Reflection for Thursday, March 6, 2008

Romans 11:11-24 reflection by Rev. Beth

"So do not become proud, but stand in awe. For if God did not spare the natural branches, perhaps he will not spare you. Note then the kindness and the severity of God."

God is kind and severe. This is how a life of faith can feel when I only experience God as my personal lord and savior and lose sight that most of the Bible is talking to the "you (plural)" and not just the singular me. One day is full of blessings, the next, random punishment. A faith journey can be such a pendulum swing when it is experienced alone.

Paul is a Jewish pharisee. He had respect and privilege among the Jewish people. He was blessed. But then he met the resurrected Jesus and he understood God in a new way. The thing was all his old friends didn't see it his way. He had to make new friends in the Gentiles. But he couldn't explain the rejection he felt from his old friends; the ones who first taught him about God and whom he knew God loved dearly. The more excited his new friends the Gentiles got about God and their new blessings, the more Paul understood his first family in his particular community of Jews. Whether you are born to faith or find it later, Paul felt it is all too easy to lose sight of God to pride. It is a much harder thing to keep living in awe--focused on God. Among his old community, Paul had lost that sense of awe, but he felt it again with the Gentiles. Still he worried about keeping awe alive.

He tries to explain this to the Gentiles with a metaphor out of everyday life--the tending to an olive tree. Sometimes, trees were pruned to keep the plant alive and other times branches were grafted back on to bring new life. Olive trees need pruning. Because the branches grow crosswise, they can create a thick canopy and block the sun from reaching the rest of the plant. This means some parts can get sun-burnt and others can wither from no sun. Olive trees also need grafting. Olive trees don't grow from seeds in the ground. Seedlings or other branches must be grafted back to an existing tree. This can bring new life to an old tree or even change the variety of olive growing there.

As a pastor, I can worry like Paul does here as old friends burn out on church and disappear for a while and as new friends come in with great zeal but no knowledge of the old friends and the olives we were growing. But I realize that the pruning and the grafting of the tree are not ultimately up to me. I admit that I worry about who has disappeared because they are experiencing severity and who is not coming because they've turned God's kindness into pride. Or vice versa, who is the fair weather church-goer and who is the devout despairer? Ultimately, I try to enjoy the fruit of the olive tree, which incidentally never bears fruit in the same place. I try to trust the Olive Grower with its pruning sheers and grafting thread. I try to remember that we are not singular seedlings, growing alone in a life of faith, but we are branches on a tree, experiencing together severity and kindness as we are pruned and grafted at different intervals. Although it feels imbalanced as an individual experience, we need pruning and grafting for our greater growth as we learn to live not alone and not by pride but together and in awe of the God who brings us there.

Reflection for Thursday, Feb 28, 2008

(Note, we've missed a few days due to technical confusions, snowdays and the flu, but we've kept reading on our own. See the calendar at the bottom of the page for each day's reading.)

Romans 8:31-39

God in the ER.

Last night, I took James to the ER. At 5:30pm, he started projectile vomiting and everything else and then just went limp after an hour. It is scary for a parent to see her child so listless and vulnerable. This is the part of the atonement that I have never understood, the part about God, a Father that would sacrifice his son. And yet, I know that God feels the pain of parents and children who suffer. In the ER, David and I, although confused about James, felt lucky. There was a toddler with a large head wound, a 5-year old girl with very painful condition similar to kidney stones that required multiple CT scans, a teenager with a sever asthma attack and no parents around, and a 12 week-old with 103 degree fever. The room needed a lot of prayers. When faced with another person’s suffering and with my own helplessness, I often ask, “where is God in this place?” I’ve always loved this passage because it seems to ask the same question I ask in these situations: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” Hardship? That 5-year old had gotten used to all the needles and tests at a young age. Distress? Parents who can’t fix it for their child, live with stress every moment. Famine? James stomach went from jolly to sunken in just 2 hours without nutrition, I can’t imagine not being able to feed my child for days. Nakedness? In different states of undress or just in confusion and at a loss, we were all vulnerable. Peril? War? Do these separate us from God’s love? It feels like it, but (at the risk of sounding like a Huckabee campaign) isn't God's love "more than a feeling."

So I was surprised to open my Bible today and find my favorite passage waiting for me on my day to reflect: Romans 8:38-39
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

James is on the mend. I hope too are the other infant, the toddler, and Leah, the 5-year old and Leah, the 14-year-old, (there was cute moment when the doctors got confused by the Leah’s and for a moment they left their own fear of their condition and identified with the other’s). Mended or not, they are not alone, not alone in their suffering as God as Jesus too has suffered great pain nor parents alone in their distress, for God too has known their vulnerability. I guess God, too, was in the ER.

Reflection for Thursday, Feb 21, 2008

Romans 6:15-23

Slaves to sin? That is strong language. Perhaps a better term for how sin rules our lives and the world is “occupation.” A friend told me about a short documentary nominated for an Oscar this year.

The film starts with a woman and her son who is 5 years-old and contracted HIV; they have just run out of his medication. The film follows the woman as she tries to get healthcare and medicine for her son. She treks out into a desert town. She knocks on what seems to be a clinic. She is told she needs certain paperwork. She treks outside again. There are tanks in the background. She is in Iraq. She goes to one government agency after another. As she tells the story of how her son got sick from a blood transfusion, she is given more paperwork and told to go to yet another place for more before she can see what few doctors there are and get what few rations of HIV drugs are available. She is a mother who wants to help her son. Perhaps the doctors, soldiers, and government officials want to help her son too (or maybe they think they have by referring her to some better place), but the bureaucracy set up by the occupation will not let them. Meanwhile, his right ear grows more deformed, his eyes more sunken and skin sallow. Their world and each individual life is “occupied.” They feel helpless—unable to break the cycle of sin in order to serve this boy. (But could they? Could one individual—the doctor, the nurse, the soldier, the official, even the film-maker with his access to the Western world, get this 5 year-old boy his medication? Or slowly change the rules of occupation in Iraq?)

Earlier in Romans, we learned that we are slaves to sin, but we are not set free by our own attempts to be sinless but by God’s grace.

“What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!” Paul really cuts to the quick with this opening question. How often when confronted with the intractable situation of evil and human sin (and my own desires to satisfy myself first), do I say, why bother trying to serve others, why bother trying to do as Jesus would, it won’t make a difference and isn’t God supposed to love me anyway? Isn’t that what makes God, God and me, human? I know that reaction sounds hopeless, selfish, and on the brink of great depression, but it is actually a subtle reaction that comes each time I decide whether or not to buy a drink in a disposable bottle, to sign up to volunteer, or don’t unplug my electronics and zap more energy from the grid than I need. Why not take? Why not sin just this once (oh and the next and the next)? I can’t save the environment alone? I can’t change our dependency on oil and the international conflicts fighting over resources, right? My choices (my sins) don’t make a difference to the world being saved or my salvation right? To feel like your sins don’t matter so why not sin anyway just like everyone else is to be enslaved by sin. To feel like nothing you do, even the right choices, can free you. Maybe so, but Paul tells us that our slavery is a state of mind and heart. God has freed us. God asks us to be “obedient from the heart” to God’s teaching so that we may understand that we are free, that our choices do matter, and that our efforts to save the environment and seek world peace do matter. The teachings of God (the law) and the love of God (grace) offer us freedom. When we must choose and change our complicity with sin, God’s teaching/law frees our minds. When we struggle with our desires to serve ourselves and with our hopelessness that serving others makes little impact, God’s grace frees our hearts. We are saved from the helplessness of sin's occupation by God's grace so that we may have hope and may act in and for hope.

By Rev. Beth

Reflection for Thursday, Feb 14

Romans 3: 21-31

"For there is no distinction , since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; for they are now justified by God's grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus..."

All of us fall short. This is a great lesson that love in a committed relationship teaches us. Romance is wonderful--it is full of fantasy. We can play the best version of ourselves and believe in the best version of the other person. It is a time when our life truly feels like a movie and all seems possible. It reminds us of the great things we want for our life and the great love we want to transform the world. Romance promises new beginnings whether it is your first Valentine's Day or your fiftieth. But what balances romantic love is committed love. This is love that picks you back up when the fantasy falls flat, when the movie film goes static, when you realize you don't always want to be the hero or heroine, but sometimes you just want to fade into the background and be loved anyway. God's love doesn't make a distinction between the best version of ourselves and the one that falls short. God loves us for our endless possibilities and loves us in our shortcomings too.

Last night, a few of us discussed our Valentine's Day menu:
"I'm making the only dish I know, meatloaf, but I'm experimenting with a new side of tabouleh. (I'm nervous about this.)"
"We'll skip dinner all-together and just graze on chips and salsa as usual. It's more relaxing that way."
"I'm making seared diver scallops with a blackbean/mango/passionfruit salsa and crabmeat crepes tied with chives. I've been planning this forever!"
"It's not about us, but the kids, we'll work as a family, filling mugs with candy for their classes."

The people and the plans were so diverse in their ideas of romance and of commitment, who could compare them. They each showed something beautiful about their hope in love and comfort with their beloved. Me, I made Magnolia-recipe cupcakes as David laid down linoleum over our wood floor to protect a soon-to-be crawling James from the splinters we often get. Later, our neighbors came by with champagne to celebrate some surprising good news they'd received that day. Our day would definitely fall short of a romantic movie, but it was full of love: the love that comes from being accepted for the small efforts we make to delight each other with lopsided cupcakes, the love that comes in showing an appreciation for safety through a baby-proof apartment, or the love that comes in being the first friends to call with good news. I couldn't feel this love without the knowledge that David, our neighbors, myself, and everyone with whom I'm in relationship have at one time fallen short, perhaps even fell short today, the most idealistic day of the year, but that we are loved still. And God loves us still.

By Rev. Beth

Post your Valentine's Day stories below: past or present!

Reflection for Thursday, Feb 7, 2008

Romans 1:1-17
Paul is expressing how much the church in Rome means to him despite his never going to it. He is a pastor to people he rarely sees. This is how I often feel with the people in our church, especially the young people who have so much in their lives that make it impossible to come back and visit us. I understand this, but it doesn’t change the way I feel about them. I find myself begging parents or friends to tell me what is going on with the absent.

Paul writes, “without ceasing I remember you always in my prayers, asking by God’s will I may somehow at last succeed in coming to you. For I am longing to see you so that …we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith.”

Some people might believe that a pastor gets encouraged directly by God or some unwavering faith, but I think most of us are encouraged by the journeys of the people around us, particularly the youth. When you let me into your lives, minds and hearts, I understand how truly amazing God is for making a person as unique as you with unique qualities and yet struggles we share. I waver on what it means to “pray without ceasing” but I become aware that I am doing it when I am going about my day and a thought of someone just appears.

Since having James and being constantly aware of his needs and schedule even when I am not with him, I realize how memory isn’t just what is on our brain at any given moment, but that the memory of the people whom we care about live in our bodies all the time. When I become conscious of people with a thought like, “hey I wonder if Emma is in a new play?” or “how Christopher, Anna and Eliza are getting on at their new schools?” or “what’s Jessica and Juan’s new house like?” it only reminds me that you have been with me the whole time, “without ceasing I remember you always in my prayers.”

Maybe prayer, like memory, is something that stays with us always, a place where we hold people and events that mean something to us forever. We are not always conscious of “praying” just as we don’t always know when it is we will pull something from our memory for “remembering” but whom and what we care about are always in these parts of us.

-- by Rev. Beth

Ash Wednesday Reflection

Reflection for Feb 6, 2008
Ash Wednesday is a day when we are reminded of our mortality. The phrases we say as we anoint heads with ashes is “from dust you came and to dust you return.” They come from Genesis 3:19 after Adam and Eve have eaten from what was God’s alone. They remind us of our mortality. It is scary to think of ourselves as dust, and yet we are also the breath of God. God took dust and breathed life into it. We are frail particles and immortal ether. I am more emotional this Ash Wednesday because I look at James, my 7-month old son. Is he dust? (No I have 24 hours of back labor to prove that! How much easier birth would be if it was a science experiment like those neon powder figures we used to just add water too!). And yet he and I are both mortal. At 4 months, James went from a sleeping body into a smiling and laughing child. I could see God’s breath in him then and now. We are dust but we are also full of God. When I imposed ashes on foreheads last night, I said “From dust you came, dust you shall return.” I also paraphrased from a verse of Romans, “From God you came, and to God you return.” We are always with God, for God is in us.
I hope you will all consider reading Romans these 40 days of Lent. Just 5-15 verses a day (with Sundays off as a Sabbath). Our youth leaders will take turns reflecting on it and posting it to the blog. Feel free to comment if you are moved.
by Rev. Beth