Gospel

Easter 4, 2015 (Preached at Amherst Presbyterian Church)

/ Sarah

Good morning!

It is such a treat to be at Amherst Presbyterian Church this morning!  Having the family all get into one car on Sunday morning is a rare experience for us.

While it can feel like Matt and I have two very different congregations, or flocks, being here with you on Good Shepherd Sunday is a great reminder that really we are all, Presbyterian or Episcopalian, part of Jesus’ one big flock of sheep.

When we think of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, we often think of the story from Luke, in which Jesus compares himself to a shepherd who has a flock of 100 sheep, but when one goes missing, he drops everything to find that sheep.  That passage gives us a feeling of deep security—that no matter what happens to us in our lives, we know Jesus will stay with us.

But our passage today is getting to a slightly different aspect of the Good Shepherd.  And our story really begins at the beginning of the 9th chapter of John.

The Pharisees are shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you, because Jesus has healed a blind man. As you know, Jesus was all about taking people who had been exiled from their flocks by disease or demon possession or blindness and healing them so they could re-join community.

The Pharisees, rather than delighting in the blind man’s return to his flock—his return to community—are immediately suspicious and begin a line of inquiry into the healing.  First they are convinced he’s lying, and after interviewing him twice and confirming with his family that he had been born blind, they are so annoyed by the claims he makes about Jesus, that they exile him once again and force him to leave the city.

Usually when Jesus heals someone, we never hear from that character again.  But in this instance, Jesus is so outraged by the Pharisees’ treatment of this man, that he seeks the exiled man out and has this deeply profound conversation with him, in which he reveals that he is the Son of Man.  Jesus treats the man, not as someone who should be exiled, but as someone who is special enough to understand Jesus’ divine nature.

And when the Pharisees start huffing and puffing again, Jesus tells this story about the Good Shepherd.

He compares the Pharisees to a hired hand.  The Pharisees are supposed to be taking care of God’s people, but somehow along the way they have lost track. They have become more interested in rules than in welcoming all people to God’s flock.  If a true threat comes to attack the sheep, the hired hand will run away.  The Pharisees, despite their best intentions, do not have God’s people’s best interests at heart.

Jesus goes on to say that in contrast to the unreliable hired hand, he is the good shepherd.  He foreshadows his own death when he explains that the good shepherd is willing to lay down his life for the sheep.  Jesus is utterly and totally committed to his flock.  Whether he is tracking down the formerly blind man, or walking towards his death in Jerusalem, the Jesus of the Gospel of John is completely in control and completely loving.

This love he has for humanity isn’t rooted in how wonderful we are.  After all, we are the kind of people to berate a blind man for being healed!  Jesus’ love for us is ultimately rooted in the love he has been given from his Father. Jesus is able to love us, because his Father loves him and his Father loves us.  Jesus invites us into that loving relationship as we become members of his flock.

In fact, it is in the Gospel of John where Jesus instructs his disciples to “…love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”  What makes our Christian communities distinctive—or what should make our Christian communities distinctive—is the love we have for one another.

We follow a shepherd who sought out and welcomed every kind of person.  The wealthy, the poor, the old, the young, the healthy and the invalid were all invited to follow Jesus.  Jesus broke down the barriers between people and God, but also broke down the barriers between people themselves.  The Good Shepherd’s flock now truly contains every type of person you could imagine from communities across the world.

Including people who are different from the mainstream in our flocks can be challenging.  We are more comfortable with people who look like us, who have stories to which we can relate.  But just as Jesus always looked outward to gather in more and more people into his flock, we too are called to open our minds to who belongs.

In 2003, at Trinity Episcopal church in Torrington, CT, the Rev. Audrey Scanlan and Children’s minister Linda Snyder got a phone call from a parishioner who had a son with autism.  Bringing his son to a regular church service was proving extremely challenging.  His son did not have the executive function to sit quietly for an hour and changes in light and sound could be deeply upsetting to the child.  Audrey and Linda worked with the family to create a church service to which this child and his friends could be fully themselves.  One in which they were not required to sit still and in which the liturgy was simple, hands on and consistent.  The service was a huge success.  Many families in the community who had felt completely isolated from church, finally felt welcomed back into the flock.  Audrey and Linda published a curriculum called Rhythms of Grace and many churches across the country now use programs like it to welcome to church members of the community who ordinarily would not feel comfortable or welcome in a church service.

Providing a way for children with autism to worship Jesus in a safe environment is the way Trinity Episcopal Church decided to live like Jesus’ flock.  But each church community has its own set of opportunities.  If Sweet Briar does close, Amherst will undergo a transformation over the next few years.  You don’t know who will buy the property, what kind of people will be moving to town or what their needs might be.

But our Good Shepherd invites us to keep our eyes open and our hearts welcoming.  Just as we take care of each other in love, we also reach out in love, ready to incorporate whoever needs us into our life together.

The Good Shepherd will lead us—whether we are here at Amherst Pres or up the road at St. Paul’s Episcopal.  All we have to do is follow.

Amen.

Easter 2, Homily for Celtic Service, Year B, 2014

/ Sarah

Poor Thomas.

The disciples have been huddled together for a week, terrified after Jesus’ body has been missing from the tomb.  Thomas is out picking up some sandwiches or getting a breath a fresh air and misses Jesus’ visit to the disciples completely!

When he gets back they are all abuzz with their amazing encounter.  Thomas is skeptical.  Or maybe Thomas is just protecting his heart.  He is grieving Jesus, he misses his friend.  It sounds way too good to be true that Jesus could be alive.  He wants evidence.  He wants to put his hands in the holes that pierced his side.

And yet, when Jesus reappears, all of Thomas’ defenses fall away.  Once he encounters the living, resurrected Jesus, Thomas doesn’t need proof.  It is enough for Thomas to be in his Lord’s presence.  Encountering the living God eliminates all his skepticism.

We live in a skeptical age.  We live in an age where we just assume someone will eventually hack into our email or steal our credit card number.  We assume all celebrities will eventually disappoint us and we just wait for our heroes to fall.  We live in a culture that chews up half truth and scandal for breakfast every morning.

We arm ourselves with cynicism and sarcasm and dark humor, because we believe it protects us from our grief and fear.  We grieve the loss of the world’s innocence and we fear for our own well being and the well being of those we love.

Thomas’ good news, is our good news, too.  Jesus is resurrected.

The light defeats the dark.  Love wins.  No matter how hard the forces of darkness, death and despair try to attack us, ultimately Jesus’ light and love will defeat them.  Sometimes that light may seem like a tiny flicker in a pitch black dungeon, but by the end of time that flicker of light will illuminate all of creation.

And we get to help spread that light by living lives that are full of joy and hope and trust—the antidote to our skeptical age.

At Trinity Episcopal Church in Princeton I met a lovely woman from India who was a Keralan Christian.  I had never heard of such a thing, but it turns out that when Roman Catholic missionaries arrived in Kerala, India in the 1480s to evangelize the local population, they found a thriving Christianity already present.  No one in the Roman Catholic world had any idea this Christian community existed.  What a moment of holy surprise for these priests to realize that Jesus had over 1000 years on them in Kerala!

The Keralan Christians trace their faith all the way back to a missionary disciple named Thomas.  Thomas’s moment of faith in the upper room transformed his entire life. Legend has it that our Thomas traveled thousands of miles during his life, joyfully sharing his faith in Jesus across the world.

May Thomas be our guide as we discover with delight, over and over again, the power of the real presence of Christ in our lives.  And like Thomas, may we share that delight with others.

Amen.

Easter, Year B, 2015

/ Sarah

Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome are grieving.  They are expecting their Jesus, the one they loved, to be in a tomb.  They are going to anoint his body and prepare him for a proper burial.  They are coming because they love him.  They are coming to do right by him.

But Jesus is not there.

So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

The original ending of the Gospel of Mark does not give us the resurrection we expect. There is no resurrected body.  There are no alleluias. Jesus is just. . .gone.

Jesus is on the loose.

This is, and this should be, terrifying to the women who have come to anoint him.

When a person is nailed to a cross, and pierced with a spear, when his blood flows out of his body, he ought to die.  The rules of biology and logic demand death.

The women who loved Jesus expect death.

And Jesus experienced death.

But not for long.

From the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in the Gospel of Mark, God has been rewriting the rules.  At Jesus’ baptism, the heavens tear open, the Holy Spirit descends, and the Father’s voice booms over the crowd, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well pleased.”

God the Father announces to the crowd, and to us, that everything about life as a human being is about to change.  God breaks into human history in a new way and reclaims us for his own.

Now, humans tried to control that holy in-breaking.  Some tried to control the in-breaking by ignoring Jesus.  Some tired to control the in-breaking by insisting Jesus follow the rules.   Some controlled the in-breaking by turning Jesus over to the authorities.

Those authorities helped control the situation even further by killing Jesus.

But when God decides to reclaim his people, not even death can stop him.

God the Father resurrects his Son, changing every rule.  Jesus is on the loose.

Thousands of years later, we haven’t learned this lesson.  We still think we can control God’s in-breaking in our lives.  We still think we can pin Jesus down.  We set aside one day a week to worship him.  We celebrate his birthday in December.  We give him a week in the spring to remember his death and resurrection.

But Jesus doesn’t do well in confined spaces.

Jesus is on the loose in your life.

Before Jesus’ death and resurrection, we were owned by sin and death.  They were our masters and we were forced to do their bidding.  But God defeated sin and death through Jesus’ resurrection and now we belong to God.

You may think you can control Jesus by setting aside Sunday to think about him and going back to your real life the rest of the week, but good luck with that.  The God who created the Universe is reclaiming you. The God who broke through the heavens, and became a human being is reclaiming you. The God who defeated sin and death is reclaiming you.

Jesus is at loose in your life when you brush your teeth in the morning.  Jesus is at loose in your life when you write your Facebook status or balance your checkbook.  Jesus is at loose in your life when you commute to work, when your boss gives you a dressing down, when you turn on your television at night.  There is no moment in your life that is apart from Jesus and his Father who raised him from the dead.

Think about that for a moment and now tell me that the ending of the Gospel of Mark doesn’t just about sum up your reaction.

Terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

The idea of Jesus loose in our lives is terrifying.  At any moment he could ask us to reconcile with someone we loathe, give away the money that gives us security, humble ourselves when we want to advance.  How can we know this mysterious resurrected Jesus has our best interests at heart?

The author of the Gospel of Mark gives us a little clue about this mysterious resurrected Jesus to calm our anxiety.  The heavenly messenger at the empty tomb tells the women “. . .Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”

Why Galilee?

If you turn to the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark, you’ll see that Jesus first arrives on the scene in Galilee.  Mark is pointing us back to the beginning of his Gospel.  The resurrected Jesus is the same Jesus that taught and healed and exorcised demons.  The Jesus that is on the loose in your lives is not some zombie, not some spiritual Santa Claus, spying on you in judgment. He is the Jesus who loved men, women, and children; brought wholeness out of brokenness; and spoke truth to power.  He is the Jesus who loved Peter, even through Peter’s betrayal.  He is the Jesus who loved us so much that he wanted to identify fully with our human experience and was willing to die, so that we might be united with God.

This is the Jesus who is on the loose, loving us, healing us and bringing us eternal life.

And for that we can heartily say,

Alleluia, Christ is risen!

Good Friday, Year B, 2015

/ Sarah

Good Friday is a day that exposes us.

The rest of the calendar year we can imagine that we are one of the disciples, lovingly following Jesus, doing our best to live as God wants us to live.

But on Good Friday we remember.

We remember that before human beings could be united to Jesus, first we had to be exposed.

We had to be exposed as traitors, like Judas.  We had to be exposed as cowards, like Pilate.  We had to be exposed as fair weather friends, like Peter.  We had to be exposed as murderous and gullible, like the crowds.

We had to be exposed as people who would sacrifice their own God in order to ease their anxiety.

On Good Friday we think about Jesus on the cross, and we shudder because we aren’t so sure we’d be one of the faithful women who stays by his side even through death.  We are afraid we’d be a member of the crowd.  If Jesus were killed today, we might just be one of the internet commenters sure that if he had just followed the rules, just done what he was supposed to do he wouldn’t have been killed. We would shake our head, and found a way to blame him for his own death.

Good Friday exposes us as complicated people.  We love God, but are too broken to follow him perfectly.  We are Christian, but we are also sinners.  We are redeemed by God, but we are still anxious, judgmental, addicted, selfish, controlling and out of control.

You would think Jesus would wash his hands of us.  Any rational God would roll his eyes and walk away from humanity as a lost cause.

But Jesus does not walk away.  In the Gospel of John, Jesus calmly walks toward his own death.  Jesus never loses control.  Jesus knows he will be betrayed by these disciples who loved him, even Peter who swore up and down that he would be loyal to the end.  Jesus knows the crowd will betray him.  Yet, calmly and in confidence he continues to follow his Father’s will and stays connected to humanity, even at the cost of his life.

God sees all of us.  Everything about us is exposed to God.  He knows every nook and cranny of our hearts and minds.

The miracle is that God sees all the worst parts of us and still treats us with unlimited love and affection.  He remains loyal to us, even though we are disloyal to him.

God looks right at us, full on, and asks us to follow him–just as we are, broken and all.

If you go back and look at Jesus’ speech to his disciples before his death, he does not spend the speech berating them for their sinful natures.  No, his speech is full of encouragement.  He doesn’t blame the disciples for his impending death. He tells his disciples when he goes to be with the Father he will prepare a place for them.  He assures them that they will never be alone, because he will send the Holy Spirit as an advocate for them.  He reminds them that their job is to love one another.

Even when he encounters them after his resurrection, Jesus does not seek recrimination for his death.  He says, “Peace be with you.” and then he sends them forth into the world.

Good Friday exposes us, but God calls us his own and wishes us peace.  He liberates us from our sin, he offers us freedom from the broken parts of our souls that hold us back.

This Good Friday, as you sit exposed before God, may you experience God’s peace and love.  Amen.

Christmas 2, Year B, 2015

/ Sarah

Happy Second Sunday of Christmas!

We still have two days left in the Christmas season and today we turn our attention to the other nativity story. We have spent plenty of time with baby Jesus, angels and shepherds the last few weeks. That nativity story, the one with which we are so familiar, is from the Gospel of Luke.

Today’s story of the nativity is Matthew’s version of Jesus’ birth. And it is very different. While Luke’s story of the nativity is appropriate for, say, ABC Family channel, Matthew’s version is more of an HBO situation.

In Matthew’s version, angels don’t appear to any shepherds. Instead, three Zoroastrian priests, wise men who study the stars, have observed a strange star they have never seen before. They somehow figure out that this means that the child who will be King of the Jews has been born and so they travel to Jerusalem to find him.

When King Herod and the rest of Jerusalem hears of their inquiries, their reaction is not to throw open their arms to welcome this holy infant. Instead, they are thrown into fear.

And isn’t that a painfully honest human reaction?

King Herod likes being in charge. The people of Jerusalem like stability. They’ve had enough conflict. The last thing they need is a new king jockeying for power. A new king is not necessarily good news.

These wise men will not be dissuaded, though. Even though Herod tries to gain their trust so he can find and eliminate this threat to his power, the wise men outsmart him and go visit Jesus anyway. But when they visit him they bring three very strange gifts.

First, they give Jesus gold, which symbolizes his kingship. They recognize his authority, even if the world doesn’t.

Second, they give him frankincense, which symbolizes his divinity. These wise men, who aren’t even from the Jewish tradition, recognize that the Christ child is of God.

Finally, they give Jesus myrrh. Myrrh was traditionally used in the burial of the body. This third gift is almost a foreshadowing of how Christ will be received into the world. Instead of a joyful birth narrative, here we have three strangers both worshiping and grieving God born into the world.

And immediately following this passage, we get the horrible story of the slaughter of the innocents. Herod, hoping to eliminate the threat in his kingdom, orders all children younger than two years old murdered.

Jesus is born into a vile, vile world. A world in which thousands of children are sacrificed for no reason other than one man’s quest for power.

We recognize this world, because it is not that different from our own. We are too familiar with the way murder and killing destroys families and communities. We have experienced it in our own town and watched protests around the world. We have mourned Hannah Graham, Alexis Murphy and Robin and Mani Aldridge. We have mourned with black communities and with police officers. We have watched in horror as Boko Haram and ISIS have terrorized our brothers and sisters to the east.

We live in an adult world filled with violence and pain. We need a God that can handle complexity, handle our sin, and see the good in us despite all the evidence to the contrary. We need a God that can handle those in power, whose goodness can overpower the evil of the corrupt.

And so Matthew gives us his nativity story. A story that reminds us that God knew exactly what he was doing. He was sending his Son to be born in a world filled with corruption and violence. But God didn’t fight corruption and violence with political power or more violence. Instead, he chose an ordinary faithful girl from a faithful family. He chose an ordinary faithful fiancé, who would do the right thing even when his first instinct was to back away.

And together Mary and Joseph managed to birth the Son of God into the world. And protect and raise the child with all the strength and wisdom he would need to do his terribly difficult job.

Even in the midst of a vile and corrupt world, with God’s help ordinary people managed to birth light into the world.

No matter how overwhelming our world may seem, with God’s help we too can bring light into the darkness.

My sister, Marianne, spent part of a summer in Sierra Leone doing teacher training a few years ago. She made some good friends there and keeps in touch with them through Facebook and email. I have been so struck by friends of hers like Samuel Sesay, who sent his family to the US so they would be safe, but stayed behind to help serve his community. He tells stories of so many faithful Chrsitians facing the darkness of this terrifying disease, but remaining home so they can deliver supplies, help enforce quarantines, and lead worship services for communities in real crisis. Christians like Samuel are bringing light into darkness. Hope into what must feel like a hopeless situation.

What’s wonderful to me is how many of you are the faithful people of our generation, birthing light into the world every day. Bringing Jesus with you as you parent, grandparent and foster parent. Bringing light with you as you care for an aging spouse. Bringing light with you as you interact with patients, clients and students. Bringing light with you as you pray for peace and fight for justice.

Bringing light into the world is hard work. But it lightens our load when we remember that it is not our job to generate the light. We are not mice on a wheel trying hard to create enough energy for God to show up.

God is already here, waiting to bring love and light into our lives.

No matter how dark it might appear to you, God is here, ready to share his light with you.

Thanks be to God.

Advent 4, Year B, 2014

/ Sarah

God the Father decided to come down to earth and encounter his creation. Now, how to do it? He could show himself directly, but then ran the risk of so overwhelming human beings that they wouldn’t be able to process what they saw—or worse be killed by the power of being in the direct presence of God. He could just boom loud messages from the sky, but that might frighten humans so much they would obey out of fear. Instead God decides to send his Son, the Beloved, part of himself, to become a human being. The vast, cosmic God, creator of the entire universe, decides to send his Son to unite to a single human cell in a particular woman’s uterus and become a person who is entirely human and entirely divine.

And for this moment to happen, there had to be one particular woman to bear this divine child.

Mary is often lifted up for her willingness to bear this life, this desire to please God. But if you read the text carefully enough, you’ll see she isn’t really given a choice. The Angel Gabriel tells her what is going to happen:

 Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

Mary acknowledges her role in the matter, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” The word servant here is actually the word doule which is more accurately translated slave.

In the Gospel of Luke, the power of God is non negotiable. God chooses Mary and Mary concedes that she belongs to God.

This concession of Mary’s, this acknowledgement of her position before God is not the enthusiastic response we remember from the Christmas story. We remember the Magnificat, of course. But before Mary can rejoice at what God is doing, Mary has to acknowledge that she belongs to God, completely.

In our baptisms, we acknowledge that we belong to God completely, as well. And when we first realize that we belong to God completely, it can be sobering. We are called to follow God all the time, at home, at work, with our friends, with our enemies. Once baptized our lives are completely reoriented. Our lives become a vehicle for God’s grace to be enacted in the world. Our lives are no longer for our own pleasure, our own enrichment, but now belong to God.

Mary doesn’t stay in a place of resignation, of course. The Angel Gabriel encourages her to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who is also experiencing a miraculous pregnancy. Mary visits this older cousin, and Elizabeth’s joy shakes something loose in Mary. Mary is able to take a step back and rejoice about the miracle that is taking place within her. Mary sings the Magnificat as she realizes her discipleship will birth God’s grace and love in the world.

God’s grace and love continue to pour into the world, but now, we baptized replace Mary as the people who carry and birth God’s grace and love into the world.

Even those of us who were not looking for God, who do not seek to be Christ-bearers, we are all chosen by God to do his work.

That work can seem overwhelming in a world that seems to devalue holiness, a world that wants to turn God into a commodity that can be shaped to fit any argument. A world where the rich and poor get more and more isolated from one another. A world in which hundreds of mothers in Pakistan and Nigeria are mourning their dead and missing children this week because of hatred and violence born out of a misunderstanding of who God is.

And yet, despite our bleak landscape, we join Mary in singing the Magnificat. We take a stand with Mary and with her holy child. We sing because we know that despite everything, Christ is alive in the world. We sing because God’s power is at work in ways we cannot see. We sing because our God is one that grieves the loss of those Pakistani children and is even now surrounding the missing in Nigeria with his love and care. We sing because we believe there are powers greater than those who wield death and grief. We sing because we believe love will conquer all. We sing because love already has.

And when we understand ourselves as being part of God’s great love for the world, suddenly the burden of discipleship is lifted. We do not follow Jesus because God requires it. We follow Jesus because we cannot help ourselves: because Jesus brings light to a dark world, because he heals our torn bodies and hearts, because we want to be part of bringing light and healing to a world we love so much.

May the Spirit fill us with Christ’s light and love so we can join Mary in bringing God to the world.

Amen.

Advent 2, Year B, 2014

/ Sarah

I need you to do something for me.

I need you to do a mental wipe. I need you to forget all about Angel Gabriel, and pregnant Mary, and sweet baby Jesus in the manger.

This Sunday, we begin the Gospel of Mark. And Mark, my friends, has no time for baby Jesus. Don’t worry, the creators of the lectionary are gentle folk and you will hear part of both Luke and Matthew’s account of the infant Jesus once we get to Christmas. But for now, I ask you to join me in a world that has absolutely no interest in the nativity.

The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

The earliest Christians had letters from Paul telling them about Jesus, but the Gospel of Mark was the very first biography of Jesus. In fact, because of the way Mark phrased his opening line—the Good News—or the Gospel–of Jesus Christ—everyone began calling these biographies of Jesus Gospels.

So, the very first time many people heard the story of Jesus, was through Mark’s words. And Mark has an urgent story to tell.

Mark has no time to waste. Mark is not interested in Jesus’ life before his baptism, before his public ministry. He wants to get right to the point.

The point, for Mark, is that God is breaking into the world in a new way. God is going to shake up the world and set it right again, through Jesus.

But before he gets to his point, before he gets to the Father breaking in to Jesus’ baptism to declare his love for his son, Mark takes a beat and gives us some context.

He introduces us to John the Baptist, the man God chose to prepare the world for God’s in-breaking. John is this very Old Testament prophet-like character. He wears really strange clothes and eats strange foods. He grabs your attention. Mark compares John to the messenger in a passage from Isaiah. John the Baptist is like one who is the wilderness shouting, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”

This reference to Isaiah roots Mark’s readers into a narrative that continues from the Old Testament. God is breaking into the world in a new way, but this God is the same God who has broken into the world before. This is the same God who walked in the garden with Adam, and showed Moses his back. This is the same God who sent an angel to wrestle with Jacob, and who lifted Elijah into heaven. God breaks into our world over and over and over again.

I listen to NPR most mornings driving into work, and this week they were doing an end of the year funding pitch. The host said something like, “This year we have brought you stories of the Malaysian Airline jet crash, violence in the Ukraine, Ebola, the rise of ISIS, Ferguson and alleged sexual violence at UVA.” The litany of news stories took my breath away. It has been a really, really hard year. And they didn’t even mention the climate change tipping point we may have reached this summer or this week’s lack of indictment in Eric Garner’s death.

It can seem sometimes, that God has left the building.

We talk about God breaking into the world, through the birth of Jesus. We also talk about how we wait for Jesus’ return. Where does that leave us in the meantime? We feel like John in the wilderness, hoping people will repent, hoping God will show up.

Jesus hasn’t left us. After his death, he baptized those faithful disciples in the upper room with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit blew through that early church, as Peter, James, Paul and all the other early Christians figured out what it meant to follow God after Jesus’ ascension. Following God has never been easy. But the Holy Spirit continues to blow through the life of faithful communities, uniting us with Christ and the Father, so we can do God’s work of love and reconciliation in the world.

God broke into our world through Jesus and taught us what it means to live in a Godly manner—with humility, joy, love, patience, self-giving. And every Sunday we enact our faith at church. We hear Scripture and a sermon to remind us who God is and who we are. We repent when we confess our sins together. We pray for God to make the world a better place and to help us make it better. We encounter the living Christ in the Eucharist, and then we take that living Christ into the world with us.

Eric shared a quote from Stanley Hauerwas this week from Hauerwas’s book Hannah’s Child that resonates here: “The way things are is not the way things have to be. That thought began to shape my understanding of what it might mean to be a Christian – namely, Christianity is the ongoing training necessary to see that we are not fated.”

The power of God is alive and well in us and in spite of us. We are not doomed. God is breaking in.

This week religious leaders including our own Archbishop Justin Welby, Pope Francis, a representative for His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, a representative of Thich Nhat Hanh, leaders of both Sunni and Shiite Muslim groups, leaders of Jewish and Buddhist groups and many more gathered together to stand united against human trafficking. I cannot imagine the logistics needed to get nearly every highest level religious leader in the same room. Frankly, they looked strange these men and women. They each wore their traditional garb, so the picture is full of clothes that evoke other eras and places. Clerical collars, cassocks, saris, and at least five different kinds of religious hats. They reminded me a bit of John the Baptist, actually. They weren’t afraid to be anachronistic, they weren’t afraid to grab our attention, to tell us to repent, to point us to God.

In a year where the news seems incredibly bleak, these souls, with all their differences, with all the bloody history between the groups, got together and declared the goodness and worthiness of human life. No one is property. Every life matters.

I’m not sure what our ecumenical and interfaith friends would think of this, but I can’t help thinking of this meeting as an Advent gift to us. Here is a sign that God’s spirit lives. In the middle of a disintegrating world, a historic moment of unprecedented unity. A moment when God broke in to say, “If I can make this happen, I can make anything happen.”

Mark is right. The gospel message is urgent. The world needs to know that God has broken into the world in order to love us and in order for us to love each other. If we don’t know that deep in our bones, if we don’t treat everyone we meet like we believe they are beloved, next year’s news stories will be as bleak as this year’s.

We who carry Christ into the world, who help facilitate God’s in-breaking into the lives of those around us, have an enormous responsibility. Will we take up John the Baptist’s mantle and make a way for God in our world? Will we join the evangelist Mark and share the good news of God’s in-breaking? Will we be the hope for which we have been waiting?

May it be so.

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 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.