The Wedding Sermon

Posted on November 29, 2019 by Elea Lee

First of all, let me reiterate that I do not expect you two to go the distance–not that prophetic considering where you are today and the inauspicious nature of this ceremony of disaster.

Most weddings are full of shi…..ps, little paper boats people fold along seams, scribble on, and push out onto whatever river they believe in. They write platitudes for the pain, use costly words all wrong.

Then the little boats float off

Leaving you there at the altar, no more substantial than cake topper avatars

Not ready for this:

Loves fierce resolve

To begin and end/end and begin

Together.

We Speak in Tongues

Posted on November 10, 2019 by Elea Lee

I have sometimes heard

The voice of God

remarkably salty

And full of fire

He is both

Placable and implacable in His anger

The first with sullen men

Then unsparing with his only Son

No siblings without the unendurable

No blind and lame set free

Without his blood for me

1 Corinthians 13:1 NIV

[1] If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

Lorentz Transformation

Posted on September 26, 2019 by Elea Lee

She dots the house with sticky notes scrawled with litany reminders–cupped in His hands, asleep in the boat, keep your eyes on Jesus, you are my “Wonderwall,”

As the preacher men go silent, as they are oft to do, in their complacency and fear

As though any of us can escape the

Light-blast of the Divine.

Solomon

Posted on September 2, 2019 by Elea Lee

Ecclesiastes 4:1-2 KJV

[1] So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter. [2] Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive.

I generally chafe at the wisdom of Solomon. I want to measure my “wise guys” by their lives–faithfulness, sobriety, compassion. S-man seems to fall abysmally short on all categories.

When I read this verse from Ecclesiastes it resonates with my own sense of the fragility and tenuousness of life, but then I cannot help that Solomon had so many powers the ordinary dude did not have to:

Stop oppression

Comfort the bereaved

And use his power as a monarch to generally improve his culture

He had the power to live a different life, to show a different way. I am no king, but I will be judged by how much better or worse I use my power

To change things.

Rules for Prodigals

Posted on August 23, 2019 by Elea Lee

I once knew a man who said it should be the parable of the prodigal father, which, of course, is true. We are not very prodigal with much but our father’s treasure.

I have been the younger son. I have been the older son. Jesus knows that we are all really not great sons–judge-y or profligate or both, so he gives a story where the two great characters are an old man and a fatted calf.

The man who saves the world makes himself the main course at a feast thrown for a loser.

I am that loser. The shining moment of clarity in any human life is when we realize we are all the prodigal child.

And so we should know the rules for prodigals–

I have done nothing to deserve this inheritance I have squandered

I have made little account for the days my Father has grieved on my behalf

But he never stops hoping I will come home.

What pride, what fear, what foolishness can withstand the power of love?

Luke 15:17-20 KJV

[17] And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! [18] I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, [19] And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. [20] And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.

The Good Friend

Posted on July 5, 2019 by Elea Lee

Recently I have started “meditating” on the good friend. I put meditation in quotes because it can seem monastic and old fashioned, could just say thinking about.

But I say meditation because the particular focus for me is the life-long friendship God calls us to pursue.

God calls us to pursue.

What is a good friend?

Who qualifies as a good friend?

How does one be a good friend?

What do good friends do together?

How much time does good friendship require?

Is there a schlepping requirement?

All these things are on the big stone table of this miraculous friendship God has called me to through the doorway of Jesus.

Very Christiany, I know.

But then I also know I could not draw close to the Holy Divine if I did not have

A friend like Jesus.

Pearl

Posted on May 13, 2019 by Elea Lee

Once upon a time the Treasure of the world entire told a story about treasure in a field, treasure within treasure, a kingdom in a kingdom in a seemingly arbitrary object, a field of the whole world

I remember when these angry men were children, lovable children, and now they behave as though they still don’t know

You are the treasure

The King and his Kingdom is the treasure.

And if that were not enough, what will a man do if he (gains the whole world)

And loses his own soul?

You are greatly loved

Posted on March 21, 2019 by Elea Lee

I have a dear friend who signs notes to me you are greatly loved. Which is cool, right?

On one of my phones I have played with the tag phrase at the end of emails. I am not sure anyone needs to know I have sent this from my iPhone, but perhaps they need a Bible verse, and exhortation of some sort, or to know they are greatly loved?

Sometimes I forget it is there. Sometimes I read it and think this snarky email I am about to send needs to be edited for snark if I truly believe the recipient is greatly loved. Sometimes I acknowledge it but then delete each letter because the mayor or the police chief or the college professor or college president already thinks I am crazy as a loon and annoying and foolish as well.

The phrase itself is not the strongest iteration of the idea. It is in passive voice. The active form is just I love you, which can be the most exposed and committed utterance when rendered true.

When we love someone enough to fight for them

When we intervene on their behalf.

When we are willing to be desperate or look foolish for them.

When we are willing to be misunderstood to keep them safe.

When we go hungry for them

Or give up jobs and honors for them.

Or when we call for help on their behalf.

When we give them our voice because their voice is young or small or taken from them.

They are greatly loved because love demands fierce and extraordinary things.

…..

A few days ago I was in deep mourning thinking about the sheer number of people who have decided that either I was not good enough for love, or worse, that God was not good enough for love.

I cried over this, and opened up YouTube to pray and sing through this grief. Matthew Mole’s You are loved appeared without a search or a place on my history.

God does that. He leaves signs all around us that we are greatly loved. He sends leaves falling over us, pennies shining on the pavement, songs which feel like lullabies, setting and rising suns–all love letters with the same matchless

guarantee–

You are greatly loved.

–John 3:16

Prayer

Posted on March 15, 2019 by Elea Lee

Prayer comes from the Latin word precarius which means, obtained by entreaty. I remember years ago looking at the way it came to us through the feudal system–subjects would pray to their lords and protectors for the things they needed to survive.

Sometimes prayer can seem less feudal than futile. Is anyone listening? Will anyone come to save me? Those two questions can haunt the soul.

I believe in prayer. I believe it brings light and brings help.

The hardest time to tell someone to pray is when you yourself feel the most alone, the most abandoned.

God never leaves us or forsakes us.

Pray, beautiful one, pray.

The Altar

Posted on March 10, 2019 by Elea Lee

It was a garden-variety Protestant set up–big ol’ baptistery in the rear, low pile carpeted stage, wood veneer podium, and home-made wooden sign written by an earnest non-native speaker of English,

DO not PLAY on the stage!

I used to speak there once a month for several years. If it was my week to sermonize I would pray first, wait for a topic to surface (unless one was assigned or liturgically evident), then chew on that passage all week. I would research words in original languages, cross-reference key words with other passages, sift through for what it all might mean for us.

I remember speaking on faith, rivers, stones, and children. The process was often exposing, riveting, beautiful, intimate, and met with a regularly dozing deacon or two.

You preach a message and then hope some small smudge of it besmirches the forehead of the listener.

And still I struggle whether anything did.

Anything like–once there was a woman who used to speak in a church where there was an ordinary altar, garden-variety stage, oddly capitalized sign propped upon it.

DO not PLAY on the stage

Sometimes all we need to know about the beauty, splendor, and grace of this dying religion is that the Spirit of the Living God can drive an ordinary man to

Print the words that matter

ALL IN capital letters

For those who are awake

By the end of the sermon.

Elealee's Blog

Words for light

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