Author: Sarah

Proper 28, Year A, 2014

/ Sarah

God uses whom he wants to use.

Today we hear about Deborah, a biblical Hero from the book of Judges. You may be thinking to yourself. Hmmm. Judges. What was that about again? I wouldn’t blame you. This tiny snippet is the only time we hear from the book of Judges in all three years of our lectionary. And this snippet doesn’t even tell Deborah’s whole story!

The book of Judges takes place between the time of Joshua leading the Israelites into the Promised Land and the introductions of Kings to Israel. The Israelites, after 40 years of wandering through the desert, are FINALLY in this beautiful land they have traveled for years to inherit. So they settle in and happily worship the Lord, right?

Nah, the Israelites settle in and then immediately start worshiping other gods!

The pattern of the book of Judges is that the Israelites betray God, an invading army comes in, God raises up a Judge who defeats the army, everyone praises God, until they start worship other gods again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Human beings are slow learners.

Judges were political leaders who settled disputes and often military leaders—they had a wide range of responsibilities.

This is where Deborah comes in. We know most women in the Old Testament by their relationship to the men in their lives. Sarah follows Abraham, Rebecca is most famous for being a mother to Jacob and Esau, Hannah is famous for finally being able to bear children after loads of prayer. Women are actively participating in life with God, but the stories told of them are usually tangential.

Deborah, on the other hand, is defined only by her own talents. Deborah is a prophetess and a judge, who is married to a man we never see in the story.

An invading army, led by a man named Sisera, is rapidly approaching the Israelites. Deborah receives a message from the Lord to pass on to Barak, who is a military General. She tells him that God has told him to go this specific location—Mount Tabor—where the puny Israelite army will defeat Sisera’s enormous army. Not only was Sisera’s army enormous, but they had tools and weapons the Israelites did not—including 900 thundering iron chariots.

Barak wants no part of this. Even though he hears this message from the Lord, he is rightfully terrified. 10,000 soldiers with advanced weaponry? No thank you. He tells Deborah that he will only go if she accompanies him. She rolls her eyes and says she’ll go, but warns him that he won’t get any glory out of his leadership.

They go to battle, and the Israelites defeat the invading army. Sisera jumps off his chariot, which is getting him nowhere, and goes and hides in a tent. This is where the story gets more like something out of Game of Thrones than the Bible. Sisera thinks he is friendly territory, but Jael, the woman he encounters is actually allied with Israel. She welcomes him warmly into her home, covers him with a rug, offers him some milk and then drives a peg into his head killing him.

So much for meek and mild, right?

God uses these two women and their smarts and their physical strength in a way that feels very modern to us.

As many of you know, I grew up around Army bases in Germany and many of my classmates became soldiers. Every veteran’s day I am particularly struck at the pictures my friends posts of their time in Iraq or Afghanistan. Here are these beautiful young women, not making fish lips in a selfie, but covered in dust, wearing fatigues, surrounded by fellow soliders or Iraqi children they are befriending. These women are so proud of their time in the service and the ways it formed them. Some of them are physicians now, some lawyers, some retail managers, but they are all defined by their own sense of identity rather than whose wife they are or whose mother. (Although many of them are both loving wives and mothers.)

How moving that for God, this is not a new idea. Our society is just catching up to how God always saw women. As valuable, meaningful people in their own right. People who can be used to further God’s kingdom. Although, I truly hope none of us are called to drive a tent peg into anyone’s head.

The good news about the book of Judges is the male leaders God chooses are just as unlikely as Deborah. Samson was strong, but as dumb as a brick. Gideon was just a kid, Jephthah had no idea who his father was, Abimelech was power hungry and Ehud, well, he was left handed. 

That’s right, God can even use left handed people to do God’s work.

One of the things I love about the Episcopal Church is how we take everyone seriously. We think about Christian formation from the infants we baptize to people in nursing homes. In our Women’s Bible Study we don’t have any cutesy pink bibles to help us figure out our role as women. We just study the Bible. At Ladies Night we are just as likely to talk about theodicy as we are to talk about our jobs or raising children. Whether you are a stay at home mom, a stay at home dad, a hedge fund manager, an artist, a CEO, a teacher, a house cleaner, a retired person, or a kindergartener, you are valuable to God. Just as you are.

God uses whom he wants to use.

The unique mass of cells and impulses that make you, you are delightful to God. At your baptism his Spirit united you to Christ. Many of you were baptized as infants. If you think you don’t have your life together now, just imagine what a mess you were when you were a baby. Babies don’t even know what their own arms are for until they’ve been alive for months! Babies are useless! And yet, the God of the Universe deigns to stake a claim on their little lives. Because God knows that each of us is enough, more than enough, just the way we are. He doesn’t wait to use us for his Kingdom until we are married, or have babies, or get a job for which we feel qualified. He doesn’t wait for us to straighten our homes, or get that personal record on a marathon, or have someone buy our first painting to think we are valuable.

God loves us, and God uses us. He invites us to participate in the ongoing relationship he’s been developing with humanity from the beginning of Creation.

Will we join him?

Amen.

Proper 24, Year A, 2014

/ Sarah

When Pharisees and the Herodians gang up on you, you are in serious trouble. The Herodians were political figures aligned with Herod Antipas, who was the tetrarch of Galilee and Perea.   While Jewish, he was a puppet of the Roman emperor. Pharisees were the religious leaders of the day. Pharisees and Herodians despised each other.

Imagine how disruptive Jesus must have been for the political and religious leaders of the day to conspire against him!

The Pharisees and Herodians come to Jesus and ask him a question that is almost impossible to answer in a way that will please both groups: Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?

Can you hear how smarmy that question is? Jesus has gained a reputation for being a real truth teller and they are trying their hardest to show Jesus up.

Jesus, however, is no fool.

The first thing he does is ask for a coin used for the tax. Now, this is telling, because Jesus did not have any cash on him. Jesus did not walk around with pockets full of coins. Jesus didn’t have a single coin in his pocket. Jesus trusted God to provide for him. He knows both the Herodians and the Pharisees profited plenty off the backs of the people of God, so he turns to them for a coin. And sure enough they have one.

He flips the coin around and around in his hand and asks them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?”

When they tell him it is the head of the emperor, he dismissively says, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Jesus escapes their trap, leaving them bewildered.

We don’t know exactly why Jesus said what he said. We don’t know if he was unbothered because he realized that everything on earth is God’s dominion, even the empire, so giving money to the empire isn’t taking anything away from God. Or whether Jesus was just being pragmatic—no one can escape the political system they are in forever. We live in the real world, where taxes are due, and there isn’t a religious reason not to respect government authority.

But it certainly evokes questions for us—what are our responsibilities toward God and toward our government?

I’m sure our family is not the only one who weighs every mile driven, every work related receipt, every day care exemption when filing taxes. We do our best to keep every penny that belongs to us in our pocket! We not alone! Burger King is trying to move to Canada to pay fewer taxes. Ireland was in the news this week, since it is closing a tax loophole that has allowed companies like Apple and Barclays to set up shop there and lower their tax rates.

The instinct is understandable—government spending can seem so abstract and often ridiculous. And sometimes you have serious ethical problems with how money is spent. You can be a pacifist and be furious at all the money going to bombing in the Middle East. You can be fiscally conservative and furious at the money spent bailing out banks in 2008. Yet, whether we belong to the Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Tea or Green Party, every April 15th, our taxes are due. And Jesus does not give us an out!

Following Jesus is not about isolating ourselves from our world. We aren’t called to move to an island and form a commune in which we are responsible only to God. For this entire world is God’s. And so we’re called to stay in the world and do our best to make it as much like the Kingdom of God as we can. With our relationships, our actions and yes, our money.

Being a steward of our time, talent, and treasure may mean running for the school board, agreeing to be on a board of directions for an organization you care about, going to really boring community meetings, even running for office.

When I served at Emmanuel Church one of our parishioners was a woman named Katherine Mehrige. Many of you may know her. She and a friend of hers thought the after school program at Brownsville Elementary could be improved. There were so many gifted people in the community, they thought it would be terrific if the after school program was a time when community members could enrich the lives of children through music, art, sport and other classes. The PTO looked at them and said, that sounds great! Now, go and do it! I think Katherine had intended for the PTO to run this hypothetical program, but she and her friend got to work and created an amazing program that has enriched the lives of students in our community and inspired schools around the country. Children stay after school, which makes it easier for working parents, and the kids have a great time learning about African drumming or jewelry making or basketball or any of the other hundred classes that are offered. Scholarships are available for low income students.

Katherine and her friend weren’t doing this as an arm of the church, but they are Christians. And one hopes that any of us who follow Jesus would also seek to make the world around us a little better. We belong to the Kingdom of God, but we live in the world. So let’s do a little renovations to the world around us to make a world Jesus would be proud of.

Amen.

Proper 22, Year A, 2014

/ Sarah

What kind of tenant are you?

Do you punch holes in walls and let your dog mess freely on the wall to wall carpet? Or do you do your best to keep your rental property clean and without obvious damage?

The relationship between renter and tenant is a fraught one. I have had more than one friend rent out a house they’ve owned. They have trusted their property to a stranger and if that trust was betrayed by a renter ruining their home or refusing to pay rent on time, the situation got incredibly tense.

Our scripture reading today has Jesus telling the Pharisees that they were tenants who were entrusted with God’s world and they have betrayed that trust.

Jesus uses the metaphor of a vineyard here. In the life of this parable, God has planted a vineyard and entrusted it to tenants. The tenants do a fine job of taking care of the grapes, but when it comes time to give back to the landowner what he is owed, they just keep killing the messenger. They want to keep what belongs to the landowner. Jesus is making a pointed dig at the Pharisees here. The Pharisees are happy to profit from and control God’s people, but they are horrified when the people want to turn to Jesus—God himself. They don’t want to lose their positions of power. They don’t want to share.

So, what kind of tenant are we?

God has given us so much. We are surrounded by beauty. We are relatively safe. We are rich in community and property and money. We have some of the finest facilities of any church in the area.

All of this is on loan to us.

All we have belongs to God. We are on this earth for a few decades, maybe a century if we are really, really lucky and while we are on this earth God expects quite a lot from us. He expects us to tend to these gifts. He expects us to plow and plant and reap in our little corner of the kingdom of God.

You might have guessed by now that today kicks off our stewardship season this fall. We think about stewardship in terms of giving money to the church so we can pay our staff and keep our doors open, but I’d like to expand our vision.

God has given us this beautiful corner of the kingdom. As you are thinking about how can you give of your finances, your time, and your heart, I’d like you to day dream and pray about how God might be calling us to tend our vineyard.

We are so blessed that we have strong, creative, loving, hard working leaders in this church. They lead our vestry, food pantry, scholarship committee, altar guild, stewardship committee, choir, education programs, pastoral care.   Many of these leaders are feeling a call to transition out of leading these areas of ministry, feeling ready to train whoever is going to follow in their footsteps.

This can feel frightening, but this is an incredible opportunity for us to walk out in faith and follow where God leads us.

With change of leadership, comes an opportunity for God to work in new ways. We cannot predict what those ways might be. I imagine when the people of St. Paul’s got the idea to do a food pantry years ago, they could not have anticipated that one day they would serve over a hundred people a month and have an entire suite of the church dedicated to its supplies. I’m sure the very first stewardship committee, never dreamed there would be well over two hundred people in the pews every Sunday here at St. Paul’s. The first choir could not have imagined our fabulous organ or that one day the Episcopal Church would have multiple hymnals from various cultural influences. And even Audi probably could not have predicted that one day treasure time would have dozens of children gathered to hear the word of God.

God is calling several of you to step up to leadership in some of our ongoing ministries. You probably don’t even know it yet. But you are going to lead our ministries into their next decade. And leading those ministries is going to change your life. You will learn more about our community and yourself and about God’s abundance than you can imagine right now.

Of course, our vineyard doesn’t stop at Owensville Rd.

Your vineyard extends to wherever you spend your time: at Meriwether Lewis or Western. At UVA or Martha Jeff Hospital. In an office or cubicle. Your home. God tasks you to tending his grapes there, too. The people around you have been entrusted to you, whether you like them or not. Your patients, your clients, your coworkers, even your boss. Your friends, children and family. Your corner of the kingdom of God is as unique as you are. But your job is the same: to extend the loving, reconciling work of God into the world. We are the peacemakers, we are the justice bringers, we are the healers. We treat people with kindness and respect, we elevate the low and are honest to the powerful.

When I think about what it means to tend our vineyard, I think about Christian Bucks. He got some media attention last winter, so you might remember this story. Christian was a second grader who noticed some kids were left out of games at recess. Now, most kids would have just glanced at them and kept on playing. But Christian really believed everyone should belong. So Christian started what he called a “buddy bench”. If a child is feeling left out, they go sit on the buddy bench. That is the signal to other students that the child wants to play.

Christian looked around his corner of the kingdom of God and realized there were people not fully connected, not fully able to be themselves. Once he realized the problem, he came up with a creative solution and the adults around him empowered him to enact it.

I hope as we think about stewardship this year, as we think about giving back to God what is his, we may have eyes as open and minds as creative as Christian. Stewardship is not dull. Stewardship should not be painful. Stewardship is living into the radical promises God has made for us. Stewardship is participating in the building of God’s kingdom, one bench, one vineyard at a time.

Amen.

Proper 19, Year A, 2014

/ Sarah

Bernard Cooper, in his memoir, “The Bill from My Father” tells a story of a time when Cooper was a young man with a dying car. His curmudgeonly father, Edward, decided to buy him a new car, but Edward’s bravado at the car dealership got him humiliatingly nowhere, so they left without a car in hand. Edward promised Bernard that the car dealership would call them back with a great offer, but they never did. Bernard, desperately longing for this new car, kept calling his father to obliquely check in. His father, frustrated and embarrassed, told him to stop calling and sent Bernard an itemized bill for $2,000,000—the detailed costs of raising Bernard.

Edward expressed his anger and irritation by literally creating a record of debt, but without any means for Bernard to actually settle that debt. Bernard never got the car, by the way!

Sometimes, when we are in conflict with another person, it can feel like we’ve been saddled with a bill we cannot pay. We can feel weighed down by obligation, by miscommunication, by anger.

We aren’t the first generation to struggle with conflict. After all, even Adam and Eve argued! Last week, Eric talked about how to manage conflict in a congregation—and our Gospel passage this week picks right up after last week’s left off. Once you’ve had a conflict, how do you move on? How do you restore the relationship?

The answer of course, is forgiveness. Peter, ever the show off, asks Jesus how many times he should forgive someone who has wronged him. Seven, he ask? After all, seven is a LOT of times! Can you imagine scheduling a seventh lunch after someone bailed on you the first six times? No way. And yet, Jesus turns the tables on Peter and tells him, you must forgive someone seventy-seven times!

And I have to tell you, it’s right at this moment my alarm bells start ringing. Because this is another one of those passages that pastors have used to convinced people to stay in abusive marriages.   Women and men, trying to preserve their lives, their children’s lives, have been thrown right back into the lions with this passage. So let me be clear, Jesus says forgive. He does not say stay in the relationship. After all, Jesus also said love your neighbor as yourself, which implies that love of self is important.

So, how do we deal with this tension? What does it mean to forgive, but also protect yourself?

Desmond Tutu, who knows something about forgiveness, having been a leader in the healing and reconciliation that has gone on in South Africa after apartheid, has, with his daughter, recently published a book called: The Book of Forgiving. In it, he describes a four step path toward forgiveness:

  1. Telling the story
  2. Naming the hurt
  3. Granting forgiveness
  4. Renewing or releasing the relationship

Now for some of us, those first two are incredibly difficult. Avoiding conflict, or communicating through passive aggressive banging of pots in the kitchen is a lot easier than sitting the person who has hurt you down and telling the story of how they have hurt you. And naming the hurt means you actually have to do some honest soul searching and deeply experience the pain someone has caused you. Naming the hurt might not be a big deal in the scenario where someone keeps standing you up, but it could be incredibly difficult if you are coming to terms with the pain a drunk driver has cost you if he has caused an accident that killed someone you love.

Both these steps help you work through your experience and come to terms with what has happened to you.

Even if you cannot sit down with the person who has hurt you, these steps still help you integrate the experience you’ve had, so you can think through whether or not you are ready to forgive someone.

Next, comes the actual forgiveness. Desmond Tutu describes it this way: “The one who offers forgiveness as a grace is immediately untethered from the yoke that bound him or her to the person who caused the harm. When you forgive, you are free to move on in life, to grow, to no longer be a victim. When you forgive, you slip the yoke, and your future is unshackled from your past.”

Forgiveness is not just about releasing the offender’s burden, but releasing our own, as well. When we forgive someone, we acknowledge that they no longer have power over us. They no longer control us.

Once we’ve broken that hold, we can then engage in Tutu’s fourth step—renewing or releasing the relationship. Going through telling our story, naming our hurts, and granting forgiveness can draw us closer to another person. I think about times in my marriage where we’ve had to admit we were wrong and ask for forgiveness from each other. For some reason, I’m still surprised every time I’m forgiven for how freeing it feels, and how much closer I feel to my husband after we have worked through our conflict. On the other hand, going through Tutu’s steps may make you realize that while you can forgive, you cannot continue on in the relationship.

Sometimes forgiveness means saying goodbye. Sometimes forgiveness means setting new boundaries that substantially change the relationship.   And that is okay. Not all relationships can or should be saved. But even in these relationships, forgiveness can help both parties move on into the world in healthier ways.

We worship a God who loved us so much, he spent thousands of years trying to find ways to forgive us for all the ways we betray each other and him. He tried starting over with Noah, he tried forming a special community through Abraham and Sarah, he tried giving us kings and judges, he even sent prophets to nag us back to good behavior with the hopes that we would repent so he could forgive us. When all that failed, he sent his son, himself, really, to come down and be with us and love us. And even as he was dying at our hands, he extended forgiveness to us.

God knows the cost and the reward of forgiveness. He has wiped our slates clean. He has forgiven us of all the hundreds of times we have hurt other people or cheated or been lazy or did things that really hurt others or ourselves. God has forgiven us far more than 77 times. He knows we cannot forgive without first being forgiven, so he has done the hard part.

Now it is our turn.

Proper 16, Year A, 2014

/ Sarah / 2 Comments

On a hot August night, a white police officer shot a young unarmed black man in a community just north of a major American city. Rumors spread through the community that the man had died and soon people were out on the streets, protesting and even looting stores.

The city was Harlem. The year, 1943. The young black man was a soldier intervening as the police officer arrested a young woman. The young man did not die, but his shooting tapped into the frustration of the community. 71 years later, the people of Ferguson are experiencing a painfully similar story.

From our reading of Exodus today: “Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.”

For years the Egyptians and Jews had a good relationship, thanks to Joseph. However, in today’s reading many years have passed and the text tells us that the Pharaoh has forgotten about Joseph.

And what happens when the Pharaoh forgets? He instructs his people to oppress the Jews. He does not remember their story together. He does not remember the power of God that binds them together. Pharaoh forgets and so the Jews suffer.

What happens when we forget our story?

Well, ask Michael Brown. Or Eric Garner. Or John Crawford. Or Ezell Ford. Or Dante Parker. All five are unarmed black men who have been killed by law enforcement in the last month alone. We don’t know exactly what happened between Darren Wilson and Michael Brown, we have not yet heard the full story. But the shooting has tapped into underlying feelings of injustice about how black men are treated by police all over our country and those concerns are certainly backed by data.

The actions of that night in Harlem have repeated themselves over and over and over in this country.

And this week and last we have seen images of police in full military gear pointing loaded weapons at unarmed protestors, assaulting and arresting journalists, even shooting pastors and other peaceful protestors with rubber bullets.

We have been awakened to the face that we have forgotten our story.

We have forgotten that through Jesus, all humanity, whatever our race, have become one in Christ. We have forgotten that every life is sacred and precious.

And in case you’re thinking, “Wait a minute, some of these men were breaking the law! These weren’t all innocent people.” Consider this.

“While black children make up just 18 percent of kids enrolled in [public] preschool programs, they constitute 48 percent of the students suspended more than once.”

Did you get that? Four year old black children make up less than a fifth of public preschoolers but, nearly half of the four year olds suspended more than once are black.

Four year olds. Are they guilty?

Consider this.

The writer Mikki Kendall, a black woman, was so tired of the multiple violent and sexist Twitter comments she received every day, she tried an experiment with some of her friends. They swapped out their profile pictures, so Mikki’s picture became that of a white man. Her white male friends switched their photos with photos of black women. Her Twitter handle was exactly the same, but immediately, the threats and harassment stopped. The same people who insulted her now had thoughtful questions about what she was writing. The same people! And her male friends who switched their pictures? One of them only lasted two hours. He was stunned at the horrifying invective launched at him when people thought he was a black woman.

Consider this, in a 2012 Pew poll, the researchers discovered that 75% of white social networks are 100% white. That means that 3/4th of white people do not spend any social time with a single friend of another race.

There is something wrong with us. I doubt these police officers or pre-school teachers were overtly racist, though clearly the twitter trolls were. The police officers and preschool teachers are probably perfectly nice people. They are probably a lot like us. I think the problem of racism is so deeply ingrained in us that we aren’t even aware of our bias. We shoot unarmed young black men, we suspend young black boys because deep down, we are afraid of them. Call it white privilege, call it systemic racism, whatever it is, we are infected.

I wish I knew exactly what the cure was.

Maybe part of the cure is remembering our history. As I rabidly followed news coming out of Ferguson this week, I realized I know very little about the history of race in Charlottesville. I know about Sally Hemmings of course, but that was about it. In the last couple of days I’ve tried to learn as much as I can, but it is just a beginning.

Did you know that at the beginning of the Civil war there were more free and enslaved black people in Charlottesville than white? Did you know Jefferson thought blacks were incapable of the full range of human emotion? Did you know there was a community of freed blacks called Canada where the South Lawn of UVA now lies? You can even see a memorial there. Did you know that in the 1960s, African American homes and businesses were destroyed in Vinegar Hill as an act of “urban renewal”?  Did you know that Greencroft Club was begun because Jews and blacks were not allowed in Farmington?

Remembering our shared history is only part of the solution. Even if we learn everything there is to know about our community’s racial history, historical knowledge can only get us so far.

History can’t tell us who we are and how we are connected. History tells us how we are broken, but not how we can be healed.

In our Gospel today, standing in a center of Roman power, a town named after Caesar, Jesus asks his disciples who people say he is. Peter gets the answer right—the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.

The God we love came to disrupt the power structures of the world that tell us what we are worth. He is a living God, who loved us so much and was so grieved by our inability to love him and one another, that he was willing to become human.

He became Michael Brown. He became the victim of our sin, so we wouldn’t have to sacrifice each other any more. His sacrifice should have been the last. His sacrifice was enough for us.

And yet, here we are.

There is still hope for us. We can pray that this living God will help us see our sin more clearly. We can pray that this living God will build empathy in our hearts instead of fear. We can offer ourselves to God as agents of change.

Clergy and other Christians in Ferguson have been doing just that. They have walked alongside protestors and police officers these last few weeks, offering empathy, offering love, helping to diffuse conflict, while still calling for justice. The Episcopal Dean of the Cathedral in St. Louis, Michael Kinman, has written eloquently on the connection between the Eucharist and the Christian response to Ferguson, but he has also acted as a physical barrier between police and protesters this week. He articulates and lives his faith.

Christians and other good hearted people, black and white, have worked for peace together in Ferguson: cleaning up the streets, feeding children who were unable to start school. And people of every race, across the country have been raising money for the St. Louis food bank, which was hit very hard with the school delay.

We can join this faithful group and can be part of change in our community and country. But first we must look deep in our hearts, and be willing to confront any fear and ignorance that may lurk there.

May God help us.

Amen.

Proper 9, Year A, 2014

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

I have fallen down a hole of BBC television programming this summer. My usual shows are over and so I started with Call the Midwife, which is a refreshingly good natured show after six months of Scandal and House of Cards! One of the actresses in that show is a comedienne and writer that has her own half hour sitcom called Miranda. Miranda is hysterical. She is an at least six foot tall woman who is as agile at slapstick as Lucille Ball. Her character owns a joke shop, much to the displeasure of her traditional mother, and has a big crush on the chef next door. One of Miranda’s problems is that every time she gets cornered or nervous she starts to lie. Crazy, elaborate lies that invent dead husbands and children, and fictive jobs that start out in retail and end up in the secret service. In the show, in the middle of one of these elaborate lies she’ll stop and look at the camera with an expression of utter confusion. As if she means to say, “Why am I doing this? How did I end up here?”

She might join the Apostle Paul in crying out, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” This is one of the most relatable passages in all Scripture, right? There is nothing that will get me to bake chocolate chip cookies faster than a vow that I’m going to eat healthier. Why are our brains such contrarians? We read this passage and wander down a road of psychological examination. But is that what Paul intended?

In Romans 5-8, Paul takes on the problem of human sin. He understands sin not only as the bad things we do, but also as a power that Christ has come to defeat. When we read Romans we think of ourselves as human beings as the main subject here, the star of the show who dramatically battle with sin. But to Paul, human beings are almost on the sidelines. We have found it impossible to battle sin alone! We need help! The real battle is between sin and God.

A very attractive and wise New Testament scholar, Beverly Gaventa, who also happens to be my mother-in-law, argues that all these “I” statements in Romans 7 aren’t meant to be Paul’s confession of weakness. She believes he is using the “I” in the same way the Psalmists, did, as a way for each person who read or heard Paul’s letters to the Romans identify with this very specific, but universal human condition. After all, the Romans were not hearing this letter from Paul’s mouth. Phoebe, who delivered the letter to them, read it to them, and as it got passed around from community to community, different voices spoke those plaintive sentences. And more specifically, Paul is describing here how the power of sin even corrupts the laws that are supposed to keep us from sinning! Here he is speaking specifically of the Mosaic law—the commandments God gave the Israelites. He is careful to make clear that it is not the law that is sinful. After all, the law is designed to guide us into holy living. But the power of sin is so pervasive that it can even make our relationship to the law broken.

In Immortal Diamond, the book we have been studying this summer, Richard Rohr writes, 

[Religion] is not doing its job if it only reminds you of your distance, your unworthiness, your sinfulness, your inadequacy before God’s greatness. Whenever religion actually increases the gap, it becomes antireligion instead. I am afraid we have lots of antireligion in all denominations.

Now, as educated and liberated Episcopalians, it’s easy for us to point fingers and say, “Oh yes, I see how this principle has corrupted the Catholic Church, which is rife with abuse and cover ups!” Or we might look over to our fundamentalist brothers and sisters and see how rigid rule following has led to powerfully corrupt leaders and wounded followers. We even take some pleasure when some particularly vitriolic pastor ends up falling in a national scandal. But guess what, friends? We are just as likely to get entangled by sin as anyone else. As I was talking about the ideas in this passage with my husband he asked, “Well, for you Episcopalians, your law would be your liturgy, wouldn’t it? How does sin creep up there?” I literally gasped, you guys.

It never would occur to me that our liturgy could become an avenue for sin. For one thing, it’s kind of boring. I mean, when I think about Episcopalians and sin the first thing that comes to mind is alcohol, not Cranmer. We’ve got a lot of money and a lot of creative ways to break the commandments. If I were to write a novel about sin and Episcopalians, it would take place on a yacht or on the Upper East Side and there would be some private school back story that would lead to an affair or murder that took place after drinking way too much expensive Scotch. But you know what would not appear in this novel? Our liturgy! I mean, even in Call the Midwife, which takes place in an Anglican Convent, our Anglican service music is used for its comfort and beauty, for solace in the midst of poverty and suffering.

For me, our liturgy is a place of comfort and safety. Its timeless words remind us of eternal truths that comfort and challenge us. But is it possible that sin can creep in around the corners of our creed and service music? If we are to believe the Apostle Paul, then yes, it certainly can. Perhaps, as liturgy loving people, where we sin is an unwillingness to let the Holy Spirit change us. Perhaps we sin in fearing the new, in being too wedded to our books, pews and bricks and not open enough to the world around us. I don’t know, frankly, I’m too close to it! I love our liturgy and pews and bricks! But next time I, or one of you, get worked up about some change, or some imperfection in the bulletin or some misplaced note in the choral singing, we’ll have a moment of recognition. Ah, sin got me, too!

Sin is so pervasive to the human condition, that we cannot escape it. Sin will creep in to every relationship we have, whether it is with our liturgy or our law. Sin creeps in under the doors of our offices, inside our cars, gets between us and the people we love. Sin separates us from our own will, our own bodies, our own desires. Sin tries to ruin everything good in our lives. Sin tries to ruin us.

We are baptizing Jackson Rector today. His parents and godparents will renounce three things: Satan, evil, and sin. Now, renouncing Satan isn’t that challenging. I’m pretty sure not many of you have ever participated in a Satanic ritual. And if you are gathering at midnight in the cemetery to call upon the name of the dark lord, QUIT IT RIGHT NOW. Renouncing the evil powers of the world is a little trickier, after all you have to sort out what is evil and what isn’t! Are we allowed to wear clothes made my child labor? Should we drive a car if it is going to destroy the planet? Should we speak out about unethical practices at work if it means we’ll lose our job? And renouncing sin? Oh boy. We’ve just discussed how sin is everywhere and after us and how it is impossible to not sin! What is the point of renouncing something that is impossible to avoid?

There’s one little detail we haven’t mentioned yet. Christ has already won the battle with sin. It may not feel like it, since we still struggle with sin, but in theological terms, the battle is OVER. Christ’s death and resurrection means sin only has power over us in this world, and even in this world sin never affects our identity as saved, loved people. Once we die, or when the kingdom of God comes to pass, whichever comes first, the power of sin falls away like dust. So, when we renounce Satan, evil and sin, we are acknowledging Christ’s victory. We aren’t saying, “Now that Jackson is a Christian, he is never going to screw up!” We’re saying, “Now that Jackson is a Christian, nothing can stand between him and God.” We’ll get to more of that next week in Romans 8, but in the meantime, next time you feel sin creeping around the door, ready to come after you, you can look it in the eye and say, “Sorry buddy, I belong to Christ, you have no power here.” Thanks be to God.

Proper 7, Year A, 2014

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Welcome to the latest installment of Real Housewives of the Old Testament!

Okay, so this piece of Genesis does not come out of Bravo’s studios, but it is quite dramatic. The lectionary—our Sunday readings—are going to stay in Genesis most of the summer. Because of when Pentecost fell this year, we have dropped smack dab in the middle of Abraham and Sarah’s story, so let me catch you up. Abraham and Sarah were called by God to follow him. He did not say where, he did not give them a road map or leave them GPS. And they did it! They picked up their household, all their stuff, and began a life of following God. God promised to make a nation out of them—that Sarah and Abraham would have as many descendants as there are stars in the sky.

There was one problem. Sarah and Abraham could not conceive a child. For years they followed God and God kept reiterating the promise, but it seemed totally laughable, especially since they were already in their 70s when God made his promises to them. So, Sarah hatched a plan. Deciding that clearly God had not thought everything through, she gave her handmaiden to her husband as an additional wife so they could conceive a child together. (What an anniversary present!) Abraham and Hagar had a little boy named Ishmael. Great, right? Well, no. As soon as Hagar conceived, she and Sarah began to fight. Eventually Hagar fled, but God told her to go back!

Years later, Sarah actually conceived and bore a child named Isaac. You would think that would solve everything, right? But no, Sarah sees Ishmael playing and laughing and cannot stand it. Ishmael represents a threat to Isaac’s inheritance, not to mention a reminder of her own poor decision making. Sarah asks Abraham to cast Hagar and Ishmael out. When Abraham checks with God, God reassures Abraham they will be cared for. God has gone through a lot with Abraham and Sarah. His goal is to be in relationship with a people and to see the promises he’s made come to pass. The narrative should have been Sarah and Abraham waited patiently, finally had Isaac, boom! promise delivered. Instead Sarah disrupts the plan and Hagar and Ishmael become victims of her regret. And so, they disappear off stage, bread and water in hand.

In another story, that would be the last we heard from Hagar and Ishmael. They don’t fit in with the covenant God has promised Abraham. Why do we need to hear the rest of their story? God may have had a plan for Abraham and Sarah, but our God is a God of love. Hagar and Ishmael may not be part of the covenant, but God’s attachments flow beyond his initial promises. We get a heartbreaking scene where the pair are out of water, so Hagar leaves Ishmael under a tree and walks away so she doesn’t have to watch him die. She weeps and weeps to God and the text says, “And God heard the voice of the boy.” This may seems strange, since it is Hagar who is crying. But the name Ishmael actually means “God hears”. I’m sure when Abraham decided to name him God hears he was thinking of the glory of God’s promise to him, but it turns out that God hears suffering, too. God hears the cries of those who have been shut out, manipulated, abused. God hears the cries of people who are shoved to the sidelines God didn’t just offer comfort, God made a nation out of Ishmael. God saved their lives and lifted them back into society.

God hasn’t stopped hearing the cries of those who suffer. He knows what grieves your heart. He knows the ways you fear for those you love. He knows the ways you have been betrayed. He hears your cries. Too often, we think we have to bear our suffering alone. We come to church, dressed to the nines. We greet our friends with a smile and a platitude, even when our hearts are breaking. One of the gifts we can give to each other as the Body of Christ, is to listen to each other’s cries. But that means someone has to cry first!

One of my favorite books about the power of crying out to God is Frederick Buechner’s Telling Secrets. In it, he tells the grueling story of his father’s alcoholism and suicide and the family’s subsequent silence on the matter. It is only when he begins telling the story of his father’s death, that he experiences true healing. As he reflects on his experience he writes,

I have come to believe that by and large the human family all has the same secrets, which are both very telling and very important to tell. They are telling in the sense that they tell what is perhaps the central paradox of our condition—that what we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else. It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are—even if we tell it only to ourselves—because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing. It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier that way to see where we have been in our lives and where we are going. It also makes it easier for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own, and exchanges like that have a lot to do with what being a family is all about and what being human is all about.

 

We become more human, and more connected to ourselves and each other, when we tell the truth about our lives. But telling the truth can be very counter cultural. I can’t stop thinking this week about that picture of Richard Martinez and Peter Rodger that was released last week. Richard Martinez was the father of a young man killed by Elliot Rodger in Isla Vista a few weeks ago. Very soon after the shooting, he gave a very angry speech in which he held politicians responsible for policies that led to the shooting. For a few days his speech was admired as a remarkable outburst of articulate rage. Of course, since media cycles don’t like to admire anyone for too long, soon Martinez began getting criticized for not grieving appropriately, for seeking the limelight in a time where he should have been tucked away somewhere being appropriately sad. Instead of retreating and behaving in a way the world would think is appropriate, Richard Martinez had a private meeting with Peter Rodger, the father of the shooter. The two came out of the meeting vowing to fight for policies that help the mentally ill and stop the kind of gun violence we’ve seen too much of lately.

There is one picture taken of them at this event where their arms are wrapped each other’s shoulders and they stare at the camera with a gaze that captures all their grief and all their defiance. They are letting their cries ring out, and why shouldn’t they? What happened to them was the most excruciating event that can happen to a parent. In telling each other their stories, in crying out to each other, I hope the slow road to healing began. And I hope God hears their cries, and begins to heal them, and our country.

I don’t know all of you, but I know many of you, and I promise you no one in this room lives a life without suffering. We’re pretty lucky, I know. Many of us have income and a roof over our heads and people who love us. But suffering comes in many forms—conflict with a loved one, illness or mental illness of a loved one, loneliness, financial strain, being a survivor of abuse, physical impairment. My dream is that one day instead of dressing all perfectly for church, we would just walk in the room wearing T-shirts that named our suffering. How freeing would it be to realize we were all in this together, broken and crying out to God? Because God does still hear our prayers, but since we are the body of Christ, he may be calling us to be part of his answer. In listening to one another with love and care, we can embody God’s love and care for us.

May we be Christ to one another, bearing one another’s sorrows as we do our best to continue the journey of faith Abraham and Sarah and Hagar began for us. Amen.

Pentecost, Year A, 2014

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

You are phenomenal.

Did you know that?

The Holy Spirit thinks so.

We think of Pentecost as an event that happened thousands of years ago. We remember vaguely that after the ascension, Jesus’ followers locked themselves in a room and waited. They prayed and prayed and finally the Holy Spirit came down from heaven like fire and changed those people forever. But Pentecost isn’t only a historical event.

Pentecost happens every day. The gift of the Holy Spirit continues to blow through the Church, continues to guide ordinary followers of Jesus like us, continues to animate our life together. So, what does the Holy Spirit do?

In our Gospel of John reading, we see Jesus breathing the Holy Spirit onto his followers, just as the Creator God breathed life into Adam. The world around us constantly tries to deflate us. The breath of God animates and fills us, so we can participate in creating the Kingdom of God.

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself walking around, shoulders slumped, as I processed all the #YesAllWomen tweets on Twitter. I don’t know if you followed that movement, but after the Isla Vista shooting, it turned out that part of the cocktail of mental illness and gun violence that motivated the shooter was a deep loathing for women. He saw women as objects to conquer and deeply resented that no women showed interest in being conquered by him.

A day later, one million tweets with the hashtag YesAllWomen flooded twitter. Each tweet recounted a woman’s incident of feeling afraid or dismissed because of her gender. Women recounted instances of being followed, being assaulted, being threatened. The point was no matter whether a woman has been assaulted or not, nearly every woman in this country lives with the reality that she could experience violence. We lock our cars as soon as we get in them. We avoid walking alone at night. We run in the street instead of the woods. We tell people who come on to us that we are married, even if we aren’t, because we know rejection may cause violence. None of this was a surprise to me. The security cameras are one of my favorite features of my gym. I was really grateful when we added flood lighting to the outside of the parish house. I live with the same anxieties other women do every day and don’t think about them much. But something about the veil coming off, seeing the breadth of the problem communicated by hundreds of thousands of women deflated me. Does the world care so little about half the human population that we allow this sort of thing to continue?

But here is the hope of Pentecost. Where the world deflates and demeans us, whether we are men or women, the Holy Spirit fills us up with the breath of God. After all, the remarkable part of the story of Pentecost is that the Holy Spirit descended on everyone in that upper room in the book of Acts—men and women, young and old. And then the first act of the Holy Spirit was to give these followers of Jesus the ability to tell the good news of Jesus’ resurrection to people of every language. Jerusalem was an international city and Jews from many countries were there. Suddenly, people were hearing the good news in their native tongues! They were important. The Holy Spirit wanted to reach out to them where they were. The Holy Spirit didn’t ask them to conform to one way of being, the Holy Spirit connected to these people as their full individual selves. These international Jews didn’t have to become someone else, speak Hebrew or Greek, to be enveloped in God’s love. God loved them right there.

At its inception, the Christian church was an incredibly egalitarian community. This changed over history, but the Holy Spirit’s first concept for us was for all of us to be filled with the breath of God as we worship and serve God together as peers. All of us matter. All of us have work to do for the kingdom. God loves and can use each of us, no matter our age, gender, or ethnicity. All of this is still true, whether the world believes it or not.

Coincidentally, right as all this #YesAllWomen writing was happening on Twitter, Maya Angelou died. No one could accuse Dr. Angelou of being a deflated person. After all, she wrote the lines:

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.

I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size

But when I start to tell them,

They think I’m telling lies.

I say, It’s in the reach of my arms,

The span of my hips,

The stride of my step,

The curl of my lips.

I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman, That’s me.

That seems like a woman deeply confident in herself, doesn’t it? Well, did you know that Maya Angelou did not speak from the age of eight until she turned thirteen? When she was eight years old she was assaulted by her stepfather. She told her brother, who told the rest of the family and a few days later her stepfather was murdered, probably by one of her uncles. She became convinced that her words had killed him and so she remained silent for five years. The love of God and of a good teacher helped her regain her courage and her ability to speak as she and her teacher immersed themselves in literature.

Maya Angelou’s faith and deep connections with other human beings sustained her the rest of her days. Listen to what she says about her relationship with God:

“I believed that there was a God because I was told it by my grandmother and later by other adults. But when I found that I knew not only that there was God but that I was a child of God, when I understood that, when I comprehended that, more than that, when I internalized that, ingested that, I became courageous.”

The Holy Spirit, and a whole lot of love of the faithful adults around her, transformed a frightened little girl into an incredibly courageous adult woman whose writing changed the world and gave many other little girls and women hope that they too, could be courageous. Dr. Angelou became a teacher and cultivated deep relationships with hundreds of students, giving back into the world the love she was given. The Holy Spirit has a lot of loving for us to do in the world. But before we go out to the love the world, the Holy Spirit’s job is to remind us that we are loved. The Holy Spirit picks us up, reminds us that God cares about us, and heals the wounds we have been given by a world that chips away at our souls. The world is not going to change all at once, but if each of us who professes to be a Christian, in Angelou’s words “internalize, ingest” that we are children of God, how God could use us to change the world!

We have huge, societal problems—and we won’t be able to break them down all at once, but with the Holy Spirit’s help, we can make a world a little more like God’s kingdom. This week I got a phone call from a woman named Anna. Anna is a Friends with Flowers volunteer. One of the recipients of the flowers was not able to receive them this week, since they were in the middle of moving to a new home. Anna called me to let me know that she took the flowers to the Cedars, a nursing home. She took them there, because every day on her commute, she passed a cheerful old man who waved at her from his beautiful flower garden. One day Anna noticed he wasn’t there any more. Unlike most of us, who would have kept driving, and forgot he existed within a week or two, she pulled over and asked a neighbor where he was. The neighbor shared that the man with the flowers was a 101 year old WWII vet and former minister, and he was too frail to live alone any more, so had moved to the Cedars. And so, when Anna found herself with these flowers she went to the Cedars and asked for his man, whom she had never met, told him how much his flowers and daily cheer meant to her, and delivered him some flowers from our church.

This seems to me like the work of the Holy Spirit. Do you see how this story lifts up the humanity of everyone involved? Do you see how the bonds of love are strengthened? Do you see how this veteran and this SPIVY member could see the light of Christ in each other’s eyes? So much separates us and dehumanizes us in the world, but if we let it, the Holy Spirit will work within us to chip away at those dehumanizing forces in the world with the light of the Gospel—that all are loved, all are redeemed, all are held in the embrace of God’s love and light. We are all phenomenal—whether we are men or women—because we are loved by a phenomenal God. Amen.

 

If you are experiencing domestic violence and live in the Charlottesville area, please contact the Shelter for Help in Emergency.

Easter 5, Year A, 2014

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

A few years ago This American Life producer Nancy Updike’s stepfather was dying. He had hospice care and Ms. Updike was incredibly impressed by the competence of the hospice nurses because she herself felt so helpless and anxious and at loose ends in the face of his death. So, she ended up producing a half hour segment of This American Life that followed hospice nurses at Kaplan Family Hospice House in Massachusetts.

Hospice care workers are a rare breed of human being. So many of us do all we can to fight death, or to ignore death while all day long every day, hospice nurses and doctors help people prepare to die. They face what the rest of us are afraid to face, and they face it with dignity and respect. They become a bridge for patients and their families between this world and the next. They understand the complex physical, emotional and spiritual process of death. At one point on the program a nurse, Patti told the following story:

“Yeah. Or [the patient is] comatose and the loved ones keeps saying, he’s waiting for his brother to get here on Saturday. They’re coming from Florida on Saturday. And I’m, inside, rolling my eyes thinking it’s Tuesday. He’s going to die on Wednesday or Thursday. He’s not going to be here on Saturday for when his brother arrives from Florida. And then the brother arrives at Logan, shows up at the Kaplan House at 12:30, and the patient dies at 1:00. And they say to me, I told you. He just needed Billy to come from Florida. And it’s like, what?”

Patti and other nurses like her know that death is not just physical. Sometimes a patient needs to see someone; sometimes they need a priest to do last rites or to hear a last confession. But even hospice nurses, the closest thing we have to death experts in our culture, can’t know for certain what happens after death. None of us can really, though they sure are marketing the heck out of the movie Heaven is for Real, aren’t they! Scripture does give us some clues about our life after death, but even the New Testament’s messages are muddied. In Paul’s letters he seems to have the understanding that all humans will be raised in a resurrection at the same time. In other parts of the New Testament, heaven is spoken of as a place where we will unite with God.

Even Jesus did not have an easy relationship with death. When his friend Lazarus dies, he weeps. When he faces his own death in the garden of Gethsemane, he prays for release. And so the words we read today from the Gospel of John are not a flippant response to his disciples’ worries, but are rooted in Jesus’ experience of being both human and divine. He knows the grief and fear of death, but he also knows that God has plans for us beyond our deaths. In this passage, his disciples aren’t so worried about their own deaths. They are worried about what they are going to do without Jesus. Our passage is part of a long speech that is called Jesus’ farewell discourse. When I was almost college aged, my dad started peppering me with advice, “Carpe Diem! Don’t pick the sick puppy! Don’t merge with anyone you don’t want to become!” He knew he couldn’t follow me to University of Richmond, but he really wanted me to take the values of our family with me to college. In the same way, Jesus is giving his disciples a framework that they can use after his death, resurrection and ascension. Jesus is reassuring them and giving them marching orders. And while Jesus’ main point is not to describe the afterlife to his disciples, his words do tell us a great deal about God’s plan for human beings after our deaths. Jesus tells the disciples his death is necessary. He has to leave the disciples in order to prepare a place for them. In John, rather than resurrection language, Jesus imagines heaven as a metaphorical place—a place with plenty of room for everyone. And blessed Thomas, ever practical, wants to know how the heck they are going to find that place? If Jesus is gone, does he plan to leave them a map? Detailed instructions? Thomas stands in for us. We want more details! More information! How do we get to heaven? Jesus then reassures Thomas that Thomas has all he needs. Thomas doesn’t need a map, because he is already in relationship with the one who prepares the dwelling places and leads us to the dwelling places.

This verse—I am the way and the truth and the life is often used as exclusionary—If Jesus is the way, then there is no other way, but Jesus isn’t addressing other religions here. Jesus is addressing Thomas’ specific concerns. Thomas doesn’t need anything but Jesus, and even if Jesus leaves, Thomas is going to be okay, because Jesus will be working on Thomas’ behalf. This exchange between Jesus and Thomas is a gift to us.

No matter how many times we ask for a map—when am I going to die? What will it be like? Will I feel pain? Will there be white light? Will I see my family?–we won’t get answers. Those answers are only knowable after our death. What the New Testament does tell us is that God loved us so much that he sent Jesus to live and die for us so we may share in God’s eternal life. And all we need to get there is Jesus, and Jesus has already done the work necessary to get us there. When Jesus reassures his disciples that they will be okay, that he has them covered, we get to eavesdrop and be comforted. As we heard last week, the Gospel of John is also the Gospel in which Jesus describes himself as the Good Shepherd, a shepherd who chases after every last one of his sheep, who makes sure everyone is tucked safely into the sheepfold. Jesus’ promise to his disciples is his promise to us—he is the way and the truth and the life for us, too. We are his sheep. We are his disciples. While we may face our own deaths with fear or dread, we can also know that even in the midst of our anxiety, Jesus is preparing a place for each of us. We are safe within the sheepfold of his love. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Easter 3, Year A, 2014

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

The story of the Road to Emmaus is one of the most touching accounts of the post-Resurrection Jesus that we have.  Two dejected followers of Jesus, devastated by the death of the man they respected, are walking away from Jerusalem, away from the trauma of the Cross.  Alongside them comes a companion who begins to tell them all about the scriptural basis for the Messiah’s life and death.  They insist he comes home with them and as they break bread together their eyes are opened and they realize their companion is none other than the risen Jesus.  You can almost feel the goose bumps rise on your flesh as they realize with whom they have been talking.  The Road to Emmaus story is our story.  Cleopas could as easily be me or (fill in names from congregation) or you.  The journey Cleopas and his traveling companion go on is the journey we go on every Sunday here at church.

We come in, and we too are overwhelmed by the world. We carry with us oil tankers on fire in nearby Lynchburg.  We carry with us horribly botched executions is Oklahoma.  We carry with us all those who lost their lives and homes in the floods this week.  We carry with us 230 kidnapped Nigerian girls.  We carry with us the painful words of rich men, which expose the ugly racism in our country.  We carry with us our own personal losses, failures and disappointments from the week. We carry with us the worries of our friends and families.  We are weighed down.

And yet Jesus comes along side us, even if we are as gloomy as Cleopas.  Just as Jesus shared the word with Cleopas and his friend, we share the word together.  We remember God’s love for his people by reading aloud the words we have been given in Scripture.  We remember God’s faithfulness to Israel, we remember the good news of Jesus’ resurrection.  We share the stories to remind ourselves that the God of the Universe always reaches out to us and asks us to be in loving relationship with him.  We shake off the false realities we hear all week—that our identity should be rooted in how we look or how much money we make or how smart we are—and we are reminded that our identity rests in being beloved creatures of God.  We are no more and no less.

And then like Cleopas, we invite Jesus to stay with us.  We kneel as we confess the ways we have not been faithful to Jesus.  And in our brokenness, we create space for Jesus.  Intimacy cannot exist without honesty.  Just as a friendship is strengthened by moments of vulnerable sharing, our friendship with Jesus blooms when we are most self aware and honest when we are in conversation with him.  We invite Jesus into the homes of our hearts and then suddenly Jesus takes over and invites us to feast with him.

In Cleopas’s home, Jesus took, blessed, broke and gave bread, the same motions he made on Maundy Thursday and the same motions we make here every week.  Breaking bread is something completely ordinary.  Whether it is pouring out the Cheerios to the kids as you get them ready for school or pulling apart an Albemarle Baking Company baguette that you pass around the table for friends, we break bread together daily.  When we make special meal for someone, it is a way we give ourselves, a way we show our love.  In the same way, in feeding his followers, Jesus extends himself toward them in love.

In the Eucharist, of course, we believe we consume the spiritual presence of Jesus–A Jesus who wants to be so close to us that he becomes part of our very bodies.  In his book With Burning Hearts:  A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life Henry Nowen writes,

Jesus is God-for us, God-with-us, God-within-us.  Jesus is God giving himself completely, pouring himself out for us without reserve.  Jesus doesn’t hold back or cling to his own possessions.  He gives all there is to give.  “Eat, drink, this is my body, this is my blood…this is me for you.

It is in this eating and drinking that Cleopas and his friend’s eyes are opened, they recognize Jesus, they recognize that their hearts burn within them from being in the presence of the holy.  And on Sunday mornings, as we gather around the Eucharist table, your heart may burn within you, too.  After all, for a brief moment you are united with the very Jesus who sat at Cleopas’ table.  For a brief moment you are united with everyone in this room as we share the same body and blood.  You remember that you are holy, too.  You remember that the God of the universe chooses to live within you.

At the very moment Cleopas’ eyes are opened, Jesus disappears.

Isn’t that strange?  For three years, Jesus’ followers hung on his every word, but they never really “got it”.  They were in his presence, but did not have full intimacy with him.  And now, the moment his followers understand, he vanishes.  They do not need his physical presence any more.  His spiritual presence is with them, in the communion they shared.  In his absence, they can have deeper intimacy with him than they did three years in his presence.

The same holds true for us.  We do not need the physical Jesus with us, because we have the gift of the Holy Spirit, who enables deep communion with Jesus and the Father.  The spirit descends on this table and transforms our wafers and port into the real, spiritual presence of Christ.  And that presence lives within you, giving you strength and courage to go out into the world.

We don’t get to stay in the safety of this sanctuary.  We are called to go back into the world.  After their encounter with Jesus, Cleopas and his friend run right back to the dangerous world they were fleeing.  They run back to Jerusalem, find their friends, and tell them the incredible news of Jesus’ resurrection.

At the end of every service here, you hear a dismissal.  Sometimes it is “Go in peace to Love and Serve the Lord!”  Sometimes it is “Go forth in the name of Christ!”  Whatever we dismissal we use, the message is the same.  You can’t stay here.  You must go back into the world, with all of its challenges and loss.  But you do not go into the world alone.  You go with the presence of Christ within you.  And Christ will give you the courage and wisdom you need to face the world with grace and love.  You are a now a Christ-bearer.  You have good news to share.  Go, and may Christ be with you.

Amen.

 

This structure of this sermon is heavily indebted to Nowen’s With Burning Hearts: A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life, quoted above.