Dying to get there!

The problem with our 'man on the street' idea of God's heaven is that you have to die to get there. With this way of thinking, resurrection has nothing to say to our life today.  Resurrection is a reward for later, and offers nothing for today.

Certainly, one cannot be resurrected unless one has died, but possibly, we need to expand our idea of death and resurrection.  We also need to re-locate heaven closer than 'somewhere over the rainbow'.

Here's my question:  can the resurrected life begin before the here-and-now life has come to an end? Can we die myriad smaller deaths before we stop breathing, and therefore, live myriad lives before we enter into God's presence?

Get ready to think broadly:  what if time isn't a straight line?  What if time folds back on itself where the future bends back to touch the past?  Can that thing which hasn't happened yet, but is eagerly anticipated, change today?

Here are two examples:

A young girl anticipates the day she will be a prima ballerina.  She dresses the part.  She takes the lessons.  She learns about the music of the great ballets.  In time, she becomes a prima ballerina.  Her future as a dancer - by its very anticipation - shapes her present.

Or - a father takes his teenage son on their first hunting trip together.  After a day trudging through the woods, the boy bags his first deer, and as he stoops down next to the fallen animal for (of course) a picture for facebook, the father is transported back to the day he got his first deer while hunting with his father.  In that moment the past and the present collide, and if one pauses long enough, one can experience the future as well.

What if resurrection begins the day you are joined to Jesus?  What if resurrection begins to shape and mold you and your life from the very beginning?  What if you don't live until you are resurrected but rather you live an (imperfect and incomplete) resurrection life now?

Can our life of faith be an on-going series of deaths and new beginnings as shaped by God?

From the parable of the wedding banquet where everyone gets an invitation to the King's wondrous feast yet someone is thrown out because they lack a wedding robe (Matthew22.1-14), we might be able to see that the invitation to the feast was intended to begin a process of preparation for the feast.  The very power of being invited into the King's presence launches a new trajectory for life lived now.

In this way, the resurrection begins to work on us the moment we receive the invitation.  The life after this life becomes the life within this life which changes this life from the inside out.

Perhaps this is the most convoluted blog post you've ever read, but I believe that this is what sanctification is about - being made holy - not because of what we do, but because of what God is bringing to birth within us.

What do you think?

What have you got to say about the resurrection?

In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus talks about the time of resurrection as the Kingdom of Heaven.  It is the time and place where we will live the resurrected life with the resurrected Jesus....after the cross, and after the tomb, but only possible through the cross and into the tomb.

The resurrection of Jesus is the first step towards the resurrection of all of God's created universe.  Jesus leads - into the cross, into death, into the tomb and then into the resurrection.  In baptism, we were joined to this Jesus, this process and this promise....that where Jesus goes, we will go also.  We too will live in and through the power of resurrection.

Now most of us focus on the heavenly portion of that scenario.  So we will start there.  In this week's gospel reading (Mt22.23-34) there are some folks who want to make Jesus look like a fool by setting up a crazy, complicated example of one woman and seven brothers.  Who gets her in the resurrection? they ask.

The question reveals our inability to comprehend life that isn't life as we know it.  We can't imagine what a resurrected life might involve, what we would do with all those empty hours, or even what we would look like.  Many folks ask whether they will recognize their dear departed ones when they get to heaven.  Will I be the age I am when I die?  Will my dog go to heaven with me?  I don't think we are being flip, I think we simply suffer from the limited imagination that comes with being human.  The best heaven we can picture is the life that we know without all the bumps, sorrows, wounds and traffic jams.

Jesus says we will be like angels.  Now, that might not prove much of an explanation for you, but the angels are the heavenly beings that live in the presence of God.  Occasionally they carry a message to others (remember Mary's angel visitor).  But they are there simply to be in the presence of God.

What more could we want?  What could be better than that?  We can't imagine that either.  I am convinced that in that age we won't even remember what it was we thought we would be missing.  All those things will be of the past, and of no concern in the present where we will be in the presence of God.

Really!  How much better can it get?

#MeToo

Probably the only subject which compares in volatility to the racial question in America is the issue of sexual harassment.  My entire adult life I have heard  'she should have known'  or 'she led him on' or 'he said, she said' or a hundred other iterations of the classic victim blaming whenever there is inappropriate behavior called out.  Before all of this blew up, I had no idea who Harvey Weinstein was, but I had no trouble believing the women who came forward, the women who launched #MeToo.

This kind of behavior is not confined to the magical movie sets of Hollywood.  Sit down with any group of women who trust you enough to know you won't immediately start declaiming and defending and you will hear stories.....of family members, of dates who presumed, of bosses, of co-workers.......of complete strangers.  Stories of men who were under the impression that females were available to them and could be subjected to all kinds of disrespectful and demeaning behavior; too many men who thought it was alright to touch!

What may surprise you is the number of #MeToo stories that come from female clergy.  These are women who serve as pastors and deacons throughout Christ's church who have been pinched, fondled, backed into a corner, invited out for drinks, been asked questions about their sex life, and been called out for the color of their lipstick, the earrings they have chosen to wear, the respect they have required through the use of the title Pastor. They have stories about professors and supervisors and even synod staff....along with an encyclopedia of congregational members.

Some of us are lucky.  It was no more than a random touch, a lingering embrace.  Some of us are not.  But this is true, there are lots of places in Christ's church which are not safe for women and lots of people in positions of authority who don't want to hear about it.*

I wanted to separate this issue from the underlying Bible story, (the woman who had 7 husbands), because it deserves to be considered on its own.

Martin Luther was right.  The power of sin is strong and we are all susceptible.  We Lutherans have always taken sin seriously; no happy bluebirds for us.  That doesn't mean that we are better at avoiding sin and therefore don't have to put our energy into making our faith community a safe place for all people.  We too need to call out wrong behavior and help all our members learn how to live in respectful community with each other.

It simply needed to be said.  That is all.

* Please do not hear this as a criticism of present or past leadership in our synod because it is not.  We are blessed with leadership who takes these things seriously and acts on them.  Not everyone has our blessings.

that guy in the gym shorts......

It was a wedding banquet.........and this guy received an invitation he had no reason to expect.  The King's messengers invited him to the wedding banquet of the King's son, and the guy in the gym shorts decides.........

Well, truth is, we don't exactly know, and of course, he wasn't wearing gym shorts in the Matthew telling of this tale.  But this guy shows up at a wedding banquet not remotely prepared, dressed inappropriately, or as the text says.....without a wedding robe.

Now you and I don't know much from wedding robes, so I envisioned him in gym shorts.  He came to banquet, but half-heartedly, tucking it in between mowing his lawn and getting in his daily workout.  It appears that he didn't take this invitation terribly serious, and wasn't going to completely disrupt his schedule in order to stop by some party.

If you were wondering, yes, we are supposed to give some thought to the implications of this story to our own relationship with the King: God and the Son: Jesus.  When we talk about the judgment imposed on the gym shorts guy, we must make clear that our work isn't the merit on which we are invited to God's feast.  Yet, apparently, there is work to be done on our part.

Somehow, the invitation is intended to be transformative just like an encounter with Jesus is intended to transform our lives.  The blind man wants to be able to see again.....Jesus makes it happen....and then how does his life change?  What is Jesus' continuing role in his life?  In his business decisions?  In his forgiving of his neighbor?  In his generosity?  In his prayer life?

Our wedding robe is our baptismal gown....that covering in Jesus Christ calls us into a new way of living, shaped by Jesus and his ministry, and increasingly consistent with the kingdom values that Jesus embodies.  Baptized into our Lord Jesus' death and resurrection is intended to make a difference in our life, and prepare us for on-going life in the kingdom of heaven.

Or we can show up in our gym shorts, ready to move on to the next thing on our schedule.  But apparently, there will come a time when God will no longer issue invitations to the huddled masses and will begin separating out those who show no interest in the kingdom life.  Like the gym shorts guy at table 29.

H Richard Niebuhr once wrote in The Kingdom of God in America (1937) that too often the message of a liberal social gospel is "A God without wrath brought a [humanity] without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross."  

Or, as I would say, we need to take the King's invitation way more seriously; there is never going to be another one just like it.

Are you able......?

....to drink the cup that I drink?"

That's the question, and just perhaps a litmus test.  Jesus has been asked to gift James and John with  the two pre-eminent positions in the coming kingdom....and he was asked by James and John themselves (I am not fooled by Matthew's version that it was their mother who asked).  So Jesus asks a question back, "Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?"

For once, this is not a metaphorical question.  This is as concrete as it gets....or will get in a chapter or two when they nail Jesus to a cross.  The cup Jesus drinks is the cup of suffering out of love for his neighbors......every single one of them.

To be clear, Jesus is not asking if you are lining up for the next round of crucifixions.  He wants to know where you stand on suffering....not your suffering, but the suffering of those around you.  Looking for a way out?  Looking for protection and security?  Looking out for yourself?

Do you see the suffering around you?  Do you know their names?  Do you know how this world is built on winners and losers?  Do you care whether the hungry get fed?  People of color get dissed?  Children get abused?  The elderly get scammed?

Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?

Or as the decade old song asks, "How deep is your love?"

Not that Jesus will love you any the less if you walk away, shaking your head, and changing the locks on your heart, handing out the keys to a select few.  It's just that there are no private rooms in the kingdom Jesus rules.

Ooops, you missed the grace.......

The day of reckoning had arrived and this servant was in deep.  He owed so much money to the boss man that he could never, ever, ever pay it back.  Maybe if he won the lottery (if they had had a lottery back then) or possibly if a foreign government invaded the country and his boss was killed and so no one ever knew about the debt........but less than those two possibilities, he was in deep.

Yet he bowed low and begged for more time.  He made promises to pay it all back even though everyone in the room knew it wasn't going to ever happen.  He might make a small dent, but when you get in that deep, there is little anyone can do to mitigate the circumstances.

Except, forgive the debt......which his boss did.  Forgave the debt.  All of it.  Completely.

If you ever are in need of a definition of grace, there you have it.  Unexpected, undeserved, unimaginable, unprecedented forgiveness of a debt beyond the beyond.  Grace. No strings attached.  No promises extracted.  100% gift.

And he missed it.  Oh sure, this servant knew he was forgiven.  He knew a thousand pound weight had been lifted from his shoulders, he knew he had a chance to live his life in a completely new way.

Apparently, however, he didn't know that this kind of thing is grace, and deserves a moment of silent awe and a lifetime of thanksgiving. He didn't grasp that this was a golden opportunity to travel a different road as a different person.  Instead he left his boss' house and demanded repayment of a paltry sum from one of his fellow slaves.....tossing him into prison when he couldn't pay.

On any other day of the week we might have called this first servant a nasty SOB (seriously obtuse brother), but today, after the wonderful gift he had received from his boss, well, words completely escape us.  Grace poured out on him that day and he completely missed it....and we are left as confounded as we are sad.

We often miss grace.  We take forgiveness for granted.  We convince ourselves that somehow we deserved this unexpected gift that fell into our lives.  I think this happens because we don't know what to do with it all......we are confounded by the grace itself.

So here's my best advice.  The next time grace drops in, give thanks to the giver, give thanks to the Divine, and then turn and be gracious to someone else.

Grace is a gift that increases in value each time it is given away.

Into the silence..........

For God alone my soul waits in silence,

for my hope is from him.

He alone is my rock and my salvation,

my fortress; I shall not be shaken.

On God rests my deliverance and my honor;

my mighty rock, my refuge is in God.

Trust in him at all times, O people;

pour out your heart before him

God is a refuge for us. 

   Ps62.5-8

My private prayer life (in contrast to my professional prayer life which requires a more public articulation of our approach to God) has reached a place where I rarely speak words aloud.  Most times I am forming words in my mind.....although rarely complete sentences......just images, phrases, single words.  

I have experienced a time when silence was the most I could manage.  I had no words.  There were no images.  Sentences had been lost days and weeks and months before.  I did not seek this time of silence; it wasn't a meditation practice.  It was a time when time stood still, breath was elusive, the future was no more than a blank void.

I was beyond participating in my future: time had simply stopped and I knew the futility of my feeble attempts to shape tomorrow.  I stood absolutely still, frozen in the cross hairs of life and at most I prayed that the Spirit was praying for me.  Remember the story of Elijah in the cave waiting for God who came not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire but in the sheer sound of silence (occasionally translated 'a still small voice').  I waited in the silence for an encounter with God.

This psalm brought me back to those times when I learned a little bit more about waiting on God and trusting in the Creator to hold me close.  For me the psalmist has captured the intersection of the cross......where this world and God's eternity are bound together, a moment when we stand in the silence and await our God.

It was a terrible time when God came close and called me deeper into a life of trust.  I would never choose it voluntarily; I would not be who I am without it.