waiting in an airport

I'm en route to an Atlanta, GA worship gathering on behalf of my synod, and the pilot got sick, so we have an extra long layover before we've even begun. Figured that means it's as good a time as any to blog a bit of thoughts on this morning's readings, even though I won't be preaching (though if I'd known the pilot was going to be ill, I could have still made it work. Oh, well, y'all got to hear another preacher in the pulpit if you made it to worship this morning.)
So, here below is one of the three assigned texts, followed by some thoughts form my tired brain:

Ephesians 2:11-22 (ESV)

Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called ‘the uncircumcision’ by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands - remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, estranged from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near (made ready? check the Greek) by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new person in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

*******

Re-membering. It’s a common theme in Scripture. We ask God to remember us. We are commanded to ‘do this to remember me.’ In this Sunday’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians we are told to remember that we were once not part of this community of faith, that we once did not belong, that we once, like our Jewish ancestors, were a wandering people. Maybe not wandering in a physical wilderness, certainly we have been settled long enough to feel we belong to where we are, and where we are belongs to us, but wandering on a search for meaning and belonging and purpose and a reason greater than ourselves, no?

I have a friend who recently posted very publicly on Facebook that, having looked at the requirements and realities, she can no longer call herself a Christian because she can never live up to the example of Jesus. She knows that Jesus loves her and that God is great, and at the same time she knows she will never be good enough, will never stop making mistakes, will never live a life that follows the example of Jesus as she should. So she does not want to lie by calling herself a Christian if she will not be able to live up to the standards of Christ. (She makes a good Lutheran in that way.) A far better response, thoughtful and honest, than entitlement and hypocrisy, which tends to be the modus operandi of so many who call themselves Christian these days while ignoring or directly contradicting the teachings of Jesus entirely. 

I have an education because my parents worked hard and saved money and invested, and because they are white they got a home loan for a nicer neighborhood without any flack from the lenders. It’s a combination of luck, entitlement, history, effort, and debt, that landed me where I am. If I forget what it took to get me here, not only is that a slap in the face of my second-generation immigrant grandparents who left everything, including their homeland, home culture, and first language (speaking German during the war was such a shameful thing), but it denies me my own heritage and leaves me without roots. If I forget what it took to get me here, and assume life owes me something just for showing up, then I’ve sorely missed the point, painfully missed reality, and completely bought into the lie that I deserve what I have ‘just because.’ I was one of those smart kids in school for whom good grades were easy - when classes were challenging, I enjoyed them more, but then if I didn’t get an ‘A’ I felt like a failure, and it took a long time to get into my head the idea that school was supposed to take work, and that it was okay to try and fail and get up again.

How easily we forget where we came from when we don’t have to struggle so hard to get where we want to be! I don’t like to harp on the Law, on the ways we fall short of God’s ideals for this world, because I think we know well when we hurt others or are hurt ourselves, but I think we still forget how connected we are to one another, how reflexively we fall back on Cain’s question to God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” But if we don’t realize the Law, how can we know the sweetness of the Gospel? How can we understand how much has been given to us freely unless we remember how little we deserve it? I remember being on a traveling youth ministry music tour when I forgot at one of our sites to pick up all the prepaid phone cards which had been given to our team, so we got to the next location and none of us had the minutes we had waited and asked for, so nobody could call home (this was just a few years before everybody had cell phones - we had one phone for the six-person team). And yet, when it came time to hand out minutes at the next location after all was said and done, I was not punished as I thought I deserved, but we stayed on schedule for who got minutes next. It was pure grace, complete gift, undeserved. A minor thing, to be sure, but to be aware of it was pretty major, especially since I didn’t always get along well with everyone on that team.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Remember that you once wandered in the wilderness. Remember that you are not your own. Remember that you are not the center of the universe. Remember that you are loved in a way that you can never deserve, or earn, which means also you are loved in a way that you can never lose. Remember that this life is a gift. Remember that the life of the person next to you is also a gift. Remember and be re-membered, be put back together again, be restored to wholeness by being restored to community with your neighbors like grains of wheat scattered in a field, grown, and gathered up again to make the bread we share. Remember that it was life and blood and flesh and death and resurrection that made this all possible. Remember that it was for you, but not only you. Remember, and rejoice.

Power

Amos 7:7-15

This is what he showed me: the LORD was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. And the LORD said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the LORD said, “See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by; the high places of Isaac chalk be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.” Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the very center of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words. For thus Amos has said, ‘ Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land.’” And Amaziah said to Amos, “O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there; but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.” Then Amos answered Amaziah, “I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees, and the LORD took me from following the flock, and the LORD said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’

Psalm 85:8-13

I will listen to what the LORD God is saying; for you speak peace to your faithful people and to those who turn their hearts to you. Truly, your salvation is very near to those who fear you, that your glory may dwell in our land. Steadfast love and faithfulness have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Faithfulness shall prong up from the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven. The LORD will indeed grant prosperity, and our land will yield its increase. Righteousness shall go before the LORD and shall prepare for God a pathway.

Ephesians 1:3-14

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him ho accomplished all things according to his counsel and will, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.

Mark 6:14-29

...King Herod heard of it, for Jesus’ name had become known. Some were saying, “John the baptizer has been raised from the dead; and for this reason these powers are at work in him.” But others said, “It is Elijah.” And others said, “It is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.” But when Herod heard of it, he said, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.” For Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and pout him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because Herod had married her. For John had been telling Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.  And Herodias had a grudge against him, and wanted to kill him. But she could not, for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed; and  and yet he liked to listen to him. But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his courtiers and officers and for the leaders of Galilee. When his daughter Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests and the king sad to the girl, “Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it.” And he solemnly swore to her, “Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom. “ She went out and said to her mother, “What should I ask for?” She replied, “The head of John the baptizer.” Immediately she rushed back to the king and requested, “I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptizer on a platter.” The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her. Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl. Then the girl gave it to her mother. When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb.

*******

Herod thought, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.” Then he thinks back to the last time he saw John alive. It was a party for his birthday, when he was manipulated into killing someone he considered more a curiosity than a threat. Or, at least, that’s the way he remembers it. John Baptizer had never been one to beat around the bush in matters of religious law, and even though Herod had the power to do whatever he wanted, to and with whomever he wanted, Herod’s sister-in-law-made-wife did not appreciate having her adultery pointed out so publicly, and you know how miserable life can be when someone is very determined to get their own way at any cost, so Herodias badgered Herod into arresting John. It was as close as she could come to getting him completely shut up. Herod knew there was something to John’s teaching, something of the prophetic, something which hearkened back to his own spiritual roots, though Herod had long since covered up those roots with bending to the political powers and authorities that occupied Israel in those day. After all, he had to save his own skin somehow, and he was probably at least not a completely bumbling idiot to be ruling as he was. Not completely, but, it seems, pretty near to that line of powerfully incompetent.

What a dangerous combination, power and fear. Herod, as one commentary puts it, would rather kill an innocent man than be embarrassed in front of his party guests. Who wants a leader who is so easily manipulated? And yet when it comes to the ways we come to power, who doesn’t have their attention pulled in a dozen different ways by financial and media backers these days? Can’t make everyone happy, and you can’t hold onto power if everyone is miserable. Or at least not if the really powerful people pulling the strings don’t like what you’re doing. Herod is just one example among many, ancient and contemporary, of someone who does not really understand their power.

So here we come again to the problem of the power of white supremacy. Or maybe we put it as the power of classism. Or sexism. Did you see the cover of the Chronicle? A guy asks a woman for a dollar and she gives him seventy-seven cents, because that’s ‘a woman’s dollar.’ Anyone who thinks Christians are being persecuted in this country needs only walk into Rite Aid and find all the Scripture references and Christian kitsch on plastic garden decor to know we are still the dominant power here. I’m pretty certain there isn’t a box store or major chain company selling mass quantities of Muslim or Hindu or atheist inspirational poetry in the same way we sell Christian-sounding paraphernalia. We have a LOT of power. Sure, there are ways we don’t have ALL the power, but even the comic books know that power carries responsibility, and far too often those with power would rather misuse it than lose it. How often, for example, are bullies just kids who are themselves bullied? How often do people work their way up the ladder only to squash everyone they left behind in the dust, even if they got where they are because of a family friend or because they were born into a higher economic class? Not saying that people don’t work hard to get where they are, but have you noticed how many people do the majority of the grunt work without a living wage?

Power. We don’t want to give it up when we have it, we want it used in our own self-interest, and we are so terrified that someone else might use their power against us, especially if we’ve ever ignored them or misused them.

Herod had power, but so did John. One was political and economic, the other was charismatic and focused. John stuck to his mission when his life was threatened, Herod caved to the pressure of his party guests and an outrageous promise he made to a little girl. Herod could have easily told her that her request was absurd and dismissed her as a foolish child. He could have easily reminded her who the king really was and yet he valued life so carelessly. John could have kept his head down and let Herod alone with his very public disregard for righteousness. John could have done a dozen other things that weren’t preaching repentance in a time and a place where people were being oppressed. Herod was a pawn, and John was a tool. But John was a tool in the hand of God, where Herod was a pawn in Rome’s game of world domination.

There’s something here about the first time we are introduced to John the Baptist. And the way Herod thinks the things Jesus and his disciples are up to must mean they are from John’s ministry - which, properly speaking, they are. The ongoing work of Jesus’ disciples flows from preaching repentance, turning around. Re-orienting to the ways of God and away from the ways of the world. It’s what the disciples did when they dropped everything to follow Jesus. Repentance is key to renewal and reconciliation. John’s baptism ministry, preparing the way of the coming Lord, centered on preaching repentance. If John was going to come back from the dead and haunt Herod, if would sure be with the same message he first preached while living.

The thing about Herod’s fear of being haunted, though, there’s something in that. It speaks to our misuse of power most clearly. Why would we be afraid of what the dead could do to us if we treated them right while they were alive? Why would it matter that we can’t kill ghosts if those ghosts had no reason to hold a grudge against us? I mean, speaking from a mythical standpoint here, everyone has their own opinions about ghosts and hauntings, but the concept, at least, has something to it, right? So what if John comes back to haunt Herod? Is Herod really going to change his ways?

So maybe the real question is, how is Jesus haunting us today? Take a minute to consider this: John’s being beheaded because of his religious threat to the political powers that be is a foreshadowing of the way Jesus will be killed by a sort of mob mentality, as though to silence his one single voice in death will completely silence all who have every learned from him or been transformed by him. Even if Jesus had stayed dead, his followers were as diverse then as they are now, with all sorts of interpretations about what he means for the state of things in this world and the next. Then you consider what it means that Jesus, in fact, did not stay dead, but rose from the grave and can now walk through walls, and blinded Saul on the road to Damascus, and bring about a miraculous catch of fish for professional fishermen who caught nothing all night long?

Power that trumps even death is pretty much the end-all, be-all, after all. And God uses power not to destroy forever, the way Herod might do without even thinking, but to raise up new life where none had been expected. The prophet Amos says clearly at the end of this morning’s reading: I am not a prophet, don’t even have family who are prophets, I’m just a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees, yet God has given me words to prophesy to you. There goes God using power to bring a nobody from no place into a position of leadership and proclamation where he ought not have had a role otherwise. And for we ourselves: Adoption, Redemption, Forgiveness, Inheritance. God uses power not to exclude but to include. Not to threaten with death, but to destroy death itself. Not to throw life away but to lift it up until it sprouts forth from every dead crevice still considered long barren. Jesus is alive again, raised from the dead, and death no longer has the power it once had over us. Death can no longer ever again have the last word. Anything that leads to death can not any longer have the last word or threat of power held over us - addiction, violence, fear, hunger, divorce, poverty, sexism, racism, these painful realities, even pain itself, are not any more powerful over us, or in us, than they are permanent.  As the dancers at yesterday’s picnic danced to the gospel song: There is power in the name of Jesus to break every chain, break every chain, break EVERY chain.

Herod may have been a pawn, but God did not let his fear have the last word for his people. John was gruesomely beheaded, as cheaply as anything, but God did not let the sword have the last say about John’s influence in the world. Jesus himself, God enfleshed, bore the weight of our fear and isolation and misused power and misdirected mob mentality, and he let it crush him to further the power of God’s incredible love across the whole wide earth. His single-hearted, focused and clear purpose to love was power enough, because Jesus was not John the Baptizer come back from the dead. Jesus was not Elijah the prophet coming as forerunner. Jesus was not a celebrity or only a great teacher, but God with skin on, God among us, God suffering alongside us and bleeding with us and reaching out wide to gather us in from all corners of the earth, that we, too, might live in that mighty power of reconciliation and love and gratitude and everlasting life.

Everlasting life! How about that? What kind of power do we have now that death has no more power over us? How are we living out of that power of the love which consumes and renews all other loves? Where will your power, your freedom, play out in the days and weeks to come, not only in this summer in Chatham, but across your vacation travels, in your workplace, where you take your rest? How does God living within you come across differently when you can act freely, without fear of judgment or of death, because of the love which carries all of our loves through death and on out the other side? Where will your power set someone else free this week, I wonder? In the way we welcomed so many to the tag sale this weekend, we shared our power. In the work of rebuilding our front steps so access here is safer for all who wish to find sanctuary, we share that power. In connecting with our ecumenical partners, other neighbor churches, through our village and across Columbia county, we are lifted up by the power above all, when love and truth are met, when righteousness and peace kiss each other.

The power of Jesus the Christ, alive again to die no more, dead once to bring us all through death and into new life, that power is new life for the world. All of it. The whole world. Love that knows not bounds or limits, that has been rejected but never rejects, that sings new life in the face of silent death and whispers peace in the heart of every fighter who serves in time of conflict. Herod only pretends at power, and makes a mess of it. John knew true power, and was not afraid to speak truth to earthly power. Jesus is the power of love and reconciliation and life, the power in which we live, and move, and have our being.

Reputations and Freedom

Ezekiel 2:1-5

God said to me: “O mortal, stand up on your feet, and I will speak with you.” And when he spoke to me, a spirit entered into me and set me on my feet; and I heard him speaking to me. He said to me, “Mortal, I am sending you to the people of Israel, to a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me; they and their ancestors have transgressed against me to this very day. The descendants are impudent and stubborn. I am sending you to them, and you shall say to them, “Thus says the Lord God.” Whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house), they shall know that there has been a prophet among them.”

Psalm 123

To you I lift up my eyes, to you enthroned in the heavens. As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their masters, and the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to you, O Lord our God, until you show us your mercy. Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy, for we have had more than enough of contempt, too much of the scorn of the indolent rich, and of the derision of the proud.

2 Corinthians 12:2-10

I know a man in Christ who was for ten years ago caught up to the third heaven -whether in the body or out of it I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise -whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows - and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. On behalf of this man I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. Though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me. So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Mark 6:1-13

He went away from there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and the bother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. And Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household. And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief. And he went about among the villages teaching. And he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff - no bread, no bag, no money in their belts - but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics. And he said to them, “Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there. And if any place will not receive you, and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.

***

This past week I spent six days at Vanderkamp for the Hudson/Mohawk Conference's Annual Senior High summer camp. We got together the same time as the confirmation camp, which was a lot of high-energy fun, and while the junior high students spent the week with their leaders learning about the liturgical year, we spent our week with the high schoolers talking about hard conversations and how to handle a variety of expectations from family, friends, school, and self. We talked about big issues like racism, and about personal struggles like living with divorced parents. It was a heavy week, and full of fun and tears. 

I wonder what Jesus would have been like as a teen at this sort of camp week. Day after day sharing what it’s like to be Joseph’s step-son, Mary’s illegitimate kid. Was he teased for not knowing really who his father was? Had he been picked on for being non-violent while the other kids got into scuffles? Was he incredibly sensitive or one of a crowd of troublemakers? We don’t have those stories in our scriptures, but we do have the story today of what it was like when he went back home to those people who saw him grow up, when he tried to work with the people who had known him as a kid, when their limited imaginations about who he might grow up to be got in the way of their knowing him as he was. It’s a common thing, to think we know all there is to other people out of one or two experiences, or only a small handful of favorite stories. We do the same thing over and over when it comes to being in relationship with God, too.

But then he sends out his disciples, a relatively unknown bunch of folks who have no widely-known reputations to speak of, no credentials, no extra bags, or bread, or money, only the gift of each other and the authority to cast out unclean spirits. These wandering pairs - I imagine them looking a bit like Mormon door-to-door missionaries in dirty old tunics - “cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.” They were completely dependent on the hospitality of those whose towns they entered. For all appearances, they were powerless, yet they had been given the command to go, and so they went. They had walked with Jesus and saw what he did, they also saw him rejected in his own hometown, and Jesus passed the baton on to them for picking up the work he was doing. Because the work to be done was more important than his reputation.

What kind of reputation does the church have these days, I wonder? What sort of expectations? I met a woman a couple of weeks ago and in letting her know I’m part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, she got caught up on that first word: “Evangelical.” She saw my piercings and tattoos and heard me talk about Grace, and then was really confused that I consider myself to be evangelical, because there is a different sort of reputation that comes with that label now than when we first picked it up. It’s a sad day when we have to say ‘our church is different because it welcomes all sorts of people,’ because that implies there are churches that don’t do that. But what is the church if not sanctuary? What is the church if not hospitality and welcome? That was one of the constant themes of Senior High Camp this past week, that the kids from all over the map - kids into sports, kids into Dungeons and Dragons, kids into fashion, kids into music, kids into complicated mathematical equations and magic tricks… - kids from all sorts of groups were able to be themselves together and be celebrated for who they are. And we kept reminding them, that this is what camp is about. But it’s bigger than camp. Just like it’s bigger than our congregation here. Just like it’s bigger than this fourth of July holiday weekend.

We’ve got a great American dream to celebrate, a theme of freedom to embrace, but it’s far bigger than just what’s here on our shores. America has all sorts of reputations, depending on where you are and who you ask, but on the 4th of July we focus on that stand we took over two hundred years ago, that official document proclaiming “all men are created equal,” though it did not free the slaves. A document which in effect would have had all of us hanged for treason if our Revolution had not ended the way that it did. It was huge, it was risky, it was flawed because people built it. The Declaration of Independence still set forth a precedent for breaking away from abuses of power. 

To quote: “…all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”  

Then the Declaration goes on to list the grievances against King George, which are many, and some of which sound a lot like grievances minorities have voiced among us lately. We wrote a good document, we got off to a rocky start, we’re still struggling to live up to the ideals which led us to fight for a separation in the first place, but even this great experiment is too small.

“Liberty and Justice for all” is supposed to mean for all, but we get mixed up, we get scared, we get hurt and hurt others in return, both on a personal level and on a bigger scale. It’s a wonderful dream, this freedom, and a lot of people have sacrificed their lives for it, but it’s not going to be finally accomplished by our own power and reputation. We take steps, forward and back, to work for it the best we know how, and we are still learning, still moving, still working, to realize what freedom really can be when it is truly freedom for all. Some of us do that by serving in the military. Some of us do that by working in education or by volunteering at the food pantry. 

But here’s the tricky part: freedom for all means even freedom for our enemies. We cannot live in a free world if we continue to kill and oppress and fear one another. This is where God’s reputation hangs on the line. In God’s everlasting kingdom, the last enemy to be destroyed is death itself. But death is the threat we hold over one another’s heads, isn’t it? Death is the thing that we use to finalize punishment on those we deem worst sinners of all. Death is the threat that pushes us to our limits when we get cornered. Death is common to all that lives, yet we do celebrate our national heroes in song when we claim that they “loved liberty more than life,” and that, my friends, that is the freedom of which we sing when we sing of Jesus. Liberty and Justice for each and every living being, freedom and life for every plant, tree, bird, and person who has ever lived. 

There has too long been this false reputation for God, that God is somehow always only angry and demanding and vengeful, and when it comes to injustice that is exactly the image the prophets conjure up. When it comes to seeing creation destroying itself over wealth and honor and consumerism, that is exactly the way we must learn to hear God railing against the powers of destruction and slavery. But when it comes to loving this world, in all of its shattered state, our God would rather die than kill. That is made most clear on the cross, where Jesus, who is our God in flesh, submits to our punishments, so that we can see what kind of world we are making. Once that door is open, once that death has dissolved into life, once we are honest about our failures, healing can begin, freedom can begin.

As the apostle Paul wrote in this morning’s reading: “God said to me “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” It is true for all of us. Every fear, every weakness, is what we celebrate when we celebrate true freedom. Because those things are no longer held over us, no longer threats to our well-bring, but embraced as places of grace, as the coming of God’s kingdom among us.

Our community, then, is made a place of honesty and healing. Our church, then, is a community of welcome and embrace. Our children are celebrated and encouraged as they explore and discover who God has created them to be. Our own struggles are caught up in the new covenant with a God who has broken our expectations and brought life out of death, wholeness out of pain, who is with us every step along the way, no matter where our lives may take us.

Blood and Touch

Lamentations 3:22-33

Psalm 30

2 Corinthians 8:7-15

Mark 5:21-43

And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him, and he was beside the sea. Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly, saying, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.” And he went with him. And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him.

And there was a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years, and who suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus and come up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made whole.” And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.

And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out form him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’” And he looked around to see who had done it.

But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you whole; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler’s house some who said, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?” But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John the brother of James.

They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. And when he had entered, he said to them, “Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But he put them all outside and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was. Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha cumi,” which means, “Little girl, get up.” And immediately the girl got up and begam walking (she was twelve years old), and they were immediately overcome with amazement. And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

“Do not fear, only believe.” I wonder if the father of the little dead girl even heard Jesus’ words, or if the news from home rang too clearly in his ears: “Don’t trouble the Teacher, your baby girl is dead.”

We’ve had a lot of mixed emotions this week, a lot of big things happening in the news and here at home. Kids are growing up, graduating, moving on and farther away. The Supreme Court has ruled marriage equality is in line with our national constitution. The Episcopalian Church elected a new national Bishop. Our ELCA Bishop has called for this day to be a national day of mourning and repentance for our perpetuation of the sins of racism and white supremacy. And it’s raining.

Some days are like that, though. Every emotion is at the surface, every moment we are pulled in a different direction, every hope and fear all in front of us at once. And when we go to get Jesus to help us out here, well, it seems even he is distracted. Jairus, a synagogue leader, who has done everything right to be on God’s good side, has every right to implore the Teacher to come and work a miracle for his little girl who is so terribly sick. He meets Jesus at the lakeshore just after Jesus has returned from that other side where he cast out some pretty powerful demons, and he begs for help. Jesus follows him, but word about this miracle-worker has spread, and Jairus is also probably pretty well known, and the crowd just keeps getting in the way. There are people all over them, wondering, asking, doubting, wanting, watching, waiting to see what will happen next, and in the middle of that cacophony of bodies pushing this way and that, suddenly Jesus stops and turns around and asks “who touched me?” 

Sorry? Jesus, there’s a crowd here you just can’t get away from, what do you mean, “who touched me?” They’re all touching you.

But Jesus had been touched with intention, not just in passing, not only accidentally. The hem of his robe, the farthest reach of what could be called his personal space, had been all that she wanted, but the bleeding woman needed touch so desperately to be whole again, all of her twelve long years of waiting were in that touch.

Can you imagine bleeding for twelve years? Twelve days is a stretch. Lots of women bleed for about five days out of the month, and it can be downright exhausting! It’s amazing women don’t die every month from that regular loss of blood, and its a good thing women have each other to understand that pain, because in Jesus’ day, and in a lot of ways and places even today, bleeding women get set apart, pushed aside, disregarded, and are considered ‘unclean’ to the point of not even being able to enter the worship space.

Because blood is such a powerful thing, you see. For the most basic scientific observer, blood is the thing which gives life. You see an animal bleed on the altar for sacrifice, and once the blood is drained there is no more life in the animal. Blood, we now know, also carries a number of diseases, and so anyone trained in first aid has to put on latex gloves before tending to the care of someone who is bleeding, lest the nurse or patient transmit an illness unawares. The MacHayden theater here in town is currently running a musical called “Rent,” celebrating life and friendship in the midst of that great and terrible plague we finally named as AIDS, which is carried in the blood and other life-giving fluids, and attacks the body’s immune system. When AIDS first hit, before we had a name for it, it was such a mystery, striking seemingly out of nowhere, and the President never talked about it, and there were so few people not infected who dared put on gloves and masks and actually touch those patients suffering from it.

But Jesus never wore latex gloves. Jesus didn’t worry about infection from the people around him. That’s how the world works, isn’t it, that illness and disease are catching, and we have to protect ourselves lest we, too, become ‘unclean,’ but Jesus is different.

“Do not fear, only believe,” he says. The woman who had been drained dry financially by doctors, and drained dry emotionally by being socially outcast, and drained dry by her own body which somehow kept living even while continually in the process of dying, she knew there was one last hope to cling to when all else had failed her. Or maybe she didn’t know, but was just desperate enough to give it one last shot. Jesus had been healing and teaching, calming storms and silencing his opponents, and word had gotten around that he didn’t discriminate like the rest of the world did. He didn’t wait to see someone’s credentials, didn’t look at someone and judge their worth by what they wore or what color their skin was or how often they had been to synagogue. Jesus was different. Jesus is different.

It’s no wonder he was so often interrupted. Who else would welcome the stranger the way he did? Who else would speak with such grace, truth, and forgiveness? Who else, on their way to a very important synagogue leader’s house, would stop and look an old woman in the face, and speak to her gently even though he had the right by law to stone her for being out in public while so terribly unclean? He should have devoted his entire focus to Jairus, the religious leader, whose little girl was just on the edge of womanhood, rather than spend his energy on this old woman whose usefulness had long since dried up.

“Do not fear, only believe.” The healing of that woman came not just to her body, but she was made whole when she was finally, after twelve years of invisibility, finally seen. Like the AIDS patients of the 1980s, she was ignored by her community until she went away, avoided in hopes that her problem would resolve itself without getting too many others involved, and she was shunned out of fear of contagion. But that fear itself became the contagion, infecting everyone who stopped being able to touch or see or care about the sick. And Jesus restored her to visibility, called her out and gave her her voice back to speak for herself and tell her story in public. What a relief, what a joy, what a miracle, that the community could now see and embrace her again after a lifetime of shame for something she could not control.

In the middle of that joy came word to Jairus that his little girl, his hope for a future, had died, and all that was left for him was to grieve. But Jesus had not forgotten him just because he was interrupted on the way. Jesus is not the sort to go halfway on healing ministry. Jesus reminded Jairus “do not fear, only believe,” and they continued on their way.

Now, after being touched by a bleeding woman, technically, legally, Jesus would have been considered unclean himself - but Jesus, remember, is different. Jesus doesn’t catch our disease, rather he himself spreads the contagion of wholeness and healing. So Jairus takes him into his home, where the wailing and mourning has already begun, and God only knows what Jairus expected at that point. Compassion for his now grieving wife? A word about resurrection someday? A witness to his own grief? Probably Jairus didn’t expect what he got: Jesus ran the wailing crowd out of the house and took three of his disciples, along with the child’s parents, to the bedside of the little girl, where he very simply woke her up and got somebody to bring her a little broth in a bowl or maybe some bread. Something to put the color back in her cheeks. “Little girl, get up.”

Jesus does the same for us, you know. There are so many ways this world bleeds us dry, so many ways the ones we love are taken from us when it seems God is looking the other way. But Jesus doesn’t ever forget us, doesn’t ever abandon us.

“Do not fear, only believe.” It is a hard word to hear when we are struggling, an easy one to say when we are rejoicing, and a true word no matter where in between the two we find ourselves. Because Jesus himself bled and bled and died to give us his life. Jesus himself, the healer, the Teacher, the one who feeds us time and again, gives his blood to us, for us all, at this Table of very ordinary, every day stuff which has sustained humankind for generations. Bread and wine, common around the world, body and blood, basic to our existence, grace and forgiveness, welcome and embrace, strength and sending, given and shed …for you, whoever you are and wherever you are and no matter where you come from or where you are going.

Our lifeblood now and always is Jesus the Christ, the One who made us, who has come among us, who still stirs in our hearts and surprises us with second chances, and third, and fourth… The world will bleed us dry, over and over again, breaking our hearts with joy and sorrow and pulling us apart at every change and challenge we face, and we will be bled dry as we give ourselves away in imitation of the One who names us and claims us, and that very One who gives us his own body and blood will continue to revive us, to renew us, refill us, restore us one to another until the whole world - and yes I believe that means the whole world - has been bound together in love and newness of life.

“Do not fear, only believe” is not something we can do on our own strength or individually alone, but it is a gift given to us in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the promise of resurrection and life everlasting, the witness of those who have known restoration and who walk among us or whose stories are told around all of those tables that feed us. It is something we receive when Jesus touches us where we are broken, when Jesus hold our shattered hopes and hurts, when Jesus embraces all of ourselves, even those things we have been taught to be ashamed of. For everything that makes us bleed, Jesus bleeds with us, bleeds for us, bleeds into us so that we may live again, whole and restored, welcomed and new. Thanks be to God.

Don't you care that we are perishing?

Job 38:1-11

Then Adonai replied to Job out of the tempest and said: “Who is this who darkens counsel, speaking without knowledge? Gird your loins like a man; I will ask and you will inform me. Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations? Speak if you have understanding. Do you know who fixed its dimensions or who measured it with a line? Onto what were its bases sunk? Who set its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the divine beings shouted for joy? Who closed the sea behind doors when it gushed forth out of the womb, when I clothed it in clouds, swaddled it in dense clouds, when I made breakers my limit for it, and set up its bar and doors, and said, ‘You may come so far and no father; here your surging waves will stop’?

Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32

R: God reduced the storm to a whisper; the waves were stilled (Ps 107:29)

Give thanks to Adonai, because God is good,

for God’s steadfast love is forever.

Let the redeemed of Adonai proclaim, 

those redeemed from adversity,

whom God gathered in from the lands, 

from east and west, from the north and from the sea.

Others go down to the sea in ships,

ply their trade in the mighty waters; R

they have seen the works of Adonai,

and God’s wonders in the deep.

By God’s word God raised a storm wind 

that made the waves surge.

Mounting up to the heaven, plunging down to the depths,

disgorging in their misery,

they reeled and staggered like a drunkard,

all their skill to no avail.

In their adversity they cried to Adonai,

and God saved them from their troubles.

God reduced the storm to a whisper;

the waves were stilled. R

They rejoiced when all was quiet,

and God brought them to the port they desired.

Let them praise Adonai for steadfast love,

God’s wondrous deeds for all people.

Let them exalt God in the congregation of the people,

and acclaim God in the assembly of the elders. R

2 Corinthians 6:1-13

As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says, “At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.”

See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see -- we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing,; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything. We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you. There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. In return -- I speak as to children -- open wide your hearts also.

Mark 4:35-41

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

****

I have to let you know I’ve been somewhat distracted since Thursday morning, when I woke up refreshed after a full night’s sleep, ready for a lovely day off, and opened my email to the daily news from the BBC. I try for an outside news source just to keep my perspective a bit more open, and when I looked at the first news story posted to the BBC Thursday morning I was nauseous, I spent the day foggy and the time since has been a flurry of emotions as more news comes down the pike through various sources. 
Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45 years old, was a beloved track coach and a minister at the AME church. Clementa Pinckney, 41 years old, was the lead pastor at the AME church, a state senator, and a graduate of one of our ELCA seminaries. Cynthia Hurd, 54 years old, was a librarian, whose birthday would have been today (Sunday). Tywanza Sanders, 26 years old, was a recent graduate of Allen University’s Division of Business Administration, and he died trying to shield his 87-year-old aunt from the shooter. Myra Thompson, 59 years old, was reverend Anthony Thompson’s wife, Ethel Lee Lance, 70 years old, was the church sexton, Daniel L. Simmons, age 74, was a ministerial staff member, a father and a grandfather and a veteran of war. Depaynoe Middleton-Doctor, 49 years old, sang in the choir and preached at her church. Susie Jackon, 87 years old, sheltered young people who needed a place to live after her son moved away from home. 

I read these stories, and the story of hate which their killer was fed, and I hear the disciples’ ask Jesus in that storm on the sea: “Don’t you care that we are being destroyed?”

And, lest we still feel too detached from it all, the pastor who was leading that Bible study was a graduate of one of our eight ELCA seminaries. And if that doesn’t hit close enough to home, the shooter was a member of an ELCA parish. In other words, broadly speaking, a 21-year-old, white member of our church decided to kill black people out of a loud and proud self-professed hate for black people. A member of our dear beloved ELCA found a black church where he joined their Bible study for an hour, and then he shot and killed nine people in a house of prayer and worship.

It makes me so angry. It makes me so sad. It makes me despondent and hopeless and fearful and I feel so powerless that I want to go smash things. There is a storm in my heart, doubtful and confused and frighteningly overwhelming. Being white, I do have the privilege of deciding if I will let this act of domestic terrorism affect me, since it didn’t happen out of hate for white people and I’m therefore not in danger from it. But being Christian, I have the call and the command of Christ to take up my cross and follow Jesus through the pain and on out the other side. The call and command to enter with others into their pain. The call and command, also, to ‘be not afraid.’

But not being afraid means not to be afraid to be honest about when I am afraid. We take so many precautions to avoid pain, especially in church. When we gather for worship it is a happy time, a joyful community, and if discomfort enters into the space we don’t know what to do with it. But our Scriptures are full of pain, just as they are full of joy and promise, so that we can live faithfully in the realities of suffering, and can hold one another when our own strength runs out. We have an entire book called ‘Lamentations,’ the Psalms are full of expressions of grief and anger, the prophets wail and weep, Jesus himself weeps, for crying out loud. And this morning’s first Testament reading comes from a book that tells a story so deeply known to us we refer to it in connection with people who struggle mightily: they must certainly have the ‘patience of Job.’ Right? I mean, who’s used that phrase before?

We have multitudes of examples of suffering in Scripture. The prophet Isaiah has an entire song we refer to as the ‘suffering servant,’ and often use to point to Jesus. We don’t like to think about it if we can help it, and the fact that we ever get the choice is, well, a symptom of our privilege. I call it a ‘symptom’ because it is not right to be so disconnected from the rest of humanity. But humanity struggles mightily every day, and to see those sad faces on the TV over and over can wear a person down... to see those sad faces in your living room, or in the mirror, on the other hand? I mean, if we, of all people, can’t keep it together, what is this world coming to? ...Isn’t that mixed up in all of this? The certainty that everyone else can have pain but we can’t? Everyone else can fall apart, but we have to hold it together? How else do we learn grace and forgiveness, though? How else can we experience that we are carried in this pain, and through this pain, if we spend so much of our energy avoiding it?

While the disciples’ little fishing boat is being swamped by the waves, the disciples ask Jesus, “Do you not care that we are perishing?” And as we are the Body of Christ, the church, I wonder how often we keep our heads under the covers, while multitudes cry around us “do you not care that we are perishing?” Are we asleep, Body of Christ? The most racially segregated time in America is right now, Sunday morning. Yet the Body of Christ exists in every shade of human skin. Have we gotten too comfortable with Christianity to live faithfully, too isolated to be affected by the suffering around and within ourselves?

Because suffering is complicated, pain comes from all corners, and when we shut down pain we shut down healing. We have gotten very good at shutting down when we get uncomfortable, very good at hiding. But hiding will not lead to healing. Hiding, in fact, is the opposite of healing. Hiding is what we did in the garden when God walked in the cool of the day and we ducked behind the bushes because we were naked and afraid. God does not call us into hiding, but out of it. Out of ourselves and into the great wide world where Leviathan has been made for sport, where God has set the bounds of the deeps and scattered the stars across the sky like so many handfuls of glitter. We live in a great big wide open world full of life and joy and death and terror, and all of that bundled up together is a mystery and a miracle into which God has come to live with us.

When Jesus and his disciples go across the water to the other side, even though they know where they are going there are still storms along the way. Any time there is change, be it change of circumstance or change of heart, it can bring up a storm of emotions and reactions and griefs. Jesus and the prophets show us a vision of God’s kingdom among us, where we are headed, but in the meantime there are a lot of storms to get through. We have a long way yet to go in our little boat, tossed by the storms inside and out. We have come far, and Jesus has come along with us the whole time. Not only that, but Jesus can handle our storms. When the disciples woke Jesus up in that storm, they probably wanted him to lend a hand with bailing out the water that was coming up over the sides of the boat, and what they got was so much more than they asked for, because it was Jesus there with them. When we ask Jesus for help in our storms, for a life preserver, a little strength for the journey, we get far more than we ask for, too. Body and blood in bread and wine, for instance. Because all of our powerlessness turned to rage, all of our displaced fear, all of our insecurities and uncertainties, got thrown up there on that cross with Christ the day we crucified him. The day we nailed him up there and hung him up for all to see, ‘strange fruit’ right there on that tree of the cross, his blood poured out for the world, given and shed freely for the freedom of all people, of every race and nation, color and creed. It is that Blood alone which is responsible for our unity, our only eternal deep and lasting freedom. That freedom is our courage to speak out on behalf of life in the midst of death.

People of God, we are in this storm-abused boat together, every last one of us, in here and out there. We have been loved, all of this war-weary world, more than any of us deserve. We have been given dignity and honor as creatures of God’s handiwork, interwoven with the rest of creation in all its beauty and majesty. We have believed the lies for too long, given in to the power of false accusations for too long, hidden our shame and our God-given differences too long. We are the Body of Christ! And this is not by our own choosing, our own power, our own goodness, but by the Grace of God who made us and claimed us, who gathers, feeds, and sends us. All of us. Here at Christ Our Emmanuel Lutheran Church, and in South Carolina at Mother Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. When we weep, we weep together. When we celebrate, we celebrate together. When we repent, we repent together. When we are forgiven, we are forged anew together. There is no ‘us and them’ in the kingdom of God. There is no shame, no hiding, no fear. Only peace. Love. Joy. Kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control, generosity, those gifts of the Spirit we have hung on banners around our sanctuary this Pentecost season. We have freely received these gifts from God. For we are the Body of Christ, fed by the Body of Christ, which is given in love for the sake of the world.

Crazy Little Seeds of Love

Ezekiel 17:22-24

Psalm 92:1-4, 12-15

2 Corinthians 5:6-17

Mark 4:26-34

I saw a beautiful article online this week from a website called “Momastery,” which I shared on my Facebook page, about the world’s need for ‘mentally different’ people. It’s an old blog post, from April, written by a woman who has anxiety, depression, and addiction, and it speaks to the usual, typical way people tend to interact with those who have mental illness. You know the way, with medications and doctors, with pity and institutions, with suspicion and typically low expectations. So much mental illness is invisible until someone has ‘an episode,’ a nervous breakdown or behavioral tics that stand out from the statistical normal behavior. And because it’s not as clear as a broken leg or even cancer, we tend to act as though a person with mental illness can just pray away their illness, or think happy thoughts, or easily change their attitude and not be sick any more. It’s not that simple, human brain chemistry, and getting along in the world as it is, well, that’s nearly enough to put anyone into an anxiety attack if we’re paying attention.

That’s just what Glennon, the blogger whose article I’m talking about, has to say about the ‘mentally different.’ Here are a few words from her article:

“Sometimes we understand that our inability to accept and live resignedly in the world we’ve been born into is chemical and personal and that we need help integrating… But other times — we turn on the news or watch closely how people treat each other and we silently raise our eyebrows and think: Actually, maybe it’s not me. Maybe it’s you, world. Maybe my inability to adapt to the world is not because I’m crazy but because I’m paying attention. Maybe it’s not insane to reject the world as it is. Maybe the real insanity is surrendering to the world as it is now. Maybe pretending that things around here are just fine is no badge of honor I want to wear.”

I say this because we joke a lot, I know I do, about people being ‘crazy.’ I throw that word around anytime somebody decides to do something that seems outlandish. As in, last winter my best friend and I drove an hour each way to meet for dinner in a snowstorm just because we hadn’t seen each other in awhile, and we called it crazy. But we needed to connect. When people today are outrageously, painfully generous, we tend to think there’s something wrong with them. The church in her first generations sold everything and shared in common with the poor, and if we did that today we would certainly be called crazy for it. Taking care of widows and orphans without repayment? Crazy. Standing up for the outcast? Crazy. Love your enemy? Crazy! Pray for those who persecute you? Crazy! Father, forgive them while they nail my body to a cross? Crazy! 

The letter we read today, that portion from Second Corinthians, has this line in it: “If we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right minds, it is for you.” In a world of buying and selling, competition and score-keeping, to be loved unconditionally and without reserve is so far from our experience it’s enough to overstimulate anyone to the point of breakdown. That’s kind of how we grow, though. Another image going around Facebook lately is simply a picture of a stalk of wheat with a phrase about the seed needing to come completely undone, to turn entirely inside-out, in order to grow into the plant it is designed to become. Usually one would look at a seed and notice, if anything, how small it is, maybe it’s general color and shape, and it might just as easily be brushed off the kitchen counter as planted in the soil with any intention.

But then all this stuff happens underground, in the dark, with time and warmth and water the seed splits and shoots sprout down for roots and up for more sunlight. If you’ve ever started a bean sprout wrapped in a wet paper towel in a ziplock baggie, you’ve seen some of what happens there, but it’s still a pretty miraculous process even when we think we know what’s going on. How does a seed know to do that? How do the cells know when to do that? How do the sugars and proteins and nutrients and everything work so well together that entire species can rely on the miracle of plant growth to sustain their own animal bodies?

This, Jesus tells us, is what the Kingdom of God is like. A farmer plants in the fields, and before she knows it there are roots and shoots, stems and leaves, flowers and fruits and veggies! I’d imagine that today Jesus might tell us the Kingdom of God is like those hostas growing out front. A few Wednesdays there were just hints of growth poking up out of the ground, and then three days later when we gathered for Sunday worship, wham! Suddenly there were more hostas than we knew what to do with! That is what God’s love in the world is like. It’s crazy! It’s amazing! It’s startling even when we think we know what to expect of it. And for all of our best intentions and for all of our worst ones, it will grow, we know not how, until it becomes a nuisance. Like dandelions all over the yard when we just spread fertilizer yesterday. Like wild mustard, and other invasive species that start out small and soon take over the garden and the lawn and come up between cracks in the sidewalk, and with their roots make even more cracks in the sidewalk.

The kingdom of God is like Mike, a guy I met yesterday in Albany who just got out of then years in prison for some dumb stunt he pulled as a kid, who claims that those ten years away were God’s gift to him, to help him slow down and calm down and learn a few things before getting his second chance. He was in town for some cancer treatment and spent a good long while telling me about God’s love and care for him, that the universe doesn’t owe him anything because everything he has is a gift, that he wishes people would understand the value of life more. Talk about a journey! He’s been through the ringer and grown up quite a bit in the meantime and is like a new person this side of prison. It’s a bit like the letter to the Corinthians reminds us: “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. Everything old has passed away, see everything has become new.”

And that is the daily conversion we go through, little by little and sometimes in spurts and sometimes in dry spells. Growth slow and invisible underground, new life budding just below the surface, resurrection out of every little letting go. Jesus Christ has given us that planting, has planted us like seeds, has come like us, down to the cellular level, to resurrect our hearts. We do not regard anyone from a human point of view any more, even though we once saw Jesus that way, just like we’d gotten used to judging everyone at first sight. We put labels on him according to our reasons for wanting him dead, and he died and rose and shattered all of those assumptions about life and death and heaven and who we are. He brought us the kingdom of God, right in our midst!

That blog I first mentioned goes on:

“We addicts — we have rejected the world as it is. We left the big world and started hiding inside the small world of addiction for a reason. So inviting us back into the world as it is — it’s not effective. We are too smart to rejoin a party we couldn’t stomach… I needed to be invited not only out of addiction, but into a movement to change the world. I needed to join folks working to turn this planet into a gentler, saner, safer, more vivid place in which folks with wide-open eyes and tender hearts might survive and thrive.”

She’s using the language of addiction, but it’s the same message, because addiction language is sin language. We sinners - we have rejected the world as God made it, we left God’s world and created our own because we did not trust the word of life and of love. So digging ourselves in deeper is not effective. We are too proud to join a party where we are not the center of attention. We are not only invited, but carried out of sin and into a movement to change the world. We are connected through Baptism to people who are recognizing God in our midst and people who struggle with recognizing God, so that we can together bear God’s redeeming love to the world.

In September, we are going to host a community Heroin awareness event. We will reach out to help folks who are addicted to Heroin, to help those who love addicts, and we are inviting schools and community resources to come together, not only to offer help ‘out there’ but to receive help ourselves. We need to know our community better to serve and love our community better. We need to recognize ourselves as addicted people, too. Maybe not addicted to pain killers, maybe addicted to making people happy, or addicted to being in control of our own lives. So we invite the addicts among us to lend us their perspective, their uncertainty, their questions and struggle, their awareness of what is deeply wrong with the world, that we may learn how better to recognize Jesus alive and active in the world as it is, and to help create the world as it can be. Where folks with wide-open eyes alert for joy and for threat, and folks with hearts made tender out of love and out of pain, all together can not only survive, but thrive in love and hope, like a garden that blooms as though overnight, to wake us in the morning, fresh and alive.

Naked and not ashamed

Genesis 3:8-15

Psalm 130

2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1

Mark 3:20-35

Now that it's the season of Pentecost, also called ordinary time, also called the season of the church, we’re going to dive right into the topic of sin. No wonder everyone goes on vacation this time of year! Beautiful, sunny days, and we come to church where the lectionary readings, chosen generations ago and read today around the world, talk about the onset of shame, the broken relationship between God and people, and the fight between people and the rest of creation. Then the Psalm response, which we sang today, is all lament and waiting, which does at least hinge on hoping to receive forgiveness. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians goes on and on about the relative insignificance of suffering, or at least attempts to offer consolation to the church in Corinth who are being greatly afflicted. Then, to top it all off, Jesus is accused of working in cahoots with the devil, he basically disowns his immediate family, AND we get that ugly phrase “eternal sin.” Also referred to as the unforgivable sin, which has led us into all kinds of dialogue and dispute about the nature of forgiveness and if there really is a place of eternal punishment where God would leave us just for speaking against the Holy Spirit, who we can’t ever fully grasp, anyhow.

On the other hand, we talk about sin all year long, don’t we? That’s exactly how we begin every Sunday worship service. We name our sin, maybe not specifically and in great detail, but as a community we confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. At the very bottom of it, we recognize that we have broken the two great and basic commandments: love God and love thy neighbor. That’s what we confess every Sunday morning together. By what we have done, and by what we have left undone, we have not loved. We have not understood love. We have not allowed ourselves to be loved, either.

See, in that first reading, in the garden, at the beginning of life, just before the part we read this morning, we were naked and not ashamed. Sometimes we talk of reconciliation with God as taking away all of our burdens, removing the things we hide behind, being lifted out of the miry clay, but that brings us back to being naked. And we still talk about our nightmares about showing up someplace naked, giving a presentation or something and realizing we don’t have any clothes on. So we cover ourselves, for modesty’s sake, with clothing, and with good manners, then striving for the perfect job, marrying the perfect spouse, raising the best kids, taking the perfect vacation, having the perfect faith. Then somehow these become things we hide behind, and no matter how good they seem to us at the time, or how necessary, they are simply not all there is at the core of us, and neither are they God.

So, at the end of the day, looking back on the hours spent, the money spent, the energy and attention spent, when we’re just in general spent, what’s left?

Love. Compassion. Grace. Let’s jump from Genesis to the Gospel. The set-up here comes from earlier in the chapter, where the people are gathered for Sabbath in the synagogue, and Sabbath is a day of rest, no work allowed according to the Law. Good idea, Sabbath. Rest is important. Rest is holy. So on this Sabbath day, a man with a withered hand is there in the midst of the people. He can’t work, he probably shouldn’t be there, and he’s definitely making some people uncomfortable. You know the type. Any sort of suffering we can notice makes us a bit squeamish if it hits too close to home. So this guy is there and the religious leaders who are all about keeping the law are just waiting for an excuse to pounce on Jesus for breaking the Law (again, he already eats with sinners and cleanses the unclean) and Jesus tests their welcome by asking if it’s right to do good on the Sabbath. He knows the answer. They know the answer. He heals the man’s hand and they plot to kill him. Then suddenly Jesus is the go-to guy for hearings and exorcisms, and he’s even got students who study with him, and I’m not saying the Pharisees, Herodians, or scribes were jealous and spiteful, but their livelihoods were on the line if Jesus got a greater following than their temple did. Here’s this teacher who’s going up against the black and white basics of ritual and religious order, and the people are flocking to him, and where does he think he gets the authority to do these things? He must be in cahoots with the devil, in a bid to take down the religious powers that be. Certainly Jesus has made a pact with Satan to heal all of those sick people and cast out those demons…

In the middle of this paparazzi mess, with all the hungry, hurting people clamoring to see Jesus and all the usual faith leaders grumbling out of the spotlight, Jesus’ own immediate family is concerned for his health and well-being, and they come to try and extricate him from the crowds so he can get away and rest and at least have a little lunch.

So, two things are going on here, from what I can tell. One: the conversation around who is in Jesus’ family. The second: powers of destruction and powers of life are getting convoluted.

Because sometimes the powers of life feel like the powers of death. Sometimes the cure starts out feeling worse than the disease. Sometimes habits and expectations need to die in order for new things to grow. 

When the scribes accuse Jesus of working with the accuser, they’re playing that blame game for their own failure to evoke conversion among the people. They have the rules of faith and the right understanding for how things ought to happen, and here’s this rule-breaker who suddenly is drawing away all of their people to something a bit more wild, a bit less tame, a bit more wilderness and less centralized in one location they can control. They’re losing their grip on their positions of power, and grasping for reasons why they can not effect their followers in the same way. There’s gotta be something evil in working outside of the box, they call the work of the Holy Spirit - works Jesus does to bring about healing and wholeness - they call these miracles the work of the prince of demons.

Yet the Holy Spirit is not the one who makes Adam and Eve ashamed of their nakedness in the garden. The Holy Spirit moved over the waters in the beginning, breathed life into the dirt-people to make them human, but never refused to forgive, never refused to welcome and to embrace God’s children. How, then, could the ones who accused Jesus that day know the One whose love they so clearly denied, if they staunchly refused to recognize the work of the Holy Spirit? Jesus tells them they are really missing the mark, way off base in their understanding of God’s character. As the Psalmist says, with the Lord there is plenteous redemption, with the Lord there is steadfast love. Forgiveness is there, is always there. Forgiveness is the language of God. And compassion. And grace. And mercy.

Then this argument is interrupted. Someone tells Jesus his mother and brothers and sisters are waiting outside, and he responds ‘who is my mother? who are my brothers and sisters? The ones who do God’s will are my mother and sister and brother.’ Is Jesus blowing them off like he’s got it all together and doesn’t need them any more? No! Jesus isn’t turning their familial connections down, he’s just expanding them. It’s no longer just Mary and the children who are part of Jesus’ family, but all who do the will of God, loving their neighbors, loving God above all others. What wonderful news for anyone who has ever been left out, chosen last, forgotten, or intentionally excluded! Jesus is reprimanding the leaders, again, for their shallow imaginations and unimaginative hearts. Of course the Holy Spirit can forgive, and heal, and restore. That’s what She’s been about this whole time!

And that’s what we are about, brothers and sisters. Healing, forgiveness, and restoration. We have been claimed by the One who made us and called us good in the beginning of things, the One who followed us out of the garden of Eden and into the world, the One who has suffered alongside us to bring us new life. We are that family of Christ, led by that Holy Spirit who healed and exorcised the multitudes. We have a God who has seen us in all our everything and in all our nothing, our nakedness and shame, who has loved us still, who has pursued us all the way to the cross and brought us with him to the other side of the grave. Who are the brothers and sisters of Jesus? We’re sitting right here. We’re going to baseball games and music in the park and bringing the new life of Christ with us everywhere we go. Because we have been forgiven. Because that’s who God is, the creator who forgives.