Ordinary Time

Proper 7, Year C, 2010

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Listen to the sermon here.

I spent the summer I turned 21 in India, as a short term summer missionary with a group called Youth with a Mission. I had many interesting experiences, but the most disturbing was when our group was meeting some religious leaders in a slum in Bho Pal.  An older man pointed out a young girl—I would guess she was about eight years old—and told us that she was possessed by a demon and they were going to do an exorcism later that day.

Now at the time, I was coming out of a conservative American religious tradition that used the language of demons and angels periodically, but no one I knew had ever claimed to know someone who was possessed.

I was too young and inexperienced to say much of anything or to ask any questions, so I stood there, dumbfounded.

When I became an Episcopalian, I expected the language of demonic possession to fade into the background of our religious discourse.  And mostly, of course, it has.  But every few years, someone will come by a church of a friend, convinced they are possessed and ask for an exorcism.  Even I have been asked to bless a home the owners were convinced had some evil presence in it.

So, I frankly, don’t know what to think about demon possession.  I would like to think that it is outdated imagery based on a pre-scientific understanding of mental illness and epilepsy.  We all know how frightening it can be when a loved one disappears right in front of us, because suddenly they are overcome with symptoms of depression or schizophrenia or addiction.  We know how frightening it is when WE disappear to ourselves for the same reasons.  The experience of mental illness can certainly feel like one has been overcome by an outside malevolent power. But maybe there is another, more spiritual category in which we can be overcome.  We may never know for sure.  What we do know for sure is that Jesus demonstrated his power over the unknown by healing the man from Gerasene.

Whatever our understanding of what was plaguing the man from Gerasene, his story is a poignant one.  His choices were to live in community, but be shackled; or live freely, but alone.  The man keeps breaking through his shackles and is forced out of community, so wanders alone through the tombs.

When Jesus heals him, in an instant the man from Gerasene is brought from brokenness to wholeness; from solitude into community.

The eighth and ninth chapters of Luke show Jesus demonstrating his power over and over again.  He calms a storm, he heals the man from Gerasene, he heals a woman who has been bleeding for years, and he brings a young girl back to life.  Jesus could have continued doing tricks with the weather to show his power.  He could have caused tornadoes to come and whisk the Pharisees away when they bothered him.  He could have made double rainbows appear every time he made a speaking appearance.  Instead, Jesus uses his power over and over again to heal people.  He reaches out to people that are ill in ways that estrange them from their communities—the man from Gerasene who could not be in community because of his strange behavior, the woman who had a uterine condition that was considered unclean, the young girl who had already passed beyond all community into death.  He reaches out to those who are beyond community and heals them, bringing them back in the fold.

Jesus shows us God’s character through these healings.  When we are in relationship with God, God is at work in us moving us from brokenness to wholeness, from isolation into community.  Whether we have miscarriages that we feel like we cannot talk about publicly, or cancers in places we’d rather not name, mental illnesses that leave us not feeling ourselves, God moves toward us, never away from us.

Our illnesses do not separate us from God, even if we feel like they separate us from our families and friends.

Last week, I received a really nice letter from a woman who had come to one of our Wednesday healing services.  She was a visitor to the congregation going through chemotherapy.  We said healing prayers for her and in the letter, she said for her the service was an experience of both spiritual and physical healing and that she has recently been given a clean bill of health from her doctor.

Now, I have to admit, I was totally shocked by her letter!  I am so used to the church’s ritual of healing prayer, that I can forget that healing prayer can have real power.  But quietly, every Sunday, our prayer team prays in the Lady Chapel for those who need healing, and every Wednesday we pray and have Eucharist together.

The power in healing prayer is not the priest’s power or the congregation’s power, the power of healing prayer is the same power that Jesus demonstrated when he reached out to the man from Gerasene.  The power of healing prayer is that same power that reaches out to us when we are feeling our most vulnerable and afraid and alone.  Through healing prayer, God reaches out to us and begins to make us whole again, begins to draw us out of solitude, into community.

Even if healing prayer does not instantly heal our illnesses, the act of praying when we are ill or afraid or alone reminds us that God’s power is stronger even than the power of illness and death.  In children’s worship we occasionally sing the song,

God is bigger than the boogeyman.
He is bigger than Godzilla or the monsters on TV.
God is bigger than the boogeyman,
and he’s watching out for you and me.

The song is meant to comfort children who are afraid of what might be lurking under the bed or in the closet, but we grownups have our own set of fears that keep us up at night, and we, too need to be reminded that God is on our side and that he has great power.

Princeton can be a town of great isolation and great loneliness.  And I know in many of your lives you are going through difficult times.  I see God at work in Trinity moving people out of isolation and fear into community and love and I encourage you to reach out to one another and to be part of the healing work that God is doing in this place.

For Jesus is not done with his healing, he is still at work right here, right now, in our lives, exorcising the demons of our fear, loneliness, disease, anxiety, depression—all those things that weigh on our hearts and souls.

Thanks be to God.

Trinity Sunday, Year C, 2010

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Have you seen the movie Wall-E?  While the protagonist of the movie is an adorable trash compacting robot, what I found really interesting was its depiction of humanity.  In the movie, humans have evolved in such a way as to spare them any suffering.  They float around in chairs, so they don’t have to walk.  They stare at screens instead of engaging in risky human interaction.  When they are hungry or thirsty, robots hurriedly bring them refreshment.

We are not quite there in our society yet, but there is a lot of money made every year on products trying to make life a little less painful.  We make luxury cars with surround sound satellite radio so commuting is comfortable.  We make diet pills and elaborate exercise machines so we can lose weight without making too many sacrifices.  We make lightweight electronic books, so we don’t have to schlep around ten pounds of novels when we’re on vacation.

We are incredibly lucky to live in a society where we can protect ourselves from an enormous amount of suffering—we have running water and indoor toilets; our doctors are trained in hygiene and anesthesia; our police, fire brigades and EMTS protect us without bribes.

And yet, even with all of our advances we can never protect ourselves fully from suffering.  Our hearts will still be broken.  Our loved ones will still die, some years before they should. Our bodies will still betray us.  Suffering is a fundamental part of what it means to be human.

Now, if I were marketing a religion, I would make sure that part of the package would be a promise of relief from suffering.  I would tell my followers that if they just followed my God, they would receive an easy life, filled with pleasure.  Paul, however (and that’s St. Paul, not our rector), does not seem to be working with a PR consultant.

In the letter to the Romans, Paul acknowledges what all of us know.  Suffering is part of life and a part of faith.  None of us can escape suffering, no matter how much we try to pad our life with luxuries.  Paul captures this beautifully in the 8th chapter of Romans, writing:

We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

This image of all of us, along with all of Creation, leaning forward, groaning, waiting for God really captures the human experience.  When something awful happens:  a child’s death, long term unemployment, hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil about to destroy miles of coastline, there is nothing we can do, but groan our prayers and hope for redemption.

But, Paul’s view of suffering is not entirely negative.

Whenever my sister and I grumbled about doing something that annoyed us, my father would tell us, “You’ll build character!”  At first Paul’s stair step argument in Romans 5 can feel a little bit like a parent telling us to grin and bear our suffering.

Paul writes that we can boast in our suffering and that our suffering will lead to endurance, which will lead to character, which will end in hope.

We all know that suffering does not necessarily produce that outcome.  We all know people for whom suffering has done nothing but embitter them.  So, when we read this text, we may read it cautiously.  We may hold it at arms’ length and think to ourselves, “Oh yeah, Paul?  Prove it.”

We are helped when we understand the context in which Paul is writing.  Paul has been telling the Romans how no one is righteous.  No one can keep the law.  No one can earn righteousness before God.  Paul goes on to explain that through Jesus ‘ willing sacrifice, we are granted righteousness before God.  That righteousness is given to us as pure gift.

In our passage today, Paul is explaining what that gift gives us.  The gift reconciles us to God, giving us peace with our Creator.  We use this passage on Trinity Sunday, because Paul goes on to say that the Holy Spirit pours God’s love in our hearts.  So, the Father sends the Son, who sacrifices himself so we can be at peace with God.  He in turn sends the Holy Spirit, who fills us with God’s love.

So, transformation of suffering into hope is part of this gift, too.  Paul is probably talking about eschatalogical suffering here—suffering having to do with the end of times—since Paul thought Jesus’ return was immanent.  But really, we are all moving toward the Kingdom of God, and we all experience suffering on the way, so I think it is fair to say that our suffering can be included in this conversation.

What’s important to note here is that this transformation of suffering into hope is not something that the sufferer does.  Paul’s whole point is that that God’s gift to us is pure gift—and is not something we can earn.  We can place ourselves before God and pray that our suffering might be transformed into endurance, character and hope.  But we should never use this passage as a weapon against ourselves or anyone else who might be stuck in grief or pain or suffering of any kind.  This passage should never be used to nag or berate.  Instead, this passage offers us a beacon of hope.

Paul’s words offer us hope that our tears and pain may deepen and broaden our compassion, rather than harden our hearts.  His words offer us hope that our crises may make us into more mature, thoughtful people.  His words offer us hope that we might yet be transformed into people of hope—people who so in touch with God’s presence, that our hearts feel deep peace.

We don’t need to be like the characters in Wall-E, completely protected from pain.

Paul’s words give us courage to face the world honestly.  They give us courage to step out of our padded luxury cars, put down our laptops, turn off our televisions.  Paul’s words give us courage to face our broken hearts and bodies head on, knowing that God can transform our suffering into something that betters us.

In my last parish, I had a friend who was in her 80s.  She had a series of health scares, including an episode of congestive heart failure that was completely terrifying to her.  She called me in the midst of all of her struggles and asked if I could come see her.  When I went to visit her, I expected to hear about her pain, her fears, maybe her loneliness.  Instead, she told me, “Sarah, I want to talk with you, because my pain has made me think about all the people in pain around the world.  I want to use this as an opportunity to pray for those people.”

That moment has been one of the most profound of my entire life, because she exemplified what Paul is talking about in his letter to the Romans.  God gave her the grace to experience her suffering as a broadening, deepening experience.  Instead of feeling sorry for herself, she found a way to reach out to the world and care for them through her prayers.  The love of God flowed through her and out to those for whom she prayed.

And whether we are people who feel that kind of hope, or not, Paul is right when he says that God’s hope will not disappoint us.  Because the gift of Jesus’ sacrifice, the gift of God’s love poured out by the Holy Spirit, is our gift, even in our deepest suffering.  Even at our terrified, grief stricken, self-absorbed worst.  Even when we feel not one iota of character or endurance or hope, God’s love pours out for us.  And that love will not disappoint us.

Amen.

Proper 27, Year B, 2009

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Whenever I start thinking about money, I start hearing lots of voices.

I hear my Grandmother Kinney’s voice.  She grew up in the coal mining town of Hazelton, Pennsylvania during the Depression.  She never overcame her fear of not having enough.

I hear my father’s voice.  He is a big saver and nearly every car he’s ever owned was purchased with cash.

I hear my mother’s voice.  I think she’d be a little appalled that I was telling you these personal details about my family’s relationship with money.  Money is not something one discusses in polite company.

I hear Suze Orman’s voice as she tells her audience over and over again to have a six-month emergency fund saved.

On the other hand, I hear Carrie Bradshaw’s voice, too, making $400 high heels seem like a reasonable investment.

I hear the voices of my husband, my friends, priests, stewardship directors, financial advisors, pundits, celebrities-and I am a total sucker for the voices of marketers. Yes, that $12 bottle of shampoo does make my hair shinier than a $3 bottle! Yes, that $70 pencil skirt would make me look just like a character on Mad Men!  Yes, a roomba would make housekeeping easier! Yes, a right hand diamond ring would symbolize that I respect myself!  (You can relax, I did not buy myself the ring or the roomba.)

We all have voices that run through our head when we think about our own relationship with money.  Whether we are tight fisted, extremely responsible, don’t know how to balance a checkbook, or compulsively shop-those behaviors have come from those voices and how we interpret them.  We can’t escape the voices, but we don’t have to be enslaved by them.

The widow in our story today seems to have found away to move past the voices of anxiety and fear in order to hear the voice of God.

I have to be honest; this story makes me very uncomfortable.  The widow’s actions are antithetical to everything I’ve been taught about money.  I want her to put those two coins in her savings account!  I want her to accrue interest!  I want her to have security for her future!  I want the scribes to get off their high horses and take her under their wing.

But my attitudes about money stem from the very modern idea that my money is mine.  All those voices I hear-whether they advocate responsible saving or wasteful spending-assume the money is mine to spend.

The widow teaches us a different way.  The widow comes from a long tradition of assuming all that we have actually belongs to God.  The widow assumes that whatever money she has is just a gift from God, passing through her life for a little while.  The widow comes from a long tradition of thanking God by returning to God a portion of what he has given.

In the Old Testament, believers are asked to sacrifice to God the fruits of their agricultural lives-grain, pigeons, cattle.  This must have made deep sense to them.  Agricultural life is so dependent on outside circumstances-rain and sun and insects and soil-that raising healthy crops must really have felt like partnering with the divine.  Without soaking rains or bright sun, all of their labor would have been for naught.  They understood that their labor was connected to the earth, which was created by God.

Michael Pollan and others who think about food and health and ethics are happy to remind us that we Americans are far, far, far removed from that agricultural life.  Many of our children have never seen a farm.  I did not know that brussel sprouts grew on that funny stalk until last year!  Any of us who have read Food, Inc. or The Omnivore’s Dilemma know how disconnected we are to the very ground that sustains us.

The thing is, no matter how our income is generated, all of us can trace back the source of our income to Creation.  Mine is a pretty short line.  I get my income my ministering to human beings, who were created by God.  Even though very few of are directly connected to nature in our work, all of us owe our very existence, and the existence of our jobs, homes, spouses, friends, children and yes, even iPods, to God.  In fact, we owe our own existence to God.

We acknowledge this during the Rite I service, in the middle of the Eucharistic prayer, when we say:

And here we present and offer to thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee. (BCP 336)

One of my seminary professors, The Rev. Dr. Edward Kryder, taught us to leave the monetary offering on the altar when we celebrated the Eucharist, because when the collection of your money is brought up to the altar, it’s not just cold hard cash.  That money is a symbolic representation of our very selves-our souls and bodies.  When we put money into the offering plate, we’re putting the time and energy and passion we spent making the money.  We put our faith and our values and our belief in the plate.   If we just needed to raise money to keep the heat on, we would not collect the money in the middle of a Eucharist.

The church needs money, yes, but we as people also have a spiritual need to give.  We need to be reminded that we are not alone.  We need to be reminded that we were created and that our life is pure gift.  We need to be reminded that every dime that crosses our threshold is the direct result of the incredible decision of God to create this planet and all the abundance it has to offer us.

The theologian Paul Tillich describes God as the “Ground of our Being.”   I love this image, because it evokes a picture of God literally holding us up-of undergirding all that we are and all that we do.  Experiencing God as the “Ground of our Being” can be incredibly liberating.  I don’t know about you, but I find it all too easy to fall prey to our culture’s spirit of anxiety.  Our culture’s voice says that we aren’t complete persons until we are married with 2.5 kids enrolled in Ivy League schools, a big house in the suburbs, a vacation home at the beach, and at least one Lexus.  Our culture’s voice tells us that we should not be satisfied; we should not feel complete until our life is completely saturated by the material things that bring true happiness.  Our culture can even punish giving.  I have a friend who was audited several times because he gave too MUCH money away to charity!  The IRS was sure he was up to no good because he gave away more than they thought was rational.

We all know that our culture’s version of happiness is empty and fleeting.  By contrast, when we root ourselves in God as the “Ground of our being”, when we listen to God’s voice, we will hear God telling us that we do not need to be anxious.  We do not need to prove anything to anyone.  If we listen to God’s voice, we will hear that God loves us and wants to give us what we need.  If we listen to God’s voice, we will be able to look at our lives with new eyes, able to see the abundance all around us. Listening to God’s voice gives us such a sense of deep security, that we can open our hands and trust that what we give away does not diminish us.

Listening to the voice of God is what frees us from being enslaved by the other voices in our minds.  When we listen to the voice of God, we can understand more clearly which of our voices are destructive, and which of our voices are life giving.  When we are making decisions about money, and the voices are swirling all around us, making us anxious, we can take a deep breath and a moment of silence and listen for what God is saying to us.

God is not an afterthought when it comes to our decisions about money.  God is the very source -not only of our wealth-but also of our life and breath.  We can follow the sound of God’s voice, like sheep follow the sound of a shepherd’s voice-knowing the shepherd will lead safely through even the most difficult places.

Amen.

Proper 18, Year B, 2009

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Last month, my husband, Matt, helped out with Nassau Presbyterian’s Esther musical, Malice in the Palace.  He was in charge of daily bible study in-between rehearsal times. The bible study’s theme was: People in the Bible who Stood up for Their Beliefs. On the third day of the program, he chose the story of the Syrophonecian woman.

Some days the kids were engaged.  Some days they were not.  But on the third day, as Matt told the story of the Syrophoenician woman, the kids leaned forward and started to hush each other so they could hear every word out of Matt’s mouth.

The kids were captivated, because unlike every other passage of the New Testament, in this story, Jesus is not the hero.  In fact, Jesus behaves in a very human way.  One might even say Jesus behaves like a jerk.

To be fair, Jesus was trying to lay low.  He had just been in Jerusalem, arguing with the Pharisees and maybe he just needed a break.  After all, Tyre is a beach town.  Maybe he wanted to go to Israel’s version of Cape May and catch a few rays, eat a fish taco, take a little break.  However, when you are as interesting as Jesus, traveling incognito becomes difficult.  Even in the days before twitter and TMZ, the word got out that Jesus had arrived.

The Syrophoenician woman has a daughter who she believes is possessed by a unclean spirit.  She loves her daughter and wants to help her.  She has probably been to every doctor and rabbi and healer in Tyre, seeking a cure for her child.  If you’ve ever known a mother of a sick child, you know there is no fiercer or more determined creature on earth.  When this mother hears that Jesus is in town, she immediately goes to him.

Maybe Jesus is sitting on his beach chair with lemonade in his hand.  Maybe he is praying in a darkened room.  Maybe he is getting some well-deserved sleep.  We don’t know.  All we know is that this woman finds him, interrupts whatever it is he is doing, and falls on her knees before him.

The Jesus we have come to know and love always heals people.  He may ask a few questions first, but he never rejects people.  Until now.

Jesus rejects the Syrophoenician woman.  He not only rejects her, but he calls her a dog.

And this is the point where the kids in Matt’s bible study started to really pay attention!

Calling someone a dog is just not okay.  And when you have the human embodiment of the love of God calling someone a dog, it is REALLY not okay.

Jesus resists healing this poor woman because she is not Jewish.  Until this point in his ministry, Jesus has understood himself as being called to tell Jewish people about God’s call for them.   So, he rejects this woman without a second thought.  She is not a chosen person.  She does not belong.  She does not deserve God’s healing.  Especially on Jesus’ day off.

Thankfully for all of us, the Syrophoenician woman is smart as a whip and stubborn as a mule.  Instead of getting her feelings hurt by Jesus’ insult, she parries with him.  She replies, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”  She pushes Jesus on his definition of who deserves the love of God.  She does not claim the same right as a Jewish person, but she senses something about the nature of the Jewish God, she knows that her daughter deserves healing just as much as a Jewish child would.

I wish I could have seen Jesus’ face when she replied!  I’d like to think he was charmed by this woman who dared to talk back to the Son of God.  Maybe he was chastened by his earlier curt reply.  In any case, he tells the woman that because of her reply, her daughter will be healed.  The Syrophoenician woman might have been pushy.  She might have been rude.  She was definitely cheeky, but Jesus saw her faith in him and her love for her daughter and it transformed his life and his ministry.

Because of that pushy lady, Jesus understood that his Father intended to expand the family of God to include all people.

When I was a kid, we did not go to church.  And I did not want to go to church.  Primarily, I did not want to go to church because I thought being a Christian woman meant having to wear really ugly flowered dresses with lace collars.  I’m not sure where I got this belief, but to me, Christian women were passive and sticky sweet and not at all interesting to be around.

Thankfully, when I got older and became involved in church, I realized that Christian women, especially of the Episcopal variety, were anything but sticky sweet.  They were complicated, diverse, strong, sensitive, and if they needed to be, they were fighters.

Perhaps the stereotypical ideal of a Christian woman for my generation was Mother Teresa.  The news always showed her smiling beatifically at some sick child.  But if you read about Mother Teresa, you learn that “sweet” is not a good descriptor for her.  Mother Teresa truly had the spirit of the Syrophoenician woman.  Mother Teresa was terribly concerned for the poor and she would do anything to help them.  She would wait for hours at a doctor’s office to get medicine, she would badger local officials until they would give into her demands.  She would shame world leaders into enacting more just policies.  In her memoir she even admitted to having serious arguments with God, and doubts about God’s very existence.

Mother Teresa was a prickly, stubborn, big hearted woman.  She was the embodiment of love, but not in the saccharine way Hallmark cards and the Lifetime channel think about love.  Mother Teresa and the Syrophoenician woman shared a kind of inner fire driven by the desire to help another.

That same fire and passion is open to any of us, regardless of our gender.  I see that fire in a friend of mine with Epstein-Barr virus who is fighting to get disability insurance.  I see that fire in my friend who moved home to help take care of her disabled brother, despite her own painful battle with lupus.  I see that fire in yet another friend, as she watches her niece battle leukemia.  None of these friends are going to let naysayers stand in their way.  They are going to fight to take care of their families.  They are going to get the care and attention they richly deserve.

There are times when we have to stand up to authority figures.  There are times we have to risk our reputations.  There are times when we have to argue and fight and push and annoy.  Sometimes a personal crisis brings out our inner Syrophoenician woman, but sometime the hurt of the world can, too.

Our world is so broken, and so needy.  All over the news we are hearing about the 46 million Americans without health insurance.  We hear about the 15 million Americans without jobs.  We are hearing about the consequences of these statistics-debt and poverty and hunger and broken families.  And this is just in our country!

I don’t pretend to know what the solution might be.  I am not a public policy expert.  I don’t even really understand the difference between a public option and single payer health care system.  What I do know is that if you are passionate about these issues, if you are one of the thousands of people on Facebook this week that posted something about health care; if you want to help people in need of work, or who are hungry, or who have lost a home; tap into your inner Syrophoenician woman.

Say your prayers, tap into that inner fire and do something.  Write your Congressman with your opinions on public policy.  Donate money to a cause you believe in.  Volunteer at the Crisis Ministry, Housing Initiatives of Princeton, or the Trenton After School program.

The Syrophoenician woman reminds us that God’s love is not just for the chosen people.  God’s love is not just for the deserving.  She helped Jesus figure that out and in turn received his affection and healing.

Well, guess what?  We’re the body of Christ.  We are called to love all those people on the edges and the fringes, too. We are called to take the lessons that the Syrophoenician woman taught Jesus and apply them to our own lives.  We are called to fight for the poor and those who suffer injustice.  And this, frankly, can be scary and intimidating.  But when we go into those battles, we don’t go alone.  Standing right next to us, beaming, is the Syrophoenician woman, urging us forward.

Thanks be to God.

Proper 16, 2009, Year B

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

I am terribly sorry for what I’m about to say.  I do not mean to hurt your feelings, I promise.  But I have to tell you-we are weird.

Normal people would spend a morning like this in bed, or in an air conditioned café with a fresh copy of the Sunday New York Times.  We should be curled up on a couch, puzzling over the crossword puzzle with an iced latte in our hand.  Instead we’re in this overheated sanctuary seated in hard wooden pews.  We’re wearing our least comfortable clothes: stockings, ties, suit jackets and high heels. When I’m done with this sermon, we are all going to say the same words we’ve said the last thousand Sundays, all together in a chant.  After that, we are going to partake of a tiny cracker and some port-before noon!

How weird are we?

Well, we are almost as weird as the disciples.

And we’re not anywhere close to being as weird as Jesus.

In today’s gospel lesson, we have finally reached the end of the Bread of Life discourse in the Gospel of John.

So far, the Bread of Life discourse has been lovely.  The image of Jesus as spiritual nourishment is a cozy, comforting one.  In my last sermon, I talked about Jesus’ coming to us as bread as his way to embrace us. But in today’s passage, Jesus veers off into a very uncomfortable, weird direction.

The word for eating in the New Testament is usually esthio.  Esthio is a nice, polite word.  Esthio is how the Israelites ate the manna in the desert.  Esthio is how the crowd of 5,000 ate the miraculous loaves and fishes.  But when Jesus tells the crowd that those who eat his flesh will abide in him, he does not use the word esthio.  No, Jesus uses the word trogo.  Trogo is an awful word.  Trogo means to chomp, to gnaw, to munch, to crunch.  Trogo is how you eat fried chicken or what a dog does to a bone.  When someone is trogo eating you can hear their teeth click and their tongue squish. Trogo is disgusting.

Trogo is an offensive word, and here trogo is paired with an offensive act-eating human flesh.

I get the sense Jesus is messing with the disciples here.  He’s pushing their buttons and making them uncomfortable.  Jesus is reminding them that he is not ethereal.  Jesus is not abstract.  Jesus, the Son of God, is right in front of them, shockingly, in the flesh.

Can you imagine the disciples’ reaction?  I bet they started looking down at their hands at first, and then maybe they started stealing glances at each other. Eventually maybe they start talking quietly with each other and looking at Jesus out of the corner of their eyes.    I bet they started to wonder what they had gotten themselves into.  Who was this weirdo they were following?  Eventually they just flat out confront Jesus.  Some brave representative says, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”  Which is a rather polite way of telling Jesus he is a freak show.

Jesus has his audience right where he wants them. They are seriously uneasy. Jesus wants to reorient his disciple’s point of view, but before he can do that he needs to disorient them, he needs to get them off balance.

And boy, are the disciples off balance!  They are probably still shuddering at the image of gnawing, chewing, crunching on human flesh, when suddenly Jesus redirects the conversation.

Jesus asks the disciples, “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe.”

Woah!  Twist!

The disciples are still over here, worried about cannibalism while Jesus is over here schooling them in what really matters.  He’s telling them that, in this instance, the flesh is not important.  Jesus is saying that what he has been talking about all along how the spirit gives life.

Jesus is reminding the disciples that they have no idea who he really is.  Jesus is telling them that if they are upset now, they would really freak out when they saw him in the fullness of his divinity.  Jesus calls them out for not believing in his divinity.  Jesus reorients them.

Many of the disciples, though, cannot get past being disoriented.  They cannot get past Jesus’ weirdness.  And so, they leave.  We never hear what happens to these disciples who left.  We don’t know if they changed their minds and came back.  We don’t know if they went back to their families.  We don’t know what they thought when they heard about Jesus’ resurrection.  All we know is that Jesus made them too uncomfortable, so they left.

Jesus turns to the twelve disciples who have been his closest allies and asks them, “Do you also wish to go away?’

Now, these twelve disciples may be as weirded out as their compatriots who left, but they are also convinced of Jesus’ divinity. Peter  says, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”  Peter speaks for the twelve and expresses why they are so drawn to him, why they cannot leave his side.  Jesus is the Holy One, Jesus is different from anyone they had ever met.  They may not fully understand what it means that Jesus is God, but they feel something in their gut.  They have an inkling, so they stay with Jesus, even though he’s weird.

We Christians do a lot of weird things.  We have a lot of weird symbols and rituals and music.  Your priests wear weird clothes. We have these weird weekly gatherings we call church.

The God we worship is weird.  He calls us to be together in ways that are too intimate, too different from the cultural norm.  He calls us to move beyond what is comfortable and into what is risky.  He calls us into real relationship, into honestly looking at our lives and confronting the parts of ourselves that don’t live up to our ideals.  He calls us to work through problems together rather than going on cable tv and screaming at each other from a safe distance.  He calls us to love the unlovable, serve even though we are powerful, have faith even when life seems hopeless.

We join with the twelve disciples in worshiping Jesus for the very same reason they did.  We may not understand Jesus.  We may think he is weird sometimes, but we also know he has the words for eternal life.  We know that what Jesus says and did and does makes sense in a way nothing in this world does.

We gather together and engage in all our weird rituals, because nothing normal quite gets at the feeling we want to convey to God.  We gather together and worship weirdly, because we are weird.  We are broken and whole, ugly and beautiful, sinful and filled with goodness.  We know that worshiping Jesus does something in us that we cannot explain, but that is absolutely real.

We worship Jesus, we follow Jesus, because we don’t want to miss anything.  We want to be there for the healing, for the joy, for the peace that only he can bring us.

We follow Jesus because we know he loves us. And that may be the weirdest, most wonderful part of all.

Amen.

Proper 14, Year B, 2009

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

I don’t know how closely you’ve been paying attention to the lectionary lately, but there has been a lot of whining and a lot of bread.  Two weeks ago, Jesus fed the 5000 with just a few loaves.  Last week, the Israelites started whining about being hungry in the desert and were fed manna from heaven.  This week we’ve got Elijah whining in the desert and Jesus describing himself as the Bread of Heaven.

Well, maybe Elijah is not whining, exactly.  You see, Elijah has been locked in an epic battle with a powerful woman named Jezebel.  Jezebel was the wife of King Ahab and had worked with her husband to encourage the worship of Baal among the Israelites.  And frankly, that is about the nicest thing I can think of to say about Jezebel.  She was not a kind person.  Elijah was not afraid to confront her about her many failings as Queen of the Israelites, but Jezebel was not really open to criticism.  Instead of listening to Elijah, she ordered his death.  Elijah ran away, into the wilderness.

Elijah is exhausted from running.  He has no future that he can imagine.  There is a death sentence waiting for him if he returns home.  In his exhaustion he asks God to kill him and then promptly falls into a deep sleep.

What happens next is one of the loveliest moments in all of Scripture.  Instead of killing Elijah, or telling Elijah to pull himself up by the bootstraps, or berating Elijah for his lack of faith, God sends Elijah an angel.  The angel gently wakes Elijah from his slumber and gives him hot bread to eat and cool water to drink.  Before the angel leaves, he touches Elijah one more time, encourages him to eat and then disappears.

Elijah has spent a lot of his life defending God of Israel against other gods.  Elijah has spent a lot of time helping people to see the power of God, the strength of God.  But in this small moment, Elijah experiences the intimate God, the loving God.  God gently encourages Elijah to press on and gives him the literal bread he needs to build up his strength for the journey.

For Elijah, his whining, or murmuring, or cry for help is met by God with nourishment, not rebuke.

Elijah’s need is met with love.

Most unpleasant behavior can be attributed to either hunger, fear, anger or loneliness.  Elijah was certainly experiencing hunger and fear!  When humans feel these unpleasant feelings and can’t quite sort out how to get our needs met, we lash out at whomever is around us.

I don’t know about you, but when I get cranky, nine times out of ten what I need is food.  My husband knows this by now and when he hears a certain snappish tone in my voice he immediately looks around to figure out what he can feed me before my unpleasantness can fully reveal itself.

The natural response when someone is cranky or whiny or unpleasant is to steer clear of the offending party.  But instead of moving away from us when we are at our worst, God moves toward us.  God nourishes us.

And maybe the lectionary spends four weeks in August dwelling on how Jesus is the Bread of Life, because this concept is so counterintuitive.  This concept is almost as hard to imagine as an angel waking you up and offering you a hot breakfast.

Jesus is easy to understand when he is standing on a mount or a fishing boat and telling us about God or how to live our lives.  When Jesus is speaking to us, we understand that he is the teacher and we are his students. The relationship is safe, the boundaries are clear.

But when Jesus describes himself as Bread-as something we bite and chew, swallow and absorb, those boundaries blur.

Ronald Rollheiser, the Catholic theologian, makes the connection between Jesus being the Bread of Life and being present in the Eucharist.  He writes:

For most of [Jesus’] ministry, he used words. Through words, he tried to bring us God’s consolation, challenge, and strength. His words, like all words, had a certain power. Indeed, his words stirred hearts, healed people, and affected conversions. But at a time, powerful though they were, they too became inadequate. Something more was needed. So on the night before his death, having exhausted what he could do with words, Jesus went beyond them. He gave us the Eucharist, his physical embrace, his kiss, a ritual within which he holds us to his heart.

Words are important.  I believe in words.  I have included many of them in this sermon.  However, words alone cannot convey love.

I spent a lot of time this week watching the footage of the journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee reuniting with their families after being prisoners in North Korea.  I’m sure they spoke words, too, and will continue to speak about their experiences to their loved ones, but their first reactions were to run toward their families and hug them as tightly as humanly possible.

Those hugs, their tears, her husband wrapping his arms around Euna as she clasped her daughter to her chest-those small acts conveyed more love than any speeches the women could have made to their families.

In the same way, Jesus was limited by words to express the fullness of love he felt toward humanity.

And so, Jesus becomes Bread.  He becomes a kiss.  He becomes our nourishment.  He moves beyond words to commune with us in a way both spiritual and physical.

And like the angel gave Elijah bread to give him strength for the journey ahead, Jesus gives us himself for the very same purpose.  Whether we are cheerful or cranky, strong or weak, ready or unprepared, Jesus moves toward us and embraces us.

Jesus is the Bread of life, given to us.  And that is beyond words.

Proper 12, Year B, 2009

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Have you ever tried to plan a party when only half the people you invited actually responded to your invitation?  I never know how many hor d’ouevres to make, how much wine and soda to buy, whether or not to borrow chairs from the neighbors.  I drive myself crazy worrying about whether I’ll have enough of everything to make my guests feel welcomed.

The poor disciples-in today’s Gospel reading, they are in a situation far more stressful than a cocktail party.  They have thousands of hungry people on an isolated hillside and Jesus is asking the disciples to feed the crowd.  The disciples know they do not have enough food.  They are not just a mini-quiche or glass of wine short, they have absolutely no food with them.  They could not even begin feeding the first row of the crowd.  Their fear that they do not have enough is a perfectly rational fear based on the evidence in front of them.

The apostle Andrew notes that the only food anyone has is five loaves of bread and a couple of fish that a child happens to have with him.  Somehow they persuade the child to give up his lunch and we all know what happens next.  When Jesus breaks that bread and tears those fish, somehow that not-enough food transforms into an abundant feast.  Instead of not being enough, the food just keeps coming and coming and coming.

Jesus takes the reality of a scarce situation and transforms it utterly.  Where there was want, there are now baskets of leftovers.  Where there was doubt, there is now wonder.

The crowd has gotten what they wanted.  Those who were sick were healed right before the scene in today’s gospel.  Now, those who were hungry are fed.  The crowd had needs and the crowd’s needs were met.  But these signs were not quite enough for the crowd-or the disciples-to “get” who Jesus was.  Instead of worshiping Jesus as Lord, the crowd’s reaction is to chase after Jesus and try to make him king.

Jesus is not an earthly King.  Jesus is not a magician.  Jesus is not Oprah in front a screaming crowd, giving away prizes.

The abundance Jesus offers is real, but the abundance Jesus offers is not the same thing as wish-fulfillment.

Jesus offers us abundance of life, not just abundance of stuff.  The crowd wanted more of Jesus, but not for the right reasons.  The crowd wanted more magic, more food.  The crowd wanted a world where Jesus was their King and his magic powers would give them everything they wanted.

Our passage today moves on to the story of Jesus walking on water and I don’t think the juxtaposition is accidental.  Jesus walking on the water is not about giving the disciples something they want.  Instead, Jesus shows them, in a new way, what it means that he is the Son of God.  Jesus wants to show them that his divinity is not about meeting their material or bodily needs, but is something beyond that, something even more wonderful than that.

Americans are living at a strange crossroads of abundance and scarcity.  Even though we live in the richest part of the world, we are feeling afraid about the economy.  We are grieving the loss of jobs and have a sinking feeling whenever we check the status of our retirement accounts.

At times, we, like the disciples, are convinced there is not enough.  There are not enough jobs available.  There is not enough money in the bank account.  There is not enough hopeful news to sustain us.

I know for me, from about September to April last year my prayers went something like this, “Please help me find a job in New Jersey.  Please help me find a job in New Jersey.  Puhleeeeze help me find a job in New Jersey.”  My anxiety drove my prayers to sound very much like the cries of the crowd in today’s Gospel reading.  “Help me, feed me, fix me!”

There is nothing wrong in sharing our deepest fears and desires with Jesus.  Jesus invites our lamentations.  He hears our prayers.  He comforts us.  He provides for us.  But there is more to Jesus than his role in responding to our needs.

Jesus, in his earthly ministry, always directed attention towards his Father, the Creator God.  Jesus redirects his followers from focusing on themselves and their own needs, to focusing on God.  When Jesus walked on the water towards his disciples, they could not help but be awed by the power of God to defy the laws of nature.  The act of walking on the water toward the disciples drew them out of themselves and helped them to worship Jesus as God, rather than Jesus as wish-granter.  Jesus showed them that the abundance of God is not just what God gives us, but is inherent in the very nature of God.  God is beyond everything we could want and everything we see.  God’s power stretches beyond our imagination and God’s love is deeper than we can desire.

Jesus walks toward us, too, and invites us to look up and out and to really see him for who he is.  Jesus offers us a life of true abundance–not of material possessions–but of relationship with our Creator.

There is something in that act of looking up, looking out towards God that helps us put our own anxious feelings in perspective.  When we remember the abundance of God’s love for us and for humanity throughout the millennia, we can re-evaluate our circumstances and see God all around us.

As Christians, our lives will not always be easy, but they can always be filled with joy and deep meaning.  Today at the [10:00 or this] service, we will welcome several children into the Christian family through baptism.  We know that throughout their lives, when they bring the broken, inadequate, not-enough pieces of their lives to God in prayer, somehow God will transform them into overflowing baskets of blessing.  God does this for us, too.  And when we realize we have enough-in fact, we have more than enough-we can start giving back to our families, communities and churches.

Thanks be to God.

Proper 28, Year A, 2008

/ Sarah / 1 Comment

We have reached the end of Ordinary Time.

Sounds pretty dramatic, huh?  The new church year begins on the first day of Advent, which this year is November 30th.  Next week, we celebrate Christ the King day.  So, for all intents and purposes, today we celebrate the last day of the church lectionary year.  While we’ve spent all of Ordinary time following the Old Testament through the stories of Genesis, Exodus and then briefly Deuteronomy and Joshua, after today, the narrative thread ends and the lectionary hops around a bit throughout Advent, Christmas and Easter.  We’ll pick back up with the Old Testament narrative in the books of I and II Samuel-but not until next June.

When last we left the Israelites, they were being led into Canaan by Joshua and a bloody series of battles ensued.

So, what happened next?  What did the Israelites do when they woke up and realized they were actually in the Promised Land?  How are sort-of faithful people who reluctantly followed God into new places now supposed to govern themselves?  For that matter, what does it mean for us sort-of faithful Christians to be governed?

At first pass, the book of Judges may not seem to address these questions.  Judges is a weird, weird book.  It is filled with stories that seem more appropriate for a comic book than a book in the Bible.  There’s the story of Jael, the woman who drives a tent peg through Sisera’s head.  There’s the story of King Eglon, a fat man who gets stabbed while on the toilet.  And of course, the story of Samson who stupidly reveals the secret to his super strength to his devious girlfriend, Delilah.

Our reading today is about Deborah, one of the more sane characters in Judges.  She is a prophetess and a judge, hence the title of the book.  Judges in those days are not judges in the sense that we think of now.  Judges were charismatic leaders who led tribes throughout Israel.  They could adjudicate disputes, but they also could act as military leaders, as Deborah does.

The important thing to note here is that Israel has divided into tribes.  For awhile, Israel was able to function as one people, descendants of Abraham, but now the twelve tribes of Israel have spread out over the land they have been given and each is governed by their own tribal leader.

So, now the tribes are not only fighting with indigenous peoples, this division leads to a terrible civil war in which thousands of people die and the tribe of Benjamin is nearly wiped out.

That’s right, the tribes of Israel start fighting each other!

The author of the book of Judges fully acknowledges the sorry state of Israel by starting nearly every new story with, “In those days, when there was no king in Israel. . .”, as if the lack of a king was to blame for this terrible behavior.

Now, we’ll get further into this issue of kings when we study I and II Samuel next summer, but the problem is God doesn’t think a king is that great of an idea.  Eventually, after the civil war, the Israelites start clamoring for a king so they can be like other nations around them.  They go to Samuel, the prophet at the time, and demand he give them a king.  His feelings get hurt, but God reassures him that they aren’t rejecting Samuel, they are rejecting God as their king.  God tells Samuel to warn them about the consequences of having a king.  Now, these are not punishments handed down by God, these are just the natural consequences of a government led by kings.  Samuel warns the Israelites,

These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you:  . . . He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.  He will take the best of your fields and vineyard and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers.  He will take one tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers.  He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle, and donkeys and put them to his work.  He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves.  And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.

Now, if you go back to our reading today, you’ll see that Deborah was called into action when a local king was threatening the Israelites with nine hundred chariots of iron.  That was incredible, incredible technology.  The Israelites were a nomadic people.  They had weaponry, sure, but chariots made out of iron?  No way.  The sight of such a thing must have been terrifying.  The chariots were the iron-age equivalent of jet planes or tanks.  The Israelites just had no recourse against such technology.  And how were Hazorites able to have 900 iron chariots?  They had a king.

And so Israel wanted a king, too.  Not just because kings were exciting, but because militarily they were unable to compete with other kingdoms.

So, the Israelites ignore Samuel and insist that God give them a king and he does.  And some kings were wonderful and some kings were terrible and the Israelites did just as bad of a job of being faithful to God, their true King, as they always did.

For the first few hundred years of the Christian Church, early Christians broke from this idea that the religious group is also the political group.  After all, they were powerless, even persecuted while the Roman government wielded its incredible power.  However, after Constantine’s conversion, once again, the idea that God chooses kings to rule over his people came into power.

Now, of course, with the world wide spread of Christianity, you have Christians under as many different kinds of governments as you can imagine.  There are Christians under dictatorships, democracies, communist rule, even socialist rule in oppressed countries like. . .Sweden.

The rhetoric in THIS country about whether or not we are a Christian nation has been particularly strong this last year.  There are faithful Christians who believe we risk God’s wrath if we don’t elect conservative Christian leaders to government who will end abortion, post the Ten Commandments everywhere, eliminate sex education and reinstate prayer in school.

But, as it turns out, the founders of our Country were not attempting to make a Christian government.  God is not mentioned once in the Constitution and religion is mentioned only twice.  Once in the sixth article, which reads, “but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”  Secondly, in the First Amendment which reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

And this is good news not only for American atheists, Muslims, Hindus or Jews, but for Christians, too.  When Israel finally elects a king, they do not become more holy and obedient to God.  Instead, they shift their loyalty to the king.  The God we serve does not need to be represented in government in order to govern our hearts.

God does judge societies, but throughout the Bible those societies are judged on how well they worship God, take care of orphans, widows, the poor, immigrants and whether or not they have just policies.  We can do all those things as individuals and as church communities within a secular government. Occasionally we manage to do them through our government as well.  We feed the poor school lunches.  We give widows Social Security payments.  We maintain justice as best as we can.  And of course our government is not perfect at this, but that leaves room for those of us in the church to pick up the slack-whether through ministries we already do-like Disciples’ Kitchen and Bread Fund-but also ministries we haven’t even dreamed about yet.  Who knows, maybe one day God will call Emmanuel to start a ministry for migrant workers or open an orphanage or teach financial management to those who struggle.

My point is, as participants in a democracy, we are called to keep our government full of integrity, justice and ethics, yet we can still fully live out our Christian duty within the confines of a secular government.  Our fealty to God is not hampered by the Constitution.  In fact, our fealty is protected by the Constitution, which many Christians in other nations cannot say about their own countries.

So, in short, American democracy gives us the best of both worlds.  We have more iron chariots than can possibly be good for us, yet total freedom to worship and serve our God.

Thanks be to God.

Proper 25, Year A, 2008

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

I have a bone to pick with this congregation.

I leave for two short weeks and you go ahead and finish the book of Exodus without me?  What am I, chopped liver?

I guess I can’t expect the lectionary to stop when I take a Sunday off, but I will tell you that I did not expect the lectionary to whip through Exodus so quickly. I think somewhere the Israelites are irritated, too. “We wandered 40 years in the wilderness so you people could cover it for nine measly weeks???  Sheesh.”

We have learned how the Israelites ended up in Egypt.  We have seen Moses’ ascendancy as reluctant leader.  We have quaked with the Israelites as God appears to them on the mountain and gives Moses’ the Ten Commandments.  While I was gone, you learned about the fickleness of the Israelites when the formed to Golden Calf, and then last week you read about the breathtaking story where God reveals himself to Moses in a moment of unrivaled intimacy.

For nine weeks we’ve been journeying with the Israelites as they escape from the Egyptians and flee towards the Promised Land, so the culmination of that story must be when Moses, Aaron and Miriam cross triumphantly into Canaan singing songs of victory, right?

Unfortunately, for them, no.

Today we find ourselves in the book of Deuteronomy at Moses’ very dramatic death scene.  The book of Deuteronomy is framed as a farewell address Moses makes to the Israelites.  The language in Deuteronomy is extremely dramatic and verbose.  If Exodus is the travel journal someone kept, Deuteronomy is Moses’ campaign stump speech.  The final scene in Deuteronomy is the death scene of Moses.  God takes Moses up on a mountain, and has him look over all the land he promised to Abraham and Moses’ other ancestors.  God shows Moses “Gilead as far as Dan, all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea, the Negeb, and the Plain”  Then God says, “I have let you see it, but I will not let you cross over there.”  Moses dies and is buried on that mountain.

Ouch.

Moses has invested decades of his life in following God and leading the Israelites and he doesn’t even get to triumphantly enter the Promised Land?  That doesn’t seem very fair.

And even more annoying than Moses not getting to go into the Promised Land is that this young upstart, Joshua, is going to get to go.  Joshua was a military scout that Moses used to scope out this land and now military leadership of Israel will pass to THIS fresh faced newbie? Where was Joshua when the bush burned?  Where was Joshua when Moses was confronting Pharaoh?  Where was Joshua when the Red Sea parted?  He probably wasn’t even BORN yet. 

I can’t help but think of this passage when I look at our election.  I think about all the work Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton put into women’s rights.  They spent their adult lives dedicated to educating the country about the importance of giving the vote to women.  Yet both died more than a decade before women got the right to vote. 

I think of Frederick Douglass, Robert Purvis, and James Forten who also used the power of education and rhetoric to persuade Americans that slavery needed to be abolished.  They showed 19th century Americans that those of African descent were just as bright and articulate as those of European descent.  And while Douglass and Purvis were able to vote, Forten died before the 15th Amendment was passed.

As we all know, though, their stories are not tragic.  In fact, these are the American heroes our children study in school.  They are heroic, not tragic, because the work they invested in this country was not meaningless-it had a powerful impact on millions of women and African Americans that would come years later.  Their work made it possible for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin to run for the highest offices in our government.  The hard work of the suffragists and abolitionists laid the foundation for years of progress and change.

And the work Moses did was also heroic-he enabled the Israelites to go from being slaves in Egypt to being a nation of their own right.  When he was told he would not enter the Promised Land he did not whine or fuss.  He just looked out over the view and let go.

We have the chance to be heroic, too! 

Whether we are aware of it or not, we enjoy the hard work of generations before us every Sunday.  Our beautiful organ was purchased after we received a generous gift from the estate of a woman named Patricia Stuart.  We were able to renovate the nursery and pre-K classroom because of generous pledges and their careful stewardship by our vestry.  Molly, who we baptize today [at the 11:00 service] is here because of that investment and the families it attracted. We have a church full of incredible leadership and energy because when you were children someone invested in you and taught you what it meant to be a contributing member of a church.  We are a hospitable church because ten years ago the leaders of Emmanuel made a decision to be a welcoming place for those who moved into the many new developments being built in Crozet.  I am lucky enough to be employed here because of your generosity and your commitment to giving the children of this place a priest focused on their education and development.

Stewardship season is not my favorite time of the church year.  Talking about money automatically makes us all feel a little uncomfortable, especially when many of us have recently lost twenty-five percent of our savings!  But stewardship is a time for us to tap into our inner hero! We choose to invest in this place even if we don’t see immediate benefits.  We choose to invest in this place because when we do, we prepare a way for our children and their children.  We invest in Emmanuel because we know that God will take our investment and transform it into doing His work in our community.  Your investment will help us preach the Gospel, feed the poor, heal the wounded and nourish the faithful for years to come. 

If you’re lucky, you may even live long enough to see some of the results of your investment.  But just remember, even if you’re stuck with Moses on the mountaintop, looking over all that which might have been, God is still at work and will be at work in this place for years to come, thanks to heroes like you.

Proper 19, Year A, 2008

/ Sarah / 1 Comment

Preaching this passage just doesn’t feel right without Charlton Heston here to don a long wig, robe and staff and say something really commanding. For better or for worse, the images from 1956 movie Ten Commandments burn in our minds as our primary images from Exodus.  To us, the parting of the Red Sea is a really fantastic use of special effects and drama. 

But to the Israelites who followed Moses, and the Egyptians who lost their lives, the parting of the Red Sea is much, much more.

After experiencing horrible plagues via the hand of God, Pharaoh has finally had enough, and allows Moses to the lead the Israelites out of Egypt.

Rather than taking the Israelites through  a direct, coastal route out of Egypt, God commands them to go out by way of the Red Sea, which makes no sense tactically.  But Moses obeys God, and the people follow Moses, so they set out in the dark night and trudge through the swampy wilderness surrounding the sea.

Once again, the Pharaoh’s heart gets hardened and instead of letting the Israelites go, he sends all the chariots at his command after Moses and his followers.  The Pharaoh scoffs at the Israelites, since he thinks they are wandering aimlessly right into a position where they will be trapped between the water and the Egyptians.

But, of course, the Israelites are not really trapped, because Moses stretches out his arm and God sets a strong east wind blowing, and soon the Red Sea parts and dry land appears.  The Israelites scoot across, but when the Egyptians follow they are drowned.

One can argue that this moment, as the Israelites move through the waters, is when Israel is formed as a nation.  So, for the Israelites, the parting of the Red Sea is a birth narrative.  Moses’ birth narrative begins when his basket is placed on the river by his mother.  Israel’s birth narrative begins with waters parting.  Their self-identity shifts as they realize what it means to have a covenant established between God and a people.  The people of Israel begin to realize that this God not only has chosen them, but will guide and protect them from harm, as well.  With their collective backs against a wall, only God’s intervention could have saved them-and that intervention did save them and in a spectacular way they could never forget. 

And all of that is wonderful, but I can’t help wonder-what about all those dead Egyptian soldiers?  The liberation of the Israelites leaves us feeling ambivalent-we’re excited for the Israelites, but uneasy about the slaughter that was involved in freeing them.  For that matter, what about all the dead first-born Egyptian babies after the final plague? Why does God need to show his power through such bloody means?   This may be Israel’s birth narrative, but when a nation is born, enemies are born, too.  From here on out, the nation of Israel will be in conflict with its neighbors as they take turns invading each other’s land and killing each other en masse. 

The Israelites did not invent this idea of nationhood or warfare, but neither does God call them to transcend their ideas about what it means to be a nation in the sense that any nation with undefined borders has built-in enemies.

Thankfully, thousands of years after this bloodshed, God will give us another birth narrative-this time of a boy born in a stable.  This boy will grow up and explain that God wants to reconcile all people to himself, not just one nation.  Throughout his ministry Jesus will come to realize that his mission is not just for Jewish people, but for all people. 

After his death, his followers, people like Paul and Peter, will have dreams, visions and experiences that lead them to invite people who are not like them-who are not circumcised, who come from a variety of cities and countries, who have different skin tones-to join this new community of believers.  These new believers will even have their own birth narratives as they each go through the waters of Baptism and come out safely on the other side, sins forgiven, members of the Christian church.  These new believers will have new primary identities-not as members of a nation, but members of a church.

And you’d think, that two thousand years after this miraculous event all humans would be able to engage with one another as beloved children of the one true God, but I guess that’s just too good to be true!  We are still wrapped up in our idea of nationhood, our nations are what define us and even within our own nation, we use religion to partition ourselves into even smaller competing factions.

Last week, Matt and I were watching an episode of The Onion News Network.  These three minute clips are parodies of news channels like CNN.  The episode we were watching was about hurricanes.  The fake meteorologist was talking about a fake hurricane that was headed right for the Texas-Mexico border.  However, instead of calling it Mexico,  he just kept saying, “Hopefully this hurricane will hit this landmass here instead of Texas.”  It was a funny commentary about how we don’t pay enough attention to natural disasters in other parts of the world. 

I did not think much about it until the following Monday.  I was at the gym, watching The Today Show and the guest meteorologist was talking about Hurricane Ike, which as we know has devastated the Texas and Louisiana coastlines.  On Monday, however, no one knew exactly where Ike would hit.  The meteorologist indicated that the hurricane was going to hit Cuba at full force.  He said this fact as if it was wonderful, exciting news. He explained that when a hurricane hits land it is like a top spinning on sandpaper-the whole hurricane weakens.  The hurricane hitting Cuba would weaken in for the United States.  He did not mention the hurricane’s devastation of Haiti or seem at all concerned about the people who live in Cuba!  Cuba was treated like a really handy, large sand bar off the coast of Florida. 

Now, whatever political differences we have with Cuba, what does it say about us as a culture if we cannot recognize the humanity of people who face the same threat of natural disaster that we do?  Who have we become?

I must say, I was relieved when I went to the webpage of the Episcopal Life newspaper and found a large amount of coverage of how the hurricane affected Cuba, Haiti, even Hispaniola, which I had to look up on a map!  Even in our world where nations are pitted against nations, the church can provide a bridge between nations. When we become Christians, we become part of a borderless community of those that follow Christ.  When we become Christians we become aligned not only with other believers but with all those whom God wants us to help. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if when a person is baptized, they were also automatically issued a passport?

That may not happen, but we can take our responsibilities as citizens of the world seriously.  We can pay attention to world news.  We can make pen pals or support someone in need in another country.  We can pray for a church that is not our own.  We can go on mission trips and immerse ourselves in another culture.  We can send money for relief aid not only for Houston, but also for Havana.

And together, we can celebrate the fact that the liberation of the Israelites was just the beginning of the liberation God had planned for us, that one day he would send his Son to liberate us not just from political powers that repressed us, but our own sin and limitations.  Whether American, Cuban, Iraqi or Chinese, Christ came for all of us and offers us the same grace and forgiveness.  Thanks be to God.

You can donate toward hurricane relief at Episcopal Relief and Development.