The Work that Feeds

John 4

Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John” ²—although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— ³he left Judea and started back to Galilee.

⁴But he had to go through Samaria. ⁵So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. ⁷A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” ⁸(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) ⁹The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) ¹⁰Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” ¹¹The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? ¹²Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” ¹³Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” ¹⁵The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” ¹⁶Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” ¹⁷The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; ¹⁸for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” ¹⁹The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. ²⁰Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” ²¹Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²²You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. ²⁴God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” ²⁵The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” ²⁶Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

²⁷Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” ²⁸Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, ²⁹“Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” ³⁰They left the city and were on their way to him. ³¹Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” ³²But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” ³³So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” ³⁴Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. ³⁵Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. ³⁶The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. ³⁷For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ ³⁸I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” ³⁹Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” ⁴⁰So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. ⁴¹And many more believed because of his word. ⁴²They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

Jesus’ disciples were disgusted when they came back from the village of Sychar.  No self-respecting Jew wanted to have to have anything to do with those dirty Samaritans, let alone have to haggle for food and water.  The disciples had tried to spare Jesus’ dignity by leaving him at a well outside of town when no one was likely to come by, but they returned to find a suspicious-looking woman there talking with him.  What was Jesus doing?  Did he always have to embarrass them this way?  That Samaritan woman was so dirty, she’d better not have touched him!  Yet out of respect for their teacher, none of the disciples spoke up to ask her, “What do you want?” or to ask Jesus, “Why are you speaking with her?”  When she left, she left behind a water pot none of them would have touched, even if they were dying of thirst.  Carefully, they laid out their food, and it was only hunger that allowed them to overcome a lingering queasiness about where it came from.  Suddenly, someone saw that Jesus wasn’t eating.  “Rabbi, eat something,” they urged, wanting to care for this teacher they loved and half-afraid that someone else – maybe that Samaritan woman! – had beat them to it.   What he said next confirmed their worst fears: “I have food to eat that you do not know about.”  It worried and upset the disciples so much, Jesus decided to explain.  “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.”  Not sure they actually understood that, he tried again, this time referring to a recent conversation.  “Weren’t you just saying you look forward to the harvest time when we’ll get to glean edges and corners of any grainfield we pass for all the food we need?  Well… that’s where I am right now.  Right now I’m doing the real harvest work that feeds me as I go along, and you can too.” 

This is the word that comes to us today, to all who call themselves Jesus’ disciples, Jesus’ students.  Right now we can be doing the real harvest work that feeds us as we go along.  We can be like harvesters who graze as we go.  And yet, to be honest, this analogy confuses us: what is it that’s like harvesting?  What is the real harvest work that feeds us?  The answer is right there in front of us: it’s what Jesus was doing with the woman at the well when the disciples returned.  The real harvest work is reaching across whatever separates us as human beings; it is bridging whatever prejudices divide us from one another in order to touch a life and to be touched in return.  Any act of caring and being cared for in community is like harvesting by hand, we both work and feed ourselves at the same time.  An example of this from five years ago is a trucker who decided to help other drivers remember 9/11.

Trucker helps drivers remember 9/11: John Holmgren’s 18-wheeler serves as rolling memorial

By Bob Faw Correspondent for NBC News at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6876211/

updated 5/31/2005 5:12:50 PM ET

MADISON, Ala. — On the straight-aways and backroads of America, at loading docks and shopping malls, 39-year-old Minnesotan John Holmgren isn’t just driving a truck. He’s driving home a message.

“It seemed to me like people were forgetting 9/11,” he says.

So he dipped into his own pocket to decorate his 18-wheeler: With a hand-painted fireman and his ash-covered face; with Old Glory, cascading; and with 3,168 names of people who perished on 9/11.

It’s a rolling memorial that makes people stop, stare and whip out their cameras.

“Unbelievable,” says admirer Terry Tate. “It puts chill bumps all over me, just thinking about it.”

Some stand, quietly, while others — like Vivien Pesante and her three children — weep.

“Daddy’s friend died at the towers, yes,” she tells her kids. “So yeah, it is very personal.”

 It’s personal too, for truckers who salute Holmgren on the road.

“I’d like to compliment you on your truck. Does look good,” says one man to Holmgren over the CB radio.

Although some reactions can pose a hazard.

“I know people are lots of times pulling up next to me and looking. I have to watch that they’re OK and they’re paying attention so they don’t have an accident!” says Holmgren.

When he does stop, they sometimes buy miniatures and they always say thank you.

Holmgren got the idea listening to Darryl Worley sing his country hit, “Have You Forgotten?” He’s turned that message into a crusade.

“It’s just my way of respecting the families, and it turned out to be so much more,” says Holmgren.

It’s a way for all of us to remember and respect, always.

© 2010 msnbc.com 

It’s also how one person chose to reach across whatever separates and divides us as Americans in order to touch people’s lives and to be touched in return.  It’s John Holmgren’s way of doing the work that feeds us. 

Here’s another from three years ago.  It’s an excerpt from Samuel Freedman’s article for the New York Times, dated October 6, 2007. 

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark.

Just before the school year started in August 1971, Bill Feldman steered his Volvo amid the pickup trucks and horse trailers of small-town Arkansas, bound for his first job as a math professor. He was coming to the Bible Belt as a Jew reared in a Boston suburb, a scholar educated in Canada and Europe. To ease the culture shock, an uncle had given him three jars of kosher pickles for the trip.

The same month, 19-year-old Fadil Bayyari boarded the first plane of his life, carrying falafel from his mother for the journey from Tulkarem in the West Bank to Roosevelt University in Chicago. He handed a taxi driver at O’Hare the college’s address and was relieved of a month’s spending money when the cabby took the naïve newcomer downtown more or less by way of Indiana.

All these decades later, destiny or providence or something has delivered Mr. Feldman and Mr. Bayyari to the same acre of land at the bottom of one of Fayetteville’s many hills. There Mr. Bayyari, now a general contractor, will build the first permanent temple for the Reform Jewish congregation in Fayetteville, of which Mr. Feldman is president. And Mr. Bayyari, a Palestinian-American Muslim, is doing the job at no charge. Without his sacrifice, the congregation probably could not afford the project at all.

“To me, it’s a place of worship,” said Mr. Bayyari, 55. “In my mind and in my religion, I believe in Judaism as part of Islam. We believe in Abraham. We believe in Moses. In the Koran, there’s lots of talk about Isaac and Joseph. I am always fascinated by this, and I always feel I have a relationship with this faith. And knowing what’s happened in the Middle East, what better way to build bridges?”

For Mr. Feldman, the bond with Mr. Bayyari felt especially resonant during Rosh Hashana. One of the Torah readings told of God’s protection of Hagar and Ishmael in the desert, after Sarah had banished them as rivals for Abraham’s love. Muslims, of course, trace their lineage back through Ishmael.

“The humanity of it is thrilling,” Mr. Feldman, 62, said of Mr. Bayyari’s gesture. “We’re thinking not only of our temple but of continuing the relationships with Muslims. We hope to accomplish an understanding. We hope to ultimately bring peace.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/us/06religion.html   E-mail: sgfreedman@nytimes.com

Finally, from a blog written last month, we have an example of a woman doing the work that feeds her even though it makes her feel wounded at times.  An excerpt from Not My Ground Zero by Nikki Stern posted on her website 1 Woman’ s Vu  on August 19, 2010:

In the autumn and winter months following my husband’s death on 9/11, my strength came from the architects and designers with whom I’d been associated for several years. I was at the time public relations director of a large architecture and interior design firm in New York. I loved the job. Working with architects and designers taught me to visualize; I, in turn, helped them express the intent and the context of their projects through words. It was a good match.

So when I had the opportunity to work with architects, designers, planners and a variety of civic activists, I jumped at the chance. I’d seen the devastation first-hand; stood by the crumbling steps that were all that remained of the World Financial Center; gazed upon the sculptured ruins of my husband’s building glowing gold and grey in the filtered sunlight. I’d seen the hell that had crushed my open-minded, optimistic mate and sent his ashes to the four winds. Now I wanted to be a part of a new and better vision, one that would embrace memory, yes, but also vision. Where before there were ungainly monuments to finance, there might be a university or an educational facility, perhaps some sort of journalistic enterprise,  a cultural center, even a museum of tolerance and understanding—because to understand was not to accept terrorism but to seek its opposite. All of this might be encased in a beautifully landscaped environment with buildings of inspired architecture. The signage—I was a big fan of signage—would be how we would tell people that they were entering “sacred” ground; made so not by the deaths at the site but by the lives that would be remembered.

Throughout the fall of 2001, even as I worked as a families’ representative in my home state of New Jersey, I stayed part-time in the city to facilitate a series of public meetings where devastated New Yorkers talked about their dreams of an inspiring skyline. In December I huddled in unheated raw space at the South Street Seaport adjacent to ground zero with members of the Regional Plan Association to come up with ideas that would be complimentary to those suggested by Mayor Bloomberg. No, I didn’t live in New York City (although I worked there), but I felt passionately that the best possible direction for us to move forward, to prove we as Americans were not about to give in to the hatred that perpetrated the act, nor the grief it sought to instill, was to make the place where my husband died something truly special.

These, then, are three examples of doing the work that feeds us, three examples of reaching across our pride and prejudice to make the world more whole.  Let us, as students of one we call the Christ, commit ourselves anew to that work.  Let us commit ourselves anew to overcoming everything that stands in the way of realizing community which is that common unity we always already share with all people everywhere.  Amen.

I’m Just a Child – Is That True?

Jeremiah 1:4-10

⁴Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, ⁵“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” ⁶Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” ⁷But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you, ⁸Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.” ⁹Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, “Now I have put my words in your mouth. ¹⁰See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”

The word of the still-speaking God.

Thanks be to Christ.

For the last several months I’ve been focusing on the Work of Byron Katie as a spiritual discipline.  You can find this work in several places on the web and also in her book, I Need You to Love Me – Is That True? [1]  This work of Byron Katie is the practice of examining our thoughts in a specific way to see if what we’re reacting to in life is really real or if we’re just reacting to what we think is happening around us.  It’s an inquiry that consists of four questions and some turnarounds.  One morning in 1986, Katie, as she’s called, discovered that when she believed her thoughts, such as, My mother should understand me, she hurt inside, but that when she didn’t believe them, she didn’t hurt.  I have to tell you: Katie doesn’t claim to be a spiritual person.  She says she’s just somebody who doesn’t like to hurt. 

So, four questions and a turnaround.  The four questions Katie asks of any thought that arises are:

1. Is it true?
2. Can I absolutely know that it is true?
3. How do I react when I believe this thought?
4. Who would I be if it weren’t possible for me to think this?

A turnaround simply takes the original thought and asks whether its opposite is at least as true or possibly truer.  For example, Katie turns the thought, My mother should understand me, into its opposite, My mother shouldn’t understand me, and then finds reasons for why that is at least as true as the original.  My mother shouldn’t understand me because it isn’t her business to understand me, or because she is incapable of understanding me, or because I don’t really talk to her.  Is that true?  My mother shouldn’t understand me because it isn’t her business.  Yes, that is true.  My mother’s job is to understand herself.  Whose business is it to understand me?  My business.  Her business is to understand herself.  Whose business is it who she tries to understand?  It’s her business, not mine.  So if she’s over there trying to understand herself, and I’m mentally over there trying to make her understand me, who’s over here taking care of me?  Who’s over here understanding me?  Nobody!  So maybe there’s another turnaround: I should understand me.  Is that true?  Yes, that’s true.  That’s my business.  I should be here taking care of my business of understanding me instead of trying to get someone else to do it for me.  And by the way, if I’m so keen to be giving advice on who people should understand, maybe I should try taking that advice and see how easy it is to do, which brings up another turnaround: I should understand my mother.  Maybe if I tried to follow my own advice, I’d realize just how hard it is to understand another human being and have a little compassion.  I should understand my mother.  Is that true?  Yes, that’s at least as true as, My mother should understand me.   

Now I give you all of that, not only because I’ve found it to be a valuable spiritual discipline, but in order to frame our inquiry into this morning’s reading from Jeremiah.  In the seventh-century before Christ, God called Jeremiah to do a huge and wonderful thing.  God called Jeremiah to become a prophet to his people – a mouthpiece for the divine who would do more forthtelling than foretelling.  When God called Jeremiah to be a prophet, Jeremiah said, “Oh, God!  I can’t do that!  I’m just a child!”  Okay, honestly, we have no idea how old Jeremiah was when God called him to be a prophet, but you know what?  It really doesn’t matter, because we’re right there with the guy every time we feel God starting to nudge us to do something: “Oh God!  I can’t do that!  I’m just a child!”  At least that’s where I am.  I don’t know enough to do this huge and wonderful thing, God!  I’m not spiritual enough, and besides, I just wanna go outside and play.  Immediately, God challenged Jeremiah to examine his thinking: “Don’t say, ‘I’m just a child.’  Go where I send you.  Say what I tell you.  I’ve got your back.  Honest to God!”  And God challenges us today to examine our own thinking, so let’s do that now.

Whenever we start to feel God nudging us to do something huge and wonderful, we say, Oh God!  I’m just a child!  First question: is it true?  For some of you sitting there with parents or grandparents, it is true that you are a child, but what about the rest of us?  I’m just a child.  Is that true?   My story says I’m forty-nine years old and so I’m no longer a child, but I don’t feel that way.  Sometimes I look in the mirror and people have told me that whatever I see there is what I look like, but I’m not sure I believe that because I know who’s looking out these eyes and I can tell you it’s not that old man looking back at me from that mirror!  So, I’m just a child – is that true? 

Hmmm… maybe we’d better unpack the word just and let it complete the sentence before we answer.  I’m just a child means I feel like a child and I know children can’t do huge and wonderful things for God and so I can’t do huge and wonderful things for God. 

I feel like a child – is it true?  Yes!  Okay, then: children can’t do huge and wonderful things for God.  Is that true?  I think so.

Craig Kielburger is a year older than my son, Ben. 

In 1995, when he was 12 years old, Craig saw a headline in the Toronto Star that read “Battled child labour, boy, 12, murdered.” The accompanying story was about a young Pakistani boy named Iqbal Masih who was forced into bonded labour in a carpet factory at the age of four, became an international figurehead for the fight against child labor by 10 years of age, and was brutally murdered in 1995 at the age of 12.

Angered by the article, Kielburger began researching child labour. He took the article to school, gathered friends his same age and together founded Free The Children. In December 1995, Kielburger travelled to Asia with Alam Rahman, a 25-year-old family friend from Bangladesh, to see the conditions for himself. While there, he learned that then-Prime Minister of Canada, Jean Chrétien was travelling to India. After being denied a meeting, Craig arranged a press conference where he announced that the prime minister had a “moral responsibility” to take action on child labour. The Prime Minister eventually met with him and raised the issue of child labour with the trade delegation, and spoke on the matter with the President of Pakistan and the Prime Minster of India.

He and a group of others also successfully lobbied the Canadian and Italian governments to stiffen laws against their nationals who sexually exploit children in developing countries like those in Asia.

Free The Children began to receive international attention. The organization has to date built over 500 schools and implemented projects in 45 developing countries.[2]

Four years after Craig Kielburger started Free the Children, my son, Ben, was delivering the Nashua Telegraph one morning and saw a headline about a high school named Columbine in Littleton, CO.  There’d been a horrible tragedy there involving two young men who, like him, didn’t fit into school culture.  These two young men went to their high school one day with guns and took the lives of twelve other students and a teacher before taking their own.  As he read the newspaper articles in the weeks that followed, Ben was deeply moved.  He decided God was telling him to go to Littleton to face its evil with them.  By the time we realized what was going on, Ben had gone, supposedly on a walk, but actually to hitchhike from New Hampshire to Colorado.  We got a call that evening from some people in town who had stopped to talk with him before he got onto the highway.  They brought him home, much to our relief.  Not only had we been concerned for his safety, we didn’t examine the belief that children can’t do huge and wonderful things for God.  I regret that, after that, instead of driving Ben out to Littleton to stand with him as he stood with the students of Columbine, I clamped down harder than ever on him, arguing with his belief that it was God who had nudged him.

I’m just a child and children can’t do huge and wonderful things for God.  Is that true?  I don’t think so anymore.  Can I absolutely know whether it’s true or not?  No.  How do I react when I think this way?  I get scared and clamp down on myself and those around me.  Who would I be if it weren’t possible for me to think this way?  I don’t know.  Another Jeremiah?  Or maybe just someone who no longer hurt from holding on so tight.

What’s the turnaround?  Maybe I’m not just a child.  Or rather, maybe I am a child, a child of God, and God always expects his children to do huge and wonderful things.

The word of the still-speaking God.

Thanks be to Christ.

---

[1] http://www.thework.com/index.php                                                                             

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Kielburger

The Words from the Cross: A Good Friday Meditation

The crucifixion of Christ is about power: power separated from its true source in the living God.  When the relative capacity to bring about an effect – and that is what power is – cuts itself loose from its roots in the flourishing of life, it becomes a destructive force; it becomes oppression.  For example, when the body’s ability to guard against infection turns on the body itself, as happens in autoimmune disorders, that power of healthy boundaries is cut loose from its source in the health and vitality of the whole and ends up oppressing and destroying the very thing that gives it life.  And when a human society’s ability to create safe spaces – sanctuaries – for the flourishing of human living fails to properly determine what is and isn’t human, the power that can protect community ends up oppressing and destroying the very people who give it life.

This was the case in the Roman Empire where crucifying criminals – publicly torturing to death “enemies of the state” on a cross – was a way to enforce Rome’s gift of order in a chaotic world.  It was also the case throughout much of the twentieth century in South Africa where the system of apartheid drew distinctions around the false concept of “race” and, when human beings resisted their inhumane treatment, ruthlessly crushed any dissent.  Peter Storey served as bishop to the Methodist churches of the Johannesburg/Soweto area under apartheid.  In his book, Listening at Golgotha, he says:

[T]he church had to learn a Cross-shaped ministry under the shadow of apartheid’s oppression.  Across South Africa’s cruel political landscape of that period, Holy Week was always a strengthening time for the hurting victims of apartheid.  The poor and oppressed and the people of faith trying to offer resistance seemed to know instinctively that in this pain-drenched narrative, their own struggles would be embraced and given meaning by the sorrow of God.

The issue of whether one would die rather than kill to overcome evil was at that time an existential dilemma demanding painful choice each day.  Since the Son of God, faced by implacable evil, determined that he would be willing to die for the world but would never kill for it, Holy Week and Good Friday in particular presented an inescapable challenge to us all.[1]

Good Friday presents a challenge to you and to me as well and it is this: how are we to hear the “words from the cross,” the seven last words of Jesus, for ourselves?   How are we to hear these words from the cross in our situation where we enjoy unquestionable rights to security and well-being?  Even as recently as twenty years ago in the cities of Johannesburg and Soweto, these words resisted human power that had become oppressive and destructive to human life.  What do they do for us?  If all these words do for us is to inspire pity for innocent suffering, I have to say that there’s enough of that in other places: we don’t need to be here tonight to get that.  So, what do these particular words from this particular man who died on that particular cross give us that nothing else can?  I will tell you: they give us the power to resist oppression without become oppressive ourselves.

You ask how can they do that?  I invite you to listen to them now and see.

First Word: Forgive  (Luke 23:32-34)
³²Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. ³³When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. ³⁴Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Release from blame.  Let go of the righteous indignation which is the besetting sin of the political left.  Let go of the hunger for vindication which is the besetting sin of the political right. Just let it go.  We know that the approach that works best against oppressive power is non-violent resistance, and that approach includes emotional and spiritual non-violence as well as a refusal to physically strike back.  Let go of labels.  Let go of demonizing.  Let go of bad blood.  Become transparent to the destructive negativities that flood our everyday environment like harmful radiation and you will resist them effectively without adding to them one bit.

Second Word: Hope (Luke 23:39-43)
³⁹One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!”
⁴⁰But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? ⁴¹We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”
⁴²Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
⁴³Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Hold to the goal of life and its flourishing even in the absence of any road to reach it.  Live as if you are already there, even if others can’t see it.  As far as the Roman soldiers were concerned, it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference if they’d heard Jesus say to the thief on the cross, “When we finish this up, let’s go get a couple of cold ones,” instead of, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”  Neither proposition seemed very likely from where they were standing.  And yet, for the man who believed Jesus, these words made all the difference between becoming an agent of God’s power or simply remaining a victim of human oppression.  If by hope we hold to the goal of life and its flourishing, even in the absence of any way to reach it, no threat will keep us from making that goal a reality.  Not only that, but by freeing us from getting too attached to any particular way of doing things, hope keeps us from oppressing those who might disagree with our approach.

Third Word: Presence (John 19:25-27) 
²⁵Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. ²⁶When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Dear woman, here is your son,” ²⁷and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.

Presence is a powerful thing.  The simple act of being present to oppressive power resists that power.  It would have been easy for Jesus to “check out” of life at this point, to slip into delirium or to let  painful apathy take over, but he didn’t.  With his third word, Jesus gives us a way to overcome the powers that oppress and destroy life without becoming oppressive or destructive ourselves.  We can always be present to life, no matter how constrained our circumstances become.  We can choose to care for those around us in appropriate ways, no matter if all we have to give them is our pain-filled attention.  Jesus saw his mother and his best friend there at the foot of the cross.  They were helping him to fight human power gone mad by being present to his suffering.  He, in turn, took time away from his dying to tell them they needed to adopt each other.  This was a simple act, full of life-power.

Fourth Word: Absence  (Matthew 27:45-46)
⁴⁵From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. ⁴⁶About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

It’s called the “cry of dereliction,” this quote from Psalm 22, and it takes up into itself the long history of oppression against all people of faith in every generation.  Faith is one of the touchstones of life, so when a human power starts oppressing other people, the practice of faith is one of the first things it tries to take away.  Oppression knows that when we can no longer perform rituals of faith, we often end up feeling abandoned by God, separated from life and power.  Jesus gave us a way to deal with this when he owned up to that feeling.  When he cried out “My God!  My God!  Why hast thou forsake me?” he made the experience of God’s absence his own, and so can we.  We can make the experience of forsakenness our own heart’s cry which, when we do this, when we cry out to God, affirms that God is there.  The cry itself affirms our faith in the One who will never leave us nor forsake us.

Fifth Word: Need (John 19:28-29)
²⁸Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” ²⁹A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips.

Human need is one thing that no one can ever completely take away from us.  Neediness, like thirst, is normal for life.  Being about 98% water, you wouldn’t think we really need any more to drink, but it is because we are living creatures that we need more.  The very process of living consumes life and its resources.  This means living itself becomes destructive and oppressive of human life whenever the powers-that-be refuse to acknowledge human need.  Jesus’ fifth word, “I thirst,” enacted a ritual of resistance against such powers by expressing normal human need in a situation that was anything but normal.  By expecting (against all odds) the people who were crucifying him to show normal human behavior, Jesus continually affirmed their humanity and his own.   He continually offered them the chance to reattach their human power to its true life source in God’s power.

Sixth Word: Done! (John 19:30)
³⁰When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

There comes a point in different kinds of work when you know you have nothing left to give.  The work may not be finished, but we certainly are.  Jesus’ sixth word, however, reminds us that such can never be the case when it comes to work in the service of life.  His triumphant cry, “It is finished!” reminds us that he did all he came to do.  You and I will be able to say the same when we persist to the end.  The writer of the book of Hebrews encourages us with these words:

²Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. ³Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.[2]

This sixth word, “Done!” is our constant reminder that until we die, we still have a last full measure of devotion to give.

Seventh Word: Commend (Luke 23:44-46)
⁴⁴It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, ⁴⁵for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. ⁴⁶Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.

“Commend” is such a strange word.  What is it we do whenever we commend something to someone?  Is it that we simply give someone something that they can then do with as they please?  No, whenever we commend something, we commit it to someone’s care and expect that person to deal with it appropriately.  Okay, does that mean we just dump it on their plate and walk away?  Again, no.  Whatever we commend to another person never loses its importance to us, otherwise we could just give it away or abandon it.  So, then, does that mean we get to keep some control over what we commend to another’s keeping?  Absolutely not!  To commend something to someone is to give it completely over, usually because we ourselves are no longer in a position to care for it.  So… how does Jesus’ final word, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit,” help us overcome oppression and destruction without becoming part of the problem?  It directs us to stay rooted in God who alone can and will care for us beyond all limits of human strength and endurance.  It reminds us that the power of being, from beginning to end, comes from God, and this reminder preserves us from becoming oppressive and destructive of life.  Amen.

---

[1] Peter Storey, Listening at Golgotha: Jesus’ Words from the Cross (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 2004), 10-11.

[2] Hebrews 12:2-3 NIV

Resurrection Power: An Easter Sermon based on Luke 24:1-12

Can you imagine a terrible grief – a grief compounded by guilt at not being there – carrying you along one morning to where you know you’ll be able to give a final loving touch to one who is now so completely missing from life… only to discover that that one is now missing from death, too?  [O]n the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. ²They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, ³but when they went in, they did not find the body.  The phrase that follows, they were perplexed about this, may well be the greatest understatement in all of scripture.  They were perplexed!  Well, I guess they were.  They couldn’t figure out what had happened because it was as if nothing had happened at all.  Jesus’ body wasn’t there!

Whenever we lose a loved one, it’s not unusual to momentarily forget that it actually happened.  William Wordsworth described this phenomenon with superb clarity in his poem, Surprised by Joy. 

Surprised by joy – impatient as the wind
I turned to share the transport – Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind -
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss? – That thought’s return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn,
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.[1]

It was possible for Wordsworth to forget the death of his little girl for a moment in the sheer joy of something he experienced, and yet it was that very feeling of joy – in its demand to be shared with another – that brought him immediately back to cold, unyielding reality.  She was no longer there to share it with.

It’s also not unusual for people to dream that a great loss – whatever it may be – has suddenly been overturned by a power we cannot fathom.  Yet we know upon waking, and sometimes even within the dream, that this is not so.  For years after leaving the Air Force Academy to become a minister, I dreamed that I had been given special dispensation to return and finish my four years there. 

Those who entered the tomb on that first Easter morning knew they were not dreaming.  They stood at an empty tomb in the cold, sober light of morning.  And the wonder they felt at seeing the stone rolled back couldn’t plunge them back into grief and guilt as it should have, because there was no body there.  And so… they were perplexed!  They really didn’t know how to see what they were seeing until two messengers – which is what the word “angels” literally means – helped them to see it.

In late August 2002 my sister, Bernice, and I helped Momma and Daddy drive his woodworking shop down to their new, retirement home in Tennessee.  I rode in the U-haul with Daddy while Bernice took turns driving the Buick with Momma.  As landscape slid by on the second morning, we watched a water tower that had been painted to look like a basket of apples rise from behind a huge hill along the road.  Bernice later described for me how she had been looking at this thing for the longest time without knowing what she was looking at.  She simply didn’t know how to see it.  Then, all of a sudden, it clicked into place for her what it was.  After that it was impossible for her not to see it.

Whenever we encounter resurrection power for the first time, it is impossible for us to see because we simply have no frame of reference for it.  Resurrection is, by definition, “outside the box.”  If we’re paying any attention at all we might realize that something happened, which is all anyone can ever say about the resurrection of Christ, but the truth is – we have no idea what.  We are like the narrator in a poem by Juan Ramón Jiménez:

  I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.
                                      And nothing
happens! Nothing…Silence…Waves…

    ^__ Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?[2]

Once they saw the resurrection, the women who had gone early that morning to put sweet-smelling spices on Jesus’ body couldn’t stop seeing it.  They went from “something happened” to “everything happened,” and found themselves “standing now, quietly, in the new life.”  Filled with insight and joy, the women tried to relate what happened to those who were still wrapped in grief, but their words seemed … an idle tale, and [the others] did not believe them.  The apostles (who were all men, by the way) didn’t take the women seriously.  Even after Peter ran to the tomb, stooped down and looked in, he still didn’t know what to make of things.  Scripture says, [H]e went home, amazed. 

That’s how it is with resurrection power: no one can make you get it.  You have to be willing to pay attention to what’s going on inside of you and to stay within the mystery, perplexed or amazed, for however long it takes.  Thirty, maybe forty, years after this Paul wrote to a group of believers:

¹⁰I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection … ¹²Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.[3]

The apostle Paul still didn’t get it after thirty years of trying, but he was willing to keep doing whatever it took to see resurrection power in his own life.  You and I have just barely begun to glimpse this power so once again let us affirm the Easter Proclamation:

Christ is risen.  Christ is risen indeed!  Amen.

---

[1] http://www.etymonline.com/poems/surprised.htm

[2] http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/121934-Juan-Ramon-Jimenez-Oceans

[3] Philippians 3:10-12

Life Is a Process, Not a Product

Yesterday, I noticed myself starting to get upset with Microsoft when I turned on my computer.  Anyone else ever have that experience?  I was getting upset because I missed the end-of-offer date on an upgrade to the Windows 7 operating system and I could feel my emotional engine revving into the red.  So I stopped myself and asked, “Why am I getting so upset over this?”  The truth was I had missed a freebie through my own neglect and everything was working the way it should anyway.  But I was still getting mad!  I had missed a chance to get something for nothing, and because nothing is ever my fault, it had to have been because of those greedy people at Microsoft!  I was upset with feeling the pinch of “not enough.”

You and I live in the most prosperous country on earth, and yet at every turn we feel the pinch of having “not enough,” an anxiety that constrains our lives and keeps us from experiencing God’s promised abundance.  Why do you think that is? 

As we are able, let us rise to honor the words of Christ.  Our reading this morning is from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 12, verses 13 through 31.

¹³Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” ¹⁴But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” ¹⁵And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” ¹⁶Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. ¹⁷And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ ¹⁸Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. ¹⁹And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ ²⁰But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ ²¹So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

²²He said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. ²³For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. ²⁴Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! ²⁵And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? ²⁶If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest?

 ²⁷Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. ²⁸But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! ²⁹And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. ³⁰For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. ³¹Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.

The Word of the Lord.

  Thanks be to God.

Please be seated.  Now, back to our question, why do we feel the pinch of “not enough?”  In a word, it’s because we are mistaken; it’s because we mistake death for life.  You say, “How foolish is that?  Everyone but the youngest child knows the difference between something that is dead and something alive;” and yet it’s true.  We mistake life for a product – something finished, complete, kaput – when it is actually a process – something still coming at us, still unfinished and open to the now.  Scripture put it this way in verse 15, life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.

Ah, so this is a sermon about “quality of life:” all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, right?  That’s what verse 15 is getting at, isn’t it?  Well, no actually, it isn’t.  Let’s try this another way: let’s interrogate our bodies.

I want you to raise your hand or arm in front of you, take a look at it, and then ask yourself the question, “What do I see?”  Hopefully, all of you saw something that, in English, we call “hand” or “arm.”  Now, keeping your hand or arm in front of you, close your eyes and feel it from within.  From within yourself ask, “What is this?”  Is the answer still some “thing” that has a name?  Probably not.

You see, we mistake life – a process – for a dead thing – a product – because we’ve been trained to see and describe the world around us as a space populated by things, and things are what people or nature produce and consume.  Things are what a rational economy such as ours can buy and sell as commodities.  Since even hands and arms can be bought and sold, is it any wonder that you and I feel the pinch of a never-ending, almost-panicked feeling of “not enough” most of the time?  Just below the surface in all of us, 24/7, runs a constant stream of thought: what if I run out of livelihood-life?what if livelihood-life runs out of me?i’m going to die.i know i’m going to die.i need more livelihood-life!”  That constant, subterranean babble fills us with angst and drives us to work and produce and consume more and more things without ever letting up, without ever letting us stop –

to consider whether we might be looking at this all wrong.

That’s the problem with the man in Jesus’ parable.  He’s reached a crisis point.  Suddenly, his work grinds to a halt because some part of the system is gummed up.  Rather than stopping to consider whether the system itself is at fault, the man acts out of his angst-filled consciousness to come up with a technical fix to get that part of the system ungummed.  He said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.’

Which brings up the elephant-in-the-room question.  How much is enough?  When does prudence become hoarding?  This question is the elephantine shape our “not enough” angst takes when confronted with Jesus’ words to consider the lilies, how they grow.  If you and I take the gospel at all seriously, we want to know: How much is enough?  Is it okay for me to put some away for a rainy day?  How about having a 401K?  Am I a hypocrite if I contribute to a pension plan?  At what point does my prudence become hoarding?                                                                                     

And we ask that question most seriously because we hear the words of God’s judgment.  ²⁰But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’  It blows us away to hear God’s judgment on what sounds like good business practice, and it makes us shiver to remember lying in bed last night worrying  about everything under the sun, but especially about our business, about our finances, about our “not enough.”  These words threaten and haunt us: “This very night your life will be required of you, and then where will everything be?” 

But because it’s Jesus telling the story, we think there’s got to be another way to read these words, a way that allows us to hear them as good news if we have to hear them at all, and we’re right.  You see, the reason Jesus told the parable was to shift our thinking so that it could then shift our hearing and maybe change the way we live into a way of life and not death.  If the man in the story would have listened to his soul instead of planning what to say to it (‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry,’) he would have heard it groaning from the depths, “You’re killin’ me man!”  If he had then asked himself, “Wait… what am I missing here?” he would have heard God’s pronouncement not as judgment, but as grace: “You crazy farmer, I’ve been trying to tell you you’re treating a pipeline like a warehouse!  Why do you think I gave you so much last harvest? Listen to me.  Right now you’ve got the valves on that pipeline screwed down so tight, I don’t think I can even send enough life through it to keep you alive through the night!  Ease up, farmer, and let the life flow!”

You know, it occurs to me that we purchase water, even if it just costs us electricity at the well-pump, as it flows by, but we purchase ice, maybe again just at the cost of running a freezer, by the pound stored.  Life is more like water than ice.  We can’t store enough water to meet every demand we’ll ever have.  We can only do our best to care for the water-cycle on planet earth and then trust that there’ll be enough there when we need it.

One last word about that elephant-in-the-room question, “Am I hoarding?” –  No one can ever determine the answer for you.  No one can either accuse or absolve you of treating life like a product because the answer, in any given case, is not without ambiguity.  It will always be an uncomfortable question to ask, and it should be.  Like I used to say to the grad students who inquired about plagiarizing, “If you’re worried about plagiarizing, you’re probably going to be just fine.” (Of course, knowing what I do now, I should have added, “But if you’re worried about getting caught, you probably will be.”)  So I say to you this morning, if you ask this question with care, “Am I treating life as a gift to be shared or a thing to hoarded?” then you probably have nothing to worry about…  But then again, you might!   So just keep asking it of yourself over and over until your feeling of “not enough” gives way to a feeling of God’s glorious abundance flowing through you.

The Word of the Lord.

  Thanks be to God.

True Hospitality: The Story of the Lost Sons

Luke 15:11-32 

¹¹Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. ¹²The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. ¹³A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. ¹⁴When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. ¹⁵So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. ¹⁶He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. ¹⁷But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! ¹⁸I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; ¹⁹I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ ²⁰So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. ²¹Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ ²²But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. ²³And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; ²⁴for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate. ²⁵“Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. ²⁷He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ ²⁸Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. ²⁹But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. ³⁰But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ ³¹Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. ³²But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”
  

Luke 15:11-32 (The Message, adapted)

The Story of the Lost Sons: Scene 1

 ^11-12Then he said, “There was once a man who had two sons. The younger said to his father, ‘Father, I want right now what’s coming to me.’ 

Charlie Brown’s little sister, Sally, wanted him to write a letter to Santa for her.  He finally agreed to write down whatever she told him.  After opening with pleasantries, she dictated “I have been extra good this year, so I have a long list of presents that I want.  Please note the size and color of each item, and send as many as possible. If it seems too complicated, make it easy on yourself: just send money. How about tens and twenties?”  When Charlie Brown objected, she told him, “All I want is what I… I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share.”[1]  

Sally thought she deserved something for being a good girl throughout the year, and she wanted to make sure she got it.  The young man in this story thought he deserved something for being the son of a rich man.  He wanted whatever it might be in advance, so he wouldn’t have to wait until the old man died.  Maybe he wanted to make sure he got it while he was still young enough to enjoy it, but regardless of the reason, his father obliged. 

 ^12-16“So the father divided the property between them. It wasn’t long before the younger son packed his bags and left for a distant country. There, undisciplined and dissipated, he wasted everything he had. After he had gone through all his money, there was a bad famine all through that country and he began to hurt. He signed on with a citizen there who assigned him to his fields to slop the pigs. He was so hungry he would have eaten the corncobs in the pig slop, but no one would give him any. 

 ^17-20“That brought him to his senses. He said, ‘All those farmhands working for my father sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I’m going back to my father. I’ll say to him, Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired hand.’ He got right up and went home to his father. 

The young man remembered the hospitality his father showed his employees at the farm.  Believing he no longer deserved what we might call family hospitality, he was more than willing to settle for employee hospitality, since no one had showed him any hospitality at all in the far country where he was.  Robert Frost captured the difference between family and employee hospitality in his poem, The Death of a Hired Hand, where he recorded a possible dialogue between a New England farmer and his wife when an on-again-off-again employee came back for the last time. 

“When was I ever anything but kind to him? 

 But I’ll not have the fellow back,” he said. 

 “I told him so last haying, didn’t I? 

 ‘If he left then,’ I said, ‘that ended it.’ 

 What good is he? Who else will harbour him 

At his age for the little he can do?What help he is there’s no depending on. 

 Off he goes always when I need him most. 

 ‘He thinks he ought to earn a little pay, 

 Enough at least to buy tobacco with, 

 So he won’t have to beg and be beholden.’ 

 ‘All right,’ I say, ‘I can’t afford to pay 

 Any fixed wages, though I wish I could.’ 

 ‘Someone else can.’ ‘Then someone else will have to.’ 

 I shouldn’t mind his bettering himself 

 If that was what it was. You can be certain, 

 When he begins like that, there’s someone at him 

Trying to coax him off with pocket-money,— 

 In haying time, when any help is scarce. 

 In winter he comes back to us. I’m done.” 

  “Sh! not so loud: he’ll hear you,” Mary said. 

 “I want him to: he’ll have to soon or late.” 

  —– 

 “Warren,” she said, “he has come home to die: 

 You needn’t be afraid he’ll leave you this time.” 

 “Home,” he mocked gently. 

 “Yes, what else but home? 

It all depends on what you mean by home. 

Of course he’s nothing to us, any more 

Than was the hound that came a stranger to us 

Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.” 

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.” “I should have called it Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.”[2] 

^20-21“When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him. The son started his speech: ‘Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son ever again.’ 

His father listened to the speech the young man had rehearsed until he got to the line, “I don’t deserve to be called your son.”  At that point the father interrupted – not by explaining that home is “something you somehow haven’t to deserve,” but by acting immediately to restore all the signs of their connection as father and son. 

^22-24“The father [called] to the servants, ‘Quick. Bring a clean set of clothes and dress him. Put the family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then get a grain-fed heifer and roast it. We’re going to feast! We’re going to have a wonderful time! My son is here—given up for dead and now alive! Given up for lost and now found!’ And they began to have a wonderful time. 

The Story of the Lost Sons: Scene 2

 ^25-27“All this time his older son was out in the field. When the day’s work was done he came in. As he approached the house, he heard the music and dancing. Calling over one of the houseboys, he asked what was going on. He told him, ‘Your brother came home. Your father has ordered a feast—barbecued beef!—because he has him home safe and sound.’ 

 ^28-30“The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in. His father came out and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen. The son said, ‘Look how many years I’ve stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends? Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast!’ 

Note the inhospitable behavior of the older son.  He, like his younger brother, evidently believed that family hospitality was something you have to deserve, and as far as he was concerned, little brother no longer deserved any such thing because he had drained the family of half its resources.  Not only that, the older son had a definite opinion of what family hospitality should look like: “you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends.”  It should look like his father letting him play the role of the gracious host to his friends – a role implying he was actually in charge of the family fortune. 

When the father heard of the older son’s inhospitable behavior, he went out to reason with him. Because that son still had all the signs of connection with the family, there was no further hospitality the father could offer him as he had the younger son, so he tried to help him understand what was at stake. 

 ^31-32“His father said, ‘Son, you don’t understand. You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours—but this is a wonderful time, and we had to celebrate. This brother of yours was dead, and he’s alive! He was lost, and he’s found!’” (emphasis added) 

Both sons were sadly mistaken.  They believed there are different things called family hospitality, friend hospitality, and employee hospitality, and that you earn the type of hospitality you get by what you do for the host.  The truth their father showed them is that there is only one kind of hospitality – true hospitality – and that true hospitality has nothing whatsoever to do with deserving.  True hospitality can never be earned.  It is by definition gracious, meaning drenched with undeserved favor.  The hospitality the father showed his children was the same hospitality he showed his employees, and the same hospitality he would show a stranger at his gate.  How each person responded to the father’s hospitality determined exactly the extent of their welcome. 

Imagine the story if the younger son had refused the signs of family connection.  What if he had refused the clean clothes, the family ring, the sandals?  What if he had refused to join the party, as the older brother did, and had insisted on working in the kitchen as part of the household staff instead?  Would he then have been welcomed as a son?  No, but as a servant because that is how he would have acted.  And if the older brother acted like a stranger who had no right to be part of a family celebrating the return of their child, was he then being welcomed as a son?  No, but as a stranger who must be urged to join the party for that is how he acted.  Both were welcomed.  One as a son; the other as a stanger. 

God’s welcome, God’s unconditional acceptance, God’s true hospitality is the same to every one of us, regardless of who we are or where we are on life’s journey.  How we respond to that welcome determines whether we will be family, employee or stranger to God. 
 

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[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059026/quotes?qt0272799                

[2] http://www.bartleby.com/118/3.html

Ten Commandments for Living Simply

Exodus 20:1-17 gives us the Ten Commandments:

1. Worship only the LORD God.
2. No idols.
3. Don’t take God(‘s name) for granted.
4. Keep Sabbath.
5. Respect your parents.
6. Don’t murder.
7. Don’t commit adultery.
8. Don’t steal.
9. Don’t lie.
10. Don’t covet.

 Here are ten commandments for someone who wants to live more simply:

1. Put the big rocks in first.  Our ultimate concern orders all other cares.  When God-within, who is your truest self, and God-without, who is our truest community, is that ultimate concern, all other cares fall into place in the simplest ways possible.
2. Resist getting attachments, the things that hook onto a life to make it “easier” according to others, the things we think will “save” us: the latest diet, the newest time management system, the new and improved laundry soap.  These are not promoted because someone cares about you, but because someone wants something from you.  One way to resist getting hooked is to institute a 30-day buying list or even a moratorium on new purchases.
3. Be mindful of what you do.  Take nothing for granted.  Watch yourself go through a typical day and constantly ask, “Why am I doing this?”  If the answer is not something to do with who you are deep down inside or who you want to become, consider not doing it next time.
4. Create a weekly Sabbath for yourself.  Make a “drop-dead” commitment to give yourself the gift of time just for you.  If appropriate do the same thing for your family, but don’t confuse the two times.  The Sabbath is a cathedral built of time, a sanctuary for self-care.  Carve it out of your schedule and surround it with rituals to protect it.
5. Take control of how you respect family.  As an adult, and even as a young adult, you are the only one to decide how you will acknowledge the special debt we owe those who bring us into the world.  Be sure to communicate your decision clearly on how you intend to honor them, then stick with it.  Don’t be bullied by well-meaning family members.
6. Stop killing yourself.  Eat right; exercise; get a full eight hours of sleep a night; stay on top of your meds, if you take any; and meditate daily in some form or fashion.  You may have to cancel some previous commitments to get it done, but just do it.  This is not a dress rehearsal.  It’s the real thing, so take care of yourself even at the expense of other commitments.
7. Keep the commitments you do make.  Number one is your commitment to God to take care of the life you’ve been given.  After that come the relationships you willingly undertake, such as with a spouse.  Work on your relationship with your significant other all the time.  Nobody can afford to coast.  The only thing more important than your relationship with a life partner, if you have one, is your relationship to God-within who is your truest self.
8. Own as little as possible.  To own is to be responsible for.  To take ownership is to become responsible for something.  Life simplifies exponentially in direct proportion to the number of persons and things we are responsible for.  We have to own ourselves.  That’s called growing up.  We tend to own what is closest to our skin: clothes, insignia, health devices.  Most of us feel we need to own the tools of our trade, whatever those may be.  It isn’t always necessary to own any more than that.
9. Be honest… with yourself (What do I really want in life?) and with those you can trust (How do I really want you to treat me?).  It really is the best policy for making your life as simple as it can be.
10. Stop comparing.  It cuts down on KUWTJ syndrome.  Something we all have – even people who live in a monastery – is keeping up with the joneses syndrome.  Whenever you find yourself making a comparison, just fix an inward stare on the one comparing.  It tends to cut down on the comparisons.

Glory! A Transfiguration Story in Lent

Luke 9:28-36

²⁸Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. ²⁹And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. ³⁰Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. ³¹They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. ³²Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. ³³Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah” —not knowing what he said. ³⁴While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. ³⁵Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” ³⁶When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

²⁸Now about eight days after these sayings  What sayings?  This chapter begins with Jesus sending out the Twelve to proclaim and to heal.  They took nothing extra and were totally dependent on the hospitality of the villages where they went.  When they came back from their mission trip, they were bubbling over with excitement and – like our young people when they return from a mission trip –  wanted to tell everything all at once.  So Jesus took them on a retreat to the Bethsaida Bed and Breakfast, but when they arrived they discovered the place was crawling with Jesus-groupies.  The disciples were disappointed, of course, but Jesus then started doing his thing.  Verse 9 says  he welcomed them, and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed to be cured (Peterson).  Finally, at the end of the day, Jesus performed his five-loaves-and-two-fishes-feeds-5000 act (always a crowd-pleaser that brings down the house) and sent everyone else home.  After that, the disciples had him all to themselves and their retreat began.  At one point during it, Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”  and a lightbulb came on over Peter’s head and he made his famous pronouncement, “You are the Messiah!” (“You are God’s special agent!”)  Now the sayings of verse 28 are what followed that pronouncement.

“It is necessary that the Son of Man proceed to an ordeal of suffering, be tried and found guilty by the religious leaders, high priests, and religion scholars, be killed, and on the third day be raised up alive.”

 ^23-27Then he told them what they could expect for themselves: “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat—I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? If any of you is embarrassed with me and the way I’m leading you, know that the Son of Man will be far more embarrassed with you when he arrives in all his splendor in company with the Father and the holy angels.” (from The Message by Eugene Peterson)

It is unusual to read the transfiguration story during the somber season of Lent.  By tradition and the lectionary, it should be read on the last Sunday in Epiphany, just before Ash Wednesday, when from the height of glory on Mount Transfiguration we look out across that dread plain of Lent to the glory of another mountain with its empty tomb.  So what are we doing here on the third Sunday of Lent?  We are here because these sayings from a retreat eight days before make Lent more transparent to our hearts and minds.  We are here reading the Transfiguration Story in Lent because it reminds us that those who follow Jesus must let him lead, whether to a peak spiritual experience or to a cross. 

About a week after that retreat, Jesus took three of the disciples to the top of a mountain for some supplemental instruction.  During prayer time, they got a little sleepy but – much to their credit and our surprise –  they stayed awake long enough to glimpse in the person of their beloved Jesus what some scholars call a “post-resurrection” appearance of the Christ.  In verse 29 we read and while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.  What’s going on here?  Just as when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the tablets of the law and his face shone so bright with glory the people ran from him and had to be called back, so in this moment Jesus became totally transparent to the power and beauty of God.  Then, as if that weren’t enough, the people who personified the Bible of Jesus’ day (called “the law and prophets”), by which I mean Moses the law-giver and Elijah the prophet, suddenly showed up and started talking with Jesus about the Exodus – not the original one out of Egypt, but the one Jesus was about to complete in Jerusalem (Peterson).  Jesus was about to part the reed sea of death and lead all who had the courage to follow across that deep chasm and into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

Verse 32 then says, Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory.  This is our good news in the story: there are moments of grace and great transparency even during Lent if we’ll stay awake and focus on what’s happening now, in this moment.  When it comes to spiritual matters, there’s more than one way to be sleeping when we should be watching.  We could be absorbed in some project that is not worth our ultimate concern.  We could lose ourselves in escapism, running from our brokenness into work or some form of self-medicating.  Or we could simply be mesmerized by the road, going about our daily traffic patterns of life, doing the same things at about the same time each day, paying little or no attention to what’s really going on around us.  But since [Peter and his companions] had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.   

 Now I can imagine Peter rubbing the sleepies out of his eyes to focus on what he thought must be a dream, then opening his mouth to the only word that could possibly have come out, the only word in any human language for what was going on in that moment: “Glory!”  It’s not in scripture, but that’s what I imagine.  The only other phrase that might have done justice to that experience comes from Michael Valentine Smith in Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land.  When Jubal Harshaw asked the “Man from Mars” how his first experience driving a tractor on a farm went, Mike says, “Brightly, brightly and with beauty!”  Actually, Peter didn’t know what to say and, like too many of us, he couldn’t just keep his mouth shut.  Besides, he didn’t want the moment to end, so he blurted out, “Master, let’s build a three-room Motel 6 right here! We’ll make a room for you, a room for Moses, and a room for Elijah!”  Well, not exactly in those words, of course, but Peter wanted to enshrine the moment.  He wanted to throw walls up around it and put a door on it so he and the others could come visit as often as they liked.

Then a cloud came and … from the cloud … a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”  Talk about having an, “Oops!  My bad.”  moment!  You see, in all the “brightly, brightly and with beauty,” Peter forgot the sayings Jesus gave him and his friends during their retreat, sayings about Jesus going through an ordeal of suffering, be[ing] tried and found guilty …, be[ing] killed.  He forgot that glory is not actually what we’re aiming for – although neither is suffering and beware of anyone who say it is.  We’re actually aiming for the spot right between Jesus shoulder blades.  We’re paying attention to  Jesus’ back as he leads us up mountains, sometimes to transfiguration, sometimes to crucifixion.  We’re aiming to be the best followers Jesus ever had, and no experience of the heights nor of the depths can make a bit of difference when the Master says it’s time for us to move on.

“Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.  Just let us hang on to this moment!”  I understand that feeling.  Sometimes it comes during a particularly intense worship experience; sometimes it comes on a lonely country road, looking up at the winter sky.  Sometimes it comes on a street in San Francisco, kneeling next to a homeless person as my friend slips a twenty into her hand and we listen to her story, and she hugs us and doesn’t want to let the moment go.

it just comes

(that’s the most anyone can ever say)

some soul-inverting

universe-whanging

slap-in-the-face

grace we thought gone 

long beyond us

it just comes…

and then… it just goes away

and the most we ever have to show for it

is some gasping,

flux-grasping

heave of lung;

some parched-tongue

                                flash of bright feathers

                                                                snatch of light song

                                                                                                glimpse of truth-shining eyes

once

I tried to hold onto it

and got nothing for my pains

but mothwing on the tongue

a raptor’s long pinions

leave traces where hare tracks

halt

in the snow, but

no comet’s tail

no moon-piercing contrail

mars the sky where

once

on a country road

I froze

transfigured

Beginnings

beginnings

are fragile things

extruding hope

and angel wings

and fairy dust

while chasms

open

underneath,

abysses

ex nihilo:

God’s

own heart

longing now

for something new

Absent Presence: an Ash Wednesday Remembrance

I absented myself today:
I watched my father lime a yard
of forest at the edge of trees.
Ashes puffed white on soil
and shoes
with every clumped remains
dumped upon the earth.
The land is sweetened
now with her presence.

We searched until we found
the perfect spot –
anonymous yet memorable.
We passed huge
horizontal oaks
whose cloaks of moss
shawled them green
and sparkly in the stippled light.
These had left the other oaks behind
to stand against the flight of time,
moss leg warmers drooping
down around their roots.

The rail fence beside the road
held three large pelts
side by side by side
as if to hide its gaunt frame
or mock the nearby peaks,
so wooly with fir.
Fields of goldenrod spread on
beyond this coated line to touch
that tall facsimile.

We wandered up a littered slope,
clambering over humus
from a thousand springs and falls,
and stood on logs
hoary with oakmoss
to see into the field beyond
that screen of trees at forest’s edge.
I said some words; we both shed tears.
We each left something of ourselves
there. Then
we absented ourselves
for the present.