May 24 -- Angels Sidling Up & Ascension from Below (Easter 7A)

He is risen!  … Alleluias abound.  We are Easter people with signs of the resurrection all around us and around this world.  Christ is deeply present in our pain and in our joy.  In our hope and in our sorrow.  Christ breathes through us, Christ breathes us, he’s so close…

So what’s Jesus doing ascending into heaven, as we read today?  Why’s he leaving us?  Why’s that closeness shrinking and shrinking as he lifts up into the clouds?  I thought he’s always promised to stay with us.
Oh well, let’s just wait.
I’m sure he’ll be back.  [looking up]
Will you wait with me?
It’s very Christian to wait, together…
And we’re getting pretty used to waiting these days…

This may have been how those disciples long ago felt to:  Can you imagine the joy that they had just experienced on reuniting with their friend?  Forget for a moment all the theological implications of Jesus’ resurrection—these men and women had their friend, their son, their brother, their favorite teacher back!

But just as soon as he’s back in the flesh—walking with them down their roads, fishing in their waters, sitting around their tables—he’s gone again…this time up into heaven.
So they’ll wait.

The text says, “While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them.”

Jesus hadn’t even been gone for but a few moments—and they could probably still see him way up there, like when a little one accidentally lets go of a helium balloon and we all watch it drifting up and up, sometimes there’s some crying when that happens—and angelic strangers are sidling up next to them!

Jesus was never even gone completely and angels are already sidling up!

How we too may be caught staring at the heavens.  How nice it is to “gaze up,” to enjoy the serenity, the dreaminess—even the fun of tracking a drifting hot air balloon Jesus, somewhere up there.

OK maybe not literally, do we gaze up at the sky.  We’re busy, productive types here.  But what is your drifting Jesus balloon that you’re gaze up at wistfully?

Paying off the house?  Retiring in fine style?  Keeping the kids perfectly safe and sound?  Finishing the backyard?  Just getting to heaven?  Getting out of this shut-down, getting back to church, getting back to “normal,” getting back something or someone we’ve lost...

All nice things, to be sure; pretty normal really, all those desires.

But Jesus doesn’t operate in the realm of “pretty normal really”!  Jesus doesn’t just leave us gazing up.  And he doesn’t drop us a ladder from on high either, affirming our longings and blissful dreams, so that we can leave all this behind.
Instead Jesus sends angels, sidling up, to snap us out of our gazes [“suddenly”], and to position us for ministry in this world, in this world.  These angels locate us.
   
When we stare at the sky, we see no one else.  I wouldn’t even know if you were here or if you left, if just kept staring at the sky.  I probably wouldn’t care.

But when I’m snapped out of my gazing up, I see you, I see us, I see this world out the windows and doors.
And this is just Luke’s version.   (The author of Acts is the author of Luke.)  In Matthew’s version there is no ascension story, Jesus in fact never does leave.  Jesus says, “Lo, I am with you always.”

Meme on FB this week:  “Today we celebrate Ascension.  To those who wonder what it’s about: It’s the day when Jesus started to work from home.”
Whether its angels or Jesus himself, we have our focal point re-adjusted again today.  From gazing at the sky to seeing our siblings, seeing the world, and seeing all those angels right before us, right with us.  Angels sidling up.

And then starts an interesting progression: One of the great things I love about this text in Acts is this progression that Jesus offers:  “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria [cross that border], and to the ends of the earth.”

Heather and I had a friend who once said — she was a bit of a guru when it came to house projects, and I was complaining to her about being overwhelmed with stuff (thinking of her advice these days) — she said, just take one thing, one room, one part of the yard at a time.  “Don’t try to stay on top of it all, or you’ll drive yourself crazy.”  Her advice reminds me of “Jerusalem, Samaria and the ends of the earth.”  The progression is daunting, but when we take each step intentionally, lovingly, faithfully, when we are located by the angels myself, then we do everything we can in this time and place.  Not gazing out or up, taking a breath, one day at a time.  The angels are already sidling up next to you.

We are called to be witnesses, friends in Christ, witnesses...
1) to Jerusalem – those who are hurting right here at Bethlehem, in Fairfax, in Northern Virginia...but Jesus doesn’t let us off the hook at that...
2) we are called to be witnesses to Judea and Samaria too – that is, both in our country and across our borders – those who are hurting in the District, in Maryland and West Virginia, in Florida and Michigan and Puerto Rico, and then cross our national borders: in Mexico and Canada and Cuba.
3) And then, we are called to be witnesses to the ends of the earth.

WE are called to be witnesses, given the Spirit of Truth, the Word of God, word of life!
And we’re not alone in this work.  You’re not alone.

My theology professor (of sainted memory, on this Memorial Day Weekend).  Vitor was soldier of the Gospel.  He would get so passionate about this text, and point out the literal words of vs. 11: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?  This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go…”  In other words, his theological read of this, is that Jesus will come from beneath:  if he’s coming in the same way we saw him go, then if you want to see Jesus from now on, you will see him in solidarity with the below, with the downtrodden people, the marginalized people, the hopeless and cynical and lost and addicted and oppressed people, the victims of violence and grieving who are remembering this Memorial weekend…

You will see him come the same way the same vector you witnessed him go.  And not just rising from people: You will see Jesus ascend back to us from the bosom of the devastated earth.  Jesus ascends from the polluted streams, and chopped down rainforests, and the elephant graveyards, all the species who have been lost on account of greed and selfishness.  Jesus ascends to us.

And goes with us as we witness, for Christ gives us that same ascension Spirit which both enlivens us, gives us the courage and strength we need to go forth, and it binds us together.  We are never offering our hands to Christ’s work alone.  Even if the whole Christian church around the world dwindles, dwindles, dwindles there will always be two or three gathering, reading Scripture, sharing the meal, and being sent out in Christ’s name!  You are not alone.  We are bound together, bound together, nourished and then sent out.

I love that at the end of this text, after this amazing experience of ascension and angels, from gazing to seeing, from dreaming to scheming—after it all, the disciples returned to Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s walk from where they experienced all this.  They don’t go out from the hillside of the Ascension:  first they gather. And they start this whole mission into the world in prayer.  “They devoted themselves in prayer.”

How often we charge into our tasks before devoting ourselves in prayer.  (prayer before voting at assembly, prayer before council meetings...vs. not)

“They devoted themselves in prayer.”

Friends in Christ, that’s a picture of a Sunday morning!  A Sabbath day’s walk.  Devoting ourselves in prayer.

Luther: “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.”

Pausing for a moment to give thanks that God is both up there and right here, at the very same time.  Lifting our hands in a gesture of thanksgiving, that this world is not ours to rescue, but only ours to serve.  Un-gripping our hands in a gesture of openness of heart and mind, for God to take us once again this day, and make us one, mold us into a people with eyes set not on the cluster of clouds and a one-track dream, but on the cluster of sisters and brothers across the street, and across the “interwebs,” and across the borders — and a one-track Gospel message of GRACIOUS LOVE.

We are gathered, we are baptized, we are fed at this manger, and now we are sent.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

May 17 -- Paul & Our Many Altars (Easter 6A)

Friends in Christ, if Paul was to wander through your life — your daily routines, where you spent your time and your money, where you made sacrifices: the things that bring you great joy, the things that get you really upset, and the ways you speak — if Paul was to wander down “your street”, stand at the center of your personal “town square” (the Areopagus) — WHAT WOULD HE NOTICE?

The question is not: “Are you/is anyone religious?”  The question is: “In what ways are you extremely religious?”  Everyone worships something.  The word worship, broken down, “worth-ship”.  What’s worthy of your sacrifices?  That’s what we worship.  Lots of people go to church but don’t worship God.  Because God’s not worthy of their sacrifices, the church is not worthy of their sacrifices: traveling the world is what’s truly worthy of their sacrifices.  Clothing or hobbies or housing improvements or sports or fancy alcohol or knives or guns or shoes or concerts or cars or crafts are what’s truly worthy of their sacrifices.  We all have our thing, I think.  What’s your thing?

The best way for Paul to wander down any one of our “streets” is for him to take a look at our credit card statements, right?  Our Amazon (non-essential) recent purchases.  Or however you can track how and where you spend your money.  (I was shocked at how much our family spent on food in this past year’s credit card report — not restaurants but food: organic, locally sourced, healthy food.  It’s more expensive.  We’ve admitted that’s a place we’re willing to make sacrifices.  I guess you could say it’s one of our idols.)  And I won’t even divulge all my non-essential Amazon purchases.  That’s the real “giving record,” right?

That’s where we can see where we really make sacrifices.  I know the whole, “but it’s not just about money when it comes to church” idea.

And that’s true, but so often, I think, we can hide behind that.   So much is about money...  x2 That’s why Jesus talked about money all the time!

“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Mt. 6.21; Lk. 12.34).  What is it that you treasure?  What is it that you protect?  What is it that you make sacrifices for?  Where is your heart?
—
Well, all this was true in the ancient world as well, as Paul walked through the streets of Athens, “Athenians,” he says, “I see how extremely religious you are in every way.”

But there’s something else:
Paul notices that there is an altar to an unknown God.
You see, the people of Athens — like us today — worshipped all kinds of gods.  I think it was more overt then: maybe less shame or denial about it.  They made sacrifices openly to the gods of sports, food, parties, travel, transportation, music, crafts and weather.  (BTW, living in Southern California all those years, I think we really worshipped the weather there.  I mean, people really make sacrifices for that beautiful weather, higher cost of living, etc.  And our observation, leaving that region was all these comments on how much we were going to miss the weather.  How different is that from worshiping an ancient sun god?)  That’s just one of many altars...

But there was this one altar that was unmarked.  It was like the fill-in-the-gap altar — one for everything else.

...and Paul seizes on that image to introduce them to a different kind of God.

See, it actually was in fact a fill-in-the-gap altar:  Like today, the people lived in great fear.  If you didn’t sacrifice to every god out there, if you worship at every altar — the altar of security, the altar of beauty & youth, the altar of war, the altar of food and drink and sport and weather, the altar of work...If you don’t appease every god, then trouble would inevitably befall you.
So just in case you miss one, there was this little “fill-in-the-gap” altar.
 Just in case you forgot about a god or two.  You could sacrifice at the altar of the unknown god.

       Paul seizes on that to draw them into a new understanding...
--
See, it’s like, there was “something else.”  The people even knew it.  This way of living and worshiping and making sacrifices at all these altars, this way of being extremely religious was coming up short.

Don’t we see that too?  Do you ever feel that?  All these things we worship, and yet, somehow, it’s never enough?  (We’re having some real time to reflect on these during this shutdown.  During this “great pause” that this global pandemic has forced upon us...)

We’re always pouring more and more out at all these different altars?  And every god, will endlessly take our sacrifices: our money, our time, our devotion, our energy, our whole lives.  But it’s like they’re never appeased.  The gods are never appeased, and they’ll just keep taking…  (Just talking with dear friends about the tolls that stress is taking on our bodies, especially these days — I realize that not everyone is feeling stress right now amid this shut-down, some are even downright bored.  But, for so many, parents of school kids, or toddlers, balancing jobs and work from home, school, family, economic pressures, etc. the frantic pace at which we’re running around our own homes, from altar to altar to altar (it’s like all those altars got crammed into our house)…

Yeah, Paul could say it to us too:  “I see how extremely religious you are in every way!”

And, let me say, if life has had the brakes slammed on, and you’re more in the camp of twiddling your thumbs, staring at the wall, that’s certainly an opportunity for devotion to the many gods to tick up — surfing the shopping websites, buying crazy things in large amounts, consuming food, alcohol, social media, technology, instruments to fill the time.  So many altars!

Paul says it to us too:  “I see how extremely religious you are in every way!”
--
But then there’s this one other little altar.  This little tiny chapel, this insignificant table in the corner.  This silly, old cross.  Laughable really, in the shadow of all the other towering altars.  

Paul seizes on that little altar, and takes that fearful theology (“talk of God”) around that altar — how that has infected Christianity now too:  fearful theology — and fills it with incarnational theology.  God is with us.  This little, tiny, insignificant altar you see here, Paul says, “I proclaim to you that the God who made the world and everything in it, [the God] who is [composer and conductor] of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands…[this God] allotted the times of [our] existence and the boundaries of the places where [we] live, so that [we may] search for God and perhaps grope for [God]...though indeed [God] is not far from each one of us.  For ‘In [God] we live and move and have our being….’”

We don’t grope for God, as if God is some object of our attaining, yet another thing to acquire [“gotta go to church to get some God in my life…”].  No, Paul proclaims here: We are IN God already.  My whole life changed with I started to accept that.  [say it again]

This little, un-named altar is an entry point into experiencing a God that is truly above all other gods!  A God who’s got the whole world — the whole universe — in a loving embrace.  A God in whom we “live and move and have our being.”  A God whose name is love, in Christ Jesus.

This is where Paul takes us...along with his ancient hearers.  Paul preaches of a God who is beyond time and space, who is above all our petty obsessions and weaknesses, who holds us even as we try to appease other gods!

This little Altar, this Book, this Water doesn’t contain God (God doesn’t live, cooped up in here)!  But they do, we confess, carry God.  This little altar, this old book, these drops of water, point us to a God who is loosed in, with, above, below, all around and throughout, under this entire universe!

We cannot encapsulate or domesticate this God of whom Paul speaks!  All we can do is give ourselves up to this holy movement — sacrifice ourselves to what we are already in God’s hands.

...Think of when children are angry and restless in their mother’s arms: there’s no use in trying to overpower her, “Just rest. Just breath. It’s OK.”  Can’t we be like restless children running from altar to altar to altar?  (Paul was once a restless Saul!)

Friends in Christ, we are truly IN Christ.  Not every day do we get to reflect on the all-inclusive, all-loving, all-surrounding embrace of a God in whom “we live and move and have our being.”  Being in Christ is where we find ourselves.  So now all we we can do is enjoy it, take a breath...and go make disciples.  Go invite others into this understanding, into this joyful awareness.  Tell them that we don’t have to make all these other sacrifices at all these other altars!  Go, make disciples by pointing them to the water and the word of life, and this community of love, this communion.  For simply in this following, there is peace.

Peace that is fuller and deeper than any other peace that any idols can offer.  Love divine, all loves excelling!   Jesus calls us away from those other loves, to come and follow, make your sacrifices here, and make disciples.  You are Christ’s witnesses to these things: you have a job to do!  It’s a blessed burden, a labor of love.

Thanks be to God, who holds us and this whole cosmos now...and forever more.  Go spread that Good News.  Breathe.  It’s gonna be ok.  Because at this altar, we celebrate...that... God’s got us.  AMEN.

May 10 -- Mother's Day Story Theology (Easter 5A)

While I was in seminary and working one summer as a chaplain with a small group of seminarians (Lutherans, Catholics, Presbyterians, Unitarians) at Loyola Medical Center and hospital in Chicago—there was a writing-and-reflection exercise that we had to do as part of our curriculum called “Story Theology”.

We had to write down a one-page, front side only, story about something in our lives, preferably not referring to our professional or vocational lives (like interactions with patients or reflections on our training) in the hospital, or in the church.  But rather a story from our personal lives, currently or deep in our memory banks.  Didn’t have to be anything profound or intense, necessarily, just a story from our lives.  Not our thoughts/feelings about the story, our interpretations; just what happened.  (Any of us could do this.)

Then, we would bring that story to our cohort (of 7), and together we’d reflect on it “theologically”.  Hence the name for this exercise: “Story Theology.”  The word “theology” is simply a fancy word for “talk about God”.  This was “talk about God” through a story, usually a very simple story.    

So, for example, a colleague of mine wrote about being carried by her uncle when she was little and on a trip to the Philippines.  I wrote about a muddy adventure I had had with my brothers.  Not the feelings or the thoughts, just what happened.   Another described her mother’s stern look, no feelings, just descriptions.  And one colleague, I remember simply wrote about a bicycle that he had seen a few days earlier, just an old rusty bike, locked to a street sign and abandoned in a Chicago neighborhood.  

Then as a group, we’d take a whole afternoon on one such story and think about “where was God” in the story?  “What aspects of the Divine are revealed?”  What are the implications from our reflections for pastoral care, ministry, theology or rituals – there was a whole list of questions that helped us dissect our simple stories, but not to take away from the beauty of the simple story, rather to find meaning, insights—even God—in our stories, in ways we probably hadn’t ever considered on our own.  

It was a unique experience – taking a whole afternoon to reflect on a short story about looking in the mirror and seeing first gray hairs or tripping and falling at the grocery store or playing catch with your dad in the back yard.

It was important training, for me, in learning how to see God and talk about God being deeply imbedded into everyday life.  (I’d encourage you to try this.)

Maybe this doesn’t sound like anything new or profound to you, maybe it’s easy for you to find God deeply imbedded in everyday life, but put yourself in the shoes of intense and anxious pastors-in-training.  Our heads were so filled with books and papers and lectures and the experiences of others, it was really easy to stop trusting and paying attention to the wisdom of our own experience…and I for one realized that I was overlooking, missing God all over the place.

Friends in Christ, God is all over the place.  In our Gospel today, Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”  

Last week, we could kind of pin God down in the image of a Shepherd...but today, we remember that God’s also…all over the place.  We also hear today that God goes ahead of us to prepare a place, and that God is our rock and our shelter even now, and long before us.  God is all over the place in space and time. 

I think it’s easy to forget that.  Just like I was once so inundated with books and lectures in seminary that I missed God, all over the place, in the simpleness of life… 

...so can we all miss Christ—the way, the truth, the life right here, right now—in our being inundated with (maybe not books and lectures, maybe so but..) the pressures of this new COVID world, the stresses, the headlines, the bills to pay, the online appointments to make on time, the projects to finish, the kids to feed, the celebrations to drive by, the sleep to catch up on.  

It’s easy to miss it – the presence of God, the talk about God, deeply imbedded in our everyday. (“Come have breakfast.”)  But regardless of whether we notice it or not, God is all over the place…[pause] like junk mail, God just keeps arriving and arriving.  And we can be tempted to want to just put God in the recycle bin:  in the church building.

I’ve never liked calling the church “God’s house”…because that building, as holy and beautiful as it is, is just not enough to “house” God.  No, God’s house is much bigger: the world is God’s house!  The forest is God’s house, the oceans are God’s house, the city streets (including the not-so-pretty-parts) are God’s house, the volcano is God’s house, immigrant and the stranger is God’s house, the hospital bed is God’s house, the preschool and the boardroom and the basement is God’s house.  The spider monkey and the octopus is God’s house.  The lawyer and the homemaker is God’s house.  We are God’s house...You are God’s house.  

What did Jesus say, in my Mother’s house there are many, many rooms?  God isn’t just up there waiting…because that’s not enough.  

God is right here acting and moving and watching and loving this world – the way, the truth, the life here and now.  Listen to that Mother’s Day proclamation again!

We don’t go to the church building because that’s where God lives, like we’re paying God a visit.  No!  Rather the church building — more important, the gathered community — is where we go to celebrate this God who makes a home in, with and throughout this whole world.  It’s where we go to celebrate God’s incarnation, God’s indwelling, God’s deep and abiding, day-by-day, hour-by-hour, heartbeat-by-heartbeat presence.  As close to you as you are to your breath.  Pulsing through your veins and arteries…“the way, the truth, the life”.

I was at a preaching conference once, and as it often does, the issue of the church being in “decline” came up: not enough money, less and less people – it’s across the board, it’s across denominations; it’s a post-church age.  One of the preachers at the conference made reference to this in his sermon, but then he did a little “story theology” about the changes in the Christian church.  He inserted “God talk” into the story of the “church these days”, which might sound funny.  Why would there not be God talk around/about the church today?  But so often, we can forget about God’s action and presence, even when we use God’s name throughout our worship services, and maybe even in our everyday lingo, like when someone sneezes.  We can use God’s name and still forget about God’s action…

This preacher, it was the Rev. Dr. Thomas Long, did a little story theology on the story of the “church these days”…and said that whatever is happening to the church these days – and everyone’s got their theories about why – whatever is happening to the church these days, “we have to remember that God is doing it.”  That’s a powerful theological statement.  

God is up to something, God is all over the place, even in the church.  God is clearing away.  God is going to seed...just beneath the surface.  So that might look like nothing.  

God keeps arriving and arriving.  God keeps breaking out in unexpected ways, rising from the tombs, rising from the pain, rising from the isolation and the loneliness and the doubt, rising from the tears, rising from the poor, rising from the stranger, rising from the martyr Steven who cries out words of forgiveness and mercy toward the very people who are killing him with stones.  

Whatever is happening, God is doing it.  And our God is not a God of death—like we’ve perhaps heard before: a God who picks a few for eternal salvation and leaves the rest of the world, billions of people, not to mention the creatures of the planet to suffer, even burn in hell—NO!  Our God is a God of life, who doesn’t even just come down from above, but who rises up from below, from the ashes and the graves and the sorrow and the pain and the confusion and the despair.  

God keeps rising.  Rising from this world, and rising from you.  AMEN.

May 3 -- Fourth Sunday of Easter