Proper 15, Year C, 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In fact, you kind of have to have faith.

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

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

Amen.

 

Proper 14, Year C, 2013

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

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

But what does it mean?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

 

 

 

Proper 11, Year C, 2013

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Martha is left hot and frustrated and alone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Proper 9, Year C, 2013

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Listen to the sermon here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Instead Paul writes this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Proper 7, Year C, 2013

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

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

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

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

So, Elijah runs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Isn’t that great news?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

Proper 4, Year C, 2013

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Good morning!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or will we hedge our bets?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

Easter 7, Year C, 2013

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

We all know the story.  Brave Paul gets thrown in prison—again—and after hours of prayer and singing an earthquake flings the prison doors open.  Being a responsible sort of person, Paul doesn’t run away.  He sticks around and ushers an astonished guard into the Christian household.

It’s a lovely story, a story about the power of God who unbinds us and sets us free.

There’s only one problem, one small rub.

The girl.

After all, she’s the reason Paul went to prison in the first place.  This young girl, a slave, has a spirit of divination.  She can tell the future, see into people’s souls.  This is not a gift that is natural, some evil spirit has come upon her.  She is doubly bound—both by this evil spirit and because she is a slave.  She does not use her divination skills of her own volition.  She is paraded around by men who profit from her condition.

We read her story, expecting good news.  After all, we have seen Jesus heal so many people: blind men, lepers, the possessed.  He sees them in all their personhood and restores them to themselves.  But Paul isn’t Jesus.  He is a Christian, not Christ.  Paul is on a mission and this girl is bugging him.  She is following him around chanting about how he is a slave to God.  For days she repeats this line over and over again and finally Paul has had it.  He flings around and commands the demon to leave her.  And the demon does.

Paul never interacts with her again.  While she is healed in one sense, this healing has made her worthless to her owners and their discontent is what lands Paul in jail.

We never hear what becomes of the girl.  We don’t know if her owners find other work for her to do, whether they discard her, whether she finds her freedom.  She is healed, but she is not free.  Her circumstances constrict her.

While it may seem that we, with all of our status and wealth and democracy, are the epitome of what it means to be free, in my experience most people are bound by something.  I have a friend who is normally very energetic and positive, but every once in awhile his shoulders would slump, and he would walk around with an extremely grim expression on his mouth.  Eventually  I began to put together a pattern.  His slump always came a day or so before his mother came for a visit.

Mothers are complicated. On this mother’s day, we celebrate the gift of motherhood and the loving sacrifices so many mothers make.  But it is also important to remember that not all mothers have the gift of selfless love.  Many mothers are manipulative, unkind, withholding—all behaviors that can really bind a child.  And some women, who would be delightful, giving mothers are unable to be mothers for a variety of reasons.  Mother’s Day is wonderful, but it can remind us of the ways we are bound.

And of course this isn’t just about mothers.  Men and women both struggle with being truly free.  Mothers and fathers who are unable or choose not to love are often bound up in their own family history or mental illness.  Cycles of dysfunction can go on and on.

And like the slave girl with the spirit of divination, these are circumstances we cannot change.  Our parents are our parents.  No matter how much we plead, we cannot change them.  But, like the slave girl, we can be healed.

I like to think that after Paul so carelessly healed the slave girl, she had an experience of the holy.  I like to think that the Holy Spirit made up for Paul’s lack of interpersonal skills and gave the girl some insight into how loved she is.

I hope that even if she remained a slave, she experienced the internal freedom of belonging to God.

Whatever binds us—whether it is issues stemming from our childhood, or being stuck in a lousy job, or being financially strapped, or being overwhelmed by the commitments of family life—we have choices to make.

We can dull the pain that these constraints give us by drinking, watching tv, shopping, working out, eating. Brene Brown calls this being a “taking the edge off-aholic”.  But these are just temporary pleasures, giving a lift to our endorphins and helping us get through another long evening.

The alternative is painful.  The alternative is to face what binds us, to acknowledge our feelings, to lean in to the pain rather than trying to dull it.  The alternative is to turn to God and ask for God’s healing.  God’s healing, of course, is love.  We can be suspicious of God’s love, especially if we had parents who were not able to show us love in a healthy way.  We can think of God’s love as conditional, as based on our behavior.

We can think of God’s love like Paul’s healing of the slave girl—an afterthought, carelessly administered out of obligation or even irritation.

But that’s not what Jesus showed us, was it?  Jesus loved all sorts of people.  People that were respectable and people who weren’t.  Men, women, old people, young people.  Jesus felt enormous compassion for human beings.  He feels enormous compassion for you.

Dallas Willard, author of the wonderful The Divine Conspiracy died this week.  His whole life mission was to get people to get deeper and deeper with God.  He writes,

We must understand that God does not ‘love’ us without liking us – through gritted teeth – as ‘Christian’ love is sometimes thought to do. Rather, out of the eternal freshness of his perpetually self-renewed being, the heavenly Father cherishes the earth and each human being upon it. The fondness, the endearment, the unstintingly affectionate regard of God toward all his creatures is the natural outflow of what he is to the core – which we vainly try to capture with our tired but indispensable old word ‘love’.

This healing love can come from a direct experience with God, but it can also come through God’s church.  We belong to each other.  We are each other’s family.  We are each other’s mothers and brothers, sisters and fathers.  My mother, who was a very loving mother, died of atrial fibrillation suddenly twelve years ago.  While no one can replace her, since then I have received so much mother love from small group leaders, priests, friends, parish administrators, my sister, my father, my husband, my in-laws.  The church stepped in, and loved me.  God loved me, through the church.  As Jesus says in our reading from the Gospel of John today:

Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.

This is one of those sloppy sentences in the Gospel of John you have to read three or four times before you get, but maybe sloppy sentences are the best way to describe the love of God and the love of the Church.

The church is more like Paul than Jesus.  We don’t have it all together.  We love really well some days and some days we act out all our pain and frustration on one another.  Love is messy and complicated.  Love involves forgiveness and repentance more often than we’d like to admit.  But Jesus gives us this gift and this charge: to love one another.

And this is my prayer for you—that whatever binds you, you might experience the radical, encompassing love of our God, who created you, redeems you, and loves you more than the very best of mothers.  May you be given the gift, even if only for a moment, of knowing in your soul how deeply you are loved.

Amen.

Easter Vigil, Year C, 2013

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God has a problem.

God made this amazing creation.    He made suns, moons, planets—galaxies full of whirling dust and light.  And in one of those galaxies he made this remarkable planet, this lush place full of water and rich soil and plants that nourish and shade.  He made animals of every color and station, invisible amoebas and awe inspiring whales.  And then he made people.

People are God’s problem.  God made people to love them.  And he does love them.  God loves people so much he allows them to be free in a way animals and plants are not.  But the trouble is, in that freedom, people turn out to be a real mix of wonderful and terrible.  We discover fire. We create art.  We create ideas.  We are the architect of St. Peter’s bacilica and the Declaration of Independence.  We learn to clothe ourselves and provide for our families and love our children the best we can.  But we also lie, cheat, steal.  We find old girlfriends on Facebook and betray our families.  We hoard money instead of caring for the poor.  We invent and use guns that can murder two dozen children in five minutes.  We too often turn our back on God, and our neighbor.  God wants to be in relationship with us, but we reject him.

So God tries everything.  He tries wiping us off the face of the earth with a giant flood and starting over again with Noah’s family.  But people are still wonderful and terrible.  So, God tries choosing one family, Abraham’s family, and makes a covenant with them.  But even that special family is still wonderful and terrible.  So, God sends a list of rules to Moses so we’ll at least know when we are being terrible.  But after we finish oohing and ahhing over the shiny tablets Moses brings down from the mountain, we just go back to being rude to our parents, coveting our neighbor’s cattle, and murdering those who become inconvenient to us.  God tries Judges to rule us.  No dice.  He tries kings.  The kings end up totally abusing their power and taking advantage of God’s people.  So God tries sending prophets.  These prophets really let us have it.  They yell at us to start worshiping God properly and treating other people with care and respect.   They don’t hold back one bit.  Some of us listen to them, but mostly we just feel kind of bad for the prophets since they smell funny and don’t have a lot of friends.  We continue to be wonderful and terrible.

Now, if we were out for a drink with God and heard him tell this story, we might pat God’s hand and say, “Oh my GOODNESS, break up with them already! They are never going to change.  Go get some therapy and find a hobby or something.  They are just not that into you!”

Thankfully, God is not interested in our advice. God is relentless and creative.  God made us and loves us and is going to be in relationship with us even if we are congenitally unable to be faithful to how God wants us to live.

God sends us his Son.  The God of the Universe, who made all those stars and suns and moons willingly takes on muscle and bone and flesh.  He becomes one of us, except he is able to live in a way God intended.  He lives a life of generosity, selflessness, creativity, and love.  He sees people for who they are and speaks to them honestly.  He heals the broken and brings life to the dead.  People start to see that obedience to God isn’t about following a bunch of rules, it is about relationship.  In fact, Jesus flouts some of the rules that clergy created. He always puts people ahead of rules.

This rule breaking freaks out the powers that be.  They can’t stand losing their power.  They can’t stand the idea that God’s authority could rest with someone other than themselves.  And so, Jesus dies.

This might be the end of the story.  This would make sense.  In a world filled with the abuse of children and corruption of governments and hopeless poverty, a dead God seems like the only explanation.

But we know, of course, that Jesus’ death is not the end of the story.  Because God is relentless.  Because God loves us. Because God won’t give up on us, even when we murder him.

God defies the very rules of the Universe that he created and breathes life back into Jesus’ body.  In so doing, he changes everything about our lives, too.  No longer are people sentenced to alienation and death for their terribleness.  Now, humans are judged through the lens of Jesus.  God can relate to us, because Jesus stands between and intercedes for us.  God can be in relationship with us, even if we aren’t perfect.  And we still aren’t.  We are still wonderful and terrible.  But we are forgiven.

We are forgiven not because of anything we’ve done.  We are forgiven because our God would not stop until we could be together. Our God loves us more than is reasonable, more than we can comprehend.

This forgiveness is not just a blank check.  As God forgives us, he draws us closer to himself and starts to form us into the people he intended us to be.  The more we realize our brokenness, and ask for forgiveness, and get forgiven, and get drawn closer to God, the more we live lives of honesty and grace and love.  We realize the greed and lust and corruption are all about fear—fear of not having enough, fear of not being good enough, fear of not being loved.

When we start to believe God’s love for us, we experience our own resurrection.  Finally, all those fears that have ruled our hearts are put to death, and hope and joy are borne from their ashes.

We rise from those ashes and say, Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

Lent 5, Year C, 2013

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

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

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

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

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

And how better to celebrate resurrection than with a party?

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

Of course, the party wasn’t all happiness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May it be so.

 

Lent 2, Year C, 2013

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.