One day

One day, I will be able to go six months without having to plan a vigil to remember some horrific act of violence. That will be a great day.

That is not this day, however.

NAU Canterbury will be holding a vigil on campus this week (most likely Wednesday, it now appears) to remember those suffering in Boston, as well as those who died in Newtown, and around the country as a result of the violence in our world.

Here’s the liturgy I’ve written for this.

(NOTE: this is the initial draft, and as such, hasn’t been approved by my ecumenical colleagues.  So please don’t hold this against them.)

 

Vigil for Victims of Violence 2013

April 2013

 

Opening: (words to this effect: admittedly, I tend to overwrite liturgy)

 

Leaders: (alternating) We have come here in deep emotion: grief, sorrow and shock.  We have come here in anger, frustration, and even numbness.  Again and again, in the past few months, we have seen the violence in our world, arriving on our very doorsteps, splashed across our televisions and computers.

 

What we have witnessed is overwhelming.

 

As people of faith, we know that God is with us, even now.  We know that God is with those who are suffering.

We know these things, even when it is hard to feel that they are true.

 

And so tonight, we bring our tears and our anguish, our frustration and our fear, and our sense of powerlessness to the God who chose to suffer with this world.

 

Let us pray.

 

Holy God, as Mary stood at the foot of the cross, we stand before you with broken hearts and tearful eyes.  Keep us mindful that you know our pain, and free us to see your resurrection power already at work in the world around us.  In your time, raise us from our grief as you have raised those we’ve lost to eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

 

Let us remember those we have lost.  As a sign of respect and remembrance, as you read the names given to you, please stand.

Students read the names, alternating.

 

• For the 28 people killed in Newtown, CT at an elementary school.
• For the many who have died at Virginia Tech, Columbine, and other schools around our country.
• For the six people killed in Tucson, AZ at a grocery store.
• For the thirteen people killed in Aurora, CO at a movie theater
• For the seven people killed in Oak Creek, WI at a Sikh temple
• For the three people killed, and hundreds wounded, at a Boston marathon
• For the thousands who die every day on the streets of Chicago, Detroit, Washington DC, and all of our cities, whose names are known to God alone.
• For hundreds of victims of accidental shootings and stray bullets.
• For victims of domestic violence and abuse.
• For all those left to mourn the dead, and care for the wounded.
• For those so lost and confounded that violence appears to be the best answer.

 

 

Leader: For all these named, and for all those we’ve lost that we name now, we pray.

We name the victims we know personally here.

 

Everyone should be standing now.  We observe a period of silence. Then…

 

Reader 1: Who will separate us from the love of Christ?  Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?…No, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, or rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

Reader 2: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

 

Reader 3: Jesus said to his followers:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven

Blessed are those who mourn; for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek; for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

 

Leader: As people of faith, and as followers of Jesus, this is who we are called to be.  This is how we are called to live.  Even in a world of violence.  Especially in a world of violence.  We are called to bear the light of Christ’s peace and illuminate the darkened world around us.  We are called to be the helpers.

Let us pray.

 

Prayer of St. Francis

Lord, make us instruments of your peace.  Where there is hatred, let us sow love.  Where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.  Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.  For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.

 

Let us go forth, to be light for the world, salt for the earth, peacemakers in a troubled time.

And may the blessing of God Almighty, Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, keep us now and forever in peace.

 

 

 

Pundit Jesus

Two posts in two days! This is shocking!
What this actually is a sermon from two weeks ago that I neglected to post. So here, Internet! Late sermon!

March 3, 2013
Lent 3, Year C
Luke 13: 1-9

I saw a cartoon this week: in the night sky shines the bat signal at one corner, and a cross at the other. On the roof below stands the police chief with Batman, and a bemused looking priest. Below the panel, it reads:
“Alright, guys, the Joker has escaped from jail again. Batman, you know what you’re supposed to do. Fr. Conroy, you’re here because I want you to explain to me how a loving God lets this happen to me!”

It’s good for a laugh, but frequently, religious leaders of all persuasions are called upon, whether by flashing the “Pastor Symbol” in the sky, or just a simple phone call, to answer this question.

Some tragedy hits, big or small. A earthquake strikes, or you stub your toe. A massacre claims the lives of almost thirty people or a terminal diagnosis claims the life of one. And the question rises again: Why?

So it’s comforting, in a way, to see even Jesus hit with this eternal question. The crowd comes to him and wants him to weigh in on the events of the day– the hot-button issues that everyone’s talking about.

Pilate– yup, that Pilate, who will become even more important in a few weeks– has just made the gossip rounds again by ordering that some Jewish rebels be crucified, and that their blood be mixed with the sacrifices in the Temple.

Nowadays, we tend to get stuck on the part where he’s executing the rebels, but for a community as devout as Jesus’, this would have been a huge insult to the whole country. To mix human blood with the blood of animals renders the whole operation unclean, REALLY unclean, unworthy of God, and to add in the fact that an occupying, pagan power is making you do it just rubs salt in the wound. Pilate might as well have spit in the face of the whole Temple establishment, and every Faithful Jewish person in the country.

Which is why the crowd wants the nice young rabbi’s opinion of how God could let such a terrible thing happen. Because the thought that such a terrible act of violation and violence could happen to them, to their country, and to their fellow countrymen just hit way too close to home.

So, to get around this scary closeness, this massive sense of violation, the crowd follows some reasoning that is still popular today: those people must have done something to deserve it.
They must have been asking for it, somehow! And so God was punishing them! That must have been it. God hasn’t abandoned us to the power of Rome, and there’s absolutely no way that something so horrible could happen to anyone that I know or like– because those people must have deserved it.

Jesus cuts this line of thought off right at the knees. “Do you think that those Galileans were worse sinners than anyone else? No, but if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did.”
At first, This doesn’t sound particularly comforting. Ok, those who died at the hands of Pilate, and in the tower collapse weren’t any worse than the rest of the world…but on the other hand, the rest of the world is doomed too?

But Jesus follows it up with this story of the fig tree and the gardener. The fig tree is similarly in trouble. It isn’t producing figs like it should, it’s just sitting there, and the owner of the garden is losing patience, wants to cut it down. But the gardener intercedes– Give it one more year. I’ll tend to the tree more closely, fertilize it, help the roots a bit. Chances are, that’s what it needs to start producing. Don’t cut it down just yet. Give it another chance.

There’s no ending to this parable, and I’m inclined to think that is on purpose. We don’t know the owner’s response, or what happens with the fig tree in the end.

Because the point Jesus is going for is that very ambiguity, and he turns it back to us. Sin and brokeness are constants in our world, Jesus argues. They have always been here. They plague us. Our human propensity to abuse each other, to hurt one another, to inflict pain and suffering on the people around us and on God’s creation, isn’t isolated to one unfortunate group or another. It’s not something we can separate ourselves from. And that is what causes so much hurt for us all.

So the question is: what are we going to do about it?

See, We are the gardeners. We are in charge of this unproductive and suffering fig tree, in this scenario. We are stewards of a world that is haunted by sin at every turn, that can be hurt or healed by the actions we take. So much suffering in this world, and rather than just blame it on a wrathful or a punishing God, or letting us separate ourselves from it by saying “they deserved it”, Jesus turns to us, makes us face it head on, and asks how we plan to help.

Because the truth is, everyone suffers at some point, even while everyone’s suffering is unique. And what Jesus calls us to do is to remember that part of our job is to help alleviate this common human suffering while we are here.
Not turn our backs on it or become numb to it.
And even though we can’t fix everything, we can change something. And so we are called to try. To do our little bit– put down the fertilizer, dig around the roots a bit, and give this tree one more shot.

Towers fall. Hurricanes destroy. Madmen kill. We witness these things every day. But Christ calls us to not become numb or cynical, or closed off, but to acknowledge, and wade right into the darkness of the world, bringing the light of Christ, bearing witness to the pain and confusion of the world and try to help.

Because. In the end, it is that witness, that presence of the divine in the midst of brokenness that means more than any explanation.

Amen.

Care and Keeping of the Snark

Someone asked me on Twitter yesterday what the virtue of snark was. I’m not sure what the basis of this question was–there’s been a great amount to snark at recently: the Oscars, the papal election, Lent Madness, and ever-present politics. And just to read Twitter or any Internet outlet is to immerse yourself in the waters of Snark.

But I’ve been pondering the role of snark as of late, and here’s what I’ve come up with. (Expanded greatly from 140 characters.)

Snark: (def) the art of mocking the powerful, the strong, the mighty, and Ideally, also any institution with power, of which you are associated, or a member.

Snark, like the Magnificat, can cast down the mighty and lift up the lowly. It is a way of calling to account something or some one which is acting hypocritically and out of step with its authentic self.

True snark, good snark, always comes from a place of love. Snark is not cynical. Because it’s tough to work up a head of steam to mock something you don’t care about.

And snark never punches down. To wit: people who practice good snark always either mock things they themselves do, or are, or things imbued with more power than they. (Herein lies the distinction between plain denigrating and snarking. And I do think there is a distinction.)

And I have this theory that the current prevalence of snarkiness comes from two places:

1. Snark is a filter. When you can make a joke about something, you are communicating that a.) you understand it on a deeper-than-superficial level and b.) you understand that the phenomenon cannot be taken just at face value.
This is why I agree with those (like genius smart-person Meredith Gould) who say that snark is a generational marker. For those of us who have grown up on the Information Superhighway, information overload is a way of life. You grow up in a world where you are plugged in to every event, every moment of every day. Not only does your phone tell you instantaneously every move Kim Kardashian makes, you also get to know what every news analyst thinks about said development. Brave New World, folks.
So to filter out what to take at face value, what to trust, and what you can’t trust (I.e., most things) snark has become a fall back. It’s a shibboleth, a password indicating that we recognize that we’re watching a performance, an agenda of some sort. So the primary targets of snark are those who somehow aren’t being authentic– the powerful of all stripes: celebrities, politicians, the news, poseurs….and in many cases, the Church. (We should work on this. Separate blog post.)
So for this reason, young people today are highly snarky. Not out of disrespect, but because it helps filter the world.

2. But also, snark creates intellectual distance. I said before that I don’t think snark is cynical, for the most part. Call me crazy (I’ll wait….) but snark actually forestalls cynicism. YES! It’s true.
I shall give an example:
This year, the Oscars made some confounding directorial decisions (hiring Seth McFarland to host was but one of their many missteps). At one point, Quentin Tarantino won an Oscar for Best Screenplay for “Django Unchained.” Which: awesome! I really liked that movie, and the script was brilliant. I could write a dozen treatises on race relations in that movie, and his use of soundtrack alone.
But they played him off to what song?

“Tara’s Theme,” from Gone with the Wind.

Jesus God.

Now, I could take to this here blog, and write a thesis on race relations in Hollywood, and the travesty behind the making of GWTW, and how it simultaneously was a step forward and like, 3 back for Black Hollywood, and how Hattie McDaniels wasn’t even allowed to attend the premiere, and she couldn’t even write her own Oscar acceptance speech, and how that movie came to crystalize EVERYTHING that we believe, falsely, the antebellum slavery experience to be, which is why, in part, movies like Django are so needed, and so controversial when they do come out, and really, did they REALLY want to dredge all of that up again and undermine his award with a song clip in a mere 30 seconds, and MAKE MY HEAD EXPLODE WITH IRONY?!?!.

But then, I’d sound like a ranting lunatic.
So I posted something VERY snarky on Twitter. (And man, did it ever get retweeted.)

You can’t fight all the battles, with a serious memo and letter to the editor. You cannot lead a marching protest every single time some company doesn’t live up to their promises. You can’t call out all the craziness, or the irony, or the hypocrisy, and it piles up and piles up, especially right now. You can’t. It will suck all the fire out of you, and you will end up rocking gently back and forth in the corner, singing “I’m a Little Teapot.”

In order to fight some of the battles, and fight them well, you have to learn to preserve your fire, and your drive, and to do that, you have to keep some distance. Make some jokes. Mock

The gospel according to Nike

In the these two weeks, I will have gone all over the state of Arizona, on the never-ending Begging Tour of 2013 (theme: “Don’t let college students be homeless!”)
Sunday, I was in Prescott, where I’ve been before, many times. St Luke’s is a lovely parish, gorgeous campus, right by the airport. This prompted my board president to offer to buzz the church in his plane, and drop brochures from 5,000 feet. (“It would be different!”)

Here’s what I said.

Note: some of this was partially inspired by what Nouwen wrote on the use of power, but I went in a different direction, and spun it very differently– at least differently from the way I’ve heard Nouwen’s on Christian Leadership interpreted.

Rev. Megan L. Castellan
February 17, 2013
Lent 1, Year C
Luke 4:1-13

Nike is very good at marketing. These ads that Nike makes, they are iconic. Usually a close up on the athete’s face with their voice playing in the background, talking about their triumph over adversity, and their achievement of some great sports goal. And it works because Nike is good at picking the best athletes of their day: people like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Mark McGuire. We get to watch these ads and think about how perfect and magical these people are, and thus, how probably Nike products helped make them that way, so we should probably buy Nike things. These are really effective ads.

Or they are, right up until the athlete in question gets caught doing something that they shouldn’t, and the ad becomes really uncomfortable to watch. Like Lance Armstrong–whose Nike ad had him talking about how the only ‘thing’ he was on was his bike! And lots of hard work! And that’s why he was the best! Til of course, it turned out that he was on a heck of a lot more than that.

Or, this week, when Oscar Pistorius, the South African runner, who was arrested for murder after shooting his girlfriend. His Nike VoiceOver included him saying “I’m a bullet in a loaded gun.” Whoops.

The thing that make these ads so powerful is the same thing that makes them so problematic–each of them constructs a single arc out of the superstar athlete’s life. They struggle, they overcome, they win, and all through lots of determination and will (and really super-expensive running shoes), but it’s all them. It’s all Lance Armstrong, and it’s all Michael Jordan, or it’s all Tiger Woods. There’s no mention of anyone else coaching, or any teammates, or a random caddy. It’s all about them.

What an extraordinary amount of power for one person to have.

No wonder they keep falling short of what we expect them to be.

Power is a difficult thing for us humans to deal with– those of us who have a little and those of us who have a lot. And all of us have some power. You get up in the morning, you decide to get out of bed– that’s power. You decide what to eat for breakfast, or not to eat breakfast at all– power again. Anytime you make a decision, you’re exercising some amount of power. Now, sometimes, the spectrum of the decision is wider than at other times; when I leave here this afternoon, and I decide where to eat lunch, I will decide between local restaurants, and not decide to fly to California. My power does not extend that far. But for some, it does.

And power is complicated, because these decisions we make come with consequences. They ripple out, Iike throwing a rock into a pond, in ways big and small. So the power we wield is never just affecting us; it always affects the people around us too.

And that’s what makes power difficult and oh so tempting. You can use the power you have to just make your life easier, better, less complicated. If you’re a world-famous cyclist, yes, you can take performance enhancing drugs and win all the races, and avoid the shame of losing. But that decision, each decision will affect more people than just yourself, all the coaches, the other competitors, the people who looked up to you, the charities. When Lance Armstrong fell, it nearly killed his cancer charity too. And see, we forget all that, when we get tempted by the dark side of power. All we see are the benefits to ourselves.

That’s what the devil is on about when he’s tempting Jesus in the wilderness. The devil shows up as Jesus is fasting out in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights, which is biblespeak for “he was out there a good long while”. So poor Jesus is in quite a state by the time the devil shows up.

In succession, the devil gives Jesus three very tempting opportunities to use his considerable power. First, he asks him to magic up some food for himself. Failing that, he wants Jesus to worship the devil and thus get all the glory and authority over all the nations for himself. When that doesn’t work, he suggests that Jesus throw himself off of the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem, and make God send his angels to catch him.

Jesus doesn’t give in to any of these. But what’s notable about these temptations of the devil is that they’re all about the use of power. They’re all about choice.

Jesus will do miracles multiplying bread– this is something he has no objection to doing, but he won’t do it here, even though he’s hungry, because it’s for himself alone. It’s using his power to fulfill his own needs alone.

He’s clearly fine with crowds listening to him preach and coming to him for healing and waving palms for him, that’s something we see from him later on– but again, he won’t accept glory and honor here, because it would be for himself alone.

And we will even see him walk on water later, rather than climb into the boat with the disciples. But here, he doesn’t elect to jump off the temple, because it would be choosing to use who he was, all his power, for its own sake.

In each case, when the devil asks Jesus to make a choice to use the power he has for himself, Jesus says no. Jesus chooses to use his power differently, radically differently. He could have, but he didn’t.

At every point in his life, Jesus chose to use his power not for himself, but he chose to use his power for others. And in fact, right after he leaves the wilderness, Jesus heads to Nazareth and announces just how he intends to lead his life. “The Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, sight to the blind, release to the captives, to declare the day of the Lord’s favor.”

For the rest of his life, Jesus would use all the power he had only, ONLY, in the service of others, and not for his own needs alone.

And so God calls us. Because we all have power too. And we are all called to use it– did you notice that at no point during that Scriptural shouting match in the desert did Jesus just say to Satan “well, I just can’t do that.” We all have power, to some degree. The question is, how will we use it?

What choices will we make? Will we make choices guided primarily by our own needs, by what serves us best, unconcerned about what the consequences are for others? But from the Garden of Eden on, making choices based on selfishness has never ended well.

Or will we follow Jesus’s example, and use our power to serve others, and build them up? Will we be mindful of how the choice we make today ripples out and affects those who surround us and those who come after us?

God has enabled each one of us with gifts and talents and then God has empowered us with the power to choose. We can choose what we do with what we have been so freely given.
Will we be tempted to live for ourselves alone, even when we know the destruction that ultimately causes?

Or will we follow in the path of Jesus, and try to use what we have, every choice we make, to the glory of God and for the good of God’s creation?

This power is ours. The choice is ours. God gives it to us. The only question is, what will we do with it?

Amen.

Day of the Dirt!

Fine, visual learners/people who read! Behold your cries and comments have come unto me.
Also I have an hour to kill before the next Ash Wednesday service, and there is not much to do in Show Low. (Motto: “Yes, that is our real name, why do you ask?”)

Here is my homily for today.
More to come on Adventure in Show Low.

Rev. Megan L Castellan
February 13, 2013
Ash Wednesday
Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

In my first call, part of my job was to be the chaplain to the preschool that was affiliated with our church. This was, by and large, a fun job. I told bible stories in weekly chapel, I led prayers at the Christmas concert and at ‘graduation’ and, generally speaking, the 3-4 year olds were theologically satisfied so long as I waved my hands around a lot, had good props, and was available for hugs when needed.
Until Ash Wednesday.
Ash Wednesday was tricky.
It’s one thing to talk to full grown adults about the need for humility,and repentance, and to mark ashes on their foreheads. I’m even okay now with being told that I myself am dust, and to dust I will one day return.
But a four year old? How do you connect a the shining face of a child to repentance and mortality? I couldn’t quite get my arms around it.

So when I gave the children the ashes, I explained that this was a complicated day, but mainly this was a day about dirt. The stuff that we’re all made of, large or small, rich or poor, boy or girl, white or black, no matter who you are. This is the day that we remember the basic truth–we’re all made of the same stuff. And it is dirt.

They liked that. Toddlers love nothing more than an excuse to get dirty.

But the more I thought about it, the more it grew on me.

Today is about dirt. Ash Wednesday is about recalling dust– the down and dirty basics.
This is about coming back to the essential, rock bottom, core truths about ourselves, about God, and taking a good long look at them. Those things that remain, when everything ephemeral passes away.

Our lives, our relationship with our creator. Our relationships with those around us, and with the rest of the creation that God has made.

Ash Wednesday is when we kneel and consider the stark ground of our being. The dust, if you will. upon which every other part of our lives as Christians is based.

And so, doing this, there are two things that stand out to me.

First of all: we are but dust. We humans are but dust. And the reality of our fallen ness, our dirtiness is evident around us. Lest we get too excited or too proud of ourselves,all we have to do is look around, listen to the news, and we are confronted again with our propensity to fail. Our willingness to fall short. Our fallible, frail nature, and the inescable fact that we are mortal. We are dust. And at some point, each of us messes up, and ultimately, each of us returns to dust.

And second:: we are but dust. Miraculously, God has made us out of Dust! And God looked at us, little dirt creatures that we are, and declared us good. Not just tolerable, but so good that God decided that the Creator of the stars of night wanted to become a little dirt creature himself.

We are but dust. we are beloved down to our dust. We are forgiven down to our dust. And we are created, and redeemed, and sustained by that divine love and grace, though we are but dust.

May that basic knowledge, as basic and as fundamental as the ground beneath our feet, may that certainty sustain us through these next 40 days of Lent, and empower us to serve the world God came to save.

Amen.

The trials of transfiguration

I have actually been preaching these last few weeks. I haven’t been posting the sermons on the blog, because I have doubted the amount of sermons that folks actually read.
Sermons are oral/aural events more than anything else. (At least, this is what I keep telling myself as I wave my hands all around and hope I don’t look like I’m suffering a spasm.)

This month, I’m on the Great Preaching Tour of 2013 to talk about Canterbury’s fundraising drive to buy a home. The students accompany me, and my trusty board president, who enjoys asking people to give money. (Fellow clergy, I am working out the cloning technology for him. Stay tuned.)
We started out in Sedona, and last week took us to Tucson. Where I got snowed in. In Arizona, this is a thing that happens when you live atop a mountain. It may be pleasantly warm in the low desert, but it is dumping snow higher up, and the roads are closed anyway.

Despite my weather difficulties, the sermon and the fundraising went very well. People who like young people are, in fact, my favorite sort of people in the world.

Here is what I said.

Luke 9:28-43

Westboro Baptist Church has become a cautionary tale nowadays–a hissing and a byword among nations. If you want to give an example of the worst hypocrisy, the worst example of hatred masquerading as religious piety, then that teeny church out in Kansas is it. After all, the members of that church spend their time not praying, or worshipping, or serving the poor, but going from event to event, protesting. They show up at military funerals, at any well-publicized funeral really, and hold signs, and loudly insist that this is God’s angry wrath punishing America for being so very, very sinful. That is their job–that’s what Westboro Baptist does. Most irritatingly and disturbingly, and unfortunately, effectively.

So it was shocking this week to read that the granddaughter of the pastor, Megan Phelps-Roper, had up and left the church, moved to New York City, and was now re-thinking the theology she was raised with. In the interview, she said she still believed in God, she still went to church (a liberal Presbyterian one in Brooklyn) but everything felt different–life had started over.

Her process of leaving had started in an email interview conducted with an Israeli journalist, who pushed her a bit on this hateful God she was describing, who killed children as punishment, and sent everyone to hell. “What would Jesus say about that? Wasn’t Jesus the person who said not to cast stones?” He asked. The question stuck in her brain, and that started the snowball rolling::-she couldn’t bring herself to hold the angry signs anymore, couldn’t yell at people at the protests, and a few months later, she left.

One little push, one little nudge, and suddenly, this young woman was beginning to transform. She was beginning the slow, awkward process of meeting God, and becoming the person that God had intended all along.

For most of us, this transfiguration process, this process of growing into the fullness of who God has made us to be, is a life-long endeavor. We stumble through it in fits and starts, we do great for a while, then plateau for a couple decades or so. It’s a process. It’s a journey, for us– the more we grow into our createdness, the more clearly we can hear God’s call to us. And on and on it goes. Grow a bit, hear God a bit more clearly.

Jesus, though. Jesus skips all that stuff. (As is typical, for he is Jesus.)
With Jesus, he’s been on somewhat of a roll this last chapter or so of Luke. He’s been going around Galilee, he’s healed, he’s taught, he’s preached. He’s tried to convey at least some of his message to his disciples, with varying degrees of success.

And most recently, Peter has acclaimed him as the Christ, the Son of God–so some of this is sinking in. Now, Jesus knows what’s going to happen next– the direct result of being the Son of God, and the Messiah is death, and resurrection, but not before the death part.
So Jesus is about to embark on the hardest, the very hardest part of his earthly ministry.
And up the mountain he goes.
He takes Peter, James and John with him, and treks up the mountain, and once there, he experiences sort of the culmination of his earthly ministry. The confirmation of who he is, and what he is supposed to do on this earth.
Moses and Elijah appear–the embodiment of the Jewish law–Moses, and all the Prophets–Elijah. And these two luminaries speak to Jesus, because if you’re the Messiah, what are you but the culmination of the Law and the Prophets? This is some great validation right here.
Then the capper– from heaven, God’s voice appearing, and thundering from the clouds— this is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.

This is my Child, the Beloved.

It’s a risky thing to crawl inside the mind of Jesus Christ, but my guess would be that for anyone, Jesus included, hearing those words directed at you! from the Creator would be a powerfully life-affirming thing. Something you would strain your whole life to hear, like a plant growing up towards the sun. Irrefutable confirmation that you are whole, valued, valuable, worthy and known. Down to your bones.
This is powerful stuff. The strength of this experience would give Jesus strength to “turn his face towards Jerusalem” and face the remainder of his ministry on earth. As a beloved child of God, what more reassurance did he need?

Us, well, …we live in a world that’s largely without booming voices from heaven. For us, our journeys towards figuring out who God created us to do and be doesn’t end in flashes of illumination and thundering voices. Our journeys toward transfiguration are lifelong. They double back on themselves, they twist and turn. We figure something out just to get confused all over again. A lot of the time, we don’t know if we’re headed in the right direction.

We stumble towards God, as God calls us, and we stumble towards self-knowledge, but so frequently, as with Jesus, those two things are intertwined. When Jesus figured out who he was, and what he was supposed to do, God became a lot easier to hear. And the more we grow into the truth and beauty of who God made us to be, the easier it becomes to hear God’s affirming words of love for us, and for the world around us.

A lot of the time, we have to rely on those around us, those who play the roles of Peter, James and John in our lives, to help us navigate. To tell us when we’re headed up the mountain, and when we’re headed down. To reflect back to us the shining light of God’s love.

In my work as a college chaplain– this is one of my main jobs: to form communities of disciples who can support each other and reflect to each other the light of Christ. Because when do you need more a trsnsfiguring, supportive community than those first years of young adulthood?

But though our paths may take longer to get there, they still have the same result as Jesus’s did. For each of us, even though the journey is confusing and the loving voice is hard to hear, the path of our spiritual life arcs towards a mountaintop where we arrive fully as God made us, entirely human, and completely reflecting the shining image of God. A place where God greets our arrival with joy, and we can hear the words God has been saying this whole time: You are my beloved Child– with you I am well-pleased.

Because we can’t all be Coach K

Lent will soon be upon us, and with it, the start of everyone’s favorite dip-into-hardcore-game-theory: Lent Madness!

Yes, it’s that magical time of year when we assemble brackets, make our picks, and then trash-talk our way through Holy Women, Holy Men: the Saints of the Episcopal Church (though, to be fair, some of us trash-talk that volume year round.  But then again, we are professionals.)

This year, Lent Madness promises to be more exciting than ever.

For one thing, NAU Canterbury is hosting our very own Lent Madness Pool of Greatness.*

That’s right.  For those of you who have been wondering how you can deepen your Lenten devotion while taking concrete action to better the world and extend your church’s ministry to young adults, I have made a way!

The way it works is simple:

–Fill out a bracket with your picks and send it to me by 11:59pm February 12 (Shrove Tuesday).  Sending a picture is fine, so long as it’s legible.

–Include a pledge with your bracket–some amount of money for every pick that you get wrong. (i.e. “For every pick I miss, I pledge 50 cents to NAU Canterbury”)

–Vote in Lent Madness, and follow along with your trusty bracket.

–When we get to Easter, I’ll compare brackets, and whoever gets the most picks right, will win the Award of Greatness.  (Which has yet to be determined, but will most likely be a mug.)

–Also, you send me the results of your pledge.

–Everyone can rest satisfied in the knowledge that they have made the world a better place through some light gambling on the Saints of God.  And who doesn’t want that?

The other thing that will make Lent Madness a thrill-a-minute roller coaster this year is that I have the honor of being a Celebrity Blogger.  So if you enjoy my writing on various and sundry topics here, imagine how much you will enjoy reading my biographies of saints!  And, better yet, the other Celebrity Bloggers are even better at this than I am, with more wit, sarcasm and knowledge than I could ever hope to achieve. There is even a running color commentary on YouTube this year.  (Because, let’s face it, color commentary is the best part of all sports programming.)

So no matter what, you should play along at http://www.lentmadness.org.  It promises to be fun, enlightening and redemptive of those of us who may not fully appreciate the glories of whatever-else-involves-brackets this time of the year.

*Title refers to this commercial from the 1990s.  I keep hoping this will happen now that I’m a Celebrity Blogger.  So far, no limos.

**This is like the Pit of Despair, only filled with Greatness instead.