Unsettled

shelliwilliams Breathing Out Series , ,

(part of the “Breathing Out” Lenten Series)

Scripture Passage:  Genesis 12: 1-4 (Lent 2A)

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” 4So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him.

We are familiar with this story that our lectionary brings for this second week of Lent.  We know it well.  Abram is called to go forth, called to leave what he knows and become someone new.  We know that it will end with him becoming Abraham.  It is the beginning of Israel, the beginning of Judaism, and, ultimately, the beginning of us and our own faith story.  The story quickly moves from a broad sweep of humanity to a focus on one family and one person.  Perhaps it was a way of reminding us that humanity is not just a glob of no-name people but is rather made up of individuals, each children of God in their own right.

We like this story of our hero Abraham.  What courage, what persistence, what faith it would take to leave one’s home, to leave everything that one knows and to follow God.  It is that to which we all aspire and to which most of us fall incredibly short.  We struggle with what leaving would mean for us.  After all, what would it mean to you to just lock your doors and walk away, never looking back at the comforts and certitudes of your existence, never look back at all the stuff you’ve gathered and stored, never look back at this life that you have so painstakingly created? 

I’ve always wondered what Abram really thought.  I mean, he wasn’t young.  He and Sarai had been around a long time.  They had wanted children, a big family, someone to carry their legacy on, but it hadn’t happened.  But they were fine.  They had settled into a wonderful life.  Perhaps Abram had plans to spend lazy afternoons napping in the hammock and watching the sheep.  Maybe he had plans to get a couple of camels.  Life was not what they had wanted but it was good—really, really good.  And then, without warning, everything changed…

I mean, “Go”…Go where?  I’m not young.  I have arthritic knees.  Where am I supposed to go?  What is it I’m supposed to do?  I’ve got a lot of things going on.  Sarai needs me.  The sheep need me.  This is not a good time.  I have too much to do.  You have the wrong person.

Yes, I took liberties.  The Scriptures don’t focus on anything resembling this fight of wills.  But Abram was human.  Isn’t that what we would feel?  He was asked to just blindly go, trusting in the God in whom he fiercely believed.  But there had to be some reticence.  I mean, think about it.  The plan he was given was a little sketchy.  Why would God call this person who was settling into the end of his life?  Why would God tell him to go into the unknown, into the wild unpaved terrain, away from everything he knows?  And, really, he was just told to go with only a faint promise of legacy and greatness and history.  How in the world was Abram supposed to grasp that?

It’s probably even harder for us.  I mean, at least Abram was already part of a nomadic lifestyle.  And then there’s us.  We don’t just “settle” down.  We actually strive for it.  In fact, it’s our goal in life—family, home, a little money to spend, time with our loved ones, and some private time.  But maybe a little unsettling wouldn’t be such a bad thing.  But what would we do?  I mean, how big of a storage unit do I need to rent for all my stuff?  Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if we breathed out some of this settling, some of this way of life to which we hold, and breathed in the new pathway God is calling us to traverse.

I’ve always found it interesting that the season of Lent begins not in the Temple, not in the “settled” place, but in the wilderness, where the winds blow the pathways into changing patterns rather than roads and the sands swirl and blind us at times.  Maybe it is when we leave behind what we know that we can finally hear the way Home.  That is the Promise in which we trust–that somewhere beyond what we have figured out and what we have planned and that for which we have settled is the way Home.  I mean, really, would it hurt to unsettle your life a bit?  Because, otherwise, how will you be able to know when God is calling you to “Go”?

Let yourself get shaken up. What are you willing to give up to ensure your own unfolding, and the unfolding of what is holy in your life? Where you stumble, here is your treasure. (Joseph Campbell)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Chaos Theory

shelliwilliams Breathing Out Series , , , ,

(part of the “Breathing Out” Lenten Series)

Scripture Passage:  Mark 8: 31-38

31Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” 34He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

We are very good at imagining who we intend to be.  We are very good at attempting to write the story that makes sense for us.  So, what do we do when we find out that the story is about to change?  See, Peter had it all figured out.  His whole identity was wrapped up in who he understood Jesus to be and who he understood himself to be in light of that.  Sure, I think Peter got that Jesus was the Messiah.  He knew the words.  He had been taught the meaning probably from his childhood, the idea that this Messiah would come and bring victory and glory. Put yourself in his place.  Here is this great man who you have grown to dearly love.  This ministry that he has begun has been great.  He truly IS the Messiah for which you have waited so long.  What great plans for the future Peter must have imagined! 

But then Jesus starts talking about his own coming suffering.  This wasn’t the plan that Peter envisioned.  This wasn’t the way the story was supposed to go.  Most of us identify with Peter here.  This cannot be!  There is no way that it is time for Jesus to leave us.  This was our Messiah sent here to save us, the Messiah for which we have waited for generations upon generations!  Jesus’ harsh statement to Peter jolts us into reality, though.  For we do often limit our thinking to things of this world.  We want to protect and possess this Messiah.  We want a Messiah who will save us on our terms, someone to be in control, someone to fix things, someone to make it all turn out like we want it to turn out, someone to make our lives safer and easier. 

Now, contrary to the way our version of the Scriptures interprets it, I don’t think Jesus was accusing Peter of being evil or Satan or anything like that.  Who could blame Peter?  He’s just like us!  Listen further…If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  We’ve all read that verse before.  We’d like to make it read a little easier.  We would rather skip through the end of Holy Week and go straight to Easter morning.  That’s why this season of Lent is so difficult.  It won’t let us do that.  The cross is not something that we look to only in the past.  The cross is not something that we look to at the end of our lives.  This is not some goal for farther down the road. This is not some plan laid out for our lives.  This is here; this is now. It’s talking about the journey.  It’s talking about our listening to God’s calling us in our lives now.  It’s talking about letting your life go NOW! If this were easy, then we wouldn’t need Christ.  We’re not asked to just believe in Christ; we’re asked to follow…all the way to the cross.

I know what you’re all thinking.  I’m not so sure I signed up for this.  What happened to that Messiah that was going to take away all our troubles—you know calm all the storms and such?  What happened to that Savior that would solve all of our problems so that life wouldn’t be so hard?  Ooops! Wrong Savior! Maybe we don’t want a Messiah at all.  Maybe we were confused.  Maybe what we REALLY want is a superhero, you know…more of a “and they lived happily ever after” ending. 

That’s not how the story is written.  Oh, don’t get me wrong, I in no way believe that everything has already been laid out for us as some sort of pre-ordained path.  I’m not that Calvinist.  It’s much more nuanced than that.  Some of you have heard me say this, but I once had the opportunity to be a part of a discussion group with John Irving (yes, THAT John Irving).  One question that was asked was predictable:  How did he write his stories?  But his answer was unusual.  He said that he writes the ending first and then rolls out the plots, themes, and chapters that will end the way he has envisioned it.

I think that’s a lot like the way this story is being written.  God has a vision.  We’ve been given clues and the small pieces of it that we can grasp.  But the story is still being written by God and by us.  God has invited us into this work.  But the story is not linear.  It’s not something we can predict or for which we can plan.  Instead, it probably more closely resembles chaos theory.  Chaos theory is a scientific and mathematical discipline that embraces patterns, rather than linear lines.  The assumption is that whatever happens is a product of multiple things, including choices, weather, science, and the things that came before.  You’ve heard of the “butterfly effect”.  That’s chaos theory.  It’s not random.  And it’s not chaos.  It’s ordered.  Isn’t that what God does?  God takes this veritable chaotic swirl of happenings and orders it.  And it is very very good.

Jesus had that vision.  Jesus knew the story.  He was trying to help Peter understand that the chapters that would unfold were not random.  They certainly weren’t chaos.  But they weren’t controllable.  They weren’t predictable.  They weren’t the story that we would probably pen on our own.  God is writing the story and invites us into it to help write it.  But we need to breathe out needing it to be predictable, needing it to be what we want or envision or write for ourselves.  Forget that.  Breathe in the story…the one that God is writing with you. 

God…leads us step by step, from event to event.  Only afterwards, as we look back over the way we have come and reconsider certain important moments in our lives in the light of all that has followed them, or when we survey the whole progress of our lives, do we experience the feeling of having been led without knowing it, the feeling that God has mysteriously guided us. (Paul Tournier)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

It WAS About Grace

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(part of the “Breathing Out” Lenten Series)

Psalm 32 (Lent 1A)

1Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

2Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

3While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.

4For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah

5Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah

6Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you; at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them.

7You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance. Selah

8I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.

9Do not be like a horse or a mule, without understanding, whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle, else it will not stay near you.

10Many are the torments of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord.

11Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.

Well, you can tell it’s Lent when we keep talking about confession and repentance and forgiveness.  Most people in our modern-day society sort of squirm with those subjects.  I mean, can’t we just put these on the top shelf next to the hellfire and brimstone theology and the decree claiming that women can’t read the Scripture in church?  I mean, how about we talk a little about grace?  Isn’t that what we do?  We’d rather hide the shortcomings away or shift the blame to someone else or change the environment so what we did is perhaps now acceptable.  I mean, admitting we’ve messed up is hard.  It’s uncomfortable.  And what if everyone knows about it?  And so, we walk around full of guilt, full of questions, full of something that could just as easily be cleared away.

Let’s get this straight.  God is not sitting there waiting for us to confess, waiting for us to repent before God loves us.  There are those who will couch it like that (probably the same ones pulling the hellfire and brimstone material out) but, and this is me talking, I think that’s not the way it is at all.  Maybe God doesn’t even really care whether or not we do it.  Oh, but I think God does.  You know why?  Because God loves us.  See, confession, admission, breathing out the wrongs we have done, the people we have hurt, the ways we have blamed others for the peril of our lives is not to please God.  It is, rather, to make room for us, to clear a way so that we can grow and prosper and find a new way.  And because God loves us more than we can even fathom, God’s desire is that that happens—not for God but for us.

The psalmist warns against our silence, warns against us hiding ourselves away and not talking about it, not facing the truth.  And the psalmist exhorts us to confess, to admit our wrongdoing, to claim responsibility for our sins.  We no longer need to hide.  Because it is God who will step in, who will hold us in our discomfort, who will comfort us in our peril, who will stand with us as the consequences of whatever harm we have wrought, whatever hurts we have brought, rain down on us.

See, we know God forgives.  The part we miss is that God will stay with us through everything that comes after.  Breathe out your confession.  Make room.  And breathe in forgiveness and newness and the very presence of God through it all.

I must confess that I was not excited about writing this one.  I mean, it sort of sounded like a downer.  Now I realize that it WAS about grace.  Breathe out confession and breathe in grace.

In the Name of Jesus Christ you are forgiven…

Forgiveness is the act of admitting we’re like other people.  (Christian Baldwin)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Map Quest

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(part of the “Breathing Out” Lenten Series)

Matthew 4: 1-11 (Lent 1A)

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. 3The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” 5Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” 7Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 8Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; 9and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” 11Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

The wilderness story…we read some version of this in the first week of every Lenten season.  It makes sense.  It is the beginning of our journey.  It is the beginning of Jesus’ journey to the cross.  And it leaves a lot of really good fodder for discussion.  Oh, we could talk about the usual subjects.  We could talk about the way Jesus did not fall prey to the temptation to be powerful or protected or relevant.  Instead, Jesus let all that go.  He just was. And he started walking.

But where was he?  He had been led into the wilderness.  There was no map.  There is a faint remnant of a road that moves and flows and ebbs like waves as the winds blow over the sands.  The way is dim, sometimes non-existent.  You might be able to navigate if you knew the mountains well, if you knew which ones rise first and tower higher over the others.  You might be able to navigate when you think about where the beating sun is sitting, where it rises, where it falls.  But the way is not dependable.  The way is the way.  There is no map.

That is hard for us.  We want to know where we’re going. Oh, we’ve moved beyond maps for the most part.  There is instead a voice in the car or a voice on our phone that tells us where to go, that takes all the guesswork and most of the journeying out of the trip.  And with that, we have become dependent upon the voice, dependent upon being told the way and we soon find that we have somehow ceded our navigation to something that limits us, to something that controls us, to something that doesn’t allow us to deviate from the path.

I grew up with a dad that, I swear, knew every back road that was to be known.  He always had a “shortcut”.  And we always had maps.  I loved maps.  I was fascinated by them as far back as I can remember.  I remember navigating from the back seat with the tattered map that I never knew how to fold back the way it was meant to be.

Soon after I lost my dad, a friend and I drove to Taos, NM so that she could officiate at a wedding.  I just went along for the ride (and, apparently, navigation support).  It dawned on me that there were probably places in rural West Texas that might not respond to my GPS.  There was an excitement in me when I realized I needed a map!  Oh, I had a map!  It was the map my dad gave me when I went to college in 1980.  OK, maybe I needed a new map.  So, I went to Amazon and ordered maps for Texas and New Mexico.

Fast forward to rural West Texas.  Yep, there it was…that gray slice of nothingness in the middle of my iPhone straining to form a map.  So I pulled out the paper version.  And I began navigating.  One of those jaunts included a missed turn.  Not a problem…I have a map.  So, we drove down a barely-paved county road toward the road we meant to turn onto.  There were delightful farmhouses and beautiful vistas and the most wonderful 19th century Spanish church and cemetery.  And we would have missed it all if we had had the GPS.  I remember commenting, “oh my goodness, Billy Don Williams is SO proud of us right now!”

The journey is not about the way; the way IS the Way.  So what do we breathe out?  We breathe out needing to follow a plan.  We breathe out needing to always know where we’re going.  We breathe out anything that gets in the way of the Way.  The journey is not mapped.  It’s a faint pathway and the winds may blow the sands so that sometimes it is concealed.  Keep walking.  What is the way?  It IS the way. Just listen. You’ll know where to go.

There is a journey you must take.  It is a journey without destination.  There is no map.  Your soul will lead you.  And you can take nothing with you. (Meister Eckhart)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

This Thing About Sin

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(part of the “Breathing Out” Lenten Series)

Man walking towards storm

Romans 5: 12-19 (Lent 1A)

12Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned— 13sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. 14Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come. 15But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. 16And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. 17If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. 18Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. 19For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.

Well, I really, really thought about changing the passage but, alas, it’s the lectionary for this week.  SO…I guess we have to talk about sin.  In this passage, Paul mentions sin or some form of it (sinner, transgression, disobedience, etc.) sixteen times by my count.  In fact, five of the mentions are in the first sentence!  Do you think he was trying to make a point?  Sin, I’m afraid, is a fact of life.  It is part of all us.  We claim that perhaps our own sins are not that bad.  You’ve heard all the claims and the questions:  So, if I don’t KNOW I’m sinning, is it really sin?  So which sins are the “unforgiveable” ones? I mean, really, it was only a little sin, just a little “white lie”.  Yes, in the big scheme of things, it was probably nothing more than a veritable sigh of a sin.  And then there’s the ultimate from our friend the Pharisee:  “Well, thank God I’m not like that tax collector!”

But in our interconnectedness, sin affects us all.  And even the smallest of sins can release such a force that none of us can control it.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I do not in any way believe that “sin” is something outside of us.  It is not a “force to be reckoned with”, so to speak.  I’m pretty clear that when I sin, it is me.  It is my bad choice.  It is me that has messed up, that has not honored myself or my place in the beauty of this interconnected Creation, rather than it being caused by some sort of little red man with horns or something.  I have to own it.  It is mine.  It is mine, that is, until it is done.  And then it spills into Creation and begins cutting a path with a force more powerful than anything we’ve ever imagined.

So, you’re expecting me to exhort us to “breathe out” sin in this posting, to just quit doing it.  Yeah, I don’t think that’s the way it works.  Sin is a part of our existence.  Now, even though Paul dances around this, I don’t really believe in “inherited sin”, the “sins of the father”, so to speak.  And yet, it’s bigger than me.  Sin was part our existence before we came to be and will continue after we are gone because part of our human condition is that we mess up.  We try, but we mess up.  Sadly, it just is.  Maybe it’s not so much whether or not we do it but, rather, what we do after it.

Barbara Brown Taylor wrote what I think is the quintessential book on sin called Speaking of Sin.  In it, she speaks of sin as our only hope. (WHAT?!?)  She describes it as our only hope because realizing our sin, realizing our shortcomings, empowers us to set things right again.  It makes sense.  If we ignore our sin or if we somehow excuse it away, even dismissing it as the act of our “mere humanity”, we have failed to acknowledge the very hope that sets us right again, the springboard that leads to redemption, to righteousness, to getting back on the pathway that we’re trying so hard to traverse.

In forgiveness, we do not find innocence.  We do not find a way to put things back like they were before (remember that innocent garden thing has sailed!).  What we find is a pathway to a better way.  So, breathe out…breathe out ignoring your sins, breathe out not wanting to change, breathe out not accepting the grace of forgiveness and the gift of beginning again.   

In the Name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven!

In Christian language, to be truly human is to shape our lives into an offering to God. But we are lost children who have wandered away from home, forgotten what a truly human life might be. When Jesus, our older brother, presented himself in the sanctuary of God, his humanity fully intact, he did not cower as though he were in a place of “blazing fire and darkness and gloom.” Instead he called out, “I’m home, and I have the children with me.” (Thomas Long)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Don’t Listen to the Talking Snake

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(part of the “Breathing Out” Lenten Series)

Genesis 2: 15-17; 3: 1-7 (Lent 1A)

15The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.  16And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; 17but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”

3Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; 3but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’” 4But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; 5for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

6So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. 7Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

This is always such an odd little story.  What do we do with it?  Yes, it’s known as the “Second Creation Account”.  It’s actually probably the first one.  This one is out of the Yahwist tradition and the “first one” (the one organized into “days”) is probably more from the Priestly tradition, which would have come a little later.  I guess the canon-compilers were going for drama.  I don’t know.  So, what do we do with it?  Well, it’s obvious no one has ever known what to do with it because over the centuries, the tradition slowly morphed into “Eve-blaming”.  Oh, yes, let’s blame the girl!  Because the guy had nothing to do with it.  Are you kidding me?  Personally, I think the most obvious lesson is don’t listen to talking snakes.  I mean, that seems pretty straightforward, right?

So, first of all, let’s all admit that it’s a story (a good one with lots of special effects but a story nevertheless).  I don’t think there was an Adam and Eve.  I don’t think there was some sort of secret utopian garden to which we’re trying to return.  And, for me, the jury is still out on the talking snake.  But the lessons?  The lessons are real.  The Truth is real.  Adam (Adamah) means “man” or “human” (or man of the earth).  So, this a wonderful parable or fable not about the birth of one man but rather an attempt to explain how we humans came to be.  Adamah is formed from dust (resembling that dust that was smeared on your forehead yesterday).  And Eve?  The name Eve (Chavah) means “living one” or “source of life”, perhaps even “breath of life”.  OK, that’s beginning to make sense.  Those are things we’ve seen before.

And then there’s this garden.  There they were in the garden, innocent, yes, but also unknowing, unthinking, not quite yet human.  See, it was the beginning.  It was not the place where we were meant to be.  God created us to go beyond where we are, to go beyond that “safe” place, rather than to live in some sort of controlled environment where nothing can touch us.  But the mistake that these “first humans” made was assuming there was a different way to do that.  According to the story, they jumped the gun a bit.  We all do it.  We think we know best.  We think we can figure it out on our own.  We think the rules are not for us because, obviously, we know better.  (Or maybe we’ve mistakenly listened to a talking snake!)

We are not called to be innocent.  That’s just dumb.  We’re human.  We’re complicated.  God made us that way, filled with dust and new life, darkness and light, regret and grace.  Again, we’re not called to be innocent.  We’re called to be redeemed, renewed, and recreated.  That story of that garden was only the beginning.  Several modern theologians and writings have referred to it as the “kindergarden of eden”.  It was how we began to understand ourselves.  And I think the point of it was not the creation of the human creature, the innocent and obedient one, but rather the realization by that creature that he or she was indeed human, that we are both flawed and glorious, that we are made of dust and the very breath of God.  The key is that we have to let go, breathe out, if you will, of the need to be in control, the need to go our own way.  Because, life is full of talking snakes.

I claim credit for nothing.  Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control…We all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper. (Albert Einstein)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Breathing Out

shelliwilliams Breathing Out Series , ,

(part of the “Breathing Out” Lenten Series)

Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-21 (Ash Wednesday)

“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. 2“So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 3But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

5“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 

16“And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 17But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

19“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; 20but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

This is always such an odd day in our church calendar. In fact, if we were to back away from the notion of it a bit, far enough to watch ourselves getting the remnants of burned leaves smeared on our foreheads while at the same time told that we are no better than the very ashes that are dripping down into our eyes and settling on our shirt, we, too, would think that was a very, very weird practice.  Because in terms of where we stand in this society, in this culture, this is indeed very, very bizarre.

And I think that may be the point.  Just like the passage from the Gospel account by the writer known as Matthew that we read every Ash Wednesday, we are being reminded that the “normal” way we do things, the things that are accepted by our society are not the things that bring us closer to God, that bring us closer to the vision that God has for us.  We cannot align with the ways of this world and at the same time become the one that God envisions.  The two ways are incompatible.  Where the world wants to build walls and borders to control who is in and who is out, Jesus called us to welcome the stranger, release the prisoner, feed the hungry,…you know, all those Sermon on the Mounty-type things.  We cannot hold both ways within us.  We will metaphorically, spiritually, and certainly explode.  You cannot breathe everything in at once.

That is often the problem for many of us.  We breathe in when we should be breathing out.  It is, on some level, a sort of “spiritual asthma”.  When a person suffers from asthma, it is not, as many people think, that they cannot get air into their lungs; it is that they can’t get air out.  And, as a result, their lungs are too full to receive life-giving oxygen.  The breathing cycle is disrupted and the person, swelling with over-inflation, begins gasping for breath. 

This spiritual asthma is a similar dilemma.  If we hold onto those things with which we fill our lives, to our habits and our fears and our misconceptions of what our life should be, to those plans and those preparations that we’ve so carefully laid, there is no room left for the life-giving breath of God.  And we are left with dust and ashes.

But there is more.  This is not just a day of morose belittling of ourselves.  A rabbi once told his disciples, “Everyone must have two pockets, with a note in each pocket, so that he or she can reach into one or the other, depending on their needs.  When feeling high and mighty, sort of overinflated, if you will,one should reach into the left pocket, and find the words: “Ani eifer v’afar; I am dust and ashes.  But when feeling lowly and depressed, discouraged or without hope, one should reach into the right pocket, and, there, find the words: “Bishvili nivra ha’olam…For my sake was the world created.”  That is the breathing in and the breathing out.  And they are both necessary for the journey.

On this Ash Wednesday, breath out…breathe out the ways of this world. Breathe out the norms to which you are accustomed.  Do this so that there is room to breathe in…to breathe in who you are supposed to be, to breathe in life.  Lent is not just about giving things up; it is about emptying your life that you may be filled.  Lent is not just about going without; it is about making room for what God has to offer.  And today is not about clothing yourself in the morbidness of your humanity; it is about embracing who you are before God.

So…remember…you are dust and ashes…breathe out…..

For you the world was created…breathe in….

BIG BREATH…Amen.

Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void. (Simone Weil)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli