My grandmother has Alzheimer's, or so we think. She has struggled much of her life with one kind of illness after another: addiction, Parkinson's, dementia, and now Alzheimer's. The diagnosis is almost anticlimactic, really. We've known for years that there were short-term memory issues, and I guess I thought it could be written off to Parkinson's. Then they decided to cut back on her medications, and she suddenly did better off them than on them.
The last few years she has begun to forget important things: to get dressed after a shower before answering the door, that her son was in town to visit, to bathe and groom and all the "activities of daily living" we take for granted. When she realizes that she's forgotten something, she gets so frustrated...she knows that she can't remember, she just doesn't know what she doesn't remember.
I can deal with all that, most of the time. She's nearly 90, and she's been getting gradually worse for a decade or more. But now she's fallen, and broken a rib...nothing major, really, but it scares me for her. I don't see her often because it's hard...she's in Memphis, and I'm here, and it's expensive, and I have lots of excuses...but the truth is, in the deepest darkest corners of my brain, that I don't really want to see her like this. I want to remember Gaga who took us to Wal-Mart (before they were a national chain, no less), with a roll of nickels as spending money. I want to remember Dairy Queen trips and sitting in Shoney's and making a little stuffed crocheted turtle together more than 20 years ago. I do not want to go see her and find that she can't remember that I'm there unless I'm right in front of her.
For years, more than the 2o+ since we made that little turtle, she used to start missing us right after we got to her hometown each summer. She did not do this gracefully: she would shut herself in the bathroom and cry for a while, but eventually she'd get herself under control, and we'd find something to do. She used to be a little fragile, but game. She had to have her index finger amputated years ago, and she thought she's never be able to play the piano again, or to knit or crochet...but she taught herself how to reach all the keys and to hold the hook a little differently and not stop doing the things she loved, just because it was a little harder.
I think I started missing her, and wanting to lock myself in the bathroom and cry a little while, when she forgot that she'd taught herself to do that. When she told me how much she missed those things, and that she hadn't been able to do it since she lost that finger, I lost a piece of her that was important to me. I'm not sure I understood how important until now, when a bathroom fall and a broken rib seem to be portents of some horribly changed reality: there will one day be a world without my Gaga. It seems somehow imminent: her 90th birthday will be in October...we hope. I've been missing her for years...but I know she's there. I'm not ready to deal with missing her when she's not.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Is it ever Tuesday!
I did think, silly me, that working Mondays would make Tuesdays a little easier. And they are, in the sense that I'm at least better prepared for Tuesday's meetings. Tuesday's still an awfully long day.
I missed the Knit & Pray group today. It seems like they are always the first to go. They get along so well without me! I don't knit, but I do crochet, and it seems like that hour is the only one I get in the week to do a little "hand-work."
Crocheting was something I did with my father's mother. We called her "Gaga," which I consider to be the fault of my oldest cousin--she started it, and all the rest of us kids just fell in line. Gaga liked to keep busy; I think she was afraid of what might happen if she slowed down and wound up with too much time to think. When I was a child, she taught my sister to knit and me to crochet. I don't think my sister cared much for it but I've always loved it. I'll go months, even years without picking anything up and then decide I've got to have something to keep my hands busy.
Today's Bible study was pretty entertaining...maybe I'll get around to telling about it next.
I missed the Knit & Pray group today. It seems like they are always the first to go. They get along so well without me! I don't knit, but I do crochet, and it seems like that hour is the only one I get in the week to do a little "hand-work."
Crocheting was something I did with my father's mother. We called her "Gaga," which I consider to be the fault of my oldest cousin--she started it, and all the rest of us kids just fell in line. Gaga liked to keep busy; I think she was afraid of what might happen if she slowed down and wound up with too much time to think. When I was a child, she taught my sister to knit and me to crochet. I don't think my sister cared much for it but I've always loved it. I'll go months, even years without picking anything up and then decide I've got to have something to keep my hands busy.
Today's Bible study was pretty entertaining...maybe I'll get around to telling about it next.
Monday, January 29, 2007
More Emergent Thoughts
I've been reading again...sometimes this seems like a bad thing.
I had been derailed by details for the new service, researching music and video licenses, trying to make sure that what we are using is legal, trying to develop a basic repertoire for the worship team (who still needs a name, so suggest away), and all that stuff, and I got a little distracted. So today I picked up some of the emergent church downloads I'd printed and started reading again. I really like what I've read of Brian McLaren, which is not much: the transcripts of a couple of PBS news spots from Religion and Ethics and some of his website and some of Generous Orthodoxy, but I can see why he scares people. I think there's a fine line between encouraging people to read, study, and understand scripture for themselves, rather than just parrotting what they've been taught, and sort of throwing the baby out with the bath water. It's important for us to be able to say that what seems to have been okay culturally in the Bible (slavery and inequitable treatment of women come to mind) is no longer acceptable. It's our belief in the Bible and our desire to make it a part of ourselves through study, prayer, and conversation with others and with the traditions that have gone before us that make such change possible...but it's only possible because it's consistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I don't want to see orthodoxy as a value lost, nor do I want to see it become narrow dogmatism. But I think there's room in the middle, and maybe (radical thought) it's becoming time for another great ecumenical council...to redefine how we approach some ideas, and refocus on a concept of salvation that is corporate rather than merely individual.
The thing is, if we believe salvation is God's design and desire for us, and we have made a commitment to Christ in our lives, then we have a new beginning, not an end. We have a commission to share what we have received for the good of all creation (at least that's one way to read it). Our salvation isn't a single instant but is instead a lifelong journey of modelling ourselves after Christ--which means that we must consider others before ourselves. One thing I really appreciate about the emergent dialogue is that it pays some attention to this issue of justice: I would call it the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God into the present world. And the responsibility rests with Christians.
Brennan Manning (I think) once said, "The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Christ with their lips and then deny Him with their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable." I think we need to take seriously this notion that we are judged by our lives...our speech, our habits, our everyday selves. If someone were to look at me on any given day, I'd hope that something of Christ would show through. But if I'm only interested in myself and don't make time to grow in my faith (discipleship is a good word, too), then what do I have to say?
Words I think maybe we need to reclaim from acculturation:
Integrity
Authenticity
Faith
Discipleship
Mission
Other
Cross
Salvation
Wholeness
Holiness
Self
Body/Corporate
Diety
Humanity
I had been derailed by details for the new service, researching music and video licenses, trying to make sure that what we are using is legal, trying to develop a basic repertoire for the worship team (who still needs a name, so suggest away), and all that stuff, and I got a little distracted. So today I picked up some of the emergent church downloads I'd printed and started reading again. I really like what I've read of Brian McLaren, which is not much: the transcripts of a couple of PBS news spots from Religion and Ethics and some of his website and some of Generous Orthodoxy, but I can see why he scares people. I think there's a fine line between encouraging people to read, study, and understand scripture for themselves, rather than just parrotting what they've been taught, and sort of throwing the baby out with the bath water. It's important for us to be able to say that what seems to have been okay culturally in the Bible (slavery and inequitable treatment of women come to mind) is no longer acceptable. It's our belief in the Bible and our desire to make it a part of ourselves through study, prayer, and conversation with others and with the traditions that have gone before us that make such change possible...but it's only possible because it's consistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I don't want to see orthodoxy as a value lost, nor do I want to see it become narrow dogmatism. But I think there's room in the middle, and maybe (radical thought) it's becoming time for another great ecumenical council...to redefine how we approach some ideas, and refocus on a concept of salvation that is corporate rather than merely individual.
The thing is, if we believe salvation is God's design and desire for us, and we have made a commitment to Christ in our lives, then we have a new beginning, not an end. We have a commission to share what we have received for the good of all creation (at least that's one way to read it). Our salvation isn't a single instant but is instead a lifelong journey of modelling ourselves after Christ--which means that we must consider others before ourselves. One thing I really appreciate about the emergent dialogue is that it pays some attention to this issue of justice: I would call it the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God into the present world. And the responsibility rests with Christians.
Brennan Manning (I think) once said, "The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Christ with their lips and then deny Him with their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable." I think we need to take seriously this notion that we are judged by our lives...our speech, our habits, our everyday selves. If someone were to look at me on any given day, I'd hope that something of Christ would show through. But if I'm only interested in myself and don't make time to grow in my faith (discipleship is a good word, too), then what do I have to say?
Words I think maybe we need to reclaim from acculturation:
Integrity
Authenticity
Faith
Discipleship
Mission
Other
Cross
Salvation
Wholeness
Holiness
Self
Body/Corporate
Diety
Humanity
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Lazy days
You know, if you looked at the condition of my house, you'd think what I really need is to take a couple days off and clean. And I agree, someone needs to...but I think what I really need are more days like today. I slept until I woke up (without the assistance of the alarm clock or my furry children), I did some chores around here and worked a little in the church, had lunch with friends, and I still have the whole evening to go. In fact, I think I could make a case that I need days lazier than today...but at least I had some fun.
I honestly think that's what was wrong with me on Wednesday...I think I was just overtired. I was pretty lazy on Thursday, too. And I have a plan to make sure I take a whole day off next week--I'm running away from home.
I wish I were going somewhere exotic, but I'm not. Just a quick visit to see Mom and Dad, deliver their respective birthday gifts (and some Christmas for Dad; I'm not sure how I left that stuff out). I'm looking forward to it. There will be plenty of time just for me, plenty for shopping (but I think I'm buying a new computer, so that's really out), and plenty for visiting. And then I can come home and get back to work!
I have promised to take a retreat day in February, and I know I really need to do it before the new service starts and I get even busier on Sundays. Haven't quite figured out what I want to do yet...maybe go away for a night or two, maybe just grab a bag of books and some snacks and plant myself somewhere. I'll have to think about it some more. I'm not very good at relaxing--I'm always looking for something to do.
I honestly think that's what was wrong with me on Wednesday...I think I was just overtired. I was pretty lazy on Thursday, too. And I have a plan to make sure I take a whole day off next week--I'm running away from home.
I wish I were going somewhere exotic, but I'm not. Just a quick visit to see Mom and Dad, deliver their respective birthday gifts (and some Christmas for Dad; I'm not sure how I left that stuff out). I'm looking forward to it. There will be plenty of time just for me, plenty for shopping (but I think I'm buying a new computer, so that's really out), and plenty for visiting. And then I can come home and get back to work!
I have promised to take a retreat day in February, and I know I really need to do it before the new service starts and I get even busier on Sundays. Haven't quite figured out what I want to do yet...maybe go away for a night or two, maybe just grab a bag of books and some snacks and plant myself somewhere. I'll have to think about it some more. I'm not very good at relaxing--I'm always looking for something to do.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Today's Newsletter Article (I'm Out)
Ponderous Thoughts
Evangelization is a process of bringing the gospel to people where they are, not where you would like them to be… When the gospel reaches a people where they are, their response to the gospel is the church in a new place...--Vincent Donovan
Well, we can’t deny it anymore—the internet is a significant force in our world. I get most of my news from the internet. Most of my mail is now electronic (email). I bought more than half of the gifts I gave for Christmas online, and Ben and I even pay most of our bills online. Our church uses the internet to communicate through our church website. Christians are now finding more and more creative ways to share the gospel of Jesus Christ through the internet. Just today a friend from Kinston emailed me a link to a website that uses people’s birthdays to select their “birth verse” from the Bible…okay, some of the stuff online is just plain silly, and some of it’s incorrect or inconsistent with what we know about Jesus Christ, but there’s a lot of good stuff out there, too.
There’s this thing called a weblog, or blog, that I’ve kind of gotten hooked on. A blog is an online journal, which allows the blog owner (blogger) to share thoughts on pretty much anything they want, and can allow others to comment on what the blogger has shared. Christians can use blogs to share their faith or just talk about whatever’s going on in their lives. I know one blogger who trades recipes in her blog and another who used his blog to post daily commentary about a conference he was attending.
I’d like to invite you to visit my blog at www.storiesandfaith.blogspot.com. It’s my place, where I go and basically write journal entries for public consumption. In it, I tell about my life and what I’m thinking. Hopefully, from time to time someone will stumble on it and we can have a real conversation about faith and what it means to be a Christian, or maybe we’ll just swap recipes. I’m just hoping it’s a way to be the church in a new place, where I can continue to come to know Christ better and to better make Christ known.
Anne
Evangelization is a process of bringing the gospel to people where they are, not where you would like them to be… When the gospel reaches a people where they are, their response to the gospel is the church in a new place...--Vincent Donovan
Well, we can’t deny it anymore—the internet is a significant force in our world. I get most of my news from the internet. Most of my mail is now electronic (email). I bought more than half of the gifts I gave for Christmas online, and Ben and I even pay most of our bills online. Our church uses the internet to communicate through our church website. Christians are now finding more and more creative ways to share the gospel of Jesus Christ through the internet. Just today a friend from Kinston emailed me a link to a website that uses people’s birthdays to select their “birth verse” from the Bible…okay, some of the stuff online is just plain silly, and some of it’s incorrect or inconsistent with what we know about Jesus Christ, but there’s a lot of good stuff out there, too.
There’s this thing called a weblog, or blog, that I’ve kind of gotten hooked on. A blog is an online journal, which allows the blog owner (blogger) to share thoughts on pretty much anything they want, and can allow others to comment on what the blogger has shared. Christians can use blogs to share their faith or just talk about whatever’s going on in their lives. I know one blogger who trades recipes in her blog and another who used his blog to post daily commentary about a conference he was attending.
I’d like to invite you to visit my blog at www.storiesandfaith.blogspot.com. It’s my place, where I go and basically write journal entries for public consumption. In it, I tell about my life and what I’m thinking. Hopefully, from time to time someone will stumble on it and we can have a real conversation about faith and what it means to be a Christian, or maybe we’ll just swap recipes. I’m just hoping it’s a way to be the church in a new place, where I can continue to come to know Christ better and to better make Christ known.
Anne
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Going public
I'm going public...at least as far as the church is concerned. Tomorrow when I write the church newsletter, I'll let the church in on this blog. That means a couple of things:
I'm taking a risk in doing this...I'm losing this space as an opportunity to vent freely (and not have to repent later).
I won't necessarily say everything I think, or write about everything I feel strongly about. I've already removed a "rant" I posted last week, because it was, in fact, a rant. I don't want to be held responsible for all of it. I was being kind of dramatic. Hopefully, after some careful editing, I'll repost it soon.
The biggest risk I'm taking is that I'm being pretty human here, and pretty vulnerable. When I write about what's going on in my life, or what I'm excited or upset about, I'm basically giving you access to little pieces of myself. And I have to trust you, dear reader, to accept me as human. I'm going to be wrong, sometimes. We're going to have to agree to disagree some of the time. You're not going to like everything I write, think, do, or say. And (dare I say it), the feeling is probably mutual.
Let's face it: if we were all just alike, the world (and especially the church) would be boring. In the Body of Christ, we are all unique, and have differing gifts and personalities. I see this space as an opportunity for me to share my passion for Christ (and chocolate, and stories, and many other things) with whoever's interested.
So here we are.
Welcome, friends.
Let's have some fun.
I'm taking a risk in doing this...I'm losing this space as an opportunity to vent freely (and not have to repent later).
I won't necessarily say everything I think, or write about everything I feel strongly about. I've already removed a "rant" I posted last week, because it was, in fact, a rant. I don't want to be held responsible for all of it. I was being kind of dramatic. Hopefully, after some careful editing, I'll repost it soon.
The biggest risk I'm taking is that I'm being pretty human here, and pretty vulnerable. When I write about what's going on in my life, or what I'm excited or upset about, I'm basically giving you access to little pieces of myself. And I have to trust you, dear reader, to accept me as human. I'm going to be wrong, sometimes. We're going to have to agree to disagree some of the time. You're not going to like everything I write, think, do, or say. And (dare I say it), the feeling is probably mutual.
Let's face it: if we were all just alike, the world (and especially the church) would be boring. In the Body of Christ, we are all unique, and have differing gifts and personalities. I see this space as an opportunity for me to share my passion for Christ (and chocolate, and stories, and many other things) with whoever's interested.
So here we are.
Welcome, friends.
Let's have some fun.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Not my best day...
Don't know if I've just been running too hard, or if I've managed to pick up a bug somewhere, but I don't feel good. I actually feel like whining, a lot, and having someone wait on me hand and foot. I think I'd have patience for that for all of 15 minutes, then I'd be back up doing something and not resting. And probably throwing up.
To take my mind off of things, I'm instead thinking about things that make me happy, and I thought I'd share them:
Classic Bloom County comic strips on My Yahoo!
Crocheting
Playing with the dog
Dark chocolate
Reruns of "King of the Hill" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
My current music favorites: They Might Be Giants and the soundtrack to "Rent"
My current favorite fiction authors: Dale Brown, Dean Koontz, JD Robb
Wearing sweaters on cool winter days (I've given up on snow)
Homemade soup and bread
My niece, the moxt exceptional and beautiful and brilliant child, ever
Sunday afternoon naps on the couch
Smelling salt water in the air
A new book (almost any one will do...reading Brian McLaren now)
Learning something new
Vacations to pretty places with just enough to do
Fuzzy blankets and warm socks
To take my mind off of things, I'm instead thinking about things that make me happy, and I thought I'd share them:
Classic Bloom County comic strips on My Yahoo!
Crocheting
Playing with the dog
Dark chocolate
Reruns of "King of the Hill" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
My current music favorites: They Might Be Giants and the soundtrack to "Rent"
My current favorite fiction authors: Dale Brown, Dean Koontz, JD Robb
Wearing sweaters on cool winter days (I've given up on snow)
Homemade soup and bread
My niece, the moxt exceptional and beautiful and brilliant child, ever
Sunday afternoon naps on the couch
Smelling salt water in the air
A new book (almost any one will do...reading Brian McLaren now)
Learning something new
Vacations to pretty places with just enough to do
Fuzzy blankets and warm socks
Monday, January 22, 2007
Busy Tuesday
I said that last week's 7 calendar obligations were without precedent. They've just been deposed. Yep, tomorrow's calendar has entries at 9:30, 10, 11, 12, 1, 2, 3, 3:45, 6:30 and 7:15. Good thing I'm not going to all that stuff...but sad why. Going to be with a friend at his father's funeral (which get me out of 1, 2, and 3). Families can be complicated...even more so when there's a death.
Thoughts for Today
On the Church and homosexuality issue, Bishop Al Gwinn (NC Conference) today pointed out that we will spend too much time at this year's annual conference meeting debating the UMC's position on homosexuality when we all already know that no one on either side is going to change their mind. Smart man. How about that moratorium I suggested in an earlier post? Seriously, it would be nice to feel like conference was a productive meeting rather than a forum for endless unproductive debate.
Second item: this came to me via email tonight:
Talking Pet
A single guy decides life would be more fun if he had a pet. So he went to the pet store one Saturday and told the clerk that he wanted to buy an unusual pet. After considering numerous options, he finally bought a talking centipede, which came in a little white box. He took the box with his new pet home, found a good spot for the box, and decided he would start off by taking his new pet to church with him the next day.
Sunday morning, he asked the centipede in the box, "Would you like to go to church with me today? We will have a good time." But there was no answer from his new pet. This bothered him a bit, since he was assured by the pet store that the centipede would talk once he got it home and it was comfortable with its surroundings. He waited a few minutes and then asked again, "How about going to church with me and receive blessings?" But again, there was no answer from his new friend and pet. So he waited a few minutes more, contemplating the situation. He decided to ask it one more time, this time putting his face up against the centipede's box and shouting, "Hey, in there! Would you like to go to church with me and learn about the Lord!?"
A little voice came out of the box: "I heard you the first time! I'm putting on my shoes!"
Second item: this came to me via email tonight:
Talking Pet
A single guy decides life would be more fun if he had a pet. So he went to the pet store one Saturday and told the clerk that he wanted to buy an unusual pet. After considering numerous options, he finally bought a talking centipede, which came in a little white box. He took the box with his new pet home, found a good spot for the box, and decided he would start off by taking his new pet to church with him the next day.
Sunday morning, he asked the centipede in the box, "Would you like to go to church with me today? We will have a good time." But there was no answer from his new pet. This bothered him a bit, since he was assured by the pet store that the centipede would talk once he got it home and it was comfortable with its surroundings. He waited a few minutes and then asked again, "How about going to church with me and receive blessings?" But again, there was no answer from his new friend and pet. So he waited a few minutes more, contemplating the situation. He decided to ask it one more time, this time putting his face up against the centipede's box and shouting, "Hey, in there! Would you like to go to church with me and learn about the Lord!?"
A little voice came out of the box: "I heard you the first time! I'm putting on my shoes!"
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Stuff I think
I keep trying to convince Ben that he needs to start a blog called “stuff I think”. He’s already telling me all this random stuff, and there’s bound to be someone else out there interested in all the strange stuff Ben comes up with to wonder about.
Unfortunately today Ben’s thoughts are pretty heavy. He called me at church tonight to tell me that he ran over a little cat on the way home from church. It just ran out in front of his car and there was no way to avoid it, and there was nothing he could do. He did go back to check on it, but it was dead. It just made him feel sick (me, too). We’re just hoping that someone’s not waiting for their little fur baby to come home tonight…it breaks our hearts.
Other stuff I’m thinking about today: I wish the Saints had won their game this afternoon. It’s been such an amazing and complicated year in New Orleans as the city continues to recover from Katrina and its aftermath…the team’s success has been a big morale-booster and has attracted some positive attention to the area. On the other hand, Lovie Smith is now going to be the first African-American NFL coach to go to the Super Bowl…a first that’s long overdue. Honestly, the things we keep count of, and are still astonished by. I’m watching Tony Dungee’s Colts struggle against the Patriots now, and hoping that their second half play is better than the first…I’d love to see the Colts play the Bears, guaranteeing that the next milestone, an African-American coach winning the Super Bowl, is met this year as well.
LATE ADDITION:
The second half was awesome...the Colts were on fire, and they couldn't be stopped. Now I'm ready for the Super Bowl!
Unfortunately today Ben’s thoughts are pretty heavy. He called me at church tonight to tell me that he ran over a little cat on the way home from church. It just ran out in front of his car and there was no way to avoid it, and there was nothing he could do. He did go back to check on it, but it was dead. It just made him feel sick (me, too). We’re just hoping that someone’s not waiting for their little fur baby to come home tonight…it breaks our hearts.
Other stuff I’m thinking about today: I wish the Saints had won their game this afternoon. It’s been such an amazing and complicated year in New Orleans as the city continues to recover from Katrina and its aftermath…the team’s success has been a big morale-booster and has attracted some positive attention to the area. On the other hand, Lovie Smith is now going to be the first African-American NFL coach to go to the Super Bowl…a first that’s long overdue. Honestly, the things we keep count of, and are still astonished by. I’m watching Tony Dungee’s Colts struggle against the Patriots now, and hoping that their second half play is better than the first…I’d love to see the Colts play the Bears, guaranteeing that the next milestone, an African-American coach winning the Super Bowl, is met this year as well.
LATE ADDITION:
The second half was awesome...the Colts were on fire, and they couldn't be stopped. Now I'm ready for the Super Bowl!
Another sermon...
091006 Sermon Mark 7:24-37
“Snips and Snails, Sugar and Spice”
I can’t tell you how many little nursery rhymes and old wives’ tales and folk sayings I’ve learned from my grandmother. “There was a little girl who had a little curl in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very very good, and when she was bad, she was horrid.” That was my sister, Emily. I was “brown as a biscuit, busy as a bee.” And she taught us, “Snips and snails and puppy dog tails, that’s what little boys are made of. Sugar and spice and everything nice, that’s what little girls are made of.” I spent at least a couple of long Tennessee summers staring at my cousin Jeremy, looking for snails and puppy dog tails and knowing for sure that boys were not as sweet and wonderful as girls, because my grandmother taught me so with that little rhyme.
Unfortunately, Grandmother taught me lots of things I had to unlearn after those long summers in Milan, Tennessee. She taught me that people who lived better than us looked down on us. She taught me that people who were a different color from us were strange and “not nice.” “Not nice” covered an awful lot of people, and implied an awful lot of sins. The older I get, the more embarrassed I am that I learned some of the things she taught me, and the more grateful I am that I grew up the rest of the year in a big city, surrounded by all kinds and colors of people, and with a great mom and family to help me un-learn some of her lessons.
In today’s scripture lesson, Jesus meets a woman who challenges some of the lessons he might have learned from his grandmother. As best we know, Jesus was raised as a devout Jew. That means traveling to Jerusalem for important festivals, learning from the rabbis in the Temple and in local synagogues, and understanding that the Jews were a people set apart by God. Samaritans, Syrophoenicians, and other people were Gentiles, and Gentile was pretty much a dirty word. Gentile meant, “not from around here.” It meant “people who talk funny, look funny, and eat funny food.” Jesus would have learned from his grandmother and grandfather and parents and neighbors and friends NOT to do what he does in today’s story: Talk to that woman! Not only was she from off, she was a woman, and nice girls didn’t talk to strange men…so this woman must not have been a nice girl, and no nice Jewish boy would ever talk to a woman who was not a nice girl.
Jesus, however, had learned from his heavenly Father that “snips and snails” are not the measure of a man, any more than “sugar and spice” characterize every woman. So when this strange woman approached him, this lady who was “not from around here”, this “not-nice” girl, Jesus did the opposite of what he should do. Instead of turning his back on her and walking away, he heard her out. Let’s take a closer look at the text.
Following some very unsatisfactory and frustrating conversations with scribes and Pharisees, Jesus went away from Israel into the region of Tyre. Seeking what we think must have been some peace and quiet, he went into a house, and wanted to keep anyone from knowing he was there. Unfortunately for Jesus, the word got out. Mark tells us that “a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him.” Grandmother used to say, “there’s no rest for the weary,” and I guess in this case, that’s how it was.
This woman was a Syrophoenician, not a Jew. She was audacious enough to talk to Jesus, knowing who he was, knowing that he shouldn’t take any notice of her. But this woman, this brave soul, pursued him, begging him to heal her daughter. Truth be told, we don’t know what was wrong with the little girl. My grandmother suggested all manner of bad behavior “could be a demon,” from yowling cats to stolen tomatoes to fights I had with my sister, and my constant “hay fever”, but it was likely some kind of seizure disorder or mental illness. It really doesn’t matter what was wrong with the little girl; what we know is that she was so sick that her mother was desperate with worry, desperate enough to look beyond the cultural mores and religious dogma that would keep her from taking care of her little girl.
We know that Jesus did his own share of boundary-breaking in this story. He actually engaged this woman in a debate, something unheard of in his time, and in a way that’s very different from how most of us think of Jesus today. He responds to her plea, not with a blessing, but with a curse: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Jesus here is not kind, not gentle, meek and mild. Instead he challenges her, pointing out that he has come in ministry to the Jews, the children of Israel’s God, and that Gentiles were merely “dogs” to them, not even housepets but strays to throw stones at. Not a kind way to look at a frantic mother, distressed, and begging for his help.
The woman does not do what she should in the face of his challenge: turn meekly away and go home to watch her daughter die. Instead, knowing that she has nothing to lose, she engages Jesus, this Jewish man, in a sort of verbal combat. “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” She says, in effect, “Fine, if that’s what it takes for you to help me, then I’ll accept your label. I’ll be a dog, if that’s what it takes to get your help. I know you can help me. I know you can heal my daughter. So I’ll be a dog to your children of God, if you’ll only remember that the children throw to the dogs the scraps they won’t eat. Your children of Israel have turned you away and rejected your teaching and healing. Throw me a bone, here, give me what I need.”
And he does—without further argument. “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” No more words, no fanfare, no fuss. She won, and she went home to find that Jesus had done what she asked. He didn’t heal her because she was a Jew, one of God’s chosen. He didn’t heal her because she was somehow entitled to his attention and mercy. Rather, the opposite is true: apart from her gender, apart from her nationality, apart from any barrier of language or culture, Jesus saw in her a loving mother, willing to give up her dignity, willing to do anything to heal her child. And he saw in her a woman, who, despite not being the “right kind” of person, saw what so many could not: that here, in the person of Jesus Christ, was the mercy and love and compassion of God present. Her success did not come because she was a child of Israel, but rather that she knew that he was the Son of God. In effect, she was saying to Jesus, “Who you think I am is not as important as who I know you are.”
Some say that she argued with Jesus and forced him to change his mind. Maybe that’s the case. But I tend to think that Jesus handed her an argument that he knew was old and tired, and ready to be laid aside, an argument that he himself did not believe: that God’s compassion was only for the Jews, the people of Israel. And I think he used this conversation with the Syrophoenician mother to demonstrate to the disciples and the crowds around him that he could not escape that God is less concerned with what is “right” about our outsides, and more interested in what is inside of us.
This woman engaged Jesus on her own terms, and it was who she was inside that made the difference. Where a Pharisee would have called her “unclean”, she shows that purity of spirit is more important than a ritual washing of hands. She gives us a chance to see that Jesus deals with us as he dealt with her: as individuals of sacred worth and value, not as a class, race, or gender that was inferior. Rather than putting her into a box in his mind labeled “other—impure—foreign”, Jesus saw this anxious mother’s individual character, her uniqueness, her personhood as something of value in itself, looking within to judge her worthy, not without. There’s a lesson to be learned here…but wait, there’s more to the story.
Mark continues this story by telling us that Jesus takes the long way home, traveling through Sidon towards the Decapolis, where he meets someone else in need of healing. This time it’s a deaf and mute man, presumably a Jew, whom Jesus takes aside to heal with word and gesture and spit, not unlike the blind man we heard about last week. Immediately this man too received his healing, hearing all that was said to him and speaking with no impediment. He spoke so well, in fact, that he ignored Jesus’ orders not to tell anyone, but he and those who were present were “astounded beyond measure” and proclaimed the news of this miracle with zeal. The witnesses proclaimed the good news of this miraculous healing, but still most people could not see who Jesus was.
In these stories, Jesus heals two people: one whom the Jewish authorities and teaching would deem unworthy, and another whom they would deem worthy. By all appearances, the woman and her daughter should not have merited Jesus’ attention. They didn’t fit into the patterns of culture and gender and religion that would have given them access to the mercy of God. They were “other”, not like us, not from around here, not our kind of people, not “nice.” On the other hand, the deaf man encounters Jesus and there’s no debate, no argument, no question of his worthiness: Jesus simply restores to him his hearing and ability to speak freely. What Jesus is interested in, I think Mark is saying to us, is not what category someone fits into, not how comfortable we are around them, not how they dress or speak or behave. Instead, God looks into all of us, past our “Sunday best” and our family tree, past our culture and the color of our skin, and into our souls. There God sees one whom he would save, one whom he would heal, one he has chosen to love.
I guess we are all made up of different stuff. I’m made up of west Tennessee, tempered by years of living in Virginia Beach. I’m a product of my grandmother’s wisdom and prejudice, of my mother’s strength and courage and stubbornness. I come from a broken home, and I have seen and done some things in my life that I’d be ashamed to admit to from here. There is no way that I could ever have earned God’s grace on my own, healing the scars within me. But Christ looks past our “snips and snails,” through our “sugar and spice,” and sees within us that which he wants to see: God’s child, God’s beloved, one who has value not because of who I am, but who Christ is in me.
Sometimes it takes an outsider to see clearly: the Syrophoenician woman saw in Jesus what so many of his “own people” could not, that Israel’s God, Jesus’ Father, was a compassionate God. She saw past the outside of Jesus, past his race and the rules, and saw hope. The deaf man saw past Jesus’ commands to keep silent and couldn’t contain the word he knew to be true: that God’s mercy and compassion are available to everyone, that healing could come, that grace can break into our lives. Sometimes “outsiders” see what we can’t: our own faults, and God’s grace to look past them.
Mark’s Gospel is a story of appearances: despite the evidence of their own eyes and experience, the disciples and others are blinded to who Jesus is. Even though they hear his teaching, even though they witness the healings and the miracles, they cannot see past their own noses to understand what it means that Jesus Christ, God’s Son, is in their midst. But the outsider, the foreign woman with a sick child, the deaf man who cannot work or support himself or even talk to his friends, these are the ones who get a glimpse of the Kingdom in the presence of Christ. They see clearly, past the externals, and into the heart of the matter: it is not who we are on the outside that matters. Who we are is less important than who Christ is.
Grandmother used to say that some folks were not “our kind of people”. I never knew who our kind of people were meant to be…seems like most folks in town weren’t. There was the Methodist Church in town, and most of those were, and most of the Baptists, but not all the neighbors and certainly not those who lived on the other side of town, literally on the “wrong” side of the railroad tracks. I did not learn from her who God’s kind of people are…but I did learn it from a Vacation Bible School teacher in that little Methodist Church in that little Tennessee town: God’s kind of people are all people, red and yellow, black and white, dressing funny, talking funny, eating funny food…precious in His sight. So too should they be precious in ours. Amen.
“Snips and Snails, Sugar and Spice”
I can’t tell you how many little nursery rhymes and old wives’ tales and folk sayings I’ve learned from my grandmother. “There was a little girl who had a little curl in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very very good, and when she was bad, she was horrid.” That was my sister, Emily. I was “brown as a biscuit, busy as a bee.” And she taught us, “Snips and snails and puppy dog tails, that’s what little boys are made of. Sugar and spice and everything nice, that’s what little girls are made of.” I spent at least a couple of long Tennessee summers staring at my cousin Jeremy, looking for snails and puppy dog tails and knowing for sure that boys were not as sweet and wonderful as girls, because my grandmother taught me so with that little rhyme.
Unfortunately, Grandmother taught me lots of things I had to unlearn after those long summers in Milan, Tennessee. She taught me that people who lived better than us looked down on us. She taught me that people who were a different color from us were strange and “not nice.” “Not nice” covered an awful lot of people, and implied an awful lot of sins. The older I get, the more embarrassed I am that I learned some of the things she taught me, and the more grateful I am that I grew up the rest of the year in a big city, surrounded by all kinds and colors of people, and with a great mom and family to help me un-learn some of her lessons.
In today’s scripture lesson, Jesus meets a woman who challenges some of the lessons he might have learned from his grandmother. As best we know, Jesus was raised as a devout Jew. That means traveling to Jerusalem for important festivals, learning from the rabbis in the Temple and in local synagogues, and understanding that the Jews were a people set apart by God. Samaritans, Syrophoenicians, and other people were Gentiles, and Gentile was pretty much a dirty word. Gentile meant, “not from around here.” It meant “people who talk funny, look funny, and eat funny food.” Jesus would have learned from his grandmother and grandfather and parents and neighbors and friends NOT to do what he does in today’s story: Talk to that woman! Not only was she from off, she was a woman, and nice girls didn’t talk to strange men…so this woman must not have been a nice girl, and no nice Jewish boy would ever talk to a woman who was not a nice girl.
Jesus, however, had learned from his heavenly Father that “snips and snails” are not the measure of a man, any more than “sugar and spice” characterize every woman. So when this strange woman approached him, this lady who was “not from around here”, this “not-nice” girl, Jesus did the opposite of what he should do. Instead of turning his back on her and walking away, he heard her out. Let’s take a closer look at the text.
Following some very unsatisfactory and frustrating conversations with scribes and Pharisees, Jesus went away from Israel into the region of Tyre. Seeking what we think must have been some peace and quiet, he went into a house, and wanted to keep anyone from knowing he was there. Unfortunately for Jesus, the word got out. Mark tells us that “a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him.” Grandmother used to say, “there’s no rest for the weary,” and I guess in this case, that’s how it was.
This woman was a Syrophoenician, not a Jew. She was audacious enough to talk to Jesus, knowing who he was, knowing that he shouldn’t take any notice of her. But this woman, this brave soul, pursued him, begging him to heal her daughter. Truth be told, we don’t know what was wrong with the little girl. My grandmother suggested all manner of bad behavior “could be a demon,” from yowling cats to stolen tomatoes to fights I had with my sister, and my constant “hay fever”, but it was likely some kind of seizure disorder or mental illness. It really doesn’t matter what was wrong with the little girl; what we know is that she was so sick that her mother was desperate with worry, desperate enough to look beyond the cultural mores and religious dogma that would keep her from taking care of her little girl.
We know that Jesus did his own share of boundary-breaking in this story. He actually engaged this woman in a debate, something unheard of in his time, and in a way that’s very different from how most of us think of Jesus today. He responds to her plea, not with a blessing, but with a curse: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Jesus here is not kind, not gentle, meek and mild. Instead he challenges her, pointing out that he has come in ministry to the Jews, the children of Israel’s God, and that Gentiles were merely “dogs” to them, not even housepets but strays to throw stones at. Not a kind way to look at a frantic mother, distressed, and begging for his help.
The woman does not do what she should in the face of his challenge: turn meekly away and go home to watch her daughter die. Instead, knowing that she has nothing to lose, she engages Jesus, this Jewish man, in a sort of verbal combat. “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” She says, in effect, “Fine, if that’s what it takes for you to help me, then I’ll accept your label. I’ll be a dog, if that’s what it takes to get your help. I know you can help me. I know you can heal my daughter. So I’ll be a dog to your children of God, if you’ll only remember that the children throw to the dogs the scraps they won’t eat. Your children of Israel have turned you away and rejected your teaching and healing. Throw me a bone, here, give me what I need.”
And he does—without further argument. “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” No more words, no fanfare, no fuss. She won, and she went home to find that Jesus had done what she asked. He didn’t heal her because she was a Jew, one of God’s chosen. He didn’t heal her because she was somehow entitled to his attention and mercy. Rather, the opposite is true: apart from her gender, apart from her nationality, apart from any barrier of language or culture, Jesus saw in her a loving mother, willing to give up her dignity, willing to do anything to heal her child. And he saw in her a woman, who, despite not being the “right kind” of person, saw what so many could not: that here, in the person of Jesus Christ, was the mercy and love and compassion of God present. Her success did not come because she was a child of Israel, but rather that she knew that he was the Son of God. In effect, she was saying to Jesus, “Who you think I am is not as important as who I know you are.”
Some say that she argued with Jesus and forced him to change his mind. Maybe that’s the case. But I tend to think that Jesus handed her an argument that he knew was old and tired, and ready to be laid aside, an argument that he himself did not believe: that God’s compassion was only for the Jews, the people of Israel. And I think he used this conversation with the Syrophoenician mother to demonstrate to the disciples and the crowds around him that he could not escape that God is less concerned with what is “right” about our outsides, and more interested in what is inside of us.
This woman engaged Jesus on her own terms, and it was who she was inside that made the difference. Where a Pharisee would have called her “unclean”, she shows that purity of spirit is more important than a ritual washing of hands. She gives us a chance to see that Jesus deals with us as he dealt with her: as individuals of sacred worth and value, not as a class, race, or gender that was inferior. Rather than putting her into a box in his mind labeled “other—impure—foreign”, Jesus saw this anxious mother’s individual character, her uniqueness, her personhood as something of value in itself, looking within to judge her worthy, not without. There’s a lesson to be learned here…but wait, there’s more to the story.
Mark continues this story by telling us that Jesus takes the long way home, traveling through Sidon towards the Decapolis, where he meets someone else in need of healing. This time it’s a deaf and mute man, presumably a Jew, whom Jesus takes aside to heal with word and gesture and spit, not unlike the blind man we heard about last week. Immediately this man too received his healing, hearing all that was said to him and speaking with no impediment. He spoke so well, in fact, that he ignored Jesus’ orders not to tell anyone, but he and those who were present were “astounded beyond measure” and proclaimed the news of this miracle with zeal. The witnesses proclaimed the good news of this miraculous healing, but still most people could not see who Jesus was.
In these stories, Jesus heals two people: one whom the Jewish authorities and teaching would deem unworthy, and another whom they would deem worthy. By all appearances, the woman and her daughter should not have merited Jesus’ attention. They didn’t fit into the patterns of culture and gender and religion that would have given them access to the mercy of God. They were “other”, not like us, not from around here, not our kind of people, not “nice.” On the other hand, the deaf man encounters Jesus and there’s no debate, no argument, no question of his worthiness: Jesus simply restores to him his hearing and ability to speak freely. What Jesus is interested in, I think Mark is saying to us, is not what category someone fits into, not how comfortable we are around them, not how they dress or speak or behave. Instead, God looks into all of us, past our “Sunday best” and our family tree, past our culture and the color of our skin, and into our souls. There God sees one whom he would save, one whom he would heal, one he has chosen to love.
I guess we are all made up of different stuff. I’m made up of west Tennessee, tempered by years of living in Virginia Beach. I’m a product of my grandmother’s wisdom and prejudice, of my mother’s strength and courage and stubbornness. I come from a broken home, and I have seen and done some things in my life that I’d be ashamed to admit to from here. There is no way that I could ever have earned God’s grace on my own, healing the scars within me. But Christ looks past our “snips and snails,” through our “sugar and spice,” and sees within us that which he wants to see: God’s child, God’s beloved, one who has value not because of who I am, but who Christ is in me.
Sometimes it takes an outsider to see clearly: the Syrophoenician woman saw in Jesus what so many of his “own people” could not, that Israel’s God, Jesus’ Father, was a compassionate God. She saw past the outside of Jesus, past his race and the rules, and saw hope. The deaf man saw past Jesus’ commands to keep silent and couldn’t contain the word he knew to be true: that God’s mercy and compassion are available to everyone, that healing could come, that grace can break into our lives. Sometimes “outsiders” see what we can’t: our own faults, and God’s grace to look past them.
Mark’s Gospel is a story of appearances: despite the evidence of their own eyes and experience, the disciples and others are blinded to who Jesus is. Even though they hear his teaching, even though they witness the healings and the miracles, they cannot see past their own noses to understand what it means that Jesus Christ, God’s Son, is in their midst. But the outsider, the foreign woman with a sick child, the deaf man who cannot work or support himself or even talk to his friends, these are the ones who get a glimpse of the Kingdom in the presence of Christ. They see clearly, past the externals, and into the heart of the matter: it is not who we are on the outside that matters. Who we are is less important than who Christ is.
Grandmother used to say that some folks were not “our kind of people”. I never knew who our kind of people were meant to be…seems like most folks in town weren’t. There was the Methodist Church in town, and most of those were, and most of the Baptists, but not all the neighbors and certainly not those who lived on the other side of town, literally on the “wrong” side of the railroad tracks. I did not learn from her who God’s kind of people are…but I did learn it from a Vacation Bible School teacher in that little Methodist Church in that little Tennessee town: God’s kind of people are all people, red and yellow, black and white, dressing funny, talking funny, eating funny food…precious in His sight. So too should they be precious in ours. Amen.
Sermon alert...
Mark 10:35-45 “Having the ‘I Wants’”
Now that the weather is finally predicted to cool off and the end of baseball season is in sight, our thoughts naturally turn to the holidays ahead. In Target this weekend, I saw side-by-side displays of Halloween costumes next to racks of Christmas cards and decorations. Sometimes it seems that all we do is run from one celebration to another, with frequent stops at the store for more stuff we want: a pumpkin for the front door, a turkey big enough to feed the family (or even better, for someone else to cook it), the perfect Christmas tree. And it comes on so quickly: 10 days to Halloween, 1 month to Thanksgiving, just over 60 days to Christmas.
When I was a child, my family had a very particular ritual at Thanksgiving. We gathered at my aunt’s house for our celebration, and everyone had their job to do: my aunt Anne made the turkey and the rolls, my mother brought ham and vegetables, my cousins made the mashed potatoes with cheddar, pecan pie, and green bean casserole. As we grew older, my sister and I began to contribute cookies and cakes for dessert and now macaroni & cheese and To-furkey for my brother-in-law the vegetarian.
After the blessing (“everyone say something you’re thankful for”), a huge meal and a lot of loitering around the table, we would move into the living room for the “real” work of Thanksgiving: the writing of the Christmas lists. No one was allowed to leave the house without making their list. Paper and pens were provided, as were multiple copies of the day’s paper, complete with sale ads, and whatever catalogs had come in the mail that week. Only occasional glimpses at the TV were permitted, unless the Redskins were doing well (rare), until everyone’s list was turned in to my aunt, who distributed them. Then, and only then, could the football-watching and socializing, the thankfulness and general merriment, resume, after we had decided what “I want” for Christmas.
It is the “human condition” (we sometimes call it “sin”) that makes us susceptible to the “I wants”. Now, admittedly, our family Thanksgivings made an Olympic event of the “I wants”, but they are hardly unique to my family. Those displays in Target and Wal-Mart, in every mall and sale circular, are designed to cause a seasonal flare-up of this disease, but we all get it sometimes. I saw a commercial recently showing 2 guys on a fishing pier. One fisherman asks the other, “What are you fishing for?” As the camera pans over to the forest of fishing rods next to the second man, he answers, “I want it all.” Heading into Christmas, our culture seems to lead us to say the same thing: “I want it all.”
Seems like there’s always something to want. How many of us spend our prayer times telling God what we want God to do? Even the disciples, who presumably knew Jesus better than everyone, who heard him preach about generosity of heart and of pocket, who saw his healings and witnessed the power of God in Jesus Christ, even they sometimes got the “I wants”. In today’s passage, two of the disciples go to Jesus with an “I want.” In fact, they tell him, “I want it all.”
Jesus has been preaching, teaching, and healing blind men…men who could not see, and then he healed them and they could see clearly that here was God’s Son. The disciples don’t seem to have understood this, proving the old adage that “there are none so blind as those who will not see.” Just goes to show there are even puns in the Bible…which means we’ll never get Eric to stop. Two of these willfully blind disciples came to Jesus and asked, audaciously, “Jesus, teacher,” (a little respectful spin, if you please), “We want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” I mean, BOLD! James and John were asking for carte blanche…from the Messiah, the Son of God, the one for whom, as Eric reminded us last week, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord. Who would have the nerve to do such a thing? Who could be bold enough, brave enough, foolish enough, to ask this of Jesus? Only one (or two) who do not know what it is they are really asking for, or from whom they are asking it.
“Lord, we want to share in your glory at the end of all this.” What a request! One brother to sit at Jesus’ right hand, and one at the left. Makes you wonder if calling them “sons of thunder” had less to do with their father Zebedee and more to do with a fear that lightning might strike these bold and foolish men…but I digress. James and John want reassurance that not only are they among the favored few disciples, but that they will have top rank when Jesus “comes into his kingdom”. They want to be sure they really are his favorites, and that others will see that they are close to Jesus.
Jesus does not strike them dead, even though he probably wanted to, for asking so much of him. Instead he asks, perhaps with a little gleam in his eye, “But can you share in my end?” These guys were thinking about “the end of all this” being when Jesus came into his power. Never mind that they have seen Jesus’ power work again and again to transform lives and heal the sick, disabled, the broken in mind and spirit. Never mind that the Jesus they have followed, traveled with, lived with, has demonstrated the power of God over and over again. When he comes into his power, they want to be there, seated right up next to Jesus as he rules over the world. They wanted to be favored above all others when Jesus came into his glory…but they had no clue, despite being told by Jesus, what that end might look like.
Jesus asked them, “Can you drink the cup I drink, and be baptized with my baptism?” It’s a trick question. John and James, the sons of thunder, likely thought back to the cup of blessing at a banquet, a celebratory toast rather than God’s cup of suffering, poured out for them, for us, and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Sound familiar? But Jesus knows that the cup ahead of him will be bitter, as he looks ahead to his end on earth: the Cross. They thought that a baptism was a water bath, a purifying ritual, but Jesus knows that he is asking them to be baptized into his suffering and death, as well as into his resurrection…They can’t see because they are blinded by the “I wants”.
Now, before we condemn these two bold fools too much, let’s remember that Mark paints all the disciples this way. Even Peter’s occasional flash of brilliance is marred by his own inability to live into the truth he sees. And all James and John were doing was asking for what every disciple wanted. They were merely giving voice to the “I want” to be recognized, “I want” to be singled out as special, “I want” to have their contributions recognized as pivotal to the kingdom of God. Probably each one could have said, “Lord, I want to be glorified with you.” That’s why the ten other disciples were angry with James and John... “who says they get to be first among us in the end?” Still, they do not have the same understanding of “the end” as Jesus.
They are all missing the point, or points: First, that the Kingdom of God does not operate on a zero-sum economy, second, that the choice is not Jesus’ to make as to who will be seated beside him in heaven, and third, that the choice Jesus asks them to make when he asks, “are you able?” is not the choice they think they are making when they say, “yes, Lord, we are able.”
James and John, and the ten, still don’t quite get who Jesus is at this point. Calling himself the Son of Man doesn’t get his point across. Restoring sight to the blind doesn’t get his point across. Telling them point blank that he must suffer and die does not get his point across. They cannot see what they don’t want to see, and they do not understand how the Messiah could have to suffer and die in order to reign victorious over all things. As Mark tells it, they can’t get past “I want Israel to be restored” to see that Jesus has come as the Messiah to restore all God’s people to full and right relationship with God. And so they do misunderstand the cup Jesus is to drink to be one of celebration, and not of bitter suffering and death. They misunderstand Jesus’ baptism to be more of a cleansing bath than a baptism of blood on the Cross. And they misunderstand Jesus’ glory to be an earthly reign in an earthly kingdom, instead of the salvation of God’s people, restored at an infinite cost as sin and death are conquered. Yes, they think they are able…but they don’t know what they are saying they are able to do.
Jesus also points out that the choice is not his to make as to who sits at his right hand and at his left in the seats of honor. “I want to sit there” is not an argument that will sway the mind of God. The place of honor is given to the one for whom it has been prepared. It’s not for Jesus to say who that might be. Jesus reminds us that this is not an earthly kingdom they were dealing with, but the kingdom of God. This is a simple point, and simply disposed of.
And then there’s this business of the upside-down economy of the kingdom of God. What Jesus has done is take John and James’ request and recast it, for us who have a little longer view, into this upside-down view. The Gentiles (those who do not follow God) have leaders who are tyrants, but it should not be this way among God’s faithful people. “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” To be a leader in the Kingdom is to serve others, and the key to greatness is to devote one’s whole life to service. As I said before, this is not a zero-sum proposition.
Think of it like this: you should all have received by now a crayon. If you wanted to color a picture, you could make it a monochromatic masterpiece of all blue or red or whatever color you have, or you could find someone and offer to trade crayons. At the end of this trade, you have a crayon and your partner has a crayon. For you to have two crayons means some one has to have no crayon. This is a zero-sum transaction: between you and the person sitting next to you, there are only two crayons. No matter how you shuffle them around, there will only be two crayons. For someone to have plenty, someone else must go short. This “economy” if you will, is defined by limitations and scarcity. There are only so many crayons to go around, and one person’s abundance comes at someone else’s expense.
The kingdom of God that Jesus is talking about, on the other hand, is not a zero-sum economy. It is not defined by scarcity but by abundance. To put it another way, sometimes I thank God when I pray that in this church fellowship of prayer that we have as a gift from God, our burdens are shared and become lighter as we share them. That’s a zero-sum idea: there’s only so much burden to go around, so sharing them sort of divides our burdens making them somewhat less.
On the other hand, I also thank God that in this wonderful church family (and I’m speaking of the extended “great cloud of witnesses” version here), our joys are multiplied as we share them. This is God’s way of taking our human fear of scarcity: that places in heaven will be scarce, that God’s love and grace are limited, that there is not room enough for all of us at the feet of God, and turning it upside down, so that we can see how rich, abundant, full, and never ending God’s love is.
In the kingdom of God, serving and sharing mean that instead of me giving you my crayon in exchange for yours and calling that sharing, together we can all put together what we have and have together all the colors, all the blessings, all the love, and all the grace of God. It’s the difference between a single piece of glass and a beautiful stained glass window.
When we share in God’s economy, we all come out ahead and no one loses out. There’s no need to wonder who will have the place of honor, for we can share in God’s honor and glory. And there’s no need to fight over firsts and lasts, because we are all working for everyone’s good, not our own. It’s not about “I want” more, I want stuff, I want this or that. Instead it’s about “we have” and “God is”. It’s about how God’s love grows in the sharing, and how the stories of our faith become stronger and more meaningful in the telling. My faith, my story, my relationship with God doesn’t lessen yours…it makes them both richer.
What James and John and the rest of the disciples don’t seem to understand is that God’s love extends beyond the boundaries we want to set. For Jesus to heal one person doesn’t deprive another of health. For God’s grace to be offered to one of us doesn’t mean that another receives less. For the Spirit of God to live within one of us doesn’t deny another the Spirit in their own lives. In fact, rather than losing out when Jesus’ kingdom grows, our love and faith grow as well. God’s love is never stretched thin…it never breaks…and it never ends. One person’s I want: healing, love, grace, forgiveness, adds to all of the healing, love, grace and forgiveness we have all received. It’s no longer about what I want, but about the matchless grace and true power of Jesus Christ in the lives of all-too-human people.
The “I want” lists we used to make at Christmas have passed away. I wish I could say that we’d matured out of them, but I don’t really think that’s true. I think we aged out of them, but who knows…now that Mom’s got a grandchild, we may start again. It’s a good thing that’s not how God’s kingdom works, where all the I wants are meant for the good of all…Lord, I want to live like you. I want to love like you. I want to be more like you. Amen.
Now that the weather is finally predicted to cool off and the end of baseball season is in sight, our thoughts naturally turn to the holidays ahead. In Target this weekend, I saw side-by-side displays of Halloween costumes next to racks of Christmas cards and decorations. Sometimes it seems that all we do is run from one celebration to another, with frequent stops at the store for more stuff we want: a pumpkin for the front door, a turkey big enough to feed the family (or even better, for someone else to cook it), the perfect Christmas tree. And it comes on so quickly: 10 days to Halloween, 1 month to Thanksgiving, just over 60 days to Christmas.
When I was a child, my family had a very particular ritual at Thanksgiving. We gathered at my aunt’s house for our celebration, and everyone had their job to do: my aunt Anne made the turkey and the rolls, my mother brought ham and vegetables, my cousins made the mashed potatoes with cheddar, pecan pie, and green bean casserole. As we grew older, my sister and I began to contribute cookies and cakes for dessert and now macaroni & cheese and To-furkey for my brother-in-law the vegetarian.
After the blessing (“everyone say something you’re thankful for”), a huge meal and a lot of loitering around the table, we would move into the living room for the “real” work of Thanksgiving: the writing of the Christmas lists. No one was allowed to leave the house without making their list. Paper and pens were provided, as were multiple copies of the day’s paper, complete with sale ads, and whatever catalogs had come in the mail that week. Only occasional glimpses at the TV were permitted, unless the Redskins were doing well (rare), until everyone’s list was turned in to my aunt, who distributed them. Then, and only then, could the football-watching and socializing, the thankfulness and general merriment, resume, after we had decided what “I want” for Christmas.
It is the “human condition” (we sometimes call it “sin”) that makes us susceptible to the “I wants”. Now, admittedly, our family Thanksgivings made an Olympic event of the “I wants”, but they are hardly unique to my family. Those displays in Target and Wal-Mart, in every mall and sale circular, are designed to cause a seasonal flare-up of this disease, but we all get it sometimes. I saw a commercial recently showing 2 guys on a fishing pier. One fisherman asks the other, “What are you fishing for?” As the camera pans over to the forest of fishing rods next to the second man, he answers, “I want it all.” Heading into Christmas, our culture seems to lead us to say the same thing: “I want it all.”
Seems like there’s always something to want. How many of us spend our prayer times telling God what we want God to do? Even the disciples, who presumably knew Jesus better than everyone, who heard him preach about generosity of heart and of pocket, who saw his healings and witnessed the power of God in Jesus Christ, even they sometimes got the “I wants”. In today’s passage, two of the disciples go to Jesus with an “I want.” In fact, they tell him, “I want it all.”
Jesus has been preaching, teaching, and healing blind men…men who could not see, and then he healed them and they could see clearly that here was God’s Son. The disciples don’t seem to have understood this, proving the old adage that “there are none so blind as those who will not see.” Just goes to show there are even puns in the Bible…which means we’ll never get Eric to stop. Two of these willfully blind disciples came to Jesus and asked, audaciously, “Jesus, teacher,” (a little respectful spin, if you please), “We want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” I mean, BOLD! James and John were asking for carte blanche…from the Messiah, the Son of God, the one for whom, as Eric reminded us last week, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord. Who would have the nerve to do such a thing? Who could be bold enough, brave enough, foolish enough, to ask this of Jesus? Only one (or two) who do not know what it is they are really asking for, or from whom they are asking it.
“Lord, we want to share in your glory at the end of all this.” What a request! One brother to sit at Jesus’ right hand, and one at the left. Makes you wonder if calling them “sons of thunder” had less to do with their father Zebedee and more to do with a fear that lightning might strike these bold and foolish men…but I digress. James and John want reassurance that not only are they among the favored few disciples, but that they will have top rank when Jesus “comes into his kingdom”. They want to be sure they really are his favorites, and that others will see that they are close to Jesus.
Jesus does not strike them dead, even though he probably wanted to, for asking so much of him. Instead he asks, perhaps with a little gleam in his eye, “But can you share in my end?” These guys were thinking about “the end of all this” being when Jesus came into his power. Never mind that they have seen Jesus’ power work again and again to transform lives and heal the sick, disabled, the broken in mind and spirit. Never mind that the Jesus they have followed, traveled with, lived with, has demonstrated the power of God over and over again. When he comes into his power, they want to be there, seated right up next to Jesus as he rules over the world. They wanted to be favored above all others when Jesus came into his glory…but they had no clue, despite being told by Jesus, what that end might look like.
Jesus asked them, “Can you drink the cup I drink, and be baptized with my baptism?” It’s a trick question. John and James, the sons of thunder, likely thought back to the cup of blessing at a banquet, a celebratory toast rather than God’s cup of suffering, poured out for them, for us, and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Sound familiar? But Jesus knows that the cup ahead of him will be bitter, as he looks ahead to his end on earth: the Cross. They thought that a baptism was a water bath, a purifying ritual, but Jesus knows that he is asking them to be baptized into his suffering and death, as well as into his resurrection…They can’t see because they are blinded by the “I wants”.
Now, before we condemn these two bold fools too much, let’s remember that Mark paints all the disciples this way. Even Peter’s occasional flash of brilliance is marred by his own inability to live into the truth he sees. And all James and John were doing was asking for what every disciple wanted. They were merely giving voice to the “I want” to be recognized, “I want” to be singled out as special, “I want” to have their contributions recognized as pivotal to the kingdom of God. Probably each one could have said, “Lord, I want to be glorified with you.” That’s why the ten other disciples were angry with James and John... “who says they get to be first among us in the end?” Still, they do not have the same understanding of “the end” as Jesus.
They are all missing the point, or points: First, that the Kingdom of God does not operate on a zero-sum economy, second, that the choice is not Jesus’ to make as to who will be seated beside him in heaven, and third, that the choice Jesus asks them to make when he asks, “are you able?” is not the choice they think they are making when they say, “yes, Lord, we are able.”
James and John, and the ten, still don’t quite get who Jesus is at this point. Calling himself the Son of Man doesn’t get his point across. Restoring sight to the blind doesn’t get his point across. Telling them point blank that he must suffer and die does not get his point across. They cannot see what they don’t want to see, and they do not understand how the Messiah could have to suffer and die in order to reign victorious over all things. As Mark tells it, they can’t get past “I want Israel to be restored” to see that Jesus has come as the Messiah to restore all God’s people to full and right relationship with God. And so they do misunderstand the cup Jesus is to drink to be one of celebration, and not of bitter suffering and death. They misunderstand Jesus’ baptism to be more of a cleansing bath than a baptism of blood on the Cross. And they misunderstand Jesus’ glory to be an earthly reign in an earthly kingdom, instead of the salvation of God’s people, restored at an infinite cost as sin and death are conquered. Yes, they think they are able…but they don’t know what they are saying they are able to do.
Jesus also points out that the choice is not his to make as to who sits at his right hand and at his left in the seats of honor. “I want to sit there” is not an argument that will sway the mind of God. The place of honor is given to the one for whom it has been prepared. It’s not for Jesus to say who that might be. Jesus reminds us that this is not an earthly kingdom they were dealing with, but the kingdom of God. This is a simple point, and simply disposed of.
And then there’s this business of the upside-down economy of the kingdom of God. What Jesus has done is take John and James’ request and recast it, for us who have a little longer view, into this upside-down view. The Gentiles (those who do not follow God) have leaders who are tyrants, but it should not be this way among God’s faithful people. “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” To be a leader in the Kingdom is to serve others, and the key to greatness is to devote one’s whole life to service. As I said before, this is not a zero-sum proposition.
Think of it like this: you should all have received by now a crayon. If you wanted to color a picture, you could make it a monochromatic masterpiece of all blue or red or whatever color you have, or you could find someone and offer to trade crayons. At the end of this trade, you have a crayon and your partner has a crayon. For you to have two crayons means some one has to have no crayon. This is a zero-sum transaction: between you and the person sitting next to you, there are only two crayons. No matter how you shuffle them around, there will only be two crayons. For someone to have plenty, someone else must go short. This “economy” if you will, is defined by limitations and scarcity. There are only so many crayons to go around, and one person’s abundance comes at someone else’s expense.
The kingdom of God that Jesus is talking about, on the other hand, is not a zero-sum economy. It is not defined by scarcity but by abundance. To put it another way, sometimes I thank God when I pray that in this church fellowship of prayer that we have as a gift from God, our burdens are shared and become lighter as we share them. That’s a zero-sum idea: there’s only so much burden to go around, so sharing them sort of divides our burdens making them somewhat less.
On the other hand, I also thank God that in this wonderful church family (and I’m speaking of the extended “great cloud of witnesses” version here), our joys are multiplied as we share them. This is God’s way of taking our human fear of scarcity: that places in heaven will be scarce, that God’s love and grace are limited, that there is not room enough for all of us at the feet of God, and turning it upside down, so that we can see how rich, abundant, full, and never ending God’s love is.
In the kingdom of God, serving and sharing mean that instead of me giving you my crayon in exchange for yours and calling that sharing, together we can all put together what we have and have together all the colors, all the blessings, all the love, and all the grace of God. It’s the difference between a single piece of glass and a beautiful stained glass window.
When we share in God’s economy, we all come out ahead and no one loses out. There’s no need to wonder who will have the place of honor, for we can share in God’s honor and glory. And there’s no need to fight over firsts and lasts, because we are all working for everyone’s good, not our own. It’s not about “I want” more, I want stuff, I want this or that. Instead it’s about “we have” and “God is”. It’s about how God’s love grows in the sharing, and how the stories of our faith become stronger and more meaningful in the telling. My faith, my story, my relationship with God doesn’t lessen yours…it makes them both richer.
What James and John and the rest of the disciples don’t seem to understand is that God’s love extends beyond the boundaries we want to set. For Jesus to heal one person doesn’t deprive another of health. For God’s grace to be offered to one of us doesn’t mean that another receives less. For the Spirit of God to live within one of us doesn’t deny another the Spirit in their own lives. In fact, rather than losing out when Jesus’ kingdom grows, our love and faith grow as well. God’s love is never stretched thin…it never breaks…and it never ends. One person’s I want: healing, love, grace, forgiveness, adds to all of the healing, love, grace and forgiveness we have all received. It’s no longer about what I want, but about the matchless grace and true power of Jesus Christ in the lives of all-too-human people.
The “I want” lists we used to make at Christmas have passed away. I wish I could say that we’d matured out of them, but I don’t really think that’s true. I think we aged out of them, but who knows…now that Mom’s got a grandchild, we may start again. It’s a good thing that’s not how God’s kingdom works, where all the I wants are meant for the good of all…Lord, I want to live like you. I want to love like you. I want to be more like you. Amen.
Taking up space...
some more newsletter articles...I kind of liked these...
The general idea for me is that each week I choose a quotation I've run across somewhere, and use it sort of as a springboard for writing about whatever's going on in my head that day. I call them ponder-ous thoughts as a sort of pun on scripture: "and Mary pondered these things in her heart." I ponder these...
Ponder-ous Thoughts
"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Last week I heard someone talk about “penciling in” an appointment in their calendar. He explained that he used the pencil so that he could freely erase and change things without his calendar becoming messy with scratched-out names and dates. Sunday, I encouraged someone who wanted to spend a little time with me to write his name in my planner in ink, so that I could be sure that time was set aside for him and his concerns.
I don’t make appointments in pencil—I always use pen. When I set a time for a meeting or to spend some time with someone, that time is entirely theirs. Do I ever have to cancel or reschedule or make a mistake? Of course, I do. But I do the best I can each day to meet the plans I’ve set, and some days just do go better than others. When that happens, I remember how Scarlett O’Hara unwittingly paraphrased Emerson’s quote above: “Tomorrow is another day.”
Every day is a gift from God, and it’s up to us how we’ll live those days. Will we allow ourselves to be controlled by anxieties, fears, and worry, or will we see each day as a new opportunity to enjoy God’s gift? Will we coast through life or will we give each person and each opportunity our full attention? And if today’s not our best day, what do we do with tomorrow? Something to think about…
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/ Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:All mimsy were the borogoves,/ And the mome raths outgrabe.
--Lewis Carroll
“Jabberwocky” conjures images of foreign lands and strange creatures, of knightly virtue and nightmares. As an adult, I’m amazed at how a life’s reading lets me put “Jabberwocky” in context; I don’t know what borogroves are or what mimsy resembles, and I’ve no clue what it means to outgrabe. But I do have a mental picture, right or wrong, of a boggy sort of forest scene with moss trailing down from trees and sneaky branches waiting to trip up an unsuspecting traveler.
A life’s living puts church in context, too. I grew up in church, summers when I was young and regularly since I was a young teenager, so I grew up with mysterious words: doxology, offertory, sacrament. Now I find these words evocative as well, because I can put them in context: song of thanksgiving, gift-giving, God’s grace in bread, wine and water.
What if I hadn’t had that raising? What if I had not grown up in church? These words might sound as foreign and even menacing as “Jabberwocky”. It’s up to us (that would be you and me, dear reader) to put these strange terms in context, to introduce others to the idea that God lives in and among us, that God’s grace can be touched in the hand of a friend or stranger, that a bit of bread and juice can change our hearts and lives.
As we come to communion this Sunday, I invite you to see our holy meal in context: as a remembrance of Christ’s last meal with the disciples, as a sharing in the great heavenly feast of the Lamb, as a part of the party when a lost child returns to God. We eat together to join us together: “Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one Body…”
For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
~ T.S. Eliot
I am not a fan of making New Year’s resolutions. I’m great at breaking them, but not so good at living up to them. Mark Twain had something to say about resolutions, good intentions, and the annual paving of the road to you-know-where. So this year I am making no declarations, no resolutions, no drastic changes to the status quo. Nope, no lists of good intentions for me…maybe that’s my resolution: I resolve not to make promises I can’t or won’t or don’t intend to keep.
Instead I’m thinking this year about grace, and faith, and finding God’s goodness even in my own failings. The great thing about a New Year’s Day is that it reminds us that we can have a new start…God’s grace is more than sufficient to give us that, and as often as we need it. There’s a book on my shelf which I will one day read in its entirety called, “How to Pray When You’ve Kicked the Dog.” I’m counting on that book to remind me that sometimes we do in fact have rotten days and do rotten stuff. Some days we run out of excuses…but we can run back to God’s arms for a new beginning.
Some days we just want to turn our backs on (sorry, English teachers and lovers of proper grammar, I’m letting that preposition dangle). Some days we want to put aside and never look back. Grace lets us come to God in repentance and leave those days behind, as a new person with a new day, a new year, a new life. And if we need to, to come back again and be renewed again. And again.
Thanks be to God,
Anne
“Go that way really fast. If something gets in your way, turn.”
--From the movie, “Better Off Dead”
Okay, I’ll admit it. I have a fairly significant crush on John Cusack. It’s nothing I can’t handle…and I’ve felt this way since I was in middle school. It’s something I’ve learned to live with, and laugh at, and fortunately my husband is very understanding. Of course, his crush is Paula Deen…and I can’t compete with her in the kitchen!
I call the quote above the “Skiing the K-12” philosophy. It has to do with a not-particularly-good movie in which Lane (John Cusack) is trying to show up the town bully by skiing the K-12, a slope that only the best can conquer. All his friends give him the same advice: “Go that way really fast. If something gets in your way, turn.” Of course, he fails repeatedly but in the end he conquers the mountain, shows up the bully, and gets the girl…all tied up in a nice, neat little happy ending.
I don’t know about the nice, neat little happy ending…I haven’t gotten there yet. But there is something to admire in Lane’s persistence and determination. Something in him tells him that he can do it, and so he tries until he succeeds. Sometimes our faith is the same way: something in us calls us to do or become something, and it’s up to us to persevere until we succeed. Kind of reminds me of Paul (the paraphrase is mine): every day I strive for the glory to which God calls me in Christ.
The general idea for me is that each week I choose a quotation I've run across somewhere, and use it sort of as a springboard for writing about whatever's going on in my head that day. I call them ponder-ous thoughts as a sort of pun on scripture: "and Mary pondered these things in her heart." I ponder these...
Ponder-ous Thoughts
"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Last week I heard someone talk about “penciling in” an appointment in their calendar. He explained that he used the pencil so that he could freely erase and change things without his calendar becoming messy with scratched-out names and dates. Sunday, I encouraged someone who wanted to spend a little time with me to write his name in my planner in ink, so that I could be sure that time was set aside for him and his concerns.
I don’t make appointments in pencil—I always use pen. When I set a time for a meeting or to spend some time with someone, that time is entirely theirs. Do I ever have to cancel or reschedule or make a mistake? Of course, I do. But I do the best I can each day to meet the plans I’ve set, and some days just do go better than others. When that happens, I remember how Scarlett O’Hara unwittingly paraphrased Emerson’s quote above: “Tomorrow is another day.”
Every day is a gift from God, and it’s up to us how we’ll live those days. Will we allow ourselves to be controlled by anxieties, fears, and worry, or will we see each day as a new opportunity to enjoy God’s gift? Will we coast through life or will we give each person and each opportunity our full attention? And if today’s not our best day, what do we do with tomorrow? Something to think about…
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/ Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:All mimsy were the borogoves,/ And the mome raths outgrabe.
--Lewis Carroll
“Jabberwocky” conjures images of foreign lands and strange creatures, of knightly virtue and nightmares. As an adult, I’m amazed at how a life’s reading lets me put “Jabberwocky” in context; I don’t know what borogroves are or what mimsy resembles, and I’ve no clue what it means to outgrabe. But I do have a mental picture, right or wrong, of a boggy sort of forest scene with moss trailing down from trees and sneaky branches waiting to trip up an unsuspecting traveler.
A life’s living puts church in context, too. I grew up in church, summers when I was young and regularly since I was a young teenager, so I grew up with mysterious words: doxology, offertory, sacrament. Now I find these words evocative as well, because I can put them in context: song of thanksgiving, gift-giving, God’s grace in bread, wine and water.
What if I hadn’t had that raising? What if I had not grown up in church? These words might sound as foreign and even menacing as “Jabberwocky”. It’s up to us (that would be you and me, dear reader) to put these strange terms in context, to introduce others to the idea that God lives in and among us, that God’s grace can be touched in the hand of a friend or stranger, that a bit of bread and juice can change our hearts and lives.
As we come to communion this Sunday, I invite you to see our holy meal in context: as a remembrance of Christ’s last meal with the disciples, as a sharing in the great heavenly feast of the Lamb, as a part of the party when a lost child returns to God. We eat together to join us together: “Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one Body…”
For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
~ T.S. Eliot
I am not a fan of making New Year’s resolutions. I’m great at breaking them, but not so good at living up to them. Mark Twain had something to say about resolutions, good intentions, and the annual paving of the road to you-know-where. So this year I am making no declarations, no resolutions, no drastic changes to the status quo. Nope, no lists of good intentions for me…maybe that’s my resolution: I resolve not to make promises I can’t or won’t or don’t intend to keep.
Instead I’m thinking this year about grace, and faith, and finding God’s goodness even in my own failings. The great thing about a New Year’s Day is that it reminds us that we can have a new start…God’s grace is more than sufficient to give us that, and as often as we need it. There’s a book on my shelf which I will one day read in its entirety called, “How to Pray When You’ve Kicked the Dog.” I’m counting on that book to remind me that sometimes we do in fact have rotten days and do rotten stuff. Some days we run out of excuses…but we can run back to God’s arms for a new beginning.
Some days we just want to turn our backs on (sorry, English teachers and lovers of proper grammar, I’m letting that preposition dangle). Some days we want to put aside and never look back. Grace lets us come to God in repentance and leave those days behind, as a new person with a new day, a new year, a new life. And if we need to, to come back again and be renewed again. And again.
Thanks be to God,
Anne
“Go that way really fast. If something gets in your way, turn.”
--From the movie, “Better Off Dead”
Okay, I’ll admit it. I have a fairly significant crush on John Cusack. It’s nothing I can’t handle…and I’ve felt this way since I was in middle school. It’s something I’ve learned to live with, and laugh at, and fortunately my husband is very understanding. Of course, his crush is Paula Deen…and I can’t compete with her in the kitchen!
I call the quote above the “Skiing the K-12” philosophy. It has to do with a not-particularly-good movie in which Lane (John Cusack) is trying to show up the town bully by skiing the K-12, a slope that only the best can conquer. All his friends give him the same advice: “Go that way really fast. If something gets in your way, turn.” Of course, he fails repeatedly but in the end he conquers the mountain, shows up the bully, and gets the girl…all tied up in a nice, neat little happy ending.
I don’t know about the nice, neat little happy ending…I haven’t gotten there yet. But there is something to admire in Lane’s persistence and determination. Something in him tells him that he can do it, and so he tries until he succeeds. Sometimes our faith is the same way: something in us calls us to do or become something, and it’s up to us to persevere until we succeed. Kind of reminds me of Paul (the paraphrase is mine): every day I strive for the glory to which God calls me in Christ.
Newsletter Article
This week's missive in the church newsletter:
Ponderous Thoughts
“I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.” --Mother Theresa
I’ve never wanted to be a pencil. There was a brief phase around my third year when I thought I might like to be a ham and cheese sandwich, but “pencil” as a life goal has never crossed my mind. Still, Mother Theresa had a point. Who do we want to guide our lives? I’ve already proved (at least to my own satisfaction) that I can’t do it alone; I want God to be the guiding hand that writes my life’s story.
But not only do I want God to write my life’s story, I want him to use me to help reveal to our world the Kingdom of God. It’s not about me (didn’t I say something like that last week?) but about what God is doing in the world and how I can be an instrument of God’s will and work. This means that God can help me rise above my own pettiness and smallness of heart and spirit and transform me into someone who glorifies God—as a witness of God’s love to others.
Maybe this is what our mission statement here at Ann Street really means: “to know Christ and to make him known” means to submit ourselves to be God’s instrument, and communicate God’s love to the world. Everyday is a new opportunity…
Anne
2 Corinthians 2:2-3: You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
Ponderous Thoughts
“I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.” --Mother Theresa
I’ve never wanted to be a pencil. There was a brief phase around my third year when I thought I might like to be a ham and cheese sandwich, but “pencil” as a life goal has never crossed my mind. Still, Mother Theresa had a point. Who do we want to guide our lives? I’ve already proved (at least to my own satisfaction) that I can’t do it alone; I want God to be the guiding hand that writes my life’s story.
But not only do I want God to write my life’s story, I want him to use me to help reveal to our world the Kingdom of God. It’s not about me (didn’t I say something like that last week?) but about what God is doing in the world and how I can be an instrument of God’s will and work. This means that God can help me rise above my own pettiness and smallness of heart and spirit and transform me into someone who glorifies God—as a witness of God’s love to others.
Maybe this is what our mission statement here at Ann Street really means: “to know Christ and to make him known” means to submit ourselves to be God’s instrument, and communicate God’s love to the world. Everyday is a new opportunity…
Anne
2 Corinthians 2:2-3: You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
Friday, January 19, 2007
Playing at work
I have had the most fun today. I've been working on our "theme" for the new service--a unifying image to tie the mail-outs about the new service, the outdoor advertising, and the banners inside all together and give us a symbol to sort of rally around, and I think I've found an image that will work...I'll post more when I see if the planning committee agrees.
Now, there's the little matter of Zacchaeus, and how I would preach his story differently to the "crowd" at the contemporary service. Some key assumptions: we want to attract people to this service who are not currently going to church and potentially never have been a part of a church. We intend to create a worship service that will invite people to become a part of the church and move into deeper discipleship through fellowship, Bible study, etc. We anticipate drawing a sort of mixed crowd that will include younger Christians and those looking for a more contemporary and informal worship style as well as those with little or no context for the Bible and church (or a negative one).
All this means that I wouldn't dare preach the same sermon on a Sunday night as I would on Sunday morning, when I am assuming a basic familiarity with the Bible and traditional worship structures. This church is old and well-established in the community and primarily has attracted members who were churched elsewhere, so I can pretty generally assume that they are familiar with our church vocabulary and will remember stories like that of Zacchaeus.
Here's something like I might try for the evening service (we'll have to settle for an outline; I don't really plan to write manuscripts...or if I do, I won't be preaching from it.)
Text: Luke 19:1-10
Theme: Jesus Seeks Us Out
Title: Invisible
Retell the story (or a little drama) as if Zack were sitting in the local lunch spot on a Sunday afternoon. Zack's in his little dinky table for one next to the bathrooms, listening to the church goers hassle the waitstaff, while he waits and waits for a waiter to pass by with the coffee pot. He's basically invisible, until a stranger enters the restaurant. The stranger is well-dressed and looks to be well-off. He walks through the tables, often seeming to pause at one or another while the church crowd stumbles over themselves to try to win him to the Baptists, the Episcopalians, the Methodists...and then sees Zack. He makes a beeline for Zack's table, borrows a chair from someone nearby, and says, "Hey, man. What's for lunch?"
The Point: Jesus' love seeks us out. Somehow, despite our less desirable qualities and our knack for making a mess, the One who could be with anyone chooses to be with us.
We've all got some Zack in us...different from the crowd, but yearning for someone to notice us. That Someone is Jesus Christ, who wants us to know that we are all stand-outs, all exceptional, all his "preferred company." Just when we think we're invisible, Jesus sees the good in us...sees us as someone he wants to know better...and to change our lives for the better, forever.
The One who sees us when we feel invisible invites us to be a part of something visible: to be a part of his crowd, to join a group of folks who look out for one another and for others who are invisible...to love as we are loved.
Those are preliminary, but there you are...
Now, there's the little matter of Zacchaeus, and how I would preach his story differently to the "crowd" at the contemporary service. Some key assumptions: we want to attract people to this service who are not currently going to church and potentially never have been a part of a church. We intend to create a worship service that will invite people to become a part of the church and move into deeper discipleship through fellowship, Bible study, etc. We anticipate drawing a sort of mixed crowd that will include younger Christians and those looking for a more contemporary and informal worship style as well as those with little or no context for the Bible and church (or a negative one).
All this means that I wouldn't dare preach the same sermon on a Sunday night as I would on Sunday morning, when I am assuming a basic familiarity with the Bible and traditional worship structures. This church is old and well-established in the community and primarily has attracted members who were churched elsewhere, so I can pretty generally assume that they are familiar with our church vocabulary and will remember stories like that of Zacchaeus.
Here's something like I might try for the evening service (we'll have to settle for an outline; I don't really plan to write manuscripts...or if I do, I won't be preaching from it.)
Text: Luke 19:1-10
Theme: Jesus Seeks Us Out
Title: Invisible
Retell the story (or a little drama) as if Zack were sitting in the local lunch spot on a Sunday afternoon. Zack's in his little dinky table for one next to the bathrooms, listening to the church goers hassle the waitstaff, while he waits and waits for a waiter to pass by with the coffee pot. He's basically invisible, until a stranger enters the restaurant. The stranger is well-dressed and looks to be well-off. He walks through the tables, often seeming to pause at one or another while the church crowd stumbles over themselves to try to win him to the Baptists, the Episcopalians, the Methodists...and then sees Zack. He makes a beeline for Zack's table, borrows a chair from someone nearby, and says, "Hey, man. What's for lunch?"
The Point: Jesus' love seeks us out. Somehow, despite our less desirable qualities and our knack for making a mess, the One who could be with anyone chooses to be with us.
We've all got some Zack in us...different from the crowd, but yearning for someone to notice us. That Someone is Jesus Christ, who wants us to know that we are all stand-outs, all exceptional, all his "preferred company." Just when we think we're invisible, Jesus sees the good in us...sees us as someone he wants to know better...and to change our lives for the better, forever.
The One who sees us when we feel invisible invites us to be a part of something visible: to be a part of his crowd, to join a group of folks who look out for one another and for others who are invisible...to love as we are loved.
Those are preliminary, but there you are...
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Surviving for now...
Well, I survived Tuesday. I had to tell my father he couldn't come visit this week, which I hated. I've just got too much on my plate and need a little time for myself (and to do housework). Besides, he really wants to come on a Tuesday night when the Methodist Men are cooking peanuts...it's pretty impressive.
I'm still having fun working on details for the new service. Maybe tomorrow I'll get around to posting my thoughts about how the Zacchaeus sermon would have been different for the evening crowd. My grand banner plan has suffered a setback; I'd hoped it would be an easy matter to hang banners from the ceiling but apparently we can't, so I'll have to be thinking about how banners on stands might work. My senior pastor had come up with the idea on hanging long narrow banners from the ceiling to set the stage area off, and I'd been really excited about the possibilities. What I need to do is recruit a team to help me think some of this through.
Today we have kicked around the idea of how to allow church members who might not attend this type of service to support it in other ways, and I'm going to have to really continue to ponder that.
This morning's adventure was a discussion of a publication by 2 Methodist pastors of the NC Conference on framing the dialogue over homosexuality in the church. I have to say that I really wish we'd addressed the specific arguments a bit more; instead we talked about how we have conversations about the Church and what's wrong with the UMC (people, mostly, just like anywhere else). What I'd really like to see, and frankly I think the most responsible and Christian response, would be for parties on all sides of the discussion to covenant together to NOT discuss the church's position on homosexuality at this year's Annual Conference meetings and particular, next year's General Conference.
For 40 years, people of honor, courage, and faith in the UMC have argued at each General Conference that scripture definitively names homosexuality a sin. People of honor, courage and faith have argued in response that Jesus' compassion for the outsider (and one could argue easily that gays and lesbians are clearly outsiders as far as most churches are concerned) as expressed in our culture have mitigated the sometimes-disputed verses cited against homosexulaity as a practice....particularly in the absence of a definitive word from Christ himself in the Bible.
I'm still having fun working on details for the new service. Maybe tomorrow I'll get around to posting my thoughts about how the Zacchaeus sermon would have been different for the evening crowd. My grand banner plan has suffered a setback; I'd hoped it would be an easy matter to hang banners from the ceiling but apparently we can't, so I'll have to be thinking about how banners on stands might work. My senior pastor had come up with the idea on hanging long narrow banners from the ceiling to set the stage area off, and I'd been really excited about the possibilities. What I need to do is recruit a team to help me think some of this through.
Today we have kicked around the idea of how to allow church members who might not attend this type of service to support it in other ways, and I'm going to have to really continue to ponder that.
This morning's adventure was a discussion of a publication by 2 Methodist pastors of the NC Conference on framing the dialogue over homosexuality in the church. I have to say that I really wish we'd addressed the specific arguments a bit more; instead we talked about how we have conversations about the Church and what's wrong with the UMC (people, mostly, just like anywhere else). What I'd really like to see, and frankly I think the most responsible and Christian response, would be for parties on all sides of the discussion to covenant together to NOT discuss the church's position on homosexuality at this year's Annual Conference meetings and particular, next year's General Conference.
For 40 years, people of honor, courage, and faith in the UMC have argued at each General Conference that scripture definitively names homosexuality a sin. People of honor, courage and faith have argued in response that Jesus' compassion for the outsider (and one could argue easily that gays and lesbians are clearly outsiders as far as most churches are concerned) as expressed in our culture have mitigated the sometimes-disputed verses cited against homosexulaity as a practice....particularly in the absence of a definitive word from Christ himself in the Bible.
One of the two writers of the document we discussed today suggests that any loving, non-coercive, monogamous sexual relationship is seen by God as identical to marriage...which I just can't agree with. I am reminded of the couple who I was counseling prior to marriage who wanted me to ignore the fact that they'd eloped in April when performing their August wedding...becasue God wasn't there. Well, yes, in fact, I believe God was. The church wasn't there because this couple had denied them the opportunity to participate, but God was there. I believe also that Christian teaching is pretty clear that marriage refers to one man married to one woman for life...and anything else is not what God meant.
But is there grace and hospitality to be offered to those with whom we do not agree? There better be; that's how Jesus operated, and it should be how we behave as well. I don't think the issue for the United Methodist Church is that we should or should not change what we say and teach, but instead live up to the ideals of our Discipline in paragraph 161G:
If we can do this in faith and spend more time on what is more clear and I would argue more urgent (for example, almost any social justice issue you could name: AIDS, hunger, stewardship of the earth/environment, health care) and take a break from thinking so much and concentrate and being the Body of Christ, we might see things a little more clearly, and then, in charity with one another, we might speak a little more kindly and understand one another better. That's my prayer and practice, anyway.Homosexual persons no less than heterosexual persons are individuals of sacred worth. All persons need the ministry and guidance of the church in their struggles for human fulfillment, as well as the spiritual and emotional care of a fellowship that enables reconciling relationships with God, with others, and with self...We affirm that God's grace is available to all, and we will seek to live together in Christian community. We implore families and churches not to reject or condemn lesbian and gay members and friends. We commit ourselves to be in ministry for and with all persons. (The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church, 2004)
Monday, January 15, 2007
Shameless...
Yup, I am without shame. I took a day off (if you don't count checking email). A whole day. Well, except for writing my newsletter article and not writing another little blurb I'd meant to write.
Okay...maybe a little shame. But I took an actual day off!
Almost prepares me to go back to work and the insanity that is my Tuesday schedule (and an unprecedented 7 obligations on my calendar).
Nope, I'll call it shameless. I laid around most of the day, let Ben cook supper (tacos) and watched the end of the last Lord of the Rings movie and "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." lazy and shameless, that's me.
I should be a cat.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Zacchaeus: who is a sinner
My sermon for January 14, 2007: "Who is a sinner"
Luke 19:1-10
I have a confession to make. I did not attend Sunday School regularly until I was a teenager. My mother taught me Bible stories, but I missed out on some things…like flannel boards and silly little songs and memorizing Bible verses. I was teaching VBS as a college student home for the summer when I learned “Father Abraham had many sons”, and I never learned the song about Zacchaeus at all. I know I’ve heard it…but somehow “Zacchaeus was a wee little man” becomes “Old King Cole” in my memory… “And he called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl, and he called for his fiddlers three.” I suspect many of you know the wee little man song, and it’s the first thing you think of when this story comes to mind. But the song only gives you an incomplete picture of what happened that day.
The song tells us that yes, Zacchaeus was anxious to see Jesus, and so he climbed a tree to see him as he passed by. And yes, Jesus saw him and called Zacchaeus to come down. But there’s much more to the story than just who did what…
To begin with I think we have to get to know our cast of characters. To simplify matters, we’ll identify them as Zacchaeus, Jesus, and the crowd, and ignore the disciples, who were around somewhere but don’t figure in this particular encounter.
Starting from the beginning of the story, we find that Zacchaeus was 1) wealthy, 2) a tax collector, and 3) short. Having money was not, in itself, a problem, but where he got it was. In those days, a tax collector earned his living by collecting more than he had to give back to the government…so a rich tax collector was immediately suspected of lining his pockets at the expense of his people. While Zacchaeus may have been a great person with a large inheritance from a rich uncle, the community clearly regards him as an outsider, this man who is a sinner.
And then there’s the shortness. Zacchaeus was not a tall man, according to the scripture, but one wonders as well if his problems went beyond his stature…if Zacchaeus had been somewhat short-sighted in his earlier life as well. Just before this encounter with Zacchaeus, Jesus met and healed a blind man who nonetheless saw clearly who Jesus was. Perhaps Zacchaeus the short one has been unable to see past his own desires and his own profit in the past…but in this story, he’s got a notion who this Jesus guy might be…and it’s enough to make him risk his dignity by climbing a tree to get a better look. (Seriously—think back to pictures you’ve seen of the type of clothes people wore back then…could you climb a tree in that get-up?)
And then there’s Jesus: the Son of Man. He’s just healed a blind man and told him his faith had saved him…salvation in the fullest sense of healing his sight, making him whole, restoring his life. He’s talked to a rich ruler who has followed the law all his life, but Jesus tells him, “there is one thing lacking,” and because the rich ruler cannot bear to part with his wealth, he denies himself entrance to the kingdom of heaven. He’s just cautioned the disciples and the crowd of people around him that “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And before that he told a parable about a Pharisee and a tax collector in prayer: “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
And then there’s the crowd: the people of Jericho, lined up to see this Jesus who talks so easily of the Kingdom of God and who’s in and who’s out. These presumably law-abiding, synagogue-going, God-fearing, tax-paying townspeople clog the streets, making it hard for their shorter neighbors to see their visitor. These are Zacchaeus’ neighbors, who, when Zacchaeus welcomed Jesus, muttered against them that Jesus had gone to the home of one who was a sinner.
It’s a complicated cast of characters: a short, wealthy tax collector with enough nerve to risk public embarrassment to see Jesus; Jesus himself, who seems less concerned with the establishment crowd around him than with those who will distinguish themselves from the crowd in their ability to see him as he is; and that crowd of neighbors who are not at all friends to Zacchaeus, and who would apparently rather not see Zacchaeus, the sinner, receive any kind of favor, and who are primarily concerned with sorting out who’s who…who is a sinner, who is worthy of Jesus’ attention, who is a member of their group and who is not.
That’s the big question for the crowd that day, anyway, and so often for us as well: who is a sinner? Zacchaeus was a sinner, an outsider, a neighbor but not a friend, a hated collector of unjust taxes for the oppressive Roman Empire. Anyone whose wealth came from complicity with Rome was clearly a sinner, according to the crowd. Those who were outside the community because they were of a different race (like Samaritans), those who were outsiders because of illness (remember the lepers who must cry, “unclean, unclean”?), those who were born blind…aren’t they sinners, too?
And how do we decide now who is a sinner…who we will keep to the outside of our fellowship, who do we, like the crowd in Jericho, want Jesus to exclude? Are we still, despite Jesus’ witness, despite the Holy Spirit, despite the miracle at Pentecost and the travels of Paul, are we still seeing those whose language and customs and country are not like ours as sinners, outsiders, less than we are? Are we still wasting our time condemning the sick in mind and heart and body instead of offering the compassion and healing power of Christ? Are we still busy trying to decide who is in and who is out…who is a part of us and who is a sinner…who should receive Christ’s gift of salvation, and who should not?. Could it possibly be that we see ourselves so unclearly that we do not know our own sin? Can it be that it is you, and me, who is a sinner? Are we with Zacchaeus or with the crowd?
Zacchaeus was so moved by Jesus’ fellowship with him that he (probably very carefully) got down from the tree and received Jesus as his guest in his home, and in his heart. When Jesus welcomed Zacchaeus into his “crowd”, the tax collector’s life was changed…and he became a new person…and he promised to return all he had obtained unjustly, and make restitution, and give half of what he had to the poor. Jesus responds by affirming that Zacchaeus is restored to right relationship with God and with his Jewish community, a son of Abraham, because he has received salvation. Now, who is a sinner? Zacchaeus is so moved that he makes restitution above and beyond whatever sin and fraud he might have committed, demonstrating that his life has been transformed by this brief encounter with Christ. Jesus responds to the crowd by making it clear that Zacchaeus’ transformation is not only personal but that he has received salvation…and restoration in the eyes of God as a child of Abraham once more.
Can we rightly join the crowd and call Zacchaeus a sinner, knowing now that he was transformed by Jesus’ acceptance? Can we condemn with the crowd one who Jesus does not condemn? Can we decide who is with us, and who is not, knowing that Jesus, the Son of God and Son of Man, welcomed all who would come to him? Maybe Zacchaeus was a sinner…maybe…but he was also one who was willing to look past community and race and propriety and custom and his own flaws and failures to allow his life to be radically changed by the power of God and the fellowship of Christ. Who is a sinner? The one who condemns, or the one who seeks out new life?
Aren’t we all sinners?
We are.
This encounter with Jesus is not about what the crowd wants (the sinner humbled or Jesus for themselves), or what Zacchaeus wanted (did he even know?) but about what God wants: salvation for the lost and restoration of all people into the Kingdom of God. It’s not about rules…if it were, the rich young ruler might have made it and the Pharisees would have the inside track. Instead it’s about transforming relationships in which the power of God in our lives drives us to changed behavior because of the goodness and mercy of God. It’s not about us…it’s about God in us.
This is the really great thing about the Kingdom of God, about the Body of Christ, about salvation: it’s not about us. It’s not about our own sins and failings, because God loves us even more than that. It’s not about how we tend to clump together in groups and cliques, trying to decide who is like us and who is not, because God sees through all of that. It’s not even about who we like and don’t like, how we think things ought to be: Jesus is better than that. Who is a sinner? We all are, but that’s who salvation is for: not the one who is “perfect” and doesn’t think he needs God, but who those who will see that I am a sinner, you are a sinner, and we all need to be transformed by Jesus Christ.
It is not about us. It’s not about a desire to be a better person, to earn spiritual points to make a great show of how faithful you are. It’s about being changed by the power of God, and learning to see the world just a little bit like God sees it. It’s not about us…it’s about the other, the outsider, the one we can welcome, can help, can love, who might not receive welcome, help, and love anywhere else. It’s about the one who just might see Jesus for who he is, like Zacchaeus, if we can put our humanness aside and be the people of God. As the church, we are called to extend hospitality to all people in Christ’s name, and give them the opportunity to know Jesus.
It’s not about us. Have you heard it yet? Instead it’s about God’s love breaking into the world in radical contradiction to “the way things have always been.” It’s about a love so great that all our failures and inadequacies and pettiness are transformed into generosity of life and spirit…and yes, of the wallet. It’s about who Jesus Christ is, and what God is doing in the world.
The reason Zacchaeus receives salvation when the rich ruler didn’t is because Zacchaeus had a moment when it was about Jesus, and not about Zacchaeus. He abandoned his social stature as an agent of the government and a wealthy man and made a fool of himself climbing a tree to see Jesus pass by. He forgot to think about how it might look for him to be up in that tree…he forgot himself. In response to Jesus’ presence, Zacchaeus’ life was forever changed and he became a generous person, exceeding the law in his restitution and alms-giving. In that moment, it was not about him: it was about Jesus, the kingdom of God, and caring for others out of God’s great love for him. It is about who Jesus is and what God is doing in the world…about the Body of Christ and the kingdom of God.
When we set conditions and limits on the body of Christ, when we create barriers of appearance and behavior, when we make ourselves the arbiters of who God likes and who God doesn’t, then we are making it about us. In our often unintentional behavior toward those who are not like us: a different social class, a different way of dressing, speaking, eating, living, tattoos and piercings and hair in colors that do not occur in nature, we are excluding those whom Christ loves and has come to save. It’s not about us, except when we get in the way. It’s about saving the lost, whoever the lost may be. God loves people for their own sake, not because of anything we can do to win God over or any notion we have of being loveable ourselves. This is a good thing, because very often we are not…at least not apart from the grace of God.
In coming down from the sycamore tree, Zacchaeus learned who the world is meant to be in the kingdom of God. Although his neighbors seem to have written him off as a sinner, Jesus writes no one off. In joining Zacchaeus for an evening, Jesus restores him to his people, to himself, and to God, for eternity: a complete healing, and a witness to Jericho of who this Son of Man really is. And because he climbed the tree, Zacchaeus left for us a lesson in who is a sinner, and for whom is the kingdom of God. Thank God for men and women who are willing to set themselves aside and climb trees, and to remind us, again and again, of who we are, and for whom is the kingdom of God.
Who is a sinner?
The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.
Thanks be to God.
Luke 19:1-10
I have a confession to make. I did not attend Sunday School regularly until I was a teenager. My mother taught me Bible stories, but I missed out on some things…like flannel boards and silly little songs and memorizing Bible verses. I was teaching VBS as a college student home for the summer when I learned “Father Abraham had many sons”, and I never learned the song about Zacchaeus at all. I know I’ve heard it…but somehow “Zacchaeus was a wee little man” becomes “Old King Cole” in my memory… “And he called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl, and he called for his fiddlers three.” I suspect many of you know the wee little man song, and it’s the first thing you think of when this story comes to mind. But the song only gives you an incomplete picture of what happened that day.
The song tells us that yes, Zacchaeus was anxious to see Jesus, and so he climbed a tree to see him as he passed by. And yes, Jesus saw him and called Zacchaeus to come down. But there’s much more to the story than just who did what…
To begin with I think we have to get to know our cast of characters. To simplify matters, we’ll identify them as Zacchaeus, Jesus, and the crowd, and ignore the disciples, who were around somewhere but don’t figure in this particular encounter.
Starting from the beginning of the story, we find that Zacchaeus was 1) wealthy, 2) a tax collector, and 3) short. Having money was not, in itself, a problem, but where he got it was. In those days, a tax collector earned his living by collecting more than he had to give back to the government…so a rich tax collector was immediately suspected of lining his pockets at the expense of his people. While Zacchaeus may have been a great person with a large inheritance from a rich uncle, the community clearly regards him as an outsider, this man who is a sinner.
And then there’s the shortness. Zacchaeus was not a tall man, according to the scripture, but one wonders as well if his problems went beyond his stature…if Zacchaeus had been somewhat short-sighted in his earlier life as well. Just before this encounter with Zacchaeus, Jesus met and healed a blind man who nonetheless saw clearly who Jesus was. Perhaps Zacchaeus the short one has been unable to see past his own desires and his own profit in the past…but in this story, he’s got a notion who this Jesus guy might be…and it’s enough to make him risk his dignity by climbing a tree to get a better look. (Seriously—think back to pictures you’ve seen of the type of clothes people wore back then…could you climb a tree in that get-up?)
And then there’s Jesus: the Son of Man. He’s just healed a blind man and told him his faith had saved him…salvation in the fullest sense of healing his sight, making him whole, restoring his life. He’s talked to a rich ruler who has followed the law all his life, but Jesus tells him, “there is one thing lacking,” and because the rich ruler cannot bear to part with his wealth, he denies himself entrance to the kingdom of heaven. He’s just cautioned the disciples and the crowd of people around him that “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And before that he told a parable about a Pharisee and a tax collector in prayer: “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
And then there’s the crowd: the people of Jericho, lined up to see this Jesus who talks so easily of the Kingdom of God and who’s in and who’s out. These presumably law-abiding, synagogue-going, God-fearing, tax-paying townspeople clog the streets, making it hard for their shorter neighbors to see their visitor. These are Zacchaeus’ neighbors, who, when Zacchaeus welcomed Jesus, muttered against them that Jesus had gone to the home of one who was a sinner.
It’s a complicated cast of characters: a short, wealthy tax collector with enough nerve to risk public embarrassment to see Jesus; Jesus himself, who seems less concerned with the establishment crowd around him than with those who will distinguish themselves from the crowd in their ability to see him as he is; and that crowd of neighbors who are not at all friends to Zacchaeus, and who would apparently rather not see Zacchaeus, the sinner, receive any kind of favor, and who are primarily concerned with sorting out who’s who…who is a sinner, who is worthy of Jesus’ attention, who is a member of their group and who is not.
That’s the big question for the crowd that day, anyway, and so often for us as well: who is a sinner? Zacchaeus was a sinner, an outsider, a neighbor but not a friend, a hated collector of unjust taxes for the oppressive Roman Empire. Anyone whose wealth came from complicity with Rome was clearly a sinner, according to the crowd. Those who were outside the community because they were of a different race (like Samaritans), those who were outsiders because of illness (remember the lepers who must cry, “unclean, unclean”?), those who were born blind…aren’t they sinners, too?
And how do we decide now who is a sinner…who we will keep to the outside of our fellowship, who do we, like the crowd in Jericho, want Jesus to exclude? Are we still, despite Jesus’ witness, despite the Holy Spirit, despite the miracle at Pentecost and the travels of Paul, are we still seeing those whose language and customs and country are not like ours as sinners, outsiders, less than we are? Are we still wasting our time condemning the sick in mind and heart and body instead of offering the compassion and healing power of Christ? Are we still busy trying to decide who is in and who is out…who is a part of us and who is a sinner…who should receive Christ’s gift of salvation, and who should not?. Could it possibly be that we see ourselves so unclearly that we do not know our own sin? Can it be that it is you, and me, who is a sinner? Are we with Zacchaeus or with the crowd?
Zacchaeus was so moved by Jesus’ fellowship with him that he (probably very carefully) got down from the tree and received Jesus as his guest in his home, and in his heart. When Jesus welcomed Zacchaeus into his “crowd”, the tax collector’s life was changed…and he became a new person…and he promised to return all he had obtained unjustly, and make restitution, and give half of what he had to the poor. Jesus responds by affirming that Zacchaeus is restored to right relationship with God and with his Jewish community, a son of Abraham, because he has received salvation. Now, who is a sinner? Zacchaeus is so moved that he makes restitution above and beyond whatever sin and fraud he might have committed, demonstrating that his life has been transformed by this brief encounter with Christ. Jesus responds to the crowd by making it clear that Zacchaeus’ transformation is not only personal but that he has received salvation…and restoration in the eyes of God as a child of Abraham once more.
Can we rightly join the crowd and call Zacchaeus a sinner, knowing now that he was transformed by Jesus’ acceptance? Can we condemn with the crowd one who Jesus does not condemn? Can we decide who is with us, and who is not, knowing that Jesus, the Son of God and Son of Man, welcomed all who would come to him? Maybe Zacchaeus was a sinner…maybe…but he was also one who was willing to look past community and race and propriety and custom and his own flaws and failures to allow his life to be radically changed by the power of God and the fellowship of Christ. Who is a sinner? The one who condemns, or the one who seeks out new life?
Aren’t we all sinners?
We are.
This encounter with Jesus is not about what the crowd wants (the sinner humbled or Jesus for themselves), or what Zacchaeus wanted (did he even know?) but about what God wants: salvation for the lost and restoration of all people into the Kingdom of God. It’s not about rules…if it were, the rich young ruler might have made it and the Pharisees would have the inside track. Instead it’s about transforming relationships in which the power of God in our lives drives us to changed behavior because of the goodness and mercy of God. It’s not about us…it’s about God in us.
This is the really great thing about the Kingdom of God, about the Body of Christ, about salvation: it’s not about us. It’s not about our own sins and failings, because God loves us even more than that. It’s not about how we tend to clump together in groups and cliques, trying to decide who is like us and who is not, because God sees through all of that. It’s not even about who we like and don’t like, how we think things ought to be: Jesus is better than that. Who is a sinner? We all are, but that’s who salvation is for: not the one who is “perfect” and doesn’t think he needs God, but who those who will see that I am a sinner, you are a sinner, and we all need to be transformed by Jesus Christ.
It is not about us. It’s not about a desire to be a better person, to earn spiritual points to make a great show of how faithful you are. It’s about being changed by the power of God, and learning to see the world just a little bit like God sees it. It’s not about us…it’s about the other, the outsider, the one we can welcome, can help, can love, who might not receive welcome, help, and love anywhere else. It’s about the one who just might see Jesus for who he is, like Zacchaeus, if we can put our humanness aside and be the people of God. As the church, we are called to extend hospitality to all people in Christ’s name, and give them the opportunity to know Jesus.
It’s not about us. Have you heard it yet? Instead it’s about God’s love breaking into the world in radical contradiction to “the way things have always been.” It’s about a love so great that all our failures and inadequacies and pettiness are transformed into generosity of life and spirit…and yes, of the wallet. It’s about who Jesus Christ is, and what God is doing in the world.
The reason Zacchaeus receives salvation when the rich ruler didn’t is because Zacchaeus had a moment when it was about Jesus, and not about Zacchaeus. He abandoned his social stature as an agent of the government and a wealthy man and made a fool of himself climbing a tree to see Jesus pass by. He forgot to think about how it might look for him to be up in that tree…he forgot himself. In response to Jesus’ presence, Zacchaeus’ life was forever changed and he became a generous person, exceeding the law in his restitution and alms-giving. In that moment, it was not about him: it was about Jesus, the kingdom of God, and caring for others out of God’s great love for him. It is about who Jesus is and what God is doing in the world…about the Body of Christ and the kingdom of God.
When we set conditions and limits on the body of Christ, when we create barriers of appearance and behavior, when we make ourselves the arbiters of who God likes and who God doesn’t, then we are making it about us. In our often unintentional behavior toward those who are not like us: a different social class, a different way of dressing, speaking, eating, living, tattoos and piercings and hair in colors that do not occur in nature, we are excluding those whom Christ loves and has come to save. It’s not about us, except when we get in the way. It’s about saving the lost, whoever the lost may be. God loves people for their own sake, not because of anything we can do to win God over or any notion we have of being loveable ourselves. This is a good thing, because very often we are not…at least not apart from the grace of God.
In coming down from the sycamore tree, Zacchaeus learned who the world is meant to be in the kingdom of God. Although his neighbors seem to have written him off as a sinner, Jesus writes no one off. In joining Zacchaeus for an evening, Jesus restores him to his people, to himself, and to God, for eternity: a complete healing, and a witness to Jericho of who this Son of Man really is. And because he climbed the tree, Zacchaeus left for us a lesson in who is a sinner, and for whom is the kingdom of God. Thank God for men and women who are willing to set themselves aside and climb trees, and to remind us, again and again, of who we are, and for whom is the kingdom of God.
Who is a sinner?
The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.
Thanks be to God.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Monet in Normandy and Zacchaeus
Well, I’m preaching this week, which is fun. Sometimes I really miss preaching every week, and sometimes I’m glad not to have to do that part of the work. I had gotten really lazy, preaching from an outline and not preparing as well as I’d like. While I don’t feel that my congregations were really suffering or hearing bad sermons, I also kind of think I short-changed them and myself by not putting into my preaching all the effort I know it deserves.
So now, I get to preach once a month or so. At least, that is, until we start the new service. Then it looks like it will be once a month in the morning services and twice in the evening. It’s interesting looking at this week’s passage (Luke 19:1-10, the story of Zacchaeus) and thinking about how I would deal with it in both contexts. I’m enjoying the exercise…but I’m not getting Sunday’s manuscript written.
Of course, there’s the little matter of not working on it at all yesterday, too. I went to see the “Monet in Normandy” exhibit at the NC Museum of Art, which was really pretty great. I avoided Art Appreciation in high school and was too busy taking “serious” courses to take it in college, but I have always loved the Impressionists. On family trips to Washington, DC, I always held my family back on visits to the National Galleries because I wanted to linger over them. So I was excited to be able to see this exhibit.
The best thing about it was that the pictures are arranged more or less chronologically, so that we were able to see how his style changed over the years, and begin to see how the subject he was attempting to capture determined his technique. He was transformed in the effort to capture familiar subjects (the Rouen Cathedral, the Normandy coast) in literally a new light, studying them in as many as 14 paintings, all emphasizing a different light effect, weather, time of day, perspective. He saw these well-known places in a different way from the rest of the artists of his day, because he was able both to concentrate on minute details or to draw back and look at things from a distance. In painting so many studies of the same subject, he must have had almost an intimate relationship with them, feeling as if he knew them very well.
Unfortunately, the exhibit was limited by the crowd (although from what I’ve heard it wasn’t too bad compared to other days) and the fact that I couldn’t get far enough away from the paintings. It was a large exhibit in a relatively small gallery and so there just wasn’t any way to step back and take in a painting or series of paintings with any distance. I spent a good bit of time comparing brush strokes and painting techniques, a sort of can’t see the forest for the trees kind of approach.
Okay, back to my thoughts on Zacchaeus. I think it’s important to compare him to the rich young ruler, whose story appears in the chapter before old Zack. The ruler apparently was a righteous man, obedient to the ten commandments and keeping the law, but he was unable to part from his wealth. Zack was a tax collector. He may have been an observant Jew but he would have been despised for being an agent of the Roman Empire, and was likely to have made his fortune at the expense of his countrymen. It’s interesting that he was short: short in stature, surely, but he was not short-sighted when it came to Jesus: he was so intrigued by what he had heard that he climbed a tree (abandoning all dignity) to get a better view. His zeal apparently earns him Jesus’ attention and a backwards invitation: Jesus will be his guest that night.
Zack is so moved that he makes restitution above and beyond whatever sin and fraud he might have committed, demonstrating that his life has been transformed by this brief encounter with Christ. Jesus responds to the crowd by making it clear that Zack’s transformation is not only personal but that he has received salvation…and restoration in the eyes of God as a child of Abraham once more.
I’ve picked up “Who is a sinner” as a title (intentionally omitting a question mark) and thinking about “It’s not about you” as a theme, in that it’s not about what the crowd wants (the sinner humbled or Jesus for themselves), or what Zack wanted (did he even know?) but about what God wants: salvation for the lost and restoration of all people into the Kingdom of God. It’s not about rules…if it were, the rich young ruler might have made it. Instead it’s about transforming relationships in which the power of God in our lives drives us to changed behavior because of the goodness and mercy of God. It’s not about us…it’s about God in us.
So that’s the soapbox for today. Maybe, if I actually finish it, I’ll post the sermon tomorrow.
So now, I get to preach once a month or so. At least, that is, until we start the new service. Then it looks like it will be once a month in the morning services and twice in the evening. It’s interesting looking at this week’s passage (Luke 19:1-10, the story of Zacchaeus) and thinking about how I would deal with it in both contexts. I’m enjoying the exercise…but I’m not getting Sunday’s manuscript written.
Of course, there’s the little matter of not working on it at all yesterday, too. I went to see the “Monet in Normandy” exhibit at the NC Museum of Art, which was really pretty great. I avoided Art Appreciation in high school and was too busy taking “serious” courses to take it in college, but I have always loved the Impressionists. On family trips to Washington, DC, I always held my family back on visits to the National Galleries because I wanted to linger over them. So I was excited to be able to see this exhibit.
The best thing about it was that the pictures are arranged more or less chronologically, so that we were able to see how his style changed over the years, and begin to see how the subject he was attempting to capture determined his technique. He was transformed in the effort to capture familiar subjects (the Rouen Cathedral, the Normandy coast) in literally a new light, studying them in as many as 14 paintings, all emphasizing a different light effect, weather, time of day, perspective. He saw these well-known places in a different way from the rest of the artists of his day, because he was able both to concentrate on minute details or to draw back and look at things from a distance. In painting so many studies of the same subject, he must have had almost an intimate relationship with them, feeling as if he knew them very well.
Unfortunately, the exhibit was limited by the crowd (although from what I’ve heard it wasn’t too bad compared to other days) and the fact that I couldn’t get far enough away from the paintings. It was a large exhibit in a relatively small gallery and so there just wasn’t any way to step back and take in a painting or series of paintings with any distance. I spent a good bit of time comparing brush strokes and painting techniques, a sort of can’t see the forest for the trees kind of approach.
Okay, back to my thoughts on Zacchaeus. I think it’s important to compare him to the rich young ruler, whose story appears in the chapter before old Zack. The ruler apparently was a righteous man, obedient to the ten commandments and keeping the law, but he was unable to part from his wealth. Zack was a tax collector. He may have been an observant Jew but he would have been despised for being an agent of the Roman Empire, and was likely to have made his fortune at the expense of his countrymen. It’s interesting that he was short: short in stature, surely, but he was not short-sighted when it came to Jesus: he was so intrigued by what he had heard that he climbed a tree (abandoning all dignity) to get a better view. His zeal apparently earns him Jesus’ attention and a backwards invitation: Jesus will be his guest that night.
Zack is so moved that he makes restitution above and beyond whatever sin and fraud he might have committed, demonstrating that his life has been transformed by this brief encounter with Christ. Jesus responds to the crowd by making it clear that Zack’s transformation is not only personal but that he has received salvation…and restoration in the eyes of God as a child of Abraham once more.
I’ve picked up “Who is a sinner” as a title (intentionally omitting a question mark) and thinking about “It’s not about you” as a theme, in that it’s not about what the crowd wants (the sinner humbled or Jesus for themselves), or what Zack wanted (did he even know?) but about what God wants: salvation for the lost and restoration of all people into the Kingdom of God. It’s not about rules…if it were, the rich young ruler might have made it. Instead it’s about transforming relationships in which the power of God in our lives drives us to changed behavior because of the goodness and mercy of God. It’s not about us…it’s about God in us.
So that’s the soapbox for today. Maybe, if I actually finish it, I’ll post the sermon tomorrow.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Convert's Zeal fading...
I failed to post yesterday. I meant to, honest, I did, but I just couldn't think of anything to say. I apologize in advance for this post. I still can't think of anything to say. Being a pastor and preacher, however, I'm trained to say something, even when my mind's a blank. So here goes...
Nope, nothing there. Mind's a blank. Tabula rasa.
Maybe Friday will be better. Yep, you heard it, I'm skipping tomorrow too. But at least I have a good excuse...I'm going on a little road trip.
Nope, nothing there. Mind's a blank. Tabula rasa.
Maybe Friday will be better. Yep, you heard it, I'm skipping tomorrow too. But at least I have a good excuse...I'm going on a little road trip.
Monday, January 8, 2007
New Wine in Old Wineskins? Not So Much...
We're gearing up to start a new contemporary worship service here at the church, and it so far has left me with all kinds of questions. I haven't been to many contemporary services--none if you don't count my flirtation with Pentecostalism (lo, these many years ago) and Emmaus gatherings. Being who I am, this has 2 effects: 1) it produces stress, and 2)I'm doing a lot of reading and research.
The hard part is taking all this information and trying to create something that is genuine and real where we are now. I've read a little bit about what works for Ginghamsburg, and that's not for us. So far what I've taken from that is that some visuals are better than none and to use what amounts to stage dressing to create a mood/enhance the message of the service. I'm reading another book, a "worship manual" no less, that hasn't satisfactorily answered my questions about discipleship. I'm reading a great deal about worship evangelism and how to be friendly to the "prechurched" but not a lot about how to integrate both kinds of worship into one church community. In fact, the manual seems to suggest that the thing to do is to create a separate worship body around the contemporary service and to keep it light on theology and spiritual growth.
What I really dream about are small groups, Bible studies, mission teams, and fellowship events that are filled with children, youth, and adults of all ages. I have this fantasy of the church as a body, composed of people who genuinely feel like they are a part of God's family, who are anxious to do something: to worship, to grow spiritually, to care for one another, to be radically compassionate, to live fully in relationship to God and one another. I imagine a church which meets in multiple worship settings, multiple small groups, but in which all these little circles overlap so that there is truly a sense of unity, even as we recognize how diverse we are in age, race, life experience, color, worship style, etc.
I think this is a big part of the desire to start a new church: to avoid dealing with the church structures we inherit when we become pastor of a church and to create new ones they way I want them to be. And I'm suspicious of this. To begin with, it sounds on the one hand lazy (don't want to do the work of helping a congregation move to this kind of model) and on the other hand like a lot of work (don't want to start from scratch either).
This is all a part of what I wanted when I agreed to consider being an associate pastor: I hoped that I would be working with a senior pastor who shared something like this vision of how church could be, and that I would be learning how to help it become reality. And I think on that end, I've fallen into "high cotton" working with my senior pastor. I think we both see potential in the church we serve to be even better than it is (and it's pretty great, most of the time), and see different (mostly complementary) ways of getting there. I have to admit that it's a lot more fun that I had imagined, but it's also busier than I had dreamed. I play here...and this is just one more part of the game, I guess...
The hard part is taking all this information and trying to create something that is genuine and real where we are now. I've read a little bit about what works for Ginghamsburg, and that's not for us. So far what I've taken from that is that some visuals are better than none and to use what amounts to stage dressing to create a mood/enhance the message of the service. I'm reading another book, a "worship manual" no less, that hasn't satisfactorily answered my questions about discipleship. I'm reading a great deal about worship evangelism and how to be friendly to the "prechurched" but not a lot about how to integrate both kinds of worship into one church community. In fact, the manual seems to suggest that the thing to do is to create a separate worship body around the contemporary service and to keep it light on theology and spiritual growth.
What I really dream about are small groups, Bible studies, mission teams, and fellowship events that are filled with children, youth, and adults of all ages. I have this fantasy of the church as a body, composed of people who genuinely feel like they are a part of God's family, who are anxious to do something: to worship, to grow spiritually, to care for one another, to be radically compassionate, to live fully in relationship to God and one another. I imagine a church which meets in multiple worship settings, multiple small groups, but in which all these little circles overlap so that there is truly a sense of unity, even as we recognize how diverse we are in age, race, life experience, color, worship style, etc.
I think this is a big part of the desire to start a new church: to avoid dealing with the church structures we inherit when we become pastor of a church and to create new ones they way I want them to be. And I'm suspicious of this. To begin with, it sounds on the one hand lazy (don't want to do the work of helping a congregation move to this kind of model) and on the other hand like a lot of work (don't want to start from scratch either).
This is all a part of what I wanted when I agreed to consider being an associate pastor: I hoped that I would be working with a senior pastor who shared something like this vision of how church could be, and that I would be learning how to help it become reality. And I think on that end, I've fallen into "high cotton" working with my senior pastor. I think we both see potential in the church we serve to be even better than it is (and it's pretty great, most of the time), and see different (mostly complementary) ways of getting there. I have to admit that it's a lot more fun that I had imagined, but it's also busier than I had dreamed. I play here...and this is just one more part of the game, I guess...
Saturday, January 6, 2007
A bonus...
I just finished writing this week's newsletter article and figured I'd share it:
“To ‘see’ Jesus as the Christ, God’s Word incarnate, is not to gaze at him, but to see the point: to know oneself called, in absolute dependence upon the mystery of God, to follow him. And of course, we do so largely in the dark.”
Nicholas Lash, Believing Three Ways in One God
I saw a little piece of video from “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” this week that reminded me of this quote. Aslan, the lion, the Christ figure, is dead on a stone table, slain by the White Witch in the place of Edmund, who is guilty of the capital crime of betraying his family. The once-fierce lion looks pathetic in death, battered and bloodied, with his glorious mane shaved off. At his side are Lucy and Susan, the two Daughters of Eve, wondering what to do with themselves and how the fight against the forces of evil can be won, but also knowing the fight must go on. Finally they leave, to go add their gifts to the battle. As they take their first few steps, as the sun comes up, as their hearts are heavy within them and they wonder how life can go on…the table breaks, and the lion lives and suddenly life is in their grasp again.
Lucy and Susan spent that night in the dark, following Aslan to the table, witnessing his sacrifice, and mourning his loss. They did not understand, anymore than the Witch did, the “deep magic”: if an innocent offers himself in place of the guilty, even death is turned back.
We follow Christ ourselves mostly in the dark. God is a mystery to us: we know about God, we know God in our own way, but still there is that which we do not understand, and God continually surprising us, amazing us, stretching us and shocking us with grace and mercy and the miracle of death turned back on itself. This is life, this is redemption…this is the mystery of God, Father, Son and Spirit.
“To ‘see’ Jesus as the Christ, God’s Word incarnate, is not to gaze at him, but to see the point: to know oneself called, in absolute dependence upon the mystery of God, to follow him. And of course, we do so largely in the dark.”
Nicholas Lash, Believing Three Ways in One God
I saw a little piece of video from “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” this week that reminded me of this quote. Aslan, the lion, the Christ figure, is dead on a stone table, slain by the White Witch in the place of Edmund, who is guilty of the capital crime of betraying his family. The once-fierce lion looks pathetic in death, battered and bloodied, with his glorious mane shaved off. At his side are Lucy and Susan, the two Daughters of Eve, wondering what to do with themselves and how the fight against the forces of evil can be won, but also knowing the fight must go on. Finally they leave, to go add their gifts to the battle. As they take their first few steps, as the sun comes up, as their hearts are heavy within them and they wonder how life can go on…the table breaks, and the lion lives and suddenly life is in their grasp again.
Lucy and Susan spent that night in the dark, following Aslan to the table, witnessing his sacrifice, and mourning his loss. They did not understand, anymore than the Witch did, the “deep magic”: if an innocent offers himself in place of the guilty, even death is turned back.
We follow Christ ourselves mostly in the dark. God is a mystery to us: we know about God, we know God in our own way, but still there is that which we do not understand, and God continually surprising us, amazing us, stretching us and shocking us with grace and mercy and the miracle of death turned back on itself. This is life, this is redemption…this is the mystery of God, Father, Son and Spirit.
I love my office
I do. I admit it. I love it when the rest of the staff are here, because this is really a great place to work. But I also love it when it's quiet, and I can sit at my desk and read, write, explore the Internet...
I'm an extrovert at heart. At least, so says the last MBTI. And I'm married to an off-the-charts introvert. He likes to spend his Saturdays in relative quiet, storing up his energy for the week to come. Me? I'm looking for something to do, even if it's just go to the local coffeehouse and read in the presence of people. That's how I get energized, at least some of the time: by being around people.
I had a major epiphany this week: I like going to conferences and seminars. Ben does not, even a little. They are like introvert hell to him. All the people, the noise, the displays, the schedule oppress him, while I'm trying to figure out how to leave with 5 or 6 workshops' worth of content when there are only 4 workshops scheduled. I take notes (yes, I'm one of those) and come home and type them up and visit all the recommended websites and look at the books. I'm excited about sharing some of this past week with some of the church folk. I did have a clever notion this week: some of us who seem to turn up at the same events ought to plan ahead a little and share notes...that way I could squeeze more learning out of it than time usually permits mere mortals.
This week I'm researching emergent church online and reading about contemporary worship services. The fun part of all this is taking it back to my own context: this great church in this wonderful community--and figuring out what works for us here in the larger context of what seems to be working for others and what my United Methodist heritage has to offer.
It's all convert's zeal, no doubt. Next week I may be chasing something else. But I've got this sense that God's put me in this place and at this time for a purpose...to learn, to have experiences I couldn't where I was, to develop a sense of who I am in Christ, who I am called to be, and how I can help others find their own way to Christ--how I can help others connect to a community that spans time and space, that lives here and now and is profoundly counter-cultural, even as it speaks to and operates within different cultures.
Ah, who knows...but that's where I am today: somewhere between "what's Sunday's MYF program?" and "what's the meaning of life?"
Maybe I've had a little too much quiet time...I'm outta here!
I'm an extrovert at heart. At least, so says the last MBTI. And I'm married to an off-the-charts introvert. He likes to spend his Saturdays in relative quiet, storing up his energy for the week to come. Me? I'm looking for something to do, even if it's just go to the local coffeehouse and read in the presence of people. That's how I get energized, at least some of the time: by being around people.
I had a major epiphany this week: I like going to conferences and seminars. Ben does not, even a little. They are like introvert hell to him. All the people, the noise, the displays, the schedule oppress him, while I'm trying to figure out how to leave with 5 or 6 workshops' worth of content when there are only 4 workshops scheduled. I take notes (yes, I'm one of those) and come home and type them up and visit all the recommended websites and look at the books. I'm excited about sharing some of this past week with some of the church folk. I did have a clever notion this week: some of us who seem to turn up at the same events ought to plan ahead a little and share notes...that way I could squeeze more learning out of it than time usually permits mere mortals.
This week I'm researching emergent church online and reading about contemporary worship services. The fun part of all this is taking it back to my own context: this great church in this wonderful community--and figuring out what works for us here in the larger context of what seems to be working for others and what my United Methodist heritage has to offer.
It's all convert's zeal, no doubt. Next week I may be chasing something else. But I've got this sense that God's put me in this place and at this time for a purpose...to learn, to have experiences I couldn't where I was, to develop a sense of who I am in Christ, who I am called to be, and how I can help others find their own way to Christ--how I can help others connect to a community that spans time and space, that lives here and now and is profoundly counter-cultural, even as it speaks to and operates within different cultures.
Ah, who knows...but that's where I am today: somewhere between "what's Sunday's MYF program?" and "what's the meaning of life?"
Maybe I've had a little too much quiet time...I'm outta here!
Friday, January 5, 2007
What's bugging me today...
Not much of anything, to tell the truth.
I'm home from the Congress on Evangelism...I did not realize how close Myrtle Beach is, although why I'd want to leave my quiet little coastal town to go to their busy coastal city is a mystery. Learned a lot, though...I think Bishop Scott Jones may go on my hero list, along with Ellsworth Kalas, who was already there. It's been a fun year for meeting people who have been influential in my life in some major way.
I met Eugene Peterson at a conference in October...even played groupie and had him sign a book--not The Message, though. I know he did the translating/paraphrasing of it and all, but I couldn't have him sign a Bible. I discovered Peterson when I was working in Christian retail and NavPress was releasing The Message. I was also trying to figure out what I was called to do...volunteer in ministry, be a DCE or other church professional, or what. My pastor at that time was less than helpful...not a fan of women in ministry, I was told. I don't know. But I read The Message and then started looking for more of Peterson's work. His books on pastoral spirituality really shaped who I am today, and helped me see that ordained ministry is my calling.
Back to this week's festivities: We still seem to be struggling for a definition for the term "postmodern", even as we wonder whether it's meaningful to us at all. I've seen it in so many different contexts, referring to technological savvy, the phenomenon of "disaffected youth" (and conversely, activist youth), and, my favorite definition, cribbed from Len Sweet: postmodernism is characterized by holding two seemingly contradictory positions: so ancient worship practices and modern technology can coexist in worship, war is evil and necessary, God's kingdom is present in the world today and is still yet to come, there is that which can be concretely explained and that which should and will remain a mystery.
To some extent, maybe Christians have always had a little postmodern in them. The "now and not-yet" of the Kingdom of God and mystery of faith would seem to suit us uniquely...we ought to have something coherent and valid and relevant and compelling to offer. But I guess the real issue becomes how do we make what we have to offer coherent and valid and relevant and compelling?
I guess that's one thing I'm trying to work out for myself in these little musings: if in fact God and the Church have something to offer that can give meaning and depth and purpose to our lives, how do we do it? How do we make sense of what we can, and share Christ's life, death, and resurrection in a way that offers hope and life to those who aren't connected to it yet? How do we say, "you were born for this," in a way that people can connect to? How do we encourage people to join our Christian community when there are so many competing communities and faiths to choose from?
That's a pretty big "one thing" but hey, what's a journal for, anyway?
I'm home from the Congress on Evangelism...I did not realize how close Myrtle Beach is, although why I'd want to leave my quiet little coastal town to go to their busy coastal city is a mystery. Learned a lot, though...I think Bishop Scott Jones may go on my hero list, along with Ellsworth Kalas, who was already there. It's been a fun year for meeting people who have been influential in my life in some major way.
I met Eugene Peterson at a conference in October...even played groupie and had him sign a book--not The Message, though. I know he did the translating/paraphrasing of it and all, but I couldn't have him sign a Bible. I discovered Peterson when I was working in Christian retail and NavPress was releasing The Message. I was also trying to figure out what I was called to do...volunteer in ministry, be a DCE or other church professional, or what. My pastor at that time was less than helpful...not a fan of women in ministry, I was told. I don't know. But I read The Message and then started looking for more of Peterson's work. His books on pastoral spirituality really shaped who I am today, and helped me see that ordained ministry is my calling.
Back to this week's festivities: We still seem to be struggling for a definition for the term "postmodern", even as we wonder whether it's meaningful to us at all. I've seen it in so many different contexts, referring to technological savvy, the phenomenon of "disaffected youth" (and conversely, activist youth), and, my favorite definition, cribbed from Len Sweet: postmodernism is characterized by holding two seemingly contradictory positions: so ancient worship practices and modern technology can coexist in worship, war is evil and necessary, God's kingdom is present in the world today and is still yet to come, there is that which can be concretely explained and that which should and will remain a mystery.
To some extent, maybe Christians have always had a little postmodern in them. The "now and not-yet" of the Kingdom of God and mystery of faith would seem to suit us uniquely...we ought to have something coherent and valid and relevant and compelling to offer. But I guess the real issue becomes how do we make what we have to offer coherent and valid and relevant and compelling?
I guess that's one thing I'm trying to work out for myself in these little musings: if in fact God and the Church have something to offer that can give meaning and depth and purpose to our lives, how do we do it? How do we make sense of what we can, and share Christ's life, death, and resurrection in a way that offers hope and life to those who aren't connected to it yet? How do we say, "you were born for this," in a way that people can connect to? How do we encourage people to join our Christian community when there are so many competing communities and faiths to choose from?
That's a pretty big "one thing" but hey, what's a journal for, anyway?
Thursday, January 4, 2007
Look what I did!
Okay, so I've just been to a conference with a workshop on the internet and ministry. My first thought was: hey, cool! And I have to admit I'm sold on blogging...after all, what pastor doesn't live for a place to tell other people what they think? I've always wanted to journal and rarely been consistent with it, but I'm committed to this...at least for the next 30 days.
I've had some second thoughts as well. Will I really keep it up? Will anyone ever read what I write? How much do I care about that? But hey, it's 30 days...and maybe in 30 days I'll try it for 30 more.
It's interesting how vulnerable this feels. So far I haven't shared any confidences, really shared much of anything at all...but the potential's there. I have "put myself out there", to abuse a cliche, and put myself at the mercy of the great and powerful blogosphere. It's like going to a new school: will anyone talk to me? Will they like me? Will they be mean? I don't have to be popular but do I have anything to offer that anyone cares about?
So here it is...I plan to post pretty much daily about my life, my work, my family, and my life with God. I hope by sharing where I am, I can figure out a little more about where I'm going...the blog as discernment tool. Hey, I just figured that out, right now, as I was typing. Maybe this will be a good thing after all.
I've had some second thoughts as well. Will I really keep it up? Will anyone ever read what I write? How much do I care about that? But hey, it's 30 days...and maybe in 30 days I'll try it for 30 more.
It's interesting how vulnerable this feels. So far I haven't shared any confidences, really shared much of anything at all...but the potential's there. I have "put myself out there", to abuse a cliche, and put myself at the mercy of the great and powerful blogosphere. It's like going to a new school: will anyone talk to me? Will they like me? Will they be mean? I don't have to be popular but do I have anything to offer that anyone cares about?
So here it is...I plan to post pretty much daily about my life, my work, my family, and my life with God. I hope by sharing where I am, I can figure out a little more about where I'm going...the blog as discernment tool. Hey, I just figured that out, right now, as I was typing. Maybe this will be a good thing after all.
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