Sermon: "This is where the light shines through." (March 30, 2014)

Lent 4A

John 9:1-41

            There have been a lot of things in the news lately that have made me really want an explanation. A flight mysteriously disappears from the sky and now seems to be somewhere in the Indian Ocean. A mudslide near Seattle covers, traps, and kills dozens of people. Several decisions have been made in various circles that many believe to have been misguided and even unethical. Day after day, something else happens to make me shake my head and wonder, “Why this?”

I’m sure I’m not alone in this. We humans crave answers and understanding. We have this need to ascribe reasons for things. If we can give something a reason, can explain it, then we can put it in a box and move on. This has long been a part of the human condition. It is noteworthy, in our Gospel lesson today, that the introduction and actual healing of the man born blind takes a mere 8 verses; the remaining 33 verses are dedicated to the controversy surrounding the healing, and people trying to figure out exactly what happened, who did it, why, and whether or not it was of God. The story starts with a very simple explanation: clearly, either this man sinned in his mother’s womb and was thus was born blind, or his parents sinned and so his blindness is their punishment. Whichever the case, it is a neat and tidy explanation for something that otherwise would be so tragic.

Don’t we just love to come up with reasons for things? Following 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the earthquake in Haiti – people were so quick to blame it on this kind of person, or that person’s actions, or this situation. We just can’t stand not understanding things.

And someone being born blind – this seems very sad to us indeed. And so it is no wonder that Jesus’ disciples have ascribed the reason for this man’s blindness to either his or his parents’ sin. In their narrow perspective, that makes sense. Maybe it even makes sense to us today. How often do you hear that someone’s poverty is their own fault? If they would just get a job, or work harder, or be more responsible, then they could be middle class like the rest of us. Their life situation is merely a result of choices that they made.

But how much do we miss when we are so quick to offer reasons and explanations? How often does our insistence to explain things reflect our own blindness, our own unwillingness to fully see?

Stated a different way, how much do we miss when we only see someone for his or her ailment? Sometimes, what you notice determines what you miss. It is remarkable in this story that everyone knows this man as “the man who was born blind” – such that when he has regained his sight, no one is even sure anymore that it is him! They see him day after day, give him money and food, even worship with him, but when he is no longer “the blind beggar” but has become “the seeing evangelist,” confessing a faith in Jesus, they say, “No, that’s not him. It’s just someone who looks like him.” They noticed his blindness, and missed his personhood. He couldn’t possibly be anything other than what they have already pegged him as. He couldn’t possibly be different, or more, than what they have already decided to perceive. Eventually, their resistance to the possibility of this man having undergone a transformation, and their inability to explain it, results in them simply kicking the man out of the synagogue.

What we notice determines what we miss. So what do we miss when we focus only on what is wrong – with others and with ourselves? Might we miss seeing the mysterious work of God? That’s what Jesus says. When his disciples ask who sinned, him or his parents, Jesus responds, “Neither. He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” But the people were too busy noticing his blindness to notice God’s work.

            But Jesus’ way is a much more faithful and transformative way to understand what we would dub as “disability” or “weakness.” It’s not an external reflection of an inward sin. It’s not punishment for bad decisions. It’s not something to judge and put into a box and move on from. Difference and brokenness and weakness are ways for God to show God’s works.

            I have been reading Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal – a wonderful book full of life-giving stories. It’s written by a woman who is a doctor-turned-counselor, who works with people with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses. There’s one story about a young man whom the author says was the angriest person she ever met. He had lost a leg to cancer in his 20s and as a result he lived in a deep, angry darkness. In one session with him, she asked him to draw a picture of himself, and he drew an outline of a vase with a huge crack down the middle. He angrily scribbled with a black crayon, making that crack more and more prominent, tears of rage in his eyes.

In time, his anger began to change. He started bringing in newspaper clippings to their sessions of stories about people like him, young people who had lost a body part, always angry that no one knew the first thing about it. “If only these people were nearby, I could talk to them,” he said. She told him, “There are people like this nearby.” He started visiting people in the hospital who had endured something similar to him, just lending an ear and connecting with them and letting them tell their stories. As he continued doing this, his anger began to fade. It was clear he had found a purpose. One day, he visited with a young woman who, at age 21, had just had a double mastectomy. Nothing he did or said could reach her; she was in a deep depression. Finally, he noticed there was music playing, and he took off his prosthetic leg and started dancing around the room, bouncing on his one leg and snapping his fingers. The girl took notice, and burst out laughing. “Fella,” she said, “if you can dance, maybe I can sing.” The two became friends, and started visited people together. She encouraged him to go back to school to study psychology and carry his work further. Eventually, the two got married.

            Sometime later he was back in the counselor’s office, a completely different man. Now that he was in a much better place, the counselor showed him his self-portrait from earlier, the vase with the deep black crack. He looked at it thoughtfully, then said, “It isn’t finished.” He took a yellow crayon and drew thick lines radiated from the crack, then handed it back to the counselor and explained, “This is where the light comes through.”

            What if instead of searching for explanations for difference and brokenness and pain, we saw them as places where the light shines through? “He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him,” Jesus explains. All of those “whole” people around him, making judgments and offering explanations, and yet it is the man born blind who was able to shine the light of Christ, to profess his faith to the authorities, and to say to his Savior, “Lord, I believe.” Getting to that place where we can not only see light shining through the cracks of others, but also in ourselves, can be a long road, and when we finally do see that light it can be blinding after so much darkness. But then our eyes adjust, and the light that shines in the darkness, the one who came into the world so that all might not perish but have eternal life, helps us to see the truth and beauty in each person we encounter – whether they are like us or not, whether they are rich or poor, blind or seeing, gay or straight, Christian or not, black or white or other, liberal or conservative, healthy or sick… All of these people have the potential to show us the light of Christ. All of these people, and their unique situation and experiences, have the potential to have God’s works revealed through them, if we have the eyes to see.

            Let us pray… God of light, we are sometimes so quick to judge. When our judgment makes us blind and keeps us from truly seeing your works revealed, grant us eyes to see your light shining in the darkness. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Production and Being a Part of the Body

Credit: Ellen Rockett

This past weekend, Michael and I performed in a musical called Death Takes a Holiday. It was great fun to be a part of it. While Michael has performed in 30-some shows over the years, this was my first as an adult. (I did star in the 1st grade musical, and the 4th and 5th grade musicals, but that is where my theatre career had ended.) We met wonderful people, and were impressed both by the level of talent in this community theatre company, and in the willingness of people, many of whom work hard in full-time jobs and have families at home, to step up and dedicate their time and energy to this project. (The company is FirstLight Players, which is connected with First Unitarian Church of Rochester. Many participants, though by no means all, are members of the church... which, for interest's sake, is where Susan B. Anthony was a member!) The resulting show, which was performed three nights this past weekend, was quite remarkable, and a load of fun to be a part of.

Butler Fidele and Maid Sophia after one of our performances.
(Thanks Ellen, for the photo!)

I played the role of Sophia, the "sexy maid," who first introduces "Death" (who has become human for a weekend so he can learn about life) to the feeling of lust, and it was a blast to play a character so completely different from my Lutheran pastor persona. (I had to work at saying one of my few lines - "I brought you fresh towels, sir" in an alluring way. "Towels" is just not a very sexy word!) As people discovered I was a Lutheran pastor, many asked about my churches, and about what I do exactly. The conversations I had with various members of the cast and crew were interesting, open, and loving. A colleague of mine recently mentioned that she interacts with very few people on a regular basis who are not either members of her church, colleagues, or otherwise somehow members of the Christian church. I felt very blessed to be spending several days a week working with people who did not necessarily share my beliefs. Unitarianism, you see, tends to draw people from many different faith backgrounds: people who have been hurt by religion in the past, people who haven't felt welcomed in other churches for whatever reason, people who married someone of a different faith, etc., all come together with a shared desire for community, service, and thoughtful, communal reflection on spirituality and life. Consequently, the conversations I had with the wonderful folks from this congregation - and some who were not - were varied and enlightening. I am a richer pastor for having spent so much time with them!

Credit: Ellen Rocket

Of course, as a Lutheran pastor, I couldn't help but reflect theologically on the experience. I will comment on the content of the show in another post, but for now, just the experience:

Most of the time I spent was with the cast, but it soon became apparent just how many behind-the-scenes people were involved. We had the two young men, twins, who are students at Rochester Institute of Technology, doing the sound; the young woman new to the area who wanted to be involved (but didn't want to sing in front of people) serving as the stage manager; the full-time-mom/former fashion designer working on costumes; the graphic designer who donated her time and talents to create all the publicity and the programs; the folks who built our incredible sets and hung the curtain, transforming the sanctuary into a theater; the women who worked tirelessly collecting props, and then organizing them each night during the performance; the immensely talented choreographer, director, co-producers and music director, who worked tirelessly and incredibly patiently to bring a bunch of amateurs to their best; the ticket-sellers; the folks who made food for intermission; the ushers; the folks who ran lights and sound cues; the musical ensemble; and then of course the cast, made up of everyone from people who had studied and even done theatre professionally, to those who thought, "Hey, I'd like to try that," and stepped on stage for the first time in this show. Our leading man, for example, had never acted, save one play in 8th grade! Some of the cast inspired and energized us with their acting skill, some with their incredible singing voices, some with their good humor or kind words behind the scenes, but every person on that cast had something special to offer the others. In the last week, especially, I gazed around at all these people, cast and crew, doing their part, putting their unique talent to work in the particular area that they could, and I was amazed.

And I couldn't help but think of the Body of Christ. What a beautiful expression of the way the Spirit has gifted each of us in different ways, and when we put all of our talents and passions together, we can bring delight to hundreds of folks over the course of a weekend, making them laugh and cry and smile and say, "I can't remember when I've enjoyed myself so much!" What a beautiful thing it was to watch! What a lovely expression of the way God uniquely gifts and equips us! And what a privilege to be a part of it.

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

 Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot were to say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear were to say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’, nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. (1 Corinthians 12:12-26)

The cast!

Sermon: The wind blows where it chooses (Mar. 16, 2014, Lent 2A)

John 3:1-17

            Like many of you, I hunkered down this past Wednesday during our little mid-March blizzard, cuddled under blankets and a Dachshund while I waited for the storm to pass. I looked out occasionally to see snow whipping past the window, drifts forming all around the house, trees shaking with the wind. As I witnessed this famous western NY wind and snow, from the safety of my nice warm house, I couldn’t help but think about Nicodemus.

            Why Nicodemus on that blustery, winter day? It was those words Jesus says to Nicodemus: “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

            Well, the wind was certainly blowing where it chose on Wednesday, huh? That much is clear. But it’s that second part of Jesus’ statement that I have been grappling with this week: “So it is with everyone who has been born of the Spirit.”

            Even if you didn’t remember the details of this story, the imagery is known all too well – that is, the image of being “born again,” or born of the Spirit. If you’re like me, you have been asked by people once or twice if you have been “born again.” Also if you’re like me, this question makes you very uncomfortable, and you aren’t quite sure how to answer it. If they mean, “Do I know Jesus,” then yes, I do. If they mean, “Am I baptized?” then yes. If they mean, “Did I have a life-changing moment in which I suddenly got myself out of a downward spiral and came to Jesus and my life has never been the same since,” well, maybe not so much. One pastor tells a story about sitting in the waiting room while she waited for some new tires. A man sat beside her and thrust a pamphlet under her nose and asked if she was born again. She thought for a moment, then answered, “I’m glad you asked. I’ve been reflecting on Jesus’ words to Nicodemus in John chapter 3 and I don’t think Jesus means ‘born again’ as if it were some emotional lightening strike that once it’s over, we speak of our salvation in the past tense, like, that’s done, now I have that checked off my to-do list. I think being born again calls for our participation, and I think it’s a life-long process.” Apparently the man was unimpressed. I wish I could come up with something so articulate on the spot!

            But she’s right – being “born again” is a life-long process, and not something that happens just once. Perhaps a shorter version of her answer is, “Yes, I’m born again, and again, and again, every single day!” That is what Luther was fond of saying: that we are born again every time we remember our baptism, which ought to be every day. Ours is a faith of new beginnings, you see, based on a resurrection story that repeats itself in many ways in our day-to-day lives.

            So, that’s what it means to be “born again” or “born anew” or “born from above” in Lutheran terms… but how do we live like that? Here the Nicodemus story can help us out, as his encounter with Jesus can shed some light on how one is to live as a “born again” person.

            It won’t surprise you, especially given our focus this Lent on prayer, that I will say that so much of being born anew has to do with prayer. In fact, being “born again” is such a very large topic to tackle in a 12-minute sermon, that for today I will only focus on the prayer aspect of it, and look to Nicodemus as guidance for how we are to pray like we are born again.

            The first thing we can learn from Nicodemus is how we are to come before the Lord – or rather, how not. What is the first thing Nicodemus says to Jesus? He tells him what he already knows, what he has perceived and so can believe. “You must be from God, because how else would you be able to perform these signs?” he asks. I think that’s often how I’m inclined to come before God, too: putting right up front all the things that I know. I often come to prayer with an agenda, and an expectation (or at least a hope) for a certain answer. But in Nicodemus’ case, his know-it-all approach serves as a barrier to him understanding Jesus’ words. He gets stuck in what he knows – for example, that no one can crawl back into his or her mother’s womb and come back out – and so is quick to dismiss any other possibility. So he can’t hear about the heavenly things Jesus is really trying to teach him.

            There is a famous parable from the Buddhist tradition, in which the teacher invites the student to pour a cup of tea, and to keep pouring until the teacher says to stop. So the student begins to pour, and soon enough the cup is overflowing and tea is spilling onto the table and floor. The student says, “The cup cannot hold any more tea!” and the teacher replies that the same is true for the young student: his mind is so full that he cannot hold any more. Only when he empties his mind will he be prepared to hear what the teacher has to say. Jesus might say the same to Nicodemus, and to all of us, for that matter – “your mind is too full; you are not prepared to hear what I have to teach you!”

            So the first thing to learn from Nicodemus’ encounter with Jesus is to let go of the control that knowledge makes us feel we have, and come prepared to hear and to listen and to learn, rather than with an agenda and an expectation. The second is related to that, and that is to be prepared that when we encounter God, we encounter mystery. I don’t think we leave a lot of space in our lives for mystery. Science helps us to understand so much of our universe, and if it can’t be explained, it is tempting to simply dismiss it. But God is so much bigger than what we could ever understand – and that is a good thing! As frustrating as it may be not to understand God’s mysterious ways, at the end of the day I need a God who is beyond my understanding, who is beyond anything I can wrap my head around. And so while our world may tell us to be skeptical of mystery, it order to hear God and come even close to understanding God’s ways, we need to be prepared to embrace mystery, and trust that God works mysteriously, and that that is okay.

            The third observation about prayer that this story brings up is in that line I thought about during the blizzard: “The wind blows where it chooses!” I had a professor in seminary who used to warn us to pray with caution, because your prayer might just be answered affirmatively. He tells a story about when he was in seminary and a friend of his got really sick. They prayed so hard for him to get better and be able to finish seminary. When he came back to school he was in a wheelchair, and needed a lot of help from his friends – even help going to the bathroom. My professor said (and this is a quote!), “I never thought that the answer to my prayers would include me wiping my friend’s butt.” But the wind does blow where it chooses, and you never know what door it is going to slam shut and what door it’s going to fling open, even out of your grasp. Prayers are always answered, just not always the way we want or expect them to be.

            There are lots of things we can do to prepare ourselves to be born from above or born anew again and again. But at the end of the day, the heart of what it means to be “born again” is letting the Spirit do what the Spirit is going to do, to let it blow where it chooses, and to let God do what God wants to in the very depths of our lives. As we trudge through Lent, what God wants to do in the depths of our lives becomes abundantly clear: God wants to forgive our sins. God wants to give us and our community the courage to live with joy and purpose for someone other than ourselves. God wants to gives us peace and assurance of eternal life. Learning how to receive these gifts is an ongoing process – and each time we come a little closer to understanding God’s promises and grace for us, we are born again. Every time we recognize that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that we might have eternal life, we are born again. Every time we open ourselves to the transforming power of honest prayer, we are born again. May it be so!

            Let us pray… Heavenly Spirit, you make it possible for us to be born again and again. Grant us courage to come to you with open hearts and minds, help us to embrace and not dismiss mystery, and make us attentive to the unexpected ways you may blow through our lives. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sea glass and the power of water

This follow is a short reflection I shared at a prayer service we held on Saturday to introduce our Lenten prayer theme:

But now thus says the Lord,
   he who created you, O Jacob,
   he who formed you, O Israel:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
   I have called you by name, you are mine. 
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
   and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
   and the flame shall not consume you. (Isaiah 43)

Back in January, I went to an event with some other first call pastors. It was a time of reflection and growth and worship and learning. In our times of worship, there was a theme that carried us through the event. Over four days, we went from being called and claimed by God, to recognizing our brokenness, to embracing our newness in Christ. There were several experiential elements to this, but one of the most meaningful to me was this sea glass. On the day we were recognizing the various ways we are broken, we were invited to take a piece of sea glass and use it as a meditation tool throughout the day. I think we were supposed to offer it back to God at the end of that day, but I didn’t want to – the image brought me too much comfort.

            Why such an attachment to this little piece of garbage? Well that’s just it, you see. That’s what sea glass starts off as: garbage. A piece of broken bottle. But God didn’t leave it that way. God and water, working together, smoothed out the rough edges, and turned it into something very beautiful. It’s not entirely smooth, but the remaining roughness shows its journey, shows where it came from, and, I think, makes it even more beautiful. That is the power of water and the Word.  

            In the passage we just read together [Isaiah 43], I asked you to visualize what image of God it created in your mind. For me, the most poignant image in that passage is that part, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.” I love that it says God will be with me in those times: not that God will pluck me out of the seas and save me from anything too hard; not that God will make the waters a little gentler for me. Because if God did either of these things, then how would my rough edges, like those of this piece of glass, be smoothed out and made more beautiful?

            What I love the most about this image is that it is not only reflective of my personal faith journey, but also that of every person in the Body of Christ. We share it. We begin our journey in baptism, doused in the water that washes our sins and smooths out our rough edges. And we spend the rest of our Christian life being the named, claimed, beautiful and beloved children that God created, trusting that all along the way we continue to be surrounded by God’s promises.

            And because of that assurance, we pray. We give thanks. We ask for help. We praise. Because God promises to be with us through the most terrifying of waters, and promises that our brokenness can become beautiful, and that our death can become life, we don’t shy away from our relationship with God. Instead of running away from the waters, we run into them. Instead of fearing the rivers, we face them, knowing God is with us.

            And all of this we do in prayer, in avid and insistent prayer. And so at this time, I would like to invite you, claimed and beloved children of God, to participate in such prayer. You will find in your bulletin a slip of green paper. There are no rules about that paper – you can write on it a prayer of thanksgiving, a prayer of need, a prayer of praise. You may decide to leave it blank, as representative of leaving space for God to speak to you, and your being open to God’s Word. Whatever you decide to do with it, bring it forward to the font, to the place where you were first named and declared a forgiven and beloved child of God. Leave it here by the font, and then take with you a piece of sea glass – a reminder that God is with you in prayer, with you in the waters, and will never leave your side – and carry it with you through Lent. Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us pray...

Sermon: "You are my hiding-place" (Mar. 8, 2014, Lent 1)

Lent 1A

March 9, 2014

Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7; Matthew 4:1-11; Psalm 32

  

            I remember a night last year when I was so overwhelmed by the inevitability of having a second major surgery in the course of four months, and of the sacrifices that this surgery would require, that I just wanted to hide. I was lying in bed, trying to fall asleep. I couldn’t settle my thoughts. I just wanted my situation to go away. Without consciously thinking about it – in fact, out of instinct more than anything else – I pulled the covers over my head, hiding myself from the world, and, I hoped, my emotions.

While there was some satisfaction in that, of course it didn’t really hide me from anything. But it was such a human response to struggle and pain, wasn’t it? Even as I did it, I knew it wouldn’t really help anything, but at least giving myself the illusion of hiding from everything on my heart provided temporary consolation. Hiding made me feel safe.

Hiding has that power, doesn’t it? The power to make us feel safe? But the story we hear today from Genesis makes us think differently about hiding. It’s a familiar story – the story of the Fall, just after Adam and Eve are created. The story in which God tells them they can eat of any tree except this one, and then a crafty serpent comes along and convinces them that it wouldn’t be so bad to eat of that tree, and in fact, it would be good! They would know good and evil if they did, they would be more like God! And so they do, and in that moment their blissful blindness falls away. Suddenly they do know good and evil, and they name their own nakedness as bad. And so they immediately sew together fig leaves to – you got it – hide themselves, hide their vulnerability, hide their nakedness, hide their potential for being hurt or embarrassed or teased or judged. They hide themselves. And then to hit home the point, when they hear God later that evening walking through the Garden, they hide not only from each other and from themselves, but they also hide themselves from God.

It’s powerful stuff, and while I’m guessing you’ve never felt the need to sew together fig leaves as protection from the elements or from judgmental eyes, who has never tried to hide something from others? Who has never wanted to hide something from God? Perhaps, we think, if I never admit it explicitly to myself, then no one, not even God, has to know about my weaknesses, my faults, my mistakes. I’ll just keep them hidden, and no one has to know, and I can pretend they don’t exist.

So the first question to ask ourselves is, what do you feel the need to hide? What can no one know, not even God? What are those things that, when we come here week after week and do confession, you can never quite bring yourself to mention, even in silence?

The next question is, what are you hiding behind? In Genesis, it says that Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together, and hid among the trees of the garden. What are your fig leaves? What are your forests?

            Our Gospel text can shed some light on this. The first Sunday of Lent always includes hearing an account of the temptation of Jesus. At first it seems that what the devil offers to tempt Jesus with has no bearing on our real lives. After all, who has ever been offered rule over all the kingdoms of the world? (Furthermore, who would ever want that job?!) But below the surface, these are temptations we are quite familiar with: turning stones into bread becomes a temptation for security and self-sufficiency; throwing himself off a pinnacle so that God’s angels will save him becomes a temptation for acceptance, as this act will prove that he is, in fact, the Son of God, and everyone will see his importance; and offering him rule over all the kingdoms in the world, of course, becomes a temptation for power and leadership. Security, acceptance, and power – now these are things we understand!

In addition to temptations, are they not also sometimes the fig leaves we hide behind? If I can show people how secure I am, I can hide from them my insecurity. If I can show people how important I am, I can hide from them my fear that I won’t be accepted as I am. If I can show people how powerful I am, I can hide from them my doubts. They never have to see my nakedness.

            But I suspect these are not all that we hide behind. We surround ourselves with many hiding places – working too many hours, academic degrees, awards on the wall, our age, gender, or race, over-booked calendars and busy-ness, a constant need to make jokes, boisterous conversation, nice cars, other material goods, the balance in our bank account… So many things to show the world that hide our insecurities, so many fig leaves to hide behind.

            I don’t think God wants us to hide. Or more accurately, God doesn’t want us to hide from God. Rather, God wants us to hide in God. Look at what our Psalm says: “You are my hiding place; you preserve me from trouble.” What a different image that is, either from my instinct to pull my covers over my head, or from our persistent attempts to hide behind our various fig leaves. Rather than hiding from, where we try to disguise who we are, or be someone different from who we are, hiding in God gives the impression of being exactly who we are, who God made us to be, who God declared us to be in our baptism: beloved and forgiven children of God. Hiding in God means crawling into God’s bosom and remembering that whatever troubles may come upon us, whatever evils may tempt us, whatever wrong turns we may take along the way, God loves us and protects us and forgives us. When we hide in God, we find that our fig leaves are unnecessary, for God is the only hiding place that we need.

            Rather than me continuing merely to tell you about this, let’s do something that will show it. You may have noticed that we did not start this morning with confession and forgiveness as we normally do. We will move into this time now. In your bulletin you will find a piece of rice paper, and our ushers will hand out some pens. Take some time right now to think about what some of your fig leaves are – what are you hiding behind – or, what it is you are hiding. Write it down on your rice paper. No one will ever see this but you and God, so be honest. When you’ve written something, come forward here to the font, to the place where God promised us that our sins are forgiven and that we are God’s claimed and beloved children. As you put your paper into the font, hiding it in God’s promise, ask God for forgiveness, and watch what God does with your sin.

            And now, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us pray as we enter a time of confession before God…

            Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy name, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

            Let us confess to God those things we keep hidden from others, from ourselves, and even from God, and those things which we hide behind…

[people take time to write on rice paper as background music plays – “You Are My Hiding Place” by Selah]

Brothers and sisters in Christ, God has seen you and knows you. God knows your sitting down and your rising up, and discerns your thoughts from far away. God knows your hiding places and bids you come and hide in Him. Know that you are forgiven. Your sins have been washed away, and you are in Christ.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen. Thanks be to God!