Safe This Far

1 Chronicles17:16-17

Years ago, a young man named Samuel Jones felt the overwhelming sense of being called to Christian ministry. He went to his pastor with this news. To his surprise, the pastor immediately set him up with a date to preach. It would be a Sunday evening service. Samuel threw himself into preparations for a sermon that he hoped would impress everyone. That Sunday evening, he stood in the pulpit and looked out at a full congregation, all there to hear and encourage him.

He began to preach his prepared sermon, full of big words and clever arguments. But soon he began to stumble. And he was lost. He could not remember anything he wanted to say. He was ashamed and stepped down from the pulpit feeling so much the failure.

But as he walked away, he felt God asking him a question: Samuel, have I really given you nothing? The answer to that question was, Lord, you have given me everything. Then he knew he had something to say. And he returned to the pulpit to speak – this time from his heart.

In looking back, he said that in the beginning he thought he was called to be God’s lawyer, to argue God’s case. But after that evening, he knew he was really called to be God’s witness. And that is what he did for the rest of his life.

There may be nothing more powerful than the true and heartfelt testimony of a witness. Just telling your own truth about how God has been working in your life is better than any amount of what we call Christian apologetics. Arguments have their usefulness, but experience is life.

We might wonder why John Newton’s hymn, Amazing Grace, has been so loved for so long. Surely, at least part of the answer is that Newton did not try to be God’s lawyer. He was only offering himself as God’s witness.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.

Newton was a lost man if ever there was one. He was born in England in 1725. His mother died while he was still an infant. His father was a sailor and he brought John into that business at a young age. He eventually found his way into the slave trade. John sailed many times from England to West Africa, where men, women, and children were chained together and marched on board the ship. They would cram in as many bodies as possible to maximize their profits. Many of the captives died from disease and brutal treatment before reaching their destination. It was a most inhumane and morally repugnant kind of work. Even at a time when English and American society defended the practice of slavery, most people regarded people like Newton with contempt. He knew what he was. He was a wretch.

In 1748, he experienced an especially difficult trip, and on the return voyage he was caught in a violent storm. In despair, he turned to prayer. It was the beginning of a change.

He returned to England and began his journey toward ministry. It took a long time. The Church of England was not at all sure they wanted a man like John. But after about seven years he was accepted, and eventually appointed to serve a congregation.

He took up the practice of writing hymns and would introduce them to his congregation after his sermon. On January 1, 1773, he preached a sermon based on 1 Chronicles 17:16-17. And then he introduced this hymn.

The short passage is about King David. It was a time when he was secure in his power and well settled in his comfortable house, and he began thinking about God. What a shame, he thought, that God doesn’t have a nice house like this too. I should really do something about that. And so he made up his mind to build a lavish temple for God.

But later, that night, David’s advisor Nathan had a vision and a word from God for David: I don’t need you to build me a house. Don’t you know that I am able to do what I desire to do in this world without your house? Do you recall all that I have done for you, David? Without a house?

In fact, the Lord says, I will build you a house, meaning that God will give David a dynasty. God promised David descendants who would serve God forever. It was the making of a covenant, an everlasting covenant.

David was humbled by this, and he began to pray: Who am I, O Lord, that you have brought me thus far?

And John Newton wrote:

Through many dangers, toils, and snares I have already come;
This grace has brought me safe this far, and grace will lead me home.

A beautiful expression of King David’s response and of Newton’s reflection on his own life; and quite possibly, words that all of his congregation could identify with too.

Newton wrote the verses, but he didn’t write tunes, which was perfectly fine. It has always been the custom to use old tunes with new lyrics, we see that often in the hymns we sing.

We don’t know what tune Amazing Grace was originally sung to, perhaps there were many. We know that it works with many hymn tunes more or less familiar to us. Each one gives the hymn something unique, offering us a new experience when we sing it.

It is possible that over the years Amazing Grace has been sung with many of the hymn tunes we know and love. Azmon, St. Anne, and Land of Rest are a few. But in 1835 we know that it was paired with a tune called New Britain and, eventually, that’s the one that stuck.

The song made its way across the Atlantic and became a very popular hymn at revivals and camp meetings. Some verses have been added, while others have been forgotten. The hymn has been adapted by contemporary praise and worship bands and by African American gospel singers. It is a hymn that seems to reach out and speak on many levels, touching more lives than we could ever know.

All because John Newton awoke to the amazing power of God’s grace. And he stepped away from a life that, while utterly wretched, was familiar to him and we all know it is hard to let go of the familiar. He followed the call God gave him, persisting for seven years before he finally was given the chance to serve a church.

John Newton stepped out in faith and became God’s instrument for spiritual growth and societal change. It was instrumental in bringing about the abolition of the slave trade and eventually the practice of slavery in England and then the United States. When we hear the gentle call of God’s grace, we do not know where God will take us. But wherever that is, we know –

This grace has brought us safe this far, and grace will lead us home.

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

Trusting the Dark

Luke 1:26-38     

John 19: 38 - 20:1       

New life starts in the dark. The preacher Barbara Brown Taylor writes this in her book called, Learning to Walk in the Dark. New life starts in the dark.

Growth happens in the dark. Right now, every day, I am watching so much growth happening in our yard – trees budding, leaf unfolding; liriope, hosta, lilies all bursting up from the ground, one day there is nothing there, the next day there is a green leafy plant.

Last summer I planted some sweet woodruff under a tree. “Grow,” I told it, “spread like you’re supposed to.” It didn’t respond last summer. But this week I Iooked out and saw how much more ground it is covering as it comes up out of the dirt. Clearly, it was doing some work, growing down there in the dark.

New life starts in the dark. Like the womb. Babies don’t just appear out of thin air – poof! They spend nine months developing, growing in the dark of the womb, the perfect environment for growing a human person. We have all seen amazing pictures of the embryo developing into a fetus, the fetus into a baby – but even though we have seen it we are awed by the mystery of it. the mystery of what happens in the dark.

New life starts in the dark of the cocoon, or chrysalis, when a caterpillar evolves into a moth or butterfly, an entirely new and different creature. Another beautiful mystery of life.

When the caterpillar is ready to move on to the next phase of its life, it becomes the chrysalis. Everything inside of it is transformed into this new thing, with an exoskeleton, protecting and covering the work that is going on inside, in the dark.

Eventually, the butterfly emerges from the chrysalis, like a baby coming out of the womb or a chick coming out of the egg. It’s wet, it’s weak, but it slowly acclimates to the outside world and then it flies.

What once was a caterpillar, then became a chrysalis, is now a butterfly. Transfiguration in the darkness!

New life beginning in the dark. like the tomb.

Jesus went into the tomb a broken human body. His friends carefully, tenderly removed him from the cross and they carried him to the tomb. Nicodemus with his hundred pounds of aloe and myrrh. They lovingly wrapped his corpse in the burial cloths and laid him in the tomb. They moved a large stone in front of the tomb like shutting a door. And they walked away.

That was Friday, just before sunset. No one knows what happened then. His body lay in the darkness of the tomb, behind the stone. And when Sunday morning came, the body was no longer there.

He appeared to Mary in the garden, although she didn’t recognize him. Only when he called her name did she, somehow, know it was him. He appeared to others, in other places, in the days that followed. And sometimes, like Mary, they didn’t recognize him. He was, somehow, changed in the darkness of the tomb.

Good and marvelous things sometimes come out of the dark, isn’t it true? Still, it is true that we fear the dark.

There are some practical reasons for that. We can’t see very well. When we walk in the dark we might trip over something or bump into something that we cannot see. We can get hurt in the dark by the things we cannot see.

But sometimes, in the dark, it’s the things that are not even there that cause fear.

In the dark all our worst thoughts come out to play in our heads. Who hasn’t lain awake in the dark of night, worrying over lost opportunities or difficulties ahead? Taunted by our doubts. We worry that we are not who we want to be, who we ought to be. We lament our failures. We feel the aching longing for loved ones who are gone. In the dark of the night there is nothing to distract us from all the things that are hard to look at. It is uncomfortable, to say the least.

And sometimes the darkness stays with us even after the sun rises. Sometimes, we go through our days, working and resting and being with others, all in our own private darkness. And perhaps you would never tell another soul about that darkness. It is uncomfortable. It is painful. And it can feel like failure.

But it is not failure. It is possibility.

The spiritual mystics found the secret gifts that live in the dark. They speak of the dark night of the soul – a place where you might, at first, feel utterly alone, afraid, abandoned by God. You might feel awash in confusion, loneliness, doubt. But then, you might discover the possibility of transformation that awaits you. The darkness is not the end. There is light on the other side and new life awaits.

There is a parable about two babies in the womb talking to each other about life after delivery. One of them asks the other, “Do you believe in life after delivery?” “Of course,” the other said. “There has to be something.” The first baby disagrees. There is no evidence of life after delivery. There is no reason to believe there is life after delivery, surely that is the end of existence. The two babies argue over the matter a little longer, then one says, “I don’t know what it will be like, but we will meet mother, and that is good.” And the other baby says, “You believe in mother?”

In the darkness of the womb, they cannot imagine what kind of life might be possible on the other side of birth. In the same way, we cannot imagine what lies in store for us on the other side of the darkness, the other side of transformation.

The truth is we are unfinished products, living in unfinished times. And some times feel a lot more unfinished and uncertain than others.  Times when we feel like we are losing something valuable, important, when we are afraid to let go of anything, just as Mary was afraid to let go of Jesus.

But in the Easter story Jesus shows us that there is no reason to fear. Darkness lies ahead of us all, but we need not fear the darkness. Our God promises us so much new life on the other side.

During this season of Easter, let us journey together: out of the darkness into new light, new life that awaits us. 

Photo by Walter del Aguila on Unsplash

Telling Stories

 

John20:1-18

Many years ago, my parents moved into a nice rental house in a nice neighborhood.  This was shortly after I graduated high school.  Most of the years I was growing up, we had lived in town houses, in neighborhoods where they were all rentals.  They were ok; there was nothing wrong with them.  But this place was different; it was pretty nice.  I don’t know how they found this place, probably from an ad the owner had put in the newspaper.  And we didn’t know why he was renting out the house, he just was.

But nothing abhors a vacuum like the imagination.  My mother was great at developing stories. My mother’s favorite words were, “I wonder…” as she began to let her imagination spin out a tale that would give meaning to whatever was on her mind.  When she began wondering about our landlord, she went to work. 

She asked aloud, “I wonder why he and his wife don’t want to live in this house.”  There must be a reason.  Perhaps this woman is his second wife.  Perhaps he lived here years ago with his first wife.  This was the house they bought together.  But then they got a divorce – it was very sad. 

He probably lived in this house after the divorce – she moved away, out of the area.  It was for the best.  Then he met another woman and married again.  But she couldn’t, wouldn’t live in this house, the house of his first wife.  Even though it’s a really nice house, there were just too many memories here.  Of course, they couldn’t live here.  It was she, the new wife, who insisted that they find a new house that would be their home. 

And after she told us this story, it was a drop-the-mic moment.  Boom.  Her work was done.  Now we had a good story to fill in the gaps.  And it was such a good story; how could it not be true?

I will tell you the truth, I did some embellishing of my own on this story about my mother, although the essence of it is certainly true. And I don’t think my mother would mind at all, because she was all for making a good story even better.

But, I’m thinking, this might be why women have been thought to be untrustworthy witnesses. 

Historically, we know, the words of women have not been taken seriously.  This is true.  In ancient Jewish history, an authoritative list of ten categories of people who are not competent to testify, women are at the top of the list.  Women were not believed to be reliable witnesses – And it wasn’t just a Jewish thing – it was a human thing.   

Throughout most of human history, women’s stories have been laughed at, scoffed at, and brushed off.  Sometimes for unfair reasons – the idea that women are too emotional, or too easily confused.  But it occurs to me, it might also be because women are good storytellers.  Stories are, in fact, important to women.  It is through stories that women tell their truth.

Very often, it is not enough to just state a fact.  Many truths need to be told as stories, so we can hear it and see it and feel it.  With a story, it’s like you are there, you know this truth intimately.  Joe Friday might want “Just the facts, ma’am” but women have stories to tell.  And the women had quite a story to tell about that Sunday morning outside Jerusalem.  So sit back and let me tell you the story.

Jesus was gone – his body was gone from the tomb.  It wasn’t something that anybody had been expecting.  Just the Friday before, his body had been taken down from the cross.  It was about mid-afternoon.  Joseph of Arimathea, along with Nicodemus, collected his body.  Nicodemus, you might remember, is the one who had once paid a late-night visit to Jesus because he wanted so much to understand but couldn’t understand, at least not then.  These two men carried his body out to a tomb where they would lay it, along with the myrrh and aloe for the embalming.  Some say Nicodemus carried more than 100 pounds of myrrh and aloe.  Most people would say that you don’t really need that much, 40 pounds will do the job.  But 100 pounds of myrrh and aloe – I think that tells us something about where Nicodemus’s heart and mind were now. And that’s another story to tell.

And so they carried the body and the herbs and spices and clothes to the garden where the tomb was.  It was Joseph’s tomb, actually.  He assumed he would be buried there some day, but on this day, he could think of no better use of it than to lay the body of Jesus in it.  By the time they arrived at the tomb, it was near sunset.

The Sabbath was coming.  Even with all the events that had transpired this day, it would not be acceptable to violate the Sabbath laws. They could not be handling a dead body on this holy day, and they needed to be getting home on time for the evening prayers.  So Nicodemus and Joseph left Jesus’ body in the tomb, covered the entrance to the tomb with a stone, and they left.  There was nothing more that could be, or needed to be, done that day. 

Sunday, after the Sabbath, Mary rose very early so she could go to the tomb.  She was awake well before sunrise, in fact, so urgently did she feel the need to go and finish the work that had been started on Friday.  There were some other women there in Jerusalem too, women who had, along with Mary, accompanied Jesus throughout his ministry.  A lot of people think it was just that band of 12 men who followed Jesus, but there were women too – women who used their own resources to provide for him and the disciples. These women had been there at the very beginning, and they were there at the bitter end, and that’s another story to tell.

Some say that it was a few of them who went to the garden that morning – the other Mary and perhaps Joanna.  But, it might have been Mary Magdalene, all alone, who made the trip that morning.

When she arrived, she was shocked to find the tomb a dark, gaping hole.  The stone had been removed, the grave was open, and the body was gone.

What this could mean, Mary didn’t know.  She only knew that the body of her Lord was gone, and that she did not know where he had been taken and she was frantic.  More than anything else, she wanted to know where they had taken him so she could go find him.  Mary was not ready to let go of Jesus yet. 

And she ran back to the house where they had all been staying, and she burst through the door where the men were all gathered, and she said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”  Now, some say that they didn’t believe her, that the men just dismissed it as “idle tales.”  You know, the kind of stories women tell. And perhaps some of them did.  But not all of them.  Not all.

Peter and one of the other men followed Mary back to the garden.  And they saw what Mary had seen – an empty tomb.  They left, but Mary remained.  She still didn’t know what happened to him.  She looked into the tomb and saw two angels – they had to be angels.  Not everyone agrees about exactly what angels look like, but when you see one, you know.  She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”

Where is he? Mary wanted to know.  She asked the angels, where is he?  Because Mary was not ready to let go of him yet.  Mary would not go.

And because Mary remained, she was the first to see Jesus in the garden, in the flesh. Mary was the first evangelist, the first bearer of the good news, the apostle to the apostles.  

She immediately reached out to touch him, because Mary was not ready to let go of him yet.  But he said to her, Mary, don’t hold on to me.  She had to let him go. 

She had to let him go so that that he could see and be seen by other people in other places and spread the good news widely.  She had to let him go so that he could ascend to the father – his father and her father in heaven.  She had to let him go so that she, and every one of us, could have him, hold him in our hearts, know him as our redeemer.

Eventually Mary went back to the disciples, her face shining brightly, and told them, “I have seen the Lord.”  She told them everything she had seen and heard. 

Yes, the men did confirm what this woman had seen and heard, with their own experiences of Jesus later, and these stories, too, will be told.  But let us not discount the fact that this woman had been the first to bear witness to the resurrection.  Perhaps it was necessary that it be this way.  Because women are storytellers, and this is a story that had to be told.

This is a story that is not over yet.

The story of the gospel is a beginning, which shows us the way to follow, the way to live. It is a story that we pick up and carry with us, and we continue writing it with our lives. Each of us has a story to tell – a story that is a piece of the big story. Patch them all together and we have color and depth and texture. And when we share it, it brings new life to others.

And God still speaks through this story that is now our story as well.

This is the story that matters more than any other narrative – the strangest story of all, as C.S. Lewis said. It is a story that tells us, in the end, peace reigns. In the end, life flourishes. In the end, love wins.

It’s a good story. Love wins.

Photo: Pueblo Storyteller Doll 

The Unexpected

Matthew 21:1-11        

There is a film called The Banshees of Inisherin about a man named Padraic. He is a sweet, gentle guy. He lives on a little island off the coast of Ireland, sharing a cottage with his sister, Siobhan, who loves him. Padraic has a friend Colm, who he thinks loves him, and life is fine – until it isn’t.

Something that is said again and again throughout the story is that Padraic always thought of himself as one of the good ones; never harmed anyone, always a kind word for everyone. But when he gets pushed hard enough, it turns out he is capable of some pretty horrific things.

Padraic is changed through the course of this story. But in the end, he’s not a different person. He is just showing something that has always been inside of him.

It was unexpected. But, in truth, it’s something that is inside of all of us, if we are truthful; all of us who think of ourselves as the good ones.

The good ones. Unlike those others we can point to who are not the good ones.

Someone asked me weeks ago if I was ready for Lent and I said I was as ready as I ever am, ready as I can be for something that fills me with fear and trembling. Because the season of Lent is a season in which we are asked to descend into death. To look at death straight on, with eyes open, with honest hearts.

And to look at ourselves the same way – straight on, eyes open, honestly. That is where the fear and trembling come in. Because when I look at myself that way I have to see the violence in me. I have to see the places I have allowed hate to fester. I have to see the ways in which I am complicit in the suffering in the world.

I don’t want to see it. I would much rather think of myself as one of the good ones.

The past two weeks have been a particularly difficult part of our Lenten journey. We saw the death of two of our beloved members. Even though we have faith that they now dwell in the joy of our Lord, it is still hard. Death is a painful and hard thing to endure, it is a wrenching separation.

In this week as we were saying goodbye to these friends, we experienced another wrenching catastrophe in Nashville – one more slaughter of the innocent children. Could it be? In the days since, I have grieved. And I have subjected myself to further punishment by reading the news.

Again and again I have read about elected officials saying in one way or another: I can’t do anything about that.

Reporters badger senators in the halls of congress and they continue walking, letting us know they’re tired of the subject. When the man who represents Nashville in congress was asked what could be done about this, he said “Nothing. We’re not going to fix it.”

When a senator was asked if they would take up any gun control legislation, she said, “there isn’t any appetite for that.”

I wonder. Is it possible that valuing the lives of our children over our guns is distasteful? How does that happen?

I am aware that violence is nothing new in our society. Jesus lived in a time and place where violence was endemic, too, just as it is here. One difference, of course, was that no one had AR-15s. Although, one congresswoman said that if only Jesus did have some AR-15s he wouldn’t have been crucified.

I suppose it was meant as a joke. But I’m afraid the whole meaning of the gospel is lost here.

Jesus lived in a time of violence and he spoke against it. He spoke God’s truth to the powers of this world. He was at times confrontational; he was bold to call out hypocrisy and evil. But one thing he did not do: he did not take up violence in response to the violence around him.

There were others who did respond to violence with violence. But Jesus, in his every word and deed, showed us a different way, an unexpected way.

On that first Palm Sunday, he rode into the city of Jerusalem seated on a lowly donkey, greeted by a glad and grateful crowd – it was a triumph of humility. Not force, not threat; this was a king of peace.

And the people shouted to him, “Save us!”

Save us from ourselves.

When we dare to look inside ourselves with eyes open, with honesty, we confront the violence that lives in us, the potential that is there.

In the 1960s the artist Andy Warhol, who was known for his pop art depictions of soups cans and other objects, began depicting scenes of violence and death. He did car crashes, plane crashes, people rioting in opposition to civil rights.

It was unexpected, but perhaps it shouldn’t have been. This was a time of increasing US involvement in the war in Vietnam and rising conflict at home over civil rights. And it was all on our TV screens day after day. Warhol was always a sharp observer of culture and he reflected it right back at us with his photographs and paintings. It was distasteful.

And then he did the electric chair series.

I first became aware of this when I visited the Warhol museum in Pittsburgh. There was an exhibit of his photographs of an electric chair, which he had tinted in a variety of colors: pink, yellow, orange, and lavender.

The exhibit was titled, Electric Chair in New Spring/Easter Colors.

It was an interesting, provocative thing to do. The display of framed pictures was attractive, in a way. The colors were pretty. The chair, itself, is crude, to say the least – but when it’s not actually in use it looks pretty benign.

Kind of like the cross.

On the first Palm Sunday, the people in Jerusalem were not thinking about the cross – they were thinking about glory. It was only later that we all discovered the way to glory passes through the cross.

The way to love is through sacrifice. The way to life is through death.

Every year at this time I remember the words of William Penn:

No pain, no palm;
no thorns, no throne;
no gall, no glory;
no cross, no crown.

Always, the unexpected.

May we enter this holy week looking for our triumph, looking for the ultimate love, in the unexpected places. 

Photo: photo of picture postcard - Weeds, by Tadasu Yamamoto