Water sports

When the dog days of August hit (although, living in Syracuse right now, I can;t even imagine dog days....I am having trouble imagining days with the sun out and the ground dry!)..........there is nothing like running into the refreshing water of lake or beach or stream.  Shocked by the coolness of the water at first, we can feel the sweat being washed away and the heat exiting our body like commuters leaving the morning subway train.  Our cranky, overheated self is replaced by a refreshed and even giddy self as we find a burst of new life, new energy, new attitude. We are transformed.


A splash of water will do that.  When the pressure and heat of this world bear down on us, a splash of water will renew, refresh and re-enliven us.  Sort of like baptism, hmmmm.  Can this image help you to claim the transformation that God is bringing to our lives through that baptismal water?


In mid-January, when I wake to temperatures in the teens, and need to put on a coat, boots, mittens and possibly a hat just to navigate the 50 feet of driveway to retrieve my newspaper..........it is unimaginable to me that there will be a day, probably only 6 months ahead, where I will step out into searing heat, barefoot and in shorts and a tank top to do exactly the same job.

In the same way, on those days when the world is bearing down with relentless demands or crushing crises, it is unimaginable that there will be a day, probably not too far down the road, when I will be lifted up and experience the sweet nectar of life, the joy of being and the blessing of family, job and community.  On those days when I only feel failure, it is unimaginable that there will be a day when I will feel love, acceptance, forgiveness, grace and possibly even shalom.

Well, my friends, that is the Spirit - God's Spirit of Love which is, in fact, LIFE ITSELF, moving among us and within us, calling us into Jesus' presence, reminding us of God's love, renewing the gift of life within us, splashing us with the water of new birth, making us into God's holy people.

Furthermore, on the dog days, on the crushing and relentless days, on the failure days, it is the promise of that gift of Spirit and Life and Love that enable me to hold on.  It is the Spirit who 'calls, gathers, enlightens and sustains us.'  Thank you Lord.

and if that wasn't enough...

One of the challenges of the Resurrection Story is the task of living out a new way of being.  How do we take the information of the resurrection and allow it to shift to an actual life of resurrection we can live today?  How does/can the Resurrection of Jesus transform our lives on Monday morning?

Although all of us need the deep assurance and comfort of God's abiding love through Jesus - an image so perfectly depicted in the 23rd psalm, in this fourth Sunday of Easter, we still need to wrap our heads around the impact of God's amazing resurrection of the Son, Jesus.  We need a picture to help us understand the power of the phrase 'I am doing a new thing' and the concept of 'bringing life out of the heart of death'.

A perfect image for this is the story of the raising of Lazarus, good friend to Jesus.  In fact, the Lazarus story bookends the assigned text for Good Shepherd Sunday, appearing in chapter 11 of the gospel of John.

Who is not moved when Jesus weeps outside the closed tomb of his friend?  We have done this, no?  We have had to say final goodbyes to people we love deeply and whose very existence we will miss.  We have had to confront the possibility of living out our lives without this beloved person.  For those of us who are widowed, we have had to figure out who we are now that we are not one half of a couple.  We have to learn how to be single again, but in a new way.

Lazarus gives us all this.  "Lazarus, come out!" Jesus cries.  Humans have rolled the stone away from the front of Lazarus' tomb, but Lazarus himself must respond to the command of the Son of God, the command to walk from death to life, the command to live yet again. He must hear the Lord's voice and follow.

Deep in the damp darkness of death, Lazarus hears the Savior's call and steps from beyond the veil back into the bright sunlight of his old life.  Yet, it will never truly be life as he once knew it, for he has tasted death and come again into the world of the living.  Lazarus has stepped out.

Jesus then commands, "Unbind him, and set him free".  Of course Jesus is talking about the burial cloths that are wrapped around the corpse, the bindings of this world which will forever keep him among the dead and restrict his ability to walk and live and move and jump in this new /old life of his.

"Unbind him and set him free!"  Leave behind all that is death to you - shuck it off and step out into a new life, a new being, a new power, a new relationship with this God who has given you life yet again.  Whether it is addiction or anger or deep wounds or resentment or any other prison of death that holds you captive, step out of your tomb and throw off all that binds you to death.  Live.

Now Lazarus is not a resurrection story in that Lazarus is resuscitated rather than resurrected.  Lazarus will, in fact, die again another day.

But we get it, don't we?  We understand that image of being closed in a tomb from which we see no escape.  We long for a time when all that binds us is pulled away and we can live a life we could never have imagined before.  Lazarus teaches us the possibility of living a transformed life as a transformed person.

Between the healing of the man born blind and the calling out of the dead Lazarus, we get the good shepherd.  Perhaps after these two extra stories of resurrection we are now ready to figure out who it is who is calling us out, what life with him will look like and whether, in the end, we can trust him at all.

40 days in the wilderness

If you pay attention to the stories of the Bible, you figure out fairly quickly that 40 is a significant number.  Most of us remember that the people of Israel were in the wilderness for 40 years.  Jesus goes out into the wilderness after his baptism for 40 days.  I'm fairly sure we are supposed to draw connections between those two events.  Let's start with Israel.

After their escape through the Red Sea, Israel wandered around in the wilderness for 40 years seeking the land that God had promised them.  It was a long time.  They tried worshipping other gods.  They complained about being thirsty.  They complained about starving.  Then they complained about the manna that God sent to feed them.  The children of Israel whined, complained,  murmured and told golden stories about how wonderful life was back in Egypt.  One scholar said that the 40 years (the approximate length of one generation of people) was not needed to get the people of Egypt; God needed the 40 years to get Egypt out of the people.

40 years.  It is an indicator of how difficult a transition it was for the people of Israel.  Life was terrible in Egypt but at least they knew what to expect.  Life in the so-called 'promised land' was unknown, and therefore scary.  'Better the Devil you know than the Devil you don't know' seemed to be Israel's motto.

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.

Trusting God is no easier today.  It simply isn't.  We are smart people and we know that things don't always turn out the way you want them too.  We know that bad things happen to everybody at some time.  We know that there are a lot of untrustworthy people out there.  People we know; people we can google.  God is way bigger than all of that.  Trusting God is not easy.

Most days we can muddle along without giving all of this a great deal of thought....until one day we find ourselves in a wilderness - stuck between what was and what will be - and our anxiety skyrockets and our trusting plummets.  We stand knee deep in sand and feel the weight of the moment and the uncertainty of the future.  For people of faith, these are the moments which insistently raise the question How much do you trust this God?

These are wonderfully horrible moments. Trust God or Abandon God?  One is beyond difficult, and can easily leave you looking gullible.  The other will leave you in the wild places until you find your way back to the God who is calling out to you, with life draining out all along the way and hope a long forgotten wish.

How was Alexander to know that the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day was a gift, it was the day he and God could find each other yet again.    [one of my favorite children's books  Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Godd, Very Bad Day.  Worth a read.]

Let's start with forgiveness.........

"God, I want some of that healing and mending.  How about you fix those others who are causing all the wounds of this world?  I want a kinder, gentler world."

"I can work with that," Jesus says.  "You are forgiven."


"I don't want to be forgiven.  I want peace and quiet."

"Well, you can't get peace and quiet unless you get a handle of how loud you are yourself.  You contribute to the noise you know.  You have bruised a few people in your time."

"But those were little things.  Not important.  I'm talking about all the big things:  oppressive economic systems, racism, those foreigners who want to live in my neighborhood, criminals.  Those kinds of things."


"All those big things start with very little things.  Decisions and choices made day by day.  By people just like you.  I remember that little nastiness with the check out clerk when she got the change wrong."

"She should have been paying more attention to me, and less to her 'friend.'"

"Yes, lack of attention is indeed an on-going problem.  And blindness.  Folks cannot see themselves in the mirror.  It's an epidemic.  Still I forgive you."

"I'm not in need of forgiveness.  I need a kinder, gentler world."

"Well, how about we start with forgiveness and see where it goes from there?"