Here’s the rest of my sermon. It’s pretty long. I actually ditched the story about Lauren because of time. (By the way, all the names in this are changed. I hope my friend “Lauren” doesn’t read this and think I’m wierd. Hopfully she’ll see the core of what I’m trying to say. That it’s nice to travel together.)

I haven’t preached for over a year, so I was a bit rusty. I do like sitting on a stool and talking into a mic though. I just don’t want to have to do it every week. I just don’t have that much to say, you know? And I’m afraid of saying the wrong thing…though I’m less afraid than I used to be. I’m learning to be okay with the reality that people will disagree with me, no matter how careful I am. In fact, this time when I spoke I started out by saying: “Eugene Peterson often says that most preachers just have one sermon; one message that they repeated over and over — variations on a theme. I only have one message. And it’s this: The kingdom of God is here…and we damn well better learn to live in it.

I wouldn’t have said that a year ago. Wouldn’t have said that the good news is not the birth/death/rez. The good news is that those things brought about this reality — the kingdom of God is here! Wouldn’t have said that the church has gotten itself on the wrong side of history. Wouldn’t have understood about theology and culture and history and how they influence each other.

I’ve learned a lot. I’ve got a lot to learn.

Anyhow, here’s the rest of the sermon. If anyone knows anywhere that might want it as an article, do do do let me know.

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Standing Around with Watering Cans: Culitvating People in a PostModern Reality, continued….

Somewhere along the way, the church decided to draw a line in the sand and we stepped behind that line and for the most part we stayed there. Maybe it was way back when Constantine was making all the rules, or when Luther was spearheading the reformation, or maybe it was as recently as the 1800’s during the Great Awakening when everyone suddenly got very aware of not wanting to go to hell, and very concerned about who was going and who wasn’t. But somehow, through the morphing effects of history and the changing demands of culture, we went from Jesus hanging out with the hookers and the druggies; to everyone having to come to our own rather exclusive clubhouse in order to experience God. We decide that is was very very important for people to stand on our side of the line. Moreover, we decided that the kingdom of God lived inside the four walls of the church, and that everyone had to come over to our place to experience that. And we made a lot of rules, spoken or unspoken depending on the denomination, about what you had to do to be a part of the kingdom of God: things like going to church on Sunday, and worshipping a certain way, counting certain things as prayer, and of course believing the whole Jesus-was-God-death-and-resurrection-heaven-and-hell story all at once and with unwavering conviction.

Now I know that you know all this, and that in a lot of ways I’m just preaching to the choir. I know that Quest has seen that line in the sand and disliked it, felt the off kilterness of that kind of thinking. Because here at Quest you have turned around and opened the doors. You have made your club house much much easier to get into. All you have to do is be thirsty…for coffee….or steamed milk…or maybe even for some spiritual thing to water your soul. It’s so cool. It is so inspiring to watch many of you throw your lives into this coffee shop, this community center, because you want to extend the loving hand of Christ to people. You’ve been working on building this huge thing, this big fat garden hose—or maybe it’s even a fire truck. And when I hear your story, I get inspired, very inspired.

But I’ve noticed something lately and maybe your have too. I’ve noticed that sometimes you can erase the line in the sand, and that doesn’t necessary help you know what to do with your watering cans. Sometimes you can change the systems, and the time you meet, and the order of doing things — rub out that line in the sand and make things more fluid. Maybe you can even learn how to do something as a community, like holding a garden hose or even driving a fire truck; like opening a coffee house, or a community center. But maybe, on your own, you still don’t know what to do with your watering can.

At least, I’ve experienced that in my own little church-tuned-missional community. We’ve changed out the structure, we’ve erased the line in the sand and said, “Let’s all just be together. You guys and us guys” Then we stood around staring and people and blinking, holding our watering cans in our hands and wondering what to do with, about, and for the people we were looking at. For so long we’ve been standing on our side of the line, inside our four church walls, watering each other. Oh, a small percentage of us Christians have turned around and leaned over the line and watered stuff out there. But mostly we’ve learned to take care of the people who were already in. This is good. This has merit. It worked fairly well for a certain age, for a certain period of history. But then we started asking ourselves “How’s that workin’ for ya?” And we decided to erase the line. We got back on the right side of history–or maybe it’s better to say that we figured out how to live within in our own unfolding history–and we looked at our little watering cans and though “Geez. What is this?”

You know, I’m in that place. I’m holding a watering can. And you’re right, it’s small. Much much smaller than a community center, or a really beautiful coffee shop.
Still, I like to use it. I like to try to put out little fires. But even more so I like to try and help things grow. I call myself a cultivator. I try to dig out rocks and roots and weeds, move them out of people’s way. But mostly I water things. I like to plant things and watch them grow. I like to look for little God-moments in people’s life and say, “Hey. Look at that! Did you know that shoot was poking up? Did you know that bud was forming?” I like to celebrate the kingdom, to watch the kingdom grow, to nurture kingdom subjects (subjects of the king) – especially the ones that are supposedly on the other side of the line.

But that’s all very abstract isn’t it? When we talk about “ministry” and “kingdom” and “outreach,” it all seems like stuff that can only happen when we are gathered together in one spot, holding on to the garden hose. But really, we can’t just do that because the garden hose is attached to the clubhouse, and even though there are new relaxed vibes about the clubhouse, all the people who were “out” for so long don’t know that. So we’ve got to figure out how to use our individual watering can – far and away from where the line even used to be. The thing that helps me do that best is story – telling stories and listening to stories. Stories from my friends, and my mentors, and my neighbors. Stories from Jesus, and thank goodness he told a lot. Stories from the people in my neighborhood and at my daughter’s school. Stories from my hairdresser. Whoever.

So I thought I’d tell you a few stories today. Stories that have tapped the passionate place in my heart, in my gut. And maybe, if you’re wondering what to do with your watering can, and whether it even matters, they will….not inspire…but encourage you a little. And in any case, Eugene asked me to share something that’s been on my heart, and these stories have been on my heart. So I hope that means they will mean something for to you today.

The Tough Guy with Long Lashes

This is me, and this is oceans and rivers of love over me. One of the kid’s in Eden’s kindergarten class painted it for meone of the “problem” kids. I spend about 10 minutes a day in Eden’s classroom. I just sort of roam around the room in the morning seeing which kid needs a little extra help settling in. I also read with the kids in small groups once a week, because I love books, mostly. I have lots of stories from these little bits of time in this awe-inspiring community. One of my favorites is about the “problem child” who drew me this picture. But it’s a little long, so I thought I’d tell you another one today.

One of my favorite kids in the classroom is this darling African American boy with long lashes and a crazy imagination. When I come in to do one-on-one reading with the kids, he spins me these amazing comic book tales about Spiderman and Martin Luther King and how they fly around the city capturing bad guys and bringing people back to life. I mean this kid’s mind is all over the place! His mom says he stays up late at night just telling stories to himself, so he’s often wiped out at school. Sometimes he just falls asleep on the desk. Mr. C just lets him stay that way. It is, after all, only kindergarten.

Last week I walked into the classroom and one of the little girls ran up to me because Dac had bumped her. I walked over to their shared desk and had to stifle a smile. There was a line of masking tape down the middle of it! Dac was leaning back in his chair, the perfect imitation of his older brother. He was wearing a knock-off Sean John sweat suit and his braids had color coordinated beads on the end. (With the braids and long lashes, I cannot convince my three year old that Dac is a boy.) “What sup Dac?” Nothing. Dac just pulls out a wad of monopoly money the size of my fist and starts thumbing through it. “You got some serious bank today my brother. What ups with that?” No answer. “Well Dac. Make sure you put it in your pocket, ‘cuz I don’t want it to go in the 176 box, okay?” Still nothing. Meanwhile, the aforementioned I’ve-been-bumped child is hovering over my shoulder waiting for restitution. “Oh and Dac, let’s make sure you keep your body to yourself, okay? I know you are working sooooo hard on it and you’re doing such a good job. Keep it up, okay?” I put my fist out to get ‘dapped.’ No response. “What? You just gonna leave me hanging like that?” A reluctant dap. Then all of a sudden Dac has thrown his arms around me and is hugging me like he’s never going to let go. “Okay. Now I see I’m getting some sugar.” I pat his back. “You’re going to have a great day Dac. I can feel it.” I think I got more out of the experience than he did. I learned to use my watering can, and then Dac gave be a big long drink of love.

Lauren

You know, it works that way a lot. You set out to bless someone, to be a good Christian, to incarnate a little Christ and spread a little love around…and you find that these people that we kept on the other side of the line for so long, they actually have much to offer us. They make us more human, more real. Life in the whole kingdom of God–among the subjects who know they’re his and the subjects who haven’t come to know that yet–life is that place is so …. I don’t know…surprising.

I had an experience with this just last week. My daughter Eden wanted to have a Spa Party. The women at ThPM had a spa party a few weeks back, and we were out of town and Eden was very, very upset about this. So I invited her best friend up the street, Annie to come over with her mom, Lauren. We put on our face masks and we poured our iced tea and Lauren and I got to sit around and jab for awhile.

A long time ago, maybe 4 months or ago, Lauren and I had talked about family rituals. Her family is very blended and complex with lots of cultural influences and various religious understandings. But Lauren was saying that in the midst of all this variety, they had ended up with nothing. No traditions, no rituals. I had been talking about school, and some tensions in the classroom, and how Eden and I had been using a traditional Celtic encircling prayer to help her process some of that. Lauren was intrigued. At the time, we didn’t have the opportunity to talk about it more, so we parted ways with me saying, “Oh, we should come up with some rituals and things that would suit your family.” And Lauren said something like, “Yes, yes, we should do that.”

Now, while we sat around “Madame Eden’s Spa” I broached the subject again with Lauren. “Remember how we were talking about family rituals a long time ago? Well I was wondering…and I mean, you can totally talk it over with Dean and think about it… but I was wondering if you would be interested in practicing a family Sabbath with us?” And I went on to tell her how Paul and I used to keep Sabbath by saying this prayer and lighting these candles, and just laying low for 24hours. But we’d fallen out of the habit of doing so since we’d had kids. We wanted to get it back, because we thought it was an important value to teach our children to stop, to be counter-cultural and not consume things, to rest and pause and be present to the moment one day out of every seven. But, I went on; I was tired of doing this by myself. And since there are no other kids in our “church” I was tired of my kids practicing spiritual things by themselves. And would she be interested–if we wrote something together that felt comfortable for both families, something with very expansive language for God and not overly legalistic–would she interested in praying these prayers together, and keeping Sabbath together, our two families?
Lauren’s response could not have surprised me more. She said, “Well, I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve been looking at your website and reading your blog. And I really like what you have to say and how you say it. And I think if you wrote something for us to pray it would be just fine, and I would totally follow your lead. Let me just talk to Dean about it.”

The thing that really turns me on about all of this, the thing that feels so novel to me in this life-after-the-line kind of way, is that we both needed each other. When the line was in the sand, Lauren would have been on the other side. I would have had all the goodies and she would have needed them. But now, in this post modern era, on this side of history, we are all in the same circle. The circle of the “kingdom of God.” And here, in this dynamic she waters my life just as much as I water hers. I was so used to watering other Christians, and feeling isolated and afraid of the outside world that I assumed Lauren would be skittish of me, or afraid I was going to try to strong arm her into something. But actually, she really trusted me, trusted our budding friendship and how I interacted with her and my kids and her kids. And in celebrating Sabbath with me she is giving me and my family something we very much need, camaraderie, companions for the journey. We both get to use our watering cans to grow wholeness and peacefulness. So cool. I hope it works out.

Men and Women of Doubtful Repute

Now, this is probably my favorite story of the year. We live in Fremont and the biggest gig in Fremont each year is the Solstice Parade. This is basically a neo-pagan celebration of the return of the sun. It’s pretty well known for the naked bicyclists. In my opinion there’s good naked and there’s bad naked, and naked bicycling is just bad naked. At any rate, in Seattle, the return of the Sun is a really really big deal, and regardless of your religious persuasions you pretty much get happy just thinking about it. So the last couple of years we’ve been involved in the parade, getting to know the community and worshiping the Son as we know him. This year ThPM decided to build a 40ft long caterpillar on a bed of radio flyer wagons, towed by an oversized tricycle inside a paper mache head. It was the litter bug and we were the trash fairies. We picked up all the garbage people left behind from the parade. So that was sort of our obvious good neighbor-y type of deed. But the main thing, the real reason I participate in the Solstice parade is that I love being with the people. So we spent a whole month of Thursdays at on old Brewery building floats and just getting to know the crazy, creative, insightful people around us.

My six year old daughter Eden came to the Brewery too. She would just sort of float around randomly hugging people and finding out how progress is going (especially on the Willy Wonka float). One day she spent two hours folding peace cranes and conversing. Who was she conversing with? Two deaf women. Eden would sign the more we get together the happier we’ll be…cuz your friends are my friends and my friends are your friends” (a campfire song) and they would teach her how to sign their names. One of the women has a name that is a sign, crossed fingers (R) that moves from her left shoulder to her right hip in a diagonal. When Eden talks about her and needs to use her name in a sentence, she just makes the sign. Eden doesn’t know her spoken name, and she doesn’t need to. She’s willing to speak a language that is not her own for the sake of making a connection. Here were some of the marginalized people Jesus hung out with, people who get sidelined — kids and deaf folks — and they were creating a space for one another within the larger community. It’s so great.

But the best day was the last day in the Brewery, I lost track of the girls. I looked outside to find them astride a giant wheeled seesaw. (I’d show you a picture of it, but the only one I have has very scantily dressed women in it and I wasn’t sure how that would go over up there and the big screen.) The board of the seesaw was 12 feet long, and the wheels were four feet high. As the girls flipped up and down five feet into the air, two spotters heaved at the wheels so that the whole contraption whipped around; narrowly missing the parade floats which were stationed in the parking lot. But here’s the best part – the part that never would have happened if we were still living behind the line. The part that I have no reference for in my own childhood memories, but that I’m totally thrilled my children are adding to their own cache. Eden was riding with a tall man in drag, his long silver pony tale flowing down his back. Cate was riding with a guy in a black leather bondage-y type vest. He’s had his finger hooked in a mostly-empty wine bottle. All four of them are rolling with laughter. You know, I’ve got the joy joy joy joy down in my heart. There were watering cans there. Stuff was getting seeded, getting planted, grown. “Them” and “Us” was getting washed away. Space was being made for the kingdom. The more we get together, together, together, the more we get together the happier we’ll be.

Luke 15

My mother, bless her heart, is a little bit appalled by all of this Solstice-y stuff. She’s okay with the parade, but she pretty opposed to our next big foray into the world of the Solstice stuff, which is our trip to Burning Man. My father is cheerfully offering us the motor home, while my mother is practically jumping up and down behind him waving her arms and mouthing “Noooooo!” The thing is my mom, and a lot of other Christians-I-know are afraid of the folks at Burning Man. Walking in a parade dressed like fairies she can handle, even if we are right behind the nude bicyclists. But a week long half-dressed celebration of …what is it is exactly?….in the dessert. She’s not so sure about.

Now this is where I move away from my stories…or maybe it’s more that this is where my story gets found imbedded in his story. This where I really dig Luke 15:

By this time a lot of men and women of doubtful reputation were hanging around Jesus, Listening intently. The Pharisees and religion scholars were not pleased, not at all pleased. They growled, “He takes in sinners and eats meals with them, treating them like old friends.” Their grumbling triggered this story.
Supposed one of you had a hundred sheep and lost one. Wouldn’t you leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the lost one until you found it? When found, you can be sure you would put it across your shoulders, rejoicing, and when you got home call in your friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Celebrate with me! I’ve found my lost sheep?’ Count on it – there’s more joy in heaven over one sinner’s rescued life than over ninety-nine good people in no need of rescue.”

Men and women of doubtful reputation. Yeah. I guess you could say most of our religion scholars, life long Christians and even my dear sweet mother would think the folks at burning man were of doubtful reputation. Guess that means it’s time to pack up the motor home and head for the desert. I can’t wait for what I’ll learn there.

My stories aren’t big stories. A hug from an at-risk kid, a neighbor relaxing with me on Sundays, a deaf woman smiling, a drag queen happy to have a childlike moment. Big deal, right? No one “got saved.” No one “came to church.” No one “got converted.” But you know what? In little ways, this wandering around sheep and those wandering around sheep got to have a ride on the shepherd’s shoulders. That’s kingdom come, or at least its beginnings.

We must learn to love people. We must learn to kick out that line in the sand, and then…furthermore…in addition to that….we must start watering here there, everywhere. And we need to recognize and express gratitude for the ways in which other people water us. We must come to realize the reality of this phrase “the good news is that the kingdom has come.” We must stop thinking “all I have is a watering can” and start thinking, in the words of Polyphonic Spree, that “together we’re heavy”, that together, we’re enough. We must live into that reality.

How do we do that? How do we stop feeling flabbergasted, and weird, and out of place? By telling stories. By getting inspired. By practicing our practices. What are your stories, Quest, and how can you tell them? Can you share them in dyads and triads? Can you write about them on a message board? Can you celebrate them in a small group? Type them up on your blog? This kingdom life, this cultivating, this watering is not about purpose-driven-target-audience-seeker-sensitive-marketing. You all know that, know it deep in your soul. Telling our stories is not the same as painting an evangelical bulls-eye on someone. No. Living the kingdom life and spinning it out in reality tales is a way of watching the kingdom grow, of finding your story embedded in his story, of getting on the right side of history and weaving out a new part of the tale.

My blessing for you today, my closing prayer, is this:

May you do stuff that triggers a story this week.
May you find yourself with men and women of doubtful repute.
May the people who still think you should stay on this side of the line
have reason to grumble.
May heaven celebrate over you, and me, and “them”–all of us lost sheep,
finding a way to hitch a ride on God’s shoulders.

Amen