A Series of Uncaffeinated Events...

 In a Series of Uncaffeinated Events this morning, I not only managed to pour the milk directly into the jar of instant coffee crystals, but also managed to cook half a container of chocolate frosting in the microwave for as long as I normally warm up my coffee (90 seconds instead of 15-20 seconds). The resulting effect an hour later is that I basically made homemade tootsie rolls... not bad...

I decided to fill the rest of the (half-empty) jar of instant coffee with water, shook it up, and put it in the fridge as 'coffee concentrate'... also not too bad...

How's your morning going?

Here's to All the Clergy Mamas

Here's to all the Clergy Mamas

who not only
planned, preached, and led
Lent, Holy Week, and Easter

but also, more than likely,
planned and prepared
all the holiday celebrations
at home, too:

the Easter dinner and
the Easter outfits and
the Easter egg hunts and
the Easter baskets and
the Easter bunny 'magic'
(like moms usually do)

and,
who likely still did all
the cooking, cleaning and parenting
the laundry and dishes
the shopping and scheduling
and maybe even
tending a sick child or two
(like they usually do)

throughout these long days
of Lent, Holy Week, and Easter

it's quite similar,
after all,
no matter the season
or the holiday

It's well known by now
that Clergy Women
can do anything and everything
that Clergy Men can do

even at half their pay
even with half the respect
even when needing
to be their own secretaries
even with the full weight
of the housework at home, too.

The world seems to get a bit better
with each generation
a bit more equitable
and surely some notable exceptions
here and there,
as some will boast;
but on the whole,
we're not there yet...

So here's to the Clergy Mamas
who do all that they do

Christ has died, Christ is risen
once again and every year

And may you, Clergy Mamas,
when the holiday frenzy is over
find a moment
of rest.

(c)2024 Le Anne Clausen de Montes

Rev. Le Anne Clausen de Montes is a pastor, parent, poet, and creator of Clergy Mamas International and Clergy Parents of Children with Special Needs. She has served congregations in the PC(USA), UCC, ELCA and UMC and is active in ecumenical and interfaith cooperation through the Iowa Faith Leadership Network and Center for Faith and Peacemaking. Prior to seminary and parenting, she was an international human rights worker who helped to investigate the Abu Ghraib scandal; trained hundreds of international volunteers for human rights documentation and reporting and nonviolent direct intervention; and was an assistant program developer for the first Arabic-speaking women's crisis center in the Middle East. During seminary, she was a Prisoner of Conscience in a maximum-security federal facility for her nonviolent protest of the use of torture. She continues to be active in multiple efforts to promote equity and inclusion at home in the North Iowa area of the United States.

The Gift of Christmas

Isaiah 9:2-7, Psalm 96, Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-20

On the Occasion of Christmas Eve, which we celebrated at our friends and neighbors, Peoples' United Methodist Church, after evacuating our worship space due to heavy flood damage.

Friends, this is the Christmas in our church that even the youngest children of our congregation will probably talk about with their grandchildren, years from now.

I want to venture a story with you tonight, that let's say, Mary and Joseph were looking forward to celebrating the birth of their first child in their own home, in familiar surroundings.  Sure, the news of Jesus' coming had been unexpected, but let's say that like all good parents, they did their best to prepare for the new baby.  Joseph was a carpenter and they were a newlywed couple, so we could safely assume the house was probably newly built and filled with well-crafted furnishings, made just for them and their new family.  I would even guess that Jesus had a fine little wooden crib waiting for him, up in their home in the Galilee.  And Mary had probably spent the past several months preparing all sorts of baby clothes and blankets and diapers, and anything else you might need for a first-century nursery.

Dining at home with family and friends, typical first-century home.
Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PikiWiki_Israel_18496_Nazareth_Village.jpg

Photos of re-enacted first-century household life: dining and making textiles.
Source: http://www.100words.ca/?m=201211&paged=2

In such familiar surroundings, I imagine that these expectant parents also thought their folks would come over to bring them casseroles, keep the house tidy and help change diapers those first few days.  Maybe they thought the first people to welcome their new baby and hold him would be Grandma and Grandpa, or maybe Aunt Elizabeth and newborn cousin John.  

Now imagine all that, nursery prepared and all--that right as you were getting ready to celebrate the birth of this child--something BIG happens, that is unavoidable, and you have to leave your home behind.

Where would they go?  And how would they celebrate the birth of that child?

I am going to guess that Mary and Joseph never imagined they would share the birth of their son with sheep and goats, cattle and donkeys, or having a bunch of shepherds fresh out of the fields, or strange travelers from a foreign country showing up, not even with casseroles, but instead with gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  (That is, air freshener and embalming spices, but at least the cash might come in handy?)

And I imagine that even though they had to travel to Bethlehem for this census, that they thought they'd at least be going home relatively soon, say, maybe a few weeks.  At any rate, there's just not that much stuff you can pack up and put on the back of a donkey along with mother and child.  So the news that Herod was coming for them and they would have to flee Egypt for a couple of YEARS, must have really been...well, beyond words.  So much for celebrating a birth as planned!

Well, I'm also going to venture that for those of us who are gathered here tonight, we can kind of relate.

We can relate, right?  A beautiful new church, halls all decked, tree all trimmed, banners up, choir tuned and ready, to celebrate the birth of Jesus--and then something BIG happens.

And yet, most important of all, despite all the disrupted plans and scrambling to make do, then and now--the most important thing to remember in the midst of our human worries, is this:  the gift, the greatest gift, has still been given to us.  God gave us his Son, Jesus Christ, to teach us how to love one another.  It was Jesus that brought together such an unexpected collection of people together in an unexpected place.  And the unusual circumstances and the enormous obstacles they faced together, and the reason for which they did so--only add to the richness of the story of this first Christmas that we tell over and over again, to our children and our children's children.

We might feel we're having a manger experience of our own tonight, but really, we are in the finest room in the inn--anywhere in town!  Here we are surrounded by warmth and comfort, and banners, and advent wreaths, and inside decked halls and there's a place for us, and for the kids, and for the choir, and all of us can celebrate this birth of the Christ child together.  And together, we can say the words of Isaiah, that:

A child has been born for us, a son given to us...and he is named Wonderful Counselor...Prince of Peace.

We have been given so rich a gift this Christmas.  We are surrounded by family and friends and neighbors.  We have been given such extravagant hospitality from our dear friends here at Peoples' Church.  We've been given willing and dedicated volunteers to help make everything better, even in the face of many challenges.  Certainly these last few weeks we've walked in darkness, but we have also seen a great light.

Sure, this Christmas isn't like what we'd planned, but it is still beautiful, and meaningful, perhaps even more meaningful, than if everything had gone according to plan.  And we're not alone; we're with each other, and we're also here among our friends.  And above all, God is with us--Emmanuel; bringing hope, joy, love, and peace to us and to all the world.  May we, like Mary, in the midst of all this excitement and chaos, may we treasure these things in our hearts, on this Christmas night, and always.  Amen.

Does God Get Angry?

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28; Psalm 14:1-7; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10

Friends, last week we talked about how some of the Scriptures we’re reading right now don’t really sound like a gentle, loving kind of God we probably prefer to think of, and we continue to get some of that this week.  So I’d like us to continue to explore what it is that actually might make God angry, as well as perhaps some things which don’t, and what happens afterwards.

When does God get angry?

Jeremiah tells us that God gets angry when people seem to be too good at doing evil and don’t seem to know how to do good.  When God talks about what it’s like when God’s angry--we hear about how the world grows silent and trembles with fear.  After all, the rest of creation knows God and what God is capable of doing.  When I read the description there of just how angry God is--no light, birds fleeing, land waste and void--I’ll admit:I kind of hear that western music that they always play right before the shootout.  God is sort of fantasizing about some really dramatic stuff here, because God is angry.

But even though God is angry, God hasn’t cut God’s people off.  They’re still God’s children, whom God calls, “my people.”  And so to help us understand a little better, let’s talk about parentalisms:  those things which parents say when they are really fed up with their kids.  Such as, “oh, you think this is angry?  You haven’t even seen angry…”  The Jeremiah passage reminds me a lot of that.  Or, can you imagine God, the parent, with the whole world in the back seat, bickering and squabbling and picking on each other and whining, and finally God saying, “Don’t make me pull this car over and come back there!”  

Have you ever asked yourself, as a parent or as a child, what exactly was going to happen if the car did get pulled over?  Did you try to find out?  Or did you just get the picture that it was time to knock it off?

Maybe God isn’t literally going to pull the car over.  However, like any parent knows, there are times when you have got to step in and get the kids’ attention before they really get hurt.  And God knows that if they keep going down the road they are going, they are indeed going to get seriously hurt.

Seriously: Don’t Eat People

So, what exactly makes God angry?  Well, the Psalm tells us God is angry when people become corrupt, that the evildoers are the ones who “eat up my people like they eat bread,” who exploit the poor and vulnerable.  If you’re going to get where you’re going by making life more miserable for those below you, then you should know that God is providing refuge for them, and your plans are in trouble.

I wonder if you’ve heard it said that if you took a knife and literally cut out everything the Bible had to say about something like healthy sexuality, or gay people, you wouldn’t notice the difference.  But if you tried to cut out everything the Bible had to say about our responsibility to care for the poor and vulnerable, the whole thing would fall apart.  Treating those who have less power and material wealth than ourselves with respect and dignity is at the very core of our faith.  So often, the world entices us to do otherwise, and to treat them like a nuisance, or simply forget them.

And wouldn’t that seem easier?  Even with the Gospel story:  If you had 100 sheep, and lost one, a 99% retention rate is still pretty good, like an A+, right?  Even losing just one coin out of ten, that’s still 90%, like an A-, right?  Ah, if only it were so easy, and the stakes weren’t so high.

More Joy In Heaven

The Gospel goes on to say that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, rather than 99 righteous ones who need no repentance.  There’s a little bit of a sarcastic undercurrent there, since Jesus is responding to people criticizing him for eating with tax collectors and sinners, when a “good” religious person would know how awful they were and wouldn’t associate with them.  In criticizing, they’re demonstrating how very self-righteous they are.  Surely, they themselves don’t need to repent for anything.  But God isn’t that excited about such self-righteous people.  Besides, they’re really rather boring.

Re-calculating...

It’s hard for many of us to admit when we’re lost--literally or figuratively.  Literally speaking, how many of you have a GPS?  How many of you disagree with the GPS and then get irritated when it sits there and says, ‘reCALCulating, reCALCulating….’  How many of you just turn it off?  My mom is one of those people, who has no idea where the thing is taking her and everytime she comes out to visit, she gets within five miles of the house, gets frustrated, and turns it off.  Has no idea where she is or how to describe where she is, and I get to go out in the middle of the night (and it always is, by that point) go find her, and get her back to the house, where the grandkids are eagerly waiting.

When we get lost, when we miss the right turn, God re-calculates.

It’s hard to admit we’re lost in other ways too.  As you may have seen, the local chapter of Al-Anon which met in our building recently disbanded.  In the weeks since, I’ve had so many conversations with families who feel very lost, even helpless and hopeless, as they try to find resources to help their loved one struggling with an addiction.  And certainly part of the difficulty for many of the families as they try to find help, is not wanting anyone else to know--they’re worried what their friends will think, or maybe even worried about their insurance.  I admit I wasn’t equipped with a lot of knowledge about what resources were around and where to direct folks when they started coming to ask for direction.  But I’m learning, along with our other local clergy, and hopefully we can figure out how to offer folks more than a seeming dead-end.

God Understands Loss

There is so much pain in these families that I’ve met over the past few weeks.  And yet it helps to remember, God knows pain.  God even knows losing a child due to all the violence and evil in this world.  When God sees us hurting, or even our children hurting, even if it’s because of our own wrong turns, God hurts with us.  And God does not abandon us to our own devices, even when we are sure we can trust only ourselves.  God’s depth of love and mercy and grace surpasses anything we can imagine.  Indeed, God’s anger lasts for a night, but God’s steadfast love is forever.  [Now that is some pretty Amazing Grace].

A Real Rascal

Some people do get lost, and don’t realize it, until they are found--and that’s what’s going on in the letter to Timothy.  Paul, who is instructing Timothy in Christian life and leadership, admits that he once was a real rascal--a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence.  We might forget that Paul was formerly Saul, a man who was actually lauded for his harsh persecution of the early Christians, including holding everyone’s cloaks as they attacked and stoned Stephen to death.  This is a man with some real blood on his hands.  He is willing to admit he is the foremost of sinners, since he was working so hard to squelch the followers of Jesus--until he had his Damascus Road incident, literally knocked off his donkey by a vision of Jesus speaking to him, became blinded, and repented, and then was given a new role in life, as Paul, who would go on through his letters and teachings to build and support the new Christian movement and take it much further than any other person had before.  

Cause for Celebration

God got angry enough with Paul to stop him in his tracks, but God also didn’t get rid of Paul.  God had a purpose for Paul, and the rest is history.  That is cause for celebration.  When people we’d rather write off as total losers are found, that is cause for celebration.  When we cease our self-righteousness and join the celebration, that is cause for rejoicing.  And when we are found, over and over again, whether we realize when we’ve been lost or not, that too, is cause for rejoicing.  Thanks be to God!

Prayers This Week:

For all who are recovering from surgery

For all who are in hospice care

For all wrestling with chemical dependency, and those who love them

For all affected by flooding

For our Presbytery during this visioning process, grant wisdom and clarity of purpose

For a true peace in Syria

For all who wrestle with hunger and homelessness, that they not be forgotten

Called to Action, and Renewal

Jeremiah 1:4-10, Psalm 71:1-6, Luke 13:10-17

In our scriptures today we hear of Jeremiah, who is anxious about being called as a prophet because he’s only a boy.  Yet God affirms his gifts for this line of work, and he’s going to need that affirmation, because being a prophet is not an easy job.

And we know it’s not an easy job because in this week’s Gospel, Jesus, that prophet of prophets, gets into loads of trouble with the religious authorities for healing a woman on the Sabbath.

So...what exactly is the Sabbath, and why is it such an issue?

The Sabbath comes from the word ‘seven,’ as in, ‘on the seventh day, God rested.’  It’s one of the 10 commandments, to remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy.  Everyone in the Jewish tradition was supposed to rest on the Sabbath.  You could not plow fields or harvest or grind grain or fix your roof or any number of other tasks, especially if they were your means of business.

You were also to make sure you gave any employees or servants you have an opportunity to rest and spend time with their families, and you were to ensure that your livestock, such as your donkey or oxen, had time to rest from their labors.  This was to help prevent the exploitation of workers or other vulnerable people by the ‘big bosses,’ so to speak, and certainly, people who did hard physical labor six days a week, would need a day of rest!

Observing the Sabbath was so important that it carried some heavy penalties--including the punishment of death for violating the command to rest.  You could act to save a life, but even the dead had to be buried either before or after the Sabbath day--after the crucifixion on Good Friday, Jesus had to be buried before sunset, or have his body left up on the cross until Sunday morning.  It will not surprise you to learn that violating the Sabbath was one of the reasons the religious authorities wanted Jesus crucified.

What does Sabbath look like today?

For some folks, Sabbath looks much the same as it did in ages past.  In modern-day Israel, the most conservative groups of Jews block off streets to vehicle traffic and everyone walks everywhere--perhaps to the park, or more especially to the synagogue, and nothing else is open in the conservative neighborhoods.  When I lived there I found it tough if I ran out of milk or needed a taxi, but otherwise it was really quite...peaceful.

Much of the 20th century labor movement recognizes the Sabbath--the need for at least one day of rest, giving us our weekend, and limits on the hours many employees in physically demanding jobs may work.  In fact, the concept of the Sabbath gave us our first Sunday Schools in this country, in the early 20th century, primarily to give child laborers a day of rest from the sweatshops by offering large group religious instruction.

In our 24/7 world, perhaps it is now harder than ever to observe a full 24 hour day of rest.

After, all, how many of us, thanks to technology, can be reached by our workplace any time of day or night--or weekend? How many of us may never feel like we’re truly away from work--even on vacation? How many of us feel anxious if we don’t check our work email even when we’re at home with our families?  How many of us wonder if we’ll still be employed if we don’t answer emails, texts or other messages immediately?

I have a pastoral colleague who has perhaps more guts than I do, and in the signature line of her email, writes, “I ordinarily do not answer emails on Saturdays and Mondays.”  Therefore, everyone with whom she emails knows her policy well in advance.  After all, if it’s a true pastoral emergency, she’ll probably get a phone call.  She has found it important in an active ministry to ensure that the time she spends with family, is time when her full attention is given to her family.  Other pastors are starting to take note.

After all, religious leaders are supposed to lead by example, to demonstrate what Sabbath truly is, and how to keep it holy.  No doubt the religious leaders challenging Jesus thought that was exactly what they were doing--stopping this radical sinner in his tracks.  But Jesus, the true leader, demonstrated the true intent of Sabbath.  He was teaching in the synagogues, as any good rabbi would do on the Sabbath; and folks were listening, as any good folks would do.  And then he turned everything they knew upside down.

So, what is lawful on the Sabbath?

There’s a long list of things that are forbidden on the Sabbath, but by comparison, the list of things that are good to do is relatively simple.  Sabbath is a time to rest, beginning at sundown the day before.  It’s time to get out for a walk and take the long way home.  It’s time to reconnect with your family.  You light the candles, put on the good china, have a simple but fulfilling meal, and pray together, like doing devotions at the dinner table.  

It’s also time to reconnect with your significant other.  Put mildly enough, some Sabbath time needs to be spent in the bedroom.  You have six other days to be too tired, have a headache, or be arguing with your partner.

Sabbath starts and ends with worship.  Traditionally, you head to synagogue twice, once in the evening and once the next day, for worship and study of the Scriptures.  After all, perhaps you’ll be too busy the rest of the week to study them.

And to make all this possible, there is a Day of Preparation.  You clean the house and make the food ahead of time, so that it can be enjoyed with a minimum of effort, and the day can be truly a day off--traditionally speaking--for women as well as men.

*A detailed description of Shabbat in conservative Jewish households may be found at: http://www.jewfaq.org/shabbat.htm.

Not Just a Weekly Thing

So, that’s your regular weekly Sabbath.  But there are other kinds of Sabbaths, which are kind of big breaks from our lives of work.  Jewish people have larger, multi-day holidays which are classified as Sabbaths.  Some folks, particularly in academia, get seventh-year sabbaticals, taking a year off to travel, study, and get re-charged so they can return to the work of teaching and leadership, which can be rather draining.

And I would argue that it’s a Sabbath to be healed of a condition which has crippled you for eighteen years.  It’s significant that the healing in today’s Gospel is taking place in a synagogue, where the woman continues to come despite obviously great difficulty getting there.  I would also note the woman wasn’t even necessarily healed because of her level of faith, according to the Gospel text, but because Jesus saw her, and did the right thing--breaking the laws, but also fulfilling God’s intent.

God has called us to action, and action for good.  Sometimes, we need to break with human rules or convention in order to do good, to come to someone’s urgent aid.  But God has also called us to times of rest and renewal.

And that is the point of Sabbath, both big and small:  to have time for activities that bring rest,  re-newal, re-creation,  and re-juvenation (literally, “to make young again”).

So, what are you doing later today, on this Sabbath?  You here in the room have come to worship and praise God.  What will you do today to make yourself new, to make yourself feel young again, or to create within yourself or your family a new sense of well-being and wholeness?

Where will you walk?  Where will you find your drink of water?

Maybe this isn’t such a bad Sunday to think on these themes, when children prepare to go back to school and there is only one real week of summer vacation left.

I know for myself, August zoomed right by, with some seriously long days in the office, considering all that is needed to get ready for September, and maybe once all the lovely lawn concerts in our area ended, which had made it so appealing to make a picnic and take the kids, it seemed more pressing to tackle lengthy to-do lists.  Soon the workweeks, crammed with many tasks and needs, crept longer and longer.  I finally realized this week how just plain tired I was, and now I’m trying to practice what I preach, and will hopefully undo this pattern over the next few days.  So far, we’ve been out on some good walks, to enjoy the kids singing and dancing in the park, playing in the sand, or just to hold Maya (our three month old) a little longer.  After all, they grow up so fast.

What is causing you to feel bent down and burdened?

You might have noticed that line at the end of Jeremiah, when God gives the power to tear down and to build up.  This power isn’t given to fulfill any personal whim, but to dismantle what needs to be dismantled.  The illness the woman had, needed to be dismantled.  The woman needed to be built up, healed, to stand up straight.  The systems which forbade healing on the Sabbath needed to be dismantled.  Systems of human concern for one another, rooted in love, needed to be built up.  This is God’s justice, that love prevail.  That people be unburdened, and not exploited.  That we be created anew.  That we be motivated not by fear and not by legalism, but solely by love.  Thanks be to God!

Prayers for This Week:

Syria, Egypt, all who have died in the violence

Colombia, where 140 young people were kidnapped by armed militia in a village this week.

Equality and unity among people of all races, on the 50th anniversary of the ‘I Have A Dream’ speech

For our earth, and the wise stewardship of all creation

For all who are sick, or nearing the end of their earthly lives

For outreach efforts and new ways of being aware of our community

Back to school children and their families, including ‘empty nesters’

Beyond Things

Hosea 11:1-11; Psalm 107:1-9; Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21

What This Message Is Not About

It would be so easy to preach this week’s Scriptures as a pointed stewardship lesson, that God blesses us with so many things that we should be ready to give everything to God, and by the way, we have a mortgage on the building, so, you know, be generous....right.  Give as you feel led, but that’s not what I’m going to talk about today.

Instead, let me talk a bit about parenting.  After all, the Gospel story starts off with a sibling dispute over the inheritance--something that causes a great deal of pain in families.  And you can definitely hear the parent in God’s voice speaking throughout the passage in Isaiah.

Let’s Talk About The Kids

My family and I went back to our old neighborhood this week, and pretty soon all the parents were hanging out talking about our kids--sharing both the joys and the frustrations.  Many of you know that banter.  And I wonder, what if God talked about us the way we talked about our kids?  How would that sound?  “Oh, you know, Adam and Eve, they were so cute and agreeable at first, but then they made a total mess out of my garden--so I put up a gate to keep them out of there--but then they just went out and made even bigger messes, I can barely keep up with it all!”

Well, God does often talk about us as though we were God’s children, because we are.  And we really hear that today in the reading from Hosea.  We hear how God raised us up like a child, and such vivid imagery:  I taught them to walk, I held them in my arms, I healed their injuries, I lifted them like infants to my cheek, I fed them.  Can’t you just see that?

And yet, that relationship was mired in pain.  For as much as God tended and nurtured the children, they ran away from God, and found themselves increasingly mired in trouble, and wouldn’t turn back and seek help, they put their trust in powers, like powerful political alliances (aka “friends”) that would ultimately betray and destroy them.

Hosea:  The Perfectly Dysfunctional Family

I noticed that several folks commented (but nobody complained!) that some of the usual Bible readings were absent last week while I was away.  Part of the reason for that was they were kind of doozies.  The upshot of the story was that God commanded the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute, and then have a couple of kids which he was supposed to name, “Not My People” and “No Pity.”  Well, ouch.  God’s point in this was to create a totally dysfunctional family, where there is no love, no mercy, and no fidelity, to serve as a metaphor for what had gone wrong in the relationship between God and God’s people.  Granted, this didn’t go over well: mostly because it was weird, and also, as far as God’s people knew, it was a time of relative prosperity.  Everything was going great, so, what’s the big deal?  In reality, things were about to go horribly wrong in ways even they could see: As the scripture reads, the sword rages in their cities and they are in danger of returning to captivity and repression.

When Things Go Horribly Wrong

I think most of us have known situations where a child has been raised lovingly, and still somehow ends up down a wrong path that leads to their destruction.  Perhaps the most frequent metaphor today would be drug addiction [CBS This Morning 8/5/13 reported on the new heroin epidemic].  But there’s any number of things that could happen, that are truly frightening.  And for those of us who are parents, we may wonder if there is any reason we would ever abandon one of our children, or even kick them out of the house.  Perhaps ultimately, and realistically speaking, if the child was endangering the others who lived there, to protect the rest of the family, we might have to say, “you can’t come home right now.”  Now, I don’t want to ever think about any of that happening to my kids--who are rascals, but they’re also so young and innocent right now--but it might.  I can parent to the best of my ability, but I realize that even as a pastor, my family and my children are not immune to the ills of this world.

And that’s where we hear and understand God speaking through the prophet Hosea in today’s reading.  [Insert your own children’s names here] and you begin to get the picture of God, this brokenhearted parent, worried sick:

“How can I give you up, ____________?  How can I hand you over, ________?  

[Insert your own name here] and you begin to get the picture of God, this brokenhearted parent, worried sick.

Insert the name of anyone whom you love deeply, and you begin to get the picture....yes, I think we can begin to tap into those feelings and relate.

The good news is, even when we have done things to break God’s heart, God doesn’t write us off.  God instead chooses compassion and continues to invite the rebellious child home.

++

It’s Not About the Little Things

Sometimes, our relationships are painful, but nothing huge and tragic has caused it.  Sometimes, things just ‘get in the way’ of our relationships.  Not just material things, like the inheritance dispute between the brothers in the Gospel story, but things, you know, stuff that happens, and builds up, and forms into walls and barriers between us that are so hard to tear down, without tearing each other down in the process.

Granted, it’s easiest not to let those walls get built up in the first place--to handle the issues while they’re small, and not let them blow up into big things.  When those little things get blown up, then we know the relationship is in trouble.  After all, even churches die, not because they ran out of people to invite, but because they got caught up fighting over little things like the carpet and blew all their energy, and pffft, there they went.

Who among us doesn’t have a relationship we wish could be better?  Who among us doesn’t have words or mistakes we wish we could take back?  

All these human divisions, God seeks to break down, bridge, or transform.  We’ve talked in the past few weeks about those walls of animosity between Jews and Samaritans--folks who were really two sides of the same coin; and today Paul speaks to us of Greek and Jew, slave and free, barbarian and Scythian (and who are those guys anyway--we’ve forgotten, because the division didn’t really matter)!  God is inviting us to not let those little things--and they are really little things, that we make into big things--stand in the way of love.

Beyond Things

So let’s talk about that Gospel verse again, but in a non-traditional way.  Maybe it’s not such a bad thing to build bigger barns--or churches, for that matter.  Really it’s hoarding, or at least not sharing, that is the problem.  We have a beautiful new facility, and God does call us to share it--to share our sanctuary, share our classroom space, even our lawn, and not keep it to ourselves.  Things will probably get dinged up a bit in the process, and we’re going to need two things:  a good-sized can of touch-up paint, and a load of graciousness.  After all, it isn’t really our building, but God’s.  When we can overlook the little things, and use wisely the big things we have been given, all of our relationships, and all of us individually, are deeply blessed.  God wants for us far more than we can imagine.  Thanks be to God!

Prayers this Week:

For all who struggle with addictions; mental health concerns; and for all who are facing abuse of any kind.

For those who come to harm when working in far-off places.

For our Sikh brothers and sisters as they remember the shootings in their sacred space one year ago.

For our PCUSA friends who are gathered at the Big Tent conference in Louisville, KY this weekend.

For all who are traveling

For all who are ill or injured

For those who are dying, and for those who are grieving

For peace in our world

Lyrics for the Lectionary:

When reading the Scriptures this week, consider the following:

A Thousand Years, Christina Perri (Hosea)

Somebody That I Used to Know, Gotiye (Hosea)

Paradise, Coldplay (Hosea, Luke)

How To Save A Life, Fray (Hosea)

Feel the Tide, Mumford and Sons (Psalm)