the whole gospel

"It would be worthless to have an economic liberation in which all the poor had their own house, their own money, but were all sinners, their hearts estranged from God, what good would it be?
There are nations at present that are economically and socially quite advanced, for example those of northern Europe, and yet how much vice and excess.  The church will always have its word to say:  conversion.  Progress will not be completed even if we organize ideally the economy and the political and social orders of our people.  It won't be entire with that.  That will be the basis so that it can be completed by what the church pursues and proclaims; God adored by all, Christ acknowledged as only savior, deep joy of Spirit in being at peace with God and with our brothers and sisters."  --Bishop Oscar Romero.

are you worried?

Jesus says, "So do not worry about your life."  Are you worried?  Really?  Why?

You have insurance; homeowners, auto, health and life.  Yes life insurance, financial security for your family in the tragic event of your premature death.

And grocery stores full of food you did not have to labor over, grow, harvest, process, can, haul, or stock on shelves.  How much food is wasted daily because it was not purchased before its sell by date expired?  You have food, I suspect, in your house on a shelf or in a freezer, that you will not eat today or tomorrow.  I bet you have at least a week’s worth of food in your house right now, maybe more. I do. 

And closets and dressers with clothing you did not have to make.  Some that you do not or cannot wear.  I do. 

And a bank account. I do.

And a pension or retirement savings account.  You have investments. I do.   

And a credit card. I do.

And social security. Maybe I will?

You have what you need for today, maybe even for tomorrow. Knowing this, are you worried?  I am.  

love your enemies

We continue to hear Jesus teachings from the fifth chapter of the gospel of Matthew.  We have been dwelling on these words for three weeks now.  So Rabbi Jesus teaches us how to live a holy life as God’s people.  If you are like me, the idea of being or becoming holy sounds a bit-farfetched, awkward, and unlikely.  Holiness is for Catholic nuns or priests or something.  Or the holy-rollers, the holier than thou religious sort, who judge others by their self-righteousness.  I don’t want to be like them.  But I do want to become like Jesus, to live according to God’s will  When Jesus says be perfect, he does not mean be perfect. It is not moral perfectionism, but rather an acknowledgment that God sets some people apart as an example for others.  Not that some of us are better than the rest, but that God has given some people an identity with a mission or calling—to imitate Jesus.  We continue, then, to ask the question, What does it mean for a blessed person to bless others?

Jesus says:  Do not resist an evildoer.  Turn the other cheek.  Give your cloak.  Go the second mile.  Give to everyone who begs of you.  Do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.  This sounds like we invite people to take advantage of us.  It sounds like becoming willing victims to abuse, violence, and highway robbery.  It sounds like letting bad people walk all over you.  It sounds like a series of bad advice.

In honor of President's day, I have a couple of Lincoln and Washington tales to tell.  

life or death. talking and acting like Jesus.

Matthew 5:21-37.  Deuteronomy 30:15-20

Life and prosperity, death and adversity.  No less than life and death are on the table in the Old Testament reading from Deuteronomy. As we listen to the Scriptures, as we consider what the Master Jesus is teaching us, we recognize that this word was about matters of life or death.  For the Jewish community, life and death hang in the balance.  The seriousness of the law makes me think of God as a powerful judge and Jesus as a high power district attorney.  Are we the defendants, the disciples the twelve jurors, our neighbors, our accusers? There is a way in which these texts can be heard in that context.  What would the heavenly court say about us?  Do we not stand condemned according to our sins?  Does Jesus raise the bar in order to accuse us, to show us how weak we are, to expose our misbehavior?  Do we stand before God then, accused, convicted, sentenced to death?  We are happy with the grace-filled, merciful and loving Jesus.  But ethical Jesus challenges us to think about what we are doing, what others are doing in our world. As God’s blessed ones, how do we live, how do we behave?

Blessed are you.

Matthew 5: 1-12 The sermon on the mount

The mediocre teacher tells.  The good teacher explains.  The superior teacher demonstrates.  The great teacher inspires.  ~William Arthur Ward.

 

When we think of teachers, we think of formal education, school, professors, and homework.  School is something that we complete, that we finish.  So what does it mean to be a student or disciple of Jesus?  We are going to find out.  What is Christian education and who needs it?   

It all started on Saturday when I slipped on the ice and sprained my ego, I mean ankle.  Then on Sunday, Jonah fell and split his head open, needed stitches.  Then Cherie had a disasterous trip to the grocery store, in which she dumpled an entire bag of dog food in the checkout aisle.  Can you say clean up on aisle 12?  Then my computer failed. I was going to say died, but I don’t want to over-humanize the machine. It’s not human.   It was one of those weeks---like someone has it in for you, when trivial things cause frustrations that turn into self-pity.  Why is this happening? Ugh.  Not now.  Not me. Not today.  I am important.  I have things to do, places to go, people to see.  You know the feeling? The whole, “Why am I being cursed” feeling?  The feeling that you are not blessed, that someone up there has it in for you.  Then I see Linda Shelley, who has good news about her cancer fight and she tells me how blessed she is.  Blessed.  Sick with cancer, having just come from chemo, and she is blessed.  Man do I have a ways to go.  I think I was also able to be a blessing a couple of times this week.  I delivered food to some neighbors.  They genuinely seemed grateful that I came, listened to their stories, felt their pain, tried to help.  I was blessed to be a blessing a couple of times this week.   

Be our Guest. Christians and hospitality

I enjoy being a guest.  It is the nature of my vocation that I enter into the homes of other people.  I love to visit people. I like to be received.  It is good to be on someone else's home turf.  Often, I am the recipient of some gesture of welcome---a cup of coffee, a piece of cake, a comfy chair.  When I came here five years ago, my wife and I intentionally welcomed the congregation into our home.  We invited people over for dinner.  We had an open house in the summer time.  With rare exception, our openness to others was not reciprocated.  We go out to eat with a few couples from the church annually. When our second and third children were born, people brought food to us.  We enjoyed many wonderful home-cooked meals that way.  But nobody came to eat with us.  And rarely have we been invited to another home.
There have been occasions when we sought to get people together around a meal for fellowship and discipleship.  But people have been reluctant to take part.  People are closed off, private, afraid of getting to know others.

Jesus' maps

If we are to become seekers after and followers of Jesus, then we must become familiar with His ways.
His ways are ancient, marking paths thousands of years old.  I have not walked where Jesus walked.  I have not been in the Galilee region, or in the city of Jerusalem.  I have not been to Israel or the middle east.  We may not literally go there, as pilgrims to a place.  But we can find ourselves following after Him.
The first step is to encounter Jesus, called the Christ.  To do so will require digging into history, religion, ancient cultures and traditions, biblical texts and spiritual experiences.
We will begin with Jesus, as He comes to us in the bible. We will call this a primary map.
The gospels tell the story of Jesus' adult ministry, arrest, trial, crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection.  Two of the four gospels include infancy stories.  The Gospel of John develops a more cosmic identity, giving Jesus the status of divine creator.  Jesus is light.  Jesus is God incarnate.
IN the gospels Jesus teaches and heals people.  Jesus feeds the hungry and raises the dead to life.  He restores sight to the blind. He calls disciples, students to come after him, learn and imitate his ways.  Jesus teaches them how to pray, how to share, how to serve others.  Jesus tells parables, stories that interpret human experience from an alternative view.  Jesus favors small things, weak things, poor things.  Jesus sees the value in a single sparrow, in the artistry of a flower, in the subtle power of a single seed.  Jesus recognizes injustices, systems of evil and oppression that threaten life.  He confronts and seeks to dismantle those systems.
Jesus is baptized and practices the Jewish Passover.  He observes Sabbath, even while breaking or changing the rules that governed human behavior on it.  He upholds the sanctity of marriage and the goodness of children, even while he eats with prostitutes and invites condemned criminals into paradise.
Coming next...the gospel of Matthew.  Rabbi Jesus and the way of poverty, humility, and peace.

Searching

Geocaching is a new game of hide and seek that people play with their handheld GPS device.  A GPS helps you to tsrack and locate a hidden object, the coordinates of which have been entered into the GPS' navigation system.  Caches are usually small containers with trinkets in them, prizes for the seeker/finder.  There are hundreds of thousands of geocaches around the world.  People are seekers.  We like to find things and be found. We like to use our minds, our intuition, and our tools to find our way.  Searching is in our DNA. 


"For as long as I can remember, I've been searching for something, some reason why we're here. What are we doing here? Who are we? If this is a chance to find out even just a little part of that answer... I don't know, I think it's worth a human life. Don't you?"  (From the movie "Contact", with Jodie Foster.)  Searching for meaning.  Asking why.  It's what sets us apart.  We have the capacity to ask questions, to search, to discover, to assign meaning to an experience or event or object.  We make sense of our world.  


In a Google world, where an engine searches millions of pages of digital content to provide the searcher with the best results for their inquiry within seconds, we expect to find answers instantly and easily.  Is everything available  through Google?  Is there nothing hidden that cannot be found with the click of the mouse and the stroke of the keys?  
"You have searched me out and known me," sang the biblical Psalmist thousands of years ago.  God searches for people, too.  God seeks us, even as we seek after the mysteries of life.  We seek God to make sense of the things we cannot Google for understanding.  
I am reading a book right now called "Enough: Why people starve in an age of plenty."  I think that is a question worth asking.  Why do people starve in an age of plenty?  Why, if there is enough food for everyone on the planet, do 26,500 children die daily from preventable diseases related to hunger?  Google that.  If you Google the world hunger about 49 million hits emerge.  That's about how many Americans suffer from food insecurity, a lack of adequate resources to provide food for their household.  I think we could spend our lives searching for a way to end hunger in the world.  

Searching for the truth about life, we travel, we read, we explore ideas, we pay attention to events and people.  Most people need a Google or a GPS to navigate their way in the world.  We need direction, guidance, a map.
I like to think that searching, though often personal, is not best done in private.  It is best done in the company of other searchers.  Geocaching is a great family activity. 
Searching for the truth about the world, ourselves, and God is something we do best in conversation with others.  It is better not to search alone.  Lonely searching too often becomes wandering, which can prove fruitless, aimless, and direction-less.


The biblical story is about a way.  From beginning to end, the biblical story is a journey filled with movement and obstacles and misguidance and redirection.  
Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life."  What is the way of Jesus?  How does Jesus teach us to seek after God?   Where does Jesus go?  What tools does he offer for navigation?  What are the maps Jesus' uses to direct His people into the life God intends?  By carefully reading the bible we can come to see these maps.  They do not provide a single-lane highway, easy-to-travel approach.  We will need to use our imagination, intuition, and collective resources to find the way.  On the way, we might also be found.  


The Christian community believes that the way is Jesus.  The way to peace.  The way to compassion.  The way to justice.  The way to death.  The way to life.  Jesus is the way there.  Getting on the way with Jesus is what church is about.  It is about finding one's way in the world with Jesus as our master.  He shows us the way.  


Coming up in the next post... Using Jesus' maps: ancient practices that give direction.    
  

An education

  

Sermon for Epiphany 4 2011

The mediocre teacher tells.  The good teacher explains.  The superior teacher demonstrates.  The great teacher inspires.  ~William Arthur Ward. 

When we think of teachers, we think of formal education, school, professors, and homework.  School is something that we complete, that we finish.  So what does it mean to be a student or disciple of Jesus?  We are going to find out.  What is Christian education and who needs it?   

It all started on Saturday when I slipped on the ice and sprained my ego, I mean ankle.  Then on Sunday, Jonah fell and split his head open, needed stitches.  Then Cherie had a disastrous trip to the grocery store, in which she dumped an entire bag of dog food in the checkout aisle.  Can you say clean up on aisle 12?  Then my computer failed. I was going to say died, but I don’t want to over-humanize the machine. It’s not human.   It was one of those weeks---like someone has it in for you, when trivial things cause frustrations that turn into self-pity.  Why is this happening? Ugh.  Not now.  Not me. Not today.  I am important.  I have things to do, places to go, people to see.  You know the feeling? The whole, “Why am I being cursed” feeling?  The feeling that you are not blessed, that someone up there has it in for you.  Then I see Linda Shelley, who has good news about her cancer fight and she tells me how blessed she is.  Blessed.  Sick with cancer, having just come from chemo, and she is blessed.  Man do I have a ways to go.  I think I was also able to be a blessing a couple of times this week.  I delivered food to some neighbors.  They genuinely seemed grateful that I came, listened to their stories, felt their pain, tried to help.  I was blessed to be a blessing a couple of times this week.    

The Master teaches.  And on this occasion, he speaks blessing first.  He will teach morals and commands and encourage a particular way of life.  But he begins with blessings.  The Beatitudes are a reminder.  Not that people in mourning are blessed.  Or that the poor are.  Or that those who are pure in heart or peaceful are blessed.  It is not a reminder that God only blesses these types of folks.  Jesus is offering a blessing to the people who had gathered to listen to him teach.  In the beginning of his first teaching event, he offers these blessings.  Matthew’s gospel includes five teaching discourses, in which Jesus offers an alternative way of life for God’s people.  Some scholars believe that Matthew is claiming that Jesus is the new Moses and the five teachings are the new Torah.  Torah are the first five books of the old testament and represent the core teachings of Judaism about life in relationship or covenant with their God, Yahweh, with each other, and with their neighbors.  Jesus’ first discourse is called the Sermon on the mount, because he is sitting on a mountain.  We will hear the entire sermon over the next few weeks.  It gives the Christian community a snapshot of the core values or principles by which the Master Jesus lives; teachings he demonstrates in his own life and expects his followers to imitate in theirs.  If Moses’ teaching begins with the ten commandments—the thou shalt nots.  Then Jesus teaching begins with the Beatitudes, the blest are theys.  Contrast these ways of talking about God.  The former reveals God as a supreme law giver and judge who presides over the people as a stern parent, with serious rules to be obeyed.  The latter reveals a God who blesses those people who are the least likely to feel blessed.  The ones who may seem to be cursed. God favors them.  When others might look at their situations and say, what did they do?  And don’t we sometimes judge ourselves negatively too?  That we don’t deserve to be blessed, that we deserve whatever crisis comes our way?  When life feels like divine punishment or has gone to hell, that is when God’s promise to bless is given.  Jesus teaches that the suffering ones will be rewarded; that the peacemakers will be God’s children; that those who grieve will be comforted; that the weak will have the world handed to them. 

Christian education begins with blessing.  It begins with God’s welcome and God’s promise to give us the fullness of life.  And it continues with the master Jesus teaching us how to live in that grace, how to become not only recipients of blessing but bearers of blessing for others.  There are so many masters out there competing for your allegiance.  Christians take Jesus as their master.  We are apprentices in his ways.   

I was blessed with the resources to obtain formal academic degrees, both my bachelors and my masters degree.  But Christian education is deeper; it is training the Spirit to will what God wills, to love what God loves, to care about the things God made, to tread a little lighter on the earth, and to bless others more than you curse. Christian education shapes one’s identity as a baptized child of God.  How do we live as bearers of God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven?  How do we show mercy, offer peace, and receive pure hearts?  How do we endure persecution as Christ’s people, doing justice and loving mercy by standing with the outcast and the sinners?  How do we stand for human dignity and demand that al people receive respect and a little compassion? Christian education is lifelong training in how to live the golden rule, how to love others, love God, love the world.  For the next few weeks, we are in for a Christian education, as we listen to the master. I know this kind of training is not a sprint, but a marathon.  It is lifelong development and formation as God’s people.  Join us as we grow in our knowledge of God’s blessings and in our resolve to follow Him.  And before you go today, tell someone how God blessed you this week. 

Amen.  

Micro-church: a post-congregational expression

I grew up going to church.  My parents became Lutheran members of a congregation in Illinois and found a Lutheran congregation that shared the same name when we migrated to New York State.  I was a member of Our Saviour Lutheran in Rockford, by baptism; and of Our Saviour, Utica, by transfer and by confirmation.  I became a member of Grace Lutheran and of Zion Lutheran by letter of call as ordained pastor. I loved weekly liturgy and started assisting the pastor in the worship service as a teen.  I was weird, compared to my peers.  I was weird, compared to adult members.  My faith life was activated.   I listened and believed.  And I loved potlucks, Lenten services, and singing in the choir.  I never thought I would become critical of the Lutheran Christian culture that formed me.  I do so out of a deep, abiding love for Jesus and his church.  I do so out of a sense of obligation to serve Him and the church I love.  I have loved and benefited from congregational life.  I appreciate a sense of belonging to a people and a place, a holy dwelling place where God's promises are spoken and received.  The familiarity of a particular congregation and its sanctuary/building is emotionally comforting in the face of an ever-changing world.

Micro-Church DNA Continued:Who is Jesus?

"The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God." Gospel of Mark 1:1.  The micro-church is evangelical.  But it is not evangelical in the political, Americanized, televised sense of the word.  It is evangelical because it is formed as a result of the gospel announcement made by Jesus, embodied by Jesus, and concerning the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.  The gospel is the announcement about God's rule and its implications for all creation and especially humankind, a public announcement that occurred in 1st century Palestine/Israel through the ministry of Jesus.  The micro-church consists of people who have been captivated, inspired, changed, and called to act by and in response to Jesus.  The life of the micro-church is found in the story of Jesus.  That story is offered four ways, but four witnesses, four storytellers, four narrators. They tell unique aspects of one story.  Much of what each says overlaps and complements the other narratives.  Some differences give unique character and flavor to the stories.  These gospels are not biographies, so much as personal accounts of Jesus and the people he encounters along the way.  They are also theophanies, revealing or showing the world something of the divine or of God's identity and character.  Jesus and God the father are consistent characters in the narrative of the gospels.  To the gospel writers the God who is present and revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures appears in the work and teachings of Jesus.
For the micro-church, encountering this Jesus in the narrative of the gospels and in the unfolding of life's story, is a core part of who we are and what we are called to be and do as church.  Jesus is not an historical figure or a hero of faith or a martyr.  Jesus is God's son, the lamb of God, the good shepherd, the light of the world, and the resurrection and life.  Jesus is the way, to live and to die. Jesus is what life is about.  The meaning of life is the story of Jesus, who shows us what it means to live a full and complete human life in full and complete union with God.  Why is Jesus so central to a micro-church's dna? There are other things that shape modern churches, including human traditions, building designs, cultures and languages. Jesus is included in these things, too.  But to say that Jesus and the gospels were coopted for the purposes of Constantinian religion is an understatement.   More about that in a bit...

small, apostolic , rooted: the micro-church

The smallest of seeds...

In shaping a vision for the future church, there are some things we identify as core values, essential aspects, part of the DNA.  The future church will not jettison or abandon the ecclesial past, so much as it will reframe and reimagine what the "old, old story" means given the postmodern situation we find ourselves in.
Without deconstructing a whole lot of what church has been about or addressing every attribute of the psotmodern global context we are in,  I hope to begin forming an ecclesial  structure for the future of our life and work as people of faith.  Much work has already been done by Phyllis Tickle, author of "The Great Emergence", Brian McLaren, and many others to identify the reformation of the church that is occurring at this beginning of the next millenium. They have already identified and unpacked this contextual landscape.  They are exegetes of culture, cultural liasons, and ethnographers of this age that give language to what we experience and know as people living here and now.  Something is emerging in Christianity that departs from or reframes what preceded it in light of that new cultural landscape.  Congregations, denominational bodies, and even megachurches are recognizing that former ways of doing church, the paradigmatic systems we've accepted as the only ways to be church, are failing to embody the gospel message in ways that connect, resonate, and give life to God's world. From church scandals to massive oil spills, the world is crying out for a message of hope lived and expressed by an inspired and inspiring people who are willing to devote themselves to living a better way.  No current religious system is free enough from the limits we have imposed on ourselves to fully embrace an alternative way.  We have a way of gauging corporate success.  Drifting away from methods proven effective is tantamount to suicide.  But what if those tried and true formulas for being church no longer work?   What if attracting people to build an institution that requires more people to sustain it and manage it for the next 100 years doesn't work?  Is there another way of being church?

Micro-churches

In the future, the Christian community will return to its apostolic roots. These roots are spiritual, incarnational, missional, and relational.  The church will not build multi-million dollar campuses to serve the religious needs of insatiable consumers.  The church will not consist of a program staff doing ministry for haappy church-goers.  The church will not be held hostage by power players who follow human traditions while abandoning the justice and joy of Jesus. The church will not abandon its mission to serve the poor, the outcast, the sinner, and the refugee. The church will not neglect its responsibility to serve and protect the earth.  The church will bring hope and healing and reconciliation to people whose lives have been diminished and broken by those who claim authority over others for their own selfish benefit.  Perpetuating broken systems of injustice will not be the ministry of religious institutions calling themselves "Christian".    

 After a long captivity, people of faith are beginning to reimagine the hope and promise of Christian community.  The church is an organic reality, like a small plant emerging from the soil.  We are being planted once again.
A church is now emerging that values hospitality, grace, and humility over self-righteousness, exclusion, and tyrannical moralism.  This church is not mega. It is not the fastest growing anything.  It is not seeker-sensitive, though all people are welcome to belong.  It is not relevant or hip.  It is ancient, small, subtle, but powerful.  It is the micro-church.
Cell churches and house church movements have been emerging since the 1970s.  They have even deeper historic roots.  But the future of the church is not based on cultural trends.  The future church belongs to God and is a spiritual movement to restore the most natural expression of ecclesia, as it was imagined and embodied by Jesus and His first followers.   What is a micro-church and how does it operate?  read more after the jump...

a new day in the blog universe

Welcome back. I am renewing this blog and restoring its original name "koinonia 21c." Communities are formed in spaces like this now. Blogs are sites where relationships can happen. I hope that this site can bring together a community of friends who share a desire to live like Jesus, the bearer of God's power, the power of self-emptying service.  Koinonia is a Greek word used in the biblical narrative of the New testament to describe the way the first followers of Jesus lived a common, corporate, way of life. They shared.  They served one another. They helped one another navigate the forces that threaten to overwhelm and devour us.  They fed one another. They breathed together, conspiring to bring healing, reconciliation, and hope to a broken and suffering world.  They became a movement, a collective consciousness, a body of believers with a mission.  This mission was not coercive, militant, or colonialistic. It was a movement for peace, for love, for healing, for joy.  It was a spiritual movement to confront powers and systems of injustice with an alternative way. For more about this relational way of being together, read on...

you will not always have me...

I wonder what it would be like to have a job or career where you weren't being compared to the last guy, the one we liked better than you.  As a pastor in the ELCA, smaller congregations tend to be very pastor-centric or oriented.  The ministry and the faith are largely understood and articulated in relation to the pastors.  A flawed way of thinking about church, given the democratic nature of ecclesial leadership in its earliest forms.  But humans in community need a head of household, a king, a leader-in-charge; one in whom the rest might turn for inspiration and direction.  One whom the others might reject or hold liable when things get ugly. Praise the leader or pin them to the wall.  No leader is going to fulfill everyone's expectations, hopes, and imagination.  Because leaders are people.  But in the church we allow pastors to be emotionally crucified by unloving and ungracious members.  The biblical narrative is full of flawed leadership; Moses, Saul, David, and every king thereafter.  God warns the people in 1 Samuel 7 the appointing a king is not a good idea for them. But they want to be like the nations and tribes around them.  God provides them leaders who misuse power, who make impulsive, self-protecting decisions, and who fail to accomplish the leadership task given to them, largely by failing to remain faithful to God and to their duty as earthly rulers under the rule of a God-King.   Despite the failures of leaders, however, people are inspired to faithfulness.  And God's love and grace are made known.  Leadership is not for the weak. I've learned that the hard way...after the jump!

wilderness journey: the emotional side effects of sin

Biblical places are part of our spiritual journeys.  The narrative breaks into our lives and draws us into the biblical world.  There are times in church life when it is possible and good to identify where we are in the story.  We are in the garden of gethsemane, where Jesus is weeping, where tensions run high, where anger strikes out, where forces of power collide.  It is a place of high emotion.  It is night.  We are walking together in my congregation through a difficult time.  It is a time of brokenness and sin.  It is a time when we acknowledge that some behaviors and attitudes have not been consistent with the law of love and grace.  It is a time when it is hard to be together and yet we need to be together.  And I am grateful for those faithful people who remain partners in ministry here, so that we can walk together with courage and hope.  So what are we learning as we walk in this garden?

the ground has shaken and we are not the same

How do Christian people, living in God’s Word, understand and respond to disasters and human tragedies?  In our time, not a day goes by that we are not bombarded by stories of violence, bloodshed, and tragedy.  Children abducted and murdered.  Violence erupting on the streets of Jerusalem last week, when praying Muslims emerged to throw rocks at praying Jews, in retaliation to the news that Israel was claiming additional rights to land in the west bank, land Palestinians hoped would become there’s.  When you see what you see and hear what you hear, what do you think?  We are so desensitized to the disasters and the violence.  We simply move on, because tomorrow will bring another round of the same.  Empty platitudes and wishful hopes of brighter days ahead are insufficient at best and at worse diminish their suffering.  Haiti’s earthquake is overshadowed by Chile’s, which will be overshadowed by the next thing.  Katrina was overshadowed by Tsunami’s  On and on it goes.  We barely have time to consider the meaning of these things.  I guess we don’t.  What does the earthquake mean?  What is God’s role in human tragedy, natural disasters, or accidents, or violence?  How do we interpret events in relation to God, who speaks to us about the world and about our lives in scripture? As a proclaimer of the Word I am called to reflect on its bearing, its meaning for us as God’s people.  What does this mean?  What does this text, this word mean to us as a word of God?  And what do the events of the week mean.  What do various encounters mean?  Because the incarnate God is revealed not only in extraordinary happenings but in ordinary experiences and relationships.  What does this visit, this phone call, this email mean? I interpret all things in relation to the biblical narrative. I listen for the biblical narrative to emerge in all things.  Where do I hear God’s word come alive?  I ask this question every week. 

The Prodigal Son of God and His lost church

The prodigal son.  Luke 15. It’s a story about broken family.  It’s a story about the difference between elders and youth.  It’s a story about resentments and bitterness and anger.  And it is an open-ended story because we’re meant to complete it in our own stories.  The end begs questions.  Does the elder son come home?  Does he ever embrace the younger brother?  Does he come to appreciate his father’s faithfulness, vigilance, and indiscriminate love?  Does the younger son find a new place in the household? Does he repeat his offense?  Does he really change his ways or is he flawed? Is it in the DNA, or in family birth position, that predetermines one’s family behavior? Does the Father, insanely gracious to both of his sons, ever get the family relationships he has tried to forge? Will the sons be his sons, so that he can be their father?  And will they be brothers?  Will they actually love each other or go their separate ways?  And what would be better?  Can this family come together or are the differences too great?    What a human story. We don’t need to stretch our imaginations very far to connect to this one. But this is also a story about God.  It is Jesus’ final answer in Luke’s gospel to the question, Who is GOD? What is God like?  And that is where some people get off the bus.   Hard to swallow a God like this God, this Father.  Unconditionally gracious.  Welcoming and loving cast offs.  Reclaiming the dispossessed, disowned, discarded.  We imagine a different God.  One who blesses the deserving and curses the undeserving.  One whose favor is conditioned upon one’s behavior.  We look around and we see the difference between those who have been blessed and those who have not.  And we begin to imagine why, too.  This God respects duty, loyalty, religion, good, law-abiding citizenship.  This God chooses some and rejects others outright and what they get is what they deserve.  This is a wrathful god.  

This parable in many ways calls to mind the story of Jacob and Esau in Genesis 27-33.  Jacob is the younger twin who steals his brother’s birthright and blessing. Basically he gets the attention from his mother and father, claiming a relationship reserved for the elder son. Esau hates Jacob and seeks to kill him. So begins Jacob’s exile.   Eventually, Jacob and Esau reconcile, but it is Jacob who is chosen by God to renew and live out the family covenant promises.  Jacob becomes Israel and the head of the 12 tribes.   Jacob is the favored one.  But Esau is able to reconcile that in his heart and mind, accept his own relationship with God, and embrace his brother.  In so doing, Esau and Jacob experience God by facing each other.  

Wednesday of the week of Lent 2

So, beginning on the first Sunday in Lent the readings from the gospel of Luke we hear in Sunday worship remind us that there is a power at work in the world threatening to dismantle and destroy the goodness, truth, and beauty God has made.  This power distorts the truth and conceals what is real.
Beginning with Jesus' forty days in the wilderness, where he fasts and prays, we see an oppositional force at work.  Jesus is confronted by Satan in a story that seems more mythical than historical.  Satan compels Jesus to use his spiritual powers as God's Son to turn a stone into bread.  Satan promises the world to Jesus, as if it is his to give away, if only Jesus would worship Satan.  Satan invites Jesus to jump off the pinnacle of the temple, trusting God's divine promise to send angelic protection to save God's beloved, chosen one.
Jesus refuses to use his power for selfish purposes, depending on God's creation as it comes to Him, for sustenance and life.  A stone is a stone.  A stone is not bread.  Palestine is a stony ground.  And a stone was a weapon of judgment upon those who broke the law.  Turning a stone into bread could be seen as a swords into plough shares type expression.  Was the devil inviting Jesus to transform punishment into nourishment?  Jesus will not avoid punishment to feed his own stomach.
Jesus refuses to devote himself to any other master.  He serves and loves only one GOD.  And Jesus knows who rules the world, whose world this is.  This is God's world and no one else's.  Jesus is not threatened by someone who claims to have power he does not have.
Finally, Jesus refuses to twist God's Word to justify foolish behavior that threatens his fragile mortal body.  Jumping off a skyscraper because someone promises you that you won't die is a test that denies what is real.Truth is, even Jesus cannot fly.  Jesus is restricted, confined to the limited powers of the human body.  Despite the truth of his identity, he is not invulnerable.
The powers at work in this world that threaten to distort the truth about who we are, what we're capable of, what we can and ought to do for ourselves, how far we ought to go and how high...these powers are busy and active.  We don't call the power satan or the devil so much, mainly because of the weak mythology attached to the figure.
I've seen these powers at work in and outside the church.  As a result, I am learning to pray in ways I never knew before.  Prayer can be a shield of protection.  And I am learning to hide in the shadow of God's wings.  

Saturday after Ash Wednesday

I read from a prayer book almost everyday. I like to use "For all the saints", a publication that includes daily prayers, three daily texts, a meditation from a coworker, all the psalms,and three daily offices.  I am a liturgist in this way, enjoying and appreciating the rhythm of a spiritual life that comes to  me from a source beyond myself and my own yearnings.  I take what I get everyday from these readings. Somedays I am connected to the words I am reading and praying, other days not so much.     Johannes Willebrands, Lutheran theologian and ecumenist, wrote, "The creative and redemptive work of God cannot be swallowed up by all that sin kindles in the human heart, nor be definitely blocked.  But that leads us to a keen perception of our own responsibility as Christians facing the future of humanity and also to awareness of the gravity of our divisions.  To the extent that they obscure our witness in a world tempted by suicide they are an obstacle to the proclamation of the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ."  God will accomplish God's purposes for us, with us, in spite of us.  But its more fun to be part of what God is doing than to oppose it.