State of The Church

I hesitate to write this, for several reasons. Among them: I do not want to be perceived as writing only about the congregation of which I am a part, because I am not. The Church (capital T capital C) is much bigger than we are, and I see these things in both my own denomination and in The Church (especially the American Church) in general. I do not want to be arrogant--my perceptions are just that: mine. I do not want to create drama…there's enough of that already.

But I also see things I think need to be said.

Every January, the President gives a speech on The State of The Union…and he inevitably says that the state of our union is strong. Even when that is patently untrue, every president says it.

So what about the state of The Church?

Here is what I see in The Church.

I see a lack of trust--of each other, of the leaders we believe God has called for us, and of God.
I see a lack of resources--in part because we choose to spend our money, our time, and our energy elsewhere, and in part because there are fewer of us than ever.
I see an urgent desire to return to the way things used to be, when things seemed more predictable, church attendance was culturally mandatory, and the church was the center of social life.
I see an urge for every congregation to be all things to all people.
I see an inability to handle disagreement or conflict without triangulation, gossip, withdrawing, and withholding grace.
I see a pervasive spirit of comparison--constantly trying to figure out how we can be like this or that other church that seems to have all the people and all the money.
I see an unfulfilled longing for true community.
I see us holding tightly to the things we desire, and ending up with no hands free to grasp what God desires.
I see us hurting each other when we don't get our own way.

And I see imperfect people learning from other imperfect people who followed Jesus (through scripture, through study groups, through prayer).
I see people singing together even though that's not something our culture does anymore.
I see people spending their nights staffing a homeless shelter.
I see people longing to share how their lives have been changed.
I see people who write cards to every person who visits, or gets sick, or has a birthday.
I see people who read Scripture together and pray for guidance on how best to explore that reading in a worshipping community.
I see people who discuss hard theological questions out in public.
I see people who get dirty in order to grow food for others.
I see people who give hours and hours (along with dollars and dollars) to make a building a welcoming space for people who are cold, who need a rehearsal space, who need a safe place to admit their addiction, who want to learn, who need a place to eat and sleep.
I see artists who use paint, music, dance, and words to express grace.
I see people who know they can walk through Church Doors and find help.
I see people who advocate for justice in every imaginable arena.
I see people who don crazy outfits and sing terrible songs in order to help kids become friends with Jesus.
I see people who have known great joy through their church and want others to know that joy too.

Most of all, I see the face of Jesus in each of those people.

So…while the picture may seem bleak from the outside, or from the perfectionist side, or from the view of someone who wishes that all of us lived in the Kingdom of God right now, the reality is that all those people, in all their small and large acts of faithfulness, are what makes the church. The Church is not a building, not a governance structure, not an institution--the church is a Body made up of many members, and it's those people who remind me, one by one, that the State of the Church, while it could be stronger, is actually pretty darn good.

Don't get me wrong, we have room for improvement--just like the Union does. But the foundation is there, if only we'll build on it.

Kittylimpics

It's so cold that I don't have much to say…I just huddle under blankets and try not to think about how there are at least two more months of winter to go. Books, the interwebz, and Downton Abbey are my only consolation…when I'm not at work, or driving to or from work, of course. (In the office I turn the heat up, jog in place at my standing desk, and try to ignore the mess I've made all over the other flat surfaces of the office over the past several months.)

The Olympics have begun on the other side of the globe, but here in my house (where we won't be watching, because we don't have TV and NBC still doesn't have them streaming, because they obviously hate me) the kitties still think they're in training mode. There's lots of talking (in the form of meows, purrs, yowls, and a sound I can only describe as "thrumming"). There's racing around the house at top speed, sometimes several laps--occasionally one at a time, but more often in a chase. There's jumping. There's hiding. There are combination events.

But at the end of the day, they don't want a medal, they just want…

a box.

So cozy, so perfect. Works every time.

if you see something, say something--a sermon for 2 February 2014

Rev. Teri Peterson
PCOP

If You See Something, Say Something

John 4.1-42

2 February 2014, NL 4-22

Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, ‘Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John’— although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— he left Judea and started back to Galilee. But he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’

 Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’ The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am he, the one who is speaking to you.’

 Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, ‘What do you want?’ or, ‘Why are you speaking with her?’ Then the woman left her water-jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, ‘Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?’ They left the city and were on their way to him.

 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, ‘Rabbi, eat something.’ But he said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ So the disciples said to one another, ‘Surely no one has brought him something to eat?’ Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, “Four months more, then comes the harvest”? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, “One sows and another reaps.” I sent you to reap that for which you did not labour. Others have laboured, and you have entered into their labour.’

 Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I have ever done.’ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there for two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world.’

iconographers at work--Ayman is the seated man on the right.

Pentecost icon in progress

Eight years ago around this time, I left my classroom at the Coptic Cathedral in Cairo and went upstairs to a room I’d heard about but never seen: the icon workshop. The windows were open though it was chilly outside, and half a dozen people were scattered around tables, huddled over panels with varying states of images drawn or painted on them. In this room, artists carried on a centuries-old tradition of putting theology into image. Contrary to popular protestant belief, icons are not objects of worship, they are windows to the divine. When we look at an icon, it is supposed to direct our attention to God, and to open a new avenue for us to experience God’s presence and story. The artists who make icons are not called painters, they are called iconographers—literally icon writers. They write God’s story into every image. At the Coptic Orthodox icon workshop, they begin with a pencil drawing, then add colored paint, and then finally they painstakingly apply tiny pieces of gold leaf until the story shimmers off the panel.

The most common icons are of course of Jesus by himself, often holding a scroll or a book. The holy family is also a common scene, and in Egypt, an especially popular image is of the flight to Egypt, complete with pyramids and palm trees in the background. Lots of other stories also make great icons, of course: the crucifixion, Pentecost, Old Testament prophets.

When I went into the workshop, I was hoping to get a traditional Coptic icon of a woman other than Mary. As I looked at the pieces in their varied states of work, and flipped through the book of traditional images, I started to despair a bit. Not a single woman to be found, besides the Virgin. But then, on the next to last page of the book, I happened upon an icon depicting this story, of the Samaritan woman at the well. I immediately knew it was perfect—what better image for the office of a soon-to-be-preacher than that of the first female preacher of the gospel? When I told Ayman, whom I had commissioned to write my icon, what I wanted, he hesitated and then asked why I would want an icon of a woman who was a sinner?

My Arabic was not good enough to explain to him that nowhere in the story does it say she was a sinner. But it was good enough to explain that I wanted an icon of the woman who first told people the good news of Jesus and brought people to see him for themselves. He was unconvinced, but he took the commission, and a few months later I went upstairs after class once again, to pick up my shiny new icon. Ever since, I have looked at it every day and prayed for the courage to go out and meet Jesus, to come back and tell what I have seen, and to encourage others to go out and meet him themselves.

The idea that she was a horrible sinner, or a prostitute, or in some way an outcast shamed by her community, persists even though it is not written in the text. In fact, this is one of the few stories where there is no mention of sin or forgiveness at all. Instead we have here a woman who continually pushes on Jesus’ answers, asking more and more questions, refusing to go away until she understands. Here we have a woman who is so excited by the encounter she has had that she leaves her jar by the well when she runs back to town. Here we have a woman whose story is so compelling that her whole town comes out to the well to see for themselves. Here we have a woman who refuses to keep her God-moment to herself.

There’s no juicy sex scandal in this story, the way John writes it. When Jesus says she’s had five husbands, that does not imply that she’s been unfaithful—women did not have the right to leave a husband, nor any standing in the community without a man to protect and provide for them. Instead it implies that her husbands have divorced her or died, and now she lives with another male family member who offers her protection from being used yet again.

The real scandal in this story is actually much simpler. But it’s only obvious if we think about last week’s reading too. Last week we heard the story of Nicodemus, a Pharisee—which means he was a legal expert and a leader in the religious community. Nicodemus comes to see Jesus at midnight, under cover of darkness. In the course of their conversation, Nicodemus never understands, and his questions lead him deeper into his own circles of confusion. He goes away disappointed, with the words of Jesus following him: “this is the judgment, that the light was coming into the world and the people preferred darkness.” Now here, in the very next chapter, is a woman who meets Jesus at noon, the lightest point of the day. In her conversation with Jesus, she probes a little deeper until she understands, and then she immediately goes away to tell the others to “come and see.”

Nicodemus the leader comes at night and goes away in the darkness. The foreign woman comes at high noon and brings others into the light. Here is the real scandal—that the woman (a woman!) who represents all that is hated in Jewish culture is the one who lives in the light and brings others to see.

But, just as in our culture today, while scandal sells, it is not the whole point of this story. There are at least two other pieces of this gospel puzzle.

painter: Lavinia Fontana,
16th century Italian,
at the Museo e Gallerie Nazionale di Capodimonte,
Naples, Italy
Love how Jesus rolls his eyes, LOL.

One piece is this: she asks questions, and keeps asking—and she really listens to Jesus’ responses. I don’t know about you, but I’m often more like Nicodemus—I ask God my question and then wait to hear the answer I want. But this Samaritan woman asks, and then follows up, and keeps in the conversation, even when surely either she or Jesus must have wanted to just roll their eyes and give up…and through this conversation she ends up knowing Jesus for who he really is, just as he knows her for who she really is. What an amazing promise for the rest of us who have lots of questions!

The second piece is the crucial one: The woman’s encounter with Jesus doesn’t end at the well. Sure, she could have kept coming back, hoping to find him here again, maybe she’d sing the same song as she walked, or say the same words when she got there, or sit in the same spot every week, all the while enjoying the memory of the previous encounter while not wanting to push her faith on others. But she runs off and tells everyone she sees that she has met a man who just might be the Messiah.

Notice that she doesn’t say “I’ve found the answer to where we should worship” even though that was the question that had kept Jews and Samaritans apart for centuries. She doesn’t say “I met a nice young man who seems to know a lot about his field of study.” She doesn’t say “I’ve figured it out, listen to me.” No arrogance or even certainty here. Instead she says “I encountered someone…I think he’s the Messiah…come and see.”

She offers her experience, and invites others to have an experience.

That is the woman I want to be. She loves to tell the story, to anyone who will listen. Hopefully it is the kind of disciple you want to be as well. This is the core of the scary words “evangelism” and “testimony”—If you see something, say something. When we see the movement of the Spirit, say so. When we sense the presence of God, describe the moment. When we see Jesus in the face of another, share the story. Not to give an answer, not to tell someone they are going to hell, not to insist that everyone see or feel or understand the way we do, but to invite them to look for themselves, to ask for themselves, to know and be known for themselves. Evangelism and Testimony mean simply to say “Here’s what I have seen. Will you come and see too?”

Take a moment to think about the most recent time you have experienced God’s presence, or seen Jesus, or felt the movement of the Spirit.

Now that you have that moment in your mind, take just a moment and turn to someone seated near you and tell them about it, briefly.

And now that you’ve practiced, be on the lookout this week for a chance to tell that experience to someone else, and invite them to come and see what God can do.

sing: I Love to Tell The Story

May it be so. Amen.

Holy Disruption--a sermon for 19 January 2014

Rev. Teri Peterson

PCOP

Holy Disruption

John 2.13-25

19 January 2014, NL 4-20

 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’ His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’ The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

 When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone.

As many of you know, this fall we began using the Narrative Lectionary. That means that we read, essentially in order, through the broad arc of the scripture story throughout the year. We started with Genesis in September, and moved through some major Old Testament characters, then into the prophets, and now we find ourselves in the New Testament. This year we read from the gospel according to John, in order, until Easter.

There are lots of things that make John a different gospel than the other three. Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell lots of the same stories and record the same sayings of Jesus, while John’s perspective is different. In John, we get no Christmas story, no sermon on the mount, no Last Supper, no praying in the garden of Gethsemane, no thieves on the cross next door. In John, we hear Jesus say things not mentioned before, like “I am the Good Shepherd” and “I am the resurrection and the life” and “I give you a new commandment—that you love one another as I have loved you.” In John, we meet all kinds of characters no one else mentions—the woman at the well, Lazarus, the disciple Nathaniel, Nicodemus, and the unnamed beloved disciple. And in John, the order of things is different. So while Matthew, Mark, and Luke write Jesus’ active ministry into one year, culminating in the trip to Jerusalem for Passover that led to his death, John writes of three years that Jesus and the disciples traveled, learned, taught, and ministered together. Which means that when we hear the words “The Passover was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem” today, we have to remind ourselves that this is not the Passover of Holy Week, but rather the Passover two years before.

It’s weird to read this story of Jesus’ Temple Tantrum, as I like to call it, at the very beginning of his ministry. So far we’ve seen him gather a few disciples and turn water into wine. In many ways, this is the first very public thing he does, as opposed to how the other gospel writers place it as one of the last things he does.

You might be wondering what difference this all makes? Well, for one thing, it means that our journey through this season of Epiphany and the season of Lent will be different, because we’ll be reading the gospel in order rather than pulling pieces from here and there and moving them around to fit the season. But for another thing, it’s important for John to place this story at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, because John is all about revealing who Jesus is—and the difficulty that arises because we cannot see.

So Jesus bursts on the scene, quite literally. And he does know how to make an entrance. In the midst of the bustling holiday season, when everyone understands the tradition and really wants it to go just so, when sacred animal specialists and currency exchange officers do their most robust business, Jesus comes in and disrupts the flow and ruins everything. Imagine if someone showed up the day before Christmas and shredded all the wrapping paper and poured out the eggnog. Or if someone went around and unplugged all the car batteries during Thanksgiving dinner, forcing us to stay home rather than go shopping.

Basically, Jesus walks into the center of religious reality, and disrupts everything with God’s reality instead. He looks around and sees that we’ve lost the point in the midst of all the trappings. Rather than experiencing God’s transforming power through the Temple rituals, we were insisting on the rules of the rituals. Rather than seeing our part in the story God has been telling since the beginning of time, we trapped the story in the Sunday School hour. Rather than coming together as the body of Christ to praise God, we focus on our individual connection with God, keeping others literally at arms length as we spread around the sanctuary sitting where we always have. Rather than wondering what pleases God in worship, or even what might help someone else in the room see God, we complain about what we don’t like. And so Jesus says: “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” These words make no sense, because of course this is how things are. What on earth can he possibly be talking about? This Temple has taken 46 years and we’re not done yet, and how do you think we pay for that? Anyway, this procedure has been in place since before you were born, so of course we’re going to keep doing it. If you want to say otherwise, do a miracle right now and prove we should listen to you.

Sound familiar?

One of my favorite sayings is that the seven last words of the church are “we’ve never done it that way before.” Or sometimes “we’ve always done it that way before.”

Don’t get me wrong—tradition is important. Telling our story matters. Knowing who we are and where we’ve been matters. But that is important because it gives us a clue about who we will be and where we are going. We’re part of a trajectory, and if we stop that trajectory in the days we liked best, we’ll miss the days that God has planned.

It seems to be human nature to construct systems that work for us, to set up rules and boundaries designed to control every detail. We like to feel in control, and that’s one way we do it—by naming who’s in and out, what’s good and bad, what matters and doesn’t matter. We do it by having committees and boards, because that’s the way things are done. We do it by insisting that our preferences are the right way, whether it’s music in worship or the way meeting agendas are organized. It can be hard to see outside our reality, whether that’s looking at another culture, or another family, or a holy disruption like the one Jesus brings.

And make no mistake—he does disrupt what we think is real. Every time. Because, as John will show us throughout the gospel, God’s reality made visible in Jesus is so much bigger, so much more beautiful, so much more inclusive, so much more radical than anything we can really live with. The holy disruption may not always be as drastic as driving the animals out of the Temple and turning over tables and pews. But this is what John tells us right at the beginning of the gospel: something’s coming. Keep your eyes open, and you just might see God walk in. But be ready, because for all we say we want to experience God’s presence, it’s entirely possible we might not like it when it happens.

So often we expect that having a God-moment will be comforting, peaceful, hopeful, nice and light. And that does happen. But what about when the God-moment turns everything upside down, speaks in cryptic quadruple entendre, and leaves us angry and confused? What about the God-moment that disrupts everything we thought we knew? What about the God moments we can see in people like Martin Luther King Jr, or the other people who rallied for civil rights against popular opinion? What about the prophets, both biblical and modern, who make us squirm as they point out how our privileged place in the system we have set up blinds us to the ways we hurt others? What about when God whispers a call we don’t want to hear?

In other words, what about when Jesus waltzes into the middle of everything we hold dear, and says “hey, look over here!” Because that’s what this is about: where we look. That’s why John puts this episode at the beginning of the gospel: because right off the bat, he’s breaking open our blinders and asking us to look—really look—at Jesus. Not at all the things we want Jesus to be, not at the ways we have insisted people interact with religion, not at ourselves and our desires, but at Jesus. In him we see Light. In him we see Truth. In him we see Love. In him we see what is Real, not what we have set up as real. In him we see God.

May we look, and may we see, even if it makes us uncomfortable.

Amen.

in the doing--a sermon for 12 January 2014

Rev. Teri Peterson

PCOP

In the Doing

John 2.1-11

12 January 2014, NL4-19

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ Now standing there were six stone water-jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, ‘Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.’ So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.’ Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

This is my kind of miracle! Not only is water turned into the best wine ever, but it all happens so quickly and easily—one minute, everything’s a disaster, the next minute, everything’s not just fine, but amazing. From panic to party just like that (finger snap).

I suspect many of us long for a miracle. And while perhaps we usually confine ourselves to verbalizing our wish for healing miracles, the reality is that we want this kind of miracle too—the one where the deficit becomes an amazing surplus. Where is Jesus when we have a need, when we’re in crisis, when we don’t know what to do next? It seems like so many of us are running out of wine. Churches close because they don’t have enough people or money to keep doing ministry. Children go hungry in the richest country in the world. People are dying in the streets of our cities. The social safety net has holes bigger than whole families. Parents are selling their children into slavery to feed the rest of the family. Does Jesus not care about this? Does the lack we are experiencing not matter? It’s not as if no one has taken the role of Jesus’ mother, letting him know about the problem. Millions of people have prayed for help, and still people don’t have access to clean water, still the pledges don’t cover the salaries, still the shelter is overflowing on Wednesday night. I think it’s safe to say God knows. And I just cannot believe that God’s response has been “yeah…maybe later.”

We need a miracle.

So the part of me that’s looking for answers goes back to this story of water turning into wine, looking for just what happened. And it almost seems that nothing happened…or at least, it’s not clear what happened when.

There’s no big ta-da moment, no fireworks, no blind person jumping up and down “I can see!” In fact, no one except the servant who carries the “water that had become wine” to the chief steward knows what has happened. It was all behind the scenes.

Of course, when we look behind the scenes in any situation, we often find that’s where the real magic happens. Behind the scenes there is scurrying and working, there’s blood, sweat, and tears. This story is no exception—behind the scenes we find servants of a panicked family running back and forth between the well and the outskirts of the party, carrying bucket after bucket of water, for no apparent reason. All the servants know is that the family is about to endure unthinkably humiliation for being unprepared for the wedding, and that some guy told them to fill up the purification jars.

Jars that, between them, hold somewhere around 150 gallons of water.

So back and forth they go, filling buckets, emptying them, filling buckets, emptying them. Trying not to spill in their haste, because every spill means another trip to the well, another precious minute lost in the race to keep people from noticing the wine has run out. They fill the jars up to the brim, still with no idea why or how this will help the situation—simply trusting Jesus and his mother, they obey the request even though the outcome is unknown.

That, right there, sounds like the real miracle: they obey the request even though the outcome is unknown, and even though it’s a whole bunch of really boring work with no recognition or reward.

I wonder if that’s where we might find our miracle too. Not in waiting for God to do something about all our problems, but in obeying God’s call even when we don’t know what to expect, and even when it’s not very glamorous.

In other words, the miracle happens in the doing.

In this case, it was an easy yet boring request: fill these jars with 150 gallons of water. It was labor intensive work, but not fun. And they did it, and somewhere along the way, it wasn’t just water anymore.

How often might our calling be, essentially, to carry water? Back and forth, over and over. Eugene Peterson called it “a long obedience in the same direction.”

Obedience is a hard word. We don’t like to use it much, because it implies a hierarchy that most of us don’t want any part of. This is the land of opportunity, not the land of obedience, after all. Or it feels like something we train our pets to do, not something expected of us. Something in us rebels at the idea of submitting to another authority and obeying what we are told. And yet that’s exactly what God asks—that we obey, that we follow. And the calling is simultaneously simple and impossible: love God, love your neighbor, love your enemy. Not in feeling, but in action. Carry the water. Or, as Jesus’ mother says: do whatever he tells you.

Imagine if the servants had first said “why do we need to fill all of them? what’s the point of dealing with water? maybe there’s a way we can do this without all having to walk back and forth. how is this going to help the situation? why are you preparing for a ritual that’s already been completed? do you know how far it is to the well? did you see how he spilled the water? why can’t she just do it the way I do, it’s more efficient.”

But none of that seems to have happened. Jesus said “fill these jars.” The servants filled them to the brim. All that hard work, glossed over. No one likes their work to go unrecognized, which makes it even harder for us to obey. We want to be part of something amazing, and we forget that sometimes the ordinary miracle is just as awe-inspiring as the flashy show. I wonder if there would have been any miracle at all, if not for their obedience? The miracle will be in the doing.

On the individual level, this is easy to conceptualize even if it’s hard to do. We might obey by literally carrying water by shoveling the walkways and stairs before PADS opens Wednesday night, as Bill and Dave did on New Year’s Day. Or maybe it’s metaphorical water, making the same phone call to the same legislator to ask for the same compassion for those in need. Our water carrying could be simply showing up, week after week, extending a hand to welcome people to this space. It could be writing notes to those who visit every week, as Bev does. It could be offering a listening ear to a coworker or a friend, even one who talks too much. Our obedience moment may be difficult—like to stop someone from gossiping, however fun it might be for us, and whatever the social cost. We may be called, like French protestants in the mountains during World War II, to risk our own lives to shelter another. We may be called to forgive someone who has deeply wounded us. We may be called to stand up and speak for those whose voices are silenced. Or it may be easier—to offer a helping hand in cleaning up after coffee hour, or to join Pam in going to Deerfield bakery every Thursday afternoon. We may be called to be the ordinary heroes who live as Christ-followers in a world that prefers darkness.

It’s dangerous to use the word hero—it lets us off the hook, because surely we’re not heroes. They do something extraordinary, something we could never do. We’re just everyday people going about everyday lives…and there, in the ordinary things of everyday life, with the servants who are the heroes of this story, is exactly where Jesus’ first miracle happened.

And that miracle wasn’t just saving a party, though that is an important aspect of the story. After all, God desires that we live with joy. Part of what happened here is that Jesus brought the fun and merriment back. But the bigger part of this miracle is that the jars for the purification rituals, the huge and visible symbols that shaped the way people understood their relationship with God, symbols of the way things had always been, even though it didn’t lead to the transformation God desires—these symbols were dry…and then they were overflowing with the best God has to offer, they were turned into a new thing that made their old use impossible, and that grace brought joy and wonder beyond imagining.

In between the dry and the overflowing was obedience, and it was in the doing that the miracle happened.

That’s the kind of miracle we’d all love to see. Which means that’s the kind of obedience we need. Not just on an individual level, but as a whole church. So what is PCOP’s water to carry? What direction should our obedience take?

I don’t have the answer to that—I have lots of ideas, and I’m sure you do too. Our task is to discern—to listen for God’s call amidst the clamor of our own voices and wants and fears. Perhaps looking through the lens of our eye-words will help. Praying for the church, talking to one another about what we see and hear, and living our faith as individuals will all help too, as we seek God’s will for this community. Who knows, we may even find a miracle along the way.

May it be so.

Amen.