Sunday, May 25, 2014

An Unknown God

Ancient altar to an unknown god. Image Source 

Acts 17:22-31
22Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 23For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’   What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. 26From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him — though indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, 
     ‘For we too are his offspring.’ 
29Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. 30While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

Sermon: An Unknown God

Seminary is a bizarre place – just ask Joanna.  People practice baptism for kicks.  Reading from the “wrong” version of the Bible can make someone argue with you for an hour-and-a-half.  And everything, everything, is questioned.  The notion of professors imparting wisdom into the empty heads of patient, reverent students is something of the past.  Everything is up for debate, which is exhilarating, and exhausting (ask Joanna).

Case in point: I once sat in a class on World Mission required for our entire year of seminarians to take.   It wasn’t taught by our Mission professor for some reason, but someone else.  And about as soon as it began, we began questioning him.  He spoke to us about mission and culture.  “Go into any village in Africa these days…” he began.

…and switch on a radio, and presto! There is culture.”

He was trying, I think, to say something about globalization or the interconnectedness of the world.  What he ended up doing was implying that there was no culture in that African village until a Western technological device (i.e. a radio) appeared.  You can imagine how that riled up a bunch of (admittedly self-righteous) seminarians!  I’m not critiquing my seminary education here – we all know that we learn more from things we disagree with, that challenge us, than things we take easily at face value.

That professor’s approach to mission is one that has been taken by Christians for millennia…that in going to share the good news of Christ, you must also go and share the good news of a better way of life (yours).  Sometimes, that sharing looked like acts of compassion, through education and health care.  Often, it looked (and looks) like colonialism and domination.

But this is not how God intended mission to happen.  We see this in our reading from Acts this morning where Paul provides us with a powerful model for sharing our faith across cultural and religious divides.

When Paul took his little stroll through the city of Athens, looking carefully at all of their gods (at Starbucks and Walmart and Apple), he didn’t destroy those gods.  He didn’t tell them that God loved his people more than them, or that they were ignorant heathens.  Instead he began with a statement of respect for their ways:

“Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.”
And then he looked for connections between his faith tradition and theirs:

“For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.”

And thus the connection is made, not through taking what they know and naming it as ignorant or misguided, but in shedding light on the unknown. 

I find it fascinating that these Athenians had a statue to an “unknown god.”  In the Greek, “unknown God” is literally agnosto dei.  Agnostic God.  God without knowing. 

I can’t help but think of that a-religious title used by so many these days, especially people of my generation: agnostic.  Folks who are agnostic say that yes, there is a God, but that this God doesn’t care much or interfere with the affairs of this world.  This agnostic God is not so much unknown as a deity, but is willfully unknowing when it comes to humanity.  This God chooses ignorance over knowing and acting on behalf of creation: the agnostic God.

This is very different from who we Jesus followers say God is.  We say that, in Jesus of Nazareth, God is made known, and came to earth, lived, served, died and rose again that humanity might be fully known, experienced, loved, reconciled. 

It is tempting, in the face of agnostism (which will be something faced quite often in Germany by Joanna, I’m betting) to immediately say, “No!  This is not what God is like!  God is with us, cares for us, died for us, rose for us!”

But it’s important when we are tempted to approach mission in this way to return once more to this reading from Acts.  You see, Paul didn’t share his faith starting with a "No!".  He started by saying, “Yes.” 

Yes – I see that you are seeking after God.
Yes – I see that you are faithful in your own way, even if it’s different than mine.
Yes – I see that the God who made all of us, gives life and breath to all.
Yes – we share a common ancestor.
Yes – we are one humanity.
Yes – we all seek the unknown.

And in doing this, Paul’s approach seeks to meet the most basic human need there is within each of us: gnosis.  To be known.  We all want to know God, but we also desperately want to be known ourselves. 

So sharing our faith with others must always be about both types of gnosis, of knowing.  Respecting the faith and cultural backgrounds of others enough to really know them.  And courageously sharing with them our own way of knowing God, not from a place of pride or superiority, but from a place of showing how it is we “search for God, and perhaps grope for God and find God, though indeed God is not far from each of us.” 

This is mission: groping for God together.  Because we never arrive at a place of knowing the God we see in Jesus Christ completely (even with a seminary education).  We cannot know God without knowing the diverse, varied people God has made.  And people cannot know God without feeling known, understood, respected, themselves. 

Perhaps that is the greatest challenge agnosticism shows us: not the idea that God doesn’t know us, but the idea that our fellow human beings don’t care either.  Our greatest witness then, your greatest witness Joanna, is to do all in our power (and then even more in the power of the Holy Spirit) to make people feel known, just as they are, as Paul did. 

I’m reminded of a poem called Red Brocade by Naomi Shihab Nye, about how we can truly know one another.

The Arabs used to say,

When a stranger appears at your door,

feed him for three days

before asking who he is,

where he’s come from,

where he’s headed.

That way, he’ll have strength enough to answer.
Or, by then you’ll be such good friends
 you don’t care.
Let’s go back to that.


Rice?
Pine Nuts?

Here, take the red brocade pillow.

My child will serve water to your horse.

No, I was not busy when you came!

I was not preparing to be busy.

That’s the armor everyone put on
to pretend they had a purpose 
in the world.
I refuse to be claimed.

Your plate is waiting. 
We will snip fresh mint

into your tea.

If there is a purpose in this world, it is most certainly to take the time to know our fellow human beings, and seek to know God together.  Though we may always within us have a shrine to the “unknown” God, especially when life throws perplexing challenges or tragedies at us, the good news is this: we are never unknown to God.  God is never agnostic where humanity is concerned. 

God is intimately involved in the details of this world and our lives, at work in ways that are real and concrete helping God’s children know each other and their Creator. 

We are not too busy to know our fellow human beings.  We are not too busy to carefully and respectfully learn their ways.  We are not too busy to share our faith with courage and compassion.  We are not too busy to worship the God who knows us – all of us -- completely. This is why we are here.  This is why you are called from here, Joanna. 

Thanks be to the God who knows us better than we know ourselves, to the Risen Lord who put flesh and blood on our deepest questions and to the Spirit who binds us together with all peoples of every nation and place, as one human family.  Alleluia!  Amen.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

The Suffering Shepherd

Today in worship we gave out 270 beads for people to be in prayer for those kidnapped Nigerian girls.  
April 11, 2014
1 Peter 2:19-25
19For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. 20If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. 21For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. 
22   “He committed no sin, 
and no deceit was found in his mouth.” 
23When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. 24He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. 25For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.


Sermon: The Suffering Shepherd

Close your eyes for a moment (really).  Now, don’t fall asleep!  I want you, with your eyes closed, to picture God.  What does he or she look like to you?

When I picture God, I see the same thing I’ve seen since I was little.  I see a tree.  A big sprawling oak in the middle of a calm field, whose leafy branches dapple your skin with golden, filtered sunlight as you nap beneath it in safety.  Anytime I doubt the presence of God, trees root me in that comforting reality once more.  Yes, there is a God.  And yes, to me, God looks an awful lot like a tree.

We all have our comforting ways of picturing God.  You might see God as a wise, kind-hearted grandfather, or as a patient, loving mother, or as a joyful, vibrant child, or as the good shepherd like we hear about in Psalm 23.

But, I wonder, do any of us think of God as suffering?  Do we picture God’s face and see the nameless face of a Nigerian girl stolen from school to be sold into slavery?  That image of God is not comfortable.  It makes us want to look away, to go back to old comforts of thinking about God as a tree or mother or shepherd. 

But our text from 1 Peter this morning makes it clear: in Jesus Christ, God’s face is one of suffering.  We hear that Christ suffered for us, when he was abused he did not return abuse, when he suffered he did not threaten, and by his wounds we are healed.

A shepherd who heals through wounds?  No, I don’t really like this at all.  We are all so wounded, and it’s painful to think about such things.  The wounds of those little girls being stolen and abused, sold to men for about $20 as “wives.”  The wounds of their mothers and fathers whose sorrow we can’t even begin to comprehend.

The wounds of many would-be mothers today, on this day that brings joy to some, but sorrow to those who have lost children or mothers, and to those who never got to be the mothers they wanted to be.  This world is so very wounded.  If I had you close your eyes once more, and picture your own wounds, your own places of sorrow, I bet they might come to you even more quickly than picturing God. 

We carry our wounds and the wounds of this world with us all the time.  There are some communities of faith that say true faith means being freed from all of these wounds, that if we really trust God, God will deliver us from our pain completely, and bring prosperity and success, to boot.  We are a different sort of community of faith.  We say that true faith means freely sharing our wounds with God and each other, to find healing.  Healing and deliverance are different things, you see.

This text in 1 Peter doesn’t say by the wounds of Jesus, we are delivered, removed from sorrow and suffering.  It says by his wounds we are healed.  Ask a person whose been through a lengthy illness, or someone whose family has been estranged and come together once more or someone who was without work for a long time and found a job finally, if they’ve forgotten the struggle toward healing and wholeness.  I promise you, they haven’t.  And they won’t.  Healing doesn’t erase suffering, it leaves scars.  When those little Nigerian girls come home again – as we desperately pray that they do – there will be many scars in their process of healing. 

And so as comforting as God as a sprawling oak tree is, that’s not the sort of God this world needs.  We need a God with scars – a Shepherd who suffers.  But it’s important that we talk about how and why this Shepherd suffers.  He does not suffer for the sake of it.  He does not suffer because of a vindictive God whose wrath must be abated so that we can be seen as God’s children.  He does not suffer because he’s trying to prove something or make a point.  Put simply, that Shepherd Jesus Christ suffers because we do. 
And so when our reading from 1 Peter this morning tells us to follow after that sort of suffering, following Jesus’ example, it is not telling us to suffer for the sake of it, or to accept violent action as God’s will, or to prove ourselves as worthy or faithful.  I believe we are being told that just as God suffers because we do, we suffer because others do. 

Anne Lamott captures this idea of a suffering God in her book Traveling Mercies.  She writes:
When something ghastly happens, it is not helpful to many people if you say that it’s all part of God’s perfect plan, or that it’s for the highest good of every person in the drama, or that more will be revealed, even if that is all true. Because at least for me, if someone’s cute position minimizes the crucifixion, it’s bunk. Which I say with love.

Christ really did suffer, as the innocent of the earth really do suffer. It’s the ongoing tragedy of humans. Our lives and humanity are untidy: disorganized and careworn.My understanding of incarnation is that we are not served by getting away from the grubbiness of suffering.


Any healthy half-awake person is occasionally going to be pierced with a sense of the unfairness and the catastrophe of life for ninety-five percent of the people on this earth.Pretending that things are nicely boxed up and put away robs us of great riches. 

Riches?  What an odd word to use.  What riches are there to be found in suffering? 

The best I can come up with is this: the riches of knowing we are not alone.  The riches of understanding that our worth (and the worth of those Nigerian schoolgirls) is not determined by our suffering.  The riches of knowing that the God who made us didn’t then go on vacation and check out from this world.  That God entered this world as a Shepherd who suffered, and enters the world again and again and again, wherever God’s children are suffering, calling us to do the same.


And so, on this Mothers’ Day, those daughters in Nigeria are our daughters.  The face of this suffering Shepherd we follow looks like their faces.  The next time you close your eyes to pray, picture them.  It is a painful picture, much more so than a tree or comforting grandfather God.  But if we are to follow Jesus, we must follow him into places of solidarity with all who suffer, refusing to let them go until they – every single one of them -- know healing on the other side of it.   Amen.

Sunday, May 4, 2014

The Things That Get Us Moving

My blog recording glimpses of God with me has been a spiritual
practice to keep me moving for the past 7 years.  

Luke 24:13-35
13Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, 14and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. 15While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, 16but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. 17And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. 18Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” 19He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, 20and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. 21But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. 22Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, 23and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. 24Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.” 25Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! 26Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” 27Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

28As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. 29But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. 30When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. 31Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. 32They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” 33That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. 34They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” 35Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Sermon: “The Things That Get Us Moving”

I have shocking news for you.  Ready?  Here it is: IT’S MAY.

Can you believe it?  May!  How is it that the months of this (chilly) spring have so rapidly passed through our fingers like grains of sand?  Easter Sunday has come and gone (though the season continues until Pentecost of course), we’re in the final sprint until summer and already, the antique fair happened yesterday, and we’re exhausted.  Spring has flown by.

That’s the strange thing about life, though isn’t it?  Minutes, hours, days even, can go by slowly, sometimes achingly so, but weeks, months and years, well they fly by in a blink.  Looking back on our lives it can seem like they have simply been a whirlwind of constant motion: school, careers, retirements, family changes, cross-country moves and major events. 

But let me encourage you to look closer: is it really the prevailing theme of constant motion that most defines your life so far?  Think instead about those rare times you stood perfectly still.  There were some moments of stillness, I promise.

Like when you held a child for the first time.  When you looked into eyes that looked back at you full of love.  When you first dipped your toes in the ocean, or when you tasted your first ice cream cone (or dewberry).  When you heard your mother laugh, or your grandfather whistle.  When you sat under a favorite tree on the perfect summer’s day, or danced beneath the stars on the perfect summer night.

These moments, in the whirlwind of our lives, are moments of blissful stillness, forever burned into our memories.

But there are other moments where we stand still as well, moments we will also never forget.

Like when you saw a parent cry, or when your childhood pet was lost.  When you got that dreaded phone call from the doctor.  When you and your best friend grew apart, or when you woke up in the middle of the night, having everything you could ever need and asking the darkness, “then why am I not satisfied?”  When you said goodbye to someone you loved, and with that, said goodbye to a part of yourself as well. 

The road to Emmaus included this kind of stillness: where grief and sorrow stops you in your tracks. 

Cleopas and another disciple of Jesus were walking the road between Jerusalem and Emmaus, moving mindlessly in the way that life makes us do.  A stranger came and asked them a simple question:

“What’cha talking about, as you walk along?” 

That question alone stopped them in their tracks.  Well, more the answer, actually.  The text says they stood still, looking sad.  We all know what that’s like, don’t we?  When grief overwhelms to the point that putting one foot in front of the other is all but impossible.

They told Jesus, not knowing it was him, the saddest story of their hurried lives: that a wonderful prophet named Jesus of Nazareth, mighty in word and deed, had been crucified.  Unable to see through their cloud of sadness, they also explained that some women went to his tomb and found it empty!  But when others went to investigate, they didn’t see Jesus alive.  So these still, sad disciples believed that, not only was their Lord dead, but that his body had also been stolen so they couldn’t even grieve as they needed to.

Jesus shook them out of their sorrow.  “Don’t be fools!” he said.  And then he explained once more everything prophesied about the Messiah and how he suffered that he might bring greater glory.  We don’t know exactly what Jesus told them, but we do know this: whatever he said got them moving.

Because the next we hear, the three of them are nearing the village of Emmaus, miles later.  How very accurate this is of grief.  We know when we are stopped in our tracks, when life becomes overwhelming and the journey becomes a burden.  But how we get moving again, well we don’t exactly know what happens there.  We just know that it does.  Suddenly, without even realizing it, miles later, we recognize that we are not where we were, that we have somehow moved.

You might call that movement a miracle.  You might call it resurrection.  Describing it in more detail becomes difficult, because Jesus walks alongside us on the road in so many varied and surprising ways.

Sometimes he gets us moving through a trusted friend who has the courage to tell us the difficult truth instead of just telling us what we want to hear.  Sometimes he gets us moving through the demands of a routine and people who need us.  Sometimes he gets us moving through the stories of scripture where we remember how God has journeyed with others before us.  But however it is it happens, it does happen.  Our Risen Lord gets us moving again. 

And when he does, when we finally realize the miles we’ve come, we want to invite him in for supper, like those disciples did, and never let him leave.  We want that spiritual fuel to last so we don’t stall out again.  We want to remember what it was that got us going so that if ever we feel frozen by fear or grief, we can rely on it again.

This is a good plan, except for one thing: God doesn’t stay still.  Ever.  We do, but God is always on the move, refusing to be hemmed in and boxed in.  And so we have to constantly open our eyes to this moving God, knowing that God might not appear to us in the same way twice. 

I have a blog, a spiritual discipline, that helps me with this, called Glimpses of Grace.  There, I record moments of holiness in everyday ways, how God has been revealed to me in the fabric of my ever-moving life. 

Today, the Risen Lord might look like a trusted friend and a warm cup of coffee (no surprise there).  But tomorrow, the Risen Lord might look like a stranger’s laughter, or a patient waitress.  And the day after that, who knows?  A comforting line in a book?  A beloved record?  A rainy afternoon? A walk in Miss Sue’s park?

Once Jesus left that tomb, he never did stop.  He’s always on the move.  And we are always being called to recognize him, yes while we’re whirling through our frenetic lives, but even more so, when we find ourselves standing still.  When grief, worry or just plain exhaustion have stopped us in our tracks, that is when we should most keenly look for the Risen Lord walking beside us. 

You don’t have to do this with a blog or any particular way, you just have to do it.  Look for the movement of God in your days.  Because the days will run together, and so will the weeks and so will the years.  What matters is not that we remember each moment.  What matters is not that we had moments of utter stillness through joy or sorrow.  What matters is that we recognize God walking with us every step of the way. 

If we don’t look for God, God will still be there with us, because that is who God is.  But it makes all the difference in the world that we do look, even through teary or tired eyes.  And it makes all the difference in the life of another that we recognize when someone else is on that tough Emmaus road, and needs us to be a tangible reminder of God with them. 


Thanks be to the God who guides our days, months and years, to the Risen Christ who walks beside us, even when we don’t realize it, and to the Spirit who makes our hearts burn with a holy movement.  Amen.