The Reign of Wondering - Reign of Christ Sunday

Colossians 1:11-20

 Sometimes, I wonder about silly things. I’ve always been this way. When I was little, I’d sit at the top of my steps, my two thumbs tucked into one of my shoes to spread out the laces, and just be transfixed, stuck in time, totally still, wondering about the mice that might have once crawled through the stairway walls. My mom would call up to me from the bottom of the steps, “Jennifer! Put your shoes on!” And I’d snap back into reality and say, “I AM!” Seven minutes later, my mom would come check on me, and there I was, laces untied, the heels still crunched down. My mom would put her hands on her hips, she’d say, “Jennifer! What are you supposed to be doing right now??” And I’d say, “Geez mom, I’m coming! Why do you always have to rush me?!” 

When I come back to my childhood home, sometimes I sit right back up there at the top of those steps and I’m transported back to that moment, or moments I guess, where there was a whole mouse world right on the other side of the grainy wood panelling. 

When we let ourselves wonder, we get to cross worlds. When we let ourselves wonder, space and time sort of fold in on themselves. Anything becomes possible. Mice can talk. The floor is lava. The guy next to you in traffic in the rusty Honda Civic is a spy for the CIA with superpowers, but he’s really a double crossing spy, so you’d better start reciting your times tables so that he doesn’t find out where you’ve hidden the secret codes for the nuclear arsenal. And then the whole world depends on you remembering how to count by 8s. When we let ourselves wonder, a jewish peasant, poor, mocked, and crucified, could become the king of the world.  

“Oh, Jenn,” you’ll tell me. “But none of that is real. Mice don’t talk. The floor isn’t lava. The guy in the Honda is just another exhausted middle aged man coming home from his dead end job, and you were never fast enough reciting your eights.”

And what can I say to that? What can I say when you rightfully point out to me that wondering never got me medical insurance, or a dental plan, or a pension? What can I say when you remind me that my kids don’t eat imaginary chicken nuggets, and nobody makes a living writing poetry, and dirt is just dirt, and I really just need to put my shoes on and get to work?

On my hardest days, I will tell you, “you’re right.” I will put my shoes on and ignore the mice in the walls and in my head. I’ll do the grocery shopping and cut coupons and only half believe it when I tell my kids that they can do anything they put their mind to if they just work hard enough.

But on my good days, on my good days, I’ll wonder what’s really caked in the tread of the bottom of those shoes. I’ll think about all that dirt that they’ll walk over, trudge through, and collect. How it’s mostly carbon. The stuff that feeds plants and fish and birds and trees. The stuff I walk on and dig through and get caked under my nails and try to wash out of my kids soccer jerseys are the very building blocks of life. 

On my good days, I’ll remind myself that I took a shower, poured milk in my cheerios and brushed my teeth with ancient dinosaur pee. 

No, seriously. It’s true. The water that has been here for billions of years is still the same water we have now. Your latte once passed through the kidneys of a tyrannosaurus rex…

I will let myself wonder where all that water has been. I’ll wonder what that dirt beneath my feet is really made of.

Was the dirt I’m washing off my carrots once a woolly mammoth? Or maybe it was the remains of a wildebeest, carried across seas and mountains and continents only to land in my front yard, only to get stuck in my tread as I imagined that the trees were magic houses for fairies who protected the forest from the evil trolls who want to tie everyone up with ropes and consumerism and feelings of inadequacy until they’ve trained us all to drive our old Honda civics to our dead end jobs. 

Did the water used to steam my latte or grow that dandelion come from the sacred Ganges River, blessed by shamans, drunk by kids playing cricket on the banks, then evaporated and turn to clouds which traveled thousands of miles only to fall in the highland park reservoir?

And the carbon dioxide you are exhaling right now - that is going to feed that tree out there, which will someday tear cracks in the sidewalk, and then one day die, and rot and become food for earthworms, or maybe a home for carpenter ants - that same carbon dioxide grew the grapes that will be fermented into wine and passed around by our savior at the last supper. These same elements formed the rain that fed the wheat that made the bread that Jesus broke with his friends just as his body was broken when he hung upon the cross under a sign that said, “Here is Jesus, King of the Jews.” 

All this, is real. Really real. It’s not just some idea that becomes true if I believe in it hard enough. It just is. Whether I consent to it or not.

In the real world, dinosaur pee really does turn into drops of prisms that become rainbows. In the real world, fallen trees rot into homes for morel mushrooms, cow dung is laid upon fields that will grow the French fries. In this world, this one, right here, the dirt Jesus wiped from the feet of the disciples is under our feet too, or transformed to books that tell our stories, some stories where the mice really do talk. 

In this real world, if given enough time, enough attention, enough love, everything is always being transformed into something else. We are always growing, changing, always evolving, and, in some ways, anything becomes possible. What an important thing to remind ourselves on this special stewardship Sunday.

In this real world, we celebrate things that don’t make sense, but are really real nonetheless. Like how, as Richard Rohr says, “Christ is just a word for everything.” Like how Jesus walked around pointing at the birds and the flowers and the heartbreak and the struggle and said, “God is here.” Like how a pile of dirt can take us to kings and sequoias and dining room tables and soufflés and art and music and the actual, real, presence of Christ in it all. Like how the blood of the cross can make all things new. 

When I was a young, earnest Christian, I thought I had to find a dark quiet closet, I had to furrow my brow, really focus, really concentrate, and somehow will myself into God’s presence. “Ok, God, I’m here, I’m ready. Time to speak!” And then…nothing. Silence. Just the shifting of my weight on the floor. My breath, inhaling, exhaling. The hum of the furnace. The flicker of a struggling candle. “No really, God,” I’d say, “I’m here! Say something!” And…nothing. So I’d fix my posture, furrow harder, read the Bible passage again, focus better. And in all my trying, in all my striving and reaching, in all my working to make the presence of God real to me in that moment, I’d miss it. I’d miss the wondering. I’d miss the mouse family as they gathered food for a picnic just on the other side of the wall. I’d miss the generations of stories and stuff that were magically hidden in the soles of my shoes. I’d miss that it’s all connected, me, and the world, and the wonder, and the stories, and the presence of God in it all. In all my trying, and striving, and forcing, I’d miss it. Hidden in my wondering, right there in plain sight. 

So when we say “Christ is King” on this Reign of Christ Sunday, we are lifting all things, all the real stuff, all the good, earthy, concrete, tangible, tasty, life-giving stuff, no matter its current state, and saying yes, that’s what directs our lives, yes, God reveals God’s self in these things. And in you. And maybe even in me. Christ reigns in the breath. Christ reigns in the earth. Christ reigns in the turning of the seasons and in our building up and in our tearing down. In that last red leaf that refuses to let go. In the pile already composting under the branches. In the bulb that will wait until spring to come out of the darkness. Christ reigns. 

And this is a political statement. It’s a pronunciation that Christ is the ruler — not princes or principalities, or billionaires, or corporations, or credit scores, or tax breaks, or presidents, or democrats or republicans, or even the almighty dollar. Christ. Christ in all things. And so. All things are sacred because they hold the sacred incarnation of the one who calls us to wonder, who calls us to see connection and community and creation - from the beginning of time, to right where we are, right here. Right now. 

For Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in Christ all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers-all things have been created through Christ and for Christ.  Christ is before all things, and in Christ all things hold together. Christ is the head of the body, the church; Christ is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that Christ might come to have first place in everything. For in Christ all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Christ God was pleased to reconcile to God's self all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of the cross.

So grab your shoes. Let’s dig in the dirt. We have wondering to do.

Thanks be to God.

Go Home Jesus, You're Drunk

Luke 16:1-15

 Dear Jesus - 

When I signed up for this vocation of being a pastor, I have to admit, I did not read the fine print. Or, I mean, I did, but I didn’t ever think I’d actually have to preach on it. I mean, I guess that’s my bad, I should have known what I was signing up for. But, honestly, Jesus, this passage is bonkers. So I feel like maybe an apology from you would be appropriate, even if I did sign at the dotted line before reading all the riders and clauses. This passage makes no sense to me. It’s right up there with Elisha sicking a she-bear on a bunch of boys just because they pointed out his bald head, or that one time God decided that the whole world should be destroyed so God sends a flood and even the innocent animals all die, or that time when God decided to torture Job so that he could win a bet with Satan. This passage may even be worse than that time God told Abraham to commit filicide, or when Lot offers his daughters to a sodomite mob. I mean, maybe not in the particularity of the act, but in the way that it just makes no logical sense whatsoever. In the sense that this isn’t just a one-off oddball situation between a neurotic patriarch, but you’re actually instructing all of us to be like this so called “shrewd” manager. 

I have to be honest, Jesus, this isn’t your best work. It doesn’t hold a candle to the lilies of the field or the lost sheep or the prodigal son. Now those parables, they get it done. This one, if you brought it in to my creative writing workshop in grad school, would get ripped to shreds by all the writers in the room. Someone would say, “this text abuses the reader.” Another would roll their eyes. Another would rewrite the whole thing using their own words, and then praise it for how amazing it suddenly became. Someone else would try to couch the criticism in a constructive way. They’d say, “It’s really interesting that you’ve inserted so many contradictions in your narrative, but I wonder if the impact is lost on the reader because you haven’t taken its absurdity far enough?” The guy with the handlebar mustache slouching in the back of the room would speak up and say, “You’ve created a world in which the reader should occupy, but you haven’t been completely faithful to that world. You’re not following the rules you’ve set up for yourself.” It’d be worse than that one time I didn’t have a title for my poem, so I turned it in with the title of “untitled,” and somebody used a bright red pen to mark a huge x through the whole thing, and then handed it back to me. 

Or maybe, Jesus, you’re going to pass the buck to Luke. Maybe it’s his fault that this is such a confusing and maddening parable. Maybe, when he was writing, he had all these notecards with all your sayings and stories strewn out on the kitchen table, and as he organized them one by one, these were the random notecards left over, so he just piled them on top of each other and inserted them somewhere there was a page break. 

I mean, have you heard this story, Jesus?

Let me refresh your memory. 

So. Right before this, you’ve just told this amazing story about the prodigal son. He wasted his whole inheritance, he rejects his family, his tradition and his faith on fine wine and cheese and women, and when he runs out of cash and gets hungry for the pigs’ leftovers, he comes to his senses, and walks back to his house. On his way, his dad finds out that he’s coming back, and so he lifts his robes, runs through the muddy fields, and doesn’t even let the kid get a word in edgewise before he’s embraced him and forgiven him and brought him back home in an embarrassment of sentimentality and emotion. Now that one was a good one. Why didn’t you follow that one up with another just like it, you know, to really bring the point home, to really communicate to us in neon lights what God is like — all gracious and forgiving and valuing human life above the almighty dollar. But no. Instead. You follow that pulitzer prize winning parable with this one - where a corrupt manager races to save his butt once his boss finds out that he’s been wasting the landowner’s cash. “Oh crap!” He says, once the rich man calls him out on his shady bookkeeping. “What am I going to do? I have no real skills, I’m worse at manual labor than I am at managing, and there’s no way I’m going to demean myself so low as to go out and beg, how will I survive this?” And being the hustler that he is, he decides that since he’s already burned the bridge with his boss, he might as well go all the way, and you know, really stick it to the man. So, in the hopes that he wins some favor with some folks who might have pity on him - or, at least feel indebted to him - he does some fancy accounting to reduce their debt to the rich man. And just like that, with the stroke of his quill, one guy who owes a hundred jugs of oil now only owes fifty. And another guy who owes a hundred containers of wheat gets his bill slashed down to eighty. 

This reminds me, Jesus, of the whole student debt controversy we’re having in the United States, where, with the stroke of a pen, the president has just lopped off thousands of dollars from folks still paying back their college loans, and the rest of us are having an absolute fit about it. Except the rich master doesn’t throw a fit at all. In fact, he commends the manager for his shady dealings. Suddenly, instead of squandering, the manager is now “shrewd.” Ok. Ok. So, in your story, now we’re waiting for some kind of criticism of the master, at least, right? Something about how the master is just as corrupt as the manager, or something about how we’re in late stage capitalism and we need to forgive our debtors just as our debts are forgiven us? 

But Jesus. It’s a total rhetorical fail. It makes absolutely no sense. It doesn’t jive at all with anything you’ve been saying in Luke’s first fifteen chapters. Jesus, you do realize, don’t you that you take the side of “the man” in this story? You take the side of all of those who make decisions just like this manager. You praise the children of this age, and then throw some major shade at the children of the light. And then you double down. You tell us all to be like this manager, like those children of this age, like the rich man in the story. You remember, right? You command us to “make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” I mean, have you even seen It’s a Wonderful Life? That’s not the moral of the story at all. Or, if you’ve missed that one, maybe you’ve read A Christmas Carol, where Ebenezer Scrooge learns that it’s not about the accumulation of wealth at all, but the relationships we make along the way? Ok. Maybe those are too post turn of the millennium for you. Have you heard the one about the prophet who walks into the temple and shocks everyone by reading from the scroll of Isaiah and says that he has come to bring good news to the poor, or the time he stood on a mountain and proclaimed that the poor were blessed and said, “Woe to the rich”? Or did you hear the one about the guy who had a huge harvest and didn’t know what to do with his abundance and so he decided to build a bigger barn to store all his stuff, and then God ends his life that night? Or the one about the flowers and the birds who don’t worry about stuff or money or how they’ll be taken care of; they just trust? Or the one where we’re reminded to sell our possessions, give to the poor, and store real, godly treasures in heaven, where they can’t be destroyed? Surely you’ve heard the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, right? Because, spoiler alert, all of these are things you’ve said. These, among others, are stories you’ve told, commandments you’ve given, warnings you’ve made. So, uh, what gives?

You even seem to contradict yourself within our single lectionary reading today. Remember when you said, immediately after this story, — I have it written down right here, — you said, “And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?” You said to us, “You cannot serve God and wealth.” You can hear how that’s very different from the moral of the parable you give us, praising this “shrewd manager,” right? 

So what the heck are we supposed to do with the contradictory and confounding parable/commandment/criticism sandwich from our lectionary today? How are we supposed to swallow that one when we’ve been chewing on all this righteousness and sacrifice and life-is-more-than-riches-burn-the-whole-system-to-the-ground casserole that you’ve been serving up this whole time? 

This passage gives me whiplash. This passage confuses and confounds and makes me want to challenge all those theologians who insist that there is always a “plain reading of the text.” ‘Cause the plain reading of this text seems to contradict everything you’ve taught us, everything you’ve come to unravel, everything you got nailed to the cross and died for. Seriously, go home, Jesus. You’re drunk. 

Unless, well, unless you knew those Pharisees were eavesdropping on your conversation. Unless you knew that they were going to take your words and twist them around and make them into something they’re not anyway, so you might as well leave their heads spinning. I know the lectionary cuts off before this detail, but it feels important. It feels significant, somehow. These particular pharisees are guys who are trying to keep one foot in two boats. They’re trying to love God and love wealth. They’re trying to do both, to serve both God and wealth. Is what you’re saying, Jesus, are you saying that we need to just pick one? Are you saying that maybe the rich man and the shrewd manager are actually more righteous than those of us who want to find a way to straddle both sides of the wealth and righteousness divide? Are you criticizing these pharisees because they’re so torn, all the time, between pleasing the system and pleasing God? Because if you are, then that gets real hard for me. It forces me to think about how wealthy I am, about how I am in the top ten percent of the world’s population when it comes to what I’ve got. If that’s what you’re doing here, then it gets even harder. Because then my attempt to give my kids a “good life” and new Nikes and drum lessons and Frappuccinos and money for college, and my anxiety about needing to save for retirement and have health insurance and get a new car suddenly becomes…not so righteous. Suddenly, the shrewd manager and his wealthy boss get to get in line before me, because, if nothing else, they were focused, they were one-minded, they didn’t put on a pretense about giving their lives to you and serving the poor and standing up for justice and then turn around and do the other thing. Are you trying to tell us that we can’t be of two minds, and if we are, then at least the shrewd manager is being honest about his corruption? ‘Cause if you are, then I really don’t know what to do. If you are, then I’ve got more worries on my mind besides a confusing and confounding lectionary passage. If you are, then I’ve got to reevaluate my whole perspective on how I live my life. And, frankly, I’m just not sure I’m ready for that right now, Jesus. 

I think I’d rather be confused. 

I think I’d rather blame you for your contradictions than wrestle with my own. 

But, you know, thanks anyway, Jesus.

Sincerely,

Your lukewarm, often distracted and confused follower,

Jenn 

Thanks be to God. 

Forest Bathing.

 

John 16:12-15

During the heart of the plague year, that is, those months of quarantine due to Covid, our family did pretty well there, for awhile. Dan and I both have flexible jobs, for which we are immensely grateful, so we were able to tuck in and out of parent-teacher-pastor-professor duties with graceful ninja-like skill. I was Zoom-meeting and drilling times tables, studying the letter to the Romans and explaining the difference between coordinating and subordinating conjunctions. Dan was parsing Greek verbs and making another pot of Mac and cheese, and grading exegesis papers while explaining factor trees and how to find the volume of a graduated cylinder. And then, we just hit a wall. We’d reached capacity. We just couldn’t function any more. The boys were testing limits and our patience, bickering, leaving wet towels on the floor and dirty underwear in the bathroom. Dan and I worried about reading delays and social transitions and job security before crashing to sleep at night, only to do it all over again the next morning. We were doing our best to do our part to keep a deadly virus from becoming even more deadly, but that left us isolated, stuck inside, and perpetually fussy. I’m sure most of you can relate. 

So one Saturday, after another fight over who was barging in to whose room, which then turned in to a fight over who hit whom first, which then turned in to an argument about who never gets in trouble and who always gets blamed for everything, I said, “That’s it we’re going to the woods.” 

We have this joke in our family. We are always encouraging the boys to get outside. But, alas, we rarely make them. They almost always choose Netflix and Fortnite. But whenever the kids are having a rough day, and we go out for a walk together, usually over to our nearby Dormont park, and the kids have this transformation -- their moods just lift — they start laughing, they start running around, their imaginations light up, they get along, they tell funny stories and ask great questions -- and we take a moment to remind them of what’s just happened. “Isn’t it interesting,” we say, “now that you’re outside, breathing fresh air, running around, playing and being imaginative, you feel so much better.” Every time. We tell them that they’ll feel better if they go outside, they resist and protest, they give excuses and arguments, but when they finally do get out there, they’re shocked by how much better they feel. And every time, we remind them, with a tone of loving sarcasm I am convinced is appropriate for parents of a middle schooler, we say, “Huh. Funny how that works. You get outside and life just seems much better.”

But really, it’s actually science. The Japanese coined the term, “Shinrin-yoku” - translated “forest bathing.” And they’ve done tons of studies about the physiological benefits of just wandering in the forest, with no goal, no intention, no accomplishment in mind. Just wandering through the woods. Studies have shown that this “forest bathing” lowers cortisol and adrenaline, lowers blood pressure, reduces anxiety, depression, anger, confusion and fatigue. It improves focus, reduces ADHD symptoms, and craziest of all, they’ve found that plants give off this chemical called phytoncides. This chemical has antibacterial and anti fungal properties, and increases a type of white blood cell in our bodies that supports our immune system and is linked to a lower risk of certain cancers. In fact, patients in hospitals with “green views” have shorter post-operative stays, take fewer pain killers, and have fewer post-surgical complications compared to those who have no windows in their rooms. So if you need to just stare out of the window for the next ten minutes, go for it. It’s the best sermon around.

Sometimes, we’ve just got to get out to the woods.

So as we wander through the forest on Trinity Sunday, I first want to remind you how very good it is for us, just to wander. Because we might start wandering around today, and maybe start feeling a little lost. That’s certainly the case whenever I try to think about or somehow “comprehend” the Trinity. 

I used to hate thinking about the Trinity. I’d end up in the philosophical and theological weeds where the theologians would drawl on and on with all the Greek and the pages of words and the footnotes. They’ll talk about the three in one and the one in three. They’ll use big words like perichoresis and hypostasis. One God in three persons, consubstantial in person, nature, essence and will. But also separate and distinct in and of themselves. Co-equal. Co-powerful. These authors insist on their rightness, and on their willingness to burn anyone else who might have a different perspective. There is one God in whom there are three persons who share one substance, and these persons, though one God, go by different names to denote those persons. They wax poetic about the heresies of modalism and Sabellianism and Arianism.  And then we wet-behind-the-ears seminarians would act like we understood what the heck they were talking about and we’d write papers about our own perfect orthodoxy that would get graded according to how smart we sounded, when really all we were doing was stringing words we didn’t understand together into incomprehensible theses and feeling really proud of ourselves. 

We’d use analogies like water and ice and steam, or the head, body and feet of a river, or a god “powerpack” that descends from the heavens, entirely God, but somehow suffused into a human body. We’d argue about the co-existence of the Son or the adoptionist theory that Jesus was made by God and then adopted in to God’s self. We’d argue about whether hypostasis means “essence” or “person.” And when we’d reach a dead end, when we’d start talking in circles and hiding our logical fallacies. After all the pages and the Greek and the footnotes and the Fathers we’d read, we’d shrug our shoulders, get to our required word count and say, “it’s a mystery.” “You must have faith.” The copout helicopter that will fly in to rescue us when we’re lost in the wilderness.

Somehow, being lost in the woods was just not ok. We like to have things figured out. We like to know and understand and comprehend and then tell others they’re wrong. 

But it’s ok. We really don’t have to have it all figured out. We’re just forest bathing.

We don’t have to understand any aspect or element of the forest in order to receive its benefits. Take a deep breath; we’re fighting cancer.

But I do want to tell you something cool about the forest, something that I think shows us a little bit of what the Trinity is like. And if you get lost, it’s no big deal, just come back to the surface, and forest-bathe. 

So often we think that we’ve got to get it all figured out, all by ourselves, we’ve got to come to this “personal” understanding of who Jesus is and what he has done for us, so that then we can go out and convince others to individually do the same. We look at nature like that, too. We don’t realize that everything is connected, that the elk need the wolves and the wolves need the prairies and the prairies need the elk in order for any of them to survive. We look at a tree and we think it’s this single thing, this one entity, this one “person,” “entire of itself.” But really, one tree is in unique relationships with all the other organisms all around it. In a sense, the tree is still a tree, but it is also the whole forest.

They call it the “wood-wide-web.” It’s a mycorrhizal network that creates a language through which the entire forest speaks to itself. So this network is made up of densely packed fungal threads that connect even plants of other species to each other. This fungus forms mycorrhiza with plant roots, and in this complicated system of tunnels and tubes, much in the same vein as our own internet, plants are able to pass chemicals between themselves in a sort of give-and-take relationship. It’s a “straight up exchange between plants and fungi. Plants provide carbon rich sugars made by photosynthesis, and in return, they get nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen that the fungi scavenge from the soil.” And then “other plants use this fungal network to communicate to each other, and through these fungal networks, the plants themselves exchange sugars, nutrients, and water between themselves,” even if they aren’t members of the same species. Mother trees have been known to send extra carbon to their seedlings. When a birch needs more carbon and the fir has too much, the fir sends some over. Dying trees will donate their nutrients to specific neighbors. They’ll even send warnings to other neighboring plants. If one species is being attacked by a certain kind of aphid, they’ll tell all their neighbors to increase a certain chemical that will attract a specific wasp that just so happens to feed on aphids, even if their neighbors haven’t been infested with the aphids yet. 

As we wander the forest. As we breathe deeply the phytoncides and focus our brains and fight off potential cancers. Just think about all that’s going on underneath our feet. Scientists still don’t have a full grasp on what’s happening. Although they can detect signals going from one plant to the next, although they can prove that there’s some kind of communication going on here that suggests unity among the diversity, although they know that each species is unique in and of itself and yet still a part of some great organism, there is still so much we don’t know about what’s going on in and through those mycorrhizal tunnels. We know now that forests aren’t just made up of single organisms in a survival of the fittest, fighting for resources battle, but they’re also this bigger, greater, more connected thing, united by this network of fungus that enables them to relate and speak and help each other.  There’s a web beneath us, orchestrating and coordinating everything all around us.

And that’s the Trinity.

At least, that’s how my puny little brain is understanding and relating to this trinitarian idea, for now. 

It’s this web of interconnectedness. The means through which we relate to one another. The tunnels through which information and needs and desires and gifts are exchanged. The system of relationships that unites us all. 

It’s this mechanism of interconnectedness that reminds us that none of us are alone, none of us can survive without each other, and none of us is separate from this great web of being. 

When we make connections with one another, when we offer someone a cup of water or a pair of shoes or the space in front of us in line, when we weep tears of mourning fifteen miles away from the most recent school massacre, when we cringe in frustration at our helplessness in a war happening an ocean away, when we are at our wit’s end with bickering families all stuck in the house during a global pandemic, we are participating in the movement of the Trinity. We are traveling through those mycorrhizal networks to reach out to one another, plant to tree to fern to fungus. We are participating in that web of interconnectedness that, at least for now, I like to think of as the Trinity - this great web of relationship. The great web of being.

And we don’t have to understand it, or “believe in it,” or learn complicated apologetics and theological backflips in order for us to participate in it, in order for us to feel the benefits of it. We can just bathe in it. Take a deep breath. Wander around. There is God beneath our feet.

Thanks be to God.

When the Pieces Won't Fit.

 

John 14:23-29

Acts 16:9-15

    In our panicked scramble to clean the house before my in-laws came to town, we found a puzzle that Jonah had received for his birthday…last August? Maybe the August before? 1000 pieces of the solar system, stars and planets, our own sun’s rays bending down from above, and the earth, a swirling blue marble, creeping up from left hand corner down below. This puzzle is hard. There are so many colors and swirls and clouds of gas that it is just overwhelming the moment you open the box. 1000 puzzle pieces, each containing its own little world, a cluster of stars, a moon orbiting Jupiter. So while the grandparents visited, we’d weave in tiny little moments of puzzle piecing. Waiting for the hamburgers to cook on the grill, waiting for me to get home from work, waiting in between YouTube commercials, they’d study the pieces, gathering up like colors, trying possibilities, flipping them around, trying again. The other day I went to say goodnight to Dan before I went up to bed, and I found him, back arched, eyes squinting, hovering over the puzzle pieces, determined to find just one more connection before his own lights out. It was really slow going at first. There was just so much, all jumbled together, and none of it made any sense. In proper, decent, and in order fashion, we started sifting through to find the edge pieces first, trying to define our border, our limits, some comfort in the fact that this is where the puzzle ends and begins, even if it is a puzzle of the universe. Grandpa and Levi were the most dedicated, and Dan stepped in to help after a few notes on his banjo. Eventually, Gramma got involved, and even Jonah came by and found one piece to put right. 

Great Grandma and Grandpa always had a puzzle out when we’d visit them in Arizona. Every time we walked by, we were supposed to stop and find two pieces to put in their place. Eventually, by the end of our visit, we’d had enough pauses to form an entire picture of sailboats or red barns or deer grazing in the forest. 

They’re such pointless things, puzzles. You take a box with a nice picture on the front, open it up to find a thousand tiny pieces that you then painstakingly sort and turn and try and turn again so that you can form a copy of the picture that has already been printed on the cover of the box. 

And I could not start this sermon until I had at least figured out how the earth went together. I’d forage and hunt, looking for the exact right piece to fit the specific section, only to try other pieces that just seemed to show up in my hands, seemed to just quietly tell me, “try me here. Or maybe here.” I sifted and searched, sorted and tried, until all those clouds and waves and currents and land came together to form this terrible, beautiful world that we live in. 

My twelve year old son has two pairs of black and white Adidas tennis shoes. Both are mostly black, both have three white stripes, both have black laces. Once when he was running around, late for school, looking for his shoes, I found a pair of said black and white Adidas tennis shoes, and offered them to him. “Here, Jonah. I found them.” “No. Mom,” he said with a frustrated sigh, "Those are not the right ones.” 

The other day at his soccer practice, one of his white teammates was chasing another teammate, who was black, saying, “Hey monkey! Hey monkey! Get in the back of the bus monkey!” 

And about three weeks ago he came home from school, dumped his backpack in the middle of the kitchen floor, and ran straight to his room. A few minutes later we checked on him. He’s on the floor, tears streaming down his face while he pulls and tugs at his cheeks, saying, “They said my cheeks are so fat. How do I get rid of my cheeks? I have to get rid of my cheeks.” 

Last week in Buffalo, New York, ten people were murdered and three people were injured as they shopped for Corn Flakes and bananas and hamburger buns at their neighborhood grocery store. One man went in to buy a birthday cake and never made it home. This was the 198th mass shooting in the United States this year. 

The war in Ukraine rages on.

Babies aren’t getting enough formula.

Forest fires are consuming thousands of acres of land and homes in New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, and Nebraska. 

A news reporter in Delhi asks a man pulling his cart of fruit to the market how he’s surviving these weeks and weeks of deadly 120 degree days, and he shrugs and says, “I try to drink water. I am not a rich man; I cannot afford cold drinks.” 

Three weeks ago the orchestra teacher at my son’s middle school was arrested under child pornography charges.

I’m sure you carry with you your own pieces that just don’t seem to fit.

Do you ever feel like the world is just breaking apart? Do you ever feel like the earth’s puzzle pieces just won’t fit?

Paul had spent most of his life trying to unravel the world. Of course, he wouldn’t have admitted that at the time. At the time, he thought that he was merely sifting through all the pieces and throwing out the ones that don’t fit. But then, when his own world is broken apart, when he experiences a vision from God where he can no longer see anything, something changes, something shifts, and he dedicates his life to gathering up all the puzzle pieces and showing how, in God’s grace, they can fit back together again. So he’s traveling around, eating with all the wrong people, getting himself thrown in prison, and then thrown out of prison, arguing with the other disciples, and somehow still finding time to proclaim the love of God in Christ, when he has another vision. A Macedonian man appeared to him and pleads with him. “Come to Macedonia and help us,” this envisioned man says. So Paul and his posse all pack up and set sail for Macedonia. It's quite a road trip. Several stops for gas and Slim Jims and mixed Coke-and-Cherry Slushees. Eventually, they land in Philippi, a Roman city, determined to connect all the pieces of this vision and their travels and the Word of God as they understand it back together. Except they hang out for a few days, and that Macedonian man pleading for Paul’s help is nowhere to be found. So, on the sabbath day, they take the remaining pieces of their puzzling vision, and they wander outside the gates to find a place of prayer. They’re searching for the searchers. The ones who don’t fit in. The ones who are looking for something more, and are willing to sit outside the gates until it comes. And instead of rescuing a Macedonian man, they take that puzzle piece and flip it around, studying it, wondering how it will fit. They sit down on the rocks and start talking to a bunch of women who had gathered there. Then they see Lydia, likely a Gentile woman, listening intently to their every word. Paul fingers the puzzle piece in his hand, trying to make sense of how any of this connects. She’s a rich woman. A dealer of purple cloth. A dealer in luxury. So that’s strange. Why would a rich woman who has everything she needs wander outside the gates in search of something more? Another set of pieces that don’t seem to fit together. She is fully present to what they have to say about God, she receives it with her whole heart, and Paul is given another piece to this Macedonian puzzle. They baptize her. Her and her whole household. More pieces. More turning and trying and studying to see how it all fits. She invites them home. She compels them. She urges. She insists. She will not take no for an answer. She gives them the final piece, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.” “If you have found that I, too, fit in to the family of God, that I’m a vital piece to this kingdom of God puzzle, then come, come home.” She demands that they realize that she fits, and that they fit, too. And Paul and his friends gather up all the pieces that they have collected, pile them up, stuff them in their pockets, and follow her home. Nothing seems to fit the vision that Paul had received, but they’ve found more pieces in the process, widening the boarders of this picture even further, even if they don’t seem to fit together quite yet.

Last Thursday a bunch of misfit middle school kids in the school’s music department had a concert. The choir sang. The band and the orchestra played. Kids with pink hair and clip on ties and combat boots. Kids with big feet. Kids hiding under their hoodies and curtains of long, stringy hair. Kids with the wrong kind of black and white Adidas tennis shoes. Kids who’d said stupid things and kids who’d heard it. Kids who know what is going on in our world and show up to sing a song or play the drums or squeak through their first solos anyway. Kids who used their voices and the air in their lungs and the rhythm in their hearts to bring their puzzle piece forward, to explore how it fit in with everyone else’s, to say, even for just an hour and a half, even just among themselves and their parents and their siblings and grandparents, “I belong. I fit in. I am a vital piece. Come. Come outside the gates, beyond the insults and the constant criticism, beyond the comparisons and the violence and the inequalities. Beyond the oppression and injustice. In search of something more. Bring your pieces. Let’s see how all this fits together. We’re all searchers, searching for something that we can’t really name and we don’t really know what it looks like, but that will quietly invite us to try. “Try me here,” they’ll say, “or maybe here. We’ve travelled this far. Come. Come home.” 

How brave were those kids? How trusting their teachers? How’d they know that if they just brought what they had, if they just came together, if they just looked around, it’d all fit together somehow? How many negative voices and terrifying comparisons and echoing laughter for their “wrong” shoes did they have to endure, and then take what they had, no matter how imperfect, no matter how unsure of the big picture, and stand up there on that stage and say, “Me. I’m here. I belong, too. You can come to my house. I’ll sing you a song. I just learned the clarinet.”

These are just ordinary stories, really. Puzzles. Road trips. Middle school band concerts. Trying to survive the sixth grade. Worrying about what other people think of you. Getting bombarded by constant bad news. Being uncertain that you’re on the right track. Looking for the searchers outside the city gates. Thinking you know exactly what you’re looking for and then stumbling upon some other thing you’d never expected, but really needed. Getting invited over to a new friend’s house for dinner. Tearing up at a band concert because it’s such a terrible, beautiful world. 

“Jesus answered him, “‘those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and will come to them and make our home with them.’”

Oh God, how will all this fit? Will it ever make any sense? Bring us more pieces. Teach us to turn them around, study them, pause as we pass by, and let the picture unfold. Help us look outside the gates. Let the pieces we need just land in our palms. There is so much more out there to be connected to. Do not let our hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. Give us your peace. Invite us home.

Thanks be to God. 

in the breath

John 20:19-31

 Every year, poor “doubting Thomas” gets a bad rap. And every year, I try to undo the damage of all those “just trust!” “Just believe!” “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” sermons in my own small way. I love Thomas. I love that he’s out there in the world, and not hiding in some house cowering and licking his wounds like the rest of the disciples. I like that he needs to see Jesus in a real, visceral, physical, bodily way. And I like how he needs empirical evidence. He needs verifiable data. He needs peer reviewed articles and repeatable experiments and consistent data before he puts his trust into anything as crazy as the resurrection. It warms the cockles of my post-Enlightenment, post-scientific revolution, postmodernist heart. Thomas and I, we are buds. Best buds. We are tight. We like the same foods, have the same taste in music and can finish each other’s sentences. 

Give me the bodies. Give me the flesh. Let me put my hand where they’ve hurt you and let us find some peace in our pain. I’ll be here to defend you, Thomas, from all of those accusations of doubt and disbelief brought up by all those terrified, cowardly disciples who put their heads in the sand and locked themselves up in fear. At least Thomas was out there, wherever, out in the world, still relating to the world, still trying to get back to normal. Maybe he woke up that morning  after the Sabbath and thought, well, I guess we go back to work now, and he put on his fishing gloves, grabbed his net, and walked out the door, squinting in the harsh sunlight. 

Yup. When tragedy strikes, you pick yourself up by your bootstraps, you grin and bear it, you fake it til you make it, everything happens for a reason, God has a plan, all’s well that ends well, when the goin’ gets tough, the tough get goin’, if at first you don’t succeed, dig deep, because "things may come to those who wait, but only those things left by those who hustle.” Like Dory the fish in Finding Nemo, “just keep swimming, just keep swimming” because we can do hard things, no pain no gain, and when I get knocked down, I get up again, you’re never gonna keep me down, because when God closes a door he opens a window. 

Thomas went out there, he faced the music, he braved the wild, he risked imprisonment. If anyone earned the opportunity to experience  his risen Lord, it was Thomas. 

Thomas and I are thick as thieves, two peas in a pod, cut from the same cloth.

Push through the pain, because that’s how you get stronger. Laugh with them when they’re laughing at you. Don’t let them see you sweat. Just keep moving, and you won’t have to face the horrors of two days before. Just go back to work, back to routine, and you can pretend the trauma didn’t happen. Thomas and I, we don’t need those days in the dark. We’re gonna show them that we are made of stronger stuff. We’re going back out there. Back in the ring. We’re getting back on the horse, back in the game, put us in, coach, ’tis but a flesh wound.

Because if we stop. If we stop, we might find darkness all around us. If we stop, we might find that our savior has left us, all alone. If we stop, we might discover that all the hope we ever had was crucified up there on that cross. If we stop, we might have to admit that we’d given our whole selves to a lie. That Jesus wasn’t who he said he was, that he wasn’t all he was cracked up to be. That all that hope we’d invested in him came up twos and sevens. No full house, no royal flush, not even a pair of deuces. We put in all our chips, but of course, we should have known, the house always wins.

If we stop and think about it, we’d fall apart. If we took a deep breath, we might cry, or get angry, or need to throw something. If we stop to breathe, we might feel that sharp pain as it pierces our ribs.

So keep rowing. Keep swimming. Keep pushing the buttons and cranking the cranks. Keep punching the time cards and putting your best foot forward. Take it on the chin. Bills still have to be paid. Mouths still need to be fed. We don’t have the luxury of falling apart. Carry that sadness like a badge of honor, show everyone else out there that you can handle it, that you’ve got it under control, that if the wave of despair and horror knocks you over, you’ll just get right back up again. Put up your dukes. Put ‘em up. C’mon. Let’s go another round. 

But it’s weird, though. Real life is happening out there and yet Thomas and I, we come back home to all these others who say, “We have seen the Lord!” While they were hiding in their basements, indulging in a good cry, taking a minute to mourn, wallowing in self-pity, and getting in touch with their emotions, Jesus showed up. Jesus revealed himself in the darkness. Full of sweaty bodies and snot drenched handkerchiefs and tear stained sleeves. Jesus came in the midst of their fear and devastation and as they threw up their hands and moaned, “oh, what are we going to do now?” Jesus came in the darkness. 

And we missed it. 

It happened, and we were out there, doing stuff, moving around, rearranging the deck chairs, keeping busy. Keeping that pain at arm’s length and with a stiff upper lip.
They were crowded inside, cowering in the dark, and Jesus doesn’t even open the doors to let a little light in first. He just shows up. Right there. Right in the midst of all that embarrassing and messy and vulnerable out of control emotion and despair.

Thomas and I come in with pizza and beer and some VHS reruns of “I Love Lucy” to distract us through another sad night, and we’re told that we’ve missed it. Jesus came back. He showed up in the dark. He showed them his hands and his side and he offered them his peace. They were floored. “We have seen the Lord!” 

Like all those who came before them and who will come after them and say, “God spoke to me.” “God is telling me…” “Trust God.” “Just have faith,” “Let go and let God,” “God has a plan,” “It’s all in God’s time,” “I had a vision from the Lord,” “Just believe.” Why do they get to have such an easy faith? Why do they get to hear so clearly? They aren’t out there, throwing out the nets, sweating in hot sun, asking all the questions, doubting all the doubts, trying to forget and keep moving and not let them see your weakness. They’re just here, inside, with all this stale air, all these tears, the sobs, the crying headaches, all this humid, recycled breath.

Funny, how we can go an entire day without breathing. 

I mean, sure, we’re breathing, that’s how we survived through the day. But we weren’t really breathing. We weren’t really aware, really mindful, really paying attention to that thing that gives us life. Deep breathing stimulates the vagus nerve, which runs from the brain to the abdomen and is in charge of turning off our “fight or flight” reflex. When we breathe deeply, we activate the relaxation response in our parasympathetic nervous system, and we calm down. When we breathe deeply, our heart rate slows down, our blood pressure steadies. 

When we stop to take a few deep breaths, we have to deal with what is, with what is right in front of us, we are pulled into the present moment. And sometimes, that present moment is really, really hard. Sometimes, in that present moment, we are confronted with truths that we have been trying to ignore and overcome with our shallow breathing and our constant moving. Like a mother in labor, when we breathe deep, we stop fighting the pain, and we start to roll with it, we start to ride it where it takes us. We let go of control. And somehow, when we stop fighting it, it becomes just a little bit more manageable. Somehow, when we let go of control, the pain stops controlling us. And it all starts with the breath.

So when Jesus barges in there, his evidence that he is alive is his pierced hands and feet, the gash in his side, and his breath. In the midst of their sorrow and pain and darkness and fear, Jesus doesn’t come in and remove it all, he doesn’t fix anything, he actually shows them evidence of all the suffering that has happened. See. Look. My hands. My side. Still open. Still wounded. Still aching and sore. But as you look upon this suffering, as you remember this struggle, as you sit here in the dark and another sob forces its way through the deepest parts of your body, here’s some breath. Breathe. Stay. My peace be with you.

Jesus meets the disciples in the dark and he gives them breath. 

That’s resurrection.

Like the spirit-breath-wind hovering over the waters, like the breath that gives life to the dust, life, resurrection, is in the breath.

Breathe that in.

But you know what else is resurrection?

When Thomas misses it. When I miss it. When we doubt and ask questions and fail to believe. When a week goes by and you’re surrounded by all these people who have had this profound life changing experience, and they don’t kick you out. They don’t shun the nonbeliever. That’s resurrection, too. They keep coming back to the house. They keep coming back to the dark. And they keep inviting Thomas to join them. And he feels free enough, comfortable enough, not judged enough, home enough, that even though he doesn’t share their beliefs, or have their same experience, even though he is actively and vocally clear about his disbelief, a week later he is with them, back in that locked room, back in the dark. He felt safe and loved enough to keep coming back.

Holding each other in the dark, no matter what we believe, no matter where we are on our faith journey, no matter what level of denial or grief we’re occupying, that’s a kind of resurrection, too. 

Because Jesus comes again. And keeps coming.

Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Jesus showed Thomas his hands and his side. Jesus meets Thomas there, in the dark, in the community that still embraced him amidst his doubt and his busyness and his refusal to deal with the hard stuff head on. Jesus shows up there, in the dark. And Thomas answers, “My Lord and my God,” as if he’s taken his first deep breath in a long long time. The fight or flight response calms down, he activates the parasympathetic nerve, he is here, right now, in this moment. It’s not easy. It still hurts. He’s still in the dark, and Jesus’s wounds are still gaping. He stops fighting the pain. Instead, he breathes in to it. But it’s here, in that deep breath, amidst the pain, in the middle of that crowded, paranoid, sloppy dna-filled room that the risen Christ reveals himself. “My Lord and My God,” Thomas cries. 

Is this the first sob he’s allowed himself since they hung his Lord on that cross and heard him cry out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”? Is it the first time he’s let the breath fill his lungs and pierce his heart?

Blessed are those who sit in the dark. Blessed are those who have not seen, yet still believe. Blessed are those who breathe deep, even though it hurts. Blessed are those who hold us in the dark, even when we don’t believe.

Breathe.

Receive the Holy Spirit.

Thanks be to God.