Genesis 4

When I stare into the mirror that the story of Cain and Abel holds up to my life this morning, I am reminded that no group puts the fun in dysfunction quite like your family.  Church committees can sometimes come close.  But family members know that special combination of buttons to push that can send your blood pressure soaring and the tiny vein in your forehead pulsating.  While culture shows us families with lovable curmudgeons, perfectly timed commercial breaks, and everything being resolved in neat and tidy ways within a half hour.  I soon realized that one, family tensions we have can sometimes fester for years with the unspoken rule that we don’t talk about it... whatever “it” is.  While the hymn is right, "Blessed be the ties that bind," sometimes those ties can also make us feel bound and gagged with guilt or brokenness or pain.  As you read Genesis 4, it is like looking into the mirror of Cain and Abel, you may only want to glance, not gaze too long.  The witness of Scripture on sibling relationships is not exactly an uplifting one.  Brothers, Jacob and Esau wrestle in the womb, only to have Jacob fool his father and steal the birthright blessing. Sisters, Leah and Rachel both vie for the affection of Jacob. The dreamer Joseph annoys his brothers with talk of them bowing down to him, so they sell him off, only later to have him play a prank on his brothers who come groveling to Egypt to get food, just to have a reunion with his father.  And it is not only in the Hebrew Bible, Jesus most famous parable is about the Prodigal Son, whose relationship with his family is like watching an episode of Dr. Phil and leaves you saying, “Gee I thought my family was dysfunctional.” 

So, Cain and Abel might be a difficult story, my prayer is that as we dwell with these words, we might find traces of grace and realize the truth that pain in our lives that is not process is passed along.  We start with Cain, the older brother, whose name means, "Spear."  He is part of the noblest profession, farmer...said the person from Iowa!  Later comes along, the younger brother, the apple of Adam and Eve’s eyes, the one who gets the car and the easier punishments and the better parenting, can I get an Amen from the older siblings reading the blog?  Abel means breath and he becomes a shepherd.  Pause with me, because I love the way Scripture echoes.  Genesis 2 talks of God breathing in the breath of life...so two chapters later, Adam who received God's CPR, calls his second son, "Breath".  That is beautiful.

One day, Cain and Abel bring an offering to God.  Notice, up to this point, God has not asked for an offering.  This is the first act of worship described in Scripture.  And we don’t know what prompts this moment.  Maybe gratitude or holy obligation or some messy mixture that still stirs in us on Sunday morning that brings you to church rather than lounging around reading the comics.  But there is this worship moment.  And we are told that God’s reaction to Cain’s offering is, “Eh,” while God responds to Abel with applause and a standing ovation.  Again, we don’t know why.  Perhaps Cain brought some broccoli, I am sure he did not bring corn, because this story would be totally different.  Maybe, some rabbis suggest, it was what was in Cain’s heart or that he brought leftovers to God.  That is challenging.  How many of us, when we pray or worship or tend our relationship with the Holy Other offer God lukewarm left overs?  And as interesting as dwelling with why the brothers worshiped and why God gave Cain’s gift only one star and Abel’s gift five stars, it is the next scene that captures my heart.

God says to Cain, why are you angry?  Why are you distressed and dejected?  The Hebrew here can be translated, why are your faces downcast?  God names Cain’s innermost feelings.  God cuts through the masks we often wear and shines a light on what is in our souls.  And that is not easy.  We like to think we have everyone fooled when we put on a smile and say that everything is “Fine, just fine,” even though we say that through clinched teeth and our shoulders are more tense and tight than a freshly wound spring.  C.S. Lewis often said that God’s interest and affection and insight into us was the intolerable compliment.  We couldn’t handle that.  In some ways, religion likes to put conditions on unconditional love. In churches we make each other jump through hoops with statements of faith and membership forms and even this act of passing the offering plates that put barriers between us and God.  God becomes distant and disinterested in us.  But in this story, God comes to Cain as a counselor and confident.  Be careful, Cain, God says, brokenness can beget brokenness.  Do you notice that Genesis 4 echoes Genesis 3?  There is temptation that leads to a decision and action that leads to conversation that leads to consequences.  The writers of Genesis introduce this theme in the early pages of Scripture and return to this refrain time and time again.  You could even say, holy week, is a riff on that same refrain.

So, Cain goes and murders Abel.  And I don’t think this is because of some defective or deficient strain in our DNA that has been passed down.  I think it is because brokenness begets brokenness.  Someone gossips about you behind your back, you feel your checks rush, flood red with anger and hurt and humiliation, and so you turn around and spread a rumor about that person.  The cycles of violence, physical and emotional and psychological have been turning since the very beginning of human relationships.  That was true in the time when people shared sacred stories around campfires and it is still turn over cups of coffee we share at Starbucks.  Brokenness begets brokenness and it takes grace, more than just positive thinking or our own will, to over come and break out of that.  Most of us get mired in the messiness of relationships.  We know what it is like to feel hurt and harmed by family and friends, to clinch our fists and teeth and try to count to ten.  We know the greatest lie is told in the rhyme, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me."  Words hurt.  And we hurt each other.  Just like in Genesis 3, God asks Cain, where is Abel?  God continually asks, where are you?  God asks us to be open to our location.  Or to quote an author, we need to pay attention to what we are paying attention to.  Cain shrugs his shoulders, “How should I know where Abel is?  Go ask the sheep.”  While our ethic of love demands us to care for each other, to be each other’s keepers, in the initial pages of Scripture it is God who is the keeper of humans.  Notice, even when God convicts Cain of the crime, it does not break the bond of unconditional love or unceasing grace.  Cain cries out over his punishment and God promises to watch and keep Cain, even though he was unwilling to do the same.  God marks Cain not with a scarlet letter, but as a sacred sign, even a blessing, to live differently.

Cain goes off and settles in Nod, means wandering or restlessness.  It means he was unsettled.  Ever been to Nod?  Ever unpack the boxes in a new place, but still feel homeless?  Ever been in that place where your soul was restless and could not find rest?  If so, you’ve visited Nod, maybe you are living or vacationing there right now.  So what?  Why care about this story?  On the one hand, I think this narrative pushes back on redemptive violence.  It holds that mirror to the ways we hurt and harm each other.  Even when we don’t kill, we still damage each other.  This narrative tells us that from the very beginning, before there was Moses with the Ten Commandments, killing, harming each other, was un-kosher in God’s creation.  This story point great themes of life and death, intimacy and jealousy, offering and inadequacy, honesty and political spinning.  Finally, this story reminds us that the great phrase, "Whoever you are and wherever you are really," was not created by the UCC, it was God’s gospel truth from the very beginning.  So may you this week, gaze, not just glace, at the relationships in your life.  May you this week, know that our God does not put a mark of judgement but one of unconditional love upon us.  And may you pause where you are, survey your surroundings, to see if you are in Nod or Oz or Sarasota or somewhere in-between, but may you know the truth of whoever and wherever God is there.  And may that be good news to heal our souls for the living out of these days.  Amen.

Genesis 3

Genesis...this book of beginnings and attempts to respond (not necessarily answer once and for all, but contribute to the on-going conversations that matter) to the big questions of life: if we were created good and set in a beautiful garden (albeit one that had loneliness of Adam and anxiety of Eve talking to the serpent), why is life so hard?  Enter in a dialogue with snake...a forbidden fruit...clothing of their nakedness...and God walking in the garden.  This would be where you want to cue the dramatic music please.  Go ahead...I'll wait.

The narrative of Adam and Eve is about our humanness in full, beautiful display.  But this narrative is NOT an eraser that wipes clean God's original blessedness and proclamation that you are good...VERY good.  Rather, this introduces tension.  Or rather seeks to respond to why we feel tension in our lives.

We all live in that messy middle of blessedness and brokenness.  It is just east of Eden, where we feel like we are so close to what could be an amazing, awesome and life-changing encounter...but we are stuck in a cul-de-sac and can't seem to get our way out of.  Why?  Some say, that is life so deal with it.  Others say it is all our fault as humans.  But Genesis seems to suggest that the tension is part of being fully alive.  David Lose points out that the part of our brain activated in flight or fight is also one of creativity.  We need some of the brain's fear chemicals to be creativity.  That totally explains why cramming for a test in college worked.  But, live too long in that fear...as we are now seeing in children who have spent their lives afraid of being shot or in constant anxiety can leave us hurt.  That totally explains why cramming did NOT work the fourth, fifth, sixth...eventually I did learn.

So, fear is both good and bad.  So is having knowledge.  Paul says, "Even if I have all knowledge and can even move mountains...but have not love...I am nothing."  That is a radical statement.  We don't act like it in the world.  We don't live that way.  Yet, that is what our faith calls us to.  Power, knowledge, and success get us so far...but we still may feel empty.  It is something else that makes us whole.  And it is not the fig leaves we sew together.  At the end of Genesis 3 God clothes Adam and Eve.  God clothes Adam and Eve...not with judgement or smiting...but with bands of love and grace that still sustain us and blesses us.  

I pray as you live in the tension, you will sense the clothing of God's presence surrounding you, giving you peace, and you sense more than a trace of God's grace.  

creation 2

Then the Lord God formed a mud-being from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being..The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. Genesis 2:7 and 15

We have just passed Labor Day weekend.  While it is often seen as the bookend to summer which started with Memorial Day weekend, to celebrate the work of our heads, hearts, and hands in this world is perhaps sometime more.  From the very beginning God calls the mud-being to work.  Please notice that "Adam" in Genesis 2 is less a formal name and more a generic description.  Adam means of red earth and it sounds very similar to the Hebrew word for "Ground".  To call this being God fashioned and formed into being Adam is stating the obvious...the being was "of dirt and mud" and more importantly...love.

Work today has a complicated place in our lives.  Many of us, myself included, define who we are by what we get paid to do.  Many today, myself included, want to be known for MORE than just our job.  Many Baby Boomers, approximately 10,000, retire each day still full of energy and dreams for the next stage/chapter want to offer their insights, ideas, and lives in meaningful ways.  It is no coincidence that Rick Warren's A Purpose Driven Life sold millions of copies.  People want purpose and meaning.  I don't know if Adam found meaning in tilling the ground.  Perhaps with the dust he stirred up, he was reminded of want he was made of.  There is something satisfying about weeding and trimming and taking care of creation.  Each week when I mow, I look over the grass going from unkempt to neat/tidy and feel good.  I weed the flower beds, filling bags, and look at the ways the flowers now seem taller and stand out more.  Work can be holy.

In fact, in the Protestant Reformation, Luther was passionate about vocation.  Now, in English, we conflate and inter-change vocation with work.  And that is true on one level.  But there is also a difference.  Vocation has the same root as "voice".  Finding your voice, where you can sing in harmony with all that is around you, is where your holy calling is.  The trouble is that so often we think there is only ONE way to do that...maybe it is not one way...but many over the course of life.  What might be my vocation, my fullest voice, in one season may fall flat in another.  I think this is especially true for people as they age.  Vocation may not be what we are paid for and it may change over time and it is sometimes found in the roles we take on.  I have vocation not only as a pastor, but as a husband, father, friend, and son.  I have vocation as a brother and fellow believer in Christ.  I have a vocation as one created in the image of God and one who has divine DNA.  Vocation is expansive and dynamic and rarely fits neatly in any one box.

As we move away from Labor Day (and start getting ready for Halloween...which might also say something about vocation as we "dress up" and that Halloween ranks second in consumer spending), I invite you to think about vocation.  Have you ever had a moment when you thought, "I was made for this?"  Have you ever had a moment when the tiny hairs on your arms stood on end because of something you were a part of (like raising money for cancer research OR painting a picture)?  Focus on vocation, moments you have felt fully alive...even if you don't feel that way right now.  As you do, can we pray that our still-creating and singing God might move in our lives in meaningful ways awaken a song within our hearts and moments of sharing our vocation/voice with others.  

May the traces of God's grace guide you this week

Blessings ~ 

Creation

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.  Genesis 1:1-2

Beginnings matter.  Where you start a story sets the tone and leaves an impression in the hearts of the listeners.  Take, for example, the first date with my wife.  I could the start the story by telling you about how I was willing to see a movie a second time...which clearly tells you that I am a caring guy.  Or she might start the story by telling you that she had to call me and that I did not return her phone call right away.  I would, of course, chime in and say my parents were in town at the time.  And we converse in loud, emphatic voices about the reasonableness of this excuse.  Or we could start the story years before, in college, when we were both at young adult retreat and I can still remember the flannel shirt she wore...again proving my caring nature.
So beginnings matter.  Beginnings set a trajectory toward the ending and chart the course for where you will go.  Start a story with a sad statement, and it is hard to start making jokes, it is too much of an emotional roller-coaster.  Start with humor, and it takes a while for people to know if you are joking or serious.
Genesis, the beginning of Scripture, starts with some amazing forest-for-the-trees views.  God begins to create with a voice.  I often have imagined that God must have been at the edge of the universe singing out with gusto and the sound of God's voices echoing...echoing...echoing all around.  But, recently, it was pointed out that God could have whisper like a mother to her infant.  That gives a different spin on these traditional words.
I love that God's spirit surfs and stirs over the chaos in the beginning.  If that is the first act, can we trust and be open for God stirring in the chaos of our daily lives?  Think about what feels chaotic for you right now:

Are you trying to get your kids back into the school routine?  (Don't get me started on the pick up and drop off lines at school...take about Lord of the Flies kind of chaos!)

Is there tension at your job or family?  Relationships change in the blink of an eye and can invite chaos into our lives before it knocks on the door.

Is there a health concern bringing chaos into your life?  There are certain words a doctor speaks in the sterile examine rooms that send our minds spinning and stirring in chaos.

Are you struggling with purpose and meaning?  The dance between our minds, hearts and bodies, the call to leave our fingerprints on this world in beautiful ways can be unsettling and wreak havoc sometimes in our lives.

What other ways am I missing?

Chaos remains an undercurrent in our world.  Chaos still surges and sloshes around.  Chaos is reported on nightly in the news and is stirred up by politicians looking to grab headlines.

And while we could focus all our attention on the chaos, where is the creative spirit of God moving in your life right now?  What feels new or re-newed in your life right now?  Genesis 2 will tell us about God's divine breath infused and enlivening all that is around us.  How are you catching wind of our still-creating God right now?

There is a holy dance between chaos and creativity.  There is a sacred two-step that is woven into our world from the very beginning.  In what ways do you find that to be true?  In what ways does Genesis 1 and 2 still get stuck in the mud and muck of "science verses religion" debates?

Take some time this week...better yet today...to dust off your bible you got in grade school and re-read these words.  How do they settle into your hearts right now?

I pray you will sense MORE than a trace of God's grace as you do so.

Blessings ~ 

Reflections 2

As long as I was re-reading, To Kill a Mocking Bird, I also dove into Harper Lee's new book, Go Set a Watchman.  Caution...there may be some spoilers ahead.  The book picks up on Scout, now as an adult.  She lives in New York but comes home for a visit.  She has to deal with the fact that no human, no one, not even her father, is perfect.  While I enjoy Lee's long prose and rambling style, this book just did not quite get it for me.  Perhaps it was because the expectations were so high.  What I loved about Mockingbird were the exit ramps.  Atticus shooting a dog with rabies or the side story with Boo Ridley.   Watchman has few of those...and less characters too.  In some ways, this would have been a great short story as an epilogue to Lee's book, or the first chapter...then we set out with Scout to New York.  How would a Southern deal with Yankees in the 1950s and 60s?  How does she eschew and embrace her upbringing?  Sometimes those stories need to be explored outside of the comfortable confines of what is known and familiar.

When I reflect on my move to Florida, a Yankee now in the South, I sense some of the themes from Watchman.  How do we deal with lingering racism?  I am privileged to pastor a church that strives to be racial diverse.  Yet, there is always more we can do. How do economic disparities play out?  I live in an area where people pay millions of dollars for homes and some people don't make minimum wage.  How do we walk around in each other's shoes, in a time when people who cling dogmatically to their own ideas (even when they are proven wrong time and time again)?  Those are challenging questions that need stories to help us sort out.

The power of stories...as opposed to history or news...is that they allow us to engage our right brain and stir our imagination.  We need stories...stories of people dealing with the messy middle of life today.  Stories of people living into their God belovedness and encouraging others to do the same.  We need stories when we get it right and when we get it wrong.  And the church needs to be a place for all that.  We need to start telling our own story and listening...that is the KEY...listening to other's stories too.

Not every story needs to be the best ever!  Stories can leave us wanting...because life and other people leave us wanting.  Near the end of Watchman, we have a conversation between Atticus and Scout.  She confronts his racism and his participation in a group opposing the NAACP.  She calls him out on his brokenness.  And Atticus just graciously and gently responds.  So we are left with the fact that Atticus has brokenness and edges...his beliefs have ceilings that Scout bongs her head on...which she also does every time she gets in the car.  Again, because of the setting, we don't see Scout bumping hard against her own limitations.  How would she respond in New York at a meeting of the NAACP?  Would she even go?  Those are important questions.  To be sure, maybe Lee did not want us to idolize anyone...which our church has certainly done with Atticus.  We all have blindspots and brokenness.  The key is not only to see others...but also our own.  To do that, Lee, is right we need more than just a trace of God's grace.

I encourage you to reflect on your own understandings of race, economic disparity, love, relationships, and life.  In the coming posts, I am going to start working through stories of the Hebrew Scriptures...hopefully, these ancient and well-known stories can give us some insights into God's whose love is woven into every fiber...yet we often don't live that way.  Until then, may the God of hope, peace, joy and love surround you.

Blessings ~

Reflections

 

"I wanted you to see something about her - I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his had.  {Courage} is when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what."   Atticus to Jem in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird 

While on vacation, I re-read Harper Lee's book, To Kill a Mockingbird.  It had been awhile since I had encountered this very human story.  It really is about dealing with each other; as Atticus likes to say, "Walk around in another's shoes."  Jem and Scout growing up in a small Southern town dealing with issues of economic disparity, racism, sexism, and mental illness.  Being a community is not easy.  Or as Linus once said in a Peanuts cartoon, "I like humanity...it is people I can't stand."  Of course, great literature is timeless.  Today, we still deal with economic disparity, racism, sexism, and the stigma placed on those with mental illness.  We still deal with the myth of redemptive violence.  We still deal with each other as humans.

Part of the draw of Lee's book is that there is no neat and tidy ending.  Strings are left dangling, just as in our real life.  We move forward, one step...only to take two steps back, especially in the above social issues.  One of the realities we are still coming to terms with is that no amount of legislation or meetings or conversations are going to change everyone.  In fact, change is so frustratingly slow sometimes, it is easy to lose faith and courage.  It is also good to remember that this is a work of fiction.  The real lives of those who live pushed to the fringes because of economics, race, sexual orientation, and mental illness can be fragile...successes are few and sometimes far between.

Currently, in the place I live, the news media has fallen in love with a homeless man who is an amazing piano player.  Because of that gift, he has found work and trying to put his life together.  Because we love a good rags to riches story, pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps and proof that the American dream is still there for those who try, daily we get updates on his progress.  To be sure, I want the best for this child of God.  But I also wonder about those whose skills are so hidden and so buried under the years of people telling them they were "worthless" and "good for nothings" that they stay on the fringes.  Spotlighting one story does not mean, "anyone can do it."  It only shows me how much work we have to do.

Which is exactly where I am with Lee's book.  My heart breaks by the relevance, that people are still just as nasty and demeaning to each other as we were fifty years ago in the time when the book is set. Yet, I also know that people were created with divine DNA.  This is not about our original sin, it is about our inability to fully trust and lean into God's grace in every moment.  Grace is not some formula or some insurance guarantee.  Grace is not a safe net.  Grace is.  Grace can undergo metamorphosis.  Which means, I need to stay constantly aware and awake to the traces of God's grace in my life.  It may not always come in the same exact way every day.

To be sure, there are traces of grace within Lee's book.  The slow realization Jem and Scout come to.  Their willingness to start to see each person as fully God's beloved and walk in their shoes.  And their continued growth.  The challenge for us, especially in a time of increasing polarization and politicization, is to do the same...and for that we need more than just a trace of God's grace.

May it be so for you and me.  Blessings ~

Rest

Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses.  But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.  Luke 5:15-16

Jesus has been baptized, began his ministry, called the disciples, and everything is ready to go.  We are a little more than two chapters into Jesus' ministry in Luke and he says, "Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed."  So, a couple of questions, who often is often?  Are we talking once a week kind of Sabbath?  Are we talking every night sitting on the sofa binge watching re-runs of The Golden Girls?  Just how often is this?  What we can say is that Jesus did this with regularity, there was a patterned that was noticed.  How often do you withdraw?  For me, a Type-A/work-aholic, my often is not nearly as often as it should be.  I tend to have the pattern of running myself down and only when I can no longer move do I take that time away.  I am trying to be better.  I am trying to swim against the current that tells me to work harder.  

Recent reports tell us that Americans are NOT taking their vacation days.  And when they do, our smart phones keep us constantly connected.  Even when we are away, we check emails and return phone calls...we've convinced ourselves that it is easier in the long run.  How hard is it to come back to hundreds of emails and piles of paper?  Why not get a jump on it while waiting for the plane or for the kids to finish up on the pit stop?   What is the harm, we reason?  The harm might not be time, but it might be spiritual, that can manifest in the physical and psychological.  The passage able calls this a lonely place or other translations say a "deserted" place.  The Israelites were once in a desert place, they wandered in the wilderness for forty years.  Centuries later, they were conquered by the Babylonians and went to another wilderness place, in exile.  Where is your desert, even lonely, place?  We need to disconnect in order to decompress and de-clutter the need to be needed and necessary.  We all want to be needed, to play the hero, and we might worry that while we are on vacation our opportunity to be Superman and Wonder Woman will come past...and we will miss the boat/plane/email/phone call...how ever it is that opportunity will come.

We are told that Jesus prayed.  He was not alone, he communed and communicated with the holy other in whom we live and move and have our being.  How is it with your prayer life?  How are you finding space to withdraw?  Where is that space?  What are you doing when there?

I pray as you ponder those questions, you will find more than a trace of grace.

Blessings ~

p.s.  this is on my mind because a week from today I go on vacation...but I will still over one more post before I go.