Sermon on January 31, 2010
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
If you’ve ever been to a Christian wedding, you’ve probably heard I Corinthians 13 read aloud. Whenever I’m doing premarital counseling with a couple and it comes time to plan the actual service and think about which scriptures they’d like to have read at their wedding, I share with them a list of passages that they might want to consider. I Corinthians 13, of course, is on the list, and when we get to it, I’ll often hear one of them say something like, “Oh, no. We can’t do I Corinthians. Everybody uses I Corinthians at their wedding. We’ve got to find something different.”
Once, in my very first premarital counseling session with a couple, we were just getting started—still weeks away from planning the service—when the bride told me, “Well, before we get going, just so you know, we are not using I Corinthians 13 at our wedding.” “Really?” I asked. “How come?” “All my friends have used it, and quite frankly, I’m tired of hearing it.” But then she asked, “Is there another good ‘love passage’ in the Bible?”
I guess a couple of things are going on here. First, more and more, couples are feeling some strange pressure to be “different” in their wedding—as if somehow entering the covenant of marriage and binding your soul to that of another person needs to “stand out” any more than it already does. But also, this general criticism of I Corinthians 13 suggests that it has been overdone. In a way, it’s sort of become the “Kum ba yah” of biblical passages, the song that’s been played way too many times—so many times, in fact, that it’s begun to lose its meaning.
Or perhaps I Corinthians 13 simply smacks of too much Hallmark greeting card sentimentality—so much so that “Love is patient; love is kind…” has become like “Roses are red; violets are blue…” overused to the point of becoming useless. Of course, the truth is that I Corinthians 13 is a powerful biblical text. There’s a good reason so many couples have chosen to have it read at their weddings. It presents such powerful, compelling language about love—language that sets love apart, I think, from its many references in pop culture and on Valentines Day cards.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
If you’re sitting there and your sense that I Corinthians 13 is overdone still prevents you from considering it much further, let me invite you to do a little exercise. Start with verse four and read through verse seven, and instead of reading the word “love,” substitute your own name. Instead of reading, “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude,” read to yourself, “____ is patient; ____ is kind; ____ is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. ____ does not insist on his own way; ___ is not irritable or resentful; ___ does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ___ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
To what extent do I embody “love”? Makes for an interesting self-inventory, doesn’t it? And we realize that “love” here isn’t simply an emotion; rather, Paul thinks of love as a “way.” He writes, “I will show you a still more excellent way.” Love—not a feeling, but a way, a practice, a life that we lead. And as Paul describes it, the way of love can be described both by what it is and by what it isn’t. “Love is patient… love is not envious…”
It’s kind of like the aspiring wood carver who was really trying to whittle a basic project—a little figure of a dog. He was making a mess of it and failing. So he went to his teacher with his knife and his rough block of wood and said, “I give up. How do you do this? What is the secret of carving?” The teacher looked at him and said, “Well it’s easy, really. You just take this piece of wood and cut off everything that doesn’t look like a dog.”
What happens when you cut everything else away in your life? What are you left with in the end? Is it something that resembles love? Is it a dog? Think about the rough block of wood of your own life. And imagine whittling it down to its essential substance. Chip off those outer layers, the stuff that really doesn’t look like you, and what are you left with?
Sometimes you can get to the core of it all and not like what you see. When that icon of baseball, Mickey Mantle, was dying of liver cancer, he was asked what advice he would give young people who still looked up to him. Mickey Mantle—an amazing athlete, an all-star on the field, but one whose recklessness and debauchery off the field gave him a reputation. He looked at the camera and said simply, “Don’t be like me.”
And the end of it all, when you see your life for what it is, will it look like love? Love is, at the end of it all, what it’s about. Love is the heart of our faith.
When I was in Austin, I was doing campus ministry near the University of Texas. One of the years I was there, the Dalai Lama was touring the United States, and he came to the UT campus and spoke in the Erwin Center—the basketball arena where the Longhorns play. The students at the church and I jumped at the chance to attend—to hear from one of the world’s religious leaders. And so we packed in with thousands of other young people that evening to hear from this little man in an orange robe with glasses.
He spoke for a while about the practice of faith and about peace, and near the end of his talk, he invited students from the audience to ask him questions. A young man near the front of the arena came to a microphone and asked simply, “What advice would you give to us college students who are about to go out into the world.”
The Dalai Lama was silent for a moment. My own seat was up high—in the nose bleed section—but I could almost sense the crowd leaning forward, ready to take in whatever this man said to them. And then he spoke. He said, “Be kind to each other.” That was it. Next question, please.
At first, I thought, “Really? Be kind to each other? We’ve got the Dalai Lama here and that’s it?” I guess I was expecting something a little more, oh, I don’t know… revolutionary? But then the students and I talked about that response during our walk back to the church, and we realized something: if we truly took kindness seriously, it would be a revolution. If everyone in the world was simply and deeply committed to kindness, we’d have a wonderful revolution on our hands!
And then we began to wonder about things that Jesus said that, on the surface, seemed perhaps a little too simplistic—things that, if we took them seriously, would revolutionize the way we lived our lives. “Love your neighbor as yourself” was one of them.
And we could have added to the list Paul’s words: “Faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” Love is the greatest. It’s about love—our faith is about love. I’ve said this before here, and I’ll say it again: this is what the gospel is all about—that in Jesus Christ, God loves us. Through Jesus Christ, God says to us, “You can betray me, you can deny me, and you can doubt me, but I will still love you. You can even put me to death—even death on a cross—but you cannot destroy my love for you.”
“You can do everything right in the world or you can do everything wrong. You can run to me and you can run away from me. You can choose to love me back, or not,” says God, “but nothing will ever change the fact that I love you. You can love me, love the world, and love yourself, and you can hate me, hate the world, and hate yourself, but nothing you ever do or fail to do will change my love for you.” This is God’s love—a love for us to embrace and practice in our own lives and in our world.
Have you ever heard of the phrase, “six degrees of separation”? Supposedly, every person in the world is connected to every other person in the world through six people. So, for example, I have a friend from high school who used to go out with a guy who used to date the singer Jewel, who, in turn, probably knows at least one person who knows Kevin Bacon, and so forth… If you think of everyone that you know in your life and then were to branch out to everyone that they know, and then branch out even further, with only six steps you would likely reach every person on the planet.
The question to ask, then, is an exciting one: What power could your love have in this world? Beginning with you and moving out, what power could it have? In light of the world’s problems, we tend to think of ourselves as immeasurably small, but the truth is this: love can change the whole world and it begins right here.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Evotional - To Be of Use
One of my favorite poems of all time is “To Be of Use” by Marge Piercy. As Haiti’s earthquake has snapped us to attention and begged us to consider what we might do to alleviate the suffering of others in our world, these words have come to mind again for me. May they bless you with an earnest curiosity about your own work, whatever it may be: serving, caring, leading, teaching, building, healing, listening, parenting, grandparenting…
“To Be of Use”
by Marge Piercy
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
“To Be of Use”
by Marge Piercy
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Body Language - I Corinthians 12:12-31
Sermon on January 24, 2010
If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.
I was a teenager in the 1980’s. For youth and young adults today, I realize that makes me something of a curiosity. But it’s true—I came of age during the era of acid-washed jeans, MTV, parachute pants, and mullets. My generation was the last to move through high school without the internet and without email and without cell phones. It’s sort of strange today to think of life without those things, but somehow we survived.
I bring this up because there’s an episode of the 80’s that I’d like to share with you. Some of you will remember this—that in 1986, there was a movement in the United States called “Hands Across America.” Basically, the idea was that millions of people would come together for fifteen minutes, holding hands in a line that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Everyone would pay $10 to participate and that money would be donated to local charities that fought hunger and homelessness.
I guess in 1986, this seemed like a pretty good idea. Sunday afternoon, May 25, more than five million people lined up across the country and held hands. The line stretched 4,152 miles from New York City to Long Beach, California. And had that line been absolutely straight, it would have indeed been an unbroken chain all the way. But in order to get more people involved, the organizers had the line snaking its way from one major US city to another. So moving eastward from New York, the chain only made it to Maryland before it suffered a large gap; apparently the folks in Baltimore didn’t want to hold hands. The line continued through the country, mostly intact (five million people is a lot of people), but it suffered significant gaps here and there, especially in the Arizona desert, where the longest breaks in the chain occurred. Some die-hards flocked to the desert, though, and formed mile-long chains here and there. In the end, the event turned out to be, “Hands Mostly Across America.”
Not a complete loss, though – the event raised close to $20 million for soup kitchens and homeless shelters across the United States. Not bad for a day’s work. Of course, the event was expensive to promote and to run. Before it could even take place, corporate sponsorships totaling close to $30 million had to be raised to cover costs. So yes—the math: Corporations like Coca-Cola and Citibank doled out $30 million to run an event that, in the end, raised $20 million.
But, we could argue, that $20 million was really put to good use, and what about the symbolic significance of everybody holding hands across the country? What about the hope, the love, the promise that such an event could instill? What about the fact that on May 25, 1986 at 3:00 p.m. Easter Standard Time, five million folks across America, including Jazzercisers, Hell’s Angels, Hopi and Navajo Indians, 500 little leaguers at Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium, numerous celebrities, and President Ronald Reagan held hands together and sang “We Are the World,” “America the Beautiful,” and the Hands Across America theme song? (Yes, there really was a Hands Across America theme song – part of the $30 million price tag, I guess) All those people holding hands, connected and singing sappy 80’s pop music (which by the way, wasn’t called “sappy 80’s pop music”—it was just called “music.”) Isn’t there something wonderful about that single act of solidarity?
And you could say “Yes”—that Hands Across America, despite its shortcomings, provided a symbol of unity and hope for a nation struggling to address issues of global hunger and poverty. So, yes, Hands Across America was a nice gesture.
But if events like “Hands Across America” teach us anything, it’s this: that true unity is awfully hard to organize and even more difficult to maintain. Furthermore, I would argue that when we engage in an activity that focuses our attention and our efforts on issues of poverty in our world, we are apt to more fully understand that poverty in our world is overwhelming. And in the true face of poverty, our symbolic acts of unity often fail to deliver long-term results.
It’s relatively easy to hold hands and claim for a moment that “Yes. We are the world. We are one human family.” It’s much more difficult to shape our lives in ways that authentically resonate with the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., whose quote I included in our bulletin this morning: “I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.”
Dr. King echoes those words of the apostle Paul, who wrote in his letter to the Corinthians, “In the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body… If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”
There’s a word for that. Ubuntu. Go ahead and say it: “Ubuntu.” “Ubuntu” is a word from the Bantu languages of southern Africa, and it means, “I am because you are.” “Ubuntu—I am because you are.” Go ahead and take a quick second and say to the people next to you or around you, “Ubuntu.”
I am because you are. If you suffer, I suffer with you. If you are honored, I rejoice with you. I am because you are. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. Ubuntu. I am because you are. Ubuntu—more, much more than fifteen minutes holding hands. Much more than a photo opportunity. Ubuntu is a way of life that acknowledges the truth of our connectedness!
A nice image for us striving to live in a spirit of Ubuntu is the aspen tree. Did you know that out in Colorado and Utah, an aspen forest is usually just one tree? That’s the way aspens grow. The root system is all connected. You can take a genetic sample from the leaf of one aspen and then walk a mile or so and take another from another tree, and you’ll find that it’s all really one tree—connected underground.
What would happen if we human begins began to understand ourselves that way? What would happen to our sense of connection as a church? What would happen to our view of the world around us?
I’d like to talk again about the earthquake in Haiti. Those pictures online and on TV are still so vivid in our minds and we continue to express concern and care for folks living in Port au Prince. On Friday night, a bunch of singers and celebrities came together to raise money for Haiti, and I guess the danger might be that this becomes another “Hands Across America Moment”—a strong show of unity and support followed by a gradual fading away as other news stories take center stage and capture our attention.
Haiti, like the gulf coast after Hurricane Katrina, is going to need serious, long-term care. And so we might wonder what will sustain that kind of commitment. And here’s the truth. It won’t be our good intentions. Feelings of sadness and sympathy will not sustain the kind of loving humanitarian outreach that will be needed in Haiti over the next decade or so. But you know what will? Ubuntu. A conviction that what Paul said was true—that if one member suffers, all suffer together with it. That’s what will sustain outreach to Haiti—an unswerving commitment to the fact that our very identity is wrapped up in the identity of the people of Haiti.
This, by the way, is what really makes a difference in our world—our recognition of ourselves in each other. Scripture’s teaching—Christ’s teaching—that you love your neighbor as yourself is an Ubuntu teaching—a call for you to see yourself in the face of another.
You’ve all experienced this, I know. Many of you here have lost loved ones. Your life’s great grief has been the loss of a parent or a spouse or a child. And you’ve said it: “When he died, a part of me died with him.” “When she died, a part of me died too.” And that’s not just a figure of speech—it’s true. It’s true because in our loving relationships, our identities bleed together and it’s hard, if not impossible, to understand ourselves apart from the other.
Think about what the world would be like if we all shared that sense of “self” and “other”—if we could all truly see ourselves in the faces of others. This is a big part of what being a church family is all about. Because it’s here in this family of faith that you and I practice Ubuntu. It’s here that we recognize each other as sister and brother in the same body of Christ. And it’s here that we experience the truth that when one of us suffers, we all suffer with that one. And when one of us rejoices, we all find cause for rejoicing.
The challenge and joy of being a church family is expanding our sense of Ubuntu to include an ever-widening pool of family members. Our outreach, then, to folks who are homeless and hungry, to our neighborhood and to the city of Racine, and to places like Haiti grows not from our desire to be charitable; rather, it flows from our conviction that we are one body.
I’m going to give you an assignment today. And that assignment is this: practice Ubuntu with somebody this week. Practice I am because you are with somebody! Maybe it’ll be with someone you know and maybe it’ll be a total stranger. Someone at work, a girl serving coffee, somebody on the street… Imagine that the two of you are part of a much larger body. See yourself reflected in the face of another, and then see what that reflection enables you to say, to do, and to believe. Amen.
If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.
I was a teenager in the 1980’s. For youth and young adults today, I realize that makes me something of a curiosity. But it’s true—I came of age during the era of acid-washed jeans, MTV, parachute pants, and mullets. My generation was the last to move through high school without the internet and without email and without cell phones. It’s sort of strange today to think of life without those things, but somehow we survived.
I bring this up because there’s an episode of the 80’s that I’d like to share with you. Some of you will remember this—that in 1986, there was a movement in the United States called “Hands Across America.” Basically, the idea was that millions of people would come together for fifteen minutes, holding hands in a line that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Everyone would pay $10 to participate and that money would be donated to local charities that fought hunger and homelessness.
I guess in 1986, this seemed like a pretty good idea. Sunday afternoon, May 25, more than five million people lined up across the country and held hands. The line stretched 4,152 miles from New York City to Long Beach, California. And had that line been absolutely straight, it would have indeed been an unbroken chain all the way. But in order to get more people involved, the organizers had the line snaking its way from one major US city to another. So moving eastward from New York, the chain only made it to Maryland before it suffered a large gap; apparently the folks in Baltimore didn’t want to hold hands. The line continued through the country, mostly intact (five million people is a lot of people), but it suffered significant gaps here and there, especially in the Arizona desert, where the longest breaks in the chain occurred. Some die-hards flocked to the desert, though, and formed mile-long chains here and there. In the end, the event turned out to be, “Hands Mostly Across America.”
Not a complete loss, though – the event raised close to $20 million for soup kitchens and homeless shelters across the United States. Not bad for a day’s work. Of course, the event was expensive to promote and to run. Before it could even take place, corporate sponsorships totaling close to $30 million had to be raised to cover costs. So yes—the math: Corporations like Coca-Cola and Citibank doled out $30 million to run an event that, in the end, raised $20 million.
But, we could argue, that $20 million was really put to good use, and what about the symbolic significance of everybody holding hands across the country? What about the hope, the love, the promise that such an event could instill? What about the fact that on May 25, 1986 at 3:00 p.m. Easter Standard Time, five million folks across America, including Jazzercisers, Hell’s Angels, Hopi and Navajo Indians, 500 little leaguers at Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium, numerous celebrities, and President Ronald Reagan held hands together and sang “We Are the World,” “America the Beautiful,” and the Hands Across America theme song? (Yes, there really was a Hands Across America theme song – part of the $30 million price tag, I guess) All those people holding hands, connected and singing sappy 80’s pop music (which by the way, wasn’t called “sappy 80’s pop music”—it was just called “music.”) Isn’t there something wonderful about that single act of solidarity?
And you could say “Yes”—that Hands Across America, despite its shortcomings, provided a symbol of unity and hope for a nation struggling to address issues of global hunger and poverty. So, yes, Hands Across America was a nice gesture.
But if events like “Hands Across America” teach us anything, it’s this: that true unity is awfully hard to organize and even more difficult to maintain. Furthermore, I would argue that when we engage in an activity that focuses our attention and our efforts on issues of poverty in our world, we are apt to more fully understand that poverty in our world is overwhelming. And in the true face of poverty, our symbolic acts of unity often fail to deliver long-term results.
It’s relatively easy to hold hands and claim for a moment that “Yes. We are the world. We are one human family.” It’s much more difficult to shape our lives in ways that authentically resonate with the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., whose quote I included in our bulletin this morning: “I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.”
Dr. King echoes those words of the apostle Paul, who wrote in his letter to the Corinthians, “In the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body… If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”
There’s a word for that. Ubuntu. Go ahead and say it: “Ubuntu.” “Ubuntu” is a word from the Bantu languages of southern Africa, and it means, “I am because you are.” “Ubuntu—I am because you are.” Go ahead and take a quick second and say to the people next to you or around you, “Ubuntu.”
I am because you are. If you suffer, I suffer with you. If you are honored, I rejoice with you. I am because you are. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. Ubuntu. I am because you are. Ubuntu—more, much more than fifteen minutes holding hands. Much more than a photo opportunity. Ubuntu is a way of life that acknowledges the truth of our connectedness!
A nice image for us striving to live in a spirit of Ubuntu is the aspen tree. Did you know that out in Colorado and Utah, an aspen forest is usually just one tree? That’s the way aspens grow. The root system is all connected. You can take a genetic sample from the leaf of one aspen and then walk a mile or so and take another from another tree, and you’ll find that it’s all really one tree—connected underground.
What would happen if we human begins began to understand ourselves that way? What would happen to our sense of connection as a church? What would happen to our view of the world around us?
I’d like to talk again about the earthquake in Haiti. Those pictures online and on TV are still so vivid in our minds and we continue to express concern and care for folks living in Port au Prince. On Friday night, a bunch of singers and celebrities came together to raise money for Haiti, and I guess the danger might be that this becomes another “Hands Across America Moment”—a strong show of unity and support followed by a gradual fading away as other news stories take center stage and capture our attention.
Haiti, like the gulf coast after Hurricane Katrina, is going to need serious, long-term care. And so we might wonder what will sustain that kind of commitment. And here’s the truth. It won’t be our good intentions. Feelings of sadness and sympathy will not sustain the kind of loving humanitarian outreach that will be needed in Haiti over the next decade or so. But you know what will? Ubuntu. A conviction that what Paul said was true—that if one member suffers, all suffer together with it. That’s what will sustain outreach to Haiti—an unswerving commitment to the fact that our very identity is wrapped up in the identity of the people of Haiti.
This, by the way, is what really makes a difference in our world—our recognition of ourselves in each other. Scripture’s teaching—Christ’s teaching—that you love your neighbor as yourself is an Ubuntu teaching—a call for you to see yourself in the face of another.
You’ve all experienced this, I know. Many of you here have lost loved ones. Your life’s great grief has been the loss of a parent or a spouse or a child. And you’ve said it: “When he died, a part of me died with him.” “When she died, a part of me died too.” And that’s not just a figure of speech—it’s true. It’s true because in our loving relationships, our identities bleed together and it’s hard, if not impossible, to understand ourselves apart from the other.
Think about what the world would be like if we all shared that sense of “self” and “other”—if we could all truly see ourselves in the faces of others. This is a big part of what being a church family is all about. Because it’s here in this family of faith that you and I practice Ubuntu. It’s here that we recognize each other as sister and brother in the same body of Christ. And it’s here that we experience the truth that when one of us suffers, we all suffer with that one. And when one of us rejoices, we all find cause for rejoicing.
The challenge and joy of being a church family is expanding our sense of Ubuntu to include an ever-widening pool of family members. Our outreach, then, to folks who are homeless and hungry, to our neighborhood and to the city of Racine, and to places like Haiti grows not from our desire to be charitable; rather, it flows from our conviction that we are one body.
I’m going to give you an assignment today. And that assignment is this: practice Ubuntu with somebody this week. Practice I am because you are with somebody! Maybe it’ll be with someone you know and maybe it’ll be a total stranger. Someone at work, a girl serving coffee, somebody on the street… Imagine that the two of you are part of a much larger body. See yourself reflected in the face of another, and then see what that reflection enables you to say, to do, and to believe. Amen.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Enough - Exodus 23:4-13
Sermon on January 17, 2010
You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.
Every Sunday morning I check the news. It’s part of a pre-worship routine that I do each week. I get up early, put on a pot of coffee, and then check in briefly with cnn.com. The thought is that something may have happened during the night—a death, a disaster, a conflict, some catastrophe—something may have happened during the night that has effectively rendered my prepared sermon irrelevant.
My plan has always been that I could write a new sermon—or at least change the one I’ve got—to address the situation, to comfort the congregation if need be, and to begin to develop a response that grows out of our Christian faith.
The earthquake hit Haiti on Tuesday, so we’ve all had five days to ask “Why?” Five days to sift through pictures and news articles and to begin to face the true magnitude of the situation there in Port au Prince. And despite the extra time to think and prepare, I must say that in some ways I’m at a loss for words. Like many of you who are also glued to the news, I’m stunned by the horror of it all. So you and I and the whole world are scrambling to respond to Haiti—scrambling to respond not only with humanitarian aid, but also with words to even describe what has happened there.
I’ve watched more television than I usually do these days, and at one point, I heard a reporter, in reference to the post-earthquake devastation, say, “The tragedy here is one of biblical proportion.” Did you happen to catch that? I sat there on the couch and thought, “Thank you, random reporter, for that riveting theological assessment.” But I must confess it left me wondering.
What is biblical proportion? I was never very good at math, and I’m not even particularly good at reading recipes. So understanding proportions to begin with has always been a bit of a challenge for me. But biblical proportion? Supposedly it refers to something that happens on an enormous scale—so huge, in fact, that it could only be possible in the Bible.
And, proportionally speaking, when it comes to mass crises, the Bible has more than its fair share. A giant flood being the first, but moving into the stories from Exodus, we find a few more. The Hebrew people forced into slavery in Egypt. Pharaoh issues an order to kill infant Hebrew boys. And then in the following chapters, plagues: thunder and hail, water turning to blood, flies and gnats, disease, darkness, death. Tragic events of biblical proportion.
However, I’d like to suggest this morning that there are other biblical proportions worth paying attention to. We’re not going to hear about these on the 10 o’clock news, and that’s fine. But I do believe that they’re some of the best biblical proportions the Bible has to offer:
The first is 5,000 to 5 and 2: the feeding of five thousand people with five loaves and two fish. That's a biblical proportion.
The second is 99 to 1: the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine sheep in search of the one that is lost. That's a biblical proportion.
The first will be last and the last will be first. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. These are true biblical proportions!
According to the laws of this world, they don’t always make sense, and certainly according to laws of scarcity, fear, and competition, they never make sense. But these are biblical proportions. And they beg this question of our nation and our world: will history measure our response to Haiti’s earthquake in biblical proportions? Will the outpouring of aid and efforts to heal and revitalize Haiti reflect loving biblical proportions?
Pondering those questions, we turn to this morning’s passage from the book of Exodus, where the voice of God is understood through Moses. God is giving Moses these lists of commandments, and tucked in there among them all is this one: “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.” Perhaps this command blends in with those around it, but you know, it’s interesting. In the entire Old Testament, there is one commandment to love your neighbor and no less than thirty-six commandments to love the stranger. And there’s a reason for that. After all, the people of Israel knew what being a stranger felt like. As slaves in Egypt and then later during Babylonian exile, the Israelites understood what it meant to be strangers in a strange land. Consequently, one of the foundational building blocks of our faith tradition is a commandment to make sure that the stranger has enough.
This is God’s heart in the book of Exodus! Remember that when the Israelites are wandering in the wilderness, they are strangers, and God provides manna for them to eat. And the thing about that manna is that it’s everywhere! So it’s distributed equally to everyone—everyone gathers as much as he or she needs. And because there is enough manna to go around, there is no market for surplus manna. Because it is so plentiful, it’s impossible for an enterprising person to try to corner the market and drive up the price with artificial shortages.
You can’t be poor when there’s manna on the ground, and when there’s manna on the ground, it doesn’t pay to be rich, because everyone simply has enough.
We haven’t yet seen this kind of manna in Haiti. Simply getting the resources there and where they’re needed has been difficult. But many Americans and folks from all over the world are mobilizing.
Here in Racine and in this church, we ask ourselves, “What can we do?” Did you know that Port au Prince, Haiti is closer to Racine than San Francisco or Seattle? It’s strange—watching the news, it’s easy to think that Haiti is such a far-distant place, but it’s in our yard. So perhaps it helps greatly to remember that when we reach out with love and care to the people of Haiti, we echo the commitments of our faith ancestors who could not be stopped from loving the strangers in their midst!
In a moment I’m going to ask Tim Lafond, our chair of finance and stewardship, to share a few words about our own congregation’s response to the situation in Haiti. Before I do, though, I’ll share some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that there are many hurting, displaced people in Haiti who are waiting for help. The good news is that there is enough—the world has enough food and water and resources to heal and rebuild Haiti (and a few other places where the human family is struggling!).
Tomorrow we celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. And so as we prepare for our offering, I’ll close with my favorite King quote. This comes from an address he gave at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. just four days before his assassination. I think these words can and should fuel our own response to suffering in Haiti and in our world.
"Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood [or sisterhood]. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers [and sisters] or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured."
(From "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution," delivered by Martin Luther King at the National Cathedral, Washington, D.C., on 31 March 1968.)
Amen.
To contribute to relief efforts in Haiti through Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, go to their web page and click "Give $"
You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.
Every Sunday morning I check the news. It’s part of a pre-worship routine that I do each week. I get up early, put on a pot of coffee, and then check in briefly with cnn.com. The thought is that something may have happened during the night—a death, a disaster, a conflict, some catastrophe—something may have happened during the night that has effectively rendered my prepared sermon irrelevant.
My plan has always been that I could write a new sermon—or at least change the one I’ve got—to address the situation, to comfort the congregation if need be, and to begin to develop a response that grows out of our Christian faith.
The earthquake hit Haiti on Tuesday, so we’ve all had five days to ask “Why?” Five days to sift through pictures and news articles and to begin to face the true magnitude of the situation there in Port au Prince. And despite the extra time to think and prepare, I must say that in some ways I’m at a loss for words. Like many of you who are also glued to the news, I’m stunned by the horror of it all. So you and I and the whole world are scrambling to respond to Haiti—scrambling to respond not only with humanitarian aid, but also with words to even describe what has happened there.
I’ve watched more television than I usually do these days, and at one point, I heard a reporter, in reference to the post-earthquake devastation, say, “The tragedy here is one of biblical proportion.” Did you happen to catch that? I sat there on the couch and thought, “Thank you, random reporter, for that riveting theological assessment.” But I must confess it left me wondering.
What is biblical proportion? I was never very good at math, and I’m not even particularly good at reading recipes. So understanding proportions to begin with has always been a bit of a challenge for me. But biblical proportion? Supposedly it refers to something that happens on an enormous scale—so huge, in fact, that it could only be possible in the Bible.
And, proportionally speaking, when it comes to mass crises, the Bible has more than its fair share. A giant flood being the first, but moving into the stories from Exodus, we find a few more. The Hebrew people forced into slavery in Egypt. Pharaoh issues an order to kill infant Hebrew boys. And then in the following chapters, plagues: thunder and hail, water turning to blood, flies and gnats, disease, darkness, death. Tragic events of biblical proportion.
However, I’d like to suggest this morning that there are other biblical proportions worth paying attention to. We’re not going to hear about these on the 10 o’clock news, and that’s fine. But I do believe that they’re some of the best biblical proportions the Bible has to offer:
The first is 5,000 to 5 and 2: the feeding of five thousand people with five loaves and two fish. That's a biblical proportion.
The second is 99 to 1: the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine sheep in search of the one that is lost. That's a biblical proportion.
The first will be last and the last will be first. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. These are true biblical proportions!
According to the laws of this world, they don’t always make sense, and certainly according to laws of scarcity, fear, and competition, they never make sense. But these are biblical proportions. And they beg this question of our nation and our world: will history measure our response to Haiti’s earthquake in biblical proportions? Will the outpouring of aid and efforts to heal and revitalize Haiti reflect loving biblical proportions?
Pondering those questions, we turn to this morning’s passage from the book of Exodus, where the voice of God is understood through Moses. God is giving Moses these lists of commandments, and tucked in there among them all is this one: “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.” Perhaps this command blends in with those around it, but you know, it’s interesting. In the entire Old Testament, there is one commandment to love your neighbor and no less than thirty-six commandments to love the stranger. And there’s a reason for that. After all, the people of Israel knew what being a stranger felt like. As slaves in Egypt and then later during Babylonian exile, the Israelites understood what it meant to be strangers in a strange land. Consequently, one of the foundational building blocks of our faith tradition is a commandment to make sure that the stranger has enough.
This is God’s heart in the book of Exodus! Remember that when the Israelites are wandering in the wilderness, they are strangers, and God provides manna for them to eat. And the thing about that manna is that it’s everywhere! So it’s distributed equally to everyone—everyone gathers as much as he or she needs. And because there is enough manna to go around, there is no market for surplus manna. Because it is so plentiful, it’s impossible for an enterprising person to try to corner the market and drive up the price with artificial shortages.
You can’t be poor when there’s manna on the ground, and when there’s manna on the ground, it doesn’t pay to be rich, because everyone simply has enough.
We haven’t yet seen this kind of manna in Haiti. Simply getting the resources there and where they’re needed has been difficult. But many Americans and folks from all over the world are mobilizing.
Here in Racine and in this church, we ask ourselves, “What can we do?” Did you know that Port au Prince, Haiti is closer to Racine than San Francisco or Seattle? It’s strange—watching the news, it’s easy to think that Haiti is such a far-distant place, but it’s in our yard. So perhaps it helps greatly to remember that when we reach out with love and care to the people of Haiti, we echo the commitments of our faith ancestors who could not be stopped from loving the strangers in their midst!
In a moment I’m going to ask Tim Lafond, our chair of finance and stewardship, to share a few words about our own congregation’s response to the situation in Haiti. Before I do, though, I’ll share some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that there are many hurting, displaced people in Haiti who are waiting for help. The good news is that there is enough—the world has enough food and water and resources to heal and rebuild Haiti (and a few other places where the human family is struggling!).
Tomorrow we celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. And so as we prepare for our offering, I’ll close with my favorite King quote. This comes from an address he gave at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. just four days before his assassination. I think these words can and should fuel our own response to suffering in Haiti and in our world.
"Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood [or sisterhood]. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers [and sisters] or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured."
(From "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution," delivered by Martin Luther King at the National Cathedral, Washington, D.C., on 31 March 1968.)
Amen.
To contribute to relief efforts in Haiti through Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, go to their web page and click "Give $"
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Thinking of Haiti
Along with you, I've been reacting to news from Haiti with such shock and sadness. In the coming days, no doubt, we'll learn more about the devastation there and hopefully we'll get a better sense of how we might be helpful in efforts to rebuild. For now, I want to share two links with you. The first is the link for Presbyterian Disaster Assistance PDA is an extremely efficient and helpful organization in situations like these, and I'm confident that the financial resources we funnel through them will be put to good use.
The second link is to an organization to which First Presbyterian Church, Racine is connected. Linda and Joe Markee, Julie Markee's parents, sit on the board of The Haiti Foundation of Hope. While this organization serves communities in more rural, northern parts of Haiti, their work and ministry is no doubt impacted by the recent earthquake. Joe and Linda will be coming to First Presbyterian Church this spring to give a presentation on their work. It will be good in the coming weeks to learn from them more about how we as a congregation might be able to respond.
The second link is to an organization to which First Presbyterian Church, Racine is connected. Linda and Joe Markee, Julie Markee's parents, sit on the board of The Haiti Foundation of Hope. While this organization serves communities in more rural, northern parts of Haiti, their work and ministry is no doubt impacted by the recent earthquake. Joe and Linda will be coming to First Presbyterian Church this spring to give a presentation on their work. It will be good in the coming weeks to learn from them more about how we as a congregation might be able to respond.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
When Heaven was Opened - Luke 3:15-22
Sermon on January 10, 2010
Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
Dayton Edmonds, a United Methodist missionary, tells this tale about a poor man who had a vision in his dream. And his dream was of a heavenly city where everything was perfect. Growing very weary of his living, he decided to go in search of his heavenly city of his dreams. So he gathered what few belongings he had and started on his journey. He walked. All day long he walked. And as he walked, he had but one thought: the heavenly city of his dreams—how perfect it was going to be when he arrived. All day long he walked with this one thought, and then it was evening time. He had not yet come to the heavenly city of his dreams. So he decided to make camp right where he was. He took out a crust of bread, gave thanks to God, and ate it. And then, just before he went to sleep, he took off his shoes and he put them in the path, facing them in the direction that he would continue his journey the next day. And, then, the poor man went to sleep.
Little did he know that in the middle of the night, a trickster came along, picked up his shoes and turned them around, facing them back in the direction from which he had come. Early the next morning, the poor man awoke. Taking out his crust of bread, he once again gave thanks to God, and ate it, and then he walked to the path, and he slipped on his shoes. And he began to walk in the direction that his shoes were facing. All day long he walked, and as he walked, he had but one thought: the heavenly city of his dreams and how perfect it was going to be when he arrived. He walked until it was almost evening.
He looked off in the distance and he saw it! The heavenly city of his dreams! It wasn't as large as he thought it was going to be, and it looked strangely familiar. The poor man walked until he found a strangely familiar street, and he turned down the strangely familiar street, and he walked until he found a strangely familiar house. And he knocked on the door, and when the door was opened, he was greeted by a strangely familiar family. The poor man went inside and lived happily ever after in the heavenly city of his dreams.
Sometimes a new perspective leads to a new life—a new sense of place and purpose—and perhaps even a living conviction that Heaven itself isn’t so far away. Racine, Wisconsin, or maybe Burlington—the Heavenly city of our dreams! On some days, maybe.
And yet I tend to be suspicious of theologies and explanations that lean toward an understanding of Heaven being simply a matter of perspective. There are those who claim that in a very real sense, Heaven is not a place—not a destination, but rather a state of mind—a way of embracing the present and experiencing God each day. My hesitation with that line of thinking comes from the fact that for so many in this world, daily life is an absolute struggle to survive. While some may be able to find Heaven in the day-to-day, there are simply those for whom life is a living Hell. And it’s hard for me to imagine myself saying to a man suffering from severe bouts of depression, or to a woman in an abusive situation, or to an orphan in a war-torn country, “Don’t worry. Heaven is here—it’s just a matter of your perspective!”
I doubt very much that I could stand by that explanation of Heaven. And yet… And yet we have these gospel stories where again and again and again we hear John the Baptist and then Jesus saying things like, “The kingdom of Heaven is near!” “Repent! Believe! For the kingdom of Heaven is near!”
Coming right out of Christmas, we have these stories about Heaven’s nearness fresh in our minds. An angel appears to Mary and later an angel appears to Joseph. A heavenly host of angels appears to the shepherds living in the field! These are just the first gospel stories where the boundary between Heaven and earth seems amazingly thin.
And then throughout his teaching, Jesus paints a picture of Heaven that is anything but far-distant. “The kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed…” “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with flour…” “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure in a field…”
At one point, in fact, in Luke’s gospel, the Pharisees ask Jesus when the kingdom of God is coming and Jesus responds, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.”
For Jesus the boundary between Heaven and earth is thin—perhaps even nonexistent. In today’s story from Luke’s gospel, we find Jesus by the River Jordan. It always feels strange to me that every year we go from baby Jesus to big Jesus all in one week. But here we are—and Jesus the adult is being baptized and we see something of Heaven’s nearness.
Luke paints a complicated picture for us here. Clearly a movement is getting off of the ground. The people are “filled with expectation”—excited about John and excited about the coming Messiah. We can imagine that they’re showing up at the Jordan in droves to be baptized. At the same time, Herod doesn’t like what he’s seeing. Crowds like this today could spell “uprising” tomorrow, and so for the sake of Rome’s control in the region, he puts John in prison. And so the world that sees Jesus’ baptism isn’t much different from the world that received his birth: violent, unstable, corrupt.
And the amazing thing is that it’s in the very presence of a violent, unstable, and corrupt world that the heavens are opened. “Now when all the people were baptized,” Luke writes, “and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove.”
I wonder what that looked like. I wonder what that felt like. I wonder if people standing there looked up and said to each other, “Well, would you look at that? The heaven is opening up. I’ll be darned.” Or perhaps whatever happened in that moment was really too wonderful to describe. That’s probably true, isn’t it? Whatever descriptions we think we have of Heaven—they all probably fall wonderfully short of capturing it all.
One thing we do know from reading the gospels, however, is that there is something of Heaven’s nearness that is worth paying attention to. Beginning with Jesus’ birth and baptism and unfolding through the gospel stories, the boundary between Heaven and earth seems so paper-thin. The kingdom of Heaven—the kingdom of God, Jesus says over and over again, is closer than you think.
The question we might bring to that observation, though, is “So what? So what if Heaven is really nearby?” Well, for one thing, if the kingdom of Heaven is really nearby, we just might find ourselves living a little more expectantly—eager to catch a glimpse of Heaven here or there—in a relationship, in a moment of joy or wonder, in the intricate uniqueness of a snowflake clinging to the windowpane…
But also, if the kingdom of Heaven is really nearby, we just might challenge ourselves to shape the world around us in its heavenly form! We know the truth, and the truth is that there are places in this world where Heaven must feel like a far-distant fairy tale. And yet Jesus calls us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, they will be done,” and so we become God’s agents of heavenly nearness! Perhaps God is calling you to be one who opens the heavens to a certain place in this world.
That may be an interesting way to sum up the Christian life—recognizing the kingdom of Heaven when it appears and creating the kingdom of Heaven when it is most needed.
My prayer this morning is that in the coming days and weeks, Jesus might come to you like a trickster, pointing your shoes in a new, heavenward direction when you least expect it—helping you find your way to the kingdom of Heaven—helping you share the news that yes, the kingdom of Heaven is near! Amen.
Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
Dayton Edmonds, a United Methodist missionary, tells this tale about a poor man who had a vision in his dream. And his dream was of a heavenly city where everything was perfect. Growing very weary of his living, he decided to go in search of his heavenly city of his dreams. So he gathered what few belongings he had and started on his journey. He walked. All day long he walked. And as he walked, he had but one thought: the heavenly city of his dreams—how perfect it was going to be when he arrived. All day long he walked with this one thought, and then it was evening time. He had not yet come to the heavenly city of his dreams. So he decided to make camp right where he was. He took out a crust of bread, gave thanks to God, and ate it. And then, just before he went to sleep, he took off his shoes and he put them in the path, facing them in the direction that he would continue his journey the next day. And, then, the poor man went to sleep.
Little did he know that in the middle of the night, a trickster came along, picked up his shoes and turned them around, facing them back in the direction from which he had come. Early the next morning, the poor man awoke. Taking out his crust of bread, he once again gave thanks to God, and ate it, and then he walked to the path, and he slipped on his shoes. And he began to walk in the direction that his shoes were facing. All day long he walked, and as he walked, he had but one thought: the heavenly city of his dreams and how perfect it was going to be when he arrived. He walked until it was almost evening.
He looked off in the distance and he saw it! The heavenly city of his dreams! It wasn't as large as he thought it was going to be, and it looked strangely familiar. The poor man walked until he found a strangely familiar street, and he turned down the strangely familiar street, and he walked until he found a strangely familiar house. And he knocked on the door, and when the door was opened, he was greeted by a strangely familiar family. The poor man went inside and lived happily ever after in the heavenly city of his dreams.
Sometimes a new perspective leads to a new life—a new sense of place and purpose—and perhaps even a living conviction that Heaven itself isn’t so far away. Racine, Wisconsin, or maybe Burlington—the Heavenly city of our dreams! On some days, maybe.
And yet I tend to be suspicious of theologies and explanations that lean toward an understanding of Heaven being simply a matter of perspective. There are those who claim that in a very real sense, Heaven is not a place—not a destination, but rather a state of mind—a way of embracing the present and experiencing God each day. My hesitation with that line of thinking comes from the fact that for so many in this world, daily life is an absolute struggle to survive. While some may be able to find Heaven in the day-to-day, there are simply those for whom life is a living Hell. And it’s hard for me to imagine myself saying to a man suffering from severe bouts of depression, or to a woman in an abusive situation, or to an orphan in a war-torn country, “Don’t worry. Heaven is here—it’s just a matter of your perspective!”
I doubt very much that I could stand by that explanation of Heaven. And yet… And yet we have these gospel stories where again and again and again we hear John the Baptist and then Jesus saying things like, “The kingdom of Heaven is near!” “Repent! Believe! For the kingdom of Heaven is near!”
Coming right out of Christmas, we have these stories about Heaven’s nearness fresh in our minds. An angel appears to Mary and later an angel appears to Joseph. A heavenly host of angels appears to the shepherds living in the field! These are just the first gospel stories where the boundary between Heaven and earth seems amazingly thin.
And then throughout his teaching, Jesus paints a picture of Heaven that is anything but far-distant. “The kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed…” “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with flour…” “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure in a field…”
At one point, in fact, in Luke’s gospel, the Pharisees ask Jesus when the kingdom of God is coming and Jesus responds, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.”
For Jesus the boundary between Heaven and earth is thin—perhaps even nonexistent. In today’s story from Luke’s gospel, we find Jesus by the River Jordan. It always feels strange to me that every year we go from baby Jesus to big Jesus all in one week. But here we are—and Jesus the adult is being baptized and we see something of Heaven’s nearness.
Luke paints a complicated picture for us here. Clearly a movement is getting off of the ground. The people are “filled with expectation”—excited about John and excited about the coming Messiah. We can imagine that they’re showing up at the Jordan in droves to be baptized. At the same time, Herod doesn’t like what he’s seeing. Crowds like this today could spell “uprising” tomorrow, and so for the sake of Rome’s control in the region, he puts John in prison. And so the world that sees Jesus’ baptism isn’t much different from the world that received his birth: violent, unstable, corrupt.
And the amazing thing is that it’s in the very presence of a violent, unstable, and corrupt world that the heavens are opened. “Now when all the people were baptized,” Luke writes, “and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove.”
I wonder what that looked like. I wonder what that felt like. I wonder if people standing there looked up and said to each other, “Well, would you look at that? The heaven is opening up. I’ll be darned.” Or perhaps whatever happened in that moment was really too wonderful to describe. That’s probably true, isn’t it? Whatever descriptions we think we have of Heaven—they all probably fall wonderfully short of capturing it all.
One thing we do know from reading the gospels, however, is that there is something of Heaven’s nearness that is worth paying attention to. Beginning with Jesus’ birth and baptism and unfolding through the gospel stories, the boundary between Heaven and earth seems so paper-thin. The kingdom of Heaven—the kingdom of God, Jesus says over and over again, is closer than you think.
The question we might bring to that observation, though, is “So what? So what if Heaven is really nearby?” Well, for one thing, if the kingdom of Heaven is really nearby, we just might find ourselves living a little more expectantly—eager to catch a glimpse of Heaven here or there—in a relationship, in a moment of joy or wonder, in the intricate uniqueness of a snowflake clinging to the windowpane…
But also, if the kingdom of Heaven is really nearby, we just might challenge ourselves to shape the world around us in its heavenly form! We know the truth, and the truth is that there are places in this world where Heaven must feel like a far-distant fairy tale. And yet Jesus calls us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, they will be done,” and so we become God’s agents of heavenly nearness! Perhaps God is calling you to be one who opens the heavens to a certain place in this world.
That may be an interesting way to sum up the Christian life—recognizing the kingdom of Heaven when it appears and creating the kingdom of Heaven when it is most needed.
My prayer this morning is that in the coming days and weeks, Jesus might come to you like a trickster, pointing your shoes in a new, heavenward direction when you least expect it—helping you find your way to the kingdom of Heaven—helping you share the news that yes, the kingdom of Heaven is near! Amen.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Putting Away the Decorations
We just finished putting the Christmas decorations away at our house. Before they're completely gone from sight, however, I thought I'd share these pics with you. A wonderful couple in the church gave Sylvia this lovely manger set for Christmas, and as you can see, she enjoyed playing with it. Here's what it looked like when she first set it up.
This was before Christmas, so of course, Jesus hadn't arrived yet.
Then Jasmine, Cinderella, Ariel and Mulan came to be with Mary and Joseph.
Jesus is born in a pile of gold tokens! Another princess on the scene, plus a Polly Pocket hiding behind the shepherd. And Sylvia's new headlamp - the Bethlehem star or another gift for Jesus?
The final scene, complete with new Polly Pockets, a Littlest Pet Shop cat, and a purple hedgehog. Not sure about the meaning of the barrettes up top, either, but they managed to stay through a few weeks of changes.
Sylvia's six now, and she's working out a theology. She told me this morning that she didn't think Adam and Eve could have been the first people because God had to be first. She said this with a delightful expression on her face and then laughed uproariously at the thought that things could be any different. It's been fun to watch her begin to work it all out along with the rest of us.
This year's manger scene with its ever-changing cast of characters hits me with a message of God's immediate presence in our lives. God's coming in Jesus wasn't simply a long-ago event. Rather it is but one expression of a daily reality - that God truly is with us - Pollies, pets, and princesses - all of us. What a playful reminder!
This was before Christmas, so of course, Jesus hadn't arrived yet.
Then Jasmine, Cinderella, Ariel and Mulan came to be with Mary and Joseph.
Jesus is born in a pile of gold tokens! Another princess on the scene, plus a Polly Pocket hiding behind the shepherd. And Sylvia's new headlamp - the Bethlehem star or another gift for Jesus?
The final scene, complete with new Polly Pockets, a Littlest Pet Shop cat, and a purple hedgehog. Not sure about the meaning of the barrettes up top, either, but they managed to stay through a few weeks of changes.
Sylvia's six now, and she's working out a theology. She told me this morning that she didn't think Adam and Eve could have been the first people because God had to be first. She said this with a delightful expression on her face and then laughed uproariously at the thought that things could be any different. It's been fun to watch her begin to work it all out along with the rest of us.
This year's manger scene with its ever-changing cast of characters hits me with a message of God's immediate presence in our lives. God's coming in Jesus wasn't simply a long-ago event. Rather it is but one expression of a daily reality - that God truly is with us - Pollies, pets, and princesses - all of us. What a playful reminder!
Friday, January 1, 2010
Evotional - Laughing Breath
Merry Eighth Day of Christmas to you all. Today I'm adding my final Christmas Evotional of the year - a poem by Thom M. Shuman. May these words bring out the very best in you as you continue to reflect on Christ’s birth, and may God's laughing breath give you life in 2010!
if you came in the spring,
we could expect newness,
bright yellow flowers
to soften your path,
the songs of birds
to herald your coming.
but you came in
winter's despair;
the chill of complacency
settled upon us.
if you came in summer
we could expect you
to be bronzed,
blonde,
stepping from the sea;
but you came
in a stable,
a wrinkled baby
with animals your midwives,
and angels your playmates.
help us to set down
our parcels of expectations
to reach down and scoop
you up in our arms,
your laughing breath
giving us life.
Amen.
- Thom M. Shuman
if you came in the spring,
we could expect newness,
bright yellow flowers
to soften your path,
the songs of birds
to herald your coming.
but you came in
winter's despair;
the chill of complacency
settled upon us.
if you came in summer
we could expect you
to be bronzed,
blonde,
stepping from the sea;
but you came
in a stable,
a wrinkled baby
with animals your midwives,
and angels your playmates.
help us to set down
our parcels of expectations
to reach down and scoop
you up in our arms,
your laughing breath
giving us life.
Amen.
- Thom M. Shuman
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