Lenten Reflection 3/22

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis speaks outside Mahalia Jackson Elementary School in Chicago about the planned closing of 54 public schools. Opponents say the plan will disproportionately affect minority students in the nation's third-largest school district.  (photo from NPR.org)

Chicago public schools will have a one billion dollar deficit next year.  Because many of the city's school buildings are half empty, Mayor Rahm Emmanuel has proposed closing 54-60 schools to consolidate resources.  "There's no question about the economics here. Maintaining half-empty, century-old buildings doesn't make sense for cash-strapped cities and states," says Timothy Knowles, the head of the University of Chicago's Urban Education Institute.

But a lot of people are not happy with this suggestion.  A number of teachers and school workers will lose jobs.  And parents fear that consolidating schools means that their children will have to travel further to get to school, sometimes through dangerous neighborhoods.  This was a very difficult stand for the mayor to take because anyone can see it would create a ton of push back.  And the push back has been strong.  NPR aired a clip of a Rev. Paul Jaques proclaiming, "If any child's life is lost, the blood of that child in on the hands of Mayor Rahm Emmanuel!"  

And I thought, "Man, I would not want to be the mayor."  Or the president.  Or a CEO.  Imagine having to make big and tough decisions that you know people are going to hate.  But then again, anyone in any kind of leadership position puts themselves in the cross hairs in one way or another.

But being called to be a disciple of Jesus is also a call into leadership.  We're called to go out and be active in sharing God's healing love.  We're not passive consumers of God's love, but active leaders in the Gospel, going out as active sharers of God's love.  We're called to take stands and stand up for them.  We're called to proclaim things like Jeremiah did - things that people might rather not hear sometimes.  We're called to do things others might avoid doing, whether that's reaching out to the poor, making ourselves last, or even following Jesus to Jerusalem and the cross.  Maybe that's why people are so often content just to show up on Sunday morning every now and then, sit in the pew for an hour and say they're Christians.  Actually going out into the world to build the Kingdom of God is a whole lot more responsibility and opens us up to all kinds of opposition and push back, just as it did for Jesus.

In his letter to the Romans, Paul says, "Make sure you stay alert to these qualities of gentle kindness and ruthless severity that exist side by side in God."  I'll admit that I really want God to be a gentle gardener in my life.  I don't want to be pruned!  I don't want to be stretched and refined and molded, necessarily.  I'd just rather do my own thing and have God be delighted with me.

God does tend me like a gentle gardener, but God also prunes me to within an inch of my life sometimes to encourage better growth in me.  I go through plenty of challenging and painful experiences that make me into a better, more mature Christian.  We used to call those experiences "AFGE's" in seminary ("oh, yeah, it's just another f..ing growth experience, we'd say.")  God knows best when its time to leave me be and when it's time to challenge, prune and grow me.  God is the one who knows best when the time is right to draw lines, make strong boundaries and take a stand.  That's much harder for you and me - and for CEO's and mayors and human leaders of every kind.  It's really hard to discern where to draw lines and boundaries in life and take stands.  But that is what leaders are called to do.

Some fundamentalist or conservative leaders draw their faith lines in very different places that I draw mine.  One mayor might draw the line in a different spot than another mayor would.  Sometimes leaders make the wrong call.  Sometimes maybe we get it right.  I take heart that God can redeem whatever we do in the long run.  We don't have the big picture and can only do our best.

But I guess today I'd say, after sitting with Paul's words this morning, that doing my best means staying very close to God.  Paul points out that we need to always remember that God is the taproot of our lives.  Whenever we are called to express leadership, it needs to be done out of the root in which we are most deeply grounded - remembering that "we aren't feeding the root; the root is feeding us."  God is the root out of which all positive, healthy and truly fruitful growth comes.  As Paul says, "Don't get cocky and strut your branch.  Be humbly mindful of the root that keeps you lithe and green."

The years of experience I have in the ministry give me increasing confidence to create boundaries and take stands as a leader.  But the more confidence I get, the more I need to remember that my confidence is not in myself, but in God.  God is the one who has given me all my life experiences and has nurtured and pruned me into who I am becoming - who I am called to be.  If I begin to believe it's my own call, it won't be long until I find myself pruned deadwood.

As I complete this practice of daily Lenten blogging for 2013, (which by the way has been a wonderful and prayerful experience for me) I think Paul's words to the Romans tomorrow are a really good place to conclude:

Everything comes from him;
Everything happens through him;
Everything ends up in him.
Always glory! Always praise!
Yes. Yes. Yes. 

Today's readings:  Jer. 29:1,4-13; Rom. 11:13-24; John 11:1-27
Saturday's readings:   Jer. 31:27-34; Rom. 11:25-36; John 11:28-44

Elsa has been praying the news and the daily readings and blogging her thoughts on each of the weekdays of Lent.  This is her last in this series.  She has been using The Message translation this year.

You're invited to come walk the walk of Holy Week at Grace Church this year.  It begins this Sunday, which is Palm Sunday.  Visit www.gracetrumbull.org for details and service times.

Lenten Reflection 3/21

 

MSNBC's website has a story today about a straight A student in Los Angeles - a girl only 14 years old and in the 8th grade - died of inhaling computer dusting spray.  She'd taped her nostrils shut and was huffing the spray in her bed after school.  The story reports that there has been an increase in inhalant abuse among teens lately.  This girl's parents say they believe this was the first time the girl had tried it, but it is clear that they had very little knowledge of inhalant use, and seem unaware of how kids her daughter's age know all about it - including details about which inhalants leave a better aftertaste, which give the best high, etc.  "I am positive my daughter did not realize that this had the potential to kill her," the mother said.  My stomach lurched reading this story.  Finding your daughter dead in bed with a can in her mouth would be probably my worst nightmare.  I cannot imagine how those parents feel.

The story says that 1 in 4 teens report having tried inhaling something before the 8th grade.  This statistic stuns me.  I think about the headache I get and how ill I feel around paint fumes and the idea of intentionally inhaling a lot of fumes literally doesn't compute for me.   I have a hard time believing that any kid is unaware that huffing chemicals is really, really dangerous, poisonous and potentially lethal.  I wonder if perhaps the danger of the activity actually has something to do with its appeal.  These parents, according to the report, did "all the right things."  They had no guns in the house.  Prescriptions medicines were under lock and key.  There was no alcohol in their home.  Clearly these parents understood that substance abuse is epidemic among kids and they felt they needed to take precautions against it.  It sounds to me like substance abuse had been talked about in that home.  It is certainly talked about in the schools.  There are public announcements on TV and computer.  Everyone who's ever heard of it knows that huffing can be deadly.  But someone who wants to get high will find a way to get high, whether that's with vodka or drugs, cough medicine or computer cleaner. 

The gospel today explores actions and words.  Jesus was a congruent figure whose words and actions matched.  None of us can claim that kind of congruency in our lives.  We do things that are not in line with what we say.  We say things that are not in line with what we do.  We go ahead and do things we say we don't or wouldn't do.  Jesus' message to the Pharisees is that his life is congruent with God.  All his words and all his actions are only what he receives from God, who he calls his Papa.  "He is in me; I am in him."

There are so many things in this world that are not congruent.  Finding your honor student daughter dead in bed from substance abuse is not congruent.  Choosing to huff computer cleaner even though you know it's dangerous is not congruent.   Judging that family or that child for this simply horrible incident is also not congruent, because there but by the grace of God, go I.

In all things, this is what we most need.  The grace of God.  The grace to hear the shepherd's voice and not to reject it, but follow it.


Today's readings: Jer. 26:1-16; Rom. 11:1-12; John 10:19-42
Elsa is praying the daily readings and praying the news and blogging about it on the weekdays of Lent.

She is reading The Message translation this year.

Lenten Reflection 3/20

 

The New York Times online has short videos on top stories, and today there's a story about a subway worker on the large 2nd Avenue subway line project who got caught 100 feet under the streets of New York in some freezing cold muck that drew him down like quicksand with such a powerful suction that simply pulling him out would seriously injure him.  Rescue teams went to great lengths, some of whom became stuck themselves, to get the man free.  The video shows pictures of him emerging from the deep, dark hole, limp and dirty, in the arms of his rescuers. 

The words of John Newton's well known hymn come to mind: "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, to save a wretch like me."  There are so many stories in life about being lost and then found.  Being trapped and then freed.  Of going wrong and then turning around right.  Of dying and then discovering new life.  There are many ways to illustrate God's deliverance.  Even today - the first day of spring - is a wonderful yearly illustration of how new life always comes around again.

I can tell you, if I were sucked into dirty, deadly, freezing muck 100 feet below ground, further trapped, as that man was, by a piece of plywood that had fallen in the muck with me, I know I would been screaming out, "Help, God!"  If the ordeal were to go on for hours and hours, as it did for him, I would be crying, wimpering, sobbing "Help, God!" over and over.  Thank God that on this first day of spring the rescue workers were able to bring him back above ground alive.  The story could have had a much different ending if the man had gone face under instead of being kept above water by his rescuers for all that time.  Sometimes stories like this don't have such a happy ending.

But Paul assures his readers in Rome, "Everyone who calls, 'Help, God!' gets help."

I had a discussion with a young Pentecostal man recently who is going through a very challenging time in life.  Believe me when I say that his is not a happy ending story, not in near sight, anyway.  Yet, despite this, he is trusting God, heart and soul as he takes it one day at a time.  And I was really moved when he told me that he feels Jesus helping him through all this, even though progress seems painfully slow.  He said, "I just keep praying for help all the time.  Because, you know, I haven't seen one story anywhere in the Bible in which someone asks Jesus for help and he turns them away and says no, I can't help you buddy.  I know that if I'm asking for help, I'm already getting help.  I've got to trust that I'm saved."

"No one who trusts God like this - heart and soul - will ever regret it," Paul writes.  "Everyone who calls, 'Help, God!' gets help."


Today's readings: Jer. 24:1-10; Rom. 9:19-33; John 9:1-17
Elsa is praying the daily readings and praying the news and blogging about it on the weekdays of Lent.

She is reading The Message translation this year.

Lenten Reflection 3/19

So today I'm reading through the news and I think to myself, "Well, there's nothing that grabs me to write about today."  That's funny, because there are things in the news today that affect other people around this planet deeply and personally.  Car bombing on the 10th anniversary of Saddam Hussein's death.  A small national economy on the verge of collapse.  A new Bishop of Rome officially beginning his work.  Our president preparing for a diplomatic trip to Israel.  Negotiations on allowing American citizenship to immigrants.  Even a very intriguing top article in the NY Times about the city attorney's office in San Francisco and how this top team of ace lawyers has gone about changing the expectations for government officials when it comes to defending laws.  I could find something great to write about in any or all of these things.  But in my mind none of them fit the thing I was hoping to talk about in the Scripture readings.  In other words, none of them fit my own agenda.

And I wondered,: how often do I miss good, juicy things in life because they don't fit what I was expecting to see?  How often do my own self inflicted blinders keep me from seeing what God wants to show me?

Paul describes the core of his teaching to the Romans this morning.  It has to do with knowing that God is not in some far, distant place, but right here in and between and among us.  It has to do with welcoming God's reality into our hearts on God's terms instead of trying to set up our own deals in life.  And it has to do with deeply trusting your whole being to God and God's will.

So even though I was hoping to make some wonderful comparison between the news and my own personal favorite gospel reading, John 9, a reading that makes me literally weep every time I read it, Paul called me to the mat this morning.  Life is ever and always on God's terms in things both small and great.



Today's readings: Jer. 24:1-10; Rom. 9:19-33; John 9:1-17
Elsa is praying the daily readings and praying the news and blogging about it on the weekdays of Lent.

She is reading The Message translation this year.

Lenten Reflection 3/18

 

So last week I didn't pray the news because I didn't hear or see much news while on silent retreat at the monastery.  And this morning as I sit down once again with the headlines, I feel rather assaulted.  The top story on the online NY Times this morning is about the question of whether men who have been put under a restraining order due to their violent threats against their wives or girlfriends should automatically have their guns confiscated.  Most states do not allow the police to take away the guns, and the article tells many sad stories of women (and men) killed by a gun at the hand of their intimate partners (often a murder/suicide) even after they had reported that the man had guns and pleaded with police to take them away.  There was a story on NPR about a gang rape by members of an Ohio high school football team that occurred on a night of wild drinking.  I read reports on violence in Syria, Pakistan and Mali, about a car bomb killed at least 7 people and wounded 10 others in Mogadishu, Somalia, and about hundreds of students at the University of Florida who were evacuated from the school early this morning after authorities found explosives while investigating the death of someone found on campus dead of a gunshot wound.

Without the news, life in the monastery was very quiet.  But even there violence was never far away.  Echoes of war from generations past could still be heard in the psalms we prayed every day.  And during the prayers of the people, at which people are free to share intercessions silently or aloud, the issues of the news were always on people's lips.  Syria.  Afghanistan.  Korea.  All kinds of people in peril.  The earth suffers violence. And you can't get away from it even in a monastery.

Today we begin reading John 9 about the man born blind.  It's a story of a man who gains new sight on every level.  When we first meet him, Jesus and his disciples are walking down the street and see him, probably begging by the side of the road.  He was a man blind from birth and the disciples ask, "Rabbi, who sinned: this man or his parents, causing him to be born blind?"  Jesus tells them that they're asking the wrong question.  It's not a matter of finding someone to blame or trying to understand cause/effect.  Jesus tells them to look first for what God can do in any situation.

And I find that very helpful this morning.  Sitting here and taking in one horrible news story after another, I can so easily find myself wondering what we've done wrong to live in a violent world like this.  What caused it?  What can we do to effect change?  What do we need to do to fix it?  I'm wondering why it seems that a peaceful life seems to have so many enemies and stumbling blocks.  I find myself judgementally clucking - what is wrong with those people and placing blame in various places in my mind.

Paul says in his letter to the Romans that we are so absorbed in what we ourselves are doing and in our own projects that we don't see God right in front of us - like a huge rock in the road. So we stumble into God and go sprawling.  I don't want to let the reality of the world stumble me up today, so this morning, as I take all this difficult news into myself, I am also taking Jesus' advice and looking first at what God can do. 

Paul quotes Isaiah: "Careful!  I've put a huge stone on the road to Mount Zion, a stone you can't get around.  But the stone is me!  If you're looking for me, you'll find me on the way, not in the way."  So today I am focusing not on how I judge our whole society to be stumbling - going to hell in a hand basket - but on how God might be transforming me - and the world - through the many giant stumbling blocks to peace I'm reading about today.  After all, this is the season of crucifixion leading to new life.  How might praying the ever bad news change me or others?  How might God be in all this?

As I transition back into my day to day life from my week of retreat, I share this lovely short video from my Brother Curtis that speaks very eloquently to these questions.   Thank you SSJE brothers, for your warm and gracious hospitality and for the spiritual nourishment your faith provides.


Today's readings: Jer. 24:1-10; Rom. 9:19-33; John 9:1-17
Elsa is praying the daily readings and praying the news and blogging about it on the weekdays of Lent.

She is reading The Message translation this year.