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.