QUEST, Part 2: THE ENCOUNTER

John 4: 7-40

Many years ago, my mother-in-law was active in the American Baptist Church Global Mission Board. This gave her opportunities to travel. At one point she was offered a chance to go to Burma, which we now know as Myanmar. She was so excited about it, and I couldn’t help wondering why. What on earth was in Burma that she cared about?

Well, actually, I should have known at the time. The reason she wanted to go there, or anywhere, was because there would be new encounters. Conversations to be had, people to meet, places to see, things to learn. This is the kind of person Claire is. Every stranger is a potential friend. How you approach the encounter makes all the difference.

Burma was a very unlikely place for Claire to travel, but a journey to an unlikely place can hold surprising gifts. This is the case in Jesus’ journey to Samaria.

Samaria was an unlikely place for him to be. The Jews and the Samaritans did not get along well. You know the parable of the Good Samaritan? Those who heard Jesus tell the parable did not, in any way, consider the Samaritans to be “good.” The notion of regarding a Samaritan as a neighbor was not a popular notion.

In verse 4 of this chapter, John writes, “He had to go through Samaria.” It was in between Judea, where he had been, and Galilee, where he was going. Actually, it was common for Jews to take long detours to avoid going through Samaria, but Jesus did not. He had to go through Samaria, John says, and I suppose he did. Because there was a conversation awaiting him there.

Whether or not he knew he would encounter a woman at the well, I think Jesus went to Samaria with the intention of having a conversation.

His disciples went off in search of provisions, leaving Jesus to wait by a well, a place they, no doubt, considered safe. It was unlikely that anyone would be at the well then. High noon in the desert. Most women would go in the early morning and the evening, when the heat of the sun was not beating down on them. You would be unusually brave or foolish to venture out at midday.

But, against the odds, this woman came to the well at noon to draw water.

Many have suggested that this particular woman is there at noon because of who she is. She is a five-time divorcee, apparently. This would mean that she has been discarded by five husbands. Five different men have married her and then, for their own reasons, announced, “I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you.” It was not possible for a woman to divorce a man, but it was that simple for a man to divorce a woman.

One would think that she carried this as a burden of shame. One might assume that she managed her days so that she could avoid the other women of the village because she knew they talked about her, looked down upon her, and probably distrusted her.

But she doesn’t act like a disgraced woman. She doesn’t shuffle around, bent over, head low in shame. She behaves as a woman who is at home in her skin.

Maybe it is Jesus who has this effect on her. She doesn’t appear to be afraid of him. She recognizes him as a Jew. And she knows all the prohibitions that warn her against interacting with this man. Even so, she asks him a question: “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”

And this one question contains so many:

How is it that you, a man, are speaking to me, a strange woman?

How is it that you, a Jew, are speaking to me, a Samaritan?

How is it that you, a religiously observant son of Israel, are speaking to me, one who is considered by your people to be unclean?

What are you doing here in Samaria? What are you doing at my well?

Just asking. Maybe it’s rude, but she’s just wondering.

Jesus isn’t bothered by her blunt question. It is almost like he was waiting for it.

So he says: Let’s talk about the water that I could give to you. The living water.

And they’re off.

She is a worthy conversation partner for Jesus. She doesn’t back down. She responds to every strange thing he says – at first not understanding him, but staying with him nonetheless. Perhaps one of the best things that can be said about her is this: She is not afraid of what she doesn’t understand, but is willing and able to continue the conversation through the ambiguity.

The Samaritan woman did not come to the well looking for Jesus. She had no idea he would be there. But finding him there she was fully present with him. In the bright midday light, they speak and listen to each other in truth. She has questions: Why do you ask me for water? How would you possibly get this water you are referring to? How can I get this living water that will forever satisfy my thirst? Wait –

Why do you mention my husband? What is that to you?

How do you know me, Jesus? How do you know me?

Jesus has never met this woman before, but he does know her. And he doesn’t shame her or look down on her.

One thing you notice in this story is that both Jesus and this woman have the traveler’s mindset; they are open to seeing things in a way they haven’t before; they are open to learning something new. They are having a real, authentic, and meaningful conversation.

When you have a conversation, there are two sides to it. That is what a conversation is, after all. Each one shares with the other. And you never know, when you enter into a conversation, whether Jesus might be a part of it too.

The prophet Muhammed said, “Don’t tell me how educated you are. Tell me how much you have traveled.” I would modify this to say, “tell me how much you have lived in the world with a traveler’s mindset.”

My mother-in-law, Claire did not get to travel to Burma, because the political situation became too volatile and dangerous; the trip was cancelled. She was deeply disappointed. But she did have other adventures. She traveled to Russia during the Cold War. She traveled to Nicaragua during the revolution. And she had extraordinary, life-changing encounters. But it is also possible to have extraordinary encounters without leaving home, because there are people all around us who have come from all over the world and have lived through extraordinary things.

An encounter with someone different is an invitation to deepen our compassion, to make meaning, to broaden our perspective and our spirit. And it is an opportunity to give the gift of God’s love.

May you open your heart to the encounter, and may you encounter Jesus.

Photo by Vincent Eisfeld on Unsplash

QUEST, Part 1: Leaving Home

 

Exodus 13: 17-21        

Ann Tyler wrote a book called The Accidental Tourist. It is a story about a man who has made a successful career of writing travel books for people who hate travel. His audience is primarily businessmen, for whom travel is a necessary evil in their lives. The books presume that the reader hates leaving the comforts of home just as much as the author does. So he fills the pages with tips on where to find Kentucky Fried Chicken in Stockholm, Taco Bell in Mexico City, and other absurdities. He writes travel guides that let travelers pretend they never left home.

The character, Macon Leary, is quirky and endearing, sort of typical for Ann Tyler’s stories. To say that he is set in his routines is an understatement. He is a man of systems, which he has devised to guard against anything unfamiliar happening to him. He has been living in the same Baltimore neighborhood his entire life; merely venturing into other areas of the city are unnerving to him.

It’s funny that he has found his niche in travel writing. But, of course, it makes for a good story.

One of the most popular real-life travel writers in America is Rick Steves. His Paris guidebook never left my hand during my visit to that city. He guided me through the most famous museums, showing me how to avoid the long lines, and into the most charming, off the beaten path, streets. My trip would have been so much different without his guidance.

You may know him from his TV travel shows on PBS as well. He has a wonderful midwestern accent, folksy style, and a quirky sense of humor that comes across so well.

What you might not know about him is that he is a devout Lutheran. He has spoken often about his faith and how it informs his experience of the world as well as how his experiences in the world inform his faith. For Rick Steves, traveling is an act of spirituality.

That may sound strange. We are accustomed to thinking of travel as having many benefits. It can be restful, getting us away from the daily grind. It can be educational, allowing us to learn about different cultures and lands. It can be profitable, as it was for the businessmen Macon Leary was writing for. Travel can be just fun – as it is for the millions of people who travel every year to Disney World, Broadway shows, Las Vegas casinos, or the Ocean City beach. But is travel something spiritual?

The business of moving from one place to another actually takes up a lot of space in the scriptures. Much of the biblical story takes place on the road. Or in the water. Or, as in the scripture today, in the wilderness. And all these travels we read of in the Bible – were they just necessary evils, like they were for Macon? Or is the journey a part of God’s plan?

The more time you spend with the story of the Exodus, the more you realize that the journey itself was as important as the destination. Maybe even more important.

The people of Israel did not imagine they would be journeying anywhere, anytime. They were stuck in Egypt. They were enslaved by Egyptian rulers and forced into hard labor, building monuments to glorify Pharaoh. The Exodus story tells us they had fallen into this situation sometime after Joseph died, when the rulers of Egypt forgot all that Joseph and the Lord had done for them. And they were consumed by fear of the Israelites, so they did what fearful people often do: they brutalized them.

This went on for hundreds of years, until God lifted up for them a leader – Moses. Moses led them out of Egypt and through the wilderness, toward the land that God promised to them.

The journey was long. Forty years they spent in the wilderness, leaving us to scratch our heads, wondering why. Did the lose their way? Were they having trouble deciding which way to go? What was the reason it took so long?

And the answer I come to again and again is this: it wasn’t about the destination. It was all about the journey. The time spent away from home was time for them to grow spiritually.

It was time for them to learn about the ways of God and draw closer to God. It was time for them to learn how to live in obedience to God; to learn how to worship.

It was a time for them to learn something about who they were, as a people. You see, they didn’t really know who they were. They had only ever been slaves in Egypt. They needed to learn to know themselves as free people in the world.

The Exodus story is one that speaks to many peoples and many times. It certainly spoke strongly to the Black slaves in America before the Civil War. In fact, it was such a powerful story, the white slaveowners made every effort to hide it from them. Special slave Bibles were printed that omitted the Exodus story and various other parts of the Bible that might inspire Black slaves to imagine themselves as free human beings.

That is how powerful the story was.

The Exodus is just as powerful today, and it speaks broadly to all of us. Because there are so many ways to be enslaved – very often enslaved to our own devices.

The character Macon, in Ann Tyler’s book, appears that way to me. He has drawn his life so close, so small, because everything else seems frightening. He becomes a slave to his rigid systems and he knows no way out. When certain things happen that disrupt his systems, Macon finds himself in a kind of wilderness.

What Macon needs is a guide to get him through the wilderness. He finds one. But I won’t spoil the story – you might want to read it.

We all need guides when we set out to explore unfamiliar territory. The Israelites needed Moses to guide them toward taking that first step out of Egypt, leaving what had been for them the only home they had ever known. That first step might be the hardest one of all. Not to say that they didn’t want to turn back many times during the journey. They couldn’t have done it without Moses, and Moses couldn’t have done it without God guiding him.

And where would any of us be if they had not made the journey?

Travel is a spiritual act because it allows us to grow.

When the Israelites left home and ventured into the wilderness, when Macon Leary ventured out of his comfort zone, when we get in a plane or our cars and go out to explore new places, we have the opportunity to learn something new about the world and learn something new about ourselves. Encountering a new place is a gift that allows us to broaden our perspective, and as Rick Steves says, the most beautiful souvenir is a broader perspective.

All kinds of strange and wonderful things happen to us when we venture out into the world. We see that God created people and places that are so different from the people we know and the places we live.

When we go out into the world we learn that we can do more than we ever thought we could. We find, perhaps to our surprise, that there are good and generous and helpful people everywhere. We carry home with us some of our best stories, and we never tire of telling others about the time in Mexico City when we followed a woman onto a subway train, not knowing if something terrible or wonderful would happen. That’s one of my stories. I will tell it to you sometime, if I haven’t already.

When we travel we see the world God created. And in the process, we see God.

During the next few weeks we will spend some time thinking about the things that happen when we travel – the encounters we have, the ways these encounters give us opportunity to reflect on our lives, our beliefs and assumptions, and then be transformed.

After a year and a half of being mostly homebound, some of us are raring to go, while others are still hesitant. And yet others are simply unable to go anywhere. Travel is not available to all of us. But what we might call the traveler’s mindset is something that is available to all of us. Regardless of whether we go anywhere, we all can look at the world with wonder and curiosity, and a willingness to learn and grow.

The people of Israel could not take possession of the promised land unless they sojourned in the wilderness. That is the reality. So it is that we cannot take full possession of our identity as God’s beloved children, until we spend some time sojourning. Whether we hit the road or stay at home, the journey begins with the first step. A willingness to move out of our safe space, our comfort zone, and look at the world with new eyes. To surrender our judgment and preformed opinions. Or, as Rick Steves says, to let the road be our church.

Photo by Mantas Hesthaven on Unsplash

REST

 

Exodus 20:8–11

Let’s take a moment to try something. Think about the last 24 hours of your life. And make a list of three people who were a part of it – in big or small ways. They might even be strangers, whose names you don’t know. Then list three things that you engaged with – things you made, washed, ate, threw away, something you did something with.

Now list three choices that you said yes or no to. Can you see how in each of these things, people, actions you listed you were entering into God’s creative field? How does it feel to think of yourself and your daily life in this way?

The creative process that we have been talking about these past six weeks is really just the natural flow of our lives. When you analyze it, you could break it down into six stages. But we do better to imagine them as waves in a cycle, a cycle that continually plays out – the cycle of God’s creativity.

We began with the dream. Every creation begins with a dream – before the work begins we have to dream up what we want to create. The dream of some possibility that doesn’t already exist. Our ability to dream is essential for us to be able to envision God’s kingdom and then begin the work of bringing it to fruition.

Next is the hovering. God hovered over the waters at the very beginning, and each day God brought some more order to the universe. We too must practice hovering, which I think closely aligns with the incubation stage of creativity. The process of creating is a combination of making something happen and letting something happen, so sometimes we step out of the way and let it happen.

And then, at the right time, we step forward and take a risk, we try something new, not knowing how it will turn out. But if we don’t try it we will never find out.

Then we step back again. We listen. We watch. We pay attention to what happens with the new thing we put into the world. We pay attention to what might be the next step, the next right thing to do.

And then we re-integrate. Everything new must find its place in the world. The old must make way for the new. Every time something changes everything changes. This world is in a constant state of creation.

Constant! And it could be thoroughly exhausting – if we did not include rest.

Rest was an essential part of God’s creation of the world. On the seventh day God rested from all the work that God had done. God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, according to the story of creation in Genesis. And so from this we derive the laws regarding the sabbath day.

We have this text from Exodus, which clearly states that the seventh day, the sabbath day, is for rest, not work. And the law then proceeds to delineate everything that cannot be done on the sabbath day, everything that counts as work.

It can seem to verge on extreme. I thought so when I was in college and shared a dorm suite with a Jewish student. She asked me to leave the bathroom light on from Friday evening through Saturday evening because she was not permitted to turn a light switch. This was considered operating machinery, work, which is forbidden. If I forgot and turned the switch off, she explained to me, she would have to use the bathroom in the dark. To be helpful, she would leave a little note on the switch each week, in case I forgot.

It seemed a little bit silly to me. Although I have come to understand since then that the sabbath restrictions are a way of articulating a rhythm, the rhythm of God’s creation which includes rest. I have grown to appreciate the rhythms of daily life under the law for Jews who live lives of observance.

Still, I think it might feel suffocating at times. Because I think that Jesus felt that. Mark’s gospel tells a story of a time Jesus and his disciples were walking through fields of grain, and as they walked they plucked off some heads of grain. It was the sabbath day. The Pharisees watching them charged them with breaking the law. Plucking grain was forbidden because it was work. But Jesus turns to them and reinterprets the law. He says, “The sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the sabbath.” In other words, God does not intend for us to be slaves to the sabbath.

Jesus did all kinds of unlawful things on the sabbath day, like healing people of their afflictions. As he did with so many aspects of the law, Jesus challenged the traditional understanding of it.

Not to say that Jesus was opposed to rest, however. For he also said, “Come to me all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:28-29).

Eugene Peterson, in his translation of the scriptures called The Message, says it this way: Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

Jesus moves our understanding of sabbath away from a rigid form we force ourselves into, toward a delicate, gentle, rhythm of finding grace.

Perhaps I am treading into a minefield when I say this, but I wonder if we let church become a form we force ourselves into, rather than allowing it to be a gentle rhythm of God’s grace.

I say this out of love for the church and concern for the church’s life. Because too many people have walked away from the church because it felt like this to them – rigid, joyless, something that just didn’t fit. Something lacking that gentle rhythm of grace.

If we allow the church to become just work, we have lost our place in the rhythm of God’s creativity. To the extent that we shut out dreaming, we lose our rhythm. To the extent we shut out play, to the extent we shut out rest, we lose our rhythm – the unforced rhythm of God’s grace.

We give it up for the sake of the artificial rhythms of religion.

We need the holy, creative, playful, loving Spirit now more than ever.

Photo by Agence Olloweb on Unsplash

Photo by Agence Olloweb on Unsplash

RE-INTEGRATE

1 Corinthians 12:12-19

Some years ago my sister gave me a gift of a beautiful hand-made clay pot. It has gingko leaves decorating the surface of it. I loved it immediately. But I didn’t know, immediately, what to do with it. So I set it on the kitchen counter. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, so I looked at it many times every day. I moved it around as needed while I worked. I wrote my sister a note to thank her for the gift. In the note I told her I was waiting for it to show me how it wants to be used.

And eventually it did. It makes a wonderful napkin holder. To this day it remains in the kitchen (having lived in several kitchens by now), on a shelf, holding the napkins. It is beautiful. I get to look at it every day. And it has a purpose.

What more could you ask for?

The book that I have been reading, called Drawn In, says that everything is created with a purpose. Nothing is created simply for itself. Now this doesn’t mean that everything must be utilitarian, that nothing can be valued just for its beauty. Because, of course, beauty is in itself a purpose. We admire beauty, and find joy from being in its midst. But even beauty wants to be useful, engaged with – that is how beauty becomes a part of our lives. 

When we talk about these things – how a creation is used, how it is valued, it is a question of economy. That might seem like an odd word to use, but economy is essentially about how we manage our stuff. And there are many ways of doing that.

I read something interesting about Native American economy. Before the Europeans came to America, the Native American tribes practiced a kind of gift economy. They gifted pipes to one another. The pipes served as a symbol of how they had interacted with one another, of the generosity they had experienced from one another. For example, the Lakota tribe would give a pipe to the Cherokee tribe. Later when the Apaches met the Cherokees the pipe would be passed to them, and they would give one of their pipes to the Cherokees.

When the Europeans arrived and began to establish friendships with the Native American tribes, the tribes gave them pipes too. But the Europeans were not familiar with this form of gift economy. They would accept the pipe and put it in a trophy case, because it was so cool. They would see the pipe as an acquisition. Much to the dismay of the Natives, their pipes were taken out of circulation. The tribesmen learned in this way that the European men did not see the world and all that is in it the same way they did. 

This idea of gifting and sharing freely the stuff of creation has somehow managed to come up in multiple ways for me recently. Last week several of us got together to have a conversation about the first of our Summer Reads – The Girl Who Smiled Beads. It is a true story about a girl, Clementine, who escaped the Rwandan genocide when she was six years old. She and her older sister then made their way through one refugee camp after another for about six years. Eventually they came to the United States.

Clementine shares a saying that she first learned from her mother, which was repeated by her older sister: Nothing is yours; everything is yours. This is the notion that everything in this world is created by God, created for the use of all God’s people. Everything is yours. But nothing is yours. It is a gift from God and is meant for sharing.

Nothing is yours; everything is yours. This, of course, runs up hard against some sayings we have in our country: like, to the victor goes the spoils. Or, he who dies with the most toys wins.

The morning after our book discussion, I was listening to a podcast that was titled, Why Do We Work So Much? A few decades ago, economists believed that by the time we reached the 21st century, Americans would only need to work about 15 hours a week to meet our needs, that we would be full to overflowing with free time. But what they didn’t anticipate is that our “needs” would continually outrun our ever-increasing abundance. We have more than we have ever had before. But we “need” more than we ever have before.

On this podcast I listened to an anthropologist describe his experience living amongst a tribe in southern Africa, one of the last remaining hunter-gatherer societies. He explains some of the systems this tribe has worked out to prevent any member from acquiring too much more than others – too much stuff, too much success, too much admiration. They understand that the survival of their society depends on being able to maintain a basic equality.

And so if one man has a good combination of skill and luck and manages to hunt down a giraffe, when he brings it home to the tribe, this is what he gets: he is mocked; he is criticized. And he puts up with it. You see, he knows that he has done a great thing, and he knows that the others are aware of it. But he also knows that he doesn’t survive solely by his own skills. He is a part of a society in which they are all dependent on one another for survival. He is willing to tolerate the ribbing for the sake of the whole body.

To know that the whole body is vital – this is key.

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. These are the words Paul writes to the Corinthian church, words they evidently needed to hear for the sake of their own survival. 

The church in Corinth was suffering from an inequality problem. Some of the members of the new church brought some old values in with them and these old values were threatening to destroy the church that had been created. Some of the people were wealthy. And others were poor. Some lived lives of leisure and others were slaves. They brought this hierarchical way of being and seeing into the church.

For example, it seems that there was a great inequality when it came to food. The church would gather for a meal. And the upper-class members, those who didn’t work, came early to the feast. They helped themselves to all they wanted. But the members who were slaves couldn’t get there early. They were late to arrive, and when they got there they might find that the food was already gone. Outrageous. What kind of a system was this, where the ones with the most would have first pick of the bounty? And the ones who had the least would be the last? 

What kind of system was this? It may have been the norm in the Roman Empire. And it may be the norm in the United States of America. But it is not the norm in the kingdom of God. For we know what Jesus said – that the last shall be first and the first shall go to the back of the line. In God’s realm, there is enough for everyone. Everything is yours; nothing is yours.

Paul is concerned about getting this Corinthian church back on track with the gospel, and he begins to teach them with this useful metaphor: that the church is a body – the body of Christ – and every member of the body has value. Every member has a purpose. No member of the body can go it alone. 

The members of the southern African tribe have a way of recognizing this truth and putting it to work. When the hunter comes home with the giraffe, and after he is duly mocked, it comes time to distribute the meat. But who gets to do that? Is it the privilege of the hunter to give out the meat? In fact, no. The tribe has determined that whoever made the arrow that killed the giraffe is the owner of the meat. Whoever made the arrow has the privilege and responsibility of giving out the meat. And there is a very important reason why.

It takes a great deal of physical fitness to be a successful hunter. But arrow-making is different, someone who is old can make an arrow. Someone who is lame or sickly or slow can make an arrow. In fact, they might make the best arrows.

This is what it is to live in community. The first shall be last and the last shall be first, Jesus said. The members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members that we think are less honorable we clothe with greater honor, Paul said.

Everything God created has a purpose, has a place. Do we really think we know better? Can we not accept the value God places on everything and everyone God creates?

When we fulfill our role as co-creators with God, we will have to face the questions about what purpose the new thing has, where does the new thing go? How does it fit into the existing creation? And to do this we must be able to see things in a new way – whether it is a new pot or a new relationship or a new recognition of value where we did not recognize value before. We must be able to let go of the things of the past that block the way now, while holding onto the things from the past that will carry us into the future. Always sorting. Always discerning, always adapting.

We cannot insist that the old way is the right way and the new way is wrong. Neither can we insist that the new way is always right and what is old is wrong. Neither of these is true. What is true is this: God has made us for one another. We are co-creators in this work of community. We are the body of Christ stumbling around on this path toward making God’s dream a reality. 

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LISTEN

 

Acts 16:6-15      

There is a picture, some abstract shapes all in black and white, with four tiny dots in the middle. And if you focus on the four dots for 30 seconds and then close your eyes, you will see Jesus. That’s what the instructions said, so I did it. And, sure enough, that is what happened. When I closed my eyes an image that I recognized as Jesus appeared before me.

It’s an optical illusion. These are fun things to play around with. There are some that have two different images in them – like the one with an old witch and a young woman, or the one with the musician and the girl’s face. Usually you see one of them to start with, but to see the other image it is like your brain has to switch tracks to get a different perspective. I find that I need to relax my eyes, soften my focus, to allow that to happen. Seeing involves more than just the eye.

Listening is that way too. Even when you hear the words someone speaks, are you really hearing what they’re saying to you? Remember back in the 90’s we had books like You Just Don’t Understand and Men Are from Mars and Women Are from Venus? These books tried to explain to us that when a man says something it doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing as when I woman says it. And that men and women may need interpreters to communicate with each other.

How we perceive things – seeing and hearing – is more complicated than just seeing and hearing, because of the nature of our human brains. We know there is a context for everything. There is a story.

The story that our author, Luke, is telling in the book of Acts is about God’s design for us. It is a story that says God – by the power of the Holy Spirit – is in control.

The Apostle Paul and his companions are forbidden by the Spirit to speak in Asia. The Spirit does not allow them to pass into Bithinya. They keep going, farther and farther westward, until they are in the port city of Troas, on the Aegean Sea. If we follow their travels on a map of the region, we see that they are being gently pushed in a particular direction – toward Macedonia.

“Come over to Macedonia and help us,” Paul hears in a dream, and so they go.

Luke and Paul and the others traveling with him all understood that the Spirit of God was with them, guiding them, empowering them. And sometimes disempowering them. What does it mean to say that the Spirit did not allow them to speak in Asia? Are we to imagine them being gagged by an invisible hand? What does it mean to say that the Spirit did not allow them to enter Bithinya? Are we to imagine that they ran into a gigantic force field as they approached the city gates? Certainly not.

What we should understand here is that the way they understand the world and themselves in it is through the lens of a purposeful and active and creative God at work in it.

It may not have always been that way for them. We know some of Paul’s story – that he was educated in the law of Moses. That he was a Pharisee, a teacher of the law in Israel. That he was an active member of the group opposed to Jesus and his followers. We know that he made it his job to seek out and destroy the church because he was convinced that this movement was an offense to the law of God. That is, until the Spirit knocked him to the ground on the road between Jerusalem and Damascus. He was struck blind, and he heard a voice.

It was all very dramatic – no subtlety here. The Spirit of God would have to take away his vision, so he could learn to see in a new way, and be able to hear what he couldn’t hear before. Only then would Paul be able to follow God’s calling for him. We don’t know about Luke or his traveling companions, whether they had similar stories. But one thing I know is that God has more ways of opening ears and eyes and hearts and minds than we can imagine. And another thing I know is that God desires to open our ears and eyes and hearts and minds so we may enter into God’s joy as well as God’s purpose.

God had a purpose in sending Paul to Macedonia.

Macedonia was a Roman province in the northern region of the Greek peninsula. Thessalonika was the capital city, and Philippi was also in this region. We know these cities from the letters Paul wrote to them, Thessalonians and Philippians. When they crossed into Macedonia, Paul and his team went straight to Philippi. On the Jewish sabbath day they went out looking for the place of prayer, as was their custom. Evidently, the Jewish community in Philippi was not large enough for a synagogue, but there was a spot near the river where believers would congregate. Here we meet Lydia.

Lydia was an interesting woman. She was a dealer in purple cloth, which was a luxury item because of the difficulty in making purple dye. So Lydia is probably a woman of some consequence. She is also, apparently, unmarried and the head of her own household. She is an unusual woman. She invites the missionaries to stay at her house and they accept her invitation. Thus we have the first Christian congregation in Europe.

It wasn’t Paul’s intention to go there, but the Spirit gently pushed him in that direction.

The story about Paul’s journey to Macedonia is a story that says something more than just the historical facts. The story tells us that there is a choice Paul faced, and that each of us faces. Paul had a plan and he could have persisted in his plan, even as he encountered so many obstructions. He could have tried again and again and again to do the thing he wanted to do even while he was failing at it. Or, he could do what he did – switch paths, follow the lead of the Spirit, which took him to Macedonia.

I don’t know if it was frustrating or hard for Paul to do, letting go of his plans. But I have to believe that it was. After all, he was only human.

We find it hard, for a lot of reasons. We are taught at a young age, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Persistence is a worthy discipline. But as we grow older we also have to learn another discipline, that is, don’t beat your head against a stone wall. That stone wall might be the Spirit advising you to go another way.

Holding on to our plans, our dreams, loosely can be a very hard – even painful – thing to do. To be able to let go of what we imagine as being our destiny, for the sake of something that hasn’t even been revealed to us yet, is something that takes humility and grace. And we have seen too many people fail to do that – such as politicians who refuse to acknowledge that they have reached the end of the path. But it’s not only politicians; all kinds of people do it, because power and control is a heady thing – even if it’s only power over your own life.

But if we don’t acknowledge one ending to await the next beginning, we will never know the joy and purpose God has in mind for us.

The only thing to do is to listen. To watch. The Spirit will show us the next step.

Photo Credit: marekpiwnicki.pictorem.com

RISK

Matthew 25:14-30      

There is an argument in the church that is probably as old as the church. It is an argument about grace and works.

We say that we are saved by the grace of God. And we say that faith in this grace is all we need. We don’t have to do anything to deserve God’s love and God’s saving grace. But, on the other hand, we have a lot of rules, a lot of expectations about how we should live and be in the world.

We say that when we are living a life of faith we will receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit and we will begin to see the fruits of the Spirit in our lives. We say that God’s grace enables us to live such lives and bear such fruit.  To become the kind of person about whom the master might say, “Well done, good and trustworthy servant. Come, enter into the joy of your master.”

The problem is that we tend to get confused about it all. We become very concerned about whether or not we are worthy of God’s grace. And once that has happened, once we have put the proverbial cart before the horse, we have really forgotten all about God’s grace.

And the big problem there is that when we have forgotten about God’s grace, there is absolutely no joy of the master to even consider entering into. That’s a problem. And that was the problem of the one-talent slave.

When summoned, this man came forward and said, “Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid.” There was no joy there for this slave.

This parable comes in the middle of a set of three parables in which Jesus is painting a picture for his disciples of what the kingdom of God is like.

In this set of three parables, he is saying that somehow, someway, some people will see the kingdom and others won’t see the kingdom.

He says in the first parable, it is like ten bridesmaids, waiting for the groom. Five of them are wise, but the other five are foolish and they miss their opportunity to enter the wedding banquet. Then in this parable, he says it is like a master who is preparing to go on a long journey and he summons his slaves to him. He has decided to entrust the management of his property to these slaves, so he distributes his funds among them, to each according to his ability.

The master apparently thought the first slave had great ability. He gave him five talents. The second slave fell short of great, and he gave him only two talents. And the third slave, who is just so-so, received a paltry one talent.

But hold on – let’s consider the kind of money we are talking about here. A talent was a unit of currency, the equivalent of 6,000 denarii. A single denarius was the usual daily wage for a laborer. So get out your calculator and see that one talent is the equivalent of about 16.5 years of labor – that is, if you worked seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.

The low guy on this totem pole received what might possibly be a lifetime’s worth of wages. The next guy got two of those and the best guy got five. Literally, he was handed five times as much money as he could expect to earn over his adult life.

Granted, this wasn’t a gift. The master handed over these sums to his slaves as a trust. The master was expecting his slaves to steward these funds – that is to say, make good use of them, manage them responsibly, while the master was gone.

The first slave went to work and turned five talents into ten talents, by trading wisely. The second slave did just as well with the amount he was given, doubling his money. When the master returned, they proudly handed over these very impressive gains.

But the third slave was different. He took that single talent and he buried it in the ground. He thought that was the safe thing to do. His master said that was wicked. It was also driven by fear.

His fear prevented him from seeing the possible.

When the church has this argument about grace and good works, when we get confused about which comes first – the grace or the works – we have this phrase: works righteousness, the idea that we gain our righteousness by our good works. And it is easy to think this parable of the talents is all about works righteousness. But it’s not about that. what it’s really about is Christian living, which involves taking risks.

The master handed over an unimaginable sum of money to his slaves, and this slave who received one talent – a whole talent – sees it only as a burden. We might see the giving of these talents as an act of divine grace. But this one-talent slave missed that completely. He sees no grace; no possibility, no hope, no joy at all. And why would he take a risk in those circumstances?

It is tragic that he missed out on the wonderful opportunity that the first two slaves seized – the opportunity to take what they were given, take the risk required to make something amazing from it, and ultimately to enter into the joy of their master.

But to get there, the risk was absolutely necessary. Let’s take a moment to talk about why.

So many things in this world are viewed through the framework of transaction – like, you be nice to me and I’ll be nice to you in return. Transactional thinking is so deeply ingrained in us that we have a very hard time imagining God’s grace. Because grace is the opposite of a transaction – it is a gift.

So why, then, you might ask, is something expected of us in return? Whether you call it works righteousness or Christian living, you’re saying I have to give something back, right?

The answer to that is that the relationship we enter into with God is something altogether different.

Imagine this: the grace of God is poured out on the world like a river that flows all around. This river and all its rills and gullies and streams are all around us and we have the option – the invitation – to jump right into it, to flow along in it, to become a part of it. God’s river of grace.

We might read the grand story of the scriptures as something just like this. From beginning to end, it is a story about God – God’s creative acts and God’s amazing grace. Throughout the story we see different characters enter in, becoming a part of the story. It is as if they jump into the river of God’s grace and flow along for a while, doing the work of God for a period of time, then making way for others.

But in that same grand story we also see examples of characters who are at odds with God. Those who seem to resist the river of grace, never jumping in. Never becoming a part of it.

It’s as though some people can’t see the river. They might see only a dry wadi, with nothing of life in it. Certainly not something you would jump into.

Here is the nub: You won’t take a risk if you see no possible gain, no joy. You won’t take a risk if you haven’t already felt the grace penetrate your skin like drops of healing water.

But if you have felt that, then you know that the best life is there waiting for you, all the joy, on the other side of risk.

Come in; the water is fine.

Photo Credit: Efe Kurnaz (@efekurnaz) | Unsplash Photo Community

HOVER

Luke 4:1-13       

So … what was going on right before Jesus began his public ministry? roaming through the countryside visiting the synagogues and proclaiming that he was the fulfillment of the good news? He was forty days in the wilderness, fasting. With the devil breathing down his neck.

But why, though?

He went into the wilderness directly after his baptism in the Jordan River – you remember, that moment when the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him like a dove. And, then, full of the Spirit, he was led into the wilderness. Alone.

It is a surprising turn of events, really, because after he was baptized, and the Holy Spirit appeared and the voice from heaven spoke, you would expect some kind of action. Clearly, he was well-equipped to do something magnificent. The people who witnessed his baptism might have waited with expectation for what would happen next. He would surely do some extraordinary thing. But, instead, he walked away, led by the Spirit, into the wilderness.

Also known as the desert. The wilderness in that part of the world is a dry and barren place, a deadly place. This story should put us in mind of the story from Exodus, in which the Israelites were led out of bondage and into the wilderness. A place of emptiness, nothingness, death. The wilderness is, as one person described it, a place of un-creation. A place that seems to resist creation.

Jesus stayed in this place of un-creation for forty days. And at the end of these forty days in which he ate nothing, he was famished.

At that point, there were three specific temptations the devil presented to Jesus: to turn stones into bread, to worship the devil for the sake of power, and to test God’s love for him. All of these would have been hard to resist, especially the one about turning stones to bread.

But what might have been the nature of the devil’s temptations during the course of those forty days? The scriptures say that during Jesus’ forty days of isolation the devil tempted him but doesn’t say how. Maybe the temptation was just to do something, anything. And maybe Jesus resisted by doing nothing.

I realize I am taking a leap here, making assumptions based on nothing in particular, but do me the favor of considering it. What if the hardest thing for Jesus to do at that time was to simply do nothing?

And what if doing nothing was the most important – the most necessary – thing for Jesus to do at that time? It would be a hard sell for most of us, who believe that life is all about doing stuff.

We measure our value by what we have done, how much we have produced, what we have created. But the truth, which we often forget, is that an integral part of being creative is to be still and do nothing.

The story at the beginning of Genesis tells us how that played a role in God’s creation of the world. In the beginning, the earth was a void, nothing. It was, according to the author of this story, formless, the way water is formless. Most translations say that God’s Spirit moved over the waters – the word in the text is something like fluttered, or perhaps hovered. The Spirit of God hovered over the waters the way a hummingbird hovers over a flower.

The poetry of this first chapter of Genesis shows beautifully how God works in the world. God doesn’t storm in and do everything at once. God watches, hovers, waits, and creates. The process of creating requires a period of hovering.

Those who study the creative process have identified certain stages you go through to create something. It begins with some kind of preparation, like making a nest for the project. In this stage maybe you have an idea of what you want to create. You might have some parameters, some expectations and hopes. But surprisingly, this preparation is not followed by action – the next stage is incubation. Just as a mother bird, after making her nest, covers her egg and waits. A period of incubation is necessary, where the bird is doing nothing.

You might have some familiarity with this stage in the creative process. The times when you have begun your work and wracked your brain and torn out your hair in frustration, before you realized that you need to step away from it. Take a break. Do something different, or nothing at all.

Then, suddenly being struck with a creative brainstorm, out of nowhere! At that moment, you know what you need to do.

Imagine God having that brainstorm each of the six days of creation. Hovering, fluttering, waiting for the next move to present itself. And, as we are created in God’s image, we need to sometimes wait for the next move to present itself. Hovering.

It is a part of the rhythm of life – the pause. The act of hovering to discern the next move. It is a part of our process in everything we do, in fact. It’s just what we are equipped for. If we can only be mindful enough to do it.

At the university where I worked years ago, there was a program for first-generation college students, designed to provide them with resources that would help them succeed. One of the resources was mindfulness meditation.

Mindfulness is a very simple kind of meditation. You don’t need any particular pose or mantra or breathing technique. You simply practice being completely present in the moment, attentive to the here and now, available to the Spirit of God.

As simple as it is, it’s really hard to do. Our minds are like flies buzzing around, landing on one thing, then another and another. Making your mind sit still feels next to impossible. The students took classes to learn it. And it wasn’t optional – all the students in the program were required to learn the art of being still.

I had my doubts about whether it was really worthwhile. So I asked one of the students what she thought about it. She told me a story. One weekend she went home for a visit. It was homecoming weekend at her high school and she went to the football stadium along with a lot of other alumni. Behind the bleachers she ran into an old boyfriend and some of his friends. He began taunting her. He said things that he knew from past experience would get a rise out of her – he had learned how to push her buttons.

She told me that when she heard him saying these things, she recognized the routine. He would say this, she would say that, he would reply and things would escalate. But instead of slipping into the old routine, she paused. She hovered in the moment until the next right step revealed itself.

That boy didn’t know what to do. Game over.

In the pause, in the hovering, she changed a destructive pattern, which made way for something new. In this practice of waiting and looking within, she was able to find the direction the Spirit was leading her. You and I can do that too.

 “Practice the pause.”

“When in doubt, pause. When angry, pause. When tired or stressed, pause.

“And when you pause, pray.”

Even Jesus had to practice the pause. Before he could begin his world-changing ministry, he needed to take forty days in the wilderness, the anti-creation, to do nothing but hover and wait. And we know from the gospels that he would go back to the pause, many times during the course of his ministry. To take himself away from it all, to pause and pray.

This pause in the process – hovering – is sacred time. Let hovering be a part of all that you do. To get out of the way and let the Holy Spirit come in, drawing you in to the creative life of God.

 Photo Credit: Tim Zänkert (@znkrt) | Unsplash Photo Community