Kitchen Table

“And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals.  He will dwell with him, they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them.’”  Revelation 21:2-3

What is the center of a home?

I don’t mean the geometric center, but the emotional center, the spiritual center, the place that we truly feel we belong?

Is it the fireplace, or the refrigerator, or most realistically perhaps, the largest television?

I think of the table as the center of a home.

It is at the table that we share meals, rushed, hastily prepared macaroni and cheese, or delicious, slow roasted Thanksgiving dinners.

It is at the table that we make conversation, natural or, as it sometimes is especially with teenagers, forced conversation,

We relive our day and share it for the family consumption,

Just as we consume our dinners.

The family becomes a family at the table.

At the table we are at home.

In many families, the table is our spiritual home.

Most Protestant households don’t have a designated shrine or altar,

And further, sometimes we are so busy and distracted

That the only prayers we say during the day are “God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food.”

Many of us here remember dear Hannah Noffert, who used to say that we must always remember to say grace at every meal, because that may be the only chance we get to talk to God that day.

So the table becomes the place where we do most of our praying,

And thus could be considered the spiritual center, the spiritual home.

In my house, we placed the Advent wreath in the center of the kitchen table, and Diana looked forward so much to lighting a new candle each week.

The poor girl is already doomed to be a PK; when she talks about Christmas she talks about Pink Candle Sunday.

During Lent we tried to use the forty day devotional sent to us with our subscription to Presbyterians Today, and our failure to keep up the forty days, we did less than half of them, became for us a true symbol of God’s grace despite our failures.

Since we are often scattered at breakfast and dinner, the Granos do it this way:  people begin eating whenever they can, but as soon as we are all together, we say grace.

The kitchen table is a sacred center of our home, and it’s important to the family.

In some families, the kitchen table is covered with piles of paper, books, keys, the various accoutrements of a busy life, its fullness a testament to all the exciting, stressful, beautiful living the family is doing.

And in other homes, the table must be kept clear, except perhaps for a pretty centerpiece, and those inevitable piles of paper need to find another place to live.

The table is set apart for its necessary and sacred function as the place of mealtime.

Cluttered or not, a family table’s physical surface bears the evidence of its life.

One side, the side occupied by the toddler, never seems to be quite as clean as the others.

There are the bite marks where the dog, frustrated by the presence of unattainable meat, finds a table leg to chew before being shooed away.

The grooves made by the wheelchair that was pushed up for so many years,

And the spot you always need to cover because a hot pot burned a neat circle in the wood.

Even years after, when the kids move away, the dog goes to doggy heaven, and the table slowly becomes somewhere where most meals are a solitary affair,

These marks left in its surface are reminders of the life a family shared.

Our special occasion table in the dining room, along with its chairs, are something Dan and I got in an estate sale,

And we noticed the burn mark in the center, detracting from the table’s value.

But over time I’ve begun to love that burn mark. 

We will never know the story of that mark and we’ve wondered about it.

Maybe it’s a good thing that through us that mark, a symbol of a family’s story,

Gets to live on, and now becomes part of our story.

So that the ending of one life becomes the beginning of another.

In the book of Revelation the ending of the life of the world becomes the beginning of a new heaven and a new earth.

Revelation is an interesting, puzzling, and somewhat disturbing book,

Full of metaphors and images that I have always found it difficult to keep straight.

There are horsemen and seals and lampstands and I keep wondering, ok how much of the earth has been utterly destroyed at this point?

But the message of the Revelation to John at Patmos and to Christian readers is a message of hope:

God wins.

This message must have been reassuring to the earliest church.

Many scholars believe that Revelations was written after the emperor Nero’s violent persecution of Christians,

When Peter and Paul and other great leaders of the church may have been martyred.

The number 666 that is the mark carried by followers of the evil beast

Is also the number corresponding to the name “Nero Caesar.”

There are lots of other references in Revelations to the city and the empire of Rome.

The message is that Rome will receive God’s judgment.

Not only is Rome actively killing Christians, but the Roman empire has also demolished Jerusalem, the center city for God’s people.

Rome sacked the sacred Temple and carried away the objects of worship, publicly deriding the Jewish people and their religion.

Think of how Americans felt just after September 11^th, or even now, in the wake of another terrorist attack, at the Boston Marathon, where people are supposed to come together in a time-honored, peaceful athletic competition,

The sense of violation and injustice.

Now imagine what the Jewish people felt, not only to have their sacred places violated, their homeland completely  destroyed, and many unarmed men, women, and children killed, but to be scattered and enslaved by their conquerors.

And now Nero has killed so many of the preachers and disciples.

To all appearances, Jesus and the message of God’s reign on earth have lost.

So when John envisions a heavenly city, a new Jerusalem, coming down from heaven,

It is the restoration of what the power and greed of Rome have destroyed,

It is the triumph of God and God’s people.

God wins.

The new Jerusalem will be more holy, more loving, more just than the one before,

And God will be everywhere within it.

The home of God will be among mortals.

In Greek the word translated “home” is actually more literally rendered “tabernacle,” and the sentence could be translated, “the tabernacle of God is among mortals, and God tabernacles among mortals.”

In the wake of the destruction of the temple, God’s people are wondering,

Now that the temple is gone, where is the tabernacle?

Where is the holy place?

Where does God live?

Where is God’s home?

To a Christian, to one who believes that God fully entered our world through Jesus the Christ,

To a Christian, who believes that in Jesus, God loved us so much that he became one with us,

So that God is not distant, not a faraway, impartial judge in the sky,

God is one of us, God is our friend, who will never forsake us,

To a Christian, of course God is not confined to a temple or shrine, of course the home of God is among mortals.

I’m always a little surprised when Christian clergy refuse to perform a wedding in places other than a church.

Because I believe that God is everywhere.

God is always among us whether we realize it or not.

God is at our hurried macaroni meals

And our Thanksgiving feasts.

God was there when the dog breathed his last

And when mom yelled at dad for burning that circle in the table.

God was there every night we pulled Grandpa’s wheelchair up for dinner,

And God is there at the silent dinners when we feel most alone.

God is there, just as God is here, at our table, at the center of our church family’s home.

Perhaps we don’t notice God,

We usually don’t save a place for him as Jews sometimes save a place for Elijah,

We get so caught up in our busyness and stress, in the bills and the forms and the to-do-lists that pile up on our tables,

That we don’t see that God is there,

Loving us,

Calling to us,

Listening to us,

Watching us,

Smiling, frowning, caring,

Wiping the tears from our eyes.

But the message of God’s Word is that God was here, God is here, and God will be there, with us.

We don’t quite see it now.

Our glimpses of God, the whispers of God’s voice we hear,

Are just a foretaste.

We are waiting, ever and always waiting, for God’s new heaven and earth,

For the new Jerusalem to be fully revealed.

But the good news to me is that heaven is a place of life.

When well-meaning Christians describe heaven as constant worship,

Where we will be like angels continually singing God’s praise,

Giving glory to God,

I have to admit I have always worried that I’ll get tired or dare I say, bored, in heaven.

But here we have the image of heaven as the new Jerusalem,

A holy city,

And cities are places where life happens.

Cities are places full of homes

Full of energy

Cities are places where merchants call out on the streets

And busses zip by

Where there is excitement and color

And always something new.

Cities are centers, homes, of humanity,

And God is in the midst of all that.

Life can be holy.

Life fully present with God is a form of worship.

And God is in the midst of our life, making it holy.

It is OK to love life, because God loves life.

God is in the midst of our homes,

In the midst of our offices,

In the midst of our supermarkets and parking lots

And soccer fields,

Right beside us, where we belong, is where He belongs, too.

Look a bit closer, and you will see,

Perhaps God, too, has made His mark on your kitchen table.

Drive

“Thomas cried, My Lord and My God!”

The women have returned from their journey

Smiling, breathless, their faces full of hope and joy

The tomb is empty!  Christ is risen!

And as the disciples listen to this story, a bit unsure,

Jesus appears among them!

Were the disciples full of joy?

Did they run to tell their parents and spouses and children and neighbors the good news?

That their follower is not dead?

No!  They are hunkered down in a locked room.

Afraid that it was a hallucination after all,

The product of the emotional ordeal they have just been through.

Afraid that the fate of their leader awaits them.

They are paralyzed by fear, unable to move forward.

Are we any different?

The church is paralyzed by fear, unable to move forward.

We are afraid to tell others of our beliefs.

Afraid to say something politically incorrect.

Afraid of what people will think of us, and how it will affect our lives.

So many Presbyterians have our faith in neutral.

The engine’s on but we aren’t going anywhere.

Driving forward can be a scary thing.

Many afternoons I drive out of the church parking lot sometime between 4:30 and 6

Where I am met with a line of essentially parked cars

Driving North on Adams.

When finally a lane of traffic clears enough that I think I can make it, I look right,

And there’s a car coming South.

Driving is often a leap of faith, whether we realize it or not.

I can think of at least two sappy romance movies that end with the doomed lover driving into a blind curve.

And the poor sap is always smiling, thinking of their beloved, as the truck, and it’s always a truck, rounds the bend.

Think Downton Abbey.

OK if you haven’t watched it yet, I didn’t say who it was.

Driving is full of unknowns. 

At some point, you have to move forward,

You have to trust your depth perception and the adjudged speed of the other cars and put it in drive.

The disciples are stuck in neutral.

They have witnessed Jesus’s victory over death.

And here they are, not only failing to go into the world and share the good news, but actually locked away from the world.

Martin Luther writes, they are not actually faced with any physical threat, the threat is in their minds, keeping them from the peace of Christ.

Does that not sound like the church of today?

Among these disciples, Thomas stands out as the most faithful.

No, you did not hear me wrong.

Thomas is the most faithful because he alone failed to encounter Jesus, but he’s there anyway.

This is the same Thomas who, earlier in John’s Gospel, asked Jesus, “Lord, how do we know where you are going?  How can we know the way?”

This is a guy who wants directions to Heaven.

He’s practical.

At another point in the Gospel, Jesus is going on to Bethany, although he knows people there who want to kill him.

The disciples hang back, unwilling to follow.

Thomas is realistic.  He says, “Let’s go and die with him.”

He is realistic, yet willing to die for Jesus.

He looks at the evidence and draws conclusions.

He does his research.

Thomas is an engineer.

And Thomas suspects it’s some sort of group hallucination.

A spiritual Jesus appearing in his followers’ hearts.

So he says, unless this Jesus is someone who I can touch, unless I put my finger in the nail marks and my hand in his side, I won’t believe.

Thomas refers to the brutal events of Jesus’s death he witnessed and cannot forget.

Thomas is not an atheist. 

He is a believer who has gone through some difficult events

And is having difficulty believing in this miracle.

But he is there.

He’s in the community of believers, still working for the message of what Jesus stood for, faith, love, justice, and grace.

There are Thomases here today, I believe.

Questioning the truth of the Gospel

Sitting with your doubts

But you’re here, warming a pew,

Still working.  Still praying.

And that is when faith becomes strong.

It’s like love, marriage, is not fully mature

In those early honeymoon days.

That’s why Romeo and Juliet is not my love story.

You know you are a grown up when you have little sympathy for Romeo and Juliet,

Caught up in their romantic idealization,

And instead identify with the poor priest trying to help these tempestuous teens.

Juliet never has to deal with Romeo’s grumpy moods,

Romeo never has to love Juliet when she’s shrill and whiny.

Love, real love, happens when a couple’s commitment has been tested

By trials and by doubt, and they choose to love one another anyway.

In the same way, faith is not mature

Until we have asked the difficult questions,

Until we have had to trust through periods when we feel God is absent,

Until we really choose to hope where we cannot see.

So if you are Thomas, hoping where you cannot see,

Warming a pew though you feel God is far from you,

I will say something to you that some may find controversial.

Take communion today.

Receive Christ with your doubts and fears.

Like Thomas, keep living out your faith, troubled though you may be.

Because it is here, as doubting, faithful Thomas sits in the church,

That Thomas encounters Christ.

And I believe that you will encounter Christ here,

As you receive him with your body,

As you accept him in your heart.

When Thomas sees Christ, when Christ speaks to him,

Thomas does not need to perform all the research he once thought.

The love and compassion of Christ are the proof his heart needs.

In Christ’s words, spoken with great love.

“Do not doubt, but believe.”

We often think of these words as a rebuke to Thomas for his unbelief.

But a rebuking tone does not fit with Thomas’s overwhelming joy,

As he worships his Savior, crying, “My Lord and my God!”

In Greek, the words which the New Revised Standard Version translates “Do not doubt, but believe,”  would be better translated, “Do not be unbelieving, be believing.”

Or in other words, do not be paralyzed by doubt, don’t live your life in neutral, put it in drive.

And Thomas responds with the clearest confession of faith in the Bible:  My Lord and My God.

When he looks into the eyes of Jesus he is looking at the creative power that gave birth to the Universe,

And not only does he believe in the truth of the resurrection, but he believes something no one else has ever dared to say:  that this man embodies God with us and for us.

In so doing, Thomas provides the eyewitness testimony for the statement John makes at the beginning of his Gospel:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

It is watching this encounter, hearing the words of Thomas, seeing for themselves doubt turned to faith,

That propels the disciples out of neutral.

They unlock the door and spill out

To tell the good news in Jerusalem.

If you have encountered Christ,

If you have seen the face of compassion,

If God’s truth has spilled into your heart,

Do not keep it locked up.

Do not live paralyzed by fear.

Do not live your life in neutral, put it in drive.

Like Thomas, who, very early and very good tradition tells us,

Founded seven churches in Kerala, India

Because there are people who need the hope that Jesus offers,

And at some point the risks of taking a leap of faith are eclipsed by the risks of standing still.

Are there 7 churches God is calling you to found?

Is there someone God needs you to love?

Are there people in the world who are in need of resources you can provide?

Not just financial resources,

But resources of time, or faith, or kindness?

Life is too short to live in a locked room.

Life is too precious to waste in neutral.

Get out of here and share the good news.

Love is alive.  God is real. 

Your journey opens before you. 

Drive on.

Whatever happened to Lazarus?

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. ²There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.

Did you know that the valley of the shadow of death is a real place?

It’s the name given to the valley between Jerusalem and Jericho in the Holy Land,

A stark, barren, desert place

Where thieves and beasts seek to devour the lost and weak.

It’s the place where the traveler was set upon by robbers in Jesus’s story of the Good Samaritan,

And the place where, tradition tells us, Jesus spent his forty days fasting and praying.

In Lent, we, too, walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

Like Jesus, we walk through this barren wilderness,

Fasting, praying, realizing our dependence on God.

Realizing that we are dust, and to dust we shall return.

Death is inevitable.

Western medicine wants us to believe our bodies can be kept going forever.

The Bible says we are dust, and to dust we shall return.

I think the Bible is more reliable in this instance.

We are all walking through the valley of the shadow of death.

We know death is there, waiting for us.

Death casts a shadow over all our living.

Death casts its shadow over the story of Lazarus, Mary, Martha, and Jesus.

They are at dinner together and it is as though death is in the room with them.

Lazarus sits at the table, newly raised from the dead.

It’s almost funny in a dark sort of way.

A couple of days ago, he was in the tomb,

And now, he’s slurping chicken soup.

I picture him twitching a bit, then he opens his mouth and a moth flies out.

The stench of death still clings to him. 
He’s odd, even a bit scary.

And then Mary performs this strange action, of anointing Jesus for his burial.

It is an action of thanks for what he has done for her brother.

Yet Jesus interprets it as preparation for his own death.

Then at the very end of the story, we hear that death still lurks for Lazarus.

The chief priests, even now, plot to have him killed.

The shadow of death lingers over this story as it lurks about our lives.

It’s a strange story, the story of Lazarus.

There are so many unanswered questions.

Why is it told in only one Gospel, the fourth Gospel?

If this was such a great miracle, why don’t the others report it?

It makes us wonder if the Lazarus story is really true?

Did Lazarus himself question what happened?

There are so many questions we want to ask him!

Lazarus, what was it like? What did you see? Did death hurt? Were you afraid?

While so many people have written bestselling books about their near-death experiences, glimpses of pearly gates and angels in white,

The major Biblical figure to die and live to tell about it is entirely silent on the matter.

We know so very little about Lazarus.

He was not one of the twelve,

But he is the only person in the Gospels Jesus calls a friend.

Jesus loved him.  Jesus wept when he died.

But after Lazarus is raised, after he walks out of the tomb and takes the grave clothes off and we hope, takes a shower,

What did he do next?

How do you live in the valley of the shadow of death?

How do you live knowing that death is so close,

And it’s only because of the mercy of God that you’re alive?

How do you live knowing you must face death again?

There are stories floating around about the life of Lazarus after death.

In the film the Last Temptation of Christ, Nikos Kazantzakis takes the option that the chief priests succeed in their plot, so that Lazarus is raised only to die a few days later.

The church’s tradition is that Lazarus stayed with his sisters and spread the message of Jesus, becoming an early bishop.  The Western Catholic tradition that he settled in France, the Eastern Orthodox that he settled in Cyprus.

Whoever you believe, all agree that Lazarus was raised only to die again.

He lived the rest of his life in the valley of the shadow of death.

Mary was thankful for what Jesus did, but was Lazarus thankful?

Did he believe that his life was a gift from the God of Jesus?

Or did he dwell in the shadow of death,

Consumed with fear of the end that awaited him,

An end that he knew better than anyone?

As I think of Lazarus, someone who Jesus saved,

I think of someone who has a choice.

Choose faith that the God who saved him will save him again,

Or choose fear.

This is the choice all of us face.

We, like Lazarus, have known the saving power of God.

If you are sitting here today, you have probably known that power.

Or suspected it.

Perhaps you were raised from the tomb of alcoholism or abuse,

Depression or divorce.

Or perhaps, less dramatically, you saw God’s power in the majesty of creation, in the stories of miracles, in the eyes of your child, in the power of worship.

You believed that God saved you then, and you felt that God alone could and would save you again.

So then, how do you live?

You have a choice.

You, me, we all are walking through the valley of the shadow of death.

Sometimes there are patches of light.

Sometimes we walk in total darkness.

We can choose to walk alone.

Or we can take God’s hand.

Will you choose fear, or faith?

What did Lazarus choose?

As he sits here at the table, Mary anoints Jesus,

Mary overflows with thanks.

But we hear nothing of Lazarus.

Perhaps he was joyful.

But I think it more likely, given what he went through,

That he was in emotional turmoil, distress,

Disoriented, scared, to hear that his savior and friend now faced death,

To wonder what that meant,

Whether this man was a magic show charlatan, or an incarnation of the Holy One of Israel.

Whether to trust in what he could not see, to live a life of faith in a God whose mercies are everlasting and whose goodness is wider than the sea,

or choose a smaller life, a life of fear and grasping, the life so many choose of hoarding time and things, or to live for something more.

Two ways to live: the life of me first, or in Christ alone.

To walk alone,

Or to take God’s hand.

The Bible tells us simply that Lazarus was there.  Maybe he wasn’t ready to tell his story, but he showed up. 

And sometimes, that’s enough.

To show up for Jesus.  To hear his message.  To come to the table with your friends and your family and your small, wavering faith.

The Bible tells us his story was bringing others to faith, enough so that he was a threat to those who were against Jesus’s message.

Faced with a choice, it seems Lazarus did not shrink back into a solitary and selfish life.

Lazarus chose faith.

Julian of Norwich chose faith.

At the age of thirty, in medieval England, she fell victim to the Black Plague.

She believed herself to be on her deathbed, and lost all feeling from the waist down.

Then she had a vision, of Christ, on the cross, looking down on her, with love.

She recovered from her illness and took vows as an anchoress,

Spending the remaining two to three decades of her life in one small room,

Giving up her freedom to serve God in a solitary life of prayer.

Julian wrote down her visions in the Shewings of Divine Love, which is the earliest English writing by a woman.

She recorded beliefs about God uncommon for that time,

a God not of wrath and cruelty, but of grace and mercy.

A God whom she believed to be like a mother, a Christ who was a brother to her.

Her God worked through all things, even suffering.

The Spirit showed her, in her words, that Love is our Lord’s meaning, and in time, all manner of thing shall be well.

In a time many thought of as a living hell,

Walking through the valley of the shadow of death,

She did not fear, but took the hand of God.

In 1967, at the age of 17, Joni Ereakson dove into water not seeing how shallow it was,

And was paralyzed from the neck down, a quadriplegic.

She writes, “many friends would say to me, from Romans 8:28, “Joni, all things fit together to a pattern for good.” When your heart is being wrung out like a sponge, sometimes the 16 good biblical reasons as to why all this has happened to you sting like salt in the wound. When people are going through great trauma, great grief, they don’t want answers. Because answers don’t reach the problems where it hurts in the gut, in the heart.”

She would never walk again.

Never walk down the aisle to marry the man of her dreams.

Never have a child.

Never even hold her own fork.

Walking through the valley of the shadow of death,

She did not fear, but took the hand of God.

Joni had been an artist before her accident.

She chose to paint again, using her mouth to hold the brush.

She chose to tell her story, to dictate a book to give other quadraplegics hope.

In her life she has written fifty books, which have won numerous awards.

She founded Wheels for the World  distributing wheelchairs, canes, and other aids to people with disabilities all across the globe.

She holds retreats for people with disabilities and their families to find friends and new their faith.

And in 1982, she married Brian Tada, who showed her and many others that love conquers all things.

Walking through the valley of the shadow of death,

She did not fear, but took the hand of God.

In 2006 sixteen year old Kristin Elliot was diagnosed with a rare and incurable cancer, called Synovial Cell Sarcoma in Stage III.

Make a Wish contacted Kristin and asked her what her wish would be.

She had seen a video about the situation of orphans in Zambia, Africa,

And her wish was to build an orphanage for the children of AIDS victims there.

Make a Wish generously gave her the first $2600, but the project would cost $60,000.

Through the support of her family, friends, and church, all the money was raised, and they built the orphanage plus an AIDS clinic.

In the summer of 2007 she visited the village in Zambia and describes it as the best experience of her life.

Today Kristin still fighting cancer, but she’s also going to college, and most importantly to her, she is sharing the good news of God’s love by helping some of the most vulnerable people of the world.

Walking through the valley of the shadow of death,

She did not fear, but took the hand of God.

We walk on.

Though shadows lurk about me,

I have a hand to hold.

I know you will hold my hand.

Together, we will take the hand of God.

We will choose faith over fear.

We will choose love over selfishness.

We will choose to believe that life triumphs over death,

Like Lazarus, we will trust

that the Jesus who led us out of the tomb once will be take our hand once more.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Fireside chats

These are the days when the fights over the covers are fiercest.

These are the days when the dog runs out, does her business, and runs right back in.

These are the days when you slather on that hand lotion and Blistex over our frozen fingers and cracked lips.

These are the days when we go to homes.com to see how much that condo in Florida would really cost.

Baby, it’s cold outside.

It’s a good time to build a fire in the fireplace and cuddle up close to someone you love.

Fires, real wood fires, are for middle class Americans more a source of comfort than of physical warmth, enjoying central heat as so many of us do.

But for most of our history fire was a central part of the human experience.

Archaelogists believe that humans began by making good use of naturally occurring fires, but eventually discovered how to build fires for cooking, fashioning tools, for defense, light, heat, and even communication. 

Our ability to create fire sets us apart from other creatures.

It’s an amazing ability; the ancient Greeks believed that humans stole the first fire from the god Prometheus. 

Wielding fire is the tool of the divine, and it gives us great power.

For thousands of years, families and communities gathered around the fire to eat, to worship, to discuss, and to share.

Everyone brought something to share.

A woman would bring her loom, a man would bring his drum,

A girl would bring a story, a boy would bring a joke.

Hot drinks were passed around, and you were warmed

As much by one another as by the flames.

It was not always comfortable.

As the fire shifted, there were some places a bit too hot, others too cool.

And if you were not careful, you could get burned.

It was smoky, it was unpredictable, and from time to time, someone would need to bring a new log to the hearth.

It was not always comfortable, but it was comforting, the crackle and warmth, the light and the woody scent.

There was the sense, sitting by the fire, holding a hand to its heat,

That we were all in it together, and if we bundled up and huddled close, we would get through.

That’s the sense President Franklin Delano Roosevelt evoked in his Fireside Chats.

During the Great Depression and the Second World War, the President addressed the nation, beginning with the words, “Good evening, friends,”

Reassuring a frightened people that with creativity and hard work, with fortitude and sacrifice, we would get through,

If we bundled up, and huddled together, we’d make it.

In the past hundred years, families have moved from gathering around the fire, to gathering around the radio, to gathering around the television,

And in many families, each person goes to his own room to watch his own show.

We’ve lost the sense of community,

And we’re falling out of practice of sharing.

We no longer need to keep one another warm.

We don’t need to huddle close and take turns getting up to put another log on.

We just turn up the thermostat.

And we no longer need the stories and the jokes, the music and art, we’ve got HBO.

We don’t practice sharing every night, we practice consumption.

So is it any wonder that when we come to church, when we come to worship, many of us come not to share, but to be entertained?

We church shop for the pastor that’s most captivating, the professional-grade choir, the brilliant, renowned organist, the coolest band, the HD screen with brilliantly edited video illustrations, the awe-inspiring sanctuary.

We church shop, we do not church share.

We come to consume, not to give.                                                      

Not to inspire one another, to pour out our own hearts, to give our stories, our jokes, our songs. 

Not to give, but to receive.

“I didn’t get anything out of church today.” 

“I don’t really get anything out of that church anymore.”

People seek a church with comfy padded seats and cupholders, where they can come in their jeans, cross their legs and drink their coffee while they listen to the sermon.

I’m not saying we should not reach out to the community.

I’m not saying we should not strive for beautiful and inspiring worship.

I’m saying that if you aren’t getting enough out of church the problem probably isn’t God.

I’m saying that if we aren’t getting enough out of church the problem is the way we do church.

What if I told you my marriage was having trouble, that I wasn’t getting much out of my relationship with my husband? 

Would you immediately say, well, you just shouldn’t go back home.  Or would you ask, what have you been doing as a couple?  Been going on dates?  Spending time and money to show your love for one another?  Have you made your marriage a priority?  Sacrificed, worked, taken out the trash and mowed the lawn and done the thousands of tiny acts of love your lover needs?  Have you gone to counseling?  Have you read books? 

If you’re not getting anything out then what are you putting in?

Our relationship with God, our life as Christians and as a church, works the same way.

The more we give to God, the more we share with one another, the more blessings we will receive.

Not necessarily in a physical way, but spiritually.

When you come to church and bring your story, your song, your joke,

When you bring your dish to share and you pass around your work of art,

You feel accepted and appreciated and loved.

You see the way that you have helped comfort and inspire others and your heart feels a little warmer.

I don’t hear the deacons tell me, “I am so sorry I spent all that time visiting that older couple.  I could have been reading a book.”

I have never heard a member of the choir tell me, “What a waste of every Wednesday night, I have to miss Modern Family.”

I have never heard a Knit Wits crafter say, “All this praying and knitting prayer shawls is hurting my hands.”

And I’ve never heard someone say, “I don’t know why I went on that mission trip and slept on a church basement floor when I could have gone to a resort instead.”

Why?

Because you have only this one small life, and the most amazing thing you can do with it is to give it away.

Jesus probably never read a book. 

He would have been too poor to own one.

He never got to watch any Modern Family.

Didn’t take a single vacation.

And the work that he did, surely hurt his hands.

But his life transformed mine and yours and the life of the world,

Because in Jesus God gave it all away.

The early church in Corinth was burning so brightly for Christ,

That everyone brought a song, a prophecy,

People sang out in indecipherable tongues, utterances of the Holy Spirit that were not in a language they even knew,

And they performed healings with power that could not be explained or understood.

There was so much spiritual life bubbling in that community

That Paul calls them to bring some order so that they can make sure to value the gifts that everyone brings.

To respect the people who fold the church newsletter as well as those who cast out demons.

Paul also wanted to make sure newcomers weren’t scared off by the spiritual fervor.

Now it’s like we have the opposite problem.

We are so decent, so orderly, that sometimes I think people are scared that if their gift isn’t perfect it’s not good enough.

But our gifts don’t have to be perfect, they just have to be real.

Our worship is not a performance.

Church is not entertainment, and worship is not a consumer good.

We need people to get up and go get a log for this fire.

We need people to open up and share your stories, your jokes, your songs,

We need people to bring the casseroles and prepare the communion,

People to rock the babies and help the elderly to their seats.

Our community is like Corinth in that we need to think less about our own spiritual experiences and more about the experience of the people around us.

Paul called the church at Corinth to translate their ecstatic tongues

So that it would build up the community, so that the newcomer would know

About the good news of Jesus and his love.

He called the Corinthians

To think about how worship could build one another up.

How can you build up your neighbor in worship?

Who needs your smile, your hug,

Who needs your voice to sing a hymn,

To preach a sermon,

To read a Scripture today?

Who needs you to come to the congregational meeting

To stop saying, someone else will do that,

To stop saying, my kids are too young or my kids are too old

Or when I’m retired or when I have more time

And to be the one to get up and say I’ll do it

I’ll ush, I’ll do flowers, I’ll join the choir, I’ll join a committee

Someone needs you to get up and put a log on the fire

Someone who needs that warmth, someone who needs that light

This world needs you to keep the fire going.

Because one day the static of technology will not be enough.

One day the lost and the lonely who are all around us will long for something more.

Long for something that crackles,

Something that ignites,

Something that isn’t always comfortable,

Never predictable,

But always, deeply real.

The light and heat and energy that burns at the heart of the universe and the center of the earth, that gave you life and breath and keeps you warm,

The light on which you and I truly depend for our everything, our all.

I call that light God.

And this is where I come.

To draw near to the flame.

To receive His warmth.

To draw upon Her light.

To huddle together with my brothers and sisters and friends

To share my story, to bring my song, to pass around the fruits of my labor, meager as they may be,

And to know that I am not alone.

To renew my trust that if we huddle close, and bundle together, and lift up our hands to the fire,

Together, we’ll make it through this long winter.

We’ll come together, we’ll keep one another warm, day by day, week by week,

And then, one day--

Spring.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Superheroes

"Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him."

Last December for a solid month if Dan and I were to call out, Diana Mae, we would get no response,
My daughter would only respond to one name:  Batman.
Eventually we sat her down and explained that she was not Batman, she was a girl.
She thought for a moment and solemnly proclaimed, OK.  Now I will be Batgirl.
And it has gone beyond this.  In the middle of the night, if she has a bad dream, she calls out, “Catwoman!”  And I must admit, I don’t mind being compared to the likes of Ann Hathaway, Halle Berry and Julie Newmar.
After all, poor Dan has to be Robin.
Even Rosie and M were renamed Batdog and Batkitty.
I’m certain that in my daughter’s mind, we all wear masks and capes, and spend our days walking the streets, fighting crime.
Di loves Batman The Animated Series from the 90s, prefers it to Dora or Disney princesses.
I sit down and watch the episodes with her,
And although there’s nothing explicit, (no, I have not let her watch The Dark Night Rises), there’s something, well, dark and gritty lurking behind every corner in Gotham City.
Batman is such a recession superhero.
The badguys don’t seem to be so much the source of the problem as emanating from the general poverty and grimness eclipsing the city.
Batman is not Superman, with his bright red cape and X ray vision.
Batman’s powers don’t seem to have any supernatural source at all.
He simply has access to good technology, great strength, resourcefulness, and discipline,
An unflagging sense of justice and the perseverance of the right.
Truly the dark knight, the caped crusader,
He lurks, vigilant, in the shadows.
It’s hard to believe he is there.
It’s hard to believe that someone cares,
Someone with the power to keep us safe.
But then, we hear the whisper of a cape
We see the shadow of a mask
We glimpse a signal in the dark
He is watching, ever vigilant.  He is there.
Why must the superhero wear a cape and a mask?
Why doesn’t he reveal himself?
Is he afraid of hurting someone?
Are there truths that cannot be known?
Diana Mae is rather confused that they spend so much time with this Bruce Wayne character.
Where is Batman?  She asks, unknowing that Batman is right before her.
Just like Lois Lane longs for Superman and won’t give Clark Kent the time of day,
Or Vicki Vale thinks of Bruce as a silly playboy.
It’s amazing the way the superhero goes about life incognito, unnoticed except to a very select few.
When Jesus goes on the mountaintop to pray,
It’s clear that something amazing is about to happen because he brings those select few who suspect the truth,
Those three sidekicks, with him.
Peter, James, and John, the same three who will be the only ones to witness Jesus’s raising of Jairus’s daughter,
The same three who will be the very last by his side, praying, on the night of his arrest,
These are the three for whom Jesus will remove his mask,
And reveal his true identity,
The dazzling light that always surrounded Jesus,
But which God kept secret for only a few, only this once.
They are amazed to see him talking with Moses and Elijah, the heroes of the faith,
And Peter, overcome by this glory, which he has waited so long to see,
Never wants to leave this place.
He cries out, let us build three booths here for you,
And immediately a cloud descends, his heart falls
As the beautiful light is masked once more.
Did you ever see that glorious light?
The instant the Scripture spoke into your heart
And you caught a glimpse of dazzling light.
You never wanted to leave either.
We want to pull off the mask and cape and look into the face of a superhero
We want to stay on the mountaintop and bask in the light
We want Batman, not Bruce Wayne
The goodness of the soup kitchen, the ordinariness of God in the day to day
Ordinary miracles don’t quite captivate us
We want superpowers
We want miracles
We want glory
Especially in February
With funerals nearly every week
Goodness has grown tired.
We are still in Recession, still at war
Detroit’s problems are worse than even Gotham.
We pray, we try to hold on to faith,
But nine times out of ten the people we pray for are not healed
Nine times out of ten there is no miracle, no superhero swoops in to save the day.
We long to see God’s glory.
We pray for a miracle.
And when it happens, we want to build an edifice, a church, a sanctuary and stay there forevermore.
But we can’t.
That’s not what God wants.
This is not the fullness of glory, what happens here.
It is just a glimpse.
Dazzling white clothes, a shiny face, do we think this is God in all his glory?
Our senses could not comprehend that vision.
This is not all God wants to do.
Not all.
Not nearly all.
That’s why though scholars and historians beg to know the name of the mountain, Matthew and Mark and Luke don’t record it, not anywhere.
Because this is not all.  We can’t stay here.
Sometimes Presbyterians just want to quietly contemplate the vision, the dazzling light,
We select few who know the truth,
Never removing the masks we wear
To let the world know our true identity, who we really are and whose we really are and why we do the things we do.
But we can't stay here.  This is not all God wants from us.
John Calvin asks, “What if the kingdom of Christ had been confined in this way, the way Peter wants, to the narrow limits of twenty or thirty feet? Where would have been the redemption of the whole world? Where would have been the communication of eternal salvation?”
The disciples want to stay,
But the road below beckons.
They must come down to where the sick are waiting to be healed and the lost are waiting to be found and death is waiting for the hero.
They must come down to a garden where Jesus will pray once more and this time the disciples will not stay awake.
They must come down to where Jesus will be lifted among them once more this time on a cross shining with power not even they will understand.
They must come down and they must remember the words:  This is my Son, the Chosen One.  Listen to him.
Alan Culpepper writes that If God only wanted to say nine words to us, they would be these.
You and I have heard those words.
You and I have been up that mountain.
That’s why we’re here.
A strange light.
An odd coincidence.
A stone rolled away.
That one time out of a hundred when we prayed and something did happen the doctors could not explain.
The way my daughter speaks constantly and affectionately to her Grandpa Joe, my husband’s father, who died a decade before she was born, but whose picture she recognized instantly at eleven months of age.
You and I know there is more.
We know that someone is there, someone who cares.
We’v heard the whisper of a cape.
Caught the shadow of a mask.
Glimpsed a signal in the dark.
A glimpse of something more.
We must carry that memory with us.
On dark days, we must draw on its strength.
And we must carry on.
We must come down the mountain,
return to being ordinary people living ordinary lives,
to being Bruce and Clark,
Teaching.  Recycling. Volunteering.  Writing checks. Doing the dirty work of love and justice and grace.
But if you were to look closer,
You’d catch a glimpse of something,
Of someone,
Acts of such power and such love,
We ask,
Was he just there?
Did you see that?
Look there, in the sky!
If you were to look close,
You would see that the greatest superpower of all is Love and He is at work among and within and through our ordinary acts of love and peace and justice.
You would see the truth that only children know,
That we, you and I, here and now,
We are superheroes.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Bridging the Gap--Connecting With Teens

As the holiday decorations are put away and the cleanup commences, many of us are left with fond memories of time spent with our families, in particular the young ones.

At the same time, many of us wish there was more we could have done to connect with our children and grandchildren.  Maybe your Christmas conversations with a teen went something like this:

“So, how’s school going?”

“Fine.”

“And how’s your soccer team doing?”

“Fine.”

“Are you and your brother getting along well?”

“Fine.”

“Did you notice that the Christmas tree is on fire?”

“Fine.”

You may have found yourself wondering what was inside that iPhone/iPod/iPad that was so all-consuming.  Directions to the lost city of gold?  Colonel Sanders’ secret recipe?

The culture of teens, pre-teens, and “tweens” these days is so far removed from previous generations.  The technological shift has made even more of an impact on the young than the rest of us, and their stage of life, with its questions of identity and conformity, makes them very ripe for all the marketing and the social possibilities these devices make possible.  So how to connect?  How to bridge the gap to gap.com, or wherever it is their world is?

In my work with teenagers, I’ve found that to be most helpful to them, we have to meet them where they are.  That’s a tricky and uncomfortable thing to do, because where they are is a weird no-man’s-land between the wonder of childhood and the responsibility of adulthood.  Adolescence is a bizarre social construction that’s only been around a couple of hundred years.

Throughout most of human history, you were a child up until the age of twelve or thirteen, and then you went through a rite of passage.  If you were Jewish, it was a bar mitzvah.  If you were Sioux, you went on a vision quest.  If you were a girl, you took your place in the women’s hut.  Before the ritual, you were a child.  After the ritual, you were an adult, expected to work alongside the others, and eligible for marriage.  Your life and its expectations were well defined by the community.

Today, rather than one ritual, the period between childhood and adulthood stretches on for years, even decades.  What ritual, or event, would define the transition from child to adult in our culture?

□      Puberty—12-14

□      Confirmation—13 or 14

□      Driver’s license—16

□      Voting/military eligibility—18

□      Marriage eligibility—18

□      Legal tobacco age—18

□      High school graduation—18

□      Legal drinking age—21

□      College graduation—22

□      Graduate or professional school graduation—25

□      Able to rent a car—25

□      Average age of marriage—25-28

□      Average age of becoming a parent—25-29

□      Average age of first home ownership—34

So from puberty to full adulthood, there’s an almost two decade period.  We have stretched the ritual out to be one-quarter of a person’s life.

And what makes this more difficult is, the culture no longer really defines our roles for us.  There’s an endless number of choices to make along that spectrum, aren’t there?  You get a driver’s license.  Should you get a car?  What kind?  You’re eligible to vote.  Who do you vote for?  You can have sex, buy alcohol, use tobacco.  Should you?  Should you go to college?  Where?  Get married?  To whom?  These choices are very liberating, and at the same time, terrifying.  What if you make the wrong choice?  How do you know what to do?  Studies have shown that while a limited number of choices make people feel empowered, being flooded with choices causes people to feel overwhelmed, anxious, and even depressed.  Sound like adolescence to you?

What emotions do you remember feeling when you were an adolescent?  If you were anxious, what were you anxious about?

□      Attraction

□      My attractiveness

□      School

□      Friends

□      Finding a group

□      Parties

□      Athletics

□      Family

□      Who am I?

□      Am I good enough?

□      Am I smart/pretty/funny/athletic/cool enough?

□      What am I going to do with my life?

□      Who will love me?

When you are a teen, you are figuring out who you are and who you belong with, because that is what your body and your mind and your culture are all telling you to do.  This is, for many people, the hardest work of their lives.

Now add to that many teens today have family situations that are more complicated.  Their parents may be divorced.  Their parents may be dating.  Their parents may be remarried. 

Their parents may have never figured out who they are, what they are going to do with their lives, whether they are good enough, or who they belong with.  If that is the case, the parents will very likely be taken up with their own search for identity and will not have time or energy to guide their children through this process.

As you can see, adolescence is not necessarily a fun place to be.  There’s an excellent book Hurt:  Inside the world of today’s teenagers by Chap Clark which I basically hand out to parents.  It describes the struggles of teens, what they do to cope—the good ways and, unfortunately, the bad ways—and talks about what teens long for:  adults who genuinely care about them and want to get to know them.

Adolescence is not a fun place to be a lot of the time, but if we love our children and grandchildren, we will meet them where they are.  The message of Christmas is that in God loved us enough to meet us where we were, knowing that were we were would not always be a good or a safe or a comfortable place.  If we love teens we will meet them on their level, not as though we are above them and have all the answers, but as though we want to be with them and genuinely want to know what’s going on.  Teens have great BS detectors.  I can remember many, many youth groups when I looked out and saw a wall looking back at me.  Like, you don’t really care who I am or what I’m going through.  It has taken quite a bit to get through that wall and reach them, and some of them I know I will never be able to reach.  We cannot assume teens will immediately trust us, after all, adults have let them down in the past.  To meet them where they are means remembering our own adolescence and what we would have wanted.  Sharing our personal experiences, even and especially our own struggles to discover who we are and where we fit.  And our spiritual experiences, who we believe God to be, and how we came to that understanding.  But most of all, asking good questions, and listening, really listening, to the responses.

Write those questions out beforehand—questions that can’t be answered with, “fine.”  Think of things to do that will be fun for you both.  Middle schoolers love riddles—have some handy—hard ones that will keep them guessing a long time.  Girls can talk well face to face, but boys often need to be side to side—watching TV or a movie, fishing, playing video games.  Figure out ways to do that.  Make appointments to just be with a teenager.  If you only come to their sporting events and award ceremonies, the message is, “I care about you because you achieve.”  Find ways to be in a place where you can just talk.  If it’s in a place with no cell phone signal, all the better.  Get away from the distractions and spend time together.  Take them on a “vision quest”—don’t call it that, but take them somewhere where they can discover who they really are—and who they are is God’s artwork, beautifully and wonderfully made.

The best thing about teenagers is that it is worth the work.  Their energy, insight, their humor, their ability to cut through everything and find the crux of the matter—it keeps you young.  When I started youth ministry, I thought well, it’s not really my calling, but I kinda have to do this for a few years, like all young pastors.  Now, I would not take a call unless there was some aspect of youth ministry.  They make you laugh.  They make you think.  And when you really connect with them, they will love you fiercely.

You have something to give them, too.  If you kind of know who you are, who you belong with, what you want to do with your life, and what you believe in, you can be a helpful and comforting person for them to be around and bounce their thoughts off.  If you are not their parent and not in their parents’ generation, bonus.  Teens connect well with their grandparents’ generation—they trust people who don’t look like their parents.  I involve all generations in my youth ministry.  I took a group of people age 9 to 77 to Costa Rica two years ago, and the 9 year old and the 77 year old preached about it when we got back.  Every small group and work team included all four generations.  In youth group, we have an older couple who the kids love and trust.  Our best evangelist to teens is a septuagenarian who teaches voice.  She encourages her teenage voice students to join our church choir.  Then the other teens, the choir director, and I begin to form a relationship.  Several of these voice students did not grow up in any church.  Two of them I got to baptize.  If I never do anything else good in my life, at least I got to know these kids, and I helped them to know God.

Bridge the gap.  Know that you will probably have to build 90% of that bridge.  Know that it will be worth it.

Church Hymns

The Dentist's Hymn.......................Crown Him with Many Crowns
The Contractor's Hymn..................How Firm a Foundation
The Tailor's Hymn...................Holy, Holy, Holy
The Optometrist's Hymn.................Open My Eyes, That I May See
The Insurance Salesperson’s Hymn……………Blessed Assurance

Marilyn Monroe’s Hymn………………….Rock of Ages, Cleft For Me

The Waiter’s Hymn………………Fill My Cup, Let It Overflow

The Shoe Salesman’s Hymn………………It Is Well With My Soul

The Librarian’s Hymn…………..Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

The Facebook Hymn……………..What A Friend We Have In Jesus

The Paternity Test Hymn………………..What Child Is This