God as Disrupter

As we approach Christmas in the midst of a pandemic, I have found it helpful to reflect on the events leading up to the first Christmas, which was chock-full of disruptive events. In this video post, I consider Mary and Joseph, and just how much their lives were disrupted by God's choosing of them to be the parents of Jesus.

Unencumbered

The traffic light was red for a long time and the day was breezy, so I was able to watch the plastic bag tumble for a long distance down the side of the road. Aside from my irritation that yet another plastic bag was littering the environment, I found it remarkable that it traveled so far and so easily, not becoming snagged by anything along the way.

It became an object lesson for me, reminding me of a quote I’d shared with a yoga class last week: Those who are possessed by nothing possess everything. That bag had nothing holding it back. It was lightweight and unencumbered. It went where the wind blew it.

A famous quote by Hildegard of Bingen came to my mind: I am a feather on the breath of God. The freedom to go wherever God blows you may seem exhilarating to some and terrifying to others, or maybe both at the same time! Living an unencumbered life is something our materialistic society can hardly imagine. We are easily snagged by the values of the culture that advocate for ownership of as much as possible. We take away our own freedom to be a feather on the breath of God (a lovelier image than a tumbling plastic bag!).

Already my email inbox is filling up with holiday sale notices. The temptation to add more possessions to what I already have is heightened at this time of year. I need to remember that more stuff does not bring peace and joy. In fact, the less I am encumbered by possessions, the more freedom I have. Less stuff to take care of means more time to spend with people I love, more time to be outside in nature, more time to offer myself in service to God, more time to practice Sabbath rest.

Living a more unencumbered life requires intention and vigilance. Yet the freedom and joy of less is the reward for that discipline. To be fully available for God is the life we are all called to live. May we desire to be freed for joyful obedience, a feather on the breath of God.

Faithfulness

Hebrews 11:1-12

Steadfast God,

you faithfulness to us calls forth

our faithful response to you.

In all ages, we witness your tender care to your creation

and creation’s faithful response to you.

From Abraham to Noah to Ruth,

to Jeremiah, Hosea and Esther—

you challenged them to see a future they could not imagine.

Because of your faithfulness

they responded in faithful obedience.

The woman who touched Jesus’ robe,

the centurion who trusted Jesus’ authority,

Paul, whose dogged faith sustained him through countless hardships—

these examples of faith flow from your faithfulness to them.

The early Christian martyrs, and martyrs and saints in every age

saw beyond their lives and trusted in what they could not see.

They lived as those prepared to die,

and in their dying they went forth to live.

Steadfast God, may your faithfulness to us

call forth our faithfulness to you

that we may be numbered among the faithful. Amen.

Advent Musings with Mary's Magnificat-Week 1

And Mary said,

“With all my heart I glorify the Lord!

   In the depths of who I am I rejoice in God my savior.

He has looked with favor on the low status of his servant.

   Look! From now on, everyone will consider me highly favored

   because the mighty one has done great things for me.

Holy is his name.

                                                Luke 1:46-49

For this season of Advent, I want to spend time reflecting on Mary’s song of praise, that spontaneous utterance she gave upon being greeted and blessed by her cousin Elizabeth as she arrived at Elizabeth’s home.

While her song is appropriate material for reflection at any time, I am especially aware of its significance currently, as hateful words and actions seem to be more prevalent, accepted and even encouraged in our country than I can remember in my lifetime.

Today, I reflect on Mary’s chosenness, on her worth as a woman, her status as the mother of Jesus. Mary is a strong prophetic voice, a person of strong faith. Her song of praise echoes that of Hannah, the mother of Samuel, and the voices of prophets all through Israel’s history, who knew that the weak, the poor and the least are those whom God lifts up and holds in high esteem.

It disturbs and angers me when women are treated as objects rather than as children of God and worthy of respect and equality of opportunity. I have heard first hand disparaging remarks about the capability of women. Being told “you’re pretty smart for a girl” is not a compliment. Calling women bossy for being in leadership roles, criticizing their appearance, and labelling them as “shrill” when they recognize and speak against discrimination does not recognize the worth and dignity of women.  Strong women have changed the course of history but have seldom been highly regarded in their own time. Contemporaries did not esteem their gifts because they came in a female package.

Mary, as well as her cousin Elizabeth, and a host of other women, remind me that we would not have Christianity and the Church today if not for women. And yet, the Church has had a checkered history in its treatment of women that, sadly, continues even now. Isn’t it appropriate as we prepare for the coming of Christ, to remember that God chose a strong young woman to be the one who would not only give birth to Jesus but who could be trusted with his life until adulthood? A woman whose trust in God enabled her to risk ostracism and judgment to become who God called her to become?

Over vs Through Part 2

In my last post, I talked about the necessity of pruning for spiritual growth. Because we are pain-averse, we try our best to avoid circumstances that are difficult or painful. But spiritual growth happens in the situations when we are most challenged. As Psalm 23 reminds us we go through the valley, not around it.

If we are seeking to travel faithfully on the path of discipleship, we have to recognize that the path will be rocky in places, dark in others, and sometimes impossible to see. For sure, we will have to give up our notions of control if we are to grow in our faithfulness. Parker Palmer says, “hardships are seen not as accidental but as integral to the journey itself. Treacherous terrain, bad weather, taking a fall, getting lost—challenges of that sort, largely beyond our control, can strip the ego of the illusion that it is in charge and make space for the true self to emerge.”

If we are determined to be in control, we will find ourselves unable to advance in faith. Grasping control may take us completely off the path of spiritual growth, because we avoid the difficult positions and places that call us to exercise our faith muscles. Grasping control keeps us from developing the traits needed for faithfulness. Joan Chittister notes that the goals and values of the spiritual life are “just plain different from the goals and values we’ve been taught by the world around us. Winning, owning, having, consuming, and controlling are not the high posts of the spiritual life.” These all revolve around possession and control.

The events of life will eventually wrest control from us. How we respond will determine if we grow bitter or faithful. Lack of control is a little death, and as we faithfully “die before we die” we are able to approach the next death, and the final death, with greater peace and acceptance.

Our willingness to go through difficulty, rather than over or around it, may very well be the refining that leads us to stronger faith and deeper love for God. And this leads us to a more faithful witness for Christ, who both told us and showed us that suffering is part of choosing the path of discipleship.

Doing Good vs Being Good

For the next few weeks, I’m facilitating a study at my church on the book Jesus for President, by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw. As I’ve been reading their description of the Biblical prophets, I’ve thought about the difference in doing good and being good.

As Claiborne and Haw note, “The prophets are weird. They set themselves apart from the normalcy of civilization and its pattern of destruction and war. Their vocation is to interrupt the status quo.” When you think of some of the things the prophets did, you realize they were less concerned with appearances than many of us who call ourselves “church folk” are.

Hosea married a prostitute. Isaiah walked around naked for three years. Ezekiel cooked over human dung, which violated Israel’s purity codes. They would not have been called “good” by the culture in which they lived. But they lived lives of obedience to God, in contrast to the “good people” who fit in by following “the rules.”

The prophets focused on doing good. They were in close communion with God, and they trusted God even when God called them to do what put them at odds with those in positions of power. Claiborne and Haw say, “It can embarrass us to read of their antics, but what they do is not nearly as embarrassing as the things we do, which their actions expose so we can see that another future is possible.”

We become desensitized to evil when evil promotes our “good” agenda. Rabbi Abraham Heschel says: “To us a single act of injustice—cheating in business, exploitation of the poor—is slight; to the prophets it is a deathblow to existence; to us, an episode, to them, a catastrophe, a threat to the world.” We rationalize all sorts of things when it serves our purposes to do so. Cheating in business can be excused as needed to take care of our family. Slandering another may be our way to preserve our reputation so we can continue to use our influence “for good.”

The prophets, ancient and contemporary, remind us that when pride, power and self-preservation become our gods, being good becomes more important than doing good, and whatever good we actually accomplish is not pleasing to God, who honors the powerless, not the prideful.

Being Seen

A few weeks ago, our pastor preached on Luke 7:11-17, where Jesus raises the widow’s son, restoring him to life. He talked about how Jesus sees the woman, and how there is seeing, and then there is really seeing. We can know that Jesus really sees us, and that is a comfort when we sense that others don’t truly see us for who we are or what is going on in our lives.

A blessing by John O’Donahue includes this line:

May you have friends who can see you.

That simple thought is a significant blessing because many people move through life at such a frantic pace that they are unable to see others, even those who are in close physical proximity to them. Physical closeness does not translate into being seen in the way that Jesus sees and that O’Donahue invokes in his blessing.

Being seen involves understanding, at least the willingness to understand. It means seeing another for who they are. To see another for who they are means not allowing stereotypes to govern one’s seeing. It means not projecting the actions or habits of one person on another. For example, you can’t assume that your spouse will act as your parent did.

To have friends who can see you has been one of my greatest blessings. Being misunderstood and mislabeled is painful, but is more common than it should be, especially because it takes time and attention to see another. The easy way out is to stereotype, project and label another. We think if we can do this, we can “manage” or control another.

But people are not machines or projects. We are, each one of us, uniquely created by God, with our own distinctive desires, gifts and vulnerabilities. To label another is to deny their uniqueness. If we choose to follow Jesus, then following means a willingness and effort to see others. 

Choosing a Master

But I am among you as one who serves.

                                                                                                Luke 22:27

The humility of Jesus should stop us in our tracks. In all he did, he served. His healing, his teaching, his living, even in his admonishing of the Jewish leaders, he acted with love and humility. He was always a servant of God.

Those last two words—of God—remind me of the right orientation of our service. When faced with a decision of which master to serve, there is really only one choice, and to serve God faithfully will not always appease other masters whose ways and values take us away from God’s love and mission. We who live economically and socially comfortable lives can easily be distracted from serving God. We like our power, our possessions, our comfortable morality and our freedom of choice. We are deluded into thinking we are serving God by being “nice.” Yet our very conformity to the culture within which we live tells us that our master is not God.

 Those of us who have power within churches can lose sight of who we serve when we wield our power out of fear or arrogance, when we capitulate to the temptation to be “relevant” rather than relational, when we push certain people to the margins because of lack of attractiveness, community prestige, age, ability, or economic power and elevate those who can make a “big splash.”

Jesus did not hang around the pretty and powerful. He chose those who were at the margins, who were diseased, poor and lacked influence. He identified with the oppressed and powerless, the ones we might cast aside even in our churches today.

To be like Jesus, to be one who serves when serving brings abuse, rejection and false accusation, is not easy. To choose the popular way of our culture, exercising power and might fueled by pride and greed, is much easier, because it keeps us within the status quo and keeps us in control. We have to be careful in our choice of master to serve.

Faster than Grace

Flipping through my copy of The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence, a monk who lived in the 1600s, I saw a  couple of sentences I highlighted several years ago when I read the book: She seems to me full of good will, but she would go faster than grace. One does not become holy all at once.

I wonder what Brother Lawrence would have to say about our instant, disposable, microwave culture that doesn’t have time for even a five-year plan. It seems to me that the Church of western culture has jumped on the runaway train of instantaneousness of everything we do. When I talk to church folk in various locations and denominations, I hear the lament of declining numbers, fear of irrelevance, and I see efforts at one-upping activities “competing” for the attention of church members.

We seem to want to go faster than grace, to find the magic pill that grants instant holiness. We forget the gifts we offer souls: the importance of consistency in an inconstant world, of stability in a transient society, of quiet in a world of noise. Heck, we don’t even build churches with sanctuaries anymore; we have “worship spaces” instead.

Maybe we need a sanctuary, a place to find roots and rest, a place that wraps us in healing embrace and asks, in return, that we go and do likewise with one another. A place to slow down and abide is a place of grace, a place where we are given permission to grow gradually, a place where life is about a long obedience rather than a quick fix.

One of the lessons I’ve learned from the labyrinth is that if I am distracted or try to go too fast, I lose sight of the path. Walking a labyrinth is not about efficiency or speed or results. Rather, the labyrinth invites one to move at a slower pace, to pay attention only to the next step, and to simply be present. The labyrinth reminds me that the journey takes time and is filled with changes in direction, but if I stay on the path, I will never go faster than grace. I’ll never be out of the reach of God’s love and goodness.

Brother Lawrence’s observation reminds me that distractions that pull us away from rootedness in God have existed forever. We haven’t changed that much throughout time. The hunger for God can only be filled by God, and we cannot devour it all at once, and declare ourselves done. We become holy over time, with discipline and stability and sanctuary. May we learn to walk with the pace of grace.

Pride and Poverty of Spirit

When our children were young and played outside, we waged an ongoing battle with fire ants. If we put the crystals out that were supposed to kill them, they moved their mound to a different part of the yard. Those elusive anthills seem an apt metaphor for the way pride operates within me. When I think I’ve tackled pride in one area of my life, it pops up in a different area.

I wonder if that is why Jesus’ first words in the Sermon on the Mount are these: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  (Matthew 5:3) Poverty of spirit is not something joyfully embraced in our culture of self-sufficiency and busyness. One of the first questions we often ask each other is “Are you staying busy?” To answer that question with a no is to be viewed as ineffective or even useless. My own reluctance to respond with a no, even when I am not “staying busy” reveals my inability to quash pride.

To be poor in spirit is to rely on God for everything, even for validation of my worth as a person. I may say that I rely on God, that I trust God with my life, but just ask me if I am staying busy and suddenly I want to be validated, not by God, but by people. One of the spiritual practices of Saint Therese of Lisieux was to welcome unjust criticism. If I seek to be validated by others, my life will always be in a state of rootlessness as I attempt to meet the expectations of others. To be able to welcome unjust criticism, I have to be rooted in Christ and draw all my life from him. While I recognize this as true, I confess that I am not there yet. Those anthills continue to show up with the persistence of a whack-a-mole game!

Several years ago I read Finding Our Way Again, a book by Brian McLaren. The book is a good introduction to the ancient practices of faith, practices that root us more deeply in the heart and mind of Christ. The watershed moment of the book for me was an example McLaren gave of a way to fast from pride: by not defending oneself when criticized. To recognize that justification or defense of my behavior was a prideful response was a turning point for me, and the beginning of a continuing struggle to address this in my life.

 It takes incredible discipline for me to not try to make my motives understood clearly by others when I am criticized because I am misunderstood. I expect this will be a battle I wage for the rest of my life. But without poverty of spirit, I know I cannot hope to live into the rest of Jesus’ teachings. Until I can get Ann out of the way, there is no room for Christ to come and dwell within me.

This quote from Meister Eckhart encourages me toward poverty of spirit and away from prideful seeking of approval: I much prefer a person who loves God enough to take a handout of bread to him who gives the handout in the first place. Why? Because the giver buys his honor; but the beggar sells his.

I pray that I can grow content to be the beggar, the misunderstood and dishonored poor in spirit. 

Wicked Advice

The truly happy person doesn’t follow wicked advice . . .

                                                                Psalm 1:1a

Wicked is a strong word, and because of it, I wonder when we read it in scripture, if we discount its applicability to us. After all, if advice seems wicked to me, I doubt I’d follow it!

So what is wicked advice? If we are to be on guard against it, it must be more subtle than what might initially come to mind as wicked. I believe that wicked advice is any advice that contradicts the stirring of the Holy Spirit within us, any advice that discourages us from being who God created us to be.

Wicked advice could be advice that guilts us into acting when we know what we really need is to be still. Wicked advice might be the advice that tells us to be reasonable when what we really want to do is be generous with our resources. Wicked advice may tell us to play it safe, to think about the risks, when our spirit yearns to be part of a mission team to a third-world country, or a blighted neighborhood. Wicked advice could be discouraging one from pursuing a call to a particular vocation because it might not provide a lucrative salary.

Wicked advice can even come from our own self-talk, when we act because we are concerned about what others will think of us if we say no to some request (even to serve some good cause). Not every call to serve is our call to serve. Not every request is one aligned with our truest self and our area of giftedness.

The path to true happiness, which is the path to union with God, means that we must tend our soul with love and care, giving it what it needs to grow and minimizing those things that suck the life out of it. Discerning the difference between these requires us to be attentive to the stirrings within, which is not a practice encouraged in our society. True happiness is found in neither superfluous activity nor superfluous leisure, but in living a life that continually draws us nearer to the One Who created us and Who sustains us.

Small Things

Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin . . .

                                                                                                                Zechariah 4:10a

A fond memory from my recent mission trip to El Salvador was a small event, taking no more than 30 seconds, but one that made a big impact on me.

Liz, our translator, had supplies to make piñatas, an activity we could do with the women and older children after teaching the day’s hygiene lessons. It took two days to make the piñatas. On the second day, we strung some cord between two trees for hanging the piñatas to make it easier to decorate them. One of the women on our mission team was pulling the cord from one tree to the other. She tripped on a large rock, just a small trip, an incident that didn’t draw any attention.

Debora, the same girl who had given us her bracelets the previous day, saw it happen. With no fanfare, I saw her move the rock, along with another large rock, to the base of a nearby tree.

It was a small gesture that touched my heart and told me volumes about this young girl. Her attentiveness and action were a lesson to me. She simply saw a need and acted. She paid attention closely enough to notice the trip, and responded from a heart of compassion. I think I am the only person who even saw Debora’s action.

How many such opportunities do I miss because I get distracted by other things going on or worse yet, by my own thoughts? I wonder how often I am so preoccupied with myself that I don’t see a simple way to make things better for others. The pace at which we move can blind us to small acts of love and thoughtfulness toward others. When my head is down, looking at the screen of my phone, I miss the chance to show love to one of my brothers or sisters.

1 John 3:18 says: Little children, let’s not love with words or speech but with action and truth. Debora loved with action. He act of noticing and moving the rocks and her generosity in sharing her bracelets with us was love that needed no words. These were simple but powerful acts of love that challenge me to follow her example. If I am to love with action I must be intentional about paying attention to the rocks in another’s path.

Hopes & Dreams

While in El Salvador, we listened to Jenny, a beautiful fifteen year old girl, talk about what she wanted for her future. This is her final year in the nearby schools. To go to high school means leaving her community.

She wants to be a teacher. She wants to go to high school and actually has a sponsor family in the city that will support her and give her a place to live. But her mother and older brother don’t want her to leave the village. Her father, who shared her dream, died several years ago, and the family struggles without him.

When I think about the opportunities my own children and the children of most of my friends have had, it grieves me to think that Jenny may not get to fulfill her dream. There is a risk in leaving the community, but staying home means that Jenny’s future consists of picking corn and raising children. Neither of these is bad, but she is capable of and wants more for her life.

So how do we pray for Jenny? As a mother I know about wanting to protect your children. El Salvador is a tough country. Gangs are so powerful there that the government negotiates with them.

Whose hopes and dreams prevail? Jenny’s? Her mother’s? I cannot even begin to say the right thing to do. Jenny lives in such a different culture, in such a different place, and I have not right as an “Americano” to impose my thoughts.

Romans 8:26-28 comes to life for me as I struggle with how to respond in prayer in a way that is faithful to Jenny, her mother, and the village:  In the same way, the Spirit comes to help our weakness. We don’t know what we should pray, but the Spirit himself pleads our case with unexpressed groans. The one who searches hearts knows how the Spirit thinks, because he pleads for the saints, consistent with God’s will. We know that God works all things together for good for the ones who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose.

I won’t know how Jenny’s story, her life story, turns out. But I know that my act of praying for her keeps my heart tender, and gives me the great privilege of bearing a small part of the burden of those with limited resources and opportunities. As long as my heart aches for Jenny, I know the Spirit is at work in me.

Performance and Pride

“Does the LORD really want sacrifices and offerings? No! He doesn’t want your sacrifices. He wants you to obey him. Rebelling against God or disobeying him because you are proud is just as bad as worshiping idols or asking them for advice.”
1 Samuel 15:22b-23a

These words from Samuel convict Saul. Saul disobeyed, but he thought he was doing a good thing by reserving the best animals for God. When do we add to what God has directed, thinking that our addition is good? Such thinking is arrogant on our part, for we demonstrate that we believe we know better than God what is needed.

I wonder how much of our activity is done to make us feel better about who we are. When we act in a way that draws the approval of others, or do something because we think we are “supposed” to do it, are we risking rebellion against God? Are we being driven by pride? 

The Wesleyan Covenant Prayer has a line that challenges our notions that what God always wants is our activity: let me be employed by Thee or laid aside for Thee. We embrace being “useful” for God, but are we willing to be laid aside for God? To listen, rest, and wait? To be silent, to be voiceless in church affairs, to be on the sidelines when that is the obedient thing to do?

When we allow ourselves to be “laid aside” we confront just how much our self-worth is driven by our addiction to productivity. Without an activity to do, a contribution to make, a role to fulfill, we lose the attention and approval of others, and we may believe we are not worth much. But only when all that activity and productivity is stripped away can we even begin to discover who we really are in Christ. It is then that we learn that what is important is our attention to God, not our activity for God.

Sadly, many people never learn this lesson, or they only learn it when something catastrophic happens—job loss, major illness or debilitating injury, or a difficult change in relationship. When we either cannot be productive or when our productivity is no longer valued, we come face to face with our false notions of self-worth. It is in learning to love ourselves simply for who we are that we can learn to love others the way God loves us—unconditionally, not based on performance. And when we love ourselves and others that way, we are no longer driven by pride and performance but instead share and receive the grace of God.

Why I Love the Lectionary

I thrive on order and structure. My husband knows that to spring something on me on short notice is to create stress for me. Years ago, I heard a speaker describe a “time fence.” A time fence is a boundary around your time. For those who are spontaneous, their time fence is small or nonexistent. Time for them is like the open prairie. You cannot trespass on their time because they freely give whatever you need.

For others, like myself, time is bounded by a large fenced enclosure. I sit in the middle, but I want a large space between my fence and myself. I want to see what has come into my fence from a long distance away. I like time to plan and prepare. I am one who looks at restaurant menus online if I know I am going to an unfamiliar establishment. I want to know my options ahead of arrival.

My preference for structure may be why I like the lectionary. The lectionary is a listing of scripture readings appointed for given days. The Revised Common Lectionary used by many Protestant churches includes readings from the Old Testament, Psalms, the Epistles and the Gospel, with some variation depending on the seasons of the Church. Many pastors preach from lectionary texts. The beauty of the lectionary to me is that I can read and pray over the texts prior to attending corporate worship and hearing a message preached on one or more of them. This is a particular advantage if you are traveling and attend an unfamiliar church. If the pastor of the church you are visiting preaches from the lectionary, you can still prepare for worship by praying over the texts ahead of time.

Since my dad died, we’ve been traveling often to his house in Tennessee. We attend worship at his church on Sundays when we are there. It is such a joy to arrive and to hear the texts preached that I have already spent time with in prayer. This preparation makes corporate worship more meaningful for me.

On a larger scale, I know that others all over the world are hearing messages preached on the same set of texts. It connects me to the wider Church in a deeply spiritual way. Across differing denominations and worship styles, the lectionary is a thread that binds us all together. It keeps us from falling into ruts of only hearing “favorite” passages. It challenges us to read scripture more broadly than we might otherwise. It calls us to structure and discipline, to growth and order, by giving us a framework for scripture study. And because the Revised Common Lectionary is on a three-year cycle, it calls us to revisit the same passages time and again, so that the texts meet us in different stages of our lives.

The discipline of praying the lectionary texts has become a transformational spiritual practice for me. The more I do it, the more I appreciate the beauty of the lectionary.

The Lighted Path of Righteousness

Light is planted like seed for the righteous person. 

                                                                                Psalm 97:11a

It is enlightening (bad pun) to think about light as seed. It’s easier to think of seed needing light to grow. Imagine the ground looking like the sky on a dark but clear night, light beaming out all around your feet. It is like a scene from a Disney movie, a path so illuminated that it is nearly impossible to stray from the right path.

Ah, you say, if only the path were so clear! But is it really that hard to see the right path, the path that God has for you? I believe that righteousness, while a gift from God, grows within us as we practice living rightly day in and day out. It’s not about “being good” but about such an overwhelming love for God that you want what God wants. This deep love compels you to faithfully walk in the way of Christ, and as you do, it becomes easier to see and follow the path.

Like exercise, the regular practice of walking in the way of Christ strengthens our faith muscles, and what was once unnatural for us simply becomes who we are. Several years ago my New Year’s resolution was to eat more fruits and vegetables. It was quite hard at first to change my eating patterns. I had to crowd out the other foods to make room for more fruits and vegetables. But consistent practice has changed the foods I crave. It is the same with living righteously. It begins with falling in love with God and grows to be who I am, instead of something I have to consciously do.

That doesn’t mean I never fail. Righteousness does not equate to perfection. Righteousness is a way of living in obedience to Jesus, an obedience that bubbles out of you because the center of who you are is overflowing love for God. We daily learn to follow more closely and we discover that our failures are caught in the net of grace! We can acknowledge our failures, repent of them, but not be defined by them or held hostage by them. They don’t rob us of our joy. They don’t turn our vision from the light on our path.

Shrine-Builder or Disciple?

This past Sunday we celebrated Transfiguration Sunday, where Jesus was transformed on the mountain. Here is the passage from Luke’s Gospel: About eight days after Jesus said these things, he took Peter, John, and James, and went up on a mountain to pray. As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed and his clothes flashed white like lightning. Two men, Moses and Elijah, were talking with him. They were clothed with heavenly splendor and spoke about Jesus’ departure, which he would achieve in Jerusalem. Peter and those with him were almost overcome by sleep, but they managed to stay awake and saw his glory as well as the two men with him.

As the two men were about to leave Jesus, Peter said to him, “Master, it’s good that we’re here. We should construct three shrines: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”—but he didn’t know what he was saying. Peter was still speaking when a cloud overshadowed them. As they entered the cloud, they were overcome with awe.

Then a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, my chosen one. Listen to him!” Even as the voice spoke, Jesus was found alone. They were speechless and at the time told no one what they had seen.  Luke 9:28-36

Peter wants to build shrines to commemorate the event. We would rather construct something to signify our relationship with Jesus than to listen to him. Listening compels us to choose to follow and obey or to turn away and ignore. We don’t really want to do either, for the first requires that we remove ourselves from the throne and put Christ there, and the second makes us feel like bad people, and we don’t want to acknowledge that about ourselves.

So, left with two unappealing choices, we, like Peter, opt for a third choice—let’s build something. As we build a shrine, others will know that we’ve been with Jesus, that we are insiders. We can avoid either obedience or outright rejection of Christ by doing something, by building a shrine. Some of us build a shrine by charitable service—feeding and clothing those less fortunate than ourselves. Some build a shrine by serving on church committees, giving long hours to administrative acts for the church. There are many way we build shrines, shrines that keep us from having to listen to Jesus or reject him.

Certainly it’s not a bad thing to help others. Jesus helped others, but his first priority was obedience to God. He listened to God, and then acted out of the intimacy of his relationship with God. We build shrines when we act without listening, when we act to make ourselves look and feel good, when we avoid committing ourselves to developing an intimate relationship with Christ.

I build a shrine when I am resentful of how my service is received by others, or when I demand my own way in the church or when I withhold resources from the Kingdom because I don’t like that the church is not doing things my way. Shrine building occurs whenever we grumble and back-bite and undermine another, whenever we slay another by our words, forgetting that the target of our displeasure and venom is a child of God and loved by God.

When our service doesn’t flow from first listening to and obeying Christ, we are simply building shrines. And, ironically, the shrine isn’t built to glorify God, but ourselves. The shrine tells others that we were here and we did something special “for God.”

God isn’t into shrine-building. What God wants is for us to listen to Jesus, and then, obey. Love the enemy, give without reservation, love God and love neighbor. Die to self. Die to self-interest. Die to self-preservation. Die to self-promotion. For either we die, or we suppress the life of Christ in us. There is not room for both me and Christ. I must die so Christ can live in me. That then is my transfiguration.

Challenge Questions for the New Year

I have been reading Colossians 3:12-17 daily since December 31st. I don’t know how long I will stay with it. There is just so much there to ponder and absorb. In an earlier post, I reflected on the first part of Colossians 3:12. Today I want to focus on the last part of the verse.

Therefore, as God’s choice, holy and loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.

Imagine what kind of impression we who claim to be Christian would make in the world if we consistently put on these five traits: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness or patience. I must be accountable for how well I demonstrate these in my life.

So here is a list of these traits with some challenge questions for each. The questions are not exhaustive (although I may be exhausted trying to live so that I can answer them as a faithful disciple). Over the next few months I intend to focus on one of these each week in my own life, to be challenged and hopefully changed for the better.

Compassion

• Can I put myself in the place of another so that I don’t just pity them, but seek to understand them?

• Will I allow myself to fully experience the pain and heartbreak of another, especially one whose lifestyle, views, or beliefs are different than mine?

• Can I experience not only the pain of the victim but also the pain of the perpetrator?

• Can I learn to see as God sees, to love as God loves, unconditionally, generously and mercifully?

• When I read news accounts, will I refuse to see numbers or enemies and instead see people—people who are mothers, fathers, daughters or sons?

• Will I consider who is benefitted or exploited by the consumer choices I make for goods, services and utilities?

Kindness

• Will I be kind to others—all others? All the time?

• Can I not only act kindly but also think kindly?

• Can I extend kindness to those who have not been kind to me?

• Can I be kind to those with whom I disagree?

Humility

• Will I prefer others over myself?

• Will I be honest in my self-assessments, neither overstating my strengths nor playing down the abilities God has given me?

• Can I acknowledge that I am capable of good but also capable of evil, yet always loved by God?

• Can I be content with the talents God has given me?

Gentleness

• Can I be careful with the feelings of others, especially those closest to me?

• Will I consider the inadvertent ways I hurt others, by ignoring or forgetting or failing to be compassionate?

• Can I be gentle toward others in the words I say, post, or tweet? 

• Can I disagree with another without attacking the person, remembering that God loves them as much as God loves me?

Patience

• Will I be patient with God, patient with others, and patient with myself?

• Can I enjoy and appreciate times of inactivity and waiting?

• Will I move slower, so I can be more aware of God, more aware of others and more aware of myself?

• Can I learn when to work and when to wait?

Dislocated Seagulls

For reasons unbeknownst to me, seagulls come every winter to live in the parking lot of the shopping center that is a mile from our house. I always wonder where they have come from, and why, being the shore birds they are, they choose to winter over in an asphalt parking lot, far from any beach or salt water.

Today I saw them for the first time this winter. It was a very windy morning and I had been watching the clouds race across the sky on my morning walk. One gull in particular seemed to be enjoying the high winds as he soared in the gusts overhead. I felt as though I could read his thoughts and that he was reminded of the winds at his seaside home. While his view of earth is much different now than where he normally lives, I could sense his joy in finding a moment of familiarity, an experience that reoriented him toward his usual surroundings.

I thought about my own life, and how at times I find myself in a place that is not familiar or comfortable. Life experiences can be unsettling. The holidays can take me out of the rhythm that most often nourishes and sustains me. Like the seagull, I may be in a season of change, a place that is different than what is home for me. In such situations, I need to be attentive for a strong wind, a wind of the Spirit that blows over me and allows me to soar in a moment of reorientation, of union with God.

My ability to recognize and appreciate such winds happens by the work I do while in my normal rhythms of life. Morning devotions, scripture study, centering prayer, worship, Eucharist and fixed hour prayer ground me and allow me to pay attention even when I am in places where those disciplines are more difficult to maintain. As such spiritual practices become hard-wired into me, I can find moments of “home” even when life’s seasons carry me far from my physical home, just as my friend the seagull found this morning.

Love and the Law

I’ve been reading through the gospel of Luke for the past couple of months. Reading through the whole of Luke has allowed me to come to new ways of seeing familiar passages as I read them in the context of what comes before and after them. In January, I heard Brian McLaren teach on how scripture’s meaning can change for us when we read it in context. That has helped me look at what I am reading more from a panoramic viewpoint rather than in isolation.

Luke 14 begins with Jesus healing on the Sabbath. Jesus then teaches us that discipleship demands that we be completely committed to him, willing even to give up all our possessions (note that this is said to all, not simply to the rich young ruler). Luke 15 gives stories about hospitality and welcoming, and in the first part of chapter 16 Jesus teaches about faithfulness with money. What follows are these five verses:

¹⁴ The Pharisees, who were money-lovers, heard all this and sneered at Jesus. ¹⁵ He said to them,“You are the ones who justify yourselves before other people, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued by people is deeply offensive to God. ¹⁶ Until John, there was only the Law and the Prophets. Since then, the good news of God’s kingdom is preached, and everyone is urged to enter it.¹⁷ It’s easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for the smallest stroke of a pen in the Law to drop out. ¹⁸ Any man who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and a man who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery. (CEB)

What follows is the story of the rich man and Lazarus, teachings about faithful service, and then Jesus heals ten lepers, and the only one who returns to thank him is a Samaritan. Through the passages before and after these verses, Jesus has done what is offensive to the Pharisees. Healing on the Sabbath violated the Law, giving up all ones possessions went way farther than the tithe prescribed by the Law, as did Jesus’ teachings about divorce. But Jesus also taught grace and forgiveness in the parable of the prodigal son and the manager who changed the accounts of his master’s debtors. Jesus also reached out to those whom society used the Law to avoid when he healed the ten lepers.

So in reading the familiar verse about how it’s easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for the smallest part of the Law to drop out, I wonder if Jesus is speaking more to the rigidity of the Pharisees than he is praising the Law. The Pharisees highly valued the Law and often seemed to revere it over people. They seemed more concerned about preserving the Law than they did about extending love and grace and healing to others. Reading this verse in the context of this whole section of Luke causes me to wonder if Jesus was saying that the Pharisees were so unmovable in their adoration of the Law that even if they were shown a higher and better way, they would not let go of the Law.

Jesus says that what is highly valued by people is deeply offensive to God. I wonder what it is that I might value highly that God finds offensive. What “values” blind me from being a bearer of good news to others? The Pharisees did not get singled out because they valued the Law, but because they put the Law ahead of compassion. I wonder if God is more offended by those who claim to be Christian but spew forth hatred and name-calling than God is by those who do evil without any claim of being a follower of God.

I don’t presume to know the “right” answer, but I believe with all my heart that because Jesus loved me enough to give himself for me and for all people—all races, all religious faiths, all nonreligious, all sexual orientations, all evildoers-repentant or not, and even those who offend me—my only response is to fall to my knees, exclaim, “God have mercy on me, a sinner” and then to love others without exclusion in humility and gratitude for the grace given to me. Jesus did not withhold his love from anyone and I am called to go and do likewise. I cannot take in the magnitude of God’s love for all creatures, but I will humbly try to share God’s love with others.