Living word by word

snakes. . . .why did it have to be snakes?: lectionary Lent4B

 The lectionary presents some tough choices this week. Either pick one of two overly familiar texts -- John 3:16 or Ephesians  -- or preach the strange tale of a snake on a pole in Numbers.

I'm going with the snakes, if for no other reason than they evoke real emotion in people. I sent out a message to the congregation asking if anyone owns a pet snake, and if such a person might be able to bring it on Sunday. Within an hour three people replied voicing complete horror at the idea. 

I don't like them either. Make my skin crawl. I think there may be a gene missing in people who aren't creeped out by them.

Snake trivia: what makes snakes different from lizards? There are, in fact, some lizards without legs. The difference is two other things snakes lack: ears and eyelids. They do not hear (just get vibrations from the ground) and cannot blink. Eeeewwww.

And yet, God uses a snake to heal in Numbers, and John uses that pole-with-a-snake as a parallel of Christ lifted up.

The cross is pretty icky too, to put it mildly. How on earth could anything good come of that?

 Apparently, God can use just about anything. Even the creepiest thing on earth. Even the most rotten way human beings treat one another. I don't have to like it. But perhaps it means even the most reptilian brained part of me -- my fears, my self-protection, my laziness -- can also be redeemed.

terminal uniqueness

My dear husband and I work in fields that look completely different. I'm a parish pastor. He consults with federal, state and local governments at the intersection of sustainable land use, transportation, and climate change.  My job is about as local as it gets. He racks up frequent flier miles. My job is ancient, his didn't exist as a profession fifty years ago.  People immediately know what I do when I wear my collar. If you really want to understand his job, you need to watch a PowerPoint presentation.

But the differences end there. We both try to facilitate long-term, sustainable community growth. We both spend lots of time on the phone. And we both encounter some of the same intractable dynamics, known as human nature.

One of our pet peeves is what the recovery community has aptly coined "terminal uniqueness." You see it when someone argues hard that they don't have a problem, even when every external measure says they do.

"Other people might fall into addiction drinking this much, but I can handle it."

"Other churches might be facing hardship if they continue to age without focusing on growth, but ours won't, because we're so unusual." 

 "Other communities might be facing long-term environmental issues if they continue to grow this way, but ours won't."

Oddly enough, the pattern continues even when people DO acknowledge that they have a problem. In fact, it's often even worse then.

 "Other people might need medication to get out of this hole of depression, but I don't."

"Other families might benefit from therapy, but our problems are so unique we won't find a solution there."

 "Other towns might benefit from learning some basic principles for sustainable growth, but our situation is so unique, that won't work here."

Ironically, the insistence on being "special" is often the very thing that spells doom -- because one codependent family is oddly very much like another, and one town that is sprawling with mindless car-dependent growth is going to end up looking like every other town with mindless sprawl.  The very things that make individuals, families, and local communities unique are lost when they refuse to learn from the experience of other individuals, families, and communities.

dirty fingernails

     Every year after Ash Wednesday, it takes a while for me to clean out the ashes completely from under my fingernails. I don't know if other ministers have this problem, but like most ministerial burdens, this one is also a blessing.

  In a middle-class church like mine, it can seem as if most of us have things together. People don't particularly dress up at our church, but we put on our game faces and generally appear happy when we show up. Sure, there are some public struggles -- deaths, battles with cancer and the occasional divorce, but mostly the wounds are hidden. Only those of us who receive pastoral confidences can look out at a congregation and see a multitude of sins and struggles. Those stories, and the grief and loss they represent, cling to us like this mix of oil and ashes, easy to spread and hard to remove. Once a year we have the grace to say it out loud and make it visible for all to see.

  It can be easy to turn Lent into a sort of New Year's Resolution time, and make ourselves as pastors into personal trainers. But I believe we begin the season with these ashes to remind ourselves that our disciplines, no matter how "successful," do not change our essence. We are all made out of the same mortal stuff. Done well, our feeble efforts to pray, fast and serve the poor only remind us again of our weakness. We are dust, but that dust is mixed with the oil of royalty because God has chosen to enter it. Our mortality is formed in the shape of a cross, blessed and broken open for the sake of others.

I will scrub out the ashes from under my nails, but it's good to be reminded of their persistence.

Ashes coming. . .

 Every year my birthday (2/24) falls somewhere near the beginning of Lent. I call it a good year when it falls before Ash Wednesday, and this year is a particularly good year, since it coincides with Mardi Gras!!

Then again, I'll have only one day to celebrate a journey around the sun before we're called to contemplate mortality, and this year the vulnerability of aging is striking especially hard. . .too many of my peers are dealing with chronic or life-threatening illness.

I love the fact that Ash Wednesday deals in a physical sign of this vulnerability though, because ashes are a prime reason many of us do not contemplate our bodies' temporality much these days. As cremation becomes more and more the standard, our society seems to "slough off" the bodies of our beloved dead all too quickly.  We will gather to 'celebrate life,' but not so much to be reminded that those eyes we knew so well are closed forever.

Thomas Lynch has written powerfully on this subject in several places, most recently in an essay in Best American Spiritual Writing 2008. He gives the vivid picture of a woman who comes to pick up her sister's ashes, because no one else will, and as he watches she goes out with the urn  to the trunk of her car, thinks better of it, then places it in the back seat, then reconsiders again, and finally places the ashes in the passenger seat, and buckles the seat belt around them.

"Just a shell," people say of the body of the deceased, but our actions sometimes speak otherwise. We know that this dust formed of the ground has not only been breathed into by God, but molded, shaped, and blessed by divine hands. They will return to dust, but in the mean time they are marked with a holy sign of God's ultimate love.

lenten dispensations, part two

On the subject of lenten dispensations, see the Ironic Catholic for a consideration of whether carob is allowed when you're giving up chocolate.

Lent 5A

    Because I split preaching pretty much evenly with my colleague here at ECLC, I often don't repeat the same texts every three years. But for some reason every time the Lazarus story has come around here, it's been my turn to preach, it seems. And so it is again this year.
    The sermon I won't be preaching, because I'm getting tired of it: Lazarus dies twice, and so do we. It's one of those sadly ironic pieces in John that no sooner has Lazarus been raised from the dead, people are ready to kill Jesus, and Lazarus again too. Of course, as far as we know Lazarus isn't killed off, but we have to assume that, at some point, he does die again.
    What would it be like to die twice? We have to hope that Lazarus' first experience with dying and being called again to new life would give him confidence as he faces his second death. He's done it once. He knows that's not the end of the story. He knows that Jesus will call him forth.
    And so it is for us. We are baptized into Jesus' death. We've already died once in those waters, so we can face our second death with more confidence. Yes, we will die, but we know that is not the end of the story. Christ will call us forth again.

speaking of being born again-- Lent 2A

    The Rake this month has an article about the Barna study in which self-professed "born again Christians" were found to have worldviews that  many of their fellow evangelicals deem insufficiently "biblical." So now James Dobson and friends are on a new campaign to bring these folks up to speed on what it really means to believe in Jesus.
    Isn't it ironic that Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus, which seems to be all about double meanings and highly metaphorical language for the mystery of God's love, is the origin of this litmus-test phrase for being a "real" Christian? Nicodemus doesn't get it with Jesus there in the room with him. Are we really surprised to find that contemporary Christians have vastly different takes on what the faith is all about?
    Maybe it's a cop out to avoid longer conversations, but when strangers ask me if I'm born again, I just say yes. My baptism is valid, thank you very much.

Lenten clearing

    I've decided, on the whole, not to blog much about my lenten disciplines this year, on the theory that Matthew 6 doesn't really endorse a lot of trumpeting when it comes to spiritual disciplines.

    I will share, however, that I'm excited about one prospect. Most recent years I've made an attempt during Lent to reduce my consumerism, buying not at all when I can and buying used when I must. Each year I've also thought, "I should call all these catalog companies and get off their lists too." But I haven't done it. Catalog Choice just made that a lot easier. And this year, there's even more motivation because we'll be leaving the country for a while, and who wants all that junk mail to return home to? Plus I'm phasing out the email account to which most of my junk mail has gone for the past couple years. I can't wait to just eliminate the account and say good-bye to all those reminders to buy! It feels great to clear the desk and the mind.

Lent 2A -- what is a gift anyway?

A couple weeks ago we heard David Rhoads of the Lutheran Seminary in Chicago "perform” the book of Galatians. It was enlivening to hear that familiar book with new ears, all at once, but what grabbed me most were his concluding remarks, in which he spoke about the power of the Gospel to free us. So often in the church we have defined the “problem” as guilt, a category that made sense, perhaps, to first-century Jews and our immigrant forebears. But increasingly our culture has lost a sense of guilt -- or pathologized it where it exists. Shame, on the other hand, is alive and well for people across the cultural and religious spectrum. And the Gospel, Paul makes clear, frees us from shame as well.

This came to mind reading the second lesson from Romans for this Sunday, where Paul in his later letter details how Abraham was reckoned as “righteous” through faith. This is a dense enough passage as it is – a daunting one to preach, especially since one has to exegete Genesis at the same time. But I'm considering it. In our Lutheran framework, the focus on being “righteous through faith” has so often turned faith into just another – if more vaguely defined – work. It wasn’t Abraham’s circumcision that saved him, the argument goes. It was that he believed God. For a modern person struggling with faith defined as believing the Creed, that’s not good news. It only leaves us feeling unable to spiritually measure up, not good enough – in other words, ashamed.

But what if this righteousness that God gives truly is something given? What if, as Paul writes, God “justifies the ungodly”? Not the believing, repentant ungodly, just the plain old, mixed-up, not even sure I want to believe ungodly?

If that is so, then we, like Abraham are living into a whole new reality, one that doesn’t fully exist yet, like the child and country still longed for. And living into that reality, created by God and held in God’s hands, is all the righteousness we need.

lengthen-ing Lent

I understand that this is the earliest Lent has begun in over 100 years, and it will not be this early again for another 150 years. Truly a once in a lifetime experience!

In Minnesota one is never sure whether signs of spring will coincide with Easter morning, but it is less likely this year.  We are just as likely to have snow Easter morning as warmth.

But one thing is certain. . .it will be lighter. It's 10 below this morning, but the days are growing brighter. May your lenten journey through the lengthening days lengthen your hope and stretch your vision as well.