Glaciers and Pearls

As I’m adjusting to being again in full-time ministry in a parish and all that brings this time of year, along with moving house, and tending to a senior dog who appears to be declining in health, getting my Tuesday (Wednesday?) posts out is taking more forethought and intentionality. I don’t say any of this to invoke sympathy or to complain but simply to lay out the reasons that this post is a day late. I am so very grateful for my parish, for our new home, for the many years of joy and companionship our dog has brought us, and for each and every one of you who give of your precious time to read my words. Life is an amazing journey following Jesus in God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven and I’m so glad you are with me.

Have you ever been to Yosemite National Park? It is one of my most favorite places on earth. Did you know the beauty of The Valley was cut by the long, slow, continuous movement of a glacier? Another one of my favorite things is a pearl. Now, I’m sure you are asking what on earth do glaciers and pearls have to do with each other (either that or you are wondering if I’ve had enough coffee yet today)? And I’m so glad you asked.

Glaciers and pearls are two metaphors (albeit limited, as all metaphors are) I’ve been thinking about as I’ve been reading through the book of Proverbs from the collection of books we refer to as the Old Testament. The movement of glaciers over time sculpt a beauty deep beneath surface. Pearls begin as something undesirable and are transformed into a precious gem.

The beauty of Wisdom isn’t something that can be instantly attained, it takes a lifetime of sculpting and transformation. What we do with our time and where we focus our attention matters.


More than anything you guard, protect your mind, for life flows from it. Have nothing to do with a corrupt mouth; keep devious lips far from you. Focus your eyes straight ahead; keep your gaze on what is in front of you. Watch your feet on the way, and all your paths will be secure. Don’t deviate a bit to the right or the left; turn your feet away from evil.

Proverbs 4:23-27, Common English Bible

The information we consume every moment of every day shapes us whether we realize it or not. I’m so very grateful to have discovered the wisdom that life is not a series of isolated events but a continuous journey of growth. I don’t just move from one event to the next (even when my calendar is full to overflowing) but I do my best with God’s help to inhabit with intentionality every moment, looking for the image of God in all people and being aware of God’s presence everywhere. And when I stumble or get bogged down in “what’s next” or lose sight of Jesus, I am so very grateful to know God is with me in these times, too.

I said last week that I wasn’t sure what this book of Wisdom we call Proverbs and Advent had to do with each other and here’s what I’m beginning to discover. In this season of Advent we are to wait and watch for Christ, The One, the Prince of Peace, our Savior, God with us, Emmanuel. The world says all that we need to make us happy can be purchased and that we have to work and move faster and faster to prove ourselves worthy of the next thing we will need to buy to be happy. Advent and the book of Proverbs remind us we are glacier valleys, carved and transformed by time and intent, keeping our lives centered on God. The world says we should instantly remove and discard anything and everything that isn’t “happiness.” Advent and the book of Proverbs both remind us we are like a pearl, that as we follow Jesus we learn how God transforms that which we find less than tolerable into precious beauty that can’t come about any other way.

Returning

A Reflection for the Second Sunday in Advent*.
The RCL readings are here.

Today is the second Sunday in Advent (it isn’t Christmas yet, y’all). And although this Season is about anticipating the coming of Jesus we spend today (and next Sunday) reading about the story of Jesus’ cousin, John. John is considered the last of the Old Testament prophets even though his story is told in the collection of writings we call the New Testament. John is referred to as John the Baptizer because, we are told, he proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And with those two words (repentance and forgiveness) I’m sure several folks have logged out.

For those of you still with me, what if I told you that the word we translate into the English word ‘repent’ means to have a change of heart or mind or to think about one’s life differently? What if what John was proclaiming is that you don’t have to struggle to do it on your own any more. You don’t have to prove yourself perfect. You don’t have to wonder if you are good enough. What if repentance means that we realize that we gave up the abundance of God’s provision for us to take a limited diet for ourselves, and make the new choice to (re)turn to God as our source of life and love?

Our faith ancestors tell the story of people in God’s garden being tasked with tending what God had made, to participate with God in the care of the world. Yet that wasn’t enough for them; the abundance and variety of nourishment of the garden wasn’t enough. They had to take for themselves the one thing God said don’t take.

Later, the people God had asked to participate with him in the expansion and growth of the world’s population decided they would rather limit themselves by being like everyone one else with an earthly leader. God as their leader wasn’t enough for them. They thought they could do better.

So along comes this camel skin wearing, locust eating fellow named John to remind them that God wants nothing more than to be in relationship with them, to live with them as a beloved family, to help them learn again to rely on the abundance of God’s provision by letting God lead them in the Way of Love. And in their remembering they make the decision to once again see the world through God’s lens and to apologize to God for having ignored his compassion and love and return home to the life God intends for everyone.

How different would the world’s view of ‘church’ and ‘religion’ be if we had held on to this loving message of repentance and forgiveness. Instead of shame and guilt and punishment we hear John’s proclamation as a remembering and a re-membering of our true selves, the beloved children God created us to be.

Hear God’s voice calling all of us to return, to change our hearts and minds and follow Jesus in the Way of Love as we participate with God in the building up of the Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

And with that message singing in your soul, I invite you to join me next week as I preach about the Good News of God using the continuation of this week’s reading when John calls the folks he’s baptizing a “brood of vipers.” I promise it will be a proclamation of love, Y’all!

*Now that I am back in parish ministry, I will be preaching every other Sunday. For the alternate Sundays I will still do a short(ish) reflection on the lectionary readings.

A Proverbial Journey

Have you ever spent much time pondering the Old Testament book we call Proverbs? I’ll just say upfront, I haven’t. Yes, we read and discussed it in OT class in seminary and I’ve read through it several times as I’ve lead the Bible in 90 Days program in the parishes I’ve served but I’ve never spent time really pondering this wisdom literature. As I was considering what to do for my personal reflection time during this season of Advent, I was drawn to the Book of Proverbs.

The book is a collection of sayings presented as though from a father to a son. I remember sitting down and writing to my son when he was heading off to college a synopsis of all that I wanted him to know, the things I thought would make his life easier or better. I was trying to impart the (little) wisdom I had gained by living my life in a feeble effort to prevent him from making some of the same mistakes I had. As I’m now on the down hill side of middle age (it’s a slow and steady slope following Jesus on an amazing journey that is so much better than charging the hill in my earlier years) I am coming to know that words of wisdom help build the framework of the loom that will weave the beautiful fabric of life with lived experience.

We can gather words of wisdom but until we grasp the purpose and meaning of wisdom I don’t think the words can’t shape our life effectively. Wisdom, to be wise, is taking what we learn and experience and letting it guide who we are and what we do so that we (and yes the plural is intentional) flourish and thrive in whatever family/group/culture/society we are living in. Part of living wisely is knowing that because we are created by the Trinitarian God (the ultimate community) to be in communion with God and each other, we are most fully human in community. We do not thrive when we seek an individualistic life in which we look out only for our individual self and not also those with whom we live.

So, perhaps, the reason I’ve not delved into the book of Proverbs before now is that I wasn’t ready. I was still seeking only knowledge and not wisdom (even if I thought I was). Wisdom literature can’t so much make us wise as it helps us discern the wisdom we’ve gained through life experience as we follow Jesus as God’s beloved children.

The writer of Proverbs begins like this:
“Their (these sayings) purpose is to teach wisdom and discipline, to help one understand wise sayings. They provide insightful instruction, which is righteous, just, and full of integrity. They make the naive mature, the young knowledgeable and discreet. The wise hear them and grow in wisdom; those with understanding gain guidance.”
Proverbs 1:2-5 CEB

The writer also personifies wisdom as a woman. I like the idea of wisdom as a companion, not something we possess or gain but someone with whom we journey, ever growing, ever maturing, our best self. To be fully transparent, I’m not quite sure what this journey into the Book of Proverbs has to do with the season of Advent but I’m listening to the prompting of the Holy Spirit as I spend time reading and praying and pondering them each day. I’d love it if you’d be able to spend some time with Proverbs, too, and share with me what you are gleaning from the richness of these words.

May your Tuesday and your coming week be filled with the awareness of the presence of God, my friends.

God’s peace,
Mtr. Nancy+

P.S. If you’d like a good introduction of the book, I highly recommend this video done by BibleProject (the topic of this past Friday’s Friday Feature).

Living Hope

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, Texas.
The Lectionary readings for the First Sunday of Advent are here.

If you were here two weeks ago, the gospel reading for today may have sounded familiar. We read Mark’s version of Jesus telling of the destruction of the Temple then and today, we continue Jesus’ sermon from Luke’s point of view. I feel like I could give the exact same sermon. But I won’t. So let me just help you remember where we are in The Story:

Jesus and the disciples have been spending time in the Temple complex in Jerusalem and one of the disciples points out the grandeur of the Temple building. Jesus tells them that the time will come when not one stone will be left on another and he paints a rather terrifying picture of what is to come: famine and war and division but offers the hope that by trusting God we will endure.

Today, we read Luke’s continuation of this teaching: “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.” And just as we hear these warnings as a description of our current situation, so did the disciples. The world was and is a frightening place with wars and natural disasters and division and suffering.

The news tells us to be afraid and to be worried. I saw a meme this past week that reminded us of when the news was the news back in the days of Walter Cronkite. News programs were half an hour long and had just enough time to present the facts of what was going on. Mr. Cronkite didn’t give his opinion, he just reported the events of the day. Now we have entire so called ‘news’ channels that have to fill air time 24/7 so they fill the time with what makes us watch: anxiety inducing broadcasting that isn’t news at all but a way to spread the ‘rumors of wars’ Jesus warns us about. Their goal isn’t to keep us informed and knowledgeable but to get the highest ratings and the most advertising dollars.

Jesus tells us to lift our heads, look up, away from the fear driven distractions so that we can see him, so that we can know the true meaning of power and glory of God’s kingdom.

Jesus gives us the example of a fig tree. For us in the Hill Country of Texas we could substitute a peach tree. When we see the leaves come in the spring, we know that summer is already near. God’s plan for God’s creation includes the continuous rhythm of new life. But new life requires the old to pass away. The tree needs the barrenness of winter to bring about the new fruit. Or perhaps, in place of a peach tree we can think about bluebonnets and wildflowers. For these to blanket our fields, we need lots of rain in the fall and a cold winter, two things we aren’t always grateful for in Texas. But think about how excited we get when we see the first bluebonnet of the season! We tell everyone we see and we take long drives to find them in all of God’s glory. We don’t say “oh, the world is too harsh, I can’t enjoy the beauty.” We go looking for it!

And so, when we see the suffering in this world, we are to say, “the Kingdom of God is near.” Not that the end is near but that God is near, with us, Emmanuel.

Jesus isn’t talking about some Pollyanna version of toxic positivity where we ignore the suffering in this world, but the acknowledgement of God’s glory because we know Whose we are: God’s beloved children and we trust and know that God is with us always, so that when we are troubled by the pain and suffering in this world we are, like Jesus, moved with compassion to ease it, not just for ourselves but for everyone.

And at the same time, we admit that God is God and we are not and so fixing the world isn’t our job nor our purpose. God has promised to restore all things and we have to let him do it his way. Jesus tells us to be on guard, to watch, to take care not to let our hearts be weighed down and dulled with the cares of this life, with the anxieties of day-to-day life. We aren’t to let fear guide us but Hope.

When Jesus tells us to pray for the strength to make it through, he isn’t saying to ask for self-sufficiency but the courage and strength to follow Jesus even when the world says we are fools for doing so and to pray for the endurance to keep our eyes on God and not be distracted by the world saying “be afraid, take what you want, look out for yourself.”

What comes to mind as I read Jesus’ words is what has become known as the Serenity Prayer. Did you know that the original version was written by the American theologian named Reinhold Niebuhr. Niebuhr was a prominent public voice in the first half of the twentieth century and spoke and wrote of the intersection of religion, politics, and public policy.

He penned the beginnings of his famous prayer in 1932, “Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know the one from the other.”

His final version was published in 1951 and reads:
God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.

Life in God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven isn’t a competition of self-sufficiency and individual strength but a companionable journey in which together with God’s help we follow Jesus toward that time when we all stand face to face with God.

Our worldview as Jesus’ Followers is a kingdom view. The kingdom to which we belong is not of this world. It is not made of bricks and wood and not an authority that finds power in oppression but in the loving, life-giving, and liberating ways of God. But God’s Kingdom is definitely in this world because we are the embodied Kingdom of God.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent and the first day of the new year in the church calendar. So, happy New Year, how was your Thanksgiving? Wait, what? Where’s Christmas? It’s coming but not yet.

We begin Advent with the tension of the theme of hope and scripture readings about disaster. Advent is the season of expectant waiting, not dreadful waiting but expectant, hope-filled waiting because we trust and believe God’s promises. We are to stand up and raise our faces toward him, without fear. God will set all of creation into proper order as he intended from the beginning before we came along and decided that the one fruit that we could take for ourselves was better than the abundance God had provided for us.

In the very first Advent season, when Mary and Joseph waited on the birth of Jesus, having been entrusted with bearing and raising God’s Son, I’m sure they had moments of fear and dread. And they hoped, believing God’s enduring Word.

We aren’t called to fix this world but to shine the light of God’s love into the darkness so that others can see Jesus coming in great glory, not someday, but now. How we love is how we reveal God’s glory to the world, keeping our eyes on Jesus so that others see him, too.

And we pray, continuously. As an Advent activity, if you haven’t already made an Advent plan for home, I invite you to take the collect for today and read it each day as you light a candle in your Advent wreath.

Let’s practice it together. Turn to the top of page 3 in your bulletin and pray with me:
“Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.”

Do it in the morning or before a meal. If you don’t have an Advent wreath at home, just circle up 4 candles with whatever you have. Read this prayer each day, lighting one candle. And then do the same next week with next week’s prayer and two candles and the next with three, and the next with four. Keep your expectation sharp. Hope. Pray. And keep your head up and your eyes on Jesus. Amen.

A Friday Feature #2

Can you believe it’s the last Friday of November already? As much as I am intentional with ordering my time so that I’m not hurrying through anything, it did take me a bit by surprise this week that November is coming to an end. And for those of us who participate in liturgical churches, the Church Year is coming to an end and the new one is upon us. This coming Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent, the time of expectant waiting for the annual celebration of the birth of Jesus, God with us, Emmanuel. We walk with God’s people through the ancient stories that point to the arrival of God as one of us, born of Mary, protected and cared for by Joseph, adored by the angels and shepherds, and sought out by the learned men of the world.

Through this season, we walk in the story that tells us why these people and events matter, not just thousands of years ago, but also today, in our lives. We walk with God, following Jesus as we continue living God’s Story on earth as it is in heaven until that day when God ushers in the New Heaven and New Earth. This is part of our Advent, our anticipation of what is to come as we love and learn in the here and now.

The mission statement of one of my favorite podcasts (it’s so much more than a podcast and we’ll get to that in a bit) is “to help people experience the Bible as a unified story that points to Jesus.” The BibleProject is a website, blog, podcast, and amazing learning center. They recently did an excellent podcast series titled “Paradigm” in which they discuss how to approach scripture. It’s a great place to start!

I highly encourage you to check it out and explore all that BibleProject has to offer. Gather some friends and do one of their Bible studies. Watch their videos. Subscribe to their podcast and their blog. The BibleProject is an excellent way to learn more deeply who and Whose we are as God’s beloved children.

May your day be filled with the awareness of God’s presence, my friends. See you Sunday.

Mtr. Nancy+

P.S. If you missed the first Friday Feature and the explanation of this new thing, check out last month’s FF post here.

Thanksgiving

A prayer of thanksgiving from the Book of Common Prayer:

Accept, O Lord, our thanks and praise for all that you have done for us. We thank you for the splendor of the whole creation, for the beauty of this world, for the wonder of life, and for the mystery of love.

We thank you for the blessing of family and friends, and for the loving care which surrounds us on every side.

We thank you for setting us at tasks which demand our best efforts, and for leading us to accomplishments which satisfy and delight us.

We thank you also for those disappointments and failures that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on you alone.

Above all, we thank you for your Son Jesus Christ; for the truth of his Word and the example of his life; for his steadfast obedience, by which he overcame temptation; for his dying, through which he overcame death; and for his rising to life again, in which we are raised to the life of your kingdom. Grant us the gift of your Spirit, that we may know Christ and make him known; and through him, at all times and in all places, may give thanks to you in all things. Amen.

Truth

A reflection for Christ the King Sunday.*
The RCL readings can be found here.

Today is Christ the King Sunday. For those of you who do not participate in a church that follows liturgical calendar, it is the last Sunday before the season of Advent (the four Sundays before Christmas, the first Sunday of Advent marking the beginning of the new church year). Christ is the Eternal King and we set this day as a special day to focus on his reign over all in heaven and on earth.

We can get so caught up in the personalities of our earthly leaders that it becomes easy for us to forget that Christ reigns over us now, on earth, in this day and time. It isn’t some ideal we hope to achieve or the state of things after we die, but the current reality of God’s creation, whether we acknowledge it or not.

The Israelites begged God for a king so that they can be like the other nations. God warned them against it and said he was to be their ruler and that he should be enough for them. They didn’t let God be enough. They demanded more and God have them what they asked for. And most of the time, according to the Old Testament, it didn’t go well for them.

How do we view our earthly leaders? Do we look to them first as a model for how we should pattern our life? In the United States, we get to vote new local, state, and national leaders in or out on a regular basis. How do we choose who to vote for? Do the character, ethics, or morality of the individual person play a part in our decision? Do we consider whether an individual really has the greater good of our whole nation as their motivation and goal or do we choose charisma over character?

How do we view Jesus? Do we make him our ultimate authority? Do we let Jesus’ model of a leader be enough for us?

In the bit we read from John’s telling of the Good News today, Jesus has been arrested and is before Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor of Judea, who firsts asks Jesus if he is the king of the Jews. Jesus explains to Pilate that his Kingdom is of this world. Confused, Pilot asks if Jesus is A king. Kings aren’t kings without a kingdom and kingdoms cannot not exist except in the world. And Jesus responds, “You say that I am a king. I was born and came into the world for this reason: to testify to the truth. Whoever accepts the truth listens to my voice.”

Jesus is not the king of the Jews nor is he simply ‘A’ king. He is The King. The One True King whom all other kings and earthly leaders are subject to whether they acknowledge it or not. This is the Truth Jesus speaks of. God is God. Jesus is The King. This is the reality in which we live whether we acknowledge it or not. With this Truth, living on earth as in heaven, we hear and follow Jesus’ voice as he leads us in the Way of Love.

Who do you say Jesus is?

*Now that I am back in parish ministry, I will be preaching every other Sunday. For the alternate Sundays I will still do a short(ish) reflection on the lectionary readings.

Thank You

This year, I put off buying Halloween candy until the day before Halloween and when I went into the grocery store, there was not a single piece of Halloween themed candy to be found. The workers were putting christmas* candy and items on the shelves that just the day before had held Halloween paraphernalia. I contemplated briefly buying christmas candy and giving it out. But what really hit me was the question “what about Thanksgiving?”

Around my neighborhood, there are quite a few folks who really do up their yards for Halloween. And within the first few days of November, some of them had transformed their yards into christmas themed wonderlands. And again I thought, “what about Thanksgiving?”

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday because it hasn’t been consumerized like Christmas and Easter, I guess, perhaps, because it wasn’t a Christian celebration to begin with but a national one. Thanksgiving has always been about gathering with family and loved ones over a good meal and remembering all that we have to be thankful for. And it always made me think of the command God gave regarding the Passover feast as told in the book of Exodus to pass the tradition down to all generations as a way to remember.

Now, yes, I’ll acknowledge that the day after Thanksgiving has been consumerized into it’s own national day of Black Friday but that’s all about the consumerization of christmas. And, yes, I’ll also admit that other events have made their way to the top of some folks’s priority list such as football and hunting season. But Thanksgiving has remained a simple idea of gathering with family and loved ones over a good meal and remembering all that we have to be thankful for.

Maybe it’s because I’m spending much less time in stores these days or that I don’t watch much tv with commercials anymore but I’m just not seeing much about Thanksgiving this year. Have we forgotten? Have we let consumeristic events push Thanksgiving to the bottom of the priority list? Would we rather go shopping than spend time thinking about all we already have to be thankful for? Have we decided it’s just easier to avoid family gatherings so we won’t need to have conversations with our loved ones who think differently that we do?

The original day that we recognize as the first celebration of what we now call Thanksgiving was to give thanks for the successful corn harvest that Native Americans helped the colonists learn to grow. These colonists formed an alliance with the Wompanoag tribe with the assistance of Squanto a Native American who had been formerly captured and forced into slavery by an Englishman. Squanto helped the suffering colonists learn how to survive in their new home. How heart breaking it is to know that this alliance is the very rare exception to how Native Americans have been treated through the centuries to come.

I once had someone tell me that just because they didn’t openly express gratitude didn’t mean they weren’t actually grateful. But I don’t think that’s possible. When we are truly grateful, we can’t help but say so. We teach our children to say ‘thank you’ to teach them gratitude and we never get too old for such lessons. And when we see our life and all that we are and all that we are able to do and all that we have as a gift from God, we cannot stop ourselves from giving thanks. We remember. We remember Whose and who we are as beloved children and we want to pass the joy and hope and peace that comes from this ‘knowing’ on to every generation.

“Give thanks to the LORD because he is good.                 God’s faithful love lasts forever!”
‭‭Psalms‬ ‭136:1‬ ‭CEB‬‬

Let’s not skip Thanksgiving. Let’s not skip giving thanks, being grateful for all that we are and all that we are able to do and all that we have. The more we practice gratitude the more we become aware of God’s presence always and the more we become aware of God’s image in each other. Gratitude strengthens our compassion muscles so that we can participate with God in making this world more and more on earth as in heaven.

What are your Thanksgiving plans? Know that I am so very thankful for you and for our journeying together. My life would not be the feast that it is without each of you.

*before you try to correct my capitalization, I am using a lower case ‘c’ intentionally to distinguish between the secularized celebrations of gift giving and the celebration of God coming to us in the person of Jesus to remind us of whose we are as God’s beloved children. It is my ‘grammar nerd’ method of protest.

Building Blocks

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake, Canyon Lake, Texas.
The lectionary readings for the twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost are here.

Isn’t it so very good to be back in this space? Thursday many of you showed up and lovingly cleaned and polished and swept and mopped to enable us to be in here today; it was such a pleasure to work with you in caring for our worship space. It was good and holy work. And in the evening a few of us gathered for quiet prayer in honor of Veterans Day and that time to sit in here filling this space with our prayers, both spoken and played on the guitar, and just being was such a gift. Time in prayer with each other is also good and holy work.

And as we return, we remind ourselves that we must remain flexible and willing to make accommodations for the weather as we wait on the air system to be repaired. I think most of us have gotten fairly good at being flexible over these past two years, don’t you?

Twelve plus years ago, in the days before I departed for seminary, a priest and friend, the wise and compassionate Father Jack Beebe sat down with me and told me what he wished someone had shared with him before his first days of seminary. He spoke of his struggles with having what he thought he knew and believed about God, faith, and the Church being dismantled by what he was learning and how he realized only after the fact that it was both intentional and necessary even though it was quite frightening at the time.

I shared with him that I was no stranger to dismantling and talked about my experience of leaving the denomination I had been raised in because I could not match up how they treated those who veered away from their ideal with what I read of Jesus. Fr. Jack assured me that intentional dismantling within a loving and supportive community was quite different, and with tenderness and concern he told me to hold lightly even what I had already begun to reconstruct, to be ready to let it all go, if necessary, with the confidence that something better would be built as I continued to learn and grow and follow Jesus, not just in seminary but for the rest of my life. He gave me the metaphor of building and maintaining a house: even when the structure is on the proper foundation and the building is good and strong, there is always maintenance and repair work that needs to happen.

This is what Jesus is speaking about with the disciples in our gospel reading this morning. He and the disciples had been spending time in the Temple complex, watching how some folks try to prove themselves not just worthy but exceptional and how some whom their culture deems unworthy reveal true devotion to God. And as they are leaving, one of the disciples points out the awesomeness of the temple building.

And without hesitation, Jesus tells them that buildings don’t last forever, and not that it will just decay but be destroyed. As he has told them before, the things of this world don’t last. And, once again, four of the disciples try to get the upper hand on the others and come to Jesus to find out the details: when? How can they be ready?

Jesus makes it clear, it isn’t ours to know the timeline of God’s plan. Our part in this journey of life with Jesus is to shine the light of God’s love in all that we do, to flavor the world with God’s love because we are God’s beloved children. When we keep our eyes on Jesus, we are always ready.

When we get distracted by the wrong things, we can both deceive ourselves and be deceived by others. When we fixate on the end, we miss out on living the blessing of life God provides for us each and every day. God’s plan for God’s people is a plan for peace, not disaster, so that we can journey toward the future with hope. When we fixate on what can go wrong, we will only see what is wrong. When we get distracted by buildings or maintaining the status quo, we miss out on relationships with the people who are the true building blocks of God’s Kingdom.

In the rest of Jesus’ sermon to his disciples about God’s greater plan that we won’t read together (I encourage you to read the rest of the chapter), he speaks of the tribulations of the times, and it sounds like he’s describing the world as we know it today. We look around at the wars and rumors of wars, civil unrest, personal conflicts, and natural disasters and we can’t help but think “it must be time, how can things get any worse.” And it would have sounded exactly the same to the first disciples in first century Palestine.

The world can be a frightening place: there are wars, and famine, we have conflict on a personal, national, and global scale, a pandemic and natural disasters that have made the situation even worse. We have leaders telling us we cannot get along and must hate each other and these same leaders convince us they can save us from it all in messianic fashion. We think somehow we can control the situation if we can just know what’s coming next. And we cannot let ourselves be deceived. We must keep our eyes on Jesus.

We can prepare and be ready for disasters as I know it first hand having been the Disaster Response Coordinator for two dioceses: we have first aid kits, insurance policies, response plans, and budgets and all of these are necessary and good but Jesus warns us against letting them distract us from what really matters: people and relationships. We can have the best prepared disaster plan ever but if in the mean time we neglect caring for our neighbors in the here and now, we’ve taken our eyes off of Jesus.

Jesus told the disciples and tells us that “this generation won’t pass away before all these things happen.” Jesus never sugar coated that the world is, has been, and always will be a frightening place. AND Jesus tells us to hold tightly onto the HOPE he has given us. The hope that leads us into the future, participating with God in making the world less frightening and more hopeful for the people we encounter each and every day.

Are any of y’all fans of Legos? Not the part about stepping on them barefoot in the middle of the night but the endlessly imaginative things you can create with them. Growing up, back in the stone ages when folks considered Legos to be a toy for boys, I loved playing with my brother’s Legos. So, I was very happy when my own son developed an affinity for them so that I could continue to play with them as an adult. As he got to be a teenager and it was no longer cool to play Legos with mom, he would take his new kits into his room and build the new thing according to the instructions and set it on a special shelf reserved for the latest Lego model. It would sit there for a few weeks, being admired, and then he’d take it down, take it completely apart and mix the bricks into his ever growing collection from which he created his own models and inventions. Remaking one thing into another was the purpose of Legos. My son would never have thought that a Lego model was to be made permanent.

This building is a wonderful place in which we can come together in prayer and worship and even work so that we are equipped and enabled to follow Jesus out these doors to flavor the world with God’s love. It isn’t permanent and it isn’t the purpose of who we are.

We are the embodied kingdom, we are the building blocks bound together by the Holy Spirit, a mobile Kingdom securely fastened to the foundation of God’s love yet ever on the journey of following Jesus on The Way. The kingdom isn’t complete with out each and every one of us. The Kingdom is ever growing as we invite and welcome our neighbors to discover the love of God. The Kingdom of God is more like Legos than a building. Amazing things come from combining the skills and talents of God’s people and as we journey forward we need to allow ourselves to be reconfigured and transformed as God continuously creates the Kingdom to include everyone.

We have to hold lightly all that we think we know about how the world should be, remaining ever flexible and ever growing, and hold tightly to the Kingdom Jesus says is at hand, with us, in us, on earth as in heaven, devoting ourselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of the bread, and the prayers, as beloved children of God who seek and serve Christ in all persons. Amen.

Comfort, Joy, Peace

One of the (if not THE) most practical courses I had to take in seminary was one titled “Evangelism”. Of course, my evangelical-church-influenced childhood caused me to enter the class on the first day with arms folded and mind closed because the only idea of evangelizing I knew was to convince people, whether or not I had a preexisting relationship with them, how terrible they are and that the consequences of their terribleness meant burning in hell and I’d be held to task at the pearly gates for every individual I encountered in my life whom I didn’t ask “do you know where you are going when you die?” Whew … deep breath … refill my coffee … I’m ok. Let’s continue:

So I sat there on our first day of class, daring Dr. Bowen with my stare to convince me that evangelism was actually a good and beneficial thing. And, to keep this story short, he began to gently remove my barriers from the very first day. Evangelism, he assured us, was all about cultivating relationships, relationships that reflected God’s love. One of the other things we discussed often was how our culture and society tries to provide the concepts of the Good News of God outside of any relationship with God and we kept a semester long journal on where we noticed such things as we went about the typical tasks of our days.

I’ve kept an ongoing journal (in my head mostly, but sometimes written down) of these types of things since. I remember a billboard for a flooring company that claimed to provide ‘sole-saving’ flooring at a reasonable price. And a coffee company that promised “comfort for you soul.” And this year, a major department store is promising “Joy, Comfort, and Peace” with all you can buy from them. (And let’s not talk about the fact that we are skipping right over Thanksgiving to a consumer styled ‘christmas’ because we are afraid that with the supply chain issues we won’t get what we want…or maybe we can chat about the meaning of that next week … what do you think?)

Although I’ve said that I recently find myself on this journey of teasing out our societal and cultural norms from our theology, I think, perhaps, that the beginnings of this journey were planted in that Evangelism class I was so very resistant to. As a society, we want the benefits of God’s kingdom without the commitment of a relationship. Commitments and relationships require something from us, we can’t just consume as we choose. Relationships and commitments require time to cultivate and grow, there is no instant gratification. A warm cup of excellent coffee may enable us to slow down and ease our minds and even bring up pleasant memories, but that cup nor the liquid in it can transform our hearts and minds. Who we share the time and conversation with in conjunction with a cup of coffee are what enable us to become fully human.

The items we buy at the department store are inanimate objects incapable of changing us for the better. The time we spend with the people we may gift them to, deepening and growing relationships, is what we are created for. There is no substitute for human connection. Nor can we with any tangible thing accomplish what can only be achieved by cultivating our relationship with God: the peace which surpasses all human understanding. This peace comes from knowing with faith that we are not in this journey of life alone nor are we responsible for fixing all the ills of this world, only that we are to shine the light of compassion and flavor all we do with God’s love, and in doing so participate with God in making the world a better place.

No thing can bring us the joy of knowing that God loves us. Full stop. End of sentence. We cannot do anything bad enough to cause God to withhold love and we cannot do anything good enough to win more of God’s love. God loves us, you and me and (as I often say) yep, even that person. This is the Good News of God, that God came to us to show us the life we are created for: the life grounded in love, lived with the eyes of compassion, a companionable journey lived in communion with each other and our Creator, here and now, on earth as in heaven.

As we follow Jesus on this Way of Love, we can show others what true joy and peace and comfort are by giving of ourselves and our time to help others know they are beloved children of God. How can I help you know you are loved today? Want to chat over a cup of coffee?