Who's Your Daddy?

 

I gave the following message at the First Congregational Church, Rochester, WI, January 21, 2024

I’m going to talk about Abraham today and I’m going to start with the lyrics of a song, not a hymn, but a song Bob Dylan wrote in 1965....

God said to Abraham, kill me a son.

Abe said, man, you must be putting me on.

God said no. Abe said What?

God said you can to what you want to, but

Next time you see me coming, you better run.

Abe said, where to do you want this killing done?

God said out on Highway 61.

 

Okay, so I used this because it’s fun, but also to show not only how famous Abraham’s story is that even a not so good Jewish boy from Minnesota knew his Old Testament well enough to write a protest era rock song about Abraham. But also to show how easy it is to get stuff within the story wrong. Dylan got the killing part right, but he missed something important about God.  Anyway, Abe’s story starts a long time before the killing incident, so we’ll start with a brief review.

Abraham, one of the Old Testament patriarchs, is often said to be the biblical example of faith. Born almost 2000 years before Christ, Abraham did a lot of traveling under God’s direction, but didn’t start until he was already an old man. When he was 60, he left his home in Ur to go to Haran because God told him to “Leave your country and go to a land I will show you. I will make of you a great nation.” He didn’t know where he was going but he believed God, so he did it.  Fifteen years later, when Abe was 75, God sent Abraham to Canaan. God said, “I will give this land to you and your descendants” and this was harder to believe because Abraham and his wife, Sarah, had no children and he couldn’t figure out how, at their age, that was going to work. He didn’t understand, but Abraham still did it. A year later, after he took his family to Egypt to avoid a famine and returned to Canaan, God said again, “I will give this land to you and your descendants.” This time, Abraham spoke up. He asked God how in the world he was going to do that because he still had no children. By then, Abe’s wife Sarah thought God might need some human help, so when Abe was 76, Sarah told him to sleep with her handmaid and sure enough, Abraham had a son, Ishmael, but God was not distracted by that. Ishmael was not the promised son. Finally, 24 years later, when Abe was 100 years old, after they’d waited 40 years and Sarah was 90, she finally had a baby by Abraham – Isaac. Isaac was the promised child. Isaac would be the future of the Hebrew people. They were overjoyed. Their belief had been rewarded. Abraham, through Isaac, WOULD be the father of a great nation.

This is how Hebrews 11 summarizes the story: By faith ^qAbraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place ^rthat he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. 9 By faith he went to live in ^sthe land of promise, 10 For he was looking forward to ^vthe city that has ^wfoundations, ^xwhose designer and builder is God. 11 By faith ^ySarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered ^zhim faithful who had promised. 12 Therefore from one man, and ^ahim as good as dead, were born descendants ^bas many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.

So far, so good.

Then when his son Isaac was 33 years old and in the prime of his manhood, God told Abraham to kill him. After all the moving and waiting, God was asking Abe to do the one thing that would make all God’s promises impossible. He for sure didn’t want to do it. He loved his son. But he also wanted to obey God. It didn’t make sense to kill Isaac, but it hadn’t made sense for God to send him moving from place to place either and God had made all of that work out. Everything had happened so far exactly as God promised. So Abe would kill Isaac to obey God and God would after Isaac was dead, make him, through Isaac, the father of nations. He just didn’t know how God would do that. So Abe went, not to highway 61 but up to Mount Moriah, to do the deed. He took His son, and a rope, and tied him to an altar meant for sacrifices. And Abe raised the knife.

This is what we’re going to talk about today. We’re going to talk about what Abraham did and why he did it. We’re going to talk about how Abraham believed and who he believed in. And we’re going to talk about how it would look for us to have the same kind of faith.

 

The thing about faith is that it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. A person has faith in SOMETHING. Faith doesn’t exist apart from the object being believed in. In order to have faith at all, we have to have a clear picture of the thing believed. And then, because of what we believe, like Abraham, we DO something.

 

For Abraham, he believed God was his sovereign King and he acted like it. He listened and obeyed. He also believed God was trustworthy. God had promised the birth of Isaac against every common sense and delivered on his promise. God had also promised him that Isaac would be his inheritance and his gateway to a nation of descendants. Abe, standing on Mount Mariah with the knife in his hand, didn’t know how God was going to do build a nation from his descendants if he killed his only son, but he knew that somehow, God would do it, just like he’d done everything else.

 

Now we have to figure out who WE believe God is. Think about it a minute. Answer the question for yourself. Who is God? Complete the sentence - God is blank. Then fill in the blank.

 

How many of you thought God is Love? You’re not alone and there are lots of similar ways to express that love: faithful, good, kind, steadfast just.

the Bible agrees:

1 John 4:16 God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

Listen closely. That’s not only a definition, It’s an instruction. It tells us to do something. It tells us, that if we love, we must abide.

·      So, if God is love, we abide in Him. That means staying close. It means remembering God in everything we do. It’s making sure he has a chair at every table, a seat at every meeting. It’s whispering to him like pillow talk in prayer. It’s holding hands with him while we walk. It’s spooning with him in sleep. It’s staying so close to Him that he’s like an extension of ourselves and we couldn’t walk away even if we wanted to.

·      If God is love, we also expect and accept forgiveness for sins. Abraham never knew Jesus, but this kind of love was the reason Jesus was born and died. This love is God’s assurance that there’s nothing we can do, as long as we love Him, that’s irredeemable and even when it seems like we’re lost beyond God’s reach, we’re not. It’s having confidence that God never acts out of anger or revenge, regardless of how it looks from our point of view. This is what Dylan got wrong. God doesn’t threaten us with destruction if we go wrong. He forgives.

·       If God is love, we are loyal and forgiving not because a person earns it but because God is. We give the kind of love He gives. We treat everyone as equals because He created us all and we are equal. We look past our differences to our similarities. We act humbly and inclusively, not boasting or excluding anyone. Anyone. We’ve all heard about the tax collectors and prostitutes Jesus hung with. If God is love, we take care to recognize our own tax collectors, our own prostitute. They are there, waiting for us to love them. I was recently reminded that people who treat us badly often do it because they are afraid of being hurt themselves. We look past our prejudices by always ascribing a worthy motive to someone else rather than judging them. We think good of them, not ill. That’s what loving someone else as we love ourselves means.

God is a lot of other things, too: omniscient (all knowing), omnipotent (all powerful), eternal, sovereign (in charge of everything), and of course, holy, but the idea of transferring our understanding of who God is into action is the same for all of these cases. This is the kind of faith Abraham had. And, in a perfect world where we can do all of this, we would, too. However, what really happens can look quite different.

 Faith in action can be hard. It was for Abraham, too, because faith is more than knowing God exists. Understanding that God exists is a starting place waiting to be made into flesh and blood. Real faith is built in individual communion with God.

 

Like Abraham. He didn’t tell anybody what he was going to do when he took Isaac  to the mountain. He didn’t tell Isaac, or his wife, not anybody. Abe’s act was not a public one –It was a one on one interaction with God. He didn’t expect Isaac to survive. He expected him to die. Abe didn’t know what God would do after Isaac’s death, but knew He would do something.

 

Isaac was Abe’s whole world and future. He was the promise. In Abe’s willingness to kill him, Abe gave his everything to God. He resigned all his plans, all his future and that of his people into the unknown. Why? Because he believed. And because He believed, he trusted because if God is love, we also trust Him. We behave with confidence in whatever circumstances come, no matter how they look, remembering that God always – ALWAYS-has our best interests in mind. If the circumstances are hard, we know that the difficulty is good either for us or for someone else or both. If the circumstances appear to be evil, we remember that Jesus came to have victory over evil, so no evil can confound God’s plan. We don’t  worry about what we don’t have or what we want to happen or spend a lot of time trying to make things work out our way, but instead letting God arrange them his way.

 

The thing is, God doesn’t always, or even often, leave easily recognizable signposts saying “Here I am” and as a result, we spend a lot of time guessing, and sometimes getting it wrong. And that’s okay, because God is love, remember? It’s not about getting things right every time. It’s about wanting to. It’s about leaning into God all the time and looking for Him right there with us, because He is most likely to show up in places we least expect Him, like in a burning bush or on Mount Moriah, taking the knife out of our hand.

 

God, because He is unimaginable, lives in the place we can’t imagine and He reminds of this us every time He does something we didn’t think of or don’t want to happen. God lives in the unthinkable because He Himself is unthinkable. When He tells us not to fear, it’s not because nothing scary will ever happen. It’s because our plans are the only ones that will be upset. His will not.

 

But when our plans are upset, what happens? We worry. We’re afraid. We can’t sleep. When the unexpected comes, it takes us by surprise and confidence in God isn’t always our first response. So when it’s not, then there’s something in the adage Fake it Till You Make It. It works. Abraham did it. If we’re scared, behave as though we are not. If we irrationally worry, do what we should. We disarm our fears not by running the other way but by entering into them, grabbing them and shaking them until they reveal the damage they are doing. Making them show their real face. Does that take courage you don’t think you have? You bet it does.

 

One of my favorite stories is about the a Chinese Christian mystic named Watchman Nee. He was considered a holy man and one night, while he was just hanging out smoking his pipe in his living room, a demon appeared on the staircase. Now the demon was doing scary, demony things like growling and snarling and cursing him. After a minute or two, Nee stood up, walked over to the demon, looked at him and said, "Oh, it's only you." He was scared when he did this, of course, but the demon didn't know that. All he heard was Nee saying, "I know who you are. You can't hurt me because I know who God is."  The demon had no defense against Nee’s faith.

 

Remember, God only brings us what we’re supposed to have. He means us good, not harm. It’s a trust fall. Did you ever try one? To stand in front of someone and just lean back and let go without asking first, without looking to see if they’re paying attention, and just collapse and see whether they’ll catch you. It’s an amazing experience, and God wants us to do that with Him. Every time. We can fall into His arms with complete confidence regardless of our fears and reservations because that is the only way to faith, the only way to find out how magnificent God really is.

 

Remember that God asked the worst, the hardest thing of Abraham and Abe walked right up to it and he raised the knife over his son. Do you think Abe’s hand wasn’t shaking? I’m willing to bet it was. He does the same with us. God gives us situations we don’t like and puts the knife in our own hands and asks us what we will do next. When we have the faith and courage to raise it, he will say, see! Look what I am doing. I am making all things new in a way you could never have imagined.

 

To God, unexpected change cannot unmake His plans. To God, death cannot unmake His plans. When we act according to what we believe rather than how we feel, God meets us there, hands out to catch us, because we know who He is. He is love, and he is just, and he is sovereign and he is holy. When we reach back to him in return, we find, like Abraham, that God moves His heaven and his earth to give us faith and bring us rescue. That is Jesus’ story. That is Abraham’s story. It is meant to be our story, too. May it be.

Image courtesy of Third Hour

Requiem

 

Requiem

December 18, 2023, New York Times: U.S. Steel to Be Bought by Japanese Rival 

 

Pure power.

I saw it once.

Showering from the pregnant mouth of a smelter in liquid stars.

Birthing its own dawn,

cascading into wide waiting trenches,

consuming every atom it approached.

scorching even the air.

 

What began as iron and cool coke

exploded to life and purpose

from a chemist’s dream,

not steel but vision

grown into monument

carrying us shoulder high

wide as invention,

broad as courage

solid as unbound minds.

 

It was so beautiful.

 

It lost no grandeur

even as it grayed into slab,

cooling as it moved.

Dignified even while consecrated to

hot rolls pressing it to near paper,

and rocketing out, thundering, into coils,

bending into the place mortals live

to meet a Hephaestion future forged in its own furnace.

 

But when future came,

the god lingered and lagged.

Grandeur and dignity faded,

romance reduced to pragmatic function.

 

Steel still breeds from formulaic components

but the spark smoldered and died.

No fresh sun rises to the blast.

No new charge promises a bloom.

 

There is weeping in Gary.

 

Image courtesy of Science Photo Library

First Snow 2024

 

Everyone begins in the dark, stumbling, grasping for purchase.

Looking for the way to light. Footsteps to follow.

Hearing hollow echoes, distant owl-sounds,

Emptiness so complete that breezes make the only noise, and

snow muffles even that.

 

Mother-love is not enough, the breath of God that bolsters only infants.

Beauty nestles there, and warm refuge, but no passage.

Giving little revelation when delivered into an urgent, constantly turning world  

both whirling on itself and wheeling through a star-cast space

That forces motion without specifying direction.

 

Show me the way.

 

Ah! A companion!

Reason, logic, formula, rule,

Discernable patterns with stable roots.

Frames. Handholds. Stakes in the ground.

Paths marked by firm signposts that climb clear one on another.

Someone to walk with. Aristotle’s salvation.

 

But that path tends toward a crowd, bending in common direction,

All finding the same solace in coherent method:

Syllogism. Analytics.

Forward circles on itself, becoming backward in helical stasis, patting itself on the back.

Leaving Beauty behind. And Grace. And Good.

The din of agreement going nowhere.

 

Nearby, nearly unnoticed, a cagy Socrates and refined Plato leave their marks.

 Ignoring the crowd, they stalk, leaving reasoned steps behind, to a riverbank. 

They point to where measured feet have no place to land and where only the willingness to flow allows movement.

 

The crowd scatters.

The way forward, effortless and punctuated only by geese rising, laughs in delighted rapids

And the place to rest appears.

All images photographed by the author

Trust Fall

 

I was thinking this morning of something I used to do.

From time to time, usually in the confined space of our galley kitchen, when I was standing casually in front of Dave either cooking or talking or generally doing something else, I would collapse. I'd just let go limp and fall to see whether he could catch me before I reached the floor. 

It was a test of some kind, I guess, because we both knew I had trust issues, like a lot of us do. It's hard to relinquish control, after all. We work so hard to get it and when we do, don't want to let go. After all, who knows what would happen if we actually fell? It's true. 

Of course, we all know that whatever control we think we have is an illusion. We are, in the end, all subject to forces way beyond our control, but who wants to admit that, much less live it? 

But you know what I learned? It's freeing. It feels absolutely fabulous to the point that, even if I actually fell, it wouldn't matter. It would be absolutely worth that one moment of freefall. 

In time, I came to understand that the trust fall thing was just a metaphor for something else. What I really wanted wasn't just that single moment of freedom, but an assurance that there existed somewhere a kind of erasure when the bounds of what divided me from the rest of the created world, even from God Himself, slipped away. 

It was about more than trust.

It was about a momentary union with the infinite, a kind of flight that released me from all the strings I was trying to hold, all the future I was trying to weave, all the security I was trying to purchase with the precious energy of my life. We can't do it, though, and if we live long enough, we realize that. Eventually, what we work so hard building melts away in a single moment beyond our control.

That's why, I think, Jesus told us to build up treasures in heaven. He didn't mean not to live our life, but to live it with what really lasts in mind. Circumstances twist and turn, but the energy we invest in building up God's treasures, the world and people He made, well, that lasts. It shatters the boundaries that separate us not only from each other, but from Him.

I don't intend to erect or fortify one more barrier in this world. I have little time and no constructive energy for it. And, when I remember what it feels like to trust that God really does intend the best for every one of His creatures, I can fall into His arms with ease.

It's reassuring to remember, too, that He reinforced that thought in the last thing I was able to do for Dave while he lived - to catch him, to keep him from falling when he was too weak to stand on his own, and to tell him, "Don't worry. I've got you." He had done it so often for me, never failing to make the catch. Of course, all those catches were illusions, too. In the end, it was God doing the catching every time. 

Photo courtesy of Maestri Gallery

Standing in the Prow of the Ship: A Lesson from FDR

 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt used to describe the porch at his "little White House" in Warm Springs, Georgia as being as "high as the prow of a ship." He established Warm Springs not only to bring him a place to rest and rehabilitate in the face of a depression and wartime presidency coupled with the ravages of a twenty-five year detente with polio, but to provide the same for other polio victims. He described it, however, not in terms of a fixed place on earth, but in terms of motion, of vast strength, and of unlimited space. Not the usual frame of reference we expect from someone living with a handicap.

There is a lesson here, and it grows from two aspects.

The first is pretty obvious - FDR was crippled. He had no use of his legs for half of his adult life but before the affliction, he grew up in New York, close to the ocean, and before he became President, served as Secretary of the Navy. He knew well the feel of being on the water - not just a lake or river, but a watery expanse of biblical porportions, with no end in sight from any angle. No landmarks, no obvious road ahead, and no guideposts. Just water in every direction. That boundless view, along with his natural optimism, kept him from focusing on a world collapsing in on itself because of physical disability. Rather than looking inward and seeing his world shrink, he looked out and saw it without restriction. He saw is spreading out on all sides before him, split by the prow of a great ocean liner, steaming ahead into a future he not only welcomed, but helped engineer. 

The second is seeing, if only in retrospect, that FDR's disability could have been the single qualification that made him most uniquely able to guide a floundering country through the 30's and 40's. As a nation, we were faced with a brokenness we'd not known since the Civil War and had no idea what to do next. FDR did, every time he remembered his useless legs. He knew what it took to go on when the future looked hopeless. He knew that handicap and death were not the same thing. He knew that, even the boundless ocean has a shore somewhere, and had already developed the grit needed to hold firm in search of it.

Those of us who are aging have the same choice to make. We may not have polio, but we have other maladies and restrictions to endure. We can let the horizons close in, or we can board our own ship, raise our eyes to the horizon, and welcome each broad sunrise, engaged to the full limits of our ability, aware that storms will come, but so will the rainbow.

We are exactly where we're supposed to be. Every time we are given is intentional - a trust, a gift. Like FDR, we have something to do and the only way to begin is to take whatever step we are able, with or without legs that work.

Death is not the worse that can happen. Missing the life we're given is.

Photo 1: View from QM2 via Facebook group Queen Mary 2 Experiences and Advice

Photo 2: FDR sailing a yacht in 1933, photo courtesy of ebay

Being a Human

 Yesterday, one of my Philosophy professors lectured about being human - about how a bird knows how to just be a bird and a dog just a dog, but we are not nearly as good at being just a human because we can reason. It's the reasoning that puts a distance between the borders of our skin and the rest of the world, that draws a line around us and says: This Is Me. And because we are so aware of ourselves, that awareness interferes with our just being what we are. The same reason that makes us more than animals also makes us less somehow. It might be that the most successful humans are the ones who leave at least some of their reason untapped, trailing down behind them like a thread hanging from the bottom of their pant leg, forgotten, unaware, not missed.

It is a lie this reason, this awareness. It tells me there is more, something shining and bright hot, that feels like a spirit, and that this is what makes us most human beyond the flesh and blood we share with animals. Maybe it's not completely a lie - maybe it's partly true, but only partly because this bright center is also what makes me unhappy because it is always just out of reach. 

The leaves are coming down. Yesterday I kicked through a yellow pile of them lying next to a curb on the way to walking to the edge of a big lake whose border is so far away that it lies beyond the visible horizon. The leaves may mean that another year of growing things is dying, but they just might mean that dying things can be beautiful. Or they just might be lovely leaves.

The Earth is Full of Gods

 

The earth is full of gods.

 

Water folds upon itself, always in motion.

Gentle hands push one ripple upon another

And urge fish to break through melting glass.

 

Distant mouths blow clouds into layered piles,

Painting quiet blue beside stern gray,

Shaping sky into banner, promise, and mobile roof.

 

Living things all around expel in rhythm –

Warm whisper to fierce assault.

Farflung lungs exhale.

Rain drops tears.

Storms vent anger.

Stars glance beneath lowered lashes.

 

It’s all motion.

 

Fish glide.

Elephants rumble.

Bears lope.

Men stride.

 

There the mourning doves signal a new day

And I track fresh light against a far shore.

Leaving no traces of wind, a mighty hand turns our earth towards its sun.

 

The earth is full of gods who have not yet seen fit to withdraw their favor.

Though I have taken a million before, every step is unlike another other.

Each day’s secrets reveal themselves as benevolent fingers open one by one.

 

A day will come when I will not open these eyes,

But this isn’t the day.

The earth is full of gods

And they are kind.

Why We Go To Church

 

The following is an edited version of a sermon given at the First Congregational Church of Rochester, July 30, 2023.

Why Do We Go To Church?

I got the idea for this message's subject from a friend, Mary, while we were sitting in the local coffee shop. "You know what I want to hear a sermon about? she challenged. "Why We Go To Church". That was a fine subject, I thought, so I did a little research. 

Everybody doesn’t go to church. Half of Americans don’t go to church even once a month. Interestingly enough, though, a lot of people who stay at home on Sunday mornings actually believe in God. Barna research says that ¾ of unchurched people own a bible, 2 of 3 say they are spiritual.

So, some folks who believe in God go to church and some stay home and we still have to answer Mary’s question. Why do we….the ones in church this morning….go to church? I thought I knew why I did, but needed to see what other folks had to say, so I asked them.

ANSWERS

When I was a very young Christian, this is what I was told: We go to get fed by the Word. That sounded right at first. Another answer was that we go to be encouraged or corrected in faith matters. — also sounded right, but these days, when I'm a little farther down the faith road, it seemed a little too pat and didn’t get to the root of the matter.

A surprising number of the people I asked said they go because they’re supposed to or because they’ve always done it. That's also true, but also falling short of a real motivating reason.

So I kept asking. As it turned out, a lot of the people I asked had answers like these;

We go for the fellowship of people who think like we do.

I go because I need a positive influence in my life, because it makes me feel good, because the people are nice, because I’m accepted as who I am.

I feel closer to God when I go to church, in a small church around people who are like me, who have God in their lives.

Church is the pillar that holds the rest of my life together. It is not a foundation for my faith, but self-preservation. I need it.

Now I was getting somewhere.

This last group of people all thought it had something to do with supporting and being supported, with sharing and understanding. That made sense.

We sometimes refer to the church as the house of God and Ps 84 says that one day in God’s courts is better than a thousand elsewhere, but Jesus said that God doesn’t live in this or any building. God lives primarily in us. So maybe we come here because even though there is enough God in every believer, when two or three are gathered He isn’t just in us individually, He’s in us corporately, and when we’re together, we are enabled to do something new in His name. I liked that and thought it was leading me in a significant direction.

It does feel good and right to spend intentional time with people who think like we do, who believe the same way, and with whom we can build and work and contribute. It makes us feel safe. It makes us feel effective. We belong. But there are also dangers that come with doing that – the unintended consequences of hanging out intentionally and regularly with people we love and who think like we do.

DANGERS

Danger #1: It can lead to self-satisfaction and complacency. When everyone around us agrees with us, we tend to think we’re right.

Danger #2: It resists change and change is necessary. Warm fuzzies don’t usually come with change. We want to do what we’ve always done, but we are an ever-changing group gathered around an eternal gospel and it’s only the gospel that doesn’t change.

Danger #3: It can make it hard to fold in the new people God brings us, people who will necessarily upset our familiar apple cart, or at least rearrange it.

Don’t think that can happen here? It happened in the good and loving church that helped me to my first intimacy with God. And it happened slowly, so slowly that we hardly noticed. In the end, the devastation was so complete that it broke some of our hearts. For others, it broke their faith. And I learned something in the process. I learned that any church can lose its way, but there are some warnings signs for churches that start to stray.

1)    One warning sign is treating church like a club– Clubs are by definition exclusive and we don’t get to exclude anyone because Jesus didn’t. We have to take great care that whatever membership we establish in a church doesn’t artificially lift up members simply for the reason that they belong. We are to be set apart for God, but we are not to set ourselves apart from our fellow men by pride in ourselves as being members of this church or Congregationalists or Protestants. Those are man’s separations, not God’s.

2)    Another is thinking of church as a theatrical display to be watched. Our times together are not to be observed but a common prayer to be participated in. We are here to be together, to raise one voice to God, to be more together than we can be alone. It doesn’t matter how eloquent we are or how good our singing voices sound. We gather to give our best to God, whatever it is, and not to the ears of other men, even our own parishioners.

3)    Another is thinking of church as a religious jamboree designed to make us feel good. Church is a privileged encounter with Christ. With or without bread and wine, it is supposed to be an intense communion. It’s like any time we get together with someone we care about. We talk and eat. Orderly but not by rote. Organized but not automatic. An outpouring of love from all sides. God speaks to us. We respond.

4)    There is also danger in thinking of church in terms of an institution or a denominational affiliation. The giveaway is saying "I am a…". Those are the creation of men, not God. God’s church is a movement of believers where people share collectively and apply what God has given them. Locally, we are a very small part in a worldwide machine that Jesus set in motion to encourage people to holiness – different but not better, faithful in fellowship only to Him who gave His life for us all.

We love our church and we love each other. It’s one of the reasons we show up Sunday after Sunday, but we have to be aware of the bear traps, because when we have the courage to declare ourselves to the world as a group gathered for the specific purpose of honoring the creator of the universe, bear traps come with the territory. Labeling ourselves a church tells the world we are different. It wasn’t always that way.

HOW WE GOT HERE – HISTORY

For the first 1500 years after Christ, everybody in western Europe was Catholic. The word Catholic means universal because it was. Nobody was anything else. The sacred was part of everyday life and everybody shared in it together. During the Reformation, common life began to be separated from faith life because, for the first time, Christians had choices.  Reformers expected at first that they would fix what they thought was wrong with the Catholic church and go forward united in belief and practice, but that didn’t happen. The Reformation created division not only from a corrupt Catholic church but from other protestant denominations to the point that competing denominations went to war. Things got so bad that Reformers could see no way to stop the bloody conflict other than to worship separately in order to govern corporately. This is the origin of the separation between church and state and ultimately, between church and every other aspect of life, but it worked. The new protestant denominations that resulted from the Reformation eventually stopped killing each other and figured out how to live socially side by side, but only by coming to terms with an institutionalized separation between sacred and secular that persists today and continues to widen so that God is disconnected more and more from common society.

So, In the 1500s or 1600s, religion and politics parted ways and here we are, 500 years later, dealing with the aftermath. It’s easy to forget that one of the only places left where we can combine our faith and community lives is in the church. Now, the church as we know it has become the only place where the sacred and the secular can come together again. Church is the place we come specifically to learn from God and also learn how to live those lessons outside the church. This is where our feeling of community comes from. This is why it feels so special, because it is.

 The church is the only place we can teach, exhort, encourage, and advise one another regarding how to live our faith in common ways in the world. We have to gather to do this because there is nowhere else to go. The divorce between community and faith life is virtually complete. 

This is the legacy of the Reformation:

1)    Religion changed from a way of common life to simply ones’ own choice and opinion regarding God, beliefs, devotion, and worship. We call this religious freedom but it has become at the same time religious confusion and detachment. Religion became intellectual rather than visceral, a mind activity rather than a heart one.

2)    We now have the right to our own religious anything, subject to our own rules and opinions and we can change our mind at any time for any reason to the point of absurdity. One of my college classmates had his drivers' license picture taken with a colandar on his head because he convinced the DMV that is was part of his religion. The prank started as a test and ended up an example of the scrambled religious world we live in. No civil law reins us in. Church has become about self – our decision to believe. Our decision to join. Something that started as very public became something private.

3)    Religion has been demoted to just another pastime to be taken up or put down, a kind of hobby like fishing or painting rather than what it was intended to be – the most important way we inform, educate, and guide our lives together. It may not be a good thing for faith to be dictated by the state, but it is also not a good thing for faith to be parted from the fabric of our lives altogether.

4)    We are now a secular, not a religion-based society – not a religious world. Not anymore. There is a kind of strength and growth in learning how to agree to disagree but it does not bring with it a clear way forward. As a result, our common society feels lost.

God, however, is still working. The same confusion that we inherited from the reformers puts the church in a unique position. It makes churches stand out. It gives church special status and visibility. And most important, it makes the church a potential haven for the sacred. The church, of all the places we can choose in this world, can be the one place we remember and act out something better.

We Can be a Haven for the Sacred in This Secular World

This is how it’s done – this is what the church does that helps us fulfill God’s intent for us as the bride of Christ:

We share bread and wine in a banquet that’s happened for hundreds of years, and will happen into eternity. God feeds us, we feed one another, and become one people in Him. We don’t just remember – we participate. This is the communion He made specifically for us and it is, like every other behavior He specified, the best of what we can know in this world.

We pray together, not because we’re eloquent, but because we’re needy. We state our faith together. We sing not because we’re good singers but because words sometimes just aren’t enough to express the glory we find in God. We come together to learn how to make all the parts of our life work together again – the sacred and the secular – and we do that because we understand that nothing is really secular if we do it right. Everything belongs to God and is for God.

We study the Bible together because even though we do it alone and hear God in the silence of our private hearts, He reveals another layer of Himself when we do it together.

We make church a place of conscious and active participation in building up not our own parish customs, but building up the universal kingdom of God. Where two or three are gathered isn’t just His promise to be here in church – it’s a reminder that He is already both here and in the larger world and He wants us to engage with it in His name.

When we do these things, we declare to whom we belong, in church and out, we become the light Christ asked us to be.

 CONCLUSIONS – The Answer

So why do we go to church?

1.    We go to church to learn to live together in spiritual health and holiness. If we depend on ourselves for spiritual understanding, all we get is ourselves. We may get input from God if we’re listening carefully, but we won’t get the benefit of what God has done in anybody else. There is value in learning the layers of meaning and the richness of the Bible, and in understanding church doctrine and history, but we can read the Bible at home and God will speak truth to us. We need each other to discover more.

2.    We go to church to learn to live together in practical union. The head of the church is Christ and we operate only in union in His name. In union. As one, in His one church, but with different views, backgrounds, and opinions. Being patient and grace-filled with one another. We go to church to learn how to apply our faith in the real world, first among the brethren who think like us, then in the world of those who do not.

3.    We go to church to work. Not like we do a job – to build or to achieve or to earn money. Instead, we come to church for its own sake, for the sake of the encounter itself, not to support a building or gather money to pay our pastor or to establish relationships. We do it for love, immediate love for God, like we hug a child or feed the hungry or tend the sick. Church is a corporate declaration that God is the highest possible good and we come to church to show Him in ways beyond those we can do alone. We bring the best of what we have individually and put them together to make more.

4.    We go to church because God’s lessons have to be applied in flesh and blood. The church is at its root messy. We all have to be prepared for messy -  it’s part of the church and what we’re supposed to learn in it – how to get along. That’s why we call it a family.

From the beginning, the church functioned not as a separate, privileged entity, but to show believers how to fold their beliefs into everyday lives. Our primary connection to God remains individual, but our way of working it out has to be communal. After all, we need to learn to share earth because we will undoubtedly share heaven. We may choose our companions in this life, but God will choose them for us in the hereafter. This is why living a Christian life alone isn’t enough. Trying to live a life of faith alone is like learning to play the piano on a cardboard keyboard. You never make a mistake because no real music is produced.

1.    Hebrews 10:24-25: "And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching."

2.    Acts 2:42, 46: "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer... Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.”.

3.    Colossians 3:16: "Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts

 We show we are Christians by our love, because when we live and work together in Christ, we make each other better and thereby glorify God. Our personal experience of God is enlarged by what we share together.

Church is the place where the gospel comes alive. The setting may be a living room, a coffee shop, or an intentional building like this one. They can all be churches when they all share two things in common –seeking together the truth of God and the desire to live and love it out in the real world.

And that, Mary, is why, and how, we go to church.

Out of Practice

 

This is my piano yesterday morning. Look closely and you will see it. Dust, and a lot of it. Laying on the keys, black and white, like feathers. It's easy to look at the dust and see a reflection of poor housekeeping, and it may indeed be so, but there's more, I think. What I see when I look at the dust on my piano is something between the failure of good intentions and weakness of discipline.

This is the piano I bought two years ago  because I missed having one. I missed the sound and feel of moving my fingers across the keyboard and listening to the rich tones that resulted. I missed Fur Elise and  Greensleeves and the Moonlight Sonata, all of which I knew once, but have mostly forgotten. The hand exercise would be good for my arthritis and the music good for my soul. But somehow, because I once knew how to play these things, I thought they would come back instantly. I can hear the music in my head. Why wouldn't my fingers remember just as easily? 

But it didn't work that way. It didn't work because I didn't practice. I didn't do the very thing I needed to do to make it happen. 

One would think that, by this time we would have figured out some of this out - some of the basic life truths  regarding good and evil, right and wrong. Oh sure, in theory we have. In theory in the world at large, in the great 'they', or in someone else's life. But I don't like those truths when I have to employ them myself. They're hard. They require discipline and focus. The require more than knowledge, more than good intentions. 

In order to play the piano again, I need to actually pay my dues all over again, like with any other learned behavior. I'm out of practice, and it takes practice to do anything well and, eventually, more easily. That's true of exercise, of good eating habits, of learning, of faith habits, and of loving well, as much as it is true of playing piano. It's true of anything worth knowing or living. 

It will take more than a dust cloth to fix this. It will take action. I should have known that all along.

Life after 70, Podcast with David Tracy

 This is a great place to share my own adventure as well as a few nuggets about living life at 70, thanks to my sweet friend, David Tracy--click here!

or click here

Skin

 There is a kind of self-awareness that Descartes, the French Enlightenment philosopher expressed as "Cogito Ergo Sum" or "I think, therefore I am." In the philolosophy world, this phrase is called simply the Cogito for short, forms the basis for a whole school of thought called Rationalism, and is one of the few philosophical declarations that persists into common culture.  

It's a springboard for self-examination and self-study wherein one ruminates upon one's own condition and place in the world. Based on a basic understanding each person exists as a discrete human being, separate from all others, it is the beginning of our understanding of what we call personhood now. 

As one adds years, however, the nature of that awareness changes because, well, we change. Life begins by building and growing, but if one lives long enough, eventually evolves into shedding and simplifying.  The skin is perfect mirror for these changes. When we are young, the skin can barely hold all that we are and do. It is fine and smooth and full of young oil. 

Like a balloon, however, we can't possible continue to expand. Long lives accumulate too many experiences, too much knowledge and understanding, for young skin to contain and the strain of it is reflected there. 

Skin

 Satin yields to crepe as taut and plump dissolves into slack folds,

Accomplished adventure looking for release.

What is done is not left behind but carried,

Years less burden than welcome weight.

Gradual deconstruction remarks survival and triumph -

Allows accumulated pressures to fall away,

Disassembling their hidden gathered strength

Rather than preserving dangerous retention in visible beauty

Until skin can no longer contain it

And gives way in frantic cogito,

Imploding like a star. 

Some Raspberries Don't Ripen until after the Frost

 Some raspberries don't ripen until after the frost. It wasn't what they were made to do...raspberries  are meant for hot summer days and long sunshine, when their juice gathers sweet and they turn red day after day in tart waves. Then, it seems like there will always be more. I know better, of course. I know that the days will get short and cold, and that the time for raspberries will pass. But they don't.

Some roses don't bloom until October. When all around them, more predictable buds turn to hips, they refuse to prepare for sleep yet. It doesn't matter that so many around them are ready to store up what energy is left to them and save it for other days. They use everything they have left now to remind the world of beauty. They know it will be a long winter and and they've made their job memory.

Blanketflowers just don't know when to stop. For them, it could still be June, when they first poked strong stems up from sleepy dirt, just then gone warm. All summer, they bloomed thick and sunny and liked it. They must be addicted.

The daisies are probably laughing. In June, they bloomed dense, crowding each other for sunlight in sensational, snowy clumps. Then they stopped, but their leaves stayed green. Now, they give a single gift like a child holding a dandelion to his mother. Here, this is for you. I love you,

I think maple has been listening to them all, having refused to turn proper maple-y red and gold. It concedes only its tips to autumn, telling me that it, like all the others, knows what time it is, but has so loved feeling the sap run and favorable breezes. They are not ready to die.

Me either.

Last Berries

 

My raspberries fruit twice - 

once in July when the sun is high and hot, 

when bees circumnavigate their busy route between blooms, 

leaving me to reach between them for my breakfast -

 and once in September, when dew hangs heavy on their leaves 

and branches don't tolerate bending but, anticipating brittle cold, 

snap when I lift them to peer underneath for the purpling berries hiding there.

My raspberries fruit twice - 

once when still young and supple, 

confident of many more risings and settings, 

when, exposing their heads to the sky, 

look unafraid toward productive tomorrows, 

full of juice and beauty.

My raspberries fruit twice - 

once when nearly done, while leave curl dark at their edges,

and their buds are almost spent, 

nudged into fruit that may not have time to ripen.

These branches bend under accumulated weight,

grown from resisting the storms of a full season and 

the weight of small, green berries that will not have time to redden.

My raspberries fruit twice - 

early and late,

young and old, 

carefree and wise,

innocent and full of days.

One life, one season,

producing what they can until one perfect frost cuts them off.

Taste one. These last berries are the sweetest.

That's how I know they are mine. 

Why We Make Love After a Funeral: What to Do With Who We Are after COVID-19

Image credit: Adobe stock

 We live in times unlike even those of us who wear many years have ever known. These last days, we find, take a grim toll on body and spirit. Many died, and many more walk wounded, broken by illness or dread, as though having abandoned hope of ever again living in peace.

We recognize the worst of sufferers by their resolute faces turned toward chaos because there is nowhere else to go. This chaos, the like of which we have never seen before in either scope or magnitude. This chaos, from which we can see little relief or solution ahead. It's a dismal landscape to wander and we feel every sad step of it. This is our post-pandemic world of shared grief, one which will never brag a declaration of victory. We will not have won, but we can survive. 

We Need a Funeral

Deaths are all like that, of course - endings and darkness, and the pains that come with them. What we need is a funeral. We need to lay these sorrows to rest and raise a headstone over them - "Here lies the COVID-19 pandemic. It killed something carefree in us all, but we survived its deceitful malice. We survived." And then, once we have done thrown exultant handfuls of dirt into the grave, raise a toast.

We need do away with dread and panic. Every death leaves survivors wondering how to find a new firm place to stand. It's how surviving is done, and it is always done while grieving. 

Actually, we already know exactly how, having gone to enough funerals during our long years of life to recognize them through song and rhythm, smell and flavor. We know how to preside over the coffin lid's close, over the scattering of ashes. We know how to walk away from the grave and lift faces toward a world still alive.

That's why we make love after a funeral. The love gives loud voice and firm action to the life that remains. It declares that no amount of death can defeat whatever life still holds for the breathing.

And When the Funeral is Over

We will never run out of threatening sorrows. Misfortune constantly lurks, but graveyards do not make nourishing homes. No one residing there thrives. We, the living, bear no fault for turning our backs to the tombs, even as we remember them.

There is no going back. What we've lost is gone forever, but if funerals perform any service at all, they let us leave sorrow and memory where they belong - behind us. They let us remember our living humanity, fully expecting to grin and grow again.

COVID-19 cannot dismantle our humanity unless we let it, unless we make our beds among the dead. If we breathe, we are meant to live, and so rediscover common ground and the joy of rebuilding. Look somebody full in the eye today. They are hurting, too. 

Jackson Harbor, August 26

 

He said last night that every morning, just after dawn, commercial fishermen returned to the harbor here, unloading their catch. Here, where the sun first crests the island’s horizon.

This is Homer’s rose-red dawn whose fingers gather pink ribbons followed by shining gold streaks. These fingers, however, do not caress. They are not gentle. Instead, a chill, stiff breeze blows surrounding trees so that they rush with it. All around, every surface is sodden with dew. Cranes arch graceful necks in the shallows, then gather and fly overhead like black arrows sent to battle. Jets leave distant, silent trails.

One car drives past.

A man walks straight and solitary on the next dock.

The sun has cleared the treetops and casts lines of fire across the water, moving so slowly as to look stationary, but constant enough to leave the horizon increasingly behind.

The earth still turns, this sun declares, full of glory every day, never hiding behind half moons or crescents. This sun has ever been the Lord of Days, but merciful. A gull calls, flies through its halo, and is not burned.

Waves break and froth against a single buoy.

Two fisherman carry coffee and bait in indiscernible white cups, set up chairs next to the dock, and cast hushed lines.

Just down the coast, land narrows to a single rocky point. There is no sand here, only rocks rounded by waves more ambitious than today’s. The lake is loud in this place, wave after wave turning turning themselves over in silver sheen and foam. The bay undulates like a dark serpent playing in new sunshine.

There will be no returning fishing boats today, but rolling waters still rock on the cradle of the earth. The sun still crested the edge of the earth right on time. We are given another day.

Revelation

The world is a whirling place -

Spinning in dizzying, constant motion,

masking with benevolent deceit its gesturing,

attempting to convince with thin perception,

firm feet floating and clear giddy heads.

But it doesn’t always work.

The world cannot help but reveal itself.

It’s the movement, of course.

The coils of a wave,

a dissipation of shadow,

the reeling of stars,

give it away.

Reflection reminds me that 50,000 tides have drawn themselves in and out,

and half as many risings and settings have defined the days of life.

Eight hundred moons have waxed and waned,

and blood flowed through half those to mark the promise of life,

fruit both born and unborn.

Yet, even after all of these,

all the rhythms of this living,

this one heart still fills the world with insistent percussion.

Each day brings its own new-born light,

announcing itself as though the first ever made,

ignoring that millions like it have already gone before

and that I, myself, have witnessed so many of them.

It doesn’t matter, you see.

The turning is relentless.

A million, a thousand, or the first,

they have every one, acknowledged or not,

brought renewed miracle to the world.

Breath, brilliance;

Power, promise;

converge and distill,

unable to deny their source.

They are all the time close,

as a soft breeze stroking with welcome, familiar hands.

This world,

this grace-filled, specific, intentional gift,

opens full-face every new morning,

and all one needs to know it is to raise astonished eyes,

recognizing Joy.

Park Street at Dawn

 

Cool gray.

Clean white.

Muffled, covert blue.

Safe and spare, the house resists heartbreaking human heat, the demands of purple flesh and red blood.

Ice house, clean and clear.

It cannot long hold sway.

Even now, life’s inevitable chaos rises and memories begin to gather in corners.

Flowers poke through between stones.

New books settle on shelves, bringing wild, dangerous thoughts.

Sheets of dancing notes people the piano rack, threatening music.

We all do it.

Hoard the calm, grab up the quiet.

Pull in the drawbridge and pretend that peace is a natural state.

But you see, no saving can come where nothing is out of place.

The narrow way is only a choice when surrounded by unpredictability—orange points of pain—black chasms.

But they have not come yet.

For now, this cool fortress remains, still alive in the slow breaths of hypothermia, holding on, hoping.

We will understand its stranglehold before it’s too late.

God always burns hotter than we bargain.

Even now, the mist evaporates and the drawbridge begins to shudder.

He comes for us.