Month: February 2013

Possession

shelliwilliams Giving, Inheritance, LENT, Possession

This Week’s Lectionary Passage:  Deuteronomy 26: 1-11
When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it,2you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name.3You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, “Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.”4When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lord your God,5you shall make this response before the Lord your God: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous.6When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us,7we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression.8The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders;9and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.10So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.” You shall set it down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God.11Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.

They say that possession is 9/10ths of the law.  When you have worked hard and earned your due, it is yours.  But did you see the news story the last couple of weeks where the guy in Dallas claimed possession of a mansion for just $16? Did he own it?  Did he possess it?  Well, for awhile the little-known Texas law of adverse possession said that he did.  After all, possession is 9/10ths of the law.  So, the promise here is that God is giving you an inheritance, an inheritance to possess.  You possess it, you settle into it, and its yours.  Doesn’t that sound great–sort of an American dream on steroids or something?

But read on…”possession” comes with responsibility.  We’re supposed to give back.  The meaning of possession here is not holding, not putting away for safe-keeping, and certainly not hoarding what we have for a rainy day.  Possession comes with responsibility.  Possession is not holding, but being entrusted with with something.  God gives and then we are called to give in return.  The gifts that we are given are not “ours” the way we think of “ours”; they are what has been entrusted to us to use in putting to into play the vision of God.

Oh, this is not good.  I mean, I work hard.  I own this little house in The Heights.  (Well, OK, I don’t really “own” it.  By my calculation, I own about half of it and share the pride of ownership with CitiMortgage.  But, really, that’s just semantics, right?)  The point is, I own it.  Really?  So, my family resources had nothing to do with it?  So, the fact that I had the gift of an education, which provided me a good job, which provided me a good living had nothing to do with it?  So, the point that I have been so incredibly fortunate in my life is lost on me?  I own it.  It is mine.

No, see, we may own it in the way that the world defines ownership.  But the real truth is that God has entrusted us with what we have, that God has given us the gift of what fills our lives, that God has already done the 9/10ths.  We can call it law or we can call it a gift.  God is waiting on our response.  (Yeah, I know that tenth thing is the same as the prescribed tithe.  The truth is , I’m really talking about something more.  Just let it go for now. )  The response to which we are called is not limited to what we give back; it is not some sort of prescribed off-the-top tenth.  It is more.  It is realizing from where we come and to whom we journey.  It is seeing that our ancestor was a wandering Aramean, a sojourner, an immigrant of sorts (yeah, I know, that’s a live one), and one in whose steps we tread.  It is realizing that, really, nothing that we hold is ours.  What we possess is only what we are willing to share.  That is the way God works.  God gives us the wherewithal to share, to live in community, to love.  God gives us this incredible bounty.  But it is not mine.  I do not own it.  It is ours.  And only when we realize that we hold it together will we truly possess it.

So on this Journey to the Cross, look at what you hold and look at what you truly possess.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

The Season of Shadows

shelliwilliams Ash Wednesday, Journey, LENT, Shadows

Scripture Passage: Joel 2: 1-2, 12-17
Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near—2a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in ages to come…12Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;13rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.14Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord, your God?15Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly;16gather the people. Sanctify the congregation; assemble the aged; gather the children, even infants at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her canopy.17Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep. Let them say, “Spare your people, O Lord, and do not make your heritage a mockery, a byword among the nations. Why should it be said among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”
 
In the shadow of the morning, we can see just a hint of light peeking through the clouds.  There is no brightness, no need to shield our eyes from the glare.  The season of shadows has begun.  We have been through this before.  We know what is to come.  And, yet, we cannot help but continue down the path.  It is where we are called to go.  The Light is at the end.  But to get to it, we must walk through the shadows.  We must walk through the ashes of last year’s palms and the smoky residue of plans we had.  It is the way that we return.  It is the way home.
 
We don’t do well with shadows.  There is something untrustworthy about these shadows, as if they’re hiding something that we cannot see.   But think about it.  A somewhat overcast day is a photographer’s dream.  After all, we need light; we crave light; we are children of the Light!  The darkness is not for us.  It is foreboding.  We do not know which way to go.  But light…full, glaring, heat-ridden light.  It is too much.  So we don our sunglasses and we pull down the shades.  Our eyes are not accustomed to the glare.  It is just too hard to see.  But filtered light, those overcast days, those gray, cloud-filled shadow days that seem to hide something behind it all–those are the ones that let us see.  The glare is gone.  And there is just enough light to illumine our way.  Shadows are disconcerting and, yet, they provide the place for the most clarity.  The filtered colors are brilliant as if all of them are refracted through one prism in brilliant technicolor.  The shadows are where we can truly see.

This is the Season of Shadows.  As hard as it is for us to admit to ourselves, we are not yet ready for the Light.  So God gives us just enough to show us the way without blinding our path.  We will walk for 40 days, stopping to rest every now and then as the Light become brighter, stopping to adjust our eyes.  This is the Season of Shadows, the season of clarity, the season that lights our way when we’re not really ready for the brightness of Home.  Let us now walk, slowly, basking in the shadows.  Even the Shadow is a part of God’s grace.

On this Day of Ashes, remember that even the Shadows were created by God.  And be thankful.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli
 
 

Shrive

shelliwilliams Confession, Forgiveness, LENT, Mardi Gras, Shrove

Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23: 34)

Fat Tuesday, Pancake Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Shrove Tuesday–there are a plethora names for this day.  Most of us understand it as an eat-all-you-can, party-till-you-drop day before we enter our Lenten fast.  So, don your Mardi Gras beads and stuff yourself with rich syruppy pancakes and get it all out of your system.  Right?

Well, at the risk of interrupting your partying, I think it’s about something more.  (Don’t you hate that?)  The word “shrove” (as in “Shrove Tuesday”) comes, sadly, not from the word for over-the-top entertaining but from the English verb “shrive”, meaning confess.  (Oh, shoot, you say!)  I know, it’s a hard word for us, particularly when we’re drowning ourselves in pancakes.  But, yes, it is a day of preparation, a day when we leave behind what we know, those things to which we are accustomed, and begin the journey to the Cross.

It is sad that in our world, there are many of us (Christians, that is) that have equated confession with judgment.  And we want to run from it.  After all, sin is somewhat subjective when you think about it.  Try as we might, there are few “black and whites” when it comes to sin and history has shown that when a culture inflicts that notion, oppression of some type usually results.  So confession becomes a somewhat shaky ground on which we tread.

In Barbara Brown Taylor’s book, Speaking of Sin, she says that “sin is our only hope, because the recognition that something is wrong is the first step toward setting it right again.”  That is what this day represents–the invitation to set things right, to confess, to shrive.  It is the day to prepare, to begin that long and arduous turn away from who we have made ourselves to be and toward God and God’s vision for what we could become.  Forgiveness is not the thing that we are trying to attain.  It is the starting point, a gift from God for those who want to begin again.

So, in the midst of your Mardi Gras wildness and your pancake extravaganzas, as you don your masks for one more hidden transgression, remember to stop, to shrive, to begin the turn.  Lent begins tomorrow.

For this season, I will try (yes I will try!) to post at least a short devotional every day on this blog.  Many of you are part of the email group that gets it every time I post.  (For those who have signed up through this blog, you will get it but for some reason known only to Google, you will get it 12-18 hours later.  Go figure!)  So if there are others that would like to be part of the email group that gets it right away, just email me through the St. Paul’s website at stpaulshouston.org.  (Go to “About St. Paul’s”, then “staff”).

Additionally, I am reposting my “Bread and Wine” Lenten blog from several years ago.  It is located at http://breadandwine-lentenstudy.blogspot.com/ or you can let me know if you would like to be added to that email group.

AND another opportunity…I have been posting my Lectionary notes that many of you get emailed each Thursday on http://journeytopenuel.blogspot.com/  It’s a once-a-week post but if you’re interested, take a look.

Thanks for being a part of my Lenten journey!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Unveiled

shelliwilliams Jerusalem, LENT, Transfiguration, Transformation

Lectionary Passage:  Luke 9: 28-36 (37-43)
28Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray.29And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.30Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him.31They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.32Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.33Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah” —not knowing what he said.34While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud.35Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”36When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.  37On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him.38Just then a man from the crowd shouted, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child.39Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him.40I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.”41Jesus answered, “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.”42While he was coming, the demon dashed him to the ground in convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father.  43And all were astounded at the greatness of God. 

This passage requires that we open our mind and widen our souls; it requires that we strip away the things that we think we have figured out; it asks us to focus our attention on what is to be seen rather than on what we see.  In other words, it ask us to go further, to view our world in the light of God’s Presence—not the way we imagine God to be but the way God invites us to experience the holiness and the sacred that is all around us.  It calls us to see things differently, to remove the veil that we have created in our lives that shield us from things that are uncomfortable or do not make sense.  Seeing things differently is not a new theme for us. 

I mean, think about it.  Here we have the story of a child born into anonymous poverty and raised by no-name peasants.  He grows up, becomes a teacher, probably a rabbi, a healer, and sort of a community organizer.  He asks a handful of people to become his followers, to help him in his mission.  They leave everything they have, give up their possessions and their way of making a living, they sacrifice any shred of life security that they might have had, and begin to follow this  person around, probably often wondering what in the world they were doing. And then one day, Jesus takes them mountain climbing, away from the interruptions of the world, away from what was brewing below.  Don’t you think they were sort of wondering where they were going?

This story is told in all three of the Synoptic Gospels.  The mountain that Jesus and the disciples climb sounds a lot like Mount Sinai that Moses had ascended centuries before.  (The truth is, there is actually no historical mention of what mountain this might have been, or if there was a mountain at all.) Now remember that for this likely Jewish audience, mountains were typically not only a source of grandeur, but also divine revelation.  And also remember again that in their understanding, God was never seen.  God was the great I AM, one whose name could not be said, one whose power could not be beheld.  And so this cloud, a sort of veiled presence of the holiness of God, was something that they would have understood much better than we do. And there on the mountain, they see Jesus change, his clothes taking on a hue of dazzling, blinding white, whiter than anything they had ever seen before.  And on the mountain appear Moses (this time with no veil) and Elijah, standing there with Jesus—the law, the prophets, all of those things that came before, no longer separate, but suddenly swept into everything that Christ is, swept into the whole presence of God right there on that mountain.

So Peter offers to build three dwellings to house them.  I used to think that he had somehow missed the point, that he was in some way trying to manipulate or control or make sense of this wild and uncontrollable mystery that is God.  I probably thought that because that’s what I may tend to do.  But, again, Peter was speaking out of his Jewish understanding.  He was offering lodging—a booth, a tent, a tabernacle—for the holy.  For him, it was a way not of controlling the sacred but rather of honoring the awe and wonder that he sensed. And then the voice…”This is my Son, my Chosen:  listen to him!” OK…what would you have done?  First the mountain, then the cloud, then these spirits from the past, and now this voice…”We are going to die.  We are surely going to die,” they must have thought.  

And then, just as suddenly as they appeared, Moses and Elijah drop out of sight and Jesus was standing there alone, completely unveiled.  In Old Testament Hebrew understanding, the tabernacle was the place where God was.  Here, this changes.  Jesus stays with them and the cloud dissipates.  Jesus IS the tabernacle, the reality of God’s presence in the world.  And all that was and all that is has become part of that, swept into this Holy Presence of God.  And, more importantly, we are invited into it.  No longer are we shielded from God’s Presence.  We become part of it, a mirror for all to experience and encounter the living God. And so the disciples start down the mountain.  Jesus remains with them but they kept silent.  The truth was that Jesus knew that this account would only make sense in light of what was to come.  The disciples would know when to tell the story.  They saw more than Jesus on the mountain.  They also saw who and what he was.  And long after Jesus is gone from this earth, they will continue to tell this strange story of what they saw.  For now, he would just walk with them.  God’s presence remains.

The Hebrews understood that no one could see God and live.  You know, I think they were right.  No one can see God and remain unchanged.  We die to ourselves and emerge in the cloud, unveiled before this God that so desires us to know the sacred and the holy that has always been before us.   The truth is, when we are really honest with ourselves, we probably are a little like the disciples.  We’d rather not really have “all” of God.  We’d rather control the way God enters and affects our lives.  We’d rather be a little more in control of any metamorphosis that happens in our lives.  We’d rather be able to pick and choose the way that our lives change.  We’d rather God’s Presence come blowing in at just the right moment as a cool, gentle, springtime breeze.  In fact, we’re downright uncomfortable with this devouring fire, bright lights, almost tornado-like God that really is God.

This account of the Transfiguration of Jesus seems to us that it should be the climax of the Jesus story—the quintessential mountain-top experience.  After all, how can you top it—Old Testament heroes appearing, God speaking from the cloud, and Jesus all lit up so brightly that it is hard for us to look at him.  But there’s a reason that we read this on the last Sunday before we begin our Lenten journey.  In some ways, it is perhaps the climax of Jesus’ earthly journey.  Jesus tells the disciples to keep what happened to themselves, if only for now.  And then the lights dim.  Moses and Elijah are gone, and, if only for awhile, God stops talking.    

Have you ever been mountain climbing?  The way up is hard.  You have to go slowly, methodically even.  You have to be very careful and very intentional.  You have to be in control.  But coming down is oh, so much harder.  Sometimes you can’t control it; sometimes the road is slick and seems to move faster than your feet.  And sometimes, through no fault or talent of your own, you get to the bottom a little bit sooner than you had planned. Yes, it’s really harder to come down.

Jesus walked with the disciple in the silence.  The air became thicker and heavier as they approached the bottom.  As they descended the mountain, they knew they were walking toward Jerusalem.  The veil that had been there all those centuries upon centuries was beginning to lift.  One week from today, Lent begins.  The Transfiguration is only understood in light of what comes next.  Yes, the way down is a whole lot harder.  We have to go back down, to the real world, to Jerusalem.  (I think that’s why the verses following this account are there.  Life goes on…) We have to walk through what will come. Jesus has started the journey to the cross.  We must do the same.    

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Emergence

shelliwilliams Calling, Change, EPIPHANY, Transformation

Lectionary Passage:  Jeremiah 1: 4-10
4Now the word of the Lord came to me saying,5“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”6Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.”7But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you,8Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.”9Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, “Now I have put my words in your mouth.10See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”

This account of the calling of Jeremiah includes the things that so many call stories do (including, probably, most of ours).  They include a calling from God, a promise that God will help and support and walk with the one that God has seen fit to call.  Then it includes an argument.  “No, no, no, not me.  I have my life all planned out.  This cannot be happening.  In fact, this is really going to mess up my plans.”  But, finally, it includes a response.  In Jeremiah’s case, God puts the words in his mouth, promising him that he would know what to say and when to say it.  And from that time on, Jeremiah is single-minded in what he is called to do.  But the problem is that the words that Jeremiah was called to say were not what people planned on hearing.  In fact, Jeremiah’s message didn’t resonate at all with the society to which he was appointed to serve.  He wasn’t called to tell them how great they were doing; instead, he was called to pluck up, pull down, destroy, and overthrow.  And then, and only then, is he called to build and plant.  What is that about?  This plucking and pulling and destroying and overthrowing doesn’t sound like God’s work.  In fact, it just sounds like out and out chaos.

So did you forget?  Did you forget what God does with chaos?  Read Genesis 1.  God took chaos and created order.  And, as I recall, it turned out pretty well. And yet, we often forget that.  We would much rather God take the plans that we’ve conjured up for our lives and have God just continue them. But sometimes we have to pluck and pull and even destroy and overthrow.  Sometimes, we just need to start again with a new plan.  But change is hard. Change is scary.  Walking that tightrope can tip us into opportunity or crisis at any turn.  So how do we prepare for that?

Maybe we don’t.  Maybe preparation comes not in the form of plans but rather a sort of clearing of our minds and our souls so that God can fill us.  Maybe preparing for change, preparing for what God is going to do in our lives, has to involve plucking and pulling and destroying.  Maybe deep in that chaos is a certain holiness, a newness that has just begun to emerge from its womb.  And God, rather than stamping some sort of holy approval on our comfortable and complacent existence, calls us into a new way of being.  God is always recasting the vision for our lives, always pushing us out of our comfort zones, and always birthing us into newness. 

But God reminded Jeremiah that even in that womb, he was not alone.  God is there in our transformation.  But we can’t stay there.  God has too much in store for us.  So, all through our lifetime, as we emerge from womb to womb, God is birthing us closer and closer to the life that God has created just for us.  Maybe we’re not called so much to plan our lives but rather to emerge.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli