Your Glorious Life

2 Corinthians 3:17-18, 4:6

The big story about Moses was that after whatever happened up there on the mountain between him and God, he never looked the same again. The skin of his face glowed like a nightlight.  God is so holy, and the glory of God is so powerful, so overwhelming, that God told Moses that nobody could see the face of God and live. So God showed Moses the almighty backside and still Moses' face was permaglow.  And it freaked people out.  

Being thoughtful like that, Moses decided it was good to just cover the offensive thing when he was out in public and only to let them see the proof of his encounters with God when he was actually delivering messages right from God.  So Moses wore a veil.

This both lent a little gravitas to the messages delivered with special effect veil removal, and also made potlucks a little easier, without his big mug beaming across the table at you while you were trying to eat your hot dish in peace. 

Imagine if he just let his light shine! Mercy! There would be no forgetting, ever, that the universe-creating, law-giving, covenant-making, ancestor-leading, Red Sea-parting, Egyptian-army sinking, manna-giving God was meddling in your affairs.  

This was back when things could holy, a conduit of the divine: the Ark of the Covenant; the Holy of Holies.  This mentality went on for quite a while – holy places, the bones of dead saints, relics. In the Middle Ages the reason the priest would put the Eucharist host right on your tongue, and then check to make sure you swallowed it, was so that you didn’t smuggle it home and feed it to your sick cow to cure its illness.

  

We modern people don’t see it that way anymore; we’re too rational to believe in holy things. We have a hard time believing in transcendence at all. We no longer take for granted the active, meddling presence of God in all of life.  We have to get into the right mindset when we share the bread and the cup to trust that God is with us in this act, and this moment is holy, because it is.  And then we take the bread into the Gathering Room after the service and eat it with peanut butter because, after all, it’s bread.  

But with that shining light face of his there was no getting around that Moses had been made holy.  He was set apart, a bridge between humanity and God. Even when he was sleeping, or using the toilet, or doing his taxes, he was different, holy.  Holy people are so extra! To navigate being near regular humans it’s just easier and kinder for everyone if he wears a veil.  

 A veil you can get used to – that’s a human thing.  You might even, from time to time, forget why he had it on and just act almost normal around him (just don’t swear in front of Moses!).

Perhaps when we think of what it means to live a good life,* we think it means a holy life, in this way. It's to be somehow different, better, other than human, set apart, not normal. And probably we'd answer, in this veiled version of holy, that it's a life that doesn't do bad things but does good things instead, a life that strives to be good and admirable, and please God, and so also maybe hides the things in us that feel bad, or weak, or less than stellar.

Perhaps we think this is what God wants from us. To project faith as belief without doubt, instead of   receive faith as the dependable presence that of the One who will never let us go.  And to treat prayer as a skill we can master and excel at, rather than it being really present ourselves in the real presence of God.  And to see being a disciple as something to strive for, rather than a state of being, characterized by attention and expectation that God will act.  In a veiled version of holiness, both prayer and faith are then also things we can use to measure and compare ourselves, ranking and dividing ourselves from each other. "He's a good pray-er; I could never pray like that."  "She's such a faithful person; I could never be so selfless and devout."

And so we’re not so different than the people of God have ever been, thinking, let’s just keep it how it was when God gave a list of helpful guidelines and the only one who had to bear the shock of meeting the transcendent was one dude, and he would veil up.  

In fact, let’s all veil up! – just to be safe. For the Corinthians, it was asking the Gentiles to become Jews, for us, we’ll set out purity tests for wokeness, or right theology, or agreeable politics, and silo everyone off into like-minded groups of good or bad, right or wrong, and guard our true selves from others, and stick with our own, who are obviously the right ones, and we’ll call that living a good life.

And with all of us veiled up then nobody has to deal with the unexpected shock of glory coming through some face we don’t recognize or approve of, or God, forbid, through our own faces at one another.  An uncontrollable kind of life that would be – just maybe coming across glory at any turn!  Geesh!  It might make us have to talk about it and share in it, and change what we believe about each other or God, or be changed by each other and God! Frankly, we’d rather just point helpfully to the list of rules and the guy in charge and keep ourselves safely to ourselves.

It is easier, maybe, to live with a barrier between us, than to have to be confronted all the time with the honest truth of being chosen by God, in a relationship with the Divine and smudged with inescapable glory.  In any case, it made things easier for the people, but it made it easier for Moses too, maybe, if they didn’t have to be reminded all the time that God is near.

But God is near. All the time. Joy is right here, just under the surface of life, for each of us to taste or touch at any moment.  (Perhaps remembering that is what it is to live a good life).

My friend Peter who has spent many years in Africa, shared a story about a wedding he attended in Morongo, Tanzania.  The bride was wearing a veil- one of the many western imports creeping into life there and into the marriage ceremony.  

Now, in that culture, Peter explained, the bride is not to look happy on her wedding day. She is leaving her family, and should be appropriately melancholy.  She is meant to have despondent demeanor, downcast eyes, look generally bummed out enough to show respect to her family who raised her and whom she is now leaving; and all the formal wedding photos reveal a properly sad bride.

But Peter took a picture of the veiled bride on her way down the aisle, and, being that this was some years ago, did what we all did back then and waited some time before having the film developed.  When he saw the photo, he discovered that the flash captured through the veil an enormous, joyous grin on the bride’s face as she made her way to her wedding alter.

He said he loves that photo, and that in some beautiful way, the veil over her face allowed her to have a foot in both worlds- to respect and give to her family and people what they needed to see (and needed to not see), but to also be glowing with joy in privacy behind that veil.

Veils, by design, don’t so much keep us from seeing out, they most often keep others from seeing us.  When the veil is removed, people have to see you.  There’s no hiding to keep yourself, or others, more comfortable. You have to be seen. For who you are.  For the glory of God that shines out of your ordinary life.  

And what the heck is glory anyway? Isn’t it the halo around the saint’s head in the paintings? The glory of the Lord shown around those angels when they sang to the shepherds in the fields keeping watch over their flock by night, and they were sore afraid!

Like a residue of mystery, power, transcendence, glory is something connected to God, something other than ordinary, something worthy of awe, something clinging on or shining forth or drawing us near its holiness.

By its very nature glory is NOT inconspicuous or unnoticeable, it’s not a blend-in kind of thing, and it doesn’t spend much time worrying about boat-rocking or institution-building or rule-respecting or people-pleasing, because it comes from quite beyond all of that, some kind of intense nearness to or reflection of the Divine, come what may.

Paul says that all of us, with unveiled faces, see the glory of God as though reflected in a mirror.  Remember last time he talked about a mirror? He was talking about faith, hope and love, those things that come to us from the complete into the partial.  “Now we see in a mirror dimly, then we will see face to face,” he said (1 Cor. 13:12-13).  In those days mirrors were just polished metal; they were vague, a rough estimate, a glimpse of the truth. 

Imagine seeing the glory of God, however vaguely, in your own face, when you gaze into a mirror? Imagine seeing the glory of God, when you are face to face with one another? 

Who is this God and what is God up to?*  God is making us holy – conduits of the Divine. The Spirit of God is transforming us. We are being transformed.  From one glory to the next.  From the glory of an immortal, invisible God only wise, in light inaccessible hid from our eyes, to the glory of God-with-us right there in the very opposite of glory – muck, filth, ordinariness, shame, boredom and the mundane.

   

Is there glory in a dozen dirty diapers in a day that never gets out of the pajama pants with a shower nowhere on the horizon?  

Is there glory in a daily drudge commute and a cubicle with little satisfaction and no chance for advancement? 

What about our recycling and gardening, voting and volunteering, listening, trying to forgive, letting out our tears and anger, injuries and healing, celebrating the birthdays and going to the funerals, do these things have anything to do with glory?

Is there glory when our bodies begin to fail us? Or when our minds start to go, and we can’t always tell what’s real, or remember the things and people that we used to know so well?

Does glory say anything to the questions, Does my life even matter? Am I even important?

Or to the crises and losses that knock us on our backs and makes us think we’ve got nothing to get up for?

Yes. The God of glory came right into those places, the real places, the veil-less, see-it-for-what-it-is-places.  Right there, in the least likely of places, and shining off the least likely of faces, is the glory of God.  The Spirit of the Living God transforms us and makes our lives holy, like it transformed a state torture and death instrument on a dump outside the city walls into the symbol of our salvation and freedom. And whether we’re caught up in pursuing purity, pleasure or protection, this story upends our definition of living a good life.

In Christ, Paul says, the veil is removed.  The curtain in the Holy of holies tore in two from top to bottom when Jesus breathed his last. God has broken through, and the transcendent has invaded the ordinary; our lives are part of that glory.  The Spirit of the Lord sets us free! Paul says this a million ways and not always nicely, You are free! Stop acting like you’re not! Go live the free that you are!

In Christ, your self-protection is stripped away.  Your comfort in answers and control over who’s in and who’s out, who’s right and who’s wrong, and how much you personally have to invest or reveal – it’s all been removed – you have been set free for the terrifying task of living as free people, free for loving God and one another, come what may. 

  

We are being transformed to live a holy life.  It’s a real and awake life, a life drawn into the helplessness of God, as Rowan Williams says, who cannot not forgive.  A vulnerable, honest, attentive, expectant kind of life, a life claimed by love, for love. Look in the mirror and see it. Look at each other and see it. In all our unglorious mess, the glory of God shines forth. 

But not if we hide.  Not if we cover our true selves and our inspiring, vulnerable places where God has met us, because we’re sure it would make others uncomfortable to be around such things.  Not if we drape over our own struggling humanity, our failures and doubts, and weaknesses.  And not if we hang a curtain between ourselves and others whom we don’t understand, because we’ve decided God’s glory can’t possibly be present there.  

I’m not perfect, and I’m not always an easy person to love. And neither are most of you.  If this were our own glory we were working at revealing, we’d be in trouble.  If the job in front of us was to make ourselves holy, we’d be doomed.  But it’s not about what we’ve earned or done, or how shiny we try to make our lives.  This is God’s glory, shining off our faces, right into the faces of others.  Shining from the weakness and honesty of our lives right into the lives of others.  And it’s inconvenient and makes us uncomfortable sometimes.  And we’d like to hide so as not to offend.

But instead, since we have such hope, let’s act with great boldness, Paul says, a few verses earlier. Let’s live bravely.  Let’s not cover up that we are people being transformed by the Spirit of God.  The light who shines in the darkness shines in the darkness of this world and the darkness of your life. 

Let it shine.

Amen.

We are in a year of questions at LNPC - lots of question. But the two (or four, depending on how you count) main questions guiding our whole year are: Who is God and what is God up to? And, What is a good life, and how do we live it?

This is sermon 4 in a series that is following along Rowan Williams' book, Being Disciples. Here are its precursors:  Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3.

An Ongoing Conversation

Luke 11:1-13

When I was young, I believed prayer could cure cancer and guarantee we’d find a parking spot at the mall. I knew ways to pray that would bring Jesus into your heart or cast demons out of it.  I even believed that I had a magic super power prayer. I thought, if anyone tried to kidnap me, I would only need to shout with confidence, “I rebuke you in the name of the Lord!” and they would flee in fear.  I almost hoped someone would try it.  Thank God nobody did.

I prayed all the time, for everything, I didn’t hesitate, I asked brazenly for what I wanted, expecting it to be given unto me.  

I am not sure what I thought about God, who God was or what God was about, except that I had the bead on God. I knew how to get God to do what wanted. I would say the right words, the right way with the right attitude, and whatever I asked for would happen. “Your will be done, Lord!” I had the code cracked.  I knew God loved me and had a wonderful plan for my life. Seek and you will find! Ask and you will receive! I got this.

Here’s what’s tricky about this. It would be easy now to say I got it all wrong. That’s not how prayer works at all. And it’s true; it’s not. But there was one thing in this that I got right.  

In the parable Jesus tells his disciples, about the neighbor who knocks on the door at night asking for bread for an unexpected guest, the word for persistence, is actually, in the Greek, “shameless, audacious, bold.”  He tells his disciples to boldly, brazenly ask for what they want. I had some boldness about me in those days.  That part of prayer I got right.

Yesterday I googled “How to pray” and got 795,000,000 results. We want to do it right. We are trying to live a good life, and we don’t want to mess it up.  We would love to have a magic ace up our sleeve, but at the very least, we don’t want to piss off the almighty.  Or maybe we don’t even know if there is an almighty, but we think it wouldn’t hurt to hedge our bets.  We have things we want done, things we wish we’d never done, people we want to save and we wouldn’t mind making sure we ourselves are saved too.  The world is scary. Bad things happen. We do bad things. Prayer must be there to fix all of this, right?

Teach us to pray! Jesus’ disciples ask him. John’s taught his disciples! They got the bonus lesson, we want that too!  Jesus seems to got it going on in the prayer department. Give us a little of your mojo, Lord.  

So Jesus does gives them some words. And I love him for this. They wanted something concrete to hold onto, and he gave them that. We want something concrete to hold onto, and God gives us that.  

We’ve made his words into The Lord’s Prayer, a procedure almost, something we can rattle off.  And indeed, we do rattle them off - I have been asked to slow down in leading them so they can be felt and savored, and I keep forgetting about this until I’m in the car on the way home, and then I swear I’ll do the Lord’s Prayer slower next week.

This sample prayer Jesus gives to his disciples begins with addressing God as Abba, Daddy, Mommy – extremely intimate, parental language. Already, he’s way outside the box as far as rabbis teaching their students to address the divine. This is the tradition, remember, that replaced the name for God all throughout the bible with THE LORD, so as not to speak the holy name aloud.  And Jesus is brazenly, audaciously, assuming a very familiar, familial connection to God, like a trusting toddler.  Maisy used crawl up my lap and face me, and pat her chubby hands on my cheeks and look into my eyes and say, “Hi Mamamama!” 

Pray like that, Jesus says.

And then the prayer has two movements. Immediately it invites God to draw us into God’s concerns. You are holy other, Your kingdom come, your will be done, here on earth as it is in heaven. Reframe our perspective, God, give us your way of seeing and relating.

Then the prayer shifts to inviting God into our concerns – give us our daily bread, forgive us, as we forgive others, lead us not into temptation.  Help us with what we need for our survival, what we need for our being to be held in others, and in you.

Pray like this above everything, all-powerful and mighty God is actually your mommy, who cares about the intimate details of your life, and wants to be involved in them. Pray like you are invited also into the intimate details of God’s own life, like God wants you to be involved in them.

Two weeks ago I shared I was going on a silent retreat.  Well, I did, and it was wonderful, the walks and the naps and the writing and reading and the chanting with the monks. 

I recalled something I had read last year when I was there, about sabbath. God rests, so we rest because we’re made in God’s image. We all know that. But this person wrote something like, “God rests because keeping this world going is not the only thing to God. God has other interests and hobbies; it’s not all about us.”  And it struck me as so funny, so delightful, unexpected and surprising. Of course. We rest because keeping the world going is not the only thing that makes us us. There is more to us than the work we do to keep everything afloat. Why not God? 

So I tried something then.  I let myself wonder who God was apart from what God does to keep the world going. I let myself contemplate what it might be like to hang out with God in the rest of God, and not just the work, (the being of God, and not just the doing!) not just what I wanted God to do for me or for the world, but to be curious about who God is and what God was into, apart from keeping everything going. And on a trail deep in the woods, I cleared my throat and said, aloud, “Hi.”  

And as I walked along, feeling like I was walking along with God, in God, it became like a kind of centering prayer.  Every so often, I’d bring my attention back with my sacred word, which, in this case, was, “Hi.” And each time I got a little thrill. God was here. I was here. We were hanging out. “Hi God.” “Hi God, it’s me.” “Hi God, what are you into when you’re not keeping everything afloat? Hi God, Will you show me who you are?”

Last week, I got to go back and forth, between praying the Psalms, and being rooted in the liturgies of addressing God as the Great I AM, the mystery we must bow to approach, to trudging along the same path in the woods, stick in my hand, leaves crunching beneath my feet, praying, “Hi, God.” 

What Jesus is trying to show the disciples about prayer has far more to do with who God is, than how to pray. He gives them the how, because that’s what they’re asking for, he gives them some words and perspectives and even attitudes – pray audaciously! 

But he is showing them who God is by how we’re told to pray - Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened. God is a God who gives, who hears, who answers, who opens the door to us. 

Which of you, if your child asks for an egg will give a scorpion, or as Matthew 7 more helpfully suggests, when they ask for bread will give them a stone? If we, who are evil, can give good gifts to our children, how much more this God of ours?  

            

Our chapter this week in our book that we are reading together, Being Disciples, talks a lot about forgiveness.  “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Forgiveness – both giving it and receiving it- returns us to the core of our humanity as a gift that is bestowed upon us, by God, and upheld by each other, rather than something we each possess and defend. Forgiveness breaks down the armor and shell of us, so the tender and defenseless human part inside is exposed – I need to admit my need, I need to let go my power, I need to see and be seen, I need to be ministered to.

We belong to each other and we belong to God – so the vulnerability of this connection means I am bound to uphold others’ humanity and I need others to uphold mine. We nurture each other’s dignity. 

Living is risky. Being human is an unsafe activity. We can get hurt. We can hurt others. But also, we can bestow dignity and uphold humanity. We can forgive; we can receive forgiveness. We can restore and be restored.

 “I cannot live without the word of mercy; I cannot complete this task of being myself,” Rowan Williams says, “without the healing of what I have wounded.” 

We need each other for this – the ones we wound and those who’ve wounded us. We are set free to live fully in our humanity when we release the hold we have on others with our unforgiveness.  And we are set free to liv fully in our humanity when we receive forgiveness from someone we have wounded.

Forgiveness pulls us into God’s life. And it pulls us back into our humanity.  

This is how to pray--as one connected already to God and to others, as one longing for that connection to be restored, shameless in asking for it to be.

We pray as a who, addressing a who, a personal being who is free to act or not, who has interests we know nothing about, who loves and adores us, and invites us to refer to the Great and all powerful Mystery as our closest, most trusted source and caregiver, We pray in an ongoing conversation that will never end.

Jesus prayed this way. Secure in his connection to God and all others, certain in where this is all going to end up –living from the complete here in the partial.  There is a kind of submission that happens, then. When I am in my most honest and vulnerable and human self, I return to the strength of the bond that will never let us go. 

During my life, my view of prayer radically shifted. 

I prayed, really hard in all the right ways, for a friend to be healed, and she died. 

I got a little more aware of the world’s suffering and a little humbled and scared to pray for my own puny old needs with so much worse tragedy unfolding on the planet. 

I got tangled up with people who used “prayer” as permission to do and say whatever you feel like in the name of “God,” with religious impunity.  

I got educated on histories, heresies, theologies and doctrines, and mixed up about which way was right and why it matters. 

I got suspicious of my motives, and curious about God’s priorities. 

So I got afraid about asking, and hesitant about seeking, and sheepish about knocking. I didn’t want to do it wrong. Perhaps it was better not to pray than to pray the wrong way.

We once said here that the only way to do it wrong, the only way not to pray, is not to show up as your real and authentic self, or not to acknowledge that God has shown up.  That if you do those two things- if you show up, and if you trust God is showing up, you’re praying.  

You’re praying with words, or silence, or walking, or breathing, or begging and pleading, or using formal written liturgy, or singing in your car, or dancing in a field, or crying with someone else in your arms. If you are present, and you attune to the presence of God, you are praying.

This sounds easy. This is not easy. 

We hardly ever show up in our real lives as we are. And we rarely expect God will. 

But the moment you say, “Hi God,” why, here you both are! 

God is already here, waiting, waiting for us to ask, to seek, to knock, ready to open the door. Not to open it with judgment or criticism, "Where have you been?” or ready to tell you how you’ve been doing it wrong, keeping track of how incorrectly you’ve been asking, or sporadically you’ve been seeking or how long it’s been since you knocked.

No, God is always, already here, with love. Ready to receive whatever we bring. God is inviting us to address the Divine with the audacious boldness of a toddler patting her mama’s cheeks, ready to soak in the gaze of love that is always turned to her. 

God is inviting us to be like an annoying neighbor pounding on a door demanding what we need to care for the unexpected guest.  If we can give good gifts to our children, How much more will the Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask?

In other words, how much more than all the generosity and excitement I might have to show my own daughter that I love her, and she belongs to me no matter what, is God ready to draw me toward God’s own self through the power of the bond that connects the Father to the Son and breathes life into the world?

We don’t know why God does some things and not others. Sometimes prayers get “answered” how we hope they will, meaning, what we ask for happens. Sometimes they don’t.  Sometimes God cures cancer, and even gives us parking spots when we ask.   Sometimes God doesn’t.  God is free to act and free not to.  And we are free to ask. God wants us to ask because God wants to be with us, to share our place, to invite us to share in God’s. God does love us and have a wonderful plan for our lives.  God came into this human life, taking on all suffering and death, with us and for us.  God will minister to us. God will forgive us.  God love us.  That’s who God is. 

God is always ready to return us to the core of our humanity as a gift that is bestowed upon us, by God and through each other.  And we can receive this gift when we’re ready to let go of our humanity as something we each possess and defend. 

Teach us how to pray, Jesus, like you do. Teach us how to be human again. Teach us to trust, to forgive, to receive, to boldly live in our belonging to God and each other. 

So find some methods you like. Try out different strategies. Find a good structure to help you. But however you pray, show up with your real self.  

Trust that God has shown up in God’s real self. 

Ask. Seek. Knock.

And don’t hold back. Be shameless about it. Be all in.

The good news is you can’t fail at prayer.  The other good news is you can’t succeed at it either.  It’s not a game to win.  There’s no code to crack. There are no rules to memorize. There’s no magic formula to master. 

Be you. With God. That’s it.

Amen.



We are in a series with Rowan William's book, Being Disciples. The first chapter's sermon, "Being Disciples," is found here. The sermon corresponding to the second chapter, "Faith, hope and love" is here. This is connected to chapter 3, "Forgiveness."

Living from the complete

1 Corinthians 13:8-13

On Monday I will fly to Kentucky.  I will land in the airport in Louisville and I will call for an Uber. I will ask the Uber to drive me an hour away outside of all cities and towns, past miles and miles of white-fenced horse ranches, to Trappist, Kentucky, where a huge, stone, white-washed building filled with silent monks sits on a hill overlooking rolling farmland and woods with winding trails. 

I will get out of the car. Then I’ll ask the Uber driver to come back on Friday and get me, because there is no taxi or Uber service out there, and no cell phone service either.  So I will trust that the driver will return to get me at the end of my time.

Then I will spend five days expecting God to do something.  I don’t know what it is I expect God to do.  Just something. As to my part, I will make myself available.  

I will do this by not bringing any fiction along.  I just finished reading an excellent novel, and I’d love to start another one on the plane. But I won’t, because there is no greater escape for me than into a world created by strong turn of phrase and compelling characters.  And I want to be as present as possible.

I will also make myself available to God by turning off my phone for the entire time without peeking at it. Not even once. This one is harder. It means trusting God with my family. It means letting go of the illusion that if I were with my kids nothing bad could happen to them, or if I were reachable then I could prevent or solve a tragedy.  

I will simply have to be in my life and let them be in theirs.  

I will pack sturdy walking shoes.  And a journal.  And a big book I bought recently called, An Anthology of Christian Mysticism that I’ve looked at for weeks but can’t stay focused enough to read- especially with a novel nearby. And I will bring some markers and paper.  And comfy clothes.

These things will help me be available for whatever ends up happening between God and me.

This is to be five whole days of silence.  

So I will leave behind the politeness and niceties that make me want to apologize when I reach the doorknob at the same time as someone else, or use my Thank yous, pleases, and excuse mes.  I will be a silent person among silent people, who express gratitude or deference with a head nod, a smile, eye contact.   

I will make myself available to God by going to the church to read scripture and chant along with the monks, (the only time they use their voices). I won’t go all eight times a day, I’m not thatwild.  But a few times.  I am already looking forward 7:30 pm compline each evening, when the monks put themselves to bed with the startling words, “May the all-powerful Lord grant us a restful night and a peaceful death.” And then we all line up for a goodnight blessing splashed over us in holy water, one at a time, as a reminder of our baptism and eternal life in Christ.

And maybe once I will go to the 3:15 am candlelit Vigil, when the vast ceiling is cloaked in darkness, and the scant candle flames dance along the walls and the silence of the star-studded sky and rolling hills is swathed around the chapel like a blanket so thick you can almost feel it.  And when the last tone of the bell in the tower rings out, I’ll pad back down the hallway and crawl back into bed. 

I know there will be restlessness.  I will crash around the woods until I can settle into my own body, until I can carry the silence within enough to start hearing the symphony all around me in the forest and fields.  

I know there will be lots of noise inside my head and heart that needs to clean itself out, and I will try to be patient with myself as that expulsion happens. I also know there will be tears as things loosen up.  

And I know, from experience, that I will be mostly, but not perfectly, silent.  That sometimes – when I stub a toe, or lock myself out of my room, or drop an earring down a drain – I will unwittingly swear outloud.  Then I will immediately judge myself for it, and scold myself that the only words coming up from my dark heart into the God-soaked silence are bad words.  Then I will find some self-compassion and laugh at myself, and maybe even imagine God laughing too, so there will be another sound coming from me than the swears, and the cleansing of the laughter will set me free and I will go back to my silence.  

I know I will nap a lot because the tiredness catches up to you when you stop.  I know I’ll struggle to try to achieve something and then remind myself I am simply trying to be aware and expectant and that in itself is a big enough challenge. 

I don’t know how God will meet me, or what God will do. But I know God will meet me there.

Now we see dimly, like in a shadowy mirror, squinting to tell exactly what we are looking at, but at least catching glimpses. But then we will see face to face, God and us, no confusion, clear as day. Now we know in part, and then we will know fully, even as we are already fully known.

All we have now is the partial. Partial attention and partial presence and partial ability to know, or to love, or to trust.  But the partial serves its purpose because it points us to the complete, and the complete is coming.   And when it does, the partial will fade away.

We want the complete. We live in the longing that cannot and will not be fulfilled until the complete comes, and so we are always pining, always a little lost, a little hungry, a little unsatisfied. We long for God. But we mostly don’t know it is God that we are longing for. 

But some things come into the partial from the complete. They give us somewhere to abide, something to remain in that will persist past the incomplete into the whole.  “Faith, hope, and love,” Paul says, “these three remain.” 

Faith is a loaded word. 

We think it means religion. Or certainty. Or doctrine. And all of those things can go into it, but they are not faith.  We are filled with questions. Filled with doubts. Filled with contradictions and failures. And so we judge ourselves for the “faith” we have or don't have.  We think we need to arrive at some truth, or at least be on a quest for it.  But that’s not faith either.

Faith is, quite simply and purely, the presence that does not let us go.  It is this dependable relationship, and the trust inside us that grows toward this presence, this One who knows all and sees all and holds all, who knows and sees and holds US.  

So together the people of faith embody this kind of trust. We become with and for each other and the world, the kind of people who don’t let go.  We stand alongside in suffering.  We stay near in sorrow. We see and stand with the marginalized, the lost, the undependable, those with nothing to give back.  We stay. We abide with each other, because God abides with us. The way we say it around here is that we meet Jesus, who is with and for us, when we are with and for each other. That’s faith.

What about Hope?

Is hope naïve or entitled?  I heard that said this week.  That hope is something for those who are privileged enough to be sheltered from the extremities of injustice, or from the mortal suffering of war or famine.   That hope anesthetizes people, keeps them from action, because it’s pie in the sky projection that everything will turn out ok, and things, for some, clearly are not ok, and may never be.

 I don’t know what that is, but it’s not hope. 

Hope from God comes from outside our reality. It is not limited by our limitations, not skewed by our perspectives, not clouded by our suffering or perceived lack thereof.  

Hope unflinchingly recognizes all the anguish of the partial and says, Nevertheless, the complete is coming.  The complete is coming when all will be whole, when the fullness of all we ever have been and ever will be, will be, without end. 

Hope means nothing is lost, nothing is overlooked, nothing is forgotten. Instead, death is overcome with life, fullness of life, for each one and for all.  Hope not a human sentiment about a disconnected future that we manufacture in our dimly mirror-gazing, in-part knowing existence.  It’s the unwavering gaze of the loving witness who sees and bears all, and who holds in the Divine self the continuity of the whole story – the human story and each human story inside of it.  All that has been and all that is, and even all that has yet to unfold, is held already in the love and completeness of God.  

And so Hope and patience belong together.  It takes time for us to deepen and grow in Christ into people who are shaped by the complete and not the partial.  So if we long for hope, and want to embody and live in hope, we practice patience. With and for each other, with our learning and our letting go, our struggles and our questions, our disagreements and our searching, our naiveté and our judgments.  We are patient as the Holy Spirit sets us freer and freer.  And out of that patience, hope will begin to bloom and grow.

And Love, what a commodified word, Love.  

We love pizza, The West Wing, autumn in Minnesota, and our grandchildren.  But if we’re honest we don't really know what it means to love God.  

We’re so flooded with choices, Rowan Williams suggests (in the book we are reading together, Being Disciples), that we confuse wanting with loving. We think it’s about our freedom to choose whatever we want, whoever we want, however we want.  Our lives become “an endless stream of disconnected acts of choosing.”  It doesn’t really matter whatwe choose, just that we feel free to choose for ourselves.

But love is not wants and choices.  Love is the deepest life instinct, the Greek word eros.  It’s the energy that drives us to what really matters.  Love is what helps us step back from distraction and anxiety and turn toward something beyond us that gives our lives purpose and meaning.  It grabs us as a deep regard for the world, for humanity in general and the specific humans our lives are bound up with, and for God. Love is living in a state of openness to joy. Williams says, “Love is what permits us to be breathed into, to be given to, to be made alive.”  We love because God first loved us.

And love never ends. Not ever.

True freedom is not to be self-determined choosers who feed our wants. 

True freedom is to be our deepest and truest selves, who come from, and exist for, and return to, love.  We are free to discover slowly and patiently “the deepest rhythms of our life,” Williams says, “to find the context in which we will grow in God.” 

This kind of freedom requires resistance to the consumer culture of wants and choosing.  It means renouncing what looks like freedom but is actually slavery, and choosing instead, the freedom that leads us to fullness. 

And it insists that we face honestly and confess our own refusals of faith hope and love.  The ways we act like they are ours to produce, or they’re aspirational, or they’re for some and not all.  We must face the many ways we reject the complete in favor of the partial, over and over, each day.  

We are here to receive from the relationship that wants to make us whole.  The unconditional witness and presence that breathed life into the universe breathes life into you and me, and is wholly committed to who we are and will be, each of us, and the whole of us together.  

We are not in the complete yet, but God is.  And so at any moment we can abide in the one who was and is and will be.  

“Faith, hope and love,” Paul tells us, “these three things remain.” They are from the complete and come to meet us in the partial. Faith, hope and love come from God to us.  We receive them.  

The Spirit gives faith as a reliable relationship, a transcendent and grounded truth that holds us. And hope, as an abiding and tender witness to all that we, and the world, have been and will be and are right now.  And love, as unrestricted and absolute bond with God, ourselves and each other that will not end. When everything else fades away, this is what will be, familiar because we’ve tasted it partially, but the fullness of it will satisfy us completely.  And the greatest of these is love.

So we show up. We can’t manufacture faith from our stuttered and stunted attempts toward truth, or produce hope from the despair and despondency around and within us, or duplicate love from the shallow self-selection of wants. 

But we can be patient together. And still.  And gentle with ourselves and each other.  We can make space for the Divine to meet us here, and work in us and change us.  We can expect to be changed. We can expect to be encountered. We can let faith take root, and hope open us up, and love grow in us like a strong and mighty tree.

There will be restlessness. And lots of inner noise.  

And there will be tiredness and naps.  

There will also likely be swearing, and most certainly self-judgment. 

But we can show up with our sturdy walking shoes and our comfy clothes to be available for how God might want to meet us.  

And while my tools may be a journal and pen, yours may be knitting needles, or a fishing pole, or a prayer cushion, or a labyrinth, or your camera – whatever help you listen and look and pray, by which I mean, be open to the great openness where God will meet you.  

We can’t make faith, hope and love real in our lives, but we can practice self-compassion and forgiveness.  And we can risk trying out the things that feel strange and new that may lead us deeper into reality, to abide in the eternal.  In Jesus, God came to be with us in the discomfort and newness of human existence; we can come into discomfort and newness too, to find Jesus. So maybe it’s not chanting with monks. Maybe it’s chanting Psalms here with us. Or seeing a spiritual director. Maybe it’s reading the bible with a friend, or volunteering in the community soup kitchen, or trying centering prayer with a group.  Maybe it’s risking being vulnerable about what’s really going on inside of you and letting someone else near.

You can be sure there will be tears as things loosen up, and cleansing laughter too.  And we might struggle to try to achieve something and then have to remind each other that we are simply trying to be aware and expectant, and that in itself is a big enough challenge.  

But we will trust together that if we seek simply to live in awareness with expectancy, our deeper life-instinct will awaken, which is love. And the yearning at the core of us will permit the Holy Spirit to shape us into people who abide in faith, hope and love, who live freely as a person among people. And we won’t know how God will meet us, or what God will do.  But we know God will meet us here.

Amen.

(This is a sermon series based on a book the congregation is reading together, Being Disciples, by Rowan Williams. This is week 2, chapter 2, "Faith, Hope and Love."  First Installment, "Being Disciples." Next up: "Forgiveness").

Attuned and Ready

John 1:29-39

I am really awkward at parties. Maybe it's because I didn't go to a lot of them when I was younger so I'm still learning or something, but I just can't seem to find my way in to relaxing and being normal at a party.  

Last night I was at a party in a neighbor’s backyard. And as we were standing there with our drinks in our hands making small talk, a mom in the neighborhood, who I’ve known since our kids were in kindergarten, began complaining about the religious teaching at the private middle school where her daughter attends. And she kept apologizing to me.  Knowing that I am a pastor, so not just a Christian, but like, a super invested, professional Christian, every time she brought up any criticism about, as she called it, “churchy stuff,” she would lay her hand on my arm and say, “I’m sorry,” and then go on to finish her comment.

I am not sure how to take it when this happens. As though I represent all of Christianity in any given situation, a whole belief system, never mind that there are some 43,000 different Christian denominations in the world, each believing nuanced things different enough from others to designate them a distinct group. And then between and within all those different groups, there are different ways to answer, Who is God?  

They Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion survey of American religious life found that American Christians have roughly four different gods, a third of us believe in an authoritarian God, a quarter believe in a benevolent God, a quarter have a distant God, and the rest, a critical God.  Whichever of these gods we have is a higher predictor of our political and moral attitudes than is our religious tradition. 

So what does it mean to be a Christian? 

When my neighbor sees me, what does she think my life consists of? 

How does she imagine I shape my world, or operate within it? 

Differently enough from her that she finds it necessary to apologize to me if she says anything critical about religion, clearly.  But would she be surprised to know my own Christianity looks really different from my parents’ or my siblings, or the other Christians on our street, or other Christians in my own denomination, or even that our faith looks different within a single congregation?  

How do we know what to believe, how to live, what to follow? 

How do we know what God is really like?  

Do we just pick the version of God that sounds the best and go with that? 

What about the one that connects most to whatever childhood trauma or psychological issues I’m working through at the moment?  So I have a “distant God” until my guilt or shame conjures up a “critical God,” and then I soothe myself with with a “benevolent God” who suits me just fine till I mess up and then the “authoritarian God” kicks in?  

It’s all very confusing, what we humans have done with the whole idea of following Christ.  It seems it can mean anything people make it mean, as long as they can make a good case for it.  Does it mean adding things to my life?  Like prayer and good works and reading my bible? Does it mean subtracting things from my life? Like gossip and sex and drinking and lying?  

How do we know when we’ve arrived?  How can we measure if we are doing it correctly? The whole thing has become very complicated.

“In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.  He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did knot know him.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it."  

The book of John begins this way just a few verses before our text.  It goes on to say, The word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory… full of grace and truth.”

How do we recognize God? How do we follow?  The first disciples in John are told, “Look! There’s the lamb of God, there is the one.”  

And they followed Jesus. They let their curiosity lead. 

They didn’t know what they were doing yet; they were just awakened to the possibility of something. They were looking, so they kept looking, kept watching.

And Jesus turns and sees them.  He sees them.

And then he asks them, “What are you looking for?”

And all these conversations are going on at many levels at once. 

They scramble for a response. How to keep the conversation going…“Teacher," they say, “where are you staying?”

And Jesus answers the question beneath the question, the one they are really asking but maybe don't have words for, the reason they’re looking, their deep longing and hope and curiosity, and he says, “Come and see.” Come find out.

So they do.  They spend the day with him; it says, they abide, they remain, they loiter with no agenda in particular. They sabbath with the Son of God, hanging out listening, talking, sharing food, and space alongside each other. Watching and listening, being heard and seen. 

They find Jesus and they are found.  

They go from looking to seeing. 

And the next day they tell a couple of others, We have seen; you should come and see too!

“He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; and yet the world did not know him.” 

God is in the world, right here among us.  

The Church is the community who sees.  Disciples, Christians, followers of Christ, we seek to see God right in the midst of it all, right here.  To see Jesus. 

And we need each other for this.  Because not all of us see all the time; in fact, most of us don’t see much of the time. 

We forget to look. We forget to listen.  Or we’re just learning again how to.  But because we keep inviting each other, Come and see, we keep taking turns getting glimpses. By being in this together we go from looking for Jesus out there to seeing Jesus right here.  

Rowan Williams says being a disciple is a state of being.  It’s not a belief system or a list of behaviors or doctrines to subscribe to. It’s a willingness to live attentive, expectant, awaiting the action of God in the world, trusting it is always about to occur.

And then it’s submitting to that.  Letting it lead you.  Hanging out where Jesus hangs out. Which is both with the outcast, and with the Father – that is, really seeing those around us and sharing their place, being pulled out of our comfort and self protection towards each other – the other that might be most challenging for us.  

And resting in the love of the Father to the Son, the unconditional and without end love that flows inside the Trinity.  That’s the basis of prayer – to simply be as present as possible, and accept that God is already present right here with you, and then being in that love and listening with your being, open to what might come next.

A disciple is a learner. Williams says, and what we are learning is “how to be a place in the world where the act of God can come alive.” 

This is what we are learning. This is what God is doing to us.  Making our lives into a place in the world where the act of God can come alive.  Making us alive, and making us into participants in the resurrection power of Christ as it brings life to others, to the world.  

Being a disciple is living with attentiveness, ready and willing to act in love, expectant that God will act, and show will us what to say or do to join in God’s act.

This is not a religion. It’s allowing Jesus to come into our own death experiences and bring us alongside others in theirs, trusting new life will emerge, and then watching for it to happen. It’s being seen by God, being asked by God, what are you looking for?And responding.

And when God speaks, when God acts, it transforms our images of who God is. It’s not a type of god or a type of belief; it’s a living conversation with our Maker that remakes us.  The Holy Spirit reconnects us, to God and each other. 

I upped the awkward last night by excusing myself early from the conversation because I needed to go home and finish my sermon.  This neighbor asked, “What are you going to preach about?” 

And after she pressed me I told her about our question for the year – Who is God and what is God up to?  And she said, “I think God must be disappointed in us for how we’ve been treating each other lately.”

And I answered, “I believe God is always here, in every moment doing something, even right here.” I even gestured around the party, where groups of people chatted and ate, a band played music while a few people danced, and children ran around laughing and yelling.  

I continued, “And we can try to learn to pay attention under the surface, to notice how we already belong to God and one another and join in.”  

Her response was, “I’m with you.  It’s all about community, right?  It’s all about community.” 

And almost back to my house, in the middle of the sidewalk, I blurted outloud to myself, “No! That’s not it! It’s not just all about community!” And I felt frustrated that I hadn’t gotten to the heart of it. Because the heart of it is deeper, and unknowable, and something I couldn’t really explain.

GOD IS HERE, already doing something.  There is something bigger and wilder, not in our control, not ours to manipulate, or grasp even, or get right or screw up.  It’s beyond what our minds can comprehend or our bodies could contain.  Our hearts’ deepest longing cannot begin to sink to the depths of this, our most euphoric joy and most soul-rending sorrow are a finger dipped in the punch bowl of God.   

And when I had looked around the party, and suggested that God was right there, for just a moment my discipleship flared up, a little “what if?” sparked inside me. What if God does something right here? Right now? In one of these conversations? What if there is a moment that changes the trajectory of a life? That sets someone free? A word that brings unexpected healing?  A door that opens to new hope or possibility?An inexplicable flash of love and belonging that sets off a journey? It could happen at any moment.  It doeshappen at any moment; somewhere it is happening, even in this very moment right now. 

What makes us followers of Christ is that we expect that Jesus might do something at any moment, and that he might involve us.

So do we let things go?  Of course! 

Whatever clogs our view of what Christ might be doing, whatever blocks our path of participating in love when we are summoned to do so, we let those things go.  They are keeping us from the full and joyful life we are called to.  The harder we hang onto them, the more likely they are blocking our view of God, and the more clearly we will see and freer we will be to participate if we let them go.

Do we add things? Of course! Whatever helps us to both look and see, to both listen and hear where God is and what God is doing.  We are given witnesses of who God is and what God does in scripture and in each other’s lives, so let’s spend some time in those places.  Purposely adding things that take away barriers, deceptions and distractions– practices that clear us out and focus us and keep us present, like prayer and silence and stillness, these help us to be disciples, they help us to see Jesus.

What version of God do we go with?  It doesn’t matter.  They’re all two dimensional projections of god made in our image.  They will all be crucified when the real God encounters us. Start somewhere. God promises, when you seek me you will find me.  So seek. Look.

Which denomination is right? None of them! They’re all just structures, built around ideas which are built around a shared desire to know and serve God. They get some stuff right and lots of stuff wrong.  So pick one and begin.

Join a church. Find the disciples. Be a disciple. Let go the things that keep you from Christ, add in the things that lead you to Christ. And watch and listen for the living God, who might intervene presently, and who may summon you to act in love at any moment.  

How do we know when we have arrived?  

There is no arriving, there is only abiding.  

And if we are worried about measuring if we’re doing it correctly, we are focusing our watching and listening in the wrong direction.

Being a disciple is “being where you are in order to be changed.”  This is thrilling and terrifying. Over and over it puts us to death and raises us to new life.  This being changed is never finished, but it’s also not ours to finish. God does this in us. 

What is ours to do is to be where we are. To expect God to act. To assume the Holy Spirit will change us.  To practice paying attention.  Something is about to break at any moment.  (Maybe even be in the middle of a party!)  And when it does, maybe we will see it, and perhaps we will let Jesus involve us in whatever that might be.  

Amen.

(This season, our congregation is reading Rowan Williams' Being Disciples: Essentials of the Christian Life, and drawing from it for our worship and Sunday school.  This chapter was: Being Disciples. Next up: Faith, Hope, and Love).