What actually matters to you? (3.8.26)

 Matthew 19:13-15
13 Then children were being brought to him in order that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples spoke sternly to those who brought them, but Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, and do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” And he laid his hands on them and went on his way.

Deuteronomy 24:17-22
17 “You shall not deprive an immigrant or an orphan of justice; you shall not take a widow’s garment in pledge. 18 Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and the LORD your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this. “When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the immigrant, the orphan, and the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all your undertakings. When you beat your olive trees, do not strip what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow. “When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean what is left; it shall be for the immigrant, the orphan, and the widow.  Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I am commanding you to do this.

Last week, we celebrated a birthday in my family. Birthdays are important to us and we have some special traditions.  

We have the cake, the gifts, four verses of the happy birthday song and in our house, a song called las mañanitas this Latin American folk song sung in Spanish.  When the birthday-person is waking up, we press play on a mariachi version. I bring the cupcakes, Omar brings las Mañanitas.  We had a friend at our old church, named Doña Soccorro who loved this birthday song: las mañanitas—there was no “happy birthday to you” singing in her house, 
only las mañanitas.  

Doña Socorro was the matriarch, there were dozens of grandchildren, nieces and nephews.  And there was always a birthday to celebrate. But there was a problem.  
There are five verses to this folk tune. You better believe that doña Socorro sang them all. But as for the rest of us, we degraded into sounding like a pack of pirates by the first verse. 

Shortly after we met her, Doña Soccoro decided she’d had enough of everyone making up the words and she hired a local calligrapher to elaborately script all five verses and the chorus in an arc across one of her entryways into the dining room—flowers and all birds bursting joyfully out of the painted stanzas.  

She would bring out the cake, everyone would glance at the words painted on the wall, and off we would go singing. I can’t promise it was in tune, but we did get those words right.  

She wanted the birthday person to hear a roomful of people singing “on the day you were born the flowers bloomed with joy!”  and because she literally built it into the dining room,  everyone with a birthday did.

********

We build the things that matter into our lives.  
We build the cupcakes into the birthday.  
We build the traditions into Christmas
We build The pomp and circumstance into the graduation.

We build other things in: In our house, we have a guest room—much to the frustration of my children who would prefer NOT to share a room. Taking care of guests this way is important to us. And we have the means, so we have a spare room.

We’ve built a kitchen table into our house because we want a shared space where we can all sit together and eat a meal or play a game.  I often build in NOTHING into my Sunday afternoons. Maybe a nap. Or if the dog is lucky, a walk. But that nothing is not really nothing.  It’s space for rest, for pause. We build the things that matter into our lives. Annie Dillard once wrote:

“there is no shortage of good days. 
It is good lives 
that are hard to come by…
a schedule defends from chaos and whim…
it is a scaffolding on which [we] can stand. 
A good schedule stops you from wondering what to do next.
We build the things that matter into our lives. 

We know this.  Love takes some sort of structured shape, a guestroom, a table, a mariachi song. Deuteronomy says the same thing about generosity and justice. We have been asking this Lent, “tell me something good.” This week, the good news is that God protects and cares for vulnerable people. God actively builds this into life. And we know something about that here at LMC. 

We have built some care for the vulnerable into our Life Together here.  We’ve built a guest room that has been inhabited for several years by various families who are immigrants.  We’re going to start building a shower soon on the first floor.  We’ve built a free little pantry outside our red doors, a pray ground in the back of the sanctuary.

We build generosity into our church budget with your offering that supports through the national church, disaster relief, health care around the world and social services we build choir practice, youth group and bible study, Sunday morning worship into our life together here—
none of that just happens, we build the things that matter into our Life Together.

In our Hebrew Bible reading, Deuteronomy asks a very practical question: What matters? Who matters? 

If the answer is “caring for vulnerable people” (and God certainly tell us so) Then God instructs us to build it into how we live. A couple thousand years ago, the world was agrarian.   So scripture said: if you have a field, don’t harvest it all, leave a little extra around the edges 
so people in need can take some of the left over grain.  If you have an olive tree, don’t pick the branches bare, leave some fruit for folks who are hungry. Same goes with the grapes.  Leave some extra on the vine for the people who need them.  

Built it into your life. Structure ordinary generosity into how you live.  Construct the architecture that leads you to live justly. Sometimes we build generosity into our lives,  sometimes we build it out. 

When we build it out:  There are moments where we’ve packed our lives so full of work or activities  that there’s no slack left, no room to linger in a conversation or time to step in to help if someone needs it. We may mean well. But there is simply no room left in us to pause, to notice, to wait. Vulnerable people rarely arrive at convenient times. Need often interrupts our plans, our efficiency, our sense of control.  If we never leave room at the edges,  we don’t have space to respond.

Another way we build it out: Sometimes we structure our lives in a way that waits for people to reach out to us instead of us reaching out to them. 

We don’t pick up the phone 
We don’t send that text 
We don’t show up at the event.
We structure life so others do all the work of reaching out and across to us. And even if we have all the time in the world, connection gets built out of our lives.

A third way:
Sometimes we hold onto grudges or judgement or old hurts. We avoid certain people, we tell the story of hurt again and again to ourselves until the wound hardens and becomes wooden, 
even a part of the architecture, And overtime, we build the generosity of reconciliation and forgiveness out of our lives. 

If we want to build the things that matter into our lives, we have to take a close look 
at what we’re already building in and out for better or worse. 

So it may be helpful to ask: Where in my life do I make room for the things that God says matter? The things God cares about?--for mercy, generosity, justice, forgiveness, community, care for the vulnerable? 

Our habits form us. If I look at my calendar and my spending and my habits and my attention, 
what do I see? What am I building in? And what might I be building out?  Building generosity, justice, community and mercy into our lives takes a little reflection and some intention.  We could just rely on our instincts to help us live out our values, but they’re not always so dependable.

Our best intentions can be derailed by our mood, or how tired we are. So instead of relying on good intentions,  God instructs the people to build it into their days, make it part of the scaffolding. Our instinct says, I love this happy birthday mañanitas song, let’s all try to sing it.  The structure painted on the wall makes it actually happen.

Our instinct produces heartwearming charity.  Gosh, that’s a nice worship service, I’ll make an offering.    A structure: I care about the ministry of LMC and the things they’re doing so I’ll set up a reoccurring gift that kicks in  even when I’m not here.  

Good intentions are nice. 
Shared practices form us.  

Over and over in scripture, when God means business, she doesn’t leave it to whim. God writes it into the law: 

Leave the edges of your field unharvested.  
Rest once a week on the sabbath
Forgive people’s debts every seven years.

God gives practices that can anchor us and carry us through our human flightiness. God is constantly building mercy into the people’s life—it is built into the fields, the olive trees, 
the seven days of the week, And in Jesus, God builds mercy--builds love--right into human flesh.  In Jesus, mercy is embodied.  In Jesus, we know what life looks like when we don’t leave love to impulse or whim but when it is practiced and carried and given over and over. In Jesus, we see the pattern of God’s love structured and lived in a human life.


A faithful life doesn’t depend only on whims or feelings but on the practices that deepen love within us and draw it out as blessing for others. 

Life is fragile and beautiful and fleeting, 
So build it well.
Build in mercy.
Build in rest.
Build in generosity.
Build in room for people who are vulnerable.
Build a life where love isn’t looking for a way in
because over time, we become the life we have built.

The world doesn't need any more hot takes from Christians (3.15.26)

John 8:2-11

...And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground...When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him... Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they?  (v. 8-10)

Matthew 23:23

...You have neglected the weightier matters of the law—justice and mercy and faithfulness. It now behooves you to do those and not leave them aside.

Around mid-March, the winds start to change in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.   Our tiny planet makes a yearly trek around the sun and in March, as the light changes, the winds shift and start blowing across the ocean in a new pattern.  As they push the surface water that ripples at the top of the bay to the south, the cool water begins to upwell from the deep.  This happens all over the earth, but off the coast of Monterrey there are run these deep craggy canyons cutting across the ocean floor filled with lush, rippling forests of kelp. As the surface water is pushed south, cool plumes of water gently reach up towards the atmosphere flooding the ocean surface with nutrients and minerals. It doesn’t take long for tiny ocean creatures flood the waters and feed. All the ocean animals, fish, birds, mammals rush to eat and replenish in the life-giving waters that rise up from the deep, deep ocean.  There at the surface of the ocean, life gathers and is visible.  It's bounty fed by the deep, rich plumes of water. 

This is true of us too. 

Our daily life happens on the surface—in our choices, our conversations, our actions, the way we take care of our relationships.  But this surface of our lives is always being fed by something: Sometimes things are going well and we are bursting with—love and kindness for everyone.  Sometimes, they are not. And our lives are fed by hurry or resentment or shame or anger, and that shows up too.  But there are weightier things that also feed the surface and  today, Jesus is calling us to tap into them.

********
We have a sharp story from our gospel today.  Two of them, in fact.

Before I get into it: we are close to Holy Week and I want to clearly say that stories and texts like the ones we hear today have been used by Christians for generations, millennia to tear down Judaism in order to prop up Christianity. This is sinful.  Jesus is a Jewish teacher who has strong disagreements with other Jewish teachers, all within the tradition.  In what we hear today, he has a critique of religious hypocrisy and hardness—the kinds that can calcify into any religious tradition—including our own.  Heaven knows I can work on my own rigidity and hypocrisy in my own life. 

*******

In today’s story, a woman is brought alone into a circle of men and accused.  

The crowds gathers.  An energy ripples across the surface and people want a verdict. Rules were broken. The religious leaders (picture someone like me) call out her sin and ask Jesus if she should be stoned. These leaders have already been ruffled and flustered by Jesus’ teaching and actions for some time now. Tension pulses at the surface. They want a punishment, a decision. I think they also want a trap for Jesus. 

Jesus doesn’t answer quickly.  He pauses quietly first, drawing or writing something in the dirt as the moment waits. Something deeper than the accusation begins to upwell.  Jesus is the very presence, essence and life of God and mercy is already rising up in him. He finally answers their question, and the surface water begins to change. essentially, he holds up a mirror: which of you is without sin?, he asks. They look.  And pause.

Maybe it’s because they are startled by their own reflection—I can’t say what it is for sure—but, something deeper stirs, plumes of mercy seem to reach up from the depths.  Jesus waits, drawing something there in the dirt. And by the time he looks up, life on the surface has shifted.  Deep cries out to deep.  The circle dissipates and the men walk away. Maybe they felt mercy for the woman.  Or, maybe they were simply shamed. I can’t say.  Whatever it was that stirred in them, the fire of their accusation and trap seems to be flooded by something deeper.  The hot current at the surface loses force. Is it humility? Mercy? Confession? Maybe. Can’t totally say, but that deeper truth stirs the shallower waters.

**************

What feeds the actions and behaviors on the surface of our lives? What nourishes our life as it shows up on the surface?  A million and one things: I rush to get out of my house,  cuss in frustration with myself or the car next to me and all of it is fed by hurry, impatience, overwhelm.  

Or, we are fired up around a specific situation: we’re cutting, mean, judgmental.  Know-it-alls. It’s fed by our impulse to be right, to win, to smack down.  Maybe control too.

Or, we are flat, detached, our light is dim. Even anesthetized. It’s fed by disappointment, shame, maybe boredom. Or worry.

In this story, Jesus waits.  Somehow, with hardly any words, he calls out the loud, hot currents of judgement, fear and self-protection. In another one of these tense encounters, we heard the gospel of Matthew records Jesus saying, “You have neglected the weightier matters of the law—justice and mercy and faithfulness. It now behooves you to do those and not leave them aside.”  

When we live up at the surface, we can reflexively build our lives with our impulses. In the story, Jesus pauses, writes in the dirt, and waits as the deeper the groundswells of mercy, justice and faithfulness begin to rise. 

One theologian, Matt Skinner, wrote,  “Jesus has expectations for the people he calls to himself.  He knows we’re capable of obstructing his promised blessings.” I thought about this in terms of the deeper blessings we’re called to and how we wall them off, obstruct them with all the stuff at the surface.

How do we feed our lives with what is weighty? With what is deep?  

I have three suggestions for you: 

1. 

Last week, we talked about the need to build the things that matter into our lives.  The ancient people were commanded to leave the edges of their fields unharvested so people in need could harvest the extra wheat or grapes or olives themselves. Land owners, were commanded to do this. So one way we feed our lives with what is weighty is to build it into the structure of how we live so we’re not derailed by whim or impulsive feeling. 

2. 

Pause what is going on at the surface.  Wait. Pray. This is one of the most vivid moments in the bible story today.  I, personally can be fast to cut when I am under pressure. In a world of fast responses, plumes of mercy take a minute to well up from the deep. In the story, Jesus interrupts the scene, even slows it down. He doesn’t give a snap response. He refuses to let the loudest thing in the moment control everyone.

3.

A third way: feed our lives with what is weighty? Get proximate to the things that matter. (as Brian Severson would say) Bring God into the your life.  Who are the people and places that connect you to those deeper currents of justice, mercy and faithfulness?

Community matters. Friendship matters. Worship and hearing God’s word matters.  Serving other people matters. 

********

Jesus calls us to live and nourish our lives with the eternal currents that rise up from the deep. Like justice, mercy and faithfulness. So build them into your lives. Pause and slow down when the surface is churning.  Get close to people and practices, and prayers and music, to acts of service that enliven and vivify God’s presence in the middle of ordinary days.

Because, of course life happens on the surface—in how we interact with people, in the choices we make when we feel pressure, in the responses that rise in us  when we’re provoked or afraid or tired or worried. But what is it that will rise in us in those moments? 

May those loud, tinny currents of our lives be flooded by something different, deeper and more holy.

The world doesn’t need any more hot takes from Christians. It needs lives that are fed from the deep and hearts that are flooded with God.

Easter Sunday: The defeat of a cramped imagination (2026)

Matthew 28: 1-10

Years ago, I hopped in an elevator in the old state of Illinois building—the Bilandic building on LaSalle—one of those old early 20th century skyscrapers built 100 years ago.  Up and up went the elevator until suddenly, the car lurched, groaned and grated to a clanking stop. No one ever wants to be in this position. Ever. I don’t remember having anything on me. No phone, no wallet, no ID that they would be able to pull from my pocket to identify my body when the metal box plummeted to the basement.  I even don’t remember one of those emergency phones in the elevator that they always have in movies. I do remember starting to feel weak in the knees. I was physically enclosed. Without a way out. My mind went blank. 

On Easter morning, Mary and Mary Magdalene made their way to the tomb of Jesus in the cold dark fog of dawn. The gospel of Luke tells us tell us they went with spices to care for Jesus’ dead body. The gospel of John tells us that Mary Magdalene was so devastated and grief stricken that she was disoriented. In all the versions, the women go to the tomb in the aftermath of a horrific crucifixion with very reasonable expectations to find Jesus dead body. He is dead. The story is over. They are going through the motions of what happens next.

As they arrive, the ground jolts and shakes with an earthquake. An angel who flashed like lightening with clothes as white as snow, bursts onto the scene. This resplendent visitor rolls back the stone from Jesus’ tomb and plops on it, looking at them. “Not here,” the angel says. “He has been raised.”

Impossible. 

Hope is not just exhausted, The possibilities are supposed to be dead. The end is the end. The curtain has closed. But the ground shakes...

“Come have a look,” the angel says. Their knees wobble and they step inside. 

…Just when we think we have a grasp on reality. Just when we’re confident the dust has settled…

“He’s gone,” angel says to the women. “He beat you to it. He’s already on the road. On his way to Galilee.”

…Just when we’re sure the four walls have closed and are sealed, Just when we’re certain that the worst is true, … God refuses our finality.

God is not bound--not restrained--by our smallest reading of reality.  For all we think we have it figured out, what we see is still smaller than what God sees. 

********

Let’s pause it for a moment here between the angel telling the women that Jesus has been raised and them switching lanes and immediately flipping to joy. Let’s pause the Hallelujah chorus for a few minutes because where the women stand there grasping at reality, that’s where I step in:

I know what it’s like to feel cramped.  Put imagination in a tight corner and she becomes a noisy little factory of dread, a workshop churning out worst-case scenarios. I know what it’s like to feel constrained. To feel the elevator lurch to a stop and to be flooded with worry. To come up against a wall—to persist like heck--and be defeated. 

Sometimes, I think we face problems that are impossible to crack: Wars rage and the headlines come at us so fast that we’re paralyzed and can’t imagine peace. The planet groans. An ice sheet cracks, the oceans warm, and it feels like the way forward is growing narrower by the day. 

This happens close to home too: Our relationship frays with a loved one and suddenly, the whole map goes blurry. Or we live pay check to paycheck, barely treading water, legs worn out, our vision flat and cramped by demands of life.

Easter knows thatdeath is real.  It doesn’t deny death. It forms a breach. It reaches in, knocks down walls, kneels beside us grasping our hand and helps us look up. It blows open what is possible

*********

Back to the elevator.  So, there was another person aboard with me that day when I got stuck.  And he happened to have a big box of tools with him. It only a minute or two for him to start bracing himself and trying to pull the door open.  (Forcing open the doors would have never occurred to me to try.  Never. What occurred to me was to stay in my little corner, without dislodging the elevator, trying to breathe as little as possible--which admittedly was starting to get close to hyperventilating.)  My elevator-companion braced himself, and pushed and pried and finally wrenched the doors open.  I watched, puffing in the corner. He was—it turned out—an elevator repair man.  (Yes, this is a real story).

We were between floors.  I could see the legs of the people from the floor above and the celling tiles of the other.   I was disoriented. We were stuck between where we were coming from and where we were going.  

“Hop out,” my elevator-angel said cheerfully and stepped aside.  I crawled out. 

*************

It’s one thing to feel blocked in. But Easter is more than getting unstuck.  Mary and Mary Mag are standing there in the tomb and suddenly, everything they had thought to be true unfolded. Their cramped imaginations stretched and spread out. The world is no longer the same.

*******

On Good Friday, the world is trapped, suffocating with no way out.  And then, God pierces the despair,  breaks through the numbness and forces the doors open.  And we stand there blinking, disoriented, drawing in air trying to figure out this newness, Trying to figure out how to step out.

********

Some of what weighs on us and cramps us is close to home, some of it as wide as the world.  You are not crazy to feel the weight of the world right now. I can’t say what you all are bringing with you this morning—stress from home, worries about your health, fear for the future, despair for the state of the world.  You are not crazy to feel the heaviness of whatever tough situations you have in your life and in our world.  But you do not have to believe that cruelty, violence, exhaustion, and impossible problems are the truest things. 

We are often hindered by what we have decided is impossible.

*******

In the resurrection God wrenches open the doors of what is impossible and shows another way. God opens our cramped imaginations to see beyond our fears and then invites us to participate. This matters not just for our private lives but for the life we share in common too. Places like this--like LMC--are meant to help us see beyond the cramped, fearful version reality.   We need places that teach us to resist vengeance, to practice mercy, to walk with courage and love. We need what one of my favorite theologians, Walter Brueggemann, calls “moral imagination that can lead us to more just and whole ways of living.

********

Mary Magdalene and Mary run from the garden that morning with fear and joy.  They are comforted, of course, but they are also changed. They left as storytellers. Their sense of reality and what is possible has been blown open. And they run to share the Good News. This is resurrection: Not just comfort but changed vision. Not just relief but new possibility. The world is larger than we thought. 

Christ is risen, he is risen indeed. Alleluia.

A Psalm for Chicago (4.26.26)

Psalm 23 
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
     He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;
     he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
    for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
    I fear no evil,
for you are with me;
    your rod and your staff,
    they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me
    in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD
    my whole life long.

How would you do on this Chicago Trivia? 

What’s the official name of the bean in Millennium park? (Check the end, no, I’m, not giving you the answer here.)

What year was the Great Chicago fire? 

Which is better ketchup or mustard?  (The answer is so obvious here that you will not find it at the bottom, you will know it in your Chicago bones.)

What street intersection is zero in the street number grid system in Chicago—where the address numbers start going up?

(This is a tricky one, but pay attention because the trivia questions are starting to get relevant…I'll give it to you: State and Madison.  And if you that right, extra credit).

But underneath this trivia, there are older stories.  Try this one: What was the name of the ancestral lake that came before Lake Michigan?  

Lucky for me, we have a Chicago historian in the church who could back me up on this one on a Sunday morning

 
…

Glacial Lake Chicago. 

No, I’m not making this up. 

If you're a Chicago fan, you probably heard at some point about the glaciers that melted eons ago revealing a land that had been ironed flat. (Make way for those Illinois prairies, right?) Almost all the land had been pressed like a panini except, for the high ridges that formed when the glaciers had dumped trailing piles of sediment as they shriveled back to the north. Scientists call these ridges of sediment moraines. And here, around Chicago, they are the shallower edges of what was the Glacial Lake Chicago.  

13,000 years ago, the land the church sits on and possibly the land you’re on right now if you’re reading in Chicago was deep under melted glacier lake water. As the water drained the lake into the size of today’s Lake Michigan, those ancient beaches and bluffs that had been cut by waves and those rocky ridges made of glacial sediment emerged.

As the land settled and grew swampy, ancient people stuck to walking along these moraines and ridges and over time wore these smooth footpaths. One of these ancient paths travels the ridge of what we know we know today to be Lincoln Avenue a few blocks East of church. 

***********

In Psalm 23, the Shepherd leads us in right paths. 

The Lord is my shepherd, 
I shall not want, 
he leads me besides still waters, 
he restores my soul, 
He leads me in right paths.  

Across our Bible, this same word for paths is translated in a couple of ways (and “scenic walk” ways is not on the list of options.) (Shout out to bible scholar, Joel LeMon here and his translation work). The Hebrew word we know as path can be translated as rut or a trench--like a furrow that forms where people walk it over and over. But our Bible translators chose to use the word path here.   Why? Why did the translators use path? 

My best guess is that they landed on path because the idea of our Lord leading us through the "trench of life"  or “right ruts”just didn’t ring in English—

Or does it--?

**********

In the 1830s the Illinois and Michigan Canal Commissioners hired a surveyor to plan out the young town of Chicago based on the US Public Land Survey System. This system was a standardized way of dividing land into straight rectangular blocks.  I read that it would help make city lots easier to parcel out and sell. Point zero started at (see trivia question) the intersection of State and Madison downtown. The grid was then rolled out from that point on the cardinal directions. 

Today, if you happen to be going down one of these north/south or east/west streets on the grid and you come to a diagonal street— Lincoln, Clybourn, Elston, Archer--It can slow you down.  And likewise, if you’re walking one of those ancient foot paths and you hit the grid, it can trip you up.

The grid is orderly and efficient. Every eight blocks is roughly a mile; every house number calculated and organized. This is not a bad thing.  Life is lived on this city grid. The busses run. The grocery stores are open. Quite possibly, you are sitting on it right now as you read. The vast majority of us live on the city grid in Chicago proper. Life is predictable here. But this isn’t the whole truth of what is going on.

Our person from the bible who gave us 23rd psalm was a person on the move. They are walking beside still waters, they are traveling over paths, through valleys and green pastures. And so are we.  

Some days, we stretch out on the shores of still waters like cats in the sun, our souls restored and purring.

Other days, we drag through the darkest valley, our minds thick with too much, our feet heavy with mud.

And then, there are those times when it can even feel like someone has just picked  up our pretty little grid map and shaken it out like a blanket with all the little characters and street lights and cars and plans tumbling onto each other in a heap--And it can take our breath away. 

But, just as the land has older stories under it that we can’t see, so do we.

We have ancient prayers and songs that have been repeated at bedsides, and whispered on desperate nights. We have stories of healing and persistence, of bitterness and forgiveness that have been passed down and clung to. We've got stories of chicks gathered under fierce wings, of seeds planted, of light dawning. These aren’t just some old stories. They make up the things that have worn the path smooth: The prayers and songs and memories tucked around God’s people like blankets on a cold night that are returned to over and over.

Thank goodness for this. For all of it. Except for the word “path,” which I am embarassed to say I am still using.  Neither “path” nor “trench” nor “rut”  seems to get at what I want. 

Helpfully, that Hebrew word for path is related to the Hebrew word cow (which isn’t as odd as you might be thinking).  Think about it: an ox pulls a cart. A cart would create ruts or even grooves in the earth. Well worn grooves that are traveled over and over and over

.

He leads me in right paths. 

He leads me in right grooves. 

In fact, it would not be inaccurate for me to say The Lord is my Shepherd, he leads me in righteous grooves (thank you again, Joel LeMon). As if walking with God, were like finding the groove: 

The Lord is my shepherd...

He leads me in right paths; 

he leads me in right grooves.

We walk in the groove. But what if we lose it? What if things are shaken up or we wander off—then what? At the end of the psalm, we hear that surely goodness and mercy will follow me all of the days of my life. But this is not “follow” as if God were following me and trailing politely behind—with some encouraging words and applause, Or following with his tricky eye on us.  Instead under this Hebrew word “follow” is a sense that God pursues us. 

Surely goodness will pursue me. 

Surely mercy will pursue me.  

Not the way an enemy pursues us, but the way a shepherd fights to get to the sheep caught in the brambles; the way the woman with the broom sweeps the house top to bottom looking for the precious coin; the way the voice in the garden called out to Mary who wept Easter morn next to the tomb; or the way the stranger on the road popped up next to Cleophas and his wife on their way to Emmaus and joined their conversation. God’s pursuit isn’t one that chases us in order to tackle us or hound us into a corner. God is not interested in conquering us or dominating us or dragging us home by the arm. …

God's pursuit is more like knocking on the door when our soul becomes like a locked house with the blinds drawn. God’s hot pursuit of us  looks more like some question we can’t quite shake, or like someone who said the truth so clearly that it’s still ringing in our ears, or like something so beautiful or fantastic that just stops us mid-sentence, bedazzled and found in wonder.

Surely, goodness and mercy will pursue me.  
Surely God will pursue me. 

For underneath the everyday, scripted hum of life (eight blocks to a mile with every address counted from State and Madison) is an ancient groove that so many have walked before us. 

What does it mean? to be led on right paths or to get in the groove? Well, these ancient, well-worn grooves of our tradition call us to live with kindness and justice towards one another and towards the earth.   But not in a fancy or shiny way, it’s more like in a way of apologies and dishes and cooking dinner, a way of organizing the community and free little pantries and pots of herbs outside the church door for the neighborhood. Getting in the righteous path or groove means--A way of remembering that everything that we touch is touching us right back—the one in the car next to us, the neighbor walking his dog, the woman picking our bananas somewhere far away  

I think Jesus knew something of walking this ancient groove and even of trailblazing when the path was over grown. Of taking the everyday bread and feeding people,  of touching bodies other people didn’t want to touch, of sitting at tables where mercy was seemed to be missing. In fact, Jesus was and is God’s great gift of pursuit for us.  In Jesus, God’s holy goodness and mercy that pursue us takes on flesh and dwells among us. And this groove he walks is a path that calls for love and repair and in living in such a way that the light of God can actually pass though these lives we’ve been given.

If you take a moment to feel the pew beneath you to feel the stone floor beneath you…or feel your chair, your couch where you are.  How many hands have slid down these pew rails? how many feet have worn over these stones in the floor?  

The saints that came before us, both here and beyond deepened that groove of God’s way.   But not on their own.  Goodness and mercy pursued them, pulled them back to those off-center paths. “Surely,” the psalm says, “I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” 

Underneath that English word “dwell” is a returning to God. And we don’t return to God because we’ve lost God It’s a returning that feels like putting down the thing that has kept our hands full. It’s a Returning that feels: less like climbing and striving and reaching and more like sinking into that soft ground that has been holding us all along. 

Surely I will return to 
and dwell in 
the house of God forever…

******

Should you find yourself walking around Chicago, I’m quite certain you will bump into these diagonal streets.  And when one of these old, ancient paths like Lincoln or Clybourn or Elston or Archer—interrupts the grid, let it interrupt you too.  Like a bell. When you bump into one of these time worn paths. May you notice where you are and remember that there are older deeper grooves beneath the ones we can see.   There is an older, loving mercy underneath and deep within us that reaches for you and calls us to reflect God’s love in our lives. 

*****

This city of Chicago with its El stops, and schools and hospitals, This city with its taco trucks and advertisements and street cleaning, with all its beauty and sting, it’s unfairness and struggles, these people walking with strollers and smartwatches and dogs and brief cases and lunch boxes...even here, and especially here, this city is awash with tiny bells: small interruptions of love and grace calling us back to the path, the groove. 

This city, held by our ancient earth beneath is a picture of Psalm 23.

Trivia answers:  
(cloud gate)
1871
(intersection of State and Madison point zero of the city grid).

Glaring morality and tight fisted mercy (from 3.1.26)

 Luke 7:36-50 Woman anoints Jesus' feet at Simon's party

This week, our story involves a dinner party—quite possibly one that starts out just about perfect. Simon, a respected religious leader has hosted a dinner party and invited Jesus. I imagine Simon has put all the finishing touches on everything and has pulled out his best hospitality for this mysterious and likeable teacher. Simon is good at this sort of thing  and it’s all going just as planned. When it’s going good, it feels good: The right people, the right vibe,  the food is delicious, the conversation just what everyone needs, the optics are great. Until, in walks a woman identified as a sinner. 

Not only was she uninvited, she was complicated. She doesn’t fit the moment.  And then, as if her simple presence weren’t bad enough, things get awkward fast when she begins to weep. She pours oil on Jesus’ feet, kisses them and starts wiping them with her hair.  It’s so intimate, and startling and some probably even grumble inappropriate.  I imagine Simon shooting daggers with his eyes at whoever was standing at the door—who let her in! What is she doing! 

He speaks up, muttering to Jesus maybe under his breath: “do you know what kind of woman is touching you?” (v. 39)

Maybe he was wondering what this would do to Jesus reputation or, worse, what it would do to his reputation? 

What is it that keeps Simeon from open-heartedness and loving this woman in the honest and compassionate way Jesus does?

***********************

Have you ever walked into a room and quickly taken stock of who is where? We scan the people looking for where or how we fit: Who looks like me? Who doesn’t? Who is confident? who seems out of place? Who looks interesting to me? (Have you ever walked into a church and experienced this? I have.)

 We don’t thinking of it as judgement, after all we’re just trying to find our place in the scene, but--it’s a way of ranking people.   In our bible story, Simon, the religious leader, ranks the woman: Is she a religious teacher? (hardly). Respectable profession? (far from it). Respectable actions? (Oy). Simon judges the woman’s place in society before he considers her love for Jesus.  

Now, Simon is respected and has enough esteem and power that he can subtly look at folks as “better” or “worse” than him. His judgement masquerades as righteousness—or, the word that actually comes to mind is snobby.  From where Simon sits, not only are this woman’s actions way over the line, she does not belong. And morally, she’s beneath him.  I think that analysis is so loud in his head that there is no space for the voice of mercy.  

But, just as Simon’s jaw is hitting the floor at what is unfolding before him, Jesus steps in and allows this woman to touch him. He honors her love and takes us to mercy.

Sometimes, I think we to pride ourselves on inclusion. In one sense, yes, we are very inclusive: I am not here to judge your cussing or your dancing or how many cigars you smoke on the golf course.  I’m not here to judge this woman’s very obvious sin whatever it was. 

But, if we were co-hosting with Simon that day, would we stand shoulder to shoulder with him and wonder--who let her in?  Would we quietly and firmly help her up and out of the room so we could get back to the dinner party? We might not judge people for vices so harshly but we sure do sort and rank people according to other standards. And the way we do this can suffocate love.  

I want to nudge us a tiny bit further today. Try this on: Last week, we brought in a new migrant family to be a part of our ministry here at church. I am so grateful to know this family and I’m so grateful for the generosity of you all and the mighty little team of leaders, and our church council.  I’m so grateful that everything aligned just so.

We share common ground with this family. They are parents, earning an honest living, hoping for the best for their kids just like many of us. 

And also, this family is very different from many of us here in the sense that their life experience as a family that has immigrated has been quite distinct from ours. However, we still extend this love to them whole-heartedly.  It’s the right thing to do.  In a sense, it’s easy because loving like this fits with our moral identity as “the good ones.”  We see ourselves as people who reach a hand out to vulnerable folks like this. 

Where love gets complicated for us is when we are asked to love folks who are, let’s say, outspokenly anti-immigrant.  Maybe we’d respond in an emergency, but over the long haul: would we befriend them and invite them to dinner, and stay in relationship with them? Would we do it even if they had views that felt threatening or morally gross?  Could we do it without making them into a project or arguing a point or forcing them to change but simply inviting them to dinner?  

In our gospel story, Simon is from a religiously serious people. His values are traditional and on point. But he assumes he stands in the right place he is “in the right with God.” This assumption blocks his love.  

Here’s what I mean: If you have the chance to get outside of the city on a clear night, or even better, far away from Chicago or any city, you will find that the sky is thick with stars.  The milky way, our galaxy, is a mystery up there and it stretches out softly across the dark night sky.  But, here in the city, we can’t see it. It’s not that the Milky Way has disappeared. No, it’s still there.  We can’t see it because there’s too much light surrounding us. There are vehicle headlights, and street lights, and skyscrapers all lit up. There are glaring buildings, screens glowing, and signs flashing. The dark is overrun with light pollution.  It’s both awful and ironic, this thing that helps us see—this brightness that backlights the words on this page—prevent us from seeing far away.  

What if something similar can happen deep down in our souls?  

Take Simon. His light is bright. He is certain and morally clear.  The way he looks at the world and ranks and sorts people into these orderly little groups helps him to get his bearings and know who belongs where.  It also blinds him to this radiant constellation of love that this woman is pouring out at Jesus’ feet.   It’s not Simon’s hatred that keeps him from love—no, that’s too harsh.  It’s the glare.  It’s the glare of having it all figured out.  The glare of being morally proud of himself. The glare of being right. 

In the dinner party scene, Jesus cuts through the glare. “Simon, I have something to say to you” (v. 41).  “Do you see this woman?” (v. 44), Jesus asks him? Not, “do you approve of her?” or “do you respect her?” Do you see her? 

Flooded with that glaring light. Simon can’t seem to get to mercy.   This glare, this moral glare (which Martin Luther might call is self-justification) keeps us from loving people.

I want to mention one other barrier that keeps us from loving our neighbors  because moral glare isn’t the only thing taking up space in Simon’s head. It’s also the noise.  

Let’s say that Simon is managing a lot in this moment as host. He is managing a dinner party, she’s weeping her heart out.  He’s stressed and amped about reputation or vibe or his honored guest, Jesus. She could care less.  He is running the room—something he usually does well. And time has stopped for her.

Sometimes, I think another thing that keeps us from love isn’t cruelty. It’s that we are so busy keeping all the ducks walking in a row and quacking in harmony. We are so busy being competent. So busy being on the right side.  So optimized and efficient and running and around the well-lit house that our eyes--filled with that hurried glare--miss the person right in front of us.  It’s not that we set out to miss people, it’s just that some of us are moving so fast we speed right by them. 

**********************

We are called to great love of God and neighbor. I think this kind of love weaves itself into us and into our relationships, neighborhoods, and into our life together.  This kind of love enlivens and heals and connects and brings joy.  This is an anchor in our faith. It’s Good News. And yet, we are pulled by these counter weights away from this love.  We’re pulled by our busyness, certainty, and by that moral glare.  

In our story, Jesus question cuts through the noise: “Do you see her.”  Jesus cuts in with mercy for this woman; and also, mercy for Simon; and actually, with mercy for us.  

Because just as God sees her, God also sees us: striving, distracted, judgmental, trying our best. And mercifully, God calls us closer: closer to the people who are hard to love. 

Closer to humility. 

Closer to slowness. 

Closer to God. 

The worst and the best and the puppies (2.22.26)

Wedding at Cana, John 2:1-11

Mustard Seed Matt 13:31-33

Last summer, we lost our pup Clio who we had had since we lived in Mexico. Clio was a special dog for many reasons but one of my favorites happened when she was about a year old.  Some of you have heard this story.  

We took Clio every where with us—to indigenous villages, coffee shops and it was in a shelter run by Quakers that one of the residents looked at her and told me, “your dog is too fat.” Tu perrita esta muy gorda. 

“No! I replied, who says that!? She’s not fat, I just had her at the vet and she’s a healthy size!”

“Si, esta gordita,” he told me, “She’s chubby. She’s pregnant.”

“Impossible!” I huffed, “she’s still a puppy and hasn’t gone into heat!” I spun around left.  

Clio got moodier and moodier and I began to fret. A nagging worry began to tap at me: what if she’s pregnant. We decided to take her to a small hole-in-the wall vet up the mountain for a check.  Thankfully, the vet was immediately reassuring:

“Your dog’s not pregnant” the vet told me, smiling warmly, “this is a psychological pregnancy!”  I looked at him with a desperately weak smile.

“She has developed sympathy placenta,” he explained confidently, “and she may actually birth it.” I felt like I was a kindergartner. I nodded, wide-eyed. “If this continues,” he patted my arm reassuringly, “bring her back a couple weeks, I’ll give her a special shot.”

I drove home dazed. Google later confirmed psychological pregnancies were a true possibility and I relaxed into the reassuring knowledge that all was well.  In fact, I became something of an expert on psychological pregnancies, after that.

Several weeks later, Omar was boarding a plane to head home to the states for a week and I was getting ready to leave for the final day of a retreat I was leading. Clio was hunched over her bed in the living room and as I stood there, coffee in hand, studying her a small puppy slid out. 

We stared at each other. 

I almost dumped my coffee on the floor.

I called Omar on the phone and screamed—"it was real!!! The pregnancy was real! What do I do!?”

“I’m on the plane!” he hissed back, “we’re taxiing! Like on the runway!”

“What do I do!!” I wailed.

“TAKE HER TO THE VET!” and he hung up.

I went to a different vet this time.  The one in the fancy plaza with the store where they sold gluten-free bread.  

After shaking hands with the vet who had responded to my early morning emergency call, I smiled wildly, nervously, “just check her out,”  My ears were starting to hurt from all this  smiling. I paced the waiting room like a caged tiger.

After confirming the worst. This vet also patted my arm. He told me her labor was just beginning. I flinched.

“Take her home,” he explained to me sternly, “and to put her in a corner with some sheets. She’ll know what to do.”

He steered me kindly toward the door. On my way home, I called the young adults,  “It was real!” I wailed to them. We cancelled the final day of the retreat, they all came over, and we kept vigil for 23 hours…while Clio birthed 11 puppies. 

My first thought was “this can’t be happening.” Then it turned into “what am I going to do with 11 puppies!?”  (For the record, we were not supposed to have any dogs in our apartment and it was already tense trying to hide a hundred pound Rottweiler.)  Then there was the expense: what was this going to cost!?  What would people think of me!  To say this was an inconvenience was an understatement.   

I am a fairly steady person, but I was wildly all over the map in this moment.

**************************

A compass aligns itself with the strongest magnetic field around it. Usually, that’s the earth, but if you put a small magnet nearby, the needle starts to swing toward it.   

Worry is like that. It pulls our imagination towards worst-case scenarios and all of the sudden, we’re living inside these disasters that haven’t even happened. Cynicism pulls us too. It trains our imagination that hope hurts too much and that it’s better to expect disappointment than be surprised. 

Sometimes, it is logic or control—if I can’t map it, explain it, or diagram it, there’s no way I’m trusting it. (Hello, water into wine? Not possible.) And our imagination whittles down to just what we can manage. 

And if we’re not careful, as these magnets pull at us, our whole sense of what could be has atrophied and narrowed and the joy that God intends is held at bay.  

This cramped feeling of bracing for the worst is exactly the room Jesus walks into at Cana: The wine has run out, I imagine everyone running around, dishes flying, yelling, it was a disaster. Running out of wine at a wedding wasn’t just a bummer, it was socially humiliating. The family’s honor was at stake. 

The servants are pulled by fear—hide the problem! Gah, Fix it, now! save face!  Everyone is panicking. That is, everyone except Jesus and arguably Mary. She calls her son into the moment. He changes the barrels of water to fine wine and his ministry begins--not with 40 days in the desert in this version of the gospel--but with explosive, shocking joy. 

While everyone was managing shame and worry and bracing for the worst, Jesus quietly took everyone to joy.  

**************

What is it that keeps us from believing that God can surprise us and take us to joy?  

The same magnets that pull at us were pulling at them. Worry that something would crumble. Cynicism that forces us to adjust expectations.  Or control: an inability to logically map it out or believe it. 

There are more reasons that pull us from trusting that God can surprise us. But there’s a common thread tying these together. When it’s worry, it is our imagination that has gone off the negative deep end. When we’re cynical, it’s our imagination that is fiercely protective (don’t you dare disappoint me.)  When we’re rational, it’s imagination that’s too narrow, too controlling and restricted. 

Mystery is beyond all these categories.   

The good news is that even when these magnets of worry or cynicism or shame or fear are screaming loud and pulling at us, the good news is still louder.  

And it’s exactly in this moment of panic and despair that Jesus makes wine.  No one there at the wedding had the kind of faith that was going to move a mountain. Maybe they just a mustard seed’s worth of hope. Just enough to fill the jars when Jesus told them.

*****************

Several months before Clio had puppies, I had lost a pregnancy. It was bad.  Wouldn’t it just be perfect if I could say right now, that Clio had the puppies and then, suddenly, I became pregnant (yay!)  That didn’t happen.  After the loss, I was magnetized by worry, fear, grief, and so many things. I was used to protecting my heart, lowering expectations, and keeping my hopes narrow and controlled.  I was shocked (shocked!) with what happened when Clio had those pups. It was so bizarre and delightful and we had 7-8 weeks of unmitigated joy and delight with those puppies in our house. My favorite puppy was the huge boss-queen pup that we named horchata.

Yes, it was chaotic and ridiculous and hilarious, but also awesome and shocking and healing.  Joy didn’t fix everything, it didn’t undo what we had lost, but it burst into the room and stayed there along with the grief. 

In Cana, the wine doesn’t appear because the hosts get their act together. The wine fills the barrels because Jesus steps into their panic. They are magnetized by shame and worry.  Jesus is magnetized by generosity and abundance. 

God moves towards us into rooms of panic and shame. Into worried rooms and cynical rooms and suspicious hearts. And God’s magnetic field is stronger. She quietly makes wine. 

In both my story and in the story of the wedding at Cana, we didn’t expect joy.  I was rolling with my grief and holding everything close. But joy showed up anyway. (11 times).  I couldn’t control it or explain it 

I could only laugh and receive it.  

Grace interrupts our boring, mundane little lives and, as time goes on, grace reshapes us. After that evening in Cana, the disciples are changed, and as the years go on they’re transformed. Their imagination of what is possible stretches.  

*******

That night at the wedding, the servants didn’t create the joy, the good news was that it came despite the fiasco of running out of wine.  The good news today is that joy comes to us, takes a seat at our table, steps into our panic and surprises our plans. At first, we shake our heads in disbelief that it happened, but then as that joy rumbles around inside of us, we learn to live as if it might happen again….  We learn that God surprises us. And we throw our hands up in the air and shake our heads in wonder at this living and holy mystery that will not let us go.