Behind the Stone

The Holy Gospel According to St. Luke, the 24^th Chapter

On the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

This past week I was sitting at the dining room table, working on my second or third cup of coffee… checking Facebook and emails like I do most mornings.  Kelly was home, sitting behind me on the couch and she said, “Are you making that knocking noise?”  I was on my third cup of coffee and my leg sometimes bounces a little when I’m nearly fully caffeinated, so I said, “Maybe.  I don’t know.”  

The next day I was sitting on the couch beside her.  It was the afternoon and the caffeine had all worn off and that knocking sound happened again.  It wasn’t my leg after all!  But now it was a mystery!  I like a mystery.  I like figuring things out.  I like fixing things.  So I listened.  It was coming from the basement.  I went down.  Looked around. Then I saw a little finch fly up to the small basement window and peck at the window.  That little finch was really angry with that “other” finch he saw reflected in that window who was cutting into his territory!  So, I went outside and covered up the window so he could stop attacking that rotten, interloping finch and focus on nest building and the other things finches focus on in Spring.  Mystery solved!  Problem fixed!  Solution found!  Man!  That felt good!  

Just one week earlier it didn’t go that well.  I got a call about a person who was homeless.  They were camping.  Not for fun, but because that’s all they could do.  They had just had to move their camp and they had the help of some really good people, but now they needed to move again, because one of the truths about homelessness is that our society doesn’t mind so much if you’re homeless, but we REALLY don’t want to see it.  Somebody had seen it.  So they had to move… again.  “Where can they go?” was the call I got.  It was a mystery.  I like a mystery.  I like figuring things out.  I like fixing things.  So I listened and I thought and I called and emailed.  But I couldn’t solve it.  I couldn’t figure this one out.  I couldn’t fix it. 

I tell you those stories because the story of Jesus’s death wasn’t one that Joseph or Mary or Joanna or the other Mary could fix.  Now, this may be the first time you’ve ever thought about Easter beyond Peeps and Chocolate bunnies OR maybe it’s the 90^th time you've heard the story and thought about Easter.  Either way… first time or 90^th time… doesn’t matter… Jesus’s death is something WE can't solve or fix, no matter how well we know the story.  First time or 90^th time...  we’re all in the same boat, Jesus’s death… all death… it’s beyond our ability to fix and frankly, I don’t like it.  I don’t like unsolved mysteries or unfixed problems.  I’m not happy that when Joseph of Arimathea took Jesus’s dead body off the cross, all he could do was lay it in a tomb and roll a stone in place.  That was all he could do.  He couldn’t fix it.  I don’t like that the women who stayed to the end, even after all the men had run off, returned with spices because getting his body ready for burial was all they could do.  They couldn’t stop his death and they couldn’t undo his death.  No matter how much effort they put in, they couldn’t fix it.  I don’t like a problem that can’t be fixed.  I don’t like an unsolved mystery.  

But regardless how I feel about it, the truth of being a regular, mortal, human being is that while there is some work you and I can do to help transform the world’s brokenness into wholeness, despair into hope, illness into healing, addiction into sobriety, scarcity into abundance, fear into courage, death into life… the fullness, the completion, the wholeness of ANY of that kind of transformation is simply and annoyingly beyond us!  

And I don’t like it!  I want to fix it.  I want to figure it out!  But in the end, a full “fix” of any of that IS beyond us.  But here’s the Good News of Easter:  Even when we’ve done all we can… when we’ve reached the end, the bottom, that pitch, dark, hopeless place… when we can’t do anything more… when the ONLY thing we have left to do is gather some spices, put whatever or whoever is beyond our fixing into the tomb and roll a stone in place… the Good News of Easter is that God continues to be at work behind the stone!  People will fuss and fight and argue about HOW God is doing that work… is it literal or a metaphor, bodily or spiritual?  They'll say things like “atonement” and use other churchy words, but the honest folks will admit they have no idea how God works!  But for me, what REALLY matters is that God is working behind the stone... to bring healing when we get stuck in our brokenness, to bring courage when we get stuck in our fear, to bring abundance when we get stuck obsessing with scarcity, to bring us life when we get stuck in death.  

You see, God is determined to have you and me and this entire world transformed from the broken, divided, fearful, desperate and dying place it seems too often to be, into the unified, whole, interconnected, courageous, hope filled, living creation that God is insisting it become.

As disciples, God is calling you and me on this side of the stone, to be at work as the living Body of Christ… God’s hands, feet, heart and mind, walking and working like Jesus did... doing everything we can to heal the broken, bind up the wounded, feed the hungry and comfort the fearful... God is calling us to do nothing less than challenge and change the world.  But God is also reminding you and me on this Easter, just like every Easter, no matter if this is your first Easter or your ninety first, that when we get stuck in that work… and we will get stuck... even Jesus, got stuck on Good Friday.  When we can do nothing more… when we’ve done all we can and have reached the bottom and find ourselves at the end of the road, terribly and horribly stuck… this Easter, just like every Easter, God is reminding us to not lose hope, but to do what we can, even if all we can do is put it into the tomb and roll the stone in place.  BUT THEN God reminds us to hold on to the promise of Easter, because that promise is that God continues to be at work transforming all that is beyond our fixing or figuring, transforming all things from broken to whole and from death into life on the other side of that stone.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.  

Bodegas and Nard

The Holy Gospel According to St. John, the 12^th Chapter

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

The hypothesis was that the process people have used for centuries to turn wine made from European grapes into Sherry in Spain could mask or eliminate the less desirable flavor characteristics of wine made from the native Muscadine grapes of North Carolina.  In Spain, where true Sherry is from, they make wine, fortify it by adding additional wine spirits and then age it in large oak casks in the hot, Spanish sun in large warehouses called Bodegas because, let’s face it, “Bodegas” sounds way more romantic than “warehouses.”    

THAT was the hypothesis.  Next, the hypothesis was tested.  Wine was made, a small scale replica of a Bodega was made and the telltale flavor chemicals that characterized real Sherry were measured as they developed.  In the end, Sherry was made, but the hypothesis… that the sherry flavors could mask the less desirable flavor characteristics of native North Carolina grapes, was proven false.  The skunky, funky flavor of Scupernog Muscadines would not go away, no matter how many romantic, Andalusian, terms you used for the process. 

Things didn’t turn out as hoped and that was a bit of a bummer to be honest.  If it had worked, the grape growers in North Carolina might have found a new market for their grapes.  But what we did learn is that the grape growers in North Carolina shouldn’t invest their money creating a Sherry Bodega.  It also got a kid a Master’s Degree in Food Science and a job at The Coca-Cola Company where he met his future wife.  So, it wasn’t a total waste. 

Things don’t always turn out the way we’d like or think they should.  When Jesus showed up in Bethany at Lazarus’ house, nobody thought things were going the way they should.  Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead and THAT had become the final straw.  He wasn’t just annoying to the Romans and their allies any more, he was gaining a following and that was dangerous.

Nobody needed to be psychic to know what was going to happen when Jesus walked the one and a half miles from Bethany to Jerusalem.  When he walked in, they would kill him.  What was up for grabs in Lazarus’ dining room that evening was not what would happen to Jesus, but what would the folks gathered there DO with the real, devastating, disappointing, overwhelmingly sad fact that things were not going to end up as they had hoped or expected.  Their hypothesis had been that Jesus would become the King of Kings and Lord of Lords!  Kick out the Romans and rule like King David, ushering in an era of peace where swords got beat into plows and spears transformed into pruning hooks and everyone had time to sit under their own fig tree!  But now it was clear.  It wasn’t going to be like that.  The question that night was how would they react now that things didn't go as they expected or hoped?

Today’s Gospel shows us four ways folks can react when things go terribly, horribly wrong.  Option A:  Lazarus’ reaction…  just sit there at the table in stunned or accepting silence… we’ll never really know which.  Option B:  Martha’s reaction…  run from the truth, stay busy and push the thought from your head.  Option C:  Judas’ reaction… Try and change the subject from Jesus’ obvious, impending death to something else… anything else.  Option D:  Mary’s reaction… Lean into the truth… even though the truth is horribly painful.   

The “right” answer we’re meant to learn to pick from this lesson is what Mary chose, but why is THAT the RIGHT answer?  What she did was strange… She went into the bedroom and found a jar of perfume.  She came to Jesus and didn’t anoint him on the head, as you would the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, but anointed his feet as you would a body for burial and wiped it from his feet with her hair in an overwhelmingly intimate gesture and the house was filled with both aroma of his coming death and her intimate, deeply felt grief.

Jesus knew what going to Jerusalem meant.  The hypothesis that Jesus would become the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and rule from Jerusalem for a thousand years was proved false. They all knew it.  By returning to Bethany, Jesus was not simply acknowledging that reality, but leaning into it… leaning into The Way of the Cross and one of the most annoying things about The Way of the Cross is that it ends in death… real, terrible, painful death… and Jesus was leaning right into it and everyone in the room knew it… everyone in the room saw it… but only Mary chose to lean right into it WITH him.

I don't think she was thinking that night that real transformation only happens through death and resurrection... that real change requires giving up our own agenda... that the promised land only comes after a long walk in the wilderness... I think the only thing she knew in that dining room was that Jesus was determined to walk the path to the Cross... and in faith and love and devotion for Jesus, she decided to walk with him on that path. 

You may have noticed that even here in Maine, things STILL don’t always go the way we expect or hope they will go.  The Way to the Kingdom of God, STILL takes unexpected turns in the wilderness and the story is STILL strewn with unexpected and frankly, unwanted plot twists even here… thousands of miles away from Bethany and thousands of years later.  And you and me… we STILL face the exact same choice that Lazarus, Mary, Martha and Judas had in Lazarus’ dining room when things don’t go as expected or how we might have hoped... We can sit in stunned silence, run from the truth, try to change the subject or lean into it, acknowledging the pain and walking forward in faith.  

We do, however, have something those four didn’t have.  We, unlike them, live on this side of Easter.  Even in the midst of Lent, we hold onto the promise of Easter each Sunday… the Sundays in Lent aren’t counted as part of the 40 days you know.  So each Sunday we remember that Easter really does follow every Good Friday and so we proclaim the mystery of faith… Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.  And with that promise, with bread and wine nourishing us for the journey, we have a bit more strength to choose like Mary chose and lean into the path that Jesus is walking even when that path isn’t the one hoped we would be walking and isn’t at all the way we had expected to go. 

You may have noticed that things have not gone as hypothesized here at 209.  The experiment has gone in a way we didn’t expect.  The author of the story has added in a plot twist and yet, Jesus continues to walk the Way of the Cross, continues to call us to follow, to be transformed, and continues to ask us to TRUST that the path he walks, even when the path leads through pain and tears, disappointment and grief, doesn’t end in a tomb.  The path Jesus calls us to walk continues THROUGH the wilderness, through the hurt and through death itself and into an abundant, resurrected, transformed life that is more than we could ever ask or imagine.  Amen.    

Scraping and Grinding

The Holy Gospel According to St. Luke, the 4th Chapter

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. 

The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’” Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

It would make a good movie.  A Passion prequel.  The rough and bedraggled Jesus slowly making his way through the empty wilderness, just barely hanging on, starved almost to death and then, just when we thought it could get no worse, the devil appears.  It looks like the end for our hero, but then…! 

It sounds like a great movie and because it sounds like a great movie it’s a bit hard to think how this sort of situation could ever happen to us.  It’s not likely that you or I would go 40 days without eating.  Even 40 hours… HECK 40 minutes would be a lot!  It’s not likely that you or I would find ourselves in the wilderness, alone and cut off from the world, and it's REALLY not likely that some dripping devilish monster would pop out and force us to remember Bible passages in order to win the day.

It’s not likely to happen, at least not like that.  But you know; this church, The Church @ 209 is the body of Christ.  We as a congregation aren't just called to be like Jesus, we ARE The Body of Christ!  209 is full of the Holy Spirit just like Jesus was at the beginning of this lesson.  We each individually received that gift in the waters of our Baptisms BUT we affirm our baptisms TOGETHER as one Body.  Individually, we know about wilderness times, the empty times… the painful times.  The times when we feel like we are lost, forgotten; times when we feel as empty as the desert. 

But together, as one Body, as the Church @ 209, we also know what it feels like to be in the wilderness as a community of faith.  It feels like THIS!  THIS is not like where we were before!  THIS is not a time of kittens, rainbows and unicorns!  THIS is spiky, prickly, dry and empty feeling.  It isn’t at all comfortable to any one of us, although we’d never all agree on what or why or who is making it all so damn uncomfortable.

It’s wilderness time.  We don’t need IMAX, 3D or Dolby surround sound booming down on us from a big screen to know what the wilderness is like.  We’re living it!   Now, I’ll grant you that there isn’t a red suited, pitchfork wielding, horned beast staring us in the face, but that doesn’t make it any LESS the wilderness and it doesn’t mean that we aren’t facing the exact same temptations in our wilderness that Jesus faced in his… because we are. 

The devil knew exactly who Jesus was.  That was not the question, Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God; even the devil confessed that.  And the devil knows exactly who we are too.  We are The Church @ 209.  We’re an experiment of four different congregations trying to figure if there could possibly be a way to serve and live out our calling together as ONE, in a world that is infinitely different than it was just 30 years ago.  We’re the Body of Christ!  And the devil’s happy to admit to that too! 

The real question for Jesus was not WHETHER he was God’s Son.  The REAL question for him was HOW would he live out being God’s Son… and the real question for us is not WHETHER we are the Body of Christ… we are!  The REAL question for us is HOW will these four congregations live out being the Body of Christ. 

Temptation number one.  Get the bread.  For Jesus the temptation was to give in and make himself a loaf of bread out of stone.  He was hungry.  He had the power to make abundance out of scarcity.  The temptation for Jesus was would he choose to use that power to feed his own very real, very deeply felt personal need OR wait and use that power later to multiply loaves and fishes in order to feed OTHERS before himself. 

Temptation number two.  Flex the muscle.  The temptation here was for Jesus to make things right in the world.  The world was a mess!  The temptation was to make the world, manipulate the world, to force the world into the way it was created to work with violence, intimidation and manipulation OR would Jesus choose instead to use the power of self sacrificing LOVE to transform the world to work the way God wanted it to work. 

Temptation three.  Make the cover.  The temptation Jesus had here was to jump off the Temple, get the angels to save him and cheat death in a spectacular, headline grabbing way. Jesus would make the cover of the Jerusalem Times!  He’d get 24 hour coverage on CNN and after that, everyone would listen to him… everyone would follow him.  OR would Jesus choose not just to cheat death for himself, but to DEFEAT death, once and for all for all of creation.  All three temptations Jesus faced were choices between using the gifts God had given him for himself or using those gifts in ways that were larger than himself. 

When it comes to our temptations, there’s no literal demonic pitchfork poised in “Temptation mode”, aimed at The Church @ 209, but we as the Body of Christ, are in the wilderness… right there facing the same temptations that Jesus faced.  We have been led into this wilderness by the Spirit and are being asked some very important questions.  NOT, “Are you the Body of Christ” because we are!  But, “HOW will we be the Body of Christ together?”  This season of reflection, this season of wilderness time, this season of Lent is calling us into that difficult, painful, fear-filled question. 

Temptations like that would be a lot easier to handle if they didn’t happen in the wilderness when we are worn, when we feel divided, alone, scared and hungry.  Temptations would be a lot easier to handle if they came from a literal guy in a red suit with horns and a pitchfork.  But the Holy Spirit is smarter than that.  The Spirit knows that when we’re full, safe, getting our way and in control we have just about ZERO chance of allowing ourselves to be transformed by God.  That’s why the Spirit DRIVES us, like the Spirit drove Jesus, out into the wilderness so that we might be broken open with hunger, insecurity and fear, because it is there in that brokenness… there in that wilderness time… there on the cross and HERE and NOW in our wilderness, that we have the same opportunity Jesus had to be transformed.  

Jesus was led into the wilderness by the Spirit and Jesus chose to allow God to hone him into the Messiah God wanted him to be.  It was painful, and happened by grinding him on the devil’s stone-hard heart for 40 days.  This Lent we find ourselves led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness facing that same question...   Will we allow God to hone us into the Body of Christ God is calling us to be?  Are we willing to be transformed even though it means some painful scraping and grinding?  This Lent our question is HOW will we be the Body of Christ?  Amen.

Two Ways to Get Stoned

The Holy Gospel According To St. Luke, the 4^th Chapter

Then Jesus began to say to all in the synagogue in Nazareth, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’ ” And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet

Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” 

When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

There are two ways to get stoned.  STOP.  Let’s stay focused.  We’re not in Colorado.  SO, if someone is going to be stoned TO DEATH, with EARTH-TYPE stones, you can either hold the person still and throw the rocks at them OR you can keep the rocks still and throw the person at the rocks.  The crowd in today’s Gospel, by the end of the story, were focused on the second method.  They were pushing Jesus to the edge of a cliff, intent on throwing him at the rocks at 32 feet per second squared.  The question is, what made these folks from Nazareth, so angry that they went from being “amazed” one minute, to wanting to kill him just a couple of verses later? 

I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard of Nazareth my whole life, so I always assumed it must be some kind of big, old city.  But the reality is that Nazareth was a big, old city in the same way New Limerick, New Sweden and Newburg are big "new" cities here in Maine.  Hallowell, it turns out, would be a sprawling, out of control, urban jungle compared to Nazareth.  So Nazareth was tiny AND Nazareth was out in the middle of nowhere AND it was surrounded by all sorts of non-Jewish, foreign type people AND to add insult in injury Nazareth had a reputation.  Remember when Philip, one of Jesus’s first disciples, went to tell his friend Nathanial about this guy, Jesus of Nazareth… remember Nathanial’s first reaction?  “Nazareth!?  Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” 

So Nazareth was a small, out in the boondocks, isolated, keep to themselves, backwards Jewish town with a pretty checkered reputation.  It was the kind of town where everybody can and does know everybody.  So they knew Jesus and they had for twenty years.  Jesus was their hometown boy!  So what was it that made this crowd of people, who knew Jesus better than anybody else on earth, go from singing the praises of their hometown hero to homicidal?

I think two things happened that sent the crowd over the edge, so to speak.  First, he told them those two stories about how God had worked in the past.  He told them the story of how, during a horrible drought and famine, God didn’t send Elijah the prophet to any of the home town people, but sent Elijah and the miracle of an oil jug and a flour jar that never went empty to some non-Jewish, foreign woman!  Then he told them that other story of when, even though there were tons of home town type folks with leprosy in Israel, God chose to cure Naaman… a SYRIAN... God, caring about a Syrian... what was God thinking! 

I think the SECOND thing that happened was that in the first part of this story we read last week, Jesus came to town and unrolled the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and read, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for prisoners, sight for the blind, the oppressed set free and the year of the Lord’s favor.”  THIS, Jesus told them had been fulfilled in their hearing. 

You see, I think it was his own hometown friends and neighbors who had their blindness suddenly lifted.  Sight for THEIR blindness had been restored in their hearing and with that new sight, they could see that those two stories meant that all the good stuff… all the miracles and signs Jesus had done out there for THOSE people, weren’t going to happen here for the people who had known him the longest. 

They could see that Jesus didn’t have a better, more powerful, more grace-filled set of miracles, signs and wonders hidden in his robe pocket, saved up for the home town crowd!  NO, they saw… REALLY saw... that Jesus had given it ALL away... to THOSE people… those Samaritans, sinners, tax collectors and even to that stinking Roman soldier’s kid, for God’s sake!  He didn’t have ANYTHING special for them!  He had lavished it all on THEIR poor and on THEIR prisoners and on who knows what kind of the world’s refuse!  He had given away a year of the Lord’s favor to the likes of Syrians… SYRIANS for God’s sake... and who knows who else from who knows where!  People who should really just go back to where they came from because JESUS WAS THEIRS!  Jesus didn’t belong to all those faithless foreigners!  Jesus belonged to THEM!  But apparently Jesus had forgotten where he came from and had just GIVEN it all away.

Their sight had been restored alright and what they could see when their eyes were opened was something they hated with a white hot passion!  Jesus had given God’s love and God’s grace and God’s favor to OTHERS and left all of them with NOTHING!  Nothing but Joseph’s boy standing there with empty pockets!  Just Jesus.  He had miracles and wonders for THOSE people, but it was just Jesus empty handed for the home town crowd!  They felt like they had been cheated and so they went to throw him out of town the fastest way they could… right over the cliff.

So that’s what they saw.  Now the question is, do you see what they didn’t?  They saw a part of the picture with their new, opened eyes, but they still missed something… the most important something actually.  You see, Jesus did give away all those miracles, signs, healings and feedings.  Their mistake was that they thought that Jesus had given EVERYTHING away to those “others”… those “foreigners”… those “people of other faiths” and “people of no faith at all” and that standing there with empty pockets, Jesus had NOTHING left for them… the home town boy with none of those shiny presents for his home town family and friends.  But they missed it.  Literally standing right there in front of their faces, they missed it. 

It’s true they didn’t get water turned into wine, walking on water or feeding five thousand.  It’s true they didn’t see the dead raised, the lame walking or the deaf hearing.  All they got was Jesus and they missed it.  They were looking for PRESENTS but instead they got Jesus's PRESENCE and in that they had EVERYTHING!  Jesus IS everything!  You and I… we have that same gift!  Do you see it?  Jesus's presence.  We go around and around every week saying “The Body of Christ, given for you!” so that we all might see it… that we too have EVERYTHING!  We have Jesus!  We may not get the miracles and signs the way we’d love to see.  We may not get water turned into wine at our weddings, but each week, we get Jesus… each week we get everything… EVERYTHING… God with us... all we need and infinitely more! 

With Jesus… we have EVERYTHING... with Jesus that prophecy has been fulfilled in our presence too... we have been freed from the prison of scarcity and selfishness to join with Jesus in sharing God’s grace and love with those beyond our home town… with foreigners, captives, prisoners, refugees and people of every color and faith or no faith at all.  Because we have Jesus… because we have EVERYTHING... we have more than enough.  

In Jesus's presence, our eyes are open.  We can see God’s love and God’s grace showering down beyond every boarder, label and box people build and defend.  In Jesus's presence the captives have been set free!  In Jesus's presence WE are free to slip through the angry, hate filled crowds that fume and foam in our world... we are free to slip through with Jesus and share God's infinite and unconditional love and grace with all the world.  We have EVERYTHING... we have Jesus.  Amen.

Gallo Pinto (Costa Rican Beans and Rice)

Gallo Pinto is literally translated as "spotted rooster" but it’s also the nick name for Costa Rican beans and rice.  Here is my attempt (with apologies to my Tico friends out there!) after finding a key ingredient... Salsa Lizano on Amazon.  This is often a breakfast dish.  I like it with a fried egg on top, both for the irony of an egg on top of “spotted rooster” but also because the yolk soaks in as you eat.  You can also add a little sour cream to your serving if you’d like.  Pura Vida!

Ingredients

3 C         Cooked rice, leftover is preferred 

1 Can       Black beans including liquid

1             Red Pepper

1             Medium Onion 

2            Cloves Garlic 

¼ C         Salsa Lizano (add extra to taste)

¼ C        Fresh Cilantro

Instructions

Chop onion and pepper in a small dice and sauté until onion is translucent, 6-8 minutes.  Chop garlic fine and add to onion and peppers and sauté an additional 2 minutes.  Add beans with liquid from can and Salsa Lizano and simmer together 5 minutes (if you don’t have Salsa Lizano you can use Worcestershire Sauce and a half teaspoon of cumin, which I've tried and it's alright but not the same).  Stir in rice and finely chopped cilantro, heat through and serve.