zero to sixty

My head can become a dangerous place to be

When it becomes so full of me

From zero to sixty

It seems to be

Something so tiny

Becomes a mountain to me

A reminder that the knee

Is where I am to be

Letting go of “it’s all about me”

To that place where it is indeed about thee

Flying without a net

I am learning much about being a priest in this new place I call home.  My homiletics professor pushed me to move away from the manuscript saying I needed to connect more with my audience.  I was stubborn enough to believe he was wrong and have held on to my manuscript as a life raft for the last three years.

This last week saw me take three trips to Nashville, two to Murfreesboro, and one to Sewanee in three days.  Added into the mix was some difficult news, an overwhelming schedule, a body that has its own time frame, and a set of readings that were enough to have seasoned preachers want to hide in a cave.  

As I sat down to begin putting thoughts onto paper, nothing would come.  I prayed in front of my computer and kept hearing silence.  A good story came to mind, but a story by itself is not a sermon.

I continued the disciplines I use to help me craft a sermon and still nothing came.  I prayed to have something to say worth being heard as the Holy Spirit revealed what the people in this place needed to hear from me at this time.   

Last night as my body ached and my eyes drooped, it was clear I was not to put a manuscript together.  Me, the one who triple checks even the most minor of details before each service.  I was reminded of a classmate who would say, "I got nothin'."  That was where I was. Yet fear was absent.


As I walked away from the computer, I heard in that still small place, "The words will come."  As tired as I was, I let it go and laid my tired body down.

This morning as I awoke the anxiety that often comes with Sunday morning was absent.  I sat down with my Bible and a piece of paper.  An outline came as did the peace that passes understanding.

Twice I delivered a sermon today after praying, listening, and remembering the words really do not belong to me, but rather to this incredible God who calls, who blesses, who breaks, and who gives as we respond.

I guess my homiletics professor may have been right after all as the people who received today's words shared they heard just what they needed to hear, connected with the parable in a new way, shed tears needing shedding, and felt the nudge that comes with the Holy Spirit making us uncomfortable enough to get out of the pew and do something.

 

All this to say that professors and God are much wiser than I and yet leaves the question of what I do with this thing called a blog and for those who cannot make it to church.  I am not vain enough to think people come here because something I said was so riveting they needed to see it after hearing it once.  So pray with me as I move forward without a net.  Pray that I continue to listen to that still small voice, that I am obedient to the (huge) nudge to be brave, and that I figure out what I do with this space.  

Most importantly, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing to this God to whom I bow the knee of my heart and give all that I have and all that I am to in thanksgiving for the precious gift of new life I have been given.

Hope

(This was a tough thing to find this week and so while the word may conjure up happy things, I had to search hard to remember where to find it...yet again it was in the little things and brief moments)

As hard to find in this 'tangle as it was in my week

As I drive past another for sale sign

A business boarded shut

The fourth restaurant in the same building

I wonder where the hope is

The tears ready to spill

As images come to mind

The mother in jail after a bad choice

The father denied his child

The daughter no longer recognized

The son ostracized

As I walk to another house full of pain

A baby jay greets me from the weather vane

A child smiling through the window pane

The sunlight warming the grain

A quick glimpse of you in the bow after the rain

Remind me that you call again and again

Come to me you whisper

Let me carry the weight

You are not alone

I see the pain and weep with you

Each day is new

And I walk with you

A reminder of where I find it always

Crazy Love

He sent Noah to build a boat and Noah was laughed at.

He sent prophets who were ignored or got angry when asked to speak to those they didn’t like.

He sent kings when asked and they were led people astray.

Crazy love.  A love we have a hard time understanding and yet we see it in…

A tired mother who won’t give up looking for her runaway daughter.

A son who mows his mother’s grass each week as she watches from her wheelchair.

A husband who holds his wife’s hair as the chemicals treating her cancer have her praying to the porcelain gods.

A daughter who reads stories to the father she is no longer sure knows her.

A first responder running into a burning building.

A tired doctor leaving the hospital who stops at an accident scene.

Each of these people love the best way they know how and yet….

While their love is an incredible gift, somehow it isn’t quite the same as this God who loves us with this wild, reckless, crazy love.  This God we come to worship today.

In the reading from Philippians we are reminded about a man who once persecuted Christians.  He acted with hate and vengeance for a reason we will never know or understand.  A man transformed on a dirt road by a God who loves so big.  A man who gives up all he is and all he has to share God with others.

In the gospel we hear Jesus tell a story about a landowner and some farmers who lease his land.  The landowner has done all the work.  He plants a vineyard, puts up a fence, digs a winepress, and even builds a watch tower to guard against theft.  All is ready and then he leaves entrusting all to the farmers.  The farmers are to tend the crop and upon its harvest provide the landowner with a share.  It is a win, win situation. 

Yet for some reason the farmers forget that it is not their land.  We want to read into the story that they were mistreated by the owner in some way, but that just is not there.  No, instead the farmers want it all.  This land they have been contracted to care for somehow in their eyes begins to belong to them.  They forget that they have been entrusted with it, but don’t own it.  They are unwilling to give to the landowner what is due.

The landowner sends his servants to get his share of the harvest.  Some are beaten, others killed.   Not willing to give up, the landowner sends others.  The same thing happens a second time.  At this point in the story most of us would give up or call the law or perhaps even hire an army.

But not the landowner.  No instead he shows that crazy God love.  He sends his son.  His beloved son.  How crazy is that?  We want the farmers to have a change of heart.  It doesn’t happen that way.  They say to each other, “This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.” The farmers even kill the son for land and crops that are not theirs to begin with.

At this point, Jesus asks the chief priests and the elders what should happen next in this story.  And not understanding this crazy love, they reply, "He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time."

Jesus then reminds them of this scripture from the Psalms: `The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is amazing in our eyes'.

In his subtle way Jesus is letting them know that if they fail to produce fruit, this immense gift of crazy love will be taken from them.  Surprise, surprise.  They don’t want to things to change and begin to plot how to get rid of this “prophet” who speaks about this crazy love.  Perhaps because this kind of love is terrifying.  It changes everything.

Or was it that they thought because of their status and religious leadership they were granted the right to all that belonged to God?   That they need not give all to God?

We often fall into the same trap.  We think we have a right to own what God has entrusted to us because we call ourselves Christians and go to church.  We forget that God looks at our heart, at our willingness to love in this way God loves us.

Our response to that love is often to turn away.  That type of love is frightening.  It changes everything and rather than embrace it we run.  It is easy to push it away and pretend we are in control and all that we have, all that we are is ours and not God’s.   

Jesus is reminding us that we are tenants not owners of this world.  While we will be cared for, the world is not ours to own.  We are charged with taking good care of all that has been entrusted to us during our time here, but we are just tenants.  We are the tenants, the stewards, we are not God.  Yet we often forget that, acting as though we own all that we have been entrusted with. 

We are being asked not only to care for all God has given us but to respond to this crazy love by giving all that we are to God.  All.

That changes everything and that is scary.

Even crazier…we can say no to God and God will still love us.

Belonging

This life of faith is not an easy one is it?  the readings from today remind us with no holds bared that we are to live a life that models that of our savior.  

a life of integrity.

a life of sacrifice.  

a life of humility.

a life of righteousness.

in today’s parable a dad says, “go work.”  the first son says, “no way, Jose”, but then goes.  good that he went, but bad that it was not when he was called.

the second son says he will and then he doesn’t.  um, that honoring your father thing?  i think he missed it.

these days i tend to act more like the second son, “yea, sure God, I will go...I will feed...I will clothe...I will heal...but first let me....write this sermon, say this prayer, check my facebook....oohh gee...darn...too late now God...someone else already did it.  Guess you really didn’t need me after all.”

does that sound familiar at all?

as i say that i have to be honest and share that the reality is i am more like the first son.  i stand here today because God called me from a place of darkness, of brokenness, of sin, of pain the result of my own choices.  much like the tax collectors and prostitutes i was an outsider.  one of the lost.  i was too busy living my life on my terms, in my time...God...pfft...there was no room for God.  

before i entered a church i knew i had to get cleaned up, put my life together, get rid of the piercings, and buy the right clothes.  and if i did get there?  i knew i wouldn’t be accepted.  see i used colorful language, didn’t know all those songs all y’all learned at camp, my family wrote the textbook series on dysfunction...oh and i smoked and drank...i’d been divorced and had heard the bible didn’t allow that either.

the few funerals and weddings I'd been to in churches showed me the pews were filled with a whole bunch of hypocrites too.  when i would go i would see these people that i knew outside those doors were not very nice.  

even in my ignorance i didn’t think the whole God thing was like a drive through car wash...come in, get cleaned up, and go back out and get dirty the minute you leave.  so i thought i had to wait until i got it all together so i could fit in better.  

then i met sandy.  she had this thing...it was hard to put my finger on it...but she had it.  her life was not an easy one.  she had a major medical condition that caused her constant pain.  her 16 year old daughter got pregnant.  her husband had strayed a few times and they fought some times when i visited.  her job was always in danger of ending due to budget cuts.  

yet in spite of all of that, she always had a sense of peace about her.  a joy that came from way down deep.  from a place i didn’t even think i had.  i spent months just talking with her.  when we would pass in the halls at work, hours would pass before i realized it.  i just like being around her, listening to her, learning from her.

after yet another disastrous life choice i had hit my bottom.  i was tired.  i was lonely.  i was afraid.  i was hurting.  and so i asked sandy how she got that thing she had...that peace...that joy...that thing.

and you know what she said?  she said i could have it too.  she didn’t own it.  it came from God.  there came that pfft thing again...how could what she have be a God thing?  it was a sandy thing.  in spite of wanting to walk away i felt like my shoes where nailed to the floor.  i couldn’t have left if i wanted to.

sandy then shared her story with me.  i won’t share it with you today, because it is hers to tell.  but i will share that it was a sad story filled with more pain than a person should have to endure in ten lifetimes.   she said she spent many years angry and hurt.  she had left home trying to run away from the pain and herself.  as she was sitting in a bus station an older gentleman gave her a book.  a book he turned to a page.  on that page were these words:

“If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death--
even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

she shared that somehow those words went to her very heart and changed everything for her.  she was tired of her anger and her pain.  she also realized that her worth was nothing without God and that putting others first did not have to make her a doormat.  she had run away and found home.  let God catch up to her.

that thing she had?  she said it was her working out her salvation with fear and trembling.  but not in the way i thought.  the fear and trembling had more to do with going to the throne of God and being so overcome by his love that she was in awe.  it was that kind of fear and trembling.  i wanted that kind of fear in my life.

i asked what i had to do to have that thing she had.  she told me i already had it.  it was God.  all i had to do was say yes to God.  much like my shadow, God was right there.  i just had to say yes.  

i told her i was too messed up to go to church...she said it was less about church and more about God.  she then told me this parable about these two sons....

she shared that she had been...as i had been, like that son.  she then told me other stories.  stories about some pretty messed up people.  people like...

this couple in a garden that did what they weren’t supposed to...

this guy who cheated his brother out of his inheritance...

this guy who wandered with a bunch of people in the desert...

this king who killed a man so he could have his wife...

this guy with really long hair....

this guy who persecuted Christians....

this guy who betrayed Jesus...

these people that didn’t belong in church when they started either.  yet as they said yes to God, over time, they found they did belong, just as I belonged.  as you belong.  some of them even came to the point that they believed God loved them.

we are called to live lives of integrity, of sacrifice, of humility, of righteousness.  but we are not called to live them on our own merits or due to our own efforts.  

we are called into a community.  a community that allows us to come to the throne of God in fear and trembling and take on the mantle of Christ.  a community that we can enter with all our yuck.  we are accepted not because we are perfect, but because God loves us.  the only requirement is that we say yes.  we don’t have to worry about how we talk, what we wear, or even the color of our hair.

that mantle we take on will give us the ability to see Christ in us as we begin to see Christ in them.

i still have trouble believing i belong here...my language has gotten better, sometimes i dress right, yet now i have a tattoo...

and yet....

Jesus loves me this I know....