Subversive Power

I am preparing for Bible study this morning and today we spend time with Palm Sunday and Jesus entry into Jerusalem.  Usually, of course, I only look at this during Lent on Palm Sunday.  But today, in the light of the political situation today and the "raw power:" that is being exhibited by Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump in pushing for a new supreme court judge I find hope in the figure sitting on a donkey and a colt.

The death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg has hit me hard and I find myself awed by her legacy.  She was an ordinary woman who worked extremely hard and really had the courage of her convictions in equality for all.  It is hard to imagine a time when a woman could not get a credit card on her own and had so little power in making her own decisions.  And, amazingly, it is within my lifetime.  RBG has been a pivotal person in the changes that have happened in the last few decades.  

I don't have time to write much more - babysitting my granddaughter Maggie today while her mom has a 5 hour meeting via zoom.  I just wonder at the whole notion of power and the belief that God is working underneath what we can see  on the surface through unlikely  people who dedicate their lives to freedom for others - people like RBG and John Lewis.

I love this poem by Maya Angelou.  

When Great Trees Fall

Maya Angelou

When great trees fall,rocks on distant hills shudder,lions hunker downin tall grasses,and even elephantslumber after safety.When great trees fallin forests,small things recoil into silence,their senseseroded beyond fear.When great souls die,the air around us becomeslight, rare, sterile.We breathe, briefly.Our eyes, briefly,see witha hurtful clarity.Our memory, suddenly sharpened,examines,gnaws on kind wordsunsaid,promised walksnever taken.Great souls die andour reality, bound tothem, takes leave of us.Our souls,dependent upon theirnurture,now shrink, wizened.Our minds, formedand informed by theirradiance,
 fall away.We are not so much maddenedas reduced to the unutterable ignorance
 ofdark, coldcaves.And when great souls die,after a period peace blooms,slowly and alwaysirregularly. Spaces fillwith a kind ofsoothing electric vibration.Our senses, restored, neverto be the same, whisper to us.They existed. They existed.We can be. Be and bebetter. For they existed.

Extravagant Generosity

"Are you jealous because I am generous?"

That is a line from the text which will be preached on this morning by John Romig.  I have already spent time with this scripture (Matthew 20: 1-16) in Bible study and am pondering this question as I prepare to do a communion meditation today.

It is the parable of the workers in the field where the landowner pays the workers who worked all day the same wage as those who came in the last hour.  It is a rich text because it can - of course - speak of salvation and God's love that is there for all no matter how late our "conversion."

It also speaks of the myth of meritocracy that we all live in.  We want life to be fair and for people to get what they earn.  We want it when we imagine ourselves to be the ones who are hard working and there from the beginning.  It is easy to become confident in our acceptance and worthiness.

The only problem with that, of course, is that sometimes all of us are the ones who did not get there on time, so to speak. Whether it is when we are too young, too old, too infirm or just lost and alone, we are not always the hard workers who deserve more than others.  

Still we persist in this idea of fairness and want to be rewarded according to what we perceive to be our effort. Then God comes in and cuts through everything with God's extravagant love and generosity.  There for us whether we know it or not.  And often we do not.

I continue to believe that one of the biggest problems for people of faith is that they really have not experiencing God's gracious love for them.  They may know about it and talk about it, but have not really felt it in the deepest part of their souls.  The interesting and perverse part of all of this, is that we cannot fully experience God's grace until we have fully experienced our need of it.  Maybe that is why our faith really gets strengthened during the second half of life.  We have had enough time to fail, to suffer, to be disappointed and a disappointment.  

It is when we face these pains that are a part of life - learning how little coutrol we have over so many things - (including ourselves, at times) - that we encounter God's extravagant generosity and grace.  God loves us not matter what.  I can say it and say it, but somehow we all have to KNOW it in our souls.

When we do, we begin to stop comparing our journeys with that of others.  When we know that at times we are the ones last to come to the field and still rewarded, we know that we are the beloved.  Not more beloved - not less - but we are LOVED by God who loves each as God loves all.

So, I soon will leave to go to church and drive down and probably ponder the amazing grace, the extravagant generosity of God's love for each and for all.  And wish that my words this morning can break through our complacency so that we might really know God's healing love as we receive communion today.

May it be so.

Do Not Worry

The passage for our Bible study last night was from Matthew 6 - Do Not Worry.  This is part of the text:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life^[e]?

. I started our time together asking each person what they worried about - beginning with myself and my worry about "losing my mind" as I am aging.  Others mentioned the pandemic, the racial situation, the political life.  There is much to worry about.

At the end of our time together Pastor John appeared and talked about his worries - when to open, the critics of the church, what to do.  what to do   what to do.

One of the quotes from Barclay on this: "Jesus is forbidding  a careworn, worried fear which takes all the joy out of life."

And I know that fear and how easy it is to succumb to it - especially in the face of this pandemic.  Barclay also spoke of the wisdom of the rabbis - life ought to be met with a combination of prudence and serenity.  Which in my mind means masks and social distancing and somehow trusting that God still wants us to live and find joy even now.  

I spent all day at church yesterday and am always shuttling between an awareness of how hard life is and remembering how good God is.  One of our members slid off her bed and did something to her eye so that right now she has no vision in it.  Another person had surgery and had his vocal chords nicked and for now they are paralyzed.  Everything can change in a moment.  We live - whether we like it or know it or not - always vulnerable.

And yet the message from Jesus is "Do not worry." I began a course through the Center for Contemplation and Action on Teresa of Avila.  And once again I remembered that God is with us always and in all ways.  There is no situation in which I am outside the love and care of God.  My hope is that I will continue to deepen my sense that God is "closer to me than I am to myself." (quoting James Finley)  That is what helps me not to worry.  What helps me not to worry is to seek God first - through prayer, Bible study, Christian community, worship, nature, silence, etc.

And so, I continue my prayer practices and know that because of them I am able to trust a little bit more and push the worry away.  I will end with a reading from Teresa of Avila. 

Let nothing disturb you.

Let nothing upset you.

Everything changes.

God alone is unchanging.

With patience all things are possible.

whoever has God lacks nothing.

God alone is enough.

 

In other words - do not worry.

The Wisdom of Wonder

There are times in which it seems like I have a theme for the week - every place I turn I keep getting the same message.  

This week the message is - "can I put myself before God who loves me and has chosen me, with all my foolishness and all my weakness?"  This is a quote from the Praying as you Go App that I started the day with today.

The scripture, 1 Corinthians 3: 18-23 begins like this:

"Do not deceive yourselves.  If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise."

They quote Gregory the Great who said: "Wisdom is born of wonder" and wonder brings us back to our spiritual search for relationship and belonging.

Last night in Bible study we spent time on Matthew 6: 22,23

²² “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; ²³ but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

We talked about the things that blind the eye: Prejudice, Jealousy and Self Conceit.  Barclay writes about what he calls "the necessity of the generous eye."  And we must be  generous in our judgments of others.

In our discussion last night we ended up talking for a while about racism and came to the same conclusion that my book group came to the night before:  we have much to learn.  We keep finding out how ignorant we have been about our own history as a country.  One example that someone gave was that none of us had been taught about the Tulsa race massacre in 1921.  (I lived in Tulsa during elementary school days and certainly was not taught that!)

In our book discussion Tuesday night we keep learning that we need to listen to the stories of people who are not like us and learn.  We need to live in wonder and not in certitude.

And so, I begin this day putting myself before God who loves me and has chosen me - with all my foolishness, my ignorance, my confusion, my weakness.  It is in openness to God's love that I might have the courage to stay open to learn what I need to learn even though it may be uncomfortable and painful to hear.

And much of what I also need to hear is how loved I am.  How loved we all are.  How God keeps seeking to bring us healing and reconciliation.  It seems that when we live in the wisdom of wonder we might be used more fully by God.

Here is a wonderful prayer by Walter Brueggemann 

Holy God, to whom we turn in our trouble, and from whom we receive life and well-being even in the face of death;  

We gladly and without reservation assert:  You are the one who gives life;

You are the one who hears our prayers;

You are the one who turns our jungles of threat into peaceable zones of life;

You are the one who has kept us since birth, who stands by us in our failure and shame; who moves against our anxiety to make us free.  

You are the one who does not hide your face when we call.

 So we praise you.  We worship you.  We adore you.

 We yield our life over to you in glad thanksgiving.

 As an act of praise, we submit our sick and our dead to you;

 As an act of praise, we submit more and more of our own life to you;

As an act of praise we notice your poor, and pledge our energy on their behalf;

As an act of praise we say “yes” to you and to your rule over us.  We say, “yes, yes,”

Amen and Amen.