Don’t flay the sheep.

Baby Gym

Since I found out I was pregnant, I’ve been coming to terms with the fact that my body is not really my own anymore. For the first two months, this was mostly a nice, warm-fuzzy sort of thing to think about–inside me, although I couldn’t really perceive it, someone was growing.

The next two months, I got sick. While this meant that my pants all fit much longer than I thought they would, the nice warm-fuzzy thought of a baby growing inside changed. I still loved that little lump of person inside me, but it was making me really sick…kind of like a parasite.

At 20 weeks, after the big ultrasound, we got a little taste of what the baby looked like (Erik’s already convinced she has my nose…), and about the same time I figured out that what I thought felt like gas bubbles was really a moving baby. Within a few weeks, Erik and I were watching my belly move and jiggle for entertainment.
The last few weeks, the kicking was fun to watch. Family members are keeping score about who’s felt the baby and who hasn’t. (So far-Mom, my sister Emily, Grandma Garry, and cousins Katrina, Peter, and Elena…)
But now, it is finally clear that my body is inhabited by someone else. We have moved from kicking to shoving at the edges and holding. I am a baby gym.
This kid is practicing for the Olympics, either gymnastics or the ski jump. At least she can’t reach my rib cage yet…

[ Filed under Journal | 0 Comments ]

What’s going on?

Sadly, despite Erik’s best attmpts to get me to write more by making me a blog, my blogging has been lacking for, oh, a month or more.

So here are a few things that have been going on:

1. It’s warm in Chicago again. Really warm. I love my central AC.
2. The baby is vigorously kicking away, all the time. Kicking baby has become my favorite personal pastime. Apologies to my family, who have to endure my encouragements to patiently touch my belly… We’re about 80% settled on her name, but Erik insists on this being the big surprise for the rest of you.
3. Still no final news on where we’ll live when the baby is born. But our lease is up at the end of the month.
4. Wedding season is in high gear. The most notable wedding of the year for me was this past weekend when my brother married Alli. Attendance at the next few weddings is probably out because of the impending baby.
5. And, I really need to start writing more…

[ Filed under Journal | 0 Comments ]

Shared Birth

• Acts 10: 44-48
• May 14, 2006
• 4th Presbyterian Church, Chicago, Vespers
• May 21, 2006
• Hope Christian Reformed Church, Oak Forest, IL

As far as Peter was concerned, he never knew what God would ask of him next.

His life, since that first request, had gone places he never expected. He started out a fisherman, a working man, with a family and responsibilities, a good man, religious, respected, hard working. But with a few words, the strangest and most compelling man he ever met, Jesus, called him away from all of that: “Follow me.” With no idea where they would go, Peter had followed. At first, the miracles kept him following—people healed, made whole again, even Peter’s own mother-in-law restored to good health. But eventually, the words and the stories were what drew him. Half the time, he didn’t understand what Jesus meant, why Jesus did the things he did. Jesus talked about God’s kingdom and righteousness, but he ate with Jews who were marginal, questionable types. Even the occasional Gentile slipped into their company. And yet, Peter kept following. And Jesus became his teacher, and his friend. Peter stored away every detail, every story he could remember—even when he didn’t understand, he had this feeling that it would be important to remember some day.

Peter followed as far as he could during the last weeks of Jesus life, tried to keep up with the whirlwind of what happened as Jesus went to Jerusalem and said cryptic, crazy things about his time ending, put himself in harm’s way.  And for Peter, that whole week crashed to a terrible, crunching halt in those moments after Jesus was arrested: In the early morning, Peter lost his courage, denied even knowing his friend, and wound up cowering in fear with the other men who had followed Jesus.  The women followers ran their errands, but the men holed up, shaking and  afraid until the strange days afterward when Jesus was back from death, back with them, to talk, and eat, and laugh.

But after that denial, after the cowardly hiding, he still couldn’t believe what Jesus would ask of him, “Feed my sheep,” Jesus said. And Peter, the fisherman, who knew nothing about sheep—except that they couldn’t be caught by a net!—Peter said “Yes.” He would take care, he would herd and nourish and protect the people Jesus sent his way.

And then the Spirit came to them, and while all the disciple were filled with its power, while each of them found new understanding and new words, it was Peter whose preaching put the whole puzzle together. Peter was not the most likely of the bunch to be the great preacher, not the most educated, never the most eloquent, a bit of a bumbler. But the preaching seemed to be what the Spirit asked of him. And so he spoke, wove together the whole story of God’s people, tied together the loose ends with the stories and sayings he remembered from Jesus. And it all seemed to work. The Scripture was fulfilled, and there were more and more disciples day by day. Here was a herd Peter could care for.

He did what God had asked—followed Jesus, preached the word, fed the growing flock of believers. He prayed—thanking God for this fulfillment of the promises to Israel, praying for the growth of the community in Jerusalem, throughout Israel.

But he never knew what the next request might be.

That was when the vision came. Peter was in Joppa, recuperating from the hard spiritual work of a few healings, staying with another follower: Simon, a tanner. It was a good place to stay, a good reminder of what he had learned from Jesus. This Simon was a good Jew, but a tanner, a leather-curer. All those animal parts and smells around the house would have scared Peter off before he knew Jesus. Jews could be tanners, but it was a little suspect, just on the edge of being unclean. But this didn’t bother Peter now. Think of all the slightly marginal Jews Jesus had stayed with, eaten with. Peter was proud that he could stay here now without flinching, without checking his religious sensibilities at the door. Simon was a good man, another follower.

The truth was, though, the house was a little smelly, and Peter found it easier to pray away from that stifling distraction. So he spent many mornings on the roof, praying, meditating, running over the Scriptures, thinking through the next sermon. And waiting—waiting for the next thing God might ask.

At first he thought the vision was just the rumblings of his unruly stomach. It was almost noon. He thought of Jesus’ words—one cannot live on bread alone—he tried to focus on the prayer.

But the vision kept coming. A sheet came down, busting at the seams with all the animals, as if Noah’s big boat-full had overflowed. And then the voice, “Get up, Peter, kill and eat.” Peter’s stomach turned—he knew what the voice meant. Kill and eat—anything in the sheet. The shet was full of unclean animals of all kinds, the things only Gentiles, pagans ate. Bats and turtles, lizards and pigs. Since before he could remember, he was told to stay away, not even to touch them. His mother said so, his father, his sisters…the rabbis, the wise men of the village…even Jesus didn’t eat that stuff. The words were out of his mouth before he knew it: “No Lord, I have never eaten anything unclean.” Peter was born and raised a good Jew, and he intended to stay that way. And then the voice again, “What God has made, you must not call unclean.” And the voice kept saying back, “Peter, kill and eat.” “Peter, kill and eat.” And Peter kept saying “no.” Then the sheet and its menagerie were lifted back to heaven and the vision melted away. Peter had no idea wh?at it meant, even where this vision was from. God or his stomach? The Spirit or something else What God has made, you must not call unclean. But what God has forbidden, Peter thought, you must not touch, right?

And then Peter felt the stirring inside, not a vision, but that quiet whisper of the Spirit. “Peter—three men are looking for you. Go downstairs, Go with them. Don’t hesitate. I sent them.” And so he went down, and there they were—servants of a Roman looking for Peter, called Simon, asking at the gate, desperate for him to come. Their master, Cornelius, a man who knew God, (but a Gentile none-the-less), had seen an angel, and the angel’s only message was to send someone for this Peter, staying in Joppa, with Simon the Tanner. He wanted Peter to come, right away.

To travel a day, be a guest at the home of a Gentile. Peter could barely clasp hands with a Gentile, let alone eat and sleep in his house. Forget following Jewish law on food—who knew what had been in their kitchens! And cleaning and household regulations? Who knew what Gentiles did, and who knew what Jewish laws they broke? By association, through the things they touched, the lives they lived, Gentiles were themselves walking, talking uncleanliness. Even the God-fearing ones really had no idea how to follow God properly, how to live righteously.

The truth was, Judaism was something you had to be born into. You learned righteousness at your mother’s knee. You absorbed it in the food you ate, the blessings you spoke, the rhythm of the Jewish year. You lived surrounded on every side by God’s people, learning the laws and the customs as part of the community.

This shared identity was the only thing that held the people together—occupied by a foreign power, constantly pressured to compromise their beliefs, the laws and the customs were the things all Jews shared. They were all that preserved the community.

Peter could love a Gentile from a distance. but to spend a day’s journey, to accept hospitality on the terms of a Gentile? He had never even eaten anything unclean! To bring the fulfillment of the law and prophets to Gentiles? It could only dilute what was left of his heritage!

Suddenly, the vision and voice of the Spirit all merged in Peter’s head. “Go with them, don’t hesitate.” “Kill and eat.”

As far as Peter was concerned, you never knew what God would ask next.

The walk would take a day, so Peter rationalized with the Spirit and hesitated a bit—for practicality’s sake. And the next morning, he took a group of followers from Joppa, all good followers and good Jews, trembling a bit along with Peter, and they left for Caesarea.

As they walked, as he thought about what God was asking him to do, Peter realized that there was something about this Cornelius that made him even more uncomfortable than the Gentile part. This man was a centurion, a man who was in charge of 100 Roman soldiers. He had power. Peter, for all his bluster, for all that help from the Spirit, was still just a fisherman from Capernaum. Cornelius had an angel visit and tell him to find Peter, and he had three men he could spare for a two day journey to retrieve him. This man was a centurion, a commander in the Roman army, the occupiers, the people who just barely tolerated Peter’s faith, as a Jew, and as a follower of Jesus.

That was what made the arrival so surprising. There was no waiting for Cornelius to tie up more important business before he met with them. Instead, the house was filled with his friends and family, waiting for Peter. And Cornelius fell down at Peter’s feet like he was a God. (The first thing, thought Peter, he’d have to correct Gentiles on…worship is for God only)

So, Peter and Cornelius compared visions, and then Peter started to preach, to weave together the stories of his vision, weaving back to the story of Jesus, the prophets, the fulfillment, pulling it all together, trying to make it fit with the lives of these people.

And suddenly, the Spirit came again, just like it had the first time, the Pentecost. Peter was not even done speaking, and the whole group, Cornelius, his relatives, his friends, began to speak and praise, prophesy, and worship God. Peter and the ones who had traveled with him from Joppa could only stand and watch. This had happened to them. But here it was, spreading beyond their control, beyond their circle, beyond their tradition and training, in a place, with a people who were unclean, who could barely understand the deep, rich history of the this God who they were praising. But the Spirit was present. There was no other explanation.

What more could Peter do? These people were not born Jews. But they knew the God of the Jews, and they praised and they worshipped. They knew God’s Spirit, as surely as Peter did. They were not born Jews, but this Spirit was something they shared. This moment was a new birth, the same new birth that came to the disciples at Pentecost. The old distinctions couldn’t matter. Born Gentile, born Jew, this birth of the Spirit was the birth they shared now.

Peter remembered things Jesus had said:

You must be born again.

I have sheep not of this flock

Go baptize, and make disciples of all nations.

John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.

Who was he, Peter, to oppose what God was doing?

So Peter looked at the others from Joppa and said, “How can we withhold water for baptism? They’ve already received the Spirit!” And they baptized them all.

Peter knew this would change everything. He wasn’t surprised when word reached Jerusalem—the uproar over baptizing people not born as Jews, not born into the faith. The uproar over the falling of distinctions, who was clean, who was unclean.

Even Peter would remain uncomfortable with parts of it. A few years later, when Paul started seeking out Gentiles and baptizing them Peter wondered if he had crossed a line—Paul didn’t teach them much about Jewish ways and righteousness, didn’t require much in terms of practice.

But suddenly, the world was bigger. What God was asking them was so much broader than they’d ever imagined. This story of Jesus was not just fulfillment of the law and prophets—it threw itself open to those of any birth. Jew, Gentile, slave, free, men and women: all kinds, all colors, all nations. It threw itself open to all people of every birth, and made them one.

As far as Peter was concerned, he never knew what God would ask of him next.

The requests eventually took him far from Jerusalem, from everything and everyone he knew. But in every place, there was this shared birth—of new life in Christ and the Spirit.

We never know what God will ask of us next.

The visions we have, the whisper of the Spirit, these things are not always clear to us, and we may question what they mean. But somehow, God is always calling us to something new, to new people and places. Places we never thought we would go. People with whom we thought we had nothing to share.

Sometimes, we are called to the very people and places we know, we have always known, since we were children, we ought not to go, to people and places we never imagined God could visit.
Sometimes, we are called to throw open the story of Jesus to people who we thought might not deserve to hear it.

The story of Jesus is bigger that us, than our identity. It throws itself open to people of any birth. But for all people, in that story, there is this shared birth—new life in Christ, and the Spirit.

Thanks be to God.

[ Filed under Sermons | 0 Comments ]

Sermon audio file

I’m posting an MP3 audio file of “Lullaby for the Dying,” a sermon on Matthew 2:13–23 that I gave at Hope Christian Reformed Church on Sunday, December 26, 2004. (I’ll be making the sermon text available later.)

[ Filed under Sermons | 0 Comments ]

Holy Week with Judas

Thanks to National Geographic, many of us who work at churches had to pay a little more attention to Judas this past week. Their cover story and the media storm they’ve been trying to stir over a new translation of the “Gospel of Judas” have church goers curious and interested, some ready to jump on this latest apocryphal craze.

I almost skirted the issue completely: my Holy Week preaching assignment was John 12: 1-11 for the Monday noonday service at my church. And there was Judas, criticizing Mary for her excessive perfume-pouring. I managed the entire sermon without reference to the “new” gospel, but at lunch afterward, the questions about it started. On Wednesday, in her sermon, my colleague Elizabeth dealt beautifully with the questions people were asking.

But a book review by Adam Gopnik said it all for me. New gospels come and go, but they never measure up to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The early Christians knew what they were doing when they chose these three:

And then the new Gospel casts a spell—for sympathetic freethinkers, especially—because it reminds us of the literary strength of the canonic Gospels, exactly for their marriage of the celestial and the commonplace. We want a bit of Hicksville and a bit of Heaven in our sacred texts, matter and man and magic together. Simply as editors, the early Church fathers did a fine job of leaving the strong stories in and the weird ones out. The orthodox canon gives us a Christ who is convincing as a character in a way that this Gnostic one is not: angry and impatient and ethically engaged, easily exasperated at the limitations and nagging of his dim disciples and dimmer family relations, brilliantly concrete in his parables and human in his pain. Whether one agrees with Jefferson that this man lived, taught, and died, or with St. Paul that he lived and died and was born again, it is hard not to prefer him to the Jesus of the new Gospel, with his stage laughter and significant winks and coded messages. Making Judas more human makes Jesus oddly less so, less a man with a divine and horrible burden than one more know-it-all with a nimbus. As metaphor or truth, we’re sticking with the old story. Give us that old-time religion—but, to borrow a phrase from St. Augustine, maybe not quite yet.

Amen.

[ Filed under Journal | 0 Comments ]

Turn the world upside down

Funnier than any bumper-sticker I’ve seen this week (and it’s been a great week for bumper stickers)–this list from the most recent issue of The Christian Century:

Ten Reasons for Not Ordaining Men

10. A man’s place is in the army.
9. Men with children might be distracted by their parental responsibilities.
8. Ministry is unnatural for men since their physical build suits them better for chopping wood.
7. Man, having been created before woman, is an experiment, not the crowning achievement of creation.
6. Men are too emotional; see how they respond at sporting events.
5. Handsome men will distract female worshipers.
4. Pastoring is a nuturing role; historically, women have been the nuturers.
3. Men are too prone to violence and would be dangerously unstable in conflict situations.
2. Men can still be involved in church work without having to become pastors.
1. Jesus was betrayed by a man, whose lack of faith and subsequent punishement symbolizes the subordinate position all men should assume.

[ Filed under Journal | 0 Comments ]

Love to Excess

John 12:1-11

Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Monday Noonday Holy Week Service

There’s no way around it: whatever his motives for saying it, Judas was right. How many others in the room must have thought the same thing? That perfume was excessive. A year’s pay, wasted. Imagine what good you could use that money for!

The excess in this story is uncomfortable; at odds with Lent as a season of scarcity. Allow yourself to ask the question with Judas: what good does excess do?

I spent my junior year of college in England, and on weekdays nights, I would sample the evensong offerings at the churches and the cathedral in town. In those churches, surrounded by music and history, sculpture, painting, carvings, song and prayer, there might be five people in addition to the choir. Here were churches that had taken decades to build, choirs with centuries-old endowments, so much excess, and the churches were empty. What good had all that excess done?

When I came home, Mrs LaMaire, one of many wise older women at my church, mentioned how this struck her when she went to England—“Every Wednesday night,” she said, “they sing, they do the whole thing. And there might be 2 people there. Like they’re singing for no one, just for God.”

Just singing for God: What good had that excess done?

What good does excess do? How do we reconcile excess with the Jesus who tells us to follow the narrow path, consider the lilies and birds who do not worry about clothing or food. The Jesus who calls disciples to follow him into itinerant homelessness and calls us each to take up a cross with him on the road to Jerusalem? Judas knows it is excess, and he says so.

But Jesus says, “Leave her alone.” The excess is just right. It is right for Mary to anoint Jesus, to wipe his feet with her hair, to give beyond what she really ought to give. It is right for Mary to love Jesus this way, while he is here. This is the way to love Jesus—with excess.

And how often do we love Jesus this way?

How often do we gaze up into the excess of space in high church ceiling, and see that it is not empty and wasted, but room for God’s praise to reverberate?

How often do we sing in the shower out of sheer joy and gratitude for this Jesus who walks with us?

Last October, I drove to the Salvation Army on Belmont with a woman from New Orleans. She had $150 in vouchers to buy a new household. And so we found the least stained mattress they had, sorted through racks of sheets and pillows, looked for warm blankets, sifted through boxes of utensils, pieced together a set of plates and pots and pans. And then, with two full shopping carts, we waited in line, waited for a manager, and waited for a total.

She had $80 left. The manager said she had to spend the whole $150 at once—there was no way to use it later. So with $80 left, we passed the electronics, and she spotted a TV and a DVD player. We plugged them in. They worked. She added them to the cart. I wasn’t sure how much more would fit in my car. And wasn’t there something they needed more? Coats, another warm quilt? Wasn’t this TV a little much? What good would that excess do?

You will always have the poor, Jesus says to Judas, but you will not always have me. Love me with excess while I am here, Jesus says.

Mary does more than she can—gives a year’s salary, an indecent display, her own hair as a towel. This is the way to love Jesus. More than seems appropriate. To excess.

This is the way to love Jesus, and this is the way Jesus tells us to love the poor.

And for those who God places in our path—the poor, the homeless, the lonely, the prisoner, the refugee, the evacuee…our call is to love them like Jesus. Beyond what seems appropriate, to excess.

How often do we second guess how much it is appropriate to give, to love? How often do we wonder how much those people God puts in our path really deserve? Enough to scrape by? Enough to get past the rough patch?

How often do we love ourselves enough to douse with expensive perfumes and potions, fine clothes, the best meal
and give others the things that are shoddy and little smelly?

How often do we love our children enough to give them the best education and a little more
and leave the schools of poorer communities crumbling and straining to care for their children?

How often do we pile on the little comforts we can’t live without
and forget those who have no comfort?

How often do we love others to excess, to the point that it makes those around us gasp at the excess?

According to Psalm 36, this is the way God loves us: steadfast and strong and forever; high as the mighty mountains, deep as the bottom of the sea; all the way to the clouds. God feeds us not just enough, but the abundance of heaven, and gives us not just cups but whole rivers of delight to drink from. God loves us to excess.

God loves us to the excess of coming to us, entering the midst of our messy lives, living our human pain and sorrow, God loves us to the excess of sacrificing a child. God loves us to the excess of death.

Thanks be to God for the excessive gift of Jesus Christ

[ Filed under Sermons | 0 Comments ]

Catching up a month or more…

It’s been awhile since I posted. Happily, that is because there is enough going on that I haven’t posted. Here are a few things that have been taking up time and energy

Work, of course is one. The highlight for me has been planning Wednesday night Lent services at Fourth with Patrick, Calum, and a troupe of faithful lay-people. We’re taking a close look at six of the “I am” statements from John’s Gospel. Beautiful things have happened: wonderful projected pictures to help people meditate on the theme; a communion service where people really felt like they were gathered around the table with Jesus and the disciples; children adding voice and movement to services; comfortably silent prayer.

I also took a vacation, which I hadn’t realized I needed until the week before I left. My sister Anna lives in Utah, and I spent week with her. We fed a heard of elk, spent the night 4 miles into the mountains in a yurt, and moved her from one house to another.

And, the annual miracle of spring in Chicago is beginning. Yes, we will have more ugly days in the next month or two (like the flat cloud-cover that we are enduring today), but that great day when it is finally warm and sunny for the first time in months hit this week.

And now, the slide into the craziness of Holy Week begins. One week to get ready for it, and one week to be overwhelmed by church busy-ness, and yet be thankful that my job lets me experience every up and down of that week.

[ Filed under Journal | 0 Comments ]

Well Potted

2 Corinthians 4:5-15

Fair Oaks Presbyterian Church, Oak Park, IL

Gifts of Women Sunday

On the surface, Ashley Smith is not a likely candidate to illustrate and celebrate the gifts of women serving Jesus Christ. She’s no Mother Theresa, Susanna Wesley, Margaret Towner, or Rosa Parks. Ashley’s life story is filled with sketchy details: violence; low education; addiction; a daughter in custody of her aunt. On the chance that we are not quick to judge her, we might take a more compassionate, pity-filled view—she’s an American every-woman, representing everything that can go wrong for women in our country’s lower socio-economic classes. And then, for many of us, we can breath that fabulously condescending sigh of relief—“There but for the grace of God go I…” On the surface, she’s like thousands of other women who we are glad we are not.

But, a year ago, Ashley made the news, and not because of any of the sketchy details. It was Ashley who single-handedly stopped the 26-hour rampage of Brian Nichols through Atlanta. Nichols, after 17 hours running from the police, murdering 4 people along the way, forced himself into Ashley’s apartment and tied her up. Within 6 hours, Ashley was making him pancakes, telling him about her life and her daughter, reading to him from a Christian best-seller, and something in Nichols must have softened. He let Ashley leave to visit her daughter, she called the police, and Nichols surrendered peacefully.

Then, a few days later, news outlets found out about the sketchier details of Ashley’s life, and even learned that Ashley had given Nichols some crystal meth that she had in the apartment. It was a great finish to the story—what’s better than revealing that a saint is really sinner? Someone just like us…or even worse. We eat that stuff up.

And yet, maybe it is those unsavory details that truly make Ashley a candidate for this sort of illustration. Not everyone can be Mother Teresa. But we are all, more or less, like Ashley: a good story on the surface, but real people underneath.

And in fact, that’s exactly what Christian ministry, the service all Christians are called to, looks like. In 2 Corinthians 4, in a chapter that is bursting with terms like “glory” and “light,” right square in the middle, we are hit with this unremarkable, earthy image: pots of clay. Plain, unglazed, terra cotta gathering dust in a back corner of the garden plot. Plain old pots…filled with treasure.

God uses people in all of their humanity, in all of their suffering. God uses people who are just plain old pots in the back corner. My friend Joan has had cancer on and off for 15 years, and she did all she could when her pastor introduced her to Carrie who had terminal bone cancer—took her by the hand, took her to a better oncologist, helped her win 2 more years. My colleague Heidi does all she can when she meets another young widow—sometimes just sits and cries. Ashley, in all of her humanity, does all she can for Brian Nichols, makes him pancakes, tells him about her daughter, reads him a little Rick Warren, and offers him some crystal meth.

In even less remarkable ways, God uses us in all our humanity. When we meet someone, we try to find common ground—a hometown, a common experience, favorite music or sports—and try to forge a relationship through those little, inconsequential details. If the wait in the line at the grocery store gets too long, we might joke a bit and bond with complete strangers, frustrated and bored together in all our humanity. We smile at a stranger on the street, and chat up (sometimes reluctantly) the other passengers on an airplane, share a grin with an irresistible toddler. And none if it, really, is inconsequential. We are who we are for a reason—God made us that way, and God made us to live into our personalities, our history, to live into the cracks and nicks in our pots. And so Ashley eats pancakes with Brian Nichols, and tells him about herself, and he must have heard a little piece there that was about him, something just a little bit redemptive, because a few hours later, he’s waving a white shirt and surrendering to police. Ashley’s life, cracked as it may have been, was a good pot for the word God needed Brian Nichols to hear.

This should be no surprise. The model for Christian ministry starts with an unremarkable pot—Jesus Christ. I taught high religion school for two years in Garfield Park, and learned many valuable lessons about being a teacher. One of the most important—there is a time and a place for movies in the classroom, and that time and that place are when you are sick of talking to the kids and they are sick of hearing you talk. This often happens right about now, in March. I was, at least, responsible enough to use movies that were related to the course material.

So my 9th graders in the “Life of Jesus” course were stuck watching excerpts of movies about Jesus, which led to discussions about whether or not the director was accurate in portraying Jesus. Our favorite contrasts were between “Jesus of Nazareth” and “The Gospel According to Matthew.”

Jesus of Nazareth was too white (in my classroom, the way this was usually expressed was, “Jesus didn’t look like Ms. Schemper!”), he clearly spent way too much time grooming his luxurious hair and beard, and according to a few students each year, he seemed a bit drugged, like he was walking an extra inch off the ground. (We liked Peter in this movie—he was one angry guy, with impressive mood swings.)

“The Gospel According to Matthew” was another story all together. Black and white, by an Italian director who went out into the countryside and hired peasants for all the parts. After we got through the complaining about the subtitles—I usually got some anger about forcing the students to “read” during a movie—we would get to completely different evaluations of Jesus. He was scruffy, needed to comb his hair and bathe. You could almost smell him from on screen. It was hard to tell which one was Jesus for awhile—he looked like all the other people. He was compassionate to the suffering around him, but that suffering also made him mad. Sometimes he even scared the disciples a little. We all agreed—we’d be a little nervous about following this Jesus. He was too—human.

In appearance, Jesus was no Brad Pitt (pick your favorite Hollywood-handsome-man here), and he was not really a luminary of any sort. He was just another one of the poor, dirty, undernourished, suffering masses of the time. The kind of guy who we probably would see, and then sigh our relief, “There but for the grace of God go I…” Jesus was an unremarkable pot, gathering dust at the back of the garden. He was the light of the world, but his face did not emit some sort of glowing aura to clue in everyone around him about what that meant.

In fact, the glory of Jesus Christ did not crack out of that pot in some sort of splendid explosion. Jesus’ glory was in his humanity. His glory was in the day to day suffering he shared with the people around him. His glory was in the anxiety and fear that grew as he walked toward the cross. His glory was in the fact that this Jesus, God incarnate, fully human and fully God, could die. The glory that blossoms forth in the resurrection could not have happened without the death of Jesus.

This is the glory that is well-potted in our lives as Christians. We are being remade into the image of the Christ, and that glory is the treasure we carry around in clay pots. That glory is based on humanity, lived to its best and fullest in Jesus Christ. Our ministry is not to glaze over the humanity of our lives, not to erase our history, not to ignore our quirks, not to be anything but the best and the fullest that God made us to be, transformed by the work of Holy Spirit. Our ministry is to use that full humanity just as Jesus used his full humanity. Our ministry is to be incarnational—in the flesh, in our own flesh, in the flesh that God made. Christ’s glory is well-potted in the humans God made and loves.

Everything about who we are becomes important in this work. And here is where the church has often confused things in the past. We can’t stop and think about the gifts of women without recalling this.

I’ve been fascinated this year as the PC(USA) has spent the year reflecting on several big anniversaries for women in ordained ministry. I did not start the journey to ministry in the Presbyterian Church, but in a small cousin denomination of yours, the Christian Reformed Church. The CRC only started ordaining women as deacons in the 1980s, and as elders and ministers of the word in 1995. They’ve been arguing about it since the mid 1970s—the arguing has not been pretty. Even now, it’s tense—many congregations still refuse to ordain women. Very few are willing to even contemplate calling a woman pastor.

I am blessed with an extended family that was wholeheartedly supportive of my call. I went to the denomination’s seminary at the tail end of the years when there was blatant resistance to female students by other students. Men occasionally walked out of preaching-lab classes when female students were preaching. There were no female professors when I started there. In 2003 I was the 23rd woman to be ordained in the denomination. There are about 40 female ministers in the denomination now.

However, it’s hard to find positions in churches. Most of us have been chaplains, teachers, or denominational administrators. Many in these positions are waiting to follow a strong pull toward congregational ministry. I am not famous for the Christian virtue of patience, and about this time last year, I started talking to the presbytery here about becoming a Presbyterian minister. (As of December, I’m one of you!)

As one of very few women in seminary, I had to learn that my gender was part of the ordinary pot that holds Christ’s glory. That it was OK that I was (stereotypically) more teary than my male classmates. That I had access to women who were hurting and couldn’t talk to male pastors. That I didn’t have to prove my worth by being the best Hebrew scholar in my class or taking more credit hours that anyone else. That God was fully thrilled with me as a woman.

I have spent the year grateful that Presbyterian women are somewhat beyond this—grateful that female Presbyterian clergy my age are aghast when I tell them some of my seminary horror-stories; grateful that the denomination celebrates women’s gifts without fighting; grateful that women’s gifts for ministry, ordained or not, are celebrated and honored in healthy ways. At the service celebrating women at Fourth last October, I stood in the narthex with my nose pressed against the glass during the sermon, grinning from ear to ear because I was having a vision of the Christian Reformed Church fast-forwarded 40 years or so, and it was a good vision.

From my perspective, coming in, this ability to celebrate the gifts and ministry of women is a privilege. It is a privilege to be a church that does not still fight and feel pain from a debate over this. But it is also a reminder that we must never forget that God uses our full humanity to bring the glory of Jesus to a world that needs it. God uses our full humanity, and the full humanity of everyone around us, even when that makes us uncomfortable, even when we aren’t sure their clay pot is a good enough vessel for Jesus Christ. We cannot forget that this Jesus who we serve is well-potted in unremarkable human lives, sometimes in ways that surprise us.

For all the times it has forgotten this, the Church has long said that this idea of incarnation, of God in the flesh, and ministry after that pattern, is what makes us who we are. In the 400s, you could start a riot in a market in Asia Minor by yelling “Mary is the Mother of God.” Debate over who exactly Jesus was had become so fierce in the church that people were fighting it out in the streets. And the one point they could hinge the debate on had to do with Mary. If Jesus was fully human, then he had to have a human mother: Mary. But, if you believed that Jesus at the same time was fully God, then Mary must be the mother of God. By the end of the 400s, church folks from all over had gathered and concluded that it was important for Jesus to be both and so yes, Mary was the mother of God, the God-bearer. Protestants today are often uncomfortable with the phrase, but there it is. Mary, an unremarkable woman, carrying God in her womb, bringing God into the world. Mary as our first model of how to bear the glory of Christ into the world.

[ Filed under Sermons | 0 Comments ]

What Do Your Chairs Say about Your Spirituality?

Here are two concepts that we don’t often combine: furniture design and spirituality. And yet, furniture design is how we best know the Shakers. If their design legacy has something to say about their spirituality, maybe we should all take a few minutes to look around our homes and think about what our furniture says about our spirituality. For example, I have a friend who restores historic homes. He is convinced that the craftsmanship he puts into restoring built-in cabinets and stair banisters is a faithful reflection of God’s care of creation. He finds shoddy work offensive because it doesn’t use God-given resources to their full potential and beauty. These thoughts are knocking around in my head thanks to the article I read during lunch today.

[ Filed under Journal | 1 Comment ]