Sermon: The Ache

                If you’ve spent a bit of time with me,
asked me questions about where the Church is going,
you’re aware that I think very highly of Richard Beck,
a psychologist and prison chaplain who spends a lot of time thinking about secular habits
—or disenchantment as he calls it.

                He uses the example of the Selective Attention Test to get to the heart of the matter.
Participants watch a video of people passing a ball to each other, and are told to be ready to write down who has the ball at the end of the video.
What they don’t know, is that a man in a gorilla suit is going to walk through the game of catch…
and because the observers are so focused on the ball, most people never notice the gorilla. So too, Beck says, modern people
—the day-to-day habits we have, mask our ability to notice God in the world.
We’ve traded meaningful things for measurable things
and the mystical for moral.

                That’s why we mark:
God Conversations,
Praying for People,
 and now Invitations to Church, with marbles…
it helps us notice the gorilla in the room…
it helps us move beyond the “Secular Frame”
and see a bit of what is going on outside the picture,
outside the box…

                And the thing about Beck’s framing of all this, is that it isn’t “vile secularists” out “there” trashing the faith or something like that,
instead it is Christians who don’t believe our own story!

                In addition to marking God moments,
one of the ways we can express and experience and share our faith in our secular world is to name “The Ache.”
The smallness of measuring without meaning,
and morality without the mystical…
the loss of Beauty and friendship,
poetry and prayer,
reflection and gratitude
—that all are part of the secular package.

The Ache
—not only an experience of our present moment,
but in every age,
every human way of life,
has its own ache…
-In Jesus’ day, “I believe… help my unbelief.”
-In Augustine’s, “We are restless until we rest in you.”
In Shakespeare’s, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

                The Ache causes us to whisper plaintively, “Imagine… I wonder… what if?”

Prayer

 

                The ache broke out in Isaiah’s soul…
serving at the pleasure of princes and tyrants,
captured there in Babylon.
Imprisoned, snatched from home, hopeless…

                The Ache broke out and asked, “What if?”

                What if that story of the exodus from Egypt
—Moses’ movement through the desert to the promised land…
what if it means something now?

-What if a return is possible?

-What if Nourishment is normal,

-What if thirst can be slaked, even in the desert… even as you return!

                Imagine, a road in the desert
—a highway hastening our return!
Imagine unkosher animals
—jackals and ostriches
—ostentatiously greeting our return!

 Imagine…
The former things
—this generation’s captivity
—forgotten, overcome!

                I wonder if God…

I wonder if God has a future for us!
Yes, our way of being the people of God is dying, but look!

What if God is doing a new thing!
What if God is the one who makes all things new!

 

                The ache broke out differently for Paul, the author the Philippians letter…
his was an ache of fullness,
of having something!
That can hurt too, can’t it?

                The Ache broke out and asked, “What if?”

                What if you lost it all?
That’s the tragic question that prods so many of our decisions
—especially the bad ones, right?
Its why we buy insurance,
on our cars and health and homes and appliances, and even our life. “What if I lost it all?” Insurance, an assurance that we won’t be left with nothing!
An assurance that at least some of what we lose with be retained.

                But imagine, if there was something…
something more,
something greater than the mystery of one’s birth,
the zeal of one’s convictions,
greater than the violence with which we defend ourselves…

                I wonder what would make giving it all up
—every last thing
—transformative
loosing it all
—a triumph, not a tragedy?

I wonder, would I then press on,
keep going through suffering…
in the face of this decaying world
—trusting that a new creation is possible,
is coming to birth?

                What if it is not a something
—this precious something, but a someone?
The one who is righting, redeeming, the whole world
—I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection!

               

                The ache broke out at that strange banquet in Bethany.
Mary and Martha and Lazarus coming to terms with death and life.
Judas judging extravagant generosity based on its ROI
—Return on Investment.

                The Ache broke out and asked, “What if?”

                What if Judas had known the gift of that moment—priceless…
present with his Savior for a meal
—as one of his followers
—still a disciple,
still six days to be with him!
A supper that isn’t the last one
—isn’t charged with the awful electricity of betrayal.
“Judas lean here beside me, while you still got me!”

                Imagine Charity…
not this beautiful word now broken,
cheapened until it is nothing more than a tense transaction
—maybe you get a tote bag afterwards
—that’s Judas’ sense of it…

but instead charity faithful flowing from it’s origin
—Charitas
—love, a generous sacrifice that is not a sacrifice but a joy
—that’s what Mary’s gift was!

I wonder at that room…
its brave example is stunning…
instead of hiding from the frightening specter of Lazarus’ recent time in the tomb,
hiding from death—they leaned into it!
Martha take that that shade lurking in the corner and pour it out as an offering.
The scent of the tomb becoming the celebration of the meal!

What if the revived Lazarus gets to see a foretaste of the feast to come,
that banquet we all yearn and wait and ache for
—and taste every Sunday?
This whole scene is a sign of it!
Death’s wicked scent met and matched by an anointing.
New life lived with family and fellow disciples.
A gracious meal, a gracious host
—all pointing to the Resurrected One,
in whom we have life!

 

The ache breaks out here among us,
just out of the frame, a flicker in our peripheral vision,
in our yearning and our loss,
in our hunger and our love.

The Ache breaks out and asks, “What if?”

Amen.

On Libraries

               Without exposing the banal and heroic blow by blow of small-town life and politics to the whole wide internet, my township attempted to close our library. A swift bipartisan response turned things around, at least for now. And it got me thinking about libraries.

Growing up out west, a town with a library sent a certain message, it said: this isn’t just a place where people have settled, this is a place where people live. Opening a library, it was a beacon of civilization; there is a beating heart here! This is a community that has made a commitment to each other, even to those as yet unborn!

              So much of who we are as people, individually and collectively, is wrapped up in our routine activities, our habits. A town with a library is a town that has established habits, civic habits! We do things in a certain way so that when things are scrambled and weird, we have established patterns to pull back to, to catch us. One such civic habit, I would suggest, is searching for answers and socializing in a library. Having that kind of space for habitual free inquiry is woven into our democracy.

In Robert Putman’s famed book Bowling Alone (as well as the recent film Join or Die) he noticed the disappearance of “Third Places”, spaces that were neither work nor home, where people could meet and be together. This kind of loss had disastrous consequences, everything from increased crime to political polarization to intergenerational breakdowns.

The library is a third place that remains! In our little township it is one of the few third places that are open year-round and free. If our country is founded on freedom of association and assembly, then fostering local places where that can happen is important!

I have seen the beauty of freedom of association and assembly up close and firsthand at our library. As one of the 25 members of the Thursday Evening Book Club, I can tell you: seeing three generations of one family all showing up to talk books (and a forth generation in that family identifying our library as his library!)… seeing Republicans and Democrats engaged in deep discussion and even disagreements that breaks upon non-partisan lines, because it is about the space race or what a giraffe symbolizes or the nature of amnesia or the origin of video games—is healthier for our township than most any other activity available!

Libraries are signs of civilization, they inculcate civic habits that are healthy, and are third places where bonds of trust can be established, even as information is gathered and imaginations are stoked! I’m so glad we still have our library!

Sunday's sermon, today: Questions of Jesus

 “Did Pilate’s Galilean victims get what was coming to them?”

“How about the dead in Siloam, did they do something to deserve it?”

“Why should this stunted fig tree be wasting the soil?”

            Today’s lesson from Luke’s Gospel is packed with questions—implied, as well as asked aloud.
Questions, that, if reflected upon, can lead us down roads of thought that can kill us, or raise us from the dead—that’s what Scripture does to its hearer after all… Law and Gospel
Questions that:
-Move us from Reaction to Response, 

-Through the narrow path between Randomness and Responsibility,
-And let us rest, Repentant and Rooted in God’s goodness.

Reaction & Response, 
Randomness & Responsibility, 
Repentant & Rooted.

Let us pray

 

From Reaction to Response

            Those Galileans Pilate brutalized, 
profaning the pilgrims’ offering with the pilgrims’ blood
—what’s your take?
Lead with your gut, shoot from the hip, these are your kinfolk after all! 
Just lay it all out there! What’s your hot take… what’s your reaction? 
Just double down on whatever your first impulse is
—don’t think, just speak, consequences be damned. 
Re-Act.

            No… 
slow down… 
don’t re-act… re-spond... 
            Respond… Do you really know what that word means?
—To Pledge Again.
You pledge allegiance to a flag
—pledge too, to be faithful no matter the situation. Even when something rips your guts out
—try to find a beat, 
a pause,
so you respond instead of react
—when faced with the impossible, find room for a loving pause.

            Am I doubling down, or allowing for a loving pause?

 

Randomness and Responsibility

            In that loving pause—we come face to face with the question of “Theodicy” framed by playwright Archibald MacLeish as, “If God is God can God be good, and if God is good can God be God?”

            As with most theological questions, there is an “O’ So Human” component lurking in the shadows—questions of Randomness and Responsibility.

            Things like that don’t just happen, do they?
Clearly, they did something wrong! 
Clearly, there is a way to avoid that fate! 
If I just
—Eat Right, Avoid Rush Hour, Hug My Child, Get My Taxes in On Time, Wash My Hands, and Always Use My Turn Signal
—I’ll be fine…

            A belief that the Galileans and the Siloam dead did something wrong
—that there are ways to do the right thing, 
and in so doing avoid such an evil fate
            …Is at best incomplete, and Jesus names it as such. 
There is an element of randomness to this world that we cannot control.

            Control… That’s what we want
—what we hope for with so much of our machinations
—control. 
A magic formula
—a spell of sorts
—that sorts out life for us and allows us to avoid all evil… 
And there is no such spell.

 

            Now hear me clear,
that’s not to say that there are no consequences to our actions
—cause does lead to effect… 
but so many of those consequences are downstream ones… 
for example, if you fertilize too close to the streams edge, 
there will be algae blooms in the aquafer… 
Maybe not your problem, but certainly a consequence…

 

            Or think of the book “All the King’s Men”
—a fictionalized account of the rise of Huey P. Long
—who essentially become Dictator of Louisiana… 
In the book a contractor used shoddy bricks to build a school
—eventually a wall falls down and kills children… 
this leads the Long character to lead a populist campaign, 
that eventually gives him total control of his state, 
and he corrupts everyone his rule touches…

A whole state corrupted, on account of shoddy masonry… 
downstream effects… 
consequences cast a wide net

responsibility… 

            When Cain asked, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Am I responsible for Abel? God’s implicit response was… yes… yes, in fact, you are.

            We are interconnected
—we share the same stream. 
We’re not an island
—but a continent, connected…

When navigating the tight space between randomness and responsibility, we ought to ask: 
            Am I being drawn to control or to connection?

 

Repentance and Roots

            Repent! Bear fruit! Offer figs, that’s what fig trees do!

            Am I bearing fruit?

Repent… in Luke’s Gospel there are two interconnected meanings for this word:
Repentance is a chance to change… 
-That’s how John the Baptist describes his baptism… 
-that’s how Zaccheus experiences becoming Jesus’ disciple… 
-that colors the story of the Prodigal son…

Repentance is meeting God and being mended… 
-that’s Peter’s call story… 
-that’s the Tax Collector’s wail that Jesus points out as acceptable to the LORD!... 
-encountering a loving Father and being made whole—that too is found in the Parable of the Prodigal we’ll be seeing in skit form next week.

            An encounter with the Divine—a time of transformation
—that’s Repentance.

 

            That’s being Rooted in God’s Grace as well…

            What would happen if you were given another year?
Another year with a loved one. Another year to get your affairs in order. Another year free and clear. 

            As I asked you all on Ash Wednesday, that hyper-Lutheran question—What do I do, now that I don’t need to doanything?

            

“Why should this stunted fig tree be wasting the soil?”

“How about the dead in Siloam, did they do something to deserve it?”

“Did Pilate’s Galilean victims get what was coming to them?”

            Questions that ruminate upon:
Reaction & Response— Am I doubling down, or allowing for a loving pause?
Randomness & Responsibility— Am I being drawn to control or to connection?
Repentance & being Rooted— What do I do, now that I don’t need to do anything?

Amen.

Discipleship in a 4D World Session 5: Disenchantment and Conclusion—Esther

              In order to consider the finally of our 4 Ds, Disenchantment, we’ll take a look at one of the two book of the Bible that doesn’t mention God, the book of Esther. Like the Judges Bible Study, we’ll be reading through a whole lot of the book, luckily it is a little smaller book than Judges.

 

Chapter 1: The King puts away his wife and sets up an empire wide beauty pageant

              The first chapter of Esther sets up the situation, how would a Jewish woman become the Queen of Persia?

 

Esther 2:15-18—Esther becomes the new queen of Persia

15-Esther’s cousin, Mordecai, has become her adopted Father.

16-Just to place the narrative in time, King Ahasuerus is a Hebraization of King Xerxes.

 

Esther 2:19-23—A Plot!

20-Perhaps stating the obvious, but antisemitism, or at least anti-Judaism, is alive in the ancient world. There is a reason Esther isn’t advertising that she’s of the tribe.

21-As a rule, Eunuchs were trusted advisors because they can’t create their own dynasty, so they ought to be more loyal and less likely to plot and rebel.

23-Keep this archive in mind throughout the book, it is Chekhov’s gun on the mantle in scene 1.

 

Chapter 3: Enter Haman

At base chapter 3 sets up the tension between Haman, Xerxes’ right-hand man, and Mordecai. Haman requires that he be worshipped, Mordecai refuses. Haman finds out Mordecai won’t worship him because he’s a Jew. So Haman seeks to kill all Jews.

As we think about the disenchanted nature of Esther it is worth noting that humans like Haman are seeking god-like elevation, even in a book that never mentions God or gods!

 

Esther 4:9-17—Esther agrees to save her people

9-Hathach is functioning as the in-between between Mordecai and Esther at court.

11-As with Haman, note that there is a graven elevation of the Emperor.

13-Even as Queen, Esther isn’t safe. We can think back to chapter one, where Xerxes previous Queen was deposed rather quickly.

14-Mordecai has a faith that the Jewish people will be delivered. He also holds out hope that Esther’s elevation wasn’t happenstance, but instead happened for a reason!

16-Esther decides, she will risk it all!

 

Chapter 5: Esther butters up the Emperor, Haman prepares to lynch Mordecai

 

Esther 6:1-9—A saving coincidence

1-The Emperor’s sleepless night leads him back to the archives from chapter 2.

4-Haman’s is seeking Mordecai’s death.

6-Haman misunderstands as thinks that the Emperor is talking about himself.

9-What Haman desires for Haman is instead given to Mordecai, who Haman wishes to punish.

 

Chapter 7: Mordecai and Haman switch fortunes

Just as Mordecai receives the reward that Haman wishes for himself in chapter 6, in chapter 7 Haman receives the punishment he wishes to do to Mordecai.

 

Chapter 8: A grand reversal for all the Jews

Finally, just as Mordecai’s fortunes are reversed, so too all the Jews in the Empire, they receive good despite Haman’s desire to destroy them.

 

Esther 9:24-28—A summary, Purim explained

24-This is an etymological explanation of the name Purim; to put it into today’s vernacular, we call our holiday Dice, because Haman threw the die and failed.

28-Purim is celebrated in March.

 

Chapter 10: It was a Grand Triumph

 

My working definition of Disenchantment is to lose the habit of paying attention to the Holy.

 

What’s Esther have to do with Disenchantment?

-God is unnamed, save Purim itself, there are no religious rituals.

-There is, in the background, a sense of something fateful going on, I think this can help us think about cracks in our secular framework.

-It is worth noting that without worship secular things, in Esther especially secular authorities, become venerated. Haman’s conflict with Mordechai begins with Haman’s desire to be worshipped, and Esther’s interaction with her husband the Emperor is especially dangerous because the Emperor has been elevated to the status of a god.

 

3 ways to think about Disenchantment:

-There is a famous experiment, the selective attention test, where subjects are shown a video of people throwing a ball and are told to keep track of the ball. At the end of the video, the watchers are asked when the Gorilla walked through the room, and most people never saw the person in a gorilla mask walking through the video. So too our religious habits. If we keep our eyes on only secular things, we’ll miss God walking through the room. What we seek is what we see.

-Richard Beck argues the Reformation and the Enlightenment both focused our attention in a way that misses some of what God is up to in the world. The Reformation focuses us on Morality to the exclusion of the Mystical, and the Enlightenment focuses us on measurable things to the exclusion of their meaning. As I’ve written elsewhere, Beck is painting with the broadest of brushes.

-There was a time when people would regularly make pilgrimage to a small town in Wales where there was a well filled with eels. These eels were said to be the descendants of eels that interacted with a particular saint and were thus seen as having magical properties. These days, no one makes pilgrimage to see these magic eels. The enchantment of holy people and places has left us, in this disenchanted world, a world bereft of pilgrimages and saints. Because we don’t look for those things, we have lost them.

 

Examples of Enchantment:

-When we mark sacred time, we take sabbaths and celebrate festivals. When space is sacred, we celebrate the sacraments and travel to places important to the faith. When holy people are pointed out, we recognize those of the faith who have gone before us, namely saints.

-Liturgical church moves us through sacred time with a lectionary and liturgical calendar, the sacraments remind us that matter matters, and our sanctuaries are more likely to exhibit some form of beauty than our non-liturgical hyper-protestant siblings.

-The Contemplative tradition pushes us to notice the sacred in the everyday. Praying before decisions and reflecting on the highs and lows of a day before bed are both small practical examples of this deep tradition.

-Charismatic Christianity refuses to amputate the heart during worship. Both preaching and the reception of preaching tries to notice the romance of God’s story. Ideally the repeated cycle of faith in this tradition begins with receptivity—waiting for God to act, gratitude—recognizing when God acts and being thankful, and then finally testifying—telling people about the good thing that has taken place.

-The Celtic tradition also offers a window into an enchanted world. On one hand, there is the concept of Thin Places—locations that feel sacred in the different way than most places (the two times I’ve been particularly aware of thin places was at an 800 year old monastery turned youth retreat centre I worked at one year, as well as at the ruins of a Mosque/Church/Synagogue/Temple at Har Maggido). On the other hand there is sacred friendship—that there can be friendships that deepen our faith lives for our whole lives, opening up understandings of grace you might never experience otherwise.

 

Challenges:

-We do live in a modern/post-modern world. For every sacred habit we’ve formed, we’re also informed by dozens of secular ones. I would venture that the average Christian has their wills formed by advertisements more than by scripture and prayer. By and large questions of morality ethics and even beauty—once addressed within a religious context—have been offloaded to partisan silos that were never intended hold their heft, and it warps both faith and politics. Why ask our Sacred Loving Parent for assistance, when Amazon Prime will get us something that will fill that desire within 48 hours?

To be clear, I’m not pushing us into little Christian enclaves like Evangelicals did in the ‘90s, or encouraging us to put on blinders—but it is worth noting that the way we live our lives is not neutral for our ability to trust in God at all.

-If church is seen as solely about creating good people, and Matthew 13, Romans 7, and the Lutheran tradition are right that we continue to be Simul Justus et Peccator, Simultaneously Saint and Sinner, even as Christians, then Churches will be seen as failures. If the measure of a successful church is the number of angelic humans it produces, then people are right to leave the church!

-For that matter, if measurable results are the only way to interpret what is going on in a congregation—the cold hard facts of the Enlightenment—then Church becomes just another numbers game. Church is nothing more than its budget and its attendance figures. Once that secular frame envelopes a congregation, denomination, or the big C Church, any of the actual vitality that makes a church what it is, implodes.

 

Possibility:

-When we engage with the secular world—which in this day and age simply means the world, because we’re all caught up in its frame—the best witness we have is to name “The Ache.” That is, our task is an imaginative one, a speculative one, a what-if adventure. “What if there is a God?” “Imagine how the world would be different if abundance, not scarcity is God’s desire for the world!” “I wonder how I would live my life differently if I manna in the wilderness and a resurrected messiah were on offer.” The secular frame can feel like a straitjacket, giving the imagination room to say, “I wish” or “That would be nice” may be witness enough these days, even when just witnessing to ourselves!

-Two other parts of life that are in the Church’s wheelhouse are beauty and friendship. These are both things that don’t fit easily into the Enlightenment’s frame of reference, because they in fact are not things at all. They are gifts, gifts that are good unto themselves, and also point to deeper spiritual realities.

-Finally, I think it is worth naming the places where I’ve tried to re-enchant my congregation. We’ve shared inter-generational wisdom in a way that made the Biblical Sages speak afresh to our realities. We’ve went out of our way to have God Conversations with our neighbors, and since then we’ve used that same way of doing things to notice when we’re praying and when we’re inviting our neighbors. I think all of these actions create holy habits that widen our ability to trust in God and notice when God is at work in the world.

 

Perhaps we can hope for an Enchanting Church!

 

Conclusion:

              These 4Ds we’ve reflected on in these 5 sessions are all very real challenges to the Church. Hiding our heads in the sand and pretending they aren’t shaping our lives is an unfaithful posture in the world. Neither fighting against them or capitulating to them are good options. Instead we ought to be in conversation with them—as we ought to be with the zeitgeist of every age. We ought to engage with the 4Ds in light of scripture, and in so doing find where the Holy Spirit is pushing and pulling, transforming and tackling the spirit of this age.

              The faithful actions of Daniel—off in Babylon no cultural supports for his faith on offer—helps us re-imagine our Disestablished world, imagine afresh faithful ways to partner with our neighbors.

              The cyclical tribal life of Judges—trying to uphold the glory of God while dispersed—points us to our radically decentralized world, a world where a small nimble church can have outsized impacts.

              The book of Acts tells the story of Pentecost—the early church chasing the Holy Spirit as it is continually active among people and in places none of the Disciples would have dared to imagine—that story helps us to navigate demographic shifts, embracing an authentic diversity that looks like the neighborhoods in which congregations reside.

              The book of Esther, silent about the most present character in all of scripture, God—showcases how that absence is experienced, both by the faithful and those who seek to be affirmed as godlike themselves—helps us to name the ache of our disenchanted world, and by naming it allows us to turn around and become enchanted again.

              In short, the way forward is:

A Partnering, Nimble, Authentically Diverse, and Enchanted Church.

              We as Church need to try on a few new roles: partnership crafter, wave rider, sacred scientist, and soul shepherd.

Ash Wednesday: Riddles

            One of the oldest riddles in the world goes like this: “There is a house. One enters it blind and comes out seeing. What is it?” (A School)… 

Perhaps the ages have made it cease to pack a punch… 

            So how about this one: “What has many teeth but can’t bite?” (A Comb)

            Or: “What is always in front of you, but can’t be seen?” (The Future)

 

            Or, how about some Lenten Riddles:

When is a return not a return?

When are secrets seen?

When is having nothing, possessing everything?

Prayer

 

When is a return not a return?

            Our lesson from Isaiah was written in response to the worst of experiences—hopes dashed. The Exiles had returned from Babylon, rebuilt… and found that all was not well—the extraordinary promises of God were so very ordinary… their life together didn’t live up to the hype—the hype Isaiah himself had preached up until then.

            And this discontinuity between the promise and his present, leads Isaiah to look how those promises were spent.

            You rebuilt the temple
—to turn a blind eye to injustice!
Doing religious work to sooth your bad conscience at the way you treat your workers!

            You were freed from Babylon
—to oppress and enslave your own people?
To deny the homeless and the naked even the basest of dignity?

            We came back together again
—to quarrel and to fight?
To hide from your siblings,
or cover it all up with a shallow nationalism?

            If that’s all this was for, God have mercy.

            But if our religion empowers us to: 
side with the little guy against the bully, 
embrace the needy, 
do kindness to our kin and all those in need of care… 
            that might be a compelling faith
            —a righteous nation, 
            a city on a hill!

When is a return not a return?: When Religion is used as a smokescreen for injustice and evil.

 

When are secrets seen?

            As Jesus states starkly, there are always dangers to spiritual practices, for example:
Hypocrisy—doing a public act, in order to hide one’s private nature.
Idolatry—confusing the thing, with what it points to.

Selfishness—making the religious act about you, instead of the transcendent or the neighbor.

 

            If we need to show off, we aren’t doing it right, 
but if God shows forth through our day to day, 
our generosity, our piety, our consciousness
            Perhaps our practice has found the mark. 

 

            I pray, in this season of Lent, that we avoid every pitfall, abandon empty forms, and instead fill our hearts with the good that comes from God our Holy Parent
—authenticity, devotion, and altruism.
That these 40 days will make us more fully who we are—baptized Children of God.
Ground us, 
center us, 
remind us of the core of Christianity.

            When are secrets seen? When empty forms, become heart-filled treasures!

 

When is having nothing, possessing everything?

            The Apostle Paul describes his ministry as a cruciform kind of thing
—cross shaped… 
God hidden in God’s opposite… 

            A kind of ministry that clings to Jesus’ beatitudes
—blessing the cursed, 
present with the cursed
—endurance, affliction, imprisonment, hunger and sleepless nights.
            A ministry that is beyond reproach
being all things to all people
—so the goodness of God might be known through him
Purity, patience, kindness, love and truth.
            Paul fashions himself as an ambassador of God’s goodness in the face of all kinds of things, his life poured out for the good news, as good news.

-Punished, yet alive, sorrowful yet rejoicing, poor, yet enriching, empty, yet having everything.

            When is having nothing, possessing everything?: When we are possessed by God… nothing becomes everything when that nothing is 
the mark of the nail in Christ’s hand, 
the spear thrust into his sacred side
—nothing is everything, 
when it meets the Word that creates out of nothing.

 

            And, I have one more Lenten Riddle for you
—one that flows out of that creative work of God

One that allows us to hold onto the challenges of tonight’s scriptures:
-Isaiah’s warning of religious practice as a smokescreen, 
-Jesus’ promise of heavenly treasure, 
-Paul’s ministry possessed by the innate creativity of God.

            In the face of all that
—a final riddle, reveling in God’s grace, 
the profound freedom offered to us this Lent and every single day
—that allows us to engage in spiritual practice at all
One that I hope rumbles around in you these 40 days: 
What do I do, now that I don’t need to do anything?

What do I do, now that I don’t need to do anything?

Amen.

Discipleship in a 4D World Session 4: Demographic Shift—Pentecost

 

Acts 2:1-21 The Redemption of Babel

Acts 2:1-6—The Spirit Acts of Pentecost

1-The day of Pentecost these folk have gathered together for, is the celebration of the giving of the first five books of Moses. That’s why people from all over the known world were gathered in Jerusalem.

3-There is a symbolism that sometimes gets missed when reading about the tongues of fire—they are a prophetic image: words, voices, mouths, set apart to speak of holy things. Think of Isaiah’s call, lips touched with sacred coals, or God putting words into Jeremiah’s mouth, or Ezekiel being told to “eat scroll!”

4-It is worth remembering that the Bible is multiple books, and therefore things that seem similar aren’t always the same. Case in point, this “speaking in tongues” is an act of human communication—the point is that people who speak different languages are all able to hear the good news, Jesus is Lord. This is different than the “speaking in tongues” Paul confronts in 1^st Corinthians, that was not human communication, but “angelic communication.” Some scholars name this as a pagan practice—think the oracle of Delphi—that’s why Paul disparages the practice. At Pentecost we see a widening of the sharing of the Gospel, in Corinth it was an act of non-communication/confused communication.

5-Again, Pentecost is a big festival, you have Jews coming to Jerusalem from all over. A good audience to tell “The Messiah came, Rome, in collusion with the Temple Authorities, killed him, and he rose from the dead vindicating his identity, and is still Lord!”

 

Acts 2:7-11—Hearing Good News in Your Vernacular

7-Maybe I’m showing my Wyoming/Dakotas roots here, but I hear “They’re Galileans” as the equivalent of “These are bumpkins!”

8-So, just repeating, Pentecost is about translation—communicating the Gospel to people who would otherwise not hear it. These days we have a lot of Christians who claim to be “Pentecostal” or “Apostolic” and read this chapter as justification for everything from semi-audible mumbles expressing the inexpressible to shouting nonsense words on account of peer pressure to fortune telling—that’s not what’s going on at Pentecost—again might be what’s going on at Corinth, but not Acts 2; Pentecost is about proclaiming “Jesus is Lord” in ways that a diversity of people understand.

10-It is worth noting that, while Judaism is not as a rule a proselytizing religion, there were still non-Jews who were attached to the faith. Non-Jews came to Judaism for a whole variety of reasons, everything from “marrying in” to embracing the logic of monotheism to admiring the ethics of the faith. So, when Proselytes are mentioned that’s probably who they’re talking about.

 

Acts 2:12-15—A variety of responses to the Holy Spirit

12-13-From the start of Luke’s Gospel (look at Mary compared with Zechariah, for example) it consistently describes people encountering God at work as Perplexed/Pondering, or Disbelieving.

15-I find this line intentionally funny, again these “bumpkins” can’t imagine a situation where someone would not be sober at 9am.

 

Acts 2:16-21—The Message

17-In the last days—at the point where God is intervening in history and we’re moving from one era to another era.

Sons/Daughters, Young/Old—all these dichotomies are ways of saying everyone! When God does a new thing, everyone will participate! No barriers to proclaiming what God is up to in the world! No barriers to the Holy Spirit and the good news “Jesus is Lord!”

19-20-This description echoes the plagues in Egypt—it is that kind of liberation we’re talking about!

Day of the Lord—Much like the phrase the last days, this is pointing to a time/the time when God is making all things right. By citing Joel, Peter/Luke is telling the crowd that Jesus’ life death and resurrection, as well as the proclamation of the Church, is how God is making all things new! A resurrected world to meet the resurrected Messiah!

 

My working definition of Demographic Shift—A significant change in a population structure over time.

 

What’s Acts have to do with Demographic Shift?

-A diversity of the Jewish diaspora is present in Jerusalem, is gathered in.

-Who constitutes the people doing God’s new thing, shifts. Everyone who calls upon the Lord is the new boundary marker.

-If we were to continue beyond chapter 2 of Acts and read the whole of Acts, a pattern emerges; the Church continually runs into the Holy Spirit working with “strange” people. The population structure of the people of God changed rather rapidly in the book of Acts.

 

3 Stories to think about Demographic Shift:

-Imagine a church, let’s call it St. Elsewhere, founded in the late 40s or early 50s. The founding Pastor looks through the newspaper every Friday for the notices of new residents. Every time a German sounding name pops up, he goes by and says hi to the new people. They flock to the church, pretty soon they invite their neighbors, both German and not. Next thing you know St. Elsewhere is a staple of the community—the demographics of the congregation and the demographics of the town overlap. Fast forward to 2010, the congregation hasn’t changed much demographically, it still has a German-American core and is mainly white. The surrounding city, however, is now 40% non-white. St. Elsewhere calls a new Pastor who stumbles upon an idea, evangelizing to the Guyanese population of the town will yield similar results to the founding Pastor’s evangelism to German Americans. The Guyanese people are incredibly diverse, their heritages running the gamut from European to African, Indigenous to Indian. As such, the congregation begins to look more like the neighborhood, and that diversity is attractive.

-Consider these demographic statistics:

1950-87% of Americans were European. 2010-64% were European.

1950-0.2% of Americans were Asian, in 2010-5% were Asian.

1950-5% of Americans were Latino, in 2010-16% were Latino.

-Or, moving from race to income, think about the shifting economic realities the church faces:

Between 1950 and 2010—10% of Americans have gone from being economically middle class to being economically lower class.

 

Challenges:

-Lutheranism can be seen as a Northern European immigrant club, instead of a dynamic faith tradition.

-Sometimes we as a church have a hard time discerning between the faithfulness of reflecting the neighborhood of which we are a part, and trying to be diverse because it is hip.

-Lutheranism tends to draw from the “Middle Class” who tend to have disposable time and money, but that’s shifted. This leads to scarcity of both volunteers and donations.

 

Possibility:

-Maybe a tightening of the belts will help us to become more creative.
For example: Lutheran Seminaries have looked at how non-Lutherans do their candidacy, having realized we were making some middle-upper class assumptions that were excluding poor people. For example, having to move 5 times in a 4-year period isn’t something everyone can afford to do, so poorer candidates drop out at a higher rate than middle class and rich ones do. Likewise, requiring a candidate to drop all other licensures to show a commitment to the candidacy process might have made sense at one point, but when candidates are being asked to find a second vocation after seminary, still being a licensed psychologist or keeping up with your CDL license would have been helpful.

-Maybe we’ll be able to see Lutheranism as a faith tradition, not an ethnic club. We have the promise of Grace and the challenge of the Theology of the Cross, that is more than enough for a faith to unpack, without functioning as an Elks club for Swedes or Danes.

-Alternatively, we can shift that ethnic club thing a few degrees, and expand out and celebrate the broad swatch of peoples who are found by Jesus through the Lutheran tradition. Crown a St. Lucia, certainly, also make pelican pendants on the day Lutheranism came to Guyana, hold an Octoberfest, and also do a big Churchwide fun run in November to honor Lutherans of Ethiopian heritage.

-As the last suggestion intimates, maybe we can start to notice how many Lutherans are coming to America, much like Northern Europeans did after the Second World War—Ethiopians, Tanzanians, Namibians, Malagasy, and Indonesians, all waiting to be invited, waiting to be welcomed just like we welcomed Lutherans 80 years ago.

So, even as Demographic Shift brings with it many challenges, I hope we can respond by becoming an authentically diverse church!

Sermon: Listen!

 

          Jesus has preached his beloved blessings of:

the poor, the hungry, the weeping, and the reviled,
as well as the corollary woes to: the rich, filled, overjoyed, and honored.

          Then he asks, “Are you listening?”

 

          He takes a beat—he does a sort of mic check,
 to see if people are paying attention.
He insists that the Disciples and the Crowd reflect on what such blessings and woes mean,
 not as abstractions,
but in the world they found themselves in… the world as it actually is!

In Judea long occupied by Rome
—where patriotic rebels and vicious bandits were rather hard to tell apart…
because they were usually the same people…

In a polarized place
—Samaritans and Jews jostling for position,
Judaism itself riven and split
—Patrician Sadducees and Essenes exiled and proud of it,
Pharisees themselves divided between
acceptance of the occupation             and resistance to it…

In such a reality
—what does God’s grand reversal
—the blessing of the Kingdom of God
that Jesus has just spoken into existence
mean in concrete terms?
“Are you listening?” This is what that will look like in your life…

And at base, Jesus insists there is a path between retaliation and reciprocity,
a path that can not be found—only revealed.
The path between retaliation and reciprocity cannot be found, only revealed.

Prayer

 

“Are you listening?”

Jesus warns the crowd of the twin dangers of Retaliation and Reciprocity.

If you live as if the Beatitudes are true
—even as a part time lifestyle, even as a hobby,
there will be consequences, you will make enemies… you will get hurt.

The temptation, an o’ so human one, is to retaliate
—you hurt me, I’ll hurt you back.
An eye for an eye—blinding the whole world.

 

“Are you listening?”

When you are struck, however, offer your enemy the other cheek
—now one reading of this is a so-called post-colonial reading
—Roman citizens alone could be struck with the left hand…
so this second slap is a sort of conferring of dignity—I’m a good as any Roman! (back-hand)

 

Maybe a more meaningful reading is that offering a second strike
is asking of the question: “Do you really mean it?”

So too, when your cloak is requisitioned,
a Roman form of Imminent Domain,
give them more than they are allowed to take
—go naked to get the occupiers to knock it off!

 

Luke’s Gospel, and the Acts of the Apostles,
 are both filled with the radical generosity of “give to all who beg”
to the point of sharing everything in common…
a practice often lauded, but rarely done.

 

Then finally, Jesus insists that theft ought to be transformed into a gift…
they can’t take your stuff if you give it to ‘em!
You’re saving them from sinning,
saving them from breaking a commandment!

 

          Resist your enemies by heightening the stakes
—make it uncomfortable and personal
—make them see the evil of their ways
and even force them to go against their own values and rules when they harm you!

          Not only that, heighten your own good deeds
—heighten the rightness of your cause,
treating them like the human beings they are!

 

“Are you listening?”

The other impulse of us humans is to transform kindness and goodness into a game
—I scratch your back, you scratch mine,
Quid Pro Quo
Reciprocity!

 

That Springsteen song might boast that,
“We take care of our own…”
but Sorry Bruce,
Jesus says “guess what, everyone does that
—even sinners love those who love them.”

 

Likewise, you might do good
in order that someone will owe you a favor
—that’s not how the least, last, and lost are going to be blessed,
that’s not Kingdom-work.

 

If you give,
in order to make someone indebted to you
—then it wasn’t a gift!

I think this is something most of us have experienced
—I’d say 1/3 of the fights I’ve mediated in my life have involved some form of this
—“I gave you this thing, and you didn’t use it the way I wanted you to…
-now I’m going to take it back…
-now I’m going to take it from you,
-it was never really yours to begin with!

A gift is only a gift if there are no strings attached to it!

          Instead of relying on reciprocity,
be merciful as our Father is merciful
—start out from a point of thanksgiving
—grateful for every gift, life itself a gift…

 

“Are you listening?”

This way of life
—retaliation replaced with resistance and empathy.

This way of life
—reciprocity overcome by mercy,
and by the Way of Jesus who is the Christ, the Lord, the very Son of God.

 

“Are you listening?”

This is impossible if it is a task,
if it is a way to be found,
to search and sift and struggle to do…

but as a Revelation,
that’s a whole different story
—mercy, empathy, resistance, a way
—is shown to us.

The Life of Jesus Christ reveals God’s own heart.

God is not a God of retaliation
—our sins are not held against us, our shortcomings and misdeeds do not condemn us…

Instead, God holds us back where we would harm another
and looks upon us with tears of compassion and love,
may the lost be found,
the hungry fed,
the least uplifted.

Neither is God a God of reciprocity
—God is not looking for a bribe,
or desires good things only for those who do good…
God doesn’t string us along or make us into, to quote Luther, “workbeasts”
or give us favor, only if we give God something in return…

Instead, God is the God of Gift and Grace,
rushes to us while we are still far off,
cares for us even when we do not care for ourselves
—God loves the unlovable and…
when God showed up to save sinners, he was all in
—living this way of blessing even when it kills him,
and makes him alive again,
and with him all of us!

 

“Are you listening?”
Jesus revealed a cosmic mercy and empathy that makes the beatitudes true,
despite all the evidence to the contrary.

He is blessing this poor hungry mournful reviled world,
transforming it into an abundant place
—a whole world resurrected through Jesus Christ!

Amen.

Discipleship in a 4D World Session 3: Decentralization—Judges

               So, first a confession, when I tried to teach this session, I went way overtime… which I should have known would happen, I tried to teach the whole book of Judges, and some of the book of Joshua, in under an hour.

 

The Book of Joshua—A Map of the Tribes

              I love reading Fantasy, and one of my favorite features of the genre are the cool maps in the front of the book. That is a good way to take the book of Joshua, a type of map of an idealized version of the conquest.

 

Joshua 4:1-7—Just feast on this imagery a bit, 12 tribes traveling together before the ark. This is the Utopia the author hopes for, a decentralized theocracy; the ideal that turns into a dystopia once the rubber hits the road, as the book of Judges demonstrates. But ideally—12 tribes, upholding God’s roving presence, founded and forged in crossing out of slavery. That’s some compelling stuff!

Joshua 12:7-24—Here is an idealized account of the 12 tribe’s conquest, almost a completed to-do list, Kings from Ba’al-gad to Mt. Halak.

 

Judges—A Tribal Confederation breaks down ever generation

              If Joshua is akin to Thomas More’s Utopia, then Judges is George Miller’s Mad Max. Any semblance of an ideal society is quickly scraped away, as the faults of a decentralized theocracy are on full display.

 

Judges 2:6-10—Joshua is buried and stability with it

6-The tribes are dispersed to go do their own thing.

10-As is the refrain from Judges to Kings to Ecclesiastes, from one generation to the next everything is lost. Inheritances never pass cleanly from one generation to the next.

Judges 2:11-15—Idolatry

11-Ba’al—Canaanite deity, “Lord” in some Canaanite languages, so Ba’al Peor would be the Lord of Peor, etc.

12-Astartes—a goddess—the local manifestation of Ishtar/Aphrodite.

14-The conquest doesn’t go so well, there are counter-attacks. The indigenous people didn’t much like having their kings killed and put on a list like groceries. These defeats are seen as reproof from God for the Tribes going over to other gods, forgetting the liberation from Egypt.

 

Judges 2:16-23—Judges restrain the people’s unfaithfulness

Just as God provided clothing for Adam and Eve when they were expelled from Eden, called Noah to build an ark to save his family from the flood, and provided the Passover as protection for the people’s first born down in Egypt, so too the people are given a way to continue on even in the face of their own ruptured relationships with their God. God provides charismatic leaders to guide them through challenges in the land.

16-Judges—Shophet, Charismatic Chief of Chiefs, unites the tribes and deals with trouble.

17-It is worth considering that when the people are dispersed throughout the land as they are, decentralized, it is harder for them to hold onto the ways of the previous generation. Traditions warp and break more easily without a center.

18-In some ways we have a replay of Egypt, the people are oppressed, they groan for help, and God sends a Moses figure.

 

A Chart of Judges:

Here is where my Bible Study went off the rails, I tried to review every judge, so I would suggest instead to review my chart here, and simply note that it doesn’t all go well, at best Judges are ambiguous figures. Often times, people read Samson as particularly heroic (the ancients explicitly paralleled him with Hercules), but my reading is that he is intentionally an example of how degraded Judgeship has become. The book of Judges isn’t a story of ongoing faithfulness, but instead the breaking down of decentralized theocracy, it isn’t a working way of governing people!

Judge	Disobedience	Consequence	Outcome
Othniel	Serve Ba’als & Asherahs.	Captured by King Cushan of Aram for 8 years	War, Tribes prevail, 40 years of peace
Ehud	“Evil in the sight of God”	Conquered by Moab, Amon, and Amalekites. 18 years under King Eglon of Moab	Ehud assassinates Eglon in his restroom, Moab crushed in the confusion, 80 years of peace.
Shamgar			Kill 600 Philistines, the Tribes are delivered
Deborah—both Prophet and Judge (Ja’el & Barak assisting)	“Did evil in the sight of God”	King Jabin of Canaan and General Sisera of The Gentile Fortress (raiding club) invade with massive chariots	The chariots caught in the mud, Sisera tent pegged, 40 years of rest.
Gideon (Reluctant Judge, his father worshipped Ba’al, he is also named Jeru-ba’al)	Did what is evil in the sight of the Lord	Midian and Amalekite raids on farms.	Destruction of Ba’als and Asherahs, Tribal infighting, killing generals, a campaign, he creates an idol out of plunder. No time of peace. His son, Abimelek, tries to create a Kingdom.
Tola	Abimelek’s bad reign		Judged 23 years
Jair			Judged 22 years
Jephthah (outsider, born out of wedlock, chased out of the country, makes a vow that leads to his daughter’s death)	Served Ba’als and Astartes and a plethora of other gods.  Ceased worshipping God!	Ammonites and Philistines control them for 18 years, subdue them out tribe by tribe… God tells them to ask their new gods for help!	Ammonites subdued. Jephtha rules as Judge for 6 years. Intertribal slaughter, 40,000 dead in “civil war”.
Ibzan (makes intertribal alliances using his 30 sons)	(after the slaughter)		Judged 7 years
Elon			Judged 10 years
Abdon (like Ibzan had many sons and donkeys to make alliances)			Judged 8 years
Samson (Special Child, Nazarite, Pursues Philistine Wife, sleeps with prostitutes, falls in lust with Delilah, etc.)	Did evil in the Lord’s sight, given into the hands of Philistines for 40 years	Samson bumbles into fighting Philistines, torches fields.	Blinded and shaven, still destroys temple of Dagon, Judges for 20 years.

 

The Rest of the Book:

New Idolatry and Tribal Dispute, much can be traced back to Gideon’s idol and his son Abimelek. Massive slaughter of Benjaminites.

 

Other Judges:

Eli (and almost his sons) and Samuel (and his sons).

 

My working definition of Decentralization—The Distribution of functions, power, and authority.

 

What’s Judges have to do with Decentralization?

-During this time period Israelite society was dispersed and governed on a tribal level.

-One of the consequences of decentralization is that truth and tradition are harder to pass along without a centralized authority.

-Theoretically this distribution of authority allows for God to be the sole authority. Hypothetically one of the ways a theocracy can work is that there simply are no earthly rulers, or they are so weak that no one pays them any mind.

 

3 Stories to think about Decentralization:

Walter Cronkite

              I hear tell there was a time when authority about current events was centralized. Everyone turned on the TV and listened to Walter Cronkite, and that settled matters. Not so now, now interpretation of current events and even what constitutes news, is diffuse, broken into pieces by 24 hour cable news, algorithms and media silos.

St. Paul and the Werewolf

              One Sunday a visitor to the congregation I was serving came up to me after worship and let me know he was an ex-Roman Catholic, because they were hiding things. After a few conversations over a couple of weeks, I found out he had “discovered,” from some amalgamation of the “History” Channel and chat rooms on the internet, that the difference between Protestants and Catholics was that Protestants acknowledged that the Apostle Paul was a werewolf (that was the thorn in his flesh).

When we got into extended conversation about this idea, and the actual historic divisions between Protestants and Catholics, he didn’t let go of this idea; instead he decided I, an ordained Protestant Pastor, didn’t really know the difference between Protestants and Catholics. For him, I was instead an authority figure hiding the truth.

Part of our decentralized, hyper-democratic society is that anything that looks like a centralized authority is automatically suspect. The slogan “Question Authority” becomes a highest ideal, even as it can at times be exercised without common sense.

 Flash mobs and Terrorist Cells

              Up until now my examples of Decentralization have been fairly negative, but the act of democratizing function, power, and authority can also be transformative, it can do big things—that is the central premise of The Starfish and the Spider. Two examples:

-Flash mobs are an amazing feat. By decentralizing the whole process of putting on a concert, a small group of people are able to give a whole performance without ever practicing together.

-Similarly, terrorist cells are small groups delegated all the function, power, and authority of making war, and they can do damage like you wouldn’t believe. Even if one branch of a terrorist organization is caught, it rarely does long term damage to the organization, because everyone has been empowered to make war.

 

The Elephant in the Room—The Internet:

              Probably the biggest example of decentralization we experienced on the day to day, is the internet. It has flattened the whole world, everything is interconnected, function, power, and authority can be spread out not just among a small group, but among millions, even billions, of people.

 

Challenges:

              I’m sure you can intuit some of the challenges decentralization brings to the church, but here are a few:

-As the Israelites found within one generation of entering the promised land, passing on the faith in a way that doesn’t get confused and involve werewolves is hard without centralized authority figures, leaders, or meeting place.

-In so far as the faith involves claims made by a religious authority, be that authority based on charismatic experience or theological education or lines of tradition, they are all suspect in a decentralized world. The watchword of most people that think about this is that any respect for the pastoral office, any religious sway that can be mustered, comes from pastoral authenticity, not pastoral authority. So, if you notice pastors in skinny jeans who say things like “I’m just being real with you” that’s the move from Pastoral Authority to Pastoral Authenticity.

-Cyberspace, the internet, social media, all of that—poses a grave challenge to the Christian faith, in so far as we are a faith that believes that material stuff matters, that Christianity is an embodied tradition, that God took on a body, took on flesh and blood—matter matters! As we all unfortunately found during the Covid years, a disembodied faith, a cyber faith, is quite malformed. There were neat things we got to try, virtual services, home Holy Week packets, Bible Studies on zoom, meetings on zoom, continuing education on zoom, zoom zoom zoom. But, even the Gnostics among us who notoriously denigrate bodily life, got tired of that disembodied form of decentralized church.

 

Possibilities:

-One of the founding stories of the Christian faith is that a small group of disciples shook the Roman Empire and beyond by dispersing and using the new technology of a codex (a bound book) to spread the Gospel. This is like a flash mob or a terrorist cell, decentralization having a transformative power. Why not again? Why isn’t there a space for a small group of Christians to use technology in a dispersed way to: re-evangelize our world, humble the Powers and Principalities of our era, and re-tune the Church to the Spirit’s calling today?

-Now, for decades we’ve bought into the church growth model of ministry, ultimately Church is about becoming bigger and bigger. There have been instances of pushback of course, the Slow Church movement, the Emergent Church, etc, but by and large those movements have been snatched up and misused to achieve the same goal as Church Growth—bigger is better. But there is a case to be made that small is attractive, that the drive for growth ultimately sours people to these churches (there is evidence that for every person entering Saddleback during its heyday there was another person leaving). In short, what if we’re supposed to be small, salt and light, not every ingredient of the soup, not the sun itself?

-What if the Church is the antithesis of Cyber-Gnosticism? As everything in our society pushes toward the anonymous and depersonalized (or the frighteningly hyper-personalization of AI), the Church as an awkward and weird third place. A place where people are authentically who they are, where you can only be so anonymous for so long, if you sit among a small group of people and worship for more than a week or two, they’re going to get to know you. Maybe that’s what we need in this world?

 

So, even as decentralization has its challenges, maybe we can hope that nimble small churches can navigate those challenges and tame some of those dynamics in order to proclaim the Gospel.