Learning from Nick--December 6, 2021

Learning from Nick--December 6, 2021

Today's dare is a big one: let's help other people believe again (or maybe for the first time) that grace is real.  And let's do it, appropriately enough, by taking a page out of the original Santa's playbook.

Let's get right to it.  For this day, our way of embodying hope is to give a gift without anybody else knowing you've done it and without anybody knowing to give you credit.  It could be big or little, to an individual or a ministry you want to support, or some other agency doing important work, near or far. You could pay for the person coming up behind you in the drive-through, or at the lunch counter without letting them know you are doing it.  You could pay for the groceries of the next customer in line at the store.  You could put a gift in an envelope or box and mail it or drop it off on someone's front door just because you know they could use it. You could give an anonymous gift to your local homeless ministry, or buy a present for a child through your local Salvation Army or school district.  

The details are up to you--what you can afford and what you know would do some good.  But the strategy is the same for all of them: to give anonymously, so that the credit doesn't come back to you, and so that it's clear there are no strings attached.  In other words, today's way of embodying hope for people is to act with unconditional love. It is about giving by grace.  In a world that only operates in terms of deals, return on investments, and getting paid back (or at least getting credit), go and be wonderfully countercultural by practicing intentional generosity for folks who can't do a thing in return for you--because they won't even know it was you.

That's where Santa's playbook comes in--at least the original inspiration for the cartoon caricature we have settled for in our time.  Most folks have some awareness that behind the "jolly old elf" with the reindeer-pulled sleigh is the historical figure of Nicholas of Myra (in modern-day Turkey), who lived in the third and fourth century and was a bishop in the early church.  But what we often forget is how very different the strategies of our modern version of Santa are from our older brother in the faith, Nicholas.  Nicholas, at least the way the stories go, had a reputation for anonymous giving, not based on who was "worthy" or "unworthy," who had been "good" versus "bad," but simply on the basis of who was in need.  His giving was secret, unexpected, and intended not to be discovered.  And people didn't present a list of demands to him for him to fulfill like an online shopping vendor, but rather he gave as he saw the needs without anybody expecting him to do a thing.  And Nicholas famously gave that way--by grace--because he knew something about the character of God.  Nicholas knew--as Jesus both taught and embodied--that God is generous even to stinkers and loves unconditionally, with a particular concern for those who are stepped on in life, up against the wall, and overlooked.  So he gave to others in ways that reflected that same kind of unconditional generosity--helping people in dire straits, combatting human trafficking, and giving to people who couldn't pay him back.  He shared by reason of grace, not based on calculating who had earned it or who could return the favor for him one day.

Sometimes it startles me just how much our culture's concept of Santa Claus has distorted the pattern of Nicholas' life.  We teach kids that this all-knowing magical person sees and keeps track of who has been "naughty" and who has been "nice," rewarding the good and threatening to disappoint the bad.  And in our culture, at least, everybody knows who's doing all this leaving of presents.  When toys appear under the tree, there's no secrecy or hidden generosity in our culture's storytelling--as the song goes, "It must be Santa!"  How different from the anonymous, unconditional grace of an ordinary man who knew that part of his calling as a leader in the church was to embody the generosity of God and to practice grace for others, simply on the basis of their need rather than any question of "earning" it.

So what if we dared today to be different--like the actual Nicholas?  What if today our secret mission was to give something without being noticed, without regard for reciprocity or reward, because like our old brother in faith Nick, we have come to know that same kind of grace as God's calling card, too? It seems our culture cannot stand very much grace--we are so quick to label people as "undeserving" or tell ourselves we have pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps that it's no wonder we turned Nicholas into a rewarder of the "deserving" whom everybody knows about.  And it's no wonder, either that we have changed the simple, direct actions of one ordinary person giving to others into a mythology of magic with elves and reindeer and flying sleighs, as though we can't possibly imagine any actual person giving to others generously without having the power of magic to power the whole enterprise.  But that's just it:  it's not about magic.  It is simply about daring to embody the love we have come to know in God-with-us, Jesus, who gives generously and unconditionally, the same love we have seen in smaller scale (but still just as real) in the real-life actual actions of people like Nicholas, or the neighbor next door, or the face in the mirror.  It's not about tapping into something magical that only can happen in December.  It's about being a part of a divine conspiracy of grace in a world obsessed with making deals and disqualifying those deemed undeserving.  And that can happen on any day.

But, given that today is the day the church remembers the life and witness of our older brother Nick, who died on this day long long ago, today is an especially good day to try our hand at practicing reckless generosity.  Today, you and I can help someone else around to believe again, not in some ambiguous silliness called "Christmas magic," but in the very real, and very amazing, existence of grace.

Lord God, help us in this day to live trusting that your grace is real... and let it shape the direction of all of our actions and words, as well.

A Gift in the Making--December 3, 2021

A Gift in the Making--December 3, 2021

When we were kids, our first impulse for Christmas presents to give to our parents or siblings was to make them something. Before we were ingrained in our culture's ritual of thoughtlessly buying trinkets nobody needed or really wanted, and before we were catechized into believing that the way you show love to someone is measurable by the amount of money you have spent on them, we had an instinct to create... and then to give our creations away to be enjoyed and treasured.

I can see it brewing already inside my kids each December, as they are drawn to spend money (all given by their parents, of course) on cheap merchandise in their school Santa Shop (or whatever names they are using) that takes no thought at all, nor any sense of the giver's self, much less the recipient.  Like any parent or grandparent on earth will tell you, they would infinitely rather have something a child has drawn, made, written, or created with their own minds and hands than another plastic keychain, pocket flashlight, or scented eraser.  And yet, here we all are, training our kids to measure a gift by its retail price rather than how much of the giver's own self has gone into the giving, or how much understanding of the receiver has been lovingly conveyed in the choice of gift.

So what if right now, for this coming Christmas, you and I made the choice to be different--to resist a little bit, to rebel against the impulses of valuing gifts by their sticker prices, and what if we chose at least one gift we will give this year to be something we make?  What if we redeem the practice of giving gifts at Christmas from being just a crass exchange of consumable goods to goose the GDP and reclaim it as a way of giving something of our selves to one another as a reminder of the way God's own self was given to us in Jesus?  What if we didn't care about that little voice at the back of our mind that says, "Making presents?! That's kid stuff!" and instead told that voice that the reason children can give gifts they have made is that they are unafraid of putting themselves into their gifts, and they are unafraid of showing genuine love?  What if we made the plans now for creating something as a gift for someone else this year?

To be clear, the "what" doesn't exactly matter.  If you're a crafty or artisan-type of person, sure, go ahead and build something.  If you're a writer, write something.  If you have even the slightest streak of the artist in you, create a work of art as a gift.  If what you can give is time and honest listening, make a gift out of a promise to buy a friend lunch and have good conversation.  But let it be some way of genuinely offering some piece of yourself to another person, and showing the other person that you know and understand what they like, care about, or have interest in through what you make for them.

And as you think out your gift idea, pay attention to what happens inside your own soul.  Pay attention to how you can feel simultaneously joyful and vulnerable to share something of yourself, something that cannot be reduced to a price tag or measured against other brands or models.   Pay attention to how it feels to put the time in as you measure and cut, as you paint and draw, as you write or plan or prepare.  And then, in the midst of all of that, consider that this is really what the coming of Jesus is all about.  Jesus is what it looks like when God gives a gift of God's own self.

Let's be honest: sometimes we get so caught up in the tradition of gift-giving that we forget the connection between God's gift of Jesus and our gifts to one another.  We forget that the reason we give to one another is as an echo of God's gift to us in Christ--a gift that quite literally conveys something of the Giver.  So as we experience the joy, the love, the thought-process, the energy, and even the feeling of sharing a piece of our own soul while we make something for someone else this Christmas, maybe we will get a glimpse of what Christmas is like from God's perspective.  When you and I pay attention to how it feels to convey something of ourselves into the gifts we create to give to others, we'll find a deeper understanding for how God has come to us in the gift of Jesus, our Emmanuel--God-with-us.

So fight against the urge to reduce every gift to a monetary cash value, and let this be a year that your gifts to others became a place of spiritual learning for you as well, so that we might come to know the love of God who has come to us in the humanity of Jesus.

Discover again what children have not yet been made to forget: there is something utterly good about making a gift yourself, for the way it lets you share your own self with others.

Lord God, let us come to know the way you give yourself away as we give to others in this season.

Watching the East--December 2, 2021

Watching the East--December 2, 2021

It's not usually in my nature just to come out and overtly tell people what to do (unless it's my kids and there are coats and shoes left on the floor, because, come on).  But in this case, I feel a direct personal instruction is warranted: tomorrow morning, go and watch the skies at sunrise.

Whatever else needs to happen in order to make that possible, do it.  Set an alarm if you have to (sunrise isn't terribly early at this time of year, but maybe you'll need to get up extra early to take care of morning chores ahead of the dawn).  Grab your coat and hat if you are able to go outside and watch.  Clean the windows if you'll be watching from inside.  Clear your schedule and clear your mind for the minutes it will take to watch for the lightening in the east.  Whatever it takes, just do it.

Watch the sunrise.

And let the act of watching help stretch your spiritual muscles to embody hope.

Why?  What will happen?  I mean, sure, I know you already know how the "plot" of a sunrise works.  Spoiler alert:  dark become light.  Night becomes day.  Of course, you already know factually what will happen.  But there is something important about what happens to us in the act of watching it unfold, even if you know what the ending will be.  There is beauty to be taken in.  There are colors that emerge that don't fit any of the categories of the crayon box.  There is the sound that rises up, too, as the chirping of birds grows like a chorus along with the light, or as the morning routines of the neighbors' houses are audible in the background.  Watch the world--your world, your local immediate place on earth--come to life, as the sun comes up over the horizon.

Now, step back from that for a moment, and let's think about the logic of watching a sunrise when you already know "what's going to happen."  It's not about mere information.  It's not about needing to "find out how it ends," or about getting an advance clue on how the rest of the day will go.  You already know, right from the title of the time of day--"sunrise"--what is going to happen. You know the sun is going to illuminate everything your eyes can see, even if it's a cloudy day. You aren't there staring up at the sky for new facts, but to participate in the beauty as it unfolds.  Just having someone tell you, "It was dark, and now it's not," isn't the same as living it, experiencing it, witnessing it--and somehow participating in the start of a new day.  There's a way in which you feel connected with all the rest of creation when you watch the sun come up, like you and the neighbor and the birds and the deer scrambling for cover in the tree line and the whole heavenly host are all sharing something together.  The way you participate in coming more fully to life as the light breaks over the tops of houses and trees and hills--that's more than just the end product of "it was daytime at the end."  It matters to be a part of it, even though you know how it will turn out in advance while it is still dark.

That's every day of our lives as Good-News-people, too.  That's what it is to live in gospel hope.  We are people who know how the story ends--a new day, and a new creation!  But we don't stay indoors and miss out just because we know how the story goes.  We are invited with every day to participate in the transformation from gloom to glory, from night to dawn, and to see ourselves connected to the whole creation that is longing for that newness along with us.  Every day is a chance to watch, wait, and notice as signs of God's in-breaking Reign appear before our eyes.  It's like every day of our lives as Christians is the chance to watch the sunrise... and yet, all too often, we either ignore it or refuse to live like the sky is changing colors before our eyes.  What a shame it is to miss a sunrise's brilliant palette of colors because our vision is too focused on a TV screen, or scrolling on our phones, or buried in some other empty distraction.  And yet, what a gift it is when you happen to catch the sky at just the right moment to see the clouds turning bright red, orange, yellow, and purple as they reflect the sun's light and welcome the day.

So maybe we can see every day in the same terms, too.  We know that at the last, God is victorious over all the powers of rottenness and evil.  We know that new creation is in store for all heaven and earth.  We know that Jesus' coming in glory is not up for debate, eligible for repeal, or susceptible to an expiration.  And we know that in the promised fullness of God's Reign, weapons are broken apart to become farming tools, old animosities are reconciled, debts are cancelled, wrongs are set right, and justice is done.  But Christians aren't supposed to just keep that trapped in our head like facts to be memorized, any more than we just learn the factual outcome of a sunrise ("The day begins. The end."). We aren't meant to keep our hope bottled up and get swept along with this violent, greedy, self-centered world, while we wait to be rescued up to heaven after we die.  We are meant to share in the beauty of the world's transformation right now. Just like there is something so much more powerful about witnessing the sunrise and sharing the moment with all the creatures, clouds, and community around you as the day dawns, we are meant to share right now in the ways God is bringing forth new creation.  We are meant to be like those clouds at the edge of the horizon that first catch the rays of the sun before its light breaks over the horizon, as living signposts of what is to come.  Your kindness, your generosity, your goodness, your willingness to seek what is just rather than what is merely in your self-interest, your striving to love neighbor, and your refusal to be dominated by fear or hatred--these will be the ways we show the world what is on the way.  We will be participants in the glorious color of the new day God is bringing about, and when people see that difference in us, it just might help call their attention to look up from their screens and doom-scrolling so they can be pulled into its beauty, too.

All that can unfold, at least in small ways, when we take the time to watch the sunrise and see it through the eyes of faith.

Lord God, open our eyes to the signs of your new day dawning, and let us be used to pull others into your glorious new creation, too.

Somebody You Know--December 1, 2021

Somebody You Know--December 1, 2021

Somebody you know is waiting.  Waiting to be remembered.  Waiting to get some sign of friendliness, some assurance of their worth, some message from another soul that says, "You are not forgotten."

Someone you know, even if you do not know them very well or go back a long way, is waiting for some acknowledgement of all the heartache they are nursing, all the effort they are giving to the world, all the burdens they have been carrying for too long.  

That somebody--or maybe there are several (it seems likely; after all, life is hard)--isn't looking to have you swoop in to fix all their problems.  But they are waiting, longing even, for you to reach out and say, "I see you."  Someone is waiting for you to check in with them.

Today, the dare for each of us is to do just that--to check in on someone.  Nothing more, necessarily--this isn't about you or me casting ourselves as the hero or the savior out of pity.  But also, nothing less--that is, it will take us actually reaching out and making contact.  Good intentions don't even get us outside our own heads.  Well-meaning but forgotten plans don't make a difference.  Actually picking up the phone, or better yet, talking to someone face to face, or even sending a text message if nothing else--actually making contact with someone who might just need to hear that you were thinking of them and wanted to check in.  That goes a very long way indeed.  

And, in God's cleverness, it might also give us a deeper understanding of what we are hoping for in this season of Advent.  We are longing, with our ancestors in the faith going back for generations, to know that God sees us... that God remembers us... that God has not left us to fend for ourselves.  Sometimes what we need is simply the assurance that God loves us enough to stay connected with us... because sometimes we feel awfully forgotten or alone.

This is one of those things I think we sometimes miss each year as we rush toward Christmas, ticking each day off our calendars once we hit the start of December.  We don't even have to wait four full weeks to get to Christmas Day now, and yet our ancestors in the faith waited their whole lives--and longer--to see some whisper of a hint that God was still moving in the world.  We sing, "O come, O Come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here..." but maybe it doesn't sink in that those were centuries (centuries!) of people's longing and waiting to hear from God that they were not alone.  They were willing to be patient with God, but sometimes, if they were really honest, it felt like God was ignoring them, or that God's messages weren't getting through.  They needed someone--some prophet or poet or leader--to tell them, "God sees us.  God loves us.  God knows what we are going through and shares it with us."

When we remember that part of our faith story, maybe we'll be able to recognize how often any of us may find ourselves in that place. We need to know someone else sees.  We need to know someone else cares.  We need to know we haven't been forgotten or pushed off to the side or left out.  We need someone to check in on us. Maybe nothing more--no agenda, no favors to be asked or fixes to be applied.  Just the presence of someone else saying, "I was thinking of you and wanted to hear how things are going for you."

And from there, well, maybe it's just conversation.  Sometimes someone has been left feeling invisible or forgettable for so long they can hardly believe it when you take the time to say, "I want to know what's going on in your life!"  Sometimes they are so used to putting up their own defenses they don't know how to respond to genuine care, and you have to be patient with them.  Sometimes the other person needs permission by your willingness to check in on them to unload the things that have been weighing on them, and then to let them go like chaff in the breeze.  Like I say, it's not about you or me getting to swoop in to save the day or "fix" someone where we think they are broken--it's about sharing what they are going through, as a reminder that they are not forgotten by God.  The apostle puts it like this:  "weep with those who weep, and rejoice with those who rejoice."  To do that, we have to be checking in with one another to know which is called for.

Just imagine what ripple effects you may have on someone else's life--what a chain-reaction you may trigger, just by the willingness to send a message, leave a voicemail, or start a conversation.  The world teaches us to keep our troubles close to the vest, like we are all playing a bad hand of cards and have to keep our best poker faces.  But to break through those defenses and let someone know you care about them, without being condescending or patronizing, but just to remind them they are important to you--that changes things.  It reminds the other person--and you as well!--that none of us is in this life alone.

I can't help but think of those words from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer's poem, "Belonging," on a day like today, where she writes:

"And if it's true we are alone,
we are alone together,
the way blades of grass
are alone, but exist as a field.
...When we feel alone,
we belong to the grand
communion
of those who sometimes feel alone.
we are the dust, the dust that
hopes,
a rising of dust, a thrill of dust,
the dust that dances in the light
with all other dust, the dust
that makes the world."

Someone you know feels like that lonely blade of grass, that isolated speck of dust, and could really use your presence to connect with them while they "mourn in lonely exile here."  You could be the one who shows up on the edge of their awareness, like a prophet to forlorn Israelites in Babylon, to say, "You are not alone.  I am with you, and because I am with you, you must also be in the presence and under the care of the God who led me to reach out to you, too."  

You could be the one who makes all the difference in the world to someone today.  Take the chance.  Embody hope for them.

Lord God, help us to see and to call to mind the people on the periphery of our awareness who might need to know they are beloved today.  Give us the courage and the time to reach out.

Gathering Seeds--November 30, 2021

Gathering Seeds--November 30, 2021

We are about as far away on the calendar as you can get from planting season, I know. And I'll wager that the harvests from your own garden this year are all far in the rear-view mirror.  But I'm going to ask you to try something today that is intentionally out-of-step with the usual rhythm of planting and harvesting: start planning your garden for the year ahead.  Even go ahead and start gathering seeds. Do it as a spiritual exercise--as a way of learning what it feels like to live in hope of a coming future.

Most of us who aren't professional farmers have lost (or never had) the skill of living our present-tense lives in light of an unseen future, or of how that calls for both action and patience.  But for people whose livelihoods are built around sowing now what will be reaped in time to come, life is constantly pointed in the direction of a day that has not yet dawned.  Followers of Jesus could stand to learn that--or to rediscover it.

In a way, that's what this season of Advent does for us: it reminds us that our lives are always oriented (a word which originally meant "pointed toward the direction of the sunrise," appropriately enough) toward God's new day, and God's new creation.  We stake our lives on the promise that God is making all things new, and that in the mean-time, we are called to spend our resources (time, money, energy, and love) in light of what will last into that new creation.  That sounds to me rather a lot like gathering up seeds and sketching out a plan for a garden bed, even while the winter is just beginning.  It is an act of hope to envision tomatoes, cucumbers, and sunflowers precisely at the time when the ground is freezing.  It is an act of faithful defiance of death to imagine there will be more to be said after January winds and snows do their worst.

So, go ahead: get out the graph paper. Sketch out a drawing.  Check the shed or the discount displays at your home-and-garden store for seeds.  Read up on how far apart to space your seeds and do the calculations for how many you'll need.  Even start your list of friends you'll bring zucchini to come summertime.  Do something, in other words, that requires hope and patience at the same time--remembering, perhaps, that in languages like Spanish, the same verb means both "to hope" and "to wait."  

And then notice what happens to you as you start to picture that future.  Even in winter, you'll start looking at the ground of your future garden differently.  You'll be careful what you dump there, or what messes you leave on that ground.  You'll watch where you step.  You'll begin to picture what it will be like on some gloriously warm June day to watch sprouts, or what it will smell like to have the scent of fresh tomato leaves impressed on your hands.  You'll treat the ground itself like it is special, even if there's nothing in the soil there yet.  But you'll know that it is special, even now, even at this moment, in light of what will happen in that patch of earth.  

And as you do, you'll also find your patience being stretched and increasing your flexibility, much like stretching the legs in your muscles enables you to run without getting a charley-horse.  The more we train our spirits to do things now even if we can't see or feel the "pay-off," the more we teach ourselves that there are things worth doing apart from instant gratification, the more we'll be able to see our day-by-day choices as part of God's Reign.  I'm reminded of those lines of Wendell Berry:

"Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. 

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years."

That's what it looks like to live now in light of a promised future--even if that future is far down the road.  And when we do that--even if it starts in small actions like the gathering of seeds for a springtime garden, it will change us.  We'll start seeing all of life differently-- every interaction, every day, every choice, as a chance to act in light of a promised future.  We'll see relationships with other people in light of knowing we'll be neighbors in the new creation--and so we'd better find ways to be neighborly to them right now.  We'll see acts of generosity toward strangers--the gift tags at the Salvation Army or for local school kids who are in need, or the donation to the homeless ministry in your community--as seeds planted for the sake of their future, even if you never get to see (or receive credit) for the goodness you place into their lives.

In a culture that focuses on immediate pay-offs, instant gratification, and fast profits, you and I can be people who choose to be deliberately out-of-step.  We can be ahead of the curve--gathering seeds for a garden we cannot yet see, whose produce we will gather in time as well.  And when we take those small, concrete steps, action like seeds themselves, we let God shape our spirits to embody hope that the world needs.

Let it start small.  Let it start today.

Lord God, enable us to act now in light of a future we cannot yet see, but which we trust you will bring to fruition.  Shape us by your promises.

 

Practice Transformation--November 29, 2021

Practice Transformation--November 29, 2021

I don't believe in magic anymore, but I do believe in miracles.  In fact, I believe they are more common than we are used to thinking.

I don't believe in spells or incantations or lucky charms, but I do see wonders all around me every day--and I believe we are invited to participate in them.

And I want to begin this Advent season with such an invitation--to be a part of a wonder, a piece of something so amazing, despite its commonness, that it certainly feels close to "magic."  I want to extend to you the invitation to practice a bit of transformation.

This season, we want to invite you to a faith that goes beyond merely thinking religious thoughts or feeling spiritual feeling.  We want to dare something that looks like embodying the Good News.  Carrying it in our bones.  Letting it direct our words, our actions, our hands, and our feet.  Being the presence of the Gospel for people around us, and enacting it with our own bodies.  The world around us, after all, has had more than enough of empty talk, and the loud, angry voices bombarding us from screens and social media all around don't make us more like Jesus, but rather they have a way of bringing out the worst in us.  So in this year ahead, know that you are invited to be a part of practicing what we believe is true--about the way of Jesus, about the Reign of God, about the depth of grace and the relentlessness of love.  In other words, an embodied gospel.

And I want to invite you to let it start with something surprisingly close to magic, but something very, very real.

I want to ask you today to consider the spirituality of recycling something--something you would otherwise probably just call "trash."  Yep--an empty can that once held green beans or creamed corn. A plastic bottle.  A glass jar.  A cardboard box from some Christmas present you have already had shipped to your home.  Find it.  Pick it up.  Set it where it can be recycled--whether picked up by a truck as some communities have, or taken to a recycling center as some do, or choosing to re-purpose it yourself by cleaning it and using it again.  But actually do it.  Physically take the old thing and make the choice to do something with it rather than letting it go to the landfill or the burn pile.  Let it become more than a good intention--let it become an action, even if a small one.

Now, please don't get me wrong.  I don't believe for a second that I'll save the world by taking one empty water bottle and putting it in a blue bin for recycling rather than in a trash bag or a dumpster.  And I promise you I will not lead you into such illusions, either.  I don't want us to get sentimental about tiny gestures.  But I do want to get spiritual about small actions... which become habits... which in turn become our way of life and our character.  

And there is indeed something spiritual--something deeply Jesus-like, I would say--about the seemingly insignificant choice to reuse or recycle something.  That's what I want to explore.  

Here's what I mean. The Scriptures, both what we call the Old and New Testament alike, speak of God making a "new heavens and a new earth"--a whole new creation.  You can find it scattered throughout the oracles of prophets like Micah and Isaiah, throughout Paul's letters, in the words of Jesus, and as the closing visions of the book of Revelation.  But that "new creation" isn't about throwing away this world or the beings who dwell in it--it is about transformation.  It is about taking this world, with all its scars, all the ways we have mistreated one another, all the wounds we have inflicted on one another and on the rest of the masterpiece itself, and making something new out of it... but with the same raw materials.  It is the risen Jesus stepping into the room with a new body but keeping the scars.  It is about crafting a New City "coming down out of heaven" (Rev. 21) but then filling it with us--you and me and all the rest of us humans from the "old" creation, as fragile and vulnerable as we are. It is about taking swords and beating them into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks.  In other words, recycling.  Or, maybe because that word seems so mundane--it is about how God practices transformation on the whole cosmos.

That, we Christians believe, is the destination--the purpose, the goal, you could say--of all creation: to be made new in God's goodness.  Not lost or burned up or destroyed, but re-made.  Renewed.  Sure, re-cycled.  To recycle something is to say, "This physical thing, however it has been spent, marred, emptied, or broken, is still good, still of worth, still of value, and still worthy of care."  And maybe, in our choice to take things the world would say "aren't worth the effort" of recycling, we can practice a bit of defiance, a bit of holy resistance, against the ruthless logic of "what's good for business" or "what is profitable."  Maybe when I take the time, and energy, and effort to cart a tub full of empty bottles to the recycling center, I am saying, in effect, "I don't care whether it makes anybody any more money, but I believe the world is beloved of God, and this small action is a way of honoring what God has made and called good."  Maybe when I take the objects that were ready to be thrown out and give them a new use, or make them into something new, it is a way of training my soul to see what God intends for all creation.  Maybe when I take the jar out of the trash but instead take the time to rinse it and set it aside, I get the tiniest glimpse of God's choice not to give up on creation--or on us--but to love us enough to enter into the mess we have made and redeem, reclaim, and renew us.

Maybe I don't really understand what the Christmas story is about until I can see in it how God took an empty food trough and re-used it to become the crib of the Messiah. Maybe my small act of re-purposing, re-using, or recycling something will teach me about how God promises new creation through that same child from the manger.

And if that happens when I save the empty tuna can to be melted down and made into something new, or restore a pair of worn-out shoes that were ready for the dumpster, then I'm not merely recycling--I'm practicing transformation.  That is a small daily habit, sure.  But it is also a holy wonder I am invited to join in.  And it is a way of moving hope from being just a bit of head knowledge to something that moves in my hands.

We pray:  Lord God, train our hearts for hope of new creation by training our hands to reclaim what the world calls trash for new purposes.

The Taste of Cherries--November 22, 2021

The Taste of Cherries--November 22, 2021

"Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, 'Are you the King of the Jews?' Jesus answered, 'Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?' Pilate replied, 'I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?' Jesus answered, 'My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.' [John 18:33-36]

For a brief window of time, my kids absolutely refused to try real cherries, because they had only ever had artificial-cherry-flavored medicine, which they understandably hated.

Just sit with that for a moment.  They refused the genuine thing--actual, dark red, fresh, still-on-the-stem cherries (we're not talking those unnaturally bright ones from the jar here)--because all they had ever known was a terrible counterfeit that came with the bitter taste of "cherry" cough syrup.  For the longest time, all my wife and I could do was to assure them that real cherries tasted different, and so, so much better than the artificial flavor of medicine, and to keep inviting them to try some.

Blessedly, at some point, my son and daughter were brave and curious enough to try an actual fresh cherry, and they have been gobbling them up each summer when they are in season ever since.  But the disgust that came from only having had a poor substitution for the real thing has stuck with me for a long time ever since... because we keep doing the same to the reality Jesus calls the "kingdom of God."

All of human history has been lived in that window of time before tasting the real thing... and all we've known are pretenders and frauds.  Of course, if all you've had is the artificial, you'll never recognize the genuine article; in fact, you'll likely think the real is the fraud because it doesn't look like what you expect, or taste like what you were used to.  That's how we end up crowning Caesar and crucifying the Christ.  

Maybe it's not surprising that Pontius Pilate, the imperially-authorized Roman governor, should be so confused about who Jesus is and the Reign of God he embodies.  After all, Rome is one in a long line of empires past and present that conquer, dominate, kill, and steal to prop themselves up. You would expect someone like Pilate to be utterly confused about Jesus, who is basically a homeless street preacher with a penchant for hanging out with nobodies.  But even Jesus' innermost circle of followers seem dangerously wrong about how the genuine Reign of God operates.  After all, as Jesus tells Pilate, "If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over..." and of course, that is exactly what had happened just a matter of hours before he said it.  There they had been in the garden earlier that evening, and when the police and their lynch mob arrived to arrest Jesus, when Simon Peter decided to take "law and order" into his own hands and started swinging his sword at them, assuming that Jesus endorsed his plan.  Jesus had to tell even his closest followers, including Peter himself, that they weren't to deputize themselves and take up weapons in some misguided attempt to preserve the Kingdom or protect the King.  They had become so used to violent (counterfeit) regimes that they assumed God's Reign worked the same way. No wonder the world around so often thinks God is just an even bigger version of Caesar or Pharaoh: religious folks have been claiming to have God's endorsement to kill in the name of preserving order since Simon Peter's self-appointed vigilantism in the garden.  We have fallen for frauds so badly we don't recognize the genuine Reign of God standing in front of us because the One who brings it looks like an unarmed loser.

As Robert Farrar Capon put it so powerfully, "We crucified Jesus not because he was God but because he blaspheme: he claimed to be God and then failed to come up to our standards for assessing the claim. It's not that we weren't looking for the Messiah; it's that he wasn't what we were looking for.  Our kind of Messiah would come down from the cross.... He wouldn't do a stupid thing like rising from the dead. He would do a smart thing like never dying."  And that's just it: we are so used to counterfeits we assume that if Jesus is a real "king" he'll be like what we're used to: locked and loaded to destroy evildoers and crush his enemies in the name of Law and Order, rather than laying down his life in suffering love with hands that are empty, save for the nails.  It's like we've only ever had "cherry-flavored" medicine and assume that the actual fruit is a fake because it doesn't taste the same.

The Good News on a day like today, then, is that no matter how wrong we get it, Jesus insists on being the real deal, whether we like or not, and whether we recognize him or not.  Jesus insists on being a different kind of king, regardless of whether Pontius Pilate or Simon Peter is the one who wants him to fit their mold.  And he keeps pulling us into his upside-down kingdom--only to have us discover that we're the ones who have been turned the wrong way all along.  The Reign of Self-Giving Love is the right-side-up way, and it always has been, just as it always has been God's way.  We're the ones who have had it wrong--not Jesus.  We're the ones who have never tasted an actual fresh cherry off the stem.  Jesus is the real deal.

Today, rather than trying to make Jesus fit our expectations (and always having it leave a bitter taste in our mouth), what if we let Jesus show us what God's Reign is like on his own terms--and then let that change the way we see everything else... and how we live in a world full of phony kings and kingdoms?  What if we were curious and brave enough to taste the real thing Jesus offers us?

Lord Jesus, show us again your strange (to us) way of reigning in the world... and help us to step into that Reign with your kind of love.