What God can and cannot do or why Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead is a bit overrated.

 

"Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying." - Jesus according to St. John

 

He died again.   For all the layers of depth and high Christology the gospel of John has to offer, the story of Lazarus is the hardest for me to wrap my head around. This week the lectionary had us read the entire 11th chapter of the John's gospel.  All 45 verses.  I am one of those types who loves the high church tradition of standing to read the gospel and raising the gospel over our heads and processing with it.  I love the blessing of it with incense and the crucifer going before it.  But I will admit, that last evening at church, after I had helped Vance build a fire pit, painted two rooms and did six hours of yard work, I could have done with Readers Digest condensed version.   I could have just had verse 25 read and be done with it.  As usual my mind was wandering, I was fidgeting, I was thinking about dinner and how much I was missing meat and wine and thanking God that he has not called me to be Orthodox yet.  (Not only would the Great Lent be impossible for me, their faithful stand for the entire liturgy which takes 2 hours).   It takes a long time to read that story.  And it was not entirely lost on me and my very tired body that perhaps the Church fathers knew what they were doing when they insisted on reading the entire chapter.  There is some good stuff in that story, but to me the raising of the dead is a bit overrated.  

Was it impressive that Jesus raised him from the dead 4 days after he was in the tomb?
Absolutely. It's been a while since I raised a guy from the dead.
Like forever a while. Like I'll never be able to touch that a while. So yea, that was one of the greatest miracles the world has ever seen. Mind blowing amazing.

But we have to remember, it's important to remember, that Lazarus died again.

There was another funeral. His friends and family all wept again but this time there was no coming back from the grave.

The story isn’t even about Lazarus. I mean, Lazarus does very little in this story. He gets sick, he dies, and then he stumbles out of a tomb. Lazarus is just a supporting actor in this story. In fact, if this were a movie, Lazarus would have a very short, walk-on part. He doesn’t even have any lines! People talk about him, but only Jesus speaks to him, and Lazarus isn’t on screen when He does.

So what is the story really about?  Is this a story about the omnipotence of God? I don’t know because I really don’t know if God can make a four-sided triangle.  I don’t know if God can make a rock so heavy he can’t move.  I don’t really know if God knows the future or not.  I tend to think not because of free will and I tend to think a four-sided triangle is a square. And even in this story, God didn’t move the rock.  People did.  So maybe there are rocks too heavy for even God to move. So maybe getting up from dead isn't even the point. 
All of these questions speak to our fascination with the extent of God’s power, specifically whether or not God can do the impossible.

"For many of us, though we speak of love and grace and forgiveness, it is the ability to do the impossible that, in our minds, truly makes God, God. So, when we are faced with a situation in which God seems incapable of doing something we panic, worried that that inability somehow diminishes God’s divinity. "(shamelessly stole this quote from a guy named Zak Brown).

And if we are truly honest, we don’t like a God that makes rocks that he can’t move.
Most of us want Jesus to show up and pull a raising the dead.  We certainly don’t want him to be late and we certainly don’t want the funeral to have already taken place and we certainly don’t want to have to grieve.  So why did Jesus take his own sweet time in getting to Bethany? 

In one of my favorite books, The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis writes about the limits of God’s power. In a scene towards the end of the book, Eustace, Jill, Tirian, and the Pevensie children are standing alongside Aslan in the new Narnia looking on at a group of dwarfs who believe they are stuck inside a dark barn. Frustrated that the dwarfs can’t see their true beautiful surroundings, Lucy begs Aslan to do something to make the dwarfs see the reality of their situation.  

Aslan replies to Lucy saying, “Dearest, I will show you what I can and what I cannot do.”
Giving in to Lucy’s request, Aslan walks up to the dwarves, shakes his mane, and instantly a magnificent feast appears in the dwarfs’ laps.

But they can’t see it for what it really is. They think someone is simply hiding in the barn with them making lion sounds in order to scare them. They know there’s food in their laps, but they give no thought to where it came from, instead greedily fighting over it.  Aslan says, “You see, they will not let us help them…their prison is only in their mind and yet they are in that prison and so afraid of being taking in out.”

The point I think C.S. Lewis is trying to make here is that there are some things God simply can’t do and that’s ok. 

I also think Lewis is trying to make us see that most of the time we have to participate in our own miracles as well as the miracles of others.  Lucy and her siblings wanted to help the dwarfs, but the dwarfs would not allow them to. 

It is interesting to me that Jesus didn’t move the rock.  He told others to do it.  Lazarus also needed help removing all those bandages.  Lazarus didn’t just walk out of that tomb without the help of others.
 
God is not a superhero, and as long as we think of God in that way we miss out on the truly incredible things God is trying to do in and through us.  In the end, I think our fear that there may be things God cannot do, says much more about us then it does about God.  We like the God who shows up and makes the dead live again, not the God who shows up on a cross, rejected as a failure.  We want the resurrection, but we don’t want the path it takes to get there.  We don’t want to die. But sooner or later we all realize that we are going to die.  I know this seems like gloomy news… but really it is good news.  I think the real reason it took Jesus so long to get to Bethany was to show us what faith and real trust looked like. (And there is the part of me that believes in the humanity of Jesus, that believes that Jesus was seeing if God really did raise the dead or not.  After all, Jesus was depending on the same power that raised Lazarus to raise him as well. And I am not entirely convinced that Jesus knew the story ended well for him. And perhaps this is why God has not called me to a more Orthodox faith.  Obviously, I did not give up snarkiness for Lent).  Jesus did come to bring the dead back to life, but the real miracle in all of this is the gift of faith.  The ultimate test of our faith is that God is on the other side of that rock.  Sometimes we have to move the rock and sometimes we have to wait for someone to move it for us.  The miracle is in the waiting.

#epicfail

      O, Lord God, who sees that we put not our trust in anything we do...(BCP)

      Snow is an agent of Satan. Friday, two days into my Lenten fast, and the epic ice storm of 2014 hit.  I am attempting to give up meat, desserts and wine this year.  And so far with the exception of Wednesday and today (but the day is still young), I have failed.  And if it had not have been for the snow, I probably would have stayed on task. 

            My house was one of 144,000 that was without power Friday and gratefully it is has been restored.  I am saying a prayer for all my friends who still do not have electricity.  By 11 am Friday, my house was cold, so I decided to pack up and go to my mom’s house.  Davis and I packed enough for two days.  My mom lives 6 miles away.  Vance was at work, so I figured he could fend for himself.  Between us, we had five bags, four pair of shoes, four coats, two iPhones, Kindle HD, and two pair of boots and a snow shovel.  It was still sleeting and snowing, and I am guessing there was about 4 inches of snow/sleet/ice on the ground and my car.  My trunk was iced shut. It took me and Davis thirty five minutes to clean off the car and we still left all the snow all the back and hood.   We were frozen and covered in sleet when we finally go into the car and I am planning on writing liturgy that extols the mercy of God for granting man the ability to design heated car seats.

            And at the end of my very long driveway, Satan attacked me in the snow.  One doesn’t associate the color of white snow with Satan, but now I do.  The warmer temperatures and periods of rain had reduced all of that snow into a nice gray slush that accumulated under my car.  I have a Sonata that does not have a snow plow attached to the front, so by the time I reached the end of my drive way the snow was well past my bumper and my car just stopped moving forward.  I got out and assessed the situation.  I got back in the car and said a few choice cuss words and Davis just began laughing out loud and said, “Mom, Lent is not going to end well for you.  #epicfail.”

            We were going to have to dig out.  Davis went to the garage to grab our snow shovel.  It was a lot of snow.  And yes, Davis is in much better shape given basketball and baseball workouts along with weight lifting to shovel than I can ever hope to be, but those cars were driving awfully fast.  My decision was if one of us was going to be hit by a motor vehicle it should be me.  So Davis watched for cars and would yell, “Car, two coming…one coming…it’s clear now, etc.” for the next 35 minutes as I dug my car out.  Two police cars actually parked across the street and watched this little comic charade of mine.  I didn’t expect them to help shovel, but stopping traffic for a couple of minutes would have been nice.  Davis said they were just waiting for me to get hit by a car, so they could call it in to EMS.  He was probably right. It was a foolish thing to do, but I was cold.  And by then, I was colder. 

            Finally we were free!  I was so exhausted and so cold and so wet, that I just threw the snow shovel in the bag seat, told Davis to hop in and we left. My mom had asked for me to stop and pick up some birdseed for her, but I was not stopping that car until I got to her driveway.   As much as I love my mom and truly don’t mind driving in all kinds of weather, her birds were going to have to starve.  Davis had been such a trooper through all this and I felt he needed a treat.  He loves Chick-fil –A.   Of course, I do too.  As I drove to my mom’s I noticed the parking lot into the Chick-fil-A was clear, so I drove right up to that drive thru window and ordered Davis a #5 combo and myself an entrée of 8 nuggets. As we pulled off, Davis gently reminded me I had given up meat.  I am not sure but he may have posted an Instagram photo of me eating my nuggets -#epiclentenfail.  

            Lent is tough, so I've compiled this list of tips for anyone entering the wilderness.  I found these while surfing the web looking for ways to succeed at Lent.  Never could I unplug.  Remember my Lenten retreat last year? I am the one who brought the copy of her bible and BCP as an app on her iPhone, so I could also check my son’s baseball game scores.  I kept staring in my lap during that retreat just like my students do.  

The following tips are based loosely on an article by Dr. Tim Stanley found in the Telegraph. (I have no idea what type of website or what kind of authority Dr. Stanley is on the subject of Lent, but these seemed very reasonable to me. But, then again, as my son said, #epiclentenfail.)  

1.    Don’t give up anything you shouldn’t be doing anyway.  Drinking too much, cussing, credit card fraud, overindulging sweets.  Really, really should not being doing those things anyway. 

2.    Don’t give up anything you won’t miss.  Like work. Parking lot duty. Cleaning your room. Having your teeth cleaned. Mammograms.

3.    Don’t give up everything because you will die or perhaps someone else will.  Some people go on crash diets of no meat, no carbohydrates, and no alcohol. While you might feel like a saint for 24 hours, (I made it for a whole two days), you will feel like a raving lunatic in about a week.  I am just a middle-aged teacher/nurse from Virginia and not Jesus.  The chances of me keeping a strict fast are very, very slim. God is very accustomed to human beings letting him down.   And I often suspect that God expects us to fail far more often than we do.  

4.    Don’t let Lent sink you into despair.  A monk said once, that the thing he was giving up for lent, was giving up. 

5.    Don’t think you can sneak off the Lenten vows behind God’s back.  He is omnipotent and omnipresent.  He really does know about the Dove chocolate you have hidden in your dresser drawer. 

6.    It is about God, not you.  Lent can sometimes be turned into a second chance at New Year’s resolutions or an excuse to shed a few pounds.  The entire point of Lent is to remind us about God-not to fit into last year’s swimsuit.  Try to think about Jesus living on a diet of grace and sand-that’s the real point of fasting. To get all of your demons (which could be chocolate, social media, booze, selfies, anger, fear, snow, heat, jealousy, grudges,  Chick-fil-A,etc.), out of the way so you can actually see God every once in a while. 

       The good news is that even if Lent turns out to be #epicfail, and you wake up and find yourself hiding in the bathroom eating an entire bag of Dove chocolates, it really is ok.   It serves as a reminder of how weak and frail you really are.  I hate to break it to you, but the job of God has already been taken. The entire Lenten season or Christianity for that matter is about facing your humanity and owning up to your failures.  Better still; the message of Lent is one of redemption.  Of being resurrected again and again and again.  It is about life coming from death. It is knowing that whatever goes wrong in life, God always gives second chances.  Lent is about falling down, getting back up and trying again even the entire 40 days were #epicfail.  

March Madness...Lent for the rest of us.

 "And you will be the called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live."- Isaiah 58:12

Exactly 53 minutes into Lent, I failed. With ashes on my forehead and everything. I have to say this is a new record for me.  Usually I make it to at least Thursday morning. To make things worse, by 4 pm, I was trying to rationalize why Lifesaver gummies were not considered candy and I don’t even like them.  And I didn’t realize until about 1153 today that Trader Joes carried so many different kinds of chocolate.  Who knew?  For Lent this year, I have decided to give up meat, desserts and wine.  I could never maintain a strict Orthodox fast.   In the Orthodox tradition meat, dairy, fish, olive oil and wine are forbidden during Lent.  However, octopus is allowed as is vegetable oil. I am not sure what the Orthodox eat exactly during Lent, but I knew I could never maintain that kind of fast, given that I don’t like octopus.  Does anyone really even eat that?  Meat, wine and dessert will be enough of a challenge for me.  I wanted to give up parking lot duty, but I am fairly certain my principal wouldn’t go for that, even for religious reasons.  It never dawned on me until today that food is truly not my obstacle to loving God and my neighbor, groceries stores are.  Seriously.  I get into more sin in a grocery store and it has never involved food or wine.  OK, maybe wine once, but never food.   And to be honest, I am fairly certain that the only chocolate that ever was stumbling block to loving my neighbor was those special chocolate covered eggs. And we all know how that turned out. 

Someone asked me what it was about the Ash Wednesday liturgy I liked exactly.  I didn’t really have an answer for that question, but it wouldn’t feel like Lent to me without walking around with ashes on my forehead.  I was introduced to the concept of fasting and ashes by a cardiologist, of all folk.  I was his nurse and every year on Ash Wednesday his wife called me to remind him to attend mass before he came home that night.  Lucky for him, the hospital had chaplains on standby round the clock on Ash Wednesday for the sole purpose of imposition of ashes.  I am not sure he ever made it to mass, but he always had ashes on his forehead because I made a call to the chaplain every year to stop by and mark him.  I didn’t want him in trouble with his wife.  The first year, I didn’t want to hurt the chaplain’s feelings when he came to put the ashes on my forehead, plus it seemed such a waste to come all the way to our unit for just one person, so I just pretended like I had done this my entire life.  

But that is not the only reason I like Ash Wednesday.  I like the liturgical calendar. (I also think the Joel chapter 2 and Isaiah 58  is beautifully written and I love to hear it read aloud, something that usually only happens about once or twice a year in the church).  Something about keeping sacramental time makes me feel grounded and something about ashes on my forehead makes me feel like maybe one day I might shine like all those saints in the glass windows at church.  Plus, it reminds me that life is shockingly short and we need to live it and be exceedingly grateful for it.

So how did I manage to fail Lent before noon today and less than an hour after I left church?   It was going to the darned grocery store. I am sure you all remember my Advent incident.  Pertinence, grocery stores and I don’t mix.  (I am also trying to give up cursing this Lent and I am proud to say, that I went to a baseball game tonight and have watched 10 minutes of the Wake game and have not said one curse word).   I had gotten my organic bananas, (which yes, I realize is completely irrational since they are encased in a peel), my trail mix without chocolate and my cheese.  I was standing in line thinking about all the chocolate around me, when out of nowhere a man rams his cart into mine, crushing my fingers and then breaks in line.  True story.   After I rubbed my crushed fingers, I turned to glare and say something very clever like, “I would yell at you right now, but I just came from church”, or “I realize this is the season of pain and suffering, but that doesn’t mean to inflict it on others,” or “I am guessing you are not giving up rudeness for Lent this year?”, or “I do so hope what is in your basket is to feed the hungry and poor and not your gluttonous self.”  Then I began to wish him ill or at least a parking ticket or a migraine.  I paid for my things, stomped off to my car, inwardly fuming and as I started my car, I saw him.  I realized that he was aged, he was walking with a limp and couldn’t really see all that well.  He really looked sad too.  And he was having trouble loading his groceries in his car.  And I glanced over at my BCP and then it hit.  The reason why we wear ashes or even keep Lent at all.  It is to keep us human.

True, giving up things might make us a tad more aware of our inner selves and the stuff we carry around that God is (literally), dying to heal.  But I think it might be more about becoming more humane which is to say to behave like humans.  I honestly sometimes think that is what the cross is all about.  To remind us what happens when we fail to be human. And humans do one thing that other living things cannot…LOVE.  If God wants us to do anything at all during Lent, it would be to be humans.   And that, my friends is more easily said than done.  Particularly, when your neighbor breaks in line at Trader Joes. The next 40 days of Lent really aren’t about how much meat I give up or how much wine I don’t drink or passing up Lifesaver gummies or chocolate at Trader Joes.  It is about Who I am giving in to.  Lent doesn’t say it is not my problem, it is not my neighborhood, it is not my child, and it is not my responsibility.  What Lent really says is… “this is not happening on my watch.” 

So as tonight, I try to wash ashes from my forehead and remember that from dust I came and to dust I will return, perhaps, instead of “Jesus please help me not eat meat or Lifesaver gummies…” it should be, “not on my watch.” 

All is grace…

What the Rolling Stones have to say about liturgy

 For all my friends who might not get what they want but they might just get what they need...

 

I never know what to say when someone asks me where I attend church.  (Truth is told, I stammer a lot, which is why I am usually glad Vance answers for me).   It is very complicated.  Novel worthy actually, and at times the narrative reads like the script of Downtown Abbey or The Blacklist depending how snarky and/or dark, as well as how bluntly honest I may be feeling at the moment. My character is a mix of the Dowager Countess, Raymond Reddington and Lady Mary all in one. 

 One of the hardest parts of telling a good story is coming up with an opening line.  Unfortunately for me, “Call me Ishmael” or “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” or “It was a dark and stormy night,” have all been taken.  I have been known to give an answer that ranges from, “I am a recovering evangelical fundamentalist or a closet Anglican or someone who has married into the Methodist tradition and had her child baptized in the Methodist tradition or a frustrated theologian who agrees mostly with Wesley and less with Calvin or as someone who thinks St. Paul had issues.”  Once at a Lenten retreat, I passed for a Catholic and even my new Baptist friend that weekend had no idea I was raised more in line with her tradition than not.  But perhaps the best answer would be, “It remains a mystery…”

  I am a frustrated theologian, a novice liturgist as well as an armchair church historian.  And I am quite certain I would have found seminary far easier than nursing school.  Each of those traits made me a really good hospice nurse and it remains to be seen whether or any of those will serve me well as a high school teacher.  It will always be my personal belief that if I understand your theology, I can make sure you have a good death.  I am not so sure theology works well with high school students; although staying prayed up certainly has its value, if for no other reason than it keeps me from killing any one of them.  

  I just finished teaching a unit on healthcare career decision making.  Most of my students have no idea which career to choose if any in healthcare, and after the occupied bed making exercise, a few are seriously considering dropping my class.  I asked them to write an essay answering the question, “If I did know which career to choose it would be…” Last night I was thinking about how I could have answered the kind priest regarding my worship preference and perhaps the opening line to my story should be, “Well, if I did know, I would be Anglican, I think…”

  I found it surprising to learn to that if I were a Church Father, I would be St. Melito.  There is a self-survey that you may take online to learn exactly which Church Father you may be.  And I can never pass up a good quiz.  I have a great love for history and liturgy.  I am attached to the traditions of the ancients but also recognize that Old World as great as it was is passing away. I am loyal to the customs of my family but would not hesitate to suggest to a heretic blood relative that the troubles in the Holy Land might be his fault.  Little is known about St. Melito, but he might have been responsible for organizing the Old Testament canon.  According to legend, he had a love for the old and the new and saw rich symbolism in liturgy.

  So, like St. Melito I am often confused by what I want and I what I need. Most of us if really honest, only like about five hymns and two verses of scripture.  We love to sing Amazing Grace and kind of become frustrated if we don’t know the hymns chosen for the service.  We really only want to hear Psalm 23 or that God loved the world.  We really aren’t comfortable with what Jesus said about anger or lust or envy or pride and we don’t like singing theology.  This would be why the priest chooses the hymns and the lectionary repeats itself every three years.  We aren’t supposed to hear only what we like. 

  I have experienced shallow.  I need deep.  I have been down the road with churches that change worship styles according to culture and fad.  I have even been offered a bagel and cup of coffee during the middle of worship.  I was sincerely waiting on a hotdog.  I need ritual that will withstand the test of time.  And you can’t get that at Starbucks and as much as I love Starbucks and a café peppermint mocha latte, I don’t need that a church. I live in a world of uncertainty that changes every day.  I need stability and not a church staff that changes constantly. I need responsive psalms that let me hear God speak and my voice answering. I need liturgy that does not change.  My life is cra-cra.  I am raising a teenage boy and working on 20 years of marriage.  I am a nurse, a high school teacher, a friend and a wife. I never know what crisis will need my attention next or when.  I need communion where Jesus offers healing in exchange for my mess, which is not a fair trade, but then I am not looking for fair. I want peace. I need to pray prayers that everyone says so I am reminded that I am not the only hot mess in town. I need to hear the perfect looking couple and family saying “Forgive us our sins,” so I know that they are likely having fights the same as us. I don’t want a pastor showing me provocative images on a big screen to get my attention so I will remember the sermon point. I am already immersed in multimedia constantly. I want to hear the scripture and I want it ringing in my ears till I walk in again next week.  

 And this is what liturgy gives me.  It was developed over 2000 years.  It was assembled among culturally diverse, multi-generational group who didn’t always agree, but agreed on this: worship is simply about God.  Those ancient prayers go deep into our subconscious, our mythic selves and transform us over time.  Church is not about learning new stuff or feeling good or differently, it is about being changed through sacramental rhythm and that only happens over time and repetition. Like a stone being thrown into river.  Eventually the water rubs the edges smooth.  Eventually.

 I will never fully be able to tell the story of how it is I came to love liturgy and it will always remain a mystery to me how this is saving me again and again.  I have a feeling that all of us show up in church at one time or another quietly and desperately calling for help.  If you are alot like me, you might show up every week or so screaming silently for help and trying not to be distracted by the latest text message, what you are going to eat for dinner, how are you going to retire before 85,  how frustrated you are at your co-worker or the latest argument with your kid or spouse.  We want help and we don't exactly know what this looks like.  We don’t really know exactly what it is that we need, we just know we need something and it is this something that liturgy gives us.  It is through the strange hymns that span centuries, men that dress up in ridiculous clothes that have not changed much in over 500 years, saying prayers and creeds that I would recognize parts of even if spoken in Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish or English, lighting candles and burning incense and kneeling and standing and bowing and raising hands and blessing and being blessed and forgiving and being forgiven and giving and receiving peace, and eating and drinking from the same cup and same piece of bread, that we are given not what we want, but what we need.