Day1 Weekly Radio Broadcast - Day1 Feeds

  Faith! The prophet Habakkuk said, "The righteous shall live by faith." Faith! Jesus said, "If you have faith the size of a mustard seed you will say to this mountain be moved from here to there and it will obey you." Faith. When he healed folk, he told them, "Go your way, your faith has made you well." Faith. The book of Hebrews says, "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Faith. St. Paul said we are justified, put right with God by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Faith. Faith is the key to living the power of the resurrected life of Jesus in our lives. Faith is the key. So keep the faith. The words keep the faith are almost part of the lexicon of preachers and people of faith. But I first heard the phrase in a way that it stayed with me when I was a child. My father had a record album--though I clearly have dated myself by this story--he had a record album of preaching by the Rev. Dr. Adam Clayton Powell, Pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem and Congressman from that district. One of his sermons was entitled "Keep the Faith, Baby." He was in the midst of a very public, political and personal crisis. I didn't know that at the time. But that crisis would result from him being expelled from the House of Representatives and publicly disgraced. And he preached that sermon--"Keep the Faith." As a child I didn't grasp the full significance of it, but looking back on the struggles that he was living through at the time, it's clear to me that there was something in that phrase keep the faith that could help us keep going on.

  Authentic worship includes both adoration and confession.  We adore who God is; we confess that we are not all we could be.  And so we hope that God will use our worship--at least in part--for our benefit.  And over time--Sunday after Sunday, liturgical year by year-we might discover our true selves, the pure and pristine essence of the persons we really are. Malachi shares this hope with us, but he uses such harsh imagery that it can be difficult to receive his words as anything approaching good news. "The Lord of hosts comes," thunders the prophet, "like a refiner's fire and like fuller's soap."  Fire burns.  We all know that.  And if we're scrubbed too hard, soap can sting.  Malachi's prophecy sounds just that--a bit too hard.  It sounds to us more threat than promise. But maybe that's not giving him enough credit.  Malachi is more precise than that.  He says our redemption will come like fire, but he is not talking about just any fire.  Not a kitchen fire, not a forest fire.  Not a fire that scorches or consumes or destroys, but one that purifies.  This is a Refiner's Fire, a fire that melts away the dross to reveal something essential and precious and pure.  And he says our redemption will be like soap.  But not just any soap.  Not Ivory Soap, not Tide, not a soap that merely cleans surface stains or covers surface smell. This is Fuller's Soap--the kind of soap that scours and gets underneath each individual fiber of wool making them not just clean but pristine and strong. 

  As a twenty-one year old seminarian, I remember the afternoon when I walked into my pastor's office at my home parish where I worked every summer through high school and college coordinating youth programs and a Vacation Bible School and I said to him, "I think God wants me to have a different experience of ministry...I want to go to the mission to work with the poor." He sighed and rolled his eyes as if I was going through some "passing thing," but after months of insistence he began to realize I was serious and I was indeed going to do this. After calling and writing around, I discovered there was a Migrant Worker Ministry about 300 miles from home in a small rural parish that was looking for someone bi-lingual who could help. So I quickly signed up! My first week there, two Mexican religious sisters took me in their Volkswagen bug through the bumpy dirt road that led to a huge field where tomatoes and peppers were being grown and off to the side there was a long row of housing units that looked more like sheds than actual houses. The conditions were indeed deplorable and the dirt floors inside the makeshift lodging made it seem impossible that we were actually in the United States. But we were. My first contact with a family of migrant workers was unforgettable. Just as the two religious sisters and I walked into one of the homes of a family with four young children, I remember how the father and mother invited us to sit down. The kids had just opened the one and only glass bottle of soda they had. Immediately after our arrival, the mother signaled the children and they handed the bottle back to the parents--no questions asked. I was shocked to see how those obviously thirsty children did not hesitate to give even the little they had to their mostly unknown guests. That image has stayed with me for decades: It was a true act of great generosity! Countless subsequent experiences confirmed that the poor are often detached and so generous; even with the little they have.

  I've lived in the same house for over 11 years now.  It's the first home I've ever owned.  It's a wonderful house, and I really do love it with all its quirks.  It's got a hugely sloping driveway that when we get a rare snowfall the neighborhood collects there to surf or slide all the way down.  It's got a little balcony that overlooks our family room.  It's got a front porch just big enough for a glider rocker.  But anyone who is lucky enough to own a home, and maybe even a little yard, knows that with that joy comes a ton of work. Our house is nearly 30 years old, and so we've replaced almost everything.  We've gotten professionals to do a lot of the work, but I've also tried to do a bunch of stuff myself.  I've remodeled my kitchen by ripping out cabinets, putting up shelving, and painting.  I am in the middle of yet another painting project, because two kids, three cats and a dog can really wreck a house, as far as fingerprints and paw prints go. And lately, my husband and I have decided that we are going to tackle our most ambitious job yet...a patio in our backyard.  We are super excited about this patio.  We have visions of parties in the backyard, maybe movies under the stars, a grill area and smoker for barbeque, a picnic table...we've got BIG plans. But first, we had to figure out how the heck to do it. There are books and there are tutorials and there are even lovely people who volunteered to help us.  We've been to home improvement stores...I think all of them... already on scouting trips.  We've scoured Craigslist for antique brick.  We've watched a few videos on the very helpful do-it-yourself channel, thank goodness for Youtube! 

  The Bible is God's joke book.  We don't often think of the Bible as a funny book, probably because it has for so long been read to us in such pompous, stentorian tones:  "And he said unto him...."  (Snore!)  Now, admittedly, the Bible does deal with a lot of very serious human issues: sex and violence, love and longing, death and human destiny.  But if you read it with the eye of a comic, you will have to admit it is filled with some sublimely ridiculous moments. Consider Abram who, hoping to preserve his skin, ingratiates himself with the Big Cheese, Pharaoh himself, by passing off his gorgeous wife Sarai as his...uh...his sister, knowing full well that Pharaoh has the hots for her.  Or how about Rebecca, the original "Jewish mother"?  When Esau and Jacob start brawling--in the womb, already!--she looks to heaven and whines, "If this is what I am going to have to put up with, why do I live?"  Years later she reprises the same act when she warns Isaac, "If Jacob goes off and marries one of those Hittite women, my life will not be worth living!"  Think of the dark slapstick of Ehud slaying King Eglon of Moab, a man so fat he makes Jaba the Hut look like Richard Simmons.  Ehud's cubit-long sword goes in, but it doesn't come out.  Eglon's blubber swallows it whole, hilt and all.  And then there is Saul, who decides to skip out on his appointment with destiny by sneaking off to the luggage depot.  When Samuel summons all the people to Mizpah to anoint him king, he hides underneath everyone's baggage, hoping against hope they'll forget about him and choose someone else.  And don't forget those nasty Ninevites, who once they got some religion and repented, dress up their cows in clothes of mourning and make them fast along with their human masters.

  I went to seminary at Union in New York City, uptown, across from Columbia University.  My parish at the time was St. Luke-in-the-Fields down in Greenwich Village, so I spent a lot of time underground, sitting inside the IRT subway train, shuttling up and down Manhattan. At first, I hated the hellish, metallic din of the thing, but eventually I learned to appreciate it: it helped me to blot out my surroundings. Like every other transplant in the city, I found myself overwhelmed by the ongoing assault that is life in New York. I learned to avoid eye contact, to cultivate a demeanor of stoical self-containment: remote, cold, preoccupied. I wanted to appear tough, to make people think twice before messing with me, but I consciously avoided any look of hostility so as not to provoke anyone. I found one of the best ways to keep people at arm's length was to mutter to oneself incessantly; it was guaranteed to generate a wide berth of at least two or three feet to either side. When someone would approach me for a contribution or to proselytize for a cause, I would tell him--in German--that I could not speak English! Always my aim was defensive: to insure I got from one end of the island to the other without being robbed, punched, stabbed, molested, cheated, or conned. To avoid making myself vulnerable, I sealed myself off from all unnecessary human interaction. To every neighbor I made myself a stranger. One hot September afternoon I happened to find myself seated across from a grimy, homeless drunk. He would nod off, tip over to the left, bang his head on the seat, and immediately spring back to life, only to nod off again. At 72nd Street three muscular teenagers came strutting into the subway. Two of them flopped down on the seat next to the drunk. As the train began to move, the drunk began to tip, right into the lap of one of the teens. The kid reacted angrily, shoving the drunk back with unexpected violence. The drunk grumbled and gropingly thrust his arms forward, as if to ward off the blows he expected to follow. The third and largest teen, who had been standing by the subway door, suddenly flew into an acrobatic spin, whirling his foot around in a furious karate kick to the drunk's head. Teeth and blood spewed everywhere as the poor man went sprawling to the floor. No one moved. No one spoke. The seats were packed, but no arm shot out to break his fall, no voice was raised against his assailants--mine included. A tall respectable man in pinstripes, a robust matron in her Sunday-go-to-meeting best, a bearded gay man wrapped in black leather, a young actress intently studying her script. All of sat stark still, averting our gaze or staring with a kind of fixed detachment, as if watching it all on video in our living rooms. The three teens, flush with adrenalin, slapped high fives and whooped and hollered. At the next stop they strode off to assert their manhood elsewhere. The drunk, dazed and bleeding, groped his way back to his seat on his hands and knees. He touched his mouth with his fingers and stared at the bloody smears as if it hadn't yet dawned on him that it was his own blood. Then he glanced at the man in the pinstripes and he glanced at me. For the first time I could read something human in his eyes. "I know," they said, "I'm only a drunk."  There was no anger, no rage, only a sort of deep, weary resignation. He didn't expect any better from us.

  If this story from Luke 10 tells us anything, it tells us that you do not want Jesus organizing volunteers at your church.  Can you imagine?  Everybody's milling around in coffee hour after the service, chatting and laughing and getting caught up with each other, and then Jesus steps into the middle of the room, clearing his throat and holding up a clipboard as he says loudly:  "Excuse me, can I have everyone's attention for a minute?  I still need seventy volunteers for a service opportunity this week.  This is a great chance to go out into strange and dangerous neighborhoods and invite yourselves into people's homes.  It will be like you are defenseless lambs sent out alone into the midst of ravenous wolves.  Oh, and please remember not to bring anything that might make it easier or safer or more comfortable for you to do that, okay?  So just come on over here and we'll get you all signed up. Thank you!"  That's no way to recruit volunteers!  How's he expect anyone to come?  Everyone knows you have to sell it: tell people it won't be hard, that anybody can do this; tell them it won't take a lot of time or effort; tell them everything will be set up for them, all they have to do is show up...you have to make it easy for them to commit, so your program can be a success.  What is he thinking? Of course, he wasn't asking for volunteers. That's a pretty important thing to notice right from the beginning. Jesus appoints the seventy and sends them out.  He doesn't ask for volunteers, and he doesn't wait to see who comes forward on their own.  He's the Lord, after all; he can do what your volunteer coordinator church only dreams of doing.  But still: "I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves"?   This is clearly dangerous territory, and he's sending them out completely unprepared and unable to fend for themselves?  And wolves aside, without money, how can they buy food or get a place to stay?  Without a bag, what are they supposed to do about extra clothes if they get cold or wet or just dirty from the road?  Doesn't he know they're going to need these things? 

  I think of this as the cranky Jesus.  It is one of those days when Jesus, as my grandmother was wont to say, got up on the wrong side of the bed.  It is as if he goes out of his way to say difficult things, things people, even good and decent people, will simply have a hard time accepting, to say nothing of actually doing. Someone says he wants to follow Jesus wherever he goes.  Jesus replies, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head."  To another, Jesus issues the invitation to follow. This one, as any good child would do, says, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father."  Jesus does not respond positively.  "Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." Another prospect accepts the invitation but also has a perfectly reasonable request.  "Let me first say farewell to those at my home." This time, though, Jesus says the one thing that allows me to make sense of all the crankiness.  It is this:  "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." Now I have never plowed a day in my life, but I am blessed to have spent many a day as a small boy watching my grandfather plow.  And I am blessed, at least for purposes of this particular passage from the Gospel of Luke, by the fact that my grandfather was old school when it came to plowing.  He didn't believe in tractors.  He did it the hard way with an old-fashioned plow and a mule. 

  You see, I wrestle with silence a lot.  We have this strange dance, silence and I.  I am much more comfortable in silence than I am in large groups of people whose conversations swell and mix together, eventually sounding like static or clucking chickens.  I need--I crave--times for silence.  But I resist it sometimes as well, behaving like I somehow enjoy having four or five programs or projects going on at the same time.  I feel like I'm being so much more productive that way--until it all gets on my nerves and I begin to rearrange my office again and put in a rug and zafu meditation cushion in the corner in hopes that I will take advantage of the space and "just" sit and be and reflect and pray and make tea for folks who come by to visit and sit on the floor.  That all works well until the next newsletter article is due or the next retreat needs planning or the next adult forum is around the corner, and I don't want to use a pre-packaged DVD curriculum, but I honestly don't have the time or the energy to come up with something original at the moment.  But I do feel like I need to come up with something, you know?  And the parish folks expect something new and quirky that has a great poster that is designed really well and catches their eye when they turn the corner in the hallway.  So there I am, wanting nothing more than to find a way to BE present and rest in silence and wonder what it might look like for an entire community to ground itself in such silence, while at the same time experiencing this pressure to unveil some grand spiritual spectacle that will be an "Aha moment" for at least ten people in the room at any given time.  It's twisted, right?  But I don't think I'm the only one who experiences this wrestling with silence....

  As a preacher and worship leader, I'm often fascinated and intrigued by how the stories of scripture and the hymns of the church can offer us theological surprise when we change their context. It often feels like a fresh breeze of the Spirit. For example, in my congregation, if we have a funeral service during the season of Christmas, we'll sometimes sing the famous Christmas Eve hymn, "Silent Night." We seldom hear or sing that hymn outside of evening worship on December 24th. When we sing the words "sleep in heavenly peace" in the dark with our candles burning, we know we are singing about baby Jesus, sweetly asleep in the manger. When we sing it the morning of a funeral, say on December 29th, as the casket of a loved one rests before us and voice the words "sleep in heavenly peace," it suddenly becomes a prayer for one who has died rather than a lullaby for a newborn. But singing this hymn at a funeral causes us to remember that the one who was born would also die for us and because he died the one we have lost will have new life. Change of context gives us fresh insights that we don't always get when we use the same things in the same places. In the story today from Luke, we witness a context change. Clearly the story of a woman who anointed Jesus with expensive, extravagant ointment was cherished by the early church. In all four gospels there is a story of a woman who at a dinner party comes and anoints Jesus' feet with a jar of ointment so expensive it's like she won the lottery. You might want to look at all four stories to compare them. When you do, you'll see that the woman is imagined differently by name and by whether she is shamed or honored. In each case somebody protests the use of such a valuable substance for anointing Jesus. In each story Jesus' credentials as a prophet or as a socially-minded person are called into question. And in each telling of this story, Jesus defends the action of the woman. As we've come to expect from the four gospel portraits of Jesus, each is a little different, and one is very different. Usually when we say that, we expect the "very different one" to be John, but with this story John hangs with the majority. It's Luke who decides to sing "Silent Night" during a funeral to thicken up our theological thinking.

  Within our Western culture we believe ourselves, our lives and our homelands to have certain rights when it comes to choosing how we are to live and what we are allowed to do with and within those lives.  We often go to great lengths to argue or stand up for or against issues that may be keeping us from those appointed freedoms. We even appoint ourselves gatekeepers for those whom we feel are being kept from those rights.  Borders, relationships and law become our battle ground. The depth of passions and sometimes the depth of indifference to any current social, political or religious topic are as various today as they have been throughout the history of civilization.  We may even find ourselves on different sides of a debate at different points of our lives.  Events and relationships will often offer a different perspective for us to consider as we encounter ourselves in each issue. Paul was considered a gatekeeper. Or at least history has made him out to be one.  I don't think he meant for it to be that way.  In his letters he evokes how much he wanted to tear down fences, not build them.  I don't believe he meant to be an architect of "The Great Divide."  All He wanted was for people to open up and experience "The Great Divine," to offer a path to God's love for all who wanted to receive it. Sometimes history and intention can get lost in translation.  And God's love is lost with it. What is needed is an understanding of love in transformation.

  Jesus had a terrible reputation. He spent time with the wrong kind of people. He ate with the grungy and despised of the world. He associated with the worst among us. He reached out to the poor, the broken, the marginalized. In this expansive vision of hope, the gospel reaches full flower. But Jesus also found himself among the powerful of his time. He associated with people of means and influence. He even drew near to the purported enemies of Israel and dared to praise them. Here too the gospel reaches full flower. In either case, faith shows up in unexpected ways. In Luke 7, Jesus is approached by a centurion seeking his help. He had a deeply cherished slave who was ravaged by illness. This centurion sees something in Jesus. He believes that somehow, someway, this Galilean subject of Rome, this mere peasant, might be able to do the impossible: that Jesus might be able to heal the sick and stave off the forces of death. Oddly, the centurion and Jesus never meet face-to-face. All their interactions occur through the means of intermediaries. First, it is the local Jewish leaders who ask for Jesus' help. The centurion, they say, "is worthy of having you do this for him" (7:4). Hearing this, Jesus sets out apparently without much hesitation. Now, no one would have blamed him for having some suspicions. After all, entering the house of a Gentile could potentially make Jesus unclean. Even more, a centurion is not your typically friendly neighbor. Centurions are the sharp edge of Rome's power, a cruel force that has dominated the people of Israel. Later, this very same empire will order the execution of Jesus. Jesus has a number of reasons to resist helping this centurion even when he is commended by the local leaders. From the perspective of many of Jesus' neighbors, this centurion represents everything that is wrong about the world.

  In her book Circle of Quiet Madeleine L'Engle repeats Dorothy Sayers' story of a Japanese man who's politely listening to a Christian who is trying to explain the concept of the Trinity.  The Japanese man is very puzzled.  "Honorable father, very good.    Honorable Son, very good.    Honorable Bird I do not understand at all."  Madeleine observes, "Very few of us understand 'Honorable Bird,' except to acknowledge that without his power and grace nothing would be written, painted, or composed at all.  To say anything beyond this about the creative process is like pulling all the petals off a flower in order to analyze it, and ending up having destroyed the flower." Trinity Sunday is one of those Sundays when the preacher has to be careful not to pull all the petals off the flower while attempting to analyze it.  It's a task easier said than done. After all, this is the only doctrinal feast day to make its way onto the Church's calendar.  It's the only feast day which doesn't celebrate a person, like a saint's day...or an event, like Christmas or Easter or Pentecost... in the entire Church Year!  No wonder preachers so often get lost in the weeds on this unique Sunday. This is one of those Sunday's which reminds us that "Some things just have to be believed to be seen." 

  I may not remember everything about my high school days, but I do remember the cheerleaders and several of their spirited yells. One of their yells was, "Two bits, four bits, six bits a dollar, all for LaGrange, stand up and holler!" And whenever our football or basketball teams seemed to hit a dry spot, our cheerleaders would eye the stands and yell out, "We've got spirit, yes we do! We've got spirit, how about you?" From across the field the other team's fans would respond and yell back the same cheer: "We've got spirit, yes we do. We've got spirit, how about you?" Then the two opposing sides would take turns giving the cheer back and forth, hoping that their fans were louder. Personally, I think I will remember those cheerleading squads from my past because in so many ways they remind me of the church that we're part of today. Most of us believe in Jesus Christ and much of what goes along with him, but when it comes to speaking of Pentecost and the Holy Spirit we are much more garbled in our speech. Oftentimes, our robust yells fade into quiet whispers. Now for the most part, we are familiar with the Holy Spirit's name, and we know that the Holy Spirit is the Third Person of the Trinity. But can we confidently say, "We've got spirit, yes we do! We've go spirit, how about you?" What do we think of when we think of Pentecost? Many of us think of fire and wind and the onslaught of a violent storm. We think of speaking in tongues and that unusual experience of "foreigners" hearing and understanding the "noble things of God" without the assistance of an interpreter. But there is much more to Pentecost. Sometimes we get so involved with the mysterious details of Pentecost that we miss the greater meaning of Pentecost.

Let's listen in to Jesus speaking in St. John's book. Jesus says, "My prayer." He is praying as he speaks and prayer is the first thing in this passage. Jesus prays. We should pray. Imitate him. Jesus says, "My prayer is not for them alone." His prayer is not just his merry band of devotees. It's for us, too. Jesus says, "I pray also for those who will believe in me." That's you. That's me. Here in the future. Prayers have power. They last into the future. How have his prayers lasted? Through the power of Love and the skill of story telling by his apostles, and in all the books and letters written about Jesus over the next three hundred years. Jesus Christ became a media sensation for centuries--in books and in letters. He was a celebrity. Stories of his life were told aloud. His story became the most famous story ever told in the Western world. His story became our story of life everlasting. Prayer is powerful, but so is story telling. Jesus continues, "that all of them may be one." What does this mean to be one? One what? One community? One church? One faith? One in dogma? One in doctrine? When? When were Christians ever one in unity in anything? Christians started fighting amongst ourselves from the get go. Unity? Name the Unity for me if you can. Jesus says, "Father, just as you are in me and I am in you."