SEASONS

Lent 3B: Everybody Plays the Fool

shelliwilliams Cross, Foolishness, KINGDOM OF GOD, LENT

Lectionary Text:  1 Corinthians 1: 18-20 (21-24) 25
For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?..For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

In this Season of Lent, as we come closer and closer to the cross, we get a better and better sense of its meaning.  You know, Paul’s really the only one that really ever dared to speak of the foolishness of the Cross, of the foolishness of God.  And he’s right, because in terms of the world, the Cross is utter foolishness.  The world says “mind your own business”; Jesus says “there is no such thing as your own business”.  The world says “buy low, sell high”; Jesus says “give it all away”.  The world says “take care of your health”; Jesus says “surrender your life to me”.  The world says “Drive carefully—the life you save may be your own”; Jesus says “whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”  The world says “get what you are due”; Jesus says, “love your neighbor as yourself”.

In his book, The Faces of Jesus, Frederick Buechner says that “if the world is sane, then Jesus is mad as a hatter and the Last Supper is the Mad Tea Party…In terms of the world’s sanity, Jesus is crazy as a coot, and anybody who thinks he can follow him without being a little crazy too is laboring less under a cross than under delusion.” (Buechner, The Faces of Jesus, p. 61)  Think about it.  It is really pretty ludicrous.  In fact, it’s probably downright absurd.  Here in this season, we are called to enter Christ’s suffering, called to follow Christ to the Cross.  Are we nuts?  That could kill someone!

And yet, there…there up on the altar every single Sunday is that beautiful gleaming cross.  Yeah, we all have them.  We polish them, we wear them, and we hang them on our walls.  (Have you SEEN my cross collection in my office?)  In fact, I think I remember seeing one on top of a cupcake the other day. (You know, I guess you can put anything on top of a cupcake!)  But maybe sometimes we clean it (the cross, not the cupcake) up too much.  Maybe we have forgotten the stench of death emanating from it or the sight of a mangled body hanging from it.  Maybe we have forgotten the foolishness of it all.  Maybe it is just too much for us.  After all, we’re good Methodists, people of the “empty cross”.  But it’s NOT empty; it’s full of life–life born from death, life recreated from despair and hopelessness and the end of all we knew.  But this promise of life did not just pop out of a cupcake.  It did not just appear in the midst of an array of carefully-placed lilies one Easter morning.  God took something so horrific, so dirty, so unacceptable and recreated it into Hope Everlasting.  Daniel Migliore calls it God’s greatest act of Creation yet.  But in terms of what we know, what we expect, even what we deserve, it is an act of utter foolishness.  Who writes this stuff?  In terms of this world, it is fool’s gold; but in terms of God’s Kingdom coming into being, it is the Gold of Fools because it takes us and turns us into the wise.  But perhaps wisdom is not about worshipping a gleaming, pristine cross but rather looking at an instrument of death and seeing the life it holds.  I know…none of it makes sense.  If it all made sense, we wouldn’t need it at all.

And, truth be told, the Scriptures are full of accounts of the wise and powerful ones mocking and getting mocked, never really understanding this lowly carpenter’s son from a no-name town.  But notice that it is the ones who are considered fools–the outsiders, the shunned, the ones who do not measure up to society’s standards–that get it.  So, maybe you have to be a fool. Go ahead.

Everybody plays the fool, sometime,
There’s no exception to the rule, listen baby,
It may be factual, it may be cruel, I ain’t lying,
Everybody plays the fool.
How can you help it, when the music starts to play
And your ability to reason is swept away
Oh, heaven on earth is all you see, you’re out of touch with reality
And now you cry, but when you do, next time around someone cries for you.
Everybody plays the fool, sometimes,
There’s no exception to the rule, listen baby,
It may be factual, it may be cruel, I ain’t lying,
Everybody plays the fool.
(K. Williams, R. Clark, J.R. Bailey, songwriters

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ni6iB3thsg

So, continuing with our act of giving up so that we can take on, on this thirteenth day of Lenten observance, do something blatantly foolish.  Give up needing to have a life that makes sense.  Feel the freedom of being recreated.   

Grace and Peace on this Lenten Journey,

Shelli

Honing Desire

shelliwilliams Desire for God, Fully Human, Humanity, LENT



Pantokrator (Jesus Christ) Icon,
St. Catherine’s Monastery
Mt. Sinai, Egypt

 In this Season of Lent, we hear a lot of talk about journeying and pilgrimage as we come closer to who it is we are called to be, as we come closer to a “oneness” with God.  What exactly does that mean, though…a “oneness” with God?  Now I have to tell you that when I hear someone refer to someone (or, even worse, themselves!) as “godly”, I really just sort of cringe.  Really?  You think you’re like God?  I don’t think so.  We are not called to live a “godly” life.  I hate it when people talk like that.  We are not called to be Divine.  We are called to be Human in the fullest way that there is.  I think that’s what Jesus was trying to show us.  I doubt he would ever depict himself as “perfect”, as unblemished.  He was Human.  That was the whole point.  Jesus came as God Incarnate not to show us how to be Divine but to show us how to be Human. 

But, that said, Jesus was “fully Human”, even as this Christ was “fully Divine”.  The life of Christ was the most human that any could be–SO human, in fact, that it was a life of open and intentional surrender to what is at the very core of each of our beings, to the very image of God, the Imago Dei, the imprint of God that exists in each of us.  And that image, that imprint, is what makes us want to be with God, compels us to follow this Way of Christ.  In the deepest part of each of our beings is the innate desire for relationship with God.  That is what it means to be fully Human.

So perhaps this Season of Lent is one in which we hone our basic desire, the desire that is the core of everything, the core of our being.  Maybe it is that desire that drives us on this journey of faith.  Or maybe, just maybe, the desire for God itself IS the journey.  Maybe a fully-tuned, fully-calibrated desire for God is how we are made perfect in Christ.  I don’t think the point of this journey is to “find God”.  I’m pretty clear that God is not lost, that God knows exactly where God is.  The truth is, I think whether or not I’m aware, God is here, always, just loving me.  God’s desire for relationship with me is so incredibly strong that it begins this journey of faith.  But the journey unfolds as I realize my desire for God.  Being “made perfect” in Christ does not mean becoming without blemish; it means becoming “fully human”; it means desiring the God in which we live and move and have our being.  This faith journey is not about finding a lost God but rather desiring and seeking a lost humanity, an image of God, the very imprint of God in ourselves.

       On this twelfth day of our Lenten observance, give up trying to “find” God or trying to “deserve” God.  Give up desiring to be perfect in this life.  And take on the deepest desire for God that you have ever known.  What does that look like?  At its best, it looks like Jesus.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

LENT 3B: Tablets From the Sky

shelliwilliams God's Love, KINGDOM OF GOD, Law, LENT, Ten Commandments
“The Ten Commandments” Movie (1956)

Lectionary Passage:  Exodus 20: 1-3 (4-6) 7-8 (9-11) 12-17
Then God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me…You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy….Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Things were hard.  Here they were in the middle of the wilderness, hungry, tired, struggling, quarreling, and wondering what in the world they were doing here.  Until now, they had no real identity, no purpose for being here, no point to life.  But this is the point where that all changes.  This is the point at which their lives and their long, horrendous journey become meaningful.  And God gives them a covenant.

Now, contrary to the name of this post, I’m pretty sure that the Ten Commandments did not just drop out of the sky.  It is much more likely that these specific laws were selected from among the gathered moral and social laws of generation upon generation.  In essence, they grew out of a people’s understanding about God and their own relationship with God.  The people are first reminded that God has already saved them before, bringing them out of slavery, bringing them into relationship with God.  But you can’t help noticing that these commandments are formative of who one is before God and how one lives in response to God.  The first four commandments related to one’s relationship with God and the remaining six have to do with the relationship between human beings.  It is really very simple:  You shall love the Lord God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. (with all that you are, with every essence of your being)  And…you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

But in our modern-day society, there are those who have tried to make these words “law” in the judicial sense, simply by displaying them in courthouses or public buildings.  But they are missing the fact that these are not laws to obey but the natural way that we are called to respond to the freedom of God.  In fact, these laws, unlike many others, do not sanction a certain type of government or a specific king.  Rather than dictating what we should do, they depict who we are as a people of God.  They are less about behavior than they are about identity—who God is, who the people are, and who we are as people of God.  It is about how we relate to God, how we relate to each other, and, even, how we provide sustenance and nourishment for our faith journey.  And regardless of whether or not we believe they actually dropped out of the sky, they are like manna in the wilderness, providing sustenance and life.  Think of them as declarations of freedom to become who we are called to be, rather than a set of rules or regulations that force us into becoming what someone else wants us to be.

Now, admittedly, I don’t think they belong on the courthouse lawn or on the walls of a schoolroom.  I think they’re bigger than that and I don’t think they can be contained.  They are, yet again, the very breath and essence of the God who dances with us rather than holds court over us to make sure we follow the rules.  The Decalogue is, once again, God with us.  And this Season of Lent is not about following the rules or being burdened with regulations. It is about experiencing the freedom of this God who dances with us—this one God, who, alone, drives our life with a Spirit of steadfast love and the integrity of respect; this one God who offers us rest and reflection that we might delight in Creation and that we might enjoy the best that it has to offer; this one God who knows that we can only understand the love we are given if we love in return, if we honor the ones from whom we came, if we honor life and love and all of Creation; if we are honest with ourselves and with each other, and if we want the very best for our brothers and sisters.  In this way we will understand this God who offers us life and all that it entails.  Hmmm…that’s fairly far-fetched for us.  Maybe it WAS written on a tablet from the sky.

So, continuing with our act of giving up so that we can take on, on this eleventh day of Lenten observance, let go of needing to have it all defined, of needing to have narrow rules that outline our moral and societal standards, and begin to live your life loving God and loving neighbor in the way that God calls you to live.   
Grace and Peace on this Lenten Journey,

Shelli

Imagining Hope in the Wilderness

shelliwilliams Hope, Imagination, LENT

With all this talk about wildernesses and wanderings, turmoil and temptations, drought and devastation, it is hard to imagine hope.  But the whole point of this journey of faith is not some sort of perverse satisfaction in denying ourselves or in the morbidity of suffering in the wildernesses of our lives.  The point of it all is the promise of life that we have been given and for which we hope.  When we venture into a wilderness, it is not limited to morose sadness and despair.  There is so much more to life than that!  The Scriptures are full of wildernesses.  Some of them are deep and foreboding, some are long and difficult journeys, and some are little more than an unwelcome inconvenience.  But always, always, in Scripture they are a way to somewhere else–parting seas, burning bushes that encounter the holy, or wrestling dreams.  They all lead home.  Beyond the wilderness, on the other side, just over the mountain or just through the trees, is the light, the newly-created dawn.  We just have to imagine it for now.

Maybe that’s what faith is about–imagining the dawn, imagining hope.  After all, if it were clear and always present, we would need no faith.  But even on a clear day, the way is murky and often wrought with danger.  So as we travel, we are called to imagine what is beyond, to imagine what we have yet to see.  It’s the way we find joy in suffering and and hope in despair, not by taking morose satisfaction in our dilemma but in learning to look toward something that we do not see.  There is always something more.  So when you find yourself in a wilderness of pessimism or hopeless, a wilderness in which you just can’t seem to find the way, a wilderness where every turn provides yet another obstacle or yet another challenge or yet another temptation for which you were not prepared, close your eyes and imagine hope.

Think about it.  If you get in your car to drive somewhere don’t you have at least some semblance of where your are going?  Haven’t you sort of imagined what is up ahead?  Why should our faith journey be that much different?  Not that we’re trying to get to a physical destination but rather to a place on the journey where the promise of life is so profoundly evident that we do nothing else but imagine what’s up ahead.  And in our imagination of hope is found life.  Imagining hope brings freedom and joy and strength for the journey.

To be honest, it is this Lenten wilderness that takes us through the desolation of the cross and Golgotha that teaches us hope.  To believe in the cross is to believe that there is something else beyond it.  To live this Way of Christ is to imagine hope.

Hope looks ahead for that which is not yet.  (Henri Nouwen, in Seeds of Hope)

So, continuing with our act of giving up so that we can take on, on this Second Sunday of Lent, let go of somethng about which you are worried, let go of feeling like there’s no way out, let go of feeling like you’ve lost your way, and imagine hope. 

Grace and Peace on this Lenten Journey,

Shelli

Whose Deeds and Dreams Were One

shelliwilliams Humanity, LENT, Reconcilation, Unity

We live in a society that separates.  So much of our language is based more on notions of “either / or” rather than “and”.  We talk about either “this” political party or “that” political party, either “conservatives” or “liberals”.  We talk about either “this” way of doing religion or “that” way of doing religion (and I guess, that, too, is somewhat loosely based on “conservatives” or “liberals”).  We talk about either the “haves” or the “have-nots”, the “legals” or the “illegals”, the “rich” or the “poor”.  And through it all, we talk about the “secular” and the “sacred”, the “things of this world” and “the things of God”, the “human” and the “Divine”.

And, yet, we are told that Jesus came into our midst, both human and divine.  There was no separation; rather there was a gathering of all into the Kingdom of God.  This holy gathering is a new creation unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.  And, yet, we are determined to keep it apart.  We are determined to separate ourselves from each other, compartmentalizing our lives and drawing boundaries through our world, through our neighborhoods, and even through ourselves.

God does not call us to be someone that we are not.  We are human, always and forever human.  But until humanity becomes human unity, we are lost.  And so we search for something that we know God can show us.  We search for an eternity or a heaven or whatever you want to call it “out there” when our eternity waits for us here.  God came into our midst, both human and Divine, that the two might come together, that what we do and who we are will join.

Ever Sunday morning, we profess that we believe in the holy catholic church.  We are professing that we believe and indeed that we desire unity, a universal church not created out of sameness or conformity but out of love and respect for each other and for every part of the world around us.  Both diversity and unity live together in this new Creation.  It is a place of “both-and” rather than “either-or”.  It means being part of a world that strives to live in unity.  But it also means recognizing that sometimes we’ll have to live with a little bit of tension as we try to work differences through.  I am clear, though, that even in the midst of those tensions, God is there, walare called to king us through it.  God doesn’t cram anything down our throats and I don’t think we’re supposed to do that to other people either.  William Sloan Coffin claimed that “diversity may be both the hardest thing to live with and the most dangerous thing to be without.”  I think he was right.  Because you see, that diversity is part of this new Creation.  It is part of what is calling us to grow and change and become more like Christ with each step we take.  And when we allow ourselves the opportunity to experience and share our diversity and perhaps even learn from it a little, we gain an experience of God that is unlike anything that we could have gained on our own.

In this Season of Lent, we are called to recognize those things in our lives that are not Christlike, that are not the way that God calls us to be.  It is our calling to reflect on those things that make us less than human.  Jesus walked this earth as a human to show us how to be human, to show us how to bring together who we are with what God calls us to be.

Dear Jesus, in whose life I see all that I would, but fail to be,
let thy clear light forever shine, to shame and guide this life of mine.
Though what I dream and what I do in my weak days are always two,
help me, oppressed by things undone, O thou whose deeds and dreams were one!

John Hunter, 1889, The United Methodist Hymnal, # 468
So, continuing with our act of giving up so that we can take on, identify those areas of your life that are divided, and give up that division.  How can you reconcile those things in your life into a more perfect and holy union? 
Grace and Peace on this Lenten Journey,

Shelli

Sorry, this is actually the post that should have happened yesterday, so I guess you’ll get two today!

LENT 2B: Safe Travels

shelliwilliams Cross, CRUCIFIXION, DISCIPLESHIP, Journey, LENT, Suffering, Vulnerability

Lectionary Passage: Mark 8: 31-34 (35-38):
Then 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. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But 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.”  He 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.

We want to be safe.  We want everything to turn out alright.  We want some minimal guarantee of what is going to happen in our life.  We want safe travels on this journey.  But that was never part of the promise.

We’re just like Peter.  Sure, Peter got that Jesus was the Messiah.  He knew the words.  He had been taught the meaning probably from his childhood.  He knew that that was what they had been expecting all along—someone to be in control, someone to fix things, someone to make it all turn out like they wanted it to turn out.    And now Jesus was telling them that the way they had thought it would all turn out was not to be, that instead this Messiah, this one who was supposed to make everything right, was to be rejected and would endure great suffering.  “No, this can’t be,” yelled Peter.  This cannot happen.  We have things to accomplish.  We are not done.  This ministry is important. (To whom?)  It cannot go away.  You have to fix this. You have to fix this now! 

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.  I doubt that Jesus would have employed our semi-modern notion of an anthropomorphic view of evil.  More than likely, this was Jesus’ way of reprimanding Peter for getting hung up on the values of this world, getting hung up on our very human desire to save ourselves and the way we envision our lives to be, to fix things.  But what God had in store was something more than playing it safe.  I think that Peter, like us, intellectually knew that.  We know that God is bigger and more incredible than anything that we can imagine.  And yet, that’s hard to take.  We still sort of want God to fix things.  We still sort of want God to lead us to victory, to lead us to being the winning team.  Face it, we sort of still want Super Jesus.  And, of course, Peter loved Jesus.  He didn’t even want to think about the possibility of Jesus suffering, of Jesus dying.

Safety can be a good thing.  I would advocate that we all wear seat belts.  I think having regulations for how children are to ride in vehicles is a prudent practice. (In fact, I’m not real impressed when I see an unrestrained dog in the back of a pick-up!)  And I lock my doors at night.  But our need to be safe can also paralyze us.  It can prevent us from moving forward on this journey as we settle for taking cover from the darkness rather than journeying toward the light.  And in our search for safety, for someone to save us, what do we do with a crucified Savior?  What do we do with the cross?  Well, let’s be honest, most of us clean it up, put it in the front of the sanctuary, and, sadly, go on with the security of our lives.  So, what does it mean “take up your cross and follow”?  I think it means that sometimes faith is hard; sometimes faith is risky; in fact, sometimes faith is downright dangerous. 

In all probability, none of us will be physically crucified for our faith.  But it doesn’t mean that we should clean it up and put it out for display either.  Sometimes our journey will take us through waters that are a little too deep and torrential; sometimes we will find ourselves bogged down by mud; and sometimes faith takes us to the edge of a cliff where we are forced to precariously balance ourselves until we find the way down.  The promise was not that it would be safe; the promise was that there was something more than we could ever imagine and that we would never journey alone.  And along the way, we encounter a Savior that will save us from ourselves.

So, continuing with our act of giving up so that we can take on, on this ninth day of Lent, give up that thing in your life that is keeping you safe and secure on this journey of faith.  Begin to move forward into what God has promised for you. 

Grace and Peace on this Lenten Journey,

Shelli

Heightened Awareness

shelliwilliams Awareness, LENT, Perspective

Lent is depicted as a 40-day journey, a pilgrimage into the one that we are called to be.  It is a paradoxical season of pruning for growth, letting go to gain, and dying to live.  It’s sometimes dark, often difficult, and usually completely disconcerting to those of us who live in this “save yourself first”  “American Dream” that worships power and closes its eyes to greed and shuts its doors to need.  We don’t know what to do with Lent.  If we can just get through these 40 days, we can go back to life as we know it.  We can go back to a life in which we are not called to give things up or look at our shortcomings or stare helplessly into death.  Just 40 days…and it will all be over.  And we look ahead to that.

But, alas, then we would have missed the point.  Lent is not about having 40 days of good behavior.  It’s not about proving that one has the willpower to give something up or take on something for 6 1/2 weeks.   I don’t think it’s even about repentance, although penitence and turning are part of it.  I think Lent has to do with heightening awareness of what is right there in front of us.  It has to do with learning to see–really see.  And the point is that that awareness doesn’t leave when we roll out the Easter lilies and allow ourselves once again to sing Alleluias.  We do not return to life as usual.  (At least that is the hope!)  Instead, the usual changes.  It takes on new meaning, new significance.  It changes the way we live our life.  And, more importantly, we are changed.  Our eyes have been opened.  These forty days are not temporary.  Rather, they are a journey to another place (or maybe to the place where we are!).  And at the end of the journey, at the end of all we know, when we have lost all that we have built, all that we have counted on, and all with which we are comfortable–it is then that the dawn will break and we will see it all.

Lent is not about teaching us to live for 40 days; it is about teaching us to live.  It is about opening our eyes and allowing us to see for the first time that we are not journeying toward God; rather, we are journeying into an awareness of the God who is already here and an awareness of the person that God has already created within us. Truth be told, it is never over.

And yet, I tend to move pretty fast through life.  I drive too fast, I pack my calendar too full, and I probably miss a lot of what is going on.  It’s hard to be fully aware when you’re speeding down the road.  Maybe Lent’s darkness is meant to slow us down, is meant to make us work to see, is meant to hone our other senses so that we can truly see in every way.  This is not life as usual.  Maybe we need to slow down and look at what is going by.

So, continuing with our act of giving up so that we can take on, on this eighth day of Lent, what is it that you see for your life?  Give up the image of what you think you see.  And slow down.  Open your eyes to the encounter with God that awaits you if you are only aware. 

Grace and Peace on this Lenten Journey,

Shelli