Who's after Isaac?

Proper 10 A; 7/13/2008

St. Paul’s

Genesis 25:919-34; Psalm 119: 105-112; Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9,18-23

When you go to get ordained in the Episcopal Church, you have to write your spiritual autobiography. You talk about your teenage years, your schools, your jobs, your addictions and obsessions, where you met the love of your life, what church you wandered into one day and decided to stay. The way the questions are framed, you are encouraged to see every scintilla of your life as planned by God to lead you straight to the priesthood of the Episcopal Church, no detours, no sidetracks, no multiple choice options. Your life is a pattern that led you to this moment. Such a way to think about “vocation” almost implies that you – or God – had no choice at all.

Today’s lessons present a challenge to such a fixed world view, because today’s lessons are all about choice. Paul seems to put it rather starkly. On the one hand: … the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free … from, on the other hand … the law of sin and of death. Paul continues, … To set the mind on the flesh is death; BUT, he says, … to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

In the story of Esau and Jacob, we have the story of a choice, the consequences of which will last for centuries. Esau seems to be throwing away his birthright, his inheritance, his fortune, his future – for a bowl of lentil stew. Jacob seems to be a trickster, pulling a fast one on his slightly older twin brother.

And in the parable of the sower, Jesus seems to distract us with all this talk about seeds falling on different kinds of ground, but the real point of the parable is between those who hear the Word of God and those who don’t. Life for the first; death for the second.

Over the years, we have read these stories as though God only intended one thing by them, like those spiritual autobiographies we construct to make our case that we have always been destined to be Episcopal priests. What if we saw that in our lives there were many choices to make, many doors to open? Maybe even God saw that there were several paths to take, several choices to make, along even the divine way?

For example, Jewish tradition has it that Esau was bad – that he chose the superficial and material – a good meal after a hard day’s work – over the spiritual and God-given. But look at the text: God tells their mother, Rebekah, that her sons will be the fathers of two nations, two peoples, and yes, the one of Jacob, the younger twin, becomes Israel. Esau’s offspring become the Edomites. Later Jewish tradition emphasizes the bad side of Esau; his offspring become Israel’s enemies. Jacob, the revered patriarch, may be a trickster, but Esau became the enemy of Israel for all time. That’s not quite so in the text: God does not curse Esau for his choice; Esau later marries, prospers, and forgives his scoundrel brother Jacob for tricking him out of his inheritance. Is the choice of “conventional” interpretation of this story the only choice that tells us something about what God had in mind?

In the gospel, we have the choice of three bad kinds of gardens, and one good. The “conventional” reading of this text is to say that if we do what God wants us to do, we will be blessed. We’ll get more stuff – we individuals will prosper. There are lots of Christians who ascribe to this theology that says that if they are rich, they have done the right things, and God has blessed them. The rest of us are just that old, rocky dried-up ground and it’s our own fault that we’re poor.

But what did Jesus mean by the “word of the kingdom” which we must hear and understand? “Kingdom” in Greek is basileia; but it does not imply a kingdom in a worldly, top-down, dictatorial kind of power-hungry sense. This basileia is a heavenly ideal, yet one rooted in this world, in the hope that God has intended this kingdom, this world, to be for the common good. It is a world of abundance, a world in which God’s will is done, God’s purposes are fulfilled. It is the world of the prayer Jesus taught us: your basileia come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven; give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. In this kingdom of God, no one person gets rich as a sign of God’s blessing; we all do. God doesn’t save us one at a time by ourselves; God saves all of us. In this basileia we live on earth – here, now – the way God would have us live in heaven.

I think that’s what Paul means when he says to choose the Spirit over the flesh: not that our bodies are bad, but that the choices we make for them should move us toward the basileia, the way God would have us live. And there is not just one choice, forever made, forever casting us out of God’s love, forever condemning us to rocky, dried-up ground. We’re not stuck in our addiction, trapped in poverty or doomed to unhappiness. The descendents of Esau do not have to be enemies forever with the descendents of Jacob. “If we blow one choice,” we’re not out of the game. “We get another choice, and another …” *and another. It’s not just about one fatal decision, one determining moment, one false move, or one missed opportunity. It’s about continually making choices, listening for the Word of that kingdom, of that great, big, fat basileia, where there is room for all and lots to go around.

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* From Jeanyne B. Slettom, Process and Faith Lectionary Commentary, July 13, 2008; Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Proper 10; http://www.processandfaith.org/lectionary/YearA/2007-2008/2008-07-13.shtml

Proper 9-A; 7/6/2008

St. Paul’s

Genesis 24:34-38,42-49,58-67; Psalm 45:11-18; Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

St. Augustine, the 4th century African saint, spent a lot of time reading St. Paul, and perhaps especially St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. St. Augustine was notorious for his living large – that is, until he turned his life around as a Christian and a theologian.

Augustine is famous for his Confessions, in some ways similar to this section of the Epistle to the Romans which we read this morning: “I do not do what I want but I do the very thing I hate.” What a common human cry of despair! How often have any of us said such a thing? Augustine knew that in his life he had sown some pretty wild oats, and in his Confessions he can be detailed about them. Like Paul, he beats his breast about the sin and evil which seems to have taken over his life. He knows what he should do but evil lies close at hand. Paul is eloquent: “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

Paul talks about the law as taskmaster, but perhaps he is yearning for the law as rest, as Sabbath rest. The law mandates that all faithful people rest on the day God rested after the creation of the world. Yet Paul seems so consumed by the evil he has done, and cannot help doing, that he has forgotten that rest is part of the law.

St. Augustine, no stranger as I said, to bewailing his manifold sins and wickedness, wrote these words, among the most beautiful in sacred literature:

"You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."*

Augustine reminds us that we are part of the creation in which God delights, and that no matter how much we do what God would have us NOT do, God has created us with a homing device, as it were: the true rest we seek we find at home, and our home, our hearts’ home, is with God. Our hearts are restless until they rest in God.

Our Old Testament and Gospel lessons would seem, on the face of it, to have nothing to do with each other. Matthew gives us some sayings of Jesus; Genesis tells us the story of how Isaac, son of the patriarch Abraham, and patriarch-to-be, got himself a wife.

These lessons do have something in common: they talk about rest, Sabbath rest, rest that leads to salvation.

In the desert lands of the Near East, where one finds water one finds salvation.

A river flows through the garden of Eden, and later splits into four rivers, which flowed to the corners of the earth. For the inhabitants of the arid ancient near east, water is a restoration of Eden. … In the Bible, if you’ve found abundant water, you’ve found your way back to paradise. If you find water, you’ve entered sabbath.**

Isaac, the one God promised to be the father of many nations, is looking for a wife, a worthy partner with whom to fulfill this promise. And where does he (or the servant he sent) find her? At a well. This is not just a story about an ancient version of matchmaker.com. This is a story of God fulfilling God’s promises with the abundance of flowing water, an oasis in the desert, the living water that leads to eternal life.

And what is Jesus saying? Don’t miss that well in the desert. Don’t miss the signs that point to it. Don’t miss out on your chance for the abundant life! What will it take for us to recognize Jesus for who he is? He points to the contrast between John the Baptist, the forerunner – the ascetic, desert-hardened one who first brought the Good News of this new world. “You called him demon-possessed!” Jesus says. And then he goes on, “And then here I am! I eat and drink, I hang out with sinners and unsavory people. I bring the same message as John, and yet you pay no attention to me, either! You think you are so wise? Hah!” Listen to how another Biblical scholar interpreted what Jesus said:

… sit out the dance in your pseudo-wisdom if you want to, but the blind are seeing, the deaf are hearing, the lepers are made new, the dead are raised, and the poor have finally heard some music they can kick up their heels to – and that is the essence of wisdom...***

We can lay down our burdens, Jesus says, at the wellspring in the desert, and there we will find rest. We will find eternal life. We will find a terrific party – a feast to end all feasts. There at the well, we can put things in proper perspective. We can leave behind our tortured lives, doing what we know we should not. We can let our troubles just dry out there on the hot sand. We can forget our tension and anger, and take on the gentleness and humility that Jesus offers. We can meet the love of our lives, the one in whom God’s promises for our lives – for life itself – can be fulfilled. We can cast off all our restlessness, for here, at this well of refreshment, of easy burdens and light duties, our hearts can finally find their rest.

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*The Confessions of St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo: http://www.leaderu.com/cyber/books/augconfessions/bk1.html

** Peter J. Leithart, from Blogging Toward Sunday, July 6 (6/30/2008) in Theolog, the blog of The Christian Century: http://www.theolog.org/blog/2008/06/blogging-towa-4.html

***From “Sacred Rest” by Kate Huey, from Weekly Seeds, the Bible study blog of the United Church of Christ: http://i.ucc.org/StretchYourMind/OpeningtheBible/WeeklySeeds/tabid/81/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/67/Sacred-Rest.aspx. Kate Huey quotes Thomas Long’s commentary on the Gospel of Matthew from the Westminster Bible Companion Series

Biblical Family Values, pt. 2

Proper 8-A June 29, 2008 St. Paul’s
Genesis 22:1-14 Psalm 13 Romans 6:12-23 Matthew 10:40-42

As I was driving down Pleasant Street on Friday, I saw a boy sitting at his lemonade stand. His hand-written sign said a cup of lemonade was 25 cents. I almost stopped. Seth and Laura used to do lemonade stands, and Simon has great plans for one this summer.

As enterprises go, lemonade stands don’t make a lot of money. Simon did figure out that he needed someone to front the initial investment, but after that he could be on his own, replenishing his supplies out of his profits. But even so – you probably couldn’t say that Bill Gates starting Microsoft was like that little boy on Pleasant Street with his lemonade stand. Lemonade just isn’t the same as a revolutionary software system.

The part of Pleasant Street where the little boy had set up his stand was one of the not particularly pleasant blocks of Pleasant Street. You could say, then, that that little boy was a prophet: he saw, on his block of Pleasant Street, that that was the sort of place where people would need a cup of lemonade. He also saw Pleasant Street as a place where people would stop and drink some lemonade, and he’d get a quarter and maybe a nice conversation out of it. That little boy saw hope on Pleasant Street. He saw Pleasant Street the way all of us would like to see Pleasant Street. He saw Pleasant Street the way God sees Pleasant Street.

No one sets out to be a prophet; prophets can only be recognized from the outside, when people see their prophet-nature in what they say and what they do. That little boy didn’t set out to be a prophet; he just set out a lemonade stand. But he is a prophet. He sees Pleasant Street as it is going to be. The little boy is a prophet of the resurrection.

There is another little boy in our lessons today: Isaac. If you thought things were bad for Ishmael last week, sent out with his mother into the wilderness to die, then you will have your breath taken away by this story. God tells Abraham to take his remaining son, the one on whom he and Sarah have placed all their ancient hopes, to Mt. Moriah, and sacrifice him as a burnt offering.

What images this story raises in all of our minds, what questions about the motives of God, the obedience of Abraham – cruel? Foolish? Mindless? What kind of God is this – is God, this God, no better than the other cruel desert ones he seeks to replace with his majesty and omnipotence, with all his talk about making great nations from these two sons. Those desert gods demanded cruel sacrifices all the time; was this God to be no different?

Amazingly, I think Abraham trudged up that mountain with confidence. He had known death – he and Sarah were as good as dead when God told them they would have a son. If God could pull life out of death once before, he would do it again. “Where is the lamb?” Isaac asked. “God will provide,” Abraham answered. It is nearly impossible for us to get inside that sense of utter confidence, the confidence of one who lives now on the other side of death, the place where tragedy is no longer a possibility. Abraham is one who expects the impossible.

God did provide. In the binding of Isaac, that near-death experience, the impossible occurred. God proved that God was not going to be one of those blood-thirsty desert gods, but a God who kept promises, who gave life, who pulled life out of death, a God of resurrection, a God of hope.

In cups of water, or cups of lemonade, a prophet is one who brings us tangible proof of God’s promises of hope. Prophets come from where we least expect them, and when we least expect them – when we, like Abraham and Sarah, are as good as dead. Prophets with lemonade stands point the way to a tree-lined, safe, drug- and crime-free Pleasant Street. Can we dare to hope? Could Abraham?

Biblical Family Values

Proper 7-A June 22, 2008 St. Paul’s

Genesis 21:8-21 Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17
Romans 6:1b-11 Matthew 10:24-39

No matter what Hallmark says, you just can’t reduce the Bible to a greeting card. Family values? Just what kind of Biblical family values do we glean from patriarch Abraham and matriarch Sarah?

Because of his wife’s jealousy of the “other woman,” Abraham casts his first-born son into the wilderness to die. Hagar, the Egyptian slave woman who is the child's mother, has run out of food and water. She lays the exhausted, parched and famished boy under a bush, and says, to no one, for there is no witness to this act, "Do not let me look on the death of the child." She then cries aloud and weeps.

This could be a scene from contemporary Darfur, or from countless desperate places on our planet today, where mothers and children are abandoned by family, by warring governments, by economic forces beyond their control, and sent out to many kinds of wilderness to die.

If the day's Gospel lesson reflects Jesus’ “family values,” it does not fare much better. "I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law." Jesus declares. "One's foes will be members of one's own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me."

This passage comes from a section in the Gospel of Matthew concerning discipleship: what does it mean to follow Jesus? What would it look like in my life, the disciples are asking themselves, to take part in the breaking in of this kingdom of heaven? What does it mean to take up my cross, to lose my life, to understand God not as the bringer of peace but as the wielder of a sword?

As important as family is to us today, our modern ears cannot hear it quite the same way as Jesus’ followers would have. We moderns are all about “ME,” about self-actualization and self-realization. We strike out on our own, we value independence and self-reliance: the Lone Ranger, the pioneer on the frontier, the corporate raider, the “Army of One.” But in the world in which Jesus lived, you were not an individual apart from your family. Your family gave you your identity, gave you not just your name but your place in the community and in the world, and your family protected you from that world. Your family was a good thing, a precious thing; you didn’t just strike out on your own. Jesus isn’t some 1960s hippie cult leader telling you to tune in, turn on, drop out, from a family that oppresses, abuses or bores you.

There were plenty of bad things in first century Palestine, plenty of things that Jesus might exhort you to leave behind, but the family was not one of them. The Romans were bad, because they were an occupying army in your homeland. The temple authorities were bad, because they colluded with the Romans in exchange for privilege and protection. The civil bureaucracy was bad, because it taxed the people nearly to death. Indeed, death and fear were the operative social norms. The family was the refuge from all that. No one could survive without a family.

So when Jesus says, “Follow me,” he is asking the disciples to leave behind one of the few institutions in society that works. Jesus’ call upsets every apple cart there is, and then he says, don’t worry. Don’t be anxious. Consider the lilies, remember the sparrows. The kingdom of heaven means the whole world is about to be re-ordered. Everything will be uncovered. There will be no more secrets, no more power brokers, or back-room deals. This news is so good that it must be shouted from the rooftops – no matter what the consequences. No matter how many authorities you anger, no matter how many armies they unleash. God’s kingdom HAS to challenge this kingdom, and even the blessed and good family, the loving parents, the bonds of affection and kinship – even these can get in the way of this truth of God which cuts like a sword. The new thing which God is doing is even deeper, even more important, even more powerful that the deepest, most important and most powerful parts of our lives, the parts of our lives that make us most truly human. God is a sword which pares away even our relationships, our kinships, our families.

Where is God taking us with this confusing, and maybe even terrifying, lesson? Is discipleship some sort of desert wilderness? Are we called to be like Hagar and Ishmael, stumbling around until the water runs out, cut off from family and security and hope and the future?

Look again at this astounding story of Hagar and Ishmael – and God. Even though God has apparently blessed the dismissal of the two into the wilderness, God will not let them suffer. The voice of the angel of God raises Hagar’s hopes, and promises that even this discarded son of Abraham will be the father of many nations. Even these two hopeless creatures, these outcasts and discards, this tiny remnant of a broken family will have a great future in store. Abraham may have cast out Ishmael but God stayed with him.

If Jesus calls us as disciples to turn away from even the good parts of our lives, if they distract and keep us from the gospel, it is because being a disciple leads us into so much more. We see this broken world now as Jesus sees it. Freed from our own particularity, we can act as perhaps Jesus would have us act. We can even take our families with us. We can see the Hagars and Ishmaels of today, in the countless desert places, the violent streets, the lonely corners. We can resolve to be that angel of God who shouts from the rooftops that it doesn’t have to be this way, the angel who brings God’s gifts of water, sustenance and hope to a world that too often cries in despair.

From June 2-9, I attended CREDO, the program sponsored by the Church Pension Fund. It was great. I wrote about it in the posting for the Feminist Theology blog. In this piece, I am both critical of the leadership of the Episcopal Church and laudatory about the Pension Fund -- kind of a funny position for a feminist, or an ordained one. So if it doesn't run, I'll post it here. Here's my sermon for the Sunday before I went away ...

Proper 4; Pentecost 3-A
June 1, 2008, St. Paul’s
Genesis 6: 9-22; 7:24; 8:14-19
Ps. 31
Romans 3:21-25a, 28
Matthew 7: 21-29

As a child, I always liked these stories. What vivid images of danger and safety are evoked from the story of faithful Noah building the ark. And then the story of the two houses on a beach – the same beach as setting for a story from the Arabian nights, where a man through a bottle containing a genie into the sea …

This story of the two houses – one wisely built where it would not wash away, the other hastily thrown up where winds and floods would wash it away – is a metaphor for faith – and it seems to imply that faith in God is like building a house. Once you’ve got it built, you’re set for life. Once you’ve figured out your faith, likewise, you’re set for life.

Isn’t that Noah’s story? The story of faith set for life? The righteous and blameless Noah, who followed through on God’s preposterous command, to build a ship and load it up, two by two, with all the creatures of the earth?

I used to think that being grown up meant getting somewhere, having things all built, all set up, all organized. I would think that once I was grown up, I’d always have movers move me; I’d never have to rent a U-Haul again!!

Well, being grown up is no more about having it all figured out and all set than faith is about building a house. Yet that may not be what this gospel story is telling us. Faith is about living a life – and life is a journey of faith. Life is a journey in a crowded boat, with a mess of creatures not your friends or relations, setting off into a choppy and dangerous sea.

Well now, what do you mean, you might say. Noah walked with God, and Matthew says it all here: Jesus likes the wise person who has built a house on a rock: firm, solid, unchanging.

But there is another chapter in Matthew – chapter 25 – where Jesus uses the same dualism, the eternal life, eternal punishment consequence for behavior. Remember: “the king will say to those on his right hand, come, you blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world.” And what is the mark of those blessed ones? They fed the hungry, visited the sick and imprisoned, gave drink to the thirsty and shelter to the needy.

And this from chapter 25 – practically the same phrases as in today’s gospel: “Then he will say to those on his left hand, Depart from me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” The cursed are the ones who turned away from the needy and destitute – perhaps because they were so concerned to get their lives all organized and set, that they did not hear what Jesus was really saying.

The gospel of Matthew really emphasizes choice, judgment, either-or. Jesus in the gospel of Matthew doesn’t let us just slide by on our laurels; Jesus calls us to act, to make decisions at every step along the way. If faith is about building a house on a rock, it’s a house that is never finished. It’s a life full of surprises, changes, new challenges and opportunities all along the way. There will always be one more hungry person – and a choice to be made about whether to take care of this one or pass by.

In the words of an old hymn, Jesus calls us o’ve the tumult of our lives wild, restless sea. Noah knew that call and followed it, preposterous as it may have seemed. Jesus calls us not to success but to faithfulness, to faith-full-ness, to a life lived fully and faith-fully, choosing and deciding and listening to what Jesus is saying all along the way.

All shall be well ...

Good grief! I've not posted here the whole season of Easter! Well, it's been busy ...
This sermon from May 25, the Second Sunday after Pentecost, was preached on the occasion of a First Communion. A ten-year-old girl studied and prepared herself for communion, bringing her family along with her to church. She and her mentor have developed a close and surprising relationship of mutual learning and delight. The event marked progress in our congregational development: new people, total strangers, have come to meet us, seen us, liked what they have seen and heard and prayed and read, and they will stay. We are blessed that they have joined our communion, and we look forward to greeting more ...

Proper 3-A
May 25, 2008
St. Paul’s
Isaiah 49:8-16a
Psalm 131
1 Corinthians 4:1-5
Matthew 6:24-34

Long ago and far away, in a kingdom by the sea, a woman lived in a small room – one small room, attached to a parish church. This woman, some years before, had become ill, very ill, so ill in fact that she and everyone around her thought she would die. Her constant companion during this serious illness was her mother, always by her side, always wiping her brow, changing her bed linens, holding her hand, encouraging her to eat and drink. And since this woman lived in a time when people had vivid dreams and visions and believed God came to them in visions, she had vivid dreams and visions during her sickness. She had visions of Jesus on the cross, suffering and burning with fever as she was. And she had visions of a loving God, cooling her brow and stroking her hand, always by her side, just as her mother was, all through that long and frightening illness. And during her visions, these two images came together, of Jesus, suffering just as she was suffering, and of Jesus, caring for her with devotion and compassion, just as her mother cared for her. And eventually, the illness passed.

But the visions stayed with the woman for the rest of her life, and since these visions were a gift from God, she decided to think about them with her forever. To do this, then, she lived in a room, one room, with stone walls, attached to her parish church. She had a maid, who brought her food and drink and helped her stay clean. And she had a cat. The room, and its simple furnishings, and the cat – and her visions – were her only possessions.

As she thought and prayed and slept and dreamed, she came to understand the visions she had during her illness. She was not the only one in her time who knew serious illness. She lived in the 14th century, in England, during the time of the plagues. Life was terrible, with this devastating illness sweeping away whole families, whole towns, whole populations. The powers of the time – the aristocracy, the church, the king – ruled the peasants with brutality and taxed them heavily. The church itself was split between two popes – it was a time of intrigue and danger and anxiety. If she suffered, and her neighbors suffered, then her visions showed her that Jesus knew those sufferings, because he had felt them as well.

But remember who cared for the woman during her illness: her mother. Her understanding of God and of Jesus and her mother were all intertwined, the suffering wrapped up in the comfort, the image of Jesus with the knowledge of her mother, the love of God with the love of a parent, and there, even there, in that difficult world, of sickness and war and struggle, in her one-room dwelling, all stony and cold, with only her cat for a companion, this is what Julian said: "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and every manner of thing shall be well."

God gives us everything all the time, she said, weal and woe. Good things and bad things. And yes, way back then, in the middle ages, it was easy to see the bad things, and many people certainly interpreted the bad things that happened to them as coming directly from God, as punishment for sin. Many people saw the hand of God in those bad things.

But as Julian – for that was her name, Julian – reminded the people who came to her seeking her advice, God gives us good things as well, loves us as a mother cares for us, and we can love the goodness in the world around us – even a world filled with suffering – if we see it through God’s eyes, through the eyes of mothers who love their children no matter what.

During this Memorial Day Weekend, it seems like the anxieties – the woes – of this world are heightened. Gasoline costs over $4 a gallon. Some people worry about losing their homes, about paying bills, about keeping a job. Memorial Day is a time when we remember soldiers – other mothers’ sons and daughters who died in service to our country. If there was ever a time we needed to hear those words, “All shall be well,” this is it.

“Consider the lilies,” Jesus says, in this passage, familiar to many, from his Sermon on the Mount. Spectacular flowers, and grasses and birds in the air, all rise and fall, all flourish and die, full of weal and full of woe; don’t you realize how much God loves you? Two things, Jesus says, just remember these two things – two things which Julian would have understood all those centuries ago in her stony little room, with her cat on her lap. Don’t worry about all those things that you need – food, drink, clothing. Yes you will always need them, and yes, you might worry about them someday, but they are not the end of life. And here is the second thing Jesus said, Strive – not for those things that worry you, but strive for the kingdom of God. See the world as God sees it, as a place of love and righteousness and compassion and abundance and beauty. The prophet Isaiah speaks for God: See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands.

Today we welcome Giovanna to this altar, for she wishes to commune with us, to be one with us as we remember Jesus among us and partake of – take part in – his body and blood. Giovanna wants to be with us as we say those holy words, “Send us out to do the work you, God, would have us do.” Send us out to the world where things are not always so easy, where things are not always so beautiful. Show us how to see the world through your eyes, God; show us how to love all of the world with a mother love, that love that never leaves our side. Then all will be well, and all will be well, and every manner of thing will be well.

What Mary saw ...

Easter 3-23-2008 St. Paul’s

Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118 Colossians 3:1-4
John 20:1-18

How did Mary Magdalene have the energy even to get out of bed on that Easter Day?

What could possibly have been worse, than to witness what she had witnessed just two days before? Her community was scattered and shattered. Her news of a vandalized tomb brought a few of them running – imagine this as one more shock, one more ghastly realization that the powers of death reached even beyond the grave, continuing to defile the body of their beloved friend. The men all leave, go their separate ways; only Mary stays behind, grief-stricken, exhausted, a woman with nothing left, no defenses, no hopes, no strength.

In a wonderful book by Studs Terkel, a collection of interviews with ordinary people, Hope Never Dies, I came across the words of Ed Chambers, a community organizer. He describes his life, influenced by Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement, his work trying to make communities safer, healthier – to encourage people that they had the power within themselves to make their own lives better. He also described how hard this work had gotten:

"I’m a little bit discouraged, but I’m not quitting, I’m not giving up. … The purpose of life isn’t truth; the purpose of life is meaning. The struggle of meaning that keeps you going, and a hope that you’re about to get something greater than anything you’ve got. … What keeps me going is that I realized, sometime in my 40s or early 50s, I couldn’t just dig down inside myself and pump it out like in my 30s. Then I realized that I got my energy for this work from other people, so the self must stay in connection with others, new others, others that have more talent and more vision and more power than you have. That energizes you and keeps you going. Without that you ossify. You can call it what you want. You can call it community, you can call it necessity. You’ve got to be in relationship with real people." [i]

Way back, 2000 years ago, at that first Easter, there must have been some idea, some hope, that God indeed had the power to bring about the resurrection of the dead. Right there in the text: “… for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”

Indeed, the hope of resurrection was something floating around religious thought at the time – around Jewish people tired of exile and persecution and occupation and corruption and taxation and struggle. Resurrection was an idea that the whole community would rise again on the last day – would be renewed and reconstituted at the end of time, as a community of justice, of God’s justice. Not just I would be resurrected on the last day, but we – and not just our spirits or our good wills, but our whole bodies. Us. All of us. Every part of us. And every part of the community, of the household of God – and after Mary’s discovery that not only was the tomb empty but that Jesus himself stood there in the garden with her – we now understand resurrection as the restoration of the Body of Christ – his real body, and our real bodies: the first fruits that are revealed.

It’s hard to talk about this in a way that makes it real, which takes me back to the words of that community organizer. His experience underscores for me that this whole resurrection business is not about the “individual” but about the “us” – the collective – the communal – about all of humanity. The reality of human life is no, we can’t go it alone. We certainly try – witness the scattered disciples, Mary going to the tomb to weep alone.

But the reality of the resurrection life is that life is communal, that we are no longer alone, that life as God intended it included you and you and you and you and all of us, restored, whole, hopeful, a whole creation renewed.

The powers of death want to keep this reality from us. Jesus died on the cross. But the power of God proves that all of that isolation and loneliness is the lie. The powers of death have done their worst. With the resurrection of Jesus, the body, the community is restored. Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia. Christ is risen.

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[i] P.231, Ed Chambers in Studs Terkel, Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Troubled Times (New York: The New Press, 2003)

With palms before him went ...

We have a new look to our church - the altar in the midst. Palm Sunday we processed around it all. The chaos and confusion and noise of the procession contrasting with the chaos and confusion and silence of the cross.

Palm Sunday March 16, 2008 St. Paul’s Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 31:9-16 Philippians 2:5-11
Matthew 21:1-11, 26:14-27:66

Today, prayers go unanswered. Cries of anguish are in vain. On this day, God is silent.

We started out in chaos and noise. The Liturgy of the Palms is at its best when things are noisy and a little confused, when we don’t quite know where to go. We are full of hope and excitement and anticipation. The whole city is in turmoil as our procession approaches, people everywhere asking, “Who is this? What is going on?” We answer, full of confidence and hope: “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

That sentence alone speaks volumes: “prophet,” meaning someone who is sent from God. “From Nazareth in Galilee,” implying that this prophet is an outsider, that he is from the place where these rabble are from, a poor, rural, out of the way village, from people not treated kindly by the Roman legions and tax collectors, or by the Jewish establishment who are their enforcers. Our loud and crazy procession is full of hope for some, full of nuisance for the Romans who dislike disorder, full of threat for the Temple establishment who fear any force that might upset their dependent relationship with the violent and powerful Romans.

Who is this, the city in turmoil asks. This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee, we joyfully shout.

That is the beginning of the week. By the end, our shouts reveal that we have turned on this prophet: Crowds, swords, clubs, soldiers, civil and religious functionaries, bystanders, onlookers, and then, of course, even those who betrayed him: the sleeping disciples, Peter trying to hide in plain sight, Judas who signaled the arrest with a kiss. We continue to be a loud and chaotic bunch but now we have turned on this prophet we hailed as the One who came in the name of the Lord.

The one at the center of this story keeps still. He kneels in grief and prayer, when he listens intently for God to answer him. Nothing. No response. Does he really believe what he says later, that with but a word God would send legions of angels to rescue him? One by one, then all at once, his formerly loyal defenders fall away, the Romans keep their distance, not enforcing their laws, the Temple authorities push him toward death, the crowd turns from hope to cynicism, jeering and taunting.

The one at the center of the story has only one more thing to say, words that betray his fear that God has left this scene, left this world, abandoned him to powers of death. God has answered neither his prayers said in the dark of night nor in the middle of the day which is so dark that it mimics night. It must now be still around the cross, for at the moment of Jesus’ last, loud cry, an earthquake shakes the foundation of the Temple.

The crowds are gone, the fear is over; no one else will be killed on this day. Quietly a few of his followers ask for his body; the Romans let them take him – they have no dog in this fight. The body is wrapped, buried, the tomb securely sealed with a stone. Once again, night falls, and darkness and silence envelop us all.