Two donuts, two postures on gratitude (8.30.26)

 

Exodus 3:1-4:23

Moses went back to his father-in-law Jethro and said to him, “please let me go back to my people in Egypt and see whether they are still living.” And Jethro said to Moses, “go in peace.” Ex. 4:34

Years ago, I was sitting in Beans and Bagels--the coffee shop when an older man carrying a donut on a plate and a mug of coffee settled himself near the window at the far end of my long dining table. I watched out of the corner of my eye as he took off his cap, briefly bowed his head, and thanked God—I’m presuming—for his donut and coffee. Then, he put his cap back on and ate them.  I don’t know what his religious background was.  I turned my eyes back to my own half eaten donut. Sheepishly. If you are familiar with donuts from Beans and Bagels, you know they truly are a gift—and I, neighborhood clergy-woman reporting for duty—mumbled a word of thanks to God.

This man and I did not have different donuts.  Perhaps, other than the fact that he seemed like more of an old-fashioned donut type while I’m more of a pink sprinkles type--but aside from that: We both walked through the same door, ordered at the same counter, both paid fair and square, and then both sat at the very same long table.  The difference was that he sat down, bowed his head and acknowledged what he received while the thought didn’t even cross my mind.

In today’s bible story, Moses is given this great, magnificent mission: to lead God’s people out of brutal slavery in Egypt (!!) After a lot of back and forth with God, Moses eventually agrees to do it but before he embarks on his epic adventure to Egypt, he goes to visit and sit at the table of another: Jethro, his father-in-law.  

Now remember, Moses grew up in the palace in Egypt—he was rescued at birth by those midwives, Puah and Shiphrah, and then raised by Pharoah’s daughter who pulled him out of that basket in the Nile. As a young man, Moses is on the run from Pharoah (it’s a story for another time).  He makes it to Midian when he meets Jethro who welcomes him into his home.  Jethro gives Moses work as a shepherd. He gives him friends and family and neighbors, and Moses eventually marries Zipporah, one of Jethro’s daughters.  It’s hard to overstate the impact that Jethro had on Moses’ life. And so it make sense that after Moses gets this great commission from God at the burning bush, and before he goes to Egypt, he remembers and returns and asks for Jethro’s blessing. 

There had been a lot of people along the way who had supported Moses over the years. And Moses seems to understand that he didn’t arrive at that burning bush all on his own.  Nope. It was the kindness of other people that got him there. It was the second chances people gave him it was all that love and support and grace and relationships that got him to that moment.  

*****

What is it that helps us to see that our comfortable lives are built on more than our own effort?  

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Imagine with me, for a moment, that you are standing in a busy coffee shop and that you are holding a very full, very hot mug coffee in your hands.  Maybe the coffee is for you, maybe you’re carrying it to someone else. Your task, is to make through the crowded, busy room to the table over there by the window.  How do you do it?

Well, you’re not going to just barrel across the room holding the hot cup in your one hand. You’re going pause, steady your arm, notice the coffee and where you’re stepping through those people and tables. You don’t want to spill. You pay attention to what is around you. You’re careful.  You adjust yourself—even your posture--to the room.  Gratitude doesn’t change what we happen to be holding in our hands; it just changes how we carry it. 

******

Moses’ life is so full of so many gifts—the midwives, Pharaoh’s daughter, his father-in-law, Jethro, his wife, Zipporah, his work as a shepherd, his home in Midian, his community.  He knows the grace of what he has received and it makes him show up in the world differently.  The man in Beans and Bagels and I both had a donut and a cup of coffee.  But his posture towards it was different from mine.  He sat down with that food as a gift.  I sat down with it as—meh—a donut.

Back in our bible story: Moses has just been given this big calling from God. And when he goes back into Egypt, he is about to walk into a very different sort of world—into Pharoah’s world.  But he walks into it mindful of all the grace that has been present in his life.   Pharoah doesn’t notice what his life has been built upon.  He doesn’t see the hands and support and effort of anyone else.  He doesn’t know the grace and goodness of what it means to depend on people or to be indebted to them.  You’re never going find Pharoah pulling up his chair to thank anyone at the table in gratitude. In fact, the prophet Ezekiel later imagines Pharoah declaring in chapter 29 vs.3, “the Nile is mine; I made it for myself.”   Pharoah is arrogant and brazen.  Honestly he’s delusional, but you know--he thinks he’s a god, so…there you have it

Not many of us on this earth are this myopic and self-absorbed, although, as Shai Held, a Rabbi and theologian puts it, “you don’t need to be Pharaoh to struggle with gratitude—you just need be human,” he goes on to say that almost none of us are [actually] brazen or delusional enough to think we’ve made ourselves or built the world that sustains us.”

And yet. And yet, in smaller, less dramatic ways, a lot of us don’t want to admit or don’t think to admit just how dependent and vulnerable we really are. How much we owe. Not “owe” in the sense of owing God—grace doesn’t ask or expect something of us, but it can shape us. even Martin Luther was clear about that (1) and in a sense, we do train our posture (like balancing a full cup over and over) to notice grace. 

I think the truth is that when we have had things in our lives like stable housing, or maybe a retirement account, or a loving family—when we’ve had a certain level of education or even professional success in our career, or maybe even a little cushion of money, it can kind of buffer us from remembering that we depend on others.  Not all of us in here have the most comfortable lives, but many of us here right now  do have some comforts.  And in that, sometimes, we sort of forget that our lives are still sustained by all these gifts we didn’t create for ourselves.  Gifts like the people who cheered us on, the opportunities we were given, our health, our network, maybe even just—good luck?  Even the hardest worker in the room right now still depends on this whole web of educators, and opportunities and certain people in our lives.  Our effort has never been the only thing in the room that got us to where we are.  So much of life just arrives as a gift.

******

Last week, Dolly Parton died.  Her story has been all over the place, and I’m guessing that more than a handful of us in here have heard it: that she had a real humble upbringing. That she was quick to call out the gifts in the way she was raised—love, kindness and understanding she understood them as treasures that her life rested on.  She said that, while yes she was a hard worker, her voice and her songwriting talent were gifts, gifts from God, gifts nurtured by her family.  She carried her success the way you might carry that hot cup coffee across the room: thoughtful, noticing, careful, aware that what she held in that cup wasn’t hers alone. She was attentive with it.  She used it to bless other people.  In a way, I think her life was animated by gratitude.

****

What does it mean to walk through life with that kind of posture—this posture of acknowledgement? Of gratitude? The posture of the coffee cup, this posture of Moses returning to Jethro’s table before turning to Egypt.  This posture that holds in gratitude and reverence all the gifts we’ve been given? It means that gratitude is a stance we hold, come what may. 

Pharaoh’s self-absorbed posture puffs out his chest and self-congratulates: I made this. I did this. But… if you made it all yourself, you don’t have anyone to thank.  You don’t owe anyone anything…You’re disconnected. Gratitude says that the story (my story) is bigger than just me.   Gratitude changes our perspective. And sometimes changes even our actions.

From:  I’m so angry with everything wrong in the world.  To: There is so much good all around me and holding me up, I’m going to use it to help me respond.

From: nothing I do matters, it won’t make a difference, why bother, To…this life is a gift and there is something I can do--something I can give back.

From: I’m afraid things are doomed, everything seems so uncertain right now…To: I can’t see how this is all going to work out, but I believe things can be different. 

I’m not saying this is always so easy.  The cup is still hot, the world is crowded and unpredictable and it’s hard to move through it sometimes.  But gratitude coaxes us to carry our gifts carefully. To not spill them but share them. And carrying it like that? Helps us resist being like Pharaoh who thinks of no one but himself.

*******

After Moses is called by God at the burning bush, he goes home to sit at Jethro’s table and thank him. And then Moses heads into Egypt where he walks with his two hands full, carrying that gift of life and goodness into Pharaoh’s court with the knowledge that none of us are self made; and with message that this way of living is empty, let my people go. 

Moses walks into those halls of power  remembering the warmth and love of Jethro’s table. And that’s what makes Pharaoh’s endless, golden table—the one next to the Nile that belongs only to him—look awfully empty.

As you sit here today, feeling the warmth and love of these pews under you where so many saints before you have sat…as you walk later down these streets, built by generations long past…and as you clasp hands when you share the peace, as you pull your chair up to your own table tonight to break bread, what do you carry with you?  What do you hold in your hands as you walk into the days ahead?  

Let it move you.

(1) Martin Luther: “Freedom of a Christian, 1520”

Whole Milk Revenge (9.13.26)

Matt 18:21-35

Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if my brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven[a] times. (21-22)

Many years ago when my friends and I cobbled together a variety of part-time jobs to pay the rent, one of my roommates would drag herself out of bed every morning at 4:45am for her shift at the coffee shop around the corner.  There without fail, promptly at 5:30am, each morning, the same rude customer would storm in and demand a skim milk latte. Like a dragon. She grated on everyone who worked there.

And then one afternoon, my roommate turned to me: “Hey, you know the skim-latte-rude-lady who comes in every morning?”  

I nodded, “oh yeah.”  

“Well today,” she says to me all smug, “I made her latte with whole milk.”

“Woah,” I say, starting to grin.

“Yeah,” she says slyly. “She loved it. She actually complemented me on the coffee as she was leaving.”

I stared at her wide-eyed. “You’re amazing.” I said. 

“No regrets,” she responded and we laughed.

For starters, never, ever mess with your waiter or your barista. I’ve worked in food service—I know what happens in the back room! 

Okay. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, oh vengeance feels so good, doesn’t it?  If you mess with me? I’m going to make sure you feel it back! 

All of us have it in us.  We’ve all felt wronged at some point or another.  And, all of us are guilty of having hurt someone before--sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. We when feel hurt or offended, we are hardwired to want to want to reach across the table and snatch our power or our sense of worth back

Michael McCullough is a research psychologist and I'm leaning on his work a lot across this message. He mused in one of his books that before humans developed criminal justice systems, societies managed themselves through revenge.  Once upon a time your reputation as a hothead protected you and your family—mafia style. If someone knew you’d act on your anger, it was like an insurance policy that no one would mess with you. 

**********

Revenge (even the whole milk latte kind of revenge) can make you feel like you have your hands on the wheel. Books have been written about this. Volumes. Billions of dollars in therapy processed over this. And one very irritating parable of Jesus’ has been told about this, that I’m going to get to…

But first, Jesus seems to be pulling on a much older thread in the scriptures he knew so well in this teaching from today. Jesus would have known the ancient story where Cain kills his brother Abel in this idiotic act of anger and grievance (Gen 4:1-16).  The circumstances between Cain and Abel were dumb, petty (a story for another day) but after Cain kills his brother, God thunders in at him “what in the world happened?!” Cain rolls his eyes and effectively shrugs, “Who cares. Am I my brother’s keeper?”  (Gen. 4:9)

Despite Cain’s awful answer, despite his inability to accept responsibility for what he did, he does experience consequences. As everything unfolds, he is ostracized. But, God mercifully protects him for the rest of his sad life and pronounces that “if anyone harms him, I’ll protect him seven times over.”  In other words, while, yes, "Cain did an awful, awful thing, but keep your hands off him. The violence stops here.”

Jesus would have known how that story continued: That generations pass and the descendants seem to inherit the worst of Cain. Until one day, Cain’s wicked descendant, Lamech, kills a man (Gen 4:23-24). In Lamech’s case, no one even blinks an eye. Why would they? Lamech’s on top of the world. (Gen. 4:20-22) The Bible says his sons invented herding.  Says they invented music. Invented metal working. (Maybe you didn’t know who invented herding, but after reading this, now you do). This family answers to no one. Lamech is unstoppable.  And it sure seems that the more civilization advances and shines and shows off, the less anyone cares about what is the right thing to do. Moral conscience just dissolves. Who cares.(1)

Lamech murders a man and then brags to his wives that if God will protect Cain seven times over, just watch, Lamech will be protected, or rather avenged 77 times over. As in: “Touch me and I’ll bury you.” He is unstoppable. 

*******

It’s not hard to hear the brilliant echo:  “Touch me and I’ll bury you.” And Jesus says to Peter in our reading today, “wrong me and I’ll release you. Over and over and over. 77 times over.” Notice two ways of showing up in the world and each of them with profound repercussions: On one side, you’ve got unstoppable vengeance and unstoppable arrogance. While on the other, unstoppable mercy.  

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I really don’t like this parable of Jesus’. Like at all. Give me the good Samaritan any day. If parables are supposed to provoke us, then guilty, I’m completely provoked. I would have never chosen this text for you this morning, the lectionary did. When I told Omar about this story the other evening, he actually grimaced and asked if I could change it, to which I pointed out that Jared has started printing the verses in the bulletins, so no, I cannot. So here goes:

In the parable, Jesus, pulls on that ancient, wise story of Cain and Lamech and tells us that a King mercifully forgives a man a debt of a gazillion dollars--unfathomable amount--owed to him by an enslaved man. (2) Good on you King, fantastic. But then, the forgiven man turns around to Another Guy who owes him a small debt and viciously demands it. When the guy can’t pay, Gazillion Dollar Man, in an act of vengeance, has him tortured. The king finds out about the derelict behavior, is furious, revokes his forgiveness, and punishes Gazillion Dollar Man severely.  And Jesus ends the sweet story with “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”  Gah.

At the very least, can we be in agreement that clearly forgiveness is a very big deal in this story?  A shockingly big deal.   Before this point in the scriptures, Jesus has been going on and on about how we all need to deal with conflict, repair our problems with each other and talk it out.  Then he crescendos into this.  

***********

Now, we don’t have Lamech sitting in our pews today--Lamech who killed a man in cold blood. But we do probably have the whole-milk-latte.  Each one of us knows that small and delicious feeling of getting back at someone. Of turning a grievance over and over in our heads and polishing it like this precious stone. We know the feeling of nursing that certainty of how right we are and how wrong they are. We know the satisfaction going quiet, smug and withdrawing our presence to make a point. 

Apparently, when you look at the brain scans of someone who has just been harmed by another—like harassed or insulted-- the part of the brain that lights up is the same part that activates when you’re thirsty or are about to get a piece of chocolate. (3) It’s a craving. Your brain craves retribution as a way to solve a problem when you’ve been wronged. But the brain also does something else: It turns out that while something in our brains is hardwired towards vengeance, another something in there is also hardwired towards cooperation.

Humans have survived and flourished because we’ve learned how to live with each other. We’re learned how to depend on each other. But (McCullough goes into this), one of the things you need for people to be able to cooperate is to be able to tolerate mistakes. We need to be able to live with people who sometimes disappoint us, misunderstand us, fail us, and at times, deeply wrong us. We need to be able to forgive each other. I don’t mean excuse everything or erase consequences.  I mean stopping the cycle that Cain passed to Lamech which predicts that every injury provokes another and every wound becomes the beginning of the next one. We need to not answer every harm with vengeance.

******

I think the hardest affronts to forgive are not actually with the rude lady at the coffee counter but with those closest to us like those in trusting relationships with us such as our family, church people, or friends. The problem is, Matt Skinner writes,  that “people rarely find forgiveness as easy as our theology can make it sound.” (4) If anything this awful parable reminds us of how complicated, offensive and painful forgiveness actually is.

In this parable, everyone with power tanks: the king, the guy who owes a gazillion, everyone.  No one reckons with their moral responsibility to their neighbor. (5) They all resort to playing by awful rules.  The whole thing is a tragedy. (6)Vengeance is so much easier.  

So what do we do with this? 

One of you once asked me to pray for forgiveness for you. (I checked in before I shared this story). You told me that you sit in the pews week after week and you pray for forgiveness.  It’s two steps forward, you explained, and one step back.  

Forgiving someone rarely happens through a one time action. It happens progressively and sometimes slowly and indirectly.  It’s something you hold in your hands, realize you’ve dropped and the pick it up again. Forgiveness isn’t a mood, it’s a practice. It’s a posture.It’s the daily bread that we pray for day after day. It’s the prayer that the painful affront may slowly loosen its’ grip on us. 

Give us this day our daily bread 
and forgive us our trespasses 
as we forgive those who trespass against us

over and over again…

Forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting the past or acting like nothing ever happened. It doesn’t mean pain or distrust are just going to dissolve. They might linger and for good reason. I worked in a domestic abuse shelter for three years, and believe me, there are very good reasons that someone may need to be written out of the picture. Forgives involves accepting what happened and trying to keep it in the past. It means not letting resentment or vengeance grab the wheel and drive the car. 

Jesus calls us to grow into people who practice this forgiveness. To build habits where we think through these hard questions of pain, guilt, accountability, conflict. Our churches are called to be a places that practices forgiveness, that tolerate mistakes and talk about them. We’re called to be a places that reaches towards cooperation—and this is not an easy call!   We practice forgiveness because God tries to interrupt this age-old cycle where hurt produces hurt produces hurt produces hurt.

******

Most of us don’t have Lamech in us. Most of our grudges are probably latte-sized. But they all hang in the same parking lot.

Here’s the thing about the whole milk latte. First, it’s a completely trivial example. But beyond that: the skim-milk lady never new, she loved it and complemented the coffee and returned to the café the very next morning.  Nothing really changed. The the only place that grievance really lived was in my roommate. She and I texted about it a couple days ago, shared a laugh about it, and even polished the win 20 years later. 

Lamech says: you hurt me and I’ll hit you back 77 times harder.  Jesus says enough. You don’t have to keep track of it. You don’t have to keep polishing the win. Or pass the hurt on to someone else.  And Jesus believes that by the grace of God, it can stop with us. 

(1) R. Jonathan Sacks explores the Cain & Able story as a story about the dissolution of moral responsibility. I think his argument holds through the descendants. “How to Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility,” (2005) Chapter 10
(2) Matt Skinner uses the word “gazillion.” I like it. "Matthew the gospel of promised blessing," Matthew Skinner, 2024. Ch. 3
(3) "Beyond Revenge" Matthew McCullough, (2008)
(4)  Skinner, (2024). Ch. 3
(5) See again Sacks interpretation re: Cain and Able
(6) Skinner calls it a "tragedy"

In good company, A message for Pride Sunday (2026)

Genesis 18:1-15

...so Sarah laughed. 18:12

This weekend, we are starting a new summer series called Anything but Ordinary. It’s a spin off of what we call Ordinary Time in the church: the time of the liturgical year between our fancy high seasons of Christmas and Easter.  

Ordinary time.
Everyday time.  

Over the course of the summer, we’ll take a closer look at our assigned bible passages from the Hebrew Bible. Our first story is one of Abraham and Sarah.  I’m going to get to Sarah, but I want to take a moment and start with Abraham.  

I appreciate Abraham because I have to.  He is a key player in the old story. But he has some solidly cringy moments in his bio.  There’s the couple of times he tries to pass his wife off as his sister, then there’s the times he pawns her off to sleep with a couple of powerful men and gets a bunch of livestock and servants in exchange. 

Abraham fathers a child with an enslaved woman named Hagar in his household, and then stands by while his wife abuses Hagar until she flees with their son to die in the desert; then there was that whole incident with Isaac bound on the altar with a knife overhead. 

Abraham is something…

He decides to circumcise himself at the tender age of 99—and then also decided to do the same to his tween son. 

But in this same man, with all these questionable attributes, watch what he does in today’s story:  he falls over himself to extravagantly welcome these three strangers who turn out to be divine.  Right after this, he argues with God to save a city full of strangers.  

So, Abraham is capable of greatness. He’s just also really faulted-- especially when I look at him from the 21st century.

Abraham is hard to categorize as great or as terrible. To be honest,  it’s puzzling why God chose Abraham to be the father of all these descendants--of all these faith traditions. It doesn’t really seem like God chooses him for his greatness.  I also don’t know if this is one of those 
stories where we say “look, God chose Abraham even though he was a faulted, dumb human.” 

I wonder if it’s something else that Abraham has. And it’s something I see in Sarah, his wife, too. 

In our story today, after Sarah and Abraham have rolled out the dazzling red carpet  and popped the champagne for these three mystery visitors, after they feasted and acknowledged that that the three travelers are not actually dusty strangers in the desert  but the brilliant presence of God--after all this, Abraham and God settle down together for some man talk. (There’s a scholar, Rachel Rend, who calls it that—man-talk.  I’m leaning on her work here in this part).  Sarah hangs back in the tent which was the realm of women. The field was the realm of men, the tent the realm of women. Everyone in their place.

Now God and Abe are shooting the breeze when God mentions that by this time next year, “your wife will have a son.” Now Sarah, there in her proper place, was listening in and when she hears this bit about the son, she laughs and says, “now that I am old (or withered) am I to have pleasure with my husband being so old?”  

We sanitize this a little in English, but the Hebrew is pretty clear as to what she’s talking about.(1) Sarah laughs. She’s there at the threshold between spaces—the tent and the field.  She’s there, hearing what she wasn’t supposed to hear,  laughing at what she wasn’t supposed to find funny.

Sarah is longing for something—for desire? For a child?  For something and it pulls her into this space between the tent and the field

“why did you laugh?” God asks her. “why did you laugh and say ‘shall I in truth bear a child’?”  Sarah’s busted. God heard her laugh.

We’re not totally sure why God interrogated her. Maybe God misheard her (unlikely).  Maybe God is scolding her for laughing. (yeah, that has been a convenient interpretation over the generations—Get back in your place, Sarah--I doubt this too).  Maybe God is giving her an opening.and inviting her  into this conversation between men so she can say out loud what she means—

Suddenly, Sarah’s not fully in “her place” in the tent, and she’s not fully in the field with the men. She’s between spaces, between categories, between where she was assigned to be and where she was told to stand. And that’s not a problem,  in that in between space.  That’s exactly where God finds her. 

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Let me draw a line back to Abraham for a second.  

Why was he chosen to receive this extravagant blessing from God?  (your descendants will out number the stars in the sky)
  
Why was he launched on this journey “to the land that I will show you?” 

There’s a Jewish Scholar named Avivah Zornberg, she’s Scottish.  And she says Abraham’s got something worth paying attention to:  

Abraham is okay being unsettled.

This guy is willing to leave it all and drag his belongings behind a camel through the desert.  He’s willing to set off for unknown places. To walk even when he’s not sure where he’s going. Into the place Zorenberg calls “the waste space between clarities” (2) Abraham is willing to pull up the tent stakes.  To step outside the circle of familiar porch light. To put not just his phone on roam but his life on roam and trust God’s signal is still going to find him. (3) Abraham isn’t credentialed. He’s just willing to be unsettled. To wander in the space between clear categories. And Sarah is cut from the same cloth. We see it in today’s story when her laugh burst her into this place between the tent and the field. Between what she was assigned and who she was.  She steps into the unknown.

This in-between space has something going for it.  Zorenburg calls it fertile.   Here’s what that looks like to me:

An ecotone is a place where 2 ecosystems meet. Eco is from comes from the Greek word for house. Tone is from the Greek word for tension. (4) It’s a place of tension between two houses:

The edge of the woods and meadow. Between the tropical jungle and the high altitude mountains,  (the cloud forests where coffee is farmed!).  Between the ocean and the land.

You’d think that in this in-between spot, life would fade out but it’s the exact opposite.  Ecotones have one of the highest concentrations of biodiversity on the planet—they have more life than either house on its own—because they hold the species of both, plus the ones that live no where but in their edge.  They are amazingly creative spaces.  Think, for example, of a tide pool.  

Twice a day without exception, everything changes: The pool is flooded with chilly ocean water and then it’s left still in the hot sun. The water evaporates concentrating the salt levels and then the rain dilutes it.  The waves crash with this force that would send most tiny things flying 

The tidepool is the most unstable little piece of real estate you can find on the shore.   And it’s crowded with life.  Anemones that open like gorgeous flowers under water and close to nothing when the waves rush out.  Hermit crabs that carry their little houses around and can pop their fragile bodies inside in a snap.

These are creatures that have become cool with change. 

All of this water rushing in and out, the sun, the waves—this middle space made them  into these, responsive and resilient little critters. 

The edge isn’t a problem for them, it’s their home. It’s the space where they have evolved to be fabulously creative.  There is something in this space between two houses:

Between Ur (where Abraham came from) and the Promised Land, 
between the tent and the field. 
Between the ocean and land.

There’s something about this threshold where life erupts with laughter, where God notices and delights and draws us out—There’s something about living between the categories that other people drew.  Between the box you were handed and the one you who were warned from.  There’s something holy in that in-between space.

*********

Clean categories are comfortable:
This is right. This is wrong. 
This is safe. This is dangerous. 
This is faithful. This is a foolish.
You’re the helper.  You’re the one being helped.

But what if you’re the helper who organizes the Free Little Pantry, and your soul aches and hungers for something that food can’t fix? What if you’re the one  who needed a box of pasta from the shelf, but you also happen to be really good at listening and supporting and caring?

These categories are never settled. That creative space is one of great life:

The ecotone, 

the tide pool, 
the doorway of the tent, 
the wandering in the desert.  

God keeps calling us from these settled spaces and into the space between, the space of growth and delight.  Some of us in the room have lived there all along—not by choice, not as a problem, but as a gift to the world. 

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

I was recently talking about tide pools with one of you who grew up near the ocean—near Laguna beach.  And you pointed out that some of these pools—these fragile in between zones of life—have turned into a ghost of what they were.  Fair.   The edge is a fertile place, but It’s not safe on it’s own. Nowhere is. We all depend on each other for safety. There are still tide pools that are healthy on that pacific coast. And they’re protected. They’re pools where nothing gets trampled or destroyed. Pools where everyone in the water looks after the water.

*********

The life God calls us to was never ordinary in the first place. It’s anything but. And as you wander in let me introduce you to the good company you’re wandering with: 

Welcome to the company of Sarah, who laughed at the wrong moment in the wrong place and got her name in scripture anyway. 

Welcome to the company of Queen Esther who lifted her chin and walked uninvited into a room that could have killed her and stayed there until her people were safe.. 

Welcome to the company of woman at the well who no one wanted let alone believed.

Welcome to the company of Nicodemus who stepped out of the porch light, took his big questions between the categories and found life. 

Welcome to the company of Jesus who, everyone knows, was not supposed to be washing any feet that night—

Welcome to the company of the Ethiopian Eunuch who didn’t cleanly fit into the law’s categories, found water in the desert, and realized nothing prevented him from being baptized. 

Welcome to the company of the brave little girl, Miriam who floated her little brother in a basket down the Nile river in the space between.

And welcome to the company the brave little girl, Ruby Bridges who lifted her chin and walked up the stairs into the William Frantz Elementary school in New Orleans in 1960

Welcome to the company of Marsha P. Johnson who stood up at stonewall and never stopped

And to Ruth and Rahab and Hagar.  
And Larry, and Dieter and Dixie

The saints upon saints who wander
And the God who goes to the edge to find us.

(1) the Hebrew word is Edna which is specifically sexual pleasure

(2) Zorenberg, Avivah. (1995) The Beginings of Desire: Reflections on Genesis, Chapter: Lekh Lekha: Travails of faith

(3) She discusses this entire concept in depth in Zorenberg, Avivah  (2011) The Murmerings of the Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious, Chapter 5, In the Vale of Soul Making,: Abraham's journey. 

(4) Adrienne Marie Brown explores Ecotones in her book, Emergent Strategy (2017).  She doesn’t write about tide pools but her ideas led me there. 

What actually matters to you? (3.8.26)

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.

 Matthew 19:13-15
…And he laid his hands on them and went on his way.

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 lives—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.

Chicago Song (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 like a gameboard 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 helping each other. Like pots of herbs planted for 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 and busses, 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).