Sarcastic Lutheran

Sermon on Repentance

Mark 1"1-8

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
²As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, 
"See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way;
³the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
'Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,'"
⁴John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. ⁵And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. ⁶Now John was clothed with camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. ⁷He proclaimed, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. ⁸I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

 

So, in the spirit of full disclosure I feel you should know that I am not now, nor have I ever been, a crazy street corner preacher who waves her Bible wildly while shouting red faced at passer-bys. Repent! This may come as a shock.  And I’m not ruling it out as a possible career move in the future.  But  (for now) as an outsider to the crazy street corner preacher world,  I must say I feel for those guys.  Because what could their success rate possibly be?  I mean, does shouting repent! at people actually work?  just speaking for myself, never once has my life changed because a crazy guy with a sign yelled at me from a street corner. 

 

I mention this because it feels like maybe John the Baptist was the first and last successful crazy street corner preacher.  And given the success he had, you know, with all of Judea and Jerusalem coming to partake in his baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,  I wonder what the guy said exactly?  Why did so many people come to him for his baptism?  Because bless their hearts, but, our modern street corner preachers who hold signs that say “repent” don’t have near the same results at all. 

Maybe you feel like I do,  namely that when I hear a preacher shouting “repent” what I really hear is he or she saying is Stop being bad.  Start being good or else God’s gonna be real mad at you.  Which feels like more of a threat than  anything else.   That just never works on me.  Who wants their spiritual arm twisted until they cry Uncle….it’s like… religious bullying . 

And I just can’t imagine that it was religious bullying which brought all of Judea and Jerusalem to be baptized by John.  I mean fear and threat can create change in behavior.  No question about it.  But it doesn’t really change your thinking.  Threats don’t change your heart.

 

Fot that kind of change…change in thinking and change of heart it takes truth and promise. Namely truth and promise that is external to us and that comes only from God reaching into the graves we dig ourselves and bringing out new life.  Because if repentance comes from something other than an external word of truth about who you are and who God is it’s not repentance it’s self-improvement. 

 

And I’m pretty sure that what happened that day by the banks of the Jordon was more than just a massive wave of self-improvement.

So if John came preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins then maybe it wasn’t so much so that sinners would confess and stop being bad.  maybe it was so that all would hear the truth about this God who comes near to us in the person of Jesus Christ - not so that we might be good but that we might be new. John says to them Prepare the way of the Lord.  Get ready for something new. Because, there is one who is coming who will change everything. 

And the way in which John the Baptist prepares the people for the Gospel is by making room for it through washing away their old ideas and expectations.  The untruth and sin and shame and all competing identities float away in the Jordon because the real thing was finally here.  Because in Jesus God is doing a new thing not to make us good but to make us new. See, I believe it was the truth and promise of this Gospel and not religious bullying that compelled repentance and new life from the people of Judea

         For this reason I love that Mark’s Gospel opens with: The beginning of the Gospel (that is, the Good news) of Jesus Christ Son of God. If it had been titled the beginning of the Good Short Story of Jesus Christ son of God then it would not be News.  What makes it news is that it is something new that is external to us that we have to be told. It is news because it is not anything we could or would ever come up with ourselves. Because any truth that I generate from within me simply doesn’t have the power to save me.

A couple years ago I had a conversation with a family member who is non-religious.  “I just don’t really need anything outside of myself to give me meaning or comfort”  she said.  “really” I answered.  “I desperately need something outside of myself because if this is all there is…well, I can’t think of anything more depressing.” I need an external interruption. and I need it a heck of a lot more than I need self-improvement.  Because I can actually change my behavior on my own.  It’s my thinking and my heart that only God can redeem.

 

 So this week I began to wonder if maybe repentance is giving up on the idea that we can redeem ourselves.  Maybe true repentance involves surrender more than it involves self-improvement.  Kind of like how the practice of kneeling in church has military origins namely that it was a posture of surrender…as in…you can’t fight if you’re kneeling.  And this kind of surrender the kind we see in forgiven sinners in the waters of the Jordon only comes from hearing the truth of who we are and the truth of who God is. 

Repentance – which in Greek means something closer to “thinking differently afterwards” than it means change your cheating ways. Of course repentance CAN look like a prostitute becoming a librarian but repentance can also look like a whore saying ok I’m a sex worker and I have no idea how to get out but I can come here and receive bread and wine and maybe if only for a moment I can hold onto the love of God without being deemed worthy of it by anyone but God.  Repentance is a con artist being a real person for the first time ever without knowing who that person is anymore but knowing he sees it in the eyes of those serving him communion naming him a Child of God.  Repentance is realizing there is more life to be had in being proved wrong than in continuing to think you’re right. Repentance is the adult child of an fundamentalist saying I give up on waiting for my mom to love me for who I am so I’m gonna rely on God to help me love her for who she is because I know she’s not going to be around forever.  Repentance is  unexpected beauty after a failed suicide attempt.  Repentance is a couple weeks ago when the clerk at the Adult bookstore on Colfax teared up and said “your church brought me thanksgiving lunch?”.  Repentance is what happened to me when at the age of 28 my first community college teacher told me I was smart and despite all my past experience of myself I believed her. See, repentance is what happens to us when the Good News, the truth of who we are and who God is, enters our lives and scatters the darkness of competing ideas.

For it is the external truth of God that liberates you from the bondage of self.  This is what the daily return to baptism looks like. It is like the arm of God reaches in to rip out your own heart and replace it with God’s own.  The Gospel is like your own emancipation proclamation. Every time you hear the absolution – that you are forgiven, every time you hear that Christ has come into the world to change everything, every time you hear that you are a child of God and that this is God’s very own body broken and poured out for you.  Every time these external words of Good news enter your ears they scatter the darkness of competing claims.  And to be sure, all of it is the Beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ Son of God.  Amen.

 

 

Sermon on Matthew 25 for Christ the King Sunday

Matthew 25

³¹When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. ³²All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, ³³and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. ³⁴Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; ³⁵for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, ³⁶I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.' ³⁷Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?³⁸And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? ³⁹And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?' ⁴⁰And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.'

Here’s the story I tell about how I met my husband Matthew.  I had left the conservative, sectarian church of my childhood along with their teaching that being Christian mostly meant buying an insurance policy for the hereafter.  We were told not to concern ourselves with this world.  We need not bother ourselves with the poor, the hungry, the stranger unless of course in doing so we might sell them the eternal insurance policy thus adding a notch to our holiness belt. See, as our hymns suggested, we were the spiritual 1% we were all about gold streets and mansions in heaven so the deteriorating sub-standard housing around the corner was not our concern.

Almost 10 years after leaving that form of Christianity and after involving myself quite deeply into issues of social justice  I met Matthew, a really cute Lutheran seminary student.  On our first date we sat across the booth from each other at el taco de mexico and talked about social issues and we saw eye to eye on everything.  Then he said “my heart for the poor is rooted in my Christian faith” at which point I looked at him and thought: What are you?  like a unicorn? some mythical combination of creatures that doesn’t exist in reality?  Soon I learned there was a whole world of Christians out there who actually take Matthew 25 seriously.  Who believe that when we feed the hungry, cloth the naked, and care for the sick we do so to Jesus’ own self.

 

The ELCA, the denomination this congregation is apart of, even has this great slogan: God’s work, our hands.  And I believe that.  No question.  And most of you believe that too.  The work many of you do serving the poor is informed by your Christian faith as well it should be. Soon after meeting Matthew I heard from the pulpit of a Lutheran church that we are the only feet and hands that Christ has so we are to be little Christs out in the world.  And to a large extent this is true.   God’s Work, our hands…absolutely. So I could preach a sermon about how actually giving a crap about the poor is part of following Jesus.  But most of you already are on board with that.

 

And as tempting as it seems when we read a Gospel text like this to think  Look!  Even Jesus agrees with us!  We are probably missing something…and we can so easily replace the conservative personal morality insurance plan for the hereafter checklist with a liberal social justice, here’s what Christianity REALLY means checklist.  Either way we end up not really needing Jesus so much as needing to make sure we successfully complete the right list of tasks.  Because in the end every form of Checklist Christianity leaves Jesus essentially idling in his van on the corner while we say “Thanks Jesus…but we can take it from here”

 

So while we as people of God are certainly called to feed the hungry and cloth the naked that whole Christian “We’re blessed to be a blessing” thing can be kinda dangerous.  It can be dangerous when it starts to feel like we are placing ourselves above the world waiting to descend on those below so we can to be the “blessing” they’ve been waiting for like it or not. It can so easily become a well-meaning but insidious blend of benevolence and paternalism.  It can so easily become pimping the poor so that we can feel like we are being good little Christs for them.  

 

So this week I had these dangers in the back of my head as I read Matthew 25 a little closer and I realized this: Jesus says I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me. Which means…Christ comes not in the form of those who feed the hungry but in the hungry being fed.  Christ comes not in the form of those who visit the imprisioned but in the imprisoned being cared for.  And to be clear, Christ does not come to us AS the poor and hungry. Because as anyone for whom the poor are not an abstraction but actual flesh and blood people knows…the poor and hungry and imprisoned are not a romantic special class of Christ like people.  And those who meet their needs are not a romantic special class of Christ like people.  We all are equally as Sinful and Saintly as the other.  No, Christ comes to us IN the needs of the poor and hungry,  needs that are met by another so that the gleaming redemption of God might be known.  And we are all the needy and the ones who meet needs.  Placing ourselves or anyone else in only one category or another is to tell ourselves the wrong story entirely.

As many of you know I was at the funeral this Monday of Cythia Burnside.  Wife of bishop Bruce Burnside. I met Bruce at the ELCA church-wide assembly and had preached about that the following Sunday.  I preached about how he and I had sat next to each other at a worship service where I discovered that his wife had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer a month before. During  a particularly un-singable hymn that I was distracted by hating…I realized he was crying. So, throwing my snotty opinions about church music aside I just had to sing that terrible hymn twice as loud because my grieving brother in Christ couldn’t sing.  After the liturgy ended, even though I was a new pastor he had just met and he was a bishop I asked him if he would like for me to pray for him and anoint him with oil and his eyes teared up and he said thank you yes.  I committed to pray for him every day since and checked in occasionally via text message and email.  At his wife’s funeral Monday I asked him “Who pastors Bishops?” He whispered “no one”   So here’s the thing…I don’t really think I was the one who allowed Christ to be revealed in this encounter… it was Bruce.  Because Bruce allowed himself to bear a need that someone else could, however imperfectly meet.  And when the grief of our brother was cared about Jesus was cared about.

I’m not a great example of this. I hate asking for help.  Clearly not in terms of setting up chairs or baking bread for communion.  I mean, if I am hurting or in pain it’s like torture to admit it and even worse to humble myself to ask for help.  It’s as though I think that I am not deserving of the care I give others which, of course, is totally arrogant.  So I wonder in this text about how we withhold Christ from each other when we pretend we have no need.  When we are only the ones being the blessing to others do we keep Christ from being revealed in our own needs that could be met by another.

Because I just don’t think the economy of grace includes 2 separate classes of people, one who hunger and one who offer food.  The fact is, we are all both sheep and goat.  We are both bearers of the Gospel and receivers of it.  We meet the needs of others and have our needs met.  And the strangeness of the good news is that, like those who sat before the throne and said huh? when did we ever feed you Lord?,  we never know when it is that we touch Jesus in all of  this. All that we have is a promise, a promise that your needs are holy to God.  A Promise that Jesus is present in the meeting of needs and that his kingdom is here.  And that he’s a different kind of king who rules over a different kind of kingdom.   Because it looks more like being thirsty and having someone you don’t even like give you water more than it looks like polishing a crown. It looks like giving my three extra coats to the trinity of junkies on the corner than it looks like ermine trimmed robes. That is the surprising scandal of the Gospel; the surprising scandal of the Kingdom:  it looks like the same crappy mess that bumps us out of our unconscious addiction to being good, so that you can look at Jesus as he approaches you on the street and says, man, You look like you could use a good meal.

 

 

 

Reformation Day Sermon 2011 - Sin and Freedom

Romans 3:19-28 ¹⁹Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.²⁰For "no human being will be justified in his sight" by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.
²¹But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, ²²the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, ²³since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; ²⁴they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; ²⁶it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.
²⁷Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. ²⁸For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.

 

John 8:31-36  ³¹Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; ³²and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."³³They answered him, "We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, 'You will be made free'?"
³⁴Jesus answered them, "Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. ³⁵The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. ³⁶So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

 

I was a rebellious teenager and couldn’t wait to be free from the tyranny of Dick and Peggy, my parents.  I pictured being able to stay out as long as I wanted, eat and drink whatever I wanted, and spend time with whomever I wanted.  All I wanted was freedom. And as soon as I was unleashed from the grip of parenting I would be free to have as much fun as I could cram into a 24 hour day.  That day finally came and yet, strangely there still was no freedom.  For I had exchanged one form of bondage for another.  Yet now it was bondage to self.  In my late teens and 20s I just lived under the tyranny of my own selfish desires instead of the tyranny of my parents and I was far from free.    I always thought freedom meant being able to do whatever I wanted but if that’s freedom then I was lied to. It ends up that real freedom is not the same as unfettered access to personal choices. Freedom in the form of me getting to do whatever I want is still being enslaved.  Because selfishness is still a cruel master.

I mention this because in our readings for today Jesus claims that he will make us free.  It’s just that I don’t think he means that he will create an environment where we get to be our own boss and do whatever we want. Plus when it comes to knowing the truth of what we are in bondage to and the truth of what real freedom looks like we often get things wrong. 

This is what we see in the text we read from John’s Gospel.  We know that Jesus is talking to some of his fellow Jews when he says his famous line “you will know the truth and the truth will set you free”.  And then they’re like “Oh yeah, we’re descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone”.  Um, are you sure?  Babylon ring a bell….or, I don’t know… Egypt?  what exactly was it that Moses led your people out of? A carnival? no.  it was slavery.

Rather than give a history lesson, Jesus uses the opportunity to make the point that we are actually slaves to sin.  And that weird denial of reality in which we say “Well, it’s not like we’ve ever been slaves” simply points to the delusions we all seem to have. In some circles those delusions are called Denial. And denial is a wonderful thing…until it’s not. My daughter Harper was a defiant and willful toddler.  I’m sure you’re shocked.  I know my parents were delighted. Anyhow, when she was 3 and we were about to go on a 2 hour car ride we told her she needed to go to the bathroom first.  Not liking being told what to do she become recalcitrant.  When I said honey you have to go pee.  She stomped her foot and said No! Never!  This I can relate to.  I want to create my own freedom but when I do it just always seems to be just another form of bandage.

So when we are offered real freedom it’s like Jesus is saying exactly what is it that God leads you out of?  a carnival? no.  It’s our bondage to sin from which we cannot free ourselves.

But in an age of self care and therapy and high self esteem (and there is nothing wrong with these things per se) but in such an age, and especially in the so-called progressive church, sin is not a popular topic.  As a matter of fact, in the church planting business these days, there is a trend toward eliminating any talk of sin at all…including the confession and absolution at the beginning of our liturgies.  Why?  Because it’s too negative.  People don’t want to hear they are sinners. Partly because they think saying you are a sinner is just having really low self esteem.  But in all fairness our discomfort with the term sin stems partly from the fact that the term has so often been abused and misused in the church.  Especially when sin is preached as something totally avoidable by good people.  Immorality is pretty avoidable…sin is not.  My suspicion is that when people hear “you are a sinner” what they really hear is, “you are immoral”  and if you are someone who doesn’t cheat on their taxes or their spouse and doesn’t murder or steal then you understandably don’t want to spend your Sunday morning having someone imply that you do. But sin, Martin Luther reminds us, is bigger than simple immorality.  Sin is being curved in on self without a thought for God or the neighbor. It can be alcoholism or passive aggression.  It can be the hateful things we think but never say or it can be adultery or it can be that feeling of superiority when we are helping others.  Our being curved in on ourselves will fashion itself in endless variety.  Pretending otherwise just never helps.

See, that’s the thing about truth…Truth…when it is real can cut deep and heal at the same time.  And Jesus says that truth brings freedom.  Freedom from having to pretend , freedom from having to defend, freedom from having to protect. And hearing the truth that we are in bondage to self and that no amount of trying to be good can change that cuts deep but it also heals. It heals because it simply gives us no choice but to be placed in the loving arms of Jesus, the great physician who heals through grace.

Martin Luther, in a letter to another preacher said “if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly.” That’s the other side of the truth coin.  Yes, you are a sinner.  But you are also a saint. Fully made new and alive in Christ. We are all simultaneously sinners AND saints. But sometimes being told that you are a saint can be just as hard to hear as you are a sinner.

You are a real and not a fictitious sinners and you are objects of God’s real and not fictitious grace.

See, Jesus brings real truth and real freedom. He isn’t just sitting in heaven waiting to see if we can pull off the impossible thing of becoming righteous on our own and then condemning us for our inevitable failure.  Jesus subverts the entire paradigm.  Because Jesus actually IS our righteousness.  Despite our lumpy broken lives, we are righteous before God.  But our righteousness is that of a Merciful and gracious God who comes to us in the vulnerability and suffering revealed in the cradle and cross. And the thing is….with the righteousness of Christ there is no extra credit to be obtained. It just is. 

So the truth that sets you free is so much more than the truth of your personal and our societal sin.  The truth that sets you free is also the truth of your unbelievable beauty and saintliness. 

Because it is always the truth of who we are coupled with the truth of who God is that sets us free. And I’m in it for the freedom.  And we are given not just the freedom FROM sin and death…we are without question given the freedom FOR the neighbor. 

         People often give House for All Sinners and Saints puzzled looks. They sometimes furrow their brow and tilt their heads and say Why do you bless bicycles and bring thanksgiving lunches to strippers and assemble bleach kits for IV drug users and sing hymns in bars.  And smiling I always say “I don't know. Because we’re free?”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Sermon on the worst parable ever.

 
**

 

Matthew 22:1-14

Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying:  ²The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.  ³He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come.  ⁴Again he sent other slaves, saying, 'Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.'  ⁵But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business,  ⁶while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them.  ⁷The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.  ⁸Then he said to his slaves, 'The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy.  ⁹Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.'  ¹⁰Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.

¹¹But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe,  ¹²and he said to him, 'Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?' And he was speechless.  ¹³Then the king said to the attendants, 'Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'  ¹⁴For many are called, but few are chosen."

 

 

When my mom and dad returned from visiting Israel and Palestine, they told me that sometimes nice unsuspecting Christians from the West fall for a little scam.  Apparently they buy tours of Biblical sites that include a visit to the very road where the Good Samaritan helped the man beaten by thieves.  This seems like it would really complete a trip to the Holy Land until you realize that the Good Samaritan was a parable. It would be like selling tickets to see the childhood home of the Billy Goats Gruff. 

But our desire to believe that there is an actual road we could visit where the Good Samaritan helped the beaten man points to our desire to domesticate parables into something understandable and unchanged that we can take snap shots of ourselves standing in front of while on vacation.

 

But that’s not what parables are – they are metaphoric speech, part riddle, part joke, part fable and totally unsolvable.  And they can be maddening which is why throughout Christian history people have tried to define what each one means and neatly allegorize them so they are less mysterious – which, for the record is like trying to nail jello to a tree.

 

But I understand wanting to simplify parables into something small and understandable - preferably with a moral lesson tacked onto the end. Yet what makes Jesus’ parables so powerful is that they are endless sources of meaning… but we have to be willing to keep tilting our head in different directions to see them anew.  And this week, with this parable I just couldn’t seem to tilt my head enough.

Because our parable for today is a real doozy.  Here’s how I heard it: A king throws a wedding banquet and invites the other rich, slave-owning powerful people. Seemingly unimpressed by the promised veal cutlet at the wedding feast, the elite invitees laugh at the invitation and proceed to abuse and then kill the slaves of the king.  Well then the king kills them back.  But he doesn’t stop there, not to be outdone, he burns down the city… and it is there amidst the burning carnage of the newly destroyed city he sends more slaves to go find whoever they can to fill the seats. After all…the food is ready and he has all these fancy robes for the guests. All he cares about is having every seat filled at his big party.  But who is left?  He burned the city. The rich and powerful have been murdered so it’s the regular folks wandering the streets looking for their dead, picking apart the charred debris of their burned city who are then told that they have no choice but to go to the party of the guy responsible.   and it’s already been established that he doesn’t respond well if you turn him down.  So the terrified masses show up and pretend that this capricious tyrant didn’t just lay waste to their city.  Out of fear they all dutifully put on their wedding robes given them at the door and they pretend. Slipping on a gorgeous garment was what you did for a king's wedding feast. And the guests got to keep the outfits, just a little souvenir of the king's generosity - and a reminder to keep in line. You don't get anything from the empire without it costing you a bit of your life. 

Well, our story ends with these well dressed survivors looking on as the King spots the one guy at the banquet who isn’t wearing a wedding robe.  And when the innocent man has nothing to say for himself the king has this scapegoat hogtied and thrown into the outer darkness. Many are called but few are chosen he says.

         Now, that is clearly the Nadia International Version of the parable but I think my hearing of it is really influenced by what’s happening in the world right now.        

Because this week- months after the Arab Spring,  and after weeks of the growing wall street occupation well,  – in this climate of discontent and dissent as we all begin to wake from our consumer induced coma to see how multi national corporations control so much more than we can imagine, in a season when tyrants are being over thrown, I simply could not preach a sermon in which I say that God is like an angry murderous slave owning king. Maybe there is a way of finding good news in that but I just couldn’t do it. 

Instead, I started to wonder:  why is it that we want to think that in parables God is always the rich man, the ruler, the slave owner, the tyrant.  Maybe its because we’ve been told that God is on the side of victory and winning and power and empire.  But that’s just not the God we see revealed in Jesus Christ.  St. Matthew – whose gospel this parable was taken from, well, Matthew is always contrasting the kingdom of empire with the kingdom of heaven.

 

So what if the hero is the guy who wouldn’t don the king’s wedding robe?  What if kingdom of heaven is like someone who shows up and says no to empire.  Who stands speechless before his accusers…what if the kingdom of heaven is like someone who is made a scapegoat for others because we are too scared to speak the truth?  What if the kingdom of heaven is like someone who is hog tied for not participating in the charade of pretending God is OK with the powerful victimizing the weak.  What if the kingdom of heaven is like someone who is thrown by the empire into the outer-darkness and what if the name of that outer darkness is Calvary.

Because If there is a king in the Gospel that looks anything like the God that we gather to worship, it looks like the King called Jesus; the one who came not to be served, but to serve and to offer his life in exchange for our death. If there is a king in the Gospel that looks anything like the God that we gather to worship it looks like the King called Jesus; the one who was the unexpected embodiment of truth – the kind of truth that disarms the powerful.

 

All of the promises of empire - jobs, security, national strength, economic prosperity - all come with a cost.  I cannot even begin to examine the ways in which I am both victimized by and complicit in the ways of empire. But Jesus doesn't play the games of empire. He choses a way that looks like complete failure through the eyes of empire, but which is the way of forgiveness, mercy, peace and life. Jesus takes on the brutality of the empire and defeats it. He defeats it for us, so that we can live in the way of life even amidst the rubble of empire – even amidst all the ways we suffer on account of empire and all the ways we benefit from it. Because the kingdom of heaven is like: a first century Jewish peasant who laughed at the powerful, kissed lepers, befriended prostitutes and ate with all the wrong people and whom the authorities and the powerful elite had to hog tie and throw into the outer darkness.  What if the kingdom of heaven is like Jesus.  And what if it is from this place of outer darkness that everything is changed?  In the outer darkness of Calvary where death is swallowed up forever.

Listen today to the words that will introduce the passing of the peace  later in the liturgy:

He will not command legions of angels

nor ride the machine of holy war;

he will become a slave,

take our hate into his heart

and win us with forgiveness,

for he is God’s unexpected peace.

AMEN

 

*I would be remiss were I not to aknowledge how much Debbie Blue's post this week on The Hardest Question inspired this sermon.  As did my sermonating conversations with Paul Fromberg from St Gregory Of Nyssa in San Fransisco. 

 **image from St Cecillia Catholic Church in Detroit

 

Naming Rite for Asher, a lovely transgendered member of HFASS

My apologies for taking so long to post this, but here is the rite we used at Baptism of our Lord Sunday when a transgendered member of House for All Sinners and Saints was undergoing a name change.  This is largely taken from a rite shared with me by Episcopal priest, Michele Morgan

One really lovely thing about this day was that Asher made a little shrine to his previously female self, Mary.  It included the whole name lovingly written out, several photos and a candle. 

 

(Prayers of the People)

 

Presider:

Holy One of Blessing, in baptism you bring us to new life in

Jesus Christ and you name us Beloved. We give you thanks for the renewal

of that life and love in Mary Christine Callahan, who now takes on a new name.

Strengthen and uphold him as he grows in power, and authority, and

meaning of this name: we pray in the Name above names, Jesus, your Son,

whom with you and the Holy Spirit, the Triune God, we adore. Amen

 

(Lindsey) A reading from the letter of Paul to the Galatians.

 

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no

longer male and female; for all are one in Christ Jesus

 

The word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

 

(Laying on of hands)

Let us pray:

We pray for your servant Asher, with thanks for the journey and awakening that

have brought him to this moment, for his place amongst your

people, and for his gifts and calling to serve you.

 

O God, in renaming your servants Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, Peter,

and Paul, you gave them new lives and new tasks, new love and new hope.

We now hold before you our companion. Bless him with a new measure

of grace as he takes this new name. Write him again in your

heart and on your palm. And grant that we all be worthy to call ourselves

Christians, for the sake of your Christ whose name is Love, and in whom,

with you and the Spirit, we pray. Amen

 

The Giving of the name

 

Pr. Nadia: By what name shall you be known? 

Kate: The name shall be Asher  

Asher:  My name is Asher

 

The community may respond by repeating

Your name shall be Asher

 

Pr. Nadia: Bear this name in the Name of Christ. Share it in the name of Mercy. Offer it

in the name of Justice.

 

Christ is among us making peace right here right now.  The peace of Christ be with you all. And also with you.  

 

Sermon on Forgiveness on 9-11-2011

Genesis 50:15-21

Matthew 18:21-35

 

When I was growing up, there was a house down the street from us which had slightly tattered window coverings and the front lawn was like a graveyard of broken things.  Posted on the fence was a “No trespassing” sign.  I remember asking my mother what trespassing was so I could be certain not to do it to anyone who lived in that weird house.  When she explained that it meant going into their yard uninvited I thought no problem.  Soon after that when I first learned the Lord’s Prayer I thought it was weird that out of all the sins that Jesus would suggest we ask God to forgive it would be our trespassing.  I pretty much made it a policy to stay out of strange yards and no one seemed to wander into ours uninvited so I thought I was covered.  Only later did I realize that trespassing was only one of countless was to trespass against others.  And now I get it – kind of. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.  Jesus always seems to be pairing God’s forgiveness of us with our forgiveness of others.

         But why?  why is he always pairing them together?  I kind of always  thought that it was a way of guilting us into forgiving others – like the parable from today – hey, I forgave you 3 trillion dollars and because of that you should feel not just bad, but tortured if you don’t then in turn forgive the 200 bucks that other guy owes you.  Like Jesus was saying hey, I died for you and you can’t even be nice to your little brother?  As though God can get us to do the right thing if God can just make us feel bad about how much we owe God. But that just doesn’t seem to me to be the God revealed in Jesus Christ.  That seems like a manipulative mother. 

And these questions about what forgiveness really is and why is it so important that we do it was all happening for me this week amidst all the remembrances of 9-11.  I kept reading and re-reading these Bible passages about forgiveness and every time I’d take a break my tv or computer was filled with images of burning towers. Which made me wonder…can evil be forgiven?

Now that I’ve mentioned evil here’s a disclaimer: this sermon will in no way answer the question of why a loving God allows evil and suffering.  But mark your calendars because That’s the topic at theology pub this Tuesday.  which brings me to disclaimer #2: it won’t be answered there either.

Our human culture would say that evil is fought through justice and might.  The way we combat evil is by making sure that people get what they have coming to them is.  An eye for an eye.  You attack me and I’ll attack you. Fair is fair.  And there are times in my own life when I’ve been hurt that I’m sure retaliation would make me feel better.  But then when I can’t harm the person who harmed me I just end up harming the people who love me.  So maybe retaliation or holding on to anger about the harm done to us or living in fear of it happening again doesn’t actually combat evil. It feeds it. In the end we can actually absorb the worst of our enemy and on some level become endangered of even becoming them. Because it would seem that when we are sinned against, when someone else does us harm that we are in some way linked to that sin, connected to that mistreatment like a chain through which we absorb it. And we know that our anger, fear or resentment doesn’t free us at all…it just keeps us chained.  And evil persists.  Sin abounds. Brokenness prevails.

Of so it would seem.  But Richard Rohr reminds us that we can tell a lot by what a person does with their suffering: do they transmit it or do they transform it. So while it’s true that God may not prevent evil and we may never fully understand why… God does have a way of combating evil.  It’s not punishment and it’s not retaliation, fear or anger.  It’s forgiveness.  Forgiveness is God’s way of combating evil. 

Of course this offends our impulses for justice or retaliation like mercy always will.  But that’s the God revealed in Jesus for you.  Like it or not this is what we see at the cross.  At Calvary God allows our human system of scape-goating, fear, and retaliation to play its natural course, which ended as it always does: in the suffering of God.  And then in turn, God shows us God’s  system by not even lifting a finger to condemn those who put him on the cross but instead proclaiming, of all things,  forgiveness.  In doing so he cuts the world loose from our own sin because Jesus can’t stand to see us chained to it. At Calvary we see our God entering deeply into the suffering caused by human evil and saying this. ends. here. - I will not transmit it.

We are cut loose.  God’s forgivness is like giant bolt-cutters.  And then God says go and do likewise.  Forgive as you have been forgiven. Cut others loose too.  Jesus commands it.  He commands us to forgive just as he commends us to love.  It’s not actually a suggestion.

But the problem with this is: doesn’t forgiving a sin against us or an evil done to many come perilously close to saying that what they did was ok?  Isn’t forgiving over and over just the thing that keeps battered women battered?

This week as I was thinking about these passages I thought that maybe forgiveness is actually the opposite of saying that what someone has done is ok…it’s saying it’s so not ok that I am not going to absorb it any more. I simply won’t be tied to it.  What happened on 9-11 was NOT ok.  That’s why we need to forgive.  Because we can’t be bound to that kind of evil.  Lest it find the evil in our own hearts and make it’s home there. 

Now, in all fairness I should say that I myself don’t naturally have a forgiving heart.  I love a good resentment as much as the next gal, and if I can go on a rant and get other people to see what an ass that person is then all the better.  Holding onto a grudge or a resentment can feel like a big delicious feast that I can return to again and again until I realize I am the main course.  Our refusal to forgive can eat us alive.

So if there is someone who you feel you just can’t forgive think about how much that resentment is continuing to tie you to them and know that God wants you free from what was done to you.  So here’s what you do…. reach for the bolt-cutters.  Because, when we forgive someone, it’s not an act of niceness, it’s not being a doormat,  it’s an act of fidelity to God’s evil-combating campaign.  Forgiveness is an act of fidelity to the kingdom of God and a defiant stance against the forces of evil – even the evil in our own hearts. And in turn when we are forgiven by someone else we are set free because they are saying they will no longer be bound to the harm we did them. 

In all fairness I should say that this is just the kinda thing that got Jesus killed -that he was going around telling people they were forgiven.  He went about freeing people, cutting them loose. And that kind of freedom is always seen as threatening.

The world doesn’t always like this kind of thing.  Just ask my friend Don – the Lutheran Pastor who lost his job for doing Dylan Klebold’s Funeral.  Dylan Klebold was one of the Columbine shooters and Don had the gall to think that the promises committed to Dylan by God at his baptism were more powerful than the transmission of evil committed by the teen. I don’t see that as saying what Dylan Klebold did was ok.  I see that as a defiant proclamation that evil is simply not more powerful than good and that there really is a light that shines in the darkness and that the darkness can not, will not, shall not overcome it. 

 

Greenbelt Sermon

(adapted from a sermon given at HFASS the 1st Sunday of Christmas)

Anyone who knows me can tell you that I didn’t get what I wanted this year for my birthday.  No, not an ipad or world peace.  What I really wanted is a new back because my is wrecked.  At the age of 42 I have a disk in my back that is so degenerated that I can’t stand for more than about 15 minutes without being in pain.  I mention this because in our Gospel reading for today we hear that  In the beginning was the Word and The Word was with God and the Word was God And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Which is basically a way of saying that God decided to have …of all things…a human body. 

We Christians have a long history of finding this idea disturbing. There was an early Christian heresy called Docetism and I’m not totally convinced that I myself would not have been a docetist given the opportunity.  You see, they were so certain that spirit and flesh could not exist as One that they convinced themselves that Jesus didn’t really have a human body…it just seemed that way.  Docetists claimed that Jesus only appeared to be a physical being.   And I get the impulse behind docetism because really, no self-respecting God would become a human when being human means being irretrievably fragile. What can it mean that God would slip into the vulnerability of skin and be made flesh? Seems a lousy idea in a way, given the very sloppy and broken reality of our physical lives as humans.  Our bodies bruise and decay and disappoint us, and sag insistently toward the earth so why in the world would God not spare God’s self the indignity of  having things like sweat glands and the hiccups?

The Psalmist reminds us that God knit us together in our mother’s womb and that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.  Of course I see at least 2 barriers to really really believing this.  Firstly there is the fact that as a middle aged woman my body seems to be deteriorating right before my eyes. How wonderfully and fearfully made is a body which ages, or grows fat, or develops cancer or no longer produces insulin? What am I supposed to do with a body that’s going to die ?? The other barrier to believing our bodies are fearfully and wonderfully made is that we are quite bombarded by messages otherwise.  Messages from every billboard we see or commercial we hear. Convincing you that a) your body is bad and b) your body can be “perfect” if you buy a certain product…and let there be no mistake, this is a billion dollar industry.

Our youth-obsessed body-improvement culture in which we find ourselves tells us that we can actually avoid any appearance of our own mortality through the right combination of elective surgery and Pilates. IN the end this is nothing but a simple fear of death itself.  But what God tells us in the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ is that we need not fear our mortality in the first place because it simply is not the final word.  Death has no sting when it cannot separate us from the love of God in Christ.  So we need not fear it. nor deny it.

So this week as you leave here I invite you to take notice every time you see or hear a message about body improvement.  Every pill, or exercise machine, or special gym membership, or tanning bed… every liposuction clinic and celebrity endorsed diet plan.  All of it.  Notice the obsession our culture has with stretching and tanning and increasing and decreasing our flesh into submission to some sort of bizarre ideal.  Then in contrast, notice every time this week that you see or hear this: And the Word became flesh and lived among us, in this we have seen God’s glory, full of grace and truth…you have received the power to be Children of God.  Through the fullness of God’s Word made flesh you have received grace upon grace.

That is a different message entirely. 

We may want a “spirituality” of pure transcendence  which rises above our broken physical reality.   But in Jesus we see that a physical life is a spiritual life…

John’s gospel bears witness not to an ethereal disembodied deity but to a sensual God -  The Word became flesh and  washed human feet, and smelled luxurious perfume, and tasted abundant wine.  When Jesus wanted to heal the blind man he didn’t use good vibes or send positive energy, he used spit and dirt. Very real tears of salt ran down Jesus face, as he smelled the stink of death on Lazarus the one he called friend.  Jesus’ very own flesh tore when he was beaten and crucified - and even in his resurrection he had a real body - when he rose from the dead he told Thomas to touch his wounded side,  one that bore the scars of having lived.  Then, as one of his final acts on Earth the guy ate grilled fish on a beach with his friends. 

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.  God came and made God’s home with us and in a real body. I think when we as people of faith hear the term Dreams of Home we tend to think of heaven and an ethereal disembodied reality after our bodies die but the thing is, this text in John says that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us but the Greek for dwelt is also tabernacled…the Word was made flesh and made a sacred home with us. God is at home in our bodies, as imperfect as they may be.

So I wonder if maybe in the incarnation God has done nothing less than blessed all human flesh.  Blessed it, not made it into our version of perfect. Perfection as we picture it and as it relates to human bodies is impossible.  And perhaps the striving for an impossible perfection is a profound distraction from the way in which we are children born of God.  Because as we know, the perfect is so often the enemy of the good. And even God, having finished creating the physical world, including the human form, called it good.  not perfect mind you, but good. so, let us remember that our good and imperfect bodies are born of God and so we have no business calling what God pronounced good anything but good. Because if the Word became flesh and lived among us ~ then despite our botoxic quest for the illusion of perfection, your body is beautiful to God.

 

Because Jesus came and in his almost disturbingly physical existence showed us what God looks like, not in some ethereal alternate spiritual plane but right here in the midst of our physical, embodied earthy reality.  Jesus said here’s what being born of God looks like… it looks like not worrying about what we're to eat or drink; it looks like loving the bodies of other people who, like us, will die; it looks like touching human flesh as if it's holy instead of worrying that it's unclean, and it looks like what we are about to do: it for sure looks like breaking bread and drinking wine with all the wrong people. 

This is a religion of God revealed in the vulnerability of newborn flesh in a cradle and in heartbreak of  broken flesh on a cross. So if God saw fit to wear our native garb should we not bless and care for our own flesh?  as well as for the other bodies that God loves? Should we not have concern for any violation or starvation or trafficking of any human bodies?

As we leave Greenbelt full of optimism and resolution let us remember that there is a reality beyond our individual self-improvement, beyond our attempts to deny our mortality, beyond our attempts to pretend we are not flesh and blood. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we were given grace upon grace to become children of God and in doing so you, dear people of God, You are now flesh become Word.   You in your embodied fragile glory are God’s healing Word for a hurt and broken and beautiful word. You as Christ’s body are no longer about the fear of death or the denial of death but about life and life abundant. You as Christ’s body are becoming flesh made Word, being made into God’s beautiful and loving intention for the world God created and called good. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

 

 

Jesus Walking on the Water - A Sermon Sarcastic and Serious

 

It’s Jesus walking on the water Sunday here at House for All Sinners and Saints and we thought maybe during Open Space we should have a kiddie pool set up in the back so you could all “test your faith”.  You know – go ahead and give it the old Christian try.  That’s how I’ve always heard this story preached:  like it’s the Little Engine Who Could Have.  As a matter of fact,  here’s a 1 minute version of the sermon I just don’t have the stomach to preach to you….it might sound familiar: The disciples are in a little boat battered by waves, they see Jesus walking toward them and for a moment, Peter is a hero.  He steps out of the boat and has sufficient faith to walk on water.  He actually does it.  Peter musters up what it takes to be God-like and what it takes is faith.  Lots and lots of faith.   Because with enough faith you can walk on water all the way to Jesus. If you had enough faith you could do it too.  And maybe even better than Peter. Because Peter’s only mistake was that he took his eyes off Jesus and that’s why he sunk.   So the moral of the story, and of course every Bible story is about how to be moral…so the how to be moral of this story is that if you in your life are not God-like in your ability to financially prosper or overcome all your failings as a human or defy the forces of nature and walk on water then the problem is that you don’t have enough faith and you should really muster up some more because the thing is, it’s all up to you to make your way to Jesus.  So, don’t be afraid.  Get out of the boat but be better at it than St Peter and don’t take your eyes off of Jesus. You can do it if you really try. End of sermon.  And good luck with that.         

          OK, this is a cynical view even for me, but it’s honest.  Yet I know that having a preacher tell me that the solution to my problems is to just try and have more faith – so I can make my way to Jesus never sounds like good news to me.  It reminds me of The Simpson’s episode where square jawed newscaster Ken Brockman made a set of motivational tapes called “get confident stupid!”.  In the end, I just don’t know how helpful is to say “get faith sinner”.  It doesn’t work. 

But the weird thing is, here you all are. Gathered again around this story of the man who walks on water.  Some of you are new to the story of Christ, and for some of you it formed who you are from the cradle. I could be wrong but I think maybe we aren’t all here because some preacher exhorted us to  “have more faith”.  I think we are here because at some point we heard the Story and the story claimed us. At some point, someone told you the story about this God who created the universe, who spoke through prophets, who came to us in Jesus, who ate with sinners and scoffed at the powerful, who suffered and died and rose again and calls us out of our of own graves to new life.   And here’s the thing about stories…  they tell us who we are. Sometimes a story can tell us what to do but when we hear who we are we then know what to do and God’s story found in the Bible does this more than any other story can.

And I guess this particular story of Jesus walking on water can be reduced to a moral about having more faith.  But, like so much of the Bible, it can also be a way to see who we are and see who God is for us. 

See if you recognize yourself in this story: Because maybe some of us are like the ones in the boat who are afraid. Maybe you are so caught up in the fear of making the wrong decision that you can’t make any decision at all. Or maybe you are like the one experiencing the thrill of stepping into the unknown -  a new relationship or a new job or you’ve just moved to Denver leaving behind the familiar - and maybe the first few steps are ok but then it gets scary.  Or maybe you or the person next to you is the one who is sinking in debt or depression or maybe you feel like you’re sinking because what you could handle last month you just can’t handle now. Or maybe you’re the one who knows you’re doomed, knows that all your own efforts have failed and you are crying out to God to save you and you’re the ones who Jesus has reached down to catch and you’re clinging on to the sweet hand of Jesus with all you’ve got.  or maybe you’re the one in the boat looking in wonder all you’ve just seen… you’re the one who bears witness to the miracle and danger of it all and how the hand of God reaches down and pulls us up and you see it and can’t help but say “truly this is God.” At some point or other I know I have been all of the above.

Yet, a lot of what I’ve heard in the church both with this story and with so many others is not who I am but who I should be.  I should be the one with enough faith to walk on water.  I should be the one whose eyes are always always on Jesus. I should be the one who makes my way to Jesus.

But all these characters in the walking on water story – the cautious ones in the boat, the brave one who walked for a time on water, the same one who is afraid and sinks and calls for help, and the ones who saw it all and confessed that Jesus is the son of God they are all actually equal in their relationship to God because…all of these and you have one thing in common: they are those whom Jesus draws near saying “it is I, do not be afraid”.  The glamorous part of this story is that Peter walked on water. Which I admit is pretty cool. And maybe he almost had enough faith to make his way to Jesus.  But what happens on either side of his short little water walk?  Jesus comes toward HIM.  In the storm Jesus is walking toward the boat, when Peter sinks Jesus is reaching toward Peter then he comes so much toward them all that finally he just gets in the damn boat.  That’s about as with them as he can be. Yet we seem to always focus on Peter walking toward Jesus when the whole story is about how much jesus walks toward them reaches toward them and then even gets in the boat with them.

We might see the moral of the story as “you should have so much faith that you can walk on water toward Jesus” but the truth of this story is that Jesus walks toward us. The truth of the story is that my abundance of faith or lack of faith does not deter God from drawing close.  That even if you are scared to death you can say Lord Save Me and the hand of God will find you in even the darkest waters.  Because this is a story not of morals but of movement. Not of heros of the faith making their way to Christ but of Christ drawing near to you in the midst of fear.  As our reading from Romans says the Word of God is near to you – on your hearts and in your lips.  And for us for today, I would say the Word of God that was made flash and dwelt among us in Jesus the Christ draws near to you.  He is written on your hearts and is proclaimed from your lips.  He walks toward you saying “It is I, do not be afraid”  and God reaches down when you call his name and as Paul wrote to the Romans Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

¹⁴But – he writes - how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? ¹⁵And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"

So. There is actually a kiddie pool in back filled with water and scented oil. I invite you during open space or during communion not to try and walk on it, but to dip your feet in as a blessing.  Feel the cool of the calm waters and know that yours are the beautiful feet of they who have been sent to tell the story of who you are and who God is….and  you tell the story of God so that you and others might call out Lord save us as we continually die and rise in the waters of our baptism. Do not be afraid.  For that is your beautiful story.

 

 

The Kingdom of Heaven is like...

 

Matthew 13

¹He put before them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; ³²it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches."

³³He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened."
⁴⁴The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
⁴⁵Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; ⁴⁶on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

 

It’s been a rough weekend.  Watching the devastation that the combination of mental illness and fundamentalism* brought to the people of Norway.  Watching what the combination of drug addiction and fame brought to a talented singer, who, like so many who went before her, is now dead at the age of 27.  Something they don’t tell you when you get clean and sober is that if, by the grace of God, you manage to stay that way - you get a much better life - but year after year you also watch people you love die of the same disease.  So yesterday when I heard that Amy Winehouse had been found dead in her home it brought me back to 9 years ago when my dear friend PJ was also found dead in his home.  He was a brilliant stand up comic and an alcoholic and a series of medications had tugged and pulled at his mental illness but never seemed to really help it.  He sadly died by his own hand and in his own home. It too was senseless and tragic.  Yet strangely, whenever I hear these “The Kingdom of Heaven is like…” parables I always think of the week of PJ’s death.  Because, these parables about the kingdom are so counter-intuative. 

Today we heard Jesus say that The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that when it has grown becomes the greatest of all shrubs. Um, the greatest of all shrubs?  What kind of off-brand kingdom is this?   It’s like saying someone is the smartest of all the idiots or the mightiest of all baby dolls. Yet he says Heaven’s kingdom is like Shrubs, and nets and yeast  – and the yeast part might be the worst when you realize that yeast is considered impure – we’re not talking little packets of Flieshman’s we find at King Soopers – we’re talking big lumps of mold which contaminate….and that in fact, Jews were required to  rid their entire house of yeast before celebrating some Holy Days.  

We mistakenly may think that the kingdom of God should follow our value system and also be powerful or impressive and shiny. But that’s not what Jesus brings.  He brings a kingdom ruled by the crucified one – populated by the unclean, and suffused with mercy rather than power. And it’s always found in the unexpected.  So when I hear Kingdom of Heaven parables and how it’s found in the small and surprising and even the profane I think back to 2 days after PJ was found dead.  See, PJ grew up in a nice Catholic family from a small farming town in Iowa.  Not really sure how they got a darkly sardonic, filthy minded comic genius for a son but that’s another story for another time.  See, 2 days after PJ’s death a group of my friends, comics and depressives and recovering alcoholics – undertook a mission of compassion. They entered the home of our dead friend and they cleared out all the pornography.  Every Playboy and VHS tape.  All of it.  They wanted to spare these good folks any more pain then they were  already dealing with.   That to me is the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God on earth, that we might clear out the pornography from our dead friends’ homes before their nice small town parents come to settle their son’s affairs.  It’s small, it’s surprising and it’s a little profane but it’s the real thing.

         And I just think that if Jesus talked again and again about the kingdom of heaven and found any image available to tell us how to spot it, that us spotting it might be kinda of important.  And the reason it’s important is that like in Handel’s Messiah I believe there are 2 kingdoms. Remember the Alleluia chorus.? For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.
|: Hallelujah! The kingdom of this world
Is become the kingdom of our Lord,
And of His Christ, And He shall reign for ever.

There is the kingdom of heaven and there is The kingdom of this world – not as in the world God created and called good, but the kingdom of this world we created for ourselves. The world according to us is the other kingdom.

I asked people on Facebook yesterday to fill in the blank, the Kingdom of this world is like

one said….a thick fog. It seems large, scary and impenetrable. But it is passing away.

The kingdom of this world is like a rich, good-looking guy who’s stock portfolio is as breathtaking as his Italian loafers. 

The kingdom of this world is a seemingly impenetrable system of victim and victimizer, winner and loser, rich and poor.

And everything around us can feel like it’s demanding our allegiance to the Kingdom of this world.  allegiance to the weight-loss industrial complex.  Allegiance to late-stage capitalism, allegiance to a worthyness based system of getting ahead in life.  The kingdom of this world wages an endless campaign for our loyalty. It’s on billboards and magazines and the workplace and the TV and the messages we received about ourselves our whole lives …Luring us in with false promises.

And it all looks so darned shiny and promising and impressive. And at the same time it also looks like 27 year old singers found dead in their apartments and it looks like senseless violence in Norway. It feels inescapable. But here’s what I’m sure of:  the promises of a human engineered kingdom are empty.  The kingdom of this world cannot save us.

But Jesus came to bring another kingdom.

See, when God could no longer be contained by heaven heaven came to Earth.  The love God had for the world God created overflowed the heavens and became incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ.  And God’s Christ brought a message of good news to the poor and release to the captives and freedom to the oppressed.  And he healed the sick and ate with sinners and scoffed at the powerful and he said in Me the Kingdom of God has come near. In the small and the unlikely and the unwanted the kingdom of God comes to us. And it changes everything. This is the Kingdom of Heaven says Revelation 21 that God had come to dwell with us.  To make us people of God. To make all things new. For the kingdom of this world
Is become the kingdom of our Lord,
And of His Christ, And He shall reign for ever and ever.

I invite you to discover your own images of what the kingdom of heaven is like.  It is important to have a field guide.  To listen to Jesus when he says what it’s like so that we can see it in our own lives and in our own world. And here’s why: When we can identify the kingdom of heaven sown around us it’s not just an FYI kind of thing it’s a subversion.  It’s God peeking through the curtain and letting us know that there is a deeper reality present in the world - a reality in which God gets God way. It’s the light of God’s Christ which shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot, will not, shall not overcome it.  And seeing where God seems to be insistently, dangerously, gorgeously and hilariously sewing signs of the kingdom is important because seeing signs of the kingdom of heaven loosens us from the kingdom of this world.  It frees us from the false promises of human culture and shows us that which is eternal and true and unstoppable. It shows us that drug over doeses and greedy multi national corporation and divorce and unemployment and senseless violence are not the final word.  God and God alone will have the final word even if inconveniently God doesn’t meet our expectations or work on our timeline.

And the kingdom of heaven is not to be found alone in a monestary, it’s not to be found in the demands and rewards of human religion, it’s found in the ordinary, the daily, the right in front of your face and never realized it.  And when you see it something is made new. Perhaps a part of the world perhaps a part of yourself.  But something is made new when the empty promises of the world according to us gives way to the whimsy, and the true and the eternal in the world according to God.  And it’s always a surprise.  Tilt your head and look sideways at your life and might see it in the small or the unexpected or the impure.

Tilt your head and look sideways and catch a glimpse- for the Prince of Peace has begun his reign. The signs are all around.  They are signs of a battle already won.  Signs of a world loved so deeply by God that God refuses to leave it alone.  So take another look. See if you can spot it. Amen

 

 (Sometimes the Kingdom of Heaven happens between the Arby's and the Orange Julius) like here in this video

 

*i used this term based on an early news report and the if I were writing this sermon today I would change the word "fundamentalism" to "extremism" (-Nadia 7-26-2011)

Sermon on Isaiah 55, The Parable of the Sower and those big talking trees form Lord of the Rings

 

My favorite characters in the Lord of the Rings are the Ents.  These were an ancient race of giant living talking breathing trees in Tolkien’s Middle Earth.  So I have a little confession to make: whenever I hear that reading we just heard from Isaiah 55 where it says The mountains and hills before you shall burst into song and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. I always picture the Giant Ents from Lord of the Rings.  And then I picture these clapping trees from Isaiah holding little Hobbits in their branch arms in what ends up bring a willful conflation of Middle Earth and Major Prophet.  I suppose to some people that might feel wrong.  Maybe a little like the visitor we had at Pentecost who was greatly dismayed at some people snickering during the reading from Acts.  You know, the one where Peter stands up and tells the crowd that clearly these men couldn’t be drunk since it’s only 9 o’clock in the morning.  Every year people laugh at that. My guess is because every year it’s funny.  But laughing in church can dismay some folks because sometimes it feels like religion has become more about decorum than delight.  It’s so often more about judgment than joy.

 

So this week I kept thinking about joy and what role joy has in our faith.  Sure we talk about prayer and sin and creeds and liturgy and discipleship and advocacy as being part of our Christian faith.  But what of joy?  It sadly never seems to be on the top of the list of what it means to be God’s people.  And it’s for sure not what we are known for….any guess what the top adjective  used to describe Christians is? Judgmental.  I think maybe that’s because human religion so easily becomes more about knowing right from wrong than knowing God.

Lutheran theologian Deitrich Bonhoeffer knew this.  He suggests that the Original sin was choosing knowledge of good and evil over knowledge of God.  See, there were 2 trees in the garden of Eden and the snake said if you eat from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil you will be like God.  But there was another tree.  The tree of life.  Yet we chose knowledge of Good and Evil over knowledge of God. Bonhoeffer calls this the Fall upward.

 We chose to move God out of the center and put ourselves there, and ever since then human religion tends to be about the knowledge of good and evil and not the knowledge of life- or the knowledge of God. This can be pretty easily seen in how we read the parable of the Sower.  I think we naturally tend to read this parable NOT as the parable of the sower but as the parable of the judgment of the soil.   To focus on the worthiness of the soil is to read the parable in judgment. When we approach this text or our lives with only the knowing and judging of good and evil, we miss out on the knowing of God.  But to focus on the lush and ludicrous image of how God extravagantly, wastefully, wantonly sows the Word of the Kingdom is to read the parable in joy.

And isn’t life just too short, too sacred and too important to skimp on joy?  Yet joy can often be the thing we give up when being right seems more important. It’s like that cliché: would you rather be right or be happy?  I’ve focused on being right a lot in my life.  First in the conservative Christianity of my youth and then in the Leftest politics of my young adulthood. They aren’t always mutually exclusive, but if given the choice, I want to choose happy instead.  And leave being right to God and God alone.  

Speaking of being right.  I hate to destroy any one’s youthful idealism here, but Bible scholars aren’t always right. For instance, the Hebrew word from our Isaiah 55  text that they chose to interpret as Purpose is the same word that can also be translated “delight” so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that in which I DELIGHT, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it Personally I think the word delight might be more accurate given the playful, whimsical imagery that follows For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

What a fantastical, joy-filled, playful image- it’s like Biblical Cirque de Soile….the delight of God seen in singing hills and clapping trees.  But I wonder if there were those in the time of Isaiah who were dismayed at this imagery as lacking in decorum especially given that this is spoken by a prophet to the people of God in Babylonian exile  - a people who felt they had lost everything and that God had abandoned them.  So I wonder if these whimsical verses seemed like the equivalent of sending a circus clown into a refugee camp. But it’s not that Isaiah lacked analysis or didn’t respect the gravity of the situation.  It’s not that Isaiah couldn’t see right and wrong…he was a prophet after all.  But sometimes the job of a prophet is not to discern right and wrong but to point God’s people to joy. To remind us that our God delights in us.  To remind us of our true home.  Remember Proverbs 8?  Sophia, the Wisdom of God is described at the creation of the world as rejoicing in the inhabited world
 and delighting in the human race.

I want the day to come when Christians are described not as judgmental but as those who, like the Wisdom of God, rejoice in the world and delight in humanity.  

Which makes me wonder: What would it be like to rather than judging the supposed imperfection of your body, to experience the joy of being a beautiful perfect creation, made in the image of God? What would it be like, rather than judging the unhealthy grocery cart contents of the lady behind me in line at Safeway, to instead experience the joy of seeing Christ’s own face in her countenance.  What would it be like to, rather than judging the political or religious correctness of every person, institution, and event to instead experience the joy of God’s kingdom breaking in on us all.  I don’t know for sure.  But I’m game to try and find out. I want to choose happy.  And leave being right to God and God alone.  

Some people have scorned the idea of blessing bicycles as frivolous to which I respond: Oh my Gosh,  thank you! A little frivolity up in here may be just the ticket.  I mean, the church has been in the knowledge of good and evil business, the judgment business quite awhile.  Maybe it’s time for we who follow Jesus of Nazareth to joyfully be in the blessing the world business.   So many of us are painfully familiar with religion that errs on the side of judgment.   But here at House for All Sinners and Saints I guess that given the choice, I want us to err on the side of blessing.  Because you are a people formed by this God who makes hills to sing and trees to clap, who rejoices in the world and delights in humanity – therefore does it not follow that we should be maybe even making up excuses to bless people and things and events?  

And what is a call to joy but a call home.  A call home to the garden of this God whose desire to be known is so much more powerful than our desire to replace God with only the knowledge of Good and Evil.  Undeterred our God still uses any means necessary to be know by us: speaks through prophets, slips into skin and walks among us in Jesus, woos us in bread and wine, surprises us in the strange and the stranger, enters our ears in the words of life and transforms us into a people of Joy, a people of singing hills and clapping tress and every single kind of soil. Blessed be the God of blessing.

 

Sermon on addiction, AA, the tyranny of the will and Romans 7

Romans Chapter 7

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. ¹⁸For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.¹⁹For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. ²¹So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.²²For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, ²³but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.²⁴Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ²⁵Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

 

Even I can't help admitting that there is a bunch of stuff in the Bible that's hard to relate to. A lot has changed in the last 2,000-4,000 years and I have no form of reference for shepherds and agrarian life and I don't know what it’s like to have a king or a Caesar and I don't know a single fisherman much less a centurion and I guess I can't speak for all of you but personally I've never felt I might need to sacrifice a goat for my sins. That's the thing about our sacred text being so dang old is that it can sometimes be hard to relate to. Things have changed a bit over the millennia. 

But one thing has not changed even a little bit and that’s the human condition.  Parts of The Bible can feel hard to relate to until you get to a thing like that reading from Romans we just heard in which Paul says I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. ¹⁹For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.

 

Finally. Something I can relate to. This I know about. I too do not understand my own actions.  I too can’t manage to consistently do what I know is right.  Paul’s simple description of the human condition is perhaps a most elegantly put definition of what we now call addiction. 

It's no secret that I am a recovering alcoholic. By the grace of God I have been clean and sober for over 19 years. But boy do I remember that feeling OF powerlessness that comes from not being able to control your drinking. I'd wake up each morning and have a little talk with myself “OK Nadia Get it together. Today is going to be different. You just need a little will power.” Then inevitably later that day I’d say “well, just one drink would be ok” Or I'll only drink wine and not vodka. Or I'll drink a glass of water between drinks so that I won't get drunk. And sometimes it worked but mostly it didn't. In the end, my will was just never “strong enough” Like Paul, I did the thing I hated. But that's addiction for you.  It’s ugly.  Yet on some level I feel like we recovering alcoholics and drug addicts have it easy. I mean, our additions are so obvious.  The emotional, spiritual and physical wreckage cause by alcoholism and drug addiction has a certain conspicuousness to it.

But the truth is, we are not actually special.  I mean, our whole culture is addicted. It's not just drunks who wake up in the morning and say today it's gonna be different. Perhaps some of you have done some “self-talk” recently.  Perhaps some of you have tried to garner up just a little more will power. Today I won't eat compulsively or i'll not yell at my kids or I’ll not spend money I don't have on things I don't need. Today, unlike yesterday I won't consume pornography or flirt with my married co-worker or look up my ex-boyfriend on facebook. Today I will finally stand up for myself.  Today I will not play video games.  Today I will really look for a job.  Today I will not lie to myself. Today I will start meditating and become a vegan and start training for a marathon and go back to college and go to the container store so I can organize my closet and be in control. But we're not. We're not in control.  That would be the point. We’re addicted to poison and people, and praise and possessions and power.  And sometimes I think the church and society fuel a very particular addiction to proving our worthiness.

 

We live in a worthiness driven culture. The pressure to be successful, hide your weaknesses, get ahead make your own way in the world … to pull yourself up by your boot straps, win at all costs and be as impressive as possible to the most people as possible is what drives our entire cultural and economic system. So naturally we think that we should be able to solve our problems through will power and a protestant work ethic. The human will, whether it be a strong will which thinks it can take care of its own problems or a weak will which just dissolves in the face of addiction is just about the worse place to look for salvation.  The source of my problems simply cannot also be the solution to my problems. I need something or someone external to myself to save me from myself. There simply is no amount of self-talk that is going to save me.  No amount of self-help, no amount of determination or gumption. There is God and God alone.

The 12 steps, which Richard Rohr calls America's single yet very important contribution to human spirituality works precisely because it isn’t a self-help program at all.  That’s the point.  Isn’t it interesting that one of the most truly transformative things to come out of America....the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is based not on proving your worthiness but on admitting your failure. 

 The genius is that the people who started AA recognized that addiction isn’t a drinking problem or a gambling problem or a food problem. It’s not a problem of the will see, it’s a problem of the soul.  It’s a putting something in the center of our lives other than God problem.  And as such it can only have a spiritual solution.  It took us awhile to figure this out but St Paul knew it all along.  Because as long as we hold out thinking that just a little more will power will do the trick we remain hopeless.   As Paul says, I can will what’s right but I cannot do it. 

So who will save us form this body of death as Paul calls it?  Well, the world gives us but one solution: our will. And as the saying goes -when the only tool I have is a hammer, all my problems look like nails.  And I just pound away at everything.  But the Gospel changes all of that.  The Gospel of Jesus Christ tells us to lay down our silly little hammers and let God do for us what only God can do for us.  Jesus doesn’t say “the solution to your problem is to just try harder”  And our brothers and sisters in 12 step fellowships can tell us that the freedom we gain from our addictions (and new ones crop up all the time mind you) but this freedom comes only from  admitting that we are a mess and that our will is not going to save us… …  believing that God and only God can restore us - and then turning our will over to the care of God. And when confronted with our own sin and addictions we no longer need defend nor deny because we no longer live under the tyranny of the will.

 

And it is tyranny to be sure.  The burden of the too strong or too weak will is heavy. It's exhausting. It's futile. And so we come here today and we hear Jesus say lay it down. Lay down your addictions and fixations and compulsions and all the ways you suffer from the additions fixations and compulsions of others. Lay them here he says at the foot of the cross lay them atop the blood and tear soaked dirt at the foot of the place where God allowed human will to take its inevitable course. Lay your weighty burden on the holy ground where human ambition was allowed to play itself out to it’s logical conclusion.  Here is where you can be free from the bondage of the self. Jesus says for the weary and heavy laden to come to him. You can stop believing in your sin management programs and futile exercises in will power because he is simply stronger than all of it.  We can all take comfort that it is not our wills but the will of the God who named and claimed us which has the strength and power to transform us. Us. The addicted, the proud, the lazy, the failures, the washed-out and those on top of their game.   Lay it down and he shall give you sweet rest - for your worthiness lies not in the strength of your will but in the unyielding determination of God’s Divine Love which is simply too fierce to leave you unchanged.

 

 

 

 

Commencement address for the PLTS class of 2011 (May 21st 11a)

Text: Luke 14: 15-24

One of the dinner guests, on hearing this, said to him, ‘Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!’ Then Jesus^* said to him, ‘Someone gave a great dinner and invited many. At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, “Come; for everything is ready now.” But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, “I have bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it; please accept my apologies.” Another said, “I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please accept my apologies.” Another said, “I have just been married, and therefore I cannot come.” So the slave returned and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his slave, “Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.” And the slave said, “Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.” Then the master said to the slave, “Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled. For I tell you,^* none of those who were invited will taste my dinner.” ’

Grace Peace and Mercy is yours from the Triune God.  I bring you greetings today from your brothers and sisters in Christ at House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver Colorado.  It’s an unbelievable honor to be here with you today.  I’d like to thank the class of 2011 for asking me to be your preacher and I’d like to thank God that I am able to give this sermon just under the escatological wire as it were.  This week I posted a question on Facebook asking exactly when Eastern Standard time the righteous are expected to float off like Mary Poppins and I was assured that it wouldn’t matter one bit since, let’s be honest, after the rapture most of PLTS would still totally be here.

So, let’s get to it shall we? Perhaps, dear graduates, you are sitting here today wondering if you now have what it takes to serve this church.  Perhaps you are sitting here having listened to the lectures, defended your dissertation, survived the scrutiny of internship thinking Am I now prepared?  Do you really have what it takes to serve the church as a pastor or lay leader or educator and the answer is: don’t be silly. Of course you don’t.  If you are worried that you have weaknesses and deficiencies and short-comings or as we recovering alcoholics call them, “defects of character” you can stop worrying.  You’re right.  You really don’t have what it takes.  But fortunately,  you do have the God that it takes.  And the question is not will your failings and weaknesses and short-comings get in the way….the question is will your strengths get in the way?

I think this is what we see in this parable of the great feast. A feast where the  A-listers – the ones who supposedly have their game together, who own land and can buy oxen-- the impressive folks, the totally invite-able ones make really lame excuses for not showing up  “Oh wow, a feast, huh? I’d love to be there, but my kids are in the Highly Gifted Soccer league on Sundays”. So the host sends his servants to instead call the poor the lame and the blind – and it’s these  riff-raff and not the A listers, who sit at the table gladly partaking of the feast set before them. 

See, sometimes it is the strong able-bodied parts of us that fail to heed the invitation.  My bishop said the greatest spiritual discipline is not praying the daily office, or leading a vegan lifestyle, the greatest spiritual discipline is just showing up. See, those in our parable for today who were invited initially were all able to actually come to the feast un-aided.  They were wealthy enough for horses and able bodied enough to arrive on their own volition….but they didn’t show up. Those who did come were those who could not get there without help. The blind needed guides and the lame needed carrying, if they were to make it to the feast.

The same can be true of us: that the property owning, healthy, secure parts of us can’t hear the invitation.  Because, sometimes we are so busy trying to be strong and self-sufficient and successful that we forget that we actually are hungry.  That’s what’s great about the parts of us that are poor and lame and blind…at least these parts of us know how much we can use a good meal.

God invites those parts to dinner, because God will not be deterred by our excuses, or our delusions of self-sufficiency: God sees where we are weak and hungry even while we are trying to hide it from ourselves and each other.

Most of you come to this commencement with real strengths for leadership.  And I’m certain these strengths will serve you and your students or parishioners well.  God will use your successes to be sure …but if you really want to witness the handiwork of the Spirit, just watch how God will use your failures.  Just wait till you glimpse the masterful redemption that springs forth when you ask forgiveness for having been a total ass, just watch how grace will rush in to fill the spaces of your shortcomings.

 God reaches again and again into the graves we dig ourselves, continues to reach into our failures and yank out new life:  just as God brought forth the universe from nothingness and water from a rock and babies from barren wombs and a church from a bunch of forgiven sinners. So don’t be afraid of your deficits, but rejoice in the spaces where you have nothing to offer, for this is the very canvas on which God’s best work is shown forth…just wait.  I promise you this.

Not that long ago when I was in seminary I said:  I just want God to use me.  And I’ve regretted it ever since because honestly some times I can feel used  by God. See, embarking on Word and Sacrament ministry I had some real strengths.  I understood post colonialism. I was a confessional Lutheran.  I could distinguish Law from Gospel, patriarchy from womanism and in pastoral care class I learned how to tilt my head and show concern in my eyes while saying “tell me more about that”. 

And while I’m not going to say that these strengths were useless, I am going to say that God has used my weaknesses a whole lot more. What God has really used in me are the things I’m no good at, where I have no choice but to ask for help.

For example, I’m not naturally a pastoral, nurturing, come to me I’ll listen to your problems kind of person.  Naturally I’m a slightly misanthropic-for-the-love-of-God-please-stop-whining kind of person – so the fact that I genuinely  do care for all the folks in my church is only because I was forced to ask God for help in managing this impossible part of my job description.  The fact that I sincerely have a deep fondness, concern and even love for all my parishioners can clearly only point to God’s grace and mercy. I don’t think well, I’m just a better person now than I was before seminary…trust me, I’m not.  But God’s strength is indeed perfected not in our strengths, but in our weakness, our poverty, our hungers.

And I simply cannot feel spiritual hunger pangs when I’m on a sugar high of personal charisma or graduate level education or economic privilege.  It seems that only when those things fail me and I’m up against the limits of my personality or skill set that I turn to God for help.

And brothers and sisters I am here to report that we have a faithful God.   A God who will provide for God’s people.  A God who never tires of being for us what we simply cannot be for ourselves.  A God who calls every part of us to the feast.

So when you go from here to serve God’s people, don’t offer to them only the invite-able parts of yourself:  your confidence, your skill, your intellect…but offer them also your weakness, your smallness, your blindness and poverty. Offer them the blank spaces so that they may see God’s creative mercy rushing in.

For what I wish for you is this:  Not that you might be strong and admirable and shiny in your ministries, but that may God use your weaknesses.  May you continually die to self-sufficiency and rise to Christ; may your people see in you the work of a God who has always used the most questionable people to do God’s work. As you go on from here both prepared and unprepared for what awaits, may you, like the apostle Paul, boast gladly in your weakness so that the power of Christ may dwell in you.  Amen.

 

My response to Sojourners

 

 

I’m not so much of a blogger anymore but several people have asked for my response to the fact that Sojourners, described as a progressive Christian commentary on faith, politics and culture seeking to build a movement of spirituality and social change, has refused to sell ad space to Believe Out Loud an organization who is helping churches become fully inclusive of all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. 

 

I’ll start by telling a short personal story.

 

Two days after Osama Bin Laden was killed, my father asked if he could read a sermon I wrote a few months back, “Loving Your Enemies Even When You Don’t Really Mean It” to the guys at his men’s prayer breakfast.  Here’s what you need to know about that: my Dad is a member of the Church of Christ (they do not ordain women…indeed women are not even allowed to be deacons or lead a prayer at worship) and the men to whom he was reading my sermon are (to the best of my understanding) wealthy, privileged, and both theologically and politically conservative.  Later that day when we spoke he said “That sermon was so powerful Nadia, I can’t imagine the teachings of Jesus being put more poignantly.  You could have heard a pin drop in that room.” I was thrilled.  Until he said “Of course I didn’t tell them who wrote it”.  And then my heart sank.

 

I texted him that “perhaps for those in the room who believe that the Gospel of Jesus Christ simply cannot be preached by a woman it might be important  to know who wrote the sermon they just heard”.  He texted back “I’ll fight one battle at a time, thank you very much”  Did this feel like shit?  You bet.  Did I feel betrayal? No question. But even in the midst of this I was grateful that 2 days after Osama Bin Laden was killed and amidst the inevitable celebration of our “victory”, that a group of wealthy conservative men heard the message about how Jesus calls us to love our enemies.  And they may not have had ears to hear if they knew I wrote that sermon.  This is the ambiguity of our fragile, messy human existence.  I long for black and white, I really do…but that’s not how I experience the world. 

 

 

My name is on the Sojourners God’s Politics Blog and I serve a church that is self-described and indeed is “queer inclusive”.  Some of my progressive Christian friends and colleagues are calling for a boycott of Sojourners until they make a bold stand for the full inclusion of our GLBTQ brothers and sister in the church. I respect this.  I too want to take the strong stand for those who are always asked to eat last and least at the table or who are prevented from coming to it in the first place. The change needed in and indeed being experienced by the church right now in terms of full inclusion calls for bold action by those who are willing to take a stand.

 

But as I thought about what to say or do in response to Sojourners I felt confronted by a terrible ambiguity.  The ambiguity is this: Sojourners has, in my assessment, done more than any other organization to call Evangelical Christians to the reality that a central part of following Jesus is a concern for the poor, a truth largely absent from much of American Evangelicalism.  They have a platform to speak about social justice to those who otherwise may not have ears to hear and this is critical.  While mainline Protestantism is on a clear trajectory toward full inclusion (shout out to the PCUSA here) our free-church Evangelical brothers and sisters are by-in-large not there yet.  By taking a stance on GLBTQ issues Sojourners may lose their ability to be a voice for the poor in the more conservative areas of the church. 

 

Are the poor more important than GLBTQ folks?  Is it ok to throw the rights of one group under the bus so that another group’s rights might be upheld? I wish there were really clear back and white answers here but the fact is that we live in a much more ambiguous world than that.  As a Lutheran I confess to living in the tension of being simultaneously sinner and saint and living in a world filed with the paradox of such. 

 

So here’s my response: I confess the ways in which I have favored the rights of one group over another.  I confess the ways in which I long for black and white answers to questions that elude them.  I confess the fact that by staying in relationship with Sojourners I may be hurting my GLBTQ brothers and sisters.  I confess that I may very well be wrong about all of it.

 

But perhaps by being the sell-out who claims to try and change the system from the inside I might be the one who is changed into one through whom the gospel can be proclaimed to those with whom I disagree.  And who knows, maybe one day I might actually preach at a Church of Christ and if that happens may I be granted humility and grace….because I don’t naturally have those in my heart.  Trust me on that one.

 

Sermon on "Doubting" Thomas

Is it just me, or does anyone else think it’s kind of weird how we’ve named Thomas “Doubting” Thomas.  We don’t give the other characters in the New Testament little nicknames…like needy Nicodemis or Co-dependant Martha.  But poor Thomas is stuck with Doubting Thomas.

         Yet the fact of the matter is this: when Jesus encountered Thomas Jesus didn’t label him doubting Thomas. He didn’t judge him. He came to Thomas just as he was, doubts and all, and offered him peace.

One of my favorite moments during Holy Week was when on Maundy Thursday we were singing a song that repeated these lines “Take O Take Me As I Am”.   We sang this beautiful song over and over.  But what made it so powerful was that we sang this while assembling bleach kits for the needle exchange. We sang  Take O take me as I am while putting cookers and condoms and bleach in sterile kits for outreach workers to give to IV drug users on the Denver streets.  Take O Take me as I am indeed.  We took this action which says to active drug addicts “you are loved as you are”  while we ourselves sang a prayer asking God to take us as WE are.  Indeed, God does takes us as we are with or with our asking – we just ask in that song that we may believe it to be true.

I think our gospel text for today is about God taking us as we are.

See, a week before Thomas touched the resurrected wounds of Jesus, the other guys were sitting together in that upper room… it was the night of the first Easter, and I suspect that having denied, betrayed, and abandoned Jesus - the disciples were really wallowing in their shortcomings, wondering what had they done.  It wouldn’t be a stretch to think they were perhaps passing around blame and justifications for the death of Jesus – it was the fault of the Priests who condemned him and there just wasn’t really enough room for them at the foot of the cross with all those women there and maybe if that sleezy Judas hadn’t sold him out this wouldn’t have happened to begin with… on and on.  It’s kind of what we do when we know we’ve really blown it.  Because the truth of our own shortcomings is often too much for us to bear.  So we either tend to make our faults about someone else or we try to make everything about our faults. Either way it’s basically just narcissism.  But anyway….  There they are in their cozy little locked room blaming themselves, blaming others, trying to figure out what in that crazy Mary Magdalene meant by “I have seen the Lord”. 

 

And it is here,  here sitting amidst doubt and Fear and locked doors, amidst blame and justifications that the disciples encountered the risen Christ. It is here that He chose to appear to his beloved Christ deniers – those he loved who abandoned him.

Because notice that the text doesn’t say “and when they had repented of what complete asses they had been; and when they had perfected their faith and the purity of their doctrine; and when they had achieved the right condition of personal morality THEN they were worthy of receiving Jesus.”

No.  There they sat. Fear, doubt, betrayal  and I suspect more than a little shame.  But it takes more than locked doors and lack of faith and low self esteem to keep Jesus out.  In fact; when we are at the point in life when our failings and shortcomings are so unfiltered…. when we are at the point in life when we have blown it completely, when we are so undeniably aware our need for God’s grace –it is then that God comes to us just as we are bringing us peace and forgiveness. It’s just like God to barge in uninvited through our fear and locked doors to remind us, whether we like it or not, that we are forgiven, that we are more than the sum total of our bad choices and more even than the sum total of our good choices.

This whole thing is an example of what My friend Kae says about God, that God is always saying an insistent “yes” to all our polite “no thank yous”

         Because a week later their friend Thomas, who missed it all the first time, was with them in that same room again.  He had said a polite “no thank you” to the news that Jesus has risen from the dead.  It’s something we’ve all done and yet we call him the doubter. As though it makes him somehow distinct.  As though Thomas doubts and we do not. The only way this would be at all fair is if we all shared this name like…oh, there’s Doubting Amy and Doubting Bill and I’m Doubting Pastor Nadia.  Because the reality is that we are all doubters.  But sometime doubting isn’t the opposite of having faith…it’s a component of having faith.  Doubting can mean that we haven’t forgotten the story.  Doubting means that we don’t have it figured out all on our own and the best thing about doubt is that at least it’s honest.  So if that’s where you are…if you are a doubter like me, then it’s ok but you should be prepared for something.  It’s a thing I never hear people in the church talk about but I know it exists because I experience it all the time: it’s called tests of doubt…not a tests of faith…but tests of doubt.  And you should probably watch out for them.

         See, when I was sure that this whole Jesus thing had nothing to offer me – when I had been so alienated by conservative Christianity and so clear about my dislike for organized religion… when I thought I had unwavering rock solid doubt, I wandered into a church that challenged all my certainties I had about the Christian faith. It was my great crisis of doubt.  When I was welcomed into a little Lutheran parish in Oakland California and was so freely given absolution and Gospel and a literal chunk of bread which I was told was Jesus and that it was for me I slowly began to lose my doubt.  So watch out for this brothers and sisters.  watch out. Because I don’t think that faith is the biggest threat to doubt, the biggest threat to doubt a barging in God revealed in Christ.

So if you would like to protect your doubt I suggest keeping your distance from the following:  avoid People who have heard the Gospel and actually live as though it’s true, avoid receiving the Eucharist or receiving forgiveness or receiving strangers and by all means don’t sing hymns for they are most dangerous. Politely say “no thank you”

But know this: whether doubt is something that you fear or something that you foster be prepared for it to be tested again and again by this God who rudely barges into your locked doors and offers you peace and breath and spirit and then sends you out to do the same for the world God loves enough to keep saying yes to all of it’s no thank yous.

 

Easter Sunrise Sermon for Red Rocks

I had the freezing-cold honor of preaching to 10,000 people last Sunday at the 64th Annual Red Rocks Sunrise Easter service.  If you'd like to watch the video of it you can do so here http://72.35.76.65:3737/ccceaster Sermon starts at about 53 minutes in. If you have a Mac you'll need this to view the video http://8help.osu.edu/784.html

 

 

I’ve often wondered what people in America think when they actually read the story of Jesus rising from the dead for the first time. There’s simply no way the story could adhere to their expectations. I imagine them reading and re-reading it, shocked that they can’t find a single mention of bunnies or rabbits or painted eggs or white sales at Macy’s. Because let’s be honest,  that is what our culture thinks Easter is about.  Easter in America is really just an excuse to eat chocolate and buy new bedding, and each year we pretend that we can’t really just eat chocolate and buy new bedding whenever we want, which I think is so adorable of us.  But honestly the church’s presentation of Easter isn’t less odd.  For many churches Easter is another word for “church show off day”…when we spiffy up the building and pull out the lilies and hire a brass quintet and put on fabulous hats and do whatever we have do to impress visitors. It’s kinda like the church’s version of putting out the guest towels.

And don’t get me wrong,  I love chocolate and I love fancy music  I mean...if I could possibly listen to the Alleluia Chorus while eating a Cadbury Egg I’d be in heaven.

But this all has very little to do with the actual Gospel story because the gospel story is not fancy, its, downright messy. See, Easter in the Bible may be the greatest story ever told. It’s just not the story we usually choose to tell, because its not a story about new dresses and baskets and flowers and candy and spiffyness. Really, it’s a story about flesh and dirt and bodies and confusion and its about the way God never seems to adhere to our expectations.

Because think about it, Mary Magdalen stood there at the empty tomb that morning while her expectations of what was possible collided full force with the God of Abraham and Sara.  Her certainty that she knew how this whole Jesus thing was ending slammed right up against the full force of God’s suffering and redemptive love and though it was nothing short of divine revelation in the flesh Jesus still didn’t look very impressive, not in the churchy Easter sense.

See, when Mary Magdalene stood at the tomb she didn’t encounter some perfected radiant glowing spiritual Jesus that first Easter morning.  Seriously, no offense to gardeners but Jesus couldn’t have been looking all that spiffy and impressive if she mistook him for a gardener: And I like to think that Mary Magdalene mistook the resurrected Christ for a gardener because Jesus still had the dirt from his own tomb under his nails.

Now, I’ve been in a whole lot of churches and I gotta say, In most of them there is no dirt under the nails of the resurrected Christ. Because we’ve had to clean him up to look more impressive at Easter. And my theory is this:  I think it’s because we go straight from Christmas to Easter, we go from the sentimentality of the Baby Jesus to the glory of the resurrected Christ, Santa Claus to Peter Cotton Tail, so quickly that we don’t bother with the messy important parts in-between: namely, what Jesus taught, how Jesus lived and how Jesus died. So, since there’s basically 10,000 of you guys just sitting here this morning, I thought I’d fill you in on the messy parts real quick…

See it starts here: Once upon a time, the God of the Universe was basically fed up with being on the receiving end of all our human projections, tired of being nothing more to us than what we thought God should be: angry, show-offy, defensive, insecure, in short, the vengeance-seeking tyrant we would be if we were God. So, at that time, over 2,000 years ago, God’s Loving Desire to really be Known overflowed the heavens and was made manifest in the rapidly dividing cells within the womb of an insignificant peasant girl named Mary.  And when the time came for her to give birth to God, there was no room in our expectations – no room in any impressive or spiffy or safe place. So this God was born in straw and dirt. He grew up, this Jesus of Nazareth, left his home, and found some, let’s be honest,  rather unimpressive characters to follow him.  Fishermen, Tax collectors, prostitutes, homeless women with no teeth, people from Commerce City, Ann Coulter and Charlie Sheen.  If you think I’m kidding…read it for yourselves.  These people were questionable. So, with his little band of misfits Jesus went about the countryside turning water to wine, eating with all the wrong people, angering the religious establishment and insisting that in him the kingdom of God had come near, that through him the world according to God was coming right to us.  He touched the unclean and used spit and dirt to heal the blind and said crazy destabilizing things like the first shall be last and the last shall be first, and sell all you have and give it to the poor.

And the thing that really cooked people’s noodles wasn’t the question “is Jesus like God” it was “what if God is like Jesus”.  What if God is not who we thought?  What if the most reliable way to know God is not through religion, not through a sin and punishment program, but through a person. What if the most reliable way to know God is to look at how God chose to reveal God’s self in Jesus?  

         Because that changes everything.  If what we see in Jesus is God’s own self, revealed, then what we are dealing with here is a God who is ridiculously indiscriminate about choosing friends.  A God who would rather die than be in the sin accounting business anymore.  A God who would not lift a finger to condemn those who crucified him, but went to the depths of Hell rather than be apart even from his betrayers. A God unafraid to get his hands dirty for the ones he loves. This, this is the God who rises to new life with dirt still under his nails.

So while the churches may try and clean up Jesus so the visitors will be impressed today, The God of Easter, the God who brings life out of death  doesn’t want to make you impressive, this God isn’t satisfied with making you good or nice. IF you think that’s what resurrection looks like, if you think it looks like perfection and piety and therefore you haven’t experienced it, you might be wrong. Because God isn’t about making you spiffy.  God isn’t about making you nicer.  God is about making you new.  And new doesn’t always look perfect, with a fabulous new dress because like the Easter story itself, new can be messy.

New looks like recovering alcoholics. New looks like reconciliation between family members who don’t actually deserve it.  New looks like every time I manage to admit I was wrong and every time I manage to not mention when I’m right. New looks like the lumpy awkward forgiveness we manage to scrounge up despite ourselves.  New looks like every fresh start and every act of forgiveness and every moment of letting go of what we thought we couldn’t live without and then somehow living without it anyway.  New is the thing you never saw coming …never even hoped for, but ends up being what you needed all along and it happens to all of us. Because as Jesus said…the world according to God is near to us. And God simply keeps reaching down into the dirt of humanity and pulling us out of the graves we dig for ourselves through our violence, our lies, our selfishness, our arrogance and our addictions. And God keeps loving us back to life over and over.

So by all means enjoy the lilies and chocolate and fancy music. But know that if there is anything impressive about following Jesus it’s that you are loved so powerfully by God that God has swept you up into God’s own story of death and life and life after death.  And if there’s anything impressive about Christians, it’s that we are a people who still have the dirt from our graves under our nails, while we stand here shouting Alleluia! Christ is risen.