Don't flay the sheep

Gleeful

While I know this does not make me unique, I am loving the TV show Glee.

For those not already addicted, it’s about a high school show choir. And, of course, they burst into song several times a show.

While it is slick, and much prettier-looking than high school really truly was (especially in the case of my first two years of High School, spent at a small enough rural district that we didn’t even have a show choir…I didn’t even know such things existed!), it catches many of the things I remember as the best and the worst of High School. (I’m curious if it just works for those of us who are long-graduated, or if it still rings true.)

There’s the whole deal where people are in and out of love with each other every other week (in other words, raging hormones).

The intrigue of teachers’ relationships (…gasp…they have human emotions and feelings!).

The teenaged sense that the world truly does revolve around you (famous rock ballads, clearly written to apply specifically to YOUR life).

And this week, an episode called “Laryngitis” which was absolutely brilliant, and especially for this: it hit right on what I think is one of the major tasks of teenager-years. Forming identity.

Teenagers are trying to figure out who they are. Everything from changing who you date, switching out an entire wardrobe, trying out for a new sport or trying a new extra-curriculuar, working harder in a subject, redefining your relationship with your parents…it’s all about defining who you are. One of the joys, and one of the gut-wrenching difficulties, of being 16 is that who YOU is is still malleable. You really aren’t sure. You really can change yourself. You can reinvent, reapply, reform.

If you’ve forgotten what that’s like, try to track down this episode. It was a well-done reminder.

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Raise your hand…

One of Zora’s favorite games, and one she came up with completely on her own, is “Raise Your Hand If You Love…”

It works like this: Zora says, “Raise your hand if you love (fill-in-the-blank).”

And then, everyone within earshot is supposed to raise their hand if they love the named thing.

Here’s the list of loved things from breakfast this morning:

Raise your hand if you love:

1. Eggs
2. Oatmeal
3. Salmon
4. Orange Juice
5. Broccoli
6. Subarus (because, as Zora says, Grandma has a subuaru)
7. Trains
8. Caterpillars

Not a bad list, huh?

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New book binge

Attention, attention!!!! I think we all need to read this book!!!

(I know I do…I think it’s about to get bumped up into the category: Books-that-have-kinda-saved-my-life.)

The Sabbath World by Judith Shulevitz.

I checked it out of the library yesterday and I can barely put it down AND I think might have to buy my own copy.

I’ve always been convinced that Sabbath in some form is something Christians need to do and need to start thinking about more seriously–especially now because we are a stressed out people. It helps a bit that I was brought up in a church culture just one generation removed from some pretty hard-core Sabbath-following practices.

There’s sociology, theology, philosophy (Kierkegaard, even!), history, autobiography…Wow…

The pithy quotes are amazing:

“The Sabbath–God’s claim against our time–implies that time has an ethical dimension.”

“A full-bodied red wine is what a poet might call the objective correlative of the Sabbath…”

“The rabbis say the Sabbath is a taste of the world to come. Me, I say it’s an aftertaste of infancy.”

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Empty Donkey

Zora spent the weekend with Grandma and Grandpa, and went to the little Episcopal church around the corner from their place. It was most definitely a “tourist church” experience…she was requested for the weekend and we sent her in large part because this church does a full-on processional through the neighborhood, complete with live donkey.

On Saturday, my Mom was explaining this to prepare her:

Grandma: “It’s Palm Sunday, when Jesus came into Jerusalem on a donkey, and people waved palm branches. So, tomorrow, there will be palms and even a donkey.”

Zora: “Will Jesus be there?”

Grandma (who says she had to think about this one): “Well, Jesus is always there.”

Later in the conversation, it became apparent that Jesus’ presence may not have been so much a theological issue as a practical one.

Zora: “Can I ride the donkey?”

(Because, if Jesus wasn’t going to be riding the donkey, you would think that the church would have the good sense to allow the cute 3 year old to serve as a back up.)

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Cornerstone

Mark 12:1-12
Fox Valley Presbyterian Church

My bike repair shop has a bumper sticker up on the wall: “Illinois Earthquake Survivor.” By God’s grace, that earthquake on February 10 was a minor one. (I know I rolled over and went back to sleep right after concluding that perhaps a snowplow had hit out building.)

But I know, for me, that earthquake is a metaphor for what has been a shaky winter.

We are living in world where things are changing, shifting, shaking, maybe even sinking depending on how much of a pessimist you are.

And the truth is that everything is not always changing and shifting for the better. It’s a fearful time. We don’t know when the economy will rebound, where the next earthquake will hit, if our Toyotas will slow down, if health care can or should be fixed, or when the snow will stop falling. We worry about who has what, and if we have enough, and if there might just be some people who simply have to get left behind or swept under a rug–as long as those people are not us.

This week especially, our own particular community at this church is reeling, over grief for people we’ve lost, and in sadness for the losses of people we love.

And when people get scared and anxious, sad and exhausted, it’s easy to get grabby and crabby, worried for ourself and ours first and foremost.

Which, I think, makes this a tough parable to hear this week. I know that what I need is something placid and peaceable. Some Bible passage where lions lie down with lambs and Jesus wipes away tears.

Not a passage where people get beat and seized and struck in the head, where tenants kill servants and sons, and owners kill tenants. And we’re supposed to find God in the middle of all that bloody mess.

So maybe here we can find a road into the passage. Who was Jesus talking to, and what would they have heard in this?

The Israel of Jesus’ day was a country under siege. The Greeks and then the Romans had trampled across the Mediterranean world, and under their feet were crushed nations, from Spain in the east all the way to Persia in the west. And guess who made out best economically in this system? The occupiers held the power, politically, socially, and monetarily.

For the occupied countries, the Romans were not entirely welcome. So the people Jesus spoke to were an occupied country. There were rumblings of revolution. There were periodic uprisings. There were absentee-occupier land-lords, and people who were desperate to get back land that they thought was rightfully theirs. Land ownership could shift based on squatters rights and the tenant of an absent or dead landlord could easily take over what someone else owned.

It was a world where things were changing, shifting, and shaking. And where people were anxious and scared about the future.

And that may just be our road into this passage this morning.

The vineyard is an old image for Israel. Isaiah and the prophets use it. Israel is the vineyard,

Those called to the vineyard are the workers. And they work there on behalf of God, one with God in mission and purpose: doing God’s good work, growing fruit, and creating joy for all of creation.
The understanding, if you are a tenant farmer, is that the fruit you produce is not all yours to keep. You owe something to the owner. Not so much that you can not live and be happy yourself. But enough that the owner’s work in setting up walls and watchtower and winepress are rewarded. It is not your vineyard, after all.

And so the tenants in this story are way out of line. It’s not just that they withhold what it rightfully the owner’s. They beat the messenger sent to collect some of the fruit.

On that violation alone, the owner has every right to evict the tenants.

But, he keeps trying, again and again, as the violence escalates.

And, in the end, he makes what is clearly an unwise choice. He sends his only son, whom he loves.

This is a huge mistake for two reasons: first, the obvious: these are bloodthirsty, irrational tenants.

But secondly, the fact that isn’t quite as obvious to us: according to the laws of the time, if the landowner died without a clear heir, the tenants would claim the land. By sending the Son, the owner accidentally suggests that he has died and his heir has come to collect. So the tenants could see this as an opportunity to gain the land for themselves.

And they kill the son.

The owner is reckless to send his son. His servants have been killed. But he does it anyway.

He is either reckless, stupid, or eternally hopeful that the tenants will get the message.

And since we are quick to see the owner in this parable as God, it’s probably the third option that fist best with what we’ve learned about God throughout history. God is long-suffering when it comes to our human inability to recognize the messenger, to hear the good news, and to live it out.

Over and over and over again, we fail to see, we fail to hear, we fail to do what God would have us do.

Maybe not literally, but al least figuratively, we have all had those moments when we kill the messenger. Or at least tie him up in a corner so that we don’t have to listen to what God has to say.

Think about it. Think about some of the things the Good News of Jesus has to say to us. The ideas of the Gospel sound nice, but if you really think about it, they go against how we think the world works.

The Gospel says: Ask and you shall receive.

The world says: If you really want something, you have to take it.

The Gospel says: Goodness is stronger than evil.

The world says: Might makes right.

The Gospel says: Death is not the final word.

The world says: Death is the end.

The Gospel says: Grace is free.

The world says: There are no free rides.

So when the messenger arrives, we aren’t always sure that the message will really help us get along in this world.

And it’s easy to get stuck on the parts of the message that bug us.

If I’m not careful, here’s where I get stuck in this parable: That the landowner, who I thought was God, just out and kills the tenants.

Like I said earlier, that is not the message I need to hear this week.

But it’s not the end of this story.

Jesus takes it a few steps further. Remember, he says, that old line from the Psalms?

The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone
the Lord has done this
and it is marvelous in our eyes.

It’s from Psalm 118, one of the Psalms that I think of as one of the “Israel goes to war” Psalms. Psalm 118 is a pep rally for the people of Israel going into battle. And these lines are an elevated way to talk about their king.

The kings around us thought them could disregard OUR King? Oh, no they don’t. Because he, the one they rejected, has becomes the most powerful, the one who holds everything together, the one by whom the standards are set.

But Jesus is about to turn that image completely on its head. His journey from this point is Mark’s Gospel is toward Jerusalem. He’s about to walk into Jerusalem on palm Sunday, with crowds acclaiming him as the coming Messiah. With crowds imagining that he will be the new cornerstone, with all the military and power-filled connotations that Psalm 118 has in place.

But what Jesus is about to do is become the son of the landowner, foolishly sent into danger, on the face of it, an utter failure. He is about die a death that looks like a senseless waste.

The opposite of victory. The opposite of a marvelous thing in our eyes.

A bad judgement and folly, a complete and total defeat,

…until the earth shakes on Easter morning, and two women find an empty tomb and a strangely familiar gardener.

In a world that shakes and shifts, the messenger is the one who turns everything upside down.

It is death that brings life.

It is folly that becomes wisdom.

It is weakness that speaks to power.

It is the shaking that brings stability.

It is the breaking apart of a gravestone that gives us a cornerstone.

And so it is that a story of a bloody vineyard reminds us that God’s ultimate plan is not foolishness or vengence, or defeat.

God’s ultimate plan is to give us the sure footing of Jesus as the cornerstone.

The sure footing from which we are able to see that there will be enough in the vineyard. and in the world, so that we can face fear, anxiety, scarcity, sinking and shifting ground, and know that we stand on something solid.

Amen.

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some good things in the middle of some not so great days

Long story, but life has been a little nutty around here.

So, in an effort to make myself feel better, I’ve spent the day thinking about things that would qualify as “good things”, little things, that are happy-making.

This is sort of my cross between Martha Stewart or Oprah’s columns and that song:

When among life’s troubles you are tempest-tossed
When you are discouraged thinking all is lost,
Count your blessings, name them one by one
Count your many blessings see what God has done.

(However, I worry that these particular little blessings may not be religious or theological enough. Whatever…seriously, it’s been a weird day.)

And here we go: some good things in the midst of a very odd, discombobulating week…

(1) I found this perfume that smells like lilacs and dandilions. How awesome is that? It’s maybe just a hair cloying, but it smells like springtime outside.

(2) We’re doing a craft with jello tomorrow night for our lent thing with kids. Downside: I have a lot of jello molds to make tonight. Upside: edible, wiggly craft.

(3) I think spring is starting. I like how it smells. I’m looking forward to it smelling a little more like # 1.

(4) The short sized-drink at Starbucks. Seriously, it takes away about ten cents of the guilt. And it’s cute.

(5) Seed catalogues.

(6) I have good colleagues.

(7) I would challenge anyone who works at a church to say that their administrative staff is better than mine.

(8) A kid from my youth group called just to get some information about a date, and I hadn’t talked to her in a while, and it was just really nice to remember that I LIKE my youth groupers.

(9) Erik tucked in a tag that was hanging out of my shirt last night, which reminded me that one of the first times he ever touched me, a few weeks before we started dating a long long time ago, was to reach over and tuck in a tag while we were sitting in a lecture together in college.

(10) I will squeeze in a little vacation time this weekend.

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It Has Been Said

Luke 4:1-13

Fox Valley Presbyterian Church

(Originally Preached on Lent 1C, February 21, 2010)

Temptation is not really a dirty word anymore. Think about it: it’s a word used to brand and identify: chocolates; resorts; a dating service in the UK ; there’s even a men’s deodorant line that has a scent named: “dark temptation”

Think about it: in all these cases, the implication if the word is not the the product is something t be avoided, but something to be craved. Because once you cave in and buy whatever it is being sold, it’s going to be good. Chocolatey good. Sexy and fabulous.

Temptations are not something bad…they are things that, when you finally step over, you will enjoy.

Even Tiger Woods weighs in the word this weekend….in his apology to the general public on Friday, he said this: “ I felt that I had worked hard throughout my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me.” Now, I know, taken in full context, Tiger was admitting that what he did was wrong, but do you hear it? Temptations can be something we deserve to enjoy if we’ve worked hard enough.

I’m not going to make a long argument this morning trying to undo everything the culture around us has done to the word temptation. I’m not going to battle the word, and try to point out how the true temptations around us are not things to be enjoyed, but pitfalls where we get stuck (although, Tiger Woods is an awfully good example of that…)

Reclaiming the word can wait for another day.

But for now, how about a little reframing? Leaving the idea of temptation aside for now, maybe we can look at this story about Jesus a little differently.

What if the story of Jesus in the desert is not as much about temptation, as it is about identity?

This idea of 40 days in the desert, 40 being the Biblical shorthand for “copmleteness”; 40 days without food, with little water; 40 days completely alone, it’s the idea that Jesus is stripped down to the most basic nature of who he is. Jesus at his most basic. No expectations from anyone about who he ought to be. Every last thing has been stripped bare, and he is his most genuine self.

And this is when the devil comes…with 3 challenges.

Turn these stones to bread; Gain power; Test God’s faithfulness

(Notice, on the surface, except for the part about worshipping Satan, that none of these temptations are things we would quickly classify as big sins…)

And, in fact, each of them has some little twist of truth…Jesus is, after all, the bread of life; Jesus is, after all, the one to whom every knee shall bow; Jesus is, after all, the firstborn of the resurrection, the one who God rescues and raises from the dead. In a strange way, by giving in to the devil, Jesus could have accomplished some version of all these things that he is called to do.

It’s not so much a matter of refusing the results the devil is promising. It’s more about the way they happen. It’s not about the ends, it’s about the means.

And Jesus’s response to these things is to go back to the most basic grounding of who he is.

So notice the foundation he takes for his response:

“It is written: One does not live by bread alone.”

“It is written: WOrship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”

It has been said: Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

Three times, what Jesus comes back to, the most elemental thing about who he is…3 times, he quotes Torah, Scripture. 3 times he goes back to the book of Deuteronomy. Even the third time when the devil tries to match the game by quoting the Psalms, Jesus simply comes back with an unwavering answer, that the Book, SCripture, is the center of who he is, the solid place where he stands.

This is not just a matter of dry quoting, rote memorization, with no body or spirit behind it.

This is the book Jesus lives. He has lived his life, a good Jewish boy in Nazareth, immersed in this book and the story of his people. ANd so, by the third time he responds, he doesn’t just say, “it is written.” He packs more punch. “It has been SAID.”

Scripture is not just something written, waiting silent on the page. Scripture is alive. From the mouth of the Holy Spirit in the beginning, it was said, and What it said was so important that it was passed down, mouth to mouth, until it was written. And over and over and over again, it has been read, silently and out loud, over and over and over, it has been SAID. It is not moldy words on a page. It is the word that has been said, breathing and real and alive.

In fact, this is the Book that Jesus is. Jesus, Word made flesh, says John’s Gospel.

In fact, this the Book that we are.

Sometimes, it takes an outsider to make the most insightful points about us. ANd our relationship to the Bible is something that Muslims perhaps have understood better than we have. Islam refers to Jews and CHristians as “people of the book” (and, traditionally, says that for this, we ought to be respected and even protected within majority Muslim societies). And did you know that the Western value placed on literacy for everyone in a society has its roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Think about it: this book is so very important and fundamental to our faith system, that Christianity truly cannot survive unless people know the text. That means either: we have to have methods for your average person to memorize this whole book; or we have to have a population that is literate enough to read the book.

And moreover, this Book is a story about us. Unlike some religions where the stories are about the gods and their doings, or one great teacher and his lessons, this book has an overarching story in it about God’s people.

And every once in awhile, the book reminds us that it’s not just a story it is our story.

What Jesus quotes back to the Devil comes from the OT book of Deuteronomy. It’s not the most exciting reading in the OT. it’s mostly laws. And, laws that are being given a second time.

But late in the book, there’s a reminder that this is story:

When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, 2you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. 3You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, “Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.” 4When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lord your God, 5you shall make this response before the Lord your God: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. 6When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, 7we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. 8The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; 9and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.” You shall set it down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God. 11Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.
It’s a passage about religions ceremony and obligation. But notice what it does: you don’t just show up and hand over your gift. You have to set a context. And the context for everyone is this: telling the story. Here’s who I am and where I came from. This is my identity. It’s why I follow all the laws in this book. It’s who my parents and my ancestors were; and it’s who I am.

We are the people of this book, this Bible. We are people with a story. This is our identity. And without that identity, we cannot face up to temptation.

And 40 days into his desert time, this is where Jesus finds his identity, stable footing: he is a person of this book. A book that is not just written, but a book that is said.

Lent is 40 days…40 days in large part because Jesus was in the desert for 40 days. So the idea is that this is another way for us to participate in the story….to think of these 40 days as 40 days to walk alongside Jesus in fasting, in stripping away things so that we can know who we truly are. It is another way that we are encouraged to make this Book a living and breathing thing, a way that we invited to enter the story.

The truth is that the Bible is a terrible self-help book by the world’s standards. On the face of it, Jesus’ choices looks like a failure in the eyes of the world.

He chooses to preach and teach in a backwater part of the world, with backward, confused, often dense student-disciples. He chooses to keep walking toward Jerusalem even when it’s clear that this path is a death-wish.
He is killed as a common criminal, in a manner that is shameful and disgusting.
It looks like utter failure.

But in the weakness and failure is power and victory.

And maybe this is the reason that for 40 days we are called into the desert. It’s not about becoming more powerful. It’s about becoming less. It’s not about becoming who we think we should be, it’s about becoming who God thinks we should be.

And it is such an odd journey, walking with Jesus through the desert, through Galilee, and the road to inevitable death in Jerusalem, such an odd journey…but it’s the journey in which we learn who we truly are.

I’m not sure we can take that journey without the right grounding. And the only grounding is in the story, the Book.

The hymn says: “How firm a foundation you saints of the Lord is laid for your faith in his excellent Word.” It’s an old hymn, but a true one. The desert can be a rocky, uneven place.

But here is the Book…a solid place to stand

It has been written.

And it has been said.

It is who we are.

Amen.

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An Open Letter to Emergency Rooms

Dear ERs everywhere,

First, I am grateful for my ER, my access to medical care, my reliable car, the general goodness of God, etc.

But I’m really really sleep deprived. So this thought is where my brain has been wandering off to.

If parents bring their kiddo in during the night due to, say, an overdose of grape cough medicine, and you have to hook up said kiddo to monitor her vitals, and especially if you are rather confident that said kiddo will be fine but it’s just a precaution, shouldn’t there be somewhere comfy for the parents who are keeping vigil to snooze? Because then, the next morning when our kiddo wakes up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready face the day, well, we are not so ready. And we are a bit frayed around the edges and not really on top of our parenting game.

Again, I don’t want to diminish my thankfulness for what I have, but I’m just really really tired and my better-rested child is not particularly sympathetic.

Thanks!

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Earthquake

We had a 3.8 earthquake here last night. When I say “here” I mean a few miles away from where I actually live. And I don’t live in a place where we have earthquakes.

Our bedroom is at/below ground level, with the windows above our bed facing onto a street that gets plowed a lot when it snows. The plows shake our bedroom. And it’s been snowing, so we had plowing action last night, too.

When it happened, at about 4:00am, I thought…plow? No, building shaking. A snowplow must have hit our building.

Then I rolled over and went back to sleep. That’s right: I thought a snowplow hit my building and I went back to sleep.

Checking in with other folks this morning, many of them had the good sense to hop out of bed and look out their windows, or check on their children and other breakables.

I would like to attribute my calm to having been raised by a man who grew up in Southern California and told us about earthquakes is if they were no particularly big deal, the small ones at least.

But, it might just be that I like my sleep.

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LOL

Series of text messages from last night:

From my sister Emily: I always find interesting little surprises around after Zora visits. For example, I just got into bed and found a curious tiny orange cubic ’something’ near my pillow. What could that be?? Cheese, of course.

Me: Well honestly what is bedtime without cheese?

Emily: Unfortunately, it was a little too far into that unnaturally oily stage and had lots of dust stuck to it. Otherwise I certainly would not have let it go to waste.

Me:  I think Anna (our other sister) would have eaten it.

Emily: That was her first response to my text: did you eat it?

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