Prayer

 

God of words and wisdom that confound and comfort us, sometimes we feel both puzzled and want to praise at the same time, thank you for the Sermon on the Mount.  Thank you for challenging us to not let the gospel of the world where ‘might makes right’ be the only truth we cling to and live from.  Thank you for the words that remind us You hear our prayers, especially when we are frustrated that life isn’t turning out how we plotted or planned.  Help us, O God, hold life loosely and lightly.  Help us find ways to laugh and sing as honest prayer.  Help us listen for You trusting that Your voice isn’t always heard amid the shouting and strain of the day.  Guide us with Your grace, fill us with Your love, let our souls be infused and inspired by You.  In the name of the One whose sermon stretches us into Your sacred image.  Amen.

House of Your Life

 

Everyone, then, who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.  The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on rock.  And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!

 

I remember singing a song in the cherub choir as a child.  The words seared into my memory still: “The wise man build his house upon the rock and the rain came pouring down!” 

 

The question is to look at the foundation of your life?  Where are you building?  What are you building?  Remember that how you spend your day is how you spend your life.  What materials are you using, which is to say, pay attention to your words and actions.  What resources are you sharing and which resources do you cling tightly to until your knuckles turn white?  Pay attention to your life today, with God as a building inspector.  Take time to investigate the cracks and crevasses and corners filled with cobwebs.  How is the basement of your life?  What is down there that maybe you need to let go of?  How is the living room, your heart and soul?  Is the interior house called your life tidy or cluttered and chaotic?  How is your mind, perhaps spinning or swirling with too much information? 

 

Hear these words from Henri Nouwen, “This image of God inviting us to God’s home is used throughout scripture. The Lord is my house. The Lord is my hiding place. The Lord is my awning. The Lord is my refuge. The Lord is my tent. The Lord is my temple. The Lord is my dwelling place. The Lord is my home. The Lord is the place where I want to dwell all the days of my life. God wants to be our room, our house. He wants to be anything that makes us feel at home. She is like a bird hugging us under her wings. She is like a woman holding us in her womb. She is Infinite Mother, Loving Host, Caring Creator, the Good Provider who invites us to join him.” 

 

Your life, and mine, is the unfinished house in which we live, says author Philip Simmons.  May this wisdom help and hold you as we with Jesus say, “Amen”…may it be so…to the Sermon on the Mount.  Amen.

Ashes to Ashes

 

Happy Ash Wednesday, everyone!  First my birthday and now Ash Wednesday, when will the fun stop?!?  Here.  The fun stops right here as we begin Lent which is that church season drenched and doused in guilt and apparently not eating meat on Friday for some reason?  I know it was about giving something up to symbolize Jesus’ loving sacrifice, but I wonder if Jesus would rather we give up hurting and harming and treating each other as less than fully human. Lent is a holy (sometimes hard) season to be honest about the places where we do not see clearly.  The coming forty days shine a spotlight on where you and I (being human size) do not practice what we preach, where we resist and downright refuse to love another human being because of who they are or what they believe or how they hurt us! 

 

As we begin this holy season of Lent, hear these words from Jesus:

 

 Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.  For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.  Is there anyone among you who, if your child asked for bread, would give a stone?  Or if the child asked for a fish, would give a snake?  If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will God will give good things to those who ask!

 

What are you asking God for right now?

 

When was a time you asked God for something and it felt like the answer from the Holy was, “No!”?  Perhaps you prayed that a family member would be cured, or a marriage would be reconciled or that as people we would stop killing each other!  While I do not know for certain, it makes sense to me that people in Jesus’ day were praying the Roman Empire would be overthrown.  We know people came to Jesus pleading, which is to say praying, for healing ~ so do we.  And we know that Jesus didn’t heal everyone.  Prayer can be contradictory.  On the one hand, we know God is not Santa Claus or a Genie or a vending machine giving us what we want.  On the other hand, our most fervent prayers are often for others who we love to be freed from pain, suffering, discrimination or death.  Hold the messiness and un-answerability of this passage ~ because I don’t think this is a puzzle we can solve, but a mystery we seek to live with lots of questions and doubts and faith.

 

Keep reading with me ~  In everything do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

 

What was one action you offered another in love this week?  Did it feel like love was returned or did the person trample on your tulips or make a sarcastic, snide remark?

 

Where is one place today you can enter the room with love?

 

Finally read this with me ~

Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

 

For me, these two verses help shed and shine light on what we have read above ~ not just today but all the way back to the beginning of Chapter 5 over the last several weeks!  This way of Jesus is not a highway we zoom down, but a twisty, turning, difficult dirt road with ruts and bumps that damage the suspension system in our logic and disrupt us in ways we’d rather not discuss.  To be sure, I think the gate to God’s way is wide open!  You don’t have to show your baptism card or badges on your heavenly sash or show that you are worthy.  You are welcome.  There are no qualifications, no resume and cover letter needed, no gate keeper.  Jesus welcomes you as you go stumbling through the gate single file into the spaciousness of God.  What is on the road right now for you?  Look around your life on this Ash Wednesday.  Open your heart and be held by a mystery that knows your prayers, doubts, disappointments, joy, anger ~ that great stew in your soul ~ spiced with flavors from your life from the spice shelf of your soul.  Amen.

Back to the Sermon

 

Okay, enough with the philosophical birthday stuff from yesterday, we have a Sermon on the Mount Series to complete here ~ gotta love my inner Protestant work ethic voice sometimes.  We are wrapping up and winding down the Sermon on the Mount this week with chapter 7 where Jesus starts off, Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.  For the judgment you give will be the judgment you get, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.  Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye but do not notice the log in your own eye?  Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.

 

Well thanks for that uplifting wisdom, Jesus.  I think someone woke up with a case of the “Grumpy Dwarfs”.  Fun Bible Nerd fact ~ the word hypocrite means actor.  This reminds us of the question, where are we playing a role right now in our lives?  Where have we adopted a ‘fake it til you make it’ mentality?  Where do we think we have ‘it’ (meaning life, faith, politics, people, the world, the universe) figured out ~ not realizing our point of view is a view from one/single point!  We all have a log in our eye and unfortunately we don’t see it.  Our mind has adjusted to it.  And because we have a bias toward confidence and competence; because we tend to think being prophetic is making a ruckus and calling other people out; because we believe that information leads to transformation (which doesn’t always work, even though that is our favorite or only tool/technique to use).  Because of all of this, we cling to our logs and point out other’s splinters.  We proclaim that we have it all together, even as our inner voice and color commentary annoyingly points out our fumbles and stumbles ~ that we don’t want to hear.   Today, sit with your beautiful beloved brokenness.  Today, be human size and let others be human size too.  I know we hurt and harm each other.  I know people’s words and actions leave wounds and we want to strike back with eye-for-eye justice, enough with this turn the other check stuff, Jesus!  We want to score points on an imaginary score board and we want, like Burger King says, to have it our way, right now!! 

 

Sit with this quote from Edward Friedman, ““The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assumption that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change.” 

 

Sit prayerfully with the truth that this applies to you and me as well!  How willing are you to change?  Wait, you think, why would I need to change?? 

 

Be still with the Sacred who is not finished with you or me on this day and in this month.  Amen.

Birthday Break

 

We pause, take a commercial break, from our regularly scheduled programming of the Sermon on the Mount because it is my 50^th birthday.  I am now eligible for membership in AARP.  Insert confetti thrown here, I guess?  I am sure some of you are think, “He is still so young.” Which I do appreciate, because the wider culture suggests that I am over the hill. I do know that I am reaching or have reached the halfway point in my career.  I do know that I get tired more easily, and this will only continue.  I do know the culture keeps preaching and teaching me that I should thrive in my fifties, the best decade ever, without ever accepting or acknowledging that my body is finite and has a “best buy” date on it.  Birthdays are filled with all kinds of emotions that we can’t frost over or drowned out by belting “Happy Birthday”.  Birthdays are moments to look back, look around, and look forward.  Maybe you remember the day you turned 50.  Or just consider your most recent birthday.  One of the beautiful tensions in our faith is the unique universality we individually share.  I hope you caught the contradictory tension in that last sentence.  You are unique and you are a featherless biped like me.  Or in other words, what you felt on your 50^th Birthday (gratitude to grief; surprise – how did I get to this age so soon to some regret to much rejoicing) may be similar and different to what I feel today as well.  If I had a magic wand (which that would be a fantastic birthday present), I would cast a spell to eliminate the phrase, “I know exactly how you feel.”  We share grief in a larger sense, but how we process that pain is as unique as your fingerprint.  We share celebrations with laughter or warm feelings, but how your soul dances with the divine bares only your name.  More and more I realize that life/faith is a wayless way.

Today, I welcome your prayers.  Today, I invite you to pause to ponder ~ you, like me, have never been this age before.  Which makes me wonder, why do we think we will ever arrive at some magical destination of having life together?  Today, I invite you to live your one wild and precious life (thank you Mary Oliver for that blessing).  I pray in the month to come, as we begin the season of Lent on Wednesday, we will find faithful, creative, brave, and bold ways to live our belovedness.  I pray in the coming decade I will be willing to fall splat flat on my face with laughter at the joy of making beautiful mistakes for the love of God.  May God bless you and keep you in these hard, holy days.  Amen.

Worry

 

A prayer for those who are worry-warts (like me)

God, I know Jesus said, do not worry, but I am so good at it!!  I have practiced worrying and have it down to an art.  My mind can create thousands of fictional future problems that I race off to solve, even though they may never happen.  I have convinced myself that my worry is productive, like sitting in a rocking chair and expecting to go somewhere.  That while I may not have to outrun a lion out in the wilderness, I can plan and plot and be prepared like a good Christian scout.  Deep down, I want You to notice all my hard work.  God, I confess my own salvation projects.  God, I name and notice my fear for my family, and that I don’t get to decide what they do.  God, I name and notice my concerns for the church, that trying to lead people can be like herding cats.  And too often I take too much responsibility and accountability for that which is not mine.  God, I name and notice my anger at culture that wounds and hurts and how I think I can be a superhero to save the day.  God slow me down.  God make me human size.  God stop my striving to be still…to be (see Morning Mediation from Wednesday).  Let Your love get a word in edgewise and write a gospel on my heart and life, my calendar and credit card, on this holy, unknown and uncontrollable day.  For here I am, God.  Here You are, God.  Here we are together.  May these three sentences be the wisdom I need every hour, every second, this day.  Amen. 

Fasting

 

So far this week, we have read all of chapter 6 in Matthew, we have vulnerably opened our checkbooks to God (not with trembling but with hope for God to graciously get a word in edgewise) and we have come before God honestly/prayerfully as we tried to lay down our agendas and wishes ~ as though God was a genie in a bottle.  We embraced and embodied the holy act of vulnerability ~ to be in God’s presence.  Today, let’s dwell on the word, “fasting”.  This word usually means denying ourselves.  For example, next week, March 5, we begin Lent.  One prayer practice is to give something up (chocolate or soda or alcohol or over functioning).  This is one way of fasting.  But this prayer practice needs not only be for food, but it can also be to refrain and reframe that which we have elevated and are emulating.  For example, there are things we worship, sacrifice at the altar of life, physically ~ we can become addicted to exercise or too many twinkies or binge-watching Netflix.  We can worship at the altar of always being positive or being cynical and critical.  We can worship at the altar of committing to doing everything at church (oh, that one is close to home!) or we can worship a relationship where we are so enmeshed that we can’t be happy unless our friend, partner, or family member is happy.  We don’t know where we end, and they begin.  Fasting is paying attention to what we are consuming and what is consuming us.  It can be news, work, fast food, alcohol, sex, money, being praised, or people pleasing.  Fasting is to be aware of what we turn to when we are stressed out to numb the pain.  This takes time and this passage is so powerful as we look to being the season of Lent.  What do you need to refrain from and reframe your one wild and precious life to create space for the holy?  Where and toward what do you race and run the second your restlessness starts to make you feel like you want to crawl out of your skin and go buy a yurt in the desert?   Listen to your life, because that is where God shows up.  As always, find a partner, a soul friend to talk to as you process all that is stirring with you and around you.  With God’s love.  Amen.