Proper 9, Year B, 2006

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

This season on Oprah, one of Oprah’s guests was a young man named Kyle Maynard.  Kyle Maynard is in his early 20s and in many ways is a typical college student.  He goes to class, lives with a roommate, dates, and is on the wrestling team.  What makes Kyle unique is that he was born with a congenital birth defect that left him with stumps for arms and legs.  He has no elbows, no knees, no hands and no feet.  Most people born with those differences would live life as defeated person.  Kyle’s parents, however, made a decision not to treat him any differently than their other children, so Kyle compensated for his missing limbs and began to learn how to walk, brush his teeth, type, and all the other daily tasks that are required of us. 

Kyle played football and was a wrestler and refused to let any situation defeat him.  In fact, he’s even written a book named No Excuses about his life experiences and his life philosophy.

Kyle’s life is truly a testimony to the power of discipline and the human spirit.  He was not born with strength, but he found strength out of his weakness.

Kyle’s story came to mind as I was reflecting on our Epistle lesson today.  Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians contains different fragments of letters that the apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth.  Unlike Chuck, or me, Paul did not have the luxury of living consistently with the people to whom he ministered.  He was a man on the move, which is why we are lucky enough to have so many of his letters.  There were costs to this kind of ministry.  Imagine if Chuck had a habit of periodically disappearing and taking care of some other churches around the east coast. We might get a little restless.  We might even get jealous.  If some other dynamic preacher came along, we might just invite him to come inside and preach to us. 

This is exactly what has happened to Paul.  He has left Corinth to take care of another church and in his absence people he describes as “intruders” have come in and begun teaching bad information to Paul’s people.  These intruders have even questioned the validity of Paul’s ministry.

Paul is really unhappy about this situation.  His response is to persuade the Corinthians that he is, indeed, a valid representative of God.  He does this, not by boasting in his strengths, but by boasting in his weaknesses. Before our passage today, he writes:

But whatever anyone dares to boast of — I am speaking as a fool — I also dare to boast of that. Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I. Are they ministers of Christ? I am talking like a madman — I am a better one: with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless floggings, and often near death.  Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters;  in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked. And, besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches.

(I’m glad I don’t have to measure my ministry by these kinds of hardships!)

Paul transitions from this litany of difficulty to describing a vision he experienced.  He wants to appear humble, so uses the rhetorical devise of writing in the third person.  So, not only has he suffered for the sake of the Gospel, he has also had a direct spiritual encounter with God.  I hope the Corinthians were duly impressed.

While Paul’s rhetorical methods are not subtle, his idea of finding strength in weakness is incredibly powerful.

We live in a world that more and more ascribes to Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” hypothesis.  My two guilty pleasures this summer are “Last Comic Standing” and “So You Think you can Dance”.  The principles behind these shows are the same as any reality competition-the strong survive and the weak get voted off the stage. 

The idea of embracing our weaknesses seems absurd-our weaknesses are what hold us back!  If anything, we should be focused on improving ourselves, becoming better, eliminating any weakness. 

Why then, is Paul so sure that there is strength in weakness? 

Well, the main reason is that God told him.  You see, Paul did not WANT to be weak.  Paul had some ailment or condition that he referred to as  “thorn in his side”.  We don’t know what that was, but we do know that Paul begged God to remove this thorn.  Paul wanted to be strong and dynamic, NOT plagued with some weird condition.  When Paul did complain, God responded by saying, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”

Isn’t it irritating how God always takes what we THINK we know, and turns that knowledge on its head?

Once again, instead of choosing some attractive, healthy, dynamic person to do God’s work, God chooses an ordinary guy, with ordinary problems.  God’s objective was to make Himself known, not to make Paul famous.  God wanted to use Paul to convince the world that God had in fact come to earth to become human in Jesus.  God knew that Paul would be faithful and passionate in all the weird ways that God had designed him to be.  God also knew that Paul’s flaws would force Paul to rely on God, and to witness to God, in a way a stronger person might not have to.

Do we offer the weak parts of ourselves to God?  Most likely, we tuck them away from him, like we’ve been tucking them away from ourselves, our friends and our families.  Do any of us go to a job interview and say, “You know, I am terrible at organizing my time.  I’ll probably be late every day.”  Do we go on a date and say, “I am incredibly passive aggressive.  I will never complain, but I will make you feel guilty every day of your life.” 

No, we do not say these things.  We would be fools to say these things!  So, if it is not wise to go around proclaiming our faults, what does it mean to let God work with our weaknesses?

Maybe it means not being afraid to try to open the weak parts of ourselves.  For instance, I was always the last person picked for a sports team in gym class, and rightfully so.  I have an incredibly strong flight reflex. If a ball is flying at my head I will either duck or run.

Tennis was the only sport that did not cause terror in my heart, only because I could use the racquet to protect my face should a ball hurtle towards me. In addition, I have flat feet, so running gave me shin splints. For years I was afraid of any athletic activity because I had pretty strong evidence it would only humiliate me.  In my early twenties, with the help of good running shoes, I began running.  Slowly. I still run slowly, even awkwardly, but to me it is a miracle. I had to let go of all my anxieties and let God give me the courage and the motivation to train.  I also had to open myself to embarrassment.  I have run races in which I am literally the last person to cross the finish line.  I have been so last that during the Waynesboro 10K a police car pulled alongside me and said, “You can run in the middle of the road if you want.  We’ll follow right behind you.” 

Now, that might not seem miraculous to you, but trust me, only the grace of God could make me get up out of my warm bed Saturday mornings to train. 

What is wonderful is that when you start to take risks,  and to function in the underdeveloped parts of yourself, then you stop relying on your own competency and begin relying on God.  God is able to fill in those places that you lack and gives you strength and courage to complete the tasks you are given.

And if you ever feel overwhelmed, just think of Kyle Maynard, the young man born without full arms and legs.  If God can help Kyle Maynard learn to play sports and type and have a full life, just imagine what he can do with your weak places.

Pentecost, Year B, 2007

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Once upon a time, many years ago, all the people of the world lived in one place and spoke one language.  There were not very many of them-a few hundred at the most-and they wandered all over the face of the earth until one day they found a little spot of land perfect for a city.  The earth was red and dense-perfect for making bricks.  So, they packed the mud together, made and fired bricks, and started piling them together.  Soon they had made several houses and even a town hall.  While this was the grandest city any of them had ever seen-it was the first city, after all-they decided these buildings were not quite spectacular enough.  What they needed was a tower-a tower that reached the highest heavens. 

As soon as they had made enough bricks, they began the tower.  After the first week, it was as high as the tallest man’s head.  After the second week, it was taller than the tallest building.  By the end of the first month, you had to crane your neck waaaay up to see the top of the tower.  It was a magnificent sight.

God was keeping an eye on this city, and particularly on this tower.  He saw how well the people were working together, how powerful they became.  While he loved them, the way they were grasping for power, grasping to conquer the heavens concerned him.  The tower was all anyone talked about.  People were skipping meals, neglecting their children, forgetting to say I love you when they left their homes in the morning.  All the people thought about was reaching the top of the heavens.

God knew this kind of behavior would only end in disappointment for the city dwellers, so he made a difficult decision.  Rather than everyone on earth being the same, God would give them differences.  They would speak in different languages, live in different countries, have different colored skin.  That way the human race would never grow too powerful.  When people saw the remains of the tall tower, they called it the Babel Tower, because they remember that it marked the beginning of all the languages of the earth.

For many years, people were separated from each other.   And those separations caused huge problems.  First, all the different language groups retreated to their own corners.  They spent so much time with just themselves, they forgot other groups existed.  When they did come across the other groups, they would fight for power and land.  Many people died because these different groups could not resolve their differences with words.  One group even got special treatment:  God chose them, and only them to be his people.  He blessed them with his presence and even gave them permission to invade other groups’ land! 

One day, however, everything changed.  A man named Jesus had come to earth.  The people who knew him got very excited about him.  They were all shocked when he died at the age of 33.  That shock didn’t even compare to the surprise they felt when he was resurrected!  They practically danced in the street!  However, Jesus gave them other instructions.  He told them to stay put, to meet together in an upper room.  Jesus explained that he had to leave, but that he would send someone to take his place-someone to be an Advocate and a Comforter to his people.

One day, fifty days after the day of Jesus’ resurrection, the people in the upper room had the strangest experience.  This spiritual presence rushed into the room-it felt like. . .like wind, or fire. . .something that rushed over them, but also into them.  And when it rushed into them, something changed.  They began to understand what all the strangers outside their door were saying, and suddenly, they were speaking their language!  A language they didn’t even recognize before that day.  And as they found themselves speaking, they felt a little delirious, but just kept telling these strangers about the wild experiences they had had with Jesus and how he came back from the dead. 

This weird energy did not leave them, either.  The energy felt less intense after awhile, but it remained with them and gave them strength and courage and helped them to understand the mysterious things they heard Jesus say.  This Advocate, this comforter, also helped them to reach out.  Suddenly it did not matter if someone spoke Greek or Aramaic or Coptic or some language you had never heard of.  They understood that God loved the whole world, not just their language group.  They understood that the days of division between languages, cultures and race were over.

(Long pause)

I wonder how these early, Spirit filled Christians would feel if the saw the state of our world today.  Even with our global economy, we as humans seem unable to get over our differences, unable to give up fighting for power, land or ideals.  Do you know what the name of the town where Babel tower was built is now?  Baghdad.  The irony that the center of our current conflict is in the very place where we were first experienced differences in language haunts me.  The tower of unity has collapsed indeed.

For goodness sake, even our churches have become battle grounds for ideologies and moral codes.  The words some Christians use to attack other Christians are just as sharp edged and ugly as words used to attack another culture or country. 

Where has the life and language giving Spirit gone?  Are we doomed to repeat this cycle of violence and misunderstanding?  Are we doomed to live without the Spirit?

I was at a conference at Virginia Seminary this week.  The keynote speaker was a man named Graham Standish, who has written a book called, “Becoming the Blessed Church.”  His hypothesis is more or less that Mainline Churches:  Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans and Methodists, have gained a reputation for being Spiritless, functional churches.  They may be nice, warm places, but they have lost that visionary drive to follow Christ, so in response, people have fled to non denominational, charismatic churches.

He argues that this reputation is not necessarily true.  Though on a denominational level, all four denominations have had internal fights worthy of newscoverage, on an individual level many parishes are thriving and are filled with God’s life giving Spirit.

I know I have felt the Holy Spirit in this place.  I have felt it most in the St. George’s chapel, during my own prayers and healing prayers.  I have felt it in the movement of your lives and in Chuck’s words.  The trick for us is to pay attention.  God’s Spirit is here among us, just as it was that first day of Pentecost. 

As Episcopalians, we’re a little uncomfortable with the Holy Spirit.  After all, we see what happens in those charismatic churches.  Heaven forbid one of us start speaking in tongues or prophesying!  However, not being a charismatic church does not give us permission to resist or ignore the Holy Spirit. 

The Holy Spirit is the force that connects us to God and helps us to discern what God’s will is for us as individuals and as a church.  The Holy Spirit is the force that, like on Pentecost, gives us the power to reach out to neighbors and strangers and welcome them with the Good news of God’s love for them.  The Holy Spirit is the force that guides us on the path to our true calling and helps us resist temptations along the way. 

So, how do we interact with the Holy Spirit?  There’s no mystery here.  To open ourselves to the Holy Spirit, we need to pray.  We need to pray and we need to create a few moments of silence in our lives. 

And it is critical that we engage in prayer for this church and for each other, as Emmanuel continues to discern its role in this community.

I was hired, and began this job a year ago, because this part of Albemarle County is experiencing incredible growth.  While this is exciting, any change, in any community, is also a little unnerving.  Emmanuel has a very distinct character and I have heard some anxiety that Emmanuel’s uniqueness might be lost if the church grows.  That kind of anxiety leads to much speculation. 

Here are some of the rumors I have heard. 

First, that the diocese will start a mission church in Crozet.  As far as I know, this is not true.  Emmanuel is the church that serves this part of the world, and it is our responsibility and our delight to welcome those that move here. 

Second, that we are going to build a larger church.  This is also not true.  This building is precious to us, and before we change anything structural, we would add more services on Sunday.  Even this change is not happening any time soon. 

My favorite rumor is that we are going to pave the grassy area in front of the church so that people can park.  The vestry is researching options for parking, but I can assure you none of them involve the view of the church from the road. 

Keep in mind that change comes very slowly to churches.  Any change will be discussed and deliberated with the parish.  There are no secrets here.  And this is why we all need to pray for the Spirit’s guidance.  We need to listen for God’s will for us as a team, together.  God is so clearly working in this place, let us make it easy for God to continue that work by prayerfully listening for what his will is for this place. 

We can choose to be Tower of Babel people-striving on our own strength to create change that is on our terms, or we can be Pentecost people-open to the Spirit, open to change in God’s time, and in God’s ways. 

Easter 6, Year B, 2006

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Today we celebrate youth Sunday.  Twice a year we take a day to honor the young people among us. 

We are so proud of our young people and their many skills and gifts and charming personalities.  “Ah”, we think, “I remember when I was young and full of potential and life was all ahead of me. . .”  But before you wax nostalgic on your own youth, or start to envy our fine young people their futures, shall I remind you about the ravages of adolescence? 

Perhaps you sailed through childhood and adolescence without any unpleasant experiences, but I’m guessing for many of you, your teenage years were at the least. . .complicated.  Maybe like me you had a raging case of acne and hideous metal braces from which you are still recovering.  Maybe you were beautiful, and so, learned to be valued for that beauty and not for yourself.  Maybe you were brilliant and labeled a nerd.  Maybe you were not so bright, and stuffed in a locker.  Any way you turn it, for most people junior high and high school have at least some element of trauma to them.

Perhaps the most painful experience of adolescence is that of love.  Do you remember?  Do you remember that first person on whom you had a crush?  That consuming desire.  You could think of nothing else.  When he or she missed a day of school your day was ruined.  When he or she began dating someone else, you wanted to weep. 

Perhaps you were unlucky in love as a teenager and remained on the sidelines or maybe you were even UNLUCKIER and did fall in love, have it reciprocated, and then had your heart broken. 

Do you remember how devastating this was?   How it brought up huge philosophical and theological question?  What is love if love can be lost?  Why should we love if it only causes pain?  Why would God make love so painful?  Frankly, some adults are still working out the pain caused by an early broken heart.

I thought of these painful experiences as I read our Epistle for today.  Both our Epistle and Gospel were written by the Johannine Christian Communities of the very early church.  You’ll notice similar themes of abiding in God’s love throughout both readings.  The phrase that leapt out to me this week, was the phrase from the 1st Letter of John-“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” 

This concept, of there being no fear in perfect love, is antithetical to our anxiety ridden culture.  Romantic love is inherently fearful, isn’t it?  We have hour long dramas like, What about Brian? based on the idea that love is inherently desirable, but difficult to get.  On the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy this week, the true love of one character dies immediately after proposing, and other couple resume an adulterous affair.  The message:  love is risky, and contains great potential for pain. 

We are afraid of not falling in love, of having no one fall in love with us, of falling in love with the wrong person, of having that person fall in love with another person, the list goes on and on.    Woody Allen would not have a career if love was not a little bit terrifying.

So, what in the world is this perfect, fearless love of which the Johannine community speaks?

First of all, it is NOT romantic love.  The New Testament seems fundamentally disinterested in romantic love.  The writers are not against romantic love, per se, they have had such profound experiences of God’s love for them, that the writers understand romantic love can only be understood in light of God’s love.

In Matthew 22, some Saducees were trying to trick Jesus and started asking him what happens if a woman has several husbands who die.  Who will be her husband in heaven?  This seems like a valid question, right? We think of  romantic love as an eternal commodity. In our culture, achieving romantic love is the ultimate goal in life. If someone falls in love with us, it gives us value and security.   We want to know that we will be with that person for all eternity.  Jesus, however, lets us know that romantic love, is not eternal love.  He replies to the Saducees, “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.”

Romantic love is wonderful, and is a subset of God’s love for us, but it is not the kind of love that will sustain us beyond this world.

Romantic love begins with us, as humans.  Romantic love ends with us. 

In these Johannine passages, God speaks of agape-or God’s abounding love.  God’s love begins with God, not with us.  We often define God as love, but in reality, God defines love.  Let me say that again.  We often define God as love, but in reality God defines love.

When we project our ideas of what love is onto God, we come up with a warm and fuzzy picture of God that has nothing to do with reality.  Instead, our passage today invites us to define love through God’s eyes.  And God’s love is not the self centered, anxiety ridden romantic love of our culture, but a love of abundant hospitality.  A love that is so secure, so perfect that it drives away any insecurity, any fear. 

So, the second quality of agape love is that it begins with God.  Only God can generate a love that is entirely selfless and welcoming and abundant.  Agape love demands nothing in return. 

Agape love moves out from God towards us.  Agape love pursues us, rather relentlessly, throughout our lives.  This love is so powerful that it fills us and crowds out any fear or anxiety about love that we may have. 

The author of 1st John writes, “We love because he first loved us.”  What’s wonderful about God’s agape love, is that it redeems and amplifies all other kinds of love. 

God does not ask us to choose agape love over romantic love-in fact agape love makes romantic love infinitely easier and more rewarding.

When we experience God’s agape love for us, the experience creates a life changing moment. For the first time we can stop worrying about whether the love we receive is temporary.  For the first time we can trust that the Being we love, loves us back.  Not only loves us back, but loves us first. 

When we know that God loves us, with a powerful and consuming love, we become secure in ourselves in a way we have not experienced before.  And when we are secure in the knowledge that we are loved, it becomes easier for us to love others.  We stop looking to other people to fill up our empty places.  We stop needing approval and affirmation from humans.  We stop our clingy neediness because we have become filled.  Filled with a love that accepts us and challenges us.

This love challenges us to love in a way that looks out for the good of the other.  When we are filled up with this kind of love, we are able to reach out to others, to take emotional risks with our loved ones, to stop protecting ourselves.  Agape love makes us generous with our time, money, energy and emotional presence.  We stop focusing on our own fears and limitations and begin to celebrate the abundance of God’s love for all of us.

Perhaps the biggest gift we can give our young people is to pray that they might experience the depth of God’s love for them.  It is no coincidence that many people come to faith while teenagers.  Teens have a special capacity to understand the incredible good news of Jesus’ love for them.  They feel love and heartbreak with an intensity that is only a memory for most of us. 

An experience of God’s agape love could change the direction of their-and our-lives forever.  An experience of God’s agape love could help these teens choose life partners who are healthy and supportive and life giving. 

Remember, when you pray and contemplate God’s love for you–Agape is not the limited, fickle love of romance, but the eternal, constant, abundant love of the God who created you and redeems you.   And that love can transform the romantic love in your life into a healthy, mutual love marked by hospitality and integrity.  And that-is good news.

Easter 4, Year B, 2006

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

While I am normally a mature–and let’s be honest, sophisticated person–every time I hear Handel’s Messiah, I giggle hysterically when the choristers belt out, “We like sheep. . .”  Sure I know Handel uses the word “like” in order to make a simile, but for a brief moment it feels as if Handel has taken a break from telling us the glorious story of the birth of Christ and is just expressing affection for. . .well. . .sheep.

Maybe my giggles are just a way of disguising my discomfort.  After all, Handel goes on to compare US to sheep who are easily led astray.  US!  We are independent, free thinking, over educated human beings, not sheep!  Sure, we have a tendency to go astray or follow the crowd occassionally.  Baaaa. Once in a while some of us go out and buy something because someone else made it look really cool.  Baaa.  And, sometimes we fudge ethically to make a little more money so we can keep up with the Joneses.   Baaa.  And every so often we go into the voting booth, having done no research on the positions of the candidate.  Baaaa.

Okay.  Fine.  Humans may have a few sheeplike qualities. But still, we can trust our families, our friends, our culture, our government to guide us wisely, right?    If we decided to structure our life around the principles that we found on television, we’d turn out okay. 

And if trusting the television felt shaky, we could certainly trust the government to help us make right choices. 

And if trusting the government did not work out for us, we could certainly trust the Church, right? 

Well, not necessarily.  In today’s reading from the Gospel of John, Jesus warns us about the dangers of shepherds who are only hired hands.   Jesus is speaking to a group of Pharisees.  A few days back, Jesus cured a blind man.  Instead of congratulating the blind man, maybe buying him a round at the local watering hole, the Pharisees immediately start accusing the no-longer-blind man of lying and then pump him for details about Jesus.  When he does not give the Pharisees the answers they are looking for, they kick the formerly blind man out of town! 

Jesus hears about this event comes back into town, finds the blind man and the Pharisees, and begins telling the Pharisees this long parable about the Good Shepherd.  We tend to think of the parable of the Good Shepherd as a sweet one.  Gentle Jesus carefully leading us. . . but Jesus uses this story to ream out the Pharisees for being such jerks and bad caretakers of their flocks. 

Jesus’ mention of shepherds would remind the Pharisees of Ezekiel 34-in which the Lord berates the Kings of Israel for taking advantage of their people, while benefiting themselves.  The Lord says through the prophet Ezekiel, “Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep.”  Jesus updates the image and portrays the Pharisees as false shepherds who do not protect the sheep.  You can imagine their outrage. 

They had been hard at work, crossing their doctrinal Ts and dotting their theologial “I”s.  Who is Jesus to tell them they have been careless?  They did not think they had done anything wrong at all.  In fact, they had been upholding traditions and truth, while Jesus burst in from nowhere to disrupt all their hard work. 

The Pharisees miss the point-Jesus is interested in the welfare of the sheep, not the details of how the sheep fold is constructed.

But Jesus, in the parable of the Good Shepherd, is doing much more than criticizing the Pharisees.  He lays himself out as the counterpoint to the image of the hired hand.  The hired hand, by the very nature of his job, is not terribly interested in the welfare of the sheep.  He will do a good job protecting the sheep as long as there are not difficult challenges, but the hired hand does not love the sheep like the Good Shepherd does.  The hired hand is ultimately most interested in the hired hand’s welfare. 

But the Good Shepherd’s eye is always on the sheep.  The Good Shepherd cultivates intimacy with the sheep.  He will guide the sheep, find the sheep when they are lost, and ultimately lay his life down for the sheep, rather than have them be attacked by the wolf. 

Who do we choose as our shepherds?  We appoint husbands, wives, lovers, parents, children, employers, best friends, movie stars, politicians, priests, writers, teachers, and philosophers as our shepherds, but even the best of these is only human, and subject to all of human weakness.  At their best a devoted spouse carries only the shadow of the love that the Good Shepherd has for you, the best philosopher carries only a shadow of the wisdom of the Good Shepherd, the best friend has only the shadow of the loyalty of the Good Shepherd. 

Of course we are called to be in relationship and to love and learn from the people in our lives, but we must be careful under whose leadership we place ourselves.  Recently I watched Enron:  The Smartest Guys in the Room.  This documentary traced the many steps that led to the Enron scandal.  What struck me most is the culture of ethical murkiness that Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skillings created.  Traders who came into the company with no illegal background, quickly assimilated into a culture that rewarded illegal transactions as long as they made the company money.   And, as we all know, the average person who worked for Enron walked away penniless, while the corporate leaders made hundreds of millions of dollars.  These shepherds did not care about their sheep.

Enron is a dramatic example, but every day we have choices to make about whom we follow.  Whether it is choosing an employer, a spouse, a friend, a social club, a political party or a church, we put ourselves in a position of trusting.  We trust that others will look out for our best interest, but that is not always the case. 

The good news is that The Good Shepherd does always look out for our best interest.  Following the Good Shepherd may not lead to instant gratification, wealth or conventional success.  Following the Good Shepherd may not even always feel good.  But we can trust that the Good Shepherd knows us, loves us, and will guide us with care.  We can trust that the Good Shepherd will be with us in pleasant pastures, beside still waters and through the dark and dangerous places in our journeys.  

You cannot get so lost that the Good Shepherd will not find you, put you over his shoulders and bring you back to the fold.  You cannot be so threatened that the Good Shepherd will not stand between you and the threat; and help you absorb the pain.  Most of all, you can trust the Good Shepherd to lead you into a life of integrity and meaning. 

The Good Shepherd is a shepherd who will not abuse you, not manipulate you, not take advantage of you.  He will use you, but he will use you for good, both good in the world and good for your own development as a Christian. 

To follow the Good Shepherd, we must know the Good Shepherd.  Earlier in this passage from John, Jesus explains that the sheep follow the Good Shepherd because they know his voice.  We must learn the Good Shepherd’s voice in order to be his followers.  If we don’t know his voice, we have no way to sort out what which is the Good Shepherd’s way and which is merely the way of hired hands. 

There is no magic trick to learning the Good Shepherd’s voice-the easiest way is to learn about the Good Shepherd by reading the Bible.  A lot of people in America have a lot to say about Jesus these days.  Instead of relying on them, or even on your priests, by reading the Gospels and Epistles you can start learning Jesus’ voice for yourself.  And if you create some silence in your life, and if you listen carefully, you might even hear the Good Shepherd call you by name.

Easter 2, Year B, 2006

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

You’re working hard alongside your twin brother, minding your own business, when this incredibly dynamic man, Jesus, persuades you to leave your steady job to become a homeless wanderer.  You’re a practical person, so this bold decision is at once thrilling and terrifying.  You are also a grown man, and frankly, not entirely comfortable with your new role as a follower.

While you love Jesus and the other disciples, you have also been driven crazy by this itinerant life you are living.  Also, and you would never admit this to anyone, you’re a little jealous that you’re not one of Jesus’ favorites.  He’s always taking Peter and James and John aside and having some deep conversation.  And Jesus never laughs as hard as when Peter says something completely impetuous and borderline inappropriate. 

Whenever you have spoken up, Jesus has always used it as a “teachable moment”, which made you feel like an idiot.  For instance, this one time, after days of being yanked around from one town to the next, and listening to Jesus’s words of wisdom, which frankly, didn’t always make sense, this one time you ask Jesus HOW we’re supposed to follow you if you don’t even know where you’re going and Jesus turns your question around and starts talking about how he is the way and the truth and the life, but never actually answers your question.

So, in short, you’re tired and a little irritated, but you love Jesus and you can tell there is something really special about him.  You’re waiting to see what happens.  You follow him to Jerusalem and before you know it, he has been arrested and killed. 

So much for this great leader, this man so close to the Lord he called God “my father”.  You’re so sick of listening to Peter and the other disciples process this tragedy that you head out on your own for awhile.  You need quiet.  You need to get your head together.  What are you going to do now?  Can you get your old job back?  What is your mother-in-law going to say?

When you get back to the room where the disciples have been camped out, it is in total chaos.  The women are chirping away, the men are laughing and talking a mile a minute.  For a brief moment you wonder if they have gotten into the wine left over from Thursday night, but the glow about them isn’t one of drunkenness.  When you finally get one of them quieted down enough to talk with you, he starts babbling on about having seen Jesus right here in this room.  Today!  Three days after his death.

Your stomach clenches.  The last few days, heck the last few years have been so weird, so intense, and this latest twist makes your head spin.  Your friends must be so upset they are having mass hallucinations.  That’s the only logical explanation, right? 

You figure they just need a good dose of reality.  So you say those famous words, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”  All you want is a little confirmation.  It is crazy to go around talking about some resurrected man if you don’t have any proof!  But still, there is something about the way Mary Magdalene clenches her jaw.  She just seems so sure.

Frankly, by about the third day of waiting around for this apparition of Jesus, the other disciples are starting to look at you nervously, as if perhaps they DID have some mass vision caused by wish fulfillment.  By the sixth day, your clenched stomach has softened into the dull ache of resignation.

On the seventh day, you are back in the house.  Frankly, you are considering whether to cut your losses and head home.  All of a sudden you feel a chill from the bottom of your spine to the back of your neck.  When you turn around, there he is.  In the flesh.  Well, kind of in the flesh.  There isn’t anything spectral about him, but he isn’t quite normal either.  He seems to be completely solid, but also. . .and you know this sounds crazy.  . .but it is as if the laws of nature do not apply to him.  When he comes in the house, for instance, he doesn’t open the door, he just. . .walks through it.  It is not as if he is making some kind of big showy statement, it is as if he just didn’t think about it.  Like those kind of human details are just minutiae.

And this time, Jesus does not turn to Peter, or John, or James, he turns right to YOU.  He looks at you with this mix of compassion and challenge and says, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” 

But at this moment, you know you don’t need to touch his wounds, to verify your experience. 

At this moment every experience you have ever had with Jesus starts whirling around your mind.  You have to sit down because all those opaque words start becoming crystal clear.  Jesus isn’t just a way, Jesus is THE way, THE life, THE truth.  Jesus isn’t just a holy man, he is Holiness itself.  Jesus wasn’t being cute when he referred to the Lord as his Father, the Lord really is. . .his Father. 

You start to shake as you realize that you have spent the last couple of years in the presence of God, but suddenly you feel a hand on your shoulder.  When you look up, you are looking into Jesus’ eyes.  And yes, they are vast and hold all the mysteries of the universe, but they are also utterly tender and full of compassion and affection.  And when you realize the enormity of Jesus’ love for you, God’s love for you, Jesus seems to nod a little bit.  He pats you on the shoulder and goes on to greet Mary Magdalene and the other disciples. 

Suddenly you realize, this experience with Jesus was not just a three year gig.  You somehow understand that the rest of your life will be devoted to telling people about Jesus, explaining this extraordinary experience of meeting God face to face.  And the even more extraordinary fact of God’s utter love for the human race.

Lent 5, Year B, 2006

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

You promise to pay a certain amount of money every month, and you get a house in return. 

You vow to stay in relationship with a person for the rest of your life, and she does, too. 

You sign a piece of paper saying that you’ll stay with a job three years, and you are promised salary and benefit in return. 

And you never, never, never date your best friend’s exes.

What do these situations have in common?  They are all examples of contracts, either official or implied.  In a contract, two parties exchange promises and the contract can be broken the minute one party does not live up to his or her promise. 

Humans have used contracts for thousands of years.  A contract assumes that both parties have equal responsibilities to fulfill the promises they make.  What happens historically if one party has much more power than the other?

3500 years ago in the Hittite kingdom, there were king like figures called Suzereins, who had money and armies and a great deal of power.  Because they had so much power, instead of making a contract, the Suzereins made covenants with the peasants.  If the peasants gave them a certain percentage of the crops they grew and cattle they raised then the suzerains gave them protection from invading armies.  However, if an invading army was going to come through, the suzerein was not going to check each peasant’s records-he was going to defend his territory.  So, the peasant, to some degree, could still receive the suzerein’s protection, even if he failed to deliver his end of the bargain.

So, why am I telling you all of this?   An understanding of covenant is important because God has related to human beings, throughout history, through covenants.  Suzerien covenants were happening roughly about the time when Genesis and Exodus were written and the covenants written in the Bible have the same structure as these Suzerein covenants.

Depending on how you count, there are anywhere from five to eight covenants between God and people in the Bible.  In our Old Testament reading for today, Jeremiah talks about the concept of God making a new Covenant, but before we can understand the New Covenant, we have to understand the old covenants.

And, because this sermon threatens to make all of you fall asleep, you’re going to have to help me list these first five covenants.  I’ll give you a few clues, and you tell me which biblical character I am describing.

The first covenant was made with the man who was the only righteous man left on the planet. Any takers?  Okay, another clue. . .there was a boat involved. ..

Right!  Noah.  Now, can anyone remember WHAT God promised Noah?  (Not to wipe out humanity)  What did Noah have to do in return?  What was the symbol of this covenant?  (rainbow)

Excellent work.  Now, on to the second covenant.  This one was made with a man who was married to a woman named Sarai?  Any ideas?  Another clue-this man had a child when he was very, very, very old.  Abraham!  Right, what did God promise to do for Abraham?  And what did Abraham need to do in return?  What was the symbol of this covenant?  Circumcision.

Okay, now we’re onto the third covenant.  This covenant was made with a man who discovered as a baby in a basket by the Phaoroah’s daughter.  He went on to experience God by a burning bush. . .Right, Moses!  God made a covenant with Israel through Moses.  He called Moses up on Mount Sianai-what did he give him there-right the Ten Commandments! 

In this covenant, God speaks directly to the people.  He calls Moses to Mt Sianai to warn the people that God’s coming to speak to them directly.  When God does speak to them, he reminds the Israelites that he is the God who delivered them from Egypt and gives the law, which will govern their life.  If they keep the law, God will remain with them.  This period also codifies the sacrificial system-if the people sin, they are required to make a blood sacrifice-either a bird or a sheep or cow depending on the offense and their financial state.

Well, soon enough, the Israelites, who are tired of wandering around in the desert, forget they’ve had this incredible experience of God and start worshiping false idols, complaining, and certainly not following the law. 

God, however, does not give up.  In Deutoromy 30, we read about the next covenant, the land covenant.  In this covenant, God says that if the Israelites come back to him and start behaving faithfully, he will gather them together and give them a spot of land to call their own.  And yes, this is the covenant that is still causing part of the problem in the Middle East!  But that’s a whole other sermon. . .

So, after Moses’ generation dies, the Israelites finally get their parcel of land, but again, they are unable to keep their end of the deal.  They live in the land of Canaan for awhile, but eventually the tribes start bickering with each other and the threat of invaders becomes very serious.

However, all is not lost.  In the book of Samuel, we read about how  the people of Israel start whining because they don’t have a king and everyone else has a king, so God decides to give them one.  The first king, Saul does not work out, so God chooses a second king.  Can anyone remember this second king’s name?  Here’s a hint:  as a kid, he killed a giant with a slingshot.  Yes, David!  It is under David’s leadership that Israel and Judah briefly reunite again and under his leadership that Israel captures Jerusalem. David’s 30something year reign is the Golden Age of Israel.  God loves David so much that he makes an unconditional covenant with him.  God promises that the Israelites will be a rooted people with land of their own and that God will establish an eternal kingdom from David’s line.

All this sounds well and good, but a theological problem developed when the Israelites were NOT able to stay in Jerusalem and the line of kings from David turned out to be kind of terrible and eventually died out. . .where does this leave us in terms of God’s faithfulness?  Our reading from Jeremiah today gives us a clue.  God decides to form a new covenant, a sixth covenant with us.  As you can see, historically, humans have not been great at living up to their ends of covenantal agreements.  Any wise businessperson would have written us off long ago.  Not only are we terrible at following god’s law, we’re not even that great about faithfully worshipping one God!  Any chance we got, we worshiped a golden calf, another God, a credit card. . .

Luckily for us, God is not a businessperson.  God is so interested in maintaining a relationship with us that he cooks up a new covenant, in which he does ALL the work.  In this covenant, he will write his law, the law of love, on our hearts.  While he required blood sacrifices in the past, all along what he really wanted was the sacrifice of our lives-for us to give up our selfishness and love God with our whole hearts. 

So, in order to make things right, God becomes human, lives a life in which he grows into perfection, and then is offered as a blood sacrifice on our behalf.  And while this seems barbaric and a little weird to our modern minds, we have to understand the context in which this happened.  All the sacrifices we offered, all our best efforts, were never enough.  And instead of raising the stakes, or wiping out humanity again, God decides to shoulder the responsibility, to continue the kingship of David through Christ and to offer us a new kind of covenant with him.  A covenant of love and trust and understanding-a covenant of the heart.

Next Sunday, Palm Sunday, begins Holy Week.  Holy Week you will have the opportunity to attend church Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  I encourage you to attend these services as we reflect on and remember this miraculous and overwhelming, sad and glorious New Covenant that God has made with us.  We take God for granted, we take Easter for granted, but we are so lucky-God does not demand our money or our sacrifices. God just wants us-our hearts, our minds, our souls-he wants to know us and be known to us. 

All of the Covenants have been pointing to this-God’s desire to be in relationship with us and his desire to help us be worthy of that honor.  God has stuck with us the whole way-through all of our missteps, all of our false worship, all of our betrayals and he waits for us now, to turn our hearts to him and worship him with all of our mind, our heart, our soul and our body.

Good Friday, Year B, 2006

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

In the Gospel of John, Jesus is the Cosmic Word.  From the very beginning he is clear about his transcendent nature and his close relationship with his Father in heaven. 

How painful then, for his friends and family, to see Jesus in the most degrading of human positions-hung on a cross.  He has been betrayed by Judas, denied by Peter and hangs before the Marys and his beloved disciple, slowly dying.  O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded, a hymn we sing today, expresses this grief:

Thy beauty, long-desirèd,
hath vanished from our sight;
thy power is all expirèd,
and quenched the light of light.

Jesus was light and life and hope.  Jesus dying must have felt like the most gut wrenching, mind spinning incongruity.  I know I would have wanted to run.  Run somewhere safe, somewhere far away. 

The Marys and the beloved disciple challenge us.  They do not run from the agony.  They do not turn away from Jesus’s pained body.  They do not try to get Jesus off the cross.  They have the courage to sit with Jesus, to commune with him, to be present to him, as he experiences his final suffering.

In the news lately, there has been a lot of talk about the recently discovered Gospel of Judas.  In this text, written about 150 years after our four Gospels, Judas doesn’t betray Jesus, Jesus asks Judas to turn him in.  There’s something comforting about this image-It presents a Jesus fully in control.  But none of the Gospels in our canon presents this convenient story.

Jesus was betrayed.  Jesus did die. Jesus willingly let go of control over his own life for our benefit.  And through all of that, the Marys and the beloved disciple never left his side. 

Last week, I had the opportunity of hearing Charles LaFond, the former assistant at Church of Our Savior, lead a retreat about Holy Week.  He told the story of the experiences of the chaplains to the morticians in New Orleans.  After the waters in New Orleans receded, the city was left with the horrifying task of dealing with tens of thousands of dead bodies.  400 morticians from around the country were brought in and a temporary tent city was built. 

Trucks brought in 40 bodies at a time, and they were distributed among the morticians.  While there were many drownings, there were also as many as 85 murder victims disguised as hurricane victims. After the autopsies, bodies were tagged and stored in refrigerated units. 

The job of the chaplains was to bless the truck with the bodies, to bless the bodies again as they were taken to the refrigerators after the autopsies, and to be with the morticians when they wept between autopsies.  Like the Marys and the beloved disciple’s ministry of presence to Jesus, the chaplains’ jobs were not to free the morticians from their horrific duties, but to stay close with them, to love them and pray for them, to be alongside them as they did their work.

That kind of commitment and presence takes enormous courage.  Facing Jesus’ death takes courage, too.  We worship a God who, while ultimately triumphant, was willing to be completely weak and mortal for our behalf.  While we are Easter people, we are also called to remember the shocking vulnerability of our Lord.  We are called to abide with him in prayer, as many of you did during the prayer vigil last night. 

In the same way, when our loved ones are experiencing crisis that makes us uncomfortable:  when they are losing their memory, dying, getting a divorce, losing a child, we are called to be with them.  We cannot solve their problems.  We cannot always make them feel better, but like the Marys and the beloved disciple, we can show up, we can pray for them, we can love them.

Good Friday invites us to grow into people who can abide in pain.  For we know that it is through Jesus’ pain, through his death that we must enter to experience the joy that follows.  In the meantime, we are asked to wait with Jesus still on the Cross.  Again from our hymn:

In thy most bitter passion
my heart to share doth cry,
with thee for my salvation
upon the cross to die.
Ah, keep my heart thus moved
to stand thy cross beneath,
to mourn thee, well-beloved,
yet thank thee for thy death.

Lent 2, Year B, 2006

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Is there any story in the Bible more horrifying than the sacrifice of Isaac?  Why would God, who had given Isaac to Abraham in the first place, then turn around and ask Abraham to kill his own son?  Even at the end of the story, when God rescues Isaac by giving Abraham a ram as a replacement, we feel uneasy with God’s behavior.  It seems manipulative, even cruel.  The point of the story seems clear-God wanted to test Abraham.  But what kind of test makes a person choose between God and his son? 

Today we have what we consider a reasonably sophisticated understanding of God.  God is love. God is One God.  God reveals himself in the Trinity.  However, we must keep in mind that Abraham was basically the first monotheist.  Imagine a world where every tribe has a different God.  Religion is rooted in superstition rather than relationship.  Imagine a world where the gods do actually demand human sacrifice to appease their anger.  This is the kind of world in which Abraham lived.  Abraham’s world was chaotic, loose.  He was a nomad, whose safety and livelihood was dependent on the generosity of the gods. 

God’s desire with Abraham was to start a new kind of relationship between God and people.  No longer would a relationship to God be about superstition, instead it would be about trust and love.  God had to show Abraham that he was NOT the kind of God that demanded human sacrifice.  He taught the lesson in such a searing way, through the near sacrifice of Isaac, that there is no way we can forget the image of last minute rescue.

There is something about the terror in sacrifice of Isaac story that resonates with us.  If you are walking the Christian walk, you are going to experience pain.  If you are walking the Christian walk, you are going to experience great loss.  Because, as our Gospel reading reminds us today, Jesus calls us to lose our lives for his sake.  The imminent death of Isaac reminds us of our fear of obliteration.  We fear that if we get too close to God, if we follow his call on our lives too precisely, we may lose everything we value.

When I was a small child, I saw a NOVA special about the Sun.  It described the power of the Sun’s energy and how eventually because of changes in its energy, everything around it, even the earth, would be sucked into the Sun and be disintegrated.  Now, as a child, I did not understand the concept of millions of years and so thought this would happen any moment, and I was terrified. 

A close relationship with God can feel like this sometimes.  God is so big and so amorphous, it can feel risky to draw near to him, to invite him into our lives.

While Isaac’s survival is small comfort, if we look more closely at this idea of losing our lives, we may be able to gain some courage.

Jesus calls us to lose our lives for his sake.  This sounds suspiciously like the kind of obliteration we fear.  However, we know that Jesus never threatened the life of anyone. He drew people out and loved them and helped them to grow.  He took immature, impulsive Peter and believed in him so much he became a stable head of the church. 

What if Jesus doesn’t want us to lose our true lives, our true selves, but wants us to lose our false selves. 

What do I mean by a false self?  I mean the self that has been constructed from other’s expectations and your own fears.  I mean the self that was taught by your parents that it was not okay to cry or to be fat or to be smart or to be an artist or to be. . whatever it was that they didn’t want you to be.  I mean the self that you’ve constructed so that your friends won’t be threatened by you.  I mean the self you’ve constructed so that your coworkers think you are always competent and never afraid.  I mean the self that you present to your partner so he or she won’t stop loving you.  I mean the self that buys a house you can’t afford and three fancy cars so you appear prosperous to your neighbors, when you’re actually drowning in debt and terrified.

The Christian life involves a huge amount of risk, and the biggest risk is living an authentic life before God and before each other.  Jesus calls us to leave behind the world and what the world wants from us.  Jesus calls us, invites us to sit at his feet and learn from him about who we really are.   

And who are we?  Paul answers this in our Epistle reading today.

“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

We are God’s beloved.  We are the people for whom God sent Christ.  God does not demand human sacrifice, God sacrifices himself for us.  God is big and amorphous and scary, but he was also human, and kind, and gentle.  Above all, God is full of intense, specific love.  God sees you, sees your true heart, sees beyond every false self you’ve constructed, and loves you. 

[At 11:00]

And, like Isaac, right at the moment when life feels the most terrifying, God will swoop in and save you.  He will give you friends when you are lonely, courage when you are terrified, and love when you feel your most un loveable.  All we need to do is to surrender to him-perhaps the most terrifying step of all.

[At the 9:00]

We celebrate four baptisms today.  At first when I read the readings, I was dismayed.  I didn’t want Hunter and Anna Marie to link this image of the sacrifice of Isaac with their own baptism.  I did not want their baptism to be something scary, but something exciting and life giving.  However, these lessons reminded us that baptism isn’t cute.

Baptism is not something we do for sentimental reasons. 

In Baptism we die with Christ and experience his resurrection.  

In Baptism we commit ourselves to following Christ, to giving up our lives to do his work in the world.  But, through Baptism and a life of following Jesus, we will become more and more our true selves, the people God made us to be.  We will discover we can love more deeply than we thought possible.  We will discover great vaults of courage and integrity.  We will discover closeness with God that is not threatening, bur reassuring and life giving.

These four children being baptized are on the beginning of an exciting journey, full of ups and downs, but always rooted in the security of God’s love for them.

 

 

Ash Wednesday, Year B, 2006

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

From our Psalm today:  “He redeems your life from the grave, and crowns you with mercy and loving-kindness”

Today we gather to observe Ash Wednesday.  We gather to remember our mortality, to repent of our sins, and to prepare ourselves for Lent.  This service is a painful one-full of images of our brokenness and our sin, but it is not a service that is without hope. 

Ash Wednesday and Lent provide the space for us to contemplate the darker areas of our lives.  We spend so much of our time fulfilling responsibilities that need to be filled, we tend not to have a lot of time to think and pray about the larger issues that may haunt us-grief over a loved ones’ death or the end of a relationship, fear about our own deaths, concern about our separation from God.  Unlike the sometimes forced cheerfulness of Christmas or Easter, Lent gives us permission to be more contemplative, less happy. 

For me, Lent is a time to remember my mother’s death.  She died six years ago this week.  Each Lent that has followed has felt a little different.  The first Lent I was still too stunned to feel much of anything.  The second Lent I was angry and felt piercing sadness. By the third Lent, I had found some level of peace and resignation.  In preparation for this Ash Wednesday, this Lent, I have been thinking about these words we will use in a few minutes:  Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return. 

At the end of the day, at the end of our lives, we are but flesh.  My mother was dead two days before anyone found her, and the image of her abandoned, lifeless body has stayed with me as an image of the organic finality of death.  The last few years, we have been overwhelmed by images of death:  the victims of the Tsumani, of the war in Iraq, of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.  The image of an unclaimed body is a lonely one, and thousands of bodies remain unclaimed, unidentified from these disasters.  What are we, in the end, but dust?  A pile of molecules tentatively held together by water and energy.  Or are we?

The words “Remember you are dust and to dust you will return” contain more than this barren image of death. Humans do not only end as dust, we began as dust as well. 

Remember you are dust. . . evokes the image of the Creator God breathing into dust to create human life.  When we say Remember you are dust and to dust you will return. . .we remind ourselves that the very ground of our being both created us and will be with us when we die.  We are reminded that our deaths are not a mere organic event, but are a transition-all within the scope of God’s loving care.  There is no place we can run to escape the love of God. Even our deaths do not separate us from Him. 

My mother was not really alone at the time of her death, and none of us will be, either.  We are not alone in our grief, in our depression, in our anger, even in our loneliness.  The same God who breathed life into the first man, and tenderly created the first woman, made each of us, and we rest in his loving hands throughout our entire lives.  Death is not powerful enough to separate us from our Creator and Redeemer.  Nothing is. 

This Lent, we are invited to draw near to this God who created us with such care and affection.  We repent of our sins and give up small pleasures during Lent, not because God wants to judge us, but because God wants us to draw near to him, to need him in a way we don’t often allow ourselves. 

God wants to breathe life into you just as he breathed life into Adam. 

 He redeems your life from the grave, and crowns you with mercy and loving-kindness;

 

Epiphany 7, Year B, 2006

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

I am about to do a new thing.

God declares this through Isaiah’s words and in Jesus’ actions in our lessons this morning.

Jesus had only been in active, public ministry for a few weeks, but word about him had spread throughout the region.  Jesus was teaching all sorts of incredible new ideas about God.  And not only that, Jesus was also doing incredible things.  He was sending demons flying and healing little old ladies.  Even though he wanted to maintain a low profile and asked those he healed not to tell others about him, those who had received his healings could not help but go on and on about Jesus to their friends and family. 

When friends of a paralytic heard about Jesus, they knew their friend needed to meet him.  We don’t get the whole story about this paralytic, but we do get a sense of the energy around him.  His friends were so committed to having him healed, they traveled to Capernaum, to the house where Jesus was staying.  Unfortunately, once they got there they could not get in the door, because so many people were crowding around Jesus, wanting healings. 

The paralytic’s friends were not to be denied.  They somehow climbed onto the roof, hauled the paralytic onto the roof, and began digging.  Rooves in towns like Capernaum were made of slats of wood, filled in with mud, rocks, and big flat leaves.  These friends tore through the outer layer, began shoveling mud and rocks out with their hands or small tools, and eventually broke through. 

I wonder if the people in side the house could hear the commotion they made.  Was it so crowded that Jesus could not hear what was going on?  Or, was Jesus amused by their efforts and simply waiting patiently for the paralytic’s arrival.

All we know is, when the friends finally broke through the roof and lowered their friend down in front of Jesus, everything stopped.  Whatever teaching or healing was going on was halted by this abrupt arrival of a man being lowered down on a pallet. 

Jesus took this opportunity, the faith of this man and his friends, to teach the crowd around him something new. 

The crowd had heard about Jesus’s ability to exorcise demons and to heal, but Jesus wanted to show them that he wasn’t just a miracle worker, he wasn’t just a showman, he was God. 

God says, I am doing a new thing.

Little did the friends of the paralytic know that their grit, their determination would be the background God would use to announce his presence on earth, and his intention to heal humanity, not just from physical infirmity, but from sin.

Now, after two thousand years hearing about how Jesus forgives us our sins, we start to take this information for granted and forgiveness loses some of the emotional power it once had. 

However, we must remember that when God came to earth in and through Jesus, the Jewish powers of the day were deeply into legalism -being a good Jew meant following all the rules, crossing all the Ts and dotting all the I’s.  Though in the past, God had tried to communicate that he was less interested in ritual sacrifice and ritual prayer than authentic worship and service to the poor and needy, the message had not gotten through to the people. 

The idea that a human being would claim to be able to forgive sins, was completely absurd-blasphemous even!  No human being could forgive sins.  Yet, here sits Jesus, calmly telling the paralytic that his sins are forgiven-and, by the way, that he can walk again. 

But really, when you think about it, the healing of the body and the forgiving of sin are more connected than one might think.  What is sin, but a kind of brokenness?  It makes perfect sense that the God who wants to heal us physically, also wants to heal our spirits.  Forgiveness is not just about divine, eternal consequences for our behavior.  Forgiveness is about restoring a right relationship with our creator and with our neighbor.

While humans are made in God’s image and have wonderful capacity to be creative and loving individuals, we also are fundamentally broken.  None of us loves perfectly, none of us is perfectly honest or good.  Despite the Jews of Jesus’ time having a list of 600 very specific rules to follow, no one seemed to be able to follow them all perfectly, no matter how hard they tried. 

In our culture today, we don’t’ have 600 religious laws, but we do have an image of perfection we try to follow subconsciously. Being competent, having the appearance of being “together” is incredibly important. 

But, what if God is doing a new thing?

This week, Chuck and I had the interesting experience of meeting with a local therapist who has a vision.  Over the years of his ministry, he has encountered individuals and couples who can admit their brokenness to him and to each other, but these same people continue to pretend to their friends and to their churches that everything about their life is together and perfect. 

This therapist believes that true healing occurs in community.  Therapy is a wonderful tool that can help people deepen relationships with each other, but this therapist would love his counseling sessions to be simply a beginning for his clients.  That like Henri Nouwen’s wounded healer, his clients could use their painful experiences and their experiences of forgiveness to propel them into community and into ministry.  This therapist envisions a ministry in which he counsels people in their church buildings, and that the community life of church and the private work of therapy ultimately partner together.

I think the image of the paralytic’s friend’s lowering him onto the mat is a wonderful example of this kind of community.  The paralytic was in a situation where his problem could not be hidden.  He obviously could not walk.  His friends did not hold back, ignoring his problem in order not to embarrass him.  No, they were engaged with him, and committed to his healing.  They were so committed they tore through a roof so he could see Jesus.

Now, I don’t know if this therapist’s ministry will be successful, but I know from personal experience that the combination of therapy and intentional community can be a powerful vehicle for the work of God.

From 1999 until 2002 I was part of a small group Bible study in Richmond.  About seven of us met weekly to study the bible and pray together.  In that way, we looked like any other bible study.  The difference was that four of us were in therapy, two were getting degrees in counseling and one was married to one of the counselors!  It was while I was in this group that I left the evangelical church to become an Episcopalian, experienced the death of my mother, and discerned a call to the priesthood.  Words cannot express the powerful ways God used this group as we each faced the brokenness in our lives and came together to support, challenge and pray for each other. This community held my brokenness tenderly, protecting and loving me, so I could grow into the person God wanted me to be.  We also had a ridiculous amount of fun together and became a true community, even outside of the Bible Study. 

At times the intimacy we achieved felt very risky, especially as my theological ideas were changing, but despite our theological differences, or perhaps because of them, we were able to each deepen our faith and learn about God.  For me, these six friends were my pallet carriers.  They brought me to Jesus, reminding me of his love and forgiveness for me over and over again.

Obviously therapy and small groups are not the only ways to live in deep community with one another.  However, we ARE called to be in deep community. Throughout history, God has called communities of faith, rather than individuals.  We gather together as a church every Sunday, because it is impossible for us to discern God’s call as individuals.  We need each other to fully realize our faith.  We need each other to carry each other when we cannot walk.  We need each other to express God’s forgiveness when we feel only guilt. 

So, maybe it’s God who needs US to do a new thing-to trust him and trust each other to live authentic lives in community.