Rebuking the Winds

Got enough water yet?  It’s a particularly wet June here in Indiana, for those few readers who aren’t from these parts. Wet, humid, damp, soggy, water-logged, flooded basements, dogs who won’t go out even when they have to; it’s just messy.  And it drains you.  Ha.  Ironic, don’t you think?  All that water and we’re drained.  Swirling around the plumbing, spilling out into the water table, swept away in the flood, adrift on the tides of time and daily living and all the million choices that come to us each day.  And we are afraid.  Afraid we’ve chosen wrong.  Afraid we’re on the wrong path.  Afraid we’re misunderstood or worse, not even known, not even seen, just invisible, overlooked, not even real any more, just a figment of our own imagination.

See?  The rain carries us away.  The storms sweep us out to the sea of our fearful imagination.  Oh, I know we don’t live there.  Most of us anyway.  Most of the time when someone asks “how are you?” and we say “fine” we really mean it.  It isn’t a lie, or a way of hiding.  We really are fine.  We’ve got stuff to do, our desks are piled up, the bills keep coming, our kids are making decisions we don’t quite understand, but we’re fine.  Really.  We’ve got that coworker who seems to have it in for us, that teacher that seems unreasonably harsh, the boss that can’t quite see our potential, and Donald Trump is seriously running for president, but we’re fine.  Really.  Aren’t we?  Yes, certainly.  We’re fine.

Until the storms come.  The ominous signs as the car you hoped to keep another few thousand miles before trading in suddenly sounds thunder on the horizon.  The lightning flash of a bill you weren’t expecting from that last little trip to the doctor that you kept insisting was nothing serious crackles across a bank account already stressed by college and mortgage and too many other things to consider.  A cloudburst in South Carolina that somehow drenches us all no matter how much we try to say that it is them and not us.  And we’re afraid.  In the midst of the storms we are afraid.  And it has been an exceptionally stormy June, or 2015, or life.  Exceptionally.  And like the disciples, our deepest fear is that no one cares.

Mark 4:35-41  On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, "Let us go across to the other side."  36 And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him.  37 A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped.  38 But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?"  39 He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.  40 He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?"  41 And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" 

Leaving the crowd behind.  Not every problem solved, not every need met.  But Jesus needed a break, needed a change.  He decided to head off in a different direction.  So, they got on a boat.  “They took him, just as he was.”  As he was?  Unpacked?  Unprepared for a sea voyage?  Or exhausted, spent, used up?  They took him just as he was.  And who was that exactly?

See, that’s the secret to the Gospel of Mark.  It’s all about identity.  Who is this Jesus?  I mean really, who is He?  They thought they knew.  They took the Jesus the knew and found the Son of God they hadn’t met yet.  They took the healer and teacher, and found the Lord of the wind and waves.  They took what they knew and didn’t know what they had.

A storm came up.  Because they do.  They will.  Nowhere in the whole of the bible is there a promise that there will be no storms.  Well, until the kingdom comes that is.  Then the storms will cease and calm will prevail.  But for now?  A storm came up.  Not just a storm.  A “great windstorm” Mark says.  Waves beating on the side of the boat, like the shark from Jaws.  And the boat was taking on water.  They were experienced fishermen, some of them anyway, they knew storms, they weathered a lot of them.  But this one, well, this one was big, a perfect storm.  More than they could handle.  They tried, give them credit, they tried.  For who knows how long, in the night, in the wind and the spray, they were soaked to the skin, they were sore and bleeding from holding the ropes that the storm tried to turn into lashes, into the tentacles of some leviathan from the deep.  They tried, but it was beyond them.  With wide eyes they looked around, finally their eyes landed on the figure in the back of the boat, asleep on a cushion.  And their fear whispered in their ears, what kind of savior is that?  How dare he sleep when you are about to die?  You saw him do those miracles, didn’t you?  And now, what?  Nothing.  Snoring louder than the roaring winds.  He won’t even know when the boat takes on so much water that it won’t even float anymore.  He won’t be there to help you bail in a fruitless attempt to save yourselves.  In a moment or two, the next wave or the one after that and he’ll be sleeping with the fishes.  With you.

They were angry, scared and angry, terrified and hopeless and angry.  They rushed to the stern and shook him.  Notice what their fear has done.  They don’t ask for help.  They don’t ask for hope.  Don’t you care?  They accuse him of abandoning them in their hour of need.  Don’t you care that we are about to die! 

Isn’t that the way?  He isn’t doing what we want, he must not care.  She doesn’t help the way I want to be helped she doesn’t care.  We didn’t get what we wanted when we wanted it, no one cares about us.  We accuse, we divide, we pull back, turn away.  Because they didn’t care.  Jesus didn’t care.  If he did he wouldn’t be sleeping like, well like he didn’t care.  Didn’t have a care.  Like there was nothing to worry about.

“If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.  9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.” (Romans 14:8-9)   Paul wrote that.  But then he was crazy.  Didn’t he care?  He seems to say there isn’t anything to fear.  That there is One who cares for us no matter what.  No matter what we face, no matter the pain we bear or the grief we suffer, he cares.  Don’t you care?  What kind of question was that?  

A question from those who didn’t know him.  Didn’t really know him.  Him, the Lord of creation, the Son of God.  Jesus doesn’t respond to their complaint, their whining, he turns and deals with the storm.  “Peace!  Be still!”  A little kind and gentle translation.  He shouts at the storm “Shut up!”  Stop your blowing and raging and threatening!  Just stop it.  Go back to where you came from.  Where you came from?  Where do storms come from?  Well, a meteorologist could answer that better than I could.  For normal storms anyway.  This one wasn’t normal.  

Jesus’ words are the same words he said in the first chapter when telling the demon to shut up and get out.  We usually translate them differently - be still and be silent, but it’s the same word.  This was a demon storm.  The kind that need rebuking.  The kind that need rejected, need to be told to get out and never come back again.  The storm of racism broke over us all again this week.  And those winds need to be rebuked, to be cast out, named and denounced.  We can’t simply say it was one man, maybe with mental issues who killed nine people far away.  This storm raises our fears and we wonder if we will go under the waves.  Don’t you care, we shout to the one who should have fixed us by now.  Don’t you care that there are threads of hatred that bind all of our hearts?  Set us free!  Keep us safe!  Make us good all the time.  Don’t you care that we have to work so hard, that we have to fight through the storm?  

Have you still no faith?  Still?  How long, O Lord?  We’re waiting to be made strong enough to stand and rebuke the winds with Him.  He’s wondering why we don’t just claim the freedom and the gift we’ve already been given.  We’re waiting for something big to happen, He says there isn’t anything bigger than life eternal, life abundant.  What are you afraid of?  A storm?  That’s nothing.  The winds? All it can do is take away stuff, all it can do is shake our confidence in our own power, all it can do is remove the feeble assumptions we try to live by - like we are in control of our destiny, like we are better or stronger than those who aren’t like us, like our strength is found in armies or governments, like our value is found in what we can do with our own hands.  Have you still no faith?  

Some wind needs rebuking, some storms need facing, not with fear but with hope.  Hope that we, with Him, can stand for something greater than hatred and fear.  Hope in the faith that says there is something more than safety and ease.  Something like reconciliation, like community, like church.  The church, that boat swept along in the waters of a changing world, seemingly too fragile to survive the storms around and within.  But we’ll be OK.  See, I looked in the back, at the one sleeping on a cushion.  The Lord of creation is on board.  It is well with our souls.

Shalom, 

Derek 

Out at Home

Jesus went home.  He named his inner circle of disciples and went home.  Called it a day.  Well, he healed a man, on the Sabbath it turns out and got into a mess of trouble and then called the inner circle and went home.  The last time he was home, someone tore a hole in his roof and lowered a paralyzed man into the living room.  Then he called a friend, had a party - got called out for that one too, went on a hike with his new friends and they plucked some grain from a field they were wandering through and got in trouble for that (reaping on the Sabbath - not stealing grain, oddly enough), then healed a man and called his inner circle and went home.  Before that he got baptized and spent some time alone in the wilderness, cast out some demons, some of whom seemed to recognize him but he told them to keep quiet about it and he healed and walked and found need everywhere he went.  Tried to go home and lost his roof, attended a few parties and did the grain thing, the Sabbath thing, called his inner circle and went home.

That’s where we start this week.  He went home.  Except it wasn’t home.  Other translations don’t say home.  One says he entered a house.  Or the place he was staying.  In other gospels he says he doesn’t have a home.  But maybe that’s after he tried to go.  Maybe that is the result of finding that homes isn’t the haven you hoped it would be.

For those of us who move frequently, home is an elusive concept.  People often ask for a home town.  There are lots of markers I can name, place of birth, where I graduated from high school, where we got married, where the kids came, but home?  That’s harder.  Home is a now thing, though.  I’m home now writing this.  In our temporary apartment in between places to live, feeling a little crowded, trying to figure out boundaries and rules, which has as much to do with the people as the place; kids who aren’t kids anymore and parents who live most of the year without them and now love them but find them annoying at times. Everyone has to change, to accommodate, to make room when there isn’t room to be made.  Jesus went home.  And his family tried to restrain him and his neighbors tried to call him out.  Welcome home Jesus.

Mark 3:19 - 35  Then he went home;  20 and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat.  21 When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, "He has gone out of his mind."  22 And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, "He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons."  23 And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, "How can Satan cast out Satan?  24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.  25 And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.  26 And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come.  27 But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.  28 "Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter;  29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin"--  30 for they had said, "He has an unclean spirit."  31 Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him.  32 A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, "Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you."  33 And he replied, "Who are my mother and my brothers?"  34 And looking at those who sat around him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers!  35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother."

He went home and found a family who thought he was crazy.  He was used to dealing with those who thought he was crazy.  Par for the course these days.  Mark follows one of his standard literary habits and makes a sandwich story.  He starts one story and then interrupts it for another story and then comes back to the story he started.  The family comes in with a straight jacket and prescription drugs to see if they can save him from himself.  But before they get there, a battalion of scribes come marching down the hill from Jerusalem, and they set up siege against the house where Jesus is, pointing fingers and calling names.  They brought out the heavy artillery for this one.  He’s not just crazy, they shout at passers by, he’s possessed.  And not just some low level demonic presence, he’s got the top dog, the prince of demons - Beelzebul!  Whoever that is.  A prince, they say.  There are a lot of demonic names that have power.  They get all mixed up in history, One of those names is “Baalzebub” which actually translates as Baal (or Lord) of the Flies.  Creepy.  Literary, but creepy.

Anyway, the fighting scribes of Jerusalem are pretty convinced they got him this time.  All these things he can do... See, that’s the crux of the problem here.  Jesus’ reputation is growing, the healing, the teaching - people keep commenting on his authority - the crowds are flocking to his side, to hear his words, to reach for his touch, to let his shadow pass over them.  The scribes are seeing their q-rating dwindle and they don’t like it.  So, they come and set up a press conference outside the house where Jesus is and say “sure he can do all this stuff, fancy stuff, unexplainable stuff, but it is because he is using black magic!  He is consorting with demons!!”  

Notice they don’t approach Jesus.  That doesn’t work so well for them.  So, they are trying to attack his reputation instead.  If they can just get enough of the goggle eyed crowd to stop and think for a moment, they can chip away at his status.   

But Mark says that he confronted them.  He wouldn’t let them shout from the sidelines, he called them in and then parabled them.  Is that a word?  No, it isn’t, but it fits.  He spoke to them in parables.  Now, we think that means he told them stories.  A parable is a story, right?  Well, that’s how we usually think of them, but not really.  The word parable literally means throw alongside.  Sometimes a story is thrown alongside a question and we puzzle out an answer.  Like “who is my neighbor?”  “A man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho and he fell among robbers.”  But sometimes it isn’t a story, it’s an idea, or an image.  In this case it is an argument, a logical discussion that gets thrown alongside the accusations.  

“He is working with Satan!”  Think about it, Jesus says, does that make sense?  I’m dismantling Satan’s kingdom, threatening Satan’s power.  You think I’m working for his team?  I’ve tied him up and am plundering what used to be thought of as his house!  I’m claiming the treasure he has stolen back, the treasure which is you.  All of you.  Who really belong to God.  You are a part of God’s family.

Family.  Then someone remembers that he was supposed to tell Jesus about the family that has come for Him.  “Hey Jesus, your mom is here.  Your brothers and sisters are here.  They want you.  You’ve broken curfew.  You’ve soiled the family name.  You need to get home and have some sense knocked back into you.  They say.”  

Jesus smiled and said, “family.  My family is here already.”  It sounds mean to our ears.  Like he was divorcing the group he grew up with, the mother who gave him birth.  You don’t count, we hear, you aren’t important.  And I don’t want to blunt the words too much, there is a hard edge to what he is saying here.  But it is not so much a dismissal of his family as it is a statement of inclusion.  The family, those to whom we owe allegiance and honor and welcome and love, above all love, is not a small circle but an almost unimaginably large one.  Any who love  God with all their heart and soul and mind and strength.  That’s the family.  

That’s home.  We don’t leave home to come to church, we leave home in one sense to go home in another sense.  And wherever we gather with those who love God we are at home.  So we should greet one another not with I’m glad you came, but with welcome home.

They called him out at home, his family, those afraid for him, perhaps even afraid of him.  They called him out.  But he knew, because he understands home and family better than we do, he knew he was safe.  Safe at home.

Welcome home.  

Shalom, 

Derek 

How Can These Things Be?

Just back from Annual Conference.  OK, not just, a little while ago this afternoon.  We skipped out a hair early, but just a hair.  I attended almost all of the required and recommended sessions.  As I always do.  Though my ears were bleeding and my eyes were going closed more often than I like to admit.  I was there.  Sort of.  In body.  My recurring thought during most of the presentations was “These people make a living talking?”  I mean surely there is a better, more interesting way to make some of these presentations.  The preaching professor in me recoiled more often than is healthy.  

Oh, there were a few bright spots, a few good words.  Some worship and music, some fellowship and reconnecting.  It was not a total waste of time. But don’t let it out that I said that, it would threaten my curmudgeon status that I’ve worked so hard to cultivate.  Yes, Virginia, there are good reasons for getting old. 

But good speakers or bad, the ones that normally set your teeth on edge were not the ones on the platform, but the ones from the floor.  The ones who jumped up to ask a question.  Oh, Lord, a question.  Can we drag this out even more?  Can we add to the tedium of a three day business meeting?  Please keep your questions to yourself.  Or ask them discretely, behind closed doors, on your time and not on mine.  Can we just move this along?  Please?

I wonder if the others who gathered around Jesus on that dark night wondered the very same thing when a Pharisee came up with questions that made Jesus roll his eyes.  You know the story.  I contains the most familiar verse in the whole New Testament, if not the whole Bible.  For God so loved.  Well, read it yourself.  

John 3:1-17  Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews.  2 He came to Jesus by night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God."  3 Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above."  4 Nicodemus said to him, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?"  5 Jesus answered, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.  6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.  7 Do not be astonished that I said to you, 'You must be born from above.'  8 The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."  9 Nicodemus said to him, "How can these things be?"  10 Jesus answered him, "Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?  11 "Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony.  12 If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?  13 No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.  14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,  15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.  16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.  17 "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 

Did Nicodemus come with a question?  Or did he come to score points?  “We know that you are a teacher who has come from God,” he bombasts right in Jesus’ face.  We know who you are.  We’ve got you pegged.  We’ve caught, tagged and are releasing you back into the wild so that we can track your movements through our community.  And then we’ll make a determination as to whether you are an invasive species come to wreak havoc on our ecosphere!

Am I being hard on Nicodemus?  Maybe.  Maybe it was more open than that, more innocent than that?  Maybe.  But maybe not.  I mean Jesus lights into him right away.  John writes after that carefully worded political salutation that “Jesus answered him.”  Answered him?  Where was the question?  Maybe John should have said “Jesus responded to him.”  Or Jesus debated with him.  Or Jesus stripped to his wrestling singlet and leapt onto the mat for three falls out of four with yet another Pharisaical opponent.  Yeah, that might have set the tone nicely.

It seems like Jesus is trying to pick a fight.  And Nicodemus is outclassed.  And doesn’t even seem to know he’s in a stranglehold.  Which only escalates when he does finally squeak out his questions: “How can  anyone be born after having grown old?”  And “Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?”  And worst of all was “How can these things be?”  That really sets Jesus off, he gets personal in his response.

Why is he so upset?  I mean, he throws Nicodemus a wicked curve and is upset when Nick whiffs on the first pitch.  Maybe he’s upset at having his evening disturbed, Nicodemus was the first century equivalent of a telemarketer who interrupts dinner to sell siding for the house you don’t own.  Or maybe Nicodemus caught him on a bad day.  In the last chapter Jesus attended a wedding and was called out by his mom, then went into the temple and ruined everyone else’s day in one angry gesture, which left folks muttering about him as he strode through the wreckage back home.  And finds Nicodemus huddling on the doorstep, like a homeless man at his gate.  Or maybe Nicodemus forgot he was in the Gospel of John and missed the whole dark verses light symbolism.  Dark, for John, is the absence of the knowledge of and presence of God.  And then he proceeds to miss everything else that Jesus tries to tell him, because his mind is as dark as the night.

Probably because he starts with this “we know” stuff.  That’s what sets Jesus off.  He comes not to learn but to show his knowledge.  Nicodemus probably was expecting gratitude or something like that from Jesus.  “Wow, gosh thanks guys.  Gee, you really think so much of little old me?”  But no, instead he gets some head-spinning theology about the Holy Spirit, of all things.  And to make it worse, how did they know that Jesus was a teacher come from God?  Nicodemus says we know this because you do cool stuff.  You do magic tricks.  You do signs and wonders.  There is nothing that ticks Jesus off as fast as getting all excited about the special effects and losing the narrative of the film. He didn’t want heads turned by miracles, he wanted them to come to him.  He wanted them to hear his words and know his love.  He wanted them to have a relationship with him and not just come for the show. 

That’s how he gets to The Verse.  3:16.  There are people who wear T-Shirts with those numbers on it who may not even know what it means.  Which might also make Jesus mad.  As mad as at a pharisee who thinks he knows all there is to know about Jesus because he’s seen an unexplainable event or two.  As mad as at a temple full of buyers and sellers, making a buck off of the need to worship that is deep down in every soul.  Mad, or sad.  A little of both, I suspect.  God so loved, he says, so loved the world, that whoever believes ... Believe in the Gospel of John is more than a head thing.  Nicodemus had a head thing.  But he didn’t have a heart thing.  Or a soul thing.  He wasn’t leaning into the Jesus the way Jesus wants us to lean into Him.  He wasn’t hungry for Jesus the way Jesus wants us to be hungry.  I am the bread, I am the gate, I am the way, the truth and the life.  He wants to be all for all.  Our light in the darkness, our hope in the midst of the world’s despair.  He doesn’t want to be a side show, or a sometime friend, he wants to be the center of our lives and hopes and dreams.

How can these things be?  That would be Nicodemus’s reply, I’m sure.  Because it is mine.  Ours.  How can these things be?  How can we hold on to Jesus when the path gets slippery and light grows dim?  We must be born again.  Great.  Cliches.  Religious nonsense cliches.  Has there been a phrase more divisive in the body of Christ than that one?  Maybe.  I dunno.  But this one has been misused and misunderstood since Nicodemus stumbled over it one night.  Born again?  Anothen is the Greek word.  Anothen.  Means again, and anew and from above.  All wrapped up there together.  But not again as in repetition - same thing over again, that’s what Nicodemus missed.  But neither is it a badge of honor or entrance certificate. That’s what many modern day users miss.  Rather it is an invitation to join in the dance with Jesus.  Whoever believes, who ever takes Him by the hand and says lead me.  Whoever says I find myself in you.  Whoever leans for repose as the old hymn says (How Firm a Foundation for those who wonder), shall have life, abundant, eternal life.  

How can these things be?  They just are.  Start leaning.  And learning.  Lest, on this graduation Sunday, I leave you with the impression that questions are somehow bad, forgive me.  But no.  Questions, dumb ones and smart ones, irritating ones and time wasting ones earnest and honest ones, are good.  We need to ask in order to learn.  But then lean as we learn.  Trust as we seek.  Believe as we wonder.  How can these things be?  Believe.  And ask.  And live.

Shalom, 

Derek 

This Present Day

Acts 2:1-4  When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.  2 And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.  3 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.  4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. 

That’s how it began, at least according to Luke, who is the only one who captured the second act of the Jesus story.  The other Gospel writers run out of steam when Jesus leaves.  But Luke keeps plugging away.  He is just as fascinated by the fumblings and stumblings and the falling and rising of the motley band of disciples as he was by the God-enfleshed, baby in a manger who becomes the friend of sinners and outcasts and then gives himself away for the least of these - meaning you and me.  He is like the parent or friend who gives a gift and then is not content with seeing the joy in the unwrapping and admiring.  “Try it on,” he shouts.  “Let’s play,” he cries clearing a space in the rubble so the pieces can be spilled out and the board unfolded.

It’s not just receiving Christ for Luke, he wants to know what we are going to do with Him.  He wants to know how we are going to live today, in this present time.  That’s a hard leap for many of us.  We read the stories of the Bible, especially the stories of Jesus and we enter in, like watching a movie that’s so good the world disappears.  “Tell me the stories of Jesus I love to hear; things I would ask him to tell me if he were here.”  If he were here.  We look around our lives and wonder if he is here.  We stumble out of the darkened theatre and are surprised to find the world different than the one we watched while we munched our popcorn.  

If he were here.  The Spirit seemed so evident that first Pentecost day.  Wind like a freight train, roaring through the room.  We imagine the faces of the disciples distorted like those pictures of the effects of wind blown acceleration.  Tongues of fire light lightning, crackling down on each of them, making their hair stand on end and sparks fly from their fingertips, their eyes light up, their bones glow under their skin.  Then the babbling, languages fast and furious, spilling out of them in a Niagara effect, and the passers-by awash in the torrent of words.  It is surreal, mind-blowing, head shaking.  Ah, some muttered, they must be drunk.  This must be chemically induced.  They are on something.  People don’t act like they have the answers to all their prayers, unless they are so plastered they forgot those prayers.  They must be drunk, muttered the cynics passing by the party room full of spirit intoxicated disciples.  What an odd sort of day, with an odd sort of presence.  

The Spirit doesn’t show up like that anymore.  Today is full of unanswered prayers.  No, not so much unanswered as unspoken.  Unprayed prayers, because, why?  I mean really, why?  The cynics of today are as likely to be inside the room as they are passing by on the street.  Inside the room until they wander out, never to return because ... well because the Spirit doesn’t blow through our worship so much any more.  “Something’s missing.”  That’s the latest explanation for a departure from our congregation.  Something’s missing.  Is it?  Is the Spirit a memory, a story we read once a year, an object of a wistful sigh about what once was, if it ever was?  Something’s missing.

Romans 8:18-27  I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.  19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God;  20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope  21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.  22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now;  23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.  24 For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen?  25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.  26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.  27 And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. 

This present time.  It is Memorial Day Weekend here in the US.  An event which began as Decoration day for the civil war dead in 1868.  A chance to honor, to remember, to decorate the graves of those who had died in that terrible war.  When it began there were competing dates for Union remembrance and for Confederate remembrance.  But somewhere in the early 20th Century the war ended and the dates merged together.  Memorial Day has been an official national holiday for more than 40 years.  We remember, we honor, we weep for those who have died serving their country.  Our country.  Our home.  And we pray for an end to war.  But still they die.  So, that we hardly know how to pray any more.  Or how to pray without despair.  Without anger, without a desire for vengeance.  We don’t know how to pray with hope.  That one day no new names will be added to the lists of those for whom we pray.

I consider the sufferings of this present day... Paul acknowledges that living in these days isn’t easy.  The sufferings of this present day.  He acknowledges that there is something missing, something not yet, something on the way.  At least he still believes it is on the way.  If you read Paul closely, when he starts writing his letters to the churches, he is full of the immediacy of the kingdom.  Jesus is on his way, get ready.  It’s almost here, maybe in the morning, maybe later today.  Just get ready, wash your hands and be ready.  But as time goes on he starts talking about how we need to learn to live together in community.  He tells us we need to shore one another up, we’ve got to figure out this church thing, this worship and service thing.  We’ve got work to do.  Not because he’s given up hope.  By no means, to use one his favorite phrases.  But the hope now becomes what sustains us in the living through the sufferings of this present day.  

And he knows we get tired of holding on to hope.  Our grip loosens and we fall into the darkness of the day instead of remembering the light that we bear.  The light that we are.  The glory about to be revealed to us is such a powerful idea.  The kingdom, heaven, the reign of God, Your will be done on earth, on earth for heaven’s sake.  But keep reading and he says that that glory is us.  The world is waiting for us.  Creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.  That’s us, that’s them.  That’s us showing them that it’s them.  The world is waiting for us to reveal their inheritance.  For us to turn on the light, so that they can live not only in the sufferings of this present day, but in the hope of the end to suffering, the end to rejection, the end to hate, the end to war, the end to dying and to killing because we don’t know any other way to live in this present day.  Those are the words that the passers by are longing to hear come pouring down over them this Pentecost, in languages they can understand, in words that resonate with their own souls, not just in the words we know.  We need to learn new languages so people can hear the word we know, can see the light we see, the light we are.  And to hear it with such joy and love and acceptance that they will wonder if we are a little bit tipsy.

Except where is the wind?  Where are the tongues of fire?  Why can’t we be empowered like they were empowered on that first Pentecost.  It’s also Aldersgate Day, this Sunday.  Memorial Day, Pentecost, Aldersgate Day.  Aldersgate Day, the day we remember our founder, John Wesley, stumbling to a bible study he didn’t want to go to.  And hearing someone read from a commentary written by Martin Luther of all people.  And that in the midst of the reading and that hearing, something happened.  Something broke through.  Wesley reclaimed these words, this hope.  He was included in God’s loving act of salvation, in the hope for eternity and an abundant life.  It wasn’t wind and flame.  He described it as a warming of the heart.  An unexplained, strange warming of the heart. 

Maybe that’s what we should lean into.  Not wait to be knocked off our feet, to be blasted into speaking of glory and hope, but a warming.  The Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.  Maybe we should keep sighing, for the sufferings of this present day, even as we hope for the glory about to be revealed to us.  To us.  Not just me, not just you, but us.  We’re in this together.  Linked, gathered, committed to hoping together.  Like a marriage.  Yeah, I got there.  It is also my anniversary.  Our anniversary, La Donna and me.  Thirty five years.  This present day.  And there is and has been suffering, but also glory.  And we live in hope, together.   

Happy Anniversary, La Donna.  Happy Birthday, church.  Hopeful Memorial Day, nation.  There is more to come.

Shalom, 

Derek

2015 Festival Journal - Day Four

Festival of Homiletics, 2015 – Denver Colorado

Day Four

Perhaps I spoke too soon.  Or too smugly.  Somewhere in the middle of the night, I woke with a pounding headache.  Decided that maybe all the warnings meant something after all.  So, I’ve been hydrating all day.  And so far, so good.

Anyway, aside from the nocturnal altitude lessons, the day began with worship again.  This morning I had the choice of the United Methodist Adam Hamilton preaching and lecturing at the Presbyterian Church, or the Presbyterian Dr. Craig Barnes preaching and lecturing at the United Methodist Church.  Wrestling with that irony for a while, I opted for Dr. Barnes.  

His sermon was based on the beginning of the book of Genesis. And to sum up a whole lot of stuff, he says that no one can do more damage to us than us.  But that from the beginning God’s plan was that God’s grace would be sufficient for us.  Not our successes or our failures.  Not our strength or our weakness.  God’s power is made perfect in our weakness.  And that no matter what, we can always choose gratitude.

Craig Barnes then followed worship with a lecture titled “The Soul of the Preacher.”  He began with an observation that I have heard in other places and am trying - trying mind you - to incorporate into my own thinking.  That the best way to do the job we pastors are called to do is to care for our souls as a priority to be able to care for souls of the congregations in our care.  “Nothing is more dangerous to the church than the pastor.  There is no such thing as a healthy congregation with an unhealthy pastor, at least for long.”

So, Craig presents some ideas for the care of the pastor’s soul.  The ones that seemed most telling to me are the toxic idea that we are more worried about God’s will than God is!  And on the positive end, a healthy idea is that for the pastor the day begins and ends by nurturing the first love, the love that brought them into ministry, the love of the savior.

There was of course much more, but I don’t want to weary you too much.  

I then moved from the United Methodist Church over to the Presbyterian one to hear the former United Methodist Bishop, Will Willimon, Who echoed some of Craig Barnes’ ideas when he said “the great thing about preaching is that you get to talk about something more interesting that yourself.  Or your people.  Or the church.  You get to talk about the always surprising, transforming God.  He then with the help of theologian Karl Barth, redefined the concept of election by saying it isn’t about God choosing special ones to receive grace or salvation.  No, election, Barth argues is God electing to be God.  A God for us, for creation, for redemption.  And then choosing us to be for God.  

The day ended with a lecture from Seminary president David Lose (a Lutheran this time - at the Methodist Church) who proceeded to look at the variety of resurrection stories from the gospels and asked us to rethink just what it is that we are doing as preachers and teachers of the faith.  Indeed what are any of us who claim to be following Christ doing?  He concluded by wondering is our job as preachers might just be to set people free.  Not about adding to burdens, not about naming sin, but about offering freedom.  Or in Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John, He came that we might have life and have it abundantly.

I had an abundant time here at the Festival.  It isn’t quite done, but tomorrow is both closing worship and presentations and departure, so finding time to write more might be problematic.  If there is something I want you to know, I’ll find a way to share it here.

And I have to be honest, there was another sermon I heard today.  And the main learning for me was that just because you can write about preaching and even teach preaching, doesn’t mean you can preach.  Enough said.

And sometimes what we need to do is to know when to stop.  I’ve wearied you with all this, I know.  I apologize.  But I also want to thank you for the opportunity to share a little of the joy that I have received this week.  It has been both affirming and challenging.  I often come away with the feeling that I should apologize for the preaching some of you have to endure from me week by week.  On the other hand, I was surprised by how often I have heard the themes I continue to proclaim repeated and expanded upon here.  So, maybe I’m occasionally on the right track.  If so, it is by the grace of God.

Shalom,

Derek

2015 Festival Journal - Day Three

Festival of Homiletics, 2015 – Denver Colorado

Day Three

Is it Day Three already?  How does this happen?  One side note, despite the warnings and concerns expressed, I haven’t noticed any effects from the altitude.  There has been a lot of walking, but so far so good.  Fresh air and sunshine most of the time.  A few showers and storms roll through quickly, but nothing serious (there are threats in the mountains this evening, the news tells me tonight)   All in all a great visit to the Centennial State.  

(One pg rated observation: be careful when passing by a group of smokers on a street corner, it just might not be tobacco!)

My morning began with worship. The preacher was Luke Powery, the current Dean of the Chapel of Duke University.  He introduced himself as a Bapticostal, and said anything could happen.  But what happened in the sermon is that we were treated to a sermon reflecting the best of African American tradition and mainline progressive faith.  Based on the introduction of John the Baptist in the Gospel of Luke, Dr Powery talked about how the word of God comes in the wilderness and not in the places of power.  Which can mean that sometimes in our wilderness God speaks and sometimes when we are large and in charge it doesn’t come to us!  It wasn’t an us and them sermon, but a how does God choose to speak sermon.  And maybe we need to learn to listen to wilderness folk more often.  And wilderness usually means the marginal ones.  

But my favorite part was when he pointed out the wilderness words that came to the slave ancestors and he proceeded to sing a series of spirituals with an amazingly powerful voice.  I love preachers who can sing.

This was followed by a lecture from Walter Brueggemann, titled “Fidelity Amid the Seduction of Certitude.”  His premise is that scripture presents to us a God of wonder, not a God of consistency.  That faith is more about being in relationship - fidelity - than it is about right behavior - certitude.  

Along the way, he referenced the rabbis who taught that the bible is notoriously multi-layered, multi-voiced, profoundly complex and deeply conflicted.  Interestingly, Sigmund Freud immersed in this rabbinical tradition presents a theory about the self.  He says that the self is multi-layered, multi- voiced, profoundly complex and deeply conflicted.  

The morning then concluded with a presentation from Diana Butler Bass, a church historian who revived hope for the mainline church a few years ago with her book “Christianity for the Rest of Us.”  I found that book a source of hope for many of us.  Today she was presenting the work of her latest book coming this year.  The title is “Grounded: God Has Left the Mountain - Understanding the Theological Revolution of Our Time.”

Diana Bass suggests that the most prominent question of our age (beginning with the second World War) is “Where is God?”  And that the ancient vision of the three tiered universe, with God in Heaven above, and us on earth in the middle and underworld below representing the opposite of God or the absence of God has given way to a God of Presence.  God is not “up there” somewhere, no longer is “God in His heaven and all is right with the world.”  But rather that God is with us, in both pain and joy, in ugliness and in beauty.  God is with us.  Emmanuel.  That is the word for us today.  Presence.  Even Wesley knew that.  His dying words were “Best of all, God is with us.”

After a quick lunch I moved to the United Methodist Church for a sermon and a lecture from Anna Carter Florence.  Anna is a favorite of mine.  I heard her the very first Festival I attended many years ago and look forward to her every year.  She teaches preaching at Columbia Seminary in Atlanta and has a unique way of looking at scripture and the preaching task.

For her sermon she took one of the “texts of terror” as identified by Dr Phyllis Tribble in the mid 80's.  Judges 19, go read it if you want.  No easy explanation.  No way to smooth it over, or explain it away.  Usually we just ignore it.  But there it is.  

Anna preached about concubines.  About the difference between a relationship of love and a desire to use a person for your own purposes.  And while none of us would claim to take concubines, she asked us to consider are there cases where we use people for our own purposes rather than see them as whole persons with whom we can be in relationship?  It’s a hard question, a hard thought.  Sometimes this faith stuff makes our living so much more ... intentional.  That living blindly, without thinking about consequences or the impact on others or on the planet, is what leads us to texts of terror.  

Not an up sermon at all.  But maybe necessary.

She lightened the mood in her following lecture.  She is also working on a book and the thrust of her next book is about paying attention to the verbs in the text as a way of shaping our preaching and our understanding of our faith.

So she took the book of Ruth and discovered by paying attention to the verbs, the dominant verbs of each for the four chapters, we find that Ruth is actually not just a nice love story, but a manual for preachers.  (This is a preaching festival after all)

Chapter one the verb is “cling.”  As in thought Naomi told both of her widowed daughter in laws to turn back and stay with their people, and Orpah took her up on this advice, Ruth instead decided to cling to Naomi.  And cling here doesn't mean clingy or co-dependent or needy. But faithful, steadfast, committed.   Cling is a relationship word.  As preachers (and followers) we are called to cling to the truth, to the text, to the God behind the text.

The verb in chapter two is “glean.”  You know the story.  Ruth had to glean behind the harvesters to get enough for her and her mother in law to live.  But Boaz took a liking to her and made it easier.  Easier, but not easy.  Gleaning is hard work.  It is hands and knees work.  It is getting down to see what is left behind after the professionals have been through.  What tidbits of meaning, what insights of living, what hope is there down on the ground?  Is it enough to live on?  Look hard.  Glean.

In chapter three it is “uncover” and the textual story is interesting and odd and a bit ... racy, to tell the truth.  But for preachers, to uncover is the reveal truth.  To show the community the truth about who we are and how we behave, what we value and our practices that continue to shape us.  Uncover who we a really are, not just who we think we are, for good or for ill.  Just the truth.  Uncover.

Then she kind of wrapped it up for us.  But there is one more chapter.  There is another verb, she says, in chapter four the verb is redeem.  But that is not our job it is God’s.  

A long day, but I had reached the end of my endurance.  Even though there were more events, I caled it a day and came to write this and turn in.  One more full day and then a half.  Then the trek to the airport and back home.   

Stay tuned.

2015 Festival Journal - Day Two Part Two

Festival of Homiletics, 2015 – Denver Colorado

Day Two Part Two

After Nadia, I traveled to the third venue for the festival, St. John’s Lutheran Church (which is also a Catholic Church, oddly enough.  A move that indicates in some spots community is beginning to overcome history and long standing animosity.  There is hope.)  The speaker this time was listed as Don Davis, storyteller. 

I went, frankly with low expectations.  I’ve heard and always appreciate storytellers.  But also feel like I know what storytelling is about.  So, I went not expecting to learn and even to greatly enjoy, but it was the best on offer at that time.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  Yes, Don started with a story that was good, but not overwhelming.  But then he began to explore with us how stories happen.  

His title was “Our Stories tell us who we are: An experience in discovering our own stories and some ways of using them in proclamation settings.”  A bit clumsy, I thought, and not gripping.  But after his story he told us of the need to stock our kitchen with the makings of stories so that when it came time to cook we had a full pantry.  By that he meant get the bones of the stories and have them ready.  And the bones he argued were not plots, not the what happened.  He says our education establishment is “plot obsessed” and that we are trained to reduce every story to just the action.  But stories don’t begin with action.  They begin with people and with places.

Four “P’s” to storytelling, and plot isn’t one of them.  Make a list of people and places.  When you walk around the places the stories “raise their hands and beg to be told.”  When you remember the people you remember who they were with you, and the stories are told.  The third P is problem.  Without trouble, Don says, there is no story.  Now it isn’t always bad things.  How many of you got married, he asked, how many have children?  That’s trouble that we choose.  And I thought of all the stories I’ve told of receiving and raising those kids.  Trouble, it’s a good word.

But the final P is one we often forget.  He called it a Progress Report.  What did you learn in this story, from this person, in this place that you wouldn’t have learned in any other way?  No matter how terrible or wonderful the moment.  How did you grow?  Progress report.

Then he spoke about biblical stories and how they neglect three of the P’s.  He says they aren’t good on people and places because they figure everyone knows them, we get names but no descriptions.  We don’t really know either well, he argues.  And he says too often, especially with Jesus’ stories, there is no progress report.  That was done on purpose, he argued, because we are to finish the stories.  Did the elder brother ever go in?  Did the Samaritan return and pay and did the beaten man ever meet his rescuer?  I see his point and while I may argue a few details, I agree and was entranced by his presentation.  Which wasn’t even his best of the day.

Then it was lunch and I met up with Nathan, the associate pastor from St Joe there in Fort Wayne.  A long way to go for lunch.  But it was good to catch up.

After lunch I went to the wrong venue and didn’t want to hear the speaker, so instead I went and found a plug to charge my phone for a while.  But then hurried back to hear Don Davis for his second session. This time in the United Methodist Church, he shared the stage with Rabbi Ben Romer who has served as a military chaplain for more than twenty years.  His stories were about crossing boundaries.  About interfaith.  He says interfaith dialog is about being strong enough in your own faith to set aside some of your language so you can listen to the other, and help them on their journey.

Don Davis took the stage afterwards and used his allotted time to tell one long convoluted story that was just masterful and gripping, funny and poignant, and in the end about hospitality, about welcoming the stranger and about Christ appearing in the strangest of places through the least expected of people.  To even attempt to give you bits from the story would be to demean the power of story and the gift of Don Davis.  Suffice it to say, I was in awe.

After a dinner break and shuttle ride back to the hotel and then back to the venue.  I ended the night with worship and more stories.  Don Davis told two stories, again was captivating.  My favorite part was the role of the ex-vet from the Cincinnati Zoo who settled in the little town where Don was pastor, and the unorthodox way the vet had of neutering 20 some cats owned by the crazy lady in town.  Nuff said.

But the sermon in our closing worship was preached by Dr Walter Brueggemann.  A venerable Old Testament scholar with immense reputation and an irascible demeanor.  His text was Matthew 11:25-30, “I thank the Father that you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.”  And then proceeded to call us both wise and intelligent and therefore not privy to the understandings of God, and babies asking us to remember what it is that we know.  He said we need to stop trying to figure everything out and just be followers and imitators.  That sometimes our plans get in the way, our knowledge gets in the way.  And we just need to trust more.

The other interesting dimension to the worship is that besides the sermon and scripture ready, the rest of the service was sung.  Prayers, liturgy, everything was sung.  It was beautiful and different.  There is a bluegrass feel to the Festival this year.  Not sure whether Colorado is considered a bluegrass state, but it does permeate much of the worship here this week.  And it kinda catchy, I must say.

Another great day in Denver.