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“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Mark 8: 34)

It was some 20 years after the march from Selma to Montgomery.  And a grand celebration day in Montgomery as the marchers this year remembered, and re-committed themselves to the ongoing march for civil rights.

The speaker at the podium was just about to begin the festivities, when there was a rustling at the back of the hall.  The speaker looked out. Paused.  Nodded. Smiled and said, “Welcome, George Wallace.”

He was a shadow of the man he used to be.  Confined to a wheelchair the past years after he had been shot five times in an assassination attempt.  Gray.  Tired.

As Wallace was wheeled to the front of the hall, the crowd gathered that day remembered.  Remembered the words from his first inaugural address years ago.  “Segregation now.  Segregation tomorrow.  Segregation forever.”

Remembered how he said that he would do everything in his power to prevent that first march from Selma to Montgomery.  The march that ended almost as soon as it began on the Edmund Pettus Bridge when the crowd was driven back, bloodied and wounded.  The day that came to be known as “Bloody Sunday.”

Wallace was wheeled out onto the stage.  A microphone placed in his hand,

“A lot has changed in the past 20 years.  Including me.  Today, I say, ‘Welcome to Montgomery.'”  

At the heart of this business of faith is a mysterious thing called “conversion”.  A turning around.  A seeing in a new way. What happens when we have been following, marching to the beat of a particular way and drummer, a way of seeing and being in the world, and something happens. Something changes.

We begin to see things differently.  Another way.  Maybe a way we never saw before.

George Wallace had such a conversion.  He renounced his stance on segregation. Apologized for the harm he had caused.

I wonder today how I might wake up, to get to such a place of seeing differently – without having to be shot five times?

Maybe this really is what the heart of the journey of faith is all about – the invitation to turn around and have our eyes, hearts, lives open in new ways.

Maybe the death we all need to die to is the dying of our own small ego, grasping will, and self-rightness. To let something else – a broader seeing and knowing, a deeper awareness take over the driver’s seat of our lives.

A number of years ago a book came out about the 100 Most Influential People in History.

Muhammad was #1.

Sir Isaac Newton #2.

And #3, Jesus.

When asked why Jesus was third, the author said that in his mind, Jesus had the greatest teaching, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

But the author remarked that he couldn’t give Jesus #1 because in his experience, his followers didn’t seem to believe him.

So much stands in the way of my loving.  My loving of myself, my neighbor, the stranger of the street, much less anyone I could name as my “enemy”.

My judgment.

My self-righteousness.

My opinions.

My rightness.

My self-doubt.

My fear.

My timidity.

My lack of faith.

Jesus calling and inviting me to die to what gets in the way and come and lose myself alongside him.  To be in the world in a different way.  To see and do things differently.   To deny my small, grasping self, to liberate a greater one.

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, and take up their cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:35)

It was a sunny day, a bit cool and brisk. A good day to put on an overcoat if you were going to be outside a while, as they were that day. A day not unlike last Sunday, here in Seattle. That day, 50 years ago in Selma, Alabama.

Some 600 people had set out that Sunday morning to make the long 54 mile trek to the state capital in Montgomery. To talk to Governor George Wallace about the death of their friend, Jimmie Lee Jackson, shot by a police deputy last month. To bring attention to their ongoing fight for voting rights.

The first part of the march uneventful, and as there are at such times, maybe a spring in their steps, a striding confidence, as they stepped out into the hope and fear of a new beginning, a moving forward into something calling and important.

The marchers had just walked to the outskirts of town and up on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Now, one thing you have to know about this particular bridge is that it arches in the middle and you can’t see what is on the other side until you are at the crest of the bridge.

It was only when they reached this point, here in the center of the bridge, that they saw what was before them. The line of state troopers and county posse. Horses. Billy Clubs. Whips. Canisters of tear gas.

The Gospel of Mark was written at a time when Judea was covered with crosses.

A great Jewish uprising was taking place against Rome.

Rome responded with capital punishment – nailing dissidents to crosses.

Some Judeans promoted using violence to overthrow Rome.

Others remembered Jesus words, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, and take up their cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:35).

To follow Jesus in his way of nonviolence – even as it might lead to their own humiliation and death.

It was these early followers of Jesus that the marchers in Selma remembered.

These early followers that others remember today in the ongoing struggles for dignity, respect and equal rights for all people.

March 7, 1965 has become known as “Bloody Sunday.”  A reminder that the long walk toward justice is a costly walk that does not come without deep wounds.

The long march goes on.

Last week, Boris Nemstov was gunned down on a bridge next to the Kremlin, the day before he was to lead a march to protest Vladimir Putin’s government.

A blogger in Bangladesh killed for blog posts critiquing Islamic fundamentalism.

On the cross, Jesus says something puzzling, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34

What does he mean?

Of course the soldiers knew what they were doing. They were crucifying a criminal. They were carrying out orders. They had their reasons.

The only way I can make sense of this odd statement Jesus makes in the Gospel of Luke, is that Jesus knew something else as well. He knew what was in the heart of these soldiers. He knew what was in them, for he knew these same feelings in himself.   The same anxieties, fears, indifference and hatred that placed him on the cross.

Knew in himself the same things that can lead any of us to blind hate and to picking up a Billy club, a gun, a sword, a canister of tear gas.   Fear. Anxiety. Fear of change. Fear of the other. Hatred.

Martin Luther King, Jr. knew as well what was in the heart of those armed men on the other side of the bridges he crossed.  He once wrote, “Let no man bring you so low as to make you hate him.” He could only write those words because he had faced his own hatred. Faced his hatred, his fear and made a commitment each day to not have these emotions rule his life.

There is a famous poem by Vietnamese Buddhist and Peacemaker, Thich Nhat Hanh, “Call Me By My True Names” that helps me find myself as I remember the events of 50 years ago and the ongoing marches for the dignity and rights of all people.

His poem helps me find my place with the marchers coming up one side of the bridge on the long walk to freedom and justice.

And he helps me find my place where I do not want to recognize that I am as well – standing with the men on the far side of the bridge doing all in our power to block the marcher’s way.

Jesus, King, Thich Nhat Hahn help me see that I am all those people on the bridge on the long march to justice.

And in that recognition, maybe the beginning of even trying to understand what forgiveness is and requires of me today. A forgiveness that begins with facing my own folly and fear, hopefulness and hopelessness, hatred and longing for wholeness

Thich Nhat Hanh concludes his poem,

Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up and the door of my heart could be left open, the door of compassion.”

Here is my prayer. That the remembrance that I am all those on the bridge, may become an opening to a new way to stand. A new way to walk and speak. A new way of compassion. A new way to healing. A new way to be on the long march to justice and hope.

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves,

and take up their cross and follow me.” Mark 8:35

Years ago. The young woman, sits in my office.

“He’s a good man. He really is. It’s just that on the weekends…he goes out to the bar with his buddies. And well, sometimes, when he comes home….”

She puts her head in her hands and begins to weep.

Looks up and says, “Perhaps this is my cross to bear.”

“Deny yourself.”

Powerful words.

Words that run deep in all of us telling us to turn away and against ourselves. Our needs, desires, dreams. Writing it all off as our “selfishness”.

Women told to deny themselves and serve their families.

Parents told to deny themselves and provide for their child’s every need.

We’ve told it to slaves.

Told it to gays and lesbians.

“Deny yourself. This is your cross to bear”.

It happens early, subtly. The denial of our own self-hood.

It’s taken me a lifetime to learn that the quality of my relationships and effectiveness of my ministry is directly proportional to the care I provide for myself.

Get enough sleep. Eat regular meals and healthy food. Exercise. Take time for rest and renewal.

When I start here, providing for these basic needs, my ministry, my relationships, my life, blooms.

When I don’t, I suffer and the people in my life suffer as well.

It’s taken me a lifetime to learn that self-love and other-love are not opposing forces.

That self-hatred is not the way of Jesus.

To really listen to Jesus, “I came that you may have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)

If you are in a relationship where you are telling yourself, or being told, to put aside your human dignity and self-worth –

Encouraged to write it off as your “cross to bear” –

Think again.

The season of Lent, for Christians, is a time that invites us to look at what we might otherwise not choose to see:

What we are living for, and why.

Death, even our own, and the small deaths we must die each day.

These questions of Lent, which find me here, in the accountant’s office. Asking hard questions.  Willing escape.

Lent I

“And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness”
(Mark 1:12)

It begins here
as it always does,
in this temptation,
the enticement to escape
by will or wit
the inevitable decline
the insatiable need.

Which leads me here
to her small corner office
where she leans across the long
dark oval table,
tells me, indeed,
there is no escape,
this matter of money.
this calculation of assets
and wind-fall projections.

No escape,
that is,
as long as you are alive.

No escape,
from the insistent questions she asks
of dreams and goals,
the estimation of how long
we shall live,
the risks and necessity
of long-range planning.

But never enough, though,
never,
to save us from this
present uncertainty,
and certain decline,
the quick slip, and fall,
the pit, the grave.

Makes me
long to turn, like Judas,
seize my bag of gold,
and run,
find my faith
in more certain things.

Lent,
which finds me here,
as the young accountant
bounces away
with more papers to sign
and I awake,
early morning,
sweaty in dread.

Peter Ilgenfritz
February 26, 2015

It’s not a very popular service.

And why would it be?  I mean, who would really want to come at an inconvenient hour in the middle of a busy week to have the pastor make the sign of the cross on your forehead in black soot and bless you with the words, “Remember you are dust and to dust you will return.”  

Maybe?  Maybe not.

Years ago, I almost lost my job over Ash Wednesday.

I was fresh out of seminary and swept up in the excitement of the liturgical revival that was introducing low-church Protestants, like me, into the wonder of all things ancient and traditional. (The very things that my ancestors had emptied the church of for fear that they were remotely “Catholic” or having the scent of “mystery”.) Things like Ash Wednesday.

Roman Catholics and High Church Episcopalians marked Ash Wednesday. In my New England church world in the United Church of Christ, we did not.

So when the Senior Pastor was away on vacation I took it upon myself to revive Ash Wednesday. I held a service complete with ashes that I gathered from my fireplace and marked on the foreheads of the tiny congregation that gathered at midday.  “Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return.”  The senior pastor was none too pleased at his upstart associate when he returned.

But this year, it’s not me using Ash Wednesday to convert the church to an ancient ritual and way, it’s Ash Wednesday that is converting me.

It wasn’t reading about some new Ash Wednesday service or trying to decipher, once again, what T.S. Eliot is actually talking about in his poem “Ash Wednesday”.  But it was going back to a novel I read last month that planted a question in me,

“What if Ash Wednesday were an invitation to see what we don’t want to see?”

Simon, rector at All Saints Parish, in K.D. Miller’s novel, All Saints, officiates at his tiny Anglican parish’s Ash Wednesday service.  He reminds his congregation that we can begin Lent by receiving ashes and those stark words, “Remember you are dust…” as a reminder that our lifespan is limited.   And he goes on,

“But we shouldn’t stop there.  We need to go on and acknowledge the thing that most frightens us, most pains us.  The thing we are must reluctant to face. It doesn’t have to be death, though it can be.  It can be the need to confront someone and say, “You hurt me”.  Which is the first step on the road to forgiveness.  Or it can be the need to tell someone we love them.  Whatever it is, I suggest you enter this season of Lent with the intention of saying, in effect, Ecce cor meum.  Behold my heart.”  

There are things in all of our hearts we don’t want to face.  There certainly have been in mine.  Our own Jerusalem’s.  Our own coming to terms with what we need to pay attention to. The things we might want to cling to desperately, but in fact need to release, to “die” to, in order to risk the possibility of something more.  Call it “resurrection”. Call it something on the other side of “this”. Some new life that we can’t, right here today, imagine finding our way to.

Years ago, I didn’t want to see, I didn’t want to know, what I knew.  I didn’t want to face that in order to continue to grow, to mature, I needed to leave my relationship with Dave. A man I dearly loved.   I needed to step out on my own and do some of the growing up work I had waited a long time to do.  I didn’t want to leave, I didn’t want anything to change in a life that was full together of such goodness.  I didn’t know what might happen.  Where it all might lead.  I was frightened.  Indecisive.  Full of trying to bury, to push away, what I didn’t want to see, didn’t want to face.  To control what was beyond my controlling.  Something was happening in me and I needed to pay attention to it.  The hurt, I came to realize, was not so much in the leaving, but in the hurt that came from not paying attention to what I needed to see.

I needed Jesus.  Yes, that one that is the story, and the one who makes this journey time and again with all of us on the way through death to the possibility of resurrection.  Yes, Jesus, in the specific incarnate form of those who stood by my side, put their arm around me and said, “Together we can stand here.  Together, I will hear you out, wait with you, until you are ready.”

A sailor’s job is to leave the dock.  To untie the bow line and push the boat out into the channel and step aboard.  To set a direction – that place you want to be – call it Hope, Joy, Peace, Justice, Life.  A huge thing to kick off from what we have known. A huge thing to look out and set a Hope on where you are going – and not have a clue how you are going to get there.

But how we are going to exactly get there is not the sailor’s job.  For what the sailor knows is that it takes this third thing – beside the sailor and the boat.  Call it the Wind. Call it the Spirit. Call it the Breath of God.  Only by tracking the Wind, playing with the Wind, using the Wind, trusting the wind, can the sailor tack and jibe the boat on its way toward that distant horizon.

This Ash Wednesday, I wonder what might happen if today were a day for us to stand on the dock we have made of our lives.

To listen to our hearts. To face the thing we don’t want to face.  Admit what we didn’t want to admit. To say the thing we don’t want to say.  And then to reach down and untie the bow line.  Give the boat a firm kick out into the channel and step aboard.

To set our faces to that far destination we might not even be able to give words to, but know from the feeling we have when we imagine we are there.

To put our hand lightly on the tiller. Find the direction of the wind.  And then, using the wind, and letting the wind take us – back and forth, quickly and quietly, in still waters and sudden gusts as such a journey always is – but forward, ever forward, toward that place beyond our knowing where new life awaits.

It may take a long time. It may take detours and twists and turns we never could have envisioned. It might take more courage than we have ever risked taking before. And it might be more joyous as well. It might be the beginning of something new. The way to new life.

Perhaps, this is Ash Wednesday.  Perhaps, this is Lent.

It wasn’t supposed to end this way.

Seahawks at the New England 1 yard line.   A Seahawks Super Bowl Victory seconds away.  All it took was a simple toss.

Interceptions?  At the one yard line?  Are you kidding?  They simply don’t happen.  There’d been 61 one yard touchdown passes this season – and no interceptions.

But then here comes Patriots defensive back Malcolm Butler.   Seconds before he’d just given up a 33-yard pass that deflected off of him into the hands of Seahawks receiver Jermaine Kearse.

But now Butler does what isn’t supposed to happen – he catches the ball. What!  Intercepts Wilson’s end-zone pass! Are you kidding!  Seals the win for the Patriots over the Seahawks 28-24.

The cries from Seattle resound to that other coast.

And they haven’t stopped.  Sports columnists lambast Seahawk’s coach Pete Carroll’s “inexplicable decision” for an end-zone pass “one of the worst Super Bowl decisions of all time.”

Ouch!

We all want someone to blame when defeat is in the air.   And Carroll takes the blame. He has his reasons.  Statistics in his favor.  But despite all the odds against it happening, it happened.

Despite all the odds that it won’t happen to us, it does. We throw when we should have run it in. Run it in when we should have thrown. And somehow the ball ends up in the other team’s hands. And we are left trying to find our way through the great defeat.

I can do victory quite well.  Imagine myself lifting the Vince Lombardi Trophy high overhead.  Waving to cheering crowds. Full of bravado and saying whatever might have led to the scrapping after the game was decided.

But defeat?  Not so well.

I responded to the Seahawks defeat by getting sick this past week.  A really nasty stomach bug.  I haven’t been so sick in years.

I’m a terrible sick person.  I moan and complain.  Diagnose myself with Ebola just because the doctor asks if I have been to West Africa recently.   The only good thing I did last week was call in sick most of the week so as not to spread my bad germs and worse mood on the poor people who would have had to be with me.

Today, I’m feeling somewhat better and am planning on feeling even better tomorrow.  But all set-backs and defeats in life are not so easy to recover from.

I know how to let past mistakes or regrets from years ago, childhood even, sit on top of my joy, my potential, my living fully today.

I know to be spiteful. A poor loser. To say whatever snide remark might have led to the brawl after the game was decided.

I don’t know how to even imagine being Pete Carroll. I mean, I’ve made my bad decisions and decisions that whether “good” or “bad” just didn’t turn out as I intended, but I’ve never had 114.4 million people now associating my name with a bad call.

What still draws me to the ancient story of a people who spoke a language I don’t speak, lived in a place I’ve never lived, believed things about the world I no longer do and didn’t know about so many things that I know about today, is that they knew about defeat.

And yes, though Christians are particularly adept at turning this thousands year old story into another triumphal march across the pages of history and other peoples and cultures rights and religions, it is the defeat at the heart of the story that we can’t run away from or cover up.  The main characters (including God) mess up. One lead character dies before he gets to the Promised Land (Moses) and another is killed far before his time (Jesus).   Things don’t turn out as they were supposed to again and again.

And yes, although I hate to admit it, the story reminds me that despite all my attempts to not have it so, my life full of small and not so small defeats and bad decisions. Passing when I should have run. Running when I should have passed.

“But defeat is not the end of the story!”, the noisy pontificator in me wants to proclaim!  …But well, like in the world of sports, sometimes it is.  The Seahawks might come back next year and go up against the Jaguars.  But in 2015?  They lost.  That’s it.  The Seahawks can’t ask for a do-over and try running the ball in.  That’s it.  It’s the year of Belichick and Brady.

Sports is about the victors.

Faith is about what we do with our defeats.

Novelist Frederick Buechner ends his sermon, “The Magnificent Defeat” with the image of Jacob picking himself up off of the ground and limping home in early dawn.  Jesus, “staggering on broken feet out of the tomb.”

The story, just starting to get interesting. Something more, waiting to be revealed.

It’s Pete Carroll talking about how accepting the truth of the situation – “getting in there, talking about it, facing it up” – is the first step toward moving forward….and that it might not happen overnight.

It’s not getting defensive.

And it is taking responsibility.

“I feel responsible for a lot of people right now, certainly from the family to the organization, our players and coaches and all that. But it extends well beyond that as you go out into our community and the area that follows us. There’s a lot of people that really care a lot about what we’re doing, and our game hit them really hard. I thought they might need me some.” (Pete Carroll interview with Matt Lauer)

“I thought they might need me some.” Hmmm….

Yes, Pete, maybe we do. And others like you. Heck, maybe like me – or you. Showing how to be after defeat has knocked us hard and down.

Revealing something more.

Something even greater than victory.  Humility.  Honesty.  Grace.  Courage.  Humanity. 

We’ve all been here.

Looking forward to the nice dinner and a movie with a good friend.

She calls at the time you were going to meet. “Sorry…..Forgot….Lost track of the time…I’ll be home…an hour…maybe more….”

You’re hungry. Tired. Disappointed. Mad.

Your nice evening turned upside down.

What do you do?

Drive home and pout?

Find the key, sit in her dark apartment and entertain the cats?

It’s a quick free-fall from here to despair.

But then…

I remember.

That cute little pizza place around the corner with the upside down sign. That’s what I need.  A slice to soothe my sorrow.

I drive down a few blocks along the south end of the lake.   Walk into this lively little place. Wood floors, bright yellow walls. Buzzing with conversation. And an empty seat at the end of the counter.

“I’d like pizza. How long will it take? 10 minutes?”

“No. 90 seconds. Tops.”

“90 seconds? Really?”

“Really.”

This is no ordinary pizza parlor.

I pull out my journal and write, “I am MAD. I am SO SO SO SO MAD. I was looking forward to this nice dinner and a movie. I am so MAD.”My literary skills deteriorating into underlines and LARGE CAPITAL LETTERS, “IMPATIENT!”

90 seconds later, the pizza arrives.  It’s gorgeous.  A work of art. Truly, these little white cheese bubbles, a sparkling of bright green basil leaves and what looks like the softest of lightly browned crust.

I take a bite.

Delicious. I mean, really delicious. This is no ordinary pizza.

I pick up my pen to continue my litany of woe.

And then I notice a man standing next to me at the end of the counter.

“What are you writing about, the pizza?”

Here I am. It’s my moment. My Russell Wilson moment.

Will I respond, “No, actually….” and turn back to scribbling my sorrows…

Or…

Remember? Two weeks ago.  The NFC Championship. Those first 55 ugly minutes. The Seahawks sinking fast. Almost out of time. And then quarterback Russell Wilson turns it around. Gets back in the game. The team that was sinking is now soaring. On to victory. On to the Super Bowl.

I remember. Respond, with a smile, “Well yes, actually, I am writing about the pizza.”

And at that moment, I become Russell Wilson. The story begins to turn.

Become not the forgotten friend but a foodie.  Bon Appetite.

I pick up my pen. And suddenly I am hearing something besides my internal warble of woe. Something about pizza.

I introduce myself to the man at my side who happens to be Vince Mottola, the owner of Pizzeria Pulcinella. His wife, Carla. David, the waiter.

Learn that Seattle has more certified Neapolitan Pizza Parlors than anywhere in the world outside of Naples.

“Really?”

“Really.”

This is no ordinary pizza. This is the real deal.

I learn about tomatoes and flour, cheese and dough. The 900 degree wood fired oven.

Furiously taking notes.  No longer furious.

Vince asks, “What do you do?”

“Well, actually, I’m a minister.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. And I really do write a blog each week about my various adventures finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. This week I’m writing about pizza…..and Russell Wilson.  ”

Our conversation makes me remember this other guy who turned things upside down. Water into wine. Bread into himself. Impossible into possible.  Hmm….there is a story here.

I take some more pictures. The cooks. The cool art on the wall. Exchange email addresses so I can send a copy of my blog.

Later that night – yes, 2 hours after we were supposed to meet – I meet my friend.  And instead of being in a bad mood, I’m now in a great mood.  Tell her how my evening of dejection became an evening of connection…how I went to THE BEST pizza place, met these GREAT people, including, Russell Wilson.

The next morning.

Leftover cold pizza for breakfast.

And the lingering memory, the hope-filled possibility that today, I might become Russell Wilson again, and turn the story, one more time, upside down.

It was 20 summers ago, and a man I’d never heard of was coming to spend a week with us at our week-long church camp at Seabeck.  What I knew was that he’d written a book, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, that was getting a lot of attention and that our church camp was overflowing with people who wanted to attend.

Marcus was doing something rather extraordinary.  He was opening a new way to imagine who Jesus was and might be for us today.  And he was speaking to people that I hadn’t always seen sitting in the front pews of church, or in church at all. Among them, rationalists and thinkers who lived in a world facts and figures. People who had left conservative church backgrounds, like Borg, himself.  And men. I was always struck with the number of men who showed up and joined the conversation.  And so many others, finding a new way in to meet Jesus.  Borg was opening and changing the conversation about Jesus. Changing lives.

Marcus was part of a new group of scholars who called themselves the Jesus Seminar who together were exploring the historical context in which Jesus lived and seeking to discern who he “really” was, what he might have “really” said.  Their work sparked faith, inspiration, a new way to be a people of faith.

Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time became the book I recommended time and again to people who wanted to know what Christianity was about and could be. Marcus gave me a new language to speak of faith to others who asked different questions and thought in different ways than I do, and invite them into the conversation.

Marcus’ summer camp with us and the work of the Jesus Seminar sparked Bob Fitzgerald to form the “Jesus Study Group” here at University Congregational UCC. Once a month, on Sunday nights, our church lounge filled with people from many different churches and faith traditions, or no tradition at all. People who were hungry to read, explore, engage with others about who the historical Jesus was and how he could speak to us today.

Our Jesus Study Group sparked the idea of a lecture series and Marcus was our first lecturer.  Tina Michalak, our first lecture series coordinator, remembers how gracious and generous Marcus was in working with us to do something we had never done before. That first lecture weekend with Marcus packed the church. The support the Lecture Series received became the seed for funding future lectures.  Marcus returned four times over these past seven years as part of our Lecture Series, most recently last June with Joan Chittister and John Dominic Crossan.

Marcus would set his little clock timer.  His lectures clear as an outline.   (“I am now going to speak for the next 13 minutes… “I will speak of this… and then make three points, and then draw a conclusion….).

But besides a way that spoke to the logical and rational in all of us, Marcus had room for something else.

Passion.

Bob Fitzgerald remembers,

“Marcus spoke so openly, so personally, about how his faith, theology and ‘take’ on Jesus changed and developed. Softly conveyed his convictions, often provoking tears in me…and jolted me awake when he spoke of the ‘American Empire’ and the contradiction between who we say we are as a ‘Christian’ nation and the reality of our military dominance throughout the world.”

I remember how amidst the careful, logical arguments that Marcus presented, that he had room, made room, for mystery.  For wonder. For what we can’t know, think, solve our way through. I loved his interweaving of ancient prayers, the stories of the icons in his home.

Marcus’ legacy lives on in the life of our church.

It was Marcus who was the inspiration for the little remark we put in our church bulletin each week,

“As Christians we are shaped by the language of our tradition, including its foundation – the Bible. Some of us understand Christian language in literal and factual terms. Others understand it as a language filled with symbolism and metaphor. We all share a common passion for the more-than-literal meaning of the stories and teaching that guide us.”

It was the legacy – and here I look out in my mind’s eye on our congregation – how Marcus found a way for so many to be here, here in church, where otherwise they might never have been, worshipping together and talking about Jesus.

Yes, as Bob Fitzgerald noted, “He was a gentle prophet, a profound teacher”.

We will be paying tribute to Marcus on Friday evening, February 6, as we gather for our next lecture series weekend with Robin Meyers.   Robin is dedicating his lectures to Marcus.

And on Sunday afternoon, March 29, at 3:00 p.m., we will gather here with members of our Lecture Series Community, our church and others throughout our region for our own Service of Memory and Thanksgiving as we give thanks for Marcus’ life and ministry and reflect on the ways he has touched our lives. We hope you might join us that afternoon. Lauren Winner will be with us for a lecture earlier that afternoon from 12:30-2, followed by a dessert reception before the memorial service.

It was at the close of a Sunday worship service here many years ago that Marcus shared a benediction that he had adapted from a 19th century Swiss Philosopher, Henri-Frederic Amiel.  I have used it in memorial services ever since.

“Life is short.  And we don’t have much time to gladden the hearts of those who walk the way with us.  So let us be swift to love, and make haste to be kind.”

Yes.

Thank you, Marcus, for all the ways you have shared with us such a kindness.

Thank you, for opening anew our minds, hearts, and imaginations to meet Jesus again, as if for the very first time.

Here in Seattle, everyone’s talking about Sunday’s game.

The Seahawks versus the Packers. National Football Conference Championship. Fourth quarter. Seahawks down by 12. Quarterback, Russell Wilson, intercepted for the fourth time with just five minutes to go. He’s been playing a lousy game.    The voices in his head as loud as the crowd in CenturyLink Field.   “What’s going on?” “How can I turn this around?” “How do I get it back? The breath back. The connection back. The place from which comes the perfect pass?”

And then, there he is. Minutes left. A pass connects.

And here he is, ball in hand, see’s Jermaine out there sprinting towards the end zone. Draws back on that place – deep, true, connecting, beyond all the other voices. Throws the perfect pass that wins the game.

It was the kind of turn-around that leads commentators to use words like “improbable”, “unthinkable”, “unfathomable”. Only one NFL team had ever tailed by 12 points with 2:10 left in a playoff game and come back to win. And that was the Cowboys. 1972.

You don’t have to like football, care about football. You can think it’s just a dumb and dangerous macho game. You can pontificate about the outrageous salaries. Yes, if you will, you can think all of that, but you can also know that what we saw happen with Russell Wilson on Sunday is something we all long for. To turn it around. To find our way back when we’ve lost it.   When we’ve been playing a lousy game, to get back in the game.

Russell Wilson didn’t just “do” that on Sunday. What he did shows just how much he had been practicing. Practicing finding his way back to this still, small, quiet, empty place from which the perfect pass can come.

Like you, I have practiced a lot of things in my life. In high school, I “practiced” the French horn “in my head”. I didn’t actually pick up my instrument, I thought about how it felt to play it. And though “thinking” about practicing may have got me somewhere, it didn’t make me a very good player.

Practice finally means entering that great effort, frustration, and struggle to actually pick up the horn and put our fingers to the keys. Take a deep breath and begin to play. To practice over and over and once again, over again, those dumb scales.

Practice takes time. I never did find my way to that still small quiet space playing the French horn.

Practice is hard. Especially when it’s something new. Leads to lots of frustration, fury, and feelings…”I can’t do this!” “I’m a lousy player!” “I will NEVER be a good player” “I don’t want to do this!” “Who would want to play a dumb instrument like this anyway!”

Decades later, I tried practicing sitting on a meditation cushion. The practice of sitting, breathing, listening. I usually remembered two out of the three. “Oh yes, sit.” (I am sitting here.) “Oh yes, breath.” (Oh, I guess I better breathe.) “Oh yes, listen.” (Yes, I hear the car screeching around the corner – are they crazy?….I hear the growl in my neighbor’s stomach…Oh, that’s my stomach. My thoughts. Boy, am I hungry. When is the bell going to ring? When is this going to be over? I am so tired…)

Group pressure helps. Keeps me sitting on the cushion practicing trying to sit, breathe and listen until the bell rings. It’s what may keep you going back to the spinning or yoga class even though feel like such a fool out there.

And we do it, we keep at it, this practicing, because when we find a practice that clicks for us, we find our way over time, through time, to that still, small, empty place from which everything is possible.

I need to find my way back here again and again during my day. I need to leave the office and go to the gym. Go out for a run. Get out on my bike. These practices have become my prayer – a communion that comes through sweat and breath with a release into something deep, abiding, connecting, true.

And in this place, this quieting space, such joy, delight, ease. An at-homeness amidst everything that otherwise is not so at home.

Last month I was sailing with Elena who runs the livery at the Center for Wooden Boats. I asked her why she loves the practice of sailing.

“Sailing restores my perspective. At the end of the workday, with whatever I am stressed out about, worried about, going out sailing takes my lingering anxiety down a notch. You can’t ‘think’ when you are sailing. You just sail. Emptied of anxiety.”

“And when you are empty, what comes in?”, I ask.

“Nothing”, Elena says, looking up, appearing somewhat surprised at the question.

“Nothing comes in. It’s just being empty. It’s just listening to the sound of the water on the hull. How different it sounds when you tack this way, or that. How different it sounds than the last time. How the boat feels when you are sailing the best you can. How you feel. Nothing else is needed. It’s just empty.”

Empty. That place from which everything can happen. That place through sweat, frustration, fear and fury we need a practice to bring us back to. That place from which you too can look down the field. See Jermaine way out there hands outstretched, sprinting towards the end zone.

We reach back, find something deeper than our fear, anxiety, self-doubt and despair. Something clear, holding, grace-filled and true. We throw the ball. We are back in the game.

It was a present sent from Canadian friends and my New Years Day read.  The gift of a good book that took me from Seattle to Philadelphia, lingered with me for a three hour layover, and on a bumpy prop plane to Baltimore.

No one is innocent.   Each character struggles.  Love, faith, marriage, sex, death, aging, mental illness.  Like us, they are odd and lovely.  Alienated and ostracized.  Flawed, frustrated, fearful, frail.  Complex, ambivalent.

I look around.  All the stories we carry.  We barely know them ourselves.  All the narratives that have shaped our lives, decisions. The limits of which have brought us here at the close of a Sunday afternoon in fading light to gather in a church with people we do not know well or at all.  Why have we come?  So many different things we could be doing.  So many needs, desires that have led us here.  But maybe as well, the longing to find a way to whatever promise of the new a turning of the calendar means.

We rise, gather around the communion table.  A wafer placed in cupped hands.  The body of Christ.  The chalice passed.  The cup of salvation.  

I read All Saints, and the longing, the hunger for the possibility of church grows in me.  The longing for some kind of meeting, gathering in ancient words infused with fresh fire.  A connection to draw us together amidst everything that drives us apart.  A gathering for the saints and sinners in us all to come together in our humanity – to name, to grieve, to rage, to speak, to be silent, to wait, to pray, to act, to bring together, bring the possibility of all of us together – what we know and the mystery of all we do not.