Easter

Easter 7, Year C, 2007

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Do you ever have moments during which you realize you’ve been burying your head in the sand? I tend to be a pretty focused person, so when I am consumed by something-such as implementing children’s worship, writing a sermon, or planning a wedding-that is where I keep my focus.  This January, at Diocesan Council, I felt like someone was opening my eyes.  I literally had the thought, “Oh, right!  There are other churches besides Emmanuel!  There are Anglican churches around the world!”  I found it refreshing to see what ministries were going on in other places and be reminded that no matter how fabulous we are, we are not actually the center of the Universe.  In that Spirit, this sermon will be an attempt to do a brief overview of the current conflict in the Anglican Communion.

Last week, we read part of Jesus’ farewell discourse to the disciples.  The reading we have today is part of a longer prayer immediately following his discourse.  If the Gospel of John were a novel, this prayer would be the climax.  The prayer sets out Jesus’ vision for the church, and the vision is one of unity.  John writes, “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.”

When Jesus said this prayer, he had maybe a few hundred serious followers.  The concept of unity was a pretty reasonable expectation.  Now, of course, there are millions of Christians, and thousands of denominations.  The Christian church has split over and over and over again, over issues profound and silly.

And while we may not have been paying much attention over here in our idyllic part of the world, our own Episcopal denomination and Anglican Communion are going through their own conflicts.

I’ll be honest.  One reason I haven’t preached much about this, is that I don’t really understand what is going on.  Every once in awhile I’ll see some news item about a church that has left, or a report that’s been published by some committee, but the language is generally pretty dry and confusing, so I end up reading some celebrity gossip instead. 

However, this week, just in time for this passage about unity, a friend passed on a speech given by the Archbishop of South Africa, which contained a Cliff’s Notes history of the Anglican Communion and the current conflict.  I will now attempt to condense his work even further give you a Sarah’s Notes version of his insights. 

The Anglican Communion was actually started the same year Emmanuel began, in 1860.  The Church of England had started churches in all the areas where England had its empire.  After England began losing its power and withdrawing from all these countries, the churches remained.  Unlike the Catholic church, where there was one central authority, these individual Dioceses were politically independent from one another.  What tied them together was each of their relationships to the See of Canterbury, their use of the Anglican prayer book, and the ordination of deacons, priests, and bishops.  They stayed only loosely connected until the late 1840s when two bishops in South Africa began a series of arguments which continued for twenty years and led to accusations of heresy until one bishop excommunicated the other bishop!  Now, the diocese realized they could not handle this problem on their own, and so the first meeting of bishops from Anglican churches throughout the world began in 1867 to help solve this problem. 

While other denominations had official dates of formation or confessional statements everyone needed to sign in order to join, the Anglican Communion developed more organically, and was always a consultative body, rather than a body that formed rules that everyone had to follow. 

Over time several “instruments of unity” were formed, in order to help different provinces of the Anglican Church stay connected to one another.  The instrument that has been around the longest is the Archbishop of Canterbury.  This Archbishop is a leader among equals.  His job is to initiative meetings, and be a central point for the church to gather, and not to “rule” over the church.  Another instrument of unity is the Lambeth Conference-which is the meeting of every bishop in the church, every ten years.  A third point of unity is the Anglican Consultative Council, which is made up of lay people, priests, and bishops.  The fourth is the primates’ meeting.  This is not a meeting of apes, but a meeting of all the Archbishops around the world. These Archbishops meet every couple of years, or as needed.

So, fast forward one hundred years to the late 1960s.  Over time, these different parts of the Anglican communion, including our own Episcopal church, have developed relationships that have largely been about connecting, sharing resources, and learning from one another.  Suddenly, the issue of the ordination of women arises and now these instruments of unity have a slightly different role.  Together they are going to work to find a solution to a complicated question.  In 1968, the Lambeth Conference-the large meeting of all bishops-asks the Anglican Communion to study the question.  So, the Anglican Consultative Council, takes that mandate and spends several years debating the question.  By a narrow margin, they decide that it would be okay for individual dioceses to ordain women if they would like to, but it should not be forced on the entire communion.  In 1978, the Lambeth Conference affirmed that decision. 

Over the following twenty years, the issue of homosexuality and the church came up and began to be a point of discussion.  In his speech the Archbishop reports, In 1978 Lambeth “passed a resolution which affirmed faithfulness and chastity within and outside marriage, and called for a wider theological study of sexuality. Its final clause said, ‘While we affirm heterosexuality as the scriptural norm, we recognise the need for deep and dispassionate study of the question of homosexuality, which would take seriously both the teaching of Scripture and the results of scientific and medical research.’ It also encouraged dialogue with homosexual people, and affirmed their need for pastoral care. ”

What ended up happening was that the primates of many parts of the church latched onto the idea of heterosexuality as the scriptural norm, and neglected to pursue the part of the call to dialogue with homosexual people.

Fast forward to three summers ago.  Despite there being no decision by any one of the four instruments of unity, the diocese of New Hampshire consecrated an openly gay bishop.  And, pardon my French, all hell broke loose.

A few individual churches and dioceses within the Episcopal Church wanted to disassociate from the larger Episcopal Church.  Many African dioceses wanted to break off relationship with the Episcopal Church.  So, over the last three years, some African bishops, in order to support the breakaway Episcopal congregations, have been flying to the United States to ordain priests and consecrate formerly Episcopal priests into African denominations.  Our Diocese, the Diocese of Virginia, has been the center for a lot of this.  You may have seen news reports of The Rev. Martyn Mims, formerly of Truro Chruch, being ordained as a bishop by an African bishop, so he could oversee breakaway churches in the Episcopal Church.

Phew!

So, in response to all of this, something called the Windsor Report was published.  A committee of people with varying perspectives wrote it, and asked the Episcopal church to repent of their actions and asked the African bishops to back off from our church’s business.

The complicating factor is, that while General Convention has complied to some degree with the Windsor Report, individual dioceses continue to ordain homosexual persons and bless same sex unions, which lights a fire under the conservative bishops.

Members of the Anglican Consultative Council, who were again charged with sorting all of this out, spent months carefully working on a draft covenant, but before they could publish it, some of the Primates-those are Archbishops-put out a Communique this spring using very strong language saying that the American Episcopal Church has not done enough to repair broken relationships.   This did not make the group working on the covenant very happy, since it undermined their hard word.

So, here we are.  Some kind of unity, huh?  I have given you only the roughest sketch of what is going on.  If you request this sermon from Janice later on, I will attach links so you can read some of these documents yourself.

But do not despair!  In the midst of all this controversy, I want to tell you about the group of Anglican women that meet annually at the United Nations, during the time when they study the status of women throughout the world.  The meeting this year was in the early spring, right when the latest communiqué from the Primates was published.  These women-from all provinces, all walks of life, all races-released this statement:

We, the women of the Anglican Communion gathered in New York as the Anglican Consultative Council delegation to the 51st Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, and as members of the International Anglican Women’s Network representing the diversity of women from across the world-wide Anglican Communion, wish to reiterate our previously stated unequivocal commitment to remaining always in “communion” with and for one another.

We remain resolute in our solidarity with one another and in our commitment, above all else, to pursue and fulfill God’s mission in all we say and do.

Given the global tensions so evident in our church today, we do not accept that there is any one issue of difference or contention which can, or indeed would, ever cause us to break the unity as represented by our common baptism. Neither would we ever consider severing the deep and abiding bonds of affection which characterize our relationships as Anglican women.

We have been challenged in our time together by the desperately urgent issues of life and death faced by countless numbers of women and children in our communities. As a diverse delegation, we prayerfully reflected on these needs.

We thus reaffirm the conclusion of the statement presented by our delegation to this year’s Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women:

This sisterhood of suffering is at the heart of our theology and our commitment to transforming the whole world through peace with justice. Rebuilding and reconciling the world is central to our faith.

I love this statement, because these women are so deeply invested in the unity of the church-the real unity, where we work together with Christ to ease suffering and bring hope where there is no hope-that they are basically thumbing their noses at the leaders of the church and saying, “You can’t make us break communion with one another.  No matter what papers you may publish, or decrees you hand down, we will continue to be in relationship with one another.”

I can think of no more response in keeping with John’s gospel.  These women challenge us to think about how we can stay in unity with one another-not just within our own happy parish family, where unity is easily achieved-but with our brothers and sisters across the world.  Are we willing to pursue unity with the passion of our Anglican sisters?

Resources

Speech by South African Bishop

Primates’ Communique

Response to Primates’ Communique by Kathy Grieb, member of covenant drafting committee

Statement by Anglican women on unity 

Windsor Report


 

 

 

Easter 6, Year C, 2007

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Don’t you love receiving a gift?

Someone hands you a package and first you notice its shape and feel how heavy it is. You admire the gift’s packaging and if you’re polite, you read the card, which expresses the giver’s intent and affection.  Finally, after an appropriate period of time has passed, you begin untying bows, and tearing through paper to discover the mysterious object you can now call your own.  When you’re done admiring the gift, you thank the giver, completing the exchange. 

Gifts are a symbol of relationship, affection, love, or obligation.  We give gifts to welcome, to celebrate, to honor and occasionally to assuage guilt.  We also give gifts to mark thresholds in people’s lives.  Matt and I get married in roughly. . .27 days and many people have been honoring this transition through gifts.  This tradition is so formalized now, our society even codifies it through registries where the engaged couple goes to a store and tells the store what they want people to buy for them! 

Thankfully, even though the disciples are entering a new threshold of their lives, they do not get to register for which gift they’d like to receive.  Our Gospel reading today is John’s record of Jesus’ farewell discourse.  Jesus makes a long speech at the last supper, trying to prepare his disciples for his death.  In the section we read today, Jesus is reassuring his followers that they will still be in relationship with him after he leaves.  He says they will receive two gifts:  Jesus will give them his peace, and the Father will send them an Advocate-the Holy Spirit.

We don’t always know what gifts are good for us.  Matt and I recently went through our registries, taking out some of the excessive stuff that we registered for during a greedy binge.  For instance, we realized that just because we thought a Kitchen Aid mixer was cool didn’t mean we would ever use it or even have the space for it in a kitchen.  Sometimes the gifts you think you want, are not the wisest choices.  If the disciples got to choose their gift, they would choose to have Jesus stay with them, in bodily form, forever.  Like most of us, the idea of change makes them a little nervous and the idea of losing a dear friend makes them incredibly sad. 

But Jesus has better things in store.  Jesus knows that his death is not the end of a story, but the beginning of a new relationship between his Father and humanity. Jesus knows that the gifts he and the Father are giving will nourish God’s followers for the next two thousand years.

The first gift Jesus tells his listeners about is the gift of the Holy Spirit, whom he describes as our Advocate.  We’ll celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost at the end of May.  But before the Holy Spirit came rushing down upon those disciples waiting in the upper room, Jesus told his disciples about the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is God, and a gift from the Father.  The Holy Spirit’s role in our lives is twofold:  to teach us and to help us remember what Jesus has already told us. 

The word Advocate can also mean helper.  The Holy Spirit is sent to help us, specifically in terms of our relationship with the Father.  Jesus told us about the Father, and lived a life in complete union with the Father and through his death and resurrection united us with the Father. 

Remembering these things about Jesus is not easy, especially once Jesus ascends and no longer present to remind us.  God knows we humans need daily reminders.  Moses had only ascended to the mountain a few days before the Israelites started worshiping Golden calves!  We do not have a good track record with keeping God in our mind. 

So, to help us remember Jesus and follow Jesus, the Father sends the Holy Spirit to be our helper.  Not our nagger, not our judger, but our helper.  We can pray to the Holy Spirit to help us understand scripture.  We can pray to the Holy Spirit to help us know how to follow Jesus in our lives.  We can pray to the Holy Spirit for guidance when the church tries to sort out what Scripture means in relation to our modern society.  The Holy Spirit is a living, moving part of God that interacts with us directly

Today, [at the 11:00 o’clock service] we, with Greer’s parents and godparents will reaffirm our baptismal vows.  We make vows that are very profound and very difficult.  By saying our baptismal vows together, we remind ourselves that we have promised to turn away from Satan, evil, and our own sin and turn towards Jesus.  These promises are profoundly difficult to keep!  You should see the way Matt and I lick our chops as we check out the status of our registries online.  You can almost see the greed pouring out our ears.  As we turn away from Jesus and towards material things or other temptations, it is the Holy Spirit that can help us get back on the right track. 

Whatever temptations Greer may face, she can know that the Holy Spirit is her Advocate.  The Holy Spirit is for her and with her and will help her to follow Jesus.

The second gift is one Jesus leaves us.  Jesus gives us the gift of  his peace.  Worshiping a God for whom we have very little tangible experience is an anxiety producing experience at times!  Remember the golden calf.  Thankfully, we have access to Jesus’ peace, so we don’t need to create any golden calves.  Remember that Jesus was in complete union with his Father, so his peace is a peace beyond anything we can imagine.  His peace is the peace of God. 

I have a friend of mine who is job hunting at the moment and she tells me she is waiting to feel God’s peace to know she has found the right job.  The peace of God can be an indicator of a right path, but it can also be a spiritual soothing in a time of unrest.  One of the reasons we do healing prayer once a month here is to invite the peace of God to rest on people who are in some way in pain.  The peace of God is mysterious and can be elusive, but Jesus has given this peace to us as gift. 

Just like Matt and I can take back unwanted gifts to the store, we can refuse God’s gifts to us.  We can decide that we have enough of our own resources and we don’t really need the Holy Spirit or Jesus’s peace.  We can decide that we know absolutely what the Bible says and don’t need the Holy Spirit to gude us.  We can decide we need to be anxious and uptight and driven in order to succeed rather than inviting Jesus’ peace to rule our lives.  It is possible to reject the Father and Jesus’ gifts.

But why would we?  Why would we want to reject these wonderful gifts of relationship and connection.  Why would we not want to learn more about God, or feel a touch of the peace God feels when he looks upon us.  In these confusing and anxious times, why would we refuse these gifts?

God’s gifts for us are good gifts.  They may not be gifts we would register for or dream up for ourselves, but ultimately we don’t have really great taste.  The gifts we would register for are misguided.  Like the disciples, we want concrete answers.  We want to pin God down.  We want to pin our own lives down.  We want to know what will happen to us.  We want to know whether we’ll always be healthy or whether our children will do well for themselves.  We would register for the gifts of certainty, of uneventful lives.

But God’s gifts-the Holy Spirit and Jesus’ peace-are exactly the gifts we need to navigate the choppy waters of our lives.  They comfort us in times of trouble and give us deep joy when times are good.  They connect us when we are feeling lonely, and enter our relationships when we are surrounded by loved ones.

Jesus and the Father are handing us to fantastic packages, that contain gifts beyond our wildest imagination.  Are we going to open them?

Easter 4, Year C, 2007

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

A few years ago, my favorite show on television was Alias.  The premise of the show was this:  a young woman graduate student gets recruited by what she thinks is the CIA, only to learn it is actually a nefarious organization.  She then goes to the actual CIA and works as a double agent, to bring the bad organization down.  While I loved the show for its tough, yet sensitive main character-Sydney Bristow-one of the campy, fun things about the show is that no one ever, ever, ever stayed dead.

When the show begins, Sydney believes her mother drowned in a car years ago.  At the end of the first season she discovers that, in fact, her mother used the air from the tires to breathe and survived the drowning!  It also turns out her mother was a KGB spy, but that is an entirely different story.  In fact, this same character, Sydney’s mother, “died” at least two other times during the course of the series.  I think the third time finally stuck, but we’ll never know, since the series ended.

Sydney “died”, as well, or at least everyone thought she had.  In fact, she was kidnapped, became an assassin with an assumed name, and then lost her memory.  When she “came back to life” all her friends were shocked, particularly her boyfriend, who had since remarried.  (The new wife was an evil double agent, of course.)  And of course, that boyfriend “died” for awhile, too.

Sydney’s best friend, Francie, died, too.  But, Francie came back to life as an evil clone.  Her boss’s wife, Emily, died of cancer, but was actually holed up on an island, waiting for her husband.  The list goes on and on.  No one on Alias ever stayed dead!

Alias was not the most realistic television series ever, but somewhere in its soap opera twists and turns, it captured humanity’s deep desire for life, especially the power of life over death.

This power of life over death is a fundamental tenet of the Christian faith. 

God’s power over death was shown in Jesus’ ability to rise Lazarus from the dead, and then, of course, God the Father’s ability to raise Jesus from the dead.  Our reading from Acts today, when the apostle Peter is able to raise Tabitha from the dead is the next link in the biblical chain.  The book of Acts tells the story of the very early church.  Acts is the sequel to the Gospel of Luke, and begins with the disciples gathering in the upper room, waiting for the Holy Spirit, per the risen Jesus’s instructions.  The Holy Spirit does, indeed come, and the fledgling Christian church is born.  Can you imagine being on the first vestry?  These new Christians had to make tons of decisions every day-do we let in Jews and Gentiles?  Do you have to be circumcised to be a Christian?  Who is going to take care of the poor?  Who is going to take care of widows? 

The new believers had to have faith in their new leaders-men like Peter and James who had been with Jesus as his disciples.

Part of the coming of the Holy Spirit was imbuing these leaders with some of the same powers Jesus had-so that their followers would know they had God’s stamp of approval.  So, when Peter is able to raise Tabitha from the dead, God is showing the early believers that Peter is a chosen leader of the church, but also, that the theme of life triumphing over death will be a hallmark of the Christian faith.

We celebrate this triumph every Easter, at every Christian burial, and every time we consume the Eucharist.

But maybe, this is not enough.

Life is precious.  Life is the very breath of God.  From a baby’s first yelp to a dying person’s last jagged breath, the air we breathe reminds us we are also full of God’s breath, God’s spirit.  We are made in God’s image.  But are we behaving as if we believe in the deep value of life?

The church tends to focus on the quality of life issues either at the beginning or the very end of life-with abortion and the death penalty the most public issues.  What would it be like, if we expanded our energies to focus on the years in-between birth and death?

I grow increasingly concerned that we as a culture are losing touch with the preciousness of life.  I perceive it happening in two ways.  First, the obvious-the increase in acceptability of violence as entertainment.  Recently the New Yorker published an article about the television show 24.  (Now, before I continue let me make it clear that until recently I watched and enjoyed 24.  And I didn’t stop because of the violence, I stopped because it got boring.) 24 is the first television program to show Americans government agents using torture that is outside the bounds of American law and being rewarded for it.  In the past, television shows or movies showed the enemy using torture as a way to demonstrate the inhumanity of the enemy. 

This normalization of torture began having an affect on the real world American military. U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, actually traveled to Los Angeles to meet with the producers of 24 because the show has such a problematic impact on U.S. soldiers.  These young soldiers have spent their teenage years watching 24 and coming to believe the kind of torture its hero, Jack Bauer practices is acceptable, even though it is, in fact, illegal.   These young soldiers are having to be reigned in again and again as they cross the boundaries of acceptable treatment of prisoners. 

The culture of violence pervades many of my favorite shows and movies, and certainly some of the video games Matt plays.  But at what point do we cross the line as a culture?  Where is the line between acknowledging violence as an unfortunate, but interesting, part of life and glorifying it as a glamorous way to conduct one’s life?  Once again, I have no answers for you, but I think these are important questions to think and pray about as we go about making our daily choices.

The second way of disrespecting life that I’ve observed lately is the way we treat one another verbally.  For some reason, this seems to be the year where out of control stars seem to think it is okay to insult Jewish people, black people, gay people, heck, even their own children. 

In March of this year, a blogger, Kathy Sierra, who blogs about the one-would-think uncontroversial topic of computing technology began receiving more and more threatening anonymous comments towards her on her and others’ blogs, culminating in a death threat.  This began a conversation in the blogging community about the problem of increasingly sexist, sexual, and violent language being used against women in the commentary section of even mainstream websites like Salon.com and Slate.com.  Measures are being taken to filter out such comments, but even that they were made in the first place is deeply disturbing.

The hip-hop community has responded to Don Imus’s comments about the Rutger’s women’s basketball team by beginning a conversation within the hip-hop communitiy about what words are and are not appropriate to promote in albums and videos.

While they may not kill, words can contain incredible violence.  Words can undermine someone’s entire sense of identity, even humanity.  The language we use to speak to one another reflects how we see the other person.  Do we see them as a threat?  As less than ourselves?

Part of respecting life is respecting those made in God’s image.  Everyone on this planet has been made in God’s image.  Everyone has a soul.  One of the first jobs human beings were given was the job of naming-Adam was asked to name all the animals and then his wife, Eve.  This power of naming is the power of giving life and identity. 

My neighbor just had a baby and already we’re calling her names.  Sometimes they are meaningless names like Pepper Pot or Anna Banana, but just as often we’re calling her precious, lovely, smart, perfect-we are identifying the precious humanity in her and calling it out. 

There is no reason to stop this kind of naming once babies become children or children become adults.  Part of our job as Christians is to remind each other who we are-We are beloved, precious in the sight of God, favored, part of a human family.

Celebrating and respecting life is not just about deciding when human life begins or debating end of life issues, but valuing our own life and the lives of those around us.  When Peter raised Tabitha from the dead, he was not just doing a magic trick, he was affirming the goodness of life, of Tabitha’s life.  The writer of Acts tell us that she was a woman who did many good works.  Tabitha was a whole person with a story and relationships-her resurrection was not just to impress the new Christians, but to bring life where there was death, wholeness where there had been grief.

Her resurrection was a reminder that no matter how much evil or violence or death may lap at our heels, ultimately we belong to a God who pours such abundant life upon us, we cannot help but give that life to others.

Easter Sunday, Year C, 2007

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

A friend of mine, a New Testament scholar, has a very clear idea of the perfect Easter sermon.  The minister would climb in the pulpit, say, “Alleluia!  Christ is risen!”, promptly sit down, and let the choir do the real preaching.

It’s a little early in my ministry to attempt such a feat, but I understand what she means.  No spoken words can capture the awe-filled experience of the women at the tomb. 

Mary Magdalena, Mary the mother of James, Joanna and their friends, have faithfully followed Jesus from Galilee.  They have watched him be betrayed, anxiously awaited the results of his trial, and watched, aghast, as he was crucified.  Then, as they make their way toward the tomb, their spices in hand, they realize something is terribly wrong.  Jesus’ body is nowhere to be found.

We now have the scope of history and years of theological reflection to guide our understanding of this empty tomb, but for these women the empty tomb was horrifying.  Mary, Mary and Joanna had been on an emotional rollercoaster the last few weeks. Following a leader they thought would save them somehow, only to watch his story end, not with victory, but with death.  An empty tomb was just adding insult to injury.

Imagine their shock when the men in dazzling white approach them and tell them the reason Jesus is not in the tomb-he is risen!  Dazed, they return to the disciples to tell them the good news.

The Marys and Joanna may not have had the benefit of the long view of history, but we do.

During our Easter Vigil [tonight/last night] we read passages from the Old and New Testaments that give us context to help us understand the enormity of the resurrection.  After all, the resurrection is not an independent event, but the culmination of thousands of years of relationship between God and humankind.  This story-of God’s relationship with humanity was also told during the seder dinner on Thursday.

The Old Testament tells the story of a God who carefully created a world filled with beauty and meaning out of chaos.  This God created humans in his own image-creatures with the capacity to think and love and choose.  For better or wrose, these early people are too curious and independent to follow God the way God expects.  God goes on to try again and  chooses a particular group of people-the nation of Israel–to follow him.  He creates this nation through Abraham and Sarah’s bravery and years later, calls Moses to free the Israelites when they are captured as slaves by the Egyptians. 

The Isralites successfully escape, but unfortunately, like all people, the Israelites are unable to follow God perfectly.  They have a hard time trusting a God who is so mysterious and ephemeral.  They want evidence and constant reminders of his faithfulness.   Even in the midst of God giving them a law to govern themselves, they betray him and begin worshiping a Golden Calf. 

As a consequence, these Israelites then spend 40 years wandering in the desert, before they enter the Promised land.  Again, they are unable to follow God even when they have this land.  Their society ends up being an unjust one-that takes advantage of orphans, widows and the poor.  Eventually, God calls the prophets to warn Israel that it must change its ways.  However, the prophets also hint that God is preparing a new kind of relationship between himself and humankind. 

The Prophet Ezekiel records God as saying, “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

Rather than trying to change his followers’ behavior, God promises to change our hearts.  And to do this, he sends us Jesus.

Mary Magdalena, Mary, and Joanna have seen the enactment of this promise first hand.  They have felt the shift in their own hearts as they came to love this Jesus who was more than just a man.  They have seen his ability to love people from all walks of life.  They have seen his power to heal the sick, restore sight to the blind, and restore the ability to walk to those who were lame.  They have heard Jesus teach with confidence about God and the Kingdom of God.  They have seen his bravery as he stood up to the powers of the day, challenging their empty faith.

Imagine with me, the wonder these women must have felt when they realized their Jesus, their friend, their Lord, whom they thought was dead, was alive again.  Imagine integrating this mind blowing news into your idea of who Jesus was.  Imagine the fear and joy and awe these women must have felt as they fully understood, for the first time, that Jesus truly was more than a human being-Jesus was God.

No longer is their image of God an abstract one.  In Jesus, they have found God enfleshed.  They now know God as someone who cares for them deeply, personally.  Their hearts now respond to God not out of fear or respect, but out of love.

You and I have known Jesus was God for as long as we first heard the Christmas story, but our minds still have a difficult time deeply understanding the joyous implications of the incarnation and the resurrection.  In coming to earth in bodily form, Jesus blessed our lives.  He hallowed what it meant to be a human, so that we, too, can live holy lives.

By rising again from the dead, he transformed our lives.  No longer are we trapped by the limitations of this world or by our bodies’ natural infirmities.  Not only do we now have free access to God, but when our physical lives are over, we will join God fully in the Kingdom of God. 

That transformation is not limited to what happens to our bodies after we die.  The resurrection transforms the way we live here and now. With the resurrection, with Christ’s victory, we can trust that in the cosmic scheme of things, God wins.  Good wins.  This knowledge can give us a deep rooted confidence as we face seemingly insurmountable odds when helping the poor, the sick, and the uneducated.  We do not need to fear governments as we hold them accountable to be governments of justice.  We do not need to tremble in fear as we begin to right the wrongs that have been done to our planet.  The resurrection frees us to pray and to act with a holy abandon.

The new life Christ gives us in his resurrection is for our whole lives-our spiritual lives, yes, but also our intellectual, physical, and emotional lives.  The resurrection calls us to an intimate relationship with God, who has experienced all our joys and sorrows, and then broken the power of death over us.  If we give God a chance, by opening ourselves and our lives to him through prayer and discernment-we, like the Marys, Joanna, and the disciples, can live transformed lives, resurrection lives, lives marked not be fear and timidity, but by wholeness and joy.

Alleluia!  Christ is risen!

Easter 6, Year B, 2006

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Today we celebrate youth Sunday.  Twice a year we take a day to honor the young people among us. 

We are so proud of our young people and their many skills and gifts and charming personalities.  “Ah”, we think, “I remember when I was young and full of potential and life was all ahead of me. . .”  But before you wax nostalgic on your own youth, or start to envy our fine young people their futures, shall I remind you about the ravages of adolescence? 

Perhaps you sailed through childhood and adolescence without any unpleasant experiences, but I’m guessing for many of you, your teenage years were at the least. . .complicated.  Maybe like me you had a raging case of acne and hideous metal braces from which you are still recovering.  Maybe you were beautiful, and so, learned to be valued for that beauty and not for yourself.  Maybe you were brilliant and labeled a nerd.  Maybe you were not so bright, and stuffed in a locker.  Any way you turn it, for most people junior high and high school have at least some element of trauma to them.

Perhaps the most painful experience of adolescence is that of love.  Do you remember?  Do you remember that first person on whom you had a crush?  That consuming desire.  You could think of nothing else.  When he or she missed a day of school your day was ruined.  When he or she began dating someone else, you wanted to weep. 

Perhaps you were unlucky in love as a teenager and remained on the sidelines or maybe you were even UNLUCKIER and did fall in love, have it reciprocated, and then had your heart broken. 

Do you remember how devastating this was?   How it brought up huge philosophical and theological question?  What is love if love can be lost?  Why should we love if it only causes pain?  Why would God make love so painful?  Frankly, some adults are still working out the pain caused by an early broken heart.

I thought of these painful experiences as I read our Epistle for today.  Both our Epistle and Gospel were written by the Johannine Christian Communities of the very early church.  You’ll notice similar themes of abiding in God’s love throughout both readings.  The phrase that leapt out to me this week, was the phrase from the 1st Letter of John-“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” 

This concept, of there being no fear in perfect love, is antithetical to our anxiety ridden culture.  Romantic love is inherently fearful, isn’t it?  We have hour long dramas like, What about Brian? based on the idea that love is inherently desirable, but difficult to get.  On the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy this week, the true love of one character dies immediately after proposing, and other couple resume an adulterous affair.  The message:  love is risky, and contains great potential for pain. 

We are afraid of not falling in love, of having no one fall in love with us, of falling in love with the wrong person, of having that person fall in love with another person, the list goes on and on.    Woody Allen would not have a career if love was not a little bit terrifying.

So, what in the world is this perfect, fearless love of which the Johannine community speaks?

First of all, it is NOT romantic love.  The New Testament seems fundamentally disinterested in romantic love.  The writers are not against romantic love, per se, they have had such profound experiences of God’s love for them, that the writers understand romantic love can only be understood in light of God’s love.

In Matthew 22, some Saducees were trying to trick Jesus and started asking him what happens if a woman has several husbands who die.  Who will be her husband in heaven?  This seems like a valid question, right? We think of  romantic love as an eternal commodity. In our culture, achieving romantic love is the ultimate goal in life. If someone falls in love with us, it gives us value and security.   We want to know that we will be with that person for all eternity.  Jesus, however, lets us know that romantic love, is not eternal love.  He replies to the Saducees, “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.”

Romantic love is wonderful, and is a subset of God’s love for us, but it is not the kind of love that will sustain us beyond this world.

Romantic love begins with us, as humans.  Romantic love ends with us. 

In these Johannine passages, God speaks of agape-or God’s abounding love.  God’s love begins with God, not with us.  We often define God as love, but in reality, God defines love.  Let me say that again.  We often define God as love, but in reality God defines love.

When we project our ideas of what love is onto God, we come up with a warm and fuzzy picture of God that has nothing to do with reality.  Instead, our passage today invites us to define love through God’s eyes.  And God’s love is not the self centered, anxiety ridden romantic love of our culture, but a love of abundant hospitality.  A love that is so secure, so perfect that it drives away any insecurity, any fear. 

So, the second quality of agape love is that it begins with God.  Only God can generate a love that is entirely selfless and welcoming and abundant.  Agape love demands nothing in return. 

Agape love moves out from God towards us.  Agape love pursues us, rather relentlessly, throughout our lives.  This love is so powerful that it fills us and crowds out any fear or anxiety about love that we may have. 

The author of 1st John writes, “We love because he first loved us.”  What’s wonderful about God’s agape love, is that it redeems and amplifies all other kinds of love. 

God does not ask us to choose agape love over romantic love-in fact agape love makes romantic love infinitely easier and more rewarding.

When we experience God’s agape love for us, the experience creates a life changing moment. For the first time we can stop worrying about whether the love we receive is temporary.  For the first time we can trust that the Being we love, loves us back.  Not only loves us back, but loves us first. 

When we know that God loves us, with a powerful and consuming love, we become secure in ourselves in a way we have not experienced before.  And when we are secure in the knowledge that we are loved, it becomes easier for us to love others.  We stop looking to other people to fill up our empty places.  We stop needing approval and affirmation from humans.  We stop our clingy neediness because we have become filled.  Filled with a love that accepts us and challenges us.

This love challenges us to love in a way that looks out for the good of the other.  When we are filled up with this kind of love, we are able to reach out to others, to take emotional risks with our loved ones, to stop protecting ourselves.  Agape love makes us generous with our time, money, energy and emotional presence.  We stop focusing on our own fears and limitations and begin to celebrate the abundance of God’s love for all of us.

Perhaps the biggest gift we can give our young people is to pray that they might experience the depth of God’s love for them.  It is no coincidence that many people come to faith while teenagers.  Teens have a special capacity to understand the incredible good news of Jesus’ love for them.  They feel love and heartbreak with an intensity that is only a memory for most of us. 

An experience of God’s agape love could change the direction of their-and our-lives forever.  An experience of God’s agape love could help these teens choose life partners who are healthy and supportive and life giving. 

Remember, when you pray and contemplate God’s love for you–Agape is not the limited, fickle love of romance, but the eternal, constant, abundant love of the God who created you and redeems you.   And that love can transform the romantic love in your life into a healthy, mutual love marked by hospitality and integrity.  And that-is good news.

Easter 4, Year B, 2006

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

While I am normally a mature–and let’s be honest, sophisticated person–every time I hear Handel’s Messiah, I giggle hysterically when the choristers belt out, “We like sheep. . .”  Sure I know Handel uses the word “like” in order to make a simile, but for a brief moment it feels as if Handel has taken a break from telling us the glorious story of the birth of Christ and is just expressing affection for. . .well. . .sheep.

Maybe my giggles are just a way of disguising my discomfort.  After all, Handel goes on to compare US to sheep who are easily led astray.  US!  We are independent, free thinking, over educated human beings, not sheep!  Sure, we have a tendency to go astray or follow the crowd occassionally.  Baaaa. Once in a while some of us go out and buy something because someone else made it look really cool.  Baaa.  And, sometimes we fudge ethically to make a little more money so we can keep up with the Joneses.   Baaa.  And every so often we go into the voting booth, having done no research on the positions of the candidate.  Baaaa.

Okay.  Fine.  Humans may have a few sheeplike qualities. But still, we can trust our families, our friends, our culture, our government to guide us wisely, right?    If we decided to structure our life around the principles that we found on television, we’d turn out okay. 

And if trusting the television felt shaky, we could certainly trust the government to help us make right choices. 

And if trusting the government did not work out for us, we could certainly trust the Church, right? 

Well, not necessarily.  In today’s reading from the Gospel of John, Jesus warns us about the dangers of shepherds who are only hired hands.   Jesus is speaking to a group of Pharisees.  A few days back, Jesus cured a blind man.  Instead of congratulating the blind man, maybe buying him a round at the local watering hole, the Pharisees immediately start accusing the no-longer-blind man of lying and then pump him for details about Jesus.  When he does not give the Pharisees the answers they are looking for, they kick the formerly blind man out of town! 

Jesus hears about this event comes back into town, finds the blind man and the Pharisees, and begins telling the Pharisees this long parable about the Good Shepherd.  We tend to think of the parable of the Good Shepherd as a sweet one.  Gentle Jesus carefully leading us. . . but Jesus uses this story to ream out the Pharisees for being such jerks and bad caretakers of their flocks. 

Jesus’ mention of shepherds would remind the Pharisees of Ezekiel 34-in which the Lord berates the Kings of Israel for taking advantage of their people, while benefiting themselves.  The Lord says through the prophet Ezekiel, “Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep.”  Jesus updates the image and portrays the Pharisees as false shepherds who do not protect the sheep.  You can imagine their outrage. 

They had been hard at work, crossing their doctrinal Ts and dotting their theologial “I”s.  Who is Jesus to tell them they have been careless?  They did not think they had done anything wrong at all.  In fact, they had been upholding traditions and truth, while Jesus burst in from nowhere to disrupt all their hard work. 

The Pharisees miss the point-Jesus is interested in the welfare of the sheep, not the details of how the sheep fold is constructed.

But Jesus, in the parable of the Good Shepherd, is doing much more than criticizing the Pharisees.  He lays himself out as the counterpoint to the image of the hired hand.  The hired hand, by the very nature of his job, is not terribly interested in the welfare of the sheep.  He will do a good job protecting the sheep as long as there are not difficult challenges, but the hired hand does not love the sheep like the Good Shepherd does.  The hired hand is ultimately most interested in the hired hand’s welfare. 

But the Good Shepherd’s eye is always on the sheep.  The Good Shepherd cultivates intimacy with the sheep.  He will guide the sheep, find the sheep when they are lost, and ultimately lay his life down for the sheep, rather than have them be attacked by the wolf. 

Who do we choose as our shepherds?  We appoint husbands, wives, lovers, parents, children, employers, best friends, movie stars, politicians, priests, writers, teachers, and philosophers as our shepherds, but even the best of these is only human, and subject to all of human weakness.  At their best a devoted spouse carries only the shadow of the love that the Good Shepherd has for you, the best philosopher carries only a shadow of the wisdom of the Good Shepherd, the best friend has only the shadow of the loyalty of the Good Shepherd. 

Of course we are called to be in relationship and to love and learn from the people in our lives, but we must be careful under whose leadership we place ourselves.  Recently I watched Enron:  The Smartest Guys in the Room.  This documentary traced the many steps that led to the Enron scandal.  What struck me most is the culture of ethical murkiness that Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skillings created.  Traders who came into the company with no illegal background, quickly assimilated into a culture that rewarded illegal transactions as long as they made the company money.   And, as we all know, the average person who worked for Enron walked away penniless, while the corporate leaders made hundreds of millions of dollars.  These shepherds did not care about their sheep.

Enron is a dramatic example, but every day we have choices to make about whom we follow.  Whether it is choosing an employer, a spouse, a friend, a social club, a political party or a church, we put ourselves in a position of trusting.  We trust that others will look out for our best interest, but that is not always the case. 

The good news is that The Good Shepherd does always look out for our best interest.  Following the Good Shepherd may not lead to instant gratification, wealth or conventional success.  Following the Good Shepherd may not even always feel good.  But we can trust that the Good Shepherd knows us, loves us, and will guide us with care.  We can trust that the Good Shepherd will be with us in pleasant pastures, beside still waters and through the dark and dangerous places in our journeys.  

You cannot get so lost that the Good Shepherd will not find you, put you over his shoulders and bring you back to the fold.  You cannot be so threatened that the Good Shepherd will not stand between you and the threat; and help you absorb the pain.  Most of all, you can trust the Good Shepherd to lead you into a life of integrity and meaning. 

The Good Shepherd is a shepherd who will not abuse you, not manipulate you, not take advantage of you.  He will use you, but he will use you for good, both good in the world and good for your own development as a Christian. 

To follow the Good Shepherd, we must know the Good Shepherd.  Earlier in this passage from John, Jesus explains that the sheep follow the Good Shepherd because they know his voice.  We must learn the Good Shepherd’s voice in order to be his followers.  If we don’t know his voice, we have no way to sort out what which is the Good Shepherd’s way and which is merely the way of hired hands. 

There is no magic trick to learning the Good Shepherd’s voice-the easiest way is to learn about the Good Shepherd by reading the Bible.  A lot of people in America have a lot to say about Jesus these days.  Instead of relying on them, or even on your priests, by reading the Gospels and Epistles you can start learning Jesus’ voice for yourself.  And if you create some silence in your life, and if you listen carefully, you might even hear the Good Shepherd call you by name.

Easter 2, Year B, 2006

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

You’re working hard alongside your twin brother, minding your own business, when this incredibly dynamic man, Jesus, persuades you to leave your steady job to become a homeless wanderer.  You’re a practical person, so this bold decision is at once thrilling and terrifying.  You are also a grown man, and frankly, not entirely comfortable with your new role as a follower.

While you love Jesus and the other disciples, you have also been driven crazy by this itinerant life you are living.  Also, and you would never admit this to anyone, you’re a little jealous that you’re not one of Jesus’ favorites.  He’s always taking Peter and James and John aside and having some deep conversation.  And Jesus never laughs as hard as when Peter says something completely impetuous and borderline inappropriate. 

Whenever you have spoken up, Jesus has always used it as a “teachable moment”, which made you feel like an idiot.  For instance, this one time, after days of being yanked around from one town to the next, and listening to Jesus’s words of wisdom, which frankly, didn’t always make sense, this one time you ask Jesus HOW we’re supposed to follow you if you don’t even know where you’re going and Jesus turns your question around and starts talking about how he is the way and the truth and the life, but never actually answers your question.

So, in short, you’re tired and a little irritated, but you love Jesus and you can tell there is something really special about him.  You’re waiting to see what happens.  You follow him to Jerusalem and before you know it, he has been arrested and killed. 

So much for this great leader, this man so close to the Lord he called God “my father”.  You’re so sick of listening to Peter and the other disciples process this tragedy that you head out on your own for awhile.  You need quiet.  You need to get your head together.  What are you going to do now?  Can you get your old job back?  What is your mother-in-law going to say?

When you get back to the room where the disciples have been camped out, it is in total chaos.  The women are chirping away, the men are laughing and talking a mile a minute.  For a brief moment you wonder if they have gotten into the wine left over from Thursday night, but the glow about them isn’t one of drunkenness.  When you finally get one of them quieted down enough to talk with you, he starts babbling on about having seen Jesus right here in this room.  Today!  Three days after his death.

Your stomach clenches.  The last few days, heck the last few years have been so weird, so intense, and this latest twist makes your head spin.  Your friends must be so upset they are having mass hallucinations.  That’s the only logical explanation, right? 

You figure they just need a good dose of reality.  So you say those famous words, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”  All you want is a little confirmation.  It is crazy to go around talking about some resurrected man if you don’t have any proof!  But still, there is something about the way Mary Magdalene clenches her jaw.  She just seems so sure.

Frankly, by about the third day of waiting around for this apparition of Jesus, the other disciples are starting to look at you nervously, as if perhaps they DID have some mass vision caused by wish fulfillment.  By the sixth day, your clenched stomach has softened into the dull ache of resignation.

On the seventh day, you are back in the house.  Frankly, you are considering whether to cut your losses and head home.  All of a sudden you feel a chill from the bottom of your spine to the back of your neck.  When you turn around, there he is.  In the flesh.  Well, kind of in the flesh.  There isn’t anything spectral about him, but he isn’t quite normal either.  He seems to be completely solid, but also. . .and you know this sounds crazy.  . .but it is as if the laws of nature do not apply to him.  When he comes in the house, for instance, he doesn’t open the door, he just. . .walks through it.  It is not as if he is making some kind of big showy statement, it is as if he just didn’t think about it.  Like those kind of human details are just minutiae.

And this time, Jesus does not turn to Peter, or John, or James, he turns right to YOU.  He looks at you with this mix of compassion and challenge and says, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” 

But at this moment, you know you don’t need to touch his wounds, to verify your experience. 

At this moment every experience you have ever had with Jesus starts whirling around your mind.  You have to sit down because all those opaque words start becoming crystal clear.  Jesus isn’t just a way, Jesus is THE way, THE life, THE truth.  Jesus isn’t just a holy man, he is Holiness itself.  Jesus wasn’t being cute when he referred to the Lord as his Father, the Lord really is. . .his Father. 

You start to shake as you realize that you have spent the last couple of years in the presence of God, but suddenly you feel a hand on your shoulder.  When you look up, you are looking into Jesus’ eyes.  And yes, they are vast and hold all the mysteries of the universe, but they are also utterly tender and full of compassion and affection.  And when you realize the enormity of Jesus’ love for you, God’s love for you, Jesus seems to nod a little bit.  He pats you on the shoulder and goes on to greet Mary Magdalene and the other disciples. 

Suddenly you realize, this experience with Jesus was not just a three year gig.  You somehow understand that the rest of your life will be devoted to telling people about Jesus, explaining this extraordinary experience of meeting God face to face.  And the even more extraordinary fact of God’s utter love for the human race.