An Everyday Pastor, Pastoring
This is the blog of Lindsay Mack, the pastor at Luther Memorial Church and these are the sermons delivered there, available to everyone who seeks to hear what we discern about God's will for all of us.
Thursday, March 21, 2024
Tune My Heart, Ash Wednesday 2024
Tuesday, December 26, 2023
A Christmas sermon about living nativities, piano players, and our purpose in it all
I never did hear my Gramps play, he died before I was born. However, years later, I heard Chopin played in a recital I attended while in college. Though I had heard recordings in the past, they didn’t compare with sitting in the recital hall and hearing my friend play the music. Without my friend, all that music was a bunch of dots and squiggles and lines on a page. Add a musician to those sheets of music and all of those mysterious markings were brought to life. Suddenly, a musician--a person--gave it all form.
Year after year, we flip through our bible to the second chapter of Luke and we read this old, old story of shepherds and starry skies, of donkeys and mangers, of a little holy family looking for shelter. It is a story of letters and words and verse and chapter numbers all strung together on the page. But it is also something more than that.
Certainly, it is a story worth treasuring for so many reasons--most of all because it is the story of God’s love for us made human in the person of Jesus.
The greatest stories connect powerfully with a place in our heart. The Christmas story has a lot of angles that touch our hearts.
Sometimes, the thing in the story that we tap into most keenly is nostalgia. It’s a story that brings up memories of childhood magic or closeness with the ones we love. But, the story also connects us with a place in our heart much bigger than the nostalgia.
There is a beautiful little line from the Christmas story that reads “the time came” for Mary to deliver her child. “The time came” is a translation of the phrase that could also be read as “the days were fulfilled.” As in: the days were fulfilled as Mary gave birth.
To fulfill something means to bring something to life. If we fulfill a certainly responsibility, we follow through. We make it happen, we bring it to life. We live up to it and give it form, almost like fitting into a perfectly tailored pair of pants that are lifeless on the hanger but “filled out” when a person wears them. Almost like bringing to life a gorgeous piece of music which as a score is a lifeless sheet of dots and lines but in the hands of a musician, is a whole new creation.
The Christmas story brings to life our hopes of a different world. A world where vulnerable families like the Holy family are taken care of and where forgotten people are noticed. A world where the tyrant kings are cast down from their thrones while heaven comes down to peasants. A worlds where loved ones persist and strong and gentle people win. A worlds where strangers show extravagant hospitality. A world where all will be well.
This connection between the story and our hearts is so strong that it cannot help but burst into life.
We hear a lot about fulfillment in the gospels and how scripture is fulfilled through things that were happening in the ancient world at that time. It was as if the ancient world were crackling with God’s life and spirit around them. The stories from Isaiah, Leviticus and Jeremiah shimmered with their timeliness as Jesus drew them into real time.
The practice of bringing the story to life continues today.
Centuries ago, St. Francis of Assisi was on his way home from a visit to the Holy Land and he passed through a little Italian town in Greccio around Christmas time.
The rocky landscape reminded him of the Holy Land and an idea struck him. What if the townspeople played the parts of the shepherd and the angels and the Holy family? And then, what if they found some animals--like an ox or some sheep--to bring to the little barn? And then, what if they invited some people to come and experience the wonder and delight of this re-creation of the Christmas story?
St. Francis did just this. And, in the year 1223, the first living nativity was acted out, exactly 800 years ago this Christmas.
Without the actors giving life to the letters and words and verses and chapter numbers of the nativity story all strung together on the page, the story is flat and neatly tucked away on the shelf.
The hope was, and is, that if people saw and heard this story acted out, they might be able to see and experience this in their own lives too.
The Christmas story needs a third party. There is an ancient story, and a holy spirit, and there is you.
Sometimes, you are Joseph, doggedly persistent and knocking on door after door, barely hopeful, but determined to fight for the ones you love.
Sometimes, you are the innkeeper when suddenly someone knocks on your door and needs help and you extend it.
Sometimes you feel forgotten, unimportant, lonely, like shepherds when unexpectedly a choir of angels appears to you in the starry sky (or maybe it’s just an angelic friend who met you for coffee, but however it turns out) they remind you that you are beloved to God.
Christmas is a story that we bring to life--God brings to life!--through the way that we carry ourselves, through how we show up in the world, through the projects we get involved in, the places we pour our heart into, through the wild energy of the Holy Spirit that nudges us towards holy spaces.
It’s a song that begins in the shadows, it’s a cry of the caged bird singing of Good News. It’s a song of freedom that sings out persistently, even in the hardest of times.
This ancient song is meant for us. It’s meant for our neighbors. The call is to listen carefully, as Mary and Joseph and the shepherds did, to pay attention to God’s music, to fulfill our call, to pick up our instruments and play our part in the symphony.
Tuesday, December 19, 2023
Searching for a sign
For Abraham when he was feeling pretty stressed out, God somehow illuminated the twinkling stars of the heavens and said, “there you go, there is your sign that you will have many descendants.”
For Moses, there was a burning bush that he stumbles upon in the desert which is so overwhelmingly holy that he immediately takes off his shoes. (Then, lucky him, he gets to dole out 10 signs or plagues to Pharoah that carry their own potent message).
In the case of Mary of Nazareth, she gets a whole conversation with an angel named Gabriel. Each of these people needed these signs because each of them was facing some sort of big life challenge. They needed a little extra reassurance of God’s presence with them as they stepped into the unknown that was before them.
In the case of Mary, she had received life-changing news from the angel. Her initial response was dramatic as she tried to get her head in the game. She immediately took off “with haste” scripture says to visit someone she could trust. Mary’s village was not going to be okay with this news. Joseph was certainly reeling. So she treks about 60 miles out into the hill country to visit her elder cousin, Elizabeth.
Harriet Powers was a 19th century African American quilter. One of her two surviving quilts now hangs in the Smithsonian. This particular quilt in the Smithsonian shows different scenes from the bible where signs from God were misinterpreted or even ignored. In one scene, you see Noah’s neighbors making light of his ark and then refusing to join him—we all know how that turned out. In another panel, you see Jonah ignoring a sign from God and then ending up in the belly of a whale. Then, in another square, you see the dove descending on Christ in his baptism which all of humanity later ignores when he is crucified.
I first learned about Harriet Powers’ quilts from African American theologian, Dr. Donyelle McCray. In the bible quilt about the signs, Dr. McCray thinks that, Ms. Powers also quilted the stories of contemporary signs from her time that showed God’s judgement.
She also quilted a panel about a particularly spectacular meteor shower from her lifetime. On that night of the meteor shower in 1833, maybe God had hoped the people with respond with awe that would open their hearts, but instead, animals, horses and cows galloped and ran like wild all over the place. People screamed and hid, they thought the world was ending.
Eventually, Dr. McCray explains, something amazing happens to us when we live our lives in response to Jesus this way. When we tune our lives to the life of Jesus, we no longer seek signs, we become them.
I’m sure many of us can think of people in our lives who have been signs to us and assured us that we are on the right path, especially in those moments of stress or challenge.
Becoming a sign of God’s love might seem like a tall order. Believe me: No one does this perfectly—unless you know how to walk on water—but, God uses the ordinary stuff of our lives to make signs of holy love, justice and joy in the world.
Monday, December 4, 2023
Lift your voice, even if it's a little rusty at first (we all feel like dead grass sometimes)
In the coming decades, living and working conditions in Chicago would improve. Chicago had led the way with this groundbreaking idea of settlement houses for migrants. In the coming years, Ida B. Wells would begin the famous settlement house a few miles away in Bronzeville called the Negro Fellowship League which served African Americans migrating north in the early 20th century.
Eventually, the social work movement would grow out of these seeds of Jane Addams work through the Hull House.
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In today’s scripture, we meet Jesus’ advance man, John the Baptist. His role was to “prepare the way” for Jesus and call other people to prepare it with him. God had a dream that John had caught on to. But that dream wasn’t John’s to fulfill. It was God’s dream to fulfill.
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Comfort, O comfort my people,” God is saying
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem
and cry to her that she has served her term.” (Is. 40:1-2)
A voice cries out:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God… (Is. 40:3)
What?--I imagine him thinking--could I ever say, Oh Holy One? have you seen what it’s like down here?! The people are like grass, actual dried, dead grass, Oh God! We are like withered flowers, despondent, depressed. There is no sparkle, no joy! (ref. Is. 40:6-8)
O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,
lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
“Here is your God!” (40:9)
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An ancient people in exile longing for a way home.
Who is God pointing you towards and encouraging you to pass your own flame to in your life? Maybe it’s a friend or a family member. Maybe it’s a whole people or a land that is faded and dried out that yearns for the love of God.
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This season is not always the easiest. So many times, right along side of the razzle-dazzle of Christmas is some sort of pain or regret. It could be grief for someone who has died, pain for some broken situation in our own lives, or sorrow for some place in our shattered world.
That is exactly where Christmas begins.
If you are one of the ones who is hurting and searching for the path forward right now, you are not alone.
This glowing good news of God’s gracious love sings in us and, to riff off of the Maya Angelou, poem we just heard, we lift our voice and share the good news
Tuesday, May 23, 2023
A pattern of life, a pattern of God (a message from 5.7.23)
"Jesus said to him, 'I am the way’" John 14:6
The dance known as Salsa (which is awfully easier to demonstrate than write about) is a pattern of stepping forward for three steps and back for three steps. This pattern repeats itself over and over, often in tandem with another person moving the same way. When you’ve got the pattern down, you can make the dance fancy by adding twirls and fun arm movements on top of it. But, however you spice it up, underneath it there is always this steady foot pattern.
I’d compare it to a heartbeat in our chest that is always underneath whatever we’re doing: walking down the street, scrolling on our phones, or eating lunch, it’s always there underneath us as a pattern thumping away. If you put your hand on your chest, you can feel it: Lub-dub, lub-dub…
In the gospel of John, there is no traditional Christmas story. There’s no stable and manger or shepherds and Magi. Instead, in the beginning was a pattern. The scripture verses say in English in the “beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) Word is how we translate the Greek word Logos into English. But, Word does not explain the breadth of what Logos means. The Greek word is so big and broad and evocative that we have to toss all these little words in English at it trying to shine a light on its’ significance.
In the beginning was the word
The thought
The reason
In the beginning was the pattern
The way
The disciple Thomas is worried in our bible story today. Actually, all the disciples probably are. Jesus has just explained that he is preparing to leave. They’ve really attached a lot of hope to him that he’s going to be the one to shake things up and even turn this world upside down. Now, it turns out, he’s going to die and his death will be ugly and heartbreaking. They’re confused.
In their defense, Jesus can be a little obtuse in the gospel of John. Everything he says seems to have some other poetic significance behind it. For example, there’s all this talk about abiding with each other which I’d liken to being on the same wave, or in this magnetic, soul-searching relationship with God. It’s deep. The disciples, always seem to be a more concrete in their understanding of Jesus’ poetry.
When Jesus says to them in today’s story with heartfelt intensity, “you know where I’m going,” I imagine them all looking at each other quizzically and whispering: “what’s he talking about? he didn’t mention anything to me about going somewhere, did he tell you?”
Jesus replies with that same sage sincerity: “I am the way…if you know me you know the Father.”
His explanation doesn’t seem to land with them and Phillip replies, “Okay, I’m still not totally tracking here. Could you give us some coordinates, or draw us some sort of map, so we’re sure to get to the Father’s house…you know, the one with all the many rooms?”
And Jesus tenderly replies: You already know the Way. I’m not a guide on the path, “I am the way.” Keep walking the way.
I am the way,
the pattern.
The way we’ve been walking
The truth we’ve been absorbing
The life we’ve been breathing and living together,
I am the way the truth the life
The pattern
This is the point in our gospel story where God is about to kick it up a notch and take the church to another level. We think sometimes, that it can’t get much bigger than Easter Sunday, but this is the point in the story where Jesus is headed out to God just as the Holy Spirit is on her way in to us. Remember: soon, Jesus will die, then he’ll be resurrected. After his resurrection, he’ll ascend to be with God. As Jesus ascends and leaves his beloved disciples he will pass the baton to them—to us!—to the Church. The Church is about to be born and we’ll hear this awesome story on Pentecost in a few weeks.
This Church that will be born, Jesus explains, shall do even greater things than He has done. (v. 12)
How will the Church accomplish this? By following the pattern and by walking the way. By abiding in Jesus, vibing with him, learning from him and working to become one with him. Jesus’ disciples are worried about what the future holds and Jesus speaks to that concern and explains they must stay on this path. Dwell with me, he invites them, in one of these magnificent rooms in my Father’s house. Dance to this pattern. Follow the way. And our connection will grow and deepen.
This Way or pattern of living flows like living water under how we live our lives (John 4). It’s like the heartbeat beneath us that guides us in how we show up in the world, how we make decisions and how treat people. It directs us in how we spend and give our money. It pulls us to love people and to question worldly ways of power and status. This Way thumping beneath us influences how we live our lives.
Annie Dillard writes about the importance of a pattern like a schedule. Every day, she explains, we count on waking and sleeping at certain hours. We count on 3 meals a day. Perhaps we read a the news or a devotional at a certain time. Whatever you’re schedule is, Dillard writes, we use it as a base or a scaffolding to build our lives on. (1)
This way or pattern that God Is to us is the scaffolding that we that we build our lives into. We build our families, friendships and careers into this scaffolding. We build our hopes and activism into this design. Giving structure, support and life-animating essence to each thing we do is this pattern underneath. When we’ve got the pattern down, we add twirls and flair on top of it. We adjust the tempo and add our personality. When we trip, we listen for that sacred rhythm and we sync up to again.
Today, we celebrate the baptisms of Bernadette and Miles. When we talk about baptism, picture this Way that we walk with God. Baptism is a mile marker or, perhaps, an on-ramp into a relationship with God. (Mind you, it’s not the only on-ramp, Jesus cautions us against excluding people when he says things like “I have other sheep that are not from this fold”).
The experience of faith is a journey of a curiosity around who Jesus is, how God moves around us, how we live our lives, and how we walk through this world as people of the Way. With baptism, that living water and that essence of God flows through us like a heartbeat. In baptism, we’re called to live our lives in sync with God and abide with the Pattern of Love.
We sync up with God’s pattern when we do things like showing up for friends or people in need, through exploring the curiosities and questions of our faith, and through worship.
In our own congregation, I see us syncing up with the pattern of God’s love as we’ve helped the migrants who are sheltered police stations this last week. We walk to this rhythm of God’s love through making meals, through offering our loving presence, and, for example, through giving haircuts to all the little boys living at the 17th precinct police station a few days ago and even bringing hair gel so they can feel just a little more normal. (Somehow, I think the gift of hair gel for these little boys who have had such a hard go of it is particularly a part of the pattern of God’s love).
I will head to my sabbatical at the end of this church service and I will be resting in God’s love this summer which is also part of this pattern and Way.
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Now, in case you are one of the people who heard me mention salsa dancing at the beginning of this message and said “oh, that is not me, I am nothing close to a salsa dancer,” maybe the dancing metaphor isn’t for you; but I notice that the life of faith is the same as learning to dance: It asks us to participate and practice. It challenges us to learn to walk to a distinctive pattern and in a particular the way. And, with time, steady as our own heart beat we realize—wow—we’re in sync with God.
In fact, we’ve been held in God’s love all along.
(1) "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order -- willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living. Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern." --From "The Writing Life," by Annie Dillard
Friday, May 5, 2023
A spark of glory and hearts ablaze in connection (an Emmaus message about despair and hope)
Last weekend, I drove with my family down to southern Illinois. I am originally from Springfield and when I was a kid, my family used to camp down at Giant City state park. We were on the lookout for spring and as we drove south, you could see the green starting to creep up the trees. Everything was in full bloom. This meant that, poor Omar sneezed his way through the woods while the kids and I skipped.
It was a really simple beautiful weekend where we hiked and ate sandwiches and connected with an old friends. But enough of a reprieve to shake the dust out of my head and feel refreshed.
Not long after returning back to Chicago, the news cycle did a number on me when I heard about the teenager Ralph, who is Black who went to pick his brother up at the wrong house and was shot on the doorstep by the man who was White inside. Thankfully, he lived. The rush of other news articles to take in this week didn’t help.
Our bible story today tells of two friends walking together on the road to the town called Emmaus. They are talking about all of the things that have happened in the last few days: Jesus’ arrest, his torture, his crucifixion at the hands of the state and now the fact that, although he was buried, the tomb now appears to be empty and people are saying he was raised from the dead which is just about more than they can bear.
Unbeknownst to them, Jesus appears as a stranger walking along side of them. He asks them what they’re talking about so emphatically and they tell him about everything. "We had hoped," they said, “that he would be the one to redeem us, to fix this mess of a world we live in, to make all things right.” Jesus walks there with them for a while listening to them as they explain. We had hoped. They are despairing.
Vivek Murthy, the US Surgeon General names a couple of reasons that he thinks feed this feeling of despair. He mentions four things:
3. Our ability to talk to one another is broken. Unless we’re with like minded folks, we hesitate to bring things up because we don’t know how people will react. We get hung up on people’s words instead of their intentions. That gets tricky because how we work things out when times are stressful is to talk it through. So, we’re not talking about stuff.
4. Loneliness and isolation and in that, more than ½ of Americans feel lonely. More than ½ young people feel lonely.
Ukranian artist, Ivanka Demchuk painted this scene with the two disciples as these brown figures on the road with their hearts blazing gold and radiating out from their chest.
But I can promise, as Jesus showed us, that the antidote to despair is connection and when we connect with one another, that spark that God ignites in us can set the whole world ablaze in glory.
Now, about connection: We are so often told that we can go it alone. We’re told that it’s each individual’s responsibility to manage their own despair and pain, but we are social, communal creatures and we depend on each other for healing. Jesus shows us this in how he continually reaches out and sparks connection with people. The very act of getting out of ourselves and gathering, for example, in a church on a Sunday morning with people that are different from us, and talking about how we care about this other world that God is calling us to is counter cultural.
We have a world to rebuild and what can get in our way is despair. We’re called to be much more than spectators to suffering. While we can’t always eliminate that despair completely, God does open a way through it by guiding us to rebuild our connection to each other.
What does that connection do?
In just a short while, we will baptize Sebastian Jude. When we gather around the baptismal font, we will renounce the powers of this world that would try to divide and demean us. We will renounce powers that justify mass shootings and ideologies of supremacy and inferiority based on race or gender. We will commit to living in a such a way that brings about this radical kingdom of God even when it feels like the world is on fire around us.
Death will not prevail, for God will strike it down, and new life will rise.
Thanks be to God.
Monday, April 24, 2023
An Easter message: When fear and joy hold hands and walk us to courage
When someone is buried, they stay buried and, at least in this life, we don’t expect to see them again in any tangible way. While the gardens in the cemeteries come back to life in the springtime with flowers and grass, that’s about it and the best we can do is visit the graves of those we have loved and continue on. This is what Mary Magdalene and the other Mary did that early, early morning when then went to visit Jesus’ grave. But, what they encountered was anything but natural and predictable.
As Mary Magdalene and the other Mary process those twin feelings of feelings of fear and joy, the angel invites them into the tomb to have a look around and see for themselves that Jesus is not there. They poke around in that cold, damp cave looking at each other in wide eyed wonder and terror and then, angel, pipes up and tells them to, “go now quickly and tell the disciples, he has been raised from the dead and is on his way to Galilee” This show is on the road!”
I wonder if, before they took off running, they thought about it for a moment—grasping each other’s hands, leaning against each other trying to catch their breath--but then they run with their hearts pounding. No sooner had they taken off when Jesus shows up there on the road. “Greetings” he says and it’s just about more than they can bear and they grab onto his feet, beside themselves. He also tells them not to be afraid—probably because new life is frightening.
Just as God pointed those women and set them on the way we are sent to go and seek the love of God alive around us and to share the story of how we know God’s love is alive in our lives even while the very ground shifts and quakes beneath our feet.
For Christ is alive, he is risen!
He is risen indeed alleluia!
A message about goosebumps, neuroscience and the power of being known by God (from 4.9.23)
There are studies that show that when you feel goosebumps or a tingle the chills that they come when you feel this heightened sense that you are joined with others in community or that you share a common experience. Evolutionarily, there are some essentials we have as mammals. Right alongside of the need to eat and keep our oxygen at the correct level, we have to keep our body temperature in the right range in order to survive. Not to hot or cold. There are some mammals that are highly social, like some dogs or wolves or primates and humans that, when they get too cold: they huddle. The very first physical response social mammals have when it gets very cold is that our hair stands up so that our skin bunches up so it’s less porous to the cold. This, then, signals to others to draw near and even embrace, which releases oxytocin, a neurochemical that rushes through the body and makes us more open to others. Neuroscientists say that the sensation of goosebumps unite or connect us with others as we try to make sense of these big unknown things before us.
When our ancient mammal relatives came up in front of vast mysteries, and even dangerous ones: their hair stood up and they found this warmth and strength in drawing closer to each other. What were vast unknowns or mysteries for these ancient relatives? a roaring waterfall, a powerful thunderstorm, a massive canyon, wild gusts of wind.
Our bible doesn’t talk specifically about chills or goosebumps. It also wasn’t written in the verbose times we live in now where we record every minute detail. There is so much left to imagination and interpretation. But the bible does have some stories of people who, in the face of vast mysteries open up to each other and this fits with the neuroscience like a glove. There are a lot of stories about mysteries and epiphanies and how they change us, but today’s is about a Samaritan woman that Jesus encountered at a well.
In this bible story of The Other Good Samaritan Jesus and the woman have a taboo conversation it’s taboo for a lot of reasons. Not only is there the male/female thing happening, Jesus and the Samaritan woman are also on two sides of a deep divide. In their day, the Israelites and Samaritans were enemies, but not distant, “out there” kind of enemies. More like “in my back yard, looks a lot like me but is different in all the wrong ways kind of enemy.” Their religion agreed on some key points but diverged around a couple of details that were significant enough to make them hate each other. The set up of this encounter between Jesus and this woman is immediately tense in the minds of ancient people. These two have no reason to interact or get to know one another, but Jesus asks something of her anyway. That’s the first mysterious thing.
The scripture does not say this, but I have to wonder if she had chills when Jesus asked her for a drink of water. We don’t know this, but again, neuroscience tells us that when people feel that profound human connection that causes a tingle in the spine or goosebumps, it releases oxytocin and it makes us more open to others.
With that question that reached across the breach, they were immediately stepping out onto a limb. The conversation continues.
History has not been kind to the Samaritan woman around the issue of her five husbands. We have no idea what her story is, but there are a number of choice words and phrases that have been tagged to her over the centuries. Folks say she was “no angel” had a “checkered past” was a prostitute and was “living in sin.” There’s no biblical basis for any of this. Just cultural…
Honestly? We could easily guess she had been widowed. Or maybe she had been divorced because she couldn’t conceive a child and her husbands divorced her because of it. We don’t know why she had been married so many times. But husband after husband divorced her or died until she was finally left with the brother of her late husband who basically took her as a pity-wife because the law said he had to.
In their conversation, this woman shares her truth with Jesus and admits that she has no husband. That's bold. She could have just ignored him. It was a moment of taking off the mask and sheer honesty. She meets him halfway. Mysteriously, Jesus fills in the gaps of her story and then meets her at the other half tells her his truth. He is the great I Am. In that mysterious moment, it was like goosebumps radiated up and down their arms and they drew close to one another. You can see this image of the two of them on the front of your bulletin meeting each other in the middle with true honesty. She shows us how to be completely and fully honest and known before God.
Face to face with the messiah, you really know who you are: the good, the bad, the embarrassing, the hopeful, all of it. It is the mystery of being fully known, seen and understood. There is no hiding here, no hiding the parts of ourselves or the parts of our lives that we would just as soon forget.
In the gospel of John, to be a disciple of Jesus is to be in relationship with God. It doesn’t necessarily mean “to follow” the way it does in our other gospels. And that’s okay, Sometimes, I think this idea of “following” makes it seem like we can’t question anything or interrogate anything. It is an image of sitting, like this cover shows eye to eye, heart to heart with Jesus.
What does it look like to be in relationship with God? Last week, I met with an old friend who was in town for breakfast. He has a current mantra He’s working on, he told me. “Don’t criticize, complain, or condemn.” Apparently, it’s loosely related to the philosophies of addition and recovery that he’s involved with.
This is good solid advice, but I happen to know that this person periodically changes their mantras, breathes them, repeats them throughout the day, writes them on the corner of pieces of paper laying around, and I’d say prays them, until they weave themselves into his being.
What would be the mantra that you need to pray continually? What is your honest truth that only God knows and the prayer that lifts out of it. What is it that you must cultivate more of in your heart? More grace or mercy towards people who “aren’t getting it right?”Less cynicsm? More tenacity? Less knee jerk judgement and more openness? More generosity towards people who have less than you? More compassion for our bodies that are thankfully less than perfect? Less-self doubt? More appreciation of the beauty you run across in your daily life?
The spiritual growth that we crave and long for must be cultivated beyond a visit to church on Sunday morning.
If believing in the gospel of John means to be in relationship with God: to let ourselves be fully and honestly known. We must be honest about where we’re cracked and crumbling and to quietly, slowly let God work on us. Sometimes it is these daily quotidian habits that slowly deepen our connection to God over time.
Lent is a time where we open our hearts so that God can prune away the old habits and patterns that should be cut back. Then, we fertilize and cultivate the areas that need to grow. God does this all with the aim of greening our souls. In the profound gift of being truthful and being known by God, may we draw closer to and be shaped by the one, who is, who was and who will be.
Thursday, February 23, 2023
An Ash Wednesday message about truth, courage and us.
Remember “you are dust and to dust you shall return” Genesis 3:19
I started off Ash Wednesday much like the past few years: on the corner outside the church building braving the elements and offering ashes to folks on their way to drop their kids off at Waters school across the street in the morning. This year I was joined by C. C and I stood at the corner in the rain, a little like wet cats, offering ashes to folks who passed by. We didn’t have as many takers as past years, but we had a few: There was the woman with the white haired pixie cut who pulled over:
“Wait, are you giving out ashes?” I drew the cross on her forehead and she ran back to her car.
As I went through the day, I saw a few people marked with ashes. It always kind of takes me by surprise to run into someone with the ashes on their face. You would think it wouldn’t given my line of work, but it does. There was the woman driving her car who waited for me to cross at the stop sign, the school crossing guard, the other parent at the school waiting with me in the rain for our kids to be dismissed.
Usually we start off our days dirt free and well groomed—or at least we do our best. I for one, trust that someone will at least give me the heads up if something is off when I’m walking out of the house. There was the time that, as I was rushing to get out the door, one of my younger family members informed me that I had my shirt on inside out. (I quickly fixed that one—lest someone be let in on the secret that I don’t always have it 100% together.)
Somedays, it’s worse than having the shirt on inside out. Somedays, we’re not sleeping well, or someone we love is sick, or we’re worried about a decision we’ve made, or about the state of the world. Somedays we’re uncomfortable in our own skin for all kinds of reasons.
Most days, we keep up the facade. We go about our business, work hard, go to school, go to the store, blend into the crowd and attempt to appear that we’re either holding it together, optimistic, upbeat, or whatever vibe de jour is most acceptable that day.
But today—today, we come for the ashes.
In just a short while, we’ll invite you to come forward and you’ll be marked by dust. It’s this visible acknowledgement that sometimes things in our lives—which we try to keep running smoothly—crack, crumble, or even break. When the dust settles, we’re left with a little pile of dirt, or rubble or sand that slips right through our fingers when we scoop into our hands.
Usually, we try to sweep this dusty reality under the rug a little like it doesn’t matter. We pretend that we’re not really anxious or lonely or overworked or harried or upset.
But not today.
Today, we acknowledge that the air is full of ashes, hearts around the world are full of ashes. Today we remember we are human, mortal and, as scripture says, “that we are dust.”
It’s a little strange: this practice of remembering like this. Why do we do this?
We are certainly surrounded by enough worry and pain, disappointment, stress and despair already: What if I don’t get into the right high school or college? What if my marriage doesn’t make it? What if getting old is worse than I thought? Why am I still alone? How could I have messed this up? Failed again? What if…
What good does it do to go over it again here on Ash Wednesday? Why focus on the dust? Why not just keep our chins up and march forward bright and shiny and perfect so we can rise up and shine and succeed? (We really do put a lot of effort into having it all together…)
Sara Miles is a pastor who writes that “It’s rare in our culture to admit, in public, that you’re not in control—that you, basically, are not God. And, given the din of advertising and political polemic and hype and doublespeak surrounding us, it’s rare to escape the fantasy that money or science, fame or violence or shiny objects will somehow save us from death.”
Ash Wednesday is the most honest day of the year. “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Its the day where we admit that we don’t entirely have it all together. That we are not actually in control and the gods of our own lives.
Last year, we had two high schoolers who gave out ashes during the service. I was standing at the side watching until Tom came up as one of the very last people in the line with baby M. M was very, very tiny—just three weeks old.
One of the youth made the cross on Tom’s forehead. As Tom turned to walk back to his bench, I locked eyes with him:
“Did you want her to receive ashes?” I whispered, touching M’s back.
“Yeah—“ he said.
I’ve never given ashes to such a tiny baby and it seemed almost wrong to remind such a tiny, precious creature of her humanness and mortality, but Tom’s courage was unflinching and contagious and gave me courage.
I lifted up the front of her tiny hat and made the cross on her soft forehead: Remember, sweet child, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
I’m sure there will be more moments of honesty in little M’s life—moments of heartbreak and challenge—but that was a start.
The truth is that as human beings, we all crack and crumble sometimes. We break. We are all fallible and imperfect. Tonight we admit that together.
It is “profoundly countercultural” as Pastor Miles wrote, to publicly admit this. When we admit this together, and when we visibly see this on each other, we realize that we are human together and we give each other courage and hope.
You, high schoolers, so many of you who are leading the service tonight, give me courage and hope with your bravery towards the way you look challenges in the face, bravely manage your own dusty pain, and call us not to turn away from the ashen places in this world.
You church grandparents, give us hope and courage with your ever present reminders of God’s faithful presence in our lives, even when you waiver.
God, who is that undeniable essence of love, cherished Comforter, and animating life force is stronger than we are and will ever be. For even in the ash of this world, we are kept safe in the promise of God’s eternal love.