Generosity....a key to living free

There are few things we can do in this world which will give us greater personal satisfaction that an act of generosity.

I don't have any scientific proof.  I just know.

I know that giving allows us the opportunity to be happy for someone else, to participate in their joy.  Giving expands our world; I think this is because we realize that we are in the position to give, and ain't that grand!

You'll know when it is true generosity when you can respond to any thanks with, "No, really, I was glad to be able to do it.  Nothing special."

Living a resurrection life in this, the season of Easter, looks very much like living generously.

Charity...go the distance

Worried that this might be another way to 'make you feel guilty' about your charitable giving?  Not.

I recently heard a TED talk about the potential for social change through charitable giving.  You can watch it here:     http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong.  It's about 18 minutes long and worth the time, but here is what I took away from it:

People are weary of being asked to do the least

instead of being asked to measure the full distance of their potential 

for the issues and people they care deeply about.

There are two parts to this I would like to raise up.  

One, people want to be asked to do more.  To walk further, to work more hours, to recruit more team members, to give more money even.  They want to be pressed to the 'full distance of their potential'. They want to discover what the full measure of their potential is.  They want to be deeply involved.

Two, this only applies to issues and people they care deeply about.

Start at number two.  Find an issue or group of people that you can care deeply about.  Not half-heartedly ($10 here and there) but with your whole heart.   These are the people who, if you had all the money and power in the world, you would improve their lives.  You would fix it.  You might come up with 3 or 4 issues but choose one.

                        Then put every skill, talent and ounce of energy you have into that.  

Along the way you can give small measures of support to the many other issues and people for which you care.  (Really, what's $10 to many of us?)  But choose one and go all out for it.  

An empty tomb and a risen Christ

Holy Week:  a week of indescribable events and violence that we rightly shield from the very young. The cross is its symbol.  Many, even among people of faith, wish to sidestep the unfolding suffering of this week.  Suffering makes us so uncomfortable we will paper over not only our neighbor's sorrow, but our own as well. 

We do the same with the Easter announcement of resurrection.  We paper over our incomprehension of resurrection with Easter bunnies and chocolate eggs and motifs of Spring.  With a moment’s thought we realize that God is claiming something outrageous on Easter morning..... and we know that Easter bunnies are nothing but child’s play. 

That first Easter the disciples are no more able to comprehend that occurrence than they understood the cross on Friday.  Dare we hope that the promise of Jesus, ‘where you are I will be also’ can be trusted even into death?

Yes, we dare. 

 In the middle of our deepest darkness, we dare to cling to an empty tomb. We dare to hope.  Darkness, evil and death do not have the last word.  We dare to hope . 
 Death is not the end but a new beginning into a life we can’t imagine.  We dare to hope.  .

Even this is not the end.  Once we grasp that what we see is not God’s ultimate reality, then we can walk into the deepest darkness of disease, evil, even death and know that God is waiting there for us with a resurrection. 

Our hope is not a maybe or a possibility: it is an empty tomb and a risen Christ.  

Easter eggs?

They are fun.  They are pretty.  They are even nutritious, but they have nothing to do with Easter.  Just so we are clear about that.

Because if a hard boiled egg is all we have to fight sin, death and the devil, then we are in real trouble.  If egg salad is the best we can do when we have grievously wronged another person, then what do we do?  When you are working for justice in the world, just where do brightly colored eggs come in?

He is risen!  Death does not have the last word.  That's the victory we claim.

Waiting in the darkness......

Waiting in the darkness is the hardest time.  The darkness surrounds you and you cannot see the end.  You cannot see any possibility of good coming out of the horror of the now.  You cannot see a new way forward.  You cannot see your hand in front of your face.

               "...even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day,
                             for darkness is as light to you." the psalmist writes. 139.11

In our darkness, we lean into this, hoping, praying that it is Divine Truth: that even the deepest darkness is light to you.  We cling to this most especially when all reason fails us and despair hovers.

This is the darkness of Easter Saturday. The women waited in the darkness.....fully expecting Jesus was dead, forever.  The women waited in that darkness....before the bright light of Easter sunrise.  Before the announcement that He is Risen.  Before the possibility of resurrection becomes, well, a possibility.  Before all of that joy and rejoicing is the darkness of Easter Saturday when the tomb lies quiet and hope is shredded.

If today is your day of dark waiting, then my prayer for you is "hold on." The light is coming, and even the darkness is held in God's embrace.

Wrenched away.......Good Friday

I remember the day he died.  I was sure the earth had stopped spinning and yet it tilted under my feet.  The sun no longer gave warmth.  I had to remind myself to inhale for breath no longer came unbidden.

In those moments, hours, even days following, my life seemed a journey to the center of the earth, where chaos rules and the order of this world is unknown.  Someone had taken all that I knew and ripped in in two, from top to bottom and a new reality came flooding in.   Nothing had changed - horns honked and children laughed and groceries needed to be bought - and yet everything had changed.  Fear and dread would startle me awake in the wee hours of the morning.  I wanted to find a place to hide away, to curl into myself, to learn how to breathe again, to figure out how this could have happened.

The world shifted in an emergency room in a strange town.... 

       and on a cross on a hill called Golgotha. 

         Death for the sake of a new creation.  

A Maundy Thursday reflection

Who is it that is working under the table tonight?

Kneeling in the dust, breathing in the stink of sweaty unwashed feet?

Doing the work that no one else would voluntarily stoop to do?  The work of the lowliest of slaves?

It certainly is not someone in middle management, a person with degrees and diplomas.  It is not someone looking for creative and fulfilling work.  It is not someone with investment accounts and IRAs.

No it is that class of workers who lack papers and fear a knock on the door from the INS.  It is those workers who are paid in cash and often fail to receive what has been promised, who have no protection from the law.   It’s the sex workers we distain and the garbage workers we are sure to stay upwind of.

Not just those who work off the grid, it is also those who clean our offices at night and work in the freezing cold and boiling summer sun.  It’s those car wash kids who forget to dry off that last window or the pizza delivery guy who has someone else’s order.  It’s those workers who know how to say, “Would you like fries with that?”

These are the folks who are out of sight and therefore out of mind, at least until something is late or wrong or lost.  They are the invisible ones, flipping burgers, mowing our lawns and washing the feet of the elderly at our nursing homes, and washing us in the hospitals.  They are the laundry workers and migrant farm workers.  These are the ones we don’t want our children to marry or our grandchildren to grow up to be.

We have worked hard to get where we are and we don’t want to put aside our honors, accomplishments, pride and comfort.  We don’t want to put aside our fancy robes like Jesus set aside his outer garment and  stoop under the table with Jesus to help him wash the feet of those who called him Rabbi and Lord….the ones who would abandon, deny and betray him.  It was all well and good for Mary to anoint Jesus’ feet – it was her place, her job.  But not us.

Yet Jesus says, “If I your Lord and Teacher have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet….I have come not to be served but to serve….If you know these things you are blessed if you do them.”

So at the center of our confession is this:  we don’t want to leave the table to wash the unwashed, to serve the outcasts, to bring comfort to the unmentionables.  We not only don’t want to do this work, we don’t want to be reminded that this work needs to be done.

Jesus breaks the bread at the table and tells his disciples, “This is my body given for you”   He wasn’t talking just about the cross.  He gave his body first under the table with the invisible ones, doing the dirtiest of the work. 

Those who join him at the table are called to join him under the table as well.

Maundy......a command I give

Maundy.........probably from the Latin mandatum the word for command or commandment.  It is the first word of the phrase "mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos" the Latin translation of "A new commandment I give unto you.  That you love one another as I have loved you."  John15

Maundy Thursday.  The day of Christ's commandment to love.

 How do you command someone to love?  How do you know when you have fulfilled such a commandment when love is as deep as the ocean?

Perhaps you start by getting your feet wet......and perhaps by washing the feet of another. Figuratively and literally.  Bend over and start at the bottom where every human foot encounters all the detritus, trash and dirt and seriously icky stuff of this world.  Start your loving there at the bottom.  Find whatever the equivalent of washing a foot is in your world and do it.

It will require putting down the stuff we drag around with us, our troubles, our agendas, our importance and our ego.  We will have to put down our smartphones and satchels, pull the ear buds out of our ears.  We will have to carry water and find towels.  We will have to get all. the. way. down.

Jesus loved his disciples before he washed their feet and washing their feet wasn't the lowest he was willing to go to embody God's love for God's creation.  Tomorrow he would take on Rome and a cross.

But let's start at a simpler place.  Let's try washing feet and see how we do with that.

Prayers for Healing

A woman walked to the synagogue.  It is as unremarkable beginning to a story as one could imagine.  She was going about her own business.

This woman who was crippled, bent over, unable to stand straight. But that was not remarkable in and of itself since she had been that way for 18 years.  In a time when a lifespan was 30 that half a lifetime.

Then Jesus saw her, called her over and laid his hands on her.  Immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.

Just like that.

We have no idea how many times she had implored the Lord to intervene in her crooked existence, to ease her suffering, to make her way easier in the world.  Millions of prayers are lifted every day for just this kind of healing......or at least for the embrace of a loving God until healing comes.

On this day, this crippled, bent over, unable to stand straight woman received her answer to the first.  It appears she was as surprised as everyone else.  But she knew it was God, because who else could it have been?

Today we pray for healing and strength and comfort for all those in need.  Pray with us.

Death, resurrection and a good friend

Tomorrow we will bury a good friend of Luther Memorial.


Shirley led us in worship and led us in laughter.  She supported the choir with a wonderful bass and supported the work we did together.  You could count on her to pitch in even when she had to take a seat to fold clothes at 10 Tons of Love.  She was there, she was fun and she was a friend.


Tomorrow we will remember the gifts she shared so generously with others.  We will claim the promises of her baptism for her.  We will sing (lots) and I expect shed a few tears, tell stories of her mischief as a child and adventures as an adult.  Tomorrow we will say good-bye.

Tomorrow we will confront all that has meaning for us as believers in this the holiest of weeks.  Shirley knew Jesus and trusted in a merciful God.

Tomorrow we will have to trust once again, for Shirley's sake, for our sake and for the sake of all of creation.  We dare to hope that because he lives she will live too.

We dare to hope.

Holy Week: death and resurrection

As a culture we tend to move quickly over suffering.  Until great loss has entered your life, it is easy to mouth the (useless) advice of 'let it all go' and 'it's time to move on.'  Deep suffering, deep grief leave real scars on your heart and your life. 

Certainly the disciples fast lost hope as they watched Jesus die.  We know about that kind of gathering darkness, where our breath becomes more shallow and our will begins to fade.  Despair hovers.

So it is no surprise that even people of faith are prone to leap frog over the dark events of Holy Week so to take up the bright beauty of Easter morning.  Yet without the stark darkness of death, the miracle of resurrection loses its capacity to astonish.  


We know suffering.  Jesus knew suffering.  This is what binds us together in reality.  Walk with Jesus this week and consider what God might be saying to you about life, about death and about love.

Holy Week: death and resurrection

Holy Week is the center of my spiritual life.  The slow movement liturgically from Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, to his last meal with his disciples, to the Garden of Gethsemane for prayer, through his arrest to his final hours on a cross.  I seek no triumphal or dramatic rendition of the events; for me these days are a time of spiritual contemplation and deep meditation.  The stark reality of Holy Week stands in complete contrast to the incomprehensible surprise and promise of Easter morning.

I believe that embracing the days of Holy Week will enrich even as it challenges your spiritual life. But there is no law here; come if you want.  Holy Week is gift, not obligation.

Service for Healing                Wednesday     7 pm

Maundy Thursday                 Thursday         10 am and 7 pm

Good Friday                          Friday              Noon and 7 pm