shalom – Salvaged Faith

Behind Closed Doors

Posted on April 12, 2020Leave a comment

Text: John 20:18-20

Almost every Easter, we focus on the tomb.

We focus on the women.

We spend all of our time and attention on that glorious moment when they discover the tomb is empty and Jesus is alive and they have a story to tell.

But this morning, I want to focus on the rest of the disciples.

As my friend, Rev. Allison Lanza, reminded me a few weeks ago, the rest of the disciples were not at the tomb.

They were not in the garden.

They were not taking risks and bringing oils to honor the body of their Lord.

As Rev. Lanza wrote,

“On the very first Easter the disciples were locked in their house. It was dangerous for them to come out… They were living in a time of such despair and such fear. If they left their homes their lives and the lives of their loved ones might be at risk.”

Only a few of us are able to gather here at this empty church to lead worship for this morning… just like only a few ever gathered to witness the empty tomb.

The rest of the disciples… the rest of the church… the rest of the faithful…

Well, you are home.

You are home where you are safe.

You are home where you are doing everything you can to protect your loved ones.

You are home because it is dangerous not just for ourselves, but for our vulnerable neighbors as well, to go out.

It is not irrational fear keeping you home… but very real concerns and worries and sensible measures that we need to take to care for one another.

This year, we may not be dressed up in fancy clothes and crowding into the pews.

One of our biggest disappointments might be missing out on that beautiful and delicious Easter Breakfast put on by VIM.

We aren’t watching the kiddos squeal and run past each other finding eggs and crashing after eating all the candy.

But maybe what we are experiencing this year is a glimpse into what that very first Easter was like for those who followed Jesus.

It wasn’t about candy or food or clothes.

It was a group of people who were grieving and lonely and scared.

They were heartbroken and frustrated.

Everything they had planned and all of the possibility vanished on the cross.

They were desperate for a glimmer of hope, a hint of good news, a ray of possibility.

We don’t have to imagine what that was like.

We are living it.

We have loved ones who have tested positive for Covid-19 and you are worried about them and unable to go visit.

We are longing for connection and know you shouldn’t risk it.

We are grieving people in our lives that we have lost but have been unable to go and properly mourn.

All of the plans that we had for this spring… concerts, games, graduation, weddings… heck, even simply barbeques or camping trips or playdates…

In the blink of an eye it was gone.

Postponed indefinitely.

We are desperate for a glimmer of hope, a hint of good news, a ray of possibility.

I have to be honest… somewhere early in the midst of this crisis, I suggested that we postpone Easter.

I just couldn’t wrap my head around Easter with the church filled up with people.

I couldn’t imagine laughing and singing and praising God and shouting CHRIST IS RISEN… without having all of you shouting it back to me.

And Easter is technically a moving holiday… we celebrate it on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox… which is another way of saying, it doesn’t matter what day it is.

So I got this idea that we should just wait and sit in Lent for a little while longer and postpone Easter until that Sunday when all of us could gather and hug and sing and shout and stuff our faces with food.

But then I realized… this was not going to be a delay of a week or two.

And maybe more than ever we need a glimmer of hope.

We need a hint of good news.

We need to see that ray of possibility.

Easter wasn’t cancelled or postponed or forgotten because the disciples were huddled together, shut behind locked doors, closed off to the world.

Easter wasn’t limited to the few people who were able to gather at the empty church… I mean tomb… on that morning.

Easter wasn’t simply a rumor or a story told by others.

And you know what, that first Easter wasn’t even something the disciples had to risk their own lives to go out and experience.

No, John tells us in his gospel account that even there amid the apprehension and uncertainty and fear, the miracle of Easter showed up.

The resurrected Jesus somehow slipped passed those dead bolts and latches and stood among them.

Right where they were.

In the safety of their homes.

God-with-us… Immanuel.

On Easter Sunday, there were a few who were called to go out and proclaim the story.

In some ways, I resonate with Mary, tasked with bringing the news from the empty tomb to share it with all of you.

But not everyone could.

Not everyone was safe.

Easter was for them, too.

I don’t know what your Easter will be like this year, but here is one thing for which I am certain.

God is with you.

The Lord of Life is with you.

The Hope of the World is in your midst.

And when he showed up with those first disciples in their homes, the first words he uttered acknowledge their… our… difficult reality.

“Peace be with you.”

He didn’t scold them.

He didn’t open the doors and push them out into the world.

Jesus offers a word of reassurance.

He simply offers peace.

Peace unlike any else that the world gives.

A breath of the spirit that reminded them of the words spoken just days earlier as they gathered around the table in the upper room.

“do not Let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid.” (John 14:27 NRSV)

“In the world you have distress. But be encouraged! I have conquered the world.” (John 16:33 CEB)

We sometimes think about peace as a calm.

Or as the absence of war.

But the Hebrew use of peace was an all-encompassing word of complete and total well-being.

It meant salvation.

It meant being “uninjured and safe, whole and sound.” [1]

Jesus stands in their midst, wounds still visible, and yet he reassures them that all is whole and well and that his earthly work among them is complete.

Jesus is our peace.

He is our shalom.

Through him, we are restored to God…

We are restored to one another…

And we are sent forth to restore the world…

My prayer for you, today, is that that same peace would show up in your homes.

That the Easter blessing of peace might find you wherever you are.

I pray that in spite of everything, you might be able to breathe in that gift of peace.

The apostle Paul knew a little something about being under house arrest, imprisoned, unable to go out and visit and care for those whom he had grown to love.

But even in a prison cell, the peace of Christ was with him.

And so his words to the people of Philippi, I share now with you.

⁴Rejoice^[^c^] in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.^[^d^] ⁵Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. ⁶Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. ⁷And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Wherever you are this morning, friends, let that Easter gift of blessed peace fill your lives. Amen.

[1] https://www.efca.org/blog/sunday-resurrection

An Altogether Peace

Posted on December 8, 2019Leave a comment

Text: Ephesians 4: 1-4, 21-32

Often when I’m writing a sermon there is an audience in mind.
I ask God what it is that we, as the people of Immanuel, need to hear.
Sometimes the sermon is only for a portion of our community…
meaning sometimes it’s a teaching sermon meant to challenge those who want to go deeper.
Sometimes it is a creative sermon for those left-brain thinkers.
Sometimes I’m focused on a more basic concept for those who are newer to faith.

Today, I’m going to confess, is a sermon for me.
To be honest, it probably applies to many of you, too.
But it’s the sermon I need to hear.

I was reading through the chapter on “An Altogether Peace” in preparation for this week and felt like it was like an x-ray of my soul.

“Think about the lack of peace within your own heart,” Magrey DeVega writes. “About the unsettledness you feel about your future, the conflict you have against your own inner demons of guilt and shame, and the inability you have to tame the wild horses of anger, fear, and powerlessness… Oh, we do our best to project an ‘almost peace’… We cover up our insecurities, we put on a good face amid the chaos to convince others – and even ourselves – that things are better than they are. But on the inside, deep down inside, we are far from peaceful. We might even be afraid.” (p.15)

There is so much unsettledness in my life right now.
Unsettledness about the United Methodist Church…
Unsettledness in some personal relationships…
Feelings of anger and powerlessness as I try to imagine ways forward…
Guilt and shame for not doing more…
One of you came up to me after the Town Hall gathering last Monday night and mentioned how poised I was answering the questions that were asked… and I realized in the aftermath… I can talk about all of these things that are happening clearly and I can project that “almost” peace… but if I were to really dive into how I’m feeling about it – I would probably just altogether fall apart.

Tomorrow night at our Administrative Council meeting, one of the things we will be voting on is the recommendation already approved by our Staff Parish Relations Committee that I take a renewal leave from mid January through mid February.

According to our Book of Discipline and the strong encouragement of our Bishop, clergy are supposed to take at least four weeks of renewal leave every four years. My last leave was in the summer of 2015, so it is time… maybe past time… for another one of these times of rest and renewal.

On the one hand, I need time to connect once again to that “hidden source of calm repose,” as Charles Wesley so eloquently described God.
Just as we are looking at John Wesley’s sermon, we’ve been exploring some of Charles’ hymns.

As verses three and four of his hymn, we are reminded:
God is our rest in toil, our ease in pain, the healing of our broken hearts….
In war, God is our peace.
In loss, God is our gain.
God is the one who allows us to smile even in the face of the tyrant’s frown.
In God, we find glory and a crown where we had only before been filled with shame.
Plenty in our need, power in our weakness, freedom for our bondage, light in our darkness, joy in our grief…

When everything felt like it might be falling apart for the disciples – Christ gave them his peace.
As DeVega reminds us, It wasn’t like the Roman peace – the pax romana – which came by brute force and conformity and oppression for all who opposed their power.
No, the peace of Christ is different. “[it] would not be sustained by fear or oppression. It would not be born of anger or revenge. This peace would not be through the accumulation of power. It would be born of love.” (p. 24)

So, this Advent, when everything feels like it might be falling apart, my troubled and unsettled heart is waiting…
Waiting for Christ to breathe his spirit of peace upon me like he did those disciples.
Waiting for the altogether peace of Christ to be born once again into my heart.

But the other reason I need that time of renewal is that peace is not only an inward sentiment.
It is also an outward and communal and public demand of our faith.
And I need to connect with that “source of calm repose” if I’m going to help lead our church and our community through the coming year.

You see, just like the first-century Christians Paul was writing to in Ephesians, we find ourselves in a world that is fractured by power and tribalism.
If we were not in the midst of a debate about the inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in our church, something else would be creating turmoil.
We lack peace not only in the church – but also in our families, our state, our nation, because we have stopped seeing one another as people who are worthy of forgiveness, mercy, and justice.

I once believed that the opposite of peace was war.
I believed that we would finally have peace in our lives when we laid down our weapons and stopped fighting.
But I’m not sure that is true anymore.
Even if all the swords and guns in the world were destroyed does not mean that peace will come.
Peace, you see, must be bigger than a lack of conflict.
Peace must encompass more than the fights we find ourselves in.

The peace that we seek is like the peace of Isaiah in chapter 65….

I will rejoice over Jerusalem
and take delight in my people;
the sound of weeping and of crying
will be heard in it no more.
20 “Never again will there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days,
or an old man who does not live out his years;
21 They will build houses and dwell in them;
they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
23 They will not toil in vain
or bear children doomed to misfortune;
25 The wolf and the lamb will feed together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox…

In the Hebrew Scriptures THIS VISION, lifted up by the prophets, is Shalom.
Shalom is a Hebrew word that means peace, not only in terms of fighting and conflict – but it describes the wholeness of life.
This isn’t just a world in which there isn’t conflict, but there is life!
As one commentator put it, “everything fits together, the relationships work like they were designed to, and things just work right.” (http://listeningtoscripture.com/Textual_Studies/Isaiah/12isaiahspeace.html)
Paul Hanson says that shalom is “the realm where chaos is not allowed to enter, and where life can be fostered free from the fear of all which diminishes and destroys.”

Doesn’t that sound amazing?
A life free from the fear of all that could destroy us?
A life of fullness of health and prosperity for not only yourself, but others too?
We keep talking in the church about schism and conflict and fighting…
What would it look like if we let shalom guide the decisions we make in the next year together.
What would it look like if let go of our fears of all that might destroy us and instead focused on creating a church of health and prosperity for all?
What if we sought the unity of the Spirit and remembered we were called together into one body by the one Lord and God and Father of all?
What if that image of peace we shared with the children included progressives and traditionalists, blacks and whites, straight folks and LGBT folks gathered together, breaking bread, sharing ministry?

How do we get there?
Well, in his letter to the Ephesians, Paul has some advice about what it means to allow the breath of God, shalom, peace, to unite us together by the Spirit.
Magrey DeVega summarizes them into seven points in our “Almost Christmas” study, but if I were to whittle them down even farther, I’d put Paul’s lessons this way:
Seeking peace means that we have to be willing to put another person at the same level as ourselves.

We have to hold them in high enough esteem and worth that we are willing to speak the truth to them without manipulating or distorting or demeaning.
And we have to value them enough that we don’t let our anger pour over into diminishing them as a person through our words or actions.
We have to believe that they are worthy of the same love, forgiveness, compassion and respect that we ourselves have received from Christ.

It’s easy to say those things…
It’s far harder to live them.
There is a person in my life that makes my blood boil. When they enter the room, I can feel my heart rate go faster.
Maybe you know someone like this?
Maybe that co-worker who is just incredibly annoying…
Or your inappropriate uncle who you are upset with before they even open their mouth…
That person who just pushes all of your buttons just by existing…
Well, I was in a situation where I was around this particular person recently and I could feel it in my body…
My blood pressure was rising and I was anxious and not at all at peace.
In fact, I wanted to punch them in their face.

But I didn’t.
Seeking peace isn’t punching someone in the face.
It is being willing to see them as myself.
And so I started to pray…
John is a child of God.
John is a child of God.
John is a child of God.
And you know what…
My blood pressure went down.
I could breathe deeper.
I couldn’t do that on my own… but with God’s spirit of peace…

I have to admit, I still have work to do with this person.
I’m not yet at a place where I truly see them with enough value and worth that I can really speak the truth to them in love without letting my anger spill out all over first.
But I’m working on it.
I’m praying about it.
With God’s help…

What if those things applied here at Immanuel… ?
In our families…?
In our politics…?
How might the peace offered to us by Christ transform this world?

Jesus calls us to be peacemakers and to be a shining city on a hill, an example to all.
And Paul tells us the only way to do that is to let the Spirit of God to enter our lives and transform them.

If we were to try to do this all on our own, we’d probably go around punching people in their faces.

But what if we really did let the Spirit of Peace be born once again in our hearts.

What if we let it transform us.
To set us right inside.
To set us right with one another.
To set us right as a people.

Maybe then when the chaos and unsettledness and guilt and shame are able to melt away from our hearts… and then our community… and then our church… maybe then people will look at us with wonder and say – what is it that they have figured out?
And when they do, we can point to the One who brought us an altogether peace.
Amen.

chaotic peace

Posted on July 6, 20102 Comments

The other day, B strongly encouraged me to organize my pocketbook. It seemed like such a silly thing at the time, but there it was, busting at the seams with reciepts and cash sticking out and no hope of ever closing. He said – if you can get that thing to close right, maybe there is hope for you after all. And I did! =) All I had to do was take the checkbook out, put the cash in the right spot, and tuck my recipets in the pocket where the extremely seldom used checkbook had been.

I think my husband would describe me as a person who thrives on chaos. What he would mean by that is that I kind of let things go and forget about them and let everything hang out flapping about until a kind of critical point is reached. And then I jump into this frenzy of action and wham bam boozle – somehow, things kind of work out.

“Kind of” is the operative part of the phrase there.

It is true that for much of my life, that is how I have viewed the world. I’ll put something off until the absolute last possible moment. I hate confronting conflict or unpleasant tasks. I ignore things until I have to face them. And while I have, for the most part, been successful in this way of doing things, it is not my best. And it doesn’t work for everyone.

This last week, I preached on peace. And as is sometimes the case as a pastor, I felt like I was preaching to myself. Because peaceful is often the last thing that I feel in this chaotic way that I operate. Peaceful is not the word to describe the way relationships sometimes turn out due to this way of operating. Peaceful is not the word to describe the garden space on the south side of my house. Peaceful is not the proper adjective for newsletter creating, or bulletin producing, or sermon writing… at least not in my life.

As I spent some time wrestling with peace this week, I was reminded of the hebrew idea of shalom. Shalom is more than peace – it is right relationship, right order, wholeness and harmony. And not in some fuzzy, hippie, feel good sense. You know how you look around and see that things are just out of whack? when you can’t figure out how to make things fit or you know in your gut that something is off… that is the lack of shalom. And an article by Bruce Birch caught my attention when he wrote that the opposite of shalom is chaos.

You see, as much as I thrive on this chaos… as much as I am comfortable with the way that I operate… that doesn’t mean it is good for me. The peace that I obtain as I work this way, as I play this way, as I love this way is not full. It is partial and it is grasping. But to open myself up to right priorities… to find balance in my life… to seek out order and a proper time for things… to allow God to guide me… to let go of some things and delegate others… maybe that could bring shalom. Maybe letting go of my comfortable chaos might help me to truly find the peace that passes all understanding.

How I end up finding this order in my life is a different question. It’s not enough to just pray about it. I am firmly of the belief that prayer also requires action on our behalf. I’ve already organized my pocketbook, so at least I’m starting somewhere. I consolidated all of my google calendars so that all of my appointments show up at the same time on my blackberry. But just ready to come to the surface is the realization that the way I do church has to radically change. I need to hand some things off. I need to let go and find people to take over a few things that may have been the pastor’s job in the past… like doing the newsletter… so that I can be freed up to do the things I am called to do. As much as I enjoy them. As much as I am comfortable doing them. They create chaos as I try to stuff everything in and clasp the darn thing shut. And letting it go might be the answer I’m looking for.