Discomfortable...

The folks who attended the 2009 Montreat worship and music conference led worship yesterday and I thank them for that.  It is always wonderful to have new worship experiences, especially when you can tell the experience is really meaningful for people, especially the people leading it.

New worship experiences are also weird.  Different music, different liturgy, different leadership...and "different" plus "human" over "CHURCH" is a formula for discomfort.  And it was "discomfortable."  Even some of the music, which I am pretty good at, was a bit beyond my ability to catch onto quickly.  At first, I accepted my discomfortableness as part of the package of different folks leading worship.  Then, by the middle of the service, acceptance had grown into fatigue.  And then, Spirit  insight...

Who am I to think worship should be comfortable?  Why do I expect to hear the Word of God only in ways that are comfortable, ways that don't challenge me?  What actually happened in my worship discomfortableness is that I paid attention to everywhere we went, read the words to every song, listened to all the liturgy.  It required all my effort to keep up...which is probably why I was tired.

Jesus life and ministry centered on "discomfortableness."  Karl Barth reminds us that we too easily form "notions of God and His Law...which are very acceptable to [us] but most inappropriate because they are harmless and conciliatory and compromising...[Our] sin takes on the appearance of something which is quite comfortable." The same move to acceptableness that limits God and Law to "harmless" also limits worship. It limits our ability to do God's work.  Harmless and comfortable don't do much challenging to the powers and principalities.

The cross on which Christ died was the ultimate embarrassment.  Crucifixions happened, but no one talked about them.  Being crucified was the most humiliating possible death, the most jarring event that could happen to a family, even a community.  Nothing good could come of a cross. The discomfort of Christ's disciples had to be profound...so profound that only one stayed at the foot of the cross.  This just couldn't be right...


If we follow Jesus, we must live in discomfortableness.  Love your enemies.  Feed the hungry.  Eat with sinners and tax collectors.  Take up your cross.  Christ's way won't be comfortable or familiar.  Moltman, another theologian in my school desk, says, "Christians who do not have the feeling that they must flee the crucified Christ have probably not yet understood him in a sufficiently radical way." (The Crucified God) I recently heard people talking of the great comfort the cross in the front of our sanctuary gives them...and perhaps so.  But I am increasingly aware of the significant change that cross calls me to embody...and there are times I wish wholeheartedly that I didn't have to see that symbol front and center of my faith.

God cracked my little shell of "comfortable."  The great irony was I think I said the Lord's Prayer more times yesterday than I have on any given day maybe in my entire life.  And every time I uttered the words "Our Father," I cringed a bit...wondering if God would answer me back (after a sermon where God did, actually, answer back).  
I would like to retreat into the comfortable on many fronts.  But for today, and perhaps tomorrow, I am going to embrace the discomfortableness of the cross and see what God wants to say.

Live Forward, Believe Backward...

The idea is from Soren Kierkegaard who once said that we live forward and believe backward.  In the moment we often cannot identify the presence or work of God in our lives, but as we look backward we see clearly the hand of God at work. 

One of my all time favorite people blessed my life with the story of the birth of her son.  She and her husband had talked before the delivery about doing no extraordinary measures if anything was significantly wrong with the baby...believing at the time that everything was normal...and they had communicated that with their doctor.  The day she went into labor, her husband was traveling and she could not reach him, her primary doctor was out of town, and her son was born critically ill.  No one involved in the delivery knew of the decisions.  The baby was rushed to a different city on life support. 

My friends were frustrated and angry that their plan had been thwarted and now they had a child on life-support who wouldn't live. The pain of making the necessary decisions was agonizing.  Three weeks after their son was born, they said good-bye.

A couple years later, she told me this story. I was holding their newborn daughter. The story ended with the words, "I guess God knew better than we did.  If I hadn't spent three weeks holding and loving John, I would never have been brave enough to try again."

Live forward...believe backward.  We celebrated the work of God after we were out of the situation. 

There are reasons God calls us into Christian community--which may seem like the most boring place ever to practice our faith.  How often have we wished for the "God on the golf-course" idea?!!!  But it is in the practice through the pain, in the endurance of the ennui, in the serving of the society that we can look back and see God at work.

Live forward...believe backward...my inspiration for the day...

Happy Ash Wednesday...

A bit of an oxymoron...wishing people happy Ash Wednesday.  After all, a liturgical holiday where you are reminded "that you are dust and to dust you will return..." doesn't exactly inspire one to joyful dancing in the streets.  Anyway, that part was yesterday on Fat Tuesday.  We humans can always get one last celebration in before we have to return to the dust.  (And I'd put money on the fact that way more people participated in the final celebration than will participate in the penitential season.)

But I digress...a habit picked up again as I am required to study for seminary classes...I can always manage to digress...

Being in a position to teach people about Ash Wednesday also puts you in a position to try and truly understand it yourself.  I know the Wikipedia definition, the one we spout if someone says, "Ash Wednesday service? What's that all about?"  We answer...well Ash Wednesday is the first day of the Lenten season which is a time that we focus on repentance of our sins.  Hmmm...what if I am not really a bad person?  After all, I came to the Ash Wednesday service and that's got to count for something.  I do my best.  And when I fall short, I know that I am , after all, human, and that God loves me, so its not a huge big deal, right?  How does living in God's grace and meditating on your sin go together in some kind of way that makes sense?

(Thank you, Karl Barth, for the insight!--and no, I never thought I'd say those words) Barth suggests that the fundamental human sin is pride and that our deepest wish and strongest motivating factor is the desire to be judge over all (which, of course, only God can do).  Even those who adamantly claim there is no God have simply placed themselves or some other god (science, money, power) in God's position.  Meditating on this idea as Ash Wednesday arrives has given me a new take on "from dust...to dust..."

God created us from the earth we inhabit.  Without this ball of dirt, we would not exist.  Don't know exactly the details of the transaction, but I know that we are part and parcel of the literal dirt that surrounds us.  It feeds us, it shelters us, it threatens us, and it absorbs us back into the cycle when our time is up.

We are not God...cannot be God...no matter how hard we try.

God created earth...God has always been...will always be...doesn't need earth to survive...will never be absorbed into God's creation. 

We are not God...cannot be God...no matter how hard we try.

Even the questions we tend to ask about Lent are an attempt to be God.  Thinking we're not such bad people...excusing our behavior on the basis of our humanity...comparing ourselves to others to decide we are better, equal, or worse than they...deciding what is "right for us" and claiming that if we are content, we will make the world a better place...all that and more is our attempt to be the judge of the world...and as such, replace "God" with "us"...

This year, "remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return" has new meaning for me.  I am at church this evening because God has called me there, not because I am better or worse or hired.  I am absorbing the image of my beginning...created by God from the carbon elements that support life on this planet...and my end as returning to the dust there before I was.

I am not God...cannot be God...no matter how hard I try.

The freedom of living in repentance today and every day is the reminder that I do not have to be the judge.  I have been judged and forgiven.  I don't have to decide how good or bad I am.  I don't have to decide how good or bad others are.  (I still will decide/judge myself and other on a daily basis...human condition...original sin thing...) but the freedom that comes with letting God be God is why I am having a very happy Ash Wednesday.  I am not the judge.  I am the human judged by God, forgiven by God, and freed from my need to be God.  I am dust and to dust I will return.  God is God, eternal, loving, and just.  Happy, Happy, Ash Wednesday!

Reconciliation...a gift from...a gift to...

We celebrated five baptisms this past Sunday, two infants, one 3rd grader and two adults.  Baptism is "a visible sign of invisible grace."  We know God's love belongs to us through grace, nothing we do earns or deserves it.  We in the reformed tradition believe that God's grace is already at work in us before we do anything, including say we want to be baptized/saved/repent...insert your term here.  Baptism reminds us, in powerful, visual, ways that God is indeed at work reconciling us to Godself and to each other.

The act of baptizing an infant, listening to parental and congregational promises to nurture that child in the faith, brings me to tears every time.  Watching two young men kneel before their family (biological and congregational) and receive the sacrament of baptism, listening to the pastor invite them to rise with Christ into the abundant life and then challenge us to look and see what God is doing in our midst...well, let's just say I needed stock in Kleenex. 

Sunday's most powerful act of reconciliation was enormously small.  Our precious third grader, in a sweet little white dress, glowing from the excitement and anticipation, stood on the chancel with one hand nestled in her mother's hand, and the other nestled in her father's.  Not unexpected...until you know that her parents recently divorced.  I know divorce.  My parents went through divorce.  My friends have been through divorce.  My family has been through divorce.  Its always tough, and it can be ugly.  Reconciliation is far from anyone's mind.

One hand nestled in her mother's hand.  One hand nestled in her father's.  Together the parents promised to nurture her blossoming faith.  Together they stood with their child.  Together they held her hands.  Together they smiled and prayed and blessed their daughter more than they will ever know...perhaps more than she will ever know.

I know divorce.  I know God's love.  I know God's reconciling love was present in the act of two parents who sacrificed themselves for their child.  Look and see, indeed, what God is doing in our midst!

Terror and Joy...

Worship is rote. No fault of worship. Human condition pretty much dictates that when we do something on a regular basis, it becomes easy not to think too much about it. That makes the cleaning of toilets bearable, but might not be so helpful in, say, weekly dates with your spouse.

This week in worship, I wished for a camera. Wishes don't come true. But the image imprinted itself in my brain and I keep watching it. Fact: acolytes hate to acolyte. Hate might be too strong a word, but truth is, once the excitement wears off and acolyting becomes rote, they hate to acolyte. (Mostly because they don't get to sit with their friends and they have to wear a dress--girls and boys.)

This week, we had a new acolyte. She volunteered--being just a little young for a spot on the rote list. Acolytes enter from the back, bringing what we affectionately call "the candle lighter thingy" crowned with real fire down the isle to light the candles on the communion table. Sometimes we forget to watch the acolyte do their thing, but this week was different.

Our acolyte wears her feelings all over her face and Sunday was no different. She radiated a mixture of excitement and fear. She couldn't believe she was actually getting to bring in the Light of Christ. She was ecstatically joyful. She hoped she was doing it right. She was completely terrified.

We all should have been ecstatically joyful and completely terrified. We come together into the presence of God on a Sunday morning. We ask the Spirit to make herself known. We invoke the name of the Almighty God. (Annie Dillard says ushers should pass out life preservers instead of bulletins in case God ever really grants our wish for God's presence.)

Rote dulls our senses to the terror we should feel at the chance of encountering our God face to face and being forever changed. Rote dulls our senses to the reality of the joy we can claim as forgiven children of God welcomed to God's worship with open arms by the one who loved us enough to die for us.

Our little acolyte wanted to participate in this great drama more than anything. She worked for a long time to get into the "rote-a-tion." Don't know what her experience was ultimately, but I know she challenged me to step out of the routine and into the terror and joy of opening myself to God.

Out of the Mouths...

Sunday school teacher...
Is communion only for the people in our church? Does God only want people here to
participate? (and the teacher waits for the inevitable...no, God loves everyone answer)
Child...
No...God loves Jews too.
Teachers and class...
giggles...
The lesson continues with the God loves all people discussion.
Child...(leaning over to teacher)
I was right, wasn't I?
Teacher...
Absolutely...of course God loves Jews. Actually, Jesus was a Jew.
Child...(shocked)
Nooooo waaaaayyy!!!

Point:
For those of us who are still under the impression that Jesus was a highly successful, blue-eyed, Christian man...
Nooooo waaaaayyy......

Implications:
Huge....

The prelude to Lent crashes this week into reading from Karl Barth. Lent usually presents as a time for penitence in light of God's judgment, for deprivation from our favorite things, for introspection on our great sinfulness. Not really pleasant or fun, not that faith is supposed to be pleasant or fun all the time...but still, the Lenten practices don't exactly scream to be put on the calendar...they kinda whisper to be ignored.

Today, a new perspective for me on Lent. Barth says:
Jesus humbles Himself to our status in order to be our companion in that status, (sinful humans) in order to share with us the assault and temptation, in order to be with us in the misery of that status with all the omnipotence of His divine mercy, in order to change that status from within, in order to turn it for good, for the very best, in order to take away the curse which rests upon us, in order to obviate the impending destruction. He comes, therefore, as a helper, as a redeemer, as the one who brings another and proper order, a life which is life indeed. He comes as the kingdom of God in person. He comes to reconcile the world with God, i.e., to convert it to God...
Basically and decisively--and this is something we must never forget when we speak of the divine Judge--He is the one whose concern is for order and peace, who must uphold the right and prevent the wrong, so that His existence and coming and work is not in itself and as such a matter for fear, but something which indicates a favour, the existence of One who brings salvation. (4.1 pp. 216-217)

If we add Barth's perspective of God coming as Jesus to create order and peace and Jesus' command to be a disciple and do as he commanded...that equals a Lenten season in which we contemplate how we might be more like Jesus, and in so doing perhaps help bring God's order and peace to the world. It is a Lenten season that we give up not our favorite things, but deliberately commit a little--or a lot--of time and energy to work for God in the world.

Lent is no longer the season of fearing God's judgment, but the promise of life out of death, light in the darkness, joy out of despair. A bit like the flower blooming in the snowstorm...

Buddy

The Utleys have two big dogs and one that could be easily mistaken for a large rat. Buddy is about 8 inches high. Six inches of snow fell this weekend. Big dogs ran and slid and played and barked. Buddy tried to keep his nose above the waterline.

It's hard to lift your leg when the snow bank is as high as you are tall. Buddy did his best. Later in the day, when we thought everyone had done all the "business" they should have done, Buddy went outside with his mother, Hannah, and her mother, and her mother. Three generations of women shoveled snow and cleaned off my car because I thought I had to get to work the next morning. Buddy checked out the mailbox, marked his territory, then slid into the street. I watched a couple of his tries to hop back into the yard, then forgot to watch as I tackled the next huge pile of sleet covered snow.

I kinda watched as Hannah walked down the driveway with Buddy in her arms. I carefully watched as she returned with no dog, but the sidewalk ice scraper and a shovel and a towel. She walked to the neighbor's house into their garage. That was interesting, because they have their own shovel, and I didn't see any neighbors in the garage. The 8 year old was brushing snow off their car. She came back, tools in hand.

"What are you doing?"...I know, the level of probing, intelligent, inquiry takes your breath away. "What are you doing?

"Buddy pooped in their garage."

Now there's a thought for you. When life gets deep or difficult, just find the most convenient, warm place and deposit your poop there. Someone will clean up your mess.