Exact Imprint of God's Being

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http://www.iksynod.org/Resources/Podcasts/2012christmasday.html

He is the reflection of God’s glory

and the exact imprint of God’s very being,

and he sustains all things by his powerful word.

[Hebrews 1:3, NRSV; appointed for Christmas Day]

This verse from the first chapter of Hebrews is appointed by the New Revised Common Lectionary for reading on Christmas day.

It’s a great Christmas announcement. It’s not as poetic as the song the angels sang to the shepherds. It might be a bit wordy to fit on a Christmas card. But it pretty much says it all. And it reminds us that all the Advent waiting was worth it.

Here, in this manger – nestled amid dust and dung, straw and struggle, animals and animosity – here in this meager manger is the very reflection of God’s glory.

This little one – not yet weaned and soon to be hunted by the murderous madness of a power-hungry king – this restless little one is the exact imprint of God’s very being.

This child – swaddled in the protection, nurture and life-giving love of others – this vulnerable little kid is the one who sustains all things by his powerful word.

That word, this child, is Emmanuel, God with us, God with the world.

As he accompanied a friend in her battle with lung cancer theologian and author Gerhard E. Frost realized at one point that all he had to give his friend was his middle name, which he had disliked as a kid: Emmanuel.

“What do I know about life?” he wrote. “What do I know about death? I affirm that God is with me. ’Emmanuel’ is the only reason I dare to grow old.”[1]

This child, this Jesus, this Emmanuel, is God’s gift to us, God’s gift to the world, blessing the mangers of our days with the shimmering light of God’s glory.

This child, Emmanuel, is God’s gift to us. He will walk through the world marking apparently God-forsaken people and places with the imprint of God’s very being.

This child is God’s gift to us. He will gather up all the woes, and wounds and weaknesses of the world – including yours and mine – take them to the cross and leave them on the floor of an empty tomb to sustain us and the world with the crucified and living Word of hope and new life, Emmanuel, God with us…ever and always.

To us, to all in sorrow and fear,

Emmanuel comes a-singing,

His humble song is quiet and near,

Yet fills the earth with its ringing. [2]

May the deep and abiding joy of Emmanuel accompany and lead you and yours these Christmas days and all throughout the new year.

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[1] Journey of the Heart: Reflections on Life’s Way, Gerhard E. Frost. Augsburg Fortress, 1995, p. 116.

[2] “Awake! Awake, and Greet the New Morn.” Marty Haugen, Evangelical Lutheran Worship #242.

Etch A Sketch Church in an iPad World

Sitting in a deli working on a sermon over lunch recently, I noticed an eight or nine year old boy looking for a seat. Carefully cradled under his arm was a half-inch thick red-framed rectangular screen a little smaller than a sheet of paper. “Cool,” I thought. “He’s got an Etch A Sketch to keep him busy while he waits for lunch to arrive.” As he neared, I realized there were no telltale white knobs and the red frame was just rubberized protection for his iPad.

Of course, my initial interpretation of what the boy carried betrayed my own generational habitat and reminded me of the hours I spent turning those beloved white knobs when I was his age. Glancing at the iPad next to my lunch plate I was caught up in a swirl of nostalgia and wonder at how things have changed.

Then, rising from the reflective eddy came a question: Are we an Etch A Sketch church in an iPad world?

It is easy to hear this as an either/or question laden with value judgments resulting in a division of the household of faith into something like “Etchers” and “Padders.” That’s not how I hear it. Etch A Sketch and iPad are very different means of creative expression and engagement with the world. Placing them alongside one another they become metaphors for the contemporary church’s creative expression of the gospel and its engagement with the world for the sake of that gospel. Such metaphors can lead us into fruitful discernment and effective engagement with God’s mission of healing and hope in the world today and into the future. In fact, this sort of playful reflection and conversation might assist us in living into this new day like the early apostles did in their new day. (Now would be a good time to read Acts 10-15 if you haven’t lately.)

For example, I am struck with the self-contained nature of the Etch A Sketch in comparison to the iPad. A person can create beautiful images by twisting those white knobs with care and precision guided by his or her creative vision. But the Etch A Sketch has no built-in interaction with or input from outside the etcher’s immediate local context. An iPad, by nature, penetrates boundaries to provide multi-directional engagement with the world. It is, by default, connected to and welcoming of interaction, resources, insight and input from an almost infinite number of sources far beyond the user’s immediate context. While we can come up with some pretty creative mission and ministry by turning the knobs of the self-contained resources right at hand, might the church, including your congregation, benefit from more immediate, intuitive and multi-directional connection with people, resources, and perspectives from well-beyond the usual red-rimmed boundaries we tend to work within?

Are we an Etch A Sketch church in an iPad world?

Let’s talk about this. Post a comment here. You can also email me, send me a note by mail, chat with me when I visit your congregation or you catch me at Starbucks. Let’s use this metaphor to help each other find faithful and effective ways to follow Jesus into this 21^st century world. In mid-September I will share more of my thoughts about this and respond to some of yours as well.

Think Creatively

[The mission territory that I serve as bishop is about to embark on a re-visioning process called "New Vision for a New Day: Listen deeply. Think creatively. Act boldly." This piece is a brief reflection on the second aspect of that process.]

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen

[Ephesians 3:14-21, NRSV]

From the very beginning of scripture to its ending, God engages in the sometimes irritating habit of calling people to think creatively. Over and over again, God’s people seem to limit their vision and, consequently, their creative energies, to the borderline where their own limitations, frailties and failings meet the threats, challenges, and impositions of life.

To weary people on the edge of a promised land fraught with well-armed giants, God says, “Go ahead; take it.”

      To people languishing in exile, God entreats, “Do not remember the things of old…I am about to do a new thing!”

      God in Christ, no longer bound by doors locked tight by fear, appears to dispirited disciples whispering peace and proclaiming, “Fling wide the doors! I am sending you just like the Father sent me.”

      In a multitude of languages, God’s Spirit permeates the people on Pentecost, calling them to dream new dreams.

      God calls to Peter, bound as he is by careful adherence to tradition, to stretch beyond the boundaries and borders at the very outer edge of his vision.

      The truth is, fear binds and faith frees. Or, more accurately, when all we see are the immense challenges in the light of our own frailties and failings we often become fearful, paralyzed, and held captive to our own imagination and to what we already know. On the other hand, trust in God’s redeeming activity in the world, combined with trust in God’s unfailing love and care for us and for the world, offers freedom to let go of what we already know and to reach beyond our own limited vision, well-worn pathways, and daunting challenges to receive with open hands God’s creative, life-giving future.

       Next time you are in a planning session at church, or trying to imagine your way through a difficult time at home, or working with a community committee on some new project, take a moment to consider the breadth and length and height and depth of God’s amazing grace and then let your imagination run wild and free into God’s imaginative future.

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen

Using Lent? Using God?

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news. [Jesus; Mark 1:15]

Sometimes, I wonder if the season of Lent has become yet another wonderful gift that we tend to grab hold of with our grubby little hands and curve in on ourselves to make it all about us.  And by pulling it so tightly to ourselves, I wonder if we squeeze the very life out of it.

Think about it: we tend to focus on what we give up (like chocolate or some other thing in which we usually take delight) or what we take up (like more worship services or more time at the soup kitchen or more prayer). We talk about our sin, our repentance. We take these forty days to focus on my purpose, the state of my spiritual life, breaking my bad habits and disciplining myself into new and better habits.

 Borrowing from St. Augustine, Martin Luther called this “incurvatus in se,” curved in on oneself.  In his lectures on the biblical book of Romans he says that our nature is so deeply curved in upon itself that we turn the finest gifts of God into something just for ourselves and hoard them. Indeed, Luther says, we use God to achieve our aims. [Martin Luther, Lectures on Romans, Kindle location 6745]

It’s no wonder an old friend of mine often ends his emails during this season with “Have a miserable Lent!”

The truth is, if Lent is only about us, our sin, our struggles, our habits, then we are – and will be – miserable people. There is no hope in that, nothing to pull us out of our inward, downward spiral, no power within us to set us free. Left to ourselves these forty days, we may find ourselves crawling into Easter laden with despair rather than lifted with resurrection joy.

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.

Notice that here, at the very beginning of his public ministry, Jesus does not say something like:

Thank goodness you all have finally disciplined yourselves enough, given up enough, added enough devotion and service to your days, turned away from enough sin that God is finally convinced that you are ready for God’s reign.

No! Jesus just shows up as God’s son, in the power of God’s Spirit, at God’s appointed time to announce the nearness of God’s kingdom and to invite folks to simply pay attention and trust that God is up to something new and good.

Repent, and believe the good news!

Repentance is, first and foremost, less about turning our own lives around and more about being opened to the newness God brings near in Jesus. It’s about welcoming the reign of God, trusting it and letting it shape us and our days. To repent is to let go of our white-knuckled grip on trying to be good, to get it right, to be what we’re afraid we are not.

In that letting go and trusting the good news of God’s nearness, we are set free from that inward curve and are turned outward to true and abundant life. And we are moved to share it as freely as we have received it.

The disciplines of Lent are not bad or wrongheaded in and of themselves. They can be ways in which God works in us to open our hearts and hands to welcome and share God’s reign. But the good news, the best news, is that Lent begins and ends not with us, but with God.

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.

So Jesus says at the beginning of these forty days. And then he walks the talk all the way to Jerusalem, through the cross and out of an empty tomb, for us and for the world.

Repent and believe this good news!

May your Lenten way be scattered with the wonder of the God who draws near long before you take the first step!

[You may listen to Bill's recording of this piece through the Indiana-Kentucky Synod website: http://www.iksynod.org. Click here: IN-KY Synod Lenten Podcast]