Sunday Morning Prayer

I was glad...when was the last time that was the first response/reaction on Sunday morning?
Gladness...not just happy because happiness is fleeting and fading.
Gladness is like a stream that I don't control.
Gladness can wash over me, like baptismal waters.
Gladness gets me caught up in the current.
Gladness isn't about rational, reasonable sense.
Gladness just is.

I was glad when they said...
what have you heard around you this week?
Maybe the truth that if it was for bad news there wouldn't be any news at all.
Maybe words that were harsh like sandpaper.
Maybe absence of words in a stony silence between you and someone you love.
What kind of invitations did you get this week?
Besides ones to save money on insurance...or cable...or enter to win valuable prizes.
Do you hear that sing-song voice of God calling you?

But these voices actually invite us to church...
And this isn't just about coming to save your soul, like a golden ticket to Willa Wonka's factory.
This invitation is to community...people gathered.
And where two or three gather ~
Yes there will be four or five opinions...
Yes there will be differences....
Yes there will be disagreements.
But!
But...
There will be live that cannot be encountered in any other way than in the flesh of another.
Maybe that is why Jesus came in the flesh.
Words of prophets and thunder bolts and temples only get you so far.
You need others.
Others to see you, invite you, care for you, love you.

In the best sense that is why the church sings this ancient and beautiful song still today at church.

Grace and peace ~~

Sacred Every Day Part One

The season of Lent begins tomorrow with an Ash Wednesday Service.  Over the next forty days, I want to invite you into sensing the sacred all around you.  So much of faith seems to compartmentalize and categorize life.  We get tripped and trapped into thinking that God lives at church.  But as Eugene Peterson translates John 1, the invitation is to see God moving into our neighborhood, into our lives, awakening us not to a new truth, but one that was hidden ~ like a treasure in the field.  The treasure in your very soul.  Yet, we are also not always great at tending our own soul.  Left to our own devices, it is easy (at least for me) to take some random exit ramp and end up stuck in the weeds and reeds of life.  For me, this invitation is not only about the individual.  We need community.  I need folks who will journey with me in the midst of the ups and downs/twists and turns.  The sacred every day is about seeing the sacred flow or animating energy or God moving, still creating and crafting in our midst.

So, why begin with ashes?  Why start so negative?  Actually ashes have a beauty to them.  Something burned but still useful.  Ashes taken from last year's Palm Sunday service...drenched in joyful "Hosannas" that turn suddenly silent on Friday.  Look back at the last year...have there been moments that went from joy-filled to sorrow soaked in the blink of an eye?  Look around right now, are there relationships that once brought smiles and now cause stress to sit upon your soul?  The universe continues to expand...the earth continues to move...why should our lives be any different.  I see a beauty in ashes with our fingerprints and songs of praise, now re-fashioned and recycled to suggest that joy is not the only pathway to God.  Religion can meet us in the brokenness and less-than-blessed state.

So, we take the ashes and trace the same place on your forehead where the symbol of the cross was made with water.  That is the truth of Ash Wednesday.  We are God's beloved and yet God is not finished with us yet.  We take the ashes of our life...moments we said or did the exact thing we did not want to say or do...and offer even that to God.  Or especially that to God.  We shouldn't have to hide ourselves from God, like a child hides a broken lamp from a parent.  We shouldn't have to put on a happy face thinking that is all God cares about.  We shouldn't have to suggest that life is all perfect and we just want to praise God.  Sometimes we want to lament and sit with Job in the ash of life.  And then, there are the ordinary, ever days of life.  Lunches to make for kids.  Appointments to keep.  Traffic to get stuck in.  Shopping.  Binge watching some series on Netflix all the while saying, "Just one more episode."  Walks to take.  Hands to hold.  Moments...ordinary moments...or as the theologians have said...God shows up disguised as your own life.  Or there is no spiritual life and regular life...your calendar is a living prayer.

This Ash Wednesday, I want to encourage you to attend a service.  Receive the ashes...not with guilt but in the graceful gaze of God whose loves is unconditional.  Sing about the coming forty days and commit to a Lenten journey.  You can give something up.  You can take something on ~ like a prayer practice or volunteering.  You can set aside time every day to sit and listen for God.  The point is not for me to be prescriptive of what to do...but descriptive of the invitation that the glory of God is a human being fully alive and in community with each other.

Then, keep checking back to explore with me the sacred every day this Lent.

Grace and Peace...and May God grant you a holy, sacred, every day Lent.

Amen

It Is Well with My Soul Part 2

After talking about this hymn...I found this beauty of this video.  I love that the words about peacefulness are juxtaposed in a gray, almost barren scenery.  That seeming contradiction, reminds us that even in the chaos and clutter and cold of the bleak midwinter...God is still up to something.  So instead of more words from me today...just enjoy this beautiful video.

Grace and peace ~~

It Is Well with my Soul

After Jesus had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum. A centurion there had a slave whom he valued highly, and who was ill and close to death.  When he heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders to him, asking him to come and heal his slave. When they came to Jesus, they appealed to him earnestly, saying, “He is worthy of having you do this for him, for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us.”  And Jesus went with them, but when he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to say to him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof;  therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed.  For I also am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and the slave does it.”  When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, he said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”  When those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the slave in good health.  Luke 7:1-7

Healing stories are peculiar part of our faith.  On the one hand, there are many moments in Scripture when Jesus heals someone.  On the other hand, there are many moments in our life when a loved one in our family or friend prayed in earnest to be healed of an illness, only to die.  What is the deal?  Some point to the fact that Jesus didn't cure/heal everyone in his day either.  There were many folks who tragically died...Jesus among them on the cross.  Other's though take a posture of trying to defend God saying things like, 'If you just have enough faith.'  I wish those six words were never strung together.  Jesus was clear that a mustard seed size faith was sufficient.  Usually when we talk about 'enough faith' that is more about us than the person who is struggling or suffering.  Even more, it is about our own discomfort in the face of someone else's fragility and morality.  Illness doesn't have time for politeness...nor for us to project our stuff on to someone else.

So why...why some who are cured and some not?  Rob Bell often says that we need to be weary of quick and easy answers to such a profound question.  I agree.  There is more mystery than certainty.  But I also know that there is a difference between healing and cure.  I can be cured of an illness (like a sore shoulder) but that doesn't mean I will be healed (stop trying to over do my golf swing...after all I am holding a club in my hand it is only natural and normal that I swing for the fences, right?)  That is a silly example.  I have seen people living with cancer who are more alive than someone who hasn't been to the doctor in years.  Or Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about people who can be dead at the age of 39 even though they are still breathing.  Life is.  Life is a mystery.  We all have some illness and brokenness and pain we are trying to find relief and restoration.

The early Christian theologian Augustine came to a moment of faith insight after a tooth ache.  Suddenly life before the tooth ache was all chocolate rivers and roses.  But in the midst of the tooth ache, he cursed the day he was born.  Afterwards, he said that is like realizing our own brokenness.  Once you have experienced the pain you cause yourself and others, you cannot go back.  You cannot return to some sense of naivete.  Experiencing the sorrow and sadness will forever leave a mark on your life.  It is why I never understood the phrase about "Getting over grief."  It isn't some obstacle.  It is a season...it is a truth we will encounter.

I think about the hymn writer for It is Well with My Soul...who penned those words after the death of his family aboard a ship.  How in the world could it be well with his soul?  I would be shouting at God.  But there was a grace...a healing...a wholeness...that took over his heart that still causes our hearts to sing out fully today.

So, how is it with your soul?  Is there some sea billow that is crashing down?  Or is it smooth sailing?  Or does it depend on the hour?  (I am definitely in the third camp).

I encourage you to spend sometime listening to your soul this week...and asking the question, "How is it with my soul?"

And may grace and peace be with you ~~

More than a day Part Three

Sunday morning prayer...


On this day a truth echoed from an empty tomb.
Love wins.
No longer did desertion and denial and betray have the last word.
Love wins.
No longer did military might and flexing your muscles and get yours while the getting is good make sense any more.
Love won.
Not some score keeping victory...not to the blaring soundtrack of "We are the champions" as ticker tape fell from the sky.
Love won in a quiet way.
In a garden where only a few women stepped inside an empty tomb.
Heard their own breathing echoing off the walls...
Perhaps how Moses felt before that burning bush hearing, "Yahweh"...which is exactly what it sounds like to inhale and exhale.
Breath...life...promise.
But resurrection was not simply resuscitation;
Nor was it some mental gymnastics or reduced to some prayer.
Resurrection is new life where we break through the waters of injustice and discrimination and division.
Resurrection was a taste of God's realm where we now breathe air and love is something more than what is sold at Halmark stores.
Love is no longer confined by a relationship.
Love is the law and grace and promise and way.
Love is letting God flow through you.
Love inspires and co-spires to create something the world still can't accept.
Love wins.
That is what Sunday is all about.
And that is why I sing and shout and break open my heart to the One who centuries ago and still today sings out,
"Love wins"

Amen.

Grace and peace everyone ~~

More than a day Part Two

 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.  If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.  If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again.  But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.  Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.  Luke 6: 32-36

In the famous words of the theologian Charlie Brown..."Good grief!"  This isn't getting any easier.  A second time Jesus brings up the loving your enemies invitation and know we aren't suppose to expect anything in return?  That is challenging wisdom because sometimes I wanted to love my enemies...take the high road...to feel a bit superior.  I want to love them as the Apostle Paul (quoting Proverbs 25:22) once put it, "To heap burning coals on their head."  (Romans 12:20).  Like some bad action movie where instead of violence, we offer discounted chocolate to our enemies..."There take that!"  This cuts to the core of motivation and intention.  Why do we love someone?

We love that person because she or he is in the image of God.  To be sure, we may think the divine spark was extinguished long ago...we may come up with all kinds of rational and reasonable lists of why we should not love that person.  But once we start making naughty and nice lists, it can tend to devolve pretty quickly.  Jesus is saying that loving our enemies means that we seek their well-being and pray for them.

And that wasn't just Jesus.  He is actually borrowing that Jeremiah 29:7, "But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare."  Quick history...Jeremiah was a prophet when Babylon came in...conquered the Holy Land...carted leaders off to live in Babylon where an eye could be kept on them...oh yeah and destroyed the holy temple Solomon built.  Wait!!!  Seek the welfare of those people?  You see, Jesus was grounded and rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures...he was Jewish.  And these echos of Scripture called him to live his life differently.  And remember...loving your enemy...in those days was Rome.  As in the people who taxed you.  As in the people who had the gall to put Caesar's face on a coin with the phrase, 'Son of God'....remember there is a commandment in the Top Ten about not doing that.  Rome as in the one who ruled with an iron fist and crucified people.   Loving your enemy wasn't just some nice idea in Jesus' day...it was every bit as challenging then and there as it is here and now.

Perhaps that is why God keeps sending people to preach about love.  Jeremiah...Jesus...King...Angelou...and on and on.  And especially in a time when we are so divided and fear-filled and hurting and disconnected despite that amazing computing device on which you are reading this blog...these words just ruffle our feathers.  But on this Valentine's Day week, I need something other than sappy sentimentalism...I need a love that challenges my whole way of being.  A way that I sense is actually a pathway to God's grace and presence and peace for all creation.  A way that is good news for all people.  A way that is the path of Jesus.

Lord grant that I might have the courage and conviction to walk this risky way of love, trusting that it lead to You.

Grace and peace everyone ~~

More than one day

“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.  Do to others as you would have them do to you.  Luke 6:27-31

One of my favorite quotes is that, "The Christian practice has not been tried and found wanting.. It has been found difficult and left un-tried."  I put the above part of the Sermon on the Plain in that category.  These words set the bar so high for Christians to clear.  Loving our enemies?  I would rather be stuck in a room with a walrus, wallaby, and a whale; which is a great premise for a joke.  But that is the point.  Jesus is turning the world upside down and inside out and two thousand years later, we still struggle.  We tend to not even get close to loving enemies, especially the ones who wish us harm...especially those who are waging war...especially those whose comments on Facebook cause that tiny vein in your neck to pulse so it echoes in your ear.  Love that person?  Really, Jesus?  And unfortunately, we tend not to talk about it.

I wish I was standing in the crowd that day to ask a clarification question.  Although, to be clear, I am not sure that is a practice I want to start less it happens during my preach!  I want to know...how?
How do I love someone when the emotion I really feel is anger?  How do I love someone in the face of honest fear?  How do I love that person who seems to have the nuclear codes to my well-being and ends us saying something like, "You look young to be a pastor...are you sure?"  Insert awkward laugh and comment about good genetics.

And loving those close to us is hard enough.  It seems to take most of my energy.  What do I have left to love the person who comes from a different political place or who makes racist or sexists comments?  C.S. Lewis quipped that if we wanted to love our enemies...perhaps we shouldn't start with Hitler.  Maybe we should begin somewhere and with someone else.  And to be sure, this is not just willing my way through...I need a willingness for God's wisdom rather than my own.  I need to let go of my usual score-keeping ways.  And this doesn't mean I need to keep silent...but I don't need to shout.  You see...this loving enemy invitation is hard.

It is a slow process.  Every day, can I let go of the anger to make space and place for God's wisdom and Christ's love to enter in?  I think about Jesus who ate with Pharisees who were really critical... and my ego has a hard time when someone says I talk too loud.  But Jesus ate with them.  And challenged them.  And loved them.  Maybe there is something so profoundly simple and sacred in that idea.  Eat with someone...be honest...but be heartfelt.  Paul put it this way...speak the truth in love.  That is a great image.  Speak your truth...but in love.  And I would add...and listen to the other with openness.  Even in a post-truth world...where hyper-individualism prevails...we need space and place to listen and talk and pray and listen and talk and pray.  The listening suggest I need to learn.  The talking point says that God can speak through me.  And the praying part reminds me that we all need to let God get a word in edgewise.  Feel free to send that on to our local and state and national representatives.

On this week of Valentines...I pray that as people of faith we can lean and live out an image of love that isn't just chocolate-covered surface level cotton candy sweet....but a love that might actually make this world different and participate with God in helping the realm more real for such a time as this.

Grace and peace ~~