25 Years in the Making

 

Yesterday, I shared a hymn we sang at my ordination 25-years ago.  Today, I want to share another hymn, more recent, that has captured my imagination.  The Summons was written by John Bell as part of the Iona Community in Scotland.  Please join me in praying these words today:

 

Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?

Will you go where you don’t know and never be the same?

Will you let my love be shown, will you let my name be known,

Will you let my life be grown in you and you in me?

 

Will you leave yourself behind if I but call your name?

Will you care for cruel and kind and never be the same?

Will you risk the hostile stare should your life attract or scare?

Will you let me answer prayer in you and you in me?

 

Will you let the blinded see if I but call your name?

Will you set the prisoners free and never be the same?

Will you kiss the leper clean and do such as this unseen,

And admit to what I mean in you and you in me?

 

Will you love the “you” you hide if I but call your name?

Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same?

Will you use the faith you’ve found to reshape the world around

Through my sight and touch and sound in you and you in me?

 

Lord, your summons echoes true when I but call your name!

Let me turn and follow you and never be the same.

In your company I’ll go where your love and footsteps show.

Thus I’ll move and live and grow in you and you in me.

 

I love the invitational nature of this hymn.  It starts with a series of questions about letting Christ guide our lives, lead us to places beyond our comfort/complacency, and to interact with people who challenge us.  This reminds us that faith is not about coercion or convincing someone else to join our club.  Faith continually expands, evolves, and embraces.  Is there one of the invitational questions above that set your soul soaring?  Which of the questions did your soul say, “Um, that’s a hard pass and an emphatic, “No” on that one.  Thanks, but no thanks, Jesus.”  Which question landed with a thud in your heart, soul, and life?  I know for me it is the question, “Will you love the “you” you hide if I but call your name?  Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same?”  Something about those two lines stops me short.  Will I let Christ’s love do something in me, through me, with me, and despite me?  Or is my Iowa stubbornness too thick, my to-do list too consuming?  Do I tell God to take a break, because I’ve got it from here?   Hold this hymn, for I am holding and praying these words with you today.  With God’s love. Amen.

25 Years in the Making

 

One of the moments from my ordination service that hums in my soul, hovers in my heart, and guides my ministry each day is the hymn, “Won’t You Let Me Be Your Servant”.  Slowly pray these words with me:

 

Won’t you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you?  Pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant, too.

 

We are pilgrims on a journey; we are travelers on the road; we are here to help each other go the mile and bear the load.

 

I will hold the Christ-light for you in the shadow of your fear; I will hold my hand out to you, speak the peace you long to hear.

 

I will weep when you are weeping; when you laugh, I’ll laugh with you.  I will share your joy and sorrow till we’ve seen this journey through.

 

When we sing to God in heaven, we shall find such harmony, born of all we’ve known together of Christ’s love and agony.

 

25-years later, these words still sing and swirl, awakening my sacred imagination.  The first verse reminds me of the relational/reciprocal nature of ministry.  We seek to serve each other ~ not out of obligation or oppression, but because we follow One who washed the feet of his disciples.  The second verse reminds us that the journey of faith is not undertaken as isolated individuals but as a community. The third and fourth verses seek to explore and explain what it means to be community ~ meeting each person where s/he/they are, not as we want them to be.  A few years ago, our church claimed and celebrated that “Faithfulness” is a core value.  Faithfulness, like discipleship, is growing in the image of Christ for the sake of the other.  I grow in God’s love not for myself, although being grounded and guided by God is a blessing.  Rather, God’s love longs to escape through me in ways I cannot control or even comprehend.  The fifth verse invites us back to a Christ-infused and inspired life ~ Christ who knew the fullness of humanness ~ from birth, life, death, and new life.  The more we engage Christ's wisdom, the more we are called to participate in the Way of Jesus.  Often the hymn repeats verse 1 at the end, circling back to the truth of our call to service with others for the sake of the world God loves.  Hold this hymn with me, for I hold and pray these words with you today.  With God’s love.  Amen.

25 Years in the Making

 

We live our lives in the meantime, the in-between time, the luminous liminal time of things ending and beginning.  On the day after my ordination, on the day before September 11^th, on September 10^th, I remember we had dinner with friends from the church.  We laughed; we shared stories about the past and excitement for the future.  Gina and I were moving out to New Hampshire to serve my first congregation.  I was excited and scared.  Excited to share all this knowledge I had, but scared because there was so much I didn’t know how to do on my own.  Sure, I had led worship, but not every week!  Sure, I had helped with funerals and weddings at my internship, but never by myself!  Sure, I had visited people and prayed with them, but now I had this title, “Reverend” (and don’t forget about that piece of paper in a frame I could hang on my wall to show the world I was legit).  It felt like I was 16 and given the keys to my parents’ car.   

 

After 25 years, there are quite a few dents, scratches, and accidents my car of ministry has been through.  My ministry car has a bumper with so much duct tape that it is hanging on for dear life; the mileage in my car of ministry increases every day, the tires are worn and have been replaced, and the engine doesn’t vroom or zoom the way it once did.  Yet, the scenery is never the same.  Each day holds new adventures that are not on my agenda.  Ministry is lived neither here nor there.  In the meantime, the in-between time, the liminal time of grieving what was and trying to anticipate what will be, is at once both the greatest joy and deepest demand of ministry. 

 

Where in your life are you living in the meantime, the in-between time ~ something new that has begun and something from the past that you still carry?  Where do you feel like something is not what it once was but not quite what it could be?  That question covers a lot of my life, not just the last 25-years.  I am not the same person who was ordained in Iowa 25-years ago.  I am not the same person who shoveled snow in Wisconsin.  I am not the same person who preached his first sermon out in New Hampshire.  As you ponder the past this week approaching Friday, 9-11, consider the moves you’ve made, the leaps of faith you’ve taken, and the slow, steady, turtle-like progress you’ve embarked upon over the last 25 years.  What has shifted, what is shifting, what do you pray to God never shifts or changes?  Hold these questions and the mystery that is your one wild and precious life.

25 Years in the Making

 

On September 9, 2001, I was ordained as a minister at Urbandale United Church of Christ in Iowa.  I still have a photo of Gina and me at the front of the church after the worship service.  After 25 years of ministry, I still remember the messy mixture of confidence and confusion stirring within me on that day.  Confidence because I now had a piece of paper conferring on me the degree, “A Master of Divinity.” Looking back now, I laugh at the absurdity of that document.  How in the world do you ever “master” Divinity?  You don’t!  I can’t.  No matter how many books I read, papers I write, sermons I preach, pastoral care visits I do, hands I hold, or vigils for justice I attend, I don’t master anything.  Isaiah was right, “For my thoughts are not Your thoughts, O God, neither are my ways Your ways” (Isaiah 55:8-9).  There is an honest confession there that is echoed in the Lord’s Prayer when Jesus says, “Thy/God’s will be done”.  As Richard Rohr says when Jesus prays, “Thy Kin-dom/realm/reality come ~ that means my kin-dom/realm/ and reality has to go!”  The Psalmist echoes and amplifies this by praying, “When I look to the macro-skies, dark and enormous, your handmade sky-jewelry, moon and stars mounted in their settings.  Then I look at my micro-self and wonder, why do You, God, bother with us?  Why take a second look our way?”  The more I’ve learned over the last 25 years of ministry, the less I know.  The more I want to hand back that piece of paper and sheepishly say, “Um, there has been some mistake here.”  There are days I wonder if I will ever complete the class called, “Ministry,” because the church is always changing, even though we sit in the same pew and try to frost over the shifting sands of the world with the same format of worship each Sunday.  The church is always changing, but like shedding skin cells, which we do each day, we don’t notice the new things God is doing.  The church is always changing, and too often we miss this amid “Robert’s Rules of Order” and voting on motions to help us feel in control.  God offers us the Wayless Way that doesn’t neatly fit into what our structured, stability-craving selves believe we want/need to thrive.

 

Two days after my ordination, our country experienced the violence, heartbreak, and deaths of 9-11.  The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq followed, alongside encouragement from our government to get out and spend money ~ because consumerism is the altar we are constantly called to worship at.  The financial crash of 2008, the politics of division and dismissing the “other” as dangerous to our country, declining membership of the mainline church, the COVID pandemic (which seminary really didn’t teach me how to lead!), and now we wrestle with faithfulness in a world that disorients us at a dizzying and disheartening pace. 

 

One of the earliest images of the church was a boat.  In fact, if you look at the ceiling of our church, with its peaked roof, it looks like a boat turned upside down.  The church was to be a safe space, not to disconnect from or deny the storms roaring outside, but to dry off, sing, support, and practice God’s love with each other.  You will hear a lot this week about 25-years since 9-11.  We will remember when and where we were when we heard the news and witnessed the heartbreaking images of the gray smoke billowing against the blue sky.  We will hear stories of family and friends who are still grieving loved ones who died in the planes, towers, and acts of terrorism ~ as well as the war that was started in the aftermath.  When we look back, it is always an invitation to look around ~ the past is always part of the present.  So ponder where you were living in 2001.  What were you doing on September 11^th?  How have the last twenty-five years left an impression on your soul that you are still trying to sort through prayerfully and with God’s love?  May this week offer us fresh insights and true experiences of God’s love we need in these days.  Amen.  

The Beauty of the Ordinary Prayer

 

Guide me, O my great Redeemer, who holds my loves, longings, and losses.  Guide me, O my great Sustainer, who gives me strength each second of each day.  Guide me, O my great Creator, who isn’t finished with me yet.  Guide us, O God, for I am not some isolated individual on an island.  The “me” who stares from the mirror is a combination and conglomeration of places, people, events, and experiences.  I create stories, sometimes wildly creative fiction, about who You are, God, who others are and why they are such meanies, and who I am.  Sometimes I am the hero, sometimes I feel like a zero, and sometimes I just want to nap on a pillow.  I confess that I get frustrated when others won’t be who I want them to be, even as I notice that I am not the me I want to be either.  God, I get so confused by You.  Your ways are not my ways.  You are not some puppy I train, but the One whose presence makes all the difference.  I offer this prayer with equal parts exhaustion, exhilaration, and exasperation for the beauty of this ordinary life.  Take today like a lump of Play-Doh that I let You guide me- heart, hands, and head in collaborating with You to create something beautiful for the world through me.  Amen. 

The Beauty of Ordinary

 

Please pray with me…slowly, savoring each syllable…Psalm 139 from the Message:

God, investigate my life;
    get all the facts firsthand.
I’m an open book to you;
    even from a distance, you know what I’m thinking.
You know when I leave and when I get back;
    I’m never out of your sight.
You know everything I’m going to say
    before I start the first sentence.
I look behind me and you’re there,
    then up ahead and you’re there, too—
    your reassuring presence, coming and going.
This is too much, too wonderful—
    I can’t take it all in!

 

(Pause, breathe, and ponder which word/phrase/image captures your heart.)

 

Is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit?
    to be out of your sight?
If I climb to the sky, you’re there!
    If I go underground, you’re there!
If I flew on morning’s wings
    to the far western horizon,
You’d find me in a minute—
    you’re already there waiting!
Then I said to myself, “Oh, he even sees me in the dark!
    At night I’m immersed in the light!”
It’s a fact: darkness isn’t dark to you;
    night and day, darkness and light, they’re all the same to you.

 

(Pause, breathe, and ponder which word/phrase/image captures your heart.)

 

Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
    you formed me in my mother’s womb.
I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!
    Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
    I worship in adoration—what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
    you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
    how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;
    all the stages of my life were spread out before you,
The days of my life all prepared
    before I’d even lived one day.

(Pause, breathe, and ponder which word/phrase/image captures your heart.)

 

Your thoughts—how rare, how beautiful!
    God, I’ll never comprehend them!
I couldn’t even begin to count them—
    any more than I could count the sand of the sea.
Oh, let me rise in the morning and live always with you!
    And please, God, do away with wickedness for good!
And you murderers—out of here!—
    all the men and women who belittle you, God,
    infatuated with cheap god-imitations.
See how I hate those who hate you, God,
    see how I loathe all this godless arrogance;
I hate it with pure, unadulterated hatred.
    Your enemies are my enemies!

 

(Pause, breathe, and ponder which word/phrase/image captures your heart.)

 

Investigate my life, O God,
    find out everything about me;
Cross-examine and test me,
    get a clear picture of what I’m about;
See for yourself whether I’ve done anything wrong—
    then guide me on the road to eternal life.

 

How might God guide you lovingly this day?  Amen.

The Beauty of Ordinary

 

Gordon MacDonald once wrote about how churches should have X-ray machines for your soul when you walk in for worship.  But unlike the TSA, we are not searching for weapons or what is dangerous, but rather we want to know what is in our soul.  Church as a space to go into those cobwebbed corners in our lives that most of us don’t dare to step into most of the time.  Unfortunately, the church, with our love of words, doesn’t give you much space or a place to pray your high, low, and just so-so of life.  We fill every second of worship with some sound or song, lest you become bored.  We jam more content in and then offer you a Morning Meditation each day so that we can point to being productive (eek! that hits close to home!).  The X-ray machine MacDonald imagined wasn’t for judgment or to rain down guilt, but to open space for grace to do its work.  God is not the audience receiving our prayers and praise at worship.  God already knows us fully.  The psalmist says, “Search and know me, God.”  (Psalm 139) because we need God to hold up the mirror to our lives. 

 

What is in your soul today?  There may be clutter from this year or dating back decades.  Maybe it is something fresh and raw that we don’t care to admit and aren’t ready to accept.  Maybe it is a moment of peace sipping tea or stillness at night. 

 

Note: our church will not be installing X-ray machines…I hear you saying, “Thank God!”  Because God already knows us fully and loves us unconditionally.  It is a great lie to think, “God won’t love me if God knew…”  God knows your wounds and wants.  God knows your longings, losses, and loves.  And prayer is a practice of bringing this into the light of affection and acceptance so God might help us process the pain rather than keep passing it along to others. 

 

What is the high, low, and so-so of your soul today?  May this invitation awaken you to the One who is at work here and now.  Amen.