The Temptation of False Gods

Lent 1b

February 18, 2018

Mark 1:9-15

If it feels like we have heard this Gospel reading before it is because we have. Three times since December 3^rd, we have heard parts of this text. But, here we are again, revisiting Jesus’ baptism, his temptation, the arrest of John and the beginning of Jesus’ formal ministry. But with the déjà vu of having heard a text repeated a few times, also comes the temptation to put details into the Temptation of Jesus that aren’t there in Mark. We get them in Matthew and Luke “If you turn these stones into bread, if you really are the son of God, throw yourself down from here, I will give all of this to you if you bow down and worship me.” These details are familiar to those who have studied the scriptures or make a habit of being in church every year on the first Sunday in Lent. However, if Mark wanted those details in there, he would have put them there. Instead, he leaves out the details of the actual temptation of Jesus, which leaves a lot of room for us to wonder just what could have happened and how Jesus responded to the temptation of the Devil. What he does note, however, is that he was driven by the Spirit into the wilderness. Not led by the Spirit, like in Matthew and Luke, but rather, he was driven – cast out. There is a notion of use of force involved. Not an invitation, a command you are expected to follow immediately, whether you are prepared or not. 

It was to the wilderness that we were driven once again on Wednesday afternoon. A wilderness of mourning, of anger, of questioning:

What happened that a 19 year old got an assault rifle into his school and killed 17 people?

What happened that this was this 18^th school shooting in 2018?

What happened that this has become almost normal in our modern history?

What happened that no one who has the power to do anything to stop this from happening again seems to be doing anything but offering up thoughts and prayers?

These are questions which have a variety of answers because we are a variety of people with a variety of opinions that aren’t always going to jive. But I know that I am not the only one who is completely done with being driven into this wilderness of domestic terrorism. I know that I am not the only one who doesn’t want to have to name the victims of such acts of terrorism that are now so common in our schools, our churches, our movie theatres, our places that are supposed to be safe but now aren’t.

When Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine high school on April 20, 1999, I was 15 years old. A few weeks later, the entire student body of Grosse Pointe North High School evacuated to the football field because of a bomb threat that turned out to be fake. Even at 15, we all joked that if someone wanted to really do damage to a student body, they would call in a bomb threat, wait until everyone was locked into the football field bleachers, then open fire. Little did we know that we were entering into an age where school shootings would become the norm, where parents have spent the last 19 plus years wondering how to convince their children that they are safe in school, where communities have spent the last 19 plus years picking up the pieces of tragedies that should have never been committed – some of which could have been stopped – being retraumatized each time another individual opens fire.

The temptations that arise when act of domestic terrorism are carried out, I have observed, are to go to our corners prepared to fight.

It is about guns – one faction says

It is about mental health – says another

It was bad parenting – says yet another

But here is one thing that I hope that we can all agree on – we shouldn’t have to live like this. We shouldn’t have to live in a nation in which this cycle of violence is inevitable because we refuse to change…because we refuse to repent…because we refuse to cast off fear and, instead, run out and buy more firearms because the growing arsenal makes us feel more secure.

In my old testament classes in seminary, we learned that, in the Jewish tradition, Satan is someone whose job it was to push our short comings in our face as a means of trying to convince us to turn away to other gods. Gods that are easier to serve. Gods that don’t require sacrifice and don’t inconvenience us so that we can become better than we already are. These are gods that look and act and think like us, they even hate the same people we hate for the same reasons.

And as we sit in this wilderness, we are being tempted yet again. We are being tempted to let fear drive us, we are being tempted to fear our neighbors, tempted to fear those who look different from us, tempted to proclaim that our God has somehow allowed us to draw the boundary lines of where God can roam – turning God into a vengeful puppet master who uses the deaths of innocents to teach us a lesson.

Beloved, we have a choice – to, as a collective, be afraid, or, as a collective people, to repent. To repent of those ways in which we have looked away from Jesus and the God of Abraham and to more convenient gods – the gods of fear, the gods of wealth, the gods of personal security. These are gods that turn us in on ourselves and make us think that we are, in fact, that only gods that we need. They convince us that we are the ones in control, that drive us into isolation, that tell us that we are the ones who are right and those who disagree with us are the enemy. But we cannot afford to live in fear any longer. We cannot afford to continue to live like this. We cannot afford to let Satan continually tempt us away from our God and to gods that claim to protect us from bullets with bullets of our own. We need to ask ourselves, individually and as a nation, what is more important to us – constitutional amendments or the lives and wellbeing of our neighbors, specifically the lives and wellbeing of our children?

I don’t want to know any answers, I pose this question because I think we need to wrestle, as a collective whole, if we are truly going to be able to more forward together into a better and more peaceful and understanding future.

However, until we – as a collective- make changes to bring about a more peaceful and understanding future, I don’t think that there is anything that we can tell our children that will make them feel safer going to school. Telling them God will protect them is bad theology because that leaves us with the question of why God didn’t protect the 400 children and teachers who have been killed in school shootings since Sandy Hook? And these are not helpful questions to ask.

But what we can tell them, with certainty, is that God walks with them, from the mountains to the wilderness, from the rivers to the desert, and that God is present with them each and everyday of their lives. God was present in Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School on Wednesday, not in the shooter or the weapon used, but rather in the staff and teachers whose quick thinking and sacrifice saved lives, in the first responders who arrived on scene with great speed, God wrapped his arms around the victims and God weeps with that community, weeps with this nation. We learn from the scriptures that God never abandons us, that God goes even where we think God is not, and that no human being can put a boundary around where God can go, not even Satan can do that. What we can do is to work together to do our best to make sure that what happened at Columbine and Sandy Hook and Parkland become an anomaly at worst.

This is the essence of what John the Baptist proclaimed and what Jesus proclaimed in his ministry – repentance. It’s not just about feeling remorse when you have done something you shouldn’t. It literally means to turn around, to step away from the things that caused us to sin so that we can more faithfully walk in the footsteps of Christ. It isn’t something that happens overnight, it takes time, takes discomfort and, in some cases, it can be painful. But we have the freedom to take the bold step towards repentance because we serve a God who defeated the devil’s ability to rob eternal life from us through the death and resurrection of Christ. And so we can boldly embrace Christ’s call to repent, to allow the sinful parts of us to die so that, having repented we can look forward to a more vibrant future, believing in the good news that God is love that God will not abandon us.

Jesus' first act - According to Mark

Epiphany 4

January 28, 2018

Mark 1:21-28

The best books are the ones that let you know what they are all about right off the bat. Regardless of the genre, it is more engaging to know the premise right away, even if the details come later. This gives the reader a sense of purpose as to why they should keep reading. The writers of the gospels seek to do this as well. Each one of them begins with a premise that is intended to hook the reader in, to clue them into what they are trying to communicate about God and Jesus right off the bat. John begins by proclaiming light and abundance that come from Jesus, Matthew seeks to tie in Jesus role as it pertains to the history of Israel and Jesus’ status as a teacher, Luke goes to far as to pen his thesis in the first verses of his Gospel – with the intention that Theophilus, would come to know the person of Jesus, the one through whom God turns the world upside down. And Mark, Mark immediately shows us a Jesus that breaks down the barriers that separate us from God and us from each other – Beginning when God tears open the heavens and the holy spirit descends upon Jesus in the form of a dove at his baptism.

This morning, then, we see Jesus perform the first act of his ministry. In the synagogue. On the sabbath. As he is teaching, a man with an unclean spirit approaches, recognizing Jesus for exactly who he is, the Holy one of God, and cries out “what have you to do with us? Have you come to destroy us?”

I’m actually a bit surprised that this man was able to get into the synagogue to see Jesus. In Jesus’ time, those with unclean spirits were cast out of their communities, we see later in the gospel that they went so far as to chain a man known as the Gerasene demoniac in a graveyard because of the danger he posed to himself and to the community. So for a person with an unclean spirit to be present in the synagogue was unusual.

But Jesus, upon seeing him, rebukes the spirit and orders it to leave the man.

And the man who entered the synagogue as an unclean and outcast, has not only been rid of the spirit possessing him, he has also been restored to his family, his friends, and his community. In other words, Jesus has given him his life back. This is the first act of Jesus’ ministry – giving this man back his life – which shows us, in a very powerful and visceral way, that Jesus isn’t just interested in saving people for the next life, Jesus wants abundant life for us in the here and now and he will stand in the way of anything which seeks to rob us of that abundance.

So what does an unclean spirit look like today?

If we take a look at the scriptures, what we find is that an unclean spirit is that which stand in the way of our ability to live into the abundance of God’s love for us. This may seem like a strange venture away from the witness of our Gospel this morning. But the reality of the situation is that, in our modern and scientific times, we are faced with the temptation to want to diagnose away these unclean spirits so that we can better understand them. But if you look at the entirety of the scriptures, we find, time and time again, that unclean spirits often take the form of the temptations of this world that try to convince us that there is a better, easier way of living than following in the teaching and commands of God.

These are ways of living that cause us to see our neighbors not as God sees them, but as the world sees them. They are no longer neighbors from whom we differ and with whom we may disagree, they are enemies from whom we must be kept safe.

We saw an example of this last weekend. For those few days that the government was shutdown, it was interesting to note that politicians on both sides of the aisle spent more time laying blame on those republicans, and those democrats, than they did explaining how they were going to come together to find a solution.

From a broader perspective, we throw around words like Illegals, thugs, burnouts, moochers, dead beats, snowflakes, all the way to words that should never be uttered aloud - to describe groups of people who we don’t like or whose existence makes us uncomfortable. And when we label our neighbors as such, the participate in the act of dehumanizing one another.

And beyond the ways that we drag each other down and label one another, there are systems that are in place in this world that keep folks from being able to live in the abundance promised by God. Systems of poverty that are cyclical, unemployment, insurance systems that leave people in tremendous amounts of debt, cycles of addiction, systems that promote abuse and harassment, idolatry that looks to the gods of wealth and security rather that to the God who desires wholeness and peace for each and every person created in the image of God, which just happens to be everyone who has ever or will walk this planet.

Beloved, according to the Gospel of Mark, the work that Jesus came to do was to tear open the heavens and come down to us so that we could be freed from those things which seek to rob us of the abundant life that God wishes for us. The work that Jesus came to do was unleash the presence of God in the world so that, through Jesus, we would know that God stands against all those things which seek to rob us of our life and the abundance of it. And in our baptism, we were joined to Jesus in his death and resurrection and thus freed from the bondage of sin and death so that, in the next life we would have life abundant and eternal with him.

But that also means that we are freed in Jesus, through the waters of baptism to boldly proclaim Christ and his death and resurrection to those places where unclean spirits live. And we have been called by virtue of our baptism to first – open our eyes to see the world as God sees it, and second – to go into the places where the world has been broken by unclean spirits so that Jesus may work through us to cast those spirits out and bring an abundance of life.

We have been called to be imitators of Jesus, seeking a world in which those who have been cast out and ostracized can be welcomed back to the table, a world in which young girls can go to the doctor and know they will be safe; where women and men can go about their day with the confidence that they will not be harassed or abused; a world in which our children can go to school without the fear of gun violence. We are to seek a world in which the systems of racism, poverty, and oppression, in all its forms, are eradicated and where, instead of the doomsday clock moving closer and closer to midnight, we can actually reverse the clock and, with it, our fears of a nuclear holocaust.  

My friends, our nation is sick. Our world is a mess which has been broken by our sinful and self-serving natures. However, it is to the sick and broken places that God sent Jesus to tear open the heavens and come down in order to break down the barriers that separate us from God, those things which seek to rob us of the abundance God wishes for us, so that, in gratitude for our freedom from sin and death won for us by Jesus, we might boldly seek ways in which we and our neighbors may live free and abundant lives here and now, basking in the love of God most powerfully made known to us in the person and work of Jesus.

So, as far as books go, I think Mark is off to a compelling start. Amen.

Seeing across the chasm

Pentecost 19

September 25, 2016

Luke 16:19-31

The chasm that separated the Rich Man and Lazarus didn’t just appear in the afterlife. It had been there all along. It had been created when the rich man hired Lazarus to be his servant. You see, the rich man was a man who wanted others to know that he was rich. He wore purple fabrics every day to show those in the community that he could afford to own clothing made from rare dyes. He had fancy banquets held on a daily basis so that those around him knew that he could afford fine foods. In other words, the rich man wanted others to know, without a doubt, that he was better than them, that if he wanted something, it would be his.

When he hired Lazarus, the rich man made it clear from the get go that he would never hold Lazarus in high esteem because he was part of the hired help. After all, Lazarus needed a job at the time that the rich man was hiring, and therefore, Lazarus wasn’t rich, he couldn’t afford the purple clothes and fine foods that the rich man could. So why would the rich man want to bother with him other than as a member of his staff.

When Lazarus became ill and began developing sores, he was fired by the rich man. After all, the rich man could not be seen with a leper on staff. Lazarus had no home, no family to speak of, and no money to pay for medical attention, and no energy left to move when the other servants laid Lazarus outside the gate of the rich man, whispering ‘we are so sorry,’ but knowing that if they did more than that, they, too would be out of work and on the street. To the rich man, Lazarus meant nothing. Was worth nothing. And each day that the rich man passed by Lazarus as he exited and entered his home, the chasm grew wider until it became fixed when Lazarus and then the rich man, died.  

One of the interesting things about parables is that they give us glimpses of the kingdom of God and of God’s own self, a God who is constantly surprising and often shocking in the way that God shows compassion and concern even, and especially for those whom we would rather not show compassion or concern for ourselves. If you go back to the time in which Luke’s version of the story of Jesus was written, there were no chapters and verses like we have in our bibles today. Those were added in about 300 years later to make it easier for monks to copy manuscripts of the bible. So what we have in the non chapter and versed version, the original version, are three stories in a row about people and relationships, relationships with each other and relationships with money.

Having an intimate relationship with money, we learn from the parables, often creates a strained relationship with the people around us. And I am not talking about taking care of your money and making sure you are making good sound investments with your money, or using your money as a tool to support yourself and your family, and it is worth noting that Jesus doesn’t scold folks for having wealth…what he does do, however, is to challenge us so that our relationship with our money and our possessions doesn’t get to the point that the things and the financial resources that we have begin to possess us and take the place of the relationships that we have with other people. As Paul wrote in our second reading this morning, “the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.”

The rich man had a love of money, a love of purple fabrics, and fine foods, and he wanted everyone to know it. It was that love of money which was at the root of the chasm between him and Lazarus, a chasm which grew larger and larger and was maintained even in the afterlife, where the rich man still viewed Lazarus as lower than him.

I realize that I am starting to sound like a broken record, but there are some pretty large chasms in our world and, particularly in this country. And not all of them have to do with money. But all of them do have to do with how we see each other.

Chasms between those on the political left and those on the political right.

Chasms between the very rich and the very poor.

Chasms between citizens and immigrants and refugees.

Chasms between white supremacists and people of color.

Chasms between the African American community and police.

The list goes on. And it is troubling.

A week and a half ago, a group of white supremacists showed up at Bethany College in Lindsborg, KS, an ELCA Lutheran college, and made threats against the students of color that attended Bethany, and against the adopted children of the president of Bethany, rallying under the banner “Make Lindsborg white again.” A few days later, Terence Crutcher was shot and killed by a police officer after his car broke down in North Tulsa. A few days after that Keith Scott was shot and killed in Charlotte. A few days after that, the KKK showed up on the campus of Eastern Michigan University with their hate filled graffiti. In the midst of all this, one of the best police officers that the city of Detroit has employed in recent history, died as a result of the complication of gunshot wound that he received while on duty. Captain Steil and his co-workers in the 9^th precinct of the city of Detroit were responsible for the dramatic decrease in gun violence in that community and he was well respected by his fellow officers as well as the people who he served.

We have a problem, friends, we have a sin problem which is causing these chasms between us. When unarmed and innocent black men die at the hands of police, we have a problem.

When police officers do not return home to their families because they have been wounded or killed, we have a problem.

When hate groups show up in our back yard or on the steps of our colleges, we have a problem… and if we say nothing, we have an even bigger problem.  

Our problem is that fear has become so woven into our ways of thinking that we don’t see each other fully any more. I think that is a major part of our sin problem. Fear. As the wise Yoda once said “fear turns to anger, anger turns to hate, hate leads to suffering.”

But it doesn’t have to be this way, my beloved friends.

Because the other great thing about parables is that the ones with not so great endings are the ones that give us the power to change the ending. Because as much as parables give us glimpses into the kingdom of God, they help us to realize that the kingdom of God is not just present in the next life, but it is present here, and now.

So we take on the role of the rich man’s brothers. For, unlike the rich man, we can change how this ends. We can choose to listen to Moses and the prophets who warn us about trampling the poor and worrying more about our bed sheets than we do the suffering of others. We can choose to listen to the laws which give clear instructions that gleanings of the harvest are to be left for the poor (Lev 23:22), and proverbs that say that if we mistreat the poor, we insult the creator (prov 14:31). We can choose to listen to the one who told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, to said lepers’ lives matter, Samaritan lives matter, children’s lives matter,

who forgave the ones who nailed him to a cross, both literally and figuratively,

and who died and was raised from the dead so that we could get a chance to make things right,

to see each other more fully,

to do what we can to close the chasms between us, so that we can love each other the way that Jesus loved us and, in doing so, we can help bring justice and peace to all the earth.

On Being Faithful with What Belongs to Another, or, #NoDAPL

Pentecost 18

September 18, 2016

Luke 16:1-13

In the late 1400’s, with the blessing of the Pope, European monarchies began a conquest of the lands on the western side of the Atlantic Ocean under what became known as the Doctrine of Discovery. It was this doctrine that gave European explorers the right to claim lands which they had “discovered” but were not inhabited by Christians. As Portuguese, Spanish, French, and British explorers arrived in the lands that we now know as North, Central, and South America, they claimed those lands for the crowns that they represented, ignoring the fact that those lands were already inhabited by tribes who each had their own unique languages and cultures. In search of gold and silver and any other materials which could enrich the wealth of the explorers and the monarchs that they represented, some native tribes were killed off, others were enslaved, and still others were taken from their homes and back to Europe where they could be taught to become civilized people.

In 1792, Thomas Jefferson extended the doctrine of discovery to the newly formed United States of America and what ensued in the coming decades and centuries was a systematic oppression of Native Americans. Their sovereignty over the land they inhabited was stripped from them, many were forced from their lands completely as reservations were set up throughout the Midwest. Germ warfare was used against the native peoples to wipe out tribes, and boarding schools were set up throughout this country with the intention of “killing the Indian, saving the man.” The majority of these boarding schools were not shut down until the 1980’s and 1990’s (though a couple still exist), resulting in the loss of a rich culture and heritage of the Native peoples of this land.

But we considered them savages. We considered them to be less than human and thus it was seen that we were doing them a favor by teaching them our ways, our language, and our religions.

A few weeks ago, construction began on the Dakota Access Pipe Line in South Dakota, a pipe line which disturbed the ancient burial ground of the Standing Rock Sioux, a tribe which has slowly seen the size of their land diminished as a result of the American Government violating treaties with the Sioux tribe as a whole. Were the pipe line to be proposed to disturb Arlington National Cemetery or even our own local cemeteries, we would be appalled. But there seems to be something about this pipeline which has caused a much more subdued response from a good majority of the nation.  

As people who live 1 mile from the Pottawatomie ancient burial grounds and who sit on the ground of the former Macon Reservation, we would do well to consider the history of these lands that we inhabit and the culture of the people who retreated from this land in order to escape persecution at the hands of those who considered them to be savages and, therefore, not worthy to have free claim to the lands where they had lived for so long.

It is easier to look at folks different from us as less than human, or at least lesser than us, and therefore place ourselves in a seat of judgment over what they do and do not deserve, than it is to look in the eyes of our neighbors and see them as fully children of God deserving of the same shakes and the same opportunities that we are deserving of. If there is no other lesson that should be taken from the protests of the Standing Rock Sioux and this election cycle, it should be that.

It is easier for me to look at a stranger who supports a different political candidate than I do and to silently call them an unflattering name than it is for me to look in the eyes of my brother, who supports a different political candidate than I do and do the same thing. It is easier for me to read a whitewashed history of the treatment of the Native peoples and Africans who were brought to this country for the purpose of the slave trade, than it is for me to read actual accounts of what happened, to listen to the experiences of my siblings who are Native American, Latino, and African American, who have experienced racism. It is easier for me to look at a homeless person and judge them by what they wear or buy at the grocery store or the phone that they use than it is for me to be in relationship with them and learn that they are working 2 minimum wage jobs, their jeans were donated, their phone was purchased by a friend, and that they saved up for 6 months to purchase something special for their child for their birthday.

This is one of the basic sins of humanity. We fall victim to the idol which is called Mammon, an idol which is comprised of the money and possessions that we have that are in excess of what we need to support ourselves and our families. The idol Mammon tells us that we are never going to have everything that we need in order to be happy. When we believe this lie, we begin to believe that because others do not have what we have, it is because they are undeserving for one reason or another.

It’s nothing new, we hear about it in our reading from Amos and in our Gospel lesson. The reading from Amos issues a warning for those who would exploit the poor and needy for their own gain, for those who would, for example raise the price of a life saving medication and give themselves a 16 million dollar raise. “Surely I will never forget any of their deeds,” says the Lord.

Then we have our Gospel text which is, admittedly, complicated. What we don’t know that Jesus’ first hearers would have, is that the rich masters of the region and their managers all got rich on the backs of the poor. They would charge so much interest on the goods that the peasants owed them that, often times, the people would be forced to make the decision to either surrender their property to the master or to sell their children into slavery so that their debts could be settled. Think of it as the ancient form of the payday loan, in which the average interest rate charged is 400%. These rich masters were participating in a scheme in which they were systematically forcing folks off of land which their families had been passing down from generation to generation.

This parable could be the source of at least a half dozen sermons, depending on which way you want to go with it. But what sticks out for me this time around, in the context of the protest of the Dakota Access Pipe Line, in the context of this election cycle, and in the context of the nature of a sin in which it is easier to tear someone down and judge them as undeserving than it is to acknowledge that all people are children of God and all people are deserving of the same opportunities as everyone else…

…what sticks out is verse 12. “And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?”

Neither the manager nor his master were faithful with what belonged to the people in their village. It just so happened that the manager also knew how to be unfaithful with what his master had entrusted him with. But what if they had been faithful to what belonged to the people of their village? What if their wealth wasn’t amassed on the backs of the poor?

And for us, then, how does this translate?

The 9^th and 10^th commandments and Luther’s explanation to them make it clear that we are to do everything in our power to support our neighbors to help them to maintain what is theirs, that we are to not attempt to trick them out of what is their own so that it can become ours, that we are to see our neighbors as children of God and respect that the things that are theirs come from God just as the things that are ours come from God. For God is generous, God gives good things to us even when we do not deserve them. In fact, the myth of the self-made man or woman is a myth purely and simply because everything that we are and everything that we have comes from God.

When God sent Jesus into the world, it wasn’t just for a select group of people, it was for all of humanity. Because God IS generous, because God is merciful and gracious, because God created us to be echoes of God’s mercy and grace and faithfulness for the entire world. Don’t believe the lies that mammon tells. Make mammon serve you so that you may be faithful and generous with what has been entrusted to you.   

Finding a New Normal

Death and I know each other quite well.  We have met on many occasions in my short life and, in the past few years, we have finally come to an understanding.  At least I think we have.  I know that death is never an easy thing, regardless of the length and quality of a life lived.  Death knows that I am not afraid of him.  I don't like death, but I've interacted with death enough to know that it shouldn't be scary.

There's a tricky side to death, though, in that death changes a lot more lives than we think.  Death doesn't just come for the person who is dying, death also comes for their family and for their friends and issues a challenge - find a new normal and keep living, or be consumed by me.  

Finding a new normal isn't easy.  It means doing the difficult work of casting off the sackcloth and ashes and stepping out into the daylight having found a way of honoring grief that helps you keep going each day.  It means that, when the cycle of grief does come around again, we can greet it with the attention and honor it deserves, and then move on with our day or week or month or year (let's be honest, sometimes grief needs to be honored for more than a moment).  It also means carrying a spirit around with you that isn't physically present in this life, a spirit that can often cause us to wonder what would have been if that loved one had not died.  

I wondered, a couple weeks ago, what our life would be like if I hadn't miscarried...would we have chosen to find out the sex of the baby?  would we have finally selected names by now?  what would his/her nursery look like at this moment?  how would we be preparing Ellie to be a big sister?  

Part of the pain surrounding pregnancy loss is that parents can only wonder what could have been.  Our lives and the lives of the children we lost only intersected in this life for a little while, and often in a way that doesn't cause too much disruption in our day to day lives. But they intersected for long enough that hopes and dreams for that child and his/her life had already been formed.  And in death, hopes were dashed and dreams were crushed. Yet, we must still keep on living. Things went back to normal after our miscarriage.  But at the same time, they didn't.  Chris and I found ourselves trying to maneuver into a new normal in which we could honor our grief while continuing to navigate parenting in the midst of toddlerhood.  Like a dear friend said about the loss of his son "I have come to peace with his loss, and life goes on, but I wish he were here."   

As we walk through life,  it is full of new normals, be they a new job, a new life entering the family, a new house, a new routine after a job has been lost or a medical diagnosis has been made, and those new normals shape who we are.  Death is the most permanent of changes that causes a new normal to be necessary.  But we know that it is possible to find life in the midst of death.  That in the midst of death new normals that allow us to not just live, but thrive, are possible.  We know this because we have seen it happen.  Because we have lived it for ourselves.  As a Christian, I know it can be done because I have heard the promises of scripture.  I have heard the scriptural witness of the disciples trying to find a new normal after Christ's death only to find Christ living within that new normal.  I have heard the witness of the of the resurrection and have seen it for myself in little miracles and in big ones, and I believe that the promises of the resurrection are there for you and for me.  

The Ten Commandments, another chapter in God's playbook

Pentecost 17

October 5, 2014

Exodus 20:1-17

Pop Quiz friends!!

Let’s check your knowledge of the Ten Commandments.

1)      Who can name all Ten Commandments in order? (put your bulletins down)

2)      Bonus question – how many versions of the Ten Commandments are there?

a.       3 – Jewish (combines the covet commandments, 1^st commandment is “I am the lord your God who brought you out of the hand of Egypt. 2^nd commandment “you shall have no other gods, no graven images”)

                                                              i.      Roman Catholic and Lutheran and same

                                                            ii.      Reformed (combines covet commandments, 2^nd commandment is graven image)

Congratulations, you “passed” the test. 

Now, before we move on to speak a bit about the commandments, we need to do a bit of catching up on what has happened since the Israelites have arrived at Sinai.  After their arrival at Mount Sinai, God spoke to Moses from the cloud that encompassed the mountain and gave him instructions on what to tell the people before Moses went up the mountain to receive the commandments.  Moses is told that only he and his brother, Aaron, were to go up to the top of the mountain.  If anyone dared to follow him or eavesdrop on their conversation, things would end badly.  The other important thing that occurred when the people reached Mount Sinai is that God consecrated the people, making them a holy people.  God did this as part of entering into a covenant with the people.  But this covenant was not like the one that God had made with Abraham, which placed no conditions that would rely on Abraham’s faithfulness.  Instead, this covenant was dependent on the people listening to God’s voice and keeping up their end of the covenant.  In other words, whereas Abraham couldn’t mess things up, the Israelites could…or, looking at it from another angle, the covenant God entered into with Abraham was focused on the faithfulness of God.  This covenant is focused upon the faithfulness of the people.   

Ok, so there’s that.

What about these commandments in and of themselves.  Surely I could preach a fire and brimstone sermon about the importance of the Ten Commandments and how our world is heading down a path in which the commandments are more and more forgotten.  Certainly it would fit in with what we see in the news and on television.  Murders happening each day, more and more parts of the world entering into the war against Isis, tales of adultery in our newspapers and throughout daytime soaps and prime time dramas, contests teaching folks to cheat each other out of something that someone else has (which is the true definition of covet…to desire something so bad, you are willing to go any lengths to get it), and very few instances in our television landscape of folks going to church on Sunday morning. And, as we near ever closer to election day, we see God being used over and over as a political ploy to get the public on your side.  As if saying “God bless America” enough times will ensure that that senate seat is yours.  But I think, as much as it is appropriate to our times, on some level that would be missing the point. 

It is true that God gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments as a way of helping them to live well with one another, which was probably becoming increasingly difficult as they wandered the desert.  It’s like on the first day of football practice when the players sit down with the coach for the first times, some rookies and some veterans and the coach says, ok, if we are going to be successful this season, these are the ground rules.  And like with the ground rules put in place for a football team, these Ten Commandments aren’t just rules, they also help to form an identity.  The identity of the Michigan football team is different than the identity of the Michigan State football team, and not because of win-loss records for the season…but because Brady Hoke and Mark Dantonio do things differently...their ground rules are different, their play books are different.

And so we have, with the giving of the Ten Commandments, the continuation of God’s play book…only this time, we are seeing not what God is promising to provide for the Israelites, what they can expect from God, but rather what God expects in return.  And God set the bar pretty high.  I can almost guarantee that before the day is out, just about all of us will have broken at least one commandment. Maybe you have already broken one this morning.  Maybe you will break one watching the Lions or Tigers games this afternoon. 

But I will argue that the easiest one to break is the one that, in theory, is the easiest to keep.  And that is the first commandment.  You shall have no other Gods. 

“But pastor, that is why we are here” we say.  “But Jen, that is why you serve the church,” I said to myself last night.  And that is true. We are in church this morning to worship God.  To live into the identity we have been given as God’s children. But do our hearts cling firmly to this identity or do we let other things get in the way? Here is what Martin Luther had to say in the Large Catechism, a volume written to help clergy instruct their congregations. 

“Many a one thinks that he has God and everything in abundance when he has money and possessions; he trusts in them and boasts of them with such firmness and assurance as to care for no one. Lo, such a man also has a god, Mammon by name, i.e., money and possessions, on which he sets all his heart, and which is also the most common idol on earth. He who has money and possessions feels secure, and is joyful and undismayed as though he were sitting in the midst of Paradise. On the other hand, he who has none doubts and is despondent, as though he knew of no God. For very few are to be found who are of good cheer, and who neither mourn nor complain if they have not Mammon. This [care and desire for money] sticks and clings to our nature, even to the grave.

So, too, whoever trusts and boasts that he possesses great skill, prudence, power, favor friendship, and honor has also a god, but not this true and only God. This appears again when you notice how presumptuous, secure, and proud people are because of such possessions, and how despondent when they no longer exist or are withdrawn. Therefore I repeat that the chief explanation of this point is that to have a god is to have something in which the heart entirely trusts”

It is so easy to fall into a way of living in which other gods have taken ahold of our attention…gods that are easier to please because they require so much less of us.  But the thing is, if we can keep this one commandment, the rest all fall into place.  When we put all of our trust and confidence in God, when we place God firmly in our hearts, when we put God above everything else, our lives are changed in such a way that is visible to our neighbors because when our lives are changed by God’s love, we reflect that love to the world.  It doesn’t matter how much money we have, what car we drive, what clothes we wear, but that we live lives that show radical love to our neighbor while not being afraid to take the time to make sure that we stay healthy in order to keep on loving.  So as we go out into the world this week, go knowing that to keep the first commandment means this – to hold God firmly in our hearts, to trust that he will provide for all of our needs, even if that means some of our prayers receive a no response, and to live into the reality that God’s love is life changing.

Healthy living check-in

I got two notifications on facebook that my cousins had liked a blog post I wrote this past winter/spring in the midst of the grossness that was that this winter/spring were.  

I'm glad they did because they reminded me that I am really bad at this blogging thing.  But I know that it's a good way to hold myself accountable for keeping up with healthy living.  So here's an update.  

On September 12, my new primary care physician (nice guy, good doctor) and I had a chat about BMI.  

Sidebar: I hate the BMI because it doesn't take into account the fact that different people have different body types.  That's not trying to make excuses, it just is.  

I digress.  During the BMI conversation, the doc mentioned that despite my amazing BP and all the other good and healthy stats and blood work, my BMI is in the obese range.  I suddenly had the motivation I needed to get moving.  

And so, on September 15, 2014, I began the mommy edition of what I like to call "operation fabulous."  It sounds silly, but that name helps me stay motivated.  Here's how it works - by giving this "project" a name, I am committing myself to taking better care of myself.  I have been more committed to my appearance in the short term, my health in the long term.  So, I take an extra 5-10 minutes a day to make sure my complexion looks better.  I have been tracking relentlessly what I eat, for better or worse.  I have been walking.  I signed myself up for a 5k, which I will be walking.  I plan to sign myself up for another 5k, which I plan to run (anyone want to do the paczki run with me??? I'm told that there will be paczkis and beer at the finish line).  I put the scale away so I can focus on how I feel and not fall into the trap of defining myself with a number.  

I accomplished a lot in the last 2-ish weeks.  I walked 30 miles.  30.  I'm very proud of that.  I've also tracked my eating for over 30 days straight.  For me, that is an accomplishment in and of itself.  

My goal for October is to walk 60 miles and get to a 16 min/mile split time so that, come thanksgiving, I can have my eyes set on a 15 min/mile.   Let's do it!!