The Womb of God

One of my favorite biblical authors is Abraham Heschel who, in 1962, wrote the definitive book on the prophets, called The Prophets. He described the time period around 400-500 B.C. when some of the great Old Testament prophets had begun to write and speak in alarming, revolutionary, and largely unlistened-to ways (I’m going to paraphrase just a little, because his words can be difficult at times):

Heschel wrote of that time- “Religion had declined not because it had been successfully argued against, but because it had become irrelevant, dull, oppressive, uninteresting. When faith is replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crises of today are ignored because of the remembered splendor of the past; when faith becomes an inherited heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority and rules rather than the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.”

Part of my personality- my vision of the world, the universe, God, and all things and beings contained therein- is summarized in that statement. I listen to and read other preachers, so many other Christian teachers and thinkers, and I end up feeling lonely sometimes, embarrassed even because what I see and believe seems so different from what I hear being proclaimed as God’s Truth, God’s Word by almost everyone else, including many of my own denominational colleagues. And that sometimes leads to a kind of situational depression on my part. I wonder if I am wrong, and if I am even being fair in sharing some of my deepest insights and doubts and wonderings with you because they so often seem to run counter to what is considered orthodox and traditional in Christian thinking and doctrine.

That is this preacher’s burden. Robbie, primarily, and some others of you catch the brunt of that odd depression from time to time, maybe too often. But I hope all of you also hear and feel- underlying that confusion and what is a very real sadness at times- I hope you also hear a real hopefulness on my part. I don’t believe Jesus intended to lead us in circles around and around in 2000 year old cultural realities and perceptions. In fact, I think that following Jesus is God’s way of leading all people, in all times, out of the Bronze Age that religion had irrelevantly, dully, oppressively, and uninterestingly become stuck in, and into an always-being-made-new Creation.

~~

I sit by the ocean watching the waves in early morning moonlight and think about these things. I walk beside the evening’s incoming tide, watching the records of that Creation in the scampering of sandpipers and the 200 million year old ballet of pelicans. I stand on Carolinian sand dunes blown into existence by winds which blew across the continents of Africa and South America long before there was a human present to scratch boundaries of ownership across them. Around me are pairs of ragged claws, as T.S. Eliot called them, crabs scuttling in and out of their ancient habitats, in and out of holes dug among the tangle of vines, the cacti, the wildflowers, and the swaying salt marsh grasses.

One morning, as I am making what is for me a jaw-dropping discovery that the horizon is not a perfectly straight line, but a series of barely discernible ups and downs of tidal risings and forming waves, like letters, words, and sentences- a kind of oceanic story being written in circles around the globe, and on that morning that story is punctuated a mile offshore with two large spouts of water. A whale.

That same morning, a little later, dolphins- 3 of them- appear near my son and daughter and others, ten yards away, jumping from the water in perfect, almost friendly formation. Then, later that same day, two sharks- small ones- appear just beside the shore, gulping the small fish caught in a temporary lagoon caused by receding tides. Those who are swimming leave the water quickly, but are unable to stop watching this scene, an unchanging scene, a wild and eternal scene older even than the time of dinosaurs.

I watch episodes like these shoulder-deep in the water, or from my sandy seat atop a dune, or hunkered down beside the water’s edges where waves born in the meeting of Caribbean currents and sub-Saharan winds are wetting my feet as my toes curl into the million and millions of tiny worn shards of ancient shellfish, now grains of sand. Other shells lie all around me, saltwater shelters abandoned by ten thousands of mollusks and crabs, shells which one day, wave after wave after wave away, will also be pummeled into the granular debris of other beaches, other shores.

I am caught up again and again in the transcendence of moments and minutes, of time and eternities. All that is around me on this shore- on any shore, and on beyond these shores to the mountains far behind me and the plains and rivers and lakes and fields beyond; all that is around me, beside and behind me, over me and under me, from the verdant green of every flower, to the forests of trees beyond them in the Great Smoky mountains, from those creatures in the seas which are too small to be seen, to sharks and whales, to crabs and the pelicans, the gulls and sandpipers, to each and every animal that burrows, flies, swims, crawls, slithers, or hunkers down near the waves watching it all- all of it, all of them, emerged in their primary, first forms from the ocean. Life- all life- has been born in these salty wet depths. All life has surged upward and outward and forward from this womb of God, this birthplace of an always new Creation.

Above me, and I cannot look elsewhere now, the morning sun is rising between scattered gray, yellow, and white clouds moving from east to west in massive air currents I cannot feel, but only see. Clouds formed by the endless evaporation of water from the ocean’s surface in response to the 10 billion year old sun’s invitation to rise toward its light and warmth. Clouds which, when laden with the many tons of hydrogen and oxygen atoms formed into molecules of water, attracting each other, joining together and spilling in heavier-than-air raindrops on the lands over which they pass. Gentle spring rains or summertime deluges, the ocean pours through them onto lands beyond, where the grasses absorb them and grow. And then the oceans are eaten in their now green and leafy incarnations by cows. And dairy farmers gather the now milky white drops of the ocean together into pasteurization vats and stainless steel tank trucks, some of which, not far away, will be made into ice cream.

Lick the ice cream and savor the ocean’s journey onto your lips. Taste the ocean’s always new and endless Creation on your tongue. We are a part of it. It is a part of us. The boundaries of difference among living things are blurred and obscured by the commonalities of our origins. Our own saltwatery blood pulses in rhythms begun by the oceans and the moon in gravitational, tidal dances, and I am overcome, again. I put my earphones on and listen to the Leonard Cohen song “Hallelujah” as I watch and wonder in gratitude and humility and I raise my arms in the same form in which I earlier saw the whale’s spouts, and I listen, and I try to sing, because I must. I must.

It goes like this

The fourth, the fifth

The minor fall, the major lift

The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

When I come back up to the house and onto the porch my son and his girlfriend are sitting there drinking coffee and Joshua asks me, with a tinge of worry, I can tell- “Daddy, what in the heck were you doing down there?” (I didn’t think anybody would be out of bed yet!) “What in the heck were you doing down there with your arms in the air?”

And I tell him, “Becoming sane.”

~~

Psalm 24:

1 The earth is the LORD's, and the fullness thereof, and all who live in it;

2 for he founded it upon the seas
and established it upon the waters.

I need those words. I need those words to wash over the curse of my own jabbering ego; I need those words to clean and scour the false priorities I schedule for myself constantly. I need those words, in waves crashing against my pride, I need those words to remind me that, at the bottom of everything I am nothing, but that me and you and every living thing are a part of the whole of everything. We are the intricately, intimately related parts of the earth’s fullness thereof. And we are loved very, very, very, very, very, very, very much.

Matthew 5 from ‘the Message’, verse 3: "You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

4"You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.

5"You're blessed when you're content with just who you are—no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought.

6"You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat.

7"You're blessed when you care. At the moment of being 'care-full,' you find yourselves cared for.

8"You're blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.

Here’s the truth the ocean was drowning me in that morning, and during those days there. Here’s what I can see so much more clearly now- what Jesus is able to lead me, and all of us toward, if we are following him.

Continuing in Matthew 5, verse 13: "David, Let me tell you why you are here. (No, my name is not really there. But there’s a white space there- insert your own name in it!) David, let me tell you why you are here. (Do it, let Jesus talk to you here) David, ___, ___, ___, ___, ___, let me tell you why you are here. You're here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You've lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage.

Verses14-16: "Here's another way to put it: You're here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We're going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don't think I'm going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I'm putting you on a light stand. Now that I've put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you'll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.

So, I cannot be quiet. I dare not be quiet. If I feel the saltwater kiss of God on my lips, what else can I do but share that caress in these ways available to me, with you? I must continue to shout that I can learn almost as much about God from a wildflower field as I can from the first chapter of John. I must admit without embarrassment that I learn as much about the active presence of Jesus in a roomful of sentenced-to-life convicts as I do from the letters of Paul.

And I must stop being ashamed or otherwise discombobulated, when I tell you or others, or even admit to myself that an hour beside the ocean, lost in the eternal mysteries of blue-green waters tinged with golden sunlight, is better than any sermon, any day. Even this one.

So, on a gray Friday morning a week ago, August 15, the day after Sarah and Travis’ wedding, I got up, almost as usual before everyone else, walked down the catwalk across the dunes, sat on the last step, and wrote what follows. I didn’t know then if I would ever share it with anyone. Having read these words of Jesus just now, though, I know that I must:

Abba, Father..

Through the smallness of my words, I cannot explain to anyone, least of all to myself, who or what you are.

Through the inadequacies of language and grammar, whatever I write leaves so much unwritten that it might be better to tear this blank page into a thousand pieces, lift them to the wind and, as they are blown across the beach say “There, there is God.”

But if I don’t write something, right now, I might cease to breathe.

I know that Genesis says humans were created in the image of God, but I think we have done a much better job of recreating God in our own image. I would rather watch the image of God I see in these pelicans, or in these scampering sandpipers, than think about the image of God which fueled the hundreds of slave ships which crossed these waters in front of me.

My heart soars as I watch the image of God in this rising sun, and know what the ancient biblical writers could not have known: that this is one of a trillion sun-stars, and a fairly minor sized one at that. I see God better in the golden explosion of these early morning, sun-reflecting clouds better- infinitely better- than I do when I read the church-blessed history of the “godly” men who came to these shores 400 years ago with ships full of guns, germs, and plans to baptize and bless the “savages” who had lived here 6000 years on land they called “Father” near the waters they called “Mother.”

My heart aches as I think about the Japanese trawlers chasing down with high powered, 21^st century harpoons the whale I saw yesterday, because a Japanese god wants whale oil burning in his temples. And my heart breaks when I think of the creature-killing weapons-testing happening beneath these waters because an American god says “My country, right or wrong, my country.”

It is the man-created images of God which infect my soul, not this billions year old image in front of me! The truest maps of creation are written on the backs of these seabirds, and in the God-writ words on the horizon. I can taste God here in the spray of saltwater. I can hear God in the symphonies of the sun and moon and the harmonies of the ceaseless waves. I can see God in paths of crabs and the nests of sea turtles. And I can touch God here, simply by lifting my hands.

Hallelujah!

No Beginnings, No Endings: God

John 1: 1-5 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

The Greek word which was translated as The Word in this well-known passage from the gospel of John is Logos: In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God. The Greeks understood Logos to be the underlying grid, the foundations from which everything came into being. They did not know about or understand specifically what those foundations were- there were no Periodic Charts of the Elements in existence yet; Einstein’s theories of gravity and relationship in the universe were still 3000 years away. So they used a general term for the God, or gods- the forces behind everything, that caused everything to be.

John gave the Logos, the Word, a name. He identified Jesus as the underlying everything, the foundation of all that was, is, and will be: “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” And he then, even more specifically, identified what it was that had come into being through Jesus- Life! “And Life was the Light of all people.”

Nothing that John has just written about Jesus would have contradicted a single Greek notion about Logos. In this way, John was cleverly associating Jesus, a brand new person who was being introduced to the world, with Logos, an ancient concept already understood by most of the Mediterranean world.

Logos is eternal. Light is always moving outward. And Life goes on. Jesus, John says, is all of those things: an eternal Light, who is the author and sustainer of Life.

Today is the next to the last day of 2007- December 30, 2007: two days before January 1, 2008. A calendar year is ending as a new calendar is about to begin. Today is last Sunday of 2007. Next Sunday will be the first Sunday of 2008. It is now 11:40 a.m. Almost noon- the end of morning, the beginning of the afternoon- halfway through the day.

Let’s do something here for a little while. Let’s put aside all of these artificial, humanly- designed ways of chopping up time into comprehensible little chunks and try for a little while to think, not about time, but about eternity. Let’s try- and that’s all we can do- but let’s try to think not about beginnings and endings, but about the Logos, the Word of God, Light, and Life.

Here’s where we start:

*tear up a 2008 calendar*

*smash a watch*

There are no more days, minutes, months, hours, years, seconds, or even eras or decades. There is Light and there is Life. And there is God, before and after all of it. What we have thought of as beginning has always been. And what we think will be ending, will always be.

Now, before you think I have lost my mind in abstract thinking, let me read to you one of my favorite verses in the New Testament, from Revelation 22, verses 1 and 2. An angel shows John a vision of what Life- God life, eternal Life- is really like. And it is not about calendars and minute hands. Here’s what John sees:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Life is like water in a river, flowing from the throne of God through the very center of the city. We can name a river, we can even draw it on a map, but we can never see the same river twice. A river is always changing. The water moving in front of us is not the same water that moved by us yesterday or even two seconds ago. Sneeze, focus again, and there is yet another new river to behold, and there, there, there another and another and another. Even the banks of the river are slowly, all the time, changing. Maps of rivers always need redrawn; banks wash away, the river changes course, lakes are formed, and silt from upriver creates new obstacles and courses.

No one looks at a river today and feels sad because it is not the same water that was there yesterday. In fact, something wonderful is happening that should cause us from feeling anything but sad. Much of the water that ran by us yesterday in the river is now gathering about us in the form of clouds- evaporated water. Somewhere downwind, that evaporated river water will be heavy enough to begin to fall down from the sky and it will rain on a field, where dairy cows will eat the grass the rain is absorbed into. The cows will produce milk. The milk will be hauled to the creamery and some of it will be made into ice cream.

We can stand by the river today, in other words, and enjoy the rivers of yesterday on our tongues. Vanilla, strawberry, butter pecan- the yesterday river is still alive, not only giving us Life, but enhancing our Life.

Where did the ice cream begin? In fact, it has always been. Ever since the crashing of hydrogen clouds 13 billion years ago against the hot gases of a dying star, the water has always been present. And whether it is an ocean, a river, a cloud, rain, grass, milk, or ice cream, it always will be.

As we are part of that river of life, flowing from the throne room of God, we can also see ourselves- or, at least, begin to see ourselves- in an eternal context too. Our lives are no more static than the river itself. Who we are today is not at all who we were yesterday. I look at a picture of myself when I was 16 years old: is that me? In calendar language, in the language of social security numbers and permanent records- that’s me, yes. But I look at this and see only part of who I am today. There are eight more years of school, a wife; three kids who wear carry part of my heart around with them all the time. There are sad years in there that I don’t even want to think about, but have to. There have been about 5000 times of laughing so hard I could barely breathe! I’ve lived in 13 different homes, in 8 different towns in 2 other states since then. I’ve cried over the deaths of people I’ve loved that I didn’t even know then, back then when death was still so abstract and far away as to seem impossible. I have voted for both George McGovern and for Ronald Reagan. There were years in there where I despised the very idea of God, and I’m just about ready to finish off paying for 10 years of seminary debt caused by falling in with love God. Am I looking at me in this picture? Or am I looking at someone who is still swimming, and will be swimming for eternity, in the river of life?

And it’s a river, a blessed river without beginning and without end, that we are all a part of. It flows from God and runs directly under the Tree of Life..that’s what John saw! A tree that bears twelve seasons of fruit..life-giving sustenance, fruit to nourish the body and the soul, food to feed the mind and the heart. We are being produced, made better and better by this tree, this tree of life that grows over the river of God. A tree, the leaves of which are for the healing of the nations..

What could this tree of Life be that John is seeing? What is it, who is it, that produces fruit that both nourishes and heals? Who is it, that told his disciples he was the yesterday, today, and forever, and would never leave them or forsake them and who went ahead of them to prepare a room for them in his father’s home, and who is the only beginning and the only end of all things?

It is the tree that gives Light, and the Light that gives Life. It is Jesus, the author, and the finisher of our faith. He is the colors in which we are being painted; he is the music which allows us to sing. His are the leaves which flow in the river with us, into the bays, into the oceans of the world..we are his and he is ours..

Therefore, what I am saying this morning is this: The calendars and wristwatches of our lives are not what our lives are about. We are not a mere series of actions leading to some future event. We are here now, in these moments, part of an ever-changing, always different river of Life. The leaves that are dropping around us from the Tree of Life are not the same leaves that fell yesterday, or the same ones that will fall tomorrow. The messages of God for us right now should not be missed because we are focused on appointment next week, or an anniversary next year. The colors and sounds of today are unique, blessed, and special. This part of the river will never be the same again. Jesus was..is..the Logos, the Word that brought Light and Life to the world. As followers of Jesus, as those passing this moment beneath his Tree of life, we are a part now, too, of the beginnings of everything from this minute forward. Each of us, no more, no less than anyone else, or anything else, are parts- vital parts of the Great Story of this day which will remain forever as chapters in the Great Stories of eternity.

We are part of the flow that began in the throneroom of God, and which now flows into the unending reaches of the universe. The Tree of Life gives us comfort and shade, and the leaves of the Tree of Life give us meaning. All of them are important. And everything from this moment onward is dependent on our being awake to them.

e.e. cummings, one of the great American poets of the last century, is a part of those leaves dropping around each of us right now. I think these words about God are as important as John’s. Catch hold of them, right now, as we pass by in this part of God’s river:

i am a little church (no great cathedral)

i am a little church(no great cathedral) far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities -i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest, i am not sorry when sun and rain make april my life is the life of the reaper and the sower; my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving (finding and losing and laughing and crying)children whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness around me surges a miracle of unceasing birth and glory and death and resurrection: over my sleeping self float flaming symbols of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains i am a little church(far from the frantic world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature -i do not worry if longer nights grow longest; i am not sorry when silence becomes singing winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to merciful Him Whose only now is forever: standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence (welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness) Amen (With thanks to e.e.cummings and Thich Nhat Hahn)

Christmas Eve, 2007

We step into Christmas Eve with some trepidation. It’s kind of a time machine in which many of the Christmas times of the past are telescoped into the present and we are looking backwards as often on a day like this as much as we are looking around and forward.

For some this year, there is the question of what to do with that empty chair at the table- the one where he always sat, or from where she said the grace last year. For others, it may feel to them like they’re peeping toms, standing on their tiptoes looking through the windows of others at how they hoped life might have been, but never really was. And for some there is the difficult wondering that never stops but which seems to peak especially sharply this time of year: Where is she now? Is he happy? Do they remember me? Is everything OK there?

Our thoughts return home on Christmas Eve, and for many that’s a blessing but for many it is only a vague and fuzzy concept that derives more from the The Walton’s Christmas Special or a Hallmark television drama, than from warm recollections of their own. They might remember how good the pie was at Aunt Nettie’s house, but then there was the drive home that night and that terrible fight in the kitchen that seemed to go on and on.

The money is being squeezed to the choking point, and some are sitting here right now remembering the one thing they meant to do and did not get done or the two or three things, and you don’t have to be sitting to feel that kind of pressure, either. You can be standing right here and feel it, too.

Outside of here, far away in geographical distances but about a half inch away emotionally for some, there are wars and rumors of wars. We all have triangle folded flags poking at our fears or our memories and we’ll just have to put off thinking about that lab report, or that grade report, or the job performance review, and the letter from the IRS, the VA, and the mortgage company..tomorrow, or the next day.

Time telescopes from the past to the present and it feels like tomorrow may never be as bright as we want it to be or remember it being.

None of us faces this dilemma, this tension, alone however. We all share it: the tallest among us, the shortest among us; male, female, the nationality, the race, even the economic condition doesn’t really matter. We are all in the same little boat, crossing an ocean of life that is sometimes stormy, sometimes downright frightening. We are making our ways the best ways we can, the best ways we know how, but there is, with all humans, the deep feeling that there must be, has to be, something more.

There is something else we want, something we share with every other person, every other living being. Rumi, the 13^th century poet, called it “The Kiss”- the Kiss we want:

There is some kiss we want with

our whole lives, the touch of

spirit on the body. Seawater

begs the pearl to break its shell.

And the lily, how passionately

it needs some wild darling!

The Kiss we want..like a mother’s kiss that will fix it where we hurt ourselves. But more.

Like the touch of someone we love..the assurance that we are not alone. But more.

Like the embrace of father, who tells us everything will be all right. But more, even more than that.

The kiss we want, I believe, is precisely the reason we have gathered together this evening. No matter how we came here, as families, as individuals, because Mom said you had to be here or because there is no other place you could imagine being on Christmas Eve.. what we have gathered here for this night is to remember and receive, again, the Kiss we want, the kiss we have longed for, the kiss of God on all humanity.

That is who Jesus is. That is precisely the reason, I maintain, for his birth. There are theological, philosophical, and historical explanations for Jesus, God’s Word made flesh and dwelling among us..thousands of books full of those commentaries, definitions, and explanations. We can study them for a lifetime!

Or, we can accept the Kiss. Jesus- the Kiss of God for all of humanity- past, present, and future. And Jesus, the Kiss of God on the cheek of each person here as well. That’s what this baby was.

Jesus was the affirmation of what God said when he formed the world and said, “That’s good.”

Kiss. It still is.

Jesus was the assurance from God that we are not alone, never alone.

Kiss. He is with us now.

Jesus was God’s whisper, the whisper of a Daddy, that everything will, really will, be all right.

Kiss. It is what we have longed for. It is what we want.

God’s gift for all of humanity, for me, for you, was not an esoteric text. It was not a sacred relic to be worn around the neck or a place to make a pilgrimage to. It was not faraway, difficult to grasp, or hard to understand. It wasn’t a set of rules, there was nothing to memorize or agonize over.

God’s gift was a touch, his flesh to our own. His love co-mingled with ours in the manger of a new creation. His trust that we would embrace his son as he had embraced us.

“Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."

A sign to the shepherds, to you, to me, to everyone who would look past themselves and into the face of God himself- one of us. A sign for all the world of peace that is possible, joy that is real, and hope that is always present. A sign of Light, understanding and trust, first in the darkness of a stable, but radiating outward through time into the dark corners of our own fears.

A sign to the shepherds, to you, to me..the kiss that we want. The kiss we have longed for.

“Unto us a son is born, unto us a child is given.”

Lean down now, against the soft cheek of a baby, lean down now and receive the kiss of our Savior.

Let us pray:

Into our lives, God, you have been born. Into our hearts, Father, you have been given. On this night that we remember the gift of yourself to a world that needs you, we acknowledge and are thankful for your love for us, for each of us. May others experience through us, the manger of new beginnings. May we, too, be ready always to share the kiss we have been given, with all of Creation.

(with thanks to Rumi, Barbara Brown Taylor, and Walter Bruegemann)