Reflectionary

The Limited

I saw on TV the other day that big box stores are placing limits on the number of (huge) bags of rice customers can buy. It's a response to a world-wide shortage, if I understand it all correctly, but it reminds me a bit of the old demand that we finish our peas because children were starving in India. Why can't we address the problems where they really exist?

I guess it's because most of us feel limited.

Just now I am limited by my hand and wrist problems, and a few other things that seem to be going wrong in this middle-aged body. I've lost a lot of weight in the hope of avoiding some of these woes, which I did not have at the greater avoirdupois, and I must say it's annoying to be experiencing them now. Causality would suggest that Bigger Songbird should have been suffering from a stiff knee, not Medium Songbird, and surely never the Wee Songbird I am striving to become!

But, I am limited, by genetics and history and circumstances and age. And I am limited in power, too. I cannot make things right just by wishing for them to be right.

And that's VERY annoying!!!

I'm not preaching on the Ascension text this week, but one of the things I love in this story from Acts is the idea that we can't know everything, that Jesus reassures us that some things are not in our control. For those of us who are firmly convinced that perfecting ourselves will make the difference, this comes as a relief (okay, also an annoyance, but a relief at the same time).

I look at Molly, who is 6, and has arthritis, and an injured shoulder that isn't getting better, and I know that lifting her contributed to my current injuries and that my inability to lift her now is worsening hers. We both have limits, but we can't seem to live within them contentedly. She wants to get on the sofa. I want to, or have to, fix dinner, open boxes and cans, hold a book and read. I don't know if we'll get better, either of us. I don't know if my husband's imminent arrival and ability to lift heavy dogs in a single bound will be all it takes for Molly. I don't know if the sports medicine doctor (and that I am going to one at all is hilarious) will have an answer or a treatment for me.

I do know I can't fix either of us alone.

My children are leIarning their limits, too. Snowman does well in everything, except math, and as I said to his father this morning, he may have reached his limit in that area. I know I did, I said, and his father concurred. If he will just give it his all for the next month, he can retire from the study of math, gracefully and perhaps gratefully, too.

The Princess begins tennis today after school, and we will see whether she takes after her father (good) or me (oh, don't ask, just painful, couldn't even learn to turn my head to look at the ball when it came toward the racket level of bad) when it comes to racket sports. I said nothing to discourage her. I like tennis. I loved watching my dad play when I was little, and later watching Wimbledon and the U.S. Open with him. I know the kind of clothes you need for tennis and coached her through a shopping trip at The Sports Authority yesterday.

Today I am aware of the limits, too, of time and space. My husband and my sons are far away. They'll all come home in the next few weeks. By May 25th we will all be under this roof together, at least for a time. But there are limits on how long that will last, limits of maturity and mortality.

But let's not be morbid. The truth is, we're all going to these places of decay and one of the things standing between us and the abyss is attitude. So I try to have a sense of humor. For a day or two I complained about the wrist splints the doctor gave me. Now I laugh and call them my bands of power!

I hope my children will find their ways to amuse themselves out of the corners of life, too.

When The Princess gets out onto the court with her racket, when Snowman takes on the last project for math class, when I listen to the advice of the doctor, I hope we can all accept our limits but not be discouraged by them. I hope we can all live fully within the limits, and look around to see the places where we might be freer, too.

At the Areopagus

(Easter 6A    Acts 17:22-31)

I have a little secret.

Even though I usually declare I don't much care for Paul, I love the story of his speech at the Areopagus.

Our hero, because he really is our hero in the Acts of the Apostles, takes what is in front of him, which is to say the worship of an Unknown God by the Athenians, and forms an argument to sway them to believing in his God.

He doesn't just slam in and tell them they are idiots. He shows some knowledge of the context. He meets the people where they are. He develops his argument organically.

How much bad ministry is done by riding into town and trying to overlay an ideal that has no relationship to the reality?

My ministry takes place in a particular time and place, among people with stories and a town with a past. If I took the Gap Outlet across the way as my only touchstone, if I ignored the morning's visit from K in her lovely straw hat and our discussion of the dish towels and pot holders in the church kitchen, if I ignored the construction in town or the slipping of the stained glass windows that may have a relationship to the trucks that travel past on Route One, if I did not observe my surroundings, I would surely miss opportunities to understand who the people of the church are and what work God might be calling us to do together.

So I will watch and listen and hope for the right moment, the moment when I will hope to be as fluid as Paul at the Areopagus.

Here endeth Stephen; now, where do I begin?

Acts 7:55-60 (Easter 5A)   

7:55 But filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.

7:56 "Look," he said, "I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!"

7:57 But they covered their ears, and with a loud shout all rushed together against him.

7:58 Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him; and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.

7:59 While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."

7:60 Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." When he had said this, he died.

This is probably not the story we want to use to recruit people into ministry. Just sayin'.

When is it right to simply give in and forgive, and when are we called to turn over the tables? I think some people in ministry confuse current circumstances with the stories of the martyrs and expect this kind of treatment over coffee cups or carpeting. If they then hold themselves as being more spiritual or evolved, they may sigh and say, "Thus it ever was. I forgive them."

But to be the living Body of Christ, and to lead one of its local manifestations, takes a different kind of courage. It requires taking stained glass seriously, if you have some, without letting stained glass become all there is about the church. It also requires figuring out the difference between the kind of verbal stoning that is unpleasant, certainly, and the kind of martyrdom that truly leads to death, which most of us will never experience.

There must be a better way, and I suspect it involves meeting people where they live and pointing out to them that God resides there with them. When we realize that and truly know it, we can't help living a little differently.

Our Ideal Church

(Easter 4A    Acts 2:42-47)

They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. (Acts 2:42-45, NRSV)

We're in Acts 2, just after Pentecost, and we're hearing about the earliest Early Church there ever was. Could there be a vision of church more likely to get a pastor fired?

I want to follow that question both with a wink and with a tear.

Many, many sincere people want to live in a world where this is the guiding principle of what it means to be church: "All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need." But our reality is very different. We pinch pennies at church, or we wish we could give more but are faced with the reality of $3.29 for a gallon of gas. We want our church to do a lot of things, but most of us don't feel we can do more ourselves. Would we dare ask anyone to give EVERYthing when we wouldn't feel safe doing it ourselves?

I love the idea of giving it all, theoretically. I love it. But can I make that choice for my spouse and my children? Or do I ask that question to protect myself from going all the way?

I'm reading Karen Armstrong's "Spiral Staircase," which is really about her life after leaving a religious order, but the beginning sections take you into her life as a nun. It's a funny thing for this former Southern Baptist girl to admit, but I've always been fascinated with stories of nuns, with the idea of the discipline of convent life, the notion of leaving the regular world behind to serve God in a different way.

It's harder to draw the defining lines for a church in 2008, isn't it? If we use only the markers of Acts 2, we may well give up, saying "no church will ever do it, because no group of people will give up that much." We might point to unsuccessful communes or the number of people who have left that sort of committed religious life. How can it be possible in our time to live this way?

Some days I feel I give all I have to God; other days I feel I can never give enough of who I am. I guess my ideal is to try to be giving and to notice as quickly as possible when I am not, then to get back to giving again. It's the same for a church, writ larger. A church that is faithful and fruitful has to spend time checking in, asking questions. What is enough? Are we getting there? When we slip backward, are we committed to getting on track again?

Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. (Acts 2:46-47)

Doesn't it sound warm? If this were all we had to do, could we do it? Break bread together, share our possessions, see to the needs of the poor and praise God all the time? Isn't there more to it, though? I can't help feeling Jesus asked us for more. He set a standard that was a little more ferocious than this passage sounds. And sometimes we get ferocious about the wrong things, passionate about things that are too small-minded and lukewarm about enormous matters that feel too big to embrace. This almost feels like a fairy tale happy-ever-after church, the ending, not the beginning.

A Letter to Peter

(Easter A    Acts 10:34-43)

      

Then Peter began to speak to them: "I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. (Acts 10:34-35)

Dear Peter,

I'm thinking about all my favorite stories about you. I love the way you tell Jesus you are not worthy but drop the net and go anyway. I love the way you want to build those booths for Moses and Elijah and Jesus. I love the way you try to talk Jesus out of his destiny, and I love it that even though he snaps at you (Get behind me, Satan!), you stick with him instead of blowing out of there.

I love how honestly you answer the notion that he might wash your feet, and I love it that you let him wash them anyway.

I even love you when you say you do not know him, although it pains me every time I read it or see it in a movie or hear it on a recording. When we get to that reading on Maundy Thursday, I know I will cringe, because I will see myself in you. I will see so many human tendencies reflected in you.

And just as I know in my higher mind that the Resurrection will follow the Crucifixion, but still feel the despair of Good Friday keenly, I look at where you ended up but still suffer with you in the moment the cock crows.

I think about how John says you ran into the tomb to see if you could find him. I think about the way you jumped into the water and swam to the shore to see him. I think about the way you spoke in front of crowds just seven weeks later, a long way from hiding in the Upper Room. I think about your dream, your beautiful dream, the way you learned that all people are included in the embrace of God's love and the salvation found in Jesus Christ.

If I could go back to your time and meet you, I would. You could tell me how it really happened, clear up the mysteries. I know you could do it, because you were most definitely a talker.

Oh, Peter! You give me hope.

Fondly,

Songbird