You Can Do Impossible Things

A sermon preached at Meadow Woods Assisted Living, on the Martin Luther Campus, Bloomington MN, on February 19, 2017, the Seventh Sunday after Epiphany based on Leviticus 19 and Matthew 5

We’ve got tall orders today. Impossible ones, it seems.
“Be holy, because I, the Lord your God, am holy.”
“You also must be perfect, must be complete.”

In our bones, we know it is impossible.

Now, there are things I can do.
Don’t deceive. Don’t lie.
Don’t make promises you don’t mean to keep.
Don’t cheat people.
Pay your workers a fair wage,
and don’t tease them with it by holding back what you said you’d pay them.
Don’t insult someone with a disability
or make their life harder just for laughs.
How cruel is that? You think that’s holy?

I can go that far.
Of course, I don’t employ anybody,
so it’s pretty easy for me to say what I’d do if I did!
But I can still avoid lying. And teasing the blind.
False promises are harder for me
because I want people to like me,
so I admit I occasionally agree to something
I don’t have time or energy to do.
But it’s not impossible. I don’t have to overpromise.

One of the commands in Leviticus made me pause this week:
Leave some of the harvest for the poor and the immigrant.
Leave some grain there in the field,
leave the grapes that fall from the vine.

I notice at first that, much as I admire the sentiment,
after all I want to help the poor,
this commandment goes against the grain for me.
It sounds so … irresponsible. Don’t finish the job?
Leave the work incomplete?

And then I remembered.
Every time my mother put lunch or dinner on the table,
I simply knew that I would have to clean my plate.
(My wife grew up calling it the Clean Plate Club.)
And you know why:
“Because (and you can say it with me),
there are starving children in Africa.”
It’s true. You grew up with the Clean Plate Club, too!

The Clean Plate Club taught me
that leaving some of the harvest behind is just being sloppy,
careless, doing the job just part-way.
A perfect farmer, a complete farmer,
will harvest all the way to the edge,
get every last bit of produce from the land,
join the Clean Plate Club of harvesting.

But here’s the thing
God wants the Israelites to understand.
That grain you grew? Those grapes?
They’re not yours. They belong to God.
And those poor? Those immigrants and refugees?
They don’t have land to harvest,
and without it they’ll go hungry.
And even if they had land,
they might not have lived here long enough to plant it for themselves.
Remember Ruth and Naomi?
If you’re going to be holy, leave Ruth the Moabite refugee
and her impoverished Jewish mother-in-law Naomi
something from your land so they can come and get it.
You might even let them work the land,
but they don’t need to work it for you
to deserve food for themselves.

This is the thing.
What you’ve planted there,
it’s not yours, not all of it, not any of it.
You didn’t design the seed.
You didn’t make it grow.
You didn’t program its DNA.
You didn’t make the miracle of life happen.
“You planted what I’ve given you,” says God,
“on land that I’ve given you,
and watered it with water I’ve given you,
and I, God, get to decide what to do with it.

I’m letting you have most of it because I love you
and am grateful for your labor;
but the rest belongs to those I send your way.
Let them have it. I choose to give it to them.
And you will help me.
If you take what I’m giving them for yourself,
you’re stealing from them. You’re stealing from me.
You want to be holy? Don’t get in my way!
Remember that I am generous,
and I care about everyone,
and I’m using you to take care of these children of mine whom I love.
Don’t forget you were aliens, strangers, refugees yourselves.
Loving your neighbor isn’t one of your rights.
It’s one of your responsibilities.
You must love your neighbor as yourself.
I am the Lord.”

Jesus gets this.
He understands that we need to hear it again. And again.
When asked about the greatest commandment,
he says, “Love the Lord your God
with all your heart, mind, and strength.
And the second commandment is just like it.
Love your neighbor as yourself.”

He’s quoting Leviticus 19. That bit about leaving some of the harvest.
He’s quoting Leviticus 19. That bit about being holy.
He’s quoting Leviticus 19. That bit about love your neighbor.
We can’t live, says Jesus, by “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
That may have sounded like justice once,
a fair way for punishment to fit the crime.
But to live by “an eye for an eye” is short-sighted.
In Fiddler on the Roof, an angry villager calls his neighbors to arms
citing “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
“Very good,” says Tevye the milkman,
“That way the whole world will be blind and toothless.”

The Clean Plate Club, oddly enough, is eye for an eye thinking.
Sounds odd, I know. But it’s true. Stay with me for a moment.
The Clean Plate Club is rooted in the bad theology of scarcity
which inevitably gives us the even worse theology of vengeance.
“Clean your plate because there are hungry people in this world,”
is only one small step removed from protecting all we have
because someone else might kill us for it, so Annie, get your gun!

The fundamental debate going on in scripture
is between a theology of scarcity, of violence,
and a theology of abundant, overflowing justice for the displaced and marginalized,
a theology of wholeness and love.
We hear which side Jesus is on.
We know where he stands and with whom.
You want to be whole like God is whole?
Be complete like God is complete?
Be holy like God is holy?
Whether you want to or not, it’s your obligation.
It’s the only way fully to be human. It’s the only way fully to love God.
Treat the alien and enemy like your neighbor,
and your neighbor, well, you know this, your neighbor you must love.

That stranger you are tempted to cheat
is a beloved child of God;
cheat him and you cheat God.
That alien, and yes this means the immigrant and refugee—
this is spelled out explicitly in scripture—
that immigrant you are tempted not to welcome
was sent to you by God;
reject her, and you reject God.

If you love only those who love you—Jesus makes this crystal clear—  
that’s no different than an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
Love for love. Hate for hate. Blow for blow.
It’s all the same. That’s how sinners think.

We’re called to do what would otherwise be impossible
if we didn’t truly trust in God:
love your neighbor not because she loves you,
but because she is your neighbor,
and she comes to you as a gift from God,
just as you are God’s gift to her.

In this way you and I will, for we must, accomplish the impossible.
We must be holy.
By God’s grace we can.
We must be complete.
By God’s grace we will.
We must love our neighbor as ourselves.
By God’s grace we will do the impossible.
Remembering this: I am the Lord your God.

The Courage to Know Who You Are

September 13, 2015

Last year’s 8th graders are now Freshmen. We’re blessed with a Senior in the house now, and we see the signs of the empty nest that’s coming fast. The harvest of last spring’s Kindergarten classes are just beginning their 12-year journey of discovery that we hope every child will take toward adulthood. Even if you spend almost no time on Facebook, you’ve seen the back to school pictures. The pride of parents, the excitement of a new start, meeting new friends, falling in and out of love, and the constant care and attention of adults whose calling is among the highest: to equip the younger human beings in our care for life.

When Jesus asks his disciples who people say he is, it’s not an academic question. It’s not a question to be addressed with doctrine, although doctrine has its place.

As Mark relates the stories of Jesus’ ministry, Jesus’ question is a pivotal point for them all. Until now, everyone’s been asking him questions. Spirits ask what he has to do with them. Beggars ask for healing. Religious leaders ask what authority he has and why he eats with sinners. On the sea, the disciples ask if he doesn’t care they are perishing. His neighbors at home ask just who Jesus thinks he is, this kid they’ve watched grow up. When confronted with a challenge, his followers again ask Jesus what to do, and he tells them to feed them, and they ask how.

It takes tremendous courage, I believe, to ask the disciples the question Jesus asked. Who do people say that I am? Because not many of us really want to know the answer to a question ke that. We think we want to know. Does he think I’m foolish? Will she like this tie? What if I ask him out and he says no?

Most of us at work grow accustomed to being evaluated on our performance. Each year when review time comes around, that meeting with the supervisor or boss shouldn’t contain any surprises, not if they’ve been managing the company well. But it still takes some courage to walk into the room and hear what someone else thinks of how you’re doing.

In school it happens all the time. Tests, quizzes, and for teachers course evaluations and online teacher rating sites. We live in a culture where we measure the formation by what we learn, how we perform, the results we attain. SAT, ACT, PSAT. the MInnesota Test of Academic Skills, the football team’s winning or losing record.

It takes courage to ask someone else, especially the people who are closest to you, who others say you are.

It also takes a willingness to let others be wrong. “John the Baptist raised from the dead, Elijah or one of the prophets.” Heady stuff. Counter-culture heroes. And keep in mind that he's asking this question in foreign land, the city of Caesarea Philippi, a Roman city.

But it takes even more courage to ask, “Who you say that I am?” No hiding behind the anonymous mask of “Well, you know some people are saying…” or “It’s not my opinion, but here’s what I’ve heard in the parking lot…”

Jesus won’t let his disciples get away with what others say. he has the strength of heart to look them in the eyes and ask, “Who do YOU say that I AM?”

I suspect he’s looking for an honest response. One that digs down deep. One that gets past the educational, occupational and geographic. Go to a party and the surface questions have to do with where you’re from, who’s your family, where’d you go to school, what do you do for a living? What brought you here?

But Jesus doesn’t ask us a surface question. He confronts us with the question of identity. His and by extension ours.

What would we discover if we asked our neighbors who we are as a church? What would our Lakeville neighbors say? Our Burnsville neighbors? Not our own self-definitions, not the mission statement we tell ourselves. But who do they say we are?

Would some say, “Oh, you’re the ones who do the oil change?” You’re the ones who… what? Would they answer by describing the things they see us do? Would they know us by our welcome, by our love?

But JEsus didn’t ask his disciples what they saw him doing. He asked who they said he was. Who he is. Can we do that? Can we say, by our words and actions alike, who Jesus is? And if we believe that he is the human face of God, what can we say or do to reflect what we believe?

Because what we say or do will reflect who we believe Jesus to be.

When I was in Tanzania for a meeting of the World Council of Churches Faith and Order Plenary Commission, I’d been working as part of a group on something called the Apostolic Faith Project. It was the culmination of 70 years of intentional work by Christian theologians from every tradition around the world to answer Jesus’ dying prayer that his followers would all be one.

The document I had helped prepare earlier the previous year in Bucharest, was a study guide on Sharing the One Faith. In Tanzania, representatives from the global church community debated and discussed the central affirmations and concerns that had to be addressed to overcome our divisions while maintaining and honoring the best of our individual and church identities. As a Disciple, I was able to bring the confidence that the one thing we all have in common is that we see what Peter saw: Jesus is the Christ. We don’t always agree on what that means, but it's the distinctive vision that Christians share.

The president of Tanzania addressed our meeting. And he introduced us to the African concept of Utu (human nature, humanity). It’s a word for extended family. It is a profound understanding of the shared bonds we have as human beings, and the shared responsibilities we have for each other. If you are my brother, if you are my sister, we are responsible for each other. That responsibility for each other is at the essence of who we are.

We find our identity in a relationship we didn’t originally choose, and have the privilege to honor each moment of every day as those who are made in the image of a God who in the essence of God’s own being is relational. Utu means we are one mutual sharing, a fellowship, a family. And how we treat each other, even our enemies, if we are to be authentically followers of Jesus Christ, reflects Utu.

In a world where forces of greed and selfishness lead us into smaller and smaller circles, Utu reminds us to stretch the circle wide enough to include not only neighbors, not only enemies, not only the whole human race, but all of creation as well.

The biblical word for this is koinonia. And I believe it takes courage. To answer the question, “Who do you say that I am?” by saying, “You are the Messiah,” the anointed, the Christ, the human face of God, we are led to ask the question of ourselves. Who do our neighbors say we are? Will they see in us the oneness, the compassion, the love of God working through us to reform unjust social structures and respect each person’s dignity?

Courage, by the way, is rooted in the word cor, heart. May our hearts be one.

Getting the Best of Jesus Getting the Best of You

September 6, 2015

Mark 7.24-37

It’s hard this week not to have seen the the photo of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year old boy who was fleeing the war in Syria with his family on a smuggler’s boat. They were trying to reach Sweden by way of Greece after their asylum request to Canada was denied. Aylan’s father and mother were trying to get the boys to safety. Their northern Syrian city of Kobani, which is a little smaller than Apple Valley, has been in the news for two years as Kurds and ISIL have been taking it back and forth from each other during one of the most violent civil wars of modern history.

It’s even harder to have seen the photo of Aylan. When the tiny, overcrowded boat was abandoned by the smugglers in rough water and capsized, Aylan, his 5 year-old brother, and his parents were thrown into the water. His brother drowned first, then his mother, and despite his father’s best efforts, so did Aylan. The boy’s body was discovered Wednesday morning washed ashore in Bodrum, Turkey, his shoes still on his feet (did his dad tie them that morning?), his head gently cradled in a pillow of sand at the edge of the Mediterranean. His funeral was on Friday.

The United States has accepted fewer than 1,500 refugees from Syria since the fighting began. 350,000 have reached the border of the EU this year. The UK announced yesterday it will accept 20,000. Australia has accepted 13,000 refugees worldwide this year and just announced they will accept more. Hungary has recorded 135,000 asylum seekers this year. Austria and Germany are sending buses to bring asylum seekers to their countries, and Germany in particular has announced they will take 100,000 refugees, spending an estimated $16 billion dollars, as German business owners make the case that it’s good for the German economy. “Angela Merkel insisted Berlin could still balance it budget while fulfilling its ‘duty’ to offer asylum to refugees.”

It’s an extraordinary moment.

When Jesus crossed into what is now Syria, he came in from the south. He was a foreigner, not necessarily a refugee, but moving on rather quickly after conflicts with his own people. We tend to spiritualize these stories too quickly, turning them into theological narratives with Aesop-like morals. But the gospel writers preserve the human particulars of these stories for a reason. There may be universal truth in the things Jesus did, but there is universal truth in everything we do, too, if we look carefully enough. To see it, you need the particulars. It's how incarnation works.

Jesus came to Syria. He wanted to stay hidden. But he couldn’t hide. A woman of the region came to him and asked for healing for her daughter. We think of Jesus as kind and gentle. But here he acts abruptly, even rudely. She asks for healing. He tells her dogs don’t deserve what’s meant for the children. Calling a woman a bitch didn’t mean something different back then than it does today. It wasn’t a term of endearment. 

But she persists and reminds him that the dogs still rely on what falls from the children’s table. And Jesus has a comeuppance. His own "come to Jesus moment." She gets the best of him. It’s a transformative moment in his ministry. And he realizes he’s not only being rude but that she sees his mission more clearly than he himself has seen it. She can tell God’s love and wholeness are for all. Not just people like his own.

The reason the second story is told right after the first is, at least in my mind, because it shows that Jesus learned his lesson. He travels north further into Syria, then turns south again through the Roman region called the Ten Cities or Decapolis. On this trip he encounters a man foreign to himself, one who can neither hear nor speak. (It’s hard to speak properly when you can’t hear. Or when you don’t listen.)

But Jesus had listened to the woman back in the coastal Syrian town. Now he pulls the man aside and opens his ears and mouth. And the man’s friends hear of it and speak out. Jesus gets the best out of them.

Are there Syrians we will listen to and learn from? Who are already showing us our own mission in the mirror of their persistence and faith? Will we let them get the best from us? How does Jesus get the best out of us? Opening our ears, our mouths? What voices will we listen to? Whose voices? And what will we say in response? 

Week of Compassion is working with Church World Service to resettle Syrian refugees. Some may come to Minneapolis. The Minnesota Council of Churches is accepting donations to help these families resettle.

We know a thing or two about being displaced. It took Jesus getting away from his homeland to hear the full measure of his calling. It changed the way he did ministry. I pray we never forget that we were strangers once in a strange land. 

May our ears be opened, you and I, by Jesus whose own ears were opened when his deep gladness met one woman's deepest need. May he get the best of us.

Ephphatha 

Alfie Doolittle got it wrong

We've been moving at Spirit of Joy. As in relocating. We're settling in to our summer home away from the mold of our Lakeville building. It's made me keenly aware of the difference between going to church and being the church.

When you "go to church," you've decided that church is a place. It's a location, an edifice, a building, a destination. Like going to the grocery or to the hospital. "Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors and look at all the people." I bet you just put your hands together and acted it out.

Alfie's got to be there in the morning. But it's just to receive a service he isn't really sure he even wants.

Trouble is, when you're moving out of your building because it's making people sick, you realize that buildings only define us at our peril. Buildings express the intentions, the theology, the self-understanding of the communities who build them. Form doesn't just follow function, it expresses identity.

Still, we know which came first. And it wasn't the building. Church is something we are, something we do, not somewhere we go. Church isn't a noun in the end. In the New Testament, the word is ekklesia, from a verb that means "called out."

That's what I'm becoming aware of. We've been called out together into the community, out into the neighborhood, outside our walls and beyond our parking lot into the streets. As church, we're not a location, not a destination, but a people sent on a mission. But never alone, always at least two by two.

Thanks be to God!

Blessings and Peace,
David

Fingering chart for the Spirit

During Taizé prayer this morning, I happened to glance at my recorder right before we entered silence. Specifically, I noticed the thumbhole.

I'm sure you remember how this wind instrument works. You probably played one in elementary school. It's a bit like a long whistle with holes up and down the front and a thumb hole high on the back. Depending on which holes you cover and which ones you leave open, you play different pitches when you blow through the mouthpiece.

Spiritually speaking, none of us stays open all the time. Likewise, none stays perpetually closed. But the Spirit still blows. And depending on who is open and closed at a particular moment, the Spirit's tune changes.

How important it is that we each are open and closed at the right times — to the Spirit, each other, our own ego, will, desires, and distractions. When we are open and closed at different times of our lives, the Spirit sounds different. As I close down, you may open up, and that changes things. It's, well, dynamic.

When we each open and close in the right proportions and rhythms  throughout the church community, the Spirit makes beautiful music, not just spiritual noise.

My insight was that we don't all have to be open at once. Lower notes require more holes to be covered. And there is even one note that requires all holes to be filled. It's hard to play, but occasionally the music calls for it. And as important as that one note is, there's not much worthwhile music written for one note alone. The Spirit uses our emptiness and fulness alike to sing God's song.

If we ever become a one-note church, or if one of us never opens up or never shuts down, the song won't be as beautiful as it can be. We'll get anxious, bored, frustrated, or tired. We need all of us, working in concert, open and closed, empty and full, to become the song the Spirit wants most to sing.

The Blessing of Being O&A: Advocacy and Incarnation

Advocacy. In a word, this is the blessing of being an Open and Affirming congregation. It's what sets O&A churches apart. It doesn't just mean everyone is welcome, if they choose to join us. It means we'll go be church most fully when we're outside our walls. It means we stand up for each other and never back down until the full equal dignity of each person is affirmed in the public square.

To be Open and Affirming means we stand up not only for those who are like us but those who broaden our sense of who "we" are. Being Open and Affirming dismantles the advocate/victim dichotomy. It picks apart the paternalistic care-giver/care-receiver attitude and declares that we're all in this together. No more we/they. No more gay Lazarus scrabbling for crumbs beneath Dives' straight table. From now on, "we" means more than it meant before. A place at the table set in the presence of enemies with whom we may yet become friends. A place at the table even in the valley of the shadow of death.

Too many churches suffer from the paternalistic attitude that "we" are here to help "them," where "we" are the sympathetic rich, healthy, white, straight followers of Jesus, and "them" means the people gospel calls us to serve: the abstract hungry, thirsty and oppressed minority, the sexually diverse, the "nones." As if "they" aren't already among "us." Sigh. This gets to the heart of the problem.

Jesus says he comes to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. We can do that safely enough with ministries of checkbook and pen and feel pretty good about ourselves, without ever addressing the essential problem of human nature, our us/them tribalism, our insistence on being separate, destined, unique.

The thing is, when Jesus proclaims his calling, he can't just mail in a check or stand at a distance and talk. He comes. He doesn't wait for those he serves to come to him. If Incarnation means anything at all, it means Jesus enters into the reality he comes to reconcile. He breaks down the first person/third person divide. He takes the us/them of poverty, sickness, disability, and, yes, sexual injustice, and he walks in the midst of it all saying we're in this together. He doesn't ask, "Are you with me?" but declares, "I am with you." The first is just recruiting. The second is advocacy. Even when he says, "Follow me," Jesus doesn't recruit. He invites us to find our wider voice.

Incarnation means God "the Father" sets aside paternalism. No more condescension, no more patriarchy, but "he walks with me and talks with me": now a Paraclete coming alongside us, transforming human relationships by means of equal justice and unconditional love.

The O&A church knows in its bones the experience of Incarnation. It feels in its heart that there is no "we" inside the church serving the likes of "them," outside, somehow objectified and made the recipients of our magnanimity and public policy work. It means we move the boundaries of who we think we mean when we say "we." When we advocate, speaking truth to power, we aren't speaking out on behalf of some abstract third person we call them. We are finding our new voice as a broader we, a voice truer to God's heart and more inclusive than before.

Being Open and Affirming means we speak up and speak out, yes, for GLBT sisters and brothers, not apart from who we are but because we now know we are one. We straight, we gay, we lesbian, we bisexual, we transgendered, we questioning and queer, we who embody Jesus' incarnation as fully as a community can so that dividing walls come tumbling Jericho-like down, became a wider, deeper more radically inclusive "we." 

After all, we really are all in this business of life together as God's beloved daughters and sons. Becoming Open and Affirming, we become Advocates for ourselves, because we realize we are infinitely more than we ever imagined. We are the Incarnate, Infinite, Embodied, Communitied, Holy Oneness of God.

It Doesn't Matter How Dead You Are

May 24, 2015

Ezekiel 37.1-14

It Doesn’t Matter How Dead You Are, These Bones Will Live

It was 9:00 a.m., May 1, 1865. The event: a contender for the original Memorial Day observance in the United States.

The Charleston Daily Courier reported that for 10 days in April of that year, 28 freed slaves who were members of a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, constructed a graveyard with a wall ten feet high. This was on the grounds of a former race course in Charleston that had been converted to a prison camp by the Confederate Army. The freedmen landscaped the graves into neat rows, whitewashed the fence, and built an arch over the entrance. On the arch, they painted in black letters, “Martyrs of the Race Course.”  

They then exhumed the remains of 257 Union soldiers who had been buried in the prison camp’s mass grave. They relocated the bodies to individual plots in the new cemetery, and at 9:00 in the morning on May 1, 1865, nearly 3,000 black schoolchildren marched around the racetrack carrying roses in their arms and singing John Brown’s Body. Three hundred freed women of the Patriotic Association carried flowers, wreaths, and crosses for the graves. The freed men of the Mutual Aid Society marched around the track and into the cemetery, followed by crowds of black and white together.

Professor David Blight, author of Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, wrote,

All dropped their spring blossoms on the graves in a scene recorded by a newspaper correspondent: "when all had left, the holy mounds — the tops, the sides, and the spaces between them — were one mass of flowers, not a speck of earth could be seen; and as the breeze wafted the sweet perfumes from them, outside and beyond ... there were few eyes among those who knew the meaning of the ceremony that were not dim with tears of joy."

An official dedication ceremony was conducted by the black ministers of Charleston, followed by some 30 speeches by Union officers, black pastors, and abolitionist activists. Picnic lunches followed, and the afternoon witnessed a Union brigade, black and white together, conducting exercises on infield.

Ezekiel’s vision is of a valley where we can imagine a terrible battle had taken place years before. The bones of the dead are scattered, cleaned by time and its attentions. They are dry. This is no recent tragedy. Ezekiel was a preacher’s kid, or at least born into a priestly family. He was among the Israelites who were forcibly marched out of Jerusalem by the Babylonians and into exile. He was perhaps less pastor or priest himself than he was a prophet, but he clearly loved his people. By Ezekiel’s visions and symbolic actions, God offered a hurting community, a vision of hope.

Ken Lawrence taught religion and art at TCU, religion and human experience, religion and personality development. But he was far more than a professor to Katy and me. He led study trips overseas exploring religion, art and architecture. I want with him to Greece and Turkey, Katy to Italy. He could stand in the ruin of an ancient temple or before a painting in a museum and hold an audience spellbound for hours, opening up windows onto entire worlds and worldviews that sparkled with ideas still relevant today.

Ken went to seminary at Brite after serving in the military, where he had worked developing NORAD, the North American Radar Air Defense. For his doctorate he did clinical work in a mental hospital in Boston and spent months studying Renaissance art in Italy. He and Dad were regular roommates at the annual meetings of the Association of Disciples for Theological Discussion. And Dr. Lawrence — Lorenzo, as we who traveled with him came to call him — became advisor, mentor and friend. After Dad died, Lorenzo was the one who guided me toward graduation. But more, he understood what I was going through. And he could assure me in ways I might not have trusted others to tell me, that I’d turn out ok.

When Katy and I taught second and third grade Sunday School at East Dallas Christian Church, we used curriculum Lorenzo had developed, a three-year cycle of art, poetry, prayer, and other resources that related to the texts in the Revised Common Lectionary. We taught our kids to read the works of art just as they were learning to read the text of the Bible, which they did out loud every week as part of the class.

When our class came to this vision of Ezekiel, we started the day with a scavenger hunt for cut-out bones that the kids then assembled into a dancing skeleton on the wall. We read the words of the vision in a rhythm that still runs through my head every time I hear this text:

The hand of the Lord came upon me,

and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord

and set me down in the middle of a valley;

it was full of bones.

“Bones, bones, dry bones;

bones, bones, dry bones;

bones, bones, dry bones;

now hear the word of the Lord.”

It didn’t matter that the kids were in second or third grade. They understood something of death. More than one had lost a beloved pet. At least one had a grandparent die whom they’d known and loved. Children that age have brains that are just beginning the transition from literal, pre-critical thinking toward metaphorical, abstract thought. They are learning to write the language they’ve already learned to speak, to express symbolically in images and actions the truths in their experience they may not yet have words to explain. This is why the stories and images of scripture, especially the fantastical and parabolic, connect so well to children. When we give them permission to wonder, to ask, “what if?”, to pay attention to their own responses instead of adding our own moral to each story, we set their imaginations free to experience God in ways that open them to understand in the core of their being that they are loved.

Sadly, this is not how many of us were raised, nor have we raised our children to read and hear scripture honoring the wonder and curiosity that brought it to life to begin with. We teach our kids to do with scripture what Billy Collins says some students do to poetry: 

All they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. 

They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.” (Introduction to Poetry)

When we fail to engage children in the wonder and delight of poetry, story, or song, because we ourselves are stuck in our own fears, we teach them, too; but what we teach them changes. We teach them that fear is more powerful than love, that being right is more important than doing good for others, that faith is an escape from reality not a promise to transform it.

The dry bones of Ezekiel’s vision aren’t just the dry bones of a community in exile. They are the dry bones of our faith when we let it descend to a Sunday morning talk-show shouting match of who’s right and who’s wrong. We’re willing to harm each other over land, money, an inheritance unfairly divided. As the Pew study that’s been getting so much press recently makes clear, Christianity that’s all about either/or and not about both/and is on the rise, and the both/and traditions are losing ground.

God calls us to be both faithful and active. We are called to become a both/and people. And if this means that our faith doesn’t make as much sense in the culture of death that surrounds us, maybe that’s because we know the reality of suffering and still believe in life. Our vision is set in a valley of dry bones, but the bones don’t just lie there. In death, the power of God is to bring life.

It takes work, of course, and we have a role to play. Prophesy to the bones. Speak God’s presence to those who are dead and dying. Speak a word of love to the loveless, of healing to the sick, of presence to the abandoned, of food to the hungry. And don’t just speak of such things but act. Because God will make these bones live.

Then, when the bones are reassembled and the flesh has returned, prophesy again: to breath this time, to God’s presence, to a spirituality that is prophetic and lifegiving, that connects us to the source of being itself. Prophesy to the breath. This doesn’t mean predict the future: it means announce God’s presence where we are to whomever will listen.

And the breath will fill the bodies, all together, so they may rise up as one, and jut as Israel’s exile will end with a return to the land of promise, so too will our faithful community thrive.

We have a prophetic role to fulfill, speaking a word of life to dry bones, in  the wake of violence and destruction, not giving up, trying again and again, with God's help, to grow not just sinew, flesh, and skin, but breath.

It doesn’t matter how dead you are. God’s spirit is moving. We will live.

Two quizzes, five kinds of people

I was reading Richard Gibala's article, "Drawing Out, Leading Out" in the April-May 2007 edition of Pastoral Music and ran across two quizzes. It made me think of the people I'm most grateful for in my life. Here's the first.

1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world 
2. Name the five most recent winners of the Miss America contest  
3. Name the last five winners of the Nobel Peace Prize 
4. Name the last half-dozen winners of the Academy Award for best actor or best actress 
5. Name the past decade's winners of the World Series 

How'd you do (without clicking)? I didn't do well, but I don't mind.

Try this quiz instead.

1. Name the teachers who helped you most on your journey through school
2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time
3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile
4. Name a few people who have made you feel appreciated or special
5. Name five people you enjoy spending time with

I'm doing better on this one. Getting every question right. And it's taking a long time, not because I have to wrack my brain for names but because each person I think of is taking me down a path worth walking slowly, and others are joining the journey as I think of each.

Thanksgiving is around the corner. There's so much to be grateful for. High on my list: the marvelous people who've challenged, helped, comforted, taught, appreciated, pushed, pulled, and never let go of me. And the ones who still do.

Grateful to God right now, and glad to share it.

Blessings and Peace.

Words of Institutionalism

I've been praying my way into the tension between the radical, real, challenging table "prepared before me in the presence of my enemies" (Psalm 23) and the temptation to force my enemies to the table on my terms. Which prayer do we pray: Words of Institution or Words of Institutionalism?

I don't know when

the non-conformist

Words of Institution—

spoken revolution

of a poet-prophet-

harbinger of God—

became the lockstep 

magic Words of

Institutionalism, 

the cross a tool of schism, 

Caesar's domination:

"Go and buy a sword." 

Coopted now, 

the counterculture

vision cataracted, 

purpose counteracted

flimflam shaman shimming 

up esprit de corps,

the whim of him

or her, but rarely

her, still patriarchal

(ugh), the high ideal 

of "freedom from" becomes

the rule of thumb, of war.

The mystery 

of hoc est corpus 

meum*  loses focus,

decays to hocus pocus,

insubstantial banter

pooling on the floor.

I wonder when

my Corporate Christ

will set the sword aside,

becoming Jesus' body:

extending broken bread 

to share and wine to pour.

*"This is my body," a parody of which some linguists suggest to be origin of the old magical phrase, hocus pocus.

(Photo shamelessly acquired from Lauren Shockey's Fork in the Road blog at The Village Voice, http://blogs.villagevoice.com/forkintheroad/2011/08/battle_of_the_baguettes.php)

Scrambled sacramental eggs

Some preachers hate preaching on stewardship. But I love it. Wrestling with money and faith is some of the most liberating spiritual work I do. 

So now I'm preparing Sunday's sermon on one of the truly disgusting sayings of Jesus. It's from John's version of the words of institution, just without a last supper scene. It's the moment Jesus says, "Eat me." And I run across something amazing from Andre Dubus. It's a must read:

"Yet still I believe in love's possibility, in its presence on the earth; as I believe I can approach the altar on any morning of any day which may be the last and receive the touch that does not, for me, say: There is no death; but does say: In this instant I recognize, with you, that you must die. And I believe I can do this in an ordinary kitchen with an ordinary woman and five eggs. The woman sets the table. She watches me beat the eggs. I scramble them in a saucepan, as my now-dead friend taught me; they stand deeper and cook softer, he said. I take our plates, spoon eggs on them, we sit and eat. She and I and the kitchen have become extraordinary: we are not simply eating; we are pausing in the march to perform an act together; we are in love; and the meal offered and received is a sacrament which says: I know you will die; I am sharing food with you; it is all I can do, and it is everything." ("On Charon's Wharf") 

I can't help setting this alongside Jesus, saying:

‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live for ever.’ He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum. (Jn 6.53-59, NRSV)

And the good folks at the Jesus Seminar in their Scholars Version give a great take on the next verse:

When the disciples heard this, many responded, "This teaching is offensive. Who can take it seriously?" 

Well, I'm working on it. Death, life, eggs, love. Maybe a saucepan. We'll see what's cooking by Sunday.

A Baptist and a Catholic walk into a ...

No, not a bar. You've heard the joke:

Jews don't recognize Jesus as the Messiah.
Protestants don't recognize the Pope's authority.
Baptists don't recognize each other in the liquor store. 

But this is no joke. A Baptist and a Catholic ... share what's so great about Disciples. Dr. Elizabeth Flowers and Dr. Darren Middleton teach in the TCU Religion Department, and if you've ever wondered how a denomination can call itself Christian while insisting on intellectual rigor and religious diversity at the same time, read what they have to say about The C in TCU. Go ahead. It's worth the click.

What felt so refreshing in reading this was remembering my own intellectual and ecumencial awakening in college. Even as the son of a Disciples minister and college religion professor, I hadn't had my presuppositions really challenged until I got away from home and had to start framing my own questions. I couldn't get by just figuring out derivatives or memorizing the names of the cranial nerves. In interdisciplinary study of the sciences, arts, and humanities I came face-to-face with both existential despair and what Viktor Frankl called the "search for meaning."

This became life-giving because I was in a university whose religious heritage didn't demand conformity. Instead it demanded honesty and a willingness to risk my worldview. My professors expected me to read hard stuff I couldn't unread. Not only Augustine, Aquinas, and Hartshorne, but Sartre, Nietzsche, and Camus; Ruether, Daly and Gilligan. And not just to affirm or deny, but to understand. Not to arrive at answers once and for all but to help me get clear about my own questions and learn how to keep asking them better.

It kind of makes me want to go up and down the street knocking on doors. But instead of handing someone a tract with a bunch of questions and answers, I'd hand them a card that asks, "What questions matter most to you?" assure them I'm not there to force my answers on them, but if they want a community that likes exploring such things, we're down the street.

Drs. Flowers and Middleton have captured in a few paragraphs something most American Protestants really do believe and might be surprised to find that lots of church leaders do, too: intellectual rigor and the valuing of human diversity are not the enemy of Christian faith but are instead a vibrant expression of it. The intellectual richness required for religion to become worthy of human striving doesn't fit in a sound byte. It's relational, not propositional.

It feels healthy to be part of a movement that lives into the tensions of faith without minimizing ambiguity or reducing others to caricature (at least not very often, and when we do, we apologize). I'm glad we're the kind of church that supports colleges where someone asks, "What's the C mean?" and discovers that it's a Christian faith that welcomes questions.

In many of our Disciples congregations, the next few weeks we will receive our Thanksgiving Offering. It supports students at 14 member undergraduate colleges or universities and seven seminaries or divinity houses. Which schools? Click here for more. Thanksgiving offerings helped me when I was at TCU and at Disciples Divinity House at the University of Chicago. To support students in Disciples higher education, click here and designate your gift to the Thanksgiving Offering.

Blessings and Peace,
David

At Table in the Wilderness - Worship November 2, 2014

At Table with Jesus

Matthew 26.26-29

The other night I did something I haven't done yet this election season. I turned on the TV and watched a program in real time. Not prerecorded. So there was no way to forward through the advertisements. And what I saw was distressing. Have you watched TV lately? Have you seen the incessant political ads? I know political advertising has traditionally been some of the most over-the-top, hyperbolic stuff out there. But, wow. I'd forgotten. Just listen to the ominous music, the dramatic voices, and you'd think the end of days was approaching and the candidate on the other side of the ad-maker was personally responsible for ending life as we know it on the planet.

The same thing hits my inbox, of course. Email comes in waves these days. Make a single contribution to a campaign five years ago, and your inbox explodes this time of year with the catastrophe of the day as fundraising deadlines approach. The techniques used involve shaming, fear-mongering, and so much strident, urgent, ALL CAPS GIVE NOW screaming that I just shut down emotionally and delete all of it, trying not to read more than who it's from and the subject line so I don't accidentally delete something unread from one of you!

We've gotten so good at packaging the horror story that it's no wonder so many of us live on-edge. This would be a good time to take a media holiday.

The church isn't immune. We have a story to tell, too, one with the capacity to make sense of life, to remind us of our purpose. But it's hard sometimes to separate the story of faith from the crisis du jour. What I'd like to do this morning, and for the next several weeks, is to help us focus on what's really important. If we are to stay spiritually grounded in a world that is constantly shouting, making earth-ending crises out of every piece of news, escalating everything to a partisan war cry, then we need to be clear about out story.

It's a story that begins at a table.

Why here? Because the table is everything the demons and demonizers cannot stand. 

Demonic powers in scripture are the ones who divide people from each other, and even divide people within themselves. Read the stories in the NT about Jesus and you'll find he is casting out the forces that divide from others and divide us from ourselves. We deny the reality of such powers only to our peril and their delight, because to deny that there are forces at work that divide us from others and divide us within ourselves is to ignore that the divisions are real. That these are demons of our own creation does nothing to minimize their effectiveness. To ignore them is to minimize their reality.

There's a reason we talk about coming to the negotiating table. Tables bring us together. Because it's when we sit down together to listen to each other and not just talk past each other that reconciliation is possible. When peace talks happen between nations, much of the work on each side is done seated behind a desk. There is research to do, and histories to study, numbers to crunch. But the actual negotiating happens when the sides come together at table.

Sometimes the table is symbolic. You may recall either because you lived through it or read about it in a history class, that when Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin were negotiating a treaty between Egypt and Israel at Camp David, Jimmy Carter was the one who kept both men at the table. Even when things broke down, and both men walked away from the table, Jimmy Carter kept going back and forth between them becoming a sort of moving table between them. When Sadat was ready to quit, Carter reminded him of their friendship. When Begin was ready to walk away, Carter signed pictures of the three of them and personalized them to each of Begin's grandchildren, whose names he knew. Thie broke the impasse. So when talks resumed, they "returned to the table." And they worked out the longest-lasting treaty for peace in the Middle East.

There is a reason when Jesus met with his disciples for Passover they met in a home around a table. It was in that meal that the sacred story was remembered. The story of God rescuing the Israelites from Egypt. The story of oppression and liberation. The story of God's judgment on those who enslave and redemption of those who suffer. The table of Passover in Jewish memory predates the temple sacrifice. Yes, the temple mattered. Yes, there was a lamb to prepare. And this took place in the table. But it was prepared to feed people at home around thir kitchen table who were telling a story of liberation. It was prepared in thankful memory of a people set free who trusted God to set them free once more.

The Romans were a tolerant lot when it came to religion. "Just add our gods to your existing pantheon, and our emperor among them, and make the sacrifices and offerings and all will be well." Judaism lived in tension with this directive because of its unusual insistence on one God and one alone. Jesus' followers were no exception. They were accused of being atheists for not worshiping the emperor. Separate, traitors. Freedom of religion is one thing, but freedom from religion, especially imperial religion, was not allowed.

So in that day when Jesus celebrated Passover with his disciples, it was a countercultural act of resistance to come around the table. By the time the gospel writers told the story of his last supper, it had become a weekly ritual his followers did in order to remember who they were and to keep them reconciled with each other so their community could do the things Jesus had called them to do in his lifetime (the things people in need need): feed the hungry, take care of the widows and orphans, clothe the naked, heal the sick.

The table each week brought them together as one people to remind them of the new age they were called to live into, a new age where the whole earth was already God's Realm, a kingdom not united by military might but by mutual care and respect, a community united by love. It was not the flower-child love of the idealistic, the "why can't we all just (smoke a bit and) get along" kind of love, but the realistic love that committed each person week in and week out to being there for the other, in the community and outside it, working for a just order in the world, not just an alternative vision of social order but a radical inside-out, upside-down kingdom. Where people were genuinely concerned for each other's needs. This is the kind of community that gathered around the table each week and kept coming back, because by celebrating these memories in bread and wine, they became one people

It's a new covenant they were proclaiming, what Lynda in study hour called "a heart-change," one that reminded them of the original covenant. A covenant of a God who comes to people in trouble and sets them free. The original covenant promise to Moses was that God would liberate. The new covenant was similar: liberation. In Jesus they saw a new Moses. In him they were reminded of the central commandments of Moses' law: when Jesus was asked, he answered, "love God and love neighbor." In him they remembered the stories of Passover, and they believed that God was bringing a new age into being where love would reign, and peace would come not at sword-point but through right relationship.

For us, who still come together around the table and who still find God empowering us to live into a new age, the challenge is clear. Our world is in need of people who are willing to come, despite our differences, to sit down at the table together trusting that Jesus is here among us, so we can find the strength and nourishment to keep loving God and neighbor.

When the world is screaming no, no, no, we are called to find someone in this world to say yes to.

When the world round us is pointing fingers and screaming across the aisle about evil incarnate, we are called to invite people to catch their breath, come to the table, and listen. Tell your story. Listen to your neighbor's story. No judgement. No screaming. Reconciliation.

Then, having discovered the freedom we find in our common humanity, we may go hand in hand from the table into the week to come working on the actual problems we face.

What's this all got to do with stewardship? It's about starting here at the the table. A steward is someone who's been given something to take care of. You and I have been given so much! We've been given each other. We've been given neighbors who are in need. And what reminds us is this most precious story we tell around a table. A story that reminds us who we are and how God envisions all of life to be.

We share ourselves, our memory, our story, our love. And in sharing them here they multiply so we can share them with others. There's nothing eloquent or fancy about it. It's simply who we are. Thanks be to God.