The Presbyterian novelist Frederick Buechner once quipped that the frequent conflict between science and religion is akin to the debate between a podiatrist and poet.  "One says that Susie Smith has fallen arches.  The other says she walks in beauty like the night. In his own way each is speaking the truth. What is at issue is the kind of truth you're after."

We Presbyterians are after divine truth.  Truth that rings true.  Truth that outlives another Tucker/Maddow news cycle and transcends the time it takes to tweet another tweet.  Truth that comforts when you lay your heavy head on that familiar feather pillow; truth that challenges when you grab your car keys and go forth again into an insane world.  After all, insists our Teacher, "you will come to know the truth, and the truth will make you free."  (John 8).  That's the kind of truth we're after.

Furthermore, in the search for such truth, who wants a podiatrist preacher?  Truth that has the power to set us free surely begs for more than a 3-point book report on neatly hole-punched paper.  How did Presbyterian preachers get the notion that holiness is somehow verified by monotony?  Too many sermons seem like overhearing your nephew's cousin report his friend's girlfriend's brother's experience of a Bowl Game.  You may get some of the truth of what happened in Miami, but three points for podiatry.  

So it is that folks of Biblical faith have long been friends with poetry.  Poetry steps in when book reports fail to inspire.  Poets take Mary Magdeline's hand, and then take ours, and being led themselves they lead us to an inexplicable empty tomb.  Poems are the only way fourth- and fifth-hand overhearers of a divine encounter can in any truthful way experience it for themselves.   

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death" prays the psalmist.  He could have said, "sometimes lived experiences cause a deficiency of our monoamine neurotransmitters and require the introduction of serotonin–norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors."   That may well be true, but that kind of straight-line speaking in the middle of the night is likely to leave us all flat-footed come the morning.  If we want to love God (dressed in mystery) and want to love neighbor (dressed in annoyance) and want to love ourselves (dressed in nakedness) we need truth that sings a song.  Banal explanations from a Podiatrist Preacher, however accurate, are not enough to get us out of bed in the morning with the same skip in our step that once raised a crucified Jew.  

So says Walt Whitman:

After the seas are all cross’d, (as they seem already cross’d,)
After the great captains and engineers have accomplish’d their works.
After the noble inventors—after the scientists, the chemist, the geologist, ethnologists.
Finally shall come the Poet, worthy that name;
The true Son of God shall come, singing his songs.

So to some poems we turn as we turn the page of a new year — a year prefaced by the lowest collective expectations I've sensed in my lifetime.   I'm calling our next study Poems for Presbyterian Pilgrims, during which we will wade into the waters of at least half a dozen poems that teach us to sing the song of the Good News afresh.  We'll explore themes about creation, praying, wrestling (with faith), and witnessing (speaking poetically about the prose of life).  And although there is never anything wrong with enjoying the beauty of beautiful words that "walk in beauty like the night," we will want to see through these poems (as with a good pair of bifocals) to catch also another glimpse of the goodness of God.  

Is such a study an indulgence in such a time as this?  Should we forsake the luxuries of reflection and conversation while troubles seem to abound all around?  Should we fiddle while Rome burns?  Fair enough.  A virus lingers.  But perhaps a good poem is precisely what our piety needs right about now.  In such an ugly hour, in the din of 24/7 chatter, amid the boredom of two years worth of isolation, let us seek the booster of Beauty in the clinic of meaningful words.   "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil."  

So says the poet.

Silent Meal

No one says a word
as the bread comes around
warm
yeasty
given out 
a half at a time
like the Eucharist
to pilgrims 
knelt at 
a rail

The silence is requested
by our trinity of hosts
Whose wisdom 
about such 
matters
is proven by 
the palpable calm
A broth
ladled out
all around this 
place

This 
taciturnity
is awkward for us novitiates
We sit in a circle of 
wordless
gestation
Not knowing where to land our gaze
Embarrassed by our contingency
Disbelieving it could be so simple

The only reports
are
the chewing of asparagus
the pouring of Chardonnay
and a 
hoot owl 
across the road
either 
adding more noise 
to the cacophony of the planet
or singing 
a Song 
we are too hurried to know

It goes on like this for a time
creatures
celebrating
the Creator's
kindness
It presents as
intimidating
It soon proves
liberating

I hear the sound of my body's worship

Then she breaks the silence
This stranger in the corner of the circle
Who is this
who tramples on our hosts' request?
She merely wants to know 
why some have quiche
and others a stew 
with spinach 
and 
sausage

Instantly my stew and I 
become 
Pharisees
Silently insisting 
on the strict rule of Law
The sausage and spinach whisper
that
Something must be said
about this stark
violation

Let Her Speak
my bread instructs us
staring up at me
from the patten
in my lap
Let her break the silence 
and know she is still 
alive
Grant her 
In your own heart at least
the dignity of inquiry
For whatever else may be lost
her synapses still 
perform
with the confidence
of a tightrope walker
up on that 
taunt line 
stretched across
what little 
remains 
below

Besides
Curiosity 
is the engine 
of living

Now tutored
and 
humbled
we suppose
My stew and I
If any deserve the spirit
and not the letter
it would be 
the 
eldest
among us

She 
whose skin 
maps the long years
Whose bones carry on just below the surface
Who walks from there to hear
like that highwire artist
slowly
carefully
meditating 
on each step
Her eldest
behind her on the rope
watching each placement
Both 
worried 
and proud

Her mother
our Sometimes Silent Sister
knows better than we
the blessed burden of these mortal coils
and about learning 
to count the 
days
That's why 
she eats 
with laboratory precision
Every forkful
now
a balancing act
a placement of the Host

The circle returns to silence
the Mystery of the Quiche
now resolved

And I return to the hoot owl 
across the road
making love
for God
And the sound of this bread
Wiser than I
Soaked in stew
Teaching all spinach souls
Giving itself
for me
in mastication
inside
my
kneeling
mouth

Dream a Little Dream

We are reflecting on dreams this Advent season in worship.   

Why?  Because we need a break from pandemics, politics, and all the posturing thereunto.  Even "dreams" seem tame after this remarkable 2020 year.  But also because the traditional readings for Advent this time around include Psalm 126:

"When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream."

I love that.  Ever felt the rush of imagination and its laughter when you learn you have more time?  Ever pass through a near-miss and feel 10 years younger, crystal-clear about what really matters?  Ever laid awake at night and imagined with fierce-new-energy just what good thing could come to pass with some holy combination of Effort and Grace?   Psalm 126 knows the feeling.  

Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the peoples, “The Lord has done great things for them.”

These are not the middle-of-the-night dreams full of bizarre combinations and inverted plots: like dreaming you keep showing up tardy for a class you've not attended in decades, and your grandparents are there, and you are only wearing sweatpants, and you have a pet cheetah in tow.  Weird, those dreams.  It is as though, freed from the chore of seeing us through daily life, at night our brains and hearts have a rummage sale and, well ... everything must go.  This gets mixed with that, plus a little of those and a lot of these ... and before you know it, you've dreamed one heck of a dream. 

Not those dreams.  For those, you might see your therapist.  

Psalm 126, I'm quite sure, is about wide-awake dreams.  Daylight dreams.  Son-bathed dreams.  The dreams you dream in the sunlight as you look down the road still before you and you cannot help but imagine what might yet be.  Holy dreams.  God-dreams.  Dreams in which the Spirit of God teaches us to look beyond the limits of our dimly-lit sight and imagine what this resurrecting, apocalyptic, born-in-a-manger God might still yet do.  This is the stuff of Resurrection: fresh energy for life in the here-and-now after the near-miss of a life without God.  That God made us.  That God saves us.  That God speaks through our daytime dreams.   

So I say Advent is for dreamers.  God-dreamers.  Gospel-dreamers.  Before we get to gather sweetly again around the familiar crèche, the season of Advent says:  Stop!  Wait.  Sweetness is coming, yes.  But first, let me disturb your sleepy religious imagination with the wild possibility that the dead-now-alive, child-now-Lord will in fact advent (appear) again.  "Come, Lord Jesus," the church says every Advent.  And if that coming be so, then all things are possible and nothing God-birth is merely a dream.  

Advent:  Be like those who dream!  Perhaps with all the masking and the distancing and the quarantining these months, we need a little shock in the spirit right about now.  Holy dreams.  Advent dreams.  Dreams (and their Biblical warrants) to remind us — and this is the good news, Saints — that there is still more to life than what we have seen in the embers of this flamed-out 2020.  

Come dream a little dream with me these December Sundays.

September marks two years as your Pastor, Northminster.  Two years!  

Since I can only speak for myself, I will gladly insert a modifying adjective and dub them Two Happy Years.  Two is hardly a long enough list to celebrate Northminster's blessings, so to celebrate these double years I leaned on the tutelage of the Drs. Emory & Genny Whitaker, who labored long to teach this mathematical neophyte the necessary formula for conversion.  Alas, such calculus is much too complicated to explain here!  But it turns out that 2 years = 24 months.  Phew.  Who knew?  

Twenty-four:  Now there's a number I can work with to convey what it is I have come to love about the Wonderful Wheat (not chaff!) Who Worship Wonderfully on Wimbish Way.  Ready?  Here we go.  In no particular order. 

#24  I love our stained glass windows in our sanctuary walls.  I love the interesting story of how they came to Macon, but I especially love the way, on clear days, the morning sunlight streams through the left-side panes and spills all over the congregation like we were really Holy Spirit Pentecostals.  Beautiful.

#23  When we worship in the sanctuary (remember that?), I love that it takes 5 minutes to Pass the Peace in the middle of our service.  The aisles fill up like halftime at a Georgia football game, when everyone stampedes for concessions and bathrooms.  Handshaking and hugging and spirited greetings that could go on and on and on if we let it:  What a blessed problem.  It shall return!  

#22  Homemade cheese straws.  God I love being back in the South.

#21  I love the fact that one of our elders can announce that we want to raise $3000 to support a staff member we care about, only to have $6000 come in within days.   And when the call goes out to send cards to another staff person we love, hospitalized, he winds up with a stack too big for one hand.  Those moments tell me everything worth knowing about a congregation's heart. 

#20  I love that our Organist (a fellow Hawkins, no less!) not only has the musical skills necessary to coax each note right off the page of the hymnal, bringing them all to life with such color and texture ... but also that she actually believes, as many used to, that music in worship is prayer more than performance, an offering more than an ornament.  Wonderful talent cradled in a living faith: That's a combination in a Music Director no congregation should take for granted.  I love that you don't.   

#19  Dessert auctions.   (Ahem ... Yes ... Of course ... Money raised for our youth to go Montreat.  Yes yes ... wonderful. Thank for that.)  But did I mention:  Dessert auctions.

#18  I love that you are the kind of church that stuck with missionaries in Bangladesh for 30 years.  Loving them, paying them, praying for them, writing to them, welcoming them to Macon again and again.  I love that you put your mission money where your mission mouth was.  So much mission is flash-in-the-pan.  Thanks for going the distance with your friends.  I'm excited to see who will be our next partner overseas.

#17  I love our sanctuary.  The first time I walked in, during a visit with your Pastor Nominating Committee, the room took my breath away.   I was caught off guard, not because it is a Notre Dame Cathedral or a Divine Downtown Dinosaur, but because there is so much room to breath and light to behold.  The brightness, the tallness, the spaciousness and simple dignity of it all: It is neither ornamental nor pedestrian, not gaudy but also not everyday.  It is clearly a room built to house the people of God, doing what they do best:  bathing in sacraments and feasting on scripture and singing their prayer.   I love it.  Also, there's plenty of room at the pulpit for my flailing arm movements.  A plus!

#16  I love that 15 minutes after worship is over, there is still a group of persons standing around chewing the fat.  I have visited too many congregations where the fellowship is bone-dry.  Not fun.  Seems to me it is harder for followers of Jesus to "love thy neighbor" when they don't even really like the person at the other end of the pew.   Hearing friends love on one another, one week at a time?  Fun.  Does a pastor's heart good.  Think about all those neighbors out there who know not that gift, on Sunday or any day.

#15  Trumpets.  Trombones.  Saxophone.  Flute.  Handbells.  Violin.  I love that so many among us bring their talents to help us worship and pray well.  I like to imagine all those notes, like incense, wafting up into the peak of our ceiling, and on up to a grateful God.  Thanks to all of you who bring your fragrant offerings on such a regular basis.  We are better for your music.  God loves it, too. 

#14  I love that at Northminster there is no wall of Pastor Pictures ... which is really a way of saying how much I love the fact that we have a wall of People Pictures, members and friends of this flock.  I love what I do and have no need to deprecate the importance of pastoral ministry, but it is my experience that we Protestants map too much of our congregations' history around the tenure of our pastors.  Preachers come and preachers go; each one of us has our season.  Better, I think, as children of the Reformation, to celebrate the "Priesthood of All Believers."  Several dozen little smiling directory photos hanging neatly on a wall near the main entrance of a building devoted to the "shelter and nurture of the people of God" says to me, and hopefully to our guests:  "Here we are.  We are not perfect.  But we are Christ's body.  Real.  Not fake.  In the flesh; not Slick and Stock.  We are we.  We are church.  Welcome."

#13  I like that our Sexton sometimes sits in on Bible studies; contributes updates on the saints during Prayer Meetings; and will help you unload your canned donations from your car on a Sunday morning, always with a smile.   He also knows your name and will ask about your grandchildren.  If a church gets lucky every now and then, they wind up with partners in ministry who also happen to be employees. 

#12  Not that there is any such competition, but if there was: I would put our Northminster teenagers up against those of any church of any time and any stripe and any place.  We have in this flock right now some of the kindest, funniest, glad-to-help, smartest, lowest drama, most all-around-talented kids I have ever known.  They rock.  I love being their pastor.  I miss them!  Stupid COVID.

#11  I love that three-quarters of the congregation stands up when the occasional call comes for ordained elders to rise.  Some may see it as a negative, that perhaps the sanctity of ordination has been diluted in the concoction of such liberality.  But knowing you now, I rather see such a majority as a positive.  Ever been in a church -- or any organization, really -- where only a handful of persons always call the shots, whether they are in charge or not?  Not fun.  I love that as far back as the beginning, Rev. Hasty wired into the DNA of Northminster an ethic of shared leadership, involvement, and open decision-making.  No record is ever perfect, I know; but the trajectory has been clear.  At Northminster, persons take their turn in leadership and then they take a break and make room for others.   We already have a Lord in our teacher Jesus; we don't need any other little lords hanging around too long in meetings.  That is the Presbyterian way.  Thanks for making it your way, too. 

#10  I like that our building doesn't smell like 1978.   I'm not kidding.  In my presbytery work days, I would often step into the door of Presbyterian churches and be confronted with the sights (and smells) of a church trapped in the past, welded to the "good old days."  Maybe there was once good air in the room, but the mission ever since has been to make the church a museum.  But not at 565 Wimbish.  Okay, maybe our long cinder block hallways can sometimes feel a little bit like a public school building of yore, but thanks for not worshipping the bygone years.   I like that many of you may know that our better days may be behind us (numerically speaking) but that there is no reason why our best days may not still lie ahead (missionally speaking).  Thanks for not being chained to your past, even while I am grateful that you know from where you've come.

#9  I love that when we dream up a fresh way to connect with our actual neighborhood here on Wimbish -- for example, last October -- our folks step up with such enthusiasm: youth decorate their family cars, adults pass out pounds of candy, Boyd dresses up like Dracula, and Virginia a witch.  "Is that YOU, Mrs. Cowsert?" asked a little girl half her height.  Why yes it is!  I love that no one seems to mind that all those kids trample over all that green grass.  For what else is Jesus' front lawn for if not for them?

#8  No one in the Greater Middle Georgia Region of Ecclesiastical Entities makes better Protestant Party Punch than the Lovely Liquid Ladies of Northminster Presbyterian Church.   That stuff is an elixir for the soul.  I vote that we not wait for funerals to mix up another batch.  Pour me another!

#7  I love that so many of you know my daughter's name, which is really to say: I love that so many of you know so many of our young adult's names.  Thanks for being the kind of congregation that pokes your head in the door on Sunday morning and asks a kid how her week at school went down.  For her, and for many, that kind of community makes all the difference in the relevance of a Jesus-faith.  Thanks for including kids in the church we are today, not trying to clone them for the church we once were, after we are gone.

#6  I have never served a congregation with so many card sharks.  Thanks for not making a winning knowledge of Bridge a stipulation for my annual Terms of Call.  I'd be out on the street!   But I do love how so many of you make so much Community out of your card groups and gatherings.  

#5  I love that we have a church secretary whose manifold gifts are so well-rounded, the session thought it appropriate and helpful to change her title to "Ministry Assistant" ... "secretary" being too limiting a term for such a blessed combination of people and technical and practical gifts.  Indeed she does: assist us all in our ministry in and through this congregation.  And every week, without fail, she helps me find the stapler, again.  Thanks be to God. 

#4  Thanks for hanging plenty of white boards on the wall so I can do my crazy Dry Erase Marker Bible Graffiti.   I say a Bible study hasn't really happened if it doesn't look like some thugs came through and spray-painted chaos all over the board.  I love to teach scripture and theology; it is the labor I most missed during five years of presbytery work.  And I love that so many of you love to learn, to engage, to listen to one another and to scripture.  Join me this fall as we try some online learning together.  Heck, we might even get a camera focussed on a white board or two!  Or three.  Four.  I need at least four.  

#3  Have I mentioned the Key Lime Pie from the dessert auction?   You people are not helping my A1C.  

#2  Thank you for the wonderful Pastor Study space at the church.  I love it.  You don't have to wait until life returns to "normal" to stop by and sit a spell.  Bring a mask and let's talk life, faith, your grandchildren, blessings, burdens, Macon weather, train travel, or moderate Reformed theology in the vein of Karl Barth.  You pick!  Shoot me a text and we'll "gather together to ask the Lord's blessing."

#1  I love how so many of you in your retirement years look upon that season as a time for more ministry in the community rather than only a time for more creature comforts, more "me" time.   I would love to know a total weekly count of community volunteer hours from Northminster members.  It would be a big number.  God be praised.  During my interview two years ago, a member of the PNC apologized for needing to run an errand on our way to the next gathering.  When that errand turned out to be picking up fresh bread to drop off at a downtown homeless ministry, I knew I had found my next church. 

And found it I have.  Happy two years, Northminster.  God willing, I will get to walk with you in this Presbyterian pilgrimage for many more.  You. Are. Loved.  Cheese straws and all.   RWH

Golden Rules

Although the "Golden Rule" sounds to me like a friend's advice not to eat at a certain Chinese Restaurant, in truth the Rule is probably Jesus' best known teaching from the four gospels in your New Testament.  "Do to others as you would have them do to you."  

I confess I like this more nuanced interpretation of the Greek from Donald Hagner, a scholar on the gospel of Matthew:  "Therefore everything you would like others to do to you, you yourselves do to them."  That version brings out a sense of going first, of stepping up, leaning in to relationships first instead of always leaning out and waiting for others to take a chance.  Any time a teacher looks at the group you are in and uses a reflexive pronoun, pay attention.  "You yourselves!"

In other words, if you want love, then love.  If you want respect, then respect.  If you want healing from a past wrong, then get busy following Jesus and liberally work his healing balm into the wounds of the world around you.  I hear this subtext of the Golden Rule as Jesus saying this disciples, "If you want to follow me, then love others first and you will learn to let go of the need for them to love you back as a second."  Perhaps the fruit of Jesus-Golden-Rule living is, perhaps, not the sacrifice of letting go of things we want for ourselves ... but the freedom not to need them so much in the first place.  

Pearls of Great Price

Paradoxically, I believe, the more Divine an encounter, the less able you are to talk about it.  The degree to which one finds it difficult to describe with any comprehensiveness a spiritual moment — much less to explain it or defend its veracity — that inertia in reporting it is often the very measure of its holiness. 

Several conversations of late have me thinking again about remarkable divine encounters.  

The small ones that cross our paths any given day, yes; but also the occasional, unprecedented, even once-in-a-lifetime disruptions that so alter our experience of living that we are left without enough words to make any sense of it to those around us.  "Go and tell what you've seen and heard," Jesus tells his disciples.  But that reporting of the remarkable is often the riskiest part.  One is reluctant to share what can so easily be misunderstood; yet one also comes to realize that one cannot keep quiet about never going back to the way things were.  

The pricked conscience.  The course-altering summons.  The voice in the ear or across the room.  The timely but illusive stranger.  The inexplicable peace right in the middle of calamity.   When your breath has been taken away, spiritually speaking, you'll likely later find it hard to make words in your windpipe that anyone can really understand.  They will try to comprehend, because they love you.  But they will also softly suggest a dozen other explanations for the round peg of your beatific vision in this world of endless square holes. 

So be it.  If you are the steward of such a moment, simply choose to carry it forward in your life and — for God's sake (truly) — don't overthink it.  Trust it first, verify it later.  In fact, the verification will only come as you step out into the unknown, knowing only what you now know in your bones.  Our educated brains are hard-wired to analyze and analyze until a moment is dismantled and you've talked yourself out of just about everything, even your own existence.  

"Don't cast your pearls before swine," Jesus teaches us.  That seems harsh, perhaps, when talking about others.  It is not so much that he is calling all the persons in your life pigs; rather, it is his exaggerating reminder that often the custom necklace of a divine visitation simply doesn't fit as well around someone else's neck. Not everyone has the ears to hear what you yourself would not have heard before you heard it.  Maybe the moment was just for you; probably it was just what you needed, when you needed it.  It is a pearl of great price.  It is very likely irredeemable for the currency of widespread understanding.  Carry it forward in your life the way of mother carries a child, the way a boy clutches a coin.  Honor it, protect it, cherish it.  It will go with you for the balance of your days. 

Finally, do not fret if, unlike John Wesley, your heart has never been "strangely warmed."  God's bumps go bump in the nights of those who need them.  Nothing out of the ordinary may just mean that no bumps are yet needed in your "long obedience in the same direction."  Carry on.  Follow Jesus.  Love the Lord.  Love those around you.  Those are often all the encounters any of us need, until we need something more.  

Besides, there is a real sense that, as his Church, we are, all of us, stewards of the strangest of stories, that biggest of bumps, that glow of history.  Jesus himself is the strange and sacred story we steward as his society.  We likely know we are on the right path when, more often not, we get deferential but strange looks from our neighbors.  After all, he has a funny way of casting his singing swine before the pearls of hungry hearts.  

Shelter in Place

You are
missed

Alone for now
Quiet these weeks
The sunlight still beams
through my morning panes
purples and blues and browns and greens
but your faces are not here now
to beam back illumination
I've seen that shine
all these years
I miss it

I miss your voices
your singing great or glad
I miss bells and brass and bulletins
I miss Riley's entrance
and Rex's handshakes
Rhonda's good mornings
Ryden's amens from his back corner
I miss the sound of water
The silence of your remembering
And the chatter of your bustling peace
I miss you hugging
and happy

I miss your
blessing
each other
and me
in that song I like

'May He guide you
through the wilderness
Protect you through the storm'

I hope you are well
I hope your own four walls
are as glad to hear your praises
as I have become every seventh day

Make sure your living room has some sunlight
Turn up your speaker so the organ sounds like mine
Pour some water and pass some bread and shake your hands
Like you do when you are here with me
Like you do when you do what you do

In that way
I am willing to share you
with your own houses
as I wait for you to
come back here
to God's

my
Presbyterians
You are missed
You are loved

'May He bring you home rejoicing
once again
into my
doors'

— your Sanctuary on Wimbish Road

By Day and By Night

Our journey with Jesus through our Lenten wilderness continues this second Sunday of Lent with a reading from John 3:1-17.  The central character of this episode is a prominent Jewish leader named Nicodemus.   His prominence in the community is noted, inversely, by the fact that he must come to see Jesus "at night."  Indeed, strange and unsettling events often happen under the cover of night.  Cars are stolen and fences are crossed and windows are busted out.  The sun's departure invites all manner of tomfoolery in this broken world.

But sometimes the Holy happens upon us at night, too.  In John 3, the darkness provides a prominent religious leader the careful cover he needs to have the kind of open, searching, curious, and even agnostic conversation he cannot have in the daytime.  Persons of some prominence often lead fairly settled lives because of their settled roles and the settled expectations placed upon them by those among whom they are protuberant.  But Jesus's ministry, particularly his healings, has prompted lots of unsettling questions for Mr. Nick, who seeks out the young, potent Preacher at great risk to his settled religious reputation.  Thanks to the gospel of John, we get to listen in on their conversation.

What questions are you carrying through this Lenten season, ones perhaps you can only reveal under the cover of Jesus' patient and listening grace?

Weaknesses

Our weekly saunter through the first few chapters of Paul's voluminous words to the followers of Jesus in ancient Corinth continues this week with a reading from 2:1-16.  "When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom."  This, following Paul's earlier rebuke of all the self-important "wisdom" and philosophical posturing of every age, in light of the 'embarrassing' way God has come to us in a helpless child.

The Apostle Paul rejecting the value of lofty words is like Miss Universe downplaying the importance if outward beauty.  Paul was a smart man, an educated man, a public figure accustomed to public speech.  For him to come to a place in his life where lofty words have lost their luster is a sign, not only of some newfound humility, but of a major movement of God in his life.  It is not hyperbole to say that the death of Jesus, and the life lived by his first followers, changed everything for Paul.  And so he can say to the Corinthians Christians, "I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified."  The weakness of the cross is, for New Paul, the key to everything.

Paul has learned what we all must learn before God: The end of our ability to manage this life on our own is the beginning of God's way forward in and for us.  Our weaknesses, when we admit them, have the nice side benefit of accentuating God's strength.  Paul:  I tried not to dress the faith up in too much finery. They way you know your faith has been built on manifestations of God's presence as a savior, not on my cleverness as a communicator.  Only Jesus saves; never his people.

Foolishness

In these rancorous times in which we live, there seems to be a prevailing assumption that "he or she who talks the loudest must surely be Correct."  Subscribe to cable TV these days and you can enjoy three dozen channels of talking heads shouting it out about impeachment, Ukraine, Golden Globes, Pro Bowl pics, and hair care secrets.  It is striking to me that I can no longer even pump gas into my orange Jeep without enduring a screen in front of me, belting out audio selling this or news-breaking that.  So much for 5 minutes dispensing Mid-grade as a quiet chance to collect my thoughts.  Although my daddy raised me always to stay informed about this world, I'm starting to wonder if in fact willful avoidance (of so much noise) may in fact be a necessity for discipleship.  One can only take so many talking heads.   And this ... from a preacher.

Pumping gas while enduring more Opinions makes me appreciate Paul's cultural critique in 1 Corinthians 1:18–31, our lectionary reading for this Sunday.  "So what about these wise ones, these scholars, these brilliant debaters of this world’s great affairs? God has made them all look foolish and shown their wisdom to be useless nonsense."   According to the apostle, this good news about Jesus is not just one more strand of super-Serious-Opinion in an already tight knot of rancor.  Everyone scrambles to be Right in this world, and many assume that the Divine will always take up Their Case ... but meanwhile God is usually up to something different; something so righteous (i.e. according to God's own terms) that it appears ridiculous to its Cultured Despisers.  Talking Heads seem to always tighten our spirits; only a resurrecting God can loosen them.

The cross of Jesus is proof to Paul that the living God gets a kick out of flying in under the radar of what everyone assumes to be True and Right and Obvious.  The cross turns out to be an open secret in a Loud Landscape; it is a whispering God dealing with a cantankerous world by showing up in God's own way: quietly, sacrificially, passionately, from the inside out ... and as a Fool.

Guess what?  For an hour or so this Sunday, we get to turn off MSNBC and Fox and all the Other Ones ... and celebrate the absolute "foolishness" of the gospel.  How about we practice being fools for Christ in such a Serious Season?  You won't even have to pump.

United but not Confused

Christian unity is at once both a fact and a calling, an indicative and an imperative, both already-eternally-true and always-humanly-fragile.

It is the blessed indicative of the good news about Jesus that, because the Father and the Son are one (united but never conflated), and because the Son has called us by name, therefore we are now one (united but never conflated) with God and one with each other.  Unity is a gift given that precedes our choices.  Praise be to God.

But in this Christian confession, most indicatives also come with an imperative.  "It is so ... so live like it!" the New Testament often asserts.  That's what the Apostle Paul seems to be insisting in our 1 Corinthians passage for this Sunday, chapter 1 verses 10-18.  "I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose."

 Let us rejoice that the Christian movement is never a cult, wherein one is required to surrender the individual mind and forfeit one's individual will for the sake of some falsely-holy homogeneity.  No, we are called the Christian unity, not cultic uniformity.  Unity is a choice, because it is a first a gift; such unity never dissolves our differences, it merely softens them so that we no longer have to have our way on everything in order to see the way to God.  It is a choice to stand together, to work together, for seek together the word and way of Jesus.  Indeed, we are more united as one when each of us, in our own ways and in our own times, commits and recommits to loving our God and loving our neighbor.

Each week begins with the gift of unity; each week ends by our asking, How did we do?

Readiness

Speaking of Stewardship Season, here's a nice nugget of wisdom from our Presbyterian tradition:

"Those who follow the discipline of Christian stewardship will find themselves called to lives of simplicity, generosity, honesty, hospitality, compassion, receptivity, and concern for the earth and God’s creatures."

What a list.  This week I'm struck by the word RECEPTIVITY; not the first term one might associate with an emphasis on stewardship giving, inside or outside our congregation.  But I think it fits.  If one starts with the spiritually cascading truths that all is God's and all is on loan from God and all is offered back to God as worship and gratitude — and that Jesus is our leader is no doubt the exemplar steward — then good stewardship invites us to learn again and again a supple posture of receptivity.

Openness.  Nimbleness.  Readiness.   After all, one never knows what is next in this way of walking.

What opportunities for good giving will present themselves?  Where will I sense the divine Holy Spirit nudge?  When a moment of extra giving comes along, how can I trust that giving away more of the gifts of God will be good for my soul, thereby flipping the script on the tendency to grasp and cling?  Maybe you have a talent:  Are you open to new and surprising ways that our Providential God might put it to use for blessing others?  And given that we serve a Resurrecting God, full of Easter Surprises and Pentecost Interruptions, how can we each pay attention for the prompting of that same Spirit in the nooks and crannies of ordinary days?  and in the week to week of this congregation we love?

Sunday's gospel teaching is again from Luke, again it is Jesus teaching us in simple parable, and again is about a posture toward God and God's world around us that could rightly be called stewardship.  Luke 12:35-48.  Read ahead, and “be dressed for action.  Have your lamps lit!"  Jesus-receptivity and Jesus-readiness apparently call for a smart source of light.  After all, a follower of Jesus never quite knows what the morrow will bring.

That is the blessing of this stewardship business, not a curse.

Friendships as Ministry

We all have friends.

Granted, the breadth and depth of friendship may vary from person to person, but surely all of us traffic in at least a few friendships.  As such, other than our families of origin, friendships are probably the most ubiquitous of all relationships.  Not everyone is called to marry.  Not everyone raises children or grandchildren.  Most of us do not loom large in public life and therefore the benefactor of hundreds of social acquaintances.  But by virtue of the great commandment to love our neighbors as well as we would love ourselves, all of us are called to the ministry of friendship.

Our simple summer sermon series for June and July explores some themes in the Christian ministry of friendship.  We started with a refresher on the love chapter of 1 Corinthians 13, in some ways rescuing those familiar lines from the clutches of wedding ceremonies and repositioning Paul's teaching as direction for every Christian in every relationship -- not just for couples "in love."  Next we'll mine the collected wisdom of the book of Proverbs for reminders on the nature of friendship.  Then we'll sit at table with Jesus and his first disciples as he announces to them, and us, that he no longer calls us servants, but rather "friends."  The implications of this new and provocative nomenclature are many, so we'll take a look at what that means both for us as his friends and for others who know us as a friend.

Behind the scenes, your session is in prayerful discussion about specific areas and directions of ministry for the next five years in the life of our beloved Northminster church.  We hope to discern a handful of mission endeavors that will guide our common life and offer ministry to others in Jesus' name.  Those are sacred and important discussions, and I know we will be sharing with you soon what we are discerning and where we hope to go in the way of direction, vocation.  The ministry we do together is important.

But meanwhile, regarding ministry, it seems to me that everyone of us also has a ministry waiting for us every time we connect with our friends.  One does not always have to cross the seas or cross the town or cross cultures in order to share in Jesus' ministry of mercy, reconciliation, and love.  Sometimes his kingdom is as a close at hand as a text message, a lunch date, a golf outing, or a note.  I hope this short summer series will be an encouragement to you as you steward the friendships God has providentially placed in your life.

Found but Lost

The fifteenth chapter of Luke and the "parable of the Prodigal Son" have been for many years fertile soil for preachers and therefore familiar ground for congregations.  Indeed, the images are rich and memorable: the younger son insisting on cashing out his inheritance early; the whorish squandering of his monies in foolish Las Vegas living; a wised-up, sobered prodigal, down on his news asking for forgiveness from a father who has every right to judge.  He is we, our preachers have often said: We are each the Prodigal.  We are all saved by grace alone.

True enough. But a fresh reading of the whole of Luke 15 reveals that the oft-preached Prodigal Son story is actually a gateway narrative for the climactic story Jesus really wants to tell. It is the sad song of an older sibling, with its own provocative images: an embittered, resentful older son who stubbornly refuses to join in on the Prodigal's welcome home party.  While the DJ cues up the homecoming dance, the older son is passive-aggressively out in the parking lot — declaring his disapproval of the father's lavish grace.

Who are we in the full story of Luke 15?  Are we the once-lost? Are we the have-always-been-here found?  Are we the younger or the older brother?  Are we guilty ... or are we angry?  What side of God's grace do we most need to hear in this stage of life?  ... the unfettered welcome home of the foolish prodigal? ... or the pat-on-the back "you have always been with me" ... but "we need to celebrate" reminder to a resentful older sibling?

Join me Sunday morning in Luke 15 as we celebrate the good news that both brothers — the lost and the found — are welcomed back by the Father's sumptuous, unmerited favor.

Redirection

737 Max crashes.  New Zealand shootings.  Mozambique cyclones.

Where do your heart and mind go when the news of more far off human pain hits your ears?

Like many of you, I was raised in a family that valued staying current on world affairs.  Walter Cronkite was a nightly fixture in our house.  My father had the Times Picayune in front of him for an hour a night.  Presbyterian faith + the value of education + access to newspapers and networks equaled regular conversation about current events, near and far.  Surely one part of loving this world that "God so loved" is staying educated about its happenings.  True enough.

But that was before the World Wide Web and the 24/7 news cycle.  These days, with the onslaught of ticker tape news feeds and pundit-talking-heads and round-the-clock media, one wonders if discipleship calls for more restraint in the consumption of news.  With so much data available to us now, I worry about a kind of spiritual-sadness inebriation that leaves us insensible to so much macro and maybe also numb to the micro in and around our own lives.  Perhaps Lent is a season to take a step back from the Big News ... in order to take a step forward into our Small Souls?  I am not adovcating retreat, merely rest, and reflection.  Each of us must work out that balance for ourselves.

In Sunday's lectionary reading, Luke 13:1-9, Jesus' disciples are ruminating on the news of more human tragedy.  When the conversation shifts to human causality — Who's fault is this? — and the matter is brought to their Teacher, Jesus offers a curious response.  Redirection.  To be sure, sometimes politicians and diplomats use redirection as a means of misdirection.  But in Jesus' case, our Teacher uses a moment of public gossip to remind his followers about the frailty of life and the resulting call to spiritual readiness.  Jesus: We can obsess about macro matters we cannot control ... or we can be spiritual stewards of those micro matters about which we can do something.  After all, what good is worry for the whole world if it wrecks our ability to love locally?

Highs and Lows

Life in this world brings with it some highs and some lows, especially when one leans into the good news and seeks to love God and neighbor. Ups and downs: That much is clear. Apparently it was not so different for Jesus in his public ministry. This Sunday we sit together before a another memory from the Gospel of Luke. Last week we sat with Jesus in his 40-day tempting and testing wilderness. This week, we hike with a few of Jesus' first disciples as together they climb toward a mountaintop and experience a high of all highs — a magical moment of heavenly overlap the church clumsily labels "transfiguration." Who wouldn't want to stay right there, basking in the glow of God? But mountaintop highs can't go on forever, at least not in this life. With Luke's help, Sunday we'll see what happens on the other side of the mountaintop, when Jesus takes the high of heaven down to the lowest of earth. Read and prayer this encounter ahead of time — Luke 9:28-43 — and help your preacher find the good news when we all gather again this Sunday.

Less Is More in Lent

The forty day season between Ash Wednesday and Easter morning (minus the Sundays) known as Lent is something of an enigma for many Presbyterians.  If you grew up Protestant before the late 1960s, Lent was likely not a part of your spiritual upbringing.  In fact, many mid-century Protestants would have probably shunned the season (and other liturgical seasons like it) as being "too Catholic."  It is true: the Protestant reformers of Europe did push back on many of the calendars, observances, and seasons that marked medieval Catholic worship in Europe and later brought to America, concerned as the new Protestants were about liturgical rites taking on a life of their own and overshadowing the preaching and teaching of the New Testament.

However, our English word "Lent" simply means "spring" and as a Christian observance, its roots are much older than the squabbles of the Reformation era.  Lent originally developed as the final season of spiritual preparation for those new followers of Jesus being readied to be baptized on Easter Sunday.  As these preparations usually called for self-examination and repentance, the six week period became known as a time of intense piety and sacrifice.  Some of that spiritual DNA comes down to us in the form of "giving up something for Lent," but in the ancient baptismal preparations, the spirit of that sacrifice was less about "going without something I love" and more about "making more room in my life for prayer, worship, and service."  The point of Lent was not to add to your spiritual suffering, but to take away from your daily burdens — for Jesus' sake.

That last point is instructive for us.  Lent need not be a dark, serious time of feeling more guilt.  Indeed, as a springtime season even the creation all around us welcomes more sun after cooler months.  Rather, let Lent be some weeks during which we offload one or more of life's distracting comforts ... in order to make room in our daily lives for what the Protestant reformers would have called "deeper piety" — personal examination, silent prayer, spiritual reflection, preparation for public worship, acts of mercy among our neighbors, etc.  If eating less chocolate or binging less Netflix or skipping Starbucks in the morning helps you welcome fresh piety ... great!  But remember, the point is not so much additional suffering (especially first world suffering!) for suffering's sake, but rather additional prayerful consciousness for Jesus' sake.  Less of one thing makes room for more of another.  Lent need not be any more complicated than that.

So, no, Lent is not a native experience for many Presbyterians of certain generations.  But since the late 1960s there has been among American Christians, Catholic and Protestant alike, a much greater awareness that we could probably stand to learn from one another the various ancient practices of discipleship, of following Jesus.  I for one am grateful for Lent's arrival on our Presbyterian scene in recent decades.  I appreciate its sharper focus, its simplicity, and its call to pay closer attention to how we are remembering our baptisms and following Jesus in our daily lives.

This month, we will follow the ministry of Jesus through the gospel of Luke, as the lectionary gospel readings serve up living examples of his lordship and love.  I'm looking forward to making this Lenten journey with you for the first time.

Gifted Gifts

Presbyterians have a large gene labelled Modesty running around in our spiritual DNA.

Most of our parents taught most of us to 1. stay nice and quiet during the worship of God, and 2. never to brag.  Makes sense. You can add to these parental prohibitions a strong emphasis in our Reformed tradition on glory always being given to God and not to humanity.  Even faith itself is a gift, we say.  Boasting is the cardinal Presbyterian sin.

Given all of this, the invitation to talk about ourselves in the context of faith and church likely leaves many of us feeling a bit uneasy.  Even more, the language of "spiritual gifts" might sound to some like it better belongs in one of those other Christian churches, perhaps one on a cable access channel.  Bottom line:  Is the naming aloud of our spiritual gifts — be they communal or individual — a form of bragging?  Is it, inevitabily: "I have the spiritual gift of wisdom ... Look at me!"

The New Testament is chockablock full of language about the gifts Christ gives to his church, in every generation and in every place.  Ephesians 4 is my favorite example, where the apostle lists a sacred chain of invisible gifts that are given by the Spirit for building up the visible church.  The logic of Paul's gift-talk seems to run like this:  God gives good gifts to those God calls to faith, gifts for blessing the whole of the faithful, all so that the faithful can become the kind of persons whose lives and love bring glory back to God amid a watching and wanting world.

It is this logic that hedges against bragging.  Our gifts come from God, not us.  No one can claim original ownership.  And when gifts bear fruit in the church and in the world, the taste of said fruit will develop an appetite in others for the divine, not for us.  Glory (emphasis, reputation, legacy, credit) goes back to God, not to us.   In short, spiritual gifts are gifts to be given away.  There is no room in that chain of logic for self-referential bragging.  But given the mandate to use them for blessing, there is also no need to keep the whole matter under wraps.  Indeed, there is a real sense in which we need each other to help each other discern what our own gifts might be.  That calls for conversation, and prayer, and encouragement.

There is freedom in the grace of gifts, freedom to ask of our lives and of a congregation's culture: What particular invisible gifts has God entrusted to me and to my visible community?  All disciples and all communions share Jesus in common, as well as his faith, hope, and love.  But beyond those sacred universals, what are the particular marks of God's gifting grace in our history?   Asking these questions, sharing in this discovery, and celebrating our findings — this activity is not bragging; this is stewardship.  To whom much is given (by God), much is expected (by God).  Staying clear about what has been given TO us helps us stay alert to those moments when grace invites us to give AWAY the spiritual blessings Christ has deposited in our communion.

What gifts of a spiritual nature has the Holy Spirit invested in your life?

Lagniappe Lord

"We picked up one excellent word, a word worth traveling to New Orleans to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word: 'lagniappe.' They pronounce it lanny-yap. It is Spanish, so they said. We discovered it at the head of a column of odds and ends in the Picayune, the first day; heard twenty people use it the second; inquired what it meant the third; adopted it and got facility in swinging it the fourth. It has a restricted meaning, but I think the people spread it out a little when they choose. It is the equivalent of the thirteenth roll in a "baker's dozen." It is something thrown in, gratis, for good measure."

Mark Twain wrote those words in 1883 in his travelogue Life on the Mississippi.  In my lifetime, my late father, John Hawkins, used Twain's favorite new word frequently in his everyday banter.  "Lagniappe."  Makes you feel like you know some fun French, even if you don't.  "Just a little something extra," my dad used to say, with a wink.  "Just because."  And the kids in line at the church picnic, waiting for his homemade ice cream, were ever so grateful for his generosity.

Sunday's gospel reading is a lagniappe moment in Jesus' ministry, a story with a wink built in.  John arranges his rich gospel collection in such a way that Jesus' first remembered miracle is an entirely unnecessary one: transforming a large batch of everyday water into a vivifying wedding wine.  John 2:1-11.  No blindness is cured; no leprosy healed.  No lame legs are given new traction; no dark demons dethroned.  Just some wine.  Just because.  At a wedding party in a side-road town called Cana, our Lord simply does a heaven-shaped favor for an everyday family throwing a party, lubricating the evening with wine when the supplies run out.  It is a lagniappe miracle, a sign pointing to heaven — gratis, for good measure.   Furthermore, it turns out the Son of God likes a good party as much as most of us (secretly) do.  Who knew?

What does it suggest about the nature of God the Father that Jesus the Son performs a lagniappe miracle as a sign of heaven's shape?  How does a beverage give a fresh taste-test of God's true heart?  What does it mean to be a wine-flavored church in this sour-water kind of public season?  Where have you noticed the Holy Spirit turning ordinary moments into kingdom encounters in your life?  What must we run out of, and then have transformed, before we will trust afresh that we serve a generous God, our lagniappe Lord?

Peaceful Intruders

Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and singing, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”  (Luke 2)

Who knows the last time you brushed passed an attendant of the Almighty.

According to the long-winded preacher in Hebrews (13:2) in your New Testament, it could have happened on Tuesday, on the way out of the Post Office. Then again, that may have just been your local interloper.  Whoever it was, Hebrews says: "Be nice.  Could be an angel on the loose."

Tis the season for intruding divine agents, like when Christmastime Joe is awoken in the middle of the night to the news of a paternal custody hearing (Matthew 1). He gets a nocturnal visitor.  No, not the Lunesta butterfly; middle-aged Joseph gets a dream.  And an angel.  And a word from the Lord.  “Wake up, fella.  Time to be a daddy.”

Adolescent Mary gets a visit, too (Luke 1).  That encounter always makes me chuckle: “… sent by God, to a town called Nazareth.”  Really?  Backwater Nazareth? I can see evanescent Gabriel trying to type N-A-Z- into his loaner GPS.  It blurts back, in a soothing British tongue, “Unknown destination.”  Indeed.  Who knew the Divine Word would be carried through gestation in a commoner’s womb?  She’s a nobody, this girl -- at least by the world's expectations.  The mandate from heaven: “Go surprise her, Gabe. I am doing a new thing.”

They’ve got a quite a list of clients on their website, these meddlesome messengers:  Cast off Hagar, down by the water (Gen 16).  Old man Abraham, with his PG-13 knife in the air (Gen 22).  Used-car-dealer Jacob, in a fuzzy stupor (Gen 31).  And of course, who can forget the canon’s best-known ass: ridden by Balaam, who is greeted by an angel from the side of the road (Numbers 22).  They all add the same comment on Facebook’s official Angel page: “Watch out, people.  You just never know what a day will bring. They come out of nowhere! OMG.”

They appear.  They hover.  They greet.  They intrude.  They show up by streams, in byways, or in the cursed middle of the night.  They even have an auxiliary unit that sings and dances and puts on quite a Sunday show (Isaiah 6). (But who cares for that contemporary music, anyway?  I prefer the standard old hymns, thank you.)

My favorite of all the angelic interruptions?  This one: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”  Even a third-shift trick of no-name shepherds gets an impromptu flash-mob in the sky, on the dodgy outskirts of Bethlehem.  The choral anthem they sing turns out to be no less than the news that the glory that already floods God’s space (heaven) will now be spilling over into our space (earth) in the form of a lasting shalom, i.e. a goodness and grace that will not fade even after the holiday rush is over.  And its (his) name is Jesus.  So sings the Newsboys, a band from Austrailia:

Entertaining angels
By the light of my t.v. screen
24-7 you wait for me
Entertaining angels
While the night becomes history
Host of heaven, sing over me

Angels.  Everywhere.  Speaking.  Surprising.  Summoning. I like that God is into a great deal of subcontracting when it comes to handing out messages.  That’s good for the economy, in these uncertain times.  And it means some group of them might just show up on your back stoop.

So watch your step on the 24th night of this Advent month, when, home from the Candlelight Service, just after dark, bedecked in last year’s Christmas-gifted bathrobe, just before heading to bed, you wheel out the trash can from under the back porch, and strewn across the crisp night middle-Georgia-sky over your neighbor’s yard, high above his crumbling tool shed and the wife’s composting garden, there is in the lower atmosphere a merry band of supernal beings, warming up with pitch pipes for the big revelatory number, carolling a new song from heaven, complete with a personalized summons to send you packing in a whole new direction in what remains of your gifted life, and all in the name of Jesus.

When and if this happens, don’t say I didn’t warn you (Luke 2).  And maybe you already have your own tale to tell of peaceful intruders.

Either way, be at peace. God still speaks.

O Christ, our Living Lord, made known to us in the humor of scripture’s stories and in the holiness of the incarnation, we welcome your word of peace and likewise pray for more of it around the world in our own day and time.  We are honored to bear your name, and grateful once again to celebrate your remarkable advent among us as a lowly child.  Send your angels to your church once again, that we might sing and sign your news.  Amen.