"Night Time is the Right Time": Thoughts on Christmas Eve (Luke 2:1-20)

It is so unusual to me to come to church at night. It feels very different than Sunday mornings.  It feels darker and colder—it feels like more work to get here, which is counter-intuitive since it’s later in the day, but there’s a watching of the clock—do I have time to do this before I have to get ready for church? It feels subversive and secret—the windows are dark, the parking lot lights might be out….it is a little unsettling. It’s a bit odd. Sunday morning, it feels more like we are where we belong.  A time for suits and dresses and bright sunshine and hope and possibilities.  But night time is not the place for such things. After all, my mama told me early in life that not much good happens out in the world after midnight, and when you get in trouble, mostly, it doesn’t happen at noon. I’m not ruling it out, mind you, but “the night time, is the right time”  as Bro. Ray Charles has told us, “to be with the one you love, now,” It is not the right time for Church Stuff, the time for God to be at work. If there are things going on at night, they are probably of a nefarious nature or if there’s good stuff going on we will miss it because we are asleep. I am most particularly likely to be asleep…in my middle age, I can no longer make it through a 9 o’clock movie!

But on Christmas Eve, we make an exception to this and we come out to church,  because of this birth story from Luke. See the angels appeared  with this good and surprising news of a savior born in the city of David at NIGHT.  While all the respectable world was asleep, having set their ADT alarms and turned on their dishwashers and closed up their gated communities.  Presumably, the birth took place as Bethlehem lay sleeping. God worked in the still of the night, in secret almost, like the way yeast works in bread dough in a dark place. God worked to bring a baby into the world whose name would be called Wonderful Counsellor,  Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. And he wasn’t born in a palace or even a Hampton Inn…or for Pete’s sake, a Best Western, he was born where the animals were kept and he was laid in a feeding trough, like an unwanted child, like a homeless stranger.  The savior of the world had come and it wasn’t 10 a.m. after we’d all had our coffee, it was at night.  Without the heavenly host to come down and lay it out in no uncertain terms, the world could have easily missed it.  Even the wise men who’ll come later need a neon sign to find him…The Savior was born in the last place in the world you’d think to look. And it happened on the night shift.

While most folks were sleeping, the angels appeared, not to the “Most Likely to Succeeds” or the pastors or the Pharisees or the Presidents, but to the shepherds. Shepherds were not wholesome farm boys from Kansas or cute 4 year olds with bathrobes and pretend crooks in their hands. Shepherds were not the people you’d want to be in the ancient world. They were unclean, they were the outcasts, they were looked down upon as low class and no-count.  In a modern day Christmas play, they’d be working the thankless jobs, the night shift, or they’d be homeless, under a bridge somewhere, drinking out of bottles in brown paper sacks. And THEY were the ones who got the word from the angels. They were the ones who got to hear the angels sing.  The coming of our Lord was good news of great joy for all the people but the news rang out first to the very last folks you’d expect to receive it. And this good news of great joy was decidedly NOT good news for folks like Herod, btw. I’d like to think I’d be a shepherd in God’s Christmas play, but considering my income, my education, and my overall spot in life, I don’t think I’d make the cut.  Someone like me would have likely slept right on through it.

Christmas eves remind us that, in case you had forgotten, this is a God-thing. It is not a Rudolph thing or a Santa thing. It is not something that we thought up. This night is about remembering that God is God and we are not. It is a reminder that when we could not save ourselves, when we had run out of money at the end of the month, and run out of sanity and options and ideas… our God came down, to us. God came into our 12 midnight worries and our messy marriages, into our world of business and usual, into our nightly news and our wars and rumors of wars, and God did the very thing we could not. God cared enough to send the very best—and it wasn’t a hallmark card. It was God’s own self, wrapped, not in ribbons and bows, but in flesh and bone, for us and for our salvation. That salvation is for shepherds and soldiers, for beggars and kings, for you and for me.

God has acted first, like God always does, creating and loving and caring and forgiving. Christmas comes to give us a new chance to see the gift we have been given—the gift is not an X-box, or some air Jordans, but the gift  of a Savior, the gift of a life that has meaning, the gift of freedom from fear and death, the gift of freedom to love and to forgive.  The gift has already been given—once for all—a present for you and for me. It’s a gift for people we don’t like, it’s a gift for people who are right now proceeding with their lives as business as usual, preparing to go to the store or the club, going to bed like this is a night like any other.  The gift is for all people—it is good tidings of great joy. When you open your presents, don’t forget to open that gift, the only one that really matters. And then once you’ve opened it, and given thanks, share it. Go looking for folks who are watching their flocks by night—in hospitals, in prisons, in bars, in stables of fear and doubt, and tell them, show them, love them, for to them is born this night in Bethlehem a savior, which is Christ the Lord., Night time, you see, is just  the right time, for God to be with the world God loves. Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to those whom God favors.

Thanksgiving

A lovely poem from poet Linda McCarriston, called "Thanksgiving."

Every year we call it down upon ourselves,
the chaos of the day before the occasion,
the morning before the meal. Outdoors,
the men cut wood, fueling appetite
in the gray air, as Nana, Arlene, Mary,
Robin—whatever women we amount to—
turn loose from their wrappers the raw,
unmade ingredients. A flour sack leaks,
potatoes wobble down counter tops
tracking dirt like kids, blue hubbard erupts
into shards and sticky pulp when it's whacked
with the big knife, cranberries leap away
rather than be halved. And the bird, poor
blue thing—only we see it in its dead skin—
gives up for good the long, obscene neck, the gizzard,
the liver quivering in my hand, the heart.

So what? What of it? Besides the laughter,
I mean, or the steam that shades the windows
so that the youngest sons must come inside
to see how the smells look. Besides
the piled wood closing over the porch windows,
the pipes the men fill, the beers
they crack, waiting in front of the game.

Any deliberate leap into chaos, small or large,
with an intent to make order, matters. That's what.
A whole day has passed between the first apple
cored for pie, and the last glass polished
and set down. This is a feast we know how to make,
a Day of Feast, a day of thanksgiving
for all we have and all we are and whatever
we've learned to do with it: Dear God, we thank you
for your gifts in this kitchen, the fire,
the food, the wine. That we are together here.
Bless the world that swirls outside these windows—
a room full of gifts seeming raw and disordered,
a great room in which the stoves are cold,
the food scattered, the children locked forever
outside dark windows. Dear God, grant
to the makers and keepers power to save it all.

"Thanksgiving" by Linda McCarriston, from Talking Soft Dutch. © Texas Tech Press, 1984.

Mandy Sayers, Teaching Assistant

So, I thought it'd be a GREAT idea to spend my day off with my former pastor and current mentor/friend, Andy Lunt, being a TA for his Introduction to Preaching class. I thought it wouldn't be tiring because, shoot, we're talking 9 to 12. Manageable. The kids are in school, it's my day off, what's the big deal? Preaching is one of my soul-feeding activities, says I. And I so loved being a student--who wouldn't want to take a turn on the other side of the lectern, and Intro to Preaching is perfect. Pretty sure I could NOT be a TA in Hebrew or anything of that nature..so I'm giving it a shot. 

Of course, I grossly underestimated the amount of work and energy it takes to do this, but in the main, it was a really fabulous idea. It's a huge honor, first of all, to be a Teaching Assistant or indeed a Teaching Anything. These students have paid for a block of time for us to teach them, and time is the one truly irreplaceable commodity. Andy is wise and trustworthy and gifted (and knows me well enough to know "what he's getting" in me). I pretty much stand up there and wave my hands about and say outrageous and true things, designed to enlighten at best and at the very least be something they'll remember.

At first, I was really scared, because I felt unqualified--after all the ink is barely dry on my diploma. I discovered to my horror that I am so adrenaline-filled it is like being out of my body to do this. Dry mouth, slightly dizzy, and Southern Storyteller meets Denise Hopkins meets Ellen Degeneres probably best describes my "teaching style"--minus the dancing. When I worried that I was a little too "much" and that I was probably going to stroke out or get arrested or something by the Teaching Police, my dad said, "My girl, they have Andy if they want wise and sage and sane and steady. If they want hair on fire, what's she gonna say NEXT, well that's what they're paying YOU for." I had to admit, he kind of had a point.

So, it appears I will survive my first semester as a TA. I hope someday I get to have another semester as this IS the sort of thing one gets better at with practice. I marshal everything I have in my arsenal for these new preachers (just as I do when I preach, myself) because a. this is their last chance to do this for practice, to make blunders and try things without actually doing it for "real" and b. as Buechner aptly describes, for maybe 30 seconds, every Sunday, a congregation waits expectantly for a preacher who clears her throat and leans over the sacred desk. For that half minute, they are wondering if we have a truth to tell them, if the Word has devastated us before it has gotten to them (Willimon, I think I have to thank for that), and whether we will indeed bring any good news to bear into their real lives.  One important sign of our Lord's Resurrection is that some cloudy Sunday morning in Dublin, Georgia or Detroit, Michigan or Deale, MD, a preacher is willing to stand up and say "I have seen the Lord" or "We have been lying to ourselves" or "We are called to see this world through the glasses of the widow's mite/prodigal son/Lazarus." There's no more important work. And that's just what I do on my day off. If you think THAT'S wild, you should see what I do the other days of the week.

Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus

Let me begin by saying, I had no idea I'd love to preach or that I'd have a gift for it. Now, I've always loved reading and writing. I did public speaking in high school and I love Jesus, so you might say it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see it...I was aware of a call to ministry in college but I just never really thought about preaching as part of it. Laity Sunday, 1999, I got called upon to preach the sermon. Because it was Laity Sunday and the Lay Leader "didn't feel called" to preach that day.  She called me and said, "I think maybe you should preach." I said, "OK, I'll give it a try." I preached on Matthew's Question about Paying Taxes, an easy assignment for a Legal Aid lawyer, I thought. I got about two sentences in on Sunday morning and thought, "So much for running from my call to the ministry. I will not be fully happy if I don't do this preaching business on a regular basis."  I was utterly surprised--as if I had some hidden innate ability to make cabinets and had managed to go my whole life without even seeing wood in its cut form and then one day, someone put a hammer in my hand. I felt completely absorbed in it and completely used by God in it. It was as if I were on the Giant Swing or the Mother of All Roller Coasters. On the outside, I was looking OK, but on the inside, I was wide-eyed surprised by grace, the way it often is when we get a glimpse of even a bit of God's mercy and love.

I've preached hundreds of sermons since then, even though this is my first appointment, thanks to generous pastors who gave me the chance to stand behind the sacred desk. Every week I preach is like the first time I ever did it, however.  Monday is excitement and reading and engaging the scripture. Tuesday is marinate and meditate and tell myself it's a long way to Sunday. Wednesday, I try to make a free form list, convinced I will never in fact get the sermon written. Thursday I try and fail to write, Friday I try and might succeed. I write front to back with little revision. Not sure what that says about me--perhaps that I am into narrative and that I like to write.  Or I'm too lazy to revise anything I don't get a grade on?

On Sunday, I feel nervous in a "game day" sort of way. And when the time comes to stand up, to go to the pulpit or the lectern or the music stand or whatever it is that marks the preaching "spot," I send the signal from brain to legs, and I feel the muscles contract. I call on the Holy Spirit to have her way, and I summon every saint I know or have ever heard of. I summon the woman who pressed through the crowd, I summon Peter and Paul, I summon Will Willimon and Andy Lunt and Sondra Wheeler. I summon Oli Jenkins (campus minister and saint for me), I summon Mama and Daddy, I summon grandparents. I summon every brother and sister in Christ I ever was in ministry with. I summon my lawyer self, who had to find a way to stand under the dry stare of judges and galleries of tie-wearing litigators. Standing up reminds me that I am baptized, that I am one called out from the community, and that I'm accountable to that community to preach the Gospel. Standing up reminds me that so much about the culture wants me to sit down. Standing up reminds me of Christ's resurrection and of the gates that lift up their heads that the King of Glory may come in. Standing up feels brave and wild and counter cultural. It feels frightening and dizzying and makes me feel full and empty both at once.

This Sunday, I'm subbing for a preacher friend of mine who has a last-minute need for pulpit coverage. The text is Matthew--The Question about Paying Taxes. It will be a lovely thing to preach a new sermon on that text from Back in the Day. When the time comes, I will get my pages together and lean forward a little. I will send my legs the "Good News" first, and rise to my feet.  Here I stand, I can do no less.

And on this Laity Sunday, I can't help but be reminded how we are all gifted and called to "stand up for Jesus," not just in the pulpit giving our testimony, but on our jobs, giving Christian witness, and in our families and our neighborhoods, giving Christian love. What is the thing you are most passionate about? How does God want you to use YOUR gifts and talents to bless somebody?

Grateful

Today, from the place I'm writing this, I can see blue skies--and the air is balmy for October. The breeze is noticeable but unarmed, a sort of shadow of its future winter self. This is one of those days when it seems one could live forever. Yet, Facebook is jammed with tributes to Steve Jobs, who died today from pancreatic cancer, and tributes to Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, civil rights pioneer, who also went home to glory today.

It's days like this that we are reminded how babies can be born in the midst of war and disaster and how billows of smoke and missiles of death  can mar a clear blue September morning. Life springs up where you least expect it and, at the same time, death can take us in the twinkling of an eye, while we were most assuredly making other plans. Very, very few people have their date of death on their appointment calendar as it turns out.

As a pastor, I am often present at the moments of transition--I have seen the grace-soaked shining face of a new mother as she holds a new baby, fresh from God's factory, birthed into this world from some other place. I have held the hands of those who were laboring to be birthed from this world into the next...both occasions for tears and sweat and blood and grace.

I have been to hospital rooms to celebrate miracles and to sit with innocent sufferers, and I have had the surreal experience of going from those serious matters of life and death to coming back to the church to a parishioner that's upset about the color of carpet or the typeface on the bulletin. I'm not bitter and I don't blame them--it's just enough to make a pastor laugh out loud, so much of it. I have had a front row seat on some marriages that have made me grateful for my own beyond measure, and ones that have inspired me to be more loving and forgiving. It is the perfect mix of joy and sorrow and it keeps me in touch with my LORD as no other "day job" could do.

Today, in fact, was not all pondering our mortality. This morning I played with soap bubbles and 4 year old children, and this afternoon, I was treated to a spread of amazing food by our child care center teachers and administration. Eating chicken wings and meatballs and salad and cake, it occurs to me that their appreciation is hard to receive, because I am the one that is grateful. I'm grateful, like Rev. Shuttlesworth, to be called to be a drum major for Christ, and I'm grateful, like Steve Jobs, to have found my passion in life.

In fact, in this, my second "Clergy Appreciation Month" ever, I feel what I felt last year too. I feel grateful. I feel overwhelmingly appreciat-IVE.

Life is shorter than it appears and how we spend this time matters. Are you grateful? Are you doing what you love? Are you fully present for the people who have your heart? If this was in fact your last day of living, would you be glad to be doing what you are doing today? Do the people you love know you love them?

When my time comes, I hope it is far enough down the road for my grandchildren to have laughed at my jokes. I hope it's far enough off to make it woefully impractical for Eric to remarry. I hope I have a GREAT preacher for the service who has the good sense to make me proud from the Great Beyond. I hope my children will know how much I loved them and that love is stronger than death. And I hope the whole world knows how very grateful I am, for every sermon I got to preach, for every hug and kiss, for every beloved friend, for every tear and heartache and the whole lovely, beautiful, complicated thing. And, child care center, I'm grateful for the chicken, and the meatballs and the cake, too. But you didn't have to. Really. I'm appreciative enough for all of us.

One Year Anniversary!

I write this from the beach, where the family and I are on vacation for a few days. It has been lovely to watch my children play in the waves and enjoy their first trip to Western Florida--green water, white sand, blue sky. 

One year ago, Eric and I were here, a sort of last hurrah before starting my first pastoring job. As the anniversary of that time approaches, I'm looking back in wonder at the past year and all I have learned. Now there's a new batch of great and gifted "first-year" pastors heading off to first appointments.  My unsolicited advice to them follows.

1. It's not about you. God is at work in your new place and you are joining what's already happening there. When you are being praised, it's not about you--it's about what God is doing through you. And when you are being criticized, it's also not about you. Put away your ego and find out what God is already up to in that space. And be a part of that. We are John the Baptist-types. We point to Jesus Christ, we want people to grow into disciples of his. It's not about you.

2. Appreciate well. "Thank you" is never said enough. Enthusiasm and gratitude are a pastor's bread and butter pitches. Don't be afraid to voice the positive or the grateful whenever you can.

3. Embrace the rhythms of our vocation. We don't make widgets for a living and sometimes it's hard to "measure" how much we've "accomplished" in a day. This can be especially hard for second career-ers who are used to measuring accomplishments by how much has passed from inbox to outbox. Our vocation is measured in disciples, which can be messy and slippery. You have to measure success through a cross-shaped lens.

4. Be a pastor who PREACHES (Thanks Eugene Peterson). The pulpit is a lovely, powerful, subversive place. Thank God for the joy and responsibility of the preaching task.

5. Work on your prayer life and your spiritual life and your self-care as if you were being evaluated on those things. If you don't take a Sabbath, how is your flock going to find the will to do it? In the words of my dear friend Kendall Soulen, "Be a rebel, Mandy, keep it sane and healthy!" I pass it to you. Be a rebel, keep your sanity. And your sense of humor.  Pastors ought to have a spring in their step, because they've gotten the word that Easter has happened, that God is really in control. It's a good thing.

6.  Being a pastor is very, very busy. Take a look at what you are doing with your time. Are you doing things that only you can do? Should someone else be doing it? You have some very, very gifted laity who can teach classes and lead small groups and give testimonies and buy supplies. Your job is to equip them to serve God--don't hog all the good stuff for yourself.

7. Take your vacation--all of it. I recommend Florida.

Looking forward to coming home and beginning a new year in service to our Lord. I can no longer say I'm the "new" pastor. Now that I've been planted, it's time to grow and branch out in our Lord's Vineyard.

Peace,
Pastor Mandy

What Worship is About

With many thanks to Dr. Stookey, I post this to guide your reflection on what worship is, as we prepare to approach the throne of grace tomorrow in various churches and places of worship tomorrow...

What Worship is About….

Worship is not first of all about me.

It is above all else about God—

       God’s marvelous glory,

       God’s boundless compassion, and

       God’s stubborn insistence

              on transforming the world

                      that divine love created and redeemed in Christ.

Next:

Through worship God wills and works

       to change all of us,

       to empower us by the Holy Spirit to minister as those

              who renounce injustice

                      in favor of justice,

              who reject greed

                      in favor of generosity,

              who forego self-direction

                      in favor of interdependent discipleship.

Only then  is worship about me,

       as I am a part of God’s “us.”

                                           Written by Laurence Hull Stookey

It's the End of the World as We Know It...

A little REM reference to go along with the prediction of the Rapture that is going around...brought to you by the same folks responsible for the Hale-Bopp Comet and the Y2K paranoia.  As a person of faith and as a pastor, I say unto you, I don't know the day or the hour of the consummation of God's creation, I don't know when Jesus shall return.  I wasn't good at math once we got to algebra anyway....

However, I do know that one day, my earthly life will end. I suspect it will be before Jesus comes. I think I'll probably go to him, rather than the other way 'round. The end of my earthly life could happen at any time. It could be tonight, or May 21st, or in the year 2062. It could come suddenly, like getting hit by a bus, and out of a clear blue sky, at a time when I least expect it, or it could be long and drawn out, with IV's and monitors, at a time solemnly predicted by folks in white coats.  I hope it's a long way off, of course, and yet, not further away than it should be.

All this May 21st nonsense is a way of saying what those of us who do funerals as part of our vocations tell ourselves every time we watch another casket close. Life is short and beautiful and precious. It is good to "be". If we could hold in our minds and hearts how much life is like this, we would be kinder to each other, we would enjoy the small things of living more, and we would absolutely NOT waste time holding grudges or sweating the manifestly small stuff. We would look one another in the face. We would taste our food, and kiss our beloveds. We would forgive each other.  We would live our lives so as to be in love with God and we would see that all we have is a gift. We would never dance on the grave of any other child of God.  And if we could embrace both our mortality and the "sure and certain hope of the Resurrection," we might be made free to do things we never thought we could before. We might not be afraid of all the things we're so afraid of. We might take on living as Easter people and give up obsessing over when and where and how we die.

TS Eliot wrote, "This is how the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper." As a Christian, I would say, "This is how the world ends, not with a bang, but with a hallelujah," as God brings to full flower the creation that God both made and redeemed in Jesus Christ. Spend your time investing in the right things--loving God, loving neighbor, and being about Jesus' business in the world: "preaching good news to the poor, giving recovery of sight to the blind, setting at liberty those who are oppressed and proclaiming the year of the Lord's favor." If the Lord comes for me, let it be that I'm so busy doing that, I forgot to check what time it was, or what day, or what hour.

God bless you.

Wing-walking Ministry

OK, I know it's Holy Week. I love Holy Week more than you can possibly imagine. But it's all I can do to live in Holy Week this year without writing about it, if that makes any sense.  I need a little more space between me and Last Suppers and Good Fridays before I can write about their shapes and  contours. Tonight, I want to write about something I particularly love about my job...and my particular post at Covenant Point-Lakeside Cooperative Parish. See,  I love "Wing-Walking Ministry." (My term--or at least I think I made it up).

My dad taught me at an early age that it pays to be sort of outrageous in your vocation, because that's where the fun of it is, and because, if it's your vocation, you need to be doing it in 5th gear with your hair on fire. (John Wesley was in agreement--in preaching he said, "I set myself on fire and people come to watch me burn" or something along those comforting lines).  Dad was an outrageous Navy lawyer, and he's currently an outrageous retiree....He used to say to the folks that worked for him "Look, we're not making a lot of money, there's no fame in it, or glory, so we might as well be having fun at it." He's courageously audacious in a way that makes your jaw drop. And he is an amazing lawyer because of it. He wanted judges and opposing counsel to say going into a trial, "Oh, it's HIM. We're going to have a heck of a good time today!"  (Or words to that effect). Now, if that is so for lawyerin', and it most certainly is...how much more is it so for a pastor, a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ? The mind boggles.

I am my own father's daughter I guess, because I want to be an audacious, outrageous, pastor. I want to be faithful and discerning and all those other things, but I also want to take some holy risks in this job. I want our laity to say "At the end of the day, I'm proud you're my pastor." And "I never know what you're going to say or do next." And "I am excited to be a disciple of Jesus Christ in this place." I am utterly thrilled to go to work every day in part because I believe anything is possible with God (and on the odd Monday morning I lose a bounce in my step, Pastor Love reminds me 'bout the outrageous Easter people we are called to be.  It makes for a pretty darn fun and exciting work environment. "Yeah, Mandy, that'll be hard but we can do it. And how about THIS?" and he comes up with something more outrageous and more exciting. It's like trading jazz riffs with someone who loves the music as much as you do).  I want to be a wing-walker of a pastor, you know, trying stuff, making mistakes, proclaiming the audacious, outrageous gospel and God has put me square with the folks who will make me the best wing-walker I can be.

In this line of work, there are a lot of dire predictions (ask Lovett Weems about the year 2018 if you don't believe me--the demographics for the mainline church are particularly bad in 2018). I take them seriously, I really do. I am particularly concerned about big expensive buildings that we have to pay to heat and cool and insure that we can't fill, and I'm concerned about declining numbers. But here's the thing. We serve a risen savior, who has endured a whole lot more than a bad Church Council meeting. It is a lovely and precious way to spend the gift of our time, being Church together and thinking about how we can be present in our neighborhoods in a new way.  My DS a few years ago asked at Charge Conference, "What difference would it make if your church were to close its doors today?" I want the answer to be, "A whole heck of a lot of difference." Or words to that effect.

Our people, well, they're wing walkers for Christ too. They don't give up easy, and they mean to praise God and work until Jesus comes for the sake of the Kingdom. They inspire and encourage me on an hourly basis to see and work for what's really important, for what really matters.  It's Holy Week, of course...but in this job, most all the weeks are holy, with crucifixions and resurrections and tears and joy. There's Lazarus and Judas and water and wine and that's Church. At the end of the day, God says "Yes and Amen" in Jesus Christ. And that's enough to keep me hangin' out on the wing, goggles and all, with a big grin on my face.

Good Friday? The Infamous 2018? Challenges? Looping loops at high speeds through the cloudy firmament of change and uncertainty? Pastor Love, our crazy brothers and sisters in Christ, and me...We're gonna do a little wing-walking in the name of the One who walked on water, the One who was raised from the dead. It's havoc on the hairdo but the view is spectacular, in a "He's not here, he is risen" sort of way.

I reckon I was writing about Holy Week after all. Be encouraged! Meet me on the wing and let's have some fun! 

Play Ball!: A bit about the theology of baseball and the baseball of theology

I have often thought of the considerable overlap between the joys of Easter and the joys of baseball season. Baseball, you see, is a game about faith and hope and love, where faith is "the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen." It is all about shaking off the mortal coils of last season, and the Good Fridays of being out of the running or losing at the very end, in favor of a brand new beginning and the start of a brand new life.

Spring training begins in Florida, where men stretch out tired muscles and wake up arms and bats to play a boy's game, at a time when most of us are glaring out ice covered windows with 'nary a bud (on branches or in bottles) in sight.  As we crunch though snowbanks or turn a collar to the chill, we know that somewhere the sunlight has already turned up its heat and is glowing down, full of promise, on the backs of some spectators in Sarasota or Cocoa Beach or West Palm.  We can hear the thwack of fastball on leather and the promising crack of the bat, even from where we sit in Maryland, Michigan or Massachusetts. We don't begrudge those Floridians their time in the sun--it is coming this way, like a royal procession, like Easter morning. We are in Lent, but Easter is coming.

And then there's Opening Day--when it's usually still bitter cold or raining, as here in our nation's capital, where a heavy cold mist falls on defiant cherry blossoms. Opening Day, where green fields and freshly painted baselines chart a new course, and make us feel young again and full of the promise of knowing our best days are yet to come. There's something about baseball that puts us back in touch with all our passions, commitments and dreams. I feel 20 years old every time I go to a game, whether it's A-ball or the Big Leagues, and my husband and I are suddenly dating again, holding hands, laughing, shouting at the players. It is a reminder of God's joy and a throwback to those days when all we ever wanted was Friday night and a full tank of gas in the car, before babies and budgets and biopsies and belly fat.  We have our best conversations about our hopes and dreams at the ballpark between pitches. The ballpark is a place to dream outrageously, to speak the impossible, to make bold claims about our future, and to remember our past. Church on Sunday morning, when it's at its best, is also that kind of hallowed ground. And Easter Sunday, is of course, the ultimate "Opening Day."

Baseball is very religious--it's Trinitarian (witness the 6-4-3 double play), it takes patience, and the season is long--carrying us from the Easter joys of April through the endurance contest of the "Season After Pentecost." Prayers are lifted up for teams and players and individual at bats and pop-flies. "Miss it, miss it, miss it," or "Get him, get him, get him..." It is about community and the shared joys and sorrows of our common life. John Fogerty sings about baseball in "Center Field": "Beat the drum, and hold the phone, the sun came out today! We're born again, there's new grass on the field."

As I write this, the Braves (my beloved, beloved Braves, who I have loved as long as I have lived) are 1 and 0, and I have a sermon to write for Sunday, about how Jesus took dirt and spit and worked a miracle, making a blind man see. It's the season for miracles, where new leaves grow on old branches, and the scrappy second baseman turns an "ofer" into a walk-off game-winner, and where Jesus is at work in the ordinary "stuff" of our life, doing extraordinary things.  When it comes to discipleship, it's the season for getting the uniform dirty in the name of loving service, and swinging hard and level, and running all the way through the play, in the name of the gameplan of the One who makes all things new.

Easter's a'comin'! Until then, "Play ball!!"

Miles to Go

Yesterday was Robert Frost's birthday. It reminded me of when I was a child, visiting my grandmother's house. She used to quote "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" and it wasn't long before I memorized it.  The quote she carried in her mind and on her lips was, of course "The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep."

Later in college I learned that Frost, already a mystery to me with his New England accent and shock of white hair, was also sort of a misanthrope, and that he told people his poem was not about death. I decided that last bit was a sort of railing against fame and the inquisitive proddings of the media. When my dad would go to bluegrass jams, some nights there'd be a young kid or two that came into the sandwich shop where it was held and said something like 'Have you ever heard of a song called Foggy Mountain Breakdown?' which of course is akin to asking a college pep band if they know "Crazy Train." Some nights they'd shake their heads "no" only to play it when they left. I thought Frost was being like that...like Foggy Mountain Breakdown requests when you've been playing bluegrass since before the cancer diagnosis and before the accident at the factory that cost you two fingers. No, no, Mr. Reporter, this poem is not about death. It's about snow and horses. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

To be fair, when I learned this poem, in my grandparents' unairconditioned house, it was not about death for me either.  It was about the alliteration of dark and deep, and rhyme and repetition, and hearing my grandmother, who was loveliness itself, say the word, lovely. I thought of how hard she worked to raise 5 beautiful, lovely children and the way she fried chicken in that hot kitchen, with the little oscillating fan gamely whirring around, fruitless but essential, like CPR breaths.  I thought about  how she looked when she would nap on the couch after lunch, crossword puzzle folded over her shirt, golf pencil balanced near long, light words like 'insouciant' and the ubiquitous small weightier ones 'amok', 'atoll' and 'ala' (a winglike organ or part).

When I got older, of course, I could see over the horizon of my life a little, and I could hear whispers about the shortness of life behind the church bells from the church across the street and the whistle of the train that came through town twice a day. My grandmother died when I was a junior in college, having kept her promises and walked her miles, and we felt bereft and cheated and lost. I learned more secrets from Frost, that "Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold....So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay."

I've been to Mr. Frost's grave, as it happens, and pondered his lovely, dark and deep journey, too. I have done a few funerals now, as an officiant and as a stricken mourner (held up by the sheer love of others, by songs and by prayer). I begin to see that the dark and deep woods of death is a pathway to another stage of being, another life, with God.  As Easter people, we don't think of those gone before in dark and snowy woods, all lost.  We think of them walking into groves of saplings with new green buds on them, into a new springtime of being with God. When I think of you, Mr. Frost, you are not in dark suit with macabre lantern on a snowy, lonely night.   You are a boy, shock of hair no longer white, climbing birches and swinging out into the great beyond of God's love.

I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Perhaps my first poem ever memorized was not about death after all, in the sense that death is not the end of the story. Perhaps it was really about the next morning, the dawn of the next day, when we awake from well-earned sleep and walk into the crisp morning and find a birch to swing on. Perhaps it points invisibly to an empty tomb and folks saying "He's not here. He's risen."

Mr. Frost, happy birthday--I shall see you in that great gettin' up morning and we'll read some poetry with a certain golden haired grandmother of mine. But first, I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.





 

Pastoral Care 101: Get out of the Car

My first experience with being with a dying person happened when I was in seminary a couple years ago. I was taking Pastoral Care and Counseling and we had just finished the class on "grief" when someone from the church where I was on staff called me.  "My neighbor's wife is dying," she said, "and they need someone to come see them. I prayed about it, and I think it's supposed to be you." I protested in a thousand different ways. "I'm only in seminary. We have so many 'real' pastors and they are all fantastic. I've never...you know...done that before...and so I'm sure I'd say the wrong thing. This is a BAD idea."  She listened patiently and she said, "Her husband would never want 'clergy' there. She's a Methodist so she would, but he's just...NOT RELIGIOUS. I prayed about it and I think you are the one to go." She sounded sure. I reported this to my "real" pastors and they said, "Go."

So early the next morning I got in my car with my Bible and an apple for breakfast. I drove to the local hospital and sat in the car, munching on the apple and praying through my fear, which was all knotted  up in my stomach with Granny Smith juice. I remembered my professor's words, when he had said just the day before to our class, "Here's the funny thing. When the call comes, when the beeper goes off, you will not want to go. You will come up with a thousand excuses for why you can't go. It is normal, and doesn't make you a bad pastor. But you must NOT give in to that feeling. When you feel that way, GO. Showing up is the hardest and most important part."  So when I felt that urge to run, I thought, well, I don't know what I'm doing but I do know that I'm getting out of the dang car.  Take that, Satan.

The woman, who I had never met, lay in the bed, unconscious. The monitors glowed and beeped. Her husband looked tired and stricken. I introduced myself.  Because I didn't know her, her husband told me about her, how she loved her bright yellow car, the one he bought her. How she looked when she came down the stairs in a certain dress, and how she always took forever to get ready. He would stop and then say, "I can't believe this." He was angry and sad and silent and laughing. The ping-ponging of grief--the shock and the crying and the laughing, the stories and the numb repetition, clinging to the sheer face of grief and searching blindly for a rock to plant a foot on that can bear the weight of this.  I listened. I said very little. I offered to leave and he asked me to stay longer, so I did. Time went by very fast.  My entire contribution vocally was just about as follows: I told him she could probably hear him, that hearing was there even when it appeared she could not hear, often right up to the end. I told him this way he felt was normal. It was normal to be angry and crazy and up and down. I observed he had many people who loved him and loved her. I told him grief was hard work, that it was important to be gentle with yourself,  and that he should eat something, even though he wasn't hungry. I suggested eggs. (Hot, protein, easy to swallow). I asked if he wanted me to pray. He said, "I want you to pray for her. I don't want to be here when you do. I will step out and have a smoke." We made a circle with me and the woman and two friends who were visiting. We prayed and I noticed he hadn't left. He was standing in the open door of the hospital bathroom, out of sight, in a dark corner, listening to us pray about light and life eternal, and grief and the loved ones gone before, that would reach out to her, to help her with this journey to be with Jesus. When I left, he seemed grateful and I thought, "For what?" I was the one who was grateful, and stunned at the presence of the Holy.

I left around 11 a.m., shaking my head at how quickly the time had gone, and seeing that God was in the room, that it was a holy space I had been in. I had been a witness, someone to stand by and watch and occasionally point out the presence of God. This preacher who loves to stand and proclaim about the gospel learned about the joys of "presence" and the mysterious judo of pastoral care. Nothing I do in this world is less about me, or more about God.  Nothing I do is more important, though.  Because the Spirit is at work most palpably in these moments of life and death, I am able to get out of the car, or walk into the hospital room, or speak at a funeral or stand in the mud at a graveside service. Because it is a God thing and I'm not God. It is a holy privilege to show up and to be in the room, to hold hands and speak about love and pain and offer both a Suffering Savior and a Risen Christ.  So, if there are any scared folks out there, eating an apple in a hospital parking lot and not wanting to go in,  let me assure you that God is in the room already.  Jesus has conquered death and the grave; Jesus makes it possible for us to love well in the midst of pain.  Take a deep breath and go.  Get out of the car.

Words to Some New Eagle Scouts

On behalf of the Covenant-Point Lakeside Cooperative Parish, and Senior Pastor Tony Love, let me say we are so proud of you both and your accomplishments today. Our congregation has prayed for and supported you and this Troop, and we have been the grateful recipients of your Eagle Scout projects. I am excited that I get to play this particular role in this ceremony, that I get to charge you before you take your oath. I was thinking about this, and I thought it was strange that a non-eagle scout, indeed a non-scout would be asked to do this, to remind you of your obligations to God as you move forward.  I’m in the theology business, so I can do some God-talk, but I am not a Scout.  I have earned none of your badges and if asked, could probably not do one part of any of them. I tie a terrible knot….Except maybe God and Family, I think I could take that badge. And yet, I am asked to speak to you.

And then I realized, it sort of makes sense that a non-Scout would take this slot. Because when you are an Eagle Scout, you are accountable not just to Baden Powell and the Scouts, and the people who know the secret handshake, but you are also accountable to us non-Eagle Scouters. Who don’t know your inside jokes or the Scout Law.  We are the people who will be your neighbors, friends and co-workers. We will be your employers and employees. I personally aspire to someday be a little old lady you will help across the street. You will date our daughters, your children will learn from you what it means to be a man and will grow up to carry on your legacy for good and for ill.  There is a lot riding on this, and not just for the people in uniform today. 

Jesus said, “To whom much is given, much is expected.” And we expect a lot from you, who have gotten this far in part because of the sacrifices of so many others. We expect you to do the right thing. We expect you to tell us the truth. We expect you to confess you’re wrong and when you hurt someone, to make it right. Jesus also said that whenever you serve those who are the “least of these” you are in fact serving Jesus. You are in fact serving God, when you visit the prisoner, feed the hungry, clothe the naked or visit the sick.  So the question I have, as a pastor of the UMC and as a non-scout, looking at you who would be Eagles… My question is not how high you can soar but how low are you willing to swoop to serve others? Do you know how to be humble? Can you demonstrate your love of God by taking the lowest place, by washing feet, as our Lord has done?  Can you love one another as God has loved you? Can you love the stranger and the even enemy?  Yes, are you enough of an Eagle Scout even to do that? Can you love God with your whole heart mind and strength and the neighbor as yourself, even when the neighbor doesn’t look like you or talk like you and you don’t even think you like them very much?

Part of your promise you have made for years is to serve God and country.  Even that badge I think I could earn today was God and family. And what I would point out is, God comes first.  It is not Country and God or even Family and God. God must come first.

I would submit to you that what we, the non-scouts, value in you is not just that you keep promises or that you are loyal. It is possible to be loyal to a bad plan or to keep a promise to do something immoral.  It’s not just that you are good leaders. It’s possible to be a great leader of a bad mission. What we value in you is that you are able to prayerfully and carefully make right choices, make promises to the right things and be loyal to the right things.  We hope that you know how to make good moral judgments and we hope that you know how to be transparent when you fail. Yes, my dear elite Eagle Scouts, you must know how to fail well.  And when you make mistakes and fail, we value that you are able to confess, repent and begin again.

Lastly, with all due respect to Baden-Powell, I would remind you that sometimes your duty to God and the fact that God must come first might get you into hot water with those in authority.  I hope, Eagle Scouts, you will make us proud in that hour.  It could be that you are called to civil disobedience. Sometimes being a good “citizen” means you land in a Birmingham Jail, like MLK did. He wasn’t a Scout, he was a preacher like me…but he knew in the end where his loyalties belonged and what it meant to serve God and his country.

Today is about celebration, but my task is to charge you, to remind you that being an Eagle Scout means you are accountable:  to the scouting community, to us non-scouts, and of course, ultimately accountable to our unruly, loving, merciful, notoriously unmanageable God.  This God can do some amazing things for God’s kingdom with folks with your training. I hope you are willing to serve God, and to serve God well.

As a representative of Covenant Point-Lakeside Cooperative Parish, I pray God’s blessing upon you and I remind you that the Church stands with you, to be a place where you can always find a reminder of who you are, whom you belong to, and what you were made for.

For my mom...

I will never be as good a mother as my mother is. It is a well-known, documented, certainty, but you should know I'm OK with it. It is like playing basic gym tennis and getting to go to Wimbledon. When the serve whizzes past you, you don't feel envy. You feel blessed at having had a ticket to be there to see it.

First, you should know that my mom bristles at compliments. This post will horrify her.  When I was 13 and awkward and convinced I was the ugliest creature ever born, in a fit of exasperated frustration, I blurted out to Mom, "You just don't understand! You're..you're PERFECT!"  She was as shocked and angry as if I'd called her a nasty name. "Manda, I am NOT!" she retorted, and we just stared at each other, full of love and being misunderstood,  tongue-tied and knowing all words would somehow take us further away from where we wanted to be.  She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, and has no idea.  When you ask her who the most beautiful woman who ever lived is, she will say, her mother. I say, Grandmother is a close second. She, my mother's mother,  was like a light, with her blond hair and her garden and her good posture and her crisp white blouses, playing golf and bridge and watching the Braves on TV.  Her laugh was like a wind chime and she was strong as steel. And her daughter is all the best of who she was, and more. So, you see, how blessed I am, and how I will never be what they are or were, but it is a blessing all the same.

My mother is funny and wise, but not in a way that demands attention. She can play any sport, and play it well,  and she makes the best vegetable soup, ever.  She is beautiful in her dressed up for work clothes (tailored and classic) and in the clothes she bikes in...(baggy shorts, layered t-shirts, men's tube socks, visor, water, snack, gum).  She brings me big glasses of ice water and takes me shopping even though I hate shopping. My mother is quiet, and has the ministry of presence down pat. She can, just by being in a room, make everything better. There is a sense that all is right with the world with her in it.  She has a way of being in a room and not taking up any space, and yet, changing the whole feeling of the whole space into something that is happy and good.  She gave me space and peace to grow up in and a love of words and learning, a lovely and warm and good broth to simmer in, as I figured out who I was and who I would be. She's the oldest girl of 5 children, so I figure she was a mother-type early on, and has had lots of practice.

My mother is smart as a whip and good to the bone. She has 3 Master's degrees. She teaches little children to love reading, and she loves the kids so much more than "administration" and rules. She lets them check out books anytime they want to, not just on library day, and lets them check out books regardless of whether they can read them or not. She believes every child can learn and that love is something every child needs. I think she believes in her heart that if every child could just have the right kind of love, in the right amounts, that most of the world's problems would be solved. She is a great judge of character and is no respecter of those outside indicators that we are so proud of: pedigree, station or money.  She respects good people, or people in need, or people trying to do their best. People routinely underestimate her, and because she is never in it for any kind of recognition, she lets them.

My mother loves literature and a great poem and she "gets it," all the deepest truths that I love to find in great ideas. She is all about the transcendent and understands about a great sermon or a fine novel or a perfect turn of phrase.  I recall listening with her to Eudora Welty read "Why I Live at the P.O." on reel to reel tape and laughing until we cried. She brought it home like a treasure and we set it up in the dining room.  The smell of furniture polish still makes me think of it, "Then I pulled the electric oscillating fan out of the wall by the  cord and everything got REAL hot." Great day, that was the funniest thing I have ever heard. And to hear my mama laugh with it made it best of all. When someone says something that would be perfect in print, we say, "Put it in the book," and laugh. Another proud moment was when she finally heard me preach in person, just this past July. She teared up a little and said, "You have a gift." I thought, well, my first gift was being your daughter, actually...if you want to get technical about it.

Mother would say that it hurts a person deep down inside if they don't have a reliable and loving mother of their own. She would say kids can make it without many other things if they have enough love. She would say it is our responsibility to share the love we have received to help people who didn't get it growing up.  She would say it is a ministry. I would say, she's absolutely right.  And, no of course she's not a perfect mother, but she is about as close to perfect at loving somebody as anybody I know, and she's certainly the perfect mother for me.

God's Valentine

When our son was in kindergarten, his class studied Martin Luther King, Jr. for January. He marched out of school talking about him a mile a minute, so I said,”He was a good man who stood for justice and peace.”   And my son looked at me with his serious face on and said, “Mommy, justice is a ‘God-word,’ just like love.”  It's a humbling moment when your five-year-old is smarter than you are.

Valentine's Day always makes me think about love.  I know Valentine’s Day is supposed to be based on a saint and everything, but it strikes me in practice as a “Hallmark holiday” somebody stuck a robe on and started calling “Reverend.” When I see all that red cellophane and all those stuffed bears clogging up the CVS aisle, it actually makes me a little sad.  Will a little sucrose heart-shaped vitamin with “Be Mine” stamped on it really be the cure for what ails us in the love department?  Can a Whitman’s sampler really get us through a long dark night of the soul? (“Yes, yes it can!” I hear the chocoholics shout).

Maybe our task as pastors and preachers is to point folks away from the temporary sugar high of the Valentine’s Day culture to a God who wants to say to every yearning heart, “Be Mine.”  Maybe we can use this Hallmark holiday to acknowledge the valentines from God that have been tucked into the corners of our lives: all those good gifts of God that go  unnoticed over time. God’s valentines often come in human packages, in our families and friends, in our pastors and teachers, in our congregations and even in our enemies. Maybe we can explore more deeply the kind of love with which God so loved the world and what that kind of love means for us  and our life together.  This deep love sits with those who suffer and reaches out to people who are lost, lonely, and in despair and refuses to abandon them even when they prove difficult to love.    

By all means, we should express our love and appreciation to people in our lives this Valentine’s Day.  We don’t do that nearly enough.  But we also need to remember that love is washing feet and sitting with and praying through.  Love is not cute or heart-shaped.  Love is a God made flesh that was killed on a cross and was raised from the dead.  It is a Lenten journey and an Easter proclamation.  It is serious life-claiming, life-changing, business.  Love is, first and foremost, a “God-word.”

My appendix, Charles Wesley, and even a bit of Dickens

 I have just gotten home from a brief unplanned stay in the hospital. I brought everything home with me that I took in, save a little bit of tissue heretofore known as "my appendix." Even the name of the body part sounds temporary, an afterthought of our maker, a sort of dangling postscript. It's as if God said, "Well, I've put in a colon, not a period or question mark, so it feels incomplete down there. I know!  I'll put....an appendix." Not really the main plot, but a sort of divine rhetorical flourish, like the swirls on the  S's in the Declaration of Independence.

This little appendix is (or in my case was) the least impressive resident of a dark and mysterious place called the abdominal cavity. It's an appropriate name for a place loaded with amorphous blobs of vitally important tissue, all doing their work in the engine room of our body, so that our brain can think great inspired thoughts, from a love poem or a great novel, to "Where in the world are Nathan's shoes NOW?"  It is all a dark mystery, this place where the utterly mundane and miraculous live, where breakfast is processed and babies are made.  It's no wonder Dickens had Ebeneezer Scrooge dismiss the appearance of Marley's ghost, saying "You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!" 

A couple hundred years ago, people even talked about love as a thing that resided in your "gut".  We see it in one of my favorite hymns by the wondrous Charles Wesley "Come O Thou Traveler Unknown." It's based on Jacob wrestling with an unknown opponent, asking what his/her/its name is, and Wesley writes it in the first person, because we all wrestle with and try to get our arms around who and what God is. At the end, for Jacob, it is an angel that gives him a blessing, a new name, and a limp. For Wesley and for us, it is God revealed in Christ, "whose nature and whose name" turns out to be love!

’Tis Love! ’tis Love! Thou diedst for me!
I hear Thy whisper in my heart;
The morning breaks, the shadows flee,
Pure, universal love Thou art;
To me, to all, Thy bowels move; (!!!!!)
Thy nature and Thy Name is Love.

So, as I sit here, somewhat gingerly, I am led to contemplate my good Maker, whose nature and whose name is love.  I'm grateful for the blessing of health, for the joys of being named "child of God," and even for my little limp, a reminder of the precious gift of being "fearfully and wonderfully made" (Ps. 139:14), and the equally God-given gift of medical science and care.

And as my own little "appendix," if you have stomach pain that starts in the middle and becomes localized to the right side, don't overly google it. "Trust your gut," that place where so much resides, and get thee to an ER.  You will be glad you did, no matter what it turns out to be.

ROCK Report: Or, what I would say to 6,000 teenagers if I had the chance

I have just come back from my first ROCK retreat, a yearly retreat for Middle-High youth held in Ocean City, MD. It was definitely something I'll always remember. The bands were better than this middle-aged person thought they would be, and the fellowship with our youth was amazing. The whole experience left me wondering what I would say in that forum, though I can't conceive of ever having that opportunity....Still, here are a few ideas, literally just off the top of my head.

1. Isn't it amazing that 6000 Youth all gathered in one place? On a CHRISTIAN retreat? Dude, REALLY? Surely there's been some misunderstanding. I'll close my eyes and y'all can leave if you want to. What? Still here? AMAZING. Didn't you get the word that you're all supposed to be apathetic and shallow? Materialistic texting addicts who can't look away from their little screens for 5 seconds...Oh, excuse me, I just got a text, one second...OK. What? I can multi-task...Well, I reckon you didn't get the memo, 'cause you don't look that way to ME. 6000 youth who are willling to spend their weekend, during the playoffs, freezing their butts off and singing songs about this Jesus guy who lived a couple THOUSAND years ago....And wanting to dance for the Lord like David danced. I swear, alert the media.

2. OK, now that you are STILL here, much to my amazement, let me tell you another amazing thing. I have heard that some of you have been learning that Jesus was a radical, a non-conformist, the kind of guy who probably would NOT win any popularity contests at school. A lover of the unloveable. A helper of the poor and downtrodden. Not necessarily "most likely to succeed." And yet, in spite of that, many of you have the gall to say "I'm with HIM. I'm a Christian. And yeah, I like football, and I watch reality TV, and I'm funny and human and play video games, and yeah, I'm a Christian." You don't have to be boring or prudish or out of touch to be Christian. After all, Jesus wasn't boring or prudish or out of touch!

3. One of the first reality shows of all time was this show on MTV called "Real World." And it started off kind of cool and then it got crazy and then it got lame. But it always started off...this is the true story of 7 strangers, picked to live in a house, and have their lives taped, and find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real...the Real World. And I always thought that was funny because the viewers were all living in the Real World to start with. I mean, when I was in high school, if you wanted to see the real world, like, just ride the bus one day. Just one day. Come to my school cafeteria. Real World. The good news is, Jesus came to tug on the Real World of our life. Jesus knows how it is in our Real World...and if you feel misunderstood, and if you feel like a lone wolf, and if you feel lost and alone sometimes or awkward or ugly or just can't fit in, Jesus knows all those feelings. And Jesus can see the real you, the one you are and the one you are going to be. Jesus loves you. The real you. The you that you don't know how to show the world. God has made you in God's image. Even on a bad hair and bad complexion day, you are beautiful and beloved and gifted. Your gifts and passions are there from God, and God wants you to use them to change the world. We have a real savior for our Real World.

4. Youth are not only the church of tomorrow, you are the church of today. And Christianity is a radical, amazing, counter-cultural thing. Teenagers want to rebel, I think I read that in a magazine, somewhere, and be radical, and are almost genetically against the status quo. (My folks were from the Disco generation. Vile, vile music. Thank God we came along to set them straight) Well, listen, Jesus was the biggest rebel of them all and the biggest challenger to the status quo! He said to a world that thought there were no other options than Empire and the status quo...Blessed are the poor, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness....Is it any wonder that his disciples were the youth of his age--young adults. Breathe some fresh ideas into your church and make it the kind of church you'd want to invite your friends to. Start a skateboard ministry or a band, or a tutoring program. Sometimes we old folk run out of ideas and energy, and y'all have those in spades. Give us your ideas and energy and if we won't listen, do it anyway, and then, we'll catch up. For example, I was at a church in this conference where they were on a mission trip to the Gulf Coast after Katrina. And one of our high schoolers decided it was silly to have to wait a whole year to come back to finish the work because there was so much more to do. She gathered her friends around her and they formed YOAM (Youth on a Mission) and they raised money and came back early. YOAM goes to the Gulf Coast twice a year now. She was 16, 17. Imagine that!

5. With God, nothing is impossible. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. God has a plan for your life, and you can't necessarily see the end of the road from where you're standing. I get that. But I also know we are not alone on the road. And if we aren't sure what the future holds, we believe we know who holds the future. Jesus Christ, God's beloved Son. God So loved the "real world", God so loved you, the real you, the one you try to cover up with makeup and hair and masks...that God sent the Son, so that we might know just how much we are loved and know what we were made for. (I'm often not sure where my keys are, and I've plumb forgot the quadratic formula and lots and lots of stuff I've been tested on in my life), but I realized early on that if I was going to make it in this insane world, it would not be as a lone wolf. It would not be through pretending to be something I'm not. And I realized that Jesus really did love me, even me, with my zit cream, and awkwardness, and Jesus really did have a real idea in mind for my life. And I didn't know what that idea would be, but I was willing to put myself, my faith, my life, in the hands of the One who thought up that idea. When I realized I couldn't be perfect, and I couldn't please everybody, and then I realized there was a God who came to free me from all my mistakes, to love me and let me have a new start every time I screwed up, that's when I decided to throw my hat in with Jesus, the Rebel, the Non-conformist, the Saviour of the world.

6. God does mighty things with crazy kids like you, crazy kids who come to Ocean City for their weekend to sing crazy Jesus songs and freeze on the boardwalk and eat their weight in Gummy Worms from Candy Kitchen. God works up mighty things from folks who thought they were screw ups and dorks and geeks and jocks. God said to Jeremiah, "Don't say you are too young for this work. Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations." Youth, don't say you are too young to take your faith seriously. Don't say you are too young to change the world for the better. Before God formed you in the womb, God knew you, and God appointed you to do some work for the Kingdom. God sends you to be the body of Christ in this world. Don't keep waiting for someone else to do it. God sent you. Don't keep waiting for someone else to speak up. God sent you. Don't tolerate bullying and racism and hate. God sent you. If 6,000 youth can come together for this weekend, and hold each other's hand and begin to see that there are ties between us that make us ONE...beyond our clicks and our groups and all the labels everybody wants to put on us...just imagine what 6,000 youth can do out THERE, in that world, in those schools and in those homes and churches. What if those youth were willing to dance like David danced, but then they were willing to love like Jesus loved and speak the truth to power like the prophets and then what if they went and made their churches into churches that took risks for the Gospel, and fed the hungry and housed the homeless and worked to end malaria in Africa? What if they were willing to put aside all the other labels they claimed or the ones that were put on them and said, wanna know what I am? Before all the other stuff in the "about me" part of my FB profile, I am a beloved child of God. I'm with Jesus. I'm a Christian. I'm not yet what I should be, but I am on my way, I am becoming. Great God a'mighty! Alert the media! Put it on Facebook and Youtube. And then, watch God use them to change the world.

Reading Poems

"Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer's day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum." Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird.

There is something so beautiful about a well-crafted sentence, an apt metaphor, or a collection of ink on a page that describes something so perfectly it takes you there. One of the best things about seminary was being required to read great books and then trying to write great papers. In the new paradigm of the "post-graduate" world, there is little time to read like that. I read the Bible a whole lot, of course, and scan resources for sermon preparation, but it is hard to find that hour to put on fuzzy socks and make tea and get lost in a book; if I can find the hour, there's no guarantee of another one, and by that time, I've forgotten the characters' names, who they are married to, and how we got to whatever page I've marked. It's not pretty.

I was unaware of what I was missing, the way a person doesn't know they need a haircut until it's been way too long, and then one day all of a sudden gasps at her reflection saying, "Is that my HAIR?" When one of my doctor-uncles had major heart surgery earlier this fall, he memorized long stretches of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" to test his cognitive abilities after surgery. (I come by my geekiness honestly, ya'll). We recited together lines I had learned as an English major long ago: "In the room, the women come and go, talking of Michaelangelo...." and "I am old, I am old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled...." He lay in the bed with his books split open, to read when he was too wakeful to nap and too weak to walk around. This was the uncle who always admonished me as a child for reading too much fiction. He'd inquire about what I was reading, and warned me if I kept up with Dickens, and Hemingway, Morrison and Angelou, I would run the risk of being an English major, and then, God only knows what would happen. So I found it strange that he would be delving into poetry. He said, "I have been so busy with my medical practice that I don't have time to read books anymore--but I can read poetry."

The beauty of a poem is, you can read it while you are doing other things. You can take in the utter essence of something all at once in a poem, and have it unwind in your subconscious all day long. Someone said that a poem is not the story of an event; it is the event itself. I think it is life served straight up, with nothing watered down. To read a poem is to be vulnerable, and to risk being devastated in the course of being uplifted. In that way, to read a great poem is like reading scripture, the Word that so often devastates us before it becomes Good News, indeed the best news there is.

Inspired by Prufrock and Uncle Don, I began to revisit poetry I had not read in years and I signed up to receive via email, a poem a day from http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/. I receive in my inbox these little jewels first thing in the morning and they are the first thing I grope for in the morning after the alarm clock. I gulp them down like vitamins. If they are really good, I send them to friends, especially friends who share my love for the right set of words. I discovered poetry is versatile--there are poems in the shape of rap and rock and poems about terrorism and poems about how it feels to lock the door for the last time at the house your grandparents lived in. There are poems about friends stolen from us and poems about stealing cold plums from the icebox. There are poems about ice cream and icebergs and icy glances of relationships gone wrong. So much in such a little package.

Words carry power and can reflect the world as it is, and the right words can even help make a new world. Words can hurt to the quick and words can heal the deepest wounds. And a great poem tells the truth. Preachers too, must be truthtellers and poets. They must be authentically "themselves" and yet remember they bring a Word that is also bigger, wider and deeper than the cups they must pour it into. Is it any wonder that when Mary speaks of what God has done for her, she turns from mere words to poetry?

My soul magnifies the Lord,

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.

Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

for the Mighty One has done great things for me,

and holy is his name.

His mercy is for those who fear him

from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm;

he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

and lifted up the lowly;

he has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty.

She was, after all, singing about God's Incarnation in Jesus the Christ, the One who would be the Light of the world. He came into the world where hope and fear meet, and he came into it "full of grace and truth" (John 1), the Eternal Word made flesh, a sort of poetry-in-motion. So much in such a little package.

Wade in the Water (Matthew 3:13-17)

A SERMON I PREACHED AT THE PARISH-- 1/9/11

I have always loved the song “Wade in the Water.” I loved the alliteration of the title and the sound of the song....it always hit me in the chest. It sounded different from all those clean, bright, major key songs in the hymnal. It stopped me in my tracks because it sounded scary, sinister….and the one who was up to something is….not the bad guy, but God. God’s gonna trouble the water. Like a hurricane. And here I thought God was supposed to lead me by still waters and restoreth my soul. What's all this business about troubling the water? I mean if God’s gonna trouble the water, I don’t want to be anywhere near it, thanks. I want to be in landlocked Kansas, if God’s gonna trouble the water!

And then I got a little older and I discovered this song is a spiritual, a song that slaves composed and sang about ways for their brothers and sisters to seek their freedom. I learned wading in the water was a way to avoid the scent of bloodhounds. It was a good thing to wade in the water. I learned crossing rivers like the Ohio meant literal freedom for runaway slaves. I learned the verses of the song were in code, so that a people who could not communicate openly about escape could pass along the way to freedom right under their captors' noses with the verses about Moses’ children dressed in red or the white dress of the Israelite.

God’s troubling the water was meant to push God’s people over into God’s promised land. God’s stirring up of the water was to send the remnant over into the land God wanted them to live in. It reminded me of the Jordan River, that place God acted to lead the people into the promised land, that place where just two weeks ago, we found God telling Joshua to get the people ready for their river crossing. Is it any wonder then that it is to the Jordan that Jesus came to wade in the water to be baptized by John?

Baptism is something we think we know. Cute and adorable. Baptism, meek and mild. After all, we baptize babies in the UM Church, and babies are cute and adorable. Even this account of Jesus’ baptism seems pretty. Like a Christmas card. It's the Spirit descending like a dove. A painting on a ceramic plate.

BUT. . this baptism is not sweet or cute or adorable. It’s actually kinda scary. First we have John the Baptist appearing in the wilderness. The Gospel of Mark even calls him, Not John the Baptist, but John the Baptizer. I like that even better. Baptist is a passive label, like Democrat or Republican or even Presbyterian. "Baptizer" is a revolutionary at work. Like if you get too close, he might just baptize you, zap you with some transforming energy ray and change you into a new person entirely. And baptism was a big deal, to the people getting baptized and to the powers that be that attached themselves to Herod or to Rome. There were a fair number of these prophet types around hoping that what they did would cause God to act to save God’s people from Roman oppression, to make good on all those promises about a Messiah. They were always hanging out in the wilderness because that’s where God has a way of showing up. And the river Jordan was the border to the promised land. Baptism is political. Scary. Potentially threatening. Pledging allegiance to something else other than Rome, other than Empire. Pledging allegiance to the kingdom of God. A place where slavery to anything other than God was not allowed. A place where justice rolled down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream. (God’s gonna trouble the water).

And this John the Baptizer, everybody knows, wore a hairy coat and ate locusts and wild honey. But do you know why? Because he was eccentric? Trying out for Fear Factor? Well, I don’t know for sure, but I think part of the reason is, Elijah did it. And Elijah was supposed to reappear just before God sent the Messiah to save the people. So, John’s walking around in an Elijah costume, eating Elijah food, and people would've gotten the message. Including the powers that be. That’s why they kept such a close eye on John and what he was doing. So, it’s not a pristine little font and a lovable little baby. It’s a band of people by the river that symbolizes God’s power to act, following a fellow dressed for God’s liberating battle, calling them to repent, turn, commit, make a decision. Calling them to Wade in the Water. And getting baptized was the way you showed that you had made that commitment. And into this context comes Jesus of Nazareth, no longer a baby in swaddling clothes but a grown-up. The One qualified to baptize, the Messiah himself, coming to be baptized. And God’s gonna trouble the water.

God’s Spirit descends on him, God crashes the party, God is on the loose, God is at work, God is with us. God has intruded into this event to pronounce who Jesus is that God is pleased with him. Pleased that he’s baptized, pleased that he has begun the path to public ministry, pleased that he has made this public commitment, pleased that he has begun his journey of healing and suffering, his journey to the cross. God’s plan for salvation, and freedom, and healing was in motion down by the riverside. Jesus was gonna wade in this water and then be led up out of the water by the Spirit straight into the wilderness of temptation. I so want that to say that Satan dragged Jesus kicking and screaming into temptation. But God's Spirit led God into the wilderness. The wilderness is a place God knows very well. See, God’s gonna trouble the water. And Satan and temptation and all the powers of death and hell will not be able to prevail against this water-washed and Spirit-born Son of God.

We also get baptized, as a way to mark the start of our Christian journey. Some get baptized by immersion, others get baptized by sprinkling. In the Methodist church, we baptize babies a lot, because we see baptism as something that God does for us, a sign of God’s love for us, a love that comes before our ability to respond. Babies, you see are notoriously unable to do a lot. They do three things, just about, and those things are not singularly impressive. Eat, sleep and require diaper changes. And yet, our Church says, you are that beloved child, beloved by God just the way you are, before you could impress anybody, before you could talk or walk or join a committee. Beloved and called and bought with a price.

So, if you were baptized as a baby, it means that you have no memory of the event itself, so when we say "remember your baptism and be thankful" your first response might be "I can't." But let me assure you, God remembers it. And the Church remembers it. People came up and called you who you were, a child of God. And they identified the grace already at work in you, a grace that would lead you to grow in the faith and make that faith commitment for yourself when you were older. And those few drops of water on your head were just as radical and revolutionary as being baptized in an ocean. It is part of the way our God works that when we see a new Christian being born, a new baby in the family of God, we here the angels shouting “Roll Jordan, Roll!” It may be a quiet event with 'nary a locust in sight, a few drops of water and a little baby's head, but when the water touches skin, we hear it: "Roll, Jordan, roll!"

We remember that it is our baptisms that tell us who we are, before nationality and race, before party and politics. And we baptized are called to say to all those forces of evil so at work in the world that God is still on the loose. God’s gonna trouble the water.

We can say to those victims of senseless gun violence, our God knows what it is like to be an innocent victim. God is still on the throne of this weary world., and has a church that grieves with those that mourn and stands with those that suffer. A church that rolls up its sleeves to clear away the brush of brokenness and the debris of despair. Wade in the water, children. God’s gonna trouble the water.

It reminds me of John 5--where the angel of the Lord would stir up the water at the spring, and people with ailments and hurts and sickness would lay there. And if they could be the first one in when God "troubled" the water, they would get well. John 5:1 "Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. 3 In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. 5 One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” 7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” 9 At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk."

When God troubles the water, it’s for our healing. When God troubles the water, it's for God's kingdom. It might look like our prison ministry, or this crazy cooperative parish. When God troubles the water. And when the man couldn’t get to the water, God sent the Living Water to him. “Do you want to be made well?...Stand up, take your mat and walk.”

Friend, if you wanted to stay on your little mat, you should’ve stayed out of the water. If you didn’t want to be made well….you should’ve stayed out of the water. If you wanted a life where you only answered to you….then you should’a stayed out of that water. If you wanted going to church to be optional, then you should’a stayed out of that water. If you wanted Church "meek and mild and cute and adorable" you should'a stayed out of the water. If you wanted a church with folks who look and sound just like you, you should'a stayed out of the water. If you wanted to remain chained up to the dysfunctional person you used to be, then you should’a stayed out of that water. If you really really wanted to have that affair, you should have stayed out of the water. But if you wanted an assurance that you would never be alone in your wilderness….If you wanted to find out who you really are in Christ Jesus. If you wanted to find out what you were made for…If you wanted to see what the Kingdom of God really looks and sounds and tastes like, then I’m so glad you waded in that water. I'm so glad you waded in that water.

I love that our parish sits on the side of that little lake (hence the name, Lakeside). (That's right, I figured that out. I have several advanced degrees). But Christians are not called to stay on the banks of the river. (Probably why Lakeside’s emblem is a boat, not a beach chair!). We are called to wade in the water. We are called to remember in the midst of trials and tribulations that we are baptized, that when that water hit our head, we were more than just wet. We were wedded to a story that goes back to creation. We were tied to that voice that said “Let there be light.” We were tied to that band of Israelites tromping through walls of water on either side. We would have with us a God who would lead us by still waters and through the valley of the shadow of death. Baptism does more than make you damp. It also makes you a little dangerous. Oh children, wade in the water. God’s gonna trouble the water.

What's in a Name?

Shakespeare wrote in "Romeo and Juliet" that "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Yet, we care a great deal about our own names, and we want folks to call us by the right name, and spell and pronounce it correctly. As for me, since coming to my first appointment on July 1, I have recently acquired a new name--"Pastor Mandy."

My appointment is as Associate Pastor to a cooperative parish in Waldorf, MD that is made up of two United Methodist churches, one mostly Caucasian, one mostly African-American. In the white church tradition, many pastors would drop the title when dealing with parishioners. To call someone "John" instead of "Rev. Smith" or even "Pastor John" would not be a mark of disrespect; indeed it would be a sign of intimacy or trust. In the African-American church, however, to call a pastor by a first name alone would be a sign of disrespect, and a rejection of their authority and position. When I prepared to enter this first appointment, Pastor Tony (my amazing Senior Pastor) clued me in to this discrepancy. "I will always call you Pastor Mandy, as a reminder to me and to our parishioners of who you are." I always call him Pastor Tony or Pastor Love, for similar reasons.

At first, this was hard to get used to. I think many first-time pastors take a second to respond that first time to the word "pastor." There is a looking-over-the-shoulder impulse to see who the pastor is that has just walked in, because it cannot be me. But now, six months in, I am used to it. It makes me stand up a little straighter when people call me "pastor," not because I feel I'm better than others, but because it is a reminder of my calling. If I lose sight of why I am in the room or what our relationship is based on, when someone calls me "Pastor Mandy" I remember that it is Jesus Christ that we have in common, and that I am called to relate to people, always and everywhere, as a disciple of his. To be called "Pastor" is to feel the tug of the faithful pulling out the best of who I am and what I have to give. At the same time, it is a blessed reminder that the Church has more to lean on than just me, my gifts, or my ideas. It has the Holy Spirit, the holy Scriptures, Church tradition and the communion of the saints. We're working together on a plot of land that we don't own; we are all working in the Lord's vineyard.

I'm not saying that pastors are better Christians than laity, but I am saying that being a pastor here has made me a better follower of Jesus Christ. Whenever someone calls me "Pastor Mandy" I am reminded of why I am here and to whom I belong. I am reminded of being called out from the faithful to be in ministry to the faithful. It is the finest job in the world, and one I give thanks for every day. Pastor Mandy? Yeah, that's my name. And it's a holy and wondrous and wonderful thing.