God with Us

I have a friend who wrote about a month ago: Christmas cannot be canceled because Christmas is God with Us in every circumstance, even a global pandemic. With that simple statement, he cut through all the consumerism and materialism of the weeks leading up to Christmas and focused my heart and attention directly on why it is that we celebrate the birth of Jesus.

This is a strange year to celebrate Christmas. I’ve heard many people express something along these lines: “This is not the Christmas we had hoped for” or “This is not the Christmas we had planned.” These words are often accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders, an expression of “whatchya gonna do?” and a resignation to make the most of what has been for some time now a very difficult year.

It’s certainly not the Christmas most of us had envisioned at the start of 2020, but perhaps it’s the Christmas that will help us see anew the wonder of God with Us. For Elizabeth and me, Christmas has been a difficult season for a number of years now. It was just before Christmas about a dozen years ago that Elizabeth’s grandmother died. That was the Christmas service where I led the liturgy, preached, directed the choir and played trumpet in the brass ensemble (we decided later that was just a slight bit of over-functioning…) And it was about ten years ago on Christmas Eve that we suffered a miscarriage and spent pretty much the whole night in the hospital. Remember these losses each year as everything around us tells us that we’re supposed to be joyful and merry is particularly challenging, and I know others have similar experiences around Christmas each year.

That year we spent Christmas Eve in the hospital, I still came home, showered, and preached the next morning. I preached because the sermon was already ready to go and I felt a need to fulfill people’s expectations for a Christmas service—but that was a mistake. I was not emotionally fit to lead worship at that point. Frankly I was a mess. It was all a bit of a blur. But one thing I remember saying that morning was that in some ways, this is what Christmas is all about—God. Becoming Human. Not ignoring our suffering but entering into it. Carrying our sorrow. Redeeming our broken and hurting world.

This Christmas in the midst of a pandemic is not the Christmas we had expected or hoped for. But it’s still Christmas. Maybe it is especially Christmas. It is still God with Us.

Sharing Our Monkey Bread

We’ve been using Elizabeth’s book Teach Us to Pray for our family devotions after some of our meals. If you’ve used the book at all, you know that part of the process is using some sort of practice or activity at the beginning of the devotions as a way of engaging the whole body and creating a sense of ritual. Ordinary time included such activities as bringing in something from nature as a reminder of God’s good creation, starting the prayers on your knees if you were able, or tasting just a touch of honey as a reminder that the laws of God are sweet for our souls.

The opening activity for Advent is setting an extra place at the table during meals as an expression of our desire for Jesus to come join us. This is rooted in the Jewish Passover tradition of setting an extra place at the table for Elijah in anticipation of Elijah one day coming to prepare the way for the Messiah. 

This has led to some interesting conversation in our house. The question “Do we have to make room for Jesus?” has been heard a surprisingly high number of times. “Does Jesus need silverware?” is also a favorite. And when I sat down at the table and there wasn’t a glass of water at my place, but there was at Jesus’, I reached over and took Jesus’ water. My children caught me: “Did you just take Jesus’ water?” they asked, and I sheepishly put it back and got up to get my own glass of water. And I have to admit—Jesus’ spot at the table ends up being next to mine, and with my long arms and long legs, I don’t particularly enjoy having an extra spot next me. This has led me to reflect on whether I’m really trying to make room for Jesus in my life or not.

One of the classic moments, however, that will go down in Blankespoor-Vander Haagen family lore, came last week when we were enjoying some delicious split pea soup. Now, when I was growing up, split pea soup was not high on my siblings’ list of favorite meals, so my mom would make monkey bread to go along with it to bribe us kids to eat the split pea soup without complaining. We didn’t get monkey bread until after our soup was eaten.

For the uninitiated, monkey bread is made by taking biscuit rolls that come in tube, cutting them into pieces, placing them in a bundt pan and then drowning them in butter, brown sugar and cinnamon before baking. Delicious—if not exactly healthy for you. But anyway, as a nod to family tradition, we made monkey bread to go along with the pea soup.

When it came time to divvy up the monkey bread (after all the soup had been eaten, of course), we made sure to distribute even amounts so there was no complaining. The conversation then went something like this: “Don’t forget to save some for Jesus,” pointed out one of the kind-hearted from our midst. “Jesus doesn’t need monkey bread,” was the quick response.

I decided to seize the moment and make it into a lesson on faith. “Wait a minute—you’re telling me that if the Savior of the World showed up—if the one who set aside being God and came to earth to be born as a little tiny baby and suffered on the cross and died for your sins showed up, you wouldn’t give him your monkey bread?” Perhaps I went a little over the top. “Would you give him your monkey bread?” came the penetrating reply. I was feeling particularly pious at the moment, so I quickly stated, “Yes. Yes, I would. Jesus could have my monkey bread.” But even as I said it, I realized that I wasn’t entirely sure it was true. I really like monkey bread. Maybe Jesus and I could split it…

And in that moment, I realized two things. First—how little I really expect Jesus to show up at any given moment. I don’t really need to worry about Jesus eating my monkey bread, I thought to myself. He’s not really going to show up while we’re eating monkey bread… And second—how little gratitude I truly have toward Jesus. I like Jesus. I’m grateful for all Jesus has done for me. But can Jesus have my monkey bread? I’m not so sure… It’d be really hard to sit there with no monkey bread while Jesus ate my share. And that was startling to me—I have to second guess whether Jesus would get my monkey bread?!?

This has made me reconsider how I approach a lot of life. Jesus tells us in the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31-46 that whatever we have done for the least of these brothers and sisters of his, we have done for him. And whatever we have not done for one of the least of these, we have not done for him. The truth is, we encounter Jesus everyday of our lives in the people all around us. Are we truly grateful for what Jesus has done for us? If we are—well, then we should probably share our monkey bread. We shouldn’t just give out of our excess, what doesn’t really cost us anything—we should share the things we treasure as well.

After my attempt at being pious with my family, stating that I would give Jesus my monkey bread, I turned to my children and asked them, “Well, what about you? Would you give the one who died for you monkey bread?” The answer came back unanimous. “Yes. We would give Jesus your monkey bread too.”

Fierce Love

God holds this world
with fierce love.
Keeping his promise,
he sends Jesus into the world,
pours out the Holy Spirit,
and announces the good news:
sinners who repent and believe in Jesus
live anew as members of the family of God –
the firstfruits of a new creation.

-        Our World Belongs to God: A Contemporary Testimony, paragraph 5

I’ve had this part of Our World Belongs to God on my mind for a few weeks now, especially the first sentence: ‘God holds this world with fierce love.’ I think it came to mind when I was preaching from Ezekiel 34 and reading about shepherds, and how they are both tender and fierce.

A few weeks ago Peter came home from school with this picture.

He and his class were learning about Jesus’ baptism, and this is how he illustrated it, depicting Father, Son and Spirit. It’s hanging on our refrigerator and every time I see it, I smile. When I asked Peter about sharing it, he nodded yes and then said “It’s like the song Mom - you know - He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands!” Look at how God is holding the whole world, close to God’s heart.

And look at the joy on God’s face! God holds this world with fierce love and God delights in us – somehow, mysteriously, even as the pandemic reveals and magnifies our worst selves and our deepest divisions. We are held in love, and we make God smile. As Julian of Norwich, a Christian mystic, wrote: “God loved us before he made us; and his love has never diminished and never shall.” God is smitten with us, and God’s love for us does not change, no matter what’s happened to us, no matter what we’ve done. God holds us in fierce and joyful love.

The last part of the paragraph from Our World Belongs to God got me thinking this week – the part about being ‘the first fruits of a new creation.’ I tend to think of the new creation as something we are still waiting and longing for, not something we’re a part of. But we are, it’s beginning and already begun in us.

One of the lectionary readings for next Sunday is from Isaiah 61, with the promise: ‘They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.’ Not only does God hold us in love and delight in us, God reveals God’s splendor in us. We are the first fruits of the new creation. Acorns that will be transformed into oaks of righteousness. The new thing that God is doing in the world, the new life that the Spirit brings, the restoration of all things, is beginning in us. And the place of transformation is of course, exactly where we are – at home, at work, in all of the details of our day to day lives and interactions with others. In our acts of love and faithfulness, in our daily repentance and trust in God, the new creation begins.

Finding the Lost

The other day I suffered one of the ultimate teenage humiliations. I was digging through the trash looking for my lost retainer. 

I’ve worn a retainer since I had my braces removed back in June as part of my dental repair work after my bike accident in 2019. I’m usually pretty good about putting my retainer in its case each time I take it out—I don’t like the thought of it being unprotected where it might pick up germs or come in contact with who knows what, and, oddly, the rest of the family are generally grossed out by finding it just sitting around the house (yes, this was discovered by trial and error). But there are times when there’s some food sitting out that I just want to snitch quickly and I still find myself pulling out my retainer “just for a moment.”

This particular time, I was up early making pancakes for the family. I decided to add chocolate chips, and, of course, I needed to make sure the chocolate chips were still good. I pulled out the retainer to try a few, and then must have set the retainer down as the pancakes needed immediate attention. I got caught up in the pancake production process and didn’t think to find my retainer again until mid-afternoon. By that time I had no idea where I had put it, though I had a vague sense that when I had put it down, I had thought to myself, “Now remember where you’re putting this…”

I searched through the whole house no less than three times. I checked all the pockets on my clothes—twice. I even went through all the papers on my desk in the basement—just in case—even though this is a monumental undertaking and I was pretty sure there wasn’t any way it might be there. I knew it was in the house because I could remember having it in when I woke up in the morning. But I couldn’t for the life of me find it. That’s when I decided I better sort through the trash.

I took the trash from the kitchen and poured it out in the driveway. This wouldn’t have been so bad had it not been freezing at the time or I had bothered to put a coat on. Or I hadn’t emptied the vacuum cleaner into the trash earlier that day. But I sorted through all of the trash to no avail—still no retainer. I went back inside and worried that the dog must have found it somehow and chewed it to smithereens. I began preparing myself for the embarrassing call to the orthodontist that I had lost my retainer.

It wasn’t until the next morning that our daughter Emma found it. She picked up some papers from the counter in the kitchen (papers from the stack that we keep telling our kids not to look through) and there it was—right underneath them. The pile must have been bumped soon after I set down my retainer and the top pieces slid over top of the retainer blocking it from view. This was, actually, the first place I had looked for it. I had checked this place no less than four times. I had moved the papers around in my search and checked under the edges of them. But I had never picked them all the way up. I didn’t know whether to be extraordinary glad that the retainer had been found or extremely perturbed that all along it had been in the first place I had looked and I should have found it right away.

But I did feel extreme relief. Relief that my search was over. Relief that I wouldn’t need to be calling the orthodontist that day. Relief that I wouldn’t need to be sitting for another mold of my mouth to be taken and I wouldn’t be paying for a replacement when I knew that my retainer had to be around here somewhere. And I felt euphoria. I was so excited when the retainer was found. I swooped over and picked Emma up in a big bear hug. I went flying around the house jumping up and down, whooping and hollering. I picked up our dog and did a crazy jig.

I’ve lost things before. I’ve had a hard time finding them and done a whole house search for them before. But this was different. This was something that would have been hard to replace—something I couldn’t just order a replacement for online. This was something that was a part of me somehow. And my relief and joy in finding it—while admittedly, solely for my retainer—were unlike much else I had experienced in searching for something that was lost.

I don’t know how many times in my life I’ve read the parable of the woman and the lost coin in Luke 15. I don’t know how many times I’ve read about her losing one coin out of ten, searching all through the house trying to find it. And I don’t know how many times I’ve thought about the celebration she had once she found the lost coin. I do know, though, that I’ve thought to myself that it was just a lost coin—and while coins certainly would have been treasured in Jesus’ day, how excited can one get about finding one?

Now, after my own celebration in finding my retainer, I read that parable differently. I have a greater appreciation for the lengths God will go to find the lost sinner. For the sense of desperation that’s involved in the search. For the pure joy and euphoria that is involved when what is lost is suddenly found. I have a greater sense of the depth of God’s love for each one of us—whether we’re the first coin or the tenth. Whether we’re the sheep that always is right where it’s supposed to be or the sheep that is seemingly always wandering off and getting into trouble.

If I got this excited about a lost retainer that was found, how much more excited would God get over a lost human being who was found? I’ve thankfully never had a serious incident of one of my loved ones being lost. I lost Emma briefly at JC Penney once when she was three years old…and there was a sudden sense of panic…my stomach dropped and instantly I was desperate. I had been looking at some clothes, she had been right beside me, but then I looked up and she was nowhere to be seen. I looked down all of the aisles, and didn’t see her wandering around. I went one direction, then the other; I started yelling her name—softly at first and then louder and louder and more and more frantically. Turns out she was in the middle of a circular rack of coats, about ten feet from me. Relief swept over me, but I didn’t celebrate the way I really wanted to because I didn’t want anyone to know I had lost my daughter in the Menswear department of JCPenney. But I can only imagine the joy and celebration God experiences when someone God loves so deeply that God is willing to die for him or her is suddenly found. I hope I can learn to love others this same way. I hope I can experience this same joy.

I wish I could say I’ve taken perfect care of my retainer since that fateful day I lost it. But alas, less than two hours after I found it I had lost it again. I grumbled against God—telling God thanks, but I’d already learned that lesson and I didn’t need to learn it again. This time I even knew I had carefully placed it in my retainer case and set it in its spot by the cabinets. I checked the case three times by picking it up and shaking it—it makes a distinctive rattle if the retainer is inside. And each time it was silent when I shook it. I was distraught—until Peter actually opened the case and discovered that the retainer was indeed inside. It had simply been caught in the edge of the case so it did not rattle when shook. I was again grateful it was found—just as, I suppose, God is grateful each time we are found when we wander off.

Now if I could just find that missing flashdrive…

Thanksgiving Preaching

Elizabeth won’t let me preach Thanksgiving. At least not anymore. Apparently, I’m too dark with my words.

There’s a skill to preaching Thanksgiving. The Thanksgiving meditation should be a simple, short message. Uplifting. Just tell people to give thanks. That gratefulness is an important characteristic of our lives as Christians. This is not one of my gifts as a preacher.

I still remember the first Thanksgiving I preached. The text was Matthew 6:25-33. The part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount where he tells us not to worry. Not to be anxious about anything. It wasn’t a bad sermon overall—it was just a terrible sermon for Thanksgiving. Somehow I got into all of the things that we have to worry about in life—hitting the grief and the job loss and the health concerns—and then made the point that God doesn’t promise that life will be easy for us—just that God will provide what we need. And that’s cause for Thanksgiving, no matter how dark your life might be right now. Expressions on people’s faces were all a bit shocked as they filed out that morning. Not quite what they had prepared themselves for as they headed off to church that morning. My notes for the sermon that day read simply, “Thanksgiving—a bit heavy.”

Another year I preached the story of the crossing of the Red Sea from the book of Exodus and the song of deliverance Miriam sang after the Israelites were safely on the other side. I emphasized how our deliverance should be a deep source of thanksgiving in our hearts—and then spent most of the sermon emphasizing all the dark and evil things we had been delivered from.

Then there was the Thanksgiving sermon on the ten lepers Jesus heals in the book of Luke where only one of them came back to thank Jesus. Somehow the sermon ended up being a stern warning not to be like the nine who didn’t bother to give thanks.

And who could forget the infamous Thanksgiving sermon from the book of Job? (Okay—I made that one up).

But the point is, Elizabeth won’t let me preach Thanksgiving. Because I tend to be too dark. And regardless of what passage I pick, my message usually ends up being something along the lines of: no matter how dark and gloomy your life might be, it’s still possible to give thanks. Most years, that doesn’t work so well for a Thanksgiving meditation. It’s perfectly true—but it’s not the simple, uplifting message people need to hear most Thanksgivings.

But this year isn’t like most Thanksgivings. This year, we’re in the midst of a pandemic. And we’ve already lost so much—we’ve given up holidays, vacations, time with family and friends. Some of us have lost jobs and others of us loved ones. It seems like everyday there’s a new sense of grief as a new loss takes hold in our lives. This year, perhaps more than any other, we need to hear that Thanksgiving message that no matter how dark our lives might become, we are still children of God. We are still redeemed by God. We are still deeply loved by God. We are still held by God. And that—that—is indeed reason to give thanks, no matter what else is going on in our lives.

Maybe someday I’ll figure out how to preach a simple, uplifting Thanksgiving meditation. Maybe one of these years, Elizabeth will let me give it another try. But until then, I was born to preach Thanksgiving 2020.

The Rituals of Our Lives

A few weeks ago I completed an annual fall ritual—I put up the plastic film covering the skylights in our bedroom. The skylights are high-quality, double-paned windows, but they are right above where we sleep. Without the added plastic film in the winter, there’s just enough of a cold draft to make it hard for me to sleep.

I always resist putting up the plastic as long as possible. It’s an admission that the warmth and sunshine of summer are gone and all that lies ahead until spring is cold and gloom. The plastic covers the whole cutout for the window, so once the plastic goes up, we can no longer reach the window to raise or lower the blinds. So most years we lower the blinds before putting the plastic up—this makes it darker at night when we’re trying to sleep, but it also means our bedroom is that much darker all day long as well. And those precious few days in the winter when the sun does manage to break through the clouds, our bedroom stays a dark and gloomy place.

The skylights are built into the slanted roof of our house. Because they’re on a slant, the plastic has a particularly difficult time staying put. This means that inevitably, the first night I put the plastic up, the double-sided tape they give you to put on the frame of the window starts to give way and we wake up in the middle of the night with plastic falling down on top of us. This usually results in me trying to add a layer or two of packing tape around the outside edge of the plastic the next morning.

All this to say that by springtime, when the first warm breeze arrives and the voice of the turtle is again heard in the land, and I rip off the plastic like I’m a kid opening a Christmas gift and crank open the skylights to let that breeze into the stale air of the upstairs, the walls around the skylights are in rough shape. Indeed, as I pull the plastic off, I inevitably pull a layer or two of paint off with it. I’ve learned to keep a generous supply of touch up paint that color in the house.

Sometimes I even take some of the drywall mud off with the paint, and there’s a bit of a gouge in the wall above our bed where the plastic had been hanging. Just as putting up the plastic is a fall ritual, so repairing the wall when I take the plastic down is a spring ritual. Only, I don’t always get to it in the spring. I typically tear down the plastic on a whim, deciding that spring is finally here—or at least right around the corner—and we won’t need this plastic any longer and the lure of the fresh breeze overcomes my fear of the nightly draft. I can tear down the plastic in about three minutes, but it can take a couple of hours over the course of a couple of days to repair and repaint the walls—especially if it takes more than one coat.

And so I don’t always get to it right away. And as the weather turns nice in the spring, there are so many other things I’d rather be doing outside than repairing the walls inside our bedroom. And so, I’m afraid to say, more years than not, the walls stay gouged all summer long—with me thinking that I’ll get to that one of these days… And then fall comes. And it’s time to put the plastic back up—only the walls aren’t fixed yet, so I figure I better do that first. So many years, it’s not until I need to put the plastic back up that I finally get around to repairing the walls from when I tore the plastic down in the spring.

Elizabeth is gracious about the whole cycle, and mostly just shakes her head as she sees me head up to the bedroom with a can of paint at the end of October. It is an odd, somewhat humorous, somewhat frustrating ritual that we go through each year. And in a strange way, it marks the passing of the seasons, the passing of time, perhaps as well as anything else in our lives—especially this year as the usual birthday celebrations, Thanksgiving and Christmas will all look dramatically different because of the coronavirus.

This summer Elizabeth and I had the pleasure of conducting the wedding of Joshua Hiemstra and Meredith Fennema. It was a small wedding, outdoors in Meredith’s parents’ backyard. One of the texts Josh and Meredith selected was 1 Samuel 7:13-17. It’s a bit of an obscure text—it details the later years of Samuel’s life as prophet in Israel, and it describes him as traveling from town to town to town in a large circuit and repeating this year after year after year. Living out his life in faithful service.

We pointed out to them that this was not a typical wedding text, but they wanted to use it anyway—they liked the idea of the routine being holy. Of our everyday actions being service to God. Of the rituals of our lives—whether they are the daily rituals or the monthly rituals or the yearly rituals—being a sign of our faithfulness and love.

Indeed, the rituals of our lives mark off our lives—but they are so much more than mere timekeepers. Regardless of whether they are the daily rituals or the yearly rituals, they can be a mark of our faithfulness. A sign of our love. A way we orient our lives to God and to others. It doesn’t matter whether we are married or single, our faith is primarily lived out in our everyday, day-to-day and year-to-year actions.

Next spring, when the plastic comes down again and the paint comes off the walls with it, I’m going to look at the ritual of wall repair in a whole new light. And hopefully, when October rolls around, I won’t be heading upstairs with a can of paint in my hands.

Comfort from Job and Skywoman

The reading this morning in Teach Us to Pray was from Job 23:1-3, 8-10 (and it’s in the NIV Readers translation):

Even today my problems are more than I can handle.

In spite of my groans, God’s hand is heavy on me.

I wish I knew where I could find him!

I wish I could go to the place where he lives!

 

But if I go to the east, God isn’t there.

If I go to the west, I don’t find him.

When he’s working in the north, I don’t see him there.

When he turns to the south, I don’t see him there either.

 

But he knows every step I take.

When he has tested me,

I’ll come out as pure gold.

 

This resonated with me. Even today, in my warm comfortable home, with two of my children still in school in person, with plans to meet a dear friend for a walk, with work and people I love, with so much to be thankful for – ‘my problems are more than I can handle.’ Mark, a friend of our family whom I’ve known since childhood died yesterday. Harvey DeWent died last week and Jay and I weren’t allowed to be there. I’m afraid for a friend who has COVID, dreading that schools might close again, worried Bri won’t ever get to go in person this year, concerned for many of you and wondering when we’ll see each other in person again. My list could go on and on with problems and griefs (anticipated and real) that are or feel like they are more than I can handle.

 

One of the books I’ve been reading these days is Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. In it she tells the story of Skywoman, a creation story told by the indigenous peoples of the Great Lakes area. It’s a story of a woman falling from the sky world, who lands on a giant turtle and is kept alive by various creatures, from whom she receives gifts and with whom she shares gifts. And then Kimmerer writes this:

 

Perhaps the Skywoman story endures because we too are always falling. Our lives, both personal and collective share her trajectory. Whether we jump or are pushed, or the edge of the known world just crumbles under our feet, we fall, spinning into someplace new and unexpected. Despite our fears of falling, the gifts of the world stand by to catch us. (p 8,9)

 

The sense that our problems are more than we can handle, the sense of falling, is part of being human, of knowing and accepting our limits, our creatureliness. It’s good to tell the truth about this – we are not in control. We can’t solve all our problems or keep ourselves from falling. And sometimes God’s presence can feel really elusive – like Job says, ‘I don’t find him . . . I can’t see him.’

 

And yet. As Kimmerer puts it, ‘the gifts of the world stand by to catch us.’ I keep returning to Jesus’ words about the birds and the flowers and how God takes care of them, and God can be trusted to take care of us too – day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. Even when we can’t see God, we can see God’s gifts: breath, food, life.

 

Job promises and testifies: ‘God knows every step I take.’ I found such comfort in this passage when we did a series on Job several years ago, and again today. The reminder that God knows us inside and out, God is paying attention, watching us with a loving gaze. And pointing toward Jesus: who knows what it is to be human, to be limited, to grieve, to live in difficult times when many things are out of our control. Jesus goes before us and he goes with us and he knows what is happening to us – the burdens we bear, the choices we face, the joys and sorrows and gifts of each day.