I also have learned a lot about myself in job interviews. First, I realize that I really don’t ask very many questions. I think I don’t trust the answers. Instead, I learn by watching people, hearing how they share with one another, how they treat each other. Often the questions they ask say more about the organization than about me. Second, I’ve learned that my viewpoint has softened over the years. I used to go into interviews trying to prove my point. Now I realize that my point isn’t so off from anyone else’s. It’s just by degrees.

Finally, I’ve learned a lot about what I want. I want to work in a place that honors my faith, rather than feeling like I have to apologize for it, or soften it, or even make excuses for it. I want to work somewhere where I can say, “I feel like God is leading me…” or “I learned today in my prayer time…”

I’m always amazed at how big my congregation is. It’s not just the people who show up each Sunday morning or at the potlucks. It’s bigger than that. It’s the fathers and mothers of the individuals who show up on Sunday. It’s the children of the people who show up on Sunday morning. It’s their friends. It’s their coworkers. It’s their dreams. It’s their hopes.

My congregation is all the people who are touched by the love that we feel on Sunday morning.

You’d think by the time you get to be my age, things would be a little less uncertain. But they’re not. As I feel myself being uncertain, and see my friends being uncertain, I have a few things I do to make it not seem so bad:

Be Here Now It seems like focusing on the future or on the past would make more sense, but it doesn’t. Focus here and now. Because right in this moment, you know exactly what’s happening.

Trust Our God has promised to never let us down. And that’s certainly true, as long as you have very low expectations. However, know that God is with you and will be with you through it all. Seek God through prayer, Bible study, church, and talking with friends.

One step at a time Uncertainly immobilizes. Stay mobile. Having options makes uncertainty seem more fun. So search for options. Write, stay current on the news, walk or run. Do things that will keep you interesting, at least to yourself.

And remember, certainty is really an illusion. We’re all uncertain. You’re just feeling it more.

Second Sunday of Lent, Scripture passage: Mark 8:27-38

Paul Simon wrote a song in 1964 that he performed with Art Garfunkel called He Was My Brother. The song was about Andrew Goodman, who was killed by the KKK in Mississippi in 1964. Andrew was one of the activists that the movie Mississippi Burning featured. Paul Simon and Andrew Goodman were in college together at Queens college. They were friends.

Andrew Goodman’s story goes like this:

On the morning of June 21, 1964, three men set out for Philadelphia, Neshoba County, where they were to investigate the recent burning of Mount Zion Methodist Church, a black church that had agreed to be a site for a Relign School for education and voter registration.

On their return to Meridian, the three men were stopped and arrested by Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price for allegedly driving 35 miles over the 30-mile-per-hour speed limit. The trio was taken to the jail in Neshoba County where Chaney was booked for speeding, while Schwerner and Goodman were booked “for investigation”. After Chaney was fined $20, the three men were released and told to leave the county.

Price followed them on state route 69 to the county line, then turned around at approximately 10:30 p.m. On their way back to Meridian, the three young men were stopped by two carloads of KKK members on a remote rural road. The men approached their car, then shot and killed Schwerner, then Goodman, and finally Chaney.

The song says:

He was my brother

Five years older than I

He was my brother

Twenty-three years old the day he died

Freedom writer

They cursed my brother to his face

Go home outsider

This town’s gonna be your buryin’ place

He was singin’ on his knees

An angry mob trailed along

They shot my brother dead

Because he hated what was wrong

He was my brother

Tears can’t bring him back to me
He was my brother

And he died so his brothers could be free

He died so his brothers could be free

Before he left for Mississippi, do you think that Andrew Goodman thought he would be killed? If he had known that he would be killed, do you think that he still would have gone?

Looking at these songs and today’s text made we want to look at it in the Cotton Patch gospel. Although Clarence Jordan didn’t write a gospel of Mark, this is the same passage in Matthew:

Matthew 16:21-28

From then on Leader Jesus began to make clear to his students that he had to go to Atlanta and to go through terrible things at the hands of the leading church people–to be killed, and three days later to be raised! But Rock collared him and began to take him to task. “Not on your life, sir,” he said, “Be dadblamed if this will ever happen to you.” Jesus whirled on Rock and said, “Get away from here, you devil; you are gumming up the works for me, because you’re not following God’s ideas but human reasoning!” Jesus then said to his students, “If a man wants to walk my way, he must abandon self, accept his lynching, and share my life. For the person who aims to save his life will lose it, and the one who loses his life for my cause will find it. What’s a man’s advantage if in getting the whole world he loses his life? Indeed, what shall a man trade in his life for?”

I’ve been reading a lectionary commentary called Preaching God’s Transforming Justice, and the text for todays gospel lesson really got to me. Alejandro F. Botta, from Boston University School of Theology, is the author. He says:

The Gospel of Mark clearly proclaimed, in the words of Jesus, that the coming of the son of man to establish God’s rule on earth was going to happen soon, during the lifetime of some of the believers (9:1). The setting of this passage in Mark is found in the early persecution suffered by the early Jesus movement. The hope of that eschatological irruption fed their faithfulness. Mark’s generation passed and no eschatological event took place, and—it is time to come to terms with this fact—it never will. What is going to empower contemporary faith communities today in a similar powerful way?

Faith communities in the Western world today are faced with very different challenges from those of the early Jesus movement. Poverty, persecutions, and marginality have been replaced by social acceptance, political power, and affluence. Practically speaking, only a few expect a figure like the “son of man” to appear in the sky accompanied by angels to impose God’s rule on earth. What kind of hope, based on the biblical tradition, can we articulate today to feed the faithfulness of contemporary communities of faith?

God’s imperial control on earth is an image anchored in monarchic and imperial understandings of government. However, even though monarchs and emperors are not heads of many states in the West, imperialism (in its European, Middle Eastern, or Far Easter expressions) is still a reality in our world. How does the hope for God’s imperium challenge the non-godly imperialistic aspirations of today’s national and multinational world powers? What is our role in the revitalization of the biblical hope for justice and equality embedded in the biblical concept of the “realm of God”?

Rabbi Robert Levine wrote in the provocative book There Is No Messiah and You Are It,

We realize that no one is going to come along and hand us truth, justice. We get that only in comics and in the movies, not in the real world. The real world is a messy, complicated place, where there are many hard questions, no easy answers, and lots of work to do. But inside of all of us there is the capacity to live up to the potential given to us as human beings created in God’s image…. We can make the world a better place. Bring the dream of redemption a little closer.

As I sit at the feet of Paul Simon these weeks, here’s what he’s teaching me, with the biblical text:

The church is gonna burn.

The church can burn with the zeal of the right—with rules and regulations and all up in everybody’s grille. It can burn with the religious rulers bringing out the freshly charred bodies, calling them slut or prostitute, it can burn with the raising of the fist to the political leaders, and call them elitist, or, even worse, say to them, “How dare you have power over me?”

The church is gonna burn.

The church can burn in a lukewarm way, and warm a few people, make them feel a little bit better, provide community, and never really take a stand on anything. It can burn with pride and affluence, meeting power and social acceptance, and fizzle out, meaning nothing in our culture.

The church is gonna burn.

It can also burn with the power of the Holy Spirit and the cry for justice and peace coming from its people. Fire has long been used as the metaphor for the creativity and passion of the Church. We can get on fire for justice, get on fire for peace, get on fire for being Christ to a hurting world.

The church is gonna burn. Like Paul Simon says:

A church is more than just timber and stone
/And freedom is a dark road when you’re walking it alone/
But the future is now, and it’s time to take a stand/
So the lost bells of freedom can ring out in my land

And a church is burning
/The flames rise higher
/Like hands that are praying, aglow in the sky/
Like hands that are praying, the fire is saying/
“You can burn down my churches, but I shall be free”

In case you don’t know, I’m addicted to Lifehacker. I religiously read their posts, nearly hourly. It’s always so interesting!

This week, they posted about Rejection Therapy. It’s a deck of cards (buy them printed or print your own) that offer suggestions on how to get rejected. There are also apps for the iPhone and Android systems, but on my Droid, the app is getting really bad reviews. I think I’ll wait on that one.

The Rejection Therapy challenge is to be rejected every day for 30 days. This is what I’m going to do as soon as I buy the cards. Wanna join me?

Pam Houston has been my favorite living author since I was in my 20′s, and I first read Cowboys Are My Weakness. There’s just no one in the world that turns a phrase like she does. Imagine my surprise when I saw her new novel, Contents May Have Shifted in my local bookstore.

So far, it has not disappointed. And it’s not the story, it’s the phrases. So far this is my favorite:

I’m beginning to understand that when we want to kill ourselves, it is not because we are lonely, but because we are trying to break up with the world before the world breaks up with us.

Thank you, Ms. Houston.

Is there anything in your life that is holding you back? Keeping you stuck? Somehow keeping you from being exactly the person you want to be?

Maybe it’s hurt. Maybe it’s grief. Maybe it’s anger.

I keep thinking about this thing like a fist-sized place in the center of our bodies. It’s a spot that, if scratched, may cause feeling—you may start crying and never stop, you may go into a rage, you may shrivel up in the fetal position and never move. In order to protect that spot, we adopt all kinds of behaviors: walls, defenses, magic spells, busy-ness, silence, isolation, lying, obsession, disease… we will do anything we can to protect that spot. Because we’re afraid of what it will do.

Pema Chödrön wrote:

Once there was a young warrior. Her teacher told her that she had to do battle with fear. She didn’t want to do that. It seemed too aggressive; it was scary; it seemed unfriendly. But the teacher said she had to do it and gave her the instructions for the battle. The day arrived. The student warrior stood on one side, and fear stood on the other. The warrior was feeling very small, and fear was looking big and wrathful. They both had their weapons. The young warrior roused herself and went toward fear, prostrated three times, and asked, “May I have permission to go into battle with you?” Fear said, “Thank you for showing me so much respect that you ask permission.” Then the young warrior said, “How can I defeat you?” Fear replied, “My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face. Then you get completely unnerved, and you do whatever I say. If you don’t do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me, and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you don’t do what I say, I have no power.” In that way, the student warrior learned how to defeat fear.

Our job is to defeat fear, so that we can release that fist-sized place in our bodies, so that we can be the person that God is calling us to be. My challenge to you this Lenten season is to conquer fear and deal with breaking down those protections for that place inside of you.

God, how well we remember
the celebrations of last year—
the hopes and dreams
and wild expectations
that we dared to allow in our hearts.
And now, how troubled
we are to recall our failures!
We have not lived up
to our own expectations.
We have not measured up to your call.
The world has not been healed.
There is no peace.
The poor are still hungry.
Our dreams have burned to the ground.
The songs and carols of Advent and Christmas
brought a brief respite
from the darkness,
but now we stand on the brink of Lent.
We are weary and frustrated.
We are fearful of what
you might now ask us to do.
Help us to bring today
the ashes of our dreams,
and present them to you
for transformation.

This sermon, preached on February 19, 2012 at the Richmond Mennonite Fellowship, based on Luke 9:28-36 and Paul Simon’s song, Wartime Prayers. They lyrics to this song can be found here. The quotes from the song are in italics.

Every year, on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, the larger church celebrates the Transfiguration. And although I’ve preached and listened to sermons about this holy day, I really don’t get it. And when I ask my preaching friends about it, they give me some interpretations that I really don’t understand. I mean, I  understand them, but I don’t understand them. In Mark’s gospel, which was the first written, it’s not difficult to understand that Mark is trying to explain Jesus’ place in the world… he’s trying to get them to see that Jesus is on par with Moses and Elijah, even in communion with them, so therefore, somehow, better than Jesus and Elijah

So the transfiguration deals with identity.

In Matthew’s gospel, which likely used the Mark passage as its model, there is more of an emphasis on the idea of building a permanent home for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. It’s like, “We’ve had this transcendental experience, let’s make it last forever! As one of my minister friends said, “It speaks to our nature to make mountaintop experiences last forever.”

For me, none of these explanations resonated.

Until I read the Luke passage and entered into a conversation with Paul Simon. In Luke’s gospel, you see that the visitation from Elijah and Moses is preparation… preparation, for Jesus’ departure, his exodus.

And it began to make sense to me. So I wrote about this conversation I think happened after the transfiguration.

After the glow had worn off, and dinner had been served and cleaned up, Simon Peter and Jesus sat up the room where they were staying. The other disciples had fallen asleep, and the house had the quiet respiration of snorers. Everywhere you went, you could hear the breathing in and breathing out.

Simon Peter asked Jesus, “Why did you go out to pray today?

Jesus replied to Simon Peter “Because you cannot walk with the holy  if you’re just a halfway decent man I don’t pretend that I’m a mastermind with a genius marketing plan I’m trying to tap into some wisdom Even a little drop will do I want to rid my heart of envy And cleanse my soul of rage before I’m through.”

“But why pray?” Simon Peter asked.

Jesus explained it this way:

“Prayers offered in times of peace Are silent conversations Appeals for love, or love’s release In private invocations But all that is changed now Gone like a memory from the day before the fires. Simon Peter, you don’t know what’s coming up. I’ve told you that we’re heading to Jerusalem, and I’ve told you that it’s not going to be easy. But it’s possible that I’ll be killed there. So instead of praying for love, or for love’s release, I’m praying a wartime prayer.

“You know what’s been happening, Simon Peter. We’ve been walking around Israel for a few years. My cousin, John the Baptist, has been killed by Herod. I’ve won the favor of the people, but I’ve angered the politically powerful. And when you add all of that to the volatility that of Israel in this time, a storm is brewing.  Because of the turbulent times, I’m not praying for sweet things, I’m not praying for good times, gone like a memory from the day before the fires. I’m praying for something else.”

Remember that our text tells us, “As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about his departure, (exodus) which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.”

The conversation between Simon Peter and Jesus continued. Simon Peter asked, “What did Elijah say to you?”

Jesus laughed and said, “Apparently, Elijah’s always rubbed people the wrong way. You remember that Elijah was a prophet to the Northern Kingdom of Israel, he faced down Ahab and Jezebel. He said to me, “People hungry for the voice of God hear lunatics and liars.” He told me the story about the time he faced down Baal. But more importantly, how alone he felt when he did. He said, “Jesus, you’re going to be unpopular. You’re going to feel alone. When you do, just offer a wartime prayer. And know that we’ll be with you.”

And then Moses grinned when he heard what Elijah said. Moses said to me, “Times are hard, it’s a hard time But everybody knows All about hard times, the thing is What are you gonna do? Well, you cry and try to muscle through And try to rearrange your stuff But when the wounds are deep enough And it’s all that we can bear We wrap ourselves in prayer.”

Moses continued, “Remember when I met Pharaoh to set God’s people free? I wanted to back down. I wanted to get past it. I wanted the cup to pass from me. But it didn’t. I put on my big boy pants, and I faced him down, knowing that my God was bigger than his.

“Then much later, in the desert, my student Joshua fought the Amalekites, and I prayed a Wartime Prayer. And as long as I held my arms above my head, we would win, but if my arms dropped down, Joshua began to lose. I couldn’t hold my hands for very long, So Aaron and Hur sat me on a rock, and held my arms for me. We won that battle. I want you to know, Jesus, that in those last moments, we’ll be beside you, holding up your arms, and joining you in a wartime prayer.”

Simon Peter sat back for a few minutes. He seemed like he was digesting Jesus’ words while he was digesting his food.

“One other question, Jesus,” he said. “What did the conversation with Elijah and Moses give you?”

Jesus looked at Simon Peter and said, “It reminded me of the nature of God. Like a mother who murmurs in twilight sleep, And draws her babies closer, With hush-a-byes for sleepy eyes, And kisses on the shoulder , To drive away despair, She says a wartime prayer.

Today made me ready for the next weeks,” Jesus continued. “You disciples don’t understand it yet, but I’m going to face some really tough situations in the next month. Knowing that God, Moses, and Elijah are with me will help me make it. And knowing that they are there for me keeps me available to be there for all of you.”

Her name was Jan. She sang in an a capella band, with radical feminist roots, which I didn’t even understand. She taught me about money, making a living wage, listening to myself, and the scourge of waitresses. She was smart, funny, fiercely protective and used to make me laugh.

Most of all, she was kind. Thank you, Jan. I needed you and you were there.

I’d like to tell her that, but I don’t know where to find her. She worked with me in a sports bar in Hillsboro Village, back in the day. She has a pretty common name, so finding her in the white pages and on facebook seems to elude me.