An Altared State of Living

Text this week--1 Kings 18:20-39

When I made the transition from the local church to military chaplaincy, one question was on the mind of a lot of people: “Do you play well with others?”  They weren’t asking about my social skills, but my ability to work in a setting that requires facilitating for the religious practices of other people; they wanted to know—they being my Religious Organization/Church and the Navy—whether I could function in a pluralistic setting.

So I became fairly adept at telling the story of my circle of friends back in the states.  It sounds like I’m setting up a joke as I tell it.  “A Christian Pastor, a belly dancer, an atheist, a Muslim, and a Wiccan walk into a coffee shop…they embrace one another, shake hands, share a meal, and—shockingly-nothing blows up.”  I love my friends. I can't wait to have coffee with them this summer.

So, then, as I met the text this week from 1 Kings, I found myself doing a lot of reflecting, a lot of prayer, a lot of searching.  What do we do with this kind of text in a world where religions are literally at war with one another?  What do we do with a text full of religious mockery when we live in a time of religious extremism?  How do we faithfully, and respectfully, treat it?

We start by remembering that this is not about Elijah versus the Prophets of Baal.  And as difficult as it may be to grasp, this text is not about religious war.  This text is about God’s calling his people back into faithful relationship.  Rarely are prophets sent to convert the nations (those stories do arise, perhaps the most memorable being Jonah and the people of Nineveh...but I sometimes wonder if that story is about the conversion of the people of that city or the conversion of the prophet...); more often than not, prophets are called to convert the people already identified as the people of God.  This text is one of those cases.

For three years there has been a drought.  For three years the crops have withered and died, and with the crops the trust of the people has also withered and died.  They have prayed and they have made offerings, and yet there is still no rain.  They have prayed and made their offerings but still the crops wither and die.

But there is the Canaanite god, who goes by the name of Baal.  This god is the god of agriculture, the giver of rain and the grower of crops.  So the people of God, set their chips somewhere on the line of red and black, hedging their bets between YHWH and Baal.

Isn’t that what we do when things get thin, though?  We may not relinquish our identity of faith, but we certainly try to juggle multiple identities in order to hedge our bets.

For example.  After the terror attacks on September 11th, I led a prayer vigil at my home church.  We opened the building for prayer and led a service of hymns, with scripture passages for mediation, and we prayed.  One of the texts for the evening service was from 1 Peter 3, “Don’t repay evil for evil or insult for insult.”  We also used Romans 12:20-21: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink. By doing this, you will pile burning coals of fire upon his head. Don’t be defeated by evil, but defeat evil with good.”  After the service was over, a member of the church came up and said, “Those texts were just un-American. We can’t do that or we’ll become doormats for the world. As Americans we just can’t live that way.”

We just can’t live that way, so I’ll set my chips somewhere on the line between this and that.

So Elijah sees this hedging of bets, he feels the ache of God in his heart for a faithful people, and he takes on the prophets of Baal in dramatic display, much like Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop-Shopping outside of Target or Starbucks.  The showdown is full of flair and it must have been something to see, one of those places where we would like to be a fly on the wall or have a hidden camera recording the whole thing so we could put it on YouTube.

But before Elijah challenges the prophets: he challenges the people: “How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.”  What an amazing question.  How long will you let your indecisiveness ruin your lives?  We cannot sustain that kind of living.  We cannot be fully committed to two different belief systems; how does the saying go “jack of all trades, but master of none?” So whatever it is that we choose, we need to live it fully.

It is a reckoning back to Joshua exhorting the people of Israel: “choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

The choice is always there.  God will never force us to love him, because a coerced love is not real love.  But if you have vowed to love, then stick to it.

I have always counseled individuals and couples regarding vows.  I take vows very seriously, whether they are vows of marriage, ordination vows, or vows of church membership.  If you promised, in the presence of God, by the Spirit of God, to give yourself to something, then do it.  And do it fully.  No one is forcing you to take these vows--no one is saying you can’t wrestle with them.  I wrestle with my ordination vows on a frequent basis--my promises to be faithful to Christ and my promises to be faithful to the Church and my promises to be faithful to the Bishops and the Book of Discipline do not always intersect with ease.  But I have made those promises.  I have made my choice.

The same holds for the youth I have confirmed and the adults I have baptized.  No one forces you to participate in these rites.  These are not rites of passage but covenant relationships we enter into, hopefully with full knowledge of what they require of us. 

To self-identify as a child of God is a choice.  But it is a choice that brings responsibility with it.  (Anyone else hear a little echo of Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben?)

The drama that unfolds between God of Elijah and the prophets of Baal, is not about warring religions; it is about calling the people of God back to a faithful relationship.  And while the Church could always stand to have a few more committed hearts, the world does not need any more extremists--of any religion.

In a three year drought, there is no logic to wasting water. 12 jugs of water in total are dumped on the altar as Elijah prepares for his prayer.  And while each of the 12 stones and each of the 12 jugs of water has a certain symbolism, I’m not concerned with that at this point in time.  If you dumped 12 large jugs of water--a scarce commodity in a time of drought--onto the wood for a bonfire, you don’t expect anything to catch.  You don’t foresee a spark, or a black smoldering mess of smoke, you don’t expect anything to happen.  AND you are looking at the prophet who has ordered this to happen like he is the biggest fool on the face of the earth; how and why waste all that water?  And yet, in the midst of foolishness, God still lights a fire for his children.  God lights a fire so that we might believe.  

In the least likely of places, in the least likely of circumstances, in a situation where you least expect to find a spark, God pours out the fires of heaven.

This gives me hope.  This gives me encouragement when so many people are talking about decline.  Where we least expect it, fires are being lit like the warning beacons of Gondor.  In small country churches, altars are catching on fire.  In small urban churches full of addicts and prostitutes, altars are catching on fire. In house churches around the world, full of people who have given up on the institution, but not on the Church, altars are catching on fire.  Where we least expect to see God at work--that’s where it’s happening. 

The drought did not end after Elijah’s high drama, not for a while at least. And, sadly, the people of God still have not stopped hedging our bets.  But the good news is that God is still God, and we always have altars that are looking for flames to be ignited from.

I will always remember what the president of my seminary said one day in Chapel.  Dr. Zeiders said the altar is the place where we are called to alter our lives.  The altar, whether set with candles, flowers and a Bible, or with the Holy Meal, is a place ripe for transformation, the place where, with the people of Israel, we can say, “The Lord indeed is God; the Lord indeed is God.”  As it was true for Elijah and the people of Israel, may it be so for us today.

Amen.

Wrestling Through the Night

(A reflection on Romans 5:1-5)

A couple of weeks ago at morning PT, I said something that got a few folks laughing.  I used a phrase that will send my daughter, Kathryn, into a fit of anger when her brother speaks it, a phrase we’ve all said or have heard spoken to us.  

We were doing base line runs on the soccer field at Nimitz Park with some form of calisthenics exercise at either base line.  A couple of younger Sailors were groaning about how horrible this workout was, how much it hurt, so Chaps put on his best sweaty smile and said, “Hey, you know what this is good for?  Builds Character!” And at that particular phrase, they started even louder: “You hear what Chaps says, this builds character!  Chaps is CRAZY!”

I don’t necessarily like that particular saying, I didn’t like being on the receiving end of it as a teenager, and I know my teens don’t care to hear it.  None of us do, and yet, here’s Paul talking to us today: “Suffering, Endurance, Character…Builds Character!”  And for many of us, we shut down at that word "character" because we don't want to hear that our physical or emotional pain is for our spiritual gain.

But Paul doesn't stop at character, even if we get hung up on that word.  Endurance builds character, but not just Character…Hope.  And with our hope, eventually, comes peace.  The thing is this can all turn pie in the sky really fast.  Or, if we aren’t careful, it can come across as a bumper sticker theology, or cloyingly cliché, ipecac theology.  You know ipecac right? The stuff that induces vomiting? Ipecac theology is the stuff that people say that makes us vomit in our mouths just a little bit.

So then, what does hope and peace look like for us as we suffer?  One commentary says, “Real peace is not something we automatically wake up with in the morning.  Real peace with God is a verb. It is more often a sweat-blood-and-tears process that requires of us an active cultivation of our relationship with God. It means having constant contact with God.”  For some constant contact looks like prayer, searching the Scriptures, or worship.

When I try to visualize constant contact with God, especially in the midst of suffering, I can only think of Jacob wrestling with God and saying, “I will not let you go until you bless me.”  And we struggle through the long and dark night until eventually light breaks and blessing comes.  And with the blessing comes a new, God-given, Grace-based identity, and afterward our walk is changed forever.

What then do we do with the idea that our justification (salvation) puts us right with God and yet we continue to suffer?  What do we do with those who would say to us that our suffering is a result of our individual or societal sin?  For Paul’s audience, this was certainly the case.  If you were suffering or enduring a trial, it was directly related to your disobedience to God, much like Job’s friends offered by way of counsel, much like the disciples asked Jesus about the man who was born blind (“who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”)

Is our forgiveness—our justification—a ticket to a life free from suffering?  Some would say yes, but life tells us otherwise.  And depending on where we fall in that area of thinking, we may feel disappointment when faced with suffering.  We may feel shame.

Paul says, in verse 5, “and hope does not disappoint us…” other translations say, “hope does not put us to shame.”  So when we find ourselves in places and moments of suffering we are not put to shame as we wrestle with God, as we strive to stay in constant contact with God, to keep our hope alive.  

And why is it that certain types of suffering are considered shameful? Why are displays of grief, expressions of loneliness, things that make us feel embarrassed? Why do we mask the realities of family addiction, or the pain of divorce?  Why do we feel shame in these moments?

Perhaps it is because we live in a culture that sees asking for help as a sign of weakness?  I am not just speaking of the military culture, it happens in the private sector, too.  Children are shamed for asking for additional help or direction in school, shamed by classmates, sometimes shamed by teachers.  

I recently heard about a family readiness program that happened during the month of the military child. The children were asked to write down positive ways their family handles stress.  One child wrote: “Suck it up.”

Why are we a “suck it up” culture? Because suffering and shame go hand in hand.  When we try to get to the source of someone’s suffering, we seek explanations, and usually ask in subtle or not so subtle ways, “what did you do to cause this?”

Sometimes, many times, we don’t do anything; it just happens.  And what we need, as people, are not answers to the question “Why?” but folks who will wrestle down hope with us.  Folks who will say, “I hate that you have to feel this pain. I am so sorry.”

How do we get to from suffering to hope?  With friends who sit with us, who weep with us, who wait with us…leaning on the promises that—even if by sheer will and determination—we will make it to tomorrow, we will make it through, one day at a time, until eventually we see the breaking of the dawn and the end of our dark night.

Meditation, Soul Saving, and the Life We Have to Live

I found myself recently frustrated that the general perception of Christianity is that we are only interested in sin management or the mass conversion of others, as if we are some kind of spiritual pyramid scheme and our eternal rewards as individuals increase with each person we get to “buy into” our product of Jesus Christ and Going to Heaven. (Maybe it is more accurate to say that the product du jour is escaping eternity in hell…)

I recently read an article about how a Baptist turned Buddhist Army Chaplain is creating a meditation and resilience center in Afghanistan (link to article) which made me proud that the military is seeing spirituality and prayer as something that makes us stronger and offers healing benefits, and more than just a lucky rabbit's foot tacked onto the occasional ceremony.

What bothered me (bothers me) is the lack of attention that we give to meditation and contemplation as Christian Chaplains (and Christians in general).  Many of the articles shared about military chaplaincy and Christianity are written in a negative light and tell of the harmful effects of proselytization.   Christians are painted as angry purveyors of an angry God.

There it is again: Christianity is only about mass conversion and sin management.  

And yet there is John Wesley’s admonition to his preachers: “You have nothing to do but save souls; therefore spend and be spent in that work.” This commission weighs so heavily on my heart, because anything Wesley said to his preachers applies to my Methodist self and there is something absolutely necessary about this work!

But when I think of saving souls…I think of the spouse who has been cheated on and lacks a sense of self-worth.  I think of the service member who has been sexually assaulted and now has issues of trust and a devalued sense of self-esteem.  I think of the troops who have survived combat and carry the spiritual and emotional damage that goes along with that.  I think of all those who are forced to live a closeted existence because to be completely honest about who they are (and who they have been created to be) means exile from family and friends, means exclusion from the Church and the One who made them…I think of the many different faces that sit in Chapel—and have sat in congregations I have served in the past—who are the people behind each of these generic statements…

In the spiritual exchange of penal-substitutionary atonement, their soul is safe the moment they accept “that Jesus died for their sins”; nothing to worry about any more.  But from a spiritual direction, and spiritual wholeness perspective many of them, while saved from “eternal damnation” have souls that live a tortured existence…they have souls that still need saving and need people who will spend and be spent in this work.

When I served in the local church, there was a man who would not cross the threshold of the church building because of the things he endured during World War II.  How many people in our world are in similar places, staying away from God and the wholeness that Grace offers because they are living with the horrors they have caused or that they have had perpetuated upon them.

Can the Church (and those of us who serve) come back to a place where we embrace meditation and contemplation as an avenue of healing and wholeness, a place where we experience at-one-ment with God through the Great Physician Jesus Christ or are we relegated to simply being sellers of cheap fire insurance?

I for one stand with the Saints of Spiritual Direction: Henri Nouwen, Richard Foster, Barbara Brown Taylor, Richard Rohr, Brennan Manning, and so many others.  All of whom are fully committed to the need for the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, all of whom are head over heels in love with the Giver of Grace, while still being generous and charitable to our sisters and brothers of other faiths.  I stand with them because they speak, write, teach and live in a holistic practice of this faith I know and love.

Holding Down our Tabernacles

Image courtesy of http://www.cruzblanca.org/hermanoleon/

I have always loved comic books so when a comic book character or story makes a transition to television, I am a happy person.  For the seasons it was on television, Smallville ranked pretty high on the list of “must watch TV.”  In one episode a group of superheroes from the 31^st century comes back to our time to visit with Clark Kent and they are surprised to find out—in Smallville’s timeline anyway—that Superman hasn’t made it to “Superman” status yet.  One character asks, “Hey, Kal, where’s your cape?” Clark asks back, “Cape?”  A few minutes later two of the 31^st century heroes are talking, “Are you sure that’s the right guy?” The other says, “It’s him.” The first says back, “I don’t know.  No glasses, no tights, no flights.  So far he’s nothing like the Man of Steel.”

If glasses, tights and flights make the Man of Steel, what then, is the Community of Faith without the presence and gifts of the Holy Spirit?

The Feast of Pentecost answers that question for us.  One pastor writes about the Before-and-After Pictures of the Disciples: “Before Pentecost, they were dense, timid bumblers who fled at the least sign of trouble. Afterwards, they were fearless leaders. They healed the sick and cast our demons. They went to jail gladly, where they sang hymns until the walls fell down.”

Pentecost is like graduation day or the day we get kicked out of the nest and are given our wings.  But the diploma is grace-given, not earned through hard work.  The wings and the flight are Divine gifts, not natural talents.  The transformation that happens through the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is anything but natural.

Pentecost comes from the Greek, meaning “50^th”.  Before the day was claimed as the Church’s birthday, it marked the Feast of Weeks for the Children of Israel, celebrating the Spring Harvest.  The feast happened 50 days after the offering of the sheaf of first-fruits at the time of Passover and Unleavened Bread.  In later Judaism, the festival marked the giving of the Law and Covenant made at Sinai.  

So now, 50 days after the Resurrection of Jesus, the first-fruit from the grave, we have a different sort of harvest that occurs.  There is a new manifestation of God’s timeless Law, a new sign of God’s covenant…the indwelling of God’s Spirit.

Go with me for a moment to the conclusion of the book of Exodus.  The final chapter of Exodus describes the Tabernacle’s completion: “So Moses finished the work. Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle…the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, before the eyes of all the house of Israel at each stage of their journey.”  Once the tabernacle is finished, the glory of the Lord, the visible sign of God’s presence, descends in fire and cloud upon the dwelling place of God.

From Genesis, where God walked in the garden with the first humans, to Exodus, where God crashes from heaven to earth to dwell in the tabernacle, to Jesus where fully God and fully human get wrapped together in one flesh, to the Day of Pentecost where once again, God’s Spirit crashes to earth with wind and fire to take up residence in the Temples of the New Covenant, it is safe to say that God is not satisfied with a life of remote transcendence, but desires intimate imminence with Creation. 

Pentecost reminds us that the gift of saving grace is – at its core – personal and communal, for one and for many.  Our manifestations of the Spirit are for others to see Christ at work in us, for them.  To think that the presence of the Spirit is for us alone, for my personal gain and nothing else, is to stifle the Spirit of God.  And if we do that, if we make God our servant, put God at our beck and call, may God have mercy on us.

Pentecost, the day in the history of the Church when the disciples were locked in a room, waiting for the promise of God, and what they find is that God’s promise looks like a reversal of Babel’s curse.

Babel showed what humanity could do when working together for our own gain (as well as God’s ability to thwart our selfish endeavors); Pentecost shows us God’s partnership with humanity to use the power of the resurrection for God’s purposes and for God’s kingdom.  (As Peter’s first sermon concluded, 3,000 new members are added to the Church!)

Speaking of Babel, I recall watching a movie when I was a child about the stories of the Bible, maybe it was by Cecil B DeMille or someone like that.  The portion of the Tower of Babel has always stuck with me—not because it was so accurate to the text, but the way the story was told.  I remember as the tower was completed a man stood on top and launched a flaming arrow into the heavens, almost as if he was saying, “From this height, I can kill God!” And at that point the languages became mixed up, our unity for self-promotion was shattered, with a flaming arrow to the heavens.

But on Pentecost, Babel’s fiery arrow comes back down, not as a returned curse but as God’s blessing.  The Spirit’s descent may appear violent and chaotic, as Luke describes the event with ‘violent wind…divided tongues, as of fire…’ and an eruption of different languages from around the world, but this is the same God who entered the first tabernacle with fiery cloud and who descended upon Sinai with crashing thunder.  God’s movement makes noise.

I went camping in Palm Desert in California one year during Spring Break, our tent was in a valley and one night we were sitting out listening to music and talking and this wind begins to work through the valley we had set up in.  It started out as a gentle wind, evening breeze, nice and refreshing after a hot day in the desert, but it kept building, blowing harder.  We started laughing because at some point “Riders on the Storm” by the Doors had come on, but it became so violent that I had to hook my arm through the door of the tent to keep it from blowing away, and I wasn’t entirely sure that I wasn’t going to go for a ride with the tent.

I sometimes wonder if we don’t hold down our tabernacles, hook our arms to things, to prevent us from being blown away by the rushing wind of the Spirit, fearful of the places God would take us if we just let go.

Red Tail Lights: An Ascension Meditation

Image courtesy http://www.cruzblanca.org/hermanoleon/

When I left home for bootcamp in 1989, my family quoted this song to me in a card:

“Daniel is traveling tonight on a plane

I can see the red tail lights heading for Spain

Oh and I can see Daniel waving goodbye

God it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes.”

And for whatever reason, whenever Ascension Sunday rolls around, I cannot help but think of Elton John.  My pastor and mentor once told me that on some Ascension Sunday before he retires, he’ll have the church sing “I’m leaving on a jet plane.”  

All of this is to say the Feast of the Ascension is one of those holy day festivals in the life of the Church that is important, for a majority of people, due to its theological significance, but otherwise, we aren’t exactly sure what to do with it.  

It’s in the Creed, in one form or another; the Nicene Creed says:

“He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.”

and usually when the Church takes the time to include a portion of Scripture as a creedal statement, we want people to know it’s a foundational piece of what the Church believes.

That being said, it’s not so important that, like Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, we create festivals of lessons and carols around it, or, like Easter, ensure that it’s always on the Lord’s Day, a Sunday.  

The Ascension happened 40 days after Jesus rose from the dead.  The actual Feast Day was this past Thursday, but because those of us who follow a liturgical calendar believe it is important, we option the last Sunday before Pentecost as either the 7th Sunday of Easter or Ascension Sunday. And 40 is a theologically significant number throughout Scripture: 40 days/nights of rain, 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, 40 days of fasting for Moses, Elijah, and Jesus.  40 days of continued teaching after the resurrection.  There’s so just based on the number of days we know there’s something worth paying attention to.  

So what do we make of this particular passage, this foundational piece of our faith.  Is the Ascension of Jesus important only because it provides a transition from Jesus to the Holy Spirit?  Is it important only  because it gets us from earth to heaven?  Or is it only about looking and waiting for Jesus to come back for his own?

As you might imagine, I have some thoughts on this...and they come from one particular sentence: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”

Think for a moment about where the Disciples have been, what they have been through.  Jesus called them from ordinary lives of family and the family business to an itinerant ministry of healing and preaching.  Then in an unexpected twist, he is arrested and executed, taken from them and just when they thought it was back to the ordinary life again, Jesus is back, raised from the dead.  As unlikely and truly miraculous as it seemed, there he was.  Teaching them again, going from place to place, showing the victory of God against the power of death.  It was kind of like when the Eagles reunited in the mid 1990’s except Jesus’ resurrection was a true conquering of Hell and Death.

So there they are again.  Just like the good old days: Jesus and the Twelve--actually the Eleven because Judas hasn’t been replaced yet.  It’s almost like nothing really changed. Until the 40th day when he leads them out to a mountain top, commissions them one final time, and rises from earth to heaven.

How do you not stand there watching the red tail lights headed for Spain?

You start by remembering that Jesus told you something important before he rose to heaven.  You remember that he gave you a mission, a purpose.  And as long as you are standing there, looking at the sky, you aren’t living your purpose.  

Luke moves us in the Acts narrative from his Gospel’s focus on the 2nd person of the Trinity to the work of the 3rd person, the Holy Spirit.

With the Ascension we are moved from passively waiting for Jesus to come and fix things to actively participating in the work of the Holy Spirit here and now.

The thing is, lots of folks in the church are still just looking up at heaven waiting passively for Jesus to do something.  A lot of us are missing out on the purpose that Jesus gives to us.

I follow Ricky Gervais on Twitter.  He’s a comedian, an actor, and an atheist and a critic of the Church.  He sent out a tweet a few weeks ago that said something like, “I think I’ll save myself lots of time, energy and money and just pray that the all world’s problems will go away.”  Another one said, “Do something? No, I think I’ll just pray about it instead.”

As hard as it may be for some of us to consider advice from an Atheist, sometimes we need to listen to what people who are not part of us have to say about how we conduct ourselves and show that we are precisely NOT what they say we are.  Prayer is seen, in the eyes of Ricky Gervais and many critics like him, not as actively working with God, but just waiting on God to do something for us.

Richard J. Foster has this to say about prayer: 

“Certain things will happen in history if we pray rightly.  We are to change the world by prayer.”

But, what is prayer? What does it means to pray rightly?  He goes on to say:

“Prayer involves transformed passions. In prayer, real prayer, we begin to thinks God’s thoughts after him; to desire the things he desires, to love the things he loves, to will the things he wills.”*

In short, to pray is to align our will with the will of God.  If we pray rightly, we aren’t just waiting for God to act, we begin to act WITH GOD.

Pastor and Author Dan Kimball says:

“The Church was born for this very mission.  Jesus didn’t just call his followers to believe in him as their Savior; he sent them out to follow him and serve the world on his mission.  Jesus didn’t tell his followers to sit around, attending church meetings and singing songs, just waiting to die and then go be with him in heaven.  Instead, Jesus told his followers to go into the world and with the power of God’s Spirit, live as a people on a mission from God, bringing the love and message of Jesus to others...the Church was created not to be an inwards (or upwardly) focused group of passive people but a Church with an outward focus, on a mission to serve others in the world.”**

Or in the immortal words of Jake and Elwood:

“It's a hundred and six miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses...Hit it.”

Like I said, Ascension is a funny kind of feast day. Not ha ha funny but strange funny and we don’t know what to do with it.  But at the core of the Ascension is a promise of presence.  And at that, we can begin to sing a song that our Jewish sisters and brothers sing at Passover.  “Dayenu” is the song.  Dayenu (pronounced "Die-yay-new") means, basically, “It would have been enough for us.”  The stanzas recognize the depth of grace in each action of God on their behalf.  But each stanza also builds on the previous one, acknowledging that God is never satisfied with “enough” when it comes to His children.

To give you an example, the song sung at Passover begins: ”if God had brought us out of Egypt but not carried out judgments against them it would have been enough...Dayenu.  If God had carried out judgments against them and not against their idols...Dayenu...”

Our version might say:

If God had come in person, to redeem our human nature but not raised him from the dead...Dayenu...it would have been enough. 

If God had raised Jesus from the dead, to destroy death’s power over us but not lifted Jesus up...Dayenu...it would have been enough. 

If God had lifted Jesus up from earth, to open heaven to us but not given us his Spirit...Dayenu...it would have been enough.  

If God had given us his Spirit to provide a means of grace and hope but not given us a mission...Dayenu...it would have been enough.***

-----------

* Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline. (HarperOne, October 1988)

** Dan Kimball, Adventures in Churchland:: Discovering the Beautiful Mess Jesus Loves (Zondervan, June 2012)

*** I owe a huge debt of gratitude to a sermon by Rev. Joshua Bowron from whom this section of Dayenu is inspired and paraphrased.

Earth Day, Cigarette Butts, and Epiphanies

We recently celebrated Earth Day with a base-wide clean up.  

As in previous years, the agency organizing the event held a contest between different groups on base with regard to weight of trash brought back to the recycling center.  Whenever there is a contest, people bring out the heavy items.  They get creative in terms of weight by scooping up wet leaves, a few small items in a shovel full of dirt or sand.  It is entertaining to watch the level of innovation that people will put into their efforts when they have something to gain.  (I think it’s akin to the late Eddie Guerrero’s tag line, “I Lie! I Cheat! I Steal!”)

At one point during the morning I was off on my own, relishing a bit of solitude, and I wandered up to this section of fencing that partitioned one parking lot from another.  All along the fence line there were hundreds of cigarette butts.  I'm an ex smoker so my initial response to these types of finds is usually anything but charitable.  But I stooped down and began picking up small butt after small butt, and I knew that my bag of trash wasn't going to be heavy, but that area of the parking lot, in that small area of our base, was going to be clean.

And it was right about then, as I was crouched down, scooping up cigarette butts that I had an epiphany.  Not an "aha moment" epiphany, but a God speaking to me with absolute clarity epiphany. “This is the most important work ever.”

How many people ignore the cigarette butts?  How many people see them and say, "I ain't picking up those nasty things!" ( I only say that because I have heard those exact words from others.) We're very interested in the big items that have lots of weight and offer chances for recognition and we bypass the little cigarette butts but picking up the small things is vital work.  

In my time in the Church, and I still consider my extension ministry being “in the Church” regardless of what others say or believe, I’ve noticed the enthusiasm that folks have for the large scale projects that earn recognition; maybe it’s because large scale projects only require short-term commitment. But when it comes to the daily work of “just picking up cigarette butts,” work that doesn’t get a kudo or a Bravo Zulu, work that doesn’t have some easily noticed, measurable metric attached to it, we just don’t have the attention span or the level of commitment that the work requires; we get frustrated by it because just when we think we have them all picked up, dammit there’s another one!  And--in the end--we just don’t don’t want to deal with “those nasty things.”

As for me, I’ll keep going on with the most important work.

Famous Last Words

If you knew you had 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes of time to speak to the world, what would you say?  If you knew you had you parting shot, your moment for “famous last words,” how would you use it?  What would you say to those by whom you want to be remembered?

Maybe you’ve thought about what you would say to the commander of a unit as you’re getting ready to check out and you know you’ll have the opportunity to give honest assessments.  I often think of the need to say something absolutely profound and important as I’m leaving a church community.  I wonder, “What words do I want them to remember?  What is most important?”  By what last words would you like to be known?

Jesus gives us eleven words: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.”

One writer says: “Simple enough for a toddler to memorize…profound enough that most mature believers are repeatedly embarrassed at how poorly they comprehend it and put it into action.”

For the most part, we are probably thinking, “Yeah Jesus, right there with you.  Got it; Love one another.”  And then in walks the last person on earth you want to see, she sits right next to you, and you think, “But not her.” And then you’re walking about town and you bump into someone else and you think, “Not him.” And then you hear about this group, or that group, both of which make you angry beyond belief, and you think, “Oh please, Jesus, Not them.”  On the whole, we’re doing okay on loving one another, until it gets real and love stops being easy, and then we feel the burden of the fact that Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment.”

And Jesus, being a savvy kind of guy, looks at the disciples…the same ones who argued about greatness, the same ones who were about to make dust and abandon him as he gets arrested, the ones who would deny knowing him, who would forego testifying on his behalf, the ones who would let the stress of his final hours destroy their relationships with one another…Jesus looks at them and adds, “Just as I have loved you, you also must love one another.  By this the world will know you are my disciples.”  

Just as we think we have an out by saying, “But Jesus, I couldn’t love right there because I was too stressed out, too freaked out, too betrayed, too angry.”  He says the way we love isn’t within our own standards, but within his.

Maybe he knew we’d remember his command to love God with all we are and to love our neighbors as ourselves, and then say, “But I don’t love myself so much right now so…’no love for you!’”

Jesus is aware of how self defeating we can be, of how by the book we can be, so he makes the plumb line of loving one another the love that he has for us.

A portion of this passage is read on the Thursday before Easter, Maundy Thursday.  And every year I preach on the washing of feet and the new commandment.  This year I came to a conclusion that when Jesus says, “Do what I do. Love like I love. Follow my example.” It’s not so much about the actual washing of feet.  It’s about giving the grace behind it.  Jesus takes on the willingness to deal with our dirt so that we will follow his example and deal with the dirt of others.  He gives us his grace, not for our sake alone, but so that we’ll give it to others because the love we share, the grace we give it’s not our love, our grace, our forgiveness; it’s Christ’s.  

And maybe it’s good that he gave this teaching around the table where we would eventually gather in living memory of his sacrificial love; because when we gather, we know that the playing field is leveled; we all need grace, we all still need saving, and as we look around the room of everyone who is gathered at the feast of grace, we see just how big and how welcoming the love of Christ is.  And just as he welcomes, so should we.  Just as he loves, so do we.  Not because we are obliged, but because we know how great it feels to be loved.