Writing What I See

Saturday, March 9, 2019

Lent Underground

Lent 1C

Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

How many of you have ever whined, “When are we going to get there” on a long trip? You’re strapped in a tiny airplane seat; or you’re cramped in the back of the car with your annoying siblings; you’ve already played with all your toys or listened to all of your podcasts. Your family is on your last nerve. And still the trip goes on and on. We’ve all been there, right?

In the church, we often talk about Lent as a journey, a trip through the wilderness on the way to Easter Day. In Lent, we clean out our backpacks and fill them with study guides, or prayer practices, or loads of good intentions. And we lumber down the aisle to the strains of the Great Litany, later heading out the church door into the world’s wide wilderness, searching for God. If you’re like me, after a few weeks or a few days of this Lenten journey, you might start wondering, “When are we going to get there?” The journey can start to feel like wandering, and God can feel like a country far away.

That’s why I’d like to propose a different view of Lent for us today. What if Lent isn’t a long trek outward in search of God? Instead, what if God is already within us, deep within our very bones? What if Lent is standing still and diving inward? Instead of a road trip, imagine a cave: Not a tourist trap kind of cave, but a real, untamed one: dark, silent, and full of wonders. Hidden way down in the depths of the earth, underneath the weary roads that we travel, are untold treasures. Who has been in a cave before? Caves are home to tiny, resilient fish and insects that have learned to thrive in the harshest of conditions. Caves are often filled with gorgeous crystals that shine like silver and twinkle like diamonds when we shine a light on them. They contain delicate rock formations of amazing beauty. Caves are also dark. I’ll never forget the Mammoth Cave tour where they turn out all the lights, and you sit in silence for a few minutes. It’s like being back in the womb. It’s so dark that you can only see inside your own imagination. It’s so quiet that your own thoughts ring clearly in your ears. It’s like the darkness and the silence hug you with long, soft arms.

We human beings, too, are home to often unseen treasures, gifts that God has carved into the bedrock our being. Like Jesus at the River Jordan, we have been named as God’s Beloved Child. How we shine and sparkle with God’s love! How strong and adaptive is the divine grace that shapes our bones! Deep down below, in the darkness and in the silence, God’s love holds us in an embrace. There, we can hear whispers of God’s true name for us; we can glimpse the Beloved that we really are. One blogger published a Lenten letter to us from God. It reads: “I was there at the Big Bang, enlivening every particle, atom and molecule. You are made of me, and through me you are connected to everything and everyone. I am every … [where] …You swim in me and I in you… I need you! You’re the only you I created. So, please, let yourself be the creation I made you to be. Trust yourself. Trust your heart. Trust me. I’ve got you.”[1]

All this talk of trusting the “God Within” might sound like Oprah-style theology-light. Except that even St. Paul draws on it in today’s lesson from Romans! Quoting the Hebrew Scriptures, Paul explains that God’s word of Love is not far off somewhere. Instead, it is near us, “on [our] lips and in [our] heart.” For Paul, God’s word of Love is embedded deep in the heart of each human being. In Greek, the heart isn’t the squishy sentimental place that it is in English. In Greek, the heart is what we call our “gut.” It’s where we find our deepest hungers, our instincts, our needs, our energies.[2] It’s where we feel those “butterflies” when we’re afraid; it’s where we feel those somersaults when we’re excited. It’s where we rumble when we’re hungry and turn green when we’re filled with disgust. Paul is saying that God hangs out in the dark cave of our desires. God plants the Good News of God’s love in Christ there, in our inmost selves. When we trust in that love, we find healing. When we speak of that newfound love to others, we join in the healing of the world.

To get around in a cave, though, we need special gear, including a flashlight of some kind, don’t we? For St. Paul, and for all of us Christians, the light that we need is the Holy Scriptures. Yes, that’s right, the Bible. You might have heard the teens in youth group calling me “Bibbi.” I love that they gave me that name! It stands for “Biblical Anne”—because in their eyes, I’m all the time hauling out the bible. What you may not know is that I resisted the bible as much as they do when I was their age. I really didn’t make friends with it until my second time around in seminary, about 15 years ago! I know how dry and confusing the bible can be. I’ve been in the boring bible studies. I’ve winced at those who use scripture to judge and to build walls. I know that in today’s Gospel, Satan uses scripture to try to move even Jesus away from the One he knows himself to be.

From my half-century of wrestling with the bible, here’s what I’ve finally learned. Yes, the bible does require some regular study with our minds in order to make sense of it. But we can’t stop there. If it’s going to speak to us, it has to shine light on the things that matter. We have to take the bible down with us into the cave. We have to carry it down into our gut. We have to open it to prayer, to imagination, to conversation. Have you ever noticed what we priests do right before we read the Gospel? It looks like we have a twitch or something: We make a tiny cross with our thumb on our forehead, on our mouth, and on our heart. In that gesture, we are asking God to speak the Good News of Jesus to our mind; to put it on our lips, and to bring it deep down into our gut. Everyone try it out—practice with me. We open our mind to God’s word of love; we place it on our lips so that we can share its healing truth; and we push it down into our gut so that we may feel it’s healing power.

This Lent, I invite each of us to take the bible with us down into our Lenten cave. Don’t be afraid of it. Go to a quiet place. Make the Gospel sign. Pick your favorite verse, or even better, pick a verse that disturbs you. Enter into prayer with it. Martin Smith defines prayer as “allowing ourselves to be loved, addressed and claimed by God.”[3] So read the verse several times and listen deeply to the words that hit you in the gut. Let the images lay claim to you, let them work their way down into your very bones. Don’t ask God what you can do for Him or where you have to go. Instead, ask God, “Who do You want to be for me this Lent?”[4] And listen in silence for the answer.

“When are we going to get there?”

We already are, O beloved children of God.

[1] Barb Morris, “A Letter from God,” found at http://www.barbmorris.com/a-letter-from-god-to-her-daughters-who-observe-lent/?fbclid=IwAR2B337wpeHGRLdZl2eM-0TTtDAzbxjbUqTkAPyA3ZxN9rWUZQn94r9tNC0.

[2] Martin Smith, The Word is Very Near You (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1989), 41.

[3] Ibid., 20.

[4] Credit goes to Martin Smith for this question, as well, in a lecture given at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in March 2018.

Saturday, January 12, 2019

If Only I Knew Their Names

The Baptism of our Lord, Year C

Father in heaven, who at the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan proclaimed him your beloved Son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit: Grant that all who are baptized into his Name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

“If I only knew their names,” I thought in a panic!

It was just over a year ago that Kentucky Refugee Ministries called on us to help a struggling Somali family with nine children. It was a simple request: the eight older children needed to get out of their small apartment for a few hours while their parents dealt with a medical crisis. “Let’s take them to the Science Center!” Deacon Delinda and I decided. “That should be fun!” Several of our St. Andrew’s families took on the project with enthusiasm, and off we went.

How many of you have been to the Louisville Science Center before? How many of you have been there during Christmas vacation, or another holiday? It’s a madhouse, isn’t it? … Children running everywhere … bunches of people crowding around all the live exhibits. Imagine walking in there with eight children, ages three to thirteen, whom you never met before. They speak little to no English, and you don’t really know their names, beyond the strange-sounding words scribbled on a crumpled piece of paper in your pocket.

Even though our adult-to-child ratio was about one to two, it was a near disaster. As soon as we got the children's coats off, they all scattered, and we couldn’t call them. We tried to set boundaries, but we couldn’t communicate. We could barely tell the six brothers apart. Each child darted from one activity to the next. Who could blame them? They were starving for freedom after being cooped up in a tiny apartment. They were hungry for distraction after the trauma of a family crisis. They were curious about new things, after a life with very few toys and books. They had no idea who we were. We hadn’t even been able to introduce ourselves. Why should they listen to us? They didn’t know our names, either.

[Right now, children, I have written the names of all eight children for you on a piece of paper in your worship bags. I invite you now to pick one and to write them a letter, or draw them a picture, introducing yourself to them. Tell them what you like to play, or tell them about your family. If you know them already from one of our outings together, just write them a nice note. But most of all, tell them your name. We will give your letters to the children, and I know that they will enjoy reading them, now that they can read in English. Maybe, they'll even write you back?]

I think that we adults can sometimes interact in our world like the _____ children did in the Science Center. We flit from one distraction to the next, filling the void in our lives as best we can. We bury our hurts and our deep questions; it’s so much less painful to cover them over with material goods or busyness. Our world can easily feel like a mingled mass of nameless strangers, all darting around to get what they need and to stay ahead of others. We can feel as if no one really knows who we are, not truly and deeply. Often, we don't even know ourselves.

It is so easy for our true names to get buried in all of the chaos. At the Science Center, I kept track of the children in my mind by giving them superficial names, and not always kind ones. "That one there is the ornery one," I thought, full of judgment. "This one is the shy one," I decided. "And that one is the boss," I assumed. Goodness only knows what they called me in their minds, as I hovered and told them what to do every two seconds. In life, without even thinking, we powerful ones often cover the true names of those with less power with unwanted names of our own invention. Africans stolen from their families and homeland and brought to this country lose their humanity further when we name them "slaves," or worse things, rather than calling them what they were: "enslaved people." Human beings who have paid their debt to society in prison we harshly call, "ex-cons" when instead, we could consider them "returning citizens." Men and women who leave home to feed and protect their families become subhuman "illegal aliens," instead of "undocumented migrants."

There was once a brilliant rabbi, Rabbi Yehuda, who was a famous scholar and inventor. One night, he dreamed that he died. In his dream, he approached the throne of God in heaven and introduced himself to the angel of the Lord. He said, "I am Rabbi Yehuda ben Bezalel, famous inventor." He asked the angel holding the great book of life to search for his name. The angel began reading out from the great book all the names of those who had died that day. In response, one by one each soul got up to be admitted before God’s throne. When the angel had finished reading, the rabbi looked up in shock and despair. He had not heard his own name. Filled with the injustice of it all, he cried out, “Why didn’t you call my name? What have I done wrong? Why did all of these people get in, while I'm excluded?”

The angel calmly replied that the rabbi’s name had most definitely already been called, for everyone’s names are inscribed in God’s book. The problem is that many people never hear their true names during their lifetimes. They think that they know their names, but since they have never heard their real names, they do not recognize them when they are called. These people must stand before the throne until they hear their names and know them.

After hearing this truth, the rabbi awoke from his dream and prayed that he might be granted just once to hear his true name from the lips of his brothers and sisters before he died.^{^[1]}

What is your true name? Not the name that others impose upon you, but the name that God gives you. How often do you hear it? We hear it from God himself in today's first lesson. To a wounded people in the midst of the chaos of exile, God comes down and gives them their name. Like the _____ children, the people of Israel had lived through war, famine, and the loss of their homes, even the loss of their identity as a people. “How can we be God’s chosen people in a strange land?” they mourned. God answered them. “Do not be afraid. I have called you by name; you are mine." And what is the name that God gave them? "You are precious," God said. "You are honored. You are loved.”

When we hear the word “precious,” we might think of roly-poly puppies or fuzzy kittens. But to be “precious” is not to be cute—it is to be bought with a high price, to be “redeemed.” If we are precious, we are so valuable that God would give anything for us. In the Hebrew Scriptures, if your “life is precious in someone’s eyes,” then they have just spared you from death.^{^[2]}To be precious in God’s sight is to be lifted from the waters that cover our heads, to be raised up from death into life. God saves the life of God's beloved people. God brings them out of painful exile and gives them new life, because God loves and honors them.

Redemption and new life should sound familiar to our Christian ears. In today's Gospel, a crowd of people have gathered around John the Baptizer. They are the powerless pawns of a bloodthirsty empire. They are desperate for meaning, starving for hope. They are looking for wholeness under the muddy waters of the Jordan. Standing in their midst, the Son of God waits patiently in line with all the other weak and unwashed bodies. He doesn't pass around the waters, watching us human beings from afar; he passes through the waters as we do, joining us in all of our humanity, in all of our pain and fear. Jesus dives into our world, into the overwhelming floods of emotion, into the trials by fire, and into the isolating loneliness. And as he rises, Jesus takes us with him. Brought into new life in Jesus, we hear God call to us: "My child, my beloved, with whom I am well-pleased … precious and honored child whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made, whom I redeemed." It is a name that we share with our brothers and our sisters, a name that we must both own and give away.

Now, when we go to visit the _____ children, names are no longer a problem. Several St. Andrean's have been visiting them every week over the past year to work on reading English. "Mr. Jim, Mr. Jim! Ms. Lora, Ms. Lora!" the children all shout at once, their faces alight with smiles. "Ayub! Saleban! Farhijo!" we reply, the names now slipping warmly from our tongues. The names and the cultures and religions in which they rest are still unique, still ringing with foreign tones on both sides. But through love, the names have grown together in mutual discovery and definition.^{^[3]} They are all names filled with God's glory, the names of honored sons and daughters, the names of God's beloved children. They are names that are valuable beyond imagining. They are the names of brothers and sisters.

¹Rowan Williams, A Ray of Darkness (Lanham, MD: Cowley Publications, 1995), 152.

^{^[2]} Anathea Portier-Young, commentary found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=494.

^{^[3]} Rowan Williams, "Nobody Knows Who I Am Till Judgement Morning," in On Christian Theology (London: Blackwell, 2000), 289.