Dancing to the Lord

King David famously danced before God in his underwear (ephod – check it out – it’s really his underclothing), much to the shame of his wife (and she paid for that shame, trust me).

The psalms exhort us to dance our praises to God.

Ecclesiastes reminds us (think the Birds song here) that there is a time to dance.

The celebration of the Exodus people after safely traversing the parted sea, led by Miriam, took the form of music and dance.

All of that biblical witness leaves me wondering when my tradition (Presbyterian) took off our dancing shoes, especially this morning.

Listening to the local radio station while getting breakfast, Pastor Shirley Caesar burst forth into my kitchen with her feet-must-dance belting of Satan, We’re Gonna Tear Your Kingdom Down.  And I did what I had to do – I stopped all else and danced to the Lord.  Right there in my kitchen.  Right there in front of God (well, that sort of was the point).

It is good when morning prayers look like dance.

Thank You, Lord, For Not Killing Me

[F]or Paul, salvation does not primarily mean the end of past disaster and the forgiving cancellation of former guilt. It is . . . freedom from the power of sin, death and the divine wrath; that is to say, it is the possibility of new life.  –Ernst Kasemann

Preachers get paid the big bucks to think on such things as did Jesus have to die on the cross?  If so, why?  What happened with his death?  How do we put that in words?  

With that comes my own discomfort on the emphasis of atonement and words like justification and redemption.  Too often, these concepts (that Jesus ‘had to’ suffer the cross in order for humanity to be restored, redeemed, reclaimed, reconnected, reconciled [notice all the ‘re-’s?] to/with/for God) echo in my own mind with the sharp feminist critiques of thinking that such views somehow require God to turn to murder (if not Jesus, then it would have to be us) in order for everything to work out right.

This thinking makes (for me) the most fervent prayer: Thank You, Lord, for not killing me.  

Is that really the prayer God desires?  It seems small enough thanks to offer – the cringing plea of the undeserving supplicant grateful to be spared what she surely had coming.

Somehow this line of reasoning seems to me to combine in an artificial way The Fall (original sin) and Jesus as the curative restorative that reduces the thing ‘saved (humanity) to a thing pitiable beyond recognition.

I am a grateful woman and offer regular thanks . . . for the beauty of the world and all within it . . . for the many graces I have experienced in a lifetime on this planet . . . for the very gift of life itself . . . for each new marvel of ingenuity . . . for children and laughter and good food and quiet times and playing bridge and big thoughts and night-sky wonders and . . . and . . . and . . .

But I find that I am never grateful that God didn’t kill me as I so richly (according to some) deserve . . .

Perhaps that makes me a bad Christian.

Perhaps.

But it also makes me, perhaps coincidentally, a thankful one.

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.

Sermon Cliff Note: It Was Evening When He Came

It was evening when he came . . . and they, well, they were afraid – hiding behind locked doors – dreading every sound, hearing every creak upon the stairs as the threat to their existence that it was . . . they were next – simple as that . . .

It was there . . . behind the locks and the doors . . . in the foggy dimness of twilight . . . in a room filled with the stench of fear . . . that Jesus stood, as if he had been there all along . . . and calmly pronounced the accompanying reality of God’s own peace to a group of people who could barely imagine such peace let alone feel its accompanying presence . . .

And then the risen Jesus does this extraordinary thing . . . as part of his divine sending, he breathes the Holy Spirit into them . . . God has come to become their very breath . . .

And thus what happens in that room is the very Genesis act of creating and recreating . . . God breathes . . . we live . . .

As one translation of God’s creation of humanity in Genesis has it, “And Yahweh God fashioned the humanity of the dust of the ground, and breathed into its nostrils the breathing of life, so the humanity became a living breath”. . . because God breathed, we became . . . a . . . living breath . . .

Medieval scientist, nun, theologian, poetess, chastizer of popes and bishops, and songwriter, Hildegard of Bingen, once wrote, “My new song must float like a feather on the breath of God.”

Every  breath we take is infused with God . . . every song, every word, every shout, every cry . . . floats on the breath of God . . .

God’s breath is like an ocean surrounding us and infusing us . . . how very silly we must seem to God as we spend so much time unaware that we are filled with and in the midst of God’s life-giving, life-saving ocean of breath. . . an ocean of love lifting and holding us up . . . safely floating us to our destination while we, unaware, dream we are swimming . . . or worse, nightmare we are drowning . . . when God’s life-sustaining breath is there all along . . .

Understood this way, perhaps we can see Jesus and ourselves as God’s breath . . . inhaling . . . taking into God’s very self all that is wrong and broken and bad in our world . . . and in us . . .// and exhaling . . . breathing into us and through us, into the world, as God’s gifting all that is of God . . . God’s goodness . . . God’s wholeness . . . God’s health . . . God’s peace . . .

For Jesus’ words convey clearly that what God sent him to do, Jesus sends them, sends us to do on his behalf . . .

And what is that thing for which Jesus was sent?  It is that simple and oh-so-hard-in-the-doing thing we call forgiveness . . . the better translation of the Greek is release, as in set free from bondage . . .

As Jesus says, it’s quite simple, really: If you forgive others, they are forgiven . . . this is the work I am sending you out to do . . . everywhere . . . with everyone . . . for if you do not do this, then . . .

Well, the usual translation is that if you don’t forgive, they’re unforgiven, which most interpret to mean Jesus’ followers are invested with the divine ability to forgive . . . or not . . .

The ‘or not’ is problematic when considered with the entirety of the gospels . . . recall Jesus’ own words in his Sermon on the Mount: forgive others if you yourself would be forgiven . . .

Jesus is not setting forth a menu of choice for his followers; rather, Jesus is reminding them that forgiveness, setting free, is the very center, the heart, of what he came to do and teach us to do . . . the Greek makes it a bit more clear by saying essentially if you do not let them go, then they are held . . . The Message translates it thusly:   “If you forgive someone’s sins, they’re gone for good. If you don’t forgive sins, what are you going to do with them?”

Precisely: if we don’t forgive, if we don’t set ourselves and others free with God’s forgiving word, then what?  What will we do instead?

This Jesus, resurrected from a cross . . . spent not one moment on how he got there or who put him there . . . forgiveness . . . the real-time demonstration of freedom from the bondage to the past . . . is Jesus’ central gospel theme . . . and thus it must be ours . . .

When he sent the disciples, investing them with the priestly power to proclaim forgiveness, this, then, is what he came for . . .

And notice what he did not do . . . he did not proclaim them forgiven . . . what he did was actually even more extraordinary – he gave unto the ones in desperate need of forgiving the very power to proclaim forgiveness . . . after all, who better?

The only question left is . . . Are we going to live out his gospel or our own?  His forgiveness or our refusal?  His release from bondage or our insistence on enslavement?  His joy or our bitter condemnation?  His grace or our justice?

Thus every day do we choose . . . locked doors . . . fear. . . guilt . . . shame . . . or freedom . . . joy . . . grace . . .

Here then is the Good News in a nutshell:  breathe in God’s spirit
and the only thing you can breathe out is peace . . . God’s own delivering, releasing, freeing . . . peace . . .

The fear-filled trembling followers hiding out behind locked doors, so frightened were they of what was to come, became faith-filled believers, betting everything on God and letting it ride.

The question for us is a simple one: do we want to be that kind of follower?  If so, pray for it - pray for the kind of faith that will give you the miracle of giving it all away.

A Symphony of Peepers

Photo from The Wilderness Center in Ohio

The other night I wend my way in the dark along US Rt. 250 from Monterey back to McDowell, radio
blaring, when I hear ‘it’ – the sound of spring that sets my heart to sailing: peepers – tree frogs that sing so loud for their tiny bodies that you can hear them over the car radio with the windows up.

I turn off the radio and open the car window and fly in and out of their song as the car and I wax and wane to the parallel of Crab Run, whose steady roar of spring waters rushing to Richmond are the constant bass one-string pizzicato writ large into the night behind the peeper symphony.

More than the blooming flowers and the sunny warm-ish days, it is the peepers who tell me spring is here. . . darting across the road in mad dash when the rains come . . . singing into the night a desire so strong, so loud, it must be heard . . . their call is not mine, but it tugs the heart always and ever towards spring . . . spring . . . spring . . .

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.

Gone Fishing

We lectio the John passage where Jesus appears to his disciples one last time.  They are fishing.

As we spend one cycle entering the story with our senses, imagining ourselves as actually there, I immediately identify with Peter – not as a person, but as a man . . . I have never even imagined myself a man before – in my imagining, it happened something like this:

It’s been a rough week – actually, a horrible week . . . Jesus – dead . . . friends and followers – scattered . . . me – unable to even lift my head let alone meet anyone’s eyes for I know what I will see there . . . even his coming back leaves me jittery . . . on edge . . . unsure of everything – my skin literally crawls with it . . . I have been wanting out of this body ever since that horrible night with Judas and the soldiers – I . . . want . . . out . . . 

And the boredom of the waiting is nearly driving me mad . . . so up I jump, eager to get out of that damned room that stinks with our fear and announce that I am going fishing.  What I really want is to be alone, so of course they all follow along – I suppose they’re as unnerved by it all as I am . . . 

As soon as I think of the sea and the boat and the nets, I feel my whole body relax – this is what I was made for, this is something I know and can do in my sleep . . . it’ll be nightfall by the time I get there, but the boat will be ready – it always is . . . 

The night is still young as we pull away from the shore and so am I – young and strong – the muscles in my back and arms rejoice at the familiar effort as I holler at the guys to go further – but they have not the heart for it, so I relent and we stay close to shore – it doesn’t really matter what we catch – I just had to – do – something . . . 

Nothing calms me like being on the water on a calm night – that and Him . . . but even He does not calm these days – scares the snot out of me, actually, coming and going like he has been – who knows when we’ll see him again . . . 

I shake my head sharply to clear it of such thoughts and laugh at something one of them says – whispering – these days, they’re always whispering . . . and tonight, it makes me laugh and I slap him on the back – hard – and ask who can hear us here?  And I laugh again and haul the net out of the water and furl it out on the water, watching reflections from the moon off its knotting as it settles down and down and feel a tug to plunge myself down there . . . I jerk myself back from the edge and plop down on the deck . . . 

The boat’s gentle sway comforts and I laugh out again realizing it is my mother I am wanting – as if she could help me now . . . 

But here, now, there are no soldiers, there is no Him . . . and for the moment, I am actually glad to be shut of both . . .

At some point we doze off and I am gentled by the snoring and farting – the night sounds of my companions – usually so annoying but now so very comforting . . . and I slip down on the deck resting my head into the crook of my arm, feeling my own pulse beat to the rhythm of the water against the boat . . . smelling the familiar odors of fishes past and the salt catching on the hairs of my nose as I breathe in and out and in and out and slip into the first true sleep I have had in weeks . . . I am home . . . and for now, all is well . . . 

Daylight cracks the sky awakening me and as I stand and stretch and scratch away the night (no fish) and the annoying little one who likes to tell us how he was His favorite points and shouts that it’s Him . . . I squint (out of habit) towards the shore and there in the dim dawn, I see a figure . . . and in that brief second of before, I see them all groggy with sleep looking to me to see what I will do and I know there can be no more hesitation, no more running, hiding, denying, for me . . . wearily, I jump in to the water and make my way, half swimming, half walking, to the shore and whatever awaits – Him, Roman soldier, old man walking the night away – doesn’t much matter to me, but it matters to them . . . 

The water’s coolness brings me full awake as I plow its resistance, my strength returned . . . I breathe in deeply morning’s air and begin to look more intently and wonder . . . and there I am, standing on the shore – first face to face and then beside Him (there is a faint smell of spice surrounding us), both of us still looking to the boat, when He shouts instructions – fish from the other side – I smile – risen or not, He is no fisherman . . . 

But of course, there are fish – when has he ever been wrong?  

And there is the fire with fish already crackling in the coals . . . when I see it, I begin to laugh – big laughing – not crazy, not joy – it’s going to be a good day laughing . . . and so we eat . . . and all is well . . . 

Resting on elbows by the fire, I see the rest of them sneaking their furtive glances towards him and I scratch myself in disgust and then laugh some more, kicking a little sand beloved’s way – just to let him know I read his silly mind. . . 

And then He ruins it with all the talk of sheep and feeding and like always, He makes me mad to make His point – why He always has to do that, I do not know – dying has not mellowed Him, not even a little bit . . . 

I sigh and sit up and pay attention and answer His questions and He will have none of it . . . we both know this, then, is our last time . . . can we not simply lie by the fire?  Feel its warmth in our bones?  Smell the salt spray?  Watch the lapping of the waves on a fine day?  Be silent?  Why does he always talk so much?  

I know He had much to say that couldn’t get said, but I would have liked more silence . . . I think with my arms and legs and they need time to sort such things . . . you’d think He’d know that . . . 

But this is the kvetching of a man who will never live long enough to be truly old . . . then, I was just . . . happy . . . 

It was a beautiful day . . . it still is . . .