The exuberance of forsythia

forsythia.c2012_b.eckstein

I have friends who hate forsythia. Detest it. Feel the need to proclaim their disdain on social media. For all I know, they probably spit on the bushes when they walk by them. I’ve never tried to plant or tend it so maybe they know something I don’t. Maybe it’s invasive or threatening to other nearby plants. I’m trying to be generous here: maybe they have good reasons for spending their energy hating a plant.

As for me, I delight in it. When we have enough warmish spring days in a row, it peeks its head out with bright – practically neon – yellow blooms, stark against its long, woody, still leafless stems. Everything else in sight – even the early showstoppers like Bradford Pears and cherry trees – is still tucked in for winter and biding its time, when forsythia shows up early to the party, wearing an outlandish hat and too much lipstick, carrying a game of Twister, hollering, “Let’s party!”

In addition to its sheer proclamation of color, I love the way forsythia branches jut out in crazy, spiky, improbable, irrepressible angles, the plant world’s version of the way Elaine used to dance on Seinfeld. It says, This is how I grow, damn it. Woo hoo! It’s spring! I love the way it naturally grows, untamed, wild, exuberant. It pains me to drive past a lawn where someone has taken matters into his own hands, trimming this marvelous beauty into symmetrical bland balls. Forsythia trimmed like this is merely a round bush with a haze of yellow, a herald with his mouth duct-taped so his announcement is garbled. When I see forsythia reined in this way, it reminds me of women who go too far in plucking their eyebrows. Like eyebrows, which on occasion can be too unruly and need a wee bit of help, I understand forsythia requires just a bit – but not too much – pruning help from a restrained gardener, to help it grow into its natural shape without becoming overgrown. Last year’s efforts paying off in early spring blooms; restraint flowering into exuberance.

I’m writing this in the fullness of Holy Week, which follows a fantastic and full weekend of hosting Nadia Bolz-Weber’s visit to Charlottesville, which follows a fantastic and full week of traveling to the Navajo Nation with students on an interfaith service trip. It’s been non-stop lately and I know I’m not the only one.

In the midst of this, the sheer timely gift of forsythia. Something we don’t have to create or remind or schedule, something beautiful that just shows up on time. Something lively, bright, festive, and over-the-top enthusiastic. Something that knows what time it is even when we want to stick our heads back under the covers for another month. Something that simply is – unmanaged, unchosen, uncomplicated beauty. In a leafless, weary world: a gorgeous, energetic, reliable gift of bursting bright beauty.

 

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photo credit: “Forsythia,” © 2012 by Barbara Eckstein, CC BY 2.0

Lax Lent

catholic family ash wed_c2014_rubydw

When, in my adult life, I first heard church folks start talking about “taking on” something for Lent rather than “giving up” something, I thought I would lose it.

I don’t remember observing Ash Wednesday until high school or giving up something for Lent until college. I was still barely getting the hang of any of that when “taking on” became the new “giving up,” but what annoyed me about the change in terms wasn’t only a novice’s frustration. I didn’t like the tone. As in, Giving up is so last Lent. Or, as in, Getting rid of distractions from God and hunger for that which isn’t God, is not enough. Making room in your life to feel that hunger is not enough. You need to do something, too.

I don’t care what anyone else does or does not do for Lent. Really. It’s not up to me to approve and I only care in the sense that a friend or neighbor might need help and encouragement in sticking to their spiritual discipline. Most of the time I don’t share with my students what my own Lenten discipline is, sometimes because it takes me a couple of weeks into Lent to decide, sometimes because it’s too private, but I try to offer them suggestions for their own observances. I try to crack open the ideas we have about it so they can meet God in the strange and wondrous places God’s waiting this year.

This is my favorite Lenten suggestion so far this year: Don’t worry about reading the Bible. And don’t start a mammoth Bible-in-one-year-OK-go-Genesis-page-1 reading plan. Start with setting aside a time and a place – even if you end up reading Twitter during that time. It comes from a colleague’s observations of a bodybuilder, who encourages people to just start going to the gym, even if they only read a magazine once they get there. Making room for the new habit of going to the gym (or daily Bible reading) is the most important part. The rest will come. God will bring it, in the space you hold open.

Why aren’t there more suggestions like this in Christian spiritual life together? Well, because many of us decide to “take on” an hour a day at the gym or “give up” sweets, as if Lent is a season meant for massive self-improvement projects. First lesson: if we could improve ourselves by ourselves, we wouldn’t need Jesus.

Why aren’t there more suggestions like this? Because we don’t believe fervently, deeply, desperately enough in the grace we are already swimming in. Because, no matter how many times we encounter it, the suggestion that resting in God’s presence is prayer enough (without the laundry list wordy prayers, without doing anything else) feels like getting away with something. When I tell students that if they happen to doze off while trying out centering prayer, God will understand and that, maybe, those moments of rest in their sleep-deprived lives could be gifts from God, they humor me. But I don’t think they believe me.

Our toxic culture does not know what to do with space except fill it up with the closest thing to hand. Our nervous, frenzied souls do know what to do with space – but they need encouragement, periods of detox, reintroduction to their natural habitats.

The main reason I resist the “taking on” language is context. The only people I hear talking about this are people who are already too busy, self-critical, and fearful of not measuring up: fast-paced professional people, overcommitted pastors, and worn-thin ambitious college students who already think it’s all up to them. In these contexts, “taking on” is poison – even taking on good and worthy and disciple-making things like visiting prisoners and feeding the homeless. I’m not saying never to engage in those ministries. I’m just saying, if you are the type who is always measuring and always coming up short, no matter how hard you strive and plan and organize and visionboard, maybe this year give space a try. Make your resistance training be the effort it takes not to fill up the time and place you want to reserve for God, to rest in God’s presence. That’s all.

I know this is making some of you itch. Bear with me. Try trusting that even if you think it’s unrepentantly lax, God can meet you in the space of “nothingness” and redeem your “lack.” What have you got to lose?

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Here’s a previous reflection on Lent, including a few other suggestions for unconventional observances.

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photo credit: “Catholic Family Ash Wednesday,” © 2014 by RubyDW, CC BY 2.0

Ash Wednesday Reflection

A reflection for Ash Wednesday, preached at Wesley Memorial/Wesley Foundation during today’s worship services with imposition of ashes.

public domain_wikipedia_800px-Crossofashes

I tried to click on a web page this week and the browser came up with a blank white screen and only these words, small, at the very top: “Too many connections.” 

 

It was the first time I’d seen this particular computer communiqué and it left me wondering.  What does “too many connections” mean?  Too many links on the page to which I was navigating and it didn’t know how to choose the one I wanted to connect with?  Too many other people just dying to get onto the Ministry Matters website right at that very moment?

I still don’t know what it meant and, after a few minutes, the site came up as normal again.  But it’s a good image for starting Lent. 

We are a culture of “too many connections.”  When’s the last time you asked someone how they were and they didn’t respond with some version of “crazy busy!”?  Too much on my plate…too many irons in the fire…not enough hours in the day…

And yet, the season of Lent calls us to pour out some of the fullness and voluntarily empty ourselves.  Lent calls us to clear away that which clutters our ability to connect with God.  Lent calls us to reflection and prayer and renewed spiritual focus, which is exceedingly hard to do when you have too many connections.

So we bring it back down to basics.  Back down to earth.  Right back to where we started.

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  This is what Ed and I will be saying as you come forward to receive the ashes in a few minutes.  It’s a weird thing to say.  It’s an odd thing, on an ordinary Wednesday, to have someone smudge your forehead and remind you of death and dust. 

But it’s also comforting.  It reminds us that God formed us out of regular, ordinary, everyday earth and that one day our bodies will go back to the earth again.  It reminds us that we aren’t superior to or set apart from creation but part of it, connected.

Artist-writer-pastor Jan Richardson says it so beautifully in her blessing for Ash Wednesday (The Painted Prayerbook, “Blessing the Dust”).  She says the ashes remind us that we are:

marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are

but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made,
and the stars that blaze
in our bones,
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.

You’ll head out into Lent today marked with ashes, claimed and called by God.  The way leads to wilderness, through death to life.  Stick with it.

You might be tempted to pack too much for this journey, to take along too many connections, so to speak.  Resist.

Take only what you really need and rest in the knowledge that God can and will provide the rest along the way.

Thanks be to God!

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photo credit:  public domain

Easter Morning: Time to Look Among the Living

Luke 24: 1-12

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body.  While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them.  The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.  Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee,  that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.”  Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest.  Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles.  But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.  But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden_Japanese Garden

The women come to the tomb ready to carry out their burial responsibilities.  They know what happens when people die.  They know what women do when people die.  They have no idea what to do with an empty tomb.  What are they supposed to do now?  What’s the next step?  If the object of their sorrow isn’t still closed up in the tomb, does it make sense for the focus of their attention to stay there – for their lives to stay closed up, tomblike?

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”  That’s the whole story, isn’t it?  Don’t you trust yet that God’s enduring mercy and steadfast love will live through anything?  Don’t you know that love is stronger than death?

Easter morning is the ultimate grounds of our hope.  There is nothing bigger or stronger than God.  There is nothing that can separate us from God.  There is nothing that will stop God’s self-sacrificial love for us.  The only thing to do now is turn our backs on the tomb and go in the direction of Life.

God of life, bring me out of the tombs I haunt.  Show me where life pushes up through the dead places, like new shoots of grass growing up through broken concrete.  Surprise me with life!  Surprise me with hope!  Praise be to you for this and every astonishing day – for bringing us back to life again and again.  Amen.

Holy Saturday

chopped wood in sunlight

Lamentations 3: 1-9, 19-24

I am one who has seen affliction under the rod of God’s wrath; he has driven and brought me into darkness without any light; against me alone he turns his hand, again and again, all day long.  He has made my flesh and my skin waste away, and broken my bones; he has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation; he has made me sit in darkness like the dead of long ago.  He has walled me about so that I cannot escape; he has put heavy chains on me;  though I call and cry for help, he shuts out my prayer;  he has blocked my ways with hewn stones, he has made my paths crooked…The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall!  My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me.  But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:  The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.  “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”

 

I once visited friends in Sweden over Easter weekend.  As we walked through Stockholm on Good Friday, the church bells rang and I asked what name they have for Good Friday.  My friend’s boyfriend, not quite as good at English as she was, insisted on being the one to tell me.  He said, proudly, “We call it ‘Tall Friday.’”  As we continued walking and I mused about why the Swedish would call it that, my friends conferred in Swedish and then he said, sheepishly, “Long.  We call it ‘Long Friday.’”  Apparently the word for “tall” and “long” is the same in Swedish and he picked the wrong English word on his first try.

“Long” makes sense.  Particularly from the perspective of Friday or Saturday, very long days when Easter has not yet revealed its life-giving, life-changing surprise.  “Long” makes sense and it’s easy to feel the pain and confusion of Lamentations in this long, slow, sad time of Holy Week.  It’s easy to think that God “has made me sit in darkness like the dead of long ago…walled me about so that I cannot escape…put heavy chains on me…[and] though I call and cry for help, [God] shuts out my prayer…”

What I love about this passage is that it is full out lamenting.  This is a wail of a prayer and you can feel how deserted the writer feels.  It gives us permission to feel this way, too.  It shows us that for many, many generations there have been times when God’s people have felt completely forsaken.  By its existence in the canon of scripture and by its own words, it gives us permission to feel and express the real, gritty, needy aspects of our humanity.  It’s OK, in the depths of Good Friday and Holy Saturday or in the midst of the low and grief-stricken periods of our own lives, to say it.  It’s OK to cry out and ask where God is and why it hurts so much.

I also love that, right alongside this wail of a prayer, is the firm conviction that no matter how it looks or feels right now, God is here, watching out for us.  “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:  The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, [God’s] mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “  We don’t have to feel that or fully believe it just yet.  It’s enough to know that for many, many generations God’s people have affirmed that God’s love is indeed steadfast, that God is full of mercy, and that this is the basis of our hope.  It’s enough to rest in the collective hope of our faithful ancestors, especially when the day is long and we are besieged.

God in the silence, I call to you.  God in the darkness, I look for your light.  Waiting is not easy but I know you wait with me.  Give me perseverance when I feel like quitting and hope when I feel defeated.  It’s a long time from Friday to Sunday but I have hope you will meet me in the morning.  Amen.

Praise, Palms, Silence, Stones

stone cairn and stone path richmond hill va

Sermon on Luke 19: 28-40  | Palm Sunday

Here’s the thing about English majors:  we believe in metaphors.  I don’t just mean we like them or appreciate them.  I mean we believe in them.  In Franz Kafka’s story, The Metamorphosis, when we read about Gregor Samsa waking up one morning to find that he has transformed into a giant cockroach, we are physically unable to sit back from the story and analyze it “as if” he’s a cockroach.  We don’t want to talk about the person who “thinks” he’s a cockroach.  We want to go deeper:  what does it feel like and how did he know and will his family accept him if he opens his bedroom door?  We accept the premise – the metaphor – and everything else follows from there.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

When Jesus gets to Jerusalem, the place he’s been headed since the beginning, he sends disciples to procure a colt.  He rides the colt into town, amidst a throng of cheering, palm branch-waving people.  The crowd is throwing down cloaks on the road for his colt to walk on.  The excitement builds and the crowd starts shouting out about the miracles and wonders they have seen.  They reach back to the Psalms to praise him, saying, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Luke 19: 38; Psalm 118: 26).

I imagine this scene as just shy of chaos.  The full press of crowds, the inner circle of disciples thrilled with the reception, thinking they are finally all getting the recognition they deserve, people shouting over top of one another, palm branches swaying and sometimes smacking people in the face.  I hear individual shouts that finally come together into this recognizable praise:  “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!  Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” (Luke 19: 38).  Everyone chanting this familiar poetry together in one booming voice.

It’s making the Pharisees nervous and a few of them get close enough to speak to Jesus over the roar.  They say, with concerned looks on their faces, Rabbi, you’d better tell them to stop.  This is getting out of hand here.  Please have them quiet down (v. 39).

And Jesus responds, “I tell you, if these [people] were silent, the stones would shout out” (Luke 19: 40).  In other words, Even if I shushed them and they all fell silent, these stones here on the path would shout out in their place.  Those stone arches into the city would shout praises.  The stones would take their place and continue the chorus.

He doesn’t say The crowd’s too big and I’ll never quiet them down.  He doesn’t say Who them?  But they are praising me and it sounds so gooood.  He doesn’t say anything about whether he could or would quiet them; he simply says that someone else would speak up.  The stones would cry out.

Ah, metaphor!  What is Jesus trying to say by invoking the stones here?

What would that sound like?  Do they all know Psalm 118?  Would we recognize the words?  Would it sound beautiful and scary to us, the way the crowds sounded to those Pharisees?

 

Since our earliest days as Christians, Lent has been a time of preparation, of being intentionally formed into more faithful disciples.  Easter was originally when we baptized new members into the body of Christ and in the very beginning that was after 3 years of preparation.  One of our United Methodist liturgical scholars called Lent of year 3 “the home stretch” – after “three years of learning how to pray, how to listen to and learn from scripture, how to care for the poor, the sick, and the orphans, how to care for and advocate for the needs of older persons, and how to overcome addictive patterns in their lives…” (Taylor Burton-Edwards, 3/20/13).  Maybe some of you working on 4-year degrees can relate a bit to that kind of a home stretch.  It’s a long time to be focused on one life-changing goal.  It’s a long time to submit yourself to transformation and refining.

Some things take a long time and it’s hard to see what has happened until later.  Like becoming less human one moment at a time until you wake up and find you are a cockroach.  Or becoming more Christ-like one prayer at a time, one verse at a time, one relationship at a time, one visited prisoner at a time…  Some things take a long time.  Like water dripping onto stone, wearing it away drop by drop over hundreds and thousands of years.

Or like stones being formed in the first place.

One of my favorite songs is by Beth Nielsen Chapman and it’s called “Sand and Water.”  It’s from her album of the same name, written in her grief after her husband died way too young.  Her voice is a little shaky and vulnerable as she describes the shifting sands of life after his death, the crashing waves of grief, the difficulty in finding a solid place to land or stand.  But the chorus goes like this:  “Solid stone is just sand and water…and a million years gone by.”  Some things take a long time, maybe even a million years.

Maybe the stones know something we don’t.

It’s interesting to me that the stones are quiet in this story.  Jesus warns that if the people are hushed the stones will speak up.  That would imply that they are fully able to speak up and ready to praise.  Are they waiting for that moment, then?  Do they hear that the people have it covered so they’re just lying low for now?  I find myself thinking Hey, stones, Jesus is only coming by this way once, so if you’re going to join in the praises, you’d better pipe up.  But when it takes “a million years gone by” to exist, perhaps your perspective isn’t human.  Perhaps you have patience and vision that we humans don’t have access to yet.

One of my favorite writers is Annie Dillard and one of my favorite essays of hers is called “Teaching a Stone to Talk,” in a book by the same name (pp.67-76).  Annie Dillard is a novelist, essayist, professor, nature-lover, and friend of God.  In “Teaching a Stone to Talk” she tells the story of a man she once knew named Larry who was, truly, attempting to teach a stone to talk.  Dillard commends Larry in this, his life’s work recognizing his sacrifice and devotion, recognizing how much we long to hear from the rest of creation and how much we doubt that anything is being said.

She writes:

It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave.  It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind.  The very holy mountains are keeping mum.  We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it; we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree.  Did the wind used to cry, and the hills shout forth praise?  Now speech has perished from among the lifeless things of earth, and living things say very little to very few.  Birds may crank out sweet gibberish and monkeys howl; horses neigh and pigs say, as you recall, oink, oink.  But so do cobbles rumble when a wave recedes, and thunders break the air in lightning storms.  I call these noises silence.  It could be that wherever there is motion there is noise, as when a whale breaches and smacks the water – and wherever there is stillness there is the still small voice, God’s speaking from the whirlwind, nature’s old song and dance, the show we drove from town.  …At a certain point you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready.  Now I will stop and be wholly attentive.  You empty yourself and wait, listening…We are here to witness…

I don’t know if Jesus meant that the stones would literally shout out praises or not.  But I believe he meant what he said.  I believe he meant that we aren’t the only ones who recognize the presence of God.  Surely these stones would cry out.  All of creation is part of this story and – silent or not – all of creation witnesses and praises along with us.  If need be, instead of us.

The arc of God’s story arc is long and we are somewhere in the middle of it all, thinking that 3 years is a long time to wait to be baptized.  We aren’t the first, we won’t be the last, and we aren’t the only ones right now.  The stones may be silent but they are biding their time.  Jesus is passing by today, on his way to scarier territory this week.  It’ll be tempting to stand here full of praise and then to stay here empty-handed, remembering the parade.  Don’t.

Follow where he goes, praising, silent, faithful.  Trust that the journey is longer than you know or think you can stand.  Keep following.  Trust that out of simple things like sand and water, God can make stone.  Out of a simple thing like dust, God makes you.  Submit yourself to transformation and refining, to the stony path of discipleship.  Know that whatever you did or didn’t do for Lent is one drop on the hard surface of your heart.  There will be others.  And know that you have all the time in the world to cry out in praise.

Thanks be to God!

In Which Jesus Gives a Flying Fig

fig tree bearing fruit
Sermon on Luke 13: 1-9   |  3 March 2013 – Lent 3

Apparently fig trees are like the scrappy underdogs of the tree world.  They have “aggressive root systems” that do whatever they have to do in order to find water and nutrients in the rocky, arid Middle Eastern soil where they grow wild.  These aggressive roots have a strong need for groundwater and will find it deep down, if it isn’t readily available from rainfall or surface water.   Fig trees can tolerate drought and make do in nutritionally poor soil, though they have been cultivated since ancient times and thrive with just a little tending (Wikipedia, “Common Fig” entry as of 3/1/13).

If fig trees wrote psalms, you could imagine one of them writing Psalm 63:  O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water (Psalm 63: 1).  I can make do with this rocky, dry, marrowless soil, but, God, I could really use you right about now.  I am holding on for dear life.  Can you come by here?

Don’t you think the fig tree wanted to bear fruit?

The one that Jesus tells about in the parable.  It had been fruitless for 3 years and though the tree’s owner wanted to get rid of it, the gardener intervened.  The gardener said, Give me a year with it.  See what happens when I dig up this hard, dry, compacted soil and add some fertilizer.  Wait another year and see what happens (Luke 13:6-8).

This is what happens.  Figs!  I’m going to pass them around so you can taste and see what we are talking about, so you can literally take it in.  This delicious, chewy, nutritious, surprising fruit is what comes from a place that just last year seemed lifeless and beyond hope.  Please keep passing them around – don’t be shy.

A fig tree is made to bear fruit.  That’s its purpose.  That’s the goal of its existence.  It’s important to remember that:  the parable is not about getting an apple tree or a pine tree to bear figs.  It is not about expecting something impossible.  It is not about expecting the tree to be anything more or less than what it is.

Again, I ask:  Don’t you think the fig tree wanted to bear fruit?  Its whole purpose is to make figs.  It’s not confused about its purpose.  It is not trying to write a novel instead.  It is probably trying to work itself up to a fig.  But for whatever reasons – drought, poor soil, neglect – it hasn’t been able to muster a single fig.  For 3 years.

It can be a little trickier for us to figure out our “fruit.”  What am I meant to bear or produce, that will show that I am fulfilling my purpose?  What is the goal of my existence?  How many years have I been fruitless and when is the nice gardener going to show up and help me out a little?  How much time do I have – gulp – before it’s Zero Fruit Thirty?

Even when you know your major or you are a fabulous fourth year “coasting” towards May with a job offer clinched, the fruit question can linger.  Is this what I am supposed to be doing?  How does this degree or job allow me to live out my calling as a disciple?  Is my whole purpose –  my whole fruitfulness in life –  measured by my work?  If not, how else do I engage in fruitful living?

Asking questions like these is your first step to bearing fruit, to living out of your purpose.  Remember that the fig tree had been fruitless for 3 years already?  And fig trees know what their purpose is!  For 3 years, this fig tree sat withering and suffering and not fulfilling its purpose, probably writing something like Psalm 63 while it waited for that gardener to finally show up and give it some help and encouragement.

Who knows what went on in the mind of the fig tree during that long wait, but you can imagine it, can’t you?  You can imagine working and striving and feeling a little lost and feeling pretty parched and wondering if God is paying attention.  Can’t you?

During times like that it can be tempting to look for signs.  That’s what the first part of tonight’s reading from Luke is about.  Were those Galileans who Pilate killed worse sinners than the other Galileans?  Is that why God allowed that to happen? (vv. 1-2).  It’s tempting but Jesus rejects this line of thinking.  He brings up another tragic event, when people were  crushed under a falling tower and he also rejects that as evidence of God’s wrath.   To questions about events like these, he says, No, that’s not how God behaves.  The lesson from those events is that life is fragile and unpredictable and the best path to fruitfulness is to repent – turn around – and go in the direction of God  (Luke vv. 1-5 and People’s New Testament Commentary p.231).

You might say that Jesus does give a flying fig.  Because after he’s gotten all that straightened out, he tells the parable about the fig tree.  Fig trees don’t wait for signs.  They use all of their energy to make figs.  And when they don’t have enough energy left for that, they wait – sometimes for a long, long time – for a gardener who knows his way around fig trees.

We don’t like that part, either, do we?  The waiting for a long, long time part.  The waiting while we are thirsty beyond our own abilities to quench our thirst.  The waiting when we are not sure what we are waiting for….Am I waiting to become an engineer?  A parent?  A volunteer at the homeless shelter?  The fig tree got at least 4 years to come up with some figs – 3 years plus the year ahead with the gardener’s help.  Hmmmm….What else takes 4 years?  College, anyone?

How much pressure do you put on yourself to have it all figured out by the time you get your degree?  Don’t you think we get at least as long as a fig tree?

And when the wait is over and the gardener finally shows up, it is still “up to the tree itself to feast on this extended care [it receives]”  It’s not like the fig tree can just put its feet up and wait for figs to be brought to it and placed on its branches.  The God-given work of a fig tree is to work with the God-given gardener to make figs out of itself, to bear fruit.  I don’t know how long you get to become fruitful but “[t]he parable is just as clear about the gracious intervention of the gardener as it is about the possible one-year deadline if no improvement is found” (General Board of Discipleship “Lectionary Planning” pages as of 3/1/13).  In other words, God is on our side.  God made us for fruitful living and God does not leave us to our own devices  either to figure out what fruit we are called to produce or to come up with it entirely on our own.

Neither is God inclined to thwart our fruit-producing abilities.  God wants our lives to bear fruit.  God sends the Gardener Jesus to give us some extra help.  You are not meant to do this alone, with no resources, endlessly relying on poor conditions and your own reserves.  You are scrappier than you think you are and God, with a trowel and some gardening clogs, is  just waiting to dig in and help you grow, thrive, bear fruit.  But you have to be part of it.  You have to do something, too.  You have to reach your aggressive roots as far as you can and take the life-giving assistance you find.

I don’t know that our deadline is a year from now but I do know that we all have deadlines.  Towers fall, cancer grows, floods rise.  Life is shorter than we think and a lot of things are out of our control.  But at each and every moment of life we are moving closer to God or further away.  Closer bears fruit.  Every time.  And you can repent/turn around/move closer even when you are still asking questions about what kind of fruit tree you are, and even when you are dying of thirst and writing psalms to God in the desert.

I know you want to produce fruit.  Like the fig tree, you are aching for it.  If that is all the path you have right now, then go with the ache.  It will take you where you need to go.  It will take you through and beyond the places that seem lifeless and purposeless.  It will take you closer and closer to God.  Go with that ache to be fruitful.  Who knows what delicious morsel your life will yield by this time next year?

Thanks be to God!

*

photo credit: ©  2005 Anthony Majanlahti, CC BY 2.0

Spinach and Breadcrumbs

I made creamed spinach for the first time yesterday.  It’s not an especially Lenten dish, what with the cream and butter and cheese.  And though Lent is also not a time that is traditionally devoted to feasting this is supposed to be a space devoted to feasting.  It’s right there in the tagline:  Space to play, rest, create, feast.  Those are the ways I tend to occupy myself on a snow day and the stuff I want more of in the other days.  But so far I haven’t explicitly feasted here on the blog.  Enter the creamed spinach.

I do not own a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, though I do own a copy  Julie & Julia and have watched it at least 40 times.  I am not exaggerating.  I can’t think of a better movie to have been Nora Ephron’s last, her masterpiece.  At the heart of it are two interwoven stories of loving partnership in marriage, passionate calling, and self-discovery.  And there’s Meryl Streep.

I love the love stories and I love the faltering, tentative ways that Julie and Julia both try to figure out who they are, following the breadcrumb trails of their callings in life.  Neither of them knows where it’s all going and neither is entirely confident that this is it.  But one crumb at a time they each keep going, creating, loving food, feasting.

creamed spinach in gratin dish

Recently I saw a Smitten Kitchen recipe claiming to be a compilation of the four different creamed spinach recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  I don’t own a copy but I have cooked from it and my ears perk up whenever I hear about a recipe I might attempt.  I picture Meryl-as-Julia and I hear the soundtrack and I think I could make that!  Still, I was not entirely convinced that I am a creamed spinach person.  It’s not a dish we had in my house growing up and I find that many cooked spinach dishes are spinachy in all the wrong ways:  strong green taste, stringy strands that haven’t been chopped well, kind of a big glompy mess.  But I do love spinach and I wanted to find some more go-to ways to prepare it, especially in winter when another cold spinach salad just won’t cut it.

And even though it is surprising/disappointing every single time you watch an entire pot of fresh spinach become only 3 cups of cooked spinach, it is also amazing what happens to spinach when it’s combined with just enough butter, cream, cheese, salt, and pepper.  Oh, and a few breadcrumbs on the top.  As my husband said when he tasted it, “This is the dish to start kids on so that they will never say I hate spinach.”  Fresh and creamy, but not swimming in butter-cheese-cream.  Just enough to hold it together and make your mouth happy.  The bonus was getting to use my gratin dishes, which always makes me feel a little French and sophisticated.

I find it sad that so many people don’t know how to cook anymore and that holidays like Thanksgiving are “special” mainly because so much of the meal is homemade for a change.  Though this feast came from Julia Child, it wasn’t complicated and it doesn’t have to be.  It’s acceptable to make a wonderful dish like this alongside a simple egg or even a frozen pizza.  It doesn’t have to take all day and you can make it without the special dishes.

The point is remembering to follow the breadcrumbs to the place where your taste buds stop you in your tracks and make you pay attention.  Where you know you are on to something .  Where you savor and maybe close your eyes for a second to take in the sensation.  Where the taste of simple things like spinach, cream, butter, and cheese confirm not only that you do indeed like spinach but that the rest of life is pretty good, too.

Mama Jesus or Jesus Is My Chicken

baby chicks_michigan farm

Sermon on Luke 13: 31-35   |  24 February 2013 – Lent

I am completely fine with it if all you walk away with tonight is the thought that Jesus is your chicken.

It’s a gift from Jesus himself, this image of him as a mother hen and us as his baby chicks in need of protection.  It’s an exclamation of longing, Jesus’ longing for us to come to him, to nestle into the warm safe place under his wing.  Why don’t we use this divine chicken language more often?

He’s talking with his disciples and a few Pharisees approach to warn him that Herod wants to kill him.  Jesus says, Go tell that fox Herod that I am busy casting out demons today and tomorrow and on the third day, too.  But then I’m on my way from here (Luke 13: 31-33).  Does that sound familiar to you – “third day”?  It’s supposed to.  It’s for us, the readers, and it’s supposed to remind us that Jesus was crucified and then, on the third day, resurrected.  It’s a way of saying that Herod’s plan will eventually work – but so will God’s.  The third day is when the story makes sense and God has the final word.

Anyway, Jesus tells the Pharisees that that old fox Herod will just have to wait for that day and while he’s in the middle of going over all the days and his plans for prophecy and healing, he mentions that he’ll be killed in Jerusalem eventually.  And then, at the mere mention of the name Jerusalem, he completely sidetracks himself, like a lover who hears the name of his long-gone beloved, like a mother yearning for her children.  He stops addressing the Pharisees, and talks to Jerusalem instead.  He blurts out, with pain and longing, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!  How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Luke 13: 34).

I mentioned to y’all last week that my dad grew up on a farm.  I called him this week as I was working with this passage.  For those of us who haven’t been around chickens that much, there isn’t much to go on here.  Jesus wants to gather us up under his wing.  I wondered how often chickens do this and in what circumstances so I called to see what my dad could tell me about chickens.  He said, “They’re dirty and they poop a lot.”  When I explained why I was asking and reminded him of the story he said, “Any time it’s raining or overcast or the weather seems bad in any way, that’s what the hen does.  She opens up her wings wide and shelters her chicks.  She does it when she’s trying to hatch eggs, too.  Just completely covers them up in her feathers.”

Since before the eggs are hatched, the hen is mothering them, sheltering them, protecting them.  When the fuzzy little chicks are running around the barnyard in inclement weather she flaps open her broad mama wings and calls them back home again.  This is the image Jesus applies to himself.  It’s not like he was in a debate and got called a chicken and then made the best of it, bending the image to suit his own purposes.  He starts the whole thing.  He refers to Herod as a fox – sly, cunning, clever, a thief, chicken-hungry – and then continues the metaphor by calling himself the mother hen.

I am pretty sure that if any one of us in this room were writing the lines for Jesus, we would have chosen something fierce and fox-eating.  Herod’s a fox, but I have a taste for fox meat, Jesus retorted.  I’m an eagle/wolf/panther!  Not a vulnerable mother animal with babies to protect.  And if it had to be a mother with babies don’t you think we would have gone all mama bear on him?  But Jesus gives us a chicken.  Unglamorous, somewhat comical, not strong or fast.  An ordinary squawking barnyard mama chicken.

Jesus is our chicken.

Barbara Brown Taylor, the Episcopal priest and writer who lives on a farm in north Georgia and, I believe, has chickens there, has some insight on this image Jesus gives us.  She says (originally “As a Hen Gathers Her Brood” in The Christian Century, 1995, referenced online, 2/19/13),

If the city were filled with hardy souls, this would not be a dangerous situation. Unfortunately, it is filled with pale yellow chicks and at least one fox. In the absence of a mother hen, some of the chicks have taken to following the fox around. Others are huddled out in the open where anything with claws can get to them. Across the valley, a white hen with a gold halo around her head is clucking for all she is worth. Most of the chicks cannot hear her, and the ones that do make no response. They no longer recognize her voice. They have forgotten who they are.

If you have ever loved someone you could not protect, then you understand the depth of Jesus’ lament. All you can do is open your arms. You cannot make anyone walk into them. Meanwhile, this is the most vulnerable posture in the world –wings spread, breast exposed — but if you mean what you say, then this is how you stand.

They no longer recognize her voice.  They have forgotten who they are – who their mother is.  Jerusalem, Jerusalem!  How often I have yearned to gather you up underneath my wings…but you were not willing.

Remember what I said last week about trying to do everything ourselves?  It would be tempting to rewrite this image and claim Jesus the panther as the one who protects us.  It would be tempting to try to protect the chicken herself, since she is so flappy and foolish-seeming.  It would be tempting to follow someone else or to fashion some other sort of god who better suits our needs, rather than accepting this Savior who turns the other cheek and embraces sinners and tax collectors and prostitutes, and who leads the way through death.  It is tempting to long for God to be more like we think God should be.

Remember Jesus, poised on the hill above Jerusalem?  Remember the moment when he interrupts his own train of thought to blurt out with messy love and longing Jerusalem, Jerusalem?  That’s the God we get – one who is thoroughly familiar with longing and who, despite all of the ways we little chicks go off running in the wrong direction, continues to emphatically yearn for us to come back and snuggle under his wing.  You want a different image, a different kind of god?  God gets that – God had something different in mind for us, too.

And you were not willing….we were not willing.  We go off half-cocked, like chickens with their heads…well, you get the point.  We like the stealth and sleek fox.  We admire his clever cunning.  We are easily lured into thinking he won’t hurt us, that we are exempt from his voracious appetite for chicken meat.  That’s how we start to think when Mama Jesus seems too exposed and vulnerable, too chickeny.  How can we give our lives to someone like that?  If not a panther, what about the fox then?  How are we supposed to build our lives around the one who just stands there, open, jugular exposed, loving us like that?

How can we not?

We know that love is stronger than death.  We know what happens on the third day.  It ought to be easier for us to build a life around this than it was for Jerusalem, living before the tale was told.  But it’s not, is it?

It makes no difference.  It has always been and is still very hard to live this way.  It’s why God keeps calling us, longing for us to come back to that embrace, where we can remember who we are again.  Living after this tale has been told makes no difference in how hard this is for us.  But it also makes no difference to God; it makes no difference in how God loves us.  The same God who stood with tears and longing on the hill opposite Jerusalem, calling our names with arms open wide, is the one who is doing that right now.  For you.

This is the God we follow.  This is the God who is our home.  This is the God who persists and perseveres in loving us, no matter how unlovable we sometimes are, no matter how stubborn, no matter how much we would rather be loved by a panther.

Jesus is your chicken but you can turn your back on Mama Jesus’ longing and try to follow or fend off the fox and the rain solo.  Or you can run as fast as your teeny chick legs will go into that embrace.  It’s raining but under those feathers it’s warm and dry and feels like home.  Like Mom.

Thanks be to God!

On Letting Go This Lent

Sometimes the whole notion of giving up or taking on something for Lent seems to fall short.  Instead of being a path to go deeper, it becomes one more way to measure success or improvement.  Insteclouds airborne_clearing space, breathing, perspectivead of offering a way to focus our habits and appetites on God, it feels like another thing added to the dreaded to do (or to not do) list.  It can feel distinctly un-faithful.

If you are already planning your Lenten discipline, I wish you well and I don’t mean to discourage you.  But if, like me, you are thinking you “should” figure out what you’re doing for Lent, might I suggest you don’t?

I started thinking about Lent last fall.  It’s a pastor’s liability, always planning ahead of the season we are actually in.  I was listening to a colleague preach about how hard Martin Luther worked at salvation for so long, thinking he needed to do something more to bring it about.  Until one day when, as my colleague said, he finally “let go.”  He realized that we are “saved by grace through faith” (Ephesians 2:8) and that his own efforts were never going to get him there.  God was.  I’d been following along with the sermon, feeling tight-chested as I listened to Luther’s frantic attempts at self-salvation.  So “let go” felt like a breath of fresh air.

What if we did that, too?  What if, as a faithful way of engaging God during the season of Lent, we decide to let go of our plans and projects, no matter how inspired?  Let go of plans to “make it” without chocolate.  Let go of the temptation to cram more into our schedules in the name of the Spirit.  For now, let go of spiritual striving and trust that God can pick up the slack.  Trust that maybe God doesn’t care as much about your spiritual sweat equity as you do and would rather take you by the hand and lead you gently to a new place.

What if we refused to fill up the space and the time that letting go would free up?  How would God show up in all that room?  What would we notice that so easily escapes our attention with all of that other stuff in the way?

Lent is a season for self-reflection, for confession and clearing away that which keeps us from God.  Sometimes it’s our own notions of self-improvement and spiritual discipline that get in the way, especially when we make completion or perfection the goal, rather than deeper knowledge and love of God.

But it’s hard to slog through 40 days without a focal point, and for the less Zen-minded of us, emptiness and cleared space might not be enough to claim our focus.  With less in the way, perhaps we can maintain focus by paying more attention to everyday moments, allowing them to breathe and resonate in ways we don’t recognize when we are rushed and striving.

Here are a few untested ways you might let God take you by the hand and show you something new this Lent.  If they feel like accumulating or clenching or list-making, let go again.  Leave them here and find your own focus.  Either way, I hope you’ll let me know how it goes.

  • Make 1 meal from scratch each day or each week and eat it sitting down at the table without any media.  It doesn’t have to be fancy and you have to eat anyway.  This puts the focus on the bounty God provides and the people with whom we share it.  If you live alone, savor the flavors and textures and consider where the ingredients traveled from and who helped get them to your table.  If you don’t cook, you don’t have to start with Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  Make eggs and toast or grilled cheese.  The point is to prepare it yourself and savor it with intention and gratitude.
  • Spend 10 minutes per day with God.  Prayer, meditation, a walk at dawn, giving thanks, listening, yoga…The amount of time is arbitrary (and you’ll have plenty after all that letting go).  The important part is being intentional about it and noticing how God shows up – and how you do.
  • Once a week, call or write to one person you love and don’t see often.  Give yourself the time to re-connect and really listen when you ask how they are.  You aren’t trying to plan or accomplish anything, but simply to enjoy someone wonderful.  Tell them how you are.  Tell them what you are (not) doing for Lent.  During the week, think about and pray for who you just talked with and who you will reach out to next.
  • Make a point of talking to someone new and learning his/her name.  At church, at work, in the coffee shop.  You have time now so let yourself connect with someone in your orbit who usually goes unnoticed.
  • Before you check email or Facebook, pause and ask God to bless your time online.  At work or at home or on your phone, simply pause and recognize that God can be present in these activities, too.
  • Ask God a question each day/each week.  This one depends on how many questions you have. Ask with the full faith that God hears you and wants you to learn the answer…eventually.  See what happens that day or week as you live with the question.

 

Travelers

sign post along the path reads "difficult path - impassable after heavy rain"I traveled solo for a long time.   Single, with friends and family all over the globe and a love of the road, meant I developed habits to keep me safe, on schedule, traveling light, and unnoticed.

I am the kind of person who is ready to de-plane well before we pull up to the gate.  When we get there, I am standing in the aisle, meticulously organized and ready to walk, waiting behind the person who can’t remember where he put his scarf when he sat down.  I am the kind of person who checks her tickets and writes down emergency numbers.  I try hard to sleep on the transatlantic flights because when I get to London alone and still have a couple of hours to go until I arrive at my friends’ house, I need to be alert and quick and get on the right train without calling attention to myself, the solo American.

When I left to study abroad in France during college, the USA was in the midst of a spat with France over air rights and Libya.  France started requiring visas and word went out that Americans should keep a low profile.  Experienced fellow ex-pats assured me that passing for Canadian would be the way to go if the going got tough.  I took it to heart and tried to blend in.  Or at least not stand out as American right away.

I read Rick Steves and pared down what I considered necessary for a 2 week visit.  Traveling alone means that it all has to fit on my person or in my hands.  God forbid, I ever end up somewhere looking for a trolley that I still can’t push because of the mountain of suitcases I’ve brought.

Backpacking also contributed to my thoughtful, scant packing skills, honed further on my many treks into the Smokies.  If you’re headed out into the woods for a few days, everything you take has to be useful and absolutely necessary, and fit in your pack.

Later, when I started taking trips with friends who, according to me, packed too much, I felt superior.  Streamlined.  In the know.  I was the svelte and efficient traveler who didn’t need help to manage my bags and no one was waiting on me.

I have people waiting on me now – husband and son and a passel of students.  And I do a lot of waiting on them.   I’m working on the superiority thing.

No matter how many advance packing lists we devise or how little room our caravan of cars has, students always show up for mission trips with too much luggage and big, gangly, sloppy sleeping bags spilling out of their ties.  The guitar always ends up on top of everything else in the back of my car, leaving just a sliver of rear view left in my mirror.  We never move through an airport or a restaurant or a town square without being noticed, all 25 or more of us laughing and talking loudly over top of one another, clearly “not from around here.”

When I travel with my family people usually notice as soon as we get out of the car.  My stepson has autism and needs to jump up and down and make a lot of noise.  Absolutely not an incognito experience, making a pit stop or a visit to Starbucks.  Things take longer with him and he is not generally interested in whatever schedule we have in mind.  As my husband says, “He can wait you out.  He has all the time in the world.”

During seasons like Advent and Lent, I tend to lean on journey images…  Making the Advent pilgrimage to Christmas.  Clearing space in our lives and hearts for God to show up along the paths we travel.  Allowing ourselves to be surprised by the turns in the road…  And, though, I can’t claim this was part of my solo traveling ethos, it does seem that the less baggage we lug into the season the more open our hands and hearts are for what God wants to give.

The thing is, God gives us what we need, but rarely expect.  Apparently I needed a noisy, jubilant, jumping son and a crowd of witnesses who are still learning to pack lightly.  I know I needed my traveling partner husband (who’s not half bad at packing, by the way).  Perhaps my solo traveling habits weren’t formed for my own speed and convenience but so that my hands and my life would be open enough to lend a hand to my fellow travelers with the huge, toppling trolleys.

I love knowing I can get myself around the world solo.  I love remembering those times and adventures.  But the adventures I am having now are wearing away at my rough edges.  Almost none of my trips are solo any more but I love the company.

Dust and Clay

(Getting ready for Lent to start again in a few weeks…  This post was originally written for the NCMA blog on 2/23/12.)

This week, on Ash Wednesday, we will have ashes “imposed” on our foreheads, marking us with a dusty, ashy cross as we set out on the journey towards Easter.  We will try not to be self-conscious when we see ourselves in the mirror, or clean off the stray ashes as they fall on the bridge of our noses.  We will go about our day, marked so that no one can miss it, while trying to pretend it’s business as usual.

learning to throw bigger cylinders on the wheelI’ve been thinking about Ash Wednesday a little differently this year as I’ve worked on the liturgy and prepared myself to say to people, one after the other, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  I blame it on the pottery classes I’ve been taking.

Each week, with my hands in the clay, I am reminded that I am made of the same stuff.  Each week, when we ladle soup into bowls I’ve made, I am reminded that they used to be lumps of clay.  Each week I form lumps into new shapes and I am also being formed – not just into a potter, but into someone who pays more attention.

On Wednesday as people come forward during worship, I will be holding a small blue bowl I made, which will, in turn, hold the ashes.  Dust, holding clay, holding ashes.

The journey of Lent is simply a reminder of our bigger journey:   pilgrims on the way, dusty from the road, and marked by the cross.  The journey is to practice:  paying attention, knowing who we are, seeing the big picture.  Remember that you are dust.  There is no other business than this.  We are all lumpy clay, with the Potter’s fingerprints all over us, forming and transforming us until we transform once again into dust.