Slavery and Freedom

I don’t have a lot of time today.  A very tight schedule, to say the least.  And then next week gets even worse.  Here is an alert that there won’t be a Bible Study next week.  So, don’t sit by your email inbox all day next Saturday waiting for these pearls of wisdom - or momentary humorous diversion - to appear. Because they won’t.

Not that you would do that anyway.  You are busy too.  You have your lists and your obligations.  You have your journeys to make and your routes to follow.  I know that.  It is the world we live in.  We carry our calendars in our pockets, even getting them to ping our appointments to us if we are technologically savvy enough to set it up.  We rush from one to the other sometimes wondering how they all stitch together to make up the tapestry of our lives.  Wondering what the design is, and who the artist is in the end.  Us?  Our careers?  God?  Chance?  The helter-skelter result of life in the 21st Century?

I’m about to leave this undone while I go off to watch Maddie in her last Dance Showcase here in Fort Wayne.  Then I will come back and work some more, while working in packing for a week at Anderson University as chaplain to Choir School.  As well as the usual preparation for Sunday morning.  Hoping that this piece will seem coherent enough to be readable.  But not making any promises.

I was just given my time check.  Gotta go.  Be back later.  Stay tuned.  Tell you what, why do you read the scripture text for this while I run downtown for a bit?  I’ll be back.  ...

John 8:31-47   Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples;  32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."  33 They answered him, "We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, 'You will be made free'?"  34 Jesus answered them, "Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.  35 The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever.  36 So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.  37 I know that you are descendants of Abraham; yet you look for an opportunity to kill me, because there is no place in you for my word.  38 I declare what I have seen in the Father's presence; as for you, you should do what you have heard from the Father."  39 They answered him, "Abraham is our father." Jesus said to them, "If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing what Abraham did,  40 but now you are trying to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did.  41 You are indeed doing what your father does." They said to him, "We are not illegitimate children; we have one father, God himself."  42 Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now I am here. I did not come on my own, but he sent me.  43 Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot accept my word.  44 You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.  45 But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.  46 Which of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me?  47 Whoever is from God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear them is that you are not from God." 

Back now.  Amazing.  Simply amazing.  Sometimes all I know is the girl who can’t walk for long without causing some sort of damage to herself.  Or the teenager who gets up around noon and then spends most of the day saying she needs a nap. Or food.  Or both.  And then I go watch something like this and see a woman I barely know, waltzing around the floor like that is her true home.  She flowed, she spun, she wove those graceful arms like she was directing the orchestra of creation itself.  It was amazing.  

I saw something deeper, something more real in that place than I had before.  Jesus says the truth will set you free.  Truth?  That’s the word we usually stumble over.  Truth?  What is that?  We’re a couple thousand years after Pilate, but we are still asking the question (I know, different passage - come hear Pastor Chris’ take on it next week): What is Truth?  Which is not really a question about definition, but about existence.  The question is really is there such a thing as Truth anymore?  If, indeed, there ever was.  

But interestingly, that isn’t the word the first hearers stumbled on.  They don’t even mention it.  Just let it slide by.  No, they trip over free.  What do you mean, Jesus, “set us free”?  We’re free!  We are born free.  We live free.  We are free as free can be, free as birds, free as a summer breeze.  We’re free, don’t you go implying anything about the state of our freeness.  Our freedom.  Freeishness.  So there.  Nyah.

Methinks they dost protest too much.  Though I don’t think they actually said “nyah.”  Sounded like it though.  They argued credentials and pedigree.  “We are children of Abraham!”  They debated theology.  “We are children of God!” Then they argued “ad hominem” for those high school debate scholars in the group.  They attacked the messenger when they couldn’t argue with the message. The forty-eighth verse begins the name calling.  I cut it off to preserve what little of their shaky dignity that I could.

Jesus takes them.  A little harshly it seems to some.  Scholars have complained that these verses are what has given rise to much of the Christian anti-Semitism over the centuries.  And perhaps they are right.  At least for those who don’t read closely.  If you look at the first verse of the reading, you’ll see these aren’t Jews representing the Hebrew faith, these are followers of Jesus who got the wrong end of the stick.  This is an in-house argument, not one designed to cast out a whole faith or race of people who are different than us.  This is an exercise in truth.

Freedom is not an end in itself.  That’s part of the message here, and one supremely relevant to our world today.  Like those early believers, we wrestle with freedom.  Or rather we elevate it to an ideal.  It is all about freedom we say, spreading freedom, inflicting freedom on the world around us.  Sorry, inflicting wasn’t the word I should have used there.  Though it sometimes feels like that.  But maybe if we saw truth as our greatest export, rather than freedom, our approach might be different.  

True freedom, says Jesus, comes from knowing the truth.  Which, since he will shortly reveal that he is the Truth (Jn 14:6), means knowing him.  Studying the word, which is also the Word, the living Word, the incarnate Word.  The Word that was standing right in front of them.  To know Him is to know freedom.  To see what really is, to see beyond the surface, beyond our preconceived ideas, beyond the blind spots and bad habits, beyond the limitations we inflict on ourselves and others, beyond our prejudices.  To see Truth.  And then to live Truth.

That is what freedom is, the ability, the courage, the strength to live Truth, to live as whole persons, sinners redeemed by the grace of God.  To see us as we really are, dancers and stumblers both.  Graceful and grace-filled, beloved by the One who came to live for us, claimed by the One who came to die for us, gathered up by the One who rose to glory as first fruits for our own ascension, when we will take our turn on the floor, spinning and flowing and conducting the orchestra of creation, as the cloud of witnesses applauds with pounding hearts for us.

I wanted to gather her up in my arms when she stepped off the floor, to let her know how proud I was of her, how thankful I was that she let me see her true self.  I wanted to embrace that truth so that she would know I saw it, and I know it, and am set free by it.  But since she told me she doesn’t like to be hugged anymore, I had to content myself with a fingertip touch to her shoulder and eyes full of joy and tears.  Her sunlight bright smile even as she fought to catch her breath from the dance told me that she knew.  She knew of my love for her and my pride in her, she knew.  I hope.

You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.  Amen.

Shalom,

Derek 

Nobody at the Well

“Who are you talking to?” “Nobody.”  “Nobody?  Really?” Actually, she doesn't usually say “nobody” when I am asking her who she is texting.  She usually says “People.”  Which is code for “you don’t need to know, dad.”  And she is right, I probably don’t need to know.  Maybe I’m just nosy.  Maybe I’m all up in her grill, as they don’t really say anymore.  Or maybe like dads universal I worry about those nobodies.

Don’t talk to strangers.  That’s the mantra of our age.  And it is understandable.  Even a cursory reading of the newspaper would tell you that being away, paying attention, staying away from the unknown and the uncertain is a prudent way to live in our world today.

Yet, I wonder if we’ve gone overboard in our attempts to stay safe.  I wonder if we’ve tarred everyone who is not like us as a potential threat instead of an opportunity to grow and expand our understanding a little bit more. I wonder if we’ve exaggerated the danger in order to keep our kids safe and now we live suspicious of the unnamed nobodies we pass by on a regular basis, no longer seeing them as people but as danger, as stranger, even as enemy. 

Maybe that is safer, but it also seems like we have lost something significant here, an opportunity for relationship, for community.  If Jesus had followed our rules of approaching strangers there are many wonderful encounters that we would never have in the gospels.  Like the one from which our passage comes this week.

I purposely pulled out just a few verses from this long story so that we can focus on our theme.  But the context of the encounter is crucial to understanding this text.  Take a look at these verses and then reconstruct the whole story.

John 4:23-26  But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.  24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."  25 The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming" (who is called Christ). "When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us."  26 Jesus said to her, "I am he, the one who is speaking to you."   

The woman at the well.  That is the usual title of this passage.  But we might also call it the nobody at the well.  But this nobody is not really a threat, for most folks she wouldn’t even register.  They would overlook her as they passed by.  As we passed by.  Let’s be honest, we wouldn’t take notice of her either.  And that is the way she preferred it.  That’s why she came to well in the middle of the day, hoping to avoid being seen, hoping to avoid the sneers and the gossip and the barbed looks.

This isn’t the time to analyze this woman and what her true situation might have been, that would take more time that we want to give here.  Suffice it to say, she was by choice a nobody.  By choice and by circumstance.  Pushed to the margins of a society that can be cruel at least as often as it is welcoming.  She was a nobody who wanted to get her task accomplished and be on her way, when her whole life was turned upside down.

Encountering Jesus upsets our agendas.  And it might explain why she (and we) tries to keep him at arms length in the conversation.  Jesus is persistent, thank God, but it takes a while to break through the walls that she has created to protect herself.  One of the ploys that she uses to distract him is to ask a question about worship. But Jesus uses that a means to get to the heart of what it is that he is trying to talk about with her.

Just when he gets to the crux of her social stigma, she diverts him by asking what appears to be a philosophical question about the geography of worship.  “My ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say we have to worship in Jerusalem.”  Not even a question, really.  More like an accusation.  You deny the tradition of my people. You think that you have all the answers and that we are just dumb hicks from the hills.  You think you are better than us because you make all the rules and leave us out of the discussion.  

Jesus takes this complaint hidden in a conversation starter and gently responds by teaching her about worship.  He reminds her in his response that worship is not about us, but about God.  Her statement/question is about our location.  Where should we be to worship?  His response is first that the object of worship is God (“true worshipers will worship the Father...”) She never talked about what is being worshiped.  Jesus says that you cannot talk about worship without talking about the One being worshiped.

Having invoked the God we worship, Jesus then is ready to talk about geography.  He doesn’t talk about it in the same way that the woman does, however.  For her it is about the location of the body.  For Jesus it is about the location of the soul.  Or the self.  Or the mind.  It gets a little blurry, I must confess.  Partly because Jesus would argue that the location of your body is also important.  But not in terms of zip code.  Instead Jesus wants to know whether our bodies are in the presence of God, or just occupying a pew.

Worship in spirit and truth.  Another Johanine duality.  (Sorry, gotta use that seminary jargon once in a while.)   A little bible study exercise - read the Gospel of John, and the letters of John and see how many times there are concepts paired together.  Light and dark, flesh and spirit, grace and truth, spirit and truth.  Sometimes these dualities are opposites, sometimes they are complementary.  

Last week we heard the prologue to John’s Gospel tell us that Christ meets us in truth, but that truth comes wrapped in grace, thankfully.  So, if Christ meets us in truth, then in order to worship we must meet Christ in truth.  To worship in truth is to bring the whole self into the act of worship.  We don’t come half-heartedly, we don’t come with the distractions of mind and body, we don’t come wishing that we were somewhere else.  We don’t come with the minutes measured out, ready to complain if the time we save for something else is used up in an act of worship. We don’t come with hearts segmented into devotions not all of which are open to God and to this moment of worship.  We worship in truth, as whole persons.

Whole persons who sometimes feel like nobodies.  Sometimes we don’t keep back something in order to spite God.  Sometimes we are less than forthcoming in our worship because we don’t think we are worthy to worship.  Sometimes we hold back because we don’t think God would really care if we were present or not, we don’t have anything to offer, or can be of any use or value to the kingdom.  It is all for someone else, it sometimes seems to us.  Which is no doubt the thought of the woman at the well that day that Jesus came for a drink.  I’m not worthy.

That’s why the spirit.  Spirit and truth.  Spirit is about connection.  About relationship.  God is Spirit, Jesus said, that’s why we must worship in spirit.  In relationship.  It is not what we have to offer, it is that God seeks us to worship God.  “The Father seeks such as these to worship him.” Jesus said.  

It doesn’t matter that you feel like a nobody.  It doesn’t matter that everyone else treats you like a nobody.  God seeks you to worship.  To be in relationship.  You, the nobody at the well.  The nobody in your office, or on your street.  God is looking for you.  Isn’t afraid of you, of reaching out to grab hold of you, to connect with you in real and significant ways.  God wants to meet you where you live, where your hopes and dreams reside, and where your strengths and weaknesses - your successes and failures dog your heels.  That’s the you that God wants to bring into worship.  That’s the you God wants to fill, the thirst God wants to quench when we gather week by week to sing praise and encounter the word made flesh.

“Who you talking to?’  “Nobody.”  In the throne room of heaven you’ll never a conversation like that.  If asked God would always tell of the somebody who worships in spirit and in truth.  And that somebody is you.

Shalom,

Derek

From His Fulness

Did you hear the sigh of relief that echoed through at least two counties, and at least four states?  The journey that began when my father fell at his church in Paris Tennessee on March 10th of this year, and then took a turn when mom fell in my house here in Fort Wayne Indiana has now turned into the cul-de-sac at Heritage Pointe, a United Methodist Community in Warren, Indiana, just less than thirty miles south of us.  Maybe not a cul-de-sac as much as a lay-by.  Is that an American term?  I've been reading a book about England that David Carter loaned me and I’m having language problems again.  

A lay-by, a rest stop, a way station.  On the one hand, I understand that.  We aren't done.  First of all my brother and I have to go to Tennessee to get some furniture for the assisted living apartment that they will hopefully move into after a period of assessment and recuperation from Dad’s surgery (after he fell a second time and they found blood on his brain (both new blood and old blood) and his doctors decided he needed to have that drained).  I know there will be settling in and changes to come.  We aren't done with this journey of care-giving, I understand that.  But forgive me for thinking that we've reached a goal, climbed a summit of sorts, topped a hill to give us a new perspective, a new horizon to strive toward.

Because there was a moment when I was sure it wasn’t going to happen.  Sure?  No, that doesn’t sound right.  The moment was anything but sure.  It was a moment of uncertainty, a moment of despair and doubt and fear.  Things weren’t coming together the way I thought they should and deadlines were approaching and solutions weren’t forthcoming and I was afraid I had messed up.  No, that’s not it exactly.  I had that sinking feeling in the core of my being that every single decision I had made in my life was the wrong one, that because of me others would suffer and no one would come out of this morass complete or content or even resigned to what was now to be.  And there was no one to blame but me.  I had been named power of attorney, I was the one they all turned to, I was the one making the decisions - with advice from every corner to be sure, sometimes conflicting, sometimes unreasonable, sometimes impossible, but advice was given, and I no longer knew how to hold it all together.

I broke down this week, staggered by the weight of responsibility and uncertainty, of circumstance and institutional lack of communication.  And oddly enough, the straw that pushed me over was my mom.  I was sitting in her room while she told me about an incident that had happened earlier that day, interwoven with the jumbled plot of the movie she had been watching on television, and she seemed to not be sure which was more real or what they had to do with each other.  But then, as I sat there listening with the weight of responsibility pressing down on me, feeling nothing less than a total failure in this new role that had been so rudely thrust upon me, she suddenly stopped her story and looked at me.  And what an incredible look of pride and love she said, “Thank you for taking such good care of me.”

John 1:14-18   And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.  15 (John testified to him and cried out, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.'")  16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.  17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.  18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known. 

Our Follower series began last month with the first of three phases of following.  Guided by Jesus saying “I Am the Way and the Truth and the Life,” we started with the Way.  For the past month we’ve been asking ourselves if we were on the Way, if we were people of the Way, if following was a way of life.  Leonard Sweet calls this “missional living.”  Once you choose to follow Jesus you have chosen more than a path to walk, you have chosen a way to live.  Our question has been are we following Jesus’ way?

But now we shift to phase two of followership: the truth.  When Jesus says “I Am the Truth” we are inclined to think he was talking about being right.  About truth verses falsehood, right verses wrong.  To follow Jesus is to be right.  But in fact, Sweet tells us, this Truth is not a proposition, not an idea, it is a person.  When we choose to follow Jesus as the truth, we are claiming a relationship.  But not just a relationship, but a relationship that defines and shapes all our relationships.  

When we live by the truth we live in right relationship.  We live, to use a biblical term, righteously.  Righteousness has to do with being faithful, being obedient to the covenants, to the relationships we make.  It means giving yourself away in those relationships.  Losing yourself to those you love.

Which is what we saw in Jesus.  I know it seems like a lot to get from a few profoundly theological verses in the prologue of the Gospel of John, but it is in there.  At least, it is in there to be unfolded.  “The Word became flesh and lived among us,” John writes.  I liked the old word, “dwelt” among us.  It carried a significance, a depth to it.  A permanence in a way.  But in fact the word carries a vulnerability with it.  In Greek the word translates as “set up a tent” among us.  

A tent?  When I was a kid a tent was security from the out of doors terrors of a dark night.  But when I got a little older, I realized that the flimsy canvas wouldn’t slow down a hungry bear out to make a meal of me.  There is an exposure, a vulnerability to this idea.  Jesus came a set up a tent.  Not a unassailable mountaintop aerie, not a walled and moated castle, not a fortress defended, but a tent.  It is almost as if he is begging us to be in relationship with him, inviting us at every turn to find our way to him and to allow his grace to fill us.

But to do that we have to be as vulnerable as he makes himself.  We have to be open and inviting, we have to be willing, we have to be broken.  That’s that bad news that is also the good news of this faith thing we proclaim.  We have to be broken to receive it.  We have to know that it is not our power that makes us good, it is his grace.  We have to know that it is not our abilities that make us whole, it is his grace.  

While that may be difficult to swallow, it also means that is it not our failures that define us, but his grace.  It is not our inabilities and our inadequacies that determine our value, but his grace.  It is not our emptiness that marks us but his fullness.  “From His fullness we have all received grace upon grace.”  Grace for every need, grace for every moment, grace to lift us up every time we fall.  

It is only when we ware empty that we can be filled by his grace.  I broke into pieces when my mom thanked me for giving her such good care, because I knew I hadn’t, I wasn’t giving her good care, it wasn’t working, I didn’t have answers, I didn’t know what was going to be next, I was backed into a corner and ready to give up in despair.  Yet, she thanked me.  Because she loved me and she knew - somehow she knew - that I loved her and wanted nothing less than the fullness of Christ for her, in safety and care, in help and guidance, in loving hands and hearts that would minister to her in her need, just as she ministered to me and so many others in her life.

The pieces that seemed so scattered and lost earlier in the week, fell into place at last and now they are both in a place than can provide for them at this stage of their lives.  Was it a miracle?  Well, no, it was people working together around detours and obstacles to get to where we needed to be.  Which, come to think about it is nothing short of miraculous.  

No one has ever seen God, true, except that I did, in my mother who refused to let impossible circumstances stand in the way of loving.  You’ve seen it too in those who give love to you even when you don’t deserve it.  You’ve seen it too, when you choose to follow the One who is the truth.

Shalom,

Derek

Time to Make the Donuts

There was an article recently saying that the famous donut chain had no intention of reviving the famous ad campaign with the tagline “Time to make the donuts.”  According to the spokesperson, the reasoning had to do with the shift in social expectations and that the product now being pushed was no longer the donuts that gave the company its name, but the coffee and other beverages that were the real money makers these days.  And the new slogan is “American runs on ...”   

Me, I suspect that the sentimental reason why the commercial won’t be resurrected is that the actor who made the “time to make the donuts” line famous died in 2005.  Probably worked himself to death.  Actually, he retired and then didn’t last much longer.  I’ve heard that happens to some folks.  Their work was all they lived for.  And once that ends there doesn’t seem to be any reason for living.  Work defined them.  We are what we do.

Except that sometimes what we do wears us out.  Like the donut maker, you meet yourself coming and going.  You feel stretched, you feel used up.  You feel as though you can’t do anything right, even though you have lots of things to do.  Work defeats us.  We are what we don’t do well.

Which is it?  Or does it shift from one to the other depending on circumstances or our moods.  Do we measure ourselves by our essence or our ability to produce?  Is there some intrinsic value to our lives or is it only in our doing, in our work that we find meaning?  And most importantly, how did we get so deep so quickly?  One minute we were talking a fictitious donut maker and the next we are hip deep in philosophy.  How do these things happen?

I blame Jesus.  Well, Jesus and Peter to be precise.  Our “I Am a Follower” series continues with a seaside, breakfast conversation.  And as with most conversations with Jesus, it gets deeper than you realize before we are ready. 

John 21:15-25  When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my lambs."  16 A second time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Tend my sheep."  17 He said to him the third time, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, "Do you love me?" And he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep.  18 Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go."  19 (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, "Follow me."  20 Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them; he was the one who had reclined next to Jesus at the supper and had said, "Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?"  21 When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, "Lord, what about him?"  22 Jesus said to him, "If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!"  23 So the rumor spread in the community that this disciple would not die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but, "If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?"  24 This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true.  25 But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. 

I left in the little bit at the end of the Gospel, even though it isn’t what we are talking about here.  I just like that little tangent that doesn’t really tell us anything, except perhaps trying to point fingers at John the Apostle.  But I especially like the final verse which says there is always more, more to say, more to do, more that we don’t know about how all this works, about who he is and was.  We, because of John 21:25 are never allowed to say we know everything there is to know about Jesus.

“There are many other things that Jesus did.”  So, what do we do?  He was always working, so are we to be always working? It seems beyond our meager capabilities to work as he worked.  Maybe we aren’t the workers in the vineyard that he was seeking after all.  Maybe we are onlookers at best, bystanders, not workers in the end.

Or maybe we just don’t understand the work required.  Maybe we just don’t know what it is that we are supposed to do or to be.

That seemed to be Peter’s problem.  He knew, or thought he did, but now he’s not so sure.  He’d been through a rough patch to say the least.  He tried to follow, at a distance, but what he saw he knew he didn’t want anything to do with.  When all seemed lost, he went fishing.  Oh, he had a moment when he ran to the empty tomb, but he didn’t have a clue what it meant, and was just as afraid that it would be bad news as he was that it would be good.  So, he went fishing.  Seemed like a good idea.

Well, you’ll have to read the first part of the story to see what happened next.  It was another fish miracle that didn’t have anything to do with fish.  He had a moment of certainty and jumped out of yet another boat to walk through water to get to his Lord.  He sat in the chill light of dawn to eat breakfast, and he was still gulping down a bit of grilled fish that somehow got stuck in his throat as our scene begins.

“Do you love me more than these?”  These what?  These fish?  These other disciples?  These failures too many to count?  These what?  Simon, son of John, not Peter, not the name that he bore like a gold star from one of the few moments when Peter did something right.  But Simon, son of John.  Like it was a legal transaction.  Like he was being asked to sign on the dotted line, like he was being hired.

Feed my sheep.  That’s the job he was signing up for.  That was the work to which he was called.  Time to make the donuts, Peter.  Feed my lambs.  Tend my sheep. OK, fine, sure, no problem.  Um, how?

It’s not that we don’t want to work.  We just don’t know how, or what to do, or when to step in and get involved and when to keep away and stay pure and unstained from the world.  We are given so many different instructions that we are almost inert in our indecision.  And like Peter we hear Jesus’ relentless question “Do you love me?”

We want to, I’m confident of that.  We want to love him, because we know that he has the words of life, because we know that he has the key, he has the life.  We want to love him ... and we do, as best we can.  The tending thing is difficult work, though, and get weary in well doing.  And sometimes we work almost against our will.  We work because it is within us to work.  We stretch out our hands and we are taken where we do not wish to go.  

Feeding sheep is hard work.  It seems like they are always hungry, always needy.  But we go, we feed, we tend, we love because that is what all this means, we love as we tend the sheep, we love as we see the neighbor bruised and bleeding along the side of the road, we love even when faced with the ones who let us down, who deny us and betray us, we love even when we encounter the ones we don’t think we would ever be able to love.  Because in the end it isn’t our love that drives us, it is His.  He doesn’t say to Peter, do you love them?  He says do you love me?  

Because he knows that unless we are filled up with love - heart and soul and mind and strength - for Christ our Savior, we will never be able to love those we call neighbor ... or better, the ones He calls our neighbor.  He knows that without being driven by an all consuming love for the Lord of life, we will never be able to drag our selves out of our beds in order to get to work.  And there is work to be done.

Time to make the donuts.

Shalom,

Derek

Where I Am

The cat threw up this morning.  Yeah, well, it might seem unsavory to read first thing out of the chute, but it was much worse to wake up to that sound.  Non-cat people don’t have a clue, but cats have a way of announcing to the world that they are going to throw up.  It is not a sound you can sleep through, believe me.

The problem was that this morning La Donna had to get ready and leave at o’dark thirty for a meeting about Mission U (that’s the new name for School of Christian Mission ...  yeah, ...  me too).  Which meant I was on pet duty this Saturday.  I had to get up earlier than I really wanted to in order to walk the crazy dogs and get their day started.  And it also meant that there wasn’t anyone else to respond to the call of the wild from our three legged cat Hairy (yeah, well, he’s ... hairy) at whatever time it was.  Oh, I could have waited for Maddie to clean it up, but since it was happening right beside my bed and I wasn’t likely to see her before your lunch date at noon, I figured I needed to take care of it.

Didn’t really want to.  Just sayin’.  But you probably assumed that.  I mean who would?  That’s not the kind of thing you get up to take care of because you want to.  It definitely falls into the “have to” category.  Don’t you think?  Along with a whole long list of other things we could mention.  Most of which aren’t suitable for publication.  At least since someone could be reading this at meal time.  Our lives seem to be full of the kind of thing from which we want to keep our distance.

Which is what I thought about when I chose the text for this week.  We’ve been going full steam into this following thing.  Embracing the joy of being close to Christ.  Calling for surrender for the sake of the joy.  And there is joy in following.  But there is also struggle, there is also sacrifice.  Jesus never seduced his followers by telling them how easy it was going to be.  He was often painfully blunt about the hazards that await.  It makes it hard to go along.  Makes it hard to want to follow. 

John 12:20-33  Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks.  21 They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus."  22 Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus.  23 Jesus answered them, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.  24 Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.  25 Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.  26 Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.  27 "Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say-- 'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.  28 Father, glorify your name." Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again."  29 The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, "An angel has spoken to him."  30 Jesus answered, "This voice has come for your sake, not for mine.  31 Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.  32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself."  33 He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. 

What happened to the Greeks?  They just disappeared from the story.  They told Philip that they wished to see Jesus.  Philip told Andrew and the two of them went to Jesus.  Jesus answered them.  Really?  That was an answer?  What was the question?  Jesus takes this moment of potential hospitality and turns it into an invitation to die.  “The hour has come,” he says.  Why because a couple of tourists from Greece show up?  

Well, sort of.  Step outside the action for a moment.  For John there are always layers of meaning.  Yeah, it seems a bit clumsy in terms of action, Greeks show up and are never heard from again.  But on another level, they represent the world.  They represent the rest of the world that is clamoring to see Jesus.  Jesus has been limited by geography and by history.  He has been confined to a little plot of ground and a group of people.  But now knows that his mission is to go to all the world.  Philip and Andrew see two nondescript tourists who want to see Jesus.  Jesus hears a world crying out in need.

And he is ready to go.  Even though he knows how this is going to have to happen.  It is for this reason that I came, he declares to a bewildered couple of followers who aren’t quite sure where he is going.  To move beyond the limitations of the flesh.  To step outside the confines of time.  To reach beyond the span of my arms.  They can only go so far.  And to show them he stretched them out.  See, he told them that quiet afternoon, see, how can I embrace the whole world with arms that only go so far?

That’s my son, came the voice from above.  That’s what it meant anyway.  Father, glorify your name, declares Jesus.  I did, says the Voice.  I did in you, I did when you became flesh and dwelt among them.  I did glorify my name in the life that you lived and the words that you spoke and the deeds that you did.  I was glorified in your every act, in the breaths you drew, in the light you showed forth.  And, there must have been a pause here, I will glorify my name again.  There had to be a hush in the heavens as those words were spoken.  A divine hesitation before declaring what was to come.  I will glorify my name again, the Voice whispered, the Voice thundered, the Voice wept in the gentle rain that fell.

What was that, the folks standing around wondered?  A sudden rumble of thunder, and few drops of tear-shaped rain.  Maybe, some ventured, maybe it was an angel speaking to him.  Jesus smiled that wistful smile as they once again missed the point, and said, the Voice was for you, not for me.  To ask you to raise your eyes and see beyond yourself, see something more significant, see the big picture.  The Voice was confirmation that I will indeed be lifted up, hung on a cross to die so that I can live.  To die so that you can live.

See, I skipped over that little bit in there.  Went from vanishing Greeks to Jesus conversation with God about his true purpose, his burden and his joy.  Skipped right over the middle bit where he talks to us.  Where he invited us to follow him.  Invited us to hate our lives.

Excuse me?  Why would the one who came that we might have life now want us to hate it?  Seems counterintuitive to say the least.  OK, he doesn’t really want us to hate living, doesn’t want us to despise ourselves and run around beating our breast and ringing our bells and calling ourselves unclean.  What he wants is for us to hold our lives lightly.  To hold ourselves lightly.  It is not all about us, despite what various and sundry advertisers what us to believe.  It is about something bigger than ourselves.  It is about giving ourselves over to a larger truth, a deeper reality, a more profound life than the one we find at the end of our noses and fingertips.  He wants us to extend our reach, just like he is about to extend his.

In fact he says that very thing.  “Where I am, there my servant will be also.”  Where he is when he says that is looking at giving his life away for something bigger than his own flesh and blood.  And that is exactly where he wants us to be.  Living beyond ourselves, living more deeply, living through surrender, living through giving ourselves away.  We can find our lives by holding them lightly enough to lose them - not always physically.  You know that something really profound is going on when you lose track of time, lose track of yourself because you are wrapped up in something beyond you.  It might be art or beauty, it might be nature in its wonder and majesty, in its terror and power, it might be in the love and laughter of a soul friend, it might be the tears shed in sympathy with one you call brother or sister.  But you can lose yourself, if you learn to let go.  To hold yourself lightly.

And then even cats with digestive issues can’t derail your desire to embrace what God gifts upon you and those you love.  Hold your life lightly, and you’ll be where He is.

Shalom,

Derek

No Place Like ...

Home is a contentious subject around here these days.  For those who haven’t heard, my mom and dad are in Fort Wayne.  Long story, but mom is in rehab for a hip she broke the day after she got here.  Dad is staying with us when he isn't staying with mom.  But mostly he is wanting to go home.  To get mom and take her home.  He feels unmoored somehow.  Like he can’t figure out what to do with himself.  He stands in the middle of the kitchen, usually when La Donna is trying to work in there, like he is trying to remember what he was going to do.  Or maybe even who he used to be.

He just wants to go home.  And even my sister and brother think I’m being mean to him because I don’t think it is a good idea for them to be going back to the house in Paris Tennessee where they have lived for about 33 years off and on.  Far longer than they lived anywhere else.  Dad was a pastor and therefore moved around from place to place, even more often than I do, I think.  But he walked away from that itinerant life and settled down in a house that should have been bulldozed and rebuilt from scratch, instead he worked on it piecemeal mostly on his own until it was almost liveable.  He was quite proud of it, to say the least.  Until the fire.

Long story, but someone with a grudge broke in and set it ablaze while he and mom were up in Fort Wayne a few Christmases ago.  It had to be completely gutted and rebuilt inside.  By professionals, the insurance company insisted upon it or they wouldn’t pay.  So, he submitted to that and let them rebuild.  Of course he grumbled about it, says he could have done a better job.  Doesn’t like this or that, isn’t quite the same.  Hasn’t felt right to him.  Until now.

It would be more right than here.  This is my home, not his.  He doesn’t live here, he is a guest.  And he makes a terrible guest.  Mostly because he doesn’t want to be here.  So, he spent most of the time at rehab with mom.  Until he got on their nerves too.  They said for mom’s sake he shouldn’t be there all day long.  So, now he is here more.  And wanting to go home.  He doesn’t say it all the time, but it is there in distant stare of his eyes, in the slump of his shoulders, in the inability to find anything to do.

Settle down, it'll all be clear / Don't pay no mind to the demons / They fill you with fear / The trouble it might drag you down / If you get lost, you can always be found ... Phillip Phillips has probably made a mint on the song called “Home.”  It was the theme song for the USA women’s Olympic gymnastics team last summer and has been used in every other commercial you hear on TV.  They say he didn't like it at first, didn't want to sing it.  Mostly because it wasn't his song, he prefers the ones he writes himself supposedly.  But I think he has made his peace with this one.  It has become his signature song. He probably will never do a concert and not sing Home, fans would demand their money back.

It is a good song, but it has become a phenomenon.  In a uncertain age, to sing about home has captured everyone’s attention.  It touches something deep within us.  Some longing, some hope that almost goes beyond words.  Home. Family.  Roots, settle down, put your feet up.  Make yourself at home.

Funny how Jesus seems so anti all those things.  Wait. What?  Really?  You’d think that he’d be in favor of that.  Of helping us to get home, to find where we belong.  To find where we relate, fit in, are known.  Isn’t he?  Isn’t that what this faith thing is all about?  Finding ourselves?  Arriving at home, at last?  

Well, you’d think so.  And he does do all those things, will all those things for us.  But his description of that is different than ours.  His methodology of finding, seems almost like losing.  His depiction of arriving sounds more like journeying.  We want to be settlers, He wants us to be pilgrims.  

Luke 9:57-62  As they were going along the road, someone said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go."  58 And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head."  59 To another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father."  60 But Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God."  61 Another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home."  62 Jesus said to him, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."  

Sometimes even home isn’t home.  The unreachable destination, the unrealized dream, the undiscovered country. Are we supposed to feel sorry for him with that foxes and birds thing?  Are we really supposed to leave our parents to deal with their own end of life issues?  Are we really just supposed to slip away, rudely, as though the people who know us best aren’t important enough to even bid farewell?

You know, this setting the face thing can be a real pain in the associations.  The Samaritans didn’t want to deal with him because of it.  Ticked off the disciples too, they wanted to call down fire to burn them all up.  Everyone seems to be a bit on edge in chapter nine of the Gospel of Luke.  It’s like everyone just needs to go home.  Go home and settle down.  Go home and calm yourself.  Maybe if Jesus just lightened up a bit...

We don’t like the edge Jesus puts on things at times.  We don’t like the demand part of the faith, the commitment part.  We like the grace part, and we often interpret that as anything goes, as long as your heart is in the right place. We like the be like little children command rather than the be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.  That must have been a bad day for Jesus.  The folks who came alongside must have felt like they caught Jesus on a bad day.  Understandable, really, since he was heading to Jerusalem to die a difficult death, after all.  So, we can forgive his curt responses, his heavy handed demands. He was a man without a home, so he was anxious to get back to where he belonged, back into the arms of the Father.

On the other hand, maybe he wasn’t just short tempered, caught in a bad moment.  Maybe he knows something he desperately wants us to know.  And that is that home is never found by standing still, or even less by going back.  Who said that you can’t go home again?  Might as well have been Jesus.  It is never back there.  It is never found through nostalgia, through wishing that is was like the good old days that never were.  Except in our fractured memories.  

And the other thing he wants to tell us here is that home isn’t a place as much as a relationship.  The first eager follower would have been better to simply say “I will follow you.”  By adding in the “wherever you go” it became about the destination, not about the journey.  I became about place and not about the commitment to follow the Word made flesh.  The other two?  They wanted a both/and.  They wanted to follow, but wanted to stay behind at the same time.  They wanted to divide their focus, a little bit here and a little bit there.  I want to follow, and will follow, but I’ve got responsibilities, so as soon as get my life under control, I’ll be back.  I’ve got lots of relationships, as soon as I get them in order, I’ll be back.

I wonder if the second one had simply said, yes I’ll follow you, if Jesus would have sent him back to care for his father.  Having made the commitment to be in relationship with Christ, then all our other relationships and responsibilities become even more vital, even more pressing.  Because now it is in the light of Christ that we fulfill these other duties.  It is in the light of Christ that we serve and love and create home.

Hold on, to me as we go / As we roll down this unfamiliar road / And although this wave is stringing us along / Just know you're not alone / Cause I'm gonna make this place your home ...  Home has always been a moveable feast.  Not this place or that place, but the accommodation created when followers journey together for a time.  There’s no place like it.

Shalom,

Derek

I Have Decided

“Just pick one, sweetpea, any one.”  That is one of my most well used lines.  “Just pick one.”  Usually to Maddie, she hates making decisions.  But it is a family trait.  Try getting this bunch to choose where to eat when we decide to go out.  And sometimes we decide to go out because someone (who shall remain nameless) can’t decide what to fix for supper.  She loves to cook, but hates to decide.  Making the menu is the tedious part.  The choosing, the deciding.  That’s hard stuff.

Well, sometimes.  Some decisions are easy. ... Um ... Can’t think of any at the moment.  But surely there are some that are.  Or maybe they are just easy for some people.  There are the deciders in our midst, it has been said.  There are those who know how to choose.  

Like Levi.  Wow, already we are getting to the text?  Who made that decision?  Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.  But I can put it off for a while, if you aren’t quite ready.  Don’t want to rush these things, gotta keep our options open.  Don’t you think?  Or do you?  I don’t know for sure.  Maybe.  Sort of.

Not Levi, so equivocating.  No weighing the options, analyzing the pros and cons, no sleeping on it.  No the choosing moment comes and he leaps ... unlookingly.  Unlookishly?  He grabbed his chance, he carped his diem. It just seemed to fit him - no wonder they named those jeans after him - so he went with it.  Go Levi, go.

Luke 5:27-39   After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, "Follow me."  28 And he got up, left everything, and followed him.  29 Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house; and there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others sitting at the table with them.  30 The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?"  31 Jesus answered, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick;  32 I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance."  33 Then they said to him, "John's disciples, like the disciples of the Pharisees, frequently fast and pray, but your disciples eat and drink.  34 Jesus said to them, "You cannot make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you?  35 The days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days."  36 He also told them a parable: "No one tears a piece from a new garment and sews it on an old garment; otherwise the new will be torn, and the piece from the new will not match the old.  37 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed.  38 But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.  39 And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine, but says, 'The old is good.'"  

Just like now, in Jesus’ day there were taxes and there were taxes.  There were the taxes everyone paid, like a land tax or a poll tax - taxes for living and for owning.  Those taxes were collected by polite visitors to your door, usually accompanied by large assistants with kneecapping experience.  So you paid them.  Then there was the temple tax, paid every time you visited the temple to worship or make sacrifice.  And you paid those taxes with joy since it was part of your obligation to God, a way of expressing your faith, of being reminded that everything you have belongs to God.  Those were collected at the temple.

But then there were the business taxes.  Or the taxes for the privilege of doing business.  Excise taxes, sales taxes, custom tax, transaction taxes.  These were taxes you had to pay in order to buy and sell.  These taxes were collected by a guy sitting in a booth in the middle of marketplace.  You couldn’t get around him, you couldn’t set up your stall without proof that you have paid the right tax.  You couldn’t take home your purchases without showing that you had paid the right tax.  You had to have the mark, the right paperwork, the proof.  

The tricky thing is that while the property and poll taxes were collected by Romans - the government; and the temple tax was collected by Jewish officials, priests and Levites; the business tax collector was a collaborator.  It was a Jew who worked for the Romans.  And to get this job you had to pay Rome ahead of time whatever they calculated the tax would be for that region, and then you could collect whatever you could squeeze out of folks as they went about their business.  Naturally, these tax collectors were not often on the invites of the A-lister parties in town.  Sure, they made a good living, but it was on the backs of their neighbors and not-likely-to-ever-be friends.  It was a lonely job, well paying, but lonely.  This was Zacchaeus - that wee little man.  Remember him?  This was Levi, who didn’t have to climb a tree.

Because one day, striding right up to his booth there in the marketplace, came a rabbi of sorts.  Of sorts because he didn’t act like any rabbi anyone had ever met before.  Rabbis tended to be standoffish sorts, behind closed doors, or in obscure corners.  If you wanted to be a disciple of these rabbis it took persistence, knocking on their door, showing your earnestness, your willingness, your ability to sacrifice.  They certainly didn’t come walking up to busy people in tax booths and look them right in the eye and say “Follow me.”

Surely there was more to it than that.  Surely Jesus had brochures printed up about the benefits of on his team, a mission statement, core values, a fancy logo and a detailed listing of the benefits.  He must have negotiated with Levi, asked him if he was happy in his job of making people unhappy, told him what he needed to bring on this filed trip, gave him a chance to call his associate in training and let him take over the booth, since there was a long line of grumpy people wanting to hand over fistfulls of cash so they could get on with their business.

But no.  That isn’t how it happened.  A two word question and a snap decision in hot dusty Mediterranean village in the middle of the day.  “Follow me.”  “And he got up, left everything, and followed him.”  Just like that.  I have decided to follow Jesus.  Maybe he was primed, by a dead end job that made him the whipping boy of the whole community.  Maybe he was considering making a break for it and Jesus showed up at just the right time, caught him on a good day, or a specially bad one and leaving behind the tax booth was what he had been dreaming of doing anyway.  Jesus was an answer to prayer, perhaps, that is why he was so ready to go, why he threw a party and invited all of his other outcast friends to join him.

Maybe.  Or maybe this has less to do with what he might have been leaving behind and everything to do with what he about to embrace.  Jesus’ conversation with the Pharisees is about looking forward, not about looking back.  It is about living in the joy that He brings.  It is about getting drunk on the new wine of a different way to live and a deeper way to worship, rather than clinging to old patterns out of habit or preferences.  Or fear.  It is a scary thing to choose Christ, everything is different.  Everything you thought you were living for suddenly becomes excess baggage, the stuff you leave behind in your booth when you stride off the follow Him.  

There are some who think that we mainliners, we who grew up in the faith never really made a choice.  That’s why our worship is somewhat dull, not like the party going on at Levi’s house.  That when we joined the church is was a kind of more of the same sort of deal.  We didn’t leave behind anything, we didn’t get up and walk, we didn’t hear the call and decide to follow.  That explains a lack of commitment, a lack of passion.  It is a good idea, we think, to follow, but it isn’t really a life and death kind of thing.  We have decided to follow Jesus, yes, but we rarely go on and sing “no turning back, no turning back.”  There are always options, other routes to take, other voices to follow, and if we choose something else for now, we’ll be back.  Leave the light on for us, and don’t change anything.

I don’t know whether that is true, it seems unfair.  It seems to not acknowledge a deep, sincere but quiet faith.  We don’t all have to jump around, do we?  Which reminds me, verse 28 says Levi got up and followed.  That “got up” was just used two verses earlier, the same word in Greek, to describe the paralyzed man who was healed.  Levi got up from his paralysis to follow.  How about you, paralysis or following?  Have you decided?

Shalom,

Derek