Jesus

Jesus was a person more aware of his divinity and wholeness than any other being and whose ministry influences my life and resonates with me in a way that is uniquely powerful and meaningful.

Meditation/Study Sounds 8: White Noise and Rain

I invite you to meditate for 10 minutes:

White Rain

What If Jesus Had Lived?

I think it’s very important to bring sin out of the individual.  I feel that conceptualizing Jesus as a sacrifice, unblemished and pure, not only fails to deal with the reality of the horrific and unjust nature of his death, but also somehow puts a stamp of approval on that death.  Whether or not Jesus’ crucifixion was an act of selflessness, I feel the movement would have been better off had he not died.  Sometimes we need to make the best of a bad situation, but much of crucifixion talk seems to me like it justifies suffering and violence.

It is hard to know how history might have unfolded had the Jesus story gone differently, but as a Christian, my focus on Jesus is on his life.  I feel there is, in a focus on the cross, a tendency to justify violence and to glorify an event that I have trouble seeing as anything but terrible.  For me, the time after Jesus’ death is a mystery.  I know this makes me a heretic, but I’m not really sure whether Jesus resurrected in any sense of the word… and since I’m not sure of that, I’m not sure what good came of the cross.  Certainly there was something amazing that happened with his followers after his death.  The furthest I want to go with the cross is toward “risk”.  I can think about resurrection metaphorically; I certainly feel that I have had “resurrection” moments in my own life.  They have nothing to do with literal death, though.  I think I tend toward a Markan focus that leaves out resurrection and focuses on the ministry.  That’s just a bunch of my own personal beliefs surrounding this stuff, but that’s where my thinking is.  I would like to think that Jesus would have offered much more to the world had he the chance to live longer.  I’m not interested in celebrating the death of the greatest man who ever lived.  

Ecotheology

How are issues of economic, racial and gender justice related to ecotheology?

The earth is manipulated and taken advantage of just like these minority groups. The same mentality is applied… those with the power deserve the power because it was given to them and is a sign of God’s approval. As long as this is the mindset, instead of justice and compassion-oriented service to this world, those with power will continue to widen the divide and work to the disadvantage of minorities and the earth.

Benediction for an Earth Day Service

God’s created people:

God called creation good. Hear this as a call to be stewards of the earth and to commit ourselves to restoring to goodness our sick planet. Remember that God has no hands but our hands, no face but our face, no landfill but our landfill, no compost but our compost, and no breath of fresh air but those that we breathe in. May we continually breathe in the Holy Spirit and receive God’s blessings. Go forth and create goodness with God!

Amen.

Uhm....

When white American Christians talk about being persecuted…

Meditation/Study Sounds 7: Wind

I invite you to meditate for 10 minutes, using the sound of the wind:

Wind Sounds

Who was Jesus? Who is the Christ?

Jesus was a teacher and healer who felt and understood his innate divinity more than any other being.

Christ is the way that the spirit and memory of Jesus vibrates and resonates in our world today.

Hyperbole and a Half

seekinguncertainty:

writhemic:

everyday.

all the days

So Much Easter in This

Every cell in the human body regenerates on average every seven years. Like snakes, in our own way we shed our skin. Biologically we are brand new people. We may look the same, we probably do, the change isn’t visible at least in most of us, but we are all changed completely forever.
When we say things like “people don’t change” it drives scientist crazy because change is literally the only constant in all of science. Energy. Matter. It’s always changing, morphing, merging, growing, dying. It’s the way people try not to change that’s unnatural. The way we cling to what things were instead of letting things be what they are. The way we cling to old memories instead of forming new ones. The way we insist on believing despite every scientific indication that anything in this lifetime is permanent. Change is constant. How we experience change that’s up to us. It can feel like death or it can feel like a second chance at life. If we open our fingers, loosen our grips, go with it, it can feel like pure adrenaline. Like at any moment we can have another chance at life. Like at any moment, we can be born all over again.
Grey’s Anatomy, 7x01 With You I’m Born Again

The Swan

By Mary Oliver

The Swan

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

Love After Love

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you have ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott, Collected Poems 1948-1984, New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1986.

Easter Sermonette

This is a reflection I gave for my church’s 8:00 a.m. Easter service a few years ago. Also printed is the scripture passage used. (NIV)

"After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men. The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee.There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.” So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

So: This story begins with the two Marys heading to the tomb after the death of their beloved leader. Maybe we’ve had quite enough Holy Week at this point, but for me, resurrection only makes sense when we start from a low place. These women were all but literally beaten down.

It is an unfortunate truth that most of us know grief all too well. We have experienced stagnancy and aloneness that grief brings, the paralyzing pain and the desire to, perhaps, crawl into that tomb with Christ, move the stone, and sit in the darkness, waiting for enough time to pass that resurrection comes while we sleep.

…But it doesn’t. The story shows that it takes an earthquake and an angel to shake these women out of the reality that grief isn’t the end of the story.

I don’t know how many of you are watching ‘The Cosmos,’ but Caleb and I consider ourselves amateur science nerds, so we have been making time to watch Neil deGrasse Tyson give us a tour of the universe. As he and Carl Sagan have done a wonderful job of showing, the patterns of the universe repeat themselves on both grand and small scales. Sometimes we can better understand a story by making it smaller or more personal, but sometimes the profundity of an experience is best portrayed by the grandeur and extravagance of the universe.

I think Jesus is a supernova in this story. He is a shining star who seemingly collapses into a dense mass of chaos. Jesus’ ministry seems to climax and then come crashing down as he is brutally executed and his dignity reduced to that of a common criminal. Jesus is killed in the most shaming way possible. His followers are dispersed and disoriented. Suddenly the life they thought they were living, their goals and ambitions, their purpose in life comes crashing down. Jesus’ followers may not have understood astrophysics, but they would certainly identify with feeling like masses of dense chaos.

When I dropped out of college (which I did, if you didn’t know), I think I was catering to the chaos within me. I let my depression and eating disorder consume me. I crawled into that tomb and let the failure that I thought I was become me.

I started working full time and tried to brush my struggles under the rug. I tried to fight my disappointment in myself and the disappointment of others. As anyone who has struggled with eating disorders or depression knows, though, pretending doesn’t help. It may get people to leave you alone or to allow yourself to hide behind a facade, but pretending you’re okay when you’re not only makes the pain worse. Like a dying star, you begin to collapse in on yourself. You become alone in grieving for yourself and for the person you wanted to be. You lose sight of whatever light you used to have. Like a dying star, you become self-cannibalizing until you have no more of your energy left to consume. And it seems like that’s the end.

But as the Marys could perhaps tell us, that’s not the end of the story. As is evidenced through the universe, resurrection happens. The explosive deaths of celestial bodies lead to opportunities for Life. Our Earth exists because of a series of deaths and explosions. Often times, we need to die to ourselves in order to be born again, to be resurrected into a new kind of life.

Climbing out of our low points requires us to remember this. When you’re at the bottom of one of those pits, it feels like that’s all there is: more low. But if we look up, maybe there’s an angel waiting to give us good news.

“Do not be afraid,” Jesus says. Resurrection happens. Jesus’ followers realized that it wasn’t the end of the story: there was work to do and growth to happen. In this past year, I got married and I began a Masters’ degree. Five years ago, that felt impossible. Five years ago, I felt worthless, like there was nothing better for me than a job that I hated, than hating my body, than hating myself.

But Jesus rose from the tomb and told us not to be afraid: not to be afraid of resurrection, of the work there is to be done. There is life and meaning and possibility, even when it feels like there can be nothing but more low. It may take an earthquake and it may take angels, but Jesus shows us that even after hitting the lowest of our low points, even after a shaming, public death, even after being stripped of our dignity and worth, we can rebound into an explosion of brilliance like that of a supernova. Resurrection happens in Jesus, in the grandeur of the universe, and in the smallness of our own lives.

I know that now and I hope, when I start losing sight of that, that I can hear the reminder not to be afraid, that I can look up at the stars and find in myself the small light that I need to illuminate the path that is still ahead of me and of all of us.

Failing and Flying

Failing and Flying
by Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It’s the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph

I Said to My Soul...

From East Coker by T.S. Eliot

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope of the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; yet there is faith
But the faith and the hope and the love are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.