Lent 5 March 22-John 12, Heb. 5

March 22-John 12, Heb. 5:5-10

A man from Indiana calls me routinely. he cannot get in his head that Jesus was a human being. It has always been a looming heresy in the church, but it seems to be a particular issue in America to downplay the humanity of Jesus.Stop and consider for just a moment. God’s own walked in our steps, took the wilderness walk of humanity in our shoes.  Heb. 5 is a sterling reminder of the humanity of Jesus.Our tradition emphasizes the priestly . Here.Here not only does he offer up his very life, he offers up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears, perhaps marks of sincerity in prayer. This could well include the prayerful cry of dereliction, of despair when Jesus quotes Ps. 22 on the cross.

I cannot count how many times I have heard something of this flow. At a funeral home visitation, some says I know what you are going through. At the same time, their response is you do not possibly know what I am going through, Can the Holy One, the Almighty, grasp the human condition? In God’s own being, Jesus’s humanity makes deepens the bond between God and us.John 12::20-33 In John’s gospel jesus often seems like a superhero riding over the concerns of everyday events. Still, this makes the human moments all the more stark and moving. In one of the images of the last century, we had Spock  trying to control his human side and the robot data trying to become more human. We approach the final act and goodbye of the life of Jesus. we do not have Gethsemane in this gospel but we have this moment. Jesus souls is troubled (ch word-tarasso, terrifies, disturbed, in commotion, stirred up, torn up shaken up bridge over troubled water)It frames the baptismal moment of Jesus where God speaks.Notice how the crowd misperceives even the voice of God.Jesus admits his heart is troubled. Still,he feels compelled to continue on.We think of courage at times as the absence of fear. Here it is recognizing the fear and moving through it, as Tom Hanks does when his hand is shaking in Saving Private Ryan.

We would see jesus-come and see at the start to the gospel. The hour includes falling letting go holding on has a Zen quality to it the full gift of himself to God and to and for the world.Jesus is trying to open eyes to another world-to move past making absolute the way things are and have been but to a new future-That entails being able to let go of one way of life and embrace another. To hold on to the new way entails release of the old patterns. We tend to cling to the familiar, and we then wonder why we cannot grab hold of the new.  In Zen and in 12 step we use the word detachment so we can more easily await and receive life. Jesus does not coerce-Jesus draws people like a magnet. Notice again the idea of free choice is set aside for this image of  attraction, perhaps a principle of spiriutal attraction ascertain as a magnetic field.No mention of free will is here.

John continues to work with the image of sight/seeing of the revealed jesus, like a new horizon, seeing an oracle into the future, a crystal ball of the gypsy, or the palantir of LOTR or the erised of Harry Potter.

We would see Jesus. We receive Communion this morning. We would see Jesus, be with Jesus. Body and soul, we are with Jesus this morning in an especially deep way..

Sermon Notes I Cor. 1:18-25 Theology of the Cross cont'd

In its original forms, this sermon went on forever. In its editing, I fear I may be a bit too condensed. Our short passage from 1st Corinthians  is a critical one for Christian belief. God works in mysterious ways and few more mysterious than the cross. while we know so much, wisdom is so lacking. Paul sees the Christ as a decisive move, a revelation, the apocalypse.

Gil Scott Heron said the revolution will not be televised. Neither was the apocalyptic event of Jesus Christ. It changes the way we view the world. Paul says that God’s foolish act confounds human wisdom, even a seemingly weak act strips all human arrogance ot power.Divine logic, the divine idea is decidely different than our own.So many churches either have eliminated the cross as too negative or have left it some sort of signal of divine wrath that then lets us all off the hook, or also glory in its bloody misery as in Mel Gibson’s notorious Pasison of the Christ that  gets so involved in the early torture that the crucifixion itself get short shrift. In our country we make a fetish of the cross itself as blood and violence.

Sufjan Stevens has a new song, no shade in the shadow of the cross. God takes the very weapon of defeat and shame and converts it into a tool for healing. Sin, the very thing that separates from God, is the wedge God uses to draw us into healing, into salvation.Of all things, God moves toward us in the cross, in the midst of weakness,in the midst of suffering. In majesty, god is hidden. So God uses the last place we would look for god tobe the vehicle of revelation of God.At the very place Jesus himself felt abandoned by God is the place where we see God with the victim, with the victimized. God takes the worst we do to each other and transform the electric chair into a doctor’s office, a surgery center, a place of healing.

(Hall via tillich): One of Luther’s most profound insights was that God made himself small for us in Christ... He showed us His heart, so that our hearts could be won. When we look at the misery of our world, its evil and its sin, we long for divine interference.. We long for a king of peace within history, or for a king of glory above history. We long for a Christ of power. Yet if He were to come and transform us and our world...Perhaps we would be happier; but we should also be lower beings, our present misery, struggle and despair notwithstanding. Those who dream of a better life and try to avoid the Cross as a way, and those who hope for a Christ and attempt to exclude the Crucified, have no knowledge of the mystery of God and of man.”  

As a direct final entrance into the troubles of the world, the cross offers no relief from the desire to rise above troubles as a way of being spiritual. Bonhoeffer- Cross sends [a person] back into . . . life on earth in a wholly new way…. The Christian, has no last line of escape available from earthly tasks and difficulties into the eternal, but, like Christ himself . . . he must drink the earthly cup to the dregs, and only in his doing so is the crucified and risen Lord with him, and he crucified and risen with Christ. This world must not be prematurely written off. This world, our world, our lives are important enough for Jesus to die for.Jesus did not avoid the valley of shadow, but went through it toward redemption and resurrection.

Thoughts on Lent and Required Optimism

Recently, I was called solemn. Plus, I found myself in the midst of a minor flare-up among clergy recently. Like many older Protestant churches, we rediscovered the seasons of the church year, including Lent. It was imposed, more than worked through, in the older Protestant churches, so after more than a generation, it still feels “foreign” to many. .It is a season of reflection, and that includes a senses of contrition for one’s sins. In a discussion of worship styles, they oppose the very notion of a penitential season. It is a symptom of our cultural insistence that everything, religion included, be uplifting, positive, and even sweet. When funerals become celebrations of life, we are witnessing a refusal to grieve in church.If we have seasons in life, winter is one of them, where we feel the cold chill of dealing with hardships..

Some years ago Neil Postman published Amusing Ourselves to Death.  He argued that entertainment values have become paramount in how we present and how we consider events. I suspect that many churches are following the amusement script  with a number of unspoken rationales. We may not wish to face the difficult questions of theodicy, the issue of God and human suffering. Second, we do not wish to  be candid with God. Third, we seem to wish to either shield ourselves from the troubles we all face, or treat people as if they are incapable of facing them. It has a sense of protecting a child form that which is beyond the ken of a child. Indeed, it is an outgrowth of seeing the church as just another player in the market who is to give people what they want.

I fully grasp that some people come to church seeking uplift and solace in a difficult world. I part company with the current insistence on emotional uplift is the sole liturgical impetus and content. To me, liturgy in church tries to embrace the entire human condition, and that includes suffering and sadness. At root, worship is prayer, and prayer, at its best, encompasses the whole of life.

The prayers a of the people are almost always prayers for some crying, even desperate need. I am truly afraid that we are disenfranchising the validity of the troubles people carry with them in light of the command to be upbeat. The church welcomes all within its worship. that includes people who are hurting but are fearful of even admitting it and have no way to express their suffering.

The Psalter is our biblical prayer book of 150 prayers. it is noteworthy that a plurality of psalms fall in the lament genre. the psalms quote dint the gospels tend toward these types of prayers, and Jesus himself quotes the beginning of Ps. 22 in his cry of dereliction on the cross. Even churches that use the three year lectionary cycle give shortened attention to these laments.

If we are to lighten our darkness we must be willing to admit that it continues to haunt contemporary life. As Lewis so boldly says, the conclusion of Lent, Holy Week, ends with the Incarnate One interred, with God in the grave. Douglas John Hall calls North American culture “officially optimistic” and “imprisoned by optimism.” He is not being complimentary. If the church becomes an Easter only proclamation, then we lose the depth of Good Friday. A culture that blithely terms everything to be a blessing, that insists that a cheery outlook can cure disease, is one unable to face reality, both positive and “negative.” When worship faces life as a whole, its glories and its dejections, its personal and social aspects together, we move toward an honest, even courageous look at the human condition.

Devotional Points for Week of March 8

Sunday Ps.19 links the order of creation to the moral order. Grace exists within  structure. When do you chafe against divine order? When would you wish to see it more plainly? does science help you appreciate creation?

Monday-“It is important that giving be truly free. It must never degenerate into charity, in the pejorative sense. Alms-giving is Mammon’s perversion of giving. It affirms the superiority of the giver, who thus gains a point on the recipient, binds him, demands gratitude, humiliates him and reduces him to a lower state than he had before.” ~Jacques Ellul

Tuesday-“Like bread and wine, Jesus both makes the heart glad and strengthens it, for which we are thankful. Gratitude is key to understanding the Christian Eucharist: gratitude for God’s good creation; gratitude for Jesus Christ, and our redemption in him, both present and future; and gratitude for the Holy Spirit, by whom the risen Christ becomes present to us and for us. The Eucharist itself (from the Greek, eucharistein, “to give thanks”), is the pulsing heart of our assemblies for worship.” (Byars, “The Sacraments in Biblical Perspective,” p. 18)

Wednesday-"The state of prayer," writes Evagrius, "can be aptly described as a habitual state of imperturbable calm." The Greek word he uses meaning "imperturbable calm" is apatheia, a term drawn directly from the Stoic lexicon. This apatheia he continues, "snatches to the heights of intelligible reality the spirit which loves wisdom and which is truly spiritualized by the most intense love."

Thursday-"I remember mom always telling me that all in all in the end the only one you really have is God. I have come to a place in experience where, in every sense of the word, I have surrendered myself to our creator because there was literally no one else... And by God and by your prayers I have felt tenderly cradled in freefall. I have been shown in darkness, light and have learned that, even in prison, one can be free. I am grateful. I have come to see there is good in every situation, sometimes we just have to look for it."- Kayla Mueller, in a letter to her parents Friday-”The spiritual life for a Christian is not rising above place and circumstance. The irony of Christian spiritual life is that it is always and in every way material. It is hassling with these particular people who make up my actual life ...and suffering through this loss and rejoicing over these mercies and trying to live in peace with those neighbors and dwelling in this community and dealing with that political tangle  and building up these institutions and seeking in the midst of all of this messiness to serve the Jesus Christ who did not come as an idea or as a principle or as a spiritual experience but in the middle of the very same material muck and mire and 'in the flesh." Preaching from Memory to Hope A ritual is the performance of an intuition, the rehearsal of a dream, the playing of a game.A sacrament is the breaking through of the sacred into the profane; a ritual is the ceremonial acting out of the profane in order to show forth its sacredness.A sacrament is God offering his holiness to men; a ritual is men raising up the holiness of their humanity to God.-Originally published in Wishful Thinking

Column on spiritual practices

In the last generation, we have seen astounding growth in physical fitness. At the same time, we have had increased interest and involvement in spiritual practices. For most Protestants spiritual practices were: prayer, Bible reading, and charitable giving. In a desire to feel closer to God, some have captured spiritual practices and disciplines as a sort of spiritual exercise regime. They could be ancient ones, such as fasting or practicing hospitality, or emphasizing the practice of Christian virtues of forgiveness, not judging others, or being kind

Every week in Lent, churches gather in different locales in Alton and Godfrey, but we seem uncomfortable with the very idea of a season of spiritual reflection and practice.

As soon as Protestants of a certain stripe hear a phrase such as spiritual practices, they shut down. “Isn’t that trying to work your way into heaven?” they will ask. Perhaps we could put it this way. If the way of heaven is in our midst, then should we not act like it? In part, it is taking a cue from Celtic spiritual life, where prayer accompanies almost every act of the day: from waking, to turning on a light, to preparing for bed. (I need to do some reflection on why I so consistently mistype spiritual).

I am drawn to experimenting with different modes of spiritual practices both to improve comfortable practices but to become more open to parts of my spiritual life that have lain fallow for too long. I am not by nature a mystical person, but I so admire the insights and images folks are able to bring to bear on learning closeness with God. Many contemporary religious practices emphasize emotion, “positive” emotion above all. I get the desire. Life is difficult, and we crave motivation and surcease from troubles. Yet, we can engage life in different modes. Some people crave activity. Their impulse is to do in order to be, so that could be working in a soup kitchen, or helping out a neighbor, or visiting the sick to run errands. The church does well to call people to different modes of religious life, but we fail if we insist on one size fits all approaches.

We are then presented with different personalities seeking different religious expression. The church can be helpful here in opening up both matches to personalities and avenues that may well feel as if they are pushing the envelope too much. Working with different spiritual practices is an attempt to balance freshness, even novelty, with depth of reflection. To paraphrase a famous quote, the unexamined spiritual life is not worth the time and effort. Spiritual experience or practice needs reflection to place it within the tradition of the ages, to ally it with wisdom. If we labor under an assumption that proper prayer looks like only this method, then it can become an obstacle, even a detriment to a richer prayer life. Practices can open us to less structured, even playful approach to intimacy with God. At their best, they help to link theory and action, thought and feeling through a disciplined work toward spiritual exercises.

Spiritual life is too vital to try to place in a compartment labeled holy. Jesus Christ did not represent some disembodied, airy, abstract sense of enlightenment, but a full throated, full bodied way of living with God and each other in this life. At the same time, we have coddled those who thoughtlessly claim the banner of spiritual but not religious to flesh out the slogan god gives us permission to seek the divine in different ways. Few things come naturally to human beings. Even the most talented often require practice. So does the utter gift of life with God, and each other.

March 1 devotional points

Sunday-Ps.22 is the psalm Jesus quotes at the cross. some think he was using the start as a shorthand for the whole song.Usually, laments have both pleas and a sense of relief and hope in the same prayer. they are model prayers for us. We neglect them at our spiritual peril.

Monday-I am called to fast from multitasking and the destructive energy of inattentiveness to any one thing, so that I get many things done, but none of them well, and none of them nourishing to me. Instead my practice will become a beholding of each thing, each person, each moment.

Tuesday-What if we knew that within our very cells is a God-given energy,

a source of light that possesses the secret of God's beautiful and complex design?

(Paula D'Arcy) At the same time, that complexity is filled with trouble as well. Healing is more than energy or return. it is the creation of a new health.

Wednesday-The desert of our weaknesses can be frightening, our emotional and spiritual emptiness starkly painful. We can choose to avoid this pain and fear, but the devil is in the avoidance. That was the wisdom of the priest who told us to "Wait. Wait." Many times my rushing to fill the vacuum has caused grief for me and others. Never once, however, have I been disappointed in waiting for the Lord. God is in the desert. God knows what I look like in my bathrobe, all alone late at night. And never once has God suggested that the sight is pathetic. Instead, in those empty hours, God says, "Talk to me. Then be still and know that I am God." From "Brave Emptiness: The Geography of Demons," Weavings: ,

Thursday-Prayer for Lent-O God, who makes all things new,new stars, new dust, new life;take my heart,every hardened edge and measured beat,and create something new in me.

I need your newness, God,the rough parts of me made smooth;the stagnant, stirred;

the stuck, freed;the unkind, forgiven.And then, by the power of your Spirit,

I need to be turned toward Love again. Amen.From The Awkward Season: Prayers for Lent by Pamela C. Hawkins

Friday-Humour is, in fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer … Laughter is swallowed up in prayer and humour is fulfilled by faith.”― Reinhold Niebuhr, Children of Light

Saturday-In a noisy world, spending time praying in honest to God silence is a paradoxical and profound way to practice listening with your neighbor.   Kent ira Groff when is silence a relief for you? when is it a gateway to the spiritual?

Sermon Notes March 1 Ps. 22, Mk. 8:31-38

March 1 2015 Mk 8, Ps. 22

We just read of the Transfiguration, that preview of Easter majesty. Now we step back from that bright reading to this crucial one, perhaps central one, in Mark’s story. Some folks come to church to seek some relief from the stresses in life.some come to church hoping that the whole of life gets represented in the liturgy. the ups and downs together.Some seek motivation to see the world in a constant stream of uplift.Lent is a season where we do step back from cultural optimism and recognize the pain and struggle in life. In Lent we are careful together the valley and shadow experiences within God’s embrace.

So often I hear people go into reverie about what it would be like to hear Jesus first hand. My guess is that we would react like Peter did if we heard this warning from his lips, because we do all the time. Peter treats Jesus  as if he has lost his mind, or is possessed. Rebuke was often associated with expelling a demon, recall . Peter is laboring under an assumption. surely the long awaited messiah would usher in an era of good feeling, of power and prosperity for his people. What is this business of continuing suffering borne by the messiah? Had they not suffered enough? I wonder if Peter could even hear the words of rising again and stopped right at suffering, rejection, and being killed?

I do not think that Jesus is referring of small acts of self denial and discipline here, neither about his own life nor the life of disciples.What does Jesus mean to gain the whole world here? (mega church pastoral issues here?) We need to be careful here about self-denial, what Calvin called the core value of the faith. I do not think it means the sense of going on  a diet and not getting cheesecake for dessert, or even the Lenten discipline of “giving something up for Lent. “Self-denial does not mean seeking or embracing abuse for its own sake, as if suffering itself is redemptive or a mark of virtue. Jesus has spent over seven chapters alleviating needless suffering or oppression whenever he encounters it; how could he be endorsing these things here?... Self-denial and redefinition come with their risks. Likewise, cross-bearing ...means death. It means the resignation of one's... life. Crosses imply rejection.Those who follow Jesus, associating with this vividly rejected Christ, take on an identity and a way of living that pose threats to the world's corrosive ideologies and idolatries.(M. Skinner)

I’ve mentioned that Eden Seminary has the great Clinton Mccann teaching Psalms and Ot, so I have sat in on a number of his classes this past fall. Even he wants to lessen the  impact of the cry of Jesus using the opening words of the prayer in light of its more comforting conclusion. Psalm 22 serves as a template for consideration of the suffering and death of Jesus. It is a classic long lament prayer. “It is the prayer Jesus had on his lips at his death. .the prayer knows that God can hear beyond the fact of death.  Not only will the living praise God, but all those "who sleep in the earth" (verse 29) and, "the yet to be born" (verse 31).. And so, we cry out to God with all who have lived, and died, including Jesus.  Few Lenten exercises would exceed learning to pray the lament deeply.We cheat ourselves of the full range of life if we neglect lament, if we shove the cross aside in light of Easter alone.