Houses and Hens

Lent 2

Luke 13:31-35

“This is Christ’s Church.”  I said to a group of church members gathered in the worship area for an annual meeting.  We were talking about mission.  A man stood up, scowling.  “This is OUR church!”  The insistence in his voice was a little scary.  “We built it.  We support it.  We take care of it.  The church belongs to us!”  Jesus words, lamenting over Jerusalem, came to mind.  “See, your house is left to you!”  Fortunately, I did not quote Jesus’ words out loud.  I don’t think it would have helped. 

That happened a long time ago.  But I fear that, sometimes, we forget why God, through the Holy Spirit, gathers us together into churches; into communities of faith.  Sometimes I fear that our attitudes about “our” churches are not too far from this man’s – we just wouldn’t dare say it out loud or even admit it to ourselves.  Out loud, we would agree that the church belongs to Christ, but our actions and our anxieties reflect a different underlying reality.  When a church turns inward upon itself, decline and ultimately, death, is the inevitable result.  When we become possessive of the church, and  begin to think that the church is primarily there to serve us and to take care of our needs, we need to be convicted Jesus’ words, “See, your house is left to you!”

Like the mother hen, God still yearns to gather her children under her wings.   Gathering and tending the flock is an important part of what a church does.  Churches need to provide spiritual nurture and care, pray for and with one another,  visit those who are sick, lonely or bereaved, teach the Word, and gather for the worship and praise of God.  In the gathering, God forms, equips and nurtures disciples for the sake of Christ’s mission in the world.  But, the gathering is not the end point of being a church.  Following in the Way of Jesus, we are sent from our gatherings to be the Church in the world and in our daily lives.  We are sent to bear witness to the love and grace of God in word and deed.  We are sent to reach out to the broken, the lost, the lonely, the hurting and suffering, the hungry, the thirsty, and the stranger.

Gathering and sending.  Gathering and sending.  Gathering and sending.  This should be the rhythm of the Church’s life.  If we forget the gathering, the church becomes, at best, just another social service agency.  If we forget the sending, the church becomes, at best, a social club for the religiously minded.   Gathering and sending.  We need to do both.  Otherwise, our house will be left to us.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

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People of Dust

Ash Wednesday

Matthew 6:19-21

When I was 36 years old, I nearly died.  I should have died.  Really.   I had played racquetball with a friend on the Monday before Thanksgiving, and tore a calf muscle.  The following Thursday, I collapsed at a local restaurant.  I couldn’t breathe.  I had blood clots in both my lungs.  I have since learned that having blood clots in both lungs is about 90% fatal.  If it wasn’t for a fast-thinking nurse (thanks Nancy) at the restaurant, and the grace of God, I would have certainly died.  Since that experience, the words and reflections of our annual Ash Wednesday observance have taken on a particularly pointed meaning for me.

As the ashes are placed on our foreheads with the words, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return”  we are reminded that we all will die.   That is one of the two things each and every one of us on this planet have in common (the other one is being born.)   We are dust.  But, so many people in our culture today do their best to ignore that, to deny it, and even defy it.

I taught “Death and Dying” for fifteen years at the college level.  It always amazed me that my classes filled to capacity almost every semester.  My students WANTED to talk about mortality…  about the mortality of others, about the death that they had witnessed, and experienced, and observed in the death-filled world around them.  But sometimes they seemed to have a very hard time grasping the truth that THEY would die.

That their time on this planet was limited.

That their time was precious,

That their relationships were precious,

That THEY were precious.

The problem is, when you deny the reality of death, when you try to ignore mortality…  it is easy, very easy, to devalue everything.  It is very easy to get to the point where we really can’t see the worth of anything; where we can no longer grasp our need for God.  For a savior.  For One who can show us the way through death.

The season of Lent is a time of penitential reflection on the limits of our lives (and the many ways we transgress those limits), and a time to be reminded of our need for God and God’s love and grace.  It is also a time of renewal as we embrace the reality of those limits and celebrate the freedom from them won by Christ.  In the passage from Matthew, Jesus reminds us where our true treasure lies – in the God who created us, and who loves us so much that God took on our frail, mortal flesh and died for us so that we might have life and have it abundantly.  God loves us so much that God gave us eternal worth, and infinite value by adopting us as children through Jesus Christ.  During Lent we are reminded that we can, and should live in the light and power of that amazing gift.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Jesus in a Box

Transfiguration Sunday

Luke 9:28-36

JB Phillips wrote a wonderful little book in 1961 (the year of my birth) called “Your God is Too Small.”  In the first part of the book, he reviews a number of small, inadequate, unreal and, he says, destructive images of God.  If you ignore the exclusive male-gender language, (it was 1961, after all) he says a lot of things that still ring true.  In the section titled “God-in-a-Box” he writes, 

“If the Churches give the outsider the impression that God works almost exclusively through the machinery they have erected and, what is worse, damns all other machinery which does not bear their label, then they cannot be surprised if he (sic) finds their version of God cramped and inadequate and refuses to “join their union.”  (p. 38).   

A prescient  description of today’s so-called “nones” (those who choose not to participate in “organized” religion)? 

From the dawn of time, we humans have been trying to cram God in a box.   We live with the delusion (which we regularly deny) that if we can just trap God in a temple, or idol, or tabernacle or cathedral or white clapboard church or website we will somehow be able to control God; that somehow God will do our bidding instead of the other way around.   In the Garden, the primal sin of Adam and Eve was not munching on some fruit, it was aspiring to be gods unto themselves.  We often do the same. 

We try to put Jesus in boxes too.  We reduce Jesus to a friendly, do-gooder, a great storyteller, a prophet who decried the social injustices of his day, a healer, or a teacher of moral truths.  He was all those things, yes, and more.  Much more.  Each generation tries to put Jesus in a box that makes sense to their own day and time (Buddy Jesus??).  Jaroslav Pelikan writes a wonderful survey of these boxes in his historical study called “Jesus Through the Centuries.”  It’s still worth checking out.  But, the Transfiguration story blows all those boxes to pieces.  In that moment, Peter, James and John saw the raw, untamed, uncontrollable power of God radiating from their master and revealing him as God’s Chosen One.  And what did they do?  Peter suggested putting up tents.  To build “dwellings” to capture the moment, put it in a box and tame it.  How silly that seems in the face of such awe-some majesty!

Phillips reminds us that God is never limited to the structures that we humans build – whether those are built out of bricks and mortar, or out of theological constructs, or beloved traditions.  God is at loose in the world.  Jesus is alive and present in the faces of the poor, the hungry and the foreigner we meet (see Matthew 25).    The huge God we dare to worship each Sunday radiates with an overwhelming and untamable love.  The Lord we dare to follow embodied that love and it took him to the cross…  and beyond death itself.   If we, but for a moment, could catch the fullness of that vision, it would change us…  and the whole world.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

As always, feel free to pass this along if you found it meaningful or thought-provoking or just mildly curious.  Thanks for reading!