The matter of memory

2 Kings 22:1-23:3

Deuteronomy 6:4-9

This weekend I traveled to Kansas City to see two of my sisters graduate – one from college and one from law school.  I stayed in the bedroom of my 8 year old nephew, Vincent, amongst legos and bugs pinned to velvet plaques, stars glued to the ceiling and collections of books about dogs.  After he’d oriented me to the important things in his room and left me alone, I realized there was music playing softly. It was a cd with the Sunday school songs I had grown up with: Jesus loves me, I’ve got the joy down in my heart, Jesus loves the little children, Oh, how I love Jesus, and others, on a mellow cd where they were paced, I discovered, to match the beating of a heart.  The cd was set on repeat.

When he came back in I said, “Vincent, that music is so relaxing.”

He said, “Yeah, I think so too.  I like to sleep with it on. Hey! maybe you could too!” 

So when I went to bed that night I did not turn it off.  Throughout the night when I would stir I would catch morsels of music, words that I had grown up hearing, comfortable, familiar, somehow part of me.  They wove themselves in and out of my dreams.  When I awoke, the songs of my childhood and my faith gently called me back to day.

“Keep these words that I am giving you. Recite them to your children.  Talk about them when you are at home and away, when you lie down and when you rise. ⁸Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, ⁹and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

You are my children who I delivered from the land of Egypt. I am your God.  You shall love Yahweh your God. 

It’s all God has ever wanted.  Back and forth this tumultuous relationship goes throughout time – from the beginning when when God breathed it all into being and placed the tree of God’s vulnerability among them, Choose me, choose life, I will show you the way to live fully, wholly. And instead they chose not to trust the God who loved them, and to look after themselves and turn against one another. And on and on it goes, rolling through centuries and millennia, God’s relentless love and humanity’s turning away and God’s constantly adapting strategies to share life with these cherished ones made in God’s image.

There are lots of reasons, I suppose, why people turn away from love.  In this story, they don’t even know yet that they have. 

What is it like to have lost your memory? To have forgotten who you are, what shaped you, where you come from, where you’re going? What is it to be not just one, but a whole people like this? Yesterday disregarded, tomorrow uncertain.  Trapped in eternal present, and unpleasant present, at that.

So what, then, was it like for them when those scrolls were opened?  What was it like to hear a story that was true about you and you never knew it? What was it like, after more than a lifetime of ruthless, unpredictable and oppressive authority, lawless self-preservation, fear and corruption, to being gathered one day in the square, by your young king and told that when cleaning out and repairing the temple this was found:  the law, the ten commandments, the history. The word of God. 

What was it like to hear the words aloud that your ancestors wrote, a message from God in their voice, guiding their lives and it was supposed to guide yours too, but you’ve never even heard of it before.  Like learning your own middle name for the first time.  Discovering you’re adopted, or that you’ve got a whole family of people you never knew, or that you’re incognito royalty.  It’s the Aboriginal lost children of Australia stolen from their people and raised in white homes hearing their language for the first time. It’s a dug up time capsule not only introducing your ancestors but blowing misconceptions about your own identity out of the water.  It’s an opening of your own past that completely alters the present and rewrites the future.

I picture stillness over the crowd, barely a breeze, rapt attention and dead silence, not a throat-clear among them, as the words are read:

My people, here is who you are! And here is how I designed life to work best, together and not just alone, for others and not just yourself, giving and not just taking, sharing and not hoarding, resting and not just toil. Each one treasured, all together belonging.  Forgiven, free.  Here’s the relationship you were meant for – with me, with each other.  You belong to me. I have chosen you for a special purpose in the world – I will care for you and you will live within my care so that you can care for others.

And the crowd holds its collective breath as these words sink deep into their souls.

And the most painful and poignant part of all of it, I imagine, is standing there listening when the words are read, Whatever happens, my children, Do not forget this!

 In fact, rehearse it, Teach it to your children, talk about it when you’re awake and dream it when you’re asleep, Discuss it over dinner, leave post-its lying around, tuck it in your purse and have it in your pocket and Literally stick it to your own forehead so you don’t forget.  It’s that important.

And you’re standing there hearing this as the third generation of people who’ve completely forgotten.  You’ve never told it to your children and you never heard it from your parents.  You’ve never discussed it over dinner let alone carried it with you in your pocket or plastered it to your forehead. You’re hearing it for the very first time. 

All the ways it could have been. 

All you’ve done that you can’t undo.  All you would’ve done differently had you known. Hope and shame comingled.  Joy and sorrow welling up and spilling over.

All together you stand there remembering what you never knew.

Huldah the prophetess knew. She recognized the scriptures when they brought it to her.  She told them what these words were and she told them what God was waiting to say when they finally looked up and noticed God again. 

How did she know?  How could she be the one-  she, and not even the priest - who could speak with confidence when the people were finally ready to hear again the truth of their situation?  How did she alone remember?

She was not alone. The prophets, who criticized the dominant consciousness and pointed out all the heartbreaking ways things were not as should be, who energized the people with the promise of a future different than the pain of the present, these prophets did not exist in a vacuum.

 They came from communities, a tiny remnant of people who remembered the story, who were raised with it as part of their lives when everyone else forgot.  They listened to the songs as they fell asleep, they heard the tales over dinner and rehearsed the lessons in the fields or the streets.  They prayed to Yahweh, and shared life with the living God when everyone else had left God long before for lifeless idols of their own making.

Even when the whole people had forgotten, even when perhaps nearly all the copies of the book of the law had been lost or destroyed, even when the kings of Judah was behaving worse than the worst of their enemies, and the cruelty and suffering was unending, there were some who remembered. Some who kept the memory alive for the rest of them.

Brueggemann says, “The subcommunity that may generate prophecy will participate in the public life of the dominant community…from a certain perspective and with a certain intention.  Such a subcommunity is likely to be one in which:

-       there is a long and available memory that sinks the present generation deep into an identifiable past that is available in song and story;

-       there is an available, expressed sense of pain that is owned and recited as a real social fact, that is visibly acknowledged in a public way, and that is understood as unbearable in the long term;

-       there is an active practice of hope, a community that knows about promises yet to be kept, promises that stand in judgment on the present,

-       there is an effective mode of discourse that is cherished across generations, that is taken as distinctive, and that is richly coded in ways only insiders know.  
        (from The Prophetic Imagination)

Imagine now, that we are such a community.  That prophets are grown here, that together, we are prophet.  That one day all the world will know again the love of God, will live in love, and peace, and justice, forgiveness and generosity,

and for now, we keep that reality alive and rehearse by remembering the faithfulness of God in the past, and telling the stories that have shaped our journey as individuals, as communities, as the church, as God’s people, in scripture, in our lives, imagine we hold that memory.

And imagine that we grieve together that things are not as they should be, we share that grief in honesty together, we talk about what separates people from each other, together we look open-eyed at injustice and brokenness and suffering.  Imagine we can openly name death in all its forms and grieve it. And not because we’re somehow exempt from it, but because we participate; even in our own lives we’re part of what shouldn’t be.

And Imagine that we practice hope, we live out of promises yet to be kept, we find strength from God’s future to treat each other as God sees us, we find courage to live unafraid to reach out to others, to see and be seen, to listen and be heard, we recognize all people as children of God and treat them that way, because one day these glimpses we see will be realized in all fullness. 

And Imagine that we practice noticing what is easily overlooked, and we get good talking about it.  We are truly People of the resurrection, who see it and seek it everyday. 

Imagine we have an effective mode of discourse; we can talk about all of this, we have rich language and imagery that we share, and we value wrestling through difficult things, we appreciate sharing stories and perspectives and insights and questions.  

And we do it in song and art and prayer and laughter and beauty and broken bread and spilled wine and cooked meals and long conversations and quiet moments and all different learning styles and all different gifts.  Imagine we become fluent in our ability to communicate with each other over the deep and important things God is stirring up in our lovely and ordinary world.

Because the world has forgotten, it’s memory is short.  And we are here to remind the world who it really is.  Created by God, each one loved by her creator. All together made for life and love.  In astonishing diversity made for harmony and wholeness.  And imagine we live this out in defiance of the dominant consciousness that has forgotten, but we also live it out in sure anticipation. We wait.  Because we know it’s coming.

My second night in Kansas City was spent celebrating with my family.  In the room last night there was a lot of joy and hope, and a lot of brokenness and pain.  Hard-fought achievements accomplished, long-suffered challenges met, pride and happiness. Also relationships strained and persons in turmoil, marriages already dead tentatively and awkwardly seated alongside new ones born. Foster kids separated from their family who can’t love them without hurting them, but loved and held by a new family of people they should never have met in their lifetime.  Children entering the teen years, hesitant and beautiful, and wild, masked, caped and flashlight-armed young ones racing in and out from the night. 

It was a room full of people seeking to love in the ways they know how – favorite desserts, group photos, flowers, laughter over stories of the younger years, fear or hope over what might be ahead.  All of it was there.  Exhausting, sweet, and poignant. 

And I returned to my 8 year old nephew’s bedroom and kicked off my shoes and closed the door.  And I heard the music still softly playing.  Reminding, gently, insistently.  Jesus love me, this I know. The peace that passes understanding down in my heart.  Because he first loved me.

There is a truth that goes deeper and reaches back further, through struggle and pain, past amnesia and unknowing,

a love beyond all denying and turning away and forgetting, that plunges into death and roars joyfully back into life again, that stretches strong from the beginning of everything out past all eternity. And even in this moment, it holds you.

I am the Lord your God. 

Be open. 

Remember.

Grieve.

Hope.

And share it, however you are able, with each other.

Now, loved ones, let it pulse through you with each beat of your heart.

Put it on repeat and never stop listening.

Amen. 

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

We've been collecting little summaries about the various prophets as we've journey through the Old Testament. Most of them we take from Frederick Buechner's Peculiar Treasures, but he didn't have one for the prophetess Huldah, so we created our own.

HULDAH

7^TH C  BC

Josiah.  When he came to power people said it was a relief; he’d be a puppet, perhaps, but at least he wasn’t his grandfather.  Or his father. Maybe this one would be better.

She wondered what would become of them all.

When he came to power he was eight years old, but he was not naive.   The advisors that had murdered his father just three years into his reign had in turn been murdered by the people.  And now he sat on the throne, his toes just shy of the floor, his arms propped up high on both sides.  He could feel the weight of the world pressing on his narrow shoulders, the shadow of danger hovering over him. 

She held her breath and waited to see what would happen.

But he had heard the stories, whispered in the corridors, told to him by a kind nurse, a peddler in passing, a servant’s child.  The snippets of stories sang in his soul, resonating in the fibers of his own being - the stories of Yahweh, and the people of God, of Solomon and David, Moses and Miriam.

She prayed he would listen to the stories.

You didn’t have to be fully conscious to see that the temple of Solomon, towering in their midst, was crumbing in disrepair, not to mention filled with idols and temple prostitutes installed there by his child-sacrificing grandfather King Manassah.  You didn’t have to be a genius to guess it wasn’t what it once was.  Or was meant to be.  Before.  Back then.

She retained the memory.  She grieved their amnesia.  She held out hope for the people’s return to their God.  And she waited.

When he came to power he was only eight, but he knew what kind of king he wanted to be.

For a few years he watched. He listened. He gathered people who could tell him the old stories.  He learned from the mistakes of his father and grandfather.  And then he made his move.

He started by cleaning up the temple. He started by rebuilding what was breaking down.  He could think of no other place to begin. 

And when the priest found it, when the priest brought it to him, he knew.  Without being told, without ever having heard the words before, he knew what to do.  He tore his clothes.  The grief of God and the prophets became his own.

She heard them coming before she saw them. 

When the party from the palace made their way to her door, and she paused and smiled, before rising to greet them. The time had come.

They placed the scrolls on her table.  She lifted one and held the sacred words in her calloused hands.  She stroked the fine letters and her eyes filled with tears.  She looked at the messengers, the questioners waiting for her answer, and she knew that their lives and the world they knew were about to change.

She answered them.

“Tell the man who sent you that this is truly the word of God.  And God is indeed very angry. For generations the people have turned away, and they will reap what they’ve sown.  But also, they will return.  By the wise hand of this king, they will return to their God.”

                                                                        (Kara Root, from 2 Kings 22-24)

Empire, Imagination, and God's Colorful Characters

HOSEA

(I am deeply indebted to Walter Brueggemann's breathtaking The Prophetic Imagination for guidance as we begin our journey with the prophets...)

1 Corinthians 1:25-28

Hosea 6:1-6 & Hosea 11:1-9

I have a friend whose dear friend in an atheist.  They get along well, critically deconstructing things, and respecting each other in their beliefs despite their differences.  Except they’ve had a disagreement recently and suddenly it’s gotten tense. Because my friend feels like her atheist friend thinks she’s an idiot for having faith.  For believing in what she can’t see, for hoping when the evidence in front of her face tells her otherwise.  It’s foolish. It’s absurd. It looks utterly idiotic.

We are the ones who say God came and shared life with us, died and then came alive again.  We cling to this and say its true and it means something in a world where to talk this way sounds absurd.

Tonight begins the part of the Story where we begin talking about the prophets.  And they are crazy. They sound insane. They rant and rave and do strange things and they make no sense.

They are inconvenient, embarrassing interruptions to life ordinary, life rational.

And yet- when they criticize and they energize, they shake the façade that keeps us all quiet and content and accepting the unacceptable.  Because the prophetic tradition knows it could be different, and that difference can be lived out.  The prophetic tradition calls us out of the numb imagination of the empire to embrace the imagination of God.  And to do such a thing, to be such a person is, indeed, wildly dubious, and looks an awful lot like madness.

Why did the people of God need the prophets?

How did it happen that the people of God lost the imagination of God?

How did it happen that the people of God, defined by this God of freedom who creates life out of nothing and who – all throughout the story – uses the impossible people and impossible situations to draw near to humanity-

how did it happen that this people of God- delivered out of generations of slavery by the hand of God, the empire of the Pharaoh is reduced to humiliation and disrepair as a whole new community comes out of nothing – a community shaped after the freedom of God –

how did it happen that the people of God forgot all this? That they succumbed to the status quo? That they allowed themselves to fall away from God, back into slavery again?

Solomon.

Remember we paused the story when Solomon built the temple? We saw the promise of God to meet them there, as God promises to meet us in one another and in our worship. 

But for all the wisdom Solomon imparted, for all the good that Solomon did, he also did a mighty bad thing.  During Solomon’s reign Israel, the people of God, became an empire.  Solomon’s had harems, organized taxes, conscripted slave labor, and even wrote down timeless (but static) truths in wisdom literature, and through the empire the freedom of God and the people was co-opted. 

God became boxed in and the people, in Solomon’s reign, adopted what Walter Brueggemann calls, “The royal consciousness” – that is, the consciousness of the empire.

The royal consciousness is numb to imagination.  Its emphasis is to build and maintain stability. A royal consciousness has no ability to imagine a future outside of what is presented in the present.  In all things it reinforces authority of the king.  And it keeps people accepting what may not be good for them, because that serves to keep order and ensure the longevity of the empire.  

Bruggemann says Solomon’s reign did three things:

1-    Solomon’s reign “countered the economics of equality with the economics of affluence.” 

Instead of a people shaped by God’s provision in the wilderness, gathering what they could eat for the day, all-in-this-together as a people before God, things shift to plans of surplus and accumulation, looking out for oneself and one’s interest, building wealth at the expense of others.

2-    Solomon’s reign “countered the politics of justice with the politics of oppression.”  

In the experience with Moses, the rule was:

“If your brother or sister becomes poor and cannot maintain themselves with you, you shall maintain them, as a stranger and a sojourner they shall live with you.  Take no interest from them or increase, but fear your God; that your brother or sister may live beside you…For they are my servants, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves.” Lev:25:35-42

But Solomon built this empire with forced labor.

3-    Finally, Bruggemann points out, “Solomon countered the religion of God’s freedom with the religion of God’s accessibility.” 

In the time of Moses- God was available, but on God’s terms.  God cared for the people but remained uncompromisingly free- I will show mercy to whom I show mercy, you cannot see my face and live.  There had always been this tension between God’s freedom and God’s accessibility – God will be who God will be, and also God who will be with and for us, available to us, but not ruled by us.  If Moses erred on the side of God’s freedom, Solomon obliterated this tension in favor of total accessibility - and now there is no sense that God is free and can “act apart from or even against the regime.” God is on call. God is boxed in.

And so the Egyptian reality of empire that the people were delivered from became their reality again under Solomon.

Brueggemann asserts, “Solomon traded the vision of freedom for the reality of security.  He had banished the neighbor for the sake of reducing everyone to servants. He had replaced covenanting with consuming, and all promises had been reduced to tradable commodities.”

This is the royal consciousness that permeates the people who were once freed from it, and have now again succumbed.

And so arises the needs for prophets.

The people of God needed those crazy outliers who were not immunized to imagination – those who could see the big picture and also outside of it, who could remember who God is and remind the people.

The Prophets call people back to the God who is free to act. God who is not defined by the empire or captive to it, not static but active, free to hear the cries of even slaves, free to create a new community of justice and compassion out of nothing, free to bring life out of death. 

The prophetic always seeks to nurture and evoke an alternative consciousness to the dominant culture.

A consciousness that CRITICIZES the present order of things, speaks for justice rather than stability.  It also ENERGIZES persons and communities by the promise of another time and situation toward which we can move- “to live in fervent anticipation of the newness that God has promised and will surely give.”

The Prophetic is necessarily absurd – it is outside definition of reason and order.  It stirs imagination through art and music, poetry and pathos - it alerts us to what is wrong around us by helping us imagine an alternative.  It looks at reality and does not shy away from sorrow and pain – both that of God’s and that of human beings, and so it involves grieving.

Brueggemann explains, “The real criticism begins in the capacity to grieve because that is the most visceral announcement that things are not right.  Only in the empire are we pressed and urged and invited to pretend that things are all right – either in the dean’s office or in our marriage or in the hospital room.  As long as the empire can keep the pretense alive that things are all right, there will be no real grieving and no serious criticism.”

We have a numbed communal imagination. We have a royal consciousness.

We may not be slaves, we may not be suffering under militant leadership, fearing for our lives, fighting against oppression or wondering where our next meal will come from.  But the empire is alive and well in our lives. 

We are satiated by consumerism, made to be comfortable, to not notice the disparity, to not rage against the machine, to ignore the voices of the marginalized, to accept the unacceptable as inevitable.

And we have lost the capacity- or even the desire- to imagine that it could be different.  Even asking the question of whether it is possible for things to be different reveals how deeply we have swallowed the lies of the empire.

And the royal consciousness has invaded the church as well.  Church isn’t where we encounter the living God, it’s where we send our children to learn to be better behaved, better citizens.  It’s where we silence questions instead of entertaining them, or hide grief instead of embracing it.  It’s where we feel we have to have everything together and hide the truth, instead of finding solidarity and hope in our shared brokenness and the grace God’s salvation.  It feeds our compulsive mania of busyness and work to earn our worth, instead of immersing us in Sabbath rest as a reminder that God love us completely outside of our work.  It’s where God is captured, summoned, on call instead of free, angry, joyful, passionate, doing things we don’t expect, bringing newness. 

Jay Emerson Johnson, in writing about this week’s story of nuns being scolded by the Vatican for being too radical, says, “Institutional Christianity’s besetting sin is not boldness but safety; not risk for the sake of life but the status quo for the sake of survival; not reckless creativity but staid conformity, and mostly for the sake of power and privilege.

So here’s a modest proposal for this Easter season. If even the most wonderful news of all time – the resurrection of Jesus – can slip through our fingers in the blink of an eye, then we might want to handle our doctrinal positions a bit more lightly. 

Here’s the more pointed version: If the Church can’t control the risen Christ, then maybe it shouldn’t try to control radical nuns who are actually living the Resurrection in their work of social justice and human flourishing.”

To embrace the imagination of God means to open ourselves to a reality greater than what we can see, a future not set in stone or laid out by the powers of the day, a hope that sustains us deeply, a promise from the God who is free to act and calls us into God’s freedom and action.  And we are to be the people who do that with one another and on behalf of the world.

In these next weeks we will talk about what it means to be a prophetic community, to both criticize and energize, to embrace and speak of true experiences of death and longing, and to anticipate – and participate in, newness, resurrection, and life.

And we will meet a few of the Old Testament prophets and hear a bit of their story. 

Tonight, the words we heard in Scripture were from the prophet is Hosea, calling the people back to God, pouring out God’s heart of love for the people, God’s anger and hurt, and God’s resolve to forgive.

Here’s what led to his role...

When Solomon dies, his son takes over, with vows to rule more harshly than his father, and some of the people revolt.  The 12 tribes of Israel split apart, ten of them rebel and form the Northern Kingdom, called Israel, (among which the largest tribe was Ephraim) – and two remain the Southern Kingdom, called Judah, - smaller, and with less money, it nevertheless has the Davidic line.  The Northern Kingdom is fraught with conflict, with coup after coup, and the people turn away from God to worship other gods, and murder, theft, and general dehumanization and disarray occurs.  It is, what has been called, “a dark and melancholic time” in Israel’s history. 

And when Hosea was prophet in the Northern Kingdom, in his own lifetime he saw the Northern Kingdom wiped out and taken over by Assyria. 

His message from God to a people who had all but forgotten about God and their own identity, was:  "I have been the Lord your God ever since the land of Egypt; you know no God but me, and besides me there is no savior." (Hosea 13:4)

Without further ado, (through the eyes of Frederick Buechner), meet Hosea.

HOSEA

780-725 BC

 Gomer. She was always good company – a little heavy with the lipstick maybe, a little less than choosy about men and booze, a little loud, but great on a party and always good for a laugh.  Then the prophet Hosea came along wearing a sandwich board that read “The End is at Hand” on one side and “Watch Out” on the other.

The first time he asked her to marry him, she thought he was kidding.  The second time she knew he was serious but thought he was crazy.  The third time she said yes.  He wasn’t exactly a player, but he had a kind face, and he was generous, and he wasn’t all that crazier than anybody else. Besides, any fool could see he loved her.

Give or take a little, she even loved him back for a while, and they had three children whom Hosea named with odd names like Not-pitied-for-God-will-no-longer-pity-Israel-now-that-it’s-gone-to-the-dogs so that every time the roll was called at school, Hoseal would be scoring a prophetic bullseye in abstentia. But everybody could see that marriage wasn’t going to last, and it didn’t.

While Hosea was off hitting the sawdust trail, Gomer took to hitting as many night spots as she could squeeze into a night, and any resemblance between her next batch of children and Hosea was purely coincidental. It almost killed him, of course. Every time he raised a hand to her, he burst into tears.  Every time she raised one to him, he was the one who ended up apologizing.

He tried locking our out of the house a few times when she wasn’t in by five in the morning, but he always opened the door when she finally showed up and helped her get to bed is she couldn’t see straight enough to get there herself.  Then one day she didn’t show up at all.

He swore that this time he was through with her for keeps, but of course he wasn’t.  When he finally found her, she was lying passed out in a highly specialized establishment located above an adult bookstore, and he had to pay the management plenty to let her out of her contract.  She’d lost her front teeth and picked up some scars you had to see to believe, but Hosea had her back again and that seemed to be all that mattered.

He changed his sandwich board to read “God is love” on one side and “There is no end to it” on the other, and when he stood on the street corner belting out

How can I give you up, O Ephraim!

How can I hand you over, O Israel?

For I am God, and no human.

The Holy One in your midst.

                        (Hosea 11:8-9)

nobody can say how many converts he made, but one thing that’s for sure is that, including Gomer’s, there was seldom a dry eye in the house.

                                                                    (Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures, from Hosea 1-3, 11)

May we be shaken from our stupor, and gripped by the imagination of God that makes us both deeply honest, and shockingly hopeful for this world that God is making anew.

Amen.


*        *           *          *            *         *             *          *         *




A prayer with the prophets

The empire says we matter if we buy, take, earn, and prove.
But you say we matter. So we can share, give, receive, and be real.
Help us listen to you, O God. Help us to live in you.

The empire calls us to compete, quarrel, tear down, and oppose.
But you call us. So we can release, forgive, mend, and welcome.
Help us follow you, O God. Help us to live in you.

The empire claims that wealth, power and strength make some of us gods.
But you claim us. So you let emptiness, weakness, and vulnerability make God one of us.
Help us to recognize you, O God. Help us to live in you.

The empire loves to feed fears.
But you love us. So what have we to fear?
Help us to trust in you, O God. Help us to live in you.
Amen.

(Kara Root, 2012)

The Unthinkable Alternative (aka., A Resurrected God)

fancy meeting you here!

 John 20:1-18

(Isaiah 25:6-9, John 1:1-5, 14, 18)

A week ago a few of us from the congregation went to see a Passion play.  It was the story of the end of Jesus’ life and his death and resurrection told again with special emphasis on the relationship between Judas and Jesus.  And it went through all the well known and familiar scenes – the last supper, Jesus praying in the garden and the disciples falling asleep, the trial scene and finally, it came to the cross. 

And for several grueling minutes three characters writhed on beams of wood and fake died.  The thief asked Jesus for mercy, Jesus got thirsty, he cried out, he forgave them, yada, yada, the whole nine yards until he breathed his last.  They took him off the cross and carried him away. 

Then the scene switched to his disciples gathered in fear and hiding, grieving that he was gone, and believing it was all over.  And suddenly Mary comes running to them and makes her pronouncement.  His body is not there.

And it struck me, where was the Resurrection?

Where ever is the Resurrection?

Have you ever found the Resurrection depicted in any form of art?  Empty tomb – sure.  Angels sitting beside the discarded (and neatly folded) grave clothes? Absolutely. 

A perfectly clean and coifed Jesus in the garden near the gaping hole? Of course! There are even paintings with the Risen Lord standing with one hand still inside the tomb wall and one foot gracefully stepping out into the sunlight, if you really search for them.

 But the moment of resurrection itself… have you ever seen it in any painting, movie, play, storybook, anywhere?

All the gospels spell out the details of Jesus’ death in vivid, sometimes gruesome, detail.  We even push them all together and make a service- the seven last words, and walk step by step through his last days hours, minutes, as life leaves his body.  There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that Jesus has died, and is not only merely dead, but really most sincerely dead.

But there is nothing in the story that tells us anything about the resurrection. We can’t see it, we’ve never heard about it, there are no details at all to help us picture how it happens, what it even is.  The particulars are simply not there.

Frederick Buechner says, “It has always struck me as remarkable that when the writers of the four Gospels come to the most important part of the story they have to tell, they tell it in whispers. The part I mean, of course, is the part about the resurrection.”

They peer in and the tomb is empty. His body is gone, and they don’t know what to make of it.  There is no hope in this discovery, it doesn’t mean anything, really, it’s simply confusion. Complication.  Aggravation of the death that has already occurred.  It’s sadness and fear and frustration.

Death is still death, and as far as they know, still permanent.  So the question becomes, what has occurred to remove the body, to upset the ending?  Even when they see the grave clothes lying there tidily arranged, they still return to sad and fearful hiding with the others, because, let’s face it, what we’re about to say has happened is simply impossible.

So we have no framework for grasping this, and no help in picturing it.  How do we see resurrection?  What does it look like when life returns to dead flesh? What is the sound of breath filling empty lungs? What happens when eyes sealed closed forever spring open, and rigid, cold limbs stretch and move, warm and limber? When color and voice and presence infuse body already beginning decay?

We barely dare imagine it.  To be honest, it feels almost sacrilegious to let our minds wander to what might happen if the final period is removed from the sentence.  In this world, with our death-defying surgeries and serums,

and our immortality-hungry consumption of things and power

and the utter tragedy of heart-wrenching loss when a loved one passes away

and defeated sense of horror when a rain-drenched village washes away

and the shock of realization and reminder - when we see that favorite movie star looking terribly old and hear about that brilliant leader battling cancer - that death comes for us all, it would be near blasphemy to take the name of death in vain; too insane, disrespectful, even, to suggest that it might not be the last word.

Death, as awful as it is, we can accept.

Resurrection? Utterly unthinkable.  Defies even the wildest imagination, we wouldn’t even know how to wish for it.

What could resurrection possibly look like?  Sound like, smell like? 

Mary could speak to this.  She has a resurrection story. Because she meets the Risen Lord.  She comes face to face with Christ Jesus whom the tomb could not hold hostage, whom death could not defeat, the force that brought life into being way back in the very very beginning and who will take us to the feast in the very very end, and who in the middle shares life with us just as one of us.  And when she does, by the way, she thinks he is the gardener.  Because she doesn’t have room for resurrection either. 

No room in the inn for a God born among us.  No space in our reality for a Risen Lord. 

It simply isn’t done.

But when he speaks her name, she recognizes the living Christ.

And then she knows resurrection. Because it happens to her, within her.  And when she finds the others she doesn’t go about spouting belief in resurrection.  She merely says, breathlessly and truly, “I have seen my Lord.”

Death is universal. We recognize it immediately because it looks the same for all of us.  When it’s over, it’s over.  When a body breathes its last.  When a door closes for good.  When the choice can’t be unmade and the marriage can’t be salvaged and the words can’t be unsaid.  When a home is burned to the ground and the machines are turned off and the pastor sprinkles the dirt over the casket, ashes to ashes. Done. Gone. Finished.   

Death feels heavy, cold and final,

it tastes like salty tears,

and smells like decay,

and sounds like wailing, or the emptiness of a silent house.

Death is unmistakable. Death is universal.

But resurrection? That’s personal.  

And it comes a million different ways and looks like a million different things because it happens for all of us differently.  The way we each need it.

Resurrection is your story now, and mine.  It was Mary’s when her once-dead savior spoke her name.  And then Thomas’ – when Jesus met him in his doubt and invited him to touched his scarred hands and put his own hand in his side.  And it was the disciples’ in their longing on the road to Emmaus, whose hearts burned within them when they heard the words the Risen Jesus was saying to them.  

We can’t tell you or show you or even imagine for you what resurrection looks like.  All we can do is ask, you, How does the Resurrected One meet you? 

Which is also to say, first, What places within you have died? Where have you lost all hope? Where has death prevailed, leaving no room for the unthinkable? That life would invade? That hope would emerge? 

Because those are the places this God goes to. 

This is the one who meets us there and brings life out of death.

In some ways, our faith would be far easier if it ended at the cross.   We’ve got that part of the story down pat, anyway.  Then Jesus could just be a great teacher, a martyr for love, an example of justice, a witness of peace.  We could package the religion and hand it out freely (or for a price) and consume it with confidence, and rest easy at night because we would know what we were getting – at least for the most part.

Death we can explain. We can’t control when it comes or how, but we can measure our response – it can be met with dignity and decorum, because if nothing else, it’s comfortingly final. No unexpected twists once we’ve crossed that hurdle.  We can write the eulogy and tell the story and the ending is complete.

But a resurrected God?  Heavens! Who knows what could happen! How does God appear now?  Where?  What rules will God break next in God’s persistent pursuit of love?  This thing could go on forever!

A Risen Lord is  dangerous.  Unpredictable.  

A Resurrected God means Jesus Christ could meet us anywhere.  In anyone.  At any time.  A simple conversation, and Jesus could be standing before our eyes. 

Hold someone in their grief and Jesus is felt in that embrace. 

Speak for someone with no voice and you’re hearing the Christ. 

When that friend brings a meal in your hunger and that sister sheds tears in your brokenness and that unexpected person ends up hand-in-hand alongside you in your time of upheaval, the incarnate one who shares our life and suffers our death and who is- for us all- the Resurrection and the Life is right there. 

It’s messy.  It’s unpredictable. It doesn’t abide by the rules, this God who dies and is resurrected thing.  It’s certainly not a neat and orderly religion that we can wield as we’d like and put to bed when we’re finished with it.   Instead, it breeds the uneasiness of indicating that it seems not to be finished with us.

It’s encountering a living God.  It’s life, infusing our days in our moments, our world, making people whole, breaking down barriers, bringing forgiveness, healing, hope, even when it’s inconvenient.  And maybe we’re not as comfortable with a God who upsets expectations and shows up wherever God wants.

This is our God. This one who comes bleary-eyed out of death and meets his beloved friend in the garden and calls her by name. This is our God – who creates and draws near and then joins and shares and suffers and loves and weeps and eats and sleeps and walks with us in it, and is so damn relentlessly for us that death itself cannot hold God back from us.

Resurrection can’t be depicted or directed, it can’t be made mundane or universal, watered down and divvied out, printed on greeting cards or bumper stickers or even in works of art in galleries, because it’s not an idea we get to grasp.  It happens to you.

It’s the kind of thing you whisper. Or keep to yourself. Or can’t keep to yourself. It has power. Because it’s personal.  It’s spoken of less in the hypothetical or the doctrinal, like, “resurrection is…” and more in the first person, like, “I have seen the Lord.” 

When the Resurrected One calls your name,

when your heart burns within you,

when you have that run-in with life itself,

when the light of the world shines in your darkness,

you have seen the Lord.

 And perhaps it feels like your heart being healed,

or looks like love on the face of another

or tastes like freshness and forgiveness, undeserved grace and unearned adoration,

or sounds like being known.

And probably it means we have to sacrifice comfortable resignation for the risky and painful alternative: hope.

And it just might be that we don’t get to give up on love, because in fact it outlasts hate. 

And it seems to suggest that even the smallest signs of life should be noticed and nurtured, because astonishingly, the enduring force is not, after all, death, but instead it is Life, abundant and full. 

The tomb is empty, Christ is Risen.

God could be anywhere!

Anything could happen.

Amen.

Palms and Prayers and not the way we'd do it

Luke 19:28-40 
& (Luke 11:1-13)

I fessed up to a couple of people this week that I feel really really silly on Palm Sunday. I feel silly leading the parade, embarrassed waving my palm – not quite unabashed enough to wave it with flourish and devil-may-care attitude, but not wanting to just timidly tip it back and forth.  I feel some pressure to lead this thing, and it makes me begin to wonder what we are even celebrating at all.  Ironically, the people I confessed this to said they didn’t really feel silly doing it; it’s just what we do on Palm Sunday.

This is the only biblical story that we feel compelled – across virtually all denominations and in all places, I might add – to reenact as an entire congregation.  This day, across the nation in churches big and small, countless whole congregations are doing some version of this procession and singing some form of Hosanna to kick off their worship.  It’s only natural, apparently.  We are in this story.  We are the crowd, we see ourselves in them, somehow.  So much so, that many of us do not find it embarrassing to wave those palms – it’s just what we do.

But why? We don’t reenact other crowd scenes.  We don’t cross a fake red sea or pretend to pass baskets of loaves and fishes when we tell the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand. We don’t emulate the same mob we’re copying today, when their yelling becomes “Crucify Him!” in a couple of days.  It’s not like reenacting crowd scenes is something we do in church on a regular basis.

There is something about this moment – the celebration as Jesus passes – each person reacting and interacting with the possibility Jesus represents, before it all goes dark and gloomy, that we can step into.  And it’s more than just the simplistic celebration of it.

In this scene they are saying something true, about themselves and about the world and most importantly about Jesus – who he is and what he’s about.  But they don’t really know they are.  In their minds they are saying one thing-  here comes the guy that’s going to overthrow Rome! Hooray for the promised one who is coming in power to deliver us from our oppressors!  

The words they use are the same the angels sing to peasant shepherds on a hillside announcing that God is breaking in, that God has come to share this life with you and me, that something irreversible is about to take place- “Glory to God in the highest heaven and peace on earth!”

And then the crowd projects onto Jesus everything they want Jesus to be – king, deliverer, conqueror, redeemer, worthy of all glory, laud and honor, even if he is only riding on a donkey and not being drawn by a team of horses in an ornate carriage,

even if he is wearing peasant garb instead of dressed in robes of royalty, even if his procession is made up of children and day workers and the sick and broken seeking healing, instead of dignitaries flanked by guards in polished silver, even if the authorities are hiding away plotting his death instead of rolling out the red carpet and setting out the feast to welcome him to town.  They see Jesus as they want him to be, and ignore all the inconsistencies before their eyes.

But then, it’s kind of always been this way with him, hasn’t it? Messiahs are supposed to be heroic, brave and strong and striking and larger than life and not really in any way weak or ordinary or foolish.  But he was born in a smelly barn in a thrown-together moment of making-do, to a shamed girl and her frightened husband, and he was celebrated and welcomed by nobody shepherds and suspect foreigners.  And now, this moment of triumph, this debut to all the world, is mirroring the first announcement and debut in its last-minute, rinky-dink wrongness. 

But all along God is seeking to give up power and take on humanity. Real, raw, basic, dirty, complicated and dying humanity.  And so this moment declares that God is breaking in, God has come to share this life with you and me, and something irreversible is about to take place. But just maybe not like you think.

If they were designing a savior, he would ride into town and materialize an army – human or angelic, and bring vengeance and justice and take down their oppressors – preferably humiliating them in the process.

Even the religious leaders who told him to silence his disciples – if they were doing this thing – which they would never be caught dead doing – they would have a bit more decorum, and they’d step way back from the line of blasphemy and idiocy and handle themselves more properly, devoutly.  So Jesus, get your people in line.

And I must say, If I were God – a kind of risky game to play but go with me here – if I were God, I would NOT have done it this way either. There would NOT have been a ridiculous parade at the beginning and a cross at the end of this week. I would not have done it in such an ugly, tragic, cruel and base way.

It would be cleaner and softer. I’d make the world a guest room with crisp sheets and a thick comforter and flowers in a vase and warm, homemade scones waiting on a tray.  And the world would just get it, just apologize and forgive and choose love, and come and have a nice warm bath and put on a big fluffy robe and tuck in for the night and I’d make a huge pancake brunch in the morning.  That’s how I’d bring salvation.

If we were saving the world, let’s face it, we’d all do it differently.  We’d accost the world Robin Hood style, relieving the rich of their horded wealth and delivering it triumphantly to the poor so they could be fed and clothed and nobody would be hungry or in need. 

Or we’d convert the world to our own faith, or our own version of our own faith, so any arguing would cease in the pervasive daze of agreement and happy conformity.  Done, salvation.

If we were saving the world we would immediately cure cancer and wipe disease from the face of the earth through some miraculous ingenuity and generosity, and everyone would have access to any medicine they needed at any time, and it would always work. Saved. You’re welcome.

Or we’d summon the world to our office and close the door and have a respectful, firm and informative conversation that would change the world’s mind and open the world’s eyes, and the world would leave enlightened and empowered and it would waste not, want not, reduce, reuse, recycle and start taking family vacations and stop taking mood-altering substances.

Or we’d put the world into a deep sleep and give the world a life-changing dream, everyone simultaneously, and the world would wake up and pile all their weapons on a big bonfire and sing cumbaya and roast marshmallows over its embers and give each other carpool rides home afterwards.  Salvation complete.

But not this way. This is embarrassing. And horrifying.

I would bet not a one of us in this room would choose to ride a donkey straight through people’s wildly wrong expectations and competing agendas, into controversy and conflict, politics and power - not once calling any of them wrong or defending your reputation, intentions or very life, by the way - and submit to whatever comes of it.

How does God do salvation? Way back at the beginning, when God spoke existence into being, and in the relentless attempt to be close to humanity, to crawl inside the experience and share it with us, to ensure that we are not alone, to break down whatever keeps us from being who God created to be, this is the plan God chose to go to- to live with us and die for us.  Who would’ve believed it? Did the angels in heaven join in the celebration the street that day? How silent was the shock of the cosmos when it led to the cross?

Like it or not, the parade of Palms finds its response in the cross.  And as the people gathered there to see him and shouted out their praise  - in all their hope and anticipation, their fear and desperation, their need and all the expectations and assumptions that they waved before them when he rode by on his donkey, God heard them, as God has always hears them, and God answered.  The answer is just not one we would choose.  It is not our answer.  It is God’s answer to us.

And this is not unlike prayer, actually, which has been our focus throughout all of Lent.  And it occurs to me now, that maybe when we pray, we lift up all our own ideas about what we think will save us and we wave them around in God’s face, and we even tell God, from time to time, what would work best, in our humble opinion.  And God takes all of that into Godself, and does it God’s way instead.

I will enter right into your prayers, I will take them all deep into myself, I will let them crush me.  And God takes those prayers, whatever they may be, however pure or selfish their intention, however well spoken or wordless, and bears within Godself all life and death itself, for us.

 And I, for one, feel a brief moment of wanting to stop God – like, wait, God, not that, ok? Isn’t there another way?  I can think of all sorts of better ways, why this?

And God, who came to share EVERYTHING with us, shares even this sentiment, a few days after this scene, when Jesus, sweating blood he’s so freaked out and shaken up about what’s coming, prays his own prayer begging that there be another way.  Because instead of all the strong and sexy and sterile ways we’d bring salvation, all pain-free and perfect and completely outside our experience as human beings, God chose to do it this way: vulnerable, weak, messy, and foolish, letting what breaks us break God too.

So today our palms are our prayers. We pray because God has invited us to  - to wave before Jesus our hearts on our sleeves.  And our own schemes and hopes for salvation, while perhaps misguided, reflect our need and our hunger and our longing - for healing and wholeness, for reconciliation and forgiveness, for things to be made right. And God hears our prayers.

And also, like the crowd gathered there that day, when we pray, we say something true, sometimes without realizing it, even when it doesn’t feel like it, even when we don’t believe it, even when we KNOW we will turn our back on it at one point or another.  When we bring our prayers to God we say something true even despite our own betrayal and shame, our own doubt and fear, our own apathy and selfishness.  We stand here with our palms and our prayers and we actually say something true: that God is breaking in, that God has come to share this life with you and me, that something irreversible is about to take place- 

So, Glory to God in the highest heaven, peace on earth and blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord.

Amen.

(This message was adapted and updated, and is the newer version is posted at "Not Our Way" March 29, 2015)

Why Ashes?

When I told my kids we would be going to church to have the sign of the cross put on our heads, they told me they already had the sign of the cross on their heads. They meant the sign of their baptism; they meant that they belong to God.

Then we had to talk about how this sign we will be making tonight is one they can see, at least for a short time. How we are making this mark to remember that even though we belong to God, we still die and death still has a hold on us. 

That creeped them out a little, why do we need to remember that we die? They asked.

Ash Wednesday begins our Lenten journey to Easter with the sign of the ashes made on us. This ancient sign speaks of the frailty and uncertainty of human life, and marks our penitence.  

Ashes is a sign of grief and a recollection of death that awaits us all.

We will mark the cross on our foreheads in ashes, visible, smudgy, dark and dusty.  Death.  Mortality.  Frailty. But we will trace the mark of our humanity over top of the unseen but permanent mark of our baptism.

The words spoken at baptism begin:

“In baptism God claims us,

And seals us to show that we belong to God.

God frees us from sin and death,

Uniting us with Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection.

Child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.”

One of the most powerful experiences of Ash Wednesday I have ever had was when my son was 5 months old.  Just in front of me as we came forward for our ashes, was a woman who was a beloved pillar of the church, Alice Satterfield; she was 84 years old.

She made her way slowly forward, her body bent over her cane and feet shuffling, and I watched the pastor trace the cross on her forehead in ashes and say to her, “From dust you came and to dust you shall return.” 

Tears sprang to my eyes when I heard those words spoken over Mrs. Satterfield, not knowing how much longer she would be with us, and realizing how painful it would be when she was gone. 

Then I stepped forward to receive the ashes myself.  The pastor leaned towards me, and with a black-smudged thumb reached out and traced the cross on the forehead of my gurgling baby boy on my hip, and said, “from dust you came and to dust you shall return.”  I gasped and felt as though I had been hit in the stomach. 

It was true, I realized.

What was true for Mrs. Satterfield was true for Owen as well. It is true for everyone.  Even fresh arrivals in this world will go out of it eventually. Nobody escapes death.  Everyone one of us is in need of life.

Why do we need to remember that we die? 

Because it’s true. 

And because remembering that reminds us that we are not God.  That we need salvation. 

And so by receiving this sign of the cross tonight we hold these truths together – that we have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever, no matter what, we belong to Christ, in whom there is life everlasting. 

But even though the power of death has been broken in Christ, and we will celebrate the resurrection at Easter, we still die.  And we still participate in sin and death in this life.

We are badly in need of the Resurrection. 

Beloved of God, says the water and anointing first, chosen and claimed. Destined for eternity with the creator, empowered by the Spirit for a life of faithfulness and love. 
And dying. Weak, says the ashes on top. Vulnerable, human, broken. 

Tonight you are invited to come forward and welcome the honesty the ashes offer.  To bring your brokenness, your places of sorrow and loss, your places of weakness and failure, the places you forget you belong to life and live instead like you belong to death. 

Let the ashes be your prayer.

Let the ashes invite you to meet God in those places of sin and death, as we journey towards the cross and the hope of the resurrection.

Prayer:

Almighty God,

You have created us out of the dust of the earth.

May these ashes be for us

a sign of our mortality and penitence,

and a reminder that only by your gracious gift

are we given everlasting life;

through Jesus Christ our Savior.

Amen

Remember that you are dust,

And to dust you shall return.