Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Further reflections on "Seeking Beyond Our Grasp"

In this week’s sermon, we were invited to be grace-filled as we examine our idolatries and the idolatries of others. From the Acts 17 scripture, it seems that we are asked to take a deeper look at what those idols might reveal about what we were seeking in the first place. Furthermore, pausing to understand that underlying yearning for something bigger than ourselves will also point to the way in which God formed us and made us in such a way that seeking is part of our being. Nevertheless, as I wrote this sermon, there was an issue that was left unarticulated. That was the matter of an all or nothing mentality.

The invitation to a graceful attitude with ourselves and others is in many ways a calling toward journey rather than destination. In the journey, many concerns we encounter can neither be completely understood nor can they be fully solved. However, we live in a culture that tells us that we must fix ourselves, solve problems, and ally ourselves fully with causes… “you’re either with us or against us.”

But much like Luke’s telling of Paul’s encounter in Acts 17 where understanding wins out over shame and guilt, our lives too are rarely made better by the shame and guilt wrought by such a limited posturing. Rather than shaming someone for not yet recycling at home, what would it be like to honor them for recycling while they are at work? Instead of guilting ourselves over participating in unsustainable eating practices, what if we respected the worthy step of eating meat only 5 days a week instead of 7? And in a world of pass/fail schools, what if we celebrated small steps and even intangibles in students and teachers lives?

It is my deepest belief, both theologically and psychologically, that we would be healthier people, a stronger culture, and a more justice filled society if we started by honoring the little steps rather than shaming ourselves and others for what we have not yet accomplished. We would likely be encouraged to take more little steps rather than giving up entirely. And most importantly, I believe that such a way of life is closer to God’s will that we be active partners in the building up of creation.

My hope is that we learn and grow from the times we stumble so that our future steps are more steady. My prayer each day is for sustaining strength to keep putting one foot in front of the other and to honor each and every step along the way.

“Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain.” ~ unknown

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Seeking Beyond Our Grasp

Seeking Beyond Our Grasp - A sermon based upon Acts 17:22-31

Good morning. It is a pleasure to be with you today and share in worship in a different way since I'm usually facing the other direction... And might I say it's quite a different view from this side instead of my rear corner view.

Briefly, for those of you who don't know me, my name is Lavender and I'm a member of St Pauls and being nurtured in the care process of ordination. I'm also a full time chaplain at Children’s Memorial, where I've been for several years now. My seminary training was at Louisville Presbyterian and I graduated 5 years ago this week. And if you can’t tell, in my spare time, I do charity events like the one where I shaved my head 3 weeks ago to raise money for cancer research.

Well, enough about me… How about this scripture? I should say that this passage fascinates me. I mean, here we have Paul walking about Athens, one of the most diverse places in history. And this is a guy who is all about strict adherence to the law so all the idols and shrines throughout the city were truly disturbing to him. But rather than start shaming people and beating them over the head for what he would have judged as sinful, he does something quite different.

Paul says, “I see how very religious you are in every way...” He goes on to honor them for their attempts to seek and understand God even though he believes they have gotten some of it wrong. Next, he connects to a particular shrine the Athenians have built “to an unknown god” and claims that this is the God and creator of all. Then he says that this God actually created us in such a way that we would be compelled to seek the One that breathed life into all creation. Finally, Paul calls for the Athenians to make sure their beliefs are of the Holy when he proclaims that there will come a day that this God of all will judge all.

So, what do we make of this? Well, I think it's safe to say that this passage has much to say to us today. We too live in a culture full of idols and a sense of groping for God. We too need help sorting through what is our idol worship and failed seeking. And we too need to be honored for our attempts rather than shamed and made to feel guilty for being limited.

So, how do we unravel this message? Well, first of all it I think the issue of Paul’s approach is particularly important. He knew that if he were to stand up and condemn the Athenians for what he judged as idolatrous, they would become defensive and shut him out. He knew that it is never through shaming and quilting that genuine change is made. Shame and guilt may coerce behavior but they are not foundations for beliefs. So Paul starts talking to them by honoring their attempts at seeking God and their deep passion around religiosity. He wants them to know that their attempts are worthy and that God has even had grace on our groping and reaching for the Holy even when we come up short.

To me, this is an amazing insight. I mean Think about our own lives… If Paul were to walk into our church, down our streets, and into our homes, what kinds of idols would he see? I dare say that he would see many that span our attempts at seeking something greater than ourselves. Our cars, job titles, the famous people we’ve placed on pedestals, the monuments to ideals that are not quite holy… they are everywhere in our lives. We might be tempted to dismiss many of those idols as ones that represent greed or selfishness. But should we dismiss how they came to be idols? Maybe we should look at what we saw in them that made us lift them up in the first place.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that even though our idols reveal much about our failings and brokenness, they also reveal much about our attempts to fill a God sized void in our lives. If it is that the accumulation of wealth or monuments to immortality are all some of us can claim, then it’s because the appetite for God is so great rather than so small. So, starting from Paul’s model for addressing idolatry in our culture, we would do well when looking at our own lives and the lives of others to start with some grace. We should honor that the emptiness in us is that of a deep yearning for God. Even when we’ve claimed false idols, it was because we wanted so badly to see something greater than us… something bigger and timeless. Guilt and shame won’t reveal God’s true presence but grace and honor sure will.

The second thing I think this passage has for us today is tied up in that yearning and search for God that all too often results in the creation of idols rather than the worship of the holy. Paul tells us “The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands… From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us.”

This is a powerful message to us. The whole reason we need to be grace filled and honor even our failed attempts to search for God is because it is actually God who implanted in us that desire. This passage says we were made in such a way that our whole experience would be marked by the search for God… and that sometimes we would even catch a glimpse or two.

And the way Paul frames this whole thing by connecting them to one of their very own shrines is pretty amazing too. He refers to the shrine “to an unknown god” and tells them that God doesn’t live in things built by our hands because the God that breathed life into all creation is just beyond our grasp and yet never far away.

So if we are made to yearn for and seek God but struggle to do so because it’s somehow beyond our abilities, what does this mean for our lives? Well, it may serve as some good guidance for us in our search. A marker of an idol rather than the Holy might be to realize that our glimpses and experiences of God can never be fully captured and pinned down. If we are somehow trying to recreate an encounter of God or claim a particular path to experiencing God, then we are probably missing the fullness of God.

Also, if God is both beyond yet near, another lesson for our daily lives might be that if someone else has experienced the Holy in a different way, we might do well to seek understanding rather than judgment. With God so full of mystery, there’s likely a whole lot that we just don’t understand but someone else just might. So another marker of our seeking should be humility.

This brings me to a closing point I think this passage is telling us today. Somewhat wrapped up in the first point, Paul proclaims that there will come a day that God will judge us for our searching and what it has yielded in our lives. Now given the recent botched prediction of some sort of rapture or second coming, I think it’s safe to say that we need not concern ourselves with what this judgment will look like or when it will be but rather we should hear the call to be vigilant and continue our journey of seeking here and now.

It is not our job to judge but God’s. Our job is to seek, to journey, to join together in creation, to respect that deep calling of God, and to honor the glimpses of the Holy that we do encounter. Our job is to uphold that desire in one another that is yearning and seeking for something more. We should do this in such a way that even when we get it wrong, we can take that experience and journey with greater clarity rather than being mired in shame and guilt.

Sisters and brothers, today’s scripture passage calls us to be grace-filled with one another when we see the fruits of our yearnings for God rather than shaming of our failings. It calls us to know that God is both beyond our ability to pin down and yet oh so very close. In the midst of that presence, we are invited to be humble in our experience and honor our paths and the paths of others. And we are called to be ever vigilant to weed out idols and false beliefs that would take up the place of God in our lives.

As we leave here today, our calling is to identify those ways we fill our lives with idols, look at what led us to believe in them, and use that yearning to find what is truly Holy. Our calling is also to help others in their attempts to seek and catch glimpses of God. And you know what, I suspect that if we are truly engaged in that work and those relationships, we’ll see God more than we have in a long time. Amen.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Peace for What?

Peace for What? <–- audio file of sermon. A sermon based upon John 20:19-31

Good morning. First off, let me go ahead and acknowledge that you might have noticed something different about me today. Is it new glasses? No. Perhaps a new outfit? No. The answer is I shaved my head 2 days ago at a charity event raising money for and awareness of childhood cancers. Some of you know that I do this every year and it’s always a wonderful event. Actually, the child we honored at the event was in the hospital and unable to attend. But like I said, it was still a wonderful occasion and such a great cause.

And just so you know, it is okay to ask me questions about it. It is okay to stare. And if you ask, I’ll even let you rub my head. But when you look at my head, please remember all those who struggle with cancer and need our support and then say a prayer for them.

Okay, now back to the task at hand. What do we make of these disciples and of good ole doubting Thomas? This is a story that a week and a half ago, I was going to preach pretty much the same thing we usually do. I thought we were going to look at the struggle between intuition and fact and of the different ways of knowing. I thought we might focus on how Christ comes to us no matter what our needs are so we need not vilify Thomas for being slow to believe.

But then Sunday night our televisions, radios, Facebook pages, and text messages starting buzzing with news that the President would speak. Soon the word came out that Osama Bin Laden was dead. And from that point forward broke a frenzy of praise, sorrow, questions, debate, and doubt. And somewhere in all this, a few people paused to ask, “what should the Christian response be?”

What should the Christian response be to the death of a man who apparently has masterminded the deaths of thousands of innocent lives? What should the Christian response be to the death of a man who struck fear in the hearts of so many? What should the Christian response be to the death of a man who was also a husband, father, grandfather, brother, and someone’s child? What should the Christian response be to the death of a man who had become so consumed by hate and fear that he could not see the humanity in others?

Sisters and brothers, I’m not going down a road toward telling you what you should believe politically or think about Osama Bin Laden. But I am going down a road that points to what happens when we live behind locked doors.

Let’s take another look at this passage. The passage begins, “When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’”

See, when we think about this passage in time, Jesus had just been crucified and died. That very morning Mary and Mary had discovered the empty tomb. Jesus had appeared to some of them on the road and they were sharing the news. But the general feeling amongst all of them was fear. They were afraid for their lives and afraid for their futures. They closed themselves off and locked the door. But Christ comes through the barriers and says, “Peace be with you.”

Later in the passage, we have the same disciples only this time Thomas is also there and he has not believed that Jesus was truly resurrected. The passage reads, “A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”

Here again we have the closed doors that are presumably locked. Even a week later, the disciples are hiding out rather than being out and about. And Jesus comes through the barriers to once again pronounce, “Peace be with you.”

So, what do we make of this? It would be easy to speed on past these verses and get to the story of Thomas’ disbelief. But I don’t think these verses are here by accident and I don’t think John went to the trouble of noting the closed doors if it weren’t an issue for us to learn from.

First of all I think we need to have grace and compassion in our hearts just as Christ did when we look at this story otherwise we get caught up in judgment. These people were scared. Jesus had been their companion and champion. They believed he was going to restore justice in the land. They hadn’t yet realized his justice would be of a more far reaching kind. So in their fear, they retreated to a home and hid out.

But Jesus came in and didn’t speak harsh words or judgment. He wanted them to be at ease and to release their fear. He greeted them with a wish and hope for peace in their lives. Christ wants them to not fear or to feel worse for their struggle. He wanted them to heal. His words were about understanding their experience and knowing that more than anything, they needed to let go of the fear and receive peace and the hope that springs from it.

This is truly an amazing model for our lives. It is an orientation toward people that begins with saying, “I want to know and understand you and your needs.” To have a starting place of grace and compassion in our hearts is a starting point of love rather than assessing, judging, categorizing, or any of the other countless ways we sum people up without first seeking to understand them and their experience.

When we are scared and either literally or metaphorically close ourselves off, what would it be like if someone who loves us came on in and spoke love and peace into our hearts, minds, and spirits? How would we react if that person looked at us with eyes of compassion that told us that our experiences and feelings are safe with them?

And looking outside of ourselves, what if we were the person who could be that voice of peace, love, and healing for the one who has walled themselves off? When we’re dealing with the person who lashes out at us, what if our starting place was that of looking into how someone got so overrun by fear rather than lashing back at them? What if our priority was to truly know and understand people and their experiences instead of quickly assessing what category they fit into?

Now coming back to where I started with the death of Bin Laden, I’m not saying that there isn’t a time to make people stand accountable for their crimes or that understanding why someone is fearful is an excuse for the way they may have hurt others. There is a time for that accountable justice. There is even a time and a place for those categories like liar, cheater, greedy, selfish, terrorist, and murderer. Those classifications can help us as a society understand who has been hurt and how to exact justice. But those categories should never be a substitute for seeking to know and understand one another. That’s just not what the Christian life is about.

The Christian life is found in our second point today. Christ’s peace and calling are to fling open the doors and live out in the world as agents of love and healing. Jesus said, “Peace be with you” not only as a way to still their anxious spirits but to clear the path to move beyond the fear and anxiety. Next, he breathed the Holy Spirit upon them and told them to go out and spread the Good News and extend the gift of the forgiveness of sins to all. Their job, their calling was to be out in the world. They had received the Spirit and the Spirit should not and cannot be contained behind closed doors.

So what does this mean to us? Well, more often than not, our fears come out in more subtle ways that are not directly damaging to others but cause harm we will never see. We wall ourselves off from certain “kinds” of people or places thereby cutting of relationship after relationship after relationship. We convince ourselves that our fears are actually wise judgments or well thought out beliefs so we don’t need to bother with this person or that group. We tell ourselves that “they” are sinners or liars or too uneducated to understand or too far beyond help. We convince ourselves that we need not worry about them because they don’t want our help anyway. We use words terms like “crazy liberal” and “snooty” to feel better about not looking at them as a whole person.

But maybe that’s just the problem. The message of Christ doesn’t start with figuring out what category someone fits in to or how to fix them. It starts with understanding. Instead of seeing “they” and “them” we need to see a person struggling or striving or searching and look more deeply into how that journey has shaped their life. When our starting point is that of trying to understand someone, the issue of helping will then naturally into place. And you know what else? We often find that we were helped in some way too.

Now, I’m not saying living the Christian life means to blindly walk up to a person who’s fear may have built to the point of violence. But I am saying that it means unlocking the doors of fear we’ve constructed for ourselves. It means gently challenging the fears of others by seeking to understand them and being open so that they can understand us. It means challenging our own fears by trusting in the peace of Christ to overcome all.

Does all this sound too big? Well, it starts here. The church is the proving grounds for how we’ll live in the world. We start with the people around us and let go of seeing the labels and the judgments and the walls that keep us from seeing the whole person.

With Christ’s peace, we can let go of seeing the person who snubbed us when we needed a friend or the person who complains instead of helping or the person who boasts instead of listening. And when we let go of the categories of judgment we might understand that we weren’t actually snubbed because the other person was deeply depressed at the time. And those complaints are just a mask for loneliness. And the boasting was just a mask for fear. If we can let the walls we have between us down long enough to understand one another, we’ll cultivate such a deep community we’ll have the strength to go out into the world and do this with others.

And we already do. Look at the Kairos ministry. That’s an amazing example of understanding that leads to healing. And I could stand here and name ministries and individual actions in this congrigation that over and over reflect the triumph of Christ’s peace and the healing of understanding. But today’s passage reminds us that there’s always more to be done.

The Christian response to Bid Laden’s death is not as simple as cheering or grieving. We must seek to be thoughtful and compassionate, appreciating justice yet seeking greater reconciliation. Christ’s call in the world always begins with peace that breaks down fear. That peace leads to understanding. And understanding leads to healing.

Sisters and brothers, whatever fears we are hiding behind or keep locked away, Christ breaks in past them and says, “Peace be with you.” As we leave here today, let us be bold to hear and receive that peace. Let us be brave to understand and be understood. Let us be trusting in Christ’s calling and be agents of healing and reconciliation in the world. Amen.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

What is beautiful?

Disclaimer: The following is about my experience of brokenness and pain, not my theology. This is not a reflection on faith, belief, or religion. It is only a humble attempt at sharing my experience.

What is beautiful? A friend on Twitter told me that I am “beautiful inside and out.” I don’t believe that on the inside or the outside. I do believe that I have internal scars that wounds that are so deep and painful that I’ll never be able to fully share them with anyone. The pain has led me to make choices that abuse my body by over eating and not taking care of myself physically. I look at myself on the inside and outside and see sorrow and the legacy of sorrow.

What is beautiful is the way my body, mind, and my spirit keep going in spite of the torment. My body is so strong and most people will never know what it has carried me through. It has fought off attackers, withstood being homeless, and granted me a storage space for my emotions. My spirit is equally amazing in that somehow it keeps going and loving and seeking no matter how much it hurts.

What is beautiful is not my inside or my outside but the way I’ve taken my pain and learned to see into other’s agony with it. I can then extend the hand of compassion to them in the way I wish someone had extended it to me. Beauty is also in the way I’ve built relationships and loved people even though my inner voice says “keep them away.”

This beauty isn’t me. I’m not the beautiful one. The only way I can make sense of it is to believe it has been God that has held all my parts together and breathed the will to love into my actions. I keep loving and reaching out because I hope someday that beauty might reach back into me and heal my insides and outsides too.

I don’t believe I’m beautiful but I hope someday I might be.

Monday, May 2, 2011

Walking Witnesses

Walking Witnesses <-- Audio link – A sermon based upon Luke 24:13-35

Good morning. I bring you greetings from the Sisters of Bon Secours at their retreat center outside Baltimore, MD. I’ve been there this week with a group of pediatric chaplains on retreat and was much blessed by my time.

The sisters of Bon Secours, which translates to “good help” from its native French, are a vibrant community of living faith. They live into their original mission of providing good help to the poor and the sick. In the early days of their ministry, I imagine poor families didn’t know what to think when a nun showed up on their door to live with and care for them until they returned to health. I imagine it was like walking along and suddenly having Christ in their midst.

And that’s where today’s gospel lesson takes us too. As we’ve walked in the footsteps of Jesus through Holy Week and Easter, we’ve seen him make his presence known in so many ways. Whether it was riding a donkey into Jerusalem or standing up to admit his identity to those who would arrest him, this Jesus guy is not one to stay hidden for long… but also not one to be pinned down. So, let’s look again at our scripture passage.

What we have are two of Jesus’ followers walking to Emmaus. Now, this was a well-known village and we don’t know why they were going there nor do we need to. All we need to understand is that it’s a common place to them. Then, Jesus appears to them but they didn’t recognize him. They told Jesus about all that had happened in the past week including the empty tomb that day. But Jesus could tell that they were not able to see the big picture of his resurrection yet so he illuminates the ways his life was represented in ancient scripture. Then he started to walk away but his two followers invited him to spend the night.

This is where the story turns. They go to into a house and share a meal. The scripture doesn’t say it’s the Eucharist… it’s just a meal. Jesus then blesses and shares the bread. At this point, they suddenly recognize him and he vanishes. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” Finally, the two takeoff back to Jerusalem to share this with others.

So what does this scripture have for us? Well, there’s definitely more than one moral to the story in this passage but what do we need to hear today?

First of all, I think God is telling us that it is okay when we don’t recognize Christ in our midst. This scripture tells us that followers were “kept” from recognizing him. Now it could have been their own inattention or grief or it could have been Christ himself who preferred to be unrecognized. The scripture does not tell us. But regardless of the cause, Jesus was obviously not offended by this. He interacted with them in whatever form they could receive.

This seems important because how often do we really recognize those God moments when we’re in them? Sometimes we do. However, quite often we are going about our day to day lives unaware that we were even part of meeting someone else’s deep and sacred need. Frequently, we hear from someone a few days later that they are grateful for our presence and how desperately they needed the eyes of compassion and hands of caring that we offered. Or how about those times when we feel so lost and something seemingly random happens that gives us new direction and focus? We could not see God working but we sure did reap the rewards of God’s presence in our lives.

So, we need to hear that it really is okay to not recognize Christ or those God moments at the time. There’s no need to feel ashamed or like we weren’t what God wanted us to be. We still took part in the work of the Body of Christ, even if we were unaware of what the whole body was doing.

Which brings me to the second point that recognizing when we’ve encountered the living Christ is fleeting and complicated and awe inspiring all at the same time. When Christ’s followers’ eyes were opened to who he was, they instantly realized that they were in the midst of a holy moment and then he disappeared. Can you imagine what that must have been like? They were being hospitable and then they caught a glimpse of Christ and then he was gone. It’s like the way Moses only caught a glimpse of God’s backside.

But our lives are the same way. When we do get that phone call thanking us for being there, the wind of the Spirit sweeps through our heart showing us God’s presence. When we look back at those seemingly random events that gave us what we truly needed to move forward, we feel the awe of God’s presence. You see, we catch glimpses of God but can’t capture the moment. This recognition of the living Christ leaves us knowing that God was working in the world but it’s not something we can pin down.

It reminds me of the song the nuns sing in the Sound of Music. When referring to Maria, arguably a Christ figure in the movie. They sing, “How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?” and “How do you keep a wave upon the sand?” You can’t and that’s the point. That upon recognizing the living Christ among us, we can’t capture it in a moment because Christ lives in movement.

This brings us to the final point which is that upon recognizing moments of the holy we are changed and are compelled forward. When Christ’s followers realized who had been in their midst, they said to one another, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” They realized that that burning of joy, hope, and love that was welling up within them was the first proof of Christ’s presence with them. Then they immediately took off to tell others and spread this good news.

Now, let’s look deeper at this for a few moments. “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road…?” This is a powerful shift in the passage and it could be easily missed. They had just seen with their own eyes the risen Christ but what they immediately went to was how he had made them feel even when they didn’t yet recognize him. To me, that says something.

Poet Maya Angelou said, “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” I think the same can be said for Christ. Oh sure we share stories of all that he did and said. Those stories really touch people and are important for our faith formation and growth. But when we really start talking to people about their faith and share our own, what people talk about are very personal encounters they had… God moments… moments of Christ in our midst. And they talk about the emotional experience of being touched by it.

And when we talk further with one another about our faith, we inevitably get to how those moments became the force for movement in our lives. We encounter the living Christ in some way or ways. The experience speaks to our hearts by whispering love, healing, joy, and hope to us. Then we are compelled forward to act more fully and boldly in the body of Christ. We may not use those words, but the meaning is the same. Christ reaches in and touches our lives. But it’s not in the recognition that we find blessing. Rather, it is in the part that stays with us that we are blessed and can then in turn bless others.

Sisters and brothers, I’ve been saying now for two and a half weeks that we need to be looking for Christ in our midst and that is truly a valid calling. However, more important than looking for Christ in our midst, we need to be reaching out and living as if we are encountering the living Christ every moment. We never know when it will happen. I even suspect that nearly all our moments are really Christ moments if we’ll truly open up to them. And if we do approach life with that attitude, I bet we would catch even more glimpses of Christ in our midst that would impact us even more deeply. And this would in turn compel us forward in even more exciting ways because living in the movement of the Spirit through the Body of Christ is never-ending in that way.

So, as we leave here today, I think the challenge is to be open to what these moments are doing to change us and how we can be open to the movement they create. How are we taking that experience of how Christ makes us feel and moving forward with it? What is Christ calling us to? Is it that we need to get to know new people? Maybe people different from us? Is it that we need to be involved in some form of ministry? Write a note to people God places on your heart? Is it that we need to open our own hearts to be touched more deeply by others? To be open to healing? Maybe we need to reach across the aisle and forgive to rebuild a relationship? Maybe we need to reach around the globe and heal relationships there?

I don’t know where the movement that God calls us to individually and collectively will take us. But I do trust that growing, loving, and living in the Body of Christ will bless us and spread beyond us in way ways we will never be able to count. And just like Jesus’ followers that encountered him on the walk to Emmaus, we will be forever better for the experience. Amen.