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.
