Once I heard and answered all the questions
of the crickets,
And joined the crying of each falling dying
flake of snow,
Once I spoke the language of the flowers…
How did it go?
How did it go? (Shel Silverstein, “Forgotten Language”)
…Listening In…
When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, reason like a child, think like a child. But now that I have become a man, I’ve put an end to childish things. (1 Corinthians 13:11; context)
…Filling Up…
My very first nephew was born last week, and his coming into the world has gotten me thinking about childhood, especially those early years that he has to look forward to. Sooner or later, each of us makes the switch from childhood to adulthood. For my nephew’s sake, I hope he waits a good long time. When we make the switch, we lose the easy access to so many things that for children come second nature.
Now whether or not you are still a minor, I’m sure you’ve had the experience of ceasing an activity you once did when you were younger. When I was a kid, I played with LEGO blocks twenty-four hours a day. Then I hit about age 14, and I entered what the LEGO company actually calls “the Dark Ages.” I quit playing with LEGO for some reason or another — I guess something internal told me that I was too old for that particular toy.
As in the case of ceasing our childhood activities, no matter how hard we might try, we all lose things that we once knew but forgot over time. I’m convinced that children know God in a way that adults cannot access. This week, we are going to look at accessing some of these things we might once have known.
…Praying For…
Dear God, you formed me in my mother’s womb and have guided my growth for my entire life. Help me to recover some of the things you taught me when I was young so that I can have a more complete picture of my life with you. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.
…Sending Out…
I leave this moment with you, God, joyful that I have been in your presence for my whole existence, whether I remember or not.
(Sermon for Sunday, May 5, 2013 || Easter 6C || John 5:1-19)
I have some really exciting news that I’ve just been bursting to tell you. Last Monday, I became an uncle. I wasn’t an uncle, and then my sister-in-law had her baby boy, and now I’m an uncle! But since I played absolutely no part in the whole “becoming an uncle thing,” let me talk a little more about the actual players in this little slice of joy, my nephew Connor and his parents, Bethany and Steve.
Bethany labored to birth Connor on Sunday and Monday, and he entered the world Monday afternoon, just under eight pounds of radiant, new life: squishy elbows and beating heart and astonishingly alert eyes. I’m sure there were moments during delivery when Bethany was certain she couldn’t do it, that one more push was out of the question, that one more contraction would send her over the edge. But then she did do it, and her son was placed in her welcoming arms.
I’m sure that in the weeks and months to come, Bethany and Steve will spend many a night awake trying to sooth the baby who will seem to be crying for no apparent reason, considering they will have sated all his immediate needs. They will be strung out, exhausted, ready to fall asleep in the next morning’s bowl of cereal. They will wonder if they can function on 45 minutes of sleep and then they will do it all again the next night. And the one after that.
I’m sure that at some point in his childhood, Connor will break his arm climbing a tree or get an infection that will send him and his distraught parents to the Emergency Room. That kind of thing happens to everyone, but in the moment, Bethany and Steve will be frantic and all kinds of worst-case scenarios will run through their minds. But then Connor’s fever will break or he’ll emerge with a cast ready for signatures, and his parents will breathe a prayer of silent relief for having come through the ordeal.
Notice a pattern here. On the day of Connor’s delivery, Bethany went to the point of no return. And then she returned with a babe in her arms. In the future eventualities of sleepless nights and hospital visits, Bethany and Steve will be at the ends of their ropes, and yet they will keep climbing and they will find more rope. How can I be so sure that they will find more rope? Because I believe God called them to the sacred ministry of parenthood. And when God calls one of us to serve, God always provides us with the gifts that we need to fulfill our callings.
In the delivery room Bethany discovered God’s gift of perseverance and more determination than she ever thought she possessed. God called her to motherhood and then gave her the gifts she needed to make the calling hers. As she grows in this ministry, she will continue to discover new gifts as she faces new challenges as a mother. The same thing happens to us when we accept God’s call in our lives. The call and the gifts to achieve the call go hand in hand. To use a political metaphor, God doesn’t believe in the unfunded mandate.
If you need more convincing, check out this morning’s reading from the Gospel according to John. Jesus arrives at the pool of Beth-Zatha and finds there a man who is waiting his turn to go down into the pool. The popular belief was that when the water was stirred up, from some underground source presumably, the first person to enter the pool would be healed of any affliction. The man had been paralyzed for 38 years; can you image – 38 years of coming to this pool only to be stymied by people who could beat him to the water, 38 years of dashed hopes and unfulfilled dreams, all drained into a morass of hardened isolation. 38 years of paralysis; just think, if this encounter were happening today, the man would have become paralyzed while Gerald Ford was president and I wouldn’t be a twinkle in my mother’s eye for quite some time.
To this downtrodden, lonely soul, Jesus comes, and Jesus asks him a question: “Do you want to be made well?” The answer seems obvious. “YES” is what you’d expect. But this man seems to have a well-worn speech ready for whenever anyone approaches him, no matter what they say. “I have no one to put me in the water and when I’m trying to get over there, someone always gets ahead of me,” he says.
Jesus takes this response as a “yes.” And then Jesus just skips all the preliminaries. He doesn’t tell the man his faith has made him well. He doesn’t touch him. He doesn’t pray. Jesus simply commands the paralyzed man to stand up, take his mat, and walk. Jesus calls this man to do something he is absolutely and without a doubt unable to do.
I imagine the man gives Jesus an incredulous look, perhaps a raised eyebrow. A hollow chuckle. Who does this guy think he is, the man wonders? But Jesus’ words ring in the air, strong and solid and shimmering. The man looks up and sees Jesus staring down at him, and he realizes that Jesus is serious. What if? What if I don’t need the pool? What if this is my chance?
He pokes his leg with his finger. No sensation. He tries to wiggle his toes. Nothing. But Jesus’ call to stand up is still ringing in the air, and now the words fall to earth, fall into the heart of the paralyzed man. No more poking. No more wiggling. He reaches up and grasps Jesus’ arm and pulls himself up. He can stand. He can walk.
Somewhere between Jesus’ call and the man’s standing, Jesus gives him the gift of the ability to heed the call. The healing happens in order that the man can obey Jesus’ command. Like I said, God doesn’t believe in unfunded mandates. Jesus tells the man to stand up. But he hasn’t stood in 38 years. And then he does because the call carried with it the gift to accomplish it. He realized Jesus had blessed him with the gift when he used it to stand up.
God called Bethany and Steve to be new parents. And I believe God will give them all the gifts they need to raise Connor to be the child God calls him to be. Jesus called the paralyzed man to stand and gave him the gift to do so. I wonder what God is calling you to do? I wonder what God is calling you to be? How many of us hear God’s call but then shy away from it because we assume we aren’t good enough to accomplish it or we don’t have the necessary gifts to do it?
This story of the man by the pool teaches us that God never issues a call without dispersing the gifts that accompany it. In fact, God calls us to certain things specifically so we can discover our giftedness.
So the next time you pray, I invite you to ask God what God is calling you to do or be. For the duration of the prayer, ignore both the seeming impossibility of the call and your utter inadequacy to accomplish it. Just sit in silence with God, listening to the call ringing in the air, strong and solid and shimmering. And then, like the paralyzed man, stand up, take your mat, and walk. Say “yes” to God. And discover all of the gifts that God has been bursting to shower upon you.
Come, then, Lord my God, come and instruct my heart where and how to search for you, where and how to find you. Where shall I look for you, Lord? (St. Anselm)
…Listening In…
Lord, you have examined me. You know me. You know when I sit down and when I stand up. Even from far away, you comprehend my plans. You study my traveling and resting. You are thoroughly familiar with all my ways. There isn’t a word on my tongue, Lord, that you don’t already know completely. You surround me—front and back. You put your hand on me. (Psalm 139:1-5; context)
…Filling Up…
God as Cosmic Creator, who “stretches out the heavens like a curtain,” did not need a reason to speak creation into being. I might need a reason to build a bookcase or compose a letter, but God doesn’t need to share my motivations. If God did not need a reason to create, why would that same creator need a reason to care about us insignificant grasshoppers? God’s very greatness subsumes the “Why” question into God’s eternal being and renders it irrelevant. With the “Why” expunged, the gut-twinging question becomes a glorious statement of faith: “You care about me, Lord.”
You care about me, Lord. When I finally realize this, I notice that God as Intimate Companion has been whispering these words in my ear the whole time. Then I realize that God’s care for me (another word for which is grace) enables and enthuses me to care for others. The penchant for betrayal and disregard for others’ welfare, once unfairly plastered onto God’s being, now fall away as God continues to make me in God’s own image.
Our world is vast and full of questions. We are insignificant. We are messy. We are little things. But God’s vastness stretches into eternity. In staggering showers of grace-filled generosity, God both answers and removes the need to question. In those same showers falls the gift of sanctifying love, which removes our insignificance and scrubs us cleans. As we discern the Cosmic Creator and Intimate Companion in the same loving face of God, more words from the prophet Isaiah resound: “Those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”
…Praying For…
Dear God, thank you for not abandoning me to questions that I will never fully comprehend. Thank you for answering me with the simple reassurance of your presence. Thank you for caring about me. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.
…Sending Out…
I leave this moment with you, God, comforted by the faith that your foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and hopeful that I might let your foolishness educate me.
Come, then, Lord my God, come and instruct my heart where and how to search for you, where and how to find you. Where shall I look for you, Lord? (St. Anselm)
…Listening In…
God created humanity in God’s own image, in the divine image God created them, male and female God created them. (Genesis 1:27; context)
…Filling Up…
This misguided transfer of shabbiness from myself to God is difficult to suspend. Human nature dictates that we narcissistically use ourselves as the measuring sticks by which other things are evaluated. Our ability to reason, manufacture tools, and put our thoughts into speech elevates us above other animals. We then use these factors to order other species by “intelligence.” Chimpanzees eat using rudimentary utensils. Dolphins communicate with their cackling code. Therefore, based on the anthropomorphic scale, these creatures are closer to our presumed preeminence.
But the scale works the other way, as well. Our penchants for betrayal, mistrust, indifference and our well-rehearsed disregard for the welfare of others knock a bleaker set of notches into the measuring stick. When the gut-twinging question surfaces – “Why do you care about me, Lord? – these regrettable attributes emigrate from our world and narcissistically modify our understanding of God.
Having thus remade God in my own lamentable image, the collision in my gut worsens. The Cosmic Creator looks down and sees a bunch of tiny grasshoppers, so why should that God be bothered? The Intimate Companion is probably just as apathetic and self-centered as I am, so why should that God care?
Do you see the twisted, oxymoronic reasoning that leads to these conclusions? The gut-twinging question appears when I notice my own laughable insignificance. At the same time, I use myself as the measuring stick for which to assess God’s motivation to care about me. This logic definitely deserves the red FOOLISHNESS stamp.
You see, when the prophet Isaiah expounds on God’s greatness and ineffability, he is not extolling God’s distance and isolation. Instead, he is warning people not to engage in the foolish business of looking for God in the mirror. The Holy One says, “To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal?” The answer is quite obviously a resounding “NO ONE!” When you escape the twisted logic that seeks to anthropomorphize God, you are one step closer to resolving the gut-twinging question – “Why do you care about me, Lord?”
(We have reached the turn. Stay tuned for the good news! To be concluded tomorrow…)
…Praying For…
Dear God, you made me in your image, not the other way around. Help me return to you from the self-centeredness that can dominate my life. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.
…Sending Out…
I leave this moment with you, God, comforted by the faith that your foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and hopeful that I might let your foolishness educate me.
Come, then, Lord my God, come and instruct my heart where and how to search for you, where and how to find you. Where shall I look for you, Lord? (St. Anselm)
…Listening In…
On the day the Lord God made earth and sky… the Lord God formed the human from the topsoil of the fertile land and blew life’s breath into his nostrils. The human came to life. The Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east and put there the human he had formed. (Genesis 2:4b, 7-8; context)
…Filling Up…
The second chapter of Genesis presents another view of the same creative God found in the first chapter of Genesis. God is not standing at the podium, waving a baton as the performing forces of creation harmonize the music of life. In the second story, God, rather the being the conductor, is the instrumentalist: God plays each violin and French horn and clarinet. “In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,” says Genesis, God bent down in the dust and formed a human being. Then, into his nostrils, God breathed the “breath of life.” When the human became lonely, God put him to sleep, and out of the man’s own flesh God created another human being. As the story continues, the man and woman heard God “walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze.”
This movement and participation in the creation, this intimacy, speak of the God who eventually becomes incarnate as the word made flesh, Jesus Christ. This is the understanding of God that Joan Osbourne wonders about when she sings: “What if God was one of us…just a stranger on the bus trying to make his way home?” This is the understanding of God that the old hymn describes: “And he walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I am his own.”
The tension between our understanding of God as “Cosmic Creator” and as “Intimate Companion” brings us back to the gut-twinging question: “Why do you care about me, Lord?” In those moments of existential angst, the Cosmic Creator easily trumps the Intimate Companion because the former seems so much bigger, holier, more powerful. When my gut compares the two, the latter seems somehow lessened by my own shabbiness.
(Stay tuned to hear about the misguided transfer of shabbiness! To be continued tomorrow…)
…Praying For…
Dear God, you breathed life into me and by your Spirit you gave me breath. Help me to use the inspiration found in that breath to work for the coming of your reign here on earth. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.
…Sending Out…
I leave this moment with you, God, comforted by the faith that your foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and hopeful that I might let your foolishness educate me.
My first novel arrives in stores August 20th. I am beyond excited about this. I hope you will join my parents and several folks from my church in purchasing a copy and then reading said copy. You can pre-order it now from several websites or from your local independent bookstore. (Go to your bookstore if you’re blessed enough to have one in your town!)
Here’s a quick synopsis:
When the newly ordained Episcopal priest Rev. Calvin Harper arrives in Victory, West Virginia, to be the pastor at an ailing parish, he has no idea how much he still has to learn about being a priest. Thankfully, Ruby Redding takes the young man under her wing and teaches him everything she has learned throughout her long, storied life. Seminary never taught Calvin that the only true way to be a witness to God’s presence in this world is to remain in relationships with people no matter what life throws at them. His studies never taught him that detachment is the bane of ministry. He never learned that deep grief comes only from deep love. But in his first year in Victory, Calvin learns all this and more from Ruby, a woman so full of God’s light that it can’t help but spill onto the people around her.
Pre-order Letters from Ruby Today
From Cokesbury (this is the storefront for my publisher Abingdon Press)
Come, then, Lord my God, come and instruct my heart where and how to search for you, where and how to find you. Where shall I look for you, Lord? (St. Anselm)
…Listening In…
God named the light Day and the darkness Night. There was evening and there was morning: the first day. God said, “Let there be a dome in the middle of the waters to separate the waters from each other.” God made the dome and separated the waters under the dome from the waters above the dome. And it happened in that way. God named the dome Sky. There was evening and there was morning: the second day. (Genesis 1:5-8; context)
…Filling Up…
Of course, there’s no reason why God should care about a messy, little thing like me. To think God does is truly first-rate foolishness.
The prophet Isaiah doesn’t help matters. He says, “It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing… To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One.”
There’s a tension in our scriptures — a twofold presentation — about how God relates to us that feeds the pulsing in my gut. The dual stories of creation in the opening chapters of the book of Genesis illustrate this tension. “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth…” says the first verse of Genesis. The narrative goes on to tell how God spoke creation into being. Creation was ordered: light separated from darkness, day from night, land from sea from sky. God orchestrated the emergence of life and proclaimed the creation “good” and, indeed, “very good.”
This ordering, this filling the void with matter and energy and life and light, speaks of the Cosmic Creator, whose voice and arm stretch into the vast expanse of eternity. This is the understanding of God that Bette Midler promotes when she sings: “God is watching us from a distance.” This is the understanding of God that the Enlightenment era Deists caricatured as a great Watchmaker, who set the gears running and then left well enough alone.
(Stay tuned for the second Creation story! To be continued tomorrow…)
…Praying For…
Dear God, you ordered creation, making all the things that are visible and invisible. Help me to participate in all the good, life-affirming things that your Creation has to offer. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.
…Sending Out…
I leave this moment with you, God, comforted by the faith that your foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and hopeful that I might let your foolishness educate me.
Come, then, Lord my God, come and instruct my heart where and how to search for you, where and how to find you. Where shall I look for you, Lord? (St. Anselm)
…Listening In…
When I look up at your skies, at what your fingers made—the moon and the stars that you set firmly in place—what are human beings that you think about them; what are human beings that you pay attention to them? (Psalm 8:3-4; context)
…Filling Up…
When I am engaged in a mundane activity—say, brushing my teeth or counting the bleary-eyed seconds until I hit snooze again or watching the digital numbers flick by on the counters at the gas station—the activity itself occupies only a tiny portion of my brain’s processing power. So the rest of my mind often wanders into other sections of my body. Sometimes, my mind meanders past my throat and lungs and finds its way down through that trapdoor in my gut. And I begin to ask those questions that make my gut twinge and pulse, like the feeling you get after narrowly avoiding a car accident.
I’ll be wrapping the floss around my fingers or anticipating the snap of the nozzle that signals a full tank of fuel, and I’ll look up at the sky and say, “Why do you care about me, Lord?” Then the cars will collide in my gut because, in that moment, everything I’ve ever believed is branded with a big red stamp of the word “FOOLISHNESS.”
Why do you care about me, Lord? This gut-twinging question doesn’t necessarily speculate on God’s existence. The question isn’t: “Do you exist, Lord?” There’s no reason to ask God if God exists. That would be like asking all the absent people in a classroom to raise their hands. Instead, the question acknowledges that God does, indeed, exist, but wonders why the heck God would ever care about an insignificant, messy, little thing like me. Of course, there’s no reason why God should care. This is truly first-rate foolishness.
(What? Foolishness? A cliffhanger? Don’t worry. This story isn’t finished yet! To be continued tomorrow…)
…Praying For…
Dear God, you are bigger than my mind can conceive. But I thank you that by your grace I can conceive even a small shadowy corner of your majesty. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.
…Sending Out…
I leave this moment with you, God, comforted by the faith that your foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and hopeful that I might let your foolishness educate me.
For life, with all it yields of joy and woe
And hope and fear,—believe the aged friend,—
Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love. (Robert Browning, “A Death in the Desert”)
…Listening In…
I came so that they could have life—indeed, so that they could live life to the fullest. (John 10:10; context)
…Filling Up…
When we accept that eternal life happens even as we live our earthly lives, we can begin to see the corner of the edge of the expanse of the abundance that God offers to us. When we turn off the autopilot, we can break out of the rut of living vaguely, indistinctly – which, in truth, is not really living, but merely existing. Jesus offers us abundant life, but choosing abundance is not a one-time decision. Rather, the choice is akin to choosing your child’s name. You pick it once; you write it on the birth certificate once. But then you call your child that name for the rest of his or her life.
In the same way, choosing abundance involves actively naming the paths down which our decisions and our outlooks can lead us. We can walk down the path of scarcity or the path of abundance, the path of fear or the path of love, the path of destruction or the path of creation, the path of despair or the path of joy. Choosing abundance means that we follow Jesus down the life-affirming paths of love, creation, and joy. He’ll be with us either way, I firmly believe, but when we follow our own wills down the life-denying paths of fear, destruction, and despair, then Jesus needs to trample through the undergrowth to retrieve us. The good news is this: no matter how far down the life-denying paths we find ourselves, simply turning around makes them life-affirming paths. (The reverse is also true, but let’s not dwell on that now.)
When we choose abundance, we participate in the fullness of the eternal life that God yearns for each of us. Living this kind of life keeps us from lapsing into the background of existence. So choose to accept the gift of living fully into the being that God has made. Choose abundance. After all, God has already chosen you.
…Praying For…
Dear God, you are the source of all life and the cause of creation. Help me to live my life so that I always trend toward the life-affirming path of abundance, love, creation, and joy. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.
…Sending Out…
I leave this moment with you, God, ready to step into the spotlight of my life and shine in the brilliance of your presence.
For life, with all it yields of joy and woe
And hope and fear,—believe the aged friend,—
Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love. (Robert Browning, “A Death in the Desert”)
…Listening In…
And yes, you want truth in the most hidden places; you teach me wisdom in the most secret space… Create a clean heart for me, God; put a new, faithful spirit deep inside me. (Psalm 51:6, 10; context)
…Filling Up…
When we step out of the fuzzy background of our existence and embrace the eternal life of knowing God, we discover that there’s an internal switch that has been set in the wrong position. Each of us has within us a switch that controls the autopilot. Now, I’m not talking about the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that regulates the parts of the body that we’re not fully aware of. We should probably leave that switch on. I’m talking about the autopilot that offers us the comfortable ability to sit back and read a magazine when we should be living.
When the autopilot is engaged, we travel day to day in the generally correct direction. The wings stay parallel to the ground. We don’t deviate course. We go about our daily lives because daily life is what happens when we wake up in the morning. (This might sound familiar because I talked about something similar on Tuesday.) But when you turn off the autopilot, you have to pay attention. You have to grip the yoke to keep the plane steady. You have to check course to make sure you going in the right direction. Disengaging the autopilot makes you engage life – both the life you are living as you go about your day and the life you are living within yourself. This interior life happens with equal parts mind, heart, soul, and spirit. It is in this internal space that you can check yourself to make sure you are living the kind of life God desires for you to live. When the autopilot is on, we don’t even realize we should make such checks.
Look to your internal fuselage: in what position is the autopilot switch. If it’s on, why not try flipping it and seeing what happens next?
…Praying For…
Dear God, the life that you offer elevates us from simple existence. Help me to take an active role in my own life, both the life that other people see and the life within that only you and I can see. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.
…Sending Out…
I leave this moment with you, God, ready to step into the spotlight of my life and shine in the brilliance of your presence.
…Opening To…
Bethany labored to birth Connor on Sunday and Monday, and he entered the world Monday afternoon, just under eight pounds of radiant, new life: squishy elbows and beating heart and astonishingly alert eyes. I’m sure there were moments during delivery when Bethany was certain she couldn’t do it, that one more push was out of the question, that one more contraction would send her over the edge. But then she did do it, and her son was placed in her welcoming arms.
My first novel arrives in stores August 20th. I am beyond excited about this. I hope you will join my parents and several folks from my church in purchasing a copy and then reading said copy. You can pre-order it now from several websites or from your local independent bookstore. (Go to your bookstore if you’re blessed enough to have one in your town!)
Where the Wind... 