Prophet-ting With God

 

Prophets were in collaboration with creation.  Isaiah and his peaceable kingdom, which tells of lions and lambs living together.  The whale in the tale of Jonah.  Amos splashing and swimming in the sacred river of justice.  Daniel looked into the eyes of a lion, gnashing its terrible teeth.  Ezekiel is out in creation, in a valley with gnarly and gross bones that he preaches to, which makes me wonder if I could do that?  Creation is not a side character in the prophets but a central actor in the redemption and reimagination of what might be.  Creation overflows with God’s wisdom, but we get too caught up in paving over paradise for our creaturely comforts.  We have stopped listening to creation as prophetically teaching and telling us our place in relationship to the Creator.  During our summer with the Psalms, I often invited you to go outside as you read the sentences and syllables so Creation could help the words sink/sing deeper into your imagination.  Reading about lush valleys is easier when the grass is tickling your toes. 

 

That was true not only in the Hebrew Hymnal, but also for the prophets.  Go outside to the trees that have weathered hurricanes, storms, seen election cycles come and go, as well as people so concerned about legacy that they forgot to live a life.  Go outside to the snakes and snails who are not wrapped up in whether their last social media post got enough likes.  Go outside to where the sun rises and sets each day with a rhythm.  Feel the light shining on the rhythm your choices are creating right now ~ liturgy (or the work of the people) is always about the patterns, both on Sunday mornings and in our lives.  The prophets called us out on how we live every day is an act of worship to God.  We are caught in a web of interconnected interdependence and inter-mutuality.  The prophets, with the psalmists, knew that the more we heard the trees and birds and clouds calling their wisdom, the closer we might be to hearing God’s voice once again.  God, who is still speaking but not through politics or preachers or pundits or prognosticators online, but right outside your window.  May God’s blessings go with you as you step into the sacred of creation with open hearts, ears, and lives.  Amen.  

Prophet-ting with God

 

There was a deep need, then and now, for someone who would call the people to return to God and to justice. Someone who would warn them, critique them, and reveal God’s heart to them. We call them prophets, and every religion needs them.  For hundreds of pivotal years—starting around 1300 BCE and continuing through the eras of Israel’s kingdom, exile, and conquest—prophets like Jonah, Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel performed this utterly important task. Besides being truth tellers, they were radical change agents, messengers of divine revelation, teachers of a moral alternative, and deconstructors of every prevailing order. Both Isaiah 21 and Ezekiel 3 (also Habakkuk 2) describe a prophet as a “sentry” or a “watcher,” whose job is to hold Israel maddeningly honest, and to stop them from relying on arms, money, lies, and power to keep themselves safe and in control.  Richard Rohr

 

Rohr reminds us that the prophets were deeply grounded in the present moment, to speak the truth in love (because if you are going to criticize and be cynical, your voice will be lost amid all the others with platforms, podcasts, and political pundits who do just that right now!).  Prophets call us back not to an idealized past (that probably never existed) or into some future utopia (that as humans we will always struggle to both create and sustain ~ see Genesis 3, the garden!).  Prophets seek to root us in the soil of the sacred.  The prophets point out that the rulers, money-makers, priests, and the powerful want to maintain the status quo.  The prophets say, God has always called us to another way, not just when it is conducive to our calendars, the conditions are correct or when someone else is elected, we are called to live God’s way every day.  This is difficult in good times and can be downright impossible in a time such as this. 

 

Who is helping you imagine what is possible to live as God’s beloved right now?

What gives you the strength to listen for God, rather than all the other voices that clamor for attention and allegiance? 

Given that the prophets were not just predicting the future, how does that open your sacred imagination to hear their words as an invitation for this day of August?

 

I pray you will continue to pay attention to God’s wisdom, not for some future day, but for right here and now to guide our living.  Amen.

Prophet-ting with God

 

“It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing futures alternative to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one.” Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination

 

Yesterday in church, we began to learn from and listen to the prophets.  We often have the job description of a prophet as a fortune-teller peering into and predicting the future.  However, prophets are more concerned about the present moment.  The prophets were less prognosticators and more pragmatists.  More than just pointing out the brokenness, the prophets sought to call people to reform and repent, to return to a relationship with God.  The prophets are calling us to keep God at the center, which is difficult. The prophets wanted people to stop putting all their trust in kings or fame or fortune (perhaps this sounds eerily familiar in a world where we are still shaped by politics, economics, marketing, and indivisible analytics online that want your attention to keep clicking on another story). 

 

There are four major prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel) and twelve minor prophets (Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi).  The distinction between major and minor has nothing to do with some earned status, nor is this meant to rate or rank the importance of what each prophet.  The classification and categorization are based on length.  Sorry, I totally spoiled the conspiracy theory or quieted the defense attorney who wanted to have Amos assigned to the major class.  The twelve minor prophets tend to be a few chapters in length and can be read in less than an hour.  The major prophets span several chapters and take longer to read ~ we will see that in September with Jeremiah.

 

What, if anything, do you remember about the prophets?

 

Maybe you think of Isaiah 11, the Peaceable Kingdom, where the wolf and lamb frolic and are friends.  Or hearing Isaiah 9 at Advent in December as foretelling Jesus as the “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”  Or perhaps you remember the flannel board in Sunday School as you heard about Daniel in the lions' den or Jonah swallowed (gulp) by a whale, only to be burped out on the beach of Niveah ~ the place he did not want to be!  Reminding us that God has a wicked sense of humor.

 

What other stories do you remember about the prophets?  Maybe Jeremiah is talking about being a child, unable to preach, or how he goes to the potter’s house as an act of prophetic imagination that God isn’t finished with the clay called “our life” yet.  Maybe you remember Ezekiel and dem dry bones, which you will now be singing all day!  You are welcome.

 

How do those above stories mesh or make sense with a prophet who isn’t only trying to predict but also reform and reframe the present?  God is restoring our broken bones of life, shaping us like clay right now, calling us to connect with people we don’t want to care about (our neighbors or enemies), which can feel like we are in a lion’s den.  How is Christ’s presence giving us a vision of a different way of living ~ not in some future lightyears away, but here in this place and moment?  Ponder with me the prophets’ role as ones who want to awaken our imagination to live in the possible of this less-than-perfect/polished present moment.  Amen. 

Forgiveness Part 5

 

I have noticed in my own life that people I don't like have power over me because I am always thinking about them. They preoccupy me and have control over my thinking. I find myself jealous, resentful, and vengeful. I lose peace. I am holding on to these people as my enemies.

Loving our enemies is the way of becoming free of our enemies. We free ourselves by letting go, by loving them, by caring for them.

One of the most beautiful things is that when we let the enemy go out of our heart by love and forgiveness, we are suddenly free to let that unlimited, all-embracing love of God pour into us. We become a new person every time we forgive an enemy, because we let go of the angry person inside who was holding on to fear.

The core of our faith is to be free people – free from the power we give to our enemies, free to love every human being with the divine love that always forgives, seven times seven and seven again.  ~ Henri Nouwen

 

Forgiving and fiercely trusting God, meet me in the messiness of my life.  I long for forgiveness to be like a pill I take for the aches and pains I carry.  I want the quick fix for all that ails me.  We live in a world of microwaves and instant communication, why does the spiritual path have to be so long, circuitous, and confusing!?!  Every Sunday, God, I pray for forgiveness to take hold of my life in the Lord’s Prayer.  Do I really want that?  Do I really trust forgiveness as a way of life for me and for those around me?  Or do I just mutter and mumble the Lord’s Prayer because that’s what is in the bulletin?  Slow me down, focus my heart on Your holy way of not holding grudges against others.  Help me shred the cultural script I adopted of eye for eye justice to create space to love my enemies.  Guiding, abiding, providing God, let Your presence pervade and persist in my heart, even in those cobwebbed corners of my soul where I am not ready to forgive others or myself yet.  Let Your patient presence be for me a truth I trust as You and I co-author the story of life today.  Amen.  

Forgiveness Part 4

 

“Forgiveness is not about forgetting. It is about letting go of another person's throat. Forgiveness does not create a relationship. Unless people speak the truth about what they have done and change their mind and behavior, a relationship of trust is not possible. When you forgive someone, you certainly release them from judgment, but without true change, no real relationship can be established.  Forgiveness in no way requires that you trust the one you forgive. But should they finally confess and repent, you will discover a miracle in your own heart that allows you to reach out and begin to build between you a bridge of reconciliation. Forgiveness does not excuse anything.  You may have to declare your forgiveness a hundred times the first day and the second day, but the third day will be less and each day after, until one day you will realize that you have forgiven completely. And then one day you will pray for his wholeness......”  ― William P. Young, The Shack

 

You have now read the above quote (or at least skimmed it) four times.  What sentence jumps off the screen/page for you?  Is it because that sentence sings the truth or because it feels like sandpaper to your soul?  Does the sentence confirm your thoughts or contradict what you know to be true?  Does the sentence fascinate or frustrate you?  I love the part of the quote that says forgiveness will not, by itself, create a relationship.  I can forgive, and the other person may never know it.  I can forgive, and it won’t make a difference to the other person.  I can forgive because I need to stop carrying around the weighted backpack of anger, hurt, and harm caused by another person or society’s words and actions.  Forgiveness offers release and relief from the ache in my soul.  Forgiveness for me is never one and done; there is no finish line, just slowly stopping to feed and fuel the hatred that burns in each of us toward others. 

 

Today, hold this quote, for it is, I promise, the last time I will share it.  I pray that the person you began to intentionally and prayerfully forgive on Monday is shifting and taking new shapes in your heart.  I pray you are finding ways to live in the mystery of forgiveness.  You may not be ready to trust that person yet.  Let this process be as unique for you as your fingerprint, because we know God’s forgiveness is offered unconditionally and unceasingly to us, day by day, hour by hour, as wisdom for our lives, individually and collectively.  Amen.  

Forgiveness Part 3

 

"Forgiveness is not about forgetting. It is about letting go of another person's throat. Forgiveness does not create a relationship. Unless people speak the truth about what they have done and change their mind and behavior, a relationship of trust is not possible. When you forgive someone, you certainly release them from judgment, but without true change, no real relationship can be established.  Forgiveness in no way requires that you trust the one you forgive. But should they finally confess and repent, you will discover a miracle in your own heart that allows you to reach out and begin to build between you a bridge of reconciliation. Forgiveness does not excuse anything.  You may have to declare your forgiveness a hundred times the first day and the second day, but the third day will be less and each day after, until one day you will realize that you have forgiven completely. And then one day you will pray for his wholeness......”  ― William P. Young, The Shack

 

Ugh, you think, we are still talking about forgiveness?  C’mon, let’s move on to another topic, like chocolate.  Everyone loves talking about chocolate.  We are a society that loves the grudge and keeps track of all wrongs on an invisible mental scoreboard.  And we struggle with trust as people today.  Last year, 22% of citizens in our country said they trust the government to do what is right most of the time.  As a comparison, it was 77% back in 1964.  And it is not just our government.  It is all institutions ~ church, medicine, education, social organizations, and businesses.  Maybe we don’t trust because we know too much, too quickly.  We live in a world where information moves fast, but not always accurately, and once our opinion is formed, we build a wall in our mind to defend and deflect any attempt to change us.  Think about how hard forgiveness is for a person you want to forgive, now try to extend that to people whom you interact with only through social media and have never met face-to-face!  Forgiveness and trust, woven together in the garment of the clothing we are wearing collectively, are tattered and torn…and we keep ripping apart because humans are messy! 

 

Today, I invite you to ponder what it means to trust.  Or maybe you are living by the words of Abbie Hoffman, Jack Weinberg, the Beatles, who all said “Don’t trust anyone over 30” (even though you are now twice that age).  What would trust look like?  Who are you willing to trust?  Who do you struggle to trust both individually and collectively?  Let these questions stir and swirl around your heart and live this day.  Amen.

Forgiveness Part 2

 

“Forgiveness is not about forgetting. It is about letting go of another person's throat. Forgiveness does not create a relationship. Unless people speak the truth about what they have done and change their minds and behavior, a relationship of trust is not possible. When you forgive someone, you certainly release them from judgment, but without true change, no real relationship can be established.  Forgiveness in no way requires that you trust the one you forgive. But should they finally confess and repent, you will discover a miracle in your own heart that allows you to reach out and begin to build between you a bridge of reconciliation. Forgiveness does not excuse anything.  You may have to declare your forgiveness a hundred times the first day and the second day, but the third day will be less and each day after, until one day you will realize that you have forgiven completely. And then one day you will pray for his wholeness......”  ― William P. Young, The Shack

 

William Young’s brilliant quote reminds us that forgiveness does not mean forgetting.  Forgiveness is a process day by day.  And forgiveness ultimately is about trust.  Trust is fragile like an egg.  Trust is never static or stationary; it is dynamic ~ reacting and responding to the unforeseen experiences and interactions between you and others.  Yesterday, I invited you to hold a person you want to forgive.  Remember, forgiveness can never be forced.  You know this from your childhood when your mom told you that you had to say you were sorry for something, but you did it through gritted teeth and with your fingers crossed behind your back!!

 

I wonder if anything shifted yesterday?  Doesn’t have to be monumental or major, doesn’t have to be like a dam breaking inside, setting off the water works of tears from your eyes, cue the John Williams musical montage or Sarah McLachlan singing, “In the arms of an angel…”  Forgiveness doesn’t excuse, but it looks for ways to reconnect and reestablish trust when and where that is possible ~ as well as wanted by both parties.

 

I am not sure we talk enough about how much forgiveness and trust are tangled and twisted together.  I do know that trust is difficult and demanding.  I know that trust can be broken emotionally or physically or spiritually.  The friend who promised they would not tell another soul, only to text another friend immediately.  The pastor whom you shared your soul, only to tell you it was your fault.  The society you were told loved freedom and wanted you to thrive/flourish as yourself, only when you did, immediately you were judged with jeers and sneers ~ like the Sneeches on Beaches.  

 

Do you see why forgiveness and trust hold hands? When you work on one, you are touching the wires of the other.  What would it look like to begin to trust a person you want to forgive?  This does not mean you will call them and read the last year of your whole diary of your deepest darkest secrets.  Maybe you start small with something very superficial, like the new kind of granola cereal you are enjoying.  Trust takes time, just like forgiveness ~ the two are the train tracks that all relationships run on.  May you and I find ways to tend trust in meaningful ways this day.  Amen.