Love overflowing

Earth SundayPhilippians 1

“I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.”

This week, I visited again with Ken and Zylphia Nosbusch. Just about 10 days ago, their family decided together that Ken would move into hospice. This was just after they had moved to their new apartment and one week later, Ken was invited to take his WWII Veteran Honor Flight—a once-in-a-lifetime kind of experience. So, it has been a whirlwind of emotions and events… but as I met with them, I couldn’t help but think how they embody for this faith community this kind of feeling—“I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you…”

It’s because of Ken’s faithful wearing of the replica of our Ethiopian processional cross and his stories about wearing it out and about and saying, “You should come and see the BIG one!” (as a no-pressure way to invite people to church… sharing his faith with neighbor and stranger alike…)

In fact, that’s something that I knew about Ken (how he proudly wears his cross everywhere) before I was even called here as your pastor.

“I thank my God every time I remember you…” It’s because of Ken’s giving out of quarters that many of our children know how joyful it is to immediately give what they have received, passing on the quarters into the offering jar or to another child to drop in the jar with joy. And I think there are probably some of you taking up this tradition, even now, because of how much it means to you to see children’s joy in giving.

“I thank my God every time I remember you…” It’s because of Ken’s example and his own long-time faithful service to Christ’s Foundation, that a new generation of leaders have taken up service in this long-view kind of ministry, faithfully stewarding investments for the future.

We thank God for Ken and not because he was or is perfect! He and Zylphia shared with me at this last visit about a time when he had to tell Pastor Sandness to “sit down” at an Annual Meeting—(where maybe, just maybe, that wonderful pastor got just a little bit out of line)… and they shared that story even now, years later, with a little horror. It took a long time to mend that broken relationship between beloved pastor and beloved member… but it was mended… and these are the kinds of stories, about making mistakes yet moving forward together, with mercy and love and forgiveness… these are the kinds of stories that personalize these words from Paul and Timothy to the church they love.

“I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.” When we move into hospice, we can talk more openly about how the good work of life is coming to completion… but for those of us still very much on our way, how do we keep this hope and this calling in mind, even we face challenges that seem overwhelming?

In the forum today, I’ll share the story that Tod Bolsinger uses as a metaphor for where he thinks we are in church and life today in his book, Canoeing the Mountains: Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory. It’s the story of Lewis and Clark and their expedition to find a water route to the Pacific Ocean. From far off, they could see the Rocky Mountains. Their expertise was in canoeing but they knew mountains, too, after all they had the Appalachian mountain range… no problem! Then, they got into the Rockies. There could not have been more different mountains. When our family was driving into just the edge of the Rockies last month, I tried to imagine how they must have looked to these travelers, gazing at them for the first time (when there were no switchbacks cut into the sides, no roads, no path). When they realized there was no water route, and they had to leave behind their canoes, the way to travel that they knew best, and find horses… and finally become hikers, following the one guide who knew this territory… a young Shoshone woman named Sacagawea.

We have all heard and maybe experienced that the only certainty in life is change, but the level of change required sometimes stops us in our tracks. This image of the Rockies, peak after peak with no end in sight, and having to lay down the ways we are most familiar with did not (remarkably) stop them. Instead, in the Rockies, they had to look to every member of the team, especially the one for whom this territory was not foreign territory but home territory, and they had to collaborate to go forward in new ways…

Often, when we heard the writings of Paul—we think of them as written from a singularly remarkable apostle (Paul)—but Paul never did his work alone. He always traveled with one or two others, and it seems like this was not because he was necessarily easy to get along with… but because this model of working together was modeled after how Jesus invites people to do work together in the reign of God. We are not solo artists—we are continuously called into collaborations. If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together.

On this Earth Sunday, I’m reminded about the record snow fall we had last weekend—19 inches--unprecedented among April storms! It’s no wonder we had to make decisions (like should we cancel worship?) and try to communicate them in ways that we have never had to do before.

In Confirmation, we are in the middle of a curriculum called “A Cosmic Adventure Through Science and Faith.” Whereas some generations and some Christians have required Christian kids to choose between the answers in science and holding onto deep faith, this curriculum asks, “Can’t these different angles on truth inform and inspire each other, can’t we both wonder and believe?”

A friend of mine wrote this week:

When the ideas you have about God, existence, and the way the world [church] works start to crack and break open in a way that shows they aren't total truth, you have two options.

First: you can glue. Glue and glue and glue it all together with cliches and half-baked proofs and internet-assembled philosophies [or pieced together Bible passages...] Then pretend it all fits together and never examine it again.

Or second: realize those ideas weren't complete. They are vintage. Antiques. Valuable, but not as useful anymore. And then learn and grow toward something that works better now. You don't try to glue it all back together, but rather use its shape and form to work on something new.  One leads to growth. One prevents it.

We are never too old for growth… along the way, as change comes to us, things will crack and break open. In those moments, it takes deep courage to be open to what is unfolding, and that’s courage that is best found together.

Gratitude is a powerful (and maybe the only) antidote to fear… and so Paul demonstrates that too—  “This is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.” 

Hear his deep confidence in the people of God to determine what is best? Hear this hopeful word that even though all we have now is melting winter snow and some seeds or seedlings, ready to plant, Paul is already imagining the harvest?

But that’s what we know happens when love is overflowing in community and leading us forward—all we can think of, whether we are at the beginning or the end, is “I thank my God for you… for all we share… and for all that is still unfolding!”

Christ making things new... Alleluia!

Easter Sunday

John 20:11-18

In the gospel of John, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb alone. The stone is missing so she runs for help—Peter and John come running. John arrives first but hesitates outside the tomb. Peter rushes in. They didn’t understand exactly what had happened at this point… and they went home wondering… but Mary stayed there, weeping. She bent in to look again, and saw angels through her tears. “Why are you crying?” they ask. But she doesn’t wait to hear their answer.  Maybe in her distress, she is still searching for the lost body of Jesus… or maybe she saw some look of recognition in their faces…and turns…

Mary turns and there he is but she doesn’t recognize him. She assumes the person standing there is the gardener.

This detail captures my imagination. The gardener… I imagine Jesus with dirt under his fingernails, planting seeds, watering tender plants… Well, what would you do first if you were raised from the dead? “Oh, you know… a little gardening.” Like God the creator in the first garden, Jesus—who has been with God from the very beginning—the risen Christ is tending a garden when Mary turns toward him.

And then we get to look on knowingly in this story, we know it’s Jesus while Mary figures it out.

“Why are you crying?” Jesus asks, and once more she tries to find her lost Beloved One.

Jesus says her name, and Mary recognizes her Lord—alive!

As unbelievable as it was, somehow she knew it was true.

Resurrection, it seems like, it often like that. When we have resurrection stories, we usually start kind of like this… “Now, don’t think I’m crazy but…” And then we tell our story of life coming right out of near-death, or actual death.

When we’re in the middle of times of betrayal, suffering and death, when we’re in the grief-filled waiting, it’s hard to hold on to hope of resurrection.

When we are able to hold onto hope even through the worst times, it’s a gift.

Like Jesus who on maybe the most disappointing night of his life created a meal for us to share every time we gather where we remember and experience Christ’s living presence in the ordinary things—bread, gluten-free wafer, juice, wine—ordinary things, and the words “for you,” and in everybody who receives those gifts.

When we are able to hold onto hope even through the worst times, it’s a gift.

Like Jesus who from the cross as he was dying forgave strangers and promised paradise to criminals. Who from the cross created family between his mother and the disciple he loved, making sure they would care for one another when he was gone, so that when it was all finished they would able to be a blessing as family, to family that would one day extend all the way to us.

When we are able to hold onto hope even through the worst times, it’s a gift.

When we’re waiting, because we reached over and felt our loved one was cold as stone. When we feel like we’re in a tomb because everything we own is disrupted, or our relationships are strained, or we’re facing challenges that are completely overwhelming but we’re trying to move forward into new visions, a new day…

Holding on to hope for spring through snowfalls in April, with our chalk in hand, our bubbles to blow, our seeds ready for planting… this is all gift. Right now, we wait, but in time, we’ll be looking back at the waiting time, remembering how resurrection was both happening and on it’s way all that time, already and not yet. It was just hard to wait.

Mary’s gift, Mary of Magdala, was holding onto hope of finding Jesus’ body just as tenaciously as she stood by through his ministry, even when he went to Jerusalem, even at the crucifixion. Once she realized Jesus was alive, she was prepared to hold onto him and never let him go again… but in this moment in his journey, raised from the dead but not yet ascended, Jesus points her forward. Your gifts of hope, love, and telling the story can’t be contained right here—I need you to bring these gifts to my disciples, hovering in fear behind locked doors.

Now, here in the garden, Jesus points out to Mary that he is no longer God’s Only Son… now, they are all God’s children. They are invited to have the same close relationship with God, kinship with each other, closeness with God’s purpose. They are asked to replicate Jesus’ relationship with God far beyond what they could have ever imagined.

So, what about for us? When the apostle Mary comes to our locked doors and says, “I have seen the Lord! I thought it was the gardener, but when I heard my name, I knew Christ was alive! And listen to this—he said something so much like his ancestor Ruth. She said, “Your people will be my people, and your God, my God.” (Ruth 1:16). Jesus said to go to Galilee—our home territory—where he will ascend ‘to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

I can only imagine that once she delivered the message, she traveled on… back to Galilee, to her synagogue in Magdala (5 kilometers from Tiberias) to share the news of love and deep joy.

And I can only imagine that this is what God hopes we might do today… like Mary of Magdala shared the news of love and deep joy, that whatever our circumstances, the risen Beloved One calls our names and invites us not to hold on tightly to the source of love so much as spread it, break up evil from the inside with unfathomable love.

I had the opportunity to see the film A Wrinkle in Time this weekend, based on the science fiction novel by Madeleine L'Engle (first published in 1962). At one point, a wise character says about the uncertain 14-year-old main character, “I think we need to tell her something, I think we need to show her why this is so important…” and then they begin to show a greater reality to Meg than she could have ever discerned on her own. They’re involved in a cosmic struggle between forces of hate and forces of love, and they ask her to use all her faults and the gifts she doesn’t really know she has yet in this cosmic struggle. She learns that finally who are different, who have had wounds, who have doubts and struggles, but who practice deep love-in-action—those are the gifts that are needed most.

Madeleine L’Engle’s vision was very shaped by the gospel of John—who also saw the influence of Christ as cosmic, and the need for knowing our belovedness to God as critical for this time, for every time.

But just in case we get to mystical, too out-of-body, too big, John also places the risen Christ right in the dirt—gardening—and later on he’ll breathe on them and invite them to touch his wounds. They’ll cook and eat some fish together at the lakeshore. It’s all very down-to-earth. You’re invited to take this down-to-earth love to a family gathering today or to the next place you encounter a stranger. You’re invited to practice it as you share a ride, give an offering, sing and pray. Christ is alive and is already at work—making all things new—tending roots and branches, with buds that will become leaves and fruit. Yes, this is for you.

Alleluia! Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!