The Problem of Good: Thoughts Upon Finishing the Brothers Karamazov

The sun shone brighter.  The buds on the pollen-laden trees perched like the shadows of so many angels around me.  My children’s laughter peeled sweeter than I have heard it in awhile, and I was able to stand by and smile and laugh with them with a peace of heart I have not felt in forever.

Can a book really do such things?  

Because this meager transfiguration of my world is precisely what occurred as I turned the final page of The Brothers Karamazov yesterday.  And I’m not sure it’s merely because of that joyous final scene around Ilyuesha’s rock, in which Alyosha bids his young friends never to forget one another - a scene that, written by anyone else, would have been cloying, too easy.  This last wave of beauty was not what made me follow St. Peter in desiring to build tents for the mysteries, grasping at them to remain, for, it was indeed good to be in their presence.  

No, not merely beauty, wave after wave of purest, baptizing beauty.  But even more so, truth.  Crash after crash of heart-breaking truth.  And, if such things may be said anymore, also, the sheer goodness that emerges, unbelievably, from the utter darkness of this bundle of dead souls.  Beauty, truth, and goodness.  From Karamazovs?   

I still recall my freshman year college course on the “Problem of Evil.”  I limped to the end of the semester, my faith lacerated, my spirit crushed, by the knowledge of so much suffering in the world.  And then Dr. Larrimore proclaimed the Gospel that still makes this whole faith thing possible for me today.  He turned the tables, offering that the true problem was not of evil, but of good.  Because if we have eyes to see, evil should not be a shock or surprise.  It is the very medium in which we eek out our tragic existence.  We know where evil comes from, even if we cannot speak it.  But good?  Self-sacrifice?  Love?  Whenever and wherever these occur, can we ever truly account for them?  For the French Huguenot village that gave its life for a handful of Jews during the Second World War?  For Ivan Karamazov’s sudden willingness to sacrifice himself for his despised brother Dmitri?  

That, I think, is what makes Dostoevsky’s miracle so miraculous.  When transcendence appears, it is not a deus ex machina, not a sudden salvage operation.  Beauty, truth, and goodness just happen.  Ivan, collector of horror stories about the suffering of children, encounters the devil within himself, and suddenly discovers truth.  Dmitri wrestles with lasciviousness and violence, and only when he is wrongfully accused, arrested, and convicted, does he discover real goodness, in himself and the world.  Katya and Grushenka never quite make it to reconciliation, and yet, we know they will, but only precisely because they do not actually make it the full way yet.  This is a book of planted seeds that are dead and buried.  And yet, unless a grain of wheat falleth and die...

And then there is Alyosha.  I find him the most perplexing character of all.  Because Alyosha, for me, does not seem to change much.  He begins as a budding saint, and ends as one.  He has a momentary crisis of faith when his beloved Elder Zossima dies.  But it is not clear to me that this is not really just grief.  As is said several times, St. Thomas the Doubter did not believe because he saw the Risen Christ, but because he had already made up his mind to believe.  Perhaps what is compelling about Alyosha is that his mind has, in a sense, been made up for him.  Love has no logic.  It is simply there, and can only ripen in the midst of such a storm of sin, seduction and suffering.  

When I was in college, I wrongly believed that, of course, I was Alyosha, the lover of mankind and the hero of the tale.  A hair over a decade later, I still long to be Alyosha.  But I cannot help but think that, in truth, I am Dmitri Karamazov.  I am Kolya Krotsokin.  I am Smerdyakov.  I am Grushenka, and I am Katya.  I am a thread of darkness woven into the tapestry of human self-deception, self-assertion, and self-hatred that shrouds the world in the shadow of suffering.  Like Dmitri, I am a loquacious buffoon and a spend-thrift.  Like Kolya and Ivan, prematurely and insufferably imperious and arrogant.  Like Smerdyakov, bitter and conniving.  Like Grusha, unwilling to forgive, like Katya, insanely jealous.  Like all, desperate for love to come and touch us tenderly, visit me in prison, believe in my goodness, untangle my confusion, speak the truth.  

I am not Alyosha.  But now, I think, I can truly long for Alyosha, and when he comes, in the presence of love that is not cloying but perfect in its naivete, then like Grushenka, I will no longer desire to “eat him up” with malice, but receive him with awe and wonder, begging him to sit upon my lap, able, finally, to see that the world is not darkness at all, but blinding, marvelous light.  The light is coming into the world, and while the world does not receive it, it receives us, and seeks us out, and reveals its presence, deeper than the darkness, at the very heart of our created beings.

There is no doubt in my mind that Terrence Mallick, the writer and director of another great work on suffering and grace, The Tree of Life, found his inspiration from the Brothers Karamazov.  The words of the father’s final, broken confession echo the crucial revelation in the life of Father Zossima: "Yes, there was so much of God's glory around me: birds, trees, meadows, sky, and I alone lived in shame, I alone dishonored everything, and did not notice the beauty and the glory of it all." 

I wonder if, in the end, it is possible to see the glory without first arriving at the dishonor; if grace and truth can be known without Law unveiling our lies.  If the world can be truly transfigured without first being crucified.  If we can truly delight in the laughter of children, the angelic presence hiding in the bursting forth of new life, if resurrection and innocence can truly be miraculous, and not merely cliche and cloying, if we do not face the fact - the Good News! - that indeed, we are not Alyosha, but the world desperately in need of his imperfect perfection.  I think then can we hear his prayer as prayed, not merely for others out there, but receive it, hear it, for us, and for all:  

‎"Lord, have mercy on them all today, unhappy and stormy as they are, preserve and guide them. All ways are yours: save them according to your ways. You are love; you will send joy to all!"

It is the ability to discover such prayers, such people, and our deep need for them, that is the transfiguring majesty of Dostoevsky’s tale of the Karamazov brothers. 



The Tree Of Life: Life's Work from Otto on Vimeo.

Cross-Bloggination: Steampunk Theology and the Rev. Nietzsche

Sometime soon, I'll do a proper post on Steampunk.  In the meantime, I've been invited by some fellow Lutheran steampunk geeks to occasionally contribute to their awesome blog, Steampunk Theology.  One trope of steampunk is the imagining of alternative histories, rooted in the Victorian Era.  So, for my first go at things, I've wondered: what if Friedrich Nietzsche, the great ex-Lutheran philosopher, didn't die from his final attack of syphallitic insanity, but instead, went the way of St. Paul, and lived on...what might he say to the church of his time?  Find out at Steampunk Theology! And check out the other interesting stuff there while you're at it!

Sermon: Never Alone, or, Jesus Happens to Death

"Never Alone, or, Jesus Happens to Death"

Preached at House for All Sinners and Saints
Denver, Colorado
Fifth Sunday in Lent
25 March 2012

Texts: Jeremiah 31.31-34
Psalm 51.1-12
Hebrews 5.5-10
John 12.20-33

"I never had a felt experience of God...it seemed at that moment, I could hear an inner voice say, 'Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo, I will be with you, even unto the end of the world.' I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone."
-Martin Luther King, Jr, on his "kitchen table revelation" in Montgomery

~

***(You can listen to a rough audio-recording via the youtube link at the end of this post! Still working on how to embed audio; thanks for your patience)

-Around holidays when I was a teenager, I’d often “volunteer” to go and play piano at nursing homes. Because nothing says “I’m a good Lutheran boy!” like unenthusiastically pounding out Joy to the World for an incapacitated audience of somebody else’s neglected grandparents?

-I really hated going to the nursing home. Because going to the nursing home meant coming close to the reality of death and dying. And not just any death; but dying, largely, without dignity and without control; dying, alone and forgotten. Dying, even while you are still alive.

-This one time, I was playing at Crest Manor Nursing Home in Fairport, NY. Thankfully, the piano was facing away from the people I was so “graciously serving,” so I could just focus on the music and ignore the moans and groans and strange odors and vacant expressions. Until a bony finger touched my shoulder, and I smelled “old person,” and a trembling voice whispered in my ear, “I gotta get out of here!” My first instinct was to ask, "is the music really that bad?" But what I really wanted to say was, “you and me both buddy.” But I was too terrified, so I just kept playing, heart heavy, back turned.

-So in today’s Gospel, I am so thankful that, in talking about his death, Jesus says, “now my soul is troubled. And what should I say? Father, save me from this hour?” I’m comforted that, even for God Incarnate, the idea of death and dying leaves him tongue-tied and troubled. Leads him to at least contemplate the advice of that old forgotten man at Crest Manor: “I gotta get outta here!”

-And I want to say to him, “Yes Jesus! That’s what you should say! Because Jesus, you’re about to get crucified! You’re headed for a painful, dishonorable, disappointing end. You are going to scream at the top of your lungs, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” You are going to die utterly alone. Jesus, for the love of God, say it! Tell the Father: I gotta get outta here!”

-Except were I to say this to Jesus, dear brothers and sisters, you know that I’d really just be talking to myself. I prefer to keep death as far away as possible, whether it’s physical death, or the many forms of spiritual death we face: loss of meaning; loss of security; death of relationships; death of things “the way they’ve always been.” Because death means change. It means the loss of control. It means pain. It means the possibility of ending up alone.

-And all that pretty imagery Jesus usually conjures up, about seeds falling and dying and rising again, it’s all very lovely for a sermon. But when it comes down to living it, I’d really rather just not die. I’m kind of addicted to being alive. I’ll just keep singing my song with my back to the dying, thank you very much.

-Because then, see, I can treat death as something that can be kept at a distance. That can be managed and controlled. It can be avoided. I don’t have to undergo it myself. And while there may be a few of you, like my wife, who are truly able to face the reality of death without fear and spit in its face, I’d wager some of you might share my trepidation.

-No wonder death in the movies or opera or theater is so cathartic for the human audience. We can look, but never have to touch, or be touched. We can be people watching people watching children kill each other in the Hunger Games and feel entertained instead of disturbed. We can "Like" Kony 2012 on Youtube from the safety of our homes and feel like we are saving child soldiers in Africa. White folks in my neighborhood can feel outraged over the murder of Trayvon Martin in faraway Florida, while refusing to show up at the memorial for DeQuan Walker-Smith, 18, who was murdered in broad daylight six blocks away from my house at 29th and Franklin.

-The price we pay for keeping ourselves isolated from death, is very often the isolation and objectification of actual dying people. Which is exactly how the forces of death keep us enslaved to fear.

-But Jesus refuses to isolate himself from death. He actually walks toward it but as he does so His soul is troubled. Jesus has the chance to escape, and of anyone, Jesus has the right. But he doesn’t. Jesus chooses the road that leads directly to the cross. “It is for this reason,” he declares to the adoring crowds, “that I have come to this hour.” To die.

-Furthermore, Jesus claims that this willingness to face and embrace death, this willingness to follow the will of God is a death for the sake of others. Jesus promises that “when I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself.” All people. Jesus promises that his death is not just a cathartic spectacle for our inspiration. Jesus‘ death breaks down the barriers of isolation created by a world bent on avoiding death, and creates the possibility of new community. He does this by his own isolated death, lifted up on the cross, in defiance of the death-denying systems of this world. Jesus dies alone so that no one - no one - will ever face death alone again.

-So deeply is Jesus committed to being involved with us in our death-haunted humanity, seeking such complete solidarity, that he walks with us, all the way to the end. Walks with Trayvon. With DeQuan. With forgotten nursing home guy. With you. And with me.

-And that means, whether we like it or not, we will also be drawn along the path that Jesus himself followed. Whether we like it or not, we too will have to face death, spiritual deaths, relational deaths , and physical deaths. Not just during the 40 days of Lent. But every single day of our Christian lives. As Lutheran martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us, “when Jesus calls someone, he bids them come and die.” It’s what it means to be baptized into Christ’s death. It means death is no longer an optional part of new life.

-And we will have no control over this. Like a dead seed, we don’t get to decide what our deaths do, or even which deaths we'll face. Undergoing any kind of death is no guarantee that we will see the new life that springs up from within us. Knowing the love of Jesus is no guarantee of security. If anything, knowing Jesus pretty much guarantees the opposite. We are called to have souls that are also troubled by death, and the world of isolation and fear that death creates.

-But brothers and sisters, Christ promises this. Christ promises that his death will draw all of us into the dark places of death in the world. Our deaths have been taken up and hidden in the paschal mystery of death and resurrection. See, death will happen to us, but Jesus has also happened to death. And when we face death, Jesus promises to be there. We walk the way towards death. But always, Jesus walks with us. Because he promises: “where I am, there my servant will also be.”

-Which makes me wonder about that old bony finger that touched my shoulder back in the nursing home. Maybe it wasn’t actually the hand of death. Maybe it was the hand of Christ, reaching out from among the dying, urging me: you gotta get outta here. Out of the isolation you’ve created around you. Out of fear and avoidance. The only way through this death is through it. So turn and face us. And turning, see the face of Jesus, and look through the eyes of the monster into the eyes of the promise. That God has entered death and created new life. That in us outcasts, suffering, dying and alone, Christ bids you join us, bids you come and die. Let us be the promise for one another, the promise that Jesus walks with the dying. And, in walking together, let us find that, in Christ, together, we never walk alone.

-Amen.

Sermon: Only the Jealous God

"Only the Jealous God"

Preached at House for All Sinners and Saints
Denver, Colorado
Third Sunday in Lent
11 March 2012

Texts: Exodus 20.1-17
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 1.18-25
John 2.13-22

"Now when all this steel and these stories, they drift away to rust
and all our youth and beauty, its been given to the dust
And your game has been decided, and you're burning down the clock
And all our little victories and glories, have turned into parking lots..."
-Bruce Springsteen, "Wrecking Ball"

~


-Incarnation. Celebration. Romance. Revolution. The opening chapters of St. John's Gospel have more thrills a 19th century Vaudevillian Spectacular Spectacular. Sign me up please!

-How can we not be compelled by John's portrait of Jesus? His mystic incarnational origins. His first miracle of amping up the party - also known as turning water into wine. And the indignant protest of corruption in the Temple, ripping through injustice and greed like an arena full of people singing a Springsteen anthem. It just appeals to the “true Bohemian Revolutionary” I am sure is hiding somewhere deep – ok, very deep – inside my soul.

-But then I wonder if such romanticizing is an exercise in missing the point. It’s too easy. Too much like wish fulfillment or projection. Because Jesus is not just a progressive with a compelling social program, or a nice man working miracles, hugging little children, and touching the untouchables. He’s not some Christian bookstore version of radical that we can commodify into another top-10 bestseller during election season. He's not a Republican. Oh, and by the way, he's definitely not a Democrat either.

-He’s also not, as far as I can tell, offering us a paradigm for street theatre or activist action. Believe me, many have thought so. I’m reminded of a story I heard in the Lutheran Peace Fellowship about certain opponents of Aparthied in South Africa, who, committed to non-violence against humans, saw no problem in emulating Jesus’ “Occupy the Temple Campaign.” So, following Jesus, they made their own whips of chords, attaching chains to the front of a prominent racist’s car dealership and pulling it down with their pick-up trucks. Allegedly, no humans were harmed in the making of this production. What’s the destruction of property and a person’s livelihood between sinners when justice is at stake, right? Oh, and if you don't have a pickup truck, I'm sure your Facebook profile will do just nicely.

-But see, I don’t think that’s what Jesus is up to here. He’s not striking a revolutionary pose so he can be made into a black and red Che Guevara t-shirt. And I don’t think he’s looking for imitators – at least, not in the way the South African activists imagined. No, I think he’s up to something else here. Something not so easily captured or commodified.

-And in some ways, that's good news for me. Because I'm less like revolutionary Jesus. More like my namesake, the Apostle Matthew, who started out a tax collector. An accountant. Caesar's certified CPA. If I'm honest with myself, I'm not backing up Jesus' temple raid. I don't have that kind of heart. I'm the one whose table got turned over.

-And see, that’s the rub, isn’t it? Even the most radical, progressive Christians of today are, at heart, no different than money changers in the temple. Becasue if the Savior knocks over the tables of those we deem oppressors, how long until we swoop in under the cover of righteous indignation and rage, and set up our own systems of accounting? It's easy to feel totally justified in being “just like Jesus” – and turning our ire back upon those intolerant backwoods fundamentalists and conservatives, the robber barons who make up the 1%. Or those unloving parents, or those hate-mongering pastors, or any of the unfaithful who have put God in a box. So of course, that box must be shattered and destroyed – so that we can put God in a much bigger box, a wider tent, a more expansive narrative. That is, in the end, still a box. Or, a money changer's table.

-But All our attempts to play God – even the God of peace and justice , prophetically raging against corruption - are, in the end, mostly just calculations in an accountant’s ledger book. Just coins clinking in the collect's coffers. Aimed at preserving and peddling the romanticized versions of ourselves that keep us going, while protecting us from the fact that God is, decidedly, not like us.

-We just don’t have the heart for it, you see. For such a revolution. That’s what the First Commandment, part of our first reading today, is trying to show us. See, long ago on Mt. Sinai, God tells the Israelites, “you shall have no other gods before me…for I the Lord your God am a jealous God.” And that word in the Hebrew text, that “jealousy,” is the same word John uses to describe Jesus’ raging against our machines, when he says that “zeal for your house shall consume me.” Zeal and jealousy are the same word. God will accept nothing less than our undivided love. God does not want our revolutions; God wants our hearts.

-And see, the “house” that Jesus comes to cleanse, it is literally the temple. But it’s also “house” in the sense that Gryffindor and Slytherin are houses. It is a gathered people, a kind of family. It’s us. Jesus, as the Incarnation of the God of Israel, is a jealous Savior. And he is jealous for the love of his people, this people here. And God’s uncontrollable, jealous, zealous love will not tolerate idolatry, whether it be a golden calf, or a collection of golden ideals – progressive, conservative, or otherwise – that presume to act as go-beteweens in God’s desire to love us, freely and without limits.

-Now, I understand that this notion of a jealous God can seem just as bad as the Che Guevara Jesus. For me, it can make God seem like the muscle-bound, varsity jacket wearing, hot-rod driving jock who bullies the nerdy kid, “stay away from my girl” before dropping him in a dumpster. Do we really want a God that is so passionate, so given to jealousy and rage?

-But then there is the story of Jeremy, one of the young men I had the privilege to mentor as part of the Duke Youth Academy. The other youth were decidedly uncomfortable with Israel’s jealous God. But then Jeremy, awkward, and reserved, suddenly spoke: “I love that God is jealous. Because he’s jealous for me. Which means he will fight for me. And that makes me feel so loved. Because no one has ever fought for me before.”

-This God, this Jesus, is not like us, in justice or in jealousy - easy as it is to forget. And there is no other God worth following, no other God that is Good News and Gospel, except the jealous, unpredictable God. This God does not come to bring revolution alone, but comes to fight for us, to stop at nothing until He has gathered us into His house. Made us into a living temple for the Spirit. Given us a new heart. Whether we like it or not.

-See, this God comes to bring a consuming fire. This God comes to break to pieces our calculating and idealizing hearts of stone, and this God, in Jesus Christ, goes to the cross, dies at our hands, and rebuilds the temple of His own body in three days, so that we too might be rebuilt. That we might be given new hearts. Hearts capable of returning God’s jealous love with passion, truth and zeal. And so also truly love our neighbors. God speaks a resolute NO! over our corruption, our idols, and our good intentions. But only so that God can speak a more powerful YES to us, God’s beloved children, foolish, though we be.

-Confrontation with the Jealous God is not always pleasant. Christ's revelation in the temple is more like that scene from Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring, when Bilbo, under the sway of the ring of power, accuses the wizard Gandalf of trying to rob him. Gandalf rears up in fire and shadow, proclaiming, “do not take me for a conjurer of cheap tricks! I’m not trying to rob you! I’m trying to help you!” Or, as Mr. Beaver says of C.S. Lewis' Aaslan, "he's not safe...but he's good."

-God in Christ kicks over our tables. But the Good News is, we don’t have to be accountants anymore. You are free, not to manage grace, but only to receive it. You are re-created, not to have to earn or fear God’s jealous love, but simply to be loved, and to be God’s beloved. You do not have to become a revolutionary; you are already the object of God's passion, and the deep desire of God's heart.

-That’s the romance. That’s the revolution. Sign me up for that.

-Amen.

Sermon for Ash Wednesday: Walking Dead and Dirty

"Walking Dead and Dirty"

Preached at House for All Sinners and Saints
Denver, Colorado
Ash Wednesday
22 February 2012

Texts: Joel 2.1-2, 12-17
Psalm 51.1-17
2 Corinthians 5.20-6.10
Matthew 6.1-6, 16-21

~

-For those of you who are new to Ash Wednesday and Lent, and wondering what to give up; or if you’re intimidated by all the “spiritual ninjas” and people reading 800 page Russian novels, let an old pro share a trade secret with you: try just giving up something you don’t like. “What’s my Lenten discipline? I think I’ll give up...doing the dishes…or drinking bad coffee…or watching Fox News!” You might feel like a bratty two-year old; but you’re guaranteed to feel a lot less guilt.

-If I was a two-year old again, I know exactly what I would “give up:” finger-painting. It would be a tough sacrifice. But worth it for the love of Jesus.

-I hated finger-painting. Hated anything, really, that required me to get icky and slimy. If you’d have asked me back in the day to help impose dirty ashes on people, I’d have said hell no. My parents joked that when I got married, they’d buy me china plates that had those little divider compartments built into it so I could keep my food neatly separated. I'm still waiting for them to come in the mail.

-And while I can stand before you today proudly able to share that I now feel perfectly comfortable smearing dirt on your foreheads, it’s made me think about today’s psalm. Because my automysophobic younger self wasn’t the only one looking for cleanliness. The Psalmist David gives voice to his desperate longing to be “washed thoroughly from his iniquity.”

-And for good reason. As Leonard Cohen sings in a song-that-must-not-be-named now that it's Lent, the great king and hero of Israel, like so many great leaders, was also great at making scandal. This time around, David saw the beautiful Bathsheba bathing on her roof, lures her to the palace where he promptly gets her pregnant, and then sends her husband to the front lines in the war to get killed off. And when the prophet Nathan calls him out, David is contrite and writes the very song we sang to open tonight’s service. Pleading with his God, “create in me a clean heart.”

-For all his rep as a “man after God’s heart,” this gangster version, this Kingpin David feels more real (except for the whole giving your lover's husband a cement bath in the river thing). It feels strangely fitting to pray his words. The words of a fellow sinner.

-And apparently, it feels fitting to lots of other folks too. I was surprised to learn during seminary that the most highly attended church service of the year is not Christmas or even Easter, but Ash Wednesday. Going out to the coffee shop on this day, it’s quite shocking to see just how many folks have suddenly remembered they are dust, and to dust they shall return.

-Witnessing otherwise ordinary, familiar citizens suddenly walking about dazed and black-crossed felt eerily like stumbling into a zombie movie – “Dawn of the Living Dead…Christians!” Where did they all suddenly come from??? As much as we strive to avoid the reality of Sin and Death - an avoidance that the Therapeutic Industrial Complex is all too willing to assist with – like an undead horde drawn to the sweet smell of brains, something about Ash Wednesday re-animates people’s neglected inner Sinner, and with it, an insatiable hunger for ritual and forgiveness.

-And I wonder if what draws people is the very dirty, cathartic practice of having some one else smudge an ashen cross on your forehead. Being told by someone that is NOT you, that, believe it or not, you are a sinner. Sin is real. You are going to die. Because if we’re honest with ourselves – which we can’t be! - its damn hard to admit on our own.

-Hard to confess that all have the deep capacity for self-deception. The deranged desire to take what is not ours. The staggering capacity to do damage to those we claim to love most. And no matter how many crossbow bolts of grace God fires into our hearts, like good zombies we keep on getting back up. Keep insisting, like the guy in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “I’m not dead yet!”

-It’s much easier for me to get divided china plates. Try to organize my own little micro-managed kingdom of purity, where the messiness is held at bay. Put up dividing walls in my heart, relegating the unclean and the imperfect into the shadows, while creating Lenten disciplines to perform and ladders of good works and merit to climb towards the light. Away from the reality that my heart is a BS factory. And towards some ideal of purity and holiness that enables me to feel like “a good person.”

-Because of course, then the messiness remains always out there, always somewhere else. Never with us. Our cleanliness costs other people theirs, but as long as we remember to pray for the souls of Frederick Douglass or Malcolm X (whose deaths we commemorate this week), we can continue to congratulate ourselves for our progressivism and enlightenment - without having to face the fact that sin is also a system. A system into which we pay dearly to keep our delusions of justice operating. A system in which we are deeply invested, and from which we continue to greatly profit. A system that numbs us, infects us, zombifies us.

-If cheap grace remains a problem, it’s only because we’re prolific at manufacturing and exporting cheap Sin, regardless of who chokes on the smog. If your iPhone was made in China, say Amen.

-That’s why I’m thankful for David’s confession. Because he names it. He says he can’t do it. Can’t make himself clean. Can’t stop lying to himself, can’t take back the damage he’s done. He is not a free man or a mighty king. He is slave to sin. He is walking dead. Can only cry out, “do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me!”

-Like David confronted by the prophet Nathan, on Ash Wednesday, when you come forward tonight to receive ashes from another, you too are confronted. You are not asked to present a catalogued list of sins. You are not expected to make excuses, or even to have them. You are not able to. When your forehead is marked by the cross, it is no longer a fellow sinner’s hand, but Christ’s. Christ, not asking for your opinion, if you think Sin exists. You are being told. Christ Himself confronts you, violently and prophetically, with the very truth of reality, spelled out in ash, in oil, and in blood. You cannot be honest with yourself. You are not clean, but dirt and dust. You are enslaved to Sin. You are helpless. You are dead.

-If it stopped there, we’d be better off zombies. But we are not just marked for death. We are signed with the cross. And not just by any cross, but with the cross of Jesus Christ. Forever. Marked by the love of the one who, full of grace and truth, did not despise us in our dirtiness, but joined us in it. Took on our ashes and dust. Descended to earth, that he might be lifted up from it on the tree of Calvary. Lifted up by our hands. To awaken us up to to zombie slaves we have become. But also to save us. To “create in us a clean heart.” To “restore us,” as David sings, “to the joy of salvation.” To “deliver us from bloodshed,” that “our tongues might sing of your deliverance.”

-You see, when someone else crosses you tonight, you are not only being claimed from something, but for someone. You are not merely a reanimated corpse, not merely un-dead. You are snatched from the chaos of sin and death that we humans have created, and from that void and darkness, God promises to make a new thing. When that hand smudges dirt on your forehead, it is the very hand of Jesus Christ, reaching through our muddy thoughts into the very depth of our souls, shaping in us a new heart, a heart that is capable of grace, truth, and love. A heart that is not hard and full of walls. But a heart that is soft, full of roots and water, where humility, beauty, and wonder can take seed and flourish.

-Receiving a new heart is not easy work. As David sings in the Psalm, his bones must be crushed, his body broken, before he can learn to sing. His self-deception must be utterly dismantled. Things will get dirty. When God sets out to make us new, God will do what God must to make it happen. Being marked by the cross of Christ, we are joined with him in his death.

-But the Good News, brothers and sisters, is that we are also claimed and joined to Christ’s abundant life. Our sin is taken into his perfection, our violence is dissolved in His peace, our hearts beat with His lifeblood. We are joined in intimate and mystical union with Jesus, whose Spirit dwells and animates your hearts, whose body surrounds you tonight, in this gathered people. Union with Christ, whose flesh and blood will be our feast. Whose grace alone opens our lips, whose song is our song, whose joy is our hope, his love our promise. We may be walking dead. But we never walk alone.

-Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. Remember also that you are Christ’s, and by Christ’s Spirit, you are truly, fully alive. Amen.

A Collect for Transfiguration Sunday 2012

Beautiful God of radiant splendor,
The light of your face is terrifying,
Reducing all of our pretensions
Of knowing or naming your mystery
To humbled silence;
As you spoke with Moses and Elijah,
In burning bush,
In flaming chariot,
In cloud and fire upon the Mount of Transfiguration,
So speak to us today;
Help us believe again in the power of beauty,
The delight of enchantment,
And the promise of true glory,
Through the gift of the presence of your Son,
Whose face reveals your face,
Whose Word who makes possible the end of words,
Jesus Christ, our Savior and your Beloved,
Amen.

Cross-Bloggination: Q - Ideas for the Common Good

Apparently, my post "Take It and Tweet it" - which was really just me quoting the preeminent Keith Anderson! - continues its venture into self-discovery in the wild wilderness of the world-wide-web. Recently, Q: Ideas for the Common Good, has picked it up, which, to quote a friend means that "now your thoughts have been cast into the wide abyss of the new evangelicals." Cool. Thanks to Ben McNutt and the Faith&Leadership folks for pushing the article out of the nest, and to Q for sheltering it on its journey!

Collecting Manna: Poetry as a Means of Grace

I wonder today how much the clergy of today keep in mind the old medieval distinction between the Active and the Contemplative Life. How concerned are they in maintaining the equilibrium between them? When a pastor's soul is weary and confused and short-focused and out of adjustment from cares and distractions of the parish, (s)he can only find readjustment through the contemplation and influence of things that reach to the infinite and invisible.

One of these means is prayer. One of these means is literature. I do not mean just books, but the thing which distinguishes itself from the rest by its imagination, its beauty, its generalization and transcendence over the mere phenomenon of life. If any has within him the depth to which the deep of literature can call - I do not mean that he should be "literary" in the narrow sense - herein is a means of restoration which is efficacious as great music, or pictures, or the grandeur of Nature, or prayer are efficacious to a man whose soul is weary with labor.

Charles G. Osgood, Poetry as a Means of Grace (Princeton University Press, 1941), 10

Cross-Bloggination: A Dantean Lent

Starting in Lent, my esteemed cousin-in-law Jonathan Grunert and I will be reading through a canto or two per day of Dante's Inferno and Purgatorio. I'm incredibly excited, as Dante was and has always been a passion and deep love. We've also started a blog, appropriately titled "A Dantean Lent," where we'll be posting on the journey (I've included a link in my "Fellow Travelers" section on this blog). I've just written a post offering suggestions on helpful resources and background reading, and if anyone feels inclined to join us, let us know!

Sermon: "Running to Stand Still, or, 20 McNuggets at 30 is NOT a Good Idea"

"Running to Stand Still, or, 20 McNuggets at 30 is NOT a Good Idea"

Preached at House for All Sinners and Saints
Denver, Colorado
Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
12 February 2012

Texts: 2 Kings 5.1-14
Psalm 30
1 Corinthians 9.24-27
Mark 1.40-45

~

I see seven towers
but I only see one way out...
-"Running to Stand Still", U2

-As a runner, I’ve always loved today’s reading from Corinthians. Yet, as you get older, it’s amazing how a text can change for you. I know, I know. I’m only turning 30 next week. That’s not that old, not even for HFASS!

-But it is old, especially in runner years. So it’s one thing to hear Paul tell the Corinthians, “run in such a way as to win the prize” when you are 17, putting in 10 mile days with the cross country team, and able to wolf down 20 chicken nuggets without a second thought. It’s another to hear it with flat feet, two bad knees, and an extra ten years and ten pounds under your belt! When getting to a half mile is a good day for me. And scarfing 20 chicken nuggets definitely isn’t.

-So unlike in my “younger” days, when this passage provided endless inspiration out on the trails, for me today, it’s kind of, well, uninspiring. Paul talks about things like self-control, competing for an imperishable wreath, punishing my body and enslaving it.

-But when it’s your body that feels like its enslaving you; when it’s your feeble attempts at self-control that seem to endlessly control you; when a life of competition and comparison leads to loneliness and isolation instead of collaboration and community; and when that sought-after prize still seems to elude you in spite of your best efforts to “run in such a way as to win it;” well, that’s when I want to tell old Paul – bracket “St.” apparently – to take his running shoes and race directly to h-e-double hockey sticks.

-And yet…we keep on running, don’t we? And not just because we live in Colorado. But as much as we say we believe that there’s absolutely nothing we can do to earn God’s grace and love, as much as our tired bodies and our broken souls scream at us to stop the madness, we cannot help being gluttons for punishment. We know in our gut that the game is rigged. That no matter how much we train for the marathon, some skinny Kenyan dude is going to come out of nowhere and make everyone look foolish while setting a new world record. We know the competition for spiritual success or self-improvement is a faltering footrace, that grace points us elsewhere.

-But then, we hear an inspiring sermon. Read a motivational blog or tweet. Experience a fleeting moment of success. Discover a new diet plan, or a new church. After years of despair about faith, we find progressive politics, or radical religion. Someone challenges us to get our lives back together. And then, suddenly, we’re back on the treadmill, training away, running after that promised carrot of glory dangled by our own self-delusion - and a ready array of promised guarantees from the capitalistic and Christian industrial complex.

-And we always start out with such high hopes, don’t we? Some of you may remember that it’s February. Which means that, just a few weeks ago, we may have made New Year’s resolutions. Remember those? How’s that going for you exactly? I was cruising...until I wasn’t. But thank God, Lent’s right around the corner, right?

-Maybe for you the race looks more "spiritual." Maybe it’s something you’ve been working on your whole life. Maybe it’s that deep, dark, completely flawed personality issue, that foible or secret fault, that you know is destroying you, and yet, you are completely unable to destroy. Like the Leper in today’s Gospel, maybe you were touched by Jesus. And then Jesus gave you a week of sobriety. Enabled you to stop lying about money. Took away your anger, and gave you kindness towards your enemies - or your co-worker, spouse or partner. Helped you stop talking so darn much…or gave you the courage to speak up.

-At least for a week or so. And then, we’re right back to measuring ourselves by our self-made images of success. The treadmill is whirring away, the headphones are back in our ears. We tell Christ, “thanks for the pit-stop. I think I can take it from here.”

-In many ways, we are all like the Leper Guy from today’s Gospel reading. We come to Jesus in an hour of desperate need, begging to be healed. We beg with the right words: “if you choose, you can make me clean.” If we’re lucky, we may even experience some form of healing! And then, as soon as Jesus sternly commands us to do something – or in this case, nothing! - well, like Leper Guy, we fail miserably. If this guy’s healing is the starting pistol of the race of faithful obedience, dude basically takes a few steps, pulls up a deck chair, cracks open a bottle of beer, and watches the rest of the runners go by from the sidelines, yelling, “see ya’ suckers!” He doesn’t even try to obey Jesus. He starts up his own race, which is, in fact, no race at all. Definitely not the nothing that constitutes the race to which Jesus calls him.

-His own race looks like self-promotion, like Leper Guy doing what he wants, “proclaiming freely” about his good fortune to anyone who will listen. And as a result, we are told, Jesus can no longer openly enter a town – any town! – but has to resort to roughing it out in the wilderness. Ironically, the quarantined, isolated leper thanks Jesus by exchanging places with him in what the text calls a “lonely place.” We are no different when, disregarding Jesus’ command, we relegate him to the margins of our lives in favor of our own efforts. And then it’s back to struggle, self-loathing, and the faltering foot-race of self-improvement. Then we’re back, with Jesus, in the lonely place of despair.

-But here’s the thing, my dear saintly sinners. This is no shock to Jesus. Christ does not call us because he thinks we are going to be all-stars. Christ knows we run on two bum knees and two flat feet, knows that at the first opportunity, we’ll turn tail and run. Away from him, and towards perishable crowns of our own imagining.

-And yet, even knowing this, Christ has compassion on us. Christ reaches out and touches us, Christ tells us “BE CLEAN” - even though, even WHEN, Christ knows that within minutes, we are going to fall flat on our faces. Christ sees us in our leprosy - our wordiness, our anger, our laziness, our addiction - and when we fall on our knees before him, begging for mercy and compassion, Christ does not merely touch us. Like my friend TJ, who during a championship high school cross country meet, found me broken-footed and face-down in the mud, disgraced and unwilling to finish the final mile, Christ comes to us all, breaks the rules, crosses the barrier, and lifts us up. Pulls our face out of the muddy ground. Christ embraces us. Christ embraces YOU. He embraces me. Full on. Sets us on our feet again. And whispers in our ears, “be clean.”

-And though we keep talking freely and thus banish Christ to the lonely places, though we line up to race for glory again and again, Christ continues to admonish us, simply, “be clean.” It’s not just a one-time moment. It’s a command and a promise: “be clean.” Be what you are. You are embraced. You ARE mine. This is your new race. Becoming what you are in me.

-Nothing can change that. Nothing can separate us from that love. Nothing can take away that crown which has been given us - the crown of the love of God in Christ Jesus. We run the race, falling, stumbling, tripping, vommitting, failing. But now, we run, even at a crawl, towards the cross of Jesus, who was not afraid to fall into the mud and mire of our lonely places, that we might all be lifted up into his arms. And even in those miry, lonely places, Christ still awaits. Even our failure cannot keep people from coming out to him “from every quarter.” The more we try to run away from him, the more shocked we are to find Him running into us.

-And maybe that’s the kind of running Paul has in mind. Running in Christ. Running together. Running in freedom. Knowing that even our bold failures, like Leper Guy’s, can still be a free proclamation of the Good News of what Christ has done for us. That, set free in Christ, we may run fiercely, risk needing forgiveness, sinning boldly, but always, stumbling more boldly in the direction of the love of Christ Jesus. Running to stand still.

-Amen

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