Why?

When faced with great loss, Why? is often the first question.
It is neither a request for information nor is it a request for an explanation.  Applying the laws of logic to a situation of loss only serves to minimize and objectivize the wrenching hurt.

Why? is an existential question.  Why is there such pain in this world?  Why has the world conspired to bring such tragedy to this person at this time? 

And, How?  How am I going to go on with my life: washing dishes, and getting gas, and mowing the lawn with such a great sorrow on my heart?  When?  When will I be able to breathe freely again?  When will I laugh again?

Theologians will discuss and explain knowing that their explanations will bring no comfort.  Comfort comes from God - and from all those in this world who reach out in love and offer to hold the one who sorrows until they can see the sun rise again.  That was one of the gifts of Easter morning: the sunrise at the Son's rising.

Beneath the cross of Jesus....

"Beneath the cross of Jesus, I long to take my stand.

The shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land

A home within a wilderness, a rest upon the way,

from the burning of the noontide heat and burdens of the day."  ELW 338

The cross is not a place to hide from this world.  Rather it is here that we find truth: our own weakness and the strength of Christ's love.

You Can't Go Home Again. Really.

"You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ...
 back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ...
back home to places in the country,
back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time ..."  Thomas Wolfe You Can't Go Home Again

This applies to the church.
As powerfully present and spiritually enlightening those days of old might have been, today is today.  When all our effort is given over to re-capturing the past ('going home') we have turned a deaf ear and blind eye to God's work among us: renewing, resurrecting, welcoming, making whole.

God's home in Jesus lies ahead of us.  Come follow where Jesus leads.

Who's bearing fruit?

A fig tree is found barren; the owner of the orchard gives it one more year to bear fruit. Barreness and bearing fruit are easy to spot in a fig tree. 

What about our lives?

And the house on the sand went......

The wise man built his house upon the rock.  Not because it was raining.  Not because there were storm clouds in the sky, but because he was wise.  Rain will come, storms will cause floods.  The rock is a better place to be.  Plan ahead.  Or as Jesus would say, "Repent."

Jesus says, "Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them is like a wise man who built his house upon a rock."  Mt 7.23

Listening, obeying, doing, repenting.....all this stuff leads a wise person to build their house on a rock.  Oh yes, and that rock is Jesus.

Long and winding road

"My thoughts are not your thoughts nor are my ways your ways."  Isaiah 55.8

Therein 'lies the rub'.  Are we faithfully following or deliberately detouring?

Whose song is playing in our head?  Whose desire is defining our days?

Whose servant are we?

Wrong turns and Dead Ends

Your GPS is insistent that you turn left.  There is no street to turn left on; or it is one way; or it ends at the Syracuse Airport.  The GPS is certain it is right.  Not!

Walking the life of faith is never clearly marked and we are too facile at reprogramming our God Positioning System so that it leads where we want to go.  We turn a deaf ear to God's prompting to go a different way; we pay no attention to the insistent voice which says, "re-calculating" again and again.  Our arrival at a dead end is often a total surprise to us.

So it was for Israel.  Even their diligent attention to faithfulness involved turning a deaf ear to Jesus.  In the end, Jesus weeps over Jerusalem and their temple is left to them forsaken.  It was sad, but not the last word. (Luke 13.31ff)

The last word belongs to God and is revealed on Easter morn.  God was busy 're-calculating' for the sake of the world God loves.  Listen. Watch. Follow.

Lament

   Lament: to express deep grief or regret....so deep it comes from the soul and has the potential to undo us.  The kind of grief God knows and is willing to help us bear.  We cry out, "Lord, how long?" and Jesus replies, "Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest."  Peace to those who lament this day.

Look v. see

To 'look' is to take in through the eyes.
To 'see' is to take in through the heart and mind.  It is about understanding.

In the case of Jesus, 'seeing' meant 'knowing' - a Spirit empowered kind of knowing.  Those who 'saw' Jesus understood him to be God's very special messenger.  Those who simply looked upon his face or his ministry saw nothing more than another street corner magician or rabblerouser. 

Andrew said it all in the Gospel of John when he invited his brother, "Come and see."
The invitation  still holds today.

The look of temptation

I think 'temptation' is better understood visually than with any choice of words I can find.  Of course, I will preach on it 'cuz that's what I'm called to do, but I offer this to you.......

or this

.  "nuf said.

We don't even know.....

"We don't even know what our sin is."

I had brought ashes to this wise woman whose spiritual presence calms and strengthens me.  We talked about the ritual of ashes on Ash Wednesday and how Lent begins with a good, comprehensive confession.  Then she said,

"When I think about it, I think we don't even know what our sin is."

We don't, of course, because we cannot see all the harm we have done to others: the snarky comment, the impatient sigh, the offhanded criticism. Add to that the good that we failed to do.

I know that all of this is covered in the official, traditional confession, but it was such a powerful statement from a gentle, loving, diligent person of faith that it caught me up short.

"We don't even know what our sin is." 

Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.

Ash Wednesday & Lent in Two Minutes

I've got ashes on my forehead

ASHES

i got ashes on my forehead and
i'm trying hard to learn
this dust that i have started from
is where i shall return
and i will follow out of love
'cause there is nothing i can earn
i got ashes on my forehead
and i'm trying hard to learn

sometime in the dead of winter
this Wednesday rolls around
we got purple on the altar
we got snow upon the ground
and this world starts spinning slower
and we sing some quiet songs
facing our mortality and
all that we done wrong

forty days in the wilderness
forty days on the ark
driving home this evening
i can still trace the mark
everybody sees the big sun setting
everybody rides the hearse
yeah, but you can't build up nothin'
'til you knock down somethin' first

i got ashes on my forehead and
 i'm trying hard to learn
this dust that i have started from
is where i shall return
and i will follow out of love
'cause there is nothing i can earn
i got ashes on my forehead
and i'm trying hard to learn

from Jonathan Rundman, released 03 January 2012

      Available from I Tunes.   Thank you Jonathan Rundman for this.     

A Community of Faith

First, a community.  A gathering which experiences a connection amongst the members; a group of people who are intentionally gathered for a shared purpose.

Congregations can be corporate entities or they can be communities (who have corporate/legal structure).  When a congregation is a community, people know that they are a part of something bigger than themselves - which is capable of things beyond the individuals' capacity.  They know that they contribute to the bigger whole.

Here is the take of one 'de-churched' individual (once active, now not) speaking especially about church leaders:

“What I value now is proximity. The only leaders I care to hear are those willing to know me and be known. Not in some official capacity over Starbucks with their church credit card in hand. But with a friend, a person living honestly in their own right with no agenda or ‘line’ to keep--but possessing the strength of character to have their own voice, doubts and convictions.”

All of which leads to the second word, faith.  Faith is not a destination but a journey, and for us it is a journey empowered by the Holy Spirit in the discipleship of Jesus Christ.  We have folks all along the road: at different points, with different motivations and different understandings, but what we share is the trust that this God in Jesus Christ is the way.  So when we gather as a community, we share our stories of faith, we seek ways to incarnate our convictions and help others, we confess our shortcomings in the presence of others who believe.

We are a community of faith, by God's calling in Christ Jesus and powered by the Holy Spirit.
For this we continually give thanks.  

A difficult truth

"Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return"

That is the Church's way of reminding you that we will all die; this life is fragile, a gift.  No amount of running around or running for exercise will save you from this universal end.  You will return to dust.

Wednesday we will use ashes as the starting point in our Lenten journey; 40 days of renewing, deepening, and stretching our relationship with the Creator of All. 

Come and enter into the season of Lent where you can discover again for the first time the love of God.

Sabbath

Too often we focus on what we must give up when, in fact, Sabbath is about what you will gain when you embrace the gift.  God isn't trying to sell us something; God is trying to gift us with something: quiet, peace, reflection, renewal and possibly even joy. 

Start small (the time during that first cup of coffee in the morning) but be intentional; open yourself to the voice of the Divine.  Listen for God.  Soak up God's eternal love.  Even as your coffee wakes you up, this time with God will fill you up.

Shalom Shabbat.

You are my beloved.....

 

Where do you have to go to remember that you are someone's 'beloved'?   A parent's lap?  A spouse's embrace?  A cup of coffee with a friend?  In your grandmother's kitchen?

Jesus was down in the water of the Jordan River the first time he heard God's blessing, 'You are my beloved.'  The second time he was on the top of a mountain.  I suspect that when he was on the cross he strained to remember those moments when God's love and embrace held him close. 

No matter our age, each of us faces a moment when knowing that we are beloved of someone calms our soul.  Never forget: you are always God's beloved.  Listen for God's voice calling you home.

Mountaintops

 

Some of the most spectacular views are those from the tops of mountains.  From the mountaintop we can see the ebb and flow of the terrain below us, the lights and shadows, the range of colors.  From the mountaintop we have a slighter better handle on how this world fits together and there is a sense of relief as we  literally stand above the pressures and demands of this world.

Often we have no desire to go back down.  We want to hold onto this moment of peace - clarity - freedom for as long as we can.  Although, even as we have that thought, we can feel it slipping away from us 'till we are grounded again.

But no one can take that moment away from you; it will rest in some pocket of memory, available for that time when, more than anything, you need it. 

So it was for Peter, James and John when Jesus gifted them with a glimpse of the glory of God, a glory that would be his only after the cross.  They didn't understand what was happening when it was happening, while at the same time, they could feel it slipping away.  On the top of that mountain, Jesus gave those disciples a sight to carry them whenever the world smacked them around.  Luke 9

Have you been 'to the mountaintop' where the view is so clear that God is present?

Obey = to hear deeply

Wonderful insight can be gained, I have found, when the origins of a word are researched.  Take the word 'obey' for example. 

Obey is a word that is much out of fashion these days.  We live in a world that foolishly (at least from my perspective) has attempted to erase the borders between those who hold positions of authority and power and those who are expected to respond - dare I say, obey - the directives of such persons.  Whether we are talking boss/employee or parent/child or teacher/student, somehow in the name of equality we as a society have pretended that true differences do not exist.  We pretend that all things are collaborative.  Have you ever tried to collaborate with a testy two year old or a cranky teen?

Which gets me back to 'obey' from the Latin obe dire or 'to listen deeply'.  As a person of faith, this insight points me to my relationship with God where if I 'listen deeply' I will obey.  But it also works with a parent and child.  When the child listens deeply to the parent, they obey - not just by definition, but as the response to the parent.  We 'obey' not because the other is bigger or more powerful, but because, at the heart of how this world works, we enter into a deep relationship based on listening and then allowing that listening to turn to action.  When leadership works at its best, this deep listening/relationship is fostered at every level and 'obeying' loses its negative spin.

Perhaps we have removed 'obey' from our lexicon because we are fairly poor at listening as well.

Listen

Really, it should be Listen!  In a 21st century world where sound is ever present (the music pumped into space while I am pumping my gas is my current annoyance), we hear a lot, but listen to little.

Yet, it is a command as clear as can be, from God, to disciples everywhere, "Listen to him!" and it comes to us from the mountaintop of the Transfiguration.  We will be listening to that story from Luke 9 this coming Sunday.

What does Listen involve?  Leaning forward and engaging the speaker?  Turning off our phones, clearing our minds and hands of distractions and focusing?  Giving thought to the words, considering the implications, reviewing the intersections between the speaker's words and our lives?

I am fairly sure that this kind of Listening is more than just the acquisition of facts; it is active, visible, eventful at least to some small degree.  Sunday we will be commanded to Listen to Jesus - a command that sets up Jesus' teaching as authoritative - authoritative as in 'guideposts for your actions and life.'

It begins with the command to Listen; no less important that the command to Follow.  Wrapped up in these two commands is God's gift of new life, grace, wholeness, forgiveness, belonging through Jesus.  I pray you are Listening closely.