Strangers and Aliens

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus Christ himself as the cornerstone.  Ephesians 2:19-20.

When we first moved to southeast Iowa, we were told by several people that we should expect to be considered outsiders for a long time, especially in the smaller communities. Someone said that you’re not considered a native unless your grandparents were born here. I thought that was an exaggeration until I started hearing about “newcomers” who had lived in the community for twenty or thirty years. Then there were Memorial Day pictures in the paper of local children putting flags by the graves of their great-grandparents. Clearly the descendants of those pioneers had not moved far! The strangest experience I had was meeting a retirement-age biologist at a local college. I expected the usual exchange of educational pedigrees and research interests. Instead she told me where she lived in the county, how long that property had been owned by her family, and how many generations had farmed there. It was months before I finally figured out that the most important thing to her was to tell me who her people were. Anything academic was definitely secondary.

Who are your people? To whom do you belong? In a culture where people move about often, where many marriages end in divorce and children grow up in “blended” families, those seem like odd questions. In southeast Iowa, and in other communities where people live and intermarry for generations, they are the first questions that come up when two people meet. Only after someone is placed in the relational constellation can the conversation progress to other matters. It doesn’t take long for me. As soon as I say that I’m not related to the Horns of New London, they know I’m an outsider and we move on to something else.

Don’t get me wrong. The people we have gotten to know are friendly and welcoming. But we haven’t gotten used to going to our local farmers’ market or one of the restaurants and have everyone turn to scrutinize us, trying to figure out who we are. I suppose that’s why we frequent the places that are used to having visitors, so we can “blend in.”

The need to belong is a very human one. It is just as human is to look askance, or even reject, those who belong to some other group. At the time of the apostle Paul, Jews had nothing to do with non-Jews, and vice versa. They did not eat together, they did not intermarry, and they did not do anything beyond interacting to the extent necessary for people living in the same town. The Jews had their own laws, their own diet, and the males even had the physical mark of circumcision to differentiate them from all other peoples.

Into this absolute distinction stepped Jesus Christ, a Jew who ate with Gentiles and sinners. His radical acceptance of all brought him into conflict with both Jewish and Gentiles authorities, who eventually saw to it that he was put to death. Paradoxically, that violent death and subsequent resurrection created the groundwork for peace and reconciliation among all who were strangers and aliens from one another. Jesus became the cornerstone – or better yet, the keystone, the one stone at the top of an arch that keeps the two opposing sides from collapsing. 

Who are your people? To whom do you belong? For us, the answer is clear: we are Christians. We belong to Jesus Christ. In him all differences are taken up and reconciled. In him we stand as one, whoever we are, whatever we look like, wherever our parents or our grandparents were born. In Christ we are no longer strangers and aliens, but brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers of one another. We are the household of God. And on Sundays when we have a baptism, that is what we celebrate, welcoming one more person into that household.

[Pentecost 8: 2 Samuel 7:1-14a; Psalm 89:20-37; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56.]

Listen to this post as actually preached.

Blogging

Last week R and I went to the 2012 Global Conference of Chaplains in Higher Education. It was continuing ed for both of us, perhaps more obviously for her than me. I did learn a lot about interfaith work. I also attended a paper presentation on faith formation in a digital age given by Fr.Chris Valka, CSB, a priest in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. He talked about the elements of a digital presence: website, blogs and podcasts, Facebook and Twitter. We do all of those except Twitter at my church. We even launched a revamped website recently.

I was especially struck by Fr. Valka’s remarks on blogs. Here they are, with my parenthetical comments.

•  Blogs are personal and vulnerable. They are about relationship and emotion. (Mine tends to be more about ideas, perhaps in part because they are homilies-in-waiting. Besides, I like ideas.)
• The ideal entry is 200-400 words. (Oops. Mine are more like 700. On the other hand, one of my favorite bloggers, Lori Erickson, posts 500-700 words.)
• Pictures are a must in every post. (Oops, again. Lori, at least, has pictures.)
• Update every 2-4 days. (How about once a week?)
• Wordpress provides the best analytics. (Sorry, Blogspot!)

I know that this blog could be more inviting. It is pretty bare bones. On the other hand, I like simplicity. I have enough plant photos for a decade of blogs, but do you really want to look at the fleur du jour every time you check here? On the other hand, having to post a picture would get me out with my camera more…and then I’d need a better camera to take even better pictures. I like where this is going!

When the Morning Stars Sang Together

Between the parsonage in which I grew up and the church where my dad was the pastor there was a yard, perhaps fifty feet wide and the length of the church. It was big enough to have a few shade trees that made it hard to grow grass underneath. The fact that my brothers and I considered it a ball field helped neither the grass nor the integrity of the church windows. It was surrounded by concrete and asphalt and houses with little strips of lawn that could be mowed in a few minutes. For me it was an oasis, my first enduring encounter with the natural world. I learned the name of every tree and valiantly grew puny radishes in their shade. The sunniest spot, just outside our back door, was reserved for my mother’s tomato plants.

My first awareness of God as Creator came from spending hours outside in that yard, just as my first language about God came from my father’s mouth in the church next door. I’m not sure that I saw much difference between them; words and experience added up to the same thing. Or perhaps not. There was always something beyond those words, something inexpressible. I saw it in the way my dad sometimes could not speak about what he felt so deeply. I saw it when the sun shone through the sycamore leaves, way up where the bark was fresh and white.

Now I live where I’m surrounded by the created world. From our house I can see deer standing at the edge of the woods a half mile away. I can watch the sun come up on the horizon precisely when it is supposed to. Prairie flowers go through their progression from daisy fleabane to wild parsnip to sunflower to goldenrod. Meadowlarks and bluebirds sit on the power line. I am as far from being in a big city as I can get.

And yet I am no more in the midst of creation than when I was playing ball under that big sycamore, hoping I wouldn’t foul the ball into a window. Instead of puny radishes I grow bright geraniums. I no longer have to know the name of every weed (although I do). The One who created all this still sustains me, still provides moments of inexpressible joy when the bluebird sings or the setting sun glows on the distant woods. It is then that I give thanks for creation, for the privilege of having been born into this beautiful world. It is then that I know why the morning stars sang together and the heavenly beings shouted for joy when God created the world. It is truly a gift of grace. May this glory of the Lord endure forever, and may the Lord always rejoice in all his works.

[Pentecost 4: Job 38:1-11; Mark 4:35-41; and Psalm 104:32 for the last sentence.]

Things Are Not As They Seem

Things are not as they seem. That’s the message we get from all three of Sunday’s lessons. What appears to be the case on the surface really isn’t; it’s the meaning inside, the hidden meaning, that counts.

The first reading describes how the prophet Samuel found the one destined to become a legendary king of Israel. The beginning is not very auspicious. Afraid of the jealousy of the current King Saul, Samuel has to use subterfuge when visiting Bethlehem to look for the new king. (Already things are not what they seem to be.) Samuel knew that the chosen one will be a son of Jesse. The eldest, Eliab, must have been tall and good-looking, for Samuel immediately thought, “Here he is!” But God chastised his quick judgment based on appearance. “The Lord does not see as mortals see,” God reminded Samuel, “they look on outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” So Samuel worked his way through seven sons, without success. Finally Jesse had to call the youngest from tending the sheep. Only after that one is anointed as the next king is his name revealed: David. He was not only handsome; God knew he had a good heart.

The Apostle Paul, too, knew that things are not as they seem. “We walk by faith, not by sight,” he wrote. We hope for what we cannot see. The new life in Jesus Christ is hidden, not so apparent to outsiders. Paul even echoed Samuel when he spoke of “those who boast in outward appearance and not in the heart.” Yet he emphatically stated that because of Jesus Christ, everything has changed even though it may not look that way. “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”

Sunday’s parable told by Jesus really emphasizes that things are not as they seem. He used the example of a tiny mustard seed which no one would expect to grow almost ten feet tall. It’s a bit of a stretch to talk about birds nesting in its branches (Matthew and Luke stretched it even further, calling the mustard a tree), but the point is made – what started out really small became really big, bigger than anyone could have predicted by looking at the size of the seed. As we would say, “Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.”

What are we to draw from these readings? The story about David is obvious: don’t judge people by their outward appearance. We know that, but we don’t practice it very well. We judge people by how they are dressed and whether they’re showered and shaved. We make false judgments based on appearance all the time. Sometimes that judgment is quite unjust. In many places, including the town where I work, a black man is much more likely to be stopped by police than a white man, especially at night, simply because he is black.

Paul and Jesus talk less about quick judgment and more about the kingdom of God. Both assert that the kingdom is already here. It grows whether we like it or not, whether we are part of it or not. For Paul, especially, it means that everything has changed in spite of the fact that everything looks the same. Yes, we still grow old and die. Yes, the rich still get richer and the poor get poorer. The paradox of Christian faith is our conviction that Jesus Christ has changed that reality. It is no longer the future. The reign of God has already broken in. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the promise of new creation for all.

And in the meantime? We can work with that new creation or against it. We can judge less by appearance and instead search for the face of Christ in everyone we encounter. We can strive for justice and peace among all people. We can walk by faith, not by sight. We can hope for what we cannot see, looking toward that day when we will know fully, even as we are fully known by God. That is the Christian hope, the hope that sustains us, that things are not as they seem.

[Pentecost 3: 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13; 2 Corinthians 5:6-17; Mark 4:26-34.]

They Don't Get It

One of the most consistent characteristics of people in the Bible is thick-headedness. They don’t get it. Again and again people misunderstand what God is trying to do, and repeatedly they have to be told that they’re on the wrong track. As a result, the Bible is full of questions – not pat answers to every problem, as some would have us believe.
 

I take heart in that. I think life is also full of questions, not answers, and I’m relieved when I see Bible people muddling about the same way that I sometimes do. It’s reassuring when they don’t get it. It’s true to life.

 I do admit that sometimes it’s not quite so evident that the biblical questions are the same as our questions. Take Sunday’s reading from the first book of Samuel, for example. After all the celebrations we’ve seen of Queen Elizabeth’s diamond jubilee, it’s rather odd to encounter a long rant from Samuel about how bad kings are. Even God appears to whine about his being rejected because the people want a king. Of course, Samuel wasn’t thinking about Queen Elizabeth. This was written after the reign of King Solomon, he of seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines and thirty thousand laborers and twelve thousand horses. No wonder Samuel spent so much energy warning the people of Israel about what was to come! He knew that with all that wealth, God would fade into the background. We see that even today – motorboats and golf courses and a big deck with a swimming pool make us forget that everything, including life itself, is a gift from God.

 
Even the people around Jesus didn’t get it. In Sunday’s reading, the religious leaders accuse Jesus of being in league with the devil rather than God. Jesus’ family thinks he’s out of his mind. They’d like him to live a nice, stable life as the village carpenter, building houses and marrying someone with a better reputation than Mary Magdalene. Instead, Jesus is surrounded by low-life types and pays no attention to proper mealtimes. Worse yet, he rejects the whole kit and caboodle of relatives and claims that the low-lifes are his family.
 
The one person who really did seem to get it was Paul the Apostle, but even he was on the wrong track for the first part of his life. The chief problem with Paul is that when he finally did get it, he was so smart that nobody could understand what he was talking about.
 
So if the ones around Jesus didn’t get it, and we still don’t get it, where does that leave us? In the dark? I don’t think so. Just because we are full of questions doesn’t mean that there aren’t answers. It means that the answers aren’t simple. And the whole point of Jesus Christ coming to earth was to provide a light to shine in that darkness.
 
For some reason, even though we humans intrinsically know that the light of Christ is where joy and life and answers are, we still choose to walk toward the darkness and the obscurity it brings. We think that we will be better off with something other than God leading us, whether a king or wealth or anything else we can idolize. We have questions because we cannot see with God’s eyes and God’s understanding. We yearn for the answers that only God can provide, but paradoxically seek them from sources other than God.
 
That’s why we have the Bible. It’s a witness to the questioning, a witness to the continued attempts by God to draw us toward him. Yes, it is something that was written long ago about people who lived very different lives from us. Yet humanity has not changed that much. We still wander off; we still fail to seek the God who is seeking us. We still yearn for answers. We still spend our lives forgetting and relearning that our hearts will be restless until they rest in God.
 
And so we continue on the journey, sometimes walking away from God, sometimes walking toward him. A lot of the time we don’t get it. But then there are those moments of sheer grace when God penetrates our thick heads and light flows in. Those are the moments to live for. May we always be open to that grace and that light. May we continue to question and to be restless, until that day when we, too, can rest our hearts in God.
 

[Pentecost 3: 1 Samuel 8:4-20; 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1; Mark 3:20-35.]

Here Am I – Send Me

What is it like to encounter God? “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God,” wrote the author of the letter to the Hebrews. “He walks with me and he talks with me,” says a popular hymn text. Which is it – utter terror or buddy Jesus? A lot has to do with one’s course of life and frame of mind. The Hebrews author is describing someone who willfully persists in sin. The hymn text has a resurrection setting “in the garden.” As usual, there’s truth in both; the presence of God brings terror as well as joy.

Isaiah’s encounter with God comes under the fearful category. A king of Judah who had reigned over fifty years had just died, and no one knew what would come next. To the north, chaos had overtaken Israel. In the midst of this uncertainty, Isaiah was serving in the temple. There he had a vision. He saw himself in God’s throne room, where fiery seraphim flew about and everything was shaking. Smoke filled the place. Isaiah knew that he could not see God and live, so he cried out in fear. One of the seraphim then took a live coal and seared his lips, cleansing them from all the sinful words he had spoken. Then when God called for a prophet, Isaiah was able to say: “Here am I; send me!”

Nicodemus’ encounter with God was more straightforward but still disturbing. He met God in human form as Jesus Christ, although he didn’t know it. He realized that there was something unusual about Jesus but couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. His fellow Jewish leaders were skeptical, so Nicodemus visited Jesus at night when he wouldn’t be seen. The interview didn’t go very well. Right from the start Nicodemus got lost in Jesus’ words, taking him literally rather than figuratively. It didn’t help when Jesus used a word that could mean spirit or wind or breath, and Nicodemus consistently choose the wrong meaning. He left confused and chastised yet well aware that there was something greater here than he could comprehend.

The Apostle Paul was knocked off his feet when he encountered the resurrected Christ on a Damascus road. It took him three days of nothing but blind thinking to get his big head turned around toward God. Three days for the Spirit of God to penetrate his stubborn wrong-headedness until it finally tapped the depth of spirit within him. When Spirit talked to spirit, Paul could say at last, “Abba! Father!”

This Sunday is Trinity Sunday. It is sometimes described disparagingly as a celebration of a doctrine, but I think of it as celebrating three ways of encountering God, three ways of knowing God. All of them are necessary. Isaiah’s encounter with the powerful, transcendent, and holy God magnifies our smallness and sinfulness. Nicodemus’ encounter with the God-in-flesh challenges us to think and grow in ways we could not have imagined. Paul’s encounter with the Spirit of God shows us depths we did not know existed, places closed to us because of our own blindness.

Encounters with God are life-changing. Isaiah became one of the greatest prophets. Nicodemus the Pharisee helped bury Jesus. And Paul changed the face of Christianity. Three encounters in three ways – yet one response, summed up by Isaiah: Here am I; send me. In whatever way we encounter God, Father, Son, or Holy Spirit, that is the response God waits for. It is as simple as that. Here am I; send me.

[Trinity Sunday: Isaiah 6:1-8; Romans 8:12-17; John 3:1-17.]

Listen to this blog as preached.

Filled with the Holy Spirit

For reasons I’ve never quite understood, some people find the Day of Pentecost threatening. Perhaps there’s an association with Pentecostal churches, ones that aim to generate high emotion with hand waving and speaking in tongues – things that horrify most calm, rational Episcopalians.

That first Pentecost described in the Acts of the Apostles is not quite so abandoned as the Pentecostal churches would have it. The writer of Acts is almost at a loss of words to describe the event, relying on images of tongues of fire and languages from every corner of the known world. Yet it’s also clear that this was not an incoherent frenzy; the hearers understood what the disciples said. The preaching about God’s deeds of power moved the listeners to believe in the good news of Jesus Christ.

Remarkably, Peter’s preaching connected that good news to all of creation. Peter quoted the prophet Joel, an unusual source. The book of Joel begins with a detailed account of a devastating locust plague (using an astonishing number of Hebrew words for various kinds of locusts). In the section quoted by Peter, however, Joel has extended that local disaster to cosmic significance, to the final judgment of God. It is from Joel’s vision of the last days that Peter draws, a time when God will pour the Spirit upon everyone, sons and daughters, old and young. Not only humans, but all creation will be a witness in those days, heaven above and earth below, with fire and smoke and eclipses of sun and moon. (The last especially resonates in a week when there was a “ring of fire” eclipse of the sun.)

The Apostle Paul picks up on this witness of the natural world. Paul knows that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now. What struggles to be born? The final, total redemption of the world, the renewal of all that is. The first fruit of that redemption is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the hope God has given to us, the hope that one day we, too, will experience new life.

In the meantime we are here, and here is not always a good place to be. I am especially mindful of that right now, with the recent deaths of four young people on the Mississippi River. It was just last Sunday, while we were in church, that they were finally pulled out of the water. Our hearts and our prayers go out to their families and friends.

At such a time we hear the words of Paul speaking to the depths of our groaning, the groaning of all creation. Paul says that the Spirit helps us in our weakness, interceding with sighs too deep for words. Jesus calls that Spirit the Advocate, the Comforter, the very Spirit coming forth from the depth of God to speak to our depth, connecting creation to Creator. That is the promise given to us by Jesus Christ. That is our hope.

And that is why Pentecost is not a threat. The tongues resting on the disciples are only the outward and visible signs of an inward and invisible grace, a grace that comes to all of us through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. That grace, that Spirit, is our hope, the hope in which we are saved. Let us wait for that hope with trust, with patience, with joy.

[The Day of Pentecost: Acts 2:1-21; Romans 8:22-27; John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15.]