Hills and Valleys

For God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low and the valleys filled up, to make level ground, so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God. ~Baruch 5:1-9

Building roads is hard work.  Building roads over valleys and hills and mountains is harder.    You have to blow up that mountain, level that hill, and make a raised highway through that valley.   It's hard work.  In the old days, it was dangerous work as well.  Before explosives, it was so hard that God had to do it because we couldn't.

Bringing the mountains low is not an easy thing to do.   Neither is crossing a mountain without it having been made low.   I'm a little strange in that I believe that when Jesus said the time is coming and is now here when the Kingdom of God shall appear on the earth, he didn't mean blow the whole thing up and start over.  I think he meant right here, right now, usher in the kingdom of God.   We have to get ready to be able to do it, that's what Church is for, and we have to do it in the world in which we live right now because that's the Gospel.

It's actually happening.

 Luke 3:1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"  

 And the harbinger's mother is old and barren when she becomes pregnant, and meets her young cousin, the Messiah's mother, who starts talking about her unborn child.   

He has mercy on those who fear him *
    in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm, *
    he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

I'm pretty sure this is class warfare.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *

Yep.

    and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things, *
    and the rich he has sent away empty.

In plain English (translated from Aramaic to Greek to plain English)

He has come to the help of his servant Israel, *
    for he has remembered his promise of mercy,

This is the Kingdom of God.  It works better if we all work together to fill the hungry with good things, so the rich don't necessarily have to go away empty, but that doesn't always work out.  Right here, right now, this is actually happening... so we should do what we're told and get to it.  God is going to make this happen... and he's doing it, right now, through us. 

Prepare the way

I was not ready for Advent this year.   My stuff wasn't out of the attic, I didn't have any candles, and the worst part--I was just not in the mood.  I wasn't in the mood for blasting the word REJOICE across the church every Sunday, not in the mood for Rite I, and I didn't have a clue what to get everybody for Christmas.  

Prepare the way of the Lord indeed.  

For some reason, Advent happened anyway.   The wreath went up in the church, the candles were purchased, I even procured a new "Advent Bush" that could withstand the ravages of my puppy by living on a table top.  Rite I happened in church, and we belted those rejoices again like we do every year.   Voices are missing and they are being missed, but Advent is happening anyway.  

Life is hard sometimes.  Preparing for Christmas, and by way of that preparing to usher in the Kingdom of God, isn't all chocolates behind numbered windows in an advent calender and haunting ancient hymns.  It's getting up every morning in December, whether you want to or not, and saying "even so, come Lord Jesus" again. 

Mary knew this.  (We haven't even gotten to her in the readings yet.  I think this coming Sunday we get to hear about John the Baptist.)   Mary had her life disrupted by an archangel who appeared ill advised on mechanics of human biology.    I have my days when I think she must have been a little bit psychic because she was faced with an angel of the Lord telling her she's going to bear a son, the Messiah even, and she has the big brass lady balls to tell him that she can't be pregnant because she's a virgin.   It's the holy version of staring down your doctor when they ask suspiciously when your last period was and telling them you have to be exposed to be in that condition.   So either they'd chatted before, or the Lady was totally and utterly caught off guard to the point of reacting to this news with exasperated unbelief.

I LOVE this about her, by the way.   Very young, vulnerable, about to be exposed to a series of life threatening social situations that probably shamed her to her very core despite none of it being what people thought, and she's making sure the archangel Gabriel understands how these things happen.

Life is hard sometimes.   Life is hard but God makes beauty from ashes. 

Even so, come... 

I've never met that guy

I've been thinking lately about what makes my sort of religion--the sort of religion I practice anyway--different from other peoples.  I don't mean this in a superior way.  I'm not sure what way I mean it in, actually.  I just know it's different from the way other people approach it.

I'm not afraid of God.  I'm just not.  I'm afraid of being separated from God, I'm afraid of what I'm like when the connection gets shaky, I'm afraid of disappointed sighs from Jesus, but I am not afraid of God.  I don't like it when I feel like God is angry with me, but not because I'm afraid God is going to make me pick my own switch and beat me with it.   Don't get me wrong, God the Father has soundly, metaphorically, whipped my ass before.  I deserved it.  Deserved every single bit of bad karma that came down the pipe at me like a wave of pain in an ocean of 'you totally deserved that'.

But that's not what motivates me to do the things I do.  I'm not afraid of God because I know he loves me.  I know this because I've seen it.  Time and time again, I've been blessed.   I've also believed since I was teenager that perfect love casts out fear.  I believe that God loves us.   All of us.  The whole of us.  No reservations.   During Holy Week this year I had a friend ask me what would happen if she missed Maundy Thursday at church.  Will I go to hell?  I was shocked.  Go to hell?  Over missing a service?  Really?

I would like to say I was tempted to lie straight my teeth and tell her that little Baptist girls who miss Thursday night in Holy Week have a room reserved for them in the Seventh Layer of Hell  but I was in too honest of a mood at the time.   Truthfully I was horrified she even thought Hell was an option after taking a baptism and, being Baptist, having been 'saved'.  How can someone's faith offer so little comfort?  How can that be anything but a prison?   How can that be anything but a heavy burden that someone tied up and laid on one's back?

Sunday's gospel lesson provides an illustrated point in this.  The Pharisees point out, technically correct I'm sure, that the disciples didn't wash their hands that day before eating.  I don't know what kind of grime they had on their paws, I don't know what cruel woman didn't put out a wash basin for them to clean up before dinner in, (Pretty sure first century middle eastern men could absolutely NOT take care of themselves in this regard) or what possessed them that day to dig in without scrubbing up.  I have no idea.   I do know that it's bloody nitpicking.   In this case I actually mean nits.  I mean straining out a gnat and leaving a camel in the stew.  I mean, seriously, you guys called out their rabbi because they ate with dirty hands?   That's like posting a photo shopped picture of the President of the United States supposedly flubbing up flag etiquette--- It's not important in the grand scheme of things and is probably bullshit.

In the case of the flag picture, I know it is, because that's a white hand on a brown body but I digress.   I understand that ritual is important.  I understand that the Law is important.  I get it.  You're reading the ramblings of a woman who has actually gotten down on the floor and picked communion bread crumbs up off the carpet before vacuuming a church.     I fall down when a kid carrying a cross passes by.  I don't enter a church for worship without praying first thing and I bow EVERY TIME I pass the alter.  I get it.  I'm high church with a capital HC and a charcoal incense burner in MY HOUSE.  

Those things aren't the point though.   In the grand scheme of things, they aren't even important, they don't even matter compared to this simple truth:

Mark 7:6 He said to them, "Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, 'This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines. 'You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition."

Why is he saying this?  Is he angry about people washing their hands?  Something tells me it's the picking of the nits...

 Then he called the crowd again and said to them, "Listen to me, all of you, and understand:
there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile."  For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."

 It's not the things you do!  It's not the things you don't do!  It's you!  It's what's deep down in your heart.  It's the coldness, the anger, the things that send you through the roof for no good reason.   It's your INDIFFERENCE to the suffering of other people.  That's what makes you cold to the love of God.  That's what makes you cold to your neighbor.

That's what makes you worry you're going to hell for missing church.   There is no fear in love.  Perfect love casts out fear.  It makes it go away.  Love conquers all.  It warms up cold hearts.    Fear piles up rules and defenses.  Fear takes things away because they aren't required.   Fear frightens people into chanting an incantation to make the bad go away and cowering beneath the steel gaze of a preacher who wants to scare them into salvation.  I don't want that religion and I've never met that God.  I don't know that guy.  I don't want to know that guy.   I'm saying this out of love:  God is not an asshole.  You can quote me on that.  You're not a rat in a cage he's set up so you can't ever get the cheese.   It's going to be okay.

Won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?

I had the odd experience of landing on the Trinity Broadcasting Network the other day and not being able to reach a remote. I don't watch TV church. Generally speaking, it creeps me out. I was subjected, however, to about five minutes the other night of the twisted logic of the Prosperity Gospel. He used the feeding of the five thousand to mean that Jesus wants to give us tons of stuff we don't actually need and that following him will make him want to load us down with (monetary) blessings.

I've seen this stuff before. I've actually gotten my hands on the curriculum for their teen Sunday school before. It had an entire skit laid out with a story about how a little teenager didn't give 10% of her babysitting money to the church. When she didn't "give God his share" a series of unfortunate events would ensue until she paid back every penny. I was...aghast at the material. I upbraided the person whose home I found it in for helping people bilk money out of teenagers by fear. The response I got? Well, it's true.

Someone else has been feeding my friends a line of crap. The line of crap goes as follows. It's a divine ponzi scheme. You give God (The church, sometimes, usually a minister in particular) money and God will give you cash and success in return. Tenfold. If you don't give God money, your roof will fall in, your dog will die, your wife will leave you and your children will laugh at you.

I have good news and bad news. The Good News is that the God who incarnated as the son of working class people and spent most of his adult life before taking up his ministry as a gnarly contractor guy is not going to punish you if you forget to or can't afford to offer up 10% of your money to "him". The Bad News is that he's not going to buy you a Mercedes Benz and your children are still going to laugh at you. There are a lot of very good reasons to give money to the Church. None of them involve divine retribution and/or reward. Sometimes faithful givers fall on hard times. Sometimes selfish people get rich. Sometimes really nice people get rich and do good things things with their money.

It's just the way the cookie crumbles. So what can a believer expect to get in return for following Christ? A hot wife? A great job? A buzz that never goes away? Social recognition? Political clout? Good connections? Good karma?

Try life. Abundant life. Eternal life. Love that doesn't go away. A community of people who love you even when you aren't very lovable. Friendships you never would have had if you hadn't been opened up to the idea that God puts people in your life, even people you never would have had anything to do with otherwise. Healing for your soul.

The ridiculousness of this is best illustrated, I think, in Janis Joplin's Mercedes Benz . Christians believe Christ died to redeem sinners from death. How incredulous of us to turn around and ask the Son of Man, who admittedly had no place to lay his head, to help us get that nice McMansion? Prove that you love me, and buy the next round???

Nice.

An Endless Parade of Crazy

I'm going to tell you all a terrible secret.

I've sworn in church. It's true. I really have. I didn't do it intentionally. When someone pointed it out I said "It's okay. God knows I swear."

I wasn't trying to offend anyone. In fact, the reason I don't typically swear in church is that it does offend people. Like I said, God knows I swear. He has met me. For some reason I've never put my finger on, he loves me.

I take issue with the idea that someone knows everything about me and loves me anyway. If you're my friend, I love you. I don't love someone in spite of their faults like I have some kind of list of things and there's a point at which it becomes too much. I either love someone or I don't. I may not like everything about someone but I don't love them anyway. I just love them.

God takes this to another level. Maybe I learned it from him, I don't know. God knows I swear. He knows I lie (albeit badly). He knows I have a hard time controlling my temper. He knows I'm self absorbed. He knows all this and loves me. I know this because I have gotten completely out of hand in our relationship and he didn't turn his face away from me. I'm an Episcopalian so when I'm at church our relationship is very formal. Sometimes when I'm at home and I'm at my best I do okay at keeping up a level of formality. If I'm tired, drunk, upset, or just plain old happy though I get sloppy. God becomes Papa. In my younger days, when I got upset, I would talk to one friend, then another, then another and finally it would come down to prayer. It would just get progressively worse on the upset scale until it exploded. Until I exploded. Looking back, I feel really sorry for my friend Will. He was the last one on the list before I got to God. If he got a tornado of teenage angst, Jesus got the hurricane. By morning I was usually back to some semblance of sanity, if you can call it that, because they calmed the storm in me. I don't know how I would have gotten through the valley of the shadow of raging hormones without Him.

I'm not saying God just puts up with it. He pushes back. I just never get the sense that if I cross that line one more time, the relationship could be over. I know people who live with that fear. I know people who think they can hide the shadow side of themselves from God. I know they think they can't let him into that space. I also know that they'll never truly be free until they do.

I remember when I was a little kid being told that God hates sin and can't be around it. I was taught that it was something everybody did. So it should have followed, I guess, that God hates everybody. Then because God also loves everybody, he sent his son to earth to be murdered by a gang of... no that's not working. Wait, they don't make it sound like that. They make it sound like a set up. They make it sound staged. Which made it even more confusing...

I managed to ignore all that. Call it blissful ignorance. I remember being in the first grade and reading chapter books. When I got to the words I didn't know I'd just make a buzzing noise in my little brain and fill in the blanks from the context. I have lots of practice at skipping over the parts I don't get and filling in the blanks.

So here's what I get. God made the universe. God called it good. Something goes wrong. We do something that makes us feel like we can't talk to God without killing something or burning something. God spends lots and lots of time trying to get us back into a relationship with him. Abraham didn't find favor with God because he was perfect. It wasn't because he was super special. Abraham found favor with God because he believed God and God reckoned it to him as righteousness. He didn't get it right. He wasn't perfect. He haggled with the creator of the universe for heaven's sake!! He haggled! With God! Moses was a murderer. Noah was a drunk. King David's great grand mama was supposedly a whore. I'm not going to talk about Saul/Paul. God the Son comes to earth as the child of unwed pregnant teenager and leaves the life of a gnarly contractor guy to become a wandering preacher who runs with a bunch of first century rednecks. God does not seem to be looking for perfect people! If he is, he's having a horrible time finding good help! But he does find good help! This endless parade of crazy leads to redemption. It ends (and begins a new story) with resurrection and redemption.

The story ends with life. It ends with God not taking no for an answer. No, he will NOT leave us alone. No, he will not give up. No, he will not let us decide who he will or will not love. No, God does not accept the limitations we put on grace. No, there is nothing we can do make him listen to reason and see that we've really got this religion stuff figured out. We can't stop him from loving us. We can't hide. The more we try the more tied up we get in ourselves.

That's deadly. It's deadly because he loves us. He doesn't love us anyway. He loves us. He can do that. He's God.

And he knows I swear. I don't think he minds nearly as much as my mother does.

Running un-opposed.

Thursday at the office I ran into a problem. I had a house that needed insurance. It was over 100 years old, in good shape, but no central heat and air, and it had been uninsured. Which, if you're wondering, is actually a pretty big problem where house insurance is concerned. Add to that the last "purchase price" on the house was meaningless because it was last purchased 35 years ago. The cost guide I did said the place was worth $93,000 but I didn't think I could get that past the company I was probably going to end up placing the house with.

I needed an educated opinion. To complicate that, I needed an opinion from someone who wouldn't defer to me on this, so my coworkers were out. (I'm not saying they don't know what they're doing. They do. The problem is that I sell more house insurance than they do and guess who trained them? Me. Yeah. Me.) I put in a call to the underwriting team at said company. We come up with $93,000 being too much and do it for $63,000. This makes me happy because I am no longer afraid I'm over-insuring this house and getting the old guy (who I actually like) to pay more premium than he needs to on his home. I also knew the customer would defer to me on this. I wanted to make sure I wasn't doing something wrong. (Industry secret: Your insurance person doesn't really want you to just buy whatever they tell you too. They want your input. For reals. Not joking. )

Sometimes you need someone who's going to doubt your opinion. You need to know that if they think you're an idiot (or just being stupid at the time) they're going to tell you. You need someone who's going to stand up to you if they think you're wrong. Being someone's friend doesn't mean nodding in agreement to every hair-brained thing they think of doing. It has occurred to me lately that going to a church where your every political and theological opinion runs unopposed is just as dangerous as well. Where spirituality is concerned, especially the will of God, letting someone just run around thinking that clouds are marshmallows in the sky if it makes them happy is dangerous. Why? Some day the issue might be more serious than marshmallows in the sky.

The one thing I've learned about the Holy Spirit is that he generally doesn't send out memos to just one person. If no one else has the same idea as you about something you think God wants you have a problem. You also have a problem if everybody in your faith community assumes that you have a direct line to God that rings on your desk and that if you think it about a topic it must be so. So here's the thing guys: If you are a leader in your community and you don't have anyone around who tells you when you're acting like an idiot---get one. Seriously. There's nothing wrong with having a lot of people trust you but if you're not careful you could end up with a dolphin fountain in the middle of the narthex surrounded by Pepto-Bismol pink tile with a troupe of dancing girls playing in it every third Sunday of the month. Why? No one wanted to tell Father no...

So don't pick a church because no one won't like you. Actually, don't pick a church at all. Listen to what your heart is telling you and find the place you're supposed to be. If you sense that God is pointing you in that direction, listen. Even if it's been infiltrated by Republicans/liberals/Democrats/conservatives. So what if there's not a rock band. So what if they don't/do pray off the cuff. So what if someone there isn't going to like you. I have people in my family who won't even friend me on Facebook but I'm not going to go out and find a new one because of it. Give it a shot. Visiting doesn't make you a member.

Sometimes the thing you're afraid of is the thing you need the most. Someone to tell you when there's a booger on your face. I didn't get to go to church for the first five years after my conversion. Guess what I hadn't picked up on? Baptism. Yup. Baptism. Didn't know I needed it. Someone told me and it changed my life. Sometimes you miss the really obvious stuff.

My mother told someone the other day that I'm rabidly Episcopalian. Why yes, I am. I am rabidly Episcopalian because they taught me that even in one church there are many ways to see God. Many ways to love him. Many ways to love her. That even if I think someone's missing what seems obvious to me they're still my family. They know it too. Yes, we drive each other nuts. If we didn't have each other there might be a dolphin fountain in the narthex. Or shiny choir robes. Or no choir at all.

Yeah. It takes all the people to make a church. All the people to make sure someone doesn't defer to one person's opinion all the time and end up on one extreme of a stereotype.

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. 29 Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret?

Well do ya, punk?

Put on your big girl panties and deal with it

"You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 26 It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; 28 just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."

The buck stops here. The leader takes the blame. If the economy's in the toilet, it's the president's fault. If a big oil company spews millions of gallons into the ocean and it doesn't get resolved instantly, it's the president's fault. If my boss makes a mistake...no wait, it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes, as they say, "it rolls downhill" but not always. It was bad intelligence. It was bad information. "My girl is new and didn't know what she was doing." If the preacher was better, the church would be full. If it weren't for the National Church, that couple would still be here. It's the gays fault. If those people wouldn't cruise Van Buren, we wouldn't have an oil addiction (but I can still own a car). If someone other than me...

If someone other than me would just do something we wouldn't have this problem. I half understand the urge to crucify the leader when things go wrong. After all, it fulfills their professed role of being a servant of all, doesn't it? They take the blame, we put someone new in, and begin the cycle all over again. Membership swells for a bit (curiosity killed the cat), international relations get better when it becomes apparent we've replaced the dumb country bumpkin model, the oil seems to slow down, and Tony gets his yacht back. Then the economy doesn't instantly rebound and everybody starts remembering that the president's black and a democrat, the old guard tightens their grip on the church again (you're not really old enough to be in alter guild, are you?) and the international community gets their feelings hurt that we're slamming their big oil company they've heavily invested in and calls our criticism something it's not.

The problem remains the same until something changes. The problem will remain the same until the leaders underneath the leaders realize what they're doing to make the situation unattractive. The problem will remain the same until we stop looking for someone to pin this situation on. While I do agree that the president needs to figure out 'whose ass to kick' in the gulf, I don't think that's always the situation. Especially when it's everybody's and nobody's ass that needs kicking.

The 'leader' is just one person. They can't do everything. There's a reason that not everyone runs around with a crown on their head. A wheel isn't good for much without spokes inside it, is it? If something needs done, someone needs to do it but not necessarily the priest or the president. President Obama has no military experience---so he should get smart people who do have military experience (and don't mouth off to the media) to advise him on how best to handle that situation. Every Sunday school class does not have to have clergy teaching it. The fact that people aren't having babies fast enough to fill those classes isn't the fault of the clergy either. (It's my fault, actually, for being single and not having popped out 2.5 kids by now.) People can't stay 15 forever---and everything goes in cycles. Even totally awesome people go off their nut once in a while and decide there's just one thing they can't handle---even if the alternative they choose seems far worse to most of us.

So images aside, can we let our leaders be our servants instead of our scape goats for a while? Can we work with them instead of deciding if they don't put up they need to get shut up? Can we quit singing "November is coming" long enough to roll up our sleeves and get this country moving again

Can we?

Opening wide the door a little at a time

8 And God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; 9 and in cleansing their hearts by faith he has made no distinction between them and us. 10 Now therefore why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? 11 On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will." excerpt from Acts 15: 1- 12

I don't normally cite my scripture quotes in these entries. I figure anyone who actually reads this is pretty biblically literate and doesn't actually need for me to do that. I did it today because this entry in Acts is taken from the church's very first "inclusion" incident. You see, we've been arguing about who to include and how and to include them from the beginning. Jesus is barely 'off the scene' and we were already fighting about who could be in our club and what they have to do to be in it.

The Pharisee believers wanted the gentiles to keep the law. After Peter got the smackdown on this from God he was ready to take up their side on this. It wasn't easy for him. He had to be shown. I understand. It isn't easy sometimes. It's hard to let people in without asking them to act just like the rest of us. God has never stopped asking the church to let people in though. We've also never stopped rebelling against it. It started with the gentiles ( most of us), then came the Europeans (let's take all your holy days and "Christianize" them), then came the Native peoples of all the lands the Europeans conquered (you must act as white as humanly possible without bleaching your skin), then female priests (many of whom still have people who refuse communion if they're celebrating) and now it's gay folks. We're just now getting to the point where most of us have stopped asking them to pretend they're celibate to let them into the church.

Sometimes I wonder how God gets through the day without taking a Valium.