Exposed Yet Loved

When my girls were babies I used to love to give them baths. To marvel at their fingers and toes- pink and beautiful. And babies love their feet. They enjoy looking at them as much as we do. They are a source of joy. Sometime after that though, I am not sure when, we stop thinking that. We learn to think of our feet as something to be covered up, not exposed. Something for which we need props. Even the bravest of us get pedicures. Feet are somehow not beautiful.

And so when we hear that Jesus washed feet on the last night with the disciples, I wonder how many of us would be in the church today if the way we remembered Jesus each week was to wash feet?

Yet here we are with this lesson, and every year for the past three I have preached on it. Maybe some day we’ll wash feet. But not tonight.

We hear that Jesus gathered the disciples for a meal and for conversations and that he loved them to the end. And he is entirely in control.

And slowly, he took of his robe and all the things that identified him as a Rabbi and a Teacher and a Leader. Set them aside. And there he is, wearing only a towel and holding a basin of water.

And he begins, kneeling and crawling, from person to person and washing their feet. And it’s odd and uncomfortable. And we can’t imagine.

It’s odd and uncomfortable. And yet Jesus knew where their feet had been. Those feet were dirty and calloused, perhaps scratched in places. Walking without the best footwear, and walking on the paths animals also trod. And animals do what they do- and the feet bear it- dirty, damaged and stinky feet.

And he goes to person after person. And maybe deep down we even want to say, “Get up, Jesus!” We don’t want this.

As beautiful as it is that tonight we are celebrating 6 kids making first holy communion, and it is beautiful, we want communion, and Easter! Not Holy Week and washing feet.

Like Peter we want to say- no way! Yet Jesus loved them to the last.

To the very last one. Even Judas had his feet washed. Be still. This is for you. Even though you don’t understand it.

In humility and service, in love and intimacy, Jesus loved. Showing there was nothing that stood between us and God’s love.

He loved who we are- people uncomfortable in our skin.

He loved people knowing where there feet had already been- the times the feet had walked away in argument,

the times the disciples said they would do something and then didn’t.

The time feet walked to a meeting to agree to betray for 30 pieces of silver.

Those feet were cleansed.

As Jesus keeps showing intimate, no holds barred love.

Knowing where the feet will go. Yet saying- you belong to me.

And you belong to each other through me.

And the message for us as ever is that we are exposed, but we are loved.

It’s a gift we almost don’t want- we don’t want to be that known and exposed. And yet, it’s the gift we most desperately need- to be renewed and cleansed by real intimate love.

Sacrificial love.

A love that challenges everything in us and yet is whole hearted.

This is what we long for, isn’t it? Isn’t this why we are here?

To experience THIS love?

God knows us- we are exposed. Yet loved. God loves the real us.

It is uncomfortable, and sorrowful, and leaves us in humbled awe, and hopefully joy.

This is the love we are then challenged and empowered to share.

 

Love one another like this.

This love- This is Christ for us, Christ with us.

Still.

AMEN

 

The Temptation of Indifference

Today I read not only the appointed lesson for the day, but went back and read chapter 1 of the Gospel of Mark, from the beginning, through verse 15.

I took us all the way back to the beginning of Mark which is really only eight verses before.  Mark is the action packed gospel- we hear it’s the beginning of the good news and the next thing you know, Jesus is at the Jordan being baptized by John. And that was the reading on my first Sunday with you. Today we hear about the baptism again as Jesus is then sent into the wilderness. And as I read the lesson I thought, “well, we’ve already heard about that baptism and we really don’t need to do that again.” And as soon as I say it though, I wonder if that is our thought about baptism. That we, already baptized have already done that. And then I think about my stole for Lent which not only has purple and black and crosses, it has that third color, the blue. That blue represents baptism and I think it’s so important, it’s in my stole.

And so we really should talk about baptism again. Mark has such intensity about Jesus’ mission and purpose. And when Jesus comes to be baptized, we don’t hear that God the Father just kind of saunters by and says, “Oh, by the way, he’s going to be important.” No! We hear that the heavens are RIPPED OPEN and that the Holy Spirit descends in the form of something like a dove. And doesn’t just hover, but enters Jesus.  God is invasive and intrusive in the world and in us. Life altering!

And I wonder how many of us have thought about our baptism THAT way- that God “invades us” and dwells in us in that kind of life-altering way?

In the days of early Christians, there were men and women who went out to lives as hermits in the wilderness. They purposely chose to imitate Jesus in the wilderness in a life altering way. They were called the desert mothers and fathers. They wrote very insightful things about human nature and challenges in the wilderness. They had the time, and were removed from everything else. The thing about the wilderness, being alone though was, when they were mad, it was their anger and the wilderness.

When they were sad, it was their sadness and the wilderness. And in reading some of what they wrote, they chronicled the various temptations of life, which made me think even more about what Jesus must have experienced in the wilderness. The loneliness, the fatigue, the hunger, the thirst, the doubts. In a place people saw as the most dangerous place around.

But of all the temptations, hunger, thirst, fatigue, these weren’t the greatest according to the desert dwellers. The greatest was another, called “Acedia.” Indifference. They called it the noonday demon- somewhere between the beginning and end you just lose interest altogether. As one New York Times writer noted this feeling “is not a relic of the fourth century or a hang-up of some weird Christian monks but also a modern force that easily attaches” to us.   With the overburdened schedules. While we seem so busy, as we do more, we commit less and less. Think of the ways we allow our “schedule” to alter our living.

As it turns out, Pope Francis, in this year’s Lenten address spoke to this very thing-perhaps the greatest temptation of our age: “Indifference to our neighbor and to God also represents a real temptation for us Christians. Each year during Lent we need to hear once more the voice of the prophets who cry out and trouble our conscience.” Because of our networks and distractions, he described the phenomenon he calls the globalization of indifference, Francis writes that “whenever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others, no place for the poor. God’s voice is no longer heard, the quiet joy of his love is no longer felt, and the desire to do good fades.”



He continues that, “We end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own.” And maybe we even convince ourselves that God is pretty indifferent too. After all, why are there so many struggles and troubles? It reminds me a of cartoon series “Coffee with Jesus” where Jesus is having coffee with a woman who asks why there are so many destructive things happening in the world, and Jesus, coffee cup in hand smirks and replies, “I was going to ask you the same question.”

Indifference is a temptation. The forces of evil are counting upon our belief that nothing will really change.

But the gospel is that Jesus comes to challenge such a world. God has ripped apart the heavens. The Spirit descends and enters. The gospel breaks in with life altering promise!

This is amazingly good news in all our places that seem that the world can’t change or wilderness exists. Since God has invaded and altered the world- it’s not the world we think we see. There is difference. Not indifference. When we turn away from indifference, when we fast from it, then we can feast on God’s love.

Now all battles with evil are altered-the game is changed because God is present. And it comes back to baptism- where we hear we become part of God’s family and mission. And it’s about more than just assuring our salvation as in eternity with God some day. Luther taught that baptism is necessary for salvation- this we believe. What about those not baptized? Will they be saved some day? Is that the only way God will save people? As important for this life I believe, is that baptism is necessary for salvation in this life- that every day we know life, share community and healing, and forgiveness and know we don’t stand alone. God is present and providing and redefining. And today Karlie, who is up here being absolutely adorable, enters this life- baptism is a life changing journey with God.

This weekend some of our youth, years beyond their baptism are experiencing this. They are at Youth Quake and the theme is ReDefine. Being followers of Jesus redefines and alters us- who we think we are and what we can do. This is the change in our conscience we hear of in 1 Peter.  We are changed and given the gift and challenge of serving others. No matter how young we are- no matter who we are. This weekend the youth are packing food for the hungry.

And here we are collecting for Baskets of Promise. These things challenge the world as it seems. Even in something as small as the soap we gather. Because when you are in a wilderness like a refugee camp, a simple bar of soap reminds you that you are human and you are not alone, you are loved.

This is what we can share, living out our baptism as not just once and done- but continually being reshaped in the story that God is here. And in us. This overcomes evil and that great temptation- the myth that tells us God isn’t really present and so we don’t need to care either. It’s exposed. Even in the most challenging place, even when God seems silent, without any doubt, God is present in it all.

So here’s the thing- may we continue to be redefined by this God and in how we respond to the challenges, and may we resist the urge to sacrifice the promises of community in Christ. Let’s bust the myth.

Ending Wilderness

Back in the day, our reading from Isaiah in the King James read “Comfort ye, my people.” Which when I was little I thought as “come for tea, my people.” Like a tea party was commencing. When I was amusing myself with that this week, I thought of one of the episodes of the “Big Bang Theory” on TV. Leonard has had his heart broken and his roommate Sheldon is generally socially awkward, approaches Leonard with a cup of tea in his hands. Leonard asks- what are you doing? To which Sheldon replies that he understands from where he grew up that when someone is upset the culture dictates you offer them a hot beverage. And he hands Leonard the tea, and awkwardly hugs him, patting his back and saying, “there, there.” And then he steps away thankful that Leonard’s problem is not his own.

In todays lessons of wilderness, I wonder if that’s not part of what’s going on. We have the people in Isaiah in exile because of their unfaithfulness to God, at least the first generation, but perhaps the second generation wondered why this was their wilderness. And in the Gospel of Mark, we hear of John the Baptist in the wilderness and people are flocking to him. From Jerusalem and beyond, they are headed into this place which frankly matches their lived reality. They are already in the wilderness- excluded from the temple perhaps by poverty, illness, ethnicity, by the abject refusal of those with power to see them. Already not receiving what the temple was created to offer- community, forgiveness, God. The temple is where God ought to be found. But some lives don’t matter.

But as is so often the case, while God is present in places of worship, God is also quite likely to be found in the places where one does not expect- places of separation, where its messy, and not proper.

God meets people, seeks them out, in their wildernesses.

Wilderness places still exist today- perhaps each of us has had some moment of this, but on a larger scale, we know in our country alone, there are these places- of poverty, illness, loneliness, exclusion and  bias. Still. The people coming to John are excluded and longing. These places exist still.

While it is a comfort for us to hear that God in Christ meets us wherever that wilderness has been or is, and that God helps us overcome obstacles and see the way prepared, it is not enough that it is for us.

In the Gospel of Mark we don’t get cute nativity sets and fluffy angels, we get- this is the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ and bam! The wilderness.

It’s the beginning of the good news- not the end.

We are called to continue the telling and the living of the good news- and of God’s desire that wilderness ends. The way for the good news to be experienced must still be prepared. And the Word must still be declared not only in these comfortable places here, but there- in the wildernesses of others.

We cannot sit here comforting ourselves that Ferguson or Staten Island or California are somehow just elsewhere. Or that the pain and suffering of others is too messy for us to solve, so why bother- be glad it’s not us. We cannot simply think it's not here- in a heartbeat it could be. God forbid it be so. It's not that simple.

No

In the days of the prophet Isaiah- there were good and right structures and people. Yet things had gone awry and people ended us separated and overcome. In Jesus’ day, there was a good and right structure that should provide for worship and community and support of the needy and forgiveness. But in some places it was fundamentally broken.

This is I think what we too are experiencing in this country. And especially what our sisters and brothers of color face in disproportionate numbers. We simply cannot deny this. We cannot tell another that their wilderness isn’t real, not can we act like someone else’s wilderness is someone else’s problem. We cannot just take comfort that their wilderness is not our experience.

Law enforcement officers put their lives on the line and face exrtremely complicated situations every day, where a split second matters, in a way most of us will never know. People of color face a world where just walking out the door is different, and where being a person of suspicion is true in a way most of us will never know. And we cannot tell them that their perception of life is invalid. We cannot diminish it. We don’t know.

We can honor law enforcement and the legal system while also acknowledging that sometimes and in certain places, it is broken. That’s what sin in our world creates. So we can honor those who serve and yet wonder what happened with Eric Garner and others. We can admit people made a tragic mistake. Because when someone says “I  Can’t Breathe,” you should let them breathe.

Our Bishop, Elizabeth Eaton offers this, “We are church… in Ferguson, in Staten Island ( and more). As we anticipate the arrival of the Christ child, let’s recall our baptismal covenant- to live among God’s people and strive for peace and justice in all the earth.” For all peoples and all wildernesses.

It’s the season of Advent where we dare to say “stir up your power, Lord Christ and come!” Where we again this day will say- “Come Lord Jesus!”

While we live a world of crying and pain and injustice, a world ruled by sin and death. Preparing the way means that we as Christians cannot simply put out our nativity set and be content.

We must never be content with such a world. Wilderness is not OK. It must end.

Because we know that overshadowing that nativity set is the cross- not only good news for us but our mission. We too continue the good news by preparing the way.

Preparing the way means Christians cannot be content with a world where barriers and struggles exist. There are valleys that must be filled and barriers brought low.

Our worship here draws us close to remind us of Christ as “God with us” and our restoration. But then it propels us out, back out into a hurting world- not so we can say “thank God” things are someone else’s problem. But to share the love and grace of God, to keep preparing the way for Christ, to break down barriers and meet those who long for wilderness to end. To name what must change and believe in the power of Christ to respond.

To cry out what must be heard for the sake of Christ whose coming we await and to turn away from the forces that suggest otherwise because all lives matter to God. May it be so.

AMEN

It's not About What's In Your Wallet ( And it is)

How many of you remember the VISA credit card commercial “What’s in your wallet?” My favorites involved the marauding Vikings on holiday, but they all ended with a bellowing question- “What’s in YOUR wallet?” I think of it whenever I hear this gospel lesson. Because what’s in our wallets is close to us, and important to us. As the Pharisees are being tested by Jesus as much as they thought they were testing him. But what exactly is Jesus really getting at when he tells them to hand him a coin and then tells them to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s but give to God what is God’s?

The short answer is “I don’t know for sure.” But I do think we have Caesars in our lives too.  And by that I mean whatever occupies us and controls us.

The Pharisees and God’s people lived in an occupied land. They were taken over by the Romans who brought their laws, their army and their money. Literally the answer to what’s in their wallet is money that had a picture of Caesar on it and proclaimed he was the Son of God. So much for the people who say they will have no other gods before the Lord. Claiming allegiance to the Lord was seemingly an impossible dilemma. They were allowed to worship their God as long as they also worshipped Caesar. And it seems they are caught and yet, they have no trouble even in the temple of handing Jesus that coin. The one they tell others they can’t have in the temple and must exchange for temple money for a price. They have a lot of those Caesar coins and they’re not sharing. And they have no trouble going to the occupying leaders about Jesus. Their words about God and their actions have gotten pretty disconnected. Frankly, they’ve spent an awful lot of time cozying up to the very thing that threatens them.

We are not occupied in the same way, but we are also living in a system that demands much it seems. However we answer the question of what occupies us affects our decision making, how we see the world, and tells where we place our hope. Often it is in our wallet. Even though our money boldly says “In God We Trust” on it.

But I wonder if anyone has looked at those words when you’re buying something, or before you spend money. Does anyone stop and look at those words “ In God We Trust” and ask if this decision lives that out? Anyone? Me neither.

With credit cards and electronic purchases becoming the norm kids today perhaps no longer will even see those words. They won’t even cross our minds.

We’re all far more likely to pay attention to the words of the brands we are loyal to. Now advertisers have gone beyond trying to convince us of a brand- it’s about creating a whole community. There are Nike people. And I-phone people. There are Weis shoppers and Redners shoppers. There are whole systems based upon these loyalties- there are even loyalty cards. And while some offer us a deal here and there, they are mainly just tracking what we buy to get us to buy more of what it seems we can’t do without. I keep waiting for my loyalty to Turkey Hill really give me the better gas discount. They tell me to keep spending. Getting us to cozy up to their system and treat the connections as real. To be the thing we want most. But they’re not real connections.

What’s in our wallet says a lot. It says not only what we are loyal to, but I think it says where we place our hope. That’s why retail therapy is a thing. For those of you who don’t know, that’s shopping at a favorite place to feel better. The next product is bound to make a difference until maybe we do realize that VISA really does own us. There’s even a spoof on the Viking commercial where the person realizes how much they owe and the Vikings come back and smash it all.

The truth in this is that there is an obvious tension in life between how to live a life of faith in the world and how to live in the culture of our world. How to live without letting the culture own us.

And I wonder if maybe the real question Jesus was asking the Pharisees and us is, whether we think the pull of the culture is so strong we don’t even try?

Maybe we begin to think it’s too much to ask how faith shapes our decisions in life about spending and saving and giving. That’s a place of no hope in the end. Yet Jesus says give to Caesar what is Caesar’s but give to God what is God’s.  Which may be a way of reminding us how our coins and our cards do not define us.

Because God does. We belong to God.

Jesus invites and even demands us to engage these words we say about God and ourselves- to speak of our Lord in terms of a real living relationship. And a source of hope. Because while God wants all of us, the good news is that God first says- you are mine. It’s a promise not a threat.

Words that are intended to reassure us that we are more than our money and don’t have to live in fear of having it all.

Perhaps now more than ever these are words of community and comfort and direction we need to hear. That our hope is not limited to what we can buy. That we can live in faith that God loves us, provides for us and saves us and we can believe there is a future and hope. Now more than ever as we look at our world and feel powerless we can be a community that continues to gather together around what is real- God’s love and promise today and forever in Christ’s work of the cross. That’s our hope. And it’s real.

In a few weeks, we will be gathering for our annual meeting, and voting upon a plan for how we will carry out ministry in the coming year. The time honored term is called a budget. And it often feels that our thoughts about bills and coins are the only way we see this process. But I want to suggest we view it as a statement of trust in God and as a statement of hope.

That the choices we make in our commitment will be based upon our trust in God so that we can support it financially. And that the choice we make in shaping ministry will be based upon what we believe God is calling us to do, not only what we feel used to doing.

Because we’re liberated by God from the weight of whatever feels like it occupies us. We are liberated! And our primary response is to say thank you! Thank God! And trust God’s providing as we carry out the gospel for others. So they can feel liberated and thankful too.

And this is who we CAN be because God claims us, loves us and empowers us to respond.

 

Let us pray- Lord God, sometimes we are unsure about how we can respond to your calling. Help us to surrender ourselves, and be thankful because we are yours, and to trust that you love us and provide for us, so that we can break free from what holds us back and share of ourselves for the sake of your world.

In Jesus’ name. Amen

 PS- here's the Vikings!

 

Crazy Love

How many of you are familiar with Albert Einstein’s definition of “insanity?” Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Our first dog helped us experience this. Every day when the postal carrier would come to deliver mail, the dog would go nuts, and bark her head off, and sounded like given the chance would have attacked the person just delivering messages through the mail slot. From the dog’s perspective she was a success- every day some stranger came and tried to put stuff in our door and she barked and the person left. That’s not insanity.

Insanity was what we did. Every day we would chastise the dog for that behavior and tell her not to do it. And it never changed. You’d think that since we provided her a safe and comfortable home and good food, and she always cornered the best spot in a nice fluffy bed. You would think that she’d listen. But every day, the postal carrier would appear, and the dog had the same response. Because to our dog, “This is MY HOUSE!” And she was in charge.

Our dog was not exhibiting insanity- we were. For thinking that on a different day or with a different person the result would be different. And we could have given up on the dog but we didn’t. Because we loved the dog. And thankfully she never “got” that person who came and shoved mail through the slot in our front door.

But insanity, that act of doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is perhaps the best way I know to describe what we see in the vineyard lessons today. Stories of wild grapes and tenants run amok, and the actions of the owner of the vineyard. (Thanks David Lose!)

The owner has labored to create a vineyard, tilling soil, planting lovingly, setting everything in order for the best and most abundantly possible harvest, and then gives the care of the vineyard over to other. In Isaiah we hear that it all goes wild from there and the temptation is tear it all down. But in the gospel, we hear about the tenants in a different way. And as far as we know in most respects they have been good tenants and have cared for the place. They’ve been given a place to live and a job to do- bring in the harvest. And presumably they’ve been given a promise that some of the harvest will be theirs as their pay, but of course the rest goes to the one who owned the land and who created the vineyard. And the harvest has come!

But now they look around and they see that harvest and they just don’t want to share. They’ve worked hard day after day for an owner who isn’t really around. They’ve put themselves into it and it doesn’t seem right that most of this goes to someone else.

So when the landowner sends servants to collect, they don’t receive grapes of joy in the harvest. Instead, to borrow the phrase from John Steinbeck, they meet with grapes of wrath. In wrath and anger those poor servants are abused or killed. Because the tenants have decided that this is MY PLACE!

Here’s where the insanity starts.

The owner could do as we would at this point, send in police or soldiers and take this by force. But instead, the owner sends more servants! Who sadly meet the same result. And that’s crazy! Why would the owner put so much at stake to risk a different result? More grapes of wrath. And frankly now the tenants are feeling the battle surge.

So then it really gets crazy, because the owner says, “I’ll send my son. They’ll listen to him. They’ll show respect, and recognize his authority, after all they have had a job and a place and are getting cared for.”

And we know how it ends. More wrath and killing.

The question isn’t really so much why did the tenants act that way- we sadly expect it. The stories in our world and our lives tell us this.

The question is, “why did the owner act that way??”

Why would anyone try to live in the framework of a relationship over and over when it is clear that it’s so one-sided?

That’s just crazy.

Today’s parable was told by Jesus to the leaders of the temple to show them who they were- those who rejected over and over the messengers of God. And while it’s a story about them and about how they would go on to reject even the Son, none of us should be under the impression we would be any different.

When so often we find in our own lives, ways we reject God’s call upon us to care for the vineyard, for those who show up in it, or to listen to God. When it is easy to respond to others not with love but with wrath. To call upon force rather than tend relationships.

Our news and our own stories tell us this is true. And in the end so much of what we’re given we are sure is OURS, because we’ve been tending it, we hardly think at all about who else might have a stake.

We can do a fine job of serving up grapes of wrath. That’s not the gospel.

Sometimes we have to work harder to see what the good news is.

The bigger and more important part of the parable however is what we know of God. It’s the story of one who lovingly arranged a place for us to live and to work and to grow, and who despite all our rejections and possessiveness, and even our violence and spite, continues to send not only messengers but to send the Son.

This side of the cross we know just how crazy this love God has for us really is. Christ on the cross is the ultimate message, that takes our wrath and made of it, our salvation.

If God responded towards any of us as we deserve, there would be wrath and destruction indeed. How unexpectedly graciously instead,

God persists over and over in a relationship with us, however one-sided, and while it is indeed the height of insanity, it is the best demonstration of crazy love we’ll ever see.

The grapes in the end are not grapes of wrath, they are grapes of mercy and forgiveness and love.

And this day again we will taste them. We’ll come because God invites us and we’ll receive the body and blood of Christ who died at our hand, but for us. So today, maybe, we’ll taste these grapes and maybe linger over it, and savor that taste that for us is the taste of love and mercy for each of us and for all of us.

And then maybe remember that of all the things we clamor to possess, or to know, the sweetest and best is God’s crazy love for us all.

 Amen.

 

** thanks to David Lose, and Sharron Blezard for the inspiration

 

 

Not Chaff

For a week at least, the animals have been trampling the gathered grain and the threshing floor has hummed with activity. Tossing up the harvest, so the grain falls to the ground, but the wind carries the chaff away. No one keeps the chaff, no one wants it. And in the world each in some way, Ruth and Naomi and even Boaz carry something of the chaff about them.

They are not desired- Ruth, carries the chaff of being a foreigner whose marriage must not have been blessed since she had no sons; Naomi, the chaff of the widow whose husband and sons are gone, not blessed. Boaz, the chaff of being older and alone-without a companion, and hardly the object of the eyes of the young.

But God is on a rescue mission.

Even for the people of Bethlehem who this year are blessed. On average, out of a ten year harvest cycle, seven of those years, one could hope to have enough to get through the winter, and into the spring. In two or three of those years, one could count on drought or famine. And they knew those times. But this year, this year was blessed- a harvest of abundance! And they’d all worked to bring it in, and to thresh that grain and scatter the chaff. To praise God’s faithfulness. Because it is God’s hand that has done this.

And then they celebrate. For in Deuteronomy, after the harvest was a week long festival. In fact, God commanded it- “Rejoice during your festival, you and your sons and daughters, your male and female slaves, as well as the Levites, the strangers, the orphans, and the widows residing in your towns. Seven days…you shall surely celebrate…with whatever you desire.” And so of course there was eating and drinking, and the settling in of pleasant fatigue- the kind you know when you have worked hard, but good has come. Where you know you are blessed.

 

And it’s a great thing to see that God loves the people enough to bless them with the harvest, and with a command to celebrate together- everyone. Which makes sense in light of God’s command to leave part of the harvest for the foreigner, the orphan and the widow. And God’s command to love the stranger, “for once you were strangers in Egypt.”

How often perhaps we forget the love in these laws of God. The beauty of the story of Ruth is what happens when God’s loving faithfulness reaches out through people rather than staying stuck on a page. Where we see God’s never ending rescue mission come to life.

So there we are, and the party was great and the last of the revelers are finally asleep. There on the floor with all that grain. Which at first makes no sense in our silo world, but in the day, it was first important to harvest, and then to celebrate, and thank God, but at the end of the celebrating, the men slept there with the grain. Each in a different spot, forming a circle round it, to protect it for everyone. Sleeping head in, feet out just in case thieves came.

That’s how it is. No wonder Naomi told her to Ruth to look for where Boaz laid down if you had to wander around in the dark looking at feet. She’s cleaned up and looking her best and she has come and laid down and she touches him.  And at some point her presence startles him. And he could have mistaken her for an intruder. Or a prostitute. Neither of which end well. There she is at the very edge of the harvest, just reaching out, hoping for something. But what follows is not what we expect.

He wakes up startled asking, “Who are you?” And she tells him they are kin. When really he wakes up, she proposes marriage! Suggesting she is not chaff that should just blow away in the wind of no concern. She proposes that she instead be gathered. “Spread your cloak over your servant-you are next of kin.” If she as a foreigner has married an Israelite, she has become kin. When she became a widow, there was no obligation to still see her as such.

But she bound herself to Naomi, and now asks Boaz to honor her with the same treatment a daughter of Israel could expect. Don’t cast me off like chaff. I ask to be treated like the law demands.

Because God’s law provided that a widow be married to another member of the family in order that she be provided for. That too was the law. So widows would be rescued. “Spreading a cloak was not only an invitation to a marriage bed, but a symbol of being gathered under the protection of his wings. And Boaz said yes. And there on that threshing floor, they exchanged the equivalent of marriage promises.” (Rolf Jacobsen)

And God’s love was at work as Ruth was gathered in, not cast to the wind.

At each turn in this story, the question is – will she be scattered or gathered? “Through Boaz living out the law, God was at work, rescuing Ruth from a marginal life of gleaning as a foreigner. But through Ruth, God was at work rescuing Boaz, who apparently was alone, as love moved into his home. Boaz recognized that Ruth could have approached a younger member of the relation. But by choosing the older, and more loyal Boaz, Ruth also secured a future that rescued Naomi. God’s steadfast loving kindness shows up in everyday ordinary, even unremarkable people. As Ruth leaves at dawn, returning home perhaps wondering whether that promise in the night will hold up in the light of day. With yet more steps of faith to come.

Would Boaz honor his promise? Would the community live as God intended? Would God still be faithful?”

When she comes back to Naomi, we hear the question “What happened?” But in the Hebrew, it is the same question Boaz asked her- “Who are you?” Who are you now? Ruth responds by showing what she has received- grain for today and a promise she hopes is true- that she is rescued.

The chaff does blow away but it is the chaff of the labels- widow, foreigner. But the grain- the heart of who she truly is as God’s child remains.

There we are too. We who wonder if the labels of our world define us, we who are those who have received the promise that is not yet fulfilled. Wondering whether the hope is for real, whether the promises will last.

We too walk by faith in the promise that Christ is not only risen but returning again. That we share in the greater feast to come. That we will be gathered not scattered. That God’s abundance, faithfulness, overflowing love are for us. We are not only rescued, but desired by God who promises not only salvation, but more to the story.

Until then, we, just as unlikely people, gather and share in the grain of the meal of this day, believing it is a foretaste of the feast to come. When the celebration has no end and that God’s desire is to gather us in until all are fed.

 

Gloom Despair and Agony on Me

Growing up as a child, and especially with family in the South, we used to watch of a lot of a show called Hee Haw. It was a variety show depicting life in a fictional town of folk in the country and their shenanigans and their sorrows. And at some point in the show they’d cut to a scene of guys in their overalls and their moonshine jugs, lamenting their troubles and singing  a song that went like this-“Gloom, despair, and agony on me, deep dark depression, excessive misery. If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all. Gloom, despair and agony on me!” And they all wail.

That’s pretty much how the Book of Ruth opens

The first chapter of Ruth sets up the story that follows starting with a time “In the days when the judges ruled” which refers back to the time of the judges, a time of chaos and disobedience in Israel. At the end of the book of the book of Judges it reads, “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes. (Judges 21:25). {Katharine Schifferdecker writes) Doing what is right in your own eyes is never a good thing in the Bible; and, indeed, the book of Judges traces a story of decline and anarchy in Israel.

God regularly raises up "judges" -- military and political leaders -- to save Israel from their enemies, but they fall back into mayhem every time. The book of Judges, which comes right before Ruth, ends with inter-tribal conflict and these ominous words: "In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes"

Doing "what was right in their own eyes" is a direct denial of the Law given to Israel, those words for life we studied earlier this summer.  The Law is given to promote life, life with God and life in community. Israel, in the book of Judges, fails to fulfill that Law and so falls into chaos.

And this is how we end up with the women in the story today.

Famine hits Bethlehem. Literally the city who name means “house of bread” has none. Naomi and her family migrate to Moab. There, the deaths of her husband and two sons leave Naomi bereft, empty. They left Bethlehem, the house of bread, because of a famine, she and her husband and sons. And at first it seems it went well, but then she lost her husband. And under the law of Israel, this meant that her sons must provide. And she probably wasn’t exactly delighted that they married foreign girls, but the bigger problem is that those marriages produced no children. So when after ten years, those two sons have also both died, these women are stuck. Naomi and Ruth and Orpah are stuck. And they’ve now given the land they had to pay bills and survive, but whatever they had is all gone.

If the book of Judges is largely about the people of Israel not keeping the Law, then Ruth is about people going above and beyond the requirements of the Law. Ruth, a foreigner, a Moabite (a fact we're reminded of often even though she is living in her own land in the beginning, is not required to follow the laws of Israel. She has married an Israelite, but when he dies, the expected thing is that she will return to the home of her parents. That's what her sister-in-law, Orpah, does. That's what Naomi, her mother-in-law, urges her to do.

And we don’t know what kind of relationship they had, whether her mother in law was kind or friendly before this. But Ruth chooses to demonstrate faithfulness, lovingkindness, covenant love instead. She chooses to enter into the covenant of Israel and Israel's God, saying, "Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God" (1:16).”

Ruth chooses to join her story to the story we've been hearing the last several weeks; she chooses to enter into Israel's covenant with God. She chooses the life of being a stranger in a foreign land. To leave all that she has known and to go to a place she's never been, with no assurance of security.

And it might not turn out well. No one is looking for a childless widow to marry. Certainly not one who in 10 years had no children.  A childless widow in ancient Israel had to rely on the kindness of those around her. In this story, Naomi relies on Ruth, and Ruth herself has to rely on the kindness of strangers.

If we stay focused on the gloom and despair, Naomi, we don’t appreciate Ruth. But Naomi is arguably the main character in the book. In some way we may know the pain of her loss and disappointment, her grief and bitterness. She speaks honestly. We too know places like that.

Naomi knows that these foreigners will not provide for her. She also knows that even going back to Bethlehem she has only the slightest of hopes. Because only if the people follow the law God gave to care for the widow can she live. And remember they aren’t doing that- the people are doing what they please. The reality is that most such women died of starvation or of the consequences of prostitution, their only other way to survive. Orpah is sad, but can go home and hope for the best from her tribe. Ruth could as well. But Ruth chooses two things that we shouldn’t expect. She chooses to stay with her kvetching mother in law, regardless of what their relationship was like before, and she chooses the God and people of Israel.

The bitterness of Naomi is not the whole of the story.

We don’t know anything about the journey in between but we do know that poor Naomi, now has a traveling companion and indeed a partner for whatever may come. Yet when they reach Jerusalem, my heart breaks for Ruth for a moment, because after all this Naomi wails to her own people and says, “just call me Mara”-

Bitter. And stands there with Ruth at her side and proclaims her life is empty and she has nothing. Wow! Really?

Sometimes we do that too. We are Mara. Perhaps…where ever that place is for you, God is speaking. We claim we are empty or the people around us aren’t who we want them to be.  

Ruth goes above and beyond what the law would ever expect of her, a law she doesn’t have to be bound by. To show the heart of God and of the law- God’s heart of steadfast loving faithfulness.

Our God loves us steadfastly- even when we sing of gloom and despair and discount the ones around us, God clings in love and won’t let go. And promises the story goes on.

Ruth’s loyalty and love for her mother-in-law holds the promise of something more, as does the final verse of this chapter: “They came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest” (1:22). Naomi is empty (1:21), but faithful Ruth is right beside her, and the harvest is coming.

And the harvest coming whether Naomi is bitter or not.

The harvest is coming still. May God fill the places of emptiness in our hearts, and open our eyes to see the wonder and faithfulness of those around us in God’s story of love.

 

Touch as Many as You Can

On Sunday we started church with the readings from I John and the Gospel of John.

After I finished reading the gospel where Jesus speaks of joy being complete, I invited some of our kids/youth/and my daughter who works at Camp Nawakwa up front to help me have complete joy.

Because one of the things that gives me joy is “The Hippo Song” that we know from Day Camp or other camp experiences. And we did the Hippo Song and I promised that not only was my joy complete, that I would get to why later. And the congregation was experiencing joy too. I personally think that moments we get to be a kids again are essential.

Just in case you are not familiar with the lyrics-
In the Beginning God made the seas,( hands make a wave gesture)
 and the forest filled with trees. (hands moving up and down like tall trees 
God built the mountains up so high,( hands moving up like to steps of a mountain)
 above it all God placed the sky. ( arch your hands up from the sides to make a big circle) 
God's fingerprints are everywhere just to show how much God cares.
( run around and touch your fingers on everyone's arm or shoulder- get as many as you can)
In between God had some fun, ( stomp) made a hippo just for fun! (jump and stomp)
Hip hip hippopotamus ( stomp in a circle)
hip hip hooray God made all of us! (spin and wave arms wildly)

But then I transitioned us to the sermon:

That moment of togetherness was such joy. But the writer, Simone Weil once wrote about two prisoners in solitary confinement cells next to each other. Their cells are divided by a stone wall. Over their long captivity they figure out a way to communicate with one another with taps and scratches on the wall between them. “It is the same with us and God,” Weil said about this story. “Even in separation there (was) a link.” A colleague of mine said that when she read this she began thinking of love as “the taps and scratches on the walls of our existence that mediate a direct face-to-face experience of God. The wall is hopefully not has stark or impassable as the wall of a jail cell, but essentially we live in a cell that is defined by what we can perceive with our senses and our experiences.

So, our cell is… made up of the creation around us that we sang about… and the people in our lives, and everything we can see, hear, taste, feel, and smell. (That is our reality).

The reality of God is that God is outside the wall of what we can experience with our five senses. God is bigger than what we grasp. But God chooses to tap and scratch.

God chooses to try to communicate from the other side of the wall of our cells, and God desires that we will communicate back through taps and scratches ourselves. Love is these taps and scratches.”

And contrary to popular opinion sometimes, God’s primary form of communication is love. Not judging and not hating. Not wall building. Love. A love that God says nothing should ever separate us from.

When we engage the stories of Jesus, we can see this love. Where the wall was totally down and in the flesh Jesus embodied what all those taps and scratches looks like lived out. The person, life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus is what the writer of 1 John points to. Jesus touched a lot of people. And tore down a lot of walls. Because after all, in the beginning of all that creating of everything including hippos God said, it was not good for a human to be alone. All the way from the beginning God intended love.

And I wonder for us gathered here whether we get a sense of God’s love for us, and that love reflected through others. So  

I invite you to close your eyes as I ask a couple questions. And I want us to close our eyes so everyone feels they can risk being honest.

Not counting spouses, has anyone told you they loved you today? Have you told anyone?

Has anyone told you they loved you in the last week? Have you?

And now I wonder, have you felt God’s love shown to you through us here?

You may open your eyes. Some people didn’t raise their hands and it’s because I think there are some walls we don’t realize. And I know this is Berks County, but with so many folk coming here who live alone, we need to hear those taps and scratches and see and sense that touch of Jesus.

And maybe we need a dose of the Hippo Song. It’s the exact opposite of wall building. I told you I’d get to it.

The other week I was at Camp Nawakwa to talk about being a pastor, and showing some early elementary school kids my pastor gear. I talked about what I did. One girl was most impressed with my hospital badge that I said let me go places other people could not to care for people. And she said she wants to be a pastor so she can have a cool badge with that power. My husband, Michael was there talking about being a judge. And people liked banging the gavel. Toward the end, I mentioned that we all have jobs we do that are how we God’s work with our hands.

And suddenly this one little girl got wide eyed and said “God’s fingerprints are EVERYWHERE!” It’s from the Hippo Song. And I was thrilled because she connected what we do with what God has done. “God’s fingerprints are everywhere” happens to be a line from the Hippo Song. The song is about creation, and how God made hippos for fun. But in the middle, the song says- God’s fingerprints are everywhere just to show how much God cares.” She got it!

The Hippo Song has hand motions, and at that point the kids are encouraged to run around and touch as many people as they can before the song goes on. And because they have no sense of limits the kids go wild. But the message is the gospel-touch as many people as you can.

We have been raised to be less exuberant, and yet the love Jesus embodied, is the same love we are called to as brothers and sisters in the family of God.  The same love called upon when the resurrected Christ asked Peter “do you love me?” If you do, feed and care for others. You can’t just love God, you have to love people. Eugene Peterson’s translation of our I John passage says- If anyone boasts, “I Love God” …but won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see?”  Touch as many people as you can.

Today we have a baptism that I think is just the most recent example of love in the life of our community. Michael first came here needing community service hours.

And was paired with Robert as his supervisor and co-worker. They have not only worked the 15 hours Michael needed, they have gone on to do more together. One easy way to see is to look at the fresh coat of paint on the outside of the church office and 423 Windsor. But that is not all, they have worshipped together here, and when Michael wondered about baptism, Robert answered some of his questions. Touch as many as you can.  

And Robert came here a couple years ago first looking to hang out under the shade of our trees in a hot summer. But then began to come here to worship and be a part of our community. And has become a volunteer at the Doves Nest and more. Little by little- the message of love gets carried and lives are touched. And it could have just hit a wall. Thank God it didn’t.

We are Christ’s gathered community called to be the taps and scratches and touches of God’s communication for others, and we are gathered to give thanks for those moments when we recognize the love we receive within creation, God’s taps and scratches touches to us.

They tell the story of an abiding love, dwelling love, love that will not let us go, especially when we feel the wall of separation our world offers. We are given God’s abiding presence and love. A love that reaches its goal in relationships of love. In the abstract, love falls short. In human love by the power of the Spirit we see the love of God.

So touch as many as you can with the fingerprints of a God who dwells with us and gives us the chance to live in this love- to receive and to give those around us what it means that actual people who see, hear and experience the sharing of God’s love because Christ first showed us. AMEN

Do You See What He's Done?

On Maundy Thursday I offer individual absolution and laying on of hands. After this I also offer corporate forgiveness in the name of Christ,  not only for those who did not come forward, but for our sins as community.
This was the message later...



Do you know what he's done? What Jesus has done? Tonight we don't hear Jesus talk about Holy Communion. It's what makes the Gospel of John different. We come here on Maundy Thursday expecting to hear "do this in remembrance of me" followed by words about bread and wine. WHAT IF...instead we were given what we hear in tonight's gospel as the way of remembering that last night with the disciples? We'd be washing feet each week. You seem underwhelmed. Or maybe overwhelmed.

We'd be told to strip away all of what gives us our status, and empty ourselves of our ideas about it all. And wash each others feet. All the dirt, and the scrapes. The wounds and literally sometimes all the crap that our feet drag around. Just as true in all the places we come from as Galilee. And cleansed, loved, and forgiven. Do you know what he's done?

And it's not just about the feet. It's about the love. Servant love. That loves our unloveliness. Servant love.

Years ago our daughters were arguing over having to clean up the mess in the room they shared and at the height of the row, I heard one of them bellow, "I AM NOT YOUR SERVANT!!" Followed by stomping down the stairs to present the offending sister in hopes I would do something about it
So often, we too want to say, if we're being honest, in the middle of people and situations we encounter, "I AM NOT YOUR SERVANT!"  and do the same.

Do you know what Jesus has done?

He has not only gotten down on his hands and knees, and entered the grittiness of our humanity, he's cleaned up the mess. And he's done it for ALL, even Judas, knowing full well what is to come.

Knowing the very real fact that evil will take up residence in Judas and lead him to be someone it's hard to imagine he'd become. And it will take up residence in Peter and lead him to speak words he swore he never would.

Henri Nouwen writes that we, "People who live close together, can be great sources of sorrow for one another. When Jesus chose the 12, he chose Judas among them. He's called a traitor, literally in the Greek, 'one who hands another over to suffering.' And the truth is that there is something of the traitor in each one of us. Because each of us hands over our fellow human beings to suffering- somehow, somewhere. Mostly without intending it, or maybe even knowing it. When we are willing to confess that often we hand over those we love ( and those we are called to love) even against our own best intentions, we will be more ready to forgive those who mostly against their will, are the causes of our pain."

Because we all muddy the water.

We are called to remember- to re-live- what Jesus has done- for you, for me, for us all. To be shaped by his servanthood and to hear again the command-love each other like this.
He summons us to come and be cleansed and then draws us into a different world
of communion and community
And it can't just be about being with the ones we like.
It's also about being with the misunderstood, the betrayer and the enemy whoever we imagine them to be.

When it's all stripped away we see who we really are- all of us.

Then... we see, just how profound it is what Jesus has done

That we can't stop God's love and forgiveness. We can't stop God's commitment in Christ
To humanity at it's stinkiest and most busted places.

Do you see what Jesus has done? What Jesus does still?
Love EVERYONE like this
Remember