Last Saturday night at about 10 p.m., with everyone else in the house asleep, I was sitting on the couch debating with myself about the morality of stealing a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup from Emily’s Halloween candy (a debate I lost), when I became aware of a tremendous amount of noise on the front lawn of the Parsonage.

It was a group of older kids, though none I knew. They were clearly pausing en route between the Disneyland of Chocolate that is Maher Avenue on Halloween and wherever their next destination was—more houses? A dance? I couldn’t tell.

I stepped onto the porch to shoo them along with my best Mean Old Grouch on the Porch routine, but then I saw they were taking pictures with their phones.

“Wait, wait,” said one. “Freeze right there! Now you look like you’ve just come out of the castle! Everyone else look scared!”

They were taking action shots in their costumes, with the church as a background.

“Awesome!” said the photographer, happily. “That one looks messed up.”

I don’t like to think of the church as a creepy castle (or as looking messed up), although I decided to let the kids go ahead and have their fun.

But it made me think of the ways that churches can come to seem just like that. And I’m not actually talking about the architecture, or about Halloween night, of course.

So often, churches can come across as forlorn and foreboding, as places haunted by the past rather than teeming with new life. There are places where the ghosts are all around: the Ghost of Christmas Past, when the church had to have seven full services to accommodate all the families, and each child thought that getting a fresh orange was the greatest present of all; the Ghost of Budgets Past, when in any given year, the church fathers just made a few calls and…bingo!…they could swing the salary for two more associate pastors and put a new roof on an outbuilding; the Ghost of Pastors Past, when the wisest, kindest, nationally-known preacher with a leonine mane of white hair and Caruso-like singing voice was their leader; the Ghost of Sundays Past, when no athletic coach would so much as dare TOUCH Sunday morning, nobody dared play golf before noon, or needed to sleep in after getting back late from an international flight, and cell phones didn’t call people into work at the last minute.

When a church is haunted by ghosts like those—and those are only a few—it isn’t long before it starts to feel like a creepy castle, all right.

Put that up against a world where people still need loving, wrongs still need righting, the young still need guiding, the bereft still need comforting, life-purposes still need pondering, and friends still need introducing, and you’ll see how tragic it is when a church lets itself give up and just be haunted, instead.

That’s what’s really messed up.

One of the greatest challenges, but also joys of our life together is trying to discern who it is Christ needs us to be in this new time. A church like ours has remained strong because it has found new ways to ask and answer such questions. But more than that, it has found joy in the searching and answering—in seeing a beloved old building as the backdrop for new stories, and the abounding grace in its bringing together new communities, and in its finding new ways to celebrate together.

I hope that’s what you’re finding here. I find it constantly…and not just on my front lawn. Let’s find a way to learn from those experiences and listen for God’s call as we do.

See you in church,

My latest piece on the UCC blog “New Sacred”…What does hope look like at the bedside of dying child? Some thoughts….

Earlier this week, CNN reported the heartbreaking story of five-year-old Julianna Snow, who was born with a rare, incurable neurodegenerative condition called Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease.

Click the link below for the full piece…

Source: New Sacred » “False Hope, Real Hope, and the Dying Child”

Dear Friends of Second Church,

Earlier this week, I learned on NPR that Ed Walker, a longtime Washington, D.C. radio man on station WAMU, had died.

Blind since birth, Walker fell in love with radio early…and deeply. The connection may seem obvious; nevertheless, in college, Walker had to convince his academic advisor that his lack of sight did not summarily disqualify him from broadcast work. Ultimately, he did, and his career began…just as television was coming into its own. Maybe it is no surprise, then, that while he enjoyed a successful career, his greatest love was “The Big Broadcast,” a Sunday evening show he hosted, beginning in 1990.

If you never caught it, “The Big Broadcast” was a celebration of the Golden Age of Radio—a four-hour show with music, comedy, and classic serials like “Gunsmoke” and “Dragnet,” many of which Walker remembered hearing as a boy, lying on the living room floor, or with the transistor radio hidden under his pillow as he pretended to be asleep.

His love of those stories, and of radio as a way of storytelling, was obvious, and it helped turn two—maybe even three—new generations into fans.

He always began “The Big Broadcast” with the same signature welcome: “If you have anything that’s bothering you in the coming week, don’t worry about it now. Or any problems that you had in the week just past — forget them too. This is our time in the week — right now. The island between last week and the coming week. So settle back, relax, get yourself a cup of coffee or whatever you want, and get ready to enjoy The Big Broadcast.”

I don’t know if Walker knew it, but the great rabbi and teacher Abraham Joshua Heschel once described the Sabbath in remarkably similar terms, as “an island in time” for humanity to rest and reconnect with those we love, and to reconnect with our Creator.

For Heschel, this wasn’t about “escaping” so much as it was remembering to put our lives in context. Remembering who matters most has a way of helping us stay focused on what matters most, and it has a way of teaching us to use our time more wisely.

Heschel taught that if all that the Sabbath does is patch us up a bit for doing the same old things in the same old way, we have not used it fully according to God’s purposes for it. The Sabbath has the capacity to ground us—crucially so—but also to grow us. That growth is crucial, too: not just for us, but for all those who depend on us, and not only now, but in the future, as those who come after us inherit the world we have built.

That’s how we remember to pay attention to the legacy we will leave, and to find joy in creating it, even though it may only fully blossom well after we have handed it to the next generation. Nevertheless, it matters for the living of our own days, as well as for the living of theirs.

Escaping to the Golden Age, whether it’s the Golden Age of Radio or some other one, is important to do once in a while. It’s always nice to visit the “island in time” between the week past and the week to come, and many of us need to do it a lot more often than we allow ourselves. But Sabbath allows us to find energy and commitment toward creating a better world to come—it teaches us not simply to enjoy rest, but to work for peace.

Ed Walker worked to find new life in old stories. He offered his listeners a measure of escape, yes. More deeply, I think he offered them a way of learning to imagine that was once familiar, but which time and technology have made strange. Those stories gave him a way to see. May they help us, in turn, find new ways to see, and new courage to repair the world.

Rest in peace.

See you in church,

Let’s begin by conceding that Mark’s point in this morning’s gospel isn’t exactly subtle.

You don’t exactly need to be an English major to figure out that in this story, Bartimaeus isn’t the one who is truly blind here.

It’s also clear that, as far as Mark is concerned, the miraculous healing is hardly the point, because the point is not that Bartimaeus can’t see.

The larger issue is that the world does not seem to see him. For the world, of course, can see. It just chooses not to notice him.

That’s central to Mark’s message for us this morning.

But actually, it goes even deeper than that.

For example, it helps to know that, in stopping at Jericho, Jesus and the disciples have stopped in a major city in the ancient world—a well to do spot on the water where people went to recover from the turmoil of life in the capital.

Jericho was the kind of place where making a big splash could have a major impact. They would have all been feeling that.

Jericho was a historic city—it was where Joshua and the Hebrew people first crossed the Jordan River to enter the Promised Land. As symbols go, it was a profoundly symbolic place…a place where you’d want your messiah to do something big.

But listen again to Mark’s story. This is what he says about this visit to Jericho.

Mark writes: “Then they came to Jericho [period]. As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city….”

What happened in Jericho? It must have gone well enough: we’re told that a large crowd followed them out of the city. Jesus must have nailed it. There was a debate, and Donald Trump was sick that day, and Jesus nailed it…Iowa, New Hampshire here we come.

But that’s not what Mark says happened in Jericho.

For Mark, what happened in Jericho was that Jesus met this man, Bartimaeus—he met this man that nobody else much cared about. This man who the world didn’t much notice. This man whose endorsement would not have mattered to anyone.

But Bartimaeus mattered to Jesus.

And Bartimaeus should matter to us.

Whatever was wrong with him was, deep down, the least of it…the most fixable thing of all.

The deeper challenge is the kind of spiritual blindness that might see, but decides not to bother.

The implication of Mark’s story is clear: being a Christian is about learning to notice the people that the world does not see.

Being a Christian is about hearing that voice calling from the back of the crowd, asking for help, asking for healing, asking for the grace to join the journey, too.

II.

That day on the Jericho road was a long time ago. Nevertheless, we know that those voices are all around us, too.   All around us, people are hurting and scrounging for any kind of hope they get their hands on.

So many of our neighbors feel left behind by the big party that it seems like life should be. And they don’t know why. And they don’t know what they’re supposed to do about it.

While we’re at it, let’s also acknowledge that Greenwich doesn’t make this particularly easy to figure out.

Here we live in this wonderful place—this town that is a watchword for success, and ambition, and rubbing elbows with glamorous and important public people—and who wouldn’t be fascinated by the things that the people all around us are up to?

And yet we know…and the longer we are here, the better we all know it…that even in this place, this wonderful place, people are hurting. People are searching. People are asking the big questions, and the answers they’re finding are coming up short.

This can be a hard town in which to do your struggling.

So this is the moment when some of you are waiting for the transition to the church and its ministries.

(That’s coming.)

But what some of you are waiting for is for me to now say that when someone in our town is hurting, it’s so important that they have this place to come to.

I do think that.

But as God is my witness, what I want more than that, what I want more than anything in this world, is that when someone in this town finds themselves struggling, what I hope is that they will find one of you.

What I want more than anything else is that when someone out there doesn’t know who else to call, they’ll call you.

Whether they’re Christian or not…whether they will feel led to become Christian or not…if they call you, if you’re the one, then this church will already have been a blessing in their lives.

That’s what we’re here to do.

III.

Because let’s remember that the church is not the building, although the building is so beautiful. The church is not the programs, although the programs here are terrific. The church is not the music, although if you spend any time here, you may find yourself humming “Little Grey Donkey” constantly for about four months out of every year.

These things are wonderful. But the church is not these things. The church is us.

The church is the discipleship of regular people, seeking to follow God’s path for their lives, and journeying along with others as they go forward into the future.

We do so much so well here, and there are so many other things we would love to do to expand our work, to tend our campus, to guarantee life-changing experiences for children regardless of cost, to love and support our seniors, to celebrate creativity in all its forms.

We have wonderful plans—dreams that Joseph even in his amazing Technicolor dreamcoat could scarcely have imagined.

Important stuff. Cool stuff. But let’s be honest: even so, that’s not what the church is.

But it is those things that teach the church. It’s those things that train the church. It’s those things that inspire the church, and shape the church, and sustain the church.

That’s why I give to the church. I’m blessed to be your pastor, and I’m blessed to be paid for the opportunity to do work I love. But I am taught, and trained, and inspired and shaped and sustained by our life together, and by the ministries of this place, and by how I find God with their help.

All these things are teaching me, and all of us, what it means for us to be the church of Jesus Christ, here in Greenwich 06830.

That’s why I give. And that’s why I hope you will join me and my family in giving to the work of this place. So that we can be the church together. So that we can be the church God needs us to be.

In it’s own way, Greenwich might be a little like Jericho. A beautiful place, rich in history and full of fascinating people doing all kinds of amazing things.

Oh, the stories we might tell…if all the anecdotes we have about encountering Diana Ross alone were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written….

And yet this morning’s Gospel reminds us that the real story is the story of that hurting person, that forgotten person, that ignored person who calls out for healing.

The real story is the one about the person who needs Jesus, and about how his life is transformed by meeting Jesus.

We are the Lord’s church, charged with carrying on his work, and charged with living in the ways he teaches us to live.

In a world where so many are crying out, in the midst of so many who cry out, we are charged to be the ones who notice, and the community of those who are called to respond.

That’s what it is to be the church.

I hope you will feel moved to be a part of it in all the ways you can, and to support and nurture its ministries, so that its ministries will support and nurture you and all those whom you may encounter on the road, wherever it may lead.

Amen.

Dear Friends of Second Church,

This Sunday, along with inspiring choral support from our Youth Choir, we will mark the beginning of Stewardship Season.

Beginning with Stewardship Chair, Rick R., and over the next several weeks, we will hear brief testimonies from many different members about what makes Second Church an important part of their lives.

So often, it’s important for a combination of reasons. A welcome sense of peace as the light from the stained glass window shines on the Communion Table. A sermon we’ve never forgotten. The greeting of good friends. The memory of working side by side in mission, near or far. Seeing our children go from Cherub to Youth Choir, then breakout stardom in the Christmas Pageant…then, before you know it, walking down the aisle to start a family of her own. Gratitude for the care of those who dropped off casseroles during a difficult time.

I am always inspired by stories like those, and they make me mindful of my own gratitude, not only for Second Church, but for all the churches that have been my home over the years.

That said, to me, they are much more than just “nice stories about church.” Really, they’re a reminder of what I want the whole world to be like.

Busy as we are, imperfect as we are, we find it harder than ever to practice the ways of caring that we know are best.

By comparison to many of you, or even to my wife, I am blessed to be hyper-local—living literally a few steps away from the office, a pleasant downhill walk to our local school, with a sense of rhythm to my week and to the year, in general.

Living in a connected way should be easier for me than just about anyone, but sometimes, even I feel jangled, confused about which calendar I wrote something down on that I’ve now forgotten, or unsure if I am hungry because I’m nervous about something or because I didn’t eat lunch. There are too many birthday phone calls for my friends and family that even I never quite get to, class reunions where the old roommates call to wonder why I didn’t come, neighbors I meant to get to know but never did quite break the ice with. There are so many years when I start the Christmas season, intending to be more deliberate about making time for prayer and quiet…only to realize on Christmas Day that, once again, I didn’t quite manage it.

Left to our own devices, we struggle to be the kind of neighbors, spouses, and friends we always expected we would be. The world isn’t so easily accommodated.

That’s why the Church is so important: it’s important because, despite all that, it stands for a different, deeper, better way. It’s a place where peace is still possible, and love of neighbor remains important, and service is understood as part of the fabric of life. It’s a place where we have permission to be decidedly imperfect—not “together,” not “over it” (whatever the “it” may be), not flawless…but us as we really are. It’s a place where joys and concerns can be named side by side among us, recognizing that in the lives we lead, joy and concern are so often side by side.

I wish the whole world were already like this. Indeed, the promise of Scripture is that, one day, in the fullness of God’s time, it will be. But as we go about making it so, each in our own way, there is this foretaste of the Kingdom. There is this place to learn the different, deeper, better way God offers us.

I hope in the coming weeks, you’ll think about how God might be calling you to live more deeply into His way. I know that as we do, our community will be blessed, indeed.
See you in church,

A few days ago, Oprah Winfrey was on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” talking about an upcoming series on her cable network.

The series is called “Belief,” and coming soon, over seven nights, it will explore the origins of different religious faiths, which as a former teacher of 7^th Grade World Religions, I am very much in favor of.

Religious illiteracy is a dangerous and all too common thing in our world. I’m glad someone of Oprah’s public standing is taking up the challenge. I hope I can tune in and that many others do, too.

But Oprah’s interview with Stephen Colbert was interesting just in itself.

Colbert is a church-going Christian, and a thoughtful person, and so at one point, he and Oprah were talking about growing up in church, and he asked her what her favorite Bible verse was.

I’m not sure if the question surprised her, or threw her off for a second, because she responded at first by asking him what his favorite Bible verse was.

Without missing a beat, he said, “Mine’s from Matthew. I like it ‘cause Jesus says, ‘So I say to you do not worry, for who among you by worrying could change a hair on his head, or add a cubit to the span of his life?’ What I like about it is that it’s a commandment to not worry, and I’ll go with that.”

Oprah responded warmly, saying, “Mine is Psalms 37:4. ‘Delight thyself’—I love that word ‘delight,’ don’t you? I’m so glad that David knew it.”

“‘Delight thyself in the Lord. He will give you the desires of your heart,’” Oprah said.

She went on to say: “Now what that says to me, Lord has a wide range. What is Lord? Compassion, love, forgiveness, kindness. So you delight yourself in those virtues where the character of the Lord is revealed. Delight thyself in goodness, delight thyself in love, kindness, and compassion, and you will receive the desires of your heart. It says to me, if you focus on being a force for good, good things will come.”

And that’s where it gets a little harder for me. Don’t get me wrong: she is absolutely right that delight is an important part of faith. Where and how we find our delight says a lot about what is most important to us, and it says a lot about the state of our soul.

And yes: compassion, love, forgiveness, and kindness—I am for all of these things. I think all of us are.

But with all due respect to Oprah, that’s also where I find myself resisting.

Surprisingly enough, this morning’s Gospel is part of the reason why.

II.

You may well know the story.

It wasn’t too long ago on this extended road trip they’ve all been on that the disciples were fighting over which of them was the greatest. You’ll remember that this is what provokes Jesus into some of his famous affirmations, including “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all” (Mark 9:35).

And he says, “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me, but the one who sent me” (9:37).

It’s the jockeying between the grownups that pushes Jesus to his important words about welcoming children as a way of welcoming him.

Well…it’s a few miles down the road, maybe a few days later, and it seems that the disciples are at it again.

Jesus has gotten mindful about Heaven, and it seems that the disciples have gotten newly mindful of Heaven, too.

But their earlier preoccupation with who among them is the greatest has come roaring back.

If Heaven is where they’re going, fine. Their question is who will be seated in Zone 1.

I’m sorry to say that religious people can really do this.

Religious people, it turns out, may have a particular definition of what Zone 1 may be—it may be very different than flying business class on an international flight—but the old, old impulse to be in Zone 1 still affects us.

I have a dear friend who is a devout Buddhist, and goes on extended meditation retreats at a Buddhist monastery in upstate New York several times a year.

And she once complained that one of the real challenges of going on retreat was watching so many people try to “out-compassion” and “out-kindness” one another.

Even the Buddhists have their version of Zone 1.

So there the disciples are, walking along the road with their rolling bags, and James looks at John and says, “You know what Heaven is going to be like? Heaven is going to be having the overhead compartments all to yourself, and waiting for you at your seat will be a little ramekin full of those warm nuts.”

And John smiles and says, “Right. And the flight’s not too full, and you’ve got your seat on the aisle, and all of the babies are back in Zone 5.”

It’s not that what they say is crazy. It just isn’t the Kingdom. More immediately, it’s not what this journey is going to be like, at all.

So let me flog this metaphor one more time and just say, when the plane hits severe turbulence, it isn’t all that different in one zone versus another.

And what Jesus is talking about is the reality of turbulence, not only for God’s people, but in the end, really for all people.

Jesus asks John and James, “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” (v. 38)

With all the turbulent events that are to come, for Jesus, and for them all, are they really committed to this journey, or not?

III.

So with that in mind, let’s go back to Oprah for a moment, because I think that’s what strikes me as thin in her answer about her favorite Bible verse.

Because who is not “for” compassion and love, or for forgiveness and kindness?

Do good things come of practicing them…do we receive something for practicing?

Of course we do.

Yet how deeply does that go? When our lives get turbulent, are those the values that will still guide us? Is that what people who encounter us will see?

Great when everything turns out our way, I guess. But when our dreams don’t come true, what then?

Because it’s dangerously easy to turn cultivating our virtues into a strategy for receiving, instead of a way of living.

When we don’t receive what we think we have coming to us, the temptation is to find another strategy and just try that, instead.

“Oh, I tried being a Christian for a while…but it just didn’t pay off. Speaking the truth in love, turning the other cheek, going the second mile. Now I’m more into massage and macrobiotics, you know, mind-body.” Or whatever.

More seriously, we all know good and decent people whose lives have been made small and bitter by loss, or illness, or deep disappointment, desperate to find a way forward.

Who can blame us for trying to buy a little good karma just in case?

There’s no getting around that life is hard sometimes.

And there’s no getting around that trying to live it as a Christian can be even harder.

Our faith insulates us from so very little. But as Jesus makes clear in this morning’s gospel, insulating was not the point, and never has been.

The point has always been to transform us.

The point is to give us a strength that we cannot have on our own; to call us to a compassion that may not be natural to us; to push us to forgive when bygones aren’t yet bygones, by any means, and it’s hard, and we have so many questions.

The point is to lead us into ways of kindness that aren’t just fakey-fake niceness, but something that comes from the real us, seeking to do good in the real world.

The point is to change us. To reorient us. So that in some way, we can be part of how God changes and reorients the world.

“Can you drink the cup?” Jesus asks.

The Gospel tells us that we can.

May it be so.

Amen.

Dear Friends of Second Church,

I hope you had a wonderful Columbus Day Weekend, enjoying the bright sunshine, the turning of the leaves, and the perfect temperature here in Greenwich, or in so many beautiful places in our part of the world.

As many with young children will admit, three day weekends are not always easy on parents. There is just that little bit more to plan, from meals to group activities to strategies for minimizing “screen time,” with sleepovers and playdates that much harder to coordinate, that many more dishes that need washing, and all those little things that need doing around the house now getting more overdue and urgent.

So when our three and half year old, Emily woke up at 5:30 yesterday morning and broke into a hearty rendition of “Frosty the Snowman,” her current favorite, and Liz rolled over and murmured, “your turn,” I knew I was in for a long day.

And truth be told, it was.

By 9 a.m., we were two loads of laundry and one grudging guitar practice down, and mid way through our second time watching “Frozen,” and I was starting to make cup of coffee number four before I just thought to myself, “Max, don’t do this. This is just a bad idea. Really, really, what does this solve, after all?”

Truth be told, good coffee solves a lot for me, but I knew that this time, it wasn’t the answer.

I gazed out the kitchen window for a moment. I thought I might pray.

I didn’t get that far, though, because it was at that exact moment when I saw Emily’s Pre School class come out into the playground for recess. Emily didn’t have the day off. Pre School was in session. There had been some sort of miscommunication.

I called to Emily, to see if she wanted to jump into her clothes and go to school, after all.

She was quiet. I asked again.

She gave me a long look. “Is Mommy coming to my school today?” she finally asked.

So much for that, I thought. She ran off.

Just then the phone rang.

“Hi, this is Julian Curtiss School,” said a pleasant voice. “Is Grace sick today? We don’t have any note saying she will be absent.”

At that point, Grace (also still in her pajamas) wandered into the kitchen to get herself some Cheerios, then wandered out again.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I improvised to the woman on the phone, “we must have forgotten to put the note in her folder last Friday…..”

Well, so much for my sense of paternal selflessness and the quiet toll of patient, dignified suffering.

Reminded of the difference between life’s little martyrdoms and the speed of my own impulse toward self-pity, I decided that I’d better have that fourth cup of coffee, after all, and get on with it, which is what I did.

Sometimes, blowing it completely can be so clarifying.

There is an old chestnut that “the church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.” We are called as the Church to be a collection of imperfect people who remember that we are loved, even as we make mistakes. Even if those mistakes are far graver than forgetting to look at a school calendar. No matter what, God’s love and forgiveness, and the joy of one another, are what we come seeking, and so often find. Perfection is not ours to claim, and never will be.

That said, the strength, vision, and hope to do better can be ours, and can be found among all those whose lives have been touched by God. Among all the other imperfect, hopeful people we call our friends and God calls His Church.

Hope to see you there this Sunday. Don’t worry: I’ll make myself a post-it note so I remember.

See you in church

Round brilliant polished diamonds.

Earlier this week, I came across a story about Swiss company that has pioneered a process resulting in a very particular kind of product.

It seems that, for a fairly significant sum, you can release the physical remains of a loved one, and have the body flown to Switzerland, where over a six month process, involving dignity and decorum at every stage, that body will be slowly transformed into an actual diamond.

They’ve been at it for a few years now and can report that there is most certainly a market for what they offer. People all over the world send inquiries, and they are currently looking to expand their facilities due to demand.

I learned also that many people go on to incorporate the diamond into a ring or some other piece of jewelry, which they genuinely prize as a treasure and a testament.

But you know, there are hiccups.

It turns out that whatever it is inside us that becomes a diamond has its own color, its own hue, and so there are times when the family receives their new diamond with great excitement, and they open the tasteful box, only to be immediately crushed by what they see.

Because instead of something the color of sunlight through water, sometimes the diamond is yellow or purple or smoky, and they take it hard.

They don’t see it as a revelation of what was in someone’s bones. They take it as a commentary on what was in her soul.

It is also hard to predict the size of the diamond, and when the diamond turns out to be quite small, some seem to feel that this is also an form of unkind spiritual commentary.

Happily, though, most are delighted, and those who are not seem to come around, eventually.

So…I’ve been thinking about this.

I will admit that it does not particularly speak to me.

But I do think that it speaks to something that most of us do feel.

I think it speaks to our hope that something of our goodness, something of our hopes and out benevolent intentions will shine throughout our lives.

We hope that the diamond that is inside us somewhere will be visible, at least to some.

And I think when you put it that way, the idea that when we die, someone will step forward with that diamond and hand it to our loved ones for their safekeeping, suddenly doesn’t seem quite so crazy.

It makes me think, also, about the rich young man in Mark’s gospel this morning.

He approaches Jesus on the road to Jerusalem, as Jesus and the disciples are slowly working their way toward Jesus’ own final confrontation with the powers of his world.

Nobody knows that, of course, except for Jesus, but I wonder if he doesn’t have it very much in mind.

There they are: the disciples and Jesus, walking along in their dusty jeans and t-shirts, engaging the people they’ve encountered in this whistle-stop of a place.  Then it all seems to freeze when the young man in the Bitter End Yacht Club cap and the fresh polo shirt expertly works his way to the front of the crowd to ask his question–his question about eternal life and what it takes to get one.

And there are some who say that what Jesus is doing is trying to take this preppy kid down a peg or two, but I’m not so sure.

I think part of it might just be that Jesus is thinking about eternal life a fair bit himself, just then, and so, truth be told, the question is a particularly good one.

Also hovering over their encounter is the young man’s hope–his utterly earnest hope–that somehow this rabbi in the dusty t-shirt will see the diamond that shines within him, and let him go forth from this encounter, not just a little bit more sure about his place in Heaven, but more sure of the person he is inside. More sure that his goodness, his hopes, his benevolent intentions are shining through.

We don’t know why he is worried that they might not be. The line between genuine humility and nagging insecurity is not always plain to the naked eye.

I mean, let’s be honest: isn’t there a part of you that so wants to meet this guy’s dad?

It is so hard to read this young man. And not just for us. I think it’s hard for the young man, himself, which is so much of the issue here.

Maybe that’s why he has come out on the road to find Jesus–Jesus, who seems to see below the surface, and into the very heart of things.

But he comes to ask his question at a strange and unsettled time.

Because what Jesus knows, what he really knows for sure just then, with Jerusalem ahead of him…what he knows for sure just then is that faith is not just a matter of claiming something, but a matter of letting go, too.

And the young man just isn’t ready to hear that.

Sometimes. we have to let things go in order to claim new and better things.

Sometimes, we hold onto the wrong things for all the right reasons, or the right things for all the wrong reasons, and it is only in learning to let go that what needs to happen or the good that might happen can finally happen.

The Apostle Paul speaks the truth when he says that the word of God is like a double edged sword that cleaves the joints from the marrow.

Letting go can sometimes feel that way, as if you’re being split in two.

And the more used to being in charge we are, the harder it can be to let go.

I have a dear friend who’s father was an 80s Wall Street guy, and he recently came across a box of old papers, and in the box was a folder of all the agendas that his father had prepared for their family vacations.

And what he found amazing was not only that his father had prepared agendas for their family vacations, but also, that he, as a young boy, had seen fit to file them in some kind of appropriate place.

Come to think of it, it would be interesting to get his take on the story of the rich young man, right?

But the more immediate question is, how is it that we can learn to let go in the moments when we need to?

How do we respond when God challenges us with the truth that letting go is the only way forward into the abundant life he promises we will find in him?

If you ask me, the hard thing about this story isn’t what it says about wealth. The hard thing is what it says about control.

And what it says is that if the brilliant diamond that is in us is truly going to shine at last, if we’re going to take on that new life that Jesus promises, then we will surely have to give up some things that are hard to give up–and by this, I don’t think he means merely giving up all of our possessions. He means something much harder: he means giving up some of our most cherished ways of being.

Do you remember that awful old t.v. show “Gilligan’s Island”?

Some of us do.

There was the millionaire. Thurston Howell III, who it seems wouldn’t even go on a three hour boat tour without carrying suitcases full of money just in case, but who now found himself just one of a group of castaways on a deserted island, and in fact, in that context, he had relatively little to offer.

If you watched the show regularly, you’ll remember that no matter how dire the circumstances, Mr. Howell found it hard enough to give up the money in those suitcases. But the real point, which was the ongoing joke about his character in the show, was that he couldn’t give up his old identity. He couldn’t give up his cherished ways of being.

And in this morning’s gospel, neither can the rich young man.

Giving up our control, our cherished ways of being, and seeing into the superficialities we cling to, is what Jesus is inviting the young man to do.  And it’s what he invites us to do.

That said, if we take its message to heart, it doesn’t take long to notice that while Jesus tells us what to do, he doesn’t tell us how.

Maybe this brief roadside encounter came too early.

After all, it came as Jesus was still wrestling, too…wrestling with how even he would find a way to honor God’s control above his own.

We know that later in the story, Jesus wrestled even in the Garden of Gethsemane itself, with the sound of Roman marching getting louder and louder every second.

Wrestling is an important part of faith. Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.

So in our story today, if there is no guidance as to the “how,” perhaps the point is that there is nothing as simple as one sure fire way to do it.

God is not looking for one kind of life, one kind of service, one kind of response to his Word.

Each of us has to seek God’s help to find our own way, our own life, our own understanding of how we are called to respond.

Each of us has to wrestle with our cherished ways of being and ask what use God wants to make of them.

We need to ask who it is that God is inviting us to be now…today.

For all the rich young man’s insecurities, that kind of wrestling is not his thing.

When push comes to shove, he is comfortable just where he is and just how he is, and what he’s come for, what he’s pushed his way forward to receive, is certainty. He wants a measure of confirmation. He wants to know that the love of God shines down on him.

It does. Jesus looked at him and loved him, says the text.

But in the very next breath, Jesus says that’s not enough.

It’s not enough because he challenge of faith is to ask how it is that the love of God shines through us.

Faith challenges us to live lives that point, not to us and what we have done, but to God, and to the ways he calls us to live.

Faith challenges us to give up anything that would get in the way of that kind of life.

Look to God, says Jesus, the one in whom all things are possible.

And as we learn to follow him, through his grace, our lives might even come to shine like diamonds.

When I was in high school, I became a serious student of meditation.

I know…it some respects, that hardly seems like me.  Actually, it seems even more amazing, in retrospect, that a school as thoroughly buttoned-down as mine was would have a weekly meditation group in the Academy Chapel.

Other rules that were rigorously enforced at that time included lights out by 10 p.m. for freshmen and sophomores, no “hot-pots” for in-room cooking, and, in the rare event that a girl visited your room during the literally three hours a week that “intervisitation” was permitted, the door was to be open between 60 and 90 degrees, lights on, and (most famously) “three feet on the floor at all times.”

Doesn’t sound like a place that would offer Zen Meditation on Friday nights, does it? But it did.

The practice became important to me. Maybe part of the appeal was precisely because it was so very different from the rhythms and the pressures of the school community and its ways.

In a place where people prided themselves on pulling all-nighters as a sign of dedication, it was so very different to be told to relax. To breathe. To let your mind wander.

The evening when Andrew Nugent came in, sat down, and promptly fell asleep, our teacher told us to not to wake him, because we needed to “honor his resting”—this was a very different way of thinking for me.

It was in my senior year that I came to see what I was doing as prayer. It was a sudden realization, in the middle of one of our Friday night meetings, and to be honest, I was not well prepared for it.

I had not started this whole thing with a religious quest particularly in mind, so I was bewildered to find myself in the middle of one. I was even more surprised to find myself connecting to the church language of my childhood—to Creation and its Creator, to the Holy Spirit, and, as it unfolded more fully in the following weeks, even to the teachings of Jesus. Church as I knew it had been more about blue blazers and penny loafers and making sure I wasn’t late for youth choir, and not so much about relaxing. The exotic words of Buddhist practice—sangha, dharma, zazen—were all much easier to drop in casual dining hall conversation at school than any Christian ones seemed likely to be.

But I knew in my heart that, in some way, at least, it was the Christian ones that were supposed to be mine. I knew also that, in my learning to breathe, in my wandering, and in my seeking for a way to live differently within a school community I loved, it was God’s vision for my life that I was after.

Later this month, we will begin offering Saturday morning Yoga in Fletcher Hall, in the hope that members of our church and the wider community might learn new ways to breathe, to relax, even to honor their own resting, here in this busy and ambitious place we call home. I don’t know that I am quite ready to grab my mat and get started—I think I’d need to do some remedial work first. But I am delighted to know that we are reaching out in this way, and I hope you will come, and that you will pass the word to anyone who might be interested.

Most of all, I love the thought of what might happen in the life of that first-time visitor, who comes to our church just for a little Saturday break, a little stretching, a little quiet time, a little deep breathing—who suddenly looks up one morning and realizes that she is seeking something else entirely, and that what she needs most is a way to connect to the God who is seeking her and each of us at every moment. And who realizes in the very next moment that she’s come to the right place to undertake that search.

However it is that you search, may you find, and find abundantly. Make sure you share it when you do.

See you in church,

I’m not sure when I first heard my father’s maxim that, when it comes to car horns, “not all honks are equal.”

He has developed a personal lexicon, of sorts, to name many of the differences.

Someone ahead of you hasn’t noticed that the light has changed? “Give him a ‘little toot,’” my father will say.

If the truck in the right lane might not realize that you’re moving into its general footprint on the left, my father counsels, “Give ‘em a ‘hey, I’m here.’”

These are two of what he understands to be “short honks” — the kind you might also give when you drive by a friend you’ve spotted walking on a nearby sidewalk.

Then there are the “punitive honks.” Those are longer. More jarring. These are not about a genuine warning, or sense of urgency. They have names like “The Unh-uh,” “The Whoawhoawhoa” and the “NO WAY.” They’re usually “assessed” after a particularly egregious example of aggressive driving by the other person—weaving through traffic, riding your bumper, coming into your lane without signaling, or cutting the line in a merge. The high crimes of the road. My father has never been one to, for example, speed up and give another driver “the look” —he sees that as foolishly asking for trouble — but even so, “punitive honks” are somewhat in that spirit, and now again seem called for.

To be honest, I can’t really say if the lexicon is all that helpful. That’s almost beside the point. More than instructions for using the car horn, it’s more of a world view. But it’s one I was raised on and share.

So yesterday, when I was walking Grace to school, I was instantaneously shocked and appalled when a driver in an SUV “assessed” the most punitive “NO WAY” honk I have ever heard on a driver, someone who had seemingly misunderstood the merge at Putnam and and Mason, and was blocking the right hand lane. To me, a minor infraction at best—we’ve all been there. But clearly, it wasn’t to the person in the SUV. The response was a car horn so long and loud that the person in the offending car hit the brakes, instantly terrified. Every head turned in that direction. A window rolled down. In that nanosecond, I actually wondered what new vocabulary words Grace was about to learn.

And that’s when the cop on crossing guard duty down the street appeared, like the fury of God’s own thunder.

“Whoawhoawhoa, there, guy,” he said to the driver in the SUV. “NO WAY.” (Yes, really.)

I mean…clearly, I couldn’t have said it better myself. Frankly, I wouldn’t know how.

That’s just it. Because stepping back from it a bit, the moment has reminded me that the lexicons we have for what angers or frustrates us, and for what violates our sense of fairness and by precisely how much, are often quite sophisticated and quite deeply-ingrained. By contrast, our lexicons for what delights and strengthens us often are not. We can be strangely inarticulate when it comes to joy and hope.

Maybe the rosy moments are more mysterious to us, somehow. All the more reason to study them more deeply—to find ways to name those experiences, to spot them so that we can be on the lookout for others. I feel like I need to do that more. Or maybe it just shows that what delights us isn’t as central to our actual worldview as it should be. I hope that’s not true.

Certainly, joy is central to the Christian worldview. From Jesus’ own teaching to the church’s ongoing reflection on what it is to be faithful, joy and hope, delight and strength are at the heart of our lives—and of our life together.

A strong faith teaches us to see the world as it is. But important as that is, if faith only teaches us to see the bad, to have words for what’s broken in the world and in ourselves, then it isn’t doing its job. Such half-formed faith hasn’t taught to see the world God has made in all its fullness, or the hope God has for each of us. Because our final hope is in the world that God is bringing into being, and our call is to join God’s work in making it so—to be the people who name what hope, peace, love and justice look like, here and now, even in an imperfect, unfinished world.

God calls us to be people who say “whoawhoawhoa” in the face of wonder, and “NO WAY” in the presence of joyful abundance, generosity and kindness.

As we learn to watch our language, may we be on the lookout for the emergence of that kind of lexicon.

Those are the words worth knowing, worth sharing, and worth writing on our hearts.

See you in church,