,,,the wind changes everything

Wind who makes all winds that blow ---gusts that bend the saplings low,

gales that heave the sea in waves, stirrings in the mind’s deep caves ---

aim your breath with steady power on your church, this day, this hour.

Raise, renew the life we’ve lost, Spirit God of Pentecost.

---Thomas Troeger, 1983

It was one of those days. The kind when you slap bugs crawling up and down your back, and find it’s sweat pouring down your spine. When your gaze across the blacktop of the supermart parking lot is crazed and zagged by waves of rising heat. When the silence is so thick your ears ring with it. When you walk bowlegged, just to keep your thighs from rubbing together where they are chafed, from rubbing together on days just like this. Five days, ten. All of them. It has been this hot, this humid, this still, for. ev. er.

You have work to do. The heat, the stillness won’t stop you, won’t keep you from working with skill, with dedication, with honor. Won’t cause you to throw up your hands, throw in the towel, throw up the white flag of surrender. You believe in the work you do, feel called to it, even. Leaving it undone, or half-done, feels as wrong as planting without mulch to protect from the harsh sun. Beside all that, you are no quitter, are you?

So you keep on.

But, playing with your sweaty curls, ruffling the hem of your red-dusted work shirt, sending pecan leaves trembling is a freshening, a breeze. You raise your eyes to the horizon, edge of disbelieving…but there it is, again. You are still, almost afraid to move for fear the wind will disappear. But you do. And it doesn’t.

And that wind. It renews. It envigorates. It restores the joy to the work you were doing. It colors your shades of grey world, reminds you how good, how life-giving, your labor was. Is.

The wind? It changes everything.

...little things

The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord;

She is his new creation, by water and the Word:

From heaven he came and sought her to be his holy bride,

With his own blood he bought her, and for her life he died.

---Samuel J. Stone, 1866

I’ve heard the stories, and you probably have, too. Churches that split over what color the new carpet will be, or whether to sing the Amen at the end of hymns, or whether to play drums in the sanctuary. And I am sure that, in the midst of the discussions, each of these issues seemed important to their adherents. We could make a list of bigger, more theologically-based issues that divide Christianity into denominations, factions, sects, and even warring camps. Emotional issues, and closely-held; the sort that draw tears and raise voices and blood pressure.

I always come back to this hymn’s first line. Jesus is the one foundation of the Church. Jesus --- his teachings, his life, his example, his leading --- is the strong base on which we build all that our community of faith is. The little things are just that…little things. And while there is a place in life for the little things, let us never forget the one foundation, the big thing that holds us all up. Let us remember Jesus, our foundation.

...and nothing else

Many the gifts, many the people,
many the hearts that yearn to belong.
Let us be servants to one another,
making your kingdom come.
Christ, be our light! 
Shine in our hearts. Shine through the darkness.
Christ, be our light!
Shine in your church gathered today!
---Bernadette Farrell, 1993

The title of the 1979 memoir I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can always makes me think of that moment when someone has given 100 percent. "You take it from here, pardner," I hear them say, "I'm out." Or, <mic drop>...done. Elvis has left the building.

And I sometimes wonder if Jesus ever felt a bit of the pull of that tension---his time ticking away, knowing he'd need to count on his rag-tag band of followers to spread the word (that love was the way), knowing he was the Sun, but he'd be having to count on the Moon to reflect the shine in the world before too long. I wonder if Jesus felt like he was dancing as fast as he could.

The church lives in that tension too---never more so than here in the Advent season, when we await the great Already/NotYet: the shining of Light into our shadowy corners, the coming of Christ into our longing world. This verse of the modern folk hymn Christ, Be Our Light by Bernadette Farrell speaks to the divergence, and richness, of what we know, and acknowledge, and embrace. While we yearn for Christ to be our light in this world, to dawn on us, we yoke ourselves with Christ the Sun. As the church, we are the body of Christ in the world, reflecting light like the moon reflects the sun's.

If Christ is to shine in the shadowed corners, it will be through the light reflected by Christ's body, the church. It will be because we served one another. It will be because we welcomed each other. It will be because we nurtured and developed the gifts each brought to share.

If Christ is to shine in our world today, it will be because the church is devoted to the work of building the reign of Love, and nothing else.

V Day: a look at love

Grant Lord that with thy direction, “Love each other” we comply,

Aiming with unfeigned affection Thy love to exemplify;

Let our mutual love be glowing, so that all will plainly see

That we, as on one stem growing, living branches are in Thee.

---Nicholas Zinzendorf

There’s an old song by Rockwell (featuring the lovely sound of Michael Jackson’s vocals) with the line, “I always feel like somebody’s watchin’ me.” When I read this hymn, with its text dating from the 1700’s, I immediately thought of Rockwell’s line. People may be confused about (or unconcerned with) the big ideas for which the church stands. They may not understand the intricacies of Biblical interpretation or theological thinking.

They thing they do know and notice? Society, the big ‘they’ out there, know that our law is love. That our corporate life is expressed in love. That our love is the representation on earth of God’s love for us. Or, they know all of that is supposed to be true. 

And the other thing about ‘them’? 

They are watching.