500th Anniversary of the Reformation

Five hundred years ago on October 31, 1517, Martin Luther swung a hammer nailing his 95 theses to the door of the Chapel in Wittenberg, Germany.  (You can read all 95 by clicking here).  As important as that one moment was, it really was the culmination of many different streams that enabled and empowered Luther.  Politically, the prince of his providence in Germany was willing to flex his muscle against the power of the pope.  Technologically, the printing press was able to spread Luther's ideas to a bigger, broader audience than the simple swing of his hammer did.  Theologically, people were hungry for new ways of experiencing the sacred.  Luther built his theology on Sola Scriptura (scripture alone) and Sola Fide (that we are justified by faith alone).  He translated the Bible into German and led worship in the common language.  Luther wanted every person to claim the priesthood or ministry of all people.  Luther wanted every home to not only study the Bible, but his for catechism was written for the father to lead teaching every night after dinner.  But least we try to make Luther out to be some hero, we know he struggled with antisemitism and he even questioned the wisdom of the priesthood of all believers after a peasant upraising.  Luther is complex figure...or stated simply - human.  Luther was said to have carried around two slips of paper.  In one pocket was a piece of paper with the words written, "I am a beloved child of God."  And in the other pocket was a piece of paper with the words written, "I am sinner in need of redeeming"  He believed everyone was a sinner and saint simultaneously.  We live between those two realities.

In addition to Luther's theological understandings that I continue to find helpful doorways into being both a person of faith and being the church, I also hear echoes of Luther's culture in our world today.  Politically, we have people flexing their muscles and it is a time of disjointedness in our world.  The deep divisions and questions over how do we live a different way?  We struggle with who should have power...the nation or the state?  Technologically, the fact that you are reading this blog in one place while I am writing it some where else...means the way we are communicating is changing.  Finally, I believe people are still hungry for new ways of experiencing the sacred.  I grew up in an era of church which is now being called or characterized as, "Moral Therapeutic Deism."   Moral meaning every Bible lessons was supposed to teach us something.  Therapeutic meaning that we wanted self affirmation and self realization.  Deism was God is out there some where. 

I agree with Karl Rahner that what can help the church today is mysticism.  Our lives are a mystery.  As a way of prayer, I want to share a video by a musical group, Cloud Cult and the song, Through the Ages.  You can hear this as a love song.  You can also hear this as a hymn we sing to God or God sings to us.  I love finding the sacred not only inside but outside the church.  In the coming 500 years may our faith find ways to connect, to integrate, and to continually stay open to a life giving and changing love of God.  I hope you enjoy the video and may you hear more than a trace of God's grace in it.  Blessings ~~

Jesus Part Three

In the chaos of an overcrowded little town of Bethlehem You come,
Come into our crowded and chaotic lives anew, we pray.

Inconspicuously You enter the through the back barn door,
Come into our hearts with a patient persistence again, we pray.

Ironically, You come into the very moment Rome was exerting it's control through a census,
Come into our lives where we can cling so tightly our knuckles turn white afresh, we pray.

Initially it was only You and Mary, the Godbearer, and Joseph, the one who risked the misunderstood stares of others who stood in that scratchy, smelly straw of the barn...
Come into our moments of reluctance and resistance that we might bear Your love this day, we pray.

Into that holy disruption called birth came another unexpected, even unwelcomed, knock at the door as shepherd, those who lived at the margins of the world, sheepishly came following the counsel of angels...
Interrupt our lives afresh this night in unexpected, even unwelcomed ways that we might hearing the unfolding hark of angels singing to us.

You came not with military might or prestige or power or all the ways we define success,
You came, O Emmanuel ~ with us and for us ~ in a most peculiar way.
You came not with bright lights of fireworks but an ordinary twinkling tiny star against the night sky.
You came not with demands, but an open invitation.
        Let us respond with an emphatic yes.
You came to the lakeshore and called disciples to follow.
        Let us drop our to-do list and busyness to keep following.
You came to the Pharisee's house and called for him to see a woman washing your feet.
        Let our eyes continually be open to each other.
You came to Zacchaeus' house, baffling us that you would associate with him.
       Let us continued to be baffled by Your ways.
You came to the dark night of the soul,
       Let us keep searching for You even in struggle, suffering, and stress.
You came to a cross not with anger or hate, but with a word of forgiveness.
       Let that convict and challenge our lives.
You came to a garden and whispered the name, Mary, to open her eyes to the mystery of Easter.
      Let us hear You whispering our name in the mystery of this hour.

Come, o come, Emmanuel into the advent of this messy moment of our lives with compassion and challenge we need every day.

Amen.

Jesus Take Two

We started with Jesus' birth...now we look at Jesus' life.  As the One who shared the costs and joys of being human.  Jesus experienced moments of deep joy.  You can read about his baptism and him hearing God say, "This is my beloved."  Talk about a holy moment!  Or you can read about healing someone whose life is forever changes.  Or you can read about his transformation on a mountain.  There were many moments when the holy happened in Jesus' life.

There is pain and suffering and struggle too.  Of course, there is the cross.  But even before that, the gospels tell us that Jesus was often misunderstood by his friends.  He would eventually be betrayed by a friend, denied by another, and deserted by the others.  With friends like that, who needs enemies! 

Jesus life was full.  We have, at best, three years of Jesus' life recorded in the gospels.  The rest of the story is missing and untold.  We know Jesus was an itinerant preacher with a particular fondness for telling parables.  We know Jesus was probably not wealthy, closer to working poor.  We know that Jesus spoke out against the empire and the powers that be...which is what got him hung on a cross.  Rome was not exactly known for taking constructive feedback well! 

We know that Jesus had moments of laughter, grief, insight, frustration...and every other human emotion.  This full life matters because Jesus is not just saying abstractly that he came to show us life abundant.  This wasn't some idea, it was a practice that he sought to show by what he said and did.  Sometimes we get so caught up in the notion of ethics and morals of Jesus' life that we miss the holy disruption of God entering earth in the form of Jesus and God's willingness to face the most human part of life (death...which will be the topic of the next post).  This doesn't have to be a multiple choice game.  We can take all three pieces and start to explore the mystery of why and what God might have been up to in Jesus' life...and in ours as well.

As that mystery dances in your life in these days, I pray that there is more than a trace of God's grace and love for you in these moments.

Grace and peace and blessings ~

Jesus Take One

At the center and core of the Christian faith we meet Jesus.  Just as there is a vast variety of names and ways people dance around the divine of God, the same can be said in our encounters with Jesus.  For some, Jesus is a teacher...a rabbi.  Someone who shows us a moral life.  For others, Jesus is savior, the One who is able to help reconcile our relationship with God.  For others, Jesus is a Spirit being who is mysterious.  Even our own Scriptures present Jesus in different ways through the four Gospels.  In Matthew, Jesus' life echoes Moses' life.  Jesus, just like Moses, has to go to Egypt.  Jesus, just like Moses, preaches a new understanding of God from a mountain.  Jesus, just like Moses, is set to liberate a people.  In Mark, Jesus is constantly on the move.  Mark loves the word, "immediately".  Jesus also confronts a variety of storms in this gospel.  In Luke, Jesus is on the road.  And when he is not out preaching, he is at a table eating.  In John, Jesus encounters distinctive people and it is in their conversations that we gain key insights.  We might want to cry out, "Would the real Jesus please stand up?"  Is Jesus the One who ushers in a new way and new covenant?  Is Jesus the One who helps us weather the storms of life and even our own deaths?  Is Jesus the One we meet out on the road of ordinary life?  Or is Jesus the One who comes to us in our relationships and conversations?

Short answer, "Yes".

Longer answer is that just as God will not be confined or contained by any one box, neither is the One God sent to live among us.

For me, it is important to begin and the beginning.  Jesus' birth, the incarnation (literally means the "enfleshment of God.").  This is an act of vulnerability.  For God to enter the human condition not as a bull in a china shop, but as One in a manger...in a barn...born to two parents who were not even married yet.  There is more scandal in the declaring God was born than perhaps we realize.  God entering in...not for the first time...but in a way that God believed we could recognize and relate.  God has always been about relationships.  God walks in the garden in Genesis 3 while Adam and Eve are hiding out among the fig bushes with their make-shift clothes.  God chats with Noah, Abraham, has the vision of a ladder for Jacob, and calls out to Elijah in a still small voice.  Yet, as several Hebrew Scripture scholars point out, God increasingly grows quiet as the Hebrew Scripture moves from book to book ~ until we reach the gospels.

To start with the mystery of God coming to us and known to us as Emmanuel, which means God with us and God for us.  God's very name makes a theological statement in the birth of Jesus.  But that is what God has been trying to get across from the beginning.  In Genesis 1, God says, "Let us (notice the plural there) make human kind in our image."  We are created and crafted for relationship.  But relationships are complex and complicated.  Relationships get messy and don't ways have happy endings.  That truth is one of many that we encounter in the Bible.  God who longs for us to respond in full relationship.  As a mystic once said, 'There is a God-shaped hole in us all.'  But because the ache of that God-shaped hole continually longs, we can tend to try to fill that space with all sorts of other things.  From alcohol to drugs to shopping to being a workaholic.  But the steady ache persists and insists.  The struggle is that because the word, "God" is so big, we often find it difficult to relate to a being that we cannot see, taste, touch, or sense.  Which is exactly why we start with Jesus as the incarnation, God in the flesh in our midst.  And not only then and there two thousand years ago, but here and now in our very midst.  The sacred there in the eyes of a family member or friend.  The holy moving in our midst as we listen to music.  Grace and love, not as abstract, but found in the beauty of creation or in a holy conversation.  Christ as the One who came to remind us that we too embody God's presence.  We too know what it means to make God's presence real.  We are formed and fashioned in God's image.

What is it that you make of the birth, the incarnation, or the coming of Emmanuel?  Is Jesus someone who saves or someone who teaches or someone who shows us a way to life?  Again, it doesn't have to be a false, forced choice.  It can be all the above and so much more.  Prayerfully ponder who Christ is to you and for you in these days.  And may those moments open you in real ways to more than a trace of God's grace.

Blessings ~

Sunday morning Prayer

Words washed over us...
Words spoken and sung.
Words that had soaked and saturated the well worn pews.
Words that had been woven into the wood work by our grandmothers and great grandfathers, people we never met, but nevertheless, had sat in this very place in years gone by.

Words washed over us...
As the Scripture was read.
Some words leap from the lecture and liturgists mouth
Awakening us.
Some words land with a thud in our laps and sit there patiently waiting for us to pay attention,
when we would rather forget.
Some words enter in and exit quickly barely leaving a trace of God's grace.

Words washed over us...
As the pastor preached.
As Karl Barth once said, "For us the Word of God became flesh...
And pastors take that truth and turn it back into words."
Ordinary words.
Sacred words.
Words that resonate and reason and reside and we release out of our memory to make room for something else that week.

Words washed over us...
As we sipped cups of coffee
Talking about the weather or the sports scores or doctor's appointments.
Words
Words
Words surround us on Sunday mornings.

I pray that this Sunday some of those words might even be God trying to get a word in edgewise.
I pray that this Sunday out of the still small silence might speak/whisper/love us into wholeness.

Amen.

Priesthood of All Believers Take Three

Consider the final verse we have been centering around..."Called as Partners in Christ's Service".

4.  So God grant us for tomorrow
    Ways to order human life
    That surround each person's sorrow
    With a calm that conquers strife.
    Make us partners in our living,
    Our compassion to increase,
    Messengers of faith, thus giving
    Hope and confidence and peace.


I love that the ordering of human life is first and foremost to the struggle and suffering and sorrow in the world.  Our shared humanity is often borne out of a sense of brokenness first...then blessedness.  I often think that Jesus' Sermon on the Mount (although misunderstood) points to this when he starts off with the 'Blessed are the poor...those who mourn...those who suffer".  When we find our shared humanity in struggle, we suddenly can move from the "us" verses "them" mentality.  We can move from judging, because we identify with the "other" in ways we had never seen.  Once you see, you cannot unsee.  Once you learn, you cannot unlearn.  You may forget.  You may get lost and leave something behind.  But in the end, what brings us together is struggle.  Which is why I find the above image so compelling.  Different people from different places and with differing perspectives forming a cross...a symbol of brokenness and pain.  Christ facing the cross was one of the deepest ways he showed his humanity.  When we surround each other's sorrows...our compassion can be increased.  Compassion is not just about comprehension.  We often want to intellectualize issues such as homelessness or joblessness or death.  We use words when what is really being called for is listening.  We pontificate and politicize rather than pause and enter into the pain.  Compassion is the deepest part of us.  Felt in our very gut or bowels.  In those vulnerable moments of entering suffering and strife and sorrow that is where we are messengers of faith...not when we grab a bullhorn and start shouting at people or knocking on doors or even inviting them to church.  Compassion is the doorway to ministry and we are all called to walk through that doorway into the life of another. 

I pray that looking at these words and letting them speak/sing to your life has helped you wrap your mind and heart and soul around the call of the "priesthood of all believers".  I pray you felt the affirmation that YOU are called by God.  I pray you felt the permission to go forth and be a blessing to others.  I pray you will seek out ways to serve and show compassion.  I pray that YOU will realize the truth that together we are all a royal priesthood called to work/labor/be collaborators with God in such a time as this.

Grace and peace ~~

Priesthood of All Believers Part Two

I have to laugh at the above image, because of the truthfulness of it.  I might resemble that remark too often.  In the last post, I offered you a video of the hymn, "Called as Partners in Christ's Service".  This could be considered one of the theme songs or anthems of the Priesthood of All Believers.  For some the word, "Priest" is a heavy and even hurt-filled word.  It is not a word that would claim as part of who they are. 

What images dance in your imagination when you hear the word, "Priest"?
How about "Pastor"?
How about "Minister"?
How about "Teacher"?
How about "Companion on the Way"?
How about Soul Friend...which John O'Donohue says in the Celtic Tradition is the word, "Anam Cara".  He writes, "Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship is always an act of recognition."  When the soul within me connects with the soul in you.  Soul being our fullest, holistic, authentic part...bearing God's fingerprints...made from the same DNA as star dust. 

Okay...perhaps now it is really obvious which of the above I prefer. 

We need soul friends in a world of surface level Facebook posts and short tweets.  We need soul friends in a world where we don't live anywhere near family and friendships can be strained over differences in politics or religion or race or creeds.  We need soul friends in a world that moves at a frenzied pace and where there is always "breaking news" coming from somewhere.  Look at the second and third verses of "Called as Partners in Christ's Service."

2.  Christ's example, Christ's inspiring,
    Christ's clear call to work and worth,
    Let us follow, never faltering,
    Reconciling folk on earth.
    Men and women, richer, poorer,
    All God's people, young and old,
    Blending human skills together
    Gracious gifts from God unfold.

3.  Thus new patterns for Christ's mission,
    In a small or global sense,
    Help us bear each other's burdens,
    Breaking down each wall or fence.
    Words of comfort, words of vision,
    Words of challenge, said with care,
    Bring new power and strength for action,
    Make us colleagues, free and fair.

Christ's example was to call disciples, soul friends.  Christ's example was to reconcile the difference that too often kept people apart.  Christ's example was to see all people as God's beloved.  But there is a new pattern for such a time as this.  The world today, while there are still echoes of the world in which Jesus lived, is different.  The walls and fences are real.  We need words of comfort to sooth our souls.  We need words of vision that evoke and awaken what it really means to live in God's realm.  We need words of challenge because the work we are called to is not easy.  But it is work with courage and conviction and more than a trace of God's grace we can act in faithful ways.  We won't always get it right...but sometimes we learn more by doing it wrong.  Although I often wish in ministry that wasn't so true!!

Keep letting this hymn sing to your soul and speak to your life in these days.

Grace and peace ~~