Confession

 

John 18:12-27

John 21:15-19

Peter loved Jesus.  He loved Jesus deeply and in both of these passages he is making promises to Jesus.  In the second passage from John he is promising that he loves Jesus and Jesus is telling him to therefore show it by going out into the world and caring for Jesus’ sheep – or God’s people.  In the first passages, Peter is promising that he will never forsake or betray Jesus.  But then we see that he does.  This isn’t his intention.  He is not planning to betray Jesus.  He loves Jesus.  But he got caught up in the moment and before he knew what he was doing, he had done the very thing he hated – he had betrayed this person whom he loved.  He had betrayed his Lord.  He had betrayed God.

We, too, make mistakes, devastating mistakes sometimes, against the people we love and in doing so, against God God-self, who loves us all and wants right relationships for us all.  Sometimes these mistakes are complicated by our failure to realize that we have a choice about them.  Many times, maybe even most times, we don’t realize we are being “tempted” into hurting others and therefore hurting God until the moment has passed. 

We see example after example of this in our movies.  So many of our stories involve a betrayal, often unintended, of one person by someone they love. We’ve talked before about the movie “The Devil Wears Prada”.  The movie’s main character, Andi, starts as a person with goals and integrity.  She wants to be a journalist, and she has written about injustices such as poor work conditions.  She is in a committed relationship and values her time with her friends.  She enjoys her life, and has a cause or meaning, a purpose in her future.  Her values do not include shallow things like appearance, being thin, high fashion, owning expensive purses, clothing, things.  She puts work in its proper place as one aspect of who she is.  She is down-to-earth, centered, and knows where she is heading and what she wants.  When she first applies for the job as Assistant to the Director of Runway Magazine, she is appalled by the value system that surrounds her – the emphasis on accessories that make no real difference to one’s well-being, the insistence on being thin, on looking “right,” on dressing “right.”  She is also kind, committed to her friendships and cares about her relationships with those friends, and with her boyfriend, above all others.  But when she takes the job, she finds her values and her identity being slowly challenged, slowly and subtly being undermined and eroded.  She finds herself giving up more and more of her time with her friends and significant other in order to work.  She finds herself being pulled into the drama and the appeal of a fast-paced career with models and glamour and eventually into valuing the entire system of clothing and accessories and being thin and owning purses that cost thousands of dollars – all things she didn’t used to care about.  The choices she is faced with – to choose depth, meaning and relationships, or to choose appearance, glamour, fame and achievement are subtle choices, but she finds herself choosing for the latter again and again, and she finds herself saying to those who would challenge those choices, “well, I didn’t have a choice!” She chooses to do what her boss asks her to do, and in the end that means that she ends up deeply hurting a colleague who was becoming a friend.  She took from her an activity, by agreeing to do it herself, that she knew was the thing most valued by her friend.  She betrayed that relationship, all the time repeating that phrase, “I didn’t have a choice.”  Similarly, she begins a flirtation with another man, “cheating” in an emotional way, on her boyfriend.  Again, it is subtle, and it feels to Andi like she is just responding in the best, most appropriate way to the actions of others coming at her.  But she betrays that relationship as well, deeply hurting the man she loves. 

“I didn’t have a choice.” But that lie that she told herself, that she didn’t have a choice meant that she lost her friends, she lost her significant other, she lost her sense of self and her values.  As she and her boyfriend are having the conversation where they are actually splitting up, she receives a phone call from her boss, and she says, “I’m sorry.  I have to answer this,” STILL not realizing she is making a choice.  As her boyfriend walks away he says to her, “You know, in case you were wondering?  The person whose calls you always take – that’s the relationship you’re in.”  Even after all of those losses she still didn’t realize the choices that she was making or that she had a choice to make, until her boss, Miranda, in the film pointed it out to her by comparing Andi’s choices with her own.  Andi could see that Miranda’s choices were hurtful, were harmful, were devastating.  But until Miranda pointed out that Andi had made the same choices, Andi couldn’t see. She could not see the choice she was making, or even THAT she was making a choice. It was just like with Peter, who did not realize he was doing what Jesus told him he would, that he was denying the person he loved, until the rooster crowed, reminding him of Jesus’ words that said he would do exactly that.

Similarly with Saruman in Lord of the Rings who thought he could look into the Palantir thinking he could learn from it and instead was seduced by it.

            Also in a Joan of Arcadia episode where Joan has been asked to do something by God that Joan does not understand and that she feels would hurt her friend.  She chooses to say “no” to God instead, believing that she has a good reason, but that choice, that choice to “protect” her friend against that request of God lead to the friend being much more harmed, much more damaged than if she had acted differently. 

            In most of these situations: Andi in Devil Wears Prada, Joan in Joan of Arcadia, and Peter in this story with Jesus, we find the same ending.  In the “Devil Wears Prada” Andi eventually chooses to walk away from the evil that she is becoming.  In the Joan clip, she is given another chance, repeatedly, and she chooses to listen and follow God.  Saruman never changes: he becomes too entrapt in his love for evil.  But with Peter, too, we know the end of this story.  The end is that Peter does follow Jesus after Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Peter becomes a martyr for the faith – dying because of his proclamation of Jesus as Lord.  He does stand up for God, by God, by Jesus.  He had a slip, but that wasn’t the end of the story. 

We, too, make mistakes and hurt people we care about.  But God offers us forgiveness, God offers us new chances every day.  More, God forgives us and starts us over again and again and again.  I wish I could say that people were as forgiving.  But they aren’t always.  Some betrayals can’t be gotten over.  Some mistakes can’t be righted by apologies or attempts at reconciliation. 

            I’m reminded of a MASH episode which I shared about recently in a blog post but wanted to share it here as well: In Episode “Dear Sis”: Father Mulcahy punched a guy who had hit him first and was being difficult.  He felt bad about it and tried to apologize, but the man was still being an absolute jerk who was completely incapable of seeing how he contributed to the problem.  Father felt bad and was outside and said to Hawkeye:

F: You know, I used to coach boxing at the CYO. I told my boys it built character.

H: Father, why don’t you stop punching yourself on the chin.  Pick on someone your own size

F: I’m Christ’s representative. “Suffer the little children to come unto me.  Do unto others… I’m not just supposed to say that stuff.  I’m supposed to do it.

H:All you’re supposed to do is the best you can.

F: Some best.

H: Best is best!  Look.  Suppose you were sitting here right now with somebody who had done his best and was feeling lousy about it.  You’d let ‘em off the hook wouldn’t you?

F:  Sure I would.  And if the hook didn’t work, I’d probably try an uppercut.

H: Father, get off your back.

F: It isn’t just that.  I don’t seem to make a difference here.  I hang around on the edge of effectiveness.  And when I do step in, I really step in.

H: Look.  This place has made us all nuts.  Whey should you be any different?   WE don’t sleep we don’t eat and every day a truck dumps a load of bloody bodies on the ground.  Okay so you hit someone.  We have to stand here and watch so much misery we’re lucky we don’t all join hands and walk into a chopper blade.

            The reality is that none of us are perfect.  Not one.  And that means that all of us will err at one point or another.  We all will.  No matter how “good” we are, and no matter how hard we try, we will hurt people.  We will hurt people we don’t care about, and we will hurt people we love.  We will, like Peter, deny someone we love when we feel threatened, refusing to stand up and say “I know that person and I love that person” to someone who is condemning them.  We will, like Andi in “Devil wears Prada” choose to do what gets us ahead, even if it means someone else losing out on an opportunity.  We will, like Joan in Joan of Arcadia, choose to follow our own path, thinking we know best, even when we’ve been told otherwise.  We will err. 

            But the Good News of this story and every Bible story is one of God’s amazing and great, unfathomable forgiveness, offered to us again and again and again.  It is the Good News of second, third, 100^th choices to do right again next time.  It is one of Grace.

            Our call when others seek forgiveness and reconciliation is to follow God, to follow Jesus and extend grace just as they did, not just for the other, but for our own healing as well.  But we cannot control the choices of others and sometimes we will not be offered that same grace. 

            Still, you can count on God’s grace.  Jesus shows it to Peter, and God shows it to us.  God hopes that we will not make those decisions that harm relationships, but God knows we will err, we will make mistakes.  And when we do, God is there to offer us new starts, new chances, new opportunities. 

            There is something else I want to say here.  We are in the season of lent, and lent as you know, is a time that we are usually called to self-reflect and to “repent”.  But that word, “repent” carries with it so many associations that are incorrect.  “Repenting” is not about beating yourself up with shame and guilt and pain.  It’s not about punishing yourself and then striving to do better.  “Repenting” means turning around, going a different direction.  Marcus Borg defines “repentance” as “returning from exile.”  I want you to think about that for a moment.  Because doesn’t that feel very different that what we’ve always heard it to mean up until now?  Returning from exile is about coming home: coming HOME.  You come home to yourself, you come home to who you really are, you come home to who you want to be.  And we don’t tend to get there by beating ourselves up.  Yes, self-reflection is necessary to know what is keeping us in exile, and what is keeping us apart from what we love and what we want to be.  For Peter, his denial of Jesus was keeping him from Jesus.  So we change.  But we don’t change out of shame and guilt.  We change as a way to return home to the people we are called to be. 

            I think about Frodo in Lord of the Rings when he thought that Sam was out to take the ring from him.  Frodo “repented” or came home from exile when he saw Sam again for who he really was: the helper who, in the end, saved Frodo’s life.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Lord, If You Had Been Here!

 

John 11:1-44

Psalm 104:27-30

Lent 1

            The story we hear today is a complicated one.  Jesus’ life has been threatened so his disciples are not excited about going back to Judea, and so close to Jerusalem.  We hear that it was “less then two miles” from Jerusalem to where Martha, Mary and Lazarus were.  But Jesus heard that Lazarus was very ill, so after waiting a couple days, he decided he needed to go back to see him, he had to go, despite the threats against him.  The disciples were anxious, but Jesus needed to do this.  He loved Lazarus, he loved Martha and Mary and he needed to return to them to help. 

            On the way back he heard that Lazarus had died.  And Martha and Mary were both upset with Jesus, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died!”  Martha said.  Later Mary said the same thing, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died!”  We understand this.  We understand this pain, this anger, this frustration.  They are grieving the loss of their brother!  And at some level they feel it is Jesus’ fault.  “If only!”  They say.  If only!  If only Jesus had been there, Lazarus would not have died!  And while in their anger it sounds like they are being disrespectful, the truth is that these statements on their parts are strong statements of faith, of trust.  Jesus is able to see past their accusations and to understand that these angry comments are both statements of love for their brother and statements of trust in him!  They trusted that he would have been able to prevent Lazarus’ death.  They also trusted that he could still do something about it.

            Oh, that we were able to see the same in those who get angry with us!  But it’s not that easy for us, is it?  It just isn’t really that simple when we are faced with an “If only” most of the time!

            A couple months ago now my parents both were sick with COVID.  Because they had been vaccinated, they did not get it severely.  They both thought they just had colds.  But the truth was that they both had it and that my father had been to my house the first day that his symptoms showed up.  By the time we found out that it was, in fact, COVID, both David and I had symptoms similar to theirs.  And while I was not worried about myself, I was worried, very worried, about other people in my life.  I was worried about the congregation.  I was worried about my kids being exposed.  And I was deeply worried about David.  David has some fairly serious respiratory issues.  The major diagnosis for him is that he has asthma about being sick.  To say it differently, he gets an asthmatic reaction every time he is ill.  That means that once he gets sick, his allergy system kicks in and he has a hard time breathing, he coughs terribly and constantly, and it doesn’t go away.  As a result of this and other respiratory issues, he actually had to have a tracheotomy when he was only 5 years of age because he couldn’t breathe.  He has the scar from that to this day and it is a daily reminder to me that for David, being sick, especially with a respiratory illness, is not a simple or uncomplicated thing.  For David, being sick is very serious.  So, when I heard that my parents did in fact have COVID, and when I realized they had been at my house the first day that it really presented itself, I was upset.  Like Martha and Mary, I confronted my dad, “If you had not come that day, David would not be sick!”  Different words, but equally a response of grief and fear that manifested in being upset.  And, like Mary and Martha, I wasn’t calling him to just complain.  They went to Jesus seeking help.  They needed to express their grief.  They needed someone to hear their pain.  But also, they were both still hoping, still trusting that he could make it better.  I called my dad to complain just because I needed someone to hear how scared and sad I was that David was sick and that I was afraid it, too, would be COVID.  But we also know that a huge part of grieving is bargaining, or negotiating.  At some level I think it felt that if I could just say “if only you hadn’t come!” it would fix it, it would turn the hands of time back and mean he hadn’t exposed David, and that we were okay. 

In fact, it turned out neither of us did contract COVID.  But in that moment of pain, those feelings of “If Only” were the feelings that overwhelmed me. 

            “If only!”  If only Jesus had been there.  If only my parents hadn’t come over that day.  If only Brent hadn’t gone to that party where COVID went crazy through the group.  If only Suzie hadn’t sold their house at the bottom of the market.  If only, if only, if only.  These are familiar sentiments to all of us, far too often.

            And Jesus’ response?  The shortest but most packed verse in the entire Bible, “Jesus wept.”  Even though in the story he could still do something about Lazarus’ death, even though he could still bring Lazarus back, even though the story did not end here, we still have this amazing and profound verse, “Jesus wept.” 

            I remember reading a sermon once in which the pastor said that we are to be people of the resurrection, people of joy, people always trusting and delighting in the hope of tomorrow.  We are to trust that God truly can and does bring new life out of every death, and new beginnings out of every ending.  And yes, there is truth in that.  As I mentioned in my sermon on the wedding in Cana back in January, we should celebrate much more than we do.  There is so much hope, promise and joy in the resurrection story!  There is so much life and grace and abundance in what Jesus brought and shows us of who God is, that we have no excuse not to party and celebrate and live this life in great fullness!  I stand by that.  I believe it to be true.

            But these two words in this one verse give us a very different gift.  They also give us permission to grieve.  Jesus wept before moving on and bringing new life to Lazarus.  Jesus wept before even looking towards hope and new possibilities for life for Lazarus.  Jesus wept.  He didn’t just cry a few tears.  He didn’t just say “aw, that’s too bad!”  He WEPT.  And he wept for a long time: all the way to the cave where Lazarus was buried.  And in doing so, he invites us to do the same.  We are given permission to cry and to grieve and to lament the changes, the losses and the struggles that we, too, have experienced. 

            I have talked before about the importance of reframing our tragedies.  And of seeing God in them, through them, and in the resurrection aftermath of them.  But we cannot jump there too quickly.  It is immensely important for us to live through the feelings of loss, and of grief. 

            I’m reminded of a movie I saw (Joan of Arcadia episode) in which one of the main characters had been in a car accident and had become a paraplegic as a result.  The person who caused the accident was the driver of the car who had been drunk when he drove.  While Kevin had finally come to terms with the loss of his legs, the loss of the life he had envisioned for himself, the family of the one who had driven the car sued him because he had allowed his drunk friend to drive.  Kevin’s parents tried to shield him from that.  They said to him, “Kevin, you should not have to go through this again!”  But his response, his profound, wise, deep response was, “But I have to.  Don’t take this away from me.”  Don’t take this away from me.  Jesus got that.  He got that there is a need to go through grief, through the pain, in order to truly heal, and, I would say, in order to see the new life on the other side. 

            When the kids were little, we had, for a while, two pets: a cat, Sabbath, and a Beta fish named Jeriah.  At night when I would tuck them into bed, I usually sang to the kids and my song would include a part where I would list everyone in our family: “With Mama and Daddy and (eldest) and (middle) and (youngest) and Grandma and Grandpa and Nana and ….” Etc.  I would name everyone who was part of my kids’ closest circle in the song each night.  Grandparents, aunts and uncles, friends, and, yes, the pets.  I would end each one with “And Sabbath and Jeriah” Well, as you know, fish don’t live long.  One day when we came out we found Jeriah at the top of the fish tank, floating on his side.  It was sad but we made it important: did a little service before flushing the fish down the toilet, sending him to his watery grave.  No one cried at that point.  I think everyone, even the littlest of the kids, understood that death was a part of life and that fish just don’t live very long.  That night when I sang our goodnight song, though, Middle was adamant, even before I started singing, “Don’t forget Jeriah!  You still need to include Jeriah!”  And it was at that point, when I was singing our goodnight song and naming the fish, that the tears came. 

            There is a wonderful Washington Irving poem that I would like to share with you:

There is a sacredness in tears.

They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.

They speak more eloquently than 10,000 tongues.

They are the messengers of overwhelming grief,

of deep contrition and of unspeakable love.

            We are in a time when there is much to weep about.  Our world is not what we would want it to be.  We are frightened and scared about the violence happening in the Ukraine, about the decision to deal with things through violence at all, with the greed and the claiming of power that this represents.  We feel helpless in the face of such wrong behavior.  And on top of that we continue to struggle with COVID.  We see people almost always through masks, we distance from people we would like to be spending time with, we all have lost people and lost a sense of “normalcy”.  And this has been going on now a LONG time.  Next week we will have been under the tyranny of the pandemic for two years.  Two long years.  Do we see a light at the end of this tunnel?  We think we do and then that light moves to being farther off.  And the reality is we will never return to what was.  Times have changed.  We have changed.  There is sadness to be felt, there is grief to go through.  This is our truth.  This is the reality of the times.  And while we trust and look to a God of resurrection, a God of new life, a God of hope and joy, we aren’t there yet.

            This is the first week in lent: and in this first week of lent, we are walking towards the cross, not yet towards the resurrection.  And we are called to look, to see, to be honest about where we are and how we are and where we are going.  And we are called, finally, to do what Jesus did.  To grieve, to struggle, to acknowledge the pain, to go through the pain.  To weep.  We know that God knows what this is, that God understands what this feels like.  And we know that tears are a deep gift: the ability to weep, to release our pain, to express our pain: this is a gift from God.  Often, it is only once we have allowed ourselves to grieve, to feel, that we can see what actions we can take to change things, to make the world better.  We are invited into the grief so that we can move through the grief to a new place, a place of hope, of resurrection, of new life.  It will come: that is the promise.  But we must go through the death, through the grief first.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Lenten experiment with plastic

         For lent this year our family decided to give up plastic, especially one-use plastic since it has become such a huge problem for our oceans and our environment.  I made this decision because I kept wondering how the Lenten disciplines of doing something that increases only personal devotion really touches all of those we are called to love equally with ourselves.  I felt that we needed instead to do something good for the world, no matter how small.  While this was the impetus, as with almost everything we do for others, I have found that I have been the one to gain the most through the learning, alone, that has come from this Lenten experiment.
         We are only half way through lent at this point, and yet the challenge of trying to extricate ourselves from plastic use has been almost impossible.  What I have learned is that plastic is all around us, in almost everything.  As a result, this one simple choice to try to avoid plastic has in fact been the hardest spiritual discipline I've yet tried.
        Beginning with food:  We found that much of the prepackaged food we are used to eating was completely off the list for lent.  I'll separate this out by food groups:
        Carbohydrates: Cereal, while boxed in cardboard, always has a plastic lining between the carboard and the cereal itself.  The exception was oatmeal, but even that came with a plastic lid. Friends suggested the bulk bins.  Two problems for us: the first was that the bags by the bulk bins were, again, plastic. We could bring in our own paper bags, though this was not appreciated by the grocery check out people.  The second was that the cereal selection was mostly limited to granola or mussily, neither of which are appealing to my kids.  Crackers, likewise, all came with plastic somewhere in the packaging.  The one exception we found to this was Goldfish crackers, which have become a bit of a staple for the kids during this time.  Pasta often is also packaged in cardboard: but almost all of it comes with a little plastic window so that you can see the pasta inside.  Breads and bagels - all sliced bread and prepackaged bagels came in plastic.  But we soon found that we were able to buy freshly baked bagels and breads directly from the bakery and put it in our own bags or in paper bags.
        Proteins:  This was, in many ways, even harder.  We are a dairy family.  We love our milk, our yogurt, our cheeses.  We could buy smaller containers of milk in cardboard (half gallon, when we usually buy full gallons of milk: about 5 a week!), but the only brand that did not have a plastic top was Clover, which is very expensive.  We looked for glass milk bottles and did find some in a health food store, and yet even those bottles had plastic lids.  Yogurt and cheese?  Nope.  Out for lent.  I simply could find no yogurt or cheese that was not packaged in plastic.  Some of our family are meat eaters.  We found we could go to the meat counter and ask for meat to be cut and prepared and wrapped in paper.  But we could not simply buy chicken or fish or any other kind of meat in any other way.  All of the prepackaged meat was wrapped in plastic.
        Fruit and Veggies: this was by far the easiest.  We have our own bags that we bring in for fruit and vegetables.  However, there were still limitations.  Cherry tomatoes were out.  So were berries.  Also, while I understand that Trader Joe's has now made a commitment to lessening plastic packaging, so far our local Trader Joe's has not made those changes.  So we can't shop there for our produce during lent.
        Other products were equally challenging.  My cats are extremely picky, I realize, but finding dry cat food that did not come in plastic that my cats would actually eat was a complete fail.  Likewise, we've been trying to get away from some of the cat litters that have so much dust and tracking problems.  But the alternatives all came in plastic.
       When it comes to bathroom and cleaning products, the challenges were even greater.  Toilet paper, shampoo, conditioner, soap dispensers for laundry, dish, hands and body, feminine hygiene products, toothpaste, deodorant:  all of it comes in plastic.  With some serious research, I was able to find products I could order on-line for most of these things.  There is a company that makes toilet paper out of bamboo (grows faster and is therefore more renewable) that also wraps the paper in bamboo packaging.  I also found a company that makes shampoo, conditioner and deodorant that comes in a bar form and therefore can be packaged in cardboard.  I am trying that out and will let you know how that goes.  There are also alternatives to laundry soap and dish soap.  Many companies advertise that they are "better" in terms of their plastic use but in fact they aren't.  One, for example, states that it produces less plastic waste by sending you a glass bottle and then liquid soap to fill the bottle in plastic bags.  Those plastic bags are still plastic, so I'm not sure who they think they are fooling.  All of this required research and ordering from companies that don't sell their products in local stores.  The toothpaste alternatives, as well as most household cleaning alternatives mostly seem to involve making your own products. Cleaners are mostly baking soda and vinegar.  There are tooth powders, yet, interestingly, almost all still came in plastic, which made me question the point.  Also the textures of these alternatives (and the concern over a lack of fluoride in the toothpaste) were really distasteful.  Still, it challenged me to think about how far I was willing to go with this, even just for lent.
         Other things were just not an option.  I could not find batteries, for example, without plastic packaging.  While there are alternatives to toothbrushes and hair brushes, on most the bristles still appear to be plastic, even when the backs are bamboo or wood.  Razors are mostly plastic, or have plastic components.. they all come packaged in plastic.  Antibacterial cream comes in plastic.  While you can buy spices in glass, they all seem to have a plastic top under the metal lid.  My children are no longer packing their lunches into plastic bags, but the alternatives we've been using are the Tupperware (plastic) in our cupboards.  Better, but still plastic. One more helpful site: here.
        Mostly, the experiment is requiring a change of lifestyle.  For example, when we had my daughter's birthday party, we needed to use real plates because all paper products are packaged in plastic. This might be a no-brainer, except it meant spending a good part of the party washing already used dishes so that there would be enough for the next "course" of whatever the kids were eating.   I've found it necessary to carry in my purse my own mug and my own metal straw (not that straws are ever really necessary) so that when I eat out with friends or even attend meetings at other churches, I can still drink without using a plastic cup.  I went to a day long conference and needed to think through food ahead of time because I knew they'd be bringing in food mostly in plastic containers, with plastic utensils.  For that day, a set of utensils also went into my purse.  Web-sites that encourage limiting plastic use say we should bring our own containers to restaurants for left-overs.  At that point, my purse was just too big to carry!
      As I said, we are only half way through lent.  I will continue to explore alternatives and let you know at the end of the best products we find.  It's been a good challenge for all of us to really look at our plastic use.  Not easy, but good.  The challenge of picking something for lent that actually serves something bigger than ourselves has been great.  I hope that next year we can come up with something equally challenging, eye-opening, and hopefully even more helpful to the earth.

The Spiritual Discipline of Celebration

John 2:1-11
Luke 15

      Today we are looking at the spiritual discipline of celebration.  This one may be one of the hardest practices for us to recognize as a spiritual discipline.  How is it a discipline to celebrate, to laugh to party?  Aren’t disciplines supposed to be hard? 
       No.  As I said the first week we talked about this, the spiritual disciplines are ways to come closer to God.  That is their purpose.  If something is too hard it can be a distraction in itself.  That is the problem, often, with people who choose total austerity as a spiritual practice.  Just as our stuff can distract us from God, total lack of stuff can also distract us from God.  Hardships of any kind can claim our focus, and the purpose of the spiritual disciplines is to limit distractions from God, or to figure out ways to still focus on God through the distractions of our lives.  So then the question might be asked, isn’t celebration also a distraction from God?  When we are partying and celebrating and happy are we focused on God?  Well, it depends on how and why we are celebrating.  If our celebration is about God, and if we include God in our celebrations, they become invitations for joy with God, for dancing with God, for expressing gratitude to God for all that God has given us and continues to give us.  We hear today in the passages from John and Luke all the many times that God celebrates.  God celebrates when we are with God.  God celebrates when we return to God.  God celebrates when we find meaningful relationships (as in the wedding in Cana).  God celebrates when we find new life and when joy finds us.  God celebrates us.  And we, in turn are called to celebrate God. 
         Some may say that lent is the worst of all times to focus on celebration.  It is supposed to be a somber time of reflection and preparation for Jesus ultimate sacrifice.  We celebrate after lent.  But actually, the forty days of lent exclude Sundays.  If we included Sundays, lent would be 46 days.  But we don’t.  Sundays are supposed to be the days off from lent.  They are set aside to celebrate the resurrection, the return to life, the glory and wonder of a God who loves us so much that even death is overcome by that love.  Sunday is the day of celebration – of God’s love and resurrection and new life given to us each day.  So perhaps especially during lent we are called to set aside the seriousness of self-reflection, repentance and preparation on Sundays and simply to be and celebrate God’s love and grace this day.  And while there are some traditions that do away with celebratory words such as “alleluia” and even “Gloria” during lent, other don’t – reflecting that every Sunday is a celebration of resurrection and every Sunday is a time to remember that God created us, first and foremost, good, and that is worth celebrating.  I read an article recently in Presbyterian Outlook from a pastor who intentionally decided to keep using alleluias and glorias during lent as a way to remember that indeed, we are made good and that our time of self reflection is not about beating ourselves up, but encouraging us to grow into being the best we can be.  Sometimes the beating up behavior makes that harder.  It is easier, it is better to celebrate the good and from that place of celebration, rededicate ourselves to working towards being even better.
       It may seem odd to offer up ways to celebrate.  Surely we all know how to celebrate.  But I would say that if the typical traditional church service is any indication, we really don’t know how to celebrate God.  It’s like when a pastor stands up and says, “This is the day our God has made” and gets back a “let us be glad and rejoice in it” in a monotone, somber, distracted voice.  That is not rejoicing.  That is not celebrating.  Are the words we say simply words, detached from the rest of us?  Or are we called to genuinely celebrate with all of our being the amazing things that God has done and is done for us?  Celebration is an expression of true joy.  Celebration therefore involves all of who we are, our bodies, our minds, our spirits, our emotions.  It looks like gratitude, deep: heart- felt gratitude.  It looks like a joy that cannot be contained in a sitting, still, solemn body.  It should look the same way that we celebrate birthdays and weddings and graduations.  But it usually doesn’t, does it. 
       At my last church, we began a family oriented midweek service when almost all the kids in the church were quite young.  The kids would dance in the aisles during the songs, they would move around during the prayers. And I have to admit that I, too, struggled with this.  I felt like they needed to learn “proper church decorum” at some level, and so, while I did not scold the kids in church, I did tell my own kids after services that they really needed to not move around as much.  That was a mistake.  Worship should have been a joyous experience, a celebration.  Instead, we made it like another school day, inviting them to sit and listen.  They gave me the perfect example of true joy.  They truly embodied and demonstrated for me the celebration in each of those services of joy in their faith, in their community, in each other.  But I was uneasy because I, too, had ideas about what “church” should look like.  I was wrong.  And I encourage all of us, as we look at lent and these spiritual disciplines to think much more seriously about how we celebrate God as a spiritual discipline.
          Here, then, are some of the ways that I think we can celebrate God’s love and presence and resurrection:
1. Laugh often
2. Play
3. Attend and throw parties
4. Visit special places
5. Visit friends, old and new
6. Be generous with your time, talents and resources and celebrate that we have so much to share!
7. Dance
8. Sing or make music another way
9. Be silly
10. Notice the blessings around you and practice gratitude
11. Be excited about what is happening and what is coming
12. Let go of fear
13. Anticipate and look forward to events that are coming.
14. Appreciate nature and celebrate the seasons
15. Take time to really enjoy and savor the physical things in life: pay attention to what you are  eating or drinking and savor it.  When you walk, run, exercise in any way; pay attention to how your body feels and enjoy it.
16. Smile often
17. Use all of your senses in life: smell, taste, seeing, hearing, touching.

     I think the hardest time to celebrate is when something bad has happened, when there is a tragedy or a big loss.  I hear people who’ve lost a spouse or a child tell me that they feel guilty celebrating or even experiencing joy after they’ve lost a loved one.  I get that.  I understand that.  But I also know that it is the times of celebration that help pull us through those hard times. 
     When my family was going through its hardest time, I remember dancing, almost every morning, with my youngest child as she got ready for school. The other two kids would have left already, and it would just be my daughter and I getting ready for our day.  Sometimes we would hold hands and dance, sometimes I would pick her up and swing her around the room to some of our favorite music.  We did this, as I said, almost daily - as a way of surviving; of moving when it felt hard to even breathe; of saying, there is still love here and life and that is worth celebrating no matter what; as a way of remembering that joy was still accessible, even when happiness was elusive; as a way of saying, “God, we still experience you in life.  We still honor you with our actions.  We still choose to walk as the resurrection people, even when it feels like death is upon us.”  We did it as a way of being in and held by love for each other and for God in each moment.  We still do this sometimes, though not as often; frankly, not often enough.  The physical activity, the connection with loved ones, the laughter, the smiles, the joy – these things don’t make us forget what we have lost.  They are not sinful distractions from caring about what or who we have lost. Instead, they take the edge off, they renew our strength and energy so that we can get through the harder times, so that we can support each other going through hard times.  They remind us that what is important in life is not just the pain, not just the losses, but the people who continue to love us and surround us and care for us.  They remind us that God still wants good for us, joy, wholeness, peace, even when things are hard.  It is good to take breaks from our grief just as it is good to have a weekly break from our more serious Lenten practices.  It is good to take time to remember the joyful blessings that surround us - the beauty of the earth, the bounty of our food and friends, the smiles, hugs and love that come our way, the unexpected surprises of new friends or seeing old friends, the gifts that surround us daily.
We are so very blessed.  Celebration is a way to honor that.  To acknowledge it.  To express our gratitude to God.  And to say, as God said at the beginning and every day, “creation - it is good.”  Amen.

Sunday's Sermon - The Rain Falls on the Just and Unjust

Luke 13:1-9

I wanted to begin today by discussing Lent. Lent is a time to repent - or, to put it in less “churchy” words, to look at our lives, to reflect, to try to make some changes, to turn from one direction and go in a new direction, to grow, to try to be more worthy and more whole and just plain more Godly, as we anticipate what Jesus sacrificed, as we remember the things that we are a part of that lead and led, inevitably towards the cross.           

As part of that, what is the most common Lenten practice that we know of? Giving something up. What kinds of things do people give up? There can be something good and healthy about giving something up: if we are really looking at our lives and we find something that is getting in the way of our wholeness, of our serving God and others. Then we can decide to make a practice of limiting, for a set period of time, but perhaps with the idea that if we can do it for a short time, we might be able to do it for longer, whatever it is that is interfering in our growth, wholeness and service to God. 

But I found myself thinking about the falseness, so many times, of these deprivations or sacrifices. A good friend of mine told me that for years she gave up chips every lent. Chips were her favorite food and a staple in her diet. Every lent though she went through the tortuous ritual of throwing out all of her unfinished bags of chips. Of course there weren’t many by lent; fat Tuesday, otherwise known as Mardi-gras, allowed her to gorge and cram down as many as she could ahead of time. And she told me that every year she felt sick for the first three days of lent; whether it was withdrawal symptoms or whether it was a chip hang-over from Fat Tuesday she was never sure. But after six long weeks of agonizing deprivation and anticipation, lent finally came to an end. The day before Easter her kids would go out and buy every kind of chip they could imagine, open the bags, and line them up in front of my friend. They would have a count-down and at the exact moment lent was officially over she would eat and eat until she was too full and sick to eat anymore, leaving her, once again, sick for the first few days of Easter.

These sacrifices on many occasions are almost like a game we play - “let’s see if I can give this up,” or they are a way of feeling like we’re really doing something in the name of our faith. But they represent a choice that a privileged or wealthy person (and we are all wealthy here by the world’s standards) makes for a short and specific period of time: a choice that can be “cheated” and even changed at any moment. 

What do these deprivations actually mean in the bigger scheme of our faith? What does it mean in terms of our dual call to love God with all our heart, soul and mind and to love our neighbor as ourselves? What does it mean to the people God really calls us to care for - the oppressed and the poor?

To put it in more concrete terms, what does it mean to those who can’t afford and therefore don’t own a television that you give up watching TV for a month? What can it possibly mean to the person who struggles to find enough of any kind of food to eat that you give up chocolate or ice cream for a month? What does it mean to God that you “give up” something but aren’t giving to someone else who might really need it? The intent of these sacrifices is to focus on God. But often the Lenten practice of sacrifice gets warped and trivialized. And do we then use those deprivations to focus more on God, or do we end up focusing on something else - like on our own “religiousness” or even more, on a sense of deprivation? Are we taking the time that we would otherwise use watching TV or whatever else it is we have given up to volunteer with the poor, to meditate on the direction God wants for our lives or even very simply to pray? 

As I said before, this Lenten practice started with good intentions. Get rid of the things that separate you from God and develop a closer relationship with God through doing so. But I think that many of our spiritual practices, this being one of them, have instead become bargaining chips in an “If I do x, God, will you please give me y” kind of way. You may not be familiar with the term “prosperity gospel” but it is what is espoused by many of our rich and powerful preachers and their followers in the United States, people like Joel Osteen. It was reflected in the theology of the movie, Leap of Faith that we showed here on our first movie night as well. It is an incredibly popular theology because it promises that if you just do “a” right or “b” right, if you give enough money to these prosperity gospel preachers, if you pray enough, if you give up something for lent, that God will reward you with riches, with prosperity, with “stuff” beyond your wildest dreams.

Just to be clear, I find no justification for this in our scriptures. Today we hear in two different gospels Jesus telling us that the rain falls on the just and unjust alike, that bad things and good things happen to all people. We know the story of Job. Despite his faith and goodness, he lost everything. And while at the end, he is doing fine again, every time I hear the story now I am now reminded of a wonderful poem by Carl Denis about Job that ends with these words, “How foolish … To … assume that Job's new family, New wife and children and servants, Would be an ample substitute for the old.” A loss like the death of one’s children is a loss never to be recovered from. And no faith can protect against that.

Bad things happen to good, God-fearing people. If you are faithful to God because you envision God as a kind of Santa Claus that rewards good action or even faith, and punishes the bad, or those who lack faith, you might want to find a new religion, one that emphasizes karma more. Because that just isn’t how the God shown to us by Jesus works. 

As Cathleen Fasani wrote in a recent article to the Washington Post, “Few theological ideas ring more dissonant with the harmony of … Christianity than a focus on storing up treasures on Earth as a primary goal of faithful living. The gospel of prosperity turns Christianity into a vapid bless-me club, with a doctrine that amounts to little more than spiritual magical thinking: If you pray the right way, God will make you rich.  But if you're not rich, then what? Are the poor cursed by God because of their unfaithfulness? And if God were so concerned about 401(k)s and Mercedes, why would God's son have been born into poverty?... Jesus was born poor, and he died poor. During his earthly tenure, he spoke time and again about the importance of spiritual wealth and health. When he talked about material wealth, it was usually part of a cautionary tale.”

The bigger problem with prosperity gospel theology is that it completely wipes out grace. In the prosperity gospel model our faith becomes an economic system of rewards and punishments. You get what you earn, you get what you deserve. But God isn’t like that. God causes the sun to shine on all of us. The rain, too, falls on all of us. And God loves ALL of us, no matter what.

I think historically, people have done many things in an attempt to earn God’s favor. A large part of the protestant reformation was in response to the Catholic church charging people “indulgences” as a way to pay off their sins and to earn God’s forgiveness and grace. And if you are a person who struggles with guilt, it is likely that that guilt is a remembrance, especially when things go wrong, of the ways we have failed. We start thinking that somehow the bad things that have happened to us are because we haven’t been enough, haven’t done enough, haven’t been faithful enough. But the good news is that this is not true. God love you just the way you are. And out of that love, God offers grace, free undeserved gifts and forgiveness and love and care. God offers that grace to all of us, not as a response to anything we have or have not done. You cannot earn grace by its very definition. It is a gift freely given. 

I believe with all my being that Grace is always there for us. But receiving that becomes possible when we see it, if we are able to connect the dots and trust that grace is from a God who loves us, if we can see the many beautiful good gifts that surround us as the sign and promise of God’s love, as they are. But whether we are able to see it or not, that grace is offered to everyone, NOT because any of us deserve it, or have failed to deserve it. It is there because that is the nature of God: God is the One who offers grace, every single day, to each of God’s children.

So, then, if we do not do our Lenten practices and other spiritual disciplines in order to earn God’s grace, why do them? Again, the original idea behind any spiritual discipline is to increase our closeness to God. We don’t do this to “earn” grace because grace can’t be earned.  We do this out of gratitude and love for a God who has already given us grace. We do it to build a relationship with the amazing God who does love creation so much that She/He offers that grace to everyone. We do it because in growing closer to God we find that, no matter what else we are going through, we come to learn, experience and trust that we are truly held and supported and loved by a God who walks with us graces us even through the hardest times. 

Today’s story from Luke is not an easy story. Jesus first says that bad things don’t happen to people because they sin, but then he goes on to say “I tell you unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” The second half of the lesson isn’t much more comforting. The fig tree doesn’t produce fruit and so the owner wants to tear it out. The gardener persuades the owner to give the fig tree another year to produce, but even then, the owner still says that if it doesn’t produce good fruit in another year, it will be ripped out. Not a really reassuring story, is it?

Except that the fig tree is not left to its own devices. The gardener promises to dig around it, to put fertilizer on it, to care for it. That gardener working hard to make us into the beautiful fruitful trees we are called to be is Grace, straight from God. That care for us, that pruning, that nurturing takes many forms: our life lessons, the church, the things that happen to us which confront us to change and to grow and to truly be servants of God, the many places we experience God’s love. When we remain open to God’s grace, we find ourselves in that place where we are dug around, where the hard places are pointed out and softened with some digging, some aeration, and in a place where we are nourished and fed, replenished, and given the best nutrition possible in order to grow so that we, too may produce fruit.

God does indeed call us to be the people of love, finding, searching, seeking and serving with that love. And when we follow God, we see grace all around us. But I remain convinced that it is not because we have “earned” it that God gives us grace. Still, through our faith and through our actions of faithful living we learn to see the grace that is offered. So, do we do our Lenten disciplines? Doing anything that brings you closer to God is always a good plan. And Lent is a good time to begin to do it (though truly, any time is). But we are called to these tasks out of love for God, out of gratitude for the grace already given. Amen.