Category: Through a Glass Darkly

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Hollow Hunger {a hillside sermon}

Blessings on the hungry {Jesus}

On Mondays, All Souls serves breakfast at The Haven, our local day shelter. Today, we had scrambled eggs, cinnamon oatmeal and assorted breads, along with the usual homemade granola and yogurt. Some enter hungry for a meal, and hopefully they leave filled. What I’ve discovered, however, is that we all enter hungry for something. Hungry for a job. Hungry for a friend. Hungry for even an inch of space from the noise. Hungry for the pain to stop. Hungry to be told we matter. Hungry for the husband to stop hitting. All this has made me wonder what hunger I carried with me as I entered those doors this morning. I’m still considering it.

And Jesus said, “blessings on those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.”

Righteousness is one of those big words we throw around, so big and (for a few) so common that we don’t really hear it anymore. To be righteous means to be right. And some of us, worn weary by all that is wrong, are starved for things to be right. We won’t deny what we know: our world is not well. Things are not right. And we live each day with this hollowness, the hollowness of hope unfulfilled.

Righteousness can also be translated justice. We long for God to step in and make justice in our world, to plead the cause of those who are trampled, marginalized and wronged. No child should ever be abandoned. No village should ever be ripped apart by civil war. No young girl should ever have her dad send her out into the night for a twenty dollar bill. We want God to do something. We live with a gnawing ache, the injustice everywhere.

We are the poor, and we long for our poverty to be finished. We mourn for others or for ourselves — and we long for our tears to be dried. We are humbled or powerless, and we hope for the day when we aren’t dismissed or when we actually have something to show for all our effort. We are hungry. We are thirsty.

And to all of us with empty bellies or hollow hearts, Jesus says, “blessings on you – you will inherit God’s kingdom.” God has no intentions of leaving us empty, of leaving us abandoned, of leaving us at all. Jesus’ audacious promise is that the Kingdom of God is the place where the wrong is righted, where the hungry have plenty, where justice and goodness own the day.

I know what I’m hungry for. I’m hungry to believe that promise. I’m hungry to hope in something other than myself.


Those who follow Jesus grow hungry and thirsty on the way. They are longing for the forgiveness of all sin, for complete renewal, for the renewal too of the earth and the full establishment of God’s law. They are still involved in the world’s curse, and affected by its sin. He whom they follow must die accursed and on the cross, with a desperate cry for righteousness on his lips: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” But the disciple is not above the master, he follows in his steps. Happy are they who have the promise that they shall be filled, for the righteousness they receive will be no empty promise, but real satisfaction. {Dietrich Bonhoeffer}

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Daring, Humbled Ones {a hillside sermon}

Blessings on the meek. {Jesus}

We live in a university town, home to a historic and prestigious academic institution that has traded titles (Best Public University) with UC Berkley the last 11 or 12 years. There’s a lot of smart people here. A lot. I love it, truly do. Important ideas. Fascinating discussions. Intriguing people. But stick around long enough, and you will notice the temptation to sound smarter than you actually are, to drop names of esoteric philosophers you don’t really understand and use words you haven’t exactly figured out yet. Not that I’ve ever done this, mind you – but I know people who have.

I’m a pastor. And you might find this hard to believe (or not), but pastors feel the compulsion to climb the totem pole just like everyone else. We have our matrix for success, though these days it’s often unspoken because someone finally realized how crass it is to actually say you’re measuring the Kingdom of God by seats filled and dollars gathered. We see other churches grow and other pastors become the superstars while we dawdle along — and we awake in the middle of the night, ravaged by the fear that we are failures. Not that I’ve ever done this, mind you – but I know pastors who have.

I’m a writer. I don’t even need to go into it. The cliches are true; we are tortured souls. You put your words to paper, sending them out into the wide world with fingers crossed that they’ll be received, if not (dare we admit) cherished. And months later, the resounding silence has squashed all that. Now, you’re just begging the great publishing gods to not let it go out of print before its first birthday. And then you see the blogosphere blow up with some schmuck’s flash of brilliance. He said something revolutionary like “Be nice to people” – and he offered his sagacity with all the artfulness of a South of the Border billboard. Overnight, he’s got 4 buzillion twitter followers and blog commenters – and you know this because you’ve counted. Everything turns green. Not that I’ve ever done this…

We exhaust ourselves with all these wranglings because we do not believe that when we are humbled (and this is the meaning of meek) that the mercy of God will be enough for us. To be meek is to be gentle. A gentle man. A gentle woman. We are free to be gentle with others because we recognize God is gentle with us. We have nothing to prove. We are whoever and whatever God has given us to be. And we offer the same freedom to others.

When we release the demand to get what’s ours, when we drop our shoulders and lower our guard and simply live the truth of who we are – we can trust that the God of all kindness will hold us together. We don’t have to pry our life out of other’s scattered opinions and perceptions of us. We are free to be tamed by God, to surrender to God’s good care.

Peterson’s rendering of this beatitude invites us to take a risk – and to breathe easy: You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are – no more, no less.

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For Those Who Mourn {a hillside sermon}

Blessings on the mourners. {Jesus}

I live with a woman who’s made friends with tears. And I tell you, Miska’s tears are one of the most powerful and beautiful things about her. When Miska and I first married, she rarely cried. I do remember that night during our first month in our first apartment, when we were still sleeping on a twenty-year-old hand-me-down mattress and box springs plopped on the floor. So many emotions, so raw. The tears came, but that was rare.

A couple years later, Miska began her grad program in counseling. She started to pay attention to her story; and she learned to pay attention to other’s stories. Miska is one of those rare people who truly listens, who hears you. Her tears signal strength, not frailty. A courageous woman, this wife of mine. She bears other’s sorrows and has become well acquainted with grief. She takes in other’s joy and weeps for all the beauty she sees. If you’ve never told your story to another and felt the sheer presence of someone’s tears over you, with you – well, I pray someday you receive that gift.

Of course, tears aren’t the only way to mourn (or express gratitude for beauty). But however one mourns, the mourner is not one we’d think of as blessed. The mourner is the one who knows the weight of things, the one who’s mistakes have brought him low, the one who can’t get over the loss, the one who carries another’s pain. The mourner lives with acute awareness of all the things we’ve lost in our world, all the places where we’ve gone wrong.

Some might call the mourners sentimental. Some might hurry them along the “stages of grief.” The mourners are the people we learn to work around, to acknowledge but keep on the edges where they won’t bother anyone.

But when Jesus announces the kingdom of God, he throws his arms open wide and speaks these words. Blessed. Blessings on you who mourn, on you who know the sting of grief. To you who can never escape the tears, for you or for others. God is here. And you are blessed.

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Ridiculous Blessings {a hillside sermon}

Blessed are the poor. {Jesus}

Blessed are the sat upon, spat upon, ratted on. {Paul Simon}

No matter the continent or century, we agree: the destitute and impoverished among us are the oppressed, not the privileged. The poor are beaten down by the man, undone by their addictions or overwhelmed by unjust systems. However we might describe the downtrodden, they are most certainly not blessed.

Yet Jesus leads off his litany of blessing in his sermon on the hill, the sermon launching revolutions and befuddling readers, with these strange words: blessed are the poor. Is Jesus glossing human sorrow with sentimentality? Has Jesus surrendered to an inner, “spiritualized” idealism, making a clean break from reality, from the poverty staring him in the face? Has Jesus lost his ever-loving mind?

Some have wondered if Jesus’ words minimize the plight of the poor, as if those under the heels of economic strain should stop bitching and thank their lucky stars they have received such an odd mercy. It hurts, but it builds character says the cliche. Of course, few of us want to get in line for this brand of mercy. Odd, isn’t it, how we can twist words so that the one who came (as the old prophet Isaiah said) to “bring good news to the poor” sounds darn close to a callous robber baron.

Jesus has no idyllic vision of poverty. Jesus is not suggesting that the hungry boy trapped in the slums simply surrender to squaller because – doesn’t he know?? — he’s blessed. Rather, Jesus announces the presence and power of God’s Kingdom, that reality that unseats and overturns every other reality, by proclaiming that the very ones gathered round him (the sick, the diseased, the outcast) who were in every way poor were welcomed, were desired and would by God’s grace be blessed, made well. As Glenn Stassen said, “The poor are blessed, not because their virtue is perfect but because God especially does want to rescue the poor.”

Matthew casts a wider net, telling us that all who are “poor in spirit” are blessed. Poverty makes it round to all of us. The poor in spirit includes all of us who are humbled. All of us who think we have nothing, are nothing. All of us who have slammed up against our limitations or another’s ridicule. All of us who feel small and insignificant. All of us who have been crushed by disappointment or shame. All of us who have been ignored or dismissed.

In one way or the other, at some point or another — and if we possess the courage to be honest — each of us will discover ourselves situated firmly in the company of the poor. We will be among those whom no one mistakes for an expert, who have no wide following, who fail to make the list marked elite. We are the silly ones, the bumbling ones. No one would come to us for an endorsement or to raise cash. We have little power. We are a poor fool.

And strangest of truths, Jesus announces to us in our impoverished place, the Kingdom is yours. Welcome. Blessed.

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Nothing Wasted

While writing last week, I bumped into a character I wanted to know, a man I wanted a conversation with. That’s how I met Rainie.

The conversation took shape from bits I’ve gleaned from other characters, real flesh-and-blood types. In several places recently, I’ve been reminded of our very powerful fear of failure, of making such a mess of things that nothing (or no one) could ever pull the shattered bits back together again. I see this in myself, my fear that I’m going to screw something up or squander something or get something or other irretrievably wrong. I see this obsession in others as well: on the back side of life, it can be an unrelenting regret that murders the soul and on the front side of life, it can be an unyielding drivenness that, well, murders the soul.

We are convinced that if anything is to happen with our life, we are to make it happen. We are convinced that mistakes are the grand enemy, those dementors of our best laid plans. I believe these bewitching notions are as lecherous as they are common.

However, if Scripture tells us anything, it tells us this: God, ever the creator, makes much of little. Sometimes God makes much of almost nothing. We can live foolishly by flittering our life away. We can also live foolishly by always fearing how we might be flittering our life away. I’m tempted to provide the expected caveats to this line of thinking, but I won’t. Not here. Sometimes, words need to stand alone. Sometimes we need to fret less about how we’re living and get on with actually living.

I believe this: with God, nothing is wasted or ultimately ruined. Nothing.

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Diary of a Plain Pastor: Wonder

The shabbiest tuppeny doll will rejoice a baby’s heart for half the year, but your mature gentleman’ll go yawning his head off at a five-hundred franc gadget. And why? Because he has lost the soul of childhood. Well, God has entrusted the Church to keep that soul alive, to safeguard our candour and freshness … I’m not stopping you from calculating the process of the equinoxes or splitting the atom. But what would it profit you even to create life itself, when you have lost all sense of what life really is? Might as well blow your brains out among your test-tubes.                                      {Diary of a Country Priest}

There’s lots of talk in the church about getting the soul alive. I don’t hear as much talk about keeping the soul alive.

The old wizened priest, the one who’d live many years and served a simple parish and outlived most of his superiors as well as the various ecclesiastical fixations, had come to believe that the church was a caretaker, a guardian of the soul. There are lots of things the church does. There are many areas to which we speak. However, none of it takes precedent over the most basic function of assisting people in staying alive. Alive in God.

At the core, this means we do simple things. We remind people of who God is. We remind people of who they are. And then we teach people to keep their eyes open, watching for all the wonder God is crafting in us and around us.

Theological precision, astute and engaging preaching, missional initiatives, well-crafted liturgy – each of these, important as they are, must not be ends in themselves. They are the soil in which the soul grows. They are the fruit from a life lived awake in God’s garden.

Wonder is an important word here. I’d like to add it to our routine vocabulary. Perhaps as often as these questions: Is it correct? Is it effective? Is it scalable? We could ask Does it evoke wonder? Does it give me a greater sense of self and control or a greater sense of God? Does it move me to love?

When I ponder the many (and varied) expectations now prevalent for us pastors, the truth is that I don’t meet up well to many of them. Some of them I need to work on, and some of them I need to let go. But I think a prime calling for me is to help a person guard their soul, to ask them if they’re alive – and to encourage them to walk among the living.

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Paradox

At the center of our faith stands wooden timbers and melded iron. Heckles and jeers. Arms stretched taut. Bewilderment. Utter loss. Chaos. A sobbing mother. An abandoned son. Love.

At the center of our faith stands raucous joy. The shock of relief. Grave clothes tossed. Embrace and laughter. Empty, empty. Arms stretched wide. An overwhelmed friend. The giddy delight of sweet surprise. Love.

Love is always a paradox.

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Diary of a Plain Pastor: Doubt

Faith is not a thing which one ‘loses,’ we merely cease to shape our lives by it. That is why old-fashioned confessors are not far wrong in showing a certain amount of skepticism when dealing with ‘intellectual crises,’ doubtless far more rare than people imagine.

{Diary of a Country Priest}

Wrangling with doubt and questions comes easy for me, too easy perhaps. One of the chapters in my first book opened with this line: “A pastor really ought to believe in God. It works better that way.” (it’s still true, by the way.) And this was no quick two-week rabbit trail for me. My quandary with doubt popped up again in Holy Curiosity. Doubt has been a companion, weaving it’s way in and out of my story for the past 15 years or so. For some, faith comes easy. For others, faith comes through blood, sweat and fears.

Doubt’s a tricky thing, though. The old cliche says that faith’s a crutch; well, doubt’s a crutch too. When doubt keeps me honest, keeps me human, it can be a friend. But when doubt isolates me or encourages my cynical side, whenever doubt diminishes the life I could be busy living, doubt has become my enemy (or “my foe,” as six-year-old Seth called a kindergarten pal who grew mean on the playground).

I cling to doubt because it provides an allure of protection. Left free to roam and pillage, doubt runs right past being honest and on to constructing barricades. Nothing required of me. Nothing to disappoint me. No one to criticize me – because I’ve committed to nothing. We cannibalize ourselves, rushing to dismantle our beliefs before anybody else tries.

Doubt as one voice keeping us honest is a good thing. Doubt as the voice telling us who we are is a horrible thing. Believing in the gospel is a posture of faith. And being a pastor is a life of living toward – and inviting others toward – faith.

If my life is defined by doubt, then I’m not getting on with actually being who I am in this world. I’m not living toward anything. Rather than giving myself to my church and my family and my craft and my friends, I’m simply detracting, deconstructing. I’m withering away. That’s no way to live.

In the wise words of the Avett Brothers, “Decide what to be. And go be it.”

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We’re All Pentecostals

For most churches, last Sunday was Pentecost Sunday, the day 50 days after Easter when we celebrate that God’s Spirit has come to us, that God’s act of redemption has broken free in the world. The days of the old order are numbered; a new world comes.

I grew up with a poor stereotype of Pentecostals. Pentecostals were the folks with bad hair styles and large broods of kids. They spouted crazy noises and did insane things like pull snakes out of boxes and dance with them, daring them to bite because neither scorpions nor vipers could harm the Holy Spirit-smitten child of God. Of course, they had stereotypes of us too. We were the folks who considered drums to be devil-inspired and who preached on the evils of mixed bathing (google it), believing the mere sight of a woman’s bare thigh might induce pregnancy.

The doctrinal turf-wars between our respective churches were nasty. The Pentecostals said (so I heard) that we weren’t filled with the Holy Ghost because we hadn’t spoken in tongues or performed signs and wonders (and if any of those signs and wonders were linked with snakes, I preferred to not be filled). We, returning the volley, said these so-called signs and wonders and strange tongues were signs they had indeed been filled – by demons. This was scary stuff for a kid who didn’t appreciate snakes or demons but who did appreciate several of the pentecostal girls.

You wouldn’t have guessed it by us, but the prime signal of the Spirit in Acts was unity. Everyone heard God’s good news in their own language – but they heard it together. Undoing the judgment of Babel where language separated the nations, God’s Spirit now used language to bring the nations together again. This was the first visible act of God’s promised New Creation, the remaking of the world through the power of the risen Christ. And, as Peter preached, this was the fulfillment of the prophet Joel’s prophecy, where old and young, women and men, slaves and free, would all be brought together by God’s Spirit.

But the Pentecostals had demons. And we were faithless. And those girls were out of bounds. We have a knack for taking a good thing and mucking it up.

I find it rather marvelous that the Spirit used language, words, as the raw material for God’s first strokes of new creation. Of course. Language shapes our hopes and our fears. Language communicates what we love and what we desire. Language opens up new worlds. Language helps us see and understand. There is a reason Guttenberg changed the world with a printing press. There is a reason Dostoevsky or Charlotte Bronte or John Grisham or Louis L’Amour or Anne Lamott capture your attention and expand your imagination. There is a reason why early iterations of the healthcare debate changed as soon as medical review boards became known as “death panels.” Language creates new realities.

We need a new language. We need a new imagination. We need to replace fear with trust, shame with freedom, cynicism with hope, distance with unity. We need God’s Spirit. Thankfully, we’re all pentecostals.

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Diary of a Plain Pastor: Empty

‘Be at peace,’ I told her. And she had knelt to receive this peace. May she keep it for ever. It will be I that gave it to her. Oh, miracle – thus to be able to give what we ourselves do not possess, sweet miracle of our empty hands!

{Diary of a Country Priest}

It’s a mantra to pastors, to anyone for that matter: you can’t give away what you haven’t received. I’ve repeated it. Mostly, I believe it. The truth in these words seems two-fold. First: don’t play games or pretend; smoke what your selling. Second: all we’ve received is grace and all we have to give is grace; don’t get too big for your britches.

But lo and behold, wouldn’t you know that even such good words with such sincere intentions find a way to wiggle back to a place of self-effort and self-importance, a place that forgets (yet again) all about grace and gift and the marvel of God making something of nothing. By God, I hope I can give more than I’ve possessed, more than I’ve taken in and truly received. I certainly hope God can love through me when I’m unlovely and enact mercy through me when I’m in such desperate need for mercy.

Lately, I’ve dropped more than a few balls. If I were a street juggler, there’d be nobody watching – and no coins in the jar. If it’s up to my sermons to save the world, the world’s headed for the fiery place. If it’s up to my powerful faith to create momentum within our church, well, we are in dire straits. Last night, Miska and I were talking about our early years in ministry. “You had quite an ego,” Miska said. She was right. But God was kind and indulgent – and God loved a few people even with my arrogance and faithlessness and erroneous ways. Contrary to Sunday School ditties, apparently God does use dirty pots. Are you familiar with any other kind?

These days, I find myself feeling more empty than full. Some days I don’t know what to pray for – or how to pray for – the people I love. In conversation, I often don’t know the words to share with a struggling soul. My sermons seem vanilla. My organizational skills are struggling to reach their normal level of mediocrity. Old nemesis (doubt, inner-disconnection, spiritual lethargy) have come knocking. All of this leaves me hollowed out.

If my job is to give what I possess, well – you see the trouble. But I believe that when we are empty, there is more space for God to fill, if we’ll be quiet enough to let God fill it. When we have little to say or give or perform, then God can speak and bless and act. And if the gospel means anything, it means this: we need God to speak and to bless and to act.

And from the beginning, God has always made something of nothing, a “sweet miracle of our empty hands” indeed.

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