Tonight's Beresheth Sermon

I tend to shy away from descriptions of Jesus as sacrificial. It makes me think of blood and dead lambs and the ego-centric “if you were the only person on earth, Jesus would have died for you” nonsense that musically lame and theologically inept praise choruses of the eighties and nineties and televangelists tend to communicate about God.

I don’t like it.

But this weekend I was reminded that indeed, Jesus led a very sacrificial life. And I was reminded of this in a love story.

Lisa moved to Kenya some time after we graduated from college to work for the International Justice Mission. While there, she met a Liberian man. Although they share her native language (his being a tribal Liberian dialect), communication is still trying at times, but despite their differences, they fell in love. The true test for Lisa though, came a year or so later when Eddie was offered his dream job... in Liberia. He would probably be placed in a village, probably without internet, with cell reception only from the top of a hill in the town. Lisa was happy about this amazing opportunity for him, but after he told her about the job offering she cried and cried. This would the turning point in their relationship - would she move to a country devastated (but recovering) from war, a place with limited resources, poor health care, and bad food? Would she move to a place like that where she had no job? Further away from family and even friends she had made in Kenya? Would she trust God through this? And that's when she realized it was, as she said, "true love." When they talked on the phone later about the situation, Eddie began and said, "I'm not taking the job. It's too risky for us. We wouldn't be able to communicate very often and I can't do that to us." And that's when Lisa learned that both of them had come to the same conclusion - that they were willing to give it all up for the other person. Indeed she was experiencing true love. “And love,” she told me “is a sacrifice. It’s modeled in the personhood of Jesus Christ and it should be modeled in the way we love each other.”

Sacrifice. That’s a hard word for me in general. Apart from Little Bo Peep’s dead sheep on the altar, sacrifice as lifestyle is a hard one to live by. I want a good job and a healthy marriage and a happy home and nice neighbors. I want to take vacations to exotic places and go to the theatre often and out a pool in my backyard. I’d love to own a hybrid car and my own home and maybe someday even a second home on a beach or lake somewhere or maybe in the mountains. Not an extravagant lifestyle, but a good one. But probably not one that anyone would call sacrificial.

But what Lisa was talking about – while it did mean sacrificing basic living conditions (electricity for one) what she described was more a sacrifice of self – of wants and desires – because of loving someone else.

So I started to wonder what sacrifice in our spirituality really means. What does it mean when in Romans 12 Paul writes, “Offer yourselves up as living sacrifices.” Obviously not a literal imperative but one that reminded me of other metaphors… Jesus told Nicodemis that “no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” Again, playing on the idea similar to sacrifice, of letting go of something, and to the born again metaphor, a definite change element is added. In all three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) Jesus is quoted as saying, “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for me will find it.”

Those images of sacrifice, rebirth, and losing and finding life remind me of the lyrics in the song written by Alanis Morisette that we sang at the earlier in the service. “Reborn and shivering. Spat out on new terrain… Day One, Day One, start over again. Step one. Step one. I’m barely making sense.”

Surely you’ve been there before. In a new city, at a new college, at a new job, in a new relationship and you’re feeling your way along, seemingly blind at first because of the newness and unfamiliarity of the situation.

If you haven’t been there before, just wait, you will be.

As I listen to the imagery in that song, I am reminded of scenes of “rebirth,” if you will, in biblical stories. There’s Adam and Eve in the Garden and then there’s Adam and Eve feeling their way around outside the Garden. There’s Hagar and Ishmael having been cast out of Abraham’s tribe to fend and provide for themselves alone in the desert and eventually in Egypt. There’s Joseph in jail, having already been through slavery and falling in and out of the good graces of the people around him, now wondering where life will take him or how to even make a life for himself in jail. There’s Jonah, humiliated, but alive (having been spit out of a fish) struggling to embrace a wider theology. There’s Mary, pregnant and alone with a story no one was going to believe. What would life look like with that magical but terrifying news? There’s Paul, the Christian-hater, now confessing Christ alongside people he’d sought to execute.

So many life-changing experiences but experiences meant to be explored with God. Told with God who indeed is one of the main characters and has been all along. Suddenly being spat out on new terrain, naked and alone before God begins to make sense to me. Apart from the Just Me and Jesus, individualistic, selfish, all-about-me-Christianity that I loathe, on some level I realize that at some point it comes down to just us and God. It’s not a faith our parents pass on to us in their wills. It’s not dowry gift received from a marriage. It’s an experience, a relationship between you and your creator. And regardless of whether or not there is a blinding light that leaves you panicked and passed out in the street, you will leave your encounter with God changed.

Changed. Reborn. Day One, Day One, Start over again. Having given up your life, you receive new life. And you are changed. And this change affects your very being. While it may not change your vocation, it changes who you are in the workplace. While it may not change your major, it changes how you use the knowledge you gain. People aren’t just people anymore, they’re children of God. Talent isn’t just being good at something now, it’s a gift to be shared. Money doesn’t have the same meaning. Everything may stay the same, but everything changes too because now God is in it. Now God is in you! Now God asks you to offer yourself up as a living sacrifice: to tithe, so a community of faith can function; to vote so that all may experience equality, to share so that the widows and orphans are not left alone, to love so that everyone may know God’s love, to forgive - even your enemies, to speak up for injustice even when it’s unpopular, to be faithful even when hedonism feels so good.

It changes you. It changes the way you interact even with the people sitting next to you tonight. Everything changes when you encounter God. And if God isn’t real to you, if you don’t start off empty, alone, naked, and acknowledging that you are nothing without God, you miss the life. Unless you lose it, you’ll never find it.

No wonder the gate is narrow. Who wants to sit exposed in all of their un-splendor admitting “I can’t do this alone, nor do I want to.”? For people in trauma, it’s easy to see what’s relative, what’s imperative, what is essential. In traumatic situations, the excess strips away and only what matters is left. So it’s often feels easier even amidst the pain for someone in crisis to realize that really nothing matters apart from loving God and loving each other. For the rest of us who sit on our comfy couches, with our good grades and our distinguished degrees and successful jobs and relatively happy families, it’s easier to be blindsighted by these essentially good things, by the good life. But if we stood blinking in the sun, startled and staring truly at our ability to live abundantly, starting freshly with that mind-boggling grace that changes everything, where would we go? How would we live?

How would we change? Who would we be?

Naturally, we would live in empowering understanding and humble gratitude - as if we really got a second chance, a second birth, a newly gained life… given through sacrifice, to be lived sacrificially.

Amen.

Love and Marriage

Wow. I learned a lot about love this weekend.

First off, Julie got married. This in and of itself it a miracle. Like myself, having been through a plethora of failed relationships, one can get to the point where one wonders... what if...

But Julie is in love. And not like I've ever seen her before. Her and Michael's first dance was amazing. Amazing. Hands down, out of all the weddings I've ever been in, sung at, officiated or attended, this couple wins for best first dance. With his hands on her back in a tender embrace, Julie kept clutching his neck and resting her head in his chest. "I'm so happy," I saw her whisper at one point. It was beautiful. Then when Julie and her dad danced, their song was the father daughter song from the musical Beauty and the Beast and it was so awesome watching her and her father singing the words to each other as they danced. Julie and Merlin always had a very silly but loving relationship.

And was she ever a beautiful bride. Holy cow.

It was a great wedding because so many of my (and Julie's) worlds came together all at once. Julie and I shared much of our adult life attending the same college, the same seminary, being in Baptist circles and churches. So there were friends there from Jewell, Truett, and the CBF all there. 12 years of friendships. It was especially fun to be back together with Lisa, Stacey and Laura for most of the weekend.

And this is where I learned my second lesson about love.

Lisa moved to Kenya some time after we graduated from college to work for the International Justice Mission. While there, she met a Liberian man. ALthough they share her native language (his being a tribal Liberian dialect), communication is still trying at times, but despite their differences, they fell in love. The true test for Lisa though, came a year or so later when Eddie was offered his dream job... in Liberia. He would probably be placed in a village, probably without internet, with cell reception only from the top of a hill in the town. Lisa was happy about this amazing opportunity for him, but after he told her about the job offering she cried and cried. This would the turning point in their relationship - would she move to a country devastated (but recovering) from war, a place with limited resources, poor health care, and bad food? Would she move to a place like that where she had no job? Further away from family and even friends she had made in Kenya. Would she trust God through this? And that's when she realized it was, as she said, "true love." When they talked on the phone later about the situation, Eddie began by saying, "I'm not taking the job. It's too risky for us. We wouldn't be able to communicate very often and I can't do that to us." And that's when Lisa learned that both of them had come to the same conclusion - that they were willing to give it all up for the other person. True love.

Normally I hate that sappy shit. But listening to Lisa talk about life in Liberia and watching Julie who has experienced so many hardships in love come to a place of complete commitment was informative at the least and inspiring at the best.

Maybe it really happens. Maybe. It's hard to write about love, but to see it being told and experienced by your friends, friends who you know and trust and love... well, it becomes a little more real, tangible. Not a romantic date or a sexual encounter or a fairy tale idealism or a rite of passage, but a journey, deliberately, carefully chosen, embraced with someone that your love. You love. Love enough to sacrifice for. A relationship both people are so invested in, they would give it all up for the well-being of that unity.

Maybe that's why even our relationship with God is characterized in the expressions of faith, hope and love.

But the greatest of these is love.

Ah Waco... I'm back here for Julie's wedding.

I have a love/hate relationship with this city.

That's all i have to say right now...

You Go Girl!

One of my FAVORITE people, here's an article on her new gluten-free cupcake business! (And this is us as kids). Congrats Andee!

EW!

There is a cockroach...waterbug...THING on my kitchen floor. I found it there at 4am when i couldn't sleep and went to the kitchen to do laundry. it was on it's back still wiggling it's wirey legs. I hate cockroaches or anything resembling them. Just last week I swore if I ever found a cockroach in my house I would move out.

Do you know how many other things I've sworn about?...

I'll never live in Texas.
I'll never work in a church.
I'll never get a dog.

I'm too afraid to say the rest of the list out loud...

The cockroach is still on the floor.

The deal with roommates has always been, you pick up the cockroach, i'll pick up the snake or spider or mouse or whatever. UGH. I have no roommate. She moved out last week. I have no boyfriend either which makes the situation even trickier. And with the price of gas now, no willing soul would drive over here to pick it up for me.

DAMNIT!

The little bug lived for a good two or three hours after I first found it. I felt just the tinsiest bit bad about that, but not enough to end it's life. Usually when I find wounded lizards the cats or dog have brought in that are still alive, I don't have the heart to kill them either. But I do gently pick them up and set them outside so they may die at least in their natural habitat. I love reptiles.

The only mercy I've ever showed any cockroaches were the ones I watched on Enchanted. When Giselle sings and all the city "animals" come help her clean house, I guffawed. But my affection for those cocky cleaners was still coupled with nervous collar tugging. Gross. Cockroaches cleaning? Funny, but gross.

Now if I could just figure out how to clean up my cockroach...