Whose story is this, anyway?

January 4, 2011 · Bible, Discernment, ministry, spiritual life · 150 comments

As I’m preparing the sermon for this Sunday’s celebration of The Baptism of Our Lord, this line jumped out at me in a commentary on the gospel, Matthew 3:13-17:

“The writer of Matthew strives to link the story of Jesus’ life with the story of God’s people as told in the Hebrew Scriptures.”

It is often noted about Matthew that, of the four gospel writers, he is the one who quotes Hebrew Scripture most frequently, and perhaps that is why his gospel was placed first in the New Testament, as a bridge from the Old to the New. But that’s not why this line jumped out at me.

I think it was because, as a reader of Scripture, I am always looking for something similar: the link between my life and the story of Jesus and God’s people as told in the Christian and Hebrew Scriptures. And, as a preacher of Scripture, I’m always looking for ways to help others find those links too. That’s not often easy, and sometimes it can seem almost impossible. But I keep looking, because the effort is always worth it.

With the story of Jesus’ baptism, the easy way to link our story with his is to focus on what happens last: God says of Jesus, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). Then the preacher points out how God says the same thing of us at our baptisms: we are God’s beloved sons and daughters. Voila! Stories linked.

But that seems too easy. It ignores several major differences between Jesus’ story and ours. For one thing, Matthew’s point here is not about God’s love per se. It’s that Jesus is actually Son of God, in a way that the rest of us are not.

More concretely, in today’s churches (at least, in Lutheran churches), we don’t experience baptisms like Jesus’ baptism. The landscape is different, obviously. And for us, the heavens usually do not open. The Spirit does not descend like a dove and alight on the one baptized. We do not hear the voice from heaven.

So, as I keep looking for a new way to think about the link between our own lives and this story, I wonder if I might look here: The same God who was present at Jesus’ baptism is also present at baptisms today. Perhaps we get so focused on looking for the concrete links (i.e. Jesus was baptized by immersion in a river, so we should baptize by immersion in a river) that we miss the bigger picture: the God who was present then is also present now, doing the same kinds of things that God always does.

The work of interpretation, then, becomes the work of paying attention to the ways God is acting today: in this case, sending the Spirit and revealing Jesus to the world again and again. With this story and many others, that work is always worth it.

Don’t speak, just wait

December 6, 2010 · Bible, Discernment, ministry, spiritual life · (No comments)

4464692837_abacc2f28fIf a pastor is going to get laryngitis, she might as well get it during the Advent season. At least there’s Biblical precedent for this combination of speechlessness and waiting in the very first story of Luke’s gospel: the story of Zechariah, father-to-be of John the Baptist (Luke 1:5-24). When an angel tells him that his barren wife, Elizabeth, will bear a child, he’s doubtful; who wouldn’t be? But the angel Gabriel is not impressed by the extent of his doubts, and those doubts have consequences: “But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur” (Lk.1:20). And so Zechariah spends his time waiting for the birth, speechless.

I used to think the speechlessness was a punishment, along the lines of “if you can’t say anything nice (or faithful, or theologically appropriate, or whatever), then don’t say anything at all.” But today, as I face my own temporary time of not-speaking, I wonder if there is also grace in this consequence. When you can’t speak, you can listen better. You have time and space to wrestle with your own private doubts–of which Zechariah had plenty–without speaking them into public reality along the way. You can enter into the silence of waiting in a more concrete way. Which, after all, is what Advent is all about.

In my line of work, you can’t get as much accomplished when you can’t speak, and perhaps this too is what Advent is all about–not the busy-ness of Christmas preparations, but the slow darkness of the winter solstice and, eventually, the hopeful lengthening of days when the Christ child’s birth will be celebrated, when the “new thing” will be born.

Recently I’ve been watching and listening to Brian McLaren’s song “To Be Born.” Words such as “do not push or rush, do not fight or strive” seem to go well with speechlessness. Just let it be. Let the new thing be born. Do not try to determine its identity or its timing or its purpose with so many words. Welcome it with openness. Welcome it with humility. Welcome it with silence.

There will be plenty of time for speech, as Zechariah discovered (Luke 1:57-80). For now, we wait.

Photo by Anders Printz (flickr/Creative Commons).

Jesus’ faith in us

September 28, 2010 · Bible, Community, Vocation, ministry, spiritual life · (No comments)

1983679028_f733a006db_mThe gospel text for this Sunday, Luke 17:5-10, presents some challenges. For me, the biggest challenge is the way this parable seems to glorify “duty”–which I frankly have never found to be a very powerful motivator.

Just before this in Luke 17, Jesus has been talking to the disciples about two particularly challenging “duties” of discipleship: 1) correct one another when you’re wrong, and 2) forgive one another as many times as it takes. Given those difficult responsibilities, it’s no wonder, in verse 5, that the disciples cry out, “Increase our faith!” Jesus’ response does not seem particularly helpful, or at least not particularly comforting: “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.” Huh? Then I guess we don’t even have that small amount of faith.

And then, this parable:

“Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? Would he not rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’ ” (Luke 17:7-10, NIV)

Here is where I find it very, very helpful to read the Bible with people of different ages. How we read the Bible–or how the Bible reads us–depends on many things, one of which is the stage of life we’re living. Continue reading →

Pluto, you DO belong

August 24, 2010 · Community, Vocation, ministry, spiritual life · (No comments)

1184940392_38d1f78e3e_mThis morning the Writer’s Almanac informed me, “It was on this day four years ago that Pluto was demoted from being a planet. Pluto’s status had been debated for decades, but its fate was decided rather swiftly on this day, at the 2006 meeting of the International Astronomical Union (IAU).” I remember that time well, because in 2006 my own sense of self-definition and belonging was in transition, as I’d just left one call in ministry and was awaiting the next. For this fourth anniversary of Pluto’s “demotion,” I’ll repost the reflection I wrote for Religion and Spirituality.com on September 6, 2006:

“I know just how Pluto feels.” That thread runs through many of the comments on the recent redefinition of Pluto by the International Astronomical Union. Pluto’s been “demoted,” some call it, from planet to dwarf-planet.

We know what this must feel like, because it’s a universal human experience: losing status, being left out, or having our universe defined in a way that kicks us out of the place we expected or wanted. Continue reading →

Coveting my neighbor’s talents

August 8, 2010 · Bible, Community, Discernment, Vocation, ministry, spiritual life · (No comments)

I just returned from the Invitation to Service event, where I experienced yet again a reason I need to keep talking about finding one’s calling: because I forget key principles myself if I go too long between telling others about them.

For example: One of the principles of calling (”vocation”) is that you start with the gifts and talents you get, which are not always the ones you want. I’ve spent much of my life and ministry mourning the gifts I didn’t have or wanted more of, which diminishes the gifts I do have. This makes it hard to follow wherever my calling is taking me because I’m always wanting to go somewhere else. (It reminds me of Parker Palmer’s line from Let Your Life Speak: “Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you.”) I was hoping that I’d be immune to this by now, but I needed another booster shot this weekend. Continue reading →

Watch for falling bricks

July 13, 2010 · Discernment, ministry, spiritual life · (No comments)

132640908_1bfbaa6f56Every now and then I encounter someone whose play with the metaphor of “new houses from old bricks” reveals new insights about how identity and faith are formed. I had such a conversation yesterday with a young woman from my congregation who’s about to start her second year of college.

We were talking about the way each person picks up “bricks” along life’s journey–bits and pieces of insight, tradition, and experience. Those bricks can then be used in the creation of a self, a faith, and a life big enough and strong enough to live in: a “new house.” This is a risky process for a couple reasons:

  • If you never pick up any bricks (that is, appropriate tradition and experience, claiming them as yours), you’ll be at best a “renter” in your own life and communities, always depending on others to provide your shelter (tell you what to believe in).
  • If you know how to pick up bricks (accumulate experiences and ideas) but don’t know how to build with them (interpret, create, and do theology for yourself), you’ll end up with a pile of bricks–not something that will provide shelter in life’s storms.

Yesterday my friend came up with a third risk that I’m still pondering. Sometimes, she said, you pick up a brick and then, instead of it getting incorporated in the structure, it becomes an obstacle. I can picture a building project in process, with the leftover bricks scattered throughout the yard just waiting to trip up the inattentive. Or, she said, you might drop the brick on your foot. Continue reading →

Adam Sandler meets Barbara Brown Taylor

June 22, 2010 · Discernment, spiritual life · 1 comment

click imageAltar_in_the_wo-210-expLately I haven’t been writing as much as I’d like, but I have been doing lots of reading and watching. Most of it is pretty random, which makes for some interesting combinations. For example: Recently I watched Click, the 2006 film in which Adam Sandler’s character, Michael Newman, is blessed/cursed with a universal remote that controls his experience of his life. With this powerful gadget, he can pause, rewind, fast forward, and go to particular scenes as he chooses. If you haven’t seen it, you can probably imagine the plot: all is fine until the device which supposedly gives him control, starts controlling him.

I encountered this movie in the midst of reading Barbara Brown Taylor’s An Altar in the World. With this book in mind, I saw in the film an interesting image of habits–in particular, the way habits shape our experience of life. Continue reading →

Getting it all figured out (or not)

June 15, 2010 · Discernment, Vocation, spiritual life · (No comments)

events calendar by yandleI have a love-hate relationship with deadlines. Love the way they force me to complete projects; hate the stress they create. Overall, I’m pretty good with project deadlines. But I have a terrible track record with life deadlines: the ones that begin, “By the time I’m _____ years old, I will have….”

I have a birthday coming up this week and my twenty-year high school reunion coming up next month, so I’m considering such deadlines, and the biggies that I have failed to meet. For example, I have not moved away from the West Coast, pursued further graduate education, or had children. In my earlier years, the years in which people frequently ask “where do you hope to be in ten or twenty years,” I had imagined “completing” all those things by this point. (Instead, I moved back to the West Coast, found myself immersed in the joys and challenges of campus and congregational ministry, and got divorced.)

I also would have imagined having some things figured out by now: how to balance my personal and professional lives, for example, and how to savor the world as it is and work to improve it at the same time (as E.B. White said).

Fortunately, as hard as it seems to remember this, imposing deadlines on myself couldn’t be further from the point. Continue reading →

Hospitality to young adult stories

April 30, 2010 · Bible, Community, ministry, spiritual life · (No comments)

After a great two-week trip to talk vocation discernment and the Treasure Hunt in southern California and Washington, D.C., I’m slowly processing all that I learned and continue to learn from many conversations. I’ll do that in the next series of posts–which should come a bit more frequently now!

A good companion for last week was Nanette Sawyer’s book, Hospitality–The Sacred Art: Discovering the Hidden Spiritual Power of Invitation and Welcome. As the title promises, it’s more of a spiritual guide than a practical how-to. For her, hospitality means making room in ourselves for people’s stories, joys and pains, and idiosyncracies. I agree with her that that inner work of “making room” is inseparable from the “making room” that happens in community–the practical welcome that people associate with the word.

It got me thinking about how the Church and individual congregations “make room” (or not) for young adults’ stories and journeys, and the particular joys and pains, and often transitoriness and chaos, that come with that stage of life. Continue reading →

Discerning along the way

April 15, 2010 · Uncategorized · 1 comment

479096768_5c638d0843Sorry about the weeks of silence here, as the aftermath of Holy Week and Easter collided with the preparations for a trip to southern California and Washington, D.C. for a few book events. Now I’m fresh from the second of this week’s two events and still chewing on some of the discussions.

Last night, for example, I heard a common question: “But how do you know?” What can you actually look forward to here, if you do this work of discernment? Once you’ve paid attention to the best of your ability and journaled and relied on community support and confirmation, etc., how can you be sure you’re doing the right thing?

Aye, there’s the rub: you can’t. Continue reading →

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