In spiritual direction
there is an exercise – more than that really,
a concept –
that sometimes helps
with tracing the movement of God
in one’s life.
It is the idea that our lives, our
life stories, are scripture.
It turns out that when we learn to read
and tell our own stories,
in the same way we learn to read
other people’s stories
or those in books and in the bible,
then we begin to see the movement of the spirit
in a way we had not seen before.

In other words, every person’s life is scripture –
God written upon every day
and every hour
and every minute of every person.

In 2013, I left full-time professional ministry
as I had known it for thirty-three years,
and moved to a place
I had never heard of
until a couple of months before we moved there.
I embarked on work I had never done before –
which was serving a small congregation
in a small town,
in a very rural area,
not to mention
trying to become a published writer.

There was no way to know in advance
what, if anything, God was writing upon my life.
But it turns out, that was no different
than any other day in my life –
or yours for that matter.
Neither you nor I know
what God is writing upon our lives
at this moment in time,
in this phase of our lives.

We do not know, in real time as it happens,
what God is doing with us,
or how the quill of God’s pen
is scribbling through the pages of our lives.
But if we have an imagination,
and if we will embrace the spiritual wisdom
of those who have come before us,
then we may consider
that every day
and every hour
and every minute
has a whisper or a song or a verse
written on it.

Trusting that, even when we have not
seen it yet, is the muscle memory of faith.

I have a good friend who is an ordained minister
and he tells the story
about when he informed his parents
that he had decided to go to seminary.

His father was an insurance company executive,
someone who had done quite well
in that business.

My friend had tried insurance
and after some time knew it was not for him,
and that he needed to follow
that curiously compelling desire for ministry.
His dad’s response was simple and direct:
“I don’t understand how those people
keep score.”

For his father, it was clear
how to keep score –
job title, office view, salary, stock options.
How in the world
would someone keep score
in a profession where
no one has any real power or wealth,
and if they did,
they weren’t supposed to show it off?

Well, I hate to tell you this,
but clergy are terribly competitive
about congregational size, programs, and budgets – I call it “Steeple Envy.”
The church as an institution
has become obsessed with metrics.
We have fallen into the abys of capitalism
with its culture of greed and predation.

How do we measure the value of
a congregation of 48 active members
worshipping in an old wine bar?

I have been in moribund congregations,
that learned how to fill the seats,
but they were no more valuable with full pews
than they were with three-quarters empty ones.
They were more economically viable,
but no more valuable – if
we gage value by the Gospel instead of capitalism.

Fatness and plenty do not define abundance,
nor do victory and achievement.
Instead, abundance is defined by
the presence of God in our midst
in hours and in days
both wonderful and hazardous.
The definition of abundance
is that God has written,
and continues to write,
upon our lives
every day
every hour
and every minute.

More often than not
we imagine that WE are the authors
of our own stories,
and we go along the margins of the page
and follow the standard interpretations
of the story
as it has been given to us.
But just following that course is lazy;
and not very wise.

Let’s turn to the story from Mark
about the widow to clue in on value in the Gospel.
It is a reading placed in the lectionary
at only at this time of year, in the autumn.
That is very strange
and it should raise our suspicions
since it is a story from Holy Week –
you know, between Palm Sunday and Easter.

Placed as it is in the context of the Church’s stewardship season
it could be used as a cudgel
to beat us up about our contributions.

But when we hear it
in the context of Jesus being challenged,
attacked, and tested
by people with power and authority,
it is something else altogether.
You see, not only do we have to look and listen
for the words God has written upon our lives,
we also have to pay attention
to who else has been writing on our lives,
and then decide
if we are going to go along
with whoever has been writing those otherscripts.

If we think about Mark’s story
in its actual context
during the last tumultuous week
of Jesus’ life,
then we see that the power of the widow
is not that she gave her last two bits
to the Temple.
I mean really,
Jesus didn’t care about architecture –
in fact, in the next chapter
he tells them how the Temple
is going to be destroyed
because of injustice associated with it.

No, the power of the widow
in Mark’s story
is that she revealed the stinginess
and pomposity
of those who were in control.

What she did ripped off the veneer
of respectability
that whitewashed the self-centered intentions
of the current class of religious
and community leaders.
In short, her action was subversive.
Shewas subversive.
What I mean by subversive,
is that her act took what was considered
normal and accepted
and told the truth about it.

You see, subversive
doesn’t mean dark and treacherous
any more than abundance means fat and wasteful.
All we have to do to be subversive
is to tell the truth
on what is otherwise considered
normal and acceptable.
When we do that,
we let the genie out of the bottle.

Whether we are teachers or lawyers,
healers or bankers,
technicians or managers,
parents or students or retired,
we can be subversive
by finding ways to tell the truth
about what has otherwise
become normal and accepted.

We can find ways, for example,
of pointing to how our economy is based upon
greed and self-interest
and what happens to the environment
when consumerism is the economic engine.
We can find ways, for example,
of wondering why it would be considered
attempted murder if I poisoned
the well on your property,
but if I am a farmer or own a factory
and my toxic by-products
run off the land and into the lake we share,
I’m not a criminal.
Instead, I get years and federal dollars
to gradually reduce but not even eliminate
poisoning your water.

We do not have to be flashy
and eloquent with our truth-telling;
the widow wasn’t.
And Jesus,
until the last chapter of his life was written,
was more cunning than direct.
You and I can find ways to be subversive
and to corrode the protective shield that covers
the script that others have written for us.
That is our job it seems to me,
and what the widow was doing.

You see, if we start reading the book
God is writing with our lives
it is subversive
because it will agitate us
and those who know us,
to reconsider how we have organized
the world in general, and our lives in particular.

I think it is possible to read the book
God is writing with our lives
while sitting in a tree,
holding a gun, and waiting for a deer to show up.

And it is possible to read that book
while folding clothes at The Linden,
knowing they will just get unfolded again.

And it is possible to read that book
walking the dog
and smelling autumn leaves on the sidewalk.

It is even possible to read the book
God is writing on our very own lives
while we are at work
or running errands
or doing any number of mundane
and routine activities.
But…
none of those is a ‘gimme’ –
we have to be paying attention.

We have to wake up.
We have to DO things that wake us up.
We have to intentionally make our feet
step outside the lines of routine
and so leave the ordinary.
We have to push ourselves
to do something different
and feel the difference.

We have towalkoutside the lines
and talkoutside the lines
and think outside the lines –
even if we go back inside the lines
like a rubber band snapping back into place.

It is the journey
and the jumble
and the activity
that will have allowed us to see
and hear
and read
the book God is writing on our lives.

We won’t actually get to see the whole book –
probably only a sentence
or a paragraph if we are lucky.

But that is how we pay attention:
by waking up
in the midst of the ordinary.
It sounds easy of course, but
we know it is not.
It is never easy to push ourselves
beyond a comfort zone.
It goes against our nature.
Nobody likes it.
Nobody.

But that is how we begin to decipher
the script others have written for us
from the one that God is writing for us.
We wake up
in the midst of the ordinary
and the routine.

We wake ourselves up,
or we find friends
who will wake us up,
or we DO things
that will wake us up.
That is what the widow did
for anyone who was looking or listening.

She showed them the difference
between the contribution to breakfast
that the hen and the pig make –
you know,
giving an egg
verses giving up the bacon.
Then Jesus,
subversive as he was,
pointed it out for everyone else to see.
That is our job too:
to keep people around us
or do stuff
that will wake us up
in the midst of the ordinary.
Then when we wake up
we’re supposed to tell others what we see.

The value of this congregation
has not changed with the numbers,
nor the architecture.

Did you catch that?
The value of this congregation
has not changed with the numbers,
nor the architecture.

That statement,
all by itself, if embraced,
if lived out as if it were true,
is subversive.