#Iloveyouasmuchasyouneedmeto

When Daddy started his decline last summer I was so sad and scared and helpless and I started making the hearts, over and over and over. I had a lot of anticipatory grief and Daddy was in Texas and I was in North Carolina and it is just what I did. 

Later in the fall, the last time Daddy was in the hospital it was clear that he had started his work of dying. I was crying and he was in physical pain. I don’t remember any of the words before or after, but he told me he loved me as much as I needed him to. It would be a few weeks before he died and the anticipatory grief would become right-now grief but the whole time it has been hearts hearts hearts. 

Then last week I realized that there is something in those hearts about the connection I had with Daddy - so many sizes and shapes and colors of love. It occurred to me that I could put pictures of those hearts up on Instagram as a kind of grief visual art thing, so that is what I did. 

Instagram got cranky about how many images I posted that first day but it seems to be worked out now and the #Iloveyouasmuchasyouneedmeto project is online. It is me trying to make sense of what is normal and inescapable but never expected. And I still tear up and get sad but I like that all those hearts are out there.

You can check them out here on my Instagram page.

When Resurrection is more than a word

 I haven't been posting much. I went to Ethiopia and then my father got sick. I was traveling to and from Texas far more frequently than usual (even pre-pandemic) and the amount of preaching I was up for got smaller and smaller and eventually withered away. 

Then, on November 22, 2021 my father died. I was in Dallas and had had lunch with Daddy and David. Daddy had declared that he was "so dang ready to go." It was the 68 years to the day since he had married my mother, although I don't know if he consciously knew that. 

I would have been on a plane flying back to North Carolina but the flight was delayed so I was still there when my brother David called and said "don't get on the plane." It was three days before Thanksgiving, two weeks before the big Parktown Food Hub Christmas giveaway was to start, and just over a month before Christmas. So we made the arrangements, wrote this obituary and waited until the funeral on December 18.

It wasn't quite that clean and clear and as we waited for the funeral I saw some of the ugly side of this thing some call Christianity as not one but two pastors declined to respect my ordination in what felt wrenchingly unkind. I ended up planning and leading the funeral myself. Seldon played piano (magnificently), Jackson read scripture in the Quaker style he is learning in seminary, and Jennifer held my grief. Lisa and David sat on the front row but I couldn't look at them but Jennifer was there for me even if she did not know it.

This sermon is the message I preached that day. I didn't go off script very much - that would have been way too dangerous. Rev. Dr. Robert Preece sat at the back of the church, watching just in case I (or anyone else) fell apart and needed pastoral care. It ended up being beautiful. I now know I am a person who can lead her own father's funeral even as I feel that my heart has had a huge hole torn in it and everything was and continues to be weird. 

There is no moment when the Resurrection is more important and more real than when preaching at your father's funeral, so here is what I said on that day. Someday I will preach again and share those words here... but for now... this is what there is. 

=

What do you remember about my Daddy?

 

<long pause>

 

Do you know him as a brother? As a father? As an uncle? As an almost-grandfather? As a friend? As a woodworker?

 

He was all of those things and so much more. And among all those roles, the most important one for us to remember today is that he was a beloved child of God. 

 

Faith was a work of art for Daddy. The pain of his childhood led him to pay close attention, to study and think and pray and ultimately, to believe. To believe that 

·      The God who would create a world that was good and let it devolve into sin rather than force anyone to behave a certain way…

·      The God who would let his own Son die the most undeserved of deaths out of love for creatures who had gone far astray…

·      The God who is *defined* as love and yet spent his earthly, embodied time with the most impure of sinners…

·      That God would be there for him through thick and thin.

·      That God could handle it all.

·      That God meant that, ultimately, everything would be alright.

 

When I was little, still living at home, we would be sitting in the living room after supper, or on a weekend, or for whatever reason and Daddy would stand up and say… “Well, I gotta go!”

 

He said it so much that we had a shirt embroidered that said “Gotta go!” It was his watchword. He would usually go to his workshop to build something but it could also mean it was time to go home, time to turn off the tv… time to go do something else.

 

Fast forward a few decades. The pandemic was hard on all of us and during the long stretch of time when I could not visit Daddy I would call – sometimes 3 or more times per week – and every time he would say “things are going good here.” 

 

No matter what was going on.

 

In an ice storm so the power would be off and on and he had to put on all his warmest clothing? “Things are going good here.”

 

When he had been hospitalized after a fall?  “Things are going good here.” 

 

Every. Single. Time.

 

So one day I said “well, Daddy, how would you know if things were not going good?” And his answer was “because then I would be grouchy.”

 

For this man – my Daddy, your brother or uncle, cousin or friend - how things were going depended on his attitude, not on the circumstances.

 

And on the very last day I saw him, the very last day he was alive, he said to me “Go on to the airport, it will be ok. Things are going good here.”

 

And here is what I think happened on that day:

 

I think maybe, perhaps at some unconscious level, he decided that things were just not going so good anymore and he decided he had to go. So he went to sleep, and then went to Jesus. It was one last Gotta Go.

 

This is hard for me y’all. I loved my Daddy as much as any Daddy’s girl has ever loved their Daddy. He was not “Dad” or “Father” to me – he was and always will be Daddy. Because I loved him and still love him and will always love him in a very special way.

 

But I know something even more special than that enduring love for the man who once said “I will love you as much as you need me to.” I know that when he went to sleep on November 22 and then went to be with Jesus, he finally found the place where he will never be grouchy. Where things will always be going good. By every standard, and not just the standard of making the best of whatever bad circumstances he might have been in.

 

And so I offer this comfort: 

·      because in his life Jesus showed us how we can care for each other and live with one another, valuing mercy and grace and comfort for those in our lives over any kind of perfection or purity

·      because Jesus came and experienced death when he did not have to

·      because Jesus could not be held by death and therefore broke those bonds

·      because Jesus died and it did not stick…

·      because there was and is RESURRECTION

 

We no longer have to fear anything. We are forgiven and have eternal grace and mercy.

 

Because of that Jesus who literally embodied love, Daddy has arisen. He is shining. His light has come. His son has come from afar and his daughter has been carried into this place by grace. We are here today, the people we are, because of a faith that Daddy embodied every day of his life.

 

My Daddy is now and forever in a place where things are and always will be going good here. Now and forever.

 

So when you are sad because you won’t be able to call him up and seek his advice…

Or when there are no more carved Santas or custom cabinets

Or because you will just plain miss your father, brother, uncle, almost-grandfather, friend…

Go with that feeling.

Feel it all the way.

Appreciate the great love that is necessary for such great sorrow to exist. 

 

But also know this:

 

Jesus has my Daddy and Jesus has you, too.

 

And because of that, things are going really good, now and forever.

 

Amen.

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.