Heart

Jesus said to them, "Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, 'This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me;      Mark 7:6

Heart   by Myuran Sukumaran

The reason I most often hear from unchurched people as to why they don’t go to church is,  “Church-y people are such hypocrites.”

And that answer makes me sad because it can be so true. The Church has, over time, welcomed its share of “holier than thou” hypocrites.  And, often, within its walls, we witness murmuring, triangulation, gossip and just plain passive aggressiveness. I am a wounded disciple myself.

Jesus warns us time and again about looking to our own selves first. To clean up our own hearts rather than judging another’s intentions. As we look at those with unclean hands, have we taken time to look at our own? Before we start trying to shape up someone else’s affairs, have we looked at our own?

God knows us: our drippy places, our wounded places, our prideful places; and God knows how earth-shatteringly human we are. Transformation occurs only when we are finally able to look at our own brokenness.

What part of your heart is broken?

What part of your heart needs to be healed, cleansed, re-formed?

Who Will You Serve?

Jonah said to the people,  ..."if serving the Lord seems undesireable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve... But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.  Jonah 24: 15

This week, I am on a Clergy Refreshment Retreat with old friends in Galena.  And while this is a time of time of prayer and rest and reflection, it is also a time of joy and laughter and mutual mentoring. 

I was struck this morning by the differing ways we set apart our quiet time for God.  For example, one friend reads the Daily Office faithfully every day. Another sits in quiet contemplative prayer, and another is a yoga devotee. Different ministries, different ways of approaching God, and vastly different political stances. We are a motley crew. 

But I'm also struck by our similarities. We all enjoy sharing a kitchen together and preparing common meals. We all love a good joke. We all wonder why Donald Trump is so far ahead in the polls. But the greatest similarity of all? That is that we each made an intentional choice to spend our lives serving God. A deliberate, definable choice.  

In doing so we have discovered a wonderful gift.  In spite of our vastly different pieties, liturgical styles, theological underpinnings, and political inclinations, Jesus is our common denominator. Our differences don't divide us; they interest us. Instead of shutting down, we strive to understand. It is a beautiful thing. 

May it be so in all of our lives, in all of our churches, and in all of our nations that the peace of God, which passes all our understanding would guard our hearts and our minds forever. 

Live!

To those without sense Wisdom says,

"Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.

Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight."  Proverbs 9: 5-6

  

Wisdom, the sacred feminine, proffers a holy invitation.  

“Come,” she says, “Eat of my bread, drink of my wine. Live!”

Ecclesiastes echoes this, “eat and drink and be merry, for this will go with us in our toil through the days of our life.” (Ecclesiastes 8:15)

We are invited to feast enthusiastically on life, to celebrate it!  The Puritans, Calvinists, and ascetics missed these verses, or avoided them all together. And, occasionally, in our desire to “worship God in the beauty of holiness,” some of us may have stumbled on the piety scale and concluded life must all bowed heads and gray clothes.

“Not so!” says Wisdom.  Yes, lay aside debauchery and licentiousness, for these numb our sensibilities and distort our perceptions. But for all else, Wisdom suggests, we celebrate life, and in so doing, offer our praises and thanksgivings to God for all the gifts that have been bestowed upon us. 

Do not simply endure..... LIVE! 

Despair

Elijah went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: "It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors."   1 Kings 19:4

Elijah is done.  He no longer has the energy to fight Jezebel. He admits defeat, flees into the desert, collapses under a broom tree, and asks God to take his life.  Ever been there?  Been just too tired to put any more effort into a relationship or a situation and just wanted to walk away from it?

Elijah is every one of us. We struggle to stay afloat, to do the right thing, to invest in good relationships to be productive members of society….  But every once in a while, we just want to cry out,  “What’s the point?  Why am I on this hamster wheel? What’s it all for?”  We are not strangers to bouts of despair.

What’s striking about this story is God’s action in it, not Elijah’s. Elijah has given up, laid everything down, and some might say “gotten out of his own way.”  But God?  God sends help. And God sends help again. And God redeems the situation until Elijah gathers his wits about him and has the strength and perspective to go on. Just like Hagar, who laid her dying son Ishmael under a tree in the desert to wait for him to die, God came.

That is the promise: that God comes to us in our despair, in our desert times.  

God will not give up on us --- even when we’ve given up ourselves.  

God is there. Waiting. Redeeming. Loving.