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Beloved: I want to give a warning that some of the content in today’s reflection talks about domestic violence and sexual assault. Please do what you must do for your own self-care if this is a trigger for you.
*********************** I thought that this morning I was going to talk with you about the line in the Gospel reading: But their eyes were kept from recognizing him…. It was the line that jumped out and stuck with me, and when I talked about the Word with my colleague Susan on Wednesday, it was the line that was resonating in her brain, so I thought: well, that’s that then. And it stuck with me because I wondered what was going on in that moment. I think their eyes were kept from recognizing Jesus because of their expectations. Their expectations of who God is and how God moves in the world. Their expectation of who they thought the Messiah was going to be and who Jesus was, who Jesus is…. Their expectations kept them from seeing God, Love in the flesh, revealed to them as they walked and talked, as they shared their story with a stranger. I thought I was going to preach on this because I think this is our truth. How our expectations of God and of church prevent us from seeing God and love right next to us in the face of the stranger who joins us on the journey. Expectations—they can fuel us forward or freeze us in our place. Expectations can be sourced by fear or love, by anger or hope. Expectations are shaped by what we consume and who and what we trust. But, on Friday, I was struck by another line from our readings; this time from the reading in the Acts of the apostles. When Peter says: Be saved from this perverse generation. Another translation of the same line is: Get out while you can; get out of this sick and stupid culture. And one other is: Save yourselves from this corrupt generation. All of these translations seem so apropos for our world, our nation right now…..perverse, corrupt….get out while you can. This past week we heard the horrifying and sickening stories of people—all young people—being killed because of simple mistakes: Knocking on the wrong door; trying to get into the wrong car; mistaking a long driveway for a road. I have done all of these things—more than once, in fact. Probably all, or most of us, has. So–what’s different now? Why these three senseless, sick deaths in the past week? Guns. An overabundance of guns. And the mentality that violence saves us. There are roughly 100 million more guns in the United States than there are Americans. We win the gun bonanza by twice as much as any other country. I know, I know that some people want to argue that guns are not the problem. People are the problem. But we keep giving people—the supposed problem—guns. Even at the cost of the well-being of our community. At the cost of now having gun violence as the number 1 cause of death to our nation’s children. Gun violence kills children in America more than any other cause. Something we can stop; something we can decrease; something we can prevent. If we have the will. But when profit is God in a nation, as it is in the United States, then the profit of the gunmakers and ammunition producers, and the power they carry over our elected servants, is apparently more important than the lives of our children. Through his parables, his conversations, his questions, Jesus continually challenges us to consider: Is your expectation that the individual is more important or is the community more important? In America it seems to be the individual. In the Gospel—In God’s dream, it is the community. Is it any wonder we don’t recognize Jesus who is in our midst, who calls us to a new way, who tells us to overturn the tables of the unjust systems we have built? Get out while you can; get out of this sick and stupid culture. About a month ago, Murray and I watched the movie: Women Talking. It tells the story of a Mennonite colony, based on a true story—where females—from little girls of four to elderly women—were knocked out with cow tranquilizer while they were sleeping in their beds. And then they would be sexually assaulted and find themselves bruised, bleeding and battered in the morning. Sometimes they would end up pregnant or infected. The religious elders told them it was the Devil or ghosts—and even chalked up the women’s story to fantastical imaginations. Much like what we hear in the Gospel when the women who first witness the resurrection are not believed and they are told that their experience is just an idle tale. As one character in Women Talking says: They made us disbelieve ourselves. Because women’s realities have been shaped by others’ expectations of them and for them since time began. Mostly because women were not the ones who told their own story, who wrote down their experience to be shared throughout time. Men have been the official historians and storytellers of truth. At least in the published, authorized version of things. Women have always been told their purpose by others: by the Church, by the job market, by their husbands, their fathers, by advertisements, by the culture. And while we now allow women to work outside the home, what that has meant is that women are generally expected to do both: home and work. And the structures, systems and institutions that women have been allowed to become a part of—for lesser pay, mind you; can’t have them make equal pay—those structures, systems and institutions haven’t changed to make room for women. Instead, women are expected to make themselves smaller, misshapen, in order to fit into these male-dominated, male-oriented structures. While doors have opened for women in my lifetime, the rooms are still decorated and fashioned for men. Think of it: the word that we were all supposed to accept as a “stand-in” for humanity is “Man.” It was all over our prayer books, songs, and liturgies…..For example, from the Book of Common Prayer’s Rite One Prayers of the People: Let us pray for the whole state of Christ's Church and the world. Almighty and everliving God, who in thy holy Word hast taught us to make prayers, and supplications, and to give thanks for all men This language is still in the Episcopal prayer book. It is still prayed by some. And when God was written about and described, by those male historians and storytellers, they made God male. So much so that many people still think God is male—or they can only imagine God as a male—and they are annoyed and uncomfortable if you use Mother or She or They….. This past Thursday we hosted a gathering for Women Only in order to show the film Women Talking. We put it in our weekly email; I announced it in church, and we put it out on Facebook. But, I didn’t know what to expect. I was thinking that if 20 women showed up to watch and talk about the movie, that would be fantastic. There were 50 of us. 50 women! Younger and older and middle-aged. And what a conversation we had. Because we are tired and angry and wounded by being seen only through other’s limited expectations. We are tired of our experiences not mattering enough. Enough to not change the systems. Not just to access the systems, but to recognize that this world was built by and for men, and it’s time to re-dream and re-build it for all of us. Just as many folx are tired and angry and wounded because their loved ones who have been shot by assault rifles in first-grade classrooms don’t matter enough to change our gun laws. That we don’t really believe that the community’s welfare is more important than an individual’s wealth or a corporation’s wealth. In today’s reading from Acts, when Peter is preaching at Pentecost and the folx who have experienced Holiness in their midst ask the disciples: What should we do? Peter tells them: Change your hearts and lives. Get baptized. Baptism wasn’t a ritual, as we know it, in the church yet. Peter wasn’t talking about a ritual; Peter was talking about the true meaning of baptism: ending one way of life in order to live a new way. Or as Julia Gatta put it in her book entitled The Life of Christ: “The goal of baptism is to restore us to the human we were dreamed to be.” To replace our expectations with God’s expectations: Community eclipses individualism. Love defeats hate. Hope beats fear. Equity triumphs over privilege. The women in Women Talking had to make a decision when the men violating them were finally caught and were brought into the town to be tried. They were given 24 hours to decide if they would forgive the men. The women saw it as three choices: Stay and do nothing. Or Stay and Fight to change the colony. Or Leave. I think this is the same fight that is taking place within the Church. Stay and do nothing: keep everything as it has always been. Or Stay in the Church and fight to change it. Or Leave. I struggle with these choices pretty much on a daily basis. Well, let me be clear. I am not interested in Stay and do nothing, change nothing. But I would never leave my relationship with Jesus, or abandon my hope in God’s dream. I cannot give up my absolute trust that this is the Way I, that we, are called to live……but when we try to live this faith out in a culture where there are more guns than people and women and their experiences are still doubted and diminished….it can be a long and weary road. Recently I heard the priest Barbara Brown Taylor say this: “The church gives me a community to figure out what is happening to me in the world.” And, that, perhaps, is the biggest reason I stay and fight…..That and this loveliness from the 2nd chapter of the book of the prophet Isaiah: There’s a day coming when the mountain of God’s House Will be The Mountain-- solid, towering over all mountains. All nations will river toward it, people from all over set out for it. They’ll say, “Come, let’s climb God’s Mountain, go to the House of the God of Jacob and Rachel and Leah. God will show us the way she works so we can live the way we’re made.” Zion’s the source of the revelation. God’s Message comes from Jerusalem. God will settle things fairly between nations. She’ll make things right between many peoples. They’ll turn their swords into shovels, their spears into hoes. No more will nation fight nation; they won’t play war anymore. Come, family of Jacob and Leah and Rachel, let’s live in the light of God. Here we are at the 2nd Sunday of Easter and we dive deeper into what resurrection means: this “wait a minute….Jesus is what?” reality that happens after the cross.
In today’s readings we have two different attempts of making sense of Resurrection. Our reading from Acts takes place at Pentecost; in our church year calendar that is 50 days after Easter, ending the Easter season. For the Jewish people, it was the festival of the weeks, also known as Shavuot or Pentecost—50 days after Passover–and many pilgrims were gathered as Peter and the eleven stand to speak with those who had gathered in Jerusalem—many of whom had witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion. And after the great wind blew among them, and the tongues of fire landed on their heads–a fairly amazing event I would imagine—Peter begins to speak. And Peter does what humans often do after something unimaginable has happened: Peter tries to explain it—wrap it up in logic—connect it to prior knowledge. It’s what we do; we want to make sense of everything. Peter does his darndest to earn the people’s intellectual assent—probably thinking if he says just the right thing….. He refers to the prophet Joel, to David the psalmist—-connecting what the people have heard and learned to what they have now experienced. Words, words, words to convince them Jesus is Messiah. The story tells us that it works; well, something works. Maybe it was the wind and the tongues of fire dancing on their heads, or maybe it was the words, but the story goes on to say that 3000 people became convinced that day….. Jesus takes a bit of a different approach. Jesus doesn’t primarily use words to convince; he goes with the sensory experience. Jesus invites the disciples to touch: Put your finger here….see my hands….reach out your hand and put it in my side. Jesus breathes on them, breathes the holy life-breath on them and says: Peace be with you. Three times in today’s reading. Peace be with you. Peace be with you. Peace be with you. When it comes to something like life after death—living beyond dying—we probably need both: experience and words. Sensual and logical. And even then……we still don’t really know, really understand. Our heads, and maybe our hearts?, are too small to capture the whole of this Mystery. Beloved: I don’t know what to tell you about resurrection. Oh, I am convinced of what Resurrection means to us right now—in this bit where we haven’t physically died but we experience the many, smaller deaths as we live and move and have our being. Like we talked about last week, I am certain that Resurrection happens: Jesus lives when we live Jesus. But what does Resurrection mean for us when our bodies finally stop breathing? What does Resurrection mean for our physical deaths? I am not sure. Not completely. But I cannot deny that if we believe Gospel, then Resurrection means Love is stronger than Death. Love is stronger than Hate. Resurrection means that the worst thing that happens to us is not the last thing that happens to us. That somehow we shed these human bodies and we join the force field of Love that we know as God—the presence of Love which also contains those who have gone before us—and as we join God’s forever everafter—we still get to participate in the creative force of love that lives and moves and has its being in this Creation, this Universe. Somehow. That’s about all I can say about that. We have to find our Peace with the unknowing. Now, if you believe in a bodily resurrection—that after he died, Jesus came back in a body and somehow, so will we—that’s faithful. But, if you hear the Gospel resurrection stories, and you really wonder or doubt or, even dare I say, find it impossible to swallow the bodily part—for Jesus or for anyone else—that’s faithful too. Because the important bit is that you are wrestling with what resurrection means, for you, for us, for Creation, —and you are scooping up and applying the Wisdom that is there. The Wisdom you can grasp. After all, the Bible isn’t so much a book of facts as it is a collective of Wisdom. Actually, there is one more thing…something I was thinking in the shower this morning about Jesus’ post-death body….Maybe the Gospel insists, here in today’s story and in John’s stories after the Resurrection, like Jesus eating breakfast on the beach with the boys—maybe the Gospel insists that Jesus had a post-death body so that we would understand that we’re it. That these resurrection stories are just Jesus tagging out–like in wrestling….Jesus is tagging out and Tag! We’re it. Jesus’ living body in the world today. Today Jesus says to us : Put your finger here….see my hands. Beloved: Which wounds of Christ are you being called to touch and see? Which wounds of Christ have you already tended? Because you have. In the 25th chapter of Matthew, Jesus says: I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me a drink, I was homeless and you gave me a room, I was shivering and you gave me clothes, I was sick and you stopped to visit, I was in prison and you came to me.’ And the disciples ask Jesus: When? When did we see you? And Jesus answers: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’ ………Put your finger here….see my hands. And then there’s this juicy, wonderful bit of wisdom: The Resurrection of Jesus undoes the injustice of Jesus’ scandalous death. Resurrection undoes injustice…..Imagine all the ways we can practice resurrection and undo injustice. The violence against Trans lives, the diminishment of immigrant lives, prisoners’ lives, impoverished lives, lonely lives, the willingness to accept the thousands of lives taken due to gun violence. Beloved: RESURRECTION undoes injustice! We are the living body of Christ in the world today. Okay: one last bit of Wisdom that was written by Serene Jones and Paul Lakeland in their book Constructive Theology. It goes something like this: If the mission of God’s church is to be effective, then it is the message of Jesus that ought to be stressed rather than Jesus as the message. We will know God’s reign has come when folx look at the church and instead of saying: see how those Christians love each other….folx will look at the church and say: See how those Christians love us! Today we hear our reality spoken in the Word.
People gather in hope; people gather in joy and cry out: Hosanna! which means Save us! We turn our eyes on Jesus and see the One who can save us. And maybe, like the crowds waving their palms over 2000+ years ago, we expect Jesus to save us from the Empire, to save us from other people, from bad leaders and nasty situations. But Jesus’ life and Jesus’ death reveal that what Jesus, what God’s salvation, saves us from is our selves. We are our own oppressors. To follow Jesus, to live and love as Jesus does, saves us from fear, greed, self-centeredness, apathy, prejudice, hatred, and division. The cross clearly reveals that if we follow Jesus, we can be freed from our need for vengeance, retribution, and violence. Instead of getting caught up as a mob of fear and distrust, the cross calls us to refuse to participate in the constant and continuous human cycle of blood-letting. March 27, 2023 Nashville, TN Their names are: Katherine Koonce aged 60 Mike Hill aged 61 Cynthia Peak aged 61 Evelyn Dieckhaus aged 9 Hallie Scruggs aged 9 William Kinney aged 9 We do not have the time this morning to list all the names of the 10,332 people who have died due to gun violence, murder, accidental death, and suicide, in our nation in the first three months of 2023. 10, 332 in three months. Those 10, 332 voices are crying out: Hosanna, Hosanna: save us! But, like these crowds of yesteryear, too quickly and too easily we can turn from gathering in hope and joy and be swayed by fear and turn into a mob of individuals who seek and serve only themselves—who live and move from distrust and fear. Fear of change, fear of loss, fear that someone is going to get what we want only for ourselves. Today’s story, this week’s story, is our story. And this Holy week story asks of us: Who will you be? Who will you follow? What life, what world, are you willing to live for? What life, what world, are you willing to die for? What world are you willing to co-create with the One who hung the stars in the sky? For me, as an Enneagram 8 with a strong 7 wing, it’s betrayal. Betrayal is something that is really hard for me to forgive. Or to let go of. It gnaws on me. Betrayal makes my blood boil and my heart break. It sends me to the pit of despair. Sends me to the valley of the dry bones.
Betrayal is really just unmet expectations. We expect someone to act a certain way, to have your back and be on your side, and they fail to do so. Betrayal can leave a relationship desiccated, like the scattered dry bones on the valley floor of today’s story from the prophet Ezekiel. Unmet expectations are often at the heart of our sorrows, our struggles. Like when we expect relationships and marriages to last, but they don’t. For so very many reasons: we change, they change, it all changes. Heartbreak. Or when our body, due to illness or genetics, accidents or disease, fails us. Or as we age, and our bodies can no longer do what they once did. Frustrating, challenging, hard to accept. The same is true for our mental and emotional capacities; we expect our minds and our psyches to perform in certain ways, and when they fall short: struggle. Grief. Hardship. What about our family relationships? Parents whose expectations for their childrens’ lives are unmet, due to so many reasons; it could be addiction, an unhealed emotional wound, disease, illness, a personal choice, accident and happenstance. When the hope-filled and loving expectations for our children's lives are not realized, we hurt deeply for them. And the reverse is true: children whose parents do not live up to the child’s expectations for security, unconditional love, a home as safe haven. All too often these unmet expectations create life-long struggle and sorrow. And then there are collective expectations for institutions, for governments, for policies and programs. It can be crippling to be let down by these institutions that we are led to believe are in place for our safety, our well-being. When institutions and governments do not live up to expectations, societies fail. And then there’s the church……which is too often synonymous with God for many people. When church fails to meet our expectations, we can experience it as if God fails to meet our expectations….and where does that leave us? Is it any wonder that for many who once were followers of Christ the church feels like this valley of dry bones? Or like the death tomb in which Lazarus lies? In fact, in today’s reading from Ezekiel, when the Hebrews were lamenting and saying: Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely, the Hebrew can be translated as : we are severed from our expectations. And most likely, Beloved, what is being referred to here is their expectations of God: how they had translated and understood what God would do for them; what believing in God would do for them. Like when we think believing in God somehow might mean bad things won’t happen to us; I mean, I know we know that bad things happen to good people—but deep down—don’t we still kinda believe that it won’t….if we are good enough or pray hard enough or go to church enough…..After all, What’s it all for anyway? Believe? Believe what? What good is that belief? What does it prevent? What does it provide? Today we hear both a promise and a call. The promise isn’t about what happens when our bodies die. It’s not about the great beyond and what happens then. It’s about here and now……this life, your life, my life. It’s about what can happen when we have to face unmet expectations. I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you and you shall live…..I will put my spirit in you….. I am resurrection and I am life…… In the beginning, God–who is Love, or at least that’s what verse 8 of the fourth chapter of the first letter of John tells us: God is Love. So, let’s use that name for God, for the source of all being today: Love. In the beginning, Love took up a handful of dust, of soil—adamah in the Hebrew–which is so close to the Hebrew word for human, adam–or ADAM as we pronounce human’s name—Love took up the soil and blew the breath into it and humanity lived. Humanity lives. Love blew the breath, which in Hebrew is ruach and in Greek is pneuma and in both languages it means: breath, wind, Spirit. Love blew Love’s spirit into the dust of the earth and human came to be. Do you hear the Holy Trinity here: Love, Earth, Human. These three are interdependent and inextricably intertwined. And today, Love promises that when we find ourselves in those valleys, those dry and desiccated places, when our bones are scattered across the land, Love will come. And step by step—sinew, bone, flesh, skin–Love can rebuild us. And then Love will blow Love’s spirit—which is life itself–back into us. And we shall live. Again. Think about it. I bet it has happened to you. Maybe it was a small valley–when you felt such sorrow or fear that you were stopped in place. Afraid to move forward or too tired to take the next step. What happened then? Something happened. You are here. Maybe a friend called or a partner took your hand or a child gave you a dandelion or a song played on the radio or the sunset took your breath away or your heart told you to take a deep sleep and rest or go on a walk and clear your mind…….Love shows up in so many forms. That—Beloved—that is God. That is how God, that is how Love, works. I know, we want the supernatural; we want the miracle. We want the Lazarus story. But the miracle isn’t the takeaway from this story. It’s the wisdom conveyed in this story that Love wants us to capture. The wisdom of what it is that brings life to where there once was death. After all, this is the essence of God—who is Creator, Source of all Being, God who is love:One who brings forth life where there was once death. The breath of Love. And these deaths we experience, Beloved. They are not a one-time thing. These deaths happen again and again to us. So many unmet expectations in a lifetime. So many things to let go, to bury, to leave behind. Many tombs, many graves, many valleys. The Promise is that there can be life after each of them. A changed life—hopefully a life that has grown or strengthened in some way—but new life can be resuscitated. That’s the Promise. And then there’s the Call. In both of today’s Wisdom stories we hear Love’s call: Prophesy Mortal, Prophesy to the breath……Love’s words to humanity Unbind him and let him go! Jesus’ words to the crowd gathered to see Lazarus come forth from the tomb…..still bound by the deathshroud. Unbind him and let him go. And that Beloved is the call; that is our work. God blew breath into humanity so that humanity might breathe Love into each other….and into all of Creation. Love begets love begets more love. We, as Church, have entangled this Promise and Call into a bit of a hot mess. It has too often been turned into memorizing doctrine and creed and dogma….asking us to perform our faith rather than to live our faith, but, perhaps, we will be a generation who will breathe the life back into these desiccated bones. Not so much with the supernatural, but with the primal act of breathing love……. That time your heart was breaking and somehow you were whispered back to joy….that was Love…..that was God. That time you failed and you were embarrassed and ashamed and you didn’t know how to go on, but somehow—through time and friends who still called and family who still loved and new chances and opportunities to try something new at which you excelled….you were able to let go of the shame and embarrassment and feel strong enough to come out of their shadows….that was Love….that was God. Or when a riverbed is swollen with garbage and trash and folx come and clean it up so it can flow freely and the wildlife and ecosystem around it is restored…….Unbind him and let him go…. Or when immigrants and refugees come to our town and we work to make them a home and companion them until they can manage for themselves in this new foreign land….Or when we restore our yards and our gardens to native plants for butterflies and bees and all winged and crawly things…. Or when we recognize we have hurt someone with our words and we own our bad behavior and apologize…. Or when we shut down gossip and story of a fellow student or camper–even though it means some others will think we are not very much fun…. Or when we gather in small groups to learn about the racism and prejudice that still storms our nation Or we acknowledge that patriarchy and white supremacy is still polluting our systems, our institutions, our churches and communities….. Prophesy Mortal…..prophesy to the breath…… Promise and Call. For me the truth has been that the more I trust the promise, the more I have died and been brought back to life through the life-breath of Love, the more I am empowered and equipped to embrace the call. In fact, the more I want to….. Love pulls us up from our graves and tombs so that we might be the Ones who pull up whoever next needs resurrection. What if, Beloved, God is not so much supernatural? What if God is deliberate….intentional? Deliberate, intentional love. In her book, Searching for Sunday, Rachel Held Evans wrote: “Imagine if every church became a place where everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable. Imagine if every church became a place where we told one another the truth. We might just create sanctuary.”
I think sanctuary—which is defined as a place set apart, a holy place, for protection, for refuge– sanctuary is wherever you are safe to be yourself and to become your self. Your best self: God’s creation, the Beloved These past three Sundays we have heard stories of individuals who encounter Holy Love, the One we call Jesus. Each one of these folx hears Jesus, sees Jesus, experiences Jesus. And each story ends with the individual waking up to a changed understanding of how to be in the world, a changed understanding of what it means to be in relationship with God. Two weeks ago it was Nicodemus: a Pharisee–a member of the religious establishment and authority—who comes to Jesus in the night because the establishment is threatened by Jesus. After all, this wandering prophet, who some think to be the Messiah, is presenting a different God than the One they sell; he’s offering a different way to understand the Torah, the law, that leads to the status quo not having all the power and knowledge, and so the authorities, the status quo, are having none of it. So Nicodemus comes in secret at night and Jesus tells him God can’t really be put into a box, clean and tidy with a bow on top. This God loves the world. All of it. Even the messy, unholy bits, and Nicodemus’ establishment-empowered little mind is blown wide open. God’s love is life-changing. Last week we heard the encounter between the unnamed Samaritan woman at the well and Jesus. This woman on the edges of society hears the hope Jesus says can be found in living life as God would have us live it; she sees new possibilities. And her experience of Love-in-the-flesh compels her to share this story, to share this possible way of living, of loving, with her community. And her witness is so inspiring and irresistible that her neighbors come to check out Jesus for themselves. And they hear Jesus, see Jesus, experience Jesus—and they are captivated—they decide to turn to this new way of living. God’s love is liberating. And now, today, we have the encounter between Jesus and this blind man by the side of the road. Left to beg because society deemed difference and disability as a moral judgment by God, so folks who fell short of the norms were literally left by the side of the road and thrown the scraps of life on which to survive. Unfortunately, Beloved, I am not so sure that we have traveled very far from this pitiful, sinful way of being as a society. Today, this blind man hears Jesus first. He hears Jesus upending this sinful way of understanding how God works that the disciples are spouting. They ask Jesus if the man is blind because he himself sinned, or perhaps his parents? So, obviously, they think, God punished the man for his or his parents' sins by making him blind. And Jesus says: NO. That is not how God works. You can almost hear Jesus’ deep sigh of disappointment as he pauses to realign his followers, yet again. And then Jesus goes to this blind man sitting on the ground; Jesus spits onto the dirt–using everyday elements of creation to make some mud–and smears that mud on the blind eyes. Jesus tells the man to go to the healing pool at Siloam. And the man obeys. This man who has heard Jesus, and now at his healing touch, experienced Jesus; this man obeys. And then he sees. God’s love is life-changing; God’s love is liberating. And if these three stories are any indication; God’s love is mysterious. It cannot be fully explained.We can not part and parcel it out to our complete satisfaction. But, oh Beloved, this love can be heard. It can be seen. It can be experienced. And that, my friends, is the work of the church. We are to host gatherings, opportunities, places and spaces for God’s love to be seen, heard, and experienced. But God is not limited to church buildings, church gatherings, or even, church people. God’s love is a fire that burns wherever there is oxygen to feed it. These three stories reveal that the Jesus movement of the first century was a wildfire that spread far and wide—even in the ancient world with no social media or printing press—but it spread not because of an authorized, official religious institution. It spread in spite of it. It spread due to individual encounters and personal stories; it spread neighborly act by neighborly act. Like Laundry Love this past week, where several individuals were met by loving neighbors from the Beloved Community who provided them the means and the opportunity to wash their clothes. Where human hearts had a chance to encounter one another. Where love was seen, heard, experienced. Or last week when our littles went off for their learning circles and our youth went to their As One Youth gathering during our Sunday gathering. Building community–and sanctuary—one gathering at a time. And like this gathering—each week we come together for an experiential encounter: with smells, and sounds, and sights, and tastes; we touch Love as we share the Peace, as we hug hello or good-bye, as we take the bread into our hands—making Love a sensory rendezvous right here in this space. This past week I visited one of our older, wiser parishioners, and she shared some stories of when life had been really tough for, when she had been brought to scary edges and she said to me: Jesus was there. With me. Every time. She didn’t always recognize it in the moment, but as she looked back, she knew she had seen or heard or experienced this One who is Love. Jesus was there. Every time. Church as sanctuary—a refuge of Love for every wandering and wondering soul who encounters it. Continually each week, sporadically or randomly–our own healing pool of Siloam. Jesus says: Go and wash. Beloved, in two weeks we begin Holy Week. A week full of these encounters when we have several opportunities to see, hear and experience Jesus; to see, hear, and experience Love. This Holy week when we immerse ourselves in our story, the love story we are to know by heart, know in our hearts—this story that liberates us, changes our lives, this Love story that models how to lay down our lives for others. Because each life that saturates itself in this love is a life that re-stitches the unraveling that has been cast upon this world by hate, violence, blindness, ignorance, apathy and despair. Redeeming and repairing Creation by loving the world as God loves. In her book, How to Live, Judith Valente tells this story: “There is a beautiful scene in a film from the 1980s called The Year of Living Dangerously. Actor Mel Gibson plays an Australian journalist named Guy Hamiliton sent to cover the political turmoil in 1960s Indonesia. He is befriended by a sensitive, almost mystical photographer named Billy Kwan, played brilliantly by the actress Linda Hunt. Billy offers to serve as the young journalist’s guide. He takes him one evening on a tour of Jakarta’s slums. Guy has never seen such intense poverty. ‘Walking through the slums of Moscow, Tolstoy had a similar reaction,’ Billy tells Guy. ‘Tolstoy went home, collected the money he could find, and returned to give it to the poor.’ “Yes, but that would be a drop in the ocean,” Guy says. “That’s what Tolstoy concluded,” Billy says. “Do you want to know what I think? I say you do what you can about the misery right in front of you. And by doing so, add your light to the sum of light.” Beloved: may we be ones who add our light to the sum of light, and thereby, bit by bit, change the world in which we live. And all God’s people say: Amen What makes us believe? Why does anyone believe?
Last week we heard about Nicodemus; he believed. Believed in Jesus. Even though the Institution that granted him power and status didn’t believe. Even though the education he had received didn’t believe. So he came at night; maybe so there would be less distractions, but also probably so no one need know he believed. In the midst of dark and night, Nicodemus came to see Jesus….because he believed. Nicodemus believed because of what he had seen—lives that had been changed by this One known as Jesus. Nicodemus had seen and heard of life-changing events that can only come from the Source of all life. These stories of lives changing for the better, they brought Nicodemus hope and belief and made him brave enough to go and see and ask. What made the woman from Samaria in our Gospel today believe? She has no power, no status, no education—-she isn’t even given a name in our story. She is the opposite of last week’s visitor to Jesus. Instead of in darkness, she meets Jesus in the heat of the day. Now, she may have secrecy in common with Nicodemus, well, not so much secrecy as the avoidance of others. After all, most women come to the well for household water in the morning, before it gets too hot. But she is here when the other women are not—in the heat of the day. Alone. This woman has nothing that should make her feel brave enough, nothing to make her feel worthy enough, to question this Hebrew, this Jew. But she does anyway. She is audacious. Maybe her thirst is even greater than Jesus’ thirst; after all, he never does get his cup of water. And in their common thirst—Jesus sees her. He sees her. He listens; And he answers her. Always drawn to the outsider, the outlier, the one kept to the edges is this Jesus. He answers her and offers a long drink of hope. Even though she is one who society has deemed practically without value. This society where a woman without a husband has no home, no security; she has no children, so no future. It isn’t her poor character that is revealed by her succession of husbands. It is the society’s injustice toward women Jesus exposes. 5 husbands? If divorce is in her past it is because men could get a writ of divorce for a variety of reasons, and there wasn’t anything a woman could do to prevent it. If a husband’s death is in her past, the woman would have to remarry. Marriage is what provided her a home. Homes belonged to men, so women had to live with a husband or her father or another male family member. There are very few women who had any capacity to be able to live as an independent woman outside of marriage. Society would cast a long sideways glance at this unlucky woman for whom 5 husbands have failed to provide her security or a future. Like all women, her life is not in her own hands. And in the heat of the day she comes for water. And meets the Christ. Who looks her straight on and sees her; He sees her; he knows her. And he gives this audacious woman answers. Answers that quench her thirst. Is that why she believes? Because she is seen; she is known. She is accepted as who she is; the injustice that shackles her is named. She is accepted. Acknowledged. Seen. The conversation Jesus has with her is longer than any other conversation Jesus has in Scripture. She engages him more than any other leader, ruler, stakeholder, follower in the histories we have of Jesus’s life.That alone speaks to the mission of Jesus. And then something happens. In my experience and in the stories from Scripture, something always happens when we find ourselves in the presence of Jesus. Jesus—who is Messiah, who is the Christ, the Anointed One. Love in the flesh. This unnamed woman walks away from her Love Encounter Changed. Changed in such a way that she must go and give witness, give witness to Love: the Love offered, the Love taken, the Love that is possible. And here’s the amazing thing—this unnamed woman with no status, power, or education; this one who comes alone because her society has failed to see her value: she is believed. By the society that has not known what to do with her. She is believed. Think of how compelling this woman must have been. She must have been lit up from the inside out. Metaphorically Glowing somehow. Her witness to love is so compelling that others go. She has used Jesus’ very own words: Come and see. And they do. The folx go and see and hear for themselves. They stand close to Love and the presence of Love changes them. And They believe! Authentic Love is that powerful. Raw love is hard to ignore, hard to look away from once you see it. Can you imagine this scene? Can you imagine yourself in this story? Have you known this thirst? Or maybe you identify more with our Hebrew siblings in today’s story from Exodus? These ones who have been liberated, have been freed, and yet are still shackled. Their request is a simple one: We are thirsty; give us water. A basic human need. First level on Maslow’s hierarchy of human need. A need that cannot be ignored if we expect these people to continue. But Moses is annoyed. Please notice that it’s not God who is annoyed with the request for water. Moses is the one who feels he has been quarreled with and who claims they are testing God. Moses wants them to completely trust and get with the program already. After all, God opened a sea so you could walk through to your safety, people, just trust and believe already! But, Beloved, let’s remember: Moses doesn’t completely share his fellow Hebrews’ history. He is a Hebrew son of a Pharaoh. He hasn’t known what his siblings know. He didn’t live what they lived. Enslaved. Oppressed. Shackled. For generations. Oppression leeches into our hearts, our minds, our spirits. Often leaving physical scars, but oppression leaves psychological scars as well. Our Hebrew siblings in today’s story want to believe; they have believed, but when they are experiencing hardship— life-threatening thirst—they are brought right back to the generations of oppression. Wiping out hope. Drying up belief. And let’s remember Beloved, many of our neighbors have experienced oppression. Maybe even some of us in this room. Poverty oppresses; prejudice oppresses; abuse oppresses; misogyny and the patriarchy oppresses. Human beings cannot move or change or grow if their basic human needs are not met. We cannot expect people to alter their expectations of life, their expectations for their own lives, when their basic needs are not a certainty they can count on; thirst comes in many forms. But God is patient. 40 years of wandering in the wilderness patient. God doesn’t chastise them or shame them for the inability to believe in this time of life-threatening thirst. God meets them in their thirst and provides water from unexpected places and sources. Through human intervention, the disgruntled Moses. Hmmm….maybe that’s a key to belief. Human intervention. A human intercessor. Moses, Jesus, this audacious unnamed woman who has been seen. The power of the presence of Love in the flesh. This is what can change everything. Or, at least, create enough change to stir up hope, to foment belief. Beloved: what makes you believe……? Here’s the problem with God. We all want God to be OUR God. We want God to think like us, act like us, look like us. We are continuously making God in our own image.
Even in our reading from Exodus today, we try to have God behave as we would: Those who bless you, I will bless. And those who curse you, I will curse.” Wait a minute, Jane…..are you saying God didn’t say that? It’s in the Bible. THE BIble. B-I-B-L-E….that’s the book for me. What I am saying is that those who first told this story and then, eventually wrote it down, were telling their story of how they knew, understood, and experienced God. This is a story probably first told 5 or 6 centuries before Jesus. Theologian Richard Rohr once tweeted (and as a theologian he is not alone in this belief ): Jesus didn’t come to change God’s mind about us, but to change our minds about God. We have made Jesus into a transaction. This is how the transaction goes: God’s mad at humanity because we are naughty and full of original sin, so Jesus came to pay a price we couldn’t pay, and Jesus died so we don’t have to, so now we are good (well, if we confess Jesus is our Lord and we do x,y, and z and believe the right things, then we are good). Excellent! Thank you Jesus. But Beloved, what if: Jesus didn’t come to change God’s mind about us, but to change our minds about God. God’s mind doesn’t need to change about us. From the beginning, from Creation’s Genesis, God loves us. All of us. Just as we are: incomplete and imperfect. And nothing, NOTHING, can change that. For God so loves the world. Jesus came to show us this truth; Jesus came to show us what God in the flesh looks like. What it looks like to love a world that is bleeding and broken. What it looks like to love a world that betrays, that is violent, that is unrepentant. A world that doesn’t actually believe it is loved. Now, you don’t have to agree with me, I might be completely wrong, but let’s ponder something together. I don’t think God curses anyone or anything. I don’t buy it. And here’s why: First, Jesus. Jesus had every reason under the sun to curse those who said they believed in him and then betrayed him and ditched him, but he didn’t. Instead he forgave them. Jesus could have cursed the Romans who captured him, jailed him, beat him and killed him. But he didn’t. So, if we really want to believe in this Jesus story, then maybe the takeaway isn’t that God curses us because of our bad behavior or when we fall short, but that God does allow curses to exist in our world. That’s just undeniable. And just what is a curse? Well, the dictionary says it is a great harm, injury or evil. So then to curse someone, as a verb, is to bring about great harm, injury or evil on another person. It is clear that before Jesus (and frankly, even after Jesus), people believed that this is how God behaved. We have several stories with that as an explanation. Many stories that explain God is unhappy with people so God curses them or people don’t live up to God’s expectation so God curses them. If those stories accurately portray God as God works in the world, then what do we do with Jesus? Jesus didn’t come to change God’s mind about us but to change our minds about God. In the life and ministry of Jesus, no one is cursed, no one is condemned, no one is excluded, no one is declared exempt. No one. Not the Romans who were unjust or the tax collectors who were cheats or the thieves who failed to earn their keep. Not the woman at the well or the woman who was to be stoned or the woman who was bleeding and deemed unclean by society. Not Peter who betrayed. Or Judas who gave the killing kiss or the soldiers who taunted or the ones who just ignored the whole entire thing. For every one of them, for each one of them, for every one of us, for each one of us, Jesus lived. And loved. And Jesus emptied his life—-not so that we won’t have to. But so that we will. So that we will do the very same thing. That we might so love the world. What if all the blessings and curses were already here? Just a part of this thing we call life. And yes, as Creator, God has something to do with that. Maybe because we only grow if there are both: blessings and curses. We only change and adapt if there are both. The World only changes and adapts if there are both. But what if God’s job isn’t to bless or curse us as a response to our behavior—as a reaction to our goodness or badness. What if the blessings and curses are all just here—built into the system. What if God’s job is just one thing: to love us. When we are blessed. To love us. When we are cursed. To love us through it all. For God so loves the world. Beloved, there are many people—for good reason, and all too often that reason is the church—who do not believe God loves the world. Women who have been silenced and told to make themselves smaller by the church; folx in the LGBTQ community who have been dehumanized; the addicted and mentally ill who have been made to believe that their disease or condition is a moral failure. The young women who find themselves pregnant and labeled slut; those who have been imprisoned in a correctional system that has no intent of rehabilitation and who casts them out into a society who affords no second chances. People of color who have been denied authority, privilege, power, and basic human rights. The impoverished who have been deemed lazy so they probably don’t deserve shelter, healthcare, anything more if it means they don’t earn it themselves. For many of our siblings, it is mighty hard to believe that God so loves the world. It is mighty hard to even hope it could be true. And that’s where we come in. This is the truth we gotta live. The truth we gotta tell. With our lives. With our choices. With our inclusion. With our equity. With our justice. With our sacrifices. When we share stories, as we build relationships and knit together community. God loves the world. The whole entire world. Every thing and every one in it. Not as an abstract or a religious thesis. But as a living, breathing reality. God so loves the world. One curse at a time. One blessing at a time. One person at a time. God so loves the world. With our hands, our feet, our voices, our bodies. God so loves the world. Jesus didn’t come to change God’s mind about us but to change our minds about God. Today we hear the same story twice. Same story: different contexts, different characters. But the situation, the choice, is the same: Are you the Child of God or not? In our Gospel translation we hear: If you are the Son of God, but it can just as well be translated: Since you are the Son of God. Fear and evil know just where to strike us: at our identity, at the core of who we believe we are…..Since you are the child of God….
Both of these stories ask the same question of our protagonists: Will you be self-centered and meet your own needs as the snake and the devil lure us to be…..or will you be other-centered, which is to be God-centered, as we are made to be? Since you are the Child of God. When the Adversary lures the Christ toward his own desires, Jesus responds by turning away from self-centeredness and turning toward God’s desires. This is a living definition of repentance. And do not fail, Beloved, to notice that the Adversary faultlessly quotes Scripture. Knowing Scripture can be used both as a weapon and as a centering guide. We would do well to remember this truth . It is NOT the quoting of scripture that saves Jesus; it’s the turning toward God—again and again—even when he’s empty and hungry. Because, Beloved, that is always when evil tries to have its way with us: when we are empty and hungry. But even then, the Christ is not drawn away. There’s an ancient monastic tale that says: an Elder monk said to a businessperson: “As the fish perished on dry land, so you perish when you get entangled in the world. The fish must return to the water and you must return to the Spirit.” The businessperson was aghast and asked: “Are you saying that I must give up my business and go into a monastery?” And the Elder replied: “Definitely not. I am telling you to hold on to your business and go into your heart.” Go into your heart. Beloved, here’s my question today: Do we really want to be like Jesus? I mean, really? Do we really want to have the life he had? No place to lay his head; itinerant wanderer; no wife or children; friends who betray him; friends who fail him, friends who refuse to hear him—over and over again. If we are honest, we probably would rather be one of the Roman leaders: get the best food, the best clothes, better housing—to have some power, authority and status. Or at least maybe a Roman citizen who has a nice quiet life in town. Not bothered by others because you and your rights are protected by the law because you are part of the favored group. Do we really want to be like Jesus: a poor, unknown jewish man in the midst of the Roman Empire? And if this is what Christianity is about: becoming like Jesus—what does it all mean anyway? Being like Jesus, having Jesus’ life, isn’t exactly the American dream. Why are we even here? What in the world are we doing? Good question. Beloved, there is one thing that Jesus has that I want. Personally, it’s why I am here. Jesus has one thing that I really, truly want to have: Peace. Peace of mind, body and spirit. Jesus has the ability to handle whatever life throws at him and still see love. Still feel love. Still give love. I want that. And for Jesus, this peace comes from knowing who he is. With great clarity. Jesus knew from where he came and to where he was going. As the Gospel of John tells us: Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Yep, on the night before his death, Jesus didn’t go out and make sure he checked all the items off his bucket list; no Disneyland for Jesus. In his last moments, Jesus served his friends. Jesus got on his knees and served others: washed their feet. Their stinky, dirty feet. Jesus loved others—even in the face of death. That. That’s what I want. I want to have the ability to face whatever life is going to hand me, and even in its scariest, hardest moments, to still be able to love, to still be able to hope, to still be able to have peace. To be so centered in and on love that fear doesn’t have the ability to take over the reins of my spirit, my body, my mind. After all, courage is not the absence of fear; courage is the ability to keep moving forward in spite of the fear. And Peace is not the absence of conflict, struggle or tension. Peace is being able to remain calm and centered in the midst of those things. And that, my friends, is what Jesus has—who Jesus is—that I want to have, that I want to be. When we are grounded and centered in Love, like Jesus, then that aching hole of “What does it mean? And Why are we here? And why did it happen?”---that aching hole is no longer at our center. In fact, that hole shrinks and disappears–filled by the presence of the holy, the truth of belovedness. And what is gained is clarity. Jesus has such deep, abiding peace because Jesus knows exactly who he is and Jesus knows exactly why he is there and Jesus knows exactly what it is all about. Because Jesus trusts God’s dream and plan of restoring all Creation back to unity with each other and with the Holy. Jesus is grounded in the truth of the Common Good and he knows he is part of it. He knows he is a sacrament (an outward and visible sign) of the Common Good, of the healing and restoration of all Creation. And, Beloved, when we wake up (maybe for moments or hours or days or years), but when we wake up to the realization that we are a sacrament of Jesus, a sacrament of the Christ, then we too have access to that clarity, that centeredness, that Peace. Beloved, what if this lent, we begin with the premise that the wilderness we are called to wander these 40 days is the wilderness of our hearts? Go into your heart. And as we wander, we can fast from those ways of being that keep us from love (in the particular and in the general), and we can intentionally and mindfully, feast on the practices, the habits, the inspirations that feed Love within us. Letting the angels—who are the messengers of God, the harbingers of Love—-care for us as we come home to our selves. Growing Love within our minds and bodies. Strengthening our muscles for compassion, mercy and grace. I’ve quoted Rachel Macy Stafford recently, and repeatedly, and now I do so again: Today I will choose love. Tomorrow I will choose love. And the day after that, I will choose love. And if I mistakenly choose negativity, distraction or perfection, I will not wallow in regret. I will choose love until it becomes who I am. Since you are the Child of God….. Readings: Deuteronomy 30:15-20 and Matthew 5:21-37
There is a lot to unpack here—particularly in the Gospel, but also in our reading from Deuteronomy today. But, Beloved, I am not going to tell you what to hear or understand today—well, not exactly. Instead, what I hope I do is to give you a tool to use whenever you are reading/hearing Scripture. A key that can unlock some deeper understanding, some relevant threads to your everyday life, your daily discipleship as followers of this Way of Love. And that key is knowing who your God is. By that I mean, how do you see God? Do you understand God to be a God of retribution or reconciliation? Retribution means payback, generally it means punishment for an evil deed, a bad act. Reconcilation, of course, is all about mercy, grace, and forgiveness. It is the process of mending, restoring, and putting things to right. How you hear today’s readings reveals who God is for you—deep down in your DNA. If God is a God of retribution, then when you hear the reading from Deuteronomy, you hear a threat. If you choose well, then you will be rewarded, and if you choose poorly, God will exact punishment on you and you will not live long. Better get it right, Beloved. If God is a God of retribution, then in the Gospel you hear Jesus spelling out things in black and white—absolute answers to situations in life—and divorce is off the table and you better mean what you say or God is going to get you. This God of retribution is a popular God; it is how the Hebrews understood God; it is how many Christians today understand God. It is the God of much of American culture. But I want to invite you to consider understanding God differently. This is a shift that I myself had to make the longer I followed Jesus, the deeper I moved into my relationship with God and took deeper dives into the Word and held it up to the life, ministry and death of the Christ. The God I know is a God of reconciliation and transformation. This God doesn’t exact punishment for bad behavior because our bad behavior exacts its own punishment. This God isn’t continually watching to catch me when I get it wrong, but continually holding me and catching me when I do get it wrong so that I can stand back up and try again. This God isn’t interested in figuring out who should be in and who should be out; this God loves and includes all. Without exception. Providing as many chances as we need—in this life and for eternity—for us to come to realize just who God is and how much we are loved, how much we are Beloved. This God gives us as many times as we need to know that we belong, that we are an integral part of the restoration of all Creation. In fact, this God of reconciliation refuses to accept an eternity without me. Without you. Without any one of us. Beloved, let that sink in. Marinate in that. God can’t bear to go on without you, but God does continue, with openness and receptivity, to invite us to return until each one of us is finally gobsmacked with the truth of just how precious we are, just how precious each bit and bob of Creation is, just how precious every single human being is to the Creator. So, with this God in mind, we can hear that the reading from Deuteronomy is simply Genesis 1 and 2 all over again—declaring God provides us a choice. We can live as God desires us to live—the Way of Love—and have a full, abundant life (abundant not in possessions, but an abundance of peace, wholeness, wellness) or we can choose our own ways and suffer the consequences of self-centered choices. Again, God doesn’t exact our punishment, but our choices and the choices of others certainly do. We hear this again in Jesus’ message today. Jesus isn’t transgressing the Law, the Torah, Jesus is transcending it—radicalizing it. In the Lutheran way of understanding Scripture, this is the difference between Law and Gospel. Law is often a black and white, absolute and literal reading of the Word. The Gospel gets at the Spirit—the lifegiving truth that is within the Word—transcending the letter of the Law in order to hear the liberating, loving, and life-giving Good News. Yes, murder is against the Law, but Jesus is calling us to look at the root of it–our anger, our hate–and calling us to deal with the root–to move toward the tending and restoration of reconciliation. This is not a call to simply end murder, but also to put an end to hostility that kills relationships, that kills possibilities and collaboration, that kills our unity and at-one-ment. Yes, adultery is a sin, but in Jesus’ day it was a sin only a woman could enact, for she was the man’s property–as were her children. Adultery was about a man’s exclusive right to a woman. Radically, Jesus isn’t addressing women when he speaks of adultery; Jesus is talking to the men and their behavior. And Jesus calls people to the root of the issue, yet again: the intention of the heart. You see in Scripture God is good and evil is anything that opposes God’s will, God’s way of love. So Jesus says when your heart begins to wander from your covenanted promise to your partner—either due to what you see (the eye) or what you do (the hand)---then you must stop immediately. Reconcile that relationship. Which, Beloved, we know might mean that the relationship is restored to a new start with lots of work rebuilding trust OR it might mean that the relationship is ended well. With lots of forgiveness and reparation of wounds. Reconciliation doesn’t come in one kind, but many—and it always leaves whole and well humans behind, not desecrated bodies. That’s why Jesus says what he says about divorce. In his time it was a man’s right to divorce a wife—leaving her without security, no home, no future. It was using divorce as a means to desecrate another human. Retributive rather than conciliatory. Jesus calls us to a different way. Telling us over and over today: Tend to your relationships. Make Forgiveness, grace and mercy the center of your promises and relationships—not punishment. Not vengeance. Not payback. How we understand who God is completely colors how we hear and enact the Word, this Good News. If God is simply my God, then the Good News only needs to be Good for me. If God is the God of all, then the Good News needs to be Good for all people. If God is a God of retribution then God is a judge waiting to determine if we are good enough. If God is a God of reconciliation then God is Love waiting for us to see and know we are the Beloved and we are enough. We are worthy. That all people are enough and all people are worthy. And God allows us to choose between the two. Because to force our hand is not love, but tyranny. Love demands choice. And here’s the thing: God cannot be both a God of retribution and a God of reconciliation. We cannot hold both as truth. Retribution negates grace and grace refuses retribution. God cannot be both. So, Beloved, who is the God you follow? Let’s end with this prayer by Padraig O’Tuama of the Corrymeela Community: God of Reconciliation, You demand much of us—inviting us to tell truths by turning toward each other. May we leave our trinkets where they belong and find our treasure by turning towards each other. Because you needed this. Because we all need this. Amen. Isaiah 58, verses 9-12 from the Message translation: “If you get rid of unfair practices, quit blaming victims, quit gossiping about other people’s sins, If you are generous with the hungry and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out, Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness, your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.I will always show you where to go. I’ll give you a full life in the emptiest of places--firm muscles, strong bones. You’ll be like a well-watered garden, a gurgling spring that never runs dry. You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from out of your past. You’ll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again. Just a note: the “you” here is 2nd person plural: all y’all During the pandemic, I found myself hungry for my momma’s homemade bread. Toasted. With butter. But my mother was not yet healed enough to make it. In fact, even though she has rallied—not once, but twice—from major surgeries since 2020, she probably will never make that bread again. So, my momma gave me the recipe; and I made it. And I continue to make it. That recipe is actually my grandma’s recipe; I love seeing her recipe with her handwriting. And I love that bread. But my momma made it just a bit differently than my grandma; she changed one small step because she had different tools and utensils than my grandma so her shift to the recipe made it a bit easier. Grandma’s bread 2.0. And, after the first time I made the bread, I made one small adaptation myself. Just a bit less salt. So now it’s grandma’s bread 3.0. It’s still grandma’s bread, but it is now in its 3rd iteration. (well who knows: grandma probably got it from her momma and changed it a bit too.) But it still feeds the body and soul (not to mention it smells like heaven), but a bit of the what and how of the recipe has changed. Church is like my grandma’s bread. It is iterative. It is always becoming. But most of us think and treat church as if it is a done deal—all already figured out and created—and our work is to simply keep passing it forward. And we can do that, but we are finding, and will continue to find, that if we do that, the body of people we pass it forward to will be a smaller and smaller number. Because the iteration of church that worked in the past—or the one that works for us—-isn’t the iteration of church that works for the present and upcoming generations. Now, that’s some Gospel truth. Each generation isn’t meant to pass forward what’s been passed to them, exactly as it was given them. Each generation is to receive, but then adjust for the current reality and world they are living in—and to make room for what is upcoming and pass forward this thing that has space built in it for the next generation to adapt for their reality. Church is a movement, not a monument; it is always becoming. Like God, it is created and is always creating. Take Redeemer Lutheran. We started 30 years ago with thoughts and plans about who we were as a body of people, and how we would be that people. And some of those thoughts and plans are in place, and some have had to be let go of because they no longer fit the current reality. Redeemer started in Bannach school, then this part of the building was built. We used to have a Preschool, so the gym and some classroom space and smaller gathering areas that are in the newer part of the building that was built in 2010/2011 was used for them. The Preschool is no longer here, and continuing to expand the building no longer seems like the best use of money and time. The reality we are living in is not what it was back in the 1990s. (and frankly most of my colleagues who have bigger buildings because that was a sign of a successful church, wish they didn’t.) The way forward that was dreamed of in the 1990s may not be the way forward we dream of in the 2020s. Even in 30 years there’s been a big shift. And if we hold onto the dreams of the 1990s and demand that’s the path we build, we will be building a path for a reality that no longer exists. Or what about the Episcopal Church of the Intercession? It started 170 years ago; I bet those church dreamers would never have dreamed Intercession as it is today. They would not have dreamed of us in this space. And they certainly would not dreamed I would be standing in front of you---a woman with a collar! So, were they wrong? Were they short-sighted? Those Redeemer and Intercession dreamers? No. You can only dream in the time you are in. But the trick to dreaming, the trick to building a community is that as you dream—standing in the present—you have to look to the future and train your eyes and hearts to see what is coming rather than to turn and look back to what has been. Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Luke 9:62 Here’s the other thing about church: it isn’t mine. It isn’t yours. It is always ours. Often we treat church as if it is the YMCA. We pay a customer fee, and then we come and take part in services, or we expect to receive services. We’re a member, and it is the staff and the workers who put the things we wish to attend together and we come and take part as it benefits us. But the church is not the YMCA; it is not a fee-for-services kind of organization, and we are not consumers here. We are disciples. A church is a school of love. It is where we learn love, where we practice love, where we embody love. It is where we see what love looks like and come to know what love costs. A local church is a collective. A collective with a mission. Our mission is to restore all of humanity and all of creation back into right relationship with God and one another—through the way of Love that we know as Jesus. Collectively we fund the mission. Collectively we provide the energy and effort to live and move forward the mission. Collectively, we invite, welcome and connect people to build and grow the community. Collectively we bring our talents and time to provide gatherings that will train us and equip us to live out the mission. Collectively we dream and sow the seeds that will build the mission, that will give the mission legs and movement, carry it forward to the next generation, the next iteration. Collectively: as a body of people whose eyes are focused on the one needful thing: Living Love Out Loud. Listen, it would be easier if church was something that came in a box and all we had to do was read the instructions and put the pieces together and choose which stickers we put on and which stickers we throw away and then we just use the hell out of it until we die, or it dies. And we can do that. Frankly, I think we have done that in Western Christianity—acted as if we were handed a box with all the answers and if we just do it hard enough or loud enough or pretty enough…. But, at its heart, a local church is a gathering of folks who are dreaming together, listening together, so that they can be the living body of Jesus in this world today. In the present moment and reality while preparing to be able to live and move and continue the mission in the moment and reality that is coming over the hill. We are making ourselves available to learn and be equipped to meet the folx on the margins and bring them to the table–or to bring the table to them. We are committed to be vessels of healing, of connection; to be bringers of hope, joy and peace. Beloved, the why has never changed; the why is our mission. But the what and the how change with the times. Sometimes slightly, sometimes shockingly different. If we demand the how and what to remain the same, the why gets lost, like a candle that finally flutters out–overcome by the melting wax—it sputters out. Recently I read this marvelous book, it’s a children’s book called The Orphan and the Ogress by Kelly Barnhill. I want to recommend it to you. If your child is old enough to read it themselves, get it for them. Or get it and read it together as a family. Or, if you want, we could have a short-term book club for it. It’s that good. Let me just share this bit with you; This bit that reminded me of what church can be: “A kind of place situated in the midst of a less than kind community. And perhaps that is why someone chooses to give to us. Or perhaps it is because we ourselves are kind. Or because the benefactor is kind. Or because we desperately need that kindness. Or because the benefactor has more than they need and feel obligated to share. Or because they simply enjoy sharing. Or perhaps it is some other reason that we can’t even think of. But the reason for kindness is never as important as the fact of kindness……. ….It was remarkable….how it took only one person deciding to do good things and then convincing others to join us, to create a cascade of good deeds, each one sparking the next. Just think if everyone decided to do good. Just think if everyone decided to do so every day. Or, if not everyone, what if some did, and it still expanded?.... We have been told since we were small that the bad outnumber the good. But I do not believe that is true……One good person can inspire other people to do good things. Good is not a number. Good is more than that. With good, the more you give, the more you have. It is the best sort of magic.” |
AuthorJane Johnson is the pastor and priest of the Beloved Community of Intercession Episcopal and Redeemer Lutheran. Archives
April 2023
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