Number in Series: Fifth

Steady Hope

For this week’s Events and Happenings, click “Download PDF.”

For this week’s Spiritual Practice “For the Sake of Old Times” led by Ivy Anthony, click HERE.

Hi everyone, happy January and happy New Year. I’m Cate, I’m on staff here at Reservoir Church. Look at us! We have made it — to a New Year. We are alive. A daily miracle, and a particular miracle in a year of visible and invisible death. God, how we give thanks that we are here today, together. 

 

Today is the last day of our Christmas season at Reservoir (Western church calendar “Christmas” ends with the arrival of the Magi, a day called Epiphany, on January 5). We have called our Advent and Christmas season “Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room.” In many ways, I can’t think of a better way to enter into a New Year than by preparing our hearts room for Jesus — for all he is, for the ways he longs to be with us — to receive his presence, his nearness, his love, his liberation, his commitment to making the wrong things right. We prepare our hearts room, in a new year — to receive of Jesus.

 

As we stand here at the brink of a new year, I have wavered between “What is the point of celebrating a new year? Won’t this pandemic winter be more of the hard, harsh same?” and, on the other hand, flickers of what Ivy mentioned, the temptation to put 2020 in the shade.

 

But I wonder if, like the choir we just heard, like the space we just reflected on, if the praying, prophetic ones we are about to meet, Anna and Simeon, in their watching and waiting, might help us into a better way of welcoming something new, something long-awaited. 

 

At the tail end of the story of Jesus’ birth in the gospel of Luke chapter two, Jesus’ parents Mary and Joseph take the baby Jesus to be presented in the temple following the Jewish custom of the day. There the author introduces us to Anna and Simeon who encounter the baby in the temple.

 

Luke 2:22, 25-32, 36-38

22 When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought Jesus up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord.

 

25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. 26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. 27 Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, 28 Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,

 

29 “Lord, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,

    according to your word;

30 for my eyes have seen your salvation,

31     which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,

32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles

    and for glory to your people Israel.”

 

36 There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage,  then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. 38 At that moment [that Jesus was in the temple] she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child, to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

 

Let me pray for us:

Jesus, our consolation, our hope, and long-awaited redemption, we give thanks for your presence birthed anew in us, in our world. We thank you for the way you come near to us, to the very places of our hearts and our lives. We welcome you this new year, as you welcome us. Amen.

 

anna & simeon: watching and waiting in resistance and hope

 

Anna and Simeon have been waiting for no small thing. They have been waiting for something big: the consolation of Israel, the redemption of Jerusalem. Israel was under the occupation of the Roman Empire, and these two in the temple had been waiting, watching, and praying for deliverance. This was a radical hope, a hope of resistance and rebellion from the mighty weight of the oppression of empire. The scripture says that the Holy Spirit rested on Simeon, and I wonder if where hope is big and at times dangerous, as our bodies and lives push against systems and structures of power and oppression, that we need the strength, the rest, and the sustaining presence of the Spirit with us.

 

I’m also drawn to Anna and Simeon as elder characters in the story of Jesus’ birth. The text says that Anna is 84, and even though Simeon’s age is not named, much of Christian tradition holds him as an older man too. I’ve been thinking about the quiet hope and steadiness of elders, who have known enough of life to know that sometimes we just keep keeping on, holding on to prayer and hope in a faithful God, in the cycles of the seasons, in the generational work, where nothing is final and we are not alone. 

 

I’ll say something more about elders here, before we come back to Anna and Simeon. On my mind are the elders for whom pandemic life has been terribly hard: the isolation, the fear, the physical, social, and emotional vulnerability. I have missed the presence of elders in my life this past year, as physical distance has been the safest option, but it has also meant absence. I think of my grandfather’s steady rituals, even as his mind fades, of meals and walks and phone calls and naps. His own waiting for consolation, for redemption, for the long-awaited Jesus. I think of the elders who have weathered these days with strength, carrying what one writer calls “crisis competence,” formed by a lifetime of responding to the social and personal trials of life. And then I think of the chaos I have seen other elders caught in, as their lives have been disrupted and unmoored and their anxiety and desolation have at the surface. I think of just how many elders we have lost in the chaos of COVID, the ones who died alone, the ones who were afraid. I ache for the loss of the older generation to our world, to our nation, and how with a different response they might have been spared.

 

Let us take a moment to remember our elders, the ones in our midst and the ones we have lost. 

 

I’ll come back now to Anna and Simeon and a few thoughts about hope, prayer, watching, and waiting. I’ll name a frustration with this passage up front. Anna and Simeon are both idealized characters in their holiness and devotion (the author of Luke loves idealized pairs). Simeon is “righteous and devout,” and Anna has been the model widow who, for decades, has been worshiping in the temple. Okay, okay, these holy ideas are lovely, don’t particularly capture how I experience life. I want to know the grittiness of their lives, their deep joys and their angst. I want to know about the days they didn’t want to go to the temple, or the years and the decades where they wondered if they would ever be free from the oppressions of empire and patriarchy. I want to know about their humanness, and not just their holiness. 

 

And yet in these two, we see something of what it is to live with long-awaited hope — and hope for something big, like redemption, like salvation. Despite all the odds, they have held a quiet, steady hope. They have been active in their watching and waiting; their prayer is no passive pastime. And then they catch a glimpse of things, of the thing, of the one they have been waiting for. The great Messiah, their liberator, their deliverer. It is not him in his fullness, but it is enough to recognize. The baby, the child, the evidence of things hoped for, the substance of things unseen. And yet it is in process — he is only a baby. They are old and will not see what his life will come to. Their hope is touched, and yet it is still in process. 

 

Anna is called a prophet. I am frustrated too that the text does not let us hear her voice, but I imagine her song of recognition at the sight of Jesus — of the praises she rings and sings to all who hear, of her prophetic witness to the one who has come to make people free. The youngest of our Reservoir community say this about the prophets during Advent in Kids Church: “Prophets are people who come so close to God, and God comes so close to them, that they know what is most important. The prophets point the way to Jesus. They say: Stop. Watch. Pay attention. Something incredible is going to happen.” 

 

Stop. Watch. Pay attention. Anna has been watching her whole life, and her prophetic gesture is to point to the Messiah who has come.  This tiny Christ Child. In process. A glimpse of her long awaited hope.

 

watch night, freedom, prayer

Stop. Watch. Pay attention. This spiritual practice of watching is part of the tradition of Watch Night. Watch Night is a prayer service held on New Year’s Eve, where communities gather to remember and give thanks for the year that has happened, and pray, sing, and worship as the new year comes in — to thank God for getting us this far and asking God to carry us still. Its historic roots cross a number of denominations, but it has a particularly potent expression in the Black church in the United States, in its connection to a historic night of watching and waiting.

 

On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that three months later on January 1, 1863, enslaved people in the rebellion states “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” On New Years Eve, the last night of 1862, Black folks — free and enslaved — gathered in churches, homes, and slave quarters, praying and singing, watching and waiting for the Proclamation to go into effect. A Watch Night of looking toward the consolation and redemption of their bodies, their freedom, their lives from the chains and chattel of a racist empire and the oppression of slavery. This Watch Night was a hope of resistance. It was a radical, dangerous hope. The ones who were enslaved were not yet free. There were laws, codes, and restrictions about gathering. Who was watching the door? What courage was it to lean into this hope that maybe, at last, this long awaited, sung for, prayed for, pleaded for hope of freedom might be coming close? What power of the Holy Spirit was needed to hold such a long and mighty hope, that had passed from one generation to the next?

 

As it goes in this country, the proclamation did not mean immediate freedom for enslaved people. It was contingent on the Union army actually advancing into the rebellion states and enforcing the proclamation. It would be another three years until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment that abolished slavery (though even in there, there were exceptions baked in), and it would still be and still is the daily struggle and fight for social, political, economic, health, and housing equality and reparation that continues to be our work this day.

 

I had an opportunity to join a virtual Watch Night service this New Years Eve, I was struck that the spirals, gradations, and continuums of freedom and hope lure us to a place of prayer. To give thanks for something as big as making it through a year, to hold before God and others the long-held, the long awaited desires of communities and generations — there are some things too big to hold on our own, and in those places, prayer becomes an articulation of our longings, and a place to conspire with God and community for what we can do together. The Rev. Carrington Moore, a pastor at Bethel AME Church in Boston, who will be joining us here on Virch later this month, talks about the way that prayer re-members and re-calls us to God. I am struck that prayer re-members us to the God who makes a way out of no way. I think of Anna’s prayers, Simeon’s prayers, Watch Night prayers through the ages and three nights ago — that these prayers for consolation, for redemption, for liberation, for salvation are a powerful resistance, a powerful hope.

 

Here at the start of a new year, where it might just be that we are hoping for so much, or wondering how to hold our discouraged hopes: what if prayer is part of our active watching and waiting? Prayer for things to be made new, for long-held hopes that are in process, where we’ve maybe gotten a glimpse or maybe there was no glimpse but there is so much more we long to see. Prayer that, as we heard last week, conspires with God’s imagination and ours. Or prayer that is simple as our breath, a groan, or a word. Mercy. Help. Jesus. Thank You. Prayer that steadies our hopes, steadies our hearts. 

 

A couple days ago, I remembered that my favorite prayer of 2020 has been lying on the floor. I get on by back and I remember that I held on steady ground, even on my least steady days. In the movement of Christmas I hadn’t laid on my back in a while, and over the last few days, I have been coming back to this place of prayer. It doesn’t even have words — but it is a way to re-member to myself, to God, to the support all around, and to the longings within and around.

 

hope

I’ll confess, in all this hope talk, there are parts of 2020 I look back on and it seems like any hope I had is under a heaping pile of dirt. So I want to say something to any of you who feel like your hopes may seem buried, dashed, broken, lost in a pile of disappointment, despair or shame. I imagine Jesus’ tenderness in these words from Isaiah 42:3 — A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice. God would you bless all that is hurting, tender, and in need of healing and justice.

 

I picture, too, those who are carrying hope into this new year, like a tiny shoot coming up from the dirt, or a plant that is growing, or maybe like one that is thriving. I think of the Spirit within us and among us, the gardener of our souls and our world who keeps at the holy work of love, beckoning us into the holy work of tending to the gardens we have chosen, the gardens entrusted to us, the gardens of our communities and the work of generations. Holy One, bless all that is that you and we are conspiring to grow in us, in our world. 

 

And through it all, I take heart that Jesus is steady in his hope. And where we are steady and where are not, we can lean on his strength and his tenderness in our weakness. Jesus is here to strengthen us, by the Spirit, in our watching and our waiting. That long-awaited baby is our Emmanuel, and he is glad to be with us in all things. 

 

Let me pray for us… Oh Jesus, we prepare our hearts room to receive your presence, to receive your companioning, to be strengthened in hope by your love, trusting that you will see us through this New Year ahead, come all that will. Amen.

 

Benediction

 

The poet Lucille Clifton writes: 

 

nothing so certain as justice.

nothing so certain as time.

nothing so patient as truth. 

nothing so faithful as now.

 

february 11, 1990

for Nelson Mendela and Winnie.

 

nothing so certain as justice.

nothing so certain as time.

so he would wait seven days, or years

or twenty-seven even, 

firm in his certainty.

nothing so patient as truth. 

nothing so faithful as now.

walk out old chief, old husband, 

enter again your own wife.

 

–Lucille Clifton

An Attempt at a Sex Positive Sermon

For this week’s Events and Happenings, click “Download PDF.”

For this week’s spiritual practice “Centering Prayer” led by Ivy Anthony, CLICK HERE.

—

Hey, friends, as we get ready for Christmas season, I am so excited for next Sunday, as we start our celebration of Advent, the pre-Christmas season, together. TODAY I also want to acknowledge, real quickly, that at end, a lot of people think about charitable giving this time of year. Reservoir, you probably know, is different than most non-profits in that we don’t fundraise, we don’t talk about money much at all. But to be as vibrant of a church as we are, touching the lives of hundreds, and to be as generous of a church as we are, impacting thousands in our community and beyond, take the time and energy of our paid staff as well as the other costs of this ministry. An enormous appreciation to all of you who together give about $90,000 a month to support this ministry. If you’re not a giver at Reservoir yet, we strongly encourage you to consider beginning, or rebeginning that. I’m dropping two links in the chat – one that talks more about giving at Reservoir and the other a direct link to set up a recurring gift to the ministry. You can do so through our website or the link in the chat. In a church located around transient communities like Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston, we really depend on new members and new givers to sustain us and help us grow. We find that giving is a powerful way to invest in the vitality of our church and even our own faith, so whether it be $100 a month, a $100 a week, or whatever amount to which you’re led, consider joining this church’s team of givers today. 

—

So today we finish our Salt of the Earth series, about Reservoir’s place in what we hope will be a healthy and useful future for our faith. We’ll end talking a bit about sex and sexual ethics because churches have had lots to say about this topic, but have said a lot of wrong things in wrong ways and have often done more harm that goo as a result. And yet, as we get more and more post-Christian as a society, it’s not like we’re suddenly finding our own way into life, health, joy, and intimacy around sex either. And I’ve heard some interest in circling back to this topic.

 

So, I’m aware that this is one short sermon, and I’m just one person, with one set of perspectives. But I’d like to at least try to say something healthy and useful about sex and continue to give permission to have healthy and useful conversations about sex in our community. 

 

I’ll start us off with a scripture reading. I intentionally did not choose one that tries to make an ethical statement about sex. There are some of those in the Bible, but I think they’re mainly yanked out of context. Depending on where and when they were written, they say different things. And these few scriptures are made to do more work than they were meant to, So instead, I give you a story from the life of Jesus where Jesus was confronted with some “no’s” around sex, and may just start to point us toward some “yes’es” instead.

 

John 8:2-11 (NRSV)

2 Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. 3 The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, 4 they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. 5 Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. 9 When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 10 Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 11 She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”

 

When it comes to sex, it seems we often lead with what we think are other people’s problems. 

 

Throughout the many centuries of church history, when men have talked about sex, and it’s mainly men who have had the power to do so in public, they’ve done so while pointing blaming fingers at women and queer people. There’s been a giant NO said to the sexuality of women, whether it be women who seduce, women who aren’t virgins when they should be, women who want sex too much, women who want sex too little. As in this passage, it’s women who have been the focus of sexual problems and taboos, even though men have had far more agency and power around sexality. 

 

And when women haven’t been shamed or scapegoated, queer people have instead. People whose sexual identities or desires don’t fit the heteronormative grid have served as a convenient scapegoat in many times and places, resulting in the stigmatization of queer people and gay sex, even though this is the experience of relatively smaller number of people. 

 

Women who have been shamed around your sexuality or sexual history, I am so sorry. Women who have been shamed by merely being in the body of a woman, I am so sorry. You deserve so much more honor, love, and respect than this. 

 

And LGBTQ friends, I know you are attuned to the long and deep history of shame and exclusion from the Christian church, which continues in so many places to this day. For this too, I am so sorry. You deserve so much more honor, love, and respect than this. 

 

All of us: our bodies, our sexuality, our sexual history or lack thereof, this is sensitive, tender territory that deserves care, honor, and respect. 

 

We see the utter lack of all this in our story, as a community rallies around somebody else’s sexual problems and engages religion as a weapon against someone else’s sexuality. 

 

Imagine the experience of this woman, dragged out of bed in the wee hours of the morning, after a neighbor had reported the affair she’d been having, or perhaps not even that, perhaps dragged out after being sexually manipulated or even sexually assaulted the night before. 

 

This unnamed woman did not have sex by herself. You cannot commit adultery alone. And yet it’s just her that is dragged into the temple to face shame and await punishment. Again, as if the transgressions or troubles of one woman is that community’s biggest sexual problem. 

 

Now the irony is that the biggest sexual problems in that community were likely the same ones we see today. 

 

They, like us, would have had problems with the interplay of sex and violence. How many millions of people have been raped, sexually abused, sexually assaulted? Sexual violence is at the top of humanity’s sexual problems, and in every community, you’ll find those that have been victims and perpetrators. Part of and adjacent to sexual violence, you have sex that is tied to the abuse of power, inside and outside of religion: sexual harrassment, sexual coercion, and the coverups of those things. 

 

And then on a more mundane level, we’ve had both then and now so much sex that has made us less integrated and whole, not more; less intimately connected, not more. Untender sex, anonymous sex, sex used to satisfy just one of the partners, sexuality that does not bring us into closer, more joyful, more intimate relaitonships. 

 

Communities very much need to have conversations about these problems, and yet these are not the conversation most faith communities are having about sex, now and then. 

 

It’s interesting to me that in this moment with Jesus, and the woman caught in adultery, and the judging crowd, some traditions have it that when Jesus bent down to write on the ground, he started writing down the sins of the judging crowd. Marking their own sins, sexual and otherwise, in the dirt, while daring them to continue in their judgement of others. Now for various reasons, I don’t think that’s what happened, but can you imagine? 

 

If Jesus has said: you, who rush through sex with your wife without giving her pleasure, you cast the first stone. You, who glare at your employee’s bodies and make unwelcome sexual advances, do you have a right to condemn another? 

 

There’s a lot more to talk about than a single woman’s sexual choices she bitterly regrets. Sexual violence, sex without consent, untender and unintimate sex that doesn’t foster love, these and other things very much call for our attention. That’s why the other year, we had our Speak Out Sunday, for instance, focused on sexual violence. We want to give our community permission to focus on the real NOs we need to talk about when it comes to sexuality. 

 

But again, it’s interesting to me, that Jesus didn’t just move his community from one “no” to another. I think Jesus took the “no” of this moment – that neither this woman nor anyone else should commit adultery, and Jesus affirmed that tacitly, but he also pivoted to “yeses” that needed to be affirmed.  

 

Jesus says no to this woman’s adultery. He tells her privately, gently: Go and sin no more. 

 

But there were other “no’s” being said here that Jesus will not affirm. The community said “no” to men’s accountability. They drag one woman forward in judgement, practicing their own version of the awful practice that we’ve called “slut shaming” in our times. Jesus won’t have it. This community also said “no” to this woman’s life and freedom and hopeful future. They judge her, they condemn her, they would stone her if they could. But Jesus, now and then, is convinced that none of us should be defined by our worst act. That we all deserve grace and the chance to find a better way forward toward life and health and freedom. 

 

So for Jesus, there are “yeses” in this scene that apply to our sexualty still, I believe. 

 

For Jesus , there is a yes to universal accountability. We all could use greater health and wholeness in our sexuality. Jesus invites the whole community of John 8 and by extension all of us as well not to focus our attention on judging others but doing our work for our sexuality – along with the rest of our lives – to be as healthy and constructive as possible.   

 

Jesus also says yes to radical grace – neither do I condemn you. You, regardless of your sexual history; you, regardless of the condemnation you have faced in your own eyes or in anyone else’s – you are not condemned. 

 

And I think Jesus says yes here as well to freedom. Go your own way, and from now on don’t sin. Don’t do harm. Don’t give up your dignity. Don’t tether your sexuality to people you’ll regret. We could fill in more don’ts here, but to me the most powerful words are again not the “no” but the “yes.” Yes to freedom, yes to the possibility of healing, yes to joy, yes to love. 

 

Thinking about what God’s yes to our sexuality might be makes me ask, when it comes to church, the good news faith of Jesus, and our sexuality, how do we “sex positive” our message and experience? How do we move from secrecy, shame, and judgement, toward honesty, freedom, and health?

 

I know it might sound funny for some of us to hear the phrase “sex positive” at church, let alone in a sermon, the Bible does contain a whole book of erotic poetry. Right at the end of the Bible’s ancient wisdom literature, just before the prophets begin, is the Song of Songs.

 

It’s very old Hebrew poetry, so the imagery is kind of weird to most of us, more tactile and abstract than visual, but once you get into it, it’s racy. And I don’t say this to shock or titillate, just as the editors who pulled the Bible together in the first place didn’t include it for those reasons.

 

I think it’s there to affirm that sex and sexuality are powerful and beautiful. 

 

Our sexuality is not a problem to be overcome, but a gift to receive in gratitude. Song of Songs affirms the utter delight sex can be. The swooning over another’s beauty, inside and out. The ecstasy in our own minds and bodies as fall in love and as live in loving relationships.

 

Song of Songs affirms the power of sex, that it is among the strongest forces we ever experience. Sex can be a powerful motivator, a powerful bonding agent between two people, and – between the wrong people or practiced in the wrong ways – a powerful harm as well. Song of Songs compares sex to all the beauty of nature in its delight, to fire in its intensity, and to death in its strength.

 

And Song of Songs in its Jewish and Christian interpretive tradition over the centuries has linked our sexuality with our spirituality. Because the longing, the ecstasy, the delight we experience are adjacent to the longings, the ecstasy, the delights that call to us to long for God. 

 

Friends, we could do well to ask ourselves today: how have I believed my sexuality to be a problem to overcome, and how can I welcome it as a gift instead? 

 

We could do well if we are partnered to ask: how can I experience more delight, play, intimacy, and fire in my sexual relationship? This is not a how-to sermon, so I’ll leave it brief here, but for some of us this means practicing more emotional intimacy with our spouse, since vulnerable hearts make vulnerable bodies easier. For some of us, this means becoming open again to our own pleasure and delight, if we were never encouraged to value that. And for some of us, this means putting energy and thought and care into our partner’s safety and joy and delight, if we’ve not been particularly creative or thoughtful about seeking the pleasure and joy of our partner. 

 

You’ll notice, though, that I haven’t talked about marriage at all yet, even though Chrisitan teaching about sex has often boiled down to: don’t have sex if you’re not married. And if you are married, don’t have sex to anyone else, and within your marriage – do what you want, or sometimes, do what you must. Churches have had a pretty limited conversation on these matters. 

 

And when I was a kid and a young adult, this conversation got especially intense for a while. If you’re in your 20s-40s, and you grew up in a Christian environment, there’s a decent chance you were exposed to what was called the purity movement. 

 

In response to the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s, and along with the rise of the religious right, sex education around churches and – in some places – in the public as well – became super-focused on abstinence education. True love waits. Put a ring on it. Save it to marriage. 

 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m a big proponent of marriage and of marital sex. Along with Pastors Lydia and Ivy, I officiate weddings. I help couples with premarital coaching. I offer short-term pastoral counseling to couples in our church here and there. In a week, I’ll be celebrating with my wife Grace our 24th anniversary. And as with many other people, my own marriage has been the greatest of gifts, in so many ways, including sexually. 

 

But this purity movement that had only two things to say about sex – if you’re not married, don’t; and if you’re married, do – it’s pretty clear it did more harm than good. On average, abstinence only education managed to get people to delay sexual activity by a couple years, not usually to marriage, by the way. But abstinence only education also made it  more likely that young people’s early sexual experiences would be less safe – leading to more unwanted pregnancies and abortions. And, as with most Christian teaching on sex in the past, its obsession with virginity and its shaming of people to try to get them to be so-called “sexually pure” was talked about with both genders, but the fixation was really on girls and women. This cult of female virginity and this fear and shaming of girls and women did a lot of damage to the faith and sexuality and souls of those girls and women. Again, if that was your experience, I’m so sorry for that. 

 

I wonder if instead of the giant NOs of the purity movement, we could tenderly hold four YESes instead. I’ll be brief, as I’ve got to wrap soon, but four things.

 

  1. Yes to covenant and commitment. Good sex is a powerful bonding agent between two people. And the safest, most delightful sex occurs between people who are emotionally and relationally intimate and who have made commitments to one another. Marriage is a great way to do this, but unlike biblical cultures, we live in a time when over half of adults – at least around here – are not married. And when people’s marriages often take place 20 years or more after puberty. That’s a long time. Somewhat unprecedented compared to most cultures. So truth is, most unmarried people are having sex at some point. Honoring that more commitment, more emotional intimacy is better, and keeping conversations about marriage on the table still makes sense to me, though.
  2. Yes to discernment – which means figuring things out in a complicated world, rather than just pointing to a black and white rule. Christiaity, compared to most religions, and frankly compared to most secular ways of life, is not very rule-based. Jesus, and his most significant early followers and interpreters, encouraged a law of love – to love God, neighbor, and self profoundly – and within that law, a fair bit of freedom. So when it comes to our sexual ethics and relationships, we need to encourage all of us to firstly ask: how do I love God with my body and sexuality? And how do I love my neighbor – including any current or future sexual partners, friends, children – how do I love my neighbor? And lastly, how do I love and honor myself? If we’re carefully, seriously asking these questions, we’ll take care of all the baselines when it comes to sexuality – consent, safety, kindness, love, tenderness, and beyond that, we’ll likely do alright. 
  3. Yes to singleness and for some of us – old school word here – chastity. Jesus, the New Testament, and the early church all honored singleness and its potential for freedom and devotion to God – above marriage. And they all honored and respected people who while single, embraced chastity – abstaining from sex during that season and devoting one’s love, energy and body to love of God and nieghbor. This isn’t for everyone, but listen, in our society – church included – you get more scrutiny and exclusion, not honor, for being single. And if you’re abstinent, either for life or for a season, you get talked about like you’re immature or there’s something wrong with you. I say shame on that. I’m not telling anyone you need to be single or abstinent, but if you are, good for you. I hope you can receive and find the honor and the gift in that. 
  4. And lastly, for all of us, but especially for those of us who are single, and especially for those of us who are single during this pandemic, Yes to sensuality. I already talked about sex and spirituality – about longing, delight, pleasure – how central these are in life. But we could broaden this to talk about sensuality. Many of life’s deepest, most transcendent experiences are really bodily. The pleasures not just of sex, but the delicous taste of food. The bracing feel of cold air and water, and the comfort of those same things warm. The delight of singing and dancing for some of us, of exercise for others, of making things with our hands. We were made for all of this. So if you’re not even hugging or touching anyone these days, let alone sexually active, you likely need more, not less sensuality in your life. 

 

Friends, I’m ending here, but my prayer and longing for us all is for responsibility, kindness, love, grace, and freedom in our sexuality. May you be blessed to know that no one condemns you. And may you be blessed in freedom to go your way, free from sin, in love, delight, and joy. 

Overturning Injustice

For this week’s Events and Happenings at Reservoir, click “Download PDF.”

For this week’s spiritual practice led by Steve on praying the psalms, click HERE.

To view this week’s online worship service, click the YouTube link above.

 

Let me pray for us. 

 

May the meditation of our hearts and minds be pleasing to you, Oh Lord my Breath, My Rock and My Redeemer. Amen. 

 

I saw a meme a while ago that said, “The real miracle of Jesus is how he had 12 close friends in his 30’s.” It’s hard to make new friends in your 30’s. There was a woman I began to become friends with. She and I were about similar ages, in similar life stages and I awkwardly said to her one day, “Hey you want to hang out, like grab coffee or go for a walk together or something? If you want.” She said yes and we met up. It was delightful and nice to hang out with her. We started texting more, sending each other memes on facebook messenger, we video chatted. We dropped off cookies and goodies to each other’s houses. And then one day we had a weird text exchange. We were going back and forth on something and then I think I offended her and she withdrew and ended the conversation quickly. I had felt weird about it too. I texted her cautiously some time later, with a sheepish, “Hi! How have you been?” And she answered, “I’m ok. U?” And I replied a bit more extensively but she wrapped up the convo again quickly. After that, I thought, well I reached out. The ball’s in her court. And I didn’t hear from her for a while. I felt bad but wasn’t sure what was going on. We were a new friendship so I wasn’t sure how to move forward. 

 

One day, she texted me with, “We need to talk.” I was like, okay, realizing something had gone wrong and we ended up talking on the phone about the last interaction. Honestly at the beginning, the “we need to talk” felt so confrontational. But I was glad she reached out. Cause we ended up sharing, even talking about how both of us were pursuing each other as a possible new friend. She was hurt and told me how I had made her feel. I didn’t know I had hurt her that much until she shared with me. She said, that after she was hurt, she was like, oh forget her. But then she said she looked at her baby daughter and wanted her to grow up learning, “Not as I say but as I do.” That cutting people off just because of one bad interaction is not the way and that she wanted her to have relationships and so she reached out to make it right. That touched my heart deeply because she took a chance, not knowing me too well, to open herself up to me and share her hurt with me. I was grateful that she had that thought and she reached out and didn’t just cut me out of her life because of one mistake I made. Her wisdom allowed us to lean into the conflict and resolve it. 

 

Building a real friendship isn’t easy. It takes work and conflict is a part of it. We’ve been talking about building a Beloved Community here at Reservoir lately. This theme of beloved community is not just a cheesy lovey dovey talk but a real possibility of an open, inclusive, loving and equitable community. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr saw and spoke of this Beloved Community as the end goal to his fight.

The King Center describes it like this though,

“Dr. King’s Beloved Community was not devoid of interpersonal, group or international conflict. Instead he recognized that conflict was an inevitable part of human experience. But he believed that conflicts could be resolved peacefully and adversaries could be reconciled through a mutual, determined commitment to nonviolence. No conflict, he believed, need erupt in violence. And all conflicts in The Beloved Community should end with reconciliation of adversaries cooperating together in a spirit of friendship and goodwill.”

 

“No conflict, he believed, need erupt in violence.” MLK was an advocate of non-violence. And yet he recognized that non-violence is not the absence of conflict; in the absence of conflict there is violence. There’s a difference. 

 

What does a beloved community look like? It’s not just unity or peace. It’s much more dynamic and real than that. It can get messy and difficult at times. Like real love, it’s not just a place where everyone gets along because everyone plays along. It’s you stepping into my space, and me getting into your head, it’s people making space for one another, it’s a beautiful dance. 

 

Here’s another example from their instagram post, @blackliturgies:

 

“Being ‘Christianly’… has all too often become synonymous with politeness.

To me, nothing is more Christian than breaking the hands of injustice that are strangling my brother. 

Don’t tell us to calm down when we’re saying I Can’t Breathe.”

@blackliturgies

 

And they offer a prayer in this regard

 

Protector God, 

We confess that we have diluted what it means to be Christian (community) with a person’s (group’s) capacity for niceness. We have smothered afflicted voices with shallow proclamations of peace and unity. Instead of listening well, we police how a person cries out without hearing the very words they are crying. But we are grateful, Lord, that you don’t ask us to be nice, but to do mercy and justice. Help us to redefine our peacemaking, that it would be known as that holy kindness which brings the fire of justice and a torrential truth-telling to all in its path. Make us people more concerned with protecting life than protecting the image of Christianity, which need not be protected. Bless our screaming, our weeping, our marching, our fight– that our pain would no longer be invalidated by how it moves when we’re gasping.

Amen. 

 

Do we have the love to really hear? When someone says in a pained voice, “we need to talk” do we make space for them to tell us what they really think? 

 

Do we just want things nice and quiet or do we really love one another to listen to each other, especially to those that are hurting, oppressed, crying out and saying, it hurts, we’re dying, stop. 

No conflict, he believed, need erupt in violence. Jesus showed us a picture of this too, in

John 2:13-16.

Let me read it for us

13 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!”

 

Wow, a whip out of cords? Overturned their tables? Jesus! Anger management much?

 

The Jewish passover was a big deal where all the people from the surrounding lands would travel to Jerusalem for temple worship. With it came over time culture and structures that some people began to exploit, those who were less fortunate, through this tradition. The cattle, sheep, and dove sellers figured out that the travelers couldn’t travel with their animal sacrifices, because the laws also required them to be fresh. So when they arrived to Jerusalem, they had no choice but to purchase the hiked up priced animals. Money exchangers gouged people with this holiday and it had become too normal. 

 

I’ve heard messages from this text to be about how you shouldn’t sell girl’s scouts cookies at church. That Jesus was mad because they were “turning house of prayer into a marketplace”. But it wasn’t just about neutering church from money. In fact, Jesus talks about money quite a bit. He was talking about, not forgetting about money, but economic justice and what that should look like. 

 

I still can’t believe this story though. Jesus has always been painted for me as the nice kind man, who welcomed children, healed, forgave. These kinds of texts where Jesus is being so extra didn’t really take the front seat. And in that sense, I think sometimes we make Jesus into a 2 dimensional character. When he was actually very fully human, with emotions, that interacted with real people. There’s a record of Jesus even crying, in public. When was the last time you’ve shown tears in public? Sometimes he didn’t answer people’s questions, which is rude. Sometimes he’d just walk away without telling anyone. Sometimes he rebuked people. In fact the text before this story in Matthew and Mark, I always like looking around the text, you will be thoroughly confused. I didn’t include it, although it kind of goes together with today’s text because I don’t have time to get into it, and well, I’m confused by it too! He tells a fig tree to die, because it didn’t bear fruit. But the text says, it wasn’t fig season. Like, Jesus, did you not know that? What’s your deal? Jesus comes off harsh in some of these texts! How do we make sense of this? 

 

We forget sometimes, because Christianity can feel so sweet and nice, how actually radical the message of Jesus is. Remember, Jesus was targeted and executed. We worship a God who was murdered by the state publicly. So many people followed him, and interestingly enough, they were the outcasts, the oppressed, the poor, the widow, the women, but so many also hated him, which happened to be those in power. He challenged everything, the system, the culture, the politics, the economic set up of the day. He spoke of things many people did not want to hear. 

 

Are we willing to listen? How has Jesus challenged you? How is the message of Jesus challenging you these days, rather than just making you happy? How is Jesus overturning things that have always been, things that are comfortable, and causing trouble? Is the message of Jesus a nice addon to your best life now or is he shaking you up a bit? 

 

What about the people who are doing that in our lives? Now I’m not saying just cause people hate you that you’re doing God’s work. The people that ask us the hard questions. The people who bring tears and anger, and not just pleasantries to our community group. The people who make things real and raw, and sometimes uncomfortable for us. 

 

And even church, if your church always makes you feel good and upbeat, if you’re always leaving at the end of worship service feeling only encouragement, I really wonder what that says about your church. Religion isn’t for feel goods. That’s a watered down version of a religion. Sometimes the message of Jesus tears our heart out and we’re left with discomfort and questions, and anger, and disappointment rather than always with hope. And God is present in the unknown, a deep dark void with no answers, only tears. Even there, I believe, God is still there. 

 

Do you feel that way sometimes? That God isn’t answering. Or God isn’t showing you the happy ending? What’s the good of this, God? And all you hear is silence? You see the world filled with injustice and people aren’t getting along, and it just seems uglier and uglier, and you just feel like flipping tables and you have no answers. God is there. 

 

We had our Reservoir’s Equity Diversity and Inclusion survey report go out this past week in our weekly emails. We call the team REDI for short. The team was commissioned by the board to think more deeply about EDI at our church and to serve as an advisory committee to the board, staff, and the leaders of our church. I’m on the team. It’s been a humbling experience because while our church is already very diverse and really a beautiful place of genuine connection and belonging for many people, it does not exist in a vacuum but within the very confines of the systemic injustice we see everywhere else, racism, sexism, discrimination, and estragement.  Can I say something you don’t want to hear? 

I’ve felt this. This is not just a criticism of our church, or organization, or our people. It’s just honestly, reality. Story of my life. 

 

I’ve been called chingchong in the parking lot of our church campus. I’ve been grazed on my butt creepily by a man in our chapel. I’ve been called an inappropriate sexualized term towards women that made me feel extremely uncomfortable. Those are just a few examples of more overt ones, not to mention others that are more subtle that I’m not even sure about but I go home pondering about the interactions because i’m a woman of color. Are you surprised? Do you believe me or question the context of the incidents that I’m referring to? 

 

I’m taking an EDI certification course online these days and it’s helpful because I realize it’s not all in my head or I’m taking things personal. Studies show that unconscious bias, bias we don’t mean, influence the way people are treated. Same behavior by a man and a woman gets evaluated differently. For example, men who speak up are rewarded with 10% more competence points whereas women get a 14% lower rating for speaking up in meetings. I could go on with facts, but I won’t. Cause you’ve heard them and you can hear them anywhere else on podcasts and stuff, but I mention it here, in a sermon. I could be overturning tables instead though. I feel uncomfortable mentioning edi data in a sermon. I’m supposed to encourage you and give you hope for your week in a sermon. But this is all a part of what it looks like to be a Beloved Community. Not just inspiring one another, but being able to bring conflict and honesty towards real equitable transformation of our community. Some of us are echoing edi facts. Some of us are crying out. Some of us are flipping tables. 

Church, are we listening? 

 

Let me pray for us. 

Jesus, why did you get so mad at the temple? Did you have to resort to violence? We’ve seen to turn the other cheek, accept undeserved judgement of execution on the cross. We know you opened your arms and said, father forgive them? What are in between these stories? Help us to know you more deeply, more completely, through the stories of the Bible, to the core of your heart and your mission. Humble us to see you, to hear you, and to follow you, not a 1 dimensional Jesus that sometimes we water you down to be, but a real personal relational God who deeply engages this world, deeply cares, and deeply loves us. Give us the eyes to see, and the ears to hear we pray. Amen. 

The Bread of “As If”

For this week’s Reservoir Events, click “Download PDF.”

To view the worship service, click the YouTube link.

To view Steve’s Spiritual Practice on Grief and Lament, click HERE.

 

We lost a legend, two days ago, Congressman, John Lewis.

I wanted to talk just a little bit this morning – about how he’ll continue to teach us to hope and change, and be in this world if we keep listening to his voice that is embedded in our society.

He was a great preacher and a teacher from birth – he said in his early years he was known to preach to his chickens!  And his voice couldn’t be tucked away – and we would continue to learn from that voice as he became a seminal figure in the civil rights movement.  He created and employed strategic plans and spiritual disciplines to bring about change in the face of brutal injustice. This is the work we know that he did “yes” in the 50’s and 60’s  – and it is also the work of civil rights that he continued to do, right up until his death. He fought the fights and he did the actions… AND he also taught us how to center love as the mode by which we STAY in the fight – how we stay engaged when the justice we seek isn’t yet realized, when the fight becomes bone-achingly tiring, and it feels like midnight at every turn.


He showed us how to keep asking, how to keep seeking, how to keep knocking. – and not give up on this beautiful and broken world. 


And he asked us to do this, by not giving up on one another.  By releasing bitterness and  believing for the beloved community. And he said, “you have to do this by seeing, by visualizing, by having this sense of faith that what you’re moving toward, what you believe for, what you imagine this world COULD BE,  is already done. Imagining that it’s already happened.

He said, you have to live “as if.” “As if” that sense of community, that sense of family, that sense of one house”, has already happened. “As if” it is real.

This is what I want to talk about today – how we keep moving, keep asking, keep seeking, keep praying for the world we want to create, even when it feels like midnight.

Communion:

Some of you may know that I’ve been holding a mid-week Communion service since the onset of Covid. I looked back and the first one we held together was on March 18th!  Isn’t that wild? 4 months ago. To be honest I started this little 10 minute communion because I knew I would need a constant time in my week to pause.  To commune with God.  And I didn’t want to do it alone. I wanted to be in the company of others, to be held in connection with one another – even if it was quirky and done virtually!

And to be honest these 4 months have felt like a maze of days. I tried so many days to  find my way out, to find the right path that would lead me OUT of the global pandemic!  It’s been a time of asking all. the. questions – when will this be over? Which way do I turn now? Should I pay attention to this cough, should I get tested?  They have been long days, long weeks, long months – where I have deeply found myself seeking the direction of God. … because it has felt like midnight. Dead ends, no answers, no one opening a door that says “This …THIS… is the way through this awful time” .

I came to that communion table week after week, with all of my asking, all of my seeking, all of my knocking – with my deepest needs of the day, asking for bread from God – hoping God would answer. 

The surprising  practice of  communion  – is  that I did get to personally commune with God – but I also got to sit at an ancient table, in beloved community –  with all of you who hopped on the call – and also with all of the stalwarts of faith, the prophets, the saints,  the disciples, John Lewis – those who have sat at this table before me.  

And I got to take into my BODY – the dreams, the visions, the abundance of hope, the strength, the bewilderment, the tears that they came with  …. And I got to take in the bread, that was broken and passed around that table – and passed through centuries of Jesus followers – reminding me that I eat this same bread today… The bread of God’s love, the bread of strength, the bread of “as if”...  

Communion  has shown me that God will give me my daily  bread  – but that it has never been meant for personal/individual consumption alone –  but for the breaking, the sharing/giving and feeding of those around me. It is the fuel I receive, to be an active, attentive and aware member of society – so that I can stay connected to those whose days are shrouded in midnight.

Because this is what our journey of faith is about.. It’s what these aspects of faith –  taking communion and prayer – are about –  it is about our relationship to God – AND – it is deeply about our active and attentive, PERSISTENT relationship to one another.   Persistently engaged with one another, persistently showing compassion and working for justice -persistently honoring our shared humanity, all the while eating and partaking in the bread of God.

 

So before I pray could you take a moment with God to get in touch with, “what you are asking for, what you are seeking, what bread you need from Jesus, right now?”

I’ll give you a second to think about this with God.


Prayer:  “Dear God – the one who offers us your full self – the one who breaks yourself open to each and everyone of us… may you bind us to one another in your spirit right now.  Would you give us the bread we desire …. The sustenance… the resourcing we need… to keep moving, to keep acting… to keep loving.”

Scripture

We are going to look at this parable today found in Luke where Jesus invites us to consider how we might respond when our days feel like midnight – when darkness covers our days. 

A Knock at Midnight: Luke 11:1-10

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”

2 He said to them, “When you pray, say:

“Divine Parent,

hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come.

3 Give us each day our daily bread.

4 Forgive us our sins,

    for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.

And lead us not into temptation.’”

5Then, teaching them more about prayer, Jesus used this story: 

“Suppose you went to a friend’s house at midnight, wanting to borrow three loaves of bread. You say to your neighbor, ‘Friends of mine has just arrived for a visit, and I have nothing for them to eat.’ And suppose your neighbor calls out from the bedroom, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is locked for the night, and my family and I are all in bed. I can’t help you.’ But I tell you this—though your neighbor won’t do it for friendship’s sake, if you keep knocking long enough, your neighbor will get up and give you whatever you need because of your shameless persistence. 

“And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

 

Now parables as Lydia mentioned last week, hold so much!  They are both fun and frustrating to roam around in … the characters, the ordinary elements in the parable can hopefully illuminate more of God’s nature to you… but also note that the hope of a parable is NOT that you would solve it, the hope is to see what is revealed to you in this moment in time.  A pastor friend says, “that the best way to suck the life out of a parable is by attempting to neatly allegorize it or worse try to figure out the so-called moral of the story. Parables aren’t about morals; they are about truths — hidden, unyielding, disruptive truths. The kind of truths that simply can’t be contained.” (Nadia Bolz-Weber)

Parables are these beautiful stories that talk to us today.  Parables that have so much play in the margins – beyond maybe the most known interpretation – which I think is often where the greatest truths reside.

This parable has been taught over time to me as the amazing power and value of persistent prayer.  That makes sense – the disciples had just asked, “God teach us to pray” – and then he tells this parable of a relentless knocking, a persistent neighbor who in the middle of the night will not stop ringing the doorbell of their friends house.

And the message I’ve absorbed is to be bold. Be brazen. Be shamelessly persistent.  Because it will pay off, with God  – if you knock, pray, plead and shout long enough.  You see here – it’s obvious that of course God will be so much kinder and more good to you than this friend in the house – who won’t even rise and get out of bed to open the door?


Ask, ask, ask, seek, seek, seek, knock, knock, knock.  In Luke and all throughout scripture we are told to pray constantly, without ceasing.  And we read that God will give you what you want if you ask, directly and incessantly, and long enough?

 

It so fits our American, individualistic tendency right?  WORK hard enough, long enough, knock until your knuckles are bloody – and you’ll get what you’ve strived for…and it maps so nicely onto an American brand of Christianity that when you pray hard enough –  you’ll be given, you will find, you will receive – the door will be opened unto you.

Except when it’s not. No matter how hard you’ve tried. 

 

My guess is that many of you:

  • Have found yourself outside of a firmly closed door. 

A door that has never been opened to you, no matter how hard you knocked.

 

  • Have asked again and again – and nothing has been given…

and your voice is sore, hoarse from shouting.

 

  • Have sought and sought and sought – and nothing has been found.

Many of you perhaps, have only found midnight.  Darkness.  Maybe some of you have found “darkness so deep that it’s hard to know which way to turn”, (MLK Jr, 53), how to make sense of your faith – how to pray.

IF parables really can reveal truths that cannot be contained, I wonder instead of approaching this parable – with the lens of individualism – trying to find ourselves in a particular character;  the weary traveler, the friend with no bread or the friend with bread.  We could instead  look at this story as a picture, a flow of community, of neighborhoods – of society.  Of the interconnectedness of a beloved community – as John Lewis’ (and Jesus’) try to remind us.  Because this parable IS indeed about persistent prayer – but it is about the kind of prayer that can not be uttered or heard, without connection to one another – and it is the persistent kind of prayer that requires an unreliquishing leaning IN, an awareness, an attentiveness to the collective shared humanity and needs around us.  The truth is that prayer is seen and spoken when we embody Jesus, when we take on his way of persistently BEING in the world, take on his heart that seeks and longs for compassion, beauty and justice relentlessly.

Parable:
Just prior to this passage in Luke 10 – we see the parable of the Good Samaritan… Which is Jesus’ answer to the lawyer’s question, “How do I inherit eternal life?”  Jesus directly answers: “Love me – and love your neighbor as yourself”… and then tells the parable – to give a container of how to imagine, to stretch that answer into full, real life, living it out, embodying it.  He says, “ Go and love – go and show mercy.”

He’s doing a similar thing here with the disciples when they ask about how to pray.. Jesus answers: “This is how you should pray – say:

“Our Divine Parent in heaven,

Hallowed be Your name.

Your kingdom come.

Your will be done

On earth as it is in heaven.

3 Give us today our daily bread.”

 

And then he stretches it – he says – oh that’s not the full answer!  You have to live this prayer out – you have to engage with the people around you, the complexities, the structures, the resources, the lack of resources, the inequities… “To love your neighbor… to pray persistently”… is to live IN – to be a part of,  this messy world.  AND to be fully AWAKE to it. 

I do think this parable is about how asking, seeking and knocking – can be the key to a  prayerful, abundant life that leads us into greater connection with one another and God. 

I just think that God could be giving us this parable to reveal truths about our current day society  – where being awake or not awake in love and prayer,  to the present needs – is consequential to the health of our whole society. 

I’m going to invite us to consider that the friend inside of the house with the sleeping family – and behind the locked door, with the bread…  is one who is not fully awake to the needs and desires of the community.

We don’t know how long the friend on the outside of the door, has been knocking.  We just know that for at least some amount of time the friend inside the house, was not conscious of this knock.  

He didn’t hear the knock, he didn’t see the person knocking because he was asleep, and his response is delayed and reluctant.

And even when he becomes aware of the knock, it’s not regarded as an invitation to answer, to give, or to open the door.  It’s regarded as an unwelcomed disruption, it causes him discomfort and annoyance.

There’s no movement. No getting up. No running to the entrance. No seeking.

Just yelling from the inside, “stop bothering me.” Your neediness is bothering me. 

The bread on his counter – represents the bread of comfort, the bread of status quo (the doors locked, that’s the way it is), the bread of “see you in the morning. At dawn, when it’s light out.”

What is consequential here, is that the dawn can not be found when there is no one to crack the door of light.  The dawn can not be found even when in the morning, the bread is stale and tastes of injustice. The continued sleepy state of the friend inside the house, who holds the resources in society, is an active perpetuation of the long midnight of the weary traveler’s existence.

Embodied love. Embodied prayer  will always demand us to be conscious to the knocks of our day.

The Friend with no bread

BUT we also have this other picture – the friend on the outside of the  door… who seems to have nothing – his hands empty. But his heart is full – of a belief of  – maybe as John Lewis would have said, of living “as if”.  As if the world he lives in – is the world he imagines it can be –  and he locates himself as a part of that. .. .

  • He shows us that to love your neighbor – whoever that might be –  a stranger, a weary traveler – is to be disrupted.   
  • He shows us that to pray – is to extend energy – physical, soul energy.
  • AND he shows us that to TRULY be awake to the needs around us we need to:

…ask, seek and knock…

  • He ASKS this weary traveler what he needs…
    • ANd he finds that this traveler needs rest and food. 
    • And he’s not deterred that he himself can’t provide it – he goes and seeks for it. 
  • He SEEKS – he gets up, goes out, he MOVES. He believes that there is a way forward when all it looks like is dead ends – when all there is is darkness.
  • And then he KNOCKS – he knocks – that knock of justice at the site where resources are known.  And he commands the attention of these needs, PERSISTENTLY – he knocks and knocks.. calling attention to the greater community. 
  • Waking up others to the needs evident in the community.
  • He INVITES others to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with their God.. he refuses to give up on one another.

The friend who loves and prays – despite having nothing at midnight – does so by Asking, Seeking and Knocking with and behalf of his fellow neighbor. And he shows me that it is both important to do our part in finding and fighting for the bread of justice – these fundamental resources that the weary travelers in our society needs… AND he also shows me that I have rich resources within me – even when I feel like I have nothing to give…. He shows me that these resources: faith, hope, love, compassion, strength – are the daily bread of “as if”, that I get to receive and be given by Jesus. 

This friend shows the weary traveler and all of us – that DAWN can crack through the eternal midnight.  

Martin Luther King Jr. has an amazing sermon on this parable.  (Please check it out if you have a chance)… and he says, “The most inspiring word that we can speak, as the church, as followers of Jesus, is that no midnight long remains. Because the weary traveler by midnight who asks for bread is really seeking the dawn. Faith in the dawn arises out of the belief that God is good and just.  AND it is on US to show that God is good and just by our actions and movement in the world. 

So we need to not just talk about how “ good and just God is” from behind our comfortable, safe, locked doors… we need to act as if we believe that truth and live it out. We need to open the door.

Because so many in our nation have been locked out, for too long. 

So many are asking for bread. The bread that might be sitting on my counter – or your counter right now.

And the prayer that Jesus teaches his disciples and us – is to create a world we could imagine for… God’s Kin-dom here on earth, now.   To “work with what is”, “what the current state of the world is”  – and build it together, as we imagine it to be.

To again and again ASK for our daily bread from Jesus.

To unlock the doors of our threatened hearts, our resources, our positions in society and SHARE THEM. 

To SEEK justice and re-equitize the stockpiles that reside behind certain locked doors.

To re-distribute, to SEE and LOVE our neighbors.

To take part in repairing – to take part in KNOCKING on the doors where the bread of justice, the bread of faith, the bread of compassion, the bread of freedom lies – before it goes stale again in our hearts.

John Lewis, lived by an African Proverb, “when you pray – move your feet.” And I feel like this parable encourages this…. Pray persistently – yes – and move your feet. 

When you pray – be in connection with one another. PRAY deeply with your whole being.  Be, as communion is teaching me – the eyes, the ears, the mouth –  the body of Jesus wherever we are. 

Get uncomfortable.
Persistently ask how your placement in this shared tapestry of life, is consequential to others.

Seek the guidance from our good, justice-loving, God – and learn from those that have come before us.  To attune our ears to the  ask of us, in our time. 

Because if we listen – I think we’ll hear that the ask is akin to the work of John Lewis’ life and his legacy that we get to carry out – “to do the work of creating good and necessary trouble”… to willingly confront injustices… to aid in removing the persistent midnight.  

And to ask ourselves, and collectively ask – “how do we remove the midnight – rather than perpetuate it?”

As we rest our heads to our pillows tonight  – do we  pray for our fellow siblings and neighbors and their perceived needs?  Asking God to help us in that – “YES . we. do!” 

AND we also wake up – get up  – and move – pray with our feet, with our arms linked to one another…. 

And we go out into our neighborhoods, our communities and we ASK what the needs are…..and we listen.

And we SEEK  – we search to help FIND what is needed. And we commit to going out even if it’s midnight. 

And we join in the knocking, the knocking of centuries… we join in the persistent knocking that JESUS has been banging on our doors with – for justice to roll down into our neighborhoods like a mighty river… 

Prayer is being connected to one another and to God.  To know that we are not alone at midnight – and to do our best each day, in making sure the dawn comes for those who can only see darkness right now.   This is how we see, visualize the beloved community – this is how we stay hungry for the bread of connection – the bread of “as if” – connected to that sense of family, that sense of one house here and now.”

As we close this morning,  I ask you again to take a moment with Jesus… “What is the bread that you are hungry for, in need of?  And what is the bread you have to give?”

And as we often did in mid-week communion – I invite you to offer now a “One Voice Prayer”.  Whatever bread you need – or whatever bread you have to give…say it outloud. On the count of 3… 1-2-3…, “The bread of ______________________________”.
Amen.

 

Signs of Life: When Your Heart’s On Fire

I spent a few hours this week sending mail to people, not something I normally do. Here’s why.

 

It started with an 11-year old named Emerson.

 

Emerson loves to send letters. They usually include news and updates, lots of questions, jokes, artwork – inside and on the outside of the envelope, and talk about Taylor Swift. 

 

And a couple of months ago, Emerson decided to write a note to her mail carrier, who’s been sending her letters and delivering the responses she gets. She wrote: I’m Emerson. You may know me as the person that lives here that writes a lot of letters & decorates the envelopes. Wel, I wanted to thank you for taking my letters and delivering them. You are very important to me. I make people happy with my letters, but you do too. The reason you are very important in my life is because I don’t have a phone so how else am I supposed to stay in touch with my friends? You make it possible!” 

 

The next day, Em got two letters back – one from the mail carrier and one from his supervisor. And the following day, she wrote them both back. And then a couple of weeks later, two boxes of mail came for Em. 

 

See, the mail carrier’s supervisor had shared her letter with the whole group of USPS workers in her region, and lots of people wrote to Em. Because she had been vulnerable in her letters, they were too. There were jokes and little gifts, and talk about their family and lives, and confessions of love for Taylor Swift from from grown men and women. And on it went; Things like:

“I work alone in a small rural post office….” 

“Not everyone realizes how hard we work….”

“I can’t tell you how much it means to read your letter…”

“I have a son in Kuwait. If you have a second, could you send him a letter too. He’s all alone…”

 

And on and on it went, and on and on it’s still going. This circle of seeing and knowing, of thanking and recognizing, of finding new connections in a lonely world. All inside stamped, addressed, marker-art covered envelopes. 

 

I read this story, shared with me on twitter by another pastor I’m friends with. And my heart lit up. What I mean by that is I was thankful and inspired and happy and sad and had new ideas for how I want to live in the world and what kind of world I want to see into being –  all at once.

 

And so last Wednesday, a few days later, I sent some letters. It was surprisingly slow going. So much slower than email, to think of who to write to, and to find the words, and write them out by hand, and find addresses and envelopes and stamps and all that. 

 

But it was my way of not letting go of what had happened to me when I read that story, my way of honoring that my heart was on fire, and that I had new life in that moment.

 

In my teaching the past couple of months, I’ve been again and again asking: Where is God? 

 

Because we’re all in our own ways wondering that a lot these days. Where is God? 

 

Well, in the resurrection accounts – the stories of Jesus come back to life in the scriptures – we find God in so many signs of life that are places we find God still. 

 

And this week, I’m giving what I think will be the first of a two-part sermon on signs of life as we find God in fire. This one on how we find God whenever our hearts are on fire. 

 

Let me read today’s scripture. And you can look at this picture of two people walking at dawn, and imagine this story.

 

Luke 24:13-35 (NRSV)

13 Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, 14 and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. 15 While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, 16 but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. 17 And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. 18 Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” 19 He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, 20 and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. 21 But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. 22 Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, 23 and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. 24 Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.” 25 Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! 26 Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” 27 Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

28 As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. 29 But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. 30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. 32 They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” 33 That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. 34 They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” 35 Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

 

There’s a movement to this story.

 

It starts where we’ve been collectively, with obvious sadness and loss. They grieve the death of Jesus, and the loss of hope. We grieve our losses too. We grieve the sick and the dying. We grieve the tens of millions of lost jobs. We grieve the lost graduations and parties, the lost freedom, the lost control. This week, we grieve racial injustice again. And we, like the two in this passage, sense the anxiety of an unknown future. We had expectations for what this year would be like, and all we know now is that we have to let them go, and aren’t quite sure yet what to hold in their place.

 

Next the story touches on the burden of the unexpected. Tucked into what they say to the stranger that walks with them is a possibility they were ready for, from people they wouldn’t listen to. There’s this report that Jesus is alive, but it came from the women of their group – news too good for them to believe, from people they weren’t used to listening to. 

 

I wonder what good news is here for us that we weren’t expecting, living in people we won’t listen to. God so often speaks truth not from the loudest or the supposedly most qualified people, but from people and places that have been disrespected, even silenced. Who are you listening to, to hear God’s truth?

 

Next the stranger fills out this gospel, this good news. It’s the gospel as apocalyptic, which is a fancy way of saying that God’s good news rarely affirms our sense of the world as it is. God reveals. God’s good news shows us something truer and deeper and more beautiful and more terrifying than what we’ve yet seen. Jesus reframes for them what “God with us” means, Jesus shows them that suffering has always been part of glory. Jesus helps them see differently. 

 

We’ll come back to this. 

 

Then these friends have the basic wisdom to stay with this moment, and in staying with the moment, their eyes are opened. The sign of life Jesus has for them is theirs to see, and they too in turn become a sign of life with a message of hope for others. 

 

And it all happened while they were walking. Jesus showed up and walked with them, as God is prone to with us. The speed of God is 3 miles per hour, the speed of walking. Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama coined this phrase – the 3-mile-per-hour God. So much truth in this. That God moves at our pace, more than what we imagine to be a god’s pace. That we think better when we walk, literally. That God is so often with us on the way to places, not once we get there. So much more here.

 

But looking back, at the center of this encounter, these two unnamed disciples recognize that good news, the apocalyptic, the unveiling or revelation that they couldn’t yet see came to them as Jesus taught them. 

 

And the sign of life for them, the sign it was true, was their burning hearts. 

 

Hearts on fire. What does this phrase mean to you? How or when have you experienced your heart on fire?

 

For words like heart, it helps to look at the Hebrew imagination of the Old Testament, which continues in a different language in the New. The heart is the seat of human emotion, for sure, but also the center of cognition and imagination. It is an integrated center of what we might call mind and heart. Thinking and emotion, which are never separate. 

 

Here the two people who walk with Jesus think new thoughts and feel new feelings, because they see new truth!

 

Perhaps your heart has been on fire as you’ve stared at the waves or taken in the sights from a mountaintop. You feel the rush of beauty, wordless, arrested with awe, your sense of being so small and yet of having a place in this world. 

 

Perhaps your heart has been on fire as you’ve been in love – with a lover you want to know as close and as constant as possible, or with a child you’d step in front of a truck for you feel so much fierce, protective love, or with an elder or mentor you respect and appreciate.

 

I’ve seen hearts on fire in students who have these light-dawning revelations about themselves or their world, I’ve had that happen to me as I’ve sat under good teachers.

 

Perhaps you’ve felt a fire of anger at the injustice of the world as it is, as you ask: how long? And why not now? And how will I be part of the change to the world as it should be? 

 

Hearts come on fire with Jesus as he teaches them the powerful, world upturning truth of God in the scriptures, and as he breaks bread with them, reenacting for the first time the communion meal of the Last Supper he’d shared with them just days ago. 

 

This is why our worship, and the worship of most Jesus-communities historically, has centered around the teaching of scripture and the taking of communion. Because we know these are so often places where Jesus sets our hearts on fire. 

 

But they’re not the only places. Whenever we become profoundly grateful – to God, to others, to land, to friends, to ancestors, to anyone or thing from which good comes – we move toward hearts on fire.

 

Whenever truth is revealed, whenever conviction is stirred of the deep truth of how things are, the deep promise of how things should and will be, our hearts are on fire.

 

Hearts go on fire when we seen new and important possibilities, when we offer or receive love, when we find courage for what’s right, when we see and admire or even make what’s beautiful.

 

And when your heart is on fire, that just may be a sign that the risen Jesus is with you. 

 

Obviously, not all moments of human enthusiasm and passion are signs of God. People have become excited about some weird and even straight up evil ideas that they thought were true. The human mind and heart – our imaginations and intellect and emotions – can deceive. Absolutely. Which is why we discern truth, and don’t just take everything at face value. Why we practice, in community, the meeting of the real, risen Jesus in the teaching of scripture, and in the taking of communion. 

 

But today, I encourage you, I exhort you really to notice when and where your heart goes on fire, in way we’re talking about it today. 

 

Pay attention to this. Stay with it. Don’t let it go. Be curious. Ask what the moment has to teach you. And respond. See what it means to carry it forward into your own sign of life and message of hope. 

 

For me, this year, I was convinced that it was to be a year in my life of more radical kinship, more radical hospitality, more radical solidarity, the discovery of a more deeply, relational way of living. And then came social distancing.

 

I don’t know what that all means still, but I know that in a story of 11-year old Emerson reading and writing letters, in that giving and receiving of connection, my heart was on fire. That this year of discovery continues for me. So I’m sticking with that for a while, and seeing how I’ll find God there.

 

When or where has your heart been on fire? When or where have your mind, your emotions, your imagination been lit up with goodness, truth, or beauty? God is alive there. 

 

Pay attention. 

 

Let’s pray.

Greater, Not More

Fifth in the Series, Seven Stories: Jesus’ Big Story, and the Other Stories by Which We Live

[The audio for this sermon had some bugs, sorry! We’ll try to get it back up and running soon. Meanwhile, full text of the sermon below.]

In two weeks, we’ll begin our practice of Lent. Lent is an old church word for the annual time in the weeks running up to Easter, a time when here at Reservoir, we have some great opportunities to deepen our faith, to welcome together a greater connection with the teaching and person of Jesus. We produce a daily reflection guide for the season, which this year will be on The Cross. This month, in the run-up to Lent, I’m posting a few reflections on our Blog on the question, “Why did Jesus die?” I hope you have the opportunity to read some of those, and I look forward to starting this powerful season together in just two Weeks.

Meanwhile, we are close to wrapping up our winter series, Seven Stories. We’re exploring Jesus’ story of reconciliation and liberation, and contrasting that with six other stories we’ve been telling, and listening to, and following for far too long.

We began our time with the children’s book Cory and the Seventh Story. There we met a badger and a fox, each of whom thought violence would be the means to a happily ever after. They told the stories of domination and revenge, the myth of redemptive violence: the very oldest human story, and the founding story of America as well. Over the past two weeks, Ivy and Lydia have talked so powerfully about two stories we tend to live when we’re threatened by how scary the world has become. We isolate and withdraw with me and mine alone. Or we lay the blame for our problems on some set of people or behaviors that disgust us, thinking if we can only purify ourselves from those people and things, we will have our happily ever after. In many ways, isolation and purification are the quintessentially toxic religious stories. How faith goes bad.  

Our last two weeks we’ll look at two more stories that are very much the stories of times, I believe: the stories of accumulation and victimization. 

There was this moment with the animals, you may remember, when the badger and the fox reunited with an idea to distract everyone from their troubles and enrich themselves in the bargain. They made a shiny object factory, which at first delighted all the animals of their village and made them lots and lots of money. 

But in time, all the shiny objects didn’t delight anyone at all anymore. They were distractions, and ways to measure status, and the making of all these objects polluted the rivers and the air. So all these shiny objects didn’t make for anyone’s happily ever after at all. 

This story of accumulation, and what Jesus has to say about it, has at first something really obvious to say. Just because it’s obvious doesn’t mean it’s not important, so we’ll start there. 

But we’ll end someplace less obvious, how our addiction to accumulation is giving us more and more, or at least making us want more and more, but taking us off track from the great that we really want most. 

Let me pray for us, and then read some words from Jesus along these lines. 

Luke 12:15-21  (CEB)

5 Then Jesus said to them, “Watch out! Guard yourself against all kinds of greed. After all, one’s life isn’t determined by one’s possessions, even when someone is very wealthy.” 16 Then he told them a parable: “A certain rich man’s land produced a bountiful crop. 17 He said to himself, What will I do? I have no place to store my harvest! 18 Then he thought, Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. That’s where I’ll store all my grain and goods. 19 I’ll say to myself, You have stored up plenty of goods, enough for several years. Take it easy! Eat, drink, and enjoy yourself. 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool, tonight you will die. Now who will get the things you have prepared for yourself?’ 21 This is the way it will be for those who hoard things for themselves and aren’t rich toward God.”

I love this story. 

It’s grim, but it shows Jesus has a great sense of humor, and man, is it true!

We know this. We have sayings in our culture, like You can’t take it with you. 

We have other phrases like: The one who dies with the most toys wins, but as a journalist pointed out — anyone who has ever said that must have thrown up a little in the back of their mouth as they did. 

We know we can’t take stuff with us. We know that more money and more stuff doesn’t make us happier – sometimes quite the opposite.

We know that when we work too much, we end up hating our lives, and living with regret. We know that when we make and buy and order and ship too much stuff, it just fills up our closets, and fowls our earth, and supports crappy, dead-end jobs for other people, and doesn’t make us happy.

Jesus’ baseline point that more money and more stuff for ourselves will not make for anyone a happily ever after just seems so obvious, it hardly needs saying. 

And yet, we can’t seem to change. For more true today, than in the first century when Jesus told this story, we can’t seem to find another way. 

Why is this? Why do we still write this story of accumulation? How is it not just about money and things, but so much more? And what’s Jesus’ better story he’s pitching? What might it mean to be as he says “rich toward God?” 

When I was last in therapy, I was working with this approach called Internal Family Systems. 

One of the ideas of Internal Family Systems is that each of us has lots of parts. We’re this family, this system of selves. We may have this really fun-loving part of ourselves, and another part of us that worries a lot, part of ourselves that gets really angry, another part that keeps us organized, and so on. 

And these parts exist for a reason. They have their place. We’ve needed them to build our lives. Parts of us know to find and eat food when we’re hungry. Parts of us know to make or buy things that we need. Parts of us know to prepare for danger, or accomplish goals, or present ourselves positively to the world. All of that is great. It is so good to be a human being and to be so adaptive and to have all these parts of ourselves that build a life for us. 

The problem is that most of us also have parts of ourselves we avoid. We have parts of ourselves that are very afraid, parts that are hidden or ashamed, parts that have suffered great pain. If we’ve experienced trauma or neglect or abuse, and especially if that was so when we were young, than some of the sad or scared or angry parts of us may be very large and very deep. Internal Family Systems calls these parts our exiles – the parts of us we can’t face with calmness, curiosity, or compassion. 

When that’s the case, we use other parts to distract us, and sometimes these parts get too loud, too active, sometimes even out of control. 

In my case, in therapy, we were noticing that much of my childhood, I was a pretty chill, happy go lucky guy. Pretty confident, pretty peaceful. But then at one point, I became really internally driven. Sharply focused on killing it, whatever I did. Crazy high standards for myself. 

And after thirty years of that, I was wondering: how do I take my foot off the pedal? How do I slow down? Ease up? Drive less, connect more. How do I do that? 

And in therapy, I started asking: what came into my life that made me so driven? And how had this drive that at one point was positive, had helped me build the life I want – how had that drive become a distractor, something that pulled me away from the life I want? 

See, I think for most of us, what Jesus is calling greed, hoarding for ourselves, is not always just about money and stuff. It certainly can be – one of the big innovations of 20th century American life was that marketers got really good and convincing us we always need more, that we never have enough.  And we tend to but it – hook, line, and sinker.

But we accumulate in other ways too. And when we do, it’s not mainly a character deficit to beat ourselves up about, as if that will do anything. I think for most of us, accumulation is a way we avoid what’s most important. Accumulation is a distraction, sometimes even an addiction, that we pore time and money and attention into to avoid facing what’s most important, because facing that is hard. Facing what’s most important maybe hurts. 

The other day, I read this story from Jesus slowly, while praying. I was using this great method of Bible reading and prayer that comes out of the Jesuit tradition. It’s to read the stories of the Bible, and especially the stories of the four gospels about Jesus, imaginatively. You imagine yourself in the story. What do you see? Hear? Smell? Feel? How does it speak to you today?

So I imagined Jesus telling me this farming story. And as I hear Jesus telling me about the person building his barns, I immediately picture the house I grew up in, particularly this shed on the back of the house that my dad built. I remembered how growing up, our home was kind of an unending construction site. 

My grandparents had bought my parents a little 2-bedroom, 1-bathroom house just before their first child was born. And as our family grew, the house grew. My dad and grandpa were both contractors, and they built an addition with an extra bedroom and bathroom, then a second garage, and a larger family room, and then a shed, and on it went over the years. Partly there was this sense that we needed more space, more room. And partly, it seemed to reflect an ongoing restlessness in my family, that there was never quite enough all around, and this was a tangible way to fight off that not enough feeling we had in life. 

The thing is as I pictured that setting for the story, I remembered that it wasn’t glamorous, this accumulation of space. The constant building meant there were tools and sawdust lying around. Things were never settled. There was always something in progress, unfinished. 

And I thought about that farmer, that builder in Jesus’ story, and then to me, he seemed not just smug and wealthy and over-luxurious. He seemed kind of desperate. 

I mean, for a person in the agrarian and mostly poor and hungry first century Ancient Near East, to plant and grow crops was a good way to manage life for yourself and your family. But maybe, in response to memories of hunger in your past, or your family’s past, you too feel: there will never be enough. We have to store up more, and more. And you start piling up so much food that you’ll never need it all, when plenty of other people do. And that’s not so healthy. You can’t face down that fear of never enough and ask if you can let it go. What freedom that would make to live well, to be truly rich. To be freed from one’s fear, rather than just keep piling up against it. But you can’t do it. You look for more and more, until one day you die, still grasping, still afraid, still not having enough. 

I thought about myself then, and I thought, I have issues of fear and greed around money and stuff, for sure. But the piling up, the building, the accumulating that came to mind wasn’t that. It was other parts of me. 

I thought about how driven I can be. About how when I complete a job well done, I immediately am like: what’s next? I thought about the never good enough way I can feel about my work and effort. About my push  to drive harder, and do more, whether it comes to scheduling my week, or accomplishing my goals, or even hobbies like how many books I read, how hard I work out, all kinds of places where I push and push, and drive and drive. 

And I was encouraged to remember again: what am I avoiding? What hunger, what not enough fears, am I staving off with my penchant for more?

And I thought of the feeling you can have in a productive world when you have ADHD, times when life seemed out of control, there was too much to do, and I didn’t know how to tackle it?

And I thought of how in this wonderful city where we live, there are so many people that seem so accomplished, so successful, so busy, so smart and good at many things, and I thought of times when I’ve wondered: how do I measure up? What if I’m not good enough?

And that took me back to all the times when I was younger and I was afraid my life would be a failure, that I would live the legacy of other men in my life of not reaching my goals, and being a disappointment to myself and the people I love. 

And then I went back further and remembered the gnawing loneliness I had at times, the wondering if there was room for me.

And it’s weird, because pushing hard, being driven helps with some of these things and not at all with others. But we’re not fully logical in our hearts and our choices and how we manage all our parts. None of us are. 

But when I’ve reflected on my own never enough – more, more, more habits – I know that I don’t need to wait until I’m facing my deathbed to know that this is not a great life. 

This is not being rich toward myself, or toward God, or toward anyone else. 

So what is? 

Well, Jesus tells his story about the rich fool, as it’s called. Or to be less judgy, maybe we can call it the story about the fear of never enough. The story about the more-more-more accumulator in us all. 

And then, he says this. 

Luke 12:22-34  (CEB)

22 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Therefore, I say to you, don’t worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. 23 There is more to life than food and more to the body than clothing. 24 Consider the ravens: they neither plant nor harvest, they have no silo or barn, yet God feeds them. You are worth so much more than birds! 25 Who among you by worrying can add a single moment to your life? 26 If you can’t do such a small thing, why worry about the rest? 27 Notice how the lilies grow. They don’t wear themselves out with work, and they don’t spin cloth. But I say to you that even Solomon in all his splendor wasn’t dressed like one of these. 28 If God dresses grass in the field so beautifully, even though it’s alive today and tomorrow it’s thrown into the furnace, how much more will God do for you, you people of weak faith! 29 Don’t chase after what you will eat and what you will drink. Stop worrying. 30 All the nations of the world long for these things. Your Father knows that you need them. 31 Instead, desire his kingdom and these things will be given to you as well.

32 “Don’t be afraid, little flock, because your Father delights in giving you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions and give to those in need. Make for yourselves wallets that don’t wear out—a treasure in heaven that never runs out. No thief comes near there, and no moth destroys. 34 Where your treasure is, there your heart will be too.

My early years of wrestling with this passage were almost absurdly rigid and literal and anxious. 

Is it bad to buy tomorrow’s food today, to own a change of clothing? Are you allowed to save for retirement? Is Jesus saying you’re a fool if you gain experience, or get educated, or make a budget, or plan a career? 

There are many signs that this is not the primary way to engage with Jesus’ teaching? But the biggest one is the anxiety of it all. Jesus is presenting a healing path away from our incessant anxiety, not another more religious version of it. 

Stop worrying. Don’t be afraid, little flock. 

I don’t think Jesus meant to introduce a new rigidity that says literally, live like birds and flowers. Don’t buy, don’t plan, don’t talk, just let life happen to you. 

I think Jesus is actually saying something like: take your energy, and give it to Greater, not More. 

When it comes to our needs, the world has enough. There is enough. We can do our part in that process. But not more. More worry invites misery. More stuff invites moths and thieves. More work invites stress, and regret. Accumulation turns against us eventually.

Jesus says, instead, give yourself to what’s greater. God is doing beautiful and important and marvelous renewal all around you. God’s work on earth, Jesus calls it a Kingdom. The beloved family God is growing, the kin-dom. The beauty that God is creating and shaping. The opportunities to love and to nourish and to make whole. 

That which is greater.

I’m using this word Greater because it’s really important in the Jesuit Catholic tradition I mentioned earlier, this tradition that has so much I appreciate. The Jesuits use the word “Magis” to describe the God who is always greater as well as the possibility of doing things that are great for God in this life. 

It’s a funny motto, Magis, because it can be translated either “more” or “great”, so it could be either the motto of numbing, toxic accumulation or the motto of the beautiful story of Jesus. So that’s fun. 

But Jesus says – there something different about the rich fool and the Kingdom. 

One never has enough, the other believes there is more than enough. 

One can never work hard enough, the other knows how to work but also how to rest.

One thinks you have worked for everything you’ve got, the other knows that so much is received and welcomed as a gift. 

One is always piling up and holding on, the other takes joy in letting go and giving away. 

One looks back on a day, on a life with regret; the other looks back on a day, on a life, with delight and joy.

In my prayers in this passage, I found myself wondering with Jesus: what is the Great that I miss when I strive for the more? And I thought of two things we’ll end on here. 

I thought about our life mission and about our capacity for rest – how we conceive of our work, or of what is ours to do in the world. You know, when it comes to what I think I have to do today, all I have to accomplish and get done, I almost always go to more. My lists for the day are always too long. And some of that is just poor planning, but some of that is a symptom for how I see my life – more, more, more. More as a wall against scarcity, more as a way of feeling I’m good enough, more as a wall against failure, more as a wall against facing the pain inside. 

But as I’ve shared, in my life, Jesus – as usual – is right. It doesn’t work. So what if I left more behind for great. I’m trying to start my day lately asking Jesus to take care of my impulses to more, to trust Jesus that I don’t need to do it all, and that today’s troubles are enough for today. And I’m trying to ask Jesus, what’s the Great for me today? What’s the one thing – the thing for your family, God, the thing for your work on earth, that’s mine to give myself to today? 

In asking that question, I’m calmed a little, and my focus shifts. 

My focus narrows in some ways – from the so many things to the one big thing.

But it widens in other ways – from worrying about my own personal good, to embracing the common good.

I get more generous to others.

And sometimes, I even get more generous to myself.

A friend of mine was sharing recently how she was starting the day with her spouse doing something similar, asking Jesus what Jesus had for her and for them that day. 

And she was surprised that for a while what would come to mind would be things like: fill up your freezer with vegetables. You’re going to want to eat vegetables, right? Go get em. And she’d think really? That’s what’s on God’s mind today – my vegetables. But she’d be like: OK, thank you God, for reminding me to take care of myself. 

Or the same thing would happen with permission to take that run she wanted to take but didn’t know if she had time for, and to enjoy that run. And she’d think: alright, well thank you, Jesus.

I know the gift of the kingdom, the gift of the kindom isn’t about self-care alone. It doesn’t end with just more veggies and exercise. But for some of us, maybe it starts there. 

Anyway, the great instead of the more. God’s good gifts and good ways for us for the common good. That’s where I’m going more and more. 

Where do you want to go ?

Spiritual Practice for Whole Life Flourishing

Four questions to ask:

  • What is my “not enough,” my “more-more-more” accumulation?
  • Do I have deep habits of rest, of letting go, and of giving?
  • What am I afraid of facing, or losing?
  • Jesus, what is the Great instead of the More for me this day? This season?

 

Faith Reflection: My Life with Jesus (with thoughts from Steve, Ivy, and Lydia)

Members received a real treat on the last Sunday of the year. We heard from all three pastors, and reflected on the past year and our hopes for the new.

Thomas said to him,

“Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life.”

-John 14

Four Phrases for Wholehearted, Humble Living

I had this really interesting moment of shame the other week. And I want to tell you about it. 

It happened at a high school sporting event. Now I’ve been watching high school sports for a while – as a teacher, as a principal, now as a parent. And I’ve noticed that certain sports more than others tend to draw out the crazy parent fan behavior. You know: shouting at refs, complaining to coaches, getting overly involved in the game outcome. One sport, though, that doesn’t draw this crazy parent stuff out is cross country running. 

First off, like no one goes to these races. They are not popular spectator events. Secondly, you can’t see your kid run very much. These races are three miles long, across fields, through woods, and you only see your kid run by three, maybe four times. And a lot of kids have ordered their parents not to say anything at races when they run by – silence, please! — so the few parents that go to these meets tend to stand around for a long time doing nothing, and then sort of politely clap for a few seconds as their kid and their teammates run by. 

Not me, though. I’m kind of a crazy cross country parent. I like the sport. I appreciate watching a running race. And I still run a bit myself, so I can run around to different parts of the course and and see a lot of moments in the action. And the other week, at one of my daughter’s cross country meets, I was a little crazier than usual. 

The course was all through the woods, so the only way to get around and see different parts of the race was to run on the same trail the athletes were using. So there was this moment when my daughter had run by me, and she was running fast, and I was kind of excited to keep cheering her on, and there was no one right behind her. So I started running on the trail. I tried to keep my distance behind her, so Julianna wouldn’t think I was trying to chase her down or anything. 

But there I was, chugging along through the woods, and I round a corner, and there’s the boys’ team head coach, who eyeballs me with this horrified look, like: Steve, what the hell are you doing? Get off the course – do not try to chase your kid. 

And I was mortified – I saw myself through someone else’s eyes for a moment, and I was like: my God, I look I’m this middle aged guy trying to enter the teenage girls’ race. Or that parent crazily chasing my kid down telling her to go faster. 

I was actually too mortified to stop and say anything, so I kept running around the corner, away from the coach – like oh, this is normal, just out for a jog in the woods. During the race. And I got out of sight of the coach, and started walking off the trail. 

I was flushing with embarrassment. And for hours afterwards, I thought what am I going to say when I see that coach again. I looked so ridiculous. What was my way out of this? 

What do you do with an experience of shame?

Well, it turns out my way through that problem, was the same as my way through many others, and it was to know that I am a person. And that a person is less like a machine, and less like a god, and more like a tree.

We began this series four weeks ago with me talking about trees and imperfection and flourishing, and we’re going to end in that same place. 

Our first of today’s two scriptures is from the old Hebrew prophet Jeremiah, who said: 

Jeremiah 17:7-8 (CEB)

Happy are those who trust in the Lord,

    who rely on the Lord.

8 They will be like trees planted by the streams,

    whose roots reach down to the water.

They won’t fear drought when it comes;

    their leaves will remain green.

They won’t be stressed in the time of drought

    or fail to bear fruit.

To be a person, at least to a faithful person, is to be a tree. It’s to know that the conditions of your life, a great part of your environment, is not within your control. The water table, the sunshine, the condition of the soil, the nutrients in the ground, the friendly or hostile conditions of the atmosphere, the weather and the climate – none of that is up to you. 

You as a tree lay roots. You pull in the best of the nourishment that is there to be found. And then you add volume, you stretch and grow, you do what you can. 

If the conditions for growth are marvelous, it is not your achievement but your blessing. And if the conditions for growth are hostile, it is not your fault. 

There’s more to be said from this passage, more that flows from this metaphor, and we’ll get there soon, but let’s start here. 

That to be a flourishing human is to own our limits profoundly. 

Many places in the scriptures – here, in the very first of the psalms, more than once in the teaching of Jesus – work this kind of metaphor of human as tree or vine or plant – who can remain connected, stay rooted, take in nourishment, but can’t control so many other things.

To think otherwise, to think that we are in control, that we are independent, or that some kind of invulnerable perfection is without our reach, is to maintain an idolatrous illusion. A falsehood that we are more or better or different than we really are. A falsehood that we’d hold so we could avoid our vulnerability or so that we could control or dominate others. 

As I said four weeks ago, I have learned from Christena Cleveland that “perfection is a figment of the colonial imagination.” It’s an illusion used to mask our limits and insecurity, and at the same time to try to conquer or control or diminish others and put ourselves on top. 

The illusion of perfection is a losing game. And so progress is as well. Our call as humans, and our roadmap for a faith journey is not progress, it is not  self-improvement on the way to perfection.

Our journey is to be as healthy as we can. It’s to be alive and celebrate the movement we can make. Our faith journey is to be fully human, to be our full tree-like, beautiful, uself, but also limited and dependent selves, nothing more and nothing less. 

One of the best words I know for this way of being is humility. 

Humility is not self-abasement – being a doormat or a wallflower. Humility is also not denying our gifts or strengths – it’s being who we are. 

I recently read The Cloud of Unknowing, this weird, but deep, classic work of Christian spirituality from the 14th century. And its author wrote:

“In itself, humility is nothing else but a human’s true understanding and awareness of himself as he really is.” 

Humility is nothing else but a human’s true understanding and awareness of herself as she really is. 

Reservoir loves humility – it’s really important to our way of being as a church. It’s one of our five core values, the fifth that we’re exploring this month as we focus on our faith journeys and our invitation to this community to live as flourishing, contributing members of Reservoir Church. 

The way we talk about this as a church is humility in what we know and how we learn. Our core value on humility says:

“We are wholeheartedly committed to pursuing the truth of Jesus through multiple sources, including the Bible, reason, culture, and experience, and we take the posture of learners, recognizing that our understanding of God’s truth continues to unfold.”

Reservoir does not have the illusion of being a perfect church, or even a certain church. We’re a humble church, we’re a learning church. We don’t make pronouncements about what the church thinks or believes about this or that. We don’t tell our own members, let alone the world at large, how they should live their lives. 

But we do commit to pursue the truth together – everywhere it can be found. 

And we do commit to keep learning, to keep listening, to God and to one another, and to keep growing. 

Once in a while, someone will ask me – usually indirectly – if we’re a biblical church.

And I don’t always say this, but I think: My God, no! A biblical church? There’s no such thing. None of us live in the first century Roman empire, do we? Lots of us are literate. We use telephones and computers and electricity. 

Of course, we’re not a “biblical church.” 

But more seriously, we’re a humble church. We don’t pretend that life is simple, that the Bible is always easy or clear, or that our minds or our tradition is always right. So we’ve taken the lead from other church traditions and say: we are wholeheartedly committed to pursuing the truth of Jesus through multiple sources, including the Bible, reason, culture, and experience. 

The Spirit of God is so good, and has many teachers. 

So you take the ancient creeds for instance, that are our faith statements. They don’t say anything really about exactly what to believe about the afterlife. They don’t tell you exactly what your sexual ethics should be, or frankly, your ethics about most anything else. They don’t tell you the right way to baptize people, or manage your money or your career or your children. Because the Bible, and reason, and culture, and experience have had different things to say about all this. And faithful, smart, earnest followers of Jesus, doing their best, have come to different conclusions about all this and more. 

And even when we say the ancient creeds, like: I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only son our Lord. 

I believe all that, and yet not only that.

Is God the Father Almighty, as the Bible says? Absolutely. But is God also mother? Is God outside of and beyond sex and gender? Is God like a parent, but actually Spirit, not a person or an animal at all? Well, yes, yes, and yes – the Bible teaches all this too.

And is God Almighty? Yes. But experience and reason teach us this can’t mean all-controlling, like God micromanages the universe, and is the cause of everything that happens. Science, and our experience, and history teach us this can not be so. So we have to search our Bibles and our faith and our minds and our prayers for some other way to understand God as the most powerful, as a constantly active force of love that is all mighty but not all controlling. 

And on we could go through every line of the creeds. Earnest, devout faith, but searching for truth, learning, growing, seeking still. 

This is why Reservoir doesn’t go around claiming to know the right thing to believe and do in every situation. That practice is not born of cowardice, or laziness, or a desire to keep the peace or avoid conflict, or to not engage the Bible – those would all be lazy, thoughtless assertions. 

Our practice of making space and choosing learning over certainty, process over arrival, is born of humility. 

Humility is how we know, and humility is how we grow. 

And for me, humility is how I be who I am. It’s how I flourish.

As I shared a few weeks ago, I’ve spent considerable time this fall, looking at trees – giant, old trees; little upstart saplings; upright, mighty maples; twisted, old oaks; trees in their vibrant, full-colored fall glory; and trees who have lost their leaves and are settling into the barren looking cold of winter. 

And in the trees, I’ve tried to see myself. 

Trees not just as beautiful creations – other things in the world. But the trees as self-portraits, echoes of me, versions of me. 

I’ve seen the trees of pictures of the growing things in me, the dying things in me, the beautiful things and the ugly things, the crooked and the just plain odd things in me. 

And this phrase has come to mind, that is kind of a different take on a famous line by the Christian reformer Martin Luther, when over 500 years ago, he said: Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God.

Here I stand, I can do not other, so help me God. 

This isn’t quite what Luther meant, but it’s how the words have echoed for me:

I can’t be anything today but who I am. 

I stand today as the person I am today; so help me God, that’s all I have. 

I can learn, I can grow, but in this moment, I can’t be something that I never will be. I can’t even be someone I once was, or that I might become. 

Today I am who I am.

This by the way was my first step out of the paralyzing shame I felt when in front of a coach at my kids’ high school, I looked like the craziest parent he’d seen. The butt of an embarrassing coach – there goes Steve Watson, crazy, out of control parent. 

My first step out of that shame was to say: that’s exactly what I was in that moment, as I chased my daughter along the wooded trail in the middle of a varsity girls’ race. 

I’m kind of extra some times.

I can be really impulsive.

At my best, but also sometimes at my worst, I don’t particularly care about what others think of how I look. 

And yeah, that was kind of a nutty moment. 

Here I stand, I can be no other, so help me God. 

Accepting who you are in a moment, even if it’s awkward, even if it’s not who you want to be, is always better than shame. 

There’s more to that story. I’ll come back to it again. 

But beyond mere self-acceptance, looking at the trees, being the humble me who seeks health and growth, not progress or perfection, has also meant laying roots and absorbing nutrients. 

Jeremiah said: The tree that trusts in God will flourish. Like a tree whose roots reach deep water, when you trust God, you won’t surrender to fear in hard times. You’ll remain alive. Temporary setbacks, hard seasons, don’t need to stress you out. 

Laying those deep roots into God, absorbing all those nutrients has meant a lot of things to me, but here’s one picture – in our second scripture of the day, from a New Testament letter that circulated around churches in mid-first century Western Asia. 

Ephesians 3:14-19 (CEB)

14 This is why I kneel before the Father. 15 Every ethnic group in heaven or on earth is recognized by him. 16 I ask that he will strengthen you in your inner selves from the riches of his glory through the Spirit. 17 I ask that Christ will live in your hearts through faith. As a result of having strong roots in love, 18 I ask that you’ll have the power to grasp love’s width and length, height and depth, together with all believers. 19 I ask that you’ll know the love of Christ that is beyond knowledge so that you will be filled entirely with the fullness of God.

After vs. 15 – I love that – God loves all the people, all the ethnos, in Greek – all the ethnic groups. And that weird qualifier – whether in heaven or on earth. You descendants of the Anglo-Saxon and Viking tribes from Northern Europe – people like me, whose primitive, woods-dwelling ancestors that in Paul’s time were called barbarians – God knows and loves and recognizes us. 

People who have been diminished and excluded and subject to violence and racism in this country’s story, peoples in the USA and around the world who are subject to violence and persecution – you may be done a great evil by others, but you are recognized by the living God. You deserve recognition. 

And that goes for any extra-terrestrial life forms way out in space somewhere – every ethnic group in heaven or on earth – recognized by God. Alright, not just that, but the waters for all our deep roots in God. 

How do we get strong in our inner beings? Where does resilience come from? 

How do we access all of the riches of God’s glory? 

How does Jesus Christ palpably live in me? 

How can I be filled up with all the fullness of God? 

What water nourishes our roots and gives us all this growth and strength, little, imperfect beings that we are? 

It’s knowing our complete and utter belovedness – that every part of me is a beloved child of God. That all of the humble, imperfect you that you are today known and loved by God, can be watered and nourished by that love. 

This has meant at least two things for me. 

One is that I need to welcome, to actively receive God’s love for me. I can look at the trees, and imagine their roots and see myself in them. That my roots are that I am deeply loved by a God that made me. 

I can sit in silence for a few minutes a day, remembering that I am seen and loved by a God who is with me. 

I can review the highs and lows of my days, knowing that God accompanied me in all of that and never stopped loving me. 

And I do all that and more, which we commend to you all the time. A lot of the spiritual life, the life of prayer, is really about remembering and welcoming the experience of belovedness. 

I also find that these roots empower four humble phrases I live by at my best. Four honest ways of wholehearted living. Can I tell you what these phrases are? 

They’re some of the best, deepest things I know how to say. 

Here they are.

FOUR PHRASES for wholehearted, humble living

  1. I am learning. (Or just: I don’t know.)
  2. I am sorry.
  3. I am beloved.
  4. I am enough.

If you think my preaching these past few years sounds like it’s been influenced by Brene Brown, that’s because it has. I call her Auntie Brene in our house once in a while, because Grace – my wife – has made sure all our family has been exposed to her work, especially her teaching on wholehearted living in The Gifts of Imperfection.

This used to be embarrassing for me – I’m a pastor, I thought, and she’s not a Christian. Well, she is, as it turns out, just not a preacher or a theologian. But more than that, the center of her wholehearted living teaching – this phrase “I  am enough” used to trouble me. 

The faith I was taught was in some ways that I am not enough. I am a problem for God to fix. A mess for God to clean up. God is enough, God is good, but I am bad. 

Now that I do badly, often. That I miss the mark in my life, and have many times. That I have had reason to guilty for things done and things not done. All that is honest. That’s truth. That’s part of humility. 

But the shame of “I am never enough” – I am bad. I am the problem. That is not healthy. Never enough, self-erasure: that is not the good news of Jesus. The good news of Jesus is about uplift, rescue, restoration, not erasure. It’s about the full you and me being one with God, not about you or me disappearing into God.

The heart of Jesus-centered faith involved reconciliation and liberation. It means being at home again with ourselves, being at home again with others, being at home again with God, being at home again in the world.

Discovering that in the love of God, I am enough. Humble me, humble you – the actual real me and you – are loved and accepted. 

When in another New Testament letter, this one called Philippians, the author Paul says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, this is what he’s talking about. The power to be at home no matter where we are, to be content in all circumstances. To not be stressed in times of drought. To not be stressed either in times of plenty, like we might lose it all. 

When we are rooted in God’s love, we can know the fearless security of humility – the peace of saying I am loved. The freedom of saying I’m sorry. The honesty of saying: I don’t know. I’m learning. And the joy of saying: I am enough. 

The 14th century mystic I mentioned earlier put it this way: For they who are perfectly humble shall never lack anything, neither corporal nor spiritual. The reason is that they have God, in whom is all abundance; whoever has him, indeed, as this book says, needs nothing else in this life. (168-169)

This means so much for me. 

That incident of shame when I was crazy at the cross country course. I kept imagining how I’d joke about it the next time I saw that coach. How I’d move past it with him, so I didn’t need to feel awkward around him. But I realized, I didn’t need to do that. I didn’t need to defend or explain myself for being weird. If he brought it up again, I’d joke about it. But if not, I’d move on. That was actually the second moment of public shame I’d had in that week, and each time, I told somebody else – the first time one of the prayer ministers here on Sunday, and the second time a friend of mine over the phone. And each person prayed for me, reminded me I had nothing to e ashamed of, that God loves me as I am. 

I don’t need to justify or defend myself in the world.

Other times I’m ashamed and I wasn’t just weird but at fault, I’ve learned to apologize more quickly, to say: I’m sorry, and to say clearly just why I’m sorry and how I want to do better. This happens with my friends, it happens with my wife. It happens with my co-workers, including the ones I supervise, and it happens with my kids too. I wasn’t raised learning about quick and sincere, real apology. God knows it isn’t modelled in our culture either. But I’m trying to learn the humility of saying I’m sorry well. 

And I’m enjoying letting go of the stifling illusion of perfection. And instead, living with less fear, and more humble joy. 

  • I am learning. (But maybe I don’t know yet.)
  • I am sorry.
  • I am beloved.
  • I am enough.

Invitations to Whole Life Flourishing

Welcome the gifts of imperfection: I am learning. I am sorry. I am beloved. I am enough.

Spiritual Practice of the Week

When you look at a tree, view it as a self-portrait. Where are your roots? What can nourish you? How are you growing?

On the Brink of Encounter

Hi everyone- it’s lovely to be here with all of you. 

I’m Ivy as Steve mentioned. “Happy October!” 

I love summer so much – that it is very stretching for me to use those two words “Happy” and “October”, so close in a sentence together.  September however, did a fine job of setting up October – in a way that I can genuinely and excitedly say, “Happy October”. 

I’m also excited for our Fall season here at Reservoir, and I’m enjoying the sermon series we are in called, “On the Brink of Everything”. Inspired by a little book by author, and quaker, Parker Palmer.  It’s a series that we felt would work well as a way to explore what it is to live in these fracturing times. If you’ve been around the last few weeks you’ve heard Steve and Lydia talk along these themes, of being on the brink of “chaos”, the brink of “overwhelm” and on the brink of “nothing” – and I’ve been thankful for this small phrase in the ways that it allows us to touch the baseline trauma we may be experiencing in our days.   This little book though, also helps us to imagine embodying the “fiercely honest and gracious wholeness that is ours to claim at every stage of life,” (Krista Tippett).  Parker Palmer himself, is looking out at the horizon of getting older – and his book was also inspired by a conversation with a friend of his – who has a toddler and also observing a young one looking out at the horizon of life.  

Today, I’d love to take us in a direction – where we really consider that “fierce, and honest and gracious wholeness”, and how it is that we can really claim that with Jesus..  So I want to talk about being on the Brink of Encounter. Encountering, a living God at every turn in our lives. Because, I think we are always on the brink of falling deeper into ourselves and deeper into knowing God in a way that has real power – power that can be game-changing in our fractured world.  Encounters with God can reveal to us that we have built within us a “survival kit” that includes surprising tools like vulnerability, intimacy and imagination.

If God is a God who is abundant in eternal, transformative love and tenderness and power – then it’s pretty WILD to think that it is available for us to touch and utilize in our LIVED experiences.   And so I think God’s invitation is to keep mining and discovering it, to not assume that we’ve had our fill, or know all the ways to encounter God… but that we could always be engaged with more. And it’s this ever-evolving display of God’s-self that God wants us to be in constant contact with. 

So for those of you today, who are comfortable with the ways you encounter Jesus, AND for those of you who are done trying to encounter God … and all of us in between –   I want to challenge you to be open to surprise, to engage your imagination and be willing to stretch beyond what is already familiar to you – and to dip into the great mystery of God’s presence. 

I think the implications of that posture, are huge – and also breathtaking. 

We can learn from history – and get a constant pulse through the daily news — how easily we forget what it means to be human.  We can forget that underneath every inequity, every act of  racism, and oppression and violence and sickness and hurdles to access of healthcare and education – is a human being.  Real life people with stories and souls, and voices and families that we live alongside. Yet, even in our most genuine efforts to bring about change (which are valid and needed),  we are quick to bundle people up under policies, and laws and votes, ideologies – losing track of the face of the one we hoped to help.   

I heard and learned a lot about how to “help people” in my faith community growing up.  It focused a great deal on biblical literacy and the accompanying moral rules that would construct a good life, (some explicitly told and some powerfully inferred).  We read a lot about Jesus. We read all the wild stories of Jesus doing strange and unexpected things in ways that seemingly helped the people that encountered him. And I would spend a fair amount of time doing this –  weekly – sometimes twice a week.

And then after each meeting of study, we all went home. 

And come back the next week – to learn and to study Jesus more.

The picture for me of what “help” and “power” could look like with Jesus  – was found in the pages of the Bible. And I’m so thankful in many ways for this foundation…

But I think I knew  in my small, young self that God had a greater, more vast ambience and resonance than what was being presented in my faith experience…. Because the dissonance between the picture of this vivid, lively Jesus in the scripture I read- was distinct – as compared to what seemed to be a “sleepy” Jesus in my life. 

I didn’t know how to enact all my knowledge of Jesus – to wake up either myself – or – him – in an experiential way.  And yet I had a hunch that ‘experience’ had to be at the heart of spirituality.

The prejudice of our modern minds, somehow comes into play…  Because it often suggests that knowledge must be something we can possess  – and often as a prerequisite to experience. To be informed – to be well resourced with data,  IS TO BE prepared for what any encounter might bring – including (in my experience) encounters with God.  

If you go out for a trek in the woods – it is good to be prepared for what experience could occur – it is wise to have the (bottles of water, extra dry-wicking sweater, carabiner, the duct tape… )… or in my case – the whiskey ….. just in case something should happen.


We want to possess knowledge, to circumvent any surprises.

We don’t love the idea deep down- of the  unknown, of surprise, of having our “heart be caught off guard and blown wide open” (as the poet Seamus Henney says). That all sounds frightening to us – I think. 

Knowledge that we can possess, (available to us at our very fingertips) – allows us to feel in control, to suppress the unmooring feeling of being caught off guard.  What we also suppress is wonder, and awe and vulnerability and intimacy. 

My friend Sarah awhile ago made a simple comment in a community group that we were both in, that has really stuck with me. We were in the midst of “studying a story about Jesus” – and it was really enlightening and rich, in a lot of ways.  And at some point, Sarah leaned back and said, “you know what I would really like? Is for Jesus to just show up in my car, and sit in the passenger seat next to me. That’s the kind of Jesus I’d be really into right now.” 

Her comment cut through all the discussion we were having, about Jesus that was primarily heady – and nailed me right in the heart.  And it got me in touch with my own hunger of that kind of knowing, of that kind of imagination, of wanting that type of encounter with Jesus to be true. 

An encounter with Jesus, requires a kind of knowing, that emerges from our imagination  – that we can’t predict, prove, or stamp as true.  But one that will bring us and Jesus back into a co-present reality… even if we imagine our way there.   

About 5 years ago I preached my first sermon here.   I talked about the love of God (shocker!), and in particular a moment – a memory that I had of my Dad, when I was young. We were driving along a familiar road at twilight – I spotted some deer in a field and he turned the car around to view them – and then turned to me in the car and said “Nice eyes, Ivy”.  

As I drove here that morning – to preach my first sermon – down my own familiar road – re-working some transitions in the talk – a deer stepped out into the middle of the road, from the side woods.   And my heart skipped 1,000 beats – because I was startled – and also because I knew I had encountered God. 

A friend of mine has told the story of his mother, who was bedded with grief following the death of her own mother.  And where upon waking from a nap – she met Mary, the mother of God. She woke to the sound of this woman coming into her room – dressed in tweed and soft clothes, in her 70’s, grey hair.  She described the depression she felt of the mattress, from the weight of this woman – as she sat down on the bed where she lay (Padraig O’Tuama, In the Shelter). 

I have friends tell me they encounter God on a mountain top. 

I have friends tell me they encounter God on the side of a trail – panting for air – before they get to the mountain top.

A woman named Mary Magdalene encountered Jesus as a gardener.

My brother, in his 8th year of life – had been sick for 3 months – bed ridden. Muscles atrophied. He hadn’t walked in weeks. The doctors were puzzled.  Prayers gushed into his story, from far and wide.. He woke one night – convinced he was going to die… and encountered God. 

The next morning – he bounded into my room, up a flight of stairs  and declared his hope to go to the beach that day.

An old testament prophet, Elijah – encountered God not in the powerful wind, or earthquake or fire – as prophets had KNOWN to encounter God, but in a thin, quiet voice that came to him.

I encounter God these days, in a pair of golden finches – these birds that peck and find their way through the sunflowers in my front yard.

The vividness, and strangeness and unbelievable-ness of the stories we read in scripture of people encountering God – are true too – in our own stories today. 

And yet you might have a myriad of responses listening to these “encounter” vignettes:  Were those encounters really with God? Are they historically accurate? Were they fabricated over time?  A result of a high fever perhaps? Isn’t that just maybe imagination run wild?  Or a result of relying too much on your feelings?

See somewhere along the line – we have become afraid of the unknown, of surprise – – of getting something wrong in the mix – God forbid – we would get God wrong.  And what we are doubting when we ask for proof – or the truth – is our own self and intuition, which perhaps is where truth actually resides. 

Somewhere we have been swept into the binary way of believing that if we FEEL something we are not THINKING… and if we THINK something than we are not really experiencing it – but I’ve been helped by the words of John O’Donohue.  I spent some time in a tiny county of Ireland, recently, where he was a priest for many years… and he says, 

“True thought is full of feeling and feeling is luminous with thought”, which means that the “the act of knowing – is a function of the imagination” (John O’Donohue).

Infact, imagination IS where the human and the divine are co-present!

So maybe the generative question isn’t whether or not,  the encounters we call into question are true or not…maybe the generative question instead is whether IT IS TRUE that the encounter helped (adapted from Padraig O’Tuama).

“Did it help?”

And if “yes” – then maybe it doesn’t matter how it happened.

AND THIS IS where I want to go DEEP into scripture for a moment – because encounters with God at a baseline HELP US.  They help us become more fully HUMAN — more in touch with our feelings – with intimacy and vulnerability – and encounter with God, helps us continue to grow and evolve and transform, not only for ourselves – but for the whole of humankind.

I invite all of you to  encounter God in this LIVING word of scripture:

Mark 5:25-34 (NIV)

25 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26 She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.”29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.

30 At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”

31 “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”

32 But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33 Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

Here we have a Biblical story of a nameless woman who encounters Jesus.

She has bled for 12 years. Marginalized on multiple accounts; she’s a woman – with no male relative to support or advocate for her – she is financially destitute, she is religiously “unclean”, and makes anything or anyone she touches “impure”. By cultural norms, she is unfit to live within city limits. So she exists in isolation, disempowered and shrouded in shame.  The laws and traditions of her time – have dehumanized her. She has no identity.
She is human to no one.  

And while I’m thankful for the written account that Mark gives us here (and Matthew and Luke who give us of this same story in the other gospels)… I would LOVE to imagine this morning of how this woman would tell her own story of encountering Jesus.  Of how she’d tell her story to her kids –  that might have surprisingly become part of her on-going story.  Or how she’d tell her story to her only human contacts – the lepers, or prostitutes, or the young rich men – or the tax collectors, who had also encountered Jesus.

Maybe she started by telling her part of the story – that comes before the story we read here in print – of how for those 12 years of suffering and bleeding – she imagined.  How she imagined every evening that the shadows moving along the stones in the street where she slept – were God.   And how those shadows comforted her, built in her a belief that God could be One who was consistently present and close in her pain.  How she imagined that in the call of the golden finches that greeted her every morning – was a song that told of joy and a promise of healing  – sung to her by God.   And maybe she’d tell of how that ability to imagine a God like this – built in her the capacity to trust herself, to be resilient …..and to imagine the not -yet-realized presence of a surprising and unexpected incarnate God – who just might, someday walk down a crowded, familiar, street in her neighborhood.  

Maybe she tells the part of the story where she admits that she had grown comfortable being out of the sight of society, comfortable being invisible.  Of how living behind the backs of people became more comfortable than seeing faces.  Of how the earth, became her temple of dirt, and dust and stone and blood.

Maybe she told how surprising it was that when she encountered Jesus he didn’t lecture her, or the crowd,  about personal sins or specific religious views and practices – or how to get back to the holy – but instead invited her back to the ordinary.   He invited her to tell her “whole truth”- Her STORY! “Why was she there? What did she hope for? Why did she long to touch his clothes?”

Maybe she’d tell of how achy and vulnerable it was for her to become visible again.

Maybe she would tell how the roots of her faith – were found in the holiest of places –  in the shadows, in the dust, in the birds, and in the grit – of life.

Maybe she tells lastly, the part of her story of how she had forgotten her name – of how long it had been since anyone had called her by name.  Maybe she’d be shy in sharing how she’d taken up the spiritual practice of imagining names for herself… Ones that she loved, but names she also needed for survival: First of course, “Eve” – because it means “to live”… and “Ruth” too, which means, “friend & companion”,  and “Rebekah” which means to “join a family.” 

Maybe she told how her forgotten name, was what terrified her most about going and touching Jesus – because she didn’t know how to identify herself, if he asked. 

And maybe she became embarrassed still, to tell her children the intimate parts of the story –  where she knows that she turned crimson red – as Jesus turned to her in the crowd – where in his face and his eyes – she recovered long lost words of her vocabulary – not only her name, but words like “tenderness” and “gentleness” and “touch”.  And how she trembled with a sensation, a feeling of overwhelming love as she touched his clothes, the intimate exchange of His love and power, as it poured out of his body – and moved into her skin.  And how in His voice, her heart was caught off guard and blown wide open with the name he gave her, of  “Daughter”… stunned that he could encapsulate all she had hoped for in a name, “to live, to be befriended, to belong in a family”, to be human again.  The power of name. 

I hope she told these parts of her story – and more parts that she’d discover over time to everyone she met….  I hope she made her kids yawn with boredom at how much she repeated these stories of God’s goodness and realness and truth to her…I hope if any questions arose it was, “mom – were you helped?” I hope she had a thousand new names given to her, like “prophet”, “courageous”, “informed”, “critical” and “imaginative”..

I hope those names are names that we can give to ourselves as we continue to encounter God. 

We are all on the brink of  ENCOUNTER with God. An encounter that sometimes gives us immediate healing… and sometimes is a long, long road of accompanied grief,  and sometimes is a mere, but fleeting feeling …..  

But all experience builds in us the survival kit – for our wild hike of life – with intimacy, vulnerability and imagination. 

Here is where we free fall into our fiercely honest and gracious wholeness that God helps us claim. 

And with that……. a knowledge that surpasses all understanding planted deep in our souls.

I think my friend Sarah has it right – to hunger for a presence of God  – close, real and in our ordinary lives. ANd it trains in ourselves an ability to trust our intuition – to recognize Jesus wherever he might show up – and to utilize our hopes and dreams of who God could be to us, and BE SURPRISED by who he reveals us to be in the encounter!…  

To believe that God could be in our passenger seat, is a stretch of the imagination – but not that much of a stretch if we believe that he is not just as a silent observer of our life – but as one who eagerly engages and  buckles up next to us…

And one who offers to hold all the stuff we drag into the car…. He takes into his lap our ½ eaten egg sandwich – our bags of messages that we’ve ingested from society, with our sense of loneliness and our own self-deprecating dialogue – he holds it all.. and invites us to tell him more of our “whole truth”, our story – meanwhile likely complimenting us on our song choice in the car, humming along – driving down our familiar roads,  calling us by name at every turn … “Ivy – you are doing just great”, or “Nice eyes, Ivy”.

This is the kind of knowledge that is so intimate and so vulnerable, to express as TRUTH.  And it’s disorienting because it’s not the kind of knowledge that we can possess first – it’s the kind of knowledge that WE gain by encountering God –
“it is the kind of knowledge that possesses us and infuses a knowing within us” (Richard Rohr).

I don’t think I can read, or imagine the story of this bleeding woman without hearing my own story echoed in it  … and I don’t think we can read this story without imagining the freedom and power it is to be called by God….. to be our exactly human selves. To bring back into view – our full, visible humanity.

This is the power of encounter.  To be deeply aware of who we are …To be deeply anchored in the presence of God. This has transformative power as we act and walk and move in our lives – it has the power to “stop people from their superficial assumptions, from their efforts to damage, marginalize and hurt others (Mary Moore, p. 44), because truth of this degree is a living force.  

I wonder as the bleeding woman made her way out of the crowd that day –  how many people saw her? As she made her way back to her familiar road – I wonder how many people reached out to touch her, stopped her to ask if it really happened? And how many people stopped her to see if she could help them become human again. 

This is what truth does, it articulates, exposes, restores, and surprises us.

The challenge for us today, is to believe that all of this is truth.  That we do indeed encounter God in so many beautiful, known ways – in prayer – with a candle in silence, or in loud, charismatic ways – or in worship songs – or in Scripture study – or in wildlife – or at the top of a mountain – or in the rut and grit and dirt of life…. and also that we can encounter God in a host of other surprising ways we cannot yet name, or know….  

“Peace I give to you”…. He says to this woman and to us- “Peace I give to you”.    In wellness and in wholeness. So do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid”. (John 14:27) – and “do let your hearts be caught off guard – and blown wide open.” (Seamus Henney)

Spiritual Practice & Reflection: 

  1. Practice expectancy with prayer: “God help me to let go of any assumptions or expectations that I may have of you, and today could you catch my heart off guard and blow it wide open?”
  2. Reflect: “Where did I encounter God today?”  and “how did it help?”

Maybe the helpful knowing of Jesus loving you deeply, in your life – helps you lead with compassion and tenderness to see the human beings in your midst. 

Practical:

  1. Discover the human beings in your midst. Start by making eye contact and learn their names and their pronouns.

Call into view someone else’s “whole truth.”

Dear God could you  remind us this morning – that on any crowded street, on any familiar road  – we can encounter you. Could you help us GOD to know – that we are not just imagining a life that could be good and powerful with you in it – but that we are actively,  presently living it. 

Prophetic Living: Prophet Hosea

Good morning. We’re in a series called Prophetic Living and I’ll share from one of the prophets in the Bible, a book called Hosea. A quick Bible overview. Old Testament is made up for 39 books. It’s really a library rather than one book. It’s ordered loosely according to genre, Genesis being the origin accounts, then some law texts, and then we’ve got some history books, then some poetry which is often called wisdom books, like the psalms and proverbs, and then the rest are the Prophets. There are “major” prophets and “minor” prophets, not because Isaiah was so majorly cool but cause the book is long. Hosea is one of the minor prophets. 14 chapters. A quick tell-it-like-it-is. When I finally read this book in seminary, cause I never once read it before then although I grew up Christian, I was floored by the content, and since then have always wanted to preach on it. So when we decided to do a series on Prophetic Living, I was like, this is my time! To talk about a very weird book!

It’s a book that isn’t often mentioned in Sunday School, you’ll see why. And you know what, prophetic living can be kind of weird, as we’ve heard about that other Prophet Ezekiel past few weeks. He weird for sure. And that’s an aspect of prophetic living, kind of weird, out of the box. It can sometimes look very different from what’s normally accepted. And I think that’s kind of cool.

 

So let me read the text for us and see what this peculiar book might have, anything, to say to us today.

 

Hosea 1:2-11

2 When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the Lord said to him, “Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her, for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord.” 3 So he married Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.

4 Then the Lord said to Hosea, “Call him Jezreel, because I will soon punish the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel. 5 In that day I will break Israel’s bow in the Valley of Jezreel.”

6 Gomer conceived again and gave birth to a daughter. Then the Lord said to Hosea, “Call her Lo-Ruhamah (which means “not loved”), for I will no longer show love to Israel, that I should at all forgive them. 7 Yet I will show love to Judah; and I will save them—not by bow, sword or battle, or by horses and horsemen, but I, the Lord their God, will save them.”

8 After she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, Gomer had another son. 9 Then the Lord said, “Call him Lo-Ammi (which means “not my people”), for you are not my people, and I am not your God.[b]

10 “Yet the Israelites will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted. In the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘children of the living God.’ 11 The people of Judah and the people of Israel will come together; they will appoint one leader and will come up out of the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel.[c]

 

You see why we don’t read this in Sunday School. Go marry a promiscuous woman. And in fact, there are a lot of parts of the Bible we don’t read for kids, but for adults either. I mean, talk about biblical marriage, there’s this one, and Abraham with his wife Sarah and Hagar the maidservant who bore him a son. And many other marriages in the Bible that is FAR from our culture and tradition, or norms of our days, or even their days frankly.

 

So let me say a few things right off the bat about this text. First of all, it’s a story and it’s a metaphor. It’s set in a time long ago with ancient cultural context. It’s also provocative. So I just want to say that, if any of this is triggering or offensive to you for any reason, a difficult topic, please feel free to step out and take care of yourself. You know your needs best. And also maybe try to allow the metaphor, locked in its particular time, to pass through to unearth the meaning behind the metaphor. We ARE going to do some initial critique of the genre, and that is a PART of reading Bible texts with integrity. So, let’s give ourselves, both me and yourself some grace and mercy through this process of discovering an ancient text. I’m going to take us through the thinking process of this text, so it’ll take us a few detours to get to the core message of Hosea. Stay with me, this is the good work of delving into the text and doing it justice. Like a love confession letter(or email) from your crush, you don’t just read it once and get it, you study every word and layers in meaning! I’ll talk about the metaphor, the problem that the metaphor is referring to, and Hosea’s hope and vision. The metaphor, the problem, and the hope

 

So, the metaphor. The medium sometimes is not the message. The metaphor is that Hosea is to marry a promiscuous woman to illustrate God’s loving relationship with the unfaithful Kingdom of Israel. It’s meant it to be provocative. Sometimes prophetic messages come off kind of blunt and out there.  It’s also an ancient setting in which cultural understanding of marriage, covenant relationship, and gender roles are set in a specific society, different from our own, most likely a patriarchal one, meaning one where the male gender has power and female doesn’t. And so to allude God as the loving husband and the unfaithful Israel to an adulterous wife, such metaphor is comprehensible language and even effective. Partly because the meant audience for the writing was for men, the powers of the Israel who was leading the country astray. But for us, those who get to eavesdrop on the conversation between prophet Hosea and the people of Israel set in 8th century BCE, there are many things that we have different assumptions and standards about. For one thing, the ancient metaphor doesn’t take into account the harm in always aligning the Divine/God with “he” pronoun and the nation, the human beings, or the wrong ones as “she”. I believe the message of Hosea can withstand modern feminist critique, to not only see the simple metaphor, but we must be able to see THROUGH the metaphor, and be able to critique the medium that has caused harm in seeing the female gender as the tainted one and male as the saviors. The text itself is more rich and complex than that. We should not take it at face value and give it the time and effort to do some digging.

 

Here’s a way to look at it. The prophet writings were a certain GENRE of writing. It’s part autobiographical, historical, interweaved with conversations of God with the prophet, and the prophet with the people. We HAVE to keep the GENRE in mind, because when we are not aware of the specific genre, we totally miss the message. For example, [SLIDE] The Onion is a news source that is meant to be a satire. They report on things like, “Man To Undergo Extensive Interrogation By Coworkers About Where He Got Falafel” with quotes like, ““It’s only a matter of moments before they’re surrounding my desk, ordering me to tell them everything I know about how long the line was and cross-examining me about what other dishes were available.” It’s random. It’s funny. But if you didn’t know the genre, you’d be like, that’s news? Knowing the genre is important when reading something on the internet. It’s also important when reading the Bible. Whenever you read the Bible, ask yourself, what’s the genre here?

 

The prophet writings are a specific kind of writing. It wasn’t written to give you marriage advice. It’s a metaphor. This sermon isn’t telling you who to marry. Please don’t take the Bible literally like that. In fact, on that note, let me say for the record, sometimes churches often provide people with cultural or moral or ethical standards as a biblical teaching or Christian tenet, and what the Prophets show us, is God’s plan is bigger than human plans. Like this story. Marrying a promiscuous woman, I’m sure would not have been a godly advice to young men in their temple. Marriage is so deeply interwoven with cultural expectations of its time and place.

 

Here’s an example. Marriage expectations is the bread and butter of Korean dramas. They’re a bit like american soap opera or telenovela, but it’s like this whole genre called Korean dramas. It’s actually huge in asia, my chinese mother in laws knows Korean phrases from watching them, and you can even find them on netflix. Usual story goes like this. A girl and boy somehow falls in love. But there’s a problem. The boy is from a poor family, or the girl grew up without parents and she’s an orphan, or the boy is younger, oh no!, or the girl has a career, she can’t have babies! And the families just lose it when they find out they’re dating, they try to pay each other off to break up, and humiliate their boyfriend or girlfriend. Drama.

 

The beginning of this text says that God tells Hosea to marry a prostitute. (side note, the specific word translated is actually not prostitute more accurately, promiscuous, although many bible translate it so because the metaphor of Israel being a prostitute is definitely there, but the word prostitute is never actually connected to the wife. clarity.) And name his children, Lo-ruhamah–’Not Loved’ and Lo-ammi–’Not My People’. That must’ve been hard names for them to live with! And the rest of the book is series of conversation between God and Hosea, and Hosea to his wife, and God to the people of Israel, and Hosea to the people as the prophet, and it is often confusing who’s saying what to whom. This is often the case in all of the Prophet books. It’s part autobiography, part oracle, part preaching, mixed in with their personal conversation, and feelings, with God and then it being God’s mouthpiece and intention. It’s unclear. But that’s often how life is sometimes right? God speaking through our lives, sometimes in moments of such clarity, God said this, and sometimes in the muddy mix of of our emotions, Is this how God feels? We ask ourselves this as we move about our days, God what are you trying to show me. How are you using me and my life to be a witness. What good story of yours are you telling through my life?

 

So the metaphor was his own personal story and experience, his marriage, his children. And it’s being used to illustrate the problem. So what is the problem? The rest of the book, Hosea expands on this marriage metaphor to call out the people of Israel. It’s an autobiographical social commentary. So what was happening?

 

Little history. It’s late 8th century BCE. Around 930 BCE the united monarchy has split into two kingdoms, the Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south. I feel like I’m explaining Game of Thrones right now, “king of the north!” but actually it’s kind of helpful in imagining it in that genre. Hosea, though it doesn’t say clearly in the text, is probably from the north from the way he talks about all the narratives that were popular in the north and mentioning of mostly northern cities. During the 8th century the Israel and Judah were experiencing some booming of economy and flourishing unlike any other time in their history. They had political stability and independence, partly due to neighboring super powers like the Assyrians, who had been colonizing surrounding nations, were kind of taking a break with their own problems like disease outbreak and such. And in fact, Israel and Judah were expanding and colonizing their neighbors with this newfound strength and stability. And with imperialism, colonizing, they enjoyed more trade, goods, which then bore more hunger for power and exploitation of foreigners and peasants. And then surplus of power that began to tip over to greed causing greater disparity among the rich and the poor. This is common history, right? A history of most nations and powers, the rise and fall, the struggle of the rich and the poor.

 

What we know is that very soon, a little later, in 722 BCE, all this goes down the drain, with the great fall of Samaria, the capital of Northern Kingdom of Israel. Assyria gets over disease outbreaks and starts destroying their neighboring cities again. We know this through other sources and the Bible. And Hosea lived just before that, and didn’t know this. But, he saw it coming. I think that’s why we allude the word Prophets to those who foretell, but it’s not just that, it’s actually more like those who really have a keen sense of the current state of the nation that they can “predict” what’s going to happen to the country. There were economists who saw the housing market crash of 2008, but we don’t call them prophets. But they knew. They saw it coming. And Hosea, saw the destruction of Israel coming and used it to warn the people to turn their ways.

 

He masterfully interweaves his conversations with his wife, the anger, the struggle, the feeling of betrayal, to illustrate God’s disapproval of Israel’s actions. Some, I wonder if they were God’s venting, or his own. They are pretty harsh words. And like a good Korean drama or an epic HBO show, things are well, let me read a few lines. Chapter 2, “I will leave her to die of thirst as in a dry and barren wilderness. I will not love her children… I will strip her naked in public… no one will be able to rescue her from my hands…” DRAMA. This is kind of why I stopped watching Game of Thrones in season 3, cause it’s like too much violence and rape, like why. And this is also why some people stop reading the Bible cause too much violence and rape and genocide. You know, human history. It’s ugly. And it’s a literary artistic choice too though. Hosea goes back and forth from one chapter on God’s judgement and fury, to the next chapter, having said all that, End of Chapter 2, “but then I will win her back once again…speak tenderly to her….You will call me ‘husband’ instead of master” (Side note, fun fact! Husband is the metaphor being used in juxtaposition to Master, because the word Master, which is baal, is the same word used for the foreign god Baal. The one true God, loving husband, the false idol god, the taskmaster. It was a pun!)  And it does kind of make God sound bipolar. Maybe Hosea was bipolar, or I don’t know, he’s going through a lot right now you know? And it goes on like this pretty much rest of the book, utilizing other metaphors in addition to the marriage one like farming, religion, or parental. Chapter 4, “Israel is stubborn, like a stubborn heifer. So should the Lord feed her like a lamb in a lush pasture? No. Leave Israel alone.” Chapter 6, “I want you to show love or show mercy, not offer sacrifices. I want you to know me, more than I want burnt offerings.” Chapter 11, “I myself taught Israel how to walk, leading him along by the hand. But he doesn’t know or even care that it was I who took care of him. I led Israel along with my ropes of kindness and love, I lifted the yoke from his neck and I myself stooped to feed him.”

 

These metaphors are pointing out how Israel is breaking the covenant relationship with God, unfaithful and disobeying, saying that they are worshiping idols. Hint: It’s not just about religion. Especially in that time, the separation of religious and secular concerns were not as distinct. So, what is the offense to God? What does unfaithfulness to God look like? As he said in chapter 6, it’s not about the sacrifices or burnt offerings.

 

Chapter 5: “The court officials in Judah have become like removers of boundary landmarks; upon them I will pour out my fury like water.” Why was removing boundary landmarks such a crime? Cause it was about territory, property, and the court officials who determine them unjustly.

 

Chapter 9: “you love shares on every threshing floor of grain. Threshing floor and wine vats shall not benefit them, and the new wine shall fail them. They shall not sit in possession in the land of Yahweh; but they shall return to Egypt, and in Assyria they shall eat unclean food.”

It was about grain, agriculture, and wine, trade goods, and possession of land, and political ties to Egypt and Assyria the other superpowers that were also exploiting other nations.

 

Chapter 10: “since you trusted in your chariots and in the abundance of your warriors, an uproar shall rise amidst your cities, and all the fortifications shall be destroyed, like the destruction of Beth-arbel by Shalman on the day of battle” and this is really extreme, I’m sorry but it’s in the Bible, “mothers were dashed into pieces with children,”.  Chapter 13 has even worse that I don’t want to read. It was about military, about walls, about wars and murders of women and children.

 

Prophets studies scholar Rodney R. Hutton puts it this way, “To accuse Israel of religious infidelity was not simply a pedantic concern about correct religion. I was fundamentally a political concern about foreign alliances and the sort of pressures such alliances exerted on Israel’s core religious and social values…Hosea rehearses a long litany of social injustices, all of which result from the fact that, “there is no faithfulness or kindness, and no knowledge of God in the land. There is swearing, lyding, killing, stealing, and committing adultery. They break all bounds and murder follows murder (in reference to the ten commandments) (4:1-2). Clearly, one cannot distinguish between religious and secular concerns, between matters of worshiping the correct god and worshiping God correctly. For Hosea the two go together and offenses again God have universal and cosmic effects: “Therefor the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field, and the birds of the air; and even the fish of the sea are taken away” (4:3).”

 

This was their sin. This was their rebellion against God. As is the case for all of the prophets. They were calling out for the repentance and turning away from their ways. Their ways of militaristic power expansion, land accumulation and exploitation of the poor. The marketplace. The economy. The politics. The unfair trades of good, about farming, about water, about children, about life.  To be devoted to God and to do justice is one of the same.

 

I briefly mentioned the Canaanite god of fertility earlier, Baal, who was also known as the Lord of Rain and Dew, one who provided the climate for abundance of crops. That’s why worshipping Baal was ‘falling in love’ with potential of grain, wine, oil, success, wealth, power. –This was Hosea’s warning and message to the people of Israel. So what. What does that matter to us? Only that, I don’t know if you noticed, but the possible parallels to our days of grasp for power and money.

 

Let’s bring it to conclusion. Having said all this, What is Hosea’s expectation or hope for the future of Israel? The hope. Having angrily vented to the people of Israel and dishing out judgements of what they deserve, what does God do? God says, in verse 7 of today’s text, “Yet I will show love to Judah; and I will save them—not by bow, sword or battle, or by horses and horsemen, but I, the Lord their God, will save them.” Assyrians are coming. And you think you need to get your power up. no, that’s not how you will save yourself. You won’t. I will save you. The back and forth of judgement and devotion, it always ends the same, I will bring you back. I will allure you. I will love. I will heal. I will do it. It is God who acts.

 

Prophets were a warning to the people. A moral ethical call to people. And one we should listen to, to the prophets of our days. But the ultimate message is the same. It’s not that you need to clean up your act, but I love you. I will show you my love that you can’t help but turn back to me no matter how far you’ve gone.

 

Hosea’s difficult marriage was what he was going through. He also was seeing the injustice of his nation. He was trying to make a sense of both, and through his life experience and his place in history, he felt, saw, sensed, and heard, not only God’s frustration (resonating with his own frustration with his wife and his country), but more so, God revealed to him love and compassion for him, and for his wife and for his people.

 

How is God showing God’s love through a difficult time in your life? This one was through his marriage. And some hold up that metaphor to be the ultimate experience of God’s holy love. But a good marriage is not the only example of God’s goodness. This example is an example of a failed marriage. A marriage that would’ve brought shame to Hosea and his family. God used shame and turned it upside down saying, even there, I will work. I will reveal. And I think of our modern days. That marital status has actually been a source of much shame for so many people and our generation. Those who are in difficult marriages. Those who are at the brink of marriages falling apart. Those who have been married before but no longer. Those who seek to be married but haven’t found one. Those who have no interest in marriage. If God used Hosea’s marital status as an illustration of God’s love, I wonder, how could God use EACH of our marital status, married, single, divorced, seperated, widowed, choose to not marry, etc, in all various stories and states of our lives, that might be seen as unconventional. how does God use the drama of your life, to reveal God’s faithful love?

 

I was a part of a conference in Los Angeles, while I was traveling last few weeks, where they had a panel of LGBTQIA+ stories. the story that stood out to me was the person identifying as asexual whose pronouns were they/them/their, meaning that they prefer to not be called she or he gender. They started to explain a little bit about their identity and life as an asexual person. They said, “please don’t say things like, “the friend zone” or “only friends” because it demeans friendship relationship,” because that’s mainly what kind of relationship they live on because they are not interested in romantic ones. They said, “people who are in traditional families with children, and please don’t call that NORMAL, be inclusive of people who are not married into your family.” As they shared, they kind of drew this picture of deep community that isn’t bound by nucleus families but a bond and connection that goes beyond culturally accepted familial lines. They were paining a picture of a kind of a church that I’d envision. A kind of heaven.

 

Cultural NORMS have wedged people into lives or expectation of lives that they can’t live upto or want to live up to. Hosea marrying a promiscuous woman was provocative and yet the whole book was actually trying to portray the deep love and beauty of such marriage that ended up this way unfortunately, and yet, this is the reality as is and love covers it. I know that people feel shame for being single, older and single. I know that as a married person I have a certain privilege that keeps me blind to their experiences. I know a little cause I got married mid 30’s, GASP so late. But GASP’s are the stuff of God’s toolbox that God paints the most beautiful pictures with.

 

Prophetic living can be counterintuitive because sometimes what looks like failure to men is glory in God. 1 Cor 1:27 says, “But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” As seen on the cross by Jesus. What seeming “failures” in your life is God using to show God’s love for you? And how can we honor such stories that might been unordinary, out of the box, out of tradition, out of the norm, maybe even provocative, for some even offensive, to see those stories as God’s stories of God’s good and faithful love being played out through their lives? Can we? May we live that provocative prophetic lives boldly, knowing that in it and through all stories, God is faithful, God is loving, God chases after us and wants to make us whole, not despite of but THROUGH that very story. Maye it be so. Amen.