Through Stained Glass: A Lenten Challenge

Through Stained Glass:  A Lenten Challenge

Have you ever met someone who is always questioning someone or something?

It could be sunny outside but that person would say, “But is it really sunny?”

That might be a bit of an exaggeration but I hope you get the point I’m trying to make. There always seems to be a catch or some fine print that takes what appears great and makes it too good to be true.

Like those Internet specials advertised on TV or those cell phone plans that are just $49.99 a month…and in fine print there is a clause about how you must dye your hair blue for 12 months in order to receive the discount.

What I am about to say will probably blow your mind.

In fact, you’ll probably think I’m one of those folks who is simply blowing smoke.

You ready?

Okay, here it goes:

God is love.

As Episcopalian priest Broderick Greer put it, “God is not a trickster. When God offers God's self in the person of Jesus, God is telling us who God is: mercy, compassion, and faithfulness.”

You don’t have to join a church for God to love you.

You don’t have to be a saint for God to love you.

You don’t even need to have your life figured out for God to love you.

Here is the best thing about God:  there may be seasons in our lives where we question something about our faith. There even may be a season or two when we doubt if God is even real, if prayer matters, and that church only perpetuates pain rather than relieves it.

God will never question you.

Instead, God looks upon you with mercy and promises to do something with you and within you.

Friends, there is no need to limit God to past mercies. Or, as one pastor has said, “God is an ever present help, to quote the old hymn. The gospel needs to be heard every day. The life-giving word of forgiveness cannot be proclaimed in the past tense. It was wonderful when it was announced yesterday, but yesterday's gospel is today's teaching. We need to hear the gospel afresh, every day.”

The prophet Isaiah reminds us of this when he writes,

¹⁸ Do not remember the former things,
   or consider the things of old. 
¹⁹ I am about to do a new thing;
   now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
   and rivers in the desert. 

God’s love is not too good to be true.

It is good and very true.

Whether you are aware of it or not, God has, is, and will continue to do something new in your life. Even now, God’s love is falling upon you and dwells within you.

That is the thing about God, even when we feel like we are in exile, God has not abandoned us. God is about liberation and resurrection, not punishment and condemnation.

God is about restoration and always will be.

Perhaps it is our own selves that are preventing it from happening.

Because let’s be honest, that sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?

Through Stained Glass: A Lenten Commentary

Through Stained Glass: A Lenten Catholicon

Through Stained Glass:  A Lenten Catholicon

I needed worship on Sunday.

My spirit’s well had run dry.

My heart’s joy had been depleted.

But Sunday restored my hope. There was such a hum rushing through the pews the way water seeps through cracks. We, as a family of faith, had gathered to worship, to share life, and to break bread. We, as a family of faith, lived into what I think is our best gift that we can offer to Lincoln and one of the most important in our missional identity:  hospitality.

As y’all know we hosted the choir from Lincoln College. Yet I think many of you would agree that in the end, they hosted us. Their singing possessed a peacefulness that penetrated the solemnity that Lent can sometimes posses. They gave us a break from our ‘normal routine’ and they took us down to the river where we were able to drink deep from God’s goodness and mercy.

On Sunday, I believed a part of us was healed.

Did you know the church can do that?

Did you know that the church can heal?

Did you know that the church is actually called to bring healing to the world?

Did you know that you cannot only participate in this healing but also receive it?

Did you know that God wants to heal you?

         From whatever is troubling.

         From whatever burden you are carrying.

         From that broken heart.

         From the bad news you received.

         From the doubt that you aren’t as good as your siblings.

         From the busy life you have taken on without knowing.

         From burn out.

You get the point.

All of this reminds me of an interaction Jesus had at a well with a Samaritan woman. Perhaps you remember it. It is high noon and Jesus stops to get a drink of water while the disciples go ahead into the city to do what disciples do. At the well Jesus meets a woman and asks her for a drink.

From there the interactions goes something like this:

Woman:  You are asking me, a Samaritan, to get you, a Jew, a drink? No way.

Jesus:  If you knew who I was, you would. You’d never have to drink again, actually.

Woman:  Ha! You don’t even have a bucket. So please, give me this living water. (Giant eye roll!)

The interaction gets a little strange. Jesus invites/tells her to go get her husband. She can’t and Jesus reveals that he knows her history. Most sermons will depict this woman as a prostitute of sorts. But this isn’t necessarily the case. She is more likely widowed or abandoned, because men often did that in 1^st century culture.

What happens next is a healing. The woman was made to be ashamed about who she was:  not only a Samaritan woman, who was viewed as an equal to a man’s donkey, but also a divorced woman. Jesus shouldn’t be talking to her. She wasn’t worthy of such acknowledgment.

Jesus has no interest in shaming her. Instead Jesus gazes upon her with sympathetic eyes and extends a word of hope, a word of healing. Jesus is not chastising her or calling her to account; rather he sees her; compassionately naming and understanding her circumstances.

I like what one Lutheran pastor says about this interaction:

While she came to the well to get water, now that she has met Jesus, "who told me everything I have ever done," she leaves her jar -- the token of her present difficult and dependent life -- behind to go tell others. She has, indeed, encountered living water, has been freed by her encounter with Jesus, and wants to share this living water with others.

Sunday I was the woman at the well.

I was thirsty and needed my cup filled up. And it was at church, among you, brothers and sisters, that my thirst was quenched.

Worship was refreshing and my spirit was renewed. That's what refreshment does for us; it renews our spirits like a cool glass of water, and moves us from scarcity to abundance in all aspects of our lives.

Friends, God wants to heal us. God sits at the well waiting for us to come. God welcomes us.

God welcomes you with open, healing arms.

My question to you is, what are you holding onto that is prevent you from being healed by God?

Name it. Then, leave it at the well.

Through Stained Glass: A Lenten Confession

Through Stained Glass:  A Lenten Confession

I have a confession.

My hope is that it won’t be too much for you.

That you won’t think any differently of me.

Okay, here it goes:

I love Jesus.

No, like, I really love Jesus.

Not in some sentimental or superficial “Jesus is my homeboy and my personal Lord and savior.” Nothing like that because that makes Jesus mine when Jesus is actually ours.

In fact, despite what some think, Presbyterians confess Christ as sovereign of all!

Personally, I confess Jesus as Lord and Savior.

But I love Jesus because of his compassion.

The compassion he has for others and his compassion for me is unlike anything I’ve ever heard or even seen.

I love Jesus because he Jesus sees me for who I am:  Adam.

Did you know compassion comes from the Latin word compassio, meaning “to pity, sympathize with, or suffer with,” and is related to the Greek word sympatheia, denoting “fellow feeling, community of feeling?” Quite literally, ‘compassion’ means to endure with another person, to experience another’s grief or suffering or need.

Which leads me to another confession:

I love the church.

I love it because the church is the body of Christ, a place where we share life with one another. In a season of great difficulty for me, you all offered me great compassion, sitting with me as an unexpected ending came and went. You all, not only in this occasion, but on numerous occasions throughout the years, have extended compassion to each other.

This is what Jesus meant when he said to “love your neighbor.” He meant that we have compassion for one another, especially the stranger and our enemy. Remember that Jesus summed up his own teaching on compassion, the practice of ‘withness,’ by proclaiming that whatever was done to the poor, the marginalized, or the outcast was, in reality, done to him.

Lent invites us to look again at the world and to see how with it we are.

For me, Lent is a reminder of how Jesus’ compassion overflowed outside his tribe. He did not let his love, his mercy, or his withness be confined only to James, John, Peter, and the other twelve. Instead, he considered all he encountered to be his neighbor.

Compassion is hard, though. Not only does it require us to see the world through more gentle, loving lenses, but it is about caring for one another.

And this is why I love Jesus. He loved. He didn’t only teach or preach or use words to tell of God’s love. But he actually loved those he shared life with. Especially those he wasn't supposed to be with.

The hard truth Lent often confronts us with as we wander into the wilderness and wade out of the waters of baptism is that sometimes, we as a church, both locally and universally, neglect loving our neighbor as ourselves. We lack compassion for ourselves and for one another.

Yet Lent is also the season we remember that Christ sees us with eyes full of compassion. That what we are examining within ourselves, what we are confronting outside of ourselves, Christ is with us every step of the way.

Compassion then is best understood when we play together, when we eat together, when we share our stories, and when we act on behalf of each other. These are the things we human beings do when we are at our best and our most courageous; especially when we recognize that God is right here with us, our partner in renewing this journey we call faith!

As we sit and watch the snow fall, remember that God’s love, Christ’s compassion, and the Holy Spirit’s company is with us this day and everyday.

May God help us let go of that which prevents us from being compassionate to the world and to ourselves.

Jesus loves you.

And so do I.

Shalom,

Adam

Through Stained Glass: A Midweek Reflection--A Lenten Temptation

Through Stained Glass:  A Midweek Reflection—A Lenten Temptation

Last week was brutal.

If not because of the cold, then especially because of whatever I had that knocked me off my feet for three days.

Most of you know I pride myself on the fact that I do not get sick often.

Sure, a cold, a cough and the sniffles now and then, but usually, that is it.

So last week when I found myself struggling to stay warm…and then cool…and then warm…and then cool again, I was a bit surprised and annoyed.

Annoyed because there was so much to do last week.

The men’s breakfast, session meeting, Mardi Gras pancake supper, Ash Wednesday in the morning, book study at 10:30, Ashes to Go in the afternoon, and then Ash Wednesday service in the evening. Oh, in the midst of all that I needed to run 4 miles to continue the preparation for the 10k I’m running on March 12^th. Thursday would be the day I had breakfast with some folks, make visits, deliver Ashes perhaps, and then write my sermon.

A busy week, which is why I had NO time to get sick.

My body, though, my body wasn’t on board with my plans to conquer the first ½ week of Lent. My body was not up to working 14-hour days on Tuesday and Wednesday. My body was not keen on the idea that back to back nights of less than five hours of sleep was sufficient enough to do all the work that had to be done. My body…my body just couldn’t take it anymore.

I find it fitting that on Ash Wednesday, the day in our liturgical year where we ponder our mortality and the frailty of our humanity, I was lying in bed, my body aching for repose and my spirit pining for relief.

This is my problem, though, I go, go, go until my wellbeing is compromised and I am forced to take a break. Awareness is the first step in recognizing a change is needed.

Reflecting on my tendency to overdo work, I am reminded of these words from scripture: 

He said, ‘My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.’

This comes from Exodus 33, when God commands Moses to lead the Israelites away from Mount Sinai to “the land flowing with milk and honey.” At first I read this story and thought, see even Moses worked a lot. But as I sat with the story of Moses, I was reminded of how often Moses spent time in the presence of God. And when Moses spent time with God, it was usually for long periods of time. So long that on one occasion the Israelites abandoned their leader and started worshipping a golden calf…

Here is some honesty:  my golden calf is busyness—which is my biggest temptation.

What does God require of me?

                  Not more meetings.

                  Not more emails.

                  Not more ___________.

What God requires of me is to do justice, yes; to love kindness, sure; but to walk humbly with God.

And this walking requires being present with God. Like, actually present.

Thus, this Lenten season I’ve decided to take on the practice of spending 30 minutes in the presence of God. So far, I’m struggling. But thankfully, Lent is 40 days long and each day is a new opportunity to begin again.

The journey has started. We have a long way to go. But together, I trust we will find what we are looking for…

May God be with you on your Lenten journey.

Peace,

Adam