lenten journal: jesus goes postal

I’ve been struggling with a story today.

“Jesus cleansing the Temple” is the way it usually gets titled for those of us who know the story. It shows up in all four gospels and I’ve heard it over and over; it’s not new to me. Jesus was going into the Temple in Jerusalem during Passover and saw the mall-like atmosphere that had grown up in the outer court where people could exchange money for Temple currency (to the profit of the money changers) and buy animals for sacrifice (also at a serious markup, I’m sure). He made a whip out of some cords and sent the money changers and merchants running for their collective lives, leaving tables turned and everyone wondering what the hell happened.

We read John’s version this morning, being good lectionary followers, which comes early in his gospel – Chapter Two, to be exact. The first chapter is full of the poetry I dearly love – the Word became flesh and dwelt among us – and the second begins with Jesus at the wedding at Cana, which is a story I love because of the interaction between Jesus and his mother.

On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine." And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come." 5His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you."

First, who gets away with calling his mother, “Woman”? Second and speaking of performance criticism, wouldn’t you love to be able to hear the tone in the voices of both Jesus and Mary? Third, we get a picture of a pretty cool Messiah in this opening miracle. Drinks are on him.

A sentence later – that’s right one sentence, however much time actually passed --he’s in the Temple going off on the moneychangers like Chuck Norris on a drug dealer. Two sentences after that, before the dust can even clear or anyone straighten the tables, Jesus is quietly talking to Nicodemus about being born again.

One of the ways I was taught to look at Bible passages was to begin by noticing what came before and after the story of interest. How do I make sense of stories that show Jesus going from wedding to warrior to welcomer? More than that, and regardless of what comes before and after, what do I do with a story where Jesus responds with violence? He made a whip out of cords, which I’m assuming was intended to be more than symbolic, and he stormed the Temple, turning over tables and chasing everyone from the sellers to the sheep out of the room. Whatever his motivation, whatever prophecy he fulfilled, he was violent and he did damage. The blessed-are-the-peacemakers-turn-the-other-cheek guy was whipping people to get his point across.

As I said, I’ve been struggling with the story.

I went back to the beginning of John and looked at the order of things once again:

• the Prologue
• John the Baptist points him out
• Jesus chooses his disciples
• the wedding at Cana
• Jesus clears the Temple
• Nicodemus comes to see Jesus
• some more John the Baptist stuff

Chapter Four opens with Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman, which is one of my favorite stories. At the end of their conversation, he told her he was the Messiah. Could it be John was giving us an account of how Jesus grew into his identity? Could he be showing us how Jesus got started and found his way to a true sense of his calling?

(By the way, these questions are not rhetorical. And, yes, I understand the are problematic since the other gospels place the story late in Jesus’ ministry because they only record one Passover where John records three. And I’m not trying to get into a theological debate here; I’m trying to figure out what to do with a violent Messiah. This blows my mind.)

To say Jesus lost his temper doesn’t satisfy me because I don’t think he is out of control in his actions. We don’t need to retitle the section, “Jesus Goes Postal.” The recent church shooting is too fresh in my mind to think that Jesus was just freaking out. He knew what he was doing. He seemed full of righteous indignation, as Ginger says. The main victims of the merchants and moneychangers would have been the poor because of the price gouging. Jesus came to liberate the poor, to turn the world upside down; we see that over and over. Yet, only this once does his defense of the poor come in the shape of a fist.

Years ago, I heard Tony Campolo speak and he said, “Everyday, over and over, we have to make a choice of how we are going to respond to the world around us, and we are always choosing between whether we will respond with love or with power.” Here is a story of the One who incarnated Love responding to a situation with power, not love. Jesus took the strong hand and slapped me silly.

Part of my struggle is with myself. I have heard this story my whole life in church and never let myself see what troubles me about it until today. I allowed myself to be blinded by familiarity; I wasn’t looking for anything new. Jesus chased the bad guys out of the Temple, which is what good guys do. But he did it violently. This can’t be one of the go-and-do-likewise kind of stories. Had Jesus made it a pattern, he never would have gone through the Cross to the Resurrection.

I suppose this would be the paragraph where I tie it all together and tell you have I’ve come to terms with the story in some new and insightful way. It’s not. And I think that’s OK. My struggle is not a crisis of faith, as though I somehow think Jesus is not who he said he was. My struggle is to have the wherewithal to think and feel through my new understanding of the story (new to me, anyway) and see what it has to say about my faith and my growth as a human being.

As we say in the UCC, there is more light yet to break forth.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: march fourteenth

The tale of my day is less
story than scrapbook:
a stop at the supermarket,
the tire store, Chik-fil-a.
Here’s the smile I brought
home from the young
woman who surprised
me with the joy she found
serving my sandwich:
“My pleasure,” she said
I still have a piece of
conversation, I found
worth keeping, with the
young man at Sears who
sold me two new tires
and called me “Buddy.”
But it was in the line
at Old Navy, where
I had gone to return
two pairs of pants, that
I realized my place on
the page that is today;
the line was ten deep
and there were only two
(too few) cashiers;
I chose patience over
pugnacity and waited
my turn to turn in my
merchandise. The man,
not so young this time,
apologized for the wait.
“That’s OK,” I said, “Buddy.”

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: show me a story

I guess because I grew up hearing sermons in church, I spent a large part of my life thinking of a sermon as primarily an oral presentation, rather than a written document first. When I began to preach with some regularity that perspective changed. I found I was a better preacher once I learned a sermon was a written document first – I needed to have worked out what I was going to say – and then an oral presentation.

When I was teaching high school in Boston to classes with seventy percent or more nonnative English speakers, I was daunted by the fact that Shakespeare was part of the curriculum. Most of the kids had trouble with modern English; how were they going to understand what Will wrote? I went to a workshop on teaching Shakespeare and was reminded that, though we were handing the play to the kids in book form, a play is intended to be performed, not read. Over the years, I taught the kids how to choreograph a swordfight on stage, how to figure out what was happening in a scene. From the opening line, we acted the play out in class and the language came alive. They got it. I did, too.

This morning, Ginger and I drove to Greensboro for a meeting of Baptist professors of religion who were gathering prior to a larger convention. Dalen Jackson, president of the group, had invited Ginger to do the devotion for the group at the beginning of their session. I went along for the ride. After the devotion, we hung around to hear Dalen’s paper, “’Clumsy Mark’ Again? Mark’s Gospel as the Transcription of Peter’s Public Performance of the Gospel Story.” It has been awhile since I got to be in on an academic discussion, and I learned something.

At the heart of Dalen’s paper was a discussion of performance criticism, which was new to me. He used a quote to describe the idea:

A performance was an integral part of every early Christian experience of the compositions that now comprise the writings of the New Testament. The New Testament writings were either written “transcriptions” of oral narratives composed in performance or they were composed in writing (perhaps orally by dictation) for use in oral performance.

I’ve always thought of the Bible as a book (more of an anthology, I guess). My experience with it is primarily in print. What Dalen taught me today was the gospels, along with most of the rest of it, were just the opposite of my sermons: oral before they were written. They were more like Shakespeare’s plays: intended to be performed, because that is how they were created.

Reading the gospels, for me, is sometimes like reading email messages in that tone is often hard to convey. Here’s one of the passages from Mark that I wonder about, for instance, Mark 3:31-35:

Then Jesus' mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, "Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you."

"Who are my mother and my brothers?" he asked. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother."

How did Jesus ask who his family was? It’s not an easy answer – by that I mean this doesn’t feel much like a Hallmark card moment to me. The tone we infuse into the words makes a difference in how they can be interpreted. If the words stay in the two dimensional world of the page, tone stays out of reach, because it needs the three dimensional world of performance to have room to move. In a time before books, that’s how the stories got told. If we want to get to the heart of the stories, then we have to let them live off of the page; we have to incarnate them, if you will – perform them.

My favorite liturgist at church is a person named Suzanne. When she reads scripture she does It from memory. She tells us the story. She is a part of the Network of Biblical Storytellers who already know what Dalen is talking about, though they get to it down a different path. Rather than connecting back with long ago, they are looking at present trends. They describe themselves by saying, “We bring God’s stories to life for a post-literate, digital age.” Whatever the age, they are on to something: the gospel story is a living, breathing thing, not something static trapped between book covers. These are stories to be read (aloud) and wrestled with, to be talked about and talked through, to be performed and remembered.

My friend Beth is an actor in California. She wrote me the other day about a character she is going to play in an upcoming performance because there were some theological issues in her character’s background that were more akin to mine as a Christian than to Beth’s, who is Jewish. Our discussion was both fun and meaningful to me, in part, because I got to learn something about how Beth, as an actor, goes through the process of becoming a character, learning about her and then climbing inside her skin for the two hours she is on stage. It reminds me of one of the earliest and still most meaningful explanations of the Incarnation given to me along the way: Jesus was God with skin on. Jesus stepped into the human story as one of us.

Dalen’s invitation, as I heard it today, was for us to step into Jesus’ story by climbing inside its skin, if you will. The dictionary says the word perform comes from old words that mean to alter and to accomplish. When we tell the story – when we perform it – we alter it by breathing life into it again and we accomplish the task of letting it come alive in us.

I had fun learning today.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: don't just do something

The music director at our church, James, was in a car accident and severely injured last weekend. He has an old Cadillac that he was driving to see some friends in another state. Unknown to him, the car had some sort of carbon monoxide leak and he passed out at the wheel. The car crossed the median and dove into a cornfield, setting the corn and the car on fire. He was able, somehow, to get out of the car, get to the road, and flag down help that got him to a hospital. He did not have skin burns, but inhaled a great deal of soot and smoke that burned his lungs. Since Sunday he has been in the hospital in another city, intubated and heavily sedated while they daily go in and try to clean out his lungs. The news today is they have made good progress and the lungs are becoming clear and appear to be healing themselves. There are other questions still to be answered, but we are grateful for the hopeful words.

But being far away, waiting for the next word sucks.

The question bouncing around in my mind and also within our congregation is, “What should we do for him?” It’s an honest question with an answer that is hard to hear: right now all we can do is let him and his wife, Amanda, know we are with them. The feeling reminds me of advice I got from my Director when I began my Clinical Pastoral Education internship. “Sometimes,” he said, “you have to live be words from Alice in Wonderland: ‘Don’t just do something; stand there.’”

I understand and I struggle with trusting a “ministry of presence” is enough.

No, that’s not it. I know from experience that having someone who stays through tough times without doing anything other than not leaving is more than enough. It’s just damn hard work. And it doesn’t feel like enough.

I need to do something tangible to make me feel like I’m helping. To make me feel not helpless. The hard reality I must face is doing something so I feel less helpless is not necessarily doing something that truly ministers to them. Our congregation has done a good job finding things that do help. The choir, for example, has come together to pay to board the couple’s pup while they are away. That’s good work. We have some family connections in the other city that have brought meals and support. But, as Ginger said in her email note to our congregation today, what we can best do is pray and support one another in “this difficult waiting room of life.”

And so we wait. And pray. Together.

Please join us.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: routine

Duke is on spring break this week, which means my restaurant has been closed and I’ve been a day worker at our catering shop, getting food ready for various catering gigs and also doing some other prep, or background, work. The shop is quiet, too, so our crew there has been small: our pastry chef, Tony the dishwasher, me, and one additional cook each day. The pace is deliberate, but doesn’t carry the same sense of deadline that getting ready for dinner service and working the kitchen line carries. I have a list of stuff to do, I do it, and I come home.

The hardest part has been trying to reorient my sleep schedule. My normal schedule – or what passes for normal at our house – is I work from 11 am to about 9 pm, then I come home and see Ginger and the pups, and then I write, and then I go to bed in the one or two range. I haven’t been able to break that habit, even though I’ve been getting up at 6:30 to get to work by 7:30. I’ve ended up sleeping a split shift: four hours at night and two or three when I get home from work. I ought to be able to get my days and night straight about the time I have to go back to Duke on Monday. Duke only has about five more weeks of classes, so about April 20 I will have to reorient my schedule again.

As tired as I am, I’m grateful that my routine changes because I’m quite capable of becoming tied to a routine. I’m a creature of habit. Hannah, our beloved Schnauzer who has been gone many, many years, always had to walk on Ginger’s right side when we were out strolling. Though the little dog is no longer walking with us, I still walk on Ginger’s right. It is far to easy for life to become an exercise in muscle memory.

Since we’ve been at Pilgrim I’ve done something I’ve not done in any church I’ve ever been a part of. I make a point of sitting somewhere different in the sanctuary from one week to the next. It wasn’t my idea. Ginger suggested it in a sermon, so I decided to take her suggestion. What I have learned is there are parts of the room where I can hear much better than others. I’ve also learned different parts of the sanctuary have a different feel. Sitting up close to the front helps me hear, but it also puts me in front of everyone, so I can’t see who else is in worship very well. Sitting in the back gives me the panoramic view, but makes me feel distant from the altar. I’ve found a couple of dark spots in the sanctuary that make it difficult to read; I’ve also learned we have boxes of tissues at the end of several rows.

The best part of the moving has been getting to sit with different people. I don’t just pick a pew, I pick a pew I can share with someone. I’ve gotten better acquainted with some folks and gotten to greet people I had not seen before when we pass the Peace since I was on the other side of the room. It is a small gesture that has had large implications. It has helped me think less about a particular pew and more about those with whom I am worshipping.

When we lived in Marshfield, I used to go walking down the beach looking for sea glass. When the tide was out, the beach was wide; there was no way to cover all of it. I had to choose a path and work my way across the sand. I learned that if I were more precise in my path I looked more closely and found more glass. If I tried to cover too much ground, my gaze was not focused enough to be productive. I also realized that when I chose a path that particular I was leaving most of the beach unexamined. Over the years I found a lot of sea glass; I missed more, I’m sure.

We follow the routines that shape our days because there’s a payoff. We get stuff done, we know where we’re going, we get a good night’s rest. But our little path through life does not afford a view of the whole beach. I need to make changes – little, one step to the left kind of changes – to help myself see a bigger picture of the world.

Sit in a new pew.
Drive home a different way.
Go to a different grocery store.
Walk on the left side.

I see new things, even with tired eyes.

Peace
Milton

lenten journal: improvisational faith

Thanks to a gift certificate I’ve kept since Christmas, I added to my cookbook library this week. I bought The Improvisational Cook by Sally Schneider. To call it a cookbook is to sell it short because the author is really asking the reader to think about how he or she cooks as much as giving instruction about particular dishes. Even the recipes she does give are intended as jumping off places – cooking prompts, if you will:

Improvisational cooking demands that you shift your thinking, or at least temporarily put rigid notions and fears aside. This is true learning: gaining information and, more than not, successes from being willing to make mistakes and a mess or two . . . . Asking yourself What would happen if? and the attendant Why not? can challenge the fiercest inhibition: fear of listening to your own senses and of expressing your unique sensibility or “voice.” . . . Creativity involves relinquishing total control and allowing an idea to develop organically. Often this means that you start out with one thing in mind but, as you cook, the idea shifts and evolves until you find yourself on a different path than the one you started on. (9)

Richard Thompson was on stage by himself last night at the Arts Center in Carrboro. The venue was small and intimate; he was conversational and interactive with an audience full of devoted and long-time followers. We were not too many songs into his set when people began to call out the names of songs they wanted to hear. More than once, I could tell he changed his mind about what he was going to sing based on the requests that came his way. His willingness to improvise – starting with one thing and letting the evening shift – made the concert even better. As many concerts as he has done, he was able to look at the unique ingredients offered him by those of us gathered in that particular room on that particular night and make something new out of familiar ingredients.

Schneider talks about inspiration for improvisation from “a mostly uncharitable confluence of associations, hungers, and memories, a mysterious process that is open to us all.” As I read the sentence it struck me that I could say the same of what it means to walk through Lent, a season of preparation handed down across the centuries that pulls from all of those influences. The same could also be said of church beyond just this one season. There’s not just one recipe for what it means to be a community of faith, but we have common ingredients, hungers, memories, and we all are born of the same Mystery.

Improvisation is also central to the world of acting, which is quite akin to cooking, I think. A couple of years ago, I came across the five common principles of improvisational theater, which seem worth repeating tonight:

• yes and
• make everyone else look good
• be changed by what is said and what happens
• shared agenda and shared focus
• serve the good of the whole

We are walking a well worn path through these days and we are walking a new path at the very same time with the very same steps. We share the ingredients of humanity with all those who have come before us and we have to see what we can make of today, which will not be the same as any day that has come before it. How we combine the flavors of our lives will determine what we make of them.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: beatitude

I had a chance to see Richard Thompson in concert tonight in a solo acoustic performance. His songs were well crafted and beautiful, his stage presence was engaging, and his guitar playing was magnificent, evidence of someone who has spent his life determined to be a great guitar player. He has accomplished his goal. Watching him brought two statements to mind, one a Beatitude of Jesus and the other a book title:

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” – Jesus

“Purity in heart is to will one thing.” – Soren Kierkegaard

I remember reading Kierkegaard in seminary and contemplating the book title as an explanation of Jesus’ words. Both statements are problematic for me because I am not a person of singular interest or effort. I play guitar, but I play like someone who also likes to cook and write and, well, do just about anything I come across, including writing poetry. This one’s for Richard.

beatitude

you played me a blues song
and brought down the house
I sat in the dark with my heart
torn open by your hands
on the strings, making music
I could not even imagine

can I afford for my response
to such beauty be to fret –
I am not one to will one thing
still, I could see the divine
in the way your hands moved

practiced hands at home
with the frets and strings –
and you’ve been home there
for a long, long time
while I have wandered

and wondered with dreams
of my own, less practiced
perhaps, less familiar
with focus, but still
hoping to see God.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: the view from here

What crossed my mind this morning was a scene from a movie. Probably several movies. The scene is from Home Alone and comes at the end of the movie (I think) as Kevin is reuniting with his family he sees the scary old man that ended up being not so scary when he met him at church. Kevin looks out his window and across the street to see the old guy reuniting with his family, from whom he had been estranged. The camera follows Kevin’s gaze across the snow covered yards and through the window, where the light inside and the warmth of the people gathering around the table spilled out on to the snow below. Kevin was in the throes of reuniting and reconciling with his family, but it was something different to look across the street and see the same feelings of family manifested around someone else’s table, as if to say, “This is real; see, it’s happening there, too.”

Yes, I probably am giving the movie credit for more insight that it deserves, and that’s what I thought of this morning as we were sharing Communion together. Actually, today was one of those days when it was more like the Lord’s Supper. During Lent, we are observing Communion a different way each Sunday as a way of looking at what it means to us as a community of Christians. Last Sunday we began with intinction. Today, we walked into a sanctuary that had two tables set in front of the altar, each one with bread and a chalice. Ginger and Carla explained we would come up in groups of twelve or so at each table and share the Supper together, passing the elements to one another.

We started with the back rows. They walked down the aisle and circled the two tables. I watched as they listened to the instructions and then began to move as the bread was passed one to another. I could read their lips: “The body of Christ for you.” They smiled at one another, held the chalice for each other to dip the bread. Some looked tentative, not knowing exactly when to eat. There were smiles, tears, quiet looks. And I felt like Kevin, looking across the street and through the window to see what a family looks like coming together, as Neal, our pianist, played

my faith has found a resting place
not in device nor creed
I trust the ever living One
his wounds for me to plead

Our service began with a shock. We gathered to news that James, our music director, was in a car accident in Nebraska, where he was visiting friends, and is now in an ICU at a hospital in Lincoln. No one knew more than that. We only know tonight that the car caught on fire and he ingested both the fire and some smoke. Before we did anything else, we prayed for him and his wife and family, who were all headed to Nebraska to be with him. And he stayed close to our hearts the rest of the service, all the way to the Table.

It has been probably since my days of leading youth camps that I have gotten to watch others share Communion. I’ve stood in line to kneel at the altar and receive the Supper, watching those go before me, but to sit and watch as I waited my turn, to watch them do what I was going to do, was a fresh perspective.

Perhaps I would do better to say a fragile perspective, because that was the overarching image for me: we looked fragile as we stood around the table, passing the bread and the cup. I could hear a hymn of another kind:

on and on the rain will fall
like tears from a star
like tears from a star
on and on the rain will say
how fragile we are
how fragile we are

And from the center of that vulnerability, I watched those who stood around the table together move through the pain and the uncertainty that life holds to feed one another in Jesus’ name: “This is the body of Christ, broken for you.” I saw what faith looks like in those who both led and followed me to the Table.

“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase,” Dr. King said. He was one who knew of both faith and fragile, and who knew what a circle of friends committed to God and to one another could do. Sometimes it is nothing more than coming together to eat and to pray.

“Love doesn’t mean doing extraordinary or heroic things. It means knowing how to do ordinary things with tenderness,” says John Vanier. “Community is made of the gentle concern that people show each other everyday. It is made up of the small gestures, of services and sacrifices which say ‘I love you’ and ‘I am happy to be with you.’ It is letting the other go in front of you, not trying to prove you are right in a discussion; it is taking the small burdens from one another” (78). It is deciding that every gesture we make, from passing the bread to passing one another in the hall, will be one that says, “We are in this together.”

Every time we come to the Table, there are more stories to tell. Sharing Communion together is how we mark time, and how we tell time. And what are we telling time? What I saw today tells of those who are walking wounded, who are acquainted with grief, who don’t know what is coming next, and who commune with one another and with God, full of the joy and hope that comes from knowing we are not alone.

I can believe my eyes.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: saving daylight

tonight we will play
with the clocks,
springing forward,
saving daylight,
acting as though
we could tell time
anything at all

we spent the daylight
we had this afternoon
taking the top
off the Wrangler
and winding our way
through an early
spring afternoon

who needs clocks
on a day like today
or tomorrow ---
as we gather at church
would we could
muster the same
abandon for worship

laying aside our ticks
and tasks, and bask
in the breeze and shine
of the Spirit who springs
our hearts forward and
has no idea that worship
lasts only an hour

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: this is a gift

Today was going to be a day to get some stuff done around the house, but the cold I’ve been fighting for most of the week set me down for the better part of the day – well, the cold and the Theraflu. As I dozed in and out, I caught up on a week of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, thanks to the magic of our DVR. His segments on the financial crisis and the Conservative Convention took me back to a sentence I read in Living Gently in a Violent World that has both stuck with and unsettled me. Hauerwas wrote:

It seems to me that democracies want to produce people who do not need to rely on trusting one another. (51)

I’m unsettled because the sentence is difficult to refute, based on the way we treat one another as Americans. Sharing with and caring for one another are not our strong suits. His statement was in the middle of a chapter talking about what it meant to be peacemakers. I got to his last chapter tonight – it’s a short book – and he had something else to say:

Long story short: we don’t get to make our lives up. We get to receive our lives as gifts. The story that says we should have no story except the story we chose when we had no story is a lie . . . Christian discipleship is about learning to receive our lives as gifts without regret. And that has the deepest political implications. Much of modern political theory and practice is about creating a society where we do not nave to acknowledge that our lives are gifts we receive from one another. (92-93)

I heard this week from an old college friend with whom I’ve had mostly incidental contact over the years. He wrote,

I wanted to let you know I've been reading your blog every day now for maybe a week or so. It has come to mean so much to me, to read your words and reconnect with you through them, knowing you as I have for all these years, and missing your presence.

The sentence was a gift all by itself because I don’t think I’m particularly good at keeping up the ties that bind. Most of my college friends are still in Texas and I moved away. In fact, moving away – or at least moving – has been the archetypal direction of my life. To have him reach across the years and not only find me, but recognize me was gift indeed. I’m working to take Hauerwas’ words to heart about receiving the gift without regret and respond in gratitude that miles and years have not broken a tie that binds, or at least retied it.

At the risk of using too many borrowed words, I’m going to lean into an old Rich Mullins song that could serve as soundtrack to Hauerwas’ thoughts:

Hello old friends
There's really nothing new to say
But the old, old story bears repeating
And the plain old truth grows dearer every day
When you find something worth believing
Well, that's a joy that nothing could take away

And so we meet again
After all these many years
Did we sow the seeds we're reaping
Now that the harvest calls us here
It seems that love blooms out of season
And much joy can blossom from many tears

So old friends you must forget what you had to forgive
And let love be stronger than the feelings
That rage and run beneath the bridge
Knowing morning follows evening
Makes each new day come as a gift

Today, through various channels, I heard from college friends, got news about my 35th high school reunion this summer, got a note from someone in the church where I was youth minister in the 80s, a friend I went to grad school with in Boston, and someone I knew in Africa. Also, today, as Ginger and I took Ella out for an afternoon walk, we talked about the growing possibility that we are going to need to move her parents here with us as her dad’s Alzheimer’s worsens. The move is not imminent at this point, but we feel as though it is a gift we need to be prepared to give. The story of my life is one of connections flowing back and forth across time, conduits of love and grace that remind me I am much more givee than giver when it comes to love and grace.

The first visual image that comes to my mind, as I think about all of the connections that tell my story, is one of an old time switchboard with all the wires coming out and going every which way, each one with a familiar voice on the other end of the line. The glorious tangle of wires is a wonderful picture of how a life gets put together, as well as how lives are tied together.

The second is the credit roll at the end of a movie. Both Ginger and I are both in the habit of sitting in the theater until the last name scrolls by and the screen goes dark because we feel like it’s our little way of honoring everyone’s work on the film. The credit roll at the end of my life will take years. I share my story with many, many co-writers.

That is a joy that nothing can take away.

Peace
Milton

lenten journal: 86

Tonight was our last night of dinner service before Duke students go on Spring Break and we’ve had a rather spirited discussion about what to expect from the evening. My boss and I were looking at it from two very different vantage points: she didn’t want to buy food that would then be left over and I didn’t want to run out of food. I also expected to serve more than double her expectations. I was looking for seventy or so and she thought we’d be lucky to have thirty customers.

Here’s the part where I tell you I am not a business person. I don’t have an entrepreneurial gene in my body. I have had any number of good ideas that have cost more money than they have made. My boss, on the other hand, is a successful business person and her ideas are actually profitable.

The menu I presented this evening was evidence of a compromise. We ran out of a couple of things – the squash ravioli and sweet potato polenta – that will not be on the menu after the break, as we make some seasonal adjustments, so it made sense to let them go early. And she sent me some food for the other dishes. Six people sat down right when we opened and we had served thirty people by six o’clock. Soon after, the number 86 started to show up on the white board where the kitchen communicates with the servers.

When we run out of something in a restaurant kitchen, we tell the servers to “86” the item, meaning we have no more, so don’t take any more orders for it. The board began to fill up:

86 steaks
86 trout
86 roasted chix
86 mac rolls
86 shrimp

By eight o’clock, we were offering Chicken Alfredo and Chicken Parmigiana and Upstairs at the Commons had turned into Uncle Milty’s House of Pollo and Pasta. We made it to closing time and counted up the evening to find we had served 81 people. I 86’d myself and came home, with missions accomplished: everyone fed and very few leftovers.

Just before service, we noticed we were out of mushrooms, which we needed for a couple of dishes. I took a small pan and went downstairs to The Great Hall, a restaurant below us, and asked Vernon, one of the chefs there, if he could help me out. He and I have been talking because he is going to North Carolina Central to get a degree in Hospitality and Tourism. He was certainly hospitable and generous with the mushrooms.

Words do funny things sometimes, or we do funny things with them. Somehow we’ve decided that hospitality can be used as a name for a business: the hospitality industry. The two words together do the same thing to me that happens during church budget discussions and someone inevitably starts talking about how we need to run the church like a business. I struggle to let the words live together, even though I understand the rationale for their usage.

Restaurants are a business; hospitality is not. Neither is church.

The distinction is important because ultimately a business has to look at things the way my boss was looking at them today: the bottom line. When we run the reports at the end of the night, will the show we did well? Did we make enough this week to pay the bills? How do we keep the business going? But good business is not necessarily good theology.

One of the sentences that lives deep in my memory and rises to the surface is from the liner notes of a friend’s record so many years ago that it actually was a record says, “Thanks to God, the Ultimate Spendthrift.”

Spendthrift: a person who spends possessions or money extravagantly or wastefully; prodigal.

Now we’re talking theology. And, yes, it’s a stretch to think of the words wastefully and prodigal as descriptive of God, I know – but give me a chance. The nature of any institution – a church, a restaurant – is to spend a good bit of time on self-preservation. That’s not all bad. It’s harder for a church because we are building the institution around a God who is not a save-it-for-a-rainy-day kind of God. When the one we call the Rich Young Ruler came to Jesus and asked what it would take to follow him, Jesus looked at him (and loved him, the gospel account says) and then told him to give everything he had away and come along for the ride.

He couldn’t do it.

We had a discussion recently among the deacons on our church around how many cups to fill for Communion. The question was asked in the spirit of not wanting to be wasteful. I couldn’t see past the possibility that someone would go to reach for a cup and there wouldn’t be one because we had been too cautious pouring too many. As I am wont to do, I moved to metaphor. For me, the fuller the tray, the better the image. Drink one. Drink two or three or seven. There’s enough to go around and then some because we belong to God.

86 isn’t part of God’s lexicon.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: god is a river

I’m tired.

This has been a busy week at work and I’ve been working hard to finish the ten gallons of soup for Empty Bowls tomorrow night, which meant I spent every spare moment of the last couple of days chopping and dicing until my hands are rough and cracked. Though dinner went well tonight, I spent the whole evening feeling a step behind and out of sync.

I’ve now been sitting in front of a blank page for the last hour and a half, trying to figure out what I had to say on a night like this. I got tired of staring and went looking for what others had to say, which led me to this video clip posted, on Cecilia’s blog, of folksinger Peter Mayer singing his song (new to me), “God is a River.” I’ve included the lyrics to read as you listen.

In the ever-shifting water of the river of this life
I was swimming, seeking comfort; I was wrestling waves to find
A boulder I could cling to, a stone to hold me fast
Where I might let the fretful water of this river ‘round me pass

And so I found an anchor, a blessed resting place
A trusty rock I called my savior, for there I would be safe
From the river and its dangers, and I proclaimed my rock divine
And I prayed to it “protect me” and the rock replied

God is a river, not just a stone
God is a wild, raging rapids
And a slow, meandering flow
God is a deep and narrow passage
And a peaceful, sandy shoal
God is the river, swimmer
So let go

Still I clung to my rock tightly with conviction in my arms
Never looking at the stream to keep my mind from thoughts of harm
But the river kept on coming, kept on tugging at my legs
Till at last my fingers faltered, and I was swept away

So I’m going with the flow now, these relentless twists and bends
Acclimating to the motion, and a sense of being led
And this river’s like my body now, it carries me along
Through the ever-changing scenes and by the rocks that sing this song

God is a river, not just a stone
God is a wild, raging rapids
And a slow, meandering flow
God is a deep and narrow passage
And a peaceful, sandy shoal
God is the river, swimmer
So let go

God is the river, swimmer
So let go

One of the ways I was taught to unpack dreams is to look at what happened in the dream from the perspective of each person or thing in the dream. As a youth minister, I found it was a great approach to looking at different Bible passages – especially the parables. What did it feel like to be the prodigal son, the father, the eldest son, the servants, the pigs? What I like best about the approach to either subject is it calls me to look at the interconnectedness of the metaphors, and the consequences of interpretation.

Mayer’s image isn’t new. He's leaning into those who have sung before him:

like a river glorious is God’s perfect peace
overall victorious in its bright increase
perfect yet it floweth fuller everyday
perfect yet it groweth deeper all the way

What he does with the image that knocks me out is put us in relationship with the metaphor. His is not abstract poetry; we are called into the action with an amazing line:

God is a river, swimmer

He names God, and then he names us. The metaphor would mean something different were we fishing, or farming, or building bridges, or (as Loggins and Messina used to sing) watching the river run. But in this story, we are in the water -- not taking from or adding to or going around or sitting it out; we are in the river, swimming.

I’m grateful for such an image to feed my dreams tonight.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: cooking with love

Part of my job everyday is to make soup. For our lunch buffet for the faculty at Duke we always have two soups (one of which is vegetarian) and the selection changes daily. On Fridays,, we always serve New England Clam Chowder, but the rest of the week is wide open. One of the favorites of the past few days was Chickpea, Garlic, and Spinach.

This is an even bigger soup week because the Durham restaurant is taking part in Empty Bowls, a fundraiser for Urban Ministries of Durham (UMD). The idea is cool. Thirty bucks buys you a ticket in and a hand made ceramic bowl. Around the room are several local restaurants serving soup. You can fill your bowl as many times as you like and your money goes to feed others in our city who are hungry. Since the kitchen at the Durham restaurant is about the size of a beverage napkin, I offered to make one of the soups at Duke and she took me up on it and even gave me a choice of the soup I wanted to make. When I read the email message out loud to Ginger she said, “Make the corn chowder.”

I’ve made a lot of corn chowder – even posted a couple of recipes here and here and here – but I’ve rarely made it the same way twice. I know what I want in it, but I’m still tweaking the recipe. What I do know is I need corn, celery, potatoes, red peppers, roasted jalapenos, black beans, vegetable stock, cream, and cumin. I’m making it without onions so Ginger can eat it (she’s allergic to onions).

This afternoon I peeled enough potatoes to fill two five gallon containers, cut a whole case of corn off the cob and soaked the beans. Tonight, I made a vegetable stock including the corn cobs to sweeten it up a bit. Tomorrow I will dice celery, and potatoes, cook the beans, and begin to bring the soup together. I’ll do my best to come up with a recipe. First I have to come up with ten gallons of chowder.

I was telling Abel about the event and the soup last night and he began to wave his hand as if to stop me.

“My sister, she makes this soup. This is a very important soup. It is very hard to make.” He began to describe how her sister created her soup and then he said, “You know not just anyone can make this soup. It is a special soup. My sister, she says if an angry person is around her when she is making this soup, then the soup will break. Sometimes she and my mother say no one can come around while they are making this soup so that no one will ruin it.”

Abel talks a lot about his sister’s cooking. He is from a family of cooks, but it seems when the family wants to feel like family, she’s the one who takes over in the kitchen. He beams when he talks about her.

In the novel (and movie) Like Water for Chocolate, there’s a batch of beans that gets made by an angry cook and pretty soon everyone is throwing up. One of the consistent themes of the story is the emotions of the cook go out through her hands and into her food, making her feelings seem almost contagious.

I think she’s on to something.

You build a soup the way you build a life, I suppose, adding ingredients as you go, changing the recipe, and adding in the flavors around you. What Abel’s sister knows is some of the flavors add themselves. Be careful, then, what or who gets near the soup. As I finish the soup tomorrow, I will be around Billy, the daytime chef, who cracks me up; Mauricio, Abel’s nephew who is equally good at smiling and working hard; Jorge, our unflappable dishwasher; Abel; and Tony, our evening dishwasher, who understands very little English and seems to be soaking up everything around him.

This is going to be a good soup.

I’ve still had Communion on my mind today. As I reflected on Abel’s words, I also thought about Paul’s admonition to make sure your heart was clear before you sat down for the Lord’s Supper. If something is wrong between you and someone else, go fix it and then come back to the Table; don’t let it poison the meal because the Supper is more than a stop along the way or a ritual worth repeating; the meal is the point. If we can’t come to the Table together, then we can’t come together.

One of the soups I made today was chili. We will serve it Thursday or Friday, because a good chili needs to sit for a couple of days. I’m a good chili maker (here’s one of my recipes) and the staff at Duke looks forward to it. As Billy was leaving to go home, he said, “I’m taking home some of that damn good chili, Milt. That’s it: a grilled cheese and this damn chili. And then I’m gonna take a nap.”

As he was ladling it into a container he said, “What’s your wife’s name? Ginger?” answering his own question. “I’ll bet that’s why she married you, Milt. You made chili and she said, ‘Damn, I can’t let this guy go.’” And then he laughed his laugh that must have improved all the soups in a ten-mile radius.

I came home tonight to a request from the one who digs my chili for a tuna sandwich. The Ginger version is a grilled tuna and cheese sandwich. Though I cook for a living and am known professionally as a chef, I remember who I am when I’m cooking for Ginger. Those that walked with Jesus on the road to Emmaus sat down with him at supper and recognized him when he broke the bread. Here in our house, it’s a reverse experience: I recognize myself when I cook for the woman I love.

And she says to tell Billy he’s right.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: this world is my home

When I walk into work everyday, I do so to the soundtrack of Spanish radio. And part of that soundtrack, which appears to be in heavy rotation, is this percussive-techno-yodeling thing that is infectious in that certain way only a percussive-techno-yodeling thing can be. Long after evening service has started and we’ve turned off the radio, I can hear Abel start laughing when I realize I’m still singing the damn song.

“What is that song?” I asked him today.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Some Mexican thing.”

I’m haunted by a percussive-techno-Mexican yodeling-thing. And I’m haunted by two things I read by Stanley Hauerwas yesterday as he reflected on the L’Arche community.

I believe L’Arche is the place where God has made it possible for Christians to be hope in a world where there is no solution. (55)

and

I have said that Christians are called to nonviolence not because we believe nonviolence is a strategy to rid the world of war – though we certainly want to rid the world of war. Rather, as faithful followers of Christ in a world at war, we cannot imagine being anything other than nonviolent. Of course we want to make war less likely. But nonviolence is a sign of hope that there is an alternative to war. And that alternative is called church. (55)

I love to sing harmony. As a result, I love gospel music. On Sundays after church, when I lived in Houston, my brother and I would race home from church so we could watch Gospel Jubillee. Those of you who follow this blog know how easily I can get caught up chasing Gaither Family Gathering video clips on YouTube. And it’s why I love bluegrass music: gospel music that needs a guitar.

So many of those old songs talk about heaven and they talk about how we belong there more than here.

this world is not my home I’m just a passing through
my treasure’s all laid up somewhere beyond the blue
the angels beckon me from heaven’s open door
and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore

I know these old songs grew out of times of hardship. And, as much as I love the harmonies, I have to wonder, in a world where there is no solution, why escape felt like the most hopeful choice. (I’ve worked on that last sentence for a good while now, trying not to sound harsh. I don’t feel harsh, I just don’t know another way to say it.) Whatever eternity looks like, I trust being in the unfiltered presence of God will be worth the trip and – not but – this world is my home and I think God expects more of me than to wish I were somewhere else, even if I sound good wishing it.

Wishing and hoping aren’t the same thing.

A world with no solution is a seedbed for violence. The reason I know that to be true is evidenced every time I have to call a customer service number and fight my way through all the “convenient” computer options until I finally get an actual human being on the phone who can’t actually help me. Violence is an easy choice for me in those situations because the voice on the other end is dismembered from any semblance of humanity and they can’t see me and I feel powerless so striking back, futile as it may be, is my all too familiar move.

Humaninzing the enemy is a lousy military strategy.

For all the resonance I found with Hauerwas’ statements, I shook my head and smiled when I read the last two sentences of the paragraph:

But nonviolence is a sign of hope that there is an alternative to war. And that alternative is called church.

“Stanley,” I thought, “you are one hell of a straight man. Don’t you realize the punch line (violent pun intended) you’re setting up?”

Yesterday at church I got to sing harmony with my friend, Donna May. Our song choice was also one written in difficult times, and one we felt had something to offer to our worship on the first Sunday in Lent and one where we were sharing Communion together.

let us pause in life’s pleasure and count its many tears
as we all sup sorrow with the poor
there’s a song that will linger forever in our ears
oh, hard times come again no more

it’s a song the cry of the weary
hard times hard times come again no more
many days you have lingered around our cabin door
oh, hard times come again no more

On this Sunday, we celebrated Communion by intinction, meaning folks came forward, took a piece of the bread, dipped it in the cup, and then ate both elements together. The practice took hold in American churches during the tuberculosis scare at the beginning of the last century. Churches didn’t want their members to be frightened to take Communion, so they found a way to allay their fears.

I couldn’t help but think , as I watched our little band of Pilgrims (that’s what we call ourselves at Pilgrim United Church of Christ) lined up for our meal together, how much we looked like one of those soup lines from the Depression Era photographs of people waiting for bread. In our sacred soup line stood some racked with grief so fresh they have a hard time sitting in worship, some with chronic pain, some with physical ailments, and a host of others whose injuries and heartache was not quite as apparent. And we stood in line with all the walking wounded of the faith who have come before us, and all those who will follow us, not because the Bread and the Cup offered a solution to the things we carry with us, but because we are not alone.

We are not alone.
We belong here.
We are in this together.

Humanizing one another is how peace is waged.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. -- I couldn’t resist this find: Mavis Staples singing “Hard Times.”

lenten journal: all I have to do

I heard a sermon on the wilderness this morning, as I’m sure many of you in churches that follow the Common Lectionary did as well. As Betty, one of our in care students preached, I began to hear a chorus in my mind that I learned as a child:

My Lord knows the way through the wilderness
All I have to do is follow . . .

I smiled at the memory, and then at the lyric: all I have to do. As though following comes easily, or without consequence.

While the other three gospels let their accounts of Jesus’ life unfold, Mark moves expeditiously. By the fifteenth verse of the first chapter, Jesus has been born, grown up, been baptized by John, and gone out into the wilderness. Read on a couple more verses and he’s called his disciples. By the end of the chapter, he’s already performed several healing miracles. So all Mark has to say about Jesus’ forty days in the desert is:

At once, this same Spirit pushed Jesus out into the wild. For forty wilderness days and nights he was tested by Satan. Wild animals were his companions, and angels took care of him. (The Message)

If his were the only gospel, we would have to lean heavily on our imagination. What made the Holy Spirit “push” Jesus into the desert? How did things change from a spiritual shove to temptation? What was it like for him to be attended to by angels and animals?

For me, the word wilderness – in church context – is connected to two big stories in Scripture. The first concerns the Israelites wandering in the wilderness for forty years after the Exodus; the second is the one we’re considering here. Though the latter telling leans into some of the symbolism of the first, it struck me this afternoon that we are talking about two very different things. Those fleeing Egypt were chasing a promise, but allowed themselves to get derailed because they became, as the King James called them, a “stiff-necked people.” The wilderness had not been on the itinerary in the initial planning. They were so blinded by their self-focus that they wandered around for forty years in Gaza.

In American terms, they spent four decades wandering around Rhode Island. When they finally got to Canaan, they were still whiny.

By Mark’s account, Jesus was in the wilderness almost from the start. He had to go out there to be baptized because that’s where John was. From there, he went farther out into the desert – pushed, impelled, sent, driven by the Spirit of God -- to a place we don’t know and he stayed. I wonder if he reflected back on these days when he told Nicodemus we don’t know where the Spirit is coming from or where it is going. Though Satan gets most of the press, Jesus was surrounded mostly by those who cared for him – the angels and animals. When he came back to town, he was truly on a mission from God.

The wilderness is an enduring theme in literature. Time and again, characters go out into nature to try and make sense of what is going on. It happens in almost every Shakespeare play. In The Scarlet Letter, Dimmesdale had to meet Hester and Pearl in the forest before he could come to terms with them and himself. The conflict builds in the city, moves out into the country to find some sort of resolution, and then comes back to town. But I see something different with Jesus. He was not merely tracing the path of his ancestors, or even reframing their experience. Neither is his time in the desert another example of a literary device. It happens at the beginning of the story. Not much has happened. For Jesus, the wilderness was not something to be escaped, as it was for the Israelites, nor was it simply a place to get a little “me” time. Even in Mark’s brief account, Jesus’ time in the wilderness doesn’t seem to be all that relaxing. He went there on purpose and he embraced the wilderness. And, it seems to me, he never let go.

Something I read yesterday came back as I thought about the wilderness this afternoon. Stanley Hauerwas quoted from the L’Arche charter:

L’Arche knows that it cannot welcome everyone who has a mental handicap. It seeks to offer not a solution, but a sign that a society to be fully human must be founded on welcoming the weak and the downtrodden.

Hauerwas then emphasizes:

Notice that L’Arche doesn’t pretend to be a solution. It is a sign of hope. And hope, of course, is the way time is shaped.

Hope doesn’t just take time; hope shapes time. I like that image.

One dictionary I found defined wilderness as, “Something characterized by bewildering vastness, perilousness, or unchecked profusion.” I read that sentence and I think all of life is wilderness: a bewildering vastness.

All I have to do is figure out how to do my job and be the husband I want to be and figure out how to cook for homeless people and go to deacons’ meeting and write letters for Amnesty and keep up with our Kiva loans and write my blog posts and maintain lifelong friendships over too many miles and walk our Schnauzers at night and pray for Darfur and Congo and Iraq and Afghanistan and try to keep up on the news and practice my guitar and read and sleep and lose weight and exercise take out the trash and love kindness and do justice and walk humbly with my God.

John, who gave us the account of Jesus telling Nicodemus that we could not know how the Spirit came and went, says of Jesus, as he prepared to wash the feet of his friends, “Knowing that he had come from God and was going to God,” he began to wash their feet. The trajectory of our journey is circular; we’re not going through the wilderness, we’re going from and to God, even as we live here in the bewildering vastness of both our world and our Creator.

Peace,
Milton