cordeliaknits

April Fool's

I wore a beard for our Palm Sunday/April Fool's Day procession!  I think the kids liked it, but I had bits of fake fur in my mouth all day!  Yuck!

Ridiculous!

This sermon was delivered on April 1, 2012.

 Mark 11:1-11

When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, "Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, 'Why are you doing this?' just say this, 'The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.'" They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, some of the bystanders said to them, "What are you doing, untying the colt?"

They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,

     "Hosanna!

    Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!

    Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!

    Hosanna in the highest heaven!"

 Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

***

When Palm Sunday falls on April Fool’s Day, you just can’t ignore the significance—the similarities between Jesus’ ‘triumphal’ entry into Jerusalem and this strange holiday meant for teasing and playing jokes.  Jesus enters Jerusalem like a king, with followers singing his praises and waving branches much like we might wave flags at a parade.  It is supposed to be a triumphant entry, and yet, he rides in on a donkey, not a majestic horse, and his followers sing his praises while at the same time begging him for help.  It’s a bit ridiculous, just like the whole message of Jesus must have seemed ridiculous to many people who heard it in his day. 

His parables never made any sense.  He did things he wasn’t supposed to, like eating with tax collectors and defending adulterers.  He was always telling his disciples to do ridiculous things, like feed 5,000 people with just a few fish and a bit of bread.  He said that those who were poor, who suffered, and who were oppressed, were blessed.  Ridiculous.  Illogical.  Foolish.  That was Jesus.  He came to turn the world on its head and shake things up…and he did a pretty good job of it, since here we are, 2,000 years later, acting out a day in his life, making fools of ourselves because we follow him.

There’s a passage in 1 Corinthians where Paul uses sarcasm to admonish the church leaders in Corinth for thinking they have all the answers and are the most faithful.  He says he must just be a “fool for Christ,” if they are so wise and powerful.  What he is really doing is admitting that the Gospel message does sound foolish in a world of greed and insatiable hunger for power, and we must embrace that foolishness—let go of the need to be right, the need to win—if we are to truly embrace what Jesus taught.

This concept has particular meaning for us in a place like Santa Cruz, I think, where being a Christian, attending a church, is seen by many people as strange, crazy, and yes, foolish.  Especially as we enter into Holy Week and move towards Easter, some of the biggest mysteries of our faith are highlighted, and they may open us up to ridicule.  Has anyone ever derisively asked you if you really believe that Jesus was raised from the dead?  And you can tell by their tone of voice that no matter what your answer, it will only lead to more mockery?  It’s certainly happened to me…and in those moments all I can do is smile politely, try not to get frustrated, and remind myself that we each have our own path. 

Now, I’m certainly not saying that Christians are oppressed in our society.  But, if we are truly walking the path that Jesus laid out for us, if we are following the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves, focusing on justice, mercy, and walking humbly with God, then we are going against our dominant culture and perhaps even making fools of ourselves.

So, today is April Fool’s Day—not commonly thought of as a Christian holiday, but perhaps worthy of consideration.  But today is also Palm Sunday, a day to remember a procession that was on the surface a celebration.—Jesus entering Jerusalem, his followers watching and joining him, praising him and celebrating his arrival.  The procession was a celebration, but it was also a protest march.  Jesus’ arrival countered the arrival of Pontius Pilate, who would have entered Jerusalem in a similar way, though likely on a fancy horse with soldiers flanking him. 

You see, there was often trouble in Jerusalem around the Passover, since many Jews made a pilgrimage to the city for the holiday, and so Pilate would have come to make sure the celebrations didn’t get out of hand.  This time of year was ripe for political unrest and protests against the oppressive empire, as the Jewish people remembered the Passover and their deliverance from Egypt.

So, Jesus’ arrival was clearly a protest march, in addition to being a celebration, but there was one more aspect to it.  The procession we commemorate on Palm Sunday was also a funeral march.  Perhaps his followers did not realize it, or want to think about it, but Jesus knew that he was heading into a political situation that he would not likely survive.  He knew that his radical teachings and the movement he initiated were threatening to the empire, and that those in power would have no qualms about shutting him up for good.  He went anyway, because he had a passion for God’s justice and a purpose to spread his message.

There’s a way in which, every year on Palm Sunday, I feel like I’m watching a horror movie.  I want to scream, “No, Jesus!  Don’t go into the city!”  There’s something terrible about knowing how the story will play out and yet watching it again and again.  So why do we do it?  Why do we spend our time and energy, our spiritual practice, on remembering and reenacting this scary, sad, painful story?  In some ways, I think that’s a question we all need to answer for ourselves…but here’s why I do it… 

I do it because life is often scary and sad and painful, and ignoring those facts won’t make them go away.  I do it because Jesus experienced this fullness of life as a human being, and it is good for us to remember that.  I do it because I feel like, even, after 2,000 years, Jesus deserves a witness.  He deserves for us to watch and remember and not look away in avoidance or shame. And I do it because without Good Friday, there can be no Easter.

I spoke a few weeks ago about coming back to Christianity in college, and how I prayed and prayed that Jesus would give me a sign or a reason to believe in him.  I told you I didn’t get a concrete sign, but I came to a love and belief anyway.  Well, the story doesn’t end there.  That same year, after I had been on my Christian journey for several months, Holy Week came along, and I found myself at every service we had in the chapel, helping to lead them.  We held our weekday services at noon, and something about Mandy Thursday and Good Friday services being done in the sunlight was not quite satisfying for me. 

Growing up, Maundy Thursday had been one of my favorite services, because at my church it was a tennebrae service, combining remembrance of the last supper with the seven last words of Good Friday.  Something about sitting in that dark sanctuary, watching as each candle was extinguished was so powerful, so sacred to me.  And so, that first year, I went to a local church for another Maundy Thursday service in the evening.  As I sat in the darkened church, listening to the story of Jesus’ suffering and death, I was overcome by grief. 

All the anger I felt towards God for my own illness and suffering, all the loss I felt from the infertility that resulted from my cancer treatment, all my fears about the future…they all were condensed into an intense grief over what happened to Jesus, and I wept.  I wept for him, and for me, and for all of us living in this broken, greedy, war-mongering world.  And as I sat there in the dark, crying, I distinctly felt Jesus there beside me, his arm around my shoulder.  He wasn’t comforting me, exactly; he wasn’t saying everything would be all right...  He was sitting with me, being present with me in my grief, weeping with me, and letting me know I would never be alone.  I felt him there so concretely, as a strong, loving presence, that in that moment, I knew I was having a mystical experience, and I knew, without a doubt, that Jesus was real.

And that is why I believe it’s so important to be present during all of Holy Week.  It’s hard to take several evenings in one week to come to worship, I know.  It can be uncomfortable—even seem foolish—to allow someone to wash your feet in church.  It can feel too intense when you see others lamenting their own losses, or expressing their anger towards God on Good Friday, and you may not want to feel the emotions that can come up.  And it can feel like you are way too busy on the Saturday night before Easter to take time to wait in peaceful vigil for the culmination of the story.

Holy Week takes us on a roller coaster of emotion, and that’s something most of us try to avoid in normal circumstances, so it’s understandable that many people will choose to only attend the high of Palm Sunday and the high of Easter Sunday.  That’s OK.  We are each on our own path.  But, I guarantee that if you open yourself up to the fullness of experiences that are offered this week, Easter will have a much deeper, much greater meaning for you.

Jesus’ ultimate message was one of transformation—radical transformation of the world, of the self, and of human relationships with each other and with God.  Unfortunately, transformation doesn’t happen by sitting idle.  Transformation happens when we show up, when we open up, and when we are willing to let go of comfort, let go of ego, and let go of the need to be right.   You may not be ready yet to be seen as a fool for Christ, but if you are, then you are in good company.  AMEN.

God SO Loved

God So Loved

(a sermon on John 3: 14-21, delivered on March 18, 2012)

“For God so loved the world He gave His only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”  John 3:16… Some of the most familiar words in the Christian scriptures.  They seem to be a concise and straightforward summary of the Gospel message, and yet, what do they really mean?

God SO loved the world… An assurance of God’s love for us, for all creation.  He gave his only son…God came to the world through Jesus to save us from ourselves.  So that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life…and here’s where it gets hairy.  What does it mean to believe in Jesus?  What does it mean to believe in anything?  Is believing different from knowing?  Does believing leave room for doubt?  And what exactly are we supposed to believe about Jesus?

When I have a question about words in the Bible, lately I always turn to Marcus Borg’s latest book, Speaking Christian to see what he has to say.  And in terms of belief, his perspective is very interesting.  He writes, “The modern meaning of the word believe is very different from its meanings from Christian antiquity until the seventeenth century…The similarity to the modern English word belove is obvious. To believe meant not only confidence and trust in a person, but also to hold that person dear—to belove that person.  Believing and beloving were synonyms.”

 

“Thus, until the 1600’s, to believe in God and Jesus meant to belove God and Jesus.  Think about the difference that makes.  To believe in God does not mean believing that a set of statements about God are true, but to belove God.  To believe in Jesus does not mean to believe that a set of statements about Jesus are true, but to belove Jesus.”

Now, think of what a difference that distinction makes when we read the Gospel.  It opens it up, so that we might read and interpret stories about Jesus in many different ways while still loving him.  Reading this scripture this way, the implied threat in John 3:16 is considerably minimized.  And what of that threat? 

It’s disturbing enough that it often gets left out when we recite this line.  Eternal life is promised to those who believe in or belove Jesus, but everyone else will perish!  It’s pretty ominous, and it has been used and abused to justify religious intolerance and persecution.  But what is it really about?

To begin to answer this question, it is imperative that we remember the context in which it was written.  John’s community in the first century had begun to separate from the synagogue, while other Jesus followers had chosen to stay connected to the religious authority.  They were a minority community who needed to define themselves within Judaism as well as among other followers of Jesus. 

John’s community was a small minority, without power or influence to marginalize others or cause harm by excluding them.  This is not the case for modern Christians, nor has it been for much of Christian history.  And so, in our hands, the Gospel of John can do great damage, because we live in a much different Christian context.  The power tables are turned, and that is important to remember when we interpret this scripture.

Here we have a promise of eternal life, with the alternative of perishing.  When most of us hear eternal life, we assume it’s referring to an afterlife.  Heaven, perhaps, but in John’s Gospel, it is a present experience.  Borg tells us, “The Greek words translated into English as eternal life mean “the life of the age to come.”  Within John’s theology, this is still future and to be hoped for.  But it is also present, something that can be known, experienced now…To know God and Jesus in the present is to participate already in the life of the age to come.”

Thus, this passage is not about heaven and hell, but about the possibility for transformation in the present through love and connection with the divine.  And we are often our own worst enemies when it comes to transformation.  John puts it succinctly: “The people loved darkness rather than light.”  This passage, then, is also about the choices we make.  The choice to see and accept God’s love and the light it brings, or the choice to stay in the darkness of our own egos, our own self-destructive choices. 

So…believing, beloving, and transformation.  I just happen to have a story about that!  Forgive me if you’ve heard it before.

When I was in college, I started to feel a call to ministry.  To say this call was shocking would be an understatement.  I was not a Christian, and told myself I had only been attending chapel services for the hymns and the friendly faces.  But, God is sneaky sometimes, and the more time I spent with the progressive Christians at college, the more I wanted to be like them—to walk the walk, to be open and loving, to trust in the Divine again.  The moment I allowed myself to consider coming back to Christianity, the thought popped into my head, “then I could be a minister!”  This thought filled me with such excitement that I literally felt my heart swell. 

And then, of course, immediately, I tried to talk myself out of it, to discount the call.  It was a crazy idea.  I wasn’t even a Christian.  I didn’t even know what I believed about Jesus, so how could I minister to others?  You see, I thought, as many people do, that what you believe about who Jesus was and is is what matters.  I thought I wasn’t worthy or called because I didn’t know what I believed.

Thankfully, the call was strong, and was recognized by others, so that soon I found myself even more deeply involved—leading worship and Bible study and fellowship groups, and even preaching occasionally.  But I still didn’t know what I believed.

And so, I prayed.  I decided that if Jesus was so darn powerful, then he should be able to make me believe in him.  It should be that simple.  Every night I prayed to Jesus: “Please, Jesus, if you are out there, just make me believe, just give me a sign, just take my doubt away.  I know you can do it if you’re real, and if you are I will promise to follow you and serve you—just prove it to me!”

I gave Jesus ultimatums, I begged, I goaded.  But Jesus didn’t come.  There was no flash of light, no visit in my dreams or picture of his face on my toast.  I wasn’t going to get a miracle.  And so, I kept going.  I kept studying and talking with friends, kept praying and questioning and worshipping.  Until one day, I realized that the more I prayed, the less worried I became about what to believe about the deity I was praying to.  The more I prayed, the deeper my connection felt to this mysterious Jesus, and the easier it was to relax into his love and guidance and trust in my call.

I didn’t have words for it then, but know I realize I was moving from feeling that believing was necessary to realizing that beloving was all that was required of me.

Now, after three years of seminary and an extensive ordination process, I have had to state my explicit beliefs about Jesus many many times.  So, I’m not saying that being able to articulate our beliefs isn’t important.  What I am saying is that transformation does not come from believing the right things…  Transformation comes from love. 

AMEN.

Giving is a Spiritual Practice

This sermon was delivered Sunday, March 4, 2012

Luke 19:1-10 (New Revised Standard)

 He entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax-collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.’ So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, ‘He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.’ Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, ‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.’

 

Our scripture story today is one many of us have heard before, maybe you even remember it from Sunday School—the image of a rather short man climbing a tree just to get a look at Jesus is one that is well-suited to children’s stories and craft projects, not to mention being easy for small children to identify with.  The profession of Zacchaeus is not as clearly ingrained in my own Sunday school memories as the image of a little man scurrying up a tree and Jesus noticing him up there.  But, in fact, Zacchaeus was a tax collector, and for Jews in Jesus’ time, that was the same thing as being a thief, or worse.  You see, the Romans hired Jews to collect taxes for them, and the collectors got paid based on how much money they could extort, so Jews who were tax collectors were victimizing their own people in service to the oppressive government, and doing it for their own financial gain.

Eating with a tax collector, entering one’s home, was enough to make you ritually unclean, because their sins were considered so great.  And so, the important part of this story has nothing at all to do with Zacchaeus’ height, or that he could climb a tree, but with the fact that Jesus announces to the stunned crowd that he was going to eat at Zacchaeus’ home that day. 

That wacky Jesus!  He was always saying and doing things that seem to be completely opposite of how a respected rabbi would behave—that don’t make sense—that jar us from our comfortable understandings and beliefs and make us question whether or not we really know anything at all about what God wants from us.  But he did those things because he came to do a new thing, to preach a radical Gospel of love and grace and personal transformation, and often, that kind of transformation requires us to do the unexpected, the uncomfortable, the scary.

 

And so, in our story, Jesus reaches out to this man whom everyone else scorns and announces to a stunned crowd that he will join him for dinner.  In response, Zacchaeus announces that he is giving up half his wealth and making reparations to anyone he has defrauded.  At this point we might wonder what the other people in the crowd were thinking.  I imagine they found this transformation hard to believe…Tax collector one minute, generous and honest follower of Jesus the next?  It seems too good to be true!  But Jesus accepts it, and actually acknowledges that Zacchaeus is a beloved child of God, a person who is worthy of God’s Grace, despite what anyone else might think.

Now, an important thing to remember about this story is that Jesus calls Zacchaeus before he has made any statements about giving up his ill-gotten wealth.  Jesus calls him down out of the tree and states that they will break bread together.  Knowing how important a ritual it was to share a meal together with another person, to be welcomed into their home and accept hospitality, we should understand that this is an act of Grace, freely given, before Zacchaeus makes any claims of repentance or generosity.

The message here, one that is difficult for many people to accept, is that God’s Grace, love and forgiveness are free and available for ALL people, regardless of station or history or what society might think of them.  This is the Gospel—the Good News…God’s Grace is already available, already ours… but what Zacchaeus teaches us is that how we respond to that grace can make a big difference in our own quality of life and spiritual fulfillment.

Zaccchaeus responds to God’s grace by giving away much of his wealth, by letting go of his greed and helping his community.  And thus, Zacchaeus is transformed. 

Now, we are not all tax collectors.  Most of us are not even particularly wealthy, at least compared with the one percent at the top of our economy.  But the kind of transformation that Zacchaeus felt when he was converted from hoarding to giving is available to all of us.

God is a giving God.  God gave us this beautiful earth, these beautiful bodies, these beautiful relationships…But not so we could own them—hold tight and not share them with anyone—God gave us all this so we could share it.  Share the beauty of creation, walk in the world helping others with our bodies and our lives, and live in relationship with each other, sharing love and struggle with the people around us.  God gives to us so that we can give to each other, and the giving becomes a continuous circle, the gifts expanding and multiplying and being offered back to God.  It’s a beautiful thing, if we can let go of our tight grip on what we have long enough to open our hands to the Divine.

This is why giving can be such a profoundly spiritual practice.  Because when we give, be it money, or time, or love, we open ourselves to receiving, and we join the Divine in being stewards of our communities and our world.  The more we give of ourselves, the less focused we are on self and ego, and the more we see Christ in others…and therefore, in ourselves.

Today we begin our annual season of commitment, a time when we as a congregation speak openly and honestly about giving, about need, about what it means to be a part of a community.  Each one of you, whether you have been here 50 years, or whether it is your first time entering this church, are an important part of our community.  Your presence is essential to our functioning, to our ability to follow the teachings of Jesus.  You help us in so many ways; by praying with us, by making music with us, by asking hard questions and sharing your struggles. 

You help us by washing dishes, by changing diapers, by teaching and by listening.  And yes, you help us by contributing financially, so that we have buildings to meet in and ministers to teach us and musicians to bring us to new heights of worship. 

Money can be a difficult thing to talk about in church, but it is an important part of all of our lives, and like it or not, our church cannot be sustained without it.  So, as we enter into this pledge season, we invite you to see it as a time ripe with possibility, ripe with spiritual gifts just waiting to be opened.  Let us move away from an attitude of scarcity towards an acknowledgment of the abundance in our lives and what a gift it is to share that abundance with others.  AMEN.

 

 

 

Wilderness

This sermon was delivered on February 26, 2012.

Mark 1:9-15 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

 

This is the beginning of Mark’s Gospel, and he doesn’t waste any time on superfluous details. Jesus is baptized, sent into the wilderness, tempted by Satan, helped by angels, and then he’s back to preaching the good news. It’s so brief, such a small mention, that if we wanted to, we could gloss over the wilderness… we could go right to Galilee… but if we did, we would be missing an incredible opportunity.

This story, of Jesus entering into the wilderness, and staying for forty days, is at the center of our Christian practice of Lent. We take this time to go into the wilderness with Jesus, to consider what it is like to be alone with God, to be afraid, to be tempted, and to be rescued. It’s an experience we have many times in our lives, but we rarely recognize it, or appreciate the wilderness for what it can teach us. Instead of staying forty days, like Jesus did, most of us do whatever we can to spend as little time in the wilderness as possible. It’s understandable—we don’t like to be uncomfortable…we don’t want to be sad or angry or confused, or whatever the wilderness looks like for you.

We live in a world and a culture that tells us we are supposed to be comfortable and happy all the time, so when we aren’t, we try to remedy that as quickly as possible. We distract ourselves with TV or other entertainment. We numb ourselves with drugs or alcohol. We seek out cheap thrills through gambling or other risk-taking. We ignore our feelings and put all our energy into others. We do all these things because the hardest thing to do is to sit with the discomfort. To sit with, and feel, sad, depressed, angry, grieved, or afraid. The problem is, of course, that if we don’t sit with those feelings—if we put them off with some other distraction—we just postpone them. Being human means we will be uncomfortable sometimes. We need to feel those feelings, as hard and bad as they may be, and if we distract ourselves with something else, we will still have to deal with them eventually.

And this, I think, is what Lent is about., This is a season in the church year that is set aside for us to sit in the discomfort—to go into the wilderness, with the glorious promise that Easter is just forty days away. This is the good news—that our time in the wilderness will end. Perhaps there will be terrible times ahead, but in the end, ultimately, we will have Easter. We will have the promise of life and love overcoming death. Keeping that promise in the back of our minds, we are equipped to wander into the wilderness with Jesus, able to experience the discomfort, the temptation for distraction, the pain of being alone and afraid…because we know that Easter will come. We know that God is with us throughout the discomfort, the pain, the depression.

I have always had a deep connection to the wilderness of Lent. Lent has often been the hardest time of year for me. I returned yesterday from a wonderful ten-day vacation in Salt Lake City. I had a great time, seeing friends, relaxing, knitting for hours every day, eating at my favorite restaurants… It was just what I needed to recharge and relax. But, I am reminded today that Salt Lake City used to be my wilderness.

When I first moved there, I felt alone. I didn’t know anyone except my partner and her friends, and I felt like I was surrounded by conservative Mormons who would hate me. I was a housewife with nothing but time and worry on my hands. I knew I was called to be a minister, but I got rejection letters from churches across the country several times a week. I was in a dark place, despite the fact that from the outside, my life probably looked wonderful. I was with a woman who loved me, I had a beautiful home, adopted family and friends, gorgeous scenery, time to make art, and plenty of freedom to do whatever I might want. Many women would like nothing more than that life. And yet, I was in the wilderness.

Despite all the amazing things about my life at that time, I was terribly sad. I knew I was not doing what I was meant to do—I was not living out my calling—and so, I was not happy, even though my life and circumstances were seemingly perfect. Eventually, I found my own friends and a loving community in Utah, and when I moved to Santa Cruz, after a very long job search, I missed them—and everything else about Utah—terribly. Almost without realizing it, my wilderness had become my home. So when I go back for a visit, I feel so comfortable, relaxed, and at peace, that sometimes it’s hard to remember how hard it once was to live there. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? If you’ve been in the wilderness—the spiritual wilderness—and come out of it, you know that as hard as it once was, it can be a healing experience to go back, to be reminded of where you were and how far you’ve come.

If we learn nothing more from the story of Jesus, we should understand that the wilderness is necessary and inevitable if we want to move forward on our spiritual path. It’s not always easy to connect with God. Life gets in the way. So sometimes it’s not until we hit bottom, or enter into our own wilderness, that we figure out how close God is to us—how close God has always been to us…and realize that we just couldn’t see it before.

In our reading today from Mark, we only get a brief mention of Jesus going into the wilderness and being tempted by Satan, then being saved by angels. It would be easy to gloss over it, to assume that it was something Jesus needed to do, to go through, and wasn’t really that big of a deal…but, forty days?! That’s a long time! And why would the Holy Spirit send Jesus to the wilderness if it wasn’t important? But that’s the thing: it was important! It was a time for Jesus to embrace his humanity, to struggle with the temptation for immediate gratification in the way we all need to struggle, and then to reject it, to reject the fame, the power, the shallow kind of Messiah he could have been. Jesus knew he was more than that. He knew it was necessary to eventually go into the wilderness, to feel what it was like to be lonely, to be sad, to feel all alone…and then to realize that no matter how lonely you might feel, God is always with you. Always there, accompanying you on your journey.

Because that’s the thing about this story…Jesus didn’t decide on his own to venture into the wilderness for forty days. He was compelled to do it by the Holy Spirit…basically, God pushed him out into the desert. They key to this story is to remember what Jesus heard right before he left: "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." Despite being in the wilderness, being tempted and tried, being hungry and thirsty and all alone, God was with him, confirmed by those last words he heard.

The love of God saw Jesus through his wilderness, and it can see us through ours. We may not all hear an audible voice from on high telling us how much God loves us, or how pleased God is with us. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as that. But, we do hear it from each other. Not only do we read it in the Gospels, we understand it through the love of our friends and family, through the beauty of creation, through the miracle of community. God’s love for us is incredibly obvious if we are open to seeing it, to accepting it, and that means that even when we are in the wilderness, God’s love is right there with us, seeing us through to the end…Seeing us through to Easter.

AMEN.

"Fishing for People"

This sermon was delivered Sunday, January 22, 2012.

Mark 1:14-20

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea — for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, "Follow me and I will make you fish for people." And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

***

What does it mean to be a disciple?  I feel like, as people who may have grown up going to church, or who have spent much of our lives in a Christian community, many of us hear the term ‘disciple’ and we don’t think much about it.  Perhaps, if we give them any thought at all, we think of the disciples as hangers-on, twelve guys who followed Jesus around, occasionally asking questions, occasionally making fools of themselves, eventually betraying the man they loved and followed. 

But actually, the disciples were ordinary people from all walks of life who brought their skills together to help Jesus in his ministry.  They listened and learned from him, yes, but they also helped him in his work, teaching, healing, feeding, and organizing.

In this short passage, we hear a story that is a bit confusing.  Jesus is walking along the shore, sees a few fishermen and calls out to them, inviting them to come along with him.  Immediately, we are told, they drop their nets and run to join him.  If this weren’t strange enough, a bit further down the shore, he does it again and two more men join him, giving up their family business and the source of their livelihood to follow this strange preacher around the country. 

Now, reading this, we might first wonder what were these guys thinking?  What could have possessed them to drop everything and follow Jesus?  Had they heard him preach already?  Did they already believe he was the messiah?  Or did he just possess so much power and charisma that they were compelled to follow him?  We don’t know. 

Mark doesn’t waste words on petty details like that, explaining why these fishermen were so willing to join Jesus, changing their lives forever and giving up everything they knew.  Mark merely tells us that they did it, and that they didn’t waste any time. 

Jesus called, and they answered. 

I believe we all have stories of being called.  Some are epic and surprising and life-changing, and some are gentle, small enough that it can be easy to miss their importance.  In seminary and throughout the ordination process, potential ministers are asked to tell and retell their story of when they first heard the Call to ministry.  I remember some of my colleagues describing it as being hit over the head with a 2x4, while for others it was a still small voice nudging them ever closer to ministry until they couldn’t ignore it any longer.

My own Call was a mix of the two.  Although I would never use violent terms to describe it, there was a suddenness to my first feeling of being Called…I wasn’t hit over the head—instead, I felt like the Holy Spirit was rushing into me, filling me with hope and excitement.  It was such a powerful feeling that I can still remember exactly where I was walking the moment it happened, the feeling of the leaves under my feet and what the sky looked like. 

That feeling of joy lasted for a few minutes until the doubt came seeping in.  This was crazy, wasn’t it?  How could I be called to ministry?  I didn’t even identify as Christian at the time, didn’t know what I believed about God and Jesus…so God couldn’t really be calling me to be a minister…right?

But, the initial feeling had been so strong that I had to pursue it, to let myself imagine that it was possible, and to seek advice from my pastor.  And that is when the slightly less dramatic, but ever more persistent Calls came.  Opportunities to try ministry fell into place, mentors and friends voiced their belief in my Call, and even though it was scary, it always felt right.

I didn’t immediately drop my fishing nets and leave everything behind to follow Jesus, but I did start walking towards him, changing my priorities and my focus until those feelings of doubt were edged out by certainty.  That feeling of certainty that I was on the path that God was leading me on must have been something like what those first disciples felt when they were called by Jesus.  Mark doesn’t tell us whether or not they were afraid, but he does make it clear that they were certain.  They must have been, to leave all that they knew behind.  Once you have felt the Call, there is no going back.

We are not all called to be pastors, but we are all called to minister to God’s creation, to be disciples...  Because we each have different gifts, our specific callings are different.  When Jesus called these four fishermen, he said “I will teach you how to fish for people…”  He knew what their skills were, and he apparently knew how they could translate into the work he needed them to do.  They didn’t know what they were getting into, they didn’t know how to ‘fish for people,’ but he promised to teach them, and so they went.  Jesus saw potential in them that they perhaps hadn’t seen in themselves, and that is often the way a calling works.

In the United Church of Christ, there are many requirements for ordination, but the most basic two, the ones you must have to even start on the path, are that you feel a personal calling to ministry, and equally important, that other people confirm that you have that calling.  It’s not just between you and God, but also between you and your community.  This is one of the reasons that being in Christian community is so important, because we help each other to recognize where and how God is calling us.

 I think about our friend Yael, who will be ordained here in our church next month.  Did she have any clue the first time she stepped into this sanctuary that she would be starting a life-changing journey?  Did she already know that she had such amazing gifts for preaching and ministry?  I’m sure God had started calling her already, but it was entering into this space, worshipping and ministering with you, being encouraged and affirmed by this community that helped to move her from where she was that first Sunday morning to where she is going, to lead a very lucky congregation in Maine. 

What does it mean to be a disciple?  What does it mean today, for us?  It does not mean that we are all called to be preachers—thank goodness!  Some of us are called by God to be healers, teachers, artists, parents, or activists.  The important thing to do is to follow those calls, listen to your community, take the risk to throw down your net and follow Jesus where he’s asking you to go, and trust that you will learn what you need to along the way.  That is the way we can change the world, one call at a time.  AMEN

 

 

Too Wonderful

This sermon was delivered on Sunday, January 15, 2012

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18

O God, you have searched me and known me.
  You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.

You search out my path and my lying down,
  and are acquainted with all my ways.

Even before a word is on my tongue,
  O God, you know it completely.

You hem me in, behind and before,
  and lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
  it is so high that I cannot attain it.

For it was you who formed my inward parts;
  you knit me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you,
  for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
  that I know very well.

My frame was not hidden from you,
  when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written all the days
  that were formed for me, before they existed.

How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
  How vast is the sum of them!

I try to count them —
  they are more than the sand;
I come to the end —
  I am still with you.

I have preached on this Psalm several times.  It is, in fact, my favorite Psalm, partly due to the allusion to knitting, but also because of the clear message that God is with us everywhere we go, no matter what.  Throughout my own spiritual meanderings as a child and as a teenager, one thing was always clear to me… God loved me, for exactly who I was, and no matter what.  This is what eventually brought me back to Christianity—the memory of that assurance of God’s love.

This Psalm tells us of the ever-present love of God, the amazing, unfathomable knowledge of God, and the assurance that God knows us better than we can ever imagine.  In this way, it reminds me of one of my favorite Rumi poems in which he writes, “When you look for God, God is in the looking of your eye…”  It’s a bit of theology that is central to my understanding of God, and that you might recognize from my prayers and blessings on Sunday mornings.  I think few things are as important as realizing how close God is to us, how much God loves us, and how intimately God understands us.

This is why Psalm 139 is my favorite… not just because of knitting, but because it rings so true to me.  Now, for some reason the psalm is chopped up in our lectionary, but I think it’s important to hear those lines in the middle. 

Where can I go from your spirit?
   Or where can I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
   if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
⁹ If I take the wings of the morning
   and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand shall lead me,
   and your right hand shall hold me fast.
¹¹ If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,
   and the light around me become night’,
¹² even the darkness is not dark to you;
   the night is as bright as the day,
   for darkness is as light to you.

The psalmist says, in every way possible, that God is always there, always with us.  There is nowhere we can go where God is not.  In our times of greatest accomplishment, when we “ascend to heaven,” God is there, and in our worst, most shameful moments, when we “make our beds in sheol,” God is there too.  Even in the depths of depression, when we feel like the darkness is going to cover us for good, God is there.

Now, God is always with us, but God doesn’t necessarily intervene in the ways we would hope.  This is one of the frustrating mysteries about the Divine.  Today is the anniversary of the birth of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King—a man who was certainly aware of God’s presence and God’s love.  God was there when he was writing speeches and organizing marches.  God was there when he was in prison and when he was in church, and God was there when he was assassinated. 

As we mourn the death of such a great leader, we might wonder why, if God was there, why couldn’t God have stopped it?  Why couldn’t God have prevented his death?  Why is it, if God is always with us, and loves us, and knows us better than we know ourselves, that God doesn’t always protect us from harm, or prevent us from harming others?

These questions are painful to ask, and risky to try and answer.  Some people will say that it’s because whatever happens is God’s will, and we shouldn’t question it.  Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t believe God wills for children to be abused or people to be bigots or bombs to be dropped.  A loving God does not cause suffering and pain, but suffers with us. 

Humanity is broken in many ways.  We have an endless capacity for love and creativity, but we also have an amazing capacity to hurt and destroy.  I think this is part of what the psalmist means when he writes, “I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”  Fearfully and wonderfully…somewhat contradictory, perhaps, but it certainly rings true. 

I think this is where faith comes in, where religion can be a force for good in our lives.  As a Christian community, we strive to learn from and follow the teachings of Jesus, who challenges us to transform ourselves and our lives, to make change where it is needed, and to treat even the lowliest people with care and respect.  We do not need to be famous to do these things.  We do not need to be ordained or have a PhD.  We just need to be willing and open and take risks in the name of love.

At Martin Luther King’s funeral, they played a recording of his last sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church.  In that sermon he made a request that at his funeral no mention of his awards and honors be made, but that it be said that he tried to "feed the hungry," "clothe the naked," "be right on the [Vietnam] war question," and "love and serve humanity."  

He got it.  He understood that the important things in his life, the things he wanted to be remembered for, had nothing to do with the letters in front of his name, but with the ways in which he strived to follow Jesus’ example and help others to do the same.

God was there when Martin Luther King was assassinated, loving and caring and weeping along with his family and all those who loved him.  But God was also there with his killer, loving and caring and weeping for the choices he made.  God loves the civil rights organizers and God loves the Klansmen, and that is all part of the mystery.

 For it was you who formed my inward parts;

  you knit me together in my mother's womb.

 I praise you,

  for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

  that I know very well.

 We are fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God… God who is ever present.  God who knew us as we were being formed, who has knowledge of us that we don’t even have of ourselves… and that can be a bit overwhelming.  When we try to comprehend that vastness of God, the immense love and understanding that God has, it is too much for our human brains to fathom—it is “Too Wonderful.” 

It is also unnecessary.  We don’t need to understand everything about God to have faith in God’s love and presence.  We only need to feel it, to see it all around us in the beauty of God’s creation and the love we have for each other. 

  When we see suffering and hatred, we can work to make it better, knowing that God is there with us in the work… and when we fall into the darkness of depression, or feel hopeless in the face of seemingly insurmountable troubles, we can read a psalm like this and remember that we are each and every one of us, incredibly precious and deeply loved by a God that will never let go.  AMEN.

 

On blogging sermons...

So, I just posted my two most recent sermons (see below), and I feel the need to write a bit about sermon writing, sermon sharing, etc.

Sometimes (often?) I write a sermon that I am not very excited about.  Maybe I never felt it gelled, maybe I felt distracted while writing it, or maybe I'm just not sure it makes any sense.  It's not a great feeling to be driving to church on Sunday morning thinking your sermon will be boring, or so-so, or just plain bad. 

But here's the thing...often, it's those sermons that people seem to appreciate the most.  This can only be attributed to the Holy Spirit, because I know it's not just me writing those things, and it's not just me preaching them either.  I'm frequently surprised by people's reactions to my sermons, whether it's that they really liked one that I didn't, or that the one sentence that rocked their world was something I barely thought about when I wrote it.

And now, by popular request, I'm posting my sermons to this blog, in all their un-edited glory, and that's a whole other layer of vulnerability.  The grammar and punctuation is not perfect.  A sermon is written to be preached, not to be read on a page.  And yet, people seem to want to read them, and I think it's only right to post them just as I wrote them.  I often want to make excuses for the way they are written, or encourage people to imagine me preaching while they are reading them, but really, they are what they are, and I suppose if I trust the Holy Spirit to help them make sense when people hear them, then I should also trust Her to get the point across when someone reads them on the screen.

 

"The First Day"

This sermon was delivered Sunday, 1/8/2012.

Genesis 1:1-5

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

***

“In the Beginning” … It’s such a perfect way to begin the Bible, isn’t it?  Those first three words carry with them such tension, such promise of the incredible story to come.  How did we get here?  How did all this come into being… that is the great mystery that all peoples of every culture and religion have been trying to answer since the beginning…and this is the way our story starts. 

“In the Beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep…”  It sounds like the start of an epic adventure, doesn’t it?  It’s mysterious and dark, there is a formless void, which is something that’s hard to fathom, and there’s that slightly ominous image of ‘the deep.’

But it’s not completely still, because ‘a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.’  So, what is intriguing about these first few sentences in the Bible is that while it is the story of creation, we are told that there was already something there before God starts the creative process.  There was water and wind… and there was darkness…and, of course, there was God.

The first thing God does is to call light into being.  God says ‘let there be light’ and there is light.  God speaks and creates something new, something good, but there cannot be light without darkness to counteract it, and while we may at first assume that because light was good, darkness was bad, that is not necessarily true.  God creates by speaking, calling the light day and the darkness night, and it is clear that one could not exist without the other.

That was the first day.

The first day…it’s interesting, isn’t it, that God didn’t just make everything at once.  She took her time, created each aspect of the world with care and intention.  One assumes that if God is all-powerful, then God could have chosen to create everything with a divine snap of the fingers, called it good and been done.  But that’s not the way the story goes.  God takes time to create, and time to reflect as well, seeing what had been created, and each day proclaiming it good before moving on to the next thing. 

I think this signals to us, as listeners of this ancient story, that creation is a process, perhaps even a process without a finished product.  It is a long-term project, always in the process of becoming what it is meant to be.  Volcanoes erupt, creating islands…tectonic plates shift, separating continents…rivers slowly wash away rock to form canyons…forests burn and new forests are born…

We are also co-creators with God, and when I say we, I don’t just mean people, I mean all the subjects of God’s creation—people, volcanoes, trees and birds—we each have our own part to play in the continuing, continuous, creation of God.

During Bible Study this week, we talked about the poetry of this passage, and of this whole version of the creation story, what a beautiful way it is to tell the story of creation.  We also talked about the folks who want to be able to take this story literally, who are convinced that the world was actually created in exactly seven days…how sad it is for them that they spend so much energy trying to prove it’s literally true that they miss the real truth entirely. 

I won’t pretend to know the whole point of this story being told this way, but I feel sure that one thing that is vitally important is that creation is a process that requires reflection and evaluation along the way. 

God creates something, and sees that it is good before he moves on to create the next thing.  It’s not the exact timeframe that matters, it’s that there is one in the first place.

So, there was darkness and a void, and wind, and then one day, there was light.  The darkness was necessary for the light to come into being.  God names both—the light is named day and the darkness is named night, because God knew that they were both important.

What do we do in the dark?  Well, the most basic thing is, we sleep.  Our bodies are made to prefer darkness for sleeping, and during sleep, our brains work through things, our bodies heal and grow, and we are rejuvenated.  Without sleep, we would die.  Without darkness, we wouldn’t recognize light.

I often tell the story of how, in my first year in Berkeley, there was not one cloudy day between the time I arrived in August and Thanksgiving.  It was sunny and warm and beautiful every single day.  Thanksgiving week, I came down with the most terrible flu. 

As I lay there on the couch, miserably sick, forced to miss classes and fun, I had a bit of a revelation.  I had gotten so sick because my body was telling me it was time to slow down.  The sun and beautiful, unchanging weather had made me feel like I needed to be on the go and busy all the time, and I was used to the changing seasons signaling a time to change routine.

In Minnesota, where I grew up, the seasons change dramatically, and when the days start getting shorter in the fall, and the air gets colder, your behavior changes.  The changing light signals a time to go deeper, to stay inside more, to slow down the frantic pace of summer and ease into the deeper, quieter, cozy pace of winter.

I decided, in my fevered haze, that my body had been waiting and waiting for me to start that transition, and when I didn’t, it decided to force me to rest by knocking me down with the flu.  Light might signify productivity, but darkness signifies rest and healing.

Now, there can be other kinds of darkness in our lives.  The darkness of depression, of grief, of anger…and as human beings, we often want to get out of that darkness as quickly as possible, rushing through too fast to see what the benefits of it might be. 

But sometimes the darkness can teach us a lot about who we are and what we need.  It can bring revelations and healing if we are able to sit with it, to work our way through it, instead of burying it or denying it or covering it up with temporary solutions.

Just as it may not have taken exactly one day for light to be created, it may take a long time for us to find the light in our times of darkness, but we can still be creating and evolving through that darkness.  The important thing is not to find the light as quickly as possible, but just to keep working through the dark, knowing the light will eventually be called into being. 

Instead of focusing on that formless void, focus on the wind of God sweeping over the waters.  Instead of feeling helpless in the dark, focus on the fact that you are a co-creator with God—in the world, and in your own life.   And when change or light does come, take time to look, to reflect, and to recognize it as good.

AMEN

“Looking for Redemption"

This sermon was delivered on 1/1/2012.

Luke 2:22-40

When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, "Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord"), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, "a pair of turtle-doves or two young pigeons."

Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,

"Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
   according to your word;
for my eyes have seen your salvation,
   which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles
   and for glory to your people Israel."

And the child's father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, "This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed — and a sword will pierce your own soul too."

There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband for seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshipped there with fasting and prayer night and day. At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.

***

It’s the first Sunday after Christmas, and today we read about Jesus and his parents going to the temple to perform their duties as observant Jews.  It’s an interesting juxtaposition, as last week, on Christmas eve, we read about Joseph and Mary travelling to Bethlehem to be counted in the census—their civil duty as people living under the rule of the Roman empire.  Today, they do their religious duty, and baby Jesus is at the heart of both stories.  Political and spiritual.

That is Jesus in a nutshell—political and spiritual.  Too often, we are tempted to focus on just one of those aspects and ignore the other.  But to do that is to miss the point.  Jesus’ politics and his spiritual teachings were intertwined. 

In this story, we hear about two elderly people in the Temple, Simeon and Anna, a man and a woman, and each of them recognize in baby Jesus hope for the future and the possibility of salvation and redemption for their people.  Salvation and redemption…two words whose meaning has been confused in the years since this story was written…

I’ve been working my way through Marcus Borg’s latest book, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power—and How they can be Restored.  This book is full of wonderful insights, and today I want to tell you a bit about what he says about salvation.

What comes to mind when you hear the word salvation?  For most people it is bound up with the idea of sin.  We are sinful, and need to be saved from that sin.  It creates an ‘us and them’ mentality—those who are saved and those who aren’t.  In fact, most dictionary definitions define salvation as ‘deliverance from sin.’  But what is so important to understand is that this is not the Biblical meaning of the word. 

When salvation is mentioned in the bible, in both testaments, it rarely has anything to do with sin and forgiveness, or heaven and hell.  In a Biblical framework, salvation is almost always about both personal transformation and political transformation.

In the story of Exodus, salvation is used to describe liberation from bondage and slavery.  In Isaiah, salvation is used to describe a return from exile—coming home.  And in the Psalms, salvation is used over and over again to describe being rescued from danger.  God as savior in the Hebrew Bible is God being present, God helping the people, delivering them not from their own sins, but from oppression and injustice.  These themes continue into the New Testament and the story of Jesus.

When the angels announced the birth of Jesus to the shepherds, did they say, “Behold, we bring you tidings of great joy!  A baby has been born who will save you from your sinful ways so you can go to heaven!”  Of course not.  They spoke of a savior; they spoke of peace on earth and goodwill among all people. 

Jesus is a savior who brings justice where there was injustice, a savior who brings peace where there was violence, and a savior who brings a return from spiritual exile—bringing us closer to God, in whom we live and move and have our being.

Personal salvation and political salvation.  These themes are underscored by the two holy people that meet Jesus and his parents in the temple.  Simeon says, “…my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”  While Anna speaks about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem. 

Looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.  Salvation for the city, for all the people…not because they were sinful, but because they were oppressed.  Extreme economic injustice, an oppressive government, religious repression…Jesus was born into a world with all of these problems, and as I’ve said before, he is born into a world with all those problems still today.

There are many stories in the Gospels where Jesus provides salvation on a personal level as well, but most of these have nothing to do with any sinfulness.  Jesus brings people from sickness to health, from death to life, from blindness—both physical and spiritual—to a new way of seeing, and from fear to trust.  This personal salvation is not about waiting for something that will happen after we die, but about how we live now, creating the kingdom of God on earth and in ourselves now.

As we continue to celebrate Christmas, remembering and rejoicing in the promise inherent in one little baby’s birth, let us remember the kind of salvation that he really came for: The personal and political transformation of a broken world into the kingdom of God.  AMEN.