I have seen the Lord

I have seen the Lord.

In the end, this is what makes a difference.  Not some preacher's rambling about the deep meaning of Easter or some theologian's rendering of doctrine, but no, it is this

I have seen the Lord.

Me, personally.  One day I woke expecting death and sorrow and instead I encountered life.  It slipped in unaware in the darkness to astound me in the morning.  Like Mary Magdalene I went to a tomb, expecting what had always been true....what will always be true in this world....dead is dead and Jesus was gone

                                         and instead I encountered an empty tomb and a  risen Jesus.

I am not here to persuade you with logic or metaphysics.  I am here to witness to what I have seen and the Jesus I have encountered in my life because in the end, it is only personal witness that begins to lead us to consider the possibility that, in fact, Jesus is risen.

Like you I have carried burial spices to the places of the dead.  I have expected life to be erased - erased by violence or hatred, by neglect or abuse, by injustice and apathy, by auto accidents and disease, by addiction or greed or poverty or fear....and instead I have discovered life.

What I see are small glimpses of a new beginning, like
    each time kindness and truth respond to ruthless and callous rhetoric or
        each time hearts and wallets open to the need of total strangers.
Each time, life is beginning again at the very center of death. Each time it is the Lord.  The living Lord.  The Lord who will transform your today as much as he will transform your tomorrow.

You have seen the Lord.

You have seen folks whose lives are powered by mercy in a world of judgment and ill will.  You have seen the Lord each time someone chooses grace instead of rejecting the other, turning a deaf ear to their cries and a blind eye to their needs, even when that would have been both easier and socially acceptable.  You have seen the Lord.

It usually looks like light in the darkness,
           it tastes like sweet arising out of the sour,
                    it can be a moment of peace in the midst of chaos.
It is also that unsettling dis-ease with the status quo and frustration with ignorance that crushes others. You have seen the Lord - breaking out of the tomb and into this world..

There is no metaphor here, no side-stepping analogy.  This story of resurrection is no parable or the faded gullibility of ages past.  It is Mary's proclamation, and the proclamation of generations after her "I have seen the Lord."  In my time, in my life.

Now I give you permission to claim this proclamation for yourself.  Try it out...say it to yourself on a day when something within you is dying.  Say it out loud for those you know who have been locked in tombs so long they can't say it for themselves.  I have seen the Lord.  The tomb did not hold Jesus; your tomb cannot hold you.  Jesus is risen and Jesus is Lord.

Yes, it was a miracle.  Yes, it is a miracle.  A miracle open to you, your life, your loved ones and your future.  He is not here.  He is risen.  Alleluia.



Many thanks to Karoline Lewis and workingpreacher.org and John Updike's Seven Stanzas at Easter for their inspiration.

In the silence of Holy Saturday

"Help Me Listen"

I hear and say so many words,
yet yours is the word I need.
Speak now,
and help me listen;
and, if what I hear is silence,
    let it quiet me,
       let it disturb me,
         let it touch my need,
           let it break my pride,
             let it shrink my certainities,
               let it enlarge my wonder.



from Ted Loder  Guerrillas of Grace  (with enormous gratitude.)

Ashes to a cross........it must be time

It must be time.

Once a year we stop and contemplate dying: our dying, the world’s dying, the death of all we hold dear.  Once a year we go so far as to take on our foreheads, for the entire world to see, an ashen mark of a cross.  They are the ashes of our good intentions and false praise.  They are the ashes of our feeble attempts to order the universe.  The cross of ashes is messy.  It marks us.  It defines us for the world.

We come, Savior, to your cross to offer our sacrifice of confession.  We beg the mercy of your lovingkindness.  Accept our prayer.  Forgive us, for we have sinned.

This is a cross that can only be rooted in confession, a long, comprehensive confession.  A confession not of guilt so much as it is a confession that we have tried our very best to be God these last 12 months, and in order to pretend we are God, we had to turn our gaze away from the one who is God.  

We turned our gaze away from the powerful ones who chose violence over forgiveness.  We turned our gaze away when violence was our expedient choice.  We turned our gaze away because we know we are them.  We cannot help turning away, pretending, trying to secure our own safety.  We are not God, and so it will always work out this way.

We come, Savior, to your cross to offer our sacrifice of confession.  We beg the mercy of your lovingkindness.  Accept our prayer.  Forgive us, for we have sinned.

Ashes began our Lenten journey through the valley of the shadow of death. Now we must confront the cross even though most of us are suspicious that God could have found another way.  Even now we reject God’s plan for God’s creation.

We have tiptoed through this time of purple, devoting little time to pray and read, to give alms and confess.  Now this death must happen; we will prove we are the powerful ones.  Jesus will die at our hands; parts of us must die alongside him. 

We are a resurrection people.  But first, we are people of the cross.

We come, Savior, to your cross to offer our sacrifice of confession.  We beg the mercy of your lovingkindness.  Accept our prayer.  Forgive us, for we have sinned.

We pray on this Holy Friday........

Merciful God, your Son was lifted up on the cross
to draw all people to himself.
Grant that we who have been born
out of his wounded side
may at all times find mercy in him,
Jesus Christ,our Savior and Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and forever.  Amen

Tonight we are commanded to remember.

Remember that night when Jesus was to be betrayed

and yet took bread and wine and ate it at table with his betrayer.

Remember that night when that meal of bread and wine

did not keep his close friend Peter from disowning him out of fear.

Remember that night and that Jesus and the gift of forgiveness

which pours out on us.

There is much to remember.

We are called to remember the enormous distance between us and God

and how much we are consumed by I – me – mine

and how little we are truly concerned about you and them.

How the very phrase ‘the common good’ carries so little weight with us

 because we quickly realize that the common good just possibly means

 I will end up with less good than before.

We are called to remember the pervasive imperfections of this world:

the poverty, hunger, violence, abuse, and neglect

for which we do not want to take responsibility

but cannot reasonably figure out who to blame

We are called to remember the weight of power

 and the frailty of human life and

how often we are standing on the wrong side of that equation

We are called to remember that real life begins when two become one,

 when community is formed and sacrifices are made

for the sake of new and continue life

          …that for community to continue and prosper we must forgive one another. 

You can reject all this talk about forgiveness

calling it just another ploy to induce guilt or shame

You can pretend that all is well, or at least,

your life is no darker or lacking than most others

You can come up with a couple of good examples

of folks way worse than you

And you can pretend that you are contented with a world

where brother rises up against brother and

parents neglect their children and

the winner gets to eat all it wants and throw out the extra

while the neighbor sits before an empty supper bowl.

You can pretend that there is nothing greater than YOU

and if there is – you owe it nothing of yourself.

So tonight you are asked to remember:

 from dust you came and to dust you shall return.

Come to the table and drink the wine of forgiveness

and eat the bread of the body of Christ poured out for you…

…..whether you want it or not.

We pray on this Holy Thursday........

Holy God, source of all love, on the night of his betrayal,
Jesus gave us a new commandment,
to love one another as he loves us.
Write this commandment in our hearts,
and give us the will to serve others
as he was the servant of all,
your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
 one God, now and forever.    Amen

You have got to be kidding me!

Let me introduce you to the Elder Son in this famous parable about an Outrageous Father with 2 sons. (Luke 15).

He is hardworking, out in the fields keeping everything running as it should.  He is loyal, living under his father's roof and caring for the family livelihood.  He is obedient (well, we don't have any evidence of that, only his word, but let's believe him.)  He sounds like every one's dream.

Yet he has a dirty secret:  there are calluses on places other than his hands.  It appears that all that diligent, loyal, obedient hard work has developed a callus or two on his heart as well.

When his younger brother decides he needs 'his space' and 'wants to find himself' he diminishes the family's wealth, and disrespects their Father.  Then he runs off to live the wild life, leaving good old Elder Brother to take up the slack.  Somewhere in all of this, he begins to resent his brother, and just possibly, his father as well.

Boy do we understand this Elder Son.  We get why he feels put upon; why he thinks he deserves a break; why he is a little bit annoyed at his father for being such a chump in the first place. We understand his sense of entitlement. So when he hears from a slave that his Father has thrown a huge party just because that ne'er do well son had showed up at his door, well, the Elder Son had reached the end of his patience.  Or perhaps his ability to forgive.  Or perhaps his storehouse of love.

We are outraged right along with the Elder Son.  Truly he deserved better than this, a little reward perhaps.  It truly isn't very fair and that Younger Son is suspiciously close to taking advantage of the Father's mercy.  The Father should understand that the Elder is the good son, just like we are good people, working hard, trying our best, deserving of a party, deserving of your love.

Oh my, oh my.  I have been guilty of this line of thinking more than once in my life.  The Father does all he can to persuade the Elder to join the great celebration of life, but the story closes with an angry man standing in a field feeling entitled.  An angry man who has disrespected his Father, treated him as a stranger, refused to take his position in the family....and who has decided that the love being poured out on the lost one was love stolen from him.

He has decided he knows better than the Father who deserves the Father's love and invitation to the table.  Often we agree with this Angry Son; something is not right with this Father.

So if the Father in the parable is intended to give us a picture of God the father of Jesus, then what are we to do?  As much as we want to rely on God's mercy when we are in need, do we not also want to be entitled to God's mercy the rest of the time?  God's desire that all should come to his table and know him and the life that he offers is somehow perverted in our minds to mean......just us?  Somehow it isn't as open an invitation as we sometime pretend.

We are fairly certain we didn't bargain for a God with a love that is as big as all that.

An Outrageous Father and a Ne'er do Well Son

So, the Prodigal Son, better named the Outrageous Father, is a story about a father with two sons.

The younger one is an upstart, full of himself, confident of his own ability.  He asks for and receives his part of the inheritance (effectively saying to his Father, "you are as good as dead to me") turns all that cattle into cash and takes a trip to a  foreign land where he immediately spends all his money. Then there is a famine and no one knows him and no one will help him.

He gets a job feeding pigs.  Think about that for a moment:  a Jew feeding pigs....and he is so hungry he is tempted to eat the pig food.  "Aha! he exclaims."' My Father treats his hired hands better than this....I will go home, apologize profusely and offer to work as his servant."

And so a plan is hatched.  He rehearses his speech before he arrives.  "Father I have sinned against heaven and before you.  I am no longer worthy to be called your son."  You have to admit, it's a very good apology.  This young man is repentent and humble, a very good combination for getting our sympathy.

We are more than ready to make a path back into the family for this son.  Perhaps a few years of difficult work.  Perhaps he will always be a hired hand.  Perhaps he will have to take his meals at the 'kids table' in the future.  But we can see a way back for this son.

So can the father.  He sees him far off and runs to meet him - throws his arm around him and does everything but dance a jig. " Hurry! he calls. "Kill the fatted calf.  My son has returned and we must celebrate."

So if God is the Father in this parable, then we can well imagine that God has enough love to welcome back the younger son, even to throw him a party.  It gives us comfort to encounter this God because we want a God who has enough love to cover us when we act like idiots and wander off into our equivalent of pig country and find ourselves stuck in the mud.

We are grateful for a God whose love is this big because this is the God we want to encounter as we prepare our repentent cries and seek the Lord's favor.  We want to face a God who has room in his heart for a broken person, especially one who is repentent and humble.....as it should be, especially for those who are working very hard to be good. These are exactly the kind of people God's love should cover.

If only Luke had stopped there, we could have twisted this little parable into any number of interpretations that require the broken ones to work their way back to the Father.  We could have rested easy with a God who loves the occassionally lost one.

The problem is there is one more son, and his is an entirely different story....that, and on any given day, we are either one of the two.

2 sons or 1 father?

"Norma, what are you doing here?"  It was my birthday and my daughter had orchestrated a surprise celebration. All I knew about was the tickets for the Syracuse University basketball game, but then I learned that a good friend had agreed to join in the celebration and so we all poured into the car, drove through ridiculous weather to find a mutually agreeable place to eat before the game.  We were enjoying our Chinese food when the door to the tiny restaurant opened and in walked Norma who had just caught up with the group.  I was stunned.  She still laughs when she recalls the look on my face.   What an amazing surprise!  What fun!  What a celebration!

That's what I think of when I hear about the great party at the center of this story called the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  That's such a poor name for this complex, intricate story that many have renamed the Parable of the Two Sons.  Except I don't think it is a parable about the sons at all.  I think the author of Luke is trying desperately to teach us about the Father, with a capital F.  And a party.  A great party.

The 15th chapter of Luke provides us with 3 stories unique to Luke.  First we have a lost sheep 1 out of 100.  Then we have a lost coin 1 out of 10.  Then we have a lost son(s) - since this story isn't about only one son, but about two sons and a Father who looks crazy to many people.

In each of the stories, the object which is lost is highly valued by its owner.  The shepherd leaves 99 sheep behind to find the lost 1.  The woman turns her entire house upside down in order to find the lost coin.  In the end, a Father relinguishes dignity and entitlement and social customs in order to welcome back into the fold 2 sons who have wandered off (at least spiritually).

At the heart of this story is a great party, fatted calf and all, to celebrate the son who was lost and is now found, who was dead and is now alive.  It is hard to imagine why anyone wouldn't want to go to that party.....but of course there is.

So, before I tell the story, before I lay out the issues, before you get all wrapped up in the drama of it all, I want you to remember, at the center of this is a great and wonderful party celebrating life.  And family.  And hope.  This is the party the Father must, absolutely must, thrown because life has been restored.

It's a party the Father throws for each one of us when we look like death warmed over and instead find new breath.  Keep that in mind, because it is easy to forget.

How much is enough?

My children did not like peas.  At all.  So every meal that included peas also included a conversation about how many peas had to be eaten.  How many were 'enough'? We finally settled on a system where they ate one pea for each year of their age.

We only ask the question How much is enough? when there is some goal we are trying to achieve (like being excused from the dinner table).  How much is enough laundry detergent for this load of laundry?  How much money do I need to spend on my spouse's birthday present?  How many answers do I have to get right in order to pass this test?  How much money do I have to save for retirement?

People of faith often ask this same question.  How much must I do?  Am I doing enough?  Am I giving enough? (OK, this question isn't asked as often as the others)  Am I compassionate enough?  Am I faithful enough?  How much is enough?

I can only ask "Enough for what?"  Enough for God to love you?  Enough for Jesus to forgive you?  Enough for you to experience the fullness of life that God in Jesus promises us?  Enough to "win the prize?"

Sometimes the question arises out of a searching for a deeper relationship with God, a richer spiritual life, and a sincere effort to be faithful, We look around us and there are too many who are hungry, too many who are oppressed, too many who need healing and comfort.  We look at our own lives and see too many places where we have cut corners, we have been less than compassionate, turned a blind eye and a deaf ear.  We look at ourselves and know that when we stand before God, we have a lot that isn't in right order.

That is how it should be.  When we stand before God we should be aware that all is not well, not in our lives and certainly not in the world around us.  This is not accusation, this is fact.  In religious talk, we are truly broken people, sinners before the Creator God.  This is confession, and it can often lead us to the deeper connection with God that we desire.

However, it is good to remember this: we cannot do enough ever to make it all right.  We cannot fix ourselves nor can we fix the world.  The problem is bigger than we are.

No matter how much we do, we will never prove to God that we are worthy of God's mercy and love. We will not prove our 'goodness' by doing 'enough' ....no matter how much we run and run and run and work and work and work.  Our work does not obtain God's love.  God gives it freely because that is who God is.

The love of God is broader and deeper than we can ever imagine.  We receive God's mercy because that is who God is.  We receive God's mercy because we need God's mercy.  We are always beggars in this equation.  Always.  Always.

So the answer to the question:  How much is enough? is this:  all and none.  Jesus calls us to give all of us......because there is nothing else we have to offer to a God who loved us before time.

All and none:  the challenge of living a life of faith.

40 years or 40 days, same old battle

"Trusting in God is hard work.  It requires that you lay down your point of view which is grounded in the past and assume God's point of view which is grounded in the future.  An unknown future.  No matter what is promised, there is no certainty about how the whole thing is going to play out.  So the only thing left is to trust in this God, God's love for you, God's good intentions, and God's ability to give what God has promised.  It's either that or whining.  Stuck in the wilderness, Israel whined their way to the promised land for all 40 of the years."

That was yesterday's meandering thoughts around the 40 years that Israel spent in the wilderness trying to find their way to the promised land.  Well, actually, they were trying to find their way to the place where they could trust God.  That place is the promised land for all of us.

But today we consider Jesus' 40 days in  the wilderness, sandwiched between his baptism and the temptations of the devil.  What kind of transition is at play here?  Are 'the temptations' not so much a destination but a playing out of the challenge of wilderness survival and trusting in God?

When you look at the whole scope of the story of Jesus, you can see that the baptism is the signal that Jesus is moving from whatever he was doing before (in Luke this includes the infancy narratives) and what he is being called to do as the Son of God.  He is anointed by the Holy Spirit - an ancient indicator of God's pleasure and calling, and simultaneously, an empowerment for the tasks ahead.  That same Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness; apparently it is time for Jesus to prepare for what lies ahead.

What lies ahead is temptation by the devil.  Now the devil generally represents that which challenges our devotion to God.  Certainly this is often 'evil' but it often simply starts out as just a convenient choice or a self-serving decision not some gigantic evil done to another.  That is exactly  how it starts out in the Lucan account of this encounter.  'Heh, Jesus, you're hungry.  No one is going to fault you for turning these stones into bread.  Really, it's no big deal.'  That was the devil's first ploy.

It is often said that the devil is in the details and so it is here.  For Jesus there is no such thing as 'no big deal' when it comes to choosing satisfying his comfort versus listening/following God's call.  Everything is important because God is all in all.  There stands Jesus with one foot in the local Subway shop and the other in the temple.  So the first temptation is to count some things 'no big deal.'

The devil ups the ante.  Now the temptation is about showing off how smart/ powerful/ beautiful/ blessed you are.  Just a little demonstration for the folks.  It will make it so much easier for the masses to believe you are the Son of God, Jesus, if you give them a little show.  So possibly the second temptation is to prove to others just how 'good' you are, how faithful you are, how compassionate you are.  It will make it so much easier for them to see you as the good Christian you are (or at least call you a good person at your funeral).

So the devil lays it out before Jesus.  You don't know what God has in store for you; grab the power now and enjoy yourself while you can.  We know what God has in store for Jesus and grabbing power while it is offered certainly looks like a good idea.  Except it is not God's idea; it is not God's plan; it is not the way to which Jesus is called.

The temptation for Jesus is the same as the temptation for us: to choose our wisdom over God's which is, in the end, to turn away from God.  Jesus pulled an A on this exam.  We never will.  Perfection will never be ours.

Except through Jesus....which is why we are eternally grateful for God's mercy and Jesus' faithfulness.