The House of Laughter and Light

The story begins rather harmless. A man had two sons prepares us for a familiar story pattern, one that usually ends with the audience nodding in agreement: this one’s the good son, that one is not. This one did the right thing, that one did not. Such a story might go something like this:

A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, “Son, I want you to mow the yard today.” He answered, “I don’t think so,” but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, “Sure, Dad,” but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?

We may think about it for a moment, perhaps we discuss it briefly, but in the end we will agree that actions speak louder than words, and so the first one gets the blue ribbon for being the good son.

Jesus’ story begins in the familiar way, but then it leaves us scratching our heads, “Which one’s the good child?” The younger is disrespectful, selfish, and reckless, the older is jealous, bitter, and self-righteous. Neither is a particularly attractive character, but we can also identify with them, and that complicates things even more.

There’s a part of us that can relate to the younger one who wants to leave home and see the world. Sure, he is reckless, but he is young and we admire his adventurous spirit. We identify with him, because once we were just like him, or perhaps we wish we could be more like him.

And there’s the part of us that can relate to the firstborn, the responsible one who works hard and takes care of the family business, and we’re willing to excuse his anger because we too make sacrifices every day that no one seems to notice, let alone appreciate or celebrate. Is it too much to ask to be treated fairly? The property had been divided, and each one had been given a fair share, and the younger chose to cash it all in and squander it. It may be good and right to give somebody a second chance after he’s shown signs of remorse and maturity; give him work to do, food to eat, and a roof over his head—but a party? That fatted calf they killed for the BBQ – whose herd did it come from? How’s that for irony?

The story begins in the familiar way, but it leaves us off balance because it doesn’t offer a simple good son / bad son moral. The father is a confusing character as well, perhaps the most confusing of all. Apparently he doesn’t consider that children who are old enough to go away should also be ready to live with the consequences of their choices. When the one who went away comes home – broke, humiliated, and hungry – dad is beside himself, acting like a fool. Forgetting all that is proper for a patriarch in that ancient culture, and ignoring most of what we would consider reasonable or wise, he runs down the road and throws his arms around the young man, shouting orders over his shoulder between kisses and hugs, “The robe—the best one—quickly—put it on him. The ring—bring it—put in on his finger. And sandals, bring sandals—only slaves go barefoot—this is my son! Kill the calf! Invite the whole town! Let us eat. Let us celebrate! This son of mine was dead and is alive again!”

Only Jesus could come up with a story like this. In our version of the story, the younger son would have some explaining to do. In our story, the father would be waiting in the house, sitting in his chair, arms folded, and with a stern expression on his face. He would listen to what the young man had to say for himself, and then, perhaps, he would look at him and say, “Well, I’m glad you’ve come to see the foolishness of your choices and the error of your ways; I hope you learned your lesson. Now I want you to go and help your brother in the field.” In our story, there wouldn’t be a party.

But it’s not our story.

Sinners felt at home in the company of Jesus; even notorious sinners who were shunned by everybody in town came near to listen to him, or just to be around him. He did not avoid them, nor did he turn them away; he even broke bread with them, openly. He didn’t mind being seen with them; he just welcomed them like he welcomed anyone who came to him, “Sit down, eat something.”

People with a deep concern for right and wrong were not pleased. They were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them. Why does he show so little respect for boundaries and rules? Doesn’t he know that righteousness must be protected? Couldn’t he at least wait until they have changed their ways?” They were confused, some perhaps angry, moving back and forth between wanting to understand and demanding an explanation.

In response, Jesus told them stories about the joy of heaven, God stories that would shed some light on who he was and what he was doing. He told them about a shepherd who lost one of his one hundred sheep, and worried out of his mind, went searching for it. And when at last he found it, he was overjoyed and called together his friends and neighbors, saying, “Rejoice with me for I have found my sheep that was lost” (Luke 15:4-6).

Then Jesus told them about a woman who had 10 silver coins and one of them got lost. How she got a lamp and a broom, and swept the house from top to bottom and searched carefully until she found it. And she called together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ And he added, “Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents (Luke 15:8-10).”

And then Jesus told them the story about the father and his two sons. And when he got to the end where the elder son stands outside the house, light, music and laughter pouring through the windows, and the father pleading with him to come in, they didn’t know what to say. They felt left out. I guess they felt like Jesus was squandering what was rightfully theirs. Attention, recognition, grace.

The younger son woke up when he hit rock bottom. Feeding pigs and being so hungry that you find yourself wanting to eat from their trough – it doesn’t get any lower than that. He realized just how distant, lonely, and hungry he was, but no one gave him anything. He was at the end of his rope. That’s when he started thinking about home and bread; that’s when he started rehearsing his little speech about sin and unworthiness, and wanting to work in exchange for food; but he didn’t grasp the full extent of his hunger until he was welcomed and embraced with exuberant joy.

The elder son stood outside – distant, lonely, hungry, and resentful.

“Is that what do you have to do to get a party around here? Go off and burn through a bundle of cash and then come back to be embraced, and kissed, and assured that you belong? What about me?”

He refused to go in, but again the father came outside searching for one of his children, and began to plead with him. But the elder son interrupted him, “Listen, for all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back – you killed the fatted calf for him!”

He couldn’t speak his name, he called his own brother “this son of yours,” and nothing in his little speech indicated that he was talking to his father. The elder son was so alienated, so starved, he may as well have been feeding pigs in a distant country. He no longer had a brother or a father, both had become strangers to him.

The story, it turns out, isn’t about morality, about who is the good child and who is not; it is about estrangement and reconciliation. The father has lost both sons, and he’s outside searching for them, not to demand explanations or hand out blue ribbons, but to restore and bring together what belongs together.

“Child,” he says to the elder son, “you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”

The ministry of Jesus isn’t about morality, about who is good and who is not; it is about our estrangement and God’s gift of reconciliation. Our being children of God and our being each other’s brothers and sisters are two sides of the same reality, two sides of the one life. Our lives aren’t whole until we see that.

In the end, it doesn’t matter if we got lost wandering off to a distant country or if we got lost never leaving at all. What matters is that God is not only waiting for us, but out looking for us, pleading with us, and rejoicing over each precious one being found.

 “Child, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.”

These are words spoken not just to one child, but to every child of God. And every child of God has a seat at the table in the house of laughter and light. Because the joy in heaven and on earth will not be complete until the brothers embrace and the sisters kiss, and all children of God sit at the banquet.

 

My Soul Thirsts

Our sanctuary is filled with pictures this morning. There are photographs on every pillar and wall, pictures of rabbits, goats and chickens, corn and beans, bananas and tomatoes, tortillas and mango juice, heavy melons and tender seedlings, pictures of children, men, and women.

Tallu Schuyler took close to ten thousand pictures last year, while working in Nicaragua with a number of food security projects. Church World Service and its partner organizations in Nicaragua are supporting small scale farming to help improve nutrition and encourage community development through local markets.

Why did we ask Tallu to hang all those pictures in the sanctuary? Why did we quite literally surround ourselves with images of food and the people who grow, produce, prepare and sell it, people hungry for life as we are?

The exhibit is part of our hunger:360 ministry project. During Lent this year, we take time to approach hunger from as many angles as we can:

  • We prepare  and serve food for Nashville’s homeless and working poor.
  • We learn about the work of organizations like Second Harvest Food Bank, Mobile Loaves and Fishes, and Church World Service.
  • We are reading a book by Sara Miles who argues convincingly that the bread of the Lord’s Table and the food given away in any soup kitchen or food pantry is the same bread.
  • We will participate in the CROP Walk to raise money and awareness for the fight against hunger around the block and around the world.
  • Next week, we’ll start Mapping the Pantry to visualize where the food in our pantries and refrigerators is coming from.
  • Just this morning, we learned what hunger does to human bodies as well as societies.

We fast and pray, we listen and watch, we walk and study and wonder. hunger:360 is a way to approach and address a human experience from as many angles as possible and to grow as followers of Jesus Christ.

Half of the stories Jesus told about the reign of God speak of seeds and farmers, barns and banquets, fields and vineyards, figs and grapes.

Jesus told Peter, “Feed my sheep,” and to his disciples who wanted to send a crowd of people away because they were hungry, he said, “You give them something to eat.”

When Jesus instructed the disciples about prayer, he taught us that we need forgiveness like we need bread, daily. And on the night before he died, he spoke of his body while breaking a loaf of bread and giving it away to those who would betray, forsake, and deny him. We do indeed need forgiveness like we need bread, daily.

This morning, we come to Jesus waving the newspaper, reciting last week’s headlines, parched thirsty and hungry for answers:

Chile Earthquake Aftershocks Cause Panic

Suicide Attacks Kill at Least 32 in Baquba

With Haitian Schools in Ruins, Children Are in Limbo

We get in line behind those who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. They too are hungry for answers, they want Jesus to explain to them the bloody violence in the Temple.

Was it the Galileans’ fault? Did they provoke the Roman guards with anti-Roman slogans? Galileans were known for that kind of thing. Or was it Pilate’s fault? Was he unable to control his own military, or was he himself behind this blasphemous act? Or did they die in this way because somehow they deserved it?

Jesus asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?” We hunger for meaning, for knowledge or wisdom that makes sense of  the inexplicable. “Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them – do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?”

Or those hundreds of thousands who were buried in collapsing buildings when the earth quaked under Port-au-Prince and Concepción – do you think that they somehow deserved to die that way—and you, somehow, did not? Do you think that the fact that you are still among the living in a world where lives are cut short daily and violently by droughts and famines, hurricanes and earthquakes, crimes and tyranny – do you think you are alive because you are good and righteous? Do you think you can just step back and explain the world’s brokenness and the tragedies of life with a concept of divine justice that somehow spared you?

No. The answers you crave are found only by turning around. Turning around is another way of saying repentance. Repentance means you begin with yourself.

Let me tell you a story. A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, “See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?”

That’s one way to think about the fruit of righteousness and divine justice; three strikes and you’re cut. You had Moses to teach you. You had the prophets to remind you. You had John the Baptist to warn you: “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” You know he wasn’t talking about figs and olives. Plenty of  teaching, of pleading and warning, but no fruit to be found on the tree. Why should it be wasting the soil?

The story could end there. The story could end with the gardener going to the shed to get the ax. But the gardener hasn’t left yet. Standing beside the fruitless tree, or perhaps kneeling beside it in the dirt the gardener says, “Let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good, but if not you can cut it down.” Or perhaps the gardener says, “... but if not you can cut it down – because I won’t”? And the story ends with the gardener going to the shed to get the cultivator. That’s another way to think about the fruit of righteousness and the work of God.

We can pretend that we are spectators looking over the wall into the vineyard and speculating about the fate of that tree, but in truth we are that tree. We long to live lush and fruitful lives, but the soil is hard and dry. The soil is so packed down that the rain cannot penetrate it and the water cannot get to the roots and we remain thirsty and dry, despite our desire and good intentions.

John the Baptist points to the ax to remind us of the urgency of change and taps into our fear to motivate us to action. Jesus reminds us that we are not alone in our hope for fruitful lives by pointing to the gardener who works with dedication and patience to break and soften the soil.

But we got to let the gardener do some digging. We got to let the gardener break the dry soil in which we are trying to grow roots. When an earthquake buries thousands of people in just a few seconds, there is a moment, just before we start stepping back, distancing ourselves to explain or find blame, there is a moment of pain and truth, a moment when we feel just how fragile life is.

We usually run from that moment. We step back and pretend to be observers who can control the chaos by explaining it. Or we jump into a action to get a sense that we have done something to push the chaos back behind boundaries.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with trying to understand. There’s nothing wrong at all with responding to tragedy with acts of compassion. But we shouldn’t run too quickly from that moment where we know life as vulnerable, threatened, and in question. We shouldn’t run because that moment is a place where we meet the God who knows and bears our pain. That moment is a dry place where the gardener pours out grace to soften the ground. That moment is a holy place where healing water finds its way to our parched roots. It is in that moment that we come to know our real thirst and say, “O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”

They say that in the southwestern United States, where the humidity is low, you may be thirsty and not even know it. It can be extremely hot, but your perspiration evaporates so quickly, you don’t even get a wet spot in your arm pit. You are becoming dehydrated and you don’t have a clue. In Grand Canyon National Park they have signs strategically placed along the trails that say, “Stop! Drink water. You are thirsty, whether you realize it or not.” [Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year B, Vol. 2, 2008, p. 74]

Do you find it hard to imagine that you could be thirsty without realizing it? How about getting so settled into routines that keep you busy and distracted that you can’t tell whether it’s your heart and soul that are hungry, or your stomach? We have a hunger for God and a thirst for life, but we get lost in a culture of insatiable appetites and false promises of fullness and fulfillment.

Isaiah asks just the right question, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” The prophet reminded God’s people in exile and reminds us, that we are people of a different bread, bread not from the Babylonian bakery, but from God’s kitchen.

Isaiah shouts with urgency, inviting any within earshot to God’s banquet, to the feast where all are fed simply because all are hungry.

“Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.”

When we listen, we are given a word as delightful as the richest food. And we have a piece of bread placed in our hands, bread that speaks of God’s faithfulness and mercy like nothing we have ever tasted.

In many ways, Lent is a persistent invitation to get to know our real hunger and to eat the bread of life.

Courageous Compassion

"Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you,” they warned him. It was Herod Jr. they were talking about.

Herod Sr.’s claim to Biblical fame was the massacre in and around Bethlehem, when at the time of Jesus’ birth he had all children under the age of two killed (Mt 2:16-18) just to make sure he got rid of a potential contender for his throne, he thought.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Herod Jr. was nervous because of reports that people were flocking to this rabbi from Nazareth. He was nervous because it was said by some that John had been raised from the dead, by others that one of the ancient prophets had arisen. Herod read the briefs by his intelligence people, and all he could say was, “John I beheaded; but who is this about whom I hear such things?” (Lk 9:7-9)

People knew that Herod wanted to see Jesus, but they also knew that his curiosity was dangerous, and some of the Pharisees warned Jesus to get out of Galilee.

There was something about Jesus that attracted the attention of men in power, although there is no sign of Jesus ever having made any overt political threat to the ruling authorities. He had no interest in Herod’s throne or Pilate’s, he didn’t play by the rules of their game, and that may have been what made him such a threat.

He was fearless, and a man who knows no fear cannot be manipulated.

I imagine Jesus laughing dismissively when he replied to their warning, “Go and tell that fox for me, listen, I do what I do, and I finish my work. I must be on my way.”

He called Herod a fox, a metaphor that paints the ruler as sly and cunning, but also several sizes smaller than a lion or a wolf. Only Jesus didn’t portray himself as a lion or a wolf either, nor as an eagle or a hawk. Instead he spoke of a hen gathering her brood under her wings – and fox and hen make an interesting pair.

I find it curious how we identify human traits and intentions with certain animals, and I wonder what fables and stories animals would tell about us if they could – but that’ll have to wait.

Jesus called Herod a fox and compared his own work to a mother hen’s desire to protect her chicks. Don’t call him a chicken, though, unless you know how far a hen is willing to go in order to protect her young from danger. If you haven’t seen The Natural History of the Chicken on PBS yet, I recommend that you do.  After you’ve watched the last ten minutes of that delightful video essay, you’ll never look at chickens the same way again.  In those ten minutes you meet Eliza, a fluffy Silkie Bantam hen, who literally throws herself between a handful of chicks and a hawk, protecting them with her own body.

Like I said, don’t call Jesus a chicken, unless you know how far a hen is willing to go to protect her young from the hawk or the fox.

Jesus did leave Galilee, but he didn’t leave to escape death. He didn’t turn west and spend a couple of weeks on the beach to give Herod a chance to relax or to allow tensions to cool. He was already on the way to Jerusalem where political and religious power resided, and where he knew he would die.

Jesus didn’t choose death, though. He chose to live the life he was given, and that makes a world of difference. He chose to live in God’s reign, he chose to live a life of compassion and truth, he chose to share his life with all, and he refused to trade it in for mere survival in Herod’s little world, or Pilate’s, or Caesar’s, or whatever their names may be who sit on their thrones, afraid to lose their power, afraid to lose control over their little kingdoms.

Jesus was fearless because he knew who he was; he knew in his bones that he was God’s beloved; and he knew that nothing in the universe is more real than the love of God for God’s creation.
When he had the friendly Pharisees tell Herod, “I must be on my way,” it wasn’t geography he was talking about or the pressures of a crowded schedule. He was talking about his faithfulness to God’s way with God’s people, he was talking about fierce, courageous love.

One moment Jesus was laughing at Herod, and then his voice changed from easy defiance to anguished, divine lament.

Jerusalem. Jerusalem! The city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!

Jesus gave voice to God’s desire, and more than voice. He embodied God’s desire to gather us closer in God’s embrace, and he bore in his body the wounds of our unwillingness, the wounds of our desire to be human without God.

Week of Compassion has been on our minds quite often recently, particularly in the context of our response to the devastation caused by the earthquake in Haiti. Just yesterday, barely more than 24 hours ago, there was news about another earthquake, this one in Chile, causing death and destruction, and terror as far away as Asia. We may not yet know the full scale of devastation, but we do know that our partners have been at work on the ground literally within minutes.

We call it Week of Compassion because this ministry began with a week-long special offering after W.W. II; it was a gesture of courage as well as compassion to reach out to former enemies and find reconciliation by building peace together.

We know it’s more than a week of compassion; it’s a way of being in the world. Courageous compassion is Jesus’ way of being in the world. It is what brought him to Jerusalem. Courageous compassion is one of the names we give to God’s desire to be with us and gather us in.

Through Week of Compassion we have the privilege of embodying that desire, that love that holds all things, in places of great suffering, places that many would call God-forsaken. We have the privilege of being present through search and rescue workers, medical professionals, counselors, civil engineers, pastors and teachers and farmers and the many who follow Jesus on the way to the place where life has been shattered and hope is in short supply.

Jesus lived fearlessly and with extravagant love, and he calls us to follow him, to enter the life of God’s reign. Courageous compassion is not foolishness in the face of danger, but the courage to trust, more than anything else, the love that raised Jesus from the dead.

The psalm for this Sunday is Psalm 27, and a few verses are printed in today’s bulletin.

The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom then shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength of my life;
of whom then shall I be afraid?
When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh—
my adversaries and foes— they shall stumble and fall.
Though an army should encamp against me,
my heart shall not fear;
though war should rise up against me,
yet I will trust in the Lord.
One thing I have asked of the Lord, one thing I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
to behold the fair beauty of the Lord, to seek God in the temple.

I cannot say these words without hesitating; they haven’t yet become fully my own. The only way I can say them without feeling like I’m reading somebody else’s prayer journal, is by saying them with Jesus, by listening to him saying them, and repeating after him.

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear?

Those words are his, and I follow him.

The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?

Those words are his, and I follow him.

Though an army should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear.

Those words are his, and my voice trembles.

Though war should rise up against me, yet I will trust in the Lord.

Those words are his, and I seek shelter in his faith like a chick under the wings of a mother hen.

One thing I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.

Those words are his, and I follow him to dwell where he dwells.

Jesus is the fearless one who laughs at Herod. Jesus is the compassionate one who cries in anguish over Jerusalem. We are the ones whose desire is to follow him, to serve him and work with him, to pray with him, to rest and be at home with him. And so we repeat and rehearse the lines and the steps, again and again, repeat and rehearse compassionate presence and attentiveness, repeat and rehearse, repeat and rehearse until God’s extravagant love has driven out all fear.

Every day and everywhere, the gift of life is in question in some way.

Every day and everywhere, there is a need for witnesses who will follow Jesus in the struggle against all that threatens, weakens, and corrupts life.

Every day and everywhere, there is a need for courageous compassion in the face of tragedy or injustice.

Every day and everywhere, there is a need for some who practice with Jesus how to laugh at Herod, how to laugh at fear, and how to hold on to a vision of the city that truly is the city of God.

Garlic And Other Magic

Friday I had the pleasure of spending a couple of hours in the kitchen with friends. We browned turkey breast, cooked rice, chopped  and sauteed onions, sweet peppers, broccoli, sweet potatoes, and celery. And when we were finished - the last ingredient we added was a handful of fresh oregano - there were several trays of delicious lunch, ready to be served.

It all began with the lovely fragrance of garlic from the marinade that had infused the turkey. With the magic of heat and olive oil, all the other flavors emerged and blended, sweet and salty, meaty, malty, musty, hot and mmmh. Cooking a meal is alchemy, beautiful magic.

We loaded the food on a truck - a great truck equipped with heated compartments - and then the miracle continued in the streets of Nashville. We had made lunch for men and women who spend the night in shelters and tents, under bridges, or just walking until morning. We had cooked a good meal for people who spend the better part of the day hoping for better days.

There is hunger in Nashville. Food security is a term from the dictionary of bureaucrats. Hunger is a human experience.

There are food deserts in Nashville. And there are people who help us see and understand and address those realities.

Next Sunday, February 28, following the 10:45 worship service, Tallu Schuyler will talk to us about hunger in Nashville. Tallu is the Executive Director of Mobile Loaves and Fishes, a ministry named after a miracle. We will eat lunch together (rice, beans, and cornbread) and we will learn together - statistics, terms, facts, and the human experiences that so easily get lost behind them.

On Saturday, February 27, you have an opportunity to be part of a little kitchen magic. There will be rice, black beans, onions, peppers, garlic, corn meal, eggs, salt, milk, water and fire. Would you like to be part of turning all that into a meal for many? The cooks will meet in the Vine Street kitchen sometime on Saturday. Just complete the form at the bottom of this post.

Before you scroll down: on Friday, February 26, a group will gather at 9am in the kitchen at Woodmont Christian Church's South Hall to prepare lunch for the homeless. Contact Caitlin Dally caitlin.m.dally@vanderbilt.edu or Tallu Schuyler talluschuyler@gmail.com for details.

 

To Haiti With Love

Mark your calendar: Sunday, February 28, 6pm, Woodmont Christian Church. To Haiti With Love is a benefit concert for Haiti by Nashville Disciples musicians, singers, and songwriters. Trey Flowers, Children's Minister at Woodmont Christian Church, planned and coordinated this event; he was part of the group of Disciples who were in Haiti when the earthquake brought death and destruction to the island.

This is a benefit concert for Week of Compassion to help fund our disaster relief and development work with our partners in Haiti.

There won't be a charge at the door, but generous donations to Week of Compassion will be encouraged. Gabe Dixon, Andra Moran, Mike Lehman, and others generously contribute their gifts of music and song, and they hope to see you there!

muddy hymnal

As part of Vine Street's hunger:360 ministry project, we are happy to announce the opening of an art exhibit in our sanctuary.

The artist, Tallu Scott Schuyler, is a member of Vine Street, and in 2009 she spent several months working in Nicaragua.

 

muddy hymnal
photographs + stories about food + resurrection
by tallu scott schuyler

a photo essay about farming and faith that tells stories from a regional food security program in Nicaragua that prioritizes sustainable economic development in poor, rural communities across the country

march 6 - april 6, 2010
vine street christian church, nashville tennessee

*opening reception march 6 at 5–7 pm, gallery talk @ 6 pm

Glory in the Gray

Friday night, I watched the opening ceremony for the Olympic winter games in Vancouver. I was mesmerized by the play of light and sound, celebrating Canada’s cultures and regions.

I watched with awe as ice turned into water, and I saw whales gliding across the bottom of the stadium – as if we all sat in a giant glass bottom space ship hovering above the sea.

I saw a boy flying like Peter Pan, carried by the wind, across the undulating prairie. I saw mountains rising from the plains, giant trees dwarfing the men and women dancing around their trunks. I saw towers of glass, athletes on snow and ice, I saw thousands of flickering lights and faces reflecting the wonder.

I heard drums and fiddles, poetry and chant, songs and hymns – it was amazing, beautiful, deeply moving, and I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to call it a spiritual experience.

NBC, however, made sure I didn’t get too carried away. Whenever I got close to jumping up from the couch and joining the dance or whenever I was being pulled in so completely that I started to forget where I was—they cut to commercials.

In the blink of an eye, I found myself transported from the heights of imagination and creativity back to the van with the two guys at Sonic discussing the benefits of the value menu.

Friday night was the first time I remember that I got angry at actors in a commercial for completely ruining the moment. It was just like you and your sweetheart enjoying a romantic dinner at home; across the flames of the candles you are looking into each other’s eyes, and the moment is filled with all your happiest memories and your sweetest dreams. And then the phone rings, and you do let the machine get it, but you can still hear the voice of some stranger eager to talk with you about something that’s missing in your life – when the only thing missing is the beauty of the moment that abruptly ended just seconds ago, the moment you wanted to last, the moment you hoped would take you away like a ride on a magic carpet.

Two obvious lessons:

One – turn off all phones and stick a sock in the door bell before you light the candles tonight.

Two – don’t count on tv to take you anywhere without trying to convince you that fulfillment awaits those who purchase more stuff.

We are near the beginning of Lent, only three days away from Ash Wednesday, and during Lent we practice and proclaim the Christian counter argument to our culture of consumption: Fulfillment awaits those who know God, and that knowledge is acquired in an entirely different way.

In the middle of Luke’s narrative of the gospel there is this mountain; it simply appears, without name or introduction:

Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray.

Not a mountain, but the mountain. What mountain was that? I don’t believe it’s a matter of geography. Just like the river in the song, As I went down in the river to pray, any river can be the river – and ultimately, prayer itself is the river. Any mountain can be the mountain, because ultimately prayer itself is the mountain.

Jesus went up and the three went with him, with sore feet and weary legs. They had been working long hours bringing the good news to villages in Galilee and curing diseases everywhere, setting food before thousands and gathering the left over pieces into baskets. They were tired. When Jesus went up on the mountain, they stumbled along behind him.

And while Jesus was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes were shining like the sun was rising inside of them. Everything the three looked at was bathed in that dazzling light; they were weighed down with sleep, but they saw Jesus, talking with Moses and Elijah. They saw their master and friend in glory, talking with the lawgiver and the prophet.

What were they talking about? Moses, Elijah and Jesus were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. They were in fact talking about his death on that hill outside of Jerusalem, at the end of the way he was on, but they did not use the word death. And they did not speak of it as something that would happen to him, but something he would accomplish. The word translated as departure is the Greek exodos, and with Moses right there, no other hint was needed.

Jesus would go to Jerusalem to set God’s people free, leading them from bondage to freedom. This time the great opponent wasn’t pharaoh, it wasn’t even caesar; the struggle was against sin and death and all the powers that cut off God’s creatures from abundant life, that keep God’s people from entering the joy of the kingdom and from knowing fulfillment in the presence of God. It would be another exodus, with Jesus laying down his own body to part the waters and the Risen One being the first on the other side.

Elijah was the ancient prophet whose reappearance meant that redemption was near, that the Messiah was due, and there was Elijah talking to Jesus; everything was coming together perfectly.

The light they saw was the glory of God illuminating the way of Christ and confirming it to be the way of God. They were only watching, but it was awesome and holy, and they wanted it to last; everything was beautiful and clear, bathed in heavenly light. They knew God like they hadn’t known God before, and all they could think of was, abide.

“Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” Master, don’t let this end; abide, and let us behold this beauty for good.

Prayer has the power to mediate divine presence; the mountain can be any mountain, the river can be any river. God’s glory can erupt anytime and anywhere, and when it does we can mark the spot with a rock like Jacob who saw a stairway set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven, and the angels of God ascending and descending on it. “How awesome is this place!” he said. “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it,” and he called it Beth-El, house of God.

We can mark the spot with a cairn or a rock or a temple or three dwellings or a sanctuary, but God’s glory will not abide in our dwellings, God’s glory will not stay on our map.

On the mountain, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were terrified. In that darkness nothing dazzled, nothing shone, all they could see was the absence of all things visible. Whereas before everything had been exceedingly clear and orderly, now they were completely in the dark without any sense of place or direction. It was as if they had fallen from the heights of holy awe to the depths of trembling fear. And that’s when they heard the voice.

"This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him."

Just one commandment for the road ahead. Just one commandment for the search for the glory of God in the lowlands of life.

They didn’t say a word about what they had seen. They followed Jesus down from the mountain, down to where the needy crowd was waiting, down to the lowlands of life. And there, at the foot of the mountain, the silence was broken by a father who cried out, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child.”

His cry was like the echo of the voice they had heard on the top of the mountain, only here it was filled with pain and helplessness in the face of shrieking, unrelenting demons that maul and abuse us.

This is where we long to see transfiguration, down here in the valleys and plains where demons need to be cast out and children wait for healing. This is where we work and watch and pray for the transfiguration that illumines all the earth with the light of heaven. Down here is where we encounter God’s Chosen One, who teaches us to pray and watch and work, always trusting in God’s presence and promise. Down here is where we listen to the One who embodies God’s boundless grace and unceasing compassion. This is where we hear him, calling us to repentance and challenging us to follow him all the way to the cross and to Easter in our search for the glory of God.

The mountain is there so we can climb to the summit and catch a more complete vision of the valleys and plains below and the land beyond. The mountain is there for us not to settle down on it but to come down from it.

In her novel, Gilead Marilynne Robinson tells the story of John Ames, a minister in a little town called Gilead in Iowa. The novel takes the form of a letter that this old man begins to write in 1956 to his young son, and just before the letter ends and the novel closes, the author has John Ames write,

It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of creation and it turns to radiance for a moment or a year or the span of a life and then it sinks back into itself again and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire or light. (…) But the Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see [Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004), p. 245]

That little willingness to see is what we nurture during Lent with simple disciplines like turning off the phone for thirty minutes of prayer every day; or leaving work early twice a week for a walk through the neighborhood; or trading tv time for reading time; or preparing food for strangers.

And we nurture more than just a little willingness to see.

We nurture our courage to trust that the Lord never ceases to breathe on this poor gray ember of creation.

We nurture our desire to be present when the Spirit blows away the ashes to show us the glory in the gray. [ With thanks to George MacLeod for the beautiful expression, “Show us the glory in the grey.”]

Take This Bread

One early, cloudy morning when I was forty-six, I walked into a church, ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine. A routine Sunday activity for tens of millions of Americans — except that up until that moment I'd led a thoroughly secular life, at best indifferent to religion, more often appalled by its fundamentalist crusades. This was my first communion. It changed everything.

Eating Jesus, as I did that day to my great astonishment, led me against all my expectations to a faith I'd scorned and work I'd never imagined. The mysterious sacrament turned out to be not a symbolic wafer at all, but actual food — indeed, the bread of life. In that shocking moment of communion, filled with a deep desire to reach for and become part of a body, I realized what I'd been doing with my life all along was what I was meant to do: feed people.

And so I did. I took communion, I passed the bread to others, and then I kept going, compelled to find new ways to share what I'd experienced. I started a food pantry and gave away literally tons of fruit and vegetables and cereal around the same altar where I'd first received the body of Christ.

from the Prologue, Sara Miles, Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion

What do you do for Lent? Same as always? Or skip dessert? Decline chocolate? Non-fat lattes only?

I like going back to the ancient suggestion that I take time to reflect on my need to repent. That I open myself to the possibility of conversion.

I love marking this season that leads up to Easter with a journey through a book, the turning of pages taking the place of steps taken on a pilgrim's path. This year, it's going to be Take This Bread, and I invite you to join me. We read through the book together, and once a week we meet to talk about favorite passages, about questions and discoveries, and to take the bread of life, give thanks for it, break it, and eat it.

Does this sound like something you'd like to do? Get a copy of the book, and meet me on Wednesdays at 7pm, starting on February 17 (with smudges on our foreheads), in my study at the church.

It's no coincidence that this also fits in beautifully with our hunger:360 project.

The Big Question

What is the big question in your life? What is the one question that goes through your mind when nothing distracts you?

A young couple I know just became first-time parents, and their big question is, “Can we do this?” Their little boy is ten days old, and they wonder, “What’s the world going to be like when he graduates from college?” Their big question: “Can we do this?”

At your work, they have closed entire departments because there aren’t enough orders in the book, and your big question is, “Will things turn around or am I next?”

Your friend’s life has been a complete roller coaster and he barely has time to process anything, and for weeks his question has been, “Is it gonna be OK?”

Between parents and teenagers, the big questions famously clash. Dad asks his daughter the mother of all big questions, “What are you going to do with your life?”, while the daughter can’t stop thinking about the cute guy in the cafeteria, and the only big question on her mind is, “How can I get him to notice me?”

Beginning sometime in early childhood, we begin carrying big questions in our minds. Some of them we all have to answer somehow at some point, they are simply part of being human; others are unique chapters of our life stories.

I remember the moment when, as a child, I stumbled upon the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” and how frightened I was when I tried to imagine what nothing would be like.

Most days, though, the big question is much closer to home.

Every time Peter and his partners pulled away from the shore in their boats, the big questions was, “Will we catch enough?”

Enough to feed our families? Enough to take some to market? Enough to pay for boat repairs and other capital expenses? Enough to cover Rome’s steep fishery tax that was due whether or not they caught anything?

The big question every day was, “Will there be enough?” and that’s one we all know, isn’t it? Will there be enough to pay the bills? Enough to stay in school? Enough to keep the business open?

It’s not hard at all to see ourselves all in that boat together, pulling away from the shore at the beginning of a work day, or a work week or a month or a fiscal year, wondering, “Will there be enough?” It’s easy for us to see ourselves all in that boat together, returning to the beach after a long day of work with little or nothing to show for it. We stand in the shallow water, washing our nets, wondering how we’ll make ends meet, hoping that tomorrow will be better.

And then Jesus gets into the boat and he asks Peter to put out a little way from the shore. He sits in the boat, he teaches the crowd, and Luke doesn’t tell us a single word of that teaching. We can only assume that he proclaims the good news of the kingdom of God as he did in Capernaum, and back home in Nazareth where they didn’t want to hear him. We can assume that he brings good news to the poor and proclaims the year of the Lord’s favor to the crowd gathered on the beach.

Then Jesus turns to Peter, and Luke makes sure we know exactly what he tells him: “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” And Peter and those with him, after a long night of working tirelessly and catching nothing, trust Jesus and let down the nets and they pull in the biggest catch anybody has every seen, more fish than the nets and the boats can possibly hold.

Imagine the faces of the fishermen, jaws dropped; imagine the faces of the crowd, eyes wide with wonder; imagine the brief, breathless silence and the sudden eruption of shouting, hollering, and clapping on the beach. Imagine the joy when those boats come ashore.

Now you know why Luke didn’t write down a single word of Jesus’ teaching from the boat: because this is the message, this is the good news, this net-breaking, boat-sinking catch is the good news of abundant life for all in the kingdom of God.

Peter knows it. He falls down on the pile of fish, knowing that he is in the presence of God, fearful that the fire of holiness might consume him. “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man,” he stammers. And the Lord replies, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”

Everything has changed.

“Will there be enough?” no longer is the big question, because there obviously is so much more than enough. What, then, is the big question?

You may be tempted to say to yourself, “Wow, that’s a lot of fish. Should I can it or freeze it? I’ll need to get a bigger boat, or better yet, two; and I need to get some stronger nets as well. More importantly, I need to ask Jesus to mark all the good fishing spots on my map. Perhaps I can interest him in a business partnership? Should I call it Me & Jesus – Deep Water Fishing or Jesus & Me – Daily Catch Fresh from the Sea?”

If that is not the big question, what is?

In the same waters that we have fished all night long without catching anything, waters we thought we knew like the back of our hands, there, right under the surface of our day-to-day work, is an abundance we can barely imagine, and Jesus has the power to bring it out. Jesus has the power to bring it up.

Once you’ve seen that, the only question remaining is, “Where are the people to share this abundance?”

The crowds that came to the lakeshore to see Jesus and to hear him proclaim the good news, got a taste of the kingdom at the all-you-can-eat grilled-fish picnic on the beach; so many people, and not one of them asked if there would be enough.

For Peter and his friends life wasn’t about fish, boats, bills and other daily worries anymore. They left everything and followed Jesus.

Now their big question was, “How do we live in response to the abundance we have found in the presence of Jesus? How do we live so others can taste and see that God is good and the kingdom so very near?”

It is easy for us to see ourselves all in that boat together, worrying about tomorrow after working all night without catching anything. What isn’t so easy for any of us is to realize that Jesus is in the boat with us; he is done talking and he is waiting for us to put out into the deep water and lower our nets, so the people hungry for good news get to taste and see it.

I don’t believe this story is about a miracle that happened on a lake in Galilee in the first half of the first century; it is about a miracle that began then.

Jesus has the power to open our eyes for the abundance of life that God desires for us.

Jesus has the power to change our big questions from anxious worries about ourselves to passionate compassion for others.

Jesus has the power to bring the kingdom of God into the dreariest, most hopeless moment.

But we must be attentive to his presence and guidance. We must be ready to stop telling fish tales from thirty years ago and get our hands wet again. We must be ready to trust him and lower our nets into the deep.

That is what we did in the summer and fall of 2008 when we got into our little boat for what we called The Journey. The big question was, “Who and what is God calling us to be in 2019?”

We listened prayerfully to God and to each other. We responded faithfully. We put out into the deep water and let down our nets, and we pulled up a vision of the future. It is the vision of a vibrant community of believers with a strong mission focus. A community equally at home in our local neighborhood and with our global neighbors around the world. It is a net-breaking, boat-sinking vision so beautiful, we made it into a movie.

Now the big question is, “How do we live in response to the abundance we have found in the presence of Jesus? How do we live so others can taste and see that God is good and the kingdom so very near? How do we live into the vision God has set before us?”

We didn’t quite leave everything to follow Jesus, but we did leave some old ministry models that no longer worked and we went to work with some new ones, particularly in the areas of communication and education.

We kept our attention on the needs of the most vulnerable among our brothers and sisters, and with wisdom and boldness we finished one of our strongest years in outreach giving during the toughest economic period most of us have ever experienced.

If you haven’t read the year-end report from our finance committee, I encourage you to do so. Most of you have already received it in the mail with your year-end giving statement. Go to our website and you will read about moments of kingdom abundance during a period when everybody else was talking about cut backs.

The big question for us as a congregation at the beginning of this year is not, “Will there be enough?”

The big question is, “How will we continue to live into the story God has put before us? How will we continue The Journey as followers of Jesus Christ here in Nashville and around the world?”

You know that our friends on the finance committee know how to worry, but they also know how to build a budget around mission, not fear. You know that our friends on the Official Board know how to worry, but they also know when it’s time to get our hands wet.

It is time to get out of the shallow water and put out into the deep water with boldness and lower our nets trusting the word and promise of Jesus.

It is time to be an Ephesians 3:20 church. Go ahead, write it down, Ephesians 3:20. No need to put it on a big poster and take it to the Super Bowl party or the next ball game. This isn’t for others to see; this is for us to see and remember when the worries creep in. Let’s write it on the covers of our check books. Let’s write it on the agenda of every board meeting. Let’s write it on every committee report and financial statement: Ephesians 3:20

Here is what it says,

“Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

I have nothing to add to that.



hunger:360

In our 360 projects, we bring together what belongs together. Too often, we treat church life and ministry like a pizza: a slice of worship, a slice of education, a slice of service in the community, etc.

At Vine Street, we want to integrate what we do in those areas: the life of faith is not a pizza, but more like a circle where all points are defined by a common center. Our work, our worship, our family life, our study, our hopes, our fellowship – they all share, we all share a common center in the God who meets us in Jesus Christ.

360 is the sum of all angles. 360 is our way of saying, “We want to look at this from as many angles as possible. We want to experience this as completely as possible. We want to bring together what we know belongs together.”

hunger:360 is our second 360 project. Why hunger? That’s the question. Our gardens, fields and farms produce more than enough food for all, and yet there is persistent, deadly hunger on every inhabited continent. In November, the Department of Agriculture reported that here in the United States the number of Americans who lacked consistent access to adequate food soared last year, to 49 million. The government began tracking what is now commonly called “food security” 14 years ago, and the number of men, women, and children lacking “food security” has never been higher.

During Lent this year, beginning with Ash Wednesday on February 17, we will bring hunger and faith together to see how and where they touch.

We will study, we will fast, we will prepare and serve meals, we will pray, we will map our pantries, we will walk, we will read, we will trust the God of abundance in the deserts of scarcity.

hunger:360 offers us opportunities to

  • talk with Tallu Schuyler, Executive Director of Mobile Loaves and Fishes, about hunger in Nashville, and how we can address it
  • hear Kevin McCoy, Coordinator of the Nashville CROP Walk, who is passionate about the work of Church World Service and its fight against hunger
  • prepare meals and serve them in unfamiliar places in our city
  • walk through a photography exhibit in our sanctuary
  • pray with Jesus, the bread of life
  • watch a movie about a community garden project in L.A.
  • tour Second Harvest Foodbank
  • ask ourselves what hunger drives our insatiable consumerism
  • talk with Prof. Douglas Heimburger from the Vanderbilt Institute of Global Health about the effects of hunger and malnutrition on the human body
  • read Sara Miles, Take This Bread and discuss it in a small group
  • participate in the Nashville CROP Walk
  • map our pantries and refrigerators and find out where all this food comes from
  • worship God with our whole being

Watch for updates on individual events on this website.

The calendar below looks best in Agenda view.

 

I read Job after the Earthquake

Hope and I hauled three large boxes to the post office last week. They contained about one hundred plastic bags, each filled with a small towel, a wash cloth, a bar of soap, a toothbrush, a comb, a nail clipper, and six band aids. We assembled those hygiene kits for Church World Service, whose warehouse in Maryland was emptied in response to the great need in Haiti.

When we set up the tables for putting together those hygiene kits last Sunday, there was a moment when I said to myself, “What good are band aids to bodies bruised and broken by an earthquake?”

But then I remembered that those little sticky strips are magic. Our little ones come running to us, crying inconsolably, or so it seems, pointing to their elbow or their knee. What do we do? We look with careful attention, we acknowledge their pain, we kiss the scratch, and before we’re finished asking, “Would you like a band aid?” they are ready to go and play again. One small gesture of love, and the whole world has changed for them.

Band Aid has become a way of labeling our response to the needs of others as inadequate, as nowhere near the level of relief and support that is needed to really make a difference. We call it Band Aid when our actions only treat surface issues rather than the underlying causes of a crisis.

But when I think about the mother who will have a bright orange band aid to put on her child’s knee, I know we are doing something right, especially since it’s not all we do.

And when I watched our own children assembling those kits last Sunday, knowing that their help was needed and that they could do their part to bring comfort and healing to another family, I knew we were doing the right thing.

I like to think that one of our kids perhaps smuggled a crayon or two into the bag, knowing intuitively that we need not just food and water, shelter and a bath at the end of the day, but also pictures, stories, and songs.

And more than anything we need to know that we are not alone.

The church has responded to the needs of the survivors with shipments of food, tents, and blankets, water purification systems, baby kits, hygiene kits, medical supplies and personnel, and we continue to respond.

Amy Gopp, the Director of Week of Compassion, was in Nashville last week and we got together for a cup of coffee before she had to go to the airport. We talked about disaster relief, refugee assistance, and community development, the three columns of Week of Compassion.

We talked about how in each of those three areas our work is always coordinated with other churches, whether internationally, nationally, or on the ground in Haiti and elsewhere. We talked about the reality of the body of Christ in the world, where individual members don’t just do what they feel called to do, but are in constant communication about the demands of our faith, challenging each other’s assumptions, discussing goals and methods, praying and worshipping together, learning from each other, embodying the love of Christ in the world.

And Amy and I talked about how in those encounters and in that work the church is not presbyterian, lutheran, methodist, pentecostal, baptist, or anglican, let alone American, Norwegian, Haitian, or Indonesian – the church is the church, the church is one.

I read Job after the earthquake.

Job had a great life; it says in the very first verse that he was blameless and upright. He had seven sons and three daughters, and his wealth was considerable.

And then he lost everything. Oxen, donkeys, sheep and camels, thousands of them, all in one day. Servants came, one after another, to deliver the messages of death and loss, each of them ending their report with the same refrain, “I alone have escaped to tell you.”

And then another servant came with word about Job’s children. They had all been together at a party in the house of his firstborn when the house collapsed on them and they were all killed.

I thought about Job when I heard the story of a man in Port-au-Prince who stood outside the morgue wailing, “Just let me see her body!” and they couldn’t let him in because there were too many bodies and too many husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters looking for the bodies of loved ones.

I thought about Job when I read about the teacher looking at what was left of the school, knowing that her students had been in the building when the earthquake struck.

I thought about Job when I read about the missionary who talked to a girl trapped under big chunks of concrete, encouraging her to pray and not give up hope, telling her that he would come back with help – and when he came back and called her name there was no response.

I read Job after the earthquake.

I wondered if he got to see and hold his children one last time before they were buried, or if there was only a mass grave for them and all who had died that day.

Job had three friends, and when they heard of his tragic loss, they came to console and comfort him. Only what could they possibly say or do?

They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great (2:13).

I sense a deep reverence and respect for a friend’s loss in that response. They didn’t stop by and whitewash his pain with talk show chatter. They sat with him, not off in the distance discussing and explaining what had happened to him and why. They let him know that he was not alone, and they didn’t say a word until he spoke [and after the first round of conversation, he told them, "If you would only keep silent, that would be your wisdom (13:5)."]

It doesn’t say that their presence was a comfort to him, but I imagine it was. Sitting with him on the ground for seven days and nights was a gesture of friendship and solidarity. There are times when silence is not only an expression of wisdom, but of love.

I thought and prayed about bodies these last two weeks. Bodies in collapsed buildings; bodies lying in streets; bodies hastily buried.

Living, breathing, vulnerable bodies that need water and food and shelter.

The body of the little five-year-old boy pulled alive from the rubble on Thursday, with people laughing and singing in wonder and joy.

I was surprised at how physical my reaction has been. My heart was heavy with sadness; I cried reading blogs and newspapers, and listening to the radio; I felt a wave of joy wash over me when I saw pictures of little children playing and singing in villages just outside the city; and at night I lay awake in bed not just thinking how fortunate I was to be with my family and to have a roof over our heads, but knowing gratitude in my body like a layer under my skin and the pulse in my veines.

I don’t know how many times I have heard or read Paul’s letter to the Corinthians and how often I have spoken about the church as the body of Christ and the variety of gifts among its members.

In these past two weeks the knowledge of this reality once again travelled from my head down to my bones.

Last Sunday we sang, “And we, though many throughout the earth, we are one body in this one Lord,” and it is true.

Today we heard, "In the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. (…) If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it."

This is true – not an idea, not a concept, but an embodied reality.

We come from a variety of religious and ethnic backgrounds, and our social and economic status varies, both within and between congregations, but in Christ all those differences are relative.

In Christ, we are all parts of one body, and members one of another. Our individuality is honored in that we each serve the body in a distinct and essential way, even the littlest among us, but we are no longer just a multitude of bodies, stories, and voices. We are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.

It is the body of Christ that was buried in the ruins of Port-au-Prince, and the body of Christ that began digging with bare hands;

it is the body of Christ that longs for freedom, and the body of Christ that brings good news to the poor and freedom to the oppressed;

it is the body of Christ that suffers, and the body of Christ that sits in silence for seven days and nights;

it is the body of Christ that hurts and hungers and thirsts, and the body of Christ that holds and feeds and comforts;

the truth of Christ is not an idea or a set of beliefs, but the embodied reality of love and mercy.

We cannot say to one another, “I don’t need you,” because we have each been given to another. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.”

But the hand can say to the eye, “Tell me what you see,” and the eye to the hand, “Help me look deeper.” The feet can say to the head, “Help me understand,” and the head to the feet, “Help me get there.”

God has knit us together in one body, fearfully and wonderfully made.

To Whom Do You Belong?

Very soon after you were born, you were given a name. There was a time when your parents and their families and anyone who knew about you referred to you solely as the baby. They spoke with joy, anticipation and hope, but still, you were just the baby; in those days they may not even have known if you were a boy or a girl, or if there were two or three of you.

Very likely your parents started compiling lists of possible names at some point during their pregnancy; two columns, one if it’s a girl, another if  it’s a boy. Names of moms and dads, aunts and uncles, best friends and movie stars, names that wouldn’t attract cruel teasing in the school yard one day, names that go well with the family name, names that start with the same letter as your parents’ or your siblings’ first names, names that capture kindness, strength, beauty or other characteristics – long lists of names for the baby.

As the due date drew closer, the list got shorter. And at some point they looked at you and they just knew what your name was going to be, and they called you by your name. You were no longer just the baby, but somebody.

There is power in a name. It sets us apart in our individuality and our sacred personhood. It is our name that captures who we are, not our Social Security Number or some other PIN assigned to us.

In the village where my mother was born and grew up, and where her parents and siblings still lived when I was little, I noticed a peculiar custom. When a grown-up would see me at church or at a store, and my mother or grandmother wasn’t  with me, they would inquire who I was, only they didn’t ask, “What’s your name?” but, “To whom do you belong?”

Grown-ups would also refer to each other by their last name first. My grandmother’s name was Elizabeth Simon, and everybody called her Lisa, but when her name came up in conversation, people referred to her as Simon’s Lisa; my grandfather was Simon’s Georg, my uncle, Simon’s Hans. Last names came first because apparently what family one belonged to was considered very important.

I must have been born with a strong independent streak. I was only three or four years old, when someone asked me, “To whom do you belong?” – and I remember putting my foot down, “I belong to nobody. I am Thomas.” I remember that moment vividly, and how strongly I felt about being recognized as a person and not just as a member of a family or clan, let alone somebody else’s possession.

As a teenager, I went to catechism class. In preparation for our confirmation, we learned the meaning of our baptism and how to live as followers of Jesus and people of God. The catechism we studied was (and still is) a collection of questions and answers about the Christian faith, and the first question has been, ever since the days of the Reformation, “What is your only comfort, in life and in death?”

Not the kind of question you’d ask a fourteen-year-old, is it? We weren’t expected to come up with our own answers, but we were encouraged to know the church’s answer to that question and to grow into it.

“What is your only comfort, in life and in death?”

“That I belong – body and soul, in life and in death – not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.” Heidelberg Catechism

I was fourteen years old; I believed that I belonged to nobody but myself – and the church wanted me to find comfort in the thought that I did indeed not belong to myself. The church urged me to question my most sacred assumptions: my independence, my autonomy, my radical self-realization, and my immortality.

I learned to repeat the answer, that I belong – body and soul, in life and in death – not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. I learned to repeat the answer, but I didn’t believe it. I wanted to be myself and belong to myself.

I liked the passage from Isaiah where the prophet says,

Now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.

I liked that promise and I made it my own without blinking, never mind that it was a promise given to God’s people. I liked that promise, because I knew that life could be overwhelming at times and frightening, and I liked the thought that my name was written in the palm of God’s hand. What I didn’t hear, not really, was the part where God says, “I have redeemed you, I have called you by name, you are mine.”

Today I know no greater comfort than that Christ Jesus has made me his own.   

Today I know that the radical independence of my adolescent imagination was not only the rejection of any authority but my own, but also the unknowing surrender to other powers and authorities that had trained me well to play by their script and call it freedom.

It took me years to realize how much I was a child of the times, and how much my thoughts and actions had been shaped by my need to conform and fit in and fulfill expectations.

Today all I want is to live as a child of God.

When Jesus was about thirty years old, he came to the Jordan river, and he heard John the Baptist proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. When John warned the crowds of the wrath to come, Jesus was there. When the crowds asked John, “What then should we do?”, Jesus was there. When even tax collectors and soldiers came to be baptized and make commitments to lives of greater faithfulness, Jesus was there. And when all the people were baptized, Jesus was there and he was washed in the river along with us. He stepped into our place, so we would be in his.

Luke is very careful to note that Jesus was praying when the heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. Jesus didn’t listen to the crowd or the expectations of his family and friends or anyone else, he prayed. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”

This is how his ministry began. Not with a commission to go and save the world, but with this beautiful statement of relationship, love, and delight.

In Luke’s gospel, the scene is followed by a long genealogy, name after name, generation after generation – but Jesus’ true identity, his true name was spoken by the water: You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.

Jesus stood in our place, so we would stand in his and hear our true name, and know the relationship that defines us more profoundly than our human ancestry or our past. Together we stand in the river and the voice from heaven declares, “You are my children, my loved ones, my people, my delight; you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you; you are my sons and my daughters, called by my name, created for my glory.”

Who we are is not determined by the accidents of history or by our choices, good or bad, but by this voice from heaven declaring God’s delight in us.

The gospel reading for this Sunday skips a few lines in Luke’s narrative, and who knows why. In those verses we are told how Herod didn’t appreciate the good news John the Baptist proclaimed to the people. In particular, Herod didn’t appreciate how John rebuked him “because of all the evil things” he had done.

When God’s claim on us and on the world is given voice, the rulers get nervous. Herod gets nervous. The fourteen-year-old whom the church urges to question his assumptions of independence and autonomy, gets nervous. The little kid who doesn’t want to belong to anyone, gets nervous.

And what do rulers do when they get nervous about that preaching and baptizing down by the river?

Luke tells us.

Herod, with all the evil things that he had done, added to them all by shutting up John in prison.

Those disruptive voices reminding us of God’s claim on us and on the world? Lock them up, lock them in, lock them out—who cares! As long as they remain shut up and silent, all is well in the little throne rooms of the world.

What happens when the call to repentance and renewal is silenced and shut up?

Luke tells us.

Where Jesus stands, the heavens open and the truth is spoken.

Herod wants to shut up objection and judgment. Herod wants to run things his own way and so he wants to shut up the call to prepare for God’s coming, he wants to shut up the demand for the re-ordering of the world, he wants to shut up the voice in the wilderness – but where Jesus stands, the heavens open and the voice of God is heard.

Every time we baptize a disciple in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we renounce those rulers and powers that wish to shut up the reign of God and the renewal of the world.

Every time we gather by the water we renounce those voices that drown out the truth by telling us that we must work or shop or eat and drink or cheat our way to fullness of life.

And every time we baptize a disciple we affirm the opening of heaven, the coming of God’s redeeming power into the world, and the new creation where we know ourselves and each other by our true name as God’s sons and daughters.

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.

hunger : 360

why 360?

At Vine Street, we want to integrate what we do in education, advocacy, service, and worship. 360 is the sum of all angles, and hunger : 360 is a ministry project that brings together what belongs together.

It is our second 360 project, and the first one in 2010. The philosophy behind this approach is simple: too often we treat church life and ministry like a pizza: a slice of worship, a slice of education, a slice of service in the community … But the life of faith is more like a circle where all points are defined by the common center: Our worship, our study, our work, our fellowship, all share a common center in the God who meets us in Jesus Christ.

hunger : 360 brings together all dimensions of our ministry around just one issue, hunger.

why hunger?

That’s the question. Why is there hunger in our world? Our gardens, fields and farms produce more than enough food for all, and yet there is persistent, deadly hunger on every inhabited continent. In November, the Department of Agriculture reported that here in the United States the number of Americans who lacked consistent access to adequate food soared last year, to 49 million. The government began tracking what it calls “food security” 14 years ago, and the number of men, women, and children lacking “food security” has never been higher.

how?

During the seven weeks of Lent, from Ash Wednesday, February 17 to Palm Sunday, March 28, we will look hunger in the face and respond. We will study, we will fast, we will lament, we will prepare meals, we will pray and write letters.

you?

We are assembling a team to put the finishing touches on a number of programs, outings, meals, worship services, etc. Would you like to be part of the hunger:360 team? We’d love to work with you. Please complete the form below, and we’ll get in touch with you.

 

Breath of God

I overheard that "unfriend" had made it into Webster's dictionary last year, reflecting the impact social media has had, particularly over the last couple of years.

I don't know if it made "Word of the Decade" or some such thing, I don't even know if there is such a thing. If I had to coin a "Word of the Decade," the short list of contenders would include "crazybusy," and I still recommend Ed Hallowell's book of the same title.

Do you notice that you are being pulled in more and more directions? Do you find yourself asking yourself after a particularly breathless day, "Why am I doing this?" - I do. Do you sometimes wonder if the time you spend rushing around from one thing to the next is time well spent? I do. A lot more people, it seems, are in a hurry from early morning until late night, more people than just ten years ago. What's getting squeezed out in the process is time to breathe, time to ponder, time to simply open up to the wonder of it all. At least that's my experience. How about you?

One thing I have thought about the most and sat with  recently is the impression that church life has become just another contender in a battle over the limited number of time slots on our weekly calendar. I wonder if our approach to church life has become too program driven and event focused. I wonder if our understanding of faith and church life has shifted even more from "that which gives rhythm, shape and meaning to our life" to "that which adds a selection of spiritual experiences to a growing list of other commitments and distractions."

I use my blackberry-synced, always-on calendar with multiple reminder functions to improve the rhythm of my week, and this year I'm introducing a new element.

On Monday mornings at 8:30 am, I'm adding thirty minutes of silent prayer. On Wednesday evenings at 5:30 pm, I'm adding thirty minutes of silent prayer. I'll be in our chapel when I'm in town, or in some quiet place when I'm away.

Thirty minutes of silent prayer on Monday mornings and on Wednesday evenings.

Time to breathe in and breathe out.

Time to sync the rhythm of my life with the breath of God.

Time to protect myself from unfriending myself in the crazybusy zigzag of MoTuWedThuFrSaSo.

If you live and/or work in Nashville, I invite you to join me. We'll just sit in the chapel for thirty minutes in silence. You can read, you can pray, you can even take a nap. Monday mornings at 8:30, Wednesday evenings at 5:30.

Otherwise, please try this at home.

 

 

 

The Gifts of God

The other morning, in the shower, I thought about the curious fact that the church calendar begins at the end of November. Long before January 1st, when much of the world wakes up late to a new year, the church begins the Christian year on the first Sunday of Advent. We may plan our programs and ministries following the school year, and our fiscal year may begin January 1st or July 1st, but we count time from Advent to Advent. Long before we make our most well-intentioned (and usually short-lived) new-year’s-resolutions, we are already immersed in God’s time. We begin with promise and hope because God already has done great things for us. God’s time is ahead of the world’s. Long before we begin another round around the sun, God has already made a new beginning with us. And because that is so, the new year isn’t just a continuation of the old, or its merciless consequence, but comes with the possibility of true newness.

In Advent we remember that our future is not closed. Our future is not bound by our past, nor defined by our tired routines or unshakable inertia. The future is open for genuine newness from God. So this is the spring season of the church year, and in this season our hope is rekindled for God’s coming and for possibilities beyond our calculations and prognostications. When January 1st comes around, we will have already sung the songs of redemption with the prophets, songs of exuberant praise with Zechariah and Mary, songs of glory and joy with the angels and the shepherds. God’s time is ahead of the world’s. When January 1st comes around with the relentless tick-tock of the clock, we are already living in God’s time, to the rhythm of grace and gratitude, and to the tune of promise and faithfulness.

During Advent, we learn to sing the songs and tell the stories that proclaim how God has come to us in the past, and the singing and telling expand the horizon of our hope, preparing us for God’s advent now and in the future. And who wouldn’t agree that our hope needs expanding.

Many of us struggle with the slow recovery of the economy and the uncertainty of how long it will take before businesses will start hiring again.

Many of us struggle with the impression that the disparity of wealth in our country also represents a disparity of voice and influence in the political process.

Many of us struggle with the reality of a global climate conference that produced little except more hot air.

The world doesn’t offer a lot of reasons to begin the new year with expectancy and hope – but we are already immersed in God’s time.

On this fourth Sunday of Advent, Luke paints a picture for us. We see Mary entering a house and greeting her cousin Elizabeth. Elizabeth had been waiting her whole life for a child.

“Years of trying to have a child of our own was like having to drink bitter waters from a poisoned well month after month,” a man who wanted to be a father wrote a few years ago, reflecting on the experience of infertility.

“Nothing could break the sinister hold of barrenness on our lives, not strict adherence to whatever expert advice we could get, not prayer, not the latest fertility techniques, not fasting, nothing. One hundred months’ worth of hopes, all dashed against the stubborn realities of bodies that just wouldn’t produce offspring. … Every time we would go to worship, the laughter and boisterous-ness of the little ones milling around … would remind me of unfulfilled dreams. The season of Advent was the worst. ‘For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given,’ I would hear read or sung in hundreds of different variations. But from me a child was withheld.” [Miroslav Volf, The Gift of Infertility, The Christian Century, June 14, 2005, p. 33]

Elizabeth had been waiting her whole life for a child. Her womb had remained barren, and she and her husband were getting on in years. Elizabeth stands in the line of Sarah, Rachel, and Hannah, the great mothers of our faith who had their barren hopelessness transformed by God, and her story is a new variation on that ancient theme. In the picture Luke paints for us today, Elizabeth is in the sixth month of her pregnancy.

Mary, on the other hand, is just entering her childbearing years, a young teenager, engaged but not yet married, and she is pregnant, too. “How can this be?” she said to the angel who made the announcement, and we can imagine why she went with haste from Nazareth in Galilee to the Judean hill country to see her cousin. She enters the house, and the two women meet. Mary speaks a greeting, and the child in Elizabeth’s womb leaps for joy.

You know I have no idea what I’m talking about. I don’t know what it’s like to be pregnant. I don’t know what it means to live with a new life inside of me, let alone how it feels when the child leaps for joy. The closest I ever got was when I put my hands on my wife’s belly and I could feel the baby kicking or boxing or whatever it was he was doing in there.

Little John jumped for joy in Elizabeth’s womb when the promise of Jesus entered the house. It was the dance of ancient hope upon the arrival of fresh fulfillment.

We look at the beautiful scene Luke has painted, and we see two of the great mothers of our faith. To Elizabeth God has given that which she always wanted to carry and hold, but had long despaired of ever receiving. To Mary God has given the entirely unexpected gift that goes way beyond anything she could have imagined. Surprised by God’s advent into their lives, the two shout blessings and sing.

In our stories, barrenness is a powerful metaphor for a reality drained of life, promise and hope. However, barrenness is too quick a description for the suffocating reality of pain, blame, and shame that infertility can cast over a life and a relationship. Miroslav Volf, the man who wanted to be a father, gets closer to that reality when he writes about the bitter waters his wife Judy and he had to drink from a poisonous well month after month. After nine long years of waiting, they adopted two children, and he was surprised by what he discovered then.

“During those nine years of infertility, I wasn’t waiting for a child who stubbornly refused to come, though that’s what I thought at the time. In fact, I was waiting for the two boys I now have, Nathanael and Aaron. I love them, and I want them …, not children in general of which they happened to be exemplars. Then it dawned on me: Fertility would have robbed me of my boys… Infertility was the condition for the possibility of these two indescribable gifts. And understanding that changed my attitude toward infertility. Since it gave me what I now can’t imagine living without, poison was transmuted into a gift, God’s strange gift. The pain of it remains, of course. But the poison is gone. Nine years of desperate trying were like one long painful childbirth, the purpose of which was to give us Nathanael and Aaron.”

Elizabeth was given what she had wanted all her adult life. Judy and Miroslav were given what they wanted, but in a way they never expected. And Mary was given a gift she didn’t dream of wanting at the time, but she agreed to let her life be turned upside down in order to serve the purposes of God.

Barrenness is a powerful metaphor for a reality drained of life, promise and hope. Mary wasn’t barren, and yet, the child she carried put an end to the world’s barrenness. The child she carried continues to bring life, forgiveness, healing, hope, and love to the world’s dead ends, to our barren places and our fruitless debates.

We count time from Advent to Advent. We remember that into the empty greyness at the end of our rope, echoing with impossibility, God comes. We celebrate that into the traps we have built for ourselves with our sinful actions and lack of action, God comes. We sing with Mary that into the world as it is – vulnerable and violent, pulsing with life and groaning in pain, fragmented and yet one – into this world as it is, God comes with the gift of fulfillment and new beginning.

Mary sings, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.” Lowliness isn’t all humility and meekness. Lowliness describes social reality. Mary is poor—worse, she is poor, pregnant and unmarried. But she sings with all her heart and soul and voice because the God who brings down the powerful from their thrones and lifts up the lowly, has lifted her up. She sings because what is happening with her and through her is like rain on the dry and barren land. She sings because she knows in her womb the advent of divine possibility, the advent of mercy and justice and hope that brings to an end the world’s barrenness. She sings because she is the mother of our redeemer.

We sing with her because we too are beginning to know that whatever is proud in us and powerful is being brought down by God’s coming. And whatever is poor in us is being lifted up. We sing with her because we are beginning to taste and see how our hunger is being stilled by God’s coming, and our need to control is being sent away empty. We sing with Mary because we have come to know that fullness of life and true humanity are waiting to be born in us.

Again, this may sound like a guy talking about being pregnant; what I mean is, her song is an invitation to us not just to sing along, but to come along. She agreed to let her life be turned upside down in order to receive the gift and serve the purposes of God, and she invites us to do the same. She is the angel sent to us to remind us that we too have found favor with God, and that nothing will be impossible with God. And like the angel who was sent to her didn’t depart until she said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word,” she is waiting for our response. Our faithful, courageous, and world-changing response. What will it be?

A Special Gift

On a recent Sunday, an anonymous worshiper left a special gift in the offering plate at Vine Street. It was a small package, and written on the wrapping paper was a brief message, indicating that this gift was to support our ministry for the homeless and the hungry.
We opened the gift, and it was a Liberty $50 1 oz. gold coin. It was almost as if one of the magi from the east had arrived early to leave his gift at the manger.
This coin has a current value of $1,125. Coin shops have offered $1070, but we thought there might be a member or a friend who would like to purchase this coin and help us achieve a better return for the homeless and the hungry in our community.
gold coing
You may want to sit down for the next paragraph.

The current high bid for the coin is $5,000, yes, five thousand.

A big thank you to the anonymous donor who dropped this early birthday gift for Jesus in the offering plate. A big thank you to all those who have entered bids to own a coin with a great story, and support our ministry with the homeless and the hungry in our community. Talk about a gift that keeps giving!

The bidding will close on Monday, December 28, at noon CST. Bids may be entered by calling our treasurer at 615-665-0677 or by completing this form
 
Once the coin has been sold, we will tell its story on our website. It will be up to the new owner to decide whether that story will include their name and the purchase amount.

Bethany Hills

The Christian Church in Tennessee is engaged in a number of ministries, but the best known is probably our Camp and Conference ministry at Bethany Hills, just thirty minutes from Nashville, near Kingston Springs.

Hope Hodnett is a key leader of that ministry, both in the Tennessee region, and at Vine Street.

At Bethany Hills, children and youth grow in their faith, discover life in community, and have a lot of fun. What we don’t see so easily is the work that goes into recruiting and training counselors, preparing the curriculum, and, of course, maintaining Bethany Hills as one of our most valuable ministry resources.

Many of the children and youth that attend Bethany Hills, become strong leaders in the church. I remember Clay Stauffer, the Senior Minister at Woodmont, singing James Taylor songs on the porch at CYF Conference in 1994. Diane Faires was at the same camp; she now serves a Disciples church in North Carolina. Tallu Schuyler was there as well, and I could go on and on. What I’m saying is, some of our best leaders grow up around Bethany Hills. Some of that is just the spirit of that place; a lot of it is our commitment to that ministry.

Every gift to the annual Christmas Offering supports the summer camp and conference ministry of the Christian Church in Tennessee. Every gift assures that the children of Vine Street will continue to have a place and the resources to practice life in Christian community, to deepen their faith, and to have fun. Our gifts also assure that congregations in Tennessee and beyond will continue to have strong leaders who know each other and share a passion for our common ministry.

Your gift to the Christmas Offering supports the Christian Church in Tennessee. We will collect and dedicate this special offering on December 13 and 20. Thank you!

Advent Fire

Our God makes a way where there is no way. In the gospel according to Luke, the story begins with the birth of two boys, John and Jesus. One is the son of an old couple, well beyond child-bearing age, the other the child of a virgin. Both boys are called by a name given by an angel. John’s name means the Lord is gracious, and Jesus’ name means the Lord saves.

When John was born, his father, Zechariah, who had been mute throughout the pregnancy, sang a prophecy, praising God for remembering the promise of redemption for God’s people. Both boys, one not even born yet, would live to fulfill God’s saving purposesfor Israel and the world.

You, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.

Our God makes a way where there is no way. There had been a long silence, one lasting much longer than Elizabeth’s pregnancy.

From the day that Israel’s ancestors had come out of the land of Egypt, God had sent prophets, day after day, and they spoke God’s word to God’s people. Beginning with Moses and Miriam, there had been an unbroken chain of men and women, who were paying attention, generation after generation. They knew how to read their culture, and at the same time they were like lightning rods, ready to receive a word from God like a bolt of truth too hot and too bright for hearts unaccustomed to divine speech. They paid attention to the world in which they lived, with hearts fine-tuned to the voice of God.

The last of the prophets had been Malachi, sometime after the end of the Babylonian exile. Had God stopped speaking or was no one there whose heart was ready to listen?

Many generations after Malachi, 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 Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas – something happened.

We listen to the roll call of all these big names of men of importance and considerable power, and we are prepared to hear something equally important and powerful. We are ready for the kind of report usually introduced by, “We are interrupting our regular programming for this breaking news…”

Something had happened, something big, somewhere in one of the global centers of power, we assume. What had happened?

The word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

You know not a single station interrupted their regular programming for that. CNN didn’t report it, nor did Fox or MSNBC. They are busy making sure everybody knows every detail about Tiger Woods’s short drive to the fire hydrant. Something had happened, something whose magnitude doesn’t register on the scales of our cable news.

The word of God came – not to Caesar or one of the governors or rulers or high priests, not to one of the ones used to journalists taking notes whenever they open their mouths, but to John son of Zechariah – and not in Rome or Jerusalem or New York or Hollywood, but in the wilderness. After a long silence, the word of God came to a man on the margins of might and importance, on the periphery of reality as defined by rulers and pollsters and talk show hosts.

The word of God came to John (whose name means the Lord is gracious) son of Zechariah (whose name means the Lord remembers) and John began to speak of repentance and the forgiveness of sins. John didn’t make the evening news or the morning papers, but the word of God came into the world, this world of palaces and temples, of tent cities and food stamps. It wasn’t a particularly promising time – it never is – but it became a time of promise when the word of God came as it once came to Moses, to Elijah, to Amos and Isaiah. The word of God came and the wilderness became once again a place of hope and transformation.

Our God makes a way where there is no way. When Israel was in captivity in Egypt, the word of God came to Moses, and the people, weighed down by the yoke of oppression and exhausted by years of toil, stood and raised their heads, because their redemption was drawing near. In the wilderness, the prophet declared, the Lord would make a way and lead them to freedom. And against Pharao’s stiff-necked resistance, the Hebrew slaves followed God’s call through the desert and the sea to the land of promise; in the great exodus they became God’s covenant people.

Generations later, Israel was again in captivity in Babylon, and the word of God came to Isaiah. The prophet declared that the Lord would end their exile, gather the displaced, and bring them home in a procession of great joy on a highway through the wilderness. Sounding like the foreman of a road building crew the prophet shouted, “Make a road for the Lord, and make it straight. Fill in every gulley, every pot hole, and grade the land until it is level. Where it’s crooked, make it straight. Where it’s rough, make it smooth. This is the road to freedom, this is the way home.” And once again the people followed God’s call to the land where they would be free to serve God without fear.

Generations later, in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, the land of promise occupied by Roman legions, the word of God came to John in the wilderness. It wasn’t a call to get ready to leave, nor was it a call to arms – it was a call to repentance, and John sounded just like Isaiah: Prepare the way of the Lord.

Another exodus was in the making, and those who heard the call crossed through the water as their ancestors did when they first entered the land. It was a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Those who passed through the water didn’t change where they lived, but the transition was no less dramatic, because they changed how they lived.

The world was still governed by Tiberius, Herod, and Pontius Pilate, but the reign of God was drawing near. John called them to lean into that nearness and begin to live there. His father had sung at his birth,

By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Now is the dawn, now is the time to lean into the daybreak and begin to live in its light. John calls us to repent – not just to look back and feel sorry for what we have done or left undone, but to turn and look in the direction of sunrise – people, look east, the day is near! The Savior is coming – lean into the advent of God’s reign and begin to live there!

Prepare the way of the Lord. Does God need us to prepare a way for God to get through to us? No, God has a way of making a way where there is no way. Does God need us to prepare a way for God to get through to others? No, God has a way of making a way where there is no way. We are the ones in need when it comes to preparing the way of the Lord.

On Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus, whose name means the Lord saves. It doesn’t mean the Lord comes to visit us in our exile and make it a bit more bearable. God in Jesus comes to us calling us to follow Jesus on the way from oppression to freedom, from sin to righteousness, from violence to peace, from the long shadow of death to the gates of life. Jesus comes to us to be for us the way into God’s future, and to be with us on the way.

Our preparing the way of the Lord is not a seasonal exercise like decorating the house for Christmas. Preparing the way of the Lord is our daily discipline:

What must I do to recognize the road blocks that keep me from following Jesus?
What must I do to notice the deep ditches that separate me from others?
And what must I do to direct my feet to the bridge of reconciliation Jesus has built for us?
What must I do to hear the word of God in the hustle and bustle of my days?
What must I do to keep my eyes on Jesus when so many other things compete for my attention?

Preparing the way of the Lord is not a seasonal exercise; it’s a daily discipline.

My life is pretty cluttered these days, and I know I’m not the only one.

What I hear John saying is, “Brother, you gotta prepare the way of the Lord, because if you don’t, you’re preparing a way you don’t want to be on.”

I have carried an image with me these past couple of weeks, and I know it’s for a reason. I’ve been looking at a manger with so much junk in it, there’s no room for a baby. It’s an image of my cluttered heart. It’s the image of a life that is no longer leaning into the breaking dawn.

I keep hearing John, “You gotta prepare the way of the Lord, or chances are you’re working in pharao’s brick yard or in Caesar’s circus. You gotta prepare the way of the Lord, because if you don’t, you’re preparing a way you don’t want to be on.”

I’m grateful he got through to me. His words are like fire indeed, refiner’s fire. May it burn.

4101 Harding PIKE, Nashville, TN 37205 | (615) 269-5614

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