God Gets the Last Laugh

To the saying "The only sure things in life are death and taxes," I'd add "our need for forgiveness and God's love."  As we approach tax day (extended for 3 days this year), we generally have a sense of dread.  I dare to suggest that we often approach our regular propensity to sin and the need to confess our sinfulness to God with dread.  Yet 1 John 1: 1 - 2:2  (a Word of Life) reminds us that God eagerly awaits our confessions with an abundance of grace and mercy. Because God is light and Christ is our earthly and heavenly Advocate, we can confront our sin openly and honestly. When we step into the light of confession, God is eager to speak the Word of assurance:  "You are forgiven."

Last week was Easter Sunday when we celebrated the Resurrection:  God raised Jesus from the dead.  On this second Sunday of Easter (Eastertide), we celebrate that God has confronted death (our ultimate fear) face to face and has laughed at death.  Herein lies our assurance that laughter is how we live and love because it's how God loves and lives in us.  While never denying our sinful natures, 1 John points us toward the light of laughter.  We who walk in the light of Christ by confessing our earthly nature, are able to have fellowship with one another through our faith in the fellowship of our trinitarian God:  Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer.  This Sunday (Holy Humor Sunday), we'll laugh with joy as we celebrate our assurance of God's grace and mercy.

Let us live, love and laugh,
Pastor Shelley

Resurrection: God's Ultimate Covenant

Do you appreciate the mystery of cliff hangers?  Whether it be a book or tv show in a series, I hate the "who-done-it" mystery that keeps us hanging - waiting for resolution.  Remember the tv show Dallas & the question heard round the world?  "Who shot JR?"

Well this cliff-hanging technique is how Mark ends his gospel with Jesus' resurrection.  We can get more resurrection details from the other three gospels.  But if we stick with Mark we can wrap ourselves up in wondering.  Why did Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Jesus, and Salome come to the tomb early Sunday morning when Sabbath was over, if they knew the tomb was sealed with a huge stone?  Why did they purchase sweet smelling spices to anoint and embalm their beloved Jesus if they would have no access to his body?  How was the stone rolled away?  Who was the young man in white robes sitting in the empty tomb?  How did he know what had happened to Jesus?  Why were the women so afraid and terrified when they heard that Jesus had been raised - as Jesus had predicted before his death?  What kind of story ends with the women running away telling no one, when they were instructed to tell the disciples and Peter?

As Tom Long says, "Is this any way to run a resurrection?" (TG Long, "Dangling Gospel," The Christian Century, 2006.)

This open-ended ending is an invitation for us to continue the story of proclaiming to the world that Jesus has lived, died, and been raised to new life.  This non-ending means that our lives and our testimonies carry the story into our time and place.  This cliff hanger invites us into a mystery of faith - provocative and inclusive of our experiences of Jesus who goes ahead of us as part of God's Promise - God's Covenant with us.  Where/when/how do you see Jesus whispering, inviting, and beckoning you to follow?  Who will you share stories of Jesus with?

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Shelley

The Promise of a King and a Lamb

Sunday is April Fools' Day, technically not a holiday recognized by the church. But I think there is something to the fact that Palm Sunday is falling on April Fools' Day this year. Who do you think of when you think of fools, of something foolish? Today, in the workplaces or at school or even at church, we feel shame and humiliation if we say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing. We don’t want to be fools – on April Fools' Day, we want to be the ones playing the tricks, not the ones being made a fool!

Read Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29 and John 12:12-19.

The Gospel reading this week shapes how our Palm Sunday feels. It is mostly a joyful celebration of Jesus as the promised King, Jesus as the one to fulfill the covenant, Jesus as a miracle worker, who can bring life out of death. The people offer a welcoming parade, pledging their loyalty to Jesus as the King of Israel, running after him, stampeding after him. And yet, we end not with their joy, but the Pharisees as they continue to plot, their current plans being foiled yet again. Their presence, however, seems to be an ominous sign that reminds us of what will come later this week: a meal, a betrayal, a trial, a cross, a tomb.  

And yet, somehow, Jesus plays us all. Jesus takes on the role of the fool on Palm Sunday – riding in not on a warhorse but a young donkey, his feet probably dragging on the ground. Jesus the king rides the animal of peace, not the Messiah the people expected to violently overthrow Rome. Jesus lets the people call him king, knowing that later in the week they would be calling for his crucifixion. Jesus turns everything upside down, making wisdom foolish: emptying himself that we might be filled; saying that the last will be first and the first will be last, to save your life you must lose it; feeding multitudes with a couple loaves and fish; healing those who were said to be beyond help; and bringing life out of a dead Lazarus in a tomb. 

In a court, the fool or jester was the only one who could actually speak truth to power, who could actually criticize the king or queen or government, who could mock those in power through the gift of humor. It is said that Queen Elizabeth once threatened her fool because he did not criticize her severely enough! That is the role of Christ on April Fools' Day, on Palm Sunday: to subvert the Roman concept of Lord, to speak to the power of peace instead of violence, to find value in the people who are marginalized and oppressed. As a fool, Jesus invites people to see and live in the world in a different way. For Jesus himself is the stone that the builders rejected – only for that very stone to become the chief cornerstone, the foundation of it all. Jesus fools us, as we are promised a king and are given a sacrificial lamb. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.” Thanks be to God for responding to our Hosannas with the foolishness of the Messiah, the only one who could really save us once and for all.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Kate

Heart-Tattooed by God

Have you been heart-tattooed by God?  Has God written on your heart:  "I am your God and you are my child?"  According to Hebrew Bible Jeremiah in Jeremiah 31: 31-34, God says "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." (31: 33b). This is a promise for "days that are coming" (31: 31).  In other words, the timing is uncertain.  This is one of those now, but not-yet passages.  God's work has begun and will be completed in us at some point in the future.  This covenant is the hope of the future and is still in the process of realization. God will make or engrave a new covenant on our hearts instead of the law that is written (and still very much valid) on tablets that can be lost or stolen or broken.

This is another covenant of grace upon grace - grace beyond our own measure of accomplishment.  This covenant - at God's initiative - pours out unmerited favor on those of us who cannot accomplish this ourselves.  We're given help from within to faithfully keep covenant with God.  God will make a way where there seems to be no way - at least according to our own abilities.

There are several amazing aspects to this covenant.  That God will forgive and forget our sin is amazing.  Visualizing a world without sin feels like utopia.  Yet it is a promise from our God who is steadfastly loyal and capable of both writing such a covenant upon our hearts and enabling us to respond.  It's also amazing because Jeremiah makes clear that it's meant for all people:  "they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest." (31: 34).  Imagine our enemies or criminals or people whom we despise or reject or those on whom we deem inferior being tattooed with God's love.  The promise of a God-tattooed-heart takes lots of imagination.

Jesuit priest, Father Gregory Boyle, writes of the power of boundless compassion in his book "Tattoos on the Heart."  As he provides a service to help gang members (homies) have their tattoos of gang membership erased, Father G does the much more important service to restore the homies' hearts into hearts of compassion and love that reflect God's real intent of shalom for the homies.

If you understand yourself to be God-tattooed, how will you share God's boundless compassion to others?  Who will you welcome into God's family with your hospitality and sharing how God has tattooed you?

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Shelley

God-Promises: The Promise through Brokenness

Snakes have always creeped me out. Maybe that’s why I loved living in Ireland during my college years – a wonderful guarantee of no snakes. Legend has it that Saint Patrick banished all the snakes from Ireland after a forty day fast. While that story may be more symbolic than anything, It seems like that is what the people from our Numbers Scripture this week could really use right now.

Read Numbers 21:4-9 and John 3:14-21.

God’s people are not happy. They don’t have any food, and they detest this miserable food. Wait, what? They sound like the child who opens the refrigerator, stares at all the food, and declares that “We have nothing to eat!” Now, the people have been complaining for a while in the wilderness. The Israelites complain about their wilderness experience, longing for the comforts and the certainty of slavery. In the previous chapter, the people spoke against Moses and wished that they had died. In our passage this week, they not only speak against Moses, but they speak against God as well. And rather than instantly providing the solution, as God did with the provision of manna, quail, and water out of a rock, Numbers says that God sent poisonous snakes.

After hearing about the 10 Commandments last week, I would wager to guess that the people have broken the commandment to not use the Lord’s name in vain. As we have talked about God-Promises these past few weeks, we have heard that God is the promise-maker and the promise-keeper, knowing that we are the promise-breakers. And we know that God brings us back into the covenant time and time again. Yet that does not mean that there are never consequences to the breaking of promises.

Brokenness seems to be a state of being for us as individuals, as a church, and as a world. But we do not like to acknowledge it. We want to skip Good Friday and go straight to Easter, we want to skip chemo and be rid of this cancer already, we want to not apologize and just have our relationship go back to the way it was. The truth for us in the Numbers story is that we must admit our brokenness to God and to each other. The truth for us is that sometimes healing and provision is not instantaneous, but a long, hard journey through the wilderness.

But we are not on that long, hard journey through the wilderness alone - God doesn’t leave us in our broken state. God works through brokenness of the body of Jesus to bring us the antidote to sin and death. The Good News from John is that our God turns the ultimate humiliation in death on a cross into a victory over sin and death. The Good News is that Jesus came not to condemn but to save the world. The Good News is that Jesus is lifted high in the wilderness of our lives in Topeka in 2012.

Know that in our brokenness, God is working in us and through us to lead us to the path of shalom.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Kate

P.S. If you are feeling particularly broken, come join us at the service for healing and wholeness on Sunday at 5:00 pm.