Wiggle Room

Reflections on  Matthew 16:13-23, 1 Corinthians 13:12 and Isaiah 43:19

I use to pride myself on being a light and efficient packer. I was meticulous about folding and organizing, so as to maximize what could be packed in a small amount of space. I could afford to spend time on folding and arranging, because I didn’t have children, or pets, or other obligations for whom I had to pack. At that time, I packed in a traditional suitcase with sturdy sides and a molded, slightly curved top. There was little to no wiggle room, a finite amount of space for all my essentials and that is how I liked it. I would not have preferred a soft-sided duffel over the solid framework of a suitcase. My belongings felt protected in my suitcase … protected from the outside elements, from careless airline employees, from the wind and the rain of the tarmac. Protected also from damage within, from wrinkles and disorganization. You can’t protect your clothing from wrinkles in a duffel bag. Neatness and organization are virtually impossible ... too much wiggle room.

Image: geishaboy50

Life is a lot like packing. We want everything to fit neatly in rectangular boxes, in a finite space that feels secure and safe.  Whether we are packing clothing or organizing our thoughts on life and faith, most of us prefer solid boundaries … toiletries, undergarments, shirts, pants … black and white, right and wrong, good and evil. Life is just easier that way. There is safety and certainty in solid boundaries and who doesn’t long for that?

“But who do you say that I am?”

Peter was certain of his answer when Jesus pulled the disciples aside and asked them that question. Without hesitation he proclaimed, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  And he was right. Jesus said that that insight came straight from God. That's a suitcase you want to pack your faith in, solid, clear boundaries, no wiggle room, or so Peter thought. In Peter’s mind, he knew exactly what was packed within the framework of “messiah.” He was certain of what that title meant and where it would take Jesus and those who followed him. So when Jesus started going on and on about going to Jerusalem where he would suffer and die and on the third day be raised, Peter rebuked him. Peter REBUKED Jesus. There was no room in Peter’s messianic luggage for the suffering and death of the messiah. That did not fit within the clear boundaries of his hard-sided suitcase.

“ … you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things.”

Peter went from hero to zero in a matter of several verses and Jesus called him on it. He said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!” (I hope never to hear that from Jesus, but who knows.) It seems that Peter, while receiving one truth from God, took that truth and imposed his own solid and safe boundaries around it, leaving no wiggle room for God to work, no room for mystery or surprise, no room for things to get a little messy. And that is a very human thing to do, imposing safety and certainly where none is provided.

"For now we see in a mirror dimly ..."

Today we live in a world that has been created out of the fear and uncertainty that was born from the events of 9/11 and resulted in a world at war against terrorism abroad and at home, as well as a huge economic meltdown right in our own backyard. We don’t feel safe and little seems certain. In such a world how do human beings tend to respond? We respond by shoring up our boundaries, not just our geographical ones, but intellectual ones, pulling tight our framework, boxing in our thoughts, creating certainty were there is none. We draw lines between right and wrong and us and them. We create a false sense of certainty, a false sense of security with opinions that we have packaged as truth. It doesn’t really matter if you fall on the right or the left, both sides are so sure they are right (that they are correct) that they can’t hear each other. So tight are our boundaries that there is no wiggle room for conversation, for dialogue, for new possibilities. All that is left is animosity and finger pointing. 

This is not a new phenomenon and it isn’t just political. It is what we humans do when fear and uncertainty get the better of us. We are just as likely to impose false boundaries around our faith, as we are our politics. Why does God allow bad things to happen? Why another flood, an earthquake, continued economic hardship, why? It must be God’s judgment on what we are doing or allowing. God is trying to get our attention. We need a reason that will make our circumstances make sense. We need a box to store what we see happening around us, so that it will seems less scary and we will feel, in some small way, empowered to do something about it or at the very least to explain it. Out of fear, Christians are digging in their heals on marriage and issues of sexuality, on the person of Jesus Christ and the authority of scripture. The same way Christians of the past had dug in their heels around slavery and the role of women, on issues of the person of Jesus Christ and the authority of scripture (some debates are timeless).

We have always longed for safety and certainty. And it has always been true that faith, just like life, is neither safe nor certain.

Faith is the opposite of fear. Fear draws boundaries and refuses conversation. Faith has soft-sides and wiggle room which fosters dialogue. Fear closes us off. Faith opens us up. Fear manufactures answers when none are given. Faith learns to operate in the midst of ambiguity and mystery. Faith takes risks.  Fear takes none. Faith says, “yes” to God, without inflicting our will on God. Faith holds what God has given us in a duffel bag, not a hard-shell case.

"I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth.  Do you not perceive it?"

With reluctance, I have traded in my sturdy, plastic suitcase with the rounded top, for a discounted, canvas duffel bag with someone else’s initials on it.  I am cautiously risking uncertainly and surprise and even a little wardrobe chaos. I am learning to leave a little wiggle room for God to work. 

Picking Up The Pieces

Reflections on Ecclesiastes 3:1-11, Matthew 19:26 and Patsy Cline

I fall to pieces …

           

Terri’s life was beginning to feel like a country western song.  While that certainly wasn’t her taste in music, it was the music she was raised on, with a father who yodeled to bluegrass and a mother who loved The Grand Ole Opry.   Of late, the radio in her head kept repeating Patsy Cline’s, I Fall to Pieces ... just the chorus, as if there was a skip in that old record.  It was no wonder really.  In the fall of her forty-second year, the business that she had started with her husband failed and they declared bankruptcy.  It wasn’t long after that that his drinking, which had always been a problem, became abusive.  In May, Terri had left her husband and moved in with her parents.  As if that wasn't enough, within a month, Sammy, her twelve-year-old Jack Russell terrier, had to be put down after a sudden series of seizures.  In between jobs, in the midst of a divorce and having lost her most loyal companion, Terri’s life had indeed fallen to pieces.      

The First Lisburn Presbyterian Church had fallen to pieces too, in an instant.  The year was 1981 and Northern Ireland’s troubles were well established and flashes of violence were not uncommon.  On a Wednesday evening in August, as local shops were closing, a car, that had been parked on Market Street, just around the corner from the church, blew up.  In that instant, shops and offices and the church were devastated.  Of greatest concern to the members of the Presbyterian congregation was the lost of seventeen stained glass windows, some shattered and in pieces and some left twisted in unimaginable formations of lead and glass.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

The writer of Ecclesiastes understood life’s propensity for ups and downs.  There is a time and season for everything: the good, the bad and the indifferent.  There is a time for success and a time for bankruptcy.  There is a time for love and a time for marriage and even a time for the divorce, cutting your loses and demanding better for yourself.  There is a time to enjoy the unconditional love of a canine companion and a time to say goodbye.  There are times for love and times for loss.  There are times for independence and leaving your parents’ home and occasionally times to return.  There are times when you have it all together and times when it all falls to pieces.  Life is just that way.  And although it seems at times meaningless and haphazard, there is something more, a thread that weaves hope in and through the broken pieces.

God has made all things beautiful for its time.

The members of the First Lisburn Presbyterian Church couldn’t bear to toss the pieces of broken stained glass in a dumpster as if they were trash.  Even before a plan was hatched, the pieces were gathered, because what was broken was still highly valued.  It wasn’t long before the way forward became clear:  these colored shards of glass, once beautiful could be beautiful again and this time more profound in their beauty.  Soon a new stained glass window was commissioned, a window to be made from the broken pieces.  In 1987 the new window, entitled The Resurrection Window, was dedicated with the following inscription:

The Resurrection Window

“This window is a memorial of the bomb-blast of 5^th August, 1981 and the subsequent restoration of our church and halls.  It is a tribute to our neighbours in shops and offices and their will to overcome disaster.  It is an echo of the motto of this town: EX IGNE RESURGAM (I will arise from fire.)  It is a witness to our faith in Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Terri too had broken bits of her life to contend with, her heart and her dreams had taken a hit.  They were in fact shattered, but she was not willing to throw them away either.  Her heart and her dreams were still of great value and so she picked up the pieces and kept them safe until the times and the seasons began to change.  And change they did. 

…with God, all things are possible.

God indeed can make beauty out of broken glass and broken people.  In God’s time, seasons change and beauty is crafted out of pain and even loss.  I don’t know how God does it, but I have seen it again and again.  Broken hearts and broken dreams pieced together by a loving and purposeful hand. The result is never what is expected, but always beyond what one could imagine.  However, God can’t heal what we toss away, only what we gather up.  Sometimes all that separates one season from the next is the picking up of broken pieces. 

Bluebonnets

Reflections on Luke 24:8-11

Having found the tomb empty and being told that Jesus had risen, the women share their epiphany with the other disciples:

... returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and all the rest.  Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles.  But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

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In the spring every region has its particular beauty.  I am from the northeast and we glory in the tulips and the hyacinth and then the forsythia, the rhododendron and the azalea.  And that is not even to mention the flowering trees, the dogwoods and the cherry trees.  We are spoiled in the northeast.  There is so much color to our spring.  In other parts of the country spring comes less auspiciously. 

I was in Austin, Texas in April of 2010.  I was attending a conference with friends, two of whom are Texas natives.  I wasn’t expecting much from Texas in April.  What kind of spring could Texas possible have?  I confess, I came with prejudice in my heart.  Texas and I are not on good terms.  I have yet to forgive the state for the disaster that was my sixth grade year.  (That is another story)  So suffice it to say, I was not expecting much from my visit to Austin.  However, I had been told, more than once, that Texas bluebonnets were a sight to see. 

I flew into San Antonio, where my friend, Katheryn, pastors a church.  She picked me up at the airport and we traveled together by minivan to Austin, north on Highway 35.  We had a lot of catching up to do.  There was talk of the glory days of seminary and of course crazy church stuff, friends we had in common and enemies too.  Pastors so rarely get the chance to vent, it was a shame we didn’t have farther to travel.  There was so much to say.  In the middle of one long tale, out of nowhere, Katheryn gasped.  Literally G A S P E D.  I was looking out the passenger side window, away from Katheryn, lost in thought, focused on the trials and tribulations of church service, when Katheryn unexpectedly took in a whole lot of air.  My heart nearly jumped out of my chest.  I was sure that I was no more than a second or two from meeting Jesus face to face and I didn’t want that to happen while I was telling tales out of school.  I snapped my head to the left, in Katheryn’s direction.  She was pointing to her left, out the driver’s side window.  “BLUEBONNETS!” she exclaimed.

Are you kidding me?!  It took a moment before I could make the transition from impending death to wildflowers.  It took more than a moment for my heart rate to drop back to near normal.  In the mean time, before I could respond, I saw them.  Little specks of blue scattered in and among the tall grass on the median strip that separated the northbound and southbound lanes.  Little flowers, not in mass, not bunched together in a blaze of glory, but scattered randomly, haphazardly, maybe two-dozen peaking out in a sea of tall grass.

All I could say was, “oh,” with a tone of relief, rather than awe.  While it was certainly better than death on a Texas highway, and it obviously meant something to Katheryn, to be honest, it was underwhelming.  I have to say, the build up was better than the reality.  I expected a sea of blue outlined in grass, not a sea of grass with specks of blue.  I expected a wildflower patch like you see on the highways in the southeast where dense, purposeful swatches of color are framed by highway on-ramps and exits. 

That is the nature of an epiphany.  It is as individual as our taste in wildflowers.  The Holy Spirit opens one person to a truth, a revelation, through a walk in the woods or the words of a song or a happenstance at work, any of which on any other day or for any other person might convey nothing out of the ordinary and even if that walk or song or happenstance is shared with another, one might have an enormous God-moment, while the other remains unaware and untouched.  Katheryn’s reaction to the beauty she saw in the bluebonnets drew from her a physical and audible reaction, a gasp, as if to say, "If you saw what I just saw, surely you would gasp too."  But I did see what she saw and I was not moved in the same way or even moved at all. 

There is a truth in that simple scenario that speaks to our desire to force our epiphanies on others.  We believe that if we can lead someone to the place of our own revelation, if we can point to what we saw or heard, put words to what we felt or what we had, in a holy moment, come to understand, then others will see or hear or feel or understand it too.  If I was moved, you will be too.  We want to share our epiphanies and we think we can make it happen.  But an epiphany is a work of the Holy Spirit, not a human creation.  It finds us when the time is just right.  It finds us in God’s time.  We cannot manufacture or control it.  It happens to us, not because of us and subsequently we can not make it happen for others. 

We can’t force the Spirit’s hand, just as the Spirit chooses not to force our will.  The Holy Spirit woos individual hearts and minds toward holy truths at God’s pace, a timing synched to our own individual personalities and circumstances.  It may take a lifetime for some to see the beauty of God’s creation on the median of a Texas highway, while others seem ready to oooooh and ahhhhhh at birth.  This, should we grasp it, gives us cause to be patient with those who cannot share our epiphanies, who fail to be impressed with what moves us to the core.  The Holy Spirit isn’t finished with them yet, just as the Spirit isn’t finished with us.  Epiphanies come when we are not looking, not expecting.  They take us by surprise.  They make us gasp.  If a co-worker, acquaintance, family member or beloved friend, cannot share the enormity of your revelation or inspiration, it doesn’t mean that they never will, only that this time is your time not theirs.  This epiphany is for you, a gift from the God who loves you, who knows you, who created you.  Their time will come and perhaps already has with a different message, another insight, something you can’t quite see yet, but perhaps someday you will. 

Our epiphanies are individual affairs.  The truth is, you can lead a person to bluebonnets, but you can’t make them gasp!

Katheryn sent me this picture just the other day.

Apparently a rainy winter has made for a spectacular spring in Texas this year. 

Had I seen this, I may have GASPED!

Easter ... Dreams Lost and Found

Reflections on Luke 24:5

Carrie and John had talked about having children from their first date.  It seemed presumptuous then, but quickly it was clear theirs was a lifetime romance.  They were married within a year and started trying to create the family they had dreamed of right away.  Within six months, Carrie was pregnant and shopping for baby paraphernalia on her lunch hour and John was busy making ready a nursery.  The miscarriage came as a shock.  It just never occurred to Carrie that things would not go as planned.  But her doctor told her it was not uncommon to miscarry a first pregnancy in the first trimester.  So they tried again right away.  Four more pregnancies and four more miscarriages.  The door to the nursery was kept closed and Carrie no longer shopped on her lunch hour.  It was clear that something was wrong.  Still, it felt like a death when her obstetrician sat them down together and told them they would never be able to carry a baby to term.  A dream, their dream, their vision for their future was laid to rest in a doctor’s file. 

Mike dreamed of a career in business, one that would start as soon as he received his college degree, but in the fall of his junior year, his father was severely injured in a tractor accident and he was needed at home to work the family farm.  His dream died and was buried in a cornfield. 

Terri loved to dance.  She often said she lived to dance.  Her childhood was a blur of classes and recitals.  Her parents insisted she attend college, so she picked one with an excellent, extra-curricular dance program and majored in dance and minored in her studies.  Her dream was to dance at Lincoln Center.  Upon graduation she went straight to New York City.  It turned out that her dreams were bigger than her ability.  Audition after audition ended in bitter disappointment.  After two years, she buried her dreams in a city dumpster along with her lucky ballet slippers and headed for home.          

Paula simply dreamed of growing old with Jack, her husband of 19 years.  She loved him more than she thought possible, but it wasn’t enough for him.  Her dream died in family court, the Honorable Judge Raymond Walters presiding over a divorce decree that freed Jack to marry Emily, his co-worker and mistress of nearly three years.  Paula’s dream was laid to rest in the home she was forced to sell in an effort to split their assets.

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Jesus wasn’t the only thing sealed behind a large stone, laid to rest in a dark tomb.  With him were buried the hopes and the dreams of all those who had left behind hometowns, jobs, even families to follow the itinerant rabbi who spoke of the coming of the kingdom of God.  Those who followed Jesus had dreams about how Jesus would make the world, their world, better.  Some dreamed of a land freed from Roman rule.  Others dreamed of justice.  Some simply dreamed of enough ... enough food, enough shelter, enough cash to be secure.  Some thought, that with the coming of the kingdom of God, the end must surely be drawing near.  They dreamed of being found on the right side of God’s certain judgment.  Maybe some just dreamed of God, drawn to Jesus because he made them feel close to the divine.  Maybe some were thrill seekers or the chronically curious, regardless, each person had a dream, a vision of how life would be for them, for Jesus, for the world, as they followed him into Jerusalem.  And each of them watched their dreams die with Jesus on that Roman cross just outside the city.  Those dreams where buried with Jesus, as surely dead and he was.

And then came Easter morning.  According to Luke’s gospel, the women, who had followed Jesus’ body to the tomb on Good Friday, whose hopes and dreams had also died with him, having observed he Sabbath, returned with spices to anoint his body.  What they found was the stone rolled away and the tomb empty.  The body was gone.  In its place, two men, perhaps angels, tell them:

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?  He is not here, but has risen.”

Photo by Jaime Owens

It would be an understatement to say that they didn’t see that coming and neither did the other disciples, who received the news from the women as an “idle tale.”  Yet the truth, God’s truth, a truth beyond all hope or expectation, won out in the end.  The one who had escaped the tomb appeared to them again and again over the course of forty days.  And with him, was born, in the hearts of those who followed Jesus, new dreams, bigger dreams, dreams that they could never have dreamed on their own.

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Sometimes we have to let what is meant to die, die, so that what is meant to live, can live.  What was laid to rest in that tomb was not what emerged.  The resurrected Lord was glorified; the same, yet changed.  He appeared and disappeared at will.  At times he was recognizable, with the marks of his suffering plain to see, but at other times he appeared incognito, revealed only in the breaking of the bread.  And what of those dreams that were buried with him?  They too had been transformed, changed.  The disciples could never have dreamed of how the world, their world, would change after Jesus’ death.  They didn’t see the resurrection coming … and neither do we. 

Our dreams die too.  Things don’t always go as expected.  Life doesn’t unfold as planned.  But letting die what must die, leaves room for resurrection and with resurrection comes new dreams, divinely inspired dreams that will surely carry us beyond what we could ever imagine on our own.

That is how the kingdom comes.  Dreams lost.  Dreams found.  The world, our world ... changed.  Resurrection!

Good Friday ... A World Without God

Reflections on Mark 15:34

It did not begin with the absence of God.  It began with good news of God’s kingdom come near.  Good news for the poor and the blind and the sick and the weak.  It began with light and life and God was not absent.  But in this last moment, as the story appears to be coming to an end, the light goes out and the miracles cease, no power is left, there is only a cry … a cry so painful that it is hard to hear for what it is.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

In this last moment, God was absent.  Jesus was abandoned.  Through Jesus there had been miracles for the sick, the lame and the blind.  There was power to calm the sea and to heal the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years.  There were words to confound the self-righteous and feed the down trodden, but on this day there were no miracles for Jesus.  There was no power to escape this end or ease his suffering.  There were no words to make sense of it.  No words for those who mocked.  No words for those who grieved.  No words to make it all better.  There was only a cry, a cry of abandonment.  My God, my God … why?

There is something very human about wanting to know why.  We are cause and effect people with the intellectual capacity for reason.  And so we push beyond the bounds of our immediate circumstances and we look back and we look forward and we wrestle with the why, so that we can make sense of it all.   That’s all we want really.   We want everything to make sense.

In that moment, Jesus wanted his pain, his suffering, his torment to make sense.  And we want that too.  Why God, would you turn your back on an innocent man, a man whose life was given in the service of you?  Why would you be so fully present in Jesus, only to abandon him in that last hour?  It is not how I would have done it, if the script were mine to write, but of course that is silly.  It is neither my script to write, nor yours and so we sit uncomfortably at the foot of the cross wanting to know why.

I have no answer for that question.  The why of God’s abandonment is left to dangle before us like a moldy carrot on a stick, one that we would like to do away with and be done with it.  I do not know why.  I only know the affect that the anguish of that moment caused on those gathered around the cross and those who through out the centuries have dared to take a long hard look.

Matthew says that the light that had dawned with Jesus arrival had gone out.  He writes that darkness fell over the whole land and with Jesus’ cry the earth shook and rocks split as if the whole created order felt in that moment the absence of God.  It was as if the rejection of Jesus was the rejection of God.  And in that moment we were given a glimpse of a world without God in it.  A world where miracles cease and words fail and humankind is left to grope alone in the darkness and how great is that darkness. 

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I remember as a young child when things weren’t going my way.  I would fantasize about running away.  I would pack a small bag and leave.  I would be free to do as I wanted.  Free to play when I wanted and eat what I wanted.  I would just go.  I must have dangled that carrot out in front of my mother a time or two too many, because one day my mother had had it.  “If things are that bad” she said, “so bad that you feel you need to leave, then I will spare you the trouble.  I will go.”  And she did go.  She packed up a small bag and walked out the front door.  She got in her car and she left.  And I got a little taste of life without my mother in it.  Before you bring my mother up on charges of neglect, my father was home at the time, but that was of little consolation.  I was devastated.  I experienced a rush of emptiness that took my little breath away.  I dissolved on the spot and was inconsolable. 

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The affect of God’s absence, God’s abandonment of Jesus, in that moment was so palpable that all of creation felt the loss.  The weight of that loss came crashing on all those around.  So great was the terror of that moment that the Roman centurion was heard to say, “Truly this was God’s son.”  As if to realize what they had done.  As if to realize what they had lost.

No doubt, I realized what I had done as a child.  My father was on the phone to my mother within minutes.  She was at the neighbor’s waiting for the signal to return.

This last moment, this last cry from the cross was, thank God, not the end of the story either, but to embrace the end of the story, to find the true wonder and joy in Easter morning, you have to sit in the darkness of Good Friday in a world without God in it. 

It did not begin with the absence of God and it will not end with the absence of God.  But in that dark moment, when God was absent, the whole world changed.