Resonance

Posted on January 16, 2014 by admin

The first time I celebrated Communion I wrote down everything I was supposed to do. “Arms lifted.” “Arms down.” “Lift bread.” Like stage directions, so I wouldn’t forget or have to think and talk and celebrate a sacrament all at the same time. I went over it all with my colleague Alex to make sure nothing was left out.

Communion chalices and bread on rock outcropping

When it came time, I was not too nervous and managed to stay out of my head and focus on my script. Until I got to “Pour out your Holy Spirit…” The stage directions said to hold my hands over the bread and wine as I asked God to send the Holy Spirit to make these simple elements be Christ’s body and blood for us. As I looked down and saw my own hands hovering there, I thought, That’s it? Just my hands are enough? Alex doesn’t have to come do something, too?

It was startling and real in a way I hadn’t expected. And, of course, I told Alex about it later.

We worked together for four years, during which I finally stopped running from or ignoring my call to ordained ministry and agreed to go to Nineveh like God had been asking me for some time (Jonah). I remember talking with other people in the ordination process, wondering together whether being an associate pastor or a solo pastor was more desirable. I heard uncomfortable stories about working “for” senior pastors. They were hard to reconcile with my own experience of stumbling into a friendship and collegial relationship with someone who was a peer in age and a mentor in ministry.

While Alex and I were still serving together, I spent a year going through CPE at the hospital. I wrote one of my reflections about the grace and humanness Alex demonstrated while celebrating Communion. On one occasion, as he lifted the bread, he said, “Then Jesus took the cup.” He stopped himself, smiled, and continued, “Jesus took the bread.” A minute later, as he lifted the cup, he continued, “Then Jesus took the cup.” At the time, I was writing papers and going through ordination interviews and worried more than I should have. I remember being worried for him when he first misspoke. But his acceptance of the flub made it ok for everyone and it offered me another vision of how ministry and ministers could look.

There are very few maxims or standard operating procedures Alex imparted and I memorized, though it seems this is what many people mean when they describe a mentoring relationship. There’s a strange focus on “the takeaway.” What I took away was something constructed over time, in small moments and flubbed lines: an incarnate example of living out a call to ordained ministry with authenticity and grace.

That’s what I needed to make it real. I needed to see how it was done and how it felt, to ask questions – especially when they seemed embarrassing or stupid. I needed someone to say, like Alex did once, “It took me about 10 years to feel like this was really my life, and not a role or persona I was adopting.”

We all need people who are willing to be real and to let that real-ness be visible to others. This is the gift of a mentor and it can be carried further and lived out more fully than any maxim. It’s the gift of resonance between lives.

Room in the Inn

Posted on December 22, 2013 by admin

I met a priest once in Hazard, Kentucky, who declared himself an “Adventist.” He was annoyed with the way Christmas overshadowed its season of preparation and he wanted to make a point. I understand where he was coming from. Advent is my favorite liturgical season of the year, all purple and quiet patience, longing and increasing light in the darkest days of the year.

Now this is how to graciously invite people in while extending ourselves without judgment. (redmondumc.org)

What I don’t understand are people who get angry about it. Hostile, even. As in, This is about the baby Jesus, damn it! Really? That’s the reason for the season?

I am not prone to exuberant sentimentality but if “the season” encourages more people to extend kindness, practice generosity, go out of their way to include the lonely and the lost, soften the teeniest bit at the calcified edges, stop and enjoy the moment – lights, tree, tastes, textures, rare gatherings of friends and family – then what, exactly, is the problem?

I don’t know about you, but I can always use more generosity, kindness, and compassion in my life. I’m not so rich in these that I can fritter them away or turn my back when they’re offered.

The windup – and the problem – comes with expecting TV news or entertainment to proclaim the gospel, rather than looking to your faith and your church for that. The problem with being so uptight about how everyone else is spoiling it is that no one wants to hear the real message if it will come from those same angry lips. The problem comes with expecting purity out there in the general culture without asking the same of yourself and your actual church.

But the biggest problem I see and the biggest disconnect with the story of Jesus is how un-Christlike these You’re not in the clubhouse and you’re getting it wrong messages are. And how much we still resemble those clueless disciples who also had trouble hearing what Jesus was saying. Remember when the disciples stumbled upon someone casting out demons in the name of Christ (Mark 9: 38-41; Luke 9: 49-50)? The tattle-tales went straight to Jesus and reported on this distressing news, including the fact that they tried to stop him “because he was not following us.” Jesus rebukes them and says, “Whoever is not against us is for us.”

I’m not saying buying a Christmas stocking and hanging lights makes you a Christian. I’m saying – because I hear Jesus saying it – it doesn’t make those of us in the church any less Christian when someone outside does this, and it’s not cause for anger and ostracizing. Jesus, those people are giving Christmas presents and they don’t even understand what Christmas is! The reply: Whoever is not against us is for us.

So, swing wide the gates and rejoice! Enjoy the lights and the fudge and the holiday parties and accept the extra kindness whenever and wherever it’s offered. The gift of the incarnation is so huge it overflows our limited comprehension, established practices, and boundary lines. Anyone who is encouraged to be more kind, just, loving, or generous because of “the season” does, indeed, get it. It’s not up to the church or any God police to proclaim how much. It’s up to those of us called Christian to recognize it when God shows up – especially in the unlikely and least expected places (manger) or people (Saul).

None of us can completely understand – no matter our reverence or years of Sunday school – the totality of God incarnate in Jesus Christ. That’s why we keep reading and telling the story and trying to live more faithfully into it. This much is clear: We are sharing in a gift we all receive, not a treasure just a few of us jealously guard. Why would we want to fence it in?

Dwell

Posted on December 16, 2013 by admin

A sermon preached on Matthew 3:1-12 and Isaiah 11: 1-10 at the Wesley Foundation at UVA. (Due to icy weather last week we revisited the texts from the second week in Advent last night, for Advent 3.)

carpenter's shop wood shavings

John the Baptist is attractive and repellant. The Duck Dynasty guys wish they had beards as long and unruly as his! He wears camel’s hair and eats locusts and warns everyone to repent – turn around, now! He’s a wild visionary who’s made camp in the desert. I find those images attractive. I can picture him with a kind of charisma, speaking the hard truth people crave hearing, baptizing people and saying Wait it out. He’s coming.

But he repels us, too, doesn’t he? He’s way out past the edge of civilization, and hanging out with him seems a little risky. Who’s coming after him, exactly? And will it be someone as edgy and scary as John? He seems especially angry with the Pharisees and Sadducees – how do we know he won’t turn on us next?

Then there’s the passage from Isaiah, which makes me scratch my head and ask where the parents are. A child young enough to still be nursing is playing right over the hole of an asp? Really? Who thinks that’s a good idea? And are we really supposed to believe wolves and lambs are going to get all snuggly with one another? Cows and bears will go out into the field together to graze – on grass? Lions will be satisfied feasting on straw?

Artists have depicted these mixed up unlikely scenes in religious art for thousands of years but they are still hard to imagine, aren’t they? Are we meant to use these as guides to life in the future? Or is this “just” poetry?

We read about strange desert prophets and unimaginable peace between creatures we know to be natural born enemies – and we read this in Advent as we prepare for Christmas and as we remember and anticipate Christ’s promise to come again. What does it mean to spend this season waiting? To hear the prophet’s words and see the artists’ renditions and wonder if we are any closer to these promises being fulfilled than we were last year?

It’s easy to get confused about exactly what and who we are waiting on. Lately Twitter and Facebook and the rest have been abuzz with tales of Pope Francis and his critics. People who’ve given up on the church or been hurt by its scandals see in the Pope’s passion for the poor another way of being Christian. It’s actually the original, Jesus-like way, but so many of us have done such a poor job of imitating him that many people no longer recognize this as “normal” Christian behavior. In fact, some folks are so unfamiliar with the Jesus who was born to unwed, poor parents and spent his life overturning tables and expectations, that they fear maybe the Pope has gone astray somehow.

What are we waiting for? Who is coming to be with us?

Here’s what I know: it is never what we expect. We, who like to put our faith in conservative or liberal, will be confounded. We, who like to think we are getting pretty good at pulling up on our own bootstraps, will be surprised when we are lifted up. We, who feel like failures, will find failure is one of God’s favorite materials to work with and transform.

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid… (Isa. 11: 6)

Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham…(Mat. 3: 8-9)

It might be “just” poetry, but it’s interesting to me how specific and physical Isaiah’s images are. We don’t hear about unicorns or ewoks – it’s known enemies like lions and lambs, cows and bears. Real creatures we have seen with our own eyes – behaving in strange, “unnatural” ways. Scary-attractive John does this too, out in the desert. He doesn’t sit around looking “spiritual” and talking in vague unachievable non-physical ways. He says prepare. Turn around. Bear fruit. Don’t think you know where you come from so you’ll be fine. See these stones? Feel this water, be baptized. Wait and watch for the one coming next.

Isaiah promises “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. On that day …his dwelling shall be glorious” (vv. 9-10). God’s dwelling shall be glorious. To dwell…to remain for a time; to live as a resident; to live in a particular place. Not generally, euphemistically alive – living in real time in a particular place. Like a stable in Bethlehem in the middle of a census. Like Nazareth, amidst the sweet-smelling curlicues of wood in your father’s carpentry shop. Like Galilee, hanging out with fishermen, feeding throngs of people with a few measly scraps of bread and fish. His dwelling shall be glorious. His dwelling. His living in a particular place, in a particular body. Jesus of Nazareth. Fully human, fully divine.

We weren’t expecting that.

Sometimes we still aren’t. It’s a little too mysterious and unnatural for our imaginings. How could God confine what’s God to a body like this? Why would God want to get that particular? This whole incarnation thing puts a real cramp in our tendency to want to separate body and spirit. If God – the ultimate in Spirit – finds a human body worthy of dwelling in, who are we to question it? Who are we to find human bodies less worthy?

Who are we to ask God to be a little less particular? When Jesus said visiting the sick and imprisoned is the same as visiting him, he meant that in a spiritual way, right – we can pray for prisoners without visiting the prison and shaking their criminal hands, right? We can love the poor from a distance, can’t we? Isn’t it enough to give to the Food Bank without actually sitting down for a meal with our hungry neighbors?

We don’t get to have a “spiritual,” disembodied Advent or Christmas – or life. Our job is to dwell in this uncertain, mysterious promise, to inhabit our imperfect maddening bodies more fully as places of divine presence and revelation. Our calling is to look for Jesus in each face we see — Pope, Palin, pauper, prince, people right next door…

The One we call Emmanuel – God with us – is always ready to be born and revealed in new ways in the midst of our lives and established routines. And it’s never what we expect. So we read strange poetry and listen to strange prophets and try to prepare.

It’s an attractive and a repellant message. It’s a promise that means no escape from here and now. These bodies and this world were good enough for Jesus to dwell in and they are the things through which the Kingdom of God comes near.

Thanks be to God!

Advent: Embodiment and Cultivation

Posted on December 5, 2013 by admin

old hand plow

There is no way to be a spiritual person without your body. There is no enlightened height you can reach where having a body is no longer necessary for your life. This is the package we come in: dust and breath, body and spirit.

It’s the package Jesus came in, born with all the human vulnerability and fragility we experience (naked, poor, manger) while still, mysteriously, being God. Fully human, fully divine.

Advent is an invitation to consider your body. As we anticipate the feast of Christmas, God’s incarnation (embodiment) in Jesus Christ, how is God calling our attention to our own embodiment?

I’m talking with college students tonight about de-stressing. Tomorrow’s the last day of classes so you can imagine their stress level. Like the rest of us, they tend to think in terms of “when this is over.” When this semester is over, I will read that novel. When I graduate, I will learn to cook. When I have a real job, I will make time every day to pray. When I land that promotion, then I’ll have enough money. When my kids are older, then I’ll be able to exercise….

The obvious problem with this thinking is there is never a perfect time to do the hard, counter-cultural work of cultivating our lives. It’s far easier to let life happen to us, gathering us in a huge rolling snowball of stress and hurry and other people’s agendas. There is no perfect time, thus, every time is perfect for this life’s work.

The other problem with this thinking is we are always training ourselves. What we practice is how we live. A life spent out of control and waiting for perfection is just that. A life spent choosing – even in very small ways – to get out of the way of that huge snowball, is a life of slow, steady cultivation. Of body and spirit.

Advent has already gotten off to a rocky start for me but I am trying to remember and practice exactly these things. I’m looking forward to the wisdom of my students as we talk together tonight. I know tomorrow will be just as imperfect and lovely as today. So, in this season of waiting, I am not waiting to practice what I preach, even as I wait on the mystery of Christmas.

Here are a few tips I’m sharing with students tonight, ways to help bring body and spirit together more intentionally. Blessings as you cultivate an embodied spirituality.

Practice resting in God for 3 minutes a day. Sit in a comfortable position and breathe deep belly breaths. Try to focus your attention on physical sensations and the sound/feel/movement of your breath. Let that be enough prayer for these three minutes. Do not try to be “holy.” Just be present. Pay attention without judgment. Don’t “say” anything to God; just know it’s enough to sit still in God’s presence without controlling or narrating the encounter. No matter how rushed you are, I guarantee you always have 3 minutes. Choose to use them this way.

Set aside a time each day or each week to be completely offline. Do it for at least an hour or two, but a whole day is wonderful. You don’t have to pray and meditate that whole day/time but as you go about time offline, notice how and where you are. Being connected isn’t “bad” but it can be disorienting (taking you to other places and people than those where and with whom you actually are) and a huge time suck (“just one minute” online turns into an hour) and the frenetic, hyperlinked nature of it contributes to a racing, non-resting mind and spirit. Choose to check out and live a human pace for discreet periods each day or week. It will put things in perspective.

Before you eat a meal, before you even offer a prayer before your meal, take three deep breaths.Notice the feel of the cool air entering your nostrils and the warmer air leaving. Three deep, slow breaths.

Do the same thing right before you open your email in the morning or start the mountain of laundry. Three deep, slow breaths.

Drink water. As much as you can possibly stand.

Sleep. Make this one of the choices you exercise. This is another way of expressing your confidence and trust that God can keep the world spinning without your help for a few hours.

Sleep without your electronic devices on your pillow or nightstand. If your phone is also your alarm clock, set your phone to airplane mode, then set the alarm. Then turn it off and leave it alone until it wakes you up at the appointed time.

Move. If you are too tired or busy to do an actual workout, at least try a few stretches or walk around the block. Get out of your head and into the rest of you for a few minutes.

Eat. Try to make it nourishing food. Try enjoying it instead of wolfing it down. If you know you’ll be busy, take a few minutes to stock up on easy, healthy snacks you can grab in a hurry (rather than ordering late night pizza because you don’t have any groceries).

Prepare. Don’t just get up and start running until you drop – choose what makes your list for today and how you will go about it all. Yes, the choices might not be ideal, but you do still have choices…What really has to get done today? (Exam at 2pm, call Mom on her birthday) What can wait? (Reorganizing my shoe or spice collection, researching best post-graduation trips to Europe) Remember that you need to eat, drink, sleep, and spend at least 3 minutes resting in God today, too. Write down those things and the things that really have to get done today. Then take a look at the list: is it reasonable (can a non-bionic human being actually accomplish these things in the waking hours of a day)? If it is, great – that’s your guide for the day and for saying “no” to other things that try to worm their way into your list. If it is not reasonable, take a second look. Can anything be taken off the list? Is there a way to move anything to another day? If all of those are “no’s” then decide how much time and effort you will give to each of your list items in order to get them done – this will likely mean that you won’t be doing all of them at 100% but that’s OK. Choose for that to be ok for these items on this day.

Remember God loves you exactly as you are, with all of your unfinished business and half-assed efforts. God loves you no matter what happens on the exam or the relative cleanliness of your house or your Christmas shopping list. This hard-to-love, beautiful you who God loves is the one you are also called to love. You cannot “love your neighbor as yourself” if you don’t love yourself. Start now. If you are good enough for God to love, you are good enough. Trust that.

Snow Day

Space to play, rest, create, feast.

Tag Archives: #incarnation

Resonance

Room in the Inn

Dwell

Advent: Embodiment and Cultivation