Dem Bones Gonna Walk Around

Our scripture lesson this week is from the book of Ezekiel:  chapter 37, verses 1-14

Please pray with me as we begin.  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

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Who remembers the old tune “Dem Bones?”  Now, because I can’t stop humming it this week, I figured you should join me.  Delta Rhythm Boys

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How many of you had any idea what that song was about when you first sang it in VBS or Sunday School?  Not too many of us, I’m sure.  I always thought it was something maybe my mother used to help her pass her med school exams.  No, not really, but as fun as that song was, I never gave its meaning in relation to our faith a single thought.

Of course, if you never made the connection before this morning, you probably figured out today that the song comes from our Old Testament lesson which is found in Ezekiel.  In the story, we see a vast plain strewn with bones…dry, sun bleached bones…something like horror story meets the Wild, Wild West…dry, dusty, lifeless bones as far as the eye can see. 

But maybe what you didn’t know is that in this lesson, the bones represent the people of Israel.  At that time, they had been devastated:  the Temple was destroyed, the people were (mostly) taken captive into Babylon, and life as they had known it was over…a desperate situation.  In fact, being cut off from the Temple meant they could not seek God, and being cut off from God meant personal and spiritual waste.  Exile.

Exile.  What does that mean?  What do you think of when you hear that word?  Outcast.  Despair.  Scattered.  Alone.  I think we have all been in places, maybe not dots-on-a-map places, but times and places where we have lived in exile. 

Can you think of a time when you were cut off from all you held dear?  When you felt scattered, cast aside or pushed away, relationships broken?  Or maybe you have just been far away from anyone you love from anyone who can call you to life by calling your name…can you remember a time of spiritual desolation?  When have you been dry as sun-bleached bones?

For me, an experience of exile comes every two years or so as we move around the country as the Navy dictates.  It’s always hard to leave a community into which we have grafted ourselves, and it always takes a little while to feel fully grafted into the new one…and those in-between times can feel desolate, indeed.

Maybe for you it is the reality of loving someone who is bound by addiction to substances or to actions…alcohol, food, gambling, or spending.  Or maybe you are an addict yourself.  Maybe for you it is the idea that you are unlovable so you hide to protect yourself.  Maybe your exile is a terrible, life-sucking job.  Or the loneliness which settles in after you’ve lost your husband or wife, your life mate.  For many in our community right now, exile looks like a seven story pile of slurry and mud and feels like despair as they continue to search for the bodies of neighbors and loved ones in Oso.  Exile comes in many different looking scenarios, but they are all terrible and desolate for the ones living there.

In the year 2000, Dreamworks released a movie starring Tom Hanks called Cast Away.  If you haven’t seen it, that’s your homework for the week.  In the film, Chuck Noland is a time-obsessed systems analyst, who travels around the world solving efficiency problems at FedEx depots. He is in a long-term relationship, and although they want to get married, his schedule interferes with their relationship. Even on Christmas Day, he leaves to solve a problem in Malaysia, and his plane crashes in the Pacific Ocean.  He is able to escape the plane, and after a terrifying night clinging to a raft on the open sea, he finds himself washed up on the beach of a deserted island.

Several packages from the crashed plane wash ashore.  He opens most of them searching for things to help him live or to help him signal for rescue or to help him escape. He leaves one package, with a pair of wings painted on it, unopened, and he muses aloud about what the package could be or from whom it could have been sent. During a first attempt to make fire, Chuck receives a deep wound to his hand. In anger and pain, he throws several objects, including a Wilson volleyball from one of the packages. A short time later he draws a face in the bloody hand print on the ball, names it Wilson and begins talking to it.

As years pass, Chuck has changed to adapt to his situation.  He looks drastically different, but the real difference is in the skills he has developed for survival, a key portion of which is his relationship with Wilson who has become a key figure in our hero’s sanity.  Eventually, enough debris washes up on shore that Chuck uses his developed skills to build a raft.  He takes Wilson and his mysterious winged package and boards the raft in an attempt to escape.   After some time on the ocean, a storm nearly tears his raft apart, then "Wilson" falls from the raft and is lost, leaving him overwhelmed by loneliness and despair. Eventually, as all hope appears to be lost, Chuck and his winged package are picked up by a passing ship and returned to civilization.

There he learns that he has long been given up for dead; his family and friends had held a funeral, his fiancé has married.  So he buys a new volleyball and sets off to deliver the winged FedEx package to its sender.[1] 

Now, I won’t completely ruin the story for you, but I think it is fair to say that this movie was a modern day retelling of our Ezekiel passage.  Chuck is indeed in exile and as he returns from physical exile, he discovers that he has been assumed dead and so they’ve moved on…he’s been cast away by those he loves, and so the emotional exile continues. 

Where is God in all of this? 

In Cast Away, God says, “Chuck, don’t give up, I’m giving you a great imagination, a volleyball, and a winged package of hope.”  (Sometimes God is a little less direct than we’d like.)

In our Old Testament lesson, God speaks directly to Ezekiel and to the valley of the bones…to those in desperate isolation…and God says, “Watch this:  I’m bringing the breath of life to you and you’ll come to life.  I’ll attach sinews to you, put meat on your bones, cover you with skin, and breathe life into you.  You’ll come alive, and you’ll realize that I am God!”

By the grace of God, hope remains alive in the most seemingly hopeless of situations.

So, too, if we cling to our faith and leave our hearts open to one another, we discover that hope never dies even if our spirits become dry as bleached bones.  Even in exile, whether caused by war or a decree, a storm or a landslide or addiction or by our own breaking of relationship, there is hope to be found in the grace and faithfulness of God.  “I’ll breathe my life into you and you will live.  I’ve said it, and I’ll do it.  I promise.”

God will breathe life into us, we will be connected, and we will walk around! Dem Bones, Dem Bones gonna walk around, now hear the word of the Lord.*  God does breathe life into us, and we do live.

Amen.

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[1] thanks to the good folks at Wikipedia.org for the memory jog

Into an Ordinary Day

a sermon to the people of Holy Cross Lutheran Church
in Lake Stevens, WA 

When we were younger, James and I were very involved in a youth movement called “Happening”.  It is a fantastic weekend of spiritual renewal for high schoolers…a little like “Cursillo” for the bubble-gum set.  Entirely youth-led (and adult supervised) the event takes place over three days.  During that time, participants hear ‘talks’, mini-sermons really, by other youth on topics like Jesus Christ, the sacraments, the church, and prayer to name a few.  There are many, many surprises, lots of camp-like music, games, skits, and small group conversation.  There is great emphasis on being who you are made by the Creator to be rather than who the world thinks you should be….which can be life-altering for a teenager.  It is a time of intense friendship, laughter, tears, and sugary snacks.  A time of very little sleep.  A whole lot of fun.  A whole lot of personal growth.  A whole lot of acceptance.  It is a mountain top experience. 

Since those days of Happening, we’ve been lucky to have several mountain top experiences.  We married one sunny day in early September.  We celebrated the arrivals of our four beautiful, beautiful children.  We’ve had a mini-getaway in New York City where we saw a Broadway show courtesy of Skitch Henderson of the New York Pops, in Key West where we swam in the bluest of water on a day in deep fall, and in Las Vegas where, well, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?  We’ve seen wonders like the Painted Desert, the Redwood Forrest, and Monterey Bay. We’ve even been to Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

But those fun and exciting mountaintop kinds of  things that have put wind in our sails and a spring in our steps have been just a day or two at a time in lives that have spanned thousands of days.  They are all days we won’t likely forget, and sometimes, they are the days we desperately yearn for, but those days haven’t been the regular ones…the ordinary days.

But it seems to be human nature to want the mountain top experiences.  After all, that’s where the jaw-dropping vistas are.  And in today’s gospel lesson, Peter is loving the view.  Six days earlier, Jesus told the disciples that he will die and die terribly.  But instead of that ugliness, here they are on a camping trip up on a high mountain, just Jesus, Peter, and the guys.  And then it gets even better. Moses and Elijah show up, Jesus is transformed into a really amazing light show even better than Broadway or Vegas, and Peter is in awe.  He recognizes the specialness of the moment, and so he says, “Lord, it is good for us to be here.”  And he asks if he can build dwellings so they can all stay for a while.

Alas, poor Peter, it is not to be.

The voice of God comes from deep within a brilliant cloud and says, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him.”  Can you imagine?  The shock of the voice of God booming out of the air…terrifying!

And the booming stops, and all the miraculous wonder ceases, Moses and Elijah disappear, and Jesus touches his friends, and says, “Get up and do not be afraid.”

And then, and then, Jesus simply walks down the mountain, wordlessly commanding his disciples to follow.  And they do…somewhat reluctantly, I imagine.  Camping trip over.  Back to the sick and the hungry and the threat of death.  Back to the grind.

See, Jesus and Peter and the guys couldn’t live on the mountain top, and neither can we.  As much fun as it is to be there, eventually we have to come down.  Weddings are one day.  Vacations have to end.  Mardi Gras is only a season. 

But that doesn’t mean that the miraculous cannot exist on a Monday morning.  There is sacred in the ordinary. 

I have a triad of sacred sayings to help me remember this:

·        "Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there also."  --Jesus

·        "When you wash your face, remember your baptism."  --Martin Luther

·         "Marriage isn’t all wine and roses.  It’s also three meals a day and taking out the trash."—Dolly Parton 

See, God is here in the little moments:  when 7 year old girls tuck their hands into yours for no reason other than that you are there and they feel safe and loved with you, when you hold the door for a woman weighed down with packages at the post office on a rainy Wednesday, when you hand a hot meal to a lonely man on a cold night at the Salvation Army, when you hold a friend as he cries…and you lift his burden for just a moment, when you spend a Saturday with your spouse running errands, watching swim lessons, building cardboard armor, and cooking for hours in the kitchen (little peek into my weekend there).  God is here. 

Sure, God is present in the Painted Desert, too, and at weddings, (and in Vegas,) but in those mountaintop moments, it seems it’s a little easier to tell.  But see if you can’t find God this week as you slog through the ordinary, too.  Look for God as you trudge down the mountain into the certain gloom of Lent.  As you wash your face, cook three meals a day, and take out the trash. 

As we leave the festival of Epiphany and the bons temps of Mardi Gras, listen to Jesus, “Get up and do not be afraid.” 

Don’t fear the ordinary.  Don’t waste all those little moments with God and with one another wishing for the miraculous on the mountaintop.  It’s here, it’s now, and it’s in the little things.

Get up.  You are free.  You are forgiven.  You are loved.  Don’t be afraid.  Follow Jesus down the mountain and into the sacred of an ordinary day.

Amen.

Hard Stuff

An excerpt from a Sermon to the People of Holy Cross

February 16, 2014 

Matthew 5:21-37 (I heartily recommend The Message translation for this particular text)

the "line-toer" as he appears today

Pray with me as we begin.  May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.  Amen.

“you can’t use legal cover to mask a moral failure”

Wow.  Right? 

This is hard stuff. 

Jesus is making us really look at the law, at the 10 Commandments to be precise.  He’s really perceptive here…he sees that what we are trying to do is prove how good we are at following directions, but he’s also calling us out because we are invested in following the letter of the law and not the spirit.

At the risk of embarrassing my oldest child, I’m going to tell on him a little bit.  We used to call him a “line-toer”.  If ever we drew a metaphoric line for behavior, he would stand right on it…dangling his cute little toes over the edge…but he would never, ever cross it.  “Don’t hit your brother.”  So he’d pull his brother’s hair instead.  “Stay right with me.”  And he’d walk just beyond arm’s reach and dance around.  Or maybe he’d run to the edge of the driveway as cars were whizzing past as they turned off Highway 90 and he’s stop mere inches short of the street.  These sorts of things were usually accompanied by a gigantic grin flashed purely for my benefit and a “what?  I didn’t hit him!! or leave you or go into the street” Let me express to those of you who have not been blessed with such a child how incredibly infuriating it is!  Do you know how many times my 27-year-old self wanted to scream at that beautiful child, “GROW UP!”

And to be fair, Carter isn’t the only one who does these sorts of things.  In our house, “Feed your rabbit” does not always lead to the distribution of food AND water.  But make no mistake, he’ll have food…don’t count on the water.  In a house of 6, we’ve got plenty of examples….and I’m guilty, too.  Jesus says, “Don’t judge”, but I get really self-righteous and ready for some good old fashioned shaming when I see other people judging their friends and neighbors.  I know Pastor Susan shares this sentiment, but my favorite bumper sticker says, “I hate people who hate people.”  Ugh.

When Jesus sat out there on the Mount and talked with the people about murder and adultery and empty promises, he was telling them and telling us that we are to look BEYOND the letter of the law.  We are NOT to be “line-towers”.  We are supposed to be looking deeper into the meaning… behind the concise set of rules that God has put before us, and we are to try our damnedest to be even better than God has demanded we be.  We are supposed to “go the extra-mile” for one another.  We are to see the “do not’s” of the law and reverse them so that we are saying, we won’t do thing terrible thing.  and also, we will do this extra thing to make it better. “We will not kill our friends.  We will not plunge a knife between Maggie’s ribs and aim for her heart or her lungs, but more than that…not only are we not going to kill her, we are going to see what we can do to help her live and live happily and well!” 

Not only will we not swear or take an oath or promise falsely, we should be faithful to the words that we use, AND we should commit to using life-giving words rather than words that tear-down…or maybe even worse…words that ignore altogether.  When we ask “how are you?” we should listen to the answer.  When we say “I’ll pray for you.” we should actually do it…and maybe we should find some sort of follow-up action that is helpful and restorative for our friend or for our neighbor.

To put it bluntly, what Jesus is saying is, “GROW UP!”  You are subjects in the kingdom of God.  So live like it.  Live out your God-created identity.  Live generously and graciously toward one another.  Without judgment toward your friends.  Without throwing each other under the bus so that you may look like the better person or so that you may have one moment of pleasure without worrying about the other’s pain.  Live toward others the way God lives toward you.

And do it now!  Don't wait.  The kingdom is coming, but also it is here.  Now.  Right now.

Amen.

 with many, many thanks to John Fairless and Delmer Chilton, aka, 2 Bubbas and a Bible for sharing their Lectionary Lab with all of us.  and thanks also to Eugene Peterson for his work translating the Bible into a language we contemporary folk can better understand.

God Is With Us

a sermon to the people of Holy Cross Lutheran Church

in Lake Stevens, WA 

December 22, 2013

Pray with me.  May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, my Rock and my Redeemer.  Amen.

Stepparents get a bad rap.  Cinderella’s stepmother is malicious; Hansel and Gretel’s stepmother is selfish; Snow White’s stepmother is murderously vain; Hamlet’s stepfather was an adulterous, homicidal usurper.  Over and over again in movies and books and culture, stepparents are portrayed as heartless, as weary and overwhelmed, and as angry at bearing the burden of raising someone else’s “problem”.  They put up with “his” children or “her” children until they can devise a way to get rid of the little buggers…maybe permanently. 

I’m sure this sort of terrible, terribly selfish, and negligent or abusive-to-the-point-of-death stepparent must exist somewhere, or it wouldn’t be such a popular theme in literature and in Hollywood.  But honestly, most stepparents willingly accept one of the hardest jobs life has to offer.  Stepparents work to raise, provide for, and love a child who is neither biologically theirs nor planned.  No one grows up thinking, “I’ll have 3 kids when I grow up: a boy, a girl, and a stepson from my husband’s previous marriage.”  Stepparents accept these extra kids as a package deal along with their new spouse, and call them family for better or for worse.  As my former neighbor said to me, “this is my bonus child…I wasn’t expecting him, but I’m so glad he’s mine.”

In today’s Gospel lesson, Matthew matter-of-factly tells the story of another stepparent.  “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.  When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.”  I imagine Joseph wasn’t so matter-of-fact about that!  Jewish custom in that time would have called the relationship between Mary and Joseph a betrothal…a sort of third step between engagement and marriage.  A betrothal was binding and could only be broken with an act of divorce.  If a betrothed woman became pregnant (regardless of paternity!), she was considered an adulteress.  The penalty for adultery for women was death. 

You can imagine the heartache and anger and sorrow Joseph must have felt when he discovered his betrothed was pregnant…with someone else’s child.  By law, he had every right to publically expose her as an adulteress and request her stoning.  But Joseph, who was a decent guy, decided to “dismiss her quietly”…or to divorce her quietly and send her out of town so as not to further disgrace either of them. 

And then, Joseph had a dream…a sort of communing with the divine…and God said through a messenger, “Hey, stay with Mary, she’s a good girl.  Don’t be scared.  Raise my boy and name him so that all might know that I am with you.”  And Joseph, who was an exceptional man, obeyed.

 Exceptional or not, we tend to ignore Joseph.  He’s a prop in the Christmas pageant, someone to guide the donkey, the guy who got duped into marrying a pregnant chick.  Quiet. Passive.  Maybe not very smart.  More likely a sucker.  And if we buy into cultural ideas of stepparenting, then we think, he was at best, disinterested in this kid who was not his.

But wait…we know that Joseph obeyed God.  Each time in the Gospel of Matthew that God asks something of Joseph, Joseph does it.  God asked Joseph to raise Emmanuel --Jesus-- as his own.  And as best we can tell, he did a beautiful job with this difficult task.  As a devout Jew, he raised his son according to Jewish law.  As a carpenter, he taught Jesus the family trade…how to handle a hammer and saw.  As a virtuous man, he modeled an obedient life.  Not because he had to, but because he chose to. 

Joseph was an exceedingly faithful man and a wonderful stepfather…  Which is all the more amazing because step-parenting is often a thankless task.  I know I drove my stepmother crazy from time to time…especially as a teenager.  I made her worry about my safety and my sanity and my loyalty to our family.  It wasn’t until I was much older that I ever thought to thank her for working so incredibly hard and sacrificing so terribly much to make my life comfortable and safe.  And heck, I don’t even thank her enough now that I’m old enough to know better!  Still, she loves me as her own, and my kids are her grandkids, and the word “step” isn’t even in our familial vocabulary. 

And she did and does all of that because she chooses to.

Families come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.  Single parent, mom and dad, mom and mom, blended, adoptive, step, half, foster, or a “house of wayward children” such as the family my in-laws kept when James was growing up, where everyone was welcome and cared for and loved.  What a family looks like in a genealogy doesn’t matter very much.  What matters is the willingness to show one another through our words and our actions and our love for one another what the name of Jesus-Emmanuel means.  “God is with us.” 

What does your family look like?  Who loves you?  Who claims you and allows you to be as a child, as a treasured one, with them? 

Sometimes, you get lucky, and your family is in fact the group of people who raised you or grew up with you and who share your DNA.  But often family isn’t defined by blood, doesn’t look like “normal”.  But the word “family” is a way to talk about all of those people who love us unconditionally.   Who feeds you when you are ill?  Who holds your hand when you are worried or afraid?  Who doesn’t pass judgment when you share your deepest shame or worry or fear?  Who laughs with you and not at you?  Who cries with you?  Who lets you know when you are behaving badly but also lets you know your misbehavior doesn’t alter their acceptance of you?  Who would willingly accept your pain and suffering so that you don’t have to do it?  THAT person, THOSE people:  that is your family.  Those people who wander into your path and your life and your messy reality…those are the ones who are showing you Emmanuel.  “God is with us.”

God loves you and redeems you and sustains you.  God sacrificed himself for you.  And you are blessed with people who mirror that for you.  Who are those people?  Who are the people who wade into your mess because they choose to do it…not because they have to do it?

Maggie shows me the beauty of God with music.  Bill shows me kindness by offering a cup of coffee to me every Sunday without fail.  Lisa accepts and understands my youngest son in ways many people just can’t.  Pastor Susan has heard my heartache and frustration and stupidity and still brings soup to me when I’m sick.  Grandma Gerry and Deborah love my daughter in ways that allow her eyes to sparkle.  The Millers have given up an entire Saturday that I might have some sanity.  What a gift you all are to me.  What a gift you are to one another.  What an amazing family.  What a mirroring, a showing of Emmanuel:  God is with us.

GOD is with us.  God IS with us.  God is WITH us.

Amen.