Category Archives: Listen

Book Review: Still (Lauren Winner)

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Still is the most Southern thing I’ve read in a long time.

I do not mean that it is about the South or about Southern issues or even has a Southern voice. It has a Southern speed. 
The book reads like a long day with a friend you know so well that you don’t rehash details. Lauren Winner reflects on the middle of her faith journey- what comes between the fiery beginning and the slow burn of the end. The book feels like a conversation she has with you, over a day or a weekend. 
Over eggs and grits with me, she confesses, “The enthusiasms of my conversion have worn off. For whole stretches since the dream, since the baptism, my belief has faltered, my sense of God’s closeness has grown strained, my efforts at living in accord with what I take to be the call of the gospel have come undone.” (p. xiii)
In my mind, I walk with Winner to pick peas in the garden, after breakfast, and she shares about her struggle to sit with her loneliness, “I tell the loneliness to pull up a seat. I notice she does not look so very threatening after all- she has a touch of the dowager about her, actually. She is clutching a handbag made of fat white beads, and she smells of rose water. We sit next to each other on my screen-porch sofa… I lean back. I breathe.” (59) 
As we shell peas, on the same porch, Winner recounts, “I told my spiritual director I was praying (I doubt she was fooled). I told myself that I should be praying, that it would be good for me to pray; I said to myself, Of course you feel far away from God, how could you feel otherwise when you will not pray? But still, I persisted in not praying. My chastisements about my own lack of prayer became private jokes. When I nosed up against prayer, I felt angry…” (64) 
Winner walks me several miles to get a cold drink and we talk about how boredom masks other emotions, other experiences, our resistance. She says, “Boredom is, indeed, a restless state. I am, I hope, inching toward stillness.” (126) 
When I try to recall an earlier comment, something she said about prayer, Winner tells me, “I am not a saint. I am, however, beginning to learn that I am a small character in a story that is always fundamentally about God.” (194) 
Usually when I read a book for review, it’s marked up, full of marginalia, little paper flags poke out beyond the page edges for attention and remembrance. I never touched a pen while reading this book. It felt like I would have interrupted the conversation. I needed to be present in the moment of the reading. The very personal, unwinding confessional, sipping whiskey nature of this book did not lend itself to notes on the first go around. 
When I go back, and I will go back, I will make notes. I will remember to mark the page where she talks about prayer as a marker of Christian life… not necessarily your own prayers, but perhaps the prayers of other people for you. When I read this again, I will be less interested in what happened in her divorce and more able to recognize the map of grief she is drawing for after a death and a divorce. When I read this again, what I appreciated about the tone of Winner’s writing voice will have deepened. 
This is the first book of Winner’s that I have truly liked, possibly because she always writes with an appeal to her reader to relate to her and her theological viewpoint. This time I do. I understand what it’s like to be in the middle, to realize that there is a lot of sailing to do before hitting the other shore (God willing). And, as it turns out, you cannot always predict the weather, the pirates, the flora and fauna. All you can count on is the persistent presence of the sea, which can become so ubiquitous as to be forgotten. But is it still there? Is it still keeping you afloat? 
Still meanders and moseys, without clear plot or direction, but with clarity of voice and purpose. For the first time, Winner seems to be living the questions instead of providing answers with a questionable surety. You cannot solve Winner’s problems or bring solutions to her, so you just listen. In the listening comes your own pondering of the middle, of your middle, of the middle of faith, of the middle of God. 
I received a copy of Still from Lauren Winner through a giveaway on RevGalBlogPals. No requests were attached to receiving the book and no promises were made upon receipt. All page numbers are from the hardback edition of the book, published 2012 by HarperOne. 

Theology of the Cross (Sermon 3/18)

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Lent 4 (Narrative Lectionary, Year B)
Mark 12:38-44
            I like to start sermons with a story. I feel like a story helps us to get into the groove of listening and pondering what’s happening in the Scripture reading. The story is like a little bridge that we cross over into history and that history crosses over to meet us.
            However, in order to be true to the gospel of Christ according to Mark, today’s passage does not lend itself to a good story, to a catchy story, to a story that I want to remember and to tell. In Luke, the widow with her two coins is the hero of the story. In Luke’s account of this story, Jesus praises the woman for giving her last two coins. For generations, she has been upheld as the model of sacrificial giving for the cause of the church.
            For Mark, the woman is symbolic, too. But she doesn’t represent sacrificial giving. Instead, in Mark’s gospel, the woman is a sacrificial lamb, preyed upon by greedy church leaders who posture at showy displays of piety, but in truth consume the goods of the poor, down to their last coins and then their houses.  Mark’s version of this story puts me in mind of all of church history, the bad parts, not a story I want to open with today.
            In 70 A.D., the temple in Jerusalem is destroyed. This is the second temple. The first temple is built under Solomon’s direction, with the conscripted labor of the Israelites. (Conscripted labor is a fancy phrase for slavery.) When it is destroyed and the people of Israel are held captive in Babylon, there is a deep longing for a place to connect with God. After the time of captivity, the second temple is built with money from Cyrus the Great. No matter how great he was, no matter how respectful of Hebrew history, Cyrus is Persian. This is not a king of Israel.
            The building project that is begun by Cyrus continues until it is finished under Herod the Great. By now, the structure of worship life in the temple is strictly monitored. Animals must be bought from the temple. Money has to be changed to temple coinage. The scribes and temple leaders demand, in the name of God, offerings for all kinds of sins. The cost of living righteously keeps many people in a cycle of poverty.
            Many people, regular people, probably have a deep sense of ambivalence about the temple because of this history. The building itself, the worship inside, the people who run the show. Yet it is also the place where people have felt close to God, where they have had deeply moving moments in their hearts or with members of their family, it is a place that is connected with hope, a future, and promises. This is what the woman believes she is giving her last two coins, too. So that someone else may have what she has experienced.
            Mark is trying to convey all of this in his story, in this fleeting description of Jesus and the disciples witnessing temple life. If Mark is writing before the temple falls, he is trying to remind people of what the story of the building is and of what Jesus said it would be, should be. If Mark is writing after the temple has fallen, he is trying to remind people of the corruption that was and the wholeness that can be.
            What Mark is conveying, what Jesus is showing, what the widow remembers is the best of what a community of faith can be. The truth that is revealed to and through a community of faith comes via the story that it tells. Is it a story of obvious glory, of fancy structures, of powerful leaders, of devouring the houses of widows for the sake of show? Or is the story of glory in the cross, of welcome and consolation, of quiet conversations, food and fellowship, support, and making ends meet?
            It’s amazing to me, though it shouldn’t be, that church history is filled with this story repeating over and over again. The story of people whose power or position went to their head and they began to build towers, cathedrals, and cities. They expected their influence to last forever. It didn’t and it can’t.
            We can’t hold the earthly idea of power, the idea that the scribes and so many since them have had… we can’t hold that idea and, at the same time, say that we trust God-in-Jesus who noticed the widow, who called unschooled fishermen, who spoke with isolated women, who healed lepers, who blessed children. The theology of glory, honor, and triumph can’t hold a candle to the theology of the cross. One is empty because it is hollow. The other is empty because of the power of God. One is pyrite, sparkly and worth nothing. The other is the light that shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.
            The deep, dark valleys of church history, the good, the bad, and the very, very ugly, can’t overcome the hope and comfort that is the story of God. This is the call to us, to each of us and to our congregation. We are called to remember that the life of faith isn’t about the story of this church, but about the story of God. The story of God-in-us and with us. The story of the family into which we have been adopted through baptism, the family table at which we eat together, the family circle that we see here and is completed in heaven.
            The story of the temple, of the building, of the scribes… the stories of seeking earthly power never end well. These things do pass.
            The story to which the widow belonged, the story into which we are called, the story of abundant life, the story of grace… it’s a story for the ages. For all ages. It’s the story that will carry us into the life that is to come.
Amen. 

Monumental Transfiguration (Sermon 2/19)

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Transfiguration (NL, Year B)

19 February 2012
Mark 8:27-9:13 
            I’m going to Washington, DC at the end of March for a church conference. What should I see while I’m there? (Vietnam Memorial, Washington Monument, etc) What are those things for? They serve as markers and reminders (monuments) to events and people of the past. They help us remember things we have promised not to forget and things we might try to forget and things we truly want to remember. Monuments serve as markers for the best and worst parts of our human nature, which is part of why we build them. Other people in other countries make the same effort, showing birthplaces and homes of famous leaders, historic places of worship, sites of battles and deaths.
            Knowing how likely we are as people to erect monuments and (now) to make attempts to preserve historic locations, can we really blame Peter for his desire to build a tent on top of that mountain? After all, throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, there were many locations where people put up cairns or rock altars to commemorate God’s help or blessing. Here, on this mountaintop, Peter, James, and John have seen Moses and Elijah. (How they knew it was Moses and Elijah I have NO idea.) Literally in front of their eyes, they see the person through whom God gave the law and the foremost among the prophets.
            Not only is Peter seeing the two main heroes of Jewish faith, but he’s also seeing two people who have no monument other than their deeds. When Moses is not able to enter the Promised Land with the Israelites, he dies and is buried. They don’t carry his body with them and their motion is forward. No one knows where he is buried by the time anyone could go back to mourn him in location.
            Elijah is taken up into heaven in a whirlwind- a crash of thunder and winds that terrifies everyone who sees it. There’s no monument to Elijah. No specific place to go and contemplate his deeds. Again, the two main heroes of the Jewish faith have no monument other than their deeds.
           
Peter may be uncertain about what it means to believe Jesus is the Messiah, but he knows what to do if he’s seeing Moses and Elijah. Not only is this location obviously holy, but also a monument here would be helpful to so many people. What a good idea! And if they’re sticking around to build a monument, you know what they don’t have to do… head into Jerusalem. If what Jesus says about betrayal and death is true, maybe they can forestall it by working here on a monument, on booths that celebrate the revelation of Moses and Elijah.
            Then the voice comes from heaven, saying, “This is my beloved Son, listen to him!” And with that the idea of a monument, as well as Moses and Elijah are gone, and they are there with Jesus and no one else. The disciples are still struggling, not just Peter, with what they are seeing as they travel with Jesus. They are trying to reconcile what they’ve heard their whole life with regard to the Messiah and the fact they believe… they want to believe… they’re trying to believe that God’s Anointed (Messiah) is right there with them.
            Not only is Jesus not acting in the swift justice, furious vengeance, David/Moses/Elijah hybrid that was dreamed (and maybe promised), but he’s also telling his disciples that they can’t follow him and act in that manner. In other words, they have to tear down the monuments of their expectations- the Messiah monuments in their hearts and minds- so that they can actually experience the Jesus who is right there with them. The Rock of their own imagination is stopping them from hearing the living Word, the Rock of Ages,  right there with them.
            The same thing happens to us. We have monuments… Bible translations, liturgies, denominational polity,… that we have built based on who we think Jesus is. We then get caught up in maintaining those monuments, which we interpret as right religious behavior, and forget to listen to the Living Word, to Jesus. Part of how we are to interpret Scripture, our own actions, our decision making is through the lens of Jesus- what Jesus would do and what Jesus would have you do… have us do. The monument, the marker, we build for Jesus is how we live our lives. 
            The mountain of the Transfiguration gives us a glimpse of Easter- just before we go back down the valley into the season of Lent… for the walk to Jerusalem. It may sound strange to say, but Easter becomes another monument that gets in our way… in the way of hearing the voice of Jesus. When we become intensely focused on the death and resurrection, we make just another monument of the cross and empty tomb. Another place to visit, to be moved by, and to leave.
            But listen to the voice of Jesus… we can be… we are transfigured as disciples for this life. We aren’t simply waiting for heaven, but we have the Messiah in our midst for living right now. This is a monumental advantage to a living God, to a God-with-us. We have received the Spirit so that we may be transformed and be transforming in our every day lives right now.
            Was Jesus the Son of God? Was he the Messiah? Did he walk on the earth? Does he meet us today? In essence, are God’s promises true? (Can I get an amen?)
            As part of the on-going transfiguration of our faith, we (like Peter, James, and John) have to tear down the monuments we have built to what we want Jesus to be, what we have made Jesus out to be… and allow Jesus’ voice to show us who He (and through Him, God) really is. This is part of the work of Lent- to hear and be changed by the radical power of who Jesus is… in his whole ministry. We, too, are being told to listen to the Beloved Son.
            What does Jesus say to his disciples, some of those hard words: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” That’s not a call to monument building- to lovely memorials of stone or gardens or well-preserved houses. It’s a call to a full life, lived in the Spirit… a transfiguring life that does not leave the world the same… a life that begins the minute you and Jesus go down the mountain.
Amen.