Sermon: Follow God's Folly, or, Jilted Jonah and the Unfairness of Grace

"Follow God's Folly, or, Jilted Jonah and the Unfairness of Grace"

Preached at House for All Sinners and Saints
Denver, CO
18 September 2011
14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Texts: Jonah 3.10-4.11
Psalm 145.1-8
Philippians 1.21-30
Matthew 20.1-16

"But we know that grace is not fair
and that is something we can't bear
so we take eternal truth
and snuff it out, that's what we do...

and here's the rub though we have stayed
and say we've kept the narrow way
and kept the unclean ones away
God welcomes us in anyway"
-"If Grace is True" by Neal Hagberg


-“I just knew you were a gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love!” So spaketh Jonah in a scene that easily wins him the Emmy for best biblical episode featuring a drama queen. The knowledge of God’s goodness is, apparently, so horrible to this prophet-turned-whale-appetizer-turned-shrub-keeper that he proclaims he is so angry with God that he wishes he were DEAD! I mean, what did Jonah want the Ninevites to say? “Um, wow, a loving and gracious God! That sounds great, but, well, you know, we’ll take destruction instead. Thanks though.” I mean, they even put sackcloth on their sheep! Of course, Jonah’s too busy to notice, crying about his dead shrubbery.

-This story is clearly proof that the Bible is not without a sense of humor. And yet, the story might be even more hilarious still, if it weren’t for the fact that it so accurately captures the rage, the resentment, the sense of entitlement, that we sinful humans often feel when confronted with the sheer unfairness of God’s grace. Like all great comedic geniuses, the writer of Jonah knew how to take a hard truth about us, and force us to confront it through humor. Our peels of laughter peal away to reveal deeper places in need of healing and transformation.

-Because let’s be honest. God’s grace really can piss us off sometimes. Especially when it starts to meddle in our own notions of fairness. Recently, a slew of books have tried to make the argument that there is no such thing as hell. Or, if there is, that it is empty. After all, a gracious God simply could not possibly stand to torture Her beloved creations for eternity, right? And you’d think such an idea – which is actually as old as the Bible itself – would be welcome to all of us who are clearly in need of that gracious God, and not the angry one. Right? And yet, no idea since evolution has caused such a stir in the Christian community. Because as loving as we like to think we are, surely, there has to be more “justice,” more “fairness,” than that. Surely, Hitler shouldn’t get to have the same eternal accommodations as the Jews he gassed. The rapist should not get to dine at the heavenly banquet with the child whose innocence he stole.

-Right?

-These questions are by no means resolved. (I for one am going to side with Marty Luther in leaving it in the hands of a gracious God.) But I do think the question of God’s fairness brings to light just how unfair we human beings really are. In reality, the systems of justice and fairness that we create are, far too often, stacked decks, designed to be only as fair as can make me feel secure, me feel powerful, me feel important, me feel in control. In a world where we imagine God’s blessing to be exclusively dealt out to a select chosen few – of which we are, of course always a part! – we begin to hoard them, all the while seeing the good fortune of others as a threat to be held at bay. Or, if possible, eliminated.

-But what I think really jilts Jonah is having to face the fact that, despite our best efforts to be more unfair than God, God simply won’t let us be better at something than God is! Like the writer of Jonah, God is also in the business of satire and folly, and God is an expert at turning tables. It happened at Ninevah, where God used the conversion of the most debauched city in the ancient world to show the supposedly-righteous Jonah he had a lot to learn. It happened in today’s parable, when the life-time employees of God’s kingdom micro-brewery come to collect their pay stubs only to learn they have made the exact same as the Gentile day laborers who have only just crossed the border into the promised land of grace. It happened on the cross, where God Incarnate exposed the unfairness of human fairness and justice, removed the veil from human piety and human holiness, and clothed God’s-self in the folly of humanity, confounding all systems of human entitlement and control. Like Jonah, we are forced to confront the uncomfortable reality that, yes, the God who created the universe is in fact “a loving and gracious God.” And the God of Jesus Christ is far more unfair than we could ever hope to be!

-See, this unfair God who unfairly calls unfair jerks like Jonah, like you and like me to come work in His vineyard, this crazy God of grace also shows His unfairness in God’s utter unwillingness to let us continue in our unfairness. Because, at our worst, we all can be Jonah; can be the workers who got there first, wanting others to be made last so that we can feel important. But at God’s best, we are also those who, standing around idle, rejected by all other employers, are approached, again and again, by a loving God and invited to join in the joyous work of the kingdom. We are often those who God delights in making last, so that all can experience the glorious unfairness of the kingdom where all are first in the eyes of God’s love.

-And, as if to make sure that we know just how unfair God’s grace can be, God seems to love using the very late-comers, the very newcomers we resent, to woo us back into God’s feast of fools. See, I feel that God brings along, even converts people, for our good, not just theirs. We need to receive the gift of the enthusiasm and the wonder that newcomers bring. Because I wonder if every good thing left to the hands of workers who have been at it for a long time, might eventually fall into mediocrity and neglect.

–Which also means that, through the gift of another’s transformation, we can receive back some of the joy and delight we lost by caring more about being fair, than in being wooed. Like a parent who hears his kids listening to old forgotten records and suddenly remembers, “oh yeah, I really do love that song.” So with the kingdom.

-Part of the grace of forgetfulness is the gift of getting to remember delight again as if for the first time.

-It’s like this friend I had back in seminary. Recently, he’s become kind of a big deal on the emergent church blogging and speaking circuit. For a long time, I felt a lot of resentment towards my friend, because like the workers in the parable, I thought that God’s blessing him somehow meant that I was getting jilted. And in fact, I was. But not by God, and not by my friend. I was jilting myself. For too long, I let my resentment keep me from hearing the amazing story of redemption in his life. From being blessed by yet another sign of the kingdom come. From realizing that, yes, God still is in the unfairness business. Which means there is still real hope for unfair people like me.

-See, good news for others only means bad news for us if God’s grace and love are scarce resources. But in the new creation, good news for anyone is good news for everyone. One person’s blessing is in fact a blessing we can all share. God’s unfairness cuts both ways. Because in being unfair for someone else’s gain, God shows Himself willing to do the same for us, too.

-That’s why I think God cares so much about wooing us jilted ones back into the vineyard, no matter how unfair Her ways may seem. Because it’s a good, a wonderful, a joyful thing to work in God’s vineyard. To work together, enthusiastic newcomer and seasoned old-timers, in cultivating the grapes that will eventually be served as the wine of the new creation at the end of all things. Like the New Belgium brewery whose slogan is “follow your folly,” God invites us to follow God’s folly, God’s foolishly gracious unfairness, so that when time comes for the party, there will be plenty of delight to go around, and plenty of forgiven enemies on the dance floor. Not staring at our feet, bitter at all of the unexpected bandwagoners ruining our scene. But full of the joy of the knowledge that indeed, God gives up on no person, does not cease to pursue us until all of us – Jonah, Israel, the Church, you, and me – let go of what is fair, and embrace what is true, good, and beautiful. Because this is a comedy, and the ending is just too good for God to allow it to be missed.

Sermon: "Stick it to Satan Sunday"

"Stick it to Satan Sunday"

Preached at House for All Sinners and Saints
Denver, CO
11th Sunday in Ordinary Time
28 August 2011

Texts: Jeremiah 15.15-21
Psalm 26.1-8
Romans 12.9-21
Matthew 16.21-28

"In whose interest is it to keep us all divided?" - Dr. Jeffrey Stout

-If there’s one thing Lutherans have always been good at, it’s sticking it to Satan. In baptism, the first vow we make is to “renounce the devil and all his empty promises.” Long before Motley Crue told us to “shout at the devil,” it was Martin Luther who first offered the famous advice to “mock the devil and he shall flee from you.” It is in this same Luther’s study that you can find, to this day, the ink stain on the wall where he reputedly threw a pot of ink to drive away his netherworldly nemesis. (Incidentally, I tried it out this week on a particularly satanic little squirrel that’s been eating the bagels in our kitchen. I missed too.) “Defy boldly,” and not “sin boldly,” was the constant refrain of Luther’s movement. And the more the Gospel was preached, he believed, the more the devil was defeated.

-So on the one hand, we who follow Christ in the tradition of the great Reformer should live for today’s Gospel, when Jesus delivers one of the great one-liners in all of history: “get thee behind me Satan!” If Jesus hadn’t said it, Lutherans would have had to invent it. We seriously wrestled this week with whether to call tonight’s worship “Stick it to Satan Sunday.” A Satan-shaped piñata may have been suggested. There is something powerful, even prophetic, and certainly cathartic, when human beings, made alive by the truth of the Gospel, can stare evil in the face, call a thing what it is, and defy its empty promises.

-Except, more often than not, we humans are not exactly experts at discerning demons. If we believe in the existence of the satanic at all, we are less likely to direct our ire towards a little red creature with horns, a tail and a pitchfork. No, we are, tragically, much better at seeing horns on other human beings, and in particular, those we experience as enemies. That’s something else Luther and his progeny, were ruthlessly skilled at. And this never ends well for either party. Just ask the Jews of Germany.

-Incidentally, this is the kind of luciferian logic that leads Peter to rebuke Jesus for revealing to his disciples that he will be crucified by the Romans. See, for many of the disciples, as well as the majority of the people of Israel, the Romans were the embodiment of the demonic. Just a few verses earlier when Peter confessed that Jesus was the Messiah, he probably did so expecting that, soon and very soon, the Christ would stop wasting his miraculous power on healing peasants and gentiles, and would eventually get busy annihilating the oppressive reign of domination under which his people lived. Too often, many of us can admit to having been guilty of the same logic: our enemy is Satan, and God will surely take my side, to the misfortune of those we hate.

-Of course, Peter does not say all this directly. Because, obsessed with seeing Satan in others, its easy to become the deceiver we despise. In this case, Peter, the recent recipient of the keys to the kingdom, shows himself to be shackled by his fear. And if there’s anything that the real devil delights in, it is manipulating people who are afraid. See, when Peter says, “God forbid it Lord! This must never happen to you!” what Peter is really saying is, “God forbid it Lord! This must never happen to me!” Because as Jesus makes explicit: “if any want to be my followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.”

-The kingdom of Satan is the network of domination systems in this world that seek to manipulate people’s fear of death and suffering by convincing brothers and sisters that they are in fact enemies. And so must compete with and destroy one another in order to remain safe. In rebuking Jesus, Peter shows himself to be possessed and thus manipulated by that same fear that so often also possesses and manipulates us. Fear of change. Fear of suffering. Fear of death. Which also leads us to treat other people as means to our own ends. Which tempts us to do violence for the sake of our own security. Which leads us to simply react and rebuke. Which twists us to see the world as a competition and a battlefield full of enemies. Which leads us to see the worst in others. Which leads us to doubt God at God’s Word.

-This is precisely the satanic system of slavery, the Babylonian mathematics of manipulation, that Christ came to defy and to overthrow. Not with armies and a holocaust. But with the Gospel, and a cross. Because Jesus refuses to be manipulated by fear. Because Jesus refuses to allow his enemies to remain his enemies. Jesus looks Peter in the eye, and says “get behind me Satan,” not because Jesus desires to eliminate Peter. But because he wants to liberate him. Because when Jesus says, “get behind me,” it is not an incineration of Peter’s life, but rather an invitation to return, to be reconciled, to let go of fear and be re-integrated into a life that can be called truly abundant. Because Jesus will not allow his friend to be manipulated into throwing out the resurrection with the baptismal bathwater of the cross.

-While the kingdom of the world seeks to create enemies who manipulate, react and rebuke one another out of fear of suffering and death, Christ’s cross has created a community in which enemies are re-created, reconciled, and re-integrated into communion with one another. Because as the kingdom ruled by the one who suffered death at the hands of his enemies rather than destroy or manipulate them, the people of the Gospel are those who have been shown that death is not the worst thing that can happen to us. We the church, gathered around the table of the one whose death has become the bread of life for all people, are those called to be agents of this kingdom, and so to take up our crosses with Jesus. With Jesus, to “defy boldly” the empty, manipulative promises of the powers and principalities who destroy life in their quest to avoid death. We are called to be those who, as Paul writes, “are not overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.” And the good of the cross is the ministry of reconciliation given to all those called to be agents of the new creation that God has fashioned out of the devil’s chaos.

-As agents of this new creation, the church is called to continue to “stick it to Satan.” Yet, we are called to do so, not out of the captivity of Peter, but rather, out of the freedom of Christ. As those who are called to take the risk of letting go of our fear of suffering and death, as those called to embrace the promise of resurrection, we are also those empowered by God to seek not only to not kill our enemies, but also to pursue their restoration and reintegration into the liberating reality of God’s grace.

-And we need not be Martin Luther King or Gandhi to do so. We need not be great saints like Mother Teresa. In fact, it is precisely in using people like us who are so very not saint-like, who are more like Martin Luther than MLK in our propensity to resort to violence in our words and in our thoughts, that God delights in defying the devil. Because while the satanic scoff at the folly of the cross, seeking to manipulate the broken beauty of the world to avoid the inevitability of death, the God of the Gospel delights in the cross’s foolishness, choosing to work with the beautiful broken things of the creation to proclaim the glory of the Gospel of resurrection. Because when we are all fearful people, when we are all manipulators, when we are all busted stuff and sinners, when we are all cross-shaped and cruciform – it is then that we have nothing to fight about. There are no enemies when there is nothing over which to compete. Grace is the great equalizer.

-Having been promised that death is not something to fear, but rather, the unavoidable first step on the path that leads to the new creation of the resurrection, we are invited into a strange new way of being in the world. While the world asks, “how can I manipulate others to keep myself safe?” we are invited to wonder, “how might this enemy, this struggle, this cross, this death, in fact be a source of friendship, of life, of growth, of newness, of surprise?” The Church is called to be the kind of people who, even while still fearful, manipulative sinners, nevertheless explores and experiments with the answers to this question, seeking reconciliation, restoration and re-integration, even as we view the world from the shadow of the cross that won reconciliation and restoration for us all.

-The Church is God’s ultimate weapon against the power of the satanic. Not a weapon as the world knows it. But as a shattered sword that has been fashioned into a ploughshare. As an abandoned military base transformed into a refugee camp for all sinners and saints. As the rotten wood of an old rifle fashioned into a guitar, singing the love songs of the Triune Troubadour. The devil is mocked most when God takes broken human beings who were once enemies, and gathers them together as friends. When God refuses to let enemies refuse each other. Whenever and wherever this happens, there can be said to be “Stick it to Satan Sunday.” So come, let us “defy boldly.” But let us be more bold in our love of Jesus Christ, and of the brothers and sisters to whom, today and every day, we extend a sign of the peace of the new creation. Amen.

Sermon: Let's Get Scandalous, or, "Take Up Your Cardboard Sign and Follow Me""

"Let's Get Scandalous, or, 'Take Up Your Cardboard Sign and Follow Me'"

Preached at House for All Sinners and Saints
Denver, CO
Ninth Sunday After Pentecost
14 August 2011

Texts: Isaiah 56.1, 6-8
Psalm 67.1-7
Romans 11.1-2a, 29-32
Matthew 15.20-28

"Dear God, I'm trying hard to reach you
Dear God, I see your face in all I do
But sometimes, it's so hard to believe in you...

Why is the world ugly when you made it in your image?
And why is livin' life such a fight to the finish..."
-"Dear God 2.0" - The Roots feat. Monsters of Folk


-My old undergrad thesis advisor was fond of saying that “if people knew what was actually in the Bible, wild horses couldn’t keep them from reading it.” Parts of Scripture read more like a South Park script than sacred holy writ. Yet, as much as we Americans love a good scandal, nothing’s prepared us for where Matthew takes us in this week’s Gospel.

-Pick your poison: you’ve got the Jewish Jesus traveling in unclean Gentile territory. You’ve got the male Jesus talking to a woman. You’ve got the powerful Jesus denying deliverance to a demon-possessed daughter. And then, of course, there’s the matter of that racial slur, of the Son of God calling the pleading mother the modern day equivalent of “Charlie,” or “Towel-Head,” or "Spick." Pick your poison – it’s that really that offensive.

-Confronted with such a challenge, it is tempting to do what we are so used to doing in the face of scandal: paper it over. This week, I’ve read countless creative attempts to square the circle of this scandalous text. My favorite one proposes that, faced with the Canaanite woman, it is Jesus who learns the valuable lesson. As one prominent emergent leader puts it, “Jesus is converted and healed of his racism by the woman he calls Bitch.” While it may be a tough pill to swallow to believe Jesus, as human, can learn something new, its worth it for the comfort of know that Jesus is learning not be a racist - just like a seminary student at Iliff or a regular church-goer in a progressive emergent church! Learning to let go of prejudice. To embrace those on the margins. A Jesus just like us enlightened urban postmoderns! Hooray! Scandal removed. Next text please.

-Problem is, this version of the story just doesn’t get the facts straight. See, the people of Tyre and Sidon were not poor little puppies and ragamuffins, but wealthy sea-traders, merchants, and war profiteers off the Roman occupation of Palestine. Sort of the Halliburton of the Ancient Near East. They also had a documented history of murdering Jews en masse. So like other Gentiles in Matthew who approach Jesus for help, this woman is not as marginal as we’d like to think. For her to address a Jew, it’s a step down, not a step up.

-It's less like the comforting, sentimental image of the homeless guy with a cardboard sign begging the rich, white male executive in his Benz for spare change. More like the exec pulling his Benz over at the entrance ramp to I-25 in a rough neighborhood to ask a woman with a cardboard sign, “um, so, do you have some change I can borrow for gas? I’m empty.” And her response? “Sorry, rich man, you’re screwed.”

-See, I think that’s the scandal, the true outrage, the utterly terrifying part about this story. That sometimes, even in the face of our deepest, most desperate need, Jesus, can and sometimes does say, “no.” Jesus’ God does not look on our privileged status as Americans. Doesn’t look upon the riches of our theological imagination or our bank accounts. She does not look at how biblical or orthodox, or how radical or progressive our community is. There is absolutely nothing human beings have to offer to impress or manipulate this God. Like the woman, we are the privileged reduced to beggars. At the mercy of a God who can look us straight in the eye when we come to Him as beggars, and can say, “sorry. Not this time.”

-This “No” would be less terrifying if it didn’t come so damn often. And we’re not talking in response to the deluded prayers of frat boys hoping to pick up a date, or the whispered pleas that the policeman walking up to our window will overlook his radar gun in favor of my spotless record. We’re talking God’s NO to real prayers. Desperate prayers – prayers that dad will make it through this recent bout of health problems. Prayers that the dark clouds of depression and despair will lift. That employment will finally find us. That our marriage or family or job will not fall apart. That children will no longer go hungry, that the world will be healed of its demonic possession by the powers and principalities of sin, injustice, violence and death.

-There are few things more scandalous, more disturbing, more offensive to us than the apparent refusal of God to hear the agonized cries of a world resounding with the echo of God’s refusals. And so, rather than confront this pain, we find a tamer God we can live with. The progressive God, who asks us to fix the world’s problems for Her. Or the distant, watch-maker Deity, whose absent silence is just part of the design. Or, we simply stop seeking this God at all, and we walk away, refusing to carry on the conversation any longer. We settle for the silence we’ve come to expect.

-But the Gospel of this Canaanite Woman is that she doesn’t take God’s “no” for an answer. She refuses God’s refusal. For this woman knows that this is “the Son of David.” That when she begs for scraps, it is from the “Lord’s table.” That this God is the God spoken of by the Jews, Jews like Isaiah, who promised that along with the Outcasts of Israel, so too would people of all nations come to worship at the mountain of the Lord. Its as if this woman says, “wait a minute, are you the God the Jews told us about, or not? If you are who you say you are, Jesus, then you’d better not refuse me. Keep your promises!”

-In this response, filled not only with Gospel truth, good theology, and right worship, but also with impetuousness, defiance and even a little sarcasm, this Canaanite woman acts as the Jewiest of Jews. She is like Abraham, bargaining with God over Sodom and Gomorrah. Like Moses talking God down to repentance when he is ready to obliterate the obstinate Israelites in Exodus. Like Jonah, shaking his fist over forgiven Ninevah, declaring, “Bollucks! I just knew you were a merciful God!” Like Jesus, on the cross, crying out with the Psalmist’s words, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This mortal enemy of the Jewish people has learned from the outcasts, the descendents of immigrants and slaves, that the God of the Universe is not a vending machine giving out “Yeses” when fed the correct theological or ritual change. She has learned that this is a Living God, a God unlike any other in the world. That this God may say “no.” But that this No is also not the end of the conversation. It is rather its beginning.

-This woman teaches, not Jesus, but us, that relationship with God is a no-holds barred affair. Like Jacob wrestling with the angel until he gets his blessing, and so being named “Israel,” we who have been included by Christ’s cross into this conversation are invited to get in God’s face. To challenge this God when God seems to have foreclosed on God’s promises. As children of this God and of Her promises, as theologians of the cross and not of glory, we are called like the Canaanite woman to abandon our privileged entitlement and come before the God of beggars and bums with boldness, impetuousness, and even a bit of sass. We are called to rage against this God when He refuses. We are called to dance naked like David before Her when we experience the Yes of Her love. For this God desires mercy, not sacrifice; conversation, not cold calculations; relationship, not rationalizations. This God is not afraid of conflict, or of scandal, or of offensiveness. And as this God’s children, we shouldn’t be either. What is scandalous to the proper is the salvation of the desperate.

-Many of us are here at House because we’ve been made homeless by the wounds inflicted by churches who have settled prematurely for what they thought was God’s No. Our challenge is not to find “a church that speaks to us,” but rather, to become a church that truly “speaks with God.” Because with God, no should not always mean no. God’s Yes is far too brilliant. And the Church is the people willing to hold God accountable to the goodness we know She is capable of. Because we know God can tell a better story than this. And we can demand that He lives up to it.

-We’ve all been approached by homeless persons telling the same old sob story, seeking to manipulate our emotions with lies when all they really want is a couple of coins for beer. Its hard to feel good about giving in this situation. How surprising, then, when we see a cardboard sign that appeals to the best in us – not by BS’ing us, but by making us laugh! By telling us, not “Need money for food,” but “wife attacked by ninjas – need funds for karate lessons!” or “why lie? Need a cold beer!” Even in scandal, there is also room for playfulness, affection, and joy. May we be these kinds of beggars as we set down our privilege, pick up our cardboard, and follow Jesus. Life is too short, the world too needy, our God too great, not to be desperately scandalous before Her. Let us settle for nothing less.



(Signs were made by HFASS community members during Open Space following the sermon)

Sermon: "The Family's the Feast, the Church's the Miracle"

"The Family's the Feast, the Church's the Miracle"

Preached at House for All Sinners and Saints
Denver, CO
31 July 2011

Texts: Isaiah 55.1-5
Psalm 145.8-9, 14-21
Romans 9.1-5
Matthew 14.13-21

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will...

f it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well
-Leonard Cohen, "If It Be Your Will"


-It’s comforting to know that even Jesus had a crappy week here and there. Even before the whole Holy Week betrayal-torture-crucifixion thing. This week’s Gospel finds Jesus on the tail end of one such week from hell. After a frustrating run at the Parable Café, Jesus heads back to Nazareth for some hometown rejuvenation. But there, we are told, even his own family and friends took offense at him, so much so that he “could do no miracles there!” Not even mom’s kosher cooking can take the sting out of that.

-Then, the back-breaker. Jesus receives news that his very own cousin, John of Baptizing fame, has been beheaded by King Herod. It turns out that speaking the truth to power by calling out the ruling monarch for marrying his brother’s wife is not a sure-fire way to become a talking head on Fox News. The only place for such a prophetic head is on a silver platter. I cannot imagine Jesus not being shaken up. The writing is on the wall. This is what happens to prophets. We got your cousin. You are next.

-Its been a crappy week for Christ. And so he loads up his backpack, climbs in his boat, and sets sail for “a deserted place” for some well-deserved R&R. (Jesus was from Colorado). But no sooner does he reach the shore than is he greeted by people –five thousand men to be exact. Oh, and also women and children! I’ve never been a celebrity – hell, I don’t think I have even a fifth that many facebook friends! – but I do know that my day off is sacred. Like the disciples, I would be inclined to say, “Jesus, get rid of these people. Let’s take some me time.”

-And yet, St. Matthew tells us that when he saw the crowds, “he had compassion on them and cured their sick.” That evening, the people are getting hungry and the disciples are annoyed; yet Jesus seems jacked up, seems to be drawing energy from this needy crowd who has sought him out in the middle of nowhere without a mind to provisions or time. “Send them away?” he asks. “We’re just getting started!”

-Jesus came to the seashore, weary and grieving; Jesus comes to the end of the day, rejuvenated and renewed. Jesus began the week misunderstood and unable to work wonders; he comes to its close, preaching marathon revival meetings and once more doing his miracle-maker magic. So what changed?

-Too many of us have been taught to think of neediness as a burden, a weakness. We live in a world devoted to the pursuit of independence, power and control. We are too often made to feel ashamed for our own neediness. And in so doing, I wonder if we also close the door on discovering the depths of our true power.

-Not Jesus. You see, while I think certainly, the crowds came to be ministered to by Jesus, I’ve been thinking that maybe God also sent the crowds to minister to Jesus. Because like the crowds, Jesus experienced great need in this time of grief, disappointment, uncertainty and death. And from the beginning God’s response to the pain, the brokenness and the fallenness of His good creation has always been to gather a family.

-When the man was lonely in Eden, God created a family for him. When the first family ate of the forbidden fruit and creation descended into darkness, God called the family of Israel out of slavery in Egypt to be a witness to the nations of the original goodness of the world. And here, on this shore in the middle of nowhere, when Jesus’ earthly family had either rejected him or been killed, notice what God does. God sends Jesus an entire army of a family to come and be with him in his time of grief. To give Jesus the opportunity to minister to them, not in spite of, but out of the midst of his own seeming needfulness, his very real brokenness. And in the process, to give Jesus the bread he needs to persevere in his own journey into the uncertainty of the future. It is not good for the Man to be alone.

-Have you ever noticed that when you are struggling, when you feel hungry and weak and depleted, when you are grieving or in despair, that you are suddenly replenished and re-energized when someone comes alongside you and says, “yeah man, I’ve been there too?” When they share with you, not pat answers, rote Bible verses, or equations of easy optimism, but rather, when they show you their scars? I think this is what Matthew’s after when he notes that Jesus had “compassion” on the crowds, and I wonder if from this compassion flowed his healing – of others, and his own. For compassion means nothing more than, literally, “to suffer with.”

-This past week, God ministered to the brokenness in my life by gathering a family. Many of you know that my father had a massive stroke on Monday evening. You know this because within minutes of either Nadia’s or my sharing this terrible news with you, you responded by filling my inbox with prayers. Throughout the week, you shared stories of your own experiences with tragic illnesses and accidents. People I have never met before – strangers within the family of God – gathered at the seashore to meet me and my family as we climbed out of the boat. We were in need, looking for rest. And we found the open arms of the Church. You were both Christ and crowd to us, and in you, we discovered the true meaning of the communion of saints. Because in our need, God gave you to us. To suffer with us. To walk with us. To pray for us.

-I’ve hesitated whether to share with you the fact that on Monday night, we also experienced a miracle. When I got on the plane in Denver on Monday night, the last I heard was that my dad would either end up dead or vegetating in a nursing home. When I arrived at the hospital on Tuesday morning, my father was feeding himself breakfast, and a team of surgeons, doctors, and other miscellaneous experts was telling us that “there is no scientific explanation for how well he is doing.” I’ve hesitated to share this, because while I firmly believe in the reality of the miraculous and the supernatural, I’ve also struggled with the implications of this. Maybe its just because I’m a German Lutheran, and thus particularly adept at finding the brokenness in just about anything. But I also know that for every Keith Nickoloff, there are a million other fathers who don’t get to hug their son in the morning. For every five thousand fed, there are five million more who must watch their children starve to death in their arms. God can do miracles; why God doesn’t do more, I don’t know, and I probably never will.

-With extreme gratitude can come extreme outrage. I think that too is part of what it means to be part of God’s family. Miracles show us that we are a people of endless need, and we have no power, control, or independence apart from the provision and grace of the God revealed in Jesus Christ. Miracles reveal that the family of God, the Church, are the people, the community, who learns what it means to be needy while not being in control. That knows the reality of abundance, without the luxury of guarantees. We are the crowds that come to Jesus in the middle of nowhere, parched, lonely, broken, grieving, starving, beggars one and all. Who say, “we have nothing to give you but our need for you. We do not always like our neediness. We do not always like your way of doing things. But we are hungry, and you are the Bread of Life” This is what it means to be the Church. We praise God together, we pray for one another, and we also ask these hard questions and lament. We are unafraid to be needy, and to need one another. Always together.

-I’d like to tell you one more story from my own crappy week. Like Jesus, I came to the end, weary and tired. My plane pulled into town, and I was ready to crash. Then a friend left me a message on my answering machine and said, “I know you are tired, but we’d really love you to be at the show tonight.” I ended up at the Stuart’s here – aka Shirley Delta Blow’s – variety drag show. During the course of the evening, Shirley herself told the delighted crowds about Rainbow Alley, a non-profit in Denver that provides shelter and guidance to LGBTQ youth. At one point, Shirley invited us to make an “It Gets Better” video to encourage queer youth to persevere in the face of persecution and pain. Breaking character and tearing up, she told the camera, “I don’t know who you are, but if you have not found a place that accepts and loves you, then come to Denver. We love you, and we will welcome you, and we will walk with you and give you a home.” While I am not gay, in my need, I heard myself being addressed by this message of invitation and hope. I needed to be with my family that night.

-The Kingdom of God is like a Drag Queen telling the broken that “it gets better.” That there is a family of God waiting for you.

-As the family of God, as the Church that is God’s witness to the Kingdom, it is we ourselves who are the miracle. I will never forget, nor cease to praise God, for the miracle of Monday night. But when I do, I will not be able to do so without also remembering the one hundred emails in my inbox. I will remember that, just as Jesus took the meager offerings of his disciples – five loaves and two fish – and blessed them, and broke them, and gave them to his disciples to feed the people who first fed him, so too, Christ took you, blessed you, broke you, and gave you to us, us to you, and all of us together, to be bread for the hungry world. That out of nothing but need, God has created a community of abundance, has filled this community with His Holy Spirit, and has deigned to call this community the Body of His Son Jesus Christ. This family, this church, this Eucharist, is God’s answer to the cries of protest, and the deepest longings, of a needy, broken humanity

-The Kingdom of God is not like this. This is the Kingdom – the family - of God. When you share the peace – when you share in the feast – give thanks for the miracle you are. Amen.

Sermon: Attack of the Heavenly Hillbillies; Or, How Led Zepplin Got It Wrong

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sunday, 17 July 2011
House for All Sinners and Saints
Denver, CO

Texts: Genesis 28.10-19a
Psalm 86.11-17
Romans 8.12-25
Matthew 13.24-30, 36-43

"There's a dark cloud rising from the desert floor
I packed my bags and I'm heading straight into the storm
Gonna be a twister to blow everything down
That ain't got the faith to stand its ground
Blow away the dreams that tear you apart
Blow away the dreams that break your heart
Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted."
-Bruce Springsteen, "Promised Land"

-Have you ever noticed that fear and angels seem to go together in Scripture? In almost every case of a human-angel encounter, the first words spoken are “fear not!” Is it just because angels are that scary no matter how they appear, even to the toughest mortal? Or because people are expecting little Precious Moments statuettes with innocent blue eyes and greeting card smiles (terrifying in their own right)? Or could it be that we know, deep down, that when these holy harbingers of heaven show up, it means judgment upon the impurities of our dirty, earth-encrusted humanity?

-Even when not wielding flaming swords, the angels in our texts today can still cause a stir. Jacob beholds angels utilizing what on first glance appears to be a celestial escalator. I didn't know that heaven was going to be like a shopping mall, but I know that's definitely not what I signed up for when I joined this faith thing.

-In our Gospel, Jesus paints a picture of apocalyptic agrarian angels. And while his naming them “reapers” conjures images of a grim, black-hooded death wielding a fearsome scythe, just as fearsome to me is the possibility of these angels as a hoard of heavenly hillbillies, replete with overalls, work-worn boots, and cans of Round-Up under their arms, waging chemical warfare upon the weeds of wickedness infesting the earth. Imagine the banjo riff from the film Deliverance as the soundtrack to the End of the Ages, and I dare you not to be afraid.

-Jesus’ parable of the wheat, the weeds and the reapers has meant many things to many people over the ages. The beauty of a parable is that it defies paint-by-numbers allegorical interpretation. It can even mean many different things to the same person throughout their life. So this week, I’ve been thinking about the weeds, which Jesus says represent “stumbling blocks.” And if there’s any candidate for stumbling block in my own life, its fear of judgment. Fear that my shortcomings will end up defining me.

-This past week, a few of us attended a retreat on discerning vocation. Many times throughout the process, we were asked about a time when we heard the “sound of the genuine” deep in our souls. It was not just the fact that I am not a baby boomer or a new age crystal worshipper -or that I was with House folks - that this phrase aroused in me smirks of annoyance and cynicism. It was also because, glimpsing within, I heard only an empty echo in my soul. I was struck by the fear that I had not lived out of the genuine, the true, the good within me. Ever. If anything, the majority of my life is an exercise in trying to make the un-genuine merely good enough. And that’s a painful realization. A realization that filled me with terror and fear. Because too often, it is fear of judgment that has led me to this ingenuous way of life in the first place.

-What if part of the destructive tendency of the weeds is to try to convince us of the lie that ultimately, it is our failures, our faults and our fears that will finally define us? The weeds just might be those voices that say, “you are guilty of X, and you will never change.” They say things like, “you really should have done this,” or, “if you had only done it this way, you might have made it, but instead, you are stuck here, this is your fate.” They specialize in formulas of fear, such as “you have done Y, and now you are forever defined by Y, and you will be judged forever on the basis of Y.” What if the weeds are the snares and the shackles of the satanic, striving to make us believe that we are slaves to sin, rather than sons and daughters, new and beloved creations of the loving God of the Crucified One?

-As with any convincing, persistent lie, it can be very easy to begin to worship it as truth. During college, when I first began to struggle deeply with depression, I read a book by Andrew Solomon called The Noonday Demon. Solomon describes the experience of depression as a vine that snakes its way about a healthy tree. Over time the tree is strangled by the vine. And yet, as the tree weakens, it becomes more and more reliant upon the strength of the vine to uphold it, to keep it from falling. You cannot cut off the weed without killing the tree. A kind of Stockholm Syndrome of the soul. We despise our weeds. And yet, the longer we listen to them, the longer we live with them, the harder it is to imagine life without them. And they become the standards by which we judge and condemn ourselves and others. Late-90's olitically-charged rock band Rage Against the Machine summed up the inevitable result in their apt slogan: “fear is your only god.”

-I wonder if Jacob felt afraid as he lay there with his head resting on a stone in the middle of God-knows-where. Jacob, the younger twin who stole his brother’s birthright by pulling a fast one on his old blind father. Jacob, the fugitive, the trickster, a perfect candidate for weediness if ever there was one. Jacob full of fear. Jacob skilled in sin. Jacob on the run.

-Yet, into his dark and dreadful dreams, God sent a “bustle in Jacob’s hedegrow,” and unveiled to Jacob a vision of a stairway to heaven. Long before the epic Zepplin song was banned from guitar stores everywhere, Jacob witnessed firsthand the traffic patterns heaven shares with earth. Amazed, Jacob exclaims, “Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it!” You know what I think led him to utter this? I think it is the fact that in his vision, the angels are not only ascending, but descending. Not leaving him alone in his fear, but coming to meet him in the midst of it.

-You see, Zepplin got it wrong. It’s not a stairway TO heaven, but a stairway FROM it. The ladder to the divine is not some standard of perfection humanity is demanded to climb. It’s a pathway by which God comes down to meet, and to minister, to humanity. A ladder that extends not just to the high places where holy men worship. But lower, to the valleys where thieves and scoundrels sleep with their regrets while fleeing from their sins. Lower, into the blackened soil where roots of weeds refuse to be pulled by persistent human hands. Lower, into the depths of the human heart, where depression, doubt, despair, disillusion, disappointment, disingenousness and death dwell. Lower still, into the very halls of hell, where Christ descended to be with us, there where we feel lost, alone, forsaken, damned.

-Jacob recognized the closeness of God, because God came close to Jacob when Jacob was furthest from God, from others, and from himself. It is there that God arrives, in the deepest pit of human brokenness. So that there we might also exclaim, “surely God is in this place, and I did not know it!” So that there, we might begin to have real hope.

-If you’re anything like me, then you need to hear the promise of Jesus Christ, that we are not our weeds. That fear is NOT our only god. That we are wheat, and that one day, we will indeed shine like the sun. That the final judgment has been pronounced, not by our failures, but on the cross, when the Lord of the Angels died for the sake of all failures. That like Jacob, we are sons and daughters, heirs and heiresses to the goodness of a God who is faithful, even and especially in the midst of our most wanton unfaithfulness. We have made a weedy parking lot of Eden. Yet God continues to tend the soil, bringing forth wildflowers from the cracks of the concrete. The angels coming to eradicate the minions of the evil one from the earth are not coming to annihilate us as well, but rather, to liberate us, to landscape us, to unleash the light of our glory, to unveil our naked beauty before the touch of the Divine Lover. To declare to us not a new command, but a new possibility: “Fear Not!”

-We are not our weeds, and the weeds know it. It is not we who should fear, but the spirits of fear who should fear us. Because if we listen to the parable, we are reminded that the wheat was sown first. And only the wheat will remain.

-And when hillbilly angels seem in short supply, we have one another. For just as there are many weeds, so too, there are many grains of wheat, brought together as one body, rich in failure, but more abundant in grace, bringing to each other and to the world the Good News that God is for us. That there is now no condemnation in Christ Jesus. That when we grasp each others’ hands as we pass the peace – this day - it is a peace that does not depend on us, but on the promises and the faithfulness of the God of Jacob, whose banner over us is Love, whose blood has won eternal peace for all creation. That when we look into one another’s eyes, we see not weeds, but the bread of life broken and offered for us. We see that we are caretaker’s of each others’ glory. And that we are well cared for in return.

-So fear not. And please. Don’t fear the reapers. Amen.

(Oh, and more cowbell please!)

More Cowbell! - watch more funny videos

Jeremiah: On Being an MC of the Cross

"Jeremiah: On Being an MC of the Cross"

Preached at: House for All Sinners and Saints
Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Denver, CO
26 June 2011

Texts:
Jeremiah 28.1-17
Psalm 89
Matthew 12.40-42

Inspired by Wendell Berry's poem Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front (which was read during the service; see video below)

Our Old Testament lesson captures what I think must be history’s first ever recorded rap battle. (Those who love me and care about my future have urged me not to attempt a reenactment for you. Meet me during Open Space – we can “rap battle” each other then). In the face of great turmoil and change, two prophets of the nation of Israel face off, spitting their spin on the present, and the future, of the chosen people of God.

On the first mic, M.C. for the theology of glory, enter Hananiah. Hananiah strikes me as the kind of guy with a nice suit and pretty personality who made his career preaching on the late night Israelite televangelism network. Now, he’s on the payroll of a monarchy that has been reduced to a puppet government by the conquering world empire of Babylon. His charge? Sedate the citizenry by spinning the comforting propaganda of prosperity. I imagine him surrounded by one of those huge hip-hop entourages decked out in golden bling as he promises: “The good old days will be back soon! The exiles will come home! The temple will be grand again! This is the greatest nation on earth! With God on our side (and a coalition of the willing), the evil empire of Baghdad…er, Babylon…will be toppled!”

On the other mic, comes Jeremiah, MC of the Cross, prophet of the living God. Almost single-handedly, this one-man opposition movement has been protesting against the state’s phony optimism. So he comes on stage bearing an oxen yoke on his shoulders, symbolizing the reality of the nation’s current captivity under the Babylonian empire. He also bears an inconvenient truth: That Israel, God’s people, is also in bondage to the slavery of sin. They have pillaged the poor for profit. They have built their beautiful temple on the backs of slaves. They have chosen the cold kiss of a golden calf over the intimate embraces of the God of the Universe. The same God who led them out of slavery in Egypt to be a nation of prophets, priests, and witnesses. In the face of a world blinded by nostalgia for “the way things used to be,” Jeremiah dares to sees things as they really are. Change has come. And its not change we can -or should -believe in.

In this story, despite Jeremiah’s scintillating mix of sarcasm and truth-saying, un-truth appears to take the rap-off. And yet, truth has the last word. Despite having schooled Hananiah, -and despite the pretender's violent temper tantrum -Jeremiah remains ice cold. Looking the pundit straight in the eye, he foretells his doom: “the Lord has not sent you, and you have made this people trust in a lie.” Peace out Hananiah.

You have made God’s people trust in a lie. Isn’t this how all the forces of sin, death, fear and oppression do their devious, deceitful work? In his efforts to maintain the illusion of control, Hananiah not only avoids the hard truth of the difficult situation of change before him. He also manages to lie about God, and about the quagmire into which God’s people have fallen. And what results from lying about God – from projecting our own disordered, deeply deluded designs and desires upon the divine canvas? Self-deception. Violence. Death. It’s always been like that.

Jeremiah, on the other hand, is willing to speak truthfully about the hard times facing his people. He is able to name the darkness, the tragedy, the pain, the grief, and the loss of his community’s plight. And, ironically, despite coming off as the nay-sayer, Jeremiah is the one who can truly HOPE for restoration, proclaiming, “Amen, may it be so.” Because Jeremiah alone among his people points to a God who is not only against the suffering – but also with His people, in and through the suffering change inevitably brings. It is ONLY because Jeremiah speaks truthfully about himself, truthfully about his people, and truthfully about his God, that he can offer his people an honest word about the mess they have become. And then offer an authentic, hopeful vision of the beauty of a promised resurrection.

It’s not just the pundits and the people in power who excel at the spin. Like Hananiah, we too fall for the lie that we can somehow prevent the discomfort of change by manufacturing our own happiness. I am always amazed at just how hard it is for me to describe and confront honestly situations of change in my life. Just a few weeks ago, when we first arrived in Denver, our lives felt incredibly unstable. The routines into which we had settled during our time in South Carolina had dissipated. Our new house was a mess. The opportunities to build new relationships felt overwhelming. The task of learning to navigate a new world seemed futile. Like the Israelites wandering in the desert during the Exodus, I found myself beginning to wish for the cozy comforts of the familiarity of the familiar. I began to wax nostalgic, longing to return to the good old days. Of slavery. In Egypt.

Until I realized that I wanted to go back to South-freakin’-Carolina instead of being in Denver, at House, now, in the midst of the place to which God has called me. If that’s not a reach of romanticization, I don’t know what is! I think despite our best efforts, we all tend to follow the path of Hananiah. Especially when change also means loss of control and suffering. As theologian Henry Rollins wisely observed, “when the going gets tough, the tough get conservative.”

Its funny how our fear of change can make us into the kind of people who suddenly begin to care about this basically made-up thing, this imaginary golden age, called “the way things used to be.” Israel pines after her stint as slaves under the iron yoke of Pharaoh. Hananiah’s good old days were tarnished by unprecedented injustice and blatant idolatry. Yet, we would rather be slaves to the pain with which we are familiar, than face the pain of the reality of our own brokenness, of our own need to change, for our own good.

The truth is, Israel, and we, her descendants, follow a God who is constantly calling us into the challenge of change. Because while our God loves us and accepts us just as we are, our God cares far too much about us to allow us to remain in a static situation that is death to our souls. The real God, the true and Living God, is not the God who promises to protect and pamper us against the inevitable tragedies of life’s changes. The true and Living God is the one who says, “yes, change is inevitable, and yes, change will suck. But in the midst of that change, I will never leave or forsake you. I will be with you in, through, and after that change. The only way through it is through it. And we’ll journey through it together.”

In the world of our own created happiness, we can do nothing but smile and be fake; we will do violence in trying to preserve our institutions, our illusions, our best moments, our treasured selves, our transient happiness. We will delude ourselves about our own virtues to avoid the harsh reality that some changes have been a far too long time in coming.

In the world of God’s truth, we will face what is real. And this will sometimes – often - include suffering, hardship, change, and yes, even death. But even so, especially so, God promises to be with us, to walk with us, to be present wherever the pursuit of God’s love will lead us. God promises to open up to us the deep mystery of our existence…and he promises to be with us, through every change and every tragedy, no matter how deep the rabbit hole goes.

The real prophets in our lives are those willing to speak the hardest truths with the greatest possible love. They are willing to demolish the idols we enthrone in our hearts when our fear leads us to attempt to create our own happiness and our own future. When they say, “it gets better,” we can believe them because in their ruthless honesty have first admitted, “it gets worse.” They are the ones who, when they speak of a God of resurrection, are able to offer us true hope, and true intimacy with the one who holds the key to experiencing most fully the whole of our blessed, whacked-out existences.

I think that’s why Jesus says in today Gospel that “you will receive a prophet’s reward.” That Greek word for “reward” can mean both “payment,” and also “retribution.” Jesus knows that the true pay-off of pursuing the path of radical authenticity and deep intimacy with God in this life is the harsh wood of the cross. Prophets have always been compensated for their efforts with suffering and death. But in being willing to speak so honestly, Jesus also makes a promise. We will be rewarded. Not just with a pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by. But with the gift, and the assurance, of the very companionship and blessing of the God whose music improvises resurrection beauty out of the distortion and deception of death and despair.

Jeremiah, like Jesus, points people to real HOPE. Because rather than seeking to mediate a static, distorted, comforting picture of a lie long dead, Jeremiah is compelled to point to the living, active, musical, improvisational God. The God who makes Gospel out of the blues. Who is willing to sing the blues with us, “even unto the end of the age.”

What would a church look like that is unafraid to change? Unafraid to suffer? Unafraid to die? Unafraid to become a NEW CREATION, while still remaining passionately committed to those things which never change – the promises of God, the love of Jesus Christ, and the fire of the Holy Spirit?

What might happen at work, in our families, in society, across the world, if we as Christians stopped following the spin of Sin, and began instead to sing with the freedom of the Spirit over the chord changes of the Triune Troubadour?

The hard truth of the matter is - we are going to change. We can either die a lonely, confused, deluded death with Hananiah and the empire for which he fronts. Or we can die the death of the cross, and be changed by that resurrection which makes a mockery of death, which liberates the oppressed, and sets the captives free. We are going to grow either way – we can grow deeper into the entanglement of our own delusions. Or we can grow deeper roots into the radical life-giving love of God, which no suffering, no challenge, and no death, can ever cause to change.

Change came to Israel.
Change will come for the Church
and for each of us.
But change has also come in Jesus Christ,
who never changes in His love,
and His promise of His presence,
with us, His beloved people,
called to be prophets
of a future not of our own making.
Amen.


(I have to say, I think Asher outdid even Mr. Berry with his reading at HFASS!)


We used the Keb' Mo version during Open Space, which is worlds better. No videos online, however.

On Joining the Troupe of Triune Troubadours

Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Trinity
Preached at: House for All Sinners and Saints
Sunday June 19th, 2011

Texts: Genesis 1.1-2.4
2 Corinthians 13.11-13
Matthew 28.16-20

"God is a fugue." - Robert Jenson

One thing you will learn – if after having me for a year, you actually want to keep having vicars – is that seminarians love doctrine. Often, one of the greatest challenges facing a teaching parish like House is to wean seminarians off high-theological speak, and teach us how to get speak about “the real world.” In this sense, Nadia’s kind of screwed me over by inviting me to preach on the ONLY Sunday of the church year devoted to a church DOCTRINE. Thanks.

That being said, who doesn’t love a little doctrine now and then? Its like red velvet cake – delicious on certain occasions, but a death sentence if indulged regularly. Doctrines can help orient us, give us a sense of direction, delineation, even security. Or, they can serve as really easy targets, sure-fire enemies for those of us with a “need to be against.” I’ve found that most people have “doctrines” of one kind or other. If they don’t tell us who we are, they at least help us define who we are not.

I believe that doctrine is passed on for the sole reason of helping us better tell the story of who God is and who we are as God’s people. In this sense, its less a set or rules, and more like...stage directions, or, if you will, like a rhythm section, providing the time and chords over which the people of God are called to improvise and sing the song of the Gospel.

That’s why, in the end, I don’t think its Nadia so much who gave me a raw deal, as the tradition of the church that taught me that Trinity is only a doctrine. Because last time I checked, Trinity is not a neat geometric shape, a perfect triangle or an equation that explains away conundrums. Rather, Trinity is an identity – or, rather, it proclaims the story about who this God is that we claim to be worshipping here. What’s more, I’ve come to believe that the name “Trinity” is a kind of melody that enables us to hear our God as a God of (drama) musicality and song. So that when we encounter the divine music alive and mischievous in the world, we will recognize the tune, feel delight or terror, and if we dare, join in with a dance or a riff of our own. Trinity tells the story of a god who is more like a four-part fugue than a fact or a formula.

I’ve found that meditating on the musicality of the Trinity enables us to encounter a God who seeks communal collaboration in God’s creative endeavors. God desires to be a band, a troupe, more than a diva or a solo act. Today’s texts are like sound stages, on which we can catch glimpses, hear snippets, of the new things this super-group’s been cooking up.

In Genesis, the Triune Troubadour sings creation into being, delighting with sheer wonder at the fact that, again and again, “it was good.” Here we glimpse a Godhead collaborating harmoniously and vivaciously as a community of persons. And the grand finale is the continued sharing of the blessings of the divine life through a charge to humankind to carry on the cultivation of the cosmos – to be not only a cover band, but also co-creators.

Then, in our Gospel, we witness the Risen One, not as Jesus Christ Superstar, but giving over his lead singer’s role to his bandmates. The Church is empowered to “make disciples” – of inviting others into the art and skill of playing the intimately subversive music that wrote the world. And did you notice? “They fell down and worshipped him – but some doubted.” The Triune God revealed in Christ does not discriminate between the believers and the cynics, between Gospel music and the blues. God surprises again and again by creating a symphony out of dischord, by composing the music of salvation out of notes both in and out of tune.

And then, ministering to the broken people of Corinth, St. Paul makes his appeal: “agree with one another!” Paul’s Greek verb here literally means “be the Holy Spirit to one another.” The creative, capricious music of God’s Spirit reaches a climax when we trade in our arms for the common anthem of true community, punctuated by the intimate lyrics of a holy kiss.

Throughout the story which tells the life of Trinity, we see a God not only willing (pause), but practically brimming over with the desire to share the sheer power and delight of Her music with others. This is not God the 1950s Father heading off to work by himself, leaving the wife and kids at home; this is a Father, a Divinity, a Lover, who from the start shares His creative love, His delight, and His power. The results will almost always surprise us – as surprising as the Son laying down his life for sinners. As surprising as a Resurrection, or an outpouring of the Spirit. As spontaneous as a dance.

Justin Nickel (fellow pastor) and I were comparing notes on seeing Mumford and Sons last week. We agreed that the most powerful moment of the show came when the band surprised the enraptured audience by asking for silence. It was awkward. It was difficult. It defied the expectations of the mad dancers and raucous shouters. But as the sweetness of silence flowed across the Fillmore, a soft, gentle, harmonied song could be heard as the band sang, without the aid of microphone or amplifier. All the way in the back, we heard familiar lyrics in a new, intimate way: “you are not alone in this.” And an auditorium filled with thousands of people were drawn into the life of the music in a glorious and hitherto unimagined manner.

Perhaps the best person to talk about the “doctrine” of the Trinity is not a seminarian who has spent three years in the library. Perhaps it is someone who has spent three years listening, in enraptured wonder, to the music the Trinity is. Someone who, in so doing and so delighting, has learned to enjoy and to know personally the intimacy of our lyrical God. Perhaps it is one who has committed him or herself to hearing that music even and especially where it is least expected, and who is willing to follow wherever it may lead.

It all sounds so poetic, so sublime, so egalitarian. Musical doctrine. A God who is a collaborative, creating community. A life of bohemian, artistic discipleship. So its kind of weird that in so many ways, I prefer to remain a seminarian, and not a musician. I still prefer the safety and control of a doctrine to the wild ecstasy of knowing the person this identity names. This God sounds wonderful. But such power – and such intimacy - is also unsettling. Its good fun to talk about, to imagine, being the kind of community where we literally embody the inclusive, improvisational love of the Trinity. But actually becoming that community is not only inconvenient, but also intolerably humbling, and if I’m honest, downright terrifying. After all, do I really want some white guy trying to rap over my perfect fugue? Am I really open to a little bit of country, a dash of punk rock, the unintelligible anomaly of a-tonality? Can I really label my musical tastes the ever-popular “eclectic?”

Moving from a personal “doctrine” of a safe, ideal community and a safe idealized Trinity, into the risky reality of a capricious, collaborative concerto of a God is not only a personal inconvenience. It is also to risk becoming vulnerable. Vulnerable to change, vulnerable to suffering, vulnerable to newness. To my ego being bruised, crushed, and resurrected.
The result may not be the kind of community,
the kind of music,
OR the kind of GOD, we thought we knew.
But the promise is that the power of this music will move us,
and that “it will be good.”
The promise is that Christ,
the One who became inconveniently vulnerable to us
for the sake of making us singers in this song of new creation,
will be singing with us, “even unto the end of the age.”

Friends, we all get tired of improvising and including.
Yet, even when we would rather settle
for a doctrine than a relationship, even when we place limits
on what the musicality of God can achieve,
even when we are simply too tired
or too afraid
to be as vivacious as the endless variations
of God’s ceaseless composition,
even then,
especially then,
the Good News is that, the Holy Trinity,
the eternally self-giving,
life-sharing,
wildly dancing communal Godhead,
is making beautiful, glorious music
out of our blue notes
in the key of grace.
The Good News is that, in the end,
it is not our song we sing,
but God’s song,
God’s mission,
God’s triune life,
God’s creation.
That we, doubters, we un-kissable lepers,
we doctrine-addicted concert junkies,
are precisely the players that God desires
for His troupe of Trinitarian troubadours.

The Good News is that we dance with a personal, intimate, ever-loving God, revealed in Jesus Christ, who no doctrine can ever contain.
So accepted,
so incorporated,
so empowered,
and so glorified,
we give delight to our loving Father,
our resurrected Brother,
and our Sister Spirit.
And in so doing,
will draw a desiring world into delighting in the same.
Such is the messy, magnificent music of the real world,
Of the true God,
and of His new creation.
Come, join the dance of Trinity!

Installed

Thank you, gentle readers, for your continued patience. This evening, I was installed as Vicar to the House for All Sinners and Saints, and as we continue to settle into our new place, Casa Karibu Sze-Ming, a missional center in the Cole Neighborhood of Denver, I expect blog flow to resume. Grace and peace!

21: Spirit Animal

(Palmer Square - Princeton, NJ)

20: Princeton Ozymandias

(Palmer Square - Princeton, NJ)