Dust and Sand

This past Wednesday evening members of our congregation worshiped together and were marked with ashes, a reminder that we are made of dust and that we return there.  We also heard and saw the pouring out of sand.  We symbolically poured ourselves out before our God and the sand became a symbol of cleansing, renewal and assurance as we offered ourselves to God for forgiveness.

For the past seven years as I’ve worked with youth, sand has not been a symbol of renewal or assurance.  It has instead been the counterpart of oil, as we share the sand and the oil of our lives with each other.  Where oil is the anointed and assured presence of God with us, sand is the barrenness and where we feel bereft.  Sand represents the all-alone breadth of the wilderness.

This week my experience turned from the former to the latter.  On Wednesday I ran my fingers through the sands of Ash Wednesday and on Friday I felt thrust into the dusty sand of the desert.  I learned that, although my body had given  no indication, had continued giving me all the right (although uncomfortable) signals, I am no longer pregnant.  Probably for several weeks now.  Probably even as I announced the news with joy.  

I was shocked.  I was upset.  I lay on the ultrasound table alone and bereft and totally utterly thrust into the wilderness.  And so Lent becomes something much different than I had ever anticipated.  It was going to be a season of waiting and preparation and growth.  It becomes a season of introspection and discernment and grief, learning to hope and wondering what is next.

When Jesus went into the wilderness, he was driven there.  He was thrust by the Holy Spirit.  That entry too was not gentle.  Although not in the Luke version of the story that we read this morning, it is in the other Gospels that record this story that he was waited on by angels.  Our psalm, Psalm 91speaks of the angels that 'will bear you up.'  In that psalm it is to God that the Psalmist turns for refuge.  This season of Lent I am looking to God’s providence and am grateful for the angels that have already offered comfort, understanding and presence.  I pour myself out to my Creator like sand.  I pray that I may find renewal.

Getting Creative with Bedtime Prayers

When I was a growing up, we had a rote prayer that we learned for mealtimes and a rote prayer that we learned for bedtimes.  These were both rattled off as quickly as possible, so much so that the meal-time prayer lost whole phrases over the course of time.  The bedtime prayer was a variation of the 'now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep' prayer but ours didn't include dying before we wake:

Now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
And when I've slept all through the night,
To wake me with the morning light.

I haven't wanted to do that with Naomi.  She has ideas and thoughts of her own and actually seems eager - sometimes, anyway - to let God know what those are.  Although we've been nothing like consistent, we have tried various prayer practices at meals and bedtime.  Those have included reading (but not memorizing) short prayers like the one above from prayer books for children, sung prayers and graces, and praying aloud with Naomi to model what it means to pray extemporaneously.  

To help Naomi begin to do that, a couple years ago I started with a simple version of the prayer of examine: looking back through the day and thinking of the things to be thankful for and on the other side, for those things that we needed God for.  We've done something similar with what are our hopes and what are our fears.  Sometimes Naomi has the words to say those things and sometimes she can names things and I'll pray for her and with her.  This has been especially important when she does feel scared or worried about something.

Lately, at her initiation, we have been praying silently together and then we'll tell each other what we prayed for.  I kind of like this format of prayer because it allows me to pray intentionally for her and then tell her about it.  There are times, even though this was her suggested method, that she can't settle down enough to be quiet or she gets distracted by the book beside her or just can't think of anything.

This was the case last night.  In the past I've just said, 'If you don't know what to pray for or you don't have words, it's okay.  God knows our hearts and the Bible says that even when we don't have words, the Spirit prays inside us and for us.' (Rms 8:26ff)  I stand by that.  But we all have times when we can't settle down and having a tool to pray helps us.  For me that has been journalling, writing down in whatever fragments and pieces, longhand or point form, the things I'm feeling and longing for. 

Naomi is five and like any other average five-year-old still doesn't write beyond the letters of the alphabet and some basic words.  But she loves drawing.  So I had a brainwave.  I said, 'Why don't you draw what you're praying for and thankful for?'  This got her very excited.  She first drew a detailed picture of Jesus, complete with ten toes, arms wide open and the traditional sash. She then followed that with an image of me and her dad and a flower (but she explained that the flower was just a decoration, not a part of her prayer).  This may not be a new idea to anyone else, but to me it seemed like a revelation.

Being a very visual person myself, prayer is often easier to practice in imagery.  Although for me this is most often internal and imaginative, I was pleased that Naomi is embracing this method of expressing her prayers.  I'm curious to see where else it can take her, and I'm wishing I'd thought of it sooner.  Haven't psychologists have been using this method of communicating with children for ages?  It's in every crime drama featuring a victimized child.  Why not prayer?  It seems to me that in the same why that using sign language to ask for milk was a revelation for our non-verbal one-year-old, being able to communicate to and about God with images - even colors and shapes and scribbles - could be a really fun and meaningful way for non-writing or speaking children to connect to the Divine.

I pray that it may be so!

UPDATE:
Here's the picture of Jesus that Naomi drew in her prayer

Did Jesus Sin? A response to a question about Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman

Br. Robert Lentz, Iconographer

This past Sunday I told the story from Mark 7 about Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician woman who asked him to heal her disturbed daughter. One of the reasons that I love this story so much is that it defies expectations and I love it when the Bible does that. Jesus is caught with his guard down.

In my reflection on this text on Sunday I noted that Jesus is unkind and offensive to the woman who approaches him out of concern for his daughter. I was challenged afterward by a family who took my reflections on the story and Jesus’ interaction with the woman home with them and responded to me with their own reflections and a question:

“We go around saying that Jesus was without sin, but in this…it seems like he at the very least made a serious mistake and in my mind calling someone a dog is pretty close to sin. Do you have a way to reconcile this?” 

This is not the first time in history this question has been asked! Sharon Ringe writes about this story and she says that “It is hard to imagine why the church in any stage of its development would want to present the Christ it confesses in such a light!”*

Indeed, why did this story end up in the Bible at all? Along with others who have thought about this text, I think that the reason that this text made it into the cannon was not in Jesus’ initial retort, but in his response after he is challenged. In Jesus’ the context, the epithet ‘dog’ was common in Jewish circles with reference to Gentiles. A foreign, single, low-status woman would have had to have had quite a bit of chutzpah to approach a Jewish, male rabbi, even privately as she did. The last person we hear of who intercedes Jesus him on behalf of a child is Jairus, a high-stature religious leader who could make his request openly and in public and who could not be further from the opposite of this woman in position and stature. Jesus' retort calling the woman a ‘little dog’ could have simply a knee-jerk one based on his cultural and religious immersion. So in that case, no, to Jesus what he did was not sinful, it was in fact appropriate.

Another possibility is that Jesus was quoting that common knowledge to the woman – a test to see how she would respond. In a way saying, this is what people say about you ‘little dogs’ (wink, wink) which then allowed her the opportunity to empower herself. Based on my reading,that doesn’t fly with me. And neither these nor any other explanations of why he said what he did get around the fact that it was insulting and belittling. In Jesus’ context it may have been appropriate but even to Mark’s first readers it must have been unsettling. To us – to me – it is deeply so.

Blogger David Henson writes a powerful article about this text and racism. In our context, what Jesus says to the woman reeks of both racism and sexism. At this point in our history, I think that we would label both of those sinful both at a systematic and at a personal level. But when the woman takes what Jesus says she turns it on its head and she is also taking a common form in the gospel and turning that on its head. And in doing so she blows this whole thing wide open! Usually – in fact in every other case – when there is an argument or controversy, it is Jesus who is the challenger, responding to a hostile question or statement, it is Jesus who corrects and puts into place an opponent. Here, the woman gives Jesus pause. And in his response he does an amazing thing and escapes those cultural and religious biases and listened to her. Henson says, 

“Jesus is astounded, the holy wind knocked out of him. A moment before, she was but a dog to him. In the next, the scales fall from his eyes as he listens to her and sees her for what she truly is, a woman of great faith, a moral exemplar, his teacher.

Jesus does the most difficult thing for those of us born into the unfortunate privilege of dominance or prejudice. He listens. And allows himself to be fundamentally changed.” 

Sin or no, Jesus does what is so hard for all of us sinners. He opens himself to the other and to the Spirit’s work in him and through her. That is the miracle and the example Jesus offers to us, his followers. Jesus the human transcends his nature (our nature!) and the boundaries that humans create between each other.
 ---
*Sharon H Ringe, “A Gentile Woman’s Story” in Feminist Interpretation of the Bible, Letty Russell, ed. 1985: Westminster Press,Philadelphia PA, pp 65-72.

God Loves People with Guns

The current issue of Geez magazine is all about stereotypes.  What kinds of assumptions do we make about people based on gender, skin tone, age, country of origin, religious affiliation?  The magazine examines all these and more.  The first piece in the magazine is a list of 'Contradictions: 10 stereotypes held by one of more Geez editors.'  Number 4 reads as follows, "People who regularly read the Bible are unredemptively lost to a conservative worldview that oppresses everybody, including themselves. Of course, Jesus loves them anyway." This made me chuckle and Naomi asked me what I was laughing at so I read it out loud.  

I’m sure she didn’t even understand half of those words, but she said, “Really?” 

So, I answered in all seriousness, “Yes, of course.  Jesus loves everyone.”

She looked at me skeptically.  “Does Jesus even love people with guns?” 

Busted.  We’ve worked pretty intentionally at talking about how guns hurt people, about how Jesus wants us to be peacemakers, about being a family that doesn't even play at or pretend to hurt or kill.  I thought that we’d also talked about God’s love for everyone, even the person who hurts others or does bad things.  But it seems that in all our intentionality with teaching peace, we neglected to teach about God’s forgiveness and expansive grace.

“You know that song we sing sometimes, ‘God’s love is for everybody?’” I sang the chorus.  Naomi nodded.  “Well, that’s what it’s about.  God loves people everywhere, all over the world, no matter what they’re like.  Even if they do bad things.  Even people with guns.  Doing a bad thing doesn’t make you a bad person – you’re still God’s child.”

Naomi was making an assumption – one that we had taught her – that people with guns are unlovable and that Jesus wants nothing to do with them.  The Gospel is different than that.  Peacemakers are indeed blessed, but Jesus doesn’t turn anyone away – his healing is for the daughter of a soldier as much as for the child of a temple leader.  Not to say he doesn't have critiques and biases himself (see Mark 7) but his arms are open to for everyone, 'Atheist and charlatans and communists and lesbians and even old Pat Robertson, God loves us all.  Catholic or Protestant, terrorist or president, everybody!'  God is love.

Detectives of Divinity Easter 6 - John 15:13-17

Props: Detective gear, picture of sculpture of a heart, a picture of friends and/or a friendship bracelet, a couple of kinds of fruit.

·         Remind the children that when we don’t have Jesus with us, we need to look for clues about God in other places – today I’m looking at clues from something Jesus said

·         John 15 gives us clues about what our relationship to God is like

·         Put on detective gear and look at clues together:

o   the first clue: friendship bracelet and picture of friends – Ask the kids if they know what kind of bracelet this is?  Has anyone made one?  Jesus said that he doesn’t call us servants.  Instead he calls us friends.  Can you think of someone who is your friend?  You tell each other everything.  You love each other.  You spend lots of time together.  You pick your friends – it’s not like family where you have no choice.  Jesus chose us to be his friends.

o   the second clue: fruit – Jesus said that when he chose us, and when we become friends with him, we will bear fruit.  Do you think he means fruit like this apple?  Or this orange?  Do you remember the song you learned from Bryan about the fruit of the Spirit?  (sing) “The fruit of the spirit is love… joy…peace” (patience, kindness, generosity,faithfulness, gentleness, self-control)That is the kind of fruit that we can learn when we practice being friends with Jesus and with each other.

o   the third clue: heart – what do hearts usually mean?  LOVE.  One of the most important fruits of the Spirit is love.  If we keep choosing to be friends with each other, and with other people, we will keep practicing love.  And love isn’t always just a feeling, it’s doing all the hard things, like being patient, and kind and generous and faithful…all those other fruits that we sing about .  It’s a choice.  But even when we don’t do it so well, Jesus loves us so much and we can count on that always. 

·         This week’s clues are hard…it’s hard to know how to act, or be or what to do when Jesus isn’t right here telling us.  So, just like always we need to look to each other and count on our friends to help us.

Detective of Divinity - Easter 4 Children's Story – The Good Shepherd

John 10:11-18 – The Good Shepherd

Props: Detective Gear, sheep, staff and shepherd for evidence box

·         Recall with the children the ways that we’ve looked for clues about Jesus in past weeks – we’ve always had Jesus right there as the biggest clue

·         Today we’re looking for clues about Jesus and what he’s like – and about what God is like – in a story that Jesus tells (these clues might be very familiar if you’ve spent time in the Atrium)

·         Put on detective gear and look at the clues together:

o   the first clue: sheep – what do we know about sheep?  They really need someone to take care of them.  They’re not very smart.  They run around in packs – herds – with other sheep.  They’re vulnerable – that means they can’t protect themselves.

o   the second clue: shepherd’s staff – one way to protect them.  Hook them out of the way, scare away mean animals like the big bad wolf, guide them all together

o   the third clue: shepherd – biggest clue – the one who cares for all the sheep, keeps them safe, knows each of their names and calls to them, they all know his name too and know to follow

·         The story about the Good Shepherd was Jesus’ clue to how much he loves and wants to protect us and care for us.  A clue to how special we each are to God.

Detective of Divinity: Easter 3 Children's Story

This story is actually the one that directly precedes this weeks lectionary reading. But we've had one Jesus-revealed-in-a-locked-room story already, I thought I'd do a prequel of sorts. In our service we'll do the children's story right before the Gospel reading.

Luke 24:13-35 – On the Emmaus Road

props: detective hat, coat and magnifying glass, evidence box, Jesus figure, Bible or scroll, bread

· remind the children of the story of Jesus appearing Mary and then to the disciples – Mary didn’t recognize him right away and his friend Thomas needed to touch him before he believed that Jesus was alive

· recap or read the story of the Emmaus road from Luke 24:35

· Put on the detective gear and tell the children: Now it’s time to look at the clues! Let’s be witnesses!

· Look at the clues in the evidence box

o the first clue: Jesus himself – but the disciples didn’t recognize him – just like Mary didn’t recognize him at first – they weren’t expecting to see him – sometimes we don’t recognize people out of context, like when we see our teacher at the supermarket

o the second clue: scripture – Jesus talked with the disciples about how scriptures told of God’s love for the whole world and about how he – Jesus would die but be alive again (they still didn’t get it)

o the third clue: bread – break the bread as for Communion and ask the children where they’ve seen that gesture before. The disciples had seen Jesus do that too. They might have eaten with him many times, finally they recognized him.

· Say: Even though we don’t see Jesus with us, the way the disciples did, one of the ways we experience God’s love is through eating together, through caring for people who don’t have enough to eat and accepting the good food that people offer us – in each other’s homes, here at church, on picnics.

· Say: When the disciples finally recognized Jesus, he disappeared, but that didn’t stop them from running all the way back to Jerusalem to tell all of their friends, Jesus is alive!!

· Say: If you listen carefully to the next story when it’s read, you’ll hear about Jesus eating with his friends again. (Luke 24:36-48, the scripture reading for this Sunday)