please take away the pain

As Brené Brown puts it in her video "Jesus Wept"

“I went to church thinking it would be like an epidural, that it would take the pain away . . . But church isn’t like an epidural; it’s like a midwife . . . I thought faith would say, ‘I’ll take away the pain and discomfort, but what it ended up saying was, ‘I’ll sit with you in it.’ ”*

Everyone has suffering in their life.  If you haven't by now, just wait because someone you love will die, someone you know will be caught by a deadly disease, someone you know will have their job disappear or their marriage dissolve.  To be human is to suffer because our bodies are time stamped and our psyches are fragile and our will power is often used to consolidate our advantages rather than choose for the greater good.

So I believe that the question of higher powers and divine intent and human culpability and just plain luck are always lurking on the corners of our attention.  Is someone to blame?  Could it have been avoided?  Could someone have stopped it?  We relentlessly ask the question, "Why?" which will often turn us to the question of "Who?"  For people of faith, the answer is God (whom we call by different names).

In the 11th chapter of the gospel of John, a friend of Jesus' named Lazarus dies.  He was 'sick unto death' and Jesus tarried a bit too long on the road and in the end, Lazarus was dead.  Wrapped in a shroud dead.  Four days dead.  Dead.

And his sisters, also good friends of Jesus, each in turn cried out, "Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died."  It is the cry of the recently bereaved.  Then Jesus asks to be taken to the cave like tomb where Lazarus had been laid to rest.

And at the tomb he wept.  He wept even though he had known Lazarus was already dead.  He wept knowing that he would call Lazarus back into life in just a few moments.  He wept knowing that the Divine Father offered Lazarus a place at an eternal table that exceeded all expectations.   Even though he knew the end of the story, he wept. He wept because he loved and he could not ignore the pain that surrounded him.

There are many powerful stories told in the scriptures, and they speak to me at different times in my life.  But for me, there is no more stark image of incarnation than Jesus standing before a tomb that he would soon empty, weeping.  From this I know that Jesus weeps with me, and my friends whose lovely daughter took away her own life, and the anonymous mothers whose children were caught in a war zone, and the myriad of others who this day will confront a tomb and weep.

It is the sound of love.  God for us in Jesus.  Us for our beloved.  It is the sound of all humanity.

*“Brene Brown: Jesus Wept,” video, 6:00, The Work of the People, www.theworkofthepeople.com/jesus-wept (accessed 13 October 2014). as quoted in Evans, Rachel Held. Searching for Sunday (p. 209). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

Love....the only commandment

Love God.  Love your neighbor. 

Some version of this lies at the heart of most religious systems.  Love involves empathy, sacrifice, and concern; all of this is wrapped up in being able to see the unbreakable connection between each of us and each of those we call 'other'.  Love involves relationship.

In 1923, Martin Buber, a German philosopher wrote a book called Ich und Du, usually translated I and Thou.  Buber's main proposition is that we may address existence in two ways:  first, in the attitude of the "I" towards and "It", that is, towards an object that is separate in itself, which we either use or experience.  The second approach is in the attitude of the "I" towards "Thou", a relationship in which the other is not separated by discrete bounds, where you and I are connected in some manner.

One of the major themes of the book is that human life finds its meaningfulness in relationships.  In Buber's view, all of our relationships bring us ultimately into relationship with God, who is the Eternal Thou.  A person sitting next to a complete stranger on a park bench may enter into an "I-Thou" relationship with the stranger merely by beginning to think positively about people in general, and thus recognizing the stranger as a person as well.  (thanks to Wikipedia for this succinct summary).

You might not understand what Buber is proposing, but let me put it this way.  We are supposed to love people (thou) and use money (it).  We are prone to love money (thou) and use people (it).

Buber offers us one way to talk about how we get this 'love' thing wrong.  We might think that loving the neighbor requires warm, fuzzy feelings which we often cannot conjure up.  In the end, it doesn't; it requires we sustain relationship with the neighbor.  This is what makes loving your neighbor infinitely ore diffiult than loving God because our neighbors are so very human. They are smelly, nasty, hurtful or in a thousand other ways less than ideal companions. In Sonnet 116,  Shakespeare writes "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds....".  Buber would say that love isn't love when our commitment is to our own comfort and not to the relationship between us.  Love cannot make an object of the other, make it into an 'it', a tool to be used whether for pleasure or gain or safety.  Love requires relationship.

  

Love looks beyond the surface in the neighbor and sees the flawed, scarred, struggling humanity we all share.  Such are the demands of love, that we see worth in every face.  Ergo, loving the neighbor is a tall order on any day of the week.  It's easy to see that loving a God who doesn’t party loudly until 2 am is a lot easier than loving your neighbor who does. 

Yet, it all begins with the neighbor, for how can you love a God you cannot see when you do not love the neighbor you can?  First feed the hungry child and then talk about your love for the Divine Creator.  Love for the Divine Creator is manifest in love for those whom the Divine Creator created.  First, connect with the lost and lonely in person before you talk about connecting with the Divine God who is both mystery and spirit.  

In the end, the commands:  Love God.  Love your neighbor.  are at the heart of our faith only when they are at the heart of our lives.

What is the Good News?

What is the good news?  Evangelism is the sharing of good news: it comes from the Greek 'eu' for good and 'angelion' for message.  When we talk gospel we are talking good news.

So what is the Good News?

God's love, manifestly present in the person of Jesus, is the Good News.  It is good news because it is God's love (and not judgment) because we have concrete examples of how that love is lived out (in all the stories of Jesus) and because, since it comes from God, it is eternal (rather than temperal).

When we gather around Jesus the Christ to worship, we are  not just gathering around the person of Jesus. Rather we gather around God's good news to all of creation in the person of Jesus, called the Christ.  The difference is between worshipping the man (historical, physical) and giving worship to the God whose love for all creation became human, living among us as the person of Jesus.  


If this is the Good News, then what is the Bad News?

The Bad News is that the world is not generally like this.  The world does not love us so that we may blossom and be all that we might be.  The world isn't interested in the health of our body or our souls.  Any reward that comes to us from this world comes as a result of our hard work and frankly, can disappear overnight.  The Bad News is that this world doesn't forgive, doesn't make us whole from the inside out, and too often won't even cross the street to give us a hand.

The Good News is that the one who created us for this lifetime is also waiting for us in the world to come.  The Bad News is that the race in this world is only to the swift and will leave all others behind.

The Good News is that everyone is invited, welcomed, considered valuable.  The Bad News is that only some are valuable, only some are welcome and few are invited in.

The Good News in Jesus is that healing is possible, your race is not a factor and it doesn't matter if you are male or female or something in between.  God is at work in Jesus bringing into existence the world to come: a world founded on mercy where all are made whole and live in peace and comfort in the presence of God.  

The Good News is that this kingdom of God breaks into our world everytime there is healing and forgiveness and invitation.  We get a foretaste of the wonder to come.  We can participate in that glory today, in this place.  We can bring that new life into being by being instruments of healing, forgiveness and welcome.

So if Jesus was such Good News, then why the cross?  That's for tomorrow.

When was the last time........

......the demons drove you into the wild?


When was the last time..... life as you knew it stopped on a dime and you couldn't catch your breath and day after day you saw no way back to normal again?

When was the last time.......a hurt became a grudge became a quiet campaign (conducted in lower voices) to defame the source of your pain?

When was the last time.....a minor mishap became a explosion of emotion and energy that forced family and friends to duck behind some kind of shelter until the storm passed?

When was the last time....you watched as a friend moved from disappointment to fear to despair as they began to believe the voices in their heads telling them they had no worth?

There are forces in our world which want to deprive you of life.......the ease to breathe, to move among us, to walk with self-worth, to make plans for the future, to feel safe in your own body.  There are forces that will seep into our broken places and then drain us of the life that God has given us.

We have heard much in the news of the Stanford rape case.  When I read the victims letter I thought - ahhh, there are the demons at work.   I am not speaking of the man who assaulted her. That young woman spoke of her struggle against all that wanted to hold her prisoner in a place that is only dark and never light- a place of constant vigilance and fear, a place where she would forget who she was.  Rather, in the wake of that horrible experience, the victim was assaulted again and again by forces that would rob her of her future.  She has fought powerfully to find her way back to life again.  To live without fear and without hate.

I know, we modern people don't believe in demons or evil spirits, but I think that a little thought will lead us to see times when we 'just couldn't let it go' or times when 'somehow it got blown all out of proportion' or times when disappointment crushed us and made it hard to step forward again.

These are the times when our relationship with God becomes our lifeline.  It is exactly the time to remind ourselves that we are children of the Divine Creator; God knows our name and desires goodness for us.  It is exactly the time to be surrounded by others who are strong, who will say the name of Jesus and pray for our welfare.  It is exactly the time to eat bread and drink wine and be filled with our Lord's strength.

It is exactly the time to remember the day we call Good Friday when evil took hold of people's cowardice and fear and executed the one who brought healing into this world...the day evil thought it was in charge.

Then remember this.....'early in the morning on the first day of the week, the women brought spices so to anoint Jesus' body....'

but he was not there.

In the end, love wins.

Friends in high places

This man didn't get to be a centurion in the Roman army by being dumb.  He wants a healing for someone who is important to him and so he uses the tried and true method of making use of his friends in high places.  I won't disparage his intentions; I won't suggest that he made friends with the local Jewish leaders in order to have this ace in his pocket when he needed it.  This isn't an episode of House of Cards.  None the less, this centurion doesn't hesitate to make use of the friends he has cultivated in those high places...or at least the friends he suspects will have influence over a Jewish rabbi with an extraordinary reputation.

These Jewish leaders want Jesus to understand just how worthy this Roman soldier - the enemy of the Jewish people, the occupiers of promised Jewish land, the oppressors of the Jewish race - is to receive whatever healing Jesus might be able to bring.  They list his gifts, his friendship, his generosity to their people.  He is worthy of your attention.

Furthermore, notice that the soldier asks nothing for himself.  He asks for a slave.  I will not call into question the Roman's intentions here either, even knowing that young male slaves were not acquired to wash dishes way too often in Roman society.  If this point is of no importance to Jesus, it will be of no importance to me. Just as Jesus is not distracted by this possibility, neither will I be.

But knowing what we do about Jesus' message to the people of Israel, to the people of Rome, to the whole of creation; knowing what we do about Jesus' ability to forgive even the ones who executed him; knowing what we do about Jesus' command to love..........well, I have to wonder what Jesus was thinking about this claim that the soldier was 'worthy.'

Of course he was worthy.  He was a child of God, created by the Divine Creator out of love and now called into a new and authentic life by the Son of Love named Jesus.  Of course he was worthy, but not because of what he had done........for better or worse......but because God made him and therefore Jesus loved him.  I wonder if Jesus was chuckling inside as he began the journey to the soldier's house.

Even more, I wonder if Jesus can still chuckle at our insistence on making ourselves worthy: running around, doing good deeds, correcting the behavior of others and working, working, working at keeping the rules.  Or, has Jesus' love gained a tinge of frustration at our dense, recalcitrant need to do the work that we are incapable of doing and which is not necessary from the very beginning.

When Jesus says we are loved, we are loved.  End of story.  When we live as if we truly believe, trust and desire that love, our lives are transformed.  That is the story that Jesus is telling regardless of what story we manage to hear.

It is so difficult to leave behind all that we have been taught at the knee of wisdom in this competitive, death dealing world.  It is difficult to trust that this Jesus can, does, will, and will always love us.  Daily we need to return to that passage from John, 'for God so loved the world that God sent Jesus..not to condemn the world but so that the world might be saved through him' (John 3.16-17 paraphrase).

He had always had friends in high places - very high places.

It has never been about being worthy.

It has always been about being loved.

Amen.  Thank you Lord Jesus.

so, to re-cap: love one another

The love that called Jesus out of the grip of death and into life, out of the back of the tomb, out of the darkness into eternal light.......

that is the same love that God expressed when God created all that exists.  It is a love so powerful that its expression is life, its goal is life, its being is life.  The same love that broke the bonds of this earth will break those bonds again when it calls each and everyone one created by God out of the tomb of fear and into the new life which is life in God.

 Jesus was certain God's love was sufficient to call him out of the tomb and into resurrection.  Jesus was certain it could and it would.  Jesus' presence among us is to remind us and to make us certain it can and it will.  This is resurrection love: it is powerful and it is life giving.

That isn't to say that it is easy.  Loving another into resurrection is demanding work.

It's not just that the tomb is dark and deep, but we cling to its walls, refusing to let go of the very things that hold us captive.  We see the light and dismiss it as a figment of someone's imagination, a false hope, a dead end.....without ever seeing the irony of our own image of 'dead end.'

We wrestle with the gift of life.  In order to pick up the life offered by God we must put down the weight of all that burdens us, wounds us, wounds others, drains the goodness out of us and leaves us without the energy to claim the life that is offered.

We argue with the gift of life.  When we look around us we can see no sensible order; seems some folks are way ahead on the 'light of life' game.  We get angry when the wounds of others crash into us and we are wounded as well.  We get so angry we pickup our weapon of choice: jealousy or revenge or even building higher walls so we can 'protect' ourselves....when in fact we are locking ourselves away.We reject the gift of life because it is offered to folks we think are unworthy with words like immoral.  We slap at the hands of those who offer to lead us into the light.

Jesus is God's concrete call to all of creation to come out of the tomb and live in the light.  "Follow me," Jesus said as he offers to lead us to a better place, an eternal place.

Oh yes, and bring your friends.  Tell them the story.  Tell them your story.  Invite them to walk with you on this journey called faith - not a journey into darkness but a journey into revealing light.  Work with them, walk with them, hold fast to them, cajole them when necessary.  Bring food for the journey and good hiking shoes because this is a stoney path.

Along the way you will begin to experience the very resurrection you seek.  You will slough off that which kills and strive towards the love that Jesus incarnated.  You will become love yourself and be the guide for others to Jesus' side.

That's what we're talking about.  Resurrection love.  Manifest in Jesus.  Given to you.  For you to share with others.  It's so powerful that death will flee and only God will remain.

Like I said at the beginning, we're not talking about fairy dust and unicorns here.  We're talking resurrection.

"Love one another.  As I have loved you, love one another."

What kind of love is this?

Having washed the feet of his betrayer, Jesus plunges into the depths of love.

What kind of love?

Creating love: the kind that was present when this creation was called into being by the Divine Power.  The kind of love that is manifest when life is called into being, when light enters the void.  It is the foundation of this world and the foundation of the eternal Divine Kingdom.  It is love that works from the bottom up.

It is hard work.

This love is such a powerful force that it can enter the darkness of the tomb, surrounded by the odor of death, and step out risen and alive.  Yes, we think of the tomb that held Jesus but there are thousands of other tombs: tombs of the living who die a little each and every day because they stand in the presence of death and cannot recognize the life giving power of love that beckons to them.


The back of the tomb is God territory: where the most deadly things happen and yet, in God, are never the last word on anything.  There in the back of tomb where humans are convinced that the power of evil has prevailed is the power of God's love - bringing life - bringing light - making a new day.

So we cannot fool ourselves:  loving another into resurrection is backbreaking work.  But it is not our backs that it breaks, but rather, it breaks the back of racial prejudice and superiority.  It breaks the back of poverty and oppression.  It breaks the back of all the categories we use to separate and (de)value one another: categories like sexuality, age, gender, nationality, religion, criminal record.

This powerful resurrection love breaks our fear, which is the tomb that holds us all.  We fear being found out to be frauds, to be unholy, unworthy.  We fear that the ugliness of jealousy and lust and greed will become visible to everyone and in the end no one loves us and there is no way out of this tomb of fear.

Yet Jesus stepped willingly into the tomb.....in absolute certainty that God is God, and God could and would continue to love him....right back into life again.

Loving another into resurrection is back breaking work.  It will kill you.  It will bring you into life again - a life that cannot be taken away.

That's the love that Jesus is talking about.  Love one another.  Just as I have loved you, love one another.

A lifetime of work to bring about a time of life.

Love one another................

It is a clear command:  Love one another.  As I have loved you, love one another.

But it comes at the most amazing point in John's telling of the Jesus story.  In John, the disciples gather around Jesus in the hours before his arrest and crucifixion.  The writer of John does  not focus on the meal but rather on the humble act of footwashing.

Footwashing was the work of the youngest or lowest slave in the house.  Guests were offered the opportunity to have the road's dust and other unmentionably smelly things washed off their feet before the evening's fellowship began.  From my time in Africa, it is easy to imagine a small basin being filled with water from a hand held pitcher as it is carried from person to person so the washing could commence.  In rural Africa that is often how they manage hand washing before a meal; it is a sign of hospitality.

But it requires that someone kneel at the feet of another and do whatever is necessary to both cleanse but also soothe those worn feet.  I can picture the muddy watter sloshing out of the basin a bit, some dripping of wet feet, a towel getting increasingly dirty.

I expect that the usual practice was to ignore the person performing this menial task for you (just as we are prone to ignore the bus boy who clears our dirty dishes). You'd avert your gaze and certainly not engage in conversation.  But those disciples were being served by the one they called Master and Rabbi and Lord and even Messiah.  So possibly they averted their gaze out of embarrassment.

Unfolding his body from its kneeling position, Jesus could have looked around the gathered disciples.  They didn't know how close the end was, even if Jesus did.  They didn't know that the spark that would ignite the subsequent fire was sitting right there among them.  They didn't realize at that moment that Jesus had washed the feet of the one who was about to leave the room and hand him over to the authorities.  Judas wasn't who Judas would become in our imagination and in this story at just that moment.

It was then that Jesus said, "Love one another.  As I have love you, you love one another."

Just as I have loved you.  On my knees.  Wet with the dirt and manure of unwashed feet.  Doing the work of the lowest of the slaves.  To all of you.  All. Of. You.

Jesus had already given the command as he moved from foot to foot......it just took a moment for him to stand straight and give us the words for the actions we witnessed.  Love one another.

Not fairy dust and unicorns.  Not sentiment and wedding bells.  Not puppy dogs and Kumbaya.

Kneeling.  For everyone.  Until death.....and then beyond into life.

That kind of love.



John 13.31-35

Do you love me? repeat 3 times

It's Peter and the risen Jesus on either side of a charcoal fire on a beach alongside the Sea of Galilee.  It's a scene that can break your heart.

"Simon, Son of John, do you love me?"

This is not a simple question because Peter is not just any Tom, Dick or Harry.
He's the one who vehemently denied knowing Jesus.
Not once.  Three times.
Just before they crucified him.
Just before he died.

I think there were some days when Peter simply wanted to die from the shame of it all, and the scent of this fire on the beach could have easily brought back the smell of the fire that night just days earlier.  That fire.  On that night.

"Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."

"Simon, do you love me?" Jesus asks again.

What is Peter to do now?  How can he convince Jesus that his love is genuine?  How can he convince himself that his love is strong enough for whatever trial is in his future?

He had failed once.  Would he fail again?  What exactly did loving Jesus look like?

"Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."

"Simon, do you love me?" Jesus asks a third time.

Was it to counter balance the three times Peter denied him?  Was it to help Peter be certain that he could translate love into action?  Was this third time to get Peter's mind off himself and focused on the work that Jesus had for him?

"Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."  Really, what more could Peter say?

Then feed my sheep.

The past was past.  God's future was waiting.  Jesus called Peter to be a part of God's future.  It was time to let it go and get on with the coming of the new creation and that looked like tending sheep.

Return to this story again and again when you are uncertain of your love, when you have failed yourself and others, when you are so distracted by the daily grind that you can't see or hear Jesus at work in the world, when you don't know what God is calling you to do.  Feed the sheep, tend the lambs, watch after the flock.

God will be at work in and through you whether you recognize it or not. Peace my friends.