I was just now outside hanging up some new birdfood - thistle seed for the finches and suet for the woodpeckers. There's already a seed-cake that's had its share of visitors; these others were new.
So there I was standing at the feeder pole, wearing my orange hoodie. I had just hung up the new finch feeder when along came a chickadee! I heard him come as he wondered aloud what this huge orange thing was standing at the feeder. He landed on a branch nearby - I mean, really nearby! - to investigate, then came closer. He ended up on the back side of the seed cake, not more than 10 inches from my hand, and peeked around the side of it to see what I might be.
I don't know about him, but I was thrilled! This was as close as I've ever been to one of these cute little guys, and during the moment he spent in investigating me I spent in awe and wonder and thrill. That he would decide to come so close was almost more than I could hope for (although for just a second I hoped he might deign to land on my arm or my hand), and the moment was delightful in every way.
Not to put too much spin on this, but do you suppose God ever looks at you the way I looked at this chickadee? Sure, we're sometimes kind of shy at approaching Him. For some of us He's big and powerful, and that scares us. For others, perhaps He's mysterious, like a huge thing in an orange hoodie to a chickadee. So sometimes we don't want to get too near Him, and we tend to stay away.
But do you suppose that when God "reaches out His hand and satisfies the desire of every living thing" there is some hope in Him that those "living things" will occasionally come near enough that He can look into their eyes with delight? Near enough that He can enjoy a thrill at their presence? Near enough that He can dare to hope that they might return someday and get even closer to Him?
Do you suppose that you might someday dare to be one of those "living things", and draw that close to the One who takes such delight in your presence? Do you suppose that you might be the highlight of His day, the way this chickadee is the highlight of mine today?
The Red-Winged Blackbirds are the first to make it back into the yard at Christ the King Lutheran Church. They precede the buzzards by about a week, and it's nice to hear their calling from the still-frosty fields.
In prior years one of them has built a nest in the weeping cherry tree that's tucked into the corner of the church between the office window and the sanctuary window. While waiting for a mate to show up, he would often try to attack his reflection in the sanctuary window, hurling himself into the fray with a loud thump (sometimes even during worship services!). I named him George (of the Jungle, of course), and when his mate showed up - Ursula.
He hasn't arrived yet this year. Instead, there's a field sparrow that seems to have taken up residence in the tree, and while I'm in the office he sings his little heart out in praise to God.
Saint Francis would probably love it here. I know I do, with all these feathered friends helping me to look up from the monitor frequently and thank God for the company.
Today is Buzzard Day in Hinckley, Ohio. Today birdwatchers of every feather flock to this quiet town in the northeast corner of our Medina County to catch a glimpse of the buzzards returning to their Ohio summer homes after wintering in, so I hear, the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. This coming Sunday is Buzzard Sunday, and the town will have a festival honoring the return of these part-time locals. Florida has snowbirds, and we have buzzards.
In this part of Ohio, we know that buzzards are good to have around in the warmer months. Other critters have been hibernating all winter, and now that it's getting warmer they're coming out of their dens and burrows - bunnies and chipmunks, deer and skunks and possums and squirrels. The woods and fields are becoming alive with the little guys, and they'll be busy and active all summer.
Periodically one of them will try to cross the road (after the manner of chickens) and meet an untimely demise at the hands of Mack or Ford or Toyota. Since only people and pets get the privilege of burials, and since it seems that Mike Rowe is always busy elsewhere, someone else has to take care of the ministration of last rites to these departed denizens of the forest floor. Buzzards are well-suited to the task and do it ably and thoroughly. Like their human counterparts, others are sometimes a little put-off by them and even make jokes about them to ease discomfort, but the buzzards don't seem to mind. They have their calling, and we have ours. Welcome back!
Notes from Sunday's sermon, March 12, 2011
I tried to look at Genesis 3 this week with a little different perspective. Genesis 3 is the story of the temptation and sin of Adam and Eve. After they eat the forbidden fruit, I think we often read God's responses as if they were driven solely by wrath or anger or judgment (kind of the knee-jerk reaction most of us would have, I suppose). But is there another possibility? Is there a note / a thread / a whole stream of sadness or disappointment in the way God responds to Adam and Eve? Consider these possibilities:
God, the loving Father, made and created a world that was "very good", Adam and Eve as the crown of creation, and a special place in that world for them to live and enjoy His company. When His beloved children unleashed the tsunami of sin into this perfect world, would He have responded only with anger - "Adam, WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU!!!!?" - or with concern, like a mother looking for a lost child - "Adam, please come out; I'm so worried about you. Adam, please!"
As Adam and Eve shuffled their feet and made their excuses, could it be that God's sadness was growing more quickly than His anger?
God unleashes His anger on the snake, so that forever afterward the very characteristics with which He blessed the snake in creating it would now be the signs of its curse.
But He doesn't curse Adam or Eve. In His disappointment and sorrow that His loving fellowship with His beloved children is irretrievably changed, He speaks to them (with a catch in His voice and tears in His eyes?). To Eve and her daughters He says, "from now on you'll be focused on your relationships with men" and to Adam and his sons He says "from now on you'll be focused on your work."
But He doesn't leave them there. He promises salvation in the first promise of Jesus. He takes away their pitiful, temporary efforts to camouflage their nakedness and covers them with coverings He provides. He sends them out of the garden to protect them from (accidentally? deliberately?) someday eating the Tree of Life and living forever with the pain and sorrow of their sin. Now they, and we, get to die someday and leave this vale of tears.
Was there sadness in God's heart on the day Adam and Eve sinned? or just anger?
But surely He is the God who is love, who sent Jesus to the cross because He loved us, and who gives us the gift of salvation and eternal life because He loves us.
And I think it is precisely because of His love that His actions that fateful day were not only driven by wrath or anger, but also driven by His great love for His children, His great sadness at their sin, and His great plan and hope for their restoration.
The preview of that restoration is in Revelation 22. Thanks be to God!
As Japan reels from this morning's earthquake; as Hawaii breathes a cautious sigh of relief at the passing of the first tsunami wave; as the West Coast of the United States braces for the wave to strike; and as I pause every so often this morning to pray for those in the path or the aftermath of the tsunami - I think of this church in southern India that survived the terrible tusnami of just a couple years before.
Not only did this church survive the tsunami with no major damage, but I was told that the people of the town who took refuge inside the church also survived.
I pray for those all around the Pacific Rim who know Him Who is their Refuge and Strength, and will seek shelter in the shadow of His wings during this day of great anxiety in that area.
I pray that their sheltering in His shadow will be a testimony and an encouragement to those who are uncertain where their true Shelter lies.
And I pray that the rest of us will stay close to His sheltering love, ready to take refuge in Him and to "dwell in the shadow of the Most High" forever.
God bless us everyone!
Yesterday evening (Ash Wednesday), as the children of God came to the altar of His church to receive the mark of ashes on their foreheads, my heart was breaking for them. I know that the Lenten season is a time of repentance, but for whatever reason the Imposition of the Ashes of past years seemed rather formulaic last night.
The rite is relatively simple: after the consecration of the ashes and oil, the people come to the altar one by one where I, their pastor, make the sign of the cross on each forehead with my finger dipped in the ashes. This experience is to remind them that, as God told Adam, "you are dust, and to dust you shall return."
But last evening as I made the sign of the cross on each forehead, my heart felt as if it would break. I sensed that the eyes of their loving and gentle Father were overflowing with tears for them as I echoed His words. So often we hear them as words of punishing reminder; but last night I heard them as words of grief and sadness. Grief and sadness that the children on whom He lavishes His love will end this life as dust. That these children need no one to mark them with ashes, because they do such a thorough job of marking themselves.
What I really wanted to do last night was to have them mark themselves with ashes, then come to the altar where I would imitate the Prodigal Father, wrapping them in the embrace of His love and washing the stain of ashes away from them. I wanted them to know His welcome and His love and His goodness for them, for us all. I wanted them to know that His children are not merely dust, that after this life ends in dust His children still go on in glory, in His arms, at His banquet.
And then we shared in the Lord's Supper. Grace at last! The celebration of the Father's welcoming love for His children!
My eyes well up with tears again - some of them are tears of joy for those who have melted into His embrace, and some are tears of heartbreak for those who are still outside in the ashes.
If Lent is a time for anything, couldn't it be a time for coming home to the Father?
Last night I saw where the moon was. I didn't actually see the moon, although it was pretty bright and shiny. There were clouds between me and the moon, so I couldn't see the moon itself; however, there was a kind of misty shiny spot against the dark of the sky, too big to be a star or an airplane. It was the moon - I just couldn't see it clearly.
I find that when I want to "practice the presence of God" I hope that I will see Him as clearly as I see a full moon on a cloudless night, but that's seldom the way it goes. Most of the time it just seems that I'm vaguely aware of Him like a kind of misty shiny spot against the dark, like last night. Maybe too many "clouds" are in the way - whatever that means - for me to see Him clearly. But last night's sighting hinted that I probably don't have to have a High Definition experience of His presence in order to know that He's there - and that even though much of the time I probably won't see Him in HD I might still be able to see where He is.
And in those times when I can't see Him at all, no matter how hard I try, I find myself holding on to the cross, to the Word, to the Sacraments. That's where I know He always is.
I just finished watching the movie "Lilies of the Field", titled after the Scripture verse "Consider the lilies of the field, how they toil not, neither do they spin." Yet, as Jesus continues, God gives them clothing more wonderous and glorious than Solomon's ever was. One of the ongoing issues in the movie is that Mother Maria never actually thanks Schmidt (or pays him, either) for all the work he is doing for the tiny community of nuns until the very end of the story.
This morning on my way to church I happened to see a couple of deer in the snowy woods along the roadside, probably wending their way home after a nighttime of searching for the last bit of winter food. I thought about the verse "You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing"; but I also thought about the phrase "Give us this day our daily bread" which I would be teaching on in the Bible class today. Luther would say this means that God gives daily bread "indeed to all the wicked" - and even some deer scavenging in the woods. So what then is the difference between the deer and you and me or Mother Maria or Homer Smith / Schmidt?
Bambi and the Lilies of the Field can receive whatever they need, daily, from the hand of a loving Father, but they can't acknowledge that His hand is the one giving it, and they can't thank Him for it all. You and I and Mother Maria and Schmidt, though - we receive whatever we need, daily, from the hand of a loving Father, and we can acknowledge Him and His prodigal love for us, and thank Him for it.
Bambi and friends tell me I have a choice they are unable to have. "Give us this day our daily bread" encourages me to acknowledge that everything I have for my life comes from the hand of my loving Father, and to thank Him for it all. "Lilies of the Field" encourages me to thank also those through whom He gives me all I need.
So - thank You, Father -- and thank you, friend!
I bought some Lava Lamps the other day for an upcoming project. We're "trying them out" at home to make sure they work OK. They do, but they are excruciatingly slow to get going! The "lava" blobs inside don't even begin to move until at least an hour after I first flip the switch. Once they do, though, they still move pretty slowly up and down in the lighted liquid. They're soothing to watch - kind of like a jellyfish sarabande - but I find that since there is no FastForward button, I have to devote some considerable time to watching them.
This past week I also found a YouTube video of Mahalia Jackson singing The Lord's Prayer on the last night of the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958 (check it out for yourself). The audience sat in rapt attention as she sang/prayed this prayer (that normally takes us, what, 20 seconds to say?) for nearly four minutes! I know, four minutes doesn't seem like a long time, but it is over ten times the amount of time we normally take when we simply speak it (even in church)!
I guess this is all just to say that some things are worth slowing down for. Some things are worth the time because they aren't made to happen instantly. Some days I feel like my spiritual journey is too much like those lava lamps - I want to "make progress" a lot faster than I seem to be going. And then there are those days when I realize that my spiritual journey is not so much about a destination as it is about a slow dance in a confined space with my Father who is absolutely, unconditionally in love with me. And even though most days I zoom through the Lord's Prayer in near-record time, I think I also need to learn that the point of the Prayer is not so much in the saying of it as in the time spent in the presence of the Father.
Thanks for taking the time to read this - but now, please go spend some time doing a slow dance with the Father.
Some guys are on the roof over the kitchen today. It's had some leaks the last couple of winters, and they've patched it up a few times. This year, though, I decided that the patches are not holding and it's time to do something more drastic. So the guys are on the roof over the kitchen. They've torn it off completely, even down to the rafters, and are rebuilding it from the ceiling joists up. I hope this rebuild at a better angle will help the water wash off better, keep ice dams from building up in the wintertime, and keep our kitchen nice and dry.
I guess that's the way repentance ought to work. Sometimes I guess we think that it's OK just to "patch things up" and go on with our lives. After all, that's the easiest fix for a roof and a relationship. But when we discover that the patches aren't holding, maybe it's time to tear everything apart, all the way down to the bare bones, and build it up again a bit differently.
That's a lot harder, more time-consuming, and more expensive that just "patching things up." I'm talking repentance here, and not just roofs. The repentance / forgiveness / reconciliation paradigm is a lot harder, more time-consuming, and costs more (in terms of what? Pride? Ego?) than just "patching things up." But if relationships work like roofs, it's a better and longer-lasting fix for both.
