Category Archives: Uncategorized

God’s Voice

Posted on by
1

Scripture Readings (1 Samuel 3, John 1:43-51) Epiphany 2, Year A

“You will see greater things than these.” Jesus tells his new disciples Nathanael in our Gospel reading this morning. Nathanael, truth be told, wasn’t expecting to see anything great at all, not least something great from somebody with as dubious an origin as Nazareth. His expectations are low. He doesn’t think he can be surprised by the quality of offering from this Jesus character. It sounds as if Nathanael was not expecting to hear from God. 

And it’s the same in our Old Testament lesson, “The Word of the Lord was rare in those days. Visions were not widespread.” I wonder, do we live in a time in which the Word of the Lord is rare? Do we expect to hear from God?

I wonder if we get confused or mishear God, too. The great prophet Samuel, who ushered in King David –  a man after God’s own heart! – didn’t recognize God’s voice when he called. Samuel’s mentor, the priest Eli, didn’t recognize God’s voice at first, either. They assumed it was just a bump in the night, less than something to be ignored, they assumed it was totally imagined, nothing at all. 

I wonder if we dismiss God’s voice. I wonder if we attribute the stirring of the Holy Spirit to be less than a bump or a coincidence, I wonder if we dismiss the call of God as indigestion or as totally imagined, nothing at all. 

What are we missing out on if we are dismissing God’s voice?

What are we suffering needlessly, because God has given us a way out but we are too focused on our expectations in order to listen to him? 

What difficulty might we avoid, what joy and peace might we have access to, what confidence and strength might we enjoy, if we were attuned to the voice of God?

In our Gospel reading, Nathanael does not immediately recognize God’s voice, either. When Jesus starts to reveal intimate details, Nathanael relents and realizes there might be more going on with this Jesus, that there might indeed be something good to come out of Nazareth. 

Even later in Samuel’s story, when he goes to anoint the future king David, David’s father Jesse thinks that God’s calling of David is so unlikely he doesn’t present this 8th son to Samuel. Can anything good come out of Bethlehem? Can anything good come out of Nazareth? What could God be about, calling people from these places, calling these types of people? Is that even God’s voice? Is this voice to be trusted? 

How do we know if a voice is God’s? How can we understand the call of God and follow it? How can we trust? 

One of the things that strikes me in the readings today is that all these people who are hearing from God involve other people in the call. Nobody is hearing God’s voice off by themselves and then acting on it alone. Samuel brings in his mentor, his priest, his father-figure Eli, to ask what to do and what’s going on.

 Is there someone in your life who you look up to, who you have experienced as wise? Maybe they’re somebody to sit with in learning and discerning God’s voice in your life. 

Both of these stories, too, show a sort of testing of spirits in different ways; God calls Samuel several times before he responds, and I wonder if you’ve experienced that, too. How God will put the same opportunity in your path a few times until you accept it. In the Gospel lesson, Nathanael hears about Jesus from Philip, he receives Philip’s testimony, but then he doubts, he famously wonders, “can anything good come out of Nazareth?” 

It’s okay to question, to wonder, to doubt. God can handle our uncertainty. God is big enough to receive our questioning, God loves us enough to hold space for our wondering. The important thing in doubt and questioning, though, is sincere inquiry – I sometimes see “doubt” as a shield people use to avoid tough questions or examining their own assumptions. God is big enough to hold our doubts, but it’s disingenuous to just leave him carrying all our baggage. 

God longs for relationship, longs so much to be near to us that he came to be a human in order to be as close to us as possible, to enter our experience, to understand us and love us well, so how might we respond well to that kind of gesture, that sort of call? 

In each of these narratives, we see a sense of community discernment, we see an airing of doubt, and then finally, we see a resolution, a surrender and submission, an openness and an attitude of humble listening on the part of the person called. 

So whether you have a call on your heart today, whether you wonder if you’re hearing strange voices or you believe you have a Word from the Lord, or perhaps you’re straining to hear anything at all, what we can surely all do to prepare us for God’s voice is to adopt open ears and hands and hearts, ready to listen and to humbly receive. 

When I was 16, I went to a summer camp for theology nerds. I’d always been the most zealous for church of my parents’ children, I served on the worship team and in the children’s Sunday School. I loved to read books far beyond my depth when it came to matters of faith and philosophy (I infamously brought Aristotle on a spring break trip to Florida). When I came home from this summer camp, a very small voice suggested I be a pastor. It was a strange voice and a weird thing to say, and those around me dismissed the epiphany, just like Eli when Samuel came to him at first. 

So I wanted to be a religion professor, and that felt much more acceptable to me and to those around me – I wouldn’t actually be traversing that ground of being a woman in a world that had been ruled by men for millenia – though of course academia isn’t that much better! Near the end of my time in college, that voice came again. It reminded me how much joy I’d felt when mentoring young women in my sorority, and how it was the relationships and interactions that fueled me more than reading and regurgitating books. 

I still wasn’t sure about this voice, and thought maybe it meant I should be a college chaplain. That didn’t sound nearly so scary as being some kind of parish priest. But brothers and sisters, I remember the night I laid in my bed, much like Samuel, and the thought was placed in my head, “You will be a priest.” A few weeks after that, a dear mentor of mine wondered aloud to me whether my call was to blow hot air about women in ministry – which was my desired academic focus – or to just go be one. 

God’s call will keep coming, in different times and places and tones and harmonies, until each of us responds. This is true in our individual lives as well as our call as a worshiping community, and as a city, a nation, and a world. 

Openness, brothers and sisters. Being open to God’s voice sounding or looking different than we expected. Allowing our community to help form and inform us about how God is showing up. Allowing ourselves to be challenged and to re-examine our conceptions, which is itself humility. 

So this morning I leave you with the challenge and charge, especially as we celebrate this season of Epiphany, of revelations and of the flooding in of light to our lives: may we be open to the Holy Spirit’s call, may we be open-handed in our response, may God give us courage to humbly submit to his gracious will. 

Amen. 

Advent 4: Where Does God Choose to Dwell?

Posted on by
1

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16

Luke 1:26-38

Where does God dwell? Does it seem like a trick question? You’ve got a hint built in this morning, since it’s Christmas Eve, and all the classic carols are floating around in your head. The name Immanuel itself means “God with us.” We know God came to dwell, to live, with us, it’s the whole “reason for the season”! But our Scripture lessons this morning wink at us, elbow us, invite us to ponder what it means for God to dwell with us in a different way. Like all Scripture, these passages reveal something to us about who God is and how he chooses to be with us. 

In the Old Testament lesson, David wants to build a temple for God, since God had no dwelling place in the time of David. As the passage from 2nd Samuel tells us this morning, God was living in a tent. And then when we get to the Gospel lesson, we see this striking interaction between Mary and the archangel Gabriel, as  he proclaims to the first human that the time for God to dwell with humanity, truly be one with us, had arrived. 

So they’re both about where God lives, where God chooses to settle his presence. That’s important stuff. But I wonder too about the interaction between God and humanity, or in these cases God and each individual, when it comes down to his choosing where to dwell, where to live.

I see David trying to repay God, to respond to God’s grace and goodness by evening the score, offering to God a great gift – a place to dwell – a grand palace on earth – and it might be a symbol of his gratitude, but it also might be a way to relieve the tension of inequity in the relationship between them. A way for David to have some power, to bring his own strengths to bear to not feel so vulnerable and so indebted to God. 

We know that God graciously receives gifts and thanksgivings, indeed, he does not want sacrifice or to take he-goats out of our pens as the psalms say, but to give our glory and thanksgiving to the Most High God.

Let’s look a bit closer at what God sees in the heart of David, revealed in the lesson we read this morning.  I think what we’ll find is that God doesn’t see sincerity of spirit but instead in this case, God finds David is trying to even the score. It’s just a hunch, but the responses God gives aren’t the ones I’d expect if it was a freely given gift of gratitude and thanksgiving.  It seems like David is grasping for something, as if he wants to make things more equal again between himself and God.

“Are you the one to build me a house”? God says “Did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel saying ‘why have you not built me a house of cedar?” Thus, remind my servant David, “I took you from the pasture. I have cut off your enemies. I will make you a great name. I will appoint a place for my people. I will give you rest. I will make you a house.” God is declaring that he is the actor. The one who does things, builds, things, decides things. There isn’t a parity in this relationship, there never ever will be. There is no delusion that humanity has anything to offer God, not really. It is all out of God’s grace and goodness. Do not be misled, David, you do not hold the keys of this covenant. This is not really a two-sided covenant. I, God, walked through the sacrifices for BOTH SIDES of the covenant with your forefather Abraham. I am the one in charge and don’t forget it. 

So there’s this outpouring of power, this reorientation – and it’s not the only one that happens with David, but this is the one about God’s dwelling and presence with humanity. We see this theme over and over throughout the story of David. It is the burden and fault and sin and problem of humanity to take power and twist it into something that we can use to try to control and manipulate God. 

“Let me build you a place. Let me tell you where to be and let me choose what your house will look like, let me take care of you.” David says.

God reorients David’s desire to place God in a temple box, to determine where God will dwell and where his spirit will reside, and then, paired with that reading, we hear in our Gospel lesson from Luke where it is that God decides to reside, where it is that God chooses to dwell when he comes to be in the midst of his people.

He chooses a young woman, an illiterate, though clearly faithful, girl on the cusp of womanhood. He chooses a country girl, no one accomplished or well-heeled or elegantly outfitted. The message, brothers and sisters, is that God looks at the heart, God knows what your heart is and what my heart is – indeed, to him all hearts are open, all desires known and from him – we pray with trembling – no secrets are hid. 

When God comes to dwell among his creation, he does not choose a palace of stone or a grand building of sumptuous decoration, he does not require elaborate sacrifices or lengthy and learned prayers. He chooses sincerity. He lifts up the humble and lowly. He exalts the poor and hungry and sick and suffering. He comforts those who are afflicted. Mary herself tells us this in her Magnificat, a prayer put on the lips of our blessed virgin, spoken in the tradition of prophetic songs of old. 

How easy it could have been for Mary to exalt herself. How reasonably we can imagine that she could have taken the reins and created a whole movement around herself. Can you imagine how David would have responded to Gabriel’s news? We are all so talented at manipulating power to fit our needs and desires. We can take news and information and permission and we can form it up to become very cushy for ourselves indeed.

But the very point, of course, brothers and sisters, is that Mary doesn’t do this. And that’s why God chose her. He knew her heart before he sent Gabriel to give her this news, and God chose not a building in which to dwell, but in our very hearts. He makes room for himself in each of our lives, and then it is a cooperative adventure, of our cleaning out in companionship with him, making room in our hearts as the christmas carol says, following, we pray, in the example of the blessed virgin Mary, that our hearts would prepare him room. 

God chooses us first, God chooses where to dwell, God places himself where he wants to be. We cannot hope to stand against his plans, or to strong arm him in to whatever machinations we may devise, there is absolutely no outsmarting God. But we also know that God has chosen us and wishes so desperately to be the inhabitant of our hearts, the desire of our days and nights, the consuming fire that lights our lives. 

We are called today as Gabriel brings the good news of great joy for all people, to make room in our hearts for God’s dwelling, to allow our lives to be upset even as much as a country girl from Bethlehem does, to surrender our grasping for control and power and plans, and instead, to rest in the goodness and provision of our Lord who comes to be with us for his love. Amen. 

Overwhelmed

Posted on by
Reply

One bridge further (All Saints Sermon here; yesterday’s post which rides on the sermon’s coattails, Bodies Talk here, today completes the spontaneous trilogy):

Yesterday I preached in school chapel to the first through seventh graders, and my assigned text was the story of David and Goliath. Gosh, it’s a great story, and “Goliath” is a descriptive and evocative word in our parlance today because of the origin story. So it’s a real, real familiar story. Especially to kids who have been in a Christian school their whole lives (or who have lived in the south, Bible-story-soaked area it is).

As I turned the story over in my head, wondering on a way in that wasn’t just telling the same thing again (nothing wrong with that!), an application slapped me upside the head.

My back’s been hurting this week, and it feels a bit overwhelming at times. Specifically when I try to move. When this mother-of-three can be still, it’s okay, I don’t notice much pain, and I can focus on whatever I’m doing. But have I mentioned that my “three” are boys in first grade, Pre-k 4, and 18 months old? Ahh yes. There’s not much stillness, cleanliness, or silence in our home (and praise God for it!). So my bodily reality has felt a little overwhelming.

Is there anything in your life that feels overwhelming? Anything that looms so large you can’t see around it? Maybe it’s so big it just blocks the sun right out. Something at work. Bills coming due. A wedge between you and a loved one. Health concerns. The truth is, we’re all facing down Goliath-sized situations.

But what does God show us about himself in the story of David and Goliath? God is big enough to defeat any insurmountable obstacle. God will protect and bring victory. It may not look like we expect (a slingshot), and it may not have the outcome we assume (a switch in the royal line), but God will look out for us, for anyone, who calls on him for help in the midst of problems and worries and situations that feel just too big.

Feast of the Transfiguration

Posted on by
Reply

Scripture

Have you ever tried to take something away from a toddler? Phew. Jacob is getting old enough to be aware of his desires and to express them with much zeal, and if he offers a book to me but he doesn’t want me to actually take it from his hands, he will throw himself on the floor, face to the ground, and sob. He hardly speaks 3 words, but how he feels about something being forcibly removed from him is abundantly clear. 

I wonder how we feel when something is forcibly removed from us. We probably feel about the same as Jacob does, though we express it differently. When our health or physical able-ness drains away bit by bit, or is ripped out from under us in one fell swoop, when the community or relationships that moored our lives drop out at the bottom, when reality is so changed that we hardly have words for the new world that we are shunted into – we might be mad, we might be sad, we might feel hollowed out and dry-mouthed and as if we are strangers, in a strange new land. 

I don’t believe that God rips our health from our hands, or that God is the one who drags us away from the life we love, or that God is responsible for the changes of our circumstances. He isn’t the one to blame when cancer strikes or when divorce happens or when addiction takes hold. These are evil things that prowl at our doors and claw into our homes because of the brokenness of this world. These are sad facts of what reality is in this fallen life. 

And the real problem is denying their power over us. I don’t really need to tell you this – you have seen in your own life the way that abuse distorts a human heart. You have witnessed with your own eyes the way that cancer and terminal illness wastes away precious people. You know the destruction that death and dissension and denial itself wreaks on us. We know that the battle is really within us. That evil isn’t just all around, but that the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. And this battle can often feel like it is against our very selves; that the grief we feel consumes us, that the anger wells inside of us without end, that the pride and the despair and the wrongs done to us and the righteous indignation and the terror of insecurity isn’t just something to fight against, but is knit into our very souls. 

And that’s what makes it so hard to let go of. The anger is not us, it is an emotion that passes. The grief is not us, it is a wound that can heal. The despair and the righteous indignation are blankets to protect us from the searing heat of life. The terror of insecurity is our signal that we’ve put our eggs in the wrong basket. So we cling to these things because they at least feel better than what we fear might happen or might be required of us if we were to let them go. These things, our grief, our anger, our despair, in a way, they keep us safe, the hem us in by making things stay the same, by making us stuck. If we are planted in anger, we do not need to change. If we are in a siege against insecurity, we cannot possibly move outside the walls. If we are sleeping in our grief, we need not be roused to another unpredictable day. And yet, what kind of life is that?

See, God doesn’t take our grief out of our hands, we must offer it to him in order to transform it. He won’t forcibly remove the sins we hold dear, even though he is God, and he could do it if he wanted to. 

I wonder whether one of the reasons he doesn’t do that is because, just like a toddler, if it’s taken from us, we cling to it all the more, we refuse all the more to release its power over us. If we don’t recognize in ourselves that we need to let go, give it up, nothing God can do will change our minds. 

We must always ask for a soft heart, a heart of flesh, in order to surrender those demons; we can’t even do that without God’s help. We must ask to be released from them. And that’s exactly what happens in the passage after the Transfiguration in Luke.

Hear the Word of God: “On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. And behold, a man from the crowd cried out, ‘Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only child. And behold, a spirit seizes him, and he suddenly cries out. It convulses him so that he foams at the mouth, and shatters him, and will hardly leave him.’” (Luke 9:37-39) 

This man offers up the suffering of his son. He begs on his behalf for deliverance. Somehow, physical illnesses seem easier to give over to God than the griefs in our hearts. But the anger that eats us up and the denial that corrodes our minds is no less fatal than diseases that afflict the body. I wonder if that’s why there are so many stories of Jesus healing people of demons and of mental illnesses Scripture – those internal battles are important to God, just as much as our flesh and our bones. 

So I believe it is not at all a coincidence that the story immediately following today’s Gospel lesson on the Transfiguration is a story of healing a boy’s spirit and mind. 

In the Transfiguration, we learn that God reveals new facets of himself to us all the time, and we see that we are always changed by close encounters with the divine — just like Moses in the Old Testament lesson. In prayer, we offer up bits of ourselves, and God takes whatever it is we deign to offer him and he transforms it before he gives it back to us.

So in today’s passage, Jesus goes to the mountain to pray, and in his humanity, on our behalf, offers himself to God — we see this by looking, too, at the passage before where he speaks of his death, as well as the subject of the discussion between him, Elijah, and Moses.

All of this happens in front of Peter, James, and John, and then, God in Jesus gives back to us a revelation of his glory and he answers these men’s questions about who Jesus is by showing them Moses the redeemer, and Elijah the great prophet. Jesus himself the fulfillment of these promises, embodying and enacting the relationship between God and humanity in the confines of his very flesh. 

Jesus and his disciples go to pray, and what does it say that the disciples do? They’re weighed down with sleep, that sweet bliss of unconsciousness, right? I wonder if the same might be said for our desire to be asleep to, to deny, to not look at or acknowledge the wounds we cling to, and the pain we grip, and the grief we hold so close. What might it mean to be awake as we pray? 

How might God be revealed to us if we open our eyes wide in the presence of God, despite temptations to doze off to the truth of ourselves? What might we see if we are attentive to our internal surroundings, to our hearts, as we approach God’s presence? Scripture tells us that these beloved disciples were heavy with sleep, “but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory.” Not only that, but the were enveloped by a cloud, they heard a voice from the sky, they were struck silent by the experience. In a word, they were changed. 

My  beloved Brothers and Sisters, may we have the courage to offer ourselves to God, to be awakened to the truth of ourselves, to have hearts soft and malleable for the Great Potter, and to joyously await the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Amen. 

What does the Holy Spirit Sound Like?

Posted on by
Reply

This week, a very dear friend of mine died.

We’d met back in the summer of 2010 and spent many long summer nights in conversation; he and his wife came to our wedding, he took us out for my thirtieth birthday. He could have been my grandfather, but he was also a dear, dear friend.

For almost the last month, he had been popping into my mind, “Oh, I must write to him!” I’d think. At first, I resolved to send a letter — I love stationery, and I have plenty of it, and it’s becoming a lost art, you know?

But the weeks wore on and I didn’t sit down to pen my planned missive. The thought popped into my head: “just send him an email, it’s something, it’s better than nothing, he’d love to hear from you.” So I resolved to send an email. I’d sit down at my laptop and type something out.

And another week went by.

Still, he pulled at the corners of my mind. So one night while I nursed my toddler to sleep, I tapped out an email on my phone. Subject: “Hello from the Deep South!”

A few days later, I hadn’t heard back, which was not at all like him. I went so far as to look through my sent folder — no copy. Somewhere my email had gotten lost between my toddler’s bed and my friend’s inbox.

I persevered (this was a lot of effort, looking back!). I re-wrote the email another night while nursing again. This time it got through and he answered within 24 hours, as was his wont.

And then, 72 hours after that, he was dead (a post-op pulmonary embolism).

You can imagine how terribly grateful I am that I listened to that little niggling voice and persevered through demanding children and disappearing email drafts. The peace I am now enjoying in grief is so, so much better than the empty grief that regret would have borne (which thing I’ve also experienced in previous deaths).

What does the Holy Spirit sound like? How do we know when we’re being poked by God? When is the prodding providential?

Well, part of this is what spiritual direction teaches us; listening with others together, whether it’s in a group or one-on-one, to how God most often talks, getting to know God’s voice. As we grow in familiarity with the sounds and tone and cadence and humor of the Lord, and as we practice responding to those spiritual sounds, the resonance grows louder in our lives, I’ve found. Our response time dwindles as we recognize God’s movement and begin even to dance with this partner, not just taking instructions as if we are in an electric slide, but joining a waltz with this divine partner leading our every step.