An inconvenient faith.........

Ours is an inconvenient faith.  Take Jesus for example....

"....this Jesus of Nazareth leaving the convenient life of a town carpenter, going on to all he was and did - even to being betrayed by his nearest and dearest, and giving up his life to an excruciating death, healing the world of our brokenness, forgiving our sins, and reconciling us to God as the Christ, God's chosen one... out of God's love for us....a love that give us life eternal with God.

All this holy inconvenience becomes a blessing of life restored and renewed - God's promise, signed, sealed and delived - in the Resurrection of Our Lord from death to life on Easter.

What a glorious outcome that was, the first step in a journey as Christ followers onto the path of our inconvenient faith!"

Pr. Janet Fechner shared this message through the St. Michael's (Camillus) newsletter.  Thank you for this wonderful word.

at last, the most needed wisdom....

"teach me wisdom in my secret heart"

Now we get to the hard stuff.  No, it's not broken and unrealized dreams or the fear of dying that qualify as the hard stuff.  It's the sins.

You might not use that word 'sin.'  So call it whatever you want; it doesn't matter.  I am talking about those things which we have done - really and truly - we could give it a date and a time - have done.  Those things we want no one to know about.

They are at home in the back corner of our heart, mixed with broken dreams and big time fears.  They are stored there for our review in the wee hours of the morning when sleep eludes us.  We hide them away because we don't want anyone to know that 'we are that kind of person who does that kind of thing.

If we give these sins names, if we speak them out loud, we acknowledge their truth.  We acknowledge our truth and the illusion that at the center we are good people is forever gone.

Within the Lutheran tradition, personal confession which takes face to face with a pastor is an infrequent practice.  Yet confession offers a rare opportunity to dredge those sins from the back of our heart and speak the truth about them.  Until the truth is spoken, there will be no resolution.

Confession is a gift that is too rarely opened.  When I speak truth to my confessor, when I lay my sin right out there in the middle of the table, I am about to experience a new beginning.  Exposed to the light, this truth has ramifications.  I can no longer claim that I am not the kind of person who.....   I can no longer claim that I would never.....  Because I am, and I did and now someone else and I both know the truth.

There it lies, this sin of mine. You can see the risk of this as well as I.  What if the one I have brought this to is repulsed?  What if there is no word of grace to be said?  What if?

But if you watch closely, you will see my confessor taking his hand filled with grace and covering over the sin which lies between us.  Forgiveness covers the truth, and takes all the power out of it. This forgiveness sets me free.  My sin will always be my sin, but it will now have no power over me.   No longer do I have to watch my back, worried that someone will discover my truth.  I can breathe.  I can forgive others.  I can clean out that corner of my secret heart and get about God's work.

God has known all along and has desired to set me free. "come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest."  God has known and God loves us still.

"teach me wisdom in my secret heart"

Perhaps the time has come for you to pull all that stuff out from your secret heart and lay it to rest in Christ. There is no better time than this week we call holy.

in my secret heart

"....teach me wisdom in my secret heart..."  Ps51.

The ancient sages know about the secret heart - that corner of our most inner being where we squirrel away any number of things.  No, that's not quite accurate; what we really do is press things into that corner of our inner being - press them hard and often, assuring that they will never find their way to the surface.

Our secret heart is the place where we secure our deepest secrets and our darkest selves.  It is the corner that we protect: from the light of day, from the casual inspection of onlookers, and from any attempts to dissect or discuss.

In this deep corner of our heart we store three things: our dreams, our fears and our sins.

Let's look at dreams.  When I was a child I spotted a wonderful white angora cardigan on a mannequin in a local shop window.  It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and I knew that if I wore it, I would be beautiful too.  In fact, I might even become the epitome of all dreams: a ballerina....or if that failed, a princess.  All I needed was that white angora sweater.

So I began to lobby for it, subtly of course.  My birthday was approaching so I mentioned that a new sweater would be nice.  White would make it versatile and I had seen so many beautiful ones.  I never missed a chance to point out this wonderful concoction in the store window.  When the birthday box came, it was the right size and shape.  It was a white sweater - a wonderfully practical utilitarian white cardigan sweater.

And my dream was shattered:  now I would never be a princess or a ballerina.  Now I would never know what it meant to be beautiful.  A dream was lost.  A dream no one knew I had.  A dream that wasn't remotely grounded in reality.  A dream that was based on a child's need to feel beautiful.  Gone without ever having been mentioned.

Those are the kinds of things we store in our secret heart.  Dreams like a happy marriage with 2 children.  Dreams like a job helping others.  Dreams like playing professional baseball.  Dreams like sending your children to college.

We tuck these dreams into our secret hearts and guard them from the light of day because the disappointment of their failure is more than we think we can bear.

So what is God's wisdom to us?  God says, "I know."  I know about your dreams, and hopes and disappointments.  I know.  Yet, I have planted within you talents and gifts and strengths and wisdom that are needed in this world to make it a better place, to ease the suffering of others, to build a safe place for all.  I need you just as you are - you are perfect for these tasks ahead.

"...teach me wisdom in my secret heart...."

a death we do not want

Today we talk about the death we do not want, we are not prepared for

Perhaps you have already lived that moment – it’s a stark memory, when we cried out at the very terminal reality of it all, when we asked “How are we to understand that this is God’s way?  How could God be present in any of this deep loss?”

There is no need for a metaphor in order for us to understand loss at this level.  We only have to look into a doctor’s waiting room, the local divorce court or that night when your son went out to the movies and it was the police who came to your front door two hours later.

There are all kinds of death for which we are not prepared and do not want.  Not now, not ever.  Instead, we want a life filled exclusively with healing and love, of striving and giving, and we want it all to end with grace and comfort.  We do not want bags of chemo or twisted metal.  We all want to go gently into that soft night without ever having to stand by and watch a loved one die in pain. 

We rebuke this image of pain and terror of which Jesus speaks.  It is the dying that we call evil; it is the pain that we call Satan and we want to push it behind us: in anger and resentment and fear. 

We want a savior who can rescue us from the terminal reality of life.  A healer who can mend our wounded, broken, hurting places.    We want a protector: a shield against the harshness of this world.

 

We want a confessor who will hear our truth with a forgiveness that exceeds our regrets and then sends us on to live with more grace, prepared to forgive others.

 And even should the death that we mourn be no more than a deep and real confession of our hidden brokenness, we don’t really trust the absolution.  We don’t trust the word of forgiveness. We have no idea how we are to live as a forgiven person,  when the truth of who we are continues to haunt us in the night.

We want a lover, one who will embrace the true nature of us – down deep.  Even though we do not believe that God in fact does love us and is calling us into real life when at the same time putting to death the stuff that we are absolutely certain we must have.

We want someone who can transform the truth of our lives into a full, abundant life: giving, receiving, loving, being loved….rather than resurrect an abundant life from the death of the old one.  It is the death of this hope, this dream that we can have all the sun without ever experiencing the night which we most fear and constantly reject.

We are afraid that somehow we will be left alone - naked - in a  dangerous world.  We are in this alone, it is us against the universe, and that which is broken cannot be fixed.

So we stand with Peter  and cry out NO!  You cannot leave us abandoned, orphaned, to our own devices. 

What are you talking about Jesus?  You CANNOT die or our hopes will end, and our striving will be for nothing.  Are you not the Savior – save me now, save me later.

Death cannot be a new beginning.  
Life cannot be found in death.    
I cannot find myself in death.
Death cannot fix anything.

You give us a promise, Jesus?

 A promise that on the third day all will be revealed…..life beyond the grave….life in the hands of this God? 

That is the promise?  In the end, it is easier to understand Peter than it is to trust in Jesus.  What do we do now?

Sermon delivered Lent 5 March 22, 2015 at Luther Memorial based on the text Mark 8.31-38.

The dark night of the soul

It is a place - a time - when the absence of God is the most palpable experience that you have of God.  It is the depth of the Good Friday cross.

The dark night of the soul is that moment when you realize that God is not a thing to be grasped, even in love.  Rather God can only be encountered 'as that which eclipses the reality of all other things.'  In this space you have moved beyond describing who God is and are left with saying what God is not.  God is not all light.  God is not easily understood.  God is not........

The dark night of the soul is a darkness that descends upon one.  There is no glowing light in the darkness; the only way out of the darkness is to travel through it.  Not striving.  Not ordering or arranging.  But breathing, existing, walking one step at a time listening for the whisper of the 'still small voice' from Elijah, or the weight of a presence that simply is.  There is no pathway neither to God or from God; only is exists.

There is no safe place; there are no promises; there is nowhere to settle.  It is unnerving yet also exquisite.  It is gift in the pain of uncertainty where you wander asking, "Where is the God I have known?"

It is not even a spiritual practice even as it is a powerfully spiritual experience.  It can not be sought; it finds you.  "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God" the writer of Hebrews tells us.

Yet in this deepest darkness, God is. Just possibly the deepest darkness is necessary to truly encounter God. Or, it is in the deepest darkness that what we encounter is truly God.

I have no answers, only the fearful journey of seeking, on this, the day of the cross.

*the original reflections on the dark night of the soul belong to St. John of the Cross

Listening in the dark

One half of our lives is spent in the dark.  Maybe more, maybe less, but I don't want to take the time to do the math.  One half.

I'm not talking about metaphysical dark - times of deep emotion, grievous loss, remembered abandonment - I am just talking about the dark, that time when the sun has set, the birds have quieted, and for most of us, the street lights have come on.

Dark is the time when we awake suddenly from sleep and must take some time to re-orient ourselves to our surroundings.  Dark is the time when the power goes off and moving about your house is dangerous because somehow your furniture has multiplied in the dark and  you keep banging into stuff.  

Dark is that time of day when we are inclined to stand still.  At first it might be because we don't want twisted ankles or bruised shins.  But if we wait it out, if we in fact stand still for more than a moment, we might discover that the dark is a place where we can stand still.

We don't have to rush off to do something else.  We don't have to answer a phone, an email, a knock at the door.  We can stand still.  Quietly.  And listen to the dark.

We listen for the sounds of the night - scurrying and fluttering; the quiet stealth of a deer looking for some tender shoots to eat, a cat out on the prowl for some night adventure.  We can listen to the trees moving, settling, growing.  We can listen to the sound of our own breathing, in and out, in a rhythm that might just match a rhythm of the night.  We can listen to the pulse of life - not the pounding beat of noon day sun, but the steady pulsing flow of life giving blood through a million veins: bringing nourishment, rest, renewal.

It is easy to forget how much this quiet listening in the darkness restores us, how much we need it.  

Perhaps the most natural remedy for the human condition is a good dose of quietness in the dark, where the power of life has a chance to call us back into ourselves, re-connecting us with the wholeness of the life around us.

Sitting in the dark

Sitting in the dark sounds pretty bad at first.
It sounds like 'loss' or 'despair' or 'loneliness'.
In our gut, it feels like 'fear'.

Wake up from a nap on a Sunday afternoon and you won't spend time wondering whether you will live to see your grandchildren grow up.

Wake up from a night's sleep at 2 am and all the existential questions will rise up and, if you're not careful, choke you into total panic.

Because our fears rush to the front of the line in the middle of our night, we can easily decide that darkness is to be feared...and avoided.  Deep in the darkness is the giant monster named fear - any and all varieties of fear -is just waiting to devour us.  Our solution to this situation is light.  Constant, perpetual, reassuring light that casts out our fear and sends it deep into the abyss.

Although, of course, it doesn't.  Light doesn't cast out our fear, it simply blinds us to its presence.  The brightness hides our loneliness for a while.  It offers up false hope to cover sadder realities.  It makes possible a thousand activities to cover over the emptiness of our loss.  Turn up the lights.  Move with the sunshine.  Forget the darkness and go with the light.

Until it kills you. All light all the time will kill you.  Your body cannot rest and repair.  We all need the dark.....and once the dark comes....it's all waiting for us again.

So, just possibly, the problem is not the dark which we fear, but the realities that we cannot avoid when the light is turned off.

Perhaps we could not fear the night, but rather use the night to come to terms with the fear we carry with us. Perhaps as we learn to walk in the dark, a good place to start is to name the fears we carry within: dying without making a difference, being guilty of contributing to the broken parts of this world, being crushed by the responsibility and failing those we love, not having the answers and not even knowing the questions, dying badly and living even worse.

Maybe it would be good to keep a list of the monsters that come to you in the dark.  Write them down on a pad you keep by your bed (because isn't that where the monsters generally show up?).  Naming the monsters is critical. In order to come to terms with our fear, we have to have a name for it.

Are you ready to name the monsters that plague you?

This post was inspired by Barbara Brown Taylor's Learning to Walk in the Dark.  You might want to read it for yourself.

Storing shadows in the dark

"Storing shadows in the dark"

It is an image conjured up by Barbara Brown Taylor in her newest book, Learning to Walk in the Dark.  Conjuring up images is the mark of a good author; putting together words to capture was is usually a fleeting glimpse of a truth lying just beyond our grasp, an image that will raise more questions and carry more weight than the mere words suggest.

"Storing shadows in the dark..." we've all done it....stored shadows that frightened us, but were only and always shadows.  From the beginning we were certain there were monsters under the bed, or in that closet with the door ajar (when it turned out that it was just your white sweater hanging lopsided from a hanger).

Once when I was a teen, I was babysitting for a family that had just moved into their home.  They hadn't hung any of their curtains yet, so as the night pressed in, the windows became a house of mirrors that only reflected back my own image.  I became convinced that there was someone lurking in the dark....and I became frightened to the core.  My father graciously left his pinochle hand to walk the 4 doors down the street to check it all out and reassure me there was no one out there waiting in the dark.  It was just me.

Can you see the humor, maybe even irony in all that?  (I'm not sure it's irony because I am fairly convinced that I don't completely grasp that concept).  I became frightened of something lurking in the dark because all I could see reflected back to me was.....myself!  Each time I passed a window, there I was, scaring the wits out of me.

What, exactly, was it about myself that I found so frightening?

What kind of darkness was in me that was so threatening?

What was it that I couldn't confront?

Why couldn't I find comfort, assurance, even ease with an image of myself?

I had all kinds of shadows stored in the darkness of that night, perhaps even stored in the darkness within me, that place I didn't know but was fairly certain contained some unattractive parts.  

See what I mean?  A good image raises more questions than it answers.  What questions will you carry into the dark, and what can you learn there?

So much to think about.


[You might want to pick up a copy of Taylor's recent book and get ready to read it through, several times.  It is a journey into the dark....and an exploration of what can be found there. It is also the primary source for our women's retreat coming  up  in April. ]

Stone cold?

The prophet Ezekiel, who has quite a reputation among the prophets for outrageous behavior, tells the people of Israel that the Lord will 'give them a new heart and a new spirit.'  God will 'take their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh'.

So I got thinking about hearts of stone.  In the Exodus story, Moses goes up against the Pharaoh of Egypt and over the course of 10 plagues, God hardens Pharaoh's heart.  Turns it to stone.  If you thought poisonous snakes were a dilemma, this episode of God actively hardening the heart of someone - so that they would continue to defy God and not repent - well, this is a tough one.  But we will struggle with a God who acts in this manner another day.

I want to look at the heart itself.  In the Pharaoh episode, the hardened heart keeps Pharaoh from releasing the people of Israel and giving them their freedom.  On at least one occasion Pharaoh appears ready to make a compromise, but God hardens his heart.

What is a hardened heart?  My first guess is that it didn't start out that way.  It was something else before and over time became hardened - like hardening of the arteries - and no longer functioned as it should.

Well, then how should a heart function?  Physiologically, the heart pumps blood through the system, bringing oxygen, taking CO2 and keeping all our parts humming.  It is the source of our energy and carries away that which will kill us.  Could we expand that image to consider the heart doing the same work for us emotionally?  spiritually?

 I doubt that God was busy hardening Pharaoh's arteries, but possibly, God was clogging up the emotional and spiritual baggage Pharaoh carried until his heart no longer brought energy and life, but allowed death and destruction to take hold.

Here's an example that makes some sense in my life. A little bit of greed resides in everyone's heart.  However, if you allow it room, nourish it, allow it to grow, it will harden like cement and your heart will turn to stone.  Ebenezer Scrooge is our favorite example of this.  Or the Grinch.

A heart of flesh on the other hand is a heart that is vulnerable, able to be wounded, capable of compassion and love, and can break in two.  Without a capacity for compassion and love, we are unable to connect with others, to nurture relationships, and empathize with our neighbor.  We cannot truly see the other's need and reach out to lend a hand.  We cannot honor God and those whom God loves.  Yet, with every heart of flesh comes the risk of pain and sorrow.

Flesh:  love and sorrow   Stone:  protection and death.  That's what it is looking like to me today.

It's the rare human who doesn't overdo it at a buffet.

"It's the rare human who doesn't overdo it at a  buffet"  Carolyn Hax

Carolyn Hax is an advice columnist.  I read her on line through the Washington Post.  This is an example of some of her wisdom:  short, to the point, and right on.  It is easy to recognize my own humanity in many of her observations.  I couldn't resist this one.

As a preacher, I began thinking about all the ways we humans grab for ourselves everything within arms reach.  At any potluck you can watch as folks fill their plates with 3 kinds of pasta, two vegetables, potatoes, rolls, meat and that's before they get to the dessert table.  They can't eat it all.  They won't eat it all.  But they will do it every time.  Too much - and just because its there.  Sure they will explain that they want a little taste of everything - just a little here and a little there, but they don't take just a little.  Oh no, it's a whole spoonful of whatever is offered.

Overdo at a buffet and you are uncomfortable for hours afterwards, and working off the extra calories into the next week.  And yet  It's the rare human who doesn't overdo it at a  buffet.

I'm not talking just about temptation, although that is a part of it.  Nor am I talking just about cumulative effects of questionable habits.  It's not even just about how dense we can be and slow to learn from the past.  At some level, that buffet table is about our eternal focus on the ME.  We want to have it all even when having it all will cost us dearly in the long run.  A buffet table is the perfect place to run wild because there is no one there to tell us No!  We can take whatever we want and as much as we want.  And. We. Do.

It's the rare human who doesn't overdo it at a  buffet.

What a perfect example of the inherent flaw within us.  When faced with apple pie, cookies, mousse and brownies, we don't want to choose.  We want it all.  And if we can get away with it, we will take it all.

You can see why Jesus had to come.  To save us from ourselves.  And the dessert table.

Poisonous snakes....the end

Who is this God?

That's really the question that trips us up.  Who is this God who sends poisonous snakes into the midst of God's people, knowing folks will get bit and die?  Who is this God who does stuff we don't understand?

Unpredictable?  By many definitions.

Uncontrollable?  Definitely.

Will punish the offender?  There is some evidence of that.

At our beck and call?  Well, that tends to depend on what we are trying to get from God.

Will always make things work out the way I want them?  Oh no.  Not at all.  That is for certain.

Calls us to follow where God is leading?  Yes.

Is able to bring new life out of death? Well, that's the crux of it isn't it?

Is life in God's hands....as creator and possibly as destroyer?  Does God work towards good for humankind in general?  What about me in particular?  Is God in charge?

I would answer those questions with a Yes.  I believe in this God, the love God has for all that God has created, and the ultimate good which will ensue at God's hands.  This is a necessary component of trusting this God in the middle of the darkness, the pain, the sorrow, and the terror.

I'm not sure about the poisonous snake episode but then there are so many things I am not sure about.  In the end, I trust the God who is author of it all.  In this God I find strength and purpose and guidance.  This God calls out of me more grace, forgiveness, and peace than I would or could ever manage on my own.  This God not only calls me 'beloved' I actually feel like a beloved.

Perhaps this answer is terribly disappointing.  After reading 4 days of posts you were hoping for something more profound.

It is just that there isn't anything more profound than God for me, even in the midst of poisonous snakes.

PS  The picture has nothing to do with God except that God makes such wonderfully adorable creatures and who doesn't like a puppy?

Poisonous snakes.....almost

So God sent poisonous snakes...and they bit people...and people died.* Wow.  There is no getting around that piece of Bible.


Who is this God?
Why did God send snakes?

The why may be easier that the who.  Our first reading of the story tells us that the people of Israel were being absolutely impossible in the desert:  whining, complaining, ungrateful, rebelling, irritating to the core.  So it is easy to conclude that God had just had enough and sent poisonous snakes while shouting out, "Can you hear me now?"

It is the easiest explanation (and following Occam's Razor, the easiest explanation is the best).  It's what we would have done.  Enough is enough.

However, this is not the way we want to know God.  This is not the way we want God to act.  So can we come up with another viable explanation?

Probably not, but here are a few observations.  Snakes have a gnarly reputation in the Old Testament, carried over into the New Testament.  We all have some familiarity with the serpent in the Garden of Eden who cajoled Adam and Eve into very bad behavior which the whole world continues to pay for.  (I don't happen to interpret that story that way, but most people do).  Later, in the book of Job (written much later than the book of Numbers where our poisonous snake lesson is located) Satan is God's advocatur - one who tempts others by challenging what they know so to test their relationship with God.

So we could see snakes as those pesky and sneaky creatures which offer us a path that is 180 degrees from where God is calling us.  This is exactly how the snakes function in our story.  With all the crying out and complaining and ungrateful whining, the people are already testing their relationship with God.  They have their own ideas about how this relationship should work and what God should be doing for them.  This is a dangerous path to travel (from God's perspective).

So God makes the danger very, very real.  God sends poisonous snakes.  Tempted to call your own shots?  Well, here's a little snake bite.  That is what it feels like when you are in charge.  It will hurt and eventually it will kill you.

Tempted to demand more for yourself than you really need?  Well, here's a little snake bite.  That is what it feels like when greed is at the center of your life, and in the end it will kill you.  Feel called by a life of ingratitude?  Go right ahead, but it will kill you in the end.

What is a person to do?  We have all been ungrateful, greedy, jealous, power hungry at some time or the other.  How can we live when we are traveling through a land filled with poisonous snakes? A very good question for which God has an unusual answer.

Look up!  See that snake on the top of a pole?  That snake that was killing you?  I can make it a path to life!  Look at the face of death, and you shall live.  Look up!  Look to God and you will know life. Sneaky?  Yeah, pretty much, but it sure got your attention.

A crucified Jesus personifies this contradiction of life found in the face of death.  Hanging, dying on the cross is the very one who can and will and wants to give life to all who look towards him.  The gospel of John, chapter 3 verse 14 begins this way  'Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of God must be lifted up...'  We may not understand that we are dying in both body and spirit, but Jesus goes ahead and calls us to trust in his sacrifice for our sake.

I understand if this explanation doesn't satisfy.  Poisonous snakes are difficult and dangerous,  So apparently is God.

*this story can be found in the 21st chapter of the book of Numbers.