Beautiful Feet

Click here to read Isaiah 52

How beautiful are the feet that bring the news.  What a strange image.  The sound of feet.  Think about that.  The implication of the passage is that how we walk and the sound of our feet can actually tell us a lot.  Our children running down the hall frantically tells us something.  Stomping our feet when angry tells us something.  The silent sliding of feet when trying to sneak out tells us something.

Here is my questions for you...what do feet bringing good news of peace and joy sound like?  What do dancing or joyful feet sound like?

As I write this my daughter is skipping and dancing around the living room.  It brings sounds of rhythm and along with it there is the sound laughter and joy.

Here is another truth: we can hear feet long before we can see who is coming.  I wondering if people of God in exile became astute listeners to the sound of Babylonian feet marching to give more orders?  Could they hear the sound of horses hooves clicking on the rock?

But the feet of a messenger of peace sounds different...joyful...more like my daughter's dancing.

I invite you as you are at work this week to listen for the sound of feet.  Can you make out the sounds of co-workers coming?  Does that bring hope or dread?  That might help you connect with the People of God Isaiah preached to centuries ago.

As you listen to the sound of feet around you...may the traces of God's grace bring you peace too.

Blessings!

Waking Up

Click here to read Isaiah 51

Isaiah tells the people to be alert and awake.  Again, remember the people of God are in exile, in a foreign land, their temple lay smoldering in ash, walls in ruins, and things have never seemed that bad.  Wake up...to that?  Really?  

Most of us today struggle with facing the reality around us.  Often we turn to food...or shopping... alcohol...medication...or other addictions to help us be desensitized to the pain.  Brene Brown talks about this in her TED talk.  I encourage you to watch that.

Brene talks about needing to live our lives wholehearted.  That sounds great when life is going well, the lights are on, and laughter comes easy.  But when things get in a slump and things are difficult, we don't always want to wake up.  So, we turn to screen time...we lose ourselves in television or chat rooms...certainly not this blog, but maybe others.

How do we wake up to this world?  And do we want to?  I wonder if the People of God in Isaiah had the same questions.  Did they want to wake up to the reality around them?  I am not sure it is easy to wake up.  But I know most mornings, it is a slow process.  

I do think one of the ways we notice the traces of God's grace is in the realities of this world...even when the realities are not easy to wake up to.  I pray you might wake up to that today>

Blessings and peace!

Where did Jesus Get That??

Click here to read Isaiah 50

There is a hymn inspired by Isaiah 50, "Great is thy faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness, morning by morning new mercies I see."  While I love that hymn, I don't know how well I live its truth or the truth of Isaiah 50.  I wake up in the morning...groggy...not necessarily considering God's presence.  I usually go to the gym in the morning and start to plot and plan my day...not necessarily considering God's presence.  And so when someone comes in with words of criticism, I am not ready to respond. When I feel the slightest insult, I become sullen and sad.  And sometimes those bad days can extend to bad weeks with my mind lingering over what was said.

Remember, the people are in exile, in a foreign land, and away from home.  Each morning they wake up and are reminded of that painful truth.  Why?  And how long?  These become the unanswerable questions for the People of God Isaiah is preaching to.

And amid people who conquered your land, torn down your walls, and destroyed your sacred place of worship, Isaiah essentially says, "Turn the other cheek,"  Ever wonder where Jesus got that wisdom from the Beatitudes?  Isaiah 50 verse 6 might have been roaming around the back of Jesus' mind and in his heart when he preached that sermon on the plain in Luke.  

But imagine trying to do that day after day after day in exile.  Turn the other check when someone pulls your beard...or refrain from trying to get even when someone insults you.  That is really difficult.  Most of us can hardly stand it when a co-worker gossips behind our back, so we build a wall of silence around them.  Or that family member whose politics are different, or that group of people who makes our skin crawl.  Really, be nice to them?  What was Isaiah and Jesus thinking?  Why can't we take revenge and get even and even act on the anger we feel when someone says something that breaks our egos...and hearts?

I am not sure I have a great reason for that.  To be sure, when I try to get even, it usually means the relationship goes to the lowest common denominator, to a place of utter chaos and brokenness.  When I hold onto grudges, I am usually the one who ends up feeling lousy because the other person just goes on with life unaware.  Part of what revenge and anger do is cause us to see the other as less than human and to deny our connection to that other person.  And when we do that, morning after morning; day after day; life becomes less than what God intended.

Morning by morning - with the rising of the sun to the going down of the same - can you this week be honest about those who have hurt you?  Can you forgive?  Can you seek to live in a different way with those around you?  Perhaps that will allow a trace of God's grace into your life.  I pray it will for mine.

Blessings and peace!   

In the Bulb a Flower

Click here to read Isaiah 48

Click here to read Isaiah 49

Isaiah proclaims today that God will not remember the former things.  I do not know if Isaiah is saying God is forgetful or just sees things differently now.  The season of Lent takes place in the weeks leading up to Spring and it is appropriate to listen to the wisdom of God's creation around us to see how it might help us prepare for the joy of Easter.

One of the ways we celebrate Easter is with plants - colorful plants.  But those plants did not just spring forth over night.  Often the bulb was planted in the ground last fall, weathered the harsh winter beneath a blank of snow, and only as the soil temperature rises, does it's tiny green shoot burst forth from the ground (sometimes the snow) with a promise of new life. And when you see the colorful array of tulips starting to come up, I have yet to ever hear someone say, "Oh I remember when that was just a blah bulb.  Do you remember how hard and misshapen that bulb was?"  

No, we exclaim how much we admire the burst of color.  We write odes to the beauty of a flower and we forget the bulb.  To be sure, if someone asked, we'd remember.  Maybe that is the way God works too.  It is not that God has a short term memory loss, it is just that in looking at God's people, there in exile in Babylon, God sees something new and different.  Do not remember the former things.

Of course, writing to church people, those words take on different meanings.  The church is built upon former things.  We LOVE former things...it is just we prefer to call that "tradition."  Cue Tevye from "Fiddler on the Roof."  Yet, the former things do not always last.  Jesus said something like that in Matthew 9:17, "Do not put new wine in old wine skins or the skin will burst."  I wonder how many of our churches today feel like they are making new wine?  I question it.  Are my sermons or blog posts or leadership at meetings...I am really doing a new thing?  Or I am caught up in the former things, the bulb God planted years ago that I think is still a bulb but don't realize is actually blossoming and needing to be harvested/enjoyed.

The people Isaiah is preaching to are in exile.  They are away from their homeland, what was comfortable and familiar.  They are in a new place.  Most pastor's today believe the church is in a new place, do we realize it?  Do the People of God realize it?  Do we see a bulb or a flower?  Do we listen for the new song of God or keep thinking that God will sing the former hymn we've always known?  Those are good questions and they are questions I believe that if we ask today, we might have traces of God's grace in our dialogue and attempts to answer the questions together.

May it be so this Lenten season.

Blessings and peace!

Dust in the Wind

Click here to read Isaiah 47

Come and sit with me in the dust Isaiah says.  Ahhhh, now that is the Isaiah we have come to know and love over the last forty some chapters.  Enough with these images of comfort and hope.  So much of what I find compelling in Isaiah is his ability to name reality and offer hope.  That is a hard line to walk.  So often, I can slip into cynicism at the brokenness of our world.  Or I find myself almost naively trying to harness the "power of positive thoughts," believing that happiness can be forged or forced.  To see the brokenness for what it is and still say that there is a trace of God's grace, I admire that in Isaiah.

At this point in Isaiah most scholars believe he is writing as one in exile.  The people have been uprooted and transplanted into Babylon and Isaiah along with them.  The walls of their beloved city reduced to rumble, the temple Solomon built is now in smoldering ash, and Isaiah says sit in that ash and find God.

That is not exactly a passage I usually preach upon.  Yet, I find it refreshingly honest and heartfelt.  So often we try to explain away, justify, or even rationalize the brokenness and ash in our lives.  This can be done through religious frame work of "God's will" or "God's plan".  Or it can be done through humanist points of view, "Humans are broken and cause brokenness."  Yet, where both fall short is our desire to understand or explain away pain or brokenness.  Maybe pain and brokenness just are.  Just are part of life.  Just are part of walking around in this vessel and breathing in air.  Just are.  

Jesus experienced pain and brokenness within his life and upon the cross.  Many theologians contend that it is in Jesus on the cross that God suffers.  God suffers because of an unconditional and unceasing love.  The parting of the Red Sea, the beautiful words of the Psalms, the words of accountability of the prophets, or countless other passages of the Hebrew Scriptures did not truly capture the hearts of the people the way God prayed those words would.  And so God comes upon us, takes on human flesh - the incarnation.  This is incredibly vulnerable.  And why does God do this?  To be 'at-one' with us.  All these "reasons" people give about why Jesus had to suffer and die are called "atonement" (at-one-ment) theories.  That is just it.  There are all theories...just the ramblings of humans trying to make sense.

Maybe the brokenness and pain, the ash of life, the moments of exile when we feel like we are far from home or in a foreign land - maybe they should NOT make sense.  Maybe we should NOT explain them away.  The beginning of prayer is a sigh.  A sigh that says words cannot every capture what is going on here.  So, I turn not to words, but to ash.

In the beginning (Genesis 2) God took dust, made a being, and breathed life into that dust creature.  Maybe sitting in the dust is not about being down in the dumps, but re-connecting with our humanity.  Our beginnings.  And while I don't think we need to go in search of those dust/ash moments...they seem to find us anyway...perhaps this is another way to look at them.  Not as a trial or a test or something God gives us or something someone else caused us...just a dust moment that connects us back to a truth about being humans created in God's image.  I don't think that solves anything, but it helps me sense a trace of God's grace in that moment.  I pray for you too.

Blessings and peace!

What's the Idol with You?

Click here to read Isaiah 44

Click here to read Isaiah 45

Click here to read Isaiah 46

The next three chapters have the theme of idols, making idols, the work of our human hands, and what happens when other gods take center stage in our lives.  Ever since the Ten Commandments, God was clear that no good can come from trying to craft idols for ourselves.  And the People of God found that incredibly meaningful...for about twelve chapters in Exodus.  Then, along comes the whole Golden Calf incident.  Moses was up on the mountain chatting with God...AGAIN.  And this time he was taking forever.  And there was no way the governing body of the church approved that much time off.  And so anxiety increased.  And Pastor Aaron, wanting to be helpful, said, "Let's make an idol."  Now to be fair, Aaron really thought he was making an idol to honor God.  It was not as though he was trying to start a new religion.  Rather, he just wanted to calm the people down.

That's the lure of idols in the world.  Here, buy this new ipad it will make you happy.  Here, buy this new television and impress your friends.  Here, buy this new outfit and wow everyone.  Andrew Root makes a compelling argument that so much of our identity today comes from what we buy and consume.  Years ago...my grandparent's generation...it was the family.  You lived closed to your parents, uncles, aunts, and cousins.  Family defined...and confined....your identity.  Around the 1950s, we became much more mobile and even nomadic...work and our profession began to provide our identity.  Watch Mad Men sometime to see how central work and who does the work is to the person's understanding of self.  But increasingly in the 1980s and 1990s, work ceased to provide that meaning.  So, people turned to what we can consume.  You don't like who you are or your identity?  It is just a swipe of a credit card away.  Family...work...stuff...all can be idols.

To be completely fair...family, work, and stuff can also connect us to God.  But there are limitations and we need to be careful.  I sense God when I laugh with my family.  I sense God when I talk with someone in my church.  I sense God on a spring day driving my car with the sunroof open.  It is not that these things are inherently bad or evil.  The problem with idols is not necessarily that it is a material thing.  It is just that at some point the idol will fail to point toward the deeper meaning and hence stop pointing to God.  All of the sudden, my kids do something that upsets me...or the church doesn't do what I think it should...or my car breaks down.  See what happens with idols?

In Exodus 32, the Calf incident...it was not so much that they made a calf or what the calf represented.  Rather, the calf could never fully reflect the mystery and unfolding nature of God.  Those three letters: G-O-D have so much depth and breath, and when we try to reduce that to something we can see, touch, or taste, we reduce the image of God.  And here is the real truth about idols: we also like to control them.  There is a reason why you have to vote on American Idol for your favorite and you want to control what they do.  I think one of the qualities of God that we don't talk about is that God is beyond our control...and yet God is intimately intertwined in our lives.  That is the tension!  That is the contradiction.  Idols reduce that tension and the creativity that comes from it.  Idols reduce the contradiction and can make us complacent.

We all craft and collect idols.  The point is not to eradicate them from our lives or to condemn others.  The point is to see an idol for what it is, not God...perhaps a way that can at times through the mystery and serendipity of God connect us to God, but that is not a guarantee.  This Lent, be aware of the idols in your life.  Name them for what they are.  And may you sense a trace of God's grace that can never be contained in anything other than the moving Spirit of God in our lives.

Blessings and peace!

Baptism

Click here to read Isaiah 43

When you pass through the waters you will be redeemed.  The waters could be those of the Red Sea when Moses parted them and the people walked through and the mud squished between their toes.  The waters could be those of baptism of Jesus.  Water is vital for life.  We need water to survive.  And so, when Christians needed a symbol for what it meant to be part of the community of faith, we turned to water.  

As Christians we place water, which we know is vital for life, on the forehead of the one being welcomed into the Church, let it evaporate, and proclaim that there is something else that is vital of life: being claimed as God's beloved and being part of a community of faith.  Water is what connects us.  Moses knew this.  Jesus knew this.  And Isaiah knew this.

Within the faith we proclaim God was willing to come to earth, incarnate - in the flesh - of Jesus.  And through the water, we also welcome a person into the Church - known as the Body of Christ.  Incarnation, living life in the flesh, is vital to our faith.

We hear echoes of Jesus' baptism, where God proclaims Christ is God's beloved.  Where did the Gospels get that image, look at verse 4.  "You are precious in my sight and honored, and I love you."  And those words surround every time we gather around the font and baptism someone in the name of the One who Creates, Redeems, and Sustains us.

I encourage you over the coming days to pay attention to water.  Water you drink, cook, and clean with.  Each time you feel water wash over your skin and refresh your throat, remember your baptism! And may you sense the traces of God's grace in that.