He wants to go, too!

Manny

Manny has lived here for just over a year, and he has claimed his place in this house. He gallops up and down the stairs, getting to third or fourth step from the bottom and tumbling the rest of the way. He snuggles when it is cold in the night and runs when he hears the back porch door open. He loves to play with his "bird" and also finds new toys in lots of places -- the latest is Q-tips. He loves what I call cat TV, which is the bird feeder outside the dining room window. I was too long without a kitty and it is good to have this little guy with me. Even when he breaks my grandmother's bowl, knocks my hand-painted Easter eggs to the floor, chews up the flower arrangement, sheds on the antique quilts, lounges on my computer keyboard, sprawls all over the Sunday paper while I am trying to read it, unrolls the toilet paper, et cetera!!!!

Third Sunday in Lent

Who's Whose?

Mark 8: 27-38

Have you ever wondered how you got to be the person you are? Perhaps it is the result of experience anchored in your family, your genetic background, the places you have lived, the opportunities you have had, your friends, your physical ability. If we are blank slates when we are born,that doesn’t seem to last very long. Each passing day etches into our lives some piece of our identity. Gradually but inevitably we become who we are and after awhile it seems all but impossible to imagine ourselves other than what we have become.

But there are some milestones along the way where it seems we can reinvent ourselves; for example, moving to a city where you don’t know anyone, changing careers, entering retirement, going off to college, getting married, getting divorced. In situations like these that are totally strange and new, the markers of the past that told us who we were are missing. It is not so easy to take for granted our own sense of identity. Essential assumptions become questioned: Do I believe what I believe because it is true or do I believe what I believe because my parents believed it? If I don’t have a job, how do I define myself? Will I pursue those activities where I have already succeeded so I can be a star or will I risk failure on something more interesting and challenging? Am I interested in particular work because it will pay the bills or because it will fully engage my intellect and ability?

Now it is true I suppose that most mornings we don’t wake up asking deeply existential questions like “who am I?” But in the midst of radical transition, whether we are aware of it or not, the questions are there.

Jesus himself faced these questions. When he asked the disciples “who do people say that I am” maybe he was quizzing them for a right answer but maybe he was also seeking reassurance for himself. I guess I don’t think it is much of a stretch to consider that he was looking for a confirmation of his calling. It was becoming increasingly clear to him where his path would eventually lead. His own sense of identity, even at this point in his ministry, was bound up with the cross. He would explain this again and again to his disciples but they would not understand until it was too late.

And even though Peter gave the right answer to Jesus’ question, he had no understanding of what it meant. But Jesus knew. At the very beginning of his ministry, he had confronted the issue in the desert place with only the voice of the tempter to keep him company. In the wilderness, the temptation that Jesus faced was whether to subvert his own identity in the service of power, whether to take the shortcut, the easy way out.

As Matthew and Luke tell it, three different times he faced a choice – turn stones into bread for his own well-being, fling himself off the temple to prove God’s care and rescue, bow down and worship Satan in order to have power over the world. Henri Nouwen has described these choices as the temptation to be relevant, to be spectacular, and to be powerful.

And let me tell you -- if you don’t already know it -- it is not only Jesus who faces these temptations. Each one of us will encounter at some point along the way that same voice that Jesus heard in the wilderness, a voice that urges us to do whatever it takes to fit in, to be a big success, to be important.

So look at how Jesus responded. In each situation, he refused to act in ways not wholly consistent with his own calling. Later on, of course, he would multiply the loaves, not to satisfy his own hunger, but rather to feed the multitudes. And he would willingly go into mortal danger, not from the pinnacle of the temple but the pinnacle of a hill with a cross. And in the end he would have power over all the earth, but it would not be earthly power; it would be spiritual power. And it would be a gift from God not the result of a corruption of worship.

In the course of his ministry, he would say yes to some version of all the things the Satan presented to him in the wilderness. But he would not take the easy way out. Instead he would take the faithful way. So when Jesus asked the disciples, “But who do you say that I am?”, it was not an unfamiliar question to him. He had wrestled with it before. And it seems that he was wrestling with it again.

He told the disciples about the path of sorrow and suffering that he would walk,
and when Peter said, “no, no, no don’t do this” it must have sounded just like that other voice in the wilderness, urging Jesus to take the easy way rather than the true way. He was again confronted by temptation. Once again he was being tested on the question of who he was and whose he was.

It was another test of what it meant to be true to his identity, faithful to his calling, obedient to his Creator. It was for him another wilderness, another transition that empowered him to claim publicly for the first time where God’s path for him would lead, and who he was meant to be.

And then he told his disciples that if they would follow him, they must also take God’s way. The words are difficult: “Deny yourself. Take up your cross. Follow me.”

What did he meant by this? Did he mean to say to them that they should forget whom they were, that they should seek out a life of suffering? And does he mean to say that to us?

I don’t think so. I think what Jesus means when he tells his disciples, then and now, to deny themselves, is to set aside their own ideas of who they will be, to let go of the kind of ambitions that can consume, to turn away from that which is other than what God intends. He is telling us to resist the easy way, if it is not God’s way. He is telling us to put behind us the temptation to be other than who God calls us to be, to deny our own view of ourselves when it interferes with our belonging to God.

Jesus tells us to follow him, not to copy his life. We have our own identity to live out. I think that is what he means when he says that we should take up our cross. For Jesus, the cross is the sign of ultimate faithfulness to his own calling, his own identity. To take up our cross, then, is to bear our own calling, and to carry that blessed burden wherever God leads.

But how do we know what that means? How do we sort out our God-given identity? It isn’t a matter of reinventing ourselves. Rather, what Jesus is calling us to do is engage in the life-long task of listening for the voice of God. That is how our true identity is revealed. Yes, certainly we are influenced and affected and shaped by our own personal experiences. But there is a deeper kind of creating that makes us who we are.

This has been described as the idea of “sealed orders” given by God. The term comes from the orders given the commanding officer of a ship that are sealed up, which he is not allowed to open until he has proceeded a certain distance into the high seas. So it is with God’s orders to us. We all have our own sealed envelope, whether we know it or not. We carry it with us as we travel into the depths of our own lives. It contains God’s instructions to us about how to live; it directs our journey; it explains our own identity.

The task of finding out whom we are, then, is not a matter of reinvention, but rather a matter of discernment. Every person is made in the image of God, every one of us belongs to God, and so we all have a holy purpose for our lives. Some of us listen for the ways God calls us to that purpose, and gradually become the person God intends us to be. And some of us miss the mark, and never understand or accept our God-given identity.

Where are you in this process? Can you do what Jesus commands – deny yourself, take up your cross, follow him? That is how you find out who you truly are – and whose you truly are.

But if you are expecting easy answers to those questions, I am afraid you will be disappointed. You won’t find them – not from the church, not from other people, certainly not from the Bible. But if you are willing to set your face, to go where God guides, to join your own journey with that of Jesus, then maybe the choice will become clear, and you will find – if not an easy answer – then at least your own response to the overwhelming love of God. You will find your life.

And in the end, there are only two questions you have to answer: Who do you say that he is? And whose does he say that you are?




(c) Martha C. Highsmith

An Unintentional Virtue

I did not mean to reduce my energy use during Lent as much as has turned out to be the case. But my dryer finally quit working, and the cost to have it repaired is too much to spend on an old appliance. So I brought in my summer clothesline and set it up in the basement, and I have been hanging up the wash. It doesn't come out quite as nice as if it were dried outside, but the sheets especially have a nice smooth crispness that they don't get from the dryer. I will buy a new one soon, but for now, I am doing just fine with this.

Reading Leviticus

This year, I am reading the Bible all the way through in version that provides a lectio continua reading from Hebrew scripture and Gospel, a psalm, and a verse or two from Proverbs each day. For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been reading Leviticus, and it is fascinating. It is such a carefully ordered approach to life in community, exactly the kind of guide an ancient people needed in order to maintain their God-chosen identity in the midst of pagan society.

It is also fascinating to consider how modern people have interpreted this guide in a time, place, and culture so different from its original genesis. It strikes me that we have done a lot of picking and choosing. For example, many modern folks want to enforce the guidelines about sex (Lev. 18), but would not dream of obeying some of the other parts. For example, I personally have never been in a church that offered burnt animals as a pleasing gift to God (Lev. 1; 4; 5; and many other chapters). There are lots of church people who say they take the Bible’s commands literally and yet wear polyester-cotton clothing (Lev. 19:19), even into worship, or associate with others when they have a skin problem like eczema or acne (Lev 13). You get the point.

And then there is this:

If one of your countrymen becomes poor and is unable to support himself among you, help him as you would an alien or a temporary resident, so he can continue to live among you. Do not take interest of any kind from him, but fear your God, so that your countryman may continue to live among you. You must not lend him money at interest or sell him food at a profit. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God. (Lev. 25:35-38, NIV)

Well.

The news is full of stories about our fellow men and women who have become poor. I know many churches that have long been concerned about the poor. There are soup kitchens, food drives, clothing closets, and building projects, all intended to help others. But I don’t hear much, if anything, about us promoting (or creating) programs to make no-interest loans, or opening stores that sell at wholesale. I do hear a lot of church people who are worried about how they will keep their lights on, their sanctuaries heated, and the preacher and musicians paid.

When we pick and choose which commands to obey, we need to be careful not to pick those that fit in with our own thinking and seem to advance our personal ideas of the realm of God, while rejecting the ones that are hard to accept. Isn’t it interesting that Jesus had quite a bit to say about money, and almost nothing about sex? Somehow, I think we have gotten our priorities wrong. Maybe one outcome of this recession/depression is that it will force us to reflect on matters of money in a way that prosperous times do not.

And it seems to me that the holy intent of the ancient commandments – all of them – was forming community. We’ve lost sight of that. In fact, all too often, the way we apply the rules accomplishes just the opposite: it shuts people out and breaks up community. Maybe as we get back to basics, we can learn the preciousness of relationships, the unconditional love of God, and the blessing of the community of faith, a community so vast it embraces everyone whom God loves. Which, after all, is ….everyone.

Children, Church, and Joy

Last week, in chapel, a little boy I know was sitting across the aisle with his mother. He is about three years old and has been in worship his whole life. From his infancy, his mother has carried him in her arms to communion, held him while she sang, and encouraged him to greet people in surrounding pews. Church is a comfortable place for him.

At the worship service last week, he stood on a chair so he could see his friend preaching; he looked at the bulletin; he snuggled with his mother; and he went with her to the Table. At the end of the service, the choir sang a beautiful spiritual, music that was lively, joyful, and hopeful. And my young friend smiled and began clapping his little hand against his mother’s. Then he hopped down from his chair so he could stamp his feet with the music and dance around. It was a holy moment, filled with love and joy and a full response to the Word sung out in the chapel. Those of us who saw smiled. But we did not dance around and stamp our feet – and that was our loss.

J. Barrie Shepherd writes, in one of his Lenten reflections:

Rejoicing has long been problem for Christians of the mainstream variety. Ask us to educate, legislate, officiate, even to ameliorate, and we respond quite well; but rejoicing doesn’t seem to be our thing. Add to all this the reality of Lent – and the call [to rejoice in one of the lectionary texts] seems out of place. … Jesus was accused because he refused to suppress his clear delight in the people and things of creation. He set his life against all who turned religion into a list of crushing duties, obligations, rules that squeezed the juice from life like a steamroller crushing an orange. Why has Christ’s church since then deserted the poor orange and hopped aboard the steamroller? (A Pilgrim’s Way: Meditations for Lent and Easter, page 26-27)

Maybe it is how we think of joy – as the same as happiness. And in these troubled times, there is not a lot to be happy about, and therefore, joy must also be in short supply. But joy and happiness are not the same. Happiness floats on the surface of our lives. It is easily disturbed, even destroyed, by the storms of life, the rough seas that threaten to overwhelm us. But joy lies deep down, far beneath the surface. No matter what is happening, joy remains constant. The challenge is not to create the joy or even to “feel” it. It is only to remember that it is always there, and then to live out of that place where joy – and God – dwell.

If you were able to ask churches for a one-word description of their worship service, I wonder how many would respond with joy? And I also wonder how many of those serious steamroller churches intentionally welcome little children, teach them about worship by letting them experience it, and learn joy and spontaneity from them? Not very many, I’m afraid.

Fasting for Lent

The psalmist says that “the earth is the Lord’s” but we have surely lost sight of that. We live as though the planet is ours to dispose of – and that is all too often just what we are doing. What if we came to see our home in the universe as the gift God meant it to be? Would we live differently?

The theologian Sally McFague thinks we would. She has offered a new way of thinking about the world and about God, in her work on the universe as the body of God. This incarnational metaphor calls us to a new kind of relationship – with God, incarnate in Jesus, and with our world.

In some Christian traditions, Lent is a time to give up something, a time to fast. One group of Christians has created a carbon fast, an intentional approach to the care of the world during the days of Lent. Each day’s fast is a small discipline; nothing is so great that I cannot do it. And it calls me to consider the preciousness of life; it reminds me that everything is a gift from God; and it creates in me an awareness of the duty of love I owe to my brothers and sisters who call this planet home.

It makes so much more sense to my spirit than giving up chocolate for forty days….

Transfiguration Sunday

Seeing the Light

When we look at the events of these scriptures through modern eyes, it is hard to know what to make of them: Elisha watching and seeing the prophet taken up to heaven; Jesus on the mountain with his friends suddenly glowing with an unearthly light.


The stories seem, well, like stories, something unreal, unbelievable. But maybe the best word to describe them is mysterious.

It is that thick veil of mystery that makes it difficult for us to see and understand, and at the same time the mystery is so much a part of what is happening that it is impossible to extract it. This is hard for us because we are not people who sit easily in the presence of mystery. We would rather be confronted with a problem that can be solved, a situation that can be fixed, a challenge that can be overcome. But the holy mystery that permeates these stories is not something that we can ever completely figure out. And take comfort, if you will: those who were there and saw it had a hard time with it, too.

The great prophet Elijah has come to the end. He is preparing to leave this life, but his companion and pupil in prophecy, Elisha, will not let him go without getting a blessing. When all the others have abandoned the dying Elijah, Elisha continues to follow him, keeping watch over him and making one last request – for a double share of the spirit that has been upon his mentor. Elijah tells him to keep watching because if he sees Elijah being taken up to heaven, what he has asked will be granted. Elisha does not turn away from the chariots of fire; he does not turn away from that which is beyond comprehension. And in the midst of wind and flame, he sees Elijah carried into heaven. It is an amazing transformation.

But just as amazing is the transformation that happens to Elisha. In his following, his focusing, and his faithfulness he receives a new identify. He takes up the mantle of his predecessor, and clothed like him, he becomes like him. It is a transformation no less powerful, no less mysterious, than Elijah being carried up to heaven. What Elisha sees gives him a whole new sense of his own calling, a new understanding of the power of the holy that is his to use in the world.

There is also a mystical transformation on the mountaintop with Jesus and his three friends. It was his practice to find a deserted place where he could be undisturbed by the crowds, where he could commune with God, where he could pray. And up there in the high thin air, the power of his praying wraps around all of them so that they are enfolded in his vision, and they see him as never before. All their defenses are stripped away; all the barriers that blind them to the presence of the holy are destroyed. They see him with the eyes of their hearts, as he really is, and it is overwhelming, so powerful and other that it is terrifying. They experience what the ancients called the fear of the Lord, fear that it is the beginning of wisdom. They begin to know him as he is; they begin to see him as he is.

But they don’t seem to know what to do with this new wisdom. Peter’s immediate reaction is to want to build three little shelters to house the holy men, to contain them on the mountain, but that is not to be. They have had a mountaintop experience, to be sure, but it will not be limited to a lofty, lonely place. Jesus, the one whom God claims as beloved, the one who now embodies both law and prophecy, does not stay on the mountain. He returns to the valley where there is suffering and sorrow, pain and sickness, exclusion and isolation, broken hearts and broken lives. And the disciples follow, focusing on him and who he is and beginning to see the light, starting to understand what it means to be faithful. Through some miracle, some mystery, on the mountain, they have seen him as he really is and it will change the way they see everything else.

And because he is one of them, they see how they, too, are made in the image of God, bearing in their lives somehow that same holy power. They see this power in him and in themselves, and they see how he uses it in the world ,and they understand perhaps for the first time their own calling: not to build monuments on the mountaintop but to pray and to preach and to practice healing, down in the valley where the people are. The disciples are called to follow, to stay focused on the source of their power, on God, and to act with radical faithfulness.

But there were only three disciples up on that mountain, only three who saw what happened to Jesus. What about the rest of them, the other nine? And what about all the others who have come after them? What about us? We haven’t seen him face to face either.

Or maybe we have and we just didn’t know it. Because we are made in the image of God, and that means that something of the presence of the holy is in us. And if the image of God is in us, then it is also in every other human being.

Part of the transformation that happens when we are enfolded in the power of Jesus is that we see ourselves as we really are, and not only that, but we see others as they are, too. Not altogether perfect, any of us, but not altogether imperfect either. Instead we are finite creatures, vessels of clay as the apostle Paul says, bearing the glory of God.

To see the light, to see ourselves and each other clearly and truly – warts and all -- is a necessary part of transformation. But it is not all that easy to do. We can put a lot of effort into trying to convince others -- and ourselves – that we are good and perfect and right. We often look for someone else to blame when we are at fault. We expend a great deal of energy denying our need for forgiveness. It is a paradox that we have to see our own brokenness in order to comprehend the potential of our own holiness.

The light that shines through Jesus on the mountaintop illuminates our own lives as they really are, and is somehow also reflected in them – in our lives and the lives of others – those like us and unlike us. The holy is present all around, if only we could see.

The writer Madeline L’Engle (in The Irrational Season) describes the mountaintop transformation this way:

Suddenly they saw him the way he was,
the way he really was all the time,
although they had never seen it before –
the glory which blinds the everyday eye and so becomes invisible.
This is how he was:
radiant, brilliant, carrying joy like a flaming sun in his hands.
This is the way he was, is,
from the beginning and we cannot bear it.
So he manned himself, became manifest to us,
and there on the mountain they saw him,
really saw him, saw his light.
We all know that if we really see him we die.
But isn’t that what is required of us?
Then perhaps we will see each other too.

And here is the heart of the mystery: when we see Christ, we will see each other – and we must see, really see, each other in order to see Christ. And then, when we see the light, we are changed, a transformation as irrevocable as death. We take a long loving look at the real. We see the world as it really is, and as God intends it to be, and we act in faithfulness to realize God’s vision. And the light of the world shines on us and in us and through us, and nothing looks quite the same ever again.

A story is told about two of the ancient desert fathers:

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, “Father, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?” The old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, “Why not become all flame?”

This is what it is to see the light. It is to know that the one who is the light of the world burns bright within us. It is to know Christ as Christ really is, and to find our own selves transformed by that wisdom. It is to bear the light into the world. It is to become all flame.

May it be so.






(c) Martha C. Highsmith

Home is.....

Driving to church in Daddy’s pick-up
Singing two Fanny Crosby hymns
Sleeping late and then taking an afternoon nap
Sitting around the kitchen table
Playing Scrabble
The smell of bacon for an alarm clock
Warming by the wood stove
Watching the children climb the magnolia tree
Teaching Sunday School
Rocking the baby
Polishing the silver pitchers and ironing tablecloths
Having lunch with 35 people
Laughing and telling stories
Saying the blessing at every meal
Taking care of each other

Spring is coming!

Some doubt the truth of global warming. After all, we have had one of the coldest, snowiest Januaries ever. But yesterday, at the bird feeder right outside my dining room window, there was a robin. I cannot recall seeing one here this early. And he (or she) was right there -- up close, in full feather, and beautiful. I wonder if the bird felt out of place in this frozen, icy wasteland, where the only accessible food is that supplied by someone who goes to the store and buys bird seed. Does that bird wonder what happened, why the seasons, the warmth, the wind, whispered "Go home. Go home," far before it was really time to fly? I don't know why the robin is here, but I do know that he is beautiful. I have never seen one so close up. I have never seen one in the depth of winter. But here he is and his presence is the promise of spring, of new life, of hope. So...thank you, Robin, for coming and renewing my faith, restoring my hope, and proving that there is and will be spring!