Month: April 2013

As I said in my first post, blogging is a new venture for me.  If there is an etiquette to blogging–to knowing what to write and who to share it with–I worry that I’m more likely to get my fingers crossed on the keyboard and offend you, my unassuming reader, than I am to say, “May I?” and, “Sorry.”  Maybe it’s dishonest on my part but this is, I suspect, why I’ve said so little about myself as the writer.

By day I’m a preacher.  I have a pulpit, a congregation of listeners, a business card with an address linking me to a church.  Now what I know, and what I’d like you to know I know, is that neither the pulpit nor the congregation nor the church are really mine.  They belong to God Almighty and to the world God is so desperately wanting to reach to heal.  That I get to stand in the pulpit, before the congregation, at the church, means I’m just playing my part willingly (sometimes not so willingly) in the healing process.  Preaching I find is dialogue.  It’s not nearly as one-way as it appears.  To the degree that it is dialogue I am (I’ll say it again),  just a player, a single player among many.  The best preachers are the ones who when you sit down to listen to them make you feel like you’re stepping into a world already in motion, and you’re being offered a seat on the grass.  So in the midst of the spinning you can rest, even lay back and close your eyes, provided you reopen them often enough to remember where you are and how you got there.  You’ve been invited.  God wants you to step onto the canvas, to lend your voice to the dialogue, to play your part in the healing process.

When I first set up this blog and filled out the section entitled “About the Writer,” I failed to mention that I am a son.  My mother, quite naturally of course, caught this omission.  Honestly, I didn’t mean to not say I am a son.  It was just a given to me.  I mean, everyone is either a son or daughter.  I just figured that what needed to be spelled out is who I am beyond this.  What my mom reminded me of though is that without first being a son, I am nothing else.  This is a powerful realization that cuts two ways.  Some people grow up as sons and daughters without moms and dads.  Maybe mom and dad were lost to them or mom and dad wanted to be lost to them.  Either way you are still a son or daughter.  In my case, my parents had me and gratefully kept and raised me.  That I am a son is a powerful given.  That my mother wants to make sure I claim this before the world is even more powerful, not because it’s a given to me that I am a son, but because it’s a given to my mother that I am her son.  She invited me into this world if you will.  She wants me here.

There is a story about a young girl who was dying.  Her father runs to find her a healer, someone who can rescue her life.  On their way to where the little girl is, the father finds out that his daughter has died.  But the healer says, “Do not worry.  She is only asleep.” Whether she was asleep or had in fact died we never find out.  If we take the Healer at his word, it’s a given that she’s only asleep.  But the story ends with the Healer taking only the girl’s parents and those we are told who were “with him” and they go in to get the girl up.  I’ve always wondered why everyone else gets left outside while all the magic is happening inside.  Couldn’t we all stand to see a bit of miracle?  I don’t wonder if it happens this way because the Healer knows that most people, after seeing the girl sitting up at the breakfast table eating again, will still be trying to figure out which one it was: sleepiness or deadness.  And when she grows up to get a job, and she gets a business card with a title on it, or she becomes a mom herself, the world won’t see her for any of it.  But to mom and dad it won’t matter either way.  That she’s their daughter is a given, and that will be enough.

So under the section, “About the Writer,” where I list ten or so things about myself, I’ve made sure now to say, I’m a son.

The idea of starting a blog came to me over a year ago.  I like to write, but somehow that didn’t feel like good enough reason to blog.  Somewhere someone has said, “Write only what matters.”  Well, I’m not sure that will be the case for me and my blog.  I better settle for hoping that what I write will matter.  But even if I fail there, I can say that writing matters.  Sharing matters.  This blog is likely to be a mishmash, a melting pot, a deranged clump.  It might get read by the people I share a house with, or a church with, or a town with, or those I call family, or colleague, or foe.  No doubt all these and more will inspire and shape what I put down here.  Again, sharing matters, and I’m grateful for those who have shared with me.

Like many across our country and world, I’ve been tuned into the recent bombing devastations in Boston, Massachusetts.  I actually get to call Boston and its towns to the south home, and so, like many, I can say that the events of this week have been more than just a news reel.  They have felt personal on some level.  But I’ve been trying to sort out what that means to call it all personal.  Some speak of the terror itself as personal, and we want, with all our might, to see those who have caused us injury, injured.  We want those who have shut down our bus lines and driven us indoors behind locked doors, to be shut up and driven away forever, maybe even to the grave.  For others there is the personal loss of safety, of not knowing if, when, where something like this could happen again.  I no longer live in the Boston area and so that kind of personal-ism doesn’t feel so personal to me.  Of course, there is the personal tragedy of losing a loved one, or not knowing if a loved one will be lost still.

In the church, where just about everyone might turn today, it’s Easter.  Not too many people catch that.  “Easter was a day three weeks ago,” we say.  Fortunately though, Easter is a season.  As a season it’s not over when all the candy has been eaten or the leftover ham is gone.  It’s not even over when the final verse of the Easter hymn is sung and Jesus himself is pronounced alive again.  Seasons mean that whatever got us there in the first place will come again.  Death will come again.  Not even resurrection lasts forever.  As a season Easter also means though that when death does come again, it won’t get to last either.  If Easter is a single moment in a single day belonging to a single person, say Jesus, then we might do well to see how Jesus handles his moment in time.  He doesn’t keep it to himself.  He finds everyone who is anyone who has experienced death lately and he breathes on them, which is to say, he gets close enough to let them see, feel, and even smell what new life is like.  That we all might remember we’re still alive.

I’ve named my blog, PleaseGrace, remembering that grace is for the giving and the taking.  There will always be a want for justice, for payback.  But before we reach for these we might first remember those who shared grace with us when we said, please, and maybe even when we didn’t.

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O Lord, we are the doubters.  Overcome with sorrow, not believing that anyone can really move past the betrayal of friends and the denial of loved ones, we are the doubters.  O God, come among us, breathe peace into our doubt.

O Lord, we are the hurting.  Our lives are shattered by the pain of death, by the anxiety of having more needs than we can possibly fill ourselves.  We are anxious for hope.  We are the hurting.  O God, come among us, breathe peace into our hurt.

O Lord, we are the fearful.  Our world is ruined by a thousand wars producing thousands of hungry, homeless mouths and leaving a thousand more hearts without care.  We have underestimated or perhaps taken advantage of our powers.  Can anyone set it right for us again?  We are the fearful.  O God, come among us, breathe peace into our fear.

O Lord, we are the.  I don’t know, what are we Lord?  We are the ones who go by so many names.  We have grown so familiar with ourselves and the way things are that we hardly know what to call ourselves or what to do with ourselves.  We sit locked behind closed doors, closed hearts, closed minds, and for all of this our hands are closed too.  O Lord, who are we?  We are the ones you died and rose to save.  We are the ones you’ve come to, to say, “Peace be with you.”  We are the ones who are sent out in hope and faith to overcome the world with love and renewal.  O Lord, come among us, that we might never be alone.  Breathe your life upon us that we might walk in the spirit of Jesus always, for who we are is your people.  Amen.