Faith

To Hold Dear and Love

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14-11-02-#6-Sermon-Thin PlaceScripture Passage (Genesis 15: 1-6)

After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” 2But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3And Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” 4But the word of the Lord came to him, “This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.” 5He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” 6And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.

 

 

We are told over and over to not be afraid. But we still want a guarantee. We WANT to believe that God will work it all out; we WANT to believe that God will sustain us; we WANT to believe, but we’d like to know when things will get worked out to at least our satisfaction, if not our comfort and ease. Now this passage is probably better translated as “trust” than “believe”. Is it the same? Well, probably close. But we tend to think of believing in something as knowing that it’s right. That’s not really right, but it’s what most of us have fallen into. In the 16th century, the Saxon meaning depicted it as “to hold dear or love”. That’s different. That’s WAY different. Do you follow because you think it’s right or because you love it and hold it dear? So is belief more about facts or about the meaning it brings to your life?

 

When we are told not to be afraid, it seems to be more of a call to trust, rather than merely believe. You can believe something, maybe know it’s right in your deepest being, and yet not fully give yourself to it. But Abram was told to trust, to give himself to it. “Come, Abraham. Trust it. Follow it. Give yourself to it. Hold it dear and love it. Become it.” And the covenant, the relationship, came to be.

 

This journey that we’re on is not, of course, a straight and unhindered pathway. There are hills to climb and valleys to maneuver. There is a wilderness to traverse. There are things that come along and get in our way and change our whole schedule when we least expect it. (I had some of those the last few days, which is why I’m WAY behind on “daily meditations”. So, I owe you four extras somewhere along the way!) But we’re not just called to mindlessly and aimlessly follow what we believe to be true.  We are instead called to trust it in our deepest being, to turn ourselves over to it, if you will. It doesn’t mean that there won’t be “blips” along the way. After all, Abraham (formerly known as Abram) would become the father of three major world religions, but he was perfect. He probably wasn’t even trustworthy. We all know he tried to manipulate the outcome of it all a bit. But this faith journey is not about making us perfect humans; it’s not about our blind acceptance of what we do not understand; it’s about relationship. Faith is about realizing and trusting that we are part of a deep and abiding relationship between God and humanity, actually between God and all of Creation as the holy and the sacred pours into our being bit by bit. No, it makes no sense in terms of this world. That’s what makes it faith. That’s what Lent teaches us. So, do not be afraid. Follow what you love and hold dear and I’ll walk it with you.

 

Meaning does not come to us in finished form, ready-made; it must be found, created, received, constructed. We grow our way toward it. (Ann Bedford Ulanov)

 

Thank you for sharing your Lenten journey with me!

 

Grace and Peace,

 

Shelli

In Our Search for Belief

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Cross-Abstract
“Faith, Day and Night”, J. Vincent Scarpace, 2012

Scripture Passage (Romans 10: 8b-13)

 

“The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); 9because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. 11The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” 12For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. 13For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

 

 

You know, this whole faith journey thing would be a whole lot easier if the rules were better laid out! So, are you supposed to confess your beliefs first or believe what you’re saying first? (because did you notice they get switched in this passage?) I mean, just make it easy! How DO we get this right? Just tell me what I’m supposed to do and I’ll do it! Just tell me what to say. I’m a pretty fast learner. I could probably remember enough to get through the initial exam anyway.

 

That’s what most of us want. That’s what those that Paul was first addressing wanted. Good grief, just tell us what we’re supposed to do to get this right! They wanted him to tell them what acts, what righteousness needed to happen so they could check off that they were following the law. We’re no different. We’re used to racking up points or grades or salary levels (or for churches, it would be members or attendees or giving patterns or apportionments—aaaagggghhhh!—there, I’m better!), all so that we can check off that we’ve achieved something. But when you read this, Paul isn’t even laying out what it is we’re supposed to believe. There’s no talk of original sin or not, no mention of which salvation theory Paul thought was the right one, and no list of rules or beliefs to which we needed to adhere to get “in”. Paul’s answer instead was to just believe. Just ask. Just open your mouth and pour out your heart and say it. That’s all. Because, see, it’s there. It’s all right there. Just call on the Lord and start walking.

 

But there’s another side to this. If we’re not told exactly what it is that we’re supposed to believe, then why would we think that our beliefs are the way everyone should believe? The passage says that “everyone—that means all of us—who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” In other words, desiring God is enough. Desiring God is what leads us toward God. Wanting to pray is praying. Yearning to be with God is being with God. Confessing our belief is believing. It doesn’t mean that we won’t have what seem to be crises of faith. (I have one about every week lately!) It doesn’t mean that we will ever get to the point where we don’t have questions. (If you meet someone that tells you they don’t question God or question what they believe, personally, I’d run! I mean, are you really willing to stake your whole existence on what YOU’VE figured out God is going to do?)

 

Desiring God, wanting to be with God, wanting to follow is enough. Beginning is enough. I mean, I’ll be honest, if God had some prescribed list of rules and definitive beliefs in mind, why in the world would God have chosen Paul to be the head writer of the greatest treatise on salvation of all time, with his circular thoughts and grammatically incorrect run-on sentences? Maybe God’s whole idea is that we wander and we explore and we question and we journey not until we “get it” but until we realize that the journey IS the way we live with God, that this wilderness in which we find ourselves IS the Way to God and, at the same time, the way to ourselves. That is the reason that in this season, we find ourselves in the wilderness. It is not a punishment. It is a reminder that the God who created us has never left us. It is for us to realize that in the deepest part of our being, we desire to be with God almost as much as God desires to be with us. That is the reason that God came, Emmanuel, God-With-Us, to walk with us, to perhaps wake up our God-given desires to be with God. So, begin. Wanting to be with God IS being with God. And THAT is something in which you can believe.

 

There is a God-shaped hole in the heart of every [person] which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ. (Blaise Pascal)

 

Thank you for sharing your Lenten journey with me!

 

Grace and Peace,

 

Shelli

Where Righteousness is At Home

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Overhanging trees8But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. 9The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance…. 13But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.  (2 Peter 3: 8-9, 13)

God will come when God will come. We’ve heard that over and over. But, granted, this life of faith is at times frustrating and often just downright difficult. How do you keep holding on to a hope when you often see no progress at all? How can we continue to be forced to wait for whatever it is for which we’re waiting? Because, as the passage says, we are promised a new heaven and a new earth. We are promised that all of Creation will be recreated. We are promised that, once and for all, righteousness will have a home. Righteousness, then, will be the norm. Righteousness will be an everyday thing. Righteousness will be that place where at the end of all our wandering, at the end of all our frustrations, at the end of the difficult days and the hours when you feel like you can do no more, we will enter our sacred place and be invited to pull the covers of righteousness over our heads and feel like things are the way they should be. So in this Season of Advent, we learn to wait. Good things cannot be rushed. The plan for God’s Kingdom was not made hastily and it cannot be just thrown together because we are getting a bit impatient with the whole ordeal. So, what do we do in the meantime? We live as if it’s here. We live righteousness. We give it a home. The Holy and the Sacred is not unattainable. In fact, if we just open our eyes, it is spilling into our lives even as we speak. God does not sit back and watch us squirm and strain until all is said and done. Rather, God gives us glimpse after glimpse and incarnation after incarnation and waits with infinite patience for us to respond. Look around…there are more burning bushes and parted seas and even waiting mangers in holy grottos than we can ever possibly imagine. As the writer of this passage maintains, it is that Holy Patience, that Waiting God in which we find our salvation. And so if we live as if the Holy and the Sacred has completely filled our lives, righteousness will indeed have a home and we will no longer be waiting for salvation.

But the part that we can’t forget, is that after righteousness has found us and soothed us and covered us, the next morning invites us to enter again and bring the home that we’ve found into our lives and into the world. See, the covers were NEVER meant to stay over our heads. Living righteousness is about being whatever it is for which you’ve waited and waking up and living it, whether or not the world seems to notice.
Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass.. it’s about learning to dance in the rain. (Vivian Greene)

 

Grace and Peace,

 

Shelli

(Sorry I’ve gotten thrown off the last few days…life happens…back on track, hopefully! :))

Coming Out of the Dark

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Mystery Forest8For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light— 9for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. (Ephesians 5: 8-9)

It doesn’t seem right to talk about darkness in the middle of Advent, does it? Maybe we could deal with it during the season of Lent, but not Advent. Advent is the season where we look toward the Light. And yet, much of Advent is about darkness, about the unknown, about the Light that has yet to come. And so we wait, in darkness.

We have a sort of aversion to darkness. We have somewhere along the way convinced ourselves that darkness is bad, “anti-light” if you will. And so we do everything we can to stay away from it. We fill our lives with light—the 75 watt variety. And we push the darkness away. But what else are we pushing away with our artificial light? After all, when you live in a city with street lights and porch lights and motion detector lights, how many stars do you see? Darkness is not bad; darkness is needed to see light. Light on light lets us see things, those things that the light illuminates. And we find ourselves lost in things. But darkness…in darkness we see the Light.

Remember the darkness of our beginnings. Creation began in darkness…and then there was light. Creation is found in darkness. Birth is found in darkness. Hope is found in darkness. Faith is found in darkness. Darkness gives us what we need to begin again. Darkness enables us to see the Light as it breaks into the world. In the darkness, we are able to see the Dawn.

So in this Advent darkness, be content. Embrace the present. Be content to wait—to wait in hope, to wait in faith, to wait for the Light that will soon dawn. Perhaps our places of darkness are where we come to be because they compel us to look for the Light and it is then that we will finally know how to see our way out of the dark.

 Too many of us panic in the dark. We don’t understand that it’s a holy dark and that the idea is to surrender to it and journey through to real light. (Sue Monk Kidd)

 

Grace and Peace,

 

Shelli

Discovered

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God holding handScripture Text:  John 12: 20-36

20Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. 21They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 22Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 23Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor. 27“Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. 28Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” 29The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” 30Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. 31Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. 32And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 33He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. 34The crowd answered him, “We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?” 35Jesus said to them, “The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. 36While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.” After Jesus had said this, he departed and hid from them.

 

We had this passage week before last, but it also appears as the Holy Tuesday lectionary reading.  We know about the wheat, how the seed must die so that the fruit can be, how, essentially, the seed must surrender itself, allow itself to die so that it can become something else.  It’s hard for us to grasp.  Those of us who live in Western society are much more accustomed to being told what to believe, for our beliefs to grow as they are added on to each other until we are so full of a collection of beliefs that we are about to explode.  The idea of surrendering, of letting a part of oneself literally fall away is foreign to us.

This morning (because I’m late in posting this), the Today Show interviewed three faith leaders as part of their week-long series on faith and spirituality.  The question for this morning is “Who is God?”  That’s a pretty big question.  It’s essentially the same question with which those in this Gospel account are struggling.  Who is God?  See, they said, we’ve learned from the law that the Messiah remains forever.  We got that.  So what is this about being lifted up?  And who this Son of Man character that you keep talking about?  But we are no different.  We would be much more comfortable if God just laid it all out for us, made it all a bit more obvious, maybe just made that light into which we are supposed to walk so incredibly overwhelming that none of us could miss it.  What we’re saying is that we would be much more comfortable if we COULD faithfully answer the question “Who is God?” and know that we are actually getting it right.

But then we are told that we have to die, give up the self that we have tried so desperately to hone and perfect.  Essentially, if we let our ideas and notions about who God is die away, we will know who God is.  Now that just seems ridiculous, doesn’t it?  I don’t think we come to know God by learning about God.  We come to know God as we discover who God is in our lives, as we walk through the wilderness where God is revealed to us without the shadows of our lives and our preconceived notions getting in the way, as we walk through the darkness and finally see the light for ourselves rather than it being something that blinds us to itself.

Jesus never really gave a straight answer to this question.  (ACTUALLY, I don’t really think Jesus ever gave a straight answer to many questions.)  We are instead compelled to follow, to leave ourselves behind, and to come and see for ourselves.  Our faith journey, our coming closer and closer to God, our own way that God is revealed in our lives comes about through discovery rather than memorization, through doubt rather than certainty, through darkness rather than blinding light.  So as we walk through this Holy Week, let us leave ourselves behind and discover our Lord anew, discover the God who will raise us up if we are not so tied down.

 

Religion is about transcendence, and spirituality is about finding meaning in the mundane. (Joan Chittister)

“You Raise Me Up” (Josh Groban):

 

FOR TODAY:  Close your eyes and let yourself slip away.  Open them and look for the light that you were missing.

 

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

The Wilderness is Where We Changed Our Course

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Change-DirectionScripture Text:  Matthew 15: 21-28

21Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. 22Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” 23But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” 24He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 25But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” 26He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” 27She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” 28Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

 

So Jesus travels to a place that is not his, to an unfamiliar place some distance away.  It’s not the wilderness the way we normally define it with deserted pathways and dangerous hideouts and such.  But it IS a wilderness.  When we journey through unknown territory, through places that are not our home, through places that are not ours, places that we have not planned or planted, there is a certain wilderness aspect to them.  In Jesus’ defense, he has to be tired.  He has to be craving some time along to regroup and reflect on his mission (OK, maybe that’s what the introvert in me is projecting!).  But then, all of a sudden, this woman comes up and she’s shouting at him with a foreign accent—not just a loud shout but one that is incessant and wailing and very annoying.  She is begging and begging him to heal her daughter.  But what could Jesus do?  After all, his mission as he understood it was to the Jews and here was this Canaanite Gentile wanting some of his time. Truthfully, this woman had everything working against her—gender, race, religion, class, and nationalism.  In the first century, she was the “outcast of the outcasts”, an outcast even in this wilderness in which Jesus finds himself.

Put yourself in Jesus’ place.  “Perhaps if I ignore her, she will go away.” But, then, the disciples get involved.  “Good grief,” he probably thought, “if they would only be quiet.”  And the woman keeps on—shouting and wailing like some sort of banshee.  What do you do with a pushy Canaanite woman who won’t shut up? “Don’t you understand…I am not here for you…I must first attend to the Jews…the chosen ones…the children of God…the people to which I was promised…it would not be right to abandon their mission for another.”  (I will tell you, the reference to “dogs” is not a nice one.  Without offense to the dog-lovers or dogs among us, in Jewish society, dogs were looked upon as unclean, as scavengers.  To compare someone to a dog was to lower them to the bottom of society.)

But the woman responds, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the masters table…Even I, the Gentile, knows that you are Lord.”  All of a sudden Jesus’ tune changes.  This woman has a faith that will not quit.  This woman DOES get it!  The mission is indeed to the Jews. But this woman’s faith has brought her to Jesus as a sign of what is to come. This moment is, in effect, a sort of turning point for Jesus’ whole mission.  In fact, at the risk of overstepping, you could almost say this was a sort of “conversion point” for Jesus.  You also have to consider that this turning point is the reason we’re sitting here.  We are not the “children of Israel” but rather those to whom Jesus’ mission was broadened to include.

I’m actually grateful that the writer that we know as Matthew didn’t try to clean up the story.  This is a powerful statement on Jesus’ humanness, his searching, his exploring, his changing.  In this moment, there, in the wilderness, in the place that was not his, Jesus saw a broader vision of God than even he had had before.

I think that’s why Lent tends to be this sort of wilderness journey.  Traversing through places with which we are unfamiliar, places that perhaps do not feel like home, perhaps will never feel like home, gives us a new perspective.  Maybe we’re not called to make ourselves at home at all.  Maybe we’re rather called to continuously journey through newness, continuously open our minds and our hearts just a little bit more with each turn of the pathway.  I don’t believe that God calls us to stay planted where we are; otherwise, there wouldn’t be so many of these pesky wildernesses in the stories of faith and in our own lives.  You see, the wilderness is where we change our course, where the road turns if only one small degree and unsettled though we are, we turn with it and continue our journey.

But whether small or great, and no matter what the stage or grade of  life, the call brings up the curtain, always, on a miracle of transfiguration-a rite, or moment, of spiritual passage, which, when complete, amounts to a dying and a birth.  The familiar life horizon has been outgrown, the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit; the time for the passing of a threshold is at hand. (Joseph Campbell)

 

FOR TODAY:  Look at your lives as if you were visiting.  What is out of place?  What doesn’t fit?  And what is calling you to change your course, to walk in a new way toward a new place?

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Guided in the Wilderness

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Shepherd with SheepScripture Text: Psalm 78: 52-54

 

52Then he led out his people like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock. 53He led them in safety, so that they were not afraid; but the sea overwhelmed their enemies. 54And he brought them to his holy hill, to the mountain that his right hand had won.

 

We tend to think of the wilderness as a place where we are sort of thrown out into virtually alone. We imagine wandering, looking for solace, looking for companionship, looking for someone to help us out of where we are. We search for God as if God is somehow parked at the exit of the wilderness holding a sign with our name on it as we disembark. And, yet, this psalm reminds us that even in the wilderness we are not alone, that God leads us and guides us through the treacherous terrain. Actually, there are times, when God, as it says, guides us IN, wandering, living the wilderness. It says that we are led to safety and brought to a place that is holy, that is of God. So, why then, here in the wilderness, do we feel so alone?

 

We are accustomed to pastoral images in the Bible, beautiful images of the flock being led or shepherds on the hillside. We know what it is supposed to connote. The shepherd guides the sheep to the place where they will be well-fed and cared for, the place where they will grow and flourish into maturity. There is soft, green grass, blue skies, and other sheep in the fold to keep them company as they grow together. But this is not what it looks like right now. Where is the green grass? Where are the blue skies? Where are my trusty companions? And so, searching for our image of where a shepherd is supposed to lead, we leave to look for greener pastures or easier pathways. But the grass isn’t really greener, the skies really aren’t any clearer, and in our confusion, we fall, tumbling down the gulley, bruised and tired.

 

As we said before, the wilderness is not just something to rush through. And God does not always lead us out of the desolation that surrounds us. As the passage says, God leads us through or in the wilderness, helping us navigate the rough paths and the difficult sightlines and, when the time is right, bringing us home. Our problem is that we don’t envision ourselves like sheep because we are trying so hard to be the shepherd of our own lives, to be in control, to be the guide. And so we often wander away and get lost. We may end up in a place that is not ours to be. But think about sheep. Sheep are seldom characterized as one of the smartest beings on the farm and yet, sheep know to whom they belong. Sheep know how to follow. Sheep know how to be part of a flock, holding each other up, helping each other see the shepherd. And when, as happens every now and then, a sheep gets lost, the sheep trusts that the shepherd will come and bring the sheep home.

 

Lent is a season that teaches us to be more like sheep, to follow God through the wilderness, learning the things that it teaches, accepting the things that it offers, and knowing, that, when it is time, God will guide us out of this lostness, out of despair, out of the loneliness.  You don’t have to fix it; you don’t have to hurry; you don’t have to make it something it is not.  Just follow.  Just live.  But by following God’s lead, we will see beauty we have never seen and companionship we have never known.  That’s what you get when you’re part of a flock.

 

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms or books that are written in a foreign tongue. The point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually without noticing it, live your life some distant day into the answers. (Rainer Maria Rilke)

 

FOR TODAY:  Be sheep.  Follow.  Listen.  Be patient.