Darkrooms and Undeveloped Film

Psalm 32

What a blessing it is to be among those you have forgiven, LORD,
those whose record of wrongdoing you have wiped clean.

People who are honest about their lives
     have everything going for them;
they never have to cover their tracks
or worry that they’ll be in your bad books.

I used to keep my sins to myself, LORD,
but they poisoned me from within;
wasting my body,
tormenting my mind.

Day and night I felt your eyes following me;
I lived in fear that you’d see right through me.
The joy of living evaporated
in the burning heat of my guilt.

Then I decided to come clean with you, LORD,
to own up to all I’d done and stop living a lie.
I made a full confession to you, LORD,
and you gave me a full pardon, forgiving all my sin.

Now, like all your faithful people, LORD,
I am always ready to open myself to you in prayer.
When trouble breaks its banks,
your faithful ones are on safe ground.

You are like a bomb shelter for us, LORD;
you protect us from danger.
Thanks to you, LORD, we can still laugh;
we can dance around singing songs of freedom.
You have given us clear directions;
you have pointed out the path we should follow.
You have kept a watchful eye on us
and made sure we understood.

You have encouraged us to follow willingly,
to understand and embrace your ways;
not to buck and snort like wild horses,
fighting the reins until our strength is broken.

Those who refuse the straight and narrow
will suffer for it, over and over;
but those who put their trust in you, LORD,
will find love and loyalty wherever they go.

You are celebrated by all right-minded people, LORD;
with open hearts we shout for joy;
with clear minds we sing your praises

Darkrooms and Undeveloped Film

You turn our hearts to you, Lord

By reminding us of your love

Your grace purifies our heart

Do your good work again today

As we are here

Now

Today

Returning to you.

Amen

From ages 3-11 I lived in a large old white house on Bancroft Street in Toledo, Ohio.

We bought the house from a family that was…well…a little eccentric, at least by Midwest Ohio standards.

For instance, the house had a huge above ground pool.  That might not seem so strange, except you have to remember that we really only got to use that pool for two and a half months of the year, so it was a little bit of a waste.

That is, of course, until you consider that the owners had special heaters put in that would allow you to swim in the dead of winter when a large cover was put on it and large fans would bubble the cover up so that you essentially had a pool-sized hot tub.

I can only recall using it that way once.  I can only imagine my father looked at the electricity it took to heat that pool in the dead of winter and then run those huge fans to create that dome of heat and decided, “That’s enough of that…”

But one of my favorite features of the house was that it had a darkroom in it.

It was located in the spare bedroom, a closet totally blacked out with shelves and strings with clips on them.  They had blacked out the window, and had even hung a red bulb in it.

My family had no use for a darkroom, of course.  With three kids all under 6 my parents were more interested in having storage space than hobby space.  It quickly was painted white and became a closet.

But that little room intrigued my brothers and me.  I imagined the previous owner carefully developing film in a room that was so pitch black that no light would be allowed and you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.  Such dark places were fascinating to me.  I loved hide-and-seek, and it would be an ideal hiding spot.  I loved scary rides at the carnival and haunted houses.  It was like our own little haunted room, this darkroom.

Darkrooms are still attractive to me.  I wonder if they are to you, too.

Darkrooms where lovers kiss passionately.  Darkrooms where movies are watched clearly. Darkrooms where we can shove those things in our lives we’d rather not look at, our clutter.

Darkrooms where we can shove secrets that we’d rather others not look at.

Darkrooms of the soul where we can store those things we’re not proud of that we’ve done, and those things we’ve left undone…

Well, maybe that sounds a little dramatic.  I mean, with all the Harry Potter hype still lingering in the world, anytime we connect the word “dark” with anything, I always imagine “Dark Lord” and then images of Voldemort and Darth Vader come to mind.

And yet, I think that’s what we imagine goes on with those secrets of our lives, those things we do that we aren’t proud of, or those things we think we should do but don’t.

I think we imagine that these secrets, this sin, resides in this little room inside of us, and our job, then, is to somehow keep them there so that they don’t get exposed to the light.

And if you think about it, we’ve been reading the Psalms and the Prophets for the past three weeks, and both the Psalms and the Prophets function within Scripture to either call people to repentance…the function of the Prophets…or provide a word of thanksgiving or lament over repentance done and joy and security had or repentance left undone and remorse had.  That latter part is, of course, the function of the Psalms, at least in part.

And so today we hone in on the Psalm for the day, this Psalm of a person who has been released from the pressure of holding something in the spiritual darkroom.

And the beauty of the Psalms (if you don’t read or pray on them, I hope you can tell that I think you should!), is that they speak the words of the heart so poignantly and truthfully…especially in those times where we might feel at a loss for words.

I used to keep my sins to myself, LORD,
but they poisoned me from within;
wasting my body,
tormenting my mind.

You see, the lie that we tell ourselves about sin, and secrets, and things that we feel we have to house in our spiritual darkrooms…as cheesy as that phrase might seem…is that we must keep them in the dark so that no one else sees them.

But the truth is, it is only in the darkrooms of the souls where these secrets and sins actually fully develop.  The pictures get clearer the darker the room is.  The colors of our secrets, the multi-faceted ways that we have or have not done the things we know we should or feel we should become more vibrant in the dark.

And then they become powerful, fully developed, hanging up to dry in our souls like a collection of memories we can visit and revisit as often as we might want to torture ourselves.

And we do.

And so, as counterintuitive as it might seem, we must take the Psalmists advice when it comes to those things inside of us that we’d rather not shed light on.  We must open the darkroom door.

Our fear is that upon doing that God and everyone else will see exactly what it is that we’ve been up to in our lives.  We’re afraid that God and everyone else will see exactly what we haven’t been able to do with our lives that we feel we should have.

That’s our fear.  But what about the truth?

Then I decided to come clean with you, LORD,
to own up to all I’d done and stop living a lie.
I made a full confession to you, LORD,
and you gave me a full pardon, forgiving all my sin.

The truth is that when light enters the darkroom, the pictures become corrupted.  They’re faded.  You can’t tell what is what in them.  Their colors are dull and muted.

They’re not vibrant.

They’re not full of life.

They’re dead.  They lose their power.

God’s grace corrupts that line-up of memories that we have inside of us, that line-up of secrets that we’ve been holding, thinking we’re hiding it from the world, but really just allowing it to poison our lives.

And I know that sin and repentance is difficult for some to talk about.  We’ve all been made to feel guilty about things we shouldn’t feel guilty about.

But, at the same time, we’ve all also learned to pretend as if the things we do and fail to do in our lives don’t affect us, all the while carefully developing them in the darkrooms of our lives and hanging them up to dry.

And, as the Psalmist says, we suffer for it over and over.

It’s counterintuitive to think that shedding light on those things we’d rather not see actually takes away their power.  It’s counterintuitive to think of God’s grace as corrupting.  It’s counterintuitive to think that in this post-modern world we might still discuss things like sin and repentance.

But, remember, we have a God who invites us to a full life through giving up of ourselves as shown in the life of Jesus.  We have a God who eats with the untouchables and asks the popular kids to consider their pride a weakness, not a strength.

And we have a God who desires us not to live poisoning ourselves by a hanging rack of sin pictures.  Who invites our eccentric selves hoarding our secrets away in a darkroom to crack the door open. Allow God’s grace to corrupt those things still hurting us.  Allow God’s grace to fade those memories into a blank nothingness.

And then this Psalm that we read today will no longer be words we wish we could say.  It becomes our song that we sing as we laugh and dance in freedom.

The freedom of no longer having darkrooms. The freedom of undeveloped film.

Amen.

Never Ending Story

1 Kings 17:8-16

⁸Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah, saying, ⁹Go now to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and live there; for I have commanded a widow there to feed you. ¹⁰So he set out and went to Zarephath. When he came to the gate of the town, a widow was there gathering sticks; he called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink.” ¹¹As she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” ¹²But she said, “As the LORD your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.” ¹³Elijah said to her, “Do not be afraid; go and do as you have said; but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterwards make something for yourself and your son. ¹⁴For thus says the LORD the God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the LORD sends rain on the earth.” ¹⁵She went and did as Elijah said, so that she as well as he and her household ate for many days. ¹⁶The jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the LORD that he spoke by Elijah.

Never Ending Story

Lord of life,

We are consumed by fears sometimes

And we begin mentally to prepare

For our end

The end of the way we live

The end of relationships

So many endings

And then you speak

A word of hope

A word of peace

A word of resurrection

“The jar of grain will not fail”

“You will not die, but will live”

And we arise anew

Speak again your resurrection song today

Amen.

I love the movie “The Never Ending Story,” the tale of this young man who enters into the foreign land of fantasy in the hopes of finding himself.

It was me many times in my childhood, engrossed in Treasure Island, The Hardy Boys (my parents had the original old book set), and even Little House on the Prairie…a fact I refuse to be embarrassed about.  It’s good reading.

And in these foreign lands I found myself many times…and found characters that reminded me of, well, me.  And it took me many years to figure out why the Never Ending Story had that title.

But I finally did see that it’s because I could always find myself there, in those places, and the story could continue.  If I but picked up a book, I could find a new life…and often, an escape from the foreign land of kid-dom where I never quite dressed trendy enough, didn’t watch the right TV shows, didn’t like the right sports teams, and didn’t quite know when to use humor and when to be serious.

And, as a child, in those books I found my never ending story.

In adult life…it’s not so simple.  Although I still like books, the pressures of the real world aren’t so easily escaped.  Rest and restoration aren’t easy to find with the weights of the world on our shoulders, and true life doesn’t seem to be found in the places we imagine it will be.

Susan Palo-Cherwien, one of my favorite poets for the church, has a wonderful poem about life being in unsuspecting places.

I posted it on Facebook on Thursday as I was working on this sermon, but here it is for those of you not on the Book of Face.  It’s entitled “Seeing Life”:

A traveler once came upon a rocky outcropping
in southern France and saw a mass of golden blooms
clinging to a dry ruin,
and in the scree of the Cascade Mountains
saw lupine spring up from desolation.
Often life appears in surprising places
rocky crags
stony slopes
rock-hewn tombs.
We would do well to remember this.

We’re used to finding life in the old familiar places, not the surprising places. And in these summer days we’re reading the Psalms and the Prophets in hopes of finding some new life in these old texts that, as one ministry staff person put it, “PT…the Psalms are boring.”

They can be.  But they are also beautiful when sung, and we put ourselves in the shoes of our founders in faith when we sing them.

And the stories of the prophets, with their larger-than-life details, they, too, are beautiful and, hopefully, we can find new life in them this summer.  But we may not expect to.

Certainly Elijah didn’t expect to be sent to a foreign widow’s house to find new life, to find food in the middle of a drought…a widow who didn’t even worship God.  The whole land was in the middle of a severe famine, and so the last place you would want to be was with the poorest of the poor…and a widow was that. Because, you see, in ancient days just like today, the poorest of the poor are affected the most when disaster strikes.

So it is surprising that God expects this widow to take care of Elijah, when the widow couldn’t even take care of herself.  In this foreign land (Zarephath wasn’t in Israel) without a friend, the only thing binding these two together is the common scar of hunger pangs in their stomachs.

And the widow’s hospitality is rewarded with a jar of meal that wouldn’t fail, even as she gathered up the sticks of her life expecting that she and her son would die.  In feeding others, she herself was fed.

Let me tell you a similar story…

As many of you know, Dieter Schulte was in the hospital this past week.  From Wednesday to almost Wednesday, a full week, as doctors and nurses ran tests and he passed the time by watching the Blackhawks win and the Cubs…well…perform like the Cubs.

He even told me that he was growing his “playoff beard” while he was in the hospital…

We were disappointed that he didn’t get out on Tuesday, and assumed that his doctor was keeping him in the hospital so that he could watch the Blackhawks in peace.

But now…now we wonder if there wasn’t different reason for him being there, even though he was tired of being there…exhausted from this hospital stay.

Because that extra night that he was there led him to meet the Syrian man who came to share his room with him.

They wheeled this man in, a man who was foreign to this place and spoke very little English, and as the nurses and doctors began to work on him they pulled the curtain shut for privacy…which this man took to mean that he was dying.

And he protested and cried out that this might not be the end as he gathered up his sticks of strength in one last gasp for life.  He was in the place where he didn’t want to be.

Because that man had seen his other family members come in for this same treatment and never leave the hospital, as the illness laid famine to their bodies.  His father.  His brother.  All dead from this same illness that went ignored and was treated too late.

So they left the curtain open, and at last they left and they were in the famine of silence that is a hospital room shared with a stranger.

And as they lay there, with Dieter in one bed and this man in the next who was sure that he was eating his last meal, Dieter does something that I think is inherently Christian: he shows the man his scars.

“See here,” Dieter says pointing to his chest scar.  You will not die, you will not fail; you will live.

In the drought of the hospital bed when it seems as if all is lost, along comes strangers thrust into the foreign presence of one another, and instead of preparing a funeral, the scars of hope are shared.  And life is renewed.  And friendship gained.

And jars of hope didn’t run dry.  Dieter’s hope was fed in feeding this man’s hope for life.

Hear again,

A traveler once came upon a rocky outcropping
in southern France and saw a mass of golden blooms
clinging to a dry ruin,
and in the scree of the Cascade Mountains
saw lupine spring up from desolation.
Often life appears in surprising places
rocky crags
stony slopes
rock-hewn tombs.
We would do well to remember this.

But we don’t often remember.  We don’t often remember that a life lived in Christ is one where we can share our scars with one another because our scars are a testament to how God has led us through the famines and droughts of life…and someone else might need to hear it.

We don’t remember, and think that somehow we’re supposed to do this thing called “life” all on our own without the aid of God or our fellow travelers; that somehow we’re going to do it all on our own…and miss the fact that God may be leading us to one another, even in foreign ways, so that we might be the embodiment of hope, the testament that Christ is still active in this world through humanity.

We don’t remember.  And by the end of the week we’re at our wit’s end, tired, drug through a hard week that isn’t easily abated by the escapes that we think we need.

And then we gather here in this foreign place, this place with strangely colored windows and impossibly tall ceiling.  And we eat a meal of a small cake that doesn’t seem like it will last but that is always here, week after week.

And this person who is foreign to us, shows us his scars, and says, “You will not die, but live.”

And somehow, the next week comes and we are refreshed…and we do live renewed by the God who doesn’t let our lives fail; who doesn’t let failure be the final word.

And that cycle…that is the real never ending story.  Remember.  Come to this table for a small cake and a life that will not fail. Remember that your life will not fail.

Amen.

Do Not Stir or Awaken Love Until It is Ready

June 2^nd, 2013

Song of Solomon 2:1-7

I am a rose of Sharon,
a lily of the valleys.
²As a lily among brambles,
so is my love among maidens.
³As an apple tree among the trees of the wood,
so is my beloved among young men.
With great delight I sat in his shadow,
and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
⁴He brought me to the banqueting house,
and his intention toward me was love.
⁵Sustain me with raisins,
refresh me with apples;
for I am faint with love.
⁶O that his left hand were under my head,
and that his right hand embraced me!
⁷I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
by the gazelles or the wild does:
do not stir up or awaken love
until it is ready!

Do Not Stir Up or Awaken Love Until It is Ready!

 

In some ways this day is pretty improbable. 

Two people in the golden years of life are, stereotypically I’d say, looking for comfortable living, relaxation, long days, easy friendships.

None of the things that marriage brings…at least, not easily.

Marriage is a total disruption of the ease of living alone.  This is the price that we who are in committed relationships pay for having loneliness abated.

And some days in the married life, as you both know, loneliness seems not all that bad in comparison to the headaches of merging your life and your story with someone else.

That is a tongue-in-cheek statement, of course.  Well, sort of.

Because the truth is that marriage, at any age, is difficult work.  Ben Affleck, actor and producer, received a lot of flack recently for claiming in an Oscar speech that his marriage with actress Jennifer Garner was tough work.

Those throwing barbs at him obviously have either never been married or are delusional.

Marriage is work.  It’s good to say so.  It’s good to know.

And it’s good that it’s work.  Because only those things that are difficult are truly worth doing, yes?

And doing at any stage in our lives, at any age.

And you two, unlikely friends of childhood who found one another again in these days, you two have taken the words of the poet we just read in Song of Solomon to heart.  The last lines of that poem are so beautiful and full of truth.

“Do not stir up or awaken love until it is ready!”

And for you two, it appears that love has taken some years to awaken.  But how beautiful it is that it is here.

Because love that is premature acts immaturely.  It’s all butterflies and puppy dog smiles and things that fleet and fly away and don’t last. 

And love that is too mature is too tired to do much of anything.  It takes the beloved for granted.

This is, I think, one of the reasons that the Scriptures tell us that God “makes all things new” in a number of places.  Because God is always refreshing God’s love for humanity, always bringing it to life in a new way at the right time.

And the prudent steward of love follows that advice and tries to act on it as well. 

And I think that you are.  Do not awaken love until it is ready to be stirred.  And today, it is.  It is stirring.  It is ready.

So, before God and one another, are you willing to proclaim this love that is stirring inside of you that has seen now as the fit moment for proclamation? 

Beautiful.  Wonderful. Poetic.  Godly. 

Let us profess this love today in front of these family, these friends, this God, this love that has taken years to germinate and is finally blossoming, a love that is stirring now, the right time.

Amen.

American Idols

1 Kings 18:20-39

²⁰So Ahab sent to all the Israelites, and assembled the prophets at Mount Carmel. ²¹Elijah then came near to all the people, and said, “How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” The people did not answer him a word. ²²Then Elijah said to the people, “I, even I only, am left a prophet of the LORD; but Baal’s prophets number four hundred fifty. ²³Let two bulls be given to us; let them choose one bull for themselves, cut it in pieces, and lay it on the wood, but put no fire to it; I will prepare the other bull and lay it on the wood, but put no fire to it. ²⁴Then you call on the name of your god and I will call on the name of the LORD; the god who answers by fire is indeed God.” All the people answered, “Well spoken!” ²⁵Then Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, “Choose for yourselves one bull and prepare it first, for you are many; then call on the name of your god, but put no fire to it.” ²⁶So they took the bull that was given them, prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from morning until noon, crying, “O Baal, answer us!” But there was no voice, and no answer. They limped about the altar that they had made. ²⁷At noon Elijah mocked them, saying, “Cry aloud! Surely he is a god; either he is meditating, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.” ²⁸Then they cried aloud and, as was their custom, they cut themselves with swords and lances until the blood gushed out over them. ²⁹As midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation, but there was no voice, no answer, and no response.
³⁰Then Elijah said to all the people, “Come closer to me”; and all the people came closer to him. First he repaired the altar of the LORD that had been thrown down; ³¹Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the LORD came, saying, “Israel shall be your name”; ³²with the stones he built an altar in the name of the LORD. Then he made a trench around the altar, large enough to contain two measures of seed. ³³Next he put the wood in order, cut the bull in pieces, and laid it on the wood. He said, “Fill four jars with water and pour it on the burnt offering and on the wood.” ³⁴Then he said, “Do it a second time”; and they did it a second time. Again he said, “Do it a third time”; and they did it a third time, ³⁵so that the water ran all around the altar, and filled the trench also with water.
³⁶At the time of the offering of the oblation, the prophet Elijah came near and said, “O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your bidding. ³⁷Answer me, O LORD, answer me, so that this people may know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.” ³⁸Then the fire of the LORD fell and consumed the burnt offering, the wood, the stones, and the dust, and even licked up the water that was in the trench. ³⁹When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, “The LORD indeed is God; the LORD indeed is God.”

American Idol

Let us pray,

Lord God, we love to set up altars in this world

And we love to believe that they will fulfill

Sustain

Speak to us, complete us

And then you come and show us deep truth

Prophetic truth

Hard truth

And our idol-less lives are better for it.

Speak such truth today

Amen.

I have to be honest with you.  I don’t hear this story as I heard it when I was a child.

When I was a child my imagination was sparked by this elaborate scene of altars and fire, of priests and suspense.  My imagination is still sparked by the wonderful imagery of this story, but I don’t hear it the same way.

And one of the reasons that we’re going to be reading and hearing about the prophets in the Old Testament all summer is because these are really colorful stories; and for those who maybe aren’t familiar with the Bible or the stories that echo throughout the Scriptures, this summer should be a really interesting time.  We’ll hear stories about Elijah, Elisha, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah…all these old timey prophets and their warnings and calls for repentance to a people who claim to follow God but so often follow all sorts of other things.

And that fact, that the prophets speak a word of truth to a people who claim to follow God but really follow all sorts of other things…that’s why I don’t hear this story the same way anymore.

Because the prophets too often are speaking to me.

You’ll cause your mind all sorts of trauma wrestling with the particularities of these stories.  Are they histories in the way we think of histories?  As in, are we reading facts here?

That’s for your own faith story to decide.

I know that I do not hear these stories the way I heard them when I was a child.  Indeed, I resonate deeply with the words of the poet Christian Wiman when he says, “The staunchest life of faith is a life of great change.  It follows that if you believe at fifty what you believed at fifteen, then you have not lived—or have denied the reality of your life.”

But I think we are reading truth here.

I know because I’ve seen it.  I’ve lived it.

I can’t tell you how many altars I’ve set up in my life to all sorts of things, calling down the appropriate responses in hopes of blessing.  Altars to money, altars to jobs, altars to love and relationships that were fleeting, altars to my unending need to be the smartest person in the room or the one with the correct answer.

And I’ve cut myself up over them; I’ve done that late night mental surgery that you do when you lay in bed trying to figure out why this particular altar you set up in your life isn’t on fire the way you think it should be.

And you scheme ways to make it all work.  You work harder at your job thinking it will give you more satisfaction.  You follow and track your money with a more discerning eye.  You work out every day because you are sure this will save you.

You lament because the later years of your life haven’t ended up the way you wanted, and you cut yourself down for missteps or mistakes.  A slice here on the self-esteem.  A gouge here at the finances to fill up the space the cut left.

And before you know it, you are marching bloody and bruised around an altar that just isn’t going to give you what you want.

And here comes Elijah, with his mocking voice.  “Shout louder!  Perhaps that will work.  Work harder!  You’re just not doing enough!”

This prophet laughed at those priests of Baal marching around that altar that wouldn’t light.

The text seems to mock us, too…at least it mocks me.  Because I often think the solution is to work harder, be more of who people want me to be, make smarter investments, work out more…

So what is the solution?  How do we read this text today?

I’ll repeat this phrase about nineteen more times this summer, but prophets are not future tellers in the Scriptures…at least not the way we think of them.  Future tellers are called “seers” or fortune tellers.

Instead, prophets are truth tellers.

And this particular truth is one that Jesus echoes throughout the Gospels.  Jesus has all sorts of lines about split allegiances.  “You cannot worship Mammon and God,” Jesus notes the Gospel of Matthew.  Money is surely something that we expect will set our lives on fire.

And our culture does little to dispel this myth other than give it lip-service.  Indeed, we look at the seven deadly sins: Gluttony, Greed, Avarice, Lust…all of them.  And what do we see?

The American idols.

The world of “Biggie Sizing” and “more money” and “strike our enemies first” and “sex sells.”

And in many ways, we think these things do set our world on fire.  Certainly sex does sell magazines and internet subscriptions and clothing.

By the way, the height of irony is that scantily clothed models sell clothing.

But one of the symptoms of a “sex sells” society is exactly what is described in this text: a mutilated humanity.

One of my very best childhood friends in the world confided in me that she had been taking scissors to her thighs.  Cutting, letting that blood run out.  She didn’t like herself.  Standards for beauty are high.  All standards are high.  And she marched around that altar, cutting herself the whole way…just like these Baal priests in this reading, cutting themselves to make it work.

Interestingly enough, an altar built to prudishness elicites the same result, as we have women who have their noses cut off in far off lands for not being covered enough.

Humanity marches bloody around the altars of sex like so many altars we put up for ourselves.

And today Elijah tells the truth…and it burns a bit.

Because the truth of the matter is we just love to build altars.  And we love to think that our work will make them do what we want it to and so we build an altar to it.  And we think that this will bring us satisfaction, make us live life correctly, and happiness will be ours.

We build altars to the things we think fulfill.

But notice what happens when the priests of Baal are tired and bloody and worn from a life of marching around an altar that didn’t perform.  Elijah comes and douses his altar with water.  And the fire comes down and does what?

It obliterates not only the sacrificed bull, not only the wood, but also the stones and, the text says, even the dust.

All of it, gone.

And I wonder if that’s not a really important part of the story that we, in our altar building love, miss altogether.

As a child I read that part as a show of God’s mighty arm.  God is so powerful, so consuming, that even rocks burn, and so we should build an altar to God because God is so powerful.

But I don’t hear it like that anymore.

Today I hear it instead as a call by God to stop building those types of altars.

Because Lord knows even an altar with religion on it, even an altar to the God seen in Christ can become an idol in this world, causing us to cut ourselves and one another.

We need only look at a lifetime of religious wars, a newspaper full of Westboro Baptists, and a whole bunch of people just certain that they’re right about God and everyone else is wrong to give testament to that fact.

Besides, real relationships don’t include altars.  If I put my wife on a pedestal she’s bound to fall off…and then the relationship can’t continue the same way because I’ve become disillusioned, disheartened…and disbelieving.

Metaphysicist and writer Peter Rollins speaks to the idea that even God can become an idol for humanity in his wonderful book “The Idolatry of God”.

He writes, “The problem, for most of us, is not that there is a lack of things we should be able to get enjoyment from, but that we are unable to actually enjoy these things.  The Idol robs us of the type of pleasure that we could have if only we were able to free ourselves from the false promise that something would render us complete.”

All things put on pedestals, all altars prevent us from actually experiencing the joy of life because they will not burn, no matter how loud we cry or how hard we try because we make the mistake of thinking that the things we build altars to will complete us.

The American idols…they are illusory.  They will not burn.

Rather, Jesus frees humanity from the need to set up such altars.  As the Word of God, the completeness of joy, who in the Gospel of John (John 15) asks for his joy to be in us so that our joy may be complete, we see our completeness is found in the God who created us, in the Christ who calls us to new life and heals our cuts, in the Spirit who moves in us.

Not in the idols we cut ourselves to make work for us…even if that idol ends up being belief and religion.

It’s a hard truth.  We like concrete things in life, concrete paths, concrete ways to make the world work, and to make our lives work for us.

But if God’s response to that desire for concrete ways is to burn up that altar of the world’s idols, our American idols, then perhaps the best response isn’t to cut ourselves over the things in this world that don’t set us on fire, and instead just stop building altars and allow God to be God for us.

Now that thought…of not having to build anymore altars…that sets me on fire.

“This Season, Too, Has Blossoms,” A Funeral Sermon

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
²a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
³a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
⁴a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
⁵a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
⁶a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
⁷a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
⁸a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

This Season, Too, Has Blossoms

There was a little girl walking along with her mother in the middle of a cold Chicago winter.

She sighed a large sigh, “There are no blooms, mommy.  It’s all snow and ice.  There’s no color.  It’s just not pretty.”

Her mother grabbed her hand and lifted her up to a branch of a low-hanging tree.  “Look closely,” she told the girl.  “Deep inside there is greenness in the branch.  And you see this little end?  Believe it or not that’s the beginning of a flower.  It will take a little while to bloom…and it will feel like it takes forever, but even here in the dead of winter we have flowers.  We just can’t always see them.”

Mom continued, “This season, too, has blossoms.”

This season, too, has blossoms.

Every time I visited with Gertrude over the past three and a half years, she always made a remark about her age.  It was often followed with, “I must have done something right because I’m still here…I just don’t know why.”

I would sit with her in her back room.  She’d point to the pictures around her, and tell me some stories…though sometimes I had to yell questions because she just hated wearing her hearing aids.

And we’d always be interrupted about twelve times by Charlie, her loveable companion who was very faithful and made sure to bark at me wildly when I first arrived to ensure I was there for help, not harm.

Charlie was good at vetting visitors.

And she’d talk to me about sailing, or her husband Bob.  And I just recently found out that this was the second dog that she had named Charlie in her life…which I find fascinating, and I wish I would have asked her about that.

But that question, “I don’t know what I’m doing here.” It always hung heavy over the room.

Because one of the things she certainly did was keep the Dollar Store in business!  Well, she loved shopping.  And sailing.

And she loved Charlie.

And she certainly provided laughter…and frustration which are two sides to the same relationship coin…to us who knew her.

And the way she always prepped for me before I came, sitting up, hair nicely done, rings on, slippers on, blanket adjusted…she was particular because she knew what it was to provide hospitality.  A good model for those of us in a generation where people rarely do such visits anymore.

The writer of Ecclesiastes notes that there is a time and a season for everything, and this is true.  And as I’ve said for years, one of my chief priorities in life has been to discern what season it is for me, for others, for life.

And sometimes what I discern as a season for life and what reality tells me are two different things.  Like that little girl, I’ve sometimes thought it should be spring when all around me is winter.

And in Gert’s life, these last years, she wondered if the season for her was the spring of sweet sleep instead of the season of life at 96 where mobility was difficult, hearing was all but impossible, and her body just didn’t cooperate with her mind.

And yet, even in that winter, there were blossoms.  Even in that season of her life beauty bloomed.  The beauty of love for Charlie and her family.  The beauty of hospitality.  The beauty of human interaction.  The beauty of a mind that was keenly sharp, even if the body wasn’t.

And those blossoms, though sometimes hidden at 96, should not be discounted.

And now as she’s in the beautiful spring of a life resting in the God to which she was very faithful, I don’t imagine those blossoms are lost at all, but now at their full bloom as they still are in my heart and the heart of those who loved her.

Gertrude Snider, you were the oldest member of this community in what many would call the winter of life.  And yet there is a time for everything.  And in the winter of your life God saw fit for the time to be that you show forth hidden blossoms of wisdom, hospitality, and love.  And we had to bend close to see them, but they were surely there.

So now, dear sister, rest in the God who promised you long ago in the spring of your life, in your baptism, that you were loved, and good, and beautiful.  A promise we saw to the very end.  A promise you now live into anew with God.

Amen.

“‘Thank God I’m an Atheist’ and Other Odd Phrases”

Acts 2:1-21

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. ²And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. ³Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. ⁴All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
⁵Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. ⁶And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. ⁷Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? ⁹Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹Cretans and Arabs — in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” ¹²All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” ¹³But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

“’Thank God I’m an Atheist’ and Other Odd Phrases”

 Let us pray,

You send your spirit upon us today.

For that we give thanks.

Make us vessels of your Spirit today.

And help us to give thanks.

Amen.

I was reading an online article the other day, and I made a huge mistake.

I read some of the comments.

Don’t ever read the comments.

It was an article about how we can and should refer to God as “mother” as well as “father.”  It was a good article, strong points, good exegesis…that’s a fancy term for “they did their homework well.”

But the comments…that was the really interesting part.  And I don’t mean “interesting” in a good way.

Because everybody and their mother had an opinion about calling God…well…“your mother.”

The literalist Christians didn’t like it because God is obviously referred to as “Father” in all of the Bible.  Which is not true.  They did not do their homework.

And the atheists didn’t like the article because, well, it talked about God.  And Times magazine shouldn’t stoop so low as to talk about God, I guess.

My favorite quote, though, was where the atheist responder began his or her comment by saying, “Thank God I’m an atheist…”

What?!

Let’s parse that for a second.  “Thank God,” or “Show gratitude to the Divine”

…that’s the beginning part, and we’re all with me, yes?

“that I’m an atheist” or “that I don’t trust that there is something Divine.”

Wow.

I don’t know if they were being sarcastic, or if they just messed up the idiom or what, but I think that phrase is really, very interesting.  I mean, when you can get past all the negativity that was spewing in that comments section, we actually have a very deep statement there.

Because, and for you Confirmands this is important to remember, we all believe in something.

We all trust something in our lives.

All of us.  Every one of us.

We trust that the sun will come up.  We trust that flowers grow in the spring after germination.  We trust that if we don’t study for our Confirmation tests we will answer questions using the phrase, “I don’t remember learning this, but…”

But more to the point, we live in ways that reflect what we trust in this world.

If we trust that poor people are a scourge to society, we will live as if they are.  If we trust that brown people are scary, we will live as if they are.  If we trust that white people are racist, we will live as if they are.

If we trust that God is vengeful and hates us, we will live as if that’s true…and will probably hate ourselves and a good bit of the rest of the world.  When we believe the Divine hates something, it gives us a lot of license to hate.

If we trust that God is loving and loves us, we’ll live into that, too.

Even if we say that we don’t believe in anything, that’s a belief statement.  It’s a statement of trust.  It’s a statement that says, “I trust that there is nothing.”

It’s a belief statement.

But the ways that we trust affect the ways that we live.

And I know this is true because I’ve seen it.  I’ve lived it.  I’ve believed that God was full of hate before.  I’ve believed that God is full of love…still believe that.  And in between I’ve trusted that God had left the building of my life, before.

I’ve lived it…for better or for worse.

I’m hammering this home today because Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit, is the day where we remind ourselves that what we’re doing here, and what you three are pledging your lives to, is not merely about some ancient stories in the past.

If there was no Pentecost, if God’s breath and fire and love were not active in this world today, I could tell you a little story about Jesus and you’d think it’s sweet and you’d put it on the shelf you have in your room next to all the other tchotchkes you think are sweet and you’d say, “Yes, that’s when…”

That’s when I went to church.

That’s when I was involved in a faith community.

That’s when I would listen to stories about Jesus.

But that’s not what we’re doing here…and that’s not what you’re promising.

You see, you’re making a statement of faith.  We, here, are making a statement of faith.  And while all of our statements are not uniform, and they don’t conform to one another, we have said unequivocally here at Luther Memorial Church that we would rather live telling stories of Jesus, asking faith questions, and growing in our relationship with the Divine and one another than not.

And in doing so, we live into the story of God’s work in the world.  We live into it as a part of it.  As Christ’s hands and feet.  As Christ’s words and work.

And Jesus that’s scary.

And exciting.

And an odd phrase.

It’s odd in the way that, “Thank God I’m an atheist” is odd. In that it doesn’t seem to make sense.

Because our hands sure screw things up a lot.  And the hands of Jesus were screwed up by nails…we don’t think of them as screwing things up, so how can our hands be Jesus hands?

And our words are often pretty terrible.  Confirmands: what’s a good definition of the Second Commandment, “Do not take the Lord your God’s name in vain?”

Right.  Do not use God’s name uselessly.

And with our words we often do.  And not only God’s name, but our name, or our friend’s names, or all sorts of names.

It doesn’t seem possible that our words can be Christ’s words sometimes.

And yet Pentecost reminds us that the Spirit of God comes rushing onto the scene in those amazing moments that we don’t think anything is possible.  God’s Spirit holds things that don’t seem to go together and makes them go together for the betterment of the world.

It’s like when we say that water is holy.  It’s just water, right?  And yet it is holy when used for holy purposes.  It’s like when we say that bread is the body of Christ.  It’s just bread!  Trust me, I baked it last night.  And yet, when used for holy purposes it’s more than holy.

And today with your lips, as crass and crazy as they are…trust me, I’ve heard some of the things you say…you will profess your faith, not in nothing, but in a God of love.  You will profess your commitment to a community of faith that, while it’s as imperfect as a two-legged stool, is somehow the body of Christ.

And I will lay these hands on you, and your parents will lay their hands on you, and the other youth will lay their hands on you, hands that are imperfect and that hurt as well as help, and they will be the hands of Christ upon you.

And by God we’ll do something holy here.

Even if it seems like an odd phrase, we’re living into the life of Christ in this place, and today you commit yourself to being an intentional part of it.  As imperfect and shoddy and crappy as we are, we’re being called by the Spirit of God to do justice and peace in this world.

And it doesn’t matter the language we speak or how we do it.

And it doesn’t matter where we’ve come from, whether from Ohio like Brian Myers, or Germany like Dieter Schulte, or Ecuador like Patrick.

Or even from Presbyterianism, Catholicism, Lutheranism or…gasp…even atheism.  God’s Spirit can work even through those languages.

And someone will always have something to say about it, or how it’s impossible, or how you’re not good enough, or how this is all a joke, or…whatever.  Don’t listen to the comments.

Because God is the best at mashing things together, the odd phrases of our lives, and making something holy out of it.

Let’s live into it again today.

Amen.

“Shallows and Deeps” or “You’re Fired”

Reading: Acts 2:1-21

In reading this Acts text, no doubt some preachers will highlight the varied regions or areas that are mentioned in the first verses.

I remember seeing this scene played out in a video series.  Little CGI flames appeared above disciple heads as one of the crowd started reciting where everyone was from.  It was as if God said, “You’re fired” to all the disciples, and then sent one inspired person on a tortuous monologue/geography lesson.

Worst speech ever.  Talk about boring.

And let’s not pretend we actually think someone did that monologue.  Do we?  Do we really think it lends itself to speech?

Much like all the other things about this text, and life, we make deep symbols shallow when we make them too literal.

Real fire?  Real wind?  Read carefully.  *Like* wind.  *as of* fire.

Much like Jesus’ baptism when the Spirit descended *like* a dove.

Why bother with all of the semantics? Who cares?

I read the comments thread of an article the other day.  The article was on how God can and should be addressed as “mother” as well as “father.”

Of course everyone had a problem with this…at least everyone in the comments section.

Literalist Christians were pissed because God obviously refers to God’s self as “Father” in the Scriptures.  Which, if you think about it, is a weird claim to make.  Not only because it isn’t true…there are plenty of feminine images of God in Scripture…but also because that’s just a weird way to write or speak.  An editor would jump on that right away.

And atheist responders were upset because it was an article about God.

One atheist responder made this curious little remark, though.  They wrote, “Thank God I’m an atheist.”

I love it.  It’s awesome.

And whether they were being sarcastic or it was just a slip of the idiom, I think it’s a statement with some depth to it…even if it’s intent was kind of shallow.

Because when we read these Biblical passages that have these wonderful images, fire-water-wind-breath, we do them a deep disservice when we make them too literal.  We silence them, contain them.  They don’t speak well, then.  And they especially don’t speak well to those who may have trouble buying that fire danced on top of people’s heads.

We only see that at the circus nowadays.

So have fire at Pentecost, speak a number of languages in the reading, fly windsock kites, do all of that.  But don’t buy into it too literally or you’ll make of it cheap parlor tricks.

Instead look at the little old lady and the newborn dressed in red, and see them as containing the flame of the Spirit. They’re fired. Instead look at the breath that comes from the choir as they sing Veni, Sancte, Spiritus and find the wind of God rushing over the church.

And maybe, just maybe, dump the idea that people heard their Parthian dialect or Cappadocian dialect, let alone German and Spanish and English, and imagine that God might speak a variety of languages far beyond those that have words.

Maybe even the language of atheism.

Now that would be disconcerting and strange and may even make some people claim, “You’re drunk!”

Now that would be deep.

Like the breath of God that hovered over the deep before the world began.