May 22, 2012

Letting Go

By marciglass

A Sermon preached for Ascension

May 20, 2012

Luke 24:44-53

Acts 1:1-11

The texts we heard this morning are the ending of Luke’s Gospel and the beginning of his sequel, the Book of Acts. Both stories describe the same event, but in the gospel, it is used as a conclusion. And in the Book of Acts, it marks the beginning of the story.

And we understand that. There are events in our lives that seem like endings. Clearly nothing could ever happen after a death, or loss, or tragedy, or after watching your savior ascend into the clouds. The End. That’s all she wrote. End scene.

But the story goes on.

Luke says they returned to Jerusalem and worshipped with great joy. Which is great and all.

But I think they also returned to Jerusalem wondering what had just happened.

And feeling a little unsettled.

40 days of Jesus’ resurrected presence must have upset their equilibriums after all. At first, you wonder, “what in the heck is going on?” but then, after a while, perhaps you get used to resurrected Jesus just showing up at your gatherings, eating fish with you, teaching you scripture, and then disappearing again.

But now he’s instructed them to be witnesses, he’s blessed them, and then he ascended into the clouds. This has a finality about it.

As they walk back to Jerusalem, where they worship in the Temple with great joy, you wonder if some of the joy is from the fact that it is over. As much as they loved Jesus and didn’t want him to leave, perhaps there is also relief. He has gone back to the Father where he belongs. And they are left where they belong, full of his recent teaching and instruction, ready to be the witnesses he’s called them to be. Ready to move on.

Endings are like that. We don’t want them to come. We would rather stay in the places and situations we are, and perhaps have been for a long while. But change happens. Loved ones die. Jobs and relationships come to an end. Jesus ascends up to heaven. And in the midst of the sadness of those endings, we also find joy, when we gather together, worshipping in the Temple.

And as Luke’s audience would have known, even the Temple would change, would come to an end. By the time his people are reading his book, the Temple is in ruins, never to be rebuilt. The very house of God is destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 AD. 
Surely that must have seemed like an ending from which they would never recover.  Where do you go to find God when the pipe organ is burned to the ground and things are different and you don’t even recognize the people in the rubble?

Who are all of these people and what have they done with my church????
Yes, change is hard. And I don’t say that glibly. Change is hard. We are creatures of habit and comfort and doing things the way they have always been done. It is what builds stability into our lives. It is a marker of what makes us human.

When Elliott was a toddler, (and he gave me permission to tell this story), he especially didn’t like change. If he was playing with trains, he wanted to play with trains forever. We’d say,”time for a bath!”, and he’d cry and scream and be sad that he wouldn’t get to play with his trains. And so we’d throw the crying kid in the tub and all of a sudden, he realized that being in the bath was exactly where he wanted to be. forever. And he’d stay in the bathtub until he turned into a prune and the water grew cold. And then he’d cry when we took him out of the water to dry him off and get him ready for the next favorite activity of the day.

He’s gotten better.

But we’re reminded, as we think about Jesus’ ascension, that change happens and we have to help each other through it. We don’t stop it. We can’t stop it.

And before Jesus rises on the clouds as he returns to God, he helps them prepare for the transition. “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.”

So when Jesus heads up to the clouds, it is because things are fulfilled, things are complete, things are finished. Not all of our endings seem to have fulfillment in them, but upon reflection, sometimes our understanding of that changes.

He didn’t leave them until it was time, until things were fulfilled.

He says, “I am sending upon you what my Father promised”. He reminds them that the Holy Spirit will come to them and surround them, encourage them, and uplift them. They are not alone.

The Spirit will be with them. And they need to be witnesses of what they have seen in Jesus of Nazareth. Witnesses of where they have seen God in the midst of change they never wanted to experience. Witnesses of the grace and love from God that was visible in the person of Jesus in ways that the world had never seen before. Witnesses of life and resurrection where they only expected to find death.

And he blesses them and ascends to God.

And then the white robed men show up, as the crowd is staring, dumbstruck at the sky, watching the bottoms of Jesus’ feet as he disappears into the cloud. “Men of Galilee, why are you looking at the sky? Who do you expect to see there? Didn’t Jesus tell you to go and do something?”

I don’t think I would have liked these messengers much. At the end of Luke’s gospel, they ask the women, as they’ve arrived at the tomb to anoint Jesus’ dead body, “why are you looking for the living among the dead?”

Well, duh. They weren’t looking for the living. They’d come to the tomb because he was dead. Why should they have been expecting the living? What kind of a question was that?

And here, “People of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward Heaven?”

“Well, mister Angel smarty pants, if you didn’t notice, Jesus just lifted up into the clouds. And while we’ve seen some crazy stuff with him, we haven’t seen this before. That’s why we’re looking up toward Heaven.”

I want to fully support the disciples in their looking up to heaven. Because I’ll tell you right now—if and when any of you, or Jesus, ascend up to heaven in my presence, I will stand there staring until the soles of your feet have gone up into the clouds.

They had already lost Jesus once before, remember. And here he was, leaving them again.

“People of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward Heaven?”

“ummm…because we’re scared. Because we don’t have a script for how this is supposed to go. Because we don’t know how to do this on our own.”

“People of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward Heaven?”

“Because it is easier than doing what he called us to do. If we focus on heaven, we don’t have to notice the homeless, the hungry, the hurting who are here in front of our faces.”

We haven’t ever seen someone ascend to heaven, but the angels could ask us the same question.

Whenever Christians place our focus on looking for Jesus up in the clouds rather than doing the work of the church, we should ask ourselves, “people of Southminster, why do you stand looking up toward Heaven?”

And there it is. The community is reminded to go and to be the church, to witness to in Jerusalem, in Boise, in Meridian, in Ada and Canyon Counties, and to the ends of the earth. And the story spreads. What starts out as a small band of terrified disciples becomes the church that has nurtured us and brought us here today. Talk about a change!

I don’t know about you, but that seems daunting to me—the whole being witnesses to the end of the earth business.
I think if we’re worried the success of this whole business relies on us, that we can become paralyzed. We can decide it would be better to jump up as Jesus is ascending and grab hold of his ankle and pull him back to earth so he can be in charge.

But we can’t just hold on to Jesus, or what we’ve already known.

We have to let go. We have to let go of Jesus, let him ascend back to heaven so that the Spirit can come and settle on us, giving us the strength we need.

We have to let go of our expectations, our definitions of success, and our fears that it is about us.

Jesus ascends into heaven to get out of the way as we become the church. And while we don’t get to ascend to heaven, we do need to let our expectations and fears ascend and get out of the way so we can let go of however we think the perfect church is supposed to look and get busy just being who we are called to be.

How would that look? If we weren’t afraid of failing? If we weren’t afraid of looking like fools? Certainly we would still make mistakes and we would still look like fools at times, but it doesn’t change our instruction.

Despite our fears and insecurities about our fitness for the job, we witness still.

And we are at a moment in history of great change. The church as we have known it, religion as we have known it, in our denomination, in our country, around the world, is changing. And it is unsettling. We are reminded that we don’t have a roadmap or set of blue prints for what is to come.
But I hope we can live into this new future without fear. Because Jesus didn’t ascend into the clouds until the time was fulfilled.

What would it look like for us, at this moment in history, to let go? If we stopped looking up or looking back to the past, and started looking forward, what would we see? Where and what would we discern God calling us to be?

As we go from this place, go with peace and confidence to be Christ’s witnesses, because change happens. And people need to know they aren’t alone in the midst of it. They need to hear from you that there is another story yet to be told, even if all they can see at the moment is an ending.

We go from this place, surrounded by the very spirit of God, and we witness to what we have seen and learned from Jesus. And we go confidently into the future, letting go of our expectations and our fears, trusting that what is now unknown will turn out to be loving, and good, and the future that God is even now dreaming for us. We don’t need to look to the sky or look to the past. Our story is beginning again today. Amen.

Leave a comment | posted in Acts 1:1-11, Ascension, Luke 24:44-53

May 18, 2012

Mother’s Day

By marciglass

I recognize this post might have been more useful before Mother’s Day, but that’s how it goes.

I’ve had a conflicted relationship with Mother’s Day since 1989. Before then, it was the day I made my mom a card and bought her some plants for the garden. It was a good day. Church, lunch, time with family.

My family adopted me as an infant, and I grew up thankful for my family, thankful for parents who wanted to give me a home, thankful for a woman I’ve never met who chose to give me life. And so I thought about her on Mother’s Day too, wishing I could thank her for the gift of my life.

But back to Mother’s Day 1989. At that point I was 8 and a half months pregnant with my first child, finishing final exams for my sophomore year of college, and preparing to place my son for adoption.

I’m the pregnant one in the middle.

Needless to say, it was a tough day.

I was about to give birth, but not become a mother. I was not going to be raising my son, so as far as everyone in the world was concerned, I wasn’t really a mother. He was going to have another mother, another family. I was going to go through life without him by my side. I wasn’t going to have his car seat in my car. I wasn’t going to make him a birthday cake and throw him a party. People were going to meet me and not be able to tell by looking at me that I had given birth to a son.

Luckily I went to a caring church. They had mothers stand up to be recognized on that day. And they told me to stand up too.

So that day, even before I gave birth, became a conflicted day for me.

My son was born six weeks later.

We went through with the adoption. It was beautiful. It was painful. It felt right. I met his parents and knew, knew without a doubt, we were doing the right thing. When I met them for the first time, I felt I had known them forever. As hard as it was to give him away, I had no hesitation. They were his parents.

the day of the adoption

I am, perhaps, the most blessed birth mother in the entire world. I’ve had a relationship with Eric his entire life. His parents have generously welcomed both Baby Daddy and me into his life. I haven’t seen him as often as I would have liked because we have never lived in the same state, but every time I have seen him has been blessing beyond blessing.

And as the years have gone by, I have gotten married, I’ve given birth to two more wonderful sons who also get to know Eric.

And each year Mother’s Day has continued to be a day of contradictions. It makes me think of my birth mother as I call and tell my mom that I love her. I have sent Mother’s Day cards to Eric’s mom, thanking her for both welcoming me into his life and for doing such a great job being a mom.

And I’ve become more sensitive to other women for whom Mother’s Day is painful.

For women who would give anything to overcome their battles with infertility so they can become mothers.

For women who would be mothers if they had partners with whom to raise them.

For women whose children have died.

For women who have never become mothers in the first place. Whether you’ve noticed it or not, we live in a world where women are rewarded and validated for being mothers. People assume that non mothers just haven’t become mothers yet.

I have become more sensitive to women with difficult relationships with their own mothers or with their children.

For women whose mothers have died.

And so, in any church where I am leading worship, I do what I can to make sure that Mother’s Day is a safe space for women like me. Worship should not be a place where people feel excluded, feel less than, or feel unsafe.

If you are looking for a good prayer to use in worship that encompasses the joy and pain of this day, I’d recommend my friend Ashley-Anne Masters prayer.

This year I wasn’t in worship on Mother’s Day. And this is why I’m writing about Mother’s Day the week after Mother’s Day. Because this was the first year since 1989 that I have been able to spend Mother’s Day with Eric. It was the day after his college graduation.

My college graduation

He was at my college graduation in 1991 and I was at his high school and college graduations.

his college graduation

And because he has such wonderful parents, I was able to spend the weekend with him and his family. And it was a day of great joy and overflowing emotion. It was a day I could give his mom a hug and thank her in person, rather than over the phone. It was a big day for me, 23 years in coming. It was also a day of lying on the couch and going out to Walmart to buy shoelaces for his dress shoes so he could start his new job the next morning. It was a day.

And because I don’t get to spend many days in his presence, the few that I do are gift beyond gift. They are also quite emotional. But it is never sadness. My tears are always because of the gift.  When Baby Daddy and I entrusted him to his parents at the adoption in 1989, we were hoping for an open adoption. We were hoping to receive letters and pictures of him over the years, so we could keep up with him, know he was okay, and watch him grow up from afar.

It never occurred to me that day that I would one day get to spend Mother’s Day with him, that I would get to buy him ties and dress shirts to wear to work, that I would go to a honky tonk late one night and listen to country music with him. That I would have any days with him was beyond my wildest imagination on the day we placed him for adoption.

the boy with his moms

I have two other boys and being their mother is a gift and a joy. It is my joy to drive the soccer carpool, to chaperone field trips, to pick them up after school on days it is raining too hard to walk home, to make a late night run to the store for printer cartridges so the English paper can be printed. Because I get so few normal, routine, every-day-kind-of-days with Eric, I do my best to appreciate those days with my other sons.

And so Mother’s Day is, in many ways, just another day. A day for me to give thanks for my two moms, the one I’ve never met and the one who has put up with me all these many years, loving me beyond measure. It is a day to give thanks for Eric’s mom, for her ceaseless love and constant care of the boy, for the way she picked up his Legos and took him to Pokemon tournaments. For her generosity in letting me be a part of his life. I will never stop giving thanks for her. And it is a day when I give thanks for the gift of being a mother. While it is not the only or best way to be a woman, it is a gift I cherish.

So, next time Mother’s Day rolls around, remember the women like me, the ones who want to hide under a rock so they can avoid the well meaning people who only see celebration on a day of contradictions.

And, in the 350 some days until the next Mother’s Day, be aware. Give thanks for each of the days you have. It is easy to be thankful on the days of celebration. But be thankful, too, on the boring ones. The stressful ones. The frustrating ones. Because each day is a gift.

Be thankful.

13 comments | posted in adoption, Mother's Day

May 6, 2012

On the Wilderness Road

By marciglass

A sermon preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church, Boise, Idaho.

May 6, 2012

Acts 8:26-40

Isaiah 56:3-8

The angel of the Lord speaks to Phillip and sends him to the Gaza Road. Just as people don’t take that road voluntarily today, so did they stay away from it then.

A wilderness road.

But Phillip doesn’t let the directions slow him down. He doesn’t say, “I’d rather head to Galilee.” He doesn’t say, “why? What am I supposed to do?” He doesn’t say, as I often said as a child to my sister or my brother, “you’re not the boss of me”. He just gets up and goes, with those rather vague directions.

Also on the road is an Ethiopian, who is the treasurer of the Queen of Ethiopia. He is wealthy enough to be in a chariot. He is educated enough to be reading Greek. He is religious enough to be reading Isaiah. And he is humble enough to ask for help when it is offered.

He is also a eunuch, which would have kept him from worshipping in the Temple and kept him from being ordained to any of the offices of Judaism. Yet, he was returning from worshipping in Jerusalem, which means he was at odds with his tradition on some level. Unable to be a full participant in Judaism because of laws from Deuteronomy (23:1) that make clear no one who is sexually mutilated “shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord”, he still worships in Jerusalem and still studies scripture.

This Ethiopian official reminds us not to let the powers of this world keep us from seeking our own relationship with, and our own answers from, God.

If the Powers of the world or the church tell you to stop reaching out toward God, resist them. Because if you listen to them, then you lose. What if our Ethiopian friend had taken that one verse in Deuteronomy as more important than his heart’s own longing for God? What if nobody shared with him those verses from Isaiah?
To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths,
who choose the things that please me
and hold fast my covenant,
I will give, in my house and within my walls,
a monument and a name
better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
that shall not be cut off.

The Spirit sends Phillip over to his chariot, but is still rather vague on instruction. Phillip hears him reading from Isaiah, from a few chapters before what we read, and asks, “Do you understand what you are reading?”

“How can I? Unless someone guides me”.

This is a much more faithful response than I would have likely given when a strange man ran alongside my car and offered unsolicited advice.
“Do you understand what you are reading?” he would have asked me, and I’m sure I would have said, “Of course I do”, as I rolled up the window and sped up to get away.

I am thankful this man was willing to accept advice when it was offered because he had uncovered a discrepancy in scripture. The book of Deuteronomy kept him from worshipping in the temple. Yet, the Book of Isaiah promises that ALL nations, all peoples will worship God together. The Ethiopian is reading a prophecy of hope, of freedom, of inclusion, but is unable to square it with what his tradition tells him.
How can I understand unless someone guides me?

Luckily, the Spirit has sent him Phillip. Because he doesn’t just need someone who can quote Scripture. He needs someone who knows the God of Scripture. He needs someone who recognizes that God’s movement is ALWAYS toward greater inclusion. The family of God is an ever-expanding one.

So we need to be open to advice when it is offered. But we also need to be discerning in the advice we accept. Because there are people who would have given a very different answer to our Ethiopian friend than Philip did. There are people today who would say, “I’m sorry. You are a eunuch. This prophecy from scripture doesn’t apply to you. It says so, right here in Deuteronomy. I’d like to baptize you, but Scripture says no.”

When we discern the advice that is out there, we have to ask ourselves, is this person speaking about a God I recognize? Do they know about the love of God? Have they experienced salvation in a way that made them more compassionate people?

In the news this week was a pastor from North Carolina, who sanctioned physical violence against boys who appear to be effeminate or girls who appear to be butch. He did this in a sermon, by the way. Here’s a portion of what he said, and even before I read it, let’s be clear that every thing he says is wrong:

“Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male. And when your daughter starts acting too butch, you reign [sic] her in. And you say, ‘Oh, no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play them to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up.’”

Needless to say, you might be able to guess how strongly I condemn that sort of behavior, especially in the name of Jesus.
The pastor went on to claim he was kidding about the violence part, but not about the judgment part.

What if the Ethiopian had wandered in to that church?

What about the actual people who did happen to be in that church last week?

Thankfully the Ethiopian met Philip and not that guy.

But whenever you start to doubt that your voice matters, remember this story. There are people traveling down all kinds of wilderness roads. And they need to hear about God’s love. But if we aren’t speaking it, they’re going to be stuck listening to that guy, who wants to claim that God is about hate, prejudice, bullying and violence.

One of the reasons Phillip is able to speak to the Ethiopian of God’s saving love in Jesus Christ precisely because Phillip is well versed in his tradition. He knew the Scriptures. How many times have we had discussions about faith at school or at work with people, people we are quite sure are wrong, but who start throwing Bible verses around left and right?

Many Presbyterians have abandoned Scripture. We hear people use it to hurt people and exclude people, and rather than read it and study it, we just put it on the shelf and forget about it.

So, if you want the Spirit to be able to use you to share God’s love and grace with the world, you have to open your Bibles.

You need to read and study them.

Had Phillip been a Presbyterian, my fear is that when the Ethiopian said, “about whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?”, Phillip would have flipped through his brand new, never been opened Bible and said, “umm…I’m not sure? Maybe George Washington? Elvis? Justin Bieber?”

If we want to share the Good News of God’s love that expands to include people who have been told that they are excluded, we have to pick up our Bibles and read them. We need to take advantage of opportunities to study them together, so we can understand.

This is where our connection to tradition, our grounding in tradition, will allow us to be led by the Spirit.

On the surface, this text is a story of two characters—Philip and the Ethiopian official. But there is a very active third character in this story—The Holy Spirit. If not for the Holy Spirit, Philip would never have been on the Wilderness Road to meet the Ethiopian man. So don’t ever stop listening for the voice of the Spirit.

It is not usually a convenient voice. It doesn’t always send us where we wish to go. And it isn’t ours to predict and control. The Spirit sent Phillip down the wilderness road to Gaza, which was bad enough, but after the baptism of the Ethiopian, Phillip was taken away to Azotus, or Ashdod, which was an ancient city of the Phillistines.

He hadn’t planned on going there either, but proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he made it back home to Caesarea—50 miles or so up the coast.

So, if we’re going to listen to the Holy Spirit, it will require us to let go of some control. She doesn’t send us where we want to go. She doesn’t send us to talk with the people with whom we would choose to talk on our own.

So live in faith that the voice of the Spirit will guide you into uncomfortable situations where you are uniquely qualified to make a difference in someone’s life. Live into that future with boldness, with confidence, with humility, with love, and with ears open to receive the direction of the Spirit.
Amen.

PS. During worship, children and adults were invited to sign a letter to send to the congregation in North Carolina. Here is a link with more information about how you can send letters of hope to that congregation as well.

Leave a comment | posted in Acts 8:26-40, anti-gay bullying, Isaiah 56:1-8

May 4, 2012

Friday Five–Birthday Edition

By marciglass

Over at RevGalBlogPals, the prompt for Friday Five is about Birthdays. Let’s play.

1) What is the first birthday you remember?
I have a lot of “snapshot” kind of memories  of early birthdays. Maybe my 4th or 5th would be the earliest I can really picture.

2) Do you recall a favorite gift?
For my 5th birthday, I received my cat Cleopatrick (the first family that had him thought he was a she. Cleopatra was adapted. We called him Cleo). He was a blue point siamese cat. I loved him with a fierce love. The corollary to this, is that my 15th birthday was my worst because Cleo died a few days before my 15th birthday.
And, my love of blue point siamese cats helped me snag my husband, because he also had a blue point siamese (it was a sign! He had to be a good guy, right?).

3) Has anyone ever tried to surprise you for your birthday? Did it work? Was it fun?
No. I’ve surprised other people for their birthdays, which is fun, but nobody has surprised me on mine. I have had a number of surprise baby showers. They all managed to keep the secret and it was a lot of fun.

4) Do you have a favorite birthday dessert?
I’m not really sure I could name an unfavorite dessert, but I do remember a delicious white cake my mom made for my birthday one year, over which red jello had been poured and allowed to gel, and then frosted with cool whip.

5) Describe what would be your ‘perfect birthday’.
It might be the one that is coming up. I am meeting four of my very dear friends from college in New York this year. It happens to be on my birthday weekend. These women have been good friends for a very long time. I don’t get to see any of them as often as I would like. I have no idea what we’re going to do. And I’m not sure I care. Any time with them is time well spent.
My last birthday was great too. I hosted my own party (which is really how things end up being done in my life) and it was a tacky sweater party. So much fun. People actually wore really ugly sweaters. Seeing my friends, who look so normal most of the time, wearing awful 80′s polyester sweaters, or bad Christmas vests was great.

9 comments | posted in Friday Five

April 30, 2012

Girl Problems

By marciglass

Exodus 1:8 to 2:10

I wonder if Pharaoh ever had second thoughts about killing the Hebrew peoples’ boy babies instead of their girl babies. Because if you read this story, the men aren’t much of a problem. They are slaves. They are brutally abused. They build things for Pharaoh.

But it is the women who cause all of the trouble. Shiphrah and Puah the midwives were so important to this story that their names are recorded. Pharaoh’s own daughter’s name doesn’t get recorded. Neither do Moses’ parents. But all these many years later, we can thank Shiphrah and Puah by name for refusing to abide by Pharaoh’s command.  When summoned before him, and asked why the Hebrew boy children keep showing up on the playground, they make up a story and start talking about “lady parts”, and you know how Pharaoh doesn’t really want to hear about that. So they continue to go about their resistance to Pharaoh’s infanticide policy.  And God blessed them for quietly working for justice, no matter what their instructions had been.

But Pharaoh wants what he wants. And so the lives of all boy children are at risk.
So Moses’ un-named mother and father are in a bind. They have this beautiful son, but they cannot parent him. He will be thrown in the crocodile infested river. They will likely face punishment as well.

So his mother hears the command of Pharaoh to throw the child into the Nile and comes up with an idea. Perhaps she trusts that God would not have blessed her with this boy child if there weren’t a plan for him. Perhaps she is so desperate with love for her baby that setting him loose on a small raft seems like a good plan. Whatever the case, Moses mother obeys the letter, if not the spirit, of Pharaoh’s command, and casts her son into the river.

See why I’m wondering if Pharaoh had second thoughts about which gender he should have killed?

Here the Bible gives us our first illustration of open adoption. Like a birth mother who realizes that she cannot parent the child she loves, Moses’ mother sets him loose on the waters of God’s beautiful and dangerous world and trusts that there is life for him.

And she weeps as she watches that flimsy raft float down the mighty river and wonders if she made the right decision.
And Moses’ sister follows the little boat from the riverbank and when Pharaoh’s daughter pulls him out of the river, she helpfully offers to go find a wet nurse. So Moses’ two mothers meet and work out a plan to keep this baby alive, in Pharaoh’s own house. The text doesn’t report any further conversation between them, but I am certain there were, at least, knowing glances, a comforting hand on the shoulder, and assurances that life would continue, even when death seemed the only option.

Leave a comment | posted in adoption, Exodus 2, Moses

April 30, 2012

Searching, Stumbling Faith

By marciglass

Acts 17:22-31

And Paul suggests that one of the reasons we were created by this now known God was so we “would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us”.

I love this. What a gift. How would we live life differently if we considered that we were here on earth to search and grope and, perhaps, find God? Doesn’t that remove any certainty we might try to bring to the faith journey? If we are here to be Searchers and Gropers and Finders, then we are not here to be Declarers and Fact Finders and People who live without mystery. It isn’t our job to have all of the answers and get an “A” on the test of life. God created us to seek, to wander around in the dark with our hands out in front of us, hoping we’ll stumble into the God we seek.

Paul calls them to imagine God, and themselves, in more lofty terms than they are used to doing. Rather than worshipping a God of stone or silver or gold, they are called to consider that we are offspring of God. And so the God we worship should be better than stone. And the people who worship God reflect God’s very love back to the world.

The tension in this text between known and unknown keeps us from settling with easy answers. Yes, God is closer to us than an “unknown god”. We are offspring of God, who is nearby. We know about God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, a man who was known. But for all we know about God, we are still groping in the dark, searching high and low and, perhaps, finding God.

How do you share the Good News of the Gospel? With a set of proscribed tenets to which the Athenians must adhere? Or do you invite people to stumble around in the dark with you, knowing that God is never far away?

Leave a comment | posted in Acts 17, Paul's Speech to Athens

April 30, 2012

Sarah’s Fury

By marciglass

Genesis 22:1-14

I am furious.

I have sojourned with him all across the Middle East. I forgave him when he tried to pass me off as his sister. Twice.  We’ve had some good times too, for sure. He stood by me in my barrenness. Even after God promised we would be the ancestors of more offspring than we could count, Abraham stood by me. He even agreed to my ill-conceived plan to have a child through my maid, Hagar.
But at long last, well past anyone’s expectation of childbearing, I gave birth to Isaac. When you wait 100 years for a child, he is treasured indeed.

Which brings me back to my fury.

The boys have just returned from what I thought was your standard father/son weekend at Mt. Moriah and Isaac told me a chilling tale. Apparently his father tied him up and put him on an altar. And, apparently, Abraham took out a sharp knife and was going to KILL MY BABY BOY. Isaac saw the blade of the knife headed toward his body!

I guess I am supposed to be thankful the angel got there just in time to stop Abraham from carrying out this sordid story. But I can’t be thankful right now. I am furious. What was this “exercise” supposed to prove? That Abraham was obedient? Or that Abraham was insane? Why weren’t Abraham’s many years of sojourning and obedience enough to prove his faithfulness?

We are going to have a talk, you can be sure. If Abraham wants to watch his son grow up, he’s going to have to learn new ways to talk with God. He’s going to have to learn to suggest God find some other ways to prove his point. He’s going to have to talk back to God, because God can take it. But I’m about done.

Because my poor son is devastated. How do you recover from having your father tie you up and nearly sacrifice you on an altar?

I’m going to go for a long walk. I’m going to keep saying to myself, “God would never have let this happen. God did not let this happen,” until my fury abates. And I’m going to let Isaac eat all the ice cream he wants.

And when I calm down, (please, God, let me calm down), I will pray that I can see redemption in this story. Because I don’t now. I will pray to see Blessing as I kiss Isaac goodnight and smell his hair as I hug him, thankful he came home from this horror story. I will pray for the strength to forgive Abraham for his faithfulness. I will pray I have the courage to invite him back into the house and out of the not-proverbial-but-very-real-doghouse, so I can console him. And when I calm down, I will pray to God this never happens again to any mother, or that at least the presence of God is tangible with them through the horror.

4 comments | posted in Abraham, Genesis 22, Sacrifice, Sarah

April 29, 2012

Bold Sheep

By marciglass

A sermon preach April 29, 2012 at Southminster Presbyterian Church, Boise, Idaho.

Acts 4:5-31

Psalm 23

John 10

The day before our story in Acts begins, Peter and John were walking into the Temple in Jerusalem and a lame beggar, who had sat at the gate every day for years, asked them for a handout. Instead, they healed him in the name of Jesus. And the man got up, started dancing around, and followed them in the temple. It caused quite a ruckus, as you can imagine. People were impressed at Peter’s mad skillzzz. And Peter said that it wasn’t his skills that were impressive. Anything he did was through the power of Jesus Christ. There was no healing apart from Jesus, he said.
5,000 people that day saw and believed.

So, because no good deed goes unpunished, the religious leaders had them arrested. I read that and think, “I could arrest people?”

I kid. I kid.

But they could arrest people. And they did. So our text picks up when Peter and John are brought before the religious authorities in Jerusalem, after a night in the holy hoosegow. “By what power or by what name did you do this?”

Leaves me wondering if there is any possible answer that would be the “right” answer for the authorities.

Luckily, Peter doesn’t spend any time wondering what the politically correct answer would be. Instead, he is filled with the Holy Spirit and says, “remember that man you crucified? Well, he rose from the dead, with all apologies to you Sadducees who do not believe in the resurrection of the dead. And despite your lack of belief in him and despite your murdering him, he is still healing people. And this man is healed because of Jesus.”

He insults them enough in his little speech that it is a wonder they aren’t put in the dungeon. He even quotes Psalm 118 to tell them that God thinks they rejected Jesus. The stone that the builder rejected…

I was talking about this text this week with Ruth Goldthwaite and her brilliant insight, which I’m stealing here, is what happened to Peter? Isn’t he the guy who denied Jesus 3 times before the crucifixion? How did he become so fearless?

However that happened, Peter speaks with authority, filled with the Spirit, and the Temple authorities are convinced. They see the healed man. They hear the the conviction in Peter and John, two uneducated men who clearly shouldn’t be able to persuade a crowd so effectively. They acknowledge everything that is true about Peter’s speech.

And yet.

They can’t allow their own minds to be changed. They can’t let go of the status quo to welcome this new reality.

The Sadducees in the room were probably thinking, “if we have to acknowledge the resurrection from the dead, then who knows how many other doctrines people will question.”

The Temple leaders probably wondered, “if any Galilean peasant can heal the lame in Jesus’ name, what would they need the Temple for? Who would pay us 2 turtledoves to be healed when they could call on Jesus for free?”
And, of course, the big question would have been, “since we were the ones who told Pilate to kill him, what would happen if we acknowledge we were wrong and that we killed not just an innocent man, but perhaps the son of God?”

I don’t often feel for the religious leaders in the Biblical narrative, but I do here.

Because any of us are capable of making these mistakes. The religious leaders were only human, after all. And we understand defending the status quo, because most days we’ve figured out a way to make it work. We understand a fear of change. We can understand that they would lose their power, possibly their jobs, if they acknowledged the way God had turned that world upside down.

And we understand not wanting to have to say you’re sorry. Especially if the mistake you made cost a man his life. Especially if that man might possibly have been the son of God.

So they come up with an interesting solution:

“For it is obvious to all who live in Jerusalem that a notable sign has been done through them; we cannot deny it. But to keep it from spreading further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to anyone in this name.”

Seems cute, doesn’t it? Can you imagine any scenario where Peter, the man who just reminded them of their complicity in Jesus’ death, is going to be interested in their warnings to be silent?

Peter can’t seem to imagine that either.

“Whether it is right in God’s sight to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.”

We cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.

You may have heard in the news recently that American nuns are in trouble. With the Vatican. Because they are spending too much time focusing on feeding the hungry and providing healthcare and not enough time decrying gay marriage and abortion. I’m not making this up. And so American Bishops are being brought in to supervise the nuns.

And the whole thing reminds me of the Acts passage today. In the role of the religious authorities we have the Bishops, and the role of Peter is played by the nuns. Because the nuns are not backing down. The Bishops may try to stop the nuns from feeding the poor and educating children, but I can’t quite see that succeeding.
The New York Times this morning had this story:

Elias Chacour, a prominent Palestinian archbishop in the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, recounts in a memoir that he once asked a convent if it could supply two nuns for a community literacy project. The mother superior said she would have to check with her bishop.
“The bishop was very clear in his refusal to allow two nuns,” the mother superior told him later. “I cannot disobey him in that.” She added: “I will send you three nuns!”

What would our lives be like, what would our world be like, if we were more like Peter, more like the nuns, and less like the religious authorities?

What if we were a little less concerned about what people might think, or what it would mean to acknowledge we’d made a mistake?

What if we were a little more concerned with sharing the stories of what we’d seen and heard?

I want to believe that at some point down the road, after the Book of Acts was published, that at least some of the religious authorities did change their hearts and not just their minds about Jesus.

Because faith isn’t always an instant thing. While I’m thankful for those 5,000 people who came to believe in Jesus after seeing one healing, I recognize that it can be a journey for others.

Let’s think back to Peter. Peter started out with great enthusiasm. He abandoned everything to follow Jesus. He tried to make bold claims to Jesus. After the mountaintop transfiguration he wanted to stay there forever and build some tents! When Jesus asks him how many times to forgive, he gives an extravagant number. Peter has enthusiasm from the beginning. But in the night of Jesus’ arrest, he denied Jesus three times. Peter’s journey had many zigs and zags.

John’s Gospel gives us a glimpse into Peter’s redemption after the resurrection. After his three denials, Jesus asks him, three times,

“Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep”.

“Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep”.

“Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep”.

And we wonder if that instruction was in Peter’s mind when he saw the lame beggar outside of the Temple.

“Peter do you love me? Feed my sheep.”

Because Peter does feed the sheep. The man was asking for a hand out. But Peter gave him much more than that. He welcomed him into abundant life.

The other Lectionary reading today is from John’s gospel, from chapter 10.

 

“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.”

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

Jesus uses imagery that is familiar to his listeners. He uses imagery that reminds them of their favorite scripture passages too. And the Acts passage we heard today gives us a snapshot of a moment of these shepherding images playing out in real life.

Jesus had shepherded Peter. Each time Peter would go overboard or would start heading off in the wrong direction, Jesus would gently redirect him, leading him to greener pastures.  Jesus could have decided that he would find a more well behaved little lamb. He could have left the shepherding business all together, because let’s face it—it isn’t the most glamorous work. But Jesus kept on shepherding Peter, leading him beside still water, restoring his soul. And when push came to shove, Peter recognized the voice of his shepherd. “Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep”. And Peter does.

And even in his conversation with the Temple authorities, there is invitation there. Yes, Peter is brutally honest with them.  But I think that is words also leave room for the authorities to join in. Just as Jesus had re-proofed and corrected Peter, so he does the same to the leaders. And Peter will go on to build the church, inviting others to join in on the journey.

What would your snapshot show today? Are you like Peter and denying Jesus 3 times? Or are you like Peter and bold in the knowledge that God loves you? Are you able to acknowledge like the religious leaders that there is something to this Jesus, even if you can’t claim it?

Are you are the person who came to faith in an instant, or  the person who is still trying to figure it all out?  Whoever you are this minute, have no fear. We have a shepherd in God who leads us, who keeps us on the path, who journeys with us through both the dark valleys and at the rich banquets.

I read today in the newspaper that when the whole brouhaha developed with the American nuns, a few of the nuns were worried that their work with the marginalized would have left them with few allies to support them in the public arena. But in Catholic churches and charities all over the country, people have been cheering and supporting on the nuns. They have responded with boldness of their own. When you recognize the voice of the shepherd, when you take seriously his command to feed the sheep, then you can speak with boldness about where you have seen God’s love.

At the end of the Acts passage, Peter goes and reports to the disciples about their encounter with the religious leaders. “When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.”

And I pray that we will know what that is like.

But don’t worry if your faith isn’t the same as Peter’s. Don’t worry if you think you resemble a Sadducee. I think we have some notion of what life would be like if we were “good Christians”. And I suspect we feel we can never measure up. So your comfort today is that good Christians are like sheep.

Jesus calls us to be like sheep, animals that need guiding. We aren’t called to be some more impressive animals—I don’t know, Tigers?, Killer Whales?, Elephants?—Jesus calls us to be sheep.

And despite that humble calling, the Good News of God’s love is proclaimed, even sometimes with boldness.

Amen.

Leave a comment   |  tags: | posted in Acts 4, John 10, Nuns, Psalm 23, sheep, shepherds

April 25, 2012

Pouring Out our Souls

By marciglass

A sermon preached at North Decatur Presbyterian Church
November 19, 2006

1 Samuel 1:4-20
Mark 12:41-44 and 13:1-8

Nothing says Thanksgiving like Jesus predicting wars and the destruction of a temple, does it? Now, I know that Thanksgiving is not a liturgical holiday, it is a secular holiday, but still. Before we can begin our new church calendar with advent in two weeks, the lectionary readings for the last Sunday in ordinary time have some unfinished business with us. Before we get too excited about pumpkin pie, or the day after Thanksgiving sales, or putting up the tree, or whatever it is on our minds these days, we need to spend some time tearing down some temples.

It is hard for us to understand just how upsetting the prediction of the destruction of the temple would have been to Jesus’ audience. This prediction is the foundation of the legal complaint the temple authorities bring against Jesus, leading to his crucifixion. The temple was the 2nd rebuilding of Solomon’s temple. And whenever it was destroyed previously in their history, the Jews hadn’t fared so well. Being carted off to exile, apparently, was not something they wanted to do again. But this temple, which was still being finished as Jesus and his disciples would have walked through the gates, was supposed to last. It was huge, with a circumference of nearly a mile. It had gold and silver on the walls, so it glowed when the light struck it. The walls were 150 feet high and some of the bricks were 50 feet long and weighed over 500 tons.

This was THE temple. “Look teacher”, his disciple said. “What large stones and what large buildings!”

But, Palestine was occupied by the Romans. And by the time Mark’s gospel is being written, Titus is sacking Jerusalem, massacring many of its citizens, selling others into slavery, and looting and then burning the temple, leaving a people once again without a home, sending them, once again, into exile.

“Do you see these great buildings?” Jesus replied to his disciple. “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

I bet that wasn’t the answer the disciple was looking for. His comment about the large buildings is sort of jarring in the narrative, actually. Jesus and his buddies are hanging out by the treasury at the temple, watching people bring their donations. The rich people give out of their abundance. The poor widow gives her two pennies. This passage is often preached as praising the widow for giving so generously out of her poverty, but I’m not sure that is what Jesus is commenting on.  He doesn’t criticize the rich people for their generous sums. But he doesn’t actually praise the poor widow, either. What he observes is that her gift is larger than everyone else’s because she has just given away the money she needed to live on. The “truly I tell you” is one of Jesus’ trademark “pay attention” comments. But he isn’t talking to the widow. He’s talking to the disciples. He’s talking to us.

“Truly I tell you, you have set up a system here at this temple that is ridiculous. You require sacrifices from people that allow the rich people to feel holier than the rest of the world and force the poor widow to go hungry. Do you think this is the sacrifice my Father wants?!”

He isn’t saying we shouldn’t give out of our abundance or out of our scarcity, but he is saying that when we give, it shouldn’t be so we can put gold leaf on the walls. We should give so that we can make sure the poor widow doesn’t only have two pennies.

And as soon as Jesus says this, the disciple says, “Look teacher! What large stones!” Do you see what I mean, how jarring that is? It is as if the disciple missed the “truly I tell you” nature of Jesus’ last comment. Every time I read about one of the disciple’s boneheaded actions in the gospel accounts, part of me says, “oh no. you didn’t just say that.” The other part of me says,  “how much worse could I have made the situation?”

Because that’s what we do. If we were to have the chance to walk around town with Jesus, would we be any different? “Look teacher! What large buildings! Aren’t we impressive? See what we’re doing for God? Aren’t you impressed?”

“ALL WILL BE THROWN DOWN.”

We hear this, I suspect, as bad news. We are attached to the monuments we have made to ourselves. We like our lives. Our routine. Our comfort.

But I think that “All will be thrown down” is good news.

It is as if Jesus is promising to deliver us from our illusions of control, from the things that distract us, from the things that get in our way and keep us from bringing a good sacrifice to God.

Long before the Temple was in Jerusalem, a town called Shiloh was the religious capital of Israel. It was in Shiloh that the Ark of the Covenant resided. It was here that Elkanah and his wives, Penninah and Hannah, would come to worship and to sacrifice to the LORD of hosts. And, each year, as they would journey to Shiloh, the text says Penninah would provoke Hannah.

Perhaps this is the ultimate family Thanksgiving of dysfunctionality. You can remember this story this week when your own family goes over the river and through the woods. We don’t catch the dialogue, but I suspect it went something like this.

Penninah: “Hannah, aren’t you excited to go to Shiloh? So we can say thank you to God for all of our blessings, for all of our children? Oh wait. You don’t have any children, do you? Silly me. I forgot. So, what do you thank God for?”

Hannah, remembering that her mother told her if she had nothing nice to say, she should just curse silently under her breath, said nothing.

Her husband, who loved her greatly but seems a touch clueless here, says, “why are you crying? Am I not better than 10 sons?”

Um….no.

So Penninah walks into the temple with her children, proudly, knowing that God has blessed her greatly. Elkanah walks in, dutifully, appropriately. Hannah walks in, deeply distressed and weeping bitterly. She pours her soul before the Lord, begging for a child.

Eli, by all accounts a good priest, sees her praying. Her lips are moving, but no sound is coming out. So he determines she must be drunk and chastises her.

Hannah is the one person in the whole place who has come before God as an open book. She’s not hiding behind any monuments to her own holiness. She is not there to impress God. She is there, pouring out her heart to God. And Eli, rather than telling Penninah to take that smirk off her face, interrupts the one person in the room who is honestly praying. Some days we just don’t get it right, do we?

But Eli quickly recognizes his mistake when she responds to him. He sees the honesty in her pain and anxiety. “Go in peace.” he says. “The God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him.”

And God does. Hannah becomes pregnant and gives birth to a healthy boy she named Samuel. And after the boy was weaned, she took him, just as she promised, and gave him to the Lord. Left him at the temple in Shiloh with Eli, only to see him once a year when the Elkanah family came to worship and sacrifice.

I can tell you right now what my song would be if I were to leave one of my sons at the Temple as a sacrifice. “No. no. no. please God don’t make me. you can have him later. let me just keep him until he’s ready for college. then you can have him.”

But Hannah’s song in chapter 2, which I invite you to look at this week as you prepare for Thanksgiving, Hannah’s song is one of thanks and praise.

We know the ending of the story. We know that Hannah goes on to have 5 other children. But she doesn’t know that when she’s praising God. We know that Samuel grows up to be a great prophet of God, who anoints Saul and later David to be kings of Israel. But Hannah doesn’t know that when she’s praising God.

By not building a temple to her own glory, Hannah ends up giving the people the prophet Samuel. By giving a real and honest sacrifice, a foundation is laid. Samuel anoints David as King of Israel. David’s son, Solomon, will build the first temple.

And then Solomon’s great great great grandson, Jesus, will be the final temple.

But just as Hannah doesn’t know the end of her story when she’s offering thanks to God, the disciples don’t know the end of the story either. And, as they sit on the Mount of Olives with Jesus, looking over the city of Jerusalem, with that temple shining in the sunlight, they ask Jesus, “so, Jesus. What’s going to happen exactly? Were you telling us another parable when you said that big, beautiful temple is going to fall? Oh, you weren’t kidding. hmmm. so when will this be?”

We all want to know the end of the story. But Jesus doesn’t give it to us. What he tells us instead is not to worry. “When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed.”

If you are giving all that you have to this new temple, to Christ, you can trust that the foundation is strong and that the story is going to end well. For all its militaristic imagery, this is a passage of hope. “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”

As any woman who has given birth can tell you, the phrase ‘birth pangs’ doesn’t quite cover the pain involved. But ultimately, the birth pangs are not an end to themselves. They are a beginning. Once the pain is over, you have a baby. New life is coming. This is the GOOD NEWS!  This passage is not to be poured over, searching for clues about the date of Christ’s return on the clouds. It is about how we live our lives here and now, in hope.

Yes. There are wars. There is pain. There is destruction. There is loss. There is hardship. But they aren’t the whole story.  There is New Life in Christ. The temples we build to our own glory will be torn down, but once the rubble is cleared away, we are less burdened. We are free to give a real sacrifice. To offer to God all that we have.

So, this week, as we count our blessings, let us ask God to clear away our illusions. To remove the things that keep us from coming before the Lord. To make us like the poor widow, giving all we have, even if we don’t know the end of the story and know how we will feed ourselves tomorrow. To make us like Hannah, laying bare our souls before God, and giving a real sacrifice in thanks and praise. We don’t know the end of the story, but God does. And for that, we can be thankful.

Leave a comment | posted in 1 Samuel 1:4-20, Mark 12:41-44, Mark 13:1-8

April 22, 2012

The BODY of Christ

By marciglass

A sermon preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church in Boise, Idaho

April 22, 2012

Luke 24:36b-48

1 John 3:1-4

Our text today is not dis-similar from last week’s text from John’s gospel, where Jesus appears to his disciples, offers them peace, calms their fears, and prepares them for the work ahead.

But Luke tells the story differently than does John. 
Jesus has already appeared to two followers who are on the road to Emmaus. Their eyes are open in the breaking of the bread and they recognize Jesus. And then they return to Jerusalem to tell their stories. Everyone is telling what they’ve heard—“don’t forget the women found the tomb empty”. “Did you not recognize him on the road? How come?” “I wish I had been there!”

And over the din of the excitement and the voices, Jesus shows up and says, “Peace be with you.”

And these same people who were just that very moment talking about the resurrection appearances, are “startled and terrified and thought they were seeing a ghost”.

Poor disciples.

It isn’t easy coming to terms with the resurrected body of your rabbi when he shows up at your dinner party.

But that is what this is about. Neither Luke nor Jesus show any interest in trying to explain how the resurrection happens. But Jesus wants his followers to make sure they see, they experience, they believe the bodily resurrection. So he scares the living daylights out of them, shows them his hands and feet, eats their fish, and then teaches them.

If Luke and Jesus don’t give a scientific explanation of the resurrection, I can’t either.  But I want us to consider what it means that we have these resurrection stories.

Why would Luke tell us a story where Jesus shows up and asks Peter, “are you going to eat those fries?”

It’s an odd story. Suddenly he’s there. Talking, calming. And then he says, “got anything to eat around here?”

Why would Luke tell this story?

If you’re sitting at your desk, trying to figure out how to tell the resurrection story, wouldn’t you have Jesus show up and do something impressive? “And then Jesus appeared before his disciples, lifted a car over his head, and used his laser vision to blast a hole in the wall”.
I don’t know. Something more Superman and something less teenage boy who is a bottomless pit of hunger, perhaps.
But I think this is exactly Luke’s point. Jesus of Nazareth, even the resurrected Jesus—especially the resurrected Jesus—is fully human.
Fully Human.
And this is the place, for me, where our faith tradition differs the most from all of the others. While we have much in common with many traditions, ours is the only embodied faith. The idea that God would become flesh, would be born and live and die just as you and I are born, live, and die is completely foreign to other faith traditions. For Judaism and Islam, God does not dwell in a body. Orthodox Jews won’t even say the Divine Name, because anything they could call God would not be sufficient. In Islam and Judaism, there are no images to be made of God.
I am not making a judgment claim, here. I’m just observing differences. But we believe that in the person of Jesus Christ, we know God. We have seen God.

And so, when Jesus shows up and asks to eat some fish after he’s been buried and put in a tomb a few days prior, we realize that in the divine embodiment of Jesus, even death itself is reordered.

I can see you out there wondering, “so what?”

Here’s what.
Every time we try to reduce our faith to a spiritual experience that is disconnected from the way we live with our bodies here and now, we should remember resurrected Jesus walking into a room and asking for something to eat.

That’s what the disciples were confronted with that first Easter season and it is what we face today. They had abandoned their fishing nets and followed him. They had left their families and their pension plans to serve this itinerant rabbi. They listened to him talking about dying and rising. They called him Lord. They heard him teach.
But when he showed up in the room, they were still terrified.

I don’t really want to blame the disciples for this fear, because I think we’re still facing it. But they had been with his body. Had traveled with him, sat at his feet and learned with him. They had fished with him and gone to a wedding with him.

But they still hadn’t internalized, or come to understand what he was saying to them about himself and his body.

And we have to be careful about that too. Because while our faith should inform our morals, values, and beliefs, it shouldn’t stop there. It isn’t enough to say we’ve accepted Jesus Christ as our personal savior if we don’t apply our faith to the very way we live with our bodies.

It isn’t enough to say something, to believe something in our heads or our hearts. We have to believe it with our bodies. We can’t read and believe Bible verses about God wanting us to feed the hungry and then ignore the starving people in our community and world.

We are embodied people, not just souls. And we follow the God who became human, lived among us, touched the unclean with his hand, healed people’s bodies with his touch, and fed people by passing around loaves and fish. We follow the God who wept when his friend Lazarus died. We follow the God who spoke and called Lazarus from his tomb. We follow the God who turned over the tables in the temple and called for justice for the people in his community. We follow the resurrected God who showed up among his disciples, spoke words of peace, showed them the wounds in his hands, and asked if they were going to be eating soon.

So, how does this belief in the bodily resurrection inform the way we live together?

I see it every day. In the way you feed people at meals and coffee fellowship and the way you bring food and other supplies for agencies in the community.

I see it in the way you volunteer at the school next door, sitting with children and helping them read.

I see it in the way you greet each other during the Passing of the Peace. For those of you who have been here for a while, I hope you appreciate how impressive our new members are. Because you hugged them when they were strangers—and they came back the next week! They are Intrepid souls who can join in to the passing of the peace in this church of hugs.
I see it when you gather with people who are dying, to guide their bodies through the end of the earthly journey with lots of love, companionship, and comfort.

I see it when you make this church safe for children and their bodies. You do background checks on staff and volunteers. You welcome children into worship and let them know their bodies—sometimes loud, sometimes wiggling— are welcome here too.

I see it when you meet together to run in the foothills with the running group, or to gather together for study and meals and fellowship.

I see and hear it when we worship together in this place, lifting our voices together in songs of praise.

I see it when we pray for healing of bodies from cancer and other disease.

I see it when you overcome your fears and worries to do something you’ve never done before, like be a liturgist, or share a musical talent, or create a painting to leave in the prayer center.

And we have to remember Jesus asking if the disciples had any snacks when we are going about our lives. Because there are other bodies out there who are hungry, who need a hug, who need to know that they are loved, and who need to know that God doesn’t just care for their disembodied souls. God cares for our whole embodied lives.

My spiritual director and I were talking about Mr Rogers this week. There was a special on PBS about him recently. I grew up watching his show, which aired for over 30 years—865 episodes in all. And Mr Rogers, a Presbyterian Minister, understood the embodied nature of our faith. 
He was not a fan of television. And he thought that children’s programming was horrible. And he decided to do something about it.

So in a career that lasted over 30 years, 865 episodes!, he would walk in the door, trade his coat for his sweater, put on his sneakers, feed his fish, and then teach us something. Like how to be kind to people we met. “Won’t you be my neighbor?” He taught us that we didn’t have to be afraid to go to school or to go to a hospital. He taught us how to share what we had. He ended his show with this: “You’ve made this day a special day by just your being you. There’s no person in the whole world like you. And I like you just the way you are.”

Every day, for 30 years, Mr Rogers tried to help children understand that the bodily resurrection is true.

Because to say we are beloved children of God, created in the image of God, for instance, and then to look at ourselves in the mirror and not like what we see is akin to the disciples calling Jesus “Lord” and then being terrified at the resurrection.

The other passage we heard this morning is a short snippet from 1 John. And from reading the letter, it appears that the community was divided about who Jesus was.

While the gospel of John made the claim “the word became flesh and lived among us, full of grace and truth”, there were some people in this community trying to claim that Jesus was more spiritual, that his bodily life didn’t matter. The piece we heard this morning also suggests that there was some confusion about when/if Jesus was returning.

But what struck me, in light of Luke’s gospel story, was this sentence:
“Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”

It was a clear reminder to me that God is just not concerned about our souls getting to heaven some day off in the future. We are God’s children now. And more than that, we know that we are children of God because Jesus was God’s son and we are like him.

Which means that everything that we experience in our bodies, Jesus can understand. So from the beauty of love and affection, to the pain that we feel when our bodies fail us, from the joy of companionship, to the pain of death, Jesus experienced that as well.

Friends, the good news of the resurrection is that God became flesh, lived among us, died on a cross, and rose from the dead and asked for something to eat.

Today is also Earth Day. And it is appropriate on this embodied Easter day, to remember that our embodied selves were given this beautiful planet to call home by the God who created our bodies. From the soil of the earth, our food is grown. We drink the water that flows from the mountain snow melt. We breathe the air so that our bodies may live. And we could do better in how we care for our home.

We are children of God NOW, and the resurrected Jesus comes to stand among us, bring us peace, and ask for some food. So this week, go out and live your life, giving thanks for your bodies, caring for the bodies you meet, and enjoying this life we’ve been given.  Amen.

3 comments | posted in 1 John 3, Easter, Embodiment, Luke 24:36-48, Mr Rogers

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