A Walking Exclamation Point

She knew every paving stone by heart. She was far more familiar with the feet of her friends than their faces. She knew that there were a lot more field mice taking up residence in the synagogue than the leaders thought. She had even started to name some of them. If it happened on the floor of the synagogue she knew about it. She was the resident expert on the bottom of things.

That’s what happens when you live your life bent-over. Eighteen years this woman had been crippled with this – this infirmity. Eighteen years of never being able to meet the world face-to-face. Eighteen years being denied the dignity afforded to most human beings of looking someone in the eye. Eighteen years of invisibility. That’s what it felt like. She might as well have been invisible.

Over time the illness not only affected her body, it also affected her soul. A weird kind of paranoia set it. Reading body language from the knees down is very difficult to do, so she began to imagine the worst from those who were addressing her. Even if their words were kind or supportive she began to imagine that they spoke to her with a smirk of scorn on their faces. She would crane her neck to get a glimpse up, but it was never the same as actually conversing. “They think I’m a nuisance,” she began to think. “They think I’m a bother. They think I’m worthless.”

The suspicions she had began to settle in like a weight on her shoulders – an additional weight. “What’s one more burden when you’re bowed down already? Bring it on. Load me down with your disdain. Give me all your feelings of superiority. Yes, I’m a woman in a man’s world. Yes, I’m a crippled person in a world made for the healthy. Yes, I’m broken. Yes, I’m a walking question mark. So why not let me take all of your anxieties away? Why should you carry the burden of questioning yourself and your position? Why should you have to stoop to my level? Just throw it on me. One more thing on my back is not going to make one bit of difference. God knows I’ve got a weak back but some pretty big shoulders. Just like a donkey. I’ll become your beast of burden.” These were the dark thoughts that began to occupy her mind.

The longer it went on the deeper the wounds got. They seeped down into her soul. It wasn’t just her body that was doubled over, but something inside her began to bend, too. It was like some inner demon was forging a chain to pull her further down. Satan…something…was turning her anger into something much worse. The chains were pulling all of that anger into herself so that she wasn’t just mad at the world, she was also mad at herself.

“The world thinks you’re worthless. Maybe you are,” she began to hear herself thinking. “The world thinks you’re invisible. Maybe you should be. What makes you think you deserve anything more than a front-row view of the floor? Down here is where you belong. Down where the streets are covered with filth and manure. Down where the vermin live. Down where you can conduct conversations with feet. Maybe you are cursed. Maybe God doesn’t care. Maybe you should just face up to it. Ha! Face up to it…face down to it. No one has earned the right to God’s favor. Certainly not you. Weakness is your watchword. That’s who you are.”

So that’s what she was carrying with her that day in the synagogue. An evil spirit that attacked her soul as much as any illness that attacked her body. But something within her had not yet given up hope. Though she could have stayed away from the synagogue…No one would have minded…No one would have noticed…Though she could have stayed away…she came. There in that place where she knew every paving stone, she still hoped to hear a word from above that was not scorn.

There was a new teacher there on this day. Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was becoming known for doing great deeds. The woman had heard that he had once healed a man with an evil spirit who had often been chained in the graveyards because of his illness. Jesus had set him free. No more chains. The man used to run around with no clothes because he would tear them off. But when the people of the village came out, there he was...with Jesus – clothed and in his right mind. Jesus had done that.

Now he was here. Teaching. But something interrupted his lesson. The woman couldn’t have known. How could she have seen it? But Jesus had stopped because he saw her. It was only one of Jesus’ many gifts that he could see invisible women.

He called out to her, “Woman.” Everyone looked around to see who he could be talking to. But the bent-over woman felt something break within her – something like a chain – and she knew from that word who Jesus was talking to. “Woman,” he said, “You are loosed from your weakness.” You are loosed from your weakness. Not “You will be.” Not “You may be.” But “You are loosed from your weakness.”

Even though she knew it was true she wondered what had happened. Had Jesus done the loosing or had he just seen what had already taken place and announced it to the world? Like that moment in a wedding ceremony when the officiant announces that a marriage has taken place – that these are man and wife – even though the moment itself goes unobserved. The woman didn’t know, though she knew now that all that remained was for her to stand up.

Before she could move she felt his hands on her shoulders. She could see the look on his face even though she couldn’t see the look on his face. Her whole body was in turmoil. Muscles that had atrophied over the years sprang forth like a fast-growing vine toward the heavens. Her shoulders were pushed back and her neck straightened. Her head…Oh, her head! It was like a geyser bursting forth from the ground, shooting upwards to the heavens. Everything inside her was moving, growing, living again.

The words she spoke were only natural. What else do you say when you walk out of an 18-year captivity? The sun is good to see. The faces of my brothers and sisters are good to see. God, after all, is good. God, after all, is a redeeming God. God, after all, is stronger than any chain that can bind. God, after all, has not abandoned me. God, after all, has not condemned me to the dirt. God, after all, is worthy of this life I have to give.

What happened next is pretty stupid, really. Somebody complained. There are, after all, people who have an interest in keeping bent-over people around. The ruler of the synagogue, who was not all that keen on having Jesus take center stage anyway, broke into the woman’s praise and said, “Now look, there are six other days of the week when it is necessary to work. So it follows that you, woman, should come to be healed on one of them and not on the Sabbath day.”

Jesus was not about to let him get away with it. “You hypocrite!” This is about as angry as you ever see Jesus getting. He seems to reserve this kind of language for those who profess to follow God, which might be a word of warning for us. “Hypocrite! You keep cows and donkeys, your beasts of burdens, tied up in the stall and what do you do on the Sabbath? Do you leave them bound or do you let them go and lead them to water? Does this woman look like a donkey to you? No. This is one of Abraham’s daughters. One of God’s chosen. One of God’s beloved. And for 18 years Satan has kept her chained. You talk about what it is necessary to do on work days. Isn’t it necessary to loose her from these chains…even on the Sabbath day?” Isn’t it necessary? Isn’t it necessary to release her into life?

What could the people do except to join the woman, no longer bent over, but praising God? And what could Jesus’ opponents do but to hang their heads in shame. Jesus was going to set people free and there was nothing that they could do to stop it.

So what about you? What about you and me and the people we love who are chained by spirits we can’t understand? Do you know what it’s like to have your whole life defined by what you see when you’re looking down? I’ve been there. Do you know what it’s like to look at the same patch, the same routine, the same struggle, the same bad habit, the same persistent sin, the same wound and to believe that all that the world is for you is that? Do you know what it’s like to question what God is up to…to wonder whether God can accept you…to feel as though you are invisible to Jesus’ love?

Even the saints can feel bowed down. I know another bent-over woman who had questions. She wasn’t bent over as much as the woman in Luke, but she always seemed a little stooped. But there were times when she questioned her own worthiness and questioned God. "Where I try to raise my thoughts to heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul,” she wrote in a private journal. "I want God with all power of my soul -- and yet between us there is terrible separation.”[i] Those are quotes from the writings of Mother Theresa, who labored so long helping the poor and the dying in the streets of Calcutta. It seems that she was prone to long periods when she, too, felt separated from God and invisible to Christ’s love.

So what is it that we need to hear? What is it that we need to know? That when we are drawn in on ourselves and it seems that the weight of the world has bent us over, someone needs to remind us that Jesus has set us free. That when we are overwhelmed by what we think we’ve lost or what we think we’ll never gain, someone needs to remind us that Jesus is calling us to walk into a future that has already been assured for us. That when we are feeling unworthy or invisible that God is seeing us in the light of Christ who died to open the way for us to live…who took on sin so that we could be redeemed…who took on the worst that the world could throw at him to reclaim the lost and to release the captive.

And here’s more good news. He’s not done with us. Jesus promised that his story was not going to end 2000 years ago in Palestine. Jesus talked about a day when all things would be made right…when the poor and the oppressed would be lifted up…when the humble in spirit would be rewarded…when those who hunger and thirst for righteousness would be satisfied…when Jesus would return. And what did Jesus say to do when we saw these things taking place. “Now when these things begin to take place, STAND UP and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” [Luke 21:28, NRSV]

Stand up! Stand up! Your life is too short to restrict your world to the patch in front of you. Stand up! Even if your body is not moving your spirit can…stand up! You are not a beast of burden; you are a daughter of Abraham or a child of God. Stand up! Don’t you think this day is a good day to claim what God has promised you in Jesus Christ? Stand up! Isn’t this day a good day to leave your question mark behind and to start living in the joy that comes from knowing Jesus? Stand up! Isn’t this Sabbath as good a day as any to become a walking exclamation point? Thanks be to God.

Luke 13:10-17
Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. Look, there was also a woman there who had for eighteen years had a weakening spirit that left her bent over so that she could not stand erect at all.
When Jesus saw her, he called out to her and said, "Woman, you are loosed from your weakness." Then he put his hands on her and immediately she was restored and began to praise God.
The ruler of the synagogue responded with indignation because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath. He said to the crowd, "There are six days on which it is necessary to work. So it follows that you should come to be healed on one of them and not on the Sabbath day."
The Lord answered him, "Hypocrite! Doesn't every one of you, on the Sabbath, loose your cow or donkey from the stall and lead it to drink? This is one of Abraham's daughters. Look, Satan has bound this woman for eighteen years; isn't it necessary to loose her from these chains on the Sabbath day?"
Saying this, all his opponents were put to shame and all the crowd rejoiced over the glorious things being done by him.

[i] Mother Theresa, http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/south/09/06/excerpts.mother.theresa/index.html

A Better Country

Do you ever get the feeling that the whole world is passing through the Eastern Shore? I often get that feeling watching the traffic go by on Rt. 13. Usually I’m sitting at stoplight trying to get ONTO Rt. 13. There go all these cars with license plates from exotic places like New Jersey, Connecticut, New York or even Quebec. All moving on.
As a United Methodist preacher I’ve gotten to be pretty good at moving on. It’s what Mr. Wesley would have wanted. He used to tell his preachers back in the day, “Never stay in any one place any longer than is strictly necessary.” Most days I hope that it’s going to be strictly necessary for me to stay on the Eastern Shore for awhile longer. But the bishop keeps reminding me that I’m an itinerant pastor and that means that one day I could be moving on again.

It’s not just a United Methodist thing, though. Being a pilgrim on a journey is part of the greater American experience. The California Gold Rush, The Trail of Tears, The Dust Bowl migration, Thelma and Louise – we’ve got a lot of stories of moving on in our past. We’re good at moving on. We just need someone to tell us when we’ve gotten where we’re going.

I remember an experience I had one time in the early days of cell phones. I was at a gas station in Dallas filling up my tank, which is a time of silence and reflection for me usually. It’s not mystical or anything, it’s just that I’m stationary for a moment of time. The radio is not playing. I’m not paying attention to traffic, except maybe to the cars on 13. Mostly, though, I’m just there.

On this occasion, I had pulled into the station and began the ritual of getting the car gassed up. I wasn’t expecting anyone to talk to me, but as I was punching in the buttons on the pump I became aware of people talking on both sides of me. One was behind me on the other side of the pump; the other at the next pump over. The woman I could see was looking directly at me and speaking so clearly that I assumed she must be speaking to me, but I couldn’t understand what she was talking about. Then I noticed the cell phone by her ear. And wouldn’t you know, the other man talking was on his cell phone, too.

This is not a tirade against cell phones…some of my best friends are cell phones…but it struck me that though we were occupying the same general space, the three of us were in vastly different worlds. With our technology we seldom are where we are. We’re on the way to somewhere else.

This has its negative consequences. One of the things I’m grateful for about the church and about this strange counter-cultural thing that we do every week – gathering for worship – is that it provides an antidote and an alternative reality to the headlong rush into oblivion that I sometimes worry we are engaged in in the world. The church, especially in its Sabbath mode, is place just to be. It invites others to stop and reflect and feel and pray and worship. It is time OUT to be IN a PLACE.

You could say, as the author of the letter to the Hebrews does, that we are seeking a better country, a place where we are not constantly in motion towards nothing in particular. As a pilgrim people, the Church is looking for a place of purpose. We are called to move on towards a city “founded, designed and built by God” [11:10, Jerusalem Bible].

In chapter 11, from which our reading for today was taken, we are invited to see this long legacy of faith moving everyone from murdered Abel to the prophets. They’re all listed there. The author takes particular care to lift up Abraham, who arrived as a foreigner in the promised land and who died still a stranger and a nomad upon the earth. All of these, Hebrews tells us, had their eyes on the prize and they were headed to a heavenly homeland.

You’ve heard this language before – “eyes on the prize,” “headed to a better country.” It echoes throughout our history. Through the centuries martyrs and saints of all types and varieties have chose the despised path because they believed sincerely and fervently that it was leading them some place different…some place blessed. In our country, Massachusetts pilgrims and tidewater Virginia slaves both found inspiration in the belief that moving would mean entering into that better country that God has waiting in store.

There’ll be pie in the sky by and by. We’re in the world, not of the world. Some glad morning when this life is over, I’ll fly away. We’re only passing through. Let’s pass over to the other side of the river and rest in the shades of the trees. We’re marching to Zion, beautiful, beautiful Zion. You know this language. You know that Christians are a pilgrim people.

So, why is it that being a pilgrim disturbs me so much? Doesn’t this language imply that the world in which we travel is somehow unimportant? If we’re only passing through, does that mea we can’t appreciate and care for the creation in which we live? When the roll is called up YONDER I’ll be there, but until then you can PROBABLY reach me at one of the fifteen different numbers or addresses listed on my business card, but no guarantees.

This is the problem with pilgrimage, you see. One glad morning we may fly away, but what about the glad morning that greeted us today? When we don’t taste the pie in the sky today, will the crust of communion bread and the hint of wine do? We need to learn to live in this world as we’re moving through. There is something sacred space about this space, too. Take off your shoes because this is holy ground and somehow the foreshadows of the better country to come can be found in mud marsh and mountains.

But I was talking about Hebrews. What does Hebrews say about us pilgrims? When I look at this text I’m struck by the sorts of people picked out as faith-full pilgrims on the road to a better country. You might want to look in your Bibles and take a look at who’s there. Abraham seems like a natural selection there in verse 8, but Sarah is almost absent in this recollection and she seems pretty significant to the story. Moses gets mentioned in verse 23, as we would expect, and all of his deeds are named, but then Gideon comes along in verse 32 and he’s an interesting example of faith. Gideon was a timid hero who demanded multiple signs from God in order to perform his heroic deeds. Barak is there in verse 32, too, and do you remember what he did? He refused to even consider following God’s commands unless Deborah, the wise and confident judge goes with him, and she doesn’t even get mentioned.

Samson is there, too, in this ancestry of the faithful even though he was as great as slave to his passions as ever he was to God. Jepthah is there, too. Jepthah! He was the one who opted to sacrifice his own daughter rather than to renounce a rash vow. David and Samuel are here, but where are Ruth and Joshua, Caleb and Miriam? Where are Esau and Saul, who, in their own way, kept God’s story moving? Where are the unnamed victims of violence who calling and faith remain a mystery to us?

This is troubling to me, until I begin to see, near the end of the litany, that even though these were called the heroes of faith, their journey is still incomplete and their story is still unfinished. Then the most ironic twist of all – we, who should be the last to do the judging I’ve just done, are the ones chosen to accompany this cohort of imperfect people in the pilgrim way to the better country God is preparing. The Jerusalem Bible translates the last verse of chapter 11 this way, “These are all heroes of faith, but they did not receive what was promised, since God had made provision for us to have something better, and they were not to reach perfection except with us” [11:40].

Some candidates for perfection we are. No offence, but if the hopes of the ancestors, named and unnamed, are on the likes of me and you then it would seem that something is not right with the universe.

Except that we do have someone who has moved on to show us the way. We do have someone who did not think that earth was a mere way station on the way to somewhere else, but a place where even the substance of existence – our human flesh - was worthy to reveal the greatest of treasures. We do have someone who was one with us, flesh and bone, and who came to touch these bodies and make sacred these places with the knowledge of God. We do have someone who knew that the most powerful things in the universe could be conveyed in the touch of a hand and the shedding of a tear.

We have Jesus. And for Jesus, I’ll move on. I’ll be a stranger and nomad upon the earth, with my eyes set on that distant, better country. Because Jesus revealed the miraculous in the mundane, the holy in the humble. And here we are –pilgrims despite ourselves.

So we baptize this baby and we welcome these confirmands and we tell them that this is not the end of the road but the beginning of the journey. We have a lifetime to learn to live in a God-filled place and we the place we have to figure that out is already filled with the presence of God. Yes, there is evil and darkness in this world. There is a shadow on the goodness of creation caused by our sin and the sin of the world. But it can never change the fact that Jesus came into this world and defeated the powers of darkness. They may still resist, but all we have to do is look at the cross to know that the power of hell has been broken. And all we are asked to do is to have faith. By faith we move on.

So swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home. Coming for to carry e home to the place where earth and heaven are not two places but one. When you were created God said, “This is good. This, my creation, is very good.” And God wants to draw the circle whole once more. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Thanks be to God.

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16 [NRSV]
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible…
By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
By faith he received power of procreation, even though he was too old -- and Sarah herself was barren -- because he considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, "as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore."
All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.

Hide and Go Seek

I have a confession to make. I once melted a vinyl-upholstered chair. I’m not exactly proud of it, but there, I’ve said it. Now I can live in peace. It happened a long, long time ago when I was a student at the University of Virginia. During my second year there, I was living in a house with three other guys and we had a hideous orange vinyl chair in our living room. I think my roommate, Wart, had brought it from his house, or the landfill, I really don’t remember. It was ugly, no doubt, but it served its purpose and everything was fine until it started to get cold. That’s when we stoked up the wood stove in the living room that happened to be right next to the hideous orange vinyl chair.

Well, I suppose that I, as stoker of the fire, should have known better, but I was young and inexperienced in the ways of fires and vinyl. The fire I mastered. We had a roaring blaze in no time and we were soon stripped down to T-shirts and shorts just to survive the heat. It wasn’t long before we noticed a funny smell, though, and looking at the orange vinyl chair we discovered what it was. One side of the chair had turned to liquid. Now if you school children have been studying your science SOLs, you know that it’s perfectly normal for matter to exist in different states--solid, liquid, gas--but this is not acceptable for a chair. Needless to say, it was never the same again, which doesn’t mean that we didn’t continue to use it after this little incident. It was just more hideous than ever.

I have another confession from those years, though, and this one is a little more serious. I had a roommate by the name of Geoff and it was during that year, that second year of college, that we grew apart. Geoff was from New York City and he was trying to find his way in a houseful of Southern guys and there was a certain cultural adjustment we all had to work through.

Geoff loved basketball. We all did and that’s how we spent a lot of our free time. Once we even played a four-and-a-half hour marathon game that in our memories has now become legendary. The Game. But our interests started to diverge through that second year. Geoff spent less and less time in the house. I’m sure the fact that I was teaching myself to play the guitar during this time had absolutely nothing to do with it. We started to get on each other’s nerves. And we stopped talking to one another, not in a hateful way, but just because we didn’t know what to say anymore.

Friendships that develop in college can be intense. Lifelong friends emerge from the experience of sharing space and time together. But it’s also a time of change and growth and in a year you look back and realize how different you are than you were when the year started. What happens to relationships in the midst of change?

Well, they can take the route my relationship with Geoff took. A year later we were living separate lives in separate parts of the university and we rarely saw each other. But another way they can go is to introduce honesty and really confront the changes that are going on. I wish, instead of letting that relationship go, I had had the strength to say, “Geoff, I know we are going separate ways, but we’re still friends. Let’s talk about what’s really going on.” Perhaps we would have still gone very different ways. But maybe we would still be friends.

Richard Foster, in his book, The Celebration of Discipline, talks about the importance of honesty in relation to simplicity. He talks about the spiritual discipline of simplicity and considering what it means to live simply, since it is something that Jesus asked of his disciples. Foster says that part of that discipline is simple, plain speech. He’s pretty blunt about what that means: “If you consent to do a task, do it. Avoid flattery and half-truths. Make honesty and integrity the distinguishing characteristics of your speech” (CD, 93-4). Our culture now laughs at the blunt honesty therapy methods of the sixties and seventies as a “touchy-feely” extravagance, but there was a great truth there. We can’t be real until we can really say what we mean.

For most of us, me included, this really is a difficult discipline. Maybe we’re too respectful, especially us Southerners…too respectful to speak an unvarnished truth even when we see someone we love dying from the decisions they are making. Maybe we’re too fearful that the world can’t handle the truth. Maybe I’m too fearful that the world can’t handle me. “If they really knew what I was like, with all the mess that there is within me and in my life…if they really knew me they would abandon me.” And so we live our lives with some of the richest, deepest parts of ourselves tucked away, even from the people to whom we say we want to be most open.

Paul, in his letter to the Colossian Christians, reminds us, “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self.” Failing to be truly honest with each other is a form of that lying.

This is my memory of a Garrison Keillor story. He once told a story on his radio program, A Prairie Home Companion, about a time when he was a boy and he saw his neighbor, a farmer in the town of Lake Wobegon, walking down to a ravine outside of town. Being curious he followed him from a distance, watching to see what the man was up to. He saw him pull a box from under some rocks and get something out and look at it. Then, after awhile, he put whatever it was back in the box and hid it away under the rocks again.

Well, of course, this got Garrison’s curiosity up, and after he was sure that the man was gone, he snuck down and got that box out from under the rocks. He opened it up and there inside were old, faded letters from many years ago. Love letters written to the man when he was much younger. He realizes that they must have been from an old flame in a time before the man was married and he kept the letters for who knows what reason – to remember a special time in his life? To reconnect with something that was very important to him, something the relationship with the young woman brought to life? But it was definitely something that he wanted to keep hidden, even though he was now very old.

Garrison says that he would often go to the ravine after that and read the letters, even though he knew he was invading a very private space. He was fascinated by the depth of the exchange between the two lovers, the ideas they talked about, the plays they attended. Plays! He had never known that this dour, old farmer had an interest in plays or philosophy. He would never have expected it. Suddenly he looked at this man in a whole, new light, with a whole, new respect for how deeply he experienced life.

Then one day he was putting the box away beneath the rocks when he saw the man approaching from down the ravine. He didn’t think it was obvious what he was doing, but he hurried away trying not to look guilty. Later that afternoon, though, he saw the man standing over a fire behind his house burning all of those notes. Now, Garrison says, that man is dead and all the richness of those letters has never been told. Only he knows that story of what that man was capable of and one day he will be gone, too.

“Do not lie to each other,” the apostle Paul says, “because you have put on a new self in Christ.” You have put on a new self in Christ. Have you ever worried that putting on a new self in Christ might mean giving up your true self? If I give myself to Christ, does it mean that I lose my individuality? If I say ‘Yes’ to Jesus does it mean that I am less than I was? After all, Paul says that when we are in Christ “there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!” I don’t know what the modern equivalents to that are but it certainly sounds like there will no longer be Cavaliers and Hokies, baysiders and seasiders or any other distinctions. Christ is all in all. And where does that leave me?

The promise Paul gives to us comes a little earlier. To me this one of the most amazing promises in the Bible. It’s one of those things that takes a lifetime to live into. “Your life,” Paul says, “is hidden with Christ in God.” Your life, your true life, your authentic life, your honest life, your honest-to-God life, your life that you have been dying to live, your abundant life, your life that you have been trying so hard to conceal from everyone else because you’re just not sure how it could possibly be your real life, your life that is waiting to be born, to be exposed, to be revealed, your life that you never knew you even had until Christ came to liberate you from the life that is death…that life is hidden with Christ in God.

You know what this says to me? It says that we get real when we get closer to Christ. We get to be…we get to be the people God always intended us to be. And when we do we can give up all of the lies and illusions and delusions with which we’ve been trying to cobble together a life. We can stop trying to pretend that we’ve got it all together or that our lives are fine…no really, I’m fine…or that we’re not dependent on someone or something. We can stop the defensiveness, stop the elusiveness…and risk being honest with ourselves and with our brothers and sisters in Christ and, most importantly, with God. Most of us are giving lip service to God, saying that we trust God to take care of things, but as soon as our prayers are over we are grabbing everything back again. If we could be honest, oh, then we could be more than we ever imagined.

What does it mean that our lives are hidden with Christ in God? It means that we ultimately find out who we are by getting in touch with something outside ourselves. We don’t get dropped into the world self-sufficient. We, unlike any other creature on God’s earth, have the capacity to change our orientation to the world entirely. A possum does not come into the world with the capacity to ignore its instincts, pierce its tongue, get tattoos and start up a garage band. Only humans can do that. But humans can also find themselves in Christ. Humans also need to find themselves in relation to God. And the way has been opened for us to do just that.

I aspire to one day be the Alex Joyner that God intends me to be. It will be the most honest and authentic day I can imagine. It will also be the day when I give up trying to be separated from God’s love for me in Jesus Christ. I want to ask you to help me be that honest and open and I will pray to be able to do that for you. Thanks be to God.

Colossians 3:1-11 (NRSV)
So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.
Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. But now you must get rid of all such things -- anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.
In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all! As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.