LIFT UP YOUR HEADS! POSTURES OF PRAISE AND HUMILITY

But I have to admit I'm not crazy about this look.

POSTURES, I.
My friend and colleague (and excellent pastor) Mike and I have a congenial ongoing disagreement regarding the appropriateness of permanent large video screens in worship spaces. My position is that the screens (on which are projected hymns, liturgy, etc.) are simply the hymn-book of the twenty-first century – tools for worship that are value-neutral as regards piety or the content of the worship. (Also, I argue, no church would be built today without them.) Although I don’t claim to speak for Mike (Mike?), I understand his anti- argument to be that the screens detract from the solemnity and focus of worship, and are more of an architectural intrusion than they’re worth in what would otherwise be a place of contemplative beauty (especially in an older sanctuary in which they would have to be retro-fitted).*

Although I continue to maintain my basic argument, a recent worship experience gave me pause. Participating as a worshiping member of the congregation in a church with screens, it occurred to me that this set-up allows for only one posture: upright. This is fine for joining in a song of praise, but is restrictive if the liturgy calls for a confession, prayer of lament, or even a doleful Lenten hymn. Restrictive in the sense that at such times the body (at least my body) is naturally and spiritually inclined to bow the head or the knee. This is why I have decided that my first preference is for another relatively new worship practice: Printing the entire service—hymns, scripture, liturgy—in the bulletin. Not only is this welcoming to the visitor, it allows for a variety of postures. I suppose many churches have the practice of doing both: the screen and the bulletin. If I had to choose one, however, I’d go with the full-service bulletin. So I can bow my head and still see the words.

POSTURES, II.
And there are times when one is bowing the head but should be looking up. Attending a conference in Chicago recently, I was walking through the lobby of our hotel, mid-morning, and I noticed that everyone—I mean everyone (including me)—was bent over a screen. People of all ages. Some (like me) were walking along and consulting a smartphone screen, some were at a lobby table working on a laptop, some sitting in the cushy chairs looking at an iPad. The desk clerks, of course, on their computers. At the moment-in-time I took this stroll, I’d say fourteen or fifteen people. Everyone.

We live on a fairly busy thoroughfare. People of all ages walk or run past our house. A mere glance out the window at a passing figure always—always—reveals the bent-down-head silhouette of the screen-user. Then I turn back to my iPhone and log in my latest move in the Scrabble game I’m playing with my friend in Texas.

I hope it’s clear that this is not a finger-pointing rant, but rather a confessional and societal observation. The old cartoon staple of the newspaper-reading husband listening with half an ear, mumbling, “Uh-huh…” to his wife’s comments has been multiplied and miniaturized. I was that cartoon husband. I finally learned (with some, uh, encouragement), that I needed to physically lower the paper and look Caryl in the eye and participate in the human interaction of conversation. I have similarly changed my lowdown ways and now physically turn away from the computer screen if someone walks in to talk.

Certainly I am not the first person to notice that if I take the bent-head smartphone posture and remove the phone, I’m gazing straight at my navel.

In third grade we actually had a unit on “telephone etiquette.” I am optimistic that as we emerge from the infancy of the digital age into some kind of maturity, we will routinely teach the eye-to-eye lessons of screen etiquette to our kids, and ourselves. Our brave new world gives a cogent (and literal) new meaning to John Updike’s profound and challenging line, “We are all so terribly alone, but it’s important that we keep making signals through the glass.”

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*Another topic is the abuse of screens in worship: Cute butterfly pictures; the speaker reading, badly, words that you can read better by yourself, etc. Screen or no screen, give me a skilled talking head in a pulpit anytime.
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I am also curious about why a person curled up in a chair with a tattered crossword puzzle book seems somehow less off-putting than the same person in the same chair doing a crossword on a device. Do you agree?
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Since publishing this post, I came across this related article in the Christian Century.

Change and decay in all around I see...

...O Thou who changest not, abide with me. ~ Henry Lyte, 1847 

In the midst of life we are in death. ~ Book of Common Prayer, 1552

Rust never sleeps. ~ Neil Young, 1979

Oxford University Church of St. Mary the Virgin.
Behind scaffolding (off-and-on) since 1258

The last time we were in Oxford (I have friends who will accuse me of writing this post just so I can use that phrase) it occurred to me that if one were not employed in Oxford’s primary occupation -- the pursuit of study both arcane and lively -- the business to be in would be the scaffold business.

Scaffolding, that is to say, and related construction and remodeling trades. As we sat in one 800-year old pub (a pub or ale house had existed in that location since the thirteenth century), I peered over the rim of my pint to look around the pleasant room and wonder what had been involved over the centuries in the conversion from candles to gas lighting and from gas to electricity. What duct-work and cabling within the thick walls? What tunneling under? What scaffolding on the exterior?

As we walked the winding streets (stepping reverently over the black cross embedded in the cobblestone to mark the site of the 1556 burning of the martyrs), my gaze traveled downward from the “dreaming spires” to ground level.  Building after building, tower after tower were enveloped in scaffolding. The effect of the whole was a sort of lattice-work, an almost delicate-looking exoskeleton that existed to silently and steadfastly prop up the bustle of life and community within.

In a sort of algebraic equation, the age of Oxford + the unremitting processes of decay + the ever-changing applications of construction technology = an almost constant need for upgrading = scaffolding.

Age and dignified beauty only serve to make Oxford a telling example of the rule that affects everything—and everyone: In the words of the Poet Rainer Rilke, “All have this falling sickness none withstands.” In buildings, this sickness is wind, water, ice, the shifting of the earth. In us: Well, as my late friend and colleague Gerhard Frost used to put it, “Ah, yes, Richard, it is true; we are all very busy dying.”

Jorgensen Manor.
Propping up ladders since 1929.

Our house has the “falling sickness.” (So does yours.) Not as grand as an Oxford edifice, but within the last year it was surrounded by scaffolds and ladders for much-needed carpentry and painting – part of our effort to prepare for a possible sale. The result is that we like it so much (we’ve always liked it), we’re considering staying. But then we think of those elements of entropy: wind, water, ice; and it occurs to us that perhaps getting out while the getting is good is another way of saying that the next owners can be the ones who hire the next scaffold-erectors. 

And each of us? Our scaffolding is exercise, pills, the latest diet -- the lattice of  support that enables us to carry on the “inner life,” of love, relationship, and meaning in which we live. But rust never sleeps; in the midst of life we are in death. As an old friend said, of his impending death, “This is the end of the road upon which we all travel. The only alternative would be to never have taken the journey at all. And who would want that?”

There would be no journeying to Oxford—no pints in ancient pubs, no evensong in sunlit chapels—without the centuries of scaffolding lining the path. I now think of the scaffolds of Oxford as part of the beauty of the place. I haven't, however, had such a romantic notion about the ladders and paint brushes needed to stave off the ravages of weather on my own house. Why? Could it be that the failure of most of us to include the practicalities of forward-looking maintenance in our budgets and calendars is not so much a matter of procrastination and forgetfulness as it is a subtle but deep-seated denial of death? Averting one's eyes from the creeping, sleepless rust? But the vitality of places like Oxford are an architecturally poetic expression of the truth that ladders and scaffolds are not signs of death, but life!

In the thirty-eighth chapter of Job, God is described as erecting "bars and gates" to hold back the chaos of the sea so that life can flourish. Deuteronomy assures us that underneath this transitory life are "the everlasting arms." Scaffolding.

     The leaves are falling;
     this hand is falling, too.
     All have this falling sickness none withstands.
     Yet there is one whose ever-holding hands
     this everlasting falling
     can't fall through.

                             ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, d. 1926

"DID I EVER TELL YOU ABOUT YOUR GREAT-GREAT-GREAT UNCLE GUS AND THE DESPERADO?"

A number of years ago, the coincidence of taking classes in Family Systems Theory and Old Testament Theology at the same time caused me to posit that every family has an “Exodus story” as a part of its history and self-understanding. Well, “history” almost certainly; how important it is to forming a family’s (and individual’s) “self-understanding” is an idea that I want to pursue with this essay.

Although I don’t claim to speak for my Jewish cousins, it is accurate – even an understatement – to say that the biblical  people of Israel, and the Jews of today, find an important sense of who they are in the Old Testament account of the Exodus. And, more than just a sentimental look-backward to days of old, this central and centering story informs not only their identity but their behavior and ethics as well. Beyond simply remembering the time of slavery in Egypt and being grateful for liberation, the story reminds them, among other things, that they “are not to wrong or oppress an alien, because you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” So essential is the Exodus – and the ensuing epic of the formation of Jewish community – to the life and memory of this people that they are charged, through Moses, to celebrate and relive these events for “generations to come,” and to “talk about this when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up,” and to “impress it upon your children.” Tell the story.

The Jews offer a renowned example, but every “people” has some kind of formative story of sojourn, tumult, liberation, discovery, renewal, or all of these. And so do all families. It is the proposal of this theory that hearing these stories is a healthy, even vital, part of a child’s development, and it is the sometimes enjoyable, sometimes painful responsibility of parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, to tell them.

Although these ideas occurred to me as I was learning about Family Systems and studying the Old Testament, the approach I am presenting here is certainly not original with me. Bruce Feiler, in a recent New York Times essay, “The Stories That Bind Us” (adapted from his new book, “The Secrets of Happy Families”), convincingly outlines the importance of having a “strong family narrative.”

Feiler cites the clear research findings of Emory University psychologists Marshall and Sarah Duke and others which demonstrate that “children who know a lot about their families tend to do better when they face challenges.” This isn’t a matter of knowing arcana like which county in Ireland one’s great-great-grandmother came from (although that knowledge may have it’s own interesting value, as I’ll discuss below), but the ability to answer such questions as: Do you know where your grandparents grew up? Do you know where your mom and dad went to high school? Do you know an illness or something really terrible that happened in your family? Do you know the story of your birth? The “Do You Know?” scale, reports Feiler, “turned out to be the best single predictor of children’s emotional health and happiness,” whether the trauma was as minor as a skinned knee or as major as reacting to the attacks of 9-11.

When asked why this might be, Dr. Duke asserted that, “The answers have to do with a child’s sense of being part of a larger family.” They know they belong to something bigger than themselves.

This sense of family does not mean that the “strong family narrative” must be all good news. Among different kinds of possible accounts, 1) “We had nothing and now we’re on top of the world;” 2) “We had it all and we lost everything…;” psychologists report that the “oscillating family narrative” is the most healthful: 3) “Dear, let me tell you, we’ve had ups and downs in this family, but no matter what, we stuck together….”

I was struck by this summary statement in Feiler’s article: “When faced with a challenge, happy families, like happy people, just add a new chapter to their life story that shows them overcoming the hardship. This skill is particularly important for children, whose identity tends to get locked in during adolescence.”

Telling the whole story – the ups and the downs – also helps to counter one of the most potentially destructive elements in a child’s development: the family secret. Although it may not be crystal clear at what age a child ought to be told about mom’s earlier divorce or grandpa’s alcoholism, child psychologists are pretty much united in the understanding that children need to be informed, in an age-appropriate manner, of even these difficult issues. (As a practical matter, the truth “will out” anyway.)

In addition to the more immediate family knowledge in Dr. Duke’s “Do You Know?” scale, I believe a case can also be made for the value of growing up with an understanding of the geographic or geo-political travels of one’s earlier ancestors – one’s own “Exodus story.”

Of course an Exodus story may have to do with physical travel from one place to another. It may also have to do with wandering in the wilderness of an illness or an economic crisis or a family estrangement. The foundational exodus/wandering in a family’s history may have happened two centuries ago or ten years ago. Every family on earth (I am bold to say) has a geographical exodus some time (even if a long time) in its past. Almost as many families have the more figurative sort of wilderness wandering. It’s good to know – and to tell – both kinds of stories. They are (at least as much as what we majored in in college or what our occupation is) stories of who we are.

I grew up fascinated with my parents’ stories of “the olden days.” But I find that as an adult the sojourns of my family and my extended family continue to fascinate, enlighten, and form me. I will no doubt write of some of these at another time. For now, I will simply name four stories in our family journey that I am glad to know (and that still get to me), even though they are not all borne out of glad tidings: 1) My father’s experience – as a very young man – of a near-fatal burst brain aneurism and his subsequent slow but grateful recovery. 2)The occasion of my Great-Uncle Gus Jorgensen, sheriff of Martin County, Minnesota, being gunned down by a desperado in 1931 (that’s how I liked to tell it as a kid), fifteen years before I was born. 3) My visit with Caryl to her great-grandfather’s rocky farm in the mountains above Norway’s Sognefjord – a sublimely beautiful locale that, in 1878, offered no choice but exodus. 4) The death of Caryl’s Aunt Ellnora, who, in 1908, died at age eighteen (a year before Caryl’s dad was born) while enrolled as a student at St. Olaf College – and the horse-and-wagon journey her parents made to bring her body home.

I will tell these and more stories to my grandkids. I will be sure to embellish the story of Sheriff Gus and the Desperado.

What is your family’s Exodus story?

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All quotes, and some of the ideas in this essay, are from "The Stories That Bind Us," by Bruce Feiler, New York Times, March 15, 2013.

The Exodus account can be read in the book of Exodus, chapter 12.

TOMBSTONE TERRITORY

I am not by nature a melancholy person, and it is not in a melancholy way that the idea for my tombstone inscription sometimes occurs to me in a flash, as if to summarize some current train of thought or experience. (Although I admit that the image of a cartoon gravestone appearing over my head is a little darker than the more familiar light bulb.)

For example, a recent mild frustration at not being able to devote as much of my new retirement freedom to this web journal as I had anticipated, combined with the cold reality that reaching retirement age is itself a reminder that I am not getting any younger, produced, in my mind’s eye, these words, ornately carved in granite:

But I still have so many opinions…

Years ago, musing on my perennial inability to maintain a neat desk, I imagined this rueful summary-in-stone:

He finally got organized.

The growing issue of aging baby-boomers storing important documents on-line has inspired this very practical idea for a headstone epitaph to be noticed by one’s heirs as they gather mournfully at graveside:

My password is 23XJ44z

Or a response to the undoubtedly increasing risk of accidentally leaving the cell-phone in the casket:

506-331-7886

You have noticed by now that, as an epitaph-writer, I’m no poet. But here’s one who is, George MacDonald (1824-1905), whose cautiously hopeful lines allow a grace-filled Lutheran to hedge his bets:

Here lie I, Martin Elginbrod.

Have mercy on my soul, Lord God,

As I would do, were I Lord God,

And thou wert Martin Elginbrod!

But enough whistling past the graveyard. Let me now turn more reflectively into the quiet lane of a country cemetery and invite you to read with me words written on a nearly-eroded headstone with a birth-date of 1799, a death date hard to make out. It is the grave of Caryl’s great-great grandparents, Ole and Beret, who, already elderly, followed their pioneer son, Helge, from Norway to Minnesota in 1858, joining him in the hard work of building this new life; words that tie labor, love, and faith together in a way that reflects how these good people really lived:

In labor as in love allied,

In death they here sleep side by side

Resting in peace the aged twain,

Till Christ shall raise them up again.

When I think about their life, both in the old country and the new, I realize that I don’t know the meaning of the word “labor.” Yet I would be honored to rest one day under those same words with one whose very life is a culmination of the reason for their journey. (Remember – still not melancholy!)

My other current candidate for a personal epitaph came to me almost as a revelation, rising out of the ethereal beauty of the final measures of Arthur Honegger’s great oratorio, “King David.” David, who rose to and fell from great heights, who sinned horribly and was forgiven graciously, utters, as his dying words:

How good it was to live!

I thank thee, Lord, for giving me life.

Nothing melancholy about that.

WHO THE HELL DOESN'T THIS TRAIN CARRY?

One of my mentors used to say “The Gospel does not teach us how to get to God; it rather teaches us that there is no way to get to God; God must come to us.” Another said, “The message of the Gospel is not that if we’ll go fifty miles then God will come 450 miles; in Jesus Christ God comes the whole 500 miles!”

Much of what is styled as “The Christian religion” is concerned with that fifty miles: If only I will do this, then God will do that. But the Christian life is not “if-then,” it is “because-therefore:”  Because God loves me unconditionally, therefore I seek to live my life in response to such love. And this is not some airy message from the celestial heights. It is as true as any family: A parent, receiving a child in her arms through birth or adoption, does not look into the child’s eyes and say, “As soon as you grow up and become the person I want you to be then I will love you.” (I acknowledge there are families like that – they’re called dysfunctional!) What the parent says, in fact, is, “I love you – because you’re my child.”

A law-based Christianity (and most other religions, come to think of it), cast God as the dysfunctional parent. The religious leader, then, becomes like that torturer-in-chief General during Argentina’s “dirty war” who informed his victims, “Only God can give life and only God can take life, but God is busy elsewhere now, so he left it up to me.” Religion, even if not quite as alarmingly applied, is always used to decide who is in and who is out. (And the one applying the rules is, unsurprisingly, always “in.”)

The old gospel song declares, “This train don’t carry no gamblers, no crap-shooters, no midnight ramblers….” So, apparently, God loves you unless you’re a midnight rambler (!), or (depending on who’s writing the song) gay, or a doubter, or an unwed pregnant teen (a young girl, pregnant, once told me, “My mom says I’m going to hell now, so it doesn’t matter what I do”), or….

This song (and these ideas) came to me as I was listening at full volume to Bruce Springsgteen’s fantastic corrective take on “This Train,” in his “Land of Hope and Dreams,”

This train
Carries saints and sinners
This train
Carries losers and winners
This Train
Carries whores and gamblers
This Train
Carries lost souls
This Train
Dreams will not be thwarted
This Train
Faith will be rewarded
This Train
Hear the steel wheels singin'
This Train
Bells of freedom ringin'
This Train
Carries broken-hearted
This Train
Thieves and sweet souls departed
This Train
Carries fools and kings
This Train.

(Springsteen includes this song on a number of recordings. The best is “Live in New York City.” Here it is on YouTube. If you’re connected to a good set of speakers, may I suggest you crank it up!)

Thirty years ago, visiting a church in western South Dakota, I read this remarkable welcome in the worship bulletin:

WHO IS WELCOME HERE?

We want it to be of public record that those of different colored skin and heritage are welcome here.

We want it to be known that those who suffer from addiction to drugs and alcohol (whether recovering or not), and their families are welcome here.

We want it to be known that women and children are welcome here and that they will not be harassed or abused here.

We want it to be public record that in this congregation you can bring children to worship and even if they cry during the entire service, they are welcome.

We want it to be known that those who are single by choice, by divorce, or through the death of a spouse, are welcome here.

We want it to be known that if you are promiscuous, have had an abortion, or have fathered children and taken no responsibility for them, you are welcome here.

We want it known that gossip, cheats, liars, and their families are welcome here. We want it to be known that those who are disobedient to their parents and who have family problems are welcome here.

We want it to be of public record that gays and lesbians and members of their families are welcome here.

Let it be public knowledge that we at Custer Lutheran Fellowship take seriously that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The young and old, the rich and poor, all of the broken are welcome here.

We want it to be public knowledge that we are justified by the grace of God, which is a gift through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. We offer welcome here because we believe that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. That’s us. Christ did not die for us after we showed signs of "getting it all together." Christ loved and still shows love to us while we are yet sinners. Sinners are welcome here. Sinners like you and me, and like our neighbors.

Let us not condemn the world, but let us proclaim to a broken and hurting world, God's forgiveness and grace.

We want it to be public record that since we are a sinful people that we will not always be as quick to welcome as we should. Let us be quick to admit our sin and seek forgiveness. May God give us the grace to welcome and forgive one another as Christ has welcomed and forgiven us.

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* The welcoming church is Custer Lutheran Fellowship, a congregation of grace and social action and great preaching in Custer, South Dakota. The document was penned by (then) Pastor Chuck Hazlett, but adopted by the whole congregation. (We might edit or state some of it differently today, but this was thirty years ago!) Thanks, Chuck.

LOSING MY RELIGION

Sermon preached on the occasion of my retirement from First English Lutheran Church, Faribault, Minnesota; and from full-time ministry.


I went to four years of college and four years of seminary, and then I came to University Lutheran Church of Hope in Minneapolis, and Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Anchorage, and now, for 24 years, to First English Lutheran Church, to learn how to become a pastor.

As with all good education, what I learned most – at Augustana College and the University of Minnesota and Luther Seminary – was how to learn. So my life among you has been a sort of graduate school. You were my teachers (and you paid me!). If I throw into the mix thirty-six years of the siren song of good books new and old, a collection of tremendously smart and supportive and challenging colleagues (within and beyond these walls), and a good dose of life experience, I am happy to report that I have been and continue to be a life-long learner.

Of course the chief textbook in this great life class is the Bible, the chief teacher, the Holy Spirit. The lesson goes on. As Luther said about baptism we can say about our faith: We have enough to study and learn all our lives long. (And my view of heaven is that God will answer all our questions, solve all those perplexities, and then he’ll say, “Now, how about this one…?” And we’ll be off again – questing, learning!)

I add to this philosophy of life-long learning two other philosophies, learned from colleagues, that I have found to be true: The one is from my friend in Anchorage, Pastor JoAnn Post, who once said, as we gathered with others at a preachers’ text study, “I can’t preach on this text until I figure out how it changes me!” (Now, there is a reason for study and pondering and praying and talking with you and with colleagues: “How does this text change me!”) The other is similar, from another colleague: “Every time you open that book, expect to find something new.” Oh, and I do, and I pray you do, too.

Let me talk about a pastor’s adventures in finding something new, again and again.

I remember a time – just a few years ago – that the new thing I found – that dawned on me – when the assigned gospel was Jesus’ charge to remove the log from my own eye before the speck in my brother’s – was that this log-removing is a life-long project!

I have to confess that, as a good religious boy, I had sort of loosely assumed that somehow I could make quick work of getting this log out my eye and then I could turn and work on you. But then, I thought, “When, exactly – would that be? When, exactly, can I say, ‘OK, log gone; now I get to judge you!’” When indeed? Log-removing is a lifetime task. “Judge not lest ye be judged” is another way that someone – Oh, yes, Jesus – put it.

And that’s another thing, another thing that I have learned, another way in which I have been changed. The more I get to know Jesus, the less religious I am. The more I get to know the Bible, the less religious I am. The more my faith is deepened, the less religious I am. This is not as heretical as it sounds; for the truth that came to me – that has been there from the beginning – is that the Bible is not a book of religion, but of life. In fact, in a way, the Bible is a very anti-religious book -- Old Testament and New.  (If you know someone who says, “I don’t go in for this religion stuff,” you might say, “Have I got a book for you!”) What does God say through the prophet Amos? “I take no delight in your solemn assemblies, take away from me the noise of your songs; let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.” So much for religion.

And Jesus: “You are sitting in church and there you remember that your brother has something against you? What are you doing sitting in church? Go – be reconciled to your brother!” So much for religion. Jesus’ harshest words were for the most religious people of his day: “You talk about my teachings with your mouth, you honor me with your lips, but you don't do the things I say to do. In vain you worship me, teaching human commandments as the doctrine of God.” So much for religion.

The word religion has an honorable meaning and background, but it is one of the most misunderstood and misused in our vocabulary. Rather than a set of rules, as Pastor Mike reminded us last week, reading in James: “Here is true religion – to take care of the widows and orphans.” James is echoing Jesus in today’s gospel: “Good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, let the oppressed go free…,” and Amos – true religion is “let justice roll down….”

And justice means that I am called to a life bigger than myself, I’ve been freed from a fearful, selfish concern for my own life, freed in Christ. Justice, righteousness (the rightness of things) means I am called to look out for the life of the widow, the orphan, the poor, the oppressed. As someone said at election time, the question, “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” is not a Christian question. (It's just selfishness.) The Christian question is, “Is my neighbor better off…? Are the poor better off?” Let justice roll down.

So if it’s not about religion – in fact if the Bible is an anti-religious book, and faith is something other than “religion” – then what is it about? Life. There is no intricate word play needed here; Jesus says it quite directly: “I have come that you may have life – life in all its abundance.” How dare we turn the richness of this faith into religious rules – especially rules that we can direct at other people? It is the wholeness of life itself that Jesus invites us – and all – into.

It is religious rules that drove the nails into the cross, but the tables are turned, for, as Paul says, the law itself is nailed to the cross with Christ. It is religious rules that drove the nails – the gift of resurrection is the gift of life. And, in Paul’s striking image, we see the law book fluttering in the breeze, nailed to the cross. No intricate wordplay, no twisted interpretation needed. Paul says quite directly, “Christ is the end of the law.”

Martin Luther had a liberating, life-changing experience when – lost in his own despair and sinfulness – he read, in Romans, that we are forgiven and saved as a free gift of God’s grace, and not by rules of repentance. My life and my revelation is not as dramatic as Luther’s, but I felt something similar when I read, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Letters and Papers from Prison,” that “Jesus didn’t come to make us religious – he came to give us life!” But it wasn’t new with Bonhoeffer – it’s what Jesus had told us all along.

One part of a “religious” life is a kind of base selfishness: I want to keep these rules so that I, personally, can live forever. But if God’s grace is enough, if my salvation is a free gift, then what becomes of a life of rule-keeping? Well, for one thing, as Mike said last week, “I can’t do it -- I cannot do it!” For another, I am called not to religion, but to life – life that is given away freely for the sake of my Lord Jesus Christ and for the sake of others, in which I discover all that life can be. And more than that, in baptism I am born into the life of Christ. How I live is not a matter of rules, but identity. I’m a child of God! I’m a son of the king! Living this life is who I am!

As another of my mentors, Big Jeff Rohr of blessed memory, once said (in another post-graduate moment that taught me something new), “I trust God to his promises of the life to come, but living the Christian life is reward enough.”

Paul says that “Faith, Hope, and love abide,” and the greatest of these is love. I don’t see religion in that list.

And so, this is not a religious assembly. It is the “body of Christ.” It is an assembly of faith, hope, and love, where “nothing in my hand I bring simply to thy cross I cling.” Where we open-handedly and open-heartedly receive life – life in all its abundance – in the name of Jesus Christ, through whose Spirit we learn something new – are changed – every day.

SOME ROUGH LINES AT CHRISTMAS, II

Rough lines, indeed. For the last few years I've challenged myself to write a Christmas sermon in verse (or is that doggerel?). I offer this as my blog Christmas Card, with thanks for your reading. God bless us every one!

Love came down at Christmas... ~Christina Rossetti

What saves Christmas for us from being just

sentiment is that crude barn, and the dust,

and those shepherds – why shepherds? There are no

princes or holy men in Luke’s tale, so

although we have beautified the small scene

and placed our nativity under the green

boughs of our lovely, well-shaped Christmas tree,

the gospel each season calls us to see

a baby, new-born, in a chilly old shed,

away in a manger – no crib for his bed.

Homeless, with rags his first baby clothes;

bleak midwinter, indeed! and nobody knows

where they are. Of course, in history’s view

they’re nowhere. That is to say, lost in the new

geopolitical empire of Rome --

refugees, wandering, looking for home.

Nobody knows – and who cares where they are?

Who wants to find them? Who’d look very far

for this young mother, this father, this son?

Like most homeless folks they are out there alone.

Nobody knows, that is, except the creator of

the universe. This family, held in love

by one another, is held, too in the heart

of God. Though lost in the night – he knows where they are.

But tonight that’s reversed, and God is the one

who in the arms of his mother is held as a son;

who sleeps in a strawbox, with animals round;

the high king of heaven thus here is found

among us: the word became flesh. Please know

that God so loved the world, and this love will show

most deeply if God in the heaven stoops down

to the lowest repute he can own.

It’s not how I’d do it – or you? It would be

more impressive if the whole world would see

a flash of great power, an army of might.

Not an impoverished family in cover of night.

But God, in the end, is not power or might;

he’ll not use the weapons of terror or fright.

In the end, God is love, and that’s all he will be:

A cosmos of love in this baby we see.

In that barn, on that night, in that backwater place,

Love came down at Christmas to show us the face

of God in the strange but familiar guise

of... one of us – in a small baby’s eyes.

And the news is not shouted from a castle’s high gable,

but shepherds are sent from pasture to stable.

Shepherds! And when this poor baby is grown

it’s still to the poorest he’ll make himself known.

The wrong kind of people, society will

think it’s an outrage, but Jesus will still

love and forgive both the low and the high;

he’ll forgive from the cross where they take him to die.

And Mary, who pondered by a small wooden manger,

will ponder again as she sees the sad danger

that her son has grown into, she’ll weep at the loss

of this wonderful boy on a crude wooden cross.

And we’ve beautified that, too -- made crosses of gold.

It’s as though we don’t quite get the story we’re told:

That the creator of everything came down to die,

to take our death upon him, the king standing by --

the King, who thinks that his troubles are gone

with the rabble that followed this rebellious one.

But rebellion does not even begin to describe

what will be unleashed when the stone’s set aside

from a rocky carved tomb on the side of a hill,

and we see that it wasn’t a man they would kill,

but they tried to kill love, and it wouldn’t stay down;

love arose, the same love that early was shown

on that night when the star broke the darkness so deep,

in that place where, exhausted, a young mother did sleep.

Where the wrong kind of people gave birth to a boy

who was God the creator. And all the world’s joy!