Cross and cathedral

Christianity has bequeathed to humankind some of the most beautiful architecture - gathering spaces where the worship of God may either soar or quietly listen for the Spirit to move.  It is in contrast to these gifts of beauty that the cross of Jesus stands, the cross that was the beginning of God's great revelation: nothing can separate God's beloved from God.  Nothing.  Not powers or principalities or military or economic might.  Nothing.  Not even death.

Not even death on a cross.  As a criminal.  As an enemy of the state.  As an outcast.  Even that can not wrest God's beloved out of God's hand.  Love will win.  Love will triumph.  Love will rise again.

That is the powerful message of the Gospel: the good news of Jesus Christ.  Not that he died, but that his death was not an end but a new beginning.  This is a beginning that is offered to everyone who faces down all the forces that will try to trample us.  These are the folks who face those forces with forgiveness, grace, reconciliation and the ever present reality that each one of us carries the same darkness and opposes God.

Those who follow this Jesus are called to carry that cross in their hearts - and on their backs.  The cross summons each of us to put to death all within us that feeds the forces of death: all that causes harm to our neighbor, all that keeps us from creating community with all who surround us.  The cross summons us to lay it down, strip it off, give it up.  Why?  because life in Jesus is greater than any power we now possess.

Jesus said, 'those who lose their life will find it' and if you wish to be my disciples then 'take up your cross and follow me'.  Jesus calls us into solidarity against the forces of darkness - those who rule from without and those which rule from within ourselves.

If you think that this gospel message has little in common with the cathedrals of Europe, you may be on to something.

Today we pray that we can walk as Jesus' disciples and embrace life, not for our own sake, for the sake of all of our neighbors.

Stewards of the Cross

It is often the outsiders who have the clearest vision. Unencumbered with years of group think and corporate ritual, they simply see - and what they see is stark and frightening.  It is often the outsiders who look on the cross at the center of our Christian faith and wonder at the insanity of it all.


What they see is the reality of the cross: an instrument of torture and death which people of faith hold high above their heads and claim as a symbol of a good and gracious God and frankly, they wonder if we have all lost our minds.  What they see is the power of this world crushing one lone, weak, vulnerable man. Even given the resurrection, they rightly wonder why we who believe would choose the cross as symbol of the holy man, Jesus and his ministry and teachings among his people.

These are good questions.  We who are stewards of this cross, keepers of the story, models of its teaching, followers of its Jesus, need to re-visit the unexpected message about power that is the cross of Jesus, the one we call the Christ.  What exactly happened there?  What does it tell us about the power of God who created heaven and earth, took on human flesh in Jesus, allowed the rulers of this world to do their worst, and yet who rises victorious and breathes new life into all of creation daily?

Well, the powers of this world aren't quite as powerful as they thought they were.  Dealing in fear and intimidation, oppression and violence, the powers of this world will crush, torture and starve their neighbors in order to get what they want.  The rulers of this world will leave children to die in the desert, behead folks who contradict their stories, and herd the unwanted ones into ghettos called Gaza until their spirit is crushed.

But in the end, the powers of this world only rule in this world and for the moment.  God rules eternally and does it with forgiveness and reconciliation and grace and healing and life.  In the end, Christ rose - leaving empty not only the tomb, but all the threats of those who would be king of the universe.

Out of Jesus' death, God shows us the power of life in God.  In the very darkness of a suffering death, God holds Jesus precious until life can be shown again.  When all is despair, God seeds hope.

We are stewards of this cross.

God's Work Our Hands

Sure is a catchy motto.  The ELCA hit a home run with this one because it succinctly says what it's all about.  Jesus was God's outreach of love to all creation.  Now, we are Jesus' outreach of love to all creation.  The Holy Spirit which powered Jesus' work, powers ours as well.

We are to continue God's mission in the world; to bring new life to our neighbors just as Jesus, God in the flesh, did during his ministry.  We are to help the lame to walk, to set captives free, to help the blind see.  We are to reach out to the suffering and give them both relief and hope.  We are to gather children into places of safety and nurture.  We are to feed the hungry - those hungry for food, and those hungry for acceptance, forgiveness, love....  We are to forgive ( a whole lot harder than feeding the hungry) - not once, but over and over because it takes all of us a long time to mend.  We are to bind up the wounded - veterans and the mentally ill, the addicted and the socially awkward, the victims of violence and the perpetrators of violence.

Well, I could go on and on.

Here is what we are not to do.  We are not to reject people who do not look, talk, smell, believe, act like us.  We are not to do violence in God's name.  We are not to abuse our 'enemies' because we feel justified.  We are not to carry our righteousness on our sleeve, flaunting what little we have in order to shame the others.

None of this is God's work.  It often comes from our hands, but it is not God's work.

Am I doing God's work today?  Now that's a good question to ask yourself.  Am I an agent of transformation?  Am I bringing light into someone's life today?  Am I life and not death to my neighbors?

God's Work.  Our Hands.  Sunday, September 7th.  We're going to go out and practice this work together and then gather for worship and praise God for all God's benefits to us.  God came to us in Jesus so we might know love.  Now we go to others so they might know the same thing.

Spell check? Upgrade? Transformation?

What hope do we bring to Jesus?

Critical question, this one.  What do we come to Jesus seeking?  In an active spiritual life, this question shifts over time and in view of circumstances.  At first our relationship might be no more than a 'vending machine' God:  send up your prayer and God dispenses the requested blessing.  As our lives get more complicated, it makes sense that our relationship with God becomes more complicated.  We ask harder questions.  We question the glib answers that folks throw around.  Any amount of time spent reading the Bible deeply will raise more questions than it will answer.  Over time we realize that the life of faith is a long journey and impacts the entirety of our day to day lives.

Perhaps if we look at three possible approaches to our Lord, you will be able to identify some of the ways we approach our relationship with Jesus. The Spirit is always calling us to go deeper, to love more, to live more generously, to forgive freely.  We tend to grow a little here (say in forgiving others) but our view of living generously lags behind.  Yet the Spirit is always calling.

Here are three (totally random) categories of 'life with Jesus.' I've been inspired by my computer.

Spell check.  We know how that wonderful program on our computers reminds us how to spell stuff we've forgotten and cleans up our typing so (most of the time) we get a coherent result.  In our faith life, when we only want a Spell Check relationship,  we simply turn to Jesus to take away the annoying even painful hindrances to our lives.  Make it a little easier.  Ease up on the problems. Keep us from suffering, make our marriage last, be sure Jenny gets on the varsity soccer team.   After that, Jesus, I'm fine and can manage on my own.

Upgrade.  Our faith life is a little sluggish; we're aware that there are problems whenever certain operations are attempted (not so good at helping the homeless; better at feeding the hungry).  So we look to Jesus to upgrade us to a newer version of 'Christian living.'  Make us a little kinder to our difficult relatives, a bit more compassionate so we don't feel so awkward at funerals.

Then there is transformation.  To empty out all the old files and re-boot with fully functional versions of all the operations God's grace filled kingdom includes.  Keep deleting the old files until they are purged.  Keep upgrading the working parts so they align with the work the Spirit is calling us to.  Cast out all magical thinking and fill me with the assurance of your presence, your acceptance and your love.  Shape me into your servant, please.

The Spirit is calling us into a transformed life; Jesus through his death and resurrection makes the transformed life possible.  God the Creator seeks transformation for all of creation.  No wonder it takes a lifetime of prayer to live fully into God's kingdom.  Keep on praying, my friends.

Somewhere over the rainbow

Robin William's death by his own hand has proved a great sadness for me, and from what I hear, so many others as well.  This man who could make you laugh exuberantly could not see a way to the next dawn.  The sadness in not just that his amazing talent is gone, but an even greater sorrow for the darkness which must have enveloped him and held him prisoner.  For him there was no hope that somewhere over the rainbow, the light would shine again. Or perhaps, that was his only hope, to let go of now and count on tomorrow.

Most of us think of death as the great ending - the final darkness, the fearful unknown.  For those who take their own lives, death is a release from a world of pain, and when that pain is depression, from the emptiness of nothingness that is at the same time an enormous weight.

 For Jesus, death was the doorway to God's great revelation: the power of love will win. This is our hope - that in the great eternal, love wins.

At worship this past Wednesday evening we listened to Mark's telling of Jesus' final hour, when darkness covered the sun and the hopes and dreams of many were crushed, when it appeared that darkness had the last word. We read no further because for many this night the followers and friends cannot see to the next dawn, or even further to that morning 3 days hence when God's love triumphs.

We stopped at the darkness trusting that Jesus would carry us on into a new light.  That is our hope, and there was a beautiful, crystal clear rainbow waiting for us as we left worship.  This is the Jesus story I want to share with people - the Jesus who stands with us in the deep darkness and then carries us into a new light.

For all who suffer this day we pray, Lord have mercy.

The WHOLE TRUTH, part 2

So.........telling the Whole Truth is confession.  There, I've said the word.  It is a powerful and frightening word.  I know because I have been frightened of it for a long time.  I knew I was playing with fire when I considered speaking the Whole Truth about myself to another, to someone I knew and who knew me.  I could almost not get the words out.......and the offense that so burdened me was also an affront to my beloved colleague who was listening to this, my first ever, personal confession of a specific sin.  This was a colleague I would sit and have coffee with in the days ahead and who might be hurt by what I was about to say.

So I get it.  It is an awkward experience.  So why do it?  Why not just rely on the Corporate Confession we share in worship most Sundays?  Why not simply talk about this issue alone, with God, as I pray?  Why take this intentional, and unnecessary step?  Because God was calling me to do just that.. to take this particular step at this time.

How can I explain that?  God laid it on my heart that I needed to walk into this area of fear in order to walk through it towards the totality of God's forgiveness for me.  I ignored God for a year.  But I had made a commitment to obey this call within a year, and in week 51 I finally arranged to meet with a colleague.

It was hard.  He was kind.  I'm glad I went ahead and did it.  Because I had done something so totally horrible that it needed to be said?  No, but because not saying it meant I was continuing to pretend that I wasn't 'that kind of person.'  It was so difficult that I was a bit put out when he said that in the end it really was a mundane sort of thing.  Mundane????  It took me 50 weeks to get to the place of even saying it aloud.  Yet together we talked about the walk of faith - that journey of trusting in God's love and being transformed by God's forgiveness.

It was one more step of understanding of what it means to be authentically me.  I believe that God has never asked me to be more than what I am - a child of God, created, broken, forgiven, redeemed, loved.  The more I grasp the power of that kind of relationship, the more free I am to simply serve others with joy.

That's why confession is good for the soul.  It sets you free.

The WHOLE TRUTH............

Speaking the Whole Truth is tough.  Not because we don't know the whole truth, but because we don't want others to know the Whole Truth.....especially about ourselves.  We don't want to have to say aloud what we did and what we did not do....not unless we can add excuses and explanations.

Think about it: having to own up to the truth about what we have done (yes, that includes that incident) and what we haven't done (yes, we can sin by not doing anything sometimes).  The Whole Truth is simply too much to say and too much to hear, and it leaves us too vulnerable.

So like the woman with the 12 year flow of blood, we try to sneak up behind Jesus and snatch out a hand to touch the hem of his garment and be relieved of our bleeding - that sinking sensation that we are less than we hoped we were and a lot more capable of nastiness than we wanted to imagine.  Jesus heals that woman who sneaked up from behind.....but he invited her to take the next step, to come forward and tell the Whole Truth.  It was then that she received a healing that made her whole and granted her salvation.

It was then that she lost her anonymity and became "Daughter".

So, now you know why you might want to risk telling the whole truth.  Then you can move from a simple healing, to a wholeness of person, to a relationship with God.  Then you can be called "Son" and "Daughter."

Pray about it.  Jesus is waiting for you.

Water into wine............

That story about Jesus at the wedding in Cana is pretty impressive.  You know the one, where Jesus turns water into wine.  Not just a glassful, but 6 jars holding 20-30 gallons each.  180 gallons of wine, and not the cheap stuff either.  It was a fine pinot grigio of a special blend (OK, I made that part up).  Everyone was surprised.

Well, not everyone.  The servants knew what had happened, who had changed water into wine.  The servants knew that this Jesus had amazing power.  The servants knew that Jesus could transform the most ordinary water into a fine sign of God's blessing in 180 gallons of wine.

This is our mission too.  To transform the ordinary into a sign of God's abundant blessing.  Not because we need a good glass of wine, but because our neighbor needs to know that God is present and God cares about even the most mundane of situations.  As the hands and feet of Jesus in the world, our work is to be change agents.....agents of transformation....agents of grace and peace and forgiveness.  This is our mission, the one we took up in the waters of baptism.

Doesn't it excite you just a little, to think that the power of the Spirit that flowed through Jesus in that backwater wedding flows through us too?  It's more than just serving a meal to someone who is hungry, it's laying claim to the power of God which is working through you.

We have already drunk the fine wine of God's presence in Jesus: we have tasted forgiveness, we have experienced acceptance, we have seen signs of resurrection.  Now we spread out into the world to offer this same fine wine to our neighbors near and far.

This is our mission: and it isn't at all impossible.

Give me de-caf

I really enjoy my morning coffee - just a cup or maybe two.  It signals the beginning of my work day.  No real surprise here.  I bet this describes lots of folks out there in America.

The quirk is this: I drink de-caf.  I don't drink the high test, get your heart pumping, rev you up for the day coffee.  I drink de-caf. I know, for many of you that doesn't even count as coffee.  Even Starbucks, coffee capital of modern suburbia rarely has freshly brewed de-caf (and here's a secret: de-caf goes bitter very quickly.  Drink it fresh brewed or skip it altogether.)

Faith on the other hand I take full speed ahead.  No de-caf there.  God's power is a fearful thing; that makes God god.

God and cancer

She has cancer.  It is very challenging, but she'd be the first to tell you that it's hard to keep a good woman down.  Some days, however, it is hard for this good woman to get up and out of bed to take care of the most mundane necessities of daily life.

In the midst of this illness she has seen God at work bringing her family closer to each other, expressing genuine concern for each other.  That alone warms her heart.  She has watched as the petty irritants that occupied so much of her son's conversation are forgotten and gratitude is being expressed more often.  This makes her grateful.  Not for the cancer, but for the God at work in the midst of the cancer.

I wonder, if it was I who was lying on that bed, allowing one form of poison to be pumped into my veins in order to 'save' me from another growing threat within my body....I wonder whether the faith that has sustained me so far would carry me through that particular valley of death.  Would I still be able to hear God and would I find comfort in God's presence?

I have no idea.  I don't think any of us do until we are looking at death face to face.  To whom will I cling?  What will bring me comfort and strength?  For now, I practice my prayers so I am well versed when I will need them so desperately.

She has cancer.  The cancer doesn't have her.  God has her, and it is a sight to behold.

God has opened my eyes............

Several events this summer (and it's only July 23rd) have caused me to think about what gives meaning to a person's life.

I was the guest at a party of folks I've known for decades and realized they had no interests beyond their front lawn and immediate family.  Don't get me wrong, they are nice enough folks, dutiful to relatives and generous (within their concept of generosity) when it is appropriate.  They have never been arrested nor are likely to be arrested.  They have no opinions on much of anything beyond who Mom loved best. They have a beautiful home and solid bank account (of which they are proud).  But they don't think beyond themselves and their own family dynamics.  There is no issue that they deem important.  They do no charity work.  They do nothing to improve the world/state/community in which they live.

Who lives like that?  Who isn't touched by some cause: curing cancer, sending kids to camp, teaching others some craft, improving the look of the local town square.  Who lives without any concern for anything beyond themselves?

For folks like these, who I am and what I do and how I live is as foreign as alien invaders from Mars.  I think if you asked them about me they would say, 'Well, she goes to church. I'm not really interested in that stuff.  I believe in God, but.....'

But it is much more than that.  When I am with them I realize that God has opened my eyes to a world that others cannot see and a way of living that others do not comprehend.  I wonder what God is calling me to do?

What about you?