my good deeds are like a tampon...

In this week's lectionary readings we find a prayer from Isaiah 64.  The tide has turned in Isaiah's (or second Isaiah's) thoughts and no more are there promises of destruction... now there are promises of salvation and pleas for God to act.

"If only you would tear open the heavens and come down!" Isaiah cries. 

It is a lament, for Isaiah looks at himself and at his people and knows why God is not answering.  The people have sinned and turned their backs.  So God is waiting. 

As I read this prayer today with my lectionary group, I was unprepared for the next line in the scripture.  As I remember the translation there was always something about filthy rags... but as I read along in my new Common English Bible, the verse leaped off the page:

"We have all become like the unclean; all our righteous deeds are like a menstrual rag."

To be unclean - ritually unclean - means that a person is temporarily unsuited to take part in holy activities like prayer, sacrifice, fasting, etc.  Temporary is the key word there.  A ritual impurity, such as that caused by contact with bodily fluids or menstruation, are not permanent states of being. 

In order to become clean again... a ritual washing is required.  Sometimes just the hands, sometimes full emersion.  But washing none the less.

When Isaiah uses this concept in the passage, he is connecting the hearts of the people to their worship.  He is connecting a physical reality to a spiritual one.  Because of their sins, they have defiled themselves.  God doesn't want them in the presence of the divine right now.  Like it will later say in Malachai 1:10 -

"Who among you will shut

the doors of the temple^c

so that you don’t burn something

on my altar in vain?

I take no delight in you,

says the LORD of heavenly forces.

I won’t accept a grain offering

from your hand."

When our lives are filled with sin, good deeds mean nothing. They can't earn us a place in God's heart.  In fact, the hypocrisy of them only serves to anger our Lord more, because they cover up the truth... that we need to be washed clean. 

That we need to be transformed from the inside out.

That we need our Holy Potter to take our misshapen clay and to form us once again. 

Come, Holy God, tear open the heavens and wash us clean.

ding dong, the witch is dead...

I found out that Osama Bin Laden had been killed last night as I was crawling into bed.  It has been a long week, I was tired, and my husband came in and announced the big news.  My husband!  Who normally isn't all that concerned about world politics/situations. 

The first thing I thought of was - "no way!" And then - "hmm... I wonder what that means?"

Today, I had a congregational funeral to deal with.  No time to think about it... although a few people here and there mentioned it and I caught a few clips of stories on NPR.

This afternoon, I was knee deep in reciepts and deposit slips trying to account for donations and reimbursement items from a month of busyness and a couple of youth fundraisers.

And when I got home at 5pm, I really didn't want to think about it.  I plugged in the headphones, turned up the music, and mowed my lawn for the first time of the year.

I found a few stray plants - an iris that was in the middle of the yard, a few ferns that started growing outside of their beds - so I moved them to better locations.  I raked up the grass clippings and I put them underneath the strawberries. I sprayed some turf builder on the grass until it ran out.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that nothing in my life has changed. Probably nothing in most of our lives has changed.

I listened here and there to various stories as I made a quick trip to the gas station for lawn mower gas and then again after I was finished to pick up some spaghetti noodles.  And everyone was talking about how this one guy created so much destruction.

My first thought is - we probably are giving the guy too much credit.  The organization he was the head of is not a one person show.  Yes, he was the face and figurehead of so much terror that has occured in this world, but I'm not going to let one person scare me or turn my world upside down. I'm not going to concede and give him that power.

My second thought relates to that strange mythological status that we have given him.  Kind of like the Wicked Witch of the East... at her sudden death, the people started singing and dancing in celebration.  Suddenly they were freed from the fear and the frustration, the anger and the pent up revenge and hostility... they burst forth in song in relief.

I can't help but see images and hear audio from those crowds that have gathered to celebrate without transporting myself to Oz.  It is surreal, it is strange, it is funny and yet... not really.

As a Christian, the only reason that I celebrate the death of another person is because I believe in the power of resurrection.  I believe in the grace and mercy of God that takes what is perishable and makes it eternal.  I believe in the new creation.

I don't believe I have been given the ability to judge another person's life. It is not for me to determine their eternal destiny.  And... I cannot put a limit on God's power to transform and renew and restore even the darkness itself. 

I find no reason at all to celebrate the death of a man who killed many.  It doesn't make me happy or feel good.  It doesn't bring me joy.  It just reminds me that we are mortal.  That our grabs for power and our bent towards hatred and evil are real and that they are destructive.  This reality sinks me farther into the human condition.  We are broken.  All of us.  And we need help. 

If we can turn back towards God and seek peace...

If we can remember that justice and revenge are God's work and not our own...

If we can love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us...

Maybe then, I might be able to celebrate. 

But for now, I'm going to get my hands dirty and plant some irises.

potluck worship

A colleague of mine recently forwarded an email about potlucks and banquets.  It was written by  Dr. Ed Robinson, the president of MidAmerica Nazarene University in Olathe, KS.

photo by: Gözde Otman

Dr. Robinson asks us if our worshipping experiences are more like banquets or potlucks.  And by that he means: do you come to worship and wait to be served, or do you bring something to the experience and try what is offered by others?  (You can read the full article here)

I think it is a fascinating metaphor for both our worshipping life and our experience as the church.  Is the church a place and a program that meets your needs or are you an active participant with something to contribute?  Are you being served or are you serving? Are you a person in a pew or a part of the body of Christ?

I happen to love food.  And I love potlucks even more.  I'm not sure that you can be a good methodist without loving these two things!  So, it's probably obvious where I fall and where I encourage you to land in the choice between a banquet church and a potluck church. 

But how do we turn our churches into potlucks?  How do we encourage folks to bring something to the table? (or the sanctuary?)

First, I think we need to create opportunities in worship for folks to be active.  Participation in a responsive liturgy is not enough.  We need to ask people to get up, move around, think, respond, speak, and do things in worship. 

This can be scary for churches that are accustomed to stand and sit worship.  But what I have found is that people are hungry for the chance to be stimulated mentally, physically, and spiritually. 

In my own congregation, we have interactive worship every so often.  It is never something that is forced upon folks; people can stay seated if they want to. What is important is that whatever we are doing directly is related to the message for the day. 

One of the first pieces of interactive worship we used related to the Lent 1 text from Genesis in cycle B.  As we remembered God's promise to Noah after the flood - we affirmed, as a congregation, that we are blessed by God.  We proclaimed that God desires not the death of a sinner, but that we all repent and live. We celebrated that God promises  to be, and has been, with us through the storms of our lives.

Our youth group prepared the canvases by painting them red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.  Then, following a brief mediation on the texts, I invited people to come and paint on these canvases signs of God's promises to us.  We remembered how God has shown us grace and mercy.  We wrote words of hope and life.

Those canvases still hang at the front of our sanctuary.

Second, worship needs to connect with the congregation on a deeply personal level.  It is not enough to simply preach a sermon that talks about the world around us - it needs to apply to what they are daily struggling with. 

I have borrowed and adapated resources from a number of different locations, but one of my favorite sites is creativeprayer.com.  One Sunday for worship, we talked about the sins in our own lives and used this idea for confession with sand. All around the room we place 2 gallon buckets filled with sand and handed each person a brown paper lunch sack.  As we wandered around the room, we read the questions above each bucket and if that applied to us, we put a scoop of sand in our bag. They got heavy.  It was a personal journey for each of us - and yet no one could see how much we were carrying.  It was between me and God. 

Near the end of worship, we took those heavy bags and we laid them before the cross.  It was one of the most powerful worship experiences we have had in our church, because the message hit you personally.  You carried the weight of your sin to the cross and left it there.  Literally.

Third, the voices of the congregation need to have a space to be heard in worship. You cannot participate if you are not allowed to speak, to sing, to respond, to question.

While we don't do this every Sunday (and sometimes I wonder, why not!), every so often our worship takes on a form of lectio divina.  We ask folks to reflect on the scriptures and to share with one another what they think.  There are other days when I ask folks to respond with their own questions.  Even hymn sings provide the opportunity for individuals to share their favorite music and why it is a meaningful selection from their own experience.

I have also realized that there are some people who will never speak up during church.  They don't feel comfortable in front of large groups.  I have attempted at various times to engage in The Roundtable Pulpit: Where Leadership & Preaching Meet sessions where a small group of folks help me to reflect on the text for the coming week.  Those questions and ideas are then woven into the sermon.  It provides an opportunity for voices other than my own to be heard and included.  I love the concept, I have just had a difficult time getting a diversity of people to show up for the weekly gatherings.

Just as we have fantastic cooks in our local congregations, so too do we have people who are gifted in word, song, dance, creativity, passion, experience, and dedication.  Just as we celebrate the good eats that come to the table when we feast together, so too should worship be a feast to God with all people offering together.

born this way

A good friend helped me to find a post by Brian Kirk called "Lady Gaga, Lent, Teens, and Original Sin." It is a good read, but there are a few tweaks that I might have made to his argument.

In his article, Kirk shows how Lady Gaga's latest song "Born This Way," helps teenagers to claim their own place, their identity, in a world that sometimes tells them they have no value.  He connects this message with the Jesus that loves the unloveable and who reaches out to those others have deemed unworthy.

Kirk also spends a bit of time thinking about the counter for this argument, "what about sin?" Kirk responds by talking about while Lent has traditionally been a time in which we confess all that is wrong with us and look to Jesus for salvation, there are some that don't hold that to be true.  He writes:

For those of us who do not literalize the story of Adam and Eve, there is no need to literalize the Christian interpretation of Genesis in which humankind fell from a perfect creation into an imperfect one and thus had to wait, mired in sin, until a savior could come and pay our ransom. This theological perspective that sees all persons as born into sin is not persuasive for those Christians who acknowledge that we now live on this side of Darwin.

I read Kirk's response as: "what sin?"

I may not read the story of Adam and Eve literally, but I do recognize that this world we are born into is far from perfect.  The institutions we inhabit are tinged with sin.  The choices we make from the very beginning lead us into temptation.  While I might not ever consider an infant to be riddled with original sin that taints their very existence, sin is an ever present reality that surrounds us.  If there were no sin, there would be no violence, no war, no destruction, no oppression, no bullying, no shame, no guilt, no hate...

We each have a personal role and responsibility in the systems of sin that surround us.  From the things we purchase, to the food we eat, to the ways we treat one another, we participate in sin.  Sometimes that sin is a conscious rebellion and turning away from God and neighbor... other times it is subtle, hidden, and ignorant.

No matter how much we might ignore sin, it has consequences in our lives.  When we act recklessly, we hurt people. When we ignore the cries of the needy, they suffer.  When we waste and pollute, our environment is damaged.  The cup of coffee I purchased this morning has implications and consequences from people I have never met and will never see. The length of time I spend in the shower this morning has financial, social, environmental implications.  Sin is real. Consequences are real.  We were born this way, too.

The song calls us to remember:

I'm beautiful in my way
'Cause God makes no mistakes
I'm on the right track baby
I was born this way
Don't hide yourself in regret
Just love yourself and you're set
I'm on the right track baby
I was born this way

The real question is how we hold these two things together. 

How do hold together the fact that we are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:13-14) with the reality that we have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23)? 

I recently began reading N.T. Wright's After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters. He talks about the process of developing virtue in our lives by the thousands of choices and decisions we make in our lifetimes. In the process of doing so, he talks not only about following the rules, but also following our hearts. 

This is the same divide that I see between these passages in Psalms and Romans.  If I am wonderfully made, if God loves me, then I can do what I want and follow my heart.  But if I am sinful, then I need rules to tell me right from wrong and to save me.

Wright reminds us we need both.  We need to form our character through the "rules" and to hold one another accountable to what is good.  But we also need to let who we have been created to be shine through... not the "me" that does whatever the hell I want, but the "me" God intends me to be - loving, compassionate, serving one another, humble.  The reality is, that "me" is inside of us.  We were born to perfectly love God and serve our neighbors.  God didn't make any mistakes in doing this.  But we get off track. We let the world tell us who we should be, instead of our creator.  We turn our backs on that reality.  We sin. Christ takes all of those missteps, all of the sin inherent in our structures, the reality of evil, death, destruction, greed, power... he takes it ALL onto the cross, he dies, and he takes it all down with him.  In Christ, we are finally free from all that which holds us back, from all that prevents us from being who we were truly created to be.

Kirk gets so caught up in sacrifical atonement that he forgets there are other metaphors for the work of Christ on the cross.  Christ liberates our true selves from all that prevents us from being Godly.  Christ shows us how we were supposed to live our lives, according to Abelard.  Jesus is also the Cosmic Christ who transforms all of creation. 

This time of Lent reminds me that I was fearfully and wonderfully made and that I have fallen short of the glory of God that lives inside of me.  It challenges me to claim the work of Christ in my life and to be better, to grow, to allow God's grace to continue to transform me. 

Lady Gaga's lyrics say: I was born this way hey! I'm on the right track baby. 

Maybe we should take that as a question.  Who were you born to be?  And are you on the right track?  Are you living the way God intended?  And if not, how do you get back there? 

You are fearfully and wonderfully made.  No matter how it is that you were made - black, white, outcast, bullied, gay, straight, male, female, rich, poor - you were fearfully and wonderfully made.  Are you on the right track?

The Human Condition

What effect has the practice of ministry had on your understanding of humanity and the need for divine grace?

Over and over again I am reminded about our utter need for grace. In my own life and ministry the work I do would not be effective or positive if it were not for God’s grace. As someone who is beginning this journey of ministry I make more mistakes that I would care to admit, and yet somehow God takes my feeble and human attempts at faithfulness and transforms them mightily. This fall, I was called to the bedside of a congregation member who was actively dying and the family wanted me to say a prayer with him before he passed. In my vanity, I had worn this cute pair of boots, but they were very loud as I stepped into the room. Embarrassed, I tried to take them off so that I wouldn’t disturb the peacefulness and the quiet music in the background. By the time I got my boots off and moved over to the side of the bed and began my prayer, he was taking his last breath. At first, I was angry with myself for having worn the wrong shoes and for taking so long. But the first comment out of his son’s mouth was about how wonderful it was that his father had passed from this world in the midst of prayer.

My understanding of humanity has also been tried and tested in my congregational work. We welcomed a gentleman back into our congregation after he had been in some trouble. Overall, our congregation was very gracious and welcoming! After some time had passed, even connected with our community, he found himself in trouble once again. I think for the first time, I really saw the destructive powers of sin in someone’s life – sin that not only imprisoned his spirit, but also led once again to the imprisonment of his body. And yet through it all, we have continued to be in relationship with him. I was amazed by his power to seek and ask God’s forgiveness and the fact that he kept praying for us in the midst of his struggles.

I have also worked a lot with families in need in our area. As I work with them, I am reminded about how little power so many people have to change their lives. Sin (our own and that of others) digs us into deep holes and creates patterns that we cannot even imagine being different. It isolates us from the help we need and from relationships of love, kindness and mercy. Only by the grace of God can we as a church continue to have the patience to minister to these families and maintain the relationships… and only by the grace of God can their hearts and minds be transformed. But I am also reminded that as a part of this relationship there must be honesty and accountability – there must be confession and a desire for repentance in order for God’s grace to transform our lives.

Photo by: Mateusz Stachowski

the redemption of creation

Over the next few weeks (months probably) I want to go back through my notes and blog a bit about some of the amazing things I have brought back from the Moltmann conference.

The first one that has been really chewing in my soul is the idea that creation needs redemption.

I guess this has always been in the background of my theology. I think about Paul writing that the creation is groaning. I think about how all of the earth suffers under the sin of humanity and our greed and destruction. But for the first time, I started thinking about how this planet itself has also fallen and committed acts against God's will and needs to be redeemed.

Now - I don't think that the oceans have a will. I don't think that the skies and the clouds do things intentionally - but in many ways neither do we. But this world is not as God created it. And when a tsunami strikes land in southeast Asia and 225,000 people die - I don't think that is God's will. Moltmann said time and time again that God is with those who suffer, not the cause of the act. He said time and time again that an act against creation is an act against God.

So, in putting various pieces together, we could talk about an ecological soteriology. That as Christ redeems us, Christ redeems the world. That all of creation is taken through the cross to the promise of the resurrection.

We spend so much time worrying about theodicy, looking for God as the cause of these events, instead of thinking about God as the one who will ultimately redeem even the world from the suffering it has caused. God in Christ through the power of the Spirit bears all of these things through to the new creation. And that is an amazing thought to behold

t.v. is taking over my life!

So, I will be the first to admit that I love television. I'm a sucker for an hour long episode (well, 42 minutes). I like to just relax in front of our t.v. and slip away to another world for a while.

The beauty of a television show - especially those "hour long" epi's is that you slowly, chunk by chunk make your way through a story. Yet they are short enough that when my ADD (self-diagnosed) gets the better of my I can hop away and mow the lawn or wash dishes.

This summer, my husband and I have made our way through seasons 1 & 2 of Dexter - a showtime series about a serial killer who only kills murderers and works forensics for the police department. In some ways, it's just an escape, but as a theologian and as a philospher, I also see so many themes that we need to deal with in our everyday lives: redemption, good and evil, morality and sin, what it means to be human.

Our instant play for Dexter isn't available for season 3 so we are waiting for it to be released. And instead, we began to watch Lost.

Now, in the whole time that Lost was on the air, I maybe watched one episode. I didn't want to get into the hype. But now that I have been watching it for a solid week (we just started season 3) I'm hooked. There is so much symbolism and many of the same themes that came through in Dexter - good and evil, redemption, and others - our purpose/destiny/fate, what it means to be family/community, questions of whether there is a God.

For the past few days now I've been thinking about blogging through the series and taking some notes - kind of a gospel according to lost type of thing. As far as I can tell, no one has really done it yet - aside from an article published by the Christian Research Institute. We'll see if I have time to go back through some episdoes and really do it or not.

law or grace?

i was talking with a friend tonight about guilt and its absolutely pervasive impact on our lives. She was talking about something that is a normal and healthy part of her life and yet there was still residual guilt from societal standards that come up afterwards.

Guilt is such a terrible terrible thing. And I think I feel that way because I'm troubled by the fact we just can't figure out how to live as people under grace.... we still think we are under the law and that we are constatnly being measured up against something.

I know I do it all the time. I neglect to spend an afternoon visiting church members and instead spend it connecting with colleagues online and I feel guilty. I don't practice my guitar, and I feel guilty. I look at the dishes piled up on my counter, and I feel guilty. And those are just simple things. Guilt pervades our lives.

And it pervades my church. I think my biggest uphill battle in this congregation is trying to get people to stop talking about hell and the law and having to "straighten up and fly right" (they say this ALL THE TIME!) and to just focus on loving one another and loving ourselves and loving God. I think it comes down to Paul's own struggle with the law that he had lived with his whole life. He wanted so much to live by grace, but was constantly seeing his body in the light of the law.

I think I've mentioned this before, but there is a guy I visit with who wants to know why I don't talk about hell more, why I'm not preaching for people to flee from the wrath to come. I don't see our faith that way. My faith and my salvation is about restoring my relationship with God, not making sure I don't spend an eternity burning in hell. And in relationships, we are constantly growing and changing and we make mistakes, but it is the willingness to keep being in the relationship that matters. I think that is why the idea of covenant is so important and why God, no matter now many times Israel was unfaithful to the covenant, found ways to bring them back into relationship. the problem wasn't that they did bad things. the problem was they neglected their relationship with God and put something else in God's place.

I've been married for only a year and a half - but even in that short time, I know what that is like. We make mistakes all the time. We treat each other like crap somedays, and sometimes we make poor choices like putting work or down time or making dinner before each other. It happens. But if we were to let the past and all of the ways we have not fulfilled our marriage covenant determine our future, if we were to carry all of those mistakes with us and bring guilt into the present, we would never be able to forgive and love one another. The biggest piece of marriage advice I got was to never go to bed angry with one another. On the flip side, never go to bed feeling bad about something you have done.

What if we lived that kind of relationship with God? Where inspite of our failings, we went to bed leaving the past behind us and with a renewed commitment to be in relationship for another day? Covenants are not about prescribed standards and boxes to check and things we have to do - it is about a choice to be in relationship. And in a healthy relationship, there can be no guilt.

rainbows.

Today in church, we painted a rainbow. As we remembered God's promise to Noah after the flood - we affirmed, as a congregation, that we are blessed by God.

We follow a God who desires not the death of a sinner, but that we all repent and live.

We follow a God who promises to be, and has been, with us through the storms of our lives.

We follow a God who reached down into the dust of the earth to breath life into humanity - and then, even when we turned away, came down and became the dust of the earth to redeem us.

I found this writing by Bruce Pewer a few years ago in one of his sermons on this text and it continues to stay with me:

Rejoice in the rainbow. It is the sign of God’s steadfast love which promises not destruction but hope and reconstruction. It is on the basis of God’s covenant love that we dare to confront evil; it enables us to laugh in the face of the evil one, taking initiative and daring to be pro-active.

Against all the evil you see in the world, against all the injustice and corruption you observe in our nation, against all the perverse evil you see raising its sneaky head within yourself, dare to paint a rainbow!

Paint a rainbow over your frustrating failings and wilful sins, and over your irksome doubts and ignorance.

Over your sins within family life, or the ugly compromises you may have had to make in the sphere of your daily work, set that rainbow.

Project a rainbow over the motley fellowship which is the church, with its flawed ministers, stumbling leaders and its sometimes passive congregations.

In your mind paint a rainbow wherever flawed and lost humanity struggles to find a way of its own mess.

The rainbow is a permanent sign of God’s faithful love. A love which not only creates, but constantly recreates and redeems.

So today, we literally painted a rainbow to remember God's promises. We painted a rainbow to remember how God has blessed us in the past. And we painted a rainbow to be a sign to us - even in these dark days - that God is with us, and that even in the wilderness of Lent, God will send angels to care for us.

In some ways - personally - with all of the excitement and joy that I wanted this response to hold, as a congregation we had heavy hearts this morning. Right before the service, we learned of the sudden death of one of our own. In more ways than one, this message about the rainbow in the midst of storm clouds really served as comfort and hope, even in the midst of our grief and sadness.

While there of course have been deaths in the congregation prior to this point, none have hit me quite so close as this one. We have said goodbye to many dear sweet older folks this past year, and in some ways, because I was new, and because many of them were in the nursing home and not actively present in the church, it has been easier to be the comforting pastor. This particular passing is the husband of someone I have gotten to know quite well in the past year. And I pray with all of my heart for God's strength to help me minister to her and her family in these coming days.

life breathed into dust

today as we come forward to have the ashes placed upon our foreheads, as we remember what it means to be made of the dust of the earth, we tell the truth about our mortality and our sin.

we are nothing but dust - and to dust we shall return.

yet there is something profoundly missing in that story. because even in the beginning, as God formed us from the dust of the earth, from the clay of the ground, as God got down on hands and knees and got dirty... molding us and forming us... we were touched with the maker's hands. and then the God of the universe breathed into Adam the breath of life.

as dust - we cannot escape from our mortality or our sin. as dust - there is no end possible but to return to the ground.

but we are not merely dust. God desires not the death of a sinner but a broken and contrite heart. God wants to bring life into our midst.

this time of lenten discipline is a time to open ourselves up to God's grace. That may come through spiritual disciplines like fasting and prayer. it may come from denial of temptations (coffee and soda, anyone?). it may come from an attentive awareness to God's movement in everyday things. But none of these practices in and of themselves earn God's love - will bring us salvation... we do them simply to spend time with God, we do them for the sake of God, practicing these disciplines focus our lives on God and that in and of itself brings its own reward.