Emergence

Lectionary Passage:  Jeremiah 1: 4-10
⁴Now the word of the Lord came to me saying,⁵“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”⁶Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.”⁷But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you,⁸Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.”⁹Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, “Now I have put my words in your mouth.¹⁰See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”

This account of the calling of Jeremiah includes the things that so many call stories do (including, probably, most of ours).  They include a calling from God, a promise that God will help and support and walk with the one that God has seen fit to call.  Then it includes an argument.  "No, no, no, not me.  I have my life all planned out.  This cannot be happening.  In fact, this is really going to mess up my plans."  But, finally, it includes a response.  In Jeremiah's case, God puts the words in his mouth, promising him that he would know what to say and when to say it.  And from that time on, Jeremiah is single-minded in what he is called to do.  But the problem is that the words that Jeremiah was called to say were not what people planned on hearing.  In fact, Jeremiah's message didn't resonate at all with the society to which he was appointed to serve.  He wasn't called to tell them how great they were doing; instead, he was called to pluck up, pull down, destroy, and overthrow.  And then, and only then, is he called to build and plant.  What is that about?  This plucking and pulling and destroying and overthrowing doesn't sound like God's work.  In fact, it just sounds like out and out chaos.

So did you forget?  Did you forget what God does with chaos?  Read Genesis 1.  God took chaos and created order.  And, as I recall, it turned out pretty well. And yet, we often forget that.  We would much rather God take the plans that we've conjured up for our lives and have God just continue them. But sometimes we have to pluck and pull and even destroy and overthrow.  Sometimes, we just need to start again with a new plan.  But change is hard. Change is scary.  Walking that tightrope can tip us into opportunity or crisis at any turn.  So how do we prepare for that?

Maybe we don't.  Maybe preparation comes not in the form of plans but rather a sort of clearing of our minds and our souls so that God can fill us.  Maybe preparing for change, preparing for what God is going to do in our lives, has to involve plucking and pulling and destroying.  Maybe deep in that chaos is a certain holiness, a newness that has just begun to emerge from its womb.  And God, rather than stamping some sort of holy approval on our comfortable and complacent existence, calls us into a new way of being.  God is always recasting the vision for our lives, always pushing us out of our comfort zones, and always birthing us into newness. 

But God reminded Jeremiah that even in that womb, he was not alone.  God is there in our transformation.  But we can't stay there.  God has too much in store for us.  So, all through our lifetime, as we emerge from womb to womb, God is birthing us closer and closer to the life that God has created just for us.  Maybe we're not called so much to plan our lives but rather to emerge.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli 

Water Plus a Miracle

Lectionary Passage:  John 2: 1-11
On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.²Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.³When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.”⁴And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.”⁵His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”⁶Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons.⁷Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim.⁸He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it.⁹When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom¹⁰and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.”¹¹Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

We actually refer to this story that we read from the Gospel According to John as part of our marriage service order, mentioning that in it, “Jesus graced a wedding at Cana of Galilee and gave us the example for the love of one another.”  I’m not really sure why because the truth is this passage is not about marriage; it’s about wine.  So last week we read of Jesus’ baptism and now we read of his first miracle.  He definitely got the show on the road, so to speak.  And yet, the story is a little odd.  We read later of teaching, of healing, of including, even of raising from the dead.  So what’s this thing about wine?  Why was this act important enough to put in the Gospel and, particularly, to place it where it is the first miracle that we find Jesus doing?

Well, according to the Mishnah (which is essentially a redaction of the oral tradition of Judaism and a documentation of the traditional understandings of Scripture), the wedding would take place on a Wednesday if the bride was a virgin and on a Thursday if she was a widow. The bridegroom and his friends made their way in procession to the bride’s house. This was often done at night, when there could be a spectacular torchlight procession. There would be speeches and expressions of goodwill before the bride and groom went in procession to the groom’s house, where the wedding banquet was held. It is probable that there was some sort of religious ceremony, but we have no details. The processions and the feast are the principal items of which we have knowledge. The feast was prolonged, and might last as long as a week (so, OK, that would be quite a lot of wine!).

So Mary, the mother of Jesus, is at the wedding, although her role seems to be more than that of a guest. Perhaps the couple was an extended family member or something.  But she seems to be one of the first to know that the wine is running out. She instructs the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them to do, and they appear willing to take her instructions.  Now you have to understand that this was an embarrassing situation.  The wine has run out, and there appears to be no solution.  Either no more wine is available, or there is no money to buy more wine. The guests seem unaware of what is happening. If something is not done, all will be embarrassed. Some commentators even inform us that litigation was possible in such cases. (Can you imagine being sued for not providing enough food and drink at a marriage ceremony?)  But, regardless, it is clear that Jesus mother expects Jesus to do something out of the ordinary.  She expects him to fix the problem.

In the setting of this story, Jesus has not yet begun to perform all the miracles and the teaching and yet his mother thought he could do this.  It’s unclear whether or not Mary really understood what “hour” to which Jesus was referring or if she really grasped who this man that she had brought into the world was, but, timing aside, Jesus helps out and fills a need.  Maybe it’s a message to us that Jesus didn’t just come for the “big”, splashy things.  Maybe it’s a reminder that God is in even the ordinary, those seemingly small things in life that we think we can handle, that we think don’t really even matter to God.

But this?  I mean, really, wine?  Why didn’t he turn the water into food for the hungry or clothing for the poor?  Why didn’t he end the suffering of one of those wedding guests who were forced to live their lives in pain?  Why didn’t he teach those that were there that God is more impressed by who we are than what we do?  Now THAT would have been a miracle.  But instead Jesus, in his first miraculous act, creates a party, a feast.  Maybe it’s a reminder that we ought to just relax and trust God a little more.  Maybe it’s trying to tell us that God is indeed in every aspect of our life.  And maybe it’s telling us that life is indeed a feast to be celebrated.

And think about the wine itself.  It begins as ordinary grapes.  Well, not really.  If you go even farther back, you start with water.  Everything starts with water.  And then those ordinary grapes with just the right amount of water, the right amount of sunlight, and the right amount of nutrients fed to them from the rich, dark earth begin to seed.  And then we wait, we wait for them to grow and flourish and at just the right time, they are picked and processed and strained of impurities and all of those things that are not necessary.  And then they are bottled and tucked away while again, we wait.  They are placed in just the right temperature, with just the right amount of light, and just the right amount of air quality, and we wait.  We wait and until it becomes…well, a miracle.

And Biblical theologians have over and over pointed to the relationship that this story has with the Eucharist.  Think about it.  We take ordinary bread and ordinary wine (or in our case, ordinary Welch’s Grape Juice), and through what we can only describe as a Holy Mystery, a veritable miracle,  those ordinary things become holy.  They become for us the body and blood of Christ, the very essence of Christ to us, for us, and in us. 
And remember that when the wine ran out, Jesus did not conjure up fresh flagons of wine.  Rather, he took what was there, those ordinary, perhaps even abandoned vessels of ordinary, everyday water and turned it into a holy and sacred gift.  Water and a miracle…

So this story of wine makes a little more sense.  Wine is water—plus a miracle.  But in case it is lost on us, remember that our bodies are roughly two-thirds water.  No wonder the ancient sages always used water as a symbol for matter itself.  Humans, they taught, are a miraculous combination of matter and Spirit—water and a miracle—and thus unique in all of creation.  No wonder that wine is such a powerful, sacramental, and universal symbol of the natural world—illumined and uplifted by the Divine.  Wine is water, plus spirit, a unique nectar of the Divine, a symbol of life.

And we, ordinary water-filled vessels though we are, are no different.  God takes the created matter that is us and breathes Spirit into us, breathes life into us.  We, too, are water plus a miracle.  So as we lift the chalice today, let it be a reminder of Christ’s Spirit infused into us, living in us.  13^th century German mystic Meister Eckhart said that “every creature is a word of God.”  It’s another way of reminding us that we are water plus a miracle.

So maybe this story of Jesus’ first miracle is not as odd as we thought.  Our lectionary places it immediately following the remembrance of Jesus’ baptism and the remembrance of our own.  It is the point where God’s Spirit, where the holy and sacred itself, was poured into each of us.  So, yes, we are a miracles, created matter, Spirit-breathed.  We are the good wine that God has saved for now.  We are water plus a miracle.

Go be the miracle you were created to be!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

A Must See!

Lectionary Passage:  John 1: 43-46 (47-51)
The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.”Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.”Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.”

At the risk of overusing movie metaphors, I saw an advertisement for a movie that touted that the critics had dubbed it "a must see."  We all know what that means.  It means that someone is telling us that we need to try to find time to go see this movie, that perhaps our lives will be more enriched by the very act of taking the time to watch a movie.  It doesn't mean that it's inviting us to rewrite it or recast it or, for that matter, even critique it.  It doesn't mean that there's going to be a quiz at the end of it to make sure that we understood it in the way that the writer intended.  And it's not even maintaining that we have to commit every line and every scene to permanent memory.  It's inviting us to simply come, to put down what we're doing and quit worrying about what we're not doing, if only for a couple of hours, and come experience it.  It's inviting us to come and see.  And the claim is that in some small way, our lives might be enriched by the act.

The Scripture that is used here is only part of our lectionary Gospel passage for this week.  But in this short segment, we meet Nathanael.  Most of us don't know much about him.  After all, he was never part of the "Big 12" as far as we can tell.  But that usually didn't matter much to the Gospel writer that we know as John.  In this version of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the notion of "disciple" is broader than Jesus' inner crowd.  You see, Nathanael is a whole lot like us.  He wanted to understand who this Christ was and, yet, it didn't make sense to him.  Shouldn't there be something more?  Shouldn't this be obvious?  How can anything this incredible come out of this little nothing town?  After all, in the first century, Nazareth wasn't much.  There was no Roman settlement there which means, more than likely, that there was little work.  In fact, you wonder how a carpenter family even eeked out a living there.  It was probably just a couple of houses, a blip on a map.  It was nothing anyone would ever really want to see.  Yes, Nathanael was trying to make sense of this, to put it into a perspecive that made sense to him.  He was trying to take this Presence of God that was beyond anything that he could imagine fit into his notion of who God was.  But Philip's response was simply, "Nathanael, just come and see."  In other words, put down all of your preconceived ideas of who you think God should be and what you think God should look like and from where you think God should come, and just come and experience the Presence of God.

I don't think that Philip was promising that Nathanael would see something tangible that would prove the existence of God.  After all, "seeing" is not limited to what we do with our eyes.  Philip is instead offering Nathanael the experience of God.  But in order to experience God, to "come and see", one has to put everything else aside.  We cannot see God by listening to something else; we cannot see God when our hands are holding too tightly to what we think we need; and we cannot see God when our minds are so full of who we think God should be.  We're not being called to figure God out or know everything there is about God.  You know what?  We're not even called to be perfect renditions of what God envisions we should be.  I think God's a lot more filled with grace than we give God credit for being.  And I don't think we're called to be "godly" people.  I hate that word.  Being "like God" is really God's area!  Shhhhh!  Just come and see. 

Last week's lectionary passages included the first few lines of Genesis.  We read of God's spirit "sweeping over the face of the waters."  In other words, God's Presence was not just standing beside or standing over Creation.  God's Presence washed over Creation, consumed it, made it part of the Divine.  We are no different.  Seeing God is about letting God's Spirit sweep over you.  It is about experiencing God in every fabric of your being.  Joseph Wood Krutch said that "the rare moment is not the moment when there is something worth looking at, but the moment when we are capable of seeing."  So, for all of us who are waiting for that one incredible moment when we finally see God, stop.  Just come and see.  It's a "must see"!

What is right now so important, to what are you holding so tightly, and what are you doing now that means you cannot come and see?

The Days That Come After

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.  Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. (Genesis 1: 1-5)

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased. (Mark 1: 9-11)

I saw a movie trailer for a new movie called "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," which is apparently a story of a young boy's life after his father is killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  The trailer ends with these words written on the screen:  "This is not a story about 9/11; it is a story about the days that come after."  I thought that was a very profound statement.  After all, do we sometimes focus so much on specific times and specific days that we lose what it means to live the rest of them?  In some way, living a life of faith means getting beyond endings.  Maybe it even means getting beyond beginnings.  It means doing something with all of them as part of the totality of life.

Yesterday we remembered the Baptism of Jesus and through that also remembered our own.  And our lectionary readings for the day included the first five verses of Genesis.  We all know that it is the beginning of the story of Creation, the beginning of life, the beginning of our own beginnings.  But, truth be told, it wasn't the beginning of EVERYTHING.  After all, it says that before it all, the earth did exist.  It's just that it was a formless, shapeless void.  Perhaps it was a chaotic mass of swirling, meaningless matter.  And then God Said.  Those are the most powerful words imaginable.  With one simple statement, God creates order, shape, life.   As God's Spirit sweeps over the waters, meaningless matter becomes earth.  It is not perfect; it is not the way it will be; it is the way it should be.  It is good.

But we know it doesn't stop there.  The days go one and God creates sky, and land, and seas.  Then, rather than directly creating (we sometimes gloss over this), God appoints the earth to start creating, to bring forth vegetation.  God calls Creation to create.  Then God creates suns, and moons, and animals, and us.  And then, as the pinnacle of Creation, God creates Sabbath rest, completion, a taste of eternity.  You see, it doesn't stop at "in the beginning". The days that come after are what makes Creation the way it was intended to be.

And in those days that Creation continued,  once again God's Spirit moved over the waters.  And this time, the heavens were torn apart (not opened, but violently ripped apart in a way that they could never go back together in the same way), and God's Spirit decended.  And once again, God spoke:  "You are my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased."  Once again, God Said. It is good.

The days that come after are the days.  Beginnings and endings are only markers, turning points, crosswalks.  We are told to "remember our baptism and be thankful."  Truth be told, I don't remember mine.  I was just a baby.  But remembering is not about the beginning; it is about the days afterward.  So, as people of faith, what will we do with those days afterward?  Faith is not about baptism; it is about the days that come after.

What will you do with your days that come after?

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

P.S.  As a programming note, I'm going to try to post a blog entry twice a week or so during this Season of Epiphany and then return to daily posts during our Lenten journey.  Thanks for staying with me!  Shelli

Beginning the Journey

Whew! It's over--this season of running and shopping and baking and wrapping and giving and getting and dressing and partying and, oh yeah, worshipping the Christ who has come!  Now we can go back to normal.  Whew!  It's over!  But what is the deal with all this light around?  Really?  So what was the point?  Truth be told,  as Christmas is the celebration of God's coming, Epiphany is the manifestation of our going.  Epiphany is the beginning of the journey.  So, in other words, don't get too comfortable!  There is work to do!

This season of Epiphany probably gets sort of glossed over.  I don't know, maybe we're tired.  Maybe we've eaten too much or run too much or just too much-ed.  Or maybe we just don't understand what it's about.  Epiphany is about making Jesus real, making the Christ child part of your life.  It is about doing beginning to travel down a road that you've never traveled before.

We know the story of the Wisemen, those learned ones who came to pay homage to the new king.  I suppose it was just a politically correct fulfillment of accepted etiquette.  There was a new king in town and they would greet him and give him the proper gifts and perhaps he would remember them in the future. (And in the meantime, perhaps the press would treat them kindly in this politically volatile season!) It was, after all, the proper and the smart thing to do. But instead, something happened.  Perhaps it was the star; perhaps it was the king; perhaps it was some sort of divine inspiration.  But, whatever it was, these wandering souls got it.  They saw a pathway that was different than the one that they were on, they saw where God was calling them to go.  And so they went home by another way.

Many of you have heard the Henry Van Dyke story of “The Other Wise Man”.  It is the story of a magi named Artaban, who waited impatiently for the star to shine so that he could travel with the other magi to see the new king. In fact, he had sold all of his possessions and bought three jewels—a sapphire, a ruby, and a pearl—to give to the new baby king.  And, then, he finally saw what he had been waiting for as the dark eastern sky was filled with light.  He hurried to join his friends so that he could meet the king.  But on the way, he came upon the form of a man lying on the side of the road, motionless and dying.  He knew that if he stayed to help the dying stranger, he would miss meeting the Messiah.  So, with a heavy heart, he stayed and cared for the man until his strength returned.  And in return, the man, a Jew, blessed his travel to Bethlehem, where he told him the king had actually been born.  So, left behind by the others, Artaban was forced to sell the sapphire, buy a train of camels, and provisions for the journey. 

But he arrived there three days after the others had departed.  He entered a cottage and found a young mother singing her baby to sleep.  And quietly, the woman told him that the new king and his family had fled secretly in the night.  Suddenly there was a noise outside as Herod’s soldiers came for the child.  Artaban went to the doorway and met the soldiers, telling them that he was alone in the house.  When the soldier did not believe him, he reached in his pocket and pulled out his ruby and gave it to him.  The soldiers went away.  The woman blessed him.

Artaban spent his life searching for the king.  In all this world of anguish, he found many to help, but no one to worship.  He fed the hungry, clothed the naked, healed the sick, and comforted those in despair.  Thirty-three years later, he came for the last time to Jerusalem and was met with a flurry of activity as the city prepared to crucify Jesus of Nazareth.  On hearing this, Artaban knew that this was what he was called to do.  The pearl, the last of his riches, could be offered as ransom for the king’s life.  It was then that a young slave girl was dragged through the streets and threw herself at Artaban’s feet.  Save me, she begged, they are going to kill me.  He sadly took the pearl from his pocket.  It gleamed with radiance as he handed it to the girl so that she could buy her life.  The earth began to shake around him; the sky darkened; and it was then that a heavy tile hit Artaban on the head.  As he lay there, the slave girl bent over him to try to hear what he was saying.  It was then that she heard a faint voice from above—“verily I say unto thee,  Inasmuch as thou hast done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, thou hast done it unto me.”  A calm radiance came over Artaban’s face and he breathed one last breath.  His journey had ended.  His treasures were accepted.  He had met the King many, many times.

Well, obviously, this is fiction.  There's no basis to it.  It's not Scriptural.  But the point is that we are the other wisemen.  We are the ones called to the work.  We are the ones that will meet the King.  Maybe we will see it to fruition; more than likely, we will not.  The point is that it's not about the end-result.  It's about the journey.  It's about making the Christ-child real in your lives.  It's about meeting the King. But more than that, it's about getting it! It's about making it real. It's about letting the Light illumine your life.

God came and the Light shined into our midst.

We are called to follow, to walk in the way illumined by the Light.
Let us follow the Light as it guides us on our journey.
Let us follow the Light as it leads us to Life.
So, in this season of Epiphany, make the newborn Christ real in your life!  There is work to be done!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli     

Extra-Ordinary Time

This is the LONGEST Epiphany Season. Ordinary Time seems to drone on and on and on.  Well, it is not your imagination.  The way the calendar falls, this is truly the longest Epiphany season we could ever have.  The cavern between the "high holy" seasons this year is indeed deep and wide, a veritable ocean of ordinary time.  The Lectionary has us reading the Sermon on the Mount.  You know, for the first time, I've noticed how much the word "you" is used in that discourse.  Oh, surely he means "you" as in those around him--the disciples, the religious elite, and the passers-by--you know, those to whom he was speaking.  Well, one thing about long seasons is that you have more time to ponder meaning.  And this pondering has become a bit uncomfortable.  Because if we truly enter the story the way we're called to do.  If the Holy Scriptures become the Word, the very essence of God, rather than merely a dusty narrative composed over a couple of thousand years, then, sadly and uncomfortably, we become "you".

Jesus is speaking to us or the Scriptures mean nothing; Jesus is wanting us to listen and to hear or he wouldn't have bothered saying it at all.  So in this ordinary time, we become the passersby, perhaps turn into the religious elite, and if all goes well, if we really bother to stop and listen and hear, then we, too, become the disciples.  You see, Jesus over and over again uses the ordinary, the every day, and the expected to frame what he wants to say.  He uses the rules that we societies have created and the roles that its members play.  And then he goes beyond where we are, calling us to a greater and greater existence, calling us to be better than even we could have imagined, calling us to live fully into that image of God in which we have been created.  And this time between times, this ordinary season, becomes something extra [ordinary].  Yes, this is the LONGEST Epiphany Season...call it the most Extraordinary Time ever.

So finally listen and hear the call to be extra-ordinary...

Shelli                                                                                 

It was easy to love God in all that was beautiful.  The lessons of deeper knowledge, though, instructed me to embrace God in all things. 

                                                                       (St. Francis of Assisi)

Grace and Peace,

Expectations

Lectionary Passage:  Matthew 5: 21-37 (Epiphany 6A)
    "You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

     You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell. “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
     “Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’ But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one. (NRSV) 

And yet another week of reading the Sermon on the Mount…So are you getting the sense that we’re actually supposed to be listening to it? This is not an easy discourse full of pretty little stories interspersed with a few light-hearted jokes to keep our attention. You see, we really ARE supposed to do this. Jesus, like any good teacher, begins where we are. He acknowledges the usual view of what righteousness was (and perhaps is)—that a murderer will be judged; that those who leave offerings will be rewarded; that adulterers will be punished…the list goes on. But the whole point is that it’s not enough. Jesus doesn’t frame his words as prohibitions or a list of rules to be followed. That would, in fact, be far too simplistic. After all, why would we really need faith to follow a list of rules? It’s not about rules; it’s about expectations. And there IS something more that is expected of us who dare to realize that we are children of God. The rules are there. They will stay there. They help us order our society and give us boundaries for our lives. But we are expected to go beyond them, to be better than the society we have ordered and the boundaries we have drawn. And here, it is not just about behaviors; it also applies to attitudes and emotions. Indeed, it is about every aspect of our being. It’s a pretty radical way of looking at things. But, really, it’s Jesus. Did you expect anything less?

This week’s reading reminds us yet again that God came in Jesus Christ not to enforce the rules, but to reorder the world itself. God does not have a checklist or a lucky-number scorecard. Rather, God became flesh, dwelt among us, and showed us what it meant to live with an ever-present God in our midst. So, what is it that you expect from God? More than you can possibly imagine. And what is it that you expect from yourself? Expect more. Expectations are funny things. They may not always turn out the way we envisioned, but if you don’t expect something, nothing happens at all. So envision what life would look like if it really was the way Jesus depicted it. And who knows? You might be surprised.

Most people see what they want to, or at least what they expect to.

                                                                                             (Martha Grimes)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Transfigured

Today is Transfiguration Sunday, the Sunday when we read of Elijah being taken up to heaven in a whirlwind and the Gospel passage that depicts the Transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain top. Both of these sometimes seem to be sort of fantastical, hard-to-believe images. I mean, after all, the whirlwind, the chariot, bright lights, descending clouds, and, of course, Old Testament heroes and prophets reappearing. But, you know, anything can happen on that mountain. After all, it is on the mountain that we can see beyond ourselves; it is on the mountain that everything is illumined in all directions; and it is on the mountain that God appears to us.

We don't really know if there was a real "mountain" or not. (In all truth, the literal topography just doesn't seem to work!) For me, a metaphorical one works just as nicely. It is that place where God appears to me. Some people claim to have had one stand-out, quintessential experience that turned their whole life toward God. For me, I have had a series of mountain-top and near-mountain-top experiences throughout my life. None stand out as "the one", but each one in its own way has redirected me toward God, toward the cross, and has indeed changed my life.

I think that is the reason that we read of this Transfiguration right before Lent. It is our redirecting, our refocusing, if you will, from our ordinary everyday lives toward the Lenten journey--the journey to the cross. In many ways, the Transfiguration is the climax of the human experience of Jesus--the mountain-top experience. And then Jesus tells the disciples to keep what happened to themselves, if only for now. And then the lights dim. There are no chariots, Moses and Elijah are gone, and, if only for awhile, God seems to be silent. And it is in that silence that Jesus walks down the mountain toward Jerusalem. And he asks us to follow. And we can--because now we see the way to go. Because we have truly been changed!

So go forth from the mountain and begin your journey to the cross!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Change

We have heards lots of talk about change lately. We have heard lots of calls to change. And we have been presented with reasons why we have no choice other than to change. But, as we all know, change does not come easy. It is fraught with the unknown, a perilous journey through the wilderness. It is filled with choices and decisions. And, probably the most uncomfortable thing of all, it means that there is no return. There is no going back once the wheels of change have begun.

Isn't that what we're all about, though? Isn't that what our faith journey means? God does not call us to stand still, feet planted, ignoring the winds that are blowing around us. If that were the case, don't you think the world would be a bit more stable? But, really, who of us live a life that has not changed over the past year, perhaps even over the last three months? For that matter, who of us lives the same life that we did yesterday? No, God calls us to walk this walk through change and, for that matter, to be a part of the change itself. If that were not the case, the Gospels would not be full of things like fishermen being asked to give up their careers and their lifestyles, magi taking a different road than what they had planned, and the very heavens being torn apart.

We are called to change. Not only that, we are called to be part of making that change happen. God did not create the world and then put out a call for its preservation. Instead, God is continually turning darkness into light and death into life. And throughout it all, waters are divided, the heavens are torn apart and curtains separating worlds are ripped apart if for no other reason that that we can get a glimpse of the way things are supposed to be. So, we are a people of change--called to change ourselves, our lives, and the whole of Creation in which we live.

It is not easy. It is not comfortable. But, after all, that is not what we were promised! We were not promised that our lives would be preserved; we were promised that they would be transformed. But transformation must happen from the inside out. When we become the change, the change will happen.

Only those who live beyond themselves ever become fully themselves. (Joan Chittister)

So go forth and be the change!

Grace and Peace,
Shelli

Do You Have God in Your DNA?

There's a church that I pass most mornings in my neighborhood (unless I go a different way so I can buy coffee!) that has one of those ever-changing metallic letter boards with messages or sermon titles or just passing whimsies--I'm not sure which. This week the message is this: Do You Have God in Your DNA? Now often the messages on this board strike me as a little trite or unrefined, but I think this week's poses an interesting question. After all, as humans, we associate DNA with the very basis of our individuality, our makeup, the thing that makes us who we are. Now I don't really think that God has "DNA", per se, but what would it mean for God to impart divine individuality or eternal order and makeup into who we are. Well, of course, God has. After all, we are "made in God's image". God has made us who we are and who we will be and breathed a part of the Godself into us.

So what does it mean to make one in your image? I think it means to imagine what they will be, to impart a piece of your own self into them (much like an artist or a composer putting all that they know and all that they have and all that they are into a masterwork). I think that's what God has done in creating each of us--imparted a piece of the Godself, a piece of the Divine into us, a DNA, if you will, that is not of this existence, but of one to come. God did not create us and then leave us to our own devices. We are not inventions engineered to certain specifications. We are, rather, artistic and musical renderings that are affected by time and space and the definitive input of those who cross our path, those who play us or repaint us or just enjoy the fact that we're here. But somewhere deep within our being is a part of God, an image that is not our Creation, an order that is not our doing, and an individuality that we share only with the One who breathed us into being.

So go forth and be the image buried deep within your DNA...

Grace and Peace,
Shelli

Juxtaposition

Most of us live our lives as if it's a winding road meandering through all that life offers, always looking ahead, always trudging along at the quickest gait we can manage. I am realizing , though, that it is not the road that enhances our life; it is not the road that builds our character; and it is not the road that grows our faith. It is, rather, the intersections of time and space and the experiences of others that cross that road that seasons our life. Because it is those intersections that juxtapose us with others and their lives, placing us side by side, and creating an intricate and often complicated web that calls us to further explore our own understandings of who we are, who others are, and who God is.

Over the last few weeks, I have been sort of "playing around" on the Ancestry.com website. It gives you the tools to track your family geneology and, to the extent it's available, marks of your heritage. At first it was almost a pain, simply inputting those things that I knew about my rather large family using data that others have gathered. And then the journey began...At the risk of sounding like the Ancestry.com TV commercial, it really is a meaningful experience. Using historical records available, I'm in the process of journeying back into my own history and meeting characters in it that I did not know before. And, with that, these people of so many years ago whose DNA has been coursing through my own body since the day I was conceived have been placed directly at my side. I am having the gift of experiencing them, if only in a small way, not as history but as part of me and as something of which I'm a part. The excitement has built as the picture that I found of my great-great-great uncle in his uniform of the 19th century Imperial German Army brought tears to my eyes or the fact that I found out that a great-great aunt had lived into her late 80's and then passed away in the same retirement home where I often preach. It proves that our lives are not merely roads, but webs that connect us all.

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend of mine who is a Jewish rabbi. Over the last year and a half, we've been leading an Interfaith Scripture Study together. I told him that I had been doing this geneology search and he was very interested. We talked about his family's past that he knew and the conversation went to Poland and then Warsaw and then Krakow, where we had both visited. The conversation then turned to Auschwitz, where we had also both visited. I told him what a powerful experiences that was for me and we talked about it. Our pasts are very different and, yet, along the way our separate lives and experiences have been juxtaposed, placed side by side, and, with it, our shared lives have intertwined, and I am richer for it.

I'm pretty convinced this is what God intended--not that we just walk our journey looking forward, wearing blinders to the rest of the world, but that we live our lives and journey our journey aware of the intersections that God imposes and open and aware to the way that others lives are placed side by side with our own.

So go forth and look for those whose lives run alongside your own journey!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Unseasoned

It's been awhile since I posted a blog. Perhaps I just needed some "down time", as we all do. Perhaps all of the high season-high church-high energy escapades of Advent and Christmastide got the best of me. It happens to us all.

So now we find ourselves at the beginning of one of the "ordinary times" in our liturgical life. Perhaps, just like most of us, the church year needed some "down time". But, contrary to what some may think, this is not "dead time"--anything but. In fact, it is during these periods of relative dormancy that we, like all living things, grow, gathering the nutrients for the seeds of faith to sprout.

When I started this blog, I named it "Seasonings". If someone just found it in a Google search, they might think it had to do with cooking. Well, maybe in a way. After all, any good cook knows that it's all in the "seasonings", in what you add to it, in the flavors that you choose to enhance what is already there. I mean, really, admit it, with the exception of bread pudding (a somewhat cumbersome project when done right), most foods pretty much make themselves. But the flavor comes in what the cook adds. What the dish becomes has to do with the seasonings. And, like a good cook, we people of faith know that we have been given all the ingredients that we need. At our core, we've been given life and gifts and resources by a God who loves us more than we can even fathom, by a God that has much bigger things for us planned than we dare to imagine. And it is up to us to add the seasonings, those things through which our own flavor comes to be.

This Season of Epiphany is a "down time"--a "low season" if you will. But, really, after all of those highly seasoned and rich foods of Christmas, how many of us were ready for just some good old macaroni and cheese. It's called comfort food. But as we bask in the comfort of this low and ordinary season, we will find our epiphanies. We will find who we are. We will find that core that we've been given. And we will prepare for the seasonings to come. As for me, my spice cabinet is full, I have several live herb plants hanging on even through the relatively mild Texas winter, and I have six kinds of pepper and three kinds of salt ready for anything!

So go forth and season your soul!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli