Prayer for this All Hallow's Eve

 

Prayer for Halloween ~ God, You hold us and know us better than we know ourselves, be with us this day.  We know that too often we get caught in ways of being that feel like shoes too tight on our feet.  We long to be grounded and guided by You in how we show up, but at the same time we need approval and acceptance from our tribes.  Help us, O God, for we don’t always know what the next right step is.  The thick fog that clouds our thinking can make it hard to be certain which way we are going.  Our ears thick with the noise of the world can make it difficult to hear Your still singing voice.  Our souls are confounded by all the “advice” can make it nearly impossible to know whether what we are sensing is a nudge from You or slight indigestion.  Help us.  Hold us, and all the costumes we wear.  Guild us as we turn toward the last two months of the year.  In the name of the One who promises to abide with us, Jesus the Christ.  Amen.

October Days

 

As October days dwindle, I invite you today to look back at the last year.  I know, we usually do this on December 31 or January 1.  But honestly, why conform to the cultural expectations?  Today, I will write down the highlights of the last year.

Write down the lowlights.

Where did Your soul feel like a fountain?

Where did Your soul feel drained?

Whose love in your life makes a difference?

And whose love makes demands and decrees you don’t want to obey?

Where was an ordinary moment a holy moment?

 

Hold your life for the mystery it is as the season of autumn is ensconced around us.  Amen.

Reflections on All Hallows Eve part 2

 

I remember one year I what as a ghost for Halloween.  I did this because we had just purchased new sheets, and my grandma (a child of the Depression) would not allow anything to be thrown away.  She recycled or repurposed before it was trending.  It was also the easiest costume to make.  A few holes for my eyes (I don’t think my grandma cut one for my mouth to breathe ~ but breathing is overrated).  She used some markers to make the eyes stand out.  And voila, instant Halloween costume. 

 

The truth is we are all haunted by unholy ghosts in our lives.  We may no longer be afraid of monsters under our bed, but we are afraid of the images we see on the news and the voices that tell us the world is dangerous. 

 

What ghosts and ghouls do you deal with? 

Tie this to what we talked about yesterday with systems.  How do you show up when the gathering sends a chill down your spine?  You know that meeting you dread each month.  Or that broken person who keeps calling?  Do you keep putting on the same costume to show up?  This is not meant to blame or shame, but to notice.  In fact, I would contend that noticing, rather than moving ahead on autopilot is a brave practice we need now more than ever.  This starts with noticing the places where your stomach does summersaults, your mind races like a hamster on a wheel, and your heart sounds like a bass drum of a marching band.  Hold those moments and think about what you said or didn’t say ~ the truth is that in anxious situations we can get bigger (raise our voice, pound the table, demand our way or the highway) or we can get smaller (sink to the sidelines and stay silent).  How you stay human-size, as your authentic self, is hard holy work ~ as hard as trying to maintain the status quo that goes against your values.  

 

I pray for all the ghosts and ghouls that show up in daylight in your life ~ for all the aches and heartbreaks and overwhelming sense we are all lugging around in the luggage of life.  May God who also hold you right now, be felt as we reflect on this one holy, beautiful, broken, precious life.  Amen.

Reflections on All Hallows Eve

 

This week we will celebrate Halloween.  Kids will come by dressed in costumes, carrying pillowcases that will be full of candy, that parents will eventually sneak and steal from.  In 2023, Americans spent 12.2 billion dollars on Halloween…3.6 billion was on candy.  Most of us spend over $100 on candy and costumes.  Some of the most popular costumes last year were Barbie, Ken, and Spiderman.  Who knows who will show up at your door on Thursday night?

Whether you decide to dress up or not, the truth is we all wear costumes or masks.  We all are impacted and influenced by the people around us.  We just finished a series on “Gospeling your life”, because we know there are many gospels around us that want our attention and affiliation.  We all want to be part of the group, we are social creatures, who don’t want to be kicked off the island.  There are moments we might be laughing and then someone walks in the room and the jovialness stops ~ insert the sound of crickets here.  Systems Theory says that we play roles ~ in our family, with our friends, and even in church.  And all systems long for equilibrium.  If someone wants to change something, the group will resist such efforts.  Maybe you have felt this when you shared a dream with your family, and they immediately told you why it was a boneheaded idea.  Or you suggested a new restaurant to a group of friends who always meet at the same place, only to have that idea poo-pooed.  Or maybe at church you suggested a new paint color and you would have thought that you said there was no God for the reaction and response you received.  Systems like the status quo or homeostasis.  This is one of many reasons why sacred conversations on race and gender and sexuality are difficult.  The hard holy work of undoing racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia is long, because those are built and baked into the very system around us.

Today, I encourage you to pause.  What costumes do you wear with your family?  What masks do you put on with friends?  How do you show up at church?  When was the last time you felt like you could be fully and authentically yourself?  May God, who calls your truest parts of yourself, “Beloved” hold you in this holy pondering.  Amen.

Gospeling Prayer

 

Gospeling God, continue to write Your story in our heart, soul, mind, and body in these days.  Storytelling God, continue to shape the narratives we tell ourselves about You, others, and ourselves.  Composing and Conducting God, continue to write a symphony in our souls that inspires and infuses our living every day.  God of four distinct and different narratives of Your love incarnate, in the flesh of Jesus, continue to let the wisdom of the last fifty-ish days spark and saturate our lives.  Help us wrestle with what we don’t understand.  Help us rest in the comfort we found in narratives where we felt You close as our next breath.  Continue to let Your good news be the first and last word of our lives from the rising of the sun, to the going down of the same.  You sing within us, You move within us, Your rustle and roam and re-arrange our lives in ways we celebrate and can confuse us.  Continue to Gospel our lives as we turn to November and into the holy season of opening our sacred imaginations to the One who is born, lives, faces death, and shows us resurrection life, Jesus our Christ.  Amen.

Gospel within the Gospel

 

Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ ³⁸ This is the greatest and first commandment. ³⁹ And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Love God.

Love Neighbor.

Love Self.

 

In these words we have three invitations to a God-soaked, Spirit-saturated, Gospel-inspired, and Disciple daring life.  In many ways these three invitations in these three verses take our entire life to explore, experience, and express.  How are you loving God with your heart?  This could be through prayer, listening for God in music or being in silence, going out in Creation to hear the sermon of the songbirds.  How are you loving God with your soul?  Your soul longs to express creatively the ways God forms and fashions you.  Your soul is an unfolding, never finished art project.  I love God with my soul through how I show up for my family, through worship, sermons, morning meditations, and I pray opening spaces where people can realize like Jacob, ‘God is in this place and I didn’t know it.’  How do I love God with my mind?  This calls me to pay attention to what I am consuming in the media, but those voices will consume me.  What do I encounter online or in the 24-hour news cycle or what am I engaging that can stretch me out of this moment to the wideness of God’s work over years and centuries (this is exactly why we read the Gospels!!).  Loving God is our primarily calling.  As we love God, God loves us.  God feeds and fuels our lives, God shows up disguised as our lives, often not in the ways we planned or predicted.  You can go for that walk outside and no birds may be singing, you may stub your toe and get splashed by a car driving through a puddle.  You may come home, towel off and think, “That was the dumbest idea I ever read.  Thanks a lot, Wes!”  Then, God shows up in a sip of warm tea that satisfies or in a friend as you share walking experience with and start laughing uncontrollably.  We don’t control or confine God’s love, God’s love is expansive and evolving beyond our comprehension. 

 

We do channel, in our very human-size ways, God’s love to others.  Our neighbors, both those next door and down the street and around the world.  A neighbor is anyone who responds with God’s love, remember this from the Good Samaritan Luke 10.  The question the lawyer asked was, “Who is my neighbor?”  Who do I really have to be kind to, Jesus, because I would like to have a sacred script that tells me step-by-step.  And Jesus tells an offensive parable, because the hero is a Samaritan, who many of Jesus’ followers would ‘other’, push to the fringe and fray, not see as fully human or God’s beloved.  The Samaritans exist in your life.  They are the people with that political sign, posting that misinformation, pushing all the emotional buttons, and causing you to think, “That’s it, I am outta here.”  To channel God’s love to the very people who are un-lovable is the scandal of the Gospel.  Caesar’s gospel said might makes right and power rules the day.  Jesus’ gospel preached and proclaimed a diverse, inclusive, equitable love that saw all as beloved. 

 

Jesus also recognized that this wasn’t easy, because we don’t really love ourselves.  I mean seriously, if you heard the endless chatters and color commentary of the play-by-play voices in the booth of my brain – you would question everything I write and speak.  What do you say to yourself when you make a mistake?  What names do you call yourself when you put on an outfit that doesn’t quite look as good as you thought?  How have you internalized the voices of mentors who demeaned and demoted you rather than treated you as beloved?  And why, for all that is holy, do we let those voices of our worst critics live rent-free in your minds? 

 

Love God

Love Neighbor

Love Self

 

This is truly the calling of being a disciple, an apprentice and follower, of Jesus in these days that takes a lifetime to explore.  Amen.

Reflections on Gospeling Your Life

 

As we reflect on the fifty-ish days of reading all 89 chapters of the four gospels, did you find yourself with a favorite narrative of God’s love incarnate?  Maybe you like Mark’s just the facts, no-nonsense approach.  Maybe you appreciated Matthew’s intensity, that what we do matters and makes a difference, that something is at stake which is why Matthew can feel a bit rough around the edges (I mean some poor chap getting thrown into the outer darkness at a wedding for not putting on the right robe – Matthew 22:1-14, seems a bit extreme).  Maybe you liked Luke’s version of service, caring for the least, lost, lonely, crossing over borders and boundaries with God’s prodigal love.  Maybe you prefer the mystery of John where Jesus seems to talk in puzzles and riddles (it is like trying to understand some of the desert mothers and fathers!).  Or maybe it is like trying to pick your favorite child, you liked a bit of each.  I invite you today to write down what warmed your heart in each gospel and what tasted like stale day-old coffee?  Where did you sense God’s presence and where did you think, “Clearly God didn’t write that!”  You may do this Gospel by Gospel, or maybe make a list of five gospel stories that you found meaningful and why.  The “why” is always important even when it feels like your words don’t quite capture the fullness of what is in your heart.  Then, please share your top five Gospels and why with me.  I would love to talk to you more about how these gospel stories right now are good news to your life and how you are venerating and emulating the truths of God’s wisdom.   May the One who continues to infuse and inform and inspire our living go with you.  Amen.

Reflections on Gospeling Your Life

 

“What we venerate, we emulate.”  I recently heard that quote and wrote it down.  What we put on a pedestal; we worship.  If we venerate a judgmental God, we justify our own judging.  If we worship a God who is distant and disconnected, we embody those traits.  If we worship money, success, status, followers on social media, friendship, we will seek to pour our efforts and energies into those areas.  There are no true atheists, only many gods that all claim and clamor for our attention, affection, and affiliation. 

Reading the gospels is to let the Good News of God’s love incarnate infect your heart, soul, mind, and whole life.  Reading the gospels is the call to explore the question, who is this God who comes to us in the flesh and form of a Jewish itinerate preacher and teacher?  This question is inexhaustible, you will never solve that question once and for all, it is an unfolding mystery that propels our lives.  If we want to know what we worship, where we worship, how we worship, we can look at our calendar and credit card statements.  Where we spend our time, the people with whom we share our energy, and where we invest our money preaches a gospel.  Who we listen to on the news, podcasts, read in magazines are the voices that are really gospeling our souls today.  When you are in a room with others, look around at who is in the space and who is not.  Your life is a gospel (remember Caesar claimed to bring a gospel too).  We all preach, your life is a sermon, a song, a way of showing up and speaking up.  Listen to your life and to find the places where what you have read over the last fifty-ish day fits with God’s truth and where are the puzzle pieces mismatched?  This is hard, holy work.  Yet, pondering prayerfully which gospels am I living is a question for us day after day.  May God’s unconditional, unceasing, prodigal love guide you in this invitation today.

Reflection on Gospeling Your Life

 

Over the last fiftyish days you have read all four gospels, eighty-nine chapters, and I am not going to try to actually count the verses, but it was a lot.  I wonder, which passages warmed your soul like a fire on a crisp autumn eve?  Which passages were like sandpaper to your soul?  Which passages did you make notes in the margin of your Bible and which ones would you like to forget (or be like Thomas Jefferson who cut passages out of the Bible)?  There is a gospel within the gospel that has shaped you and I encourage you this week to reflect on what you have experienced as we have explored the narratives about Jesus.  A few insights I am carrying in my heart.  First, I made a special note of the narratives where women play a vital and vibrant role, I will be preaching on these passages in March to Celebrate Women’s History Month.  From the Woman at the Well, to Mary and Martha who confront Jesus about tarrying to help Lazarus, to the persistent and persuasive woman in Luke who keeps showing up to demand justice, to Mary and Elizabeth being the God-bearers of God’s love in this world ~ showing us how to let God’s love feed and fuel our life.  Please, if you have a passage where a beloved daughter of God is crucial and central let me know.  Second, I carry with me how Jesus shows a love that isn’t fuzzy or fluffy.  Dr. King said, “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”  Jesus’ way of showing love and power was to face the cross, death, rather than turn to violence and vengeance.  Yet, we who bear his name, would prefer to find another way.  We who sing God’s praise every Sunday don’t know if we want to pick up the cross to carry with us Monday through Saturday.  Afterall, the stats on religion are not good right now, it is not trending on social media, and it isn’t like our numbers are growing.  Four times the gospels tell us the way to life is to let go of the grasp we have, to find a power that is not might makes right and I deserve to have it my way, but a way of service that empowers and love that embodies and affirmation that embraces the person right in front of us.  I invite you to reflect on how you are gospeling your life after reading these four books of the Bible in the last few months.  Amen.

Gospeling Your Life ~ Finishing

 

Read John 19-21 ~ Woo hoo…fifty-ish days are wrapping up and winding down.  Four gospels complete.  I encourage you this weekend to reflect on what you experienced and encountered. 

 

Which Gospel stories still stick and stay with you?

 

Which Gospel stories still feel like sandpaper to your soul?

 

Which Gospel stories still feeling like a popcorn seed stuck in your teeth that you can’t get loose?

 

Which Gospel stories warmed your heart and stirred your soul?

 

Now, email me.  Or come and tell me your response.  Here is the invitation, I want to preach in the coming year on the stories you found meaningful, life-giving, troubling, and are wrestling with today.  I want our church to experience and encounter the breadth of the Gospels and need your help.  John ends chapter 20 (which might have been the original ending) with these words, “But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Christ/Messiah/ Embodiment of God’s love, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life.”  Why did we read the Gospels?  Because I long for the fullness of life that comes from following, being a student of, the One God sent to show us ways to be full of God’s love.  Remember Jesus lived God’s love, shalom, presence in a time of oppression.  He shared God’s love in a time of fear, a time of division, a time of hate.  In a time not so different than our own.  It wasn’t easy.  But the invitation was to life, full life, abundant life that wasn’t a five-step process, but was full of God’s presence.  I pray you have felt your life shift and stirred in meaningful ways over the last fifty-ish days.  And now, may the One who is able to empower and infuse our lives with a holy love that makes all the difference, makes us different, continue to “Gospel” your life for the rest of this year and throughout the coming year.  Amen.  Amen.

Gospeling your life ~ Jesus' prayer for you?

 

Read John 17-18 ~ In chapter 17, Jesus prays for his disciples.  What do you think Jesus’ prayer is for you today?  Is Jesus’ prayer tangled, inseparable, from your own prayers for yourself?  Or does Jesus pray, move, nudge you in ways you may not want to go?  I find verse 26 in chapter 17 a powerful verse to memorize (or write down on a post it note where I can see it or cross stitch into a pillow) ~ “I (Jesus) made known God’s name/presence, so that the love with which You have loved me may be in them and I in them”.  We abide in God and God abides in us.  It is a circle without ending or beginning.  We abide in God (or pray constantly as Paul would say) to the One who goes before, beside, and behind us every moment today. 

 

Now, turn to the page to chapter 18 and read about Jesus’ betrayal and arrest.  Jesus has just been pouring out his heart about love and abiding in God.  Then, the bottom drops out.  Being grounded and guided by love isn’t living life in Willie Wonka’s Chocolate factory (I know, two references to that fictional place twice in one week, who saw that coming??).  Jesus is preaching about love.  Jesus lives/embodies/expresses God’s love.  Jesus seeks to saturate and soak your life with love.  And, the world doesn’t get it.  The world is still caught up in swords and violence and might makes right and how many likes you got on your latest Instagram post.  The world still cares more about culture than Christ.  So many of us grew up in a world where Christianity was the norm.  In fact, in the 1950s, being a part of Christianity was expected.  You went to church, more than likely because it was the only thing to do on Sunday mornings.  The world has changed.  There are more options now for you on Sunday mornings than you could possibly do.  The church is now part of the consumer culture.  We talk about church shopping as if selecting a community of faith is like picking out toothpaste.  Hold this.  There is no easy resolution.  We live this messiness together.  Hold together God love, that isn’t a shield but a shelter.  God’s love isn’t a guarantee of the good life, we will be betrayed and denied and deserted.  We will have wounds and scars, and God is still there in the midst of it all.  How has this been true for you?  Pro tip, it is often easier for me to see God’s love in hindsight than in the moment.  I often see God’s love clearer in the rearview mirror than I do in the windshield as I am going through the storm.  Feel God’s love abiding with you.  Hold the heartbreaks and soul aches.  Then, I want you to wrap your arms around yourself in a hug, that is God’s presence, not magically taking everything away, but giving you strength for today.  May God’s abiding love be with you.  Amen.

Gospeling Your Life ~ Animating Force

 

Read John 13-14 – In chapter 12, Jesus enters Jerusalem in the Palm Sunday parade.  You may want to go back to compare John’s telling to the other three gospels we have read.  Notice what comes next, Jesus washes the disciples’ feet.  Jesus shows us what leadership looks like.  Jesus embodies a way of life that feels downright offensive given the gospel of America based on the teachings of Adam Smith.  Leaders are supposed to be confident and certain and even a bit full of themselves.  As Brian McLaren said, we prefer a confident lie to a confusing truth.  The gospels are confusing truths.  My page of questions about the gospels grows longer every time I read a chapter or verse. My page of certainties keeps getting crossed off as what I thought I knew just ain’t so. 

 

Do you think Jesus washed Judas’ feet?  Would you wash the feet of one who betrayed you?

 

Jesus gives a new commandment in 13:31-35 to love one another.  Jesus breaks open God’s inclusive, expansive, evolving love.  Jesus soaks and saturates our life with God’s love.  And God’s love isn’t meant to just live in the corners of our souls.  It isn’t about getting a golden ticket to the Willa Wonka chocolate factory in the sky (there is a strange vision of heaven).  Jesus calls us to love because we are loved.  Love is a fuel that feeds our actions and lives.  Love is an animating force.  How is that true for you?  How might that be true?

 

As you ponder this re-read chapter 14 where Jesus describes, defines the Advocate who animates our lives with love.  You are not alone.  We are not alone.  We are empowered by a Spirit that is hovering and humming over the chaos of our lives in creative ways.  May this Spirit of Love from the Living God fall afresh and anew on you and me and we this day in ways that the world around us senses. 

Read John 15-16 ~ John 15 has captured my sacred imagination as a metaphor/image for the church.  We are leaves on a vine.  Each leaf (representing an individual) is unique.  And leaves share similarities too, just as all humans share 99 percent of the same DNA.  Both are true.  We tend to over emphasize the differences and uniqueness and write off the similarities as being too simplistic.  We are connected as people of faith to the vine of life.  The vine in creation delivers nutrition and water and what is necessary for life to the leaf.  The vine of the Holy feeds and fuels us.  In our church, we celebrate our Core Values of worship, belonging, caring, justice, faithfulness and welcome.  Each of these can be expressed in our lives individually and collectively.  Where have you encountered these words in the gospels?  How did Jesus express these values?  And where do you see these words taking life in our church?  And where can we continue to expand and evolve in living these words?  In chapter 16, Jesus is asking us not to be a cul-de-sac or dead end to the world of the Spirit.  The benediction at the end of worship is, “Our service of worship has ended and our service/worship (caring, belonging, faithfulness, justice, welcome) in the world begins”.  The moment we step out the narthex doors our values are lived in you, and you continue to abide in the vine of the One who is with you.  I encourage you to hold this prayerfully, loosely, and lovingly as you go about your day today.  Amen.

Gospeling Your Life ~ Weeping

 

Read John 11-12 – Chapter 11 is a profound and powerful story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.  I invite you today to enter this story.  Imagine being Mary and Martha, what would you say if Jesus didn’t show up?  Wait.  What do you say to Jesus when he doesn’t show up on your time schedule like a genie to grant you your wish?  Imagine being the disciples, wondering why Jesus don’t just “say it plain”?  Why did Jesus wait?  Why does Jesus say it won’t lead to death?

And why, given what Jesus said, does he weep in verse 33?  Especially, given how confident and certain Jesus seemed up to that point.  Jesus was clear that Lazarus was sleeping and that this wasn’t really, truly death, just looked like.  So, why weep?

 

I have a lot of questions about this passage.

 

I love the truth that Jesus wept.  We are not meant to be somber stoics unaffected by the world.  We are not made of Teflon but flesh (earth/dirt).  I weep.  I weep for the devastation caused by recent hurricanes.  I weep for women and children killed in wars by weapons produced in the United States and paid for by our tax dollars.  I weep for leaders who would rather show might rather than humility.  I weep for young people who are numb to violence and have grown up thinking school shootings are normal.  I weep for a country that may have “United” in our name but seems to have no desire or appetite to live that.  I weep for older generations who only criticize younger generations.  I weep for younger generations who struggle in so many ways.  I weep for the church trying to reclaim glory days that have passed us by and the energy we expend trying to recapture what was ~ rather than sink into what is.

 

I need to be unbound (like Lazarus) from the wounds of the past.  I need to be unbound (like Lazarus) from expectations of success that are only measured by numbers and noses in the pews.  I need to be unbound (like Lazarus) from feeling like it is all on my shoulders.  I need to be unbound from anger at family members who no longer talk to me.  I need to be unbound by hurts I keep lugging in the luggage of life.

 

Now is your turn.  Where do you weep today?  Name what is in your heart.   Where do you need to be unbound?  Pray this.  May the One who calls us out of tombs death that might become wombs of new life.   Amen.

Gospeling Your Life ~ Deconstructing

 

Read John 9-10 ~ These two chapters are rich in metaphor and meaning, worth reading a few times.  Chapter 9 is a narrative of a beloved son of God who is blind from birth.  Notice how the disciples want to explain (even blame or shame) who is at fault for this brokenness.  I don’t know what hurts more ~ the fact that this is in the Bible OR that we keep doing this today?!  We keep blaming and shaming people who are hurting, telling them that they didn’t pray enough, believe enough, follow our instructions well enough.  This adds salt to the woundedness of the world.  To be sure, Jesus saying the blindness was for God to work through this beloved, could be taken several different directions.  We should be clear that Jesus is breaking down the accepted theological explanation of the day ~ that if you had a disease, it was from the divine.  You made God angry.  Jesus is pushing against that.  I wish that he had said this a little clearer ~ that illnesses/pain/grief are not punishment!!  And I don’t want to miss how Jesus is deconstructing bad theology equation of the day that a bad event was caused by something you did.  As the story unfolds, the Pharisees (that is, good religious folk) want to figure this out.  So do we today.  We want, almost demand, reasonable and rational reasons for why bad things happen to good people.  The Pharisees cannot accept mystery and ambiguity.  The question is, can we?  Are we willing to enter a realm where our brain won’t be able to come up with witty, cynical, thoughtful, well-argued reasons?  Are we willing to be mystics who hold life loosely, or do we keep treating life as a problem to be solved?  Do we keep erasing the chalkboard pushing ourselves to understand everything.  Do we let grace confound and confuse us?  Do we let joy disrupt and disturb us (that evokes laughter at the absurdity of it all)?  One final note, I love how the medicine in 9:6 is mud – soil – earth.  This echoes Genesis 2 where God makes humans out of the earth – mud – soil, breathing in us the breath of life.

 

Breathe in the breath of God.

 

Breathe in the One who longs to shepherd your life through these words you’ve been reading for the last 40 plus days.

 

Breathe out the prayers of your heart ~ what is life giving right now, what is life draining?

 

Breathe out the voices that want to criticize and critique and throw tomatoes at you because you are daring to let your light shine and follow the voice of our Shephard/Savior.

 

Breathe and be.  Breathe and be.  Breathe and be.  Amen.

Gospeling Your Life ~ Written in Sand

 

Read John 7-8 ~ Jesus shows up in chapter 7 at a major Jewish religious festival, the Festival of Booths.  He creates quite a stir, makes a scene.  He starts challenging the preachers and teachers, demanding the organist to play certain hymns, and offering his own prayers.  In some way, I wonder, what would I do if Jesus showed up on Sunday and did that at our church?  Would I embrace this rebel-rouser or ask the ushers to call the authorities?  Would I recognize God’s love incarnate or would I want to protect/hide behind the way things are supposed to be done?  And not only does Jesus cause a stir, some in the crowd think, “He’s got a point.”  They start calling him the Christ or Savior or Messiah.  Quick aside, remember that is political language.  Caesar (and Caesar alone) was the Savior, that job was taken and no one else should even dare apply.  This creates more chaos as people try to arrest Jesus and creates division among people.  Good Lord, that sounds like the news I read this morning.  Then, there is this powerful story of a woman caught in adultery.  Note, where is the man?!?  We all know, to quote my grandma, “It takes two to tango.”  But apparently the guy got to walk away, because, sigh, that is still heartbreakingly truth today.  Jesus writes something in the dirt (8:6) and inquiring minds, like mine, what to know, what did he write??  Did he write the man’s name?  Did he start writing the law, which commanded that both parties be held responsible and accountable?  Did he start writing down what others in the crowd did?  Whatever he wrote, the people drop their rocks, and slowly back away.  And yet, friends, we still carry rocks and throw them around.  Oh, today it is much more anonymous online or gossip behind people’s backs or in parking lots after the meeting.  Jesus says in verse 12, I am the light.  Light helps us see and light casts a shadow, both are truth.  To abide, be present, and take up residence in the presence of Jesus will not be all pony rides and chocolate rivers, we will face our shadow sides.

 

You may want to light a candle today and ponder where you are at.  Where is just stirring up dust in your life?  Where is Jesus writing in the soil of your soul, what do you sense him writing?  Where is your shadow that you are protecting (or ignoring) because we have rocks to throw at those people?  May these questions cause all of us to know that as we drawn to abide in the light, there is work to be done in us, through us, around us, and only by the grace of God. Amen. 

Gospeling Your Life ~ Stories we Tell

 

Read John 5-6 ~ Please note, I will be preaching on John 4 in March to honor Women in the Bible during Women’s History Month.  Just a short note that I believe the Woman at the Well serves as a wonderful counterbalance to Nicodemus.  The two are meant to be linked and remind us of two parts of ourselves.  I am both Nicodemus and the Woman at the Well.  Both are curious.  For Nicodemus, he needs to sit with the wisdom of Jesus for a while (contemplate what Jesus said), for the Woman at the Well her heart is instantly and immediately opened to God in transformation.  Sometimes change takes time, other moments we adopt and adapt quickly.  Hold these two important characters in scripture pondering the truths each teach and tell us.

 

As you read chapters 5-6, there is a wonderful question Jesus asks the beloved on God sitting by the pool.  In 5:6, “Do you want to be made well?”  That is a great question.  Do I want to be made well, whole, full of God’s Shalom?  On the one hand, you may think, “Duh, Wes.  Of course I don’t want this illness, pain, ache, brokenness, hurt.”  On the other hand, we can sometimes hold onto past pain tighter than grace.  I can feed, fan to flames, the words of another person, lugging them around in the luggage of life and tell anyone who will listen, “You won’t believe what that church member said to me…fifteen years ago.”  Or I can rehearse and replay the actions of another anew and afresh each day, until my life is defined and confined those actions.  You can tell a lot about a person by the stories they tell.  You can tell a lot about yourself if you listen to the stories you tell.  Do I want to be made well?  Yes.  Am I willing abide in the One who calls for forgiveness, non-violence, standing with the marginalized, being a peacemaker, being a seeker/learner, being an embodiment of God’s love?  Is that where I want to reside in a world, especially when none of that is trending on social media?  How do I want to show up and let God write the story of my life?  We ask and answer that question moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day.  How you life each day, is how you live your life.  May you find ways to abide with the One who is calling us to wholeness/shalom/healing/wellness this day and every day.  Amen.

Gospeling Your Life ~ Nicodemus

 

Read John 3-4 ~ I confess, I love Nicodemus.  I think he has gotten a bad reputation from the church. Oh, we love to criticize him coming in the middle of the night.  What, Nicodemus, afraid of what your peers will think of you?  We love to laugh at his expense.  What, Nicodemus, can’t wrap your mind around Jesus’ being ‘born again’ puzzling comments?  And then, Nicodemus, fades into the background, steps back into the cover of a starlit night, not to appear again…until chapter 7 when he defends Jesus.  And also, at the end, chapter 19, when he is there at the last breath of Jesus’ life. 

 

You see, I love Nicodemus, because I am Nicodemus.  I sometimes hide from my faith.  I don’t go around blurting and blasting to everyone that I am a pastor.  I sometimes duck and cover, especially when the people around me start criticizing religion.  I justify this by saying/singing, “They will know we are Christians by our love.”  Which, yes actions speak louder than words, but sometimes words, sharing our faith, is helpful too.  Second, I am often baffled and bewildered by Jesus.  I don’t get him.  I’d rather shake my head with a smirk at Nicodemus than confess that I don’t have Jesus figured out.  I have some thoughts on being born anew/afresh, which is what Jesus is saying to him, but I also don’t get what Jesus is saying entirely.  And I can fade into the background, be a wall flower, slip off the sidelines of life silently, hoping that no one notices. 

 

And, I want to be like Nicodemus, showing up in places and spaces to share God’s love in real ways on behalf of those who are being hurt (see chapter 7).  Yes, I want to be like Nicodemus showing up in pain of death, when resurrection isn’t on anyone’s radar as the next logical step.  Thank you, Nicodemus, you don’t get the credit you deserve for showing us how to live our lives.  Thank you, Nicodemus for helping us realize that faith is complicated and contradictory and isn’t neat and tidy.  Thank you, Nicodemus for showing me a way to live this day.  Amen.

Gospeling Your Life ~ Abiding

 

Read John 1-2 ~ John doesn’t start with birth narrative of Jesus in a little town of Bethlehem.  No, John goes all the way back to Genesis 1.  If you open another Bible to Genesis 1 alongside John 1, the two echo each other.  John says, “In the beginning,” which is exactly where the Hebrew Scriptures begin.  John says there was the Word or in Greek – logos – which can mean wisdom/truth/life.  Logos is about the Holy’s presence.  One of John’s favorite words is “abide”.  Think of that great hymn, “Abide with me fast falls the evening tide, the darkness/night deepens, God with me abide”.  We need God’s presence.  So, this word/wisdom/truth/life of God comes to us in the flesh.  And John tells us from the start while this mystery is a miracle, it will be a tragedy too (spoiler alert that you already know from the other three Gospels, Jesus will face death on a cross).  We won’t get Jesus.  Eugene Peterson translates John 1:14 as God moves into your neighborhood, right next door.  God shows up disguised as your life.  God abides still today, and the question is are we awake and aware and alert to what God is doing? 

John jumps from a cosmic opening to…poof…Jesus is an adult.  That is a big leap.  And John the Baptist, a street preacher and prophet, not down by the riverside, but along the roads of life points out to his followers Jesus walking/waltzing past.  “That’s him!!,” John shouts making a scene.  And John’s disciples leave him, go to Jesus and say, “Where are you staying.”

That is an odd question.  Unless, the disciples are not asking about Jesus’ hotel arrangements or his sleeping quarters, but where he stands.  “Where are you staying,” could be translated, “Where do you stand?”  Here we are a month out from the election, and we want to know where candidates stand on issues.  People sometimes ask you what you believe.  Or someone may knock on your door and want to know who you are voting for.  We constantly want to compartmentalize and categorize other people, even when we believe that we don’t fit neat and tidy into a box because we are complex like a Rubix Cube. 

 

Come and see, Jesus says, not just to the disciples then and there, but you right now.  Remember, John’s question is how do we live/abide in joy?  How do we, amid the stress and strain, live out our sacred image?  Come and see, Jesus says.  The remaining 20 chapters of John are going to show you how John understands God’s love in the flesh.

 

What questions do you have for Jesus if he came waltzing/walking past?   Here you are winding down, in the last Gospel, what do you want to know more about?  Write your questions down. 

 

Finally, in chapter 2, Jesus offers his first sign by turning water into wine, even if that act was a bit coerced, reluctantly done.  You can almost hear Jesus saying, “Aww ma do I have to?”.  Remember, God in the flesh, abiding with us, loves moments of celebration.  God, in the flesh, is showing up in ways we may not comprehend or realize.  I often wonder if the bridal party ever knew of this hospitality crisis, because it would have been a major social faux pas to run out of wine.  The stigma would have stayed/stuck with the family for years.  How might you celebrate today with the One who is still saying to you, “Come and see” this day?  Amen.

Gospeling Your Life through Communion

 

Read Luke 22-24 ~ This is the third telling of the last supper, crucifixion and resurrection.  What details do you notice in Luke?  What surprised you? 

Now, go get a piece of bread and sip of juice. 

Hold the piece of bread, smell it, imagine the wheat waving in the wind through sunlight and storms.  Imagine the soil that sent its nutrients in a divine dance slowly forming, fashioning the wheat day after day.  Imagine the hands that harvested the wheat, the baker who formed the bread, and the worker who helped check you out when you bought the bread.  In your hands, with this bread, you hold a web of life.  There is a whole world in that one piece of bread.

 

Break the bread.  Jesus breaks open his life, not just in these chapters, but throughout the whole Gospels.  Jesus shows us, embodies for us, vulnerable love that is willing to see the ones on the fringe and fray as well as those who think their halos shine brighter than the sun.  Jesus sits at table with anyone and everyone.  In Luke, Jesus is always eating.  And every time we take bread, Jesus is there.  And especially in the sharp shards of your life today, the broken parts that like the bread in your hand, can’t easily be put back together.  Where does it hurt today?  Where do you ache?  This could be physically, emotionally, spiritually.  Hold that broken bread for in the middle is Christ’s presence.

 

Eat in remembrance of God’s unconditional and unceasing love.

 

Now, take the juice (or coffee or water or whatever).  Jesus said, “Brokenness is never the last word.”  Paul said, “Nothing separates us from the love of God”.  This is the foundational, formation truth.  Love is. 

 

Sometimes I love to take the bread (symbolizing brokenness) and dip it in the juice (symbolizing grace that saturates and soaks all my life).  You may want to do this.  May God, who brought to life Jesus our Christ, raised him from the tomb (which became a womb), out of pain, suffering, brokenness, death to a new way of being in the world.  May God saturate and soak your life each moment this day.  Amen.