Faith

The Salvation of the Wilderness

shelliwilliams Breathing Out Series , , , ,

(part of the “Breathing Out” Lenten Series)

Scripture Text: 1 Samuel 23: 14-17

14David remained in the strongholds in the wilderness, in the hill country of the Wilderness of Ziph. Saul sought him every day, but the Lord did not give him into his hand. 15David was in the Wilderness of Ziph at Horesh when he learned that Saul had come out to seek his life. 16Saul’s son Jonathan set out and came to David at Horesh; there he strengthened his hand through the Lord. 17He said to him, “Do not be afraid; for the hand of my father Saul shall not find you; you shall be king over Israel, and I shall be second to you; my father Saul also knows that this is so.”

David is one that spends a lot of time in the dark wilderness according to the Scriptures. Here, he is running, running for his very life. He knows that Saul is coming after him. So, he runs into the “strongholds of the wilderness”. Isn’t that interesting that this place that holds such danger, such peril, such forsakenness, is, here, a place of protection? David stays there, hidden away, as the wilderness surrounds him and holds him offering comfort and safety. I suppose given the alternative (you know, like when a really angry man with an army is chasing you), the wilderness appears to be a very attractive place. And it becomes easy to enter its wilds and close ourselves off to the world.

During this season of Lent, we talk a lot about wilderness, about darkness, about those places that do not provide comfort and repose.  It would be easy for us to think that the wilderness is a place for us to stay. Now, don’t get me wrong. Sometimes I would like nothing better than to close myself off and not have to deal with my part of the world. Sometimes, I would love to just stay in my room for days on end and write. But even though God calls us into the wilderness in certain seasons of our lives, the wilderness is not meant to be home. The wilderness is not a place where we put down stakes and plant roots. The wilderness is not a home; it is an encounter. It is the place that pushes us. If a wilderness begins to offer us solace, we have, sadly, tamed its wilds.

I’ve thought again about those early Desert Mothers and Fathers, who spent the better part of a lifetime wandering in the wilderness, communing with God, and writing the tales. But they did not live in the wilderness as a home; they did not tame it enough that they could close themselves off. Imagine them moving in a way that their feet never really touched the ground. Maybe that’s the operative word…moving.

When you think about it, the Bible is a story of movement. God creates life and just as quickly pushes it into the wilds. The creatures wander for a time and then they begin to plant their feet and build walls and boundaries (and dress themselves). So, God, with loving hands, pushes them farther out into the world. They wander and then they begin building. The Bible is a story of the rhythms of God driving us into the world and our building of walls and boundaries. It happens over and over and over again. It is no different here. David is driven into the wilderness and then decides, “you know, I’ll stay awhile and let it offer me solace and protection”. It did not last long.

Lent, like the wilderness, is not meant to be our home; it is meant to be our way of life. Because when we wander in the wilderness, we are free, we are vulnerable. University of Houston’s Dr. Brene’ Brown tells us that connection begins by allowing ourselves to be seen; in other words, being vulnerable, allowing ourselves to be seen, leaves us open to encounter. If we quit wandering and sit down and plant our feet and build a home that is not meant to be, that is not ours, we close ourselves off to encounter. We close ourselves off to God. So, if you feel the need to stay where you are, to build a home, to wall yourselves off, at least an opening so you can see the sun and breathe the air and know that God is always there.

The darkness, the wilderness, that place where we struggle and look for answers is indeed a place where we do not feel at home, where our comforts and all those things to which we’ve become accustomed, are stripped away.  We are laid raw in a way.  And, as uncomfortable as that is, it is in those places where we are most ready to connect with God.

So, here we are in this unfamiliar place, wandering, perhaps lost.  Breathe…Breathe out the need to tame it, to make it your home.  Breathe out the need to calm it and understand it.  And then breathe in…breathe in the wildness, the untamed, the vulnerable, the lack of control.  Breathe in…God.  God is always there offering mercy and salvation.  But God does not always offer comfort.  God does not always tame the wilderness or light the darkness.  Sometimes God just lets us be…and gives us a chance to breathe. Sometimes we need the darkness. Sometimes we need the wilderness. Sometimes realizing our vulnerability, our lack of control, our needs leads us to what we needed all along.

“When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability… To be alive is to be vulnerable.” (Madeleine L’Engle)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Beyond Sensical

shelliwilliams Breathing Out Series , ,

(part of the “Breathing Out” Lenten Series)

Scripture Passage:  1 Corinthians 1: 18-21, 24-25 (Lent 3B)

18For 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. 19For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” 20Where 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? 21For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe… 24but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. 

Well, you have to give Paul credit. After all, he’s the only one that actually said what we were all thinking out loud. Admit it, you were. I mean, really? After years and years (no scratch that, after centuries and centuries and centuries) of waiting for a Savior, waiting for the Messiah, he finally shows up. He’s from a no-name-blip-on-the-road town and is born in another no-name-blip-on-the-road town to young, no-name working-class peasants. He’s born in a grotto of some sort and is placed in a feed trough. Then after a considerable amount of hoopla surrounding his birth, he sort of drops out of site for three decades or so. Then he bursts onto the scene to take on the world. He’s baptized in a river by some relative of his that lives in the wilderness and wears camel hair and eats locusts and seems to preach a little hellfire and brimstone. Then he goes out and lives in the desert for six weeks or so completely alone. Then instead of hobnobbing with those who had the power to finally make his ministry fruitful, he hangs around the Lake of Galilee for a couple of years gathering other no-name folks to help him out. He shies away from things like pledge campaigns and evangelism programs and instead opts to tell stories, to stand out in the weather and the elements and try to get people not necessarily on board with his fledgling ministry but just to turn their lives around. He never even, as far as I can tell, took up an offering unless you count that meager fish lunch that he somehow managed to use to feed the multitudes.

Then this young itinerant pastor and his motley brood make their way to Jerusalem. They go right in the gates, taking on the best and the brightest, taking on the Holy City itself. I mean, who writes this stuff?  Well, we know how it all turned out. Because, you see, when you take on the strong and the powerful, when you begin to unseat those in charge, when you point to their vulnerabilities, to their shortcomings, it seldom ends well. You know, there are seasons and places where that can get you crucified!

In this Season of Lent, as we come closer and closer to the cross, we get a better and better sense of its meaning.  Because in terms of the world, Jesus, Jesus’ Life, even 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”.  We say “America First”; Jesus says, “You are the light of the world…let your light shine before others.”
 

So, we try our best to make the story presentable to the world. We polish the gleaming cross at the front of the sanctuary. We make the pews comfortable with back support and we make sure the temperature is comfortable. We spend hours making the bulletin user-friendly so it will all make sense. We try our best to keep the worship service to an hour so that everyone can get back to their lives (or their sports dates).

Maybe once in a while, it would do us good to embrace the sheer foolishness of it all instead of trying to make it presentable to the world. After all, this promise of Life did not come to us unscathed. God’s promise is life born of death. It does not just appear in the midst of a beautiful array of carefully-placed lilies on Easter morning. God took something so horrific, so dirty, so unacceptable and recreated it into Life Everlasting. But in terms of what we know, what we expect, even what we deserve, it is an act of utter foolishness. Perhaps wisdom, though, is not about worshipping a gleaming, pristine cross but rather looking at an instrument of death and seeing the life it holds. Because, you see, if it all made sense, we wouldn’t need it at all.

The truth is, the ones that got it were not the powerful or the rich or the ones in charge. The ones who got it were the ones whose lives the world assumes makes no sense—the poor, the blind, the prisoners, the weak, the meek, the givers, the peacemakers, even the outsiders.  They were the ones who think the world should change. The ones that don’t fit into what the world expects, those that the world thinks are less than others or are being foolish themselves, those are the ones that get the Cross, those are the ones that can make sense of the foolishness of God. And the rest of us? Maybe we are indeed the fools.

So, what do we do?  What do we breathe out?  Maybe we breathe out the world.  No, I don’t mean shunning the world.  I mean breathing out the ways that the world accepts, the ways that make the world comfortable.  The Scriptures are not there to make us comfortable; they are there to push us beyond ourselves, to compel us toward the vision that God holds for us.  So, breathe out the ways of the world.  And breathe in the vision that God holds.  I know.  This is hard right now.  We’ve all got different ideas of what that vision holds.  We’re in the middle of a war, a war that most of us don’t really understand at all.  We’re divided among ourselves.  Breathe out.  Breathe out needing to claim rightness or superiority or the “winning” message.  Breathe in the foolishness of God.  It will make sense later.  Open yourselves to what you do not know.  Open yourselves to what you’re missing.  And then breathe it all in.

“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.” (Frederick Buechner, “The Faces of Jesus”)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Collateral Damage

shelliwilliams Breathing Out Series , , ,

(part of the “Breathing Out” Lenten Series)

Scripture Passage:  Romans 5: 1-11 (Lent 3A)

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.  For while we were still weak, at the right
time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

This is one of the hardest Scriptures for us (or at least the part of “us” that is “me”).  What do you mean suffering results in hope?  That can’t be right.  I mean, suffering is bad, hope is good.  Everyone knows that.  Isn’t that how it works?  But suffering is a part of life.  It doesn’t mean that you did something wrong.  It certainly doesn’t mean that God is sitting off somewhere doling out suffering like it’s some sort of giant card game.  And, please, DO NOT tell me that God would never give me more than I can handle. (aaaggghhh!)  What, are we all supposed to get some sort of ration of suffering?  No, that’s not the way it happens at all.  Suffering just happens.  It happens because it is part of life.  We do not live as mechanical robots.  Suffering is part of the richness and profundity of life.  Maybe it’s the downside of having skin, of being created, of being real.  We all have needs.  Sometimes life is just too much.  (And sometimes it’s not enough.)  But we will all suffer.  And where is God?  There…there in the midst of the suffering.  Suffering reveals the heart of God.

Nearly thirty years ago, I had the opportunity to visit Auschwitz, Poland.  I expected to be appalled; I expected to be moved; I expected to be saddened at what I would fine.  I did not expect to become so personally or spiritually involved.  I did not expect my empathy to kick in in a way that I felt it so deeply.  As you walk through the concentration camp, you encounter those things that belonged to the prisoners and victims that were unearthed when the camp was captured–suitcases, eye glasses, books, clothes, artificial limbs, and shoes–lots and lots and lots and lots of shoes–mountains of humanity, all piled up in randomness and namelessness and despair.  This is the epitome of suffering.  This is humanity at its worst.  This is humanity making unthinkable decisions about one another based on the need to be in control, based on the need to be proven right or worthy or acceptable at the expense of others’ lives, based on the assumption that one human is better or more deserving than another.  It is something that in this divisive and vitriolic climate, we need to think about, to perhaps revisit what happened in what seems another world but is in THIS century of humanity.

I’ve thought about that trip a lot lately.  There is so much suffering today.  And somehow we make excuses for 72,000 dead in Gaza since October 7, 2023.  We ignore 400,000-500,000 deaths in the Russian incursion into Ukraine.  And now we don’t even talk about more than 1,000 Iranians dead from the attacks that we have inflicted.  You can say there are reasons for all of those wars.  There are.  But it doesn’t alleviate the suffering.

And yet, God CHOSE to be human.  God CHOSE to put on skin, temporarily separating the Godself from the Holy Ground that is always a part of us, and entering our vulnerability.  God willingly CHOSE to become vulnerable and subject to humanity at its worst.  God CHOSE the downside of having skin.  Now maybe God was having an off day when that divine decision was made, but I think it was because beneath us all is Holy Ground.  God came to this earth and put on skin and walked this earth that we might learn to let go, take off our shoes, and feel the Holy Ground beneath our feet.  God CHOSE to be human not so we would learn to be Divine (after all, that is God’s department) but so that we would learn what it means to take off our shoes and feel the earth, feel the sand, feel the rock, feel the Divine Creation that is always with us and know that part of being human is knowing the Divine.  Part of being human is being able to feel the earth move precariously beneath your feet, to be vulnerable, to be tangible, to be real, to take on flesh, to put on skin, to be incarnate.  Part of being human is making God come alive.

Suffering exists.  It always exists.  Maybe we could stand a little reframing from Paul too.  For us, suffering is a failure; within the vision of God, suffering holds hope for newness.  Because in the midst of suffering, just like in the midst of everything else, we find God.  God walks with us through it, loving us and holding us, perhaps even revealing a way out of it, if we would only listen, and gives us a glimpse of what is to come.  The suffering of the world reveals the heart of God, reveals the holiness that is, if we will only look.  It doesn’t explain it; it doesn’t make it easier; it just reminds us that it is not the final chapter.  Maybe it’s the downside of having skin, which means that you are human, a child of God, made in the image of God, with so much more ahead.

The suffering of the world also reveals the heart of us, if we will only listen.  It reveals our connectedness.  It reveals the community that God created just as God created each of us as individuals.  In this season of breathing, we’re not called to breathe out the suffering.  That is part of life.  But I think we need to breathe out the callousness of our reaction to it.  We need to breathe out the excuses and the way we ignore it and the way we attribute it to “collateral damage”.  We need to breathe in the way that God heals and resurrects and the way that we are called to be a part of that in the world.

In this season of Lent, we once again walk toward the Cross, with the drums of discord, still this moment far in the distance, growing louder with each step.  This season lasts for forty days.  But those forty days do not include the Sundays of Lent.  Known as “little Easters”, they are opportunities to glimpse and celebrate the Resurrection even in the midst of darkness.  They are reminders that even in this season of Christ’s Passion and Death, there is always a light on the horizon.  Resurrection always comes.  But it’s not a fix; it’s not a reward for the most powerful; it’s definitely not a dismissal of collateral damage; it’s what happens when God’s love is poured into our hearts.

Look back from where we have come.  The path was at times an open road of joy.  At others a steep and bitter track of stones and pain.  How could we know the joy without the suffering?  And how could we endure the suffering but that we are warmed and carried on the breast of God? (Archbishop Desmond Tutu)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Unquenchable

shelliwilliams Breathing Out Series ,

(part of the “Breathing Out” Lenten Series)

Scripture Passage:  Exodus 17: 1-7 (Lent 3A)

From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. 2The people quarreled with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” 3But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” 4So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” 5The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

Life in the wilderness is, obviously, precarious.  They have put their trust in God and in Moses and here they are in the middle of the desert, the hot sun beating down upon them.  The parched surroundings reflect their parched bodies and their lagging souls.  There is no water anywhere.  It seems to many that God has all but deserted them.  They had done exactly what they were told and now they thought they would surely die in the desert.  And poor Moses.  All he can do is listen to the complaining that is directed right at him.  But what could he do?  He can’t make water.  He can’t command the skies to rain.  He probably wishes that he could just run away.  After all, whose idea was it to make him the leader anyway?  He is surely questioning how he got into this mess.

This is not some sort of metaphorical thirst.  They were thirsty–really, really, parched and dry thirsty; there was no water.  Thirst is perhaps the deepest of human physical needs.  What does it mean to thirst for the things you need the most?  It’s hard for us in the Western part of the globe to even imagine.  (As I write this, I actually got thirsty and went and filled a glass with filtered spring water from Kroger.)  And yet, 780 million people lack access to clean and healthy water.  That’s about 1 in 9 people in the world or about 2 1/2 times the population of the United States.  Lack of access to clean water and sanitation kills children at a rate equivalent to a jumbo jet crashing every four hours.  And, amazingly, an American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than the average person in a developing country slum uses for an entire day.  Thirst is real.

But as we fill our recycle bins with plastic water bottles, what does this mean for us?  For what do we thirst?  Again, don’t think of it as metaphorical.  It is real.  Maybe it’s not physical, but it’s real. For what do you thirst?  For security?  For a life of ease and plenty?  For things to just make a little more sense?  Do you thirst for life as you’ve planned it?  Do you thirst for righteousness?  For justice? For peace?  For meaning?  How many of us simply thirst to be alive, truly alive, in the deepest depth of our being?  Being alive is thirsting for God, thirsting for the one who can walk us through grief and shadows and even death and give us life.  It means that we thirst for the one who thirsts for us.  Thirsting is the thing that makes us real.

Dag Hammarskjold wrote in his journal the words, “I am the vessel, the draught is God’s.  And God is the thirsty one.”  God is thirsty.  God’s love for each of us is so deep, so intense, so desiring our response that it can only be characterized as a thirst. God, parched and dry, thirsts for our thirst.  So, is the Lord among us or not?  God knows everything about you.  The very hairs of your head are numbered.  Nothing in your life is unimportant to God.  God has always been with you, always loved you, and always yearned for you to come into the awareness of God’s Presence in your life for which we strive, that sense of needing something more in the deepest part of you, so much that it leaves you parched without it.  And, ironically, it means letting go of the need to quench your thirst.  Because it is thirst for God that this journey is about.  Ironically, we are not questing to quench it but to live it, to open ourselves to the waters that hold God’s creative Spirit.  To thirst is to be.  To thirst is to know in the deepest part of our being that we need God.  To thirst is to be alive.

I thirst for you.  Yes, that is the only way to even begin to describe my love for you:  I thirst for you.  I thirst to love and be loved by you—that is how precious you are to me.  I thirst for you.  Come to me, and fill your heart and heal your wounds…Open to me, come to me, thirst for me, give me your life—and I will prove to you how important you are to my heart.  Do you find this hard to believe?  Then look at the cross, look at my heart that was pierced for you…Then listen again to the words I spoke there—for they tell you clearly why I endured all this for you:  I thirst.  Come to me with your misery and your sins, with your trouble and needs, and with all your longing to be loved.  I stand at the door of your heart and knock.  Open to me, for I thirst for you. (Mother Teresa of Calcutta)

So, what do we breathe out?  Thirst?  Need? Desire? No, breathe out the need to quench your thirst with those things that will never quench your thirst.  And breathe in thirst.  (Yes, this time, I really do mean it spiritually.  Don’t quit drinking water.  In fact, you probably need more than you’re drinking.)  But let yourself thirst.  Let yourself feel that thirst for faith, that thirst for God, that thirst for being in your deepest self.  Do not be tempted to fill that thirst with easy answers or comfortable commentary.  Do not let your thirst be assuaged with things that do not offer you growth and newness, with things that do not bring you closer to God.  Let yourself get shaken up.  Breathe in that thirst for the life God calls you too.  It’s not easy; it’s uncomfortable; and sometimes you will feel that you don’t have everything you need.  You don’t.  That’s why you’re on this journey.  It is a journey of unquenched thirst.  Keep walking.  Keep growing toward.  Keep thirsting for God.  That thirst is your faith.  That thirst is your life.

After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said, “I am thirsty.”…Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. (John 19:28, 30b)

One needs to keep on thirsting because life grows and enlarges.  It has no end; it goes on and on; it becomes more beautiful…[One] cannot be satisfied until [one] ever thirsts for God. (Alexander Baillie)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Be Like Mary Poppins

shelliwilliams Breathing Out Series , ,

(part of the “Breathing Out” Lenten Series)

Scripture Passage:  John 3: 1-17 (Lent 2A)

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” 3Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” 4Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” 5Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ 8The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 9Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? 11“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. 12If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 16“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 17“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

In an essay on this passage, Nurya Parish says she thinks that “every baptism or confirmation class should include a showing of the movie Mary Poppins.  Not for the suffragettes or the magic carpetbag [but for] the scene where Mary, Bert, and the children take hands and jump straight into the middle of a sidewalk chalk painting, emerging in an entirely new, much more colorful world.  That’s what becoming a disciple does…you leave an old, dreary world behind and enter a world where the unexpected becomes commonplace.  It’s not enough simply to say you are a disciple; you actually have to jump.”

That’s what Nicodemus did not get in the Gospel passage that we read, even though he was a learned leader and, therefore, a teacher, of the Jews, a rabbi, a teacher of all things Scriptural and all things faith.  He knew what questions to ask and we should probably give him the benefit of the doubt that he was continuing to probe and explore.  Maybe he wasn’t as sure of his own certainty when it came to beliefs. Maybe he wasn’t ready to admit that to himself.  He wasn’t really ready to go there yet.  So, he goes to Jesus in the dark of night, cloaked in mystery and secrets and probably trying to hide the fact that he was having trouble understanding it all from the rest of the community.  He wanted Jesus to get rid of all the doubts that Nicodemus had.  He wanted Jesus to make it all perfectly clear for him so that he could go on imparting that knowledge to the rest of the community.  He wanted Jesus to give him the answers.

Part of the problem may have been semantics.  After all, he did believe what Jesus had done, what Jesus had told him.  He knew that Jesus had done numerous miracles.  He had seen it with his own eyes.  So he knew that Jesus was good, he knew that Jesus was worthy as a teacher.  And yet, Jesus seemed to talk in circles.  He preached that one had to be born from above.  But how can one be born unless he or she re-enters the mother’s womb?  He preached that one must be born in the Spirit, and yet admitted that the place from which the Spirit blew was unknown and unknowable.  How can this be?  And he preached that one must believe.  Nicodemus believed what Jesus said.  What was Jesus talking about, then?

When you read this, you do sense that Nicodemus must have been a good teacher.  He was astute and knew what questions to ask.  He was diligent as he studied and explored to get to the truth.  But how could he believe this circular reasoning that Jesus was espousing?   Part of the problem, it seemed, was that Nicodemus and Jesus had completely different understandings of what “believe” was.  Nicodemus had, after all, accepted Jesus’ propositions.  He had probably even taught it.  But Jesus was not asking for people to believe what he did or believe what he said.

There is a difference between believing Christ and believing IN Christ.  Believing IN means that you enter into relationship, that you trust with everything that you are, with everything that is your life, that you sort of jump into it. It is much more visceral than Nicodemus was really read to accept.  Nicodemus wanted to understand it within the intellectual understanding of God that he had.  But Jesus was telling him that there was a different way.  Jesus was inviting, indeed almost daring, Nicodemus to believe in this new way, to turn his life, his doubts, his heart, and even his very learned mind over to God.

“How can this be?”  Those are Nicodemus’ last words in this passage, which sort of makes him a patron saint for all of us who from time to time get stuck at the foot of the mountain, weighed down by our own understandings of who God is, without the faintest idea of how to begin to ascend.  But there’s Jesus.  “Watch me.  Put your hand here.  Now your foot.  Don’t think about it so hard.  Just do as I do.  It’s like the Mary Poppins chalk painting.  Just jump!  Believe in me.  And follow me….this way!

We’re the same.  We are ALL Nicodemus.  We want to be certain.  Really?  Consider this:  the opposite of faith is not doubt…that would be WAY too easy.  The opposite of faith is certainty.  I mean, if you were certain, if this all made sense to you, well goody for you but, really, why would you need faith?  Breathe out the need to be certain, the need to have all the answers.  And breathe in faith, that wild, unexpected, sometimes-unexplainable thing that brings us closer not to the answers…but to God. So….JUMP!  I mean, after all, wouldn’t you want to be like Mary Poppins?

When we get our spiritual house in order, we’ll be dead. This goes on. You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don’t expect faith to clear things up for you. It is trust, not certainty. (Flannery O’Connor)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Just Make the Turn

shelliwilliams Breathing Out Series , ,

(part of the “Breathing Out” Lenten Series)

Scripture Passage:  Romans 4: 1-5, 13-17 (Lent 2A)

What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness…For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation. For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”) —in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

We are creatures of habit.  We cling to our patterns of life sometimes for our very identity.  And it is no different with our faith.  Our ways of believing, our ways of worship, our ways of practicing our faith are, for most of us, virtually untouchable.  (If any of you have ever tried to make any changes in a worship service, you know EXACTLY what I’m talking about!)  We are open to change as long as WE don’t have to be the ones that change.  We are open to doing things differently as long as it doesn’t affect us.  Does that sound a little bit uncomfortably familiar?

The audience to whom Paul was probably writing were really no different.  They had grown up with norms of what was “right” and “righteous”, what made them acceptable before God and as people of faith.  For them, their revered patriarch Abraham was blessed because he followed God and did the right things (which also happened to of course be the things that they were doing or at least thought they were doing).  And now here is Paul daring to write that that’s not what it meant at all, that it had nothing to do with what Abraham did or whether he lived and practiced his faith in the right way but that he had faith in a God that freely offered relationship, in a God that freely and maybe even a little haphazardly offered this relationship to everyone (whether or not it’s actually deserved–go figure!).  Faith is not something that you define or check of your list of “to do’s”; faith is something that you live.

In this Season of Lent, we talk a lot about giving up old ways and taking on new patterns in life.  Lent is a season of re-patterning who we are and how we live.  Maybe it’s a time to let go of the things that we assume, those habits that are so ingrained in us that we don’t even realize that they are there, things that have somehow become so much a part of our lives that they have by their nature changed who we are.  Think of Lent as the season that asks us to drive on the other side of the road.  I remember the first time I did that.  It was in New Zealand.  Now if you’ve been to New Zealand, you understand that the miles and miles of rolling hills patterned only by sheep farms is a good place to learn to drive on the other side of the road (and the other side of the car!).  There is lots of room for “correction”, shall we say.  That wasn’t the problem.  The problem was the more heavily populated areas where we had to deal with other people’s habits and ways of being.  (As in when you had to worry about other people on the road, all of whom were driving on the “wrong” side of the road!)  And in the middle of every town was what they call a “round-about”.  It was sort of fun to get on but getting off was a completely different story.  My brain did not work that way.  I couldn’t make myself turn the right way (or the wrong way) while I was driving on what was to me the “wrong” side of the road (and driving on the “wrong” side of the car!).  So, I just kept circling.  Let me tell you, I circled MANY times.  I remember thinking that there was a distinct possibility that my life would end in that circle.  (And the other three people screaming at me that I had (again) missed the turn was just incredibly helpful, as you can imagine.)  It was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done.

We are often traveling our faith journey on a similar roundabout.  We know there’s a place to go but getting there just doesn’t fit in with our lives, doesn’t fit in with what we’ve planned.  So, we drive in circles for a while.  After all, that turn is a scary thing.  So, we grip the wheel with our visions of righteousness and rightness and we keep circling.  The truth is righteousness isn’t just doing the “right” things or thinking the “right” way.  If it was, that would be easy.  We could just get the list of things to do and follow along.  This journey is hard.  It’s about relationships—relationship with God and relationship with each other.  It’s about being open to change, open to seeing things differently, open to being transformed.  Sometimes the turn is hard to make.  Sometimes we have to just breathe the circular, stifled motion out and breathe in the way that God is calling us to go.  And, yes, that means we have to change.  Breathe in the change God is calling you to make.

When we despair of gaining inner transformation through human powers of will and determination, we are open to a wonderful new realization:  inner righteousness is a gift from God to be graciously received.  The needed change within us is God’s work, not ours.  The demand is for an inside job, and only God can work from the inside.  We cannot attain or earn this righteousness of the kingdom of God; it is a grace that is given.  (Richard J. Foster)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Map Quest

shelliwilliams Breathing Out Series , ,

(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