What the Garden really sounds like

Throughout Lent, at LNPC we are exploring the Biblical Stations of the Cross.  We have the stations up in our sanctuary, and the congregation is doing a Lenten Worship Project, bringing in images that we find in media, our lives, art, etc. and helping to construct one of the stations during worship each week.  This week, we began with Jesus Praying in the Garden, Station 1.

Praying at Gethsemane, by He Qi

Luke 22:39-49

Station 1: Jesus Praying in the Garden

Lenten Collage Words: Prayer, Pleading, Sorrow.

In the Garden - a reading in four parts

John:             After the strange dinner, where Jesus washed our feet, and Judas got up and left in the middle, we walked together up to the garden on the Mount of Olives as we had done so often before.  But this time Jesus was distressed and agitated, and the usually pleasant ritual was colored with a heavy sense of foreboding. 

When we arrived at our favorite spot we all began to find a comfortable place to sit under the stars and someone started building a fire.  It was a mild night, with the soft breeze rustling the olive trees, and the nervous small talk started up in the group while we waited for Jesus to sit down.

Peter:             But Jesus didn’t sit.  Instead he pulled aside me, James and John, and left everyone else gathered around the fire that was just starting up.

Jesus:            Stay here, you guys, while I go over there and pray.

Peter:            When we had gotten a little distance away from the others, he grabbed us by the arms, clinging to us.  His voice was strained, and there was anguish in his eyes.

Jesus:             This sorrow is crushing my life out! Please, Stay here and keep vigil with me.  I cannot do this alone. I need you to be with me.

James:            He walked a few paces away from us, and then he fell down on his face draped over a rock, and began to pray fervently.  We stood there for a minute in silence, then looked for a comfortable spot to sit down and wait.

Jesus:             My Father, please, if there is any way, get me out of this! Oh God! But, not what I want. I’ll do what you want. I will. But please, is this really what you want?!"

Peter:            He was so distraught!  He prayed so intensely, that the sweat was wrung out of him like great drops of blood.  But he didn’t let up – just prayed all the harder.  After a while, he got up and came back to where we were waiting.

He found us asleep.

James:             We didn’t know what to do.

He had never asked us to do anything like this before. 

He wasn’t teaching and we weren’t there to listen; he wasn’t asking us to run errands or take care of any details.

He just wanted us to sit there, near him, while he had this frightening utter breakdown. 

What can I say? We were embarrassed, self-conscious, overwhelmed and afraid.  I guess after the long, weird night, the dinner, the wine and the hours under the stars with no clear directions as to how we were supposed to help him, we just sort of… fell asleep.

Peter:             He shook us awake, well, kicked us actually, or me, at least. He was completely beside himself.  Soaked through with sweat, wild with frustration. 

Jesus:            You’re sleeping? Can’t you even stay awake with me for one hour? 

Peter:            He cried out at us, whether we couldn’t even stay awake with him for even one hour, though I am certain it had been much longer than that.  We felt terrible, ashamed but really uncomfortable too. What did he expect?

John:            He was afraid.  “This is so hard.”  he said to us. 

“The spirit is willing, but the flesh is so weak.” 

He seemed deeply and genuinely afraid.  “I don’t know if I can do this,” he said, “and I pray for you – and you should too – that you never ever have to be in such a terrible time of trial as I am right now.”

James:            It was then that the lights came bouncing over the hill and the sound of a raucous crowd met our ears.  He turned towards commotion, and said:

Jesus:            Get up.  My betrayer comes.  It begins.

Reflection

Tonight I want to debunk two myths about prayer.  The first one is that “prayer warriors", or those who pray a lot, those who rely on prayer, never doubt or struggle. I think we tend to picture people with strong prayer lives as those who have some kind of unshakable belief, some kind of certainty - that they pray with confidence, with sureness that they know what God wants, or even that they can tell God what God should do and God will do it.

This is one of many grave misconceptions about prayer. 

Here is Jesus praying. Jesus. Afraid. Alone. Pleading. Filled with sorrow. Knowing what is coming and wanting with everything inside him for it not to be so.  And telling God all of that. Just sitting with it in the presence of God and letting it all hang out. That Jesus – the very incarnation of God in humanity – would pray in this way, shows us that there is more to prayer than we might think.

Prayer is baring your soul to God. It isn’t censored for content; isn’t figuring out what we think God wants to hear and saying that. It’s trusting God enough to simply pour out our hearts. To plead. to beg. And it’s also trusting God enough to know yourself to be in God’s hands no matter what.

Being held by God doesn’t mean there wont be suffering. It doesn’t mean there wont be sorrow or pain. It means that those things cannot destroy you, you belong to God. And belonging to God means God wants to hear what we are afraid to say. And it means saying it can’t do a single thing to change the fact that God has got us.  God has got us.

Anne Lamott has said of her own life, "I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something [my friend] Father Tom had told me–that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns." 

Jesus showed us how to pray with this kind of faith.

Praying is the language of our life together. And it isn’t always expressions of gratitude, and it’s rarely declarations of certainty. Sometimes it is pleading. Sometimes it is sorrow. Sometimes it is groanings too deep for words. That is faithful prayer.

The other myth about prayer that I want to debunk tonight is that prayer is something best done alone.  Prayer, like everything about faith really – like reading scripture, like worship, like following Jesus and whatever that means in our lives – is best done with others. 

This is Jesus’ pain, Jesus’ grief. It’s his prayer here.  But he wants his friends around him. He wants them to be near him. Just to stay awake. Just not to leave him alone. Just to share – in some small way, and despite their confusion and discomfort – his sorrow, his terror.  His prayers find courage when others are nearby, holding him in love.  It’s not about what they say. There is nothing they can do. He doesn’t want them to give him good advice or religious cheer-ups!, he just wants them to share his grief so that he is not alone.  When they are there, God’s presence is tangible.  When they are with him, for him, he finds the strength, the voice, to trust God with his pain.

We gather tonight in the garden. The first Station of the Cross, the beginning of Jesus’ last week, and we seek to follow Jesus on this journey.  And truly this room is the garden.  Because earlier today, it was filled with flowers, and tears and people who were here to share sadness with someone they love.  People who have nothing to say, nothing to do, except to stay awake with and for their friends, to be near them in their terrible grief and unfathomable loss. 

As we lift up the world in prayer tonight, those we know and those we’ve never met, as we hold up tonight people suffering in unimaginable ways – earthquakes and tsunamis, losing children, and losing hope, and as we stand with each other in all the ways death breathes down our own necks, as we stand at the beginning of this journey to the cross, we do not shy away from pleading and sorrow.

We will encourage each other just to say what is, and not to try to clean it up with religious pep talks or give God easy outs.  We will come with the world’s pain and lay it before the cross.  In other words, we will pray. With Jesus in the garden, we will pray.

But we will also stand with and for each other, we will stand on behalf of the world, we will strive to do the very most basic thing we can – to stay awake and see and hear the pain and grief, not to hide from it or cover it up.  That is the way of faith. That is the way of Christ.

Amen.

"In the Garden" script copyright, Kara K Root. May be used with permission.

Entering Lent

In honor of Ash Wednesday approaching this week, I am reposting last year's Ash Wednesday Reflection. Enjoy.

image by Jan Richardson, used with permission

When I told Owen about Ash Wednesday, and making a cross on our forehead, he said, “But I already have a cross on my forehead.” 

He was speaking of his baptism. That he is marked as Christ’s own and claimed by God forever.  But his baptism was a baptism into the life, death and resurrection of Christ, that his very being is now taken up into the life of Christ – the death of Christ, the redemption of Christ.

And every experience he has in this life of death, each loss and pain he suffers and inflicts on others, each time something is taken from his being, each brokenness, each injustice – these things are all taken into Christ who bears them all on the cross.

So, I told him, “This time the cross we make on our forehead is one we can see. It is marked in ashes.  It represents death – Jesus’ death, but our own too. Because we are going into Lent, where we talk about how death has a hold on life, and how we participate in death, and how we all really need God’s life to destroy death.” 

He looked at me and touched his forehead and said, ‘Will you think of Grandma Root when you make your cross on your head?” 

“Yes, I will think of her," I answered, "because she is gone from us and death has separated her from us, and I will think of all the other ways that death separates us from each other. The ways death hurts us in life. Because when we spend some time remembering this, we know that even though death makes a mark on us, we belong to God and that can never change.  And we will be ready to talk about how God destroys death and brings life.”

We go into these next weeks, these 40 days of Lent following Jesus’ journey to the cross, and it helps us remember why.

Why do we celebrate the resurrection anyway?

Why does it matter that we have a God who died for us?

Why do we believe there is any hope in the story of Christ, in God’s story that we are part of? 

And we cannot know the hope, taste the promise, unless we are willing to really face the despair, unless we are willing to spend some time in the shadow side of life: 

the unanswered prayers, 

the guilt over relationships shattered 

and dreams traded away 

and promises broken 

and wounds gouged deep into our souls 

and inflicted on others by our own words or actions. 

Last week after Grandma Root’s funeral, Owen sat in the car holding his popped balloon that he had been playing with the whole day.  He finally sighed a big sigh and said, “Mommy, why are bad things happening?  Why does everything die?  Did God do a bad job making the world?” 

These are Lent questions.  

And too often we rush to answers instead of sitting in the questions.  

Lent gives us a chance to simmer in the questions.

Why do bad things happen? 

Why does everything have to die?  

Why did Jesus die?  

Why is the cross "good news"? 

We can’t know it to be good news until we spend some time in the bad, until we let ourselves stop faking or fearing, stop defending God and ourselves, stop ignoring our complicity and looking past the shame in our lives. 

Lent is an invitation to honesty.

It is a chance to clear away some of the noise- as cheerful or friendly or positive as the noise might be- to get rid of the distractions that protect us from having to face the doubts or the anger, the deep sadness or the piercing regrets.  It is an invitation to enter those things, as fearful as it sounds, to sit with those things and expect that God will encounter us. 

Lent is a time when we acknowledge sin and evil, and our participation in sin and evil, and recognize that we don’t deserve forgiveness but we stand here in need of it anyway,

It is a time when say we have a whole lot of questions and concerns about how the world is run and how life is going, and we are not going to hide them or explain them away; we’re going to swallow our fear and say them outloud, even if they seem too big to fix,

Lent is when we say from dust I came and to dust I will return, ashes to ashes, and we stare death in the face, and admit that we are unable to save ourselves or the world around us, and that we need a savior.

In Lent we stand with our flimsy faith drawn on our foreheads in ashes, of all things, and say as crazy a story as this is, as hard as it is to see hope sometimes,

I am going to risk it,

even with my doubt and my unfaithfulness and my hypocrisy and my self-righteousness, I stand here in the possibility that there might be more going on than I can see, and that redemption may be more real than I can imagine.

So we surrender ourselves to the story, our story, God’s story - that moves now through life’s horror and illusion and brings the Creator ultimately to death at the hands of his own creation and most astonishingly, on its behalf,

we submit ourselves to this story because in this story there might be a hope beyond what we can grasp, and we’re willing to risk letting it grasp us.

So we begin Lent today that we might be made ready for Easter. 

We begin Lent today that our eyes might be opened and our pain might rise to the surface, that our guilt might become obvious to us, that the world’s utter need might stand starkly before us – because there is a promise at the end of this journey,

and we can’t hear the promise in all its cosmic, world-changing power with all the religion and politics and business as usual in our ears,

and we can’t see the promise’s searing brilliance past all the self-importance and busyness, and personal agendas clouding our vision,

and we wont be able to really let the hope of our salvation wash over us, fill us, cleanse us and sustain us if our backs are turned because we’re too occupied being strong, or good, or right.

Lent prepares us for the good news of Easter. 

Bring your questions.  Bring your fears.  Bring your failures.

Lent is an invitation. 

May we accept it.

Mountaintops and Messiness

"Thin Place" by Roger Hutchinson

Matthew 17:1-9

(Exodus 24:12-18)

The disciples follow Jesus to the mountaintop to pray. All of a sudden, Peter, James and John are stunned to see Jesus standing with Elijah and Moses - the key figures of their faith, all glowing and shiny, and chatting like old friends.  In an instant they see all of history standing before them represented in these figures, the unfolding of God’s story – the people of God led out of Egypt, called and guided by God, restored by God, and the Messiah, the future, standing there with the past - together, like a complete picture, a glorious glimpse of timeless wonder.

Peter, not knowing what he is saying, all swept up in the moment, suggests they freeze the moment, capture and honor it and stay right there in the awe and mystery and the thrill of witnessing eternity, and he is still speechifying when he is interrupted by a bright and terrifying cloud encircling them and a booming voice proclaiming “This is my Son! For the love of God, listen to him!” – and they open their eyes and everything is gone, just them and Jesus, and Jesus tells them not to tell anyone and then leads them right back down the mountain. 

And to make matters worse, as soon as they set foot back on flat ground, here comes the distraught father with the demon possessed son, the one they had tried to heal but couldn’t, the one that reminds them that the world is full of desperate fathers and ill sons. 

Life has transcendent moments – glimpses of glory.  Times where we experience something out of the ordinary, encounters with the supernatural that you can’t explain. I have had them.  

Have you?

It could be a moment alone where the beauty and stillness of nature takes your breath away, and you feel yourself connected to everything around you,

or perhaps it is the witnessing of an actual miracle – when fervent prayers are answered and someone is healed right before your eyes. Or a clear answer from God -  a door opening and sure direction on path you are to take or choice you are to make, or perhaps it is a particularly exquisite moment in worship, where you sense God’s presence and hear God speaking directly to you. 

A supernatural vision, a powerful dream, even a near death experience.

On occasion, human beings have these experiences that seem to pull us completely out of ordinary life into something holy, divine, mysterious, maybe frightening, maybe thrilling, maybe both.   

And we long for these – as human beings we crave these tastes of the beyond. Moments where the space between what is and what will be thins out, when the gap between earth and heaven, natural and supernatural, ordinary and extraordinary becomes narrow - the thin places where God feels close.

There is more to reality than we can see or understand; God is able to break through time and space surprise us with things that flip the universe on end. And we long for these glimpses.

So, then when they do happen, what do we do with these experiences?  How do we understand them?  Maybe we try to stay there, to recreate them, to grasp onto them and make them our focus, to shape our lives around them. That is what Peter tried to do. 

Or maybe these moments are simply baffling. They can’t be incorporated into what we know to be true. They feel so removed from what we see around us on a daily basis that we simply trudge back down the mountain and breathe not a word of them because they don’t make sense. And we need things to make sense.

So if we don’t try to spend our lives trying to live in them then often we discredit the supernatural experiences, or at the very least marginalize them because we have no idea how to integrate them into our lives. 

We, (as Presbyterians especially), are not afraid to talk about the real “stuff” of life, we’ll talk about sex trafficking and famine and politics, we’ll lament injustice all week long, but we get all stuttery and bashful to discuss the moments when God is right there in our face, when we taste transcendence.  

Or we think others wouldn’t understand – and why would they? We have trouble understanding them ourselves.  We want to be able to explain them, to find what the meaning is, and why they happen and how they happen and what they are telling us to DO.

When Moses saw God on a mountain he brought back down the Ten Commandments – he brought specific words and instructions of what to do, how to live, what the people were supposed to take with them from supernatural encounter with God into their ordinary lives.  God told them what to do, God told them what it means. 

But when the disciples see God on a mountain the only instruction they have from God, the only words God gives to them up there come in a brilliant frightening cloud, and echo the words God said when God claimed and pointed out Jesus for the first time – at his baptism – This is my Son, my Beloved.  And then the only thing God tells them to do is: LISTEN TO HIM.  Listen to him.

So we come to this text at the end of Epiphany every year – the very last text we use in the season of talking about God being revealed in Christ.  The story that comes just before we begin Lent is this story, of the disciple’s witnessing Jesus’ strange and momentary transformation, and then going right back down to face the father of the tortured kid they couldn’t heal – it comes up this way, these two parts of the story, back to back, in Matthew, Mark and Luke, like they belong together.

The disciples go from this terrifying exhilarating experience immediately back to this troubling, frustrating and humiliating experience.  They swung from great confidence and sureness, absolute faith and a sense that it all makes sense, immediately to impotence and impossibility, confronted by the ministry they could not do and tagging along after a Messiah who is headed for a cross. No wonder they never talked about what happened up there.

So what is the point? What are they supposed to learn, or do, what does it mean?  We don’t know. Maybe they don’t know. It never says. It doesn’t interpret for us what God is up to by showing them this.

Except, EXCEPT that when Jesus calls them back down the mountain and heads off towards Calvary, they follow now as people who have been up the mountain. They follow as those who have glimpsed glory, who have tasted transcendence.

 

Maybe that makes his suffering and death that much harder for them –they have seen who he really is and this feels so utterly in contrast. Maybe it makes their despair deeper, their sense of all things being turned on end nearly debilitating, because they know they way things really ARE, and they carry this secret inside of them of what they witnessed and can’t even begin to describe or explain. And it leaves them with nothing but agonizing questions, Why God? Why don’t you stop it? Why are you letting this happen?

Or maybe it gives them confidence, trust. The deep awareness that in everything there is more going on than they can see in the moment. Maybe it makes them strong enough to keep following when all looks lost and Jesus is put to death.

Who knows what it did to them? 

And what do they actually take down the mountain with them? Not power. Not commandments. Not even something they understand. They take an inexplicable experience which they can’t really rationalize but they can’t ever shake either. It has happened to them.

And we are never told how it does impact them – maybe each one differently.  There is no clear message or implication – only that God wanted them to have this experience.  And that God wants them to listen to Jesus.

How are we supposed to take extraordinary experiences with us into the ordinary?  How do they shape us? What does God intend with them?

Perhaps the goal is not to understand, to grasp, to keep or to do, but to follow. To watch, to listen. We follow him up the mountain into the unknown, let ourselves be open to meeting God in ways we could never predict or even desire.

And we follow him back down the mountain, into suffering, into confusion, into a world with sick sons and desperate fathers and our own inability to do anything about any of it.  We follow him there too.

Jesus goes both places with his followers, God is there in both realities, in the extraordinary glory and in the ordinary pain.  In the moments of transcendent mystery, and in the times of terrible struggle and suffering.   

So great is God’s glory that it encompasses past present and future and doesn’t hesitate to speak in a booming voice from a cloud with no explanation whatsoever. So great is God’s love that God comes back down from the mountain and dies among and for the people.

How do we follow?  How can we be open? How can we see God who both meets us in mystery, and comes near in the messiness? 

As we walk into Lent, as we enter a time of deliberate pause, recognition of the world’s desperate need for God, we take these questions with us.  We follow the God of all eternity on his road to death. We let ourselves speak out the contradictions, hold up the confusion, pause to sit in the soup of God’s mysterious presence and painful absence, and then continue to follow where Jesus goes.  And however the journey shapes us, we walk it as people who have been up the mountain.

Communion Liturgy

Come to the table of God.

The mountaintop is here, where earth touches heaven,

the place of meeting,

the place of mystery,

the place of epiphany,

the place where the glory of God is revealed.

The valley is here as well, where heaven invades earth,

the place of suffering,

the place of shadows,

the place of sorrow,

the place where the humanity of Christ is made known.

When we gather at this table,

we both proclaim mystery,

and embrace reality.

we recount what God has done

and proclaim what God will do.

When we gather at this table,

we both speak words of promise,

foreshadowing eternity.

and remember words of pain,

recounting the past.

and God meets us here.

In this bread and this wine,

In this gathering and this breaking,

In this sharing and this eating,

We declare again, that

Truly great is the mystery of our faith:

Christ has come,

Christ has died,

Christ has risen,

Christ will come again.


(copyright Kara K Root, liturgy may be used with permission).

money, stress and flowers

Edvard Munch, "Anxiety"

Matthew 6:24-34

I am a world-class worrier.  I’m fairly certain that if there were some sort of worrying competition, I would at least place, I’m that good. In fact, I don’t just worry when things are going badly or there are frightening threats on the horizon, I worry when things seem to be going too well – because that is just a set up for disaster, it says so right in the worry manual, the handbook for perfect anxiety.

For someone prone to worry, tonight’s text is not terribly good news. First, because it’s nice that God cares about the flowers and birds and all, but what about the 1000 Libyans who brutally lost their lives these past two weeks, crying out for freedom? What about Iraqi children and Haitian families and the neighbor who lost her house in a fire and the friend who cannot, no matter what it seems, find a job? 

So for a world-class worrier, this text is cold comfort. It raises more questions than it answers. You can’t fool us, Jesus. There’s a lot to worry about. And despite the promise that God will care for us, God doesn’t seem to be wrapping up these loose ends any time soon.

The second reason this text is not great news for a world-class worrier is that it makes you start to worry about how much you’re worrying. It makes you question your faith, and not in a good way.  By telling you you shouldn’t worry, it gives you more to worry about. Why can’t I just “let go and let God?” What’s wrong with my faith? Would God take care of me more if I backed off?  If I just tried harder not to worry so much, would that make me more secure, less afraid?  And so, without realizing it or meaning to, you’ve let anxiety take the reigns again.

On the flip side, it’s a beautiful passage. Really poetic and lovely. And if it didn’t need to mean something to my daily life or the really messed up world we live in, I would like it very much. So, there’s that.

It does make a few interesting observations about worry.

Certainly, I do realize that by worrying I cannot add one cubit to my life span – whatever a cubit is – one second, hour, moment. In fact, if studies are to be believed, I actually can take time off my life by worrying. Time with elevated heart rate and increased blood pressure and heightened fight or flight response and it all takes a toll on your longevity.  (So, there’s something else to be worried about).

The other thing it points out is that worrying is necessarily future-oriented.  We worry about what is going to happen. We live in today – with enough troubles of its own, but we worry about tomorrow. We worry what the test results will show or what the teacher will say or what will happen when the last of the money runs out.  We worry about what we will do, and what they will say, and how we will survive whatever crisis looms on the horizon.

In fact, we miss a whole lot of the present by living in the future, and not in a pleasant dreamy way, but in a wholly worrisome way.  And when the future becomes the present many of the things we worried about ahead of time never come to pass, or we find ourselves coping with what in advance had seemed insurmountable.

So truly, tomorrow will bring worries of its own and today has enough trouble of its own and there is no need to go borrowing more, and I do appreciate the text for at least acknowledging that, and not pretending today is all rosy and tomorrow only hunky-dory.

It’s interesting that these two pericopes – that is what we call little units of scripture that contain a complete thought – that both of these pericopes, the one about money and the one about worry -  are together for today’s reading. It’s the “therefore”: when we read these together we can see, as my dad used to say “what the therefore is there for” – For this reason, because of what I have just said, having heard this, don’t be anxious. Don’t be anxious!

Don’t be anxious about your life, because you can’t serve God and wealth. You can’t be ruled by money and by God, so don’t be worried. Pick your lord. And you couldn’t find two more different.

Let’s just take a moment to remind ourselves where we stand when we read this text. We are, yes, STILL in the Sermon on the Mount. We’ve already concluded that the point of the whole lengthy sermon is to talk about what this kingdom of God life looks like when it is lived out.  We’ve seen that it means people are upheld and respected, mutual love and support is the way people relate, what it means that God is God and we are God’s people in concrete, visible ways.

And Jesus is still going on. He has covered relationship with God, with others, has addressed conflict and division, divorce and arguments and all these other real life experiences, and given a pretty compelling picture of what it looks like when the love-driven life of God in Christ is the life-blood of your own life and relationships. So now we come to anxiety. And money.

Money and worry.  It would be ludicrous not to worry, especially about money. In a world of insurance and accidents and investments and retirement and unforeseen circumstances and medical conditions and rising college tuition and passenger side air bags and long-term care facilities, and not leaving baggage unattended, and home security systems and supplemental insurance, telling people not to worry, and particularly to not worry about money, is just about the dumbest advice you can give.

But it depends, I suppose, on which system you choose to live in,  which master you’ve chosen, back in the last pericope. Instead of being defined by a system of anxiety and accumulation, we are invited to be defined by rest, beauty, cooperation and interconnectedness, each having what each needs to thrive – no more and no less.  We’re invited to live from the kingdom of God.

In a few weeks we’re going on an all-church retreat that is focused on Sabbath. And Sabbath itself, as we will talk about then, is a form of resistance. A powerful form of resistance. It is, in fact, what this very passage is talking about.  Truly resting, as God rested, is to live in opposition to a system designed around anxiety. A system that doesn’t rest. A system of 24/7 business and commerce where you are defined by your trading power and your net worth and your ability to consume and spend. Where participation means economic involvement, spending power. 

Sabbath is resistance to this culture; it is the ridiculous notion that you are free to stop doing. That your person and your time is valuable without producing or selling or proving or buying a thing. It is a wildly alternative mindset, a dramatically different form of living, a completely other system. A system of wholeness and abundance, where participation means connecting and caring, relationships and creativity, honest grief and wholehearted laughter. 

It means, like birds and flowers, living out your essential you-ness and trusting that it is part of a greater whole.   And you may not see the whole picture or even yet recognize what song or scent you contribute to the world, but you are part of it all anyway. It means your life and existence does not depend solely on yourself or your striving. You cannot ultimately make or break it.

There are incredible gifts within the fabric of this life that we skim right by because we’re so caught up on preserving our own lives or promoting our own agendas that we miss the bird and the flowers and each other and the gifts we’ve been given and the invitations extended to us right here and now to give the same gifts to others.  We’re so worried. So anxious. So fearful.

But Sabbath counters this.  It says, I am going to stop for a day. I am going to step off the crazy moving sidewalk and sit down and be here, right here, right now and not be driven by anxiety and worry, not think that I am personally so integral to the world moving forward that it can’t get along without me.

My God is not money, not accumulation and consumption, my God is the one who worked hard to make the world and then looked around and declared it good and flopped down for a nice long nap.  A day to rest. To let it all germinate. To take pleasure in the goodness of what God made, the ongoing life of it, to smell those lilies and listen to those birds sing, to relax and enjoy it. 

And my God is also the one who was born into all the anxious, worried, fearful moments in life and shared them with us to remind us that God is God and we are not alone.

So when we rest, we trust. We trust in God.  That despite what we see on the news and on the CT scan and on the bank statement that God IS in control in some way. That God IS loving. That God is God and we are not alone.

Jesus is always encouraging us to live like the kingdom of God is now, is here, live like it in the face of its absence, in opposition to those who would preach and live otherwise.  

Jesus is saying through all of this, in multiple ways,

Don’t participate blindly in the systems that dehumanize and threaten people, in systems that tell you you never have enough and you must always be about stockpiling and insuring and protecting.  

Instead, live from abundance and joy, live freely and love fully, be generous and authentic and leave tomorrow in the future. Today has enough adventure of its own. Today is where you are, and where God is, and where life really happens, after all.

This is not something that can be done alone, this not worrying thing, this not worshiping money thing, this living in today thing.  For human beings to be true human beings, like bird are birds and flowers are flowers and God is God, we must live interdependently, connected, supporting one another.  We can’t NOT worry alone. We choose not to worry together.

Seek first God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness – live out God’s justice and care for common humanity and creation, bind up the brokenhearted and look after the poor and love one another and let go of anger and be about the business of God in the world- and all these things, food, clothing, basic needs, will be covered. 

If we’re all caring for each other we are all cared for. If we are all sharing what we have with others we are all shared with.  There’s enough to go around, and in God’s kingdom all have what they need.  The kingdom of God takes the future of God’s promise and invites us to live it now, and in living it now, we are reminded of the future that is promised.

In the midst of a crisis, and all on my own, I could spin into a fantastic worrying vortex of death.  I need to be connected to other people who remind me of the truth, who keep me grounded in today and help me avoid obsessing over the million possibilities of what might be that threaten to strangle me.  I need to see myself not as a sole individual in the world, but as a part of the Body of Christ, just one little part and I can faithfully do my part but the whole body will care for one another, the whole body belongs to the God of past, present and future. 

And by the way, this isn’t about not feeling worried when the late notice or the lump appears. This isn’t about fixing your feelings. It is about together choosing to live in an alternative system, a kingdom reality. It’s about not letting worry or anxiety rule us or tell us how we are to live.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and again: we remind each other of the truth, with our words and our actions, our money and our mouth, our shared struggles and joys.  We continue to tell each other who we are, and who God is, and which system, which kingdom, which reality, we are going to live from, and how we see that kingdom unfolding in the world.

Together we can live out faith, which is to say, we’ll practice trust in God. Together. And trust is a powerful anxiety reliever.  Worry paralyzes us, and prevents us from really living. But trust sets us free to participate joyfully in the life of God.  And we can be a people who practice trust.

“I have calmed and quieted my soul,” says the Psalmist, “like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.  O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time on and forevermore.”

Amen.

Creating Ritual - Practicing faith with children

Last week my Methodist minister friend Mandy and I took our children on our annual winter "pilgrimage" to a small retreat center in Northern Minnesota.  Each year the kids are older and the dynamics are different, but it is rich and surprising every time.  This year we had two six year olds, a four year old, a three year old and a nine month old. Two moms and five kids in a cabin in the woods with no TV or video games.  It is our living sacrifice, our spiritual service of worship.

This is our third time, and we've perfected the packing: a huge tub of outdoor clothing and boots, sleds, a giant bin of legos, a small tent, a novel or small set of children's books, a couple of board games and a container of craft supplies - which sits in my storage room completely packed until the next year's trip rolls around.  We do not deviate from this assortment. It's tried and true. Oh, and a mix cd. Each year has its own mix cd.

While we're together at "Cabin in the Woods" we practice a "Goodnight Circle" - each sharing what we are glad about, and what we are sad or worried about from our day, and then praying for one another. We walk a labyrinth a few times a day - a remarkable feat (and great risk) with short legs in the snow, where monkey business or carelessness could ruin the whole design.  But from the first time, these children held a sacredness to the practice - even when run with speed and playfulness, they respected the common experience and rejoiced in the rhythm.  This year the snow labyrinth at the retreat center was not maintained, and the children missed it so much that we decided to create our own.  We found a book with instructions, and what followed was a poignant, joyful project that I will never, ever forget.

Most days we follow a trail to a prayer gazebo, where we light a candle and everyone "writes" prayers on small papers and shoves them in the cracks between the rocks.  Their paper prayers have gone from scribbles to single letters to whole words and now sentences as they quietly add their message to the silent, faded joys and griefs of visitors gone before.  Then we must sneak down the trail past the hermitage where someone is tucked away in silence and solitude with God, either blissfully unaware of, or mirthfully peeking out at, the parade of tiny, simultaneously sweaty and cold pilgrims in snowsuits and boots trudging through the trees.

Every day we eat lunch in the lodge, startling, overwhelming (and delighting?) solitary adult guests who are staying in retreat.  There the children fall into the lunch rhythm, which includes a reading - for which they must sit silently, and concludes with singing the World Peace Prayer, which in theory is sung by people at lunchtime in every timezone making it an endless prayer for global peace.

Bread is important to our time, for every meal and snacks, both because it is delicious and because the variety of heathy, organic vegetarian meals does not include anything remotely like pizza or chicken nuggets. (Wine is also important for the mommies' late night chats when all the kids are snoring under handmade quilts).  Mandy and I give each other breaks from the chaos; one of us will stay in the cottage with the kids while the other spends a couple of hours in the lodge for adult conversation, silent prayer, or to check email and Facebook.  And we end every night by the fire with our feet up and the deep forest darkness wrapping the cottage in stillness.

Somehow this crazy little trip to the last place you could ever imagine bringing children (winter, Northern Minnesota, a generally adult retreat center) has become an annual Sabbath ritual for us that we cannot imagine our lives without, and which has impacted us and our families in profound ways.
 Whether it is the kids' requests for the World Peace Prayer or ARC bread for dinner, the way the goodnight circle lingers in our evenings for a few months and resurfaces from time to time after that, the labyrinths they draw or are drawn to in worship settings, or the freedom with which they talk about God hearing their prayers, the power of this ritual has permeated our children.

And it has shown me that maybe one of the greatest spiritual gifts we can give our children is ritual.  Bedtime prayers, mealtime candles, Advent calendars and deep woods walks - helping our kids notice and experience God in ways other than speaking and listening, frees them.  It, paradoxically, helps to give them words.  It loosens up questions and opens up connections. It helps them see the sacredness of the world and the mystery of their place within it.  It gives them permission as children to create patterns  for themselves - (my daughter demands the Doxology as her bedtime song and my son collects prayer stones and shells).  It places their experience in church -- the lessons in Sunday school, the hymns in worship, the passing of the bread and cup -- in a wider, more generous context, and calls them personally to engage.  It reminds them that they belong to God, and that God is always with them.

And as parents, it gives us greater permission and courage to talk about God with our kids.  Ritual provides shared experiences and contexts from which to raise questions and tell stories. Impromptu praying or talking about God's presence in world events and frightening circumstances, struggling together with ethical issues and wondering what difference Jesus makes in our daily life and relationships becomes easier because we have shared in a common spoken and unspoken language of faith.  And for Mandy and myself, whose vocation is to speak about God ad naseaum, these simple rituals give us an alternative way to express faith, and to encounter God, our children and ourselves.

Most importantly, practicing simple rituals with our kids reiterates the oft-forgotten truth that faith in God is not a destination but a journey. Faith is not about learning right answers or correct beliefs.  It is about learning to trust ever more in the Creator of all who came to share this life with us -- birth and death and everything in between.  Faith is about discovering ourselves in the hands of the one who overcame death with life, and who is moving and breathing hope in the world even now.
And that is a journey we can share together.

What such life looks like

"Reconciliation" - Coventry Cathedral

Matthew 5:38-48

What do we really think of Jesus’ words? If he walked in here today stood in front of us and said them to us outloud, how would we react? Would we think him weak? Idealistic? Impractical?  Would we consider him harsh, demanding, out of touch with real life?

It’s hard to consider this as unrealistic as I might normally when just last week, through mostly nonviolent means, the people of Egypt overthrew a 30 year rule. Standing together, praying together, camping together, refusing to back down but not resorting to violence. It’s hard to call this totally impractical when this very passage inspired Ghandi’s non-violent resistance – who said “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

When Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement that brought such an astounding change to our nation were so informed by these words, it gives them some credibility on the large scale, which is all well and good, but leaves me a little at a loss with what to do with them in my own life.

I have the privilege of knowing a few truly, deeply honest people. People of fearsome integrity who need their lives and their words to mean something. So when they read something like this: be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect – it really upsets them. They’re unable to explain it away or ignore it or pretend they didn’t read it. They can’t just see it as a nice religious pipe dream, a goal to aim for but never actually consider achieving, like most of us might. They can’t use historical context or rhetorical style to excuse what it seems to be demanding, or consider it broad guidelines for a peaceful revolution that don’t speak directly to you and me.  This kind of scripture really messes with them. These people really think it should mean something when Jesus says to turn the other cheek or go the extra mile.

We’ve been talking about the bible for several weeks in Adult Ed, and we have learned that the lens you read scripture with will shape what you get from it.  So try on this lens, which some of us may have had at some point in our lives. What if the whole point of this faith, the central claim, the goal of it all was this: God is in charge and God wants people to be good. And God is punitive. God is harsh and judging. God has high standards and most of us will not make it.  But we’re supposed to try anyway.

So turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, pray for your enemies, and be perfect.  Be the impossible. Be good because God is good. You’ll most likely fail, but you’re supposed to die trying. And then hopefully God will make up the difference and let you in in the end anyway.

That’s how one lens might read it. Does read it.  But we can’t read this as a command to be the impossible, as some unreachable goal we aim for and hope for the best because we have a different lens.  We’ve pretty much agreed that the central claim of all of scripture, the purpose of it, in fact, that which Jesus embodies in the flesh and speaks of with his words, that which the disciples proclaim and gospel authors write, and the Old Testament stories explore and the New Testament letters explain and church communities throughout time are founded upon and our whole faith revolves around is this:

God loves us. God wants a relationship with us. God creates and sustains and empowers life so that God can be in relationship with God’s creatures and God’s creation.  And God wants us to be in relationship with each other that reflects this love.

So this passage isn’t saying be good or God will get you. It is saying be love because God is love.  This scripture is another stanza in this lengthy teaching –we are still in the Sermon on the Mount here, that began with the Beatitudes, blessed are the brokenhearted for they will be comforted! - another in a long line of Jesus talking about what life really is, about what it means to really live, about the kingdom of God that upholds the weak and cares for the poor – the kingdom where all people are loved and respected, and each person is fully, wholly, completely human. The kingdom of love we now are to live out.

Be perfect, it says. Not American, perfectionistic, I’s dotted and T’s crossed, botoxed, honor roll, pageant perfect. It comes from the Greek word, telos or goal, end, completion. Be complete, be whole, be fully you, just as God is fully God. Have the same goal – that is love and connection – that God has.  Live in God’s fullness.

We live half-way much of the time.  We demand respect but don’t respect others. We rank and judge people and think some deserve things others don’t. We keep track of the wrongs done to us, and hurt those who hurt us.  We limit our own humanity and that of others because we are consumed with fairness, and we know how to look out for number one even at the expense of anything or anyone else. An eye for an eye keeps us in check because we’re more likely to rip off the whole face.

But what would it be to live so secure in our life and the love of God that when someone slapped you on the cheek you could look them in the eye, and then offer them your other cheek as well? That when someone sued you for the shirt off your back you’d give them your coat also. Here! Might as well take this too. It’s a matching set! 

What does such an astounding and unexpected response do to the whole fabric of the situation?  How does it change both people involved?

Two weeks ago the session headed to ARC Retreat Center for our annual retreat.  Surrounded by the majesty of tall creaking trees and the stillness of the snow, we sat by a fire with mugs of hot coffee and tea and pondered what it means to live in God’s welcome. We talked about what it is to really welcome one another each time and every time, mutually, authentically.  Not to take each other for granted. Not to act as though we had anything to lose. To be generous, open, honest, trusting, seeing each other, hearing each other, recognizing and appreciating each person for who they are and not just the role they play. What would we be, we wondered, if we really deeply embodied God’s hospitality? What power is there in that for this little community? For the world?

Last weekend I was in Atlanta to baptize little Sloan Elizabeth Flemming.  I looked out on a congregation of people making vows to this child, vows that, let’s be honest, most of them wont do anything about keeping.

I put the water on her head, and it was just water, wet and messy and a little cold, nothing magical about it. I spoke words over her, just words, ordinary, human words, nothing powerful, no incantations or charms. And we prayed for her. We asked God to do something.

And that’s the thing. We are just human beings. We are not in this alone. On our own it’s a pointless ritual, this baptism, a mime, a mockery even. On our own it’s a lie. Death will get you.  There is nothing more than this life, that we have to offer. Violence is powerful and atrophy and disease and decay are part of the order of things, and relationships fall apart and people betray you and this community making promises to you will fail you at some point or another, and you will let yourself down time and again, and life has got some pretty awful surprises up its sleeve, and we are all play-acting if we stand around that font and think that what we are doing has the power to change any of that.

But we prayed, and we asked God to do something, and we believe God does something, because it’s not about us. It’s not up to us. This message, here, today, is not about us. Jesus, sitting among his disciples, pounding it into them - Matthew just packing all these things together in the world’s longest, most dense sermon- like if we just keep saying it in different ways it might eventually sink in.

I am telling you about a different way of being! A different way of living! A way that is not like this world, and not naturally within you, and not like anything you could dream up. I am telling you about what God is up to.  God is making a world where the blind can see and the lame can walk and the powerless are made strong and justice is real and hope is shared by all and people are free to be fully alive, to love God and one another unabashedly.

And you can be part of that now! Even now, in this life where people hit you and sue you and talk only to their friends and hate their enemies really well – you can be part of what God is up to by refusing to participate in that reality. It looks like this:

You may hit me if you choose, but I will not hit you back, I will not spit on your or call you names. I will not cower from you. I will offer you my other cheek, and in this way I will choose my role, not you, and not fear. I choose to use my power differently than you are using yours. I will meet you and you will meet me. I am not defined by this moment, but by something greater.

If you take something from me, I will give you even more. I will not live as though life is filled with scarcity and dread, pitting us against one another to survive. Instead I will live in abundance, having what I need, and you will have to see me, to deal with me; I will give you my cloak and you will have to reach out your hand to take it from mine. Human to human. You are not defined by this moment, but by something greater.

What would it look like if one, two, ten, a hundred, a thousand, a whole community, a movement or a nation, the Church of Jesus Christ in the whole world, began practicing this?  This kingdom of God living, this upside down and inside out, illogical love-driven living? 

If nobody hits back, what would happen to the hitting? If everybody is giving things away, what stealing can there be?  If people go around praying for each other, could there hardly be an enemy left?  Because how can you imagine God holding someone, how can you ask God to care for someone, to see and hear them, and not begin to see and hear them yourself?  To see the ways you are both connected? To hear the struggles you share, to recognize the humanity that comes out for each of you in broken ways?

You’re not going to get this right every time. In fact, most of the time you’ll slap that cheek right back before you’ve realized what you’re doing, and then you’ll have to apologize all over the place.  But there is hope here for us because it is not about us.  There is hope for the world because God loves the world. God is loving the world. Jesus is here today, among us, between us, with us and for us.

Be whole, live in God’s fullness, exist in God’s love the way God does.  It’s an invitation. It’s a possibility.  It’s a prayer.  God, help us to live your kingdom of love!  And let it change us. Let it change the world.

Amen.