Where to go when we can't love enough

The message just before this one was for the good people at Atria Southpoint Walk in Durham, NC, but it was via Zoom. This message was the first one in person after COVID pandemic closures and everyone was just so happy to be together! The people at Atria, an independent living facility, had been through a particularly tough time with isolation and sorrow and disappointment. Coming out of that pain made this day all the more wonderful. 

The three texts for the day are:

Acts 10:44-48

1 John 5:1-6

John 15:9-17

Holy Spirit, come to us through the distance. Bridge the gaps. Fill us with your love and connection. Amen.

Good morning! I bring you greetings from Pastor Amy and Pastor Ben, Pastor Betty and Pastor Tom, and from Pastor Rachel who has not been here before but will be leading worship next week. 

Every single one of us was SO EXCITED when Eileen called and invited us back to worship. For a moment we thought we would be there in person so it was a little disappointing to learn that we can’t do that yet. But here we are, connected once again via  Zoom. And all six of us are so, so happy to have this way of being with you.

And do you know why? It isn’t because we are being paid the big bucks to be here. This is a volunteer gig and we do it for only one reason. Our texts today are soaked in this reason. 14 times it occurs! 

Anybody care to guess what word is in the text 14 times? 

The word is LOVE.

We love you. We have missed you, and there is great rejoicing that we are able to be back and will soon (we hope) be able to be with you in person.

LOVE.

A preacher could spend a lifetime on that topic and never begin to scratch the surface because love, like God, is infinite. Love does not fail. And since God IS love – we know that God is infinite and will not fail. We like to say it this way:

God loves you.

God loves me.

Always, not matter what or where, no matter how we behave or misbehave.

God loves each of us and the way that God loves is Jesus-style.

Jesus, who came to earth to show us what it looks like to love each other. To show us how God created us to love and be loved.

In fact, in our Gospel today Jesus explicitly says… “Do you want to know how to love? Here’s how. Live like I lived!”

Jesus was telling his friends that he would LITERALLY love them to death. That his insistence on and capacity to love would ultimately lead to his death. And in the process Jesus was telling his friends (and us) that if we are going to be Jesus-followers then we will be called to love.

We don’t have to be perfect (which is good, because as you well know we are not perfect.)

We cannot save ourselves.

We can’t save anyone else.

The best – the literal, absolute best we can do – is to love each other.

Not because of who WE are but because of who GOD is. The God that is revealed to us in Jesus.

It’s in our second reading, too: Believing in Jesus is being a child of God.

We believe things all the time: it will be hot in July, it will get dark tonight. And for me, and maybe for you, that’s how we believe in God. It is such an assumed part of us that if someone asks “do you love God?” we say yes as quickly as we do if someone asks “will it get dark tonight?” And it will seem like just as silly of a question.

But sometimes it’s harder that that. Because, well, believing stuff puts demands on us. If I know it will be hot in July I have to act on that. Like I need to know that shipping chocolate in July is a dangerous thing. That putting crayons in the attic during July is a risk. 

And as easy and natural as it can be to say we believe in God, are we always ready and willing to do what that belief demands of us?

If I say that I am following Jesus, and if I believe that Jesus is God, and that God is love, and that I am called to love… wow. It gets real – real fast!

Like when the crack addict shows up on the church step. Can I love them? God does.

Or when a self-proclaimed atheist says things that get under my skin… can I love them? God does.

Or when a homeless smelly person peers at me from the median at the traffic light… can I love them? God does.

Ok, yeah. But what about the woman who irritates me by breathing and when she walks into the room I want to run and hide? Do I have to love her? Well,  yes, but only if I say I want to follow Jesus.

OR the man who for whatever reason can’t listen to anybody else but always has to have the loudest voice and last word, I have to love HIM TOO? Yep. If I say I am following Jesus. 

Because God loves each of us:  completely, utterly, unconditionally. 

And sometimes I don’t like following in that path, y’know?

Loving is not for wimps.

But here is the completely mind-blowing part: There is nothing legalistic about loving. It is not actually a law. It is, in fact, kind of an anti-law. 

We love, and when we get it wrong (because you know how it goes – OF COURSE we are going to get it wrong!) God loves each of us enough to fill the gaps that we leave in our wake. God does not punish us, God says... OH YOU DON'T HAVE ENOUGH LOVE? WELL HERE IS MORE! I HAVE PLENTY! 

When we realize that God loves us, we are free to love as much as we can, knowing that Jesus came and took care of what we cannot do. Jesus fulfilled the law. Jesus took on the death that would be ours (if we could be perfect enough) and that death did not stick. 

In the Resurrection we see that love – the loving way that Jesus lived – really is the way to complete life. And not just in eternity after we die!

Love is the way to a more complete life right now.

Loving the people we cannot stand on our own. In fact, even thinking “ah, I must love you” can change everything.

Loving the people who are least lovable: the confused and unclean, the judgey lady and the mansplaining man. We can love them. In fact, that is our primary duty in life.

To love each other.

And when we can’t do it on our own, THAT is when we turn to Jesus and know that we have the freedom to start over, to try again. Because in living the perfect life of love, dying a normal human death, but then not being held by death – that is the best and only proof I need that a life of love is the only way to go. When we turn to God to receive more from the infinite supply of love that is God.

So here we are, deep into the Easter season. We know this:

CHRIST IS RISEN!

We have the ultimate freedom because of it. Not freedom to do as we want, oh no. Our ultimate freedom allows us to do something even better:

Put away our fear and love each other through thick and thin.

Amen.

Loving in the field

I've been preaching every few weeks but life has come roaring alongside me and I haven't posted the messages as regularly as I would like. So... today is the day to post all those back messages! Because tomorrow is the day I go to Ethiopia to visit an orphanage, visit families that I support through Hawassa Hope, and open myself up to being changed. Not sure how I will be changed ... but we will see. And these might be my last "before" messages. 

The texts for this message, offered to the beloveds at Atria Southpoint Walk in Durham, NC, are Psalm 23 and 1 John 3:16-24

Come Holy Spirit. Tune our ears, open our hearts, grow us to be more like Jesus. Amen

The Lord is my shepherd.

I really love the idea of having a shepherd. I had a colleague once – when I knew him he had become a prominent chemist working on some of the biggest problems of our time. But when he was a boy he was a shepherd, watching his family’s sheep.

Gabriel, my colleague, made shepherding sound kind of dull:
* Sitting around
* Letting the sheep do whatever
* Swooping in when there was trouble (which, apparently, was not that often)

It is a one-sided image where the sheep don’t have any responsibilities, and the shepherd doesn’t do much until there is big trouble.

And when we look at Psalm 23, it also seems pretty one-sided, too, except the shepherd in Psalm 23 is not aloof. The shepherd in Psalm 23 is intimately involved with the life of the sheep.

Not just chasing off enemies but having a feast. Celebrating the sheep. Celebrating me!

But you know what is still missing? Any kind of response from the sheep. It’s all about the shepherd, not about the sheep. Not about me.

And I will confess, it sounds like a pretty awesome thing to me! I do not have to do anything for God to love me, protect me, celebrate me. It’s all about God.

In fact, the Old Testament is full of God loving human beings in ways that certainly don’t make sense:  rescuing stubborn people, responding to their wants and needs, and from the beginning creation, there is a pattern in which the people wander away, and God responds with a tremendous blessing.

Over and over we see it:
* Creation
* Fall
* Noah and the Flood
* The promise of the rainbow
* The Babylonian captivity
* Some of the greatest, grandest, most beautiful promises yet

Over and over. The people wander away, and God calls them back.

In fact, with Abraham God made the covenant from which the people of Israel grew… and asked nothing in return from Abraham. The covenant was all on God’s side. That’s how it goes through the whole Old Testament.

But then – along comes Jesus!

Jesus, who could live the way people were intended to live all along.

And for the first time we get to see exactly what the optimal human life looks like. Instead of us merely wandering around until God delivers another blessing, Jesus shows us what being human is intended to be.

The optimal human life looks… like the life Jesus lived. A life that was without blemish. A life full of doing things.

I think that our second text, the words from 1 John, are talking about just that, about how Jesus was doing all that.

No longer are we only wanderers with a doting, loving God watching out for us. 

Now we see how we can respond!

Not just by saying stuff, but by doing stuff.

TO BE CLEAR – I am not saying that we will do things in order to deserve God’s shepherding. There are millennia of evidence that we do not have to do anything to deserve God’s love. God shows up over and over and we do not have to do anything to deserve and receive it.

But when we receive all those marvelous blessings we want to respond. It’s very normal. I cannot say how many clients of the Parktown Food Hub as “can I come help? How do I donate?” Not that they often do help, or donate, but they want to – that is the impulse and I always take it seriously. Sometimes I say “pay it forward – share what you have been given” and I think sometimes they do. And I hope they remember the times they could give as well as the times they could receive. 

And when it comes to us and God and Jesus, we want to respond because we have a shepherd who will care for us. We no longer have to worry if we do it wrong. We don’t have to worry WHEN we do it wrong. We can always start anew, loving in the way of Jesus.

The way of Jesus, where Jesus hangs out with people who are scorned by society.

The way of Jesus, where Jesus challenges the religious order so much that that religious order eventually killed him.

An opportunity to give to other people, not just the one who was generous to us.

We see Jesus loving and caring, not choosing himself over others
     but also not neglecting his own needs.
      Showing the perfect balance between working and resting.

We see Jesus directing anger at those who could have loved and helped others who were in need but instead chose to prioritize themselves over those in need.

We see that same Jesus direction compassion and care to those with no power and who were therefore forced to rely on the care and compassion of others – care and compassion that were often in short supply…

Except when Jesus was around.

And so, says John in this letter, we do not have to condemn ourselves or others.

Jesus loved so well that when the establishment DID kill him, the death did not stick. He was human, he did die… but as the only human who managed to live the life of pure and unfailing love, the death did not hold.

Jesus proved once and LITERALLY for all that a life of love is the life that will never fail.

We simply cannot live love like Jesus did… but we can turn our face towards Jesus.

Because you see, if we believe that the way of Jesus is the way of life that cannot be tainted by death, then we do not have to fear.

We can be bold before God. We can be bold in loving others in crazy radical ways, because we know that love never fails.


Now… there is one more thing:

Loving is often easier SAID than DONE…
But we are not called to TALK love, we are called to DO love.

And sometimes… we just don’t know what to do.

Oh of course, sometimes it’s easy! Even if we do not always like it, and we do not always want to do it, it is in fact easy to know that if I have resources and others do not, I can share generously. Not just a crumb off the edge of the table, but a feast. That sharing is loving, and God promises that loving – real loving – too much is just not a thing. We cannot love too much.

When the Parktown Food Hub was shiny and new we got a lot of questions like 

How do you know when somebody is REALLY in need?

And our answer, the answer we arrived at after prayer and thought and studying Jesus, is

They will tell us.

But what if they lie?

We have not seen that. Over 100,000 people have received food from the Parktown Food Hub in the last 18 months and people just do not lie – at least not that much.

But what if they do?

Then it is just not our problem. We just move on to helping the next person.

That’s the easy part.

But sometimes it is not so clear cut:

For example, some of our people receive food by appointment and when they don’t show up they will sometimes call and ask if they can come at a different time. That’s hard for us – we have a small staff, not many hours, and we simply cannot offer individual, customized times for every person who needs food.

BUT… we do have some capacity to help.

Last week a woman called and said she could not make her appointment because she had had a wreck on highway 40 as she was driving to pick up her food.  What to do?

It was pretty clear that her need for grace – for a customized appointment – was more important than our rules regarding no shows. And so we offered her an alternate appointment a couple of days later when she had settled things with her car a bit. She came by and showed us the damage and told us the story and it was clear we had loved well.

But another time a man did not show up. He did not call to let us know. He just didn’t want to come out at his appointed time. And in that case, our need to care for our staff and volunteers was greater so we put him on a waiting list for a future time. And when he missed future pickups, we moved him to another food program that does not require appointments. After several months it was clear we had chosen well – we had loved well as the man came when he could and we were not troubled by his missed appointments.

The thing is, ignoring our own needs is not following Jesus. 

It is not demonstrating the belief that the way Jesus lived is the best way – the way of love – the way of God. 

It is hard to find the balance that Jesus did but we can keep seeking to follow the example of Jesus.

An example of ACTION and TRUTH

Following in the steps of Jesus – doing our best to live like Jesus lived 

Believing in Jesus and the way Jesus loved.

Responding to the shepherd who has always cared for us and always will

Living a life of love because, thanks to Jesus, there is no reason not to.

Amen

On Our Hearts

 It's not exactly an Easter message and yet... it wouldn't even exist without Easter. What is written on our hearts? Offered at St. Philip Lutheran Church on Sunday, March 21, in both services. Cath The Crossing here (message starts at about 26:300 and the 11 am service here (message starts at about 16:30).

Texts of the day:

Jeremiah 31:31-34 

Hebrews 5:5-10 

John 12:20-33 

Do you know who Melchizedek was?  Well, Melchizedek was a priest.  

He first shows up in Genesis 14, in a passage that is not in the lectionary. And then again in Psalm 110, and finally in the today's text from Hebrews. Not a major character.

In the Genesis story, Abram’s nephew Lot was kidnapped and carried off. Abram was not yet  Abraham, and Sarai was not yet Sarah, but it is the same guy. And Lot was his nephew.

Abram and his people went and completely overwhelmed the kidnappers, rescued Lot, and returned back to the coalition of kings that was sponsoring him with all the spoils of war – SO MUCH STUFF!

When he got back he was met by the priest - Melchizedek - who is called “priest of God Most High.” 

Not just any ordinary god, but the God that Abram worshipped. The HIGHEST God. Abram’s God.
Melchizedek is fairly mysterious but after Jesus has lived, died, and been Resurrected he shows up in the letter to the Hebrews. But we do know that he was not from the line of Aaron, living way, way before Moses and Aaron came on the scene.

Melchizedek was a priest, and he did not come from a lineage in which priesthood is granted by virtue of birth. No, Melchizedek was a priest before there were such lineages and apparently was made a priest 

by God’s own self.

Or at least that’s what is being implied in Hebrews, in which Melchizedek is mentioned as being DESIGNATED BY GOD.

Not a priest because of who his earthly parents were. Not some kind of earthly royalty. But a priest who was in that role because God put him there.

OF COURSE there is nothing wrong with earthly lines of royalty. Here in the United States we sometimes sniff about royalty as a bad thing, preferring our more democratic systems. But if you put Harry and Megan on tv with Oprah, Americans are glued to their sets and endlessly discussing what they had to say. 

And OF COURSE we have our own types of royalty in the United States, where birth will give you all sorts of prestige and power:  Kennedys, Bushes, Vanderbilts, Carnegies… I’m sure you can think of plenty of others.

Why, if you had a mind to map out how many teachers come from families of teachers, or pastors from families of pastors, or farmers come from families of farmers, you would almost certainly find that while it might not be a requirement, having family members in a field makes it much easier for succeeding generations to break into that field. 

There are all sorts of reasons for that, but my point today is that Melchizedek as not that kind of a priest, not a priest by human inheritance. And neither was Jesus.

This fact – this naming of Melchizedek as a priest named by God, and naming Jesus as that same kind of priest – is very important to me as a mission developer whose family was made up of farmers and ranchers, carpenters, seamstresses, merchants, and blue collar workers. God’s call on my life was as surprising to me as it was to my family.

It is clear to me that many pastors did not have the same upstream journey that I did. Being young, being the children of people well known in Synod ministry circles, being male… all those things lead to placement and being embraced in a way that I have not always felt.

But I like to think that South Durham Connections is a “ministry in the order of Melchizedek.” Not because either the ministry or I are so much like Jesus, but because it seems to be a placement that does not match the more traditional, historical lines. 

Melchizedek and I were certainly never going to be like Jesus. We are both, after all, only human. But in mapping Jesus to a priest whose call could only have come from God, I am encouraged that sometimes God does come and call those of us who don’t have any of the advantages or trappings of ministerial lineage.

It has not always easy to remember what my actual calling is – especially when people are gracious and loving and enthusiastic and so very clear that I would do well in a traditional ministerial position.
But it is even harder to resist this compelling call of the Holy Spirit to something else. To something so far outside of traditional parish ministry that even the Synod sometimes has to just watch and squint and wait with me to see what will happen.

In those difficult moments, it is a joy and relief and delight and game-changer to read about Melchizedek, and Jesus being “in the order of Melchizedek.”

Because being outside of the traditional order has all kind of ramifications. For example, in this call I am living and working with people who are all over the place in terms of their faith and belief systems.
* There are the pagans who came on Ash Wednesday and declined ashes – apparently images of burning did nothing for them – but also BEGGED for a blessing, even when I was abundantly clear that it was going to be a blessing in the name of Jesus, and that I believe that Jesus was the divine Son of God.
* The atheist who gives of her time, calls donating blood her “tithe” but is just as comfortable explaining that in her teen years she read the Bible and she searched on Google, and Google was more helpful. She has also wondered aloud if things might have been different if someone had been there to answer her teenaged questions instead of just sending her, unguided, to the Bible.
* Then there are the women who have attended church faithfully for years as a members of a local choir but never joined any church because the “mysticism” of it all was troubling. Or the people who belong to a church and are endlessly frustrated because the politics and business of church do not seem to match the word written on their hearts.
* Or the couple who never goes to church but struggles that only one of their children was baptized as a child because nobody explained what baptism means and when the child’s father saw his little one being immersed he thought she was being drowned and said NEVER AGAIN. They worry:  are the kids too old? How can they make a choice like that? Why did that church want to hurt their babies?

I could go on and on. These people are as different from one another as they are from the people who first taught me about faith but they all share at least two things:  
1. they are deeply distrustful of “church” as they perceive it and 
2. they are deeply committed to doing things that have a remarkable behavioral and ethical similarity to the things that Jesus preached and demonstrated in his life.

What if… what if these behaviors of following Jesus – often consciously so – make them Christians in God’s eyes and we just don’t know it? What if they are HEART Christians even as their minds insist on something else?

That very question brings me to… Jeremiah.

In today’s reading Jeremiah is relaying a prophecy from God that someday the law would be “written on their hearts.”

Since I was quite young I have puzzled over that but as I have aged I have come to a sneaking suspicion that maybe God meant exactly what it says:

Written on ALL HEARTS
    Mainline Christian and evangelical Christian
Jew and Muslim and Sikh
    Atheist, pagan, agnostic
                 Even people of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Because God says 

For I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more

Not “then my followers will whip everybody into shape and make sure I’m defended.” God doesn’t include God’s followers in there at all… except as forgiven.

GOD will forgive iniquity and remember sin no more. Not us.

Which is good, because we do not really want all the iniquity and sin forgiven, at least not that radically completely. That might make us less special before God, right?

Oh sure, we want God to forgive US… but we just aren’t so sure about others.

Christians all over say it but then we get really uneasy at the thought that God might actually forgive everyone.

Now, to be clear, I do not know what God is going to do.

I do not know if absolutely everyone will eventually be forgiven and fully redeemed and taken to live with God for all eternity.

I do not know if (in the prophet Micah’s words) 
    Acting justly
         Loving mercy
         Walking humbly with God

Or in my words 

    Caring for neighbors

            Sharing food

                    Working for just housing and employment

                            Fighting racism and white supremacy

                                    Working that all life is kept sacred… 

I do not know if that is enough. I do not even know what it might or might not be enough FOR.

But I do know that I preach and Christians proclaim that forgiveness in the Resurrection is for everyone. 

Everyone.

I preach and we proclaim that in Jesus we are all forgiven and separated from our sin “as far as the East is from the West.” 

I know that there are questions about translations of the Bible:  does it mean to say that WE have to believe in JESUS? Or that JESUS believes enough for all of us?

But I do know that it is in Jesus, only in Jesus, that our sin is remembered no more. However that comes about.

And if that part is true – a thing that I believe, complete with all its surprising and uncomfortable ramifications – then it means that all people really can access the only two laws that Jesus says we need to know (and follow):  

LOVE GOD.

LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR.

That’s it.  Love.

Not police each other or make sure we tell others all the things they are doing wrong, but LOVE THEM.

Not require a certain family lineage or faith tradition or gender or sexual orientation.

Not pity, or skepticism, or dismissal… but LOVE.

We can differ on how we choose to live out those two laws of loving. We can do all sorts of different things, and use all sorts of different words, but in the end, the way we recognize those two laws are about a single action:  Loving. 

And we don’t even get to have one single definition of love!

It is a remarkable and surprising thing, this idea that God would come to each of us and draw us to a redeemed life, a life in which we are free to love others (even the people we disagree with or do not like or even cannot ABIDE) because we do not have to be the sorters. A world in which there is no love police. Just more love.

AND WOW AM I GRATEFUL ABOUT THAT!

Because how could I love AND decide that the pagans begging for blessings – even as they also proclaim atheism and knowing full well what the words will be – should be denied that blessing?

How could I possibly love AND decide that people who have been in church far more than I have been in the past year or ten should be disregarded because they don’t think what they have seen is something they want to formally join?

How could I love AND decide that certain ideas about baptism, and confusion about baptism vs. drowning, means baptisms should be denied because the only churches they had ever known seemed so unkind?

I cannot do it. I cannot decide. I cannot turn them away – the hub would literally not run without each of the people I mentioned.

And I don’t have to.

I do not have to judge their hearts, or even their actions.

But if I do note (but not judge) their actions I would say that they all seem to be doing things a lot like Jesus did, and doing them because it just seems right.

Like maybe it’s written on their hearts.

None of us have to belong to a certain church or speak a certain language, have a certain skin color or love within certain parameters or wear a certain kind of clothes. 

Jesus has taken care of it all. Jesus lived a life unbroken by sin so death could NOT hold him, and therefore he was Resurrected and opened a path to restoration of the original perfect Creation… in that example Jesus took away the burden of us being the sorters or deciders.

And here is the biggest surprise of all:

It is ENTIRELY possible that we understand God’s will, plan, and purposes all wrong.

It might be that our assumptions are off base.  It might be that the people who think differently than me or you on hot topics like

Abortion
Transgender rights
Same sex marriage
Gun control
White supremacy and
                                        All manner of governmental and political issues 

Are more right than I am. Or you are.

People on any side of those disagreements might somehow be getting things right that you or I are getting wrong.

How’s that for a kick in the pants?  It is pretty much a certainty that every single one of us is all wrong about something. And the people we despise most have it right in some way.

SO. WHAT. IF. THAT. IS. THE. CASE???

Then we move on. We keep loving each other. It might have to be porcupine love, from a distance, because we are too infuriated, or maybe we have good moments when we decline to snipe and carp and ridicule because we have the thought “I’m supposed to love you, even now.” We keep loving each other…

And we trust God (and only God) to sort it all out.

Because God is faithful and will do that.

Because Jesus has taken care of the Law on our behalf.

Because all that is left for me – or you – or anyone else – is to do our best to love each other, and to love what or whom we see as God.

Those are the only rules.

Be like Melchizedek.

Be like Jesus.

Live the particular way God calls you to love, regardless of what anybody else thinks or does or says. 

Amen.

He broke them.

It's Lent and once again my beloved friends at St. Paul's Lutheran invited me to give a message at one of their midweek Lenten services. This year it was on Zoom, which is kind of awkward for the message-giving activity since it's hard to receive energy from the gathered group. But it was a sizable group and delightful and I'm so glad that they keep on inviting me. :-)

I don't know if there will be a recording but if there is I'll put it here. For now, enjoy the word cloud and text.

The relevant texts were 
Isaiah 58:5-10
Mark 8:1-9

Come and break us, Holy Spirit. Break us and feed us and teach us to love. Amen.

I talk about food a lot these days. It pops up everywhere – in my life at the Parktown Food Hub, my personal life as I take care of my body by eating a little less, and in my preaching. Like tonight!

But recently something else has been happening: we are seeing clearly that it isn’t just food that people need. The young woman who called and said she had rice and a can of vegetables but is there any way she could get anything else today? She needed food… she also needed somebody to hear her need and respond. And when she got home and saw the abundance that Aja had put in her car she wept. She wept because she could cook again.

Or the young man who showed up in November with a confusing story and a drug habit. Just that one night, but he was drawn to our place and did not want to leave. So we listened and prayed and cared for him and then 4 months later he showed up again:  his story was still confusing but he was adamant that he had quit using drugs. Adamant that he wanted to be in our space because we had been kind on one night four months ago. Adamant that he wanted to now help us.

He was hungry for something and his only interest in the food we were giving away was that it gave him a place to belong and not be judged.

There keeps being abundance in ways we cannot anticipate. The more food we give away, the more resources come to us. The more open we are to peoples’ pain, the more pain the people bring to us. And the more we seek the wisdom and compassion to respond, the more wisdom and compassion we receive.

And so today, in this wild story of Jesus feeding 4000 people with a few loaves and fish, I had a sense of recognition. Aha! Give it away and there will be more!

I like this Mark version of a mass feeding because there isn’t too much detail. We can get to the heart of what was happening: somebody was generous, and Jesus used that generosity as a seed to break the scarcity mindsets of the others. 

For me, it was in these words:

He broke them.

It’s pretty clear that the text is referring to the loaves and fish. But I wonder. What else did Jesus break? 

Did Jesus break the fear of not-enough that others had by blessing that which was shared? 

Was Jesus breaking open hearts to see what could be? To see that fear of not-enough was not-necessary and even not-helpful?

I like to think that Jesus was pointing to what we have seen at the hub: that when we are more generous we will also receive more. 

That we do not have to exhaust ourselves worrying about where we will find resources to share, because sharing opens up avenues we cannot foresee or imagine. 

That we can trust that just as there will be an abundance of food and compassion to share, there will also be an abundance of time to rest and care for ourselves. 

Not from a me-first perspective, but out of a sense that we will have plenty of everything we need and therefore do not need to exhaust ourselves.

I am deeply grateful to Pastor Scott for his consistent focus on continuing to offer communion, and worship, and to be creative in his generosity with liturgy and the communion meal. I have driven through and shared that meal many times!

I am also grateful for the way that the St. Paul’s congregation has shared generously with South Durham Connections. We were surprised to find out that our earliest work would be done in pandemic. We have not yet offered the bread and wine of holy communion. 

And yet every day we are breaking something… sharing loaves (there is SO MUCH BREAD in the food pantry world!) and fish. 

     And chicken 

         and corn 

             and rice 

                 and beans 

                     and potatoes. 

Seasonings and soup, 

     canned beans and cereal. 

         And granola bars. Thousands and thousands of granola bars.

     

Breaking open our hearts to share with compassion.

I know in my quiet moments with God that St. Paul’s and South Durham Connections are both being faithful to what Jesus showed us:  we have been broken of our fear of scarcity and have turned to open-handed generosity.

And if you still worry whether you can afford to be generous? Jesus gave it all. It scared and worried and angered the power holders so much that they killed him. But Jesus must have been doing something right, because he had such an abundance of life that even death could not overcome it.

That life is there for each of us, too. 

     For you. 

         For me. 

             In the Resurrection. 

There is enough for abundance in care and compassion and rest …

because abundance is the way of love. And love brings us the true life we were created to live.

Amen.

Prisms and light and colors

This message - my most recent! - actually being posted in a somewhat timely fashion! - grew out of an ear worm. A very long-lived, very insistent ear worm. I was back at Springmoor this past Sunday, February 14, Valentine's Day, Transfiguration Sunday. Rainy and 34. But also bright and warm and happy. The message came together quickly as that ear worm and the notability of the day and my physics past all converged. Some days are just like that I guess.

Here's the link to the video, thanks to the awesome folks at Springmoor Retirement Village.

The texts are:

2 Kings 2:1-12

Psalm 50:1-6

2 Corinthians 4:3-6

Mark 9:2-9

Do you know what an ear worm is? When a song (or more often a little piece of a song) worms its way into your brain and you can’t stop yourself from humming it over – and over and over and over and over and OVER?

I had one of those. For two weeks before I even started thinking about this message I would be thinking that song when I woke up, hum it while I was getting dressed, bop my head to it as I ate. At work I would realize I was humming it as I prepared for distribution of food, and yep, it was the last thing I “heard” when I went to sleep at night.

FOR TWO WEEKS. Ugh.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s a good song! It’s a song I love, a song that has been known to leave me in tears. But when my friends and coworkers started noticing, well… 

It was a bit much.

It’s a song that was released by Cyndi Lauper and it was a big hit in 1986. In fact for two weeks in 1986 it was the number one song on the Billboard Top 100. It was also Cyndi Lauper’s last big hit. And what a way to go out, y’know?

It’s called True Colors. (you can listen to the official version here)

One line especially captured me:  When this world makes you crazy and you’ve taken all you can bear, just call me up, because you know I’ll be there.

That’s the line that made me cry, because something in my spirit longs to know that when the world has become more than I can bear, all I have to do is call and they will be there.

And that made me think of Jesus.

Then came the time when I was starting to prepare to be here today. Transfiguration Sunday. The day we hear the story of Jesus being transfigured from ordinary Middle Eastern Jewish man to someone else. Someone described as dazzling.

Dazzling bright light.

That dazzling bright light came up against the True Colors ear worm in my former-physics-teacher brain and I immediately thought of prisms.

Do you know about prisms? Pieces of glass. When light shines through a prism a rainbow comes out the other side!  They are so much fun to play with. In fact, if you look on the internet for prisms one of the first thing that comes up is a toy.

But prisms are also serious physics. In a previous part of my life I was a high school physics teacher and I spent 10 years doing research into how people learn physics. I have spent some time thinking about how pure light goes into a prism and gets broken up into lots of different colors.

The colors are beautiful on their own, but they are only a part of the whole light. The unbroken thing is the pure bright dazzling light.

Like Jesus.

In the Transfiguration.

Like Jesus when he showed his closest friends who he really was. When Jesus revealed that he was the whole package, the ideal human being, the only one ever to live like God created all people to live.

Peter, James, and John (and all the other disciples, and you, and I) could never be that pure kind of light. Each of them had their own beautiful true color, but none of them had all the colors – all the parts – of perfectly pure dazzling light.

But Jesus! Jesus has all the True Colors. And of course we were meant to have them too. But when sin came in it acted like a prism, breaking our pure good humanity into who we are. 

It was super critically important that Jesus revealed who he really was, but in broken human terms it was also really dangerous. That’s why Jesus told Peter, James, and John not to tell anybody. But whether they told or not, that Transfiguration started a path for Jesus and all his disciples that would unfold so that Jesus would die. 

But of course he did not stay dead! I can’t leave out the end of the story – Easter came!

But before Easter came there was a lot of brokenness. A lot of sin acting like a prism. 

    * Judas betraying Jesus – possibly because he was so sure Jesus could not harmed

        o Peter denying Jesus three times – possibly because he feared for himself more than for Jesus

            * The disciples all huddling together in fear – possibly because they thought death would be 

                final this time, too, and the politicans would be coming after them.

     

It was like Lent, a display of some of the worst of humanity, except that the disciples did not know that Easter was coming. All they could see was that terrible things were happening to Jesus and they couldn’t help. They couldn’t be anything but broken and hurtful to the one that loved them so well.

What a contrast!

The pure dazzling light of Jesus coming right before all that bad stuff. All those reminders that the disciples were not the whole package.

It was a rough time as the disciples saw their own broken parts in contrast to Jesus dazzling consistently good presence.

But Jesus kept loving them.

Today is Valentine’s Day. The day of love! And everywhere you look you encounter red. Red, red, red. Red hearts. Red bows. Red teddy bears. We sometimes think of red as the color of love.

But I think maybe that’s not enough. Red is only one of the many colors that pure light gets broken into.

Jesus, who IS love, was (and is) that pure dazzling light. Jesus was (and is) all the colors. Red and blue and green and purple (my personal favorite) are just pieces. Beautiful, but in different ways for each of us. They are good, because those colors are all part of the pure dazzling light of Jesus.

But none of us can dazzle by ourselves. We need each other if we are to even begin to think about getting close to who Jesus was.

We cannot love on our own. Only Jesus could do that. We need the give and take of loving each other, to love one another when things are tough, to invite us back into relationship when those relationships become broken. The back and forth of helping each other carry burdens and pick ourselves up and move on when things have gone dreadfully wrong.

Pastors from liturgical traditions (like Lutheran and Episcopalian and Catholic and Methodist) traditionally wear white stoles on Transfiguration, to remind us of the purity and dazzle of Jesus. But today I’m wearing this stole to remind myself – and maybe you – that we cannot dazzle on our own but we can be beautiful together.

Sin may break pure light into colors but they are True Colors – the parts of us that long for wholeness that only God can offer. The parts of us that are drawn to each other in an attempt to be better than we are alone. The complete, pure, shining light that we see in Jesus, who lived the perfect life that we cannot.

Lent starts this coming Wednesday and some people will get ashes on their foreheads as a reminder that we are limited, that we will not live forever, that sin has fractured the pure dazzle of the original creation into so many separate colors. And remembering that fact is good when it makes Easter all the more joyous and beautiful and celebratory.

But this year I urge you to remember this also: 

You have a True Color and that part of you is holy and good and beautiful. It is the part that will bring you back to the savior who sees those True Colors. So…

When this world makes you crazy and you’ve taken all you can bear you can call him up – he’s already there.

Amen.

Does your meal irritate my God? (A real question)

Here is the second catch-up post on this, the weather day that has turned out to be miserable but not particularly dangerous. Still, it's been good to have a quiet moment to sit and do these things.

This message is from the time of Epiphany - January 31, 2021. Staying on track for at least one message per month! I thought it was going to be all about food since food dominates pretty much everything I do these days. But no... it turned out to be about something quite different thanks to the gentle but firm nudge of the Holy Spirit.

The message was delivered at Springmoor Retirement Village Vespers but the video system rebelled so I don't have any kind of recording to share. The text is below, though, and I hope you are happy to have read it (you know, if you decide to read it.)

The texts are:

Deuteronomy 18:15-20

Psalm 111

1 Corinthians 8:1-13

Mark 1:21-28

My friends and I love that the word cloud turned out looking a little bit like a fish. A most delicious food! 

Feed us tonight, Holy Spirit. Feed us with your word and your love and your grace. Amen.

My whole life is all about food these days:  running a food pantry, cooking at home more than ever due to COVID, and trying to eat healthy meals with the result of losing 36 pounds. So I was really attracted to this particular passage and am thrilled that Juliana and Lori asked me to be here tonight!

What I am wondering about tonight is… what is this business of food and idols?

It turns out that the congregation in Corinth had been squabbling and that’s why Paul was writing this letter. They lived in a world where people believed whatever they wanted to believe (much like our world today) and their culture had norms and priorities and ways of doing things that didn’t necessarily have to be, but everybody just knew that’s how things were. Much like our world today.

One of those norms was that they worshipped by sacrificing food to idols, and then having feasts.

So when the Christians came along with their common (or communion) meal, lots of people did what they always do – try to make it fit with what “everybody” knew. In this case it was worshipping their god of choice by eating.

It was a little like the way Roman Catholics believe that their communion is only for professing Catholics and anyone else is not welcomed (at least by their canonical law, which is not always the same as what priests and congregations actually do.)

On the other hand, the ELCA (my branch of Lutheranism), Juliana’s Episcopalians, and Chaplain Lori’s Methodists all say anybody can participate (or to be technically correct for Lutherans and Episcopalians, anyone baptized.) 

There are rules about who eats and what it means when they eat but even when they sound similar, those rules can mean really different things to different people.

But the Corinthians weren’t so worried about who should be at their own common meal. They were really uneasy about whether they could go eat somebody else’s meal. Would eating with others mean they were disrespecting their own group? Would God be mad at them for eating some other god’s special food?

And THAT is where this scripture picks up.  Paul is saying NO YOU ARE NOT DISRESPECTING YOUR OWN GOD (THE REAL GOD) because those other gods, those idols, are simply not real. They are not powerful. The one God – the God who is REAL GOD – just sees some food prepared by some of the Real God’s children in a way that was respectful and appreciative… of something or other.

Maybe a little misguided, but while Christian communion where the Real God is in and over and under and with the bread and wine, the food to the idols was not special in that same way because it wasn’t for the Real God.  So… there y’go. Don’t worry about it Corinthians. Because there is nothing at all wrong with eating food sacrificed to an idol that doesn’t exist.

But was that the end of it?

No. No it was not.

Because squabblers gonna squabble and squabbling about whether it is ok to eat the delicious pagan barbecue is as good a reason to squabble as any.

Yes you can! The idols aren’t real!

No you can’t! Those other people THINK they are real! (or maybe.. I used to think they were rea, tool?)

Back and forth.

It reminds me of vegans who hold “we should not be cruel to animals” as such a deeply held belief that they have to live it out daily or they can’t live with themselves. So they don’t use anything that comes from an animal – not even leather shoes.

It reminds me of meat eaters who need and crave animal protein in order to feel good and healthy and believe that animals can live lives in which they are happy and cared for.

And could those two groups squabble? Oh yeah. FOR. SURE. Daily! Because deeply held beliefs seldom stay in us. We always get tripped up thinking everybody should have the same deeply held beliefs we do.

But one of our most faithful volunteers at the Parktown Food Hub is vegan and I have seen her in a barbecue restaurant buying meat to go because her extended family was in town and they love meat and she loves them and the barbecue was a fundraiser. She didn’t eat it, but she didn’t fight about it, either.

And someday when COVID allows us to have group meals again at the Parktown Food Hub we are going to make sure that there is good healthy vegan food sitting right alongside good healthy meat and animal foods. Because the overriding value of the Parktown Food Hub is to follow the model of Jesus and Jesus loves my friends and they eat meat or don’t eat meat or have allergies or whatever. So we respect what is important to each person, even if it isn’t so important to some other folks.

And that brings us, I think, to Paul’s main point:

If you know God is one and there is only one God, by definition it cannot matter that someone else thinks they are sacrificing to some other god. Because if you really believe there is only one God, then you also really believe that the other person’s lower-case-g-god does not exist as a god. The lower-case-g-gods really don’t challenge the Real God at all.

There is only one God. So even if someone else sees that one God in different ways, it’s still the same God!

Let’s face it: that one God as big and deep and diverse to create the universe and love us all, and die and not stay dead, then there is plenty of room for each one of us to see and know and experience and follow that one great big Real God in different ways.

If the people cooking or doing whatever they do are not genuinely worshipping the Real God, then it’s just ordinary food, or an ordinary thing. Like preferring brisket or ribs – it doesn’t matter that much!

Because, you see, in Real God – in Jesus – both brisket and ribs are fine. And delicious. And a beautiful thing.

What is not fine and not a beautiful thing is beating each other up and creating hierarchies and separation and division because of something that does not really matter in the end.

Because we are either worshipping the same God in different ways, or somebody is worshipping God and someone else is not, or nobody is worshipping God. And only God really knows who’s who.

Recently we had a workday at the Parktown Food Hub getting things ready for a great big Christmas giveaway. There were Lutherans and Brethren and Methodists, Buddhists and Muslims and people who don’t admit to any kind of faith.  

And we were all doing the same things for basically the same reasons.

We were all converging on the thing that Jesus spoke about and modeled and taught:

* Helping the poor and hurting

* Comforting the weak and afraid

* Bringing hope to the sad and lonely and hopeless

* Focusing on people who are in bad situations and being kind

We were all in agreement (even those who don’t celebrate Christmas as a Christian thing) that nobody should be hungry and that children should receive gifts, especially in this land of abundance that is matched only by our wastefulness.

And if we all ended up doing what Jesus showed us how to do, how can we squabble over why? 

If a pagan person thinks loving is good

If a Buddhist person wants to help their neighbors

If a Lutheran wants to respond to a Resurrected Jesus

Then I am willing to stake my life and career on this truth:

Loving is what counts and it counts way more than anyone’s particular motivation is.

Jesus’ life is how we know how to live.  The Resurrection is what makes it possible.

When someone does what Jesus taught, they are following Jesus. There is nothing to squabble about.

If a person hits roadblocks because of spiritual weakness (as Paul put it) or because their current motivation doesn’t carry them through, that is the moment to walk together. But where they started doesn’t matter.

Our job is to help.

Our job is to love.

Our job is to trust that if Jesus could die and not stay dead, then Jesus can bring everything else into being as well.

We can let go of telling each other how to live out our calls and trust that a Jesus who died for everyone one of us will also give us each opportunities to realize that the call comes from Jesus.

So our task? Live our own calls. Love others. Let knowing the one Real God does not make you better but it does make you different.

And then live out that difference so that everyone wants to know why.

AMEN.

Peace Power

It's been awhile since I've posted! December was absorbed by a big Christmas giveaway at the Parktown Food Hub and then recovery from that event! But I have been to Springmoor a couple of times and today - when the promised ice and snow turned into more rain and 34 degrees - seemed like as good a day as any to catch up.

This was the message on the second Sunday of Advent (December 6, 2020) and it was preached three times in one day! First at The Crossing service at St. Philip Lutheran, then at the later service at St. Philip, and finally in the evening to the beloved people of Springmoor Retirement Village. It was a long day. But thanks to the miracle of modern technology you can still see it being delivered or read it below.

The Crossing at St. Philip

Later service at St. Philip

Springmoor

The texts for the day are:

Isaiah 40:1-11 

Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13 

2 Peter 3:8-15a 

Mark 1:1-8 

Come Holy Spirit. Tune our ears and open our hearts to expand our understanding of your peace so that it doesn’t pass our understanding by such a wide margin. Amen

WELCOME TO THE WILDERNESS!

Wherein today we hear the rest of the story about violence and power and God.

Sometimes the Old Testament gets a bad rap. People say things like “wow, God is really mean in the Old Testament” or “all that violence! What kind of God orders everybody killed?”  And those are hard questions. But they do not reflect the whole story.

On top of that, we live in a broken world and are in a culture that prioritizes power, status, privilege, and maintenance of those things at all costs – including force. We are so accustomed to the use of violence that it’s hard to imagine other ways of solving problems.

It really isn’t a very peaceful way to live.

Take the Babylonian captivity, for example:  The Israelites were living their lives. Doing whatever they thought was best – but not necessarily living God’s vision.

Then along come the Babylonians. The big bad country with the most weapons, the most soldiers. They could swagger in and do pretty much whatever they wanted.

Through the prophets – including Isaiah, who we hear from today – God told the Israelites that the Babylonians were coming

The prophets narrated the captivity as it happened.

And in the end, it was through the prophets that God told them the rest of the story.

God let the Israelites feel the consequences of their behavior… but God never let them down.

In today’s gospel lesson, Mark is quoting Isaiah 40, verse 3:
Here it is from Isaiah: 
 

A voice cries out:

“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,

make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

And in Mark:  

“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,

who will prepare your way;

the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:

‘Prepare the way of the Lord,

make his paths straight,’”

It’s a perfect introduction to John being that voice. To John being the fulfillment of prophecy at a time when the Israelites were discovering that God had not been abandoned and they would still be saved.

Do you suppose that John, the guy wearing camel hair and eating bugs and honey, was what they expected for the “voice” that was prophesied so long before?

John calls the religious leaders a brood (or den) of vipers. Since those were the people who were supposed to be leading people to God, I cannot imagine that they were impressed.

But also, I’m pretty sure they never saw it coming.

John talks about power, too – something that those religious leaders really loved (at least the version they knew and trusted.)  Jesus says that “one more powerful than I” was coming. Well imagine that. Someone more powerful than a guy who eats bugs? 

Can you imagine that ANYBODY expected that the powerful one would act like Jesus acted? All the evidence says…

NOPE.

But still, I wonder what would have happened if those religious leaders had *really* paid attention to the rest of that passage from Isaish?  To the rest of the story.

There is singing in verse 9: 

Get you up to a high mountain,

O Zion, herald of good tidings;

lift up your voice with strength,

And right next to that, in verse 10, mightiness:

See, the Lord God comes with might,

and his arm rules for him;

his reward is with him,

and his recompense before him.

And then the kicker that ties it all together:

He will feed his flock like a shepherd;

he will gather the lambs in his arms,

and carry them in his bosom,

and gently lead the mother sheep.

Singing, and a mighty arm – and gentleness? 

Or as it says in the Common English Bible:

God will gather lambs in his arms and lift them onto his lap. 

Does that sound like a mighty arm, and power?

Apparently so…
At least to the God of hope.

Apparently so…
At least to the God of peace.

If you were here last week you heard me talk about the Advent For All that South Durham Connections is sharing with any and everyone. Last week’s piece of the Advent puzzle was HOPE

This week we encounter PEACE.

How peaceful would it be if mighty arms were used to cuddle and comfort in our laps the most vulnerable among us?  

How is that even power? Are you rolling your eyes internally just a little bit, thinking… there she goes again… that bleeding heart… that’s nice for Sunday morning church but come onnnnn… join us in the “real world.” And yet – all I’m doing is sharing what God himself said … in the Old Testament no less!

I receive a daily quote called “This Nonviolent Life” and on Wednesday (12/2) the quote was from my fellow Texan Walter Wink. He said: 

"Our society is so inured to violence that it finds it hard to believe in anything else. And that phrase believe in provides the clue. People trust violence. Violence 'saves.' It is 'redemptive.' But when we make survival the highest goal and death the greatest evil, we hand ourselves over to the gods of the Domination System. We trust violence because we are afraid. And we will not relinquish our fears until we are able to imagine a better alternative."

Now Wink was a Methodist pastor and I’m pretty sure the “better alternative” he would have described would be “power” that comes from Isaiah’s version of God, cuddling little lambs in his lap, being kind to nursing moms…

* Giving attention to the weakest and most vulnerable

* The hungry and homeless

* Those who don’t expect to live long lives because of gun violence

* The abused and abandoned

* Orphans 

* Women who fear for their sons’ lives

* Families who take risks – and arrive at a place where they are punished rather than heard

* Everyone who is cast aside because they haven’t been seen and heard, because they don’t have enough earthly power

* Because they don’t have enough money, or strength, or capacity for domination of others to overcome injustice and pain

Those are the people that Jesus the Good Shepherd pulls onto his lap and snuggles comfortingly.

And in doing so, Jesus shows us that the real power is in PEACE.  That in peace we are empowered beyond more violent kinds of power.

This is not the so-called “peace” of avoiding conflict by giving in, or of armed “peacekeepers.”

This is a peace (and yes, it DOES pass all understanding because as Walter Wink said, we simply cannot imagine this kind of peaceful power on our own) that comes from moving towards a world of wholeness, 

A world where everyone’s need to be loved and cuddled in a loving lap is met.

That includes the people who struggle and can’t seem to “get their lives together”.

That includes people who have forgone deep relationships and care by prioritizing money and the power of violence above all else.

This wholeness is for happy go luck playful people who can’t seem to stop playing long enough to face their problems

And people who are so worried about their problems that they can’t seem to let go long enough to enjoy the opportunities for love that surround them.

I could go on and on, but in the end, what counts is that this love, the LAP OF LOVE, is for YOU.

Regardless of which side of earthly power you are on at any given moment:  wielding it or being battered by it.

Jesus came and gathered the hurting close (defying human power) while chastising those who help human power (also an act of defiance.)

And it got him crucified.

But it could not keep him dead and it is in the Resurrection that we find our best hope for peace today.

That Jesus who defied all human-sanctioned power is the one one – the ONLY one – who was not held by death.

It is that Jesus, that fact of Resurrection, that allows us to have peace now, despite all the temptations to other ways of being.

It is that Resurrected Jesus who defeated violence.
    Who gives us the PEACE POWER to be the ones who gather the vulnerable into comfort and safety.

        Even when the “prevailing wisdom” is to “teach them a lesson.”

In the Resurrection we are freed to love contrary to the world’s common sense.

And that, my beloveds, is the rest of the story.
Amen.