Independence, Parenting, God: Part 3

So I've been pondering questions like "Is independence a worthwhile goal to strive for (as an individual)" and "What kind of actions am I going to take to inculcate independence in my infant son?" At what point do I make choices to let him cry himself out, and what are the deeper ramifications of such decisions?  Why am I making those choices?  Will never allowing him to cry himself to sleep make me a helicopter parent who spoils my child?  Will doing it too early teach his infant brain that his tears and screams have no effect on me?  I certainly don't have answers to these questions.

Yet I keep thinking about them, and wondering if they say anything about my relationship with God.  I grew up in an evangelical church context where some of the most serious questions were about theodicy and suffering: How could a good, loving God allow _______ to happen (to me)?  I know people who had significant crises of faith wrestling with the tragedies in their lives and their image of God and all the ways the two just never fit together.  They couldn't imagine that the God of love they worshiped condoned or caused their suffering in any way.  Sadly, so sadly, some lost their faith in any God in the midst of these tragedies.  "How can love co-exist with my suffering?"

Shusaku Endo's novel Silence made quite an impression on me when I read it as a college sophomore.  I highly recommend it, both as literature and theology (my friend Kyle is figuratively screaming at me in my figurative ear THEY'RE THE SAME THING (often)).  Essentially the novel builds up to a climax where a character asks the question "Where is God in my suffering?"  The answer, which holds little weight out of context, is "I AM right here suffering with you."  It's a difficult answer, nearly incomprehensible, not least because some branches of theology can't abide the concept of a suffering God (even though, you know, the crucifixion).  I can feel the triteness of the answer "God is here, suffering with you" when spoken to a mourner in the midst of a tragedy.  In the context of the novel, I found it powerfully moving.  In a hypothetical pastoral context, I'm less sure.

I find it still less moving when I consider Cyprian crying at 1 or 2 in the morning.  What good does it do him if it "hurts me" to lay in bed and listen to him cry rather than go to him and try to soothe him?

What kind of identity do I want to have?  I remember speaking with a friend about a book my professor had written on the Song of Songs.  As I was reading the book (Eros and Allegory by Denys Turner) and the scriptures it referenced, I found myself meditating on the idea of security.  The image of a woman tending a garden behind a locked door, waiting for her spouse to come, deeply scared me.  Can I be that secure in the love of a spouse or of a God, that I can simply wait and prepare the garden around me, the physical space, knowing that any preparing I do on myself doesn't matter because of the strength of the love of the one who loves me?  Can I simply be myself, hidden behind a locked door, waiting for one who loves me totally, fiercely, no matter what?  

It frightens me because it leaves me no task to fulfill, no set of boxes to check off, no way to earn that love.  I just have to be me, and I find that very difficult.

It challenges my notions of independence, of self-worth, of identity.  I am who I create myself to be, I am the sum of all my actions / feelings / thoughts, I am my charisma and charm and humor and intelligence, I am my pride.  How can I be any of those things without showing them off in front of other people?  Without defining their worth in distinction to those around me (and often, admittedly, in superiority over them, in arrogance)?  Aren't I independent?  Can't I get along on my own, without them, carving out my own identity and solving my own problems, not needing the love or "helicoptering" of someone else to save me?  Should I, as it were, be able to cry myself to sleep and learn to get along on my own?  Is it the mark of how badly I've been spoiled to imagine anything else?

In a great little StarWars book I read in high school, an ancillary character repeats like a mantra "Why is always a question deeper than the answer."  I have many (stream of consciousness) questions but few answers.  

The short: I want to be a good parent!  I want my son to have a healthy emotional / psychological life (despite the fact that watching the movie Magnolia makes me severely doubt this as a possibility).  I want his identity to come from a place of security in our love for him.  I want my identity to come from a place of security in God's love for me.

And I think the notion of independence might get in the way of having the mindsets and taking the actions I need to do to be and do those things.

To Wash the Feet of a Hurting and Embarrassed World

I was fortunate enough to be asked to preach Maundy Thursday this year at the church that is sponsoring me for ordination.  Below is the text I preached from:

Jesus said: You do not know what I am doing, but later you will understand.

And again,

You also should do as I have done to you.

May I speak in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

I’d like to tell you, just for a minute, about my best friend Ryan.

Ryan is a very clean human being.

He is a neat-freak, a germaphobe, an obsessive cleaner.

He wrote rules for his housemates and put them up by the sink,

Rules for how to keep the sponge clean.

Ryan knows that I’m not going to wear my shoes,

But he still thinks I’m crazy.

Ryan would never go around barefoot.

Ryan is the kind of person who comes to Maundy Thursday and says:

No way - no how - no chance am I taking my shoes off to have my feet washed.

Dirty.  Gross.  Unsanitary.  Weird.  EMBARASSING.

How good of Jesus to be honest,

As he knelt to wash his friends’ feet:

You do not know what I am doing, but later you will understand.

How many times did Jesus say this that we do not have written down?

How many times should Jesus have said this?

When the storm raged all around that little fishing boat,

Jesus took a nap.

When the crowd of five-thousand was half-starved and far from home,

Jesus sent the twelve out with two pieces of fish between all of them.

When the Pharisees, the strictest of all Jews, confronted Jesus,

He told them straight-up that they didn’t understand the Sabbath.

When a hated tax-collector was in the crowd,

Jesus broke everybody’s social rules and invited himself over for dinner.

            You go to the nicest house in Oxford and try that.

When the mob was already holding their stones, intent on righteous murder,

Jesus dropped down and drew in the dirt.

When a voice from heaven announced the start of his ministry,

Jesus fled / into the desert  and disappeared // for forty days.

You do not know what I am doing, but later you will understand.

In Bible study last Sunday morning

Pastor John told us that when we get baptized

We don’t have to turn in our brains at the door.

I’m glad for that.  I’m a teacher!  I’m glad for that.

But I also know something else:

A life that follows Jesus is going to be filled with a whole lot of confusion.

You do not understand what I am doing, Jesus said,

but later you will understand.

Peter did not understand.

Brash, impulsive Peter.

Peter,

Who named Jesus rabbi, master, teacher, messiah.

All Peter could see was Jesus,

Doing the work of a slave.

It was a slave’s job to deal with the feet,

The lowest slave of the low.

Jesus took his job,

Taking sandaled feet that trod the dusty, unpaved roads where the animals ran wild,

And washing them clean.

{Peter did not understand,

 “Lord, not my feed only but also my hands and my head!”

Peter did not understand.}

For all that Maundy Thursday is concerned with our feet,

It says a lot about our hands as well.

Jesus knew, the gospel says, that the Father had put ALL things into his hands.

It reminds me of that song:

“He’s got the whole world, in his hands…”

The Father had put all things into Jesus hands.

ALL things.

Justice. 

            Dominion. 

                        Glory.

            Power.

The Kingdom.

Do you remember the temptation?

“Now Satan took Jesus to a high mountain.

And he showed him all the kingdoms of the earth.
And he said to him:

“All this I will give to you,

If only you will bow down and worship me.”

“Love the Lord your God and worship Him only”

Jesus replied.

Satan thought the kingdom, the power, and the glory were in his hands.

But Satan         does not understand                power.

When Satan in his pride grabs for power

He thinks of ruling and of riches,

            Of fury and force,

            of might and of majesty,

                        of command    and of control.

Satan grabs power to lord it over others and force them to serve him.

The temptation Jesus faced in the desert was a double edged attack:

Jesus dodged one temptation by not taking the power from Satan,

By staying true to the One True God.

The other temptation that Jesus now overcomes

The temptation was to understand power in the way that Satan seeks to hold it.

The battle Jesus began with Satan in the desert begins to reach its climax here,

In the upper room at the last supper.

The Father had given all things into his hands.

Don’t you know that even now the tempter was there,

The echo of his voice whispering in Jesus’ ear:

“Take up the sword with a mighty hand and oustretched arm,

Attack your enemies, force the Romans out of Jerusalem,

Set up a kingdom of great power and glory

Put all the nations under your feet!”

In that moment,

When Jesus had all things in his hands,

He did not stretch out a mighty arm,

But he knelt and took up stinking, filthy feet.

Jesus understands power.

Power is to be used for the sake of love.

 “He loved them to the end,” one translation says,

Or in another “He showed them the full extent of his love.”

He took off his outer robe,

Tied a towel around his waist,

Knelt before them to do the work of a slave,

And used his hands to wash their feet.

And he said to them:

“You also should do as I     have done to you.”

What has Jesus done

                                    With his hands?

He has done the work of the lowest of the low.

He has ensured that they are clean in their body and their spirit.

He has anointed the feet of his friends
            That he knows will flee from his suffering.

I was with my friend Ryan one Maundy Thursday.

The bulletin for that service told us that we were free to have our hands washed

instead of our feet.

And Ryan, germaphobe that he is,

Instantly said “no way am I taking off my shoes.”

I peer pressured him,

Embarrassed him into doing what everyone else was doing.

I understand that many of you may feel now as Ryan did that night.

No way am I taking off my shoes.

Dirty.  Gross.  Unsanitary.  Weird.  EMBARASSING.

I know you may not believe it,

But even I know how hard it can be to accept having your feet washed.

I know it can be truly humiliating to take off your shoes

And allow someone to go so low as to wash off your feet.

One of the most humiliating experiences of my life was having my feet washed.

I was out in the grass playing soccer with my friends,

And of course, I was barefoot.

We played for hours in the mud and the grass.

At one point, a friend kicked me with her shoes on and cut open my foot.

It wasn’t that painful, so of course I kept playing!

But when I went to return to pick up my backpack from a classroom,

I passed by a friend of mine.

She was shocked at the sight of my feet,

Bruised and dirty and still slightly bleeding.

She forced me into a bathroom – a women’s bathroom! –

And made me sit on the sink so that she could wash off my feet.

I was just like Peter:

No!  Stop! 

You don’t have to do this!

I’m not worth this kind of love.

Friends, the lesson from 1 Corinthians is clear:

We must be humble as we come to this altar to receive,

To discern the body and blood of the Lord.

We must proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Friends, we are used to coming to this altar.

But tonight, we are invited to come forward not once, but twice.

One time will seem familiar. 

We come to kneel at this altar,

To receive communion.

But when we do that tonight,

It will be after the first time we come,

When we come to we have our feet washed.

We come to receive communion

After we have been humbled,

Embarassed, and even humiliated,

After we have come to realize

We do not deserve this kind of love.

This is no empty religious ritual.

We are coming forward to meet the hands that hold the whole world in place.

The hands into which the Father has given everything.

The hands that truly understand that

Having power means to love.

That having everything means being invited to serve.

That the true kingdom and power of God is NOT of this world,

But calls us to die to this world.

To come to the altar unsure, confused, and even embarrassed.

Calls us NOT to understand,

But to stretch out our own hands,

Weak, empty and frail,

And to hear the words:

The body of Christ, the bread of heaven.

The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.

Then we will be called to get up, on our feet, and to go out

To love and serve the Lord with gladness and singleness of heart,

To do to others as has been done unto us.

To be the hands of Jesus,

Seeking not our own power,

But filled with love,

To go out into a world that is confused, broken, hurting and embarrassed,

And to wash its feet.

Amen.

The Pruning Shears of God

Jesus said “I am the vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.  I am the true vine, and you are the branches.”

May I speak in the name of the risen Christ. Amen.

This Thursday, I took a final exam – hopefully my final exam – at the Divinity School,

Fittingly, I think, for a class called “Transitional Moments in Western Christian History, Part II.”

In the first half of that class, the final exam had an essay question on it:

What makes a moment transitional?

It’s a question that Greg Ganssle knocked out of the park last week with his front-porch analogy:

Transition is not unusual.

Transition // is the new normal.

The epistle reading from 1 John is trying to re-wire our hearts for a new normal.

“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and 

knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.  God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.  In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

In just four verses, John uses the word love ten times.

Twenty-five times in the reading for today alone.  I didn’t bother to count the whole book.

John wants the normal setting of our hearts to be love for God, love for each other,

Love all the time.

Including times of transition.

In fact, reading 1 John through the lens of transition goes a step further.

It isn’t just that we should love all the time.

It isn’t that we have to maintain our love through times of transition.

Love demands that we undergo radical transition.

The real heart of love is not what we think we have for God.

The real heart of love is what God has for us, what God did for us.

The real heart of love is that God loved us first, and sent his only Son into the world

That we might live through him.

Love demanded reconciliation for our sins.

Love became an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Love is incarnation, the word of God, the love of God made flesh for us.

If you want to know about transition, hear these words from Phillipians:

He did not consider equality with God –

Which he had –

Something to be exploited.

He emptied himself,

Taking the very nature of a servant,

Becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.

Our faith is founded on the greatest transitions of all time,

The transition of love:

Incarnation.  Crucifixion.  Resurrection.  Ascension.

Ascension brings with it some pretty incredible transitions.

The book of Acts in one sense is the Acts of the Apostles,

A model for the church in transition that we could very easily imitate:

Sharing all things in common,

Giving to all who have need,

Gathering for prayer.

But in another sense the book of Acts is a more singular Act of the Holy Spirit,

An unrelenting presence of unexpected love sustaining this new body called the church

Through a whirlwind time of transition.

The Book of Acts catalogues that fractured sense of time when every follower of Jesus

Struggles to figure out what it means follow Jesus with Jesus not around.

The Holy Spirit somehow shows up in the middle of their struggle,

Stretching and expanding their communities to new forms, new definitions, even new locations.

One of the things that makes transition so difficult for us is that transition marks a time when we don’t 

know what we can expect.

I still remember the words of a professor during my orientation at the divinity school:

“If you are exhausted, that is ok.

The basic neural pathways that form your base expectations for everyday living are all being upended.”

Where’s the bathroom?  Where’s the water fountain?  When are we going to eat?  Where even are we?  What’s going on?

Adjusting to a new time, a new place, a new set of relationships takes a lot of work.

Transition is exhausting,

Because we don’t know what we can expect

Or even what we should expect.

I’ve always been struck by the question John Bonk asks about the gospels:

[And forgive me, John, for misquoting you so terribly]

What are we left with of Jesus life if we take away all the interruptions?

Jesus’ life on earth – his incarnational life of love, the greatest transition ever known –

Is constantly filled with interruptions.  Heal me.  Son of David have mercy on me.  Who is this woman?  Teacher, we caught this woman in the act of adultery.  Should we pay taxes to Caesar?  Teacher, what marvelous stones!  These people are hungry, and we have no food.  Lazarus has died.  How can I enter the kingdom of heaven?

Jesus is always getting interrupted.

And he always responds with patience, letting the other that he encounters set the agenda.

If our faith is founded on the greatest transition of all time,

One of the marks of discipleship should be a healthy relationship with transition, with interruption.

One of the marks of our discipleship should be our ability to respond to interruptions by patiently letting others set the agenda.

One of the marks of our discipleship should be

That we think transition is normal.

Philip gives us a great example of this.

What’s that?  Walk down the wilderness road?

OK.

Go over to the chariot with the foreigner in it?

OK.

Explain to me what I’m reading!

OK.

By the way, we’re just gonna drive this chariot around a little bit while you explain.

OK.

What is there to prevent me from being baptized?

OK.  Let’s do it!

Poof!  You’re in Azotus.

OK.  No big deal.  Guess I’ll just do some preaching then.

Philip embraces transition.  He isn’t surprised by it.  He isn’t fazed by interruption.

He’s the perfect example of how we should apply those words from 1 Peter:

Be prepared, in season and out of season, to give an account of the hope which is in you.

In season and out of season. 

Transitions are going to happen.  They are normal for a disciple of Jesus.

Times and seasons are constantly changing.

What has to remain constant is our ability to listen to the Holy Spirit,

To speak of the hope that we have in Jesus,

To know      that we are rooted in the love of God our Father.

St. John’s Episcopal Church at Orange and Humphrey is at a new time of transition.

St. John’s is in a time when we don’t know what to expect,

And we don’t even know what we should expect.

St. John’s is in a time when what was normal for the last few years has been interrupted.

The temptation is going to be intentional about setting our own schedules,

Trying to figure out exactly what we want and exactly who we want to be,

To create a plan of action and to follow it through,

To set our own agenda.

That kind of thinking, of community awareness, of intentionality has its place.

But Brothers and sisters, we need to be cautious about walking down that broadly defined road.

Today I articulate as challenge to all of us – myself included, in my own time of post-graduation transition –

The challenge to slow down,

To pay attention to the things that annoy us -

About ourselves, our communities, the relationships we have, the tasks we don’t want to do –

The things that interrupt the lives we want to lead.

I call that challenge listening for the Holy Spirit.

We have before us the challenge to act with patience,

To respond to every difficult question that comes before us

To let other people set the agenda.

In this time of transition,

We must ask for and let our hearts be re-wired to a new normal,

To the very heart of love that is God’s very self,

The mystery of faith: Jesus Christ crucified, risen, and coming again.

Transitions and interruptions are challenges to our expectations.

When we listen for the Holy Spirit’s voice,

When we let ourselves abide in the life-changing love of Jesus Christ,

Transitions and interruptions remind us that our lives and our communities are not / about / us.

Transitions and interruptions become the very acts of God.

Transitions and interruptions are the pruning shears of God,

Reminding us that we are the branches,

Grafted onto the true vine,

Who wanders and grows not on its own, or according to its own path,

But is itself pruned and guided by the very hand and love of God the Father.

Amen.