blow to our high anthropology: You are not powerful enough to stop what God is doing.  And what you do will not save the world. You’re not really in control of much of anything. None of us are. It’s part of being human. And you are too important to God to let go of.  And so is this world. God’s YES is always bigger than our human Nos, or I don’t knows.  All this means your most excellent actions, most generous sacrifices, highest deeds of goodness cannot bring God nearer or give you any security at all.  And, your most horrible mistakes, most self-centered spitefulness, and worst deeds of cruelty, cannot make God retreat further or disqualify you from God’s love.  

We are making some terrible mistakes in the world. We are hurting each other badly. Our selfishness and division have very real and heartbreaking impact. Choices we make have appalling consequences and contribute to horrific suffering. And trapped inside of time, we can’t undo what we’ve done.  Nevertheless, nothing, nothing can stop God’s love and redemption. Nevertheless, Jesus saves.

We can participate in that salvation with awareness and gratitude, choosing to align our lives with the inbreaking Kingdom of God and seeking live as we were created to live, connected to God and others. Or we can participate in that salvation with naivete and ignorance, or even live our one life with deliberate malice. But make no mistake, we participate. One way or another, we are part of God’s redemption story. God will do what God is doing – in us and through us, or despite us and without our approval. God uses anything and everything to move the world toward healing and hope. God’s presence inhabits every moment. God’s voice cannot be banished or silenced, God’s work cannot be hindered or obstructed. Love prevails. Most often in unexpected and ordinary ways; most often through weakness. We can watch for it or not. We can recognize it or not. We can receive it willingly, or resist it pointlessly. But the love of God has claimed this whole story, Christ has come into this world, and turned it all inside out, and nothing can stop God.

Every year we read this text in one gospel voice or another, and every single year, we just breeze past and generally ignore a certain character that, in Mark, takes up over half the passage. This is, of course, the donkey. When Jesus tells a couple disciples to go untie a random colt from a random doorstep and bring it to him, and he gives them words for if someone asks them what they’re doing, it happens just like he says it will.  What this shows us is this: They may not have any idea of the big picture, or even what’s about to unfold, even though Jesus keeps trying to tell them that he’s here in Jerusalem to die. But in this small moment with a random donkey, they DO glimpse the Divinity of Christ, and they get this small taste of their own participation in something bigger. With this act of trust and courage, their actions join what God doing in the world. They go into this strange parade having been guided and having obeyed. 

God is always up to something way bigger than we can see or understand. Even though our participation is often misguided, driven by our own agenda for what being saved would feel like, nevertheless, God uses our actual experiences to bring love and healing into the world. Nevertheless, we are part of a story that reaches beyond us and yet encompasses our lives entirely. God’s healing comes into our most vulnerable and broken places, not because we are impressive and powerful but because we are not.  Jesus, in vulnerability joins us, and invites us into our own brokenness alongside one another to share in God’s redemption where it comes, where it is needed. 

This next week is going to suck for the disciples. And not just this next week, which ends in Jesus’ death, not to mention the death of all their beliefs and dreams and plans. Life is going to be overwhelming and disorienting for them for some time to come.  

So, the week begins here, in this moment of participating, with this donkey, and this goofy parade, where a whole crowd of people says the most true thing in the universe, even though none of them have any idea what they are actually saying or what it really means:

Hosanna, blessed is the one who comes to save. 

Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!

Hosanna in the highest heaven!’

 Amen.

Born Again (and again and again...)

 

The Deposition, by Michaelangelo, 1550. Nicodemus, Mary Magdalene and Mary the Mother of Jesus, removing Jesus from the cross. Michaelangelo was carving it for his own tomb. His face is the face of Nicodemus. Unfinished. In frustration he destroyed part of it, and was never able to complete it.
(read more HERE)

John 3:1-17

There is no bible passage more recognized, memorized, beloved, despised and exhausted than John 3:16, known as “the gospel in a nutshell.”It used to be when I heard this story what I heard was John 3:16. And I had all sorts of opinions and experiences related to this bite-sized good news – from the scary teenagers that tried to evangelize me with it in a pizza place when I was 12, to the first time I saw it on the bottom of an In-and-Out Burger cup. It’s a little American shorthand instructional for how to have a good life, or at least, how not go to hell. Believe in Jesus and you’ll have eternal life! Easy-peasy! 

But life changes things; it changes us. And this time what utterly stood me still was a verse I didn’t even know came from this same conversation, something that for most of a lifetime of being a Christian has meant nothing to me, but now, unexpectedly, does. It is this line: The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’

 

That’s because for nearly a year and a half, a few of us, one with terminal cancer, gathered online for morning and evening prayer, and once a week we read these words aloud together as part of our evening prayer. And every Monday, when we would get to these words, they irritated me. (I even admitted this to the others once). Because I didn’t get it. And I still don’t. How are people like wind you hear but don’t know where or how or why?  What does that even mean?  What is this “being born of Spirit" business? Why does it all have to be vague and confusing and difficult? Why can’t it be a simple formula, pray this prayer, take these steps, be saved from death; believe in Jesus and everything will work out?

And so, I first want to say, I feel you, Nicodemus.  

Nicodemus is our second guide through Lent. First we had Lazarus, who dies and comes back to life, both through no fault or accomplishment of his own, by the way.  In love, the love between Lazarus, his sisters, and Jesus, they all feel their way through death and resurrection, and life after resurrection.

 

Now we have Nicodemus, dear Nicodemus, this wise leader, respected teacher, sneaking out of his house hoping his neighbors don’t see him slink off into the darkness, searching out a slightly suspect, intriguing and dangerous, radical street-preacher, Jesus, about whom the rumors are swirling and whose words won’t leave Nicodemus alone. 

 

I imagine him moving through the shadows, driven by a yearning he can’t understand or articulate. Feeling his way through the darkness, with that tangled ball of question pressing in on his heart, pondering the realities of loss and death and the inexplicable places where light does not seem to shine and perishing feels imminent and real. 

 

And when he does get to Jesus, (the one John has introduced to us as the light that shines in the darkness, the light that no darkness can extinguish), he can’t even form a question. His questions and longings built up under the surface, he says, “Some of us think that you are from God...” hoping Jesus will pick it up from there. Jesus does, but infuriatingly, by introducing more confusing concepts, when he answers, No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.

So now Nicodemus can ask outright, What does that mean?? How is that even possible?

 

Speaking as though God’s kingdom is so foreign it cannot be recognized by us as we are, in this world as it is, and also as though God’s kingdom is somehow happening right here and now and when something happens to us that we don’t control, we can actually glimpse it and experience it, Jesus reminds Nicodemus of a strange time way back when the people were wandering in the wilderness, waiting for God’s deliverance and they were dying from snake bites. God saved them in a weird and inexplicable way-  they needed only to look on a snake God had told Moses to create from bronze and lift before them, and they would live.

And then Jesus says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him will not perish...”

 

But we are perishing, actually.  All the time. Anxiety and hidden sadness plague us. Injustice and cruelty prevail. Marriages disintegrate; friendships break down, our dreams fall apart, our bodies fall apart. Catastrophes strike, inconveniences disrupt, sorrow and terror have their way all the time, and we feel life slipping away: in the words we cannot take back, and the choices we cannot have back, and the clock we cannot turn back.  We know all about perishing.  And we are quite accustomed to doing things, saying things, buying things, and sacrificing things, striving in the frantic attempt to keep from perishing. We’ve even turned the very words of Jesus in this story into one our strategies! Because what would be better than a religion that gave us a simple one, two, three steps to guaranteed eternal salvation and earthly happiness! 

 

But instead of clarity, answers and tactics, Jesus talks of wind and water and spirit and not knowing where things come from or where they are going. He describes unpredictable, unimaginable realities that require we give up our security and control. And then he talks not of what we should do, but of what God does, what God did, what God is already and always doing. For God so deeply and fully loves this perishing world that God gave the only son…and whoever relaxes their being into the being of God will know real and abiding life.

 

In John, remember, believing is trusting. It’s not accepting a set of facts you can argue with or slapping an admissions-paid entrance sticker on your chest.  Believing in Christ means opening up and leaning your whole self in, Trust in me and you will find life indestructible, Jesus says.

He isn’t giving Nicodemus a foolproof, comprehensible approach to cheating death. He is inviting him into a life so pervasive it encompasses even death.

 

God so loves this world that God came into this world and is saving it. God Is bringing life out of death, and hope from despair, and joy from sorrow, and healing from brokenness, and leading everything toward a time when perishing itself will perish. This is wind-you-hear-but-can’t-grab-hold-of, born-not-of-logic-and-understanding-but-of-water-and-spirit, mystery-and-firmament, God-breathed, word-spoken life-out-of the-void-of-nothingness, resurrection-from-death’s-finality, Holy Spirit-transformation, unquenchable-light-shining-in darkness, sit-back-and-take-it-in-because-you-didn’t-make-any-of-it-happen kind of salvation. 

 

Being born at all was not our doing, how silly of us to toss around “born again” like it's something we achieve!  How dare we use belief in Jesus as a label, a guarantee of our eternal destination that we individually acquire by following some back of the box directions?

 

Maybe we should let ourselves be with Nicodemus on this one. Admit we can’t grab hold of this, can’t make this make sense. Because maybe that’s Jesus’ point. The Kingdom of God is not something we grab hold of; it grabs hold of us. It’s invading the whole world, and we don’t get to decide how that happens. We can be caught up in it, swept up in the transformation of the whole cosmos, or we can be oblivious to it. We can trust in it, or we can miss it.  But we don’t control it.  We don’t make it happen. We don’t avoid pain or perishing by applying some eternal life conversion formula. We listen for the sound of the thing we can’t explain. We let it move through us and take us where it will.  

 

The teacher must let go everything he thinks he knows to be brought into the world—this tired old, wounded world, this gorgeous, poignant, precious world—all over again, like a vulnerable newborn, ready to receive the mystery and be swept up like the wind. He must be born from above, born anew. And Jesus has implied back to him that the reason he’s there at all, with his questions and his longing, is because he has been. He’s glimpsing the Kingdom of God.

 

We are all feeling our way through the darkness, with our own tangled balls of questions pressing in on our hearts, pondering the realities of loss and death and the inexplicable places where light does not seem to shine and perishing feels imminent and real. And so, we are invited, especially during Lent, to ponder, How might I be being “born again”? What competence or sureness am I letting go of to receive God’s care, and to trust I am held like an infant? What keeps me from experiencing the uncontrollable salvation of God in the world?  

 

Nicodemus disappears back into the shadows after this encounter, and we will briefly see him just twice more in the gospel of John and in no other gospel. The next time we see him he is subtly advocating for Jesus to the council by reminding them that the law gives people a chance to defend themselves against charges.  And the last time is after Jesus has died.  

John 19:39-42 says, “Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came,” (implied is in broad daylight, where he could be seen by any and all) “bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation [for the Sabbath to begin that evening], and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.”

 

So we never really know what Nicodemus thought about what Jesus said, where it took him or what it did inside him.  But that’s not ours to know – not of him or of each other, or even, perhaps, of ourselves. God knows what God is doing – in us, in the world. God knows where it is going and how it will get there. For our part, we get to ‘assume the stance of least resistance’ to being swept up in the love and salvation of God. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. May we continue being born anew.

Amen.

Imperfect Together

Daily Devotion - June 4

I will send a brief message each day (except Mondays)

while we are pausing gathering in person.

- Kara

This morning I read this article: “Paternalistic Racism of Nice White People.”  

  

I recognized myself, both because I had this messaging in my own upbringing, and also because I contributed to groceries that day at Sanford Middle School.

Here’s the gift of this time. Discomfort. Confession. Recognition of the sin (another word for division from God and each other) that has a hold on us, sin we join in without realizing it.  

Also, I do not regret sharing groceries.  The call came from the community and it was something I could respond to.  

A risk of this time is that we try so hard not to do it wrong that it could paralyze us.  We live in a time when we tell each other what to do, what to think, how to act, what to say, and then we are terrified we’ll do, think, act, say the wrong thing and get called out. 

When I get caught up in this, it helps me to return to some things I know are true: 

• God made us to be with and for each other. God intentionally created us diverse and different from each other, each single person unique. We ALL belong to God and we ALL belong to each other.  
• Sin / the Way of Fear / systemic evil tells us we have to earn our way, some lives are of higher value than others, we are in competition, there is only so much  - voice, justice, respect, resources – to go around, so we have to decide who gets it and who goes without.  These are lies.  
• We believe the lies most of the time. Even when we are trying to do right in the world, even right in the middle of it, we are often believing the lies.  The response is not to judge ourselves for not getting it right – that’s part of the lies too.
• We will never get it right.  It’s not about getting it right. It’s about being a human being alongside other human beings. 
• Being human is vulnerable. It feels uncomfortable a lot of the time because it feels risky, scary, weak.  
• The greatest strength we have is when we are in our most honest place of weakness, when we can receive each other and allow ourselves to be received. We can actually live our shared belonging.

Sin would have us do the wrong things, or the right things for the wrong reasons, or nothing at all because we are so afraid of doing the wrong thing.  It’s a game with no winning.  But the game is false.

As the above article so beautifully said, 

Part of the trouble with the Paternalistic Racism of Nice White People that has been a part of my own experience, is that white people assumed we were to serve as saviors. A quick mistake all of us often make when attempting to change this is to reverse it. And quickly we look to the first black person we're in relationship with to be our savior, to imagine that now instead, it's their turn to save us. 

Part of being a Christian, for those of us who are, is knowing that there's only one Savior, and that's Jesus. We shouldn't make gods of others just as we can't make gods of ourselves. So in working to build relationships, to create a more equitable community, we have to remember our shared humanity first. White people don't need to save black people, and black people also don't need to save white people. Jesus promises to save us all.

And, 

My vessel is imperfect. I was born in a culture that taught me to sin, and into a family that also taught me to love. In this imperfect jar I can lament my imperfections or I can whitewash them and cover them up with good deeds and nice words and passive aggressive utterances of racism. 

Or I can stand, blemished and unblemished, at the foot of the Cross. I can try to tell the truth. I can try to work harder for justice. I can hand off the microphone. I can build authentic, honest relationships with white people and black people alike. I can confess my sin, I can be forgiven, and I can forgive others.

I’d add to this – and so we can forgive ourselves.   

There is never a pure motive or a completely perfect approach, and we are actually not called to that. We are called to know ourselves to be sinners in need of saving. (Remember what salvation is? Wholeness.). And we are called to see each other as children of God.  

We are in need of being restored to our wholeness – to live consistent to our belonging to God and each other. We can’t do this for ourselves, and we can’t do it for each other. But we can come alongside one another in our brokenness and confess, and listen, and offer care to, and be willing to receive care from, each other. When we do that, God restores us to wholeness.

As for the Sanford food drive that requested 85 bags of food for their impacted families, the school called in The Sheridan Story, who took over distribution of the food to the whole impacted community.  Because while Paternalistic Racism certainly plays a huge role in our lives as Minnesotans, and is undoubtedly woven into what’s happening when white Minnesotans from outside the most impacted areas respond, the other thing that is happening is whole communities coming together, across perceived boundaries of culture, race, city lines, income, and religion, and trying to support each other, drawing on the strong networks and organizations who have already been bringing us together and know how to do this to help guide us.

Here’s the update from The Sheridan Story:

We have distributed most of the food from the food drive at Sanford Middle School on Sunday out in the community.

This was one of the biggest food drives we've ever seen… and perhaps one of the largest-ever in Minnesota. In less than a day, we estimate that over 2,000 families were served. Our amazing community came together, some waiting in line approximately 14 blocks long, to provide a total of about 18 semi-trucks of food. Of these:

•  3 semi-trucks of food were distributed to families the day of the food drive
•  4 semi-trucks of perishable food went to our friends at Loaves and Fishes and Minneapolis Public Schools Culinary and Wellness Services
•  4 semi-trucks of non-perishable food went to us
•  7 semi-trucks have been re-routed to additional collection and distribution points throughout Minneapolis

God uses whatever we give.   

Even while seeking to make us more real – to remove hypocrisy and sin from within our hearts – God calls us to join in our belonging to each other right now. 

To believe we have to earn the right to live in this belonging by making sure we’ve rooted out all sin, or racism, or brokenness from ourselves first is also sin / the way of fear / the lie.  

(By the way, this is the gift of seeking to be “anti-racist” as opposed to the false notion of  “not racist.”  Racism has infected us all; it’s in our un-thought thoughts, and we all operate inside its strictures.  But we can acknowledge its hold on us and also act deliberately against it.  This is a great resource to learn more about anti-racism).  

We can help each other. We can seek to see and hear each other. We belong to each other. Each of us can participate in whatever ways we can, in what God is doing in our communities, city, state, nation and world, to bring wholeness and healing into all our brokenness and division.  We can be imperfect together.

One more message from The Sheridan Story:

POP-UP FOOD DRIVE

As we continue to distribute this extraordinary show of support for those most in need, we hear both the need for food and the desire to help. The calls are loud and clear!

We are collecting donations of food and other essential items at our warehouse.

• Where: 2723 Patton Road, Roseville
• When: Monday - Friday from 10 am - 2pm
• What: Non-perishable canned food, rice, pasta, diapers, wipes, feminine hygiene items, and baby formula
• How: Follow the food donation signs and you'll be able to drop off items in tents we've set up in our parking lot. 

All of the donations we receive will be re-distributed to our community partners in neighborhoods across the metro as quickly as possible!

THANK YOU for showing the positive power of what our community can do together!

---

CONNECTING RITUAL:

Perhaps tonight before bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

I seek your presence, O God,
not  because I have managed to see clearly
or been true in all things this day,
not because I have succeeded in loving
or in reverencing those around me,
but because I want to see with clarity,
because I long to be true
and desire to love as I have been loved.
Renew my inner sight,
make fresh my longings to be true
and grant me the grace of loving this night
that I may end the day as I had hoped to live it,
that I may end this day restored to my deepest yearnings,
that I may end this day as I intend to live tomorrow,
and I intend to live tomorrow.
Amen.

- J Philip Newell, Sounds of the Eternal