A letter to our 2022 confirmands

 Luke 18:9-14

Dear Confirmands,

Today is confirmation Sunday! Today, we confirmed eight of you 9th graders in your faith! You, dear confirmands, have experienced a lot of bumps in the road the last couple of years.  School has been stressful. You’re involved in so many different sports and clubs and activities, and there have been some really hard moments for some of you where the bottom has dropped out of life. 

Last Wednesday, a big group from the church here got together to talk about who we are as a church, what we care about. Some of you youth showed up too. In my particular small group we talked two (of the many) sides of faith. We discussed how faith is: 1. a place of rest and comfort and 2. a place of challenge that calls us change and grow.  Some of you may have heard this before: that church is a place to comfort the afflicted (St. Paul said that) and afflict the comfortable.

I’m going to wager a guess that in the years prior to confirmation, especially the years when you were much younger, church was often a place of comfort and rest. It has been a place of peace. Many of you have come here with your parents. You sit together year after year in the pew.  You sing familiar song and you hear familiar stories. Church is a place that comforts us, that calms us, that brings us peace. But, the other side of the coin is that church is a place that challenges us.  And, I’m going to guess that if you haven’t started thinking deeply about God, or taking a closer look at what Jesus values compared to what the world values, you will. 

Following Jesus is a way of life and when we keep our eye on the path, it will bring friction into our lives. 

We hear the word “friction” and we think it’s a bad thing—is it some sort of conflict? What friction technically is, is a force that opposes motion.  It slows something down. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Friction is the reason that tires on a car have traction and don’t fly off the road.  Or, it’s the reason why our basketball sneakers make that squeaky noise on the gym floor and stop us instead of slide out from under us.  Friction slows us down. 

In the case of our faith, friction asks us to take a closer look and to reflect. Take today’s gospel reading.  There is an easy way for me to just ice skate (friction-free) through this parable of Jesus without thinking too hard.  For me, a face value interpretation of this story would read like this:

There are 2 men: The Pharisee is a Jewish leader, he’s proud and boasts about his good works.  The tax collector is humble and humility is the most important thing that matters here. The tax collector is the one who ends up being cool God.  Better luck next time Pharisee. We should all be humble like the tax collector. The end.

Now, obviously, humility is important and we could talk more about it. There are many ways to reflect one day about humility and pride. However, given that the parables of Jesus are supposed to stop us in our tracks and turn us upside down, I’m going to offer 3 points that make me think twice about this story and challenge me today.

ONE: What if I tell you that St. Luke, who wrote this story down is always describing Jewish leaders like pharisees in a negative light and tax collectors--despicable as they may be--as sort of darlings. You can go back to scripture and see it for yourself.  Have you ever heard the word "Pharisee" and immediately felt suspicious about how they're messing something up or "not getting it" in the bible story? We’ve been taught that in the Christian faith.  

Luke wrote these stories almost 2,000 years ago. The original people who Jesus was talking to would have thought of pharisees as good, compassionate and merciful Jewish leaders.  And, they would have thought of tax collectors as people who worked for “the man,” cheated folks out of money and were despicable. Luke is showing that tax collectors can be good people, religious leaders can be flawed. Thing is, those categories and their stereotypes aren't engrained in our contemporary daily lives they way they were in Luke's time.

TWO: What if I pointed out that this Pharisee is giving a full 10% or more of his income to the temple. He is exceptionally generous.  He is going above and beyond what the law requires of him.  

Take a moment to think about your family income, or ask your parents about it.  Or consider this, if you make money babysitting or some other after school job.  Imagine that you gave slightly more than 10% of your gross income to church or to charity.  Take a second to think of how much money that would be... Maybe some of you are there and give this. Maybe some of you aren’t. If you do give this, or if you did give it, there is a chance you might feel a little proud of yourself, too. This is generous!

Yes, perhaps your pride is not the best character trait and is would be your growing edge, but do you still roll your eyes in the same way at this pharisee who is proud of his generosity?

THREE: Finally, What if I pointed out that where it says the tax collector was the one who was “cool with God” (or justified) rather than the Pharisee, that the word “rather than” (para in Greek) could also be translated as “along side of.”  This would have the verse sound like this: “A tax collector was made cool with God right along side of the Pharisee, not rather than the Pharisee.”  It sounds different right? (1) For some reason, perhaps some anti-Semitism, translators have favored one translation over another. 

How do these three points make me think differently about this story?  (Remember, Jesus’ parables meant to provoke and challenge us and even make us feel uncomfortable.)

Here’s how this parable could sound in today’s day and age, (I’m taking this entirely from a Jewish scholar named Amy Jill Levine who spelled all this out with this fantastic analogy which I am paraphrasing): Imagine a group project at school. In your group, you’ve got 
1. The smart one (or the over-achiever), 
2. the creative one, 
3. the one who invites everyone over to work on the project and brings snacks, and, 
4. the slacker. 

The first three group members do their fair share. Actually, they do more than their fair share because they’re covering the slacker’s part, right? The slacker shows up to the group meeting and might be 100% friendly and great in the moment but effectively contributes nothing. The project gets an A. The three who contribute are “justified,” they get an A. The slacker also gets an A. She’s also “justified.” The end.

Who reading this finds the scenario unfair? 

I do. 

Have you ever been the over achiever and felt smug about it?  This is what is happening in today’s parable. 

<<says with a hint of sarcasm>> “Hi, overachieving pharisee, thank you for making our world a better place. We know you’re awesome and you kind of want a medal or a prize. Feel free to tone it down a little....Hi, slacker tax collector, you are a little slimy and not exactly embodying God’s love but you’re trying. And we are trying to love you for it but it’s a little hard.”

What if, in this parable, Jesus is telling me that my sense of what’s fair and what’s unfair is off? What if Jesus is telling me that I am being tight-fisted with my generosity? 

Maybe the slacker, who I called lazy, did what she could. Maybe she knew she was slacking and she got all the tense text messages in the group chat, but she trusted the system and she slacked her way through the project. Maybe she had something going at home that we never knew about.  Maybe she sincerely didn’t care and for real just checked out. Was I a fool for doing her work?  Was it dumb for me to be so generous?

What if Jesus is telling me that living in community is actually a kind of group work because not everyone is always their best in community?  And if our good deeds help a sister out, why not just celebrate it instead of begrudge her?

Oh, that’s a hard lesson.  

I just read an article in a business journal about how people who help too much don’t actually get ahead (whatever that means) and Jesus is asking me to help more. This is the kind of challenge that this parable tosses to me today. It’s uncomfortable. It’s irritating. There’s a part of me that wants to fight with it.  

Dear confirmands, the life of faith that you are stepping fully into today needs friction in it.  This goes for all of us.  Some of you are thinking, “Thanks. I’ve got enough friction in my life at the moment, Pastor Lindsay,” and I hear that, some of you do. Friction in life ebbs and flows. How God shows up in our life (as a comforter or an agitator) also ebbs and flows. 

When we put the teachings of Christ into conversation with our own lives, we will be challenged.  There will be times when church or God makes us uncomfortable. So be it.  

But we do not go it alone. Part of what is true in the life of faith is that we need companions on the journey. We need friends, coaches, sparing partners.  We need people who will help us learn how to become more generous in our daily lives. People who will help us identify the places where we’re kind of jerks and how we can take the next step to change. We need people to hold us accountable,  and we need people to bring us a casserole when things fall apart.   God both challenges us and supports us through the community and the congregation. Faith in God is a team sport. 

So, Jesus comforts us, Jesus challenges us, and Jesus does one more thing consistently in scripture…

Jesus celebrates!

He’s constantly throwing parties, inviting folks to dinner, turning water into wine, savoring life, and telling stories about celebrations! His joy is infectious! And this why we celebrate our confirmands today.
God bless you, dear confirmands in this wild and precious life. May your journey with God open your hearts and bless the world around you. To God be the glory!

(1) Jewish New Testament scholar, Amy Jill Levine discusses this at length. She acknowledges the two legit translations of 1. instead of, 2. alongside of. However, she also offers a 3rd fascinating (imo) translation that suggests that the word can also be translated as "because of" rendering an idea that "the tax collector is justified because of the Pharisee's generosity. This third suggestion is even more of a mind-bender for me.

A message about sleepless nights, struggle in our souls and holding on

 Genesis 32:22-31

A couple of weeks ago when talking about the parable of the lost sons (or prodigal son), I mentioned that there is something refreshing about hearing the stories of families in the bible. For all that we hear this day and age about “family values” that are based in scripture, for some reason, our bible stories sure like to zero in on the moments when families are cracking or people are at their worst.

Today’s story about Jacob is no different. Jacob was the younger of twin boys.  Remember, his dad, Isaac was the one who was almost sacrificed by Abraham until the angel intervened?  Right. Dad, Isaac married Rebecca who eventually got pregnant with twins.  Rebecca had a miserable pregnancy. She said it felt like the babies fought the whole time in the womb. And as the story goes, Jacob was born clutching the heel of his slightly older brother Esau.  These two brothers are in competition from the moment they were born.  Years later, they were probably teenagers, Jacob dressed up as his brother and convinced his dad, Isaac, to give him the special blessing of the firstborn son.  Esau is furious. He vows to get revenge. Jacob takes off running to the hills to Uncle Laban’s house.  

When our story picks up many years later, Jacob is married with several wives, several concubines, lots of kids, tons of animals, loads of drama. (Any of you see Joseph and the amazing technicolor dream coat? You know the song “Jacob and sons”. This is that Jacob).

Jacob, there in mid life, gets to reflecting on things and decides to send a messenger out to test the waters with his twin: “Hey Esau, it’s me your long lost twin brother. I know things weren’t so great the last time we hung out, but I was wondering if we might mend the bridge, bury the hachet, let by gones be bygones, what do you say…? 

Esau sends a message back, “ah, you want to meet? Okay. I’m on my way. With 400 men in tow. See you soon. xo"

400 men. Instead of accepting Jacob’s olive branch, Esau seems to have ignited it. This is not exactly how Jacob was hoping this would go.  Jacob is freaking out. The bible records it in detail: “How am I going to survive this!”  He panics. He splits his wives, kids, animals into two groups hoping that one of the groups will survive the attack. He prepares this nice present for Esau and sends it ahead, maybe this will help soften him up—and then he starts praying: “Look God. I’m in a mess. A real mess here. You said you’d protect me. Okay, this is the moment.” The bible records this prayer. I’m paraphrasing. But clearly Jacob is freaking out. He is haunted by his mistakes. He’s in a serious bind. He’s estranged from his extended family.  He has sent the rest of the family away to hide and he is alone. Dusk falls. And then night. And this is where our bible story picks up today. 

Justin Renteria is an illustrator and created this picture of a woman sitting at a desk.  She’s presumably a modern business woman but she has that 1950s looking housewife vibe of a woman who looks like she’s just been delivered the washer and dryer set of her dreams.  She’s beaming, but sitting at a massive, formidable desk. She’s one of those annoying images of carefree perfection. What is not immediately apparent is that her desk is sitting on top of a tank, an army tank that is bulldozing forward come hell or high water. 

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We do not always see what is going on beneath the surface. We don’t always share what keeps us up at night.  The mistakes that haunt us. The stress that amps us up.  A lot of us are wrestling something in a dimly lit space that we can’t make out the end of.  Jacob doesn’t know what the morning will bring when he meets Esau. He is between worlds, straddling the boundary between what was and what will be. We straddle those in between, liminal spaces all the time. Sometimes its after hitting send on the email, we wait. After an argument with a spouse or a sibling, we wait. In the 5-7 days before the biopsy results come in, we wait. 

We wait for something we hope for or for some higher love to intervene. With Jacob’s story, there are chapters and chapters detailing his mistakes and freak outs, but all we get is a couple little lines about his dark night of the soul.  What happened between the lines?

We know that night falls and Jacob is attacked in the dark. It is a full on fight. He wrestles with someone there on the banks of the river.  Who is he fighting? We’re not really sure.  The scripture doesn’t say. There are ancient tales in the middle east of river spirits that only come out at night—is that who he wrestled with? Some people say he wrestled God.  Some say it was an angel (the book of Hosea suggests that). If you’re into Karl Jung, maybe you’ll say Jacob was wrestling his shadow side.  

The Hebrew just says that Jacob wrestled an Ish, which simply means “man.” He wrestled for hours. Until he was exhausted. Have you been exhausted? By your pace? By your anxiety? By your anger? By your grief for something or someone who is no longer the same? All night long on the banks of that river, Jacob wrestled. He’s alone. No one is there to bear witness to his struggle with this man. Except us.  

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Why don’t we let people see the real struggle that we experience. Not in the sense that we’re supposed to bleed all over people, but we don’t let people see failure, the stress, the strain the wrestling match.  While we might prepare some well crafted answer about “failure” for an interview, that’s about it. Researcher Cia-Jung Tsay who teaches at the Wisconsin School of Business has explored the psychology around struggle and its’ role in success.  She explains that if you ask folks in the US which is more important to success: effort or talent, they are 50% more likely to say “effort is most important to success” There’s a 2:1 probability they’ll say this. But, if you ask them what’s most important in a new hire: talent or effort, they pick talent over effort 5 to 1. 

Deep down, we bias talent over effort. We think that people succeed or make it through or grow because they are naturally strong, or gritty or they were born gifted.  We don’t want to think about how they’ve fought for it: Fought for their mental health, their relationships, their craft, their career, their compassion, their faith, fought for a better world…

Journalist Jerry Useem wrote that, “You cannot find youtube videos [of the struggle]: of Yo-yo ma tediously repeating a difficult passage, or Ronald Reagan practicing his speeches in front of a mirror, or Steve Jobs unveiling a half-baked iPhone.”  He says he closest he came to finding this on youtube was an early Rolling Stones draft of “start me up” as a reggae tune which was, to say the least, a bust. 

We don’t want to see the struggle, admit it’s there or even, find the value in effort.  Jacob wrestles the man in the dark and no one is around to see it. If struggle or wrestling sets off this alarm in us, then we’ll always pull back when we’re confronted with it.  What does that mean when the going gets tough? When the conversation gets real? When the stake are raised? 

Back to our story of Jacob.  Jacob wrestles all night.  It’s not clear what the Ish is after. But these two are relentless and they will not let each other go.  By this point, Jacob has hung on long enough to be hurt.  And as dawn approaches, the Ish slams him in the hip. It’s dislocated out of the socket, maybe it pops in and out, the text isn’t clear, but it sounds bad. And still Jacob hangs on. The Ish tells Jacob to let him go. Jacob throws back “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” The Ish says alright.  He changes Jacob’s name to Israel (which means the one who wrestles with God) and then blesses him.  There is this fuzzy clue that maybe the Ish wrestling Jacob was God. Maybe, it was God that came to him, in that place of struggle in that dark night. 

As the sun rose, Jacob walked away from the river bank with a limp.  He walked the whole rest of his life with that limp. But his wound wasn’t a sign of failure, but of growth, in a sense success and in a sense persistence during a really tough time.

A lot of us are facing uncertainty in our lives.  Some of it big, some of it small. Some of it personal some of it societal.  How do we hang on? (Think of that persistent widow in the gospel story for today who hung on pestering that judge.)  For our lives thrive and flourish, we must hang on. The same goes for our lives of faith.  God isn’t always that image of the gentle shepherd or loving servant. Sometimes, God is our streetfighter who will not be wrestled into a box and who will not be wrestled into our understanding. God is the one who calls us, even pushes us to growth and to change. God is the one who loves us too fiercely to let us go. 

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The end of Jacob’s story isn’t as much of the point today.  While Jacob did indeed change, he didn’t become this whole new person after wrestling and being wounded and being blessed.  His life moved on.  He survived the night.  

The next morning, he met his twin Esau and the four hundred men. And before he could get a word out of his mouth, Esau ran to him and embraced him and they wept. They reconciled. They met each other’s families, they probably ate together and told old stories and carried each other’s kids around on their shoulders.  And then they went on their ways and life went on. Jacob had another child, Benjamin. He buried his beloved wife, Rachel. He moved his family to Egypt.  He passed the story of God’s love to his children who passed it on, in turn, to their children. 

Over the generations, the people made mistakes that they wrestled with. They struggled with God, they figured it out—or didn’t. They turned away and God took them by the shoulders and turned them back.  
Some storyteller somehow, somewhere passed this story of Jacob’s long night down to us today to remind us that this life isn’t easy. This life of faith isn’t easy. Loving God and letting God love us and change us in the midst of our pain isn’t always easy; but we stand on the shoulders of people who have known the struggle and who point to the way. We know that in that challenge, somehow, God strives alongside of us.

St. Agustin of Hippo famously wrote that “if you have understood, than what you have understood is not God.” 

This faith that we inherit and pass on and cherish has so much more to do with hanging on than with being certain.  Truthfully, our faith in anyone—including God—has to do with being willing to fight for the relationship. To risk getting hurt. To risk the dirt of the rough and tumble. To have faith of the blessing that is ours in the midst of it. 

In my own case, there are days when I believe and God’s presence shimmers with certainty. These are days when God fights with me, or alongside of me through my struggle. And then, there are days when I don’t believe, and I grasp for God in the night.

Understanding it or not, or having certainty or not doesn’t threaten my call to struggle for beauty and justice and this world. It doesn't dim my effort to be transformed. It doesn’t steal God’s presence or God’s essence from my life. 

God uses Jacob to remind us that sometimes the dark nights are long. Sometimes the wounds we carry into the morning stay with us forever. Sometimes we are unsure of where the road may take us. But, we carry God’s blessing with us along the way.

A samaritan, a mindset, a community

 Last week, with the parable of the lost, sheep, coin and son, I mentioned the power of stories or ideas grouped in threes.  Folk stories grouped in threes catch our attention. It’s always the third character that succeeds. The rule of three also has this element of predictability.  If we think groups of three:

Father, Son and Holy Sprit.
Larry, Moe and Curly.
Snap, crackle, pop.
Signed, sealed, delivered.
Back to that same old place, sweet, home Chicago!

This favorite bible story that we just heard is about the man who is beaten up, thrown to the side of the road, and he needs help. 

1. The first person who might help him is a priest, 
2. The second is a Levite and when Jesus told this story, all his people  are going to know that your... 
3. ...third person in that trio is going to be an Israelite.  

(A levite, priest and an Israelite—it’s the old standard formula(1)). When Jesus says, “Samaritan” you can almost hear everyone go, “Noooooo! C’mon, man!!”  

While we look at the story and might say, “ah, the first two characters failed. Yes, yes, sometimes we too fail. We should be like the lovely, generous Samaritan.” That perspective is not wrong.  But it’s a little more nuanced than that. In Jesus’ time, there was bad history, with the Samaritans and Jewish community. Some folks considered the Samaritans Jewish, some didn’t. There was a complicated history all around, but people would have really booed at Jesus with this story.  Jewish scholar, Amy Jill Levine explained this point and went on to say that “A priest, a levite and a Samaritan would have been like saying, “Larry, Moe, and (enter the name of some famous terrorist). For a lot of reasons Samaritans were not beloved.

When we don’t like someone, there’s something in us that prefers a simple lie about them to a complex truth. As with anyone who you really don’t like, it was tough to imagine the Samaritan was motivated by good old fashioned compassion.  

MLK, on the night before he was assassinated, gave a speech called “I’ve been to the mountaintop.” He was in Memphis and the city's sanitation workers were striking. In it, he reflects on the priest and the Levite who first stumble upon that injured man and why it was that they didn’t help.  He suggests that are worried about what will happen to them if they stop and help.  That makes sense. We have worried about that too: What will happen to us if we help a person who is in need, if we support a movement, defend a cause? Just look at the bible story: It takes time to get involved with this guy on the side of the road. It takes money to truly help him. It’s uncomfortable. It’s an inconvenience. The Samaritan loses the better part of a day. These first two characters in the story, King said, couldn’t get over the question of, if I stop to help this man, what’s going to happen to me?

But the Samaritan is different, King says. The question he asks is, when he sees the man in need is if "I don’t stop to help this man, what’s going to happen to him?" 

Spin this question out just a little bit and extend those comments of King and ask, “if I don’t stop to help this man, what’s going to happen to us? 

We are part of a collective whole. 

Catholic Priest, Father Richard Rohr wrote about how during the South African Truth and Reconciliation process, the perpetrators apologized to the victims and when they did that they used the words “I’m sorry. Forgive me.” It was a way to take responsibility for what they did or what they had done. But, when this was translated the victims heard something different. It was a painful miscommunication. They instead heard what the translators said to them: Nidi cela uxolo which has a different meaning. When we say “I’m sorry” in English, it’s something that we say individually: I did something wrong and I’m responsible for it. The words, “forgive me” Father Rohr explains, are specifically about me and my guilt that has weighed heavily on me. Please cancel this debt. Forgive me. But the translators translated the words “I’m sorry” as Nidi cela uxolo or “I ask for peace.” You can feel the difference between “I’m sorry” and “I ask for peace.” Peace is wider than just you and me. It is an Ubuntu way to apologize and it is about “we.”  The elders heard a request for peace and they offered forgiveness with this spirit of “us” with a “hope that seeds would be planted for the good of the whole community.”  It is a way of asking for a better “we” and for a healing of the fabric of the collective people. It’s a little bit of a mind bender but it’s one we’re called to adopt.   

What does it look like to think collectively?

It’s not easy. 

This last week, I was talking with Dave, who many of you know in our congregation, who is a business man. He works in sales. He mentioned how strategies around leadership are changing since he got his MBA 10 years ago. He is obviously concerned about a profit in his line of work, but he told me he has been thinking about servant-leadership. 

Clearly, this piqued my attention. I asked him about it and he reflected. Servant leadership is simply good for the people he works with. It helps everyone become their best selves which is healthy for the collective. He told me he’s still trying to figure it out and that it’s not intuitive. I believe him. But we’re called to move in this direction and he's thinking about how to do that.

We are not trained, not raised, not guided to think of the collective. For example, here in the US, folks talk about buying organic produce because it was good for them. (Fine and good, buy the produce you like organic or not. However, for the sake of the example:) my own thought process on it changed a little when I worked with some migrants farm workers in Mexico who told me how their eyelashes would fall out after a pesticide was sprayed. While we tend to consider the individual cost, implication, benefits, etc, I realized there was a collective consideration wrapped up here that goes beyond the “cost to my own body.” 

Every once in a while, this church sells fair trade coffee. It’s a similar idea: there’s an effect that goes beyond the cost to us but that affects a wider circle of farmers. Regardless of the kind of produce or coffee you buy, we’re just not trained to think this way. 

Kevin once told us in a message that his mother said she didn’t always go to church for herself but for the people down the pew who needed the presence of another person there. We’re not taught to think of the wider collective implications of caring and helping. 

African American activist and writer, James Baldwin wrote that it’s actually in the interest of American whites to think of the collective and to pursue racial reconciliation.  At first that sounds like a mindset of self-interest. Yes, in a sense, he appealed to our tendency towards self-interest (What’s in it for me?), but racial healing is actually to everyone’s benefit. It’s about us.

It’s not the easiest shift for us to move from, what could I lose if I help? (What will this cost me in time, money, and energy? if I give, serve, advocate, and participate) to what do we lose if I don’t.

How can you practice thinking collectively this week? How can you practice this in the way you respond to people who are in need, in the way you interact with your team at work, in the way you buy things, in the way you serve?

When we don’t stop to help, when we ignore the pain of the person, when we make snap judgements of people, when we stop deeply caring about our neighbors, we lose something of the kingdom of God. Something cracks. We lose something. Justice frays. We lose connection, trust, grace. We lose peace. Our vision of a world animated by God’s love dims.

God’s kingdom doesn’t just exist between two people: for example, between the wounded person and the one who helps. It is something collective that is shared between all of us.  Maybe the Samaritan isn’t showing us what it looks like to individually sacrifice. Maybe he’s showing us what community looks like and the kind of world he wants to live in.

I want to live in that world too.

And we can. We build it—we experience it--with each action of service we do.

Clearly, Jesus wanted to get us thinking and reflecting with this one. But then, he tells us at the end where to land. Go, he says. Be like the Samaritan. Do likewise.

(1) Ezra 10:5, Nehemiah 11:3. Amy Jill Levine elaborates this idea in "Short Stories by Jesus."

When you lost more than you meant to

Luke 15:11b-32

One of the beauties of a story like the prodigal son is that there are notes that ring true across the generations.  We resonate. All of us have some awkwardness in our families—or a lot of it.  No family is without its’ drama. Many of us know what it is like to want to run away.  Some of us ran away as children (I marched off as far as the Sherman’s house next door before glancing behind me to see if my mother was watching.  She was). Some of us have run away quite happily and permanently as adults and we continue to keep our family distant. Or they keep us away.  

I’m guessing that all of us have had moments of serious annoyance with our parents—or anger?  I’m also guessing that many of us parents have faced moments where we truly have no idea what to do with our ridiculous children.

And then there are the siblings.  There is nothing quite like a sibling. If you don’t have one, it will take a person down the pew exactly 10 seconds to confirm that siblings are can be best and worst thing that can exist.  She may be your best friend. Or…your is she your arch enemy?

It’s kind of comforting to me that family dysfunction is a real theme in the bible.  Especially when the siblings get involved.  There’s the story where one of the famous biblical twins, Jacob, puts on a costume, fools dad who is half asleep and hornswoggles the inheritance out of him. His brother Esau is understandably enraged. 

There’s the bible story, where one brother, Joseph, gets a fancy new snazzy coat from his dad and the other siblings are so mad about it, they throw him in a pit. …I assume that’s the kind of thing that happens when you have eleven older brothers.  Martha, the sister of Mary, seethes in the kitchen washing dishes while her oblivious sister (who-never-picks-up-a-broom) is compared against her.

Interestingly, let’s just all take notice that the younger siblings sure get a lot of attention and extra TLC in these stories.  Moreover, not only are the younger kids the family favs, they’re also successful, handsome, smart, visionary, they have stunning portfolios, excellent business acumen and hundred dollar haircuts—these biblical babies are shining stars.  King David is the youngest of 7, King Solomon is the second son born to David and Bathsheba. Isaac, the beloved son of Sarah and Abraham, is younger than his brother Ishmael. No, I do not have a bone to pick with biblical birth order, I have a point to make. 

That when Jesus begins this oh-so-favorite parable with, “there was a man who had two sons…” that everyone in the audience around him comfortably settled into their seats because they knew their bible stories and they knew exactly how this story was going to turn out with the shining star youngest child.

Until the story went off the rails. 

When the younger son left home to see the world—which is, by the way, what young people do all the time these days, he had a lot of fun and then things went very bad. Burned the whole college fund, his whole inheritance, in riotous living. He’s greedy, and dumb and makes lots of bad choices.  Perhaps par for the course for many of us were also young and foolish when we first set out to conquer the world.

But while he may not have gained riches, he does seem to have gained wisdom—if we could call it that? (or sneakiness) and after he has lost it all, he returns home where dad, is overjoyed that his fav kid, the baby of the family, is home. All is forgiven. And his dad throws him an epic party. This is the part of the story where we point out that the older, workaholic brother is pouty and won’t forgive, and get over it, and come to the party.

*****

You know, Folks-stories grouped in trios have always been good at the plot twist.  Think of goldilocks and the three bears, the first two chairs were too big and too small, the first two bowls of porridge too hot and too cold. It’s always the third that is just right.  Same goes for the billy goats gruff, the three musketeers, the three three little pigs, Leave it to the third pig to build the house of of bricks, trick that wolf and get it right.  

In today’s story, told by Jesus in succession after 1. Lost sheep and 2. Lost coin, the rule of three does not disappoint. In the first of the 3 stories that we heard about last week, the shepherd goes out to look for his lost sheep and finds it.  In the second story, the woman turns the house over top to bottom looking for her lost coin. She finds it. In the third, the son that the dad goes looking for is not the merry prodigal son, who came home from his escapades with his tail between his legs.  The dad goes out to the field to search for the older son who he, scripture tells us, forgot to invite to the party.  (oops).

While I can affirm that there was something about the younger prodigal son that was most definitively lost, given the shape our world is in right now, the second half of the story has me thinking. 

You see, there is something very comfortable about having an enemy.  When we’re face to face with things stressing us out, it’s nice to know there’s someone to blame.  It’s a convenient to have a scapegoat.  It’s so nice, in fact that we are good at creating enemies. For example, there were a series of studies in the last few years that showed that when you tell folks in this country that technology and automation is taking jobs, people become more anti-immigrant.  Instead of directing their feelings of frustration towards the tech or the people who made the tech, people—across the political spectrum—direct their anger at a human scapegoat.  Because it’s nice to blame someone.

When the dad in this story leaves the prodigal party to look for his lost son in the field, he finds him, and his son lets loose. Years of resentment and family disfunction overflow. Before we jump to some kind of desire for everyone in this family to just hug it out, let’s acknowledge that no one in this room, right here today is a stranger to human dysfunction and even making enemies out of each other.  Whether it’s a parent that favors a certain child, or an inability to talk about why we are jealous or hurt or why we feel awkward or left out or scared, we all know that relationships can be a real mess.  And while sure, relationships can be bruised by misunderstandings, there’s also a lot of human sin like judgement, pride, and arrogance that can cut and wound them.

Here’s the thing that I could not stop thinking about this last week: the son (or both of the sons) are not the only thing that is lost in this story that Jesus tells. 

When we hurt each other, when we take advantage of each other, belittle one another, fail to appreciate one another or build each other up, when our ego is convinced of how blameless we are, we lose something. Something was lost in that field that day. We lose connection, trust, and accountability. We lose our sense of peace. 

Zoom out a little, and take a wider view of this dysfunction: when we get caught up in our money or our stuff, when we make each other the enemy, when we’re snide and disparaging, when we are judged by one another, addicted to cynicism, when we’re stingy and won’t share, when we are in need and there is nothing there for us, when we stop deeply caring about our neighbors, when the one who hurts is forgotten, something cracks. We lose something. Justice crumbles. We lose our vision of a world animated by God’s love.

If we are working to build this world that God calls us to, then we have got to take a look at what is getting in the way.   Sin isn’t some kind of rule that we break that we need to get punished for or get demerits for.  It’s something that robs us of the kingdom of God.  It closes our minds, it makes us not care, it hardens our hearts, it distracts us from what matters. And in the grip of dysfunction, we lose one another. We lose God.

Thankfully, the dad in today’s bible story had the foresight to realize that he had spaced on inviting his child to the party and he went to look for him. heaven only knows how long they stood there talking in that field, with the son, furious and spitting out the truth and his hurt. His dad tried. We got a little bit of the conversation. 

“Child!” the dad says to him. (It’s the same word that mother Mary cries out when she and Joseph finally find 12 year old Jesus who was lost in the temple. “Child!” She says to him, “we were so worried!”)

Faced with so much brokenness, we must wrestle back the tools that we need to get us to God.  We must wrestle back compassion, a desire to understand one another, a deep humility.  We must struggle to practice generosity and patience and forbearance. Even if we grit our teeth while we do it, we have to practice it like a muscle to make it stronger. We must wrestle back grace.  And you are the one that knows what this looks like in your own life. Because grace comes before change. And God has asked us to change this hurting world.

When we think about what kind of world we want to build—and we’re going to think more deeply about that as a congregation this fall—we know that we as humanity are not there yet.  

The poet Cleo Wade writes, 
we say to the world, ‘please change; we need change.’ 
But how do we show up to change in our own lives? 
How do we show up to change the lives of the people in our communities?

Something has been lost. There the dad and his son stand deep in conversation while the party music drifts down in to the field.  How do the two men resolve it? Well, Jesus doesn’t tell us. Given that you know this challenge as well as I, I guess I’ll say, How do we resolve it? What does that look like in your life? 

You tell me.  

The gift of friendship and a slice of cake

 John 14:15-21
I want you to take a moment and think about your friendships.  For some of you, you know exactly what I’m talking about with friends.  And you’re very jazzed to see them in school tomorrow! For others of you, these are the friends that live on the other side of your backyard fence, the people you sit next to at the little league game, the people in your water aerobics class. Maybe it’s a person you cross paths with weekly in a meeting.  There are also the people that you connect with once in a while for lunch, Or there are those friends who you’ve known for a long time that you don’t talk to often, but when you do, there is an ease that is almost supernatural. 

What is it that makes friendship so special? 

Journalist, Julie beck once wrote that, when people talk about their friends or with their friends, they are “their most generous, their funniest, and their most fascinating.” 

It seems like a lot of researchers focus on relationships we have with our parents or our romantic partners. Friendships get less attention.  But friendships, also shape and anchor our lives. 

There also aren’t a ton of places in scripture where we specifically hear of friendships.  Maybe they are implied: obviously Pricilla and Aquilla had to be friends if they were working together in the streets of Corinth. Tabitha most certainly had deep friendships with the women in the early church.  She has a whole posse of ladies in Antioch. Or the old stories of David and Johnathan—they were good friends.  Jesus is certainly deeply affected when Lazarus dies. One can only suppose that he was friends with Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha. 

There’s another place in scripture that got me thinking about friendship. There’s this little section of the gospel of John that was read a moment ago. In this scene, Jesus is with his disciples and they’re all talking at the table.  He says to them, I’ve been here with you, but I’m not going to be with you in the same way going forward. The way I’ll be with you is to send you the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, according to the gospel of John, is the one who is called to be alongside us. You can see it right in the word that John uses to describe the Sprit. The first part of the word, para means “with” or “alongside,” the second part of the word is kaleo or “to call.” Para-clete. So, the holy spirit is the one who is called to be along side of us.  

I heard an interview with Dr. Vivek Murthee, the surgeon general, where he talked about friendship. He mentioned that when he was young man, he felt really fulfilled socially, but then, he said, he started to get more deeply involved in his work. He had two kids, life was busy and, with time, he stopped paying attention to his friendships. It was an insidious thing that didn’t happen overnight, but eventually at the pinnacle of his career, he found himself consumed with work, and isolated. He talked about how this seems to be a little more common for men than women. He said he was ironically surrounded by people, but that the quality of the connection with them was thin. Loneliness, he said, masquerades as depression, addiction, anger, violence, grumpiness.  Then, he said, he happened to be on a retreat, where he saw two old friends that he looks up to and respects. He hadn’t been in touch with them.  He said at one point at the retreat, the three of them took a walk and he told them he felt like he was struggling with a lack of connection and good friends.  The friends made a pact then to check in once a month and call and it has helped. 

Social scientists say that a lot of our close friends are friends of utility. They’re certainly real friends, but we’re friends with them because our paths cross consistently at work or in our kids’ lives. Sometime, these people become our very best friends, often they’re not.

If your friendship is utilitarian or connected because of work, for example, you might always be hanging onto a little bit of your professional demeanor and you don’t want to risk messing it up by sharing something personal or speaking up if something really matters to you.  Maybe you could say that there’s always a little bit of our guard that’s up? It can keep the quality of your connection with that friend thin.

But there’s another deeper kind of friendship. It was Aristotle who said that when friends share a love of something bigger than either of them that is outside of you both of them, you move to another level of friendship. These kind of friendships don’t depend on work or family or ambition.  You’re connected by something that is outside of you that you simply enjoy. Maybe you share a love of baseball or you love to make music together, or you share a common love in your… religion.  Over time, when we get to really know one another. These are the friends who come up along side of us (like that paraclete Jesus speaks of) not because we need them, but just because we love them.  They don’t need us, they just…love us. There is no useful purpose to the relationship other than knowing and loving each other. 

Or--is that the most transformative thing of all?…That there is no useful purpose other than knowing and loving each other?

Some studies say that being truly known is central to achieving change in psychotherapy.  I wonder if the same could be said about growth in our faith.

In the gospel of John, Jesus talks all the time about knowing God and being known by God, and abiding in God and abiding in one another. I wondered if that level of friendship is a kind of discipleship, and, in its’ own way, a way to follow Jesus.  Was that kind of closeness, and enjoyment of one another almost like a spiritual practice?  I have not yet landed on the answer to that one, but I’m thinking about it.

I’ve been thinking about friendship, in part because about a month ago, Liza mentioned at a staff meeting that her friendships and relationships were part of an experience here at this church that has had a deep impact on her.  

She shared in our worship service how these relationships impacted her and you can see some of her reflections here. 

How have you experienced being deeply known or a powerful friendship that has changed you? 

I want to take a moment to acknowledge that some people feel really known at church, and some people feel impossibly lonely in the church and like they don’t fit (maybe it’s useful to point out that: basically everyone over the age of 10 questions and frets about if they really belong at church at some point or another. Ironically, everyone finds common ground there)

**** 

For a variety of different reasons, over the years, many of us let the friendship muscle atrophy and we stop intentionally practicing friendship. There are any number of other reasons, we stop being intentional with our friends. Maybe, like, Dr. Murthee, we get caught up in work: professional success has become almost virtuous--it certainly seems more virtuous than hanging out with friends. maybe we have a family member with a health crisis that is consuming us and it’s hard to connect with friends.  Maybe… there’s a global pandemic and we all become a little socially awkward and unsure about how to connect with each other. Strange as it sounds, like other practices, Friendship is a skill that we have to cultivate and practice …or we get bad at it. 

Here at church, while there are certainly a lot of tasks we can get caught up in around here, one of the main things is relationships.  We could do this God thing on our own, some people do which is just fine, but there is also something about faith that is a team sport, a group project and we show up here with a group of people to practice it. there is no utilitarian function to the relationships or friendships you will make here at church. I mean, maybe you’ll network with someone, or find a play date for your kid, or find someone who can retile your bathroom, but that isn’t the point.This place is about relationships for the sheer sake of relationships.  That is how Christ is made known in this world. And we practice that together.

******

We are, of late, a little rusty at relationship here at church.  In the last couple of years, we’ve trimmed out a lot of the places where we used to cultivate those relationships and even practice friendships. Wednesday night meals or choir practice. It has been hard to get coffee hour going. It’s difficult to see each others’ faces with the masks. This fall, we’re going to get some things going where we’ll hopefully be able to connect more deeply with each other through some cottage meeting conversation groups, maybe an occasional men’s group bonfire, or music rehearsal on Wednesday night. We hope you’ll find space to connect. But in the meantime, right here, right now, we are going to pause our worship service for a ten minute moment of fika. 

During this short coffee break, your task is to turn around and make eye contact with folks and introduce yourself.  When the music starts you’ll know it’s time to continue with the communion liturgy.

A sermon about praising God when things are bad and lessons in carpentry

Psalm 33:12-20
Some years ago when I worked with the domestic violence organization, one of the clinicians and I led a therapeutic writing group for survivors of abuse.  One of the prompts that the groups would reflect on had to do with what home felt like.  We weren’t necessarily talking about what someone’s house or apartment was like but the idea of home or the feeling of home. Home was a place where they felt safe, empowered, capable, loved, that kind of thing.  Some folks in those writing groups reflected on feeling “at home” in their childhood home or in college.  Some mentioned certain friends that made them feel like home.  I can’t remember any specifics of what people wrote, but I remember words like: “comfortable, safe, peaceful” as words that described that feeling of home.  There is a word in Spanish that keeps coming to mind when I think of what home means: Plena. It means whole, complete, content, full hearted. 

What makes you feel like you’re at home?  (or who?)
Where are the spaces where you feel at home?

Early last week, I erased the psalm from the service. In my defense, we try to keep the services shorter in the summer and we do less readings.  But that wasn’t entirely my motivation.  I eliminated it because singing praise of God and dancing around with a lyre, tambourine and joyous shouts wasn’t totally vibing for me this week.  It felt tone deaf. The earth, the psalm says, is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.  I took a walk recently with one of our high-schoolers who specifically mentioned that it sure didn’t feel like the earth was full of God’s love.  I didn’t argue. 

I was not at home with the psalm and I quietly erased it from the service. 

You’ll notice, it’s back. 

In the writing group at the shelter, it was occasionally a process to realize that a person didn’t feel very “at home” in their house or apartment.  When you don’t feel at home, but you long for it, that can be called that homesick.  Think summer camp or even a sleepover as a kid.  Did you ever feel homesick? I did. 

Or, as an adult, I remember moving to a new house and staring at the ceiling my first night in my new room and not quite feeling at home. I would feel that homesickness deep in my belly. Even today, I’m occasionally struck with a twinge when I miss someone who is gone, like my mother, in a sense, homesick for her. But I also feel that same thing when I think of what I long for in the world that isn’t here yet.  

I long for that feeling of safety or security and love for my kids, for all of us.  And there are times when it’s clear that it’s not here. Sure, there are pockets of it, but when I look around at some of the wounds in our world or our city and our neighborhood, I know we are not there yet—and I long and I ache for something different. 

About 100 years ago, philosopher Ernst Bloch equated Heimweh (which could be translated as homesickness) with a feeling of hope.  Hope. He said it’s a feeling of home that is just out of reach. Hope is a longing for that feeling of home. It’s a kind of homesickness.

So back to that time earlier in the week when I erased the psalm.  Last week, as many of you know, we found those tiki torches outside the church on Sunday. It robbed some of us of a feeling of home and safety here at church or here in our neighborhood.  There have been unsettling events in the news and our neighborhood.  Some of you have personal strife that you’re working through:  diagnosis, anxiety, that kind of thing.  We long for that feeling of home. How, I wondered, could I pray those first joyful verses of the psalm with confidence?  

This psalm sings of a God that bottles up all of the deepest, shadow-iest dangers and carries them away.  But that image of God wasn’t squaring for me with real life. “Faith,” Hebrews says, “is the assurance of things hoped for. The conviction of things not seen.”  And perhaps, just in that, there was a side to this psalm that I not seeing.  I assumed that the psalmist saw God as so strong and so mighty so joyful, so oblivious to the frayed ends around us. Or, was there a side to God in the psalm that I was missing?

In vs. 15 of the psalm, we sing of a God who fashions the hearts of all people. That word for fashioned is the same word used in one of the ancient creation stories from Genesis where God fashioned and formed all of the different people and animals in the garden.  Rachel Wrenn commented that God is like an intimate potter, puttering around, with be-speckled glasses, divine lips quirking up in a smile with what is coming to shape before their eyes. That, she said, was an image of God fashioning us, molding us and shaping us day after day.

But, while God fashions and forms and molds us, the person who wrote this psalm acknowledged that in their daily ancient life, there was still actually famine, fear and pain.  The psalm says that God’s eye is upon us. God is watching us, God is with us, and will save us; but we, who sing this psalm are still waiting and hoping and longing for the Lord who is our help and our shield.  We are still homesick and aching for what is not yet here.  

How was it that these ancient people could praise God like this while they were in the midst of such famine and fear and distress? 

Many years ago, my youth group participated in one of these mission trips where we were sent to a small town with several hundred other high school youth. They split us into teams and then dispatched us to go do construction projects for a week.  On that very first trip, I think it was to West Virginia, I was set up with a crew and we worked on the roof of a woman who we called Granny. Our project was to patch a couple of rotted pieces of plywood in the roof above her front porch and then re-shingle it.  That is until one of my crewmates almost fell through the roof, and our crew leader determined that the we would have to do some additional structural work.  

The roof was sagging, but we would be able to save some of the support beams through what is known in carpentry as “sistering.”  When you sister a board or a joist, you put a healthy beam right alongside of the saggy one. You fasten the two together and it adds this extra support and strengthens the jenky beam.  

This is precisely what we did for granny’s roof.  We cut new pieces of wood and then scooched them right up next to the weak beams. They added support and they kept the roof up.  

This is what praise does for the longing, aching heart in this psalm.  It pulls in that strong beam of God’s goodness and it fastens itself to the original beam for support.  Praise sisters us to God, it comes along side of us, supports us. It reminds us of a God who provides for us, who is quietly at work in our lives.  Praise is a way to fasten our hearts to God.

And it sounds like this: “We praise you, God for another day.  From the moment our feet hit the floor in the morning, we thank you for this incredibly beautiful gift of being alive.” And we fasten God to our hearts.

“We praise you God for the beauty of creation around us: for the rain and the sky and the air we breathe.”And we fasten our hearts to God.

We give our thanks and praise
For our families
For our neighbors
For the mail carrier
For a perfect tomato at lunch
For the friend that sent the funny text
For the fan blowing hot air on me in the impossibly hot church
And God buttons into us.

We praise God, and we fasten our hearts to God.

And there are more things that sister us besides praise.  You all have sistered me as strong support that has come up along side of me in times of need. Sistering is holy work. And it’s not something that just the sisters do. I’ve been sistered by some incredible brothers this week. We are sistered by our neighborhood that responds to us with support and compassion after what happened last week.  We are sistered by each other.

What has sistered you?
What has been the support that comes up alongside of you?

For what do you give thanks and praise to God?

While it might seem like this psalm with its’ joyous praise is annoyingly tone deaf to the pain of real life, it turns out that praise is a practice (a spiritual practice) to draw close to God and to draw God precisely into those places of fear and famine and death. Praise opens a window into our hearts. In through that window comes God who sisters themselves right up along side of us.

****
It has been a week where my sense of home has been shaken.  Maybe yours has too, for any number of reasons. And THAT is the story of why I added the psalm back into the service.
***

I wrote to you earlier this week that we are living in extraordinary times.  These are times when it feels like the world is shifting under our very feet.  It is frightening, exhilarating, disorienting.  It is a time of homesickness for what was and hope for what will be.  What a time to be alive! Right now, by the grace of God, we have the opportunity to be a part of shaping this world into what we long for, for ourselves and our children. Despite every evidence to the contrary, in the face of famine and death, of racism and hatred, of homophobia and transphobia and evil, with all these things that make us homesick and full of longing, We will sing our praise and thanksgiving to God, and the Holy One will fasten themselves to us as we sing of  God’s endless steadfast love.

Truly, your eye is upon those who fear you, O LORD,
  upon those who wait for your steadfast love,
 to deliver their lives from death,
  and to keep them alive in time of famine. 
 Our innermost being waits for you, O LORD,
  our helper and our shield.
 Surely, our heart rejoices in you,
  for in your holy name we put our trust.
 Let your lovingkindness, O LORD, be upon us,
  even as we place our hope in you. 

Teach us to pray (a sermon about kissing, baptism and the things we long for)

Luke 11:1-13

Last Sunday we celebrated Leo and Mia’s baptisms. As a part of their baptism, we also prayed for them. Each time we come together at church, we pray. We pray for a lot of different things around here. 

For the pain in the world, 
for stuff we’re worried about, 
for things on our minds, 
things we care about, 
for help, 
for healing,
for guidance.  

Some of us aren’t really into words when we pray, and we’re more of the “quiet your mind or stare at a leaf” kind of pray-ers. Hike it out. Others of us are really into the words.  Our Lutheran tradition is really into the words, which is good and fine and one of the many ways to pray. 

I have a friend who’s favorite moment of church is this presence and connection to God that she feels when she sits in the pew at the start of the service and watches as the candles are lit.  

Learning how to pray isn’t like learning how to read or how to drive a car. There’s not a checklist to work through or an instruction manual.  Someone once told me that learning how to pray is more like learning how to kiss.  We watch other people do it. We think twice about who we allow to teach us (hopefully we think twice!) We make some mistakes. And then, somewhere deep down, you always kind of wonder if you’re actually doing it right. 

When Jesus’ disciples come up to him and said “Lord, teach us how to pray,” I’m guessing they weren’t trying to get him to explain the technique of praying. 

You know, “Hey Lord, I’m a little concerned about those times I’m going to have to pray in public, could you just give me some pointers so I sound good? 

Or, “so, Lord, we were wondering if you could give us some best practices or even key phrases for praying that will enact some real change around here. Ignite some lightening bolts and stuff.” 

Or, “Lord could you just give us a little prayer that we can recite together in unison for the next couple thousand years—something short and snappy and catchy that we’ll remember?” 

Nah, these disciples were devout Jews.  They had grown up praying in the synagogues with all the right words and all that.  So, what were they after when they came up to Jesus that day and said, Lord, teach us how to pray?

What are any of us after when we reach for God?  Some peace and calm. Some help? (Jesus knows, we need a lot, of help around here.) Help for ourselves? For all these messes in the world right now?

What are we after? The disciples most certainly could see Jesus’ great love for God and intense desire for God’s kingdom to come.  Did they want to know more about it? Teach us to pray…

All these things that we long for—like those deep soul things that we long for, point us to a different world which Jesus often talks about as the kingdom of God.  Thy kingdom come. Were the disciples wondering “how do we get there?”   

If we only come to God for a formula or a rulebook or a driver’s manual or a checklist, we’re missing out on something.  If God is just a vending machine that we punch some numbers into and out comes exactly what we want, then we’re missing something.  God is very much in the business of transforming us exactly while She transforms the world around us.  But we have to be in some kind of conversation in order for the dialogue to bring us somewhere new.

Think, for a moment, about someone you have a real relationship with. A good friend, a co-worker.  Maybe a roommate. Maybe even a roommate you’re married to.  Or a niece or nephew or grandchild.  Spending time with this person—for better or worse—has an impact on you. They change you. They shape you.  When we pray day after day for understanding, our minds will open.  When we ask God over and over for compassion, our hearts will soften. Relationship with God in prayer will change us.  

A couple of weeks ago, Anne Lamott wrote an essay where she explained why she prays. “Prayer,” she says, “connects us umbilically to a spirit both outside and within us, who hears and answers… I pray a prayer, she says, some sober people told me to pray 36 years ago…because when all else fails, follow instructions. It helps me not to fixate on who I am but whose. I am God’s adorable, aging, self-centered, spaced-out beloved."

"One man in early sobriety told me that he had come into recovery as a hotshot but that other sober men helped him work his way up to servant…I pray to be a good servant because I’ve learned that this is the path of happiness…

"It is miserable to be a hater. I pray to be more like Jesus with his crazy compassion and reckless love. Some days go better than others,” she says reflecting that it blows her mind to remember how God loves certain members of congress equally as much as God loves her grandson because God loves, period.  “I will have horrible thoughts about others, she says…and I say to God, ‘look – I think we can both see what we have on our hands here. Help me not to be such a pill…’…I can’t turn politics around, or war, or the climate, but in listening, by opening my heart to someone in trouble, I create with them more love, less of a grippy clench in our little corner of the universe.” Her whole essay is great.

The truth is that God teaches us to pray through each other.  Our prayers articulate what it is we think about God and what we know about God. Jesus tells the disciples and us of his certainties about God in today’s reading.  He tells us, as theologian Matt Skinner says, “God hears. God provides. God forgives. God protects. God expects us to be generous to each other.” 

You as congregation, as friends, family, and community will teach Leo and Mia to pray. Through hearing about the things you long for, God will teach them to hope for a new word. Through your stories, they will learn of the heartaches in life and how they will live through them. There is no manual for faith or instruction book on how to pray or live this life God calls us to.  There is only you who enflesh God’s story and bring God’s word to life.

When we gather shortly around the baptismal fount, we will renounce the powers of this world that would try to divide and demean us.  We will renounce powers that justify mass shootings and ideologies of supremacy and inferiority based on race. We will commit to living in a such a way that brings about this radical kingdom of God even when it feels like the world is on fire around us. We will promise to teach our youngest ones to pray (and our oldest) and to let God form and mold them through the practice of relationship. We’ll promise to take care of the earth and each other (the little Each Other in our community and the wide Each Other in our society and world). And through it all, we will remind one another of our belovedness to God.

Luke 11:9-11 from our scripture today is famous: “Ask and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” 

The first Nations version indigenous translation of the new testament reads differently and I share it with you as we close. It reads: 

“So, keep dancing your prayers, and the way will open before you. Search for the ancient pathways, and you will find them. Keep sending up your prayers, and they will be heard. Answers will come to the ones who ask, good things will be found by the ones who search for them, and the way will open before the ones who keep dancing their prayers.”

God bless you, Leo and Mia on this occasion of your baptism.

The Cost of Healing

 Luke 8:26-39

This last week, I took a class for religious leaders at Northwestern downtown.  It was a great week. We were mostly pastors and rabbis with a few denominational leaders, chaplains and school principals in a room talking about our faith and our ministry.  A word that kept coming up over the course of the week was the word “transformation.” It’s not surprising. Yes, it’s a word that comes up all the time in our ancient scriptures and, clearly, it’s a word that describes things that are happening all over the place right now.  

Our churches and synagogues are in seasons of transformation. Our schools are. Our society is in so many ways.  Those of us gathered at this event last week talked about what it was like to look at change in the face and listen for what it is calling us towards. But, as we pastors and rabbis all discussed various times over the course of the week, transformation of all kinds--whether it’s in our own hearts or in our wider society--doesn’t come easily. 

Transformation asks us to take risks. It asks us to be courageous. It admits: something’s not right here, something needs to be changed. Transformation shines a light on things we’ve tried to hide.

While we like change and new directions, the piece that we sort of conveniently put to the side is that transformation comes with exposure to something we need to change.  It brings something out into the open for everyone to see. 

For example: “Here’s this family secret that we’ve been keeping quiet that’s pushing the everyone to the brink.” Or, “here’s this personal detail I’ve been keeping in the shadow that I need to work through.” When we bring that out into the light, the future before us shifts. if it’s a mind-bender for us to individually do this, it’s just as much of a mind-bender, and even a trip, when society does it.

In the story we heard of today, there’s a man who is possessed, naked, out of control, living with the dead; 

And then, by the healing power of Jesus, he is saved, clothed, sitting at Jesus’ feet and in his right mind. This. Is. Great. News. This tormented man is healed and free…and yet, he (and Jesus) are the only ones celebrating. Did you catch that?  The bible says that the community doesn’t find any joy in this story.  In fact, they are counting the cost associated with this healing and they are finding it to be just a little too high. 

Jesus heals for free. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t costs.

So. The costs.

1. At face value, there is the cost of loss.  While this healing was good news for the man, it wasn’t for the pigs. The pigs were lost when the mob of demons entered into them. They ran off a cliff. There is a deep economic loss for the owners of the herd, especially if they make a living selling the animals.  

When you consider the cost of change in society or in your self, what is the economic cost to you? 

2. For the man who’s healed, there is the cost of a new vocation in life.  Any of you who have ever changed jobs know what I’m talking about. What do you lose when you leave an old job or even vocation?  Maybe you’re the parent of a newly graduated child and your vocation as a parent is shifting. There’s some loss. Maybe you’ve changed careers and, either your salary changed, or your responsibilities. For this man, the change is obviously dramatic.  He is turned into a disciple. Jesus calls him to activism and tells him to go and proclaim what God has done. He is freed and sent to share the good news.  In your case, what would be the economic cost of healing to you? What would answering a call to activism cost you? 

3. And finally, there is the cost of uncertainty. There is the cost of change. Remember, this guy is changed but no one wants that change but him and Jesus. Everyone else seems to resent it or they’re completely terrified by the way his transformation messes with this neat little system they have in place. We try to control the things and people that scare us.  Out of sight out of mind.  And when they couldn’t keep him locked away up out there in the cemetery, when everything is brought into the light in this story, 

This cost is steep. 

Too steep, in fact. Did you catch the way The Message version of the bible translates the verses that describe the people’s reaction to what happened? “too much change too fast.” 

Scripture actually says that the people were fine in the storm.  They were fine with of having this man chained up outside of town. Yes, perhaps they acknowledged his awkward presence up there, but now, they’re afraid of the calm.  They had a deal worked out. They had a system worked out: They had some kind of logic that was twisted into “we chain him up and it keeps him safe and us safe. It keeps the peace (even if it’s uneasy peace).” Now, they feel this change and this dis-ease and they can’t handle it.  And they ask Jesus to leave.

There is a cost of transformation. 

In this story, there’s a lot that is brought out into the open.  This man isn’t well. He’s tormented. He’s naked. Being naked all kinds of vulnerable. It is all kinds of fear. What will people see? What will people think? What if we admit that our family is a little messed up right now? Or that we have something really tough that we’re working through? Or what if I bring out into the open the truth of some kind of systemic thing that I’m grappling with? Or something that I need to grapple with but don’t really want to? Do we take a chance? Or do we say, “there’s not really anything I can do. This is too big. Too much. Out of sight out of mind.” 

What do we need to see in order to be healed?
What is it in our lives in the life that needs healing?
What is it in our society that needs healing? 
Where am I practicing control because I am freaked out by the cost of what calm would bring?

In 2018, Kendrick Lamar released an album called “Damn.” Kendrick Lamar, is rapper, a songwriter and record producer. He’s the kind of artist that, when I listen to his album, makes me stop. And ask: “what?” and skip back in the song to see if I heard he right.  This album, “Damn.,” was the first non-classical, non-jazz album that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music. And in it, his poetry is about storm. “Where,”

he asks through the poetry of his lyrics, “can one find a sense of peace, a sense of safety, a sense of trust?” He is exploring a sense of humanity in these tracks. 

In his song “FEEL.,” he’s showing how this storm beats on the walls:

I feel like friends been overrated
I feel like the family been faking
I feel like the feelings are changing
Feel like my daughter compromised and jaded
Feel like you wanna scrutinize how I made it

He created this album before the pandemic but it puts words to the storms: the racial deaths, the war deaths,  the shootings. African American professor, Luke Powery says: the great resignation, the “great hater-a-tion,” pandemic—pandemonium. The storm. 

What do you need healing from?
What do we need healing from?

Because Jesus shows us: the calm is possible.

This isn’t a bible story that happened a long time ago and now, because of the resurrection, it’s all fixed and we don’t live like this any more.  We are right here between these words.  We see the things and the ones that we chain up. We need the healer’s presence in our midst. We still need liberation. 

But there is a cost to the calm.  Please leave, the people say to Jesus. The calm was too much to bear.  The chaos was familiar. The healer’s presence healed too deep.

Today is Juneteenth.    On June 19th, we celebrate the truth that the last enslaved African Americans learned they were freed in 1865. This is a day to celebrate freedom and African American achievement, art and education. It is a day to celebrate liberation in all of its’ beauty.  

It is a day to ask the dangerous question of what needs to be healed? To shine a light on the things we’ve tried to hide to consider the cost of freeing our hearts of freeing our world from the things that bind us. And to move forward despite the cost because our liberation depends on it. 

Transformation, growth, and an opening of our hearts are central to our faith.  So we’ve got to ask the difficult questions.

What needs to be healed that only the presence of Jesus can heal? 
Where are we as a society called to change? 
Where are you?

What do you imagine? (a message about queer politics, outrageous biblical characters and things we don't know)

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

For many, many decades, even lifetimes, things had been predictable.  Maybe not perfect, but predictable. Folks had these familiar ways of interacting with each other. Everyone knew their place. Everyone was on the same page about what was okay in society and what was not okay, maybe even forbidden.  Religion was anchored by these age-old, steady principals that weren’t really questioned.  (Of course, this was the way God functioned in the world!). But then, things turned upside down. There were cataclysmic events that made folks question their religious anchors.  The people had to leave home and with it, leave all the old patterns and beliefs, …when they came back to life as they knew it, nothing was quite the same.  

The government was dissolving—(that was the monarchy in their case). Some of the infrastructure was changing or disappearing.   The old symbolism was eroding.  Those pillar truths that supported religion were being shaken.

It used to be predictable who held power in society (it was the elites: the king, the temple, the priesthood) and now, that was being challenged.  There was extraordinary social and even theological upheaval.  There was nostalgia for the way things had been back before it seemed like the world exploded (you know, nostalgia for the courts and the wise sages, the temple being the center of religion).  It had been a nation that knew what it was and that was clear and confident in who God was. And now? What a mess.

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There is something frightening about an open future where we can’t quite imagine how things will shake out. Like when a few too many support beams have been kicked out from under the house. Social philosopher, Judith Butler, wrote about this almost 2 decades ago in her book, Undoing Gender:  All these questions! All this change! All this uncertainty about how things are. And then, let’s not even get started on imagining what will be when everything feels a little out of control around us.

If this level of uncertainty doesn’t freak society out, it will at the very least, make it feel threatened. 

She really hit the nail on the head with how ancient Israel was grappling with change and instability around the time when the book of Proverbs came together.   The Israelites had been exiled in Babylon for 70 years. Now they were returning to Jerusalem, and things were different: their temple in Jerusalem which had been the center of religious life had been destroyed, there were all these working class Jews who had stayed behind who were now, different. Who was God? Where did they find God? Where were they headed? There weren’t clear or easy answers. 

Judith Butler wrote about how when we ask questions or poke holes in ideas that are tried and true, it stresses folks out because it makes the future feel unstable or cloudy.  People, she says, do one of several things when the future feels that unsteady. 

1. They can become frozen and they don’t want to rethink anything. It’s like they say: This is too much! I can’t process this! I will be here freaking out in the corner if you need me.

2. They become really nostalgic for the way things were:  Oh <<reflects wistfully>> remember when we were young how safe and predictable everything was?

3. Sometimes, she wrote, that regardless of our politics, we become so nostalgic that we even kick into a sort of cultural reverse-gear that uses moralism to pull us back to the way things were. We actively work to stop the change: "Reverse the currents! Stop the change! Back to tradition!"

Or, you could say, when everything around you is unraveling and you find yourself in a big open space full of piles of yarn, do you shout: fix grandpa’s sweater! Knit it back the way it was! Or Hmm, could we knit something new? Or could we throw away the knitting needles and weave a hammock instead? 

There is a fourth option when everything around us unraveling: Theologian, Elizabeth Stewart writes that it’s the job of queer politics to resist that tendency we have to run back to the tried and true when we’re stressed. 

And when I say politics, I don’t mean partisan, but politics in the sense of what do we want the world around us and the life we share to look like.” 

Just when we think something is concrete reality, queer politics pokes holes in it.  

It pokes holes in the ideas like: this is how women are supposed to behave. 
Or: This is how men are supposed to dress
Or: these are the two genders that exist. Period.
Or, this is the way we’ve always done it in the church.
This is who holds the power in society.
This is the way you _______ (fill in the blank)

Just when we think things are concrete, queer politics call us to the edge to think again. (To the edge of the dance floor? Or to the edge of the canvas? And then perhaps, while handing us a paintbrush, it asks us “what do you imagine?”)

The fourth option is stepping into that uncertain, scary space and courageously asking what can we be?

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In the case of the book of proverbs, Woman Wisdom bursts into the scene and it is undeniably different from anything we’ve seen. ever. in Hebrew scriptures up until this point.  

Women have nothing like this kind of role in the Torah like you see here in proverbs.  Biblical mothers like Rachel, Rebecca, Leah, Jocabed, and Sarah get this teeny, tiny amount of air time as supportive actors. Not until this time period in ancient Israel’s history do you start getting people like woman wisdom or even Queens Vashti and Esther breaking into scripture like this and taking up chapters and chapters in the story.   

In today’s reading, Woman Wisdom breaks into the street. She is loud and shouting! Confident and even flashy! Eloquent and poetic! stamping her feet in the public square, clapping her hands, look at me!  

Again, this is exactly the time when Judaism is starting to pull away from practicing religion in the temple (remember, the temple had been destroyed) and instead it’s settling into local synagogues and even the home which had traditionally been women’s domain. 

Biblical scholar, Elizabeth Stewart, whites this whole thing about how we can actually see this tension between what Judiasm was and what it’s becoming getting worked out here in scripture.  

The whole book of Proverbs toggles between these different people who are working it out.  In one chapter you have the obedient son or student who’s looking for clear instruction or guidance.  There is no mystery there. There’s just a common sense patriarchal, family, living by the rules. In the next chapter we find one of a whole cast of interesting women characters called Woman Wisdom who is  non-conventional and shouting in the streets. 

If we preform our gender, (I learn and preform what it means to be a woman) and if we preform our humanity, (I learn and preform what it means to be human), Elizabeth Stewart says that lady wisdom is “performing [her] humanity subversively.” She is pushing the envelope as a woman character. On purpose.  Whether or not it was the intention, she is making us think again about something.  She’s undoing us. Unraveling us. 

And it sounds like this when we digest this scripture: 

“Wait. Wait a second. Is Lady Wisdom, …God? Or God’s wife? Or some previous iteration of the word made flesh?” What exactly going on here? Why is this woman behaving like this?”

And we start asking dangerous questions. 

Truth is, social transformation always depends on some brave people who are willing to risk kicking a leg out from under tradition. And that doesn’t happen unless we go right up to the edge of what we know.  

Change, growth and transformation in ancient Israel would depend on a daringness to risk, a willingness to imagine, and the courage to talk about or even live out what seemed like it was impossible.  

We get a window into that with the book of proverbs.

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In the gospel of John, not the piece we read today, a different piece, there’s this story about a Samaritan woman who goes to a well.  Jesus unexpectedly finds her there.  Because of her life story, this woman, you could say, lives on the edge and, as she talks, Jesus goes to the edge there with her.  (Hanging out on the edge with people is kind of one of Jesus’ signature moves).

He asks her dangerous questions. He blows her mind. He knocks down walls. They work something out in their conversation that’s recorded in the bible. She is undone by him. It’s like he says to her: “Imagine, what we will become!” 

She is transformed, runs back to her community and all these Samaritan people in her town start believing in the extraordinary expression of God in Jesus.  

*****

Can you think of someone who has blown your mind? 
So much so that some pillar in you has been undone? 

Or a time when God has said to you: “hey. here’s a nugget of scripture. Put this in conversation with your daily life and see what you get.”

You know, we look at our Christian tradition sometimes as if it weren’t this living thing but stagnant.  Like God revealed themselves to us thousands of years ago and now, well, we just have to learn those ancient lessons.  Nope. We Christians confess that, yes, God created the world, and then came to dwell in it, and then, as we celebrated it last week with Pentecost, continues to be alive in it right here, right now by the power of the Holy Spirit.  The life of faith is never about staying in one place.  The Holy Spirit is always coaxing us forward. The life of faith is always about growing.  

And this unsteady, uncertain place? This place that feels a little scary or even threatening? That is where the growth and the transformation happen. 

And you, queer family, are there, often at the edge of comfort, dancing with risk and ready to lend us your telescope so we can see what is out there that’s calling us forward.  

Last week, there was an interview with Aiyana Elizabeth Johnson that aired. She’s a marine biologist and climate activist.  She’s amazing for a million different reasons

You know climate change is tough to talk about and to think about right now.  She posed this question in her interview: "Instead of how bad will it be," she asks, "what if we get this right?"  What will the world look like in 50 years, 100 years, 500 years?

For example, The healed lung of our great forests grown back to health? Oceans that provide enough for coastal communities to live? Clean and healthy air for all of us to breathe? It’s mighty easy to critique, but to build something? that takes effort.  

So today, let’s let ourselves be drawn out into this creative space I ask you, what if we get it right? What will this world look like?  What do you see when you take a hold of that telescope and look out there?  

In this time of uncertainty, what do you see from your spot there on the edge? Do you see each one of us living as our beautifully created selves without fear of violence?  Do you an end to gun violence? A world without Parkinson's?  A magnificent redwood forest? What do you see? What do you imagine?

During a song later on in the service, we’ll sing a song that Jesse Lava wrote a few years ago about the Samaritan Woman who met Jesus at the well out on the edge. 

During that song or maybe another point in the service like communion, I’ll invite you to answer this question: In this time of cultural upheaval and change that we’re living through, in this time that feels so uncertain,“what if we get it right?”  (write that down) what will the world look like? When you're ready with your answer, come up and fasten your idea up here.

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Out there on the edge is this creative space.  God bless you, queer ones for “making cultural trouble” (as Elizabeth Stewart wrote decades ago—John Lewis said a version of a few years ago). God bless you for cracking open these creative spaces where change happens.  Where would we be without the ways that you draw us out and bless us?  We love you.