Lent 3, Year B, 2009

/ Sarah / 1 Comment

Oh, Jesus.

Just when we think we know our incarnate deity, just when we think we’ve gotten a sense of his personality, just when we’ve gotten comfortable with him, he has a temper tantrum in the temple and starts causing real havoc.

Our mild mannered man-god starts acting more like testosterone fueled thug than a wise sage.

In the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, the cleansing of the Temple comes when Jesus is deeply stressed and close to his death, after he has entered Jerusalem for a final time.  Today’s reading, though, comes from the Gospel of John.  And, you’ll note that this scene takes place in the second chapter of John, right after Jesus turns water into wine at the wedding in Cana.  So, unlike Mark and Matthew, where Jesus is well known and has been ministering for a long time, in John, this radical act of clearing out the Temple is the first public act of Jesus ministry!

Talk about shock value-In the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, disciples, Pharisees, Scribes, everyone knew who Jesus was.  So, when he turned over the tables and chased out the money changers, they had some context with which to understand his actions.  In the Gospel of John’s version of the story, he explodes onto the scene, introducing himself to the community at Jerusalem in a bold and violent way.

In the Gospel of John, rather than slowly ingratiate himself through healing the sick, restoring sight to the blind, or dispensing wisdom, Jesus has no hesitation about immediately distinguishing himself and claiming religious authority by clearing out the temple.  John’s Jesus is carving out his territory and claiming his identity.

After all, Jesus not only clears out the temple, he also identifies himself as the temple.  He tells the horrified onlookers that if the temple is destroyed, it will be raised in three days.  They think he is talking about the building, but he is referring to his own body.

Jesus is differentiating himself from other teachers, other miracle workers and physically claiming the most holy part of Jerusalem for himself.  To insult his father’s house is to insult him, and Jesus will not tolerate that behavior.

Jesus knew who he was, and he was not afraid to make a scene in order to stick to his principles.

I think we, as Christians, are invited to be a little bolder and to carve out our territory, as well.

Let me be clear-I’m not talking about going after political or economic power or overthrowing the government, or even destroying the companies that make tacky Christian kitch by the truckfulls.

I think we are invited to carve out our own territory of hope and faith in the midst of a culture that is filled with fear right now.

A friend recently forwarded me a column that was found in The New Republic.  The column was responding to an article in The New York Times about the humanities needing to justify their worth in the midst of tough economic times.  While the quote I’m about to read is about the humanities, I think it applies to religions, too.

it will take many kinds of sustenance to help people through these troubles. Many people will now have to fall back more on inner resources than on outer ones. They are in need of loans, but they are also in need of meanings. The external world is no longer a source of strength. The temper of one’s existence will therefore be significantly determined by one’s attitude toward circumstance, its cruelties and its caprices. Poor people and hounded people have always known this, but now the middle class is getting its schooling in stoicism. After all, bourgeois life was devised as an insulation against physical and social vulnerabilities, as a system of protections and privileges secured honestly by work; but the insulation is ripping and the protections are vanishing. We are in need of fiscal policy and spiritual policy. And spiritually speaking, literature is a bailout, and so is art, and philosophy, and history, and the rest. These are assets in which we may all hold majority ownership; assets of which we cannot be stripped, except by ourselves.

As Christians, we have precious assets that we can offer to our friends and neighbors who are hurting right now.

As Christians, we are not rich because of our bank accounts, we are not stable because of rising home values, we do not alter our level of faith when the stock market swings to and fro.

We know that at our core we are valuable because we are created beings who are loved passionately by God.  We know that true power comes when we give up trying to control our lives, and release ourselves to God.

Middle class America has been pretty comfortable for some time now, and in its comfort, it may have lost some of its ability to deal with the very real crisis we are now facing.

When we carve out our territory of faith and hope, we are not being empty headed Pollyannas.  I am not suggesting we go around chirping about how everything is going to be okay if we just believe in Jesus.

I am suggesting that we lead the way in a sense of hope that is rooted in prayer and our knowledge that God will provide us the strength and courage we need to face any crisis with dignity and compassion.  I am suggesting that we can show the world that we can face this economic disaster by banding together and helping one another rather than by frantically scrambling to position ourselves. I am suggesting our faith can give us the courage to be honest about what is really happening in our lives rather than pridefully hiding behind a veil of false appearances just to keep our places in society.

A few weeks ago Lisa Ling did a special report about the foreclosure crisis in California.  She interviewed several people who were handling the crisis in different ways. The first group were representatives of the hundreds of people who were living in tents in a makeshift tent city.  Many of them were there because they were too embarrassed to tell their grown children that they had lost their homes.  They were so caught up in their pride, so rooted in their identity as being people with homes, that they would not seek help from others.  I understand that some families are so fractured that living together is not an option.  However, it broke my heart that these people would rather live in such a desperate way rather than reach out to the people who love them.

Alternatively, another couple in danger of losing their house invited a family to live with them and help pay the rent.  They were honest with themselves and with their friends and family about their financial situation.  Instead of isolating themselves, they reached out.  The couple found a website that matches people who need homes with people who own homes and invited a mom and her daughter to move in with them.  While this arrangement will certainly have its own bumps in the road, I think the flexibility, creativity, and openness of their response really reflected a mature spirituality.

We are stronger when we reach out and ask for help when we need it.  We have deeper relationships when we are honest.  We grow as people when we engage with friends and strangers rather than isolating ourselves.

We have a choice in this economic crisis.  We can act out of fear, or we can carve out our territory of hope and faith and be a witness to the world.

Amen.

Lent 1, Year B, 2009

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

The story of Noah’s Ark is such a sweet story, isn’t it?  You’ve got a big boat, a colorful lead character, animals marching two by two.  We even have a big, beautiful rainbow wrapping itself around the story as the finishing touch.  Because it is sooo cute, Noah’s Ark imagery is very popular for children’s toys and décor for nurseries.  [Holding up brightly colored, stuffed, Noah’s Ark toy.]  This is adorable, right?

The story stays adorable until the kid who plays with the toy start asking questions.

“Why did Noah build a boat?”

“God told Noah he was going to send a big flood and that Noah should build a boat.”

“Why did God send the flood?”

“Because God was very angry with people.”

At this point the child starts looking a little concerned.

“God was mad at the people so he sent a flood?”

“Yep.”

“So, no one else got to build a boat?”

“Nope.  Only Noah.”

“So. . .did the other people. . .die?”

“Yep.”

About this point in the conversation is when I would suddenly offer the kid the opportunity to eat whipped cream right out of the can.  I would offer anything just to redirect the conversation.

The Noah story is not really an adorable story.  The Noah story is a horror story.  We have seen two mind-bogglingly terrible floods in the last few years:  The 2004 Tsunami in the Indian Ocean and the terrible 2005 hurricane related flooding in the gulf coast.  There was nothing adorable about either of those tragedies.  Through the power of television, we saw the bloated, drowned bodies.  We saw survivors begging for food.  We saw the panicked faces of people searching for their loved ones.  We saw animals, separated from their owners, looking lost and forlorn.  No one is going to design a Katrina or tsunami themed nursery, that’s for sure.

So, why are we so quick to embrace Noah as a hero?  Why don’t we resent Noah for not trying harder to rescue his neighbors?

I find it helpful to think of the story of Noah as a myth.  There was some kind of enormous flood in early Mesopotamia. Nearly every culture in the region has some mythology surrounding this vast down pouring of rain and subsequent flooding.  The peoples of the time did not have a scientific or even historical understanding of the world, so they would not have recorded data or interviewed survivors like we might do today.  Instead the survivors would tell stories.  They would ascribe spiritual meaning to the flood and tell the miraculous story of their survival.

In this case, the survivors, Noah’s descendents, understand their very existence as a gift from God.  They tell the amazing story of Noah’s survival in mythic terms in order to emphasize what a miracle Noah’s survival was.

But that does not get Noah’s descendents completely off the hook.  The story of Noah’s ark has a disturbing “us” and “them” mentality.  The “us”, Noah and his family, become this superior, righteous family who were chosen by God to live. The  “them”-the rest of humanity-are judged as sinners so that we don’t feel too badly about their death.

We truly are descendents of Noah’s, because we still have the exact same tendency to divide and diminish.  As Episcopalians, we tend to judge Fundamentalists.  Northerners judge southerners.  Politicians judge Hollywood.  Homeowners with ballooning mortgages judge New York bankers.  Christians judge Muslims. Democrats judge Republicans. And, of course, all of these statements can be reversed to be equally true.

But here’s the thing.  Noah’s exclusive family boat may have worked for his situation, but none of us are going to be given the opportunity to escape from people who are other than us.  No one is going to call me up and say, “Hey, Sarah, we’re starting a colony on the moon.  It’s going to be GREAT!  The only people who will live there will be just like you. When can you leave?”

This moon colony has several problems, not the least of which is that I cannot imagine anything more annoying than being surrounded by people just like me.  But the larger problem, is that our Christian faith not only allows for incredible difference within it, Christianity compels us to open our churches and our lives to all kinds of people.

Jesus, if you will allow the metaphor, offers us an enormous boat and invites all of us to climb aboard.  While Noah’s family understood their survival as the grace of God.  Jesus widens this image so we understand that God offers grace to all people-the righteous and unrighteous, the ins and the outs, us and them.  We are all in the boat together.

The name for the part of the church building where you are all seated is the nave.  Nave comes from the Latin word for ship.  Architecturally, the word nave is a reference to the ship like appearance of the ceilings in Gothic cathedrals, but the image of the nave works for a simple church like ours, as well.

Every Sunday we gather here, together, in one boat, in Jesus’ boat, because of what Jesus did for us two thousand years ago.  We climb into this boat time and time again, because our God is a God who loves all people-people of all cultures, income brackets, skin colors, and beliefs.

We climb into this boat, because we need each other.  We climb into this boat, because if we are going to survive the floods that this life brings us, we are going to need the security of the faith and fellowship contained in this boat.  We climb into this boat because Jesus stands at its bridge and welcomes us on board with open arms.

Amen.

Transfiguration, Year B, 2009

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I occasionally wish that I lived in an earlier era.  Now, granted, I would want that era to have women’s rights and flushing toilets, so perhaps what I really want is a mythical earlier era.  In that imaginary era, I would never have seen a special effect.  So that, when I read the Bible, I would be awed by the stories it contains.

We 21st century people are jaded. We have seen waters part in The Ten Commandments.  We can see creation begin by turning on the Discovery Channel.  Noah’s flood has been replicated in any number of movies and cartoons.  And dead people appearing is nothing new. In the last calendar year alone, the television series House, Grey’s Anatomy, and Lost all had major characters who were dead.  Dead Amber appeared in House’s memory.  Dead Denny was hallucinated by Izzie.  Dead Christian-well, we still don’t know how he got on the island.  And that’s not even considering the dead characters on the show Medium!

We are not impressed by well-laundered clothes and Old Testament ghosts.  We have seen it all before.

Thankfully, Peter, James, and John are not jaded.  Their senses are still sharp and their minds are fresh and open.  For them, the transfiguration is the most incredible event they have ever witnessed. For Peter, James, and John the transfiguration is a moment of transcendence, a moment of understanding God in a new way.

It turns out for them, for Jesus, and for us, experiencing those moments of transcendence is a gift from God to help understand God better and to receive nourishment for the hard work of ministry.

Jesus and the disciples have been working hard.  In the eighth chapter of Mark, immediately before this reading, Jesus has:  miraculously fed 5,000 people bread and fish, walked miles and miles on foot, healed a blind man, informed his disciples that he was going to die tragically, and argued with Peter.  Talk about a heavy couple of days!

Jesus and the disciples must have been worn out-physically, spiritually, and emotionally.

Jesus leads three of his disciples, Peter, James and John, up a mountain so they can spent some time away from the demands of their work.  While they are there two amazing things happen.  First, Jesus becomes illuminated.  His robes become so white they know the source must be supernatural.  Second, two great Old Testament Heroes appear next to Jesus: Moses and Elijah.

Why Moses and Elijah?  Why not Abraham or David?

The disciples are shown Moses and Elijah because of their unique, spiritual relationships to God. You might remember when Moses comes down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments his face shone with a supernatural light.  Peter, James and John would remember that story, look at Jesus’ shining clothes and realize that Jesus had the same ability to hear directly from God.

Legend has it that Elijah never died, but instead was assumed into heaven.  Jesus has just told his disciples that he will die and be resurrected.  They see Elijah as a kind of foreshadowing, to help them prepare for the reality of Jesus’ resurrection.

I believe for these three disciples, Jesus’ transfiguration was their transformation.  While Jesus got time to rest and commune with his Father, the disciples had an incredible supernatural experience they would never forget.  On their walk, after the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus asks the disciples who they think he is.  They guess many things, but finally Peter gets it right.  Peter tells Jesus he thinks he is the Christ.

The transfiguration is a way for these disciples to really internalize and understand at a more intuitive level what it means that Jesus is the Christ.  When your friend is the Christ, weird, supernatural things happen.  When your friend is the Christ, he can glow at will.  When your friend is the Christ, biblical heroes who have been dead hundreds of years will suddenly appear.  When your friend is the Christ, the voice of God will pour out of the sky, filled with love.

These memories of the transfiguration will be something Peter, James and John will be able to hold onto during their darkest moments of doubt.  Even as Peter lies about his association with Jesus on Good Friday, perhaps a small part of his mind was reminding him that everything was going to be okay.  His friend, Jesus, was bigger than death and more powerful than the laws of nature.

The transfiguration was the spiritual experience Peter, James, and John were given so they could keep on going, keep on “running the race”, as Paul phrases it in 1st Corinthians.  After they leave the mountain, Jesus and the disciples get right back to work, right back to ministry, but now they can do it with a little more energy, a little more bounce in their step.  They now know, in a concrete way, that God is with them.

Now, I think it is fair to conjecture that none of us will ever experience the transfiguration.  However, I do know many of you who have had some kind of spiritual experience.  I think we are all capable of that kind of experience.

Some of you have had spiritual experiences when you have taken time away from your own family and work and retreated for a few days in prayer and meditation.  Others of you have experienced the holy when you have traveled to holy places like Iona, or Shrinemont.  Others of you encounter God through singing sacred music. Still others of you have experienced the divine when you had your first child or understood God’s love for you through the love of another.   There are many ways and places where God can break in and speak to us.

Those moments may be few and far between, but they are great gifts to us.  They give us courage to go back to our ministries and give all we have to them.  Those moments feed us spiritual nourishment that sustains us through difficult times.  Those transcendent moments remind us that God is real and that he is with us.  When we experience a spiritual moment we are invited to savor the time we are given with God and use the energy the experience gives us to return to our daily lives and ministries and give back to those around us.

We may be jaded.  We may have seen it all, but like the disciples, we still need God.  We still need reminders that he loves us.  We still need the transfiguration.

Amen.

Epiphany 4, Year B, 2009

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When I was ten, my father got diagnosed with high cholesterol.  My mother was the cook in our house and within days she was deep in the American Heart Association cookbook and ordering a subscription to Cooking Light.  Gone were the omelets, steaks, and sour cream from our lives.  They were replaced by cheerios, pasta, and skinless chicken breasts.

At the time, this did not seem that remarkable to me.  But now, looking back, I am impressed with my mother’s willingness to uproot an entire family’s dietary lifestyle for the health of one member of the family.  If my dad’s eating habits had to change, all of our eating habits had to change.  It would not be fair to him if he was eating a piece of fish while the rest of us chomped down on hamburgers.

Our passage from 1 Corinthians today is also about dietary choices that are good for a community, but the situation Paul is responding to is not as simple as one member of the Corinthian community having high cholesterol!

Corinth was a Greek town with a predominantly Hellenistic culture.  Part of that culture was idol worship.  Small statues would be placed on altars and these “gods” would be given gifts of food.  The food would later be eaten by people in social gatherings.  The religious and social life was entwined together.

This created a huge problem for Corinthian Christians.  After all, they certainly did not believe in worshiping idols or that these small “gods” even existed.  To them, there was only one God.

The Corinthian Christians had broken into two camps.  The first was a group who approached the situation intellectually.  They were secure in their faith, they knew no other gods existed.  Since no other gods existed, then food offered to those gods was no different from any other food.  For this group of Christians, joining in the social eating of food offered to idols was not a problem at all.

The second group of Corinthian Christians were not so sure.  At one point in their lives they, too, had offered up food to idols, and that time was recently enough that eating food to those same idols now made them nervous.  To these Christians, eating the food offered to idols was acknowledging the gods they represented and was just plain wrong.

And this is where Paul comes in.  Paul has been asked to adjudicate this dispute.  He acknowledges that the first group, the intellectuals, are right from a philosophical viewpoint.  He states,

Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “no idol in the world really exists,” and that “there is no God but one.” Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth– as in fact there are many gods and many lords– yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

He agrees with their argument that since there is only one God for the Christians-even if another culture thinks there are many gods-then idols don’t exist so food offered to them is food offered to nothing.

However, just as that group is feeling pretty proud of themselves for being right, Paul turns the argument.

But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if others see you, who possess knowledge, eating in the temple of an idol, might they not, since their conscience is weak, be encouraged to the point of eating food sacrificed to idols? So by your knowledge those weak believers for whom Christ died are destroyed. But when you thus sin against members of your family, and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.

In other words, just because the intellectual argument was correct, does not mean that eating the meat offered to idols was right.  By eating the meat, the first group was threatening the faith of the second group.  Members of the second group may know that there is only one God in their head, but that deep knowledge may not have penetrated their heart yet.  Worshiping many gods may still be a temptation for them.  Because of this Paul is saying that he, for one, would choose not to eat the meat sacrificed to idols in front of Corinthian Christians.  Eating the meat did not matter one way or the other to God, but wounding another Christian was absolutely not acceptable.

Paul is telling the Corinthian Christians that they are in this journey together.  They need each other.  If eating meat sacrificed to idols threatens the faith of some of the community, than the entire community should abstain from eating the meat.

In the modern church we do not have a direct comparison to this problem.  As far as I know none of you were part of an idol worshiping religion before you came to Emmanuel!

However, I think we can learn about sticking together from this passage. Paul sums it up well when he says, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”

The desire to be right, the desire to win an argument can blind us to the needs of others.  Whether we are on our high horse about our political beliefs or whose turn it is to take out the trash, our single mindedness can be deadly to our relationships.  I find it helpful to step back from an argument and think about what I really want.  Do I really want to prove that I cleaned exactly 61% of the house or am I just looking for some affirmation and gratitude for the work that I did?  Ultimately what we want, I think is to feel heard and loved in our lives.  When we don’t feel that, being “right” is the next best thing.  But what we really want, is love.

The foundation of any good relationship is love.  We want love ourselves, but we are also asked to give love.  Part of love is seeking the good of the other, even if it means some sacrifice for yourself.  Paul asked the intellectual group of Corinthians to be generous to their brothers and sisters.  We are called to be generous, too.  For instance, if you live with an alcoholic, the generous response is to not keep alcohol in the house.  If you are friends with someone who is pinching pennies, the generous response is to plan a walk through a park together, rather than a shopping trip.  If your father has just had a heart attack, the generous response is to not bring him over those bacon wrapped twinkies you just deep fried.  While none of us can control the behavior of another person we can help to make life a little easier.  We can refrain from being “stumbling blocks” to those around us.

We are a community that worships one God.  And that God reminds us over and over again to love our neighbors as ourselves.  We are bound together by our faith in God, but those binds can enrich us as much as they limit us.  By rooting our identities in a community rather than in our individual lives, we become kinder, more open minded, flexible and loving.  Seeing the world through the different lenses of members of our community helps us to be creative and to learn.  Our community makes us stronger.  Our community makes us better Christians.

Epiphany I, Year B, 2009

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

My husband, Matt, just finished reading The Life of Pi.  I read it a few years ago and don’t remember all the details, but when I began thinking about this week’s readings, I kept coming back to the main image of The Life of Pi, which is the image of a young boy, stuck on a lifeboat in the middle of the sea, with a  zebra, a hyena and a Bengal tiger.  Now, being stranded in the middle of the sea in a small boat is bad enough, but you can imagine that wild animals as your shipmates complicate matters.  At one point, after the tiger has dispatched with the zebra and hyena, Pi writes a message and puts it in a bottle.  The message reads,

Japanese owned cargo ship Tsimtsum, flying Panamanian flag, sank July 2nd, 1977, in Pacfic, four days out of Manila.  Am in lifeboat.  Pi Patel is my name.  Have some food, some water, but Bengal Tiger is serious problem. Please advise family in Winnipeg, Canada.  Any help is very much appreciated.  Thank you. (p. 238)

Ah yes, those Bengal Tigers will get you every time.

Being stranded in a boat is a powerful image because endless water is one of the most primal, beautiful, but fearful images in the human psyche.  Water, though it sustains us, can also completely subsume us.  Water symbolizes that which we both need, but that threatens to destroy us if not controlled.

Water courses throughout our readings today.  We begin in Genesis with the wild waters of creation that simmer in the chaos, not yet controlled by land.  These images continue in descriptions of thunder, storms, and flooding that threaten the Psalmist.  Water is presented here as something extremely powerful and dangerous.

If water represents unknown, uncontrollable forces, then it certainly is a metaphor for our times, isn’t it!  In my three and a half years here I have never received as many calls and visits for financial assistance as I have the last three months.  People are getting hours cut back and fired because businesses just can’t sustain activity in the current economy.  Being a worker right now feels a bit like being afloat in a boat on the wild seas.

And in such unsteady times, if any additional part of your life begins to fall apart, it can feel like there is a Bengal tiger right in your boat with you!

For better or worse, we are not the only group of people who has ever felt this kind of anxiety.  In fact, most of our readings today were written to respond to anxiety.  When everything is going well, and you sense the presence of God very clearly, you don’t need to be reminded about who God is.  However, when things in your life are rocky, you need all the reminders of God’s goodness you can get.  When you are an Israelite who has been exiled from Jerusalem, you might need to hear about the God that controlled chaos and created plants, animals and people with loving care.  If you are an early Christian who fears being persecuted, you might want to be reminded that Jesus really was the son of God, and that the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus like a dove.

Telling our stories is a powerful antidote to anxiety. We tell stories from the Bible every week in church because they remind us of who God is.  We need those reminders on a regular basis to stay rooted in our identity as God’s children.

The stories we tell in this week’s lectionary readings remind us both who God is and also who we are in relation to God.

Our first reading is the very first passage from Genesis.  When the creation story starts, the world is nothing but a formless void.  The world is dark and filled with water.  We don’t get the whole creation story, but we get the very beginning images: a wind from God sweeping over those vast waters and then out of the darkness, comes light.  God makes something out of nothing.  God sheds light where there was only darkness.  God takes something chaotic and scary and makes something beautiful and life-filled. Although water can be overwhelming and uncontrollable, in this passage, God is fully in control and able to shape and guide the powerful element. This passage reminds us of God’s control and the way God brings light into difficult situations.

The author of Psalm 29 calls out to this Creator God as he faces a terrible storm, and reminds himself that the Lord God is incredibly powerful and reigns even over the floods and cracking trees and thunder that the storm brings.  The Psalmist gives us a model of how to pray in the midst of crisis.  He is able to celebrate God, even while being nervous about his own safety.

Our stories from the New Testament today address water and God’s relationship to water in a different way.  Both stories are about baptism.  In the Gospel we have Jesus’ baptism and in the epistle we have the baptism of Apollos.  While these images may seem completely unrelated to the images of wild and dangerous water from the Old Testament readings, danger is actually a part of baptism.

Baptism symbolizes cleansing, but it also symbolizes death.  Like Jesus’ baptism, early baptisms were all fully immersion baptisms.  People who wanted to be baptized were pushed under the water and then hauled out again three times.  Being pushed under, symbolized drowning, reminding the baptized of the power of water and of death.  When you were pulled back out, it symbolized your new life in Christ. And like God shows up in the Old Testament when waters become dangerous, God shows up at baptism, too.  Both Jesus and Apollos experience the Holy Spirit after their baptisms.  In the book of Acts, Jesus explains that the Holy Spirit gets sent at baptism to be our Comforter and guide.

We need to be reminded of the Holy Spirit.  We need to be reminded that even amidst the roiling waters God sends us a comforter and guide to help us through difficult times.  We need to be reminded that God is with us, even as we face off our own Bengal tigers in our tiny boats.

And so, we tell our stories.  We tell stories of God’s faithfulness in the Bible, but we can also tell stories of God’s faithfulness in our own histories.  I think of all the stories I know about how God has shown up in my life and your lives just in the nick of time.  These stories calm me.  They remind me that God is with me.

You might remember times when you thought you would be adrift forever, but then God rescued you in unexpected ways.  Better yet, you might remember a time when you were lost on the seas, but suddenly God helped you to see that you were not lost after all-you were just on a little character building adventure.

This remembering is what puts legs on our faith.  Telling our stories gives us the courage we need to take risks, to be brave in unfortunate circumstance, to be kind when we are feeling threatened. Telling our stories helps us to be true to our baptismal promises on the days when they seem silly or outdated.

Telling our stories helps us to remember that God holds us up amidst the waters, even if there is a tiger in our boat.

Christmas I, Year B, 2008

/ Sarah / 1 Comment

In honor of the incarnation that we celebrated this week, today’s readings are all about the law and grace.

Now, when I hear the words “the Law”, the first images I think of are American ones.  I think of dusty sheriffs patrolling the western frontier.  I think of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood.  I think of lawbreakers like Johnny Cash, singing the “Folsom Prison Blues”. I think of Billy the Kid and Jesse James.  America has always held the law and law-breaking in an exciting tension.  After all, we began as a nation by breaking the law and rebelling against England.  Outlaws have been our heroes as much as the lawmen that chased them down.

When we think about grace, we think about big sweeping outlaw stories, too.  American Christianity, particularly of the conservative sort, loves a huge conversion story.  There is nothing better than when a hopeless outlaw has an experience with Jesus that transforms his life. The first of these that comes to my mind is Charles Colson, who found Jesus while in prison after the Watergate scandal and has spent his life since working in prison ministry.  I think of Anne Lamott’s story, too.  She was addicted to drugs until a series of experiences in which she had a very clear supernatural sense of Jesus’ presence that motivated her to seek healing and a church community.

These dramatic conversion stories are exciting and a give a clear picture of the power of Christ in the life of believers. A new understanding of Christ’s love can motivate people to completely change their lives, making for a remarkable witness to the power of God.  But, what about the rest of us?  What does grace look like for those of us who aren’t outlaws?

As you can imagine, I have at MOST about 2% outlaw in me.  I have been a rule-follower since I was a little kid.  I like order and most laws make sense to me, so I see no need to break them.  I pay my taxes, stop at red lights, and have never done drugs.  I am, as a four year old I know likes to say, “Boooooooowing.”  Matt likes to mess with me in grocery stores by putting an item out of place. He knows I just can’t stand it if a can of beans ends up with the pasta.  He knows I will be unable to resist picking up those beans and putting the can back where it belongs.  I am a rule bound woman.

And yet, the grace of God that comes through Jesus incarnation is still profound to me.

Why is that?  What does the incarnation of Christ and the grace of God offer for us boring rule-bound types?

Well for one thing, in terms of obedience, the law of the Hebrew Scriptures is a lot more complicated than American civil law.  It’s easy to stop at red lights.  It’s not always easy to follow the hundreds of specific household and dietary laws of Leviticus.  It’s really not easy to avoid breaking the laws-such as coveting-which are as much about an emotional response than a behavioral one.  Being obedient to all the laws of the Hebrew Scriptures is nearly impossible.  They are so detailed, following them might be like having an entire lifetime of just putting cans back into the right slots.  While putting cans back in their proper places brings me a moment of satisfaction, it certainly does not offer me a lifetime of joy!

Christ’s incarnation and life changes our relationship to the law.  He follows the law perfectly on our behalf.

But more importantly than changing our relationship to the law, Christ’s incarnation fundamentally transforms the way we relate to God-whether we are outlaws or chronically obedient.

In our reading from Galatians today, Paul writes,

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.

When we were under the law, we related to God as his servants.  We were the vassals to his Lord, the peasant to his King.  Our relationship was based on obedience and loyalty.  We were rewarded when we worshiped him properly and punished when we slipped and worshiped Ba’al instead.

When Jesus is born into Mary and Joseph’s human family, we are invited to join God’s family.  Suddenly, our status has changed.  We are no longer slaves, but children of God.  God sees us as his children and we are invited to call him Father.

Now just think for a minute, if you were here last Sunday, about how you felt about our children as they performed and watched the Christmas pageant.  I saw the tears in your eyes and heard the sighs and laughter.  Our children are beloved here-as they should be.  Now imagine that God feels the same way about you!

This is a big transition to make.  If you’re off being an outlaw, you’re used to railing against authority figures.  If you’re a rule follower, you’re used to trying to please authority figures through your perfect obedience.  Neither of these ways of being really prepares you for the challenge of simply being loved.

We don’t have to prove anything.  We don’t have to earn anything.  We are loved simply because God has chosen to love us.  He has decided to adopt us into his family without any manipulation or trickery on our part.  He loves us.  He wants to be around us.  He wants a deep relationship with us. The relational dynamic has changed.  Now pleasing God means developing an intimate relationship with him, rather than simply obeying his laws.

And this is the true meaning of Christmas.  We welcome the baby Jesus into the human family as a reminder that Jesus has invited us to be a member of his family.  We put up lights and exchange presents and generally rejoice because whether we are outlaws, goody-two-shoes or someone in-between, we are loved and wanted by God, and have become part of his family.

Merry Christmas, indeed!

Advent 3, Year B, 2008

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

God will make a way.

On this third Sunday of Advent, we have rounded a corner from the repentant beginning of Advent to the great celebration of Christmas.  We light the rose colored candle on the Advent wreath because it represents joy and the act of rejoicing as we begin to anticipate the birth of our Savior.

The problem for us, is that this third Sunday in Advent does not feel very joyous.  Half a million Americans are unemployed. I know I have a handful of friends who work in various state jobs who are nervous about losing their jobs come budget cuts in January.  I have had three serious conversations with friends who are preparing either to move in with relatives or have relatives move in with them should the worst come.  I even have friends who have just flat out cancelled Christmas. We are a nation at edge faced for the first time, in many years, for a dramatic change in the way we live. 

And yet, I tell you today, despite all of this, that God will make a way.  I can say this with confidence because that is just who God is-he is One who makes a way.  Mary’s story reminds us of this.

The Canticle we [read/sing] today are the words of Mary as she fully absorbs the news that she is bearing God’s child.  This news was absurd on many levels. 

First of all, Mary has never been with a man, so her being pregnant isn’t even a possibility.

Second of all, why Mary?  She’s a young girl from a small town.  She’s not from a powerful family.  She’s not rich.  She’s a nobody.

Another word for this kind of absurdity is grace.  Mary is blessed by God not because of who she was or what she did, but because God is a gracious, loving God, who breaks into our world and transforms it.

In the Gospel of Luke, Mary’s annunciation is paired with her cousin’s Elizabeth’s annunciation.  There are many stories of miraculous pregnancies though out the bible and Elizabeth’s fits the pattern beautifully.  Like Sarah and Hannah before her, Elizabeth is older and believes she is barren.  She and her husband are extremely pious.  Zacharias is even a priest in the temple!  They both deeply desire a child and are granted the gift of a child late in their life, much to their surprise.

Placed so close to Elizabeth’s story, we realize how shocking Mary’s story really is!  God made a way to enter the world through Mary in a way completely unprecedented.  Mary’s annunciation happens in a different way so that we know that God is doing something really unusual. Mary does not fit the mold of annunciation stories. Mary is not an older woman who is longing for children.  In fact, children are probably the last thing on her mind!  She is a young teenager, betrothed to Joseph, minding her own business.  The angel Gabriel comes to her not in a temple, but in an ordinary city, probably in an ordinary home or street.  Gabriel does not reassure Mary that she and Joseph will be able to have children, but suggests something entirely different-that the power of the Holy Spirit will come upon her and she will bear a child via a miracle of God.

God makes a way to enflesh himself with humanity and he does it in cooperation with an ordinary girl in an ordinary town.  God does not enter our world through the most powerful family or the most religious family.  God makes a way to enter into and redeem our experience by being born of a girl who was willing to be completely open to God’s will for her life.

A month after her experience, Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth.  While there she has a moment of clarity about what is happening to her and she speaks or sings the words of the Magnificat.  The Magnificat is all about Mary’s astonishment at God’s decision to visit his grace upon her.  She understands the deeper implications of this-that God’s grace will no longer be expressed via the kings and the hierarchy, but to the lowly, every day person.  She understands that God is continuing the relationship begun with Abraham, but that he is transforming the nature of the relationship completely.

Mary is no more deserving than other girls of her temperament or background, but she is favored by God as an act of grace.  Jesus’ whole life will be about explaining how the love of God works.  How God loves us without pre-condition and despite our seeming inherent compulsion to betray him.  Our God is a god of grace.  He bestows upon us love, acceptance, forgiveness because of who he is, not because of who we are.

We currently live in a meritocracy, so we have a hard time understanding grace.  We believe we have earned everything in our lives because of our hard work and intelligence.  Our country is now in a time when suddenly hard work and intelligence is not enough.  Good, hardworking, smart people are still losing their jobs through no fault of their own.  The sands are shifting beneath our feet and it feels, for good reason, really frightening.

But God will make a way.

And when I say God will make a way I don’t mean that God is going to swoop in and solve this financial crisis.  I don’t even mean that God will swoop in and solve your personal job or retirement crisis.

What I mean is, that God will make a way for grace in the midst of difficult times.  God will make a way for the unexpected to occur. 

God will make a way to provide for you when you least expect it.  God will make a way for you to experience love and deep connection in your community.  God will help you experience his love for you in new and deeper ways. 

Many of us will be faced with difficult decisions in the next few years, and most of us will have to make some level of sacrifice.  But in the end, what I hope for us, is that in retrospect we will have experienced this economic crisis as a time when the members of Emmanuel really put their trust in God and really opened up to one other.  We are the beloved community.  We are the family of God.  We have the capacity to help each other-not just through moral and practical support, but through holding one another in prayer and asking that we each may experience God’s grace in a new way.

No one could have predicted how Jesus would enter the world.  No one can predict how God’s grace will break through to us over the next few years.  But we know it will-not because we deserve that in-breaking, but because God is a god of grace who extends himself to us over and over and over again.  We join Mary in rejoicing in the goodness of our God and waiting in expectation to see what God will do next.

God will make a way.

Advent 1, Year B, 2008

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Happy New Year!

The world is going to end!

Today, this first Sunday in Advent, we celebrate the beginning of the new church year.  Advent is the season of repentance as we prepare to welcome Christ into the world.  However, Advent is also the time in the church year during which we remind ourselves that Christ will come back again.  This creates a little cognitive dissonance within us.  After all, Christ coming into the world the first time is really exciting and, even . . .cute!  Jesus started as a little baby.  Babies are adorable. What is less adorable are the scary and mysterious apocalyptic images we read during our Advent lessons about the second coming of Christ.

Today’s lessons reminded me of one of the darker moments of my seminary experience.

In order to be ordained an Episcopal Priest, you must take an exam called the General Ordination Exam.  This exam is taken over a four-day period, early in January, after Christmas break.  If we failed the exam, our ordination could be postponed, so we were appropriately terrified.

Most of the questions on our exam were manageable, but then Tuesday January 4th, 2005 at 1:30 PM, we opened our Church History question.  Now, to take the exam, we would go to the library, pick up the question in a sealed envelope, and then go to our dorm rooms to answer the question on our computers.  At 1:30 PM on that fateful Tuesday, I opened the question and suddenly heard a scream from across the hall, and then some cursing from upstairs.  When I read the question, I understood why.

I won’t read the whole question, but the first part of the question was this:

During the second quarter of the 19th century, a modern form of apocalypticism known as Dispensational Premillennialism (or Premillennial Dispensationalism) arose in Britain, crossed the Atlantic to the United States, and subsequently played an important role in the development of Protestantism in this country.

Briefly identify the origins and major features of this type of apocalyptic thought. Trace its history in the United States from the later 19th century to the present, noting major developments and situating them in the context of their times.

The reason my neighbors screamed and cursed, was that none of us had ever heard of Premillennial Dispensationalism.  We had no idea what the subject of the question meant. We were toast.  Thankfully, the question was open book, so we were able to fudge some answers, even though the term was not even covered in our Oxford Dictionary of Theological terms.  It turns out the people who did best on the test were those who were raised in fundamentalist households.  Premillennial dispensationalism, as it turns out, is the theology that undergirds books like the Left Behind series, and many fundamentalist churches.

And, I still don’t fully understand premillenial dispensationalism, even though dispensationalism does rate its own Wikipedia entry now.  Basically, premillenial dispensationalism is a theology begun in the late 1800s in England, which eventually ended up on our shores.  This theology has a very complicated understanding of end times that takes the Bible literally and takes clues from the Bible’s apocalyptic passages to divide time into thousand year blocks that outline when Jesus will come again.  This theology involves tribulation, the anti-christ, and the State of Israel and much, much more.  Those who believe in this theology are very certain about what the end times will be like.

We, as Episcopalians, however–in typical fashion–are less sure.

We talked about the idea of the end of time in Seminary.  I remember lots of graphs about the word parousia, which is the word the Bible uses to describe Jesus’ coming again.  But the graphs never told us anything about what the parousia would be like.

And this is where I think our passage today is helpful.

No, not the spooky part about the sun being darkened.  Not even the elusive part about the green leaves of the fig tree.  No, I mean this part:

But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake– for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.

This part of the passage reminds us that no one really knows when Christ will return.  No one really knows what life for people on earth will be like when Christ returns.  We can make guesses, based on texts and what we know about Jesus already, but in the end, even the most certain person will be surprised by Christ’s re-entry into the world.

What God calls us to do is to remain in the present.

We cannot control the end of time by worrying about it, or hoping for it, or trying to predict it.  All we can do is be responsible for our own hearts, minds and actions.

We prepare for Christ’s coming by leading the life the un-mysterious parts of Scripture call us to lead.  We are called to follow Jesus, to pray, to read Scripture, to love our neighbor, to take care of those in need.

What we want to do as we go through life is to pay attention.  Jesus calls us in this passage from the Gospel of Mark to “keep awake”.   When life is stressful, or even boring, it is  easy to disconnect and stop paying attention to the world around us. Sometimes escape-physical, mental and emotional-can be really tempting.

But when we keep alert, when we pay attention to the world around us, we give ourselves the opportunity to really live.  When we stay awake, we are also awake to the opportunities that God gives us every day.  We are awake to opportunities to love and serve.  We are awake to opportunities to grow and learn.  We are awake to opportunities to give thanks.

God does not always speak to us in a booming voice.  Opportunities do not always jump up and wave their hands and shout, “Hey!  You over there!  God wants you to pay attention to me!”  To fully serve God, and prepare ourselves for Christ’s coming again we must be fully aware of our present and open to the experiences it brings us.

In the end, we do not need to know the exact details of what Christ’s second coming will look like in order to be prepared to receive him.  We just need to open ourselves to what Christ is doing here and now in the world around us.  If we participate in what Christ is doing now, we’ll be able joyfully meet him later.

This Advent, as we prepare to receive Christ into this world, we are invited to brush aside the distractions and stresses of the holiday season and to really focus on staying alert to the work God is doing in us and around us.

Amen.

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.

All Saints, Year A, 2008

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Today we celebrate All Saints’ Day, the day in the church calendar during which we honor the Saints who have gone before us, like the many dearly loved people on our own prayer list this morning.  All Saints’ Day also reminds us that we are part of that collective body of Saints that belongs not just to this world, but to another, spiritual realm, as well.  We are people of two worlds and torn loyalty.  Those Saints who have gone before us are now fully in that other world, but we are left here, both longing for and dreading the transition to the next world.  We wonder what that world will be like?  Will we be reunited with our friends?  Will we remember any of our history?  Will we still be ourselves?

I went through a period of my life-way back in my mid to late twenties-where I liked to read television spoilers on the Internet.  Spoilers are little tidbits about future episodes of television shows that are dug up by entertainment reporters.  I began hunting for spoilers when I was watching a lot of J.J. Abrams’ shows like Alias and Lost.  His shows can be very tense and scary and I just could not wait a week to find out if my favorite character would escape the cliffhanger ending of the last episode.  Spoilers don’t tell you everything about the future plot of your show-they just give you the teensiest glimpse of the future.

On this All Saints’ Day, we too are invited to catch just a glimpse of what our future may hold, through the “spoiler” of the book of Revelation.

One of our readings today comes from the book of Revelation.  I think it is fair to argue that no book of the Bible is more confusing and difficult to understand than Revelation.  There are as many ways to interpret Revelation as there are biblical scholars.  You can read it as a lens to a particular time in history.  You can read Revelation as a prediction of what the end of time will be like.  You can read Revelation as a metaphor for the spiritual realm.  As I was preparing for this sermon, I had to chuckle when the New Interpreters Bible informed me that the Church of England would not even include all of Revelation in the Daily Office.  Leave it to us Anglicans to just wash our hands of the really weird stuff!

Even though it is confusing, Revelation is still worth our effort. There are no clear descriptions of heaven in the Bible, but the snippet of Revelation we have in today’s reading comes close.  And this vision of life with God is glorious.

As one might expect, God is at the center of this vision, in the person of the Lamb, which is an image often used to describe Jesus.  In addition to being worshiped by angels, the Lamb is being worshiped by people of every tribe and language.  This is the first really beautiful and hopeful image of the passage.  In this world of John’s vision, the Saints are no longer divided by their external differences.  In our normal state, humans love to divide ourselves into little subgroups, and religious people are the worst at this!  When talking about a particularly self-righteous person, my mother used to say, “Well, I think HE’LL be surprised by who is next to him in heaven!”  The image of people from every people-group worshipping God reminds us that God’s love transcends every boundary we put up between us.

These people are all in robes of white, symbolizing their cleansed souls, who have been redeemed by God.  Wonderfully, the angel explains to John, that this Lamb is shepherding and sheltering these people-making sure they do not go hungry or thirsty or even get too hot!  And most beautiful of all, the angel promises that God will wipe every tear from their eyes. 

Life with God will be peaceful, and relational and joyful.  We don’t know much else.

This passage from Revelation does not tell us everything about the next world-we are just teased with enough spoilers to keep us encouraged.  After all, if we knew the whole story, where would the fun be?

Eventually, I stopped reading spoilers for television shows online, because I found I was no longer excited by the shows I was watching.  Knowing what happened ruined the fun of being fully present with the characters and the drama of their lives.   

Saints are saints not because they spend all their time daydreaming about what the afterlife with God will be like.  Saints are saints because they-and we-are focused on loving and serving God right in the here and now.  If we knew too much about what heaven was going to be like, we might be tempted to spend our lives just waiting to get there, rather than being fully engaged in our present. 

But we are welcomed to be encouraged by the good news of an afterlife with God and our loved ones who have gone before us.  Following God is not easy.  Following God requires discipline and personal sacrifice.  If you are feeling discouraged, it’s perfectly all right to take a sneak peek at the back of the book and remind yourself that in the end, God wins, we are redeemed by Christ and go on to spend eternity with him in joy.

Amen.