Dirt

At this moment there is a small container of dirt in my office.

It has to do with the children's message on Sunday.  Wracking my brain for an idea for the complicated gospel reading about the man born blind, I thought about the mud Jesus put on the man's eyes.  Dirt plus water equals mud, I thought.  Surely we could riff on that for a couple of minutes with the children.

I thought I ought to go out and buy some dirt.  This is my way.  I am not proud to admit it.  My husband said, "Why don't you dig some up from around the church?"  But before I could retort to this perfectly sensible idea, one of my good church members was texting me about helping with the children and wondered if there was anything she could do.

"I need dirt," I texted back.

So I had dirt on Sunday morning, and a little bit of water, and I made a little bit of mud in a pie plate while asking the children about what was good about dirt.  They shouted out that things could grow in dirt:  flowers and vegetables and other things.  They thought about good things that we need water for too:  for drinking and washing and growing things.  We need water to live!  they said.

We need dirt to live too.

I poured a little bit of water on the dirt and asked what we made.

Everyone knew it was going to be mud.  Some thought it was cool, except when I asked about Jesus putting it on the blind man's eyes.  "Ewwww!"  said one little boy.

But a miracle happened.  Using dirt and water, Jesus made a blind man see.

Just water and dirt and Jesus.

We are made of earth too, according to the Bible.  Water and dirt.  It could be humbling.

And yet fearfully and wonderfully made.

Water and dirt and Jesus.  Miracles.  Each and every one of us, muddy, messy miracles.

A Longer Epiphany

I've often wished that the season of Epiphany was just a little bit longer, and not just because it would give me a little more time to get ready for Lent to begin.  It is also possible that I like long Epiphanies because there is a better chance that (at least here in Minnesota) Easter will be a warm spring day with some flowers blooming, which is the way I imagine it should be.

But I also just like Epiphany, as a season, even though, I confess that I don't think of it as much as I ought to.  It is that obscure little season between Christmas and Lent.  Christmas is famous.  Everyone has heard of it, even people who don't ever go to church.  Many people are also vaguely aware that there is something called "Lent", partly because of its reputation as that season when people have to 'give something up.'  But Epiphany?  What's that?  It's an odd word really, that most people don't even use or know.   Even as a Christian-in-the-know, I can't help but think but think of Epiphany as that 'sandwich' season:  a smattering of Sundays after the big high of Christmas, but before the serious discipline of Lent.

Friends, it should not be so.  Epiphany is a season.  It is a season that begins with the wise men following a star to Bethlehem, and ends with Jesus' face shining on a mountain.  In between, we get stories about light, and stories about Jesus calling his disciples.  We get the story of Jesus' baptism and stories of him healing people.  But why?  Why these particular stories right now?  They are small windows of light, small revelations of who Jesus is in the world, and of who we are in the world, as well.

The word Epiphany actually means, literally "a showing forth, a revealing."  An epiphany is a revelation, a flicker or a flash of light, a moment when you said, "aha!" and just knew something, without studying or going through all of the steps.  Or maybe you WERE studying:  you were reading a book, or doing the research, or singing a song at church, or sitting at your desk at work, and in the midst of it all you had an epiphany, which is to say, that the truth just came to you, not as the fruit of your studying, but just as you were going along, in your working, in your playing, in your worshipping.

In some religious traditions, the season of Epiphany is also called "Ordinary Time."  As opposed to, for example, Christmas and your wedding and other high moments of your life.  But perhaps that is one of the reasons that I like it.  Most of our lives are, actually, ordinary time.  I wouldn't trade the high moments for anything, but the promise of Epiphany is that the light shines also on ordinary days.  So it goes like this:  when you are going about your working, studying, playing, regular Sunday morning worshipping life, suddenly, somehow, something will happen, and you will say, 'aha!', and you will know, just know, who Jesus is.  And you will know who you are, as well.  It could be as small a thing as a handful of water, shimmering, a line that leaps out at you from a book, or a song, a small piece of a small conversation that you had, just because you showed up.

So I sometimes wish that Epiphany could be a little longer, just a few more days to hear healing stories and be surprised by the possibility that God could be in this place, although we did not know it.  I do wish that Epiphany could just a little longer, although I suspect that it is the nature of the season to be fleeting, just as fleeting as our ordinary lives.

In the meantime, sing songs about the light, the light of a candle, the flame of the fire, the light in the darkness.

For that is who you are.

Learning to See: God-sightings, Part 2

As our informal summer outdoor worship service, "picnic church", winds down, we have added one additional element to our weekly order of service. " God-sightings", it is called.  Instead of bird-watching, keeping an eye out for cardinals, or sparrows, or even the occasional catbird, we are to keep our eyes open for God, lurking about in our lives and neighborhoods.

Two weeks ago, we introduced "God-sightings" after our high school students returned from their annual mission trip.  We asked two of the young people to share a bit of their experiences, and called them  "God-sightings."  Easy-peasy.

The next week, after the message and after the scripture reading, we asked again.  We began by affirming that God is with us through every aspect of our lives.  God is in the world.  God is very near, we reminded people.  Then we asked the question, "Where have you seen God lately?"

There was an awkward silence.  I felt a little disappointed.  Hadn't anyone seen God in the last week?  God really is all around us.

I realized later that it perhaps was not a fair experiment.  We don't have a lot of practice in my faith tradition talking about where we have seen God.  Even I didn't realize until an hour after the service that I could have testified that I saw God at two weddings the previous weekend.   Four people were brave and foolish enough to pledge lifelong faithfulness to one another, holding hands out on a hot and humid Saturday afternoon.  I saw God in those four hands, and heard God's voice in those promises.  But it took awhile to remember, even for me.

I also realized a deep truth from my own faith tradition:  yes, God is everywhere, God is very near, but God is also hidden.  Sometimes God is very hidden, especially in the dark tragedies of so many current events these days, in the personal griefs and fears of our lives.  Why should I be surprised when it is not automatically easy to testify about where you have seen God hiding during the past week?  God is everywhere, but not obvious.  Seeing takes practice.  Speaking about what we have seen also takes practice.

With these realizations in mind, here are a few practices that might help us to see God:

1.  Begin with prayer.  It is as simple as the request of blind Bartimaeus, outside Jericho.  What do you want me to do for you?, Jesus asks him.  "My teacher, let me see again,"  he replies.  That's all.  Just "My teacher, let me see again."  And then, let Jesus teach us.

2.  Go small.  Go for the fleeting glimpses, for the whispers, not the shouts.  If God is present (as we say) in water, bread and wine, God is present in other small, and ordinary things.  And people.  The cardinal may only be in your front yard for a moment, not long enough to take a picture -- and yet, yes, in the cardinal I recognize something.  A tongue of flame, perhaps?  A moment of glory.  I love the beginning of Luke, Chapter 3.  While Luke sets the scene and the timing by telling us all about who was emperor of Rome, and who was governor, and who was ruler in Judea, he goes on to say that the word of the Lord came to "John, in the wilderness."  Rather than in the seats of power, where everyone expected the action to be, the people saw God out in the wilderness, standing in the river Jordan.

3.  Look not for individuals, but relationships.  Pay attention to service, acts of mercy, small sacrifices, what we do for love.  Imagine what "grace" would look like, if grace were a painting, or a sculpture, or a movie.

Once, long ago, I was at an outdoor concert.  I saw a couple not far from me, a man in a wheelchair, along with his wife.  At the start of one of a song, I noticed from the corner of my eye, that she began to dance with him, moving the wheelchair gracefully.  They turned in circles together, moving to the music, pirouetting back and forth.  I saw God then.  I saw God in the dance.

4.  Pay attention not just to success, but to failure.  Pay attention to what is broken. Pay attention to the broken pieces, the shards, the tears, and to joy.  Pay attention to what, and who, needs healing.  Pay attention to what is bent over.  

I see God every week in a man from my congregation.  He walks bent over.  I know the reason why.  I knew his wife, who had contracted polio as a young mother.  She recovered, but later on contracted post-polio syndrome.  Every week they came to church together, and he had to help her, to carry her.  They also often went out to concerts and theatre.  For many years he lifted her and carried her.  Now he walks bent over.  And I see God.

Where have you seen God this week?

Epiphany: A Day and a Season

Epiphany went by this year, and I hardly even noticed it.  It came and went on Monday, January 6th, when the most notable news was the Polar Vortex, which has plunged our state (and most of the country) into a frozen wasteland.

I love the day of Epiphany, though I had barely a notion of it growing up.  I have grown to love it, I suppose, because there is a certain exotic taste to it.  It's not just the story of the three wise men from an indeterminate country "to the east"; it's not just the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.  It's also the things I have learned since then, about exotic places where Epiphany is a much bigger deal than it is here:  where they have community festivals with life-size puppets and processions of the three kings; where children leave their shoes out on the eve of Epiphany so they can be filled with gifts; where people gather by Mediterranean waters and bless the sea; where people mark the lintels of their houses for the new year with the initials "CBM" and pray God's blessings on friend and stranger for the coming year.

Epiphany seems exotic to me, and that is why I like it:  finding the revelation of Christ in places and faces strange to me.  It reminds me of that time long ago that I spent in Japan, finding myself constantly surprised and always learning new things.  There are times now that I wonder:  it was so long ago.  Was I ever even there?  Everything was so different.  The streets narrow and winding, with men delivering bowls of noodles (instead of pizza) on bicycles, the children shy or staring, the small churches where we took off our shoes at the entry and wore slippers instead.  So exotic, so far away.  At first I thought I was bringing Jesus to Japan.  But I discovered that instead Jesus was already there.

Epiphany seems exotic to me, but ordinary as well.  It is the surprise of finding Jesus in the strange and the familiar, in the old man making his bamboo baskets, and in the weary cashier at the supermarket.  It is the surprise of discovering Jesus in the words of an old hymn, and in the sounds and lyrics of a top forty tune.  It is the strange taste of bread and wine, so ordinary, transformed.

Lucky for me, Epiphany is not just a day.  It is a season, too:  a season where we hear the call of a strange and ordinary man, walking by the sea.  He says, "Follow me," and for some reason we can't even imagine, we follow him.  We follow him across the sea of Galilee, through storms and fasting, to Myanmar and Japan and Texas and the subzero Midwest.

And because we follow him, we see miracles, both exotic and ordinary.


20  C B M 14.