He is not here! He is risen!

Alleluia!

Remember when?  I'll bet your family has some great stories which start with 'Remember when.........' and get told again and again. These are the memories which get us laughing or leave us pensive or taste a little bittersweet.  They are our stories; they make us one.  Family members know the story and those who know the story are considered family.

Children love these kinds of stories, especially when Mom or Dad are the main characters and were young and did something silly .....you know, they acted like the children they were.  My children always loved to hear about adventures from 'when they were a baby' including all the ways they managed to fracture the English language as they learned to talk.  I only get nervous when my children are telling stories to one another and I have absolutely no recollection of the 'incidents' being described.

Sharing stories after the death of a loved one helps us place this moment in the context of an entire life lived.  The stories connect us and give us a sense of belonging while at the same time carrying us along the current of inexorable time.

When we read the stories about Jesus, we get to listen in on the disciples' story telling.  Remember when.....he fed all those people on the hillside?  Remember when.....he made that terrible storm go away?   Remember when.....he ate that last supper with us?

Remember when.....we thought he was dead.........but he wasn't?  The earthquake!  The angel!  I couldn't believe it.  I wanted to, but it was too incredible.  I told Mary and Peter told me and then I spoke to Thomas and then......it was amazing.

He is not here!  He is risen!  Who could imagine that?  What can I say?

Alleluia!  Alleluia!

Holy Week: 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

Holy Week: servant to all

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.

Secret heart: true 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 our core we are good people' is forever gone.

Within the Lutheran tradition, personal confession which takes place 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.

Deep in my secret heart: fear

Fears.  That's the second thing we bury deep within our secret heart.  Not the easily negated kinds of fears.  Oh no.  The big fears - the often irrational fears - the "I can't say them outloud or they will come true" fears.

I can name a few of mine but of course this is only helpful if you are naming a few of yours on your end of the computer.  When my children were small I had an irrational fear that my husband would die and leave me to raise the children all alone.  That fear had a lot to do with my own estimation of my incompetence and who wants to admit to their middle class neighbors that they are fairly sure they are incompetent as a parent.

Abandonment is also tied into that pretty little package.  I expect it has a lot to do with the early death of both my sister and father.  But there it was.  I was going to be Left Alone.  The irony, of course, is that, having been widowed now for 17 years, that is exactly what has happened, and it isn't nearly as fearful as I imagined, even though it was fear filled in different ways.

We are afraid that we will die a bad death....or have to watch as someone we love dies in pain.  Is that one of yours?

We press these fears back into the corner of our secret heart, guarding them, nursing them, watching to see if our worst fears will come true.

What is God's wisdom for us?  "I know."  I know about your fears, even that silly one about going down into the basement at night.  I know.  I want to cast out all fear and I can do that when you trust in the perfect love I have for you.  But until then, I will stand right here beside you.  I will walk with you through the valley of the shadow of death.  I will hold your hand if it helps.

There is no place you will have to go that I am unwilling to travel with you.  I have already reached down to the lost ones and called them back into relationship again.  You are mine and you are beloved.

Ahhhhh, if we could only believe with as much energy as we fear.

"teach me wisdom in my secret heart."

Meet me in my secret heart Lord

"....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...."

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.

A Palm Sunday sermon: the palms are so much easier

I think Palm Sunday ranks up there as one of most fun days in the church.  We get to wave palms and sing at the top of our lungs these wonderful hymns.  You could convince yourself that this is just the beginning of one long celebration that will grow throughout the week to the big extravaganza of Easter. 

And yet, today we wave palms to begin a week that marches inexorably to a scene of unspeakable violence which those palms waving folks never saw coming. 

Too many believers will skip over Holy Week observances because

they too don’t want to re-visit this week of fear and sorrow,

violence and grief.

This week requires that each of us look again at our expectations of God, our own broken relationship with God and the potential for great sacrifice when following this Jesus.

The Jesus of Palm Sunday didn’t quite turn out to be the triumphant king they expected.  He wasn’t the magician who would wave his hand and change the world into one which pleased all his followers. 

He wasn’t going to exact revenge on his enemies and pour out all manner of material

blessings of his followers.

 He was going to die….and no one saw it coming.

Which leads me to ask,: What do you do when God disappoints you? How do you react when your expectations of God are dashed to the ground?   It happens to everyone, you know.

 

Some of our disappointments are enormous: the marriage that didn’t work out, the job that disappeared, the diagnosis which meant an early death, the tornado that targeted your house…..and on and on.

Our response to it all is not rational.  It doesn’t matter that you haven’t been singled out……..it only matters that God didn’t turn out to be God the way you wanted, the way you expected.   These are personal stories, for rarely does this kind of estrangement come from a neighbor’s loss.  This is about us and our expectations for our own lives and for God.

We start with “If God were a God of love then…..”

and we end up de-friending God; we leave the Church;

we give up whatever spiritual practices we had. 

We pretend that it never mattered in the first place.

I get it: It is hard to get a handle on this Jesus and the coming kingdom that Jesus points to.  Not only is it not fully visible to us right now, it works with rules that confuse us. 

Jesus says the last shall be first and the first last.  He calls the religious leaders blind and the man born blind is able to see much more than the hand in front of his face.  He calls out the very religious and welcomes sinners to his dinner table.

Occasionally we glimpse this kingdom of God when it breaks into our reality with miracles of every stripe.  But we DONT live in Paradise.  All is not as it will be, even though we would like it to be that way now.

So we are caught: standing between this world and the next, we want justice and mercy for others, but first we want a large enough share to compensate for the pain and suffering of our own lives. And THAT is God’s job.

We want less suffering….now.   In the end we draw our own Pictionary sketch of what God should be ….and ignore the God who came among us in Jesus and the path he took to break the barrier between our world and God’s kingdom.

So when Jesus comes riding in on a donkey, we see a chance that it will all be made great again.  We want a savior so badly, we paint this non-descript Jewish carpenter as a King. 

Finally! We say,  God has come through for us and

We cut palm branches and celebrate that finally it will all be made great again. 

It’s not what Jesus talked about but then Palm branches are so much easier than delving deep into the mysteries of the universe with its big bang theories and black holes. Palm branches are easier than trusting in the unseen and wrestling with the paradoxes of life.  They are so much easier than love.

A Divine Power who can bring life into being, and life out of death……..this is majesty beyond our imagination, and too deep for our comprehension. 

            We would rather cut palm branches, or organize committees or join a

peace march than to truly trust that God is God and Jesus is God’s son. 

AND ALL this is easier than being a servant to our neighbor even unto death.

Just possibly at the heart of our disappointment is fear:

fear that the brokenness of our world is beyond anyone’s ability to fix.  And it is.

The brokenness of our world is a God sized problem that requires a God sized solution. 

Not a God to whom we dictate; but a God who dies in order to explode the 

power of death.

Palm branches are easier, but in the end, it is a cross that we need.

Palm Sunday sermon   Luther Memorial Lutheran Church  April 9, 2017

A journey through the Passion

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