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?

All In

A Sunday Reflection*:
The readings for the twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost are here.

When you hear the word abundance, where do your thoughts go?
When you hear the word enough, where do your thoughts go?

In the reading from Mark’s telling of the good news story today, Jesus and the disciples are on the campus of the Temple in Jerusalem and Jesus offers us a comparison, more like a juxtaposition really, of two people: those who give out of abundance and those who give. (No, I didn’t forget any words at the end of that last sentence.)

Jesus speaks of those who give out of their abundance, people who give because there is some left over. And then he points out one individual who doesn’t have enough and still gives. Jesus provides us with clues in the verses we read today as to the motivation of the folks who give out of abundance when he cautions the disciples to beware of the religious leaders who seek public recognition by showing off, who casually toss in some spare change and say “oh, it’s nothing” because, really, it means nothing to them.

If you back up even more and read all of the 12th chapter of Mark, you gain an even deeper understanding of Jesus’ teaching on our motivations for giving. Do we give simply to give or do we give because we want recognition or because we can afford to? Materialistically, the widow could not afford to give; spiritually she knew she couldn’t afford not to.

This widow was all in with God, living within God’s Kingdom economy even if those around her were not. This woman, whom God had commanded his people over and over again to care for (along with orphans and foreigners and all whom society marginalizes), gave all she had. It was everything to her.

Are we all in with God? Do we strive to live in the Kingdom Economy even is no one around us does so? Even if the world around us tries to prevent us from doing so? In the Kingdom Economy, everyone has enough. When our greatest desire is that all people know they are loved and cared for, we discover there is always an abundance of everything. There is always enough.

God’s peace,
Mtr. Nancy+

*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.

Always Learning

I fret sometimes after one of my posts goes live about saying the wrong thing or if some might consider my words to be controversial or offensive. And then I am reminded by God’s gentle voice of the reason for this desire, the need, to share words with others. What started as a way to help us grow more compassionate toward others has become a journey of discerning how we live this amazing gift of life as living, breathing participants in the prayer ‘Your will be on earth as in heaven.” I have learned that when I read or hear something that makes me bristle and immediately say, “that’s wrong” or “what do they know” that I need to read or listen to the words even more closely because often my reaction is uncovering an unknown bias or learning edge in me. I may not agree with or accept what I’ve read but really listening to other points of view help me know my point of view more clearly and it helps me be more compassionate toward others.

In the last moments before ascending to be at God’s right hand, Jesus commissioned the disciples saying, “I’ve received all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that I’ve commanded you. Look, I myself will be with you every day until the end of this present age” (Matthew 28:18-20). This is what is passed on to us, through all of the generations of believers of this present age, so that we can continue the continuous line of succession of discipling, baptizing, and teaching others to walk the Way of Love.

We are to be a Living Sunday School, revealing to all we encounter by our very lives the love of God. As any good teacher will tell you, however, true teaching means we are also in a continuous state of learning. Teaching and learning cannot be separated and both are continuous, life-long actions. In the moment we say to ourself, “I’ve learned all I need to learn,” we stop living fully. Once I decide my ‘knowledge’ is complete, I must fight against anything that threatens or contradicts my certitude.

In the new Friday Feature I posted this past Friday as I told the brief story of my own separation and convergence of science and faith, it occurred to me how similar the processes of scientific learning and faith formation are. The enemy of both is certainty. The process of science involves the continuous collection and observation of new information to analyze and test what we know. When new information changes things it doesn’t mean we were wrong to begin with; it means we’ve grown in our knowledge and adjusted accordingly.

Our faith is the same. Believing that Jesus is Lord isn’t about a static moment in time but about growing and maturing in our relationship with God throughout our whole life, just as we would in any healthy relationship. Jesus tells us that we must become like children, not childish but childlike with an openness to learning and in a continual state of growth and development. What Jesus doesn’t say is anything about how to determine we are ‘fully grown’ as his followers. He doesn’t define a curriculum plan to get the degree or certificate that proves we’re done with our studies but says ‘be like children and follow me’.

Following Jesus is a relational way of life, The Way of Life, living as God intends us to live, the life God created us for as beloved children. Following Jesus is a continuous learning journey as we discover more and more how to love like Jesus.

What have you been learning and discovering along the journey lately?

The God of Life

A sermon preached for the Feast of All Saints’ at St. Francis by the Lake, Canyon Lake, TX.

The lectionary readings for the Feast of All Saints’ are here.

I’d like to share a personal story with you, if I may. I shared this with the group who gathered on the deck for fellowship this past Wednesday so sorry for the repeat for those who were there, but at the time I hadn’t yet made the connection between this story and the message of today’s gospel reading. Thanks for asking me to share it with you then and giving me the inspiration to share it in connection with today’s celebration of All Saints’.

As many of you know, I didn’t grow up in the Episcopal Church. My very first footstep into an Episcopal church was at an uncle’s funeral, at the cathedral in Houston. As I observed all that was going on around me, for the first time in my church going life I knew I was where I belonged. The signs and symbols revealed God’s glory. The music gave a new rhythm to my heart. The words of scripture and prayer spoke to my soul. In the grief and sorrow of the death of someone so very dear to me, I encountered the God of Life.

In the church of my childhood, the focus of our faith was mostly on what happens after we die; our belief in Jesus was more or less an after-life insurance policy to save us from the fiery torment of a Dante-style Hell. I don’t recall being taught much about how our faith shaped our living but rather how it affected what happened upon our physical death. I am so grateful to have come to know the God of Life and to be in a community where we seek together how to live a resurrection life, following Jesus for the glory of God.

In our gospel reading today, Jesus reveals life as God intends it for all of us, here and now, on earth as it is in heaven, a resurrection life lived for the glory of God. I want take a few moments to set the stage so that we can dig deeper into the short bit of God’s story we read today. It’s important that we know where we are in God’s story literally and figuratively.

So just how did Jesus arrive at the tomb of Lazarus?

Not too long before, while Jesus and his disciples were in Jerusalem for the festival of Dedication, what is called Hanukkah today, Jesus was asked by a group of people at the Temple to tell them plainly if he was the Messiah. The festival of Dedication was about the Maccabee’s revolt against the Greeks and the rededication of the temple almost 200 years before this incident. Jesus doesn’t behave or talk like the Maccabees, or what they expected from a messiah figure, so they aren’t convinced he’s a messiah who can free them from Roman rule. Jesus points out that even with all that he has said and all of the good they have seen him do, they are unable to see him as the one whom God has sent.

They take up stones to kill him and try to have him arrested but Jesus and the disciples escape across the Jordan back to where John had baptized him. And it is here that Jesus gets a message from his friends Mary and Martha that their brother Lazarus is very, very sick. Jesus assures the disciples that Lazarus’ illness will not lead to death but to God’s glory and he waited two days before telling them he was going to return to Judea.

The disciples remind him of the previous incident and warn him against returning to where folks had just tried to stone him. And even though he had just told them that Lazarus’ illness doesn’t lead to death, Jesus now tells them plainly, “Lazarus is dead” and begins the return journey. The disciples are very confused. We have the benefit of knowing how this bit plays out but I bet we’d be just as confused as the disciples if we were there with them.

As they approach Bethany, Martha runs to meet Jesus on the road with the same words we hear her sister say later: “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” Martha and Jesus then have a conversation about life and resurrection and Martha, in her grief at the death of her brother says, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

It is Martha who has the ears to hear and the eyes to see Jesus. It is Martha who proclaims God’s plan. It is Martha who is the exemplary disciple.

Martha then returns to the house and tells Mary that Jesus is calling for her. And this is where we enter the scene in our reading today. When Mary approaches Jesus she kneels before him and says, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Mary is immersed in her grief and Jesus is deeply saddened by the pain he senses from all who are mourning Lazarus. Jesus isn’t raising Lazarus as a way to dismiss death and the pain and grief it causes all of us. Jesus doesn’t downplay our pain and sorrow in this world. He knows better than any of us how real the suffering can be. Jesus walks with us in the place of our pain to show us how to see every moment of our life through the lens of God’s love.

Jesus asks where have they laid Lazarus and their response is the exact same as Jesus spoke to his first followers a few years earlier: “come and see.” Jesus uses these words to mean come and see the life God has planned for you. For the mourners, these same words reveal their understanding of life shrouded by death.

At the tomb, Martha speaks again, ever the pragmatist, the one who so boldly proclaims Jesus as the Son of God and Messiah points out that Lazarus has been dead four days as proven by the smell. Grief is like that isn’t it, one minute we are clear headed, the next looking for distractions in the details, and in the next we weep.

The four days is important. It took time for word to reach Jesus and then he delayed two days before making the trip. In Jewish tradition it takes the soul up to three days to leave the body so in the understanding of those around them, Lazarus was completely dead, not just mostly dead. Not only was he physically dead but the life source, his soul, the very breath of God that had been in him was gone as well.

Jesus reminds Martha of their previous conversation: this is all for God’s glory, to reveal the resurrection life we’ve all been promised. Jesus is living this with them and provides a prayer to help them focus on God to find comfort in their pain.

And finally, Jesus commands:
Lazarus, come out!
Come out of the darkness.
Come out of the fear.
Come out of the struggle.

Be freed from the trappings of this world that shroud life in death.
Be freed from the burdens of living life on our terms rather than God’s terms.

To all of our questions and struggles Jesus answers, “Come and see. Come and follow me out of the nightmares of our own devising into the life that God intends for everyone (to borrow a phrase from the Most Reverend Michael Curry).
Come and see the resurrection life. Follow me to the future with hope in which God dwells with us, undoes death, and wipes away all our tears.”

At the celebration of my uncle’s life, in the midst of the grief, I saw God’s glory revealed, not just in the details of the service but through the memory of the life my uncle lived, demonstrating the heart of Jesus to everyone he encountered. My uncle lived a resurrection life freed from the trappings of this world, as a light that shone in some very dark corners to reveal God’s love and glory to others living in fear and struggle.

We are stewards of this gift of life given us by our creator. Our faith is all about how we live life here and now, in the now and not yet of God’s Kingdom. The home of God is already among mortals. We don’t have to wait for it some day. God dwells with us and in us and it is through us that God continues to reveal himself to this world as the Living God, the God of Life.

Jesus calls us with the invitations ‘follow me’ and ‘come and see’ to step into God’s story. This is the resurrection life: seeing God in all people and places, aware of God’s presence with us and in us always, proclaiming with our whole life that Jesus is Lord not someday but here and now.

And that is precisely what we celebrate on our festival of All Saints’ – the lives of those who have walked before us with the God of Life, the Marthas and Marys and others whom the church recognizes as special witnesses of God’s story as well as those more personal to each of us, the uncles and others whose lives caused a shift in our lives so that we can walk with God through this life on earth as in heaven, sharing with others what has been handed down to us. Amen.

A New Thing: A Friday Feature

Let’s start something new, shall we?

Along with the regular Tuesday and Sunday posts, on the last Friday of each month I’d like to start sharing with you a podcast or book or blog that has become one of the learning tools along my journey. My hope is that you will make the time to check out what I share and let it be a part of our together journey. Take a listen. Find a good spot and a cup of coffee and read. Open your heart to God’s message for you. And, then, share with us through the comments your thoughts.

If you know of a podcast or book or blog that is influential for your journey, let me know! I’ll check it out and share it.

To start this off with a bang, my first recommendation is a Three-fer: a book, a website, and a podcast! But first, let me tell you a short story. I was in high school when I saw a stage play based on the Scopes Monkey Trial. I remember coming home in tears because my Baptist church influenced teenage brain could not fathom the scientific concept of evolution. Although my dad, himself a scientist, had never voiced a conflict between trusting the scientific method of understanding the world around us and believing in a God who created the universe, I did not know how to reconcile the two in my head, heart, and soul. I felt as if my identity was being shattered and no one around me was able to help me hold all the pieces together. No one I knew had the language to help me articulate what I was experiencing because science and faith were never brought together in the same conversation. The underlying message was they both existed but did not interact or belong together.

I learned to live with this un-articulated tension and as had been modeled for me, I did not attempt to discuss the two at the same time. Until I read Dr. Francis Collins’ book The Language of God. It’s been so long that I can’t remember how I found the book but it was definitely a game changer for me. For the first time, I began to learn how to integrate what I knew about scientific study and information and the loving God who created each of us in the divine image and the entire universe. I was learning how to integrate the two into one comprehensive and full-bodied understanding of Whose and who we are.

Ten or more years after reading the book and referencing it countless times in sermons and seminary papers, I discovered the “BioLogos” website and from there the “Language of God” podcast. Both of these are now a part of my weekly reading and listening routine and I am so grateful for their ongoing exploration of “God’s Word and God’s World to inspire authentic faith”.

I invite all of you to make use of what the amazing folks at the BioLogos Foundation provide for all of us to grow in wisdom and understanding in our companionable journey following Jesus on earth as in heaven.

Language of God – book
Language of God – podcast
Biologos website

I’d love to have a conversation with you about what you discover!

God’s peace,
Mtr. Nancy+