an imagined memory

I was baptized with earth—dirt, actually—
at the unconsenting age of five
in the name of God and Jesus Christ,
both daringly used in vain
by that most unholy of trinities: Jimmy, Steve, and Charles—
my older brother and his two best friends.

They did a thorough job of it.
I wasn’t sprinkled.
I was buried.

Charles got me to lie face down
in the back yard right behind the deck
between the peony bushes.
I don’t remember how.
Told me to count ants? Or maybe to hide?
I was just glad the older kids noticed and included me!

Charles got me to lie face down
in the back yard right behind the deck
between the peony bushes
while Jimmy and Steve carefully positioned
their fully loaded wheelbarrows up above.

I didn’t want to go out back there for months,
and it was much longer than that
before I could look up without flinching.

I did get extra dessert that night—
I still remember it was chocolate sheet cake with ice cream,
and I got to stay up late and watch TV
while Jimmy didn’t get any dessert
and had to go up to his room
right after he finished his homework.
He was punished too.

Maybe that’s why I like dancing outside now—
pressing my toes into earth and feeling it move beneath me—
kicking and lunging—leaping and landing—
packing earth down—with me on top—
spinning and swaying,
leaning and laughing
because I am so alive.

God be with you

Our God,

Social networking
creates the expectation of
(or the desire for)
virtually instantaneous response
to circumstance.

In the aftermath of … life …
we scramble
for something appropriate to say—
quickly.

And, honestly, our first response to much that’s hard
is simply an anguished, “No!”
(whether in response to the natural disaster—
the unnatural disaster, the diagnosis,
the foolishness, the selfishness)—
“No!”

Our second response,
“Why?”
Even believing there’s no answer to that one,
we ask anyway.

There’s anger—
sometimes directed,
other times not.
Sometimes directed at you.
That’s okay, right?
You’re big enough.

There’s the desire to do something—
when sometimes we can’t;
other times we won’t;
sometimes we do.

Ultimately, our best prayer …
best? … last?
is simply—
not “No!”—
a form of “Yes!” actually—

“God be with you.”

And yes, sometimes that so painfully means good-bye.
Not always.
Not even most of the time.
But no assumptions.
No expectations.

Affirmation nonetheless.

God be with you—

in and through the specifics—your specifics—
in and through what you face
and we face.

God be with you
in the fullness of God’s being—
being love—
being grace—
being the desire for wholeness—
for balance and health—
for transformation—

and working toward that being for all.

This we pray
with assurance and hope
in the name of the one
who says still,
“I’ll be with you always,”

Amen.

to see a dancer

Water slows things down.
That’s the way I see it.
The grace of buoyancy is actually just a force
giving us time to see
the grace inherent to the movement.

Sink below the surface,
watch someone walk underwater.
There’s a grace to each step
because there’s time to see each step—
time to appreciate each step.

Dance does that too—
slows movement down—
or focuses in on detail:
shoulder isolation, hip, hand.
And as you tighten the focus,
you realize,
essentially,
the same thing you notice with things slowed down—
or made bigger, for that matter
(extended—
exaggerated),
you realize,
drawing attention
to everyday movement
to make it appreciable—

you realize (1) a dancer is always dancing,
and (2) we are all dancers.

And once you know someone (anyone) is a dancer,
you can watch their slightest move, as if underwater,
and admire the choreography of breathtakingly beautiful sequences.

Though when you’re underwater, of course,
you really don’t want anything to be breathtaking.

So we live above the surface,
largely unaware,
everyone’s dancing.

worth dying for

Here’s a question:
what’s worth dying for?
No, wait, wait—never mind—
that’s way too philosophical.

What would you die for?
Not that that’s not abstract
for most of us (as in not real),
but if you can answer that one—
propose a possible reply—
even make a somewhat educated guess
(what’s important enough to you
that you would, on its behalf,
sacrifice your living?)—
if you can but conjecture a response,
here’s the follow-up:
how much of your living
is devoted to what you think you would deem
worth dying for?

You could also ask that question inverted:
where, in priority, would what you spend
most of your time doing rank?

What would it be like
to live ever more into what you would die for?

words made …?

Acts 2:1-21; Genesis 11:1-9

For Pentecost Sunday, the lectionary couples
an Old Testament text and a New Testament text:
the New Testament reading from the Acts of the Apostles,
the story of Pentecost, and an Old Testament reading
from Genesis, chapter 11, the story of Babel.

Set in ancient days when there was but one people and one language,
the story of the tower built out of pride and presumption
(a long-lost Jane Eyre manuscript!)—
the tower built out of pride and presumption
on the plain in the land of Shinar
where God scattered the one people into many peoples
by giving them many languages.

So, take one (of three)—one observation of three:
in the one story, God uses language to divide and separate people;
in the other, God uses language to bring people together,
and it’s God’s initiative in both stories.
Yet in the one story, language confuses human effort to reach God,
and in the other, language is the means through which God is known.

One quick thought about language—
more than simply what different sounds mean as different words,
different languages participate profoundly
in matters of identity and belonging.
Back in 2009, I had the opportunity to travel to Israel.
Our group was flying Lufthansa, the German airline,
out of Atlanta through Frankfurt to Tel Aviv,
and I was completely unprepared
for my response to hearing German—
the language of my childhood and youth.
A significant part of me didn’t want to change planes in Frankfurt
and continue to Tel Aviv, but rather to spend two weeks
just hearing German again.

And it’s so much more than simply about what you can understand
and where you can be understood.
Because these days, with English, you can go pretty much anywhere.
But it’s not about where people can speak English,
but about where people do.
And though Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Africa
may feel more like home, because of the English spoken there,
you know you belong where the very accent is yours.
You know you belong.

Together, our Bible stories this morning suggest
that all the words of every language
combined in our loftiest and our deepest thinking—
our richest imagining—
combined in the best stories of all our cultures
reaching toward truth
do but indicate the Word.
Language is our admittedly limited means to reach toward God,
and while the most we have to give falls short, it is yet wonderful—
susceptible to division and smallness of vision,
but full of possibility and hope.

So, take one, God and language—
who we are and where and with whom we belong.
So important.

And as followers of God in the way of Jesus,
we belong together and we belong with God,
and the accent is love.

Take two—
now I believe, I do,
that Scripture is revelation—divine revelation,
and I take that to mean both it is inspired by God
(God reveals truth in Scripture),
and that Scripture reveals God—the truth in Scripture.
I believe as well, that Scripture reveals us—
the truth of us, as human beings.

I also believe it’s not always easy to know in Scripture
who or what is being revealed,
and that sometimes stories apparently about God
are truly more about us—actually reveal more truth about us.
This Genesis story is one of those.

For in contemplating the apparent contradiction
between the two stories,
the one in which God evidently does not want people to reach heaven—
in which God is worried about people—threatened by them,
and the other one we read as integral part of God’s work of reconciliation.
So in the one story, God separates people
not just from each other, but also from God and the God story,
and in the other, God not only welcomes people into community,
but also into the truth of God and the God story.
And again, in both stories, God is presented as the one initiating—

as if God is at crosspurposes with God’s own self …
or as if something profound had changed
between the telling of the two stories.
And some would say that’s Jesus—
that Jesus came and everything changed.
That’s the purpose of the cross, some would say,
that God not be at cross purposes with God’s own self.

But here’s the thing, after or before the coming of Jesus,
I just have trouble thinking of God as threatened by a tower.
I have trouble thinking that God’s insecurity
led to the great dispersal of people, and the variety of language.
I have trouble thinking a tower rising into the skies,
no matter how high, no matter the intent of the builders,
worried God enough that God would say,

“Look, they are one people, and they have all one language;
and this is only the beginning of what they will do;
nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there,
so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”
So the Lord scattered them abroad from there
over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city”
(Genesis 11:6-8).

What makes more sense to me
is to hear the two stories together as parable—
revelation of the truth of us—
that on the brink of mighty accomplishment—
on the brink of achieving something momentous,
we regularly blow it—almost like we sabotage it.
We splinter into groups.
and it’s different languages, yes—
and different dialects within one language.
it’s different religions, yes—
and different theologies within particular religions—
different names for God within the same theology
within the same religion.
It’s different politics;
it’s petty jealousies and insecurities;
it’s anger and pride, selfishness and greed.
It’s sin.
And that’s not the work of God.

So, take two—the truth of the gap, the great chasm,
between what is possible and what is probable—
between what we would like to see, and what we’re likely to see—

the gap that can so easily lead to cynicism,
but that can also be taken as the great challenge
to overcome our tendencies—our leaning—
the great challenge that is the possibility
that the best of what we attain
only represents the beginning of what we will do;
and that nothing we propose to do will now be impossible for us.
Nothing we propose to do will be important …?

End hunger?
Ensure enough water for everyone?
Access to medicine? education?

Nothing we propose to do will be impossible.

Finally, take three,
a couple of weeks ago now,
a friend of Sydney’s at school
gave her a quote and said, “Your dad can use this in a sermon!”
So how could I not?
It’s an Eleanor Roosevelt quote:
“Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is mystery.
Today is gift; that’s why they call it the present.”

But it’s not just gift for us,
but also how we offer our present to others as gift.
How is today gift to you?
How do you offer today as gift to others?

It’s one way of thinking of the great commandments:
love God, love yourself, love others.

When we think about how we offer our present,
as followers of God in the way of Jesus—
how we offer our present to our world,
how do you think we’re perceived and received?
Does our world hear the babble of a people
they perceive as divisive, petty, judgmental and closed-minded?
Or do they hear and see words made flesh
binding together in transcendent hope and possibility
the lives we live and the faith in love we proclaim?

Because how we’re heard—
how we’re perceived
is what we say and then
how we do or don’t live into what we say—
what we say and then
how we do or don’t live toward what we say—
what we say and then
how we do or don’t live into and toward the One
to whom we belong.

The world is not stupid.

Set before you this day, two stories.
Both true.
Two truths that represent two possibilities
for us and for our world:

words made babble,
or words made flesh.

It’s up to us.

sabbath prayer

Our God,

We set aside a time again
to rest in You—
to gather all that wears us down—
to name what burdens us,
along with, as well, all that makes our hearts sing
and our hopes dance—

to bring all we are into Your presence
and to rest in You.

Prayer as sabbath.
Thanks be to You.

And we trust,
that in our presence,
You sing with our hearts
and dance with our hopes,
and that, somehow, our load is lightened,

and that when we go from prayer,
we do not go from Your presence,
but go with all we are and all You are
into the rest of our days.

Amen and amen.

prophetically pastoral

I remember, through the years,
a time or two,
the pride welling up inside
in response to being told I was prophetic—

as if it took more courage to be prophetic than pastoral.

Now I don’t think I ever took that
(someone naming me prophetic)
to mean anything more
than that I had said something
someone heard as prophetic,

but the longer I’ve pastored,
the more I’ve realized
that being prophetic is nothing more
than being pastoral to the others—
the overlooked and the left out,
those too often without a voice,
without power,
and without a pastor.

Could it be
the distinction between prophetic and pastoral ministry,
is nothing more than too small a pastoral vision?