Mary and Martha

Amos 8:1-12

Luke 10:38-42

            As I reflected on the story of Mary and Martha, a short vignette came to my mind.  There was a man who visited a farm one day slightly before thanksgiving.  He was watching the farmer, whose job it was to dispatch a turkey for thanksgiving.  Sure enough he chopped off the turkey’s head.  And as we’ve heard sometimes happens with chickens, the head-less turkey took off running around the yard.  “You see,” said the farmer, “activity is not a sure sign of life.”

Activity is not a sure sign of life.

            But we tend to think that it is, don’t we?  I was walking with a good friend the other day and we exchanged the usual conversation that we almost always have when we meet, every couple months or so.  “How are you?” she asks.

“Busy,” I answered.  And then I returned the question, “How are you?”

“Also busy,” she answered.  And then she paused.  “Why is it that if we answer any other way, we somehow feel we have failed?  Why is it that we have to prove our worthiness and our work ethic and even our label as ‘good person’ by being so busy we don’t have time to walk with a friend except once every few months?” 

There’s truth in this. Far too much truth for comfort.  My own life is work and kids, work and kids.  I now have a walk scheduled in for every other Thursday morning.  But I do it in such a way that it is part of my job: the “hiking group” that we have here: a time to connect with parishioners makes it acceptable for me to walk. 

While I tend to think this work-mania is worse now that it was in the time of Mary and Martha (though honestly, whose to say?), I think another big part of the issue here is that Martha feels she is taking the higher road.  She is doing what is expected of her. She is, no doubt, getting food ready to feed their guest, she is taking care of the work of the house, being a good hostess.  And yet Mary is the one reaping the benefits.  Martha is doing what must be done.  And yet Mary is getting to sit and listen and learn and just BE with her friend, her teacher, her Jesus.  Martha is outraged by it.  Why should Mary, who is not following the rules as we know them, not allowing herself to be defined by how active and busy and productive she is, not doing what is needed by the household and by the rules of propriety, why should she actually be gaining, be benefitting, be thriving in her scandalous behavior? 

And Jesus?  Well, he does not give Martha what she is hoping for.  He does NOT lift her up and praise her for the work she is doing.  He does not correct Mary for her choice to sit and listen rather than work.  He does not support what everyone knows to be the rules of good manners and good behavior then and now.  Instead he says, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”  Outrageous!  Frustrating!  UNFAIR.

I understand this.  I think about people I know personally who have what I call enchanted lives.  One in particular is very comfortable, has no need to work, and takes full advantage of that to do whatever he wants to do.  He has a lovely house, a cute zippy little car.  While fairly young, he does not have to work because he was born into privilege.  He does take the time to sit and listen, to walk, to be with people he cares about.  And there are times when I find myself very envious of his situation.  There are moments when, like Martha, I want to shout, “It’s not fair!  Make him do his part!  Tell him to help!”  I am truly grateful for the work I have and the privilege of raising my beautiful children, and the depth of the relationships that I have with them.  In my better moments, I know I would not trade my life of busy and crazy with anyone else's.  But there are moments when I also recognize that he too has been given a gift: the gift of time, and space; he has time to listen and reflect, to choose what he does, to step forward into a new life, a life without responsibility, a life of freedom.  And there are moments of recognition on my part that the gift in that is something I, too, should embrace, and in fact could embrace, with more frequency and more intention. 

Mary, we are told, has chosen the better part.  She has put aside the requirements and responsibilities of daily living in order to be in the moment with Jesus.  She has put aside the busyness of expectations and demands on her time, and has instead chosen to sit and learn and listen.  She has chosen to be alive in the moment, rather than running around, headless, without meaning or true life. 

How often do we pause, do we take the time to just take time?  How often do we say, “No, I’m not going to do whatever the world believes I need to be doing in this moment.  Instead I’m going to just BE, rather than DO?”

In talking with my eldest daughter about this, she has shared with me that, as she is a quieter person, that the business and activity of her fellow students makes her feel that she is somehow failing.  She has already learned to measure her worth by busyness.  Which is unfair, both to her, and to the other students who have forgotten how to find the time to simply BE.  She has much to teach them by her quieter stance.  But what she has to give is harder to learn.

I used to think that retired people were better at this, but as I’ve watched many of the schedules of my retired friends, I no longer believe this to be the case.  We all struggle with this.  Maybe in part because we feel that we aren’t doing anything by just Being.

But science actually tells us something different.  It’s not intuitive, it’s hard to understand.  But science tells us that observing, watching, just BEING changes everything around us.  As an article in Science Daily (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/02/980227055013.htm) said it, “Strange as it may sound, interference can only occur when no one is watching. Once an observer begins to watch the particles going through the openings, the picture changes dramatically: if a particle can be seen going through one opening, then it's clear it didn't go through another. In other words, when under observation, electrons are being "forced" to behave like particles and not like waves. Thus the mere act of observation affects the experimental findings.”  If this is the case at the quantum level, think how much more true this is at a grand scale level.  When we take the time to look, to see, to observe, to notice, to hear one another, to listen, to learn, to reflect, the world around us is affected.  It is changed.  It is often when we do the least, that we do the most.

I think about the trees that surround us.  They are not “active” and yet, they produce the very air that we breathe.  And their ability to stand, quiet, still, silent, can have a profound effect on all of us when we actually take the time to be in the forest, with the trees. 

There is a wonderful book called Touching Spirit Bear, by Ben Mikaelsen (New York: Harper Collins Pub., 2001) about a young juvenile delinquent who is dealt with using restorative justice practices rather than retributive justice.  What this means is that instead of incarcerating and hardening the boy to become a life-long criminal, the community came together, including those hurt by his crimes and decided together that instead of incarceration, he would first make amends, and then spend a period of time alone on a secluded island, with occasional help from wise officers, working through his past in order to make new decisions about his future.  I won’t ruin the story for you by telling you all of his experiences.  But I would like to share with you a segment of his story.  He has had a bear encounter that ended very badly, but now he is searching out that bear, trying to restore and reconcile what has happened to him since his time there.  He calls the bear “spirit bear”.  The story continues with Cole, the boy reflecting…

“… what happened to people in their frantic worlds of noise and hectic rushing?  How much of the world did people miss because they were not calm enough, empty enough, to experience it?...When dawn finally arrived, he hiked to the opening of the bay… As he walked he focused on the patterns around him.  The lapping waves came as regularly as deep breaths, the light drizzle roughed the water’s surface, clouds hung low as fog, and thousands of smooth worn rocks lined the timeless shoreline like a ghost highway that disappeared into the mist.  Cole felt a part of the pattern as he meandered alng the shore.  When he reached the point, he picked a natural saddle between two rocks and sat down.  He focused his gaze on a small whit erock near the water’s edge and breathed in deeply.  To see the [] Bear, he needed to clear his mind and become invisible, not to the world but to himself.  He left his hood down to let his head and senses remain exposed to the air.  The cool drizzle soaked his hair, and soon droplets of water dripped off his forehead onto his cheeks.  When he closed his eyes, the droplets felt warm on his face.  At first they felt like his own tears of anger and fear.  Then he breathed more deeply, feeling the rhythm of the world around him, an endless rhythm where time disappeared.  As the past, present, and future became one, the droplets on Cole’s cheeks dripped to the ground, melting into the landscape to which they belonged.  When he opened his eyes once again, it was as if he were waking from a deep sleep.  Far down the shoreline, where the rocks disappeared into the folding mist, a white object had appeared.  At the place where things visible faded into not-being, there stood the [] Bear, as clear as if it were standing only feet away.  The bear gazed patiently.  As Cole stared back with the same patience, all time, even the present, ceased to exist.  He no longer thought of himself as Cole Matthews, a juvenile delinquent from Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Instead he was part of the landscape, without a beginning or end. …(p189-191).

             I think about my own moments of being so completely in the present that the amazing happens.  Or maybe it’s not the amazing that is happening, but the ordinary that I’m finally seeing.  As you may or may not know, one of the things that gives me the most sense of life is walking, is being outside with nature and with the beauty that God has made.  A few weeks ago I was sitting by myself outside for a few minutes, just breathing in the depth of the air around me and listening to the world.  Just for a moment I was still.  Suddenly a dragon fly came out of nowhere and landed on my knee.  It was facing me, looking up into my face.  I have never before been so close to a dragonfly.  But I looked into its face as it looked into mine.  It squatted down: that’s the only way to describe it.  It had been up on its legs and it kind of bent down, tipped it’s head and looked at me again.  I didn’t want to breathe.  But I did breathe.  And together we sat looking at one another in wonder.  It must have been a full minute.  But suddenly the world around me was back in my mind.  And I went from being present in that moment to wanting to take the dragonfly’s picture, to share the moment with my family and friends.  I went from being present with the moment, to being in the future and into what I should “do” with that moment that was given to me.  The moment my thinking shifted from being there with the dragonfly to thinking about sharing it in the future, the dragonfly spread his wings and left.  Before I had even moved, but the moment my attention became divided, the dragonfly left. And I was the one who was no longer blessed by that special time. 

            Yes, we have much to do in this life. We have responsibilities that need to be done, people who need our care and our attention.  We need to do the things of daily living and not shirk our responsibilities to ourselves, our families, our communities and the world.  But we are also called to sit at the feet of Jesus and to listen; to be present to this glorious, beautiful, amazing world that we have been privileged to experience.  We are called to take it in, to be fed and nurtured by it, so that we CAN do the work of the church in the world, loving, giving, working towards justice.  We are called to eat and drink of the bread of life, to allow the gifts of God to build us up so that we can enter the world with strength, with wholeness, with grace. 

            There will be times of being Martha.  But let us not be so consumed by them that we also miss the times of being Mary.  For they are the “better part”.  And they are an invitation to us to live with fullness.  Amen.

What I would want if I were King.

           I don't know what happens after we die.  I've said this before.  My faith is not about "heaven insurance" and I don't find much in scripture, certainly nothing Jesus says, that I think gives any kind of actual clear image concerning an afterlife.  From a scientific perspective, nothing is created or lost: so my inclination is to believe the same is true of "souls," whatever that may be: and so I tend to think there is some kind of continuance.  But I won't try to imagine what that is for you or for me.
          That being said, I know what I'd like heaven to be... or afterlife, or whatever you want to call it.  While I'm not really a vengeful person, while I don't believe in violence as a solution or revenge scenarios, while I don't even think our retributive justice system with its "punishment" philosophy actually improves anything or makes people "learn their lessons" or even inhibits others from misbehaving, while I cannot accept that "an eye for an eye" is in any way a good idea (and as we know it certainly isn't a Godly one, as Jesus said again and again), there is a part of me that dreams of heaven as a place where people finally see what their actions have done.  I want people, especially those in power, to really understand and see at a deep level how self-serving and therefore how dreadfully attacking, unkind and abusive their decisions have been.  I want them to see that those they have vilified are in fact their brothers and sisters, people like themselves, who are equally loved, valued and cherished by God.  I want them to understand that to be unkind, to restrict access to needed things, good things, life-giving things for anyone is to injure everyone, including themselves.  I want everyone to have the eyes of God who loves us all with a ferocity that defies every way in which we see the world.  I want us to finally and fully comprehend that denying others a safe place to live, enough to eat, good education and health care, community, connection, compassion - is to be cruel and restrictive to God-self; that to build walls that keep others out is to separate ourselves from God in those other people, and to look with eyes of hate on anyone else is to hate God.  I want people to get that when we use and abuse the earth, we are using and abusing our mother, our creator, our core, our ultimate being.  And I want people to fully comprehend, from a deep place, that nothing that we have is "ours" - all of it is put in our stewardship to use for the good of all creation.  This is what I want.  I want this so badly that I lie awake at night envisioning the conversations between God and those who abuse their power and in the process end up killing and destroying people and the earth.  I don't want suffering: I imagine a God who is so full of compassion that She/He/They understand exactly why another can't see in this life-time.  My God has grace and love even for those who have harmed others.  But I do want everyone to see, to know, to have clarity around the choices they've made that have harmed and hurt.  That is my idea of "heaven" - a place of ultimate accountability in the sense of facing the vilification of others, the unjust fears that cause us to act without compassion or love in any situation and which continue to cause rifts that divide, destroy and will ultimately end life on this planet in one way or another.  I want people to see.  And I want it with every atom in my body.
            But the other day, my thinking around this moved a bit.  I believe deeply that God has given each of us free will.  I believe we are called to be in genuine relationship with God, and that means God will not, indeed cannot, control our thinking, control our actions, control what we see or fail to see, what we choose to believe or fail to believe.  I believe that God has given us this free will because God wants genuine relationships with us.  If our thinking/feeling/understanding is controlled by God, then the relationship is not genuine.  Instead we are puppets, controlled and manipulated and played.  I don't experience God this way.  Instead, I experience a God who really cares about each of us as we are, and who wants to know us as the people we choose to be.  I believe that is what the story about Adam and Eve is about: the choice that they made in the story to go against the wishes of God, while not what God desired, was none the less a choice they were given to make.  We continue to have the choice of exercising that free will.
          It suddenly occurred to me that this is a free will given for all time.  God always chooses relationship: that is the nature of God.  And that means we always have free will.  Therefore, even when the truth is right in front of us (and isn't that the case now?) some people can still choose not to see it, not to embrace it, not to accept it, and not to have it influence them.  It doesn't matter if it is in this life or in an afterlife.  This remains true.  This WILL remain true.
         I hate this.
         The visions or daydreams I have had about days of reckoning, especially for our leaders, suddenly expanded to hearing their response when faced with truth.
         God, "Do you see?  These people you are keeping 'out' - they are your brothers and sisters seeking asylum, seeking safety and life for their children.  They should be embraced, and helped, and healed."
        National leader: "No!  They are a threat."
        God: "They are not a threat.  They work hard, they struggle to survive.  They can expand and deepen your life.  Just like you (indeed for they ARE you, as we are all one another, all connected), they are simply trying to do the best for their children. They are my children too and I call you to love them as you love yourself.  Think of what they go through to try to get here.  They don't do this because they are fine where they are.  They are doing it to try to live, to try to create a life for their kids that is safe."
        NL: "No!  I hate them.  I don't want them.  They are not my brothers and sisters. They are trying to take what is MINE. I do not want them here.  They will change my world and I don't want my world changed."
        God: "It is not yours.  It's all mine, put into your hands to share for the good of all."
       NL:  "No.  I made this happen.  This is mine.  I worked for this.  Or you gave it to me for my own use because I am better.  I deserve this.  I will not share.  I will protect what is mine at whatever cost to anyone else."
        God: "Even at the cost to your children and grandchildren?  What you are doing is destroying the earth."
       NL: "No.  It's not my fault and it's not my responsibility."
        And so the conversation continued...
        Every day I am broken hearted by what I see.  Every day I am astounded that anyone could ever think that the separating of children from parents, that the killing of children by neglect and dehydration, that the hatred we send to people of different colors, backgrounds, languages, faith traditions, sexual orientations and places of birth... that we could ever think any of that is somehow okay with God.  Every day I weep from what I witness and strive to find a way to walk differently in a world that is increasingly accepting of hate, division and apathy towards others.  Each summer I am more and more frightened by the changes I experience in the climate, in our environment, in our world and I struggle to understand why some people continue to bury their heads in the sand and to live in such fear of the truth that they deny it altogether.  I want that to change.  I am aware that I am not doing enough to make the changes.  And yet I do not see the way forward into change.  I do not know what I am to do except to continue to speak, to learn as much as I can, and to share both what I know and what I experience, both as a human and as a person of faith.
         But this week I have had to give up on my own "revenge fantasies" of people simply seeing truth.  I have had to give that up as I've come to realize that those who do not want to see won't.  And those unable to self-reflect won't.  And those who do not want to own our part in the suffering of the world and our responsibility to help and to heal, will continue to grab what they can for themselves and will not see the bigger picture of our connection to everyone else and our need to care for them as if they were our own, because they are.  We belong to one another.  If we don't all work together, we will all perish together.  But I came to realize at a deeper level that this is the path that we are on...
        And my heart aches, and I weep.
        I am weary with the efforts, and I have had to let go of much of the hope...

        And then, after writing the above, I talked to my eldest daughter.  She struggles too.  She is my daughter in many senses of the word, and one of those has to do with her level of grief when she loses those she loves, and the depth of her anxiety when she faces change.  This, my girl, who struggles in many ways more than I ever have; who is afraid to return to school, afraid to see those places where friends she loved who have now graduated once walked, afraid to step forward into the new - I spoke with her.  I shared with her some of my fears and my concerns.  And in that place of pain and struggle, she still had the ability to say to me, "No one is beyond redemption.  We all learn and see and hear in different ways.  Different things cause us to grow and learn and move.  But God knows us fully.  And God knows what will help us to see.  We will all see.  All of us.  Including you and I: we will see our blind spots too.  And we will be shown those with grace and compassion and in the way that we can best hear and see.  There is hope.  Maybe not in this life, but there is hope."
        And so I wept again: this time with gratitude for my girl, for her vision, for her love, for her wisdom.  I saw with new eyes.  And what I saw was very good.

Not Peace, but a Sword

Hebrew 11:29-12:2

Luke 12:49-56

            This passage from Luke is a hard one, I believe, for us to understand.  In so many ways, in so many of our scriptures, we hear words promoting peace, promoting love, promoting a care that is full of grace and compassion and acceptance and nurture.  In the beginning of Luke’s gospel, Jesus, we are told has come to “guide our feet into the way of peace.”  When he appears at the end of the gospel, a risen Christ, he offers peace again, “my peace I leave you, my peace I give you.”  He tells parables of reconciliation such as the parable of the prodigal son, and he told his disciples to bring greetings of peace when they went to share the good news.  He brings healing, which is a physical manifestation of peace, and he offers forgiveness which bring the soul peace. 

But then we come to today’s passage.  And instead Jesus says, “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”  It’s hard to understand. 

Not only is this passage hard to understand, it’s also dangerous when misinterpreted.  This passage has been used by Christians of a more fundamentalist nature to justify the cutting off of children who are different than we expect them to be (such as LGBTQ children), disengaging from family with whom we disagree, and separating ourselves into “us” and “them”.  It has been used to isolate and alienate and create divisions without bridges, without words of understanding or ears to hear.  It has been misused to justify failing to work on relationships where there is controversy or conflict.  It has been misused to give excuses for simply ending relationships rather than doing the hard work of listening, sharing and rebuilding.

            But that is not what this passage is about.

            First of all, I believe this to be another example of a passage that is descriptive rather than prescriptive.  It describes a reality, rather than proclaiming that this is the way we are called to be.  But it describes a reality that accompanies a faith that is genuine and true and active.  That reality is that when you set your heart and mind on following a Christ who stands up for the oppressed, who is not afraid to confront the authority figures of the day (the scribes and pharisees, the money changers in the temple), who speaks TRUTH in the face of injustice, division will be created.  It will.  This is not because we are seeking division, but because speaking truth to authority, upsetting the status quo, demanding justice for those who are being harmed, will cause conflict and division.  We’ve seem this throughout history.  Those people in this country who stood up during the civil rights movement.  The women who fought for suffrage and the right to vote.  Family members creating an intervention for someone with addiction issues.  And now: with all the people standing up against the inhumane treatment of the children at the border.  The people doing God’s will, the people saying “No!  We will not tolerate this inability to treat one another with love.  We will not put up with the inhumane treatment of our brothers and sisters.  We will not allow this kind of cruelty to continue, a cruelty that fails to remember that we are connected, that we are all one, that when one of us hurts, all of us are lessened.”  When people say this, when people stand up for those who have little voice, when people reclaim basic human rights for ALL people – this causes division, it causes strife, it causes disruption.  It is a knife between peoples: between those who are seeking what is good only for themselves and their families, and those who get, as Jesus taught us to get, that there are not people who are more deserving or have more right to the good things that others have.  This sword, this division, is a necessary part of justice.  I wish it weren’t but it is.  And Jesus is clear about that.  If we want to follow Jesus, conflict will occur, divisions will occur.  And we are still called to follow.

            Sojourner’s Magazine had a very interesting article this week in which Melissa Florer-Bixler wrote, “"We wrongly assume we should not have enemies, but the expectation of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that we will have enemies. We know this because Jesus gives us a command to love our enemies. And in order to love your enemies, you first have to know who they are. Enemies are not the people we dislike or those who are different from us. In the gospel, enemies are those who make camp on the far side of the line that is justice.  And God is beckoning us – ALL of us – to join God among the oppressed.”  She goes on to explain that yes, we are called to love our enemies.  But loving them, true loving and caring about them is “to call them out of the world of denial and oppression, of despots and executioners.  To love your enemies is to help them see the truth about themselves and show them something else is possible.  To love your enemies is to tell them the story of how once we too were enemies of God and that through the lvoe of God who lived, died and rose among us, we are now called friends.  We have enemies because we hope that one day we might call them friends…. To turn from enemies to friends means our lives must change.”

            Again, this is what it means to be people following on the way.  And it is not pretty.  It is not easy. And it does not happen without confrontation and division. 

Frankly, even reconciliation will bring division.  As Audrey West says in Feasting on the Word commentary, “A ministry that reconciles long-standing enemies will inevitably rend relationships that depend on the old status quo.”  She goes on to point out that even in the story of the prodigal son, while the father and younger son had a healed and reconciled relationship, that reconciliation caused a new division between the father and the elder son.  She continues, “Humankind does not always appreciate the gospel's great reversals. We do not like it when those we deem undeserving receive the abundant grace promised to all. We want others to be punished for their sin, while we expect to be welcomed into the heavenly home (nobody expects to see their enemies in heaven!). Jealousy, anger, desire for revenge, resistance to change: these can consume us in the face of the gospel, to the point that we find ourselves antagonists against those whom Jesus welcomes.

“Jesus' teaching also speaks to the reality of a kinship based not on familial blood ties, but on a covenant of Jesus' blood (22:20). Even among his own people, where he is known as "Joseph's son" (4:22), Jesus becomes an outsider when he announces his mission from God. And when his own mother and brothers try to get close to him, he redefines the familial ties that bind his true family to him: "My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it" (8:21). What ties believers together is not the covenant of lineage but the covenant of blood, poured out for those who find fellowship in the family of God.”  (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary - Feasting on the Word – Year C, Volume 3: Pentecost and Season After Pentecost 1 (Propers 3-16).)

            It is when we are actually following in the way of Christ that divisions begin, not because we are seeking division but because we are seeking goodness, grace, justice, which will upset the status quo.  It will unbalance the mobile that we’ve come to understand and accept, especially when it has benefitted and served us.  It will not be pretty when the work of the gospel begins, it will not be smooth, it will not be easy.  It will require change, from all of us, and it will demand the best of us to challenge the worst that arises in response. 

            Jesus specifically describes this “division that will come” as a division within families. And this is a reminder to all of us that the “family of God” is not biological.  It includes everyone.  And when we try to protect what is “ours” for “our family” we miss the point.  All of it is God’s, and it is put in our care so that we might be stewards of the resources that come our way, using them for the good of everyone: EVERYONE.  The new family of God will not look like everyone looking out for their own.  It will look like us taking very seriously the call to see that homeless man as our brother, to see that undocumented child as our own child, to see the prostitute and drug addict as our sister, to see the person in prison as our spouse.  And it will mean that we provide the same care for them as we would if they really were our family member because in the new kingdom of God, in the NOW, in the following of Christ, that is exactly what they are.

            In the book Tattoos on the Heart, Father Boyle talks about the upset that some of the older church members experienced when his congregation really took on caring for the poor, for the homeless, and for gangs.  He says,

It was about this time what a man drove by the church and stopped to talk to me.  He was Latino, in a nice car and had arrived at some comfortable life and living.  He knew I was the pastor  He waxed nostalgic about having grown up in the projects and pointed to the church and said he had been baptized and made his first communion there.  Then he takes in the scene all around him.  Gang members gathered by the bell tower, homeless men and women being fed in great numbers in the parking lot.  Folks arriving for the AA and NA meetings and the ESL classes.  It’s a “Who’s Who of Everybody Who Was Nobody.  Gang member, drug addict, homeless, undocumented.  This man sees all this and shakes his head, determined and disgusted, as if to say, “tsk tsk.”

            “You know,” he says, “This used to be a church.”

            I mount my high horse and say, “You know, most people around here think it’s finally a church.” (p73)

            That’s what the gospel looks like.  It offers grace and comfort to those who are afflicted.  And we like talking about that.  We are comfortable talking about that.  This is important.  And if you are suffering, which all of us are in some way, know that the love and compassion of Christ is with you, offering comfort, presence, love, grace and healing.  But the other side of this is that the gospel also offers affliction to those who are comfortable.  Doing the work of Christ is not and will not be easy.  It does not come without cost, and sometimes the cost is relationships with those we love the most.  We know this.  We know as we struggle to get along in an increasingly divided time how hard it is to listen and speak truth in a way that maintains relationships.  We know that as much as we try, if we do the work of Christ we put at risk for people the comfort of their current lives and that challenge costs us at times.  The cost for God-self, for Christ, for Jesus, in his speaking truth and in his standing up for the defenseless, and for his healing of people and confronting the status quo: that cost was death: a death on a cross in a most awful and gruesome way.  And yet, he stepped into that life, with conviction, with strength, because God’s love for us was so great, Jesus’ love for all was so big, that being that Truth, being that Way of unconditional love and strength: these were things he was not willing to sacrifice to make nice or to get along with everyone, or even to keep his life.  He calls us to be willing to follow in the same way.  Again, not easy.  Not pain-free.  Not comfortable.  There is no room for “prosperity gospel” thinking here.  Following Christ is hard.  It is simple, but it is hard.

            So where is the Good News in this?  The good news is that there is peace at the end.  But as Bonhoeffer said it, “There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won when the way leads to the cross.”  The good news is also that when we choose to do what Jesus calls us to do, when we choose to stand up for those who are voiceless, those who are weaker, those who are suffering, that is when we find true peace within our own hearts.  It is truly the “peace that surpasses understanding.” And part of why it passes understanding is that it comes in the midst of the divisions that action causes.

            It is difficult for us to hear passages like today.  I understand that.  God understands that.  But God is not only about grace.  God calls us into a life of radical and complete love.  That means speaking truth, it means acting for the best for everyone.  It means caring about those we would rather not speak to.  It means being willing to give some things up, to step forward into a life of stewardship, sharing, caring that confronts injustices and brings wholeness to all people.  This isn’t easy.  But God wants us to be the most whole, the best we are and the best we can be. For our sake, as well as for the sake of all we encounter.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

Returning from the Mountain Top

            We've all had those mountain top times in which we experience something beyond "good," beyond what we expect, beyond what we even imagine.  We've all had those rare but beautiful times when it feels that our lives have been, for a moment, in a "thin" place, a place where the "veil between heaven and earth" or rather, the separation between what is true and good and profound from what is mundane and daily and "life" simply thins out.  These are times when we glimpse what is important, what is real at a whole other level, when we touch the Divine in a way that brings tears to our eyes, changes our breathing, affects our whole perspective on our lives and for a moment feels that it will never let us go back to what we once were.
          The transfiguration story was such a moment.  The disciples were given a vision: they saw Jesus transformed and Moses and Elijah appeared and were speaking with Jesus on a mountain top.  Their response was to say "let us build three shelters here for the three of you!"  They did not want the experience to simply be over: they did not want the vision to end.  It needed to be marked, somehow, with something special and concrete, something that was not the vision but was tangible.  They wanted a way to stay in the moment, or to at least a doorway to be able to return to it.
          Again, this is familiar.  When we have those moments, those "mountain top experiences", those highs, we want to mark them, to make them concrete.  We want to be permanently changed by the experiences in a way that lets the world know what has happened, that shares it.  We want to be able to return to that place within and without where we touched something beyond ourselves.  Given the chance, we would never leave.
       But that is not what happens.  We do leave the mountain top.  We have to descend back into the daily hum drum of life.  We have our routines, we have people who need us, we have our work and our household chores and our relationships.  All of these require attention that bring us back from those highs and push us to return to who we were, at least in the day to day scheme of things.
        In light of this, how do we hold on to a piece of what we experienced?  How do we allow those highs to change us, affect us, make in us something new?
         For the last two weeks, David and I had the incredible privilege and joy of being able to go to Scotland for a belated honeymoon.  I will not make this into a travel log post, though at some point I may write one.  What I will say is that it was wonderful.  We were able to see many Scottish beauties and to participate in many interesting events.  We travelled mostly around to the islands off the mainland of Scotland and stayed, most of the time, in smaller villages.  We saw castles and estates and standing stones, the National Piping Center, a sheepdog demonstration, the Edinburgh Military Tattoo.  We experienced a traditional Scottish meal with entertainment of singing and performing.  We travelled with two different tours, met very interesting people, heard much about Scottish history and Scottish culture, heard traditional and new Scottish music, saw the bagpipes play many times, and connected with people in meaningful and wonderful ways.
        But to say all of that is to miss out on the depth of the experience, at least for me.  The depth of the experience connected for me much more to things like the weather (which was wonderful for us), and the incredible beauty of the highlands and the gardens and nature.  It was about being in places that meant something to David and I - a cemetery with the names of family for David, and Iona with all that it represents in terms of faith and spirituality for me.  It was about walking and smelling the smells of Scotland, breathing in the air of history and story and deep connection.  It was a beautiful, meaningful and wonderful couple of weeks.  To talk about it at all feels like cheapening and lessening the experience somehow... moving it out of the realm of the magical and spiritual, and into the realm of a vacation or a trip, a fun time that we were given, in order to celebrate our marriage.
       I've returned then wondering how to share, what to say, and how to communicate in any way what we experienced.  I've returned wondering if the time away can be allowed to change me for the better, and if so, what that looks like and why.  I've returned with more questions than I had before I left, more unresolved wonderings, and a stronger sense of the restlessness that my life produces in me regularly.
       And as I've sat with this mountain top experience, I think my response to it has to, as ever, begin with simple gratitude: gratitude for the time, gratitude for the space, and gratitude for the experiences. I think it is that gratitude that must deepen as I reflect on what lessons I will carry from that time away.  I also hope it will help me to remember when I am struggling or feeling low that life comes with ebbs and flows, highs and lows.  I've had extremes at both ends.  But that, too, just invites fuller living and a deeper sense of possibility within me for growing, seeing, becoming what I hope to be.  I do not know where all of this will take me.  But perhaps the "high", the "mountain top" is just a new beginning, and an invitation to see where my next steps will lead, both within and without.  It is an opening up of the spirit so that what is deep and real may blow inside my being with each new breath.  I will write more as I learn.  But for today, I sit in the gratitude and am thankful for the space to remember, to reflect, and to breath in experiences of joy, light, and love.
     Thanks be to God!