gathered under wing

Some folks really enjoy stirring the pot.  There was this time in 8^th grade when a fellow student came to me and told me about one of our classmates who was angry with me and wanted to have a fight after school.  I didn’t know it at the time, but this same classmate went to the other student and said the same thing to him about me.  There wasn’t any conflict between the two of us.  Some folks just enjoy stirring the pot and seeing what kind of stink rises from the disturbance.

I don’t know, and neither do many scholars, why exactly the Pharisees came to Jesus with this warning about Herod.  The inclination may be to say they’re just stirring the pot because the Church has a tendency to villainize the Pharisees, but the reality is that we just don’t know why they came with the warning about Herod.  Some Pharisees were supportive of Jesus’ ministry, even if others were out to get him, like Herod was out to get him.

It is possible that the Pharisees were thinking that if Jesus knew his life was on the line, if he knew that Herod was out to kill him for the ministry he was completing, that Jesus would back off, settle down, lie low and find something else to do.  That is how we are inclined to operate most of the time.  We get fired up about a cause, we get momentum going around a project, we get moving in the right direction of a call we have and then resistance happens, or someone tries to shut us down because they don’t agree with our cause or like our project or they think our work will cause too much conflict, and so we quit or we decide to wait until a “better time” -- which never comes, by the way -- action on behalf of a Christ-like love will always be seen as “unwise and untimely” by those who would protect the perceived peace that is offered by the status quo.  It is entirely possible that the Pharisees were warning Jesus in an attempt to dissuade him from continuing his ministry.

But Jesus (there’s my favorite phrase again… “But Jesus”) … Jesus is focused on the work that is before him, no matter the cost.  

He says tells the Pharisees to tell Herod that his work isn’t finished.  There are still demons to be cast out and healings that need to occur and that on the third day his work will be complete (which is a clear pointer to the final triumph of the Resurrection).  He says quite clearly that Jerusalem is his destination, even though, like so many prophets before him, it means his death.  

This is where it gets good, though.  You might think that Jesus would have nothing good to say about Jerusalem; that maybe he’d go in there looking a bit like Django Unchained, or Rambo; that maybe he’d just bypass the city altogether because they aren’t deserving of his goodness.  But he doesn’t.  Jesus doesn’t go Django or Rambo; he doesn’t cold shoulder Jerusalem.  He laments over Jerusalem.  He says, “How often I have desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.”

One pastor tells the story of a barn fire in a parish he served; the loss of property was terrible, but during the fire animals were also trapped in the barn, so livestock was lost as well.  After the blaze was put out a mother hen’s body was found wings outstretched, protecting her brood from the flame.  She gave herself to protect her children.

This is Jesus.  In the flailing of life, where we have the tendency to spend so much time running around in panicked circles seeking ways to survive, sometimes, many times, to the detriment of others, he is there willing to stretch out his wings, his arms, to sacrifice himself for us.  This is what he offers to Jerusalem; this is what he offers to the Pharisees, and probable even to the fox-like Herods, as they stir the up the pot; this is what he offers to us.

There is a phrase in one of the Prayers of confession: “Most merciful God, we confess that…we have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.”  And then a litany of failures follows.  They are hard words to pray some days.  Because they force us to think about all the ways we do not love God with everything we are; and they force us to be confronted by our failure to take care of one another, to love one another as Christ loves us.  Like it or not prayers like these align us with foxes like Herod and with cities that kill prophets and stone those who are sent to us.

But Jesus, Jesus looks at us as tells us that we are welcome under the protection of his wing. That our not-so-sly scheming, that our political maneuvering in the social realm, in the professional realm, even in the religious realm, our scheming and our maneuvering can be forgiven, will be forgiven, has been forgiven, if we will just turn to him and learn what it means to love as we have been loved.  

There is a saying that all roads lead to Rome.  In the gospels, all roads lead to Jerusalem: the city that kills prophets and stones those who are sent to it.  But it isn’t Jerusalem that gets the last word, as final as that word may have seemed to those who stood on the hill on Friday, and even to those who hid from the hill on that Friday.  Jerusalem doesn’t get the last word.  The Pharisees don’t get the last word.  Herod doesn’t get the last word.  

Jesus gets the last word.  And that word is grace.  And grace invites us to come, broken as we are, to be made whole.

Identity Check

The text for this week was Luke 4:1-13

Love draws people close.  When we meet that special someone, we want nothing more than to spend hours and hours alone with that person; getting to know more about them, soaking up their presence.  When children are born, our instinct is to hold them, and hold them, and hold them just a little bit longer; cradling them close to our hearts, even to the point of napping in chairs while their little bodies rest against ours.  Love draws people close. So it’s no big surprise that after his baptism, Jesus is led off by the Spirit of God.   

If you follow the continuity of the narrative, Jesus has just been baptized by John.  The voice of God has just confirmed the identity of Jesus: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”  It’s hard not to be full of the Holy Spirit after having your God-given identity verified...

These words must have been ringing in the ears of Jesus after he left the crowded banks of the Jordan for the less populated locale of the Judean wilderness.  “You are my Son, the Beloved.”

If you have ever participated in a silent retreat you know that some very challenging things can emerge in those quiet times.  Spiritual directors will most times give people breath prayers for seasons of silence: The prayer of the publican, “Lord have mercy upon me a sinner,” “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,” “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me” are just a few.  Priest and author Brennan Manning tells of his experience of claiming this passage from scripture: “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me.” (Song of Solomon 7:10 NASB).

Can you imagine the power of praying something like that in silence?  What an empowering passage.  “I am my Beloved’s and his (God’s) desire is for me.”  The words would roll in your head and into your heart; how could anything possibly disrupt the power of those words?  How could anything possibly disrupt the power of hearing God’s own voice declaring, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased”?

And yet, it is precisely in these types of situations where echoes, memories, phantom voices, new voices, the Enemy—it’s in these moments that we begin to hear other voices.  “If you are God’s Son...If you are REALLY the Beloved...and if God is REALLY well pleased with you...”

Traditionally scholars have looked at the temptation in the wilderness in terms of temptations to use power for selfish reasons and to achieve fame or popularity, and in service of someone or something other than God and God’s purposes.

 I can’t help but notice, however, that Satan says twice, “If you are the Son of God...”  Yes, at the end of 40 days of fasting Jesus’ resistance would have been very low and the urge to use his divine power for his own benefit would have been very hard to resist.  But when we are weak, when we are tried, it is so easy to give into despair and forsake our knowledge that we are the Beloved. When our energy is low we are apt to not have the patience to serve others and will most likely only look out for #1, or we give in to the ever present temptation to sell out to the vote of popularity—everyone will love me, I will be the object of praise, and so what if who God has made me to be is sacrificed just a little bit? ...or give in to despair and believe that IF God really loves me, he won’t let this tragedy happen and if he does, then I’m not loved…in fact I know I’m not loved because I’m all alone and I’m tired and I’m hungry…

At the core of all of these is the Imposter who lies to us and tells us we aren’t the beloved; we aren’t Children of God and God is not well pleased with us.  These lies come to us when we are alone, they also come to us when we are confronted with our brokenness and need for repentance.  How can anyone accept me when I’m this much of a mess?  How can anyone believe in me when I’ve failed so many people?  The liar says no one will accept us, no one will believe in us…

Easter on the other hand, that celebration that lies at the end of our 40 day journey through the wilderness, Easter promises us that no matter how many lies are thrown our way, no matter how difficult the trials may be, no matter how much of a mess we are accepted and forgiven, no matter how many people we have failed we are still believed in and forgiven.  No matter what, God is still God and we still belong to our Abba.  We are not forsaken.  We are marked and we are sealed and we forever belong to our Beloved whose desire is for us.  

2013 Ash Wednesday Ramblings

The text from Joel Chapter Two rolls around every year on Ash Wednesday.  And when I think of Joel, I think of someone that Heath Ledger's Joker would lean down and ask, "Why so serious?"  Because Joel says, “Bad things are on the horizon.” Like any number of prophets before him and after him, Joel says, “Trouble is coming, so change your ways; clean up your act.”

At least that’s where he starts. And by starts I mean spends the bulk of his discourse.  But there is an awesome little nugget buried in his discourse about bad times.

I would bet--and I’m not really a gambling person--but I would bet that most of us have been on either the giving or receiving end of a statement like: “If this happens again, you’re going to be...” (grounded, written up, standing in front of the Captain, etc.)

Granted, there is a time and a place for “Come to Jesus talks,” and enforcing negative consequences certainly creates compliance.

But I’m thinking, and wonder if you don’t agree, that God is interested in more than just compliance.  Because compliant people aren’t joy-filled people.  They are compliant; they are afraid of being in trouble and so they toe the line.    What God is after, ultimately is our hearts, our complete and total devotion.

There happen to be a few sets of words that have changed my life; one set is this: “This will be so much easier if you just admit that you love me.”  They came from my best friend.

Lately as I ponder what it is to undertake the season of Lent and the disciplines that we are invited to be molded by--and ultimately what I understand the life of a Christian to be about--I hear the words spoken by my best friend, “This will be so much easier if you just admit that you love me.”

When I first encountered the season of Lent it was as a zealous convert to Eastern Orthodoxy who wanted nothing more than to prove my holiness by observing each day of the fast with perfect diligence, if for no other reason than I didn’t want to have to mention my failures during confession.  

But I have the words spoken through the prophet Joel rolling around in my head and in my heart.  “Even now,” says the Lord, “return to me with all your heart.”

Christ in the sermon on the mount says that if you are fasting to show others your holiness, then you certainly have that reward.  And if you give alms so that folks will pat you on the back, or so that your name ends up on a brass plaque donors' tree, then that is all the reward you’ll get. And if you want to comply with the legal portions of the law to avoid being in trouble, then you’ll get that, too!

(Yes, I’m paraphrasing...but it’s preacher’s privilege.)  

“Return to me with all your heart,” God says. “Rend your hearts and not your clothing.”  Do what you do out of love for God and you will know how deep the love of God is and you won't want any other thing than God's love.

But don’t worry about the outward signs if the inward status is cold and compliant. Joel, Jesus, the season of Lent, they all remind us that these things we do as demonstrations of repentance, they just signify our desire to get our life (our real life, our whole and total life) back on track with God.  Repentance, the act of turning away from selfishness and sin toward God in Christ, is a whole body action requiring outward signs, visible demonstrations; but we are called to remember that the outward signs are a reflection the inward reality.

Fading Radiance

The text for this week was Exodus 34:29-35

There are certain words that scare us.  They’re practically dirty words for some people.  One of those words is “vulnerability.”

Paul writes (in 2 Cor. 3:13) that Moses wore a veil “to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside.”  Many scholars say this is a metaphor for a movement from the Mosaic Covenant to the New Covenant in Christ; additionally we can also take it for what it says: Moses wanted to hide the fading radiance from others; he wanted to keep the reality of his life from being seen by the people he was called to lead; he was afraid to be vulnerable.

Top Four from a Google Search of “Vulnerability”

1. Vulnerability “The ability to withstand the effects of a hostile environment” (Wikipedia)
2. Vulnerability (Computing) “a weakness which allows an attacker to…” (Wikipedia)
3. Brené Brown “The Power of Vulnerability” TEDTalk
4. “Susceptible to physical or emotional injury…susceptible to attack.” (Free Dictionary)

“Vulnerability is not weakness. And that myth is profoundly dangerous.”(Brené Brown)

Interview with Brené Brown:

Why should we foster vulnerability in our relationships?

…there can be no intimacy—emotional intimacy, spiritual intimacy, physical intimacy—without vulnerability. One of the reasons there is such an intimacy deficit today is because we don’t know how to be vulnerable. It’s about being honest with how we feel, about our fears, about what we need, and, asking for what we need. Vulnerability is a glue that holds intimate relationships together.

How does vulnerability relate to our capacity for joy?

As someone who spent more than a decade studying fear, vulnerability, and shame, I never thought in a million years that I would say that joy is probably the most difficult emotion to feel. It’s hard to feel joy because we are so keenly aware that it’s fleeting. When we lose our tolerance for vulnerability, we lose the courage to be joyful. Joy is a daring emotion! We are going to let ourselves stop in a moment that won’t last forever, that can be taken away. We feel almost that “you are a schmuck if you let yourself feel too deeply because the bad stuff is going to happen.”

Bad stuff is going to happen and the radiance of joy will fade, so we veil our faces and hide the reality of what life is like from people we are blessed to share life with.

This passage in Exodus is not just about vulnerability in community though; what we read is about Moses not hiding his fading radiance from God. When Moses entered the Tent of meeting, he would uncover his face, allowing God to see the wear and tear of life on his spirit.

Can I stop for a moment and ask you to consider whether or not you are capable of letting God see all the wear and tear of life that might be sitting upon you?  Can I ask you to take a moment and set aside any expectations you may have inherited that tell you to be stoic in your faith walk and just be real and uncovered before God?

As a leader Moses felt the full brunt of the calling God had placed upon him.  He wrestled with the Lord on a regular basis, interceded on behalf of his “stiff necked people” on more than one occasion, settled disputes between the people (many of which had to be petty disputes), and lived with the realization that he was a pretty flawed human being who did not deserve to enter into the presence of God but was welcomed anyway.

Two quotes.  The first is from a Christian psychiatrist named Gerald May, from his book Addiction and Grace:

Honesty before God requires the most fundamental risk of faith we can take: the risk that God is good, that God does love us unconditionally. It is in taking this risk that we rediscover our dignity. To bring the truth of ourselves, just as we are, to God, just as God is, is the most dignified thing we can do in life.

The second comes from Brent Curtis and John Eldredge in the book Sacred Romance:

From one religious camp we’re told that what God wants is obedience, or sacrifice, or adherence to right doctrine, or morality. Those are the answers offered by conservative churches. The more therapeutic churches suggest that no, God is after our contentment, or happiness, or self actualization, or something along those lines. He is concerned about all of these things, of course, but they are not his primary concern. What he is after is us—our laughter, our dreams, our heart of hearts.

It almost reads that the psychiatrist is saying we experience freedom in our vulnerability before God, but a tremendous number of people are afraid of taking that “risk.”  And the other authors/pastors are saying that God desires nothing more that raw honesty and complete vulnerability.  

Be a Moses.  At least in terms of letting God see and heal all the chips in your paint job, be a Moses. We cannot help but have certain degradation in our personal and spiritual “material readiness” the least we can do for ourselves is accept that God can and will receive us no matter how broken we know ourselves to be.

An extra piece for us to take from this is related to our faith communities.  My prayer has always been that we can/will cultivate communities of authentic vulnerability, communities that reflect the posture of God’s readiness to receive, communities that let the bruised and broken come just as they are, with no need to hide behind veils of false pretense; communities that say, “we know your radiance has faded, come stand in the light of God’s presence with us and we can be healed together.”

Thoughts on Fasting and Giving Gifts

I remember being in Italy and looking for a gift to bring home to my wife.  It's not that she is difficult to shop for, it's that I want to get her the PERFECT gift.  Not just a "hey honey I was in Milan and got you a glittery plaster statue of Il Duomo" gift; a meaningful gift that says "hey honey I was in Milan and saw this and it just screamed your name" gift.  The. Perfect. Gift. That is what I want for my wife most of the time, which makes gift giving holidays kind of stressful for me.

Which brings me to the season of Lent.  Towards the end of dinner a few nights ago we were discussing what to bring to the Chapel's "Fat Tuesday on Sunday" fellowship lunch and that led to the next logical question: "What are you thinking about giving up for Lent?"

Being of a Protestant tradition of the Christian faith, there aren't any specific fasting traditions or requirements. In the Eastern Orthodox Church you will most likely encounter fasting from meat, dairy, eggs, wine/alcohol, and oil.  In the Roman Catholic tradition you will most likely meet with individuals who are limited to fish as the only meat they can eat on Fridays.  On the Protestant side of the family tree, there aren't quite so many limitations, which means that there is usually some ind of discussion as Lent draws near about how we want to approach the 40 day fast. 

What has recently occurred to me is that maybe we should approach the decision to fast with the same level of care with which we choose gifts for one we love.  After all, fasting is a gift given in love to the God who saves us through Christ, why not choose the pattern of fasting with the same care-filled hearts we choose gifts with. 

For the season of life that I lived in the Eastern Orthodox Church, I let my life be governed by a dietary calendar.  Pink days on the calendar were fasting days, if there was a little fish in the corner it meant that seafood was permissible. 

Permissible.  That's a pretty telling word about my approach to the fast. It was rules-based and driven by my desire to not need to confess to the priest that I had not kept a particular fast day.  There was very little love behind my discipline.

After moving into the Protestant neighborhood, I had seasons where I would not be dictated by a calendar and therefore never kept much of a fast at all.  There were also seasons where I made the choice to take up a discipline and found that in taking something up I was forced to lay something else aside and grew in my love for God and my walk with Christ. 

Now I find myself motivated by wanting to find the perfect gift. And I am reminded of these words that are part of the Ash Wednesday liturgy every year: "Even now," declares the Lord, "return to me with all your heart."

I don’t want to go as far as to say, “It’s the thought that matters,” because that’s not entirely true.  But I do believe that fasting disciplines are more meaningful to us if we put our hearts on the line and consider the why behind the fast.

Thoughts on Love

I’ve presided at more than a few weddings where the bride and groom have had 1 Corinthians 13 read because they feel that it is such a romantic passage.  There may be a few of you here today who had this passage included in your wedding, or want to have it included in your wedding someday.  It’s a good passage to use as the “mission statement” for a marriage…as long as you understand that Paul is not referring to being “in love”…romantic love…he is not talking about Eros. The word he is using in Greek is Agape and what Paul means by agape is love like God has for humankind. (A short and somewhat sloppy definition, to be sure...)

Agape is…agape is…agape is…

The love God demonstrates for us is…

This is what Paul is saying.

Like I said, it is a good passage to use as a “mission statement” for a marriage…as long as you understand what Paul is talking about.

Putting this passage into context is important.  It comes on the tale end of Paul’s teaching about spiritual gifts.  Some ancient texts have “And I will show you a still more excellent way” as the beginning of Paul’s discourse on the gift of love, because living in and with the love that God has given to us the more excellent way.

Some have said that the goal of the Christian life is this thing called “Theosis,” a growing in Christ-likeness.  John Wesley called it Christian perfection.  Others have referred to it as entire sanctification, which begins with the moment of salvation and continues over the course of our life.  So if the goal of the Christian life is to live like Christ, by the Grace of Christ, then the greatest gift we can receive and share is Love of Christ. Or maybe think of it like this, any spiritual gift we have received is for the purpose of being able to love like Jesus and we need to use them in community to get the fullness of that love.

I read a sermon recently by Lutheran Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber, where she speaks of the word faith being in the middle of Paul’s list of spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12.  She says that she never thought of faith as a spiritual gift before, but once she stopped to think about it, it makes perfect sense and it gave her a certain amount of peace to know that some people are gifted with faith at levels some of us are not.  And in community, we need folks with mountain moving faith.  Amen?  The spiritual gift of faith comes up again in Chapter 13.  Paul says, “If I have all faith, so as to move mountains, but have not love…”

Love is a gift of the spirit, greater than faith, greater than hope.  Love is longer lasting than anything else.  Love is the gift Paul encourages us to strive after as we grow in Christ’s likeness.  

Practically speaking, what does love boil down to? Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes:

There are neighbors or others who continually say evil things about us, who abuse us, who openly wrong us, who torment and harass us whenever they can. At the mere sight of them, the blood rushes to our heads, a terrible threatening anger. It is the enemy who provokes such a thing in us. But now we must be on our guard. Now we must remember quickly: I was met with mercy, not by people, no, but by God…Now we hear: repay no one evil for evil. Do not lift your hand up to strike, do not open your mouth in anger, but be still…perpetuating injustice does harm. Indeed, the evil one wants to accomplish only one thing with you; namely that you become evil…Therefore repay no one evil for evil.

This is love.  When tempers flare, when we want to lash out in a lack of patience, when we are exhausted and have no energy to talk with peace anymore, we are called to love.  Jesus never says to love when it’s easy, in fact he says that anyone can love when it’s easy.  He says his followers are people who love when there’s nothing to love.

Because that’s when we were loved.  When by all rights there was nothing to love about us, God kept on loving.  Like the words of a prayer of Thanksgiving, “When we turned away and our love failed, Your love, O God, remained steadfast.”

Love, especially the way God loves, is an eye opening thing to come to terms with.  If we can let ourselves believe it, it can change our self perceptions and then, if we let ourselves be overcome by it, it can change—it wants to change—our perceptions and dealings with others.

For example, it is very easy to jump on the bandwagon of humiliation and condemnation when public figures “fall from grace” (as the saying goes).  A few recent examples were when a pastor from Seattle sent out a tweet questioning the president’s faith in God and belief in the Bible he placed his hand upon for the oath of office.  After the tweet there was a firestorm of rebuttal and condemnation towards the pastor, as well as a flurry of tweets, Facebook posts and blogs in support of the statement.

More recently a pastor had an judgment failure with regard to a group gratuity on her bill at a restaurant—which in an of itself is a failure to demonstrate the kind of love Paul speaks of in this passage—but my news feeds have been full of shared slams of this pastor, some of which essentially question the integrity of her practice of faith…

It is so easy to fall into these traps…I even sent out this tweet the other day: 

“wish folks would stop getting hung up on the perceived sins of others; work on your own planks…and I’m not talking about fitness.”  

As soon as that tweet hit the ‘verse I sent this one out: 

“and suddenly I feel guilty for getting hung up on the perceived sin of being judgmental…crap balls this spiritual life thing is hard.”

Indeed.  This life of Love that God calls us to is difficult.  It means laying aside our selfish desires, working out our own salvation with fear and trembling, all the while remembering that we are God’s beloved--“forever  marked by God’s grace” as one of my favorite pastors recently said in a baptismal sermon—even when fall short of the mark.  Because the love that God has for us, sometimes, that’s the only reason we have for getting back up and trying again.