Advent 3A: Are You For Real?

The phone call went something like this: “She’s a nice girl,” I said. “She says we’re soul mates.”  “You’re not soul mates,” said my friend. “Are you sure?” “Yes, I’m sure.”   A couple of years later, another phone call with my friend: “She dumped me,” I said. “I thought she was the one…I was fairly certain she was the one.”  By the way, this one, that I thought was the one, isn’t the one who said she was my soul mate.  The friend I was talking to, the one I was pouring my heart out to,  turns out she was The One.

There had been a long line of would be Messiahs, revolutionaries, and prophets before Jesus, the most famous and perhaps the most disheartening was Judas the Galilean.  Most of them preached liberation from Rome and the coming Kingdom of God (as a political and ethnic reality); all of them ended up imprisoned or dead.  The people were crying out for their soul mate to arrive; they were looking for The One who would finally set things right, but in each case they walked away thinking, “I thought he was the One…I was almost certain he was the One.”  And so John and his disciples look to Jesus as possibly being the One, but his actual signs look different from the signs they want, so they wrestle with these questions and bring them to Jesus: “Is he the One?” “Are you the One…the One we’ve been waiting for? The One we’ve been expecting? Or do we keep waiting?”  

And if you think about it, most of the people walking into churches these days are asking the same questions.  In the pluralistic world we live in, people are looking to have their questions answered.  Is Jesus The One?  As much as I am not a fan of the idea of a religious marketplace, we have to come to terms with the reality that people are looking for something that works as much as they are for something that feels right.  In the years I’ve spent leading congregations, so much of how we spend our time is marketing one congregation against another or one style of worship against another…and what we’re missing are the questions, the deep and searching questions, that people are bringing with them—even if they’ve been in the church for years—some of you probably have them today.  So many people are wondering if Jesus is the One that is worth giving up everything for, if he’s the one they’ve been waiting for.

Sometimes the questions about Jesus really being who he says don’t occur until a crisis, though.  When John sends the questions--something has changed.  Something has changed between the baptism of Jesus and now, when John begins asking questions.  Now John is in prison.  As one pastor says, “It’s easy to believe in God int he bright sunlight when all is joyful and free, but let the iron doors of difficulty slam shut, and doubt is there in the darkness. ‘Are you for real, Jesus?’ ‘Can religion matter in my case, in my condition, with my concerns, or has it reached the end of its usefulness?’”

I was talking with someone this week who said to me, “I wish I could believe in religion or God because then, at least, there would be something stable in my life.”  

These questions are real.  And, sometimes, these questions are a matter of life and death, a matter of clinging to hope rather than giving in to despair.

When the disciples of John come, asking those questions, listen to what Jesus has to say to John’s disciples.  “What do you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor have good news brought to them.”  Jesus invites John’s disciples, and us, to look at the way he is touching and changing lives, especially the lives of those who are on the margins.  Look for the proof; listen for the testimony of those who have been made whole.

My Christmas hope, my prayer, is that Jesus will be better reflected in my life each day in the coming year, that he will be more visible in your lives in the year to come.  My hope, my prayer, is that through the Church, Jesus will open more eyes, set free people who are paralyzed by guilt, shame, fear and sin, that more of the “poor” (in material, and in spirit) will experience good news.

Because, really, what do we come to Advent and Christmas hoping to see?  Do we come so we can stand at the manger and think, “Aww, look at the beautiful baby…so cute…so precious…”  Or do we come looking for the God who has come to proclaim that we are free, we are beloved, we, who were once no people, are now royalty.  

Listen to the words of the prophet Isaiah one more time…the words that Jesus is referring to when he talks to the disciples of John:

1 The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus 2 it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. 

3 Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. 4 Say to those who are of a fearful heart, "Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you." 

5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; 6 then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; 7 the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes. 

8 A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God's people; no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray. 9 No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. 10 And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

This message from Isaiah, that Jesus says he embodies, that I know he does! This is a message for the hurting and for the broken.  This is a message for people who are weary from carrying heavy burdens, for a people whose feet are blistered from burning sand and rough wilderness wanderings.  

The proof is in the pudding, as they say.  And the proof of Jesus being the one, is that those who have met him, and have allowed themselves to be known by him, they are free. Free to love and to be loved. Free to forgive and be forgiven.  We leap like a deer and our voices go up with shouts and songs of joy.  And not only is the proof in us—it’s in the ones we help get to freedom, in the ones we help to sing songs of joy, whose blistered feet we tend, whose parched thirst we allow to be quenched.  

Again, my hope, my prayer is that in the Church and through the Church, Jesus will open more eyes, heal more lives, may this be our prayer together. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

A post for Today...

Dear Friends, Family, Colleagues…

I have to stop being silent.  I have wrestled with "making a statement" but have finally come to the realization that silence truly is culpability.  It is all too easy to like someone else's status and call that standing in support. And I can't be quiet any more.

On Twitter I have been reading comments related to the hashtag "#reasonsIstay" - one which hit me very hard said, "I stay because I am a person NOT an issue." Another said, "I stay because: it is harder to call me 'incompatible' if you have a relationship with me."

I have contemplated walking away. Really, I have.  I have thought about moving over to any of the other inclusive "brands" of mainline churches, but as I recently told one friend, I just can't shake the Wesley in me.  I CHOSE to become United Methodist because I believe in how we do theology.   I believe in the "Three Simple Rules"-I believe in our "Duty of Constant Communion" - I love our officially unofficial Open Table.  I love what it means to be United Methodist.

So much so that I leaned on the "we have to keep the covenant until the covenant is changed" stance for a very long time.  I said, "We must work to change the rules, but until that happens, it is only right to abide by them."
Now I have a problem with that because too many people are being kept from participating in the covenant. My friends who are LGBTQ cannot enjoy the fullness of what it means to be United Methodist because our covenant prevents them from the fullness of the ministries of the Church.  To keep the covenant is no longer just.  

(And part of what it means to be United Methodist is to know that we are founded-as a church--on Ecclesiastical disobedience.what else does one call a priest who ordains others without being given the authority? Especially considering that those ordinations happened to include "identified revolutionaries" in the full ministries of the Church.)

I do not believe that sexual identity is a choice.  I do not believe that my friends who identify as LGBTQ are making a "lifestyle choice."  I do not believe that their identity is a sin.

I do believe that heaping guilt and shame upon a person based on biology that cannot be changed is a sin, though.  And I believe that all the time I have spent sitting in "silent support" is a sin, and I repent.

Please forgive me for being silent.   I cannot, I will not, be silent any more.  For those of you who make a choice to "de-friend" me or "unfollow" me because of this, and as much as I don't want that, I accept that.   I am sure that for some of you this will be a surprise, maybe even a disappointment; others not so much. 

But please know that this is not a debate.  This is not a dialogue.  This is where I stand.

"That's What Dreams Are Made Of…"

You know the song. It starts out with this great uplifting synth keyboard riff.  If you were lucky enough to see the music video when MTV actually still played music videos, you may remember that the Blue Angels were featured fairly prominently.  That's right, we're talking Van Halen's (or Van Hagar depending on how you felt about the group…) "Dreams" off of 5150.

Back in the early 90s--when MTV was still playing music videos--I had this wild dream of being a DJ. Now please understand that when I wanted to be a DJ it wasn't the person in dance clubs spinning mixes of thumping bumping twerkable music.  I'm talking about wanting to be the person in the booth, behind the glass, with headphones and stack of records at my disposal to blast out over the airwaves.

Maybe I have to blame Christian Slater and Pump Up the Volume for planting this seed of a dream in my heart or maybe I can trace it all the way back to WKRP in Cincinnati.  I certainly have to give props to all the great DJs (and VJs) I've heard over the years on so many radio stations: KGB_FM and 91x in San Diego, KXGO on the North Coast of California (Hey, Burly Man!)  Regardless of where the seed came from the seed was planted.

Maybe you also remember, before our music files were digitized, the phenomenon of the Mix Tape.  Mix Tapes came from a variety of sources, our own music selections, tape to tape dubbing or vinyl to tape dubbing, or there were the excruciating hours spent sitting in front of the stereo listening to the local radio station, waiting for THE SONG to play so you could capture it on tape.  If you made mix tapes, you also know that there were the tapes you made for yourself and then there were the tapes you made for other people; as in, "significant other" other people.  There was no greater sign of devotion than spending hours and hours creating the perfect mix of music for the one you love.

("This one goes out to the one I love…")

All of this brings me to the "point" of this whole little bit of writing. 

When I was still nurturing my dream of being a DJ, when mix tapes were still a thing, there was the series of mix tapes called "KDnT Presents: The Dan & Thom Show." This series of tapes were created by my brother and I across the miles of my first tour in the Navy.  This series of tapes helped me keep the dream alive and it introduced me to new music via my brother's collection before the days of Pandora and now iTunes Radio.

It was fun blending songs and editing intros and outros.  I also learned something very important.  Our lives have a soundtrack.  If you think I'm crazy, listen to a song from 20 or 30 years ago, if you are old enough to do that, and wait for the memories to start bubbling up.  I won't say they are good memories, because they won't all be good.  But there are memories connected to music, and all the music we have heard makes up the soundtrack to our lives.

I don't make mix tapes any more--I'm not even sure if you can get cassettes anymore--but the dream lives on.  Maybe now it will get expressed through podcasting--depending on music rights and all that interesting copyright stuff.  But for now there is the dream, and there is all the music on YouTube, and there is my Google+ profile (and "This Is My Jam") where I get to let my life's soundtrack get blasted into the 'verse.

Party on Wayne!

Keeping the Hours

The Twitter account for the Episcopal Church recently offered the following:

“Watch over those who work while others sleeps, and grant that we may never forget that our common life depends on each other’s toil.”

As one who lives on the other side of the International Dateline from most of my family, friends, and colleagues, I found this prayer very comforting and inclusive.  Usually, I get tad lonely when Renovare, Weavings, or other spiritual formation accounts send out prayers of the daily office because it reminds me of how many Twitter accounts cater to the “other hemisphere.”  As if the silence my social networking sites offer in my afternoon and evening isn’t isolating enough, I have prayers of the day coming through at the wrong hours for me.

I’m not whining, nor am I asking for special favors of scheduled tweets to help me mark the divine hours…I do very well with my prayer books, thank you.

What I am offering is a reflection on a broader vision of what it means to pray for those who work while others sleep and remembering that our common life depends on each other’s toil.

I have prayed similar prayers on board ship at evening prayer “watch with those who work or watch or weep this night.”  It is an important reminder to ship’s company that while some of us “rack out,” others are steering the course, keeping the ship from running aground or colliding with another vessel or being attacked.  So much is going on while we sleep.

This prayer makes so much sense for military folks, or when we remember that while we slumber in our homes there are members of the police department patrolling our cities, or standing ready to respond from the stations.  There are nurses checking up on sleeping patients in hospitals, EMTs responding to emergencies.  Clerks at 24 hour convenience stores and gas stations.  While we sleep (if we have a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. job) there is so much going on that keeps our communities going.  There are laborers in factories making our stuff. 

Our common life, people keep it going at all hours.

And while you sleep in the “other hemisphere” there are soldiers and Sailors and Marines and airmen in my hemisphere who keep that watch in a different way.  (Along with all of the folks in manufacturing plants in small corners of the world toiling over the tiny little gizmos that make our tech toys that help us stay connected.) Likewise, while all of us in “this hemisphere” sleep, you take care of us.

And now I am reminded of a lyric by U2: “We get to carry each other.”  While some of us sleep, others pray the morning office, and some of us are praying compline while others are praying the dawn office…and while some of us pray to the Triune God, others are contemplating the teachings of Buddha, and others are just trying to live in a way that proves “kindness is magic” (thank you Derek).

Regardless of which time zone or hemisphere, regardless of spirituality, we depend on one another for a decent common life.  So thank you @iamepiscopalian for honoring me with your prayer, for prompting me reflect on how we get to carry each other.  May we live in such a way that we are the answer to our prayers.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

For the past 11 years I've been serving in ministry settings that have revolved around congregational ministry of some sort.  The past three years I have served in a Navy Chapel in Japan.  In a little over a week, I'll move to a new ministry setting that has nothing to do with preparing to lead worship on a weekly basis, nor will it mean preparing weekly sermons.

Weekly sermons have been the primary content of this blog.  If not weekly sermons per se, then it has been meditations revolving around those texts, or thoughts relating to congregational development or local church ministry.  Sometimes denominational politics.

But as I have been thinking about the new setting I'm moving into, I have also been reflecting on my blog, and what to do with it.

I haven't been as regular in posting as I would like to.  Maybe part of that is the need to have "sermon quality" content.  Maybe it's the need to have a specific content, centering around church or theology.

I really don't know where this blog is headed.  But changes are coming. 

I think those of you who read with "regularity" can expect, more human, more raw, reflection on the Gospels.  By more real, I guess I mean more deeply personal reflection, because they won't be "sanctuary safe" reflections.

You may also find more "mundane" blog posts too because I do have a lot of interests other than just preaching and worship and church life.

I don't know what coming, honestly I don't.  But I hope those of you who choose to read will continue to choose to read, as I figure out what to write.

Pacem.

You Got Your Splankna All Over My Life!

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

Texts: 1 Kings 17:8-24 and Luke 7:11-17

If you've ever seen the movie Groundhog Day you may know where this introduction is headed.  In hearing the texts from 1 Kings 17 and Luke 7 back-to-back, or very near to one another I sometimes wonder, haven’t I heard this story before?  Doesn’t this tale remind me of something I’ve heard elsewhere, or read in a different place or a different time?  Is hearing this story something we would call Déjà vu?  Is that "I Got You, Babe" playing in the background?

Luke certainly wants to take us back to the tale of Elijah and the widow at Zarephath as he tells us about the interaction between Jesus and the widow at Nain.  He wants us to remember the last time there was a powerful prophet who demonstrated the power of God in the midst of the people; but there are more contrasts between the two texts we heard today than there are comparisons.  

Jesus is coming into town with his disciples and a crowd of followers, hangers on, fan boys and fan girls.  They have just seen an amazing display of Jesus’ power as he healed the servant of a centurion with a word and are curious to see what he will do next.   As they enter the town of Nain, a funeral procession is moving through in the opposite direction.  A young man has died, and his mother, a widow, is left with nothing.

When we say that the widow is left with nothing, it is important to understand culturally that she has no husband, so she would have been married by her husband’s brother or another male relative.  If no other male relatives were available, the widow would be relegated to society’s margins and become vulnerable to alienation and exclusion from the community and simple daily provision of familial care.  She would be someone’s problem, but not ours; and if we happen to have some alms to give, we’ll toss some her way—because that’s what charity is, right: the crumbs from our table, the scraps of what we have after we’ve taken care of our own?  

Added to the issue of being a charity case, the death of an only son would leave a widow without an heir and therefore unable to retain whatever means remained for her.  Without an heir, all her personal property reverted to her husband’s family.

The widow has, quite literally, lost everything with her son’s death.  She has no husband, no son, no legal identity, nothing.  The crowd that surrounds her, and cries out in grief with her in this particular moment, will soon fade; they will go back to their families and she will be alone with no one to share her grief, no one to take care of her.

But, Luke says, “The Lord saw her.”  In her mourning, in her grief, in her pain, in her loneliness, the Lord saw her.  And he had compassion for her.

How many people saw the widow as the procession moved through Nain that day?  Probably a lot of people saw her that day, because you can’t miss a funeral procession as it moves through town with the mourners wailing at the top of their lungs, crying louder than the widow so that her grief would be hers alone.  Many people saw the widow of Nain that day, and knew what it meant for her to lose her only son, and they probably felt bad for her.  But feeling bad, having sympathy, is not the same thing as having compassion.

Compassion is sympathy that accompanies mercy.  Compassion is what moves us to act on behalf of those for whom we feel sympathy. The phrase "had compassion for" comes from the Greek word "Splankna" which I have spoken and talked about before; Splanka means basically his gut was so twisted by what he witnessed he couldn't not act.

This moment between Jesus and the widow leads me to ask a couple of questions.  First, do we believe this of our own mourning, grief, and pain? That the Lord sees us and has compassion for us?  And second, when we see the pain of others, how do we respond?  Are we like the crowd, who sees the pain of others and does the SMH thing but does nothing about it, or are we willing to be like Jesus who feels compassion and steps in to co-suffer with those who are hurting?  And more than co-suffer, but transform suffering to joy, to make hope where none can possibly be imagined.

Jesus says to her, “Do not weep.” Not in a belittling way, or with condescension, or to say that she has no reason to grieve at all, but in a way that says he is acting on her behalf.  Then he approaches the funeral bier, he touches the cart on which the body rests, and he speaks, “Young man, I say to you, rise!”

These words are not a prayer.  This moment is not a fervent argument like Elijah has with the Lord.  It is a command, and the voice of Jesus reaches from life into death, and with a word, “rise,” the young man sits up, and begins to speak, “and Jesus gave him to his mother.”

Dr. Bonnie Thurston, former New Testament professor of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, writes of this: “The widow of Nain is both an individual woman for whom Jesus had compassion and a silent representative of all who have been deprived of personal worth, all who have been defined in terms of social relationships (to men.)”  She then asks if restoring her son, while compassionate, keeps the widow in a place where she is defined by her son.  I can’t help but wonder if this action does not solidify her identity as one for whom God has seen and acted.

The widow is seen by Jesus.  She does not approach him.  She does not cry out to him for mercy as so many others have done.  She does not send others to ask for his intercession, she is seen by the Lord, and is the recipient of compassion.

And perhaps this is precisely where the rubber hits the road for us this week.  The people respond to Jesus’ action by glorifying God and saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has looked favorably upon his people!”  Another translation says, “God has visited us…God has come near to us, to save and rescue us! This is the time we have been waiting for!” 

So what I would ask you to do is to quiet yourself for a moment, and think of the thing you most dread that may be coming this week, this month, this year…something you know about…or something that is unknown but which strikes fear into you…feel the sorrow, the frustration, the bitterness, the anger, the disappointment, the grief…and then watch Jesus join you in the middle of it.

Hear him say to you, “Do not weep; do not fear; put away your anger.”  And then see him speak life into that moment, feel him speak peace into that moment.  And know, trust, believe, that God has visited you.  God has come near, to save and rescue, and that this moment of Emmanuel, this moment of God with us, is the time we have been waiting for.

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.