Reality and Easter Reality...

Trouble has been stirred by the new Noah movie. I haven't seen it yet. The trouble seems to stem from a portrayal of a gritty, certainly angst-ridden man instructed to build an ark. God is at work to save humankind.

The dumbest comment I have heard--and I thought about trying to soften the "dumb" but really, it was just dumb--is a female news anchor remembering the story from the children's Bible she read (as a child) where all the stories had happy endings. And children's Bibles tend to do that. We don't typically tell our children the story of the slaughter of the innocents after Jesus was born. Four year olds aren't ready to process that. Sometimes 40 year olds aren't either. From what I am hearing about the Noah movie, some adults aren't ready to process the reality of the text either.

The reality of the text is one of my favorite things. After the Easter celebrations in which every church puts on their finest clothes and music and resurrection joy, we return to lives that often are all too real. We hear and speak promises that God has defeated evil, has won the victory over death…and we still face the realities of death and evil in every part of our lives.

So if we read stories of a perfect Noah, the righteousness that got him attention, that enabled him to do the job God asked of him…and then if he is nothing but perfect, how do we understand the story? I might can sustain the obedience of righteousness until I can finish a task that God assigns, but I am more likely to slip, to forget the source of my hope, my sustenance, my focus. If the Noah story is about a perfect man, the guy who never fails, who always does the right thing, who lives the "happy ending," then what have I to learn? The story becomes about Noah, a man who I can never emulate, a man who lived a different reality than do I. Instead, the story is about God and God's work…and the moments of righteousness (obedience to God) that inspire our own obedience, perhaps. Certainly righteousness/obedience is not easy, especially if you are fully human and not some children's-Bible-cartoon character. (Though perfectly good for children!)

Regardless of what the sin will be once the ark comes to rest, there will be sin. Noah is not saved because of his ability to be sinless. Noah is saved because God's work is the redemption of humankind.  Noah "comes home" to the same brokenness that God tried to wash away in the flood. Truth is, no matter how much we want it, we cannot escape the brokenness that surrounds us. We cannot wash it away. We cannot simply "get rid" of the broken "others" who mess things up for us (or so we would like to think).

Reality is, we continue to sin. Easter reality is God doesn't give up on us. Even in those moments deemed righteous, those moments of our finest and best, God knows who we are and remarkably, miraculously, loves us unconditionally, warts and all. Easter reality is God providing a righteousness that is dependable, the righteousness that never fails, the righteousness that is ours because we live in the body of Christ. Somehow in the mystery of God's work, we live "in Christ" and he in us.

There is no storybook "happy ending" in scripture. Even Jesus' resurrection is a series of brief, joyful appearances and then life goes back to reality. But the reality has been changed. The resurrected Jesus brings an invitation to live into and out of God's reality, that we really have nothing to fear, that nothing can separate us from God's love, not even ourselves. So now we can live in our "reality," our brokenness knowing that God's love wins…always…forever. Someday we will have the ultimate happy ending here on earth. Until then…living obedient lives out of an Easter reality just might change the world!

Easter Again...

So here's the thing. I believe it. Actually, the better wording is that I trust the good news of this Easter resurrection thing.

"Believe" is a head thing. What you think about something. If I think about resurrection too much I struggle. I do have a quite capable brain and am thoroughly immersed in the enlightenment investment in scientific methods.

But with every fiber of my being, I trust this resurrection thing. I have experienced God's ability to bring life from death, to call out new life where nothing existed before. And I am amazed and grateful that God invites me into God's work of transformation and reconciliation. I am so completely human that it boggles the mind that God thinks I have something to offer.  But I experience those moments of grace and see the healing and I hold out Easter hope for the world.

I trust this Easter resurrection thing. I will sing my heart out and lift my prayers because this trust gives meaning and focus and hope to a world that too often and too completely spins out of control.

All this is wrapped up in that phrase we wear out in the Easter season:

He is risen. The Lord is risen, indeed!

To-Doing Holy Week...

Wonder what Jesus would have thought if he had known how Holy Week would morph over a couple thousand years. One church my husband served had a mini-revival beginning on Palm Sunday. So you had evening and breakfast events Sunday through Wednesday, plus the pastor had to entertain the guest speaker. Oh yeah, and still prepare the Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter sermons. I always said (in my nicest preacher's wife annoying way) that I though that church put their preachers in the tomb for the week to see if killing him resulted in a funeral or a resurrection.

Wonder if Jesus could do anything more than put one foot in front of the other during his last week, "left foot, right foot, breathe" as Anne LaMotte says. When life…or death…comes at you that fast, I'm not sure you have the ability to reflect. Today, I pray for families in South Korea. The sinking of a ferry carrying 300, with most of those being high school students on a school trip, is devastating. I wonder how you even put one foot in front of the other in light of that event.

Sometimes I wonder instead of making Easter Sunday the celebration day with the new dresses and family dinners and congregational decorations…what would happen if we met on Easter like the women at the tomb. They didn't know to wear their new dresses. They were still trying to breathe. What would happen if we just showed up after a slow week of contemplating death and suffering; of confessing our own complicity in the sin that took Jesus' life, that takes our own lives a little every day. What if we just showed up in our regular clothes and listened to the good news of the gospel, that new life is possible. What if we, undistracted by the to-do list, were able to really hear the reality of the promise of new life and transformation.

Hearing that promise, being surprised by the possibility, glimpsing the kingdom…that is worthy of celebration. That is when we might buy the new dress. That is when we might invite friends and family over for the renewal of community. Then as we continue to live into the Easter reality all through the season, more and more signs of new life might arise…

I guess I hope our focus on the celebration doesn't eclipse the good news that will be ours. 

He is risen…

The Lord is risen, indeed!

Holy Week...

Palm Sunday begins Holy Week. It's the consistent lament of church professionals that we have to pack Palm Sunday and Passion all together because few people will come out for the darker services of Mandy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday.

Today my hot water heater stopped working. Cold water showers are horrible, to be avoided at all costs. I just thought today as I showered at my daughter's, we are mighty lucky that we can avoid the horrible. Many people can't. There are people tonight who have to face the sudden unexpected death of loved ones, people who live and serve in dangerous places, people who don't have enough to eat.

I wonder if the discipline of Holy Week is a necessary reminder that the world doesn't always have an abundance of hot water. I promise I will appreciate my hot shower when it comes back. Perhaps it is in the journey through the darkness and the pain, the hopelessness and the evil that is our companion in this life that we can truly appreciate the resurrection, the promise of new life.

Daily...

Some life events define us. We know immediately what they are. We can describe them in detail. We know how we were changed.

Today, I wonder about between the life events. We are defined there, too. Get up, go to work, be with other people, perhaps read or watch TV, go to bed. Perhaps this between time shapes us even more than the big events. The habits and perspectives we develop in the between shape our responses to the events.

I'm going to try and be more aware of daily practices that inevitably shape who I am. I'm not going to change anything now. Just see how I'm being defined in the footsteps of the mundane.

The Children...

A friend who became  father yesterday mused on his child's nursery and posted picture of children's rooms from all over the world.

I wonder how we are defined when some children in this world live in extraordinary poverty and others have more than they could ever want. More importantly, I wonder how we are defined if we justify that inequity or ignore it.

The birth of a child suddenly and completely redefines us. We know that beyond doubt.

God's love and mercy redefine us too…though for most of us it't a slower, more incremental process. Once we recognize we are re-defined, perhaps we are inspired to live in a way that might re-define the world. The children are depending on us...

Joy...

Holy Week approaches. The story fascinates me. I suppose it always has. As long as I can remember (that's getting longer all the time), I have been curious about what Jesus thought and felt during that week. I had a hard time buying one of the common explanations of dealing with the tragedy of Holy Week--that Jesus knew he was God and knew the outcome of the week…therefore he was willing to go through the death. If Jesus was fully human, he couldn't have known the outcome. We don't know the future except in nebulous ways…like trusting in the sovereignty of God.

So what enabled his willingness to put himself in danger, danger he pretty clearly knew existed in Jerusalem?

I was reading The Longing for Home: Reflections at Midlife by Frederick Buechner. He describes a moment at Sea World (surprising) when the killer whales came out in "one great, jubilant dance of unimaginable beauty." Tears filled his eyes and, he found out later, the eyes of his family members.

That led him to a conversation about joy. In a "tourist trap" in Florida he says "there is joy unimaginable." And his words are beautiful and significant as we approach Holy Week:

The world does bad things to us all, and we do bad things to the world and to each other and maybe most of all to ourselves, but in that dazzle of bright water as the glittering whales hurled themselves into the sun, I believe what we saw was that joy is what we belong to. Joy is home, and I believe the tears that came to our eyes were more than anything else homesick tears. God created us in joy and created us for joy, and in the long run not all the darkness there is in the world and in ourselves can separate us finally from that joy, because whatever else it means to say that God created us in his image, I think it means that even when we cannot believe in him, even when we feel most spiritually bankrupt and deserted by him, his mark is deep within us. We have God's joy in our blood.

I believe joy is what our tears were all about and what our faith is all about too. Not happiness. Happiness comes when things are going our way, which makes it only a forerunner to the unhappiness that inevitably follows when things stop going our way, as in the end they will stop for all of us. Joy, on the other hand, does not come because something is happening or not happening but every once in a while rises up out of simply being alive, of being part of the terror as well as the fathomless richness of the world that God has made. When Jesus was eating his last meal with his friend, knowing that his death was only a few hours away, he was in no sense happy, nor did he offer his friends happiness any more than he offers happiness to you and me. What he offers is more precious than happiness because it is beyond the world's power either to give or take away. "These things have I spoken to you," he said, "that my joy may be in you"--joy, as poignant as grief, that brings tears to the eyes as it did to mine that afternoon in the crowded bleachers.

Perhaps that is the power that gets Jesus through the last week of his life. That's why some people with terminal disease exhibit a peace and trust that takes our breath away and makes us wish we could be them for a moment. There are those who serve in areas of intense suffering and describe the miracle of intense joy they experience.

It rings true to me. Joy is home. "God created us in joy and created us for joy, and in the long run not all the darkness there is in the world and in ourselves can separate us finally from that joy…"

It's a nice way to be defined, don't you think?

 

Questions...

A series of interesting questions for the Lenten definition of self…

(Thank you T.S. Eliot…choruses from "The Rock"…and it seems appropriate for National Poetry Month.)

Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word
Where is the life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

Dry Bones...

We drove past a dying church last weekend and yesterday's text was on the valley of dry bones. And this happened…

The LORD's power overcame me, and he led me out and set me down in the middle of a church parking lot in a certain neighborhood. The church was full of bones. He led me all around the church; there were very many bones in classrooms, in the sanctuary, in the kitchen and the fellowship hall…and they were very, very dry.

The Lord asked me, "Human one, can these bones live again?"

I said, "LORD God, only you know."

He said to me, Prophesy over these bones and say to them, Dry bones, hear the LORD's word! The Lord God proclaims to these bones: I am about to put breath in you, and you will live again. I will put sinews on you, place flesh on you, and cover you with skin. When I put breath in you, and you come to life, you will know that I am the LORD."

I told them what the LORD had in mind, just as I was commanded. There was great noise as I was prophesying, then great quaking, and the bones came together, bone by bone. When I looked, suddenly there were sinews on them. The flesh appeared, and then they were covered over with skin. 

And then the trouble started. 

Wait…you're not one of us. Who put your bones in our church? Bones of your type should be coming together in the church up the street. 

Look at this…this skin color is just not right. We planned this church around the lovely colors available to us at its inception…yeah, we know that was 40 years ago, but Sherwin Williams can match colors now, you know. There's no need to start fresh. And, besides, nothing matches. Look at this mess. It's like the LORD just threw together leftover skin from all over the place. Nothing goes together. It doesn't look like it used to. How are we supposed to function if it doesn't look like it used to?

Why couldn't the LORD have put the skin on first, then filled in with the sinew. That's private business. What sinews I have are between me and God, not the business of other folks. Having seen the muscle I've got, now people have all kinds of expectations about what I can do. I was content just coming and worshipping on the back pew. Now people keep asking for participation. 

The flesh had certainly appeared, and they were covered with skin, but the LORD saw there was no breath in them…and actually, the LORD God clarified…there was plenty of hot air, but no pneuma…no spirit…no breath of life…

The LORD said to me, "Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, human one! Say to the breath, The LORD God proclaims: Come from the four winds, breath! Breathe into these dead bodies and let them live."

The LORD God was no dummy. Human one, these bones…say "Our bones are dried up, and our hope has perished. We are completely finished." 

But the LORD proclaimed: I'm opening your graves! I will raise you up from your graves, my people, and I will bring you to fertile land. Lotta new people in your neighborhood who need to hear your witness of good news! You will know that I am LORD…I will put my breath/spirit in you and you will live!

Will those bones live? God only knows. Certainly we can choose to stay in the graves we have dug. But I can tell you this. I'm listening and breathing as deeply as possible of the breath God is pouring out in all times and places. I want to see the dry bones covered and raised up…dancing and singing and proclaiming that the LORD has done it!

 

Resurrection Sunday...

Mini Holy Week, I suppose. Last post on Thursday…absence Friday and Saturday. Resurrection Sunday! I only wish I was a profound as the real resurrection. Maybe…

Seems more crazy than profound. You have women visiting the tomb, carrying with them spices and oils with which to anoint the body of Jesus, and Jesus is gone. Mark has them running in fear from the tomb (original ending…that's all folks). Women crying in gardens, then seeing angels…oh no, it's Jesus!

Walks with Jesus on the road to Emmaus…breaking bread and recognition! Breakfast on the beach.

Who'd believe any of this.

But it's Sunday and after days of business and distraction, the miracle beckons. I think not having to explain the unexplainable is one of the gifts of Sabbath…

Dear God...

I was cleaning out…"redefining my office" if you will. Found a beautiful prayer that absolutely defines who we are and who God is. I am only sorry that I no longer have the author…

Dear God, we confess that often we find your unrelenting presence tiresome. It is so hard to live seemingly caught between what it seems you want us to be and what we know we are. Help us to realize that our very pretensions of unworthiness are unworthy. Make us glad to be your people, gathered into your church, celebrating the victory that is ours. Amen.

Self-denial...

I listened to a man talk about the Lenten season this morning. He does a bracket with saints and people vote their favorites. He described Lent as a season of "self-denial." Aaaannnndddd that got me thinking for today…

We don't do self-denial well in this culture. We want what we want, when we want it. We hate to wait.
When we practice self-denial during Lent, we focus far more on what we give up than on the God for whom we give things up.

What is the value of self-denial? Should we learn to accept "no" or "not now?" Is there value in denying our immediate wants? What do we gain by "losing?"

I do think we tend to self-define by what we have or can get. How do we re-define by what we don't get or by what we give up?

Today I seem to have questions but no answers. So I will give up answers for Lent today. Maybe tomorrow I'll figure more things out…

We Get What We Are...

I work with children, youth and young adults and I can tell you how their parents solve problems, deal with conflict, overcome obstacles, decide on consequences for misbehavior. I've not been in their homes, but you can see the patterns in the kids. You can see them in my kids, too. Not one of us is immune.

An headline in the New York Times this morning speaks of the patterns that are us, "An 8th Grader, a Gun and a Bystander." The paper tells a tragic story of teenage turf wars, an eighth grader who looks grown who listened carefully to his cultural patterns that guns solve problems, and an innocent bus traveler in the wrong place in the wrong time.

Note: someone will now be offended. I appreciate our right to own guns, but I think the conversations that try to frighten us into maintaining that right and assuming it is God-given in all times and places seeps deeply into the minds of children who do not yet have fully developed brains. If someone is trying to hurt you, or saying they will, the problem solving functions that 1) are weak because they are young and 2) are weak because they operate out of fear fail to work in the ways they should.

Guns solve problems in our movies and TV shows. We see people acquitted of shooting other people when the reason is "self-defense." The first move of this 8th grader was not to seek out his parents help, the support of a faith community (don't even know if he had one), the guidance of a trusted teacher or school official, or even the police. He just bought a gun.

Chew on that. An 8th grader bought a gun to solve his problem.

I've had four eighth grade children. They are bright, educated, well-supported, and not ONE of them had the sense to make a decision with a gun in the 8th grade.

So several lives are destroyed. Certainly the man who lost his life to the poorly aimed gun. The child now charged with murder. The children who will assume they need guns to protect themselves from each other beginning yesterday. The society who must now spend its tax-payer dollars to house a prisoner instead of educate a bright, promising student. Parents, grandparents, siblings, and friends of all those involved.

Again and again in parenting circles we are told, "You get who you are." Extrapolate. We get, as a culture, who we are. Our intense individualism, our assumptions that other's problems are not our problems, our dismissal of tragedy as not our problem, our glorification of violence, all these cultivate the culture that results in an 8th grader, a gun, and a bystander.

Who are we? Read the headlines as your Lenten practice today. Reject the assumption that negative headlines are "someone else." Consider who we are by what we get.

Pray for forgiveness, reconciliation, redemption, and transformation.