On Adventures and God…

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adventure, bruise, church, doubt, fear, fun, God, hurt, invitation, new, question, relationship

Photo credit:  Elizabeth Shows Caffey

One of the themes of this summer for me has been new adventures.  This summer I tried aerial yoga for the first time – a practice of yoga that involves being suspended from the ceiling with silks.  I also rode a bike for the first time in over 20 years.  And last night, for the first time ever, I represented our church by throwing one of the first pitches at our local minor league baseball games.  In each of those instances, I was nervous, skeptical, or downright scared.  I know I yelped at least once in aerial yoga.  When I first started riding the bike, I was so stressed out that my hands started hurting from gripping the handlebars.  And as I waited to throw that first pitch, my stomach was doing flip-flops.

Those examples may not sound all that thrilling to you.  I certainly did not skydive, bungee jump, or walk a tightrope.  But those adventures were all experiences I normally would have declined – coming up with a hundred reasons why the adventures would be a bad idea:  pulled muscles, skinned knees, or a bruised ego.  But in each instance, I could see in the eyes of the people asking me to take the adventure a sense of longing, hopefulness, vulnerability.  They were inviting me into adventure, and saying “no” would have meant a crushed spirit of enthusiasm.  And so, against my better judgment, I said “yes.”  And you know what?  In every instance I had a ton of fun!

I was thinking this morning about that weighty pause when someone invites you into adventure – when you can either say “yes” or “no,” with the person left eagerly anticipating your response.  I think we experience that same weighty pause with God all the time.  God is constantly inviting us to take on new adventures:  stepping through the church doors for the first time in a long time, hoping not to be judged or hurt; going to a church study group, unsure about how your doubts or questions may be received; serving dinner at the homeless ministry, wondering what you can possibly say to or have in common with someone who lives on the streets.  If you do not have a relationship with Christ, saying “yes” can be hard.  But even when you do have a relationship with Christ, responding positively to an invitation from God can be hard.  Taking on new adventures with God means trusting, letting go of fear, and making yourself vulnerable.

I wonder what invitations to adventure God has been inviting you to try this week.  What invitation might you say “yes” to that you have been delaying or refusing altogether?  The risk is that you might pull some muscles, skin some knees, or bruise that old ego.  But the payoff is that you might find meaning, purpose, and renewed relationship with God.  And I suspect that you might also have a bit of fun!

Sermon – Matthew 4.1-11, Genesis 2.15-17, 3.1-7, L1, YA, March 5, 2017

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church, corrupt, disciplines, doubt, evil, God, goodness, identity, insecurity, Jesus, Lent, question, relationship, repentance, Satan, Sermon, sin, temptation, trust

On this first Sunday in Lent, I usually like to talk about Lenten disciplines.  The season of Lent is one of the few times in the Church that we take a hard look at our faith life and then actually commit to doing something tangible to strengthen our walk with Christ.  When I hear about your disciplines, I get some clue as to what feeds each of you spiritually – whether you long to connect with Holy Scripture, or hope to deepen your prayer life; whether you know that denial of certain parts of your life will create a needed discomfort or disruption, or instead find taking up something to create needed transformation; whether you are motivated by something fun and engaging (like Lent Madness), or you prefer something more philosophical (like our Lenten study group focusing on the spirituality of the Eucharist).  Lenten disciplines also give me a tiny clue about what sinful behaviors have been pulling you away from God.  As we prayed the Great Litany today, there were countless options:  pride, vainglory, hypocrisy, envy, hatred, malice, desires of the flesh, and hardness of heart.  Or, perhaps you are inspired to help one of those we prayed for in the Litany:  the lonely, the sick, the homeless, the imprisoned, broken families, the oppressed, or those suffering injustice.  There really is no wrong way to approach Lenten disciplines – that we are taking them on demonstrates a commitment to enriching our faith and growing closer to God.

Given the beginning of those practices, the text of Jesus’ temptation every year on this first Sunday in Lent has always seemed most appropriate.  How better to encourage us to engage in repentance and reformation than to remember that Jesus too was tempted – tempted to ease the discomfort of hunger, tempted to test God’s loyalty and support, and tempted to take on power – even if ill-gotten – for the greater good?  And even better that this year in Lent, we get that powerful lesson from Hebrew Scriptures of Adam and Eve’s temptation – the temptation to eat beautiful fruit, to learn what God knows but won’t tell us, to take control of our destiny.  And all of those temptations would be plenty.  But what has been striking me more powerfully this year has been what is at the root of the temptations of Satan.  You see, in all of those tests for Jesus, and even in the simple offering of forbidden fruit, Satan does something even more insidious.  Through his temptations, Satan works to undermine our relationship with God – to sow the seed of mistrust that promises to unravel the very foundation of our faith.

We can talk all we want about deepening our faith, working on our sinful behaviors, or becoming better Christians in Lent.  But much scarier to talk about is the power of evil to undo our faith altogether.  Many of us know the darkness of this power from Satan.  If we have not had a spiritual identity crisis in our lives, someone we know has.  Enough people around us die, enough suffering happens in the world, enough pain comes our way that slowly we begin to wonder if God cares at all.  We watch what Christians do to one another or how they fail to care for one another, we see the misdeeds of the Church, or the Church’s clergy disappoint us, and slowly, slowly, we begin to doubt God is even present.  As I have been watching the news, as our country becomes more deeply divided, as suffering seems to be epidemic, and as we dehumanize one another, sometimes institutionalizing that dehumanization, I see the power of evil planting seed after seed of mistrust.  Who hasn’t asked, “Where is God?” in the last year?  Who hasn’t thought, “Maybe I should stop trusting God, and start taking care of things myself.”?  Who hasn’t wondered if God is slipping into irrelevance as the world falls apart around us?

As I have pondered the temptations of Adam, Eve, and Jesus, the power of evil to corrupt has been much more powerful, potent, and pressing this year.  The “crafts and assaults of the devil” and the desire to “beat down Satan under our feet”[i] we heard in the Great Litany are much more powerful in our current climate.  I am much less worried about Adam and Eve’s original sin than I am worried about their original insecurity.  The serpent comes along and sews mistrust among Adam and Eve.  He starts out with a simple question, “Did God really say…”  And so begins the serpent’s assault on their relationship with God – misrepresenting and undermining God’s instructions, suggesting God is keeping something from them.  And as scholar David Lose suggests, once this primary relationship is undermined, Adam and Eve are “susceptible to the temptation to forge their identity on their own, independent on their relationship with God, and so take and eat the forbidden fruit… [They] forget whose they are and so lose themselves in the temptation to secure their identity on their own.”[ii]  Though Adam and Eve’s sin is grave, how the serpent gets them there is much scarier to me.

Satan attempts to do the very same thing with Jesus.  “The devil also tries to undermine Jesus’ relationship with God by suggesting [the relationship] is not secure, that he should test [the relationship] by throwing himself off the mountain, or that he should go his own way by creating food for himself, or that he should seek the protection and patronage of the devil rather than trust God’s provision.”[iii]  Satan is good!  He even tries to twist Jesus’ use of scripture to convince Jesus of God’s unworthiness of trust.  What is frightening about Satan’s tactics is that he is not just about tempting us to do bad things.  He is meddling in our relationship with God, sewing distrust, confusion, questioning our identity as beloved children of God.  And that kind of meddling leads to much worse problems than poor behavior.  Satan tries to upend who we are.

Last week, we baptized two members into the household of faith.  We talked about how baptism marks for us who and whose we are.  We gave thanks for the reminder and celebrated as a community.  We were not unlike Adam and Eve, who upon their creation, God says it is very good.  We were not unlike Jesus, who at his own baptism, which occurs immediately before his temptation today, God says, “This is my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”  But Satan takes goodness and blessedness, and tries to taint that goodness and blessedness with doubt, mistrust, and insecurity.  He tries to confuse us, making us forget who and whose we are.

Several years ago, the movie The Help debuted.  In the film, there is a maid who cares for a child who gets a lot of verbal abuse from her mother.  In several key scenes, the maid takes the child aside and teaches the child a mantra of sorts.  In her rough grammar, she reminds the child, “You is smart, you is kind, you is important.”  Eventually the maid is fired, and the audience is left hoping that the mantra she taught the child will remind her that no matter what verbal abuse she receives, she can remember who she is – smart, kind, and important.

We do not always have caretakers in our lives who will instill in us a mantra that holds us in the face of adversity.  But we do have a church.  We have a church that will tell us we are made in the image of God, that our very creation is rooted in goodness, and that we are beloved children of God.  When we begin to be assaulted by the power of evil, which would rather us question our identity, the church reminds of us of our baptismal covenant, our identity-making set of promises, which tells us we are enough, there is plenty to go around, and we need not live in fear.  While the forces of evil will try to isolate us and send us into questions of identity, the church comes together every week to remind us that we are beloved children of God – a people of value, worth, and purpose.[iv]

I do not know what spiritual discipline you are taking up for Lent this year.  But if you do nothing else this Lent, come to church.  Come gather with the community that reminds you who and whose you are.  Come be with a people who are also assaulted by the doubts, questions, and fears of the day, but who ground themselves in their identity, and find meaning, encouragement, and purpose in this place.  Come.  Together, we will stamp down Satan under our feet as we shine light on our God who redeems, reveres, and renews us.  Amen.

[i] BCP, 151-152.

[ii] David Lose, “Lent 1A:  Identity as Gift and Promise,” February 28, 2017, as found at http://www.davidlose.net/2017/02/lent-1-a-identity-as-gift-and-promise/ on March 2, 2017.

[iii] Lose.

[iv] Lose.

Homily – Hebrews 4.12–16, John Wyclif, October 30, 2014

Tags

alive, challenge, change, comfort, God, homily, John Wyclif, question, scripture

Today we honor John Wyclif.  Born around 1330, John was educated at Oxford.  He served as a parish priest, but spent most of his vocation teaching theology and philosophy at Oxford and was celebrated for his academic achievements.  In 1374, Wyclif defended the Crown during a dispute with the papacy about finances.  This stance gained him a group of powerful patrons who were able to protect Wyclif.  This protected status gave him the freedom to try out his theological views, many of which were at odds with the medieval church.  Many of Wyclif’s ideas became the fodder for the reform movement in the following centuries.  In fact, later reformers like John Hus and Martin Luther acknowledged a debt to Wyclif.

Wyclif’s ideas may not seem radical now, but that is because they are a part of our Anglican identity.  Wyclif believed believers could have a direct, unmediated relationship with God, not needing intervention from the church or a priest.  He believed the national church should be free from papal authority.  He believed scripture should be available in the language of the people – and he translated the Vulgate into English.  He even questioned transubstantiation, which eventually gained him some enemies.

What I love about this feast day for Wyclif is that we get this lovely passage from Hebrews.  The lesson opens up with this line: “The word of God is something alive and active.”  So often we think about Holy Scripture as a static collection of books.  We might try to understand a passage, but often forget that Holy Scripture is alive and active.  Or perhaps we do not forget, but we long for scripture to be static and still, because if Holy Scripture stays the same, we can be comfortable and avoid change.

Once, when I was visiting a friend at Trinity Wall Street, she told me that the clergy have a lot of freedom there.  Because their funding comes from their huge investments, they are not dependent upon pledges for support.  And because they are not dependent upon pledges, they never have to worry about someone becoming upset and taking their pledge away.  I imagine that the clergy are much like Wyclif in his day – free to explore new concepts and ideas, and to challenge the status quo.  We know that when Wyclif did that, the church was transformed – it became alive and active like the Holy Scriptures.  That is our invitation today, too: to consider how our own faith life might become more alive and active, how the Holy Spirit might be working in us in new ways and to jump into the unknown.  Amen.

Sermon – I Kings 19.1-15a, P7, YC, June 23, 2013

Tags

coach, Elijah, go, God, question, retreat, Sermon, spiritual

This past week, I went down to a monastery in South Carolina for my annual spiritual retreat.  An annual spiritual retreat is one of the stipulations from my letter of agreement here at St. Margaret’s, so one could assume that we all know what going on a spiritual retreat means.  But I cannot tell you the number of people – parishioners, friends, family members, and fellow travelers – who have asked me the same question:  so what do you do on a spiritual retreat?  Some follow up with other questions about whether I have a schedule of meetings or classes or whether I really have to be silent the whole time.  But most people do not know what a spiritual retreat really looks like.

So imagine my surprise this week, when I opened the text for today, only to hear God twice asking Elijah, “What are you doing here?”  Having been asked that question by countless others over the last few weeks, I got a little defensive about God’s question for Elijah.  Thinking that I somehow needed to answer this question too, my first response was a response not unlike Elijah – who twice explains to God, in the exact same words, “I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword.  I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.”  As if God did not know that already.  God’s double question, and Elijah’s double response give a little clue about what is happening here.  God is not really asking what Elijah is doing there – at least not in the sense of, “What led you to come here?”  God is asking a much deeper question.  God’s question is the deeper question, “What does your being here say about me, about you, and about our relationship?  Given what you know, what are you doing here, Elijah?”

So instead of answering the question in the standard way – telling others about the silence of the day, the times of worship, the periods, places, and practices of prayer, or even about the monks themselves, instead I let God’s deeper question sit with me this week as well.  What are you doing here?  I found that each time I tried to answer the question the response was not as deep as God’s question.  So if I said I came to rest and refresh for my ministry, God’s response was, “What are you doing here?”  If I said I wanted help discerning answers to some heavy questions, God’s response was, “What are you doing here?”  If I said I just wanted clarity, God’s response was, “What are you doing here?”

This is the hard question from the text for all of us today.  God is asking this question of you this week too.  When you came in those doors and sat in that pew, God asked you, “What are you doing here?”  When you listened to scripture and when you pray, God is asking you, “What are you doing here?”  When you come to the Eucharistic table and consume Christ’s body and blood, God is still asking you, “What are you doing here?”  Today is one of those tricky days in Church.  There is no coasting through this service, just hoping to feel some sense of peace.  God is actively in our faces, asking us the tough question.

The truth is most of us feel like Elijah a good portion of the time.  We hear Elijah’s whiny response throughout this story.  When Elijah flees from Jezebel’s death threat, Elijah sits down under a tree and asks God to just let him die.  He even flops down under the tree hoping for death.  Of course, God does not allow that.  Twice angels wake him to give him food for the journey.  Even after this sustenance, Elijah finds another place to hide – a cave hidden away.  But God does not allow hiding there either.  We know Elijah’s pain.  We just want to come to church, hear some good music, hear a decent sermon, get that sustaining meal, and go back to the daily grind.  We do not want to hear what God says in the sheer silence.  In the sheer silence, God says, “Go.”  God tells Elijah to get back out there and do God’s work.  God does not coddle Elijah or comfort him in his fear.  Instead God tells Elijah to go.

At the end of the day, God’s words for Elijah were the same words for me during my retreat.  I may have lamented to God.  I may have worried to God.  I may have given some lengthy explanation to God about why I was there.  But before I could go any further, God stopped me.  “What are you doing here?  Go.”

When I was in college, the first year I danced with a team, we went to a training camp.  The coach realized pretty quickly those of us who were lacking in certain areas.  My challenge was that I could not yet do a toe-touch.  When we started doing them in training, the coach had us stand in line and one-by-one we had to do a toe-touch in front of him.  When he saw mine, he laid into me.  I basically remember him screaming something to the effect of, “I don’t care if you have to do sit-ups non-stop, or if you need to lift weights, or you just need to stand there and do toe-touches all day until you can’t move, I better see you up in the air before the season starts.”  At least, that is the clean version of what he yelled.  Never having played sports, I had never had anyone yell at me like that, and he put the proverbial “fear of God” in me.  And figuring he was serious, I started working out more and practicing more just to get to where he wanted me to be.

I hear God as being like that coach for us today.  God is kind of like a coach, getting up in our faces today, demanding to know, “What are you doing here?”  And before we can stumble through some Elijah-like complain fest, God says, “Go.”  God says that the dismissal we hear every week is not some cute phrase we say to conclude the service.  That dismissal is our “Go.”  “Let us go forth in the name of Christ.”  “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.”  “Let us go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.”  The answer to what we are doing here is to be empowered to go.  We can be fed by the word, by song, and by the meal, but the reason we do those things is so that we can go.  God’s question today is deep, hard, but simple:  What are you doing here?  And in case we are wondering what the answer is, God tells us:  Go.  Amen.