Monday, March 18, 2024

lent four: god so loved the kosmos...

Text: John 3: 14-21: And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.

My heart always beats a bit faster whenever today’s texts show up in the appointed readings both because St. John’s gospel is so rich with complex spiritual insights, AND, because this was the text my mentor, the late Rev. Dr. Ray Swartzback, chose when he preached my ordination service back in June 1982. Swartzy was a pulpit master: part Old Testament prophet and contemporary social critic, part skilled wordsmith and Bible scholar, and part devotee of Jesus committed to vigorous pastoral care and compassion. He earned his propers fighting in the Battle of the Bulge during WWII; when he returned stateside, he sensed the need to give whatever time he had left to nourishing life after encountering the rigors, trauma, and destruction of war. He served four different urban congerga-tions in the rustbelt before I interned with him in Jamaica, Queens, NY. His ordination sermon was entitled: Trapped in the Trappings and it’s been one of my guides for decades.

· Ray issued a prophetic warning to me in that sermon: do NOT try to be holier than Jesus. Rather, give yourself fully to loving the folk – and that means ALL the folk – those who fit in and those from the periphery, those who love God as well as those who are either ambivalent or even hateful. Remember: Jesus didn’t come to condemn the cosmos, but to love, nourish, and bring a measure of healing. Like the old song says: he’s got the WHOLE world in his hands

· So, in the spirit of both St. John the Evangelist and Ray Swartzback the urban preacher, let me risk unpacking some of the problematic and even uncomfortable parts of today’s readings for you because they not only strike contemporary people as troubling, but evoke a sense of God that no longer holds water. A creator who sends poisonous snakes to kill the community’s complainers? The source of creative and wild diversity throughout the cosmos who condemns those with doubts or existential questions about the meaning and purpose of life?

That, my friends, is BAD theology, a truth some intuitively embrace and vote with their feet, while others resist – especially if they choose to interpret the Bible literally. We would do well to recall that our spiritual cousins in Judaism long ago concluded that nuance, patience, and creativity are essential for making sense of the Bible. In fact, they crafted a four-tiered approach to Bible study using the acronym, PaRDeS, to keep things fresh. Pardes, in Hebrew, means orchard or garden, a reference to the paradise of Eden God created in the beginning.

P stands for p’shat meaning plain – a medieval exploration of a text’s literary, linguistic, and historical context – that strives to articulate what the words of Scripturehtml meant when they were first written, spoken, and/or collected. R represents remez meaning hint - a teasing out the allegorical possibilities of a passage – D is for drash from the Hebrew word midrash – the preferred, practical, and playful application of Scripture for everyday life – and S is for sod, meaning secret, or the creative consideration of the mystical and sacramental meaning of God’s word. The rabbis concluded – and we would do well to emulate – that the Bible is open to a host of interpretations – some are more useful than others – but all carry a piece of the truth. John Robinson, pastor to the Pilgrims who came to this continent in 1620, told us that: “God hath yet more light and truth to break forth from the Holy Word,” than we now grasp.

· Such a perspective is essential if we’re to make ANY sense of passages like Psalm 61: I long to dwell in your tent, O Lord, forever, and take refuge in the shelter of your wings? Oh really? God has wings…?

· Same holds for a rigid interpretation of some of the purity codes like not ever touching pork: does that mean Christians and Jews can’t play football? Let’s not even open the door on some of the sexual references that today strike us as bizarre except to note that once upon a time women’s hair made into braids or a top knot was considered an offense to the Lord. No wonder Jesus quoted the prophet Hosea to the scribes and Pharisees saying: “There is something greater taking place than even the Temple so go and learn what this means: I, the Lord your God, desire mercy not sacrifice.” Compassion always trumps rigid rule keeping for Jesus.

So, with these qualifications, I think Bible scholar and pastor, Bruce Epperly, is right to ask: Is God for us or against us in these readings? Is God primarily punitive or graceful in nature?

Can we trust God’s love or is there a “hidden” violent side to God, inspiring fear and not companionship? The texts for today describe an ambiguity in divinity. Though they speak of divine rescue and global love, they also suggest a dark side to divinity. In the Numbers passage, God causes suffering and seems to be the source of punishment that far exceeds our misdeeds… (while) the gospel of St. John asks us to wonder: Is God the source of condemnation or does condemnation occur in the natural course of events in response to our actions? Can our love of darkness thwart God’s grace? What is the nature of this condemnation – is it a matter of inability to experience the fullness of God’s love or is it eternal in impact? Is there a limit to divine love and, if so, does it come from our side or our ability to say “no” to God? Is it possible to have moral responsibility without condemnation or accountability without destruction? These passages invite us to ponder the relationship between grace, punishment, and personal responsibility.

· We know many of our neighbors no longer find solace or hope in the institutional church now at least partly because of such passages. They intuitively sense what depth psychologist, Carl Jung, once said about the story of Job: with a God like THAT, who needs Satan?

· Declining numbers for the past four or five generations have given rise to a culture with NO experience with church. Episcopal lay theologian, Tricia Gates Brown, writes that we are “on the cusp of a change… where almost every aspect of our country is in upheaval — cultural, technological, political, environmental, and spiritual. We are well past the time when we thought we could reverse the tide…for this cultural shift is much larger than us.” And while there are clues that the tide is beginning to turn in this vast and epochal cultural shift that may result in a yearning for communities of compassion like the church, so much remains beyond our control. My hunch, Dr. Brown, writes:

Is that in time, the shared faith expression people get from religious services is something they will, again, long for. But only in the way we appreciate something so long absent that the reper-cussions of the absence become evident and undeniable… and it’s not likely to occur in my life time.

· So rather than lament and fret over this – or give-in to nostalgia or worse to fear – why not become allies of the Holy Spirit as St. Paul encouraged in Philippians 4 and give attention to whatever is “honorable, just, pure, pleasing, true and commendable: if there is any excellence or anything worthy of praise, give your attention to these things.”

· From my perspective this includes rigorously sorting out what is true and salvific, good and noble, even in our holy scripture, ok? And today’s texts are a GREAT place to start given the ambiguity and contradictions they describe about the nature of the Lord we’ve chosen to wor-ship.

I take my lead from a wise and wonderful Bible scholar, the late Rev. Dr. Walter Wink, who taught at my alma mater, Union Theological Seminary in NYC, and later went on to do truly remarkable re-search at the Presbyterian Auburn Theological Seminary. Walter used to say that there are at least three perspectives concerning Biblical interpretation and each is thoroughly grounded in Scripture.

· One is a literal reading of Torah – the Law in Hebrew – that’s shaped by Leviticus and Deut-eronomy. There are liberating passages within Torah but also severe restrictions concerning who is in and who is out – who is acceptable and forbidden – who belongs and who must be banished from community. Can you think of a Biblical story or character that speaks to this restrictive perspective?

· A second interpretative lens comes from the prophets: rather than celebrate an austere and fixed sense of who is acceptable to the Lord and who is not, the prophets ground themselves in the story of Exodus and urge us to incarnate acts that emancipate and heal people, the land, and all that lives and thrives in creation. Tradition suggests that the essence of the pro-phetic expression was synthesized in Micah 6:8: What does the Lord require but that we do justice, love mercy, and walk with God and neighbor in humility. Do you sense the differ-ence between the path of the prophets and those favoring a more simplistic sense of Torah?

· And then there’s the path of Jesus who is every bit as devout as the Pharisees but without their penchant for segregation: Jesus rarely offers an unyielding set of rules, preferring, in-stead, parables, stories, and testimonies of faith rather than inflexible tests of faith. That’s the school OUR tradition favors – testimonies not tests of faith – and while we haven’t always gotten this right – think of the genocide our founders enacted upon first nations people or our acceptance of slavery for way too long – one of the great poets and hymn writers of the Congregational Way, James Russell Lowell of Cambridge, MA, put it like this in Once to Every Man and Nation: New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth; they must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth. Contemporary commentators insist that the readings for today are so curious and problematic that we MUST wrestle with them in worship, so here’s a few concerns:

As the story goes, when the wilderness people (of the Exodus) continue to grumble and misbehave, God gets impatient and angry and sends poisonous snakes among the people, whose bites cause several fatalities. The people confess their sin and ask Moses to intercede on their behalf. God relents and has Moses fashion a bronze serpent as an antidote. So, while God has offered a remedy, the snakes are still running loose, and people are still getting bitten… This story shows us a God who hurts and heals; a deity somewhat arbitrary and unpredictable whose moral ambiguity borders on abuse and should be called into question because the path of Jesus abhors even a hint of divine torment and terrorism.

The spirit, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus thoroughly rejects any portrayal of the holy as arbitrary and vindictive. As the Reverend Dr. Bruce Epperly put it writing in the on- line website Patheos: “If there is any redemption in this passage, it comes in recognizing that an orderly universe can involve pain as well as joy and that acts have consequences… any-thing more must be denounced as unworthy of Jesus and his love.” I would add that as St. John notes: the bronze serpent that Moses raises symbolically prefigures the Cross of Christ. Scholars at the SALT Project write: 

While God could have saved the Israelites by having them look upon any object at all, the chosen remedy is to look upon a bronze serpent, a vivid reminder — even in the midst of healing and restoration — of two things: first, the deadly, self-destructive nature of sin; and second, God's gracious transformation of even our worst into part of our redemption. The Christian cross can play this dual role, too reminding us of the many ways we turn against each other in violence and betray-al, and at the same time, of God’s graceful, transformative forgiveness and deliverance Like St. Paul wrote: we KNOW that in everything God works for good with those who are commit-ted to love. Not that everything IS good, but that God’s love is greater than even evil.

In the 21st century, connecting church with the cultural shift that engulfs us must include calling out bad theology even as we highlight the awesome accounts of sacred love that are beautiful, true, noble, and salvific. I like the way Pastor Dan Sadlier of Mosaic Church in NYC put it when he said that while formal theology can be confusing, the way of Jesus is pretty clear:

We move toward the poor, empower women, create space at the table for everyone who wants to eat, throw parties, widen the boundaries of family, poke holes in oppressive systems, don’t retaliate with violence, forgive the enemy, don’t horde, and be present with one another. Heal, share, and trust God as you push back the darkness because the kingdom is within and among us all.

So what do we do with the ambiguities and contradictions of today’s gospel? As you might expect, to make sense of this in OUR generation involves a choice. Some, like the Pharisees before us, are inclined limit and segregate God’s grace saying: ONLY those who confess Jesus as Lord the way I do are entitled to experience eternal life after life on earth is done. Others, and I place myself in this group, perceive at least three reasons to trust that salvation is way more inclusive.

First, throughout John’s Gospel, “the world” (kosmos in NT Greek) is a term used as shorthand for sin or estrangement from God — be in the world but not OF the world – which makes it all the more striking that Jesus says, “God so loved the world” (the kosmos) not, “God hated the world but loved the remnant of those who believe.” Second, in Torah, when God provides the remedy of the bronze serpent, the strategy is not to save just a few well-deserving Israelites, but rather to save “everyone” who had turned against God and then (for arguably less-than-noble reasons) sought deliverance (Num 21:8). And third, as if to clarify this very question, in the next verse Jesus underlines that God sends the Son not “to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17). (SALT Project)

I think this causes us to make a choice: do we trust that God loves ALL of creation and is doing all that is possible to heal rather than hurt? Or, is God’s love eclipsed by divine violence so that we worship not a God of mercy but one of retribution and suffering?

· To save, you see, is NOT to offer a pass to get into heaven at the END of this life – although that’s not excluded – rather the New Testament word we translate as salvation – soteria from the root sozo – means… to heal. To rescue from danger, pain, as well as the consequences of sin, confusion, and brokenness.

· So, what I hear in our new context is that those who choose to trust the way of Jesus – the path of forgiveness and compassion – are made whole. Healed. Empowered to pass on God’s love to others. Fr. Richard Rohr likes to say: if our wounds and sins are NOT transformed with-in, they are transmitted outwardly to others – most often to those we love the most. To be a part of the charism of this era, therefore, calls us to greet one another with open hands and arms rather than closed fists, hearts, and minds.

Reality is calling our community to incarnate an alternative to the chaos both by being creative and faithful to the gospel that Jesus makes flesh; and, by wrestling with the hard, troubling, and often unacceptable bad theology found in the good book. Symbolically, these challenging parts of Scripture are a lot like you and me: they’re real – they have to be dealt with – and by grace we need not be afraid to engage and be changed by them. Bad theology, like aspects of our own inner brokenness, you see, can point us in new and better directions IF we’re paying attention.

And that’s where sacred humor becomes part of God’s salvation plan: over the years I’ve discerned that most of us do NOT respond well to criticism, challenge, or what some overly pious people call speaking the truth in love. Most of the time, we just walk away from such insights and never find out the real issue. But bring a bit of self-deprecating humor to the table and suddenly hard truths within can be owned, named, accepted, and addressed. And you know who tells a GREAT story sat-urated in spiritual humility and humor? The mystics of Islam: the Sufis. One of my favorites involves the Holy Fool known as Mullah Nasruddin.

One day, the Mullah was sitting in a tea shop when a friend excitedly came in. ‘I’m so happy, my old friend,’ he gushed, ‘I’m about to get married and wanted to know if you had ever thought of marriage?’ “Oh many times,” smiled the old man. “When I was young, I very much wanted to and set out in search of the perfect woman. I travelled far and wide to find her. I went first to Damas-cus where I met a beautiful woman: she was gracious, kind, and deeply spiritual, but had no worl-dly knowledge, so I decided she was not the perfect wife. Later I travelled further and went to Bagdad and met a woman who was both spiritual and wise in the ways of the world. She was beautiful in many ways but we did not communicate well. Finally, after much searching, in Cairo I found her: she was spiritually deep, graceful, compassionate, savvy, and beautiful in every way. She was at home in the world and at home in the realms beyond it. In her I knew I had finally found the perfect woman.’ At which point his friend blurted out: ‘Why then why did you not marry her, Mullah?’ “Alas,” sighed Nasruddin as he put down his tea cup while shaking his head, “Alas, it seems that she was searching for the perfect man.’

We need not be trapped by bad theology: its existence in our Bible gives us a chance to name it, call it out, make it good and get it right just as we do in prayer and contemplation. And I submit to you that the more we do – and do it playfully and tenderly, with humble humor – the more God’s truth will shine within and among us to lead us from the darkness into the light.

For this is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And here’s why: so that no one need be destroyed; by trusting him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.

And THIS is the good news for today for those with ears to hear.







Saturday, March 16, 2024

what a LONG strange trip its been...

One of the BEST rock lyrics ever penned is found in the Grateful Dead's anthem: Truckin'! It showed up on the American Beauty album in 1970 and became an instant winner. Written by Garcia, Weir, Lesh, and Hunter (three instrumentalists and their erstwhile lyricist) about "life on the road," Truckin' is a mid-tempo shuffle that joyfully proclaims: "What a LONG strange trip its been!" Truer words have rarely been shared in all of rock and roll.
The first time I heard this I had just entered the first year class at Lakeland College in Sheboygan, WI. I was already a Deadhead and LOVED Working Man's Dead. Taking in the groove of that era with other music geeks and progressive intellectuals was like a smorgasbord: new songs were happening every week and that fall was all about After the Gold Rush and Dr. John the Night Tripper PLUS the new Dead  and Lennon's solo album. What a trip that some 50+ years later, my precious 10 year old grandson is playing tunes from American Beauty. And, of course, the best of both Revolver and Rubber Soul.

Friday, March 15, 2024

relearning how to say yes and say no...

One of the challenges of my current incarnation is accepting limitations: it is a counter-cultural commitment to sometimes say no, right? Especially for clergy. Stanley Hauerwas once described clergy burnout as the result of living like a quivering mass of availability. Twenty-five years ago I began to learn about this commitment through the spiritual practice of "saying yes, saying no." (for more information see:
https://practicingourfaith.org/practices/saying-yes-and-saying-no/Martin Copenhaver, retired President of Andover-Newton Theological Seminary, tells the story of his mother's strict NO when it came to sabbath keeping. He wrote:

At first, saying No usually looks like a form of self-denial. And often it is only later that we can see that the No is really the key to freedom. For instance, when my mother was a girl her family kept the Sabbath quite strictly. In accordance with the biblical mandate, they would observe Sunday as a day of rest. My grandmother would bake bread on Saturday to be served with warm milk the next day—their traditional Sunday meal—so that she would not have to cook on the Sabbath. When Sunday arrived, the children would not do their normal chores. The Sunday newspaper was kept on the top shelf of the China cabinet until Monday morning. They couldn’t talk on the telephone and they weren’t allowed to play any games, either. As a boy, I remember thinking that it sounded awful. My mother would say, “Well, actually, that was my favorite day of the week. After church in the morning, we would spend the day together. It was a busy family, so it was nice to have a day when you could eat dinner together without being so rushed, take walks and catch up with each other. Or we could spend time with friends.”

My aversion to Blue Laws notwithstanding, something was lost when Sunday became just another day of doing business. Not that I favor returning to a watered down theocracy, mind you. Not at all. Simultaneously, however, I know that actually articulating a commitment to Sabbath - and living into it - is baffling to most contemporary Americans. We may lament that our children and grandchildren have sports events when they might be in worship - or that families struggling to make ends meet now regularly work on both Saturday and Sunday - but our behavior tells a different story. The art and discipline of keeping the Sabbath holy has been ceded to devout Jews and Muslims as Christians rush about with more and more important tasks to complete. 

Back in our early days of Sabbath keeping I was scolded by a Cleveland matriarch for my selfishness in not answering the phone on my Sabbath day off.  The very notion that I would opt out of engaging was an affront to her - especially, she said pointedly: because our pledge pays your salary! In addition to the loss of Sabbath consciousness her fury was fueled by an understanding that a pastor is just like any other employee in the so-called helping professions. And as much as I protested and challenged such narrowness: it's in the cultural air we breathe and not easily eradicated. Copenhaver adds:

It is not insignificant that the Sabbath was established when the Jews were in exile. Their Babylonian captors wanted to get as much as possible from the Hebrew slaves. So they tried to make them work every day. But the Jews rebelled and insisted that one day a week they would refrain from working so that they could worship their God. In short, they said, “No. We are good for more than labor. We are made in the image of God. This is the God who rules over us all, Jew and Babylonian. Call us slaves if you will, but one day a week we will remind ourselves that we are precious in the sight of the one true God.” Somehow the 4 Babylonians knew that this was a form of rebellion that could not be crushed. And so they relented. One day a week they did not expect the Jews to work and allowed them to worship. (NOTE: you can read his entire reflection @

The mystical wisdom-keeper of Western contemplation, the Rev. Dr. Cynthia
Bourgeault, notes that challenges to our commitments (be they Sabbatarian or not) are necessary in helping us strengthen, deepen, and modify them as needed. Questions and controversy, you see, reflect the healthy tension of natural new life where outdated truths are discarded and eternal insights fortified. How did the poet Rilke put it in Letter to a Young Poet?

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

But let's be clear: saying NO is still counter-cultural. It remains a discipline to be practiced. And requires patience along with a willingness to fail in order to sustain its life giving qualities. As a dear friend from L'Arche Ottawa wrote me: you can't keep adding commitments to your day without relinquishing others if you want a balanced life, ok? Upon accepting a call to serve as an Interim Minister during a time when my musical options were starting to flourish showed me just how much I needed a "saying yes/saying no" refresher course. Reality was squeezing some commitments out even as new ones were being revealed. Some, like needing to stay local during key holidays rather than traveling to loved ones, broke my heart. AND this reality is calling us all to become more creative and inventive in finding ways to stay connected. We haven't cracked that nut yet but the possibilities are beginning to strike me as wonderful even as I grieve what is being lost. Talk about paradox, yes?

The cultural/political/spiritual/emotional need to revive a healthy commitment to saying NO is all too obvious in 2024. But NOT in a theocratic/return to blue laws way. No, our rebellion must be a playful and tender rebellion that helps us affirm the best of this era while relinquishing habits that no longer celebrate life. Today, as part of MY Sabbath, I'm off to the library. There isn't a better place to practice saying yes and no for they are both part of the dance of life. I like how Copenhaver's essay concludes:

Here as elsewhere, it is not simply that we must learn how to say No to some things and Yes to other things. The two are more closely related than that. It is like they are two steps of the same dance. The No is implied by the Yes. The No frees us to say Yes. We say No as a form of Christian practice so that, finally, in the end, our lives might sing a word of affirmation: Yes, yes, yes!

Monday, March 11, 2024

recognizing that reality is the will of god...

Since before February, I've been wrestling with HOW do I keep connecting with those beyond my immediate faith community who are important to me now that I have taken on the assignment of being an Interim Pastor for a few years? I put my weekly spirituality reflections, Small is Holy, on hold in the hope that I would be able to find another day or time for them. To be candid, today I had to admit that while I still don't have the answer to this I wanted, two inter-related truths have bubbled to the surface that speak volumes:

+ First, given my new commitment to nourishing the faith community of Palmer, including worship leadership and pastoral care, after linking the music we're making locally with the church it's become clear that most of my time, energy, and focus has been consumed. 

+ And second, as Meister Eckhardt might suggest: this IS my answer. Somewhere along the way I read Matthew Fox quoting Eckhardt as saying: Reality is the will of God; it can always be better but we must start with what is real. The Serenity 
Prayer affirms much the same truth: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. What I must figure out is how to share our music work beyond the confines of each gig as music is where I currently connect to those beyond my faith community. 

Initially, this wasn't clear. I wanted to find a way to keep doing what I had been doing even while adding a bold new commitment. Truth be told, however, I have neither the wisdom nor the energy to do more outwardly than give myself to the church and music along with an essential commitment to family and caring for Di. It's humbling - and rather sad - to realize and accept that along with the new blessings are some unexpected consequences causing my to relinquish a discipline that I've savored for four years. What I sense now, however, is that Small is Holy needs to morph into a music /poetry connection - I don't yet know how - but that seems to be where my journey has taken me thus far. Stay tuned for future developments.


Sunday, March 10, 2024

celebrating grace outside the box...

Today was a blessing - and my hope is that the blessing ripens as we move from Sunday morning worship to Sunday afternoon music party. Two simple thoughts about each gathering:

+ This week I wound up crafting three very different drafts of my reflection
. The first was too heady - the second spent too much time on the bad theology of the Numbers reading - while the third discerned a playful and new take on Nicodemus. What I keep discovering in the process is that my preaching is NOT just about sharing Bible facts and insights. Rather, it is opening up the blessings of grace, challenging the parts that are punitive and/or simply wrong, all while reiterating the joy of living into God's love. The story of Nicodemus in St. John 3 invites us to move beyond the baggage of being "born again" to the more inclusive invitation of recognizing when we are "sired from above." Not that born again is bad, it is not; it is just too limited. Yes, some among us have a Damascus Road event - those stunning, awesome inward/outward encounters with forgiveness that change our lives forever - while most of us are awakened and renewed by grace incrementally. One way is NOT better than another for it ALL comes from the holy. Our response to grace is what matters. Born again rhetoric has only been around for about 100 years and offers only a one size fits all description of inner transformation. If today's reaction has legs, a lot of folk are hungry to know that their experiences are holy, too.

+ That's part of why doing this afternoon's music party is so important: it, too, is a way to share beauty, depth, and solidarity as an integral albeit non-traditional path to inner renewal. Like Richard Rohr says: "If we cannot find a way to make our wounds into sacred wounds, we invariably become cynical, negative, or bitter. If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it—usually to those closest to us: our family, our neighbors, our co-workers, and, invariably, the most vulnerable, our children.”  We're doing a LOT of quiet and reflective tunes - Fast Cars, Breathe, Times Like These, Lucky Now, Landslide, One Voice, and Find the Cost of Freedom - both because we've created some stunning 3-4 part harmonies and to showcase the band's depth. People KNOW we can rock and roll - now it is time to show the poetry and nuance. This means making music with and for a very mixed gathering is every bit as prayerful as this morning's worship for me - and I hope for those who attend. 
My hope is that I'll be able to video some of the music and share it as yet one more way to "rejoice in the Lord always (and all ways, too!)  

Thursday, March 7, 2024

the sacrament of music in mud season...

This weekend, Lent IV in the Christian tradition, is also the unofficial start of Mud Season in the Berkshires. There's certain to be a "surprise" snow storm still to come in April - there always is - and locals always say: this is such a shock! Nevertheless, spring is starting all around us - and that means MUD before much else. That's a rather culturally appropriate symbol on the way to Easter, don't you think? There's muck and mire to wade through before the beauty and bounty of new life.
Further, if you are truly sacramental in your spirituality, you'll rejoice in the mayhem as much as the miracle because you can't have one without the other. Many of us are unable to trust grace till it heals our hearts. We're anxious and even angry about how little we can actually change, fix, or control till we experience the deep rest and renewal that occurs when we relinquish our illusions of control and rest into the unforced rhythms of God's love. Same for serenity: it comes NOT by taking on more busyness or effort; but by trusting God to be God and accepting just what is ours to contend with. How did Jesus put it? There's already enough worry in each day without adding to it!

So, to celebrate - and incarnate - the sacred nature of mud season: we're hosting a music party at the home of one of 3D's musicians. There will be beer and wine, finger foods, and whatever else guests choose to bring. It is a "by invitation only" affair (but if you want to come, just shoot me a note, ok?) For the past month or so, the band has been working on a variety of reflective songs in addition to some kick ass rockers. I am particularly moved by our take on Leslie Duncan's "Love Song," Anna Nalick's "Breathe," Stevie Nicks' "Landslide," the Wailin; Jenny's "One Voice," and the Doobie Brothers' romp through "Jesus Is Just Alright." It should be a grand little party - and part of the reason is that our commitment is to sharing love through music. There is precious little ego in this band. Tons of willingness to experiment, too as well as an abiding respect and affection for one another - and our guests.

We also believe that the more our culture and politics become brittle, the more we are called to make alternatives flesh. Visible. Audible. Tangible. If you are in need of a pick me up, I hope you'll send me a note and I'll make sure you get the logistics to join us.

Sunday, March 3, 2024

lent three: living as embodied prayers...

TEXT: John 2: 13-23: The Passover of the Jewish community was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves where the money changers were seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, with the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” Those who had gathered for prayer then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” And Jesus answered: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” They Jews said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

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This morning, I want us to consider how our bodies are an integral part of our Lenten discipline – specifically our flesh as embodied prayers. We all HAVE one, you know? They may be young or old, tall or short, healthy or hurting. Karoline Lewis of Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN wrote: “We all have bodies and all too often we don’t really know what to DO with them.” Sometimes:

We desperately want to change them, improve them, shrink them, hide them. We want to tighten them, shape them, mold them. We compare ours to others. We describe them with odd category-ies, like fruit. We analyze them, take them apart, and we like some parts more than others. We take them for granted. We look at them in the mirror with disgust or with modest admiration. We keep the lights off so that they cannot be seen; or, we expose them in ways that leave little to the imagination.

St. John’s gospel gives us a lot to chew on today – and not JUST about the unity of flesh, blood, and spirit. For the next few weeks, the appointed gospel texts come from St. John’s writing so sometime before Easter:

· We’ll need to clarify the tragic historical mistake made by the early Christian community that conflated a once time specific internecine squabble between Jews – some who followed Jesus and others who did not – into the sanctification of antisemitism for two millennia.

· We’ll also try to put the anger of Jesus and his furious civil disobedience against the money-changers and merchants of sacrificial animals in the courtyard of the Temple into context, con-sider how his assertion that his body was every bit as holy as the Temple itself – a critique of all spiritualities of sacrifice – and ponder what Mary Magdalene’s anointing of Jesus means in anticipation of his Passion.

And that’s not even opening the door to the spiritual and political parallels these ancient words have with some of the challenges we’re facing today. That could warrant a rich conversation and analysis of what happens when religious leaders get into bed with political authorities. But today the Spirit has led me in a very different direction: I’d like to contemplate what an embodied Lent might mean for you and me – or how our flesh and blood can become living prayers, ok?

You may recall that St. John’s gospel starts by telling us that at just the right time in the history of creation, God’s essence – the Word – became flesh and dwelt among us. The text says that since the beginning of time, the Word – the essence of the Lord – was waiting to become incarnate. So, at the right time, the time of God’s choosing, this holy essence took on flesh and blood, literally pitching his tent right next to ours to sojourn with us – that is, walk with us – so that we might see a one-of-a-kind glory saturated in generosity both inside and out. Tradition rightly insists that generosity shapes God’s grace as made visible to us in Jesus. It only stands to reason, therefore, that we’re encouraged to respond with a comparable largesse.

You may also recall that when St. Paul was asked to define how we are to respond to God’s generous love, he crafted Romans 12: Here’s what I want you to do with the help of God: pre-sent your bodies to the world as a living sacrifice. Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t be-come so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. In-stead, fix your attention on the Lord and you’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what God wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to the lowest level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. To express our gratitude to the Lord, we’re to practice living as embodied prayers for the world.

That’s what the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus shows us: love is greater than death – and love wins. But most of us aren’t used to seeing sacramentally – that is, recognizing reality as well as its deeper insights and truths – so we must train our eyes to see the holy amidst our human-ity. We need to SEE God’s truth in a tangible way, an incarnation we can trust, a manner of seeing the BIG picture in faith. Did you know that the word belief or faith – pistis in New Testament Greek and emuhan in the Old Testament’s Hebrew – is NOT about dogma, doctrine, catechisms, creeds or ideas? Faith is about trust – embodied trust – and I’d like to show you what I mean if I can have a volunteer, please?

Oh, you want to know WHAT you’ll be asked to do BEFORE you volunteer? Nothing dangerous, I assure you, something simple: I want to see who among us TRUSTS this stool to be a stool that will hold you up when you sit on it, ok? Anyone willing to help me with this demonstration? You see, you can say out loud that you trust this stool, you can hold a host of ideas about this stool in your mind, but you aren’t actually trusting it till you put buns on the seat. Anyone? (NOTE: Today a young tween volunteered - she first said I trust it because it looks sturdy - so I said: that's an observation but only verbal. I won't know you trust this stool till you sit on it and... she did. To the congregation's applause and delight.)

Trust – faith – is embodied not abstract, ok? St. John’s gospel asks us to practice trusting that the One who is holy not only brought the essence of the sacred to birth in the flesh and blood of Jesus of Nazareth, but that the more Jesus practiced trusting God’s truth to be his guide, the more he GREW in wisdom and blessings.

· Does anyone recall what Jesus heard from the heavens – and his heart – when he came up from the baptismal waters in the River Jordan? YOU ARE MY BELOVED. Those words – YOU ARE MY BELOVED – were NOT for Jesus alone. By faith – by trust – YOU – and you and you and you and me – are God’s beloved, too.

· Incrementally, we mature into this blessing the more we practice living by trust. St. Paul was clear: we see by faith not just by sight alone? Practicing trust is how we embody God’s love and grace. It seems to me that’s what God was telling us when the Word became flesh in Jesus. And if it’s true for Jesus, then by association and faith it’s true for us too: trusting God’s grace in our flesh is the foundation of a living and salvific faith.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve found that poets are much better at affirming this truth than many theologians. I’m not going to unpack today WHY the church so often contributes to our confusion – and even sometimes hatred – of our bodies. I’ll save that for another sermon. And I do not want to go into the way culture and fashion warps our perspective except to say: they do. No, just give an ear to what old Walt Whitman told us about our bodies: I sing the body electric…

A man's body is sacred, and a woman's body is sacred, too. No matter who it is, it is sacred—is it the meanest one in the laborers' gang? Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf? Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as much as you, each has his or her place in the procession of creation.

ONE of the reasons we sing in worship is to practice trusting ourselves to become embodied prayers by expressing praise and gratitude with our WHOLE being – from the inside out. Not long ago I found out that scientists have discovered that when a group is singing something they love together that our hearts start beating more or less together in unison? The music, our voices, and our flesh and blood tenderly become ONE body guided by the Spirit. And in our case, that means the body of Christ as well as a community of compassion. 

Same for our celebration of Eucharist. In this sacrament we physically take IN to our bodies the mystical essence of Jesus so that Christ may nourish our bodies to pass on the generous blessings of God once worship is over. One of my favorite poets writing about the body, the bard of Provincetown, Mary Oliver of blessed memory, put it like this:

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

Your body matters: it matters to God as the Lord’s beloved; it matters to Jesus who has NO body now but yours (as St. Teresa of Avila told us adding: Yours are the eyes with which he looks com-passionately on this world and yours are the feet with which he walks to do good.) Your body mat-ters to this community, to this church, and even to strangers. Your body matters because by faith, hope, and love, you are becoming an embodied prayer who makes Jesus visible to the world. That’s what Jesus did wherever he showed up: he made God’s grace visible more often than not by shar-ing peace, blessing, and healing to troubled flesh and blood.

· Think of the parable of the prodigal son who recognized his brokenness only when he woke up physically hungry and surrounded by ritually unclean pigs in a foreign land. When he repented – that is, when he changed direction in his life – he was embraced by his father and welcomed to a feast.

· What about the healing of the young man possessed by demons who lived in a graveyard? After banishing the abusive spirits, Jesus made certain that he fed and clothed this young man in need. And just to drive the point home, where do you think he GOT clothes for that broken body? From his disciples! He asked his followers to ante-up so that the one who was naked and alone could be clothed. In other words, he asked Peter, James, John, Magdalene and all the rest to practice sharing grace in a tangible and essential way.

· Same for the woman who had been hemorrhaging for seven years: she was made physically well in her body so that she might return to community life and spread the blessings. Over and again, the heart and soul of Jesus brings new life to worn out bodies. During Lent we now cast our eyes upon the body of Jesus: a body washed in the waters of baptism, a body that was anointed, then beaten, nailed to a Cross, and placed in a tomb. Lent tells and re-tells this story of Christ’s body so that we might listen to what OUR bodies are telling us about the sac-red, the desecrated, the ordinary, the extraordinary, and everything in-between.

When Jesus told his opponents that HIS body would be raised again in three days, he not only link-ed HIS flesh and blood with the presence and location of our living God, but yours and mine, too. He was telling us that by faith and trust in God’s grace we no longer need be confined to the Temple – or zendo – a mosque or church. Grace and God are now portable in our bodies. The historical incarnation made flesh in Jesus ended on the Cross – now, by faith, sharing this as God’s beloved has been passed on to you and me to make flesh every day. My prayer today is: Lord, may this be true among us. Amen.

Thursday, February 29, 2024

the blessings of paradox...

One of the multiple paradoxes I experience working with a few trusted and
beloved musical colleagues has to do with the marvelous realization that the "whole is greater than the sum of its parts." I understand it comes from the genius of Aristotle (Aristotle, Metaphysics, translated by W. D. Ross, Book VIII, 1045a.8–10.)

In the case of all things which have several parts and in which the totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something besides the parts, there is a cause; for even in bodies contact is the cause of unity in some cases, and in others viscosity or some other such quality.

Last night, for example, individually we were all weary: life has been challenging for each band member in a variety of ways and as we gathered to work through the first set of an upcoming performance, it showed. I know that I was fatigued physically from a few demanding days of ministry and music-making as well as emotionally exhausted from carrying around in confidence both the pain and love I share with my mates. Interestingly, despite a collective flagging mojo, everyone was on time for rehearsal. When I started acting a bit cranky, someone else cracked a joke about me that reclaimed a measure of humor and humility. This happened a few times for other members of the band. What also caught my attention was how each song was filled with rich harmonies, subtle musical nuances, and emotional commitment. No one was dialing-it-in despite being bushed. Their laughter and loving presence helped me get over my self (mostly) and I sensed the presence of the sacred within and among us.

This band, in one form or another, has been playing together for over 15 years. As the new/old hymn puts it: "I will weep when you are weeping; when you laugh, I'll laugh with you; I will hold your joys and sorrows till we've seen this journey through."  Like I replied to a local church search committee when asked how I practice self care: I play music with a small collective of trusted and talented friends. Rehearsing, arranging, refining, critiquing, and performing our music is soul food for me and spiritual succor, too. This ensemble is my faith community. And I wasn't kidding. Each of us, of course, have our own discrete formal spiritual practices. But I find myself more often than not on holy ground with these women and men - and I rejoice in it!

Something similar takes place with my partner in the duo: Two of Us. We work hard at making joyful and satisfying music. And even though we've been playing out with a few other friends who bring percussion and bass into the mix, what we do each Tuesday night establishes the foundation. And when we get to share that sweet soul music... well, it is a little bit of heaven right here on earth for me. It calls to mind what Kris Kristofferson once wrote about Dennis Hopper in "The Pilgrim."
He's a poet, he's a picker
He's a prophet, he's a pusher
He's a pilgrim and a preacher, and a problem when he's stoned
He's a walkin' contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction,
Takin' ev'ry wrong direction on his lonely way back home.
He has tasted good and evil in your bedrooms and your bars,
And he's traded in tomorrow for today
Runnin' from his devils, lord, and reachin' for the stars,
And losin' all he's loved along the way
But if this world keeps right on turnin' for the better or the worse,
And all he ever gets is older and around
from the rockin' of the cradle to the rollin' of the hearse,
The goin' up was worth the comin' down

Add into this mix my new gig as an interim pastor to a lively congregation open to the playfulness of a ragamuffin gospel and I am one happy camper whose so very, very grateful. As this springs ripens - and our respective challenges are dealt with - I give thanks to God that I am a part of such a blessing.




Wednesday, February 28, 2024

lent two: our failures hold the possibility of blessing

 Text: Mark 8: 27-32

Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi, and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah. And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone. Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes and be killed and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter saying, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Today’s appointed New Testament text from the gospel of St. Mark is both one of my favorites and one of the most challenging to interpret. It not only invites us to get clear about who Jesus was to his disciples, to the emerging Christian community of the first century CE, as well as you and me some 2,100 years later. It’s a nuanced story with bold images that has simultaneously been con-fusing, clarifying, and challenging. On the upside, it asks us to come to terms with who Jesus is in our lives; on the downside, St. Mark’s choice of words are so loaded and historically contextual that it’s no wonder we’re sometimes bewildered and befuddled. 
Do you recall the old story about a young pastor’s first Easter Sunday children’s message?

“Who can tell me something about Easter?” she asked the cluster of little ones? One little girl raised her hand and said, "Easter is when they hide all the eggs.” The pastor said, “Well, sure, but there’s more going on: so, can you tell me something more?” A 10-year-old boy replied, “Well, pastor, Eas-ter is when we’re blessed to get a chocolate Easter bunny in our basket.””

“Hmmm,” said the young clergy woman, “that IS always fun, but it’s not really what we celebrate in church, right? Any other ideas?” At which point a shy little girls said, “Pastor, I think I know: on Good Friday, Jesus was crucified” at which the minister smiled with excitement and said, “Yes, yes, right, go on, please!” So, she added: "The next day, Jesus was placed in a cave behind a big boulder." The minister grew more excited thinking we’re really, finally, getting somewhere. “Anything else?” she asked enthusiastically. To which the child replied: “Um yes… on Easter Sunday, the boulder is rolled back, and Jesus comes out alive!” Which totally flipped the minister out for now at least one child got it. “You’re right on the money, child; can you tell me what happened next?” The little one paus-ed, then smiled, and said: “Well, when Jesus comes out of the cave alive, he looks around and… (say it with me if you know) if he sees his shadow, we’re going to have six more weeks of winter!” 

With the innocence of a child, would you pray with me now that we might go a little deeper?

Lord, in your wisdom and mercy, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be made acceptable to you through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ who, with you and the Holy Spirit, reign in heaven forever. Amen.


There are at least four levels of spiritual truth taking place in this short passage – and if we fail to take them into account, we’ll celebrate a Christ who may be familiar to us but will NOT lead us into the kingdom among us as it is already happening in heaven. First, there’s the symbolism linking Jesus to John the Baptist, Elijah, and the other prophets of ancient Israel. Second, there’s what the text meant to the faith community guided by St. Mark’s gospel in the middle of the first century of the CE. Third, there’s the paradoxical spirituality of Jesus concerning the Cross that continues to be worthy of our consideration. And fourth, there’s what WE do with this wisdom.

I’m a believer in wrestling with each of these insights. Not only do they tell us something about the mysterious nature of God – who will NEVER be fully understood lest God no longer be Almighty – but they also offer us a warning about taking the words of Scripture only at the literal level because THAT obscures the historical nuances St. Mark wants us to confront concerning Jesus as a Messiah who must suffer, die at the hands of the chief priests, elders, and scribes before being raised to NEW life by God’s love. A simplistic reading of this text, you know, gave birth to nearly 2,000 years of antisemitism in the Church – and St. Mark the evangelist was NOT advocating that THEN any more than he is today. One commentator put it like this:

Here we come face to face with arguably the most difficult, challenging, and dangerous of Jesus’ teachings: the idea that Jesus must suffer, die, and rise again, and that anyone who seeks to be his disciple must “deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” The disciples are perplexed, Peter is offended, and Jesus takes them to task for misunderstanding him — so we should be caut-ious about whether or not we understand him ourselves… If the disciples are any indication, mis-taken conclusions abound when it comes to the full meaning of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Which is why St. Mark gives us three cycles in which (a) Jesus predicts his passion and suffer-ing; (b) the disciples misunderstand; and (c) Jesus responds with a discourse on the true nature of discipleship.

One useful way I’ve found in sorting this out is to look closely at the arch of Peter’s life. His ups and downs, questions, doubts, fears, and tenacity are a synthesis of how many of us experience grace. In St. Mark’s gospel, Peter symbolizes the journey of faith for many giving shape and form to what I think of as a gradual transformation. He doesn’t get it all right all at once – he’s a slow learner – and THAT, beloved, is good news – and I’ll say more about it in a moment.

But first, there’s the context in which this gospel was conceived: St. Mark crafted it during the Roman Empire’s brutal war of suppression against Israel’s insurrection of 67 CE where war – in all its horror – not only shaped the faith community but defined how St. Mark describes Jesus within it. Former Roman Catholic priest, James Carroll, retired columnist for the Boston Globe and novelist of great insight, unpacks this in chapter two of his monumental: Christ Actually: The Son of God for a Secular Age.

The First Holocaust (he writes) was the Roman War against the Jews, ignited not long after the life-time of Jesus. It began in 67 CE, intensified between 115 and 117 and concluded about 136. The scale of destruction during this war was devastating: millions of Jews were killed, tens of thousands of women were raped, Judea and Galilee were laid to waste, the second Temple was demolished, and Jewish communities throughout the Mediterranean were attacked and terrorized.


Carroll reminds us that both St. Matthew and St. Mark were eyewitnesses to the sacrilege – and this horror shaped how they interpreted both Jesus and his ministry. “Mark is the main source of, and template for, the later gospels of Matthew and Luke. Mark’s rendering of Jesus, and its proclamation of him as the Christ, are the central pillars of the Christian imagination – yet Mark is rarely read in the context of war.” The insurrection began in Galilee where sixty thousand Roman legionnaires were killed and more than 100,000 Jews enslaved before sacking Jerusalem… where 10,000 crosses bearing Jewish bodies circled the Temple Mount in the Holy City.

In my analysis, after the Christian community of Jerusalem experienced devastation, slaughter, ter-ror and abandonment, they began to rethink who Jesus was and what he meant. In his day, Jesus was a wisdom-keeping, itinerant spiritual nonconformist emphasizing community building rather than chaos; he practiced a radical inclusivity that broke down the barriers of gender, class, and race; celebrated a radical trust in God’s enduring grace that maintained forgiveness to be the path to personal and social healing - and never called himself Messiah. He insisted that his integrity and authority came from living simply as a human being fully alive. He never spoke of himself as a deity nor did any of the Biblical writers in his lifetime.

· After his followers lived through the moral madness of war, however, Jesus the earthy mystic became Christ the divine God-man who was holier in death than he was in real life. Mark and his allies who endured the unimaginable violence of Rome’s war, started this shift towards Jesus as Christ.

· The gospel writers of 70 and 80 CE, women and men traumatized by the brutality of the Ro-man Empire, borrowed a chapter from the apocalyptic book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible to rethink a reality that included the crucifixion of over 500 Jews every day.

And their conclusion, a re-interpretation of Jesus and his ministry, had two components: First, that Judaism and the Temple HAD to be destroyed by God and replaced by the Church because the old way had become corrupt; that’s the beginning of what we know as supercessionism or replacement theology that remained orthodox until the reforms of Vatican II. And second, that the betrayal of Peter and the male disciples was symbolically linked to the betrayals that occurred throughout the Christian community during Rome’s war against Israel. In this retelling, Peter’s consistent confusion, and eventual abandonment of Jesus, is ugly, but doesn’t end in judgment: just grace.

Carroll asserts that Mark and the other evangelists highlight this as a pastoral assurance to their broken faith communities that even moral and ethical failure need not end in hellfire and brimstone because the loving embrace of Christ begins and ends with forgiveness. He writes:

If the gospel of Mark was addressed to a frightened, demoralized collective of Jesus people holed-up in Galilee, to a people threatened on all sides by marauding Romans as well as revenge-see-ing Jew-ish Zealots (remember the Christians chose NOT to join Israel’s military rebellion against Rome) or Jews associated with rabbis who believed Jesus to be a false Messiah who threatened the survival of what remained of Judaism; if those Jesus people, who bore the burden of guilt at their own failure to join the resistance, or were tempted to believe that they were cowards who may have lost their faith in the Lord, Mark’s message was straightforward good news: Do NOT feel guilty because you faltered in your faith; do not feel disqualified because you lost hope; do not count yourselves for-saken, because LOOK: the most intimate friends of Jesus behaved exactly the same way including the exalted Peter (whom Jesus called the ROCK upon whom a new community shall be built.) What you need to hear in this time of grotesque tribulation is that Jesus extends his call NOT to heroes alone, but to cowards, to those who fail him, and reckoning with our failures can be the starting point of a deeper discipleship.

That’s a lot to take in, right, so let me ask: are you still with me? Carroll contends – and I concur – that the good news during and just after the catastrophic collapse of Jerusalem: Where many “refused to stand up to Rome, but hid… who likely informed on one another, became collaborators, ran off to the caves in the desert, committed suicide or helped others do so… were just real people looking out for their own skin. They were beleaguered, terrified human beings who behaved like broken human beings always do.” And Jesus NEVER condemns our humanity – he joins it – by grace. Carroll concludes that this shift in interpreting Jesus, “born of mass violence inflicted by the Romans in 70 CE demanded St. Mark’s revisions. The catastrophe… forced the Jesus people to look back on their memories, prayers, collected sayings, and stories in a new light… a light cast by the fires of war."

This macro context is usually avoided or at the very least forgotten in most of our Bible commentaries, but it shapes even the shortest verses of St. Mark’s gospel – including today’s text – where our old friend Peter begins by celebrating Jesus as the Anointed One only to say in his next breath that Jesus should skip out on his appointment with destiny. Jesus asks: Who do people say I am? Peter answers: The Christ … but please don’t act like it. Stay here with us here in safety. You may remember that Peter said much the same thing in the story of the Transfiguration we considered on my first Sunday with you: Let’s stay where it is safe! To which Jesus says: GET THEE BEHIND ME, SATAN! 

This is Peter distilled to his essence: his is a wandering faith where he’s called, doubts, resists, affirms, learns, wonders, hopes, betrays, and finally let’s go of his ego long enough to become a courageous, albeit flawed disciple – much like you and me. Have you ever looked at the totality of his story as a continuous whole? Early in all the gospels, Peter is called – and follows. Life as a fisherperson under the bootheel of the Roman occupation was a dirty, thankless job. Most of the catch went to feed the garrisoned troops in Israel – and what wasn’t taken by Rome left only a meager existence: so who wouldn’t leave all that behind to follow Jesus, right?

· But no sooner does Peter leave then he starts to question and doubt: he freaks out in the boat on the Sea of Galilee, begging Jesus to save them from a storm that Jesus sleeps through. He confesses his mentor to be the long anticipated Messiah but urges him to not act like it. He celebrates Jesus and then doubts him. And after Jesus tells Peter he’s not a political messiah in the expected way, Peter turns on his friend: he deserts Jesus in the garden when the Roman soldiers take him captive, he denies knowing Jesus while awaiting the outcome of the trial shouting: Woman, I do not even know him. The gospels go on to tell us that Jesus predicted this betrayal before the cock crowed three times. And when the cock does crow, Jesus looks at his friend in sorrow – and Peter flees again weeping in shame.

· But the story doesn’t end there: St. John’s gospel, written 40 years after Mark, includes a post resurrection story in which Peter first dismisses Mary Magdalene as an hysterical woman after SHE meets the resurrected Lord in the garden; and then fails to recognize his old buddy after returning to his old life as a fisherman by the sea. Talk about symbolism, yes? Betrayal and denial has pushed Peter back into his old way of being.

As the story ripens, after breakfast on the beach, Peter’s eyes are opened to the presence of resurrected one much like the experience of other disciples on the Road to Emmaus where they, too, fail to recognize Jesus as the Risen Lord at first until they break bread together. When Peter awakens, Jesus asks: Peter, do you love me? Three times he asks this in parallel to Peter’s three betrayals. Peter, do you LOVE me: You know I love you, Lord – then feed my sheep.

John closes the story with Jesus telling his friend: when you were young, you went where you wanted and did what you felt; but now that you have matured, you will be led into those places you do NOT want to go by another. By those in need. By those haunted by a shame like your own. Go out and love, them. And tradition as well as Peter’s own letters tell us that is exactly what Peter did: he went back out into the world to tell people that God’s grace was available to everyone: sin and shame are NOT the end of the story. In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter says: Silver and gold I have not, so I give to you all that I do have: in the loving presence of Jesus as Christ – pick up your life and walk!

If you look at Peter’s letters to the young church, you find not an overblown enthusiast nor an un-grounded soul shaped by shame, but a man of sober humility. So much so that at the end, when Peter was arrested by Rome and condemned to crucifixion, he pleaded with his captors to nail him to the cross upside-down because he would never presume himself to be equal to his Lord and Sav-ior Jesus. Peter’s witness shows us a person transformed by grace. And Mark was trying to assure his beaten down friends that the power of Jesus that healed and renewed Peter, could renew them as well. Grace is greater than demons or death, war or betrayal, confusion and chaos. Jesus is NOT just a humble wisdom keeper… No, he's the one who shares with us the unpredictable, undeserved, and even promiscuous grace of God that can heal wounds personally AND advance mercy in our society.

What St. Mark did in his day, you see, is what ALL good preachers do in theirs: tell and retell the story of Jesus and his love as the story of how grace can set us free from fear, shame, and the stench of sin. Peter learned this incrementally – step by step – mistakes and forgiveness intertwined over a lifetime. And I submit to you that this is good news for us. I know it’s been so for me because like Peter I’m a slow learner, late to the party, and in need of a ton of grace. Most of us are NOT like St. Paul on the Damascus Road: we’re rarely smitten with one life-changing event that causes a 180 change of direction. Rather, we experience the blessings of the gospel slowly, taking two steps forward and one step back most of our lives.

Mark’s gospel was crafted to assure us that THIS can be a blessing. Yes, the train MAY have left the station, but it will make frequent stops so you can climb aboard. For if this was true for a guy like Peter, it can be true for us as well. Slowly and unevenly, Peter opened his heart to the love of Jesus and came to experience a grace that subversively transformed him – and the promise is that it can transform us, too even when we’re lost, hurt, and confused. Elizabeth Bolton and the scholars at the SALT Project write:

Some of the worst things in the world (the Roman cross and betrayal by your friends) can be trans-formed into some of the best things in the world (the Tree of Life and forgiveness even among enemies) — by a God willing redeem everything… like poet, Mary Oliver, wrote: Christ’s story will break our hearts open, never to close again to the rest of the world.

The path of Jesus is the paradoxical way of healing, and liberation – it is grounded in humility and the Cross not grasping, dominance, and destruction – and it’s every bit as bewildering and challenging to us as it was to St. Mark’s community. With all due respect: MOST of us are like Peter, slow to change and able to grasp grace only incrementally.

That’s why Lent shows up again and again, asking us to listen to a story where patience is the path to faith, giving is more important than grabbing, generosity trumps vengeance, and trust instead of control carries the day. It’s the counter-cultural message of the Cross – good news then and now.

Saturday, February 24, 2024

lent one: just light a freakin' candle, man!

NOTE: Given my break in sharing the Small is Holy reflections (a work still in progress) I'll be posting the written versions of my Sunday morning message from Palmer during Lent. Here is the first instalment.

Lent One 2024: Lent – at its best – is a gift. We haven’t always treated it as a gift, mind you, given our tendency to think and see life in an either/or binary manner, but that’s not Lent’s fault. It’s just how things are. Notice that I don’t ascribe blame here because, you see, I’ve been persuaded that an emphasis on original blessing, not original sin, resonates more with the grace of God that Jesus reveals. So, my days with spiritualities of shame, blame, or judgment are mostly over! Not that I ignore sin, ok I just try to keep it in perspective.

Yes, I know this departs from traditional Western theology that starts with human depravity; clearly Calvin and Augustine have their place. But so, too the well-respected minority report whose lineage harkens back to the generous orthodoxy practiced by the desert fathers and mothers of the 3rd CE, the joyous panentheism of the Celtic Church in the 4th century, and the heart and soul of St. Francis of Assisi who chose to incarnate the beauty of following Jesus and his love in the 1200s. What’s more, original blessing is a path proclaimed by mystics of every stripe, context, and tradition. The poetry of Kabir puts it like this:

Friend: hope for the Guest while you are alive. 
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think... and think... while you are alive. 
What you call "salvation" belongs to the time before death. 
If you don't break your ropes while you're alive, 
do you think ghosts will do it after?
The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic just because the body is rotten is fantasy. What is found now is found then. 
If you find nothing now, you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death. But if you make love and embrace the divine now, in the next life you will have the face of satisfied desire.

This is at least PART of what I hear in today’s text when Jesus announced: The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near; so repent and believe in the good news. I want to unpack those words – especially fulfilled, kingdom, repent, and believe – because they too have been sullied and diminished by centuries of clerics more jazzed with penitence than celebration – which is why we don’t hear them as part of God’s gift in 2024. In the beginning, if you will, repentance and belief were ALL about changing direction so that we might become fully our best selves as God intended. Pope Francis likes to say that If you want to grow closer to God during Lent, then:

Fast from hurting words and say kind words, fast from sadness and be filled with gratitude. Fast from anger and be filled with patience. Fast from pessimism and be filled with hope. Fast from worry and have trust in God. Fast from complaints; contemplate simplicity. Fast from pressures and be prayerful. Fast from bitterness; fill your hearts with joy. Fast from doing and simply be. Fast from grudges and be reconciled Fast from words and be silent and listen.

In this spirit the practice of a Holy Lent has to do with choices: letting go of or holding on to whatever binds and exhausts us; clearing away inner distractions so that there’s more room within to be filled with grace. Dr. Alicia Britt Cole, popular Christian author, writes: Lent can be a much-needed mentor in an age obsessed with visible, measurable, manageable, and tweetable outcomes, for it invites us to walk with Jesus and his disciples as they encounter the parts of life we’d rather avoid: grief, conflict, misunderstanding, betrayal, restriction, rejection, and pain. Easter CAN be a celebration of salvation as the stunningly satisfying fruit of letting go and letting God. Lent shows us how to become empty so that we might be filled.

St. Paul encouraged this when he taught that in everything God can work for good for those who love the Lord. Not that all things ARE good, but God’s love can transform even the Cross into a source of new life. Eugene Peterson restates this truth when Jesus talks about blessings in the Sermon on the Mount saying: You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope for with less of you there is more of God and his rule. You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you because only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you. You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less for that’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.

Are you still with me? Have I at least suggested why a spirituality of original blessing might have merit? I hope so because I want to explore what gets in our way: what inhibits, distracts, or prevents us from resting more consistently into God’s grace. What slows us down from trusting that the Lord is truly within and among us, ok? Look, we ALL have wounds and fears, right? There are social constructs that encourage conformity as well as bullies, insecurities, institutions of oppresssion and so much more. But that was true in the days of Jesus, too. So, what does he MEAN by insisting that: The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near; so repent and believe the good news? The Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, professor of Old Testament studies and wisdom-keeper of our United Church tradition, believes that Lent is the great departure where we practice giving up:

The greedy, anxious anti-neighborliness of our economy, the exclusionary nature of our politics that fears the other, and our self-indulgent consumerism that devours creation be-cause these things keep us from trusting that grace is a gift: a gift to be simple, a gift to be free; a gift to come down where we ought to be.

The Eastern Orthodox speak of the Great Lent as a concentrated season dedicated to moving beyond self-pity and regret with specific practices set aside for each week including intensified prayer, vigorous fasting, and acts of generosity for the poor. This year I want to talk about Lent with you as a way to get UN-stuck: NOT a season focused upon our profound or pervasive sinfulness – but rather a way to face and address the inertia that keeps us from recognizing God’s love in our lives. It’s been said that ALL of us sometimes fail to recognize something: Jews do not recognize Jesus as Messiah, Protestants don’t recognize the spiritual authority of the Pope, and Baptists don’t recognize one another in the liquor store.

The problem is that when habit, culture, confusion, and exhaustion block us from recognizing the sacred in every one and every thing: we’re stuck – creatively clogged, spiritually constipated, and ethically malnourished. You might even say that our imagination has atrophied, and our soul is star-ving This condition inclines us to forget or ignore that in the beginning God created us ALL from the same dust and dirt and called it ALL good. Very, very good. This was brought home to me earlier this week when I read that: 

Spiders dream. That monkeys playfully tease their predators. That dolphins have accents That lions can be scared silly by one lone mongoose. That otters hold hands. And that ants bury their dead. Both science and spirituality affirm that ALL of creation is not only good, but linked together in an inescapable network of mutuality where whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. There is NOT their life and ours nor your life and mine. There is just ONE life as MLK told us: Either we learn to live together as sisters and brothers; or, we else we perish together as fools.

Clearly, something is stuck when good people all over creation choose NOT to recognize the sacred presence in ALL life. Look at Israel and Palestine – Russia and Ukraine – the Muslim and Hindu vio-lence in India – or the so-called troubles of my kin in Northern Ireland. Once upon a time it truly made sense to stay stuck in our basal ganglia – our fight or flight reptilian brain. But in the 21st century we know that what harms one directly hurts us all indirectly. To paraphrase St. Paul, we practice Lent year after year because when I was a child, I spoke as a child, thought as a child, and acted as a child; but when I matured, I put childish and reptilian things away so that I might live unstuck. That’s why Lent always frames our unclogging with one of the gospel stories about the baptism of Jesus, his time in the desert, and his first call to repentance.

This is another place I tend to take a minority report: traditionalists interpret both the baptism of Jesus and his time in the desert as something extraordinary. These events are seen as bold, charismatic happenings. But I believe both the baptism of Jesus and his time in the wilderness were more spiritual rites of passage designed to give him space to think, feel, and pray about his emerging ministry. It was his way of getting unstuck from culture and religion.

As one called into the prophetic tradition of ancient Israel, Jesus would have needed training. You may recall that last week in the story of Elijah and Elisha, the younger prophet was an ap-prentice who literally was passed the mantle of Elijah. Now, we don’t often make this connection between Jesus and John the Baptist but the story tells us that Jesus went to John for baptism. My hunch is that there’s more going on here than meets the eye – like Jesus being trained in the wisdom of God’s first revealed word in nature. I see John training Jesus as a wisdom-keeping mentor who KNEW how to read the signs in the sky, the birds of the air, the unforced rhythms of grace in nature. So, when Jesus is finally baptized it’s more the culmination of his training not a spontaneous act of the spirit: it’s a ritual initiating him as a prophet. Same for his 40 days and nights in the wilderness: that, too, sounds like a traditional rite of passage where a spiritual novice sets out on a vision quest to integrate holy and human wisdom.

And as is often the case for an extended retreat – and that’s what the 40 days is all about – a LONG time not an exact number like 40 years in the desert or 40 days on Noah’s ark. During these lengthy retreats people regularly experience doubts and questions as well as bits of clarity. A clue to this interpretation is that while in the desert Jesus was tested by his shadows AND ministered to and cared for by animals and angels. He heard in his heart that he was God’s beloved at his baptism – now he takes some time out to discern what that means. His prophetic journey began with Jesus being the carpenter’s kid, but after training in the way of the prophet and getting unstuck on his vision quest, he becomes an avatar of sha-lom and an advocate for spiritual transformation. That’s why I believe Jesus articulates the meaning of HIS new life metaphorically saying:

Time has been pregnant with possibilities – a necessary season of waiting and gestation – but now time is filled full with so much grace that it’s giving birth to a new way of being called the kingdom of God. 

That’s my paraphrase, of course, with tradition stating: The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near; so repent and believe in the good news. But that’s what fulfilled means: the Greek word St. Mark uses is pleroo – meaning to be complete, to ripen and mature, to bring to birth a final realization. It’s the gospel’s translation of the Aramaic, d’mala, spoken by Jesus – and shows up all over the place in the Bible. In the Sermon on the Mount, St. Matthew has Jesus saying: do not think that I have come to loosen or abolish Torah and the Prophets; no, I have come to fill them full and complete them. St. Luke opens saying: I am writing so that you may know the d’mala – the complete truth about the one we know as Jesus – who makes us whole. And St. John starts by noting that: The Word became flesh and dwelt among us; we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten from the Father who is filled full with grace and truth (that is, made complete and whole – d’mala/pleroo.

The Bible scholars that I trust note that in Aramaic, Greek, and Hebrew to fulfill is: To carry out or bring to realization, to perform or do as is a person's duty; to obey, satisfy, complete, and incarnate the Commandments. Two hundred and forty times the Hebrew Bible uses a cognate of d’mala – maley – and it’s also used 52 times in the New Testament. That’s also why I hear Jesus saying something like this: we can each become complete or mature as God intended – filled full with grace like I was during my baptism – if we choose to welcome rather than oppose God’s love and practice getting unstuck.

We have always been God’s beloved – since the start of time when God created us and called it good . To trust this deeply, to live into original blessing not original sin, is to take up residence in the kingdom of God. So, let me say a word about kingdom, ok? The Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault offers this clue about the meaning of God’s kingdom when she writes:

Throughout the Gospel accounts, Jesus uses one particular phrase repeatedly: “the Kingdom of Heaven” (or sometimes the Kingdom of God.)” These words stand out everywhere: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like this,” “The Kingdom of God is like that,” “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you,” “The Kingdom of God is at hand.” Whatever this Kingdom is, it’s clearly of foundational importance to what Jesus was trying to teach. Many Christians today, particularly those of an evangelical persuasion, assume that the Kingdom of Heaven means the place you go when you die — if you’ve been “saved.” But that’s NOT what Jesus teaches: time and again he tells us that the kingdom is within us, that it is at hand, that it is NOW not later. Bourgeault adds: you don’t DIE into it; you awaken unto it.

· Others equate the Kingdom with an earthly utopia. For them the Kingdom of Heaven would be a realm of peace and justice, where human beings live together in harmony with a fair distribution of economic assets. For thousands of years, prophets and visionaries have labored to bring into being their respective versions of this kind of Kingdom. (NOTE: this is clearly how John the Baptist talked about the kingdom of God – same for the prophets of ancient Israel – and even the first disciples of Jesus.) But it’s NOT how Jesus understood it because the main problem with earthly utopias is that they never seem to last. So, Jesus rejected this understanding as well: when his followers wanted to proclaim him the Messiah, the divinely anointed king of Israel who would in-augurate the reign of God’s justice upon the earth, Jesus shrank from that saying, strongly and unequivocally, “My kingdom is not of this world.”

The BEST scholars of our era insist that the: Kingdom is really a metaphor for a state of conscious-ness; it’s not a place you go to, but a place you come from. It is a whole new way of looking at the world, a transformed awareness that literally turns this world into a different place.” This take on the kingdom: sees no separation between God and humans, between humans and other humans, or beyond humanity and the rest of creation. We’re ALL in this together and whatever blesses one ripples through life like a pebble spreading blessings to the whole pond. And THAT, beloved, is the deeper and more important understanding of repentance. Metanoia is NOT a feeling of remorse or shame over some indiscretion, failing, or sin. No, to repent is to radically trust God’s grace – trust it so profoundly that it changes – meta – our mind and way of knowing – nous – from the inside out so that we become the person God has desired us to be from the beginning.

When you know you are the beloved child of God, one who trusts God’s grace beyond every other truth, then you, too can live into the inner peace that Jesus shared with a wounded world. You, too, can share compassion, creativity, and courage tenderly because you know God is God, so you don’t have to try to do it all – just your part. And THAT is why we keep practicing Lent as a gift – not a burden – but a gift that encourages us to get unstuck – a gift that promises grace in ways that nourish, ripen, fortify, and empower us with new minds: metanoia.

Lent has historically been defined as relinquishing – letting go – self-emptying or renunciation – and the Via Negativa has its place. How does the Serenity Prayer put it: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. It’s a time-tested way to practice fasting, prayer, and sharing with the poor. But a new spirit is emerging about Lent that’s guided by the Via Positiva – adding a practice that fills us full – instead of just emptying. Tricia Gates Brown – lay theologian, poet, dreamer, and author – recently put it like this:

A few years ago, I created a practice that brought Lent to life for me—a new way to commemorate the season. You see, for me, Lenten imagery is strikingly about the darkness and dormancy preceding Easter, like the darkness and dormancy of winter that precedes Spring. A plant goes dormant in wintertime, but does not die. In fact, the nourishment of winter is essential to its growth. Winter is when roots are strengthened, made ready for the coming vitality. The imagery and symbolism of Lent also points to the tomb, to the time between Jesus’ crucifixion and resur-rection, when something mysterious happens. We don’t know quite what that mystery was, but the lacuna of the tomb prepared the way—the way for Easter, for the Jesus Movement.

Much like Pope Francis, Dr. Brown suggests that maybe some of us will want to add a spirituality of addition to our spiritual toolbox as well as the practice of letting go in subtraction.

In Lent, we go deep into the roots, into a time of mystery and tomb, into nourishment and dormancy. Thinking of Lent only as a time to focus on ‘sinfulness’ and giving things up as a kind of penance, doesn’t resonate with Lent as a time to delve deep into the roots of a thing. Anticipating Lent, I started to ask: How do I want to go deeper this year? What calls me into a practice of deeper reflection?

She said that one year exploring quantum physics took her deeper. Another year it was taking in new music. And most recently it was simply sitting in nature and rejoicing in its bounty as a human be-ing not a do-ing. And I’d like to suggest WE give this alternative Lent a go. What would it mean to enter a Holy Lent as a six-week retreat dedicated to going deep into the roots of something that would nourish YOU – fill you full – so that your joy expressed God’s grace just by the way you walk-ed around? Would you be willing to try it? Explore it? Walk around with it for a season?

I’m not talking about burdening yourself with something too big or too grand, ok? About 30 years ago when I started to get serious about the contemplative life, I told Fr. Jim O’Donnell, my spiritual director, that this Lent: I’m going to fast two days a week, pray and chant the Psalms every morning, and spend some time in our local soup kitchen. To which he said, “Slow down, big guy, slow down. Just light a blasted candle every morning as you pause to breathe in a sacred breath. Too often we come up with grandiose plans that only disappoint. So, just light a freakin candle, man, ok?”

And that’s my invitation for you: start small – don’t set yourself up for failure. And to help remind you to go slow and start small – like the proverbial mustard seed – here’s a Lenten tool. Take this wee glass rock and… what? Carry it with you? Place it somewhere you’ll see it regularly as a reminder to start small? Whatever… but take this home with you as you try this out.

We’ll check in each week as Lent ripens, ok? The GIFT of Lent is renewal – a time to rest, to go deeper into trust and grace – and do so with joy. Remember that Jesus told his disciples: I have come so that your JOY may be full. In that spirit, let those with ears to hear: hear.

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Text: John 3: 14-21: And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes i...