Gospel

Advent 1, Year A, 2013

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

You may have caught on to this already, since Target has been draped in tinsel for weeks, but Christmas is coming! Today we begin a new church year and the season of Advent.  Advent, the four weeks preceding Christmas, is a season of waiting and preparing for Jesus’ birth.

But Advent isn’t just about getting ready for the baby Jesus.  The first Sunday of Advent always begins with an apocalyptic text.  I don’t know about you, but when I get to church in December I want to hear sweet stories about Mary and Joseph getting ready to welcome baby Jesus.  Instead, we get stories of women disappearing while minding their own business.  That doesn’t usually show up in Advent Calendars, does it?

No matter how uncomfortable they make us, these kinds of apocalyptic texts are pretty common in the New Testament.  They understand Jesus’ life, death and resurrection as part of an as of yet incomplete journey for human kind.  Jesus has already done the work of saving us from ourselves, but the work of completing the Kingdom of God—a time when peace and justice will mark humanity’s relationships—is still to come.  Theologians call this time we are in the parousia:  the already, but not yet.

We are already saved by the incarnate, resurrected Jesus, but our world is not yet fully redeemed.  Our world is still marked by human brokenness.  In Advent, we are called not just to remember the infant Jesus coming into the world, but we are also supposed to prepare for his return.

And how do we prepare?

We stay awake.  Not literally awake, of course.  Jesus doesn’t want to come back to be greeted by delirious believers clutching bottles of “5 Hour Energy”.  Jesus wants us to stay awake spiritually.

There are Christians who believe if you compile all the parts of Scripture together that reference Jesus’ return, you can map out roughly when he’ll come back.  But our passage today refutes that notion.  Jesus reminds his listeners that Noah’s contemporaries could not have known that there would be a great flood.  In the same way, Christians cannot know when Jesus’ return will happen.  We don’t need to obsess over it.  We don’t need to try to predict when it will come.  We just need to stay awake.

In our culture, we are experts at doing anything but staying awake and alert to our present.  Our culture has trained us to long for what is next.  Our next meal out, a fancier car, a better job, a more elaborate home.  We think about the future all the time.  We worry about the future. Will we get married?  Will we be able to have kids?  Will we have jobs we love?  Will we be able to afford retirement?  We can even put off our own happiness, thinking that our happiness will come at some point in the future—when we make a little more money, when we lose the weight, when we meet Mr. Right.

In the same way we can put off our own spiritual lives.  Oh, I’ll start going to church when I have kids.  I’ll start studying the Bible when I retire.  I’ll go to that fellowship event once my work settles down a bit.

But this one Sunday a year it is my job to say this to you:  Wake up.

Wake up!

You don’t know what time you have left.  Jesus could come back tomorrow.  You could get hit by a bus on your way home.  Our time on this earth is short and unpredictable.

Would you be ready if you had to give an account of your life today?

Have you checked in lately with God to find out where he is calling you to serve? Have you been paying attention to the needs of your neighbors?  Are there widows, orphans, or other people on the margins in your life who need attention?

These kind of questions make us feel vulnerable and nervous.

In her book Daring Greatly, Brene Brown tells us that we numb ourselves to avoid feeling vulnerable.  We put ourselves to sleep to avoid the pain of our lives. We put ourselves into a stupor by endlessly checking Facebook, by watching TV, by drinking every night, by stuffing our faces with brownies or queso.  We would rather sleep walk, than live fully awake.

We only have this one life.  We only have this one life to feel the joy and pain of what it means to be human.  We only have this one life to take emotional risks.  We only have this one life to love and serve other people.

When I yell “Wake up!” at you, it may sound like a nag.  Like something your mother used to do when you were just exhausted before school and all you wanted was a few more minutes of rest.

But I really mean to yell “wake up!” at you as an invitation.  Jesus invites us to live a full, rich life drenched with meaning.  Jesus invites us to live lives in service to God and other human beings.  I want you to wake up, not so you can check off a checklist of “good deeds” you’ve done.  I want you to wake up so you can feel the exquisite joy of being a human being made in God’s image.  I want you to wake up so you experience the human life that God made holy by his incarnation in Jesus Christ.

Your life is ordinary and extraordinary.  Just as it is now—with the same job, home, marital status, friends, pets—your life is really something special.  You don’t have to sell everything and ditch your life to follow God.  Your path to a meaningful, holy life is right in front of you.  So wake up!  And live!

Proper 27, Year C, 2013

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What is heaven like?

I get that question a lot, but since I haven’t experienced the afterlife myself, I never have a great answer.

The Bible never speaks extensively about heaven—but there are clues here and there.  Our passage today is one of those hints.

Ironically, the people asking Jesus the question about what happens after the resurrection don’t even really care about his answer.

Some Sadducees come up to Jesus, trying to outwit him.  Sadducees were the Jewish sect that was in charge of keeping up the Temple.  They came from wealthy, respected families.  And they did not believe in the resurrection.

To try to prove how illogical the resurrection is they pose the question about the widow that we heard today.

This poor hypothetical woman!  In the law of the time, if your husband died, it was his brother’s responsibility to marry you.  This was meant to protect the widow, but it also reinforces how women were treated like chattel—passed along from one brother to another.  This poor woman has not been able to bear children, and she goes through all seven brothers.  You can only imagine how much she and her mother in law loathed each other after all this!

The Sadducees want to know:  Who does she belong to in heaven?  Who has the right to be her husband, if she’s been married seven times and has no children?

Jesus’ response set the Sadducees back on their heels.

To the Sadducees, this woman is just hypothetical, an intellectual exercise.  But Jesus has known and loved women in really difficult circumstances.  Remember his loving response to the woman at the well who had been married five times.  To Jesus, women weren’t chattel to be passed along.  A barren woman wasn’t the object of derision or deserving of shame. Women were integral parts of God’s kingdom.

Jesus tells the Sadducees that in heaven, no one is given in marriage.  Each person comes to God on his or her own terms and worships God as a whole person.  In community, yes, but not tied to any individual person.

What good news this is for us!  We are in this rare time and place in history in which we understand that women and men are equally valuable members of society and the church.  We understand that a woman’s value is not based on her ability to produce an heir for a family line.

On the other hand, we in the church can do better!

Church can be a very marriage and family centered place. When I was single in church, people kept trying to set me up.  When I was newly married, parishioners felt perfectly free to ask me when I was going to get pregnant.  We treat single and childless people as if they haven’t quite arrived to adulthood.

And I am not innocent of this!  One of my goals as your priest was to minister to the women I don’t see at my women’s bible study:  women who work during the day, who are busy with other responsibilities, including children.  So, I planned this “Mom’s night out” for next week.  After we had already advertised this, I had a revelation.  There were fabulous women I really wanted to be there who did not have children. I found myself running around individually asking them to join us.  We’ll rebrand it the next time we meet, and please, if you want to join some of the young and middle aged women of St. Paul’s Ivy next week, read your bulletin for more information!

This is just a small example of the way churches treat being married with kids as the default position for adults.  But be reassured, even if your clergy get mixed up about this, Jesus never does.

Nancy Rockwell wrote a gorgeous blog post about this passage this week in which she writes,

… the Christian church has so venerated women as childbearers  that it has been unable to imagine other roles for women,  even though Jesus never praised childbearing or motherhood, and did imagine other roles for women:   Mary has chosen the good portion and it will not be taken away from her, he said, when Mary chose to sit among the disciples and learn, rather than work in the kitchen.  And perhaps most importantly, in this argument with the Sadducees over the barren woman, Jesus opened the gates of heaven to her, saying that in the resurrection, life is not as we know it here on earth, there is no owning or belonging to one another, for in eternity all are children of God.   Thanks to Jesus, the barren woman does what is unthinkable:  she steps into heaven on her own.

Jesus was never interested in anyone’s societal status.  He never asked a tax collector if he was the best tax collector in his company.  He didn’t ask Peter whether where he ranked among local fishermen. He didn’t keep nagging Mary Magdalene about finding a man and settling down already!

Jesus was interested in the hearts of human beings, not any of the outward categories by which we humans judge each other.

In heaven, and now, we are loved by God for who we are in all our individuality.  There is no one way to be a woman.  There is no one way to be a man.

Heaven is a mystery.  But God is not a mystery.  God has revealed himself to us in Jesus and we can trust that Jesus’ compassion for humanity will extend itself into our experiences after we die.  And for those of us who are happily married, who grieve the idea of no longer being married in heaven, we can trust that while the legal bonds of marriage may be dissolved upon our deaths, the bonds of affection between two people, the love between two people remains.   After all, those bonds are part of who we are.

In our community, may we strengthen and widen those bonds of love so that everyone, no matter their life situation, may feel welcomed into our little corner of the Kingdom of God.

Amen.

Proper 11, Year C, 2013

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Matt and Charlie’s birthdays are one day apart in April.  This creates no small amount of pressure.  But this year, we decided to keep things low key.  Matt’s parents came to stay with us and we planned a quiet day together.

But there had to be a homemade cake, of course.  I mean, I do CARE about my husband and my child. I decided not to get carried away.  No Thomas the Trains carved out of fondant or Legos made from melted white chocolate.  I would make a simple angel food cake.  An angel food cake festooned with whipped cream and strawberries would be the perfect, simple harbinger of spring.

I woke up early the morning of Matt’s birthday and followed the Cooks Illustrated recipe perfectly.  I whipped my eggwhites, measured my flour and sugar, carefully folded the two together.  By this time, everything was taking a little longer than I expected and other members of the family were starting to trickle in, looking hopeful that they might get started on the breakfast biscuit part of the morning.  Moving a little faster, I got the cake ready for the oven.  Cooks Illustrated said to line the bottom of my pan with parchment paper, so I did.  And to really demonstrate my care for this cake, I also lined the sides of the pan.  With great confidence I put the cake in the oven.

About twenty minutes later, I took a look in the oven.  Disaster.  The cake was collapsing in on itself because of that extra parchment paper. Apparently an angel food cake needs to cling to the side of a pan to rise properly.

I might have handled this with great grace, but I didn’t. I flung cookbooks around to see what other kind of cake I could make in the next hour. I questioned my ability to be a mother.  I threw myself on my bed and cried.

I, in other words, had a serious Martha moment.

I would argue about 90% of women identify with Martha.  And so, about 90% of women hate this biblical passage.

Although women are no longer trapped in the sphere of our kitchens, we are still judged by our homes, our gardens, our food.  We judge ourselves for these things.  We go to Pinterest and post pictures of dream bathrooms and creative crafts to do with children and recipes that we’re sure to try one day.  We take our homes and our families seriously.

Martha has been working her tail off in the kitchen getting ready for Jesus.  Jesus never traveled by himself, so she’s getting lunch ready for him and who knows how many disciples.  She has disrupted her entire routine to have this man in her home.  And she’s not the first woman to do so.  Think of all the places Jesus has stayed, all the hospitality he has enjoyed, the hundreds of invisible women who have made him breakfast, lunch, dinner, cleaned his clothes, made sure he had somewhere to sleep.  These women have been incredibly hospitable.

The translator of this passage demeans Martha’s hospitality.  Martha’s work is translated as “tasks” here, evoking the image of a list stuck to a refrigerator with a magnet.  But the Greek word is diakonia.  Everywhere else in the New Testament, that word is translated as ministry or mission.  That’s right.  Whenever a man in the New Testament is doing diakonia it is ministry, but when Martha does diakonia, she is distracted by her “tasks”.

So, it’s no wonder women get grumpy reading about poor Martha!

Mary has abandoned her.  Her sister has left the hot kitchen, trespassing convention and unspoken family bonds.  Her sister has chosen this new role as student without as much as consulting Martha.  Mary just walks away from the kitchen like she can!  Like hundreds of years of history and tradition can just be unmade by sitting at Jesus’ feet.

Martha is left hot and frustrated and alone.

And so, she does something else we can relate to.  Instead of dealing directly with the person who is irritating her she gets passive aggressive with Jesus trying to shame her sister into getting with the program.

Jesus’ reaction to Martha feels like a slap in the face to all of us who have been in her shoes.  “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things. .  .”  To our defensive ears, Jesus sounds patronizing and dismissive.  After all, it’s Jesus’ lunch that is distracting her!  Who is he to criticize?

But what if Jesus is not insulting Martha?  What if Jesus is issuing Martha an invitation?  What if he is saying to her, “Mary has chosen the better part. . .and you can, too.”  What if his response is an invitation to sit at his feet?  To walk away from the roles Martha thinks she has to fill?

This summer, a group of us have been reading Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly together.  The book is all about how embracing vulnerability can lead to wholehearted and transformative lives.  Brown argues that in our culture women are judged on how we look, how our homes look, how our children behave, and how effortlessly we pull all that perfection off.  All summer we have been talking about what it would mean to embrace our imperfection, to let go of the myth of perfection and live our lives as our authentic selves.

Martha has this idea that she has to work, work, work to care for Jesus.  But Jesus would be perfectly satisfied if Martha did not do a stitch of work on his behalf, but really connected with him instead.

Our lives as modern women are really complicated.  There are areas of our lives where we are as free as any women have ever been free.  Women my age have been brought up believing we could grow up to be anything we wanted to be.   We can be scientists and politicians and editors and soldiers.  Even priests.  We can be mothers and wives and travel and write novels in our spare time.  And so we get it in our heads that we have to be all these things.  We have to be professional women at the top of our field.  We have to be incredibly attentive wives and girlfriends, fulfilling unspoken fantasies with our perfect gym-toned bodies.  We have to be the most nurturing mothers of any generation.  We have to be best friends, and excellent hostesses, and affectionate pet owners.  And we have to do all of this without breaking a sweat.

We work and we work and we work and in the end, if we’re lucky, we realize that this is all baloney!  Or, we end up weeping on our beds because our stupid cake has fallen and we are exhausted from trying to keep everything together.

And this where grace can enter in.  Because it’s hard for grace to wedge its way into a perfect life.  Grace is like light—it prefers cracks to make itself known.

When you are weeping on your bed because your cake fell apart, your husband can reassure you that all he wanted was cake and berries mashed together and you realize you can make a trifle!  When you are weeping on your bed, you realize the only person in the house that gave a hoot about the cake was you and what everyone in the house wants is for you to be happy and to join them in the kitchen and to eat a biscuit slathered in peach butter.

In that kitchen, surrounded by love, you really understand Jesus’ invitation.  Because Jesus loves Martha—not for what she does for him, but just because he loves her.  And if Martha would be happier sitting by Jesus’ feet, then she should sit by Jesus’ feet.  But if Martha would rather make sandwiches in love, that’s great, too!  Both are ministry, no matter what the translators think.

All of us Marthas need to realize that there is not one way to be.  There is not one way to serve Jesus.  There is not one way to be a woman, a friend, a wife, a daughter, a mother.  Human beings are infinitely varied and flawed and interesting.  We are loved.  Full stop.  Not for how we look, not for how we perform at work, not for how our children behave, not for how much volunteer work we do.  We are loved by God because God wants to love us.  Full stop.

And as we baptize three infants today (at 10:30) we can remember that sometimes the best way to help them live into their baptismal identities is by living as if are worthy of being loved.  What better way to teach them about the generous grace of God and the value of their small lives?

May God’s grace shine through the cracks of your lives.  Amen.

 

Lent 5, Year C, 2013

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Mary wasn’t always so happy with Jesus, you know.

Just a few weeks before, Jesus allowed her brother Lazarus to die.  Mary knew Jesus could cure him, she absolutely believed in Jesus.  Mary, Martha and Lazarus are described as Jesus’ friends in scripture.  They aren’t just his disciples, they are his people. They have a deep connection with one another.  So letting Lazarus die was inexcusable.

When Jesus showed up at Mary’s door four days after Lazarus had died, she was so upset she did not even notice he had arrived.  Martha had to come in and gently tell her he was there.  Mary wept at Jesus’ feet and told him that if he had been there, Lazarus would have lived.

Jesus is so distraught he weeps.  The text leads us to believe he tarried on purpose, but even if letting Lazarus die was intentional, Jesus feels the pain of his friend’s death like a lead weight.

We know what happens next.  Jesus shows Martha, Mary and all their friends how powerful he is.  He calls Lazarus forth from the grave and against all odds Lazarus comes back to life.

And how better to celebrate resurrection than with a party?

This house which had so recently been a house of mourning was now a house of celebration!  How thrilling to get a chance to honor Jesus, who brought Lazarus back to Mary and Martha’s life.

Of course, the party wasn’t all happiness.

Jesus has been telling his disciples for some time that he is going to die.  And the authorities were upset enough by Jesus that they were actively looking for him, to put him to death.

So, this party is a celebration of life, and friendship, but the looming threats to Jesus’ life means this also might be the last dinner Jesus will have with his friends from Bethany.

How do you adequately thank the man who has brought your brother back to life?  How do you express your grief that this amazing God-bearer might soon be killed?

The only way Mary can express the fullness of how she feels about Jesus is to break all the rules.  She scrapes together an incredible amount of money, and buys a pound of perfume.  She lets down her long hair in an incredibly provocative act. And then, in a society where women did not touch men to whom they were not related, she pours the perfume over his feet and begins to caress his feet with her hair.

She anoints Jesus for his death, but she also anoints Jesus as her King.  She is his only friend to acknowledge the reality of his situation.  The disciples never want to believe that Jesus is going to die.  But Mary, Mary is willing to face reality.  And Mary is willing to take big risks to show her love for Jesus.  Mary pours herself out for her friend.

How do we show our love for Jesus?   How do we offer thanks to a man whose feet we can no longer anoint?  How do we pour our selves out for Jesus?

We gather , we worship, we sing hymns of praise, but we can do more.

Glennon Melton is a woman who, in 2002, found herself alone, drunk and pregnant.  After 20 years of abusing alcohol she made the decision to quit drinking, keep the baby and began her recovery process through the help of AA.  She ended up getting married quickly and having two other children.  Through her recovery she began a blog called Momastery in which she has explored her faith, motherhood, addiction and living an authentic life without the armor alcohol gave her. Her blog has become incredibly popular with women responding to her unusual transparency.  A community of women has developed in the comments section of the blog who encourage and support one another.

This past year, Glennon has gone through unspecified troubles in her marriage, which have sent her through a tail spin and have led to a separation.  Out of that pain, though, has come something remarkable.  Because of her experiences she has been able to write a book.  Because of the book, she has been able to go on a book tour, and because of that book tour, she had met incredible people all across the country.  One of those women, Sarah, runs a home for homeless pregnant and new mother teens in Indianapolis.  She wrote to Glennon, in a long shot, hoping Glennon would come speak as a fundraiser for this home.  Glennon agreed immediately and the two women began corresponding.

Sarah wrote to Glennon explaining that there was a young woman with an infant who was homeless but very much wanted to join the program, but the program did not have the $83,000 needed for the young woman to join them.

After pondering this, Glennon announced to her followers that she was starting a flash Love mob.  For 24 hours she would be accepting donations on behalf of this girl.  The rules were no one person could donate more than $25.  Thousands of women responded and more than $100,000 was raised.

Women, and presumably at least a few men, around the world did something stupid.  They gave money to a stranger.  To someone they had never met.  I’m sure there were people in their lives who rolled their eyes and muttered something about a scam under their breath.  After all $83,000 is an extraordinary sum to spend on one girl and her baby for one year’s care.

But overwhelmingly, in the comment section of the blog, women who donated just wanted this teenager to know that she mattered.  They wanted her to know that God loves her and there is community of faith throughout the world that will support and uphold her.  A common refrain in the comments was a simple exclamation of “Love Wins!”

Since Christ’s ascension, we have become the Body of Christ.  To love Christ, is to love our neighbor.  To love Christ is to love a lost young woman and her baby.  To love Christ means being willing to look at the world honestly and see it in all its brokenness and all its love.  To love Christ means to reach out beyond ourselves and take a risk to love another.

There will always be Judases around to rain on the parade of people who do extravagant acts of love.  There will always be people who think going through life with their armor up, unmoved by the needs of others, is better than going through life feeling all the pain and need of the world.  And we should have compassion for these people—who knows what pain they have experienced in their own lives to make them create such a impenetrable exterior.

But we also know that the kind of barriers that Judas put up, how he hid behind righteousness and responsibility, ultimately prevented him from really having a relationship with Jesus.  His own anxiety would not allow him to accept the reality of Jesus’ divinity, death, or love.  Mary, on the other hand, whose behavior was so shocking and inappropriate, loves Jesus and Jesus knows it.  Mary hides behind no barriers, she puts herself forward completely honestly and authentically. Mary pours herself out for Jesus, as Jesus will soon pour himself out for Mary.

Will we have the courage?  Will we be brave enough to let down our hair and do something shocking for Jesus?  Will we put down our armor and let Jesus in?  Will we pour ourselves out for others as Jesus has poured himself out for us?

May it be so.

 

Lent 2, Year C, 2013

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In the 2011-2012 school year, 29 students and recent students of Harper High School in Chicago were shot.  Eight of those students died.  The producers of the NPR program This American Life were deeply curious about what life is like in a school that lies in such a violent community.  They sent three reporters to spend five months interviewing students, parents, teachers, and staff.

What they found surprised them.  The violence was gang related, but not drug related.  The neighborhood around Harper is made up of a dozen small, loosely organized gangs based on blocks and neighborhoods.  A child is automatically a part of a gang, just by living on a particular block .  To avoid gang activity, the only option is for the child to never leave his home after school.  Gun violence occurs because of perceived slights, romantic relationships gone bad, revenge, and for no reason at all.  This violence affects every child at Harper High School.  Every one of the members of its football team, for instance, have been shot at some point in their adolescence.

Harper high school has an incredibly dedicated principal, teachers, and school psychologists.  However, the adults who emerge as having the closest relationships with students are the two social workers assigned to the school.

Crystal and Anita have an official caseload of 55 students, but many more come to their office to find a safe place to talk.  Their tiny office is often so filled with students, there is no place for anyone to sit.  You can hear the concern in their voices as they ask a student about his trouble sleeping after he accidentally shot his own brother.  You have the image of these women as hens gathering these children to themselves like chicks, using their limited resources to act as peacemakers, counselors, mothers.  They will do nearly anything to protect these kids.

In our Gospel reading today, Jesus refers to himself as a mother hen, gathering in his chicks.  Pharisees warn Jesus that Herod is looking for him.  Herod Anitpas was the Roman tetrarch of Judea–the territory where Jesus was most active.  Herod was the agent of Roman rule and culture, in opposition of Jewish rule and culture.   Jesus loathed Herod.  In describing himself as a hen, Jesus sets himself in opposition to Herod.  Herod is the fox that comes after God’s people and Jesus is the hen who protects God’s people.  Herod is leading the Jews away from God’s word and vision for them, while Jesus will walk straight into his death at Jerusalem for God’s people.

Crystal and Anita, the social workers at Harper High School, are trying to protect their students from the prevailing culture, too.  Roman culture said that the Emperor and his power should be at the center of everyone’s worship.  The culture of the neighborhood in which Harper High School sits says that power through violence is the central truth to which everyone should adjust.  Crystal and Anita are trying desperately to change the points of view of individual students, so that the culture at large will change.

Jesus, of course, is also drawing people to himself and trying to change a prevailing culture.  He wants desperately for God’s people to return to God and live lives of justice and peace.  He talks and talks and talks about what God’s kingdom is like.  He gathers followers one by one, and encourages them to transform their lives.

Back to Harper High.  A day or two before the big homecoming game and dance, a former student is shot.  As the student lies in the hospital, the staff at Harper High frantically try to find out what possible reactions might be and whether or not they should cancel the game and dance for security purposes.  The last thing they want is a shooting on their property.  The principal, Leonetta Sanders, attempts to recruit teachers, staff, and their spouses to act as extra security for the game.  Anita, one of the social workers has spent all day talking with students about what staff might expect.  Students have warned her that there is a very real danger of violence at each event.  Anita, mother of two small children, has made the difficult decision to go home so she will be safe.  At first she tells this to the reporter calmly, but soon she breaks down in tears of guilt.  She wants so badly to protect her students from their own terrible decisions, but she has reached a line she cannot cross.  Ordinarily, she is not fearful like this—she walks through the neighborhoods around Harper, talking with students, walking to their houses, meeting with parents.  But on this day, with a credible threat of shootings, she decides the risk is not worth it.

Who can blame her!  How many of us would even enter the neighborhood around Harper High, much less enter it every day, over and over again, tackling the issue of gun violence every day?  The teachers and staff at Harper have incredible moral courage, but even the most courageous person has limits, and for Anita those limits are making sure her children have a mother who is alive and well to care for them.

Jesus did not share these limits.  In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus seems completely aware that the inevitable outcome of his ministry is his death.  Jesus identifies himself in the line of prophets who die in Jerusalem, but unlike other prophets who have died after speaking God’s truth to God’s people, Jesus’ death will prove redemptive.

No matter how hard they try, Crystal and Anita are unlikely to create such a cultural change that the neighborhoods around Harper High become safe again.  The barriers of poverty and culture are incredibly strong.  Crystal and Anita may help get shepherd a few children safely through, and will undoubtedly help hundreds more along the way feel loved, but change of that scale is incredibly difficult.

We humans are a stubborn, stubborn bunch.  Over and over again we make choices that are bad for us.  Whether it is picking up guns in the streets of Chicago or driving after a couple glasses of wine on highway 29; worshiping a Roman Emperor or worshiping a paycheck; we court our own self destruction every day.  God knows this about us.  He tried helping us in so many ways—giving us time in the desert, leading us to a promised land, giving us judges, kings, and then prophets.  But no matter how charismatic our leader or wise our prophet, we always fell back into idol worship and injustice.

So God sends us Jesus, his very self.  And Jesus has to be more than a prophet.  He has to be more than a social worker.  We need more than encouragement.  We need more than love.  We need a miracle.

And so Jesus’s ministry is not just his miracles and cures, not just his words of rebuke and hope.  Jesus ministry is also Jerusalem, because without Jerusalem there could be no death and without Jesus’ death there would be no resurrection.  Jesus did not come to simply help us manage our sin and brokenness.  He came not only to comfort us like a mother hen.  He came destroy the hold sin and brokenness have over us.  He came to open the door for all of us, those in the pews here in Ivy, and those in the hallways of Harper High School.  He came to create the beginning of a future in which there will be no more violence, no more tears, only love.  We wait, we long for that future to unfold.  And while we wait, we join Crystal, Anita and Principal Sanders in extending our wings to the world around us, offering a vision of hope and peace and of a God who loves us, even to death.

Amen.

Last Epiphany, Year C, 2013

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Who is God?  What is God like?  What would God think of me?

These are the questions that drive us to church on Sunday morning, aren’t they?  They are the questions that occupy our minds both when we are feeling lazily philosophical and when we are gripped by loss that has us on our knees.

This season of Epiphany, we celebrate the different ways in which Jesus answered these questions for us. We start with Zoroastrian priests chasing a star; see the heavens break open when Jesus is baptized. We go to a party with Jesus and see him turn water into a fabulous, party-saving vintage. We hear Jesus claim that he is the manifestation of Isaiah’s prophecies.  We flinch with him as his hometown rejects him.

All these revelations about Jesus’ identity culminate today.  Today we travel with Peter, James and John up the mountain.  A week before, Peter made a statement of faith.  He told Jesus he thought Jesus was the Christ.  In return, Jesus revealed to the disciples that his destiny was to die and to rise again.

The disciples are starting to get it.  Jesus isn’t just a charismatic preacher.  Jesus isn’t just a wise teacher and miracle maker.  Jesus is the Son of God.

Jesus lets the disciples sit with that idea for a week and then he takes them up the mountain to pray.

And what a prayer!  The disciples fall asleep, of course.  (The disciples seem to be excellent nappers throughout scripture, which gives us all hope, I think!)  As the disciples slowly wake up, they see that Jesus has been completely transformed.  He is glowing, much like Moses glowed when he came down from Mt. Ararat.  And not only is he glowing, but he is having a conversation with Moses himself!  And Elijah!  These historic figures lean in, talking together about Jesus’ upcoming death.

The disciples are stunned.  They have come to understand Jesus as the Christ, but understanding something and seeing it in person are two entirely different things.  In prayer, the Lord is revealing Jesus’ holiness, his Godliness.  This moment is a perfect, cosmic, intimate moment.

Until Peter butts in.  Peter is our stand in here.  Peter always says the perfect human, bumbling thing in almost every situation. He eagerly offers to build some tents for his ghostly visitors.  And we get that, don’t we?  When we have an encounter with the holy, whether during a favorite hymn, or a candlelit service, or on a mountain top, we just want to bottle it up.  We want to hold on to it and stay in the presence of God and soak up the holy.

Unfortunately that is not how God works.  Not even Jesus stays on the mountain.  The perfect moment is just a moment.  Jesus is revealed as holy, Elijah and Moses fade away, and Jesus and the disciples head down the mountain, where Jesus continues to heal those who approach him.

But in this return to ordinary life—if you can consider Jesus’ life ordinary!—Jesus is revealing himself, too.  Jesus is the God who can change the laws of physics and time for an encounter with Moses and Elijah and Jesus is the God who so cares for ordinary human beings that he allows imperfect, bumbling men to be his closest disciples and chooses to heal the distressed rather than stay on the mountain, bathing in his own holiness.

The God we worship here at St. Paul’s, Ivy is all of these things. He is the powerful creator of the Universe who shows himself in shouts and whispers.  He is the passionate Son who loved ordinary, lost, impetuous people.  He is the God we experience in brief moments of luminous revelation and the God we follow even when we don’t feel his presence.

If you doubt that God still shows up, read Megan Phelps-Roper’s story.  Megan is the granddaughter of Fred Phelps. Yes, that Fred Phelps.  The Westboro Baptist Fred Phelps of the horrible, hate filled signs and the picketing of solider’s and children’s funerals.  The Fred Phelps who somehow has come to believe that our God is a hateful, vindictive God interested only in our conforming and punishment.  Until November, 27-year-old Meghan was the social media arm of Westboro Baptist.  Her whole life has been drenched in Fred Phelp’s hateful theology.  She believed that spouting his beliefs was a way of loving the world.  Bringing others into the fold would save them.  Jeff Chu had the privilege of interviewing her recently and wrote a beautiful article about her separation from Westboro Baptist.

Interestingly, it was a conversation with an Israeli web developer that first caused her to start questioning what she had been taught.  As he argued with her about the hateful messages on the signs held at Westboro protests he reminded her that Jesus said, ”Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”  This simple conversation led to a world shattering in-breaking for Meghan.  She came to realize that Westboro’s message wasn’t consistent.  They did not treat all sin the same way.  That if Westboro truly followed Levitical law, many of its own members would have to be killed.  She and her sister left Westboro and are now reading and praying and experiencing their own transfigured Jesus.

God does not always answer our questions the way we would like him to.  We do not always sense his presence when we long for that connection.  But God is in the business of making himself known.  Throughout history God keeps revealing himself to humans – through his direct presence, through dreams and visions, through prophets, through Jesus, through the Holy Spirit.

We gather as a community on Sundays because we long to know this loving, in-breaking God.  We begin to get answers to our questions through sermons and bible studies, but more importantly we encounter the living God through worship, prayer, and the Eucharist.  Because what we want is not a bunch of answers to hypothetical questions, what we really want is to know God.  We want to know God like we know our parents, our friends, our partners.  We want to feel God’s love, to be drawn in and reassured.

This is my prayer for our time together in this place.  I pray that God will make himself known to us.  I pray that whatever is going on in your life, no matter how difficult, that God reveals his love to you.  I pray that you would know the transfigured Christ who radiates holiness, and the Christ who heals ordinary people so they can be free to fully live.

Thanks be to God.

Epiphany, Year C, 2012

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Listen to the sermon here.

I have been lying to you.  I’m terribly sorry.

On December 16th, I allowed three children to march right down that aisle dressed as kings, walk right up to Mary and baby Jesus in the manger and offer him presents.

I know you come to Christmas Pageants for their historical accuracy and I apologize from my heart because those details were all just wrong, wrong, wrong.

It gets worse. At this very moment, right below me, there are three plaster figures painted to look like kings handing presents to the baby Jesus, who is in the manger.  We just can’t stop telling you that story!  What is the matter with us????

Here’s the truth.  The kings were not kings.  They were magi.  Magi were believed to be Zoroastrian priests.  Zoroastrianism is an Iranian monotheistic religion started by the prophet Zoroaster about 3500 years ago.  Also, our text never tells us how many kings there were.  We say there were three Magi because there were three presents, but there could have been two. Or five.  Or twenty.  Also, and this may be the worst part—the Magi don’t come to the manger.  In fact, the Magi don’t show up in Luke’s account of the Nativity at all.  The Magi only show up in the Gospel of Matthew and the text tells us they came to the house where Jesus and Mary were.  I know you are SO SHOCKED right now!  I’ll give you a moment.

In the church’s defense, it is WAY easier to sing, “We three kings of orient are” than “We undetermined number of Zoroastrian priests of Persian descent are”.

The story of the Magi is a strange story that we have molded to a shape that makes us comfortable.  But in the strangeness of the story is at the heart of what is wonderful about the story.

The Gospel of Luke’s version roots the Nativity Story in Jewish tradition.  By the end of reading, we know that this baby is the savior of the line of David, come to save his people.  Angels pop up everywhere, reassuring everyone, making all the players feel secure that the miracle that is happening is within the bounds of how God has acted throughout history.

On the other hand, In the Gospel of Matthew’s account, no angel comes to alert the Magi.  They are not studying Hebrew Scriptures or praying to the Hebrew God.  They are practicing an entirely different religion, studying the cosmos, reading the signs in the stars when a star they had never seen before shines so brightly they stop everything they are doing.

Somehow they know this star is connected to the birth of Jesus.  They are compelled to follow the star and find the child.

The event of Jesus’ birth is not just a religious one.  Jesus’ birth changes the very shape of the universe.  And this new star that appears, that shines so bright, be it a supernova, a meteor, or a miracle, reminds us that Jesus’ story is much, much larger than any religious tradition.  John Polkinghorne, scientist and Episcopal priest writes, “Of course, nobody would deny the importance of human beings for theological thinking, but the time span of history that theologians think about is a few thousand years of human culture rather than the fifteen billion years of the history of the universe.”

The Gospel of John tells us that Jesus, as the Word, was present at the birth of universe—which is older than any of us can imagine.  For heaven’s sake, our pop culture is feeling all kinds of nostalgia for the 1990s!  The 1990s!  How can we possibly imagine fifteen billion years ago!

The story of the Magi encourages us to think big, to think cosmically, to engage in wonder and mystery.

We spend so much of our time as Christians thinking small.   This makes sense, of course. We have to make a thousand small decisions every day.  We wonder what God wants us to do about our friends, our families, our work, our decisions about where to live and what to drive and where to worship and how to forgive.  As priests we worry about individual people, and liturgy, and budgets.  These are all good and worthy things to consider.

But the Magi invite us to look up.  Put down the check list.  Put down the iPhone.  Look up.  Look up at the stars.  Remember that we are tiny people on a tiny planet in the middle of a vast universe.   Remember that there are millions of suns and planets and moons and meteors and black holes. Remember that even on this tiny planet we have ecosytems that contain plants and animals that humans have not yet discovered. The world is mysterious and complicated and so are we.

Your body contains about 100 trillion cells. Your brain is firing hundreds of billions of neurons[1].  Think of the muscles you’ve used today just to wake up, brush your teeth, eat breakfast, get dressed and drive or walk to church.  Even if you are sick, even if your body is disappointing you right now, your body still accomplishes amazing things every day.

Our world is filled with wonder.  The Magi invite us to see the wonder of a baby born to save the world.  A tiny baby that contained all of the God that made the universe into which that baby was born.  A baby who grew up and experienced the ordinary and extraordinary  world of human beings.  Whose heart beat just as ours beat.  Whose neurons fired just as ours do.  Whose feet got calloused and hard, whose heart got broken, whose life ended.  Just as ours do.

But this baby obeyed our biology and physics only to a point.  After all, what is the fun of creating a Universe if you cannot play around with the rules?  By defying death, Jesus changed the rules for us, too.  Inviting us to a new type of life, ruled by light and hope instead of death and despair.

No wonder the Magi stopped what they were doing.  No wonder the Magi brought incredible gifts to symbolize this child’s kingship and death.  The Magi knew this was the baby who was going to change everything.

The Magi were open to the wonder.

Not everyone was so open to the wonder.  Not everyone was able to look up and out and beyond their own interest. Herod.  Poor, psychotic, self-interested King Herod.  The Magi come to him, excited to be directed to this infant born King of the Jews and all Herod can do is panic.  He has no imagination.  He can only see this infant as a threat to his power.  He is afraid Jesus will change his life.

And that is the catch for all of us, isn’t it?  That if we give in too much to the wonder that our lives will change.  After all, wonder is not something we really value.  We value irony, objectivity, and the ability to make dispassionate decisions.  Nowhere on a report card is there a place where children get marks for imagination.  Nothing will make a dinner party more uncomfortable than someone going on and on about Jesus.

But maybe we can do a little experiment.  Maybe just for the season of Epiphany, which starts today and lasts until February 12th, we can practice being less like Herod and more like the Magi.  For these five weeks we can practice looking up.  For these five weeks, we will take out a telescope and look at the stars, or learn something new about how our amazing brains work, or unabashedly delight in the Good News of Jesus’ birth.  We can read a poem instead of the editorial page, stare at some art rather than our checkbook, ask a question, rather than giving an easy answer.

We can practice being like the Magi, open to the unusual, open to new adventures, open to Jesus.

Amen.

Advent 2, Year C, 2012

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Right now, as we sit huddled together in the warmth of this church, there are people living in exile.  People living in the wilderness.  Right now, there are children in Syrian refugee camps fighting over blankets, huddling together for warmth, dreading the setting of the sun when everything goes dark.  They are without a home, without a country.  They cannot go back and they cannot go forward.  They are in the wilderness.

Twenty five hundred years ago, Judah was in the wilderness, too.  Babylonians had invaded and enslaved the people of Judah, and they too, were forced to leave their home, abandon Jerusalem.  Their identity as a people would be forever changed.

Out of this wilderness came a prophet.  He wrote the middle part of the book we know as Isaiah.  He wrote these words:

Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the LORD’S hand
double for all her sins.
A voice cries out:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together,
for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

Isaiah spoke hope into hopelessness.  He spoke light into the dark. He gave the Jews in the wilderness hope that one day, God would lead them home again.

When John the Baptist appropriates these words, he knows the emotional weight they carry.  By the time he is preaching in the wilderness, the Jews have returned to Jerusalem, they have even built a new Temple.  Order has been restored.

And yet.

And yet, while the community might no longer be in the wilderness, individuals were.  While God’s presence rested in the Temple, people were still too sinful, too broken to have a direct encounter with God.  Priests and sacrifices mediated the relationship.  God wanted a more direct relationship with his people.  God wanted the mountains between himself and his people trampled down, he wanted to make a way.

Here is the thing about exile in the wilderness; the person in exile cannot end the exile.  The Jews couldn’t just say, “Excuse me Babylonian captors, we’re just going to slip out and head back home now.  Thanks!”  Those children in the Syrian refugee camp can’t just decide to go home.  They aren’t allowed to go home.  They aren’t even allowed to leave the camp!

Someone with greater authority has to step in.  A government has to say, we will take you. You are welcome here.  You may leave exile now and come to your new home.

Or, in our case, the God of the Universe has to say, “I understand that you cannot make your way to me.  I will come to you.  I will send my Son to you, but first I will send John.  John will help you get ready.”

So God sends us another prophet–a camelhair wearing, locust and honey eating man named John.

John helps us, because the barriers between our exile and coming home to God are not mountains and rough places and twisty roads.  The barriers between us and coming home to God are selfishness and broken relationships, idolatry and greed, jealousy and lust.

So John comes, and tells everyone to come meet him in the wilderness and while they are out there everyone takes a good hard look at themselves.  They see the good and the bad and then John washes the bad away.

What the crowd doesn’t know is that soon among them will be the God of the Universe.  Among them will be a man named Jesus who is going to share in their baptism, who is going to love them and listen to their stories, and tell them about how God sees the world.  This Jesus is going to so identify with them—both their good parts and not so good parts—that he is going to be killed so that final barrier between people and God will be broken.  This Jesus is going to rise from the dead to show this crowd that nothing—not even the worst thing—can separate us from God’s love.

Every Advent we remember John the Baptist’s story.  John reminds us that we still have rough places in our lives. We still have mountains of brokenness.  And it is still a good and healthy thing every once in awhile to take stock of the mountain.   And boy, does the holiday season throw that brokenness right in our faces!  Every day we get cards in the mail with pictures of perfect families and catalogues filled with incredibly attractive and thin models in expensive clothes and perfect make up.  But the reality is that the perfect family started snapping at each other the moment the camera stopped flashing and the perfect models stumbled into the studio looking tired and crabby and make up artists and hairstylists spent two hours brushing and painting them into shape.

No one is perfect.  No one is happy all the time.  We all wrestle with feelings of still being in exile—still feeling alienated from God, from our families, from our friends.  We worry that if people knew the real us, the broken, needy, messy us that we would be rejected.

John the Baptist’s words speak hope to you, too.  No matter your situation, God is at work flattening those mountains and straightening those roads, so you can be one with him.  We no longer have to be in exile.  We do not have to stay in the wilderness.  All we have to do is acknowledge our brokenness, our selfishness, our imperfection and ask God for help.  Advent is a perfect time to stop the cycles of shame and doubt and ask God for help.

(Pause)

Even after we accept God’s help, we still live in tension though, don’t we?  Because we still live in a world where children can fight for blankets in a refugee camp.  We still live in a world that is marked every day by violence and betrayal and horror.

This is the other side of Advent.  We are so grateful that Jesus came to us, identifies with us, forgives us, loves us, but we want more.  We long for a different world.  We long for a world without evil.  We long for a world without car accidents, cancer, war.

We have a Christian hope that one day we will live in such a world and every Advent we remind ourselves of that hope.  We hold on to each other and we face forward and we pray that God’s kingdom could come to fruition here, now.  We pray that we could be peacemakers instead of warmongers, agents of justice instead of deception, bearers of love instead of hate.

Because it does starts with us.  We wait for Christ to come back, but in the meantime, we are the body of Christ.  We are the power for good in the world.  We are the powers that can influence governments to release refugees.  We are the people who organize blanket drives and food drives and sit ins and petitions.

We wait for Jesus.  We long for Jesus.  But we also act.  We are weak and imperfect and broken, but we are also healed and filled with the Spirit and as powerful as any army.  We are God’s people.  We have hope and we are hope.

Amen.

 

Proper 27, Year B, 2012

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Listen to the sermon here.

The widow’s mite.

We all know this story from The Gospel of Mark.  It is a sweet parable about sacrificial giving, right?  A little old lady gives all that she has to the Lord.  If only we were all so faithful.   The end.

But the story of the widow’s faithful giving is not a parable.  The story of the widow’s mite is the story of deep faithfulness in the midst of intense corruption, faithfulness in such stark contrast to the bankrupt morality of religious leaders that even Jesus himself notices.

Jesus comes into Jerusalem, heading toward his death.  He sees a temple full of people selling doves and banking, taking advantage of people in the holiest site of all of Jewish tradition.  The very presence of Jesus’ Father rests in this temple and instead of worshiping, the people try to profit.

Jesus is horrified.  Jesus is disgusted.  Jesus is furious.  He starts yelling and tossing tables around the room, and throwing people out of the temple.  His rage overcomes him.

This is no parable.  This is no calm teaching moment.  This is Jesus at his most real, most vulnerable.

Pharisees and Saducees come to him, trying to trip him up and catch him in a blasphemy or a lie so they can have them killed.  He tells them parables then, but not sweet parables about how to live into the Kingdom of God.  Oh no, these are parables about tenants who murder a landowner’s Son.  We are in a dark, dark place in this story.

Jesus has spent several days battling with these religious leaders, these men who were supposed to be upholding everything Jesus’ Father had started.  In our reading today, Jesus calls out the scribes for wanting the best of everything, and taking advantage of widows to do it.

Jesus must be completely deflated.  He has walked into what should be the heart of his Father’s kingdom of earth, the holiest of all holy places, and it is completely vacant of any virtue.

And so he sits.  Maybe he is tired, maybe he just needs to take it all in.  Maybe he needs to brace himself for what is to come.

But instead of seeing more corruption, instead of seeing more greed, instead of seeing yet another betrayal of his Father, he sees an ordinary woman make an ordinary decision to donate a few pennies to the treasury.

But in the larger context, in the middle of the giant mess the Temple had become, the woman’s act is revolutionary.  The corruption might have been everywhere, but this woman defied its pressures.  The widow faithfully donated to the treasury despite  the fact that scribes were taking advantage of women exactly like her.  The widow donated faithfully despite all the opportunities for scheming and money making all around her.  The woman donated faithfully, because it was the right thing to do.

And Jesus notices.  Think of all the people walking around the Temple.  Think of the hundreds of people going about their business.  In Jesus’ stressed state, it would have been easy for him to not really pay attention to what anyone was doing.  But this woman’s simple faithfulness jumps out at Jesus.

Jesus is no longer speaking to crowds.  Jesus is just talking to his disciples, those partners in ministry who have been following him for three years.  What if this little moment is remembered both in Mark and Luke because of the intensity of Jesus’ reaction to this moment of faithfulness?  What if he teared up and leaned forward and gripped Peter’s arm and said, “See that?  Over there?  That’s what gives me hope.  That’s what reminds me of why I came here.  That’s what gives me courage to face what I’m about to face.”

The widow somehow has a moral center, a faithful center that guides her even when external circumstances would bend the morality of the most straight laced person.  And the widow isn’t alone.  She is one of many people donating to the treasury.  She is one of many people willing to make a sacrifice to honor God.

The widow donating her two pennies is an ordinary act, in the midst of an extraordinary situation.  The God of the Universe is across a courtyard and she has no idea.  The God she is serving is actively watching her serve.  And he is not only approving of her, but he is moved by her.

We may not always realize it, but God is with us, too.  Even after a brutal election cycle when we watched obscene amounts of money spent and terrible vitriol spoken.  Even in the midst of the chaos caused by a storm so fierce many people still don’t have homes or power or their ordinary, faithful lives back.  Even in the midst of welcoming a new Archbishop of Canterbury and wondering what it means for our denomination.

Life is full of chaos and corruption and institutional sin.  But in the midst of all the yuck, there are still signs of hope, like a faithful widow giving her two last coins to God.  If you follow our Diocese’s Facebook page you’ll see all the ways faithful, ordinary Christians are stepping up to help one another after the storm. Every time someone donates a coat, loans a truck, houses someone without power, they are standing up for all that is right and good about our world.  They are choosing to live in the Kingdom of God, rather than the selfish and corrupt kingdoms of this world.

And every person who waited in line to vote, sometimes for hours, was a reminder that despite alleged attempts to suppress votes, people of every political philosophy care about this country, took responsibility, and took a small action that enabled our country to have another free and fair election.

We look for heroes.  We look for the people in power to show us how to live, what choices to make.  But the widow teaches us that even if we are in a situation where there are no heroes, God empowers each of us to retain our dignity, to live into Kingdom values, to offer the small things we can offer in order to honor God and one another.

And we may not feel like we are making much a difference and may feel overwhelmed and helpless by the corruption or destruction we see around us, but God is with us. God gives us the power to remember who we are and whose we are.  God gives us the power to be like the widow, a person of honor and integrity, regardless of circumstance.

And you never know when God will be just across the courtyard, watching in pleasure as you do the right thing.

Thanks be to God.

Proper 20, Year B, 2012

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Listen to the sermon here.

Have you ever been afraid to ask a question?

Have you ever sat in chemistry class as everyone is smiling and nodding and taking notes, while you’re still not quite sure how a covalent bond works?

Have you ever been to a party and happened into a conversation about Psy and something called Gangham style and you think everyone is talking about music, but you’re not entirely sure, so you keep your mouth shut?

Or more seriously, have you seen your significant other light up when someone else enters a room?

Or seen an unusually serious look on your physician’s face?

Or wondered why your kid seemed so spaced out lately?

There are questions we are afraid to ask.

There are questions the disciples were afraid to ask, too.

For the second time, Jesus warned the disciples he was going to be betrayed, die, and would rise again.  His statement just hangs in the air.  No one responds to him. The Gospel of Mark explains that the disciples did not understand and were afraid to ask Jesus anything.

I wonder why they were afraid. Were they afraid of Jesus dying?  Were they afraid Jesus was a little unstable with all this resurrection talk?  Were they afraid one of them might be the betrayer?

In any case, they do not respond to Jesus’ statement.  Instead they start talking amongst themselves about which of them is the greatest.  A few days earlier, they had seen Jesus transfigure before their eyes.  During that transfiguration they saw Elijah and Moses, back from the dead.  Instead of discussing what Jesus had just said about his own death, maybe they started thinking about this happy event instead.  Maybe they started wondering which one of them would get the privilege of glowing with Jesus at the next transfiguration event. Who would be the greatest? Maybe they started ribbing each other about how good they would look in glowing robes.  Anything, anything to avoid discussing the real issue.

And of course, that is the very moment Jesus turns around.  Like a mother, Jesus seems to have eyes in the back of his head when it comes to his disciples.  He just knows they are up to something.  When they sheepishly admit they have been arguing about who will be the greatest, he gives them an object lesson.

He pulls over a child and says, “Whoever wants to be first must be last and servant of all.  Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me”

In our culture, children are put up on a pedestal.   We read up about their development and schedule our lives around their naps.  We do our best to make sure they are in the best schools and include them in decision making in our households.  We buy them expensive clothes, toys, and electronics.

In Jesus’ time, children did not have such a valued status.  They were loved, of course, but children were thought of as lesser.  They were vulnerable.  They were on the fringes of society.

But certain things don’t change.  Children of any time ask questions.  One of the delightful things about working with children is their absolute inquisitiveness, especially four year olds.  At a Lenten Supper at Emmanuel Church five or six years ago, a four year old named Adelaide asked me a series of questions. “Why do you wear a white robe?  Why do we have communion?  What is heaven like? Where does God live?” Twenty minutes later still answering questions, I slowly backed out of a screen door trying to get on with my evening.  As I shut the screen she asked, “And why does that door have holes in it?”

If four-year-old Adelaide ran across Jesus she would ask him questions until he escaped up a mountain.  Children are vulnerable, yes, but they are also incredibly tenacious, even rude.  Children don’t understand taboos or social norms.  Children don’t understand that there are some questions they should be afraid to ask.

And Jesus wants his disciples to be more like children.  Jesus wants us to be more like children.

Jesus wants us to approach him, unafraid and ask him whatever is on our heart.

In some denominations, if you start asking too many questions, someone will tilt their head to the side and say sympathetically, “I’ll pray for your faith,” as if human questions have the ability to unravel the God of the Universe.

But one of the best things about the Episcopal Church is that we believe God is big enough to handle your toughest questions.

Why do the books of Deuteronomy and Joshua have such different perspectives on the same time frame?  Why don’t the Four Gospels agree with each other?  Why was the Apostle Paul so crabby about women?  How do we love a God that allows massive bloodshed in his name?  What if Mary wasn’t a virgin?  What if Jesus wasn’t perfect?

Why do Christians still cheat and lie and steal?  How can there be a God if there is no scientific evidence for it?

Tough questions about our faith do not undermine our faith. In fact, tough questions can be the beginning of adult faith.  We offer Christian Education for every age at this church, because we may know the Bible stories by heart by the time we get confirmed, but the real in depth understanding of Scripture and theology cannot begin until our brains are old enough to understand complex ideas.

Our faith is not a child’s faith.  Our faith hinges on a man being murdered for being obedient to God.  That’s not the subject of children’s books!  But in order to fully enter the stories and ideas of our faith we need to have open, curious minds in the same way that children have open and curious minds.

Jesus invites us to lose our inhibitions and fears so we can engage with him and with each other humbly, openly and with curiosity.   Jesus wants us to ask him the hard questions.

You may not find answers to all of your questions.  Your “Whys?” may be met with nothing more satisfying than with “Because I said so”, but in the asking, in the wrestling, you will encounter the living God.

Throughout the Gospel of Mark, the disciples bumble around, never fully comprehending Jesus.  Over and over again they tell Jesus they don’t understand him or just ignore really important things he says.  And yet the disciples follow him.  They don’t walk away because they are confused.  Jesus is too compelling for that.

Our God wants to communicate with us so much he becomes one of us.  He spoke our words with our voice box and mouth and tongue.  He encapsulates vast cosmic ideas in a human body and mind.  Empathetic doesn’t begin to describe a God that would literally walk in our shoes.  This is a God that has seen our worst.  He can handle your questions.  No matter what they are, no matter how shocking, no matter how the answers might up end your world.

So, if you were little Adelaide, what would you ask Jesus?

Amen.