As a pastor, I get more than my share of inspirational or humorous 'religious' e-mails forwarded to me. Most of them I appreciate. A little extra inspiration or levity is often a welcome addition to my day. There is one e-mail that I get quite regularly. It is the one where a little boy tells his father that he knows what B-I-B-L-E stands for: Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.
I have to apologize right now to everyone who has sent me that e-mail, because I do not intend to offend you and I DO appreciate the fact that you think of me and send the e-mail. But I also have to admit that I find that one more annoying than I do cute.
You see, that just isn't the way that I see the Bible. The Bible is not a "how-to" manual for humans. It is a collection of stories about God and God's relationship with us. When taken together, the collection culminates in THE great story of God - the God who is faithful to us, has mercy on us, has compassion for us, and loves us enough to become one of us. Having become one of us, God becomes one with us and shares our life. What I find so amazing is that by dying and rising from the dead, Jesus alters our human reality. Through Jesus, God set in motion the restoration of the nation of Israel and the redemption of the entire creation. Now THAT is one heck of a story. In fact, there is no other story like it. It is a life-giving and life-transforming story.
Sometimes I simply read the Bible; sometimes I study it. Other times I read it in a way that can only be described as completely devouring the words I am reading. It is then that I am absolutely enraptured by this amazing God and the stories of faithfulness, steadfastness, mercy, grace, and love that I encounter in their midst.
When I read the Bible, what I encounter is the life-giving story of a loving God. What I discover are not so much instructions and as ways in which my life-story, with all of it's sub-stories, intersects with that live-giving God's story. My life is transformed in the process, not because of any basic instructions which I am following, but because it is opened up to being a part of God's story. And God's story is all about giving and transforming lives.
May you be transformed -
PK(+)
Memorial Day is celebrated in the United States on the last Monday of May. It is a day when the country honors those who gave their lives in military service to the country. It began in the aftermath of the bloody U.S. Civil War and has continued since. Sadly, each year brings more lives lost.
It is not uncommon to see business and homes routinely flying the American flag outside their premises. The trend picks up considerably as Memorial Day weekend approaches. An American flag flying from the flag pole of the home next to the church where I serve is common. However, as Memorial Day weekend was drawing near, I was met by a very uncommon sight. Flapping from the flag pole next door, hanging alongside the U.S. flag, just as proudly as could be was the flag from Germany. Now THAT was a curiosity at best.
When I asked our neighbors about the significance of flying the flag from Germany, they shared with me the final chapter in what was already a remarkable story of hope and healing.
Several months previously their son, a young man in his 20's, had a recurrance of lymphoma. Our congregation and community had grieved with them and prayed for them. Many words of update and encouragement were shared across the church parking lot between them and me as I came and went each day. It was a typical roller-coaster of hope and disappointment, promise and fear, as treatments were attempted without favorable results. At long last, there was no alternative but to attempt a bone marrow transplant. Finding a donor proved to be exceedingly difficult. At long last, a donor was found. The transplant was successful and eventually, their son was able to come home.
The culmination of the story was told under the sound of the two flags whipping in the breeze on a sunny May day. What I had not realized was how exceedingly miraculous finding a donor had truly been. It seems that of all registered donors world-wide there were only two that had a close enough match to even attempt a transplant. The most likely candidate was a 20-something young man from Germany. He had registered some time before when a co-worker needed a transplant, but was not a match. Still, his profile was on file with a global donor registry concern and years later, some stranger whom he had never met, a continent away, would end up needing some of his bone marrow for a transplant.
That weekend, Memorial Day weekend, donor and recipient would meet. They would celebrate, spend time getting to know one another, and from a little bit of shared DNA a friendship that will span an ocean and connect two continents would take root and blossom. I have no doubt it will be a friendship that will last a lifetime. How could it not?
I was blessed to be invited to the picnic to celebrate the meeting and meet the donor. As I stood there and watched the two young men, the joy and laughter of all those gathered, and two flags flapping in the breeze, I could only shake my head and smile at the irony of it. On a day when we were honoring our war dead, we were also gathered to celebrate life. Two young men, strangers with nothing in common, share LIFE. They are blood brothers in the most miraculous sense of the word. Nationality, politcal ideologies, liberal-conservative - all of the labels that we can concoct to put barriers between humans fall away in the face of the connecting of these two young men.
I think that is just a little slice of what God is up to in the world. Teaching us humans to understand that what we have in common is so much richer and more deeply life-giving than any differences we may experience or create.
I am deeply grateful for the reminder that day. Here's to Memorial Day - and blood brothers, and life.
May the Spirit keep us grounded and connected in the one thing we all have in common - God's breath of life!
PK (+)
Five years ago yesterday I was ordained as a pastor. Shortly thereafter, I began my first (and so far ONLY) call in a congregation. In all honesty, the congregation had a reputation as being decidedly hard on clergy. Because I was an older, second-career pastor and hopefully a little bit seasoned, there were people that felt I was a good candidate for this call. I am now convinced that the Spirit was well and truly at work in the process, although I would not always have said so.
At any rate, it was a recipe custom created for tapping into my near-pathological drive for perfection and resistance to failure. I made my share of first-call pastor mistakes. (For the record, age and 'real-world' experience do not immunize one against those.) Combine first-call pastor enthusiasm with a tenacious Celtic spirit and add in a little over-zealous drive to do well and well - yeah, it wasn't always pretty. The landscape of a challenging congregation in a small community is littered with landmines and I found just about all of them. I am lucky to still have limbs.
Early on in my journey with the congregation, a number of people took issue with my style of leadership and my gender. Many ended up finding other communities in which to worship. One person, in particular had a very difficult time with those qualities. Over time, things became untenable for that person and in the midst of misunderstandings, miscommunication, and mishap they left the congregation. We both contributed our share of fuel to the fire that had apparently burned bridges. I tried to leave the door to conversation open, but eventually, I went on about congregational life having adopted a bit of an out-of-sight-out-of mind attitude. I held no grudge, but also made no further effort to reconcile.
Imagine my surprise to call home from a meeting and hear from my husband that this person had dropped by the house on a summer evening bearing a half gallon of ice cream and an equal quantity of freshly-picked red raspberries. A peace offering, they said. The news brought tears to my eyes.
Later, when I called to say "thank you" we both apologized and asked forgiveness for the things we had done and said that wounded. Will we be close? Probably not. But because we were able to ask for, give, and receive forgiveness we are reconciled to one another. Make no mistake about it - this was not an achievement of human might and power. It was an offering of humility and vulnerability made possible in Christ and through the Holy Spirit. I am decidedly grateful that one of us was able to be the initial instrument of the reconciling work of the Holy Spirit. That made it possible for both of us to experience the Spirit's reconciling work.
For those of you who wonder if or where God is at work in the world - it is through moments like this. We have been reconciled to God through and in Jesus Christ. That reconciling love flows like a waterfall into our lives and through them to others. We can experience reconciliation with God in the sacraments of the church - baptism, the Lord's Supper. But it needs to spill over into the daily fabric of our lives. And in my book - for this week, at least - nothing spells reconciliation like a little ice cream and raspberries on a summer evening.
Raspberries - an unofficial fruit of the Spirit.
Having been reconciled, may we bear fruit and be reconciling in the world.
Peace -
PK (+)
