Ordinary Time

Proper 15, Year C, 2013

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We pick up this week with Hebrews where we left off last week.  The author of Hebrews is trying to inspire and encourage second generation Christians who are starting to question their faith.

He continues his greatest hits account of the Old Testament.  His rhetoric is really ramping up, so he doesn’t get into a lot of details, he just starts rattling off names:  Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets.

Except for Samson and David, these are not the usual heroes of the Old Testament.  Even those of you who spent your entire childhood in Sunday School may be drawing blanks when you try to remember their stories.

And when you do hear their stories, you may raise an eyebrow!

Rahab was a harlot who helped out some Israelite spies, Gideon was a warrior against the Midianites who took a lot of convincing to follow God, Barak was Deborah’s general who refused to fight unless she came with him, Samson was a strong warrior defeated by love of the wrong woman, Jephthah ended up killing his own daughter after making a foolish promise to God, and David wasn’t exactly a prince.

These people had faith, but most of them weren’t role models.

And maybe that is why the author of Hebrews chose them as examples.  Because faith is not really about us.  Faith is not some moral characteristic we exhibit.  Faith is a gift from God.  God’s power isn’t dependent on perfect people to act in the world.  In fact, in the Gideon story, God commands Gideon to fire a bunch of his warriors so that the world would know that God, not military might, caused Israel’s military victories.

The author of Hebrews is writing to ordinary people.  Ordinary, scared, discouraged people.  They need to be reminded that the heroes of faith were also ordinary and often scared and discouraged!

And the new Christians needed to be reminded that often these heroes did not even see the end results of their faithfulness.  Abraham and Sarah did not get to see the multiple generations born that would become Israel, Moses never got to enter the promised land, David did not get to see a temple built in Jerusalem.

As we turn towards kick off Sunday next week and the beginning of our Christian Education year let’s think about how these two ideas—that ordinary people can have extraordinary faith and that even the faithful may not see results they hope for—can give us courage to minister to our young people.

Those of you who do not have children or whose children are grown may be tempted to tune out now.  Please don’t.  Remember, the children of this parish belong to you.  Every time you witness a baptism you make a vow to do all in your power to support that person in their life in Christ.  So you’re on the hook here, too!

As you know, we have been searching for a youth minister all summer.  We are very close now, but before this person joins our staff, I want to name something.  When we hire a youth minister, we are going to run a risk of outsourcing our youth’s faith formation to that person.  We are going to run a risk of forgetting that we have all made these promises to the youth in this room.  We run that risk by having a children’s minister on staff, too!

Ministering to children and youth can feel really intimidating!  Kenda Dean, in her book Almost Christian, argues that people avoid teaching junior high and high school Sunday School not because they don’t like teenagers, but they feel like their faith is inadequate to do the job.  Potential volunteers are afraid they don’t know enough about the Bible, they don’t pray enough, that they aren’t faithful enough.

But children and youth learn how to be faithful by being around people who are faithful!  And if everyone abdicates responsibility, we are in a lot of trouble!  Parents are the strongest influence in a young person’s life of faith, but other faithful adults are important, too. Dean argues that a person doesn’t need to be an expert to be a great teacher or mentor to a young person, but they do need to be seeking a life with God.  She writes,

What awakens faith is desire, not information, and what awakens desire is a person—and specifically, a person who accepts us unconditionally as God accepts us.  We may question what we believe, but most of us are pretty clear about who we love, and who loves us.  it is such a preposterous claim—God-with-us (oh please)—that young people are unlikely to believe it unless we give them opportunities to do some sacred eavesdropping on us as we seek, delight, and trust in God’s presence with us.  . . .People are not called to make their children godly; teenagers are created in God’s image, no matter what we do to them, and no matter what they do to disguise it.  The law called upon Jewish parents to show their children godliness—to teach them, talk to them, embody for them their own delight in the lord 24/7.  Everything they needed for their children’s faith formation, God had already given them.  In the end, awakening faith does not depend on how hard we press young people to love God, but on how much we show them that we do.  (Dean p. 120)

The best thing you can do for your child’s life of faith is to seek to deepen your own relationship with God.  It is just as important for you to go to a Bible Study or prayer group as it is for your child to go to Sunday School.  And Sunday School teachers, it is just as important to show children that you understand you are loved unconditionally as it is for you to teach them the ten commandments.

And this is where Hebrews can help us.  Because realizing that the children around us need us to model faithfulness can make those feelings of inadequacy rise up in us like bile.  But God uses ordinary, flawed people.  God’s faith grows in imperfect people.  Are you selfish?  Great, then people will be more impressed when they see God at work in your life.  Are you really materialistic?  Super. Then God’s power will be truly evident when you decide to pledge a little more to church or charity this year.  Are you Biblically illiterate?  Perfect, then you can demonstrate humility by learning Jesus’ parables right along with the second graders.  Are you crazy busy?  Maybe God can’t wait to teach you about the joys of Sabbath.

The other thing that can be frustrating about teaching Sunday School is the lack of obvious results.  You show up week after week and sometimes kids are there and sometimes you have a faithful remnant staring at you blankly.  Sometimes you feel like you are connecting and sometimes you feel like everyone is wasting their time.

But remember our message from last week—faith is the conviction of things not seen.  There is always more going on than we can see.  You may have a child in your class who says not a single word the entire year.  But in twenty years, that child may remember your kindness to him and decide to come back to church.  You just don’t know.

In fact, you kind of have to have faith.

As a church, I hope we will all take a leap of faith to support the children and youth in this place.  I hope we will surround Audi and our youth minister with supportive, encouraging words and actions.  I hope we will show up to teach, to chaperone, or just to give a parent wrestling with small kids in a pew an encouraging smile.

I hope we will, as the author of Hebrews writes, “run with perseverance the race that is set before us.”

Amen.

 

Proper 14, Year C, 2013

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“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

This is one of the most iconic statements in Scripture.  It has been emblazoned on plaques and embroidered on sweatshirts.  People have cross-stitched it, framed it, and hung in on a thousand living room walls.

But what does it mean?

The author of Hebrews is writing to discouraged, second generation Christians.  These aren’t the disciples who stood with Jesus as he was transfigured and listened to God praise his Son.  These aren’t the crowds that surrounded Jesus and saw his miracles.  These aren’t the friends who noticed the empty tomb and experienced the resurrected Jesus.

These followers of Christ have heard those stories, of course, but those stories are fading.  These followers have been through terrible persecution, seen their friends thrown in jail, know those who have been killed for their faith.  Now they are wondering, “Was it worth it?”  They aren’t seeing any results.  Jesus hasn’t come back.  There has been no revolution.  All they’ve got is the Holy Spirit and some old stories.

The author of Hebrews is encouraging his readers. He’s reminding them that faith is more than looking at the evidence around you and sighing in resignation.  Faith requires a person both to look ahead in hope and to look more deeply at the reality around them.

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for—faith reminds us that Jesus promised us the kingdom.  Jesus promised us a new way of life.

But faith is also the conviction of things not seen.  That is, faith is the belief that there is more than meets the eye to the present.

Think of our news coverage.  Whether we open the Times-Dispatch or go to the New York Times online or turn on CNN, we are inundated with the fifteen most horrible things that have happened in the entire world the previous day.   On top of that, we are reminded that we are slowly poisoning our planet and that we probably have some terrible disease we just haven’t been diagnosed with yet.  Getting a bird’s eye view of the world is enough to make us want to hide under our covers for the rest of time!

Detroit is a perfect example.  What do you know about Detroit from the news?  Detroit is a big city that has collapsed and is filing for bankruptcy, right?  You probably picture poverty and violence and decay.  And all that is happening.  Buildings are abandoned, some with squatters living inside.  The drug trade and gun violence is all a part of life in Detroit.  But what happens if we have “the conviction of things not seen.”  What if we believe that God is at work in Detroit?

On her wonderful program “On Being”, Krista Tippet interviews people who examine the bigger questions in life, whether they are religious persons, scientists or poets.  Recently she re-aired an interview with a woman named Grace Lee Boggs.  Grace is a 98 year old philosopher who has lived in Detroit for decades.  She and her husband were instrumental in the civil rights movement in the area and she continues to live her life with energy as she tackles the big questions of what it means to be a worker in an era in which all the jobs have left your community.

As Tippett spoke with Boggs and others in Grace’s community, they talked about community gardens which have been springing up in blighted areas. They talked about artists gathering and expressing themselves.  They talked about people in Detroit gathering and breaking bread together, sharing life together.  You heard stories of true community.  Community rooted in love and respect.  Community that sounded quite a lot like a community of God.  There is more than meets the eye in Detroit.  God is at work, even amidst the blight, even if we cannot see that on the evening news.

Abraham and Sarah certainly had to draw on deep reserves of faith.  God send them forth without any real instructions!  God made promises about their offspring that he didn’t fulfill for decades.  Year after year Abraham and Sarah plodded forward, somehow trusting that God was at work, even when promises were not yet fulfilled.

We are not alone in those moments when we wonder whether God is a faithful, loving God.  We are not alone when we have moments in which we think the resurrection story is a little far fetched.  Waaaaay back, just a few years after that resurrection, people were already starting to think it sounded too good to be true.

So how do we nurture our own faith two thousand years, hundreds of generations later?  How do we keep ourselves holding on when the evidence seems thin?  When our own suffering, or the suffering of others makes us start to doubt the presence of God?

The author of Hebrews would encourage us to tell the stories.  Remind ourselves of all the people in the bible, all the people across history who have had encounters with God.  Remember our own stories of God’s faithfulness and listen to the stories of others.  Whether you choose to read about the saints or a more modern memoir of faith by Lauren Winner or Kathleen Norris, reading about the faith of others can encourage our own faith.

Worshiping together can also be helpful.  When a friend first invited me to attend a service at an Episcopal Church, I was a 21 year old evangelical who had just spend the summer on a poorly organized mission trip in Delhi, India.  The trip raised all kinds of questions for me about poverty and God’s work in the world.  It also made me doubt the church, whose cheerful attempts to lead Vacation Bible School amongst people who barely eked out livings in the slums of Delhi seemed patronizing, at best.

I came home uncomfortable in the cheerful, hand clapping worship services of the church I attended.  So, when I walked into the doors of St. James’ Episcopal Church in Richmond, I did not know what to think.  But then the liturgy started.  And I teared up because for months I had not been able to pray, but now, praying these old prayers in unison with hundreds of other people made me feel deeply connected.  I had never seen the Nicene Creed before and thought it was the most brilliant thing I had ever read.  At the time I had no idea it was a statement of faith that had been cobbled out in the 4th century, but I could tell it was rooted in something deep and true.  I actually still have a scrapbook where I cut the Nicene Creed out of the bulletin because it moved me so much!

When we say the Nicene Creed every Sunday, we say it together and we always say it in the plural.  We help each other keep the faith.  When one of us doubts, another can believe for us.  We may have weeks, months, years at a time when we aren’t able to say the words of the Creed with confidence, but we can stand there silently listening to the chorus of voices around us and remember that faith surrounds us, even if faith is not within us.

And if you are struggling with faith today, know that we will believe for you.  We will hold onto the hope that God is at work in your present and that God has a future for you.

We hold onto the faith together.  No one has to go it alone.

Amen.

 

 

 

Proper 11, Year C, 2013

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

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.

 

Proper 9, Year C, 2013

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Listen to the sermon here.

How many of you went to see the film adaptation of Les Miserables that came out last year?

As a former teenage girl, I had been extremely familiar with Eponine’s plot—the poor rejected girl who has to suffer through watching the love of her life choose a soprano. Like many of you former and current teenage girls, I had sung “On My Own” in the shower about 500 times over the course of my life.  Every time some cute boy I had a crush on chose another girl, out would come my double cassette recording of the London production.

So what a shock to watch the film adaptation as an adult and realize that poor Eponine is not the heart of the story at all!  The real meat of the story is not Eponine’s broken heart, Marius and Cosette’s love story, or even Fantine’s extremely dramatic, extremely tuberculer death. The heart of Les Miserables is the conflict between Jean Valjean and Javert.

For the two of you who are not familiar with the plot:  Valjean in his youth stole some bread, was locked up for 19 years, released, stole some candlesticks, was forgiven by a bishop, which gave him faith and an inner drive to be a good man.  He changed his identity and became the mayor of a town committed to serving those around him.  Javert, on the other hand, was an upstanding police officer, absolutely committed to justice, who had it in for Valjean and relished the idea of re-arresting him.  There are also revolutionaries and barricades and shifty innkeepers and an orphan girl, but you’ll have to see it to get those stories!

Javert does not care that Valjean has changed his life and is a contributing member of society.  He can only see the former thief, former prisoner in front of him.  They battle throughout the musical.  At one point Valjean has the opportunity to kill Javert, but does not.  Javert is so distressed that Valjean has offered him this grace, that he ends up throwing himself off a bridge into the Seine.  The heart of Les Miserables is a battle between grace and the law.

I don’t know whether God does screenings of movies in heaven, but if he does host a showing of Les Mis, I’m pretty sure the Apostle Paul is in the front row with a bucket of popcorn, humming under his breath.

Paul spent a lot of time persuading people that grace was the new order after Jesus’ resurrection.  For the last six weeks or so, our lectionary has led us through Paul’s letter to the Galatians.

To sum up:  Paul is incredibly irritated with the Galatians.  He skips his customary opening where he spends a paragraph thanking the community for how great it is and just dives in telling them, “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel”  Paul has visited the Galatians and taught them personally all about the grace that Jesus has given them.

Not long after Paul and his friends left Galatia, another group came in and told them that grace was fine, but the Galatians were still going to need to be circumcised if they wanted to be Christians.

Paul then spends five chapters outlining why this is a terrible idea.  Namely that the whole point of Christ’s resurrection was to create a new way for human beings to be reconciled to God, so that human beings no longer had to follow the law perfectly.

Don’t worry, lest things get too crazy, Paul explains that without the law we don’t just go around doing whatever we want to do, but that we now live in tension between the flesh and the Spirit.  The Spirit will give us the power to resist all the same yucky human behaviors from which the Law was designed to protect us.  Instead of walking around stewing in anger, factions, sorcery and drunkness, the Spirit will transform us into people marked by “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control”.  (Not as exciting, I know.  But in the long run, much better for us!)

So, after five chapters of going on and on about circumcision and what a bad idea it is and how unfaithful the Galatians are being by perpetuating circumcision among new believers, you would think that Paul would end with a really strong finish.  After all, he is defending grace, the core of Christian theology!

Instead Paul writes this:

May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.  For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything!  As for those who will follow this rule—peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.

In the Greek the second sentence is much shorter—“Neither circumcision or uncircumcision—but new creation!”

This is how crazy grace is.  Even though Paul is theologically correct in being anti-circumcision, he knows ultimately it doesn’t matter.  Circumcision, uncircumcision—Eh!  Paul cares enough to want the Galatians to have a correct understanding of grace, but he loves Jesus enough to wish the Galatians on either side of the argument peace.

Christ’s resurrection changes the nature of the universe so completely, that our old categories do not apply.  Circumcision and uncircumcision aren’t even relevant. We are in a new creation and we are a new creation.

Jean Valjean lives into this new creation by living a life based on the idea that he is loved and forgiven and called to do good in the world.  But Javert cannot see the new creation, even when it is right in front of his face!  He can only see the old creation, the old rules, the old categories.  He can only see good or bad, criminal or upstanding citizen.  He has no capacity for nuance.  And his lack of imagination kills him.

As Christians we have done a terrible job living in the ambiguity of the new creation.  We love labels! Are you baptized or not? Are you confirmed or not?  Are you Catholic?  Are you Protestant?  Are you a progressive Christian or a conservative Christian?  We love rules.  We love to know who is in and who is out.

When I was involved with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in college we had a problem.  We were a pretty conservative group who spent a lot of time worrying about whether we were following the rules correctly. But even though we were conservative, there was another group on campus that was snatching our members because they thought they were the only denomination that was following Biblical rules correctly. The International Church of Christ  recruited members on many college campuses and may still be operating.  When they pursued our members they would make it clear that the student’s faith was not adequate.  If they had not undergone a believer’s baptism, followed the doctrine of the ICoC, and actively recruited disciples, they were not real Christians.

Not many of our group left to join the ICoC, but a handful did.  There was something compelling to them about having external rules to follow that let them know they were being faithful to God.  There was a safety in law.  With a strict law, their faith could be measured and found adequate.

As Episcopalians, we have the uncomfortable job of living in a lot of ambiguity.  Because our church is rooted in how we worship, rather than what doctrine we believe, sometimes what we believe can feel rather loosey goosey.  But I think the advantage to the way we do things, is that we are forced to actually turn to the Holy Spirit when we are making a decision, rather than following a universal set of rules.  And the fifth chapter of Galatians is a fabulous way to check in about whether we are following the Spirit.  Are our lives marked by enmity and jealousy and out of control behavior? Or are we slowly developing patience and love and joy?

And to be fair, Episcopalians do have hundreds of pages of Church Canons and we even pay church lawyers, so we probably don’t completely understand that we are living in a new creation, either!

What would our lives look like if we lived lives like Jean Vanjean’s, rooted in a deep knowledge of God’s grace?  What risks might we take?  What forgiveness might we offer others?  What forgiveness might we offer ourselves?  May God give us the gift of insight into his expansive, generous grace that welcomes all of us into a new creation.   Amen.

Proper 7, Year C, 2013

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

A few weeks ago, we met Elijah the showman—a man so confident in God that he was willing to have a public throwdown with the prophets of Ba’al.

Today we have a slightly more relatable Elijah.  Today we have Elijah, the whiner.  Not many of us have had public throwdowns in which we have heroically defended God’s honor.  But I guarantee that most of us in this room have whined at least once.

The last few weeks we have skipped all around the Elijah story, but this leg of the story happens right after the show down with Ba’al’s prophets.  You might remember that Elijah then kills the prophet’s of Ba’al, which infuriates Queen Jezebel, who sends a messenger to warn Elijah that he has 24 hours until she is sending someone to kill him.

So, Elijah runs.

He spends an entire day running into the wilderness until he finally collapses, exhausted.  He lies under a little tree and decides to give up.  He asks to die.  He doesn’t want to go any further.  He’s had a good run as a showman prophet and now that things are going downhill, he’s ready to check out.

Now, anytime I get a little cranky, my husband’s first line of defense is to feed me a snack.  This works about 85% of the time.  Apparently, God has the same plan for Elijah.  Elijah falls asleep under the tree, but an angel wakes him up and feeds him some cake and water.

What a tender acknowledgement of Elijah’s humanity!  Before God engages Elijah directly, he gives Elijah what he needs to regain his strength.  He has asked Elijah to do extraordinary things, but God remembers that Elijah is just a man, and a man who needs some cake.

Once Elijah is revived, he finds a cave and hides there.  For 40 days.

Finally, Elijah hears God’s voice.  And God says, slightly exasperated, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

What would we answer God if he asked us the same question?  Would we answer, “What?  This is where you called me to be!”  Would we say, “I know, I know, I’ve gotten way off track.”  Would we say, “Don’t look at me, Lord of the Universe, I am only here because of outside circumstances!”

Elijah gives a personally reasonable response, even if it is a teensy bit whiney.  Elijah patiently explains to God that he has been extremely faithful to God, even though the Israelites are total losers who have turned their backs on God and now they are trying to kill him, so he’s just going to go ahead and live in this cave thank you very much.

We might expect that God would tell Elijah, “Oh grow up.  No one ever said being a prophet was easy.  Put on your big boy britches and get back out there!”

In fact, at first God doesn’t answer Elijah at all.  He just tells him to go stand on the edge of the mountain because he is about to pass by.  Remember this isn’t just a mountain, this is Horeb.  This is Sinai.  This is the mountain where the Lord shows up in big ways.  This is the ten commandments mountain.

So, Elijah goes out to the edge of the mountain.

Now, Elijah has gotten used to experiencing God in dramatic ways.  After all, God shot fire from the heavens to prove to the Israelites that he existed and was more powerful than Ba’al.  So, I bet Elijah expected a big showing when The Lord himself was going to appear!

Elijah waits and a huge wind comes.  But the Lord is not in it.  Then a huge earthquake, but no God.  Then fire!  Surely God was in the fire, Fire is God’s move.  Nope.  No God.

Finally sheer silence fell on the mountain.  Elijah wraps his face in his cloak because he knows hte Lord is passing by and he wants to be protected.

What a powerful moment.  Elijah is reminded that God is not only with him when fire is raining from the sky, but God is with him even in those moments in his life when he cannot hear or experience God.  God is in the silence, not just the dramatic.  God is in the everyday, not just the holy experiences.

Surely, this is a transformational moment for Elijah, right?

Well, God asks Elijah the same question, “What are you doing here Elijah?”

And Elijah gives God the exact same answer as before.  Word for word!

I think we get so distracted by the beautiful imagery in this passage, that it is easy to miss that Elijah’s anxiety has not diminished.  The encounter with God was surely powerful, but not enough to transform Elijah’s personality or current problem, which is that the king’s wife is going to kill him.

Our reading stops there, but what happens next is that God gives Elijah an out!  He lets Elijah quit!  He tells Elijah to head back and that God will appoint a new king to replace Ahab and Elijah will get to appoint Elisha to be the next prophet!  God gives crabby Elijah what he wants! Elijah knows what he can handle and God honors Elijah’s limitations.

Isn’t that great news?

We hear so often of the Christian martyrs and remember Christ’s death on the cross, that sometimes we think being faithful to God means working ourselves to death.  We think being faithful to God means beating our heads against brick walls.  We think being faithful to God means handling whatever we are dealt, no matter how terrible.

But God created us to be limited beings.  We are not infinite, God is.  And because we are finite, there are challenges that are too much for us.  And we are allowed to complain to God about them.  Sometimes we will have to follow through, but sometimes God will completely understand our need to quit.

Now, please, don’t all of you quit your church committees at once; Eric will kill me.  And, it turns out, Elijah didn’t quit, after all!

God did give Elijah the out, and Elijah did immediately find Elisha, but he didn’t then move to Florida and start wearing Hawaiian print shirts.  Elijah worked alongside Elisha, finishing out his duties as prophet.  Something about being heard by God, and having his limits recognized, came him the energy and courage he needed to finish out his ministry.

When you imagined God asking you, “What are you doing here?” Did you imagine parts of your life that are making you miserable? Are there responsibilities you need to give up so you can fully live?  Do you need encouragement to finish out what you have started?

Admitting your limitations will not make God turn his back on you.  In fact, it wasn’t until Elijah admitted his fears that he experienced the full presence of God.  God’s relationship with Elijah was not a reward for Elijah being a “good boy”.  God’s relationship with Elijah was because God loved Elijah, for who he was, in all his crankiness.

And you too, are loved, exactly as you are.  With your bad habits and unpleasant disposition and extra ten pounds–God loves all of that.  God loves all of you.  And God will continue to call you, but that call is a conversation, not a set of marching orders.

So, what are you going to say when God asks you, “What are you doing here?”

Amen.

Proper 4, Year C, 2013

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Good morning!

Welcome to St. Paul’s Ivy on this very special day as we celebrate our 175th anniversary!  If you are visiting from another congregation, we heartily welcome you and look forward to getting to know you during our picnic this afternoon.

We can promise you good food and warm company, but cannot guarantee any pyrotechnics the like of which we see in our reading from 1st Kings this morning.  This showdown between Elijah and the prophets of Baal is amazing.  We can easily imagine the scene being some kind of new reality show. Instead of The Voice or The Bachelor, we would all gather in our living rooms to watch Prophets:  The Showdown.

Of course Elijah is not just parading around to entertain the Israelites.  The Lord is so angry with Ahab and the Israelites that he has caused a multi year drought.  Ahab is described in the Bible as the most evil of all the kings of the Israelites and the other kings were no peaches, so you can get an idea of what kind of person he was.  His wife, Jezebel, encouraged him to start worshiping the local God, Ba’al, so he set up shrines for that purpose.  Breaking the first of the ten commandments is no joke.  I mean, truly, if you are the King of God’s people at the very least you ought to get down to the third or fourth commandment before your integrity starts to fall apart.

Elijah is assigned the uncomfortable task of being the prophet to try to keep Ahab in line.  Elijah has confronted  Ahab before when warning him about the drought. So this scene is round two in their battle.

Ahab gathers all the people of Israel to see this competition between the Lord and Ba’al. In other parts of 1st Kings Elijah can be afraid, even whiny, but here is all swagger.  Beyonce is known for getting into her Sasha Fierce character before a show and I picture Elijah doing his own version of this here.  At the very least he must give himself a pep talk!   Elijah’s first move is to taunt his audience!  Can you hear his scorn?  “How long will you go on limping between two opinions?”

This is what is so pathetic about the Israelites worship of Ba’al.  They haven’t given up worshiping the Lord, they’ve just added Ba’al into the mix to hedge their bets.  They won’t even commit to fully abandoning the Lord.  Elijah is not impressed.

In a contest, Elijah puts himself up against the 450 prophets of Ba’al.  The prophets of Ba’al make a pile of wood and pray and pray and pray and nothing happens to their pile.  And when nothing happens Elijah trash talks to them!  “Cry aloud! Surely he is a god; either he is meditating, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.”

Like a true showman, he then calls the crowd to get closer so they can all get a good look. He carefully rebuilds an altar to the Lord that has been torn down.  He digs a trench and puts wood into it.  In the middle of a drought, he then pours water all over his pile of wood.  He doesn’t do this once, he does it three times for good measure! The entire trench is filled with water. There is no way this fire should light.

Elijah offers a an offering to the Lord and prays that the Lord would show himself so that the Israelites could know him.  The Lord sends a fire that consumes the burnt offering, the wood, even the water catches on fire.

The people of Israel, given this absolute visual proof of the power of the Lord fall on their faces and worship him.

If this was on our imaginary reality show, Elijah would drop his mike and walk off stage.  Ba’al has been served.

We may not have any altars to Ba’al set up at St. Paul’s, Ivy, but the story of Elijah and the prophets of Ba’al is a powerful reminder about God’s power.

We have been celebrating the ways God has shown up in the past in this place, but a few weeks ago Eric guided our attention forward.  We now begin dreaming about the next 175 years of worship and service in this place.  Will we move forward in courage and hope, trusting that God is powerful?

Or will we hedge our bets?

A few weeks ago, at our last vestry meeting, your vestry voted to authorize the hiring of a full time director of youth ministries to care for our junior and senior high youth and their families.  The children and youth formation committee read about, talked about, prayed about youth ministry in this place and nervously made this recommendation to the vestry.  I’ll be honest with you; I didn’t think there was any way it would pass!  Most churches I know hedge their bets, not wanting to fully commit to youth ministry.  When the vote came in I would not have been surprised to see the coffee table in Neve hall burst into flames.

Hiring a youth minister is not a way to outsource youth ministry.  With a full time youth minister, we are going to have more events, need more chaperones and drivers, need more Sunday School teachers, need more confirmation mentors.  Will you rally around this vestry and the new youth minister when he or she comes?  Will you come to church more often so your kids can be in Sunday School regularly?  Will you put youth events on your calendar first rather than squeezing them in when they are convenient?  Youth ministry is not just about giving teens a wholesome set of activities.  Youth ministry is about inviting teens to meet the living God, the God who so loves his people; he is willing to put on ridiculous light shows to get their attention.

And for those of you not called to work with youth, are you willing to dream big?  To imagine the other ministries God might be calling us to in this place?  How does God want to show his power and his love at and through St. Paul’s, Ivy?

God shows his power now, not through droughts and fire, but through changed lives.  Are you willing to draw near to God in these upcoming years and have your lives changed?  Are you willing to pray?   Join a bible study or Education for Ministry group?  Encounter God in our outreach program?  Finally go to AA? Are you willing to be changed?

Following God is no joke.  After his amazing, bold display of God’s power, Elijah spent a long time on the run, afraid for his life.  (He also killed the 450 prophets of Ba’al, which might have had something to do with his sudden need to hide in the hills.  Jezebel was not pleased.)  We will have moments in ministry when we feel bold and confident in what God is doing and there will be spectacular failures when we want to hide in the hills.

But there is exhilarating freedom to take risks when we realize that our successes and failures aren’t really about us at all, but are both part of living lives that are open to the possibility of God’s power breaking in and doing something miraculous.

Keep your eyes, your ears, and your heart open.  Be a detective who searches for where the Holy Spirit is at work.  Let us know where you think God is calling us. And 175 years from now, let the members of St. Paul’s, Ivy reminisce about the exciting work God has done in our time.

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.

 

Proper 17, Year B, 2012

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Listen to the sermon here.

When I was 10 years old, my father was diagnosed with high cholesterol.  Suddenly, foods we had loved—scrambled eggs cooked in bacon fat, beef stroganoff, potatoes drenched in cheese and sour cream—these foods vanished.  Cheerios, skinless chicken breasts, and olive oil took their place.  We weren’t the only family going through this transition!  The late eighties saw the dawn of the low fat diet.  So many people began associating egg yolks with almost certain heart attacks, that American Egg Farmers suddenly had to start marketing the humble egg!

Flash forward fifteen years.  Americans have realized that low fat doesn’t necessarily mean healthy.  Basically we’ve been substituting fat with sugar and are none the healthier.  Now red meat and eggs are okay, but in 2002 the enemy is carbohydrates.  My boyfriend at the time was one of the many people who attempted the South Beach Diet.  Do you remember that one?  It was not as extreme as Atkins, but all flour and sugar were out.  They replaced mashed potatoes with mashed cauliflower and ice cream with ricotta mixed with a little splenda.  I may or may not have kept a stash of cookies in my car during this romantic relationship.

Food takes a funny place in the world of human beings.  We love food, but we also loathe food.  Food has power over us.  We think if we can control the food we eat, we will be happier, look better, and live longer.  We alternately demonize and sanctify foods based on whatever the latest science reveals about their effects on our bodies.

Now, just imagine if this relationship to food was complicated further by there being religious and ritualistic meaning to food!

For Jesus’ followers, food was related to religion.  Some foods were okay to eat and some were absolutely forbidden.  Jesus’ followers would have been horrified, for instance, when they saw me eating lobster after lobster on my Maine vacation.  Any shell fish, pork and some other meats, such as meat from mice or bats (perish the thought) were forbidden.

Now, those foods had been explicitly banned by Leviticus, but other traditions around food had developed that were not a direct biblical mandate.  Priests were required to ritually wash their hands before dealing with animal sacrifices, but over time that practice had expanded to include all lay people washing their hands in a ritual manner before any meal.  Jesus’ followers were not all washing their hands before they ate.

The Pharisees and scribes were not happy about this.  These weren’t any old scribes, either. They were the scribes from Jerusalem.  These were the experts in the field.  They were the most important scholars in the Jewish world.  They wanted to know why Jesus was allowing his followers to eat with defiled hands!

Jesus calls the scribes hypocrites and then says: “there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

Jesus digs underneath the meaning of the rituals and the rules and clarifies to his followers that nothing we can eat can defile us.  Not even a deep fried stick of butter at a state fair.  Only our own thoughts and actions can defile us.

But we get the disconnect.  We understand and have sympathy for those first century Jews.  We understand that food is complicated and tradition is complicated.  While outside of Seders and the Eucharist, food does not have much of a religious component for us anymore, it still holds incredible power.

While first century Jews understood their religious health to be wrapped up in what and how they ate their food, science has started to unravel the mysteries of how our physical health is wrapped up in our food.

And just as first century Jews might have lost track of their spiritual health by focusing on food rules rather than their own thoughts and behaviors, we can lose track of our spiritual health by focusing on food rules rather than our own thoughts and behaviors.

Food is a gift—it gives us strength and nourishes us.  It can give us great pleasure, too.  A perfectly cooked steak, an aged cheddar, the Bent Spoon’s chocolate sorbet: Food can give us a moment of true transport.

However, like anything in life, our relationship to food can get out of balance.  We can be addicted to it, we can abuse it, we can use it to hurt ourselves.  On the other hand, we can also become incredibly controlling about food, we can deprive ourselves, we can shame others.

Caitlin Moran, in her hilarious, profound, and extremely profane book, How to be a Woman has an extremely insightful chapter about her own unhealthy relationship to food.  She makes the claim that there are two kinds of over eating—one in which a person just really loves good food and experiences it in a sort of Falstaffian way, but that for other sorts of people, including herself, eating becomes a compulsion, a kind of addiction.  She writes (and this is heavily edited due to the aforementioned profanity):

 

“I’m talking about those for whom. . .thoughts of food, and the effects of food are the constant, dreary, background static to normal thought.  Those who think about lunch while eating breakfast, and pudding as they eat chips; who walk into the kitchen in a state bordering on panic and breathlessly eat slice after slice of bread and butter. . .until the panic can be drowned in an almost meditative routine of chewing and swallowing, spooning, and swallowing.  . . .You get all the temporary release of drinking, [sex], or taking drugs, but without—and I think this is the important bit—ever being left in a state where you can’t remain responsible and cogent. . .Overeating is the addiction of choice of [people who care for others], and that’s why it’s come to be regarded as the lowest ranking of all the addictions.  It’s a way of [messing] yourself up while still remaining fully functional, because you have to.”[1]

Her words resonate because while not all of us drink or use drugs, we all eat.  Food is part of each of our lives and for many of us, to various degrees, food becomes a kind of medication for our anxiety, for our fear, for our self loathing.

On the other hand, in the “Dear Prudence” advice column in Slate this week, a woman wrote in because mothers in a play group her daughter is in, berated her for bringing non-organic carrots and high fat ranch dip to the child’s play group.  While this may seem a completely opposite problem to that of over eating, food snobbery that becomes so extreme it causes a person to lash out at someone for bringing conventional carrots to a play group also comes from a place of brokenness.  The false belief that we can control our future, control our health, control our destiny through organic and high end food is just another form of anxiety.

Whether we over eat or starve ourselves, whether we indulge in everything or count every calorie and potential toxin, many of us have used food to ease that sense of panic that comes with anxiety.

And this is where Jesus comes in.  Because Jesus knows this about us.  He knows about our insecurity, our fear, our inability to control ourselves.  Jesus knows it is not the food that is the problem.  Food is just food.  Jesus knows the heart of the problem is our own brokenness.  We can call it insecurity, we can call it addiction, we can call it fear.

That fear, that brokenness does not defile us, but what we do with it can.

There is a moment in our baptismal vows during which we promise to renounce all sinful desires that draw us from the love of God.

I warn baptismal candidates that this is the most difficult baptismal promise of all.  We are conditioned to turn towards other things to comfort us instead of turning toward God.

We turn towards food, shopping, overworking, over exercising, wine, pornography, drugs to comfort ourselves. (If it makes you feel better, in the course of writing this sermon I consumed a pint of ice cream, two cookies, two Reese’s peanut butter cups, went to the GAP and bought a pair of jeans and two t-shirts, and bought a diaper bag on Ebay that I don’t really need.  She knows whereof she speaks.)

The potential is there that our anxiety will grow and build and mutate and turn into fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly—those things Jesus warns us will defile us, will separate us from God.

Whenever we feel our brokenness, our panic, we have a choice to make.  Will we choose life or will we choose death?  Will we choose Jesus, who loves us and forgives us and will give us strength?  Or will we choose to hurt ourselves and those around us?

Jesus offers true life to his followers.  Over and over again he cuts through the Pharisees’ and scribes’ hypocrisy and reminds his followers that following him is not about obeying rules perfectly.  Following Jesus is about being in relationship with the living God.  A relationship with the living God is risky!  God is asking you to bring your whole self before him—all your anxiety, all your fear.  He’s asking you not to stuff it down, not to submerge it, not to subdue it, but to hold it up to his light.

Not only that, but as you’ve been learning the last few weeks in church, Jesus becomes our food.  He replaces the empty calories with his own person. Jesus is the food that nourishes us.  Jesus is the food that gives us hope.  Jesus is the food that saves us.  Jesus is the bread that actually addresses our anxiety, our alienation, our fear.

Eating a tiny piece of wafer and drinking a thimble full of wine every week may not feel as satisfying and downing a pint of Ben and Jerry’s or getting through the day having only consumed 1200 calories by eating steamed organic carrots and hummus for lunch, but Jesus is food that sustains us.  Jesus is the only food that leaves no craving.  Jesus is the only food that is enough.

Thanks be to God.

[1] Moran, Caitlin, How to be a Woman, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY:  2012, pp. 116-117

 

Proper 11, Year B, 2012

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

We disciples were so tired.

We hadn’t always been so tired.  When Jesus sent us out into the world two by two we were thrilled.

Jesus gave us power.  Real power, over unclean sprits.  We could feel the energy shoot through our arms when we practiced healing the sick exorcising demons.  Peter in particular, loved to find a good demon possessed person.  He loved the loud whoosh as he sent the demon flying.

When Jesus sent us out, we knew we were up for the challenge.  We might have been nobodies, fishermen and tax collectors, but now we had God on our side!  We had the magic touch.

We strutted into a nearby town and knocked boldly on a door.   It was slammed in our faces.  We tried again and again and eventually a desperate mom with a sick daughter let us in to her home.  The back room was dark.  We could barely make out this tiny girl lying on a pallet.  Suddenly, all our bravado was gone.  This mother didn’t care about how powerful we were, she just wanted her daughter well.  We held the girl’s hand and prayed more desperately than we ever had. In front of our eyes, the girl sat up, took a deep breath, and looked around disoriented for a minute.  When she saw her mother she ran to her and held on to her skirts.  She was perfectly healthy, just a little unnerved by two strange men in her house.

From then on, things were different.  We healed so many people.  You wouldn’t believe the problems people had.  Boils, blindness, leprosy, bad legs, lung diseases, any disfigurement you could imagine.  For days we did this, walking and healing; walking and healing.  Our strutting turned to dragging feet.  We were physical guys, but this was different.  We could haul fishing nets all day long, but fish don’t break your heart.

Eventually, it was time to go back to meet Jesus.  We made our goodbyes and dragged ourselves back to him.  We were so glad to see the other disciples.  Even Peter looked like the wind had been taken out of his sails a bit.  We just wanted some time to decompress. Jesus took one look at our bedraggled condition and immediately started leading us away to get some rest.

We got on the boat together and began to cross over.  Before we landed we could hear a weird buzz.  As we pulled in closer, the buzzing turned into the sound of human voices.  Hundreds of human voices.   On the shore were thousands of people as pitiful as the ones we had been healing.  Sad people, sick people, desperate people.  As soon as we got off the boat, their hands were on us, tugging, pushing.  People were climbing on top of one another just to put a hand on Jesus.

We kept expecting Jesus to get us out of there—to lead us away, but he didn’t.  Your lectionary may leave this out, but what Jesus did next was just infuriating.  He did not ask the crowd to leave, he didn’t find a private place for us to connect.  What did he do?  He invited the crowd—we are talking thousands of people—to sit down and eat!  That’s right, instead of giving us a retreat, suddenly he was expecting us to be waiters to a crowd of what must have been 5000 people!

This is how he was—no matter where we were, no matter how closely we needed to keep to a schedule, no matter what our original plan was, Jesus just couldn’t stand to see a hurting person.

I can’t describe adequately how overwhelming this was.  Once Jesus got really famous, everywhere we went, he was surrounded.  We were surrounded.  Hundreds of people every day asking things of him.  Hundreds of people every day begging him to change their lives.  It was like a plague of hope.  People who had been resigned to their lives for the first time thought there was a real chance that their lives might change.  That hope turned them into fierce, dogged, relentless pursuers of Jesus.

And Jesus loved them.  Even as they crowded us, and stepped on our toes, and ruined our plans, he felt only compassion for them.

But here’s the dirty secret.  Jesus couldn’t heal everyone.  Not because his healings were ineffective, not because he was unwilling.  No, the sheer numbers were just overwhelming.  For every hundred people he saw and healed, there were another hundred, two hundred, a thousand who showed up too late, or on the wrong day, or stood a little too far back in the crowd.

The crowds were like tidal waves, and Jesus could only deal with a bucket at a time.

And even once he gave us powers for healing and exorcising demons, we weren’t able to pick up the slack.  We did our best, but keeping up with the demand would have required an army of thousands.

Jesus never seemed anxious about this.  As much as his gut wrenched when he saw a particularly wounded soul, he never experienced despair.

We disciples were exhausted and discouraged, but Jesus just got more and more determined.

At the time, of course, we did not understand the big picture.  We saw how he poured himself out for these strangers, but we never could have predicted his end game.

We thought we needed more of him, more like him, or for him to work harder or more creatively, or to deputize more people.

Instead, Jesus walked toward Jesusalem.  Jesus handed himself over to the insecure, grasping, anxious hands of the enemy. The healer of the wounded became wounded himself.  He threw himself towards death and despair.  He poured himself out, completely.  We were devastated.

And then, that third day.  That third day, everything changed.  When he rose from the dead and showed himself to us, we finally got it.  In order to heal every person in the world, those in the world during his life time, and those after, Jesus had to change the rules.  Jesus needed to die so he could defeat death and all the suffering that comes along with it.  He needed to go to the source of the pain and the horror and trample it under his feet.  Human suffering might have been a tidal wave, but he was the Son of the One who created the oceans in the first place.  There was no limit to how far he was willing to go to bring healing to humankind.

We disciples knew what it was to be around Jesus, the living God.  We knew what it was like to be loved, to be healed, to share meals with the creator of the universe, come to earth.  In his death and resurrection, Jesus did more than bring healing to humankind, Jesus transformed the relationship between his Father and his Father’s creation.  Now all people could share the same intimacy with Jesus that we did.  Every Sunday across the planet, people share a meal with Jesus, much like the final meal he had with us.

Jesus shares himself with you, just as he shared himself with the crowds.  No matter how broken and needy you are, Jesus longs to heal you.  No matter how hungry your spirit is, Jesus longs to feed you.  No matter how lost you are, Jesus longs to be your shepherd.

We disciples knew Jesus for a few years, but you have your whole lives to get to know him.  But be careful, before you know it, you’ll be dropping your fishing nets and following him to the ends of the earth.  Getting to know Jesus is a risk, but trust me, it is a risk worth taking.