ALL THINGS MADE NEW

 

HAPPY....HAPPY....HAPPY 2021!

There is just something inspiring about a new, blank calendar; a crisp, clean journal; an untouched snow-covered field; a newly dragged and lined baseball diamond; a brand new pair of sneakers.......

As a kid, I was always jacked to receive a new pair of sneakers.  There was the intoxicating new shoes smell and removing the paper covering the sneakers and jammed into the toes of the shoe.  When you put on the sneakers for the first time and checked the aesthetic factor of how they looked with your blue jeans, the next phase was to break in the new sneakers by walking around in 'em for a bit.  Because of the newness factor, one believed one could run faster, jump higher, stop stronger. 

I still want to know what deviant came up with the concept of stomping their dirty shoe onto your sparkly, new shoe and triumphantly exclaiming something along the lines of "stamped!" or "stomped!" What exactly was the meaning of that mean-ness?  Seriously.....to willingly target a new pair of shoes and mark the shoe with a dirty, black smudge??!!!?  I'm not sure, yet, I believe said shoe-stompers spend eternity in level 4 of Dante's Inferno.....my Latin may be a bit off, yet, I think I read that and it is accurate.

The journey of a new year is before us. For these first several days, I trust we will feel energized and confident that we can and will achieve new heights, reach our goals and become and then be boldly and beautifully our whole selves!

Of course, we know at some point we are going to feel stomped on, stamped as a failure, have the marks of someone's meanness.  

Keep on going....there is still more pathways and possibilities.

When making the error that lost the game, missing  the trophy buck, flunking the test, being snubbed and ignored by Mr. or Miss Popular....in each of those stomps and more my mother's refrain was "Life goes on...."  Indeed it does.....

Journey onward and forward......

THE END????

 

 Recently, I've been asked by a variety of folks if these are the end times. I'm not real big on an end times faith focus and a belief of fret and fear. My experience with it has been....well, way too much heavy judgement as folks do their own sort  and export type of thing --- to quote Anne Lamott, "You can safely assume you've created God in your image when it turns out that God hates the same people you do."   This over-focus on the looming apocalypse creates a lot of immobilized, clenched disciples and that's not good for any movement .

A true story to further highlight my point. Let's file this experience in the "Major Misguided Ministry Ideas" folder. I was in seventh grade, my friend invited me to her Baptist church's Vacation Bible School (VBS).  The Jr. High class for that VBS was not familiar to me and my more relaxed church programs.  These budding adolescents were intense and I was intimidated. Case in point, when the daily snack was shared the teacher would select a kid to offer grace. The majority of the class offered prayers that went something like, "O, Sovereign of the Universe, you made the cow lower than man and to be in service to man. In your wisdom you also provided a harvest of wheat and sugar cane.  We are grateful for the cow's milk that strengthens us and for the wheat made into flour and mixed with sugar to provide a glimpse of life's sweetness and joy. For these gifts, we offer our thanks."  The one day I was asked to offer grace, I said, "Thank you for the cookies and milk."  You get the point.

Throughout the week the focus was on the end times and stories of the rapture. This was not often studied in my Methodist upbringing and I was uncomfortable and also quite freaked out. The rapture story that stuck in my mind was where two are out working in the field and one is taken and one is left behind. Good for the one gone to heaven, bad for the one left behind to endure the tribulations. 

Toward the close of the week these studies culminated in the teacher taking the class to the sanctuary, up to the altar and announcing that for the sake of our souls each one of us was now going to kneel and accept Jesus and, in a sense, get our afterlife passport stamped and sealed.  I may not have been able to pray for five minutes, using four syllable words and quoting scripture, yet, I knew this didn't sound right.  Wasn't this a personal decision made by an individual when one is ready to make that choice?  

Like every other kid in the class, I knelt, yet, that was all I did.  I was completely unsettled, scared and troubled.  That afternoon when I got home, I planned on talking with Mom. Now if there was anyone whom I knew would make it to heaven it was my mother  Regarding that story of the two women in the field, I was assured that Mom would be chosen and have her ticket punched for glory.  

I walked in the kitchen, Mom's domain, and she wasn't there.  I went downstairs to the laundry room, maybe she was doing the wash...not there either.  I ran upstairs, maybe she was cleaning the bedrooms, nope, not there. I asked my brother if he knew where was Mom and he answered that he hadn't seen her and didn't know where she was. I checked the garage, the back porch, the side yard....not in any of those places.  I thought it had happened...the rapture....Mom was taken and I and my brothers and sister and father were left behind, we didn't make the cut, bring on the fire.  I was terrified.

Fear-laden footsteps outside and a glance up to the field and I saw my Mom!  She was out in the garden and had stopped by to chat with the neighbor.  As she walked through the field to our house  I ran up to meet her. I was both thrilled and relieved. We were all still in the game!  

Surprised by my greeting and how close I stayed to her for the rest of the day (I figured if she went up in the rapture maybe I could grab on and get swept up as well....hey, in my mind it became every kid for one's self......) she asked me if everything was OK and I said that I just didn't like VBS and that I would be glad when it ended. "Why is that?" she asked. I replied that I didn't like a church that tried to make everyone afraid and that didn't sound right to me. 

Ours is not to scare, dare, bully or berate others into the faith. Ours is to love, journey and connect and extend grace and mercy.  That is how I understand my job and calling. I trust God to do the rest and to sort it all out and all in.  

So, are these the end times?  Who knows.  Jesus said that of that day and hour we do not know. He also said not to worry and to be about the work of God which is "to do what is just, to love tenderly and to walk humbly." Let our focus be there.

Sermon for the last Sunday of a long year

 LUKE 2. 22-40

DID YOU NOTICE?

This sermon is on the last Sunday of the year 2020; a year when the refrain of many is to just get it over (the year, not the sermon…or so I think that’s the case) a collective look toward a new year and putting this all behind us. 

When asked what one word best describes 2020 a frequent reply is LOSS or LOST.  

•  ·      Loss of life --- over 377,000 Americans, nearly 2 million worldwide
• ·        Loss of livelihood ---- record numbers of unemployment, businesses closing, foreclosures looming
• ·      Loss of normalcy --- we don’t go to stores, resteraunts, bars, movies, gyms, in-person worship, school
• ·      Loss of community
• ·      Loss of trust in one another and our institutions

 …..sigh…with so much loss how do we get found? How to find ourselves? How do we restore our connection to one another?

 What does this story in the Gospel of Luke have to do with helping to get us found?

 In these verses, it is clear that Luke, the gospel writer, wants to emphasize that Jesus was a faithful, obedient Jew.  His parents are in the temple to perform the purification ritual and to offer a sacrifice for the birth of their first born. As noted in the Law found in the Old Testament book, Leviticus, chapter 12 the required sacrifice was a lamb yet the law had a “poverty clause” that stated for those who could not afford a lamb, the sacrifice of two turtledoves was sufficient and was what Mary and Joseph offered. As writer, Fred Craddock puts it, “the parents were such who managed to get by on the religious equivalent of food stamps;” somehow that fact is even more poignant in this time of blocks-long lines for food bank pick-ups and the widening chasm between wealthy and poor.

 Luke emphasizes that this child will bring a broad, inclusive message for the Gentiles and the entire world….pssssst, that’s where you and I come in so we ought to be paying attention to what is taught and lived and try and follow actively.

 A pattern in Luke’s gospel is to include both men and women in his stories and illustrations. In the well-known parables of the lost sheep and prodigal there is the woman with the lost coin; the parable of the Good Samaritan followed by the story of Mary and Martha; the persistent widow who persistently bangs on the judge's door and the humble publican and here the introduction of Simeon and Anna, both older, faithful and long waiting and soon to have their faith confirmed by the appearance of the infant Jesus, the one for whom they’d been looking.  

 After a season of waiting, we are provided portraits of two people who had waited decades for the promise to be fulfilled. Do we need more of a contrast?  The young couple, their infant son and ancient Simeon and Anna; wrinkled hands and hunched shoulders, feeble legs and thinning hair gathering up the baby and prophesying the one Mary delivered will, in many ways, deliver.  

 In many ways the year 2020 has been a long slog of worry and waiting of tiredness and tension.  Our very nature as social beings has been compromised and isolation is the new reality. We are fearful and in our fear we become angry.

What answers do Simeon and Anna offer to we who live in a state of lost-ness?

I hope to seek, to build, to have the “prayerful expectancy” of Simeon.

I want and I need the constancy and commitment of Anna who kept showing up and keeping watch. 

  During these times there are a lot of movies being watch and re-watched; we are breaking out the films that inspire or comfort us with a laugh or a lesson or both.  The other day the film SIMON BIRCH checked both those boxes for me. After the death of his mother the character Joe says, “I’ve got faith. I just want proof to back it up.”  

I seek to develop and to strengthen the kind of faith that can embrace the mystery; a faith that is able to live in times of such uncertainty and unsettlement. I want to live a faith that believes in what I’ve not yet seen nor experienced because of what I already have seen and experienced in a God of love and Presence, of grace and joy, of inclusion and justice, of resurrection.

As we wind down the year 2020 and ready for a new year, a new beginning, I plan on so doing and suggest that we each engage in the practice of noticing.  To slow down and like those early reader books of “Dick and Jane” to look and to listen.  To pay attention and notice what is going on within one’s self, what is happening within the lives of those closest to us, within our community, our nation, our world.  

Notice. Notice and sit with and reflect on what you see, hear, feel. 

 As the old song by “Seals and Crofts” refrains “We may never pass this way again…” and as 2020 will soon fade into history many are probably echoing an Amen….whatever is ahead of us may we notice, may we experience, may we trust, may we be faithful.