Friday Flashbacks (this week on the blog)

Tomorrow promises a follow-up on yesterday's post.  Today promises some long-overdue basketball with a friend.  Without further ado, then, the week that was:

Thurs: Pancakes!

Wednesday: Grocery Bags and the God Who Gives

Tuesday: A Conversation with Bread and Wine

Monday: Jesus, Garrison Keillor, and Highly Trained Dogs

Pancakes!

Grocery Bags and the God Who Gives

The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!" The Lord replied, "If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, `Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you.

"Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, `Come here at once and take your place at the table'? Would you not rather say to him, `Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink'? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, `We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!'

+    +    +

My mom did the shopping in our family growing up.  We didn’t argue.  She’d disappear on a given Saturday afternoon and two or three hours later, there she was, with a honk of the horn and a car full of groceries.  But if it was understood that Momma did the shopping, it was equally established that her job ended there.  We, my brothers and I, were the designated pack mules who brought the bounty in, from the car into the kitchen.  Regardless of where we were in our play, our studies, or our gentle, brotherly, disagreements, we knew that when the car pulled up, we came out, and began the tedious process of unpacking. 

Well, before too long I realized that, if I didn’t mind the half-inch stripes pressed deep into my skin, I could balance no fewer that four bags on each arm.  That’s eight bags a trip!  Two quick treks to the car and back, and my job would be done.

So I would strap on the bags and begin my journey.  And as I staggered toward the door, completely over-matched, I’d begin to realize the flaws in my plan.  Minor details that my mind had overlooked.  The door would be locked.  At least one bag would begin to tear.  My arms began to tremble.  And about the time that all of these thoughts collided into the inevitable moment of collapse, my mom would miraculously beat me to the door, catch the falling bags (or at least help me pick them up), and bring the haul inside. 

How did you know I wouldn’t make it? I’d ask her.
Some things, she’d say, you can just see coming.

And it occurs to me, as I stand here today, that the same thing might be said of sermons.   Some things you can just see coming.  That is, you hear the first words of the gospel and immediately think about the sermon-to-be, “Not that again.”  “The prodigal son?” the parishioner says, eyes rolling a bit, that’s easy, she says, “The preacher asks me which character I think I am in the story and tells me to embrace the love of God.”  The Good Samaritan?  *yawn*  Expect a lecture on the needs of those around us.  As you listened to the gospel of the mustard seed of faith this morning, having been warned already that this is a season of stewardship, I wonder if you’ve figure you’ve heard this sermon too. 

I know I have.  It goes a little something like this:

“If you believed, had even a single ounce of faith, mulberry trees would be dancing on the ocean waves by now.  That is, you would be living lives of miracles.  Demons would depart at your whisper.  Disease of all kinds would vanish at your word.”

The preacher continues, sensing that he’s on a roll, “Do you wonder why God seems slow in coming to you?  He is waiting for your faith.

“After all, surely you know that the plights about which you you so faithlessly fret, sin and suffering, disease, death, and war, all of these are just a little “umph” of faith away from ending.  Where is your faith?”

The preacher gets more personal still:

“Your child’s illness?  Only believe.  Pray--really pray--for her healing. 

“Your family’s emotional pain?  Pray and act in the certainty that God has already answered your prayer.

“And giving?  Giving is your chance to quantify your faith.  To show how much you trust and put your faith in God.

“After all, the people of God live by faith.

The preacher concludes, “Let’s be honest.  The problem in this whole salvation circus is YOU, loser.  You, with not even a tablespoon of faith.  If you only had more faith, if you were only up to snuff, what a wonderful world this could be!  O you of so little faith.  Shame on you.  And God help us all.”

Have you heard that one before?  Or something like it?

I know I have, and time and time again I have left the church dejected, confused, and not unlike a little like a boy who can’t quite make it to the door. 

So what do we do, then, today, with these hard, confusing, and challenging words of Jesus?  How do they do more than torment us with a standard that’s forever just beyond us? 

Let’s look at these words again.

Notably, Jesus doesn’t start this conversation on faith.  The disciples do.  “Lord, increase our faith.”  Next, Jesus doesn’t tell them, “Aha, now that I see that you take your faith seriously, now I will grow your faith into mountains.”  Instead, he tells them that a mustard seed is enough.

But it is at precisely this point that countless teachers and preachers have traditionally interrupted, “See!,” they cry.  “See!  The disciples don’t have even that much--not even a seed.  Let’s have them show their faith out loud.”  Enter the sermon on the no good and faithless wanderer.  Exit hope.  Stage right, despair.

The only real problem with that reading of this gospel is that Jesus hasn’t stopped speaking.
The exhortation to build up one’s faith cuts Jesus off down right in his mid-sentence.

We listen as Jesus goes on, “Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’?  Instead, wouldn’t you say, ‘Prepare supper for me, serve me while I eat, and you can eat later.’  Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded?  So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done.’”

The disciples cry out, “Lord, give us more faith.”
Jesus’ reply is profoundly ordinary, “Give me yourself.  You can’t impress me with your service.  You won’t win me with your faith.  Whatever good you do is only what you ought to have done.  But learn the heart of faith:

“I am enough.” 

At this point I can picture the disciples thinking back on their short time with Jesus.  The disciples, after all, knew that Jesus was enough.  The disciples knew that Jesus was enough when he fed five thousands people with five loaves and two fish.  The disciples learned again that Jesus was enough when they saw him calm the raging seas.  They remembered that Jesus was enough when he straightened the back of a woman left crippled--for more than 18 years.  But now, now something sinister has happened.  Somewhere on the road to the cross, on the road to believing that Jesus is enough, the disciples get distracted by the very thing that draws them to Jesus: their faith.

Strangely they see faith itself as a thing to hoard, to build up, as a thing to control and believe in; faith itself becomes the goal, the work, the very enemy of empty hands ready to receive the fullness of Jesus. 

“Lord,” they cry out, “give us more faith.”
Jesus cries back, “I am enough.”

Are we ever the same?  Are there times in which we seek to hoard the life of faith?  To pile faith up like mountains?  We can hardly be blamed, I think, for wanting more faith, like the disciples.  A quick survey of the pain of the world tells us that we need all the help we can get.  The tedium, the monotony of a world that seems obsessed with being obsessed, with little promise of change, this mindless buzz can be too much.  It can leave us feeling inept and unprepared for the challenge of true healing. 

But to look into the eyes of Jesus as the world’s ways grow thin, to take seriously Jesus’ promise to us, this is our charge.  Jesus calls out to you and to me, “I am enough.  My child, rest in me.”

Jesus goes on, “I am enough.  Because I am enough; you--you are enough.  Give me yourself, and then we’ll be in business.”

The truth is that faith has never been about having it all together, having our pockets full, being 100% ready for anything.  But faith has always been about abundance in the midst of lacking.  It is about the surprising feast in the midst of famine.  The strange, rich fullness of fasting.  This is the mysterious, hard, path of faith: To have no faith to hold up, but only faith to hold on--to cling to and grasp the fullness of Jesus for us. 

To hold fast to our Lord--this is the first instinct of faith.  To grab hold with both hands to Jesus.  Jesus, who uproots his tree, the cross, from the power of death.  Jesus, who through the waters of baptism, invites us to die, to follow him into the ocean of his death.  Jesus, who yearns to pull the hard soil from our roots, who longs to plant us on the banks of his eternal stream.

Do you see it now?

Faith cannot be stored up within us, because the strength of faith is beyond us.  The power of faith rests in the person and faith of Jesus. 

Resist the temptation to make faith your possession.  To polish it.  To frame and hang it on your wall.  To keep it tidy. 

The Good News of the Gospel is that we have a ridiculously untidy God.

Like any lost beyond hope lover, God is well passed self-respect.  He doesn’t ask, “how much.”  Instead, he says, “Come nearer.  Child, come nearer.  You who are far off, know the heart of mercy, learn the depths of true forgiveness.  You who are near, please don’t think yourself too close.  My love is steadfast and eternal.  Child, wherever you are, whether close by or far off, take that next step nearer to me that is faith.” 

And realize that the measuring sticks and rulers have all been put away.

So give, give mightily, give joyfully, give with all your heart and all you are--not because you have to--but precisely because you don’t.  You are God’s child already.  You are his.  You and I can give him nothing that isn’t already his.  The pretense of impressibility has long been swept away.  The clutter of pride was lost forever when a troupe of angels pointed to a baby and said, “This child is God.”  The simplicity of faith forever holds, forever cradles, this gift of God, knowing well that payment in return has never been the point.  But God gives himself as a child, a slave, in order that we would know our service to God as the fullness of joy. 

My mind returns to the image of an awkward eight year old boy weighed down with plastic grocery bags, stumbling his way toward the door.  I tend to think about faith like that.  How many bags can I carry--how many burdens can I bear to prove my faith to God, how great it is.  Surely, when he sees it, he will look at his servant with mercy and favor. 

But it seems to me that the true test of faith is not the number of bags that we can carry; it is our willingness to put them down.  To let them go.  To rest in the arms of the one who calls us his own.

Amen.

[Sermon preached at St Helena's Episcopal Church, October 7, 2007.]

A Conversation with Bread and Wine

Jesus, whom now hidden, I by faith behold, 

what my soul doth long for, that thy word foretold:  

face to face thy splendor, I at last shall see, 

in the glorious vision, blessed Lord, of thee.

- Att. Thomas Aquinas, The Hymnal 1982, #314.

.   .   .

O bread, I wonder, what is Sunday morning like for you?  When trembling hands and quiet whispers call you forth from blissful sleep, what inklings do you have?  When the priest cries out from deep to deep, and the Spirit quickens you to life you don’t deserve, what meaning do you make?  Do you sense a holy terror?  Do you anticipate delight?  Do you marvel at the story spoken tenderly to you?  Do you believe your insignificance defeated?  I ask because I don’t know how you do it.  I marvel at your calm.  Or are you only unaware of all that God makes new in you?  You are, after all, just bread. 

One moment, “bread”; “Body of Christ” the next, as human hands tell human hands the promise of God by you. 

And wine, in the endless wait that was your fermentation, did you ever dream of this?  I wait, too, and your dusty bottle resonates with me.  You and I--we share too many days lost to dry and distant cellars.  “How long, O Lord, how long?”  O wine, when I don’t covet it, your patience inspires me.  But surely you could not have known...surely you could not have fathomed this.  “Blood of Christ.  Cup of salvation.”  O wine, did you doubt it?  Did you ever wonder if the wait that was your lifetime--the perfecting of your taste--might end simply and cruelly with one night’s drunkenness?  Did you worry about these things?  And now, Blood of the New Covenant, you declare the forgiveness of sins! 

Tell me.  What is it like to point with all that you are to an Other?  I mean, you point so completely that where you end and God begins is the unending argument of theologians.  How do you stand it?  What is it like? 

I know, I know--I ask a lot of questions.  Forgive me and be kind if I come off too nosy; you see, I too am called the Body of Christ--or at least a member of it.  That is, I am told that the transformation I see in you is likewise meant for me. 

This news should be my joy; and sometimes it is.  Other times, though, it scares me.  I ask questions, and wonder.  Who am I, after all?  I don’t have the first notion of what it is to be God’s food for others.  I confess I’m rather clueless as to how to live this out.  But then I look at you, and--I mean no offense--you are only bread and wine.  You have nothing to offer God, still He creates you and continues to touch you, over and over with His presence, until you bring the whole of this world to the same closeness that you share with God.

Gracious God, I find myself lining up alongside bread and wine, waiting for your touch.  And, Lord, I confess that “lining up” and “waiting” are not verbs that I find terribly exciting.  I get agitated--even angry.  You know I get anxious.  Lord, in this Advent, I will need help for the waiting.  But I will wait.  What else can I do?  Your touch is salvation!  Only Lord, help me to wait.

Amen.

[Originally appeared as an article in the St Helena's CrossFinder newsletter.]

Jesus, Garrison Keillor, and Highly Trained Dogs

5th Sunday after Epiphany

Isaiah 40:21-31
Psalm 147:1-12, 21c
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Mark 1:29-39

The first question of the lesson from Isaiah seems to especially fit Mark’s gospel.  Isaiah asks: “Have you not known?”

Last week we noticed that, as Jesus was preaching in the synagogue, the people were amazed, but nobody knew who he was.  This week, it’s more of the same.  The people know that something amazing is happening, but they’re not sure what to call it.  They don’t have the quite right words.  The demons have words, but Jesus commands them to keep quiet, not to tell, which only makes Jesus all the more mysterious to everyone else.  Who is this guy, exactly?

All the while Isaiah’s question echoes like a whisper: “Have you not known?  Haven’t you heard?”

Mark’s gospel and Isaiah’s question name a truth that you and I already know:

The truth is that it’s possible to hang out with Jesus without knowing Jesus.  To rub shoulders with Jesus without knowing Jesus.  And not just for the first followers of Jesus.  It’s true for folks who come to church on rainy Sunday mornings, it’s true for Vestry leaders, and God knows it’s true for clergy.

A reminder for all of us: you can hang out with Jesus without knowing Jesus.

The situation brings to mind the Garrison Keillor quote: “Anyone who thinks (that) sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.” But it also brings to mind, for me, another image:

The truth that it is possible to hang out with Jesus without knowing Jesus calls to mind the image of a parent I was talking to a while back.  The family was just back from a camping vacation, and I had asked about the trip:

“Terrible,” Dad said, getting straight to the point.  “It was hot and then the bugs...so, so very dry.  The tent was a disaster to set up, we fished without luck.  I don’t think we’ve ever been so glad to pack up and go home.”

Separately, I interviewed one of the children.  Without hesitation, and without knowledge of his father’s answer, he said matter-of-fact-ly, “Mom and Dad, camping in tents, best vacation ever.”

How is that, within the very same space, some can know and some can not know?

Have you not seen?  Haven’t you heard?

It happens to the best of us: John the Baptist, you’ll remember, sends word to Jesus one time.  Asks Jesus, through friends: “Are you the one?  Or did I get us all worked up for nothing?”  And Jesus says go tell John what they have (what?)...seen and heard.  There it is again, that echo from Isaiah.  Some folks can see it.  Some folks, they can’t.

Jesus talks a lot about having eyes to see and ears to hear, but the gospels tell us that not seeing and no hearing is far, far more common.  Not seeing, not hearing, is the norm.

This is not surprising, I think.  We live in a world of bright lights and loud noises.  Jesus has some competition.  Jesus says, “Love your enemies,” and, “Father, forgive them.”  The world’s bright lights and loud noises say, “Come November, the defeat of your enemy in the polls, by any means possible (no matter your politics), is your only hope.  Jesus says, “Peace, I give you, my own peace I leave you.”  The world’s bright light and loud noises say, “But who’s looking out for you?  Nobody.  Fight for yourself.”  Jesus says, “Love your neighbors; love one another.”  The bright lights and loud noises say, “Are you really so naive?”

The gate to the Kingdom is crowded outside it with corporate commotion, loud noises wanting to sell you one more thing before you go.  Here, take this remote - it’s your key to something more interesting than the people around you.  Here, put these in your ears - nothing worth hearing out here anyhow.

Some people manage to sneak in the gate anyway.  They see and hear the Kingdom, even now.  We call them saints.  These are people who see and hear the first-fruit possibilities that the Gospel has opened for them, even now - the love and grace and mercy of our Savior. 

The rest of us, on our bad days, get rubbed out: the commotion consumes us.  We either give in or give up, despairing of finding a meaning that matters.  But the still, small voice remains; the whisper that echoes across the generations: “Have you not seen?  Haven’t you heard?”

There’s a wonderful quote that comes from the apocryphal writing known as the Acts of Peter: “Unless you make what is right left, and what is left, right, what is above into what is below, and what is behind into what is in front, you will not learn to know the Kingdom.”

This conversion, this re-orientation, this learning to see and hear the Good News that is already present to us and the world, is very much the heart of what it is to be a Christian.

We Christians are learning day by day - sometimes suddenly and sometimes exceedingly gradually - to make left right, right left, up down, and down up.  We are learning the dance of the Kingdom of God, step by step, until our instinct is mercy, our heartbeat forgiveness, our delight and desire the worship of the God who is Lord of the Dance.

Can I be ridiculous for a moment?  If it’s true that you are learning the dance of the Kingdom of God, seeing and hearing the things of God, even the God at work in this world, do you know what that makes you?  What that makes us?

It makes us, the Church, the world’s seeing-eye dog.  Guide dogs for God.

It means that the things you see and hear are not seen and heard by all.  Don’t take your eyes and ears for granted.  It means that you are in a unique position to name hope to the hopeless, speak power to the powerless, new life to the lifeless.  It's not that they don't care; they don't SEE the hope, power, and life that you see.  It means that you are called to go to people and places without hope, power, or life and look for God there.  Remember, you can see what they can’t.  Help them see God at work in their lives.  Help them name the quiet joy of the Spirit. 

I remember a youth leader who told me about his experience listening to a girl who told him about a moment of discernment in which she decided to forgo a high paying job opportunity in order to serve the underprivileged in her community.  After listening patiently and interestedly, he gently offered: “Do you know how you’ve told me how you want to hear the voice of God’s Spirit?”  Remembering their previous conversations, she nodded.  "That was it.  That’s God speaking to you; working through you.  I hope you see that."

You are called to be seeing-eye dogs for a world that cannot see.

I wonder if you could take a moment just now to think of a person in whom you've seen God at work, but maybe they haven't seen it themselves.

I wonder if cherishing your ability to see changes your approach to people who just don’t get it.  I wonder if it gives you other options besides frustration. 

And not just for the world, out there, but for one another, in here.  I’m not talking about the blind leading the blind; I’m only noting that we all have our blind spots, despite our fields of vision.  A friend of mine, talking about the fact that others seem to know him better than himself sometimes, remarked of his blind spots: “I don't know what they - that's why they're called blind spots!”  We all have them - both for our flaws AND for God's working in us.

But you, the friend who stands outside of the action, are uniquely positioned to see what your brother or sister can’t see; to speak the hope in a voice, a frequency, her ears can hear.  And equally to receive your sister or brother’s touch on your shoulder, his or her attempt at direction, as a kind of blessing on the days you can’t see for yourself.  This is what it means to be holy friends to one another in the community of faith.  This is what we commit to in the promises of your baptism.

“Have you not known?  Haven’t you heard?”

Because Mark’s gospel and Isaiah’s question name a truth that you and I already know:

The truth is that it’s possible to hang out with Jesus without knowing Jesus.  And it’s true for folks on Sunday, it’s true for Vestry leaders, and God knows it’s true for priests.

But if it’s true that you are learning the dance of the Kingdom of God, seeing and hearing the things ofGod, even the God at work in this world, then we are seeing-eye dogs for a world that cannot see.  We are trumpeters of Good News; speakers of truth; ambassadors of a Kingdom whose glory has begun.

Amen.

What Your Church can Learn from Crisco (and how Tina Fey can help)

So yesterday Annie and I are driving into the city late afternoon to pick up burritos for dinner when I catch this fascinating story on NPR.  It's the story of lard and why we no longer use it.  The piece - entitled, 'Who Killed Lard?'-  explores how this thing that everybody cooked with for thousands of years was abruptly and summarily ushered from our kitchens, ingloriously replaced by alternatives like Crisco.

The obvious answer is health - all those saturated fats - but it turns out that the obvious answer only paints half the picture:

• In 1906, Upton Sinclair wrote his famous novel The Jungle in which grim he depicts workers falling into tanks of boiling lard.  Nobody notices the falling workers, until they find their bones mixed in with the lard.  This had people thinking twice about Grandma's homemade pie crust.

• Then, in 1907, a chemist working for William Proctor and James Gamble solved a problem that had threatened the viability of their business.  Proctor and Gamble had, to this point, made a fortune on cottonseed oils for use in soaps and candles, but electricity was fast relegating candles to the archives of history.  Enter E.C. Kayser, who invents hydrogenated oil.  You know, for cooking.

A little fine-tuning, marketing (thank you, Upton Sinclair!), and voila!  Crisco.

To top it off, hindsight tells us that the original Crisco wasn't healthier than lard: Crisco simply traded in those saturated fats for trans fats (which it not longer has).

___________

I think I find the story of Crisco so incredibly fascinating because it reveals the economic biases of most people with respect to supply and demand.  Most of us, as habitual consumers - trained to know that "the customer is always right" - therefore assume that products are supplied because we demand them.  The reality, of course, is more complicated.  And history is rife with examples like Crisco in which creative entrepreneurs literally create the market so that demand will follow supply.

Another example that has received increased attention of late is the story of corn after World War II:

"After World War II, the government had found itself with a tremendous surplus of ammonium nitrate, the principal ingredient in the making of explosives. Ammonium nitrate also happens to be an excellent source of nitrogen for plants. Serious thought was given to spraying America's forests with the surplus chemical, to help the timber industry. But agronomists in the Department of Agriculture had a better idea: spread the ammonium nitrate on farmland as fertilizer. The chemical fertilizer industry (along with that of pesticides, which are based on the poison gases developed for war) is the product of the government's effort to convert its war machine to peacetime purposes. As the Indian farmer activist Vandana Shiva says in her speeches, 'We're still eating the leftovers of World War II.'" (1)

Demand follows supply - at least some of the time.  And suppliers' motivations range are - not surprisingly - largely economic.

___________

At this point, you could make the case that purely economic motivations have societal inefficiencies, that these are exhibits A and B, respectively, and that this is a major flaw of western capitalism.  I won't argue that, but today I'm interested in something else: I want to look at the stories of Crisco and corn through the lens of what the theater calls improvisation; what Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert, and Sam Wells call the importance of "yes AND..."  Say what we want to about the economic efficiencies, today I want to talk about the learning of possibilities.


"Yes and..." is the fundamental unit of improvisational comedy and all good story telling.  In theater, it's what makes room for unexpected twists that no one sees coming: like candle makers turned cooks because of the rise in popularity of electricity.

"Yes and..." is what Sam Wells calls the acceptance of givens.  You don't choose your story.  It comes to you.  You can block it or accept it.  To block is to say "no."  To accept is to say "yes."  But to say "yes and..." is to receive the story you've been given and re-imagine it in a way that makes a unique contribution to the story.  "Yes and..." is to say, "I might have started with something else if the choice had been given to me, but it wasn't.  These are my givens.  And these givens have possibilities."

My wife's friend has four children and another one the way.  Her way of saying "yes and..." is this: "What are my strengths in this moment?  How can I play to them?"  One day she was confined to the bed because of a bad back.  That was her given.  Her "yes and..."?  An afternoon of sheets and story time with the children.  They were delighted. 

___________

As a priest and pastor, I find that we Christians perpetually struggle to believe that we've been given all that we need to do God's work in the world.  There's never enough.  Of course, the Gospel's message is this: We have been given all that we need.  We have more than enough.  So we find ourselves at a fork in the road, needing to answer a question.  What if we have been given all that we need?  This of course, requires a prerequisite question of reflection: What have we been given?   What have you been given?  Faithfulness means asking this question often, as well as offering its compliment: "Thank you."

Christian faithfulness is a bedfast mother saying to herself, "Here is where I am.  And I have been given enough.  What are my strengths in this moment?"  "Yes AND..."  "Yes and..." This is the beating heart of faith, the moment of Christian courage; it's the work of the unpredictable Spirit, the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead, living and breathing and moving in you. 

__________

(1) Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/presence-jul06.html#ixzz1lQO1esmQ

What's Trending Now

To begin with the obvious: trends change.

Yesteryear's groovy becomes yesterday's cool becomes tight becomes right-on becomes...?

Trends always change: after all, that's what the phenomenon names.  Like "waves" have to fall.  If they didn't, we'd call them ponds instead.  Change is what trends do.  What remains increasingly hard to wrap the old head around is how social media took the word that meant "the very latest" - and with it our begrudging acceptance of change - and "verbed" it.  "Trending" is what happens when the very latest won't sit still.

Trending is why false reports of Eddie Murphy's death less than an hour ago are "yesterday's news."  Trending is why this commercial doesn't just make us laugh; it makes us want a faster phone. 
You know, so we can keep up.

When I was in high school the only thing worse than not catching a trend was holding on to a trend too long.  Yeah, not gonna be THAT kid.  Only I was.  We all were.  So the words most guaranteed to grab the full attention of the group were always breathlessly delivered along these lines: "Haven't you heard...?  What?  You mean you didn't you KNOW?"

We'd wait, bug-eyed, with rapt attention, in total silence, to learn just what we had missed.

Trend-setting across the 1990s.  

You can imagine my discomfort, then, when I experienced an unexpected jolt of adolescent-angst as I looked ahead at this Sunday's lessons.  Isaiah's reading, beginning: "Have you not seen?  Have you not heard?"  What!?  Tell me!  Please, please say that my dark wash jeans can stay!

I collected myself.  And thought ahead to the gospel: Mark's gospel wherein countless people know Jesus, but not who he is.  Not that he's brought in a new Kingdom.  Not that all the old rules are about to be trended.  That everything is changed.  Not just for Israel but for the dated ways of the world.

Enemies, for example: killing is out and forgiving is in.  Money, too, isn't safe: the clenched fist is out, the open palm is in style.  Neighbors: used to be tolerated, now to be celebrated.  Even God and how we thought we got to God is turned on its head: 0ut is the dream of controlling God by my actions; in is the impossible truth that God comes as free gift.

This past week I came across this quote in my morning prayers - it comes from the apocryphal writing knows as the Acts of Peter:

"Unless you make what is right left, and what is left right, what is above into what is below, and what is behind into what is in front, you will not learn to know the Kingdom."

I find myself not able to remind myself often enough that the Kingdom of God is not just an invitation - it's an announcement; it's announcing the truth about ourselves and the world in light of the God who delivered Israel from slavery and raised Jesus from the dead.  Given this truth, somethings about myself no longer make sense - like parachute pants after MC Hammer.  The Kingdom is here; I want to learn the style of the Kingdom.  I want to wear the freedom to serve, to love without fear.