Who We Really Are

Good Tuesday, Y’all! Can you believe that May is more than half passed? For those of us who live in the northern hemisphere, summer is almost upon us and winter is descending for those who live south of the equator. Even in the transitional rhythms of the earth, sun, & moon, God reminds us that we too are called to move forward in growth and transformation.

Jesus tells Peter that he will be the rock on which Jesus will bring about The Church – not a building but the everlasting community of people1 who love God and follow Jesus. We think of rocks as permanent but if you’ve ever studied even the basics of geology you know they are not. And if we look at Peter’s behavior and words following Jesus’ declaration, we see that Peter was not the permanent, fixed, stalwart of perfection that we’ve somehow morphed the idea of Peter the Rock into.

Immediately after Jesus’ declaration of what must happen, Peter attempts to correct Jesus by telling Jesus that he (Jesus) will never suffer and die. Jesus not so gently reminds Peter of his purpose by saying “get behind me.” Peter momentarily had stepped out from following Jesus and was trying to lead Jesus to a different way.

At the last meal Jesus has with the disciples before his arrest and crucifixion, Peter swears he will never deny knowing Jesus. And yet, even before the three times Peter was directly asked if he knows Jesus and he says ‘no’, Peter again steps out from following Jesus and returns to his own way. In the garden where Jesus asks the disciples to keep vigil with him while he prays, Peter falls asleep. As the soldiers come to arrest Jesus, Peter attempts to defend him with a sword.

Peter, the rock on which Jesus promises to shape his community of followers is more like Talc than Granite. Peter is as human as the rest of us and it is about his humanness that Jesus says, “let me tell you who you really are.”

Who we really are are image bearers of God. Who we really are are God’s beloved children. Who we really are are citizens of God’s Kingdom. Who we really are is the community of people God chooses to work through in this world with our faults and foibles, bringing all things together for good, on earth as it is in heaven.

Following Jesus isn’t about being perfect it is about being the human beings God created us to be. It is about staying behind Jesus, trusting and believing that Love is the most powerful thing in all of God’s creation.

Jesus chooses Peter to illustrate how Jesus’ Church, Jesus’ Everlasting Community, is good and holy because God makes it so, not because we do. In choosing Peter, Jesus says “I choose everyone who desires to follow me, moving forward in growth and transformation through the rhythms of this life created and given by God.”

Following Jesus is finding who we really are in God’s love for us.

1This is one of only two times Jesus uses the word we translate into english as ‘church’. The more common use of the word that Jesus used was ‘community’.

To Whom We Belong

I am regularly astonished by the thought of God knowing me, knowing my name, knowing the hairs on my head (even and perhaps especially the grey ones), wanting only the best for me. I’m also regularly amazed that God is willing to use my simple human efforts to bring about The Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Are you astonished and amazed that the same is true about you?

Long before any of us were conceived and born, since the very beginning of ever, God said we are good.
And that we are worthy of love.
And that we each hold a special place in The Kingdom that no one else can fill.

Jesus came to show us what it is to live in this confident love, a beautiful mosaic of God’s beloved children, all necessary, needed, and wanted. And loved.

As John tells the good news story, during his last evening with his disciples, Jesus offers a prayer for them and for us regarding our life in this world.

Jesus prays for us! Let that sink in way down deep into your core, way down in the God shaped place of your being. Long before we were born, Jesus prayed for us! And not just some “God bless Whats-her-name” kind of prayer but very specifically that God would protect us as we learn to navigate being Kingdom Citizens in this world.

Jesus sends us into the world not so we can just bide our time until God brings about the new heaven and new earth, Jesus sends us so that we can participate with God in making it on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus sends us into the world to love God, our neighbor, ourselves, and, yes, our enemies.

Jesus sends us out into the world to continue the work of love he showed us how to do. And more than that, Jesus sends us into the world so that we can show the world what it means to live fully as the human beings God created every one to be. The things we do in the name of God we do because of who we are, beloved children of God.

Again, Jesus speaks of joy being made complete. We can only know real joy by knowing the truth of who and whose we are. We are sanctified – a big fancy church word that means to be set apart and made holy for God’s purposes. God chooses to make us holy. God chooses to work God’s purpose in this world – drawing everyone and everything into the kingdom – through us. God chooses us, you and me. Let that sink in.

As citizens of God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, we don’t belong to the world but we live in the world belonging to God for God’s purposes. Let that sink in. Way down deep into your core, way down in the God shaped place of your being.

Wait for it

Today is Ascension Day in the church calendar, the day we celebrate the ascension of Jesus 40 days after Easter and 10 days before Pentecost. Over the next ten days we will transition from Eastertide to the season of Pentecost, the six-month long part of the church calendar we call Ordinary Time as we turn our formational focus to following Jesus in our regular ordinary days at home and work and play.

The days of Eastertide wrap up with the most intense waiting period yet. Jesus has been with his disciples since the day of the Resurrection and now he springs something else on them: He’s going away (again) and instructing them to wait (some more) until God sends the Holy Spirit.

We can only imagine their trauma. They witnessed Jesus arrested and tried and murdered in the most brutal way. And for three days they were in limbo, not knowing. He said he’d rise up but that was impossible once he was physically dead. But he did! And he has been with them for weeks. Things were “back to normal”. But they weren’t. Jesus was the same but different. People didn’t recognize him at first but the wounds were still visible, proof he had been crucified. Despite what all the world had done to him, he rose from the dead, not just resuscitated but risen from three days dead to new life, and he continued to model for them God’s love and to ask them to do the same.

The writer of the Acts of the Apostles tells us that after Jesus “was taken up and disappeared in a cloud,” that they just stood there looking at the empty sky1. Can’t you just picture the dumbfounded looks on their faces? Wait … what?! What just happened?! Where did he go?! What are we to do now!?!

“Wait. Wait for what God has promised. Wait for the power of the Holy Spirit to empower and guide you. Remember all that I taught you. Be witnesses of the goodness of God’s kingdom here and now and share this good news to the whole world!”

Waiting on God doesn’t mean doing nothing. Waiting on God is about following Jesus and living as Kingdom people, doing the things that build up people with God’s Love.

The apostles and disciples of Jesus spent the ten days between the Ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit (Pentecost) together, working out their emotions about the betrayal of Judas, seeking understanding from God’s Word and discerning God’s will for the leadership team to prepare themselves to continue to fulfill their role in God’s plan.

We wait on God as we live into our purpose of participating with God to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.

What do you need to discern about God’s purpose and plan for our renewed resurrection life together in our time and place? The apostles and disciples were sent out to carry their first-hand witness of God’s goodness to “the ends of the earth.”

As we all begin to transition out of our necessary quarantining and staying home because of the COVID19 pandemic, where and how will you carry your first-hand witness of God’s goodness into the world?

1I find it curious that the writer of the Gospel according to Luke is also supposed to have written Acts. In Luke, the writer ends this story with the apostles returning to Jerusalem “bursting with joy.” In Acts, it’s like the writer has to correct the story because I don’t know about you but staring dumfounded into the sky until a couple of angels snap you out of it is much more believable to me that doing a joyful dance at Jesus’ leaving again (or is that just my own past traumas talking). It’s like the end of Luke is the social media version and Acts is what really happened.

Seeds of all Kinds

As we’ve journeyed through this Eastertide together, we’ve focused on what it is to BE resurrection people, not just recognizing that Jesus rose from the dead as a moment in time but celebrating and living in this new and glorious life we have because of Jesus. Jesus did what he did – feeding and healing and restoring people into community because he knows boldly and confidently who he is. Jesus knows that it is God’s will and desire that all people – you and me and us and them (yep, even them) – live into the fullness of life that God created us for.

This abundance of life is lived from the core of our being: the image of God in which we are all created and the unique person we each are, designed as an integral part of God’s purpose and plan for all creation. From this core we live into the fullness of life and we shine the light of God’s glory in the darkness so that others know they too are beloved children of God.

In the annual seasons of God’s plan, both in the natural world and as the church mirrors the rhythm of God’s story we continually rest, reflect, grow, and follow. We answer God’s call to sow seeds and to cultivate the soil of our soul so we can better receive seeds and bear the fruit of God.

Some seeds sprout easily. Do you remember as a child growing bean sprouts from beans laid between wet paper towels? Other seeds are more difficult. On a family trip to Hawaii I bought some native plant seeds to grow at home. As I opened the package and read the instructions, they were quite lengthy and detailed, involving sanding the seed coat, soaking it for a long time, and finally planting. I wondered how these plants could possibly grow in the wild unaided!1

I don’t think it is at all coincidental that Jesus uses so many agricultural metaphors in his teaching. Yes, he was in a much more agrarian society that we are in our time and place but even if the only seeds we saw grow were our kindergarten beans on paper towels, we know that a seed has to open up to let the sprout come through, however easy or difficult that process may be.

Sometimes our own growth is easy and quick like the beans and sometimes our growth needs a lot of help to even be able to sprout and begin to push through the darkness toward the life-giving light. And, when we experience new growth, the roots need to stay grounded and fed. The work we’ve done in our current season of Eastertide will continue to feed the growth we will see in the days, weeks, and months to come.

We are resurrection people and God’s beloved children, this day, this season, and always, growing from the changeless foundation of, and being continuously nourished with, God’s love.

1I learned that it is through various animal digestive systems that the prep work is done, but I’m not sure that is helpful to my illustration here.

Joy Complete

Readings for the Sixth Sunday of Easter: http://lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Easter/BEaster6_RCL.html

Jesus’ words for us today are a continuation of what we began last week (and pair well with Tuesday’s and Thursday’s posts). Jesus is in Jerusalem with his closest disciples. He’s washed their feet and had what would be their last meal together before his arrest. And one of his closest disciples leaves to betray him for a few pieces of silver.

Jesus takes this opportunity to talk with them about love and joy and life. If you knew someone close to you was going to betray you and that most of the friends you were having supper with would run at the first sign of trouble and even deny knowing you, what would you talk with them about?

We need to hear Jesus’ words of love and joy and life as well.

Jesus tells us plainly that it is God’s love for us that enables us to love others as Jesus loves.

And to make sure we really get it so that we can live it, Jesus provides us with the two-fold purpose for the directive to love as as he loves:
“I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”
and
“I give you these commands so that you can love each other.”

Joy is cultivated in love and love grows from joy. Does that make your head swim? It messes with our western, modern, linear, binary thinking. Which is exactly what Jesus’ words are intended to do: to challenge our worldview and way of thinking.

We are accustomed to talking about what makes us happy. Happiness is based on our circumstances. We say things like ‘that new job will make me happy’ and ‘going on this vacation will make me happy’ and ‘baking makes me happy’ and ‘helping others makes me happy’. Happiness is dependent on something outside of us. Happiness is about doing.

Joy is about our being. Joy comes with remaining in God’s love, knowing at our very core that we are beloved children of God. Joy is a choice to live in the confident hope of God’s goodness. Joy remains regardless of the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

The word we translate as ‘complete’ means ‘full’ or ‘filled up’. Joy is something that fills us from within. When we live from the foundation of God’s love for us (remaining or abiding in God’s love), we are enabled to love God and our neighbor and ourselves as Jesus commands us to. And the more we love, the more love we have to give and the more love we give the more our joy is filled up, even if we aren’t feeling particularly happy about what’s happening around us or to us.

This is the abundance of life that Jesus promises us when we follow him.

We cannot pursue joy as we try to pursue happiness. We come to know this holy joy as we let go of our own desires and seek to do all that we do for the purposes of bringing about God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. In God’s Kingdom there is only love and justice. In God’s Kingdom we work together with God’s help so that everyone has what they need. This doesn’t mean we won’t have anything but that what we do have will exceed our own personal desires.

And here’s one more thought to mess with our way of thinking: We aren’t equipped to do the things Jesus tells us to do once we enter God’s Kingdom; loving others as Jesus loves is what brings about God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus says the Kingdom of God is at hand, right here with us, and he tells us how to be in God’s Kingdom now.

Know that God loves you as God loves Jesus. Live in that love. In the fullness of the joy that God’s love creates in you, love others as Jesus loves. Amen.

Being and Doing, Part 2

Good morning, Y’all. How are you being this morning? I know that sound odd to our ears, but I really mean it. As we talk about being as the foundation of our doing, I really want to know how you are being, not as a test but out of genuine concern. Imagine the conversations we could all have if we asked each other “how are you being” and really stop to listen to the answers!

Tuesday we talked about how our worship of God in our regularly scheduled gatherings in our meeting spaces is not the goal of our belief but one of the ways we learn to live in relationship with God every moment of every day outside of our gathering spaces. Worship is one of many formation tools that, with God’s help, we learn to be The Church, living and breathing and moving in the world, participating in God’s redemption Plan. So, what is it to follow Jesus out of the worship space doors and off the grounds of our campuses to love and serve God in this world?

When Jesus says, “follow me,” he doesn’t mean we are purchasing a reserved seat ticket for some future trip. And the invitation isn’t to just come and visit God once in a while in these buildings we gather in for our worship until then. Our response to Jesus’ invitation is about our life now.

In Jesus’ sermon about not looking for shortcuts to God that I quoted in Tuesday’s post, Jesus goes on to say:

“These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on. If you work these words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who built his house on solid rock. Rain poured down, the river flooded, a tornado hit—but nothing moved that house. It was fixed to the rock.”

Matthew 7:24-25, The Message

Jesus tells us plainly that we are to build our life on what he teaches and demonstrates. As Jesus prepares his earliest followers for life without his physical presence, he talks about feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked, and caring for the sick and those in prison (see Matthew 25:31-40). These aren’t “next life” activities but for us to do now in this new and glorious life given to us through Jesus’ own life, death, and resurrection.

All of this doing grows from the foundation of our being, God’s beloved children who follow Jesus as The Church. Whether we are at home or at work or running errands or participating in our hobbies and leisure time activities, how we interact with others either reflects the Love and Light of God or it doesn’t. Jesus tells us that the way we treat other people is the way we treat him. Do we offer kindness or indifference? Do we offer hope or apathy? Do we offer compassion or self-centeredness?

What we do not only comes from our own being but how we see others ‘being’. Every person we encounter each and every day is created in the image of God and is a beloved child of God. Let’s be and do accordingly.

Being and Doing

As we slowly transition out of the many life-preserving safety protocols necessary in a world-wide pandemic, I’m seeing a lot of self-help, check-list styled techniques to assist our transition. And I’m not even talking about non-church sources but among publications intended for clergy and church leadership. “7 ‘must haves’ before you reopen church”. “5 necessary steps and pitfalls to avoid before reopening”. “10 ways to ensure your congregation will reengage”.

And as I scan them looking for something useful, I hear Jesus saying, “Don’t look for shortcuts to God. The market is flooded with surefire, easygoing formulas for a successful life that can be practiced in your spare time. Don’t fall for that stuff, even though crowds of people do. The way to life—to God!—is vigorous and requires total attention.” (Matthew 7:13, The Message)

I’m speaking to clergy, church leaders, and congregation members when I say don’t get so caught up in finding the right magic formula that who we are as the people of God and Body of Christ is overshadowed by doing or worse yet a projected image of anything other than God’s Love for all. People aren’t a checklist. Human beings are not cogs in a worship machine. I say often that God’s kingdom is made of people not bricks and mortar but never ever take that to mean that it’s ok to use human beings as tools and equipment to some end or goal.

Our relationships, with God and each other, are both the means and the end for the purpose of living in God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, in other words, being The Church. The must-haves for resuming in-person worship is the love of God and the desire to serve and worship our Creator. The necessary step to being the people of God is to respond to Jesus’ invitation “follow me.” People will engage with a community that is grounded in the self-giving love of God.

How we each do these things depends on each locale and culture and the people who make up our communities. Each person has skills and talents that are necessary and needed in the Kingdom of God. Each culture has a unique way of expressing their love of God and neighbor. None of what we do as The Church will be authentic unless is grows from who we are as God’s beloved. Instead of looking for the perfect checklist, have a conversation and pray with others in your community about living authentically as God’ people going forward into God’s kingdom.

All of us together need to reconnect and reengage in our expression of corporate and public worship. It is a necessary part of who and whose we are but it is not the purpose of our calling. Our worship of God together is one of the ways the Holy Spirit enables us to participate with God in healing this broken world with restorative Love. Worship helps us become whole and holy so that we can follow Jesus out through the worship space doors to love and serve God in the world.

There isn’t a magic checklist. There is God and us, living into who God calls us to be, living from the image of God in us, following Jesus every moment of every day. There are no instantaneous results or shortcuts; it’s a lifelong journey of doing from the core of our being.

Made to Love

Readings for the Fifth Sunday of Easter: http://lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Easter/BEaster5_RCL.html

Most of the time in these Living Sunday School posts, I focus on the Gospel reading for the particular Sunday. We are, after all, to proclaim the good news of Jesus because we ourselves are recipients of the good news that God loves us and invites us into the Kingdom to be in relationship with God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Today, however, I’d like us to take a look at the bit we have from John’s first letter. The letters we have in what we call the New Testament are written by the apostles to the earliest Christians to help them all work out what this new Way looked like in their 1st century, day-to-day, ordinary lives. Just as we are trying to work it out for ourselves what it looks like in the 21st century. Following Jesus will necessarily look differently not just across cultures and history but through the ongoing changes of our lives as we grow and mature from childhood to adolescence to early adulthood to middle age and beyond. People are different from one culture to the next, from one neighborhood to the next, from one individual to the next. God did not create us to be cookie-cutter, preprogrammed androids, all exactly the same. God created each of us uniquely with specific gifts and ways of viewing and responding to the world so that when we all come together, we are a beautifully woven tapestry that would be lacking if even one thread were missing.

And, at the core of all of our individual uniqueness, we are all created in the image of the changeless God who is Love.

This is the foundation for what John writes to a group of Jesus-followers who apparently were acting out in hateful, hurtful ways toward each other. He writes to remind them of why they are all hanging out together in the first place, to be The Church that reveals God’s love and light to the world and the only way to do that is to start with God’s love for everyone and then loving each other as God loves each of us.

God’s Love is self-giving love, unconditional love, unrelenting love. This Love is not an emotion but the life source from which we all are created and the life we are called to live as we follow Jesus.

John gives us a 2 point test of sorts to determine if the love we are learning to live in is God’s Love: are we afraid and do we hate others. Trusting in God’s love for us means that even when we face uncertainty and/or hardships – even the most devastating things we can imagine – we do not let fear govern our behavior and responses. When we live from the source of God’s Love within us, we know that even if by the world’s standards we have lost ‘everything’ we still have the most precious and valuable thing of all: our identity as God’s beloved.

Fear tells us that we have to earn God’s approval, to prove ourselves good enough. Fear grounds our relationship with God in avoiding punishment rather than receiving love. Fear causes us to be in competition with others in receiving God’s approval and good-will because there just might not be enough to go around. Fear causes scarcity based thinking and living, leading us to be self-preserving and self-focused rather than self-giving and other-focused.

God’s abundance isn’t over indulgent excess but a never ending supply of love, hope, peace, and compassion.

God’s Love is abundant, not ‘over indulgent excess’ but a never ending supply. In learning to love as God loves, we learn that the more love we give the more we have. God’s Love is focused on giving not getting. We are enabled to love because God first loved us. And there is absolutely nothing we can do to make God love us any more or less. Our choices to not love others doesn’t dissolve God’s love for us, it damages our love for God. Our choices separate us from God, or to put it in Jesus’ words (you knew I’d work the Gospel reading in somehow):

“I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing. Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire.”

John 15:5-6, The Message

Beloved, let us love one another because God loves us.

The Gift of Being

The first sermon I gave for a grade in Preaching class in seminary was on this passage from third chapter of Peter’s second letter.

“Don’t overlook the obvious here, friends. With God, one day is as good as a thousand years, a thousand years as a day. God isn’t late with his promise as some measure lateness. He is restraining himself on account of you, holding back the End because he doesn’t want anyone lost. He’s giving everyone space and time to change.”

2 Peter 3:8-9, The Message

It was one of those passages that I knew that I’d read many times before but for the first time I really, really read it and I heard God speaking through it directly to me in an act of redemption.

In the denomination I grew up in, the time of Jesus’ return, the final judgement of God was used as a method of inciting fear in us to make us ‘behave’. If we didn’t do all the right things now, we’d end up spending eternity in a lake of fire. Time was a test of our ability to be good enough.

As I prepared this sermon for a grade, the fear based, misguided theology of eternity and time of my early years was redeemed. I read these words written in love by Peter, the one who was told by Jesus he’d be the rock of the church and the one who denied knowing Jesus in order to save his own skin, and I experienced not an angry task master but a loving parent who patiently waits while I learn and grow.

Time became a gift to me because I don’t have to use it to prove I’m good enough. God has given us time to learn and grow in relationship with God now, experiencing the abundance of compassionate love and care of God’s righteousness and goodness.

Like Peter, I’ve not always used what I’ve been given to build up God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Like Peter, I sometimes try to tell Jesus the right way to do things because I want the solution now. Like Peter, I know that when I step back on the path, following Jesus into the kingdom I won’t be condemned but loved and redeemed.

God has promised that at the appointed time God will set all things right in a new heaven and a new earth. As we wait, knowing God is always faithful and true, we are given the gift of being God’s people, God’s beloved children, here and now. It’s an amazing time I don’t want to rush through but genuinely experience.

I’m so grateful we are on this learning journey of life in God’s Kingdom together. Thank you for sharing your precious time with me.

The Shape of our Day

Good Tuesday, Y’all! How’s your coffee?

I used to teach time management seminars to corporate managers and executives. In the days before smart phones and tablets, I carried around the full sized 8 1/2” x 11” life planner briefcase as if it were my life source and I didn’t do anything that wasn’t written in my calendar or on my task list. I scheduled everything. And when I say everything, I mean
E V E R Y T H I N G.
I even blocked off time to be ‘spontaneous’. I don’t know if there was ever such a thing but I definitely could have used a 12 step recovery program for this particular addiction.

Looking back, I bought into the idea that the company I worked for peddled: that planning was living. Also in hindsight, I’ve come to know that what I was really doing was avoiding living deeply and fully. I was as flat at the paper I planned my days on. I looked busy because being busy was a badge of honor in the corporate culture of being busy for the sake of being busy. If you didn’t have an immediate task at hand you made yourself appear busy by planning out what you were going to do tomorrow, next week, next month, next year … planning how to make your life good someday rather than seeking the goodness of today.

And here’s what else I’ve come to know: earning the Busy Badge has nothing to do with being who God created me to be. It has nothing to do with being, period. The very foundation of my existence is that I am a beloved child of God, created in the image of Love. The very foundation of your existence is that you are a beloved child of God, created in the image of Love. All else grows from this reality. The purpose of all that we do is this reality.

In this Kingdom reality, we learn that we are not in competition with each other for anything because we understand that our very existence is dependent on each other. This is God’s purpose, that we all thrive as the beloved people we are created to be. If you are hungry I cannot be truly full. If you are hurting I cannot be truly whole. If you are lost I cannot be truly secure.

Whatever we put on our calendars or task lists doesn’t define us or create purpose. The events and tasks we make time for in our days reflect what we truly believe the foundation of our existence to be.

God invites us into quiet reflection of who and whose we are not so that we can escape the busyness of our lives but enable us to remember our created purpose: to live in communion with God and each other every moment of every day. Letting this shape our days is what enables us to live deeply and fully.

What’s on your “To Be” page for today?