Soundings: Children

I’m beginning a new sermon series today and as part of it I would like to reintroduce a book that we ought to know a little bit about as Christians. It’s called The Bible and if you didn’t bring one with you today, or weren’t presented with one while you were here this morning, you’ll find a copy in the pew racks. There are several reasons for this reintroduction. For one thing, I have a conviction that sermons ought to be biblical. Maybe you believe that, too. But I recognize that there are many ways of being biblical and I am willing to explore some new ways of doing that.

I have a bias toward the story of scripture. By that I mean that when I turn to the Bible I like to take one text and really wrestle with, get the shape of it, learn the background of it, and hear what God is saying through this particular story. Sometimes I will do that with allusions to other parts of the Bible or to the shape of the scriptures as a whole, but my belief is that God has so much to say in one passage that it’s worth giving it a deep listen.

Today we’re going to do it a little bit differently. We’re going to take a theme or a question and look at how it appears throughout the Bible. I’m calling this a sounding. You know, a sounding is when you take a line with a lead on it and drop it into a body of water to measure the depth. There are more sophisticated ways of doing that now, but that’s the image I want you to keep. Because what we’re going to do is to take a question and do a sounding through the Bible – going down to look at how the question looks from different perspectives in this book.

So that’s one reason for the introduction, but there are others, not the least of which is that it strikes me that we don’t know our primary book nearly well enough. And if we are going to look different from the rest of the world, which is one of the things I suggested last week we should be doing, then one of the things that makes us different or distinctive is the fact that we believe that God is speaking to us through this book. Well, if God is speaking to us through this book and we keep it closed and we remain ignorant of what it has to say, what does that say about how much we really mean what we say? So blow the dust off the covers and let’s do some soundings.

Now this kind of preaching is going to be a challenge for me. You know I’m a storyteller so I’m going to be tempted to linger at every stop to tell the story of how we got this or that verse. If I do that too much, though, we’re liable to be here awhile. So to help guide me along I’m going to offer some provocative propositions to order our journey. These are the things that I want you to be testing with me as we look at these Bible passages. You may also start to develop some provocative propositions of your own, which is just fine.

So, having said all that, let’s look at the question of the day, which is, “What does the Bible tell us about children?” And my first provocative proposition is: We think with children. We think with children.

I remember right after Joel was born. It was probably the first day we were home from the hospital and Suzanne was getting some much-needed sleep. I was sitting on the sofa with this tiny child and he looked at me. Now I know that for a four-day-old baby the world is an incomprehensible blur. It’s all shapes and colors and faces that are becoming more and more familiar. But, I could have sworn, when he looked at me that something very meaningful happened. It was like I was meeting something holy. To be honest, it was like I was meeting God.

I wrote about it in a poem that I shared at a Christmas Eve service one year. This little baby seized the initiative from me. And it was not so much that we met face to face as face to grace.
Now I’ve since learned in many ways that Joel is not God and I think he’s beginning to suspect that I’m not God either, but it is certainly true that people represent for us more than just the people that they are. They play roles in our lives. They are husband or wife, protector or provider, lover or nurturer, caregiver or mentor. This is particularly true for children. They carry meaning and the Bible is very aware of this.

Let’s do some soundings. Genesis chapter 33, verse 5: When Esau looked up and saw the women and children, he said, "Who are these with you?" Jacob said, "The children whom God has graciously given your servant." The children whom God has graciously given your servant. Isn’t this the most natural thing in the world to believe? When a child is born, we say that he or she is a blessing from God. So when Jacob and Esau meet up after twenty years of estrangement, one of the signs for Esau that Jacob had been blessed by God was his children. The children were a sign.

But there is a hurtful counterside to this story. If children mean blessing then the absence of children was often interpreted as a curse from God. All you have to do is go back a few chapters in Jacob’s story and hear the pain in Rachel’s voice. Genesis chapter 30, verse 1: When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister; and she said to Jacob, "Give me children, or I shall die!"

Now, it’s really hard not to tell this whole story because there are a lot of strange things to note about Rachel’s situation. She and her sister were married to the same man and there were concubines and all sorts of other things that would make this a great HBO series but the relevant point for today is that in the worldview of people living in the times of Genesis, not having children was tantamount to death. Children represented the future, they represented security, and they represented God’s favor. Psalm 128 offers us a vision of what the good life was for a faithful Hebrew. Verse 3 says: “Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table.” But for those who were left out of that vision, no children could be interpreted as a curse. It’s something that we still carry around with us and there is still great pain for couples who struggle with infertility. We think with children.

This takes another form in the Bible. Children become the symbol of the nation and the nation’s hope. When Moses’ mother places him in a basket in the river there are echoes of other stories and foreshadowing of others. Exodus chapter 2, verse 3 describes the scene: Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, has ordered that all the male babies born to the Israelites be thrown into the Nile and killed. But Moses’ mother can’t do that so…”When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, [the word for basket here is only used one other place in the Bible – it’s what Noah builds – she’s building an ark] and she plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river.” And if we fast forward in the story we know that Moses is going to lead God’s people to safety through the waters of the Red Sea. This child is not just a child. He is going to be a representative of the people.

Later Isaiah is going to give us lots of images for children who represent the hopes of the people. Isaiah chapter 7, verse 14…you hear this verse every Christmas: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.” Later in chapter 9, verse 6 he says, “For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” The expectations of the people are centered on a child. And in Jesus those hopes are fulfilled. In the infant Jesus those hopes are fulfilled.

So one thing that you see throughout the Bible up until the coming of Jesus is that children carry a whole lot of symbolic value. God gives the people images of the future and these images often have a child in them. It’s important to realize how unusual this is. In early societies people tried NOT to give special significance to children. Infant mortality was high. Death was far more common than today. Childhood was not a stage of life people paid a lot of attention to. If you survived until adulthood, then you were significant. But here in the Bible we have a society where children had significance. And Jesus only deepens that significance by welcoming children.

So if you accept, (as you surely should), that my first provocative proposition is right and that we do think with children, then there are three other provocative propositions that are even more important. It’s one thing to recognize what we do…it’s another thing to know what we should do. So here’s something important to remember as we get there. Though children may symbolize many things for adults, children are people, too. This is provocative proposition number 2. Children are people, too. They don’t just live in stories that other people write about them. They are not just playing a role in a play where adults have all the leading roles. They are people in their own right.

That’s biblical, too. Children are showing up at some unlikely places, especially in the stories of Jesus. When Jesus feeds the multitudes, the gospels are very clear about noting who was there. Look at Matthew chapter 15, verse 38: “Those who had eaten were four thousand men, besides women and children.” Children were there and they get mentioned, even if they don’t get counted.

When the disciples try to push children away who are coming to see Jesus, they are reflecting the bias of the society that children are less important than the adults who were following Jesus. But how does Jesus respond? Look at Luke chapter 18, verse 16: Jesus called for them and said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it." The children matter! In fact, they are models for the disciples to follow.

And then look at Matthew chapter 21, verse 15. To me this is the most fascinating passage of all. We sing songs like “Tell Me the Story of Jesus”, which talks about the children shouting “Hosanna” and waving the branches of the palm tree. But what they are doing is a political act. It makes the leaders nervous. Look at this verse:

But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, "Hosanna to the Son of David," they became angry and said to him, "Do you hear what these are saying?" Jesus said to them, "Yes; have you never read, 'Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself'?"

So children are people, too and that leads to two parallel dangers for us as people who care about and have responsibilities for children. The first danger is that we will neglect our role as parents, disciplinarians, mentors, and elders. This is especially a danger for us in our youth-oriented society where no one wants to be the adult. But provocative proposition number 3 is that children thrive with discipline.

Now in a different age the first stop in talking about discipline would be something like Proverbs chapter 13, verse 24, which says, “Those who spare the rod hate their children, but those who love them are diligent to discipline them.” That usually gets shortened to the old saying, “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” But in an age where we have heard horrible stories about child abuse and beatings that children have suffered, we want a little more than this. Discipline is not the same thing as corporal punishment. I know there a lot of folks who believe that if we just brought back the paddle the education system would be a whole lot better, but I don’t think that’s true.

Discipline is about training, not punishment. We are called to love our children – and by our children I mean the children of our whole community – by telling them who they are and how they should live…by caring enough to correct them when they go astray…and by giving them a grounding in what is right and what is wrong. The bible talks about it in terms of storytelling. When the Passover is celebrated the instructions, found in Exodus chapter 12, starting with verse 24, say:

“You shall observe this rite as a perpetual ordinance for you and your children. When you come to the land that the LORD will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this observance. And when your children ask you, 'What do you mean by this observance?' you shall say, 'It is the passover sacrifice to the LORD, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt, when he struck down the Egyptians but spared our houses.'"

Children need our stories. They need to hear how we know what to do, where we made mistakes, and how we listen for God. Children need to come to church and to learn the language of our faith. This is discipline, too.

Finally, there is this: We think with children and the danger we run into is that we will forget that they are actually people in their own right with their own fears and needs and dreams and their own future. So we dare not neglect our role in offering them guidance. But my last provocative proposition is this: We also dare not stop learning from children for they are gifts from God.

Jesus points us to this lesson. Matthew chapter 18, verses 2 through 6:
[Jesus] called a child, whom he put among them, and said, "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. What could Jesus possibly mean by this? He doesn’t say. Jerome Berryman, an Episcopal priest who has studied the connections between Christianity and the Montessori Method that we are using in our new school here, writes about this passage:

Jesus did not define the child he told us to be like. To discover what we are to be like if we are to be spiritually mature we must consult Jesus parabolic sayings and actions in scripture, take a deeper look at the children around us, and inquire into [our] own childhood. Jesus’ parabolic method forces us to discover what adult maturity is for ourselves. He refuses to tell us more than where to look. It is the experience of that discovery, which prepares us to enter God’s domain.[i]

So something in the experience of a child can give us a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven. In fact, to become like a child is the key.

This week we started welcoming a bunch of kids here to Franktown. 12 preschoolers who are going to be regulars here. There were some tears and some stressful moments. And that was just the adults. But there is something miraculous about the first day of school. Everything is new. There are new experiences to be had. There are new relationships to be formed. And those children trusted Gillian and trusted their parents and trust us that what we say about them, we believe. They are God’s gift.

Last week I quoted Casting Crowns. Today I want to quote another Christian group – Jars of Clay. They have a song that is old now. It must be 10 years old, and it’s called “Like a Child.” In the song a little girl’s voice repeats things that seem so simple they can’t possibly be true, can they? She sings, “I’ve got joy like a fountain.” And she says, “Be kind to others.” And then she says, “In Jesus Christ, your son.” And then the chorus kicks in:

They say that love can heal the broken
They say that hope can make you see
They say that faith can find a Savior
If you would follow and believe
with faith like a child

Here’s the greatest promise of a biblical perspective on children. If we get it right we can claim the greatest gift. Read John chapter 1, verse 12: “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” You know the greatest thing you can be called? To those who believe, God gives the power to become children of God. There’s a child who needs you and you need to be a child. Thanks be to God.

Luke 18:15-17 (NRSV)People were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they sternly ordered them not to do it. But Jesus called for them and said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it."

[i] Jerome Berryman, “CHILDREN AND MATURE SPIRITUALITY”, 2005. http://www.godlyplay.org/uploads/pages/downloads/Children__Mature_Spirituality.pdf

Leaky Vessels and Living Water

There are some things that are just so wrong that you wonder why they were ever done. Like polyester leisure suits. (Been there.) Edible deodorant.[i] (It failed. Who knew?) And actors trying to sing. (Does anybody here remember William Shatner’s version of “Mister Tambourine Man” or Mae West singing “Twist and Shout”?[ii] Didn’t think so. Sad to say – it happened.) These are things that make you say, “What were they thinking? How could the people behind these projects have seriously thought that these were good ideas?”

Well, I’ve got some sad news today, brothers and sisters, and it’s not going to come as any surprise to you. The reasons these things happen and the reasons much more serious and tragic things happen is because we are human beings and as human beings we have an amazing capacity for self-deception. We are capable of some astoundingly good things, too. We are, as Psalm 139 says, “fearfully and wonderfully made” [Ps. 139:14, NRSV]. But we can also get disconnected from reality and from what is really important.

In addition we are forgetful. We forget who we are, who we are made to be, and who God intends us to be. We forget God. This is the most tragic thing about us. We are afflicted by spiritual amnesia and the results are devastating.

So today I want to bring a very simple message and it is this: God does not want any more edible deodorant. What God wants, what this world needs, is a people who are willing to be different. Really different.

I guess you know that this human condition I’ve described is not anything new. Back in 400 A.D. Augustine of Hippo, my favorite early church guy, was recognizing the same thing in himself and the people around him. In his book Confessions, which is one of the first autobiographies, he talks about how humans go astray.

It’s not that we intend to leave God. We pursue all sorts of things that we think will bring us fulfillment or make us successful or make us happy. But if we pursue these things without considering God or how our path strengthens or weakens our spiritual journey, then we often find that we have wandered a long way from home and don’t know where to turn next.

(Actually there’s a new DVD and curriculum out that addresses just this question. It’s called “Where Do I Go Now, God?” and the leader’s guide is $12. Available at your local Cokesbury store or online at Cokesbury.com. I promised the publisher I’d find a way to plug it in every sermon.)

But back to Augustine. Augustine’s way of describing this habit we have of wandering off was to use a version of the prodigal son story. The twist was that the home the prodigal leaves is his own true self. The prodigal who is us, leaves this home and travels into the far country. And the experience of salvation is really a returning to this true self. God doesn’t leave us, even though we may sometimes feel that God is very far away. The reason God seems so distant, Augustine says, is because we have become so detached from ourselves. God is there at home, with our true self, and we, through our sins and distractions and delusions and forgetfulness, have wandered off.

But we can go back even further than that. Our scripture lesson for today shows how deeply embedded this dynamic is within our natures. Jeremiah the prophet was writing around the sixth century before Christ. He spoke to a dying nation – the last days of the independent nation of Judah. It was a time when reform was in the air. When people were looking for new alliances to save them. But Jeremiah had a much more basic question for them.

Jeremiah speaks the word of Yahweh, the people’s God, and says: “What were you thinking?” That’s really at the heart of this passage. “What were you thinking that you would wander off from me? You have forgotten that I brought you out of slavery in Egypt. I led you through desert and darkness, drought and wilderness to bring you to a fertile land where you now live. But when you got here you kept going. You left me behind.

“It’s so bad,” God says, “that you have even stopped asking the question, ‘Where is God?’ It is not a question that occupies you. Even the priests and the keepers of the law and the prophets have stopped asking for me and have busied themselves with things that are worthless.”

So God prepares a case against the people. “I accuse you,” God says. “Look around you. No nation abandons its gods like you have. Even when their gods are not really gods at all, they do not leave them like you have left me. My people have exchanged their glory for something worthless.”

The people it seems have been too busy…too distracted…too disconnected from their own story to realize how far they had left God behind. Other gods seemed more enticing. Other pursuits seemed more profitable. Other things, (which were not really things at all…when you looked at them they were tissue thin), other things seemed more real than the God who gave them life.

Jeremiah was writing for his community almost three thousand years ago, but I bet you’re seeing where this is heading. We don’t read the Bible in here because it’s just a good history lesson. We don’t read the Bible because it’s a quaint old habit that we haven’t found a way to get rid of you. We read the Bible here because we believe that God still has a word to speak to us through these ancient words. So here’s Jeremiah talking to Judeans who have long since passed from the face of the earth. And what is he saying to us?

He could be living in 21st century America, couldn’t he? Are we a people who are busy and distracted and detached from the God who gives us life? Aren’t we a people who, even on the Eastern Shore, live our lives in the car, wandering the roadways in pursuit of things that seem worthwhile today but looking back on them we wonder, “Why did I spend so much time and energy on that?”? Aren’t we a people who are so in touch with pop culture that we know all about Sanjaya and the personalities of American Idol but we know next to nothing about the deep human longings of the psalms of David. Aren’t we a people who know Harry Potter but who can’t see beneath the story of Harry in that last book to see the deep images that could only be there because of the story of Jesus, the crucified King? In other words, aren’t we, just like our ancestors in Judah, just as disconnected from our root story and our primary relationship with God?

Jeremiah concludes with a powerful image. On the one side is a fountain of living water springing up with life for the people. This is God, who is the source of all that they are and whose blessings are sufficient for the crises they are facing. On the other side is a cistern, cracked and leaky, which is what the people have substituted for God…it is what we become when we try to do it on our own as if God didn’t matter. Leaky vessels or living water? What were they thinking when they chose the cracked pots? What are we thinking?

Denise Jackson, who is the wife of the country singer, Alan Jackson, has just written a new book in which she talks very openly about how her marriage to Jackson almost ended. It was 1998, when Jackson was at the height of his career. They had just had their third child and Alan Jackson, who had been her childhood sweetheart, came to Denise and said, “You know what, I can't live like this anymore, and I don't know if we know how to fix it." And he left.

It was a terrible shock. There had been problems in the marriage. It had not been perfect. But it was still a shock. And Denise’s response was to try desperately to do whatever it took to bring Alan back. Part of that was to pray, fervently, that God would bring her husband back.

Then one day she was talking with a friend who gave her some new advice. “You have been praying for Alan to come back,” her friend said. “Why don’t you pray instead that you will become the woman God wants you to be?”

That advice made all the difference. Denise began to concentrate, not on her relationship with Alan, but on her relationship with God. Suddenly all the pressure of having a perfect marriage and her insecurity about who she was started to melt away.

“I put so much pressure on myself,” Denise said. “Everyone, I felt, was looking at us under a magnifying glass and I had to be the perfect wife, who was the perfect size, who wore the perfect gown, who had the perfect jewels, and it was so stressful to live like that and to base your self worth on what you thought other people felt about you. So that's why it was so freeing to really come to the place in my life where I realized that I shouldn't base my self worth on any of that, that my self-worth really comes from being a child of God.”

Nine years later, her marriage has been restored, but I think she would recognize that not every story ends like this. Sometimes the thing we think we want restored doesn’t happen. But the title Denise Jackson’s book is It’s All About Him, and the ‘him’ is not Alan Jackson.[iii] She found new life and living waters, not by basing her life on the relationship she had with Alan Jackson, but by returning to the God who knew…who remembered who she was supposed to be.

Which all reminds me of an encounter another woman had with God. It was by a well in Samaria. A woman on the edges of respectability shows up at the community well in the middle of the day, a time when she was not likely to run into other women who might be about the same work. She brought her jar in the heat of the day to fill it with water.

She ran into a traveling teacher who seemed to know all about her life. He asked her for water, which was a pretty forward thing for a foreign man to do. But he probed right to the heart of her life. He knew about the men in her life, five of them, none of whom had given her what her soul most needed. And what did he promise her? Living water. “A spring of water gushing up into eternal life.” [John 4:14, NRSV]

What are you wasting your life on? We’ve all got something. What is the worthless thing you are dying to give up so that you can live? Is it your preoccupation with a relationship that you just can’t seem to make any headway with? Is it an obsession that you can’t seem to let go of, no matter how ridiculous it seems? Is it video games? Is it gambling? Is it drinking? Online pornography?

I’m telling you that none of those things is getting us closer to God. They are obstacles to becoming the people we are supposed to be…the people our dogs think we are…the people God knows that we can be. Because God has not forgotten. God remembers who you were when you were created, formed in your mother’s womb. God is waiting there at home, with our true selves, the selves we were enabled to become because of Christ’s death and resurrection. God is waiting for us to come to our senses and to give up the edible deodorant. God is waiting for us to give up the cracked pots for the living water that God offers.

And there is more. Jeremiah was calling the people as a whole. There is a greater work for us to do. Our nation has lost its way, too. We have wandered off into a war we don’t understand. We are a country whose leaders have been shown over and over to have feet of clay, feet you can easily see even when it’s not below a bathroom stall. We have not addressed the cries of the poor and the immigrant in our midst. Our health care system is an unholy mess. Our media is not serving the common good. Much of our popular music and entertainment encourages and celebrates our basest desires without pointing the way to something more. There is much for us to do and we should not say – “We are on the Eastern Shore. What can we do?” If the kingdom of God is coming here first (as I sometimes say), why shouldn’t we be helping to get the people ready?

Casting Crowns, a Christian band, has a new album out and the first song on it is one that says, “What This World Needs.” The last verse says, “What this world needs/ Is for us to stop hiding behind our relevance/ Blending in so well that people can't see the difference/ And it's the difference that sets the world free.”

What this world needs is not edible deodorant. What God wants, what this world needs, is a people who are willing to be different. And different because they know the God who loves them and loves this world and because of that is not willing to let them go untransformed. Thanks be to God.

Jeremiah 2:4-13
Hear the word of Yahweh, House of Jacob,
all you clans of the House of Israel.
Thus says Yahweh:
“What injustice did your ancestors find in me
that they went far from me?
They followed vapors and became vacuous.
They did not say, ‘Where is Yahweh,
who brought us out of the land of Egypt,
and led us through the desert plains,
a land of deserts and pits,
a land of darkness and drought,
a land where no one travels
and a place where no one lives?’
I brought you into a fertile land
to eat its fruit and its good things.
But you came and defiled my land
and my heritage you made into an abomination.

The priests did not say, ‘Where is Yahweh?’
Those who handle the Law did not know me;
the leaders rebelled against me.
The prophets prophesied by Baal,
and followed after things that are worthless.”

“Therefore, once more, I accuse you,” says Yahweh.
“And you children’s children I accuse.
So cross over to the coasts of Cyprus and look;
send to Kedar and examine with care;
see if there has ever been such a thing as this.
Has a nation ever changed its gods,
(even though they are not gods)?
But my people have changed their glory for something worthless.
Be appalled, O heavens, at this;
shudder with great horror,” declares Yahweh.

“For two evils my people have committed:
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
which hold no water.”

[i] “Garlic Cake and Edible Deodorant: When Products Go Wrong,” CBC News, 2/1/2000, http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/home/failedproducts/index.html.
[ii] Dave Barry, Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs, (Andrews McMeel Publishing: Kansas City, 2000), p. 22.
[iii] “Country Star’s Wife on Marriage’s Crash and Rebirth,” 8/31/2007, cnn.com, http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/books/08/31/celeb.qa.denisejackson.ap/index.html.

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.