God is faithful - and we have HOPE

 WAIT! What comes next? We don't know, and yet, we hope. South Durham Connections - the ministry born in collaboration - is starting Advent for All 2020, a series of messages and activities for everyone.

This week I was delighted to open up the Advent season with my beloveds at St. Philip Lutheran in Raleigh. There were two services:  The Crossing at 9 am, where the message was short because we decorated a Jesse tree. You can watch that service here (the message starts at 31:00 but the Jesse tree part before is kind of cool.)

The later service had a longer message (no Jesse tree, though) and you can see the message here.

The lectionary texts for the day are:

Isaiah 64:1-9
Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:24-37

God of all times, even the bad ones, show us the hope that we can have because you are the God of love.

Greetings from South Durham Connections!  Three years ago when I was your vicar, preaching regularly and wondering what God was doing, I had only a glimmer of what was to be.

Today, there is a little more than a glimmer, and I am wide-eyed at all that has come to pass in those three years, but I still do not know what is coming next!!

I can report that the Parktown Food Hub has become a pantry leader in Durham. 
* That we now have a Vision Board of community members, 
* An active Saturday gardening program, 
* We have just hired a person to help specifically with our garden. 
* We have been serving food to 10,000 people per month (that’s over 2200 families) 
* We served hundreds of families every Thursday between the end of March and November 19 (because that’s when the weather has driven us inside)
* and on our last Thursday distribution of the year we had so many cars in the parking lot that we completely lost track of who came when… and yet… all were fed.

We were at the forefront of the McDougald Terrace displaced resident response and generated the idea that the city came to advocate:  that churches or other groups adopt hotels to work with specific groups of displaced residents.

We have partnerships with so many groups that they barely fit on one page (in two columns!) and even then we keep discovering groups that we forgot to mention.

We started a (Lutheran) food pantry and mission, in a (United Methodist) borrowed space, using a (Muslim) neighborhood parking lot, and all because our food resourcing manager had been working with a (public school) pantry and living an astonishing faith that God will provide despite denominational politics - and always at the exactly right time.

I simply do not have enough superlatives to describe what happens every day in this community ministry that God has started and that God continues to carry in the palm of that loving, grace-filled hand.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that this is God’s, and not ours.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that all those good things that are happening (and that this congregation has been a part of for such a long time) are not the reason for my hope.

I am keenly aware that it could all fall apart at any time.

And yet… when my mother-in-law had a massive stroke, and then died a week later, and I was gone for two weeks with virtually no notice… the work thrived and volunteers showed up.

When my hub partner and food sourcing manager Aja faced the prospect that her three middle-schoolers would be doing homeschool for the foreseeable future, and her life was turned upside down as she tried to manage everything… the work thrived and there was food.

It is all so remarkable, and so hopeful, and we are very aware that God brought us together so that our styles and priorities fit together like puzzle pieces – and the puzzle is a vision of a community that cares about all its citizens and no one goes hungry…

Our hope is not in ourselves though (no matter how perfectly we all fit.) 

We honestly do not know what is going to happen next. 

We do not know if it will be a good thing (beautiful weather and extra food on our last distribution before Thanksgiving) 

or a not-so-good thing (a thunderstorm that blew away our tent and soaked three pallets of boxes containing fresh produce.)

If our hope came only from us, or from our track record, it would be hope of the “maybe it will and maybe it won’t” variety.

And yet, that is not our hope at all! Our hope is “I have absolutely no idea what will come next and I am absolutely certain that it will be an outrageously generous gift from God.”

Because even the thunderstorm turned out that way – when community members rushed over with a replacement tent and put it up; when other volunteers came to help distribute the food; and when we learned that we DO have limits and can arrange things so that we do not have to damage our own health and lives. We only need to do what we can do.

Because everything belongs to God, and God is faithful.

Today’s message is all about hope: there will be sorrow and pain and darkness, and everything will be shaken up… and THAT is when Jesus will return.

We do not get to know when it will happen, because that would remove the need for faith. That would remove the need for a faithful God. And so we do not know – we get the exceedingly great job of a God who loves us purely and perfectly and wants us to know it.

And then in the final verse: Jesus says “Keep Awake!” Not as in “don’t rest” or “don’t sleep” or “never relax” but in a smell the roses kind of way. Pay attention to what is happening around you. And not just the frightening, alarming stuff! 

Notice the grace. Notice the people who come around seeking grace, and offer them prayer and hope.

Notice the ways that you have connected in different ways with the people in your household.

Notice how your body, mind, and spirit have adjusted to a slowed-down, less frantic pre-Christmas season.

Because in noticing, in staying awake, you will find God’s faithfulness, and in that faithfulness you will discover hope.

The hope that comes from a God who has never let us down, who has never been defeated by politics or weather, cruelty or war. Nothing we human beings have ever done have vanquished God’s faithfulness, and nothing ever will.

And so today I offer you hope. The hope of faith. The hope that comes because God is faithful.

I also invite you to participate in the South Durham Connections Advent for All.  If you go to the South Durham Connections website (soduco.org) you can download a piece of an Advent puzzle each week along with a little bit about that week of Advent. The first one is up now.

Here’s how it works:  Go here to download and print the .pdf document, read the information on the first page, then cut out and decorate the puzzle piece on the second page with your idea of what hope looks like. The “it’s going to work out great” kind of hope that comes from knowing a faithful God. 

Then, when your puzzle piece is decorated, send a picture of it to the South Durham Connections email address (on page 1). We will put them up on the website and create a community of hope.

Each week we will add puzzle pieces until we get to Christmas and assemble the whole thing. A picture of what happens when a broken world has an infinitely faithful God.

It’s for everybody, and I hope you will consider joining us!

May God’s hope and peace, love and joy fill you in the coming month!

Amen

Love in the election aftermath

Spoiler: it's like love in any other time. But still. It seems like a good moment to review the basics.

I am posting this on Saturday evening and will be sharing it with my beloveds at Springmoor Retirement Village tomorrow. It will be good to be back among them, and it is good to be sharing with you now.

The texts are:

1 John 4:7-8

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

On Wednesday I was sad. I was sad because of the ugliness in our world, sad because of the whole election season, sad because my mother-in-law died on October 26. Sometimes when I am sad I think about love. And that thinking led me to put this out on facebook:

God is love. That is how we know we are not God.

It’s pretty standard Christian stuff – especially Lutheran Christian stuff – and it is the idea that we get in our reading today from 1 John: Love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God, and knows God, because God is love.

But the responses I got were fascinating:

* The rabbi who only said “ouch” – I don’t know what she meant but I am certain it was something borne out of the depth of experience in her long life. 
* The Southern Baptist gentleman who reiterated with “double ouch” – and almost certainly meant something quite different than the rabbi.
* The woman who is married to a Buddhist and was thanking me for a scarf that I gave her years ago – a *very* warm scarf – that she had been able to wear for the first time that week, saying “I love you, does that make me your God?”

And I explained that for me, “God IS love” is a symmetric relationship:  God is love, and love is God. If it is of God then it is loving. If it is loving, then it is of God. And God is always, only, immutably, unfailingly, uniformly loving.

But we human beings are not. We are not uniformly loving. In fact, the reason I came to that sentiment is that I was having distinctly unloving thoughts about a lot of people – and they weren’t even connected to politics or the election!

There are so many ways and reasons that we do not love each other. And it contributed to my sadness.

That is some impressive stuff – and the part about God always loving is really great, right?

But here I am, talking to you. People who have lifetimes of experience in loving and being loved by God. People who are so steeped in your faith that you probably can’t imagine what your life would be without it.

Love can mean a whole bunch of different things, depending on the situation. It is different for different people, both in the giving and in the receiving. Love gets really complicated, really fast.

* There is tough love – holding people accountable even when it would be less painful for us but more damaging for them if we just let it go.
* There is compassion love – when someone else is sad or hurting, and we may even act against our own (perceived) interests in the moment because love is greater than what we want for ourselves
* But there is also love of self – honoring and taking care of ourselves and not taking on other peoples’ work, doing the things that we need to do in order to be healthy and as whole as we can be. It will never be perfect, but certainly some times are better than others!

And that is why I am so, so grateful for Paul’s contribution to the matter in his first letter to the Corinthians.

You may know that the Corinthians were in a mess. They were people of faith, but were polarized around different leaders. Paul calls them to task:  it’s not about Apollos, it’s not about Paul, it’s about Jesus! It’s about loving! We are all together in this journey and are meant to love each other on the way.. It is not an accident that in the earliest days of the church “christian” was not a thing. They were just a bunch of Jews talking about The Way.

The Way that was, and is, following Jesus.

In his letter to those arguing, divided Corinthians, Paul gives them a little lesson on what love is – and is not. Not based on situations, but something a little broader. Something that we can use just to check in… am I loving right now, in this situation?

And so it seemed like this week was a good time to remember. To remember that God is love and we are not. To remember that Paul wrote to a polarized and squabbling congregation. And to think about these things:

Love is patient.

Love is kind.

Patient with ourselves when we are exhausted or in pain or just not at our best. Patient with ourselves when we are arrogant or full of ourselves or wildly, wildly wrong. And patient with others when they are exhausted or in pain or not at their best – and even when they are wildly, wildly wrong.

Kind… when we could whisper and natter and gossip and cast dispersion but choose not to. When we do not have to say anything but do, something that shows a recognition and concern for the humanity in another person.

Eloquent speech, being able to anticipate what people will do or say, all the scientific knowledge in the world, even faith that is unshakable… it doesn’t do any good for anybody unless it is spoken or used in love. We can be the richest person on earth, or we can make the choice to be martyrs to that unshakable faith… but without love, Paul says, it is all for naught. 

Because love will determine how we deliver all our gifts. If we deliver our gifts without love, then we are using them as a club. The point is that we do not hurt each other, but we use all our various gifts to make things better for the people around us. We use our gifts to take care of ourselves so that we have the strength to share that love, to set boundaries, to do the things we are called to do – and to not do the things that are someone else’s calling. All in the service of making sure that as many people as possible experience as much love as possible.

Paul tells us there are a lot of things that love is not:

* Envious
* Boastful
* Arrogant
* Rude
* Selfish
* Irritable
* Resentful
* Gloating in victory

And what love will look like in action:

* Rejoicing in the truth because it is truth
* Bearing whatever comes our way
* Believing that anything is possible
* Hoping for the goodness we cannot see
* Enduring life in all it’s confusing iterations

The last part of the chapter to the Corinthians talks about how love will not end. Everything else will end… but not love. Because as I noted earlier tonight…

GOD. IS. LOVE.

God is unending, so love is unending.

We are not there yet. We see in a mirror dimly – not the fancy mirrors that we have, but the mirrors in Paul’s day, which were more like the reflections of ourselves that we see in sheet glass windows. It’s dim. You can make out shapes, and see a lot, but the details are not clear. We don’t know now, but someday we will.

In the meantime, what we know is that love is eternal. Love will last. Love is God. God is love.

And if we want an example of what love looks like in person? We can look to Jesus. The Jesus who was present at creation and who came to earth, as a human being, to show us what love looks like in action.

The Jesus who showed up for poor people and despised people. For the ickiest politicians and the widows who had no one to care for them. For the children who had no position in society. For the people who were literally kicked out of town because they weren’t healthy enough. For the blind and those who couldn’t walk, the mentally ill and the people who had absolutely no standing in society.

The Jesus who loved so much that he had to be killed, because that earthly powers couldn’t stand it. 

And this is why we believe that Jesus is divine, that Jesus is God. Because death could not hold him. Jesus loved perfectly. Jesus made it possible for us to start afresh in every moment to love our neighbors, because we are enfolded in God’s love. In the love that Jesus shared with everyone he encountered.

We cannot be Jesus. We cannot love all the time. We cannot be God. We will sometimes be confused about what to do, how to respond. 

But we are not completely on our own. We have Jesus. We can see what Jesus did, how Jesus loved, and we can have confidence that we will continue to be forgiven when we do not love.

Because we have the ultimate love. God’s love. The love that is always there for us.

And in the Resurrection we are promised that God’s love IS for us. For each of us. For us personally, and for the people we like, and for the people we do not like.

Because 

God

Is

Love.

AMEN