...in their shoeprints

God of past, Who by Your Spirit, led Your people through each age,

may we learn from their example, by their faith our doubts assuage.

May their steadfast resoluteness as they followed in Your way

be for us an inspiration as we serve the present day.

---Milburn Price, 1981

I have written before about the deep and lasting impact that repeated visits to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice have made, continue to make, on my life and spirit. This quiet memorial situated in Montgomery, the heart of the deep South, chronicles the dark cruelty of humanity—and the soul of a culture trying to address that cruelty clear-eyed, and to find a way to heal, and thrive, together. At the Memorial, in addition to the truly overwhelming silent witness of named victims of racial terror lynchings, county by county, several sculptures speak to other steps on the path to ‘now’ for black people. One sculpture work that I am thinking of today is Guided by Justice, by Dana King. In it are depicted the figures of three of the many black women who powered the Montgomery Bus Boycott in the mid-1950’s. The figures shuffle, wrapped in overcoats against the raw midwinter chill, faces etched with weariness, each solitary with her thoughts. Beside the figures are shoeprints planted in the gravel pathway.

In all the time I have stood and watched that sculpture, I have not seen a visitor walk by without at least lining up their own foot beside those shoeprints; many stood in the prints, struggling to manage the emotions threatening to overwhelm them. I know this was my story. And when I’m weary with struggling to see right done, and tempted to give up, I remember that privilege is having the option to give up. And I remember the feeling of fitting my feet into the prints of those women who walked because they had no option left. And their faith and resoluteness lifts me, and reminds me. And I walk on.

...be like

Gracious Spirit, dwell with me, I would gracious be;

help me now thy grace to see, I would be like thee;

and, with words that help and heal, thy life would mine reveal;

and, with actions bold and meek, for Christ my Savior speak.

---Thomas Toke Lynch, 1855

One of my favorite movies as a child was Walt Disney’s The Jungle Book. A soundtrack highlight for me was the scat jazz ‘I Wanna Be Like You’, sung by the masterful Louis Prima and penned by Richard and Robert Sherman. In the chorus, King Louie sings,

            Oh, ooh-bee-doo, I wanna be like you-hu-hu,

            I wanna walk like you, talk like you, too…

Now, in the movie, King Louie had his own reasons for wanting to be like Mowgli. But I thought about this song when I read this verse of today’s hymn for Children’s Sabbath.

I thought of it because, as a follower of Jesus, there is nothing I want more than to be like Jesus. I want to walk ( and live) in the way of Jesus; I want to talk (and love) in the way of Jesus. ‘I would gracious be;’ I want to live my whole life letting my words, my actions, my intentions be motivated and guided by the gift of love that has surrounded me from birth.

How will I live if I know that I am representing Jesus to the world? I want Jesus to speak through my life by my actions, bold in love and meek when honoring others. I want to show Jesus’ life in mine, through words that help and heal, in a world where words often tear down and injure, or where silence causes wounds of its own.

Gracious spirit, dwell with me, I would gracious be…

I wanna walk like you, talk like you, too…

...while we wait

O God in whom all life begins, who births the seed to fruit,

bestow Your blessing on our lives; here let Your love find root.

Bring forth in us the Spirit’s gifts of patience, joy, and peace;

deliver us from numbing fear, and grant our faith increase.

---Carl P. Daw, 1990

The more we learn about gestation and human growth, and germination and plant growth, the more similarities become apparent. So much of early growth happens silent, hidden—good, strong changes taking time and nourishment before new life is ever ready to make an appearance on the scene. And while I’ve never been a farmer, having to depend on invisible growth for the future, I have been a mom, waiting helpless for months on growth beyond my control for my arms to be full. And I know the numbing fear that comes with trusting unseen growth, especially what must be the farmer’s fear after a drought year. I know the mother’s waiting fear after still birth. The breath-held, afraid-to-hope, needing-to-trust, wanting-to-believe fear that growth is happening.

I think other parts of our lives are like that, too. So many characteristics of a faithful life grow unseen, tucked away, nurtured by time and steady attention. The Spirit’s gifts grow in us, perhaps unseen as they germinate, but growing all the same, ready to yield mature aspects of our character that will shape the world around us. Peace, love, joy—powerful forces for transforming life. And the patience to believe that unseen growth will yield a harvest.

May God deliver us from the chokehold of fear into the embrace of faith…while we wait.

...while supplies last

God pours the Holy Spirit on all those who believe,

on women, men, and children who would God’s grace receive.

That Spirit knows no limit, bestowing life and power.

The church, formed and reforming, responds in every hour.

---Jane Parker Huber, 1981

*while supplies last. Surely these words were designed to strike fear in the hearts of every red-blooded human on the face of the earth. If you might run out of something, I need one. Who am I kidding?...I probably need two. And if there is a countdown clock in the corner of the QVC screen or the Instagram ad (check your generation), those beads of sweat, and a sudden desire for previously unknown (but now totally life-giving) goods pop out all over.

Is there a better marketing principle discovered than the principle of scarcity? It stands to reason that if something is in short supply, only the real winners will end up possessing it. The rest of us? The waited-too-late, didn’t-pay-attention, stayed-in-on-Black-Friday, don’t-queue-up-for-Ticketmaster-at-midnight, wasn’t-tuned-in-to-the-faint-ache-of-longing-that-was-emptiness ones? Oh, yeah…the losers? Well, we’re gonna lose. That’s the way of the world, baby. Winners and losers—get used to it.

But on Pentecost, the rules go out the window. It’s not that winners and losers switch places, though Jesus used to talk about that scenario sometimes. No, at Pentecost, the only loser is the principle of scarcity. Here in this gathering of believers, inquisitive onlookers, and straight-up gawkers, the Spirit breathed a new sort of energy on God’s love story. And for once, it seemed, there were no losers, and there was no FOMO (fear of missing out). This Spirit was like the wind, or fire, and didn’t have to be measured or conserved. There was plenty for everyone, and more.

Still is. Still is.

...pass-along gifts...mighty good tidings

Arise, your light is come! The Spirit’s call obey;

show forth the glory of your God, which shines on you today.

Arise, your light is come! Fling wide the prison door;

proclaim the captive’s liberty, good tidings to the poor.

---Ruth Duck, 1974

We are so used to hearing the themes of Advent and Christmastide that they ring almost common in our ears, feel a bit bland rolling off our tongues…Light! Glory! Good tidings! When I stop and think about these things, they make me glad --- I need some good tidings, and some light, and a little glory to shine down on me! Yay, me!

Then hymnist Ruth Duck uses the prophet’s message from Isaiah to call my attention back to intention. Yes, some of that God-glory falls on me...but not to soak up and store. That glory, that light, those are pass-along gifts from a God who has called us as co-laborers in the life-work of lifting, reviving, nurturing, and restoring. These gifts? They were never meant for me, for us, to get and keep. This glory, this light, has always been destined for community.

And those, my friends, are mighty good tidings.

...different, together.

God is here! As we Your people meet to offer praise and prayer,

May we find in fuller measure what it is in Christ we share.

Here, as in the world around us, all our varied skills and arts

Wait the coming of the Spirit into open minds and hearts.

---Fred Pratt Green, 1978

Here we are, God. We come to this place with an incredible array of talents, needs, resources, hurts, dreams, and personalities. It is quite amazing that we all keep coming here to make a church, isn’t it? What is it that keeps us coming back, that entices us to search for the things that bind us?

In the midst of our differences --- of need and resource, of faith and fear, of black and white and shades of gray --- we seek the coming of the Spirit of Christ. We await the Spirit, anticipate the Spirit --- to enliven us, to inform us, to enlarge us, to add meaning to our lives.

We pray, we praise, we seek, we anticipate…together

,,,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.

...pass-along glory

Arise, your light is come! The Spirit’s call obey;

show forth the glory of your God, which shines on you today.

Arise, your light is come! Fling wide the prison door;

proclaim the captive’s liberty, good tidings to the poor.

---Ruth Duck, 1974

We are so used to hearing the themes of Advent and Christmastide that they ring almost common in our ears, feel a bit bland rolling off our tongues…Light! Glory! Good tidings! When I stop and think about these things, they make me glad --- I need some good tidings, and some light, and a little glory to shine down on me! Yay, me!

Then hymnist Ruth Duck uses the prophet’s message from Isaiah to call my attention back to intention. Yes, some of that God-glory falls on me...but not to soak up and store. That glory, that light, those are pass-along gifts from a God who has called us as co-laborers in the life-work of lifting, reviving, nurturing, and restoring. These gifts? They were never meant for me, for us, to get and keep. This glory, this light, has always been destined for community.

And those, my friends, are mighty good tidings.

...held like Jesus

Water Deep and Life Made Whole

tune: O WALY WALY

As John baptized the crowds that day,

Made straight the path, prepared the way,

Jesus approached the water’s edge

To seek God’s will, to make his pledge.

I’ll follow Jesus through the flow

Of water deep and life made whole,

Blessed knowing I’m held from above,

Like Jesus was, in God’s great love.

When Jesus stepped into the tide,

All other yearnings swept aside,

With singleness of heart and mind

He turned his life toward humankind.

I’ll follow Jesus through the flow

Of water deep and life made whole,

Blessed knowing I’m held from above,

Like Jesus was, in God’s great love.

And now we seek the water’s mark

To call to mind the Spirit’s spark

That kindled love’s warm glow within,

Remade as each new day begins.

I’ll follow Jesus through the flow

Of water deep and life made whole,

Blessed knowing I’m held from above,

Like Jesus was, in God’s great love.

...beyond the page

Break Thou the bread of life, dear Lord, to me,

As Thou didst break the loaves beside the sea;

Beyond the sacred page I seek Thee, Lord,

My spirit pants for Thee, O living Word.

---Mary A. Lathbury, 1877

Seeking Christ beyond the page. Sounds exciting, real detective-y stuff. But wait…we are “people of the Book”; how do we stay true to Scripture, and still venture beyond the sacred page when our spirits seek to know God more deeply?

Perhaps, first, we must know Christ in and through  the Scripture. We must know the stories of Jesus preserved for us in the Gospels, the teachings of Jesus in parable, and the example of kingdom living in his dealings with the world around him. We must know the Jesus of the Bible, and we must teach Jesus to our children. We must call that Jesus to remembrance in each other’s presence in sacred story, in chilling chant and holy harmony.

But then, oh then…we are privileged to seek Jesus beyond the page --- walking with us, bearing our burdens, urging us on toward maturity, our friend and brother.

The Bread of Life, broken for you.

...with rare perfume

A prophet-woman broke a jar, by Love's divine appointing.
With rare perfume she filled the room,
presiding and anointing.
A prophet-woman broke a jar, the sneers of scorn defying.
With rare perfume she filled the room,
preparing Christ for dying.

The Spirit knows; the Spirit calls, by Love's divine ordaining,
the friends we need, to serve and lead,
their powers and gifts unchaining.
The Spirit knows; the Spirit calls,
from women, men, and children,
the friends we need, to serve and lead.
Rejoice, and make them welcome!
---Brian Wren, 1991

In that day, says the Lord, I will pour out my spirit on all people;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy;
the old among you will dream dreams,
and the young in your midst shall see visions.
On people of every station in life, women and men, 
in those days I will pour out my spirit.
---Joel 2:28-29 (para. laca)

...stand in your way

Where can I go that your spirit is not?
Or where can I slip away from your presence?
If I take to the heights, lost to the eye,
you.
If I plunge to the depths, to abide,
you.
If I soar on wings of dawn
to the spot where sea meets sky,
even there, you before me,
even there, you surrounding me.
When I think that surely the darkness
should cover me over,
and where there once was light
only deep dark remains,
even that stifling dark is
not, to you;
the new-moon sky is like noon-day,
for dark does not stand in your way.
---Psalm 139:7-12 (para. laca)