What actually matters to you? (3.8.26)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good intentions are nice. 
Shared practices form us.  

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

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

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


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

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

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

John 8:2-11

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

Matthew 23:23

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

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

This is true of us too. 

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

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.