Up and Down the Mountain: Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday, March 2, 2014

Our New Testament reading is Matthew 17:1-9. Listen for what God is telling you.

Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. ² And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. ³ Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. ⁴ Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” ⁵ While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” ⁶ When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. ⁷ But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” ⁸ And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.⁹ As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.” 

This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

Once upon a time, I climbed a mountain. It was a nice day, not too hot or too cold. Light-sweatshirt weather. I had several water bottles in my backpack, a good pair of worn-in shoes, and two friends going with me. We worked together in that national park.

I’ve never been a very fast-moving person, so I fell behind the others periodically. That was normal for me and not distressing. I might lose sight of them for a moment, but as I came up to a clearer spot, they would come into view again. Sometimes I’d catch up and we’d walk and talk for a while. There wasn’t much of a path, just a general idea of the direction of the peak.

            

This mountain had a series of basically very large stairsteps. Taller than a person in places. When we got to those, it was much harder to keep my friends in sight because these ledges blocked my view. But eventually I would spot them. Until I didn’t. One stair-step too far between us, or maybe one too many water breaks on my part, and I didn’t know where they were. Which meant I didn’t know where I was, in a way. I had been following them, if somewhat windingly, and when you’re not following someone things can change pretty quickly from a fun little hike to a disorienting and potentially upsetting experience. I tried to figure out how far up I was, which is really hard when you’re on the mountain. I picked up my pace hoping to catch up, but with increasingly uneven terrain I knew there were too many rocks and rises blocking my view. I decided to go on—I knew which way was up, after all, and I didn’t know of any clear and present dangers on that mountain. I might never have the chance to get to the peak again. So, periodically yelling for my friends and to keep bears away, I went slowly up and up. The soil was gravelly and loose, so I slipped a few times. Once I grabbed a small tree to pull myself up and it moved with me! The closer I got to the top, the less willing I was to turn around.

           

I got there eventually. I took some pictures, I think. Drank some water. Rested for a bit before heading back down. It was pretty cool, I could see a lot, a couple smaller rises and trails I had been on before, the hotel where I worked and the building I lived in, the one road out of the park. But, as interesting and different as it was, I never would have wanted to stay. The mountaintop is a lonely place; there’s not much to do except look around.

In the time and place where the Bible was written, mountains were considered a literal bridge between heaven and earth, which meant a way to get direct access to the gods. People went there for mystical experiences and rites of passage. You’ve probably heard of Mount Olympus, where all the Greek gods like Zeus and Hera lived. If they came down, it was atypical and noteworthy. Divine folks did not deign to mix with the lowly mortals unless there was a reason.

            

So it makes some sense that mountaintops figure prominently in our two stories today, with Moses and Jesus. That was how the readers’ worldview thought of divine encounters. But in both cases, something is so different from Zeus and Hera and their friends and foes. Namely, God is saying in both cases, “I don’t want to stay here. This mountaintop is a lonely place. There’s not much to do except look around.” God is saying, “I would rather be with people. This mountain is not for me.”

            

In the Moses story, God has been communicating with the people of Israel mostly through him, through Moses. But now God writes down the ten commandments, which begins the process of, in a sense, cutting out the middle-man. With this law, God’s people can begin to handle their own relationship with God. It’s still in a somewhat limited sense, but later God will put the law in their hearts, and then God will send Jesus, and then…well, then Jesus will go up on another mountain.

            

Peter, John, and James are with him. They’re not prepared at all for what happens up there. No one would be, really. So when Peter makes a somewhat bizarre statement, surely part of it is just the awkwardness of not knowing what to say. “It is good for us to be here! We should set up some sort of structure!” Maybe he also wanted something to do with his hands. At any rate, Moses and Elijah had appeared, Jesus was all lit up, so they were already pretty flustered when something even more crazy happened—a voice from heaven! “This is my son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” It makes you want to pay extra attention to the next thing Jesus says, doesn’t it? So what are his next words? “Get up, and do not be afraid.” He says this while touching Peter’s shoulder. So this God, this mountaintop God who likes to dress up as a cloud or fire or blinding light, who speaks from heaven and makes people quake with fear—this same God is the one who touches us with a human hand and reminds us we don’t have to be afraid. It’s the same God who dwells with us, who is always moving to guide us. Even in cloud form in Exodus, God didn’t stay on the mountain.

            

So if this flashy mountaintop God is not the center or the extent of who God is, why do it? Why put on the show? Maybe God just thinks it’s fun to freak us out sometimes. But probably it’s something more than that. I think God gives us dazzling moments where God’s presence is obvious in order to sustain us through the times we can’t be sure. This is going on in both stories. In Exodus, several chapters before and after this scene are the type that some people skip over. I don’t know who those people might be, but I hear it happens sometimes. Before Moses goes up the mountain, it’s legal minutiae about how the community should be run, how the people of God should live and work together. Afterward, it’s detailed building instructions for the temple! So detailed! Down to the type of wood to use and the measurements of the curtains. And in between, in the middle of all that mundane material, we have this transfigurative experience. Isn’t that how it goes? Doesn’t God usually catch us off guard when we think life is just utterly normal? It’s less about topography and more about divine moments amid the mundane ones.

And, in Matthew, the worse than mundane. Immediately before this scene, Jesus asked what people were saying about him, which led to Peter’s confession that he is the Messiah, which led to Jesus telling them that he was going to suffer and die. Maybe they went on the hike just to be distracted and to get away from the other guys’ gloomy reactions. Anything to get their minds off such terrible news. That’s not what you want to hear about your leader or anyone you love. It doesn’t make sense! And after the transfiguration, right on the way back down the mountain, they encounter a man and his son, who is possessed by demons. The father says, “He often falls into the fire and often into the water.” So this boy is burned, maybe even disfigured. Worse than mundane. Not long after that, the momentum starts to build more quickly for Jesus’ crucifixion. There’s no turning back and no denying that he meant it and knew what he was talking about when he said he would “undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” And in between, in the middle of all that anxious, fearful, sad, unsettling material that doesn’t make sense, we have this transfigurative experience. Isn’t that how it goes? Doesn’t God usually find us when we need God most? Not always, from our perspective. Sometimes we just don’t feel God’s presence even when that’s what we most want. But sometimes, these mountaintop moments happen in the lowlands, the wadis, at sea level, in the Marianas Trench, the deepest part of the ocean. It’s not about topography. It’s about God being utterly obvious—flashy, loud, unmistakable—at times we don’t choose or understand. Times when God is preparing us for endurance through mundane boring ol’ life. Or when we have just gotten bad news, like the apostles, and are about to see it unfold while we can do nothing. God knows when we really need a transfiguration.

Regardless of where those needs align in our lives, liturgically, we’re in the situation of Peter, James, and John. The season of Lent starts on Wednesday. We’re standing on a great big peak, looking down on the time that we set aside to remember the really terrible, hurtful things about Jesus’ death. Things that almost everyone struggles to accept, understand, or even believe. We’re supposed to leave this high place and go down there. Here is the good news on this particular day, which may be the best news of all. God has already left the mountain. Oh, God is with us up here, most certainly, but God also knows the depths of every valley. God lives there, in the lowlands, where the light does not touch. God went first, so it is safe for us. When we look out at everything Lent means for us and crumple to the rocky ground, God reaches out to us with human hands and says, “Get up. Don’t be afraid.” 

An Open Letter

Dear ten-year-old girl who said before praying, "It's not going to be good. I don't know how to do it":
Dear high-schoolers who are intellectual and introspective in a town of people who are just trying to get by:
Dear women who act ditzy when you are smarter than most people around you:

I am sorry that when I was in third grade I said my favorite school subjects were P.E. and lunch when in fact I loved reading and social studies and science. I knew already that it wasn't cool to be smart or even to be interested in school. Because I didn't own it, you're having a harder time knowing how powerful and intelligent and worthy you are. And you are. It's OK if you like P.E. and lunch. It's OK if you like reading and social studies and science. It's OK if you like history. It's OK if you like your teachers. It's OK if you like school. It's OK if you don't.

I am sorry for the time in high school when, giving an example about spending money, I said, "Like if you buy a book--I mean, not that I would buy a book--a CD or something...." When in fact I loved books so much, and still do. I betrayed myself and you, I betrayed all of us. I reached through the years and put out my hand to hold you down. We all did. We all do.

I am sorry for not wearing my patchwork hippie shirt for about five years in high school and college because it made me stand out too much. I was complicit in creating a culture where people are not rewarded for standing out, no matter how much it is spoken of as a good thing. I was playing the game of fitting in. Please know: it's so overrated. The rules keep changing and nothing but luck can win it. That shirt got so many compliments when I brought it out of hiding. Fitting in is fine if what you want happens to be what many others want, but it can happen by coincidence, as a result of other choices, not as a reason for them.

This is not a letter about guilt. Feeling sorry doesn't always mean feeling guilty. I was acting based on what I understood and wanted at those times. I don't want anyone else to feel guilty about what they have chosen in the past, especially when they were very young. No, this is a letter about freedom. A letter about light. Awareness. Recognition. Support, strength, empowerment. This is a letter about learning from the way my life is shaped by others, trying to push back gently and encourage others to do the same. Here we are, simmering in our individual pots of shame and fear. Let's remember we're all here, and everyone is so different with different reasons for different choices, but we can start by peeking over the top of the pot to see who else is simmering nearby. Then we can pull ourselves up--a huge effort, not for the faint of heart, but luckily none of us are faint of heart. Then we can sit on the sides of the pots and talk, cooling ourselves in the air. When one person falls in, the others can reach out and pull them, or jump in and buoy them. But no one has to keep simmering forever. I invite you to start getting ready for the climb out. The water makes it harder because it offers resistance, but that means you will build muscle so much more quickly.

Love,
Rachel

The Greater Good

This post contains spoilers about the movie Hot Fuzz.

I have had a post rolling around in my head for a long time. I watched the movie Hot Fuzz a few months ago, and especially at the beginning, I found myself thinking of the book A Church of Her Own. The movie is a hilarious spoof of the cop genre, done by some of the same folks as Shaun of the Dead. It begins by establishing that the main character is great at his job as a policeman in London, but it turns out he is too good. He's making the rest of them look bad! So the higher-ups ship him off to a tiny, sleepy town in the country. He learns that the crime rate is extremely low, though the accident rate is curiously high. Eventually, he discovers that the neighborhood watch has been killing people who make the town look bad, mostly for absurd reasons like building an unsightly house, acting badly in community theater, or even just having an annoying laugh. These people put the town's standing as Village of the Year in jeopardy. The murders are all made to look like accidents, which is why the accident rate is so high. The refrain throughout is that everything is for "the greater good" (which is always echoed in agreement by at least one character, never said just once in this movie). At the end he is able to persuade the rest of the police officers to think differently about "the greater good" and save the day. It's great and you should watch it, preferably a bunch of times, because it gets a lot better with each viewing.

A Church of Her Own is a nonfiction work about women in ministry. It is full of discouraging, disheartening anecdotes about senior pastors (men and women) belittling, ignoring, or undermining female associate pastors, as well as congregations and communities that don't know what to do with a pastor who's a woman. Story after story made me hang my head. People were fixated on women pastors' appearance and clothing, commenting on that instead of the sermon--even if she was wearing a robe or alb, people often talked about her shoes, nail polish, hair, or jewelry! If I needed any confirmation that women are often seen as objects to be beheld, not people with something to say, this book provided it. It ends on an uplifting note, with a few stories of exciting work women are doing in ministry. I recommend it to anyone who has a vested interest in churches.

Here's what made me think of the book while I watched the movie: the main character was treated a lot like the women in the book. Not objectified, but often ignored or waved away as a naive newcomer or an overachiever who was not appreciated for pointing out what others had missed. As I said, it's been months, and specific examples aren't coming to me, but this is a blog, not a dissertation. One day I'll go back and read the book and watch the movie and bring in some quotes. The idea is that he disrupted the status quo by trying to do the right thing, like looking into accidents that seemed suspicious. What he was doing, what lots of ministers of any gender do, is for the greater good. There's nothing inherently wrong with comfort, routine, the way we've always done it. But when someone comes along who doesn't know the code or doesn't care to follow it, or who asks questions that unsettle us, or who wants to dig deeper when we prefer to stay on the surface, or who has a different perspective, let's listen to them. Let's not dismiss them as not knowing anything because they're not like us. Let's not pat them on the head and tell them not to worry. Let's take them seriously. Let's welcome them into our lives and communities with genuine care and curiosity about who they are and what they are about. Let's not be like the village or like some of the churches and individuals in the book. Let's take a chance and turn our faces outward from time to time. For the greater good.

Mark: The Story of God’s Rule

Friends, today's post is an assignment for my New Testament class. Enjoy! I might actually do something similar for the other gospels, so let me know if that is appealing or appalling.  

When you think about the gospels, do you differentiate much among them? What does it mean to you that we have four different versions of Jesus’ story? I’m finishing up my first semester of New Testament in seminary, and even after reading them many times on my own, I am amazed at how different the gospels are. Mark stands out as particularly divergent from what we might think of as Christ’s story if we are familiar with it. There are several ways Mark has shocked me during this class.

First, the beginning and ending are shortened basically not there, at least not in the forms we find in other gospels. Mark has no birth narrative (meaning this time of year no one wants to read it!). No mention that Mary was a virgin, no shepherds, no barn full of animals, no wise men/kings, no angels. The story starts with a brief introduction of John the Baptizer, and Jesus first appears when he comes to him to be baptized, as an adult. The ending, too, is abrupt and seems to leave out a lot if you expect a resurrected Jesus to appear. Even if I hadn’t been studying the history of the gospels, I think it would be pretty easy to see why people think Mark was written first. It’s a very basic, straightforward version of the story. It feels like there’s no time for details—even if the writer believed there were angels and a virgin birth and such, which is doubtful, he deemed them non-essential and decided to make his point without them.

Second, as you may have discerned from the lack of birth narrative, Jesus is remarkably non-divine in Mark. God does say, “You are my beloved son. I delighted choosing you.” But the idea of being a son in this story is not supposed to mean Jesus is godlike. It means Jesus gets God, understands what God is trying to do, and wants to help God do it, presumably more than anyone else. It’s like on The West Wing when Jed Bartlet refers to Josh Lyman as his son (in the episode “Two Cathedrals”). Not a blood thing, but a sense that in his gut, Josh understands Jed’s purpose just as well as Jed himself does, and he is all in, willing to go anywhere with him to pursue it. The idea that being God’s son makes Jesus divine came later, as Matthew and Luke built on Mark.

            

A third mind-bending trick of Mark is not necessarily intrinsic to the text itself but is a compelling reading I found in Mark As Story by David Rhoads, Joanna Dewey, and Donald Michie. The authors say Mark, like other gospels, is often read as a story of Jesus’ execution (at the end) with a whole heck of a lot of exposition, introductory material. They choose to read it instead as a story of God’s rule breaking into the established world (at the beginning), with a lot of d­énouement. They make a really convincing argument for it, and I recommend the book to anyone who’s interested in this stuff. Much of what I say in this post comes from it. Anyway, it’s Jesus’ baptism, just a few verses into chapter 1, that inaugurates the rule of God, and the rest is the story of how that plays out. This reading changes how we pay attention to the story. If we think the important part is at the end, we’re likely to rush through a lot of the scenes and just get the gist so we can move on. If we think the main part happened at the very beginning, we have new eyes with which to read the rest. So we can see Jesus perhaps not as a doomed, tragic figure but as a person—as we established earlier, not a divine character—whose faith in God is so central to his life that he overcomes fear and pain because he believes his death will serve God and others. Still pretty tragic in some ways, but for me there’s an awe in this second reading that isn’t there in the first, as well as a loud and clear call of encouragement and challenge to the original listeners.

That brings me to a fourth point, the way the context shaped the meaning. Those who listened as Mark’s gospel was performed, at least some of them, would have been facing persecution and death not just because they followed Jesus but because they wanted what we would now call social and economic justice, and they believed in power that is expressed not in force but in service. Sometimes I think it’s not hard to picture how threatening this was to the people who had power at the time, because it’s still so threatening now. But then I think about how much worse it was. They had no such thing as political correctness and not even a reason to appear to care about people. It was pretty acceptable, as I understand it, to look out for yourself and your friends and act in your own interests. That definitely still happens, but when it does, other people sometimes find out and speak out. At the time this was written, there was no accountability like that. Mark came soon after the Roman-Judean war in 66-70. It was a peasant rebellion against Roman and Judean elites, and boy, did it not end well. The Romans destroyed towns and farms throughout the whole area of Galilee and Judea, and they burned the temple in Jerusalem. That’s what happened when you tried to speak out against anything powerful people were doing. Sometimes I’m angry with congress or other people in control, but I don’t run the risk of having my entire city destroyed if I say something. The people this story was written for felt like they had to choose between doing what was right and saving their own lives. Jesus’ story no doubt gave them something to cling to.

Alongside the potential encouragement in the story, there is an unmistakable challenge, point #5. As I studied that abrupt, unresolved ending, I kept thinking of the parable that is often called the story of the prodigal son. It doesn’t appear in Mark, so it’s not entirely academically appropriate of me to mention it here, but the connection is this: the parable ends with the father telling his older son that his brother’s return is something to celebrate. The gospel of Mark ends with three women fleeing from Jesus’ tomb. In both cases, the story acts as a question to the listener or reader. When something is left unresolved like that, we get to be the decider and think about how we want to respond, how we will respond. In the parable, we think about the older brother’s options. In the gospel, ideally, we see ourselves as the ones who now have the opportunity to tell what the women didn’t tell at the time. Especially in the original context, that ending was an invitation to pick up where they left off.  

That’s it for now. Hit me with comments. What do you think of all this?

Hurry Up and Wait. Sermon for December 1, 2013

Hi friends, here's the sermon I preached today at Ashland (VA) Presbyterian Church, where I'm doing my internship. I've never posted a sermon before, but I understand it is a thing people do! The texts were Isaiah 2:1-5 and Matthew 24:36-44. Advent, y'all! Enjoy.

I’d like to start by wishing all of you a happy new year! 

Even after all the Advents I’ve experienced, I didn’t quite put it together until this time that this right here is our new year’s day. It’s good to celebrate the other one, especially since JANUARY FIRST IS MY BIRTHDAY!, but the first Sunday of Advent, today, is the beginning of the church year just like that’s the beginning of the calendar year. 

So let me ask you, what does the new year mean to you? What is special about that time? 

For me, it’s a balancing point where we look back and forward at the same time. I like to take a little time around the new year to think about what happened in the last year, how I’ve grown and changed, things I want to remember and carry with me as I move forward. I don’t usually make new year’s resolutions, but when I look back like that, it does make me think about how I might like to do things differently in the future. 

I also like to clean the house really well and watch the Rose Bowl parade, but I don’t see those rituals reflected in today’s readings, and we do have some good words about looking back and looking forward.

It’s easy to talk about the looking-forward part. Advent has a lot to do with that. Getting ready for Christ’s coming, preparing, waiting, straining our eyes toward the future we so eagerly desire. The Isaiah text today is all about how great it’s going to be. God’s mountain will be taller than all the others, and not just Israel but all people will stream to it because they want so badly to hear God’s word and instruction. Also, no more war! The weapons are going to be turned into tools of nourishment, sustainability, community. We won’t have to get by on our scraps and fading memories of spiritual moments, because we’re all gonna be with God, together! 

I don’t know about you, but I can’t get enough of this. Apparently I’m not the only one, because the bit about the swords into ploughshares shows up four times in the Hebrew Bible. There is something really powerful about those images and the feelings they give us.

Speaking of powerful images, I don’t think it says in the book of order or the book of common worship that I have to talk about consumerism and materialism now because Christmas is coming, and I’m pretty sure we’ve all heard about and experienced how difficult it is to be a faithful follower of Christ, focused on the important things, when there are advertisements for toys and jewelry and sparkly presents and indulgent foods everywhere we look. Actually, I didn’t want to bring that up because I’ve heard sooo many sermons and read so many devotions about it. But, wouldn’t you know, there’s a time for every purpose under heaven. What I want to say about the Christmas-industrial complex is this: the images in advertisements, and in the songs and stories and movies that are sometimes little more than thinly-veiled advertisements, they draw us in for a reason. They show us things that God made our hearts to want: togetherness, generosity to strangers and loved ones alike, peace, healing of wounded relationships, and a childlike sense of wonder at the mystery of Santa Claus or God.  In fact, if you take out the plug for a particular product, lots of those messages are really similar to the things we see in Isaiah and elsewhere in the Bible. So what is it that makes this passage different from a well-done, heartwarming commercial for God?

There are a lot of things, and since I can’t have your ears all day to talk about them, I’m focusing on one: looking back. We don’t see it very explicitly in this passage, but Isaiah was written for a people with history. Their relationship with God is, to say the least, complicated. On-again, off-again, will they, won’t they? The Israelites were, let’s be honest, they were not so great. Let me be lightning-quick to say we are a lot like them, as a people and as individuals. Along with them, we betray God and worship idols. Along with them, we hedge our bets out of often-unspoken fear that God will not come through for us, that when it comes down to it we are our only hope. Along with the Israelites, sometimes we just forget about God altogether and hum along as if we were never chosen, called, or saved, as if our lives are small and insignificant. This history, and so much more, is the foundation for what Isaiah says.

If we look at the perfect family from any commercial, those images are unreal and meaningless partly because we don’t know the back-story and it’s assumed that there is none. If the commercials lasted a few years and let us get to know the people, maybe I’d believe the love and peace they conveyed. If I knew that the kid in the footie pajamas with the perfect hair had just spoken words of true repentance and reconciliation to his sister after an argument, maybe the image of the two of them smiling with their arms around each other would mean something. If I knew that one of the parents had slept on the couch the night before but then the other spouse had embraced them with real forgiveness, maybe their on-screen embrace would mean more. If I knew that the college-age daughter had contemplated spending this holiday away from her family because she had been doing drugs or she had a girlfriend or her boyfriend was of a different race, but decided to come home and be honest with them and been welcomed, perhaps with some hesitation or confusion but with the same open arms as always, her smile would make it so much more than an advertisement. It would be a story, a real story about real people who mess up and give up and then try again at the surprisingly hard task of loving each other. It’s only when we look back that we can know what is really happening now and what could happen next. After all the fighting and killing that’s gone on between Israel and other nations, the images of all nations streaming toward God’s mountain together are so much more powerful. They have sometimes been horrible neighbors, but God promises to set things right and that God’s word will overshadow—not erase, but overshadow—all of those divisions and hurts.

This type of looking back happens more explicitly in the Matthew passage. In telling us that no one including himself can know exactly what to expect, Jesus reminds us of Noah. Actually, not Noah himself but the people who lived at the time of the flood and didn’t know it would happen. They kept on living their lives as usual, not knowing that each day brought them closer to the end of the whole world as they knew it. Jesus says we don’t have to know the day or hour to be prepared for God’s kingdom, at least more prepared than they were for the flood. But that’s not an easy thing to try to do. How do we hold ourselves in readiness if we have no idea when it’s happening or even what exactly to be ready for? Well, here’s one idea that kind of helps me when I’m trying to think about this.

There’s a composer named John Cage. He was basically contemporary, he died in 1992, and he’s known for what I like to call crazy music. He composed music for the prepared piano, which means he would put various objects like bolts and screws on the strings to alter the sound. I heard a piece by him once that involved several people sitting in a row with radios tuned to different frequencies and turning them on and off at set times. The piece that he is probably best known for is called 4'33" [pronounced "4 minutes and 33 seconds"]. Here’s what happens. Any instrument or combination of instruments can perform it. The performer goes to the piano, or puts her violin under her chin, or they raise their wind instruments to their mouths, and then they don’t do anything. They just stay that way. Poised to start playing, but with no sound. The audience at first is expectant, then probably uncomfortable. As they start to realize they’re not going to hear music in this piece, they can’t help but pay attention to other sounds in the environment. Creaking auditorium seats, shuffling feet, rustling programs, coughs, whispers. And that’s John Cage’s point. He wrote 4'33" to call attention to those sounds. To say, this is a kind of music, and I hope you will hear the beauty in the common sounds you rarely notice. He puts the audience in an expectant and ready place, and then he points to a kind of music they probably never thought of. This is how we can be ready and not know what for or when. We can try to pay attention to the things and people we usually pass by, because God composed that crazy music for us to listen to.

I had another church internship a long time ago, and one of the first things the pastor said to me was, “Do you like to read? Because you should probably have a book with you most of the time. It’s a lot of hurry up and wait.” He was saying that like it was a bad thing, and yes, that can sometimes be very annoying. You get yourself all ready to do something important, something big and exciting, and then you end up standing around for minutes or hours, sometimes years, waiting for the go-ahead, waiting for the right time, waiting for someone to hire you, we might not even know what we’re waiting for. 

But I’ve found that, especially when it comes to ministry, there’s really not such a big divide between those big important moments and the time we spend looking for them. When I went on mission trips with my youth group in high school, the van ride was sometimes the highlight of the trip. We were waiting to get to the place where we were gonna do God’s work, but in the meantime, we got to know each other better and goofed off and made memories and shared snacks pretty much like the early church--nothing belonged to any individual but it was all communal property, the pretzels and the Twizzlers and the Skittles and the granola bars. I think that counts as God’s work, and I don’t think we knew it at the time. 

More recently, the experience of being in seminary is occasionally very frustrating, and sometimes I just want to graduate and get a call to a church and start my ministry already! But then I think, isn’t that shortchanging my life now and kind of an insult to everyone who’s not ordained? Have we really spent almost three years in a holding pattern, not doing ministry because we don’t have a degree yet? Wrong. My classmates and professors minister to me and each other all the time! And we have internships and committees and all sorts of ways that we are doing ministry, even if on some days it feels like we have hurried up just to get here and wait. 

That’s just my experience; everyone feels at times like they are not doing anything important, like they are just waiting for the next big thing, sitting in that auditorium seat waiting to hear the music start. But we can listen to people like John Cage who say, hey, this other stuff is worth listening to. It doesn’t have to be a big production. We can learn and grow and serve while we wait, and it might turn out we’ve been right where we belong. We can believe when Jesus says the kingdom of God is among us. Maybe that means it’s already here, but it’s so subtle or so common that we ignore it. Maybe our call is to perk up, wake up, and see what has already been going on: the acts of mercy and justice that occur every day.

They are smaller and often deemed less newsworthy than the painful stories we are used to. But a friend of mine had the stranger in front of her pay her toll on the Jersey Turnpike when she was traveling for Thanksgiving. Another friend is going to start not one job but two this week after a long and frustrating search. Countless people this past week at family gatherings played games they didn’t like so that children would feel loved and important. People who’d never imagined anything but a traditional turkey dinner learned to cook vegetarian dishes, or vegan or gluten-free, for the sake of loved ones. 

These happenings, and so many others, they might not look like much, but neither does a mustard seed. 

When Isaiah says, “Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord,” he’s been talking about the future for the whole passage, but that line is in the present. "All this is going to happen," he says, "and here’s what I invite you to do together now." 

The light might be as faint as the light that shows at the edges of a door, just barely illuminating our own space, but we know it is bright on the other side, and we can see enough to get there. 

Or the light might come only in brief flashes and then leave us in darkness, but it’s enough to take the next step, and we know it will come back when it’s time to move again. 

One day we will be where God is, and we will not need or want to go anywhere else. But right now, we walk in the light because we are getting closer to God’s mountain, little by little, together, starting with this first day of the new year. 

Amen and amen.

Monsters University

I went to see Monsters University last night. It's a prequel to Monsters, Inc., giving us the story of the main characters in college. It was very good. Good enough to write a blog post after a months-long hiatus! Spoiler alert: I'm going to write about things that happen throughout the movie.

So the premise is that the little green monster, Mike Wazowski, is not very scary, and the big blue monster, James Sullivan, is. I love that they have "normal" names, and I think that's funnier than naming them Scary McFangs or something.

The whole movie is basically about Mike trying to be scary, studying hard for his Scaring class and final and then trying to win the Scare Games, while Sulley is a natural but that makes him pretty full of himself. The reason I'm still thinking about it and writing about it is that in the end, Mike does not become scary. His hard work pays off, but not in the form he hoped for. This is a really powerful idea for the kids and adults who watch the movie. Similarly, they were both cut from the Scaring program and eventually expelled, and the movie does not have a deus ex machina that lets them back into school to graduate with honors. They both leave school after one year to work in the mailroom at Monsters, Inc., which of course leads directly to the other movie. Again, not what either of them hoped for or expected from their college experience or from life, but it definitely counts as a happy ending. Happy and realistic. I'm continually impressed by Pixar/Disney's ability to draw adults in and write very fine scripts, both on the story-arc level and on the line level, while catering just as powerfully to children. In this case, as in others, it's a story most of us need to hear: no, we can't always transform ourselves or get what we want. But that doesn't mean failure, and if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.

The Year of Contextual Thinking

I'm continually surprised at how well classes fit together. In high school and middle school, I was so delighted that we studied world history at the same time as world literature in another class, U.S. history the same year as American literature. Totally different teachers! I eventually figured out they did that on purpose, and was no less delighted.

In seminary, though, we decide which classes to take, so it's not really orchestrated that way, and somehow the same thing happens, at least to some degree. For instance, the word of the year so far is context. In Preaching & Worship, it's the decider of most everything. Got a congregation full of old people? Don't use too many illustrations about school or having young kids! They'll remember, but it won't make the same impact as things that are more relevant to their current experience. What if your listeners are mostly lifelong urbanites? You might want to take some more time to explain that agricultural metaphor. (Hey, even Jesus exegeted his own Parable of the Sower, and almost everyone knew the farming world then.) And it's not just illustration choices, but the length of a sermon, the style and format, even what you wear. Context, context, context.

In Teaching Ministry, it's the same. Clearly teaching a lesson to children is different from teaching the same lesson to adults, small groups are different from large, the examples abound. In both classes, a lot has to do with what happened before you were there, expectations that were set up a long time ago. That doesn't mean you can't do something different, but it means you don't have a blank canvas or an unlimited array of tools that will be equally well received. We often experience context as limiting.

The Church History application is only just becoming clear to me (which is part of why I choose this moment to write this), because it is more subtle and heady, but it may be more important. One of the things that makes me maddest so far in Church History is Constantine and his conveniently patriotic God. In very brief, Constantine was a Roman emperor who got there by killing or deceiving his co-emperors. Then he had a vision where God told him, "In this sign, conquer," the sign being the first two letters of Christ's name. So he did. He conquered a lot of people and made Christianity the official religion of the empire, ending one wave of persecutions and martyrdom, funding shiny new cathedrals in most towns, making bishops into civil judges, and issuing an imperial standard Bible. I guess I/we probably wouldn't be Christian if he hadn't had his visions and made Christianity so widely accepted, but I'm not sure the faith is better off because of him. Here's why: being a Christian came to mean something entirely different once he started his chain of events. Before, from Christ's time until his, Christians were mostly people who were desperate, marginalized, way way down and way way out. They met in homes. They didn't love the empire because God's kingdom was the true power. Some of them were martyred because they would not pray to the gods of the empire or curse Christ. That was enough to keep the riffraff out--or in, depending on how you look at it--no one would be Christian unless they saw it as a life-saving, life-changing faith that they couldn't imagine not following.

Then comes Constantine. Suddenly the emperor is doing it, so by definition Christianity is no longer so subversive. One will not die for being Christian. In fact, you're a lot better off if you are. Remember the part about bishops being judges in civil matters? If you go to church and know the bishop, well, that might pay off if you ever get in a tight spot with the law. Never mind other kinds of payoff. The church was all but overrun with what my professor calls free-riders, "people who join simply out of comfort and formality, and if it ever got difficult, they'd stop going." Sound like anyone you know? Maybe everyone (including me)? So the character of people who were attracted to Christianity changed radically. The atmosphere of worship and faith changed. The context was almost completely different. And that meant the faith itself and the practice of it were different too.

Aside from hipsterishly lamenting the mainstream-ization of the faith, I'm mad at Constantine because he made something easy that I believe was supposed to be hard. He thought God fought his battles and made his life and his reign easier. Aren't we supposed to fight God's battles instead, if we have to use that imagery at all? Since then, Christians have been reviled again, mainstream again, and everything in between, and sometimes it's hard to say where we stand today. But the point as far as this post is that the context was and is critical in determining what it means to be Christian, or to have any belief.

Then there's Greek class. When a word or phrase can mean two things, we always use context to determine which one's being used. That's a nice, small, concrete illustration: in one kind of sentence, the phrase means "her sister." In another, it means "the sister herself." So context sometimes disambiguates and always helps us discern meaning. I'm a different person with my family, with seminary friends, with Wilmington friends, with my boyfriend, in class, in France, with my two different host families from France, as a teacher, as a student...the list is exhaustingly and shockingly long. Any specific combination of people, setting, and mood constitutes a context and brings out different aspects of me.

The key is, I'm all of them. I'm only my full self when you add up all those aspects. And that's what makes the whole thing so maddening and so lovely: I can best understand Christianity when I look at as many contexts as possible. Far from being limiting, context becomes freeing and illuminating. This is what Christianity looks like in a small church in North Carolina. This is what it looks like in Peru. This is what it looks like in a megachurch in a beach town. This is what it looked like in the first century when Christians fully expected Christ to return any day. This is what it looked like when Constantine stripped it of its hipster outcast appeal.

It is very much a religion for outcasts and losers, but it is also a religion for prom queens and winners. It is for everyone, in slightly or radically different forms.

This is my Christianity.

This is yours.

All of this is ours.

Thanks be to God.