Baby, It's Cold Outside

It's been just over a month since my wife, Haley, and I first moved to Indiana. Before said move, the residents of Lafayette assured us that the weather was "no different" from Kentucky weather, that it "wasn't really that much colder." I'm glad that they told us this, because now I know that I was called to pastor a community of liars.

It's cold. Really, really cold. At times like this, it's hard to imagine what could possible make the world outside so necessary and appealing that I would choose to brave the snow and this infernal wind. I walked the dogs this morning because they're loud and whiny, and I suppose I'm going to suit up and head to the church office in  few minutes, because it's like my job or something.

It's truly amazing the effect that discomfort can have on our motivation, isn't it? No matter how dedicated you are to a course of action, no matter how assured you are of a righteous path or a perfect plan, the knowledge of discomfort changes everything.

Having recently learned about St. Anges of Rome for the purposes of Lent Madness**, this snow makes me wonder - would I have faced the flames and sword for my dedication to Christ? I don't rightly know.

As I look around at worshipers and worship communities who are turning their world upside-down in an effort to live out the Gospel, to attract new people to the faith by dint of creating a radical, unique community, this snow makes me wonder if I have the perseverance to blaze new trails as they have.

As I look around this world full of pain and hatred, this snow makes me wonder if I am capable of transforming it in God's image.

But y'know, as I pack up to leave for work, I realize: It's not the paycheck that makes me brave the snow, nor the sense of responsibility. It's excitement about the job ahead. I'm excited about sermons to prepare and worship to plan. I'm excited about a community to forge and a world to transform. I'm excited about another day, which is another chance to truly live out the Gospel... and that's what gets me out in the snow.

What bitter wind keeps you from living out your potential? What cold makes you scared of braving the world outside, so that you keep your light hidden up, like your lamp hidden under a bushel? And, more to the  point, what energizes you to break through the fear and that discomfort? There's a whole world out there, full of causes that need supporting and wrongs to be righted and oppression to be fought and seven billion hearts to fill with love. Maybe, if you're excited about it too, the cold will not stop you.

As for me? I'm going to pre-heat the car.

--

** PS - Lent Madness! www.lentmadness.org Go check it out! Learn! Pray! Vote!

The Purple Days

Happy Ash Wednesday!

I want to wish you a wondrous Lent, filled with beauty and peace as we contemplate our mortality, our morality, and our relationship with God.

Beginning tomorrow, I'll be posting updates from LentMadness, so be sure to check back here to make informed decisions as you vote for the winner of the Golden Halo.

Will you be attending an Ash Wednesday service tonight? If so, post a smudge-pic (er, I mean, a photo of your sacredly-imposed ashes) on Facebook or Twitter and share it with us!

- www.facebook.com/fcclaf
- www.twitter.com/revgeiger

Are you giving something up for Lent? Remember, we give things up to recognize our dependence on God and to strengthen our dedication to Christ. Consider, rather than sacrificing a joy in your life, engaging in an intentional act of love each day throughout Lent. The important thing, when using this season as a spiritual tool, is to do whatever you do to further your service and devotion to the Lord.

From the Book of Common Prayer:

Dear People of God: The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord's passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting. This season of Lent provided  a time in which converts to the faith were prepared for Holy  Baptism. It was also a time when those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church. Thereby, the whole congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith. I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God's holy Word. And, to make a right beginning  of repentance, and as a mark of our mortal nature, let us now kneel before the Lord, our maker and redeemer.

Take Heed!

#1 - New sermon/blogpost below. Read it! Read it now!

#2 - Make sure you're following me on Twitter (@revgeiger) and that you Like First Christian Church of Lafayette on Facebook to stay posted on what the SouthSide Church and I are doing.

Shalom!
Chris

Shiny, Happy People

Did you know that people glow?

                It’s true. People, all of us, glow. All living things, as a matter of fact, emit visible light from their bodies.  Mostly from the face. A human body, for instance, puts off this light that is one- one-thousandth the vision threshold; I would have to glow 1,000 times brighter for you to see me glowing.

                We all glow, even if you can’t see it. I wonder, though, if our glowing-power ever gets better, if it ever gets stronger. I mean, think about the descriptions that you hear about pregnant women – what do people say? They glow! When somebody has a really happy look about them, what do we say? They’re beaming! Heck, really smart people are characterized as bright, so they’re glowing a lot as just a base level. Somewhere, in our bodies and in our language, there’s a recognition that we are creatures of light, and when something big is happening – when we’re triumphant, when we’re special, when we’re going through a life-altering event – we get, well, shinier.

                In fact, it’s always been a part of our culture, a part of our stories. Special people, or ordinary people in special circumstances, shine. In ancient Greek literature, it was said that great heroes shined with extraordinary light in the heat of battle. In most of the world’s faiths, in most of humanity’s traditions and stories, are people who glow with an exceptional light. In many of the East-Asian faiths, they depict the great teachers as being surrounded by flames. The Colossus of Rhodes, a giant statue of the Greek sun-god Helios, has a crown with sunbeams shooting from it, which you might recognize as the same crown worn by the Statue of Liberty.

                In the Jewish tradition, and the Christian tradition, we often see our great figures depicted with halos.

Image Source

That big shining disc, like a golden dinner plate sticking up behind their heads, or a golden ring just sort of floating up there. The saints get it. The disciples get it. The angels get it, along with shining bright robes. Jesus definitely gets it.

 And I’ll tell ya – within my tradition? In the Bible, a lot of it traces back to one particular encounter.

                You see, this was after the Exodus, when God and Moses led the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt.  After that point, they start wandering – Moses is leading the group, but they don’t really feel like they’re getting anywhere. Just muddling along, barely surviving, with no Promised Land in sight. They get fed up with Moses. They start to suspect that this Moses is either a sham or a loser, and they’re not too sure about this Yahweh thing either. This God-of-our-ancestors business doesn’t seem to be helping them. They look elsewhere – they make a golden calf, put it on a pole, and worship it, hoping for protection from the kind of god they’re more familiar with. Moses orders a bunch of them dead, saying it’s God’s command, and later Moses has to talk God out of abandoning the Hebrews entirely. This relationship – Yahweh and the chosen people – is starting out on really rocky ground. If they’re gonna have this relationship – you will be my people and I will be your God – they’re gonna need some kind of code of conduct. Some kind of agreement. Some kind of covenant. Even a set of laws simply handed from God to us won’t work – God tried that, but the tablets were destroyed after the incident with the golden calf. It needed to be an agreement, both sides saying, “This is who we are, this is what we will be to each other.” But as God and Moses are about to make this final agreement, this covenant, as they’re about to create the Torah, Moses demands to see God. To see God’s glory. God is hesitant, and says that nobody can see God’s face and live, but if Moses hides in a crack in the side of the mountain, he can see God’s glory from behind as it passes by.  It’s a bizarre little encounter, but what happens next, after they make the tablets of the covenant? That’s the strange story for today.

 I’ll be reading to you from an adapted version of the Common English Bible, and I’ll be reading from the book of Exodus, chapter 34, verses 28-35. Let the whispers of God settle into you.

[TEXT]

28 Moses was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights. He didn't eat any bread or drink any water. He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten words.

29 Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two covenant tablets in his hand, Moses didn't realize that the skin of his face shone brightly because he had been talking with God. 30 When Aaron and all the Israelites saw the skin of Moses's face shining brightly, they were afraid to come hear him. 31 But Moses called them closer. So Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and Moses spoke with them. 32 After that, all the Israelites came near as well, and Moses commanded them everything that the Lord had spoken with him on Mount Sinai. 33 When Moses finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. 34 Whenever Moses went into the Lord's presence to speak with God, Moses would take the veil off until he came out again. When Moses came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, 35 the Israelites would see that the skin of Moses's face was shining brightly. So Moses would put the veil on his face again until the next time he went in to speak with the Lord.

[/TEXT]

                So that’s what happens when you see God’s glory a little too closely. Some of it just sticks to ya. Now, the science nerd in me is fascinated by this story. If it happened in real history the way this story describes it, I have to wonder about the process. It could be that whatever makes us glow already, that life force that emits energy from our bodies, just gets stronger and pours out when we get near God, when we get near the source of our life.

                The theologian in me understands that, whether or not it happens this way, it’s a way of understanding what happens to us when we encounter God. How it can transform us. How it can transfigure us, make us look and sound and seem different. How, whatever it is that makes God God, whatever that “glory” stuff is, it seeps into our pores and then explodes back out at the world around us. How we can be a reflection of God to other people, how we can point people to God by the light of our lives and our love.

                The domestic man in me is fascinated by the idea that somebody could be shiny and bright after they’ve been wandering in the desert with no bathing abilities to speak of. Moses’s shining face, the shining clothes of the angels and of Jesus – make no mistake, these things are special because it’s hard to keep something clean and bright, especially in the wilderness of the ancient Middle Eastern desert. If your robes are shining brilliant white, or if your face is gleaming, then there has to be something special about you. There has to be something strange going on.

 

                Look at these images. Look at the people that we venerate, the people we lift up as special and holy. These otherworldly figures. They’re glowing because something different is happening. Because they’re connected in some special way to God.

                What makes you glow? What makes me glow? I’ll tell ya, when I’m glowing, most often, it looks more like this:

Image used with permission by Casey Mullins

                Maybe some of the impact of the glowing people is lost on us these days, because this is the modern glowing person. Glowing has come to mean comfort, joy, and connectedness. And, y’know, those things are holy as well. God can be found in a text conversation just as much as in a mountaintop transfiguration. We can experience the sacred through the meditation exercise known as Angry Birds just as much as we can through an hour of studying Scripture.

                But I wonder if there’s something else, too. I feel like Christians, God-people of any kind really, are expected to be shining and glowing all the time. The world expects that connection to the Divine means that you radiate beautiful light, that anything not shiny and not glowy couldn’t possibly be good enough or pure enough to be Holy.

                I believe that having an encounter with God doesn’t necessarily make us all Shiny, Happy People Holding Hands. It can. But it can also make us look the opposite. It can make us choose to stay in the dust and grime of this life, to nestle in here and live in this world. An encounter with the Divine doesn’t just make people rise above this world, but to transform it from within by the power of knowing God. And that can be messy work. It will get your glowing robes dirty, and it will dim a shining face. But it’s holy work all the same. It’s all a part of that covenant, all a part of that connection with God. That’s what it can mean to know the God who loves this world and everything within it.

                Moses went up to the mountaintop, and he came down with some Holy on his face. The encounter with God made Moses a Shiny Happy Man. What would you look like if you got some holy on your face? If you dusted up your shoes by kicked around in the sacred for a while?

                It might look like loving your enemy and praying for those who despise you. It might look like loving all people, especially those whom nobody else loves. It might look like living your life together with people who look, act, think, and believe differently from you. It might look like giving of your own time and energy in service to the world around you. It might look an awful lot like following the path of God, following the path of Jesus Christ.

Even if it’s not shining, even if it’s dirty, it can still make people uncomfortable. Perform a blatant act of radical welcome, radical love, in public and tell me that it doesn’t make people uncomfortable. Sometimes we might even have to veil it, like Moses, to shield those around us from the dangerous power of sacred enthusiasm. But we cannot stop. We keep seeking to connect with the sacred, again and again in a thousand different ways, to be transformed by God. 

Amen.

Weird

So, for my post of the "Love Nut" sermon? I had apparently marked the date as 3/10. Bizarro. It was actually 2/3. Fixed now.
Lord bless us, we of constant mistakes...

The Love Nut (Sermon 2/3)

In every generation, there is another picture of Jesus. In every generation, there is another aspect of who Jesus was, who Jesus is, that our society lifts up and points to. It becomes an ideal for us. Around the turn of the 20th century, we saw the Muscular Christian movement, which promoted physical strength as a Christian virtue, and gave us everything from the Boy Scouts to crucifixes with bulky, stacked Jesuses. Jesus as bodybuilder.

                In the early 1900s, a Christian Socialist named Charles Sheldon coined the phrase “What Would Jesus Do?”, and kicked off the Social Gospel movement, lifting up Christianity as the solution to the social and economic problems of the world. If you just do what Jesus would have done, the Social Gospel says, then you would eliminate injustice and poverty on earth. Jesus as social reformer.

                There have been a ton of these trends, even in the couple hundred years. In fact, it’s funny that the “What Would Jesus Do?” movement began so long ago, because it really came into its own in my childhood, something like fifteen years ago. That was when the “What Would Jesus Do?” culture really exploded, and you saw WWJD everywhere, on every billboard, t-shirt, and wristband.

Then there’s radical Jesus. Some of you may remember the Jesus Movement from the sixties and seventies, that strange merger of hippy counterculture and traditionalist Christianity. Calling themselves “Jesus People”, living in communes and speaking out against authority, all in the name of this radical Jesus. Other hippies called them Jesus Freaks, a term that’s grown to the point of becoming cliché.

                For these Jesus People, Jesus could be best understood as a radical, a strong personality speaking out against the empire, railing against the religious establishment, against the patriarchy, against all things accepted and status quo. Jesus as Weirdo.

                So many Jesuses.  Jesus as bodybuilder, as social reformer, as weirdo. Not to mention the standards – Jesus as Lord, Jesus as the Word, Jesus as lamb of God. All sorts of Jesuses. Each one with a different picture of God, and each one pointing to a different way to be follower of Jesus.

                This problem – which picture of Jesus do I behold, which path of Jesus do I walk? – is not a new one. Indeed, it’s one of the oldest problems in the Christian story. I mean, really, we start out with not one nor two nor three but four biographies of Jesus in the Bible; that should tell you something right there.

                The early church saw this problem, and tried their best to work through it. In one of the earliest Christian communities, the church at the town of Corinth, it was starting to become a serious issue. So Paul, the missionary who founded all sorts of churches throughout the Roman Empire, Paul who founded this church in Corinth, when Paul sees what’s going on there, when he sees these Corinthians struggling and dividing themselves over the “Too-Many-Jesuses” problem, he has to put a stop to it. So he writes them a letter, the first of two letters he would write to them, which we church-people in our infinite wisdom and subtlety call “First Corinthians”.

                So hear with me now a few words from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. I’ll be reading from chapter 12, verse 27 through chapter 13, verse 3, from a modified reading of the New Living Translation. If you have a Bible, feel free to follow along, or follow along on the screens; or feel free to close your eyes and let the whispers of God settle into you. May these words shine a light into all who seek the Lord.

<READING>

                ²⁷ All of you together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a part of it. ²⁸ Here are some of the parts God has appointed for the church:

first are apostles,
second are prophets,
third are teachers,
then those who do miracles,
those who have the gift of healing,
those who can help others,
those who have the gift of leadership,
those who speak in unknown languages.

²⁹ Are we all apostles? Are we all prophets? Are we all teachers? Do we all have the power to do miracles? ³⁰ Do we all have the gift of healing? Do we all have the ability to speak in unknown languages? Do we all have the ability to interpret unknown languages? Of course not! ³¹ So you should earnestly desire the most helpful gifts.

But now let me show you a way of life that is best of all.

3.¹ If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. ³ If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it;^[a] but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.

</READING>

                These are Paul’s words to a church divided, his words to a community of people who were all passionate for Jesus. A group of people gathered from all walks of life by the single idea of following Christ and the God that sent him, but who find themselves breaking into cliques and subgroups, each with a different Jesus on the wall, each with a slightly different understanding of how to follow.

                Muscular Christians. Social Gospel Christians. WWJD Christians. Jesus Freaks. Methodists. Catholics. Disciples of Christ. Disciples – like the original ones, the Twelve. Disciples. Apostles. Prophets. Teachers. People who speak in tongues, understandable or otherwise. Healers. All of them, nuts for Jesus.

                And the weird thing is, they all seem to be valid pictures of Jesus, at least a little bit. Valid ways to follow Jesus. Paul uses this imagery of the body of Christ, that we are all parts of a larger whole. That whoever in the whole bunch represents the hands is no less in Jesus and of Jesus and with Jesus than the bunch who represents a spleen. People that I don’t like quite so much, people that I disagree with, even about major, important things? Body of Jesus.  I don’t know what the cutoff is, how different from me you have to get before you’re off the body. If there is a cutoff at all. I don’t know.

                But, Paul is telling the Corinthians, that’s not the whole answer. It’s all well and good to say, “I know you’re splitting into different groups, but that’s okay. You’re all doing it right,” but the fact is that it’s clearly tearing apart this community. So Paul reminds them that their diversity is only possible because of the thing that unites them. The most comprehensive picture of Jesus. The most complete and unifying philosophy of and gift from Jesus.

                In the translation I read today, Paul says, “So you should earnestly seek the most helpful gifts.” A more literal translation from the Greek says something like, “Yet be boiling for the best effects of grace, and still I’ll show you a higher way.”

                 Paul is saying – Look, remember Jesus? Remember the stories you’ve heard about him? He was a complicated guy, with a lot of angles, and his followers are a complicated people, with a lot of angles, but there was one thing at the core of Jesus that powered him. We serve God and follow him in a lot of good, true ways, but we can’t lose sight of the one thing at the middle of Jesus’s life, his teachings, his way of serving God. The kernel of what it means to follow Jesus. That piece inside of Christianity that makes it what it is, the seed inside.

                If we are nuts about Jesus, then Jesus is a nut for love. Everything else about following Jesus, every worship practice, every creed and covenant, every rite and ritual is built upon love. All of it.

                “3.¹ If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love, I would be nothing. ³ If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it;^[a] but if I didn’t love, I would have gained nothing.”

                Whatever our creed, whatever our faith, whatever our practices and our traditions, they are good inasmuch as they are built upon love; they are valid and true for precisely as long as they show love to others. We experience the love of God, the love taught to us by Jesus Christ, the love proved and vindicated in his death and resurrection, and we reflect it outwards towards all the word. We reflect the light of God’s love to the places where love is needed most. We do that in charity and works of tangible good. We do that in preaching and teaching and speaking. We do that in prayer and in healing. We do that in being disciples.

                I don’t know what creed you proclaim or what faith you follow. I don’t particularly care. I don’t know if you know your path yet. But if you live your life in love, seeking love, feeling love, and spreading it around… you will be following the path of Jesus.

                I’ll close by praying the words of writer and monk Thomas Merton – a fellow Kentuckian –

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Amen.