The Life of the Party

 

Remember the last party you went to, what images come to mind?  Maybe it was a Super Bowl party on Sunday, New Year’s Eve, a recent birthday celebration, or fellowship after church.  When we gather in Syster Hall on Sundays, we are living the value of caring and belonging.  Ponder, what helps make a party a party?  Is it music, food, dancing, or meeting someone new?  Do you love big parties or more intimate dinner gatherings with just a few others so you can all participate in the conversation?  One of the key values of God, according to John, is gathering people where each can show up as their God-created self.  The truth of worship isn’t just for us to celebrate God as if God needs the praise to feed God’s ego.  Rather, when we worship, we get caught up in celebration as a key component and characteristic of God.  What would it mean to worship a God who loves parties, not just somber, serious prayers?  What would it mean to welcome others as a way of prayer?  Welcoming is one of our core values as a church.  We embody this in the practice of an open communion table ~ there is a place for everyone at Christ’s table.  We don’t decide who is on God’s guest list.  We don’t check baptismal cards, attendance records, or contribution statements.  All means all.  We practice a prayerful welcome at fellowship, seeking to sit with people we don’t know as well.  We practice a prayerful welcome in taking food to those who are food insecure at the Community Meal and Resurrection House.  We practice God’s love in hospitality, taking food to friends who live in fear and cannot go out because of ICE.  You can practice prayerful hospitality in conversations.  Your listening ear, curious questions, and open posture toward another is a loving action.  To be sure, it might be easier to turn water into wine than listen to people who are full of hate.  I would rather welcome people I like who think like me.  This is what social media bubbles do to us.  They promise us that we are safe, secure, and soothed, but watch the moment you color outside the line.  When you post something that doesn’t reflect the perspective or political position of another, there is someone who lashes out with keyboard courage to “tell” you what is right.  Just as Jesus lived in an honor and shame society, so do we.  We blame and shame each other viciously online and in the 24-hour-news-tainment that is our world.  Today, practice gracious, generative hospitality with one person.   Pro tip: doesn’t have to be your mortal enemy, doesn’t have to be someone who makes your blood boil and the tiny vein on your neck throb.  Pick someone whom you do care about, but perhaps can step on your toes.  Finally, please note, the goal is not to “change” the other person.  The goal is not for you to do this to earn God’s love (which is unconditional anyway).  The goal is to see what happens in your body, mind, soul, and life when you welcome another person with an embrace of God’s love that has you.  I pray this stirs your soul in new ways this day.

Hospitality is Next to Godliness

 

This year, we are wandering our way through the Gospel of John.  Over the last few weeks, you’ve heard about Jesus' conversations with Nicodemus (John 3), Photine (John 4), and the man who had been suffering for 38 years at the pool in Bethzatha (John 5).  Continue to hold the question from yesterday, “Where does it hurt?”  Each conversation in these three chapters opened our imaginations to hear God authoring our story in these days.  This week, I want to rewind to John 2, the Wedding Feast.  In Jesus’ day, wedding feasts were not just one night but would go on for upwards of a week.  It was the responsibility of the groom to provide provisions for everyone who came to the feast.  And you thought your wedding was expensive!!  Secondly, in Jesus’ day, the cliché wasn’t, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.”  Instead, hospitality was holy and the way you let loose God’s love.  You would do whatever it took to make sure there was food and drink for a guest, rather than face the shame of being seen as stingy.  You see the culture of hospitality in Genesis 18, when three guests/angels show up at Abraham and Sarah’s campsite.  Even though it is the middle of the day, when the heat and humidity are oppressive, Abe springs into action.  He tells Sarah to bake enough bread to feed 5000; he takes the best calf to be prepared with a rosemary sauce; he will do whatever it takes to be seen as a good host.  I see him with sweat pouring off his forehead. He stands nearby, praying that the guests will give him a good review.  Hospitality, welcome, and caring were important ways to express God’s love woven into the Jewish culture.  Given this cultural context, slowly read these words of John 2 from the Voice translation:

 

Three days later, they all went to celebrate a wedding feast in Cana of Galilee. Mary, the mother of Jesus, was invited together with Him and His disciples. While they were celebrating, the wine ran out, and Jesus’ mother hurried over to her son.

Mary: The host stands on the brink of embarrassment; there are many guests, and there is no more wine.  (Wes’ side note ~ the embarrassment or shame would be perhaps because the host didn’t count on the number of people or how thirsty they would be.  Nevertheless, the host will never live this down!).

Jesus: Dear woman, is it our problem that they miscalculated when buying wine and inviting guests? My time has not arrived.

But she turned to the servants.

Mary: Do whatever my son tells you.

In that area were six massive stone water pots that could each hold 20 to 30 gallons. They were typically used for Jewish purification rites. Jesus’ instructions were clear:

Jesus: Fill each water pot with water until it’s ready to spill over the top; then fill a cup, and deliver it to the headwaiter.

They did exactly as they were instructed. After tasting the water that had become wine, the headwaiter couldn’t figure out where such wine came from (even though the servants knew), and he called over the bridegroom in amazement.

Headwaiter: This wine is delectable. Why would you save the most exquisite fruit of the vine? A host would generally serve the good wine first and, when his inebriated guests don’t notice or care, he would serve the inferior wine. You have held back the best for last.

Jesus performed this miracle, the first of His signs, in Cana of Galilee. They did not know how this happened, but when the disciples and the servants witnessed this miracle, their faith blossomed.

 

What surprised you about the above reading?  What questions do you have?  Any insights about how these words are landing in your life today?  This week, as you go about your day-to-day life, notice who shows hospitality (restaurants, grocery stores, doctors’ offices, church) ~ where do you feel warmly welcomed and where do you feel overlooked?  May you sense God’s holy hospitality and may others sense that Spirit in you.  Amen.

Prayer

 

We protest because we love

 

Review your sheet with “Faith” at the top, and re-read what you’ve written on the sheet with “Hope” on top.  Now, I want you to list the names of everyone who embodied and expressed love to you in your life on the sheet with “Love”.  Family, friends, a random stranger this week whose name you don’t know, but paid for your hot chocolate during these chilly days.  We are overwhelmed with the Hallmark-zation of “love” in these days.  Too many stories show love as being fluffy and fuzzy.  But ponder these insights: the great Howard Thurman once said, “The formula is very neat: love begets love, hate begets hate, indifference begets indifference. Often this is true. Again and again, we try to dispense to others what we experience at their hands. There is much to be said for the contagion of attitudes.”

 

Or take Maya Angelou who wrote: “Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, and penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope. Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.”  (Tie this back to the story of Phontine and Jesus on Sunday in your heart.)

 

Toni Morrison said, “Love is or it ain’t.  Thin love ain’t love at all.” 

 

Or what about, “We do not protest because we hate, we protest because we love.  We protest for the beautiful future we know is possible.  We do so with joy, because the music of community plays in our hearts and we cannot help but sing.”  Now it is your turn, what questions stir and swirl in your heart when it comes to the word “Love” right now?  What comes up when you Google “Love”?   How does love play with faith and hope?  I recently heard that annoyance is the price we pay for community, connection, and love!  Let’s keep playing and praying and vulnerably living the word love in these February days.  Amen.

Hope of sinew

 

Way back on November 30^th of last year (which feels like forever ago), we lit a candle of hope.  That wasn’t just some ritual for Advent, it was a prophetic prayer for our lives every day this year.  Hope is not just wishful thinking.  Frederick Buechner said, “For Christians, hope is ultimately hope in Christ. The hope that he really is what for centuries we have been claiming he is. The hope that even though sin and death still rule the world, he somehow conquered them. The hope that in him and through him, all of us stand a chance of somehow conquering them too. The hope that at some unforeseeable time and in some unimaginable way he will return with healing in his wings.”

 

Walter Bruggemann says this, “Hope in gospel faith is not just a vague feeling that things will work out, for it is evident that things will not just work out. Rather, hope is the conviction, against a great deal of data, that God is tenacious and persistent in overcoming the deathliness of the world, that God intends joy and peace. Christians find compelling evidence, in the story of Jesus, that Jesus, with great persistence and great vulnerability, everywhere he went, turned the enmity of society toward a new possibility, turned the sadness of the world toward joy, introduced a new regime where the dead are raised, the lost are found, and the displaced are brought home again.”

Slowly savor this blessing of hope by Jan Richardson:

So may we know the hope that is not just for someday
but for this day— here, now, in this moment that opens to us:
hope not made of wishes but of substance,
hope made of sinew and muscle and bone,
hope that has breath and a beating heart,
hope that will not keep quiet and be polite,
hope that knows how to holler when it is called for,
hope that knows how to sing when there seems little cause,
hope that raises us from the dead—
not someday but this day, every day, again and again and again.

Now it is your turn, add questions, quotes, and random thoughts on your sheet with “HOPE” written at the top.  How is hope different than wishful thinking for you?  What percolated when you read Jan Richardson’s prayer of blessing in your soul?  How can hope have a soft heart and a strong backbone in the world today?  Keep playing and praying the word “hope” on this first Wednesday of a brand-new month.   Amen.

Faith Explored rather than Explained

 

What did you come up with on your sheet for the word faith yesterday?  Maybe somewhere in the cobwebbed corners of your soul, you recalled from Confirmation this scriptural gem, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1).  Here are a few of my favorite quotes about faith:

 

Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars. Whoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.  Barbara Brown Taylor

 

Franciscan Blessing:

MAY GOD BLESS YOU with discomfort, at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears, to shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger, and war,
so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain to joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in the world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done, to bring justice and kindness
to all our children and the poor. Amen.

 

Now it is your turn, add questions, quotes, random thoughts on your sheet with “FAITH” written at the top.  Where did faith show up yesterday in surprising ways?  Did faith fill you with living water like in John 4 ~ Phontine and Jesus?  Or did faith feel like an empty bucket right now?  Keep playing and praying with the word “Faith” as we begin this month of February.  Amen.

Faith, Hope, and Love

 

As we begin the month of love, with Valentine's Day around the corner, we focus on the final words of Paul’s ode to love as the mission/vision/purpose statement for the church in Corinth and our church today.

 

There are, in the end, three things that last: faith, hope, and love.  But the greatest of these is love.

 

Today, I invite you to take each of these words and reflect on your experiences and encounters.  How would you define faith, hope, and love separately?  What do faith, hope, and love feel like?  Is there someone who embodies each of these words in your life?  How do these three interact and overlap?  Is your faith strong or running on fumes?  What is the dashboard of your soul saying about your level of hope and your trust in love?

 

Author Kathleen Norris once wrote, “This is a God who is not identified with the help of a dictionary but through a relationship.”  As much as we may desire/demand a concrete, never-changing definition or description of faith, hope, and love are fluid, constantly in flux ~ just as relationships continue to evolve/expand.   Any attempt to confine these words soon eludes our intellectual efforts.  Norris continues, “But in order to have an adult faith, most of us have to outgrow and unlearn much of what we were taught about religion.”   Wait, is there something you need to unlearn about religion today?  Consider how this connects to the story of Phontine at the well with Jesus yesterday ~ those two breaking down boundaries and biases.

 

So, get out three separate sheets of paper.  Write “faith” at the top of one sheet; “hope” at the top of another; and “love” at the top of the third.  What have you gleaned from hymns, sermons, prayers, and the glimpses of God that left angel dust in your hair through your life with each of these words?  Who inspires and infuses your faith ~ sets your soul ablaze and alive to flourish?  Where is hope knocking on the door of your heart to live this year differently?  How does love walk through the door of your life without knocking, without RSVPing, with arms wide open, taking you into an unexpected bear hug? 

 

I pray this exercise might help you rewind and review your experiences and encounters with each word.  Norris writes, “Faith is not discussed as an abstraction in the gospels. Jesus does not talk about it so much as respond to it in other people, for example, saying to a woman who has sought him for a healing, “thy faith hath made thee whole” (Matt. 9:22, KJV). And faith is not presented as a sure thing. Among Jesus’ disciples, Peter is the one whose faith is most evident, always eager. Then, in the crisis of Jesus’ arrest and trial, Peter is the disciple who denies him three times. I do not know the man, he says, and weeps. The relentlessly cheerful language about faith that I associate with the strong-arm tactics of evangelism fails to take this biblical ambiguity into account. I appreciate much more the wisdom of novelist Doris Betts’s assertion that faith is “not synonymous with certainty ... [but] is the decision to keep your eyes open.”  Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith  May your words mix and mingle with Norris’ thoughts as we live with and into faith, hope, and love this week and month.