The Way

shelliwilliams Breathing Out Series , , ,

(part of the “Breathing Out” Lenten Series)

Lake of Galilee from Capernaum

Scripture Text:  Mark 6:1-6

He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. 2On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! 3Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. 4Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” 5And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. 6And he was amazed at their unbelief.

The account of Jesus early in his ministry speaking in the synagogue before his hometown is found in all four Gospels.  It is the beginning of the story of Jesus we know as the teacher, as the community organizer, as the one that pushes people beyond their own boundaries.  In the Lukan Gospel, the passage from which he read is included. 

So, as was the custom, Jesus stood in the synagogue to read.  He unrolled the scroll and began.  But something happened in the midst of the reading.  He saw himself differently after reading the lyrical words from the scroll.  Hear the Scripture that was read: (Isaiah 61)

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives,  and release to the prisoners;
2to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour,  and the day of vengeance of our God;    to comfort all who mourn; 3to provide for those who mourn in Zion—to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.  They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory. 4They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.

The truth was that Jesus wasn’t seen as a prophet or a Messiah by this crowd.  He was just one of them, this little kid that had made good and of whom they were very proud.  This was the kid that they had helped raise.  They probably thought that his ministry would be a reflection on them.  But Jesus was not cooperating.  And when they looked at him, they did not see a reflection of what they were expecting but a dim view of something that was a tad unfamiliar.  Jesus was standing there, calling them to change, calling them to look at things differently, to step out of their carefully constructed boxes and away from their earthly temples of who they thought they should be and actually become the people of God. So, who did he think he was?  God?

The truth is, Jesus was asking them to go beyond what they knew.  As hard as it was for them to fathom, God was not some far-off inaccessible entity to which they could go when it was convenient and from which they could turn when it was not.  This ordinary, earthly man standing before them was God—Immanuel, God-with-us—calling them to serve others, to put themselves out there, and to unlock those gates that we all so carefully build around our lives.  They were being called to look into that reflection to see not who they were but who they were supposed to be.

And the passage says that they “took offense at him”.  In Greek, the word offense is “skandalon”, from which we get the word “scandal”.  Jesus was scandalous because he had the audacity to imply not that these learned people who had worshipped so faithfully for so long were wrong but that the religion that they practice, the boundaries that they had built, were not the whole thing.  

Albert Einstein once said that “we cannot solve our problems with the same mindset that created them.”  This world that God created is always changing, always growing, always alive.  There’s sort of a wildness to it, not to be tamed or fixed, but to be embraced and entered.  We are called to go out into the world and change it.  But, more importantly, we are called to move to where God is leading us and allow ourselves to be changed.  The world is different than it used to be—and so are we.

Jesus got that.  I think he knew in this moment that the ministry he was beginning was not a recap of the “usual” way.  No, it was the Way of Christ, the Way that God calls us to go.  And as much as the world still tries to sanitize that image of Christ, still tries to make him “acceptable” to the ways of the world, as much as those in power try to present a version that is on their side and affirms what they are doing, the truth is that the Way of Christ doesn’t look like this world or this theology that we have so carefully constructed.  It is rather one that shakes us up, turns us around, and heads us in a new direction.  We cannot follow the way that has been paved over and we can’t live in a world that has been safely fenced off against those who we are called to serve.  The pathway ahead is wild and untamed.  So, breathe out…breathe out the usual way.  Breathe out the way the world tells you that you should go.  Breathe out the usual and the comfortable and the way that won’t get you, I don’t know, killed or something.  And breathe in.  Breathe in the Spirit of the Lord that was breathed into the human we call Jesus.  And follow the path that calls you to build up ruins, raise those place that are devastated by our world, and repair the cities that the world has chosen to forget.  Breathe in the very image of Jesus Christ.

I think Jesus knew in this moment that the pathway would not be easy, that people would be “offended”, that there were those who would try to stop him.  Perhaps he knew how it would all end.  Jesus was not just placed in the world to become yet another historic footnote.  Jesus came to invite us into the Story, a story that at times would be difficult, a story that would take us on a difficult journey to the Cross, but, ultimately, a story that would end where it all began—with Life.  And God saw that it was very, very good.

He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside…He speaks to us the same word:  ‘Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time…And to those who obey, whether they be wise or simple, [God] will reveal {Godself] in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in this fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who [God] is. (Albert Schweitzer)

Lyrics: “Jesus” (Ashley Cleveland)

Jesus
They say You walked upon the water once
When you lived as all men do
Please teach me how to walk the way You did
Because I want to walk with You

Jesus
They say you taught a lame man how to dance
When he had never stood without a crutch
Well here am I Lord holding out my withered hands
And I’m just waiting to be touched

Jesus
Write me into Your story
Whisper it to me
And let me know I’m Yours

Jesus
They say You spoke and calmed an angry wave
That was tossed across a stormy sea
Please teach me how to listen how to obey
‘Cause there’s a storm inside of me

Jesus
Write me into Your story
Whisper it to me
And let me know I’m Yours

They drove the cold nails through Your tired hands
And rolled a stone to seal Your grave
Feels like the devil’s rolled a stone onto my heart
Can You roll that stone away?”

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Water Into Wine

shelliwilliams Breathing Out Series , ,

(part of the “Breathing Out” Lenten Series)

Remains of first-century city of Capernaum, February, 2010

Scripture Text:  John 2: 1-11

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 4And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” 5His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 6Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. 9When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom 10and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” 11Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

So, more taking stock…remember this day?  Remember the wedding where the newly-baptized Jesus who had not yet really started doing all the things he did suddenly performed his first miracle?  But, in an infinitely obvious clue that Jesus was human, his mother made him do it.  That was always a little odd and somehow refreshing to me.  I mean, Jesus didn’t just walk out of the manger and begin being Jesus.  He was fully human…growing up, probably getting in trouble, worrying his parents, and obeying what they said or at least fulfilling what they desired.  Jesus was the Messiah.  But he was also Mary’s son.  So, he had to go get more supplies for the gathering. Because that’s what good sons do!

So, a little background…According to the Mishnah (which is sort of the oral tradition of Judaism based on the understanding of Scripture), a wedding would take place on a Wednesday if the bride was a virgin and on a Thursday if she was a widow. The bridegroom and his friends made their way in procession to the bride’s house. This was often done at night, when there could be a spectacular torchlight procession. There would be speeches and expressions of goodwill before the bride and groom went in procession to the groom’s house, where the wedding banquet was held. It is probable that there was some sort of religious ceremony, but we have no details. The processions and the feast are the principal items of which we have knowledge. The feast was prolonged, and might last as long as a week (so, OK, that would be quite a lot of wine!).

So, Mary, the mother of Jesus, is at the wedding, although her role seems to be more than that of a guest. She seems to at least have some responsibility for everything that is going on. Perhaps the couple was an extended family member or something.  But she seems to be one of the first to know that the wine is running out. She instructs the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them to do, and they appear willing to take her instructions.

Now you have to understand that this was an embarrassing situation.  The wine has run out, and there appears to be no solution.  Either no more wine is available, or there is no money to buy more wine. The guests seem unaware of what is happening. If something is not done, all will be embarrassed. Some commentators even inform us that litigation was possible in such cases. (Can you imagine being sued for not providing enough food and drink at a marriage ceremony?)  But, regardless, it is clear that Jesus’ mother expects Jesus to do something out of the ordinary.  She expects him to fix the problem.

But I think there’s something else in this story.  Think about the wine itself.  It begins as ordinary grapes.  Well, not really.  If you go even farther back, you start with water.  Remember, everything starts with water.  And then those ordinary grapes with just the right amount of water, the right amount of sunlight, and the right amount of nutrients fed to them from the rich, dark earth begin to seed.  And then we wait, we wait for them to grow and flourish and at just the right time, they are picked and processed and strained of impurities and all of those things that are not necessary.  And then they are bottled and tucked away while again, we wait.  They are placed in just the right temperature, with just the right amount of light, and just the right amount of air quality and environment, and we wait some more.  We wait and until it becomes…well, a miracle.

So, using wine to depict a miracle is not all that unusual.  The Bible is full of wine.  In fact, no single plant or product is mentioned more frequently than the vine and its fruit.  There are over 200 uses of wine itself.  It is used as a symbol of abundance and blessing.  When Moses pronounced God’s blessing in Deuteronomy, the words were “[God] will love you, and bless you, and multiply you; [God] will also bless…the fruit of your ground, your grain and your wine and your oil.”  The Book of Isaiah talks about the vineyard and its grapes to depict the world as it should be, as God envisions it.  And often a surplus of wine is taken to depict the coming of the Messianic Age, such as the words from Amos, “The time is surely coming, says the Lord, when…the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it.”  Wine is used to talk about sharing, about hospitality, and even about peace.

And Biblical theologians have over and over pointed to the relationship that this story has with the Eucharist.  Think about it.  We take ordinary bread and ordinary wine, and through what we can only describe as a Holy Mystery, a veritable miracle, those ordinary things become holy.  They become for us the body and blood of Christ, the very essence of Christ to us, for us, and in us.  It’s not a magical conversion.  We still believe that they are bread and wine.  But God’s Spirit has made them this incredible sustenance that we need.

And remember that when the wine ran out, Jesus did not conjure up fresh flagons of wine.  A miracle is not about fixing something or turning something into what it was not; a miracle is about making something new.  So, Jesus took what was there, those ordinary, perhaps even abandoned vessels of ordinary, everyday water and turned it into a holy and sacred gift.  Water and a miracle…

So, this story of wine makes a little more sense.  Wine is water—plus a miracle.  It is a story of Jesus fulfilling even the smallest of needs, of God infusing grace into our ordinary lives if we will only trust that that will happen.  But there’s more.  In case it is lost on us, remember that our own bodies are roughly two-thirds water.  Do you remember that from biology?  No wonder the ancient sages always used water as a symbol for matter itself.  Humans, they taught, are a miraculous combination of matter and Spirit—water and a miracle—and thus unique in all of creation.  No wonder that wine is such a powerful, sacramental, and universal symbol of the natural world—illumined and uplifted by the Divine.  Wine is water, plus spirit, a unique nectar of the Divine, a symbol of life.

And we, ordinary water-filled vessels (remember, we’re like 80% water or something) though we are, are no different.  God takes the created matter that is us, those incredible bodies that have been created from in the very waters of life, and, just as God has done before, moves over the water and breathes Spirit into us, breathes life into us.  We, too, are water plus a miracle.  Christ’s Spirit is infused into us, living in us.  13th century German mystic Meister Eckhart said that “every creature is a word of God.”  It’s another way of reminding us that we are water plus a miracle.  So, breathe out the you that was, the you that you thought you should be, that the world told you to be.  And breathe in the miracle that is you.  After all, you are water plus a miracle—created matter plus the Spirit of God.

So maybe this story of Jesus’ first miracle is not as odd as we thought.  Our lectionary places it immediately following the remembrance of Jesus’ baptism and the remembrance of our own.  It is the point where God’s Spirit, where the holy and sacred itself, was poured into each of us.  So, yes, we are a miracle, created matter, Spirit-breathed.  We are the good wine that God has saved for now.  We are water plus a miracle.

And, notice, this passage begins with a very familiar phrase: “On the third day…” On the third day, there was a miracle…I don’t know, I guess God knew what was going to happen all along.  It’s water, the very basis of creation, plus a miracle.

“We hear of…water into wine…as a miracle.  But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes.  Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, and which incorporates itself with the grapes, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” (Benjamin Franklin)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Remember

shelliwilliams Breathing Out Series , ,

(part of the “Breathing Out” Lenten Series)

Scripture Text:  Mark 1: 4-11

4John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. 6Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. 7He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. 8I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

9In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Whenever I write daily during Lent, I am always wondering what to do with this week before Palm Sunday.  After all, the Lectionary passages for this coming Sunday ARE Palm Sunday.  So, maybe it’s a good time to sort of “take stock” as we come closer and closer to the Cross, as we walk with Jesus through those last days.

My grandmother lived to be over 100.  She developed a plethora of physical ailments but she never lost her sharp mind and her memory.  In those last few years before her death, I had wonderful times of just driving around our hometown with her (the one we had BOTH grown up in) and sharing her memories.  I knew what she was doing.  She was “taking stock”.  She knew that the end of her earthly life was imminent and this was her way of making sure she left what she needed for us, that we knew from where we’d come.  So, together, we sat on a road that used to be “out in the country” as she recounted where the family farmhouse had been and down the road from there where the Stockdick School was that my great grandfather had built.  (Those are now covered with suburban homes, grocery stores, and a really cute wine bar.) 

On one of the trips, we went to the old cemetery where there are relatives back to my great-great grandparents (on two sides of the family…yeah, we don’t get out much).  My grandmother wanted to find the gravestone of her dad’s younger brother who had died as a child to get the year he died.  She called him Little Roy.  So, I remember kneeling down in the mud scraping on a more than hundred-year-old tombstone (he died in 1899) to get the death date while my grandmother stood there on her walker watching me.  I ended up going back to the car and digging in my purse for a pencil and a piece of paper and I did a rubbing of it. We were “taking stock” of those important moments–together.

After my grandmother died, we found all these notes where she had tried to recount all the family stories.  I also found the pencil rubbing of Little Roy’s tombstone.  I took all those and put together a book of sorts.  They were the important things that my grandmother “took stock of” before she died.  They needed to be remembered. 

Don’t you imagine that Jesus was doing some of that?  I mean, he knew things did not look good.  He knew where things were going.  So, he began to take stock of his life. Had he served God in the way he was called to?  Had he shown his followers what they needed to see?  Had he left something that would take hold?  Jesus was human.  Of course he was asking himself those questions.  (That’s why it’s OK for US to ask those questions!)

And so, he remembered his baptism.  He remembered with love his cousin John, who had baptized him in that cold murky water of the Jordan.  John was gone now.  Only beautiful memories remain.  He remembers that point where he knew it was time to begin his ministry, to walk the walk that God had called him to.  He had gone to John to be baptized.  Even Jesus couldn’t baptize himself!  It was what he would call his followers to do so it was his to do also.  He knelt down and John had bent over him.  And it was then the heavens opened up and the Spirit emerged in the form of a dove.  We read of the heavens being “torn”, violently ripped apart so that they could not go back together in the same way.  The Greek word there is a form of the verb schitzo as in schism or schizophrenia. It is not the same word as open. I open the door. I close the door. The door looks the same, but something torn apart is not easily closed again. The ragged edges never go back together as they were. The Gospel writer known as Mark wasn’t careless in using that word: schitzo. He remembered Isaiah’s plea centuries before when the prophet cried out to God, “Oh, that you would tear the heavens open and come down to make your name known to your enemies and make the nations tremble at your presence.” In other words, at this moment, God’s Spirit on earth became present in a brand new way.  A new ordering of Creation had begun. 

It was at that moment that the heavens opened and spilled onto the earth.  The Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus like a dove.  And we heard what the world has always been straining to hear: “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”  In this moment, Jesus knew his ministry had begun.  This is the moment toward which all of Creation has been moving.  This the moment for which we’ve been waiting.

And we remember in this moment that it had begun.  And at the same time we remember our own baptism, that moment when the heavens are torn apart and spill out into the earth.  Breathe…breathe out wanting to hold back.  Breathe out wanting to keep things the way they were.  Breathe out the reticence you may have.  And breathe in…breathe in your baptism, breathe in what God is calling you to do, breathe in the Spirit that spilled out of the heavens.  It is yours, meant for you.  The heavens will tear again soon.  The temple curtain will rip in two.  Perhaps this tearing was a foretelling of what was to come.  For now, we take stock.  And we remember.  And we follow Jesus on this journey.

Jesus was still wet with water after John had baptized him when he stood to enter his ministry in full submission to God.  As he stood in the Jordan and the heavens tore apart and spilled into the earth, all of humanity stood with him.  We now stand, wet with those same waters, as we, too, are called into ministry in the name of Christ.  As we emerge, we feel a cool refreshing breeze of new life.  Breathe in.  It will be with you always. Submit your life, empty yourself, so that there will finally be room for Christ in this world.  Then…it is up to you to finish the story.  This day and every day, remember your baptism, remember that you are a daughter or son of God with whom God is well pleased and be thankful. You are now part of the story.  Take stock of it all. 

The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens. (Rainer Maria Rilke)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Out of the Depths

shelliwilliams Breathing Out Series , , , ,

(part of the “Breathing Out” Lenten Series)

Scripture Text:  Psalm 130 (Lent 5A)

1Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.

2Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!

3If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand?

4But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered.

5I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope;

6my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.

7O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem.

8It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.

The Psalmist writes from the deepest bowels of life.  It is his or her lowest point, feeling so overwhelmed with despair, almost hopeless.  And yet, there, is the sound of the still small voice.  It’s only a whisper but it is there.  The Psalmist strains to hear, laying there in the darkness, unable to sleep, unable to see the light of the morning.  It is a Psalm of faith.  It is the expression of one who though wallowing in the depths of sadness and despair, cannot feel God’s Presence and, yet, knows in the deepest part of his or her being that God is there.  It is the writing of one who knows that there is always morning, if we will only wait.

The words of the Psalm promise us that no matter how dark the night will be, there is always morning.  There is always redemption.  The King James Version depicts it as “plenteous redemption”.  We often hear of redemption as if it is some sort of payment that God required for our sins, as if Jesus’ death was somehow foreordained because we were such sinful creatures that God could take it no more.  But redemption can also mean restoration, to bring something to a better state.  It is what the Psalmist knows.  God is there, though unseen, restoring, recreating, even in this moment of darkness.  Redemption is not about payment; it is about the promise of morning, the promise of life.  Redemption is not about what Jesus gave us or what Jesus did for us but what God in Christ does even now.  God brings morning.

The Psalm does not give us empty promises that “everything will be alright”.  Rather, it is honest.  Sometimes life hurts.  Sometimes life hurts more than we think we can bear.  Sometimes we have our own dark night of the soul.  But in the darkness, we learn to wait.  We learn to hope.  That is what Lent is–a waiting in the depths.  We are journeying now deeper and deeper into the darkness.  We know that it will be painful, at times even unbearable.  But our faith tells us that God is present whether or not we can feel the presence.  And so, we learn to wait.  And in the waiting we sense that veil between darkness and light, between death and life.  So, we wait through pain and betrayal and last nights together.  We wait through darkness and death.  We wait in the stillness and foreboding silence.  We wait because we know that morning always comes.

We modern-day worshippers have, sadly, almost lost the voice of lament.  We praise God in good times and we beg God to change things in times of despair.  We struggle with waiting, with just waiting in the darkness, with knowing that God is there whether or not we feel that Presence.  When we are in the depths, we seldom wait.  We instead do everything we can to raise ourselves out of it.  What we miss is that in the waiting, it is God who will raise us up.  The Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem has a chapel that is known for its stained glass windows created by Marc Chegal.  They are set within a domed ceiling that directs the worshippers’ gaze heavenward.  But directly below the windows is an odd place where the floor is sunken and in the middle of the depression is a pulpit.  The floor was intentionally made that way with the belief that all prayer should be “out of the depths”.

How would our prayers sound if they were out of the depths, if they were out of the waiting?  How much more precious would redemption be?  I think that is the reason that we push ourselves into those depths on Good Friday.  We push ourselves to be taunted by death because only from that sunken place can resurrection come to be.  So, in this time as we get closer to that taunt of death, as we come nearer and nearer to the Cross, remember to breathe.  Breathe out the tendency to “fix” it, to clean it up and sanitize the whole idea for human consumption.  And breathe in what you find in the depths—the promise of plenteous redemption.  If we would only wait…

Bidden or unbidden, God is present.  (Desiderius Erasmus, 1466-1536, Also attributed to Carl Jung, because the quote was posted above his door in his house in Switzerland.)

Lacrimosa (Mozart)

Lyrics (Latin)

Lacrimosa dies illa
Qua resurget ex favilla
Judicandus homo reus.
Huic ergo parce, Deus:
Pie Jesu Domine,
Dona eis requiem. Amen.

Lyrics (English)

Full of tears will be that day 
When from the ashes shall arise 
The guilty man to be judged; 
Therefore spare him, O God, 
Merciful Lord Jesus, 
Grant them eternal rest. Amen.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

The One Who is Raised to Begin Again

shelliwilliams Breathing Out Series , , , ,

(part of the “Breathing Out” Lenten Series)

Scripture Text:  John 11: (1-16) 17-44 (45) (Lent 5A)

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

This has always been at the very least a strange story to me.  I think I once had some image of Lazarus walking out of the tomb, with tattered grave clothes dangling and an unbearable stench following him (probably from a 3rd grade Sunday School picture!), and then dressing and sitting down for a nice fish dinner with Jesus and his sisters.  But the Scripture is not here to show us magic or to in some way depict a God that with the veritable snap of a finger can just put everything back like it was before. (Well, I don’t know, I supposed God CAN, but why?  That’s not really the way God works.  God has something much better in store.)  This story is taken as a precursor to Jesus’ own Resurrection.  It was Jesus’ way of promising life.  But ironically, it is also the act that turns the tables toward Jesus’ demise.  Here, standing within two miles or so from Jerusalem, the journey as we know it begins to wind to an end.  Even now, the Sanhedrins are gathering their swords and the night is beginning to fall.

This passage is odd.  Even when you read it all (I “shortened” it but I’m not sure how good a job I did), it’s more about the minutia around Lazarus’ death and rising than about Lazarus himself.  In fact, we really know very little about the character Lazarus except that he was dead and then he wasn’t.  Like us, the characters deal with death by dealing with minutia.  When my dad passed away, I was definitely the queen of the minutia.  One family member removed herself completely.  Another one wept in the front room.  (I remember thinking…I want to do that, to weep, to wail, to scream, but, instead, I’m organizing and directing.)  When my grandmother died, my dad and I sat alone in the hospital room for hours waiting on the funeral home.  We recounted memories, talked about what it meant, and felt that thin veil that gathers when a loved dies, the sense of the presence of those who were loved and who were important there with us.  THAT’s what I wanted.  I wanted to sense that veil.  But instead, I directed and hosted and gathered information—the police, the EMT’s, more police (he died at home), and then the funeral home.  I barely remember it but somehow it happened.  Isn’t that how we often deal with death?  But here…Jesus steps in and raises Lazarus.

So, why would Jesus do that?  Surely he knew what might happen.  Surely he knew how many red flags his presence near Jerusalem had already raised.  And what about Lazarus?  Who was this mysterious man whose main part in the whole Biblical story is to die and be raised?  Why do this with someone as seemingly insignificant as this?  Maybe it’s because Lazarus is us–you and me.  Maybe the whole point of the passage is not to point to Jesus’ Resurrection but to our own.  Do you think of yourself as journeying toward resurrection?  Do you believe this?  Sure, we talk about journeying to God, about journeying to the Promised Land, whatever that might be, and about journeying to where God call us.  But do you think of it as resurrection?  Do you think of yourself dying and then being raised?  Maybe each of us is Lazarus.  Maybe that’s what Jesus wanted us so badly to believe and live.

We don’t talk a lot about our own resurrection.  Perhaps it’s because we think that feat is reserved for Jesus Christ.  Or maybe we don’t want to talk about it because in order to talk about our resurrection, we must also acknowledge our death.  We must acknowledge an ending.  Resurrection, of course, doesn’t happen without death.  But that’s been the promise through the whole story when you think about it.  Think of all the stories of redemption, of re-creation, of resurrection—stories of raising and passing over and wrestling, stories of new life.  That’s the message. 

We talk a lot of this Lenten journey as our journey to the Cross, our journey with Christ.  So, does it stop there?  I think the story goes on.  Jesus is Resurrected.  Maybe that’s what Jesus was trying to show us–not that we would be somehow plucked from death in the nick of time and not that God really has need of putting our lives back together like some sort of Humpty-Dumpty character, but that we, too, are journeying toward resurrection, toward new life.  Lent is the journey that shows us that.  Lent shows us that the journey is sometimes hard, sometimes painful. Lent shows us not that death will not claim us but that death will not have the final word.  Death thins that veil between earth and heaven, between this life and the next.  And resurrection steps in and tears it apart, ripping it at the seams for all to experience.  (Read the Passion story—there’s a curtain that rips) 

Lent shows us that our faith tells us that there is more.  Lent shows us what it means for Christ to unbind even us–even you and me–and let us go.  Through all of life’s transitions, through all of life’s sad endings, through all of life’s unbearable turns, there is always a beginning.  There is always resurrection–over and over and over again. So, breathe…breathe out finality, breathe out hopelessness, breathe out endings.  Our faith tells us that the only endings are those that are transformed to beginnings, to life.  So, breathe in life.  We are all Lazarus, whether or not we know it.  Just start breathing again…

There was, indeed, something I had missed about Christianity, and now all of a sudden, I could see what it was.  It was the Resurrection!  How could I have been a church historian and a person of prayer who loved God and still not known that the most fundamental Christian reality is not the suffering of the cross but the life it brings?…The foundation of the universe for which God made us, to which God draws us, and in which God keeps us is not death, but joy.  (Roberta Bondi)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Fully Human

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(part of the “Breathing Out” Lenten Series)

Scripture Text:  2 Corinthians 5: 17-21

17So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; 19that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. 20So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

We’ve read this before, this “new creation” stuff.  We’ve read that God has reconciled us to the Godself through Jesus Christ.  OK, now that we’ve gone over our main theology…The truth is, what does that mean?  After all, we’re only humans.  Right?  We’re sinful and messed up and many of us have no idea what this actually means.  I mean, what does it mean to be human?  We read the Creation stories.  God created us.  Why?  Was it to become something different?  Was it to become better?  Or are we doomed?

I think many of us tend toward Gnosticism.  We imagine the notion of a good God, a God who created us as humans, as sinful, as not “of God”.  We have the notion of a divine spark that might pull us out of our plight of humanity, our sinful state.  But, remember, God created us.  God created us as human.  Do you really think God would create us as bad and then expect us to claw our way out of our created demise?  That’s bizarre.

So, along came Jesus.  So many of us relegate him to a super hero of sorts, a “super human” that is somehow above all this that we have to endure.  Really?  See, we are told that Jesus was born of a human, born as a human.  Otherwise, Jesus never would have been able to reconcile us to God.  Jesus came as one of us, as Emmanuel, the one among us, the one who was one of us, the one who showed us the way to be not just “merely human” but “fully human”.

Jesus was fully human and fully divine.  Call it the sacred “And”, the very reconciliation of God to the Creation that God so dearly loves.  THAT is our understanding of the Cross.  The Cross was not a way “out”.  It certainly wasn’t a punishment for being human.  I don’t even think it necessarily “wipes” our sins out (oh dear, I’m going there!).  For me, the Cross is the ultimate reconciliation, the new Creation.  It is the place where God recreates humanity, recreates the world, finally gives us a notion as to what it means to be “fully human”.  “Fully human” is not “just human” or “merely human”.  “Fully human” is the way that Jesus lived, the Way that Jesus walked.  “Fully human” is what we’re called to become—not “godly”, certainly not Divine”—just what we were created to be all along. 

So, the breathing…Breathe out the notion that you are “merely human” or “only human”.  Oh, my goodness, God created you for so much more.  And breathe in the message of the Cross, that we are reconciled and made new, that God invites us and walks with us to what God intends for us to be. 

Jesus didn’t come to make us Christian; Jesus came to make us fully human. (Hans RMadeleine L’Engle)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Life Breathed Into Flesh

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(part of the “Breathing Out” Lenten Series)

Scripture Text:  Romans 8: 6-11 (Lent 5A)

6To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, 8and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

10But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

So many times, this Scripture is one of those that is read as if being “human”, being “flesh” is bad, as if somehow body and spirit are not compatible existing together in Creation.  That’s not the way it was intended.  After all, didn’t God create us as “flesh”?  For Paul, of the “flesh” is not “human”, per se, but rather a perversion of who we should be as humans. But it is the “way of the Spirit” that brings life.  Without the Spirit, the essence of Life breathed into the body ultimately dies.  The two belong together.  God’s Spirit brings breath and life.  Paul’s words are not mean to be dualistic, separating two unlike things, but, rather, transformational, depicting the salvific act of transforming sides of a whole that need each other.

We tend to get wrapped up in those things of the “flesh”—our needs, our desires, our fears. Paul is not saying that we dispense with them as bad. They are ours.  Paul is making the claim that the Spirit can breathe new life into them. There is no sense in fighting to sustain our identity apart and away from God. It will ultimately die. Paul has more of a “big picture” understanding than we usually let him have. He’s saying that the flesh in and of itself is not bad but the Spirit brings it to life. I don’t think he is drawing a dividing line between darkness and light, between mind and Spirit, between death and life; rather, he is claiming that God’s Spirit has the capability of crossing that line, of bringing the two together, infused by the breath of God. It is a spirituality that we need, one that embraces all of life. It is one that embraces the Spirit of Life that is incarnate in this world, even this world. I mean, really, what good would the notion of a disembodied Spirit really do us? Isn’t the whole point that life is breathed into the ordinary, even the mundane, so that it becomes holy and sacred, so that it becomes life?

And here’s the important part.  Verse 1 of this chapter from Romans says that there is “no condemnation”.  In other words, through Jesus Christ, we are more than flesh.  We are more than those things that we think “make us”.  We are more than the identity that the world inflicts upon us.  Through Christ, we are “flesh embodied”.  Our flesh and our spirit, our body and our soul, our humanness and that piece of the Godself that was so lovingly and graciously supplanted in us is one, undivided.  It is that total self that God loves–not just the Spirit, not just the things that are not of this “flesh”, but everything.  We are a package deal.  Don’t you love package deals?

In his book, Everything Belongs, Richard Rohr says that “in mature religion, the secular becomes the sacred. There are no longer two worlds. We no longer have to leave the secular world to find sacred space because they’ve come together.” In essence, our body and our spirit are one. That is what Paul was saying. Life in the Spirit is an embrace of our whole being. There are no parts that are elevated above the others. It is a new way of learning to see. It is a new way of learning to be. Everything becomes one in God. There are no good parts and bad parts. Everything is waiting to be transformed in the Spirit.

Here’s another way to illustrate it. How many of you like to eat raw eggs? How about a nice tasty tablespoon of flour? Or, perhaps you would rather have a wholesome cup of sickeningly sweet Karo syrup? Well, obviously, none of those things sound that appetizing. In fact, for most of us, they all sound downright disgusting. (I say “most” because I do know of someone (of blessed memory) that used to drink syrup when he thought no one was looking.  I so miss that!) But if you take those things and combine them, along with some other ingredients, you get my Grandmother’s pecan pie. Alone, they are worthless. But as a whole, they are wonderful.

We cannot pick and choose what parts of our lives we want to be with God. All of the mail is opened and read. For if one is to live a true life of holiness, there is nothing left out or hidden from sight. There is no secular. It is all sacred. There is no thought in our mind that is not part of the spirit. And there is not one of us that is of lesser importance than another in a true community of faith. Every part of us, no matter what it looks like, no matter what is tastes like, is necessary to make the recipe wonderful. Life in the spirit means that everything belongs in a perfectly balanced recipe for life that perfectly reflects and perfectly reveals all that there is and all that there is meant to be. That’s us–we’re a package deal.  Everything belongs! Thanks be to God!

So, for today, breathe out—breathe out that assumption that one’s humanity is bad, that those things “of the flesh” are things from which we are trying to run.  And, then, breathe in—all of it.  Breathe in everything in your life and be open to God’s way of breathing Spirit into it all.

Perhaps if we are brave enough to accept our monsters, to love them, to kiss them, we will find that we are touching not the terrible dragon that we feared, but the loving Lord of all Creation.  And when we meet our Creator, we will be judged for all our turnings away, all our inhumanity to each other, but it will be the judgment of inexorable love, and in the end we will know the mercy of God which is beyond all comprehension. (Madeleine L’Engle)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli