Mary Did You Know?

This morning as I was driving up to Wilderness Retreat Center for our district pastors' Advent Day Apart, I had on the radio station 102.1 which along with at least 98.1 plays Christmas music all day. The song that was on the radio as I passed over the Paseo Bridge was Mary Did You Know? The first time I heard this song was on Christmas Eve 2000 at the evening service at Broadway UMC in Kansas City. It was my first Christmas at Broadway, and Penny Ellwood and I were working on the service. She told me that she and Bill would be glad to sing this song. I said sure but did not tell her that I did not know the song. When they sang it at that service, I was swept away to another dimension of time and space, and realized I was hearing the most wonderful description of Christmas, and received the reminder of the man Jesus who was the Christ. I can never hear this song when I am not swept away to that place. So tonight, I just wanted you to have a bit of respite from the fray of the season, or perhaps for those who may be in a place of sadness, grief, or emptiness, a moment to transcend those difficult burdens and rest beside the weary road and listen:

Nehemiah

'Tis the evening of St. Nicholas saint's day whom I could REALLY blog on (I bet I know more than you do about this good man who lived in Myra in Turkey in the fourth century) and there were at least two things in the KC Star newspaper this morning that I could blog on tonight.

But I just wanted to do a gentle piece on a young man I met this evening. Nehemiah is his name and he is a bagger at Price Chopper on 103rd down south. Those who read this fairly regularly know that grocery store is where I go most of the time. This is about Nehemiah

I had gobs of groceries tonight, piled high on the cart, with stuff not only for the family, but snacks and items for communion for our district's Advent Day Apart for Pastors tomorrow. Although my hand is on the mend, I was not looking forward to loading all of these groceries in the back of the Prius. I really did not want to spend the money to tip the bagger to load them for me. That was going on in my mind. When I approached the check out lanes, all had people with carts two deep so I pulled up behind what looked to be the most promising line. But as I did, the security guard motioned me over to the next lane which was just opening. Ah, a blessing! As I pushed my cart over, and started putting my groceries on the belt, a bagger appeared. I know several of the baggers there, but this guy was new. I noticed his spikey, but not too much so, jet black, his great smile which was genuine, and then how polite he was at the 16 9r 17 years of age that I guessed him to be (being "m'aamed" is a rare thing, and now that I am nearly 55, I think I like it). Something that I always ask the bagger, since even at wonderful Price Chopper my experience with this is spotty, is to put the cold stuff together. Each time I do this I try to by easy about how I say it as to not offend the bagger by inferring he/she is stupid or something, so I said to this young man, as he began to bag, "Please put the cold stuff in bags together" his wonderful smile,not a sarcastic smile but a real one came on his face, and I quickly said "not that you wouldn't do it anyway" him still sweetly smiling and saying with no sarcasm, "Yes, maam." Then the clerk asked about my hand, and nearing the end of the her task with me, said "You want drive up, don't you?" and to be honest I did want drive up and out I went to get the car and bring it around to the pick up door. The same bagger came out to put the groceries in the car, and as he was putting the last two bags of groceries in the passenger side of the car, since we'd run out of room in the back, I started to give him a tip--and when he saw it in my hand he said, "oh, no maam, I don't need a tip", "oh," I said, "but I want to give you a tip" and by this time I really did, and again he refused. At this point, I asked him what his name was. "Nehemiah" maam." And I said, "that sounds like you might go to church somewhere." "Oh, yes maam," he said, And then he named his church without a blink, a church with the word "revival" in its name, and I did not get the other words. I said "I want you to have this tip. I'm a United Methodist clergywoman." I am not sure why I said that...maybe that I wanted him to know that I knew his kindness came not just from being kind, but from his faith? Or did I feel like I needed to justify why I wanted to tip him? I think somewhere when I said that his name sounded like he went to church, if he had said no, I would have asked him if he knew what the man was like in the Bible who originally had that name. Who knows?

He took the tip after I pushed him on it and I think he wished by a blessed week.

This was a little moment, probably all told I spoke to him less than 2 minutes. But the brightness of his smile, his refusal until I insisted to take the tip (which has NEVER happened to me at any other time in my life that I can remember), and his sweet spirit was probably the neatest thing that happened to me today. He warmed my soul; he made me think; and his willingness to give me a little special help without price gave me a brief moment of grace, glorious grace, and I am grateful.

It is true that is in these little grace-filled moments, we sense Christ's coming.

Pinball and Riding the Waves

I am tired. I would imagine that in the previous 420 posts to this blog I have I said this same thing a lot of times. How many times have I written that this week? Ah, I'm just too tired to look.

I am tired because of this burn business, the burn itself and the medication I am taking for it. I am tired today because I did not get home much before midnight last night coming back from the cabinet Christmas party in Columbia and then blogging. I am also tired because over the last two weeks I have often resembled a pinball---in the morning, pull that level and away I go to the office(eventually)--PING time to look at messages and talk to Barbara when I make HER feel like a pinball by giving her gobs of tasks; PING listen to my phone messages and sometimes scan my email before the first pastor comes for evaluation; look at his paperwork, pray before he comes in for him: PING do that again plus the actual interview four times, all of which have been rich with meaning and the leading of the Holy Spirit: PING-talk to Barbara about things she had not been able to ask because I was unavailable; PING answer message PING message PING message. Go home and the pings continue there.

This is really not unlike most folks' life, especially at this time of the year. My image of myself is like I am propelled into the game for that day, hit one bell, hit another, and another, finding Jesus in many of those bell places, but reacting to circumstances that I have been bounced to by another circumstance. And sometimes we just have to live like that for a time, but hopefully never too long.

About twelve years ago, when I was going through a very difficult time in my life, sitting and looking at those "redeemed trees" I wrote about a few weeks ago which were across the driveway from the corner window in my office at Community UMC in Columbia, an image emerged in my head as to how I believed God was holding me up in those days. And it's one that for some reason I remembered this evening. In that image, I am in the ocean, not very far, but past my waist facing the shore. Another person was with me, who was teaching me how to "ride the waves" which was very hard for me. To ride the wave, you have to allow the wave to buoy you up and let it carry you up, trusting it to do so. You should not fight the wave--because if you do, you will end up soaked and under water. With your back to the ocean, you have to trust that you will feel the moment when you need to let the wave carry you, and not anticipate too very much lest you jump at the wrong time instead of letting the wave come to you.

We do a lot of jumping at the wrong time, I think, at least I do. I jump wanting to make my life happen, I let my desire to control, and mostly my inability to trust my life completely to God jump too soon. And so the waves get me sometimes. The pin ball flippers are sending me flying to another one and I react only

Part of Advent is learning to trust God and his timing--He may not come when you want him to but he's right on time, the gospel song sings. Susan, and anyone out there in the blogosphere who may be reading, stop trying to save yourself from the wave--allow it to do the work and trust yourself to it. Erase that pinball game mentality. God gives you direction as you grow closer to him, you'll learn that you are not arbitrarily being bounced from circumstance to circumstance, but being guided in your way of discipleship. You are not powerless because you trust--you are more powerful when you trust that Jesus is walking the way with you, that God asks you only to rely on him, and to lose you fear and fatigue of trying to make it all right by you own power instead of trusting your life to him.

Lord, as I wait, let me not wait for my own longings to be fulfills, but for your will to be done. Let me grow in trust of your loving hand in my life, and help me to let go just a little more, Lord, so I might feel the thrill of trusting you and feeling you on the crest of the wave. Amen

John the Baptist

It is late---we had cabinet in Columbia plus the cabinet Christmas party and I did not get home until well after 11. So I offer tonight the last few paragraphs from a manuscript of a sermon for the second Sunday in Advent--on John the Baptist. I read in a commentary the year I put together this sermon about the scripture where John is in prison and sends some of his disciples to ask Jesus if he indeed was the long awaited Messiah. Jesus tells them to go and tell John what they see, the blind can see, the lame can walk. I would seem from this scripture that John had questions as to whether Jesus was the long awaited One. Does this mean that all of his ministry was a time of waiting? That he really was not sure that Jesus was the one he had fortold would come? In that case, John's life was a testimony to his waiting faith, and his trust in God. Here is the last of the sermon---I think some of this may be from Barbara Brown Taylor:

People tend to be shaped by whatever it is they are waiting for. Have you noticed that? When you want something really really badly, your whole life tends to rearrange itself around that goal. For one person that which is wanted might be a baby, for someone else it might be a certain job, or an academic degree. Many of us wait for our vocation to be madeclear to us, others of us wait for a relationship that will last. Most all of us are still waiting for maturity, for enlightenment, for a bridled tongue, and for a contrite heard.

How about you? What are waiting for, and how is it shaping your life? Are you waiting for certainly, for healing, for love? Are you waiting for recognition, for retirement, for enough money to pay the bills? How about peace and justice on earth? How about the dawning of a new age, in which the wolf and the lamb shall feed together and the lion eat straw like an ox?
Whatever it is that our hearts yearn for, chances are that it has something to do with our vision of what it would mean for us to made whole, to be transformed into people who are not afraid anymore, whose basic needs are met and whose wounds are healed and who are more nearly the people God created us to be.

John the Baptist, the odd one who knew the truth, lived a life of waiting, a life that he lived with integrity, for he never turned the spotlight on himself, he always pointed ahead to the one who was coming. John knew the essential truth that all faithful people must know--that although God seems to delay in his coming; God always comes in the time that is right. Not so in haste, my heart, the hymn says, Have faith in God and wait; although he lingers long, he never comes too late. John knew this, even to his earthly death, which came too early for him to see the vindication of God’s love and power over the darkness of death itself.

During this Advent, perhaps God is trying to teach each of us to be people who learn how to be odd in that same way. That we are to be people who know the truth of God, that God is in charge of this universe, and of our lives, and we need not burden ourselves by impatience; we need not make things happen that end up birthing decisions that have not had time to mature; we need not push and push, do and do. Maybe this Advent, we need to learn to be, and in learning to be, we will learn to trust God with our lives, to approach him instead of with grabby fists, but with open hands that allow him the time and space to fill them will all good gifts.

Let us wait on our Lord, with the oddity of Christians who now what it is to trust God with our lives, even, as with John the Baptist. The Advent truth of waiting on God’s time is truth that is real, that can be trusted and that will make us free. Amen

Today I was speaking with Bob Howard about his trip this summer with others in our conference to Mozambique. He said that wherever you go there, if folks know you are a preacher, you are asked to preach. He preached several times in the bush, but he also preached in a church of 500 in Maputo. He told me about the choir sang that day and he remembered them singing "Ezekiel Saw the Wheel" and how well it was sung. So, I said, let me get this right: You heard a choir in Maputo United Methodist Church on the coast of Mozambique sing a slave spiritual, right? Yes, he said. I knew I needed to think a bit more about this and in fact did some research on the song and its meaning.

I gleaned from several internet sources that it is believed that this particular spiritual was often used as a code for slaves who were fleeing to freedom to illustrate the Underground Railroad. A wheel within a wheel was a good way to talk about the circuit of the Railroad and perhaps even to illustrate to one another what was known about that circuit.

I also learned that there are folks who believe that what Ezekiel saw was not really a vision from God but something else altogether as this t-shirt says:

And then there are those who think Ezekiel was on some hallucinogenic drug and that's why he saw this fantastic vision.

It's really easier to go with one of these more bizarre explanation for Ezekiel's vision than to take it as the vision that it was. I am not going to give my interpretation here, but I have been thinking that between the slaves who originated this song, and those in Maputo who sang it the Sunday that Bob was there may have had some real resonance between them. The American slaves sang the song as a song of hope, of freedom, for a different life that could exist. Despite their slavery, they knew they were made for freedom. The Maputo choir, many members who could remember the terrible war that killed so many, most all having been effected by drought and other natural disasters, could sing this hope of freedom, and of moving forward, because they know they were made for freedom too.

I am not sure I can ever experience that same sense that the American slaves and the choir in Mozambique had/have, but on occasion, I wish I could have a vision, so fantastic, so wild, that people would still be talking about it 2500 years later. More importantly, I yearn for a vision that has so much the stamp of God on it, so full of a transcendent spirit that I cannot grasp its meaning. I want to live like another wild one, John the Baptist who wore strange clothes and ate strange food and faithfully preached a message of what was to come, allowing God to use him as the forerunner of Someone who yes, calls us to repent, but fulfills John's message not with sheer judgement but with unending grace.

However, the vision that I am called to live out right now is the work of resourcing churches who want to blossom, but who need help both believing the fact that they can and need the tools that will give them courage to blossom in the right direction; I am called to listen to pastors, most of them who really believe that they are not doing a very good job at the ministry, and who need someone to point out their gifts, yes, but who will help them name what is holding them back, and to bless their attempts, and to always let them know that, yes, there are areas where intentional work needs to happen and that they are already blessed and beloved by God and by me. I don't get those wild dreams like Ezekiel about wheels and moving parts and fantastic creatures; I don't get to go into the desert and wear camel hair and eat locusts, but I do get to pray, and grow in my own faith, and to speak the truth to pastors and congregations. That in itself often gives be wild days and wild nights. It also lets me experience hope for our church and to sense the freedom God gives us to be courageous in the midst of a nay-saying world. I guess I do know a thing or two about being bound in guilt and shame, too, and thank God I not only hope for redemption but it that it has come to be.

The WDYDTY question

A bit of a cry for sympathy this entry. Sorry.

Whose beautiful but bandaged hand is this, you ask?? 'Tis mine I am forced to admit. But please don't ask me "What did you DO to yourself?" You may ask me "What happened to your hand?" or "Oh, Susan, I'm sorry that your hand is hurt" or "How did your hand get hurt?"but I reiterate, do not ask me "What did you DO to yourself?"

I have tried my best not to ask that "what did you do to yourself" (from now on referred to in this entry as the "wdydty" question) when I noticed a bandage or a cast. It sounds like the asking one is blaming the injured one for having done something to herself...and that it was the injured person's own fault that the injury or accident, usually, occurred.

There was a lot of room in the scriptures leading up to Christmas for that question to be asked. "Mary, what did you do going and getting yourself pregnant?" and "Joseph, what did you do to yourself asking that girl Mary who now is pregnant to marry you...see, she's
gone off and slept with somebody else...your judgement is terrible" or "John, for Pete's sale, why don't you lighten up a little, guy? What are doing to yourself out hear in the desert acting like a fool...you deserve any criticism you get!" and you can probably think of more.

I know there is an ongoing campaign to stamp out complaining. Maybe we should have one to stamp our blaming. It's been my experience that when people do get injured, or didn't think and did something that hurt, or when people get into situations where we wished they had better judgement, those people who are hurt are already feeling pretty guilty and stupid for what happened, and they have enough pain already without folks around them asking them what they did to cause this hurt to occur. People ask the wdydty question not really meaning to place blame I guess. And I may have let that phrase slip out of my own mouth sometime.

We never know what is going on with another person fully. When somebody gets herself into a situation where she has ended up hurt, either of body or spirit, the best approach is to always be generous in our sympathy and careful in our question asking. Or better, we can just listen and make those little "ohhh" or "that must of hurt" or "how can I help" replies, the last being the best sound really, and an "I love you" thrown in there somewhere too.

So, you ask me "What happened to your hand?" I burnt it Thanksgiving on a rack in the oven. It did not hurt for two days even though there were these interesting white bubbles (some might call blisters) that had immediately appeared after the burn. It started hurting Sunday and has not gotten any better and it is gross to look at and there definitely is some swelling. When both Barbara, my assistant and Cana, my daughter told me today to call my doc, I did, and her nurse said "GET THEE TO OUR URGENTCARE CENTER AND DON'T WAIT" (that was a paraphrase) I did, found out that it was indeed a second degree burn that was becoming infected, was all bandaged up and was taught how to show someone else how to bandage it (see picture) given a prescription burn cream and another for a heavy antibiotic. I get to wear this bandage thing for at least a week, maybe more re dressing it twice a day. It hurts. I have been unusually fatigued and teary this week and this may be part of the culprit. So there, you asked, I told, and yes, I am garnering sympathy.

And thanks for not asking "What did you do to yourself?" But if you do, I will tell you anyway.

Delight and desires

Some thoughts I have and wonder if any one reading this might have too:

I purchased this same bracelet a few weeks ago while I was in Indianapolis and I have been wearing it just about every day. I wear it because it is pretty, with its two-tone look. But I mostly wear it because I am under conviction about what it says: "Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart." Psalm 37:4

I guess some who would read this verse would have it mean that if you delight in the Lord (take delight in the Lord) that means he will give you anything and everything you want.

Hmmm...

I wear it for what this verse means to me each time my eyes rest on it around my wrist. Take delight in the Lord --meaning, I believe, feast on his word, by giving plenty of time to being in God's presence in prayer and meditation each day; partake of his love which for me is boundless; take time to luxuriously bask in the joy of his presence being amazed and thankful that he loves me, even me.

And when I begin to do these things, then the desires of my heart change. I no longer desire those "things" of life or for my future to be as I imagine that I want it to be. When I am in his presence, and do it faithfully and intentionally, what my heart desires becomes quite different. My heart begins to desire what God desires for me, and I pray for a vision of what that is and most of all I submit my heart to God's own, and my greatest desire is to seek what is pleasing in God's sight, not simply what I would like my life to be like. If I spend time delighting myself in simply being loved by God and brought close to him through Christ, the desires of my heart become simple really--to live so closely to him so that my heart beats with his and indeed I will one will with God. And through it all, I become more and more aware in my spirit that love is growing, satisfaction is growing and that God indeed can do far more with who I am and what my future holds than I could ask or imagine.

These are the thoughts that I feel as if I need to keep closest to me. And so each morning, I put on my bracelet. And when I look and see and feel it it there, God is reminding me that I have not fully reached the place of willing one will with him yet but God walks with me on my way to perfection.

Lord Jesus, this Advent as we live with anticipation and yearn for the time yet to come, keep us yearning toward you. Amen