Carnival Church: The Outrageous Steward and our Practice of Being In Tents

Not the german carnival.

Colored lights and striped tents filled the open spaces on a fall evening.  There was that ride like a top, that lifts up with swiftly spinning swings.  There was a contraption with pretend wild animals to ride.  Oh and bumper cars, there were bumper cars.  Neighbors wandered, children begged for a treat.  An open sided carnival, free flowing with the neighborhood, one could come and look and smell and taste, while someone else could ride and play and dare.  

Small carnivals would appear from time to time in our west German neighborhood.  It was an easy walk from our off base duplex, around the corner and up the hill to where the usually barren field would be transformed.  I can still find in my memory scent notes of what is not an American carnival sensation,  a mystical kind of lightly sweet,  mixed with cloves and ginger and maybe a hint of licorice.   Some of the people who wandered there may have felt lost, some may have worried about what tomorrow would bring,  and so they wandered up the hill and let the lights and the music be a balm for a moment.

Jeremiah is no carnival clown.  He can grasp he will be soon be wading in the debris of imperial marches.  His name in recent centuries became a noun: jeremiad.  To speak a jeremiad is to publicly bemoan and lament the conduct of life among your people, your leaders, your neighbors.  “For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.  Is there no balm in Gilead?  Is there no physician there?”  

Perhaps you recall that Jesus’ contemporaries had a hard time placing him in a useful category.  Is he a prophet?  Rabbi? Wonder-worker? Carnival act?  Jesus embodied Gods life and intention for the world.  His proclamation in word and deed is authentic love.  An experience of something wholly different than the everyday plastic existence that makes life dull and fruitless.  Whomever it was that could have possibly written the ancient version of Forbes,  he is long forgotten.  Whatever that person might have advised, it is dust,  having been a flat, plastic and predictable idea of security.  The living word of God is not going to be so flat or conforming.

 

Post harvest wheat fields near Pomeroy, Washington

No one seems to think that Jesus’ words about the good shepherd are an agricultural lecture, so why do we get so bent out of shape about these next words?  I think it is because this subject pokes at our deepest insecurities.  Yet Jesus isn’t really talking about earthly accounting of deutchmarks or denari.  I ask you to take a second and ponder: what is wealth to God?  Hope.  Justice.  Forgiveness.   Grace.  Resurrection.  What is wealth to God?  The prophets say that it is NEVER HAVING TO HEAR THE CRIES of any of God’s beloved creation ever again.  

Looking at the parable,  what are the items of wealth that become free flowing forgiveness?  Oil.  Oil in the ancient world is heat, it is light, it is cooking, it is cleaning, it is healing. Oil is the deliverer of those balms of Gilead, and in a dry land, oil is as precious as water.   And you know about grain.  Grain is nourishment for bellies, and it is straw for mats for burdened bodies.  Wealth for God is measured in love, calculated by free flowing compassion.

If this lesson has advice about any human venture,  it is perhaps about the adventure we call being church.  A carnival knows it is temporary, when the duty is done, the tents come down, rides pack up. There is a thread of query in the Old Testament, wondering if maybe we were better when we were with God in the wilderness, wandering together in our permeable tents.  Building of temples and churches changes us, changes our relationships with each other and with strangers.  Dwelling in tents may have better reminded us of the truth that the past is dust, and the future is always in motion.  The only thing we have to be sure of is we are God’s beloved, right here on this shifting sand, with these strangers and neighbors and friends.

We have spent a month praying through our hopes and fears, resentments and anxieties.  Before we bring it down I want to point out that there are empty clips where unnamed prayers rest.  There are open spaces where the free flowing grace of the Holy Spirit is transforming us as we pray.  As I let the cards rise I read of both sadness’s and gratefulness.  What struck me most clearly was worry about what is to come, and a desire to be more effective proclaimers of Good News.  

I once served with one of the most effective Episcopal congregations in the country, and it was rather like a circus or a carnival.  Like many of the most effective congregations I know of, they have a footprint, but their mission is as unbounded as festival music or pleasant carnival smells.  The good news comes and goes and flows freely.  The second thing I know about effective congregations is that they don’t invest most of their time or energy in 20 years ago or 20 years from now.  They are fixated on the present day, of being incarnate gospel centers for teaching and healing and shelter in their neighborhoods today.  They PRACTICE being CHURCH AS IF WE DWELLED IN CARNIVAL TENTS.

Jesus’ life and ministry offers an un-jeremiad. He laments the way we conduct the business of life.  Our gospel story isn’t about our currency or investments, it is about our generosity and fluidity.  He summons us into stories that jolt like bumper cars, and humor that makes us dizzy.  Jesus makes friends with what seems like crookedness and chaos and fills our flat lines with resurrection.  The number one thing I believe that this Gospel lesson demands is that the Christ figure here today is this outlandish steward!  This example who encourages the better part of us, and discourages anything that makes us smaller and less generous. 

Jeremiah and Jesus may have had deep divine knowledge of what came next,  yet you and I, we have no idea of what the next era will demand.  So we must trust that our longevity will only spring from being a captivating carnival of the good news.  Healing balm over here,  tasty joy over there,  wisdom to the left and new life to the right. 

I have two questions to leave you with.   

What outrageous spin in your life can make the gospel shine brightly today?  

And, what does the Christ carnival look and feel and smell like to you? 

Let us pray.

Gentle us, Holy One,

into an a deep breath, a letting go

of shriveling anxieties

            and dead certainties

so that, surrounded by the light,

            and open to the mystery,

We may be entranced by the simple,

and filled with the joy that is you,

In the name of the Holy Dancing Carnival Like Trinity, One God Forever and Ever. Amen.

September 18, 2016  St. Paul's,Walla Walla
Audio Link if Widget doesn't work

RCL Proper 20 Year C Track 1

Prayer adapted from Ted Loder.

itty bitty green haired reblog

A small piece about PNEUMA.  You should come to this fabulous ecumenical conference for folks who know our call is to shape lives of discipleship.  And it is at the Bishop's Ranch..which is swell.



So ...here is the reblog link.

http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/youthministry/2016/08/12/pneuma-conference-holy-communication/

And for the pool rat memories...http://parliament-pool.com/.  I would post photos from them, but we seemed to never take a photo of my kelp tone hair before cutting it off.  Kelp tone hair might be cool now.  Hmm.

epistles for a friend: say it in print

Hi there Daisy.

It has been cooler than normal thus far here in the Inland Northwest. I was never 'hot' at camp last week, which is amazing since it was July and it was quite warm there in May! Anyways, I have been thinking a good deal about our messages back and forth. I preach and teach all the time, I set goals for formation such as: guests will know the summer gospel well enough to tell it in their own words. I have deeper goals that go unstated, such as 'parishoners will know the difference between practicing Christian-ness and just liking it'.

Yet you have me wondering. How often do I make public personal 'I believe' statements? I was not embedded in this mystery we call the body of Christ, and now I rather am, and there are many reasons why. Yet do I say them, not really. So maybe that needs to change.

Still, our tradition, we also tend to do less of the 'this I believe' statements and more of the 'this is how we live it' declarations. Being an incarnate (in the flesh) focused tradition means we really intend that our actions speak louder than words. However, like you, sometimes we find ourselves in spaces where having the words would make us feel more grounded. We may know the creeds by heart, but that is hardly the words we need in a conversation with dorm-mates.

So here are a handful of 'I believe' statements about our tradition from my‘expert’ point of view.  I say them to set an example of the words of faith you have been steeped in, but may not have seen in print.  I also use I statements because I am speaking for myself and not the branch of church I have served and helped lead for 20 years.

• I believe in God because I see purpose and beauty and creativity in the world that I am certain was not an accident.
• I experience God as intention and hope that surrounds me and leads me in the higher ways.  
• I believe in God when I know I need to say sorry to the ground of being for my brokenness and the brokenness the human race inflicts on the creation.
• Sometimes I connect most to this trust in God when I am singing of God.  There is an Alison Krauss song that always brings me to that space where I know that I really do trust in God and God’s reign. It is not a head thing in that moment, it is a heart and soul place of deep connection.
• I experience my relationship with Jesus as a strange friendship that called to me and drew me in even as I denied it was happening.
• It did this through loving relationships in a community of imperfect practitioners who were Christ to me.  The liturgy, the meals, the ministries together, they soaked into me and changed me into his likeness too.
• I feel that following through with the life prescribed at the conclusion of Matthew 25 (heal the sick, release the prisoners..) is more important to Jesus than any statement of faith I ever could make.   
• I think that belief without doubt isn’t faith; it is stubbornness or laziness.   I should add the IMO, but IMO this isn't an opinion.
• I don’t have an intellectual agreement with our creeds, I ‘believe’ them because I trust that the Trinity is at work in them and with us as fuel for the mystery of faith they try to frame.
• I don’t believe in individual salvation because if I don’t love and care for strangers,  then I haven’t been saved at all.  No one person can be saved without the rescue of all.

I mentioned podcasts in the last message (did I?). Anyways, speaking of listening...I recommend lots of podcasting with On Being, especially her interviews with musicians. The host Krista Tippett (who you should read up on), starts every interview with a question about the faith of childhood for folks whose fame isn't always faith based. Here are a couple to find the podcasts of: Brian McLaren, Joe Henry, David Isay,and the Mary Oliver one, and Yo Yo Ma, Indigo Girls, and the Brene Brown one, and the Rex Jung one (more cause I know him), and the Nadia, Rosanne Cash one, Jaroslav Pelikan, and because I am the church lady fan girl..Walter Bruggemann.

I know you have work and a life, however, the marvelous thing about these is that they are intended to be listened to. Take them to the gym, on drives, whenever. Let them be a gift to your questions and journey and desire to do well by the world.

Love, and Reminders to wear Sunscreen!
Jane

This series of epistles are rooted in actual replies to an actual young friend who found herself far from her faith home. Names have been changed to honor the beloved and the situation has been cloaked for the same reason. Still, while making myself sometimes feel like Paul writing to a distressed congregation, maybe it will do you some good too.

Epistles for a Friend: Episcopal Encounter with 'Other Christians'

Dear Daisy,

I have been thinking about your message, about how you are spending the summer with people you adore and respect, and who clearly love you, yet they sometimes make you wonder if you believe in any proper churchy ideas.  I have a sermon to write, and so I need to download a few thoughts and guesses for you so that I can focus and not get these two topics all mixed up.  So I am going to make a few guesses and share a few points. After I share a little ditty about tension. Which has a few words that are not camp appropriate. It is actually a mashup of two songs, but I love this guy, so here it goes.

I don’t recall I ever told you about my olden days, you know the ones in the 80's. For all except the end of my high school experience, I didn’t believe I believed in God at all.  The God thing didn't seem to be rational and I liked logical things.  I would have told you that I paid as little attention as I could to church or Sunday school until I got out of going (and worked in the nursery) at age 12.  

In the many years since I have discovered that I learned a whole lot more than I realized while I was ‘not paying attention’.  My antagonistic agnosticism, remember that I lived in South Texas for the end of high school, began to slowly dissolve through experiences that I could name, even then, as Grace.

Still, when I was your age I would have told you I was Episcopalian, but I didn’t know enough about Jesus to tell you whether or not I believed that he was anything more than an ancient teacher. I would have unlikely to have checked a box that said 'Christian'. That young person still hangs around in my self-perception, when I wonder what the heck I am doing pastoring people in their faith.  I admit that I still wonder regularly if I haven’t lost my mind, if I made up the holy moments I experienced, and I wonder if I trust in a fantasy novel. Yet I also know that such wondering keeps me searching (and healthy).

The most difficult tensions in religions are not between different ones, but within themselves.  I don’t have any investment in Hindu theological debates, however I care a whole lot about Christians who claim that Jesus is in favor of oppression or sexism or hatred.  You have stepped into this high tension place, not the oppression place but the tension of living together as 'one church'.  

The Episcopal tradition you were raised in has some rather different assumptions, foundations, and understandings of the who what and why of Jesus than your hosts this summer. My guess is that you are encountering people who talk God, Jesus, Spirit in ways that are quite dissimilar from the way you might use such names.  And I am confident that in a worship setting this distance wasn’t as evident.  I have known plenty of folks who love our liturgy, but they don’t know they have any holy imperative to take responsibility for their neighbors (which we teach and preach consistently).

Maybe you will find something you have been missing with the new friends you are spending your summer with.  Or maybe it is going to be like the hymn whose tune you love but whose words make you ill.  There is a gracious space of holy self-giving in that choice. I already recommended the book 'Searching for Sunday', and I want to suggest that again, and add a book that DOES NOT have an audio version, yet is quite elegant to read and look at, 'Tokens of Trust'.

Keep wrestling and thinking and conversing, and singing.  There is deep growth to be found in the act of performing the faith while asking big questions. I am proud that you can name that you are in a place of tension, and that you have asked for help rather than stewing in your discomfort. Rather like a more advanced yoga pose, you have to breathe into it, set your intention and listen. If you fall over, so be it. You can always get up again.

Peace and Camp Appropriate Hugs!
Jane

These two epistles are rooted in actual replies to an actual young friend who found herself far from her faith home. Names have been changed to honor the beloved and the situation has been cloaked for the same reason. Still, while making myself sometimes feel like Paul writing to a distressed congregation, maybe it will do you some good too.

Listening to the Real: Snuffy, Teresa and Dietrich Bonhoeffer Walk Into a Neighborhood

When I was a child, Snuffleupagus was imaginary, or at least he seemed to be.  Like a gigantic furry ant-eater, or like a slender mammoth without tusks.  Snuffy, as he is sometimes called, was frequently seen on Sesame Street, however, only known by the viewers and Big Bird.  For 15 years he was spoken of, but not touched Snuffy was named, but not heard.  Part of his story was that he was crippled by shyness.  He was bound by anxiety and after so much time, he became more and more distressed by the idea of connecting with the neighborhood.  Snuffy’s story also seemed to be a 15-year metaphor for the unnoticed elephant in the room.  

Interviews with writers and actors years later show a muddled memory about Snuffy’s existential crisis.  Writers claim he wasn’t supposed to be imaginary, and the actors share that they absolutely played their role from the stance of believing this creature to be the make-believe of Big Birds joyful heart.  Big Bird is an iconic and an ironic Muppet, a giant who is a child.  His heart and mind are about 6 years old, even though his stature is about 8 feet tall. Imaginary friends are normal for a young person, and so the ambiguity around Snuffleupagus had natural causes.

Yet over time, the writers and producers became concerned.  Troubled about the example they were setting for real children, real people daring to speak of an experience and neighbors not believing them.  Learning to listen, learning to hear real stories is as crucial to human development as knowing that cookie starts with C.  So, after 15 years of storytelling confinement,  the process was begun to bring Snuffleupagus into relationship with the whole neighborhood.  In the book Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us of the following,

            Christians have forgotten that the ministry of listening

            has been committed to them by God who is the great listener

            and whose work they should share.

            We should listen with the ears of God that we may speak the Word of God.

Perhaps you are startled by Jesus’ healing of the woman who had been bound by her illness.  She really needs a name.  Let’s call her Zoe.  Zoe steps out of her captivity, walks out into a difficult world on a Sabbath day, and seeks after Jesus. Amazing how simply seeking Jesus’ hearing, raises Zoe to strength.  The neighborhood,  however, is outraged.  Jesus healed on the Sabbath, and that is not a resting thing to do.  This episode happens repeatedly in the Gospels.  Jesus heals someone on the Sabbath and the system freaks out.  Sometimes we are Zoe, sometimes we are the folks who are focused on the wrong syllable.  To which Jesus’ whole ministry lends us an ear and asks, Why are you living this way?  You know what matters: Come….Seek, Serve, Strive, Share.  Listening, being real, is what God asks.  Sesame Street simple and as hard as life together gets.

During my babysitting years, when they made Snuffy real,  I was aghast.  I liked the idea of that imaginary friend. Yet as an adult, I understand moving him from an unheard story to a known one.  Neighborhoods with stories that they agree not to tell or not to hear are systems that fail to thrive.  Re-watching the Snuffy scenes this week I was once again disappointed.  But this time, my feelings of dismay come from hearing how the people and Muppets in the neighborhood did more than just not listen to Big Bird over the years.  They ridiculed and shamed him so much that it had me uttering ‘stop it’ at the screen.  No wonder Snuffy stayed hidden, unheard and unseen.  

Maybe this is part of what our gospel neighbor Zoe faced.  Not only an ailment, but a system so caught in their own noise that her home of constant denial was easier.  I am in awe of her Courage.  It took a wellspring of courage to bring her whole story to Jesus.

After all those years of un-knownness, there stood before them a kind shy neighbor.  The whole cast of the Sesame Street neighborhood stands there, a camera panning over jaws wide open.  One by one they walk up to Snuffy.  They touch his furry snout, and they finally hear Big Bird.  Dan Rather, CBS anchor, once asked Mother Teresa what she said during her prayers.   She answered, "I listen."   So Dan returned a new question and asked, "Well then, what does God say?"  Mother Teresa smiled with gladness and replied, "He listens."  

Listening is transforming. We who follow Jesus are called to listen with the ears of God that we may live the Word of God.  Being committed to Christ and his church  is not being devoted to sunny or saccharine.  It is about being real.  Sunny days, rainy days, all the days.  Jesus beside us, before us, behind us, with us in holy listening to the whole story of the neighborhood. 

Here at St. Paul’s we have been circling just outside the process of what comes next for most of the last year.  And today, Andrew will invite this community to enter the next stage of the Interim lifecycle.  Standing up straight.  Naming and listening, being real. 

As we pray, Be Still and Know that I am God.

Amen.

Proper 16c RCL

St. Paul's Episcopal Church

Walla Walla, Washington

August 20/21, 2016

If you are a friend of St. Paul's and were not able to gather this weekend we hope you will check in with us so that you may offer your part to the project began by Andrew this week.

A link if the WIDGET does not play on your browser.

Unexpected Treasures: Hey You Guys!

When I lived elsewhere, there was this guy.  He was a friend of a friend and I could not stand him.  We had spent enough time around each other that I believed that we had nothing in common.  His name had syllables that echoed a name for the Devil, and I confess that I referred to him that way more than once.  However, for today I will call him, Mouth.  I disliked Mouth so much that on a World Cup afternoon, when the café I was at was packed to the brim, when I had a seat right in front of the screen, noticing Mouth coming in the door, I put my head down, and wished that he would not notice me.  I figuratively walked to the other side of the road.

We spent the week diving into the Good Samaritan who is the outcast, the unwelcome stranger who is the most unlikely hero, the unexpected bearer of grace who carries a beaten man to safety.  We explored how God has already gifted us with everything we need for the rescue of the whole creation, it is already here, often in unexpected people like us, and waiting to be revealed and put to good use.  We also strangely enough, spent the week following the Goonies.  A group of outcast teens who are about to lose their homes.  They were looking for rescue, they were hoping to save their neighborhood.  And we met Sloth, a beaten and deformed and uncared for man who calls out to them, an unlikely superperson.  Hey you guys!

So these Goonies teens, they followed a whispered rumor of treasures underground.  Those Goonies were just kids, however they dared greatly and entered into the adventure of hope. They went through dark tunnels,  full of booby traps and dangers.  They find their strength in each other, they find that there is something that matters more than their pain.  The Goonie journey is a metaphor of bold trust, transformation of hearts, and a metaphor for the treasures that await when we step out with the trust of a child.  It is amazing what big whole hearted love can do.  It is stunning what daring to welcome a stranger can do.  Loving the hard to love neighbor is a treasure that can heal, loving the scary creature is a gift that can feed, loving the outcast is a holy blessing. 

The treasure that waits right underneath our feet is the good news that Christ is a gift for us.  Jesus wants us to shout love and whisper kindness and live his call to love the whole neighborhood.  Jesus invites us to embrace his whole life in the center of our being.  He wants for us to discover the gifts of love that are already present, precious jewels in us and all around us, priceless good news which can shine bright enough to transform all the dark tunnels we find ourselves in.  These Goonie friends rescued one another, liberated a broken stranger, and in so doing rescued their neighborhood.  Jesus calls to us in his parable, calls to Go and Do Likewise.  Go Love God with all we have.  Go Love All People as Much As God Loves Us.  Go Rise By Lifting Others.  Go Be a Gift Giver.  Go Pay Attention, because treasures come in the most unexpected ways.  

So my friend of a friend, the one I am calling Mouth, the one I needed lots of help learning to love, one day he surprised me.  We were chatting at one more gathering of mutual friends, and I was hoping for social rescue.  Somehow the topic of the Governor came up.  And he said, ‘I just love that woman’.  I knew enough about Mouth to know that his political opinions didn’t jive with anything she ever did or said.  So my ears perked up and my lips uttered the word ‘Really???’ ‘Yeah’, he said.  ‘I don’t like her policies, but one day last year I decided to pray for her. Everyday. So I do. And man, I gotta tell you, I love that woman.  I don’t like her choices, I ain’t gonna vote for her, but I love that woman.’ So here was this guy, who I derided and avoided the company of, showing me how to truly love the other as Jesus commands us to.  Showing me how to heal.  Unexpected treasures, right in front of me. 

The question posed to Jesus is ‘how do we find union with God, how do we make God’s reign real on earth and in our lives?’  His answer is by loving God with all your heart, and loving all your neighbors as much as God loves you.  All of them.  Sometimes our rescue comes in unexpected treasures and unfriendly faces.  Hey You Guys…Go! Love, Serve, Heal, Pray… and Wake the World!

Camp Cross Closing Eucharist

August 6, 2016

Unmentionable Walls: Permission to Speak Hard Truths

Cindy’s religious childhood was first Mormon, and then evangelical for a while.  Her memories seemed to be a mash-up of prayer meetings and Sunday school flannel boards and red punch. Nice people, nothing shocking, nothing very exciting either.  Over time she fell away.  Believing, but not belonging; curious but living beyond any organized spiritual practice.  She grew up, and married, had children, divorced, remarried, and still she was a n-o-n-e.

You may have heard the advice that there are two things you do not discuss in polite company. Religion and politics.  Cindy was my hairstylist and she owned the salon.  This advice was important to her livelihood.  As we got to know each other, she began to murmur simple religious questions beyond the full roar of many hair dryers.  Eventually, she began scheduling my appointments after hours, when she could ask all the politely undesirable religious questions she wanted.  A short while later her husband would join us too, and when my regular appointments were not enough, She would call and say, ‘I need to practice prom up do’s’, when are you available?  Cindy needed a way and a place to have the conversations she felt were unmentionable during business hours.

Our lessons today are highlighted with a variety of undesirable subjects and polite company unmentionables.  Scanning the lessons on Monday, I asked across the office: who our lectors are this week?  I was uncomfortable with the idea of having these lessons read by a child. Yet right there in the Colossians reading is the transformation of that gut reaction.  The fullness of God was pleased to dwell and live and be fully human in Jesus.  A human who burped and had fungus between his toes, and did all sorts of unmentionable and very human things.  Again and again in Christian history we have forgotten this part,  we clean Jesus up, think his space cannot bear messier words, and we settle for a philosophy  that offers a precious plastic Jesus who has no scriptural heart.

Colossians is asking the Christology question, and the Christology question is why Jesus matters. For me the answer is that, Jesus continues to hold my curiosity and love because he is God who said bad words and sneezed up flemm and ate things that gave him heartburn, and whose disappointments kept him up at night, just like you and me.  I love this God, this God in Jesus who is foolishly human.  All of which means that all the unmentionables of our lives are capable of bearing the divine.  All these lost and defeated and demeaning moments, are beloved by God.

The prophet Hosea is telling a hard story about how precious we are to God,  it is an extended metaphor which rightly accuses us of being broken, cruel, wanton and sold out.  It says something like, I set you down a miracle among miracles and you don’t love yourself like I love you. Hundreds of years later Paul is rebuking another foolishness saying, Jesus became one with us, he wiped the slate clean, and you think you can find eternity through secret paths or magic words or clean diets???  Paul and Hosea, like late night comedians, they grab our attention with cringeworthy metaphors on topics you might rather have left unsaid.

While Cindy and I had our religious salon in the evenings, I served a church where part of my duties were supervising a tutoring ministry.  One day one of the students didn’t show, but her tutor Ella did. Ella asked if I had anything else she could help with, and I did, so she went to work in my office assembling binders or something like that.  At some point, my young friend Darla passed through a doorway of my office. Darla was 13 and active in the choir and youth group,and the most common answer uttered in our time together was you don’t love yourself as much as God loves you.  As was typical in our life together, her conversation wandered from unmentionable question to an undesirable story as salacious as any cringe worthy word in our lessons. This wasn’t a teary confession or a fearful drama,  instead a casual conversation.  Which concluded when Darla cheerily said, ‘I have to get downstairs for choir’ and bounced out the other door.

Now you may remember that the doors were wide open and a stranger, a guest was sitting in my office the whole time Darla was speaking.  I could see and feel that Ella, sitting there with her binders and hole punch, was stunned by what she heard.  I said to her, ‘the rule around here is that they can say anything in my office.’  Ella’s reply was something like this. ‘Oh I’m not offended, that was awesome. That she could be so honest, and you wondering when she would make the better choices, and so nonjudgmentally!  I just never in a million years would have shared those things, said those words, to anyone at my home church.’  Growing up I thought the same sort of boundaries applied. Church was glistening brass and frosted cupcakes where cringeworthy things were left unsaid.  I was mistaken.

This is not a place for unmentionables.  The fully human Jesus is who we bind ourselves to in Baptism and Eucharist. We bury ourselves in the earthy holiness of all of it, Jesus nails himself to our disturbing stories, to our hungers and our plasticity and our ungratefulness.  And his being there with us, is the forgiveness that raises us with him. Maybe we need to be better at telling our whole cringeworthy story, just as it is.  Maybe I need to give you the same permission I give young people, maybe I need to say it out loud.  Anything can be said here, anytime, anyplace.  Maybe the space you need to name and pray through the strange discomfortof fractured dreams is small and personal, like Cindy’s salon.  Or maybe the space you need to speak of sad memories is more open, like Darla,who would breeze through my office and freely speak all sorts of honesty's.

So that rule about my office?  It was more about permission than the office itself.  It looks like we have walls and doors, but truly we do not.  Brokeness is inside and outside and Jesus redeems it all when we name it as our truth.  Church isn’t a building word, it is a relationship word.  So even though you can see the walls and the doors and the locks, in Christ’s church, they are not really there. The rule is that you can say anything here, wherever here may be.

The open doors didn’t change the choices Darla had already made.  It didn’t solve anything in the short term.  It was an ongoing relationship and dialogue.  One of love and honesty, about how she confessed things like this because they didn’t meeGod-given given expectations for herself.  Flannel board and red punch Jesus is too flimsy and sweet to meet the challenges of this day and time.  Our God given expectations take whole hearted courage:  and all of it grows out of our union with him.  Union with a vulnerable, honest, forgiving and storytelling human Lord.   Does your nose run or are you embarrassed by the sound your stomach just made?  Me too.  Do you forget to floss or fail to live up to expectations?  Your neighbor does too.  Does your heart burn or are your hands scarred?  Jesus’s too.   Knock, Open, Ask, Share.  Alleluia.

St. Paul's Episcopal Church

Walla Walla, Washington

July 24, 2016

RCL Proper 12 C