Old MacDonald joins us for lunchtime
Old MacDonald from Erik Vorhes on Vimeo.
More on God and the economy
So much for anyone who would criticize a certain big-city newspaper for being a godless pit.
This is a very striking editorial.
I’m with Them
- Genesis 9:8-17; 1 Peter 3:13-4:2
- Fox Valley Presbyterian Church, Geneva, IL
- March 1, 2009 (Lent 1B)
If there’s any Bible story that is truly a part of “youth cultureâ€, or at least the culture of the youngest of youth, it’s Noah and the Ark. If you do a search on Amazon for “Noah’s Ark toys†you get 303 results. That’s a whole toy-store-full of options!
When the Bible shows up in the toy aisle, I figure that’s a pretty clear sign that we’d better pay closer attention. Because, let’s be honest, Bible stories are often a little twisted. And if you can mass-produce the story in colorful plastic, you’re probably skipping over the difficult parts…
…As anyone who has ever tried to tell the Noah story to a little kid knows. Because, eventually, the kid starts to ask tough questions: like the people and animals who don’t make it onto the ark. The possibility that 40 days and 40 nights in a ship being battered by cataclysmic weather was not so much comfy and cozy as nasty and nauseating. That a grand total of 150 days with all of the animals of the world likely involved some of the most tremendous pooper scooping efforts in humans history, and all of that doesn’t even begin to account for the bizarre appendix to the story where Noah gets drunk and naked.
All of that to say, that in one church service we are not even going to go near half of that stuff, but just sit for a bit with what happens immediately after Noah and his messy, mucked up menagerie get off the ark.
Noah is a strange place to go for the beginning of Lent. All you would think this has to do with Lent is the whole 40 days thing: it rained for 40 days in this story, and 40 keeps popping up in this particular season: 40 days for Jesus to prepare and fast in the wilderness leading up to his ministry, 40 days for us to prepare and fast (although likely, not as well as Jesus) leading up to Easter.
But here’s one thing to notice, one piece of this very strange Bible story, one place to land for the day. Think about what God promises at the end of the story:
A covenant between God and the earth. And not one of those covenants that are a two-way commitment between two parties. This is a covenant where one powerful individual simply commits, absolutely, positively, no strings attached, world without end amen. And God commits to exactly the opposite of what has just happened. Never again, says God, will I destroy the earth with a flood. Never again will I let the waters that I controlled at the time of creation spill out from the sky and from under the earth, never again will I let chaos reign and destroy everything I have made.
There is no condition. There is nothing for Noah to do. God just says this is the promise and God will stick to it. And that’s the end of that.
Now, on the surface, this is a very nice part of the story…we like it. It fits well with the whole children’s toy vibe of the Noah story. It even has a rainbow to make things look pretty.
But here’s the thing…think about what God is really saying.
Remember why the flood happened in the first place? Because everything on earth spun so out of control that God could see no other remedy than starting from scratch. God made the whole creation to be good and peaceful, whole and perfect, but then sin came along, and suffering and death, and pain and evil, and within a few generations things were a mess.
And God was angry.
At least, that’s how I remembered it. That’s how I was sure the Bible said, that God was angry to wipe everything out.
But that’s not what the text says. If you go back to Genesis chapter 6, when this whole thing begins, you get this:
And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.
God is not angry. God is grieved. God’s heart hurts. The whole thing is such a mess that even God cannot be the way he intended to be, the living God of a good creation, and there seems to be no other solution than to blot out the whole sorry mess.
Now remember that, because we know that God is wise and smart, and we know that God has some idea that the flood hasn’t fixed everything. Of course there was bickering on the ark, animals snapping at each other and Noah and Mrs. Noah getting testy with each other, and maybe a few minor fistfights between the brothers.
So hear what God is saying in the promise in its full beauty…I promise not to unleash chaos on the world again. I promise to hold things together, not matter how bad it gets.
In other words, I won’t destroy it and start over. I, God, I choose to be grieved. I choose to suffer. I choose the pain of a broken world.
That is how deep God’s love is. God chooses to let his heart hurt.
In 1983, Nick Wolterstorff, a philosophy professor, lost his 25-year-old son Eric in a mountain climbing accident. He wrote a small book as a grieving parent. And in trying to sort through his own grief, he saw God’s grief, not just over Eric, but also over the whole world. (I quote this much of it because I can’t say it better…)
God is not only the God of the sufferers, but the God who suffers. The pain and fallenness of humanity have entered into his heart. Through the prism of my tears, I have seen a suffering God.
It is said of God that no one can see his face and live. I always thought this meant that no one could see his splendor and live. A friend of mine said perhaps it meant no one could see his sorrow and live. Or perhaps his sorrow is splendor.
And great mystery: to redeem our brokenness and lovelessness the God who suffers with us did not strike some mighty blow of power but sent his beloved son to suffer like us, through his suffering to redeem us from suffering and evil.
…
But I never saw it. Though I confessed that the man of sorrows was God himself, I never saw the God of sorrows. Though I confessed that the man bleeding on the cross was the redeeming God, I never saw God himself on the cross, blood from sword and thorn and nail dripping into the world’s wounds.
And here’s where I come to Lent.
This idea of God suffering is messing with one of the images I’ve always had for the season.
For years, this has been my working picture for Lent: we are on a journey with Jesus toward Jerusalem. It’s dangerous for Jesus to go there, right to the center of power, right to people who are threatened by his ministry. And even without 20/20 hindsight, the disciples and Jesus seem to know that this is a not a safe trip.
But the disciples go with him. They aren’t perfect companions, but they go along and try to be supportive as best they can. They make that choice. And if someone stopped them on the road asked them, “Where are you going?†they’d point at Jesus and say: “We’re with that guy.â€
I think I’ve always thought about Lent this way: that we can choose to walk alongside Jesus and give him some moral support along the way. And maybe that means fasting or giving something up, or living simpler, or just trying to be more holy so that we can be good companions for him. “We’re with that guy.â€
But what if I’ve got it backwards?
Because it’s not Jesus who is inevitably headed toward Jerusalem. It is not Jesus whose path is already drawn out for him, who inevitably has to go toward the cross, toward sin and death and evil. It is not Jesus whose destiny is suffering.
This is not Jesus’ journey. It’s ours. We are the ones who are headed for Jerusalem. There’s no choice for us: the suffering and pain are ours already.
And if someone stopped and asked where he was going, Jesus would point at us and say, “I’m with them.â€
And that, for me, throws all my ideas about Lenten spiritual practices on end. It’s not about what I can do to get ready. It’s about what Jesus has already done.
And so I do not travel with Jesus, I do not fast or give things up or add time in prayer or try to be holier to make the way easier for him. (And, I’ll be honest, I wasn’t really very good at those things anyway.) I do not travel with Jesus, but thank God, Jesus travels with me.
And if I strip away some extra things so that I can see it a little better, so that I can walk for 40 days (or even spend 40 days in the stinky hold of the ark) and know that God is with me.
I can pull the extra stuff out of the way, see the suffering for what it is, and know that Jesus Christ, God the Almighty One, chooses to walk alongside of me, chooses to suffer, chooses to be wounded to his very heart by my pain, and the pain of the whole world.
And maybe even see that we are called, like God, not to escape the world, but to be God’s image in it, an image of a God whose heart aches. As Peter says, since Christ has suffered arm yourself with the same intention, and try to do the will of God. God chooses to enter the suffering of our world—that is what it means to follow, to do the will of God.
I think Lent gives us a strange opportunity, as well, to be the church. Lent is a time to prepare ourselves, but also our self as the body, to prepare for what it means on Easter morning to be the church, resurrected, triumphant, and in the image of Christ.
Because, if we are Christ’s body, if we are truly the image of God, then what the world should see is a community that takes on suffering.
A community that chooses to cry when it sees pictures of refugees.
A community that chooses to give more when finances are tight, because it can’t bear to send anyone away from its doors cold or hungry.
A community that does not run from the sick, but embraces them even when it gets messy. or even contagious.
A community that chooses to let the world’s pain in through its doors, that plans its life and its future around the needs of those who need the most.
And so we are on this journey for 40 days, not because we choose to be here. We were already headed in this direction.
The only difference is that we try to hear the one who chooses to travel with us, the one who says: “I’m with them.â€
How to leave for study when your constant companion has no attention span?
That title is a question. Because, all of a sudden, it’s hit me that:
- Erik works full time and has precious little vacation time. And has a brutal commute which means that he can’t take on Zora duty before and after day care.
- Zora works full time, too, at being a little kid, and that means she needs a full time assistant. (Usually, that’s me.)
- Our parents are all young and hale and hearty and un-retired, so none of this sending the kids to grandma for two weeks business.
- Â If I go on study leave, Zora has to come along or we have to hire pretty much a nanny.
- Zora is not so conducive to attending conferences as she used to be.
- Zora is not so conducive to letting me read for long chunks of time.
- And, therefore, my study leave is about to look very different for the next few years.
So, what do I do? I’m thinking, at very least, I’m probably in a place now where a good chunk of my study leave time each year will have to be of the reading week variety. But that begs the question: how much reading do I have to get done each day? Because, I am telling you, Zora is not one of those kids who sits nicely at her toddler tea table and draws while Mommy cruises through a few volumes of Barth. Is two hours of intense study during a nap enough? I’m not sure we can afford to hire the extra two weeks of childcare for study leave (in addition to the youth trip type things where we have to do that, that could be 4 or 5 weeks a year). Could a take-along-nanny be counted as study expense? Maybe I can find a little room somewhere, or rent a cabin and lock me and Zora in there with books for a week. Maybe she’s just going to have to suck it up and come along on a conference and learn to preach. Could I team up with a consortium of minister moms to create a childcare co-op in a cabin (everyone gets to read for 2 hours and then goes back to kid central)?
Any brilliant ideas?
Food
I’ve been bouncing around some ideas about what to do for Lent. Less TV, more sleep, no computer, giving up church (just kidding!), eating the same thing for lunch every day, some form of fasting, going vegetarian…
But, if you are thinking about food, check out this amazing photo spread of world-wide families and their food consumption for a week.
On the one hand, there are some families here I’d like to move in with (check out the veggies on the Mexican family’s table…and look at the loaves of bread with the Italians!) And while I do like pizza and chips and burgers as much as the next American, when you put it in a picture like that…
On the other hand, I wonder what my spread would look like. And what it should look like.
Zora and the Cats…
Overheard while I’m finishing lunch and Zora is playing:
“OK, Ole. I got to brush you.”
(I turn around, and she’s convinced Ole to sit still on top of a folded up quilt.)
“OK, here’s the brush.”
(She’s brushing him with the smallest sister of a set of Russian stacking dolls.)
More random conversation about brushing Ole. General sounds of content toddler and kitty. Mama tunes out a little bit.
“OK, Sven, I have to cut you.”
Mama spins around, wide-eyed, and ready to move when she hears this.
Fortunately for all concerned, and especially for Sven, Zora’s still a little confused about which implement to use for a particular grooming task, as evidenced by the Russian doll. She’s reaching for Sven with a package of quilt binding.
Muddying the Waters
- 2 Kings 5:1-14
- Fox Valley Presbyterian Church, Geneva, IL
- Service of Healing and Wholeness
Every once in a while, my two-year old comes up with little theological insights, new ways of explaining church-y things to herself, and one of my current favorites is the “church bathâ€. It’s what she calls the baptismal font. The place where she sees babies getting their heads wet. I know, at two, she doesn’t get that much about baptism, but she seems to get the clean part: baptism is the place where we get clean and fresh and get a new start.
Naaman’s story is not about baptism, but the pictures and images it carries probably take most of us in that direction: a man dipping himself into the waters of the River Jordan. You read it and start to think about all those Jordan stories in the Bible: the people of Israel crossing into the promised land, John the Baptist standing in the Jordan while hundreds, thousands, stream out of the cities to be baptized. And, of course, Jesus himself coming to his cousin John, John dipping him beneath the waters, the sky opening, and God’s voice declaring that he is pleased with this Son, Jesus Christ.
And in those pictures, isn’t the Jordan deep and wide? You can see the rocks at the bottom, and the sparkle of a few small minnows in the deeper pool. Clean and blue and clear as a bell, water you could scoop up and drink right from the stream. Safe and pure and you’d feel a whole lot holier after a sip.
I’ve heard that the Jordan isn’t as clean and fabulous as we like to think…
When I read this story of Naaman, I get the idea that maybe the Jordan didn’t look so inviting.
And the whole idea of healing is a lot messier than I usually picture it.
Naaman was probably one of the rare people in the ancient world who had access to plenty of good clean water, a guy with no reason t go near a body of water that looked even a little bit suspect.
He was a general, a successful one, a guy who had the ear of the king and a houseful of slaves. I picture him as kind of sleek, with well done hair, and perfectly tailored suits, everything neat as a pin and in its place. He smelled like success…maybe some combination of leather and money and subtle cologne.
And he had to project this slick image on the outer layer, because underneath everything he was itchy. It took all his military discipline not to scratch, because scratching brought attention to the problem: he had this nagging skin disease, and all of his money and resources, connections to the King, every slave who helped salve his rash with oils—only a slave, after all, could be forced to touch it—couldn’t cure him.
Like so many powerful men, he was a little bit aloof and untouchable, and maybe that was what made the skin condition OK in the circles of power. He was so powerful you wouldn’t want to touch him…and you wouldn’t want to touch him anyway, because there was that whole skin thing…
So everyone kept their distance just a bit. They didn’t shake hands, maybe an occasional awkward clap on he shoulder of his fine suit.
And no one dared suggest a new cure. Because Naaman, a man with his position and power, surely he’d tried everything.
But then there was this tiny little slave girl in his wife’s quarters, just a no-name serving girl, who piped up with her strange accent about some faith healer in her homeland. But she said it with so much matter-of-fact faith that the wife took notice, and started to pester Naaman about it.
And after enough gentle pushing, Naaman did what you do if you have the ear of the king: he arranged for a special letter from his king to the king of Israel…a guarantee that he would get the best and brightest of what Israel had to offer. Such a great faith healer would surely be directly tied to the court.
But when Naaman arrives in Israel, donkeys piled high with gold and gifts, servants streaming behind him in a great parade, the places of power are powerless…the King of Aram’s letter bungles the request…skips right over the healer the slave girl mentioned, goes straight to the power of the King of Israel. And the King has no idea what this letter, let alone this visit is about…what can he do for Naaman? It looks like a set-up, a grand power-play between two kings.
Word gets out, and Elisha sends for Naaman.
Imagine Naaman outside of Elisha’s house…just an average place, a little dusty, roof needs patching, just a servant or two. Imagine Naaman. Maybe he’s game for anything. He’s tried everything, right? So some strange, back-water faith healer? Sure. Whatever works. And if it works, well, how good for the healer…fame and fortune. He’ll be the man who healed Naaman. Naaman will leave him with enough to fix up the roof of the house, get some decent furniture, and live well for a good long time. Word will get out. It’s the most Naaman could do if this guy can make his skin good as new.
But Elisha doesn’t even come out. Naaman’s a little offended. He’s Naaman, after all. Everyone knows about him. The little snubs of refusing a handshake he can understand, but what kind of healer is this who’s too scared to come out and talk to him face to face?
And then there’s the messenger’s message: go wash in the Jordan River, seven times.
No healer, no potions, no magic, no one waving their hand over the spot.
Just the advice to go wash in some half-rate, half-dried, muddy foreign stream. They crossed it on the way here. Who knows what sort of nasty bugs are in the water in this little back-water country? Washing in it? A joke! You’d come out dirtier than you went in.
Naaman’s had it. He’s ready to go home.
But his servants have had it, too. They’re sick of walking. Sick of carting around Naaman’s expensive gifts, sick of the salves and the suffering. And maybe a little sorry for Naaman. So they plead with him: just try it. what can it hurt?
So Naaman goes to the river. The muddy little creek. And undresses, exposes the rash, totally open to the world, vulnerable right there in front of all the servants.
And wades in. And holds his nose. And shuts his mouth tight. And goes under, under the water, into the murkiness.
And he comes up a little muddy, a little silty.
The servants yell from the shore: “Six to go.â€
He goes again. A little water leaks into his mouth. He comes up and spits. “Fiveâ€
He goes quickly, doesn’t open his eyes. “Four†“Threeâ€
He can feel mud in his hair. All he can think about it toweling this water off when it’s over. He goes in again.
“Twoâ€
“Oneâ€
And it’s over. He squeezes the water from his hair, feels the sun starting to dry his back, wipes his eyes clean of the silt before he opens them.
He starts to stumble toward dry land. Glad it’s done. Reaches to brush water off an arm, the muddy water comes off…
A slave runs to him with a towel, but he is too shocked to take it. He just stands there, looking at an arm, a leg, his chest, he cranes his neck to see his back, and it is all perfect, under the fine layer of drying silt, Jordan River water dripping off and drying in the sun, the skin of a child
There’s more that happens here…he goes back to Elisha, professes belief in Israel’s God, Yahweh, and even more after that about the gifts Naaman brought, about a greedy servant of Elisha…there’s s much more to this story.
But wait a moment on the banks of the muddy River Jordan. Because this is where the healing happened for Naaman.
It was not what he expected, it was not where he wanted to go. It was not because he had power or connections.
I’m not even sure he went into that water believing, or that he went in for any reason other than getting his servants off his back.
But somewhere in the middle of those seven dips into muddy waters, something happened, and Yahweh got involved, and Naaman came out clean and healed, like he was freshly born.
It’s a story, and it really doesn’t answer any questions. We don’t know how it works, God’s healing. We don’t know how Elisha knew it would work, we don’t know why God healed Naaman, in spite of his unbelief.
We don’t know if it means that we could all be healed this way.
All we know is this: there’s a moment when it’s just you and God in the river.
When you are stripped of your fine suit, the thing that disguises our sickness.
When the power and prestige that you have in the world has done you no good.
When you feel tossed aside by the people who are supposed to serve you.
And the water is not a place we want to go…it’s murky and muddy, and it’s not clear, and we’re not sure how it can get us clean, let alone heal us.
No one goes in with us—they stand on the shore and watch.
But somehow, down there in the mud and the silt, somehow that is where God does something to us.
For most of us here, our “church bath†was a pretty clean affair…the water clear and warmed, just a sprinkle. And once was enough.
Maybe our baptismal water is too clean and clear…because this God of Israel, this God of Moses and Miriam and Abraham and Sarah, of David and Bathsheba, of Elisha and Naaman, of Jesus and Mary, this God gets involved in the muddy messes of the world, and calls us down to the water, down to the river’s edge on our own, to go where we don’t want to go, to do something that just can’t work.
But what if we see the need for healing as a return to that moment: what if we could come back to the river edge again and again, remembering those waters as the place where we were on our own with God, the landmark we can return to when we need God’s power and healing?
Not always coming because we are sure it will work. Not always coming because the water looks clean and clear and makes sense.
But coming because somehow, down there in the mud and the silt, somehow that is where God does something to us?
To ask God for healing: when nothing else will work, even when we struggle with doubt or disbelief or the murkiness of the water.
In our words, our action, and our prayers today, that’s all we do: step into the river, plug our nose, close our eyes, and dip down into the water, waiting for that moment when God will make us new.
Water: Editing Room Floor
I don’t think all of this is going to make it into tomorrow’s sermon (well, maybe, who knows) but I’m kind of in love with it, so here it goes on the editing room floor…
Among the things I love about summer is spending a week outdoors, camping somewhere, but especially the moments toward the of that trip when you slip into a lake or a stream, with a little bottle of biodegradable (of course) soap, and come out smelling like peppermint with only a little bit of smoke smell left in your hair. It is that feeling of washing away, getting clean, starting fresh.
Every once in a while, my two-year old comes up with new little theological insights, new ways of explaining church-y things to herself, and one of my current favorites is the “church bathâ€. It’s what she calls the baptismal font. The place where she sees babies getting their heads wet. I know, at two, she doesn’t get that much about baptism, but she seems to get the clean part: baptism is the place where we get clean and fresh and get a new start.
And maybe that’s what I like about lakes and rivers and streams at the end of a camping trip… the sense of starting fresh and getting clean, almost like a little baptism before you go back to the world.
But, of course, those little baptisms are better when they happen in a clean body of water…you’ve got to pick water that looks at least cleaner than you are…
Summers, growing up, we swam in ponds. Now, if you were one of the wealthier kids in the little town in upstate New York where I grew up, your family might have a cottage on one of the big cold, clear lakes up in the Adirondaks, lakes where the sky and trees reflected off the very top, and you could see the granite bottom distorted through the ripples.
The just-above-average families among us would have a little cabin on a pond somewhere in the hills.
Our family cabin was on Laurel Lake. It was called a Lake, but but make no mistake: it was a pond. And by late July, the Laurel “pond†would be “working†as our cabin neighbor PJ Palella put it…â€working†meaning that from the shore, and creeping out to the center, there were big green slimy clumps on the surface. In order to swim, we’d take the canoe out from the dock, and jump into the smaller and smaller patch in the middle where the water was still it’s regular mucky dark color. And by August, the clumps would grow together into a skin that covered almost the whole pond, and all we could do was wait for the frost the come and kill off the slime, so that it sunk to the mucky bottom of Laurel Lake.
Now, I think about Laurel Lake with some nostalgia, and I said that all really nice just now, but there is a much simpler way to put it: it was gross. Like swimming in a pool of fluorescent snot. It had to get awfully hot and sticky in July and August for us to brave the waters. And I’m guessing the Adirondak-Cabin-Heirs in my class would have had nothing to do with Laurel Lake.
Where I Live
I’ve got this cold that just won’t quit. In fact, I really haven’t had it long, but it is beating me down. I have to pull it together because I preach on Sunday so there needs to be a sermon and voice by 8:00am.
This particular cold comes with a generous side of exhaustion and malaise. Which might not be the cold’s fault. Looking back over my calendar, I have’t had a 24 hour chunk of time to family, let alone to myself, in the last 3 weeks. I’ve taken time off, but there have been a whole cluster of little events that have squeezed their way into my day off, and some slightly larger events that have eaten up entire evenings.
None of this is the classic church cocktail of catastrophes or funerals. It’s just the generic mixture of meetings and regional-church committees, youth group trips, mailings to send out, worship to plan…patch that together with taking care of Zora and still being on the learning curve about what it’s like to be married to someone with a 2+ hour commute, and I’m not really surprised that I’m sick.
Maybe my cold is not all virus.
And it’s not that I’m writing here to complain either. I know this happens sometimes, and I knew what I was getting into when I started doing this. And I am very grateful and blessed by many things, like the fact that my husband and co-worker both pushed me to take vacation time a few weeks ago, and maybe both were actually wise enough to see this coming, because as of next Thursday, that vacation will be here!
But I wish I worked in a such a way that when I did start to break down with a cold or just general malaise, I could take 36 hours to just hole up at home, with no work committments.
At the same time, I know that it’s hard for the people I minister to to take time…I know they are busy and over-stretched, chasing kids and jobs and dogs and bills and church work and volunteer work, and all that stuff. I know they are commuting from the city and traveling for work and just trying to hang in there most of the time.
And sometimes, I start to think that part of the insanity of parenting young kids, working full time as a pastor (with a spouse who works full time, too) is just part of doing incarnational ministry in the suburbs. I love that translation of John 1 in The Message: “The Word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood.” If being in ministry is about following Jesus and being real and fleshy and incarnational, then one of the things we do as pastors is move into the neighborhood. It’s rare that ministers live in exactly the place or circumstances that they would live if they could choose any place. We go where we are called. Even if that means living far from family and close friends, even if that means leaving the geography you love most, even if that means your spouse commutes a whole lot farther than you would ever choose.
Sometimes this means that yu move in nex door to the people in an urban slum, or down the road from everyone else ina struggling farm community. Sometimes it means a highrise in a city. Sometimes it means a place where the language and food and customs are foreign to you, and you look different than anyone else.
For me right now, I think being incarnational means that I live here in the outer ring suburbs, and I work full time while trying to faithfully raise my kid, and my husband commutes a ridiculous distance to his job, and I am just trying to scrape together 36 hours to get over this cold.
It’s not as glamorous as some of the places I could be called, but it’s where I’m supposed to live.