Jesus Schooling the It Boys

Matthew 23.4-10:  They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.  They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long.  They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues,  and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi.  But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven.  Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. [NRSV]

“Instead of giving you God’s Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn’t think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving honorary degrees, and getting called ‘Doctor’ and ‘Reverend.’  “Don’t let people do that to you, put you on a pedestal like that. You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don’t set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do. No one else should carry the title of ‘Father’; you have only one Father, and he’s in heaven. And don’t let people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them—Christ. [The Message]


Religion cannot be about showing off, or it isnt’ religion at all.

Showing off shifts our faith away from the worship of God (its very purpose) to the worship of ourselves.

The most insidious, the sneakiest way we have of doing this fools (even) ourselves.

The sneaky voice of the pretender is the voice of condemnation: look how bad he is! . . . I cannot believe she goes to church and acts like that! . . . And she calls herself a Christian! 

Here’s the thing: whenever I recognize myself in your sin, I am much quicker to lean toward mercy, forgiveness, compassion, love, understanding, forebearance, grace.

It is only when I do not see myself in you that I feel so free to condemn and judge.

In this way might we understand that our condemnation of others is just a slick way of pointing out how wonderful we are, for surely in our condemnation of others is at least implied a celebration of how very lucky we are not to be (like) them.

Remember how much Jesus liked that?  Not so much.

Why should it matter so to God?  After all, aren’t we better than some folk?  Aren’t there people just begging for a little healthy criticism?

Perhaps.  But by whom?  Is not God the judge?  And if God is THE judge, then who are we pretending to be when we get all judging?

Exactly.

Because once again, we are making ourselves the focus (spiritual narcissism), making of ourselves gods (or at the least, demi-gods), to be admired (which is perilously close to being worshiped) for our wondrous selves, if for no other reason that at least we’re not that guy.

But we are not the judge.

If it’s a legal model we so desire, what we, all of us, are, are co-defendants.  But the metaphor will only take us so far.  Life is not a courtroom.  And we do not get off more lightly for our wrongs by rolling over on the other guy.  It doesn’t work that way.

Condemnation of others is the adult version of tattling – we’re the kid and God’s the Dad.  And he doesn’t want to hear it.  The only person’s inventory we are responsible for is our own.  And God isn’t just Dad.  God is The Dad.  And he already knows.

Ultimately, condemnation of others is evidence of the absence of love in our hearts for another.  And we are commanded to love others, just like we love us.  To condemn another is to find them wanting in the courtroom of our own minds and appoint ourselves the judge.

And there we are, slipping into the judge’s chair again, forgetting that our job, our only job, when it comes to other people, is simply, merely, only, to love.

Anything else just isn’t our business.

Checklisting Our Way Out of Heaven

Matthew 23.1-3:  Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples,  “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat;  therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.   [NRSV]

Now Jesus turned to address his disciples, along with the crowd that had gathered with them. “The religion scholars and Pharisees are competent teachers in God’s Law. You won’t go wrong in following their teachings on Moses. But be careful about following them. They talk a good line, but they don’t live it. They don’t take it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior. It’s all spit-and-polish veneer. [The Message]

Does it carry him or does he carry it?

                                                                                                              – William Barclay

Does your religion, your faith, carry, sustain, uphold, you?

Or does your religion, your faith, require you to carry it?

William Barclay opines that a religion that requires you to carry it isn’t much of a religion.

I tend to agree.

What say you?

Is religion, a life of faith lived in community, a source of comfort?  Do your fellow followers lift you up?  Do they carry you when you cannot carry yourself?  Do you do that for others?

Or is it more about the checklists, like passing through the many gates and checkpoints at modern airports, where you have to repeatedly prove you (a) are who you say you are and (b) have the right documents with you to proceed further?

For without them (the correct documents), you will be found wanting, rejected, disallowed entrance, no matter how great your need, no matter whether you are supposed to be on board or not.

If you can’t prove it, well, you’re just out of luck, aren’t you?

That, I think, is what Barclay is getting at and what Jesus is so frustrated and angered by: the human tendency to take something like grace and make of it a series of rules for an entrance examination only the examiners are qualified to impose, grade, assess, and ultimately judge.

If heaven, if the kingdom on earth as in heaven, is like encountering the TSA in an airport, we are all doomed.  And the greatest and saddest irony of all is that TSA employees stand in the same sandbox when they seek to travel.  The same rules of exclusion apply, which leaves us all standing outside the gates, wondering how on earth we missed a flight we worked so hard to make.

Down to the Hard Work of Reconciliation – Part 3

Regardless of the precise meaning of Jesus’ instructions on how to progressively confront the unrepentant sinner in the body of believers, we are still left with the tax-collector-gentile conundrum: what on earth does Jesus mean when he says to treat the unrepentant one as a tax collector or Gentile?
The traditional interpretation over the centuries is that Jesus is instructing his followers to shun, to have nothing to do with, the one who will not repent.  

Is this what Jesus means?

Consider earlier in Matthew, as in Matthew 11.19, where Jesus is reproached, accused of being a drunk and a glutton who was a “friend to tax collectors and sinners” and in Matthew 9.10, where it is noted that “many tax collectors and sinners” came and ate with Jesus and his followers.  The Pharisees objected and Jesus replied, “those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.”

Maybe treating the unrepentant has nothing to do with shunning. 

It seems to have to do with expecting more rather than less from fellow believers (as we do with family).

But to treat the unrepentant as ‘tax collectors and Gentiles’ might well mean to treat them more gently rather than less. . . especially if we consider Jesus’ earlier statement that they are to be viewed as the ‘sick’ – as those with additional need for care, as those who require the help of a physician rather than the condemnation of a judge.

In practical terms, it might mean that you don’t put that person in a leadership position simply because they’re not up to the job.  But at the same time, you do continue to care for them. . . for as long as it takes – just like we do with the one who suffers a serious illness.

In 12-step programs, members learn a helpful slogan: I’m not a bad person trying to get good; I’m a sick person trying to get well.  Maybe Jesus is talking about going the distance with someone in great need of him – someone whose need is so great they cannot see it for themselves.

And maybe there does come a time when someone must be ejected from the fellowship with the hope that such an extreme measure will bring them to their senses, turn them around.

But I keep coming back to the witness of the desert fathers and mothers – early Christians who went into the desert and away from the cities in order to pursue more closely the life Jesus had called them to live.  Their stories are stories of extreme living, extreme sacrifice, extreme love – extreme Jesus.

Consider the time when a brother who had sinned was turned out of the church by the priest.  Abba Bessarion got up and went out with him, saying, "I, too, am a sinner."

In one monastery, if any committed a fault, many of the other brothers would seek the offending brother’s permission to take the matter to the abbot and to accept both the responsibility and the punishment.  When the abbot found out that his disciples did this, he inflicted easier punishments, in the knowledge that the one punished was actually innocent.  And he made no effort to discover the real culprit.

One brother leaves with the sinner, knowing himself to be a sinner too.  Others take on the punishment for the offender – like brothers and sisters do for each other all the time.

Maybe the tax collector-Gentiles among us are not the ones kicked out, but rather the ones held all the more tightly to, the ones we walk with because we recognize ourselves in them.

Maybe they’re the ones we make room for at the table for we are them.

Maybe as Jesus sees us, so we are to see them.  

On Seeking Forgiveness

God forgives us.  We forgive ourselves.  We allow ourselves to be forgiven by others.

Matthew 5 (The Message): This is how I want you to conduct yourself . . . If you enter your place of worship and, about to make an offering, you suddenly remember a grudge a friend has against you, abandon your offering, leave immediately, go to this friend and make things right. Then and only then, come back and work things out with God.  

What The Message calls ‘making things right’ is usually translated as “be reconciled”.  Seeking and receiving forgiveness are biblically understood as reconciliation, a restoration of something that was lost.

Hence the practice of the passing of the peace taking place before coming to the communion table arose in the very early church – passing the peace is not merely a handshake or greeting among friends – it is the opportunity to restore one’s self to fellowship with someone wronged.

As noted in the Pulpit Commentary: “Our Lord is insisting that it is so important to lose no time in seeking reconciliation with a person whom one has injured, that even the very holiest action must be put off for it.”

There is a sense of urgency about the importance of seeking out forgiveness from someone we have wronged.  It requires Honesty, Haste and Humility.

Our job is to do the work of seeking out that forgiveness. But how?  Today’s passage suggests some obvious, clear, simple – not easy, but simple – steps:

(1) acknowledging/admitting that we have done something that needs forgiving

(2) asking the person or persons wronged to forgive us

(3) doing what we can to make amends

(4) leaving the decision to forgive to the person from whom we seek forgiveness

(5) making this a priority in our lives

1. Acknowledging that we have done something that needs forgiving.  It’s about getting honest – with God, with ourselves and with the other person.  It means saying it out loud.  It is an act of humility to admit we’ve done wrong by someone, leaving out all the self-justifications, reasons, and resentments. It’s no accident that Jesus speaks of ‘remembering’ what we’ve done wrong while we’re at the altar.  Where better to be reminded of our wrongs than standing before God? Thus, when we are reminded of something we’ve done that hasn’t been addressed, we might do well to also remember who reminded us.  If God’s Holy Spirit is bringing something to our attention, chances are it’s because the matter needs our attention.  Whether the other person has a part or not is irrelevant to your apology, your admission, your acknowledgment.  Their part is just that – theirs.  When seeking forgiveness, seek it.  Don’t shift the blame.  Don’t rehearse all your justifications.  You’re caught.  Live with it.  Admit it.  Seek to redress it.  Period.  Anything else takes you away from the land of honesty as well as humility.

2. Asking the person or persons wronged to forgive us Here’s the really humbling part: ask to be forgiven and walk away.  Don’t demand it.  Don’t beg for it.  Don’t wheedle, whine, carp or nag for it.  Simply ask and leave it at that.  Maybe they’ll need to think about it.  Maybe they’ll forgive you right away.  Maybe they’ll even have forgotten what you’re talking about.  In seeking another’s forgiveness, grace would suggest that we give them the space to do their work.  After all, we’ve been thinking about this for some time.  Shouldn’t we give them the same opportunity?

3. Doing what we can to make amends Reconciling, making things right between us really means making things right between us.  If I have wronged someone, it’s not their job to erase the debt – it’s mine.  And that may well include some form of recompense.  I may not be able to do it all at once, in which case I outline what I am going to do – and then, and this is most important, do it.  There is no credit here for my good intentions if they remain nothing but intentions.  Sometimes there really is nothing we can do to make up for what was done.  But we can refrain from repeating the same mistake.  We can change.

4. Leaving the decision to forgive to the person from whom we seek forgiveness The person we’ve harmed has the choice to make once we have sought their forgiveness whether to forgive or not.  What they should do is not up to us to decide.  We have to be willing to risk being told no, as in ‘no, I cannot or I will not forgive you.”  Once we honestly know we have done our part, we simply have to leave it at that and trust God’s Holy Spirit to begin a work within the their hearts just as was done in ours.  We must accord the one harmed the same freedom given to us – the freedom to say no.  That, too, is grace.

5. Making this a priority in our lives  What the Holy Spirit brings to your heart requires your response – now.  It is so urgent that Jesus speaks of literally walking out of church in order to go and seek the person out.  “Lose no time.”  The act of reconciliation is more important to God than what we might think of as the most holy act of worship.  How we are with each other, then, we might understand as a form of worship itself.  How do we worship God?  By seeking the forgiveness of those we have harmed.

We do this work in the constant companionship of God’s own self, God’s Holy Spirit, who begs us to remember and act, that nothing, not even ourselves, might separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Amen.

God's Forgiven-ness

God forgives.  God is a forgiving God.  Forgiving is what God does because forgiving is who God is.  The two – identity (what we might call character or nature) – identity and action are inseparable in God.  Who God is is what God does and what God does is who God is.

And God is a forgiving God . . . hence God forgives.  Simple as that.

The problem – the issue, if you will, is our understanding (or our lack of understanding) and even more, our acceptance (or lack of acceptance) of this reality.

Perhaps we would do well to begin with asking what, exactly, is forgiveness?

There is no single answer in scripture.  Forgiveness is variously understood as . . .

1. Healing – as in Jesus’ healing of the paralytic in Mark 2.8-12, where Jesus proclaims him forgiven and the man immediately begins to walk.          –and–

2. A life-changing slate wiped clean as in Acts 5.29-32, when Peter preaches Christ to the High Council, “God set [Jesus] on high at his side, Prince and Savior, to give Israel the gift of a changed life and sins forgiven.” –and–

3. Restoration to right relationship with God, as in Matthew’s recounting of the last supper, “During the meal, Jesus took and blessed the bread, broke it, and gave it to his disciples: Take, eat. This is my body. Taking the cup and thanking God, he gave it to them: Drink this, all of you. This is my blood, God’s new covenant poured out for many people for the forgiveness of sins.” –and–

4. Life itself, as in Romans 5.20-21, where Paul proclaims, “All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end.”

Forgiveness, then, is a healing . . . a life-changing slate wiped clean . . . a second chance . . . and a third . . . and, and, and . . . a restoration to right relationship with God . . . and life itself.

The best word, I think, to define what God means by forgiveness, is grace – God’s gift to human beings of relationship to God in the absence of any earthly, human reason to do so.

Because God is forgiving, we are forgiven.

God’s forgiving is not consequence free.  Scripture is rife with examples of those who were forgiven but who nevertheless experienced the consequences of their actions.  What they did not experience – the ultimate consequence – was loss of relationship with God.

As Isaiah says (Isaiah 55.6-7), God’s forgiveness is a lavish thing.  It is also a costly thing.  The twist, if you will, is that the cost of forgiving is borne by God’s own self in the person of Jesus the Christ, who, in his life and in his dying, took on the sins of the world for the benefit of all humanity.  Remember, it wasn’t from the cross, but from the wilderness where John baptized all comers that he saw his cousin Jesus walking towards him and shouted, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”  (John 1.29).Because God is a forgiving God . . . because in Christ, that forgiving divine nature beheld you and proclaimed you good . . . because God forgives, what you are in Christ . . . is forgiven (Colossians 2.11-15).

The challenge, perhaps, is accepting this enormous thing, this gift, this grace, this reality.

Week in and week out at church, we gather, we chat, we catch up with our neighbors, we settle in, we sing, we laugh, we weep, we pray, we listen, and we experience ourselves forgiven anew.  Every week our forgiveness in Christ is proclaimed.

Why do you suppose we have to do it every week?  Is it because we’re such bad people that we have to catch God up on what we’ve been up to this week?  Perhaps.

But maybe, just maybe, we hear our forgiveness proclaimed every week because we’re a forgetting people, who need reminding again and again and yet again that we are a forgiven people and just what that means.

Does it mean we get to declare a relieved ‘whew’ – avoided-hell-again boy-was-that-a-close-one exclamation of relief – good for another week?  Maybe.  I doubt it, but maybe.

But perhaps it is so much more than that.  Maybe we do this proclaiming of forgiveness every week so that we can recall with greater ease the great love God has for each and all of us . . . the sheer delight God has in each and all of us. . . the divine image God sees every second of every minute of every day in each and in all of us . . . in you and you and you and in me.

Because God forgives . . . you are forgiven . . . know this . . . and rejoice.

Amen.

The Ascension: Going Up?

In Acts 1.1-11, we read that Jesus ‘goes up’ to heaven.  When I hear this, all I can hear is an elevator

Dali's Ascension - a ground's eye view

operator asking, ‘going up’?  It just seems so . . . ridiculous. This ‘going-upedness’ of Jesus, lifted into the sky on a God-cloud, seems . . . so . . . silly . . . as if Jesus were Superman or better, Lois Lane, being flown into the sunset . . . it . . . is . . . ridiculous . . . isn’t it?

But the author of Ephesians has it more right than I do when he prays that the people of God’s church may ‘see with the eyes of your heart’.  That helps . . . a little.

The eyes of the heart and the words of Barbara Brown Taylor help me to understand a bit better what this ascension thing is all about:  “It was not enough that through him God was born into the body of the world; that was just his Christmas gift to us. His ascension gift was that through him the body of the world was borne (carried) back to God. . . Jesus has not only brought God to us; he has also brought us to God.”

John Calvin says, “Since Christ entered heaven in our flesh, as if in our name . . . in a sense, we already sit with God in the heavenly places in [Christ].” Thus does Jesus open the way to the heavenly kingdom, by which Calvin means that without Jesus, you and I just can’t get ‘there’ from ‘here’.

Using my elevator image, we might say Jesus ‘went up’ in order that we won’t ‘go down’.  By opening the gates of heaven, Jesus closes the gates of hell forever.

Brown Taylor puts it this way, “It was almost as if he had not ascended but exploded, so that all the holiness that was once concentrated in him alone flew everywhere, flew far and wide, so that the seeds of heaven were sown in all the fields of the earth.”

Silly as it sounds . . . We do worship a flying Jesus . . .

But it’s a bit like an airplane . . . no matter how well crafted it is, it can’t fly simply because it ‘decides’ to . . . [This might be a good time to make your own paper airplane and try to fly it to heaven.  That’s what we did in church today, anyhow.]

What is astonishing is that neither could Jesus . . . Jesus didn’t decide to go to heaven . . . Jesus didn’t fly ‘there’ on the power of his own might or even the power of his own decision . . . Jesus didn’t go to heaven . . . Jesus was taken to heaven . . .

Grace is the word we use to understand this simple, crucial truth . . . of our own power, we can do nothing.  Yes, we have work to do.  But if we are not very careful, it is oh so easy to believe that the work, and not God, is our pathway to heaven.

Like paper airplanes, human beings who try to fly themselves to heaven will always fall back to earth.

Think of it as the difference between the grateful and the guarded.  The grateful share what they have . . . it wasn’t theirs to begin with, so what’s the big deal?  The guarded live their lives like characters on apocalyptic television shows, willing to kill to protect their bread from starving others . . .

The guarded always have a plan . . . the grateful simply trust, for they know their plans mean nothing . . . they’ve failed too often not to know.

The guarded know how much work they have done and how much pay they’re entitled to for the work . . . the grateful simply offer thanks for whatever they get, knowing they didn’t earn a bit of it . . .

The guarded think in terms of ‘mine’ and ‘yours’, for they have earned what is theirs and expect that you should do likewise. . . the grateful know there is no earning all the bounty they have received, so they simply say ‘thank you’.

The guarded are often angry at the injustices done to themselves by others . . . the grateful are angry with the injustices done to others . . .

The guarded are productive and hold those who are not in contempt . . . the grateful are not productive and so are free to love others simply because they are, and not because of what they do . . .

The guarded are jealous of the successes of others . . . the grateful rejoice in them . . .

The guarded compete . . . the grateful cooperate . . .

The guarded believe good fences make good neighbors . . . the grateful know good fences make only good fences . . . and that a good neighbor is made from being invited in, not being kept out . . .

The guarded believe the path to heaven is a ladder they must perpetually climb lest they be left behind . . . the grateful know the path to heaven is an elevator and their ticket was bought for them by Jesus a very, very, long time ago.

Going up?

Ordinary Time

Perhaps the first thing to notice is the very ordinariness of it all – Jesus coming after the resurrection to his various followers:  sharing meals with them, talking to them, sitting with them.

Perhaps then we might remember that God doesn’t comes to us when we’re rescuing children from burning buildings or leaping tall buildings with a single bound . . . nor does God come doing those things . . . most of the time . . . most of the time, God comes to us at the dinner table . . . sitting beside us watching tv in the living room . . . walking or driving home . . . working in the garden . . . standing at the Wal-Mart check out.

We live our lives in ordinary time . . . thus it follows that most of the time, God, who is ever-present, would be with us not or not mostly, in times of crisis, but in the every-day of things.

God’s coming to us where we are is what we call grace – a thing done just for the doing and not for the earning.

Our recognizing God when the divine stands before us we might call mindfulness – paying attention . . . looking for . . . seeking out the very God before us.

When Jesus comes to dinner, grace and mindfulness meet at the table and share a meal.

It’s not very noteworthy in the headline news.  Nobody – even me – will record for history that I eat dinner tonight.  No one, including me, will remember what was served.

The big deal is not what we’re doing at the time . . . it’s not even what we need at the time. . . the big deal is that Jesus is there at all . . . that we have been graced with his presence –

Merely by being here with us, God has elevated us beyond the ordinary that we were into something more beautiful, more wonderful . . . we are made better merely by God being in the room.

Unexpected Beauty

It is 2001 and I am about to enter seminary.  For a last blast, my son and I travel to Italy, Greece and France.  In Pisa, we do the usual photo-op grab of the Leaning Tower and then wander around the square.  I notice the Baptistry nearby and decide to go in while Ben shops for tourist trinkets and obscure music suited to his tastes.

As I approach, I hear a choir singing and it is breath-taking, even outside.  I open the door only to have an Italian gentleman in a uniform (the sort national park folks back home wear) smilingly signal me to wait and so I do.

A few minutes pass, the door opens and several folks come streaming out.  I am the only one at the time, so I enter alone and look around the spartan circular space for the choir.  They are nowhere to be seen.

The gentleman who gave me entrance smilingly beckoned me to be seated and he began to sing.  Just him.  No choir.  And it was . . . well, it was beyond words – what his voice and that space did was magic and I simply sat on the concrete bench that hugged the wall and listened and noticed only later the tears streaming down my face.

“Moved to tears” is more than a phrase: beauty in its many forms can and does move us to tears as it did that day in the Baptistry for me with a man whose name I will never know brought beauty to me I wasn’t looking for and did not expect.

For all the musicians in the world . . . opening grace for us in ways expected and unexpected . . . thank you.

The Prayer of a Good Day

You know it’s a good day when

last night and this morning it snowed and snowed and snowed –
somewhere round 17 inches of the stuff just kept piling up
and in the sudden sun of the late afternoon, you look outside
and there’s your neighbor with his grown son on their 4-wheelers
snow blades firmly attached, plowing out a path to your garage
so you can get your car out if you need to and you get motivated
to sweep away enough snow from your back door to make a path
to them to offer up some gooey brownies fresh and warm from the
oven and Larry teaches you how to drive the 4-wheeler and lets you
plow some snow out of the way just for fun and refuses any money
for his efforts in that sly country way of just acting like he didn’t
hear you and going about the business of being a good neighbor
and it is so wonderful it’s just about enough to make a grown girl
cry as you make your way back into the warmth of an old house
that stays warm like new ones can’t seem to, oooey-gooey brownies
in hand as you glance back over your shoulder and watch father
and son playing in the snow and helping a neighbor just cos
and suddenly you realize that you’ve just been to church and you
whisper your amen there on the steps where only God hears

Yeah, that’s when you know it’s been a good day

Playing in the Snow

When I was 7, I had my first (remembered) solo experience of sled riding down the street where I lived.  I watched others first, navigating the teasing boys at the bottom of the hill who formed a line across the road.  At 7, I did not understand that they would get out of the way of my sled.  Apparently neither did my compatriots, as each flew down the side of the street until just before the parked car, jerking hard left at the last minute to sweep between car and boys and onward.

Confident I understood the process, I jumped on my sled and down I went.  I have never had that level of confidence again.  As I careened towards the car, I froze, head up, as the car and I rapidly drew in to our own date with destiny.  Head smacked bumper.  The rest, including my unease around playing in the snow, is history.

Flash forward.  I am 58.  Younger friends decide we should go tubing.  I cheerfully agree.  It was only later, alone, that I started to get nervous: I’m 58 years old!  What was I thinking?  I can’t do this!  I’ll break my fool neck!  And so it went.

I consulted with son Ben (my go-to person on all things physical), who calmly reassured me how safe tubing is, walking me through what it would be like step by step (everyone should have a son so patient with a fearful mom).

So I layered up and on we went.  The journey was, of course, the adventure.

Just a few miles shy of our destination, our driver Melissa politely pulled to the side of the road to allow faster drivers to pass, as I was internally screaming noooo!  We were in West Virginia now and there aren’t shoulders on the road to speak of in West Virginia, even when it looks like there are (as when deep ditches are covered with snow).  We promptly sank – gently, ever so gently, in to the snow-covered crevasse and there we sat until rescued, which was in pretty short order, as Snow Shoe has employees and equipment for just such an occasion as this (shout out to our rescuers - thanks, guys!).*

On to lunch and then the great tubing adventure.  What a hoot!  There were injuries** (aren’t there always?), but we did all survive the experience with lots of laughter and the simple joy of being outside (it was a warm winter’s day after a long January of sub-zero temperatures where we live, so this was our first time outside in a long time – glorious!)

For a brief moment, I saw the folks learning to ski on the bunny slope beside the tube lanes and thought to myself, I could do that.  Ah, confidence.

It passed as quickly as it came as I hobbled home, but now I know some things I didn’t know when I was 7:

1. The boys will get out of the way.

2. I could do that.

3. Snow and sun are a heady combination.

4. Laughter and play are great medicine.

5. One bad experience need not a lifetime of fear make.

But most of all, I was reminded that God’s tender caring looks like a son talking his mother down . . . like

Erin, Deb, Melissa & me (fashion-forward
in Ben's hat and many layers

strangers stopping to help . . . like car rescue guys competent to the task . . . like friends laughing helplessly as they roll in the snow. . . like expanding possibilities . . . like grace.

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*When you get discouraged about the state of our kindness or lack towards each other, I want you to know that virtually every car passing by slowed down to see if they could help.  The one noteworthy exception entertained us mightily as they sped by, bumper stickers hailing their political persuasion and beliefs, leaving us in their wake, confirmed in our mutual preconception that such folk aren’t nearly as kind as they say they are on t.v. and leaving me to have to internally apologize to neighbors from the north (I thought the license plate was from Pennsylvania or New York: turns out it’s a specialty plate from Virginia).

**Injuries:

1. I was first – fitting as the eldest, I suppose.  It didn’t occur to me (remember, I actually had to call my child to talk me through this) that the bottom of the tube was resting on the actual ground and that resting my bottom on its bottom meant I was sliding butt first down a snowy pathway that just might have bumps and rocks.  And it did.  Thus am I one very sore puppy today.

2. Erin was next – it was our very last run – and somehow she came to a dead stop at the bottom of the run and was ejected from her tube, hitting her head.  Nothing serious, but boy, did it hurt.

3. Melissa was the last to go down.  Heading out the parking lot, we were almost home free, when she stepped onto a sheet of ice and went down hard, landing flat on her back, the kind of hard, scary fall that makes you worry about broken bones and concussions and such.  Good fortune that nothing was broken and home safely we went.

Deb was the only one of us to escape the day without injury, but all of us are aching today.

17 Things Easy to Forget When You’re the Pastor

1. I like me.  You should too.  If you don’t, we can both let that be okay.  Really.

2. I am doing the best I can and most days, that’s actually pretty good.

3. I am no one’s savior.

4. Everyone isn’t interested in God . . . or Jesus . . . or church . . . even among those who come every Sunday.

5. The fact that others think the minutia of my life is of interest doesn’t mean that it is.

6. The fact that others think the minutia of my life is of no importance doesn’t mean that it isn’t.

7. The same God that adores you adores me too.

8. This job ain’t for sissies.

9. I take grace seriously and that’s a big deal.  A very big deal.

10. I really do know stuff and sharing it is my job.

11. The fact that some will avoid me like the plague does not mean that I am socially unacceptable.

12. Even when I’m operating from a script (like a sermon), chances are you aren’t.

13. It is not my job to explain myself (grace is as much for me as for you).

14. Chances are if I’m doing my job, I will not be the cool, the popular, kid.  The reverse is also true:  if I am the cool kid, I’m probably not doing my job.

15. I am actually allowed to have a life outside of church, but never outside of God.  God and church are not the same thing.  One is merely an instrumentality (even if an embodiment) of the other.

16. Your discomfort may mean that I got it wrong.  But it might also mean that I got it right – or more accurately, that the Holy Spirit did.

17. Some think this is just a job.  They’re wrong.

Always There

On retreat, I study from outside in the darkness of a cold fall night the backlit by effect wooden carved plaque of the well-known scene – Jesus and his followers.

It too is night, although you wouldn’t know it from the carving.

It is the last night.  It’s supper time.

And there he is – unknown among the 12 – he is always there – Judas.

He is always there.

As I spy inward through the glass, that is the thought that lingers.

Judas is always there.

It is a present-tense thing, isn’t it?

Whenever we gather, there is the reminder of the perpetual presence of the saints, the communion that exceeds time and space and bids all enter, bids all welcome.

If he is always there, then is he not always here?

And if he is, is that not a sign of enormous hope?

I think so.

The God of the present tense stands, sits, reclines, into all our presents and bids us welcome and we are always there – there, at the beckoning place – present in The Presence.

It argues, I think, for grace possibilities beyond my imagining.

And I am awed.

He is always there.

The Sidelines of a Life

To stand at the sidelines of a life
to hear and know by hearing
“this is why I love him”
“this is how he made me better”
“this is who we are together”

This
this this-ness of things

This showing
and telling
and sharing

if there wasn’t love –
love in the telling
and in the hearing,
I’d be a voyeur

as it is, I confess –
to borrow from Merton a bit –
I am a grateful bystander
graced by their beauty,
their love, their lives,
even if only from a distance

To the Caregivers

In the course of any given week, I encounter many caregivers – those who make life easier, even possible, for others.  Some, like my Aunt Bonnie and friend Kay, are, I believe, called by God to serve others in such a way.  Their care is a grace-filled thing to behold.

Others, myself included, not so much.  Sometimes we rise to the occasion; sometimes we’re filled with resentment.  Our care is a necessary but sometimes painful thing to watch as desire clashes with necessity.

Whichever category (and sometimes one looks much like the other), the giving of care by one to another is fraught and full, often both at once.

So to the caregivers among us, I say thank you.  Thank you for the love and the practical service you offer up, whether for pay or from the goodness of your heart, both or neither.  Thank you for taking on the burden.  Thank you for caring.  Thank you for being there.  Thank you for keeping those we love safe and provided for.  Thank you.

To the caring and the cared for, I offer a reminder: self care is not bad or betraying.  Self care is an absolute necessity.

Take time away.

Breathe.

Don’t take the challenging words personally.

Keep a sense of humor.

Accept help yourself.

Remember to eat.

Remember to pray.

Remember to play.

Remember to look for grace.

And be blessed.

Epiphany Me

Today is the day of celebration of God’s revealing in Jesus the Christ, as made manifest to the magi, the wise men from the east, who came bearing gifts fit for Christ’s true identity as Lord of All.

Epiphany:  a bursting forth suddenness of revealing.  The groundwork having been laid, it is the magician’s ta-da pull-back-the-curtain moment.  Greatly anticipated, now we see what before was only imagined.

Epiphany: the God-reveal revealing us to ourselves – the who-we-were-made-to-be of things.  Child of God . . . that is who we are called to be . . . that is who we are.

From Flickr

Epiphany: the prodigal son at the moment of the father-running embrace.  Son tried to run away from who he was, to turn his back on the father who loved him.  Ultimately he came back, but even when he was the farthest away from home, he was always the beloved son.  So was I right that his epiphany moment was at the hug, the fatherly embrace?  Or was his epiphany sooner, felt only in his feet, finding themselves willing to turn homeward?

I think the feet knew best.  After all, the son’s identity did not change because he rejected it.  And that, that is grace abounding.  Claiming to be someone, something, else, God still and yet loves.

Does it matter that we know?  That we’re aware that the curtain’s been pulled back?  No and yes.  No – we are who we are, whether we know it or not.  Yes – for to know the identity not of self, but of God, is to be forever changed . . . to know the identity of God is to come into the presence of God . . . in ways quiet and ways fantastical . . . in ways earth-shattering and in ways barely earth-registering, we all are invited into the presence of God . . . to sit a spell . . . and just be . . . be the ones we were made to be . . .

In such a space everything else falls away . . . And we know who we are . . . for the first time . . . Who am I?  Is another way of asking Why am I?  And in the asking as much as in the answering . . . is . . . God . . .

In meeting God, we come to the end of ourselves as we see and the beginning of ourselves as God sees . . .

So today, perhaps our prayer might be . . .

Lord God, epiphany me.

Driving in Circles

Just a small town girl . . . I never thought those words would apply to me.  But they do.  Yesterday, I, along with hundreds of others, spent time helping with a fundraising dinner for a little girl in need of heart surgery whose parents’ health insurance will not cover the cost.  So here in smalltown America, someone organized a dinner and everybody came, bringing dishes and donations and hands to help.  The ladies here have a long-established rhythm born of years of experience in the industrial-sized kitchen where such things happen.  Yet they welcome me in and show me their ways.  I become their sous chef apprentice, doing as they direct, trying to help and when I can’t, to stay out of the way.  It’s a grace-filled place, that kitchen.  Every now and then, someone new who comes in comes bossy.  But instead of putting her in her place, these ladies just step back and make room for her ways.  How I wish I had their class.  At the end of the night, we all went home tired, yet most managed to make it to church this morning.  Their staying power puts me to shame.

Just before I went over to start helping yesterday, I checked FB and there was a message from Tiffany, No more stop lights in Highland!  I grinned in appreciation.  The 18-month-long bridge project has come to an end and the temporary stop light, the source of much complaining, wonderment, and perceived inconvenience, is gone.  So with a little extra time between the two church services this morning, I drove past the second church and crossed our new bridge, breezing by the now colorless stop light, took a right around the store and cheated through Obaugh’s parking lot to come back out on the road back and recross the bridge, grinning like a fool as I passed with nary a pause at the famed stop light now no more.  Oh, happy day!

Yes, I am a small town gal who cruises in circles just to enjoy not having to stop for a light and who loves that she gets to help sometimes just by being there.


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If you’d like to donate to the Ella fund, you can make a check payable to Hiner Church of the Brethren and mail it to Hiner Church, c/o Charles Varner, 6527 Highland Turnpike, McDowell, VA 24458.

Ella, who is five years old, has a heart defect which requires surgery.  As I said above, her parents’ health insurance will not cover the surgery because they say her condition is congenital.  The surgeon’s cost will be anywhere from $25,000 to $40,000.  The Affordable Care Act provision regarding pre-existing conditions does not go into effect until 2014.  The dinner and other fundraisers have and will continue to raise a goodly sum, but more is needed.

Resting into grace

I have been trying so hard this week to be good . . .
mostly failing, but I’ve been trying hard, Lord . . .
but the guy with the “You’re not special”
commencement speech wasn’t wrong . . .
I am not special or different –
I am just like all the other kids at the candy
counter of Your love, pushing and shoving
my way to the front –
for what?
I know there’s plenty of candy
and that I’ll get mine
But I’ve been trying so hard
that I almost forgot –
almost
forgot
about resting into Your grace . . .
falling into Your love . . .

Photo by D. Sharon Pruitt at Flickr Commons

It’s like the trick questions
on the pop quizzes my teachers
were so very fond of giving
The obvious answer is obvious
because it’s the answer
It’s so easy to fall into you
and so hard to remember
that it is so easy . . .
I’ve been trying so hard
that I almost forgot
almost
to stop trying at all

What Grace Looks Like

When living in Scotland, I was invited to attend the retirement party of a woman named Ruth.  Ruth attended the church where I was interning, but I hadn’t met her other than brief handshakes.  My friend Liz, who would be playing the fiddle, invited me as her guest.

But it was Ruth who as the hostess showed me what lived grace looks like to a stranger in a strange land.

This was Ruth’s night, but she took me literally by the hand and told the stories of her work life as a midwife to me.  When she referred to people, well-known to everyone else in the room, she had them stand up so I could know who they were.

In every way, Ruth reached out to me and drew me into the circle of friendship and love surrounding her on her night.  It was about her, but she managed to include me.

That’s grace: including.

God includes us just like Ruth included me.

The Envy of the Dead

When I was fifteen, my Grandmother on my mother’s side died.  Grandmother and I were separated by great distance most of the time, so I did not know her as well as my other grandmother.  But I can remember being outraged on her behalf with the sense of propriety that only an adolescent can muster against the lesser-ness of her elders, in the face of the laughter and loud and even boisterous chatter of those visiting the family at the funeral home.  There was even cigar smoke, for God’s sake.  Who were these people and how dare they ignore the reality of my grandmother’s body lying right in front of them?  It was an insufferable affront.

My memories of that time remind me of Tolstoy’s novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich, in which, as I recall it, Ivan Ilyich grows increasingly resentful over the seeming lack of care from his family about the very clear reality that he is dying.

I wonder, though, were they truly uncaring or were they simply doing what the living do: living?

As I sit with others in caring for my dear and dying friend Stu, it is clear that Stu does not resent that our lives continue without him.  He regrets it; he is sad for what he will miss.  But he does not begrudge the living their lives, their continuity.

Should I suffer like Stu and Ivan Ilyich, should I have the slow rather than quick kind of meeting with death and dying, will I begrudge the living?  Or will I rejoice in their largess even as I regret its loss in my own journey?

Will I hate the laughter surrounding my body as the living discuss the cares of the living; will I resent it even then?

I hope that my corpse will be filled with grace rather than resentment, acceptance and love rather than envy.

That would be a good death, I think.