spiristirrer

“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.” Gabriel Garcia Marquez in Love in the Time of Cholera

Maybe each new year is really a new birth. We go into it with plans, checklists, things to accomplish, then as the year lives its life we are transformed, sometimes without even recognizing it. Some years the transformation is due to joyous moments, others due to heartbreak. For most of us the year brings both; are both going to be a source of new life?

If both joy and heartbreak are to become sources of new life we need to resist our tendency to want to skip ahead, to prognosticate and forecast. Our constant concern about the “next thing,” and our knack for expectation can prevent our new birth. It is interesting that we find ourselves being constantly surprised by life. The unexpected being the stuff of life, you would think that we would expect it, that we would be open to different outcomes, to surprises. Yet, most of us are so distracted by our schedule and our plan that we leave little room, so when it happens, it throws us off course, it shakes us, at times to the core, and makes us question some of the key markers of who we are becoming.

Maybe that’s why Jesus said:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? . . . But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

Matthew 6:25, 33-34 (NRSV)

Questioning, re-evaluation, reflection can become the medium for awareness. It is in this paying attention to the present, to the ways where God has been at work in our lives, where, as Garcia-Marquez tells us, we are obliged to be reborn.

Our new birth, our opportunity to be about God’s kingdom, the availability of transformation is here! It’s in our living, in our engagement with what life brings. As we prepare for a new year let us make a commitment to engaging our lives fully. How has this passing year changed us? How has God been present in our lives? Identifying where God has been might give us clues where to find God in the coming year.

As I look back to this passing year I recognize that there are three practices that I want to engage in this coming year. These are not “resolutions” instead they are ways of attending to God’s movements in my life. Practices that allow me to engage the coming year as an opportunity to become a more faithful follower of Jesus, as an opportunity to be born again.

This year I am committing to presence, to faithful discernment, and to communal life.

Being present means living for today. It means being intentional in my relationship to God, to those closest to me (to my life partner and our children) and to those that God sends my way. For me it is also about being present to place, paying attention to the geography around me and the way that it is holy.

I believe that there are decisions that we make that more faithfully reflect God’s doings in us and for us, that God wants our decision making to reflect God’s vision of shalom for us, for our communities and for our world. I believe more than ever that God cares, about the decisions I make, about how I live my life for God’s kingdom. Faithful discernment takes time, intention, and attention. It also requires a community where the leading of the Spirit can be “tested out.”

My commitment to communal life is a desire to be more attentive to the communal covenants I have made in baptism, marriage and ordination. How can I live these covenants in ways that they live into their potential as means of grace in my life, for the life of the world?

I know this coming year will surprise us with joys and opportunities also with heart breaks and disappointments. But I also know that “[y]ou can tell adult and authentic faith by people’s ability to deal with darkness, failure, and non validation of the ego – and by their quiet but confident joy!” (Richard Rohr in The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See). My prayer is that I’ll be open to the new birth that comes from engaging life fully that I’ll be open to the joy that comes from seeking God’s kingdom.

May this year be a year of presence . . . of life together . . . a year of openness to surprise knowing that God is with us along the way!

Happy New Year!

In the ancient passover ritual a child asks, “why is this night different than all other nights?” As we gather on Christmas Eve I’m wondering why this night is different?

We could start with a baby. Like most songs and hymns during this season, we could focus on the little baby Jesus. Gentle, meek, mild, quiet, sleeping, peaceful are only some of the adjectives describing the baby Jesus in music and popular culture. As a father of three I can tell you that the reality of a birth is not found in these adjectives. As a Christian I can tell you that the night was not different because a baby was born.

The night was different because God came into the world in human form. The writer of the gospel according to John says it like this:

“The Word became flesh and made his home among us. We have seen his glory, glory like that of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

John 1:14 (CEB)

I think it makes a difference that Jesus came in human form. It must make a difference. Jesus taking our form, our lives, says something about this life of ours. It tells us that our embodied world is good and embodied it is meant to be. That the Word became flesh and “made his home” among us means that God left God’s own place, God’s own glory, so we could experience divine life.

God taking our form, our shape, tells the world that this body, this earth, this created order is holy. Serving this God makes a difference for he took our form in Jesus who walked, talked, lived, and struggled to be about his work in the world.

In a recent interview on Krista Tippet on Being, poet & philosopher, John O’Donahue said:

“I think the beauty of being human is that we’re incredibly, intimately near each other.”

God’s coming in Jesus demonstrates that humanity was indeed created in God’s image. Through that image God shows us that we are intimately near the Godhead and that we are also called to be near each other, sharing the divine life. If we are to be God’s own people in the world, the “body of Christ redeemed by his blood” then it is important that we live our lives leaning into the beauty of being human.

God did not bless us from afar but instead came to us where we were, in the messiness of a stable, in the messiness of life. God came among us, struggled with us, suffered what we suffer each day, and told us that this way of living was love. In Jesus, love makes a difference, healing is possible, resurrection can take place.

God came to earth and turned the world upside down so that we would know that the promise of a good created order, the promise of abundant life, was true. Somehow, although we have lost our way, through Jesus, we can find home again, we can find heaven on earth.

This heaven we are called to is not the “sweet by and by,” instead it’s the heaven that Wendell Berry tells us he longs for:

“the Heaven of creatures, of seasons,

of day and night. Heaven enough for me

would be this world as I know it, but redeemed

of our abuse of it and one another. It would be

the Heaven of knowing again.”

– from VI. in Leavings

When we take the incarnation seriously it begins to transform us, prod us, and open our eyes to the ways others are holy, others are sacred, others are like we are, children of God. At times this might rub us the wrong way because it uncovers our own prejudices, our own ways of looking at the world that go against everything that God told us, proclaimed, and made present in Jesus.

I know I am being convicted, I’m being spoken to. I know that my spirit is heavy for those children of God who live hopeless today. For those children of God that don’t seem to catch a break. For those children of God that are so unlike us, yet they are us! For those and for the created order that gives them life I’m thinking that God came into the world for them.

We are living days of transformation. Things are changing, ways of communication are advancing and yet if you sit at a mall, wait in a hospital lobby, or observe people at a red light, one thing has not changed, people have a need for one another. Have you observed it? People buying gifts, making plans with people they have not seen in a while, gathering around tables and sharing stories with family and friends. Then there are those that have little reason to celebrate, no joy to be found, no good news in the horizon. Whatever the reason, they have lost touch with what it means to be human, hope has been lost.

The messiness of life pushes us, prods us, and sometimes breaks us. We as people of God cannot sit back and wait for better things to come “some day” we cannot sit and act like somehow just prayers, wishing better, reading scripture, or gathering on Sunday morning is enough. It is not enough! Somehow we must live this incarnation in our being, in our acting in the world.

We as a church can get caught up in the divisive rhetoric of our day to the point that we can’t begin to answer the call. Instead we can easily take sides, call people names, and ignore the plight of those who need it most. Maybe it’s time for us to leave our comfortable pews, our amazing programs, our certainties, leave the comforts of the heaven we have made, and go out and get messy with those around us.

Why is this night different than all other nights? Because God did just that . . .

Noche Buena (Good Night) is what we call Christmas Eve in Spanish speaking countries. It’s more than a translation but a different way to look at this special “eve” in the Christian calendar. In many countries Noche Buena is the most important night of the Christmas season. It might even be more important than Christmas morning. Families gather, food is shared, then the family heads to church to celebrate Christ’s birth.

This year I am reminded that for many who gather on Christmas Eve it’s not such a good night. Memories of painful Christmas past are at the forefront, a loved one or a job has been lost, health has been hard to come by, loneliness has become the norm. Added to all of this is the anxiety of a difficult economic climate. There will be many who will come wondering, what kind of good news they could be given during such a time as this?

It was not such a great night for Mary and Joseph either! They were tired, Mary was pregnant, and they could not find a comfortable place to sleep. In the end they settled on a stable: stinky, dirty, noisy, uncomfortable. That’s all they could find.

The shepherds were not having a good night either. They were sleeping in the cold fields, no place to call their own. Despised by most as nothing but riff-raff, they made the best out of their circumstances and continued watching their flocks, continued doing their jobs.

So what’s the good news of this night? The angels tell us: “to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” (Luke 2:11) This messiah, this Lord, is not in the halls of power, in the mansions of the well to do, instead he is “wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” Salvation comes in the most humble of ways and those who are first told are the ones who needed most.

The God that we serve knows our bad nights, that something is wrong in the world, that something needs to be done in order to restore us to what God intended. So this God chooses the stench of homelessness, the messiness of exile, the anonymity of illegitimacy. God chooses it for us, because of who God is, God chooses to come into our world to show us that we are God’s own.

I realize all these years later how “buena” this night really is! It is not perfect, nor free from the stuff of life. In fact it is as real as real can be. This is what makes it good, this is what the world had been waiting for, from the beginning!

We now join the sheperds, “glorifying and praising God for all [we have] heard and seen, as it [has] been told [us]” We do not ignore our own troubles or try to make light of them, neither do we do that with the trouble of others. Instead we proclaim a God who knows our troubles and chooses to break into history as one of us so that we know that all of God’s creation can be sanctified, made holy, re-claimed for God’s purposes.

This is a “Noche Buena” indeed!

_________________________

This post originally appeared on Day.org under the title “Noche Buena” on December 24, 2009

[Jacob] himself went on ahead and bowed low to the ground seven times until he was near his brother. Esau ran to greet him. He embraced him and, falling on his neck, he kissed him; and they wept.

Genesis 33:3-4 (TANAKH)

Forgiveness is easier said than done. It’s one of those things that most of us know to do but few of us are willing to do it when something serious happens in our life.

At times those closest to us can hurt us the most. They know us, know our weaknesses and the right buttons to push. It can be easy to hurt someone you love and hard to extend forgiveness, after all they should know better.

Asking forgiveness from someone is at times as difficult as forgiving. Can we just move on? Why should it be brought up again? Won’t that make it worst? We can make so many excuses for the extremely difficult work of forgiving and asking for forgiveness.

Esau had some good reasons not to forgive and to seek revenge. Time and time again his brother Jacob had tricked him, taken advantage of him, and used him to achieve his purpose. From birth Jacob had been trying to take Esau’s place in the family and the promise.

Jacob had reasons to be scared of his brother. His attempt at buying mercy is understandable. Jacob had learned what it meant to be taken advantage of and fooled. Life had transformed Jacob, he was sorry for what he had done.

In his book, Embodying Forgiveness, L. Gregory Jones tells us that

in the face of human sin and evil, God’s love moves towards reconciliation by means of costly forgiveness. In response, human beings are called to become holy by embodying that forgiveness through specific habits and practices that seek to remember the past truthfully, to repair the brokenness, to heal divisions, and to reconcile and renew relationships.

(from the Introduction, iix)

Forgiveness is needed in the world today. Time and time again we hurt each other and participate in the perpetuation of patterns of injustice. This brokenness keeps human beings in constant enmity with each other, with the created order, and with God.

Forgiveness is costly but not forgiving is costlier. Today I wonder who needs my forgiveness and who needs me to ask for forgiveness? How can I be an agent of peace making and reconciliation in the world? How can I be a hearer of a truthful past? How can I lead the community of faith to be a community of forgiveness?

And [Israel] blessed Joseph saying, ‘The God in whose ways my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, The God who has been my shepherd from my birth to this day — The Angel who has redeemed me from all harm — Bless the lads. In them may my name be recalled, And the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac, and may they be teeming multitudes upon the earth.’

Genesis 48:15-16

I am a fan of blessing, in fact it has been a topic of conversation in this blog a few times before (most notably here and here). Yet, each time I encounter blessing in scripture it grabs my attention and this time it has been no exception.

What struck me this time in the many blessings found in Genesis is that its speakers meant what they said. They believed that somehow the divine would respond and support their speaking and ritual action.

Those who are blessed are indeed blessed and those who are cursed or whose blessing is not ultimate (see Esau’s “blessing” here) are in trouble.

Blessings serve as a way to invoke the divine to become active in the lives of human beings. Do we mean what we say when we bless today?

When we invoke the Holy Spirit in the sacraments of baptism or communion? When we call down the Spirit to bless those who are taking the covenants of marriage or ordination? When we bless the everyday lives of people, their homes, their fields, their new beginnings?

Maybe we have become to advanced and have left little room for mystery. Maybe we have left little room for the possibility that the Spirit does still break into history and makes good on our broken words, weak songs, and timid invocations of the holy.

I think we need more blessing, more invocation, more proclamation that the God we serve cares about life, humanity and the world. More proclamation that in blessing we acknowledge that what God has created is holy!

You shall observe this as an institution for all time, for you and for your descendants. And when you enter the land that the Lord will give you, as He has promised, you shall observe this rite. And when your children ask you, ‘What do you mean by this rite? you shall say, ‘It is the passover sacrifice to the Lord, because He passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when He smote the Egyptians, but saved our houses.’

Exodus 12:24-27

Do we explain why we do what we do?

Why do we gather on Sunday to worship? Why do we sing songs and hear scripture? Why do we have a bath and eat at a table? Why bread and wine? Why help the poor? Why welcome the marginalized?

These are only some of the questions that come to mind as I think about our Christian faith. There are many others . . .

The passover was a world changing moment for the Hebrew people. It marked a new beginning, a change of direction, a turning of fortunes. The ones that were slaved now found themselves freed to go home, to build a nation, to self-determine their future. They could not forget this turning of events, so the repetition of the ritual acts served as a perpetual remembrance of their identity as God’s people.

We have those moments in our Christian faith. We talk about repentance, conversion, regeneration. We talk about professions of faith & its renewal. This coming Sunday we celebrate Baptism of the Lord, where we remember Jesus’ baptism and ours. These ritual acts should help us to bring back into being, to re-member, our identity as God’s people through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Maybe we, like the Hebrews, should make it a point to have our children ask us, Why do we do what we do? Why do we gather, why do we eat and drink in Jesus’ name? Why do we call ourselves Christian?

In my Christmas Eve post I talked about why that night was different than any other night. I wrote about the importance of passing on the faith through the signs, symbols, and seasons of our Christian tradition. Reading this portion of Exodus this morning reminded me again of the power of story to help us remember, live, and proclaim.

May our bath, word, meal, & life become rites of identity for us and for our children, for the life of the world!

‘What is this thing that you are doing to the people? Why do you act alone, while all the people stand about you from morning until evening?’ Moses replied to his father-in-law, ‘It is because the people come to me to inquire of God. When they have a dispute, it comes before me, and I decide between one person and another, and I make known the laws and teachings of God.’ But Moses’ father-in-law said to him, ‘The thing you are doing is not right; you will surely wear yourself out, and these people as well. For the task is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone.’

Exodus 18:14-18

Wow! I’m sure that for the pastors reading this there will be no question why this caught my attention as I read this morning. We as a whole tend to have “lone ranger” tendencies. At times it seems like we take great pride in what we have accomplished all by ourselves. Lifting up examples of great “lone rangers” we fail to provide a different model for leadership in the faith community. Moses father-in-law was a wise man. He recognized human limitations and the unhealthy patterns that Moses was perpetuating. In the end this way of leading was not good for him nor for the people he cared so deeply for. The answer to this dilemma was in front of him, the people themselves could be empowered to lead each other.

‘You represent the people before God; you bring the disputes before God, and enjoin upon them the laws and the teachings, and make known to them the way they are to go and the
practices they are to follow. You shall also seek our from among all the people cabable men who fear God, trustworthy men who spurn ill-gotten gain. Set these over them as chiefs of thousands,
hundreds, fifties, and tens, and let them judge the people at all times. Have them bring every major dispute to you, but let them decide every minor dispute themselves. Make it easier for yourself by letting them share the burden with you. If you do this — and God so commands you — you will be able to bear up; and all these people too will go home unwearied.’

Genesis 18:19-23

I know that none of us are leading communities in the wilderness trying to reach a promised land. We are leading faith communities to be about God’s kingdom in the midst of life. What would it look like to adopt a more collegial and communal approach to leadership? What if we shared the burden of the people with others? What if we visioned, ordered, and led in leadership groups?

Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought such great sin upon them?” Aaron said, “Let not my lord be enraged. You know that this people is bent on evil. They said to me, ‘Make us a god to lead us; for that man Moses, who brought us from the land of Egypt — we do not know what has happened to him.’ So I said to them, ‘Whoever has gold, take it off!’ They gave it to me and I hurled it into the fire and out came this calf!”

Exodus 32:21-24 (TANAKH)

We have all been desperate. Even when we know something is not “right” we can easily give in if there’s enough pressure. We tend to blame only teenagers for this behavior but the truth is that group-think is a problem among young and old alike.

Standing for what we believe to be right in the face of a raging mob is difficult. How many times we have experienced this in our families, our faith communities and our politics. When you add desperation to the mix, hopelessness and the unknown it makes it easy to give in, to go along, no matter what.

What I find interesting in this passage is that I expected Aaron to just be honest and acknowledge that he had given in, that he was concerned also, that he was trying to appease the crowd. He knew it was wrong, but was it? What if Moses did not come back? What if this “Lord” that Moses was talking to was not for real after all?

All of us are full of excuses for why we are not faithful to promises made and commitments taken. Sometimes those excuses might have legitimacy but most of the time they sound ridiculous in light of the larger narrative of our lives. The least we can do is acknowledge that we  “messed up” and seek to begin again.

There are times when as people of faith we must stand for what is right, no matter the consequences. In the Christian tradition this means that we stand for the lowly, the poor, the marginalized, the hungry, the naked, the imprisoned, the one’s in need of good news. This might not be popular but it is God’s call to us in response to the covenant we have made in our baptism.

As leaders we know that human beings will always choose gods of their making instead of submitting to the one true God. We stand in the midst of the people, not with excuses, but to remind the people of our common story as God’s own.

I spent the weekend with a group of amazing young people who are ready to hear God’s voice in their life. They came from different places across the Louisiana conference to worship, hear,
and serve God. We purposely invited them to leave their world for these few days. We made sure that televisions were off, cell phones put away, and computers were nowhere in site. Little did we know
that on Saturday a tragedy would make our gathering even more important.

Our common prayer during the weekend came from Ephesians:

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, will give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation that makes God known to you. I pray that the eyes of your heart will have enough light to see what is the hope of God’s call . . .

Ephesians 1:15-18 (CEB)

We live in a hurting world, a world where hatred seems to guide the way. Hatred blinds us it makes us see the other not as God’s beloved but as an object to be disposed off, to get out of the way.

There is no better time to pray that God may “awaken us.” We must shine a light in the darkness, we must become peacemakers, we must not participate (through action or inaction) in our systemic pattern of inflammatory rhetoric.

In order to be transformed we must take the time to foster the interior life. Oscar Romero, Archbishop of El Salvador, facing a daily life full of violence tells us:

We really live outside of ourselves. There are very few humans who truly live inside themselves and this is why there are so many problems . . . . In each person’s heart, there is something like a small, intimate space, where God comes down to speak alone to that person. And this is where a person determines his or her own identity, his or her own role in the world. If each of the people with so many problems were to enter at this moment this small space, and, once there, were to listen to the voice of the Lord which speaks in our own consience, how much could each one of us do to improve the environment, society, the family with whom we live?

(from Through The Year With Oscar Romero: Daily Meditations)

As I heard of the events that were unfolding I was thankful to be surrounded by such amazing young people. They were hearing God’s call to be about God’s kingdom in the world. They left and returned to a world that needs their visions, dreams and hopes. May God awaken us, all of us, to the need for Good News, for our need to become proclaimers of God’s love, God’s light for the world!

When Moses went into the Tent of Meeting to speak with Him, he would hear the Voice addressing him from above the cover that was on top of the Ark of the Pact between the two cherubim; thus He spoke to him.

Numbers 7:89 (TANAKH)

One of the things that I am enjoying during this reading of the Old Testament is how real God seems (this is not always positive, see my post on Leviticus).

Moses takes a series of censuses because that’s what God told him to do. God speaks directly to Moses, over and over again.

I can’t tell you how many times I have wanted God to talk to me like this, to have a conversation. I have been blessed to have heard God’s voice in inaudible ways, but wouldn’t be nice if we could hear God and have an actual conversation like Moses does?

It would certainly make things easier, knowing what God thought. At the same time I am not sure that’s what this set of scriptures are getting at. I think that what’s most important here is that the people of Israel knew that God cared for the way that they lived their life together.

What would it be like if we lived our communal life as the Church in a way that said, God cares? God has a preference?

I think that if we begin to ask this question of ourselves we’ll begin to hear God’s Voice call us to order for kingdom work. And we’ll begin to live and tell our story in a way that expresses that preference.