Have You Believed because You Have Seen Me?

So much of our western orientation of belief and intellect is based on demonstrable proof.  We are children of the scientific revolution.  Yet our religious forebears had a much easier time seeing themselves in story, believing in the miraculous, humbling themselves before awesome wonders.  

Again I could answer "yes and no" to this question.  I do not have a direct visual experience of God like Thomas.  But, I have had a direct experience of God which served to underscore a sense of certainty in faith.  As I laid on an operating table spending precious moments with our three children, born premature, there was a presence and strength that cannot be wrapped up in words.  And those moments changed me, rearranged, me, put everything I thought I *knew* into a different realm.  When it is dark and I feel alone, I *know* that I am not.  I can feel totally forsaken, yet find strength in seeking the light.

Once the scales fell from my eyes, I began to see God in all things.  There is a sweet surrender to finding your vision infused with the divine.  Yes, there are still valleys in this life; but even in the darkest darkness I sense light.  

I love this verb: to abide.  If we abide in Him and He in us, then we know real peace and joy.  That has been the goal of my journey through Lent: to spend more time in quiet contemplation, to rely less on friends, food, even my spouse to fulfill my needs.  Balance comes in knowing the Beloved and putting that relationship first.  Sometimes it is an awkward lean; sometimes it is a full embrace; sometimes it is a straining reach.  If I lose balance, I become like Thomas:  I doubt, I revel in anxiety, I wallow in my sense of self and all of its shortcomings.  But, if I abide in His love, my balance is restored, my vision made clear, the light which seemed to allude me suddenly appears over the hills.

We are indeed blessed beyond measure.  May we continue to seek that which propelled us into the desert at the start of Lent.  May our vision be made finer, our senses made more alive, our souls attuned to the new creation of His Kingdom.  Happy Easter eve to all those who have undertaken this journey; may you find yourself refreshed in this holy season.

Why Have You Forsaken Me?

There is much in our faith walk that avoids, dismisses, or covers up the reality of darkness, forsakenness in our journey.  Yet, it is real.  They put him to death on a tree, but God....raised him on the third day.

In the darkness of our remembrance this day, if ever there was a conditional clause that gives rise to hope, it is this:  but God...I once was lost, broken, confused, dazed, grieving, depressed, hurting, alone...but God rescued me...delivered me...walked with me.

The world bids us seek happiness at all costs, even when we waste precious time chasing after illusions.  But God says: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul, and your neighbor as your self.  The world says, avoid and ignore death at all costs, take care of number one.  But God says, those who would save their life will lose it.  The way of the world leads to death, illusions, false power, empty prestige.  But God's way leads to death and then new life, life abundant, and life poured out in love.

In our darkest hour there is still light.  Theologian Douglas John Hall writes: 

“Darkness entered into, darkness realized,

 is the point of departure for all profound expressions of Christian hope.

 'Meaningless darkness' becomes 'revelatory darkness' 

when it is confronted by the courage of a thoughtfulness

 and hope that is born of faith's quest for truth.”

While so much of our gaze at the Cross will focus on Jesus' suffering for us, and while our hope is found in the but God reality of this day, there is one more preposition to emphasize:  Jesus' suffering with us.  Diana Butler Bass puts this into words poignantly:

Indeed, thinking that Jesus died for salvation may give pause, cause us to raise a prayer of thanks, feel sadness or relief; but ultimately, the idea that someone dies for something is theologically and spiritually uncomplicated.

But with is complicated, even frightening.  Good Friday plunges us into with. Have you sacrificed with others?  Have you walked the way of death with someone?  Felt the power of the suffering love?   Do you feel Jesus dying with his Mother, his friends, with us, with all creatures, with the firmament, with the planets and the elements?  Can you embrace the truth that, at Calvary, Jesus’ Mother, friends, US, all creatures, the firmament, the planets and all elements died there with him, too?

The Cross isn’t a contract between God and sinners; the Cross is God’s definitive expression of kinship and love—that everything, everywhere, through all time, is connected in and through pain and suffering.  That is God’s Passion; that is Jesus’ Cross.  And, in the tortured Christ, we find the hope to endure, a love for others and creation, the power to enact God’s dream of love and justice for the whole world.  We are with God.  God is with us.  This is why the Cross should cause us to tremble, tremble.  We tremble at the fearsome with of God.

Do You Know What I Have Done for You?

My first response to this question is "yes and no."  Yes, I know the story and I know God in the essence of my being.  But, do I truly know all that God has done for me?  Probably not.  I do not see clearly in my brokenness.  I sometimes navel gaze and miss what is going on around me.  I chase rabbit trails and then find myself lost.  I see dimly, as through a glass.

I love the Maundy Thursday service.  I cannot imagine not washing feet and sharing in Jesus' last meal with his disciples.  Yet, we have virtually forgotten this command in our churches.  We are fine with "go and baptize" and faithful to a tee in "do this in remembrance of me."  But, lowering ourselves to wash one another's feet?  We've somehow phased that out in our western religious practice with its puritanical fear of the body.

How many will come to service tonight determined not to have their feet washed?  Why do our feet expose such vulnerability?  Are we truly afraid of being touched by God?  Are we afraid of having our journey through the dark valleys exposed?  Are we afraid of being made well?  Are we afraid that others will think of us as less than?  Are we afraid of humbling ourselves in real service?

As I chatted with a Baptist minister before yesterday's funeral, he asked me about what I studied.  When I told him systematic theology, he sort of chuckled.  He then asked how I found myself in pastoral ministry.  As I fumbled to answer, he said "it really is all about loving people, plain and simple."  And I said, "yes, it is."  He then said "but we sure know how to complicate things, don't we?"  And I said "oh, yes, we do."

The truth of the good news, of Holy week, is that love wins.  Come and have your feet washed, your yoke made light, your being nourished by the God from whom we come and the God to whom we shall return.

Whom are You Looking For?

Another tough question.  What leaps to mind is the Christmas acclaim, "wise men seek Him."  But, do we really seek Him?  Life is full of much seeking.  As the chorus from the famous U2 song rings, "I still haven't found what I'm looking for."

I think we ebb and flow in what we actually seek.  Sometimes our seeking is primal: safety and satiation.  We have to consciously move up our pyramid of wants and needs to transcend the bodily hunt for comfort and prestige.  We seek to be liked, loved, wanted, needed, and even applauded.  Yet, Jesus of Nazareth said blatantly, "I do not accept glory from human beings." John 5:41.  Do we seek glory from human beings, or to share in God's glory?  What do we really do with the inverted Kingdom logic:  those who will save their lives will lose it.  The last shall be first and the first, last.

Like Mary at the mouth of the tomb, are we stuck in our seeking of worldly gain?  Are we blind and deaf to the presence of God?  Do we fail to hearken to the divine messengers who beckon us to see "he is no longer here?"  Do we stay dumbfounded or do we seek him?  Are we looking for a what, rather than a whom?

We have had some tough questions along this journey.  And this one strikes at the heart of many we have struggled to answer.  They are all interlinked.  Whom do we seek this day?

May we be bold enough, brave enough, and brazen enough to see the empty tomb and to recognize the Lord's presence where two or three are gathered in His name.  May we seek Him anew with hearts attuned to His Word and the manifestation of His Kingdom, right here and right now.

Do You Have Something to Eat?

My first reaction to this question was "yes, thank goodness I usually have something to eat, I don't have to struggle with this basic provision."  My second reaction was hearing the question Jesus asked his flailing and anxious disciples when the large crowds had gathered and it was dinner time: "how many loaves have you?"  So often we have resources, we have everything we need, and yet we act out of scarcity, out of fear, out of a sense of hording.  

So why does Luke show us a Jesus who hungers?  Well it certainly dispels the notion that the disciples saw a ghost or created some phantasm in their minds after Jesus' death.  It brings forth the reality of humanness, of hungering, of sharing need in community.  After all that is what we do when we gather and have holy communion.  We admit our need, we turn over our need for sustenance to God.  We find nourishment at the table, in the fellowship, and in knowing where two or three are gathered there he is in the midst.

So many people struggle with the question of knowing Jesus.  The trinitarian aspect of our theology can be daunting.  Three in one, one in three: it is all quite abstract.  But here we get a glimpse into something we know well:  do you have something to eat. Jesus doesn't give a lecture on ethereal things or glimpses of heaven.  In fact, how often does Jesus use the little things in life to illustrate larger points, to point us toward divinity: bread, wine, water, mud, spit, mustard seeds, yeast, etc.  Yet we usually insist on complicating things, finding a way to control that which is divine.  Well, Jesus, you can't just eat fish! We have to get this gig catered, kill the fatted calf, invite important people.  Perhaps people struggle to know Jesus because they see so little of Jesus in our behavior and in our lives.

The people in whom I meet Jesus rarely have to talk about Jesus or even religion.  They live it, they make it present in their earnestness, they exude the grace of knowing mystery and respecting it.  In these people you know the presence of the Lord.  And others generally hunger for this; they inquire, they are drawn to those who harbor the joy of Christlikeness in their everyday lives.  This is the essence of what it means for the church to be in mission.  It is not about assimilating others into our way of thinking or behaving: do we show them Jesus in all we do?

What does it mean to know Jesus?  What does it mean to be Christ like?  Asking the right question is the key to transformation.  For me that question is this:  how might I decrease that He might increase?  How might I lose my life so that I may find it?  What loaves/fish do I have that I might share right here, right now?

In the ordinary commerce of our day may we be reminded of the simple reality that our God is a nourishing God. Whether in broiled fish, bread, wine or water, may be find the nourishment to become like Him, to know the satiation of real joy and peace.

Why Do You Doubt?

My knee jerk response to this question is "because I am human."  I was not there when God laid the foundation of the world.  In fact, I sometimes have difficult seeing the foundation or even feeling as if my feet are firmly planted on it.  Doubt propels me to use the mustard seed of faith I have: that mustard seed I grasp tightly, finding solace that the light will reappear again.  The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light...and the darkness did NOT overcome it.

There is a shadow cast over this week.  We will march to the Cross with Jesus, and we will say goodbye to a beloved member in our faith community.  We lost one of our most vivacious members on Saturday morning.  It was a swift and unexpected death.  And, we find ourselves sitting the valley of the shadow, doubting, hurting, and wondering if we will see the light of Easter.

The daughter of our member told me last night that one reason our beloved member was drawn to the Lutheran church (between her Baptist roots and Catholic work place) was that our emphasis was on grace, not guilt.  So often when we ask questions of faith, when we are honest about our doubts, we have a programmed guilt that sets in.  Yet, doubts are often the stepping stones of spiritual growth.  If I am unsettled, if I am disturbed, if I am not certain, then I am open to seeking: seek ye first the Kingdom of God.  We cannot buy spiritual growth or share it with another.  It is something unique to each one of us as we plod along our daily lives, seeking God, seeking Kingdom, seeking peace, and seeking reconciliation.

Yet, there is a nascent spiritual immaturity that can creep in with doubt: pouting.  If we do not get our way, if we do not get the answers that we want, we can turn our back on the journey and become luke-warm, disgruntled, and sick.  Our doubts are there for a reason: how might we engage them toward wholeness and growth?  As Anne Lamott says wisely: the opposite of faith is not doubt, it is certainty.

Where have I failed to seek growth in my doubting?  Have I upstreamed the blame for the messiness I see?  Am I too immature to sit with the darkness, the emptiness, too immature to cultivate the patience to wait for the light to return again?  

There will be darkness this week.  There will be tears, pain and suffering.  There will be doubting, fear, travail, and abandonment.  There will also be healing, comfort, sustenance, and reassurance.  Will we dare to be there?  Will we too run for the hills?  Will our doubts propel us inward or outward? 

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

Was It Not Necessary?

There is probably no other question that gives me pause than this one.  Was it necessary that we kill Jesus of Nazareth?  Tomorrow we will celebrate Palm Sunday and physically and vocally enact the procession to Jerusalem.  We will cheer him on, lay down our garments, cheer and applaud; and then when he fails to live up to our expectations, we will turn on him and yell "crucify him" just that quick.

I don't question God's wisdom as wholly beyond anything we can grasp in this world.  As is asked of Job, "where you there when I laid the foundations of this world?"  No, I was not there.  That is something I hold on to dearly in faith.  I relish what Barbara Brown Taylor says: “I am not in charge of this House, and never will be. I have no say about who is in and who is out. I do not get to make the rules. Like Job, I was nowhere when God laid the foundations of the earth. I cannot bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion. I do not even know when the mountain goats give birth, much less the ordinances of the heavens. I am a guest here, charged with serving other guests—even those who present themselves as my enemies. I am allowed to resist them, but as long as I trust in one God who made us all, I cannot act as if they are no kin to me. There is only one House. Human beings will either learn to live in it together or we will not survive to hear its sigh of relief when our numbered days are done.” 

With a posture of humility, is the Cross a stumbling block or a stepping stone?  Maybe it is not either-or, but both-and.  I think the Theology of Glory gets a bad wrap for being solely focused on what God can do for us, a prosperity gospel of sorts.  While I stumble at the sight of the Cross, I also find it to reveal a truth about who we are and how we are wired.  At our crudest, when something disrupts our sense of well being, power, or prosperity, we seek to be rid of it.  The commerce of the world supports this reaction and gives us the tools to make such removals expedient.  But, for me, a true Theology of Cross and Theology of Glory are intertwined.

I find comfort in the three Solas of the Lutheran faith as I wrestle with the dappled wonder of divinity in so much of what I see as well as the broken travail of finitude.  These are my necessary things: grace, faith, and Word alone.  These are the stepping my stepping stones when I stumble.  This does not necessarily mean prosperity or an easy walk along the Way.  Perhaps this is where I find the heart of the Cross:  in being emptied of this life, in being emptied of my very own self in God, in finding less of me and more of God (I must decrease, He must increase as John says).  In emptiness I find resurrection and new life, freedom and resuscitation.  I like, once again, how Barbara Brown Taylor describes our awareness, our honest posture in faith:  If it is true that God exceeds all our efforts to contain God, then is it too big a stretch to declare that dumbfoundedness is what all Christians have most in common? Or that coming together to confess all that we do not know is at least as sacred an activity as declaring what we think we do know?” 

I am certainly dumbfounded.  God's power comes in what appears weak, foolish, and lowly.  That is a counter-intuitive wisdom that rings very true.  How can I posture myself this coming Holy Week to find that power in what appears weak, foolish, and lowly?  As we move through a healing service, stations of the Cross, vespers, foot washing, Holy Communion, and tenebrae there is the same truth sprinkled again and again:  Salvation comes in all the tight places where our lives are at risk, regardless of how we got there.  Salvation happens when we use a key to open a door we could have locked instead.  Sometimes that key is a human hand extended in love; sometimes that key is water, bread, wine, oil, tears or barrenness.  This is the Way, the way of life, and only God truly knows how it works.