To watch together for God

Psalm 119:103-105

Luke 24:36-53

Yesterday at a party, and I was standing in the kitchen, asking my sister if someone I had just seen outside was a new friend she’d been telling me about, and while the question was half way out of my mouth, the person walked in, and I felt busted, and ended up awkwardly cutting off my sentence and introducing myself instead.  I had acted like she wasn’t there and suddenly she was, and everything changed. 

That’s kind of what happened in this scene. While they were talking about Jesus, he showed up among them.

You guys, they’d been saying, he’s really alive! We were walking to Emmaus and this stranger started talking to us, and he turned out to be Jesus! Were not our hearts burning within us while spoke?

And when we invited him back for dinner and he broke the bread, suddenly our eyes were opened and we recognized him!

Without a cell phone to call back and say, “You’ll never believe what just happened!,” instead they hit the road that same night and had raced back to where they’d come from, and they were just now sharing these stories in the wee hours with the rest of them, who, it turned out, had stories of their own, and suddenly, Jesus himself stood among them.

And they were startled and terrified and thought they were seeing a ghost.

It doesn’t matter how much we may believe with our head that God is real, that Jesus is here, that God can intervene, or speak to us, or do something that turns our life around, we have no rubric for this sort of thing. So often, when it happens, we are astonished, startled, terrified even.

In fact, all the most profound realities of life are this way- knowing you are about to have a child is night and day different from someone placing a tiny screaming stranger in your arms.

We all know in our heads we will one day die, but dying itself? No matter how much we try to prepare, we will be utterly unqualified, and yet we will do it anyway.

All the things that call us to our true selves as children of God, that strip away illusion, the things like love, transformation, forgiveness – we are not prepared for them, no matter how much we think we may be, they surprise us. Like waking from a dream, when they come they make life feel altogether new and different.

And now, here is Jesus. The one they saw die. The one they buried and began to grieve. He is back. But he’s also different. Like, how you might be different if death can’t kill you.  Different in a way that isn’t bound by time and space – he keeps appearing and disappearing where he will. He is unrecognizable at first, and yet, it’s him.

So they are aghast, and can’t seem to move past it, even seeing his hands and side, and touching him, and they still can't absorb it.  

Here, he finally says, when the staring gets to be too much, Do you have anything to eat? And they get him some fish and he eats it in front of them. And they watch, until it starts to feel a little normal, and then they begin settle into the new new, at least enough to sit and listen to him talk to them like he used to before he died.

And when he does, he opens up the scriptures to them.

He starts way back and tells how it all fits together, how God’s unfolding story of love and hope begins way at the beginning, and weaves through their history, the kings and the prophets and the judges, how all of it was part of the same trajectory – God made it all for love and call us to love, and how God came into this world, to set us free from everything that keeps us hostage, and how God with us walked among them, shared this life with them, and now, right now, near the platter of fish bones, as the lamp is burning low, and the sun is just peeking up the horizon, is sitting with them. 

And he talks about repentance – remember that word? How it means changing your mind, letting go your way of seeing things and picking up God’s way? – that this invitation is to be extended to all the world, beginning right here, among these people who have done that just moments ago and even still now are in the midst of it.

And forgiveness of sins – freedom from all that keeps us captive to the injuries we commit against ourselves and others, all that separates us from God and each other, release to live for God and for others - this is the message that they will soon be carrying to everyone, everywhere, starting right here where they are, in this very place.

And then, before he leads them to a mountaintop and disappears, Jesus gives them a new identity, a calling. You, he says, you are witnesses. Your role is that of a witness.

Witnesses testify to what they have seen or experienced. 

Witnesses don’t become witnesses because they believe or can recite back something specific.  

A witness isn’t skilled worker with training, or a stellar student with perfect test scores; a witness doesn’t prove their abilities or worth in order they become one.

Witnesses are not directors. 

They aren’t tour guides or teachers; they aren’t trying to decide where things will go or how they should turn out, or make anyone else decide anything either.  

They don’t interpret things or turn them into lessons. 

They simply experience something, and then tell about it. 

That’s what witnesses do.

These people, in their joy, disbelieving and still wondering, were witnesses.

And what these witnesses had to share, so far, was that Jesus came among them. Ate some fish. Told them about the scriptures. Disappeared from their sight. The same Jesus they had seen teach and heal and suffer and die. That’s what they have to tell.

That’s what they tell each other; every time they get together, they witness to what they’ve experienced, what they felt when they heard him call them by name, what they thought when they realized it was him standing among them, what happened inside them when their eyes were opened and they recognized him, or how their hearts were burning within them, or what they heard when he unpacked the scriptures and told how it all fit together.

They witness.

And the act of witnessing to each other opens up the space between them where Jesus can encounter them all over again. It’s the place the Holy Spirit likes to hang out. Between us.

There is no such thing yet as church. There are no Christians.

There isn’t a bible – just the beginning of one –the Hebrew Scriptures we call the Old Testament. They studied and learned and knew the same scriptures we hold here before us. Except the parts that weren’t written yet because they were happening to them right then, so that we can read about it now, so that we can witness the witnesses witnessing the witnesses.

Because, you know where this is going, right?

We are witnesses too.

We are witnesses to the God who is witnessed through this book. I

f you want to see who God is, look at Jesus, and if you want to see who Jesus is, look in this book. And here he is, sitting with his friends, showing them how this whole story fits together.

The Holy Spirit meets us we read together what they read; this is our family scrapbook of meaning, filled with letters, laws, poetry and prose, music and metaphors, heartbroken lament and frustrated complaints, euphoric praise and joyful celebration, retellings of the lives of the leaders and the losers in both gripping and boring ways, describing the ongoing struggles of a people to be faithful, and the ongoing faithfulness of a God that never wavers – it all witnesses to this one big thing God is doing, has always been doing, and will never stop doing: This most real and true thing about love and repentance, forgiveness and new life, belonging, healing and hope.

You and I are part of that story. 

As witnesses, we are called to pay attention. 

To notice and share about where we see Jesus.  

And not unlike these disciples, we might not recognize him at first, sometimes not until we hear him call us by name.   

And sometimes we will know him in the breaking of the bread- as we share meals with each other side by side in our humanity, or we will know he was there, talking to us, when our hearts burn within us and we say to each other, wait, back there when that was happening, did you feel it too?   

And like all those who saw the risen Christ in the flesh, just when we seem to grasp hold of him he vanishes; he’s elusive, Jesus can’t be captured and owned. 

He comes and goes as he pleases.

But instead of giving up, we keep witnessing, and practicing being witnesses. 

So we have to get together with each other and tell our stories.  

And in a few weeks when we hear how church starts, we'll notice that it starts just like that, because that’s actually exactly what church is – people breaking bread together and telling stories of how they see Jesus, and looking at scripture together at the words of the witnesses who’ve gone before, and trusting that through these words God will speak to us right now.

This is not about believing something with your head and getting others to think the same way. 

This is about trusting something with your life and telling what that feels like.

And trust is that kind of thing that you only learn by doing. 

You put one foot tentatively out, maybe with wonder and disbelief, even, and then you start to lean some weight on it until you can step out with the other foot and stand, and then the next, and soon you look back and see how much trusting you’ve done and how far you’ve come. 

And you witness about that too, Hey look! I trust! Look how much trusting I’ve done!  And people can celebrate with you and share about their own trusting that might help you to trust even more, until you’re a bunch of witnesses whose lives are part of this one big thing God is doing, every day part of it, people who are learning to watch for, each moment, where is God going to show up next.  And when we have trouble trusting, we share that too, God is there too, and others trust for us, and that’s also what it means to be witnesses. 

We are going to give the kids new bibles in a few minutes. 

And we will tell them we trust God to speak to us through these words. 

That is, we act like God will, and we lean in and expect it to happen, and the trust grows from there. The Holy Spirit, we will tell them, uses these words to teach us, challenge us, encourage us.  And because this bible shows us who Jesus is, it helps us see Jesus in our own lives and in the world around us. 

These bibles show us God is love, forgiveness is real, life is hard, people are always messing up and hurting each other, and God keeps on loving us. 

They witness to us, so that we can witness too.

And the wonderful thing about the bible is that because God is not a ghost relic of a past devout era, or an imaginary notion of comfort or authority, not an idea to believe in, or a concept to learn about, but because God is real, beyond the cosmos and here in our own lives, right now, that means that you might open your bible and God will use it to tell you what you need to hear right now. God will speak right to you through words that have spoken to people for centuries. 

And if right now you are sad or scared, and at another time in your life you feel confused and lost, or hopeful and peaceful, God may use the very same verses and tell you something new through it, speak right into your situation, in a different way than the last time you read it. 

And the person sitting next to you? They may have something altogether different happening in their life, and God might talk to them through the same scripture, exactly what they need to hear, which may be different than what you’ve heard!

This is why we do faith in community. We are in this together. Our lives are witnesses to each other. We read the bible together because we learn from each other and we witness God in each other’s lives –sometimes more quickly than in our own.

So by giving the kids bibles, we are saying to them, Your story is part of God’s story, and it is part of our story. Together we will watch for God in the world and in each other’s lives. We will share our insights and our experiences. We will pray for each other and trust that our lives are part of the one big thing God is doing.

Like those first witnesses long ago, we come here with each other to be called back to our true selves as children of God, to have illusions stripped away, to be reawakened to love, forgiveness, transformation and the other truest things in life, to share our experiences and encounters, and to feel overwhelmed and astonished sometimes, as the new normal sets in and we begin to recognize Jesus, in that space where the Holy Spirit likes to hang out, between us.  

And I promise that, from time to time, when we’re not expecting it, we too will find that while we are talking about Jesus, he shows up right here among us.  

Amen.

Liturgies of Life and Death

“IN LIFE AND IN DEATH, WE BELONG TO GOD…” 

We are called to share life with each other, so on a Wednesday evening a few weeks ago and one year and three days after we laid hands on Marty and commissioned him to a ministry of dying, we anointed Marty once again, and told him his baptism will soon be complete. 

The sanctuary gradually filled up with church members, Marty’s family and his “bar friends,” most of whom sat together on one side of the sanctuary, like it was a wedding. I told the crowd we were here to tell stories, to celebrate Marty’s life and assert our presence with him as he moved closer to his death, and to affirm that in life and in death, he belongs to God.

And then service opened with his favorite song, What a wonderful world, and as our musician sang out in a clear, sweet voice, I felt the lump in my chest work its way up to my face and I began to cry. I looked at the rows of bar friends across from me also crying - these strangers, church members and me, this whole room full of people, brought together by our love for Marty and our fear that we were maybe not going to make it through this thing.  

But I’ve learned that something incredible happens in these experiences of confronting life and death and sticking with the discomfort. It’s excruciating, but it only lasts a moment. Once we go through the death moment together we come out the other side a little bit invincible, a little bit able to face whatever all this is with joy and gratitude and sadness and love and most astounding of all, without fear.  

So we all stuck with it and stayed put, crying into our kleenex and not leaving.  And just as it has each time in a moment like this (like in Joanne’s service years ago), we made it through to the other side.

I rose to walked to the podium. I pointed out table near the door with the pile of markers and signs that said, “Marty is…” and the clothesline strung across the front of the sanctuary, reaching from one side of the room to the other, and I said,  “As Marty prepares to join the cloud of witnesses, we here today get to witness to him his impact on our lives.  Each one of us who wishes to share, will take turns holding up our sign and answering the question, “Marty is…” and then sharing whatever story or memory of Marty that we wish.”

And I went first, “Marty is… surprising.” I told people one of my favorite moments of the whole year was hearing Marty’s life story, and then I invited people to raise their hands if they had: Scuba-dived the wrecks in the Great Lakes? Been a well-known astrologer? Been Buddhist? (I got a couple hands there), Wikkin?  Been a private detective?  Trained as an acupuncturist?  Lived for a couple of years in Columbia? Every time, Marty’s hand went up, and I watched people laugh in delight as this man we all love claimed his wild and wonderful life, his mystery and hidden depth, before our eyes. 

Then, person after person stood and came to the center and shared.  And I watched his bar friends, some of whom were decidedly not church people, and his church friends, some of whom were decidedly not bar people, bound together in our love for Marty, opened up in our view of him, deepened in our gratitude for him, and witnessing to the incredible impact of a single life that ripples through us and beyond. 

Marty is… Kind. Brave. Gentle. A gift. A friend. Hopeful. Loving. Welcoming. 

Children shared. Friends from kindergarten shared. People who hadn't planned to share shared.  We glimpsed into seasons of his life before many of us knew him - Marty the hippy, Marty the one they were sure was an FBI agent, Marty who loves espresso martinis and holds the bartender accountable to making a good one.  Marty who told me long ago that he believes we are here to take care of each other, and who is teaching us in this moment how to do that by letting us take care of him. 

                 

I preached to this group, but mostly to Marty. A short message. 

Do not be afraid. 

Life and love are where you come from and they are where you are going. 

We will walk with you to the point where you go on alone.  And you go on with Christ.  

You have shaped us all so much; our lives, our world, has forever been altered by your presence.  

You have embodied your life message well.  

We love you.  

And we gathered around him - those of us who are praying people - and laid our hands on him and prayed for him.  And then we all left the sanctuary and filled the Gathering Room where Marty’s favorite foods awaited us: Lasagna, salad, garlic bread from Buca, with dozens of cherry pies and apple cobblers made by friends lining the counter.  

The room was filled with laughter and ease, warmth and care, gentle conversation surrounding us all like music.  Many of Marty's friends came up to me to thank me and to tell me they were pondering other stories, or they had ideas for ways to bless him, or they were so thankful for this special evening.  The subtext of it all was, We are his people and we’re in this together now.

The days are getting harder. Moments are more frightening, more poignant, more sad, more awake. 

And still, he said to me this week, "I said I would share it with you, and I intend to keep my promise."

And we said we'd walk this road with you, Marty, and we intend to keep our promise too.

Thank you for letting us share this journey with you, Marty.

Thank you.

A Tale of Two Easters

Matthew 27:57-28:20

There are always two stories going on in any situation, and Easter is no exception. I suppose we might say we have the religious story of Jesus rising from the dead, which people either fully believe and trust in, believe in as some kind of theoretical idea or metaphor, or completely reject. And right alongside it we have the story of the Easter bunny. A fun day to celebrate Spring and eat marshmallow peeps and jelly beans.  Often, with powerful and dangerously true stories, there is a childish and commercialized version, safe for mass consumption, and, especially for, commerce – something mild and marketable. There is no money to be made in empty tombs and rising from the dead – (unless it’s zombies. There is big money in zombies).

But Jesus wasn’t a zombie; he was fully alive, real, out there in the world ahead of them.  And even without the whole bunny thing, Matthew’s own version of the Easter events contrasts two stories of Jesus’ death and resurrection. One from the way of fear; and the other from the way of God.

It goes like this. This guy Jesus, was either the Messiah, God-with-us as a human being, or was a dynamic teacher and healer, a viral sensation who didn’t seem to care about money or success, and was always hanging out with losers and talking about another Kingdom, either way, he had become a hazardous threat to the secular Roman and religious Jewish establishments, so he was publicly killed as a criminal. And some weird stuff happened when he died – like an earthquake, and the heavy temple curtain separating God’s holiest private meeting place from the general public being torn in two from top to bottom, and apparently real zombies of dead people coming out of graves, but we kind of ignore all that because we don’t really know what to do with it.

So Jesus died, and his body was prepared and placed in a tomb, with these two women sitting there, across from the tomb, watching the whole thing.

And then, right in the middle of the action, the sabbath happens. So the women go home, along with everyone else, and they rest, as God has commanded. Because God is still God. And we are not God. And no matter what happens, we do this thing that reminds you who you are and who is in charge of the whole thing.

My friend Phil shares that in the hours after the 9-11 attack, in the midst of the world in chaos, people leaving work, stores closing, all bets off, he noticed cars pulling into the parking lot of the church he pastors.  At first he thought there was a need or emergency, but the people got out of their cars, headed inside, and began setting up folding chairs, because it was time for AA. And you go to AA, no matter what else is happening in the world. It reminds you who you are and who is in charge of the whole thing. So it’s like that. They kept the sabbath. 

Except not all of them did - not the leaders, not the very most religious people, the chief priests and the Pharisees who had orchestrated Jesus’ death - this group got spooked. They remembered that Jesus had said he would rise from the dead, so what if his followers steal the body and go around saying he had risen?  This fear, this need to protect their place and power, and secure this thing they had finally accomplished, was enough to send these most devout of people scrambling on the sabbath day.

Breathlessly, they rush to Pilate, who, God bless him, thought he’d washed his hands of the whole affair, and they made the case for some extra protection around the tomb, to prevent what could be a PR disaster for them all.  Pilate says, fine, you have your guards, station as many as you want, and yeah, go ahead and seal the tomb. So they place guards there, and seal the tomb closed, and say a few prayers for missing the sabbath for this super important errand, and then sit back mostly satisfied that all this ugliness is finally behind them and now they can rest.

But the following morning, the women, the ones who hung around the tomb before, came back.  And when they did, there was another earthquake, the ground shook and this figure came from the sky who looked like lightening, if lightening was a person wearing glowing white. And he slides away the enormous, sealed stone, and sits on top of it, calmly looking at them.  And the military professionals with the boring gig of guarding a dead man, were so afraid they shook and became like the dead themselves.

And, as it always does in the Kingdom of God, the script gets flipped. The powerful and strong – whether those who guard, or those who scheme, or those who rule, or the very technology, weight and strength of sealed stone – they are of no consequence.  And instead, the angel turns to the women.

Now, Mary Magdalene got a bad rap in the Middle Ages with an unfortunate label as a former prostitute, as many, many paintings can attest - again with the spinning a tale to devalue something and make it more palatable and profitable and less powerful – and it’s a charge that stuck.  But in fact, she was never a prostitute, and the bible never calls her that. Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus’ most devoted disciples, rivaling Peter in importance, a woman of great respect and honor who was close to Jesus, and she is the person whom all the gospels agree was first to know of Jesus’ resurrection, and who was given the job of delivering the news to the others. 

And “the other Mary,” the text tells us earlier, is the mother of James and Joseph – who were two of Jesus’ brothers, so it is assumed she is Jesus’ mother Mary. But she is not referred to here as that, because everything has changed. The earth has shaken, the world has turned, God has acted, the powerful and mighty are struck down, the humble and meek are lifted up. 

In his life and death, she was Mary, mother of Jesus, but in his resurrection, she is Mary, the witness, Mary, the preacher, the other Mary charged to deliver the news of the resurrection to the rest of Christ’s followers.

So here, among the scattered bodies of passed out soldiers, there is perched atop the giant stone, an angel, who says to these two women, “As for you, you stop being afraid. I suppose you’re looking for Jesus who was crucified? Well, he’s not here; he has already risen, just like he said he would.” And then, because the whole moving the stone and getting the soldiers out of the way thing was for them, not for Jesus, he invites them, “Come, come, see where his body was laid – but then go quickly to the the disciples and tell them that Jesus will meet them in Galilee. This is the message I have been sent to deliver to you.”

So the women peek inside, and then they take off running, with fear and great joy, that is, with their own trepidation and hesitation but also with bubbling over, euphoric and grounded happiness, they become the bearers of God’s message to the world.  But before they reach the rest of the disciples, Jesus appears to them. Like he just couldn’t wait. And the translation we have has him saying, “Greetings!” like he is delivering their mail or something. But in scripture, this word is hardly ever a hello or goodbye, most of the time, this word means, “Rejoice!”  So I imagine Jesus coming to them, throwing out his arms and shouting, “Rejoice!” And the women shriek in joy and embrace him and fall at his feet and worship him. And then Jesus pulls them up and says, “Ok, now, don’t be afraid any longer. Go to my brothers” - And again identities have shifted, they are no longer disciples, followers, now they are brothers –“ and tell them to leave Jerusalem and head back where we used to hang out and I will see them there.”

So the women deliver the news that indeed the Kingdom of God has come, that nothing has stopped God’s way from breaking in, which, indeed, now rules the world.

And back at the tomb, those groggy and stunned soldiers peel themselves off the ground and stare in horror at the unsealed and clearly empty tomb and the impossibly heavy, tossed-aside stone, and their predicament sinks in. The last thing they remember seeing was this smug walking lighting man that came from the sky and these two insignificant Hebrew women. But the women are gone, and the angel is gone, and the dead body is unfortunately gone too.

So they head back, hat in hand, to the religious leaders, and they tell them what happened.  And wow does the scrambling amp up then – those guys rustle up a shocking amount of cash as quickly as they can, and they pay off the soldiers to keep their mouths shut. Tell nobody about what happened. Who would believe you anyway, fools? Instead, say they overpowered you and took the body. And if you get in trouble at all with your bosses, we’ll cover for you. So they spread that story far and wide, and it stuck.

But the 11 disciples, having received the news from the Maries, headed out to Galilee, and hiked up the mountain where Jesus said he’d meet them. And there they saw Jesus. And they worshipped but some doubted, that is, with their own trepidation and hesitation but also with bubbling over, euphoric and grounded happiness, they hung out with the Life that death can not end.  And Jesus said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  This is my world now, and you’re all living in it. So go live it, share it, spread the love and the joy, bring people into the freedom of belonging to God and belonging to each other, invite them to live in this reality too, show them how it works and teach them how to remember the real, and I will be with you to the very end of eternity.

And that’s how Matthew ends his gospel.

There is the narrative of fear. The one that says the powerful keep their power, and the weak do not matter, and money buys all, and back room deals and corruption can accomplish anything, and the wicked prevail, and those who say otherwise will be silenced, and the dead do not live again.

But the other narrative says God’s Kingdom has come. God has broken down, torn open, and shaken apart the very foundations of all we think strength and might are.

And we are invited, over and over again, to put down fear. To set down the quest for personal safety, security, and worry about our lives, and rejoice.  Rejoice! And spread the news the love is stronger than hate, and hope endures beyond despair, and life triumphs over death. 

Because in weakness our God came in with us, and he took on our suffering, our shame, our pride, and our whole system that sees healing for the sick and freedom for the slaves and good news for the poor as a hostile threat to the order of things.  And darkness and evil threw at him the worst it had, killing him and putting the whole matter behind it. But it was never really over. There is no rest for the weary in that game.

While, as Martin Luther said, “Jesus sabbathed in the grave,” and both of his dear Maries left their tombside vigil and sabbathed back home, and all his disciples, and the whole community of believers, and all the faithful people of God in the land sabbathed where they were - stopping, as their ancestors did for generations, to remember that God is God and they were not, stopping to recall that they belonged to God instead of to Pharaoh and fear, remembering what it means to be free and practicing living it -  those who had killed him were not free.

They had to work to keep their tenuous victory. In this game of power and deceit, you could lose your place, even your life, at any moment. And so, bound to fear, anger, hatred and the root of sin itself - self-preservation, they missed the reality of God in their midst. They, whose whole lives’ longing was to see the Messiah, whose role in the community was to seek God and follow in God’s way for everyone to observe, they traded the way of God for the way of fear.

But Mary and Mary saw Jesus, and heard the words of God to them, “Rejoice! Stop being afraid. Go tell the others I will meet them.”

So here is our Easter message today: no matter how it looks at any given moment, the Kingdom of God has come. The end is decided, the trajectory is set. And in the middle, there are two stories. The story of self-preservation, rivalry, threat and fear, and it’s a powerful story. There’s a lot of evidence for this story all around us, and it has some persuasive spokespersons: the serpent, the Pharaoh, Herod and the Pharisees, the voices called “us and them,” and “not enough,” “you’re alone,” and then the loudest one - that speaks in separation and whispers permanency - death itself.

And then there’s the story that makes no sense.  The one where people love each other even though they are supposed to be enemies. And where people give what they have to others instead of hoarding for themselves. And where people confess when they’ve hurt each other, and forgive each other for the hurt they’ve caused.  

And in this story doubt, trepidation and hesitation go right along with bubbling over, euphoric and grounded happiness because the lost are found, and the least are most, and the wrong people are chosen, and the things that last, like - love and hope and peace - happen, inexplicably, in weakness, and show up in suffering, and the most vulnerable people turn out to be the strongest ones of all.

This is the story where after the ending comes a new beginning. Over and over again.  And it has repeated refrains like, “Stop being afraid” and “Rejoice,” and “I will be with you forever, no matter what,” and “Be still, and know that I am God.”

This is our story, this is our song. This is why we are here today. Here we rejoice, because the living God whom death cannot contain, summons us. Come and meet me, he says, right now, out there in the world, right here in your own life, where I already am, and always will be, no matter what, and until only one the one true story remains, for all eternity.

Happy Easter.

We begin here

Lofoten Island, Norway

Psalm 46:1-3

When I was in college, I spent the large part of one summer sleeping on a 3 foot round papason chair cushion on the floor of an apartment five friends were renting in Dinkytown.  At one point, we ran out of toilet paper and went through all the napkins, coffee filters and finally, Far Side comics, before someone finally bought more.  But whatevs. We were young.

When Andy and I graduated from seminary, we were in our mid-twenties, and were willing to go anywhere in the US to start our next life chapter. Coast? Desert? Mountains? Big City? Tiny town? Sure! Why not! Andy applied to programs all over, and when we moved to Princeton, New Jersey, we packed up all our things in a u-haul and drove from LA for five days across the country, each day listening to Harry Potter cds and eating sunflower seed and drive-through food; each night parking the truck with everything we owned in the world, towing our only car, strategically where we could watch it from our motel window so it wouldn’t get stolen.

There are times in our lives we anticipate change. We expect it; invite it, even. We are totally open to upheaval, happy to cooperate with a little chaos.

But I think we think that is supposed to stop.  That you go through your change and chaos phase, and then after that, things are supposed to be predictable and secure.

But life never stops changing.  Children, homes, illnesses, adjustments, they just keep coming.  That first friend to get divorced becomes one of many.  That dream job you pursued falls through, that church you loved falls apart, and that person you trusted falls away.  And they take your favorite show off the air, and stop making your favorite ice cream, and tear down your favorite diner to put up another Starbucks.  The president you loved is replaced by one you can’t stand, and that woody place you found silence and solace as a child has become a crowded, rowdy resort.

And instead of settling down, the changes seem to speed up.  More friends move away, drift away or pass away. Your doctor retires and your phone becomes obsolete, and every ten or so years, your body seems to have become a completely different shape than the one you’d adjusted to last.  At 62, you discover, a job loss is nothing at all like it is at 22.

And these are just the little changes, the everyday, ordinary, constant upheavals.  That is to say nothing of global crises, natural disasters, or community violence, of catastrophes, bankruptcies, life-altering diagnoses and devastating deaths.

Change doesn’t restrict itself to phases, and chaos doesn’t play by any rules.  Trouble, tumult, seismic shifts happen in our lives and in the world all the time.  From birth until death, living with the unexpected and in the midst of constant change is part of what it means to be human.

Also part of what it means to be human is to try to diminish change. We like to act as though we have more control than we do; we mitigate risk and bolster security however we can.  We depend on all sorts of things to make us feel safe and stable, because, as it turns out, we are dependent beings; we can’t do this life thing all on our own.  We need to find our strength and security somewhere.

So we rely on our intellect or our bank accounts, our health history and insurance policy. We trust institutions and governments, leaders, pastors and teachers. We depend on the climate, community and culture to give us predictable ways of living in the world, and then we act like they can’t, or at least shouldn’t, change. 

But they do. It turns out that none of these things, ultimately, can do a thing to protect our lives. They can make us feel secure for a time, but anything can change at any moment.

So what are we to do?

Our Psalmist, in this opening line, sums up the theology of the whole book of Psalms in these words: God is our refuge and strength.

God is the One we are to depend upon. God is our safety.  A very present help in trouble.  Not a helper in the midst of trouble, but Help itself.  Very present help.  Right here.  Right now.  Right in the midst of it.

Therefore we will not fear.

Therefore. 

Even though the earth changes. And mountains fall into the sea, and tsunamis and storms and whirlwinds roar through our world, and the very ground seems to shake beneath our feet and turmoil and tumult overwhelm us.  Even though.  Not because these things don’t or wont happen, but because they will, and do. 

Still. We will not fear.

Why? Because God is our refuge, our strength, a very present help in trouble.

What does it look like to trust God? To find refuge in God?

What does it look like to trust or find refuge in anything, really?

We believe things will make us safe. We act as though it is so.  It soothes us to depend upon something or someone else for our ultimate stability.  It completes our dependent selves to depend on something outside of us.  

The question is simply, what or who will we depend on?

We’ve been talking these past two weeks about repentance. 

Repent! Jesus says, For the Kingdom of God has come near! Turn around, change your mind, look at things differently! For God’s reign and God’s way is already unfolding among you.

Repentance has been a primary focus of Lent for centuries, so I think we should keep talking about it these next five weeks.[1] Repenting is setting down your way of seeing things to take up God’s way of seeing things.  

And so, first, it exposes the things we turn to for refuge that are not God: the flimsy counterfeit security we find in camping out with those who are just like us and shutting out those we don’t understand. The sense of well-being we get from a well-paying job, or a well-spoken compliment.  The measuring and comparing, are we more or less secure than those others are?  And the soothing lies and half truths that ease our conscience or pacify our egos.  The protection we feel from hatred, blame and anger.  We find refuge in all sorts of voices, places, and things that cannot ultimately save us or make us any safer or more whole, and mostly just make us trapped by the trouble we are seeking to escape.  Repenting helps us turn from those things back to our true source of life, God.

And then, repenting leads to confession and forgiveness, or confessing and forgiveness lead us to repentance, in either case, it causes us to recognize our sin, that is, the places in our life where we have, either on purpose or accidentally, put up barriers between ourselves and God or others.  Because when we repent and see things from God’s perspective instead of our own, it reveals where we have brought pain, suffering and harm on ourselves and others, so that we can reach out for healing and forgiveness, and let God make us whole.

But repenting is hard.  

And we avoid it because it brings trouble.  

Did you take something that didn’t belong to you? 

Did you say something about someone else that caused them embarrassment or pain?  

Did you cheat on a test, or your taxes, or your spouse? 

Who among us would jump at the chance to come clean for any of these things? 

We tell ourselves that maybe we’ll avoid trouble if we avoid repenting.  If we hide our violation and move on, pretending we’re secure, maybe that’s almost as good as being secure.  

But to repent?  That’s just walking into trouble.

But, wait, this God of ours is found in trouble. Is very present there, in fact! 

For those who’ve had trouble brought down on them by others, and those who bring trouble upon themselves, God is Help itself.

Will you spend your life trying to avoid, diminish or escape trouble? 

Or will you find refuge in the God who is a very present help in the midst of trouble? 

Will you wall yourself off ineffectively from chaos and guard yourself unsuccessfully from change? 

Or will you rest your being in God who is our strength and our refuge?

When we repent, we are brought out of self-protection, judgment, blame and fear, back to the trust and dependence on God that the Psalms invite.

We are set free from pretending chaos isn’t chaotic or changes stop changing. 

We are released to speak honestly about trouble and walk into trouble by speaking honestly.

We are allowed to acknowledge how tumultuous it all is, and how vulnerable we sometimes feel, that we hear the roar of the storm and see the shaking of the earth and sometimes tremble with the constant change and threatening chaos, and still, still we find our refuge and strength in God.

God is our refuge and strength. A very present help in trouble.

Therefore, we will not fear.

Not because trouble doesn’t find us or find others because of us,

Not because the chaos dies down, or the earth remains tranquil,

or our lives stay stable and unchanged.

But because right in the midst of trouble, chaos and change, God is our refuge and our strength.

The psalm pauses here, as it will at the end of each of our three stanzas in our Lenten psalm, with the word “Selah.”

Selah is written right in, part of the text, and while it is never clearly explained, it is thought that it means something like: Pause. Breathe. Take it in. And Praise God.

Pause, Breathe, take it in, and praise God.

So here are our Lenten practices, my friends:

First, Repent.

Second, Pause, breathe, take it in, and praise God.

God is our refuge and strength. We begin here.

Amen.

---

[1] Lent has traditionally been for fasting, repentance. 40 days of preparation for Easter (minus the Sundays, which are always mini-Easters, celebrations of the resurrection).  But both of these are incredibly useful practices. Fasting, is to refrain from something that is ordinarily part of your life for a set period of time, most commonly food, in order to turn that attention normally given to that thing, to God instead.  It shifts your perspective off of yourself, by breaking you of your routine and patterns, and requiring you to sacrifice something, notice the emptiness of it, the space it occupied in your consciousness, and opens up that space and attention for God.  It is a physical act of repentance.

When things crumble

185 Chairs

Proverbs 3:5-8

Matthew 4:12-17

Our family has been on a month long trip to Australia and New Zealand. Last week, we were in Christchurch.  In 2010 a huge earthquake hit Christchurch and caused extensive damage. Thankfully nobody was killed.  18,158 aftershocks followed, and people functioned in a daily life that felt unsure and threatening. They had no idea what to expect; anything could happen.  And six months later, it did. In February of 2011, a bigger quake struck. Large swatches of the city were decimated, thousands were injured, and 185 people died.  A lot of businesses and individuals have left the city, and while a lot of rebuilding has been done, a lot remains, and Christchurch is a city still locked in PTSD and exhaustion, as the slow work of rebuilding continues. 

Near the place we were staying, a 90 year old women came most days and set out a few dozen water color paintings along the sidewalk, for people to peruse and buy. She’d been painting for 60 years, she would tell everyone who walked by. One day, part of our group stopped to chat with her. And, as went with many conversations in Christchurch, she told them where she had been in the earthquake.  She had just come out of her home on a hill, where she had lived for most of her life. She walked down the walk to the mailbox and opened it, and was pulling out her mail when the quake struck, knocking her to the ground. She looked up and watched the house she had been sitting in 30 seconds before, collapse from the top down, and crumble into rubble before her eyes.

When our scripture opens, Jesus has just come out of the wilderness – 40 days in another world. No cell phone, newspaper or social media; he wouldn’t know if his great aunt had passed away while he was gone, or if the president had changed.  He wouldn’t have had any way of checking in on life back home, which is good, because he had his hands full with what he was doing out there anyway.

The wilderness stripped Jesus down to his most basic self, no protection or community, just him, out there in the elements, hungry, tired, alone, and then, at his weakest, tempted mercilessly by the Accuser. And when all that was finished, we are told, “The devil left him, and suddenly angels came and ministered to him.”

So Jesus returns to the hustle and bustle of the real world, sunburned and skinny, and the first thing he hears is: John has been arrested.

And it crumbles before his eyes.

While you were away, your cousin, the one destined from of old to pave the way for the Messiah, was seized by the authorities and locked away.

And the community surrounding John was undoubtedly in upheaval. What kind of tweets and status updates and forwarded articles were going around the followers of this movement? What urgency and fear hovered over them all? What rumors, interpretations, and rallying cries? What moans of despair, and calls for action? And what did it all mean? Does God’s plan get derailed? Does this mean the end?

Jesus, if you thought this would be easy, think again.  You’ll get no gentle reentry, no chance to reacclimate to ordinary life, in fact, here’s the new ordinary: you wont know what to expect. Anything can happen. And while you know in your bones and soul you can trust God; you can’t trust that God will protect those involved in God’s schemes from suffering and injustice.

So, the text moves really fast through this part, but what Jesus does next is super important: He withdraws to Galilee. And I want to stop in that little space between the period and the next sentence for a minute, because this says something a little shocking and pretty significant: 

Jesus disappeared for a while. Even though he had just returned, even though the community was swirling in drama, Jesus stepped out of the fray, off the grid.

Jesus withdrew. In Matthew, this verb is used when circumstances bring unexpected threat or loss - the Magi returning home another way, Mary and Joseph fleeing to Egypt, Jesus, later on when he hears John is dead, retreating to a quiet place – in times of upheaval, this verb has people “stepping out of the situation.”

Jesus steps out of the situation.

He withdraws, and gets his grounding. He does what he maybe just learned in the wilderness: he separates himself from the situation and puts himself where God can meet him uncluttered, unencumbered. 

In Presbyterian Women’s gathering, for over three years, we’ve been going through a book about women in the bible. It is taking us so long, because we love to talk, so we get through just one or two women each month, and it turns out, believe it or not, there are a whole lot of women in the bible.  So this week we met Philip’s daughters, in Acts, who were, all four of them, well respected prophets in the church; they spoke words of encouragement from God to the people.  And we began to talk about prophecy, and why we don’t hear so much about prophecy or prophets in the church these days.

Then one of us (Rosie) made the observation that today we live a non-stop life surrounded by noise. We are rarely quiet. Rarely still. We hardly ever let ourselves stop and simply be.  Even when we are alone, we fill the space with radio, television, other distractions. And perhaps with this way of living, we make it a whole lot harder for ourselves to listen to God. Maybe if we were still or quiet more, we would be more likely to hear God.

When Jesus heard the difficult, and potentially frightening news, he stepped out of the situation.  After the period and before the next sentence, Jesus put everything down and withdrew to a place where there was nothing that could distract him. 

And I think it’s safe to say that in that place, apart from it all, God met him, because (as we’re learning), when we stop, God meets us. And when Jesus was finished, when he remembered whose he was and who he was, he came into the next sentence with direction and clarity.  He packed up his things and left his hometown, Nazareth, in the region Galilee, for a new city, Capernaum, by the Sea of Galilee, the land that used to belong to the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali, but hasn’t been referred to that way for over 700 years.

Until this scripture. 
Because Matthew is always linking Jesus back to the prophets, showing the continuity of God’s story, so he draws on a prophesy and promise in Isaiah 9, the one we always read at Christmastime,

Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali,

   on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles—

the people who sat in darkness

   have seen a great light,

and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death

   light has dawned.’

and if we continued on, we would come to, "...for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, authority shall rest upon his shoulders and he shall be called wonderful, counselor, mighty god, everlasting father, prince of peace,” and end with “the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.”

Here’s what all that is saying about Jesus as he begins to carry out God’s ministry in the world: God-with-us goes to make his home in the land of those God has not forgotten. This story has a long arc, and God’s promises do not fade away.

This is the story you are now part of.

Now once Jesus has settled into his new home, he begins his ministry by picking up the message John the Baptist got started, Repent! For the Kingdom of heaven has come near!

The word repent, Μετανοεῖτε means literally “change how you think after being with,” in other words, turn around, shift your being in another direction, change your purpose after this.” We could think of it as laying down your mind and exchanging it for the mind, perspective, and purpose of Christ.

The kingdom of heaven has come near. The reign of God, the way of life with God in charge, where we all belong to God and we all belong to each other, the order God created for the world and is leading the world towards, in Jesus, this reality has come near. It has come to live among us. 

So here is what that looks like:

We spent our last week with a group of people from New Zealand, South Korea, Vanuatu, and Tonga. We prayed together, sang together, and ate together; we shared stories of joy and suffering, listened to one another, and encouraged each other.

Even though we are divided by language, tribe, miles and circumstances, we found ourselves acting as though we belonged to each other, living out the truth of the Kingdom of Heaven right here on earth, because that is the real reality.

Then on Saturday, our group had the opportunity to help restore a memorial to the 185 people who died in Christchurch’s 2011 earthquake.  An artist had painted 185 chairs white, easy chairs, dining room chairs, folding chairs, car seats and wheelchairs. And he placed them on a grassy spot in rows.  Six years later, this exhibit remains one of the most powerful places of healing for this city.

So that morning the kids and I joined the artist and several other volunteers, many of whom have cared for this display for years, and we helped to repaint the chairs, lay down fresh grass, and replace the fresh chairs in their rows.  We worked alongside those who had lost loved ones, for whom a particular chair meant someone no longer in their world, and alongside these people we’d been spending the week with, none of whom were from Christchurch either.  And the importance of what we were doing, and sorrow for what it represented, did not hinder the laughter and cooperation, the tentative conversations, and the synergy of working alongside one another. 

And at one point, I looked around at this group of strangers in the summer sun, on the other side of the planet from where I call home, working together to minister to a city, and I felt overwhelmed by the awareness that we all belong to each other, and we all belong to God.  With paint on our arms and dirt under our fingernails, the kingdom of heaven has come near. 

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is here.

Perhaps it’s been taught to us in church, or at least insinuated, that Jesus never got afraid or worried, never felt overwhelmed or dismayed. But the way the gospel writers tell it, his whole adult ministry begins with God claiming him in the waters of John’s baptism of repentance, and then the Spirit immediately driving him into the wilderness of temptation. So I would be wiling to bet that sometimes he felt overwhelmed, and at times he felt tempted by the fear and the messages of the empire’s power to derail what God was doing. 

Rather than think that Jesus never needed to repent, I wonder if in fact Jesus repented all the time, if, at the first inkling of fear or doubt, Jesus steps out of the scene, opens himself to God, and allows his mind to be changed, his perspective shifted, and his being reoriented back God’s truth.

When we repent, when we change our mind for Christ’s mind, and turn around and head another direction, we also lift gaze lifted to a further horizon to see the long arc of God’s salvation, and the endurance of God’s promises that cannot be derailed.

Jesus gives us a way; he shows us his way. When he hears the news that John has been arrested, when he feels the messages closing in around him, bombarding him, threatening to make him believe the empire is in control, he withdraws. He leaves the scene and finds himself alone with God.

I was in Australia for the presidential inauguration, and for the next few weeks afterwards. And every day, because of the time difference, I would wake up in the morning and it would be late afternoon yesterday back home. And every day, I logged onto the internet and saw news that made me feel afraid, worried, and despairing.  And most often, I did not choose to step out of the situation, pray and seek direction, and let my mind be shifted back onto God. Most often I obsessed, and read every article I could find, and fretted and worried about what it could all mean.

But after I came home, a couple of days ago, I came into this sanctuary, and I laid out an American flag and some candles, and I sat in silence before God.  And I found myself being shifted back into the mindset of Christ, which is to say, I repented.

This is part of the story. I was reminded. This is not the whole story. 

The world belongs to God.

And after laying down my fears and frustrations, I felt myself rest. 

Instead of worrying, which is practicing fear over and over again, I rested, which is practicing trust. I let myself fall back into the care of God. 

And when I was finished, I found I could approach the world and my concerns with new clarity and purpose, with confidence that the Kingdom of God is here. Even when we can’t always see it; we know where this is all heading. And we get to live in that confidence and trust by living out what we know to be true, boldly and joyfully in a nation starving for connection and hope.  

And I will tell you that I will be doing that in this space every Friday morning from 9:30-10:00 am, and I welcome anyone who wants to join me, to come withdraw, repent, and practice trust with me.

In this life, anything can happen. 

And while you may know in your bones and soul you can trust God; you can’t trust that God will protect those involved in God’s schemes from suffering and injustice.  Things can crumble to the ground before our eyes.

But every day we can repent. 

Every day we have the opportunity to turn around, and change our mind for the mind of Christ. When we start to believe the empire is in control, when we start to shift into fear, when things are falling apart in front of us, we are invited to step out, into a place apart where God can meet us, and to shift our being and our purpose back into God’s reality.  And this story of God’s has a long arc, and the promises of God are trustworthy and true.

So come to me, Jesus says, and I will give you rest.

Follow me, Jesus says, and I will fulfill your purpose and bring you into my kingdom work.

Repent, Jesus says, for Kingdom of heaven is at hand.

And indeed it is.

Amen.