thoughts on the screenplay of Christmas….

If I were God, the whole Christmas story would have been very different. For starters, the lead actors would have changed. Mary would be more like Diane Keaton in Annie Hall, beautiful, wise, witty, and old enough to have a child. Joseph would have played a more prominent role, think Robert Redford in The Way We Were. Martin Sheen, better known as President Bartlett, would have played God and instead of directing from behind the scenes, would have been a visible role. I am not sure I would have cast a baby as Jesus; having a 7 month old I know they are most unreliable.

If I were God, the location would have been some incredible site. Maybe a beach in Spain, or nestled at the foot or the Rocky Mountains, or at least a New York Penthouse.  The plot would involve more action, romance, dialogue, and would be a bit bigger. More people would be involved and God’s entrance into the world would have been known by all.

But God’s screenplay is quite different.

Mary is just a teenage girl. Joseph is merely a bit player. God orchestrates it all, but does not make an appearance until the very end and then appears as a small baby. A baby that requires diapering, swaddling, and nursing. The plot is really simple. It was an unknown event. It happened in a manger in a stable. The supporting cast was composed of animals and those who care for animals.

I don’t know why this surprises me every Advent season. Throughout the Old Testament, God has worked in the common, the ordinary, and the human. He has worked through donkeys, bushes, ladder, fleeces, and gentle breezes. God seems to work best through the ordinary.

The Christmas story is another simple reminder, that in life we need to pay attention to the ordinary, the common, and the human. In those things, we will find God.

One of my favorite plays is Our Town by Thornton Wilder. In one of the pivotal scenes, a ghost is allowed to relive one day of her life. She chooses her 12^th birthday. After re-living the day, she ask the God character if anyone every notices the wonder of every moment. He pauses and replies, “No. Saints and poets, maybe. They do some.”

Christmas is just one more reminder that we should not miss the goodness, the Godness, of each and every moment.

As you celebrate this year, be present to each and every moment. Pay attention to the ordinary, the common, and the human. It is in these things that Christ is likely to be re-born.

The First Advent Voice….

It’s the season of preparation. We have to find the perfect gifts for those on our list. We need to make sure the Christmas card makes us look like the family we want people to think we are. We have to decorate the house, inside and out. We have parties to attend, concerts and programs we can’t miss, and all those church functions. We spend 24 days preparing for one glorious day.

The Advent story begins with preparation, also. We begin our story looking at the prophets, the crazies who delivered the message that Christ was coming. Isaiah, Amos, Jeremiah… those whose books we often neglect. It’s John the Baptist out screaming at the masses. He truly is the lone voice of one crying out in the dessert, all the prophets are this voice. The message is simple: change your life because God’s kingdom is here.

And it’s that message we need to prepare ourselves for. It’s the message that this season is different because God’s kingdom has already come and we live now in the glory of that kingdom.

So maybe this holiday, our preparation needs to look a little bit different. Maybe instead of worrying about the gifts, the Christmas cards, the decorations, and the parties, we need to worry about the preparation to live in God’s kingdom. I think that checklist would include words like grace, forgiveness, justice, joy, peace and love. I think this checklist focuses more on the internal, the soul, that which really matters.

What are we preparing for? Perhaps this season, we could all be a little more like John the Baptist and we could prepare ourselves and those around us for the Kingdom of God. This is our true calling. This is the true purpose of Advent. We are called to prepare our hearts and our worlds for the coming Christ. This is not an easy calling. This is a high and holy calling on each of us this season.

So listen carefully and closely to the first voice of Advent, the voice of one crying aloud in the wilderness to make ready the way of the Lord. Don’t get so caught up in the holiday preparation that you miss the holy preparation.

Use this season to prepare for the coming Christ. Start with your heart and your world, prepare Him the way.

thoughts on gratitude….

Every Thanksgiving season, I am reminded of the ten lepers in John’s Gospel. You know these ten, Jesus is on his way to Galilee when they spot him and begin to cry out for a healing. Our compassion filled Jesus grants this request, and the ten rush off to present themselves to the priest. They will be announced clean and allowed to return to their families, their faith, and their lives. One stops in the midst of the joy, realizing both the source of the joy and the importance of gratitude, and returns to express both realizations to his newfound Lord. Jesus asks where the other nine have gone, why they did not return to express praise and gratitude.

 I am afraid that I am often the other nine. I get so caught up in the goodness of a moment, the greatness of this life, and in that I forget to return to the Source and express the gratitude that is due him.

 God, forgive me for those times. Allow me to express gratitude for all that is around me…

 Gratitude for a year of birth, for a year of love like no other, for a communion table that is always open and calling to receive and give, for authors like Sara Miles, Eugene Peterson, Kathryn Stockett, Luci Shaw, and Sue Monk Kidd who have challenged me this year, for grace, for the noise machine that calms Blake into sleep, for the Colorado mountains, for the humanity of Jesus, for the holiness of Jesus, for Come Awake retreat, for mentors, for movies like Darius Goes West that remind me to live fully, for dark coffee, for words, for Word, for Aaron Sorkin’s ability to write dialogue, for music that provides the soundtrack to my life including Explosions in the Sky, Johnny Cash, Band of Horses, and Joshua Radin, for great art like Michelangelo’s Statue of David and Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son that enhance our faith, for red grapes, for friendships that allow us authenticity, growth, and laughter, for this church and the staff I get to work with, for Blake’s laugh and mischievous grin, for Lupita’s, for homemade pizza and Better Than Sex cake, for early morning runs, for Madeline L’Engle and Gerard Manley Hopkins, for order out of chaos, and for peace….

There’s a start….

Today, take time to make a list of all the gifts he has given you in the past year. Tomorrow take time to express gratitude for all this greatness and goodneBe the one that returns. Be the one that realizes the source of the goodness, greatness, and healing that we find within our lives. Be the one that says thank you for all you don’t deserve.

thoughts on freedom….

Blake has a new habit that is causing me to lose sleep. She keeps getting herself caught in her crib. Somehow she manages to maneuver her little self to a position where she can get her feet under the bumper pads and caught in the crib. This results in a loud sudden cry to alert Abby and I that she is stuck and does not like it. So one of us goes in to free her, to reposition her in the wide openness of the crib, all while knowing full well she will get stuck again in a few hours. It’s simply her habit.

I think as Christians we have the same habit.

We tend to get stuck a lot. We get stuck in a routine with God; our relationship grows stale because we are stuck in a ritual with our creator. We get all tied up in sin that we meant to just dangle our feet in, but soon we are all caught up. We get stuck in a pattern of thinking that is not healthy for us. We get stuck in the details and lose the big picture. We get stuck in the rules and forget the community with God. We value the law over the love. We get too religious and lose the relationship.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus is teaching on freedom and says this: “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” The Message puts it like this: “So if the Son sets you free, you are free through and through.”

So what if this time, when our Father comes to untangle us from whatever we have gotten caught up in, we try to live in our freedom, our God- given freedom?

What if we allow our relationship with God to be a real relationship, with the ebb and flow of friendship, and not a routine? What if we really use our freedom to avoid the sinful traps that we know we tend to fall into or at the very least to be more honest as we walk into them? What if we allowed our minds to have some freedom and not be so pre-conditioned in our thinking? What if we allowed the details to matter less and the big picture to matter more? What if we valued the relationship over the rules, if we placed love over the law? What if we got lost in a relationship with Jesus instead of a religion about Jesus?

I think Christ set us free for so much more than we realize. It’s freedom to live and to live well. It’s freedom to love. It’s freedom to avoid the traps, the routines, and the rules. It’s the freedom to live like Jesus. I do believe that Christ will continue to come and set us free, to untrap our trapped feet, and to loosen that which we have tightened.

And I think every time he does so, he is thinking “live in my freedom, live in my openness, I have set you free, so be free.”

So may we live like free people. May we learn to live the freedom that is our gift.

thoughts on secrets….

My football coach used to begin and conclude practice with these words: a chain is only as strong as its weakest length. He used to say this and look at me. I think back then I thought he was giving me words of wisdom, something to perhaps use in a sermon or teaching later. I look back now and think he might have been giving me a not so subtle hint.

John records the account of Nicodemus coming to Jesus in his Gospel. There is one detail that has always stuck out to me found in the second verse: “this man came to Jesus by night.” Most of Jesus’ ministry occurs during the daytime, out in the light, but not this meeting. It seems almost back alley, a Soprano-type set up, one set up by the disciples so no one would know that this man was meeting with This Man.

Nicodemus came at night because he could not come in the daylight. During the daylight hours, Nicodemus was playing the part of Jewish ruler. Playing this part would involve a certain assurance of things believed, a certain code of behavior, and an assurance to those around him that things were good. But at night, I think he wrestled with the big questions, the dark places, the unanswerable issues, and the secrets he could never tell anyone about himself.

Night was the only time Nicodemus could come because it was the only time that he could be honest about himself. If the meeting had taken place in the daylight, I am afraid that Nicodemus would have been so caught in playing his role; he could not have been himself.

How many of us are there, we are so stuck in playing a role we can not allow ourselves to be ourselves? It’s the questions that wake us up and haunt us so that we can’t go back to sleep. It’s the worries we have that we can’t ever share with another person. It’s the fears we have that we can’t verbalize. It’s the doubts we all struggle with, but never express. It’s the secrets we each carry and guard as though our lives depended on them. It is the things we struggle with at night, in the dark.

We have the same option as Nicodemus does, we can allow Jesus to invade this space. We can come to the truth in the middle of the night, in the middle of the secrets, questions, and fears that only we know.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest length. Our faith is only as strong as our weakness. May you allow Jesus into the places you hide. May you go to Jesus in your night. And may you find truth and words that challenge and guide you to a new place of light.

thoughts on left-overs….

I don’t care for left-overs. This goes for left over dinner from the night before, take home boxes from restaurants, and basically any meal that sits in the refrigerator for longer than about an hour. My main problem for any meal eaten like that is that meal was prepared for something else, we are just eating it now because we made too much. The purpose of the meal has already passed.

I think the story of the widow and her two small pennies in Mark 12 is about left overs. The widow gets praised by Jesus simply because she does not give from her left overs. The widow gives from a different place while the others give from a surplus, a left over. I think it’s a story that is typically used in regards to money, but I want to look at it anew. Let’s think about it in terms of time.

Jesus does call us to give financially, but he also invites us to give to him relationally. Jesus invites each of us into a relationship with him, one that will grow as we learn more about one another and thus learn more about ourselves. Like every relationship, time is critical. This relationship demands time.

And time is precious. And for most of us, time is limited.

There are things that must be done: meals to be cooked and served, a house to be cleaned, errands that need to be run, homework that needs to be completed, kids that tend to need a lot of time, and then there is our actual job. There are things we want to do: books we want to read, movies we want to see, people we want to spend time with, hobbies we want to do, and naps we want to take. And when it’s all done, there simply are not enough hours in the day.

And we meant to squeeze some time in for Jesus. We really did mean to spend some time this morning reading God’s Word. We really did mean to pray for something or other, time just got away. We meant to try and listen for God’s still small voice, but frankly that time was spent listening to something else. What we have leftover is five minutes now to try and make this relationship work.

One of the most striking elements of the widow’s story comes early on with these words, “and he sat down and began watching.” Jesus did not merely catch from the corner of his eye who was giving what. Jesus intentionally sat down and watches what people give.

I think he has a similar seat now. I think he still watches what we give. I think he calls each of us to spend time with him. I don’t think he is calling for what we have left in our schedules either. I think he is calling for a place on our schedules.

So make time- no place time- for Jesus.

thoughts on Saints….

This Sunday is All Saints Day. This Christian holiday celebrates all those who while now in eternity with God, lived lives that continue to impact us today. Some of the Saints are well known, including St. Francis, St. Gregory, and St. Augustine. Others such as St. Sabas, St. Ceed, and St Lua are lesser known Saints.

St Gregory’s Episcopal Church in California has a different concept of Saints. This church has decorated the ceiling of their worship center with the Saints of their church. They got together as a congregation and chose those who had made a difference in their lives and faith. Their ceiling is adorned with images of Sojourner Truth, King David, Anne Frank, Miriam, and Lucille Ball. Each week as they gather to worship, they take time to reflect on the lives of those who have made a difference to their unique community.

I like this idea of sainthood. I like to think that each of us carry our own list of saints. We could even each use the same criteria as the Catholic Church. Our saints need to be people who are exemplary models. They need to be extraordinary teachers for us. We need to have seen God’s power evident in their lives, calling, and passions. They need to be intercessors. Finally, something needs to have set their lives apart from all the others. Their influence on our lives needs to be almost miraculous, definitely beyond our understanding.

This concept of Saint can serve to remind us to take time to reflect on those in our lives who have made incredible impacts. It’s a call to gratitude for those who are no longer with us, but live on through each of us.

My list of Saints would include my seminary professor Ruth Ann Foster, Abby’s great-grandmother Nana, the incredible poet Madeline L’Engle, the great Johnny Cash, my great-grandmother Mimi, my great-grandfather Papa , Henri Nouwen, Martin Luther King Jr, the unnamed father in Scripture who prays ‘I believe, help my unbelief’, the author Flannery O’Conner, Mother Teresa, and my 5th grade teacher Carol Hewlett.

Take time this week to think on the Saints in your life. Express gratitude for all they continue to mean to you.

May the concept of Saint also encourage you to examine your own life. Ask yourself: Is there someone out there, who one day when I are no longer, who will call me a Saint? Are there lives that I am impacting for eternity? How many of the criteria for Sainthood are present in my life today?

So, on the Eve of All Saints Day, take time to reflect on your Saints and then take time to be a Saint.

thoughts on giving….

The worst Christmas gift I ever gave was a tire gauge.

It was the typical little kids Christmas situation, my parents had given me money to spend at the Christmas fair we had at our school. For my great-grandmother, who lived in a nursing home, did not own a car, and had not driven in five years, I selected the best tire gauge and key chain combination that $1.50 could buy. My sweet Nanny cherished the gift and put her nursing home key on a tire gauge that she carried around with her in the nursing home.

There is something so wonderful about that image to me, my great-grandmother in her nursing home showing all her friends this great tire gauge that her great-grandson had given her for Christmas.

I think giving is more about the spirit than what is really given most of the time. I think giving might actually be more beneficial to the giver than the given. So what are we giving right now?

Just like any parent taking their kids Christmas shopping, God has gifted us abundantly with the expectation that we will give abundantly.

It’s giving our finances to good causes, making sure that we are giving to the church, helping those who can’t help themselves, giving to feed the hungry, to clothe the poor. They say the best way to find out what a person really stands for is to look at their finances. What does your check book, credit card statement, and wallet say about you? It’s giving our time.

Our time is the most important gift that we can ever give to another person. Are you abundantly giving your time away to things that will eternally matter, things like family, faith, and friendship? Are you giving your time to things that will actually stand the test of time? Does your calendar reflect your priorities?

And then finally, the biggest gift of all- yourself. Are you giving yourself to others? Are there people in your life who you know beyond a shadow of doubt, you would die so that they could live? Are their people who you have really given yourself too? It’s the gift we are called to give to the world.

Are we abundantly giving in return for abundantly receiving?

This week, make sure that you are living a life of giving. Make sure your finances and calendar are in order. Make sure that you are giving gifts that matter. Make God proud in how you give. Teach your children to give by giving. And live, live abundantly.

thoughts on Esther….

She is probably my favorite Old Testament character, simply put she is just a gorgeous woman who marries a king after she wins a beauty contest and then as almost an after thought, she saves the entire Jewish nation from destruction.

Esther is just using her natural gift, beauty. It’s not one of the spiritual gifts that we take spiritual gift inventories over. It’s not something that she could work to attain, she simply is beautiful. She does not seem haughty about it, she simply knows that she was blessed with the gift of physical beauty, it’s in her genes.

When you read the story, it just seems so natural to her. She does not read like the type of girl you are going to find on the runway, but instead the type of girl you pass on the street and think “there is true class and beauty.” It seems Audrey Hepburn-esque.

It’s so opposite of the way we use our natural talents. We have a tendency to either be extremely prideful about them or be so humble about them that we hide them. It seems Esther finds that delicate balance in the middle of the extremes.

In that balance, she wins the favor of the king. She becomes one his most favored wives. And then it all hits the fan, there is this plan to kill all the Jews because one of the kings men has a bit of problem; mainly he is a little prideful and racist. Esther is a Jew; she is the only Jew that is in a position to save a nation.

Her uncle tells her this infamous line to call her to action: “and who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?”

Here is where you have to love Esther, she did not set out to save the world, but by being herself she came into a position where she was able to make a huge difference.

There are so many lessons we can take from Esther: courage to do the moral thing, dealing with difficult people, humility, and leadership. I think the lesson we all need to focus on this week is this…. Be yourself. Shine in the areas that God has gifted you. Do not hide your talents, but instead humbly use them. Allow the love, beauty, and grace of God to shine through you in the areas where it seems most natural.

And who knows, by simply being yourself, you could walk into a royal position where you are able to make a huge difference for the Kingdom of God? It’s happened before, it could happen again.

So be yourself, let God shine through you, and always be ready for the difference your life could make by you simply living it right.

Thoughts on Nets

One of my favorite scenes in the Gospel story comes early when Jesus calls the disciples. To understand the calling, you need to understand their world. The disciples were fishermen, which meant that they had tried other routes and no one had picked them. They could not be rabbis, scholars, lawyers, or even a follower of a rabbi. They had not gotten picked, they were overlooked, and so they went fishing. It was not a powerful or popular job; it was a job for misfits and those who the world did not pick. It’s the job for those picked last for dodge ball.

They are out fishing when Jesus calls them. I imagine that it would have been quite a scene. This rough, tired fishermen being stopped by a rabbi, a rabbi would never stop to talk to fishermen. He stops and then he does the unexplainable, he tells them to follow him. He calls them to be his followers, it’s another twist on the story because you asked to be a follower of a certain rabbi, never did a rabbi ask you to follow him. But Rabbi Jesus calls them to follow him.

And they drop their nets and follow Jesus. Never have the heard such a calling. The calling was so powerful and inviting. They dropped what was safe to them, what they knew best, the one way they knew to make a living, and they followed this Rabbi.

Mark adds this detail into his gospel, “immediately.” They did not stop and think about it. They did not make a pro and con list. They did not debate if this was a good road to take. They immediately dropped their nets and followed.

Maybe it was the voice of the one calling them; they had never heard a voice so true. Maybe it was the confidence that this rabbi had in them, his call made them believe in themselves. Maybe it was the compassion, grace, acceptance found in the eyes of this rabbi.

Whatever it was, they immediately dropped their nets to flow. I am not sure we are willing to risk it for the call of Jesus. I think many of us tend to carry our nets with us when Jesus calls; we need a back up, a just in case, a ‘if this does not work out, I can throw my nets out somewhere else’ plan, simply a plan b.

We don’t follow immediately, we tell Jesus we are going to get back with him on this one. We need to make sure that this calling is going to match up with our work and social calendars. We need to check to make sure this is not going to interfere too much with our plans.

Sadly, if we carry our nets with us, we get loaded down and can’t keep up with the footsteps of our Jesus. If we delay answering the call, perhaps we miss the call. By missing that call, we might be missing it all.

So take time today to see if you are carrying your net with you still. See if you have put off answering a call on your life. Become as risk-taking and willing as Andrew and Simon, immediately drop your nets and run after our Rabbi.